House of R - ‘28 Years Later’ and Our Zombie Survival Team

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Mal and Jo are here to discuss ‘28 Years Later.’ They talk about what worked, what didn’t, the future of the franchise, and more! Plus, they create their pop culture zombie survival team! (00:00) Intro (06:24) ‘28 Years Later’ (41:14) The Father (01:17:19) The Mother (01:38:28) The Elder (01:53:14) The Jimmy Gang (01:58:43) The Bone Temple (02:03:00) Our Pop Culture Zombie Survival Team Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Carlos Chiriboga and John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to House of Our. I'm Joanna Robinson. And joining me today, we have both dragged our corpses to the microphone. It's Mallory Rubin. Hey, Mal, how you doing? For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trimphia is administered as injections under the skin.

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Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfaira Radio.com. Joanna, my beloved, I would share any apocalypse with you, including this one. It's great to be here with you today. I am feeling ill, as I just shared with you mere moments ago. Not the rage virus, though, because we've been talking for longer than half a minute. minute and I haven't begun to vomit blood into the Zoom. This is how we know. So I'm a little

a little off my game today, but could be worse. Listen, Mallory Rubin off her game is sharper than anyone else I've ever had the pleasure of podcasting with. So, we're here if the mention of projectile vomiting

blood was not enough to tip you off, we're here to talk to you about 28 years later, the new film by, from Danny Boyle Alex Garland. So we will be talking about that. The film we both saw this last weekend. We also have a couple extra things that we're going to do along with that discussion, including drafting a zombie survival team and another running segment that I will leave us a surprise when we introduce it to you all at home. Mallory knows is coming, but you and home.

Sort of. A little bit. Okay. Not really. It's an exciting tantalizing, dare I say, mystery for me as well. Before we get into, all of the zombie-related fun. And by the way, Alex Garland, if you're listening, you're not. But if you are, I know that they're not supposed to be zombies. They're the infected. We know that. We'll be calling them zombies anyway today.

That's just what we will be doing. Podcast shorthand. We respect it. We respect the distinction. We will be ignoring it. Okay. Also, coming soon from us, we are doing our Stranger Things season one check-in. So I have been having a really good time

rewatching Stranger Things Season 1. So we will be doing our first episode of our year-long plan, Stranger Things Rewatch. So tune in for that. We also have Squid Game coming up. We'll be doing our Squid Game coverage. Next week.

And next week, the end of Squid Game is here. It is upon us. We'll be doing that next week, also on the feed. And then coming up after that, we've got Back to the Future, has an anniversary coming. So we're doing something related to time travel. in the same way that we're doing something related to zombies today is essentially what is coming up for us. Also, thank you all.

We've gotten a ton of feedback from our speeches episode that we did. People have been really nice and supportive about that. And also just sort of like, but you missed, but you missed, but you missed. Great. Also, we've been getting a lot of ideas for what other best of the century episodes that we can do. Folks have been sending in a ton of suggestions. So we'll announce what that is, you know, in a couple weeks because we will be hitting another one next. month. It's our plan to do one per month for the rest of the year. So that's a lot from us,

Malie Rubin. And that's what we haven't even gotten to the Buffy rewatch that people are excited about or the rest of Hot Nolan summer. So how can folks, you know, Superman fantastic for Oh, Superman? Ever heard of it? Got my notice for my press screening for Superman. Very exciting. So how can folks, you know, follow along? Your should I recommend. Your F1 takes if you d'am, share them with us, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Follow the pods. Follow House of R.

Follow the Ringerverse. Follow the Ringer F1 show. Follow the Prestige TV podcast. Follow it all on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch. That's right, not just listen, but watch. Full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys. Beoboo!

On Spotify or the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So make sure you're following along there as well. Follow the ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. We're popping on YouTube shorts, YouTube posts. Ooh. Get in there. Wow. Yeah.

Send us your emails as well while you're at it. Keep your thoughts coming for the rest of the best of the century so far series and any of the other stuff that we just mentioned. Stranger Things, Buffy, et cetera. Hobbit and Dragons at gmail.com, the inbox is always open. One last thing is our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. We're just going to give it blanket spoiler warning for the 28 franchise. That is 28 days later, 28 weeks later, a film I did not revisit, but Mallory is familiar with so she can weigh in on if she wants to. And then 28 years later.

And we will be discussing the planned upcoming. sequel, Bone Temple, which has already been shot. We have some, a little bit of info on that as it pertains to the end of 28 years later. So we're talking about that. That's its own section at the end. If you don't want to know anything about that, you can just wait till the end and, like, skip ahead and not learn anything about bone temple if you don't want to. Great name. Just a great name.

