Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Mandalorian and Grogu with Chris Gethard

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first new Star Wars movie in 7 years. It was also directed by Jon Favreau while he was making grilled cheese sandwiches. What the heck is going on with our favorite franchise? "Bad Boy of Blank Check" Chris Gethard returns to the pod to discuss The State of Star Wars: the deal with Dave Filoni, the Male Loneliness Epidemic, how watching Andor felt like texting your ex, and the complete and utter catastrophe of Rotta the Hutt. It's a cathartic three hours, so grab your Grogu Nilla Nummies and buckle up. Listen to Hits Different Listen to Beautiful Anonymous Watch TCGS #28 | Ruin This Show Watch Chris Gethard: Career Suicide  Read The Bracing Authenticity of Chris Gethard's Career Suicide Check out Dave Filoni’s “Plan”  Read Star Wars: Thrawn Series by Timothy Zahn Read the New Canon Novels Read The Rise of the Fools by Allison P. Davis Read the Kathleen Kennedy Exit Interview Watch The George Lucas Talk Show LIVE From Smodcastle with Kevin Smith and Chris Gethard (2024) Check out Smodcastle Cinema  Watch the 2020 Disney Investor Day Presentation Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the podcast. What, you guys aren't cheering? You're not ramped up by the high energy, the Mando, when he says things like, Okay. Brogu, come here. Where's that? I feel like it's a lot of him going like, okay, and where do I go now? I'll give it a shot.

You're saying they need to be shot by me? Fine by me. I'll ask one to two questions and then just do it anyway. Yeah. Mandelorian, thank you for helping. I don't help. Feels like help. Maybe a little bit. Bye.

Dun-da-dan, dun-da-don, dun-da-dun-dun-da-da-da. But I mean, you know, it's a fine line. A man who doesn't speak. Obviously, can be cool. Can't be cool. I saw a really good quote, and I want to see if I can find who it was. I was reading through reviews yesterday. And I saw, I think it's the greatest distillation

of what this movie fucks up to me. Can I do my... Can I do my impression of Rod of the Hut really fast before I forget? Oh, boy. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Can we get a photo in time? Hold on.

Hold on, fuck. The physicality is fierce. And then, of course, with the addition of... I'm not like my dad. I'm a good guy. I'm not like my dad. Yeah, I'm my own man. You're a giant slug.

But it's just he's like... You're not. a man. What are you talking about? I'm not like my dad. I'm like, will this come up again? He's like, not really. My little sister... Your dad's dead. I don't care. My little sister Romley had, when Revenge of the Sith came out, a toy that was a Darth Vader with a voice changer inside. And it's one of those things where she was like, that's so cool. I can sound like Darth Vader. And it's like, kind of. All it's going to do is make your voice deep and reverby. Sure. There's not a $30 technology at Toys R Us that makes you sound like James

Earl Jones. No. And the Rod of the Hut voice performance sounds like Jeremy Allen White wearing that toy. We're all it's doing is just pitching his voice down and reverby. Why'd you hire him? Exactly. Doesn't sound like him or anyone. No.

Great, geth, what were you saying? I'm sorry. I feel like I'm already going to be the bad boy and say I liked this movie way more than the reviewers did. Okay, okay, more than. More than. Would you identify yourself as liking it or would you say that you just like it more? Or you just sort of like thought it was all right.

Well, first thing I want to say is you guys asked me to be here at 11 a.m. And I canceled plans I had at 7 p.m. just in case we are still talking about this. David has said, he has no intention of it. But just so the fans know, I'm literally, I lit your pot. Without exaggeration, canceled a commitment to drive an ambulance for a volunteer first aid squad. I got someone else to cover the shift. This is true. I said, I don't know if we'll be done.

You really did. I mean, I understand that's probably in New Jersey. I do need a little bit of transit Right. So you've got the transit buffer to worry about as well. That still anticipates a 6 p.m. Memorial Day weekend. We could still be talking at 6 p.m. I might have to get back through traffic. I mean, you could be.

I won't be here. I think it's a wise There'll be a David-shaped hole in the wall. Look, you're going to leave it all on the field today. So even if you make it back to Jersey by 3 p.m. by noon? If I make it home by 3 p.m., we have failed in our promise to the fine fans of the Blankcheck podcast.

I would love it. Shout out to Ryan, who works at the Dublin pub in Morristown, New Jersey. I was there one night. He said him and all his friends listen to Blank Checking or on a WhatsApp group about it. This isn't your fault, yeah. I just have to speak to this right away. What? There's a problem developing in our podcast where now every guest comes in and is like,

don't you worry. I'm not working for a week after this. Yeah. All the time. We're going for it. Okay. I'm never leaving. I won't leave.

Alex Ross Perry. A new record-breaking episode this week. I don't know if we can necessarily announce the guest or can we can. It was Tracy Letts. Tracy Letts. Who has better, you know, who has things to do? One a Pulitzer. He said a man of letters and said, I'm going to be the record.

You'll stick around for Letts, but old Gettherd here. No, I wanted to kill myself. All Getther comes through. You threaten to run through the wall like the fucking Kool-Aid man. He shows up. He says, let's get out of here. Yeah, I'm serious. The guy who's been here from the very beginning.

The guy who's part of the very DNA and fabric of this show. As we often say, the three of us would not know each other if not for you. Everybody says I'm the bad boy, a black check, mostly me, but maybe I'm the glue holding this goddamn thing together. You're the embryo. Tracy Letts walks through and you'll stay as long as he seems necessary. Well, there were two issues. One, of course, I do not want to be rude to Tracy Letts, who is obviously an estimable person. Two, we did have another thing to record after he was done so I couldn't leave.

It was a very long day. It was a very long day. I'm going to admit. My wife was like, are you okay? And I was like, legit, I am not okay. I'm fucked up. And I was fucked up all day and pretty much tomorrow. Same.

Yeah. I was just like, that was, we can't do that again. It was too much. Too much. So, stay tuned for that episode. It's a corker. The episode I thought was very good. Yeah.

We're all like holding it together. But too, Geph. Yeah. You used to run, you know, like shows pretty, you know, big scale. Kind of like you got all these balls. You understand the logistics and the nightmare. I'm also a father. And you're a father.

I'm also a father. And a husband. And I understand, I understand all of it. But at the same time, you're like, if we don't. Well, no, David, I mean, I understand all of those obligations. And I also feel like, you know, if there's a counterpoint, I would say, even with all those obligations on the table, I never shortchanged the people. Beyond that.

You never did. Has Gethirted. You've never shortchanged it. Ever seen a self-destructive or self-harming bit that he hasn't run headfirst into. If I know one thing about the man, my friend. That's true. I feel like a little bit. You're a little bit like, yeah, well, you know, those were the glory days.

That's, you know, back when I always got that itch. Oh, yeah. But I mean, if we can do something ridiculous, that's what. I feel, I think about your face all the time, though, on that TCGS episode. Was it the Chris Getherd show for those who don't know? You know, was it when Fallon was on or maybe Hugh had just been on Phelman. Oh, that was a bad night. That was the first time I ever went live.

And you're like people are actually paying attention. I just plugged this show on national television and that episode was particularly chaos. It was horrible. It was horrible. It was called Ruin this show. You went on Jimmy Fallon. You got network TV coverage for a cable access show. Yes.

And I said call up and or show up and do whatever you want to try to ruin the show. You said, tomorrow I'm going live. The theme is ruined the show. I'll be live. Show up and ruin my show. Do anything you can. You can stay. You even suggest it. You can stand in front of the camera.

Yes. And then. Which it's a good bit. It's a good bit. But what I didn't anticipate and I say this with love. I think, you know, I think there are other people who have done renegade talk shows. Like Eric Andre, who I think is hilarious and who I love and admire greatly. Jimmy Fallon, one of the wildest out there.

No, but I was going to say it. I think one of the things Eric Andre has that made him more successful than me is like he can be ruthless if he has to. Totally. And I don't, I don't have it in me. Like my boundary on ruthlessness is not extended far enough for the S-PAC. Everyone had a mile-long pier to walk with you. I was about to say. But I was just going to say on that show,

what I didn't anticipate was that a lot of green comedians that we probably would not have been booking at that point used it as a chance to come grab screen time. That's what happened. And I didn't have it in me to just be like, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, right. It was kind of a worst of all the world.

It wasn't meerdos wandering off the street who I could speak to in a certain way. It was young artists who ultimately I do feel very much proud of my ability to support young artists over the years. But unfortunately, it was a bunch of trash young artists who show up in costumes. It was a bunch of Dinn Grogus who hadn't yet learned the way. Dind Jaron and Grogue, you've sort of combined them. No, no, no, no, excuse me.

Oh, right, is Grogue's first name? I have only recently watched the Mandalorian season three, which I finally polished all. You're slightly more, you probably have a little fresher than I. I had tapped out on everything post Book of Boba Fett. Yeah. A year ago, we put this episode on the calendar. We were looking ahead at the schedule, and we went like, we basically never book guests on new releases. Yeah, and usually sort of a pain for them because they would have to watch the movie right away.

If we do, it's a thing we usually do at the last second because something sort of makes sense. A year ago, we were looking at the schedule. We were like, got to get Geth back on. What's the right thing for Geth? And you guys were throwing episode ideas, and I forget, it kind of organically came up. Maybe we just do a Star Wars episode. so my commitment to the Star Wars bit actually makes functional sense

and doesn't distract from anything else. Of course, and I do want to call out, I'm wearing a Spider-Man 2 t-shirt today and a Spider-Man hat. I do want to talk about Spider-Man a bit. I have some Spider-Man talk. I genuinely want to do. I think it's important we talk about Spider-Man in this episode.

I have two other franchises that I also want to bring up. Everyone is just like very excited. I do want to just to answer the question. Yeah. I would say I did land on the side of enjoying the experience of watching Mandalorian and Grogu.

I think that's fair. It had things I liked, but I do think that the sadder conversation is... What is this anymore? I think we all need... And I do... I also will say, I think the blank check

podcast honestly does matter in the world of film nerds. You guys and J.D. Yamato, I think, came together and showed people that Speed Racer was in fact a good movie. And now... Credit to Emily or She did as well. But there's think pieces... I mean, J.D.'s my guy.

Yeah. But there's think pieces out there how Speedraiser is actually good. I think that started with Blank Check, but I think Blank Check is a really good place for us to have an honest, not histrionic, not internet commenty, ragey conversation about like we've kind of just have to admit defeat

about the cultural relevance of Star Wars and then we can go back to enjoying the movies again. I don't even know if it's... Yeah. They are not meeting the moment in any way. And there's so many ways that this movie shows that. But then if we can get past the fact that they just refuse to do anything,

that meets the moment outside of Andor, but then we hear about all the weird backbiting behind the scenes about the Gilroy Filoni stuff where it feels like the Andor stuff is not appreciated there. You sit here, I go, I saw a movie where a rocket ship had turtle feet. Yeah. I saw a movie

where baby Yoda and a bunch of Babu Frick scaled a vertical wall. That was fine. David and I are the things I like. Right, there's things I like. There was like a 20, 25 minute section that David and I were locked in on. But I want to report to you.

Did you guys see it together? We saw it together in IMAX. I didn't get the invite. Well, because it was a year ago I was going to be on this episode. We did book it a year in. During one of the busiest weeks of my life when I was already canceling other plans, I had to find time to fit this in when I didn't get the impulse. You chose to not go to the after party for Colbert's final taping last night so that you could be rested.

Everyone settled down. I was your beauty sleep. I was exhausted. I started a press screening, which, you know, suddenly get that invite a few days earlier. And I had a plus one at Brock Griffin. Yeah, Ben did not go. Ben didn't go.

Ben saw it by himself last night. I also figured, like, you would probably just see it in Jersey. You know, you would see it in like, uh, I'm giving you the comfort of, you're giving me the bad boy. You're giving out to be bad. I honestly, I didn't. You don't get mad at a dog for barking. You don't get mad at guess for being a bad boy.

Wow, wow, baby. I was a little annoyed at the, the screening, because I, like, my wife was out that night. We had to, like, fucking get her babysitter because I was like, I got, because it's like, she was like, is there going to be another screen? And I'm like, it's Disney. They're just kind of like, you show up. or fuck you. Let's also acknowledge the other thing.

Yeah. We were coming from City Field where we had spent the afternoon at Star Wars Day. That was fine. Star Wars Day, which I will say also, I think, factored into our experience of being very, very underwhelmed by this movie was Star Wars Day with the Mets was an experience that reminded me more of what I like about Star Wars. Yeah. Than the Star Wars movie I saw that night. I mean, Mr. Met was. dressed up as the Mandalorian.

I thought he gave a better performance than Pedro Pascal. I thought he was a little more locked in. He was locked in. The t-shirt canon, there was just a lady dressed as Padmay and I want to say episode two. And the t-shirt is canon, right? You know, like they were just kind of doing shit. Like, there was just a stormtrooper walking around. Yes.

You know, like, you know, like, you could kind of like high-five them, I guess. And they had like good video package stuff. They had great video packages. And you didn't see this because of where our seats were exactly. But on the screen for every picture. a little bit. Your current enthusiasm for the New York

Met's Star Wars Day versus what I can only imagine your tone and body language will be for the actual medall learning and rogue experience is making me sad ahead of time. Back to back. It's making me sad ahead of time.

We went to City Field. We took the seven to the southwest side. Yeah. And saw the film. I'm currently all in on the Mets. It was also a fucking great game. They're bouncing back, right? Quality start from Nolan.

See, I didn't know any about that. Five gingers. I wasn't watching any of that stuff. Great game. It's true. my friend Ellen was there and she was like, I really, I want to get Griffin into it. And I was just like, Griffin's been

going to sports games all his life. He knows how to entertain himself at a sports game. He gets his food. Yes. He's got his like business. Check out the merch. Right, yeah. He's not, you're not about to be like, Griff, look at this guy. Like, let me get you in, you know, right. She did turn to me at one point. And this is Ellen Cushing, who co-hosts your secret podcast. It's different,

not secret podcast that you should all listen to. She turned to me at one point and went, So, Griffin, what relationship do you have to baseball? And I'm like, everyone thinks that I've just been like, never looked at it. And I'm like, this was shoved down my throat for 12 years. Yeah. Right. There was an extended prison sentence.

That war was waged. Yes. You know, I'm not going to wage that war. Right. It was much like Andor. We fought so hard for our freedom. The Gorman massacre. From the tyranny.

I mean, I've been talking about this with my therapist lately. I'm like, about Andor. No, I should talk more about Andor with her. I don't know if she's watched it. But I feel like until I was 12, I played two. sports a week. Yeah. They kept making me do it.

They did that. I've known you almost 20 years now and that does not ring true. Isn't that crazy? What sports? Was it Manhattan sports? Were you playing like high lie? No. I was in Manhattan, too.

I did all the little league sports. I did baseball. I did baseball. Basketball camp in particular. Yes. Would you be shocked if he was like, I had to play two sports and it was racquetball and chess? Would you be shocked if Griffin? I mean, I'm laughing.

I'm laughing. Would you be surprised that when I got to high school to fulfill my P requirement, I took a physio ball class. That was when I had the agency to lean into the bit. What is physio ball? Is that like a way you got like a medicine ball? It's basically like Lamas class. It's doing exercises on a big medicine ball. Kind of like rolling up and down or whatever.

Yeah. And I almost got an incomplete. I'm not even joking. I'm not even joking. They were like, what's the right field of you doing this? Because you're not. Like, how do we make this easier? From 13 on, I was. exactly what everyone thinks I was. From before 12, I was...

Like in gym class discussing Betty Friedan with the other kids in gym class like that type. Yes. Not to stereotype with the girls. Until I was 13, I was doing baseball. I was doing soccer. They made me go to basketball camp, roller hockey, boxing. You boxed? Yes. There's not a... No. This shit was a nightmare. And by boxing, were you just a punch? punching bag. He was foxy boxing. Well, no, I wasn't like competitively boxing against people, but my dad was like,

you should learn how to defend yourself. And I'm like, what if I'm a professional podcaster? And he's like, what's a podcast? I'm like, I'm going to figure out how to make this a thing. We're going to do that instead. And I'll defend myself on Mike. Thank you very much. I had a good time.

I had a good time of the game. And Ellen, you guys really don't want to talk about the met. Ellen, we've gone through all of it. The game was good. Game was great. Yeah. And then we went to the movie. and, you know, we're watching the movie, and I would say, you know, we're chatting a little bit, we're sitting in the back row.

And, like, you know, a lot of times we're still like, this ain't really, you know, it's light my fire. And then the Grogu part, which we'll talk about more, where it's only Grogu, right, where he's in the swamp alone trying to help. Like, two minutes in, I have massive thoughts on it. I whispered to Griffin, like, not saying this is good, but I'm more interested. And like, two minutes later, I was like, I'm officially declaring this part of the movie good. And I was like, I came aboard. And up and for how long into it? basically the whole Grogu alone segment.

I was very in. I, I, the Mandalorian wakes up again. Now again, I know that any time I'm, I don't want to lean in too much to my relationship with your guys' fans, but anytime that I have a counterpoint to you guys,

it does set me apart. Don't worry about it. I got very restless during that stretch. See, I was restless during every other part. I would agree. And David and I were checking it. I did like hate this movie. It did not inspire enough to like make me angry.

It is not the worst. the worst Star Wars movies. Can we agree? No, not even close. Yes. And Solo, I would argue. I think I prefer solo to this. I do as well.

I like... But, I mean, it's probably kind of... Okay, I would say I liked this better than... Keep going. Are you going to say it? Most of the prequels and sequels. That's a little low. Yeah, I'm not there.

If I had to sit down and watch one of them again, I might watch this one again because it's standalone and not tying me into a bunch of lore that I know is kind of a headache and confusing. Look, I'll say this. This probably will end up being a Star Wars movie. I rewatch a lot because I, of course, suffer from insomnia. And this movie was threatening to put me asleep.

When you guys hit at a press screening, I will also say, I saw it in Morristown, New Jersey, where I was in the theater. And there were two moms who brought a group of about nine boys who all seemed to be about 11 to 13 years old. Yes. So I also got to watch it in that context, where as I left, the theater in a way that I promised was not too creepy. Yeah. One of the moms made eye contact with me. And I was like, how'd they like it?

And she was like, hey. So I'm like, I had this. I had the same exact experience. That's a lot different than seeing it with a bunch of professional reviewers. No offense to one of my favorite reviewers. Well, it's Sims and Sep and Wall. It's everybody else, baby. That's very nice.

You, Chris. Seventh and Wall was at the screening. Oh, was he on the theater. He was. He texted me. Seeing it in a room with Sims and Sep and Wall, I think sets a difference. Sims and Sep and. Simpson, Sepin, go right down the list. That's a different environment than eight kids in Jersey who like fucking monsters fighting.

They want to see a poison snake. Live action. They want to see a dragon snake. They want to see IRL to Jaric. I very much was like, yeah, it's a movie. It's very much like a movie for kids. I don't buy that as a defense exactly, but I was like, certainly that's the tone it's going forth. Experientially, though, I had that.

I would say at a Star Wars press screening, yes, there's a few learned. espresso sipping, quarter away. There is a lot of people who work in this sort of fan and genre journalism world. This is a lot of, I would say, yes. Yes. I would say it was majority, like, fandom journalists over film critics. Yeah. Right.

I will throw out. It was, like, pretty silent. It was very late in the movie. In that same section, I want to say, where I turned to Dave and I went, I think that's the first joke that landed, like, that got a laugh from the audience outside of, like, One isolated. The jokes were bad. The dialogue was bad.

The joke's bad. The score was awesome. The score was legitimate. Ludigarnson is beyond an essence. The score was good enough that multiple times throughout the movie I clocked. This score is fucking cool and weird. What's interesting about the score is different. And it's like there's not a lot of stuff in this movie that felt too different.

No. The score is one thing where you're like. I also, even as someone saying I liked it, like seeing a movie and obviously spoilers, right? You don't need to say that. Seeing a movie where it, where. Rogu establishes no new powers that we haven't seen in the show, to my memory. He does not. Healing and lifting.

He does that already. And literally it ends with them getting just the two of them back in a fucking spaceship and flying away, which I've seen a thousand times again. This reflects so much corporate boardroom. Yes. A little bit. A grouping analysis in a way that's frustrating that, again, the refusal to meet the moment. Holy shit. I've just settled the balance on a couple things.

Having rewatched season three recently, they do at one point dub him, Dinn Grogo. Yeah, because it's like a family name. Because they accept that they're training him as a Mandalorian, even though in season two and Boba Fett, both Asoka and Deepfake Luke trained him. So the idea is that he kind of is like, but I don't want to be a Jedi. So the idea is that he's the first kind of hybrid. There's like the first Jedi Mandalorian. But they don't do it. He's a force using Mandelior.

They don't do it in this movie. Yeah. But season three, they're like, he is canonically Dingo. And when they start calling him Dengrogu, they don't stop calling him Dengrogu. Which speaks to kind of what you're saying, which is this movie is in this insane, damned if you do, damned if you don't place where the movies have just been on ice. The TV shows have become this unwieldy thing. Grogu as a character is the one thing that undeniably has been working for them. Selling toys for seven years.

Making money hand over fist, right? Don't fuck with Grogu. Totally. Kind of all we want to see is. some character development from fucking. And you can just tell that this was a corporate mandate. Favreau has said this himself, that they had season four at least, like, broken down into outlines, if not like, basically like scriptments.

