Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Old Guard

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

In The Old Guard (2020), Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, and a group of immortal warriors define why it's worth living to fight another day. Plus they look extremely cool doing it. This week, we wrap up Gina Prince-Bythewood's series with her most recent film, released on Netflix mid-pandemic. How has 2020 affected the release and how we watch it (preferably from a porch)? What do we want to see out of a sequel? What's the best Netflix movie formula? Join Griffin, David and Ben as we list our favorite Prince-Blythwood movies and what blank checks we're looking forward to in the future. Our new store is officially live! Buy the latest Blank Check merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

What is he, your boyfriend? Your child, an infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He is not my boyfriend. This podcast is more to me than you can dream. He eased the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold and his kiss still thrills me even after a millennia.

His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worth of. I love this podcast behind beyond measure and reason. He is not my boyfriend. He's my podcast and he's more. I should have saved the podcast for the third time. I know. I was wondering where you were going to put it because I don't know.

Right. It's a very flowery, big monologue. You know, there's a lot of places to put it yes but i should have saved podcasts for the end i should have built up to it we're recording at nine o'clock in the morning which we don't usually right right right but where would you put it he's not my boyfriend he's all and he's more like he's not my boyfriend he's podcast i was gonna say he's not my boyfriend he's my podcast and he's more and and i did that but i also replaced the two earlier instances of man right look guys it's an all-time

it's a hall of famer it's a perfect episode and let's say right off the bat ben is on his porch that's right full circle ben is sitting on his, the porch of his childhood home in New Jersey, wearing sunglasses. And a shirt that I wore as a child, like a Halloween glow-in-the-dark shirt. It seems to have skeletons, bones on it. It does have bones. It says shake, rattle, roll. I mean, talk about full circle it's an early bone shirt on the childhood porch yeah when we say yeah i guess it is full circle yeah it's full circle

were you born on that porch ben is that part of it yes that'd be amazing if that was true no it's not true but of course i'm at my parents houses are out of town. So I came out for the weekend. And I just I couldn't not jump at the opportunity to broadcast from the porch where really porch movies started where I watched movies on a porch. The porch classics. Yes, the porch classics. Now, did you watch this movie on a porch or did you watch it in the comfort of your air conditioning uh you know on a television yeah yeah i mean that's pretty good wow you know i mean parents not around that's why i got relegated to the porch in the first place they there's only one tv they were like all right come on go sit on the porch

shitty little built-in vcr tv and go sit out there and watch something would this have been a potential porch movie it's very violent so like that would have been yeah right a ragtag group of immortal fighters would definitely been a porch potential movie now i want to make it clear i'm not i'm not trolling for comedy points here but there has been zero acknowledgement of my zoom background uh you've got the uh the the the guy from the the last dance the famous bodyguard who plays uh quarters you know okay what right you know throw quarters at the wall or whatever game it is. They played jam,

Michael Wozniak, but what's another way that you would describe him, David? A human role. Another. I don't know. I'm not sure what you're trying

to leave me up here. T up for me here. An old guard. Okay. I mean, I mean, you know, I don't want to cast aspersions on that guy's age,

but yeah. Griffin, do you hear that beeping like a, of a truck backing up? Wait a second. What's going on here? All right. And you just got a cash load of comedy.

Dumped it. I will say you also did this in our slack where you posted like a guy in an old face sort of makeup and then a security guard and then like a duck honking and that was supposed to be like the old guard honks yes but we were all kind of like are you what's up what's this like you know we we did not dial into it i did it on twitter and i believe i believe that tweet won the academy award for best picture right of course which is technically isn't fair because it was four pictures it was uh the word the an old man mask security guard from behind and then honks but i simplified i've simplified to one now john michael wozniak the old guard and he's and he does honk john michael wozniak he does and i'm also realizing he's not even

i feel like the old guard oh he's not that old like he seems sort of what in his 40s maybe and there's that character character there's that real human being who's part of the the last dance who's the guard who becomes michael jordan's father figure after his own father dies right right yeah that guy's genuinely right he's like in his 50s or 60s we're gonna describe someone as the old guard i mean that group by guard security guard standards quite quite aged yeah i'm i might send back some of the points ben i appreciate them but i feel like i might have to send back some of them folks we're talking about the old guard today what might be the only new release movie we cover on this podcast all year in 2020 i think i would

i would say i would bet on that i mean i know you know it's i suppose it's possible if tenant or wonder woman maybe squeak in by christmas who knows but uh i would bet against it there are three potentially the three would be tenant wonder woman and west side story west side story sure right supposedly coming out this christmas they have as of the time we're recording just this week they reclaim that the films will come out this year but everything's getting pushed tenant is still technically undated. I feel like, just so that we can do this thing where we talk about something that will be slightly different

in the future when it comes out, I feel like all these movies are about to get released everywhere else in the world before us, right? Which used to feel unfathomable. It does seem possible. I mean, who knows? But it does seem possible i mean who knows but it does seem possible a tenant i think is officially right it doesn't have a release date but its release date is just like whenever america has unfucked itself like then perhaps tenant can come out that is now

it's like right you know but at the bottom of the poster like in cinemas, when you guys have, you know, actually confronted your public health crisis. And it also feels like they're waiting to announce the official overseas date. Right. Like they're just going to be like officially everywhere that can open the movie. It will open on this day. Yeah.

They should open it in New Zealand or whatever. Right. Great job guys. Open it up. it will open on this day yeah they should open it in new zealand or whatever right open it up yeah they probably should open it on fortnight unfortunately palpatine he only programs like 40s and 50s noir movies he's very very particular he does he's not into nolan now he that's a guy who really has been hurting from the loss of Filmstruck. Because obviously they still have noir, but there was something about Criterion being

matched with the Warner catalog that really played into his sweet spot of, as you said, early 20th century gangster films. So yes, of course, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david and emperor palpatine thrusts his consciousness into film struck so hard that it died what was film struck if not a dyad david it was warner brothers criterion and criterion

yeah right it was a dyad you're right it was a dyad. You're right. It was a dyad. It was the original film dyad. Only followed by Manon of the Spring. This is a podcast about filmographies. Directors and John DeFleurat. I'm finishing my own joke. Directors who have early success, massive success early on in their career, given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks

clear and sometimes they bounce baby. Now, sure. this miniseries pot and basket cast covering the films of gina prince bythewood has been a little different because the thing that activated this miniseries that made us push the red button and put it on the schedule was that it felt like oh she's finally getting her big blank check right we had not seen it at the time we committed to doing this mini series yeah she had made an expensive action movie yes for for netflix and skydance and we were hoping we were gonna like it and now about a month after it's gone on netflix we finally get to talk about it and david oh boy this thing honks you you think that it honks i love it it's a honker for you so thoroughly so thoroughly and there's always that fear when we're covering a director with a

miniseries that's vaguely tying up with a new film that you end up with like a Detroit versus a Dunkirk. You're right. We did have a Detroit to deal with. Those are both cases where we covered the new release film about three weeks after the miniseries ended. But after we had already committed, we'd been covering all the other movies,

and Detroit was just such a bummer to be like, fuck, versus Dunkirk, where it's like, this is a good one to end on. What dumbo dumbo i think falls right in the middle right yeah in between that was a weird one yeah it's like in my mind i'm like as long as it's a dumbo or better we can end a mini series on a new release detroit really doesn't exist i kind of forgot about detroit really doesn't exist that's a weird one a very very bizarre film to have been made um but uh you heard from our friend past and future guest bill goberry yeah i checked with him because you were like check to see if that movie like sucks because if it sucks then maybe right i was like can we literally just get one person we trust who has seen this film early

before we officially commit to doing this series and bilga was like it rules and we were like great let's commit to doing it let's start recording let's hope we agree with bilga uh yes by the time we started recording i had seen it as well i mean people say yes the buzz was good and then we started making this mini series and now it's come out it's on netflix it's a hit uh and yeah it's the most watched movie that anyone's ever seen in all of history 70 million people watched it every minute of the day but um and she's lined up new projects her career you know whatever continues to make great strides and you know onwards and upwards like it feels like she is in the blank check mode right now yes i would say it there was like that little bit of like sort of you know post-hype backlash where people like well it's okay like you know i feel

like there was a little bit of that discourse, which has happened to every movie. Yes. It's happened with every movie in quarantine, I think, because there's also the, um, well, maybe we just kind of like, we're hyped up about a movie. Cause like there aren't that many movies, you know, there's always that conversation as well. When a sentence starts with, well, it's always going to as well. When a sentence starts with well, it's always going to be good. Oh, we love it. We love a well sentence.

It's also, it's like the exact thing that makes me sort of dislike the culture of movies going straight to home viewing, which is just how quickly the discourse is even more sped up. It's even more breathless and breakneck than the sort of unsustainable speed at which I think these feedback cycles have already been happening. Just naturally because of the internet, you know? But like the same thing, I mean, I remember watching Defy of Bloods. I texted you and I was like, this thing i mean i remember uh watching defy of bloods i texted you and i was like this movie is fucking humongous this has to be like spike's second or third best

movie i think this is going to win best picture which is still vaguely my prediction in this weird oscar year that we can't predict i honestly would maybe possibly predict it right now, but that's just because God knows what's coming, right? Like, it's such a weird time. Right, and my theory, too, is I think that's a movie that's going to benefit from being on Netflix already and six or seven months of people digesting it and coming back to it and what have you. Like, I think that's a movie that will benefit

from people watching it a second time at home four months from now or whatever. But I was watching with you, and I was was like we all agree this thing's a triumph and then the next day i started reading all the like well actually takes from defy bloods and i was like i don't know like it's fucking every movie is it are we just like especially now because it's like any any drop coming down the rain pipe you know yeah anything that feels like a new movie the standards are so hot and right yeah yeah i mean my my mom and dad watched uh palm springs and they were like that's the worst movie i've ever seen and i was it's absolutely not the worst movie you've ever that is an insanely hot take that's a crazy take that's the worst movie they've

ever seen they've got they've had a great life if that's the worst they ever saw like nothing about it it was poorly shot it's not funny it's predictable wow rude and then i said to my dad did you really predict plot points you know x y and z like late plot points of that movie because that movie has so many twists and he went well no i mean i didn't predict it but at that point i just given up i was like so it's not predictable i would love to know what it actually was like whatever the thing that flipped your dad's switch actually was because there's clearly something it's not just like oh i thought it was predictable there was some moment in that movie where he was just like i hate this i'm giving up yeah yeah i have a feeling it was andy samberg masturbating in the first four exactly that's what i was sort of that's what i was hinting at and my dad loves

bawdy stuff but i feel like that scene is pointedly trying to be uncomfortable yeah right it's like you're like oh i get it it's funny it's andy samberg you know oh is you know maybe his dick will be in a box later and then you're just like oh this is just a bummer yeah it's a bummer yeah and they never box his dick they never his dick becomes never unboxed or boxed it's a fair point it's a fair point um but but old guard yes i also texted you the following day, and I was like, this thing's great. I think this is S-tier Netflix movie. Not to talk greasy, but you and I often talk about whether it's because of... I think this is a thing

that I just touch upon very briefly. Netflix very often forces its filmmakers to follow very, very specific technical specs. Yes. So that their movies will play best on TV in a way that I often think flattens them out a little bit. Not just in terms of, I think, the kind of shot sequencing and shot selection that is maybe sometimes strongly encouraged by Netflix, but literally the specs about

what you have to shoot on at what speeds and how they output it and what the digital intermediate's like and all this shit to just make everything look as like... It's not as bad as motion smoothing on TVs. No.

