God Awful Movies - 524: Starship Troopers 3: Marauders

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

This week, Ursa and Aaron from Philosophers in Space join us in convincing you that Starship Troopers 3 is too a Christian movie. --- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a tr...y at betterhelp.com/awful and get on your way to being your best self. --- Come see us live in New Orleans on September 27th! Hear more from Aaron and Ursa on Philosophers In Space If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Notable Power Rangers tie-end Bohemokoi to see here voiced by Zordon. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it. But because we don't want to do it. I'm too old to know the Power Rangers. Power Rangers?
Starting point is 00:00:16 No, I'm too old for that. Yeah, sorry. Oh, my God. Wow. Someone listening appreciates that reference. He wasn't at 32-bit video games. He was like, do you remember when Grandpa would move the tiles of the shadow show against the wall and then Plano would come and ruin it for everyone.
Starting point is 00:00:37 God-awful movie. Movies. Welcome back to the Gamecast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema because the market for high-end pigeon noises is way lower than Eli expected when he was in college. I'm your host, No Illusion. Heath will be unable to join us this week but sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad
Starting point is 00:01:04 friend Eli Bosnick. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir? Well, I was a lot better before that introduction. No, I didn't mean to rub it in. We're taking shots. Silent treatment for the rest of the podcast. Well, good thing I brought two guests then. Heath is actually on this episode. He did a
Starting point is 00:01:22 similar intro for even. Heath is sitting there with his arms crossed eating a caramel. Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. So the two guest masochists that I mentioned to haven't been here for a while, Aaron Rabinowitz and Ersa M. Wright, are the co-hosts of the Philosophers in Space Podcast,
Starting point is 00:01:36 among other stuff, and are uniquely qualified to help with this bizarre shit that we are going to talk about today. Aaron, Ursa, welcome back. Hello, hello. So good to be back. Yeah, no, Eli, my old friends. We haven't ventured into hell and met Nietzsche in a while.
Starting point is 00:01:52 How you doing? Yeah. That's the thing that was actually on the last episode. That's not just a thing Aaron says when you see him. I could understand why people would think that's just how Aaron Rabinowitz greets. I just appreciate
Starting point is 00:02:06 that you all are going to join us for another mission. Hello, my darling. We haven't Jenny did to hell admit you for a while. That's not an anti-Semitic impersonation. The fact that it's happened more than once, I feel like is important. All right, so tell us, Ursa,
Starting point is 00:02:26 what will we be breaking down today? the 2008 direct-to-d-d-d-d-D-D smash hit Starship Troopers 3 Marauder. If Starship Troopers 2 wasn't enough for you. Woo! And Eli, how bad was this movie? Well, if you love the ironic fascism of the Starship Troopers franchise, but you wish it was actively manifesting the present moment while you were trying to write notes for your comedy podcast,
Starting point is 00:02:55 you will love this movie. If my heart rate started to appear in the background of this movie, I wouldn't have been surprised at a certain point. And here's a surprise for you. I know, like, maybe a lot of you like me, when we announced that we were going to be doing a Starship Troopers movie, thought, oh, we must be starting that secular movie month that Heath got gifted through our patron fundraiser.
Starting point is 00:03:20 But no. In fact, we are not doing a secular movie. So, Aaron, I'll turn this one to you. how Christian is this movie? It is so Christian. It would cheerfully sacrifice everything and everyone it cares about to its just and loving God.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Sure would. It is, for those who are skeptical, the from dust till dawn of Christian movies. If you know, you know. Pretty good description. Yeah, yeah. So does anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best,
Starting point is 00:03:49 being the worst hat? All right, this is a little broad. So just bear with me. It's best, worst, showing movement through a coherent series of images. That's pretty broad, yeah. Yeah. What do you call that? Filming, I guess. Moving picture.
Starting point is 00:04:09 By the end, I was pretty nostalgic for the fight scenes and gladiators all. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I went hyper-specific, best worst alien pussy depiction. Yes. And Ursa knows their alien pussy depictions. Do I ever? This is an expert weighing in, okay?
Starting point is 00:04:27 There's even a cosmic... It's the real mid-orifice. Yeah, no. We're not ready to talk about that surgery yet, but I've had it. Yeah, no, it's pretty amazing. I have a lot of notes. And so I'm going to go with... I'm going to be the first I read the book.
Starting point is 00:04:44 I think like all of us have read this fucking book, but I'll be the first to point out that I read the book. This was based on. And I'm going to go with best, worst, mex suits, right? Because if you write the book, the fucking book opens with mecksuits, right? The very first thing we learn is that the Starship Troopers have fucking Mexuits.
Starting point is 00:05:00 So if you read the book and then you've learned that they were going to make a fucking movie about it, you went to the movies hoping to see a goddamn fucking mex suit, right? And they were nowhere to be found in the first one because they didn't have the budget for that apparently. Well, actually, it's because the script was not written to be a Starship Troopers movies and then was like retrofitted to fit this older property. But at any rate, everybody was disappointed that there were no mex suit.
Starting point is 00:05:21 So when they get to the third one, they're like, we're going to name the fucking movie after the fucking mecksuit. So don't worry. And this one, we're finally going to get around to those awesome mecksuits that could cause you to jump like three stories high and all those badass shit. You'll see them in this movie. Trust us. Asterisk.
Starting point is 00:05:39 And technically we will. Yeah. See the fine print. Yeah. The way that we see Satan in some films. Yeah. The way we see Norm's wife. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Yeah, I hinted at it at the beginning, but I wanted to go with best, worst, apropos, right? By the end of this movie, I was pretty sure whoever shot Charlie Kirk was going to be in the end credit. Tyler, what's his name? Shooting Charlie Kirk. Right.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Hope your weekend was good. I am dying to prove to y'all that Starship Troopers 3 does too count as a Christian movie, so we're going to keep the break brief. When we come back, I'll start making my case. Oh, and I'll also take a Roomba. Yes. the deluxe one.
Starting point is 00:06:22 Hey, Eli, what's you doing? Oh, Aaron told me I don't have to worry about money anymore because of philosophy. I feel like that's not what he said. He did. He said everything's meaningless so I can have a switch to for every room in my house. I did. He didn't say that either. Ah, you weren't there though.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Look, Eli, if you want a better way to keep track of your funds, you should try Rocket Money. What's? Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Well, how does it do that? Rocket money shows you all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you forgot about. If you see a subscription you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it. Plus, their dashboard lays out your total financial picture, including build due dates and pay dates in a way that's easy to digest. You can even automatically
Starting point is 00:07:07 create custom budgets based on your past spending. But does it actually work? And sure does. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features. All right, Noah, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with RocketMoney. Go to RocketMoney.com slash awful movies today.
Starting point is 00:07:29 That's rocketmoney.com slash awful movies. RocketMoney.com slash awful movies. All right, Noah, thanks. I guess I should return all this stuff because, you know, life has so much meaning. Well, I didn't say that. Okay, Roomba or no Roomba? Why is it tied to a Roomba?
Starting point is 00:07:46 It just is. Okay, everybody. Welcome to the Writers' Room Meeting for Starship Troopers 3. Woo. Yeah, look, everybody, I understand that we set out to write a fascist parody with the first two movies, and they, well, came true? Parts of them came true, Craig. Like a lot of parts. Well, yes, a lot of parts.
Starting point is 00:08:14 But I think as long as we really lay it on thick, this time, most people will get it. I mean, is Kelso going to get it? You hired Kelso again? Kelsso's contract was for all three films, dude. What up, knuckle fuckers? You ready to make another amazing movie? Hey, Kelso. Shut up and get pregnant.
Starting point is 00:08:36 Hear me out. Bug Planet, psychic bug God, everyone is Christian now. In Starship Troopers? You bet your balls they are. Now, if you'll excuse me, I stole a lime scooter, and I want to ride that bad boy until the GPS calls the cops. Get pregnant.
Starting point is 00:08:53 I mean, yeah, maybe people will get it. I don't think they're going to get it. Is it pregnant like a catchphrase or an imperative? I don't know, man. Nobody knows. And we're back for the breakdown
Starting point is 00:09:11 and we're going to open up with the fucking federal exposition network that they introduced in the first movie. Right? Yeah, you know, over on philosophers in space, we're aficionados of the info dump. It's pretty essential for sci-fi. And I feel like Starship Troopers propaganda media is like the best of the best with honors. I will always smash that.
Starting point is 00:09:32 I would like to know more button. Fuck, yeah. Can I say, this is probably more fun before than now times, huh? Yeah. Like, I know that there's a lot of fun to be had to be like, well, this is just like Fox News, but like... This was just like Fox News. I used to be a comedian, you understand.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Yes, right, right. Come new listener, there are seven of you, statistically. Hi, I used to be a comedian. I would exaggerate the things that we saw in the movie for the giggles. And now I'm just like, well, you know what that reminds me of? Now, yeah. I think the production values are a little better on Fox News, though. Yeah, no, that's true.
Starting point is 00:10:12 This was definitely given me, like, better CGI. This is more of a News, Max, than a Fox News, maybe an O-A-M. But there really is no law, pose law anymore. There's like the montage with the chemistry YouTuber set. Yeah. So they're like they're introducing some new bugs for us this time. They're like, okay, well, you know, kids, you got to buy all them all, right?
Starting point is 00:10:30 So now we have grenade bugs, right? And I'm like, okay, it was bad enough in the first one when you had bugs that could just fire plasma into orbit out of their butts, right? That was already dumb enough. And now you're expecting me to believe that evolution selected these bugs for ability to explode? It seems hard. That's my culture, Noah. Yeah, not just grenade.
Starting point is 00:10:54 We got kamikaze bugs, right? They picked up the non-Western bug DLC on this one. Yeah. And so we learn, in addition to the fact that there are now grenade bugs and scorpion plasma bugs to look forward to later. We also learned that the farm planet Roku-san used to be peaceful, but now it's like, you know, it's the front lines in the bug war. Yeah, and as we see all of the new bug weapons,
Starting point is 00:11:23 we get introduced to the heavy tech that the humans are bringing the new shovel. Yes, yeah. Which would be a really great 40K reference if anyone involved in this movie was actually a nerd. But so, but the reference that they're making here is that
Starting point is 00:11:39 you know, we've dug in and entrenched, right? But like, the bugs aren't shooting at us, so why would we entrench? the best tactics World War I has to offer trenches and straight lines. For folks who aren't familiar
Starting point is 00:11:53 with military strategy, trenches are pretty good for defending against not super mobile enemies. Anyone who's heard the term blitzkrieg might understand why in this case it's just a death trap. Yeah. It's also wildly variant how
Starting point is 00:12:09 affected by the guns these bugs are. I know we're going to talk about it a lot through the movies, but every time there's a military tactic either works super well or not at all and the movie will never tell us why. Mostly because of whether or not there's a main character involved. Yeah, that's fair. It's very important. Sorry, there's two
Starting point is 00:12:25 more nuggets that we have to squeeze out of this info dump before we can flush it. One is that you now get executed for protesting the war. Oh, sorry, 1A is that you get executed for protesting the war. One B is that religion is against the law because that fucks up
Starting point is 00:12:41 the war effort. Yeah, and if you're listening to this episode in archives, this was not not apropos when we recorded the episode. I know now. We all miss Ursa so much. Oh my gosh. Oh, no. RIP.
Starting point is 00:12:58 I might die. That's funny. So, okay, but the other, the other nugget we got to squeeze out is that there's a general, he's the Sky Marshall. His name is Omar Anokei, and he is the superstar general
Starting point is 00:13:14 fucking lounge. singer that everybody wants to get with these days. Yeah. No, I think it's pronounced Sky Marshall Nookie. Like, he's super hot if you're into the balding dill fetish, and I have no judgment there. I'm sure. I could... I know that's at least two of the people
Starting point is 00:13:31 on this call. It sounds like you maybe do a little bit. I'm going to be honest. Yeah, no, I can see how, like, this happens, but, like, you feel like when they wrote this, they imagined a very handsome actor playing this role, right? They sure did. It's written in that way. I mean, Like, you know, this guy's fine, right? Like, I could see, like, there's an amount of drinks where I'd fuck this guy, right?
Starting point is 00:13:53 But, like, he's not, he doesn't exude hot guy the way this movie seems to think he dies. A lot of attacking Ely on the podcast is with the feeling that we should maybe have laid some ground rules. Then I lashed out at Eursa and said they were going to die. Yeah, right. Maybe we felt like that would have played better. I'm going to dig, don't worry, I'm going to dig in on Earth's death and we'll find the funny. You got it. The only way out is through.
Starting point is 00:14:17 Okay. I do feel like this guy, if he cleaned himself up, could do a decent well, Arnette impersonation. Sure. Oh, yeah. The best I can say.
Starting point is 00:14:24 With a wig. I wasn't sure if you were talking about me or the actor because I'm glad for, I'm glad you clarified. I'm just going to plant my flag here and say the song is a fucking banger and you can all go to hell.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Oh, yeah. It's an absolutely a bangor. A good day to die? It's a good day to die. Yeah. And slightly less jingoistic than the program. and get the Kennedy Center this year.
Starting point is 00:14:47 So, you know. So, yeah, two of my first notes, like, can you imagine a world where federal government was cracking down on war protesters just for protesting the war? And then my very next note is, can you imagine federal leaders
Starting point is 00:14:58 selling their own branded merch? Because that's the next place they go, right? General Nookie over here has, like, branded merch and they're like, Tee, could you imagine if the leader was selling merch with his name on it? I feel like it's like watching the Matrix
Starting point is 00:15:12 and being like this feels like obvious lazy writing, but it's only because, because we're in the world that they rode. Or there, yes. Right. Aaron, are you offering me the ability to go back to sleep because my answer is yes. I cannot emphasize enough how much I will sell out.