They had the season figured out. And Disney was like, can you make a movie instead? And they scrapped all of that. And they wrote a new thing from scratch. And it was because he said, A, it felt like what we had was designed for TV and it wouldn't work in film because you need to tell one cohesive story and not. be episodic. I would say this movie fails on that front. It is crazy to me that it's not just several episodes mushed together, that he claims all of that was thrown out and that would potentially

maybe be a season four if they go back to TV, which is the real issue here. You're making a movie that is not like a finale to a TV show. It's not the graduation. It's just here's another adventure. It's a little bit bigger in terms of length. We don't want to make it too tied into the lore of the seasons of the Mandalorian, let alone the book of Boba Fed, Asoka, what have you. So it's like basically not building on anything for the people who have watched that.

But if you haven't watched that, it doesn't really like get you into the world well or make you care about these characters outside of just Grogu being cute. And I saw some... For Babu Fricks on a little dune buggy fly. Totally. They gave me that. There's stuff.

There's stuff. But I saw someone... Sorny We're going to talk about her. about that. I saw someone in a review say nothing else you did was good. Things already were getting out of hand when season three of the Mandalorian lost the intimacy of the lone wolf and cub

dynamic and the standalone adventures. They did try to make this one kind of lone wolf and cub and cub where the second cub was Jeremy Allen White as a jacked hush. He sort of, it was lone wolf and cub and bum. Kind of wild.

It's insane that that happened. I want to keep, I want to That's like a bit we would do of like they're going to make a movie with like Hot Jaba's son. Like he's played by Jeremy Allen White. I just want to be clear though. Even me saying like I liked it better than the reviewers. I think being in a theater with a bunch of kids helped, my final feeling really was like going from a show that I loved that season one made me feel like maybe Star Wars is back on track. That the end of the movie as I walked out. I went, did I really just watch those two fucking assholes fly away and a spaceship again?

Like that that's the one. Like I liked it better than the review. and I still walked away like, it's not how movies work. No, movies, the characters are different at the end than in the beginning and they just copped out on the very basic narrative choice. At point A, things begin,

and then the end, you see how characters change and how that affects the narrative. If this movie would even claim to have an emotional arc, it would be, well, Dindjaran, the Mandalorian himself. Who? Learns that someday Grogu's going to grow up. Well, that is, and like,

vaguely accepts it. If we know one thing about Grogu, it's that he ages so fucking slow. Well, he's not allowed to grow up that we can't sell him in toy form. A, we can't sell him in toy form. B, timeline-wise, I think Mando will be fucking dead before Grogu even hits puberty. Possibly.

Can I, there's a thing I do want to talk about that I wrote down. Please. Ties in directly to what we're saying right now. They're written in a napkin. And what I don't want to do is dwell in the air. A file under his arm. I don't want to dwell in the air. fan fiction is boring. Okay. But to the exact point that we're saying right now of like this

little Muppet sells toys, we can't ever have them change. Yeah. It's very frustrating corporate thinking. And there is a thing that I perked up for that I only want to put out there as like fantasy booking, so to speak. Okay. I wonder if it's the same thing I thought. Because, only because I have a feeling that if I say this out loud right here, the day after the movie, came out on the blank check podcast that I have a feeling it may be revealed at some point that corporate interference interfered with something I thought they were about to do. Okay. And I have a... Just say the thing, please. What was the thing? Why are you already mad at me? David, this is a very friend. We never would have met. I drove from New Jersey. I paid tolls and

congestion pricing and on her hand. We will absolutely cover your travel. Geez, just tell Ben. Drove very far. Business expense. You know, no one told you to move. to the boonies. Hey, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, he's happy. He's got a canoe. He's got a kayak, he got a kayak. He got a kayak. So, it's our best episode.

That dragon, the dragon thing scratches. Yeah. Mando. The poisony thing. They established this poison's going to kill him. It tells Groga get lost. Yeah, right. In the, Grogo comes back.

Yeah, he puts him in the weird little mud hut he tries to build. Bons his head a couple times. It's sort of cute, but I've seen it a million fucking times. The one bonk I laughed and then they kept doing it. I was like, guys, you got me the first time. By the way, Bonk was the laugh in the audience. That was the one. I'll also say, too, nobody loved Babu Frick's original appearance more than me.

You guys heard it. True. I don't know that multiply it by four and put them on a fast little doom buggy is like, come on guys. I'm treading on why people hate it the e-box. I posted a negative letterbox thing, and people in the comments went, how was Babu Frick? And I'm like, this is the trick they're pulling in the marketing.

People are like, Babu Frick's in it. And I'm like, no, this is set decades before Rise of, Skywalker. At best, we are watching Babu Frix's uncles. Yeah. That's the best case. I know that some of what I'm about to say is, same actor. Yeah. Some of what I'm about to say is tangled up in the existence of this timeline that they're bound to. But he's there with the fucking scratch. Yeah. They established that they have said so many times that Grou doesn't speak, right? They explicitly say he doesn't speak. These all feel like choices here. Yeah. I will tell you, when I'm watching Mando with that scratch, yeah. I am brought back to one of the most

influential moments of my entire childhood, which is Transformers the movie, which I did not see in the theater. I've only seen it once, but is Optimus Prime dies in it? Yes, spoiler dies in it, right? Spoilers play 40-year-old movie. Optimus Prime dies, Orson-Wells was dying

when he recorded. But Orson-Wiles plays the planet. He plays Unicron. He is a giant transformer the size of a planet. It's incredible. That's great performance. Fantastic use of weird. But Optimus Prime.

By the way, incredible use. Dare to be stupid. He does. The first act of this movie. Let me talk to you about this. So, because I'm older than you guys. I was watching Transformers episode by episode as a six-year-old child. It was like one of your first genre.

I'm hanging on to this thing. Half an hour, half an hour, half an hour. Is it the matrix of power? Matrix of leadership? The matrix of leadership, right? Now, my parent, I did not have, my family didn't have money growing up. And that was the same year. My parents bought a new house.

So there was zero disposable income. Plus, I don't think anyone in my family. wanted to sit through the Transformers movie. But also, you're not getting hot rod that year. You're not getting a hard that year. I never had the big Transformers twice. I only ever had mini bots, many of them bought a garage. Like headmaster? So are we talking like mini bots? Okay, mini bots. Look at it. Many bots.

Point being, whenever we do Michael Baker. I don't see Transformers the movie. I'm also six years old. I think it was 86 it came out. You're right. Yeah. This is the anniversary. I'm six years. I turned six in May of 86. Okay. I don't see the movie. Thank you so much. The show comes back on in the fall. And for some reason, it was not on at 3.30. I was watching before school. And before school, the new season comes on. And it is revealed to those of us who didn't see the movie. Because at six, you're not catching spoilers. Not for the internet world. I turn on this show and realize they fucking killed Optimus Prime. And when I tell you, without exaggeration,

I remember distinctly falling to my knees and grieving the death of Optimus Prime as a six-year-old boy, that's not an exaggeration. It is widely reported as, as well, one of the greatest kind of like corporate boondoggles of all time. They went for on the level of like new coke. Right. Where it really fucking damaged the brand. They were like, we're doing this and then they were like, what have we done? They were flying in the theater.

They also sold a bunch of Hot Rodomis. He went from Hot Rod to Rodomis Prime. Yeah. They sold toys for him. Yeah. It was the blue and red guy's name? Is there? Is there?

Isn't they did this? Like, what was their? It was dramatically interesting. Well, there is a story too that. It wasn't like some like, we need to get of Optimus because we don't like the voice actor or whatever. I have read that they wanted to kill... No, he kept doing the Michael Bay movies.

I've read that they wanted to kill Duke in the G.I. Joe movie. Yeah, yes, I've heard that as well. It was flagged that it would be like really disturbing to kill a human. So they used the idea. They were around the same time. I think they just... Point being, no. They were looking for like...

And it was fucking cool. Can we end on a downer note? I think it was that kind of thing. I'm watching Mandalorian and Grogu and I go, are they really about to kill fucking Mando? It did kind of feel like that. It gets interesting. And I have a feeling there was a script that he was going to die

and I have a feeling where then Grogu is going to come back and we're going to watch Grogu go fucking ape shit. We're going to watch Grogu murder those huts in a way that job of the huts. Let me finish the thought. Let me finish the thoughts. Let him finish. I think you're going to see him fucking wheeled.

He's going to pull off fights that fucking Ray Park as Darth Maul didn't pull off. He's going to do disturbing shit that's more disturbing than we saw Vader do and Obi-Wan, the most redeeming aspect of the Obi-Wan series, we're going to see him fight more with more fucking Yoda shit than Yoda

did versus Count Duku, and it's going to end with him finally saying, he's going to end with him saying his first words, my father he was. And we're going to realize that Jabba the Hutt's son is witnessing it, and we're going to see a franchise that so canonically says

that sons hang on to the sin, it is the responsibility of a son to reject the sins of the father and not carry them forward and generations. We're going to realize that Mando's refusal to have Grogu train fully with Asoka and Luke was about the emotional attachment, the most dangerous emotional attachment in this franchise since Padme and Anakin himself. And we're going to be left with a cliffhanger that suggests that perhaps Grogu is reactivating

as the Jedi master Yoda was, or perhaps the Sith have been reborn because Mando was not brave enough as a dad to let his son go live his own life. And it's going to be one of the most, it's going to be the best. And most intriguing heel turn since Hogan joined the goddamn NWO. And somebody came in and said, we can't do it. Grogo's got to stay a good guy. There is no way they were ever going to do that. I will predict that someone will hear this on blank check.

And it will eventually come out that there was talk of killing Mando and turning Grogu bad. I would bet money out. I agree with you on two out of three things. I agree. It would be finished before you make sticky poop-bo-bo face. Eddie through the plate. Don't make sticky. Bo Boop face.

I'm bruce this fucking barbershop. I'm making the face. I thought there was no universe in which Groku ever turned bad. No. I did think for a second. This feels like at some point someone pitched can Mando die? It got shut down almost immediately. And they were like, what if he's out of commission for 30 minutes?

It's a great. It's not great. It's a far more intriguing movie if Mando fucking dies. I agree with you. It felt like that was killed immediately. You guys are crazy. David Sims, you're letting me down right now. No, you guys are crazy.

You're calling me crazy. I'm just getting yelled at, so I will actually shut up. You're literally calling us crazy. You guys have ranted for five minutes about how you think they wanted to kill the Mandalorian in the first Mandalorian movie. That is fucking nonsense. Let him have the floor. Sorry. But like, no, guys.

That got weirdly heated. Yes, you guys were like yelling at me after. Blabbering on. You started telling a notoriously mentally ill friend of yours that he was crazy on Mike. Career suicide, 2017, highly rated on Rot Tomatoes. It's great. I raved it in the Atlantic.

Thank you so much, but it's this insecurity of mind to be called crazy. Sorry. You're crazy. About this. No, it's just like, why the fuck would they kill? This is a dude bitch. To fucking grow and change and take a narrative chance. And to meet the moment.

we are not living in a time of happy fucking endings right now. I will say something different to get there. You guys are triggering me because I think the worst, worst, worst dramatic choice any franchise ever makes is that death is like a way of, you know, conveying storytelling, like maturity and shit like that. But you don't think in Star Wars a father dying is not. No, it's been done a million times. Boring. May I please make my case? Sure.

Go ahead. I agree with you generally. Yeah. Oh, he died. Great. Now it's important. I think it was a thing that probably in sitting down ideation, oh, we have a Mando movie on the schedule two years from now. We just throughout our season, what's the movie about?

I bet you it was pitched at one point and he is just asleep for 30 minutes was the solve for that. The reason why I am inclined to feel like Getherd that there were seeds of intention somewhere, even if they were nipped out immediately, is that the movie is all trying to. to be about what happens to Grogu when the Mandalorian's gone. How is he going to be on his own? And the only good section of the movie, as we said, is him being on his own. It is different than just killing a character

for emotional weight or growth because the whole notion of the movie is, can this thing survive on its own? I also think the only section of this movie that had any narrative tension to me was, oh, I'm a little bit worried about Grogu now. He doesn't have someone protecting him. You're, your Occam's razoring yourself.

You just, it's not that they were, like, should we kill the Manilore? And they were like, we need a Grogu's section. I really think they just fundamentally were like... Of course, this movie has the mandate of not doing anything. But they couldn't even say give him a little fucking light and bolts have. This movie has... Let him go crazy because his dad's mom was dying.

A literal card with a blank head and a question mark on it of like, this is the real bad guy. And you're like, oh, okay. Like... I turned to David, I go. It's Sigourney, right? They don't hire Sigourney. Because she's the only famous person they got. Looking at the opening credits.

Double cross. There's no surprise cast members. Or there's some secret, you know, reveal they're going to do of either a news celeb or who's do cooos back. Or fucking, you know, Filoni will start. Or dark gregon and it's like Thrawn or whatever, right? Instead, they're just like, oh, that was just the bald guy. You saw right at the start.

That was just him. And that's that and that, that's done. This movie absolutely is just kind of like, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, stop, stop. Don't worry. Nothing happens. It's a close circle guys.

Outside of us getting heated, which I do apologize for, David, how much do you think that was from the start? How much do you think that was corporate interference? I think that was corporate interference. I think that's on the side of this. From what I can gather. Filoni wanted to do a Mandalorian Asoka crossover series. Can I set up, can I introduce the podcast and then I feel like we can do all of this?

We haven't introduced the podcast. This is why I'm trying to help. you. I'm trying to help you. Well, sometimes you're trying to help me, but I am in the middle of saying something. And you say, can I do something while I'm in the middle of the same? It's a massive conversation. It's a massive conversation. Is this all still the intro? This is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who had massive success early in their careers, giving a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This started out as a Star Wars podcast. And for the first five years, even when we moved on from Star Wars, new Star Wars movies were coming out and we kept talking about Star Wars. And Getherd would come on to talk about other movies and we'd still talk about Star Wars.

And people loved it until they hated it. Some were calling a dark Grogu turn. And it has now been seven years since the last Star Wars movie. Now, to set up your point, in that time, fewer films that have been announced and then canceled. Yeah. Patty Jenkins Rogue Squadron announced at Disney

Investor Day live stream in 2021. She was a video with an Air Force guy or whatever. Rogue Squadron movie. Might have been cool. Who knows? Like, who can say? David? Yes. You look like a man who doesn't know that fast growing trees is America's largest and most trusted

online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over two million happy customers. I had no idea. Yeah. Well, David, they have all the plants, your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and houseplants. My home is littered with all of these, and they're all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find anywhere else. And whatever you're looking for, fast-growing trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, space, and lifestyle. For me, all-inclusive.

I'll take any kind of tree you got. Griffin, I know you're, you know, a green thumb. Yeah. And I think you're going to... I got 10 green fingers. Yeah, I think you're going to agree with me on this, that, you know, you go to a garden center and you just find it so overwhelming and inconvenient. You took the personal statement out of my mouth, Ben. That is how I feel.

And then here's the other thing. You try to hire some landscapers. It's too expensive. I'm so tired of spending every day of my life on the phone with landscapers. Listen, with fast-growing trees, it's just so reassuring. that you know you're going to order plants and they're guaranteed to be healthy and to thrive.

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Untitled Taika Watiti movie. Yeah. Ryan Johnson Trilogy. Sure. David Benioff and D.B.W. That was movies. Trilogy. These things are all canonically dead.

Correct. Yes. And then at the Star Wars celebration three years ago, they came out and said, we're finally ready to announce the next couple movies. Here are the three. James Mangold is going to make a movie that's the early. thing we've ever done on the Star Wars timeline. It's the thousands of years ago.

The cursed Jedi. Sounds like the old Dark Horse comics. It's like these things where they bring a guy out and they're like, he's got an idea. And he just signed the contract a minute ago. And he gave us one sentence. And everyone's like, what's it called? When's it coming out? And they're like, see you later. But yes, that is a thing.

The second thing they announced was episode 10 or something like it. They said it was episode 10. Did they actually say it? Daisy Ridley is back. Yes. This is episode 10. they had just fired what's his name

Lindelof, Damon Lindelof or he'd walked away. Damon Lindelof had been on a secret movie that was then retroactively revealed to have been episode 10 which was announced with Daisy Ridley's coming back. That movie was originally going to take a different direction. Now they were like, it's the continuing

adventures of Ray. That movie has had seemingly no public progress. Although it doesn't seem entirely dead. They keep trying to figure out what that is. The third movie that was announced, is Dave Faloni has this master plan, Phi-gee style of all these series. They're building up to Thron as the Thanos.

Right. And he is going to make a movie that counts as basically the phase one finale of the entire Disney Plus project. It's going to be Asoka and Mandalorian and Bo Biffet and fucking everybody. Who the fuck is Thrawn? You know what, Ben?

It's just a great question. Throns from the Timothy's on novels. He's one of the only people from the extended universe they've brought into Ken. He was in a Throfenstein. He was in a Throne. He's the blue guy. He's great.

Ben has watched all of it. Those old Timothy's on novels are fucking great. You know, people of those. I remember them being great. I read them. To be fair, when I was 12 years old. I also read them as a child. I don't really remember them.

I remember Thron being cool, but right, they brought him into the show. That weird alien race. What was that species? Those like assassins that were under his thumb. I wish I could tell you. I'll Google it. They brought him in. He's played by, what, a third Mickelson or whatever.

Which Mickelson is it? Sir, we've located a third Mickleson. It's something. Mickleson. Mickey Mickelson. And I think I already said this on an episode. I can't remember where Lars Mikkelson. There we go.

He fucking has like Joe Biden energy where they're like meat, Thrawn, like the scariest and he's just like, hello, you should get Asoka. I'll see you later. Like he just do anything. Well, this is the Faloni thing. He is no energy. Like bring a character from an obscure cartoon that he also is behind and it's

just okay. There is. There's a thing that's here. Look at him. pointing, you know, just the way the Faloni shows brought back Haney Christensen to play Anakin. And he's like, here I am.

Well, the major project of the Faloni shows, of course, is that when Disney buys Lucasfilm, they go, here's the canon of Star Wars. The canon of Star Wars is the six movies that have been theatrically released. And the Clone Wars cartoon show. Yes. End of story.

And I think was Rebels in the works? Rebels was the first thing started by them. And a bunch of comic books. Well, once those started. They basically said all previous comics, prior comics and books are names. The Marvel re-launched. But the prior stuff is now consigned to what they call

legends. Exactly. And is not canon. Marvel is now going to start new comic series. This is the start of the new canon. We're going to do new cartoon shows. That is expanding that canons. I will just say the Lando series. Yep. Very good. And gives you a lot of background. Is that a comic book? It is a comic book that

does a pretty good job of explaining everything you've ever wanted to know about Lobotch? I would say, well, your dream. I do have a few questions. I will say, I think the first two years of the Marvel comics were really excellent,

and I was reading all of them. And then like everything else, it got overwhelming. There was too much, I lost track. I couldn't keep up. Yep. We all, the first season,

the Mandalorian rocks. It's a triumph. And like, you know, I feel like even those early novels, like the new official novels that were being written in the wider people were like dialed into. The first High Republic novel people were all about. The reason is because they were really making an effort, like to, you know, they were picking talented people and they were right.

They were like, yeah, we have to make. And then as you say, they, you know, start to lose the threat a little bit. There's too much style. I also think Faloni's, many wheels spinning. I think Faloni's major project from the outside has seemed to be, I want to salvage things and bring them back into the canon. It has felt like that is his priority on the work he does. He's a bit of a keeper of the flame with the world building. What is the extended universe stuff that has now been knocked out of canon into legends that I want to reintroduce.

So like Thron was not on the Clone Wars. They reintroduced Theron on rebels. It was a big deal. Holy shit, Thron counts again. And then live action Thron in Asoka. This feels like the pipeline of what he's been doing for the last 10 years is just let me pick my people. Let me put them in a cartoon. Let me make them live action.

They count again. Next, repeat, repeat, repeat. That movie is supposed to be the payoff of all the shit. And then as you are setting up here, the movie mysteriously kind of disappears, doesn't really get talked about again. And there's a sudden surprise announcement, Mandelorian and Grogu movie coming 2026, stand alone adventure. Does this negate or replace season four?

There's a whole other aspect. And they were like, I don't know, maybe we do another season after this, or maybe it would just be other movies. And then we also have to point out, which I think everybody knows, and or which hits and is truly special. It's a miracle. And we will talk about it. Of course.

But just to also say, just to only tie it into what we're saying here, that with this thing that's regarded as phenomenal, that's getting credit with something that I bet drives them nuts, even if this wasn't Star Wars, it's just a fucking great show. Like a lot of the praise is backhanded. And then you start to also hear that there's bitterness about this,

and who knows how true it is, but the internet rumblings are that. There's sides of the, Follone's bitterness about the Gilroy of it all. Yeah. And you hear these rumbling. Follone has his garden, the Osoka rebels. He regards it as his.

And he's kind of left to it. And has apparently indicated that he's not a huge fan of Andor, which is only the more frustrating for all of us hardcore fans who feel like Andor is the thing that nailed it. And it's also just the thing that felt different. It's also, it's true. Entirely different philosophical approaches. Do you want to make things that are exploring the ideas, already within Star Wars in new ways?

Or do you want to just kind of circle back to what Star Wars has been? You know? And it's a lot of like, you know, can I make movies that feel like the old movies? And Faloni, it's like, can I reintroduce my friends? What, and like, Filoni, we should acknowledge, is George Lucas's, like, apprentice,

his Pot of one learner of sorts. He was the guy that Lucas entrusted with home wars. He's the Roy Thomas to his Stanley. Right. He brings him over from. Avertcar, the last airbender. Which we have to talk about. I think it has major implications.

