God Awful Movies - 571: Young Washington

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

This week, Andrew Rakich of Atun-Shei Films joins us for a roast of Angel Studios' Young Washington. A movie that cares as much about it's subject as it does not being racist. Hear/See more of Andrew on his Youtube Channel If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawfulCheck 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/

Here's the thing. Normal people watch our show occasionally. Just normal people. And that means that some lady... That's all right. Nobody's perfect. Yeah. Some lady and her husband are going to be like, let's check out that Sopper movie that those fellas were talking about on the movie podcast.

We'll give that. And I am sorry for ruining your evening or making your evening. I mean, you should watch some of my movies, fans. Yeah. Even you might be scandalized. You never know. A awful movie. Movie.

Welcome back to the GAMCast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema because some fiction is only pretending to be historical. I'm your host Eli Bosnick and sitting an unspecified number of YouTube miles to my digital distance is a brand new guest masochist. Andrew Rakeach is a filmmaker, educator, and the creator of the YouTube channel Atoons Shea Films. He's best known for web series like Checkmate Lincolnites and independent films like the Sudbury Devil. His new movie, The Vampire of New Orleans, will be available for.

Rape Review starting October 1st. Andrew, thanks for joining me. Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me, Eli. And Andrew, here's the amazing thing. The folks at home do not know how many times I just got your name and your brand wrong. They're like, wow, Eli nailed it on his first drive. You're going to hear from all the Serbs in your audience. Yes. Okay. Well, all right, I will look forward to it with terror. I've seen their film. I've seen their film. It's very, very intense. So tell us, Andrew, why we brought on a historian today. We brought on someone with some know-how, some thinkability. What will we be breaking down today? Well, you made me watch Young Washington, the new film from Angel Studios, which was not good. And so thanks, thanks for that. I really appreciated, Eli. It was a truly bizarre and terrible Christian nationalist movie. You know, when I was watching it, Eli, I kind of got the sense that, like, if you put this movie on and then played on your phone for two hours, you would be forgiven for thinking that you had just watched a movie or that you had a movie on in the background.

It is a collection of cliches disguised as a movie. You know, it is a collection of like tropes in a trench coat in the shape of a movie. Yes. And, you know, in Angel Studios, I think, as far as a lot of, and you can speak to this much more than I can, Eli, but as, as far as a lot of like Christian Nationalist cinema feels more like a movie than a lot of the other ones. Yes. But the, but you really like actually pay attention to the film beyond just sort of this very kind of casual viewing. And you realize that basically nothing that happens and it makes any sense at all.

Yes. And it looks like fucking shit. Yes. The entire way through. I'm sorry, can I say fucking shit. Oh, you can say fucking shit. You can fuck shit. You can get, if you can find the right angle, you can find, yeah, on this film, we fuck shit.

Yeah, it's amazing to me. And we'll talk about it when we get into the movie, how reflective of the Angel Studios worldview it is. Right. Because like in wide strokes, right? Like, if you ever talk to someone with like really bad dementia or someone in psychosis or someone who ate all the shrooms instead of just one, you can sort of do a thing where you go like, oh, okay, I see what part of reality your current world view is connected to? It's like it's the AI slop of movie of historical films, right? It's like, yeah, I mean, hands do kind of look like that. It's not the right amount of fingers, but it's, you know, it's flash and there's phalanches.

I get it. All right. Well, I think we've answered how bad was this movie. Pretty much. So my question now is, is there anything you'd like to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at? Oh, God. I mean, I think the sort of the twinkiest George Washington.

we've ever seen on screen. Yeah, it wasn't all unenjoyable for your boy. I was having some fun with those cheek ones. What's amazing is like, look, we've already like wildly exaggerated Washington, right? In history and in the American mindset, right? And so when you look at a couple of realistic paintings of him, kind of looks like your dad's chubby friend who like played golf in college.

So for them to cast this absolute fucking Greek statue, you doing the fucking, what's the blue steel? Doing the Zoolander. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. Which brings me to my best worst, best worst hagiography. So this entire movie is quotes your grandpa read in a poorly researched book that was written in 1322, which means this movie's two fucking hours. By the way, I'm so sorry, Andrew.

Have I said sorry yet? Not enough. Not enough. Not enough. Don't worry. We got time. This is two. hours of nonsense.

He never has a real conversation in the entire movie. He's dying of dysentery and he's like, you know, the thing about a man is not the salt of his brow, but the brow of his salt. And you're like, dude, you just shat your pants. I know you just shat your pants. Why?

Why are you speaking like a guy at the January 6th betrayal? Well, you know why. You know exactly why. Yes, I do. I do know why. Because the writers and the traders are the one and the same. All right. Well, we have some chicanery, some writery afoot, but we deserve a break first to recover.

And for me to apologize to Andrew for a few more times. So we're going to take quick break. And then we'll be back with all the bat shittery that is Young Washington. All right, everyone. Welcome to the first writers room meeting for Young Washington. It's just me. Right. sorry. Anyways, thanks so much for helping out, Andrew.

You told me you were from the University of North Carolina. No, no. I said I was at the University of North Carolina. This coffee shop counts. No, it doesn't. Look, just let me pitch you on my movie, okay? Fine. All right. So you know that famous story from Washington's life of when he was a kid and he cut down the cherry tree? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm familiar with the story, but I,

wouldn't call it from his life. I'm pretty sure somebody made that up in like the 19th century. That's not true? That story's not true? No, not at all. Oh. No, no. Child Washington did not cut down a tree by himself and then immediately expresses an ability to lie.

He didn't? No. Oh. Why? I was just going to say the whole movie is about that story. The whole movie? Yeah, but it's okay because I'll, put in the time he killed a French guy while he was shaving instead.

Got it. He murdered him. Yep. Yep, he did. And we're back. And we're going to start off being told that this film is approved by the Angel Gilt. That's the paid program that you too can participate in as a part of this movie studio. It's just $179 a year.

Wow. Wow. So we see he's, Washington's out. in the Pennsylvania wilderness. This movie is shot in aspect ratio that you can watch it on a fucking Zoom. Yeah, no, it's very, I love how it's got the aspect ratio

of like fucking, you know, Lawrence of Arabia. It just is like, so pretentious. It just thinks that it's such a fucking big deal that this movie thinks it's so epic. These guys were so ready for the press junket where they could be like, oh, movie's not meant to be watched on a phone. And then everybody was like,

Can I watch your movie on the phone? So, yeah, there's a battle. Something happens. There's explosions. He has a moment, like, it explodes. He rolls out of a thing. We're going to explain this like 20 seconds before the end of the movie. But he has this moment where he like gets weak.

And I was like, did they steal the Last of Us panic attack moment? Because it's the exact same sound and physical appearance as the last of us panic attacks, right? Is that everything becomes sort of like ringing. and he bends down for a second. But no, he's just not enjoying the war. Again, it's like I said, it's a collection of cliches. Like, it's not just The Last of Us. Like, The Last of Us ripped it off of, you know, Ted Lassow who rifted off of, you know, every movie, you know, everybody in the past 25 years has ripped it off of Saving Private Ryan.

You know, right, yes, exactly. The moment in the D-Day thing. Like, it's, you know, again, it's a collection of cliches in the shape of a movie. I mean, this is, this film has not had an original thought. And we'll kind of get into The Last of the Mohicans compared. Harrison, you know, it's, it sucks. This movie fucking sucks. It sucks.

And that's how we could end literally every sentence of this review is, it sucks. It fucking sucks. But yeah, but the important thing about this little opening scene is that some guy we don't know yet, he wants to abandon the men, but George Washington can't abandon his men because he's the world's least interesting stereotype. And can we actually talk real quick about sort of the background of what's happening in this scene? Please.