Starting point is 00:15:26 I am offering you pills. Let's leave it at that. Yes, I'll take both pills. I'll take all three pills. I'll take 74 pills. Purple pill. There's some solid joke work there shining through, I feel like. I want to respect that, even if it's dead now.
Starting point is 00:15:42 Yep. Not much. You know, there's not much compliment in this. sandwich. Let's get them out where we can. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so then we're going to cut to this cheap. And we should point out that this movie has like, you know, it's direct to DVD. It's got like a one 15th of the budget of the first one.
Starting point is 00:15:55 So we cut to this cheap-ass-looking military base on Roku-san where they're holding the bugs at bay with an electric fence. The bugs can fly, by the way, in the first one. And immediately, Chekhov's shovel is fired. Yes. Yep, they throw
Starting point is 00:16:12 a grenade bug in and somebody gets killed by an exploding shovel. Yeah, this is just like an expanding series of Chekhov's objects throughout this entire movie. Yeah, it's right, right. And I just want to say, I was an individual who unironically thought that Starship Troopers should have beat Titanic for Best Special Effects, and it's a travesty that it lost. So it is deeply personally painful to me how bad the bugs have fallen in this movie. They look so bad. It looks so bad.
Starting point is 00:16:40 Yeah, I was going to say, I do miss that era where instead of like practical effects or, or not having special effects. Movies were just like, we're just going to play Mario on the screen for four seconds, and we'll say that's the alien spaceship. My beautiful bugs, they cyber trucked, my beautiful bugs. And we should also point this out. Of course, this is a problem that just carries over from the first one,
Starting point is 00:17:06 because this movie has Caspar Vandina. He makes his return as the lead character. This is a character who is named Johnny Rico, and he's from Buenos Aires and they cast a man so white he's literally named Casper for that role, right? Casper Van Deen,
Starting point is 00:17:23 I would challenge you to make a whiter name without adding, you know, Erthington the 3rd to Casper Van Dean, right? And they kill a man just to serve his interest and I'm told
Starting point is 00:17:37 the fact that that man had a family is important. Keep, believe you're just. joking about that shovel. I do feel like some of us rewatched the original one. Don't you feel like Casper was a little swarthier in the first? Like, I feel like he got whiter somehow. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:17:55 We spend that much time in space, yeah. Maybe there wasn't a lot of sun on the set of what the bleep do we know. I don't know. The difference in paycheck between this movie and that one, I think, is probably at least part of the explanation. Yeah, right, right. Pails you right up. So, okay, so we're also going to meet Lieutenant Mannion and her fucking
Starting point is 00:18:12 communist accent. This is like his assistant that will fade in and out of the movie here and there. And we learn that Sky Marshall Nookie is coming to the barracks for an inspection, right? Yeah. And his gal Friday, who does not matter, is mostly really interested in doing her own inspection with the Sky Marshall. Yeah. She wants her trenches bombed hard. So the generals, like basically, this is one of those movies where if they talk about it in this scene, it happens in the next scene, right?
Starting point is 00:18:42 So General Nookie's ship shows up. We meet General Dix, who is very clearly, like, was, they were hoping that they were going to get Neil Patrick Harris back for this part. Yes. Right? Like, it's supposed to be, like, his old buddy from school or whatever. But, you know, fucking Dugueyhouser doesn't need this money, this fucking bad. So we get just some new character named General Dix.
Starting point is 00:19:04 That's also an old friend of his. You just didn't meet him in the first movie as all. Polished Casper's Brass. Yes. My Grindr hookup did that the other day. And I appreciate the queer inclusion this far back in the 2000s. Highly recommend. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:19:19 General Dix. So I'm sorry. So they come out the general nookie. He's very like, you know, PR conscious. So he has somebody filming him with a goddamn camcorder that they thought we'd still be using in the 2300s. I think we should get full credit here, by the way. Dick's name is full name is Dick Hauser, which I think is very clearly a porn name. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:19:39 And, like, poor Boris Kojo is doing the best he can fill in some, you know, very fancy shoes. This legitimately just hit me. Dix Houser, Dugie Houser. Yeah. And Jolene Blaylock's name is like some anagram of her name in this. They really just did that, didn't they? Oh, wow.
Starting point is 00:20:00 He's here to prove that the Gestapo is both post-religious, post-gender, and post-race. Like, this is the future liberals want. That's the point of the third. Right, yeah. So, yeah, so we're also going to meet her. We're going to meet Jolie. This is a Lola Beck, all lips, right? And she's going to be the, I feel like she's going to be the main character of the film, really, right?
Starting point is 00:20:21 Yeah, at least as far as I'm concerned. I do hope that at least Eursa recognized her as the Vulcan from Enterprise. Of course. I, Eric. You know, how could you even? How could you even? I know. There are a lot of ways in which this was a very specific torture.
Starting point is 00:20:37 You mean Ursa turned to the poster? on their wall. Yeah. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, apparently like Denise Richards was busy doing friends and Charlie Sheen so couldn't make it back. So yeah, but we learned that General Dix and Lola are fucking, but
Starting point is 00:20:55 Johnny is a little green about it. I don't know if Lola's supposed to be like his ex or like a love interest he had in the past, but there's some kind of love triangle there. They squeeze that in at the very beginning. Which really breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, because if this is this post-fascist, you know, utopian society,
Starting point is 00:21:12 how have they not solve love triangles with polyamory like we did back in the aughts? What's going on here? Yes, obviously. Well, that's the problem with fascism, right? It just maintains the monogamy. That's why it just otherwise it would eventually dissolve into communism. That's wrong. You're so close.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Fascism requires sexual hierarchy to maintain its structure. It does. The foundation of fascism is monogamy. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, kind of is. So, yeah, so the general nookie is like, well, why don't you get? He's psychic, by the way, which is another stupid thing that they forced into this movie that never fucking matters.
Starting point is 00:21:51 So he's psychic and he's like, hey, I can sense that there's a love triangle going on here. And I'm like, oh, am I psychic? Because I sense that too. Jesus fucking Christ, pretty obvious. He's like, why don't you guys all go to a bar and I'll get with his girl Friday and she can show me around. Yeah. As someone who spent a lot of time around magicians who don't. want to admit that the things they're doing are badly
Starting point is 00:22:10 disguised card tricks. I deeply identified with General Anoke being like I'm really picking up a vibe here of the things you said and did. I didn't have to wait for him to say that he was sensing anything. I actually knew he was psychic because he spends the entire movie looking like he wants to fuck
Starting point is 00:22:28 everyone and everything he sees. Yep. Yep. That's his psychic face. Yeah. And touching his temple, that's important too. Yeah. Also very important. But touching his temple like he wants to fuck something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Again, the Will or net comparisons do stack up a bit.
Starting point is 00:22:45 Yeah, don't they, though. So, okay, so Casper takes Dixon Lola to a bar, right? And of course, General Nookie's song is on the radio, his banger about it being a good day to die. And when we get to the bar, we're going to have to introduce that there's a little tension between the military guys and the farmers that were on this planet that were doing just fine before the damn military showed up. Okay. I want to talk about my perspective on this scene. If I may zoom out for a bit, this scene is written like the actors playing the farmers didn't know which of their lines
Starting point is 00:23:17 started the bar fight. Like they were improvising and everyone else had lines because they will respond to everything. Everyone in the bar says with quote unquote fighting words. That's what you say, Southerner.
Starting point is 00:23:35 And then everyone will be like, so I hear you're growing tomatoes. Sorry, we had more fucking info dump to dump here, yeah. And every time they forget a line, it's just and they're like, oh shit, that wasn't in the script, that was good.
Starting point is 00:23:50 Let's get more of that. So while they're doing that, back on the base, the soldiers are watching the bugs. They're just frying themselves on the electric fence one after the other. And we're doing this in like, it's much cheaper to render them in night vision cam. Right?
Starting point is 00:24:05 So we're constantly just seeing like a silo, a gray silhouette of the bugs, and they're like, no, trust us, it's bugs, it's bugs. But, like, they're clearly testing the Fence Raptor style, you know, and Sky Marshall's like, doing that weird talking about how impressive they are as a species, which is just never a good sign for your leadership. Yeah. This man has 100% stuck his penis in bug hole. Yep.
Starting point is 00:24:30 100% has happened. And honestly, like, it not just like this character, this actor fucked a bug costume to get into character, right? It's called method acting. Yes. Well, no, right. I'm not judging him. I'm not judging him.
Starting point is 00:24:42 He called his good buddy, Daniel Day Lewis. And he was like, Daniel, D-Money, how do I get all the way in? He was like, you've got to fuck a bug. That's what he did for Lincoln. Come on, it worked. Yeah, no, he did fuck a lot of bugs. I thought it was weird that he fucked a bug in the middle of Lincoln. I know no one watched it except me and Aaron Rabinowitz.
Starting point is 00:25:02 And so the Academy didn't talk about him fucking a bug. I care about history. It's important to me. Also, important directing note, the Sky Marshall here is doing a lot of what's called a Kubrick stare. He's going to do it basically throughout this whole movie. And it just makes me wonder if maybe he's not entirely above board. Point that out. Perhaps you picked up on something.
Starting point is 00:25:23 Put it out there. Well, suddenly, and suddenly he slips, and this is done the stupidest possible way. Everybody swamps him for autographs. And so the girl that's like watching him turns around to get her autograph book, like, you know, get up her nerve to ask him. And then when she turns back around, he's disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. But they were all surrounding him. What is he, Bilbo fucking baggins?
Starting point is 00:25:43 What happened? Right? Because we don't, like, learn later that he has the ability to turn fucking invisible. Everybody's like, oh, where did he go? Right. It's a psychic thing, Noah. Yeah, it's a psychic. You notice where everyone's paying attention at the same time because you're so psychic.
Starting point is 00:25:56 Well, yeah, yeah, obviously. Maybe learn something about other cultures. Yes. Before I judged them. Before our friend, Ursa dies. All right, so back at the bar. Hey, Ursa, I'm going to need you to make it like six or seven more years or else this we can't this episode.
Starting point is 00:26:14 I'm going to make it a lot more than that. No, like, look, I manifest forever and ever, but like just friend to friend, I need this not to be apropos. That's what's going to get me through the next six or seven years after that. After that, when I die, I'm going to be like, you should have said more years. Yeah, right. This is your fucker. You did the, I'm going to use my last ounce of strength.
Starting point is 00:26:36 to call you, this is your fault, you motherfucker. September 15th, 2031. I mean, I wasn't sure when in the recording to kind of admit this, but I wanted to let you all know over in philosophers in space, we have a cursed monkey paw, and we fuck around with it sometimes.
Starting point is 00:26:52 And we may have left it in the glove box of our ship on the way over. We have one of those. It's called being people who make their living on the internet. So we're back at the bar. the farmers are still talking shit. They are desperately trying to start the bar fight
Starting point is 00:27:10 that is their purpose. So finally, they get under Dix's skin. They get under Dixen. Dixen. And they start fighting him. And he's just letting him hit him because if they hit him enough times, he can legally execute them.
Starting point is 00:27:26 And that's what he's after. Right? Because he's a bad guy. But then he'll be a good guy and we'll never actually deal with this behavior in any fucking way whatsoever. I really just thought he was a liberal screaming this is illegal while the illegal thing gets.
Starting point is 00:27:38 Makes a cell phone video in his car. Who is he Merrick Garland? Yeah, right. Part of the sub-checks here if there's such a thing in this movie, right? Is that like his girlfriend is very clearly, like vividly replaying her very extensive fuckfest with Rico from their previous employment. Like just full on. And so, yeah, I think he wants to kill some people. Right. Dix wants to like show how manly he is.
Starting point is 00:28:06 or whatever. So, yeah, so he goes to shoot the farmer, but Rico, Caspar Van Dean's character, grabs his gun and, like, makes him fire into the air at the last second or whatever. Because he's one of the good ones. Right, exactly. He's one of the good fascists.
Starting point is 00:28:20 He just wants to kill bugs. Yeah. He just wants to kill the other species, guys. Yeah. So, but now Dix is going to have the farmers arrested, but he's also going to have Rico arrested for insubordination for not letting him kill that farmer. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:36 So, okay, but just as he's having him arrested, the electric fence goes down, the power goes down and the thing, and now the bugs can get through. Yeah, we got through our real one grab ass, and now it's Chekhov's electric fence. Here we go. Yes, exactly. Impeccable timing. Exactly. The bugs have.
Starting point is 00:28:51 Yeah. And I do like that they get the news about the bug attack on Zach Morris's cell phone, right? Again, however many thousand years in the future. Well, Enrico listens to the broken radio transmission for way too long, right? Because it's like, you know, powers down. It's like, yeah, well, you know, we can see that. Bugs are through the vents.
Starting point is 00:29:05 Well, yeah, we, we, you know, we can see that. knew that right away and then he listens to it for a really long time to like the crackles to get one word here or there. I'm like, man, you get the gist of it. Yeah. Do you think that maybe if you hold out he's going to say no need for reinforcements, we got this? So now this is the first time though that we get a really good look, you know, not through the night vision goggles or whatever, of how bad the bugs have gotten since the original movie. I was going to say, I'm not sure I call it a good look, but now I see what you did. Yeah, right, a solid look, I guess.
Starting point is 00:29:38 Thorough look. Yeah, that's the word I need. So, guys, it's like, it's Johnny Neutron, right? It's like a Nickelodeon cartoon from the mid-2000s. It's amazing. At one point, the graphics get so bad that they just splash the screen with red to be like, oh, sorry, can't show you any more of our super cool bugs. Yeah, right, there's really good graphics behind all this way.
