Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Lion King

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

On the week of its release in July of 2019, Griffin and David discussed The Lion King. Together they examine the photorealism angle, Disney’s legacy, as well as, the recent Cats trailer and the dawn of digital fur technology.

blank check with griffin and david blank check with griffin and david don't know what to say or to expect all you need to know is that the name of the show is blank check Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Let's keep going. Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! Podcastia! All right, I'm cutting you off. From the pod we cast on this planet. And blinking pod into the cast.

There is more to pod than cast ever be seen. Okay, get out. More to pod than cast ever be seen. Okay, get out. More to pod than can ever be cast. Yeah, we get it that you use the words pod and cast. There's far too much to pod and cast. More to pod than can ever be cast. But the pod rolling cast through the Sapphire podcast keeps pod and cast on the endless round. It's the pod of the cast.

Shut the fuck up. Be quiet. And it moves us all. It started out that I was enjoying it more than the movie. Now we're about equal. Through despair and podcast. Despair. Mostly despair.

Good song, though. Pot! I mean, I'll say, that was the most emotionally activated I felt by the entire movie. That needle drop is unbelievable. It is. The moment that kicks in and you just see the sun.

I was like, what if I like this? Interesting. I was for like half a second i was like what if this gets me right you know it is good i mean but then i just immediately think of the i'm just watching it right now it looks so much better cartoon the cast uh god is there yeah what is there any disney movie that begins as like boldly as that God. Is there... Yeah. What? Is there any Disney movie that begins as boldly as that? No, you know what's cool, too?

Because a lot of them have that mood-setting opening number. You know, right? You know what I'm talking about. But I feel like... This one, it's like, yeah. Here's the other thing. I feel like the other mood-setting opening numbers are kind of more like story songs. Yeah, yeah.

Like, these are the daughters of Triton. Right. That one. And I feel like this one, the fact that it takes until Beauty and the Beast is all plot. The end of the song until we see our main characters. Right. That's what I like about it. I don't think the other ones have a mood

setting song like this. No, but they're sort of like, right, we're easing you into the world. Here we are, right? But it's like the fucking, like Notre Dame starts with like Chopin saying like the tales of Notre Dame and he's a cloak man, I'm sorry. And he's like literally like. How does Pocahontas begin?

Because I'm remembering the good ones, but yeah. So you and I disagree on the Pocahontas soundtrack because I think the Pocahontas soundtrack slaps. Oh, you know what? Pocahontas begins with Steady as the Beating Drum, which is good. Yeah. That's one of the better songs in Pocahontas. Are you playing Steady as the Beating Drum, which is good. That's one of the better songs in Pocahontas. Are you playing Steady as the Beating Drum?

No. This is one they'll never touch, right? I'm sorry. You know what? It doesn't start with this. Because I think the opening of Pocahontas is the best thing. Pocahontas cold opens with Virginia Sailing Company. And you start on the boat.

And then it's the hard cut to this and that's the first time you see America. I think that's incredible. But they'll never remake that one, right? I wouldn't put it past them. You wouldn't put it past them? I wouldn't put it past them. That is some tricky territory.

I guarantee you they have, the way any any proper like sort of uh a medical lab has like a wing that's just trying to crack cancer 24 7 i guarantee you disney has like a whole story wing that's just people being like is there any way there's gotta be a way there's gotta be a way what are the remaining other films they have not how about the way is that they make the movie and all the proceeds go to Native Americans? Yeah, well, that's not going to work for them. Okay. Okay.

For Disney? All right. There were all these stories about how they've been underpaying the employees of their theme park so much. The theme parks are the biggest money getter for them. That's like the cornerstone of their company. It's just like pure profit. And employees who work at the theme parks were like living in cars

because they couldn't afford to live on the full-time salary. There was like a woman who died of a heat stroke in her car who had worked as like a janitor at Disney World for like 10 years. Welcome to our Lion King episode, by the way. Yeah, of course. Terrible stuff. And this summer, Disney attendance is down at both parks,

way down from the usual summer standards, when they expected that they would be breaking attendance records because of Star Wars. And what happened is, I believe, this is not my theory alone, but I truly think this is the thing. They spent so much time hyping up how batshit crowded it was going to be. Exactly.

The people, you know what, I'll take that summer off. They scared everyone off. And that coupled with the fact that they were like, only one of the two rides is going to be open. The other one opens in six months. I think people, like myself, were like, I'm not getting on a fucking plane until December. Which I should be someone who's going to be there fucking opening week. They had done this once before.

They made these places like Disney. We're here to talk to Lion King. Don't get into deep lore. Don't get into park lore now. You know who's a Disney head? Snooki. Really? Yeah. Have her on the pod. If we ever do Musker or Clowmans, which we've been talking about more and more, You know who's a Disney head? Snooki. Really? Yeah. Have her on the pod. She's wonderful.

If we ever do Musker at Clowman's, which we've been talking about more and more, it would be kind of cool to do because it's like the rise and fall of the Renaissance. She was just talking about it in a recent episode. Like just getting back from Disney. Oh, sure. What's the other Disney park they did this,

they overhyped that then people stayed away? They did these two things. They tried to make their own discovery zone, like kid, like Chuck E. Cheese style. And they overhyped how popular they were going to be, and the attendance was so fucking low. And Disney Quest was them trying to do a more high-tech

interactive arcade. And the same thing happened. They've done this before, but they were previously always Eisner mistakes. And Iger hasn't made this mistake before. But they were spending so much time announcing to the press how they were going to handle crowds and being like, we got this figured out, that even someone like me

was like, I'm not touching it for six months. What's Snooki's favorite Disney movie? That's a good question. I don't know, offhand. But let's just start the conversation, see where it goes. Yeah, start it up. I'll find out. Throw the ball to her. Here's an interesting thing.

Okay. It feels more and more now like the Disney live action remakes that work at the level that they want these movies to work are the Renaissance movies. Box office wise? Yes. Yes. And it's a narrow pool that's going to get more and more shallow. I'm going to read you the list. This is what I wanted to.

All right. So Snow White, they have not remade, right? There were the two other ones. There have been other, right, Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror, Mirror, but those weren't Disney. They have now announced that they're working on it, that they're developing it, that they hired a writer or whatever. Sounds tricky.

I could imagine that they perhaps, I will say this. I think if the Maleficent sequel underperforms, I think everything pre-1988 will get slowed. All right. There's Pinocchio, which they are actively working on and has not yet gotten into production, but they've been hammering away at that one. Paul King was very close to making it. Chris Weitz has been writing on it.

That's public knowledge. It's pretty cool when you're in a whale.itz has been writing on it. That's public knowledge. It's pretty cool when you're in a whale. Yes. True. Alright, there's Fantasia. They did Fantasia 2000. I mean, I don't know if they did the Sorcerer's Apprentice. And they did the Sorcerer's Apprentice. That's right. The live action, definitive live action adaptation. There's Dumbo.

They did Dumbo. Didn't do that great. Good movie. There's Bambi. Yeah, good movie. Kind of a good movie. There's Bambi. I don't see them. That feels like a nightmare for them. I don't know how they would possibly approach that. Cinderella, they did that. Alice in Wonderland, they did that. Peter Pan, they're not going to do that, are they?

Maybe? I mean, there's been other Peter Pans because that's like public domain. I don't know if I should say this on mine. All right, then. I know people have been trying to do Peter Pan at Disney. Do the proper Peter Pan at Disney sure I think they're fighting the uphill battle on it

because there's been a lot of Peter Pan that's the whole thing because there's been like straightforward Peter Pan and then there's been like Finding Neverland but you had Pan and Peter Pan both bombed yes oh Pan I forgot about Pan

so I think those two things scared them off. Although, you know, Hook's nostalgia is at an all-time high. But I think there are people who want to make a Peter Pan movie and Disney is skittish about the idea of putting another one out there. Right.

There's Lady and the Tramp, which is going to be Disney+, correct? Done in the can. There's Sleeping Beauty, which Maleficent is the take on that. There's 101 Dalmatians. They did that with them closed and they're redoing Cruella. Craig Gillespie is doing the Cruella movie. There's Sword in the Stone

is also Disney+, is that right? I think that was announced. I don't know if they've 100% confirmed it, but I believe that's the idea. I'm pretty sure that has been 100%. Hey, look, that's one for me where it's like, you could do a fucking cool movie off of that. Yeah. Jungle Book, they did. Aristocats.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, look. We'll get to cats. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, is there an Aristocats remake to be done? I don't think so. I think there is one to be done. I think in a world where the cats movie wasn't made, I think now they wouldn't dare. No, think in a world where the Cats movie wasn't made,

I think now they wouldn't dare. No, they should make a filthy version like the joke. Like the joke? The Aristocrats is what he's saying. I also think that Aristocats is not popular enough to put that much money into it. I don't think it has that kind of legacy. I agree with you. I don't like that movie.

Robin Hood. I think it's weird because... Give it a shot. I mean, here's what's tough about it. They're taking a human story and putting animals in it, which would necessitate them doing a weird inhuman Lion King style thing, except all the animals in Robin Hood are fully anthropomorphized. They don't behave like animals at all.

So it would be needlessly expensive. And there have been other unsuccessful Robin Hood movies lately. That's also true. I don't think they do. Well, if you bring in Taron Egerton and make it a sequel to his movie, then yes. I love Taron Egerton. Love him too. Robin Hood, unfortunately, not playing to anyone's strengths.

The Rescuers, they're not going to fucking do that. Fox and the Hound, is that one Disney Plus? I don't think they've announced it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do it. Fox and the Hound, I weirdly like a lot. Black Cauldron, I don't like that movie. It's too dark. I like how dark it is. I like it's really sad. Black Cauldron, if they announce a live action

remake of the Black Cauldron, all bets are off. Then we know Disney is truly like, I don't know. That's the one that they just kind of hide even more than Song of the South. That one has to be on Disney+, though, right? I'm kind of pumped for that. Yeah, I mean, they've re-released it on Blu-ray and stuff. I remember when they released it from the Disney Vault,

I thought it was a new movie because it was never included in Disney Legacy stuff. I was a kid who was so deep on Disney Legacy stuff. I was like, how did I never hear this movie? Uh, yeah. It was never on any of the posters that were like the history of, anyway,

go on. right. Well, I, I really just knew it as like Disney's dark mistake or whatever. Right. Uh, and then after black cauldron,

you've got great mouse detective. They could do that. Mice. Yeah. I don't know. All of them in company. Disney just shut down shut down uh the mouse guard movie yeah at fox yeah but what if it was detected yeah i mean look the photo real thing was on the case yeah little mermaid is in the works beanie the beast aladdin lion king done pocahontas probably never gonna happen hunchback

are they doing that no they keep on trying to do it for the stage. It has played in Germany. It has played in Europe. They've done out of town tryouts. James Levine. So the next James Levine, James Pine. Yeah.

The next wave for them would be Hunchback, Hercules, Tarzan. That would be them being like, I don't know. Those ones are really tricky to pull off. Hey. We got a pizza pipe,

ladies and gentlemen. Hercules, I think, is kind of unadaptable because it's so specific in its tone and it being a weird comedy that feels so of its time. That's a very 90s comedy. It is.

And Tate Donovan's in it. Most 90s performer ever Hercules is kind of the proto-Shrek I feel like people don't talk about that Donkey That's what Shrek used to say Yeah Donkey

But he's got his little Dan DeVito sidekick And I feel like Hercules is the movie That's like Yeah but we're making fun of Disney movies Like Hercules has all the jokes About like the madness And the calling out

How much merchandise there is If we do Clements and Musker We can talk Hercules It all the jokes about like the meta-ness and the calling out how much merchandise there is if we do Clements and Musker we can talk Hercules it's got an interesting style visual style here's something radical I will tell you what the fuck Jesus Christ this is a blank check podcast what are we doing we're doing this is important okay go ahead

we said this episode was going to be short but we're connoisseurs of context go ahead go ahead we promised Ben it would be 15 minutes long what I was going to say is when Hercules came out, I said that is tied for my number one favorite movie of all time. That's interesting. How old would you have been?

The original Toy Story. Yeah. So in Hercules, you were like, they did it. They finally came up with something. It doesn't surpass Toy Story, but it's equal to Toy Story. And Toy Story, I still think, is one of the greatest movies ever made.

And I don't even like Hercules anymore. I have twice in the last five years tried to rewatch it. Tried to go back to it and been like, eh. Yeah, I thought it was so fucking funny.

I thought it was a laugh riot. Loved the songs. Was all about it. That was my favorite of the Disney Renaissance. Anyway. Fair enough? Yeah. I mean, this is the other Renaissance. Anyway. Fair enough. Yeah.

I mean, this is the other problem, though. These ones like Hercules, two recent live action movies. That's true. Tarzan, a recent live action movie. It was a hit. Yeah. America loved it. Right.