Okay, my notes are peppered with, Andrew, I'm so glad you're here. I'm a stupid person and I know nothing. Well, you know, I'm a stupid person too, but maybe with both of our brains together, we become one smart person. But like, if you look in the background of anything that's happening in these scenes

and you know just the first thing about 18th century warfare, like not even that much, just the first thing, then very quickly, nothing makes any fucking sense at all. So immediately he rolls out of his wagon and he's like, you know, scrambling,

and bolts are whizzing by and whatever, cannonballs are whizzing by. And you're thinking, okay, cannonballs. Because this is like an attack, an ambush on a camp, right? Like in the middle of the woods. Typically, you know, you don't bring out artillery to... You don't sneak up with a cannon a la, you know, bugs bunny. Ambush.

That is typically not how a good way to take ground and defeat an enemy in 18th century. Eastern Woodlands Warfare, right? What you would see in this sort of frontier, you know, in this time and this place, what you'd see in frontier warfare was very small-scale engagements, right, of like just like a handful of dudes against a handful of dudes. And it was very much that kind of like Eastern Woodlands indigenous tradition of the ambush, right? I was just moving quickly and quietly through the woods, you sneak up behind them, you surround your enemy and it's like all over in a second, you know? So the French are bringing like huge, huge.

artillery pieces to what should really be like, all right, everybody surrounds the camp and that at a signal, we all fire the flintlocks and like take basically just, you know, take out as many as we can and hopefully just throw them out into disarray and then we can take their camp, right? Yeah, exactly. Absolutely no sense at all right off the bat. When he gets out into, like, when he like gets on the horse and he's riding and then he meets up that guy, he was like, George, the battle is lost, we must retreat. And then, you know, but my man, you know, or whatever. So we look at sort of the background of that scene and he's sort of like running up this like this clear like sort of meadow kind of dale sort of area,

right? Think about what the Appalachian Mountains would have been like, right? Before sort of like widespread. Mostly clear meadows. Yes. Before widespread colonization, right? You would have had these very kind of like manicured kind of old growth forests, right? That indigenous people would essentially like they would clear with seasonal fires,

essentially that essentially would, and do a number of other sort of land management techniques that would sort of promote the growth of species that they subsisted on, essentially, right? And that was where, you know, they, like, you know, they grew a lot of their own crops, but a lot of the sort of, you know, stuff like maple, right, like maple syrup, like sugar from from maple trees, you know, that was like gathered through this way. The animal products that they ate, the animals they ate, you know, would be sort of from sort of doing these prescribed burns that would increase the types of species of plants that the animals would eat and then the animals would be fat and happy and would reproduce a lot and then

the humans would have more animals to eat, right? So that's sort of what these forests would have looked like. It would not have looked like a giant cow pasture that you would see off I-81, right? Europeans brought cows. Europeans brought pigs and chickens and the animals that we eat today. right so like this is you know you didn't see these like wide open kind of like pasture lands obviously until europeans brought cows to these places so right off the bat it's like that just looks like a fucking rest stop in you know a third of this movie might as well be shot on a football field right with like a team practicing in the background and beyond that you look at like sort of some of the extras who i think most of them were probably AI generated because the stuff that they're doing in the

scene makes no fucking sense at all. And there's like one particular moment where he's like, it's like a medium of, of the guy that runs up. He's like, George, we're losing. And you're like, look in the background and just soft in the background. You'll see these two soldiers. Like, it's like, you know, there's like a French horseman or something like coming at them. And these two soldiers stop and then like present their flintlocks in formation, just the two of them. Right? Just like, present. So like the whole point, right, of line infantry of like getting. Getting soldiers in a big line with a flintlock musket is essentially to release large amounts of volley fire that will decimate other large groups of line infantry and take ground. It is the most effective way to take ground in this period of North American and European history.

So why on earth would you as an infantryman getting chased by a horse? It makes no fucking sense at all. And the reason is because the, you know, whatever, the fucking AI program that they used has seen the Patriot and knows that what it's supposed to look like and is doing this, like, pale limitation that doesn't make any fucking sense and that nobody caught because they didn't fucking care about the quality of this film in any way that matters. Yeah. No, the closest the people who made this movie got to.

to understanding this period of history is they own the board game risk and they have seen the pieces for that game. And I think that's about as close. Pretty much. All right. So now it's time to check in on Baby Washington.

Don't worry, nothing interesting will happen in these scenes. This was rough, dude. This sequence was fucking rough. Yeah. All we will learn is that Baby Washington also speaks in hayography and nonsense. We have three scenes,

the scene where he meets his brother, a relationship, by the way, that's actually interesting in history. Don't worry. They won't ever say anything interesting or do anything interesting. They'll just speak in fucking pablum. I forget where I said it in my notes. But at one point, and I'm sure you can relate to this, you ever talking to someone on Twitter and they think they're like a philosopher

at a salon engaging in reposts? And you're like, oh, I'm just like, I'm like eating dinner and trying to communicate with my fellow human beings. That's how everyone in these fucking movies talk. No, I don't know what that's like, Eli, because I'm not on fucking Twitter. I used to be, but then now it's... Can I say congratulations on your far superior mental health to my own? I'm no longer on Twitter, but the damage was done.

The damage was done. But the point of these scenes with Baby Washington is that we see all of this stereotypical shit, right? His brother gives him, like, fucking ancient treatises, you know, Plato and Socrates and how to eat dirt or whatever Greek fucking books he thinks. and we see him studying them by candle. That's my favorite one, actually. Yeah, I'd eat dirt by candle. Okay, fantastic.

My favorite one. Yeah. All right. So now we're going to cut to Williamsburg, Virginia in 1793. I wrote in my notes, Andrew, I hope you know why this matters or if this matters. But this is when he's grown up. This is what we'll see him for most of the movie where he wants to be an officer. So, wait, would it be 1755 or like around there, not 93?

Not to be a petting. No, please. Hey, Andrew, this is why you're fucking here. Okay? The people need you today. The people need you. But he wants to be an officer. And so he is here asking a fancy, fancy man, a fancy British man. Which everyone and every British man in this entire movie is oppressively fancy.

Yes. Comically fancy. Yes. He's a fancy British man. He asks if he can be an officer. But the British man says no, because he is poor. and America has not yet grown bootstraps. I would say 92% of this movie

will be about the fact that George Washington vows at the end of every scene to invent bootstraps that poor people will be able to raise themselves up with the moment he is president. Very much so. And also it's obviously very important to note that George Washington was not poor. No!

This was a man who had very high status in his culture, in his society. Yes. somebody who, you know, the movie is like, you know, broken clock right twice a day type of correct about the fact that he was interested in social advancement. But it was within the context of somebody who was already a landowning, you know, gentlemen essentially and wanted to basically sort of, you know, make more money and have higher social status within that world.

He was not, you know, this working class pauper. No, they will portray him like Oliver fucking twist. Yeah, yeah. the film, including this next scene, which is where he goes to the party. Now, party is very important for a couple of reasons. This is where we learn that he's a rap scallion who's bent on

moving up in the world. This is also where we introduce, I almost went with best, worst love interest. This is where we introduce the love interest that will never matter. About, I'm going to say two thirds of the way through the movie, this love interest who will make up 40%

of the scenes in this first half in the movie will just be in to another guy and then we will... Yeah, just marry some other guy and then we never see her again. She evaporates. She anti-bechal tests into the ether. And, you know, Eli, it would be one thing if it was like, if it just decided to go just like, well, fuck it. You know, we're just not going to be historically accurate at all.

And it was Martha. You know what I mean? And it was like the love of his life. Yeah. You know, that would be, that would be one thing. That would be like kind of sweet. It would be kind of this Batman begins type of thing. It's just like, you know, what's your name?