Very briefly talk about. You brought it up. I was actually, I was trying to be good. You brought it up and has dropped his pen and like squirm in his hands on the table. I don't know much about Poloni who always heard is like a lovely guy. You know, one's always like he's a

sweetie pie. But like I do feel like he's the last like keeper of the flame of like the Lucas 2000s era of Star Wars a little bit. There is a feeling of even though George Lucas is still alive, I'd say it's a little bit like Steve Whitmire with the Muppets where, you know, he was eventually pushed out of playing Kermit. But there was this feeling of Jim chose him.

And now Jim's gone. We have to all kind of follow what Steve says is right. Right, because it's like he's still invested with Jim's energy and we don't want to like, yeah. And it's odd when George is still alive. But there is this feeling of like, I don't know, George picked Dave. Ralph is the most overrated. His name's Ralph. I feel like you've said that before.

Respect. You like to bust that day out. Dolboys has been doing a Muppets month and Weiger loves Rolf but hates all of the electric mayhem. He has the exact opposite take, which is, David, do you hate when I'm on this show? Not at all.

Because the internet always says you do. And today's the first day where I really feel like it might be true. I do not. I do. We're having a great time. I low-key, again, we'll just stress you, Tuesday was very traumatizing for me.

And I'm feeling a little anxious about the amount of branching things going on, but no, I love having you on the show. I know I've been, to be fair, I won't do it. I have been threatening to the boys to make this entire episode about Avatar the last year, but it's not happening. Have you never seen it? I've only seen the first three episodes for when I audition for the Sean Milan movie.

I got to say one thing about it. It's lower, we said back in the time. You watched it recent. My son found it. My wife and I both realized separately that we would go and tell him it was time to turn off the TV and would sit and watch full episodes with him. And then asked him. at the age of, then six,

hey, can we, once he finished it, can we go back to the beginning and watch it together again as a family? Right, like, can we actually... It's the best. It's amazing. I will say, it is, it's a 2005 Nickelodeon cartoon. I think people know what average.

Incredible. Like, Griffin doesn't. No, I know what it is. I just haven't watched it. But when you watch it, I kind of always lumped it in. There was a phase there where Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon,

these things that either were from Japan or inspired by Japanese animation. Right. When it was on, I was in college, and I was a little bit. I was old. I was 25. years old when it came out. But my sister was the exact rate age.

She was weirdly into it because it's not her kind of thing. It's not weird. She tried to get me into it. And then I had, I got an audition for what was supposed to be Shaman's trilogy. Yeah. To play soccer? You were going to play fucking Soca? Well, I didn't get the fucking hard.

You almost played soccer. I did not get anywhere close. One of the leads of Avatar. I remind you, they made Soca like a fucking hunk on the movie. And he's not funny. But he's kind of a crybaby on the show. in a hilarious way. But I just want to say.

I've only ever seen the first three episodes. I've watched Avatar about, I would say six months ago. Instantly really, really fell in love with it. You've been texting me about it. And I've been talking a lot about it with people,

but you have to steal. I had lots of Cora. Wow. You're the one who told me Cora's underrated and it's worth the watch. I stick up for Codagh. But David, I don't know if you had this same feeling. I remember watching it with my son.

Yes. And the reason I want to tie it into today's conversation is that, I had this feeling that was maybe slightly heartbreaking for me, but also made me really happy for him, which was, oh, everything I got out of Star Wars, he's getting out of the show. Oh, like that you're not able to have the Star Wars shared experience with him? Or that Star Wars isn't meeting him where he lives today.

Kids today can just go watch an adventure movie and be like Star Wars, cool. Right. It's all of us who are old and who grew up with it, who feel like, why can't they fucking figure out the Mortal Tales again? but since 2005, I legitimately think you could put, I'm not blowing smoke. I don't know if you'd agree with this, David, but I'm like, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Avatar, the Last Airbender are to me the three fantasy epics that teach kids morals right and wrong, good and evil, how to exist in a scary world.

Avatar's very layered. So since 2005, kids don't need Star Wars to do that. Avatar's been doing that for a few generations of kids now. It's like, there's not more option there. But I think it's part of why, I think. I think it's part of why I can go to Mandalorian and Grogu and not be angry. Why I can go because... I don't think Griffeyr were angry.

We're just like, that was a bit of a nothing, burglare. But we're really doing nothing here. Come on. Like, I felt exhausted by it. I just think that as an adult when you watch Avatar, and I watched it with a kid, but I do think there's something who said for like, okay, Star Wars, I'm sadly recognizing that Star Wars used to be something like for a lot of us. I think a lot of us grew up

and if you weren't that religious Star Wars kind of gave you what religion gave you. And we get mad that it's not that anymore. But like maybe we can let that go. It does need to change. We didn't to let things go. As Kyle Loren said. Yeah, right. Let the past go.

Like the first one came out the first one came out a year after the bicentennial and like predicted Reaganism and good versus evil. And it was at the same time as the Ramones and this whole idea of like look backwards while also establishing the future. You're not going to recreate that. No, well, no, we got to bring the Ramon.

You think about the cultural moment, like a New Hope metacultural moment that ties into looking back at the 50s and moving forward to the 80s. And Star Wars is part of that. And like the heroes we needed them were Luke Skywalker and Rocky, you know, like it gave us these heroes that met the moment.

I don't know if we want to bring back. Johnny Ramon right now. Of course. Of course. But you know what I mean? He might be a little too into it. Good. The most important band of that.

that era was also looking back while reestablishing an exciting future. Star Wars refuses to fucking give that to us anymore. And then when they almost do with Andor, a bunch of people involved in Star Wars publicly at least they get mad about. I was going to say. It's sad. It's sad, but

we gotta start letting it go if we're ever going to be able to enjoy these movies as anything except a toy factor. Weirdly, I think differing opinions, but Last Jedi really, really tried to do that. And instead, it launched a culture war rather than becoming part of a conversation of what it was commenting on.

No argument. Yep. End of my contributions to the Last Jedi decision. Great. And then Andor I agree with you is sadly because of how fucking cyclical humanity is, is really in conversation with what's going on in the world today. And inputs into the original trilogy in a way none of this other stuff does. But it is fascinating to me that now having finally watched it for the first time, it's the greatest fucking TV show. It's unbelievable.

It's an astonishing work. I have thought, too, I think if you watch it. two seasons of Andor, Rogue 1, and the original trilogy, that's the perfect Star Wars experience. I finished Andor last night,

so I have not done the Rogue 1 rewatch post Andor. It's interesting post-Andor. I imagine. Because even like, certainly I care a lot more about, let's say,

Cassian Andor. Yes. But let's also say a little guy that I know you like Chris Getherd. Who's this? Someone who you've said is maybe the new kit Fisto

of the Star Wars universe. Oh, if you want to get into a fisto discussion. We're talking to Sagaera? I have a million things to say, but being here. Sa Guerrera is the current Fisto of Star Wars. Kit Fisto is no longer the Fistow.

Fistow is now the title. I'm down with that. I love Sawgarera. It's a awesome character. So, Gare is the most intriguing Fisto. I love. The most intriguing.

I'm playing ref. Give him the floor. I really need to talk for a sec. Yes. David. Go. On Avatar, the Last Snarebender. Very good show.

Wonderful. I think it's good. I can't wait to watch that with my kid. That'll be great. I also can't wait to watch to watch. Star Wars with my kid. I think there's room for all of this. My kid was unimpressed by Star Wars. Well, I was going to ask. Okay, so maybe this is part of your

Europe. Oh, but you didn't take him to the movie yesterday. No. Yeah. But you're saying, this is your emotional journey you're on. You're right. You tried to get your kid into Star Wars or you like you get, you know, you showed it to him and he was kind of like, right. And with Avatar, I saw him getting everything. You got it organically. Everything Star Wars gave me when I was his age. Avatar's giving him now. This idea, we live in a laird world.

People are put up on your friends. Okay, okay, okay, right, right, wait, I still need to reply. Okay, so Avatar. I watched that in the pandemic. My wife had already watched it when it was on, so she knew it. And it was one of those pandemic things of like, we ought to watch something all the time, right? Like, the TV's just got to be on because we're so bored. So I watched all of Avatar, all of Cora, like then.

Remember I was watching with election night 2020, Biden, Trump, when Trump tragically, I mean, he won. We all know he won, obviously. Right, when he was lied to and the public was lied to. No, like I remember like we were really stressed out election night and like I was like, I'm putting on Avatar. Like we were not going to know anything for a few hours anyway. And we remember us watching. It's sort of a cherished story. Love Avatar.

Got the steals, Griff. Love that. I haven't recracked that, but I have been kind of like, yeah, that'll be perfect for my daughter in like a year or two. Like pretty soon. And you haven't done Star Wars with your daughter yet, but we have several friends, mutual friends of ours who have kids around your daughter's years or two older. We have like a bunch of friends who have all in the run up to. Mandalorian been like, is it time to show my kid Star Wars? We've gone through them and have Star Wars obsessed kids now. I would say, it's not a thing that's completely bouncing off the entire

general. And my daughter's pretty interested in Star Wars because the toys are around. I like what she's seeing. He likes the toys. He likes the toys. Kid Fisto gave him some Kit Fistow toys. You did. You gave him a Kit Fistow onesie when he was born. Thank you for that. And it was also a Coca-Cola one. So it was soda and Kit Fistowthethe's two favorite things. That is true. I'm very soft. He likes Boba Fisifis. He likes Boba Fishton. Fizz. Sure. But the sense I get from the kids his age is like, I can look back.

And I didn't know this as a kid, but I'm like, oh, right. I'm going to wind up not being a practicing Catholic. And Star Wars is a little bit more of my moral and ethical. Which is great. They're not getting that out of it. It's a big ask. It's a big ass where like I need my kid to essentially religiously connect. Avatar is a little bit closer to it.

But that's fun. At least that's good. At least he's not like I love. I mean, I don't know what the bad version of this is. Yeah, he's not out here watching looks maxing videos. He's not getting in on that shit. He's not like, Dad, can I eat elk's meat? Can I eat elk meat and get a jaw reconstruction surgery?

Where do you introduce a kid to clavicular? I don't know, 12, 13. Just the second they sort of start asking questions about their body, you're like, oh, these questions can all be answered by Mr. Clavicular. Someone who has it figured out. Height lying. Re saw Guerrera Kit Festo.

Or limax. It would be awesome if. there was a scene in any of the Star Wars movies where someone said to Kit Fisto, like, you come on pretty strong. You know what I mean? Like, what I love about Saul Guerrera is that even fucking, um, Stalin Scarsguard, you know, even he's like, he's a lot. Like, you know, we need every weapon in our toolbox over here, but my God, is that man tough to deal with? I fucking love it because it takes Star Wars from rebellions are built on hope and goes, no, they're sold on hope. Yes.

They're built on fucking lunatics like Stalin Scarsgard and Sagaerang! What's that? Scarsgarsarsars' name is Lutheran, Rale. Luthran. It's Luthrin and that's who, they're built on fucking extremist maniacs.

And when you watch Rogue 1... They're sold by Luke Skywalker and the branding around the sky. I was going to say, when Andor's season 2 ended and I was like, I got to watch Rogue 1 right away. You put it on. You're dialed into Cassian. And then there is Jin Erso.

Right. And you are, after watching... and or kind of like, I don't care about you or your dad's stuff. This is my exact concern. But the movie I really rock. Yeah. I like that, that, and maybe I'm giving them too much credit because I love so much. And Cassian's like flirting with her and you're like, you have a baby!

But I do like the idea that all these characters were operating in their own little vacuums to foment this fucking thing and they barely know each other and putting their lives on the line and this implicit non-trust. That's the best stuff in that movie. In a better world, too. Andor and Rogue One retroactively make one of Luke Skywalker's lines in a new

hope so sad. Which one? I used to Bullseye Womp. Have we talked about this before? I'm not sure. That's the line. That line becomes so tragically fucking naive and you realize everyone else in that room must hear that kid say that and go I hope he's not in my squadron

because not only is he dead, he's going to get us fucking killed. Sure, sure, sure. Then like the contextualizing of that that Luke is legit on New Hope. Like, optimism was dead. The thing that's crazy about Andor is that, like, right, it feels like... We got to see what the empire did.

It makes original Star Wars even richer because it is not diminishing it by being like, well, that's like silly, froffy surface level kid shit. It's being like, no, this is like religious myth. These are the sort of, like, figures that we can prop up as miracles that help sell a belief system. and literally... And allow society to move on from trauma.

A new hope. Right. And it's like, here's actually the historical account. Here's what was happening. Whereas the book of Boba Fett says, what if this character you've always wanted to see Kickass becomes a low-level county-level bureaucrat? So weird.

He effectively becomes a county's sheriff. Right. We should also mention, I think everyone knows this, but Dave Faloney is now in charge of Star Wars. He is now the creative head at this moment. And I like a lot of what he's doing. Kathleen Kennedy's stepping down. I like some of what he's done.

Have you watched all of Clone Wars? No, right? I've watched a lot of it. He was announced as president of Lucasfilm in January, 26. However, Linwin Brennan, who's a long time like ILM person was announced as like co-presidents. It's similar to the James Gunn situation where she is sort of the business person and he is the creative person. Because there is only one FIGI who is seemingly good at doing both of those things. and anytime they've tried to make someone do both,

it's been a calamity. And I think part of the worry, if people trying to do an autopsy on the Kathleen Kennedy era, their takeaway was, this is kind of one of the greatest producers in Hollywood history. Not kind of, in arguably, one of the greatest producers of Hollywood history, but she worked with incredible creative minds and storytellers. She was never someone generating stories or even developing material as much.

And do you need a balance between someone who understands the logistics of production and management and someone who can have the big overarching story view. And in theory, Faloni is now placed to... Well, he's not. Because it's over. At this moment... Yes, at this moment we're recording, that is his position. Right.

But, like, Kathleen Kennedy's obvious eye was for, you know, talent. She had a great eye for talent. Correct. And it paid off for her pretty well with Star Wars. Until I would argue she started getting the yips. I think... Well, from what I'm aware... And I guess I happen up gosh.

Mostly from the audience. Last Jedi freaked out Disney, not Kennedy. Correct. Kennedy loved it. Iger, etc. We're just like, the fans are yelling too much. So no more of that, whatever that was. Not only that it was like, that was the best production they had.

That was the only Star Wars movie that wasn't riddled with reshoots and panic. And she was unbelievably happy with the final result. And people like to erase from history, it made so much fucking money. Because it was divisive, people like to be like, And that one disappointed. It did not. In the year 2017, three of the ten highest grossing films in history

were Kathleen Kennedy's Star Wars movies. Right. Force Awakens was number one of all time. It still is domestically. Rogue One was in the top ten. Last Jedi was in the top ten. So it was working. Yes.

I mean, one would argue, oh, but then the movies after Last Jedi didn't do as well. It's like, well, yeah, because they were solo. Immediate problem. Which was a shambles. Yes. And episode nine, which, people are sort of like, you know, oh, that's J.J. Abrams's fault.

It's like, fundamentally what happened with episode nine was Carrie Fisher died. Yes. And they had to completely dynamite what they were doing. They also had a director that they were losing confidence in. They fire a director. Yeah. They bring in Abrams two months before production starts or whatever. Right.

So late. They push it back four months when they needed to push it back two years. Right. And Abrams is like, I don't know, I guess, Philvotine Richard. Yeah. I mean, he's just. Which, you know, many people think, and I don't think this is, a baseless conspiracy theory.

There's actually a lot of evidence that points towards this, that Palpatine was entirely a reshoot thing. I mean, that, it seems impossible. I have no idea. It's so crazy. I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole, but there's stuff that makes it seem somewhat valid.

But yes, it does feel like they started to freak out. We should mention also that the first season of the Mandalorian TV show, a show we all love, or that first season, we all love. Two months before production, by the way. Two months after. It doesn't matter. Karen.

Whatever. Yes. One month before Rise of Skywalker comes out, Disney Plus launches, and their big launch title is first episode of the Mandalorian. It was before episode nine is when Mando started. By a month. And in unison, the world says they put a little baby Yoda in a Pokemon. I mean, truly. They stuck a little Yoda in a Pokemon.

I couldn't love this more. I remember episode one, which ends with the reveal of him. Yeah. I was like, a baby Yoda. I don't know. And by episode like three, you're like, Baby Yoda is one of my family members. I love Baby Yoda.

A conversation I remember was... Everyone agrees. They were so mysterious about that show. Can you believe? It's weird. John Favreau, the Iron Man guy, he's making a TV show for Disney Plus, but they're saying it's not going to be cheap.

It's going to be really expensive. It's going to look like a movie, right? They got fucking Greek Freezer to shoot the first season. It looks incredible, right? But they're also like, it's called the Mandalorian. And I remember at the time being like, that's nerd shit. That's nerd shit.

Like, this is supposed to be like, you know, for the masses. That feels like deep lower shit. And the other part of it was they kept saying there's a twist

in the first episode that's why they're being so secretive. I remember you and I saying, I'm gonna be so annoyed if he's Boba Fett. Right.

And instead, the twist is we've cracked the code. We've created, we found fire. This is Grogoot. This is like a new element on this earth

that is infinitely powerful. And we all were like, fuck, that puppet's pretty good. What is this show? And then the show Burner Hurt sogs in it. It's cool. It feels fucking

weirdly cool because of that. It's got cool, weird energy. The show reveals itself to be like a Western. A like stand alone. He's a bounty hunter. He goes out in a mission. You meet new characters every time. We've ever wanted.

And it's like here's the cleanest new entry point to Star Wars in forever. Anyone can watch this. Actually, it is free of kind of lore shit. Yes. The only lore is like it's after Return of the Jedi. Yeah. The Republic kind of exists. The empire's still kind of, you know, hanging around.

You don't even really need to know that. about it. Yeah. And I just loved, I was like, this is TV. This is not a 13-hour movie. This is every episode is 30 minutes of an of an adventure and a different style. Because I'm just remembering when they're like, that's what I loved. But they're, you know, when they start being

like, let's learn more about the creed. Season two. Let's meet cartoon characters. Let's hear about the dark saver. And that's Faloni being too protective of his own comedy. Yup. And the stuff he loves. It's both. It's like, what's the lore that I grew up on? and what's the lore that I made in homage to the lore that I grew up?

Basically. I will say in general, I think the Disney Plus stuff gets a real bad rap, and I understand all the disappointment and sharing it. I generally think there is something redeeming about most of the shows. I like Obi-Wan and Asuka better than average. I disagree on those two shows. Those two, I can't really go there with you. I watched them.

I can say with Obi-Wan, hugely disappointing to once-exam. again waste the potential of you in McGregor. It's just... That's the only good thing. It is just baffling. Him and Moses and Grum both give good performances and everything else in the show is bad. I do think for the first time since his introduction, we get to see why the galaxy was truly scared of Darth Vader.

And like, I'm not going to be mad at that. Yeah. No, it just was sort of like, what was? He was like fighting with Inquisitors or whatever. Three of the shows. He's going to small town showing up as this cloaked fucking figure in black. and people are fucking dying and getting their fucking

shit torn up. Like, that's, I've wanted to see that my whole life. Arguably, all become the exact same thing. This was my big takeaway from grinding tape and watching a lot of these very close together, right? Because I got really turned off by Mando season two where I was like, guys,

you're doing the exact thing I was praising you for not doing in the first season. Why is every episode reintroducing a character from lore and being like, look, it's Bo Katan. here's Bo Katan's deal. It's Asoka. Here's Asoka's deal. And then it ends with the Deep Fate Luke and I was like, I'm fucking out on this.

The Deep Fake is indefensible. You think so. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I mean, the Deep Fake, anything is going to mention. But the idea of Grogu traveling to go train with Luke Skywalker. You can't do it.

You can't. That's how I feel. It looks like this. That's what they need to be smart enough to realize. It looks like this. And it's literally like a robot voice. And that's where it becomes a fucking. Deep fake loot.

That becomes like, let's just show our dick in public. You know what I mean? Like, this is like, take our dick out of our pants, basically. It's like kind of the effect. Like, you can't actually follow through on this. Do you know that they created like a Mark Hamill soundboard? It's not even him giving a voice performance because the other thing that happens and the Mando movie has a lot of this is they become so obsessed with the tech of like

we're pushing virtual production and the pipeline and the volume and all this sort of stuff. we have our own proprietary deep fake thing. That rather than just bringing Mark Hamilton, incredible voice actor into a booth, having him give dramatic line readings, and then putting a digital effect on it to try to make him sound younger, they like study every second of line delivery

he's ever given as Luke and put it into a computer and then basically just do like text to speech. So every line reading fucking Luke gives is flat because it's like, Brogu, I will train you now. That bums me out, but more than that, watching all these shows close together, I defend Skeleton Crew and the Acolyte. I think the Cardinal family of both of those shows.

Skeleton Crews got good reviews in general. Skeleton Crews was like, let's do a Spielberg, let's do the Spielberg, it's for kids. I think it came so late that people had kind of tapped out and were tired on the whole thing. I do think the people who... There's an upswing. I think it was underwatch, but I think the people who watched it appreciate it. No one was really against it. I just think people kind of shrugged it off.