I mean, this whole movie was a real bone temple. Was it not? It was. It wasn't, Joanna. This is going to be a real even by our standards. House of our has an explicit rating and contains adult content. I really don't just going to make it into the final stages, but just so everyone knows, the title of this episode in our document today, a document that I wrote, but I wrote with an audience of one Mallory Rubin in mind, is 20 years later, swinging dicks and our zombie survival team.

So, you know, that is what we are here to talk about today. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. Wow. Carlos. That was a shock and a delight. Carlos did warn me that he had been playing around with some zombie groans and moans. So thank you so much for that, Carlos. Weird, though, that you have the audio of me getting ready for the podcast this morning

when I started to realize that I was feeling, to quote Logan Roy, incredibly unwell. Carlos, how did you get that audio? Let me know on the side. Can we hear a little bit of a replay of what that sounded like, Malloribor? you clearing your throat perhaps Not sure how much sound to fact voice work and zombie impressions I should do today

I was hoping for more phlegm but it's okay I don't know if I'm in like an alpha energy space I might be more in like a crawler mode just just roly-poly worms lurping just inching my way forward on the sod and soil looking for a morsel as various parts of my body. Slash off. Yeah.

Okay. So listen. If you don't watch these videos, then that's fine. You can listen. That's fine. I just want to let you know that when Mallory did her little zombie impersonation right now, she basically did her imitation of the zombie emoji. Yeah.

She just like put her little jazz hands up. That's pretty great. That's true. I did. I could do that. Okay. 20 years later. Yes.

Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland. cinematography by Anthony Dodd Mantle, all three from the original 28 Days Later film. They shot this on an iPhone. A legend that's cropping up around this movie is a little overblown and gimmicky because they took those iPhones and then used like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lenses and other equipment around it. But they did do like a bullet time sort of put up a bunch of iPhones on a rig sort of thing.

So iPhones were definitely involved. I just don't want anyone else to think that they can just go out into the wilderness of North Eastern London, England, and shoot on the countryside and get the same exact effect that they got in this film. You can try, and I encourage you too, but I'm just telling you, don't quit your day job if it doesn't work out for you exactly as this movie does. Opening weekend stats and figures. This movie made $30 million, domestically, $60 million globally on a $60 million budget. that's a pretty decent opening weekend. Second still to How to Train Your Dragon, which is still ruling the box office.

But, and I was stunned by this, biggest opening for Danny Boyle pick ever and the franchise by a mile. So this is like, you know, a huge win. And we will just see how it goes because Mallory, you were a little surprised to, we all know very well on this show that Rotten Tomatoes is a faulty metric, but you were a little surprised by the numbers that

cropped up on Rotten Tomatoes. What were those numbers and why did they surprise you? Yeah, so the critic tomato meter has been sitting anywhere from a 95 to right now around an 89 or a 90 as we record since the reviews started pouring in. So a very strong critical reception to the film. Yeah. The audience score, the popcorn meter, I believe, is a 65% which I find astonishing. I was like, usually when you, first of all, usually when you see a discrepancy that vast, something is going on. Like, is there like a review bombing campaign? I was Googling trying to figure out what was Phelius. It's just like there is a gap in the response, at least according to this metric. So I find I'm interested to continue to talk to people who have seen the movie and see what they think about it.

Everybody who I know who has seen it felt somewhere between was deeply disturbed by it but quite impressed by it. And I thought this was a modern masterpiece. And that's the spectrum that I've been exposed to so far. But admittedly, everyone I've talked to about it is either my husband or somebody who's podcasting about it. I was like, it hits dead center for a lot of ringer core sort of stuff. So when I heard, you know, Chris and Sean and Amanda talk about it, I was like, this all makes sense to me. Like, their reactions make sense to me.

And I think not to get ahead of ourselves because we will weigh in on our particular takes. But if I had to guess, I would say an Alex Garland film, especially later Alex Garland film, so the recent like sort of men. Civil War, warfare are very heady properties and not afraid to get very strange. And if people went into this movie expecting something closer to 28 days later or something closer to 28 weeks later, which these two filmmakers were not really involved in at all, which is an even more, I would say, straightforward kind of action property. And then the weirdness, the strange ending, all these other things might be off-putting.

I think the reactions have been somewhat polarizing. And I think that's always fun to talk about. For sure. A B-cinema score, which is not a bad cinema score at all. Cinema score is, of course, the one where they intercept people in the lobby. And they're like, what did you think of that movie? Yeah. Half the audience is met over 25 in the opening weekend of this movie, which I think is interesting.