And the songs aren't as sort of legendary as they are with like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin and Lion King and such. Maybe they'll remake Bolt. I can't wait for another remake Bolt. Bolt! A photo reel Bolt. John Travolta. But then, yeah, then there's this other weird thing where now there's this rumor going around

that they want to do fucking Atlantis. Great. Sounds good. But didn't Guillermo shoot it down or whatever? What he denied was that he was doing it, which I'm sure. And then all the sources were like, we doubled down on this story. We trust our sources. I guarantee you he's on everyone's fucking wish list.

Apparently the thing they're into is that Disney wants to make a Tom Holland vehicle. And they were like, Tom Holland would be good for the guy in Atlantis. Tom Holland is attached to everything. Yeah, Atlantis also lost a ton of money. But it was about a lost empire. It lost an empire. I kind of like Atlantis, and I would like to see them make a live-action movie

just because it's something that is not, like, fucking religiously, like, beloved. Right, exactly. And it's a cool premise, and you could actually pull it off in live-action now. And the whole movie's designed by Mike Mignola. It looks really cool. All the devices and everything, whatever.

Yeah. But I think they're going to run out. And I've heard things from people who are like around the Disney company that there is that internal panic of like,

we've been riding this money train, these live action remakes. What do we do when it's over? Yeah, it's not going to last forever. And especially with Disney Plus

where the ones that aren't sustainable enough for theatrical are going to go there. They're going to burn through anyone they could possibly do. Remake Toy Story with real toys. So here's the thing that a lot of people have said.

Why don't they just remaster Toy Story 1 and 2? The way you remaster a video game. Yeah, and make them look nice, right. Right. And the thing that people don't understand is to remake Toy Story is essentially the same kind of undertaking as remaking The Lion King. Right.

You would have to do it all. You would have to redo the entire thing. Even if you wanted to slavishly... You could copy it frame for frame, but you'd have to make every frame. But the data, I mean, you could not reuse the data from the original movie. You can't just like upload the original movie and be like, okay, and now let's turn up the resolution. It's incompatible

file types. They talked about when they did Toy Story 3, they had to rebuild all the characters from scratch. It's essentially new actors. You have to build the characters again, or even if you use the model from Toy Story 3, they had to rebuild all the characters from scratch. It's essentially new actors. You have to build the characters again, or even if you use the model from Toy Story 4, you'd have to reanimate the performance frame by frame. Yeah. Because they made the first Toy Story in DOS. Yeah.

But they re-released it in... David's shrugging. What were they thinking? They released it in, like, 4K. They've done their, like, up-conversion thing. Does it look good? Yeah, it looks very good. I mean, it's like the colors are good and the detail's good and whatever. But they're not trying to pretend it's something it's not. It's still got toys?

It does still have the toys in it. Okay. I remember they were in that one. I can confirm that the toys are back in town. But, yeah, they'd have to make the movie from scratch just in order to have more realistic textures and stuff. Which I don't think is worth the money for them because, you know. No. People don't want these things.

No. Now, this is Blank Check. With Griffin and Dave. With Griffin and Dave. I'm Griffin. You're? David. And Ben has given himself a slice of pizza.

The meat lover was weirdly against getting the meat lover pie today. I know, we should have gotten the meat lover. The dog wanted one. He was off the leash. Bark, bark, meat lovers. Or should I say for this episode, meow, meow, because we're going to be talking about some big cats

and some little cats. I could call this episode The Lion King, parentheses, 2019 v. Cats, parentheses, parenthesis, 2019, V, Cats, parenthesis, 2019, first theatrical trailer, colon, dawn of digital fur technology. Yeah, that's what we should call it. I could call it that. Or it had...

Because this is usually a podcast about miniseries. God damn it. This is usually a podcast about filmographies. Directors, keep it in, Ben. He's not keeping it in. He marked it, and I filmographies keep it in Ben he's not keeping it in he marked it and I demand that you keep it in don't cut that shit out I want to live a transparent life

I love it less work for me I want to go home to my children and tell them I live honestly how are your kids they're terrible they hate me I got no respect for me I tell you Ben I got no. They got no respect for me. I tell you, Ben, I got no respect. Hey, up yours, Dad.

I got no respect, Ben. My wife asked me. Did you go to your Dr. Vinny Boombots? Yeah. My wife asked me. She goes, you want to be on top or on bottom? I go bottom. Slide under the bed.

I butchered a Rodney Daniels show. There's a reason that Rodney was better at that than everyone else. Yeah, Rodney was the best. I think else. Yeah, Rodney was the best. I think joke for joke, Rodney's the funniest person. Once a week, I watch a Rodney Dangerfield YouTube. Same here. Like all the fucking time. I watch his specials all the time.

Oh, God. No one was better at jokes. No one's better at writing and delivering a joke than Rodney Dangerfield. But Rodney Dangerfield is also someone who the simple act of him sitting down is hysterical. Just me watching Rodney Dangerfield sit in a chair. I'm like, this is kind of the best thing I've ever seen. Yeah. Everything about him is funny.

God. He and Carson, him on Carson, like he is the perfect match for Carson because Carson is best when he's not doing anything. You know, he's just like, oh, sure. Yeah, of course. You know, like, oh, sure, yeah, of course. And that's just the perfect foil for him. Johnny, I tell you. I tell you, go see my doctor, Ritty Boombots. Ritty Boombots.

But we usually talk about directors who have massive success along their career. They make whatever crazy project they want. Sometimes the check's clear and sometimes they bounce baby. We usually pick a miniseries. We pick a director's career. We go through them one by one. And once in a while there's a new film that we just gotta talk about.

And this is certainly a blank check film in a lot of ways. It's a blank check for this notion of the live action Disney films. It's director certainly has blank check status. And Favreau is an interesting one because I think despite the fact that he has had a run of successes, his blank check also increases because of the increasing success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Oh, I thought you were going to say Chef. And Chef. And the Chef Cinematic Universe. The CCU. The MCU and the CCU. We all stand a legend. His name is Chef Casper. You got to try this, Cuban.

You got to try this, Cubano. Okay. Remember that famous gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this

you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this you gotta try this like the all-consuming thing, the more everyone's like, Favreau, he was ahead of the curve. He was on to it. He was involved, great. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's fair. So coming off The Lion King, coming off all the Marvel movies, he goes, I just feel like we're getting warmed up. Right. We just cracked this technology. I want to take it to the next level. This is the problem, though.

And they announce it as a new Lion King, and everyone goes, oh my God, they're making a live-action Lion King. Which they did. Or a new Lion King and everyone goes, oh my god, they're making a live action Lion King. Which they did or not. It took them three years to figure out a way to refer to it. For three years, they kept on like, Robert Iger would do interviews and be like, I don't know,

because it's not live action, but it doesn't really look like an animated movie. And they finally, like three weeks ago, were like, go on all the talk shows and tell everyone it's photo real. Photo realistic. You don't like that? And that and that's the pitch the pitch was what if we did the lion king and tried as much as possible to make it look like a nature documentary yes the animals will just look like what those animals look like and we will try to hold them to the actual physical limitations of how much animals can emote and move around.

So here's some things that lions can do. Walk. Run. That's it. Eat. Sleep. They can kind of like crouch down. They are very survival based creatures. Right? Yeah.

There's not a lot of emotion that goes into their decision. It's survival-based. They have their needs. Pack hunters. Right. They live in prides. There's this thing that's interesting about watching animals behaviorally. Sure.

Where because they aren't rash, they're not run by emotions. You just see it's sort of the like. Clockwork brain. The clockwork brain of like what do I need to do at this moment? When do I conserve my energy? When do I use it? What's the geometry of this attack? Any of that sort of stuff, right?

Yep. And when you watch nature documentaries and the animals sort of like look blankly and are like twitching, and you're sort of projecting onto them like what is that animal doing? What is it trying to do? That's kind of fascinating.

Right. When Jon Favreau did The Jungle Book, I thought, I like that movie a little more than you do. I think it's like a gentleman's 6.5. Right. But I think he nails that element. I think you have one of each type of animal. I think

generally those types of animals were more expressive. Bears, panther, tiger, snake, multiple wolves. Yeah, Tiger. Tiger. Snake. Multiple wolves. Yeah, but really one. Just sort of one main wolf in that one. Mother, father, cubs.

Mother, father. Mother, father. I don't know. Hello, mother. But also, he seemed a lot more comfortable having animals do things that animals couldn't do in real life in that movie. That is true. Even though there isn't singing and dancing, the animals just stick to it.

Well, there's a little singing. No dancing. I'm just saying no dancing with the musical numbers. But there is rhythmic moving. There is intentionality in their actions. I was saying this to you before we saw the movie. We saw the movie together last night. We did.

We're tired of it. Bears and monkeys, apes, whatever, chimpanzees, are more expressive and human to begin with anyway. So you got that advantage. Do you remember how fucking well Shere Khan works in the jungle? That was the performance everyone liked. He works better. Yeah, it's not bad. I mean, he's only really got this he's

scary yeah which helps because like tigers are scary but is scar ever as successfully scary in this movie scar is the biggest problem and this is a movie where pretty much everything is a problem i think scar is the biggest disaster in the entire movie wow Wow. Yeah. But I think if you're going to try and highlight what went wrong here, I think Scar is probably the best example. And also probably the story of Disney's failure with these remakes in general. Is the villains?

Is Scar and the villains and their whole thing where they're like, well, we can't have them be as sort of like flamboyant as they were because that, that kind of seems offensive now. And it's like, make another fucking movie. You know, like then,

then why are we doing this? Like, have you seen the Lion King recently? Scar is like, every word is like, well, you know, it's like Jeremy Irons is like in the river.

He's in the hand river. The character animation on Scar is so much fun. The shallow end of the gene pool. You know, like every word is enunciated in this. And then like, Joe Tell's like, yeah, I'll play him just sort of like, is this kind of moody guy.

Like, who's sort of like, you know, I don't know. It's like, it's monotonal. He's not bad. It's not his fault. I think he gives a good performance. Good fault. I think he gives a good performance. Good is.

I think he gives a good period performance. But anyway, back to The Lion King. I mean, The Jungle Book. This was the thing that kind of. But they have Baloo sitting, eating honey with his hand, making eye contact with the person he's talking to when he's talking to them. Like gesticulating with his paw a little bit. Talking to a person as well.

Right. Another advantage that movie has, that there is a person. Right. But I think that movie like actually allows the characters to behave like characters. A little bit. And in this movie, I kept on being like, what's the weird thing that's going on? There are a lot of weird things. And then also, just the other point I made, too, that you agreed with is, like, at least in the Jungle Book, everyone's a different kind of animal, so you can, like, each, they have their own personalities. This one has, like, you know, eight or nine lion characters.

Right. They all look like lions. Yeah. Why? There are three hyenas. They all kind of look the same. Hyenas all look the same. One of them has, like, a fucked up ear.

A little bit. Yeah. Right. I had to do a lot of dog scenes on the tech. Right. Because we had the dog midnight in season one. And dog acting is very difficult. And here are a couple of reasons why.

Because they're so fucking divas. They're divas. Their writers are insane. Oh my God. But there is a basic thing that we are just used to as an audience because so much of the language of cinema is based on eye lines you know not even just the spatial geometry of how you set up a room but like where characters are looking in direction in relation to where you cut before or after they look,

all that sort of stuff, that if you watch the Michael Caine acting masterclass videos, which are incredible, the ones he did for the BBC in the 80s, he talks so much about the qualities of stillness that you need as an actor, even when you're playing a jittery character, that you have to maintain some sort of stillness, and why people don't move a lot in close-ups

and why they try to keep their eye contact fixed and not blink as much even though it's unrealistic. And if you're watching it on set, you're like, this is bizarre. This is a thing I feel like I struggle with. I always like to play antsy people. And I'm always trying to find this zone. And when I dislike my performances, I'm like, it feels too unfocused because I'm doing too much in a way that's distracting for the audience.

Right. You need to find a way to like thread that needle, right? Right. Animals are only distracted. If anything comes into an animal's range of sight, it looks over at it. Sure. An animal can't stand still unless it's like sleeping, right? Sure.

There are these weird involuntary twitches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are all these sorts of things that are distracting to watch because it distracts from whatever the intentionality of what an actor or character is trying to convey to you. Yeah, you're saying they're shitty actors. Jungle Book, he got most of that out of the way. And then very once in a while, he'd maybe throw a little, little touch in that end

so he'd be like, wow, it looks like a real tiger. Right, right. This movie, he is so slavishly committed to like, I want this to look like planet Earth. When the characters are talking to each other they keep on looking around they keep on having little twitches or like walking off to

some corner so that it looks like nature. Like a nature documentary. And it doesn't it's like he's actively not letting their body language Yeah well they can't look human at all. Right. Cause then you know you wouldn't fucking believe at all. Right. Because then, you know, you wouldn't fucking believe

what was happening on screen. I mean, it'd be impossible. It would ruin the movie. I don't know what you're talking about. They gotta look like real lions. No, I mean, they gotta look like real lions. And I just kept on doing this test,

which is like... I think it's pretty obvious. Aside from the fact that their faces aren't expressive enough. Right. Aside from the fact that they all look the same. Yes.