Starting point is 00:29:59 Yeah, so Rico's like, oh, we got to go fight the bugs. he says the come on you apes thing very important yeah come on apes you want to live forever but here's the problem right the fact that he says it again in this movie right because this is like a catchphrase
Starting point is 00:30:16 from Starship Troopers what? Correct Michael Ironsides catchphrase yeah it's Michael IronSides okay but the fact that he says it now means that it's like a thing people say it really loses its power right
Starting point is 00:30:27 it would be like if you learn in fucking Scarlet O'Hara 2 it was just like frankly me, my dear, I don't give it. It's just a thing people said. It was a catchphrase, like, drink Coke. And we should point out that before he says that, he's like, oh, well, you know, we got to go out and fight the bugs.
Starting point is 00:30:43 Dick says, no, you can't do that because you got arrested. I arrested you. And so RICO knocks him the fuck out. And then he goes and he gives his, you know, big rah-rah line. And, hey, one of the guys, when he gives the Rha-R-R-R-Line, crosses himself, Christian movie. Christian movie Wink Christian movie
Starting point is 00:31:03 Hey I wonder if RICO will be forgiven by the end of the movie Oh That's interesting Yeah Big questions So in comes a grenade bug
Starting point is 00:31:12 So everybody stares at For a while As you do They stare at it like Guys wasn't that Used for traumatic effect Like two scenes ago It was we just did grenade bug
Starting point is 00:31:22 This is third time We were nine minutes Into this movie And this is our third grenade bug yeah We're gonna get a few more too And then never again ever. Even when they could really use one. Yeah. So, but the bugs are now in the trenches and I'm like,
Starting point is 00:31:35 oh, it's a good thing you guys seized the low ground here, right? Yeah, they're going to pull on some red coat style military strategy, get in the straight line, shoot in one direction. Oh, no, I'm out of ammo. I have to stay directly in the middle of the trench in the most vulnerable place possible while I reload. Yelling for someone to give me ammo. Yeah, right, right. Oh, no, I died. So now, but deeper in the bases, Lieutenant, communist accent is mustering her forces. They've got another one of these great military decisions where you can see one guy. He's shooting this mounted gun.
Starting point is 00:32:07 It's mounted from the ceiling, but it's way too high for him to, like, see what he's shooting at. So that doesn't seem good to me either. Let me know if I'm fucking him up down there, okay? Yeah. The sit rep here is totally ominously fucked up or tofu as it's more common. Oh, interesting. Well done.
Starting point is 00:32:22 The military would love you. So now it's time for Casper Van Dean to come in and do some real serious tactician shit, right? So he's like, point your guns, it's a bad guys and shoot them. They'll work this time, even though they haven't up to this point in the movie, right? And this is where we also get a better look at the guns, which I would describe as something you could buy
Starting point is 00:32:40 for your children before Columbine. Yeah. And after, I mean, they fight a real. Ah, you beat me to it, you son of a lot. Eli, let's be specific here. Oh, I'm going to kill your kid at school. Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:32:55 It's okay. No one cares. Nobody cares. Literally no one cares. no one cares it's fine it's fine no you're right they won't even that's not worth half-mast
Starting point is 00:33:02 your kids never explicitly called for the deaths of other people there's no matter you're just like kids we're in the way of bullets of a right-winger oh so
Starting point is 00:33:10 Ersa gets it in the future oh god Jesus Christ and so okay the only way out is through Noah you're just trying to make sure I can't edit it out
Starting point is 00:33:24 is all you're doing now don't try to dress this up as some high-minded comedic principle now. I'm putting a phone call to you as a shortcut on the home screen of my phone just to make sure when it happens. Just to make sure when it happens, I now know what the last thought will be.
Starting point is 00:33:40 I mean, just open up Grindr. We already talked about it. All right. All right. So meanwhile, so Dix is woken up from getting knocked out and he's walking through the battle trying to fulfill his grudge. He finds the Sky Marshall who's all like injured up and shit. And he's like, hey, we got to get this guy back to the ship and get him the fuck.
Starting point is 00:33:58 It's not me that needs to get the fuck out. It's him. Yeah, everybody can get paired up with their act two dance partners. Yeah. They're going for dazed and traumatized and confused, but I know what subspace looks like.
Starting point is 00:34:12 And so, by the way, we should point out that they call the bugs Archie now, right? Because in the first movie, they were called arachnids, even though they only had four fucking legs, six maybe, if you wanted to count the arms as legs. Definitely not eight
Starting point is 00:34:26 by any fucking way you'd count it. So I think they're just, trying to like back away from that without completely retconning it in them. Which is such a bizarre line in the sand for them to draw. Of all the insane, impossible, stupid things this movie sticks to, at some point in the writer's room, someone stood up and pounded their fist on the table and was like, they don't have eight fucking legs. That's why, Greg. Oh, I find it perfectly easy to believe that they're still inventing slurs 300 years. Yeah, no, that's true.
Starting point is 00:34:55 And they still don't make any sense. Yeah, right. So, okay, so they get the Sky Marshall guy, Sky Marshall Nookie, back into his ship where we meet the doctor. The Sky Marshall is in shock, but the doctor, you know, does some doctor magic and now he's fine. Dr. Wiggs. Yeah, let's be specific here, Dr. Wiggs. I know this is a satire, but for fuck sake. Yeah, and Dr. Wiggs instantly declares that he's in shock.
Starting point is 00:35:20 I mean, like, I'm not even talking Star Trek, Biboo, Beep, Beep thing that so can tell you how sick you are. He, like, sits on the table and he's like, shock. Oh, yeah, you know, he's as good at it as, like, R.FK Jr. is detecting MRNA. Yeah, the mitochondria and my son, yeah, exactly. He specialized in phrenology at Himmler University. Give him some, give him a fucking break. Never seen a fucking stethoscope. This is exactly the kind of doctor you'd get in a fash society.
Starting point is 00:35:47 Sure. And Spirit Halloween, Michael Ironside fucking hates bugs a whole lot. Yeah. Your blood is haunted. Good job, Dr. Wiggs. Thank you. Yeah. So, okay, so they're going to blast off and get the Sky Marshall to safety, but Dix is going to stay behind.
Starting point is 00:36:01 I know. I love that they gave me that name to work with. But Dix is going to stay behind and arrest Rico for wanting to fuck his girlfriend, right? Yeah, Lola is super sad and is going to give us one of the saddest don't go. I love you scenes ever forced onto celluloid. Oh, she says, I love you. And he goes, blast off fleet, which is exactly how Heath responds to that. Just as good as I know.
Starting point is 00:36:26 I still thought the wedding was lovely. I mean, I don't know. So, okay, but Dix gets on the PA. In the middle of the battle, Dix gets on the P.A. And he goes, I want everybody to know, I'm in charge now, not Rico. I'm in charge of everything.
Starting point is 00:36:40 And Rico can go fuck himself. Lola likes me best now. Really nailing the emasculated male representation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just then, he gets grenade bugged. Yeah. For the fourth time in 16 minutes. it's a film or whatever we've gotten to now.
Starting point is 00:36:57 Really wanted to flash cut over to the bugs and they're like, should we throw another one? They always work. Yeah, they always just sit there and stare at. As always. I do think instead of shovels, they could have given them those like cool, long hooked glove thingies
Starting point is 00:37:09 from that scary-ass version of squash and they'd whip them back at the bugs at like a hundred miles an hour. High-A-Ly, learn to respect Ursa culture. Yeah, there you go. Are you Basque, Ursa? So, yeah. Top, basque.
Starting point is 00:37:24 You got to get on great. right. Urs has been called a lot of things. I sure have. So, okay. So just then, a giant, oh, here's one you haven't been called. A giant plasmus scorpion attacks. You don't know my life.
Starting point is 00:37:48 I should have got on your hinder, my bad. That's like bottom 11 things, I would assume. Ursa has not been called. What a, like scorpion bug, which is, if we're being generous, it's just a mobile dick wagon. Yeah, it is, yes. Plasma jizzes all over the Marines. This scorpion bug fucks so hard, and I am not going to pretend other ones. Okay, so now this is a practical effect.
Starting point is 00:38:10 This is not CGI, right? They made a model of this because somebody on the staff said, hey, look, if you make it look enough like a dick, I will pay for the practical effects on this. I get to keep it afterwards, but, you know. So, as you all know, General Anoki ruined the bug costume that I was making plans later earlier. I'd like $100,000 for a big acid spewing cyber dick. I honestly, I don't want to answer any questions about it. I'm the Sky Marshall, you don't have to.
Starting point is 00:38:42 It's my birthday. But hey, hey, you know what? We finally see a fucking Arakken in these goddamn movies here. So I'm not going to complain to her. I do you think we could call this an impression. practical effect, though, because this is clearly like the jaws shark of the dick, of like the dick bug world. We see it for
Starting point is 00:38:57 one scene, and they can't even get it up. They can't even keep that fucking thing hard enough. The claymation is so bad that like, no, great use of budget. They keep it up for like 40 seconds at most, yeah. So Lola gets back to the sky marshal back to the mothership, which is
Starting point is 00:39:13 by the way, designed to have the fewest possible surfaces to animate. Like, you can count the polygons on this ship. We are at least 10 years past the need for blue screens and administrators to look that bad by the point this movie is I just feel the need to say that very clearly. Right, yes. And there's a tone
Starting point is 00:39:29 shift here. We really truly abandon the first movie, I feel like, and like jump into a second movie where Timu Carmen is like a boss bitch. Yes. Uh-huh. Yes. Everyone, like all right, help me with the vibes here because as Ursa knows. Hey, by the way, Ursula, I heard all the implications in that yes,
Starting point is 00:39:45 and I am with you. Okay. You're psychic, too. It turns out. We're doing great. Help me with the subtext, though. Has she fucked everyone on her crew, including the stewardess? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:40:03 They all play it like that, right? They're called flight attendants, Aaron. No, she would, I think she would pretty much self-identify as a stewardess and would consider her woke for you to suggest otherwise. So, okay, yeah, right, she's the Christian character. So, and just to give you an idea how bad this fucking movie is, there's a moment here where Lola, runs into the flight attendant character, right?
Starting point is 00:40:24 This is Holly. And there's like a three-second exchange between the two of them. And you're like, well, surely you'll pass the Bechtel test in these three fucking seconds. You only have to make it three seconds. And she's like, are you carrying food to a man? And she's like, yes. And she's like, oh, good. Good.
Starting point is 00:40:40 It's the Sky Marshall, who we are now talking about. I was scared for a second that we were going to go woke and therefore broke. And just to answer your question about the vibe check, Aaron. we meet a character here named Jingo. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Hashtag vibe checked. Yes. Jingo is the chef. He'll be important
Starting point is 00:41:02 later. Jingo Unchained. Will he? No. No, he'll show up later. Yeah, good point. So they go in to see the Sky Marshal. A lot of eyebrow work in the Kubrick stare from the Sky Marshall here. But as they're chatting,
Starting point is 00:41:17 the ship is suddenly under this scene as boring attack and they fall. all out of warp. The cameras are shaking, you guys. Yes, well, obviously. Yeah, so it must be bad. I wonder if he can't get the Kubrick stare quite right because he doesn't want to tip his head down far enough
Starting point is 00:41:32 because they gave him a note not to show his bald spot because it ruins the whole concept. Oh, interesting. Yeah, right. He's trying to do the cat head cocked back Kubrick's stare. A.K.A. He's looking straight up. Specific subgenre.
Starting point is 00:41:46 How's this? Is this doing it? I feel like it's not doing it. Am I crazy yet? Do I look crazy? We also meet here, so as everybody's running to get to the escape ship, we have to meet Bull the Mechanic character who will fall in with this group of people that the movie will follow for pretty much the right.
Starting point is 00:42:03 It's going to be Bull the mechanic, it's going to be the doctor, it's going to be the Sky Marshal, Holly, Lola, and Jingo the Chef. Meeting all the people who are going to die later. Yeah, it's like everybody's D&D character from the first half of the movie died and so now they're just slowly pivoting over to the characters they rolled up. in between sessions. Yeah, but they escape their way into an escape pod
Starting point is 00:42:26 to fucking tattoine smatooine, whatever the hell they call it, yeah. And this is the closest we have yet come to a plot. Yep. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:35 I mean, look, hey, damsel meet distress. That's going to do it. That's the plot, which means that also does it for Act 1 and we get to take a break. But we'll be back in a flash
Starting point is 00:42:44 with even more of Starship Troopers 3, Marauder. Marauder. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, podcast listener. I'm Eli Posnick. And I'm no illusions.
Starting point is 00:42:58 You know, today's film tackles an issue so many of us have been faced with, changing work and personal relationships. Tell me about it, Eli. But whether your friend has been promoted above you in an interplanetary bug war, or you just need some advice about relationships, one great thing to try is therapy with BetterHelp. BetterHelp does all the initial matching work for you, so you can focus on your therapy goals.
Starting point is 00:43:21 A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, and their 10-plus years of experience in industry-leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. So no awkward therapist breakups? No awkward therapist breakups. As the largest online therapy provider in the world,
Starting point is 00:43:43 BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash awful. That's BetterH-E-L-B.com slash awful. Hey, I'm sorry that I'm dating your ex who also pilots my ship, by the way. I forgive you, and I'm glad we worked this out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:04 Feels good. Damn it, we've been hit. All right, everybody. Into the lander, especially you, Holly. Wait, why am I going? Well, because we're going to crash. Right, but shouldn't I stay up here in the spaceship? Well, we need your skills.