Next weekend is something to watch. Just for the overall health of this movie. And the reason why we might be a little bit more invested in the overall health of this movie versus maybe some other movies is this is part of a planned trilogy. Yeah. They have funding from Sony for this movie and the, as I mentioned, already shot Bone Temple. But there's a third movie that they want to make. and they don't know funny for that yet. And as Danny Boyle keeps saying in every interview,

it's going to depend on the box officer seats for these two movies. So if they have a massive drop-off next weekend, when Megan 2.0 comes wandering to the theaters, when F1, you know, takes away the dad demographic or whatever, and the Mallory demographic's the same demographic. I was going to say, one and the same. Yeah, exactly. I'm the most dad-core person you know.

That is so true. For sure, true. So, you know, what is that going to do for the health of the box office seats next weekend? It's just a question we're thinking about checking in on perhaps next weekend. Interesting. Yeah, it feels like the initial both box office and critical response has been strong enough to secure the future of the trilogy inside of the larger franchise. But who knows, I have never claimed to be a box office trendline expert, nor will I claim to be. be one today. I think in addition to just what's happening with this film and this franchise and the

future of this franchise, obviously there's also just this larger moment in genre horror. And that's a fun and cool thing too. Like obviously Sinners is a phenomenon of a like unique and historic scale. But even even being able to enter into that space in 2025 where moviegoers are like, I'm excited to go see a bloody, violent, heady, fun, interesting, very specifically rendered genre horror story, bloodsprite everywhere. That's a, that's a, that's just a part of a larger interesting moment in our moviegoing experience. So that's fun to track. And I do think it's interesting. I was texting Sean a little bit before you had seen it.

And I had, like, takes I wanted to get off. So I did subject Sean Fantasy to them. And I have done the last, I think the last two big pick episodes on Alex Garland films I did with Sean. So, like, men. And, no, I wasn't on Civil War. So just men. But the, the hardcore Alex Garlandness of this movie and the way it is, like, very specific to the themes that he has been trying to explore in these other movies that he is. is done, men civil war, annihilation, et cetera, et cetera.

And to package that inside of an existing franchise that sort of started his career is such a clever way to engage with IP that I really appreciate that effort. Yeah, one of my favorite things when like a writer or a filmmaker or storyteller of any form has a theme or an idea that they're interested in exploring and uses a franchiser or a genre story of some sort. This is obviously a through line of our podcasting and the way that we relate to genre stories in general. Like, you know, obviously something that we, I think there are probably certainly, I don't

want to say that our experience is everybody's experience, right? I think there are people who are like, I don't want to actually be thinking about like Brexit or COVID, you know, when I sit down to watch. a sequel to 28 days later. And then I think there are going to be people who are like riveted by that and find that that elevates an already cinematically, scintillating movie-going experience. And in general, as you know,

and as we have talked about many times on the pod, including most recently when we did a ex-Makana rewatch, I just fucking love Alex Garland stuff. Like not every single Alex Garland story is for me, but that's actually part of why I love it. Like, he is so bold and ambitious in his undertaking and I think so unflinching in the vision that he seeks to present in each of his stories that, like, when they hit for me,

they're just all-time favorites sort of instantly. And when they don't, I find the fact that I have repelled by them to be actually, like, impressive into their credit. There's always just something to think about and chew over. And, like, what I find often with an Alex Garland story is that with the exception of, like, You know, he has written some things and then written and directed other things, you know. So we'll put them all under the umbrella of an Alex Garland story.

But I would say with the exception of something like Ex Machina, 28 days later, and probably Sunshine, two of which were directed by Danny Boyle. The other Alex Garland properties, I have found tremendously challenging and to a one have really enjoyed thinking about them afterwards. even more than the experience of watching them. Sometimes much more than the experience of watching them. And I really, really value that about him because I think his ideas are always interesting and what they provoke in me is something I really relish. So Alex Garland, incredibly thoughtful and interesting storyteller. Danny Boyle hugely influential to me.

I don't love, again, I don't love everything that Danny Boyle has ever done. but and he has been in a sort of slump phase for, I think, a little while. I really hated yesterday. And sorry, but shallow grave and train spotting. Train spotting starring Ewe and McGregor is like an insolive. It is like an inciting. Joanna has decided to watch challenging films like a moment in my life. I was quite young when that movie came out and I saw it anyway.

way. So, and then I, like, sought out, yeah, I was like 15, right? And that's not that long. That's fine. I was 15. Saw Transpotting, changed my life, sought out shallow grave, which became an incredibly important film for me. And a lifeless ordinary, even though it is quite weird. I really, really love Sunshine Amazing. Millions is a really, I think, underrated Danny Boyle movie. And I think a really good that plus slum dog, which is, of course, a somewhat overrated. Danny Boyle movie is but a really good movie, nonetheless, is an indicator of how good he is with child actors, both at millions, which has an all-time or child performance in it,

and Slumdog Millionaire, which has incredible kid performances in it. Amazing. So that should have let me know what to expect from the kid performance in this movie, and I was still blown away by what we got. So these are incredibly important filmmakers to me. 28 days later is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is so spare and like taut and just sort of like a perfect, like a perfectly constructed thrill ride,

