Free With Ads - The Nativity Story (2006)

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

To celebrate the birth of Mr. Jesus we decided to watch an ahistorical recreation of it starring Oscar Isaac, 2006's The Nativity Story - directed by the same person who did the first Twilight movie.Tune in next week when our movie will be... Go!-----Visit Emily's ETSY store FlemGems!Check out the MaxFun Gift Guide! https://gift-guide.maximumfun.org/Get a copy of Jordan Morris's comic book Predator: Black White and Blood #4!Also click this link to get a signed copy of PREDATOR Bloodshed #1-5! https://bit.ly/coolfight

This is free with ads. the podcast that asked the question, why tithe 10% of your income to attend a church service and hear the story of the nativity when you can go online for free and see the story of the nativity told so boringly you'd think you were in a church service. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Emily Fleming. Today's movie is the nativity story. And boy, is it going to be challenging for me to find a place to fit in a fingering story, but I'm sure as heck going to try. With us as always is the super producer of the he freak. Matt Lebe hitting us with those Oh, so holy drops

Jesus You've started to believe The things they say of you You really do believe This talk of God is true What? You guys don't know Jesus Christ Superstar? This is the fucking best musical ever

Unfortunately I didn't ever got I've never seen that, never got to do it I have done Godspell three times There you go I don't know that one I've heard of it. And it's okay if you don't.

I know of it. But Jesus Christ Superstar, unironically, my favorite musical. Okay. Wow. I also did a play called the Cotton Patch Gospel. Oh, okay. Which is a bluegrass country version of. A lot of religious musicals they make kids do in high school.

Joseph, another one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know that one. The Matrix. Where's all the Matrix? The Matrix. Everybody's favorite musical, The Matrix. I love The Matrix, the musical.

Well, hey, we're going to talk about the nativity story, which is as of this recording, streaming free with ads. But first, we're going to talk about something else we saw for free on the Internet this week. Emily, you're bringing us. Free stuff. Okay. Emily, you're bringing us this week's free thing. What is it?

Okay. So I got a little folder that I keep weird shit in for us. And there's this guy. A physical folder, you print everything out. And it says confidential with a stamp on it. You drop it off inside of a dark parking lot somewhere. I love it. And yeah, so there's this guy, we love, you know, to hate Matthew McConaughey's.

Sure. poetic isms that he says that are a lot of words that mean absolutely nothing. It's a word salad. Yes, but said with confidence. He is a verbose buffoon and we love him. Yes. And I think I found someone who could give him a run for his money. And here's the thing.

I don't think that it looks like it has to be a joke, right? The thing is his username is J-A-Y-P-U-K-S. so j pukes or is it j pucks i don't know i don't know this is where i'm like this is this comedy but the comment sections make it seem like this is dead serious he gives daily quotes inspirational quotes so go ahead all right here's one one of the hardest things you will ever have to do is grieve the loss of a person who is still alive You're already Okay

Okay Okay And he's always I have not seen this man So that might enter into it Yeah No if you were to look at him He's wearing a shirt that says

What does it say fighter? Yeah it says fighter on it And he's got a backwards cap on He's a white dude And he's got you know Black framed glasses A little blonde mustache Yeah it truly is

Hard to tell at this point Whether or not it's a joke because that last one felt like 50-50 chance that that was... And there's always like... I'm not convinced either way yet. ASPCA music going on in the background. And the other thing is every time he says one of these lines, there's a long pause after he says the line where there's a music

and he just kind of tips his head and like looks up to the sky. Do we got another one? I feel like I want to hear another one before. Okay, okay. There's a couple. The truth is you cannot heal. in the same environment that made you sick remember that when did i become so okay okay all right pretty standard okay now give me give me number three okay okay

i still i still can't tell it's still 50 50 i don't know okay so this is him responding to someone saying quote of the day please all right here we go yeah someone once told me cry is hard you want but make sure when you stop crying you never cry for the same reason again say something i'm giving up okay it takes so long to get that out the cry core songs at the end are really telling i know i know i know i'm always on the hunt for this but this does sound like an australian person trying to do an American accent. It has a hard arlers. It also sounds like, you know, that clip that they always play of Miley Cyrus going,

and the only thing that you remember is the journey of the bad. I have not heard that. You get it. It's like her voice is so gravely. It sounds like you're gargling like rocks. Yes. Don't give any context for the last one. Okay, yeah, let's hear this one.

And then maybe we can make calls as to whether or not this is. Okay, okay, here's the last one. All right. You may not have got to spend the rest of your life with them, but they got to spend the rest of their life with you. There is so much being. Okay, so. So he didn't bother to say if this person was dead.

I think that's kind of implied. I think that's the implication, is that something you say to someone when. I don't know. I think that should have been... Okay, so I'm sorry, but that one starts off like, okay, this is about a breakup. But then he got to spend, they got to spend the rest of their life with you, which

implies he murdered the person. He's just confessing to a murder via these weird Instagram videos. Inspirational quotes slash murder confessions. Yeah, Mr. police, I give you all the clues. I just

want to, and I don't think he's coming up with these quotes. I think he finds them places. I feel like I've heard some of these before, you know, like... The sick one. Yeah. But the one up top is like a nothing statement and it has 1.4 million views. And but this, you have to...