Starting point is 00:44:22 What skills? Well, she's like, assistant. Okay, now everyone's making me feel bad. You brought it up. I thought someone might say something. I'm sorry, hold on. So you were fishing for compliments during an emergency evacuation? I wasn't fishing for compliments.
Starting point is 00:44:37 I was looking for affirmation. Well, that feels like a you thing. Folks, are we going to get in the lander or not? Fine, fine, I'm coming. You're really good at getting into land? No, no, it's too late. Way too late. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:44:58 And we're back for more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action by checking in with the Exposition Network, again, to learn more. We learn that Rico, Caspar Vandine, is taking the blame now for the Roku-san base falling to the bugs, right? They've pinned it on him. Defeat at Klindathu. I mean, Rokosan. I mean, yeah, right, right. And hey, if your character's name is RICO, maybe you don't name your planet Roku, right? I'm sorry, just small note.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Yeah, I just, I can't get enough of the fact that the peace terrorist is named Elmo. Elmo Ghanif. Danny DeVito with a beard. Yeah. And also, so they spend so much time establishing this character that you just keep expecting him to pop up and like serve some function in it at some point, right? Because we learn that there's this character, Elmo Gonneff, he is a disabled guy in a wheelchair that is
Starting point is 00:45:50 the leader of the Christian anti-war movement and he's just like so in the background. Yep, not just a piece nut, he's religion. Yeah, right, right, yeah. But then, so we cut to the Sky Marshal giving a speech to everybody and we're like, well, hold on, wait,
Starting point is 00:46:05 I thought the Sky Marshal had crashed on some alien world, but now that's a CGI deep fake. Yep. An Admiral Brass Polisher is having feelings about it. Yeah. Right. he's the fascist with a conscience well he's
Starting point is 00:46:23 sad and alone now and you know this is just so depressing yeah yep yep yeah so and we meet Admiral Bad Lady I don't know FID Admiral FID FID FID
Starting point is 00:46:36 Ph-I-D A-FID I guess I don't know what the fuck they're going through everything is so stupid about this movie I just don't even want to try to figure out what they're trying to do with it So Admiral Fid is the one that's like pretending to be the Sky Marshall doing the speech
Starting point is 00:46:52 that's being deep faked into him or whatever and she's trying to like take over by pretending to be him and while he dies off on planet Shmatoing. Yeah, using the, you know, sci-fi version of AI. And again, just to talk about how unsatterizable the world is around us,
Starting point is 00:47:12 I literally watched this scene and then I was like, okay, Eli, you deserve a little break, turned off this movie and watched the AI generated video that Trump made about Charlie Kirk and I was like, oh, here we are where I'm just living.
Starting point is 00:47:26 They might as well have turned off the hologram generator and had him be like, so what'd you guys think? Could everyone tell I had a stroke? What do you think? I was an exact same experience. I'm like, we're all fucking subpruders now.
Starting point is 00:47:38 Did his hands get bigger? What the fuck are his hands doing? Yeah, right. Back into the left. No, he's always had seven fingers. That's what it is, yeah, no. So, but then Dix goes to work, right, to be fascist and evil, and he goes to his office where we see a, he has a clearer whiteboard, like a see-through whiteboard?
Starting point is 00:47:58 Because it's the future, and in the future, whiteboards will be much less useful. Everything is see-through. Why are, who the fuck decided that that was a sci-fi trope? It's so dumb. Yeah. Apple in their next iOS release. No, I don't know. I don't know how to break it to you, but take a gander at my iPhone.
Starting point is 00:48:16 next time I see you and he's super mopee because he threw the only guy who can tolerate him in jail. Yeah. He's supposed to feel fat for, whoops. He's having the elementary school level dilemma. Like, hmm, the authority figures are supposed to be trustworthy, but they're doing bad things.
Starting point is 00:48:32 Yeah, right. Well, and then to really drill that in, uninformant by the name of Lieutenant Lamb will show up, right? So Lieutenant Lamb was on duty when Lola and the Sky Marshal sent in a distress call saying that they were stranded on the planet Schmatoen, and when she kicked it upstairs. Yeah, I'm a big fan of proto-Didramiro here. I love that she,
Starting point is 00:48:56 because really nothing fucks over Fash plans more like over-eager middle management types. Right? Yeah. She says, yeah, you know, I took this to my superiors, and they told me to sit on it, and here it is.
Starting point is 00:49:08 And she hands him, like, a typed-up report. They've typed it in sci-fi font, obviously, because it's the future. Of course. But it's just Lola going like, hey, somebody come get us. We're on Shmatoing, right? Yep. But she was ordered to stand down and let Lola and the Sky Marshal die.
Starting point is 00:49:24 So now he's going to go confront Admiral Fidd about that. But he realizes here that the Admiral doesn't want to give up power. So she wants to let his girlfriend and the Sky Marshall die. Hey, no illusions. Can I thank you personally for telling me why the fuck the Admiral does that in the movie? I spent the whole movie being like, I don't understand why the lady wants them to die. I don't understand why the lady wants them to die. Well, it's not even that.
Starting point is 00:49:48 It's going to be something dumber and more convoluted as though the movie is like, I changed my mind later, right? Yeah. Yep, psyched you out. Yeah, so now we cut to, we cut to Tadouine or Shmatoen or whatever. What was the name of this planet?
Starting point is 00:50:02 It was stupid. It's actually OM1, which I'm pretty sure is meant to just shorten down to Ome. Oh my God, you're fucking right. I think that's the joke. So Planet Om So they get down there And so we've got that
Starting point is 00:50:19 The Motley crew that I described earlier The chef, Jingo He's going to be the comic relief And while they're all like You know Licking their wounds after the landing He spots a bug In the distance
Starting point is 00:50:32 He spots a bug and does a literal Bbbbbbbbbbbbb He does He almost jumps into her arms Like fucking Scooby-Doo Yeah they do coax him out of his part later with a Scooby Snack. Yeah. And the mechanic
Starting point is 00:50:47 who has managed to survive, who, to be clear, we refer to as Bull. His full name is Bull Brittles. Like a golden age super villain. Yeah. You know, what's going to happen here is space stewardess, and that is the correct name because fascism.
Starting point is 00:51:03 She's going to start into the Lord's prayer, but Lola shuts her down super fast. And then Bull has to like come to her defense, like, everyone has a right to think what they want. Yes. And Lola clavs back, sure, as long as they keep it to themselves.
Starting point is 00:51:19 And I swear to fuck, I could hear your entire audience cheer like we were in a theater together. It was the best moment. You missed a very important part where Lola gives him a nuggie. Yeah. Oh, God, it does. You're right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, with the slow motion
Starting point is 00:51:35 arm twist. Yeah. It's incredible. Well, and then she says she turns to Holly, the space toward us, and she goes, can the God talk, which would be in our intro if we had quotes in our fucking intro. I loved it so much. All of us wrote it down. And I'm like not even with
Starting point is 00:51:51 commentary. All of us just have in our notes, can the God talk? Independent of anything else. That's amazing. This is also when the Sky Marshall reveals that he's religious too. I'm not going to spoil how he's religious or why he's religious, but he
Starting point is 00:52:07 will with his performance because she's like, oh, our father who art in heaven, can the God talk? And he's like, You know, I also have a religion. Yes, I also believe in a god. Yeah, and everyone else in the movie will be like, weird way that you phrased that, but I have no follow-ups. All right, moving through the desert, let's get going.
Starting point is 00:52:28 And also, from the, like, gam perspective, here is where I feel like you start to see the drop coming, but it's too late and to avoid it, and it's going to be so much worse than you think. It's so good. Oh, I have to ignore so many of my notes for this. this movie, because so many of my notes were, Aaron, this doesn't count as a fucking Christian
Starting point is 00:52:47 movie until... But it does. Retroactive, absolutely knows. Yeah. I also, like, because the movie's never going to address this, right? Because we learn here that Holly is very, very Christian, and we imply, at least, that the Sky Marshall is as well. And I feel like Christianity would be really hard to reconcile with malicious spacebugs that are
Starting point is 00:53:05 killing humans by the planet full. I don't know. Is it really you who was going to underestimate the ability of Christians? No, that's true. Christians to just sail on past any information like that. Oh, guys, that's what they meant by Gog and Magog, alien bugs with grenades. Yes. With the power of space, Jesus, all things are possible.
Starting point is 00:53:25 Just write that down. You're right, yep, yep. I can leg press a bug. But, like, this is also where it's going to get even harder to try to keep a handle on what this is satirizing or if it is satirizing anything at this point. Because Lola is responding to all of this in the correct way. objectively right way every step of the way. And I'm still not convinced that she's actually supposed to be a protagonist.
Starting point is 00:53:48 At one point at the end is like, all of you guys can go look for God. I'm heading for the fleet marine lander. And I just, I take back everything I said about her up to this point. She is my one true Carmen and I'm with her till the end. And ride or die for her. Fuck, yes. So, okay. So they're going to head to the marine fleet lander, whatever the fuck that means.
Starting point is 00:54:07 I feel like there was something that explained that that wound up in the cutting room floor. but they found something that they can go to where they think they'll be safe from the bugs. So they're going to head there. That's going to be the rest of their part of the movie, basically. Meanwhile, we're going to go to the prison where they're holding RICO. Right now, I just want to point out, if I recall correctly, there are not prisons in the Starship Trooperverse. There's a whole big thing about the immediacy of punishment being key to their entire judicial system. But, hey, you know, what do I know?
Starting point is 00:54:34 Yeah. Should have been hung on RICO, son. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, but now they're about to hang him. and the announcer guy who announces the hangings goes into like what his charges are but there are also two other guys getting hung who like the announcer doesn't tell their stories at all
Starting point is 00:54:50 yeah it's like the two guys who were crucified next to Jesus exactly what I thought yeah right it's like where are their stories man I really wanted them to start interrupting I'm a rapist just um case anyone's sorry I just thought we were focusing on war guy a lot obviously he's got a very strong jaw line but I raised a lot of people not all of them adults
Starting point is 00:55:10 I'm holding the talking nail right now can I get my words in here I'd like the speaking vacuum cleaner news yeah so but yeah so but then they hang the two guys on either side of him but it turns out that Rico is only being fake executed all they do
Starting point is 00:55:26 is drop him onto concrete from 25 feet up so he's fine yeah no which is yeah exactly how you want to do that if you're trying to make sure someone doesn't die yeah his hands are tied behind his back when this happened Yep. How great would this movie be, though, if he just, like, catches his forehead on the ledge and is dead anyways. Oh, fuck, I need a new robot guy now.
Starting point is 00:55:48 Yeah, Dick's pulls a prestige on it. It would be funny if there was another Casper somewhere that didn't make it. Yeah. Also, the other two guys are, like, very clearly hanging where the camera can see them and he is not. And I just get the sense that maybe the Federation is not actually the best at secrets. Really? Yeah. So, yeah, so, but Dick set this all up. He's like, you're with me now. So he takes him out of the prison and he tells him the plot that he's got to go now and rescue the Sky Marshall and Lola.
Starting point is 00:56:14 Right. This is basically Jesus too. Space Jesus gets a reprieve for one last mission. Right. Pull him down off the cross so they can gun some people down. Right.
Starting point is 00:56:23 Which also makes the plot of the beginning of the movie that he was going to execute Rico and then he was like, actually, you know what, now that I'm planning to execute you anyways and there just happened to arise this need for a secret mission,
Starting point is 00:56:34 I'm going to do a fun little shenanigan based on my murder attempt earlier. Yes. Right. And we, by the way, never redeem this character from that, which is going to be increasingly bizarre as we go. I felt like at any point he was going to turn to camera and be like, so the problem is the cast of D&D Minus didn't take my quest for them to go onto the sphere of Shangri-Lah. So that's why when he went to get hung, you got to go with the flow.
Starting point is 00:56:59 You wouldn't play the game. Now we're doing a suicide squad. Exactly. Yes. Yeah, right, right. Honestly, the sub-colonic of D&D Minus. You didn't play my game and we're doing a suicide squad. It's okay.
Starting point is 00:57:11 So meanwhile, back on Schmat, on Ome, the gang is marching across the desert and the bugs are following, but they're following them underground like bugs bunnies style, right? Yeah. Because that's cheaper to animate. It's also apparently working fantastically, right? These bugs appear to be like roughly elephant size and no one has noticed them in this barren desert, which is, again, impressive. Yeah, it is.
Starting point is 00:57:37 But now she notices where she sees them on the ridge lane. She's got her little binoculars, and the binoculars apparently have a count the bugs function, which is useful. Which she takes credit for, like a fucking college student using AI. She's like, I count 16. It's like, okay, chat GPT count at 16. Of course, there's probably like 30 of them that's fucking chat GPT. Yeah, right, right.
Starting point is 00:57:57 But the bugs aren't attacking. They're just following along on the ridge line. we're being hurted well that's what some of them think but holly thinks and the sky marshal thinks that maybe god is protecting them yeah space mary magdalen just starts singing
Starting point is 00:58:13 a hymn yes start singing a fucking him honestly if lola had just charlie kirked her in the back of a fucking head this would be my favorite movie yeah first of all i feel like we should reserve charlie of kirk's for saying the funniest possible thing you could say before you get shot i don't want
Starting point is 00:58:29 just him to get shooting you know what I'm saying. You have to be like, you'll never shoot me in the back of the head. Right. You've got to leave something for Oswald is what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah, and she starts singing this hymn, and I honestly can't tell if it's meant to be deliberately terrible and
Starting point is 00:58:45 annoying, or if she's just that kind of singer. Yeah. And this is, you know, you've got to make strong acting choices, people. Absolutely. We've got to know what you're going for. Yeah. All right. So now we're back to Exposition TV for a bit so that they can introduce the new Q-bomb, which is nine letters more dangerous than the age.