visually distinctive entry of the early aughts. It is where I think I met, I'm sure it's where I met, Killingen Murphy. It's where I became more where I had already met Brennan Gleason a few other things, but where I really got to know Brennan Gleason like Dadcore sort of stuff, Naomi Harris. Like I just, I think that is, I've rewatched that movie just a million gajillion times, even when you couldn't stream it,

which was true for a very long time because like you and Adam over there, I own it on physical media. So I just, but I was mixed about this. I wasn't sure like what to expect. from this. But that's sort of my relationship to Danny, to Alex, and to the 20. And then 28 weeks later, I don't care for and did not bother to revisit. And it seems like this movie is pretending it doesn't exist at all.

So, you know, you're a Milituary on that. Yeah, it's, I think, yeah, the question of where that fits now in the larger franchise is an open one, but increasingly less open as we go and to expand the canon. I, yeah, I like quite a few Danny Boyle movies. Actually, not seen millions. I'll have to add that to the list. It's very sweet. Yeah, okay. Adding that one to the list.

But yeah, I love a number of his other movies. And as, you know, as established many times, Garland is a favorite. I really agree with what you said. We're like just thinking about Garland's work in the wake of it. We've talked a lot before about like devs is an example of that. obviously that's a show, not a film, but I had a lot of notes on Dev and actually on like a kind of soul deep level disagreed with its contention

and found that I could not stop thinking about it or talking about it and have not stopped mentioning it since, which is just not a thing that typically happens to me with stories there. I'm like, this was like not really for, this was not like an A plus for me. So yeah, that's just like what he can do. is just really one of our great modern philosophers, I think. I just find him fascinating. I really like the 28 franchise, as we talked about in our recent hype meter.

We were both looking forward to this new installment quite a bit. I feel similarly, I think maybe not quite as, it's not like I wouldn't list it as one of my absolute all-time favorite movies the way that you would, so I can't claim to have the same degree of passion for it. But I do, I think it's sensational and spectacular, and I love it. And I think that the thing about it that always strikes me, like, from first watch now through any time that I revisited, it's just that, like, if you found yourself describing it, it would sound on some level, like you could be talking about any story about the outbreak of an infection. I was trying to describe it, like, a friend of mine who went to go see 20 years later with me, she's like, have I seen 28 days later? What is it? And I was like, uh, found family. Yeah, found family. You wake up and the world has changed and a virus has rapidly spread and the extent beyond the space around you is unclear.

Or men the real monster. Exactly. You have to find a family to forge ahead with and then you work your way toward the third act where the real villain is revealed to be your fellow man. But when you root yourself in the specificity of the rendering of that vision inside of the film, it is just a master work, I think undeniably. some of that is the visual specificity, right? And the kind of like digital handheld, right, camcorder, like, of the moment of the era. In time, I loved the way that like Sean described it as, you know, the idea, the thinking about it while you're watching it is like, well, the world stopped. And like, what if someone just like picked up the last camcorder that they could find and then like made the movie, right? Like, that's a fun way of thinking about it. The

Clusterphobic, shaky, you know, the horror of what you're watching, obviously, like the rage virus, is, I think, undeniably scarier than many of the other strains of infection and zombie stories, the speed with which it spreads, the fact that, like,

you don't even have to be bitten. Just like a crow gnawn on a body above. You look up. One drop in the eye. You're fucked. That's it. That's the end of your life. You're done.

Horrifying. And, then the degree and ratcheting up of the horror, you know, everything with Christopher Eccleston's character and that troupe in the final stretch, it's like difficult to introduce the rage virus and then figure out how to make everybody feel worse about what they're trying to survive or what they might be trying to save. But the film does that expertly. So it's just fantastic. My relationship to the second movie is like, I think it's like pretty, fun to watch, but I don't think of it as often as the first one. And I think inside of it it actually, I did, I rewatched it last week. And it's, I find it, it's so propulsive and it moves with such a quickness and a pace that you do just kind of get swept up and watching it. And it's like a I was going to say pleasant way to spend 90 minutes. That's just simply not the case. Nothing's pleasant about watching any of these movies. It's a riveting.

Kind of like magnetic way to spend some time. You can't look away. I do always when I watch the one have like a lot of questions. Interestingly, in terms of the point about, does this, has this movie kind of been reconed out of relevance in the franchise? I think one thing that now feels more relevant to me, which I was always very confused about at the time was Don, the father's, like, pursuit of his children, which was like implying something about the preservation of your awareness that I don't think anything else in the movie is, really seemed like it, like, supported. But now, obviously, we have something in this new film with the alpha and the baby that, like, feels deeply connected to that. So that's interesting.