They shrugged it up because it's also Skeleton Crew sort of like this movie is kind of like, we're just kind of doing our own thing over here. We're not really trying to mess with larger Star Wars. With Skeleton Crew, I genuinely appreciate that it's doing that. It basically works. I think both Skeleton Crew and Acklead have the exact same core problem,

which is they should have been movies. They both have like peak TV issues for me where I'm like, this is a two-hour story that's now stretched to five or six hours. Well, Akalide I genuinely like. I like a tremendous amount. Really? I do think it would have been better

I haven't even watched it. You should watch it. Accolite is one of the... I watched the first episode. This probably won't sell you on it. I heard such bad things that I was like, I guess I want to vest the time. I think you would find it interesting. It is one of the only things in Star Wars since, you know, the Disney takeover that one engages

with the prequels, which I think is like vital if, unless, you know, we're not about to junk them. It's the primary mission is to engage with the weird stuff happening between the margins and the prequels textually, not in a lore sense. Engages with like Jedi rot. the ideas. You know, the idea of, like, what happened that, like, Yoda's, like,

I'm not seeing this coming and then episode three ended up all die. How did the Jedi become this bloated bureaucracy? Right. And that's... It's got witches. It's got witches. It does have witch.

And it's got all this, like, interesting ideas about how witches are related to the force. But demonized. But, like, they stand kind of in between the dark side and... And the Jedi. It's interesting.

It's about the birth of the Sith. And it's also about how fucked up it is that Quigon Jin just abducts a kid. Like that's the starting point for the show clearly as you watch it and just be like, it's weird. Is this a thing they do all the time? It's so fundamentally it's say to this day

the Kweigon's like, I won you in the bet so I get to take you and he's like, can my mom come and he's like, I didn't include your mom in the bet and I don't want to hear about it again. Get on the spaceship, eight year old. The accolaries me in a way, I think people get pissed off by it. I can't go with you. I'm like, why? You are a fucking

Jedi. Just take her. What's going to happen? What, Wado needs a 50-year-old woman? Like that badly? No, he sells her off immediately. Exactly. Once he's gone, Anakin's gone. No, why?

She wasn't in the bet I made with a bug Jew. Mom, uh, spaceship's a little heavy. We already have 80 astro-mextroids. It's just, when you're a kid, you're just kind of like, of course, because when you're a kid, like, every story is about, like, a kid being orphaned or separated from, you know, but then when you're an adult, you're, you know, but then when you're an adult, you're, you're just kind of, you're, you're just kind of, you're, you know, you're just like, you're. course, because when you're a kid, like, every story is about, like, a kid being orphaned or separated from, you know, but then when you're an adult, you're just like, oh, my God, just take her. That is what Ackleite's about.

Like, Ackleite is digging so deep into the text of what has been made and stuff that George did and being like, what does that actually say? What is that reflective of, right? And if these movies, the prequels are about, like, how the Jedi were taken down by their own arrogance, then, like, where does that start? and what was going on big picture. I think it's a really good show. I think it would have been better as a movie.

I think the exact same thing with Skeleton Crew. And Obi-Wan was supposed to be... Scolute crew really should have been a movie. Obi-Wan should have been... Obi-Wan was supposed to be a movie. Obi-Wan, they had hired Stephen Doldry and they had started building the sets and it was going to be the next standalone after Solo.

And when Solo underperformed, they were like, let's slow our role and redevelop this for TV. And you can tell. You can tell. It feels so fucking... padded and Asoka, Obi-Wan, and what Mandalorian becomes are all...

And Boba-Fet. And Boba-Fet. But those... None of them are great, but I forget the book. But I was saying those three in particular, what kind of blew my mind is that they're all the same fucking show, which is like a stoic character has a younger ward that they're trying to protect while they're looking for one thing and one mysterious person has changed, chasing them.

It's all lone wolfing up. They're all... That and just the slider is slightly different. We've talked about this. I've never read the manga. I've seen a couple of the movies. They are a delightful. I believe it.

I mean, Wolf and Cobb is so fun to me. Animated. Mall Shadow Lord is animated. It's Clone Wars continuation. I was just following along as we were talking through all of the, like, releases in order. Mall Shadow Lord?

They've never even heard of them. I knew, right? Cool shows that are also animated. I haven't caught up with this one. Right. Right, right, right. And this is a mini-series that's following up on mall. David, sorry, you were about to say.

I just had to answer Ben's mall perplexion. And I forgot about Mall. I feel like they just got into this sort of, the Disney, whoever, Lucasfilm, got into this kind of endless trick on themselves of like, well, it can't be a movie. And it's like, well, why can't it be a movie? And the answer could be like, well, because that's too similar. you know, like Obi-1, like whatever. We've done something like that already, or we don't want to do a prequel again.

Why can't Skeleton Crew be a movie? Oh, it just doesn't feel big enough. Like, that's more of a kid thing. So we can't do it. Why can't, like, uh, acolyte be a movie? It's too complicated. It's too dark, you know. I almost feel like,

even what can be a movie? And they're like, I don't know, you know. Right. I almost feel like that's giving them too much credit. I feel like they go, why should this be a show instead of a movie? And the sad answer to me is, is because a movie they'll give us $20 bucks once

and a show they'll give us $10 bucks 12 times for the year. There's a little of that, but like if you ever hit movie, you're making ungodly money. One would think, but they had a streaming service to launch. They did. They did. But they started to move off of that. They're trying to unwind this now.

And you're seeing all the tendrils of Disney where they had been like, please make more stuff for Disney Plus because all the money is going here. And now they're like, how do we train people off? of thinking these things are unspecial and making them think once again that it's worth paying to go out on a Friday night. Like, you know, I think they just got in their head of like,

well, the next movie's got to be something big, right? It's got to be something, you know, we've had a couple flops. Like, we kind of need something that's going to set the new tone. Longer the gap goes on, the more they feel the pressure of, well, now it's got to be even bigger to justify the return of Star Wars movies.

And so they've sort of compromised with like, well, if we have a movie with Ryan Gosling as a star fighter, that'll be good enough. And that's the next movie. That's coming out next year, right? You're aware of this. I'll buy a ticket. Sure.

We'll all go see it. But like with Mando and Grugu, it felt like Faloni was like, here's season four. And Faloni and Favreau, I guess. We've written season four. I guess we want to do it. And Disney's like, that's going to cost $300 million. It's going to suck.

I'm sure the script has so much Thrawn and fucking God knows. you dark sabers, right? Like, I'm sure it's like heavy on lore. Because they've said like, we pivoted from season four to something that had no lore, right? We made sure the movie was going to be a clean entry point. You know, Favreau said, like, we didn't want to do any of the lore.

So Disney's clearly like, can you just do a movie? And Flan's like, sure, can it be a big movie? No, no. No. Can it just be fun movie with baby Yoda in it? Yeah. That's for kids. That's her kids.

It's for basically middle school. I mean, this movie is flirting with being a piece. PG. It's a PG-13 because it's got enough kind of like gun shit, I guess. It feels PG. But it feels kind of PG. And I solidly aiming for kid reaction. Right. I think what you're saying, and it just has this. From beginning to end, it's like, yes, sure, the bald guy is in season three. I guess I forgot about it. Which I did not remember even though I had watched it one week earlier. But it's basically just kind of like, all you need to know is the Mandalorian and Grogo go on adventures together.

They're going to go on an adventure. I do feel like fundamentally one of the questions we're circling around is. it seems like no one in the Disney era as asking the question of, what do people out there need? No. Because people used to get something they needed out of Star Wars, and that's why it's a franchise that for 50 years has meant so much. Like, one thing that really stood out to me about Mandelorian and Grogu that I think is so insane.

And I get it. I get what the world we're living in. I get the blend of visual. No, no, no. I mean, like the Star Wars universe is one with creatures and masks and a combination of, you know, always the world. debate about practical effects versus digital, all this stuff. But I go, we are in an era where everyone's relentlessly talking about the loneliness epidemic and how much loneliness is killing

us. And we literally have a movie where you only see human eyes for it's five to six minutes of a two hour and 15 minute movie. Like everything is either a mask or digital. Like we're living in a world where everyone's fucking lonely. And I can speak for myself. I'll get weirdly vulnerable this deep into a Star Wars thing where I go, I am literally like a mental health advocate working to get kids less lonely in schools while also struggling deeply with the fact of, oh, I'm a living, I am so relentlessly lonely on a daily basis. You and I were saying this yesterday, but we're people who, for outside perception, people would be like, you got like a friend base and you're like busy and you're doing stuff.

And we're like, you and I are both like burdened with the fundamental loneliness as a condition. Literally lonely. Like my birthday is tomorrow and I never have a birthday. party and reached out to friends because I go, a birthday is a reason that people will actually come out and I need to fucking connect with people. I forgot that that was part of this planning was to do this. Yes, this is a birthday

present to myself is to be called crazy by David Sims on my... I apologize for calling you crazy. I mean, you are your notion that the Mandalorian would die and baby Grogu would turn evil at the end of this movie was a little crazy. All I'll say is this. When it leaks that

that was proposed. Okay. We're going to You was crazy. Excited for that leak. Like, the idea that I watched a two-hour, 15-minute-long movie where I did not look at human eyes is just such a lack of grace of like what do people need. Apart from Sigourney, it's like, you're right, right? His helmet comes off one time and he says, I'm going to kill you to the huts. And it goes right back on. And we've seen versions of that in the show before.

And it brought me immediately back to fucking Princess Leia in that first movie. with the blaster up, looking around the corner, and she's stone face and badass. But she's teeny, tiny with this big doe eyes, and she's a princess. It's primal shit. And you sit here and, like, you don't even realize it in the moment, but then you watch it over and over again, you go,

oh, for like a late teenage era princess, who's a tiny diminutive person to have that steely resolve is masking so much fucking pain and fear, and you immediately are sucked in by Carrie Fisher's eyes. Yeah, totally. And now what they give us is a movie where Jeremy Allen White is playing a jacked yelling that he's not like his dad. I'm not like my dad.

I just want to take another look at him. It's hard. It's hard being a hut sometimes. It's like it's like all of it. Like I want to love baby Yoda, but like I kind of don't give up. He's a cute. He does that big eyes. But also the only addressing the eyes can think. But he's a puppet doing cute shit.

And like I just kind of need someone in my life to make. fucking eye contact with me. I agree. And tell me a story that explains to me what's good and what's bad. Wish you a happy birthday. And that's what Star Wars used to be. Yeah, well, right.

You are yearning for Star Wars. As you keep coming back to this, is this sort of like moral force, which like, you know, that's right. That feels kind of long lost. And it's tough for any, you know, franchise to hold that birthday or whatever. Part of the disappointment is that film,

you know, film fans and film nerds like getting vocal on the internet. Comic Con nerds like getting vocal on the internet. Star Wars is a flashpoint for all of them. Like another big point of what's going on right now is like, this is a franchise that spoke to us on a deep level for a long time and just swings and misses and asks us to pay them for another shot. It's like the boomers who made shit like Star Wars, you know,

had sort of a more woo-woo. I'm, you know, speaking positively, right? Like this kind of like post-hippie, you know, these interests, you know, this sort of expansive view of thing. I think there's a larger issue. They're blending it all in there. They had the hippie optimism mixed with the punk cynicism. Yeah.

Cool filmmaking of the air. I think there's a larger issue. In my opinion, is Grogu Nuts Neat Cookie. And someone should address this. I've watched in the last couple of months six seasons of Star Wars television and a movie for the first time. I want to formally congratulate you on doing it. You thought I wasn't going to get it done. We haven't even really started talking about Andor.

I want to try to do something here. I want to try to do something here. Ben, can we as an exercise? Ben's eating the cookie. Do you want to bring this? Do you want to mention this? Oh, I'm just hungry, yeah. I just want to a snack.

By the way, there's a merch spotlight, including a food spotlight at the end of this episode. I got bags under the table. But Ben's snacking on Grogu, Nellweiser. Wait, do you guys want some. There's plenty of shares here. I do want some. I do want some.

I do want some. Ben, I got, Ben, can you stick your tongue out quickly? Oh, man. That's a blue tongue. Ben, can you start a counter for three minutes? I think I can. and I'm not saying this is all we're talking about it. But I just want to actually run through

the entire plot of the movie in under three minutes. Of the Mandalorian and Grogu? Yes. Yeah, go right. Because I was practicing this on the way here. I think you can honestly do it. Yeah, three almost seems roomy. Okay, ready?

Start. Okay, we start with Mandalorian on a bounty hunter mission, trying to capture a warlord. He brings him back to Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver's like, cool, I got two more missions for you. One is find Rod of the Hut, Jabba's son, and free him, bring him back to his.

aunt and uncle. Secondly, here's a mystery warlord. Can you find this guy? Rodda might help. He goes to find Rada. Rada's like, I don't need to be freed. I like fighting because my dad was bad. And so, but by the way, I know where that warlord is.

I can bring you to him. But then Mando gets captured by the same people and he gets caught in the fight with Rada. They escape. They find the warlord. Bring them back to Skorney Weaver. Sigorni Weaver's like, where's Rada? He's like, Rada didn't want to be freed.

She's like, this sucks because we work closely with the aunt and uncle. Can you go make things good with them? He goes back to the aunt and uncle. They're like, fuck you. They throw him in a pit. He gets scratched. He falls asleep. Grogu, who's been separated from him and started, was about to go.

Gremlin's two gizmo mode, like Rambo-style badass. Instead, just learns to be alone. Meet Stephen McKinley Henderson on a porch. Then Mandalorian wakes up and they have to escape and all their friends come and help them escape. And then Sir Gorni Weaver's like, thanks for your work. That's the entire movie, right? And for some reason...

That was a minute 14. Yeah. And for some reason, Scorni Weaver decides they need to like nuke the hut, like house. They're already escaping. Just at the end of the movie,

it's kind of like, I don't know, something's gotta blow up. That was wild. It was a bit of an Eagles and Lord of the Rings moment of like, if you got... She was like, hi!

And he's like, I'm out of here and she's like, don't worry about it let it go. Let's blow him up. She's also like, jump quickly because the bombs... It's shot already. I also was like, man,

like, you didn't even have to kill the NASGAL to get the eagle. Like, you could have done that the whole time? Look, look, the Eagles and Lord of the Rings is too complicated for this day, I would say. I was fairly detailed there. Was I not? I mean, the only thing you left out was Scorsese.

Star making turn by Scorsese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Scorsese is not actually vital to the plot. He's just kind of like Rod us over there. He wasn't informed who doesn't want to give information, which is funny. That mother personality. It was so hard that that character shines. Dude.

That character's the other. they're part of the movie we were like. I cannot believe how locked in he is. He's giving his all and it has personality and humanity. Does it speak to something that Martin Scorsese, who has sort of, you know, grumbled about franchise filmmaking, right, in interviews? Ben prepared all of us a little dish.

Ben's giving me some Mando cookies. It's a lot of cookies. I don't know what I'm going to need all those. But thank you, Ben. I got five other food items on my back. They make a real cool banana pudding with these blue nila wavers. That's true. But they call it like, he plays essentially. Faced nana wafers or something. Like a guy being paid, you know, like a shill.

Like in this movie. I just run a flat meat stand. I don't know anything. Don't ask me about it. I don't know. Maybe. An incredible impression of Martin Scorsese as that streetcar operation. Thank you.

Specifically. I ate it. It tastes like a nilla wafer. I guess there's no like blue flavor. No, but the cognitive dissonance of it not being blue flavor does fuck your brain a little bit. Well, we should probably name it. It is Grogu Nilla Numb Numb-Num-Num-Num-Num. Says right here on the...

the box, nummies. David, yes. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make our glasses?

Uh, the windows. The window frames? I don't know. The curtains? Uh, yeah, the curtains. The point is, if you are glasses where like I am

or like our own producer Ben is. True. It's a big decision. Sure. Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. This is to engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames.

Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally. I agree. All right. Well, so what about Zeni optical? Oh,

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That's Z-E-N-N-I.com slash podcast promo code, Podcast 15. David, quick question and be honest. I solemn swear, I will tell the truth and nothing about it. Thank you. When did you last actually think about how much fiber you're eating? I can't say anything about it enough. Actually think about it. I don't know.

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Some days, I'm locked in, I go to the gym, I'm meal prep. For me, those days are called never. It literally never happens. Other days, and I call these days every day, I look up and realize it's 2 p.m. And I've had coffee and nothing healthy. That actually is a little bit too accurate. Fuel is the first thing that's actually helped me stay consistent

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Thank you to Huel for partnering. and supporting our show. David and I, as he said, are sitting here at the theater. And I want to be clear, we're considerate moviegoers. We're not talking the whole time, but occasionally we turn to each other and whisper one sentence. And I would say about every 20 minutes, one of us would turn to the other and go,

is this really all there is? Like, we kept being, like, there must be some story idea that the trailers were hiding, not a big twist. But it's not that I wanted that. No. Like, it's not like I wanted the third act of the movie. I was basically like, is this movie going to be what it looks like, which is just kind of like a disposal.

They got to find one guy, except they find the warlord halfway through. And then you're like, he's bald. He's bald. What is the movie now? You turned to me and said, I actually don't know what the rest of the movie is. Right. And so then I'm like, right, will the third act be AI, Luke and fucking, you know, take your pick, shows up.

Is there a bad surprise behind the mystery door? You know, Grogu Shots shoots some lightning or grows wings or we don't. You really don't think dark Grogu would have been a more interesting third act? No. You really triggered me there because it's the kind of shit I hate them. We were actually screaming at each other. I really hate the someone needs to die for a movie. Can you guys say that

you love each other just so we can. I love you very much. Here's my pitch that hit me when we got to that section. I was like, are they going to do some slop? Yeah. But they didn't. No. But instead it was just kind of like, Mando's. Why did you even make this? What was the idea? Get away from the huts.

What's your pitch? My pitch is... Can I just say one thing to close out that thought? Please. And I think this actually is... truthful. This does feel like the exact Star Wars movie you would make at a

cultural moment where it feels acceptable to people to remove Stephen Colbert and replace it with Byron Allen's comics. I mean just kind of like let's not hurt anyone's feeling. A society where it's like we are looking we're looking for something and we're not getting it.

It's beyond that. It's actually heard you just traveled over here from New Jersey. Anything you want to share about that? We need to be talking about this, Lincoln Town of Jersey. that big Byron Allen. We gotta be talking.

The Lincoln, the Holland, the George Washington. You're crazy. Like one of the creative, you know, great comic figures of our lives. Geth, that is a brutal comparison. Yeah. It is 100% on point. It's not even about inoffensiveness. It's about this sort of like the whole weirdness of comics unleashed as you're like,

this looks like comedy, but something feels off. Everything's for sale. It's doing comedy, but it's in a hot. hollow way and it's so packaged and strategize and they're acting like this is an organic conversation, but it's neither stand-up nor interview. And it's getting an 1130 slot, which used to be sacred to the American people. We're treating this as if it's the legit thing when this used to air at four clock in the morning, and this was only watched by people who were struggling. People who should not be watched by drug addict. Yes. Literally, the core demographic was men in hotel rooms

debating whether they wanted to live through the night. Some of the worst nights of my life had been watching Comics Unleash, and it wasn't because of Comics Unleash. Comics Unleash was meeting me where I was. You and I both just revealed that we watched that show while having suicidal ideation. I just also want to... I just want to shout out to you that while we're all talking

right now, everyone has a blue tongue. This is true. It might be... It went blue in immediately. You nillaway for talking about killing ourselves. It went blue. Immediately. Nilla numnys. Numbies. Numbes. Right. All right.

Griffin, can you get back to my flag, my own metal. Your pitch. I hope you're doing okay, Chris. So like minute 30, 40, I love you, Chris. I love you guys. You're doing all right, right? It's a very funny dissonance for us to do that bit while eating these treats. I got to say, you're making a little sinker face while you're eating the nilla nummies. We've never stopped talking.

We never stop eating in the webbress. It's kind of good. Look, it's the most respectful way to honor the movie is to just keep snacking. Keep buying the product, baby. We don't give a fuck.

Say whatever you want about our movie. You're literally eating our tie-in product while you talk bad about our movie. We're giving you what you want, Disney. We were underwhelmed by the movie and thank you for the blue nilla wapers, you fucking corporate fucks. Minute?

Like maybe. 30, 40 of the movie. They go to get Rada. Rada's like, I'm not like my dad. And Dinger Aron's like, okay, I guess I'll leave. And then they gasped them. And as he's starting to pass out, he's like, Grogu, run, I'll find you later.

And I was like, oh, is the core idea of this movie? Because I'm not asking, in going from TV to film, make the movie really big in a all plot threads connect, Theron comes in, deep fake Luke kind of way. I'm like, can you tell me, a story that could not fit within an episode. Ideally, that's a story of greater emotional range. Right.

That's what I want, not necessarily even scale that's bigger than the TV show. A lot of this is the murky, uncanny valley of the more that TV has become like movies, does movies feel like TV, and how do we make this distinction? We saw it in IMAX. Weirdly, any time it went to the IMAX ratio, what is closer to the traditional old-school TV ratio, It felt more cinematic because it didn't look like Disney Plus, which is now super widescreen. This whole weird backwards thing we're living in, right? All I want is for this movie to be like, we came up with a story that is two hours long that has an emotional through line.

Sure. That's not an episode and doesn't feel like a couple episodes smushed together. And when Mandalorian's getting gassed, you're like, they're going to make him do the Dajaric fight, which for the listeners who don't know is, the hollow chess board that Chui has of the Millennium Falcon where he plays against C3PO

and then leans back and looks fucking awesome. Let the wookie win. We see like the real version of that in this. It's like a pit fight, right? With all the big creatures.