Or even just like Blu-rays. When they started, a lot of movies were getting digital noise reduction to death. They look super waxy because the studio's perception was if people are buying HD, they don't want anything that has grain on it.

They want it to look really, really shiny and sharp, which is not how for example predator looks it's just not right no i mean that right that they wanted they they figured everyone figured we wanted everything to look like the tv you see at best buy that's showing the screensaver of the right fucking jungle you know you know like of waterfalls. And that obviously doesn't fit with movies. Netflix originals are not that bad, but there are subtle things that they're pushing across all their films for consistency's sake that I think have a similar effect

on a much smaller scale. And this movie doesn't feel like a Netflix movie to me. It is in that rare camp of Netflix movies that feel like real movies, which makes it also the Netflix movie most which I've been able to see in theaters. Because every other movie I was thinking that I rank at that level,

I did go out of my way to see in theaters if only for the one week it was playing at an ID or something. Defy Bloods is another one this year. I mean, that obviously, the theater would be just outrageous because of all the mind sequences and stuff like that. Imagining that with an audience,

it would be very different. No, I wish I had seen both of those movies in theaters. I wish I'd seen Never Rarely, Sometimes, Always in theaters. I'm so bummed out every time I watch what I consider to be a major film in quarantine. Because, man, I just really don't like watching serious movies at home for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Agree.

I don't like a lot of things about quarantine. Honestly. No. No, we've argued about this i think most things about it are really good i'm not talking about the disease i'm saying most sociological aspects of quarantine i think we can all agree are better and are making us all feel very normal and well adjusted psychologically it's good too sometimes i just feel i don't know i feel a little funny about good too. Sometimes I just feel, I don't know, I feel a little funny about the whole staying at home all the time thing. I don't know. I got some issues. David, you're trying to cancel quarantine

and I won't stand for it. I'm just weird. I'm just like a weird guy. That's just the thing you got to remember about me is I'm just kind of like a weird guy. You're different. You're a weird guy. Yeah, I'm just kind of like a weird guy. I say weird stuff sometimes. But pointedly, I will say defy bloods and old guard are like the two times in quarantine i've watched a new movie and come close to the feeling i have when i see a great movie in theaters where

for like a moment the world feels reset to me because I am just so excited by how well a film worked on every level for me. Both of these movies I love, but the one we're talking about today, The Old Guard, also for me is a movie. because this and Palm Springs both came out on the same day, that both of these movies are about justifying why you want to stay alive. Sure. Yes. Which is a message that hits really, really hard for me these days with everything we're living through and with the amount of death that's surrounding us, you know?

And there are different angles on it but i find this film very uplifting at the end point it reaches even though it is not a conventionally sort of uplifting movie but i agree with that and i think that um some of the reaction i sort of gauged to this movie was sort of like a little bit of exhaustion of like well at the end of the day it was kind of an origin story movie and i'm a little sick of those right you know it's a superhero movie in a way and when the movie's over it's like okay and now the team is gonna do its thing you know and that's great and i'm like no that's not it's what you're talking about it's about them you know especially about charlie's like you know remembering what it is she's like goes to work to do you know like she you know it's like sort of falling back in love with her life does this movie

set up some very exciting possibilities for the sequel yes absolutely i want that shit in that way tomorrow but this film has a complete emotional story that it tells. There are complete arcs that are satisfied within the body of this film. Just because it promises more at the end does not mean that the film is just an extended pilot. And I find it very bizarre that it's getting that complaint when everyone's gotten used to the fucking Marvel system, that is that like the Marvel system is just constantly leaving you walking out of the theater, more excited about what could happen next over what just happened. And I feel like this does the thing that most Marvel movies do not, which is like,

there's real substantive character growth that is meaningful. There are real like status quo shifts that are not undoable by the end of this movie that make me feel like I have had a complete meal even if it makes me want to go back to that restaurant again and order something else.

I have this theory that I threw out to you that I now sort of stand by, especially after doing a little more experimentation, that I threw out to you that I now sort of stand by, especially after doing a little more experimentation, that I think a lot of the complaints of this movie, and look, it is very much possible for someone to just not like this movie. It can just not be your thing.

Oh yeah, whatever. It's a very specific thing. And as Ben was saying right before we recorded and we're going to get into it, this movie's got a very weird tone. And it is very much going for a certain elevated action movie dare i use that term but in a way that i think could bump for certain people if you're looking for just a trashy b movie shoot them up the the uh weight and the sort of hauntedness

of this movie might bump a little bit for you. On the same level, if you're looking for just the emotionally astute depth of a Gene of Prince Bythewood movie, and you're also having to watch a bunch of shoot-em-ups, that might bump for you. But I see certain comments from people who like this type of movie who are saying, yeah, it's just like another Netflix action movie.

They're not even shitting on it, but they're saying this movie is the same as Extraction. And my report to that is I don't want to generalize for everybody. I think that's a silly opinion. I think that's a silly opinion. And I also think anyone had it. Yeah, let me go ahead to throw out your

you know what I'm going to say. Yeah. I also think that is connected perhaps to people watching this movie the way they watch a netflix movie in the sense that they might be watching this movie with the lights on on their phone while doing other things forget the old guard that's just the problem with yeah everything you know that's forget netflix it's just that is just the unavoidable truth of how we watch movies at home all the time i don't like watching movies at home it's why i like to go out to the theaters

it's why i will pay to see fucking netflix movies projected on a screen for the five days they're playing because i know i'm going to engage with it more seriously and obviously like i you know it's it's it's easy enough to make the effort to like oh turn all the lights off you know put your phone turn it off or put it over there you know what you know all that shit but like sometimes it's impossible for me to avoid being like oh you know what i have something i wanted to you know like you know whatever being at home you're not trapped with the movie in the same way no i think that's what the whole argument for the theater experience is and that's why we have to save it absolutely from this damned virus but the first time i was watching this i would get tempted by my phone and would check something and then i would realize i'd missed a

moment so i like many times went back to make sure I wasn't missing micro moments. Or if I had to do something else, I would pause it. Like I took the three hours to make sure that I was not actually looking at the screen or fully listening. Anytime something, that's not as good. Like it's not great.

You have to pause it. Right. Yeah. That's a pain. I agree. I agree. But I was realizing I was doing the classic Netflix thing of just like, oh, I can look away for 15 seconds and look back.

And in a movie like this, this movie is all about tiny moments. The difference between what Gina is doing here and what most filmmakers would do with this material is all in tiny moments. And a lot of them are physicality. Yeah, character stuff. And looks between people. Right. They're the lingering pause after a line is said. And a lot of them are physicality. Yeah, character stuff. Between people. Yeah.

They're the lingering pause after a line is said. And last night, I watched this movie for a second time, but I watched it in bed with the lights on and also doing some stuff on my phone at times. Not pointedly trying to not pay attention, but trying to see how the movie plays, if it's mostly playing background audio, like murder mystery or something. And the other thing I did was I re-read

or read, rather, the comic book. And the comic book to me is what this movie's detractors accuse it of being. The comic book is very much, let's set up an idea. The comic book is very much, here's a demo for a possible movie franchise.

You know, it's that thing that a lot of like creator comics, you know, people who have worked with the big boys, Marvel and DC, the Mark Millars of the world. Now every comic they start feels like it's a pitch for a movie. It's a backdoor pitch for a movie. And it's just about the table setting and all that sort of stuff and the entire narrative of what you're saying david of uh andy learning to love her job again learning to want to be alive again having her faith in humanity restored none of that is in the comic book the comic book does not have any of those emotional arcs it does not have that depth it has flattened out a bunch of stuff the core elements are all there.

Many of the big moments are all there. The characters are, by and large, all there. But it's such a good example. I really will encourage people to read the book if they can, whether they love this movie

or are slightly underwhelmed by this movie, as a study in what a director brings to a project. Because Greg Ruckcca adapted his own work for this movie i'm sure gina did some work on it and even though she literally wasn't the one at the typewriter i think i think she did a fair bit of work on it but he he wrote the screenplay yeah i think so too and what i was gonna say is even if she wasn't physically the one typing it feels

very clear to me that she was saying if i'm making this movie i want this to be in it and i want this embellished in the story and this and that because they're all the pet themes and interests she said her big thing was also that the nile character i haven't read the comic so i can't but like the the nile character doesn't pop as much in the like that that was where she put a lot of attention yeah look nile and and Andy have very little interior life in the comics. Right. Booker and Joe and the, what's the third guy's name? I'm forgetting now.

Oh, the rest of the, yeah. They're very similar between the comics and the movie, but they are also the guys who have the larger sort of like plotty movements. So their characterization is tied to that, you know? Right. the movie but they are also the guys who have the larger sort of like plotty movements so their characterization is tied to that you know right um andy and niall both kind of feel like cyphers andy in particular just feels like impossibly cool badass woman which she succeeds as being in a comic book form and niall is just the new one you know yeah right she's the the class it's a classic i mean the thing is also in a comic book it's like you have 22 you know illustrated pay you don't have a lot of time to do stuff like you know and

like the the comic books sometimes need like 30 issues to set up everything in terms of character and plot that they want to set up and but i have not, yeah, I have not read this thing. The graphic novel, which is just collecting that first miniseries, is five or six issues in total. It's like a little over 100 pages. And not only is that, it ends up translating as being a much

shorter Cliff Notes version of this story being told, but also there's certain limitations to what you can do in comic books in terms of how much story you can tell through performance. What she's certain limitations to what you can do in comic books in terms of how much story you can tell through performance, which she's really choosing to do here, which is a thing she always does, you know? I think for a filmmaker who is primarily a writer,

started out as a writer, comes from that perspective, I think one of the things that makes Prince Bythewood so good is she understands a good actor can do the storytelling that five lines of dialogue could do on the page. You know, you can convey something with a look, with a moment, with a pause. And this is a movie that's very big on that. If you're half watching it, you're only hearing the dialogue that might feel a little more expositiony. And you're not noticing the amount of stuff conveyed by the moment Charlize takes after she says something that implies the deep well of sadness this woman has felt for 2,000 years. 6,000 years, I believe is the concept. Well, I'm saying maybe she was happy for the first 4,000.