In terms of, like, the film ending with, you know, young Andy, not showing sides of infection, but carrying the infection or bribing the helicopter in Paris, and you're like, there goes to the world. And then this movie opens and it's, like, not so. It's just kind of, it's like a little bit of a hand wave for the end of that movie, and that's fine. So yeah, I was like super excited for this movie. I thought the trailer was incredible. Like we talked about, the cast is amazing. Jody Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, who says no, literally ever.

Not me, not on this podcast. And Ray Fide's just all-time, like, all-time fave. I had absolutely no idea who the true star of the movie was, though. Alfie. Or I'm sorry. Are you talking about Samson? I was talking about Spike, young Spike, young Alfie. you're right. The co-star obviously would be Alpha Samson's giant dong. Yeah. So we'll talk about

all of those things today. Great. Sadly, a prosthetic dong. All the, all the donks were prosthetic because Alfie was 13 years old and they were like legally, we had to put some, slap some prostheses on there. But I think I know for a fact that you had a better time with this movie than I did. You asked me my reaction out and you're like, I was like, I don't think it was very good. And then I thought about it for several days. And I was like, actually, to our earlier point, given the fact that I've been thinking about it a lot, I do enjoy that much more. I actually don't feel very excited about ever rewatching it. And Danny Boyle, in one of the many interviews, actually in a couple, he described the tone he was going for as suffocating intensity. And I would say mission accomplished. But it was a

It many times a deeply unpleasant experience for me watching it. But thinking about it. Thinking about Jamie and Spike, thinking about Ilsa and Spike, thinking about Reifine's performance, the Bone Temple itself. As soon as Ray Fine shows up, the movie kicks into a different gear for me entirely. And that is a section that I would happily revisit any day of the week. But I found the experience of watching it not the same pure joy that Christopher Ryan communicated on Big Pick. And like, which is not, you know, something like 28 days later, I can rewatch endlessly. So it's not like Gore is a problem for me necessarily.

But there was just something about, you know, the frenetic editing, which Danny Boyle loves frenetic editing. but like frenetic editing, the like cut to disgusting slurping night vision, infected, wandering through the word, the number of spinal cords and just sort of like there's just a level of aggravation and, you know, unrelentingly that I had, that I struggled with when the movie slows down and we spend time in the characters and the emotionality, which is both Danny and Alex say the real point of this movie, obviously. I think this movie is incredibly successful, and I think all of its ideas are...

I love every single interview I've read or watched or listened to of Alex and Danny talking about this movie has been endlessly fascinating to me. So, like, thinking about this movie, and I am all in very excited for Bone Temple. So like, which promise, which they said is going to be even bleaker than this movie. I mean. And so why am I, like, I'm like, this is unpleasant.

Can't wait to do it again. That's sort of where I'm sitting. So I don't think the times will be tame with Jack O'Connell's Jimmy. Crystal. Yeah, the track suit mafia coming over from Hawkeye. No, Sir Jimmy Crystal is not promising us a good time. But that is where I am. So you had a much better time.

me about your experience? I thought this was sensational, just really, really, really wonderful. Each of the three acts, and that's actually, I think those three acts are independent of the Jimmy Bookends. We have our Jimmy Bookends, and we have our three acts inside of that. Spike and Jamie, Spike in his mother, and then our beloved Dr. Kelson. all of which we'll talk about more, they were so tonally distinct that it feels to me like it should not have worked as a movie, like a cohesive experience. But I think that was part of what I responded to is like the jarring change in circumstance based on a choice that you make.

I thought the movie was visually astonishing. Whether the iPhone propaganda is overblown or not, you know, even beyond. There is something that just feels like different about the visual quality of it. But even beyond that, the editing these cuts to the infrared horror escapes, the dream sequences, the chase down the causeway and the stars and northern lights in the sky. The s missing from the shell station. So it just says, hell. Like however zoomed in or zoomed out you were, it was unmistakable what world you were in.

had happened to that world and to pan from the attempts to recreate or fabricate or hold onto or approximate some semblance of life on Holy Island. And then to see what the wilderness had reclaimed around that, I thought it was like breathtaking. And then the ideas inside of the film, which obviously we'll talk about more as we go, I found just quite provocative. And intellectually stimulating. This is like not a movie and not a franchise where the bold font headline is as simple as like,

the people are definitely better and they're going to win and they're for sure worth saving and they know how to do it, right? Like, it's just much messier than that and I like that. And it's also not like, I mean, we'll see what happens in Bone Temple, but it's not as clear as even 28 days later,

which is like, these aren't Army dudes are a bad. Because, you know, even someone like Jamie, Aaron Taylor Johnson's character, who dramatically disappoints his son. Yeah. I'm like, this isn't a bad guy necessarily. That's not what they're trying to. And they're not just saying this village is evil.