Harvey, you know? Harvey what? Harvey dead. Yes, exactly. You know, yeah, yeah, Martha, Martha Custis, you know. But yeah, just this random woman who has no real relevance to Washington's life, and certainly no relevance to the film just kind of appears. Now, one thing about the party scenes, plural, that I noticed, which was very funny,

was that consistently throughout these scenes, we hear diagetic classical music playing in the background. Yes. So the sort of, you know, right, the implication is that there, There's a, you know, a band playing presumably in some other room that we, like, never see. Of course not. But you think about how the, how these parties actually, you know, if you had a band or, you know, not a band, if you had like, you know, quartet or whatever at a party, then you would want to show them off. You would not throw them into closet.

They would be like in the main ballroom playing along and people would be dancing to their music. And, you know, and sort of they would be performing for the party goers. So it's already like really weird that we just don't see this, these musicians. But also the sound editors threw, I swear to God, they threw a high pass on it. Oh, 100%. Which gives it the kind of like is the effect that you use for a song or, you know, audio playing like on speakers. Yes. On a phone.

Yes. Like in a scene. So you're watching these party scenes and it's seen. like they're just playing classical music over the loudspeakers. Yes. From an Alexa. He's going to stop. Alexa.

Turn off. Hops accord hits 27. Exactly. This is like this is what I'm saying when it's like no thought was put into this at all. Now, I do want to touch on something very important because this movie's relationship with slavery is fascinating to me, right? because look, you're not part of Angel Studios because you believe Black Lives Matter.

You know what I'm saying? You are not on board with good stuff. And so in this first scene, I know there's so much to cover, but I do have to cover it. As he's sneaking into the party, he goes into the slaves' quarters. And this is literally what takes place.

Andrew, correct me, right? He literally is like, ooh, slaves. Hey, guys, we, uh, a little more ice, the enchants. Thank you.

why? Why would you include? This movie will constantly remind us of slavery. It will never go so far as to lie and be like George Washington didn't like slavery. It's like this actor. They were like, just think what you think George Washington would do if he ran into some slaves. I mean, you know, it's, it's, yeah, what a missed opportunity. You know what I mean? Because the historical Washington's relationship with slavery was fascinating, right?

So somebody who was ostensibly intellectually against slavery, but who enslaved people his entire life, right? Somebody who profited off of slave labor consistently, you right? Never really stopped, but was believed, you know, very much in this kind of like utopian idea that like, well, wouldn't it be nice if one day it was over? And you know what? We should work toward a future where one day it was over. that is a very interesting perspective that also i think dare i say says a lot about people's attitudes in the modern day really in every age it's a timeless thing right it's a timeless thing that you know we will i'm sure be judged for a lot of things that we do that you know a lot of us say well wouldn't

it be nice if that was if that just stops happening well i'm just going to keep personally doing it though Yeah. Because it's scary and socially isolating to be the, you know, the radical, you know, whatever, killjoy. This movie doesn't even bother with that. No, it doesn't. And, you know, and just generally, right, I think that in that sense, I think this is a very insulting movie to Washington, who was an absolutely fascinating man with a flawed, but

incredibly gifted man who had a lot of complexity. and a lot of sides to his personality, but somebody who was sort of, I think, perhaps above all else, incredibly competent, intelligent, a natural leader, somebody who knew how to manage people. There's a great, one of my favorite pieces of Washington's writing

is a letter that he wrote to Benedict Arnold some point during the Revolutionary War before Arnold defected. And Arnold was a very, you know, he was a big personality. This was a guy who was very, outspoken, he was quick to anger. He was pretty entitled and, you know, and had a lot of, you know, he clashed with a lot of people that he worked with. He was kind of a heart and soul of the podcast. There you go. It's a bit of a nightmare coworker, right? And he's writing to Washington asking for a

promotion. And not just that, but he's just, why haven't you done this yet, George? You know, it's this very sort of entitled sort of bitchy tone. And George sends him this just pitch perfect letter where he says no in a way that clearly when Arnold, like you could just imagine him opening this letter and reading all the nice things that Washington is saying about him, but also saying no at the same time. And you can imagine this like volatile entitled dude being like, oh, that's like a very sweet of him to say.

While at the same time being like, no, dude. No, you're not getting. Here's your problem with sandwich. This is Washington's like, this is one of Washington's great gift. Grifts, right? And this is like what it is to be a leader. Is somebody who can like manage people and can get people to do what they need to do in the context of like winning this incredibly difficult war against a very powerful enemy. And throughout Young Washington, Washington himself, if I wanted to be charitable, right? This movie is sort of showing Washington not yet as the great leader that we know and love, showing him as kind of a bumbling kid.

But at the same time, I think that if that's what they were trying to do, it's so sloppily done that it doesn't come through at all. And that the Washington we do see at the end is, succeeds more due to divine intervention than anything that he does, which I'm sure we'll get into at length. So in that sense, I think this is a deeply insulting film to Washington's memory. Yeah. Just straight up, right? And like, you know, I'm not like the biggest George Washington family. in the world, right? The dude was a fucking slaver and a hypocrite, but at the same time, this was a deeply consequential person, a deeply fascinating person whose life and personality

and his work and his career deserve to be taken seriously. One of the reviews that I read of this film, because I needed smarter people to tell me what was wrong with it than me, is that like, it's fascinating how little the people who made this movie care about George Washington, right? Like they have like their own weird agenda. They've got their own weird like perversities around it. But like when it comes to George Washington himself, they are almost entirely uninterested. So he goes to this party.

He meets Frazier who gives him his first big gig exploring the wilderness. And that that's going to be his job. I mean, I know Kelsey Grammer was like always kind of a bit of a, you know, of a conservative and stuff like that. But it's like, yeah, it was rough. It was rough seeing him in this. And circus, too. We'll get to that.

Yes, exactly. So he heads off into the wilderness. He picks up a group of vagabond explorers. Don't worry, the movie will not introduce them or tell us anything about them, but we will definitely care when they die in about six minutes later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and they're so salt to the earth, Eli. Oh, they're the people's people.

All the accents in this are anachronistic, but especially. they're just like, you know, good old boy. Oh, down homey, Alabama. It's just like so fucking stupid. At some point they'll scream Virginia and I was like, which part of Virginia? Fucking Atlanta? But they're exploring the wilderness. They have lots of old-timey fun and then they see a French fort.

So they go back to reporter net. And my friends, something is downright happening. And that is rare here on God Offa Movies. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a bit with even more. Young Washington. General Washington. Yes, Cabins. What is it?

The French are all around us, sir. They're in the trees and 10,000 troops more march on our location. I see. The time has come for action. Yes, General. So, what do we do? We stand in a line and take turns shooting each other. Sorry, sir. We what? We look them right in their eyes, and we shoot our old, very slow guns back and forth until only one of us is standing, like gentlemen.

Right, we're not going to, like, ambush them or dodge. We could dodge. You mean the cowards, curtsy? Not my men. Right. But I just said there's more of them, and they also have cannons. They might have cannons, but you know what they don't have? What, sir? going first. Do we get to go first? You know what, Kevin?

I really haven't foggiest idea. Got it. And we're back for more of this shit. When we left off, George Washington was narking on the French to the governor, played by none other than Ben Kingsley, baby. Yeah, who they got for, you know, two days of filming. Notice how he was just in one location the entire time.

Just that one spot. One scene before lunch, one scene after lunch. He came back the next day. One scene before lunch, one scene after lunch. And he's third in the billing. Yes, yes, he is. It genuinely felt like Ben Kingsley was trying to fix the accent work of all the other actors in this movie. Like, he seems to be like delivering the lines being like, don't you mean to be talking like this?

And everyone else in the movie is just like, hey, y'all, dick you can come on down to George. Washington's, but he gives him... Yeah, no, he's one of the only actors who tried. Yes, one of the only actors who does anything remotely resemble... In fact, of all the good reviews of this movie, right? Because, like, reviewers had no fucking idea what to do with this thing. All the good reviews are like, hey, Ben Kingsley's in it. That guy's great.