Aside from the fact that I don't think it makes any sense to go this photorealistic. Sure. There were a bunch of scenes where I was like, if they had just had Simba sitting, right? Sure.

And while he's sitting, his focus is fixed on another person. And maybe once he gesticulates with his paw a little bit. No, they don't really talk. They mostly just are looking off in various directions when they're talking to each other. That's the fucking thing. I know. I know. It's true.

And you're like, wow, I guess this does look like real lions. Yeah. And that's why I thought it was great. Five stars. I feel like a lot of people in talking about this movie

have used the like, they were so busy thinking about if they could, they didn't even stop. Yes, that is what it is. Because, I mean, one assumes that there was that conversation of like,

wow, Jungle Book was a hit. We have this tech. Yes. And someone was just like, Lion King. That's the animal movie. That's the other one. Right. Let's fucking do it.

And apparently- Everyone was like, you know, bam, great, do it. You know, right? I mean, I can't imagine the hard sell. It was something that Favreau like wanted to do post Jungle Book. But apparently they were already sort of stewing on that. And Favreau was like, I want to win this job. Right. Weird. Yeah. I don't think he was met with much resistance. ready sort of stewing on that and favreau was like well i want to win this job right oh weird

yeah i i don't think he was met with much resistance but it was like a thing he like pursued within you know the the lineup of potential disney movies he could grab yeah he beat out malik and my joke at the time my joke at the time was like I did this both ways was like because that same day they announced that Justin Lin was attached to direct a Hot Wheels movie sure

and I said Jon Favreau agreeing to make the Lion King is like if Justin Lin agreed to do a Hot Wheels movie and then I did the opposite joke

of like Justin Lin agreeing to do where it's like if you've already kind of done this thing, what's the difference? What do you need to prove? Well, this time the wheels are hot. And that would have been here.

Flaming wheels. The trailer would have been like, here's a car. Everyone knows cars. What does he think he can add to this movie? And the answer is apparently just that thing that we've talked about a lot on this podcast because it happens to blind tech directors where they just become so obsessed

with the tech and the idea that the process of making the movie can change Hollywood forever that they just go so deep up their own butt. And sometimes the guys get out. Sometimes like Cameron in spite of themselves the things sort of work. And sometimes they don't baby. Yeah.

You know? Yeah man. i mean they have the and then this they have the additional problem where it's like they're just they have the animated film playing and they're like yeah okay let's you know okay no he it's a branch that he's on let's have him hanging in the same way right like oh and they did a zoom here so we'll zoom even though like we barely zoom at any other point in the movie. You know what I mean? Like, shit like that. Was Stefanski the one who was telling you the spirit story?

Yeah, the spirit stallion of the Cimmerin, also known as Cimmerin's Stallion of the Spirit, or Stallion's Spirit of the Cimmerin. You can just, your joke is that you can just change the names no matter what. Which is a horsey animated movie from, I want to say, 2002, maybe one. I think it's two. You know, they're about a bunch of horses. 2002, that's right.

The horses do not speak in the movie. It's a movie about horses. Matt Damon plays a narrator. Yeah, Matt Damon plays spirit, but as a narrator. An internal monologue sort of thing. James Cromwell, I think, played a colonel that's sort of like Custer. Oh, that's interesting. So it's just all narration. It's a very pretty movie. And Cromwell, I think, played a colonel that's sort of like Custer. Oh, that's interesting. So it's just all

narration. Very pretty movie. And all physicality, essentially. It's a movie that tries to have the horses communicate and behave like real horses rather than making them in front of a morph. Don't make them cartoon horses. Make it an animated film about real horses. And it is a pretty

movie. I think of it mostly as just being pretty. But the animators said the one concession they had to make to us, outside of reality, was they had to give them eyebrows. Human eyebrows. That makes a lot of sense. Just because otherwise,

there's no emotion. That's like simple claymation, right? Yes, exactly. Everything. Exactly. Everything. And as you look at the trailer, I mean the poster, it's like, yeah, you can see they just got a couple brows on there. 100%.

Yes. And Jon Favreau is not an animator. He has no background in animation. No, he's a sandwich maker. He's a sandwich maker. I gotta try this Cubano. Okay, Cubano. And even though The Jungle Book, it was like 90% CGI,

it's reverse engineered from here's a kid we're putting in front of a physical camera. He was on a set with a kid, and the kid was acting, and he was directing the kid, you know, like a director does. To walk on all fours? Sometimes. Well, the kid was playing Mowgli. Yeah. Oh, sorry.

But sometimes Mowgli walks on all fours. Favreau, notably, would usually play the animals with the kid. Where his acting experience comes into play is like Favreau would play Baloo. And I'm sure he was good as Baloo on set. He killed it as Baloo. He probably was really good. He was actually probably great as Baloo. Actually, let's find those fucking dailies.

Yeah. I mean, like, as Ka, was he great? Who knows? But as Baloo? I don't know. You got an Oscar for that. But I was like, Ka in that movie, they turn into Scarlett Johansson as a weird hypnotic seductress.

And I'm like, that is a scene that so fully embraces the unreality of what's going on here. I know. And it felt like that snake gave an emotional performance in a one-scene role, right? In this movie, he's like, no eyebrows. No. It's not no eyebrows. No. It's not motion capture. No.

So you don't have actors who are able to put emotions into the performance physically. Like Donald Glover's face is not being mapped onto Simba's face. This is keyframe animated. Keyframe. He records voices, and then he hands it over to animators. Most of those animators, I believe in this instance, are special effects artists. Exactly. They're not what you would call animators.

Now, very often these days, if people don't want to have to pay the overhead to have an animation studio going on all the time, something like Rango, for example, hired ILM to be the animation studio. Right. But they will hire a lot of animation experts to work on it because the visual effects people are usually trying to replicate something

or create something that can fit into what already exists. And character animation has its own school of sort of art that you need to learn because a good animator is a good director and a good actor. In that sense, you go,

Trevor could be a good fit, both the director and an actor. Yeah. But the difference is that animators have to learn how to act from the outside. Interesting.ators have to learn how to act from the outside. Interesting. They have to understand how to give a performance, but it's not about I'm feeling really connected in the scene.

I'm listening to my partner. Sure. All the things that they tell you to do as an actor. Don't be outside of your head. Don't think about it. Don't try to get this resolved. Don't talk with your hand. All this sort of shit.

Yeah. Animation is the exact opposite. And then you're trying to find the specific inner life in that gesture, in that movement. And you have a movie that is like special effects teams being directed by a very naturalistic conversational behavioral

actor director. A guy who's best no, his best movie is probably Iron Man? What's Favreau's best movie? Elf. Elf or Iron Man, right? His best movie is El Iron Man. What's Favreau's best movie? Elf or Iron Man, right? His best movie is Elf. Elf is pretty good. I love Elf.

I think Elf is a masterpiece. Masterpiece is strong. I think Elf is a masterpiece. Okay. I will say that. I think Elf is a masterpiece. Okay. Elf's good. He's an elf.

Jungle Book was kind of a good fit for him because Jungle Book's got this jazzy hangout vibe. Yeah. I was saying to you last night, Jungle Book's my favorite. Right. I didn't realize this. That it's your number one. First movie I ever saw. Sure.

Sure. Saw it at the quad. Remember it vividly, even though you called me a liar. You are a liar. I'm not a liar. Known liar. Remember it vividly. Right.

But that movie is this sort of shambling, like, here are all these weird bachelors in the jungle hanging out with this kid, having these conversations, just sort of, like, bumping around, singing songs and shit like that. Sure. Unsurprisingly, this movie hits, like, a 10-minute window of enjoyability at, like, the peak Timon and Pumbaa section in the middle, where you're like, well, this is why you hire Favreau to do this. Yeah.

Because this feels like the kind of thing he knows how to do. Sure. When you're watching Favreau do slavish recreations of what were previously either fully dramatic or fully musical scenes. Yep. Because otherwise Lion King does not have a lot of overt humor. No. The humor is mostly Timon and Pumbaa.

Right? Right. A little bit of Scar. Right. Scar's got some humor. And then he's taking out all of his humor, all of his sort of like human rhythm sort of interest and dialogue.

This is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, this is a weird stilted match of material to him. Sure.

Whereas someone like Julie Tim or someone who had always been like, I'm going to pick a folklore tale or like this like Greek tragedy or like something, you know, and sort of like work

these mythic stories into these more like expressionistic things. I work with these sort of like secret texts. Right, and then she does arachne and it does her in, right? Right, right. But that was like she was like- That was her concept. I'm trying to view Spider-Man as this-

As this like mythic. Right, right, right. But he's making this movie in which he's so obsessed with, as I said, the fact that he could, that he didn't think about whether or not he should. Right. Right. Right. But he's making this movie in which he's so obsessed with as I said the fact that he could that he didn't think about whether or not he should. Sure.

Now everyone's been saying that and that's sort of the fundamental line everyone's using to sum it up. Yes. It's always kind of bugged me because I've been like that doesn't feel totally right because I feel like

the origins of that term are always tied to catastrophic acts against humanity. And as bad as this movie is it's not a malicious act. No. No, it's not malicious. So I'm sitting there watching it.

It feels deeply cynical, even though I don't think Favreau is cynical. No, I think it feels super cynical from a studio perspective. Yeah. I think he was coming at it very earnestly. I think all the people who worked on it were very earnestly trying to do something with it. Sure.

But I'm sitting there watching and I'm going like, what is the analogy for what this feels like to me? Because I think you and I agree, like, when Oceania hits and the sun hits, it feels kind of fun. Hey. When you're watching Circle of Life, even though it's less effective than the original, you're like, if I saw

someone upload this to YouTube and they were like, this special effects artist spent a year recreating. Sure, like those people who like, are like, I made Obi-Wan and Darth Vader fight. You know, yeah, right, right. Or the guy who did like,

the entire like, Battle of Normandy from Sam Pryor on his computer. Like that shit, you're like, you're like, well, hey, the craft is well done. It's impressive. What an interesting thought experiment.

Right, right, right. So we're both watching that and I'm like, you know, recognize the... Okay, but say when when i laughed are you getting to when i laughed during the recreation of circle of life there is a rack focus which is a great shot in the original uh the rack focus from the ants to the i mean i can probably find the exact animals but you know in the original in the 1994 movie yeah it's like a nice little visual suggestion of like, yeah, like everyone's coming, you know, like to this ceremony from the tiniest little ants, you know, this Ben to the zebra. And it's like, it's always kind of cool when Disney 2D animation like has stuff like a rack focus where you're like, oh, it's like a movie,

even though they just drew that. And the live action movie literally has the exact same shot. They do that a lot. I mean, they do a lot of those recreations. I mean, Circle of Life, I have to imagine, is like you could put it

like Gus Van Sant's Psycho next to each other. It felt that way. That, the Mufasa death, I'm trying to like the most sort of iconic visual sequences from this movie. It felt like they were like, let's just try and replicate them. Yes. And then others like say like, I just can't wait to be king,

which is obviously it's like big sort of Busby Berkeley musical number. It's like they're actively avoiding giving you the imagery. Yeah. Well, we can't do that. So I guess they just walk around the watering hole and there are other animals there to which i say and i will continue yelling this for the rest of the episode why can't you what weird rule that doesn't exist are you trying to abide by well i think it's just if you've got these animals these planet earth animals yeah and you had them, it would just look stupid.

So instead they went for boring. You know what I mean? They just were like, well, if it's boring, no one can call it stupid. Now I want to say, I didn't see the movie.

It's probably going to call it stupid. But my thinking with just this, this line of conversation is like, okay, so what about the rule of almost like when humans aren't around, animals act differently. That's like a really simple thing I've seen done in stories before. Humans are gone,

all of a sudden animals communicate to each other. Simple, easy. Like, who cares? You literally, you give them 10% more human characteristics in their movement, and this movie becomes 75% better. I'm glad I didn't see it. Like, you get 10% more intentionality. It's like, it was like, we

just sat there watching it. And, like, for the first, I said this to Griffin, like, the first half of the movie, I was eating dinner, because I was at the Alamo. So, like, that was okay. Because I had, like, food. There's one part. I had some drinks. There's one part where we got, like, really grossed. Genuinely enjoyed the Timon and Pumbaa stuff.

Really good. And we'll get to that in a second. There's one part where we got, like, really sort the Timon and Pumbaa stuff Really good and we'll get to that in a second There's one part where we got like really sort of on the edge of our seats Okay Which is when they accidentally brought me buffalo wings But I had ordered loaded fries I mean that was Fuck intense And it definitely happened during the Elfin Graveyard sequence

And we were a lot more focused on Sorry It's an Elfin poop yard in this movie It's a poop yard? No, it just looks like shit. David thinks it looks like a bowl of farts.

I mean, the whole movie looks like it. Yeah, they should actually, we should clarify that. So like, here's how the movie began.