But they're saying there are elements here that are our protagonist on the verge of, you know, in the midst of a coming of age story is having the scales falls from his eyes about certain things, about the way of life that has been presented to him, about the philosophy, about the stories that his father has told him, all these sort of things. And that is like, that is much more, it's much more interesting to me to watch Jamie give his child all the bacon and lie about saying he had bacon earlier than for Jamie to be an abusive prick or something like that, which he's not. You know what I mean? like all of that's much more complicated, which is much more interesting.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's, you know, that's the next thing. I think that the specific family unit and just the community in general really worked for me as like a way into the world. The, again, like we've already mentioned Brexit, COVID. We'll talk about that a little bit more momentarily. Religion, faith, the shared experience, like what the film has to say, about all of that, while also making room for Samson's giant dick. I just thought it was really impressive and quite gripping to watch.

I liked all of the slices of the film in different ways. I was a little thrown by Jimmy's return at the end. I was like, wait, this is just like really jarring totally. But not in a way that I minded, like, because it is, you know, I think part of it is what you bring in in terms of the knowledge that this is like part one of a new stretch of films. The next movie comes out in six months, like six months in January. And also because, you know, Jimmy was dotted in throughout, you know, the

curving on the torso. Corpse and the graffiti scrolls on the wall, et cetera. So I was kind of like, I got to say, one note, there just have to be more names. Jamie and Jimmy are the same name. Jamie and Jimmy, but then Jim. Killingen Murphy is named Jim. Not sure, but it's like, kind of needless. Were you fooled the way that I was into thinking that Jamie was the Jimmy at the beginning of the movie?

Initially, yeah. It just took too long for them to show us the crucifix, and I was just like, obviously, like, the crucifix is how we will know for certain that is the same person. and I have not, he still got his fleece zipped all the way up. I haven't seen Hyder Harovet. So I was like, maybe that's not who that kid was. And then, you know, we get the reveal at the end. I think just at the very beginning because these Scottish accents are quite thick. I was like, oh, maybe they're saying, they were saying Jamie instead of Jimmy.

But then once you start saying Jimmy, like, written that I was like, these are probably different people. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, everyone's named Jim or Jimmy or Jamie. Jim or James. Or Spike. Or Spike. Which is different. But Spike might be short for James Jr.

We don't know. One last thing I'll say. And I mentioned this on the 2000 draft we did over in the Big Pick feed. But Billy Elliott is like another one of my favorite movies of all time. And this is set not in County Durham, but like right nearby. So the accents are quite similar. So when you have a young boy like Spike. dealing with dead mom stuff, that's just like straight arrow down the middle of Billy Elliott

for me and I just got, I was a mess in the whole ritual for his mother sequence of the film. Absolutely. So it might have been no matter what the accent, but this is a particular bruise for me that I sustained 24 years ago, 25 years ago. Okay. So we're going to go sort of section by section. You mentioned there's like the father chapter, the mother chapter, and what I'm calling the elder chapter, and then the Jimmy bookends.

So we're going to go through that. Throughout, though, we're going to take a pause from headier ideas to play a segment that I'm calling, Mallory, would you fuck that zombie? Inspired, of course, by Samson, but also when we were trying to come up with how we would do a podcast episode about this movie. an idea we had with our beloved paler, Judah, was like, rank the most fuckable zombies. And then we're like, are zombies really fuckable? And then we said that on the podcast.

And then the bad babies have been emailing in suggestions. So these are brought to you by the bad babies. Incredible. Okay. In general, I will just say as a starter that fucking a zombie is a no for me. I was, you know, very captivated by Samson, obviously. You might eat your words. Are you ready?

I'm going to take this from like probably least moldering to most moldering is how we're going to go. And I will start with something I'm fairly confident you haven't seen, but that's okay, no matter. This is, again, brought to us a couple of bad babies suggested this one. There was a show called I-Zombie in which the zombies. The main promise of that show is that there was a young woman who got turned to a zombie, and by eating dead people's brains, she helped solve the mystery of their murders. It was a great promise for a show. A really fun show I watched all of it from Rob Thomas, who did Veronica Mars. This is Blaine McDonough, played by David Anders from I-Zombie.

And basically, they just made him look like a spike from Buffy Vampire Slayer or something you will understand later. would you fuck the zombie, Mallory Rubin? Okay, so he's like... Oh my God, really set in the mood today. Okay, so I have not seen eye zombie. I've seen commercials for eye zombie. But I will say just from that picture, he looks pretty intact.

Yep, like pretty preserved. Oh, yeah. It's just like a little bit of extra eyeliner and a little bit of like base on the lips to make you look a little pale. I just in general, not really interested in fucking. any zombies who have like exposed ribcages or like intestines hanging out or anything like that. We'll see. We'll see. But in general, you said I might eat my words and maybe I will.