I know that we're only sharing the audio with you, but you really need to see this guy in action. So we'll have clips for it. And once you see it, you're going to die. I just, I think you need to... Okay. Here's my... I'm ready to... I'm ready to give a guess.

Please. Okay. Okay. My guess is that this guy started doing it as a joke and found out that more people are taking it seriously so it's just doing it now. That's my official guess. I think so too. I think so too. And he has like a whole sweatshirt line. One says fighter and like one says like heel and there's it's like he's like there's a middle age white woman who loves Cracker Barrel that should just hang him on the wall. Right. Do they think, do you think this category of lady thinks he's hot? Is that like part of it? Is he's like, oh, this beautiful, sensitive man. Like, he's like a Hallmark movie protagonist or something. Yes, and the voice is also like, and he's a slight of a boy.

Okay. A wee boy. A wee boy. And I think that the voice really does it for you. Like, you know, like when your friends did. Matt, do you have a guest, Matt? I think he is serious. I think you might be right.

This is what I call the J.P. Sears trajectory. He is who, if you don't know J.P. Sears, he was like a comedian YouTuber who had a sort of hippie character that he, you know, he was doing kind of like woo-woo stuff as a joke. And then he became a conservative anti-vaxer. actually became the character. And I was just like, oh, that's a weird version of audience capture. I've never seen that before. Yeah, this was the thing I picked, but the other thing I was going to pick is about

how Quentin Tarantino, you know, he's been talking trash about Paul Dano. But apparently he- Ulrich, too. He's just, everybody's catching his phrase from, oh, Matthew Lillard, excuse me. Yeah, he was talking shit about Matthew Lillard, and I'm like, what conversation was this? like wild I have a feeling this all has to do with them being

unavailable or unwilling to show their feet in a movie and he got real mad about it no I think I know it's always wearing socks he's always walking around and socks show the toes man I think you should show your toes it's a pretty good Tarantino Matt

that's the best I could do it's pretty good that's my impression that's good too that's also good Well, hey, speaking of famous foot freaks, that's right, Jesus Christ, who had his feet washed. He did. He did. Oh, my God.

That was a good segue. Thank you. Wow. I'm impressed. Yes, time for our most blasphemous episode ever. Oh, boy. I'm assuming. This is the nativity story.

Matt, this was your pick. Tell us about your thinking. Had you seen this movie? Were you dying to see this movie? I had not seen it, but I Googled Christmas movie. And one of the things that popped up is a 2006 Oscar Isaac movie. And I said, yeah, I want to see Oscar Isaac in 06. I'm sure it'll be fine.

And, you know, I knew of the nativity story, but I was like, you know, I don't think I actually know the details of it. And I would love it to learn about it from Oscar Isaac. and that's the entirety of the reason for the choice. You thought that he wrote this and it was... I don't know. I thought he was going to act or something. You know how he usually, you know, can act real good? Oh, wow.

I feel like I know how you felt about this movie already. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't want to give too much away, but oh, boy. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's get it. to it we start out with a crawl, a text crawl giving us all the back story

will need Herod rules over Israel, but there is a prophecy someone from David's lineage is coming to steal the hearts and minds of the people away from Herod. Man Christianity, a real Star Wars-ass

religion, huh? Yeah. Right. I could just be a Star Wars crawl. I got to say, I was impressed with their like just complete refusal to say the word Jew threw out they would not say Jew

they would just say someone of David's line someone of the David family you know it was like they just didn't want to say Jew mostly I think because they were like you know we don't want to we don't want to offend anybody here

but yeah so the director of this is the same director who did Twilight Yes. Amazing. And has kind of done a lot of teen romance, heartthrobby stuff. And I feel like this movie plays as a romance more than anything else.

Yes. And I will say, having seen her Twilight film, this movie also displays her unique take on human interaction. Lots of pauses, very natural dialogue between the characters. Yes. not weird and robotic at all. Super normal. Very normal. So Herod, he's afraid of this prophecy. He wants to be the king.

He doesn't want anybody to take the people's hearts away from him. So we see a little flash forward of him kind of ordering the kind of murder of all the like sons. All the sons in Bethlehem will get murdered. All the sons in Bethlehem. And this is like, they come back to this. They don't really like. They just showed that it happened. It's like the only action in the movie.

I can tell they were like, oh, we got to have an, you know. Yeah, Mary would agree. Yeah. Yeah, she didn't get any action. Just got to get pregnant without action. I know. That sucks. But then we go to one year earlier where we see Zachariah at the temple.