Jon Favreau got a bowl and then he farted into it a bunch. And then Caleb Deschanel. Caleb Deschanel filmed that shit. And then, here we go

and it's going to make two million dollars. Now, I do think it's wild that this we go and it's gonna make two billion dollars now I do think it's wild that this movie was it's a 50

Rotten Tomatoes is what it is but it's a 55 on Rotten Tomatoes which is like you'd think like usually with Rotten Tomatoes

or the movie like this you can kind of just coast on nostalgia and get a lot of three out of fives you know get a lot of like mildly positive reviews and just sort of

coast your way to like an 80% favorable kind view like people are kind of like they fucked it up like even right i think most people are just sort of like no sorry like i was bored well and we sat there and we'll get to the the highlight of the audience reaction later in the episode but um when the highlight of the audience reaction later in the episode. But, um, when the circle of life ended and it does the smash boom, Lion King as a title. And, and you know,

obviously that was the trailer for the original. It was the trailer for this remake. I, I rewatched the trailer because I want to rewatch the movie, which is sadly still in the Disney vault until Disney plus happens. Um, so you could only buy it on iTunes. Sure. But I rewatched the trailer, and do you

remember that the trailer, which is just The Circle of Life, starts with, like, three title cards that say, like, in 1994, Walt Disney Pictures will release its 33rd animated film, an original story about lions in the Sahara Desert. This is the opening song. It's such

a baller move. Like, for me, that's, like, on the level with level with like Michael Jordan, I'm back. To just say like, this is the opening song. We're calling it a year in advance. And famously within Disney, Michael Eisner and Katzenberg were so obsessed with the idea of getting an animated film to win Best Picture. Sure. They got nominated with Beauty and the Beast.

Because they had snuck up on it with Beauty and the Beast, right? And that was after they did a full-court press. They campaigned really hard for that movie. Right. And they got that nomination. Everyone was like, hey, wow. Yeah. History made.

Right. And they thought Pocahontas was going to be the one. Right. The whole time during the development of these, because those two movies are happening basically parallel, they're like, Pocahontas is going to be huge. Lion King I don't know. We don't know. And people were trying

to get themselves off of Lion King to get on Pocahontas. Lion King I feel like I think that Climates of Musker turned it down. I believe so. And it's directed by what's their pants? Rob Minkoff. Minkoff and fucking

The other guys The other one Like it's not even Trousdale and Wise Who are the other Sort of big Directors Who made

Beauty and the Beast No Dollars and Minkoff Yes And like what You know what Minkoff went on to make The Stuart Little movies

Uh huh Haunted Mansion Yeah And Mr. Peabody and Sherman Yeah You know it's not like these guys were Did he do 102 Dalmatians? Undisputed Geniuses No

Kevin Lima did it Oh of course Goofy movie Yes David's looking at me knowingly One of the goofier movies I just wanted to talk about how it was a fucking goofy movie. Well, yes, but I mean, I can think of a goofier movie.

An extremely goofy movie. Extremely goofy. I can think of a goofier movie. That's right. Son of Saul. I'm trying to make this the most serious movie. David. You're right.

It was only somewhat goofy. David. How dare you? Unbelievable. So unbelievable. God, I'm It was only somewhat goofy. David, how dare you? Unbelievable. So unbelievable. God, I'm in such a bad mood. How are we going to get back on track after this? Okay, so here's what I want to say.

Griffin, you were real quiet during that. I was in awe. Look, we know here on the podcast I'm a little bit of a roastmaster general. If I said something, I was just going to brutally roast this guy for looking like Goofy. Right. They call you Dr. Bird. I operate on Lights, Camera, Jackson rules. Okay. Don't have anything nice to say.

You don't say anything at all. Fair. I forgot about that video. That is one of the most chilling pieces of filmed art I've ever seen. You're speaking of the best film of 2018? Yeah, I think it was the official title was Children of the Corn

6, right? Booksmart Review Edition. Have you seen this video? No. I don't know if it's better to let you see it or hide it from you. Play it. Play it because 90% of it is silent so Ben can

watch it while we're talking. Oh god. Okay. There's only talking at the beginning part. And I want to say I've been loving the Back to You podcast. I've literally listened to all of it. I think it's great. Plus Cameron Jackson. Playing his standard clip. One of his rapid reviews.

There are times as a film critic that make you think back to that famous saying maybe your mother, grandmother or an early teacher first taught it to you. Early teacher? An early teacher. Alright, and we can keep talking while this fucking clown show continues. Oh, I'm letting him go. Best to look at it, but let's get back to staring at the camera. I feel like I'm staring into like um like just the deepest

pit of of just commentary sure entitlement i don't know it's uh but the back viewpods is it is it good what's some stuff you've learned recently it calms me down what a faustian situation we're like i found the recently? It calms me down. What a Faustian situation where you're like, I found the one thing that calms me down. Unfortunately, it's a podcast hosted by Jackson from Lights, Cameras, and X. From Lights, Cameras. I couldn't remember his last name.

Jackson, king of the famous ongoing narrative. Lights, Cameras, Jackson. This is going to be a short episode. We haven't even fucking talked about cats yet. I know. We gotta get to cats. Folks, this is the first time we've recorded two episodes in a row

in a long time. That's right. Probably since Book of Henry. And we're feeling it. A thing I learned from the Back to You podcast is in the last four episodes of Back to You, they changed the character who's playing the daughter of Patricia Heaton

and Kelsey Grammar. I knew that. A very late recasting from Laura Marano to, what's her name, Lily Jackson. I think they were thinking they were still going to get that season two pickup. They thought they were. Their ratings were higher than Till Death. This is another thing I learned, but Till Death was less expensive to produce. Till Death was right, but you

know what happened with Till Death, right? That became one of the weirdest sitcoms of all time. Yes. You should read Emily's article on that. I have read that. It's i have read incredible yes just but that hard cut to black is what we were talking about yeah this moment is incredible with it like yeah boom the audience the audience erupts the audience at the alma draft house where we saw this movie last night really good loaded fries uh with good loaded fries and all that. Nice Moscow Mule. I was drinking a couple Moscow Mules.

Just applause. And I think it's almost Pavlovian. It's like, oh my God, right. Of course, you know. But it felt like people were satisfied. And it's like, you showed us the tech demo. I'm on board. Right.

And David said, let's watch how it dwindles. Yeah, which it did. Because they continued Pavlovian style. Responding. After I Just Can't Wait to Be King, one person was like. how it dwindles. Yeah, which it did. Because they continued Pavlovian style, responded. After I Just Can't Wait to Be King, one person was like, yeah, there was that sort of like, one person was like, we're still clapping,

oh, we're not clapping anymore? It was more than that. It dwindled. It dwindled. In the end, a couple, in the end it was light applause. The one that I remember was really light is in Hakuna Matata

when they make the transition where suddenly he's adult Simba. And that was the one where it was like three people thought it was gonna happen and pulled back. Right. I just can't wait to be king. I feel like they were still doing polite. Because that's the second song. So people are like, oh, they did another one of the songs. Right. There's only

I guess because they kind of cut Be Prepared apart from... They make Be Prepared into like a Rex Harrison. Be Prepared becomes kind of like a dramatic monologue. Monologue set to music. Now, my question, because we're talking visuals, how's the music? Is it at least... Music's fine.

Is it good? I mean, because... The score is good. Beyonce, you have amazing vocalists. We'll get to Beyonce. I mean, Beyonce's a good singer. Yeah. Look, these songs are good.

They hire people who are good at singing. Right. You know, even Billy Eichner, itner turns out is a better singer than Nathan Lane. Nathan Lane, one of our finest, you know. Well, Nathan Lane's always been one of this kind of singer, you know. Nathan Lane's got pipes. He can obviously like really sing, but it turns out that like Billy Eichner has the voice of an angel. And he sings the shit out of these songs.

That's amazing. Rogan cannot sing at all. Not surprising. They push him a little more than they should. I think they embarrass him a little bit. Not his fault, their fault, right? Right. How about Glover? Glover,

voice of an angel. Beyonce? Phenomenal. Like all these people, it's like... Turns out this Beyonce... Can sing. Talented. Good singer. And even at the very end of like the spoken word like slam poetry, be prepared, they do. Chiwetel like holds the very end of the spoken word slam poetry, be prepared, they do. Chiwetel holds the tune for a little bit,

and I'm like, nice voice. Sounds like, of course, he's a classically trained man. Of course he has some basic perfunctory singing abilities. He's royally trained or whatever. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. A little bit like, what the fuck is going on here?

I was looking back, because I've seen all these conflicting reports about how much Beyonce was paid to do the movie. And I think they're all based on hypotheticals that have now been sourced and re-quoted. No one knows. No one knows. But there was the rumor at the time that was they were going to pay her $25 million because the big key was she was going to produce the entire soundtrack. Right. And she did, didn't she? going to produce the entire soundtrack. Right. And she did, didn't she? Pharrell gets a credit. I didn't see her get any credits other than that she co-wrote and produced the new song.

But Pharrell gets a song. There's the Lion King The Gift. You know what I mean? What's the Lion King The Gift? It's this soundtrack she made. She produced a curated soundtrack, which counts as her seventh studio album. Right. I think that's sort of part of the gift. It's this soundtrack she made. She produced a curated soundtrack, which counts as her seventh studio album. Right. I think that's sort of part of the deal, but it's

under her own label. Yeah, sure. The credit that Pharrell gets, which is songs produced by Pharrell Williams, I feel like at the time, the perception was she was going to do that. She was going to be hands-on. She was going to bring in the musicians. She was going to figure out how to reorchestrate these songs.

And I was watching it every time they did one of these songs, and the songs themselves, on a musical level, totally work. They're fun. I was just like, I would have rather seen someone try something different here. Because all the actors are singing them well, but you could have approached them differently from instrumentation. But you're just talking.

From mixing. They're just not doing that they're just not they're doing the Lion King doing it you think this is money being printed yeah

on screen right I mean that's what I'm that's what I'm the more you talk about it but do you guys know what the most successful piece of entertainment

in history is one single piece of entertainment in history is the original Lion King the Broadway musical oh sure yeah

nothing has ever made more money than the Broadway musical, and it is very interesting how this movie doesn't take anything from the Broadway musical. Right, right, right, right. Like, it is purely just an adaptation of the live action, or the original animated film, and not the one other time that they tried to sort of bring the Lion King into real life. Right. It's kind of fascinating.

a real life. It's kind of fascinating. Aside from the fact that Julie Taymor has talked about how she wanted to do this movie, how she would have done it, how she thought doing it hyper-realistic was not going to pay out. There are

even story changes that the musical makes that would have benefited this movie. Because this film was inexplicably half an hour longer. Aside from one scene that was when I went to the bathroom, it doesn't seem to add anything. It is, from what I could tell, 15 minutes longer with incredibly long credits. It adds that one...

Did they hold on the bowl of farts for longer? They did. They did. They did a tracking dolly shot on. I mean, there's a scene where Nala and... No, sorry, not... It's Nala and Scar. Yeah, Nala and Scar kind of tussle.

Yeah. And I came back from the bathroom and you went, well, that was kind of interesting. And I said, what? And you were like, they tried something. Yeah, it was another scene. Scar was trying to hunt Nala. They extend, because she's trying to sneak out.

Yeah. They extend the sequence of Simba's fur flying over to Rafiki where it's like, oh, a giraffe eats it and then it poops it and then a termite rolls it into a poop ball. There's a dumb beetle sequence which is almost a direct copy

of, not something from The Lion King, but something from Microcosmos. Do you remember Microcosmos? Microcosmos was a documentary about bugs where they had like, we cracked the micro lenses. It was all something from Microcosmos. Do you remember Microcosmos? Microcosmos. Good movie. Was a documentary about bugs where they had like, we cracked the micro lenses. It was all zoomed in. We can do bug photography

better than anyone's ever done before. And I think it was like French documentary filmmakers. French movie early, mid 90s, whatever. And it was like a weird art house crossover sensation where it made like

a couple million dollars. Wow. Because kids kind of liked it. It was like a good planet earth style nature documentary. I remember thinking it was kind of boring. The poster was a praying mantis wearing sunglasses and I kept on telling my mom and going, when's he showing up? Because he seemed like a

fun Joe Camel type. And instead it was like, no, Miramax was just trying to make it look like the movie was fun. But there's one sequence that rules, which is watching this dung beetle trying to push a ball of dung up like an anthill. And it's got like these stakes that you understand where even if the thing can't

emote, he's like trying and struggling to push up and he keeps on falling back. And I remember that thing just like fucking killing. Seeing that as like a child at the film forum. Hey man, I mean you know, it's a ball of poop. And then he does that in this. And it's like I have to imagine for a guy who's talked so much in the press about like, I'm trying to make it look like a nature documentary, that he fucking was like, this is my microcosmos

homage. And so it's a closeup of poop. Yeah. For a while. It's a closeup. A couple minutes. Yeah. Did he get notes on the poop?