Starting point is 00:59:01 bomb, which is already seven letters more dangerous than the A bomb. So this is pretty bad shit. The Q, of course, standing for controversy. Yes, controversy. Because the Q bomb can, quote, crack an entire planet. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Yeah, uh-huh. Now, okay, I have to point this out.
Starting point is 00:59:21 There's a survey that they said, you know, well, we're watching Exposition TV up in the upper right corner. And the question it's asking is, Q-bomb, what do you think? Now, here's the results of that question. 83% of the people think yes. Yes to the question, what do you think? They think yes. 18% think no.
Starting point is 00:59:41 And the remaining 11% are undecided. Okay, so the numbers constantly move, but I paused at like eight different fucking times and there is no point at which those numbers add up to 100. Okay? They're not even close. That's because 100's communist math, obviously. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:58 Okay. All right. So, duh. Yeah, and during this, we get what is the most amazing point by counterpoint, I think, ever to encapsulate, sort of exactly what we see all the time. From the man on the street shit. Yeah, so the first guy is like, and he looks like what this universe's version of the neoliberal would be, the Democrats, if we're being honest.
Starting point is 01:00:18 Right. He's like, a bomb seems kind of dangerous. The second guy is like, there are so many fucking planets out there. And the universe blows up all the time. What's the fucking deal? Who's just talking about blowing one up? And the third guy's like, God decides who when planets go boom. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:34 I'm like that covers our entire political spectrum. Nailed it. The three genders. Yes. I get to make that joke. None of you do. Okay. You get to play your G card on that one.
Starting point is 01:00:45 No, I'm sticking, don't worry. I'm staying to the safe humor where you die. Oh, you thought I left back behind in the commercial break. You're wrong, podcast. You're wrong. Ers is dropping cue bombs where the cue is queer. Ersa, we're going to need you to laugh a little bit louder at that one before me. I don't know if you could tell the perfectly silent laughs that no one and I indulged it just now, but we're going to need you to lead the way.
Starting point is 01:01:16 So, okay. No, okay. Fuck you, Aaron. Speaking of. You know, we lost. I stand with my good personal friend, Ursula, when I say, fuck you. I'm leaving now. Speaking of queer
Starting point is 01:01:28 Call his hotline on him, Marissa, get him. But so I'm trying it so hard. Speaking of queer, we get the queerest fucking fleet ad, right? Where there's just like this little twink that's just going like, I might suck your dick if you join the, uh, I might not, but I might. Oh, God. Right after the line that's like, you think 16 is too young, think again. Oh, God, it is, isn't it?
Starting point is 01:01:49 Wow. It's directly after that is, is I give great HED. What? I mean, it's really clear that Jeffrey I've seen set up a large, part of the space fleet system, as we'll learn later. Yes, definitely their robot sizing system. It's something to do with that. So, okay, so then we cut to Sanctuary, which is a space base that they clumsily introduced
Starting point is 01:02:10 eight fucking seconds ago in the fleet ad, right? Yeah, it's a hugely important secret location, a hidden fortress, if you will. Yeah, yeah. Now, I will say this was nice because after it all made so much sense and was so relevant to our time. I was like, okay, see? Trump will never get us to space. So that's this thing that I don't have to feel as relevant to today's times.
Starting point is 01:02:34 So yeah, so we introduced this fucking thing as though they're going to try to sell me the sanctuary play set now, right? Like they're like the sanctuary is the most important thing in the whole universe. They're like, really? Oh, okay. And they're like, yeah, because if the bugs find out about this place, then we're completely fucked and we're like, oh, and like, and Lola
Starting point is 01:02:50 knows where this place is. I'm like, oh, okay, so so does Admiral Bad Lady know that she knows where this place is and that this would be like a devastating and terrible thing if they found out
Starting point is 01:03:01 and like yeah and was like oh okay so is she ignoring that anyway and giving her up to the bugs she's like yeah okay yeah will that ever make any sense
Starting point is 01:03:08 given some new revelation about the character oh no no no not something like that so that's where we are with this stupid fucking movie I just want to list to the people who don't know
Starting point is 01:03:17 where this thing is like it seems to be that almost everyone in this movie probably knows where this thing is and that seems like it's a big problem when we get to
Starting point is 01:03:25 the brain bugs. Well, you know, Dix is like, you know, only a few select pilots know where it is. Lola is one of them. And I'm like, dude, you just came here, though. Right? Like, you're here, you knew where it was and you're not a fucking pilot. Also, it's a spaceship. Famously, they move.
Starting point is 01:03:43 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I have been told. So, okay. But then we have to cut over to, they're now on, okay, I'm just going to read this to you. I don't know where the commas go here. They're on Starship, Shiloh, Athena. class marauder project.
Starting point is 01:03:57 I don't know. Just a bunch of fucking words there. Or shack mop for short. So yeah. But he's like, I'm going to send you in to rescue the Sky Marshall and Lola. And yeah, I mean, like, I can, I'm sorry, I can swallow a lot.
Starting point is 01:04:14 I would have qualified for flight school, obviously. But I just can't accept that Rico is so dumb. He cannot grasp the concept. New leaders don't want old leaders back. they can take over. Yeah, right. It takes him a long time to puzzle through that one. Yeah, Dick says to lead him through that by the hand through it.
Starting point is 01:04:33 And he says, yeah, I'm going to send you in. He's like, okay, I'll need a whole team. He's like, nope, you only get six other people. And he's like, oh, okay, well, surely there'll be characters that we've met at this point in the movie because we're more than halfway through an hour and 40-minute movie. Now he's like, oh, one of them will be. Sure. Would you settle for the actors and actresses who were willing to show their naked
Starting point is 01:04:55 butts and breasts. Because that's what we've got for you. Yeah, why am I only getting seven? That's what we got left in the budget, dude. I was going to say that that's where I was going, the people who will do that for pay. Yeah, exactly. I got four extras from the Red Shoe Diaries.
Starting point is 01:05:11 How's that hit you? Speaking of weird costume choices. If you understand my Red Shoe Diaries reference, your back hurts. Yes, it does. It sure does. Is it anyone else, maybe them just be starting to hallucinate at this point, when they're walking down the hallway,
Starting point is 01:05:26 I swear they did something to Rico's costume where they like bulked up his shoulders and torso with padding for just this one walking shot and then made him act like he was walking like an ape just to convey that he was somehow dumb enough to not understand the plot to take over the government thing. Ooh! So there's also, which is weird
Starting point is 01:05:47 because they're about to show him naked where they can't do that. No. But then there's also like a big tease here right where he's like, there's no way that me and six people can take out a whole bug armada or whatever the fuck. They're supposed to be taken out. And he says, well, you'll have a little help. And they turn around and they look at the big
Starting point is 01:06:04 Macsuits, which we only see the shadows of because the budget for this one was only $20 million. Max suits. Right? Cardboard cutouts are cheap. Don't worry. We will see those an hour and 36 minutes into this hour and 40 minutes. Don't you worry, Erza, any second now.
Starting point is 01:06:22 What do you think the day was like where they had to tell everybody we're not showing the mexos? Do you think they gathered everyone around or do you think they just kept the lie up until, and then at the rap party he sort of got up and was like all, everybody, I don't want
Starting point is 01:06:40 us all to find out in the theater. There's no fucking mixes. There's nothing. Given the difference in budget between this movie and the first one, I have to imagine anyone hired to work on it doesn't have hope for much of anything. That's fair.
Starting point is 01:06:55 Also, Neil Patrick Harris isn't coming. I just said that. See, guys wouldn't go. More like, duty houseer, am I right? So meanwhile, back on Schmatoween, folks are getting folks are getting mighty tired and they're sick and tired of walking through the desert.
Starting point is 01:07:15 And while they're all complaining about that, the doctor and Lola are chatting about the fact that the sky marshal is being so damn religious. They specifically used to the phrase got the religion or get the religion. Yeah. And I just,
Starting point is 01:07:30 I couldn't help but finish the sentence. I just got the diagnosis during my regular testing. I don't know. I thought it burned with IP because I wasn't drinking enough water, but it turns out I got the religion from that airline stewardess. He starts out at least,
Starting point is 01:07:45 the doc's a little cagey about this too, again, to play the theme. He's like, I wouldn't say religion. More like spirituality, which for me really drives how much I fucking hate that word. Yeah. It's just, I believe in supernatural shit, but in a cute fun way. So don't be worried about me leading the government. Right.
Starting point is 01:08:04 Yeah. So, yeah, and also, like, fucking HIPAA violations galore here, right? Always. They're just talking about, like, this is this guy's patient. And she's just like, so tell me about his religious conversion and his psychological health in your estimation. He's like, oh, yeah, I'll tell you all about that. It'd be fucking bizarre if the Starship Troopers universe still had HIPAA, though. Okay, no, that would be fucking nuts.
Starting point is 01:08:24 Not to shit. I know that's a no end of the joke, which is kind of comedy poison, but I do also love the idea of them being like, look, you either join the Federation or hang, but we're not going to fucking tell people where you got your cult. Where you got your religion. It's not like there's anything interesting to hide here, though. It's pretty straightforward, dumbass white guy went off into the desert and did. Wandered in the desert. Space ayahuasca with Robo Peter Thiel. or something.
Starting point is 01:08:50 Also, like, they're having this conversation all hush, hush, but, like, this guy Marshall's fucking psychic. We can tell by the Kubrick stare, right? So he's Kubrick staring at them the whole time. He knows what you're saying, guys. He does, I love this moment so much. He does a passive aggressive temple touch. Like, just a reminder, I'm a psychic.
Starting point is 01:09:07 I'm doing the temple touch. It's super bigoted, though, if y'all to assume that psychics are always in everybody's mind all the time. You know, respecting their fucking privacy. Respect Earth's people. I'm just saying. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:09:19 Eli. You're welcome. So welcome shift in your attitude. Thank you. What are you talking about? It's been awesome. This whole episode is going to cash money. You didn't chill. Throughout the edit, yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:28 When Aaron earlier said that day, I was like, whoa, Aaron, not cool. I'm an ally. No, this moment is really brutal for me because Lola's like, is he fit for command? A fairly straightforward question. And the other dude is like, this conversation makes me very uncomfortable. Well, right. But if the answer was yes, he just said yes. Right? Like, it's one of those type of
Starting point is 01:09:50 situations. It just, I feel so much like we're all Lola in this moment and the other dude is Chuck Schumer and we're just like do something. So, okay. So, but he's like, well, you know, he talks to God a lot and she's like, okay, would you want me fly in the fucking spaceship if I told you I was talking to God?
Starting point is 01:10:09 And he's like, hey, look, over there. It's very lovely. You see the sunset over there? Which God? I get it. The DSM-4 does the same thing. Yeah. Look, it's not that someone can't say they are Jesus It's that they've got to be specific in what they're doing as Jesus
Starting point is 01:10:27 They can't say they're that Jesus Can we make homosexuality illegal again? Not like we were crushing it when we did that one. They're gone. So, okay. That's what Aaron would do. Am I right? I mean, like just homosexuality only?
Starting point is 01:10:43 Yeah, I mean, like, you can't be just that. You've got to do at least two other things. That's the law. All right. So that at night, everybody's gathered around the cook stove. Jingo makes him some good food because he's the cook. That's his fucking thing. Holly wants to say grace before they eat.
Starting point is 01:10:58 Lola's like, I would rather not eat. So she wanders out where the bugs are. Yeah, we've got to get set up here for our last supper. Oh, Christian movie. So weird how their planet that there on has a moon that is the same size and color as our moon, isn't it? So weird. Yeah, it's clearly not tattooing.
Starting point is 01:11:21 There's only one moon. Why don't you stop being a dick about it, guys? Yeah, it's only one sun and everything. So, also, there's a moment here where bull turns to the sky marshal. He goes, hey, man, you're a psychic, right? So don't you already know if we're going to get rescued? And he's like,
Starting point is 01:11:36 no, no, no. I'm a psychic in a vague way that only counts when it's convenient to the plot. Okay, don't just think of a card now. Pick a card. And then you'll shuffle eventually. but I'm going to shovel it first. I just, I'm going to, right. No, don't, don't put it back.
Starting point is 01:11:51 Hey, look over there at that sunset. Put it back in the gymit, you're ruining everyone's bar mitzvah. Oh, God. I bet things are going to go so fucking great for Blondie and Bull. Like, I just, at this moment, I know that their lives are going to be trad-cat influencers after all this is over. It's okay. But just then, as they're having this argument about, so the Sky Marshall goes around and asks everybody about their faith. They're like, hey, everybody, everybody,
Starting point is 01:12:17 justify your inclusion in god awful movies the podcast you start right yeah and dr wiggs does what i do when i'm around strangers who i don't want to have an argument with he's like i think whatever makes you all feel cool and vibing yeah it's not jesus enough so he gets the double kubrick stare he does yeah and just then there's a fucking tatooine quake or whatever but it turns out that it's under the ground bug movement of some sort. And the person who said, fuck off at the praying is the one who saves them all. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:12:56 That's true. Beck decided to watch the perimeter instead of closing all their eyes and just facing towards the fire on bug planet. Right, yeah, away from the bug. And also the guy who is wishy-washy and agnostic gets swallowed up by the crack in the planet. Mm-hmm. Right?
Starting point is 01:13:11 What's the movie saying? I hope he learned his lesson. And maybe none of you all caught this because you may have watched it somewhere where the effects weren't on point enough. But after he gets eaten, the Sky Marshall looks down and sees a giant fuck-off eyeball in the fissure. And they very clearly share a moment. They head bump.