That's right. We're going all the way back to Zachariah for this movie. He is Jesus' uncle or something. at the temple he hears a voice that tells him his wife is going to bear a son but she's old she's too old and he doesn't believe the voice and he loses his voice

that's right he says this I did get one clip which you know I'm going to find ways to use over and over again but the voice says this you will be stuck down and not be able to speak because you believe it is not my words hell yeah is that the guy from Instagram

doing the voice of yes that's him is that if you don't believe if you don't believe if you don't believe you'll tell your voice Zachariah

my favorite thing is he's just objecting to fucking like it's just like she's too old I can't fuck her anymore yeah

he kind of strikes him dumb like really quickly because all he says is like but she's old and then the angel's like

fuck you then She's just annoyed And Zachariah's wife Elizabeth She looks good She looks good She's beautiful She looks good You know I forgot about this detail

The Elizabeth detail It's been a while Since I went to Catholic school And went to church every Sunday And I completely forgot The Elizabeth and John the Baptist origin This shit is all new to me I'll tell you that right now

I was like who the fuck is Zachariah I really liked this detail I liked the Elizabeth kind of detail of Mary and Elizabeth hanging out and stuff like that. I thought that was nice. I like that Jesus has kin. That's kind of fun to me. I kind of forgot he had like a stepdad.

And so like Joseph is like around, but you never really hear about him except when Irish people are mad. Yeah. And I'm going to be thinking about it forever. Hey, he's not the stepdad. He's the dad who stepped up. That's right. He's just wearing that shirt while he's like trying to find an. In?

Yeah, Joseph got it at Walmart. He's like, that shirt's about me. Anyway, so we go to the village where some kids are sewing seeds. The girl child looks at a boy child in a flirty way. And then, oh, guys, you know what happens next? They start throwing seeds at each other. I love it. Oh, my God, what a parallel.

Like, I mean, or metaphor. tossing what is what is what is becoming pregnant but tossing seed yeah spilling seed sure throwing it right at a lady we need them to be doing something fun uh we need to how would they have fun we don't know there's no record of how anyone had fun how did people have fun in the bible days throw seeds it's the thing of like you know it's a it's the calm of the plants yes what is the seed they you know it's a lord of the rings thing we need to show them before they go on the journey we need to show him being happy at home. Everyone's laughing.

Throwing seeds. And then a man notices the girl, Mary. He's looking at her. And his buddy gives him a little nudge and goes, oh, Joseph. Oh, shit. Joseph, played by Oscar Isaac. Woo.

Gorgeous. Yes. A superhero, pre-superhero Oscar Isaac. You know, I was thinking. in a lot of ways Joseph is kind of the first superhero. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Yeah, I love the MCU, the Merciful Christ universe. That's the only MCU I care about is the Merciful Christ universe. This movie will make you say Merciful Christ. Hey, it's time for that segment

we've done one other time before Scavenger Hunt or a message to you, movie, where I point out any ska connection of the movie we're watching. What? Do you guys know about Oscar Isaac's

Christian ska band? No. Oscar Isaac had a Christian ska band around the time this movie was filmed. There's a grainy video of it that I found on R slash ska. The video is really worth watching.

It's a real time capsule. But Matt, can you play a little bit of Oscar Isaac's Christian ska band? That's him singing I don't know what I'm going to give it all to you all to you know I would have this in high school you know I would have loved it in high school I'd be like this is my favorite band. I mean, listen, I didn't grow up around Christian music, you know, so it is whenever I would

like do a long drive, especially when I lived in the Bay Area, if I would go north to like Sacramento or something, I would put on the radio and there was always one radio station where all of the songs sounded like 90 songs from my past but weren't and I was like this is Christian rock it's like there's this like uncanny valley of Christian music where you're like this almost sounds like music I would like there's something wrong with it I can't I can't place it that's that's what that sounded like to me they're just like they're not Jewish rock or something like that no that's just called rock it's secular yeah although There is more and more, like, religious Jewish music that is out there.

Like, Mattis Yahoo kind of came out and was like, what if I did reggae? But, no, in general, it's just, it's too silly, you know? I think it's just too silly for me. Too dignified, the Jews to start a ska band. Yeah, too dignified. Listen, we'll manage one. Yeah. We'll help you get gigs.

I'm not going to sing about old geezie. So yeah, Oscar Isaac, he's Joseph, he's looking at Mary like, oh, boy, I want to marry her but not have sex with her. By the way, the actress is one of the sand snakes from Game of Thrones. She sure is. She's also from the movie Whale Rider, which I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was like a little girl, and I'm pretty sure she was nominated for an Academy Award. She's, like, one of the youngest nominees.

I'm not sure. But I remember that movie coming out, and it was like a huge deal. yeah yeah yeah so she's some yeah there's some cameos in this they they got some good folks for this we also cut to one of our one of our subplots in this in persia three wise men i love these guys they're cute they're very cute they try and give them they're the other than the seed throwing all the comedy in the movie is given to the three wise men yeah yeah and i never really like I guess I never thought about where the three wise men came from. They came from Persia?