All right, fine. She was happy for the first 4,000 right fine she was happy for the first four thousand you're right but but the comic book does not have that weight and there's even just stuff that i think gina said explicitly was her addition the chua tell character is nothing but a functionary in the book he's got no backstory and the end point they get at with this character is not there he is just the smithers to the bad guy okay so he it doesn't end with him being maybe set up as the smithers to the good guys right exactly yeah no that's not there the guy's got no motivation he's got no larger function he isn't the element of him tracking the sort of long tail effect that they have had on humanity is not there he is literally just smithers and the bad guy in the film is a much more traditional

he's like jacked up he's like slick back hair cool suit he's still a tech pharma bro but he's closer to being like the Elon Musk version of it. Let's dig into the meat of this film. As a little backstory, as a little table setting, Post, Beyond the Lights, a film that you and I agree is one of the most underrated films of the 2010s, but did not perform particularly well at the box office and did not get the recognition it deserved. She sort of surprisingly gets announced as the director of Silver and Black, a big superhero movie that Sony is making as part of their expanded, we're going to make spinoffs of everything in the Spider-Man universe. Yes.

The only other thing to note is that she also worked on the, the show cloak and dagger. So we'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. So it was, I believe right after beyond the lights, she announced that her and Gugu Mbatha-Raw were going to team up again to adapt a Roxanne Gay book. Oh, sure.

Sure. Okay. That never came into fruition. It never came to sure. Right. Yeah. She does shots fired, which is her mini series on Fox that she did with her husband. Okay. That never came into fruition. That never came to, sure, right, yeah. She does Shots Fired,

which is her miniseries on Fox that she did with her husband. But she directed three of those episodes, wrote the show. Her and Sanaa Lathan again. And then they announced that she's going to do Silver and Black, which is Silver Sable and Black Cat,

two characters that no one would think to necessarily center an entire movie around at this point they don't neither of they're not related to each other except that they're both in the spider-man world right they've occasionally crossed paths but they're not a team no i mean black cat is like a villainess an anti-hit right like she's like a cool cat burglary kind of right yeah i don't know i never loved black cat she's all right she's sort of a cat woman rip off exactly and and silver sable is uh silver sable is cool

she's very cool i'm a huge silver sable fan she was very big in the 90s when i was reading comics when i was a little kid uh but i loved like her in the wild pack like i loved all that shit she but yeah she's like she's kind of like a euro uh mercenary type right like because she's from like uh i think she's from uh not latveria but like next door to latveri like she's from another fictional euro okay yeah that would have been fun latveria's belgium or whatever exactly um but. But Sony kept on sort of like saying, we want to make a female-driven Spider-Man movie. Like to their credit, they were like, we want to do this. And like seven years ago, they were already on that tip,

except they could never find a good thing to base a story around. So there was that rumor they were going to do the young Aunt May is a spy movie. And then there was a movie that was called the glass ceiling that was like every female spider-man character teaming up it was like silk and penny parker and all these sorts of characters and then there was uh there's now still the rumor they're gonna make a madam web movie but for that moment in time sony was all about the idea of doing Silver and Black and Gina meets on it and is like, you know, I didn't think I wanted to do a big action movie,

but I read this script and I immediately saw the movie in my head and I got so excited about making it. And Sony was fast tracking it and it felt like, holy shit, she's going to get to do this big superhero movie. This is awesome. And she was talking about it really excitedly and her really strong take. And then the movie just sort of started slowing down. And what it felt like between the lines, which was later confirmed by her, is just as they got closer and closer to going and it felt like they were maybe six months away from filming about to announce casting deep in sort of the pre-production, they started questioning all of her decisions i i also think she she didn't like the script and whatever it is they were demanding script wise right that was where they were like well

right you know there's a lot i think it was the opposite of this i think she said read the script and said oh i know exactly what i'm gonna do all this right right and then started adding all that stuff on and then when she added the stuff sony was like, we don't like all this new stuff. Whereas Old Guard, it feels like they're the central couple of things that she latched onto here that she retains, but then added a lot of depth. And Netflix and Skydance to their credit were just like, do you? But she very much got this movie because of her work on Silver and black uh even though that film never got made let me i talked to her about it wait i've got i've got context here it led to her doing the cloak and dagger pilot because she was sort of in the marvel ecosystem and she wanted she she did that because she was like i absolutely have to do something because no one is taking me seriously like that wasn't she didn't get it she was like basically like hunt down at all costs anything that will prove that i can direct action to these people because

like i'm being pushed around the silver and black thing fell apart she does cloak and dagger that's the first time she'd ever shot action at all like you know because her first three movies don't have any like so that's like her doing but like Skydance came to her with this movie. I think Skydance was very seriously like, we need a female director for this. So they approached her. Charlize was not even attached. It was just Skydance being like, we've got this comic, you know, it's, you know, this, we're going to have this basic story.

Like we want, we want a female director. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, this thing that happens now, I was briefly trying to find, like, a comic book to develop as a TV series. Right, and everything's owned by someone. Everything's owned by someone. It was insane.

I mean, you were, like, I was talking to you during this process, but I was reading, like, six graphic novels a week, and everything is owned by someone. If anything hits a store shelf that has even a halfway engaging premise, someone options it immediately. So this just feels like a book. I mean, A, the book's designed to be pitched as a movie or a TV show. And B, Skydance, it feels like is trying to make the move to almost being a little bit of an Annapurna, where they go from being a financing company to a little more of a sort of self-sustaining studio,

even if it's just making stuff for Netflix. It feels like they were the main creative force on this movie and not Netflix. Yes, because Skydance also did Six Underground. They were the main creative force. But yeah, Six Underground, which insanely I've never seen. I just didn't watch it. all skynance also did six underground they were the main creative force um but yeah six underground which insanely i've never seen i just didn't watch it it's very weird that i just have michael bay made a movie and i was just like oh i guess i'll check that out later i don't know like i mean it's

not like it got good reviews but still like i and and that one in particular is one where i was like it's gonna feel like a bummer to watch a mich Michael Bay movie for the first time at home even if it's a bad one and I missed the one week it was at the Ipix South Street Seaport I refuse to go to the Ipix South Street Seaport I only go there to see Netflix movies because like they play what such a bad cinema experience it's the waiter comes and talks to you like David there's a section where there's no wait waiter service you have to go and bust your own food and drinks it's you have to go and get it the beeper and then you have to leave the theater walk to the lobby so your tray what is this they charge you more for the seats with food service and those seats also are like

little pods it's it's the weirdest fucking theater there's also the weird one that i love uh that's pretty much a nightmare the cmx which is uh some mexican chain that's doing a dining experience yes yeah i know i know of its existence at ipix someone a waiter sang the birthday song of someone during a movie i just wanted to put that out there and then we can move on do you know what i would give for that level of frustration now though like i just wish i was in a theater tisking at a person checking their cell phone in front of me yeah i wish i was sitting next to someone who brought like fucking egg salad right i was just gonna say just this just the smell of a stranger's ass just ripping

ass right now someone taking their shoes off and putting their fart detective here yeah that's right i'm sorry i threw on my sherlock holmes hat and i'm ready to sniff um this very much feels like a Skydance movie that was made for Netflix. They're the ones who seek her out, saw the Cloak & Dagger pilot, knew that she was in development on that. You have to imagine just Hollywood circles,

they were reading her drafts or hearing about what she was trying to do. They came to her with the book and she said there were the couple things she latched onto. But as I've talked about, as I front loaded, I was surprised for how much it is very much a one-to-one adaptation with the same creator and writer adapting his own work that all the depth in this movie is not present in the comic. That the comic is very much the surface version of it, and the comic is the version

that this movie's detractors claim it is. Sure. I mean, she's very complimentary about Rucka, and she said, like, oh, I had the comic book with me at all times, and he was very open to all the changes I wanted to make. It's a good book. It all sounded like a perfectly harmonious collaboration.

It is a fun comic book with good ideas. I have nothing bad to say about it, but I think this movie is playing on a different level. Yeah. And it's a great adaptation in that it's finding

the themes, the personal themes that one storyteller can dig into and someone else's from their starting point. You know? Yes.

And there's this cool axe with like a little circle that looks like a big circle and that the axe is definitely in it yeah yeah um so they stuck with that at least so right off the bat this movie starts with in media res like not literally i bet you wonder how i got here but close to it which i usually dislike i feel like we talked about usually it just feels like it's a flourish for flourish sakes but the the opening is so striking to this movie and i love that it takes less than 10 minutes to get back to this point me too i but yes the first time i watched it i I was kind of like, meh, like I am very resistant to those openings. And then the second time I rewatched the time when I rewatch it for the podcast, I was like,

I don't know, like whatever. It clicked for me more that I had forgotten that she's thinking like, you know what? Maybe I'll be dead this time. And that's that'll be okay. You know, like, right. Like that's what she because that's what she's saying in her monologue is sort of like look you know every time i'm kind of like is this it is this gonna be it because maybe you know maybe it's time for it to be it and this is a big thing i love about this movie aside from all that thematic stuff just on a very

surface level um when you hear the pitch for this movie you go like haven't i seen eight variations on this isn't this just like six things i've already engaged with smash together isn't this just like a wolverine mixed with like yeah you got some wolverine i mean yeah yeah isn't this special ops wolverine and to some degree i'm not accusing him of of theft but uh there's the one sort of good sequence in the otherwise excretable x-men origins wolverine is that opening credit sequence where you see wolverine and his brother saber-tooth uh time-lapsed fighting in every important war of the last 300 years right that was just like such an interesting like oh yeah right i guess wol Wolverine has like been used as a soldier in all these different battles. And seeing him exist in different time periods was kind of a striking thing.