Remember Patient Zero? That was weird. It was a weird choice for him to make that. Yeah, well, and Ben, you know, and here's the thing about Ben Kingsley and some of these other actors. I mean, I guess it's not, you know, to be expected of... some of these people. But look, I worked in the film industry for a while. I had friends who did Christian movies. You know, I went to film school in North Carolina, right? Some of the, the only work that they could get right out of school were on these like million dollar, two million dollar

faith-based films. And, you know, and it's whatever. They were working their jobs. It was, you know, they, a lot of the people, you know, whatever, below the line, people were not obviously down with the message. They were just there to collect a paycheck, and that's fine. However, that was in like 2014. I think that in 2026, right, when we've got fucking ice agents patrolling the streets of America, throwing people in prison for publishing a pro-Palestine op-ed or whatever the fuck, holding people without trial, holding people in abysmal conditions, murdering people, all this sort of stuff. The full-blown backslide into fascism that we're experiencing, it's here.

Like it's not on the way, it's here. We are living in a fascist country. And if you have no other choice, I understand. However, this was a SAG movie. This was a union movie. The people, most of the people who work on union shows, you know, they're not rich by any means, but a lot of these people make pretty good livings and can pick and choose their projects occasionally.

And if you're knowingly working on what you're. what is clearly fascist propaganda. You're a fucking class traitor. Yeah. You're a fucking class trader. So fuck you, Kingsley, fucks you circus. Circus, bro.

You are not fucking, Andy, you are not hurting for fucking cash. You're fine. You did not need to play the electrifying role of General Braddock. You did not need to fucking do this shit, dude. Right. But you just don't fucking care.

You don't fucking care. And you just want to make your goddamn bag. And it's like the conservatives and the fascists are in power right now. So there really isn't like a lot of pushback and a lot of consequence for doing this shit. But you know what? When they fucking collapse

in on themselves, which they always do because that's the fascist's favorite thing to do, we're going to remember that. Yeah. No one's psyched about their Lenny Riefenstahl credits on IMDB. No. No. It's not a good look. Basically what Governor Ben Kingsley says to him is go tell the French to

leave and then he's like, okay, what if they won't leave? And he's like, well, we'll figure that out in the of the movie. He checks in with his girlfriend, not girlfriend for a second, and then they march to meet the French. Now, this is where we will have our first encounter with Native Americans, which I will say are the only people who this movie handles worse than slaves. Dude, it's real fucking bad. It's real bad. It's real bad. So can we talk about one thing that Washington says in this fucking scene that, like, there was like five lines in kind of like a Mr. Plinkett way. There was like five lines that came after that. I would love to just like cut together

with this one line. He's like, you know, one of like the, you know, the half king or whatever, like the main Native American guy. He's like, well, you're here to like take our land. And Washington's just like, we're not here to take your land. And then several other times in the rest of the movie, he's like, you know, whoever can tame this land can take it. And then he's like, he says to the French, he's like, hey, this is our land. Yes. And then like the British is just like, you know, British is like, well, my land is an ocean away. And he's like, well, this is my land. Like, as he's, like, standing in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

In front of the guy. Who he was told, you know, an hour and a half ago that, that, yeah, we're not here to take your land. Like, yes, you are. You are. What do you think the fucking surveyor is? What do you think the purpose of this fucking is? It's, and it just makes Washington look so duplicitous and evil.

And also, the portrayal of. First Nation peoples in this movie. First of all, so now I do want to be fair to this movie, which is that at this point in history, there was some intermixing of the tribes, right?

So there would be like Blackfoot and Seneca sometimes working together, sometimes like fighting together, especially as expansion became worse and more terrible. That does not excuse the fact that the fucking village people-esque variety of Native American representation.

They got fucking Iroquois addresses with Seneca makeup on. You got people with like, just made up war paint. Like, what's so funny is that the people who made this movie are very, if you explain to them like, oh no,

First Nation people's like, their war paint has like symbology and rank the way that like we would wear like stripes and stars and stuff. So you can't just fucking paint random people's faces and then line them up in the background to be George Washington's Native American friends. It's, But honestly, if they had had a construction worker, it would have been comedy perfection. We just needed a construction worker and a plumber for this to be more anachronistic.

But so he talks to the Native American people. They agree to help him against the French. This character is very, very loosely based on the half king, which I am loath to use that comparison, because that would sort of be like if Jaime the Jew popped out of a bush and I was, I was like, that guy's based on Moses. Like, I don't know that I'm super comfortable being like, oh, yeah, no, that's the historical representation right there. But it's time for his first meeting with the French.

And whatever, and you could tell they thought they were so sensitive with their Native Americans because they Googled what Native American war paint looks like once, kind of sort of. And whatever racism they held back against First Nation peoples, they let loose with the French. Every French soldier has the fucking homo hom. Everyone talks like Pepe Lepeu. It's hilarious. At one point he like, he gives them the missive and the bad guy who's going to murder in a second. And that's actually a cool story from history.

Like, curls it up and throws it at him. He might as well, honestly, if he had said that his mother was a hamster and he farts in his general direction, it would not have been more stereotypical or silly. No, no. Yeah. It was real bad. It was real bad. And I think the like, you know, yeah, maybe we, we'd, well, maybe we'd,

should just sort of, I should wait until we get to that scene, but the, but just the fact that in the first engagement of the Seven Years War, the ambush on the French camp, it's the Native Americans who attack against Washington's will, when historically he literally gave the order to fire. Yes, and gives and writes a letter afterwards being like, I heard bullets singing in my ears. And first of all, there's fucking some weird psycho, send your kid to the guidance counselor. And when the first time you see people murdered, you write your brother a letter being like, I fucking love the bullet sounds.

Like maybe George Washington needed to do some ACT or some CBT. But yeah, let's get to that scene, right? Because this is going to be the reenactment of the ambush. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with history, George Washington asked the French to leave. They tell him to fuck himself as well they should. And so he ambushes the leader of this camp and kills him, right? Which, as Andrew pointed out at the beginning over our review,

is kind of how warfare around this time worked. It was a series of ambushes. You really weren't supposed to ambush officers, though. And so it's kind of George's first. Look, and again, brilliant tactician. We could talk, if we were not reviewing this movie, we could talk about the interesting things about George Washington as a warmaker.

But what this movie has chosen to do is be like, the Indians did it. The Indians killed the guy when George wasn't looking. Literally, we see them like, shoot and then go over and do what is very clearly supposed to be a scalping that they lost their nerve to show us at the last minute. Yeah, it's the, you know, the savages, they're predisposed to violence and they can't be controlled because of their animalistic nature.

That's what it is, right? I mean, that's, let's like call it fucking spade a spade and yeah, it just makes Washington look horrifically incompetent. Right. It just makes them look like an idiot. And it takes, oh, and like, dramatically it takes away his agency's a character. Yeah. So he writes a my bad letter back to Britain, which is very funny because that's not what he wrote, right? Like, again, just like you were saying, right, what this movie

does to Washington's legacy is it makes him seem wildly incompetent and what, and I know that they think they're going for like, he was so young and like he didn't, he hadn't yet become the great leader he would be. But like, what this is portraying him is is a man who got his troops killed, which is exactly what this next scene is going to be. It starts to rain on this fort, right? And everyone's telling him that it's going to flood and that they're not going to be able to hold this position. And he's like, no, no, we have to stay here for no reason. Yeah, for no reason. Well, it's like, and it's, well, this is interesting for many reasons. I laugh out loud during that moment because he, you know, they're building fort necessity, which is like famously, right, sort of like Washington's,

like, the site of his, like, great defeat, right, you know, in this, in this sort of episode of history. And yeah, like one of the down home guys comes up and is like, well, it's like, this is like a floodplain and like there's woods all around. Like they could easily just like shoot us. And he just like looks at the guy kind of does the Brennan Fraser Whale meme and it says, what would you have me do? And it's like,

I don't know, man, maybe your job. Yeah. Build the fort somewhere else. Like he's such a fucking idiot. And it's like the way that the movie frames it, right, makes it seem. And again, this is sort of one of those things where they like, they understand the trope that has happened in a million movies, but they don't actually not giving any thought into the arc of their characters or the sort of the dramatic kind of like journey of their movie,

which is that the way that this is framed is sort of the moment in the action movie where everybody's telling the hero, this is never going to work. This is a terrible idea. What are you doing? You're being reckless. You're going to get us killed. And the hero's like, no, trust me, it'll work. You know, it's like the way that they, and it pays off, right? Yes, it's the same. It's the scene in Braveheart, right, where they're just like, the English have cavalry. Like, you're going to get us all killed William Wallace. And then it's like revealed, oh, he was sneaky and he had the Schultrams and the spears that he like pulled up at the last second. That's how the movie is framing this moment.