Guys, great looking zombie. Got to say, great looking zombie. I'm still eating my words. Sure, they're going to eat my brains. Isn't that the thing with zombies? That's not the vibe I'm looking for during a sexual encounter. Maybe they will preserve your brain because you are a beloved paramour and they will only go after other people's brains. Is I-Zombie a story where, you know, like the zombies engaged in sexual Congress and know their limits? Like, as you know, I'm a big fan of the story being human, where that's more centered around, you know, the vampiric. Vampirism, werewolfism. Werewolves, ghosts.

Yeah. But that more general idea of like we'd just like to try to like live a life and that includes sexual Congress. There's like times where you slip away from your humanity and your like brains, you know? Yeah. What are you going to do? Okay. Okay. Okay. I would fuck that zombie.

I don't know anything about the character. Number one. But sure. Yes. I'd fuck that zombie. Okay. So it's score one for zombies. Okay.

I don't have, let me say this. I don't have, I've not been presented with enough reasons not to fuck that zombie. I think he's, my memory about this character is that he's sort of like a bad boy that you want to fuck anyway. So, okay. Great. I'm in. Chapter one, father. We're just going to take some, like, much like this movie, we're going to take some wild tonal swings on this podcast. Okay, so let's come back to.

Will you be commenting on whether you would fuck the zombies? Oh, David Anders, who I know best from alias? Yes, I would. You would fuck that zombie. Yes. Absolutely. Great. Okay. By the way, this is a visual thing. You can watch this podcast if you want to see the images that I'm presenting to Mallory Urban. Okay. Chapter 1, The Father, we'll come back to the Jimmy opener. I just want to start with Alfie. We've already sung his praises a bit. But I just want to say that in an interview with Alfie, who is just like so what a little cutie, he is obsessed with stranger things. And the Chrysler Reeve Superman. Alfi, come on. House of our. We will gladly welcome you on the podcast for our Stranger Things.

Rewatch. Yeah. Standing invite, kid. I, I, actual genuine, like, not hyperbole, like a revelation. This kid was so good. And the movie hinges on him completely. I mean, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Jamie, he comes back at the end briefly, but is, like, barely in the movie after the first act. Yeah. Yeah. Which obviously centers on them and their pairing. and their family unit, but then you're like, wow, okay, I've realized whose story this is and it's Spike's story. And that was not something that I had any reason to expect based on how the film had been marketed and presented us. So that was just like really cool and fun. And to pull that off, the performer has to be ready to shoulder the entire story. And boy, was he. Just a really,

really incredible performance. Moving. Charming in those moments of like, youthful insecurity, the worry and fear and moments of confronting some sort of new realization about the people around him or the nature of life, action, like all of it. It just all had to be there and was just really spectacular, like a very, very expressive face. This kid has hardly anything on his CV. He was in the His Dark Materials TV show very briefly, and he said his first day of filming was the scene where he discovered. James and Rosie, you know, enjoying some adult time. That was the first thing he, that was the first thing he filmed.

That and like having to act like he was sick from, you know, drinking and stuff like that. This kid smashed it. Smasharoo. Just like really, really incredible stuff. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, also fantastic. As you pointed out, like, we both really like him. We even watch Craven the Hunter, you know, I mean. That's how much we like Aaron Taylor Johnson. But like this, Aaron is, honestly, one of my

favorite, like, leading men in Craven aside, like, has really good taste in the project. I frankly, I dare you. Yeah, I will. And I love this. Like, him showing, he is such, like, a physically imposing presence here with the long ear and the beard and just sort of, like, his craven bulk. And I think he just, you. I think he just. just does such an incredible job of presenting this dad figure who, again, we don't hate, who is in a tough position because what do you do when your wife is dying of cancer and there's nothing you do to help her? And, like, are you merely a red blooded male or red-blooded human and, like, crave, you know,

contact when your wife has sort of like lost touch with who she is. I'm not like necessarily excusing it. There are very like, but it is a very human thing that he does here. And and I think almost the worst sin is the lies he tells earlier in the celebration. And like for all the harrowing set pieces that are in this movie. Honestly, my stomach was most turned by that pub sequence, which is shot to be like a horror movie, essentially. And just sort of the surging crowd, the creepy iconography that we find here and there and everywhere inside of this village setting. And then Jamie boasting about what his son accomplished when he didn't, you know, when the reality is, Spike did a very good job. job for a young teen out on the mainland for the first time.