And the rest of that movie is bullshit. And it feels like that might have been a thing that inspired Rucka, the old guard, the idea of, oh, these soldiers have been there for all of these different things. They fought like all of humanity's great battles. Is it just stripped down black ops wolverine team yeah but i think a big thing she's doing here is uh this isn't like cool healing this is almost zombie like and how much these guys are undying yeah you're right you're right i mean because it's not that different from your wolverines where like you got the cool special effects and everything sort of snapping and it's gross but you're right that there's a weird like glassiness to their eyes like a like it's a little more clear that

they are kind of like dead for a second if that makes sense like versus wolverine obviously god bad day like whereas they're like i just died and now i come back to life and like all the way back to the first x-men movie he had it's that thing of like where he's like you know like where like it's like like it's like he got you know whatever punched you just hit the impression that i was about to describe but even logan which is like the grittiest of them by and large he cracks his neck and then the little dash like heels you know she she cited logan as uh as an influence though she uh yeah she's aware cracked bones really gnarly wounds and they take time and it really feels like you're watching footage of someone being

murdered played in reverse. Right, right, right. Which I love that this is another thing that I think she's doing very differently than almost everyone else working in the genre. This is really a movie about the weight of violence as well. Like it is a movie that does not take its violence or its death lightly.

And that is also both visually and thematically when it's expressed in the text of the film, something that is not in the book. When they talk about the cost of taking a life, how you have to carry that with you, it's not. And the book is not gory in the same kind of way. It's gory more in an oh cool kind of way. she cited the very famous book on killing, which was written by a soldier. That's about like the sort of, you know,

entain intense psychological toll of killing people that like, you know, builds up on people in war. And right. That was her whole life. Like what, if you were doing that for thousands of years, it would make,

you know, like it would mess with your brain chemistry. She made the five main actors, the, the members of the titular old guard read that book and use that as their primary text for character she was like this has to be an important element of this movie and it it absolutely uh is and that's something we almost never see i feel like in a very different form and not as directly or emotionally,

the John Wick films are kind of about that, you know, like how much his humanity gets lost, the more he kills people. But, but this is explicitly like said, like, and,

and it, it takes the time. Once again, this is like a Gina moment thing that if you're not fully paying attention to this movie glosses over, but in your mind but it takes the time to have the reaction shots of its primary characters looking at a body they've just killed and having a moment of like wait it is not joyful it is not badass these are all

human beings even if they're bad when we meet meet Niall, she's just killed someone. For the first time. For the first time. Right, exactly. Right. And her reaction is like to try and save that person, which obviously the old guard no longer have that impulse. But to that point, I also think the important shot,

the opening shot is important. Those opening couple of shots with the voiceover, because as said david they are like glassy eyed it's very weird to if you know anything about this movie you know it's immortal people right sure and to start the film with all them lying dead on the floor it doesn't make you think oh this is the end of the movie this is how they die but it makes you think i'm gonna watch them come back from this like they're gonna show me the healing process to this it makes it eerie it makes it haunted from the very beginning but i mean the other thing that we don't know that i certainly didn't know going into this movie is like that twist of also like yes they're immortal yes they can heal from basically

any wound but there is they all that you know their number will come up one day and they do know that and so there's that sort of like hint of mortality like to every encounter um that they're all kind of wondering about and especially because they don't know like they don't know what the operating rule is. What age do you stop being able to heal? Is there a thing that pushes you out of immortality? I love that there's no system, or there's no tome to it. Yes. It's just like this has happened,

and I guess really the only thing is that they all are connected through dreams. Yes. I am praying, praying that the comics don't eventually explain the codex of how their mortality works. I mean, if the comics... I could not be less interested.

Right. I don't know if the comics are going to keep going. It looks like he did two volumes. Is it ongoing? Like, is it an ongoing series? Do you know? It's like, he's always said he envisioned it as a trilogy.

It's the second miniseries is just finishing up now the trade is coming out right around right it's called force multiplied yes i guess the trade's coming out in september so i haven't read it yet um but i i think by and large the three volumes of this story are probably going to be what they try to adapt for the three movies. And it certainly seems like there's no reason for them not to make a sequel now if it has, in fact, been watched by,

let me see this, two trillion people per nanosecond? Yeah, right. Everyone has watched it, so much so that other Netflix characters, such as Hot Santa Claus, played by Kurt Russell, have watched

the movie they noted that and he isn't going to be a member of the old guard in uh the older guard the sequel to the old guard i'm sure they will make a sequel there was a recent deadline article that was talking about how like it won't be quick because charlie's does not like to do action back to back because it's exhausting and it's a whole thing and of course gina prince brythe would just set up a new movie that she's doing with viola davis right um i also feel like uh charlize has been very openly talking about how she is not filming a movie until there's a vaccine sure right well that's fine too obviously but um yeah but just like on a personal level she's like i don't feel comfortable getting on a set i'm writing this off until i don't think they would

even start making an old guard sequel for a couple years is sort of also just i think but hopefully they can do one because they i think they should and this thing is screaming for one and i just would like to see it but i think this movie once again works as a complete meal so it goes from them lying dead on the floor uh uh her voiceover of like i've been here before you know the whatever but then it goes to uh her walking down the streets of where are they are they in jordan at the beginning of the movie uh they're in marrakesh i believe um but there's there's all kinds of uh you know because there's that whole sequence where they're like um isn't it it's right at the start where they're eating the baklava and they're like guessing where it's like she has a whole little reunion with her with her pal all of this stuff it's very like classic relaxed behavioral gina stuff You know? It's like

Bilga's review of this movie was great. He talked about the block of love being like the defining moment of this film that that would either not be included in a movie

or would be included just as a cute moment and the movie really just like slows down and lets this moment breathe because it's like if you are in these characters' shoes

how hard it is to attain a moment of pure enjoyment like that. The weirdness of what still has any sort of appeal to them. And also setting up all these little characterization things about their reality where it's like, oh, right, I guess if you're that old, you kind of have infinite money. Like, she talks about how she's bought Booker, the Mateus Schoenaerts character, a first edition book, right? It's like Count of Monte Crisco. Like she's bought him like a very important text.

Yeah. In a first edition. She bought like a Rodin statue. Right. She just has all this stuff either because she owned it before it was worth anything or because she's literally the exception to the you can't take it with you rule where she's just doing high level work for incredible amounts of money and she never runs out she opened a high yield savings account hundreds of thousands of

years ago I mean interest it just compounds over time like you're gonna win right So it's like the one thing that's still kind of fun for them, because they show like all of them are drinking all the time, but it feels like it barely even has any effect on them, is this thing. They buy her a piece of baklava, and she has to guess every single ingredient in it and the origin of that ingredient. Because once again, it's like, oh, if you're that old,

I guess you just have the time to understand everything. And also as you get old, food is the only thing you really got. Right. So you can taste the difference between like which sea your salt comes from and stuff. Showing them checking into the hotel, her like erasing the photo, when she gets caught in the background of these young girls selfie. I mean, I just think all this is like really good characterization stuff, none of which is in the book. That just shows you, A, what would it actually feel like on a day-to-day level if you've been alive for 4,000 years? And B, what kind of life would you have to lead if you're that committed to being completely

off the grid because of paranoia of what society would do if they found out that you existed right um but Mateusz Shonar has come to her it at the beginning it feels like they haven't seen each other in years right yeah and I'm not clear on that still. I think the implication is they're so old and they're so reticent to regroup. It's only if a mission feels very important that for them, like not working together for five years or 10 years or whatever is like a matter of weeks for us, you know, in the grand scheme of things. So they're just like, well, that was a tough job. I'm going to take a six year us, you know, in the grand scheme of things.

So they're just like, well, that was a tough job. I'm going to take a six-year vacation, you know? Sure. So she's sort of found by her old teammates and he comes to her with this case he's heard about from this guy, Copley, who is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the great Chiwetel Ejiofor,

who at the beginning of the movie, you're like, this guy, I don't, I mean, I'll take any Chewie that I can get, but he feels very overqualified for this role. You're sort of confused up until the last 10 minutes

why you hire this heavyweight actor to play this role. But I think the movie ultimately explains why, not just in terms of set up for future sequels, but the one scene that really matters where you need an actor of his gravitas to pull off. But he's a guy they've worked with before within the CIA, and now he has left the CIA. He has a wife who got sick, and he just said, you know, he left when she got ill. She passed. He never found his way back.

He's now working for independent contractors and he's got a mission for her. I'm glad David returned. He walked away for a second, but I just want to say, because I need all three brains on this. I was very confused by this element in the beginning of the film. They say that she would tell as you for was a CIA agent. Yeah. confused by this element in the beginning of the film. They say that Chiwetel Ejiofor

was a CIA agent. He says, don't you need to be, or Booker says, don't you need to be American to be a CIA agent, whichever one says it. And he says, I was born in Boston, moved to London while I was young. Now, I don't get this.

An American very early on in their life moving to london and spending their predominant sort of like coming of age years in the united kingdom yeah yeah weird situation similar to my situation wait huh because you're a mortal well wait chihuahua's not immortal in this movie no but if you're saying similar to mine i have to imagine you're relating to the least ridiculous situation in this movie not the one that makes no sense all right that was funny being an american who grew up in london that's like a wacky sci-fi premise yeah yeah you're right that's a wacky sci-fi premise anyway i grew up in london love the love the euro feel of the old guard a lot of london stuff in this movie

uh another thing just set up from the very beginning, Charlize in the hotel lobby, seeing the news broadcast, the transitions from one awful human injustice story to another awful human injustice story. And she sort of said already a couple times at this point, like, we've lost. The world's not worth saving. It's so far gone.