At a certain point, the poop ball splits open. Yeah. Fur comes out. And the fur comes out. And then you're just tracking. That's disgusting. This poop fur flying around. Rafiki catches it and you're like, Rafiki, wash your fucking hands.

And then he does. And he does. And that's an extended sequence. There's a long sequence where Rafiki purels his entire body. There's a long sequence where Rafiki installs a plumbing system in his tree. This is, wow. This is colossal. It's like fascinating.

So I'm watching this movie and I'm going like, what's the analogy here? I don't want to use the could, should thing because it's, what they're doing is so much more innocuous

where it's really like, why spend the time doing this? You know, it's not malicious, but it just feels like such a waste of time and energy. Anytime I was sort of like visually taken by something in the movie, it would be like, man, look at how good that grass is. And then I would think, why did someone have to spend that much time accurately replicating the imperfections of a thing that I could film on my cell phone right now. You know? Yeah. Like, the way the light hits the thing.

You know, this and that. The fact that it's all 100% CGI, and that stuff is more impressive than the animal stuff, the environmental stuff, the water, what have you. Yeah. And you go, like, there's no reason any of this needs to be replicated. I understand you can't get lions to do things like this. And even if you want to do it babe style, it's really dangerous,

and it'd be hard to get the performance out of them, whatever, right? And they don't want to do what Dinosaur did, which I kind of would have preferred Disney's Dinosaur, where they shot live-action backgrounds and then just animated the characters into them. Because that movie then has to abide by the physics of what a real camera can do. Which when this movie is replicating certain famous shots,

like the sweeping shot where you're on like Zazu's back as you fly towards Pride Rock, works in animation because in animation, animators are drawing a thing, and then they have certain technologies like a multi-plane camera, or CGI later for Lion King and stuff like that, they can use to simulate a camera movement. But your brain is not rejecting it because you know there's not a real camera in the same kind of way.

In this movie, when they have Caleb Deschanel sitting in a room as a visual consultant, given the D in VR, wearing this headset with two Oculus Rift controllers, placing his digital camera somewhere and picking his digital camera somewhere

and picking his digital lens and all this. That's the whole thing they talked about. You watch the behind-the-scenes photos of this movie, and it is ten guys sitting in office chairs with Oculus Rift controllers and headsets, and one guy's, like, the gaffer, and they were like, we digitally created a way where someone can light a set.

And it's like, there's also an analog way to do it. You hire a guy and he brings lights and he turns them on and it's an artistry. It's like a crap. But they had to do a photo reel CGI. So when the Zazu flight thing's going on, you're like, there's no way you could get a camera to do this in real life.

And it makes everything look more fake. But this is the point I want to make, okay? Because I was really proud when I landed on it. Sitting there watching that, bored. I'm not emotionally engaged. I'm not hating it,

but I'm just like, it's weird how much I don't feel anything watching. Thinking about what happened to your loaded fries, where are they? Right, that was when there was really some tension.

And things like Scar that used to be scary, I'm just like, I don't feel any threat, I don't feel any danger. I really think they fucked up how he looks. I hate him. I do too. The design of Scar is terrible. He's just like, I don't feel any threat. I don't feel any danger. I really think they fucked up how he looks. I hate it.

I do too. The design of Scar is terrible. He's just skinny. Like, he just looks like a rag. He's just like a mangy looking lion. He looks like a meth-y lion. He looks so bad. Right?

He looks meth-y. It's so disappointing. I'll find a picture for you. I go, why spend this much time and energy for something you can so simply just do? Replicating things that you could already just film. Replicating the way that a camera or light would work, right?

That's so bad. And then I said, what is this movie? This movie is the cinematic equivalent of the Juicero machine. Oh, the, okay, so if I can remember right, it was that thing where they were like, Silicon Valley has cracked juicing. People are so into juicing, we need technology to disrupt the juicing industry. Right, people, you know, how do you make juice?

You have to buy fresh fruit, put it in a juicer. It's whisper quiet. No, it barely makes any juice. What a pain in the ass. Not with the Juicero. It's a machine where you put it on your kitchen counter. You buy Juicero packs. They ship them to you.

You put a Juicero pack in it. They're trying to do like the Nespresso coffee, but for juice. Right. Oh, it's so easy. Just put the little pod in. And then someone figured out that you could just take the juice pack and just squeeze it with your hands into a glass like you didn't need the machine. The only thing the machine was doing

was squeezing the juice. And they were like the force, the torque of the squeeze in the machine and the machine syncs with wifi so it knows what day it is and what time you like your juice and that way also there's a barcode reader in the machine that scans the date on the packet.

So if the packet's expired, it won't squeeze it for you. That's right. Because humans can't read. It costs several hundred dollars plus the juice packets. And everyone was like, you know, they were saying like this video people are posting where they cut it and they squeeze it themselves. We're telling you the juice isn't going to taste as good. It's not going to be good for your juice. Listen to me. I'm an expert here.

And they had raised so much money. 120 million dollars. 120 million dollars. From companies like Google. Right. You know, they were like, yeah, sure,

sounds great. And people were just like, there's no need to make this. If you've made, if you figured out a packet system where you can ship me a packet of juice and I can squeeze it,

maybe that's a business. But their business was like the $600 tabletop machine. Right. The appliance. Right. And it just went under, unsurprisingly.

And I'm sitting there watching Lion King, and I'm like, I feel the same way. In a certain way, if I had a juicer machine, and I had it make me a glass of juice, I'd be like, this is juice. I'm drinking this. This is satisfying. What about the QR code?

Right. Come on. And the more they tell me like, the code! The nomadic press! You can set alarm for your juice! I'm like, I also can go down to my local bodega and they just like put some shit in a blender and I drink it. And it's a hundred

times cheaper. Right, and it's like the same quality. Yeah. Or I could learn how to do it perfectly, make my own artisanal juices, like, you know, I don't know, hand animating The Lion King? Like, if I really care about getting this thing right? It is just, you know, it's like Ben said.

If they had just re-released the great movie, The Lion King from 1994 in theaters, they probably would have made a lot of money for a re-release. They did it in 2011. And it made close to $100 million. Right. And you know, if they'd re-released it again, they probably would have made a lot of money for a re-release. They did it in 2011. And it made close to $100 million. Right. And if they'd re-released it again, they probably would have got a little more juice.

Yeah. A row. A little more juice a row out of it. Pneumatic grass. Yeah. Or make a new movie. Sure. In the universe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Whatever. There's a million other things. The Lion Queen. I'm seeing David is being given the key to the city. Robert De Niro is fucking his face. Mayor Bill de Blasio, what are you doing here?

Shaking David's hand. Go fucking run the city, you maniac. I used to know him. Back when I fucking run the city, you maniac. I used to know him. Back when I was on the border, I did. He was a co-host on Night Cheese, right? You and Sonia and DeBlasio. I used to cover, he was city councilman for the general welfare committee. Remember when that was a bit that I was jealous that you had another podcast?

Four years ago. And who won? I guess Griffin did. Congratulations. Here's the key. Thank you. But the simple fact that they spent, you know, $250 million making a fucking, you know, faithful, free CGI rendering of this movie means that they unfortunately will make billions in profits. By the end of this weekend,

they will have likely made close to half a billion dollars. It's already been in China for like 10 days. It's made over 100, whatever. It's going to make 200 in this weekend in America alone. Now, is it going to be the most successful movie ever made? No. No. And here were the two cornerstones of my argument for why I thought it could end up being the most successful movie ever made? No. Hmm. No. No.

And here were the two cornerstones of my argument for why I thought it could end up being the most successful movie ever made. Oh, it's your argument. It's my argument. Where you were like, Lion King hit, plus Beyonce. The musical, look at how well Jungle Book did. Look at how well the re-releases did. Right. It feels like they have this technology down.

And as I consistently pointed out to you, even if you like tripled the amount of money that these other things made, it would not come close. And look, I'm not going to engage in a hypothetical scenario here. But I think if this movie... And I also think that Beyoncé's impact on things

is overrated at this point. Although I have tweeted that and gotten yelled at, but her last couple albums have not sold that well. I think the Beyonce thing is not quite the phenomenon it was five years ago. David, people can hear you. David is cupping his hands around the microphone. I literally just got shot in the face with a gun.

By Bill DiBlasio. You're in league with the Bayhives! No wonder you don't care on the subway. His name was Bay DeBlasio all along. That tall motherfucker. He's tall. He's really tall. That's crazy.

Yeah, he's very tall. I thought you were the number one follower. No, who's the rare person I have to interview where I would have to hold my microphone up. That's why night cheese didn't last. Your arm got tired. Yeah, right. That's why night cheese didn't last. Your arm got tired. Right. That's why night cheese didn't last.

You had to hold one up and one down. Doing a lot of physical humor on this podcast. What were you going to say? Come on. More physicality than The Lion King. Yes. I think if this movie had then just hits the backboard. Yeah, it was okay.

I think if this movie was executed at the level of The Jungle Book, it would have had a real run at being the highest grossing movie of all time. I don't even think it needs to be exceptional. Yeah, you ain't right. And I also think if Beyonce actually felt like she had any impact on this movie. When she starts speaking, which takes an hour and a half. Yeah, well, this is the thing. She's got less than 10 lines.

She's playing Nala. And I'm like, have you seen The Lion King? Adult Nala has two lines. And I gave them way too much credit. Adult Nala's fucking role is, she's just like, Simba, come back to Pride Rock.

And he's like, no. It's Moira Kelly? Is that who plays? No, Moira Kelly plays Sarabi. Oh, right. Who does play Nala? Am I right? Or maybe it is Moira Kelly

yeah I always forget who plays no it's yeah no Moira Kelly it's Moira Kelly oh yeah it's yeah

someone else played Seraph okay sorry when they announced that Beyonce was gonna do it

I thought there's zero chance they're hiring Beyonce to do as little as Nala had to do in the original film I gave them way too much credit you're thinking about it the wrong way their pitch to Beyonce was like

honestly the whole thing will take fucking two days we'll do it in your car just be like Simba what the heck and she was like okay Simba what the heck and they were like great here's 20 million I thought she was going to really hands on produce the soundtrack she did make this thing that she made a soundtrack but it's like a curated it's an album she did it's sort of like how you know kendrick lamar did that with black panther

where like there was like the score but then there was also this like curated jay-z did with american gangster yes that's true yes that's true she's copying that model i'm sure it will sell very well and everyone will be happy with it. I thought she was going to... Or will it? I've never seen it open down recently. If you check her last couple albums. Oh, I've been shot again!

Bill de Blasio. Sorry, go on. More like Buckshot Bill de Blasio. I thought they would give that character board to do. I thought they would find... Especially because, you know, I think people, the common accepted stance is that the young Simba stuff is the best stuff.

Yeah. The movie kind of peaks with Timon and Pumbaa. Can You Feel the Love Tonight's a jam. The Mufasa in the cloud scene people love. But the end of The Lion King is a little perfunctory in terms of just like getting through the stuff. The end of The Lion King is not very good. The movie certainly

probably peaks with the stampede. Yeah. That's like the emotional and visual peak and then the Timon and Pumbaa stuff is fun and then the last half hour

is pretty boring. But I think I think the movie is despite not being a movie that I love or have an immense amount of nostalgia for watching this

and even just like running over the story beats in my head I'm like it is kind of a perfect object. It's a film with like such narrative power and economy. It looks great. I think it's a great looking movie. No, but you just look at that as a text

and how well it works on stage and how well it works in film. And it's just like, it's a really classical, clean story. It has every type of element in it. It has thrills. It has romance. It has comedy shallots here i'm roaring for this lion king and i ain't lying i'm telling the truth that i liked it two paws up i think timon's cool timon is very cool and billy eichner kills him that's my thing

it's it's weird how hard he kills it's two things it's one he's he's doing a good job and he's funny and i think it's a pretty committed performance but two it's also just like you've been wandering in the fucking desert and then he shows up like what 45 minutes in whatever i think like an hour yeah and is like doing new material and you're like oh my god oh you wrote this for this movie oh give me more you know i would say rogan's funny too i think rogan's funny rogan's very good he knows his role he's playing off him really well they have really good banter the two of them recorded together clearly and i imagine the two of them sat together and worked out bits weren't just improvising stuff but came

in with shit there's some like i genuinely think the line where simba's like, oh, you know, the circle of life. And they're like, ah, I don't know where you got circle as like people who are lower on the food chain. I think that's funny. Yeah. Um, and they talk about how like,

it's like a meaningless line. That's good. Everyone's trying to get everyone else. There's no circle. Right. Moron. Um, that was funny.

They're really funny together. It feels like they have slightly different takes on the characters while fitting into the role to bring their own energy to it. Their own personas to it. Anytime Rogan laughs that wonderful laugh of his, it's kind of amazing because you're like, look! This is like one of the best

duos. Like all time. I mean, look. They're just classic comedy. Tango and time. I mean, look, Timon and Pumbaa I love. They're just classic comedy. Tango and Cash. A little guy Timon and Pumbaa. You got a little guy and a big guy. You got a high status guy and a low status guy. You have the bossy one.