That's hella far. Yeah, I guess I always accepted as a kid that they just were part of the figurines in the nativity scene. I didn't really give a shit where they came from. But this whole prophecy thing that they had all these scrolls and that there was stuff about they're basically into zodiac shit. They're like following stars. They're like, you know. They're like Jupiter is like in, you know, in the line. And I was like, oh, my God, are Zodiac people right?

Is this all real? Yes, everyone who tells you about your horoscope is right. They are in the tradition of the three wise men. Oh, fuck. It's true then. I will have a big decision sometime this month. Oh, fuck. Sure.

People are drawn to my positivity. Oh, damn. What do I do with this? Um, so Mary, uh, she gets married to Joseph, but as, as some guy in the village tells them, who's maybe like a leader or something, she must not lay with him in the way that leads to family. Uh, Mary, she doesn't like this. She doesn't want to marry Joseph. She goes out to Mope and she sees a fucking angel. An angel with some real prince vibes. Uh, Emily, did you recognize this actor? He's been in a lot of stuff, but I don't recognize what he's from. I checked out his IMDB.

I was sure you were going to recognize. He plays Razagool in Gotham. Oh, my God. Razagul, who came back to life via the Lazarus Pit. Lazarus, a character from the Bible who came back to life, much like Jesus, Christianity, a real DC comics-ass religion. Wow. For sure. That's crazy.

I loved that he turned into like a falcon. or something when that was cool although I think we should have gone biblically accurate angel he should be a ball of eyes yes you should have been a ball of eyes with bat wings wait is that is that a joke or is that in the Bible I think if you like if with the you know angels I think via art and whatever are portrayed as like kind of hot peaceful people but I think if you just go by the biblical description they are balls of eyes they're supposed to to be terrifying. Like from alien

earth? Kind of. Yeah. Kind of. That's cool. All right. I remember hearing that in Catholic school

because Catholicism is a lot more kind of pagan influence. Yeah, I like that shit. I like it. I did too. I found it to be a lot more interesting than, you know,

Methodist Church is just be nice to everybody and we're like, ugh, bored. I got to go get fingered. But yeah, there's like, Like there's just a lot of saints and stuff like that. And then, you know, if there's an activity, there's a saint for it. And the angel stuff seems like a lot more Catholic.

Sure. And in the chat, I'm going to drop a link to some biblically accurate angels. Yeah, they're cool as hell. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yo, what the fuck. They look like a boss in Final Fantasy. Yeah. They're kind of rat.

Yeah. They do have wings, but they are a ball of eyes. Or like in Resident Evil or something. Oh yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, kind of late in the game. Yeah, I love it. There's, I mean, I don't know. I think Catholicism is far more mystical kind of and like, I don't know.

So, Mary, the angel says you're pregnant now, son of God, all that stuff. So she goes to see her aunt and uncle. Her aunt is pregnant and they're pregnant together. It's really cute. Yeah, I liked it. We go to the wise men who one of them doesn't want to go because how will I have my spices? I can't go without my dates and spices and wine. The food I've become accustomed to.

The food I've become accustomed to. Yeah, so that's a little comedy bit. He loves his treats. Yeah. We see, he loves, you got to have a little treat. You got to have a little treat. You can be wise and still be. be frivolous.

When you finish your to-do list, you must get a treat. That's right. When you find the Messiah, you get a little snack. Only after you follow the star. Yeah. I can go to Dutch bros after I find the Messiah. A Turkish delight after I find Jesus. Well, don't mind if I do, for I am the wisest man from Persia.

Anyway. So we see Mary give birth. and I think this scene this scene is kind of like the best of what this movie does well they show you how she would have given birth I don't know how accurate it is but they like tie up a rope

so she's holding onto the rope Oh no that's Elizabeth giving birth Oh Elizabeth excuse me yes Yeah Elizabeth and they tie up a rope So she like hangs onto this rope And like all the women kind of help her give birth And like the details in this They really care about getting like day to day life

Right in this movie Yeah I really like it's all fucking practical as hell they like have a donkey running around to grind up millet everybody's kneading cheese all the time i like that part about this movie it like shows you what their like little world was the childbirth scene with elizabeth yeah that whole like hanging from a rope i'm like that does i mean i just think about it i've never given birth but i have had really bad cramps yeah and so there's like ways you kind of deal with it you know you put a pillow on your stomach and just kind of lay as hard as you can on it but i'm like

I bet if I had something hanging from the ceiling and I just kind of got a bucket and just free bled for a while. That'd be pretty cool. I bet it would feel pretty good. But she did do some like bouncing up on up and down on a board and I'm like, you're going to mash that baby to death. I thought it was a pretty good idea. I was like outside of just like using centrifugal force and having someone swing her around, I was like, this one actually kind of makes sense. They built the net strong, don't worry. Jesus came in like a wrecking ball.

So Mary gives birth, she says the baby's name is John. No, Elizabeth gave birth. Excuse me, Elizabeth gives birth, says the baby's name is John. Everyone's like, why did you pick that name? And then her husband, Zacharii, who has not spoken, says his name is John. What a fun moment. So she gave birth to John the Baptist, right? I think so.