It's fucked. She is struggling with that. Right. That's thousands of years in she's like what is the point of all of this she's in a griffin newman headspace everything is terrible everyone's the worst we can't fix it we're all doomed and they're saying like come on it's a mission we'll save people and she's like irrelevant at this point like come on like a four thousand year sample size we're not doing any good for anyone things end up just ruining themselves right but they tell

her this story about these girls who are being held hostage uh seemingly on the verge of being trafficked and it just like hits her and she reluctantly agrees to do this rescue mission which is our first real action sequence um great action sequence that's where they get mowed down with bullets in like a kill box right they like lured into it yeah 10 minutes in we come back to the opening uh and it is right it's a kill box they realize they were set up it was just uh a trap to get them on camera uh she was looking for video proof that they are immortal that they can come back from death and then they come back from death and they kill everyone and there's some cool like you know i don't know like using the ground to like fire your shotgun like you know all these little moves

that are cool it's very um like it's eloquent and it's got like a ballet or like you know what's the like pointy little sword play kind of stuff i'm talking about fencing fencing it's got a fencing kind of vibe to it definitely she told me she wanted the action to like she wanted them to fight like people who used to exclusively fight uh you know hand to hand because if they're hundreds of years old they all came up fighting with swords like right yes the gun feels like an extension of that less than it forward gun for she wanted that to be their advantage that like you know modern soldiers using weapons uh using automatic weapons would not be uh used to and not know how to deal with someone charging at them like because that's just not how things work anymore but here's the one thing and i guess maybe it is so preposterous that he

wouldn't have given the mercenaries a heads up but wouldn't he have like at least mentioned when he hired them hey these people might be immortal or did he just like he just needed to kind of get them on the ground and then like that's it i mean look it's a fair question you get it when you get to the harry mellon character like clearly it's like we got to keep this shit proprietary we got to keep a tight right you can't mention it to anyone right he's very worried about his rivals right and that's a that's a big part of the harry mellon character is like he doesn't care how many people have to like die in the churn of trying to get to immortality like he views them all as like that's inherent vice that's like sunk cost i'm fine with that it's worth it you know he's that's what i i love about the sort of slight rejiggering she

does of the villain character is like he is absolutely believable as a guy who thinks he's the good guy because he's thinking about everything as an algorithm you know he's like in what way is it not worth killing a hundred people if you then end up solving death for everyone else right uh he views his sort of lack of humanity towards everyone who gets in the way of this discovery as for the greater good but also he's obviously motivated by his legacy and his bottom line and all that sort of profit motive sure but yes but yes he does i mean obviously chihuahua tells character the ideas his wife died of als so he's like well a cure for disease. Surely anything is worth this. He watched her tear it. And the idea of having to suffer through someone,

watching someone that close to you die that painfully and slowly would make you want to find a cure for death and would make you perhaps at your most heightened moments justify some fucked up shit if you felt it was for the greater good. He grabbed the red string and he started tying it from one thumbtack to another and once you go that far and you're there's no going back but he's got it's still an inherent humanity that that harry melling does not well well but this is the it's like chibitel is overqualified for this role i'm very glad he's in the movie we said this when he went to the bathroom yeah i mean i'm sure he wanted to work

with gina prince but right right like that was probably part of the motivation for him it's the setup for what he does at the end and it's the one scene where i think it's very clear why they hired someone that big and this also so yeah this movie is is i would say markedly worse without him absolutely absolutely uh and it makes you in a way i mean a especially because none of that is there with the character on the page in the book and b it makes you kind of resent the way he's used in doctor strange where that's a role that is so much t up for oh but the potential of what he could do in sequels and he does his job very well there. Chiwetel's a fucking pro.

He's got, like, you know, top 10 emotional depth of any actor working today. He's just got an infinite well of emotion that he can apply to even the silliest material. But whereas Doctor Strange is just pretty much like, here he is as kind of like mentor ally character with the promise of oh he might get to do some real shit in later movies this movie

even though for a lot of it you're like why is this guy so over qualified for this role yeah it justifies why you hire him versus hiring me to play this part you know yeah I yes it does I mean you should have done it but yes

no i wish i played them harry mellon character but also he nails it and he's a better actor than me harry milling is a good actor it's funny funny like the kid who played dudley dudley dursley yeah i mean yeah the thing i loved him most in was um scruggs buster scruggs yeah that was incredible yeah and now he's in like the new antonio campos movie he's in the half shot joel cohen mcbeth movie yeah he's in mcbeth right he was in lost city i said he's in lost city is that he's like well i say it's ridiculous you know he was playing that kind of a character but he's good at it. Yeah. So good. Watching this twice just made me so thirsty for the moment where I get to play my shitty hoodie wearing tech bro villain in an action movie.

Like the facts in your neck. Yes. The fact that every villain in an action movie or at least every other villain in a big action movie has now become a Griffin Newman type makes me more and more eager to eventually play that role. They're in this kill box scenario. They're caught on camera and she immediately is like,

see, I shouldn't even try to help people. It's not fucking worth it. Now we're screwed. We got to go on the lam again. So they all run out of there, jump on a train, try to look for a hideout. The safe houses they have

placed all over the world. jump on a train try to look for a hideout the safe houses they have placed all over the world um and on the train they all have the nightmare uh the nightmare they have that connects them to the other immortals uh the other people who got uh old guard disease or whatever it is um ogd and it is uh the great kikiiki Lane who I never realized was tall. Oh is she a tall? I think she's like 5'9 or 5'10 but especially because Charlize is known for being very tall and statuesque

and for whatever reason in Beale Street Kiki Lane reads short. I think also because Stephen James is a big guy and she's playing such a sort of young sort of innocent character in that like childlike character in that. But this

movie the first time she's in an action sequence and especially when she comes face to face with Charlize and she's holding her own and also is holding her height against her. You realize like oh this isn't one of those examples of like Scarlett Johansson being an action star despite being 5-1 kiki lane despite being a not ripped woman is believable as a

soldier yeah i think she was uh did the most they all you know they all everyone in the movie did this sort of classic like months of boot camp thing you know where you all sort of bond together learning how to operate weapons and all that stuff but she i think she had the most intense training she has that big plane fight and all that that she has to do uh i love her i think she's really she's great interesting oh she's got really unique energy and there's something very raw about her and something very vulnerable about her that feels perfect for uh gina who is so based in sort of that earnestness of emotion yeah um yeah she raw is a good word for it right her feelings are very keenly felt like whether they're in field street you know

she's got this sort of like warm sad loving energy and in this movie she's got this very sort of like independent kind of you know mistrustful kind of you know she's got a warrior energy right like that's sort of the big moment later in the movie where she's talking about how her father was a soldier and like it's like yeah right you are like uh descended from warriors that's another thing i mean that this movie is interested in is that they what what makes a good soldier psychologically in a certain way you know right because she dies trying to help someone and and he's also been holding women hostage i mean it's they right there's that moment where she's only tipped off to it through her humanity through relating to the children and the women right exactly right they set it up in a way where she's only tipped off to it through her humanity, through relating to the children and the women in the village.

They set it up in a way where she's not a shitty soldier. She's not like a piece of shit soldier. She's trying to stabilize this person. They slash her throat. Yeah. You see, as we said, how upset she is by the moment. She's realized that she's probably killed a man. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, of course, she heals up and everyone's like oh that's weird and then that's when charlize comes and grabs her and you have the whole plane sequence she's just trying to listen to some frank ocean and bum out about the fact that she's being discharged and said charlize comes and does the coolest shit ever And talking about the choreography of this movie, yes, it's very balletic, which I feel like anyone who's done action talks about the fact that

shooting action is far closer to dance than it is to any sort of sport because of the amount of takes you have to do and the precision of your relationship to the camera and of stunt guys and wires and all this sort of stuff. And a lot of the amount of takes you have to do and the precision of your relationship to the camera and of stunt guys and wires and all this sort of stuff.

And a lot of the best action stars have a dance background. The Russo brothers have talked about that Chris Evans and Tom Holland are the best in all the Marvel universe at action because they both did

dance when they were young. That they understand that they're breaking it into like it's step turn step but here's this is my question actually because i've brought this up about dancing in movies like uh like writing dance right you write a dance how do you do this do you write a fight well because this is based on a comic book there is like you know a vague storyboard already in place but that's that's what you do you storyboard it you bring it in yeah you bring in a choreographer i mean most action movies have a very specific choreographer who is sort of the author over those sequences in the same way that the dance

choreographer is over a musical and it's like on the script page, it will just say like cool fight. And it will only describe- It doesn't say punch. Right. It will just, it'll truly say something. I mean, they talk about like- Yeah, yeah.

In screenplays, it's roughly a page a minute, except if it's an action movie where any page with action is probably five times longer than it's written. Because it usually just says they break out in an awesome fight. They take no prisoners. The only time they'll describe something is if it's an important story beat. The fight choreographer on this movie is called Danny Hernandez.

He had worked on Avengers Endgame. He's a stunt guy. You know, he'd worked on John Wick. You know, he's a stunt coordinator on the John Wick movies. Yada, yada. You know, I think he's rising in the ranks. She talked about him. I mean, like, you know, she's stunt coordinator on the John Wick movies, the yada yada, you know, I think he's rising in the ranks. She talked about, I mean,

like, you know, she's a very serious director. She's very methodical in her approach. And she very much just like consumed every action movie of the last 20 years and was like, I want this vibe. I don't want this vibe.

And she would not tell me what she didn't want, but I'm pretty, don't want this vibe and she would not tell me what she didn't want but i'm pretty i am inferred that she did not want the more kind of like very slick pre-vis marvel-y kind of stuff right it it feels very practical and tactile uh you have charlize who is really good at this shit um and is only getting better and better at action but you know you have a number one on the call sheet who you don't have to shoot around who is going to be able to pull off extended choreography without cuts works for her character too like she's this immortal warrior and i'm like right it's charlie's she's been a mad max she's been an atomic blonde like you know

yeah she's like an action luminary now uh Yeah. Has quietly become like a top tier, one of our best action stars, despite, you know, like not making an action movie with her being the muscle until Eon Flux, which flopped and not really reclaiming it until the last seven or eight years. The only other one is, is the Italian job,

which is sort of an action movie. Like she does a lot of driving and complaining about it this week in interviews that she doesn't really get to do more right yeah uh hancock of course oh yes which she's pretty good and forget hancock special effects based yes that's not uh right as actiony but another movie in which she plays an immortal eon flux uh uh mad max old guard and atomic blonde she is doing closer to keanu type work and i think they're very unified in what makes both of them good as action stars that they retain their vulnerability and it is just sort of the precision of it

but the other thing i love about the action this movie that i finally sort of like wrap my hands around watching it a second time is they're all so relaxed it is the sort of like malcolm gladwell thing of they have done this not like 10 000 hours but like you know 10 000 like years no i get it i'm exaggerating but there are moments where in the final action sequence, one guy will just casually hand a gun back to a different person. And it's like the combination of A, they know they're probably going to be able to recover from any hit they take. And B, they've done it so many times that for them, all of this is like brushing their teeth. It's like, which move am I going to do? You know, and they all know each other's moves.

gonna do you know and they all know each other's moves and that element of it is very interesting to see where so often actors and choreography are showing tension and like the exertion and the clenched teeth and how hard it is and this is just sort of like so they get kiki lane they bring her on a plane this shit's great with uh kiki Ling just refusing to accept what's happened to her. Trying to stab Charlize. Yeah. Well, cause I want to say also, I like how they deal with her not initially accepting it and just Charlize shooting her in the head.