I mean, they're like an animal odd couple, you know? Like, literally, they're like Felix and Oscar. You have the slobby one and the kind of persnickety one and what have you. Yeah, that's true. But the thing that's nice about Timon and Pumbaa is they're an odd couple who really like each other. They don't fight much. No, they're a good couple.

They're on each other's side. Everyone's level knows each other, but they're like really united, which I think is what pushes them over the edge. So David's putting on- I'm showing him the clip of the new movie. And it looks like a video game in between scene. Yeah, cut scene. I mean, the other problem is that I find the environments in the new movie pretty boring. Yep.

It often looks just kind of washed out. Yeah, I mean, this is a desert scene. Looks very real. The original lighting has a very expressive use of color and light. Yes, it does, absolutely. And this movie does not. No. Safer at the end when the fire is going.

Even that's not. Something like Be Prepared, which gets very sort of like. Well, it's got the green mists and fires and things like that. This movie mostly takes place in just broad, harsh, unsparing daylight. Like just Sahara sun. And this is one of two moments where I started to flip out and go like, what the fuck is going on here? Is when they get to Can You Feel the Love Tonight,

the entire song takes place around 1 p.m. That's right. And Eichner's singing his heart out. Can You Feel the Love Tonight? And they are in horrible, oppressive heat. It's- Underneath a wide open- The middle of the day.

A violent sun. Now, here I am. I'm reloading. And then they cut. They do a time lapse cut, and you're like, finally,

we're gonna get to night. We're gonna get to night time. No, it's like 1.30. Yeah, right. They had lunch. Yeah.

I'm watching the original movie's version, and right, it's like, it said it's sunset. It's hot. You wanna see these lions? Fuck. The sun's going down, and then, right, it's like, it said it's sunset. It's hot, you want to see these lions? Fuck! The sun's going down, and then right, the sun sets,

and there's that moment where Nala licks Simba, and then kind of gives him bedroom eyes, and as a kid you're like, what's going on here? And then this happens, and you're just like, animals are weird, why do animals do that? Like, it just seems like, I don't know, it doesn't have any personality behind it.

But this Timon and Pumbaa section was like if everyone involved in this movie had taken the job the same way that the two of them are taking it

where it's like cool we know what the thing is now we're going to try to make our own thing that doesn't betray what people like about it. Like start over from square one.

Because I'd say Timon and Pumbaa 90% new material in this movie. Yeah. In terms of dialogue. I think there's some of the classic jokes, mostly not.

Whereas James Earl Jones had to re-record his entire role. The poor man's 88 years old. As the only actor reprising his character from the original. And I swear to God there's not one thing,

without knowing the movie encyclopedically, there's not one thing he says that I don't remember being said word for word in the original film. Largely, I believe you are. They don't add scenes.

They don't add meaningful new character dimensions. Someone else. You're like, he could have died. They could have pulled the audio files and it would have been the exact same performance. Someone else who's doing new material that I was less enamored of is John Oliver as Zazu. Yeah. His stuff is just not that fun. Our audience was really into it.

I think it's because he's the one who's doing jokes in the middle of a boring fucking movie. I didn't hate it, but the Timon and Pumbaa stuff's got life to it. It's got a punch. Rowan Atkinson is almost underrated in Lion King. He's so fucking funny. He's really good. And, yeah, Oliver, I forgot that they cut to a crying Timon.

It's good. The original one's pretty good. I'll say this too good movie Timon and Pumbaa they anthropomorphize a little bit more

it helps that Amir cat can stand on its hind legs but there's even timing stuff with like there's that scene

where Timon keeps on popping his head up and behind the rock because he's afraid of Simba and there's like shit where they add like recognizable physical behavior Right.

Right. into it and like that section's kind of jamming and at that point we weren't going to love this movie but we were both laughing a lot

and we were like this is pleasant to watch. It's a couple guys. I'm watching a thing that's engaging. Right. Right. Then the can you feel the love

tonight thing happens. We get adult Simba who becomes immediately less expressive. Yeah, and I think Donald Glover pretty much phoned this one in. I'm sorry. It wasn't very good. He's not very good. I agree. I don't think he's bad. It just feels like he's kind of doing the basics.

But he looks almost identical to Mufasa, which I know is supposed to sort of be a plot point, but you literally can't tell them apart. And the other thing is, at least when he's a baby lion, baby animals have larger, more expressive features. They are cute.

So that they don't get eaten by predators. Right. And even during I Just Can't Wait to Be King, which is just them slowly walking past the animals that used to do exciting things in the previous version of the film. Yep. Like, I was just like, even if they're not going to dance, have him stand on a fucking

giraffe's back. You know? Sure. Like, even if you're going to keep them slightly to, like, the rules of how these animals move, like, have the flamingos, like, all, like, move at the same time. You know? Even if it doesn't look like fucking Busby Berkeley. Or instead of them, like, just, like, grazing, have them working, digging, you know, Flintstone style, you know?

Have them doing stuff. And they're like, it's a living. Yeah, they should all say it's a living. Yes! But I was saying, it's like, all the musical numbers in this are shot like an Aaron Sorkin walk and talk. Yes. They walk around. It's just them sort of slowly walking in the camera like, you know, like steady cam, like backwards tracking with them

as they walk through the Sahara. And not even walking, it's not like their paws are hitting the ground on the beat. They're sort of just like stepping at their own pace. God, this movie's draining. It's so fucking boring. I hate Scar. I'm so mad about Scar. Can you feel the love

when it happens? We're like, what the fuck? Oh, right. You want to get to your final rant. Who cares? This is so stupid.

At this point, I'm just disconnected from the movie. Me too, but it's drawing no real ire from me. I'm just like, this is so silly.

What a fucking waste of time. What a juice roll machine. And then we get to the scene. Remember who you are. Right. That scene. The cloud scene. You know, like, you know. You got Rafiki, played by legendary South African playwright John Connie. I want to say. In his, like, fourth

appearance in a Disney movie in recent years. Third. One of my favorite things about The Lion King is Rafiki. I think Rafiki's my favorite character. Sure. The Broadway musical does great shit with Rafiki. Expands that role. Always has it played by a woman. Sure. Opens great shit with Rafiki. Expands that role. Always has a play by a woman. Opens the show with Rafiki.

She kind of sings Circle of Life. But there's this beautiful thing with Rafiki where Rafiki is like a reverse Yoda. Where at the beginning of the movie you're not hearing a lot from Rafiki but you're seeing a lot of Rafiki and he just seems unbelievably noble and stoic and powerful and wise.

And then at the end when he comes to Simba, he's like fucking insane goofball lunatic person. Like the way Yoda tricks Luke at first. And he's like doing bits and he's like you know, all that sort of shit. Which is so much fun. Robert Guillaume's doing it.

He's killing it. Benson. John Connie in this movie is doing a very respectable, restrained performance. There's a lot more respect for... It's again, it just feels like they want to avoid any kind of stereotype.

Yeah. And I understand that. It's the same thing they did with Scar. It's the same thing they did with Jafar in Aladdin. Same thing they did with the hyenas in this too where they're all like... Eric Andre gets a couple half-jokes in. Keegan-Michael Key plays one of them, and it's unclear what his bid is because they don't want him to actually be scary. He's also not really funny. Eric Andre's playing the equivalent of Ed, the one who always just laughed, and now he's just the dumb one.

Yeah, that was not helpful. And then what's-her-name, Florence Kusamba. Yeah, she plays the main one. And it's like, Who. And then what's her name? Florence Kusamba. Yeah, she plays the main one. And it's like, Whoopi Goldberg's kind of amazing in The Lion King. And this is where, but she's sort of like half funny, half serious. This is just, she's just serious. She's just scary. Right.

And it's this weird, like, she's got this weird specific thing with Nala at the end of the movie. She's like, I'm going to eat you. I've been waiting for this my whole life. thing with Nala at the end of the movie. She's like, I'm going to eat you. I've been waiting for this my whole life. That just felt like them being like, let's give the female voice characters a little more of an arc. But you have the Rafiki

thing. Fail. Alright, so the Rafiki thing is whatever. And I said to you, who should have played Rafiki? Danny Glover. I love it. But I love Glove. You love to put on the Glove. As you said. Glove fits and I quit. Always. Fully canceled. to put on the glove. As you said. Glove fits and I quit. Always. Always.

Fully canceled. So he does the like. You got shot again. He's still alive. He's still alive. Look. He lives in you. And he points up to the clouds.

And I go, okay, at least this is going to be this sort of transcendent moment. You know? Yeah. Of like emotional sort of ecstatic truth. I can't wait to see how the cloud, they pull it off. Guess what they do?

They don't put his face in the fucking cloud. No. What do they put? They show you a cloud. It's a cloud. They show you a sky filled with clouds.

It's a cloud. It's stormy. The lightning strikes. And when the lightning flashes, looks like a little face for a second there. Oh, what? What?

Oh, Griffin's taking it back and he's realizing it was truly majestic. Ben, no exaggeration. Yeah, so I'm just sitting there being like- There will be an infinitesimal, a millisecond long lightning flash in which you can see 5% of his face. Five, just the vague sense of maybe that's a cheekbone.

Is this a prank? It felt like it. And I just went, what the fuck are they doing? Now, at this point, when I'm watching the movie, I'm sitting next to Griffin, I'm just like, boring! And this is happening, and I'm like, yep, that's boring too.

And Griffin suddenly feels like, whatever, the straw that broke the camel's back. Suddenly he just won't tolerate this. He's like, he's sort of like gesticulating at me, like, what is this? What is it? And I'm like, I don't know.

His fucking face is in the cloud. What do I care? I was like, but it's not. Remember who you are. What the fuck are you doing? Why are you going to show up if you're not ready to play? Why make a fucking Lion King movie if you're not going to? As you said, they fucking, everyone parodies the father's face in the clouds.

This is his joke when he's like, this is CNN. It's funny. Yeah. It's one of, like, the most iconic visuals of the last 30 years of film. Pretty iconic. It's the dad's face in the cloud. Yeah, and that shot of Simba going like, remember, they use that in, like, memes all the time, I feel like. And they just are like, it's kind of unrealistic.

Remember when Rafiki beats up all the hyenas? I mean, in real life life a real lion's face wouldn't appear in the closet I don't give a shit that's actually a great point not photorealistic they didn't do that they did a storm and it was great and then Simba goes back to Pride Rock and they fuck up Scar

hyenas eat him I also I mean it's the problem with the original cartoon too it's like the whole thing where Scar is like your dark secret is you killed your father. And it's like in front of everybody. Yeah. He was there during a stampede. Like, I mean, how is even childish Simba going to be like, yeah, I'm responsible.

Yeah, I should probably. Yeah. I've never loved that. And then people are always like, oh, the Lion King is like Hamlet. No, it's not. No, it's not. It'd be like a prequel to Hamlet. Yeah. Hamlet begins with the dad is dead. it's just the uncle stuff yeah it's just it's just that there's an uncle who killed a dad and they're like oh we're really inspired by

hamlet no you're not fuck off okay it's not it's a ripoff of that japanese cartoon yeah kimba yeah kimba kimba the white lion kimba the white lion disney was like no no no it's not it's not a cartoon not a ripoff what are you talking about you watch kimba the white Lion. Kimba the White Lion. And Disney was like, no, no, no, it's not a rip-off. What are you talking about? And you watch Kimba the White Lion has like the same rock, you know. And it was originally Simba the White Lion, and then they made him yellow, and then they called it the Lion King. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, like every Japanese person apparently who saw the White Lion King was like, hey, is this Kimba? And they're like, no, it isn't.

And Japanese people are like, oh, I think it is. I remember Kimba the White Lion looks like, no, it isn't. And Japanese people are like, oh, I think it is. I remember Kimba the White Lion looks like this. Except he's yellow. And Disney was like, no, it's not. We're not talking about it again. Fully original.

Fuck the Lion King. Whatever. I like the first one. It's okay. I saw it when I was eight years old. My mom had to take me. My dad was living in England at the time.

Two direct-to-video sequels. I feel like the second one didn't have... It started at the Lowe's 84th. Oh, congrats. Thanks. Very hyped up. Unlike Return of Jafar, which made a big cultural impact, I feel like no one has any memories of Lion King 2, Simba's Pride.

I know some people who are nostalgic for that one. Really? Yeah, because the kid is cute. It's the new kid. And then there's Lion King 1 1⁄2. No, I feel like more people like that one. Which is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Timon and Pumbaa. There's a Timon and Pumbaa movie that is Lion King told solely from Timon and Pumbaa's perspective.

I like that. It's supposed to be really good. Is it? Yeah, I know people who say it's really good. You do? It's like the one direct-to-video sequel from that era that's supposed to be interesting. It's funny, too, because on the cover... What's now Pumbaa?