And he's like, Grogu, go, I'll find you. And I was like, oh, is the big idea of this movie that they get split up? Yeah. That it is,

Grogu has to fend for himself on his own and Mandalorian has to deal with the emotions of feeling what that's like. Now, we've already split them up. Season 2 ends with Luke taking him. Mando's really upset, and it's the first major boondoggle

in the Greater Mandalorian Experiment is they resolve that, not in a movie, which would have been a storyline fitting for a movie, or season three, they resolve that in the second half of Boba Fett, a different show. So then season three starts, and it's like, this is resolved, now I'm training you. And then season three becomes basically a Bo Catan show. As you said, David, it's largely, Mandalarians talking about politics and caves.

Right. They're in a cave. Many caves. It's like dark. Yes. There's like a big lake with like a what a serpent or something that they're like. Right. We maybe don't believe that it exists. It's like I saw it. It's the soul that's on your shoulders except that we think it's fake.

And they're just like and there's like a lot of like to what extent should we wear our helmets and I'm like guys. I'm also shut the fuck up. I'm watching it and I'm like this show is barely about the Mandalorian or Groguing. Right. They all kind of just sound like Emma Thompson, so I can't, like, tell which one is which. Right. This movie still makes a big point of, like, the disgrace of his helmet being off. And I'm like, I thought all of season three was litigating the helmet thing and sort of going, eh, maybe we're not that

serious about the helmet thing anymore. I can't chill with the helmet rule. Truly. Literally. To the extent that I was almost like, is this, was this written before season three, like, but, like, no, like, it was not. You also have a very famous actor who is famous. famously, infamously, not done most of the physical performance for this character across the previous three seasons plus

Boba Fet. Credit to him, like his stunt performers are second and third bill. Single card billing. Like, big ups for the transparency on this. Yeah. But it is fascinating that this movie is like, we had Pedro Pascal do one sequence. We had him do one sequence that starts

with a little emotional dialogue and then his one big action set piece. The rest of the movie, I'm like, did he ever meet Sigourney Weaver until the press. Yeah, right. Definitely not. But after the Dejaroch fight, he just immediately reunites with Grogu. And then the movie has them split up and get back together like two or three times until it

finally does the thing where he's asleep because he was scratched by a space slug or whatever. And then there's 20 minutes of him having to fend for himself. And I'm leaning in because I'm like, this, I mean, this is the thing. Grogu is the star. This is the thing they like. And the biggest reason. The exact point where I would actually say, I mean, it's also puppet stuff, which I like.

One of the things that I was most disappointed, though, by, I'm like, at least we'll see Grogu finally level up. And instead, I just saw him continue to be able to just lift. I cannot deny that they consciously clearly were like, we're not going to have him level up. It's also, it's a conceptual fuck up that they have him level up way too fast when he starts training with Luke. And when they start showing him do the Jedi shit, it always looks dumb. I think in your words, he looks like a fucking idiot jumping around. You said that about someone in the prequels, maybe grievous back in the day. I said that about many people.

I think so. But it looked silly and they gave him too much power too quickly. And they've already set up this thing of he ages really slowly. When the Mando meets him, he's already hundreds of years old, but he's a baby. So any growth is going to be so slow as to be indistinguishable. And the money is this character needs to stay in the same. exact form. I agree with you that it feels like dramatically he should say at least one

word by the end of this movie. Having said one thing in the style of Yoda and watch every theater go nuts. Totally, but they're too terrified of fucking with the magic of whatever the sanctity of literally have him say, dad, wake up. You must when Mando's passed out and watch everyone cry their eyes out. Or nummies.

He could have said nummies. He could have said daddy. He could have said daddy. Yeah, daddy. I want more nummies. Daddy nummies. have him do one new force power or say one thing. Yeah. And satisfy everybody. But that would disrupt the status quo.

I don't think. I don't think I would like that. Would like what? Him talking like Yoda. I think that would annoy me possibly. So he just says daddy. What if he just says daddy at the end? That would obviously wreck me.

Exactly. Well, because I'm a mark for this sort of stuff right now. Yes. But even that's too risky for them. Sure. I mean, the two makes. Major reasons they talk like Yoda when he talks. He's a Yoda.

He's a Yoda. I mean, this is the debate, right? He's a Yoda and a Yaddle. All do you respect to Yaddle. Right. It's like we don't know rude. They don't call him Baby Yaddle. That's true.

Did Yadl talk that way? I know Yaddle eventually made like a cartoon appearance or something, right? If I remember the first season, yeah, Bryce Dallas Howard played Yaddle. Do you remember the first season? That might be true. It is true. I'm not joking. Love her.

Love her. I'm very pro Bryce Dallas. First season, we all call him Baby Yoda. Disney's like, please, call him the child. Don't call him Baby Yoda. His name isn't Baby Yoda. And we're like, okay, so his name is the child? And they're like, no, he has a name.

But we're not telling you yet. I remember when the Asoka episode dropped in season two. She calls him Grogu. And the internet was like, do we like this? Did they just fuck it up? Is the sanctity, the purity of just little cute thing eats things. We have a name we like for him ruined. Eventually, everyone comes around to Grogu for a name.

this movie refuses to even make a move as strong as his name is Grogu. They're like nothing new about this guy. And part of it is, as they've said, their strategy in this is a movie now is they're like, there is one thing that the current generation has grown up with of kids under 10 as their Star Wars that feels proprietary to them. It's baby Yoda. Even if they don't watch the show, baby Yoda is just omnipresent culturally. My son has a baby Yoda water bottle. My daughter knew who Baby Yoda was before she knew any other Star Wars thing.

They point. They say Grogoo. My son is by far most familiar with Baby Yoda as a Star Wars thing. Probably doesn't know much about Yoda. No. It's the second thing, which is the Cars effect. Every Cars movie made less money than the previous one. They made three theatrical films and two planes movies, and they all dropped.

Right. But the merch was insane. And they kept being like, I guess we got to make another movie to keep. the merch relevant. And at some point, they're like, do we? Maybe the merch is the thing. That merch still flies off the shelves. Totally for that. Right. Maybe we can leave it alone. There hasn't been a Cars movie in almost 10 years. But they're just like, do we got to do it again? Just to like the brand deposit? And that's some of their math. I don't think they were responding to a false notion of the public is demanding this. But it was a real path of least resistance thing.

And also, if our, like, majority shareholders are freaked out about our lack of action on Star Wars, is the promise, hey, I bet we're going to sell twice as much, five times as much grogoo shit in 2026. Is that good enough? And it feels like that's the only justification for this movie. And I feel like if in that scene where he's gassed outside the Dajaric scene, they are actually split up for the next hour plus of the movie. And that's what the bulk of it is. it was that Mando's trying to figure out how to get back to Grogu, and Grogu's trying to fend for himself, that's different than what they've done on the show. And that is a story that I feel I could sustain a slightly longer narrative would give us something. And instead, what I saw was them get back in a spaceship just the two of them. You're so mad that they're, but it is. How about the scene where they just, Grogue, Mando's like, I need to take a break and they like, go back and they take a break. And they're just like, okay, let's go again. And I'm like, did we just do like a commercial break?

Like, isn't this a movie? There's a scene in this movie where they listen to our episodes with Getherd talking about Star Wars in the past. And I'm like, why are we watching them listen? It's not even a video podcast. It's just like, it felt like television the whole time. The final moment back in the spaceship. Yeah. He lets Grogu push the button.

Yeah. And you went, and you went, you went, you said. You sighed and you went. He gets to push the button now. And that to them is their notion of like, look at the character growth. Because they're like, we planted the scene. In the first act, he was like, don't push the button. This is how he was elemental storytelling.

I want to say one very nitpicky thing. Please. And Griffin, you just rewatch the seasons of the show more recently. I also found myself feeling very not into how often Mando uses dog language to tell Grogu what to do. Yeah, I don't like. Bring him heel. Yes. The heel thing they think is funny and it's not funny.

It's like, is he your kid or is he a dog? It is clearly that it's bad comedy instinction. It was, it ended up being funny a couple times. And I think when it used to happen, when it happens earlier, mostly in the first season, the joke is this guy doesn't have bedside manner. Exactly. He doesn't know how to be a dad. But at this point, it's made choice after. Exactly.

That this is his child. Yeah. No. And as a dad, I watch it. And I'm like, that's child abuse. It's just when. seem like a dick now. When parents treat their children the same way they treat their animals,

it's because they're bad parents. Yes. Obviously, the Mandalorian's supposed to be, you know, whatever, a man of few words and so on and so forth. But yeah, there's not much of a connection that you can detect because of how muted and flat the character is. The seasons lost their way. I mean, you have the end of season two when Luke comes on the ship and takes him. So, right, right. So season one is perfect and is the one that ends with the TycoiT robot saving them.

and everyone, like, all the characters they've met from all the episodes sort of come together and it, like, it just felt like great TV. Does that also, though, Mark? I don't want to say it. No, let me just, let me finish before we, right, okay. And basically ends with him being like, I'm going to keep the kid.

Yeah. And then season two ends with like, Giancarlois, Pesito wants the Dark Sabre or something. And then Luke Skywalker shows up to rescue them. And he takes Grogu and he like, Nerfs them all, but then he takes Grogu. I have to train him and Mando takes his helmet. He has a tearful goodbye showing his face to Grogu for the first time.

And the emotional growth is he cares more about connecting to this kid. Than the creed. Right. And the creed. And he's showing his emotions. The stoicism wall is over. And Asoka's in season two. Like, she drops in somewhere in there. She tries to train him a little bit. Yes. And I guess she's the one who tells Luke to go find him. And then Book of Boba Fett was in between those two seasons. So like the first half of Book of Oba Fett is Boba Fett being like, do I want to be a sheriff, a mayor?

I'm in charge, I guess. The fact that he just becomes a sheriff, which is an elected county position. There's never been. You know what's so wild about BocaFet? Let's leave Tatooey. Let's go. And the season ends with him kicking fat Bib Fortuna off a throne and going, I like that chair. Are you taking his position?

No, maybe just the chair. Say your thing. I got to say this. On this show, we have created, honestly, at this point, our own language, which is ludicrous. But the idea of a Fisto as represented by Kit Fisto in the prequels, the character that you see and you go, I want more of that. And we said today that the current person holding the crown of all Fistos is actually Sagarara. Who is dead?

But in the Star Wars universe, even Fistow has been out Fistow by St. We've never talked about the fact that the most famous and iconic Fistow is Boba Fett starting in the Star Wars show. The original. The original where fans are just like, what's the deal with that guy? All the way. Interesting. And then Vader says no disintegrations. And you're like, so he's fucked up, huh? Like, he's stunned disconnect.

We've been begging them to get him right. We have it's to be specifically told. They have mishandles him so much that we've never even addressed that he's the original Fisto. Right. But he's actually the most mishandled the attempt to Fisto to give the fans what they want. Yes. In an incorrect way with a Fisto. Yeah.

Leads to what we have now with Bob Fett, which I would actually argue should now be phrased, a swing and a misto. It was a swing in a misto. He's the ultimate swing and a misto. You have a fisto, which is Fisto himself, the absolute representation of what this should be. Tees us with some intrigue and then don't give us

too much. Make us watch some deep cut cartoons to find out more. Saw Guerrera currently there with, I would say, we're probably not the only people. Ben and I clearly kind of begging like, if you can get fucking force, Whitaker to recommit to a prequel about how that asshole came to be, I will put

But you know, his backstory is great, too. I went down a rabbit hole reading all about his shit. That was the cartoon first. The weirdest thing is that Saw Guerrera not looking like, you know, Forrest Whitaker. Forrest Whitaker is like that they didn't have that idea yet.

But he is in the Clone Wars cartoon. First. You know. And like, and like is a minor character that they decided to recycle for Rogue One. But then obviously, Forrest kind of just transformed the character. and everyone kind of forgets that now. That character is the rare example of a jump from the cartoon

being interesting. Yeah. And done very, in a very considered way. You also have to imagine that you're going to an actor of that caliber who whatever you tell him to go says, thank you so much for your input. Right. I've got this from here. And you actually shut the fuck up and listen. I think also Rogue One

is crazy where it's like, because like he was going to be in more of it. There's the scene where he like rescues her and I think there's stuff. The trailer he has two different haircuts One of the haircuts never shows up in the film. There's stuff they decided to cut of their relationship. Because, like, in Rogue One, he's a little weird because you only really see him, you know,

at the last days of his life. Yes. And he's crazy. Yeah. And then Andor gives you much more seasoning on him, but it is still basically like, you need to understand how this person became such a... He's an anarchist.

Yeah. He's kind of like the weather underground. Yeah. He's like, we're just going to blow shit up. He's the dirty work. He's the one who's getting shit done and they all love to pretend it doesn't have to be that black. He loves a machine.

Mon Mothma's the least, like, she's the most like, we need to win over the people, hearts and minds. We can't just be blowing shit up. Luthen's a little closer to hair. He's the IRA that's like, actually we need to kill fucking Mountbatter. We need to, how about we bomb a boat and kill an ancillary member of the royal family? We do that, but also I don't care if, right, if we're going to kill some civilians, like, they're all culpable, blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. It's dirty.

And Luthon is more on that side of things, but Lutthin has some control, whereas Saul likes to like huff, like, But where we saw is the inverse of Vader. Yeah, well, they kind of do that in Rogue One of like he kind of sounds like it. The suit. Right. I mean, I love it, though. And Lutthin is one of the most psychologically fucked up characters in Star Wars. But what I love about Luthan is he's like, I'm a bullet casing and I'm going to be spent.

Like, I will be done and I know I will die. It's incredible character. And I know, like, that it's in service of something important. And I know that I'm like a sin eater. Like, I will do the bad. stuff, I know I won't be remembered. That's fine. Like, you know, this is my purpose. He basically shows up at the end of episode two in the first season, I think. And I was watching the first two episodes and I was like, yeah, this is good. But there are a lot of great TV shows that people

tell me for years to watch. And I watch them. And I'm like, I get this. This is well made, but I don't like TV this much or, you know, that's just not my temperature. And you've been hearing four years from people like me who watched Andor one aired. You love Star Wars. This is the greatest thing ever. You don't understand it actually rock. Like it's actually, it's not just good to be. Where do you think it stands up in... It's the best thing they've ever done apart from the big two. I mean, I don't think that's really into fear.

Yeah. I basically, I'm inclined to agree with that. Yeah. My only regret is that they can do five seasons. I think I said previously on the show about Rogue One, and I think if you view And or in Rogue One as a package deal, I think time will only perhaps elevate them even more possibly. Yeah, but I also think part of its power is that it's building something

underneath the foundation of the original Star Wars. It's in conversation with the original such a smart way. It serves it. It makes it better. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't feel like it's like, you know, messing with it. I'm saying this as a callback, but also really,

there's so much eye contact. It truly. There's so much fucking men. There's people. Making choices in spaces. The idea that, like, it's not digital that you go like, oh, sometimes the way a street revolution starts is someone takes a spoon and bangs on a fucking

frying pan so you have time to lock your door. That's the most human, real-ass shit, you know? Those first two episodes, I'm like, this is well done. The second episode ends with Scarsguard on the train. I lean in a little bit. I go, I don't know. Scarsigard interesting. Okay. Third episode starts

with him introducing himself to Andor. Like, two minutes in, I text you guys, Andor's the best shit ever. I get it immediately. I see the whole thing now. Just the entire conception of his character is so perfect and so smart, and then his performance on top of it, and then everything feels like that,

where you're just like, oh, my God, I'm watching them practice rebellion runs in the mountains of how they're going to infiltrate these things. They're doing their play. Right, this is like the fucking Cuban Revolutionaries. Like, it's so smart about, like, commenting on human history and also the text of Star Wars. And this is a big thing I felt watching all these shows

and watching this movie. And you saying, David, like the 70s, creatives, more woo-woo and all of this. There's a bigger thing, which is the magic of Star Wars, is that George Lucas put basically the entire history of storytelling into one container. He was

like, what if you could make a authoritarian legend exist with Saturday morning cereals and religion and samurai and westerns and all of this shit? He put it all on a blender. And then he kept pulling from different genres. What if you have an alien kind of mob boss?

That's Jabba the Hut. What if this? what if that, and you kept building and building, and the longer Star Wars goes on, Star Wars starts to become more and more about itself. The prequels for all of their faults are not about themselves. They are him saying, like, this is actually what's like the foundation of this world I built. You know, it's about me commenting on the cyclical nature

of how, you know, fascism rises and falls and all these sorts of things, the human instincts and structures and governments, you know, and people and power. And the Disney era has had this, really uncomfortable relationship with, are we trying to comment on Star Wars? Are we trying to make a new Star Wars for the current audience? Or are we just trying to point backwards for the things that the fans love,

minus any of the deeper meaning? I have not watched much Clone Wars, but the people I know who love Clone Wars, and I'm sorry, I'm forgetting who said this to me. But someone recently was making the case for why Clone Wars were so good and what the problem with the live action shows and specifically the Faloni-led ones have been.

And they said this thing that Faloni did that was really smart on Clone Wars. First handful episodes roughgoing. That was the stuff that felt a little more passed down by George. And then Faloni starts to find his own voice. And what he did was he clocked into, George was pulling from so many movies he had watched, so many stories

he had read, books he had read and stuff. Faloni just starts watching like Turner Classic movies and going like, oh, here's like a B noir from the 40s. This is kind of an interesting plot line. Could I transpose this onto Star Wars? And part of Star Wars to me, the magic is that. It's taking a different mode of

storytelling or a different genre and finding how to put it into this universe. And Or is doing that. And Or is like, what's the Star Wars version of Battle of Algiers? Yes, totally. And it rules, and it's in conversation with everything, and it's deeper and more meaningful for that reason.

I think Ackleite does that. I think even skeleton crew in a very superficial way, while not being self-burdened with seriousness. It's doing it. It put the goonies. It put goonies inside Star Wars. We said that in unison. We did. And Mando.

Mando smartly, why the first season works so well? Is it like, why? What if you just did, do lone wolf and cub? Do gun smoke. You know, do like have gun, will trowel or whatever. Here's the question that I have for you, Griffin, having just watched it, though. Because we've talked so much about how, and again, I'm the one who liked the movie the most. Had fun watching it.

Saw shit I enjoyed and still kind of rolled my eyes. But, like, part of it feels like, don't change a thing about Grogu. He's our moneymaker. This is about Star Wars and beyond that it's about Grogu. It's like about, like it's so myopic. But then we also talk about, you know, from Force Awakens to Last Jedi to the Rise of Skywalk and how they're constantly unwrapping what's been done based on overthinking fan reactions and this and that. How in the world in an era where it's clear that the creative and corporate culture is leading to so many moments like that,

let alone the number of high caliber filmmakers that have been announced and then it's been pissed away. how the fuck does Tony Gilroy get two seasons of a show on that so clearly meet the moment in the way no other Star Wars is in which he does a show about regular street-level people trying to deal with the encroachment of fascism at an era where the news is so heavily dealing with all over the world street-level protests of people trying to fight back against the idea of no kings, George Floyd, Minneapolis, last year.

So it's a miracle that. How did he pull that miracle off of getting it on? He pulled it off in the way that most miracles happen in this level of like corporate art, which is like something slipped through the system. There was a mistake and it was actually, it solved a problem to let him do this. That same deep pandemic Disney investor conference day where they announced 87 projects and these things that used to have behind closed doors were suddenly live streamed. And none of us had stuff to watch.

So many people were watching it and it was being reported on. They announced these movies that didn't happen and they announced like eight TV shows. And half of them never manifested. There was some new droid show that never happened. There's the Gina Carano show that never happened. There's the Lando show that never happened. Oh boy. And Andor is part of that lineup.

Andor was of the things they announced that hadn't actually like been going. And Osoku was part of that as well. Andor was kind of highest priority. A, they have Diego Luna on a contract. trying to negotiate his holds. He's a busy actor. They're like spending money to keep him available to do a show. They hire writers quickly. They start developing it. They put months of work and money into it. I think there's some amount of pre-production. Well, Jared Bush, it was Jared Bush's show. And it was also Stephen Schiff, who had come off of the Americans.

There were a couple different teams. No, Jared, no, Jared Bush develops the show, the Zootopia guy. He writes a pilot. Behind Zootopia. That's the original. Yes, he writes a pilot. He writes a Bible. So it wasn't Gilroy at first. No, not at all. Then Schiff is hired as the showrunner. Yes. And then Gilroy joins in a little later. And that is how this all happens.

It's what happened with Rogue One. Where he's like, I have a few notes. And then it's like he seems to have just kind of taken over in a good way. My understanding is, you know, Rogue One, they said, like, the movie has problems. Can you come in and fix it? And he was like an assassin. And they credit him with solving a lot of the issues, even though it costs a lot of money, was a lot of panic late in the dead.

And so they're like working on this and they're like, this Utopia guy, Stephen Schiff, who's coming off of the Americans, oh, let's hire a spy show guy. None of this is working. And they're like, can Gowroy come in and give us the three fixes? Right. And he sort of says, like, I think you sort of don't have anything.

And Kathleen Kennedy challenges him and says like, okay, if you could do anything, what would you do? And he goes, let me think on it. And he comes in and pitches it. And basically, there was enough money sunk into it. that it was prudent to do something with it. And then I think they got excited by it. And they were like, let's fucking support this.

But he never could have pitched that from the get-go. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. And it doesn't seem like there's any part of them that's going to look at it. I don't know about the actual subscribers, but the critical praise and the fan, like they will... It matters. Well, they listen to the negative fan love to the point where they have...