In the head. Yes. Yeah. Just like making it just so blunt for the audience. Like it's, uh, it's wild. It's shocking. It's so shocking though every time.

I know. I know, but it's because of the space it's given and also the like actual detail and realism of their injuries that they look really fucking bad every time they get shot. Watching the bullet come out of their head is gross oh yes yeah the violence definitely right it's it's not exactly fun violence but it is uh like interesting but i don't know how else to put it like you are kind of like transfixed by it it's given weight and it has consequences yes but it's also kind of cool it makes me like because when the movie started

i will say the first raid sequence i was like i i'm like i want to like this but also i'm just so tired of gun violence and movies but but the amount of time and space this movie gives to like this is not cool like even if the action is, the devastation it leaves is not something that's fun. You carry these people with you. And, uh, uh, the aftermath of this violence,

it looks appropriately disturbing. Um, so the plane sequence fucking rules. It's such a good version. It is the plane sequence. Cause it's two immortals against each other. So there's less of that. Right.

Yeah. Right. And there's the fake out with the pilot's death but all the psychological games that uh charlie's andy plays with nile are so good too i'm just like she's just done all of this she's worked through every scenario i mean she's like late groundhog day bill murray where she's like i just know how everything goes yeah i know every variable at this point she's a little bored though she's like i just know how everything goes yeah i know every variable at this point she's a little bored though she's like almost like i have to introduce another person to all this all right yeah so kiki lane meets the group and here's a big difference in the comic in the comic uh joe and nikki are kidnapped before kiki Lane gets brought on board. So she never knows them until after they save them.

So there's like no team dynamic with the actual full team at all. Yes, absolutely. And it's one of the things you and I love team movies. I think that comes from our love of team comic books. Love of X-Men for sure yes that's a huge thing it's the thing where not only do I love team action I love a movie

where multiple characters get to feel like they actually matter that they're fully rounded and they exist I love you know Martin Eden what's his name Luca Marinelli and Marwan Kanzari. The Hachafar.

Hachafar. It's so fucking good in this movie. Great in this movie. This actor is Hachafar from Guy Ritchie's Aladdin, Ben. Okay. Okay. And he is so goddamn good in this. I believe he's like Dutch.

He's like Tunisian dutch right and when he was in uh aladdin i didn't really know him but someone was like oh yeah this guy like he's in like a couple you know dutch movies like you know he's he's sort of a thing and i was sort of like i was very perplexed by his jafar performance because he's so serious and very low key in that movie like he's very like intense and of course jafar in aladdin is like this big broad you know silly figure and i get that he was like well i can't do that i need to like dial it you know in the other direction yeah but i i didn't come out of aladdin being like oh this guy is no someone to watch whereas i'm like oh my god this guy's so fucking you know sexy he's so like he's hot he's very very alluring a very magnetic

figure um but all this stuff is just really good of her meeting the team uh coming to understand what the rest of her existence is going to be like. Yeah. Learning all the rules, learning about the people they've lost over the years. Right. You know, like the, yeah.

Yeah. So the comic does not have the Quinn character at all. Oh really? Oh wow. Because that's one of the things that feels like the biggest sequel to you. Um, a hundred percent. Perhaps she comes in.

The second volume is not in the first volume whatsoever. There is one extended flashback to the one serious romantic relationship that Andy had, which was with an American, uh, slave. And it was sort of like a Benjamin button thing where she slowed down and spent like 50 years of her life with him

as he eventually got too old. Right, right, right, right. And that was like the one great, like the loss of having to watch him die, essentially, and having to leave him was the thing that made her resist emotional connection, which is far less interesting than the Quinn thing,

which is really playing on the existential terror of this existence. Like, what's the only thing weirder than not being able to die not being able to die and being at the bottom of the ocean in an Iron Maiden which by the way sounds no good that sounds bad don't do it oh yeah don't do it makes me cringe

like like when I get portrayed in the movie it really it made me I had such a visceral reaction yes um yes when they go to the hideout the cave where the rodan is and all the other stuff there's one shot of kiki lane taking a blanket off a painting and that's the painting of charlie's and the love interest character from the comic i think implying whether or not it will come into play later that that character still was a period of her life but quinn was like the first or not i guess there's the other fellow immortal the man

that she said she saw die uh yes one immortal she's seen die right right played by joey and so yeah but quinn was the joe to her nicky uh was not just her partner but uh the love of her life. And was pulled apart from her because of fear of witchcraft. And now is at the bottom of the ocean. It haunts her. Kiki Lane has the nightmare about her. So she starts to find out about all this thing, their existence, the vague rules that they do

and don't understand, how they still are able to enjoy life. But you're getting this thing of like, Charlize is just sort of over it. Like she just wishes she had the sweet release of death now. And even though Matthias Schonartz is relatively the toddler of the group,

he seems to be taking it really roughly. And you get the thing with his son, which is even maybe a bigger element in the comics of just this is why we can't have human attachments it's not just that you have to watch people die and that you have to watch their resentment over

the fact that you have something that you can never share with them that you're going to keep on living and there's no way to pass it on to them, but you will see people, your loved ones, the people you care about most in the final years of their life transform into something really ugly as they resent your condition. And not only will you have to live with the loss of those people, but you'll have to live with the memories

of how warped they became by the end of it. Classic immortal stuff. Classic immortal drama. Good shit. by the end of it. Classic immortal stuff. Classic immortal drama. Good shit. I'm always into it. It's front-loading all the stuff that is usually subtext in these movies. And really making it about that sort of condition

in sort of like a sci-fi short story kind of way. Also, though, they're so hot. We haven't even talked about um matthias schoenertz and uh you know uh who is just just uh just a very a very fun person to look at i really enjoy looking at a relaxed on-screen presences like even when he's playing really intense guys he just makes everything feel so natural so calm so lived in you know i feel like i guess the first thing i saw him in was rust and bone i didn't see bullhead which was like his his breakout breakout but he's been active since he was 13 he's a belgian graffiti artist hell yeah and rust and bone

you hear that i didn't know that that fucking rules but it was yeah like, like, Bullhead, Rust and Bone was his big breakout. And then you have, like, The Drop and, what was it, Mustang. And he's great. He's great, and he's so fucking hot, and he's great in this. I love that there's never a romantic entanglement between either him and Niall or him and Andy, which it feels like 99 out of 100 versions of this movie would do. He has to at least have will-they-or-won't-they energy with one of the female leads, and he doesn't. And this movie has two romances in it, essentially,

and both of them are queer, which is somewhat profound and revolutionary. You know? I mean, it's like like these are like two serious undying loves that our heroic characters have and they're both queer um you the thing you read at the start you know the big moment where uh he you know he scoffs at the talks about his love for his partner you know that's in the comic book, right? That's in the comic. That's the thing that Gina said when she read that in the comic.

She said, I want to make this movie. She was like, holy shit. Right, right, right. Yeah, and I feel like, I talked about Mark Millar earlier, but he's like this perfect example of a guy who's essentially writing comic books so that he can get them optioned these days, right?

And there's this thing I often see in like original comic books where A, the premise is like it's like this but this it's sort of like it feels like a hollywood pitch of like what if it's like this meets this i'm taking this well-established hit film or franchise or comic property and i'm putting a slightly different twist on it so it's easily packageable but the other thing is they always have these scenes that feel like, and I don't say this in a negative way,

but a comrade going, man, I always wish I saw this kind of scene happen in a movie. You know? Right, yes. And so it feels like a riff on the kind of homophobia that often exists in these types of films and the idea of what if a bad guy makes a quick gay crack and the retort to it is the most emotionally profound thing you've ever heard someone say.

Right. And they're all like, Oh, Oh, Oh, get it right. Yeah, right.

And in the comic, it's kind of striking, but the way time just fucking stands still during this monologue and it's pretty good and fucking Kenzari just like killing it. Yeah, he is killing it. And, and Martin Eden,

I only know him as Martin Eden eden i forget what is i keep forgetting he's italian luca marinelli but that guy's uh he's a cutie everyone in this movie's hot everyone in this movie yeah it's a very yes it's a very hot cast yes um but the the extended beat after the monologue uh when the guys just kind of look at each other and look at them. And it's not even like, before they sort of try to apprehend them again, restrain them again. It's not even like a, like, awkward.

It's a, wow, I now feel stupid. I realize my lack of emotional depth. Like, it's all these grunts suddenly feeling really really like yeah you're right they've been put in place because they're like well yeah i mean i i guess i felt that way about someone or maybe not i don't know like in high school yeah so they've been apprehended now henry harry melling uh has been promised by she would tell that he will collect the old guard so they can perform tests on them and try to bottle whatever it is that keeps them immortal uh so he can sell the cure for death and the remainder of the movie movie is pretty much uh them trying to retrieve joe and nikki while charlie's fights her sort of

over it attitudes to this entire fucking enterprise of being a human being of being alive and the realization that her mortality is starting to perhaps catch up with her um uh matthias schonartz despite being a relative newbie is just fucking over it it feels like he's the cypher he's the one who's like maybe we just want to die like he's in the bargaining phase of all of this he's trying to see if there's a way out they all talk as if they've experimented with the way out as if they wish to some degree they could be uh killed and he's still at the point where he feels like it might be worth making the Faustian bargain. And Kiki

Lane is still just questioning whether she wants to deal with any of this shit. Like, she just wants to go back and be with her parents. And they just, or at least her mother and her brother, and they keep on trying to explain to her, like, you cannot exist in proper society ever again. Like, your troop

mates saw you recover within a day from a throat slashing like if you're existing in the proper world people are going to apprehend you and they're going to distrust you and they're going to turn against you like you're you're i'm sorry you're fucked you're doomed like you can just live off the grid or you can live with us and try to do shit about it but there's no normal life you can have with regular attachments to human beings but that's a bummer for her i wouldn't want you know i would be a little grumpy too i mean that's what yeah this movie's like dealing with all that it's like right this isn't fun and it's sort of in a certain way also about like the hard work of trying to make the world a better place, which does not make one feel good.