And yet what happens is that those guys were right. Washington loses badly. And he's like humbled by the experience. So like, wouldn't if the sort of point was that this is Washington's great failure and he's humbled by this. wouldn't it make sense to then portray him as being like arrogant, dismissive, rude, abrasive, not like heroic and just like, you know, just like, no, trust me, it'll work. You know, it's getting its tropes confused, right? And it's just leaning in on these cliches rather than actually giving us any kind of character arc.

Yes, absolutely. And again, especially in this setup to this big fight that we're about to see, which is supposed to be right, the dramatic moment of. the movie, right? They can't do something interesting enough to make Washington selfish or uninteresting or like you said, right, if he's too proud to take advice. Right, flawed anyway. He's a dumb kid and he doesn't know what he's doing. He's still this perfect hagiography of Washington. And so when he loses in this next scene that we're about to talk about, it literally feels, and you said this so well at the beginning, right? Everything that happens in this movie feels

like it happens by divine command, right? Yeah. It just feels like, well, this was the bad luck time that he lost, and later it'll be the good luck time that he wins and is also maybe bulletproof because of Jesus, right? So it's raining. And this is the other thing, too. And we talked about this a little bit earlier. This movie spends a tremendous amount of time talking about how the French cheated by firing

out of the trees, right? Which is how we're going to start this. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's the French are cheating. and yet the kind of like good old boys tell the British officer and just like, again, the most fucking like cliche, fucking fifth grade history way to these British officers like, y'all look are mighty cute in those red coats. Yeah, I'm going to blend into the forest with my earth tones.

It's like, how fucking stupid do you think your audience is? Very stupid is the answer. But yeah, no, it's, again, it's just this mess of contradictions. Like they just didn't think about this movie at all. And it's so inconsistent, right? So at first, the first part of the battle, right, it's the French are cheating because they shot out of the trees. But then everybody gets into the misunderstanding of formation anyways,

which I, look, I didn't enjoy this movie. It was two hours long. I had a very busy weekend. I did not want to watch a single second of it. But when they did the ambush and then everyone lined up to do formation, I laughed for a while. I paused this movie to laugh for two minutes being like, all right, guys, we have successfully ambushed the terrible British.

now it's time to do the taking turns thing. Everybody line up. Also, look, again, maybe it was AI, maybe they could only afford 11 extras. These lines are tough. It's six dudes just fucking facing each other

exchanging follies. I wanted like one guy to just step out to the side and they're like, oh, oh, your guy's cheating. Your guy is cheating. He's not allowed to be telling him to move back into the thing. Yeah, no. And like, historically, this wasn't like a big battle, right?

Yeah, of course. Like it's so, it kind of, it's sort of in that sense, it like makes sense, right? That it's not like fucking 10,000 dudes, you know, fucking Helms Deep, whatever. But at the same time, nothing that happens makes any fucking sense at all. Once again, the artillery, the cannons, right?

Like, the cannons that they were bringing onto that fucking battlefield that the French had were like gigantic. Yes. Right? And this is Appalachia. This is like roots and rocks and super steep hills and stuff. How did they fucking get those out there? Yes.

First of all. And like there's, you know, no like baggage train or whatever. They just like melt out of the woods and they're just there. Right? Without like, you know, you think where's their supplies? Like where's all their shit? But they like somehow brought these cannons, you know, like off a mountain. We don't see a single cannon ball in the movie.

Cannons will be shooting generally. But apparently all you need to shoot a cannon is the. cannon itself. Yeah, yeah, clearly. Yeah, exactly. You roll a big silver tube out and it just starts shooting infinity cannonballs. The cannon balls that they have, it's, you know, yeah, they just take them out of their assholes.

Yeah, you know, Greg was carrying. They didn't show Greg, but Greg was just carrying one cannonball. So they fall back, right? And again, there's this weird thing, right? Because, like, when you study the history of this battle specifically, it's actually really interesting, right? But this movie is stuck between, like, George Washington. don't get this collar don't run so george washington keeps not surrendering because this move or this

sorry george washington keeps not retreating because this movie genuinely does not understand the difference between moving backwards and surrendering and so there will be lots of times in the movie where they'd be like we have to fall back and it'd be like you coward piece of shit but eventually they end up inside the fort again the men falling left and right they're all getting killed but then but then fat guy from earlier in the movie who we didn't realize until this moment we were supposed to care about get shot.

And I mean, talk about your stereotypes. Yeah. Literally, the entire battle stops. Like, everybody. And the bullets stop flying so that this guy can do like a, I told you to fucking

build on some dry shit, you piece of shit. it's i laughed for a while i i will yeah i laughed for a while during fat guy who i'm suddenly supposed to care about stats but yeah he dies and that's that's apparently all it takes to make george washington surrender so we see george washington surrender this we get a great little bit of apology here for so for those yeah and he buries the guy he buries the guy we get a great little bit of apology here so like we said earlier he has a little bit of apology here so like we said earlier, he assassinated the French officer.

Not really supposed to do that. Kind of got in trouble for it. So the postmodern sort of David Barton, no, no, he didn't. Rewriding of history that is portrayed in this scene after the surrender here is that George, he don't speak no fucking French. And so when he agreed to say he killed that officer, the translator, this fucking translator over here even explained to George what he was admitting to. which is so fucking

it's so funny on so many levels not the least of which is it just makes it look like a fucking idiot it just makes him look like a total moron right it makes him look like I wanted like a flash it cuts to the Netflix screen and we just see like making a murderer and it's George

in an interrogation room like sign a confession that he hasn't read but he does and then we watch as they burn his fort in front of him does some some weeping at his Fat Friends grave. Yeah, he does the weeping.

And that shot is very evocative. It looks like, you know, sort of a t-shirt where I kneel for the flag and, you know, stand for the cross or whatever. By the way, if you would like to buy your three George Washington's and a Moon t-shirt, they are for sale right now in our Etsy store. All sales go to Fat Friends family. We're really trying to chip in for him. All right.

Well, George Washington is downright pouty about all the guys that he just got killed which means we are going to need some time to recover. So let me give Act 3 the hard sell here. Will George Washington get more people who aren't him killed? Will the movie keep cutting to slaves like they're hoping they're going to give the camera a thumbs up? Will George ask any of those slaves how they feel about donating their teeth to his set of dentures? Find out the answers to way less than that when we return for the other people died conclusion of Young Washington. The answers are yes.

Yes, they are yes. General Washington. John Hancock. How are you? Excellent, sir, excellent. Just putting the finishing touches on our Declaration of Independence. Amazing. Tell me, when does it go before the Continental Congress? July the 1st. The month begins and our nation begins with it. Ooh. What?

As a Monday. Yes, I believe that will be a Monday, General Washington. Right, right. It's just do we want to do it on a Monday? Like, everyone's going to be coming off the weekend. And like, hey, do you really want to start our nation when people have a case of the Mondays? A case of the Mondays. Exactly. They'll have a case of the Mondays. I suppose we could do the second.

Tuesday's basically Monday, though, isn't it? Right? When you think about it? Sir, this doesn't have anything to do with you, does it? What? What are you talking about? Didn't you get your... Your, and pardon my friend, your ass kicked on July the 3rd way back when you were like 20 years old. First of all, it was muddy.