Starting point is 01:13:29 Yeah. Hey, how's it going? Was he tasty? You get enough to eat? You want another guy? You want to know, you want jingo? He's annoying. I've seen that look so many times.
Starting point is 01:13:40 But they do get... I got to stop offering to feed Ursa Jingo at atheism. no but seriously don't so but yeah jingo falls into the crack and they pull him out they're like no no you don't die until later in the movie he's like oh great awesome so then we cut to riko he's now filling his troops in he's like we will show up shockingly late in the third act you'll be really surprised but i'm going to yell militarily at you for a little while so that nobody forgets we're in the movie yet yeah he's got his crack team of hitler youth here they are at best 15 to 16 years old,
Starting point is 01:14:18 which is going to get really awkward in a second when we get to the fitting room. Yeah. Yeah. I just kept thinking, like, I live for scenes of this variety when I was like 12 and my aunt at HBO and before I knew how the internet worked. Yes, it is genuinely one of the hardest things
Starting point is 01:14:34 to explain to young people today that there was an entire genre of movie whose sole purpose was, we'll show you some boobs. For like 10 seconds out of the whole two hours and it will make all of it worth it. Right. But it'll be late enough in the movie
Starting point is 01:14:47 that Mom will have left by then. And yeah, right, right. So yeah, but then we get Dick's calling Lamb. I know what, I'm just saying what happens. The name of the god-awful movie's porn. There it is. Dick's calling lambs.
Starting point is 01:15:03 You're just saying what happened. I know. My job is so easy today. But Lamb, the informant that told him about Lola's distress call is nowhere to be So he starts looking into it, by which I mean he types her name into a computer. And it says, oh, yeah, no, she's getting executed any minute.
Starting point is 01:15:21 So this is where he goes to have it out with Admiral Bad Lady, right? Where he threatens to take her down. And she's like, but I'm in charge, though. Goes predictably poorly, given that she has basically absolute power to hang whoever she wants at any moment. Right, yeah. But even if she didn't, his attempt to physically threaten her is one of the funniest things in this movie. He is like a 12-year-old doing Malcolm X cosplay. It does not land.
Starting point is 01:15:44 yeah no it's an odd thing earlier in the movie he's like I fight my war with numbers yeah right yeah no he's pretty bad ass and lost I also I just want to throw out there this scene so he's like threatens her and then it's like that
Starting point is 01:15:57 the consummate like click of the gun behind him moment which whenever I see one of those scenes on any movie but especially this one it means that the admiral had to do a little shenanigan before he walked in the room right where she was like okay Chris
Starting point is 01:16:11 Chris go hide in the closet okay because here's what's gonna happen Dix is going to walk in and he's going to be like, you're corrupt, I'm corrupt, by the way. He's, I'm going to be like, you're a girl. And I'm going to be like, what are you going to be about about? And then he, if he does literally anything except focus his attention solely on me, we're fucked.
Starting point is 01:16:27 But luckily, he will. And I want you to do a really ominous, like, Cleggis. You know, really, really milk the click of your laser weapon. Yes, yeah, right. Yes, of your laser weapon, right. All right, well, I'll tell you what, we've bumbled our way into a full-blown plot at this point, so I think we can take another break.
Starting point is 01:16:43 But first, let me give a little. of Acts 3 the heart cell. Will Lola find Jesus and pray for deliverance in time? Will God provide with Jesus? Are all things possible? Find out the answers to literally those questions and more when we return for the is-to-Christian conclusion of Starship Troopers 3, Marauder.
Starting point is 01:17:08 Okay, Eli, you could do this. Hey, Eli. Damn it, Noah. I was just getting myself psyched up. psyched up for what? Uh, to eat this pumpkin, of course. Oh, my God, you're going to eat an entire pumpkin? Yeah, man, I got to get my diet ready for fall. I don't want to get taken out by my first PSL.
Starting point is 01:17:26 PSL? P-SLat. Oh, right. Look, Eli, if you want to capture fall flavors the easy way, why don't you just try Green Chef? What's? Green Chef makes it easy to spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying fall. And with their new heat and eat meals, enjoy a delicious, wholesome meal in just three minutes. Three minutes. That sounds great. But don't those meal kits get kind of samey?
Starting point is 01:17:48 With 80-plus dietitian-approved weekly meal options, Green Chef makes it easy to find meals that fit your lifestyle. Pick from Mediterranean, gluten-free, plant-based and protein-heavy options, or even calorie-smart choices, too. But have you actually tried it? I sure have. Green Chef sent us a box to try when they first became a sponsor. I love how everything unpackes in seconds and I'm ready to cook an amazing meal any night of the week. That's why I, Noelusions, personally endorse Green Chef. All right, Noah, I'm sold. Where do I sign up?
Starting point is 01:18:15 Make this ball your healthiest yet with Green Chef. Head to greenchef.com slash 50 awful and use the code 50 awful to get 50% off your first month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50 awful at green chef.com slash 50 awful. All right, Noah, thanks. Feel bad that I wasted this pumpkin, though. Yeah, I can see I already cut a hole in it.
Starting point is 01:18:36 Oh, you know what? This one's actually Heath's. Hmm. All right, men, I selected you because you're the best of the best. Nobody knows where we are, and if you tell anybody, they will hang you. What's the mission, sir? You don't need to know. Oh, uh, how are we supposed to do it then?
Starting point is 01:18:58 Damn it, Sergeant, do you want your neck and a noose? Okay, um, can we guess? Um, but, yes. Oh, you're doing charades, uh, two words. Movie, movie, movie. No, no, it's not movie. Fight? Fight.
Starting point is 01:19:14 Nice. A movie. It looked like the movie gesture because the fists were in circles. Oh, okay, okay. Second word sounds like hug. Chug?
Starting point is 01:19:24 Thugs. Ooh, we're fighting thugs. I don't love that terminology. Yeah, honestly, I think we should probably take a step back for the game. Oh, my God, it's bugs. We're fighting bugs. Oh, that makes more sense.
Starting point is 01:19:37 I get it now, yeah. All right. Now, everybody take off your clothes. Wait, what? it's it's for the robots sure fine already and we're back
Starting point is 01:19:51 for still more of this shit and once again we're going to open the act with more from exposition news right we learned that they've staged a bombing at the Sky Marshall building and they're pretending that the Sky Marshall and Dix got killed
Starting point is 01:20:04 in that bomb hate when a peace bomb explodes right yeah they're pinning that on peace activist Christian Elmo Ghanif. Yeah. Yeah. But don't worry.
Starting point is 01:20:16 When it turns out to be one of the admirals, they're going to completely forget about it and not want to talk about it anymore. Nancy Mace knows that if Elmo Ghanf just sat across from Admiral Dex. All right. So back on Shmatoine, Jingo is starting to freak out.
Starting point is 01:20:35 He's getting to be less comic relief, more guy who we need to kill off because he's getting annoying, right? he is suddenly 10 years old. Yeah, he's going to full Hudson at this point. Yeah, he's indulging literally every guy who's about to die in a horror movie troupe. He might as well call his wife and kid and be like,
Starting point is 01:20:52 Daddy's coming home, I promise. All right, we get it, man. I still think we're playing up the action element of this a little too much. There's just going to still be a bunch of walking here. This is where I felt like I needed to metaphorically and literally reinforce that this long walk is going to be worth it. We're going to get somewhere with this, I promise.
Starting point is 01:21:10 It is. Don't lie, Aaron. Oh, come on that way. Come on. We get somewhere. So, okay. So, but, like, he's freaking out. Lola smacks him.
Starting point is 01:21:20 And he just turns to you and he goes, bitch. Right? You know, you're kind of expecting the whole, yeah, no, yeah, thanks. I snapped out of it. He's just like, what a mean fucking thing to do to somebody who's obviously having a hard time
Starting point is 01:21:36 traumatically with the fucking situation. That was very uncalled for violence. So, but we also, we're reinforcing here that she is not very good at being in command and she's starting to lose everybody, right? There's, there's starting to be insurrection in the ranks. She says to Jingle, you're wasting water. And he just says, I hate you. Yeah, yeah. Well, because he's crying.
Starting point is 01:21:57 He's crying from being smacked around while he's having a fucking PTSD episode or whatever. And she says, you're wasting water. I'm like, Jesus Christ, lady. The fuck is strong. They've also, I think, they've accidentally saved up like two. thirds of their R rating for the last 20 minutes of this movie. So she's going to drop F bombs right and left
Starting point is 01:22:16 here and the space hostess is like you shouldn't talk like that. That's blasphemy. Yeah. And like that's what happens when you enable this shit. All of a sudden you can't say fuck anymore. There's just no freedom left. Noah, just on a quick of one to super problematic, how was Aaron's southern
Starting point is 01:22:32 accent there? That is unfair given that I am from Virginia. I will both do a southern accent and have a southern accent when and where I want. Thank you. We're not from anywhere except that place in the desert. Okay, fair enough. I was, I was, that was where I was set up. That was my position.
Starting point is 01:22:48 I apologize. All right. I'm also, I'm from Detroit, so I don't think I can say shit. So, okay, but so there's another Tatooine quake.
Starting point is 01:22:57 Jingo guy, he's ready to fucking insurrection, damn it. But they have the moment where like, he's like, come on, we're going back this way. And they're like,
Starting point is 01:23:06 the bugs are right behind you, Jingo. And then the bugs like, oh, and he turns back and he goes real funny guys it's the scene in the movie where all the little things that are trying to kill you run away and you shouldn't relax but they couldn't afford anything so it's just a little thing
Starting point is 01:23:24 yeah right what's jingo going to do the wrongest thing repeatedly yeah right so yeah so he runs to these little fucking termite mound things or whatever to hide within them but it turns out that they're secretly spider legs and they break out and grab him and eat him or whatever. He is poorly composited into the ground. Yeah. I feel like they should have been worried when this guy Marshall's like, he belongs to God now.
Starting point is 01:23:51 Yeah, but I mean, that is the Christian thing too, right? Like he would then belong to God, yeah. That's the problem, right? Pose law cuts both ways. You're just, are you satirizing me? Yeah. I can't tell. Right.
Starting point is 01:24:04 So, like, Holly cries over Jingo's memory, right? Because he gets sucked into the ground all dead. shit. And Lola comes up and gives her a sick atheism burn, right in the middle of that. She gives her the worst, where's your God now ever? It's so soulless. It's like Jimmy Buffett having to grind out another Margarita Ville. It is brutal. I'm like timing, Lola. I mean, Brian, I get it. You are correct. You got it. You did win. Right. But timing, Jesus. Got to play the hits. All right. So meanwhile,
Starting point is 01:24:39 Rico and his guys are still stalling until it's their time to be in the movie, but up until now, they've been stalling with their clothes on. That's about to end. It's naked time. The British doctor just comes in, apropos of nothing, and says, please remove your clothing. And everybody just gets naked. And, of course, it's all fucking waist up naked, right?
Starting point is 01:25:04 Look, guys, equality. Yeah, we got a very, as folks mentioned. I mentioned earlier, we have a very, very famous shower scene to live up to here, people. So tits and abs, out and proud. Yep, yep. So, yeah, so they get everybody naked. They march them into this room where each of them has a little crotch guard stand right in front of them. Yep.
Starting point is 01:25:28 It's like an Austin Powers designed scanner. Jeffrey Epstein Memorial wing of this building. Oh, no. They're all also doing a schick. where they're all clearly getting to check out each other's junk while none of us are, while we're all just deprived of some swinging pipe because this is not in fact HBO.
Starting point is 01:25:47 Right. The fat guy has a small dick. Yes, yeah, right. We have a small dick moment for the fat guy. To be clear, this fails the Philosopher's and Space version of the Bechdel test, which is if boobs are boobing boobily, dongs better be donging donnelly. That's just a baseline expectation.
Starting point is 01:26:04 I also called for dong. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. This movie cheated us out of don't. Yeah. Also, we get possibly the dumbest techno babble I have ever heard. Once everybody's naked and standing all spread out like they're at airport security or whatever, the fucking computer goes commencing Gamma Jeddah Bonza.
Starting point is 01:26:25 Oh. And then it's time for the Power Rangers morphine time montage. I love this so much because there was a design meeting somewhere where they were like, no, we need a semicircle of the exact same kinds of scanners. you can't just use one for you know like put each person through it no they need to all be lined up so that all the teenagers who can't get real porn can pause it on this one shot please that's right yeah correct yeah well and then it goes through like after like we watch them all get like lasers scanned nakedly for a minute and a half it then goes through and it names all the various characters and it shows us a picture of them like you know like their fucking ID but tits out like tits out pictures of them on their ID Because we don't care about tits at all, you guys. We are so progressive about this. This doesn't even matter to us.
Starting point is 01:27:12 Are your ID photos not tits up? They photoshopped my shirt back on to me. So, okay, so now we're at an underground research facility. This is below the prison that Dix broke Rico out of earlier. This is where they keep... Sorry, if you're not up to speed on the Starship Troopers first. This is where they keep the brain bug that they... they captured at the end of part one.
Starting point is 01:27:38 Yeah. Right. That was the denouement of part one was that they managed to capture the bug that did all the thinking for them so they could study it and figure out how to kill them. Now we're there with that thing. So much veteran presence in this. And we found out earlier ominously, the brain bugs just keep growing forever. They don't know how big they get.