Yes. What did he do? He's the one who started baptisms pretty much. She's like making people clean in the river and Jesus sees him and they find each other for the first time and he baptizes Jesus and he becomes one of his disciples. Wait, and he becomes one of John's disciples. No, John because he becomes his disciple, but he's the one coming up with the baptism thing. That's crazy. I love that, yeah, so that's, okay.

They're cousins. They were meant to, like, know each other and be together. It's like the Samwise Grange of Jesus. Christianity, a Lord of the Rings' ass religion. Anyway, so Mary goes back to her village. She's pregnant. Everybody's pissed. They don't believe it.

Joseph is pissed. He has a very pretty upsetting dream where they're going to stone her. Oh, my God. And then he sits up awake, fucking no shirt on. They're like, we got to have him shirtless in this. Yeah, it's Oscar Isaac. We got to give a little something for the ladies out there. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So, Oscar Isaac, he's got no shirt, but you know what? He decides he's going to raise the kid himself, the dad who stepped up. That's right. Got to tell you, it did it for me. Oh, yeah. Just a nice guy being willing to raise someone else's kids. But he's so gorgeous, like also.

But he's like, he does play, like, he's very in love with her. Like he kind of, you know, he sees her as an angel, kind of, which I guess I've always wondered, we don't really hear about him loving Mary a lot. We just hear about him going, I'm here. Yeah, sure. I put up with this. kind of thing but I liked I liked it I thought he was very romantic yeah I mean it was

it was cute watching them to I think the problem that I had with him in this movie was that he was forced to do an accent the whole time right and I just kind of wanted to hear him I don't know I wanted

him to just be Oscar Isaac I know they're taking a whack at what people sounded like back then it's just like well everyone in English Yeah, I know. It's like none of it makes sense. Just talk normal. He's Oscar I just Cuban, I think, you know, so it's like you're...

I just wanted him to sound like the guy from inside Lewin Davis, you know? I just wanted to be Lewin Davis the whole time. So you wanted him to Kevin Costner, Robin Hood, Prince of Thees that shit? 100%. I would have been totally okay with it because it's Oscar Isaac. But instead, they're doing kind of like a proto, they're trying to do like a Middle Eastern accent thing. and it just doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't work for me. I don't like it.

I'm sorry. I want to do a little backtrack on the baptism thing. Please. Real quick. So, like, John the Baptist adapted it from a longstanding Jewish practice ritual purification through water. But he innovated it by using it as a public call for repentance. And, like, a sign for preparing for the coming of the Messiah.

Okay. So he co-opted it. Okay, yeah, that's fine. The Christian version of it. There's no new ideas. But yeah, he gave the, it was remix. There's no new ideas, only Jew ideas. There's new ideas, and then there's Jew ideas.

I've got good ideas. Anyways, I'm going to spend most of this podcast asking you guys, who's that? I don't know most of this story. Right. It's like when a non-nerd goes to see a Marvel movie. Yes, yes. Who's that? Taking your mom to see Spider-Man.

Yeah. Well, honestly, this is like, this was kind of a refresher for me because I've forgotten a lot of this stuff. So I found it, I found this movie very interesting. I mean, yes, well, we'll get to what we think of. Oh, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. So Herod, he comes up with a little scheme. He's going to try and find this messiah.

He thinks it's an adult. He assumes it's an adult. He's going to have a sense. where everyone has to return to the land of their ancestors, and he's going to root out the person that way. So Mary and Joseph has to have to get on the old donkey and go to the land of Joseph's ancestors before she leaves.

Mary's father comes up and says, you are a strong young woman. And that led me to believe that Mary was the original girl boss. Oh, lean in, Mary. Lean in Mary. I love that. an iconic girl boss. Absolutely.

Ever less one. Anyway, so, so you know, so a lot of this is just them kind of traveling and doing stuff. There's some moments where she's like, he's kicking and I just wanted Oscar eyes just to go, who, Jesus? Is Jesus kicking?

Yeah. Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and my stepson? Yeah, he doesn't know for sure. So he like punches the donkey and he's like, Don't kick my wife. So, you know, they're just kind of traveling.

They get trapped in the water. They pray before they eat a tortilla. That's the kind of stuff that happens in this movie. There was a snake. There was a snake. Yep, there was a snake. That was fun. It's exciting.

Herod invites the wise men to come to dinner. They kind of let it spill that the Messiah is a baby. So that is something Herod knows at this point. I'm going to say not very wise move. No, later they're like, maybe we shouldn't have told him that. We should wise up. Yeah. Yeah.