But that, no, it's hump day is the thing, is that I care about. Great. Well, why don't we do the fourth then? Instead of hump day, that's the Thursday and it's so close to the weekend? I think the fourth will be perfect. Ah, it's so close. What? I said Thursday works.

It's decided, George. Shut the fuck up. Listen to the politicians, you fucking bastard. Oh, slave teeth in my mouth. And we're back for the last of this shit. When we left off, George Washington didn't read the fine print. And so now he's getting yelled at by Ben Kingsley for admitting to assassination. And again, this is where we get our George Washington being like, oh, I didn't know.

And this is where we have to have his, like, refusal of the call. Yes, well, yeah, he's basically like, you know, he does the honorable thing and he's like, I'm going to go, I'm going to resign my commission or whatever in the militia and I'm going to go crawl into a hole and never come out and die and think about all, you know, my fat friend that I got killed. And it's, you know, and again, like why, though? Like, why is he just constantly this humble to a fault? Yeah. dude, you know what I mean, who is even when he's supposed to be being arrogant and selfish, he's like still comes across as humble and heroic. So it's like, you know, and I was like truly baffled during the Fort Necessity battle scene. I was just like, what are they fucking going for here? And then the movie like, won me over is too strong.

Andrew became Christian at this moment. I can see I became Christian. It, you know, I was like, okay, all right. This is like just not quite as like utterly nonsense goals as I thought it was going to be. when he was like, okay, he like knows that he fucked up and he's like trying to atone and all this sort of stuff. But sort of the, in terms of like how Washington reacts to this stuff is just the most possibly just uninteresting

and out of character way he possibly can. And beyond that, it's sort of hard to kind of get away from, even though it's sort of the big finale. And I feel like we should wait to talk, you know, about it until that. But like it's hard to get away from the fact that he has absolutely no agency. he is a character. Clearly the idea is that he is tested and humbled by God and then, you know, God gives him another chance, but also God is controlling everything. So nothing he does actually matters, clearly. Clearly, because he like lucks into all of this stuff. It's all by sort of divine hand.

So it just makes him a truly kind of passive and uninteresting character just to follow him to watch. And, you know, and in terms of also speaking of, again, insulting Washington's memory, you know, we sort of earlier in the movie, right, just sort of, and it's subtle. And that's the fucking thing about this movie, man. It is sneaky. It is sneaky as hell. Once again, you put it on. You don't know what it's trying to do. Maybe you're not fully paying attention to it.

You'd be like, oh, yeah, that was like a pretty good historical movie. Or at least that was a movie where, like, things happened in it. But then every once in a while, his mom will be like, remember Galatians. Or, you know, his girlfriend will be just like, well, God moves and mysterious. And we'll just do these sort of like empty kind of evangelical platitudes that very clearly, you know, you could be, again, forgiven. If you don't know what the movie's trying to do, you could be forgiven from thinking, well, it was just the time. And like people were religious back then. And so it's whatever.

But like, no, those are the most important lines in the fucking movie. Because that's what sort of speaking to what actually is happening here, which is that Washington has no agency as a character. He's just being moved around like a fucking chess piece. Literally there's a line about that. like a pawn can take a king, moved around like a chess piece by God. And sort of, and reason 1,000 why this is so insulting to Washington's memory is that Washington was a child of the Enlightenment. Washington was not a Christian.

Washington was a guy who, you know, he wasn't like completely down with like all of the craziness of the French Revolution or whatever. But this was somebody who believed that ecclesiastical, and like, you know, canon and civil law were dangerous bedfellows that the, you know, correctly understood that the bloodshed of the last two centuries in Europe had been caused by clashes between Protestants and Catholics over shit that just didn't matter, you know, who understood how religion was used as a pretext for war and oppression and, you know, and basically just suffering.

and was like many intellectuals of his generation working philosophically and politically toward a world in which that would not happen. Oh, absolutely. And that's what part of what is so insulting, right? It's like to turn him into this sort of like Calvinist figure, right? And like, look, they've sprinkled modern your grandma's fucking post-1960s, Joel Osteen Christianity on top of it. So it's not even Washington's Christian.

right like Washington would be like I don't know what the fuck you're talking about for 90% of these these platitudes and this like like moms just quoting the Bible like random women would just be fucking reading and and quoting Bible quotes randomly to their I mean we could go into all that bullshit right but like it's hard to think of a person whose legacy it is more insulting to decimate with Christianity than George Washington right like one of the founders of the country that is all about like not. being part of this Calvinist wheel, right? If they ever make a biopic where Christopher Hitchens is told by his mother, like, remember, even a pawn can love Jesus. And he's like, thank you, mom, I will. I love you. Maybe that would be slightly more around. But yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. But he goes home to have a mope, which again, makes no sense and removes all of his agency. But then he's done moping for no, because his mom talked about Galatians. Right? Like his mom literally just like fucking Give him one for the gipper That's why because he was inspired by God And so now he's gonna go see Andy Circus

Who is Andy Circus Here's the thing Look Comical, dude This is a comedy performance Okay, all the accent in this movie All the accents in this movie are bad Andy circus's accent in this movie

Feels like he was getting ready for Ghalem The Video Game Right? Like he was proud He was like, and they were like, hey, man, are you going to do that voice for the British General? He was like,

so he's just, he's, he's doing these weird faces. I think he's, and look, I know he's working for the fascist and we should feel bad, but I also am worried about him. Andy, I think you've been in the suit with the balls too much. I think you forgot how to act out of the suit with the ball. Because he's still, he's like, he's too used to be.

covered in green felt and balls. It's not good. I mean, no, that might be the case, but he, I mean, you know, but at the same time, like, I know he can disappear into a live action performance. Like, the cook in King Kong is a fucking phenomenal live action Andy Circus role, you know, and so he can do it. He can do it. Like, he's a talented guy.

He is a great actor. But this role, first of all, the dialogue is just like hilarious. And the way he delivers it is just, I, I know that he's, I know that he's. he's just a greedy money-growing bastard. But at the same time, there's like a part of me that's just like, did he just agree to this, do this movie, just like camp it up and like make fun of it? Right. Because there's that moment where, you know, he's like talking to Washington.

And he's like eating like messily and noisily. And Washington is less like, you know, oh, we should go there and easily defeat them, you know. And Washington's just like, well, I don't think you will. Like, you know, it was actually really hard the last time. And so it was like, absolutely not. you know, and over the journey there, it'll be fine. It'll take us a week.

And Washington's like, no, it'll take a month. Like, it's just, I was just waiting for like the, you know, kind of a classic kind of rule three's comedy escalation where he's just like, you know, just says something even more ridiculous, you know, and we'll arrive by float pain or whatever, you know. It's just, it seemed like the setup to a joke. It's just like, who. Flat my wings and fly there.

Yes, exactly. Who on earth, like, like, like a week? Like that's like that's like that. how off he fucking was, like, by like, you know, a month to a week. Like, and we're like expected to, you know, to like see this guy as a competent British general. He's a British, yes, he's supposed to be this great British general.

I assume he's based on a real general somewhere. Yeah, yeah, he is. Yeah, he is. In my head, I'm just picturing that guy's family watching this movie and being like, oh, come oh, fuck. No, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's, it is, it's like. Again, I'm just shocked that nobody was just like, hey, isn't this funny? Like, isn't this like, didn't we accidentally make this funny? Yeah, we've accidentally made a comedy. But George heads off into the wilderness. He meets up with his band, with his Marianas Pippen, the Virginians with the moving accents. Their accents have moved to a different part of the country because their friend died. Okay, Andrew, verify for the people at home.

That's the real thing. That can happen, actually. That's the thing. Okay, it's a fucking travel thing. They just turned. They fucking traveled in their accents. That's happened to me. That's happened to me.