Starting point is 01:27:58 Nudge, nudge. Mm-hmm. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Well, and so, and we established in the first film that only psychics can communes. can commune with these brain bugs, right? So what we're going to learn now, the Admiral Bad Lady is going to explain to Dix that the Sky Marshal, who is psychic,
Starting point is 01:28:15 has been communing with this brain bug, but he's gone native, right? He started to believe in the bug religion. This is super weird because Dix, as far as we know, is the Sky Marshall's Charlie Young and seems to have no idea that his Sky Marshall went rogue in this religious kind of way.
Starting point is 01:28:33 Yeah, the doctor knew all about it. why wouldn't Dix know about it? Baffling. But she shows him a video where we're seeing it from the waist up and the video plays very much like he's fucking that bug from the waist down, right? He's just like... He's big spooning it.
Starting point is 01:28:46 Come on. Be gentle. Yes, he's big spooning the bug and he's just going like, oh, I do have deleterious effects on me, Daddy. Yeah. But he's going like, you know, I will turn off the power at the Roku Sun thing so that the bugs can come in and kill everybody.
Starting point is 01:29:04 and then I'll sabotage my ship and we'll get, oh yeah, baby, we'll get caught on Shmatoen and then, oh, yeah, I'll tell you where the fucking bass is that you wanted to know about.
Starting point is 01:29:14 And I'm like, why would he say all of that? He knows he's on camera at this point. This isn't secretly recorded. Plus he's psychic. You'll have to say it out loud. You can just be psychic about it. Right.
Starting point is 01:29:25 What the fuck are we doing here? My favorite thing here is that the bug has a name. Oh, yes. The bug is named. Who wants to take a swing at this one? Go for it. Let's go. Behemicoidal.
Starting point is 01:29:35 It's named behemacoital. Wow. Right. And now I am also named behemicoidal. I'm non-binary. I was going to say, nailed it on the first fucking try. Yeah. I feel like behemicoidal is probably Quetzocotal's annoying bug brother.
Starting point is 01:29:48 He's like, oh, my brother's fucking flying snakes, fucking cool looking with waves and shit. Gosh, guys, I'm really sorry about him. It's not just a coital. It's a behemacoital. It's so stupid. He's on the god in-cell sites. Like, Charlie Kirk. Skymarsh is going for some
Starting point is 01:30:06 Bahamacoyas. So, yeah, so then the brain bug, they're giving all of this backstory well standing next to the brain bug for no reason, right? I don't want him to feel left out. Right, yeah. And so when he realizes that they're onto him,
Starting point is 01:30:28 he starts using his brain powers to make their heads explode. Yeah, it goes full scanners on them. Yes, exactly, right. The bug us, he is so mad. Yeah, he tries to shut down. There's like a big gate that's between them and the bug. And the guy tries to shut it down,
Starting point is 01:30:44 but it's so slow that his head explodes. And I'm like, wow, I didn't realize that was a level of slowness, but I guess here we are, right? Trey to squeeze this giant gooey body through a very, very small orifice until Dick's blasts enough of the weak points to take him out. Relatable, right? Yeah, right?
Starting point is 01:31:00 Mm-hmm. talk to me, Aaron. So, yeah, but well, and it's funny, too, because one guy shoots him and it's like, no, no, no, no, that didn't work. And Dick shoots him and he's like, oh, yeah, right, because he's a named character. Of course. It works when he does it.
Starting point is 01:31:13 You got to shoot the flashing red eyeballs. Come on. Yeah, obviously. New move. So, yeah, but he kills the brainbug. And, like, everybody's head has exploded except for Dix and Admiral Fid, right, the bad guy lady, who's now, I guess, a good guy lady because she's actually trying to get the guy who's a traitor
Starting point is 01:31:30 to the human race killed. I don't know. It's hard to figure out. But yeah, but like everybody's head has exploded like two seconds ago and the admiral is like, hey, you know what?
Starting point is 01:31:41 This religion thing might actually be a really good thing to weaponize. The timing lady. Yeah, never came up before and in hundreds of years of fascist society. Right.
Starting point is 01:31:50 Never came up to use blind religious faith. Nobody ever read a Marx text at all just for funsies, I guess. Clearly not. Yeah. So, okay, so back on Shmatoween, they're all walking along in the desert,
Starting point is 01:32:02 the same stupid fucking religious discussion they've had the entire goddamn movie, right? It's the same fucking scene again. How in the world am I supposed to keep introducing this same scene and make it feel like we're making progress through the goddamn movie? I love this. She's like, faith is more powerful than a cue bomb.
Starting point is 01:32:17 Without it, you're nobody. That's why I'm only going to listen to the captain. That was where I was desperate for Lola to shoot her in the neck and be like, yeah, not more powerful than a bullet who's fucking nobody now. But this is also where Bull proposes to Holly Which is weird because they're not dating yet Gotta pick your moment
Starting point is 01:32:39 Yeah, I thought he was turning around to ask her out He's like, I don't suppose you'd ever consider And I was like, oh, I'm meat cute And he's like having my three children And I was like, ooh! And she's like only if God is in bed with us at all times That's a boundary and it's okay for me to set boundaries Yep, I'll have a thruple with you and Jesus
Starting point is 01:32:56 Only in the church, you take God and you can take me purity culture nailed to a lowercase tea right there. Yeah, but just then when she agrees to marry him, if he is the right religion, they find like the fucking thing that they were looking for, the lander that they were looking
Starting point is 01:33:15 for that they've been walking to this whole time. And this is where the sky marshal starts to really tip his hand beyond just the obvious looks that he's given everybody. He goes, yes, soon we will all meet the one true god behemacoital. So good.
Starting point is 01:33:31 Because everybody's like, huh? The bug god? Yeah, right. That's crazy. But Holly at first is like, well, you know,
Starting point is 01:33:37 I know that God has a lot of names. I don't know about that one. I'm not sure if I've heard behemoth. I like that Holly holds out hope that it's going to be her God still. She's like, you know, I'm not up on my Latin.
Starting point is 01:33:49 Yeah, I don't really speak Hebrew. I stopped watching Dan McClellan on TikTok because it's usually just him arguing with bigots. Maybe that's what I'm missed. I hope you'll all caught the throwaway. line where he refers to it as brain of brains instead of King of Kings. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:04 Oh my God. That's a deep cut I feel like for our team here. It's beautiful. So yeah, but at this point, Lola's like, no, you idiot. Behemicole, he believes in the bug God. And I'm like, why would she know that is she watching the movie with us? I really wanted him to break into song at that moment and like explain himself through song.
Starting point is 01:34:22 But instead he just says behemacoital like several more times. I guess in the way that like if you just say it enough times, it stops sounding weird. Yeah, yeah, right. Where it becomes the sound. So there's also, there's an interesting moment here where Holly's like, oh, wow, you know, these religious beliefs are really dangerous. Should we kill him for apostasy? And I'm like, wow, ramp that way the fuck up, huh?
Starting point is 01:34:43 That's pretty accurate. That's about as long as it takes, right? Right, right. It goes from, we've got to say grace to you can't say fuck to let's kill the apostates right away. Yeah. And then Lola is like, oh, are we killing people for having dangerous religious beliefs now? Is that what we're doing? And Holly's like, well, the wrong,
Starting point is 01:35:00 he has the wrong dangerous religious beliefs. Yeah, she goes full new atheist on her. His beliefs are just like yours. Why should he have to die? Yeah. Now who's not a, yeah. Yeah. And Holly's response is just, it's the wrong God.
Starting point is 01:35:12 That's a quote. That's a quote from the goddamn movie. It's the wrong God. From them. Yeah. From their side. It's amazing. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:35:23 It really reminds you that it can be super fun to banter until you remember that we're still all totally. fucked. Yeah, yeah. We're supposed to help people escape from that, Aaron, on their on their commute. Whatever. Your Facebook group grew a terrorist, Aaron. That's fair. That's fair. You got me. I did that. Ursa, have you ever grown a terrorist? Not on purpose. So they reach the ship or whatever that they've been looking for. So you're not on field. Yeah, right. So they're checking the ship out. And I'm trying, guys. I am. I'm going to push
Starting point is 01:35:53 through. The only way out is through. So. Oh, I got them with that one. I got them good with the field joke. Oh, wow. Okay. So they're checking out this ship that they found, and they're like, Holly, why don't you stand guard? And she's like, I can think of a lot of reasons why I don't stand guard, but okay.
Starting point is 01:36:15 I don't know how this gun works. It's fake anyway. It doesn't matter. You're just going to scream when the bad guy shows up anyways. Come on, Lolo. At what point did you feel like a useful character? Just fucking... Come on.
Starting point is 01:36:27 So, but there's a moment here where Lola has her gun trained on the sky marshal and she's like, hmm, she, like she knows that he's betrayed the entire human race, but will she shoot him? Why wouldn't she fucking shoot him? Right? If she knows that, what, but okay. Yeah. She doesn't, though. She's just going to get up off planet.
Starting point is 01:36:45 Like, she's still trying to like just be okay with the spy. He's worshipping the bug god. You figured out the answer. What are you doing? Right. I feel like we know now. So, okay, but then like Bull gets the ship running again. And so Holly's like, oh, pretty lights.
Starting point is 01:36:58 I can turn my back on the thing I'm supposed to be guarding. Yeah, of course. So we get this great moment where it's almost a great comedy moment. Lola gets on the radio and she says, you know, we need a rescue for the Sky Marshall and three additional survivors. And then we cut to Holly getting snuck up on. And I really wanted her to go, make that two additional survivors. Two additional survivors. Yeah, we can take one of the cheaper Ubers.
Starting point is 01:37:23 It's fine. We don't got that many people. So, but yeah, so Holly gets knocked down by another Tatooine quake or whatever and something's coming up to get or we can't see it because they didn't, you know, they only had so much animation budget. Yeah, the bug's defense budget was slash. Turns out it's not just humans that have budget problems.
Starting point is 01:37:42 Right, they got doged. They're renaming it the Department of Bugs. There's only so much clay to go around, guys. Yeah. So, yeah, so, but Holly thinks of get up and run way too late in the game, but she does. She does think of that. There's all these weird spider fingers, things that pop out of the ground to get her.
Starting point is 01:37:58 But they don't get her because presumably she's protected by God. She's protected by Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The real God. Yeah. Right, right. We need her for the next stick. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:38:12 So Bull comes out to rescue her, right? Because God can't do it all. Of course. And he starts fighting the spider leg. She gets away. He gets a spider leg through his leg, which is fatal, I guess, in this universe. an engineer class, they're pretty, pretty fragile. Oh, well, no, that's true. That's true.
Starting point is 01:38:28 Yeah, low armor class. So, yeah, so, but they've now traded their mechanic, who knows how to get the fucking ship running and seems to be pretty good with a rifle for the hysterical flight attendant, Jesus freak, is the trade they just made. Who is favoreded by the Lord Christ of Nazareth? Well, no, you're right, though.
Starting point is 01:38:46 It is going to turn out to be the correct trade, yeah. So, okay, so they all run under the ship, and they're like, ah, you know, we ran, the whole movie was us getting to this ship so that we could get away. Now let's get away. And then the alien tears the ship in a half. And so all of that was useless. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:39:02 It's fucking Jabba the Bug. Let's go. Fuck. Yeah. We finally get to the payoff. I'm so fucking happy to drop a Star Trek 5 Final Frontier on y'all like this. I love that this ends up just being what is bug God need with the starship. Yes.
Starting point is 01:39:20 Especially Ursa. I feel like dropping Final Frontier on someone like, Ursa is the sci-fi atheist equivalent of Rick Rowling somebody. Yeah. They did it to me. Never going to give God God. Yes, no, we did that movie together.
Starting point is 01:39:32 Yeah. That's the last time we had Ursa on the show. Never going to let, but God down. So now, okay, so to be clear, this is where behemicoidal bursts to the ground. Now, behemicoidal is supposed to be like a most of the planet-sized thing, which is way bigger than their animation budget.
Starting point is 01:39:48 So it's very much like, I'm speaking to my fellow olds here, it's like a 16-bit game where they had to the bad guy out of background tiles so he just like kind of went up and down on a black screen and just like his tongue and his arms were animated things right yep i understood that reference okay awesome awesome you're a fellow old then i'm sorry to say he's he's big because he's far away go yeah right right yeah oh my god they might as well just be filming this in front of a picture of their monster it's so bad right but of course this is where we get urs's best worst the the
Starting point is 01:40:22 the giant face vaj that creeps at him at this point? The behemocordesi. Yes. Would so, would so be in communion with that. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:40:34 Just to understand there's a basic rule, every orifice is also a pussy. I know there was some confusion in the notes about whether this was a mouth or not. But like, it could be a mouth. It's also a pussy. Just like every tentacle is also a dick. I'm just a coward.
Starting point is 01:40:47 That's why I went ahead and said mouth. It's just as pure. You brought, you know, we're the experts for this. There's no confusion in mind. You know, you all are here for the God stuff. We're here for the orifices. We're going to work together on this. I didn't say pussy.
Starting point is 01:40:59 I said face vage, but hey. No, I agree with you. That is totally right. You were on the money. I appreciate that you understood. You know, each guest brings a different thing to our show. Michael Marshall does research and Ursa. Ursa memorized how to say Bohemica could get me.
Starting point is 01:41:16 Because I know that wasn't one take. I know Ursa spent the week like doing this. They were hitting through their life. Behimicotosa. See, you got it right. I watched this movie for the first time 30 minutes ago. Yeah. Wow.
Starting point is 01:41:28 I saw you going through the notes last second. Eli's like, oh, I'm going to have to start 15 minutes later. And Earth was like, oh, no. No, no. And Ussie savant, if you will. No, I watched it very early this morning, and then I watched it a second time and took notes because I'm a diligent guest. Fuck you. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:41:46 Thank you for having confidence. I didn't even watch the movie the first time. Yeah. I've just been kind of yes anyway. What you guys said. Versa is just an expert on the third act involving a random ussy. It's just how like 90% of our content goes. You've seen one.