Three of us should be more wise than this. We should just speak the three men. Three and a half men. Three and a half men. So, anyway, listen, we're coming up on the big moment. The moment that every nativity scene is based on. and we're going to talk about it when we come back. We're back. We're back. It's free with ads. We're talking about the nativity story,

Mary and Joseph On the donkey Jesus Mary and Joseph Jesus Mary and Joseph On the donkey Oscar Isaac Playing Joseph Oh Jesus Mary and Zachariah

Who was struck dumb Who struck dumb Poor Dameron himself Apocalypse from the X-Men movies Oh Jesus Marion moon night Oh moon night Pull it into Bethlehem With his pregnant wife

You know, in that one, this is your famous character, Irish guy who conflates the Bible in the MCU. That is a great character. Yeah. Oh, and Pontius Pilate, store the Infinity Stones. Yeah, I'm confused Irish guy. And then Jesus said, my secret is I'm always angry. He died on the cross for your sins, and on the cross his last words were, I can do this all day. Anyway

So, Mary, she's going into labor There is nowhere for her to give birth Yeah, Bethlehem looks rough Yeah, Bethlehem is rough There's a lot of little like stone huts and stuff But a kindly innkeeper hears their prayers And lets them go into a barn

Well, it's like a cave kind of thing Yeah, it's a cave barn It's a manger. It's a manger. It's a one time I know It's a manger But I guess I don't know what the hell of manger is. I don't know either. It's a place where lambs live, I thought. It's where you keep your livestock, I guess.

Because there's always a lamb there. There was, there were other, yeah, there were lambs and stuff in there. I think there's a donkey. I think there's, you know, stuff like that. Great donkeys in this movie, by the way. It's a very good donkey movie. Yeah, lots of good donkeys. And there's one red heifer, which is a lot of fun.

Do you guys know about red heifers? No, tell me everything. red heifers uh i don't i can hear you i'm right here like no you're not a red oh okay it's definitely's name on red it's definitely my name on wiki feet well you won't like wherever this goes but red hafers uh is like an old old uh like orthodox jewish uh cleansing ritual where you sacrifice you put all your sins into the red heifer you got to find the red heifer and then you kill it.

I saw that scene. They do a little of that in this movie, Herod Patilac Sins into the... That was really interesting. I guess I'm glad you explained that because I was like, wow, this is different. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's one of those weird things where it's like, no one should do that anymore,

but sometimes that happens still. Yeah, I think there's like sin-eater lore kind of in like fantasy stuff where they do it to a person, they eat your sins. kind of thing, and then they kill you. I guess like Jesus was the ultimate red heifer. Sure, yes, a sacrifice. Whoa. Was this movie good?

We'll see. We'll find out. I mean, that's in the Bible. It's from the source material. I don't know. So, you know, the baby's born. The angel goes to the shepherd. The shepherd comes to see the baby.

The wise men come. A lot of weird pauses. while the wise men are looking at the baby. Just kind of like this director's directorial style, I guess. A lot of weird pauses. No little drummer boy. No perumpa pom-pum. What a bummer.

The drummer boy is never in the figurines for the nativity scene either. I think maybe not actually in the Bible. Maybe he was just. They added a drummer boy later. Well, definitely no Santa. Yeah, no Santa. Yeah, no Santa. I spent this whole movie go, where the fuck is Santa drinking a Coke?

Where were the Coke bears? Where's the Coke bears? This is bullshit. I'm definitely going to do a nativity scene with my action figures. Oh, that'll be fun. Who's Jesus? Who's, oh, shit. Who is Jesus?

I'm going to say. One of the Power Rangers for sure. Gotta be one of the Power Rangers. It's got to be, or Beast. No, he's too big. He's got to be the angel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is going to be tough.

Stay tuned, everyone. I will post it later. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, stay tuned. Follow us on, follow us on Instagram. free with ads, odd, right? Yes. Where Emily will be posting her action figure

in each of the video scene. Yeah, and definitely when we post about the movie, ask what we're going to talk about in the episode as opposed to just listening to the episode. Definitely comment on all our posts. Are you guys going to talk about? I don't know. Listen to the podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, commenters. We love you. Yeah. Or it's when there's a comment about something we did talk about. Did you know that? Yes. We did. We did.

But thank you. Did you know? Yes. We do. We love you. We love our fans. We do love you, yes. We love all of you equally. No, not equally. We will die for your sins. Or at the very least we'll kill Emily for your sins. Put your sins in me. Finger your sins into me.

There you go. You did it. You got a finger. You got a finger of red heifer. All right. Yeah, sometimes you got a finger the red heifer. You want to get into heaven. You better play that sting. You better do it. All right. I'm doing it.

Fingering story. Okay. Fun. A lot of hats in this movie. I'm kind of remiss to call one the worst hat in case it's like a religious symbol. So no worst hat in this movie. You just pick someone wearing a yarmica. Did you see this guy's dumb?

It was little. It doesn't even cover his hand. You have to do a notes apopology. I'm sorry. I don't know. I think Herod's wig is pretty wild. Herod's wig's kind of wild. It's just so perfect.

You know, I mean, maybe that's how perfect they were, but it's like the little coils were just too pristine. Too pristine. I agree. So, yeah, that's the thing. Jesus is born. We will eventually go to die for our sins. We don't see that in the movie.