And they do like a, I'm not kidding. They do like a kick the floor like, are you guys mad because I got her friend killed? And they're like, no, we forgive you, George. And so he and the rap scallions are made up. This is also where it's time for George to get sick. I did think that the scene where they make out was like kind of gratuitous. Hot. Was too hot?

Well, no, you know, normally I'm all for, you know, the sex scenes and movies. but I thought that one was a little bit strange. It was kind of out of that. And for a Christian film, I was surprised that they included that. Brave, brave. And I thought it was distasteful that they did it on the Fat Friends Dead Body.

I thought it was weird. You know, I was remembering the, oh, what's the Brightburn? You know, the Brightburn bathsub scene. I thought that was the one thing that I loved about it. Brightburn was missing. It's not Brightburn.

Whatever movie I'm thinking of, it's definitely not. Salt burn. Salt burn. Brightburn, be a hell of us. Be a hell of it. If there was a cup. If there was a cummy bath water scene in Riteburn, be a hell of the thing.

Unironically, my favorite scene in Saltburn, by the way. Yeah. I love that. Hey, it's a great fucking movie. It's a great fucking movie. Look, there's two kinds of movie enjars. There's people who can handle Salt Burn and people who can't. Here's what I love, Andrew, and I appreciate it because you're a fellow dirty boy like myself.

All right? Here's the thing. Normal people watch our show occasionally. Just normal people. And that means that some lady. That's all right. Nobody's perfect. Yeah.

some lady and her husband are going to be like, let's check out that Soper movie that those fellas were talking about on the movie podcast. We'll give that, and I am sorry for ruining your evening, or making your evening. I mean, you should watch the online movies, man. Yeah. Even you might be scandalized.

You never know. So we get another crazy moment with slaves here. They momentarily, for like the last 20 seconds of this movie, this is where they're going to befriend random. slaves who were sent by Frazier to be part of this battle. Right? This is what we're supposed to be seeing here. Right?

So they meet these two slaves and they're like, what are you doing here? And they're like, oh, we were sent by Frazier. And it was like, okay, so would you say you're some of our best friend? And it's like, yes, we are some of your best friend. And so don't worry, there are black characters in the movie. Do they have names? No, no, fuck on. Names.

So now it's time for George to have dysentery. Now, again, we should point out that, like, this is a real thing in George Washington's life. It's a really interesting part of his life and a part of history. It is an inconvenience to this movie, which this movie will care about right now for about two and a half seconds. And then, like John Wick, who he will become in the last 10 minutes of this movie, he will quite literally stop having dysentery for the final fight of this film. It's very convenient. He makes a full recovery. Yeah.

Just for one battle. But yeah, this is also where he warns another fancy British man. There's so many. This is where he warns another fancy British man. I think it's Thomas Gage, who is the, you know, who I was not there historically. I'm like 99% sure. Please somebody, you know, correct me in the comments or whatever if I'm wrong about that. But yeah, he was the guy who was basically in charge of the British troops in Boston in 1775.

So he was like the, you know, like, so sort of they're doing a thing. They're trying to do a thing. and in the scene kind of at the end when they're talking and Gage is like again, I mentioned this, but it's like, you know, my land is the world away. And Washington's like, well, that is the difference between us. It's like, it's a, you know, it's a Batman begins like the revolution. I'm not wearing hockey pants. Okay.

Let's be on. Let's be radically vulnerable, Andrew. If he had said, I'm not wearing hockey pants at this point in the movie, this quickly turns into both of our favorite film that has ever been made. Oh, of course. What we do for the rest of our lives is to be like, you got to watch Young Washington. It's two hours, but one hour and 45 minutes in, he tells Thomas Cage, who is not historically present, I'm not wearing hockey pants.

It's the greatest film ever made. But the whole point here is that he knows about the French and their sneaky, sneaky ambush tactics, which again, so fucking funny, but he tells him to look to the trees. So now it's time for the French to ambush the English. again with their canons because Thomas Gage. Thomas Gage is not... Because that's how things work. Not looking at the trees.

Now, it's also like the scene is just so obviously the Michael Man, Blast of the Mohicans, like, Amber Sting. Insane. It's like so obviously plagiarized. Yes. And, you know, whatever. I can get down with a good homage. Like, I'm not fucking anti, you know, whatever.

I'm not an anti-omage guy. But it is just, you can just, you can just, tell that it isn't just like this loving gesture to a great film. You can tell that it's just like, oh, we'll just do that. Yeah. It's just plagiarism. No, honestly. They don't care.

Their soul isn't in it. Yeah. If fucking Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett had stepped out of orange portals to help for the final battle, I would not have been surprised at this point in the movie. So now we cut back to where the movie started. Remember the movie started? There was a fight. Fight was going on.

Now we're back to that. George wakes up. He does not have dysentery anymore because it's time for him to go full John Wick. My friends, listening to this podcast watching us on the YouTube's, there are no words I can say to exaggerate how silly Washington's John Wick action movie killing spree-y for the next six minutes of this movie will be. Yeah, it's real fucking bad. And it also, I think this is some of the most obvious AI use in the movie is in this sequence.

Oh, yeah. Where it just looks like fucking garbage. Like, it just looks bad. And yeah, and just the way that he's like, you know, obviously he's not getting hit by anything. He's, you know, he's, you know, dodging bullets left and right gets shot through the code miraculously survives. But he's also like murdering people just didn't like cold blood. And at first, you know, it's like it's interesting because when he was supposed to be, when you were supposed to be like, oh, Washington, you're, you know, your hubris is like, you know,

you're being led by your hubris and arrogance. In that scene, he kills a guy in self-defense, even though historically he, like, gave the order to shoot. Yes. And in this, he's like just going around, you know, he's supposed to be the hand of God and this, like, great kind of benevolent, godly figure, I guess. And he's just going around shooting people in fucking cold blood. Yes. One thing, you know, talking about good Christian cinema, one way that they could have gone that would have been, I think, much more impactful and also just like better from their ideal, like more ideologically consistent on their end would be basically what happens in Hacksaw Ridge. Of course. Which is a great fucking movie, or at least the second half is a great fucking movie.

Like the, you know, where Andrew Garfield's character, you know, Desmond Ross or whatever the guy's name is, is like, is just going around this horrific battlefield and just like saving life. lives, you know? And in a way where it is like very clear that he is sort of like moved by a higher, whether it's a higher power or a higher sense of duty is like very obvious and like really comes through and it's very emotional. And you know, whether you believe in God or not, I think it's a very emotional sequence. But that's because, you know, Bell Gibson is a good director who actually understands how to make fucking movies and like have an emotional, you know, give their, his audience an emotional reaction, you know, when he's sober. Yeah. But that is not what happens here.

I'm not kidding. If the Doom music had begun to play at the beginning of this battle scene, it would have been totally identical to what they ended up doing. So he's killing his way through. Again, silliest way possible. At one point, he does a show horse thing where he rides side. It's not side saddle. He's hanging off the side of the horse and fucking like punches a guy jousting style.

Again, I can't exaggerate because it's just what happens in the fucking movie. it's the funniest thing that one could possibly do. If I were trying to fuck up this movie and I could like sarcastically higher and stage the fight choreography, this is what I would have done to the film. So he kills his way through. Andy Circus dies and gives him the in-charge scarf,

which is very funny because historically that didn't happen and also there wasn't an in-charge scarf. Thomas Gage tries to retreat, but George Washington calls back scenes. And again, it's a battle scene. A historical cannons are going off and everyone's shooting and insensitively portrayed Native Americans are killing every direction. But he's like, no, literally, I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating podcast this story.

He literally goes, no retreat. And everyone just stops retreating and turns around and starts to win the fight instead. Yeah, no. It is truly something that could only happen. with if the literal creator of the universe that you'd think would have better uses for her time decides that this one white boy is going to... He's going to be the president.