Starting point is 01:41:58 You've seen them all. So, okay. So, but no, this is the part where the Sky Marshall is going to, like, give up the human race to the alien, right?
Starting point is 01:42:05 Where he steps up and he says, oh, behemicoidal, I've worked really hard at saying that name with a straight face. And so I'm going to do it a bunch of times now. And then another Power Rangers tie in, Bohemich, see it there, I can't do it now.
Starting point is 01:42:19 Nope, gone now. We made a whole thing. It's chinkster. Never going to happen again. This is how they go. Put an Ossie at the end. Put an Ossie at the end and it's your superpower, Ursa. That's true.
Starting point is 01:42:29 Yes. It's the lack of Ossie. There it is. See? Yep. Yep. Another notable Power Rangers tie-in behind McCoy to see here voiced by Zordon.
Starting point is 01:42:41 Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it. But because we don't want to do it. I'm too old to know. But the Power Rangers. Power Rangers? No, I'm too old for that.
Starting point is 01:42:51 that, yeah, sorry. Oh, my God. Wow. Someone listening appreciates that reference. He wasn't at 32-bit video games. He was like, do you remember when grandpa would move the tiles of the shadow show against the wall and then Plato would come and ruin it for everyone? Who's drinking tonight? Who's fucking tonight?
Starting point is 01:43:11 So, but the Sky Marshall at the end of the seas, like, you can get the location of sanctuary and win the war from Lola's brain. And so the alien very slowly eats him first. us, that's what happens. They didn't have the CGI budget for us, so it happens off camera, right? But that is what happens. Well, we should be clear, because they also couldn't do a lot of
Starting point is 01:43:30 usy animating in this particular thing, bug Jesus is actually going to talk to its loyal servant by puppeting their dead loved ones, John Edward's style. Yes. Yeah, right. For his pleasure. Right.
Starting point is 01:43:43 And like the Sky Marshal really appreciates the fact that Bug Jesus has had to embody a dead dude so he can talk to this guy, Marshall, as a man. Do you get it? Bug God, bug Jesus. There's a bug holy ghost somewhere. Yes, appears as a human. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:43:59 It is kind of funny when he's like, you know, I did this so it wouldn't creep you out. And I'm like, you did this so it wouldn't creep him out. Wow. It's like every Catholic thing ever. This is not supposed to be creepy, you guys. Okay, death cult. And here at the moment of the final reveal,
Starting point is 01:44:13 he gets to go fully mask off and he's just like, can you please just kill these women? Literally just kill these women, please. Just full-blown massagy at this point. Yeah. But just then, Holly asks Lola to pray with her. There are 10 minutes left in this movie, not counting the credits, guys. The heroes have not shown up.
Starting point is 01:44:34 Lola, though, she's like, I can't pray. I'm the atheist character. But she changes her mind, right? Holly goes, Lord, send us an army of angels with fucking sweet mecksuits and bombs and shit, right? Yep, here's the fucking reveal, right? Yes. Sheik prays for an army of angels, and as she does, the mech team drops in,
Starting point is 01:44:57 creating a halo, and like, it is the most Warhammer 40K thing you will ever have fucking seen. So, yes, there's literally a halo behind her of the mech suits, just like landing on the planet. It's such fucking cheese. So then we get the nine seconds
Starting point is 01:45:16 of mech suit versus bug aliens that they could afford to animate. Yeah, they're basically the Cybermen from Doctor Who. And I don't mean like the reboot. I mean the original. It is so fucking bad. I don't think any part of them turns. No.
Starting point is 01:45:31 It should take two bugs to peel them open like a sardine can. But instead we have to wait until we are completely surrounded, literally buried in bugs before we can fire a weapon. Wait for it. It's amazing, right? Because they're trying to make it seem like that's his strategies. He's like, everyone hold perfectly still. Don't move at all.
Starting point is 01:45:51 Their vision's based on movement. Yeah, right, right, exactly. We can't afford to animate the fucking shit the fucking, come on. Just we already had the bugs. Right. So the reason for this is to go back to Noah's point at the beginning of our conversation, the original necks suits are supposed to make you jump around. That's why the phrase for the mobile infantry is on the bounce.
Starting point is 01:46:12 Yes. But they couldn't afford more than one jumpy bounce. Yep. So we're going to get him literally. jumping straight up once and doing a weird bomby thing and that's it. Okay. Aaron, I am so glad you clarified that on the bounce thing because I have several notes in our document where I'm like, my financial strategy made it in for the movie. Yes. He finally, he lets him pile up on top of him. He uses the kill everything around you
Starting point is 01:46:40 button, right? And then they just machine gun bugs with their meksuits for, you know, a minute and 15 seconds or something. Standard 40K comp. Until they switch to flame throwers. Well, yeah. Sometimes they punch them with a gatling gun. Bathing them in holy fire. Yeah, it gets even more religious.
Starting point is 01:46:57 And the mouth of the gun is shaped like a crucifix. It's pretty great. Now, I want to take this moment to issue an apology. Not to Ursa for how many times I mentioned that they're going to die. That I'm sticking down on. We all liked it. We all thought it was cool and cash money. No, I want to apologize to Aaron, Rabinibish, Moitzi.
Starting point is 01:47:17 Rosenberg because the entire time I was watching this movie, I was like, Aaron, this is not a Christian movie. This is a movie where people say the word religion multiple times so I can see why you're confused, but we make fun of Christian movies. And it was as the blazing guns took crucifix shape that I knew true humility and would like to say, this is a Christian movie. Yeah. Never fucking question me.
Starting point is 01:47:45 Ersa has learned this the hard way. The horrors that I will release upon you. It's good. It's good. That means several things. So, right. So, yeah, so the mech suits take out all the bugs and then, like, they stop. And Rico goes to step out.
Starting point is 01:48:00 And he's not naked. I mean, like, I feel like, why were they naked then if you didn't have to drive the things naked? But at any rate. It's the last chance to see some dong here, people. What the fuck? Right? Yeah, totally blew it.
Starting point is 01:48:09 Now, of course, in the movies, there actually is an inner suit and an outer suit, or in the book, rather, there was an inner suit, the muscle suit. And then there was the outer suit, which was the mex suit. So maybe it was a reference to that. Anyway. But yeah, but he takes Lola by the hand and they escape to space. Not just by the hand.
Starting point is 01:48:23 They do the full Sistine Chapel reference. They really do. They really do, don't they? Because as they're fading, you can see the pattern of the like moon or planet or whatever behind them. And it is like very deliberately textured to look like an old, like chapel ceiling.
Starting point is 01:48:39 It's incredible. The cinematographer worked exactly one day on this movie and it was on that shot. And by the way, in case that was too subtle for you, when we get back to the star base or whatever, Holly walks by cloaked like the fucking Virgin Mary for no goddamn reason. She's got like a nun habit over her fucking head.
Starting point is 01:49:00 It's like her rescue blanket, though, and she's been put over her head. Yes, exactly, yeah. Yeah, so because this movie has deep religious implications belongs on Cam. And so then we, Admiral Bad Lady, who is now Admiral Good Lady, I guess, she shows up to hey howdy everybody right i guess it's now time to deploy that cue bomb we were telling you
Starting point is 01:49:21 about yep all's forgiven throuples back together everything's cool yeah yeah i will admit look i don't want to give this movie a lot of credit but the romantic coming together in the foreground while the planet is blown up by the cue bomb in the background pretty fantastic i stole it from true lies but yeah no it was pretty good so this okay this is a weird generational thing because you're like true lies. And I'm like, that's very clearly space fight club. I expect Lola to take his hand and say, you met me at a very strange in time in my life. I just
Starting point is 01:49:50 contracted space Jesus. There you go. Well, yeah, because he's like, at this point, he's like, you know, will you marry me? He doesn't do the one knee thing, which is fucking stupid. I don't know why they didn't do that. But she's like, only if you become Christian now. I believe in Jesus because of the timing of
Starting point is 01:50:07 when Rico showed up. And he's like, huh, weird. She goes, I got the religion. I got it bad. Yes, that's the only way you can get it, girl. And he's like, well, poe, but he's nerficked. Yeah. You know, you really hope they're going to figure out space divorce because I feel like that shit's not going to last.
Starting point is 01:50:24 Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I would have loved it if he goes, okay then. So, let's get food. You're probably hungry, huh? So, okay, so now it's time to check in with the Exposition Network one last time.
Starting point is 01:50:41 So this guy Marshall got a, a state funeral, right? Loving memory for him. They don't have to tell him. Medal of freedom from what I heard. Also, and then the news even comes on and says, also, God is real now. And he's on our side. They actually say that, like, experts, most experts now agree that God exists.
Starting point is 01:51:01 They do specifically say God exists. He's on our side and he wants us to win. B and C feel pretty redundant. What's the difference? Yeah. Yeah, it would be weird if he was rooting for the bugs despite. And I guess Holly is the new Pope or something. Yep, Pope Karen of the new Space Church.
Starting point is 01:51:17 Yeah, exactly. Religion is acceptable. Peace is not. Yeah, the goal of all trad wives everywhere. Yeah. And then Admiral Bad Lady is now Sky Marshall Bad Lady. She did get that promotion. And they executed the peace protester, Elmo Ghanif.
Starting point is 01:51:34 Remember him? He's dead now. Along with 51 people. Yeah. Which again, it feels like a waste. They could be cannon fodder. I don't understand. This is an inefficient system.
Starting point is 01:51:44 And again, they say they have a good moment here where they say it's the most execution since the 21st century. And I was like, again, if you're listening in the backlogs, that was not apropos when the episode came out. But now since the purge, compliment sandwich. Fast-moving situation. Not apropos when it was recorded. There's a week, buddy. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 01:52:03 Yeah, no. So, yeah. And so, and then the Dixon Lola get married in a church. That's on the news. apparently that's news that everybody on the planet needs to see and we have this moment where they try to have the mech suits walking behind everybody
Starting point is 01:52:20 in like broad daylight wow did you guys not have the budget for that scene? What the fuck were you even thinking? Yeah. With dead shit. Yeah, the first rule of CGI don't put it in daylight unless you got a lot of fucking money. Yep. Wow, that was bad. Possibly the worst CGI I've ever fucking seen
Starting point is 01:52:38 outside of well about 17 movies we've done on this like they don't count because they were done on $3 dollars budgets all right well that's it that's the whole fucking movie Ursa Aaron thank you so much for joining us today thanks
Starting point is 01:52:53 no no do you don't know you don't have to thank us we're very welcome as all pleasure as always at best at best we're welcome that's what we hope for so okay so we already told our listeners about philosophers in space where you know used popular sci-fi to make different
Starting point is 01:53:09 points about philosophy, which is an awesome show. You should check out the episodes that I've been on. And, of course, you'll find that show linked in the show notes. But that's only one of the many projects that you all have. Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners about what we've got you here? I've got a Brace the Void if people want to listen to that. And also, I can tease, I just got under contract for a book that'll hopefully be out sometime by next year. Oh, shit.
Starting point is 01:53:31 Yeah, we'll look, will books still be legal. Sure. Yeah. Enjoy it in the camp. We'll pass it around as a like a z. a zoon or whatever. When they burn it, we will all be warmer for it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:53:45 I like that we're going to pass it along as a zoon. Yeah, right. All in our zoons, right. Yeah. Now, philosophers in space is the only thing. I spend the rest of my life playing role there to me. Fuck, yeah. Awesome. Good for you. And while that does it for our review of Starship Troopers, three marauders, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to start the cycle all over again.
Starting point is 01:54:02 So, Eli, tell us what's on deck? When two Mormon missionaries are arrested for preaching in a small town, attorneys and best friends Thomas and James stir the town into a frenzy by taking opposing sides in a court battle over the validity of the missionaries' religion. We'll be watching
Starting point is 01:54:22 Day of Defense. Oh, a Mormon movie outside a Mormon movie month. Very exciting. So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 524 to a merciful close. Once again, a huge thanks to Aaron and Ursa for all their help this week.
Starting point is 01:54:34 And an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors to help make the show go. If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, you make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash godawful, and thereby our early access to an every version of every episode. You can also help a ton
Starting point is 01:54:43 by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms. And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows the scathing a thesis, needed D&D minus, and the skeptocrat available wherever podcast live.
Starting point is 01:54:52 If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions, you can email godawful movies at gmail. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slatnik and Vivile Druffs on Mars while the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark
Starting point is 01:55:02 and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us to check your life. Thanks again, and Eli Bustick, I'm an illusion's promise to work hard to earn another chunk next week. Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes. Aaron promised to only use his powers for good. He immediately broke that promise. Dix went on to pretend to believe in Jesus until Lola got over it.
Starting point is 01:55:25 Ursa went on to be mercifully euthanized after 10 straight years of singing the It's a Good Day to Die song. See, it was a call forward the whole time. Eli was open to an offer from Bug God. Call me, Bug God. All right. Aaron, you're on a little bit more of a delay than Ursa or Eli is for me. So just be aware of that. Like if everybody seems to be talking over you, that might be...
Starting point is 01:56:07 It's because we hate you. It's because we don't like. Your jokes aren't very good. Jew face. Eursa said that was Ursa. Hey, that is our love language. You don't know what we do in private. Well, you do now.
Starting point is 01:56:28 Well, yeah, right, it was. You know your love language. You sign up for the Patriots, yeah. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4-255 or on their website at creator-accountabilitynetwork.org. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.