I think that Abrams' unwrapping giants' movies. but they don't listen to the positive fan love to go like, what's our next political story? But how do you replicate and or? They're like, that's like... Well, Saw Guerrera. Well, you know, people... The Book of Saw.

Hell yeah. Buzz Buzz, Motherfucker. Guerrera from the Book of Saw. You know, like, it's like this weird series of accidents that led to this thing. It costs a fortune. They don't want to do that.

You know, I mean, partly it's COVID. Partly it's streaming TV. But also, Gilbert was like, if we're doing this, it has to look real. We need like bodies in places. They set it in like real places. Yeah. Mando was shot entirely in L.A.

Which they keep saying, and people have been making fun of Favro for trotting that out. And obviously it's like Favro is saying... He's doing right by the industry. Exactly. He is doing right by his people. Yep. Where a crowd understands like that matters right now.

And I think that's fine that he's doing that. As a human being, it's a great move. But some people are kind of pointing out like, hey, man, Star Wars is kind of defined by like going to a really crazy place. Tunisia. or whatever, or even Australia or, you know, where... The Arctic Circle.

Yeah. And like getting some cool landscapes. And instead, like, you're having a conversation with Rod of the Hut in what's clearly like nothing. Right. But credit to Favre. Like, the unions and the out-of-work people and the industry are rally. I didn't shoot this in fucking Bulgaria, guys.

Right. Right. That's what he's saying. They weren't going to shoot this in real places anyway. Favre was basically become a guy who seemingly doesn't like fresh air or daylight anymore. Right? Like, you're right.

It was a binary. It was either they go to Eastern Europe or they shoot this in stages in America, but it was going to be shot on stages. That in and of itself is not a death knell, but it's like every decision on this movie is a version of that. And there's even a story, there's a Vulture article that came out yesterday at the time we're recording this about like the clown scene in L.A. I read that. No one's talking about it. Everyone's normal about that piece. Did you read it? Yeah. I was just jumping into me. a joke. No, no, no.

It was funny. You're the vulture piece. You were saying. It was asking the question of, why is this the thing that they made? What was the strategy here? Is it going to work? It's not opening well, right? The reviews have been bad.

Everyone's kind of shrugging about it. And they call out this movie was very cheap to make, especially for Star Wars. It cost $175 million. L.A. was so grateful to get production entirely there. They gave a $25 million rebate. It costs less than $150, which for Star Wars is nuts. what's an insane amount of money. It's not,

it's money that was spent to put a lot of people to work and create jobs and fucking whatever. But they also have this anecdote that two friends texted us yesterday. Yeah. And I was like,

there's the review right there. And they go, Disney just trusted Favro because he's like a smart, steady hand. He launched the Marvel universe. He kind of launched live action Disney in a way.

He doesn't stress out. He gets things done. He works fast. He works quick. He's such a multi- Tasker that one day when they were filming easy interior shots of Mando and Grogu in the cockpit, he also

spent his time grilling up 500 grilled cheeses on a griddle for the cast and crew. And I'm like, this feels like a movie made by a guy who's also making sandwiches at the same time. Chef call that. There are TV shows that feel like, you know, we joke, this is a show you're supposed to watch while you're folding laundry. This is a movie made by someone who's in the act of

folding laundry. And it's like, it's the whole thing that where you're like, it's great that he brought production back to L.A. That's nice that he made sandwiches for everybody. I don't know. Maybe the scenes in the cockpit should be better. I would not be shocked if this movie outpaces the financial projections that the reviews are dismal about because people are going to bring their kids to it. The Thursday numbers, which is not a kid thing, right?

The kids will come in the weekend matinee the afternoon. Just wait to watch it off streaming is now also. It's also a problem. Yeah. But the Thursday previews, when you went to see. it are lower than what Solo did. And Solo opened on this exact same Memorial Day weekend and made 100 million for the four day and like 80 for the three day. And this is looking to make less than 80 for the three day. So it's coming in below the low watermark. It's coming in at solo or worse.

Yeah. It could, you know, because it's a family movie. You know, you could see some improvement. It's kind of like a rainy weekend. Yeah. That's sort of good and bad. You know, like that can help drive people to theaters. But their triumph would be, we did the exact same number as solo. The idea of them doing demonstrably better than solo is basically out of the question. But also, wouldn't they make a bunch of money from all the toys and the numbies and all the shit?

They're fine. They're fine. They're fine. It wasn't that expensive a movie. They shot solo two times. Solo costs like $400 million. Sure. They're going to be fine on this.

But like, what's the long-term gain of it's fine? when Star Wars is kind of in crisis and Andor is starting to feel like an aberration. Yeah. And like, I guess Fallonie's hope is next year we have this other movie comes out.

It'll work and it'll do well. Yeah. And my skin is saved. Yes. But if I'm in charge of Disney, I'm seeing this go over so poorly. This is going over poorly. It's going over poorly.

It's got bad reviews and it's not doing well financially. Blank checks barely even talking about the movie. Right. Pined checks mostly just talking about Nilla Wafers and Avatar the Last Air Bender. They're saying it's a good episode. I can't tell if people are going to be upset that we're not talking about the plot, but I did do that three-minute challenge thing, and that was 114. Our editor's struggling a little bit with the screaming, but we'll make it work.

Oh, I didn't even think about that. Thank you. Thank you, Alan Smithy. Let me just cut that part out. No, we can keep it in triple it. Nope. Oppas last day is the best. Offa's lost days.

That's the best stretch of Avatar. That's very good. I mean, I love all the Bossing say stuff a lot. Oh, the Bossinging says really, amazing. special for kids, especially, like, you know, like teaching them about totalitarianism and about, like, displacement and refugees and all this stuff.

And a Nickelodean cartoon, Chris. Yeah, no, I didn't watch it. I don't question for a second. You will love it. It took me years to watch it. The Potolorian and Cascoo. Oh, sure. So I said a text to you.

But I'm just saying, is, sorry, I just finished with it. Is Filoni fired? Right. Like, is there a world where someone above at Disney is like, Star Wars needs a very strong hand at the hill now. Star Wars is a little, lost. We need to do the James

gun thing that DC did. We need to bring in a respected creative force. I have no idea if they do or don't. I don't know. But like, if I'm in charge of Disney right now, Kathleen Kennedy has gone out into that good night and Faloni with his cowboy hat, he's in this movie. He's wearing a stupid hat.

Trapper Wolf. God bless him. Do you think what he's performance at that robot is when he said, I'm the shit and I won't take notes anymore? I think so. I think it's all part of it. I think a lot of things contributed to Tyca White and he was really feeling himself girdling sandwiches. I was so wrong about, I thought that Thor movie was going to do the God Butcher stuff.

That's one of the funniest runs you've ever gone on in this podcast. I would say, if you read the comments, no, you're right about this. He betrayed it to have his own character make jokes. Yes. He betrayed everything amazing about the storyline so he could keep coming back to life and personally making jokes. Thor Love and Thunder, which did you ever catch up with it? I still have not seen it. It is the only MCU movie I haven't seen.

I haven't seen Iron Man 3, obviously. So good. I regret to inform you. It has one flaw, but otherwise it is maybe our favorite Marvel movie. It's the one flaw that I was cut from the film. Yeah, correct. Obviously, it's the only thing that could have improved it. I acted opposite Don Chedel and it got the cutting roll.

It's a great actor. Fortunately, he could not overcome the massive deficit I brought. Oh, sure. No. But Thor Love and Thunder is one of those things where I'm like, that kind of slipped under a bit of a sort of post-COVID radar. It doesn't get enough shit. but I think it actually does not get enough shit how fucking bad it is.

And if you read the source material, it's so good. Then the source material goes out the window. The riffing was freaking sublime. The riffing was fricking. What did you want to say, Ben, about the Mandalorian Pawski? Excuse me, the Pottolorian and cast goo. I sent you a text. Can you just look?

Yeah, look at there. The great Pat Reynolds are our longtime Photoshop artist, titled this episode, the podolorian and cast go. We give him no... Oh, I don't want to make you here. I'll just show you the picture. Yeah.

Wait, I know. I found it. I found my phone. Okay. Because I do think there's some powerful stuff going on here. He doesn't, you know, we rarely even give him notes. Sure. But he usually drops the thing like a day or two before it needs to post and we just trust the process.

He sent this photo yesterday and it did have us reeling. I even showed it to my wife. And I don't show her every, you know, Photoshop that crosses my task. And was she smiling? She was laughing. I like that you came to Cascoo's defense because Marie God love her. Oh, curse. And I'm like cursed with awesomeness.

This is good. We've really landed on something. And in fact, maybe Blank Check's first movie is the podcast Lorean and Castgou because I think we could sell a lot of Cascoo merch. I think so. I mean, look, I know we're being critical of this movie, but we can do it right. Right? If we sold like Cast goo cookies and shit?

Yeah. Are you looking at this, Geth? This is really strange. It's kind of an achievement. I wish I wasn't in the room with you. You wish you weren't in the room. Are you saying you want to be Photoshopped in? Do you want to be Zeborellis?

I mean, I did, I did think maybe I would be in there, but that's okay. Do you want to be Zeb or Rada? Me is Rada. So I think Rada is the right pin. Geth is Rada and your Zeborelios. There's, you remember Zeb or dear friend. I'm going to email Pat right now and let him know. Griff, yeah.

Until this second, I forgot about Zaborellio. Zeb. Yep. And they told you not to forget about Zeb, obviously. You know, they... Eminem said that. Yeah, right. But... So, Zeb, who's in Star Wars Rebels, who's like... Which I love Rebels. Rebels is a show I actually watched. Love is too strong, but I watched most of it. I felt it somewhat disappeared up its own ass eventually, but I enjoyed it. David, the exact same relationship. I don't remember if it was three or four seasons in total. I loved the first season of that show, much like Mandalorian. At season two, I was like, I still like this. Season 3rd. I'm like, it's getting really into tying back to Clone Wars shit.

And then I never finished the show. Yeah, the end is not good. I love the start. Well, did you love in Asoka where, you know, all those characters are flesh and blood now and they deliver lines like this. We have to go get the guy. I liked it fine. I mean, I also just, you know, I like Rosario Dawson. I do too.

So much. I'll watch it's a good actor. I don't mind. I'll watch her be pensive and exist in this. Mary Elizabeth Winston, I love. Rosario Dawson existing in a liminal space where. she rejected Jediism but can never be human again. Basically, taking a nap for four episodes of that season.

You guys are so harsh. I'm not harsh. I watched all of that TV show. It was a lot of hours I put into it. It was very low energy. It was very, very low energy. But her face is lit up by the lightsaber. I was watching it. And it's a white light saber.

That's a white lightsaber. I was watching it and I was like, what is this acting style? Why are they like this? What does this remind me of? And then I cracked it. I went, this is children. doing Shakespeare. This is when you see a high school production of Shakespeare and it's like, no one knows what they're saying, but they know that it's supposed to be performed seriously.

And so you just make an acting choice that is serious. I like Osuka fine. And I'm watching actors, I like just be so juiceless. Quite juicy. Can I share my joke with Chris? Oh yeah, it's time. Yes, I've heard that there's a joke. I struggled to watch Asoka. I was really struggling and I made this commitment to I'm going to watch all the shows before this episode and Ben was a real friend and he helped me. Well, because in a little more context, we're...

Just say the joke first and then give the context. I think this is the way to do. Fine. Okay, well, whatever. So Griffin's struggling. I say, do you want me to come inside a jump on the bed while you're a soaking? Got it.

Got it. No context needed. Okay, so the context is we workshop this joke a lot. It's been in the work. for like two months. I pitched it. I mean, I said it in real time when we were on our trip.

We were drunk in the back of a car and you said, is a soaking anything? Is there a way to make that mean something? That's when the Mormons, they jiggled a bed to... Yes. Because they can't move, but maybe someone else removes them. You can't... But you can't...

When you say, you can insert, it's sort of like, I think already some rules are maybe being bent here. Is they insert. Yeah. And then they go, well, I'm not thrusting. And then someone else jumps on the bag like a bunch of monkeys.

Jury duty did a famous joke. Yes. So Ben was joking that I was holding my finger over the play button. So I didn't want to press it. And then he started jumping on the bed. A soaking. And that's a soaking. So Zeb.

Yes. Zeb, no, I like all, Rebels, I think every character is well-conceived and fun. And the way they've translated to live action, all of them have become so boring and sad. And Zeb's thing is basically, A, he's based off of like the original Ralph Macquarie Chubaca design which is fun.

Chubbacca, right. Right, which most of Rebels is original Macquarie designs back to the drawing board. I like that. His character is basically like what if the pilot is kind of like a big kind of monkey bear alien who's almost got like a football hooligan vibe. Right. He's like a bit of a tough guy. Right.

But he's funny and he'll give you shit, whatever. This shows up. They just act like everyone's going to be. cheering that he's back. He's from a TV show that's now over 10 years old. They brought him in for one scene, basically a like Blinkin'emissic cameo in one episode of Mandalorian season three, where he never interacts with Mandalorian or Grogu. And now he's just like their friend who pilots their ship, even though Mando famously loves piloting ships. Is a pilot skilled. And they don't do any work to introduce him. They don't do anything to make you like this guy. He no longer has

the traits that made him likable in his previous show. And they just act like we're all like, thank fucking God Zeb is here. And he's there and he disappears and he reappears twice. And like Groger pushes the button. Twice you think he's gone from the movie. And then he's like, oh, Zeb's back. I do have a follow-up question for something you said, David. And it ties into this, which I think you said, like, is there a chance for Faloni gets fired?

Yeah. Or maybe fire might be too strong, but like exactly pushed again over to the side of like, you know what? You can be in charge of cartoon. But I kind of, I think one of the thing that seems clear about him and I don't know him is that it seems like his greatest strength and his greatest weakness is that he really, really cares on a granular detailed level about the things he cares about. This is true.

And that's what made so much of his early stuff feel so great and connected. Right. And is why we're all sitting around like, who the fuck is Zeb? Like, that's clearly it's good and bad. my question is if someone is brought in to share that load or to become the figy of Star Wars that he is maybe proving not to be, fundamentally,

is that better if it's someone who really loves Star Wars or someone who doesn't give a fuck about Star Wars? You know who doesn't give that much of a fuck about Star Wars? Who's that? Tony Gilroy. Could you hand the whole thing to Gilroy with Disney ever? No, and he wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do it now.

Right. Because it is, right, the challenge is, it's like James Gunn was, I guess, down for it. But it's like, right, do you want that job? It's like kind of this weird executive managerial job. You always need someone that's like, I just want good stories. Totally. And then the Star Wars stuff will come in.

Or at least a 50-50 split, you know, versus Faloni's interests feel 90% maintaining the tenants of Star Wars in a very kind of like literal way. You say, you know, do they bring someone else in? Do they push them aside? The question is, beyond who would even want to do that? that because it feels like such a poison chalice and the fandom has become so impossible to please. I feel like the fandom speaks as if they're monolithic, even though it's like a shattered, like 40-part fandom with different feelings.

You know, it's like modern Christianity that's like a bunch of different sex, and then they're speaking as a monolith. And then Disney reacts to them like they're also a monolith. So you're never actually making something that pleases everyone, and everyone's like, no, Star Wars is for me? and why are you not making the thing that I want, which is a struggle. I'm not against the idea of this being a movie that's just for kids to get the new generation in. And if kids are loving this, I'm happy.

The screening we went to, our buddy Matt Singer brought his daughter, who I believe has not watched the show. Sure. I don't know if she's ever seen the original Star Wars movies. I mean, she's seen some Star Wars. I'm not sure. But she's certainly not specifically a big Star Wars fan. You said you brought her to the press screen? Matt Singer brought his daughter.

Oh, got it, got it, got it. And he, you know, was... I thought you did have a blast. I did not. He brought his daughter, who I think is nine, and was just kind of like, I want to see that movie because I like Baby Yoda. And he said that she enjoyed it.

But she also enjoyed, like, her green-colored sprite as much as she enjoyed the movie. And it was just sort of the general celebration of Grogu was enough. I'm not going to be, like, cynical of that. I like anything that, like, makes people happy that isn't aggressively harmful to systems. We will all be dead sooner than those children. Totally.

They need those children spending their money when they are in the workforce. Yes. But I question, is there even an obvious or semi-obvious person to point to should that person take over Star Wars? Because when people were angry about the movies four years ago, everyone would have said, probably makes sense to hand it to Favro. Sure. And if not Favro, Follone's the bad fan choice.

And now both of these guys have come. kind of like stepped in it. Well, but I mean, I personally would never have wanted Felonius to be in charge of Star Wars. Bavro, I could have seen that happening. Yeah. Yeah. He's more got that kind of like vague exec kind of status.

Now I would rather see him be in charge of a Cubano truck, for example, because it feels like that's what really makes him happy. It's so funny that he made one great giant franchise movie. One franchise movie that was a mess, then made his self-referential. I'm struggling working within these corporate demands. I just want to be doing my little thing, food truck. Got that out of his system has become the ultimate, like, studio hired hand guy. Has become the like, yeah, yeah.

I figured out how to take all difficulty out of the filmmaking process, and I will do nothing controversial. David? Yeah. Oh, you do it. I'm doing horribly. You want to know why? Tell.

Because I'm remembering what my experience used to be like shopping for glasses. Ah, terrible. Complicated. Overpriced. And the glasses, the styles themselves, they felt outdated. Now, you don't wear glasses. No. You wear sunglasses.

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And now I'm going to put my glasses back on. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Please. And I just also want to say I think you guys would agree. Yeah. I think I've put the bad boy

of blank check bit on hold for this episode. I think we've had a thoughtful discussion with a lot of good points. I think your blank check's good boy. Some passion along the way that maybe led to some early moments of contentiousness, but I think all in the spirit of the debate. Yeah, it's emotional arc.

And I think that you and anyone listening can hear that we are, I believe, two hours in, and I'm only bringing this up for the first time now. And I want you to know, I hope that that that's a reflection that I'm asking this genuinely and not trying to force any past divisiveness back into the spot, like for real.

Sure. When I watched Andor, and I watched Rogue One, I mentioned before that I did have that, it's not that much harder than you, and wamp rats in the T-14 back home. And you know, Luke was so,

fucking naive, so innocent. And it actually, like, a new hope is, obviously you kind of know this, but it just underlines. He's hope.

Yeah. He's a farm boy who represents this idea. Like, not only, not only does he step up in the face of people, like, who know the history of Cassian Andor,

killing someone who's like, you're on my team, but you're making too much fucking noise. Blow, you're dead. But also he's, a vessel. He's an idea to believe in. He's a blonde hair, blue-eyed boy

with optimism. How and I don't oh boy. You see where I'm going? I know where you're coming. I just want you to say it. How do we like I sink my teeth into that, Luke, and it actually gets me choked up thinking about

the beauty of like, oh right, there is no revolution in real life that can lose sight of hope and optimism. And Luke is the reminder of that in this universe that we love. But I think the other thing that Star Wars is about is that history repeats.

But when we get to the last Jedi and Luke himself is cynical, that's not even slightly heartbreaking. No. It is heartbreaking, but that's the point. That's what it's using. That's the story engine is that it's heartbreaking. I just don't have this relationship with Luke that you do. I just don't at all.

I don't want Luke to be. I'm fucking Hull. Do you see that motherfucker? Why are you yelling at me? Because you're like, why do I like Star Wars? I like Luke all right. Being so gentle about even bringing it up because I think it's a valid question in light of Andor.

But I'm trying to respond. It's just like, it's just not what I feel about. I just don't care about Luke in that way. I care about Luke, but I think it's more interesting to have these things tested. It's also just so funny to me. It's the same as you ever. Forever and ever. And everyone's like, I can't believe Ryan Johnson did that. I'm like, episode seven begins with

He Has Vanished. That's the exquisite corpse he was handed. And number two, George Lucas's entire plan for his secret trilogy was the exact same thing. It was going to be more Will's focus, but it was going to be, you know, have your own wills.

Luke on his own island. I really am not trying to have a fight. Yeah. I'm really not trying to poke a beehive again. I'm not doing a bit. I just will say, the dismal nature of Andor building up to the dismal

ending of Rogue One, linking right to Vader on the ship and throwing you into Luke's story. Right. With the new context of Like, this world is fucking falling apart. This kid's aunt, the uncle got killed. He's leaving this world.

And he somehow still fucking believes that, like, he has the fucking idiocy, the audacity, if not idiocy to think he can actually blow up the death star, but then he does it. Because it's age 20 knowledge. He's a young man. He has to experience anything. All I'm trying to put on record is that that's the Luke I love.

And I'm just leaving it at that. I'm not trying to have a fight about it. that's the Luke I love. Sometimes you love your dad and then he gets old and he's like racist and you're like, how's this the same guy? Not speaking of my own father. But they don't make a movie. But the credits can roll before your dad gets racist.

That's why it's fiction. But then you're questioning the entire enterprise of making these movies. And again, which ties into, do we need more Star Wars? Maybe not. Okay, but here's the thing. We're going to have more Star Wars. It's happening.

I'm not sure. You guys can feel it. I'm being a good boy. All these debates died with episode nine. Yes. Any chance to sort of properly resolve Whatever you felt about the Luke story Or any of the other sequels or died with episode 9

Which had no story They whiffed in a way that pissed off both sides Because in episode 9 Was unhappy other than Chris Gethered blank checks If episode 9 The ocean fight looks cool Some things Looks all right

If episode 9 had successfully Kind of given you a satisfying Conclusion to the stories of Ray And Finn and Kylo Ren And maybe Poe But like those big three Oh Poe I like, no.