That's a different movie. That's Passion of the Christ, which came out the same year, or maybe a few months earlier. Whoa, really? A movie and its sequel came out the same year? Yeah, it's in a crazy sequel came out first And then the prequel, the nativity story came out. Did you know Pashita the Christ is in Quentin Tarantino's top 20 films of all time?

I mean, weird guy. He's a strange man. He really loves Mel Gibson. I'll have to rewatch it to see how much feet is in it. And then I can tell you why. Probably more feet than you remember. Yes, definitely. There's a nail in them.

There, yeah. There you go. What's sexier than a nail being driven through a foot? That's right. Feet get nailed. He's got to. That's got to be why I'm in the list. That's what Quentin liked.

Anyway, so Herod does the thing where he tells the soldiers to go find every baby under two years old. That kind of leads into our little, you know, flash forward that we got at the beginning of the movie. But Jesus is fine. They go back to their village to live, and that's the end of the movie. And during the credits, there's a producing team. called Judd Funk and Michael Disco Funk and Disco I took a screenshot of it

I was so amazed I was like yo Funk and Disco You better send that to me for the Instagram post because that's funny I love that the Muppet Christmas toy

is brought to you by Kraft and this movie is brought to you by Disco Funk and Disco He's Funk he's disco Co-executive producers Here's Judd Funk and Michael Disco.

I, yeah, that immediately stood out as like, well, that's my favorite moment of the movie. What I would, yeah, we should look into the career of Funk and Disco and see what else they produced. Yeah, they probably, I hope that they work together again. How could they not? Yeah, that would be nice. I mean, they worked. Won't you take me to Bethlehire? That's perfect.

Holy shit. That is because that's a song about Funk that's disco. Yeah. Yo. Perfect. Perfect. Hey, we're going to talk about what we thought of the movie, but first, oh, we're going to do the hunk watch.

It's Hunk watch. Oscar Isaac, of course, a noteworthy hunk. I'm going to go ahead and give it to the angel. Well, yeah, Razzal Gould. Razzal Gould himself. Yeah, he's pretty hunky. More like Rosal Angel, if you know what I mean. Thank you.

Very good. I'm not going to pick Jesus because Jesus is a baby, and I don't know if we have had a hunk baby yet. Yeah. Well, we've got to do those Rugrats movies at some point, right? We're going to do look who's talking. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we've had hunk dogs, but I'm like, we're not doing babies. No, no. So if I had to choose anyone other than Oscar Isaac, honestly, I'm going with King Herod's son. Oh, yeah. There's this weird little subplot that doesn't need to be there of King Herod, essentially telling his son, I killed your other brothers because they tried to take my throne and I'll kill you too if you ever cross me. And I don't know why that's in there. It doesn't come to

anything. I assume maybe if you're like a Bible person, maybe that factors in somehow. Does Herod eventually kill his other? I don't know. I don't remember. I just know he scowls a lot. And I'm like, if I were a bad guy, I'd kind of keep that under wraps. That's like, stop the scowling. so much. Try a smile. Try a little smile. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Smile, baby. That's what I would tell a bad guy. Hey, smile more baby. Anyways. Now, this is a mobster movie now. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I think I'm doing a Russian misogynist.

Hey, babe, why don't you smile more? I'm talking to King Herod's son. Anyways, that's mine. Who's your home, Emily? Yeah. Oh, it's Oscar Isaac. I mean, I feel like this movie was, filmed like a romance like it it's not as much it's about how you know I don't know the dedication of Joseph it's more about Joseph than anyone else I feel like yeah but he's hot as hell I want someone who'll save me from a snake in a river yeah and will be cool if I fuck a god and confront a ska band if they need to yeah yeah he's so versatile

Question, and this is sort of, I guess, a Bible question, but it's also a musical theater question. Is this the same Joseph who had the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? No. That's a Old Testament guy. Oh, that's the Old Testament guy. Okay, okay. This makes more sense because that ties in more. Otherwise, I was like, damn, this Joseph has been around.

Yeah. Stay tuned for the further adventures of. Joseph. Yeah. Joseph will return in rise of a dream coat. Yeah. Rise of a dream coat. Oh, yes.

Okay. Cool. Good to know. Well, yeah, we're going to rank this movie on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials when we come back. We're back. It's free with ads. We're going to rank the nativity story on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials. But first, we want to remind you to go to maximum fun.org.org slash join. You become a member of Max Fun.

You get all our sweet bonus episodes. And you get a good feeling knowing that you keep this show coming. maximum fun.org slash join okay uh we're going to rank the nativity story on a scale of one to ten super loud commercials uh matt since this is your pick do you want to go first yes and i listen i appreciate this movie for the bible heads out there the big you know big big christ lovers out there who are like i want to see a non-antysemitic jesus movie Because with this one, you could tell they really took care to not repeat the problems of passion of the Christ. And so for that, you know, it gets a few points, but mostly it was incredibly boring.