You know, like spending this much time wallowing in the worst of humanity in order to try to combat it tends to make you focus on the worst of humanity. It is a thing that I love about. I was never really here. that I love about I Was Never Really Here, You Were Never Really Here, my favorite movie of two years ago, where it's like

taking this sort of like vigilante, like take in, oh, he's the guy correcting the wrongs of the world. It's like, that guy would be

fucking miserable. He would put a plastic bag over his head every single night because he has to spend so much time exposed to the worst shit on the planet,

you know? And it makes sense that Kiki Layne, who is young, not just in relation to most mortal human beings, but, you know, infinitely younger than the rest of the people she's with right now, would just be like, no, no, hard pass, none of this. Let me just sit on a couch and watch TV with my brother. But she is inherently a warrior. on a couch and watch TV with my brother. But she is inherently a warrior. She can't knock that out of her spirit. Charlize, you know, at this point is over it enough that she understands and she has this sort of compassion that you feel like she maybe wouldn't have had 600 years ago and says, like, look, I can't keep you here. I can't tell you this is worth doing because I hate it. And I

think it sucks. And I wish I were dead. And I don't even think it worked. So, like, go back, you know. But by giving her a gun so that she's able to fend for herself, she realizes the gun was given to her, Andy, by Mateusz Schonartz. The gun is empty. Mateusz Schonartz is setting Andy up to be captured. Right. He does not know that Andy is starting to become mortal.

You have that great scene where Andy breaks off from the group and goes to the pharmacy in France. Yes, love that scene. And it's that little moment of compassion of this young woman, this punk woman behind the counter at a pharmacy at presumably three o'clock in the morning, who not only doesn't ask questions about the amount of violence that clearly has happened to Charlize, but takes her in the back room and helps stitch her up. Because at the end of the day, what is life worth living for if not those small moments of kindness?

And why be a person if not to find some opportunities to extend those moments of kindness to others? So that's a brief sort of, like, maybe this is kind of worth it moment for Charlize. But of course, when Kiki Lane puts it together, tracks him down, and goes and meets face-to-face with Shuatel, Shuatel has his big Oscar scene where he talks about watching his wife die and is not delivered in a James Bond villain kind of like, you don't understand, I want to stop death way.

It is such just a vulnerable, broken man, just saying like, when you watch someone you love that much suffer that dearly, it throws everything out of whack. You know, it really makes you question everything

because it doesn't feel like that is just, that someone you feel for that deeply can hurt that much. It also speaks to Gina's interest in consequences, uh, in a way that most action movies are not, not just the consequence of death,

but the consequence of choices that they push. She would tell to a breaking point that even when he sees them being tortured, that all the early stages, he bites his tongue and lets it happen because this is a guy who has to live with what he's done. Like there is not a clean path to redemption and he's set up to be uh more beneficial to the world by the end of the movie but they're still not trying to totally acquit him for the choices

he's made because they've been doing similar things they've lived for fucking thousand of years it's very clear that all of them have had periods where they've been fucking awful yeah but i like this is what i like about it it's like they're never no one's ever that like when when booker um betrays them their their reaction is i mean i um uh joe marwan kanzari he's he's a little madder about it but like andy's reaction is mostly like oh sweetie jesus come on like really but why is joe angry about it because joe has nicky and he has something to live right they've been captured and they right yeah you're right joe joe and nicky feel like the two who are at peace with their immortality because they have found each other and the other three characters are like get get me out of this. But she would tell as well.

Right. It's like, they just do not have an approach to people. That's kind of like, well, you're clearly bad. And that's the end of you. I mean,

Harry Melling, they kill him because he's trying to kill them. But like they've lived long enough that they probably have more of a concept of like a redemptive arc. And like this, you know, you know, the kind of balance of like good and bad in the world.

And also how many times, uh, were each of this, each of these characters fighting on the wrong side of a war? Like they've done it. They've done both sides, you know, like they've just,

they've been through fucking everything and they've done everything a thousand times. Like the fact that andy when she finds out about booker it's sort of setting her up is just like oh come on booker like she looks at him with a level of compassion where she's like i know what drove you to do this i have all of those same impulses i'm not even angry i'm just disappointed um and at the final moment when they give Booker his punishment to jump ahead a little bit, what does she do after that? She hugs him and she cries. Like, it's not just disciplinary. It's like, this sucks, you know? But yes, this final action sequence

where the team works together one last time, they free Joe and Nikki. Kiki Lane sort of comes into her own. Andy has given up. The rest of the team has figured out that she is losing her immortality down and trace their impact on history he has realized the amount of sort of butterfly effect good they have done for the world that they are too close to as uh kiki lane says uh uh what she's in it but she can't even see it um yeah this final action sequence is great it's just great team action and as we said it's all just good grossness like you know like Luca Marinella getting shot at one point right he's the one like one of them gets shot and he's like ugh

you know it's so annoying we didn't talk about but just the moment where they find Booker and his like entire stomach's been mingled like they've cut him off and they're waiting for him to wake up again so good and it's just like so gross like it's like fucking full and his entire stomach's been mangled. They've cut him off and they're waiting for him to wake up again. So good. And it's just so gross.

It's like fucking full zombie movie gore with total realism in a way you never see in comic book movies. This stuff can't just be fun. If we're dealing with life and death at this level, it needs to be taken seriously with weight from every aspect. And so she's constantly just doing anything she can to underline the stakes of just any human life and the value in that in movies where people are usually just disposed of wantonly and where we rarely see the aftermath of violence in any sort of visceral way you know even movies that are bloody are rarely bloody in a way that is realistic and actually upsetting

in the way that this film is uh i love it it's sad it's upsetting it's a lonely movie uh you know it's lonely and it's more in full yeah or melancholy that's the criticism i i more readily expect is it's just like not fun i found it to be kind of a bummer because you do have to very much get onto its wavelength to find the fun where it is and and feel willing to accept fun with consequences. You know? The idea that this movie is the same as Extraction is bananas. Yes. Haven't seen Extraction yet. I hear there's something with a rake.

His name is Rake. No, but then at some point he like kills someone with a rake or something. Of course he does. Wait, is this the perfume movie? Definitely not the perfume movie now i i'm very curious jason bateman what jason bateman perfume movie what are you talking about i don't know you mean extract you mean the film extract the the 11 year old mike judge comedy about vanilla flavoring for baking no different movie that was not a movie that the old guard was being compared to what if it was that people are like i don't know this feels very derivative of extract yeah she's really just like cribbing from you know the

masters uh you know uh john woo uh mike judge the masters of the of the genre hey my judge that's one of my guys when we get to our next go around a march mad if we're gonna do right he could be on your list yeah that would be that would be a good good series i think what is it four or five movies i've watched idiocracy in lockdown oh man that's a i haven't that movie hits yeah that movie hits i can i mean it would be it's four movies it would be beavis and butthead office space idiocracy extract i mean that's a you know that's a solid four-movie miniseries. I mean, that's, if we do the March Madness idea

where each of us gets to pick a quadrant, Yeah. he would be in your eight, right, Ben? A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. For sure. But yes, I just think

even if you don't like this movie, you cannot act like it is the same as extraction when it has this much more on its mind you know when it is pointedly sort of standing in opposition to that sort of film and that film has its own merits and values for what it is you know extraction yeah it's got some rakes i i want to see it i should watch it what does he extract someone yes i mean there's literally another movie on netflix called extraction from like a year ago with bruce willis okay right but that doesn't count if bruce willis isn't a movie it doesn't count in the last five years correct it doesn't count i would i would unfortunately say last 10

like you know because of course there are exceptions that prove the rule but by and large yeah david he had a good run at the beginning of the 2010s he had yes he did and moonrise in 2012 yeah yeah were those both yeah yeah but that's you know and and and of course he's in you know in in glass and we enjoy that we enjoy i actually kind of enjoyed him in motherless brooklyn uh he's only in it briefly i wish he had done more than three days on glass uh but i do think he's good in it uh he he sells drowning in a puddle like no one could um i also david i think he's good in g.i. joe retaliation right sure i haven't seen but believe you it's just that he's in movies at that point

yeah can i can i trauma center yeah prince vice precious cargo marauders first kill acts of violence reprisal death wish airstrike none of these movies exist breach hard kill cosmic sin midnight in the switchgrass reactor out of death uh those are all let me just look this up here uh movies that bruce willis has filmed in the last month yeah right and he filmed them all in one month yes uh bruce willis could film his parts in these movies over zoom and they would not affect the quality of his performance at all that is the level of work he is doing in these direct-to-red box movies um but how's the movie end uh kiki lane Ki-Hee Lane goes to Charlize and says, like, you can't give up. You have to fucking fight.

And Charlize decides that they are actually doing something of value, and she's willing to enter one last big hunkin' action sequence, even knowing she might not make it out of there alive, because it's worth it for the greater good in her eyes. Yes. alive because it's worth it for the greater good in her eyes yes um they use the uh the fake out routine uh with the pilot to get harry melling i love that kiki lane finally is just like i gotta protect charlie's she can't shoot him what can i do i can use myself as a weapon i can throw myself out a window and fucking essentially live through a death in order to make sure that this guy gets taken off the board. And then her sort of like gnarled body in the collapsed car slowly cracking back into place is so unsettling. And the final real moment in the movie is, or not really, but her last big character moment is before they get in the car to drive away she looks at harry melling's

body even he is a death that she has to take account for and carry with her and this is what i'm talking about there's so much shit that is just a look in this movie a reaction a wince from a character you're right to a concept you gotta watch this this thing with full eyes. But then, of course, they go to Chiwetel and they go like, look, this isn't a request. This is a demand. You're our Professor X now.

Which got me so amped up. The idea of, A, Chiwetel being part of a team in the second movie, and B, them now having this renewed faith in the second movie and be them now like having this renewed faith in the good they can do for humanity and him being like essentially the uh human non-superpowered version of cerebro right like that's what he is it's not like that he's professor

x it's like he's bureaucratic cerebro where he's like, look, here's a place you got to go. I found another tragedy that could be avoided. Here's another way in which you've helped. It just gets me fucking amped up. And he goes like, it would be an honor. Cut to black. The old guard. Fucking awesome.