No, but I'm just saying like, if you had given them satisfying endings, then you would have been like, string them to a tree and chop his head off. Hey, come on. Let me, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Please. Get it. No, no. I just run out of energy, guys. You're smart and I respect you. You're smart and I respect you. Please. I'm just, dudes, I'm so out of energy.

I just like, it's too late. It's gone, guys. No, we're begging for it. You cut me off so many times. We're making a joke about chopping and post that up. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm going to be honest with you guys, I'm not mad, but I get cut off so much that I just, my brain can't fire anymore.

I don't remember what I'm trying to say. You were saying if it had given satisfying endings to the main character. Then the Luke and Leah and Han stories in the sequels might not hurt your feelings as much. They might be a fun debate then instead of a... It would be like Luke did that and had all that in service of what happened to Kylo, which made sense, and Ray which made sense. And instead it was like, Ray decides to be a sky. Skywalker, because she thinks that's nice. Kylo died.

He was all right the last 20 minutes there. It is ultimately... Where does Poe end it? I don't know. He's around. He's around. But I mean, like, after that, is he around? He's around.

He blows up the empire or whatever. And Finn, I guess, like, maybe meets his sister or his friend or something. No, he wasn't his sister. And she's a girl. And she's not Lando's daughter, but she's... She's like, I don't know, she's like him or something. Yeah, because she also was a stormtrooper or something. But maybe they have force powers.

We'll deal with it later. And it's just kind of like the movie just kind of ends with like, I don't know. Everyone's all right. Can we talk around? Sorry. The other elephant in the room. It is tough to be like, oh, right, it could be an interesting debate, but like we don't even. But they just blew it.

We don't, we fundamentally don't trust that anyone's at the wheel of this entire thing. Like, and like, Luke's in episode nine, right? Like, he's like. And Hans Solo. They bring both of them back as Force Ghosts. That's true. Hans Solo, I remember, because that moment is fine because he doesn't even speak. But Luke is like...

He talks? What does he say? He's like, shit, son, I'm sorry. But Luke has like the scene, like, Ghost Luke sits with Ghost Yoda and they're like, Hey, Ray Skywalker. I like the sound of that. Yeah. Like, I just...

Shlitz. You know, it's just like if there had been... then maybe you wouldn't be so mad. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. Or whatever your emotion is about the sort of the later arc of Luke that they blew. It's, I don't even care to relitigate it.

I'm sorry that got any of us this upset. I just really. I just really think Andor underlines the naivete of Luke in a way that I think it really underlines what I always liked about the character. I agree, but that's the naivete of a young man and also a white man who's not being challenged in the same way. that Andor is. I mean, that's part of what Andor's about. Not a nice fun part of the juice of Andor.

Totally. And even down to him being. Not in a, over the top way. No, but he is, like, coded as immigrant within the universe of the movie. And he's never going to be the poster boy.

He's hidden in the shadows. It can't be the poster boy. It's cool. What I would equate it to, Geth, is part of the enduring power of Jesus as an idea for people to believe in. We're talking about Jesus now.

He died very young. right as a pure symbol kind of have to die and there's also you know the promise of he's going to come back someday but if he never comes back we can all project

how helpful he would be today and I think there was a similar thing because you make this trilogy it ends with Luke settling the universe right and now he's become the Jedi master and then George Lucas is like I'm stepping away

and by the way if I were to do more they'd be prequels it just takes Luke off the board where it's, we all have her head canons of how great Luke could be, right? And then he does the prequels and people are disappointed and then they come back. I will say not another word about it. I'm just putting on record.

Andor made me like the Luke I met when I was young. Totally. But that guy can't live forever. Like life experiences are going to change him and test him. I mean, the thing that sucks, and then we should just, of course, return to, well, we should be done soon as well. A little rata. There's some toys we need to.

A little rotta. A little bit of rot. But it's just like, that was your shot with Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher. That's the thing they absolutely fucked up is never putting the three of them in the same frame while they had the chance. And that's a JJ fuck up. It's a bit of a J.J. fuck up. And it's just kind of a like, you know, you had all those guys.

They all look great in Force Awakens. It's like, you know, the energy could be there. Terry dying is a tragedy. No one could have anticipated that. That was force major disaster. But just generally, it's kind of like. like, we saw old Han Solo, that kind of rocked. Yes.

We saw Luke Skywalk, old Luke Skywalker, people had complicated feelings, but he gave a big performance. He did. We saw old Leah, you know, there's little bits where you're kind of like that kind of rocks, but like, there's not much of it and it's sort of, you know, and it's like, and now if they're like, hey, we're going to do episode 10, it's like, yeah, but you're not going to do it with them. So that's that over.

So now what are you going to do? Our friends who've been watching Star Wars with their kids are all like, Ray still fucking hits. Oh, yeah, Ray Rock. Like, kids watching. watching this today, you know, born after these films ended, that trilogy ended, are like, I'm buying Ray. I'm buying Ray like I'm buying Luke.

Both of these work for me. Like I'm buying Anakin. I mean, that's the interesting thing about our friends with kids under 10 who have shown them all three trilogies are like, they're in on all three of these arcs. They like the innocent. They like seeing the innocent go bad. They like seeing the different versions of what the innocent becomes. That all works.

The elephant in the room, I think we should just talk about very, very. briefly. They brought it in the room. The rotta in the room. The hut in the room. It was revealed earlier this year that they had been deep in development and had greenlit. And Lucasfilm internally was ready to go on a movie that was going to be directed by Stephen Soderberg and written by Scott Z. Burns, one of his regular collaborators, that was the Kylo Ren movie. That was basically Adam Driver being like, we got to fucking undo this rise of Skywalker mess.

Clearly, Driver just being like, that character rocked. Yeah. Yes. And we didn't do it right. And can we just bring him back and like do a better thing? Right. And no one knows exactly what the take was on how he's back or what, you know, it was. But it was going to be set after episode nine. And it was going to be called the hunt for Ben Solo and not be episode 10 proper, but it be this

Kylo Ren Ben Solo movie. And Lucasfilm greenlights it. Kathleen Kennedy green lights it. It went along some amount of time. And Disney says no to it. Yeah. And Kathleen Kennedy did not. an exit interview earlier this year

where she was like, that's the only time that's happened, that we wanted to make something and they overruled us. And the argument that was given to us is, we don't think you've justified in the story undoing his death. Right.

It's like, I just don't see how he's alive. Right. Versus like Mando and Grosgu, I got no questions about, they're on another adventure. And it speaks to like what a mess this thing is. We're kind of what everyone wants is a movie that could undo the damage

of nine. And I accept some pretty stupid logic if it leads to a good movie that is functional on its own terms and leaves me feeling like these characters are in a better place. But then it's like what? You're going to make a whole movie that like exists to fix continuity, right? And it's like on the one

hand, sure, on the other hand, should you just do something else? Just forget it. Maybe. Just like lob the ball to another field. But then I'm also like if Adam Driver wants to do it, that's already more of an argument in favor. That's the thing. That's the thing. That's the baffling part, that you have an enthusiastic Adam Driver and Steven Soderberg that want to play in the sandbox. That's an energy that Mando doesn't have where Pedro Pascal's like, so what, five days total, right?

It speaks to the Disney thing where they are not hearing Soderberg's driver. They're hearing like, they're going to be expensive. They're going to have notes. They're going to push back. You know, like they're probably hearing just kind of like, those are artists. We don't want to deal with that. We just want to make something that's like, you know, we can control. The thing with Soderberg was part of his big pitch was I figured out how to make this movie cheaper.

I think these movies got too expensive and that created a fear around making big creative decisions. He's been figuring out how to shoot movies on fucking iPhones. This wasn't going to be that. But he was like, I think I can apply some of what I learned to make a movie that costs half as much as what these other things cost. Closer to probably the budget of this movie. And said, like, it would be great if we could free Star Wars up. to have different budget levels. You know, this is the thing

that fucked Marvel eventually is that the movie's got so big they couldn't make a smaller film. Right, right. So everything has to be $300 million worth of justification. And I, to some degree,

commend that Mando's small. Sort of. At least he's not trying, right, to be the start of something new. It's not cacophonous, but it's like, it really places a lot of its bets

on Rod of the Hut, who is ripped ab-laden Jeremy Allen White with a pitch-down voice whose characterization is just my dad was shitty I'm trying not to be like him. Not like my dad.

I'm like a muscle brain. Now let's fight the chest pieces from the chest thing. So Chris. Yeah. This character. I'm actually watching a Twitter video of it right now.

God. This character here is. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks. This is. It's really rough.

This is like hard to watch. Can I ask where you saw the film, Ben, you actually? I know you saw it with some kids, but... I saw it at the Cobble Hill Theater. Oh, that's kind of a fun place to see. And what actually, I think, enhanced it for me as, like, on an emotional level, is that the 15-year-old kids that were there were talking throughout the entire movie. Yeah.

And that helped me get distracted from the film. Sure. Because I could then lock in on my anger. at like this kid whispering to his friend that that's Jeremy Allen White up there on the screen or whatever the fuck.

What did you ask me? Oh, just, were they, yeah, were they into the movie? Were they like this box? They loved it. They were laughing at everything.

Every bad fucking joke, they were like rolling and fucking in the aisles. Maybe we're the old heads and we just need to let it go. Every time Grogu came on screen, there was a group of like girls. They were just like, That's what I mean.

I understand projections. Thank you. But I watched a movie where I'm like, it's not for me. Yeah. I have to let go of the idea that Star Wars is going to give me anything to actually chew on. Like it really legitimately used to. But like the kids in that theater walked out. Is Andor almost a problem because it demonstrates that that can still be done?

And we're like, why don't you do this all the time? Yeah. This is the fascinating thing is I've been so deep in Star Wars. The closer we've gotten to this, the more I've been watching, right, to make my deadline, myself-imposed deadline. And the majority of the stuff I've watched I have not liked. And a lot of it, I found kind of a slog to get through and kind of boring. And I'm not a binge watcher in general.

So that notion of being like, to stay on schedule, I got to watch three tonight, has like often felt like true homework. In a way, this job of doing the podcast and having a sign viewing usually does not. Yet, the more I'm watching the stuff I don't like. As much as watching the stuff like Andor that I love, I've come out of it just being like, fuck, I'm remembering how much I love Star Wars. Like when I see Andor it reminds me everything that makes me love Star Wars.

And when I watch the stuff I don't like, it reminds me of what it's not doing, which reminds me of what I do like about Star Wars, where I just like have bought three Star Wars shirts in the last two weeks. Because I keep being like fucking Star Wars. What you buy? They're like old comic art shirts, which I kind of like, like it's the Marvel comic.

Isn't it funny how all these like bespoke t-shirt shops online and stuff and like, you know, like with these sort of like indie designs of shit we like like X-Men or Star are basically just kind of like, you know those guys on the street who would just have weird t-shirts that were kind of like bootleg? Bootleg stuff has become official. Right. Worth that. Yeah. It's $45.

Right. Like it's like we're that. You want a hoodie that makes you look like night crawler. Right. Do I have a $98 deal for you? And by the way, you know. You don't know if this is drop shipping company in China that might take eight months to send it to you. Or is it like a hypebeast company run by VC people?

I almost think to speak to what we just touched on. Andor almost feels like a really profound accident that it ever slipped through. Yeah. Yeah. Like I think that a lot of the explosions of nerd entertainment, when you look at them historically, actually max you up with points of major societal anxiety. Yeah. Right?

Totally. And we're living through one of those moments. Right? Like superheroes were invented by young Jewish creators as Hitler was rising in Europe. This is when superheroes were invented. And feeling empowered as survivors making it through the other side. Well, that on 60s Marvel was a combination of those same Jewish creators, now also talking about survivorship and nuclear anxiety, right? All the origins of Marvel.

Right. It's a lot of civil rights. But you look at Spider-Man, whole Fantastic Four X-Men, X-Men, all nuclear anxiety leading into social movements. Children of the atom. Feminism, racial anxiety, all of it, right? The same years that race riots were happening in major American cities are the same years Marvel's exploding. And Star Wars about the Vietnam War. It's about seeing another era, a new form of fascism on the horizon. It's about all of these things. And now we don't, like, I don't know what to point to that's doing that now and then end or maybe it seems accidentally or Trojan horse

in a way that feels like such a tease compared to everything else which is like now they fight a big dragon snake now they fight a couple of robots and now they fight this and now they fight the whole fucking chessboard and now they fly away. Oh, the chessboard are the monsters.

Yes. Oh. Yeah, you didn't love that then? Well, because they just looked like nothing. Yes. They just looked like... It was a monster after monster. They looked like...

Ben, thank you for calling that out. I have a thing I want to say about this. So the chessboard was done by Phil Tippett, who's like one of my favorite film artists of all time. The original Star Wars movie with the little puppets. Yeah. It was the first moment that Phil Tippett really kind of shown in the process because he was brought in a sort of additional guy to do stuff.

They had shot the digitaric chess board as actors in costumes, and it didn't look good. And George was like, can we get a Harryhausen type thing? And they were like, Tippett's good at stop motion. And he does that and it leads to the breakthrough of him being the guy who cracks the Tontan and the ATAT and all these sorts of things, right? And then Robocop and Ed 209 is like a legend to me and like a genius. And I watched this documentary about him that was called, let me look it up quickly.

But I watched it recent. It's a documentary made by two French guys. That's mostly just kind of like informational about the entirety of his career and his worldview and whatever. And a lot of his compatriots were talking about him and what makes him so great. And they said the thing about Phil is a lot of. people start with detail and build out a design from there. And Phil always starts with really elemental shapes. He lands on a shape that's interesting. And then he lands on a personality connected to that shape. And then he works into the finer detail. And it's like, right, you see the Dejaroch

Tress board for like seconds. And the different shapes on that board, beyond being different colors, feel so distinct and recognizable. This movie shows them for 10 minutes. It does. They move all around. It covers them in a way where you basically never see them full body. You can't distinguish between them. And these are very honed designs by a genius. They brought Phil Tippett into work on this movie. He did work. A lot of the special effects feel like they are CGI trying to approximate Phil Tippett stop motion,

especially the little walker that Mando's on in the snow at the beginning of the movie. They did that. But I sucked. But then I felt like the big robots at the end might have actually been some version of stop motion. it certainly they felt very robocane so he's involved in this process like this is a guy that Favro idolizes and yet he's not getting

what made this guy's work work. What I didn't like about the opening sequence apart from just generally kind of low energy the weird thing of him going up and down the mountain and the walker, it just felt like a video game where you like one of those open-world games were you like... No, it's like you're like, I'm gonna go this way

and then you, like, climb over a mountain by the sake. Like, it just didn't make any sense the physics of it. Well, why would they be walking in the monster? He is a character. Narrow. Yeah. Yeah. But there is still a part of me that's a sucker for, like, Empire starts with a big, dumb

battle on hot. Totally. And it's a smart battle. It's a big smart battle. It's pretty smart. It's pretty smart. It's a cold open. And Ben has quit the podcast.

I guess I'm still just a bit of a sucker. Like, there's still just enough of a kid in me that's like, maybe they didn't nail it in every way. Like, I'll watch the heroes climb into a Star Wars Walker machine. Oh, that's... I'll watch it. I was there. Five out of ten.

They got a convertible ATST. They got an open top ATSD? Okay. This is me being 100% honest. I still am charmed by that. I wanted to feel that so badly. And because I was, like, feeling so ramped up on Star Wars, I go into the screen with David and I'm like, I'm not excited for this.

But I bet when it starts, some of the key jangling is going to get to me. Right. I bet they're going to start showing me things that are Star Wars. By the way, I like these characters. I love that first season. I like Grogu. Grogu's like a Marvel, right? Like, they nail the execution of this character on a technical level,

which is half really fucking high-level puppetry. And the genius of Grogu is when he's digital, they make the digital look like a puppet. They use the limitations. And like Grogu fucking just works visually this whole movie. And I sat there and I kept waiting for anything to give me any feeling of joy. and I wasn't sitting there with my arms crossed. I wasn't like, this sucks.

I just felt bored. And I don't know if it's that I, like, maxed out on Star Wars, if coming off of Andor, the bar was set too high, it being so fresh in my mind. Or if I just am like, guys, we can't be doing this. Like, there has to be something new. I see the trailers for the He Man movie, which is another dumb baby thing that I love so much.

And, like, the trailers have not been great. But I'm like, I guarantee you I'm going to sit there and they're going to show me characters. I have, and I'm going to point at the screen. I got hope for a Ram Man. People are starting to say it's kind of good. I'm starting to be some okay responses.

Whereas the Street Fighter movie. Yeah. You're out on that? I don't know about that. Interesting. But yeah, I'm like, if I see Ram Man ram into a bunch of guys, I'm probably going to like, my heart will. You have real connections to him in.

I have been Orko. You've been Orko. What a wild thing to be able to say. Isn't that insane? Yeah. It really is. It is a, it is a, Orko and Arthur are the two things where I'm like,

it's actually crazy that there are characters that meant that much to me when I was young that I got a chance to play. And I think about this stuff where it's like, in both of those cases, I want to do my own thing, but there's a legacy of these characters. I want anyone who grew up with them to recognize, not that it's identical,

but that like the spirit of the thing is captured, but how do you do something new with it? I spent years professionally thinking on this stuff so much in a microcosm only how it relates to like these characters and just be like it's got to be new otherwise you're just doing an impression

but also don't try to make it your own thing and disregard the past entirely and I just, this movie to me felt like it was just like snow, right? Like Hoth stuff? Yeah, like you like that? You like Walker. Like I do.

And I'm like... Like I said, I'm like five out of ten, I ate my chicken fingers. If my kid was older, you know, old enough to see it, I would have taken my kid and been like, yeah, I was all right. You would have had a better time

with your daughter than me because she would have gotten a little something out. Totally. And I'm not like just gripping my hands together. No. But I am just kind of like, well, this ain't really getting my blood pumping. Yeah, I was tired.

All right. We ought to be done talking about that movie because I know you have toys to show me or whatever. Like, I, I'm just, we cannot ignore the top. Did we at least shut out Mbo? It's crazy that we didn't even mention that. There's a fucking assassin, the skinny assassin,

with the flat hat. It basically becomes the antagonist for the second act with the wolf. I called him hat man. I kind of like the character design. I thought he looked cool. Apparently he's from one of the animated. He's a poloni. He's from the Colors?

He's a Flonny thing, right? Oh, he's a Flonny creation. I briefly thought he was, what, constable Zuvio? You did. And you went, that would be. You were like, that would be the coolest move. I did, I just, I thought he was cool. He was like, I like, I thought he was cool.

I like that he has a dog. I thought that wolf was cool. Yeah. No, I thought this guy. Can I say Wait, what's the wolf? He has a little dog He has a wolf

That's like his grogoo Yeah I'm gonna say something It's gonna make me sound nuts Yeah You either go Here we go Uh oh

No Never mind It's the type of thing that I say You have to say it And then we're gonna do food In toys I think if you're gonna have The wolf pick up

One of the Babu Fricks With its mouth Just kill the Bobu Frick's I agree with you 100% Just cramp the courage At your conviction For Babu Frick I think it's okay if maybe one is maybe.

Much like like two Ewoks like die and return of the Jedi. Right. And you have it roll over and go like, and it's kind of sad. It's kind of sad. It's kind of sad. It's good. It brings you in. Again, like the corporatism is showing when it's like, well, we can't possibly, we can't possibly kill one of the Babu fricks. The children will be sad. It's like, then don't have the wolf ever put it in its mouth. But don't go halfway. Kill the Babu Frick. Is there like, I just like the Star Wars.

thing of like the Anzilians. That's the Broughtap of Frick aliens. Where it's like, so do they just all like being mechanics? Is it a world of mechanics? This is where Star Wars weird with it's like races sometimes. Are there no Anzilians who are like, I make fucking pizza. Like someone's got

to eat it. I'm working on an EP. Dad, I like me. Maybe they're like... Just all guys with a bunch of goggles. Maybe they're like Cornish miners. Maybe it happens to be an industry they have excelled in culturally for decades. Let's go with that. So we bring them to Michigan and have They're like the Cornish miners of the Star Wars universe.

You remember how Carrie Russell is in episode nine is like a lady with a helmet or whatever? She's a spice dealer. Right. And like, I've forgotten that. It's got tight booty. But there was Babu Frick and it was like, Bobu! Frike! Babu was on her shoulder and we forget that she existed.

She's a fantastic act. Incredible. You don't see her actress. Incredible. She wears a helmet the whole fucking... Maybe one of our best living actors. She's up there. Yeah.

Babu Frick. only survives because Spielberg at the end was like, where's Bobrick? Where the fuck is Bobby? Are you guys idiots? So they have them like pop up and go like, hey, hey. Okay, I know we're trying to move on and I think you should do your thing. I want to, at least because we've been slamming on this movie,

I want to call out some good stuff quickly at the end. I went on record from the start that I liked it better than I thought I was going. The story is the thing I want to shout out is I like all of the shady droids that work for the twins. I think there's awesome design there. And even the assassin we've been talking about Embo, he has some other guys in his crew, including the one that's headless. I think that shit's cool.