And I'm shocked at how boring the story is, given that there's a virgin birth. You know, you'd figure it would be like, whoa, but it's actually, it's got the plot of about a three-minute, 10-second song. stretch out to one and a half hours. So I'm going to give it a three, but I want to say it's a three that I mean with all love and respect to all religions out there who worship Jesus Christ.

Oh, lightning. Oh, no. Matt, are you okay? I've seen the light. A plague of locust is just swarming into Matt's house. What the fuck? Emily, what did you think? Okay.

Also, this is our Christmas episode. This is Christmas week. Oh, good. Merry Christmas. And we can say it again. Merry Christmas. It's good that we can say it again. We love Christmas.

But Mary and Joseph Christmas. But I, yes, it was slow moving. I feel like there was, especially for someone who made twilight, I was hoping for something a little bit more mystical and spiritual. Like Gabriel was just a hot guy that turned into a falcon. I really wanted something beautiful and like more. It feels like she focused. a lot more on making this realistic and grounded. And I'm like, why? Why make it so realistic and

grounded? It's a pretty like, it's, you know, it's a fantastical story. Why not make it more exciting? I don't know. But I, I enjoyed it kind of. I thought it was, I guess maybe a little bit educational. It was a refresh for me on the story. And Oscar Isaac is a dream boat. And I liked the three wise men a lot. I thought that was fun, and I liked learning about that. I think it's a solid five for me. Yeah. I will, yeah, I'm kind of in the zone with you guys.

There's some stuff I like about this movie. I thought that the, yeah, the like lengths they went to to recreate everyday life, I thought were really cool. And it's a cool, like, part of this movie. Again, I don't know how accurate all that stuff is, but it seemed like it was done with a lot of TLC. I think the idea of, like, can we put the story of Jesus's birth

into a movie format? It's like a really interesting idea. And the ways they try and modernize it are interesting. It's more of like an interesting exercise than it was a fun movie to watch for me. I think it is pretty boring. But you do have a lot of great actors

and, you know, who are like fun to watch on screen. So, yeah, I think for me, it's like a four. But I'm kind of like, I'm glad I saw it. I'm, like, interested in it. But, yeah, as far as it being enjoyable, eh, not really. So just to recap my personal movie rankings, the story of Jesus for Alien versus Predator 8.

Yeah. I mean, this is a great movie that a substitute teacher at a Catholic school could wheel in on that TV. That's what this is for. Exactly. Oh, interesting. The screenwriter of this also wrote Finding Forrester, which is where we get the line,

you're the man now, dog. Oh. So I kind of understand why in this movie they say, you're the son of man now, dog. Anyway. Also, there was another interesting thing, which was, and I appreciated this being that it's Christmas, there is, you know,

kind of orchestral versions of the Carol of the Bells when they're, like, running to get into the manger. Like the, dan, dun, dun, dun, dan, dan, dan. Yeah, I know. And then later, when they're, from Herod's men killing everyone, there's a orchestral version of Oh Holy Night playing.

And I was like, okay, that's fun. And you could see the guys from Trans-Siberian Orchestra in the background with like a bunch of electric guitars. Yeah. And then they have an orchestral version of Mariah Carey saying, all I want for Christmas is you. It's beautiful. Cool.

Well, yeah, that's the nativity story. We watched it. Okay. Any plugs? Emily, got anything going on? Boy, I don't know. It's the week of Christmas. It feels like I'm all plugged out.

It's everybody don't, you don't need to go to Flim Gems. It's because it's not going to get there in time. Don't even go. It probably wouldn't get there in time if you bought it two weeks ago also because I'm bad at my job. Get yourself a New Year's gift. That's what I say. There you go, New Year's gift. Early Valentine's Day gifts.

That's right. Valentine's Day will be lit. Shop for Valentine's Day now at Flem Gems. Matt, you got anything? Nothing for me. I'm going to be chilling in Sedona. Oh, that's beautiful. I'm going to Sedona. That's a beautiful, beautiful country there. Yeah, so if you see me in Sedona, don't bother me.

Or say hi, I don't know. Or say hi. Is that God's country? I don't know whose country it is. It's Arizona. I don't think it's anyone's country. I will remind folks to pre-order Predator Bloodshed, the upcoming Marvel Comics miniseries about The Predator breaking into an underground fighting tournament written by me, art by a lot of talented people, including the main artist on the book. I don't think it's been announced.

I'll say it on the show. I don't think I'll get in trouble. Names Rory Coleman, currently the artist of a great X-Men title out there right now called Blood, sorry, Iron and Frost. Rory Coleman, a great guy, wonderful artist been a joy to work with. This book's going to look real cool. Predator Bloodshed, put it on your poll list at your comic shop, or go to bit.l.ly

slash cool fight, bit.ly slash cool fight, and they will send you signed copies from me in the mail. Nice. That's something you can, hey, if you need a Christmas gift for a comic head or a predator head, pre-order that thing, bit. bit.ly slash cool fight, print out the receipt and say, comics are a coming. That's fun. Anyway.

Do that. Do that. Okay. Tune in next week when our movie will be, go. So, You know. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported. directly by you.