And he's big. Pumbaa's the bigger one. And he's struggling. They try to make the fucking empowerment thing with Pumbaa in this movie that they're fat shaming him and that's how he gets the courage to stand up because even though he's cowardly, he hates bullies. The thing

I kept thinking about was like, imagine the person who's like, fuck, honey, I'm gonna like fuck honey I'm gonna miss dinner I'm gonna miss the next three years of dinner I can't get the lighting right on this rock you know like you watch that and you're like there are individual people who care about what they're doing

in this movie of course I'm sure it was worked on very hard it looks like lions in a desert and stuff and like I can't believe we're at that point where we can do this. It's very impressive that they can replicate this. Why do I need a machine to make me the fucking Jews?

I can squeeze it myself. Why do you need a machine to make you the fucking Jews? But what if like Jeff Nathanson, who wrote this film, did a great job, did a great job watching The Lion King. Scream right out, catch me if you can. Yeah, what if he came in and he was like, Griffin, look, I was having a hard time

and I made a couple million dollars in this movie and now I'm doing okay. Would you be like, alright. Listen, I can copy and paste a screenplay. I just want someone to give me reason to be like, alright, well, whatever. Someone comes in, my kid was sick, I made a lot of money, my kid's better.

Alright, cool. Glad you made better. I'm like, all right. Cool. Glad you made it. Donald Glover went on Jimmy Kimmel to promote it wearing a full lion costume, which was kind of fun. Kind of funny. And he seemed a little embarrassed to talk about the movie. But he had one really good anecdote. So is your son excited? He was like, my son weirdly loves The Lion King.

I don't show him a lot. We don't have screens in the house. We don't watch TV. David's rolling his eyes because David shows his kids screens all the time. When I have a kid, I'll be like, yeah, when they're two years old, I'll be like, alright, so the NYPD Blue is kind of the midpoint between Hill Street Blues

and the modern cop show like The Shield. Tape an iPad to your child's hand. We'll do seasons one to six or seven. We'll see. I mean, and then we'll, we'll,

we'll work on more. Daddy, I want to watch Peppa Pig. And I'm like, yeah, but David Milch is really foundational. Peppa Pig has a lot to do with David. Peppa Pig has no integrity.

But he was like, my son weirdly loves The Lion King. That's like one of the ones he watches. And I wasn't telling him that I was in it because I didn't think he could grasp the concept. I don't know what they do or how movies get made. And I thought it would be a nice surprise to just take him to see it and then afterwards try to explain it to him. And so I was like, hey, do you want to go see The New Lion King? Sure.

The new man. No, he didn do you want to go see the new Lion King? Sure. The new man. No, he didn't say that. That's the joke. He says like, do you want to go see the new Lion King? And his child, who's like three years old,

goes, oh yeah, Beyonce's in there. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. And he was like, and Glover was like, I mean,

I guess she's in it. Yeah, yeah. That was the thing. He's like, you know, daddy's in that. I don't thing. She's like, daddy's in that. I don't know how you know who Beyonce is. What if the kid was like, oh, I hear John Connie's in it.

John Oliver? It's kind of an interesting choice. I can see how John Oliver is kind of this generation's Rowan Atkinson. Sure. It's weird. Just like the game now. We're going through with Little Mermaid It's weird just like the game now and we're going through it with Little Mermaid where it's just like it's like a fucking Buzzfeed

community article every time where it's just like, okay, so who is our generation's buddy Hackett? Aquafina? Who plays a flounder? I don't know. Tremblay? He's good casting. Tremblay is basically a living flounder? I don't know, Tremblay? He's good casting. Tremblay is basically a living flounder. He's good casting.

Alright, let's never talk about this movie again. I hope it fucking gets forgotten immediately. It's going to make $200 million. Doesn't he have to like, because he missed the bet, doesn't something happen to him? We never set the terms of the bet. I was going to say, I'll go get a cup of... You get my nudes? I was going to say, I'll go get a cup of milk.

Oh, no. I'm not going to make him drink milk. Oh, no. You know me. No, I get to do a Batman Forever episode or whatever. I don't know. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.

Okay, we'll figure it out. You get to do something stupid. I mean, unless it breaks the record. Oh, boy. I mean, how awful it would be to be proven right. Right, exactly. What a horror show. It becomes a country. It makes so much money, they just own

countries now. Yeah, the nation of Lion King. But the set I read is that Disney now controls 33% of the domestic box office. And that's pre-Fox acquisition. Yeah. And they now have seven of the top ten movies of all time?

It's my take. It's the same take I've always had. Everyone's freaking out, but wait until 2020, baby. I think movies are going to die in 2020. Sure. We're all going to die. No! No, that's going to be 2021.

We're going to live forever. But if Lion King is 100 on the scale of how realistic we want to make our computers work to replicate things that we could just film. Right. Right. What's the most literal minded stripped of any sort of interesting creative choices? There's another movie. That in terms of digital for technology is going the exact opposite direction. Oh, what are you talking about?

Fur. Jumping headfirst into the uncanny valley and going like, let's creatively, artistically make the weirdest series of decisions. To adapt a thing that most people think doesn't really hold up is not this immaculate work. And that is the film cat fur fur fur fur fur fur I don't know I'm Rumble Teaser

I'm a cat are you? now alright I want to come out of the gates with my hottest take I already said it on our Kiki's Delivery Service episode but you ain't getting that for two months. So you're getting this now. Jennifer Hudson, who is playing

Grizabella in Cats. Am I correct that she's playing Grizabella? I think so. Yes. Looks like Salazar. Plays played by Javier Bardem, Oladak Baro, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales, a.k.a. Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales, aka Pirates of the

Caribbean, Salazar's Revenge, where her face just kind of looks like half of a face. Yes. Just sort of a half face. And they just kind of like put her human face sort of in the middle of it. You know what I mean? And then they're like, yeah, and put some whiskers on it. Yeah. Okay.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, it just looks like she's not filled in. It makes me, like, kind of, like, nauseous a little bit. And I love it. Now, I saw this trailer. This trailer hits the world. The world explodes. While I'm commuting on a subway.

We were blessed with this trailer playing before The Lion King last night. It did get the biggest response of anything. We'll get to that. It got the biggest response of anything I've ever seen in the history of film. I've never seen an audience react to anything the way I saw it. It did get a genuinely fascinating reaction.

We will talk about it. But I saw it on a subway, so I just loaded it on my phone. It was all grainy. And I was like, well, that looks fucking terrible. That looks demented. Then I get home.

Joanna said, and I just put it on with absolutely no warning. I was like, I'm putting something on immediately. Watch it in high def and I'm like, okay. I mean, okay. It looks like something. It does look like something.

Yup. They're too small, maybe. I don't know what this world is. But it does look like something. Yes. I still think that it's possible we will be judged as a species.

Like this will be the final feather on the scales. There's been all this news about actual UFOs. Yeah, right. I think that they're going to be like, I'll be on hope. Because they're slowly getting us comfortable with aliens. At this point, the New York Times is running another UFO story every two months.

Every week they're like, yeah, Trump said a racist thing, and also there's another trove of Navy videos of aliens. So here that is. You can watch it anytime. And everyone's like, Trump did what now? You know what I mean? It's just one of those Air Force videos. It's like, Trump did what now? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like just one of those Air Force videos. It's like, what's that?

Wow, aliens. Crazy. That's nuts. It's moving like an alien spacecraft. He just tweeted Kofifi. And then the ship crashed. What does Kofifi mean? But before we talk cats, before we talk about Tom Hooper's cats,

which is probably going to be one of the films of 2019. So the cat's trail is at the opposite end of the spectrum, where even if it looks like another crime against humanity, it's the kind of crime I respect. Do you know what I'm saying? I do. It's the difference between a quadruple homicide and an insane robbery. Okay.

Interesting. Sure. Does that make sense? Yeah, I get what you're saying. One of them is kind of dehumanizing. It's a crime, but at least it's sort of creative. You're like, oh my God. And they had to hide out in the walls or go undercover as this or whatever.

You know? Yeah. And I'm sort of like, you know, in an era in which things are, I feel like, getting very safe or weird in just boring ways. Sure. This is a movie that's fucking swinging left and right. And I also think... I've never seen anything that looks like this.

I don't like it necessarily, but I can't look away. I watched the trailer 12 times yesterday. I've watched it so many times. I can't look away. So you've got these... All right, so the thing is that fundamentally, Cats is an absolutely bonkers work of art anyway.

Right, right. Andrew Lloyd Webber was charmed by these old TSLA children's poems about cats. With no narrative. With no narrative to them. He put them all to music and they're weird. And then he wrote one

other song, Memory, that's like kind of a banger that ends the show and is, you know, like a classical ballad. The plot is that it's a bunch of fucking cats who live in a garbage dump and they argue over which of them gets to go to heaven and be reborn as a new cat. Have you seen cats?

No. It sounds batshit crazy. It's batshit crazy. It's one of those things that's kind of like probably best when it was on Broadway. Like it was probably. Yeah, sure.

Keep going. No, I don't want to interrupt you. Okay. You know, there was probably best for kids. But it has that weird cult following where people would see it

over and over again. Rum Tum Tugger. It's so weird anyway. It's just that a Cats film will be weird. It should be weird. Cats is weird.

Are you done? They wear leotards will be weird. Griddle bone. It should be weird. Rumpelteaser. You know what I mean? Because cats is weird. Shimble shanks. Are you done? And now, so they wear leotards and they have like hair. Mungo Jerry. Right? That's their look. And they have painted faces

in the Broadway play. Jelly Laura. Yeah, they wear leotards with sort of patterns on them. They've got some makeup. They got some fur. Cillabub. Now in this version,

are you supposed to want to fuck the cats? There's definitely going to be some new or existing subculture that has that concept. I don't know. But so it's like the cats kind of look like humans but if the humans were covered

in fur. The fur is digital it's not makeup. It's filmed on set. It's digital fur technology let's be honest. But that's what I find fascinating. It's not makeup. They filmed it on set. It's digital fur technology, let's be honest. But that's what I find fascinating is it's not like these are like photo reel mocap versions of these actors. These actors gave these performances and then they like digitally painted fur on top of them. Yeah.

Andy Serkis always says like motion capture, you should think of it like digital makeup. This is the first time anyone's actually just done digital makeup. To this extent. Yeah, it's directed by tom hooper who is at this point just a garbage man right i mean i don't know i actually kind of like the king's speech i like the damn united but i mean lay miz is awful and uh the danish girl can go fuck yourself sinful yeah uh and not because it's about a trans person realizing a danish girl

was about a trans person is sinful no it's just girl, what's about a trans person? It's sinful. No, it's just, it's just an abhorrent piece of movie making. Yeah. Yeah. Cats, I guess, I mean,

Cats is bad. I just like, It's bad anyway. What are you going to do? Fuck it up? In a world, A, right, what are you going to do?

Yeah, fuck it up. It's not a sacred text, right? And B, in a world where Favreau is too afraid to put Mufasa's face in the clouds, here's a movie that is seemingly unafraid of anything. We'll put a face on anything. We'll put boobs on him too, you will? Yeah!

You want it to have a nice ass and a tail? We'll do that. Here's a great point. The tail could kind of be like going into the ass in a weird kind of a way. Do you like that? Yeah, you do, you dirty viewer. I don't like that. I'm like, yes, you do.

Yeah. David's whipping the table. You know, tails, usually kind of above the bottom. That's true. What if this tail looked like you were pooping it out? It suddenly got kind of hot and sweaty in here. So we see this trailer and we go sitting down in front of the Lion King.

We're like, fuck this bullshit. And I'm like, oh, it just premiered. You think so? And then we see a trailer for... What were some other trailers? We saw the Mulan trailer, which we both agree. People are angry about the Mulan trailer which we both agree. Mulan trailer got a good reaction. People are angry about the Mulan trailer online

because it looks quote disrespectful to the original Disney film. I don't know who you're quoting there. Unquote. I did a little Twitter search in Mulan when it came out

and the response was overwhelmingly negative. People said why did they make this? Why does everything look different? Why isn't Mushu in it? Why not use the songs? This is disrespectful.

Why bother? These are the exact people who are going to push The Lion King to 650 million domestic. Right. Whether or not they really enjoy it, that's what they think they want to see. Yes. Mulan looks awesome. Mulan looks good. I'm trying to think what other trailers we saw, but I can't remember.

It doesn't matter. It's weird because I saw the other self-defense at Alamo and they showed the Star Wars trailer. Really? And it's weird that they didn't in front of the Lion King. There was a moment where I thought there was a false alarm. I thought it was maybe the Cats trailer, and now I can't remember what.

Oh, they played the Down Abbey trailer, which is also incredible. That's bonkers in its own way. I'll be there in the morning. But Cats, the trailer plays. The second the trailer begins, the audience is like. Like the first couple chords. Wait, Cats in a movie?