But of course, the one plot detail I forgot to mention is that they have the meeting where they need to come up with the punishment for Booker, which they do with compassion, but they tell him he's going to have to spend a hundred years on his own. He's on just a brief one century time out

before he can rejoin the team. Right, that's like a ten game suspension in the NBA or whatever. Right, yes. And he says, I guess I'm never going to see you again knowing that Charlize

is now presumably killable and she says you should have a little more faith, Booker. I do love that by the end of this movie she's a character who's like, I'm going to keep on fighting to try to stay alive. It's a really nice full circle

fucking character arc. An actual thing that happens is set up and concluded in one movie which is why this is not just fucking franchise starter bullshit you know i don't know though but no one got killed with a rake few marvel movies have journeys this complete for their main characters but there's no post credit scene there is there is no no but there's the title and then they cut to Booker drinking his whiskey

well yeah right okay I guess that serves as one I suppose and he finds Quinn which I forgot they set up when Kiki Lane

has the nightmare about Quinn about drowning in the Iron Maiden which I guess should have been a tip off to the rest of them that Quinn was still alive

otherwise they wouldn't be able to hear that it would have i mean they know really wet when she shows up like her clothes it asks you a lot of questions where she been this whole time i don't know if she's in volume two of the comic but it she's not in volume one so i have no sense of where this is maybe she is though maybe that was right yeah um volume two and then fucking l king song and credits with photos of shuatel's board of all the different places they've been in history and it's a tiny thing but talking about fucking integrity as a director bane of my existence huge pet peeve movies with badly photoshopped photos right yes where you're trying to place an actor in an earlier moment and it's a horribly photoshopped or like green screen

photo or clearly just a photo from that actor's personal collection that they put in a frame because they can't take the time to make a good fake photo and this is really exquisitely well done putting them into historical photos and subtly like in the background uh but really well integrated you see them just in all these different wars and different situations hiding in the background and i get fucking amped the old guard rules i want to see more adventures from them i want them to justify to me why life is still worth living existential action movies for the win it's my fucking john wick thing it's my john wick thing those movies are good because they're about trying to come up

with a reason to stay alive in a bad world in a bad world griffin do you have a gina prince bythewood ranking i do my. My number one is Beyond the Lights. My number two is Love and Basketball. My number three is The Old Guard. My number four is Disappearing Axe. And my number five is The Secret Life of Bees. I have the same list, except I've got Basketball on top

and Beyond the Lights second. But yeah, that top, is very big. And then Old Guard, a very solid third. Yeah, I mean, I think we were like dropping our list, but both of us are like Old Guard top five original Netflix movie ever, putting it in the tier of shit like the Irishmen at Buster Scruggs and Defy Bloods.

You like Marriage Story more than I do. We're talking that level of actual auteurs being given free reign to do whatever they want. Okja, Roma, you know, like the ones that are real movies. This deserves to be viewed alongside

those rather than alongside extraction. No disrespect to extraction. i'm excited for mink i hope mink slaps what's mink it's good mink it's the next fincher movie david fincher okay about the screenwriter citizen came that's right baby movie yeah shut up hey tom burke tom burke is playing orson welles ben how easily you scoff at screenwriter movies mink might have a scene where he's trying to write in the bathtub i guess you're right no he can't fincher knows he can't go near bathtubs for this movie he can't

no he knows that's that's right no that No, that's like doing, you know, it's like how... 2001, right? There's stuff like, if you're making a space movie, you can't imitate. I am trying to write in the steam bath. You can't get to Trumbo.

You can't do Trumbo stuff. I am trying to write on the bidet. He'll do some variation. That's fine. No, that's okay. That'd be okay. You have to. I love this fine. No, that's okay. That'd be okay. You have to. I love this movie.

I think it's great. And I miss seeing movies in theaters. I wish I got to see this in theaters. Both of us have talked about that, about how awesome this movie would be with a crowd. Yes. There's just a few good moments of like where you can,

you know, feel like a crowd would have a big old reaction. But also those moments of quiet, of pausing, of depth would register even harder in a theater, you know, because I think she's very deliberate about her uses of like silence. silence. Gina's movies all have a lot of very, very subtly edited background atmosphere noise. And for as much as she's good at using music in films, both score and soundtrack, she'll have these moments where it's just silence between characters and she plays up really heavily on the mix, the ambient noise of their environment. If you watch any of these movies with subtitles, which I almost always watch movies with closed captioning so I can try to pay more attention to them,

it's clear how deliberate it is because the closed captioning always says, like, sound of honking in the street, you know, wind rustling through the leaves, things like that. She's really into those moments because silence is one of the most effective and underused tools a filmmaker can have

in their arsenal these days. And especially because it is so underused, when she deploys it, it's kind of striking. But it's more striking in a theater when you are noticing everyone in the same room being silent with you while watching the movie. Whereas with Home, those moments are punctuated by you farting or whatever.

Wow, fart detectives back again. i love gina i'm glad she's finally seemingly been handed the check brooke she deserves i hope she gets to make the older guard i'm excited to see this viola davis movie i hope she gets to make everything uh i think she's one of our best and and undersung for far too long and uh as we said bilga's pieces on her have been phenomenal his review of old Old Guard, which is really in-depth and good, and then his profile, The Quiet Storm, is amazing and you should read them. I will say, people have been saying like, oh, well, you know, I guess her blank check

is coming and like, you know, but like this is it's a 70 million dollar movie. It's a big action movie. It was shot all over the globe. This is hands off. This is one person's vision. Skydance fucking trusted her like this is unmist this is one person's vision skydance fucking trusted her like this is unmistakably her movie you feel zero concessions in it oh one thing i wanted to say that she told

me that's wild is that you know it's got the score by um you know dustin o'halloran and and haushka um and they they recorded it in iceland because she was like I was gonna have to have a digital score because of the quarantine like because oh wow before we recorded it and I have never used a synthesized score like I've always had orchestral scores and so I was really upset about that and then Dustin literally happened to be in Iceland when this all went down and Iceland did not lock down like you know Iceland is dealt that's awesome it's a much smaller country it's an island all that uh so they were able to record it isn't that a weird little detail yeah i love it hey this is a good mini series good message yeah just a nice little quick mini series of someone i'm very happy uh that we will be able to draw some uh conversation to And already it's been very exciting

to just see people talking about Prince Bythewood more because of this movie. Yeah. We have always been of the contention that she as a filmmaker should be taken very seriously. For sure. And, you know, we said this, but as our podcast shifts

and we are in a position where rather than necessarily having to follow the trends of directors who are taken seriously and thus covering them in order to bring eyeballs to our podcast ear holes, rather I should say, it is nice to use the

ear holes we already have to sort of make our own canon and go like, every time we cover a director, it's us making a little bit of an argument that this person deserves to be taken seriously. And some of those people, we're not really giving them a boost, you know? We're not necessarily like doing this show

where it's like, well, these are our favorite directors, but certainly they are all directors who have had some impact and or, you know, made some sort of, you know made some sort of you know body of work that is fascinating and like worth considering as a body but we're also not at this point doing a show where it's like these are the 15 most legendary filmmakers of all time you know it's one of the reasons when people go like are you guys perverse when with some of these director choices like why would you choose to do with some of these director choices? Like,

why would you choose to do another romantic comedy person or do Ang Lee before you've done Fincher or Kubrick or whatever? And it's like, because it's more interesting to have these sort of a tourist conversations with people who aren't already like this thoroughly chewed upon. And look, when we did Nolan, it was great. I was resistant to it. I thought he was too discussed and I end up being fun to talk about it. And we'll get to everyone eventually. We'll do the show for a thousand years because spoiler alert, we're the old guard.

We can never die. Or at least just not for a long time. Yeah. But yeah, so good mini series. I'm glad we got this in before we start now this big kind of run of zemeckis right march starting in starting in september we're going right to him we're doing robert zemeckis he's gonna run all the way through january he has made many movies he's made all kinds of movies griffin before we

go tell me what it is you want to call the miniseries. I wanted to end the episode by throwing out a couple pitches. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to say it's been a pleasure doing Pod and Basket Cast. Do we have a nickname for Ben? Oh. Oh.

I don't know. Secret Life of Haas. I don't know. I have to think about it. It could be Secret Life of Benz. With a Z. That's kind of a twist. That's a little fun.

Well, that's something he started doing, remember? Exactly. And I always like when a nickname can riff on a new nickname that has yet to be riffed on. You know what I'm saying? That a miniseries title can reappropriate another nickname from the non-miniseries category. For sure.

But so that can at least be the placeholder unless someone pitches us something better. But what are yours, Zemeckis? Come on, come on. Well, I'm going to say thank you all for listening and please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Thanks to Lane Montgomery for our theme song. Joe Bonaparte Reynolds for our artwork. Antwoord Goududa for co-producing the show rachel jacobs for her

editing assistance ben what do i gotta hold on for well guys i think it would be kind of cool to announce something because we've been waiting to announce it for a little while and this sort of feels like a clean place to do so so i think we should officially say on the record that we have blank check merch available oh yes yes uh well we will have details in our social media but our own storefront our own merchandise this isn't t public stuff anymore where it's made to order we're keeping the t public and the designs up for the time being but one by one we're going to start retiring those and moving them over to our own storefront where you're going to have a higher quality merchandise yep made by like um an austin

base press uh night owl who were referred to us by our friends at super yaki so if you're familiar with that quality of product uh both in terms of quality of print and of fabric uh that's the kind of stuff we're working on right now we got comedy point coins we've got hashtag the two friend hats and most importantly we have special fifth anniversary merchandise that was produced for our intended little tour of fifth anniversary shows that did not happen so this is real limited one run only stuff a very special fifth anniversary it's tough to make the five designed by our good friend joe bowen uh so if you're a real blankie you might want that stuff in your home and as always pod to the future cast wow that's what we were building up for pod to the future cast part two anything else part three i want to pod your cast i want to put mancing the cast

podcast who who who who potted podger cast bit you know podmancing the cast is kind of funny podcast becomes her yeah what podcast beneath what about podcom to cast when oh i mean that is disgusting that is depraved. Pod contact? No. No, not that one. The podcast lure express? Well, I forgot, of course, there is a movie with the word cast in it.

I forgot that we could always do podcast away. Well, fuck you. That was the joke I was building up towards. Well, I didn't realize you were building up to a joke. The actual title is podcast away. That's my earnest suggestion. I was going to set it up as a joke, but I think we should just commit to the next miniseries being is podcast away that's my earnest suggestion i was going to set it up as a joke but i think we should just commit to the next miniseries being called podcast away yeah i think if there's a cast in a title i think we kind of just have to acknowledge it right like well yeah

i mean we do and i had come to that conclusion and was going to set it up in a funny way sorry jesus this is what happens when you don't tell me about bits griffin because i like things to be organic i don't want any of this phony baloney scripted bullshit i just want to say david once again i shouldn't be punished for not wanting to pre-plan bits that are fake because this show is all about versamilitude as best evidence by the time that Ben and I really traveled into a podcast within a podcast and went seven layers. Yeah, right.

Of course. No, that was just a dream you had. You don't remember it. Yeah, but it was a real dream. You woke up being like, huh? Huh? If someone could have seen us in the studio, Griffin, you and I, oh my God. And David just rolling his eyes.

I believe I took pictures of, of you. We did full physical comedy. We were acting like the room was spinning. You were doing the lean, you know, like, yeah.

When in inception, they're like kind of leaning. Yeah, it was good. Yeah.