This is the stuff that felt very tippet to me. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the stuff he worked on directly. Because he's got a pretty major credit in the film, I noticed. Yeah. But I just like the idea that there's mercenary droids. Yeah. No. But that's been in Star Wars before, though.

but I guess it's cool. It's cool and it's different. Sure. I'm trying to, I don't know. I don't know why. In speaking positively about most of the Disney Plus stuff, like I said, I liked Obi-Wan more than most people. I liked Asoka more than most people.

Found Book of Boba-Fet. I watched it all. Yeah. I found it disappointing. I didn't hate that. It was a little disappointing. I didn't. I think it gets worse.

I think the Mandalorian, like the stuff on the Mandalorian world, it got away from what I liked about the first season, but on its own, I liked it well enough. Sure. But I think I've had to kind of almost start treating Star Wars as like, that's someone I used to date who I was deeply in love with. That is how I feel right now. It's a great way to. And I'm buying two-shirts. And I'm buying two-sur-by-X.

Broke up, but we can still text. Like, it's an ex that I'm still friends with. But we don't love each other anymore. But we can still text. There's a reason you fell in love, right? Is Indoor when you had like a week-long vacation with them later? And it was like back to the glory days. Andor is when you had to leave it, you know, like, behind.

Andor is when you are frustrated in your current relationship and then while you're on the toilet, you check your ex's Instagram to see how they're doing. I don't know, man. That's what it is. Maybe that's why I like Andor so much. I also, I feel like my relationship to Star Wars is closer to it being the ex where I'm like, we're friends and it's good.

Is she still dating that guy? You know, I want to believe. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. The opposite. I want to believe like maybe there's like a universe where it could work out again. Even if it seems unlikely. Yeah, we've got to get past.

Because the base of emotions is so strong. Culturally, we have to get past the idea that we're ever getting back together with... What? David, I bought this toy for George Lucas Talk Show. We were in Pittsburgh and Connor wanted to do the George Lucas Pit Show, which is an insane idea. So I was like, oh, can I get a grogu that does something? Sure. So I can act like Grogu is a patient.

This toy is called Galactic Snack and Grogu. He's got a weird open mouth. And if he push his tummy, his cheeks flex. And the idea is that he comes with little snacks. Little nibblets. And you feed him into his mouth and he choose them sort of. Let's see. Yeah, there you go.

They go down there. Yeah. And then how do you get him back? Now, this was, it's more of, it's just doing it for visibility. It's more about, you can do it facing up. I bought this for the show and then the theater had bad eye lines, so, or sight lines. Yeah. So it didn't work at all.

I'm gifting you this for your daughter. Oh, sure. She will have fun with it. The food's in the backpack. And this is what Mandalorian and Grogu is all about. It's about merchandise and it's about snacking. So I found four different food items. We don't have to eat all of them now,

but I at least want to just introduce them. I'm a feeling I know where you bought them. I don't think you can guess. I'm holding a big target bag. These are... So many toys. Oh, fuck. No, they're not toys. They're food.

Oh, you're saying your box of toys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you get these as well? I did. We have two bags of trash. Great. Okay. Fan foods, officially delicious. Outer Rim. ranch flavored chips.

The cutest chip in the galaxy, the chips are shaped like rogu. I find this pretty morbid. There is a part of me that this is bringing me back to growing up in the 80s where Mr. T's face was just on everything, though. Yes, it does feel like that. So that we have two boxes of nilla wafers. We have two boxes of fan foods. Ben, did you buy anything else?

Ben was late to this, I mean, not late, but like, you know, delayed because he was buying these at Target. Yes. I do have Did you also purchase muddy bites cookies and cream filled waffle cones

with green vanilla filling? No, I didn't say that was at the target I went to. Okay, so that's the proprietary item to the Griff bag. Did you purchase this? What is that? What the fuck is that?

It's like a... It's called a pop... A pop poles. Oh boy. At home movie theater popcorn kit. Does it make popcorn? It's three buckets and two bags of

microwave popcorn, but most interestingly, Galactic Stardust popcorn seasoning. Oh, sure. I don't know what that tastes. Like Ben... The stars, of course. What was the other item that you bought? Well, because I knew it was Chris's birthday tomorrow. So I thought it would be nice to at least get him a gift. That's so nice. Thank you. So here, I'll give it to you one sec. Okay, here's the galactic seasoning. It doesn't have ingredients listed on it. This unit is not marked for individual. So, whoa. Whoa. This is really kind.

And this was worth you being delayed. This was worth that. This is a Mandalorian and Grogu. Electronic Mando. Wait, so are you saying it's a voice changer mask like the one my sister had? Is this going to make you get Jeremy Allen White voice? It does seem to have a thing that if you hold down the button on the side and speak... Is this a way?

Oh, there you go. Okay, so it says Mando stuff. So it's not like you can put it on and be like Donald. Trump did nothing wrong in Mando. Like, can I ask why there are two Star Trek poster things on my desk? Yes, you can ask.

Okay. Why? I'm not mad. I'm just wondering. Yeah. They're little, little picture thing. I thought you might like them because they're interesting little, like, promotional paintings. I found at a vintage store, uh, I think it was when I was in Pittsburgh, uh,

action figures of, uh, the Malcolm McDowell-Villain villain from generations. Of course, Tillion Soren. And Alifrey Woodard's character from First Contact. We love her. And they both came with these posters and I thought you might like them. I like them fine. I thought that nice little original art.

I just like that they're anything with that kind of 90s feet. That's what I'm saying. That's why I thought you'd like it. I thought it was your aesthetic. I'm pro. Okay, I'm putting the ears on this popcorn bucket. I think this has been a good episode. I think we've gone on a journey.

There have been ups and there have been downs. Look, if we just literally like broke down. Okay, Chris. Okay. Someone got a picture of this because this is pretty good. Okay, this is really good. Okay. Although it is underlining that the

The Mandalorian is the most quotable guy. Okay, he's just saying lasers. It's just not even working. What was that? I am the Mandalorian. It's a mask that literally says I am the Mandalorian. What if the next one is I am not Boba Fett? Some of these are just sounds.

I don't think the sound effect for a good call. I need some information. I need some information. This is what he talks like. Where is Ron? Hi. I didn't get a lot of sleep. Thank you, man.

You look great, God. You're so welcome. Truly a kind present. This definitely feels like the most thematically appropriate way to sort of wind down this episode because this is what it's all about, folks. Yeah.

Unfortunately, this movie exists to create these bags of bullshit. It exists for toy. And for snack. Yeah. For nominees. But we'll make sure to post picks of all of this stuff. You better believe it.

Yeah. God, this thing is freaky. It is weird, right? The cheek movements are weird. I thought it was going to be really funny, and then you just couldn't see it from the stage. But I'm sure. It's kind of cute.

It's kind of cute. The cheek movements are weird, and I thought they'd be, the creepiness would play more visually. Right. So we think this is going to end up at like a 70, four day, 75. Oh, you think it's not going to make 100 four day?

That's where people are projecting right now. Let me see what the, yeah, we're doing, I guess, sort of the box. Office prediction game. Yep, yep. So it opened, no, it had 12 million previews. That's the exact number that Captain America Brave New World had.

Okay. That made 104. Okay. My guess is that Manda will be slightly over that because it's more kid friendly. Uh-huh. So I would guess that it's like low 100. Okay.

Uh, four day. But obviously, the word of mouth is not great, although nor was it great for something like Captain America Brave New World. That's true. But I just think Like, dude, it's a fucking rainy Memorial Day weekend And Baby Yoda is on a screen like, take your kids

Like, what's good? That's the worst that could happen. I'm gonna say, uh, 85. Obviously, the other contenders at the box office right now are Curry Barker's obsession, which is already like a kind of a breakout hit. It looks like it's maybe going to go up this weekend. Yes, it's like it feels like it's number two dethroning DeVor's a horror movie.

It's a horror movie. It's a very good film. It's good. It's quite effective. I didn't say very good, but I liked it a lot. I had a good time. It's effective. It's very effective.

That's a good way of putting it in here. You're a good film critic. Oh, Jesus. And a dear friend. Please relax. I'm sorry if sometimes the show gets annoying to do. It's quite hard. This is the way.

We kind of got Amanda Grogo relationship. Sometimes you have to tell me to kneel. It's funny how Griffin's kind of trying to apologize for cutting me off. I mean, it's a somewhat self-aware bit. It's pretty good. Devilware's product to is doing fine? like it's holding fine. I mean, yeah, exactly.

Like, it's like, it's good. Mortal Kombat 2 is doing, you know, the kind of 60% drops one expects of a Mortal Kombat movie, but like, hey, everyone's happy. You see Mortal Kombat 2? No. Not bad. It's a lot of fun.

Do you like Katana? Sure. Do you like Baraka? All of our friends are here. This is probably the best Katana's been in a movie in a long time. Raiden's in there. Raidens in there. Maybe I'll take a flyer on.

Sheep detectives that's holding on. Is there anything else new this week, Griff? No. No, right? It's no counter programming. I don't, right? I mean, oh, though, there's, there is counter programming, right? Because there's...

There's what. Fuck, isn't there one thing? I'm gonna look at it. Yeah, there's I love boosters. Oh, sure. But I assume that'll be a little low. It doesn't... Right.

And then there's this horror movie, Passenger. Oh, Andre or Ridal. Whose movies I kind of like. What else did he make? He did scary stories to tell in the dark, and he did autopsy of Gene Doe, I want to say. Oh, yeah. Those are both kind of interesting.

Yeah, he's just funny because it's like, Deadline is referring it to as like the Melissa Leo R film passenger. Sure thing. And I'm trying to imagine how many people are like walking up to the box office being like, I hear this a new Melissa Leo movie. Next week, though, I think this is something Mando didn't see coming. I think Backrooms is going to eat its lunch a little bit.

I mean, they're saying Backrooms might open a 50 now. Backrooms is one of those things where it's like, you don't understand. Every 20-year-old is very locked into like liminal spaces. This is an 824 movie directed by a 22-year-old. year old? He's 21. No, he's 20 years old and he will be turning 21 in a month. I interviewed him recently. He legally. This movie is about to open incredibly large. It's an adaptation of a viral YouTube video. It's like a real changing the guard moment for Hollywood. It is. It rocks. It's a good movie. And I liked him a lot. He was really smart. Just kid self-taught during COVID

how to make like visual effects shit and, you know, started making YouTube shorts and kind of rocks. Yeah. Like he was housebound by both the pandemic and arthritis. I can't write himself blender. Yeah. Yeah, except I didn't learn blender. I got a faulty bucket.

It's got two right ears. Yeah, that doesn't look right. The scrogoo bucket. So we'll post a picture of, I've been fussing with it trying to figure out if I was thinking of it's wrong. It is. Yeah, it's a rare variant. Chris, is there anything we haven't covered that you wanted to be very thorough?

No, we did it. You sure? No, we got to all my notes. I haven't watched Quora yet. It's next up on my list. Avatar is very good, though. Has your son watched Quora? He started watching it, yeah.

But then we decided to watch it as a family. Okay, okay, so he put it. What else is your son into? That's been the big one lately. Jurassic World has been very big for him. World. The whole Jurassic World cartoon. Oh, yes.

I've heard that show's kind of fun. The films are too scary for him. I can say that Jurassic World seems to be very big with kids in his age. Yeah. Dinosaurs. Yeah. Dinosaurs are back. big way.

And what else? That's about it. He went through an Italian brain rot phase. I'm really glad that's over. I don't know what that means. Acer Ehrlich was really into Italian brain rot. What the fuck is that? It's so funny that David Ehrlich was like,

my child will never watch Western animation. It will make you feel. It's feebly only. It'll make you feel worried. He did get very into, how we got him very into, like, Totoro and Miyazaki stuff. Yeah.

These AI generated, I'm looking enough, ADHD cartoons called Italian brain rot. Tung Tung Tung Tung Sohor, Crocadillo, Bombardillo. They all have insane names and they look like nightmares. Chimanzini, Beninini. Is this on YouTube? They're like a cup of coffee with a hot dog.

YouTube nonsense. I don't know if it's like Russians influencing my child to betray America someday. It's one of those things where it's like, oh, this is just like random AI slop and you're like, no, it feels like this was made by a human hand. They've got millions views. For some nefarious purpose. There's also like rap songs that have 55 million views on YouTube that is AI generated it rap sung by the town brain rats, but I will tell you, I'm glad that phase is over. In the

beginning of first grade, my son would often say to me, who's your favorite brain rot? And I would go, I don't know, man, tongue, tongue, tongue, tongue, tongue, tongue to her. And he'd go, who are your favorite 17? And would not stop until I named 17 brain rats. And when I tell you this happened like three times a day, every day, it was starting to drive me into madness. Chris, I congratulate you on making it through that period, and I hope you never have to look back. Although some of the songs are catchy, some of the AI generated rap songs. I'm sure they are.

Beautiful Anonymous. I mean, I still have the Tala Lalo, tra la la. The Pinkfong lion's song, anyone out there get at me if you also listen to that a hundred times. I'm never going to listen to that. I don't want it affecting my brain. Beautiful Anonymous is still one of the best podcast out there. Yeah, Beautiful Anonymous just celebrated

its 10-year anniversary. Oh, shit. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I will ask to, all bits aside, I know I've been the bad boy to blank check fans, but go listen to an episode because I'm trying to get that show to survive. We have a contract of 2028 and I'm trying to just like get people back into it. It's an incredible show. And it's like a good thing you do, not to be self-righteous about it. Thank you. Yeah, I feel good about it.

And then also on June 11th, we're doing a What's in the Dumpster Live Stage show. We're paying homage to the 10-year anniversary. 10-year anniversary of the one episode of my show, everybody universally liked. It's going to be live at UCB. Paul Shear will be there. This hasn't been announced yet, but Manzukas arranged his schedule.

He'll be coming in. Hell yeah. I've reached out to spoiler. Person from the first dumpster. I won't say it to see if he wants to be there on stage. And yeah, it's already sold out, but there will be a live stream ticket for 10 bucks. So you can watch that live.

And what's the date on it? That's on Thursday, June 11th. Thanks. And if you're in New Jersey, Jersey, my beloved New Jersey, I've got tickets on sale in Red Bank, June 19th. Oh, we're Chris Kevin Smith's. Yeah. Oh, yeah, the secret stash is now.

Places, right? Yeah, New Jersey. You've been to Smodcastle. I've been there with you. Yeah, you guys have it. I was there, and then I went to a dogma screening there. And did you go there one other time? It's pretty great.

I really love it. I really love him. Like the Smod Castle, you love, or the theater. The fact that he owns a movie theater. Yeah, he bought his childhood movie theater. The Smod Castle Cinemas in Atlantic. Highlands, is that correct? Yes.

Yes. I know you know him better. You've worked with him and you know him much better. On the Hemean show. I know. Yeah, yeah. But I can, I want, I do have to say,

meeting Kevin Smith and you realize he's just exactly who you hope he's just like that. He's exactly who you want it to be. And he is. You know, I weirdly get asked about him a lot. There's something very special about him. Yes. Especially for our generation. But people are like, you're friendly with him.

Like, you know him. Like, what's he actually like? And I was like, he's actually. everything you want him to be. He's wearing a suit jacket and denim shorts and down to tell stories and laughs a lot. I think the people who are the most cynical about him are completely disarmed when they meet him when you see just like how thoroughly genuine he is.

And he's incredibly thoughtful and smart. He is, as you can imagine, as a DIY jersey creator, he looms very, very large in my history. And I'm one of the biggest mall rats defenders you'll ever meet. Geth, we were only going to have him be the guest for that show. And I threw out the flyer and I said, I think we should ask Chris to be honest. I think beyond the fact that it's like a mitzvah to have you two guys like engage on stage and connect as people.

I was like, I think it will make for good entertainment. I think you guys are going to get into it and you did. You started just naming locations and the audience was applauded. It was fun shit. It was great. Thanks again. No, you're the best. And I said it before very cleanly with no cross talk.

The three of us would not know each other without you. On the most fundamental level, there's no universe in which the show exists without you. be Griffin and I are acquaintances, but like obviously these bonds were forged. But I meet Ben in the basement because he's a sign to become the second producer of talking TCGS, the podcast I do with Riley Solner. He was thrilled by the assignment. No, I was. A weirdly popular show in its time from what I remember.

It was bizarre. And David and I only meet because Alyssa Stanoa tweets that the two of us should be friends because we're both active in the gether community. Well, I will say at this point in my career, which has slowed down a lot, it is very strange for me to be in rooms sometimes and realize I am just strangely a person who can sometimes walk into a room and realize most of these people know each other because of me. Yeah. Which is strange to say for a guy who is generally pretty socially uncomfortable and sort of off

in the corner. But it's a point of pride that I've been able to work with so many great people and smart people such as yourselves over the years. You're the best and we love you. And it's always a pleasure to have you on. You would never shadow band. I need to communicate that very clearly. Why did you use shadow shadow band?

Because you felt like there was a gap Post Spider-Man 2 that was pointed Because I'm mentally ill Brother, I feel you big time My brain is so bad It's crazy A lot of people like being on the show We're always just trying to like match guest

To thing well You know We'll say like Matt Singer is about to come back on The aforementioned Matt Singer And he was like Thanks for having me on Like I hope I can be on again sooner than three years from now

And we were like Shut up you were on six months ago We checked the calendar We were like three fucking years What are we doing? And this has been the way. Oh, God. Clearly, we talked about the movie a little bit.

A smidge. Oh, the one, this was the one connection. The one connection I was going to make. Do you know who was the DP on this film? Who? The man who shot clerks. Is that true? Yeah.

Is that true? Kevin Smith's jersey body, who, like, that was his first professional. And Moritz. And chasing in? Maritz. Yes. Marrots underrated. But I'm just saying, like, this.

You guys don't like seeing the spaceship that looks like a tursexual. I like the ship. I like the Anzellians. It's okay. Turtle. I like Stephen Inzilians had a little ship. Yeah. Well, what was the best part? Oh, Stephen McKinley. And the rocking hoar chair. Right. And yeah, grilling some sandwiches,

I guess, and then Scroo C. I guess the only two good characters are the ones who grill meat? Are puppets grilling meat? I mean, I know Scrazi's he wasn't really a puppet. Yeah. voiced by esteemed members of the artistic. But I'm just saying, is that what is really kind of activating Favreau the most as an art? is being able to tell the story of people making sandwiches.

You're so right. I'm seeing here David Klein shot a bunch of the Book of O'Fest. Yeah, he's become the default Disney Plus Star Wars guy. I just bring it up because, like, he was a guy bootstrapping it with the Kevin Smith thing, learned how to be a DP across those movies, and now is shooting Star Wars. And I know that like Kevin's been doing screenings all weekend with him talking to the audience afterwards, which is really fun at the Smodcastle Theater. So shout out that if you're in the area

and you need to still see the movie. Sorry that we ruined it for you. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Next week is an episode. It's a movie that I kind of hoisted upon David. It's called Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World.

Right, that's next week. David very quickly sets the rules in place that it is his episode. Yeah, you're like, you try some, like, you know, Grish bit. And I'm like, we're not doing that today, sir. You were in tears. I was like, no. Best step off, sir.

But don't worry. It is absolutely you and John Hodgman. We have fucking Andrew Stanton coming up. There's plenty of griff material in the future. No, no, no. I was saying don't worry that you go off. No, I think we had fun on that episode. John talks a lot about boats. Hodgman talking boats. It's a good episode.

So, yeah, we're finishing that up. And then, yes, we've already sort of soft announced it, but Andrew Stanton is coming right after that. We will be covering Disclosure Day as well. Yes, yes. There are a couple summer releases that will take some breaks. Odyssey obviously comes. in the middle of Stanton,

but we'll be doing finding Nemo through Toy Story 5, and then Scorsese is starting right after that. Martin Scorsese, I don't know if you know this, the guy who plays the flat meat dealer in the Mandalorian and Grogo movie.

His name is, also directs movies. LARP or whatever. I'll have to look them up. And we're going to cover him on the podcast. We also have a Patreon. We're currently, we've just recently covered

Mortal Kombat, and we're going to soon kick off our Robocop series on June 1st. Yep. you can sign up for that at patreon.com slash blank check. Guys, I'm so excited to take a nap. I'm like, I'm really...

Don't worry, Griff, we have like six ads to do after we stop recording. A post ad nap is the sweetest nap of all. I'm so excited at pee. Yeah. I love... Rata. His abs. His body?

His brain? His sparkling whale. What do I love from this? Dad, you love his dad, right? His dad's a good person. Yeah. And he's just like him? miss him. He had some Riz. Again, I'll

shout out a lot of the images we've been talking about. We'll be posted on our social. Also sign up for our newsletter. We have a substack called Checkbook. We also have a lot of that stuff if you don't engage with social media. And I'm sure Marie is going to have a lot of mandolourin and Grogu thoughts. A movie she has many times said she

is excited to never see. Can't really argue with her. And as always, David, you were trying to remember things you love. Yeah. And I just want to end this episode in a positive note. I love you and I want to remind you that you love coaxium, which I think is best served cold? Isn't it actually best served cold?

I think you did it wrong. It has to be cold. So good job remembering that coaxium should be cold. Okay, so I'm responsible. Nice. I guess that's how we're going to end it. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley.

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production. help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at blank checkpot. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. Ben, are we recording? Okay. And what I'm about to say is going to sound like it's pre-roll, but I both want you to keep a lot. You know, keep it in and actually do what I ask. Okay, Ben? Yeah, of course. It'll make sense in a second. I'll do what you ask. Okay. K-Fab...

Not like blanket statement. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, so K-Fabe's starting now. Ben, can you put a filter on my voice? And post.