They're kind of like, I've heard... It's sort of like... It's like the emperor is coming out naked and everyone's like, what's he doing? Excuse me. Universal logo. When they cut to the image of... Francesca Hayward, who's playing Victoria. Right. The audience simultaneously applauds and laughs.

Yes. Like, people were like, yes, we got it. They spend the whole trailer kind of laughing derisively, but also kind of into it. Like, stunned. Right. And then the title comes up, and they applauded. Because it was sort of like, look!

What can I tell you? This is my reaction. It's like, I'll see it! I can only imagine it's similar to the response you would get from the audience at like a Tijuana sex show. It's one of those- Where people are grossed out, they're entertained, they're turned on. Like every sound was

being made. It's one of those things where like, I feel like in a couple months, everyone will be like, well yeah, because that's what Cats looks like. We know. We saw the trailer. We're used to it at this point. And we can't let that happen.

We've got to hold on to what's happening right now. We're just like, nothing looks like this. What is this? It was amazing to come home. And 12 hours later, after the trailer had premiered, after I'd seen it in the theater, still my feed was just 32 seconds ago, 45 seconds ago

1 minute ago, 5 minutes ago Fucking cats, man. We're all talking like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now where we're like God, those cats. I can't escape them. They haunt me. It was unbelievable but I will pick that any day.

Jaboukie Young-White, the comedian who's on The Daily Show. We love him. He changed his Twitter account to at Cats Movie. Oh, no, I'm sorry. He kept his username the same, but the display name was Cats Movie. And he changed the logo. And he tweeted. Do you have it here david no no okay he tweeted this is twitter a website that is uh overrun with nazis uh harassments of all sorts uh jabuki young white was uh immediately banned from twitter for posting

because he's also verified he's got the check mark right, right? So it's at Jaboukie, but it says, Cats Movie, checkmark. And his tweet is... The tweet is, The Cats in Cats 2019. We'll have... Realistic spiked penises. That's what they'll have.

Got little spines on their dick. To scrape the semen out from other competitors. His account was suspended. In the hour. It kind of feels nice to have something that everyone can agree on, which is just like, this is fucking weird. What the fuck is this trailer? But I was like, the trailer comes up,

we're getting ready to watch The Lion King, and I say to you, if Lion King is 100 in terms of trying to replicate the natural world, and Cats is a zero in terms of going as unnatural like hell world as we possibly can. Cats is even a zero. It's like a series of like hieroglyphics that are red, you know, that mean like the world is ending.

I think I want Lion King more in the Cat Zone than what we got. Right. You'd like Lion King to be more like going for 20. Yeah. I don't know. 30, 40 even. Even if it was 49%. Hell, give me 60. Yeah.

Yeah. Cats! I'll say this. It's about cats. I'd love a fishbone. You keep coming back to this. I'd love a fishbone. They're street cats. The problem is... Give me some trash. The problem is now they've made them so humongous. There's that shot of her with the knife and the fork

very weird where the knife and the fork each look five times the size of her entire body the perspective though seems solid well you know what they did they built fucking humongous sets which I love that was the other thing it's like the Gallagher special

Universal they fucking set this joke up so well. Because they released the video 24 hours in advance. That was like the famous Les Mis, let's brag about shooting everything on set. Right. Doing the songs live. And Eddie Redmayne talking about the fragility of the performance three times in a row. Right?

Yeah. He uses the word fragility. They did another one of these videos, but it was just the cast in their movement clothes, either on set or in rehearsal spaces, not in motion capture suits, but seeing how big the fucking sets are, which is pretty impressive.

They rarely do that anymore. They rarely make full fucking insane sets like that. This is my favorite Jaboukie tweet. Twilight, New Moon, kicking Citizen Kane in the chest. Good tweet. And then the poster came out where from behind you see the one Victoria. Yeah, the ballerina cat. And people were like, oh, that's weird how defined her butt and womanly curves are.

And then they released the trailer and the world went blind. Yes. It was fucking bird box all over again. Now, here's what I love about it. It caught our eyes out. Someone tweeted this and I realized, oh, this is, among all the other things, one of the elements that makes this so unnerving. They didn't give them cat noses.

No, they're human. They spent so much time and energy putting cat faces on human bodies and then giving human bodies cat fur. But the one thing they could have done is just give everyone a little pink at the end of their nose. Because they do have whiskers.

They have whiskers. They have whiskers coming out of their face. They have tails coming out of their butts. Their noses, the exact same color as the rest of them. I do think, and that fucking video, behind the scenes video is so funny because they're like, you know, we're like people,

but we're also cats. And I'm like, don't know what that means. And then they were like, do you see? Tom Hopper signed on like three years ago. And when they announced that he was doing it and Spielberg was producing it, they were like, they will now establish a committee

to decide whether the film should be live action fully animated somewhere motion capture like they were like we don't know and then a guy comes in a visual consultant who I think was worth every penny they spent on him he came in he was like dun dun dun

hola Tom Hooper. Do you see my face? Salazar. See, it's like the Sprite commercial. For the listeners at home, it's Salazar. He's like, do you see the great pink face?

Yes, sir. Hola, Steven Spielberg. Our old friend, Salazar. I need a co-producer credit. I don't know. I mean, you said in the Kiki episode that we just recorded that the Jumanji movie, that it's coming out. That's it.

That's the bellwether for the future of Missouri in a presidential election. Outside of the four silos that Disney has. Yeah. Right? That seem unstoppable. If that one hits, then Hollywood's like, okay, all right. The rest of us still have some idea of how this works. Right.

Right. Here's the thing. If that hits and Cats fails, I think people will be like, all right, I wouldn't have predicted that, but okay. If that misses and Cats hits, it's like, okay, there's still money to be made, but I don't know how we make it. I don't know what to do. At that point, you need Mad Men running the whole, right? We made a horse the CEO of Disney now.

He'll make the decisions. If he clomps twice, we green light it. Who knows? I just think the joy I felt watching that Cats trailer and the audience response to it, it was then like, after the Mulan trailer they applauded, but it felt like them being like, well now we look like

assholes if we don't applaud at the thing that actually looks good. And then the Lion King applause felt more like, as you said, this Pavlovian thing that disintegrated as the movie went on. And it was like, look, you can say it works or it doesn't, but there was a genuine energy happening in the theater during that

cast theater trailer that I've been missing. I've been missing in my life. It was like being electrocuted. It was. Cats! I'm dying to see it now. It's like one of my most anticipated movies because I'm just movies because I don't know what to make of this fucking thing. Cats. It's about cats!

Do you know that scene that I'm referring to in Angels in America? It's an iconic scene. Early on, Pacino, Roy Cohn is on the phone with some Republican's wife and he's trying to get her tickets to a Broadway show and they're talking about on the phone with his, with some, like, you know, Republican's wife. And he's, like, trying to get her tickets to, like, a Broadway show.

And they're talking about, like, and he's like, La Cage, now you wouldn't like La Cage. And, like, then he puts the, you know, his hand over the microphone. He's like, have you seen La Cage? It's fabulous, you know. And then he's like,

let's try and get her something. And the assistant calls back and he's like, cats. He's like, cats. Cats, it's about cats. You'll love it, singing cats. He's like cats. Cats. It's about cats. You'll love it. Singing cats. I honestly think probably 95% of the success of cats was just that it was called cats.

It's about cats. Like don't you think. You know what else? What? It has a fantastic poster. One of the great posters. The poster's incredible. With the eyes?

With the eyes and like the eyes are kind of dancing and you're kind of like, ooh, this looks like dark and mysterious. And then you sit down and someone's like, or I'm Tom. Tom is a curious cat. And you're like, what the fuck is this? I remember my dad saw it alone and like,

he came back and my mom was like, why did you see it? And he was like, I just kind of like wanted to see what the deal was. And she was like, did you like it? And he was like, no, I didn't of wanted to see what the deal was. And she was like, did you like it? And he was like, no.

I didn't. Didn't like it. I was saying to you last night, I've never seen a production of Cats. Didn't see it on Broadway. Never seen it at a school or a camera. There's a pretty definitive filmed version of it that you can watch. Right. None of that.

None of that. None of that. I never stop finding Cats jokes funny. Anytime anything or anyone references cats, I find it hilarious. Anytime anyone says the name of any character from cats. Rumpelteaser. I mean, come on.

Buster for jokes. Come on. I'm not faking this. Isabella. This is like auto- Old Deuteronomy. Mordecai. That's one of the cats. Is one of the cats actually Mordecai. That's one of the cats.

Is one of the cats actually named Mordecai? Okay. That'd be funny though. So excited. Okay. So I want to ask it now. Okay.

We're wrapping up here I assume. Yeah. Would you be willing to see Cats in 4DX? Do you think it'll be available in 4DX? I think it would. Sure. I mean I assume I'm going to go to a press screening

of it that will not be in 40X, but if cats is in 40X, and I have a feeling it won't be because Star Wars will probably be taking its the 40X space. Sure. I'll see cats in 40X. Okay. So the entire time it would just smell like garbage.

You're in a dump. Pump more garbage. Cat piss. They spray cat piss in your face. Well, we did it. We did it. We did your Lion King, your blessed Lion King episode, Griffin. It's probably going to be huge.

Probably going to be huge. Probably going to be the biggest podcast of all time. Much like the Lion King. An inexplicable success. Oh, boy. I just feel like we've been talking about it for so long,

especially because of the... The bet. The bet. And also, you know, it feels like really representative of where we are

in the state of the film industry now. Every time they do one of these fucking things about like, you won't believe this technology they developed. You know what looks good?

What? Top Gun. Top Gun Maverick. I was telling you this. I'm sorry, what? Top Gun. Top Gun Maverick. Oh, it sounds like you said DACA.

DACA. You know what looks good? DACA. I like that. He likes DACA. Protects people from this country. No, no, no. Top Gun Maverick.

See, I don't know if I think it looks good. I think the trailer. It's in the plane. He's flying around. Looks cool. Top Gun Maverick. See, I don't know if I think it looks good. I think the trailer's good. It's in the plane he's flying around. Looks cool. I'm in for it. I like it when people fly in planes and I'm not involved. I guess Ad Astra is your most anticipated movie the rest of the year, right? Yeah. That thing.

We got that trailer. Have you seen the new trailer? I saw the new trailer. Pretty good, huh? It looks great. You know what? I didn't realize how much I miss Brad Pitt. Oh, I agree. Seeing those two trailers playing in theaters. Especially because even the Brad Pitt, we've gotten like big short Brad Pitt.

It seemed being like, can I just be weird? Yeah. You know what I mean? I've missed like, I think that Ad Astra is going to be really serious Brad Pitt, locked up Brad Pitt, like sort of closed off. Yeah. And then Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

is more like fun Brad Pitt, you know, kind of sandwich eating Brad Pitt. I'm trying to get, because up Brad Pitt, like sort of closed off. Yeah. And then Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is more like fun Brad Pitt, you know, kind of sandwich eating Brad Pitt. I'm trying to get, because he hasn't, his last movie. It was War Machine. We've had this conversation on the podcast. But I know, but what I want to see is like the last pure, right, Allied is the last sort of, even that was him sort of buttoned down. He's real buttoned down.

Then Big Short and By the Sea aren't good examples. Fury. Yeah. God, what a weird. Man, I love Brad Pitt. Me too. That's when it really snuck up on me.

I never could have predicted he would have become someone I valued as much as I do now. I was so fond of him when I was younger because 12 Monkeys was like an early

favorite movie for me like when I was like 13 years old. Yeah. And I love him in that movie. Now when I watch 12 Monkeys I'm kind of like Red's a little much in this.

I agree. I don't mind it because it's a very wacky movie, but he's kind of one-dimensional in that. And then Bruce Willis is kind of the great performer. Right, and I think that's Brad Pitt really just trying to prove to everyone what he could do. Which he did, and now he gives far more interesting performances. He should have won the Oscar for Moneyball. Yes, he should have. God, is he good in that.

The greatest performance he'll ever get. I think he's aging really well in terms of him accepting what both Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood feel like they're tapping into, which is like this golden boy

who's on the other side, the wrong side of 50, and has this sort of heaviness to him. Right. This weird sort of suppressed anger. I don't think he's ever going to be better than Moneyball. I think Moneyball

is the most perfect role he could ever have. He knocked out of the park so hard that movie rules, and instead he hit a home run. He hit a home run. And then Jean Dujardin won the Oscar. That was a baseball reference. Moneyball also looks so good.

Incredible looking movie. Who shot that? Wally Pfister. Good DP. One of his few non-Nolans. Okay, we're done. Okay, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate,

review, subscribe. Thanks to Andrew Gooden for our social media. Pat Reynolds and Joe Bone for our artwork. Lane Montgomery for our theme song. Pat Reynolds and Joe Bone for our artwork. Lane Montgomery for our theme song. Ben's looking at a screen. Is everything okay? Go to blankies.reddit.com

for some real nerdy shit. TeePubble for some real nerdy shirts. Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Oh. Ah. Yeah. Yeah. And as always