The president of a country that will collapse in 250 years due to its own hubris. Because of the game show host we elected. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, it's, you know, in that sense, it makes sense, I suppose. but it is utterly fucking stupid. And again, it's just like, watch Haxaw Ridge. Like, I'm fucking begging you.

Like, just watch Haxar Ridge and just see this. Please throw off this movie and watch anything else. Yeah, watch anything else. But, like, if you actually want to see this, like, scene done in a way where you might actually feel something and be kind of excited, like that movie already exists, right? So George Washington, oh, man, there's so much to go. So first of all, and I'm only talking about this because we have to talk about it

later. At one point, a bunch of First Nation people try to shoot him, but he's bulletproof. Don't worry about it. We'll talk about it at the end. It's just an important thing. He also rescues his accent moving Virginians single-handedly. Like, just by himself

fucking Ip Manning around the camp, doing the thousand punches for the bag of rights, rescues all of them. That the whole sequence ends with them heroically emerging out of the misk back at the British camp, right? Yeah, yeah.

Literally, he literally wins the battle single-handedly. Yeah. Single-handedly, he like defeats everybody and rescues all his friends. He defeats the entire French army. Defeats the entire French army and saves everybody. Yeah. So the battle's over. They've defeated the French or lost less. So it was interesting. I was actually looking into this. This is this battle specifically is an interesting historical thing because it was a series of skirmishes. It wasn't like we all line up and fight. And it's very obvious the people who made this movie were like, but we won't him to win.

And they're one. That's not very exciting. Yeah, their historian who I assume took his own life after this movie was right at the first screening, got up there and Bud Dwired it. But assuming, right, that their historian was like, nobody didn't win. So instead what they have, say, have this moment where he meets up with the half king. again, the Native American and his group of Native Americans. And this is where one of his guys, one of the Native American guys through a translator,

explains that he is blessed by the great spirit. By the great spirit. This is the most important scene of the movie. Like this is the movie. Yeah, is this scene. He might as well be like, I think you're going to be the first president of America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it's also, I think, very depressed.

So I think this is an incredibly vile scene. Oh, it's insane. It's a deeply vile scene. And this is a trope that's come up again and again in frontier fiction going back to the 19th century is the idea of sort of like the indigenous person, particularly done in like a spiritual kind of way, basically feeding defeat or like allowing sort of this God chosen, this sort of divinely chosen people of like the colonizer to take. their land. Consenting, essentially. Oh, because he's chosen by God.

He's chosen by the great spirit. And obviously in a way to like alleviate the fucking horrific guilt. Of course. Of colonialism. You know what I mean? And it's like, and that is, you know, and people talk about white guilt and they're like, whatever.

Oh, you know, it's like a white person being kind of cringy at a BLM protest six years ago. It's like, no, the real white guilt is having so much cognitive dissonance about the fact that you live on stolen land, that you have to manufacture a fairy tale. about that actually the people that you did this unspeakable thing to consented to it. Yes, consented and are aware of your God and your religious. Let's also talk about the a religiosity of the idea of the great spirit, right?

For just a random guy, right? That would be like if there was a movie where I wish this was actually the case. Now I'm sad. If at the end of the last of the Mohicans, one of the white guys had turned to them and been like, you are blessed by our God, Muhammad. It just fucking written off with all the white women they could eat. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly.

So it's like, and there's also another part of it that I think is, and, you know, while the kind of first thing that I talked about was how the landscape was very historically inaccurate. There's also something like deeply depressing when you just think about what all this kind of led to, where it's like, okay, yes, George Washington, you are selected by the great creator. and that means you will lead a great empire. And so in 250 years on this spot will be a Chucky Cheese. It will be exit 29 off of the interstate. There will be a McDonald's and a Wendy's and a strode running through it,

a beautiful, lovely strode where no one could walk or ride a bike. And there will be trash all over. Every green space will be covered with trash and exhaust. And there will be a sign of a... above this spot that says, turn right now for the lion's den. And then there will be another sign 10 feet that way that says, you know, life begins at conception.

But just truly, like, what is, like, what are we giving birth here? And the billboard of Joe Biden. Yeah, yeah. So it's just, you know, like, what are we giving birth to here? We're giving birth to the fucking, like, you know, to I-81. You know what I mean? It's just like fucking soulless consumer fucking colonialism. You know what I mean?

Just like just the most, it's so sinister and horrific. Every, every part of this. Skin crawling. Just utterly skin crawling. Yes. And then of course, we end our movie with a glorious shot of George Washington. Now wearing blue. Remember?

Remember they were supposed to wear blue? Because you can get shot if you wear red. Yeah, because blue blends into a forest. Fucking perfect. Yeah. You can't see blue in forest. For the last shot of this movie, they've given him like the wig and the George Washington white coat with the blue and everything.

like we're supposed to be like, oh, it's George Washington, right? Like when the fucking kid picks up the Batman Mass. I just realized. That's the guy. That's George Washington. And that's the end of the movie. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. Fuck you, Eli, for making me watch this.

Fuck us. Fuck the people who made this movie. All right, Andrew, if people want to hear more from you, where should they go? Yeah, so you can follow me on YouTube. Once again, the channel is called Atun Shea Films. You can also follow me on places like Instagram. And I've got a film coming out very soon. It's going to be available for streaming on my website for pay-per-view on October 1st.

Then it's going to drop free on YouTube on Halloween night. Appropriately enough, it is a horror film. It is a docudrama called The Vampires of New Orleans, which is basically Southern Gothic Terror combined with investigations into the city's real-life folklore. may not look like it right now. I'm not in New Orleans right now, but I am in, I live in New Orleans. I've been there for 14 years now. And this is the sort of New Orleans vampire movie that could only have been made by somebody who, who toiled in the tourist industry for years and years and years in the French Quarter and knows all the dirty secrets. So it's going to be great. So y'all should check it out. Yes. And we will have a link for that down in the show notes. Or if you're listening, look at your iPod and that's there in the show notes. We'll link to all of that in the show notes. Check that out. That sounds. absolutely fantastic. Hey, Discord perverts. I know you all do a movie night. I expect an extra movie night for Andrews movie now. Not just our films. I want a movie night for Andrews when it comes

out. All right. Well, that's going to do it for our review of Young Washington, but that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we need to get everyone hot and bothered for next week. So tell us, me, what's on deck? A young woman at a crossroads in life reflects on her decision to join the Mormon Tabernacle Cryer and how it strengthened her. through its challenges. We'll be watching, singing with the angels. All right, me, that sounds terrible.

So with that to look forward to, we'll bring episode 571 to a merciful close. Thanks again to Andrew for joining me for this episode. The Two Amigos, Andrew's first performance out of the gate a fantastic one. A huge thanks to all our Patreon donors who help make this show go. If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks,

you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com forward slash godawful and thereby earn an early access to an ad-free version of every single episode. You can also help us out a ton by leaving us a five-star review and 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 Atheist Citation Needed, D&D Minus, and The Skeptocrat, available wherever

podcasts live. If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions, you can email god-offel movies at gmail.com. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slot and Krivolta Chirfts on Mars. All other music was written and performed by our audio. audio engineer Morgan Clark, who has forgiven me for not pressing record on the first quarter of this episode, Morgan Clark. And it was used with his permission. Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week for Heathenwright and No Illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. Promising to work hard to earn it on the check next week. Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti clothes.

Our country would go on to elected game show host who would bring this whole American experiment to its conclusion. It kind of worked out. All right. At one point, about 20 minutes in, you will see me do this. And it's because I've set a timer to remind myself not to talk for an hour and a half. Okay. So forgive me. But it's also it's to shut me the fuck up.

Do you hear that, Morgan? That's our editor I'm telling right now. 20 minutes is what I've set my timer to, Morgan, because I love you. He was like, hey, thank you, Morgan. Don't go long. Because our co-host, the head of the show, the guy who started the shows, he keeps us on track. And he's like, usually the guy. And when I am alone, I tend to be like,

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