And I think also the physicality variant Taylor Johnson, especially in the visual similarity to a certain degree with the bearded alphas that we encounter out in the real world. I thought that was like an interesting visual connection. I loved this performance. I loved this character of Jamie. Yeah, I thought he was fantastic in the film as usual. And I agree. I found Jamie to be like, actually for me, like a character I felt a lot of empathy

toward it while also being repelled by him and judging him, which is interesting. That's just more interesting. And I think like the movie and the franchise is not really interested in anything. We would like traditionally label as a quote unquote hero. That's like not really what this is, right? And I think that while there are moments, of certainly like bravery and moments of bold acts. At the end of the day, this is like a dude who's still alive when a lot of other people

aren't and is trying to figure out how to protect the people he loves, but also how to make himself happy. And like that feels really human to me. Like the idea that if you were miserable and you had yearnings and, like, I think fucking somebody else in a cave while your kid, unknown to you, but watches and your wife is dying of cancer, screaming and bleeding in your bed is horrible. To be clear, we're aligned on that.

Not great. Really tough. Brutal. Like, you understand. You understand, especially in a world like this, that a character like Jamie would be seeking that moment where he feels alive. And especially like that, you could, you feel the way when he returns, when they return, that he's like, now I'm chasing the high.

Like, I felt that. it again and I have to keep it going and I had the hunt and then I had the booze and then I had the cheers and then I had sex and it's like you're holding him in like a withering state of judgment but also you're like well of course on some level he would be chasing that over a constant reminder of how hard everything is that's just like human nature so I thought that was all fascinating and to watch Spike confront something that everybody confronts at some point in different circumstances and context, certainly, but just like basically who were my parents, really, was incredibly effective. And this was one of my single favorite things in the movie,

because everything you just said is right. Jamie is lying. Jamie is boasting. Jamie is showboating. and Spike feels inadequate and insecure and ashamed that he wasn't better, even though he did, as you said, do quite well. Made it out. A lot of people don't make it out. Tried. A lot of people don't try. The fact that like the thing that before he sees Jamie and Rosie in the caves,

and he's like, you're supposed to be caring for my mother, not like fucking this other woman. The fact that the thing that he's like, and then of course we have everything with like Dr. Kelson and this idea, idea. What was the fire? You don't know. Oh, you do know. Oh, someone else had to tell me, wait, there's a doctor who's alive who could help, but you don't want to go try? Like, we're not going to do everything possible to save her. Here's my question about that, though. Like, I don't know that that's true. Which part? I think everyone knows that she has cancer,

and it is beyond helping and Spike is like you just don't care and I think what's more true is that Jamie's like there's literally nothing we could do you know so so huh I guess I would say at that's entirely possible but like maybe at some point

when symptoms first started to manifest that there would have been a moment where like if you knew there was somebody with medical expertise out there like wouldn't wouldn't it be worse risking everything to try? I do think that like somewhere in this village, since it's only been 27 years, people know that if you have like lumps on your breasts and like all these other things

are manifesting, you have cancer. You know what I mean? Like I feel like everyone knows and they just haven't told Spike what it is, you know? Yeah. And certainly as we'll hear later, like she knows and has not been ready to tell them. But so I think like what was really interesting to me about the like my father is a liar and thus not the man I thought he was, is that before we get to the infidelity and the questions of whether the truth of a doctor's presence, whether it would help or not, is like shared, the first thing that Spike is like nauseated by is that his father is proud of him or like wants to be proud of him. It's like a lie of pride. And I thought that was really fascinating too because in this world, like one of the questions is just like, are you?

worthy of any label that somebody puts on you or the expectation that comes with it or how other people, what they look to you for in the wake of that. And like this right of passage, you know, we know that Spike is younger than others, right? It's like there's that moment by the gate like 14, 15, that would be better. And it's like 12. He's ready. And he wants to go, but then to see what are you going toward. And I thought that was just really interesting too. Like I liked what what Boyle has been saying about the idea of like risk and kind of how they wrapped their minds around like, well, would you even go across the causeway? What would that be for?

Why? Well, because of course you would. Yeah, because they don't have endless supplies on this island. You know, we do see like signs about sort of like hay supplies are low. So it's an interesting. This island is such an interesting. I mean, first of all, really to set this on the Holy Island with that causeway. So good.

Yeah. Which as texting with Chris, I was like, do you think you and I are the only ones who watch that Jude Law HBO series, which is filled on Holy Island? Island with the Cosway that gets flooded. I don't think even Jude Law watched that show, but it's such a beautiful, incredible, natural set piece to take advantage of. This is a real place. I had put in our notes, this language from the Holy Island sort of website, which says,

when the tide is in, you cannot cross. Please don't put yourself at risk or embarrass yourself by becoming the cause of an expensive Coast Guard rescue. This happens on average once a month here, more frequently, during. the summer months. So like, don't be a dumb, dumb, etc., etc. Easy to imagine. Once a month seems infrequent.

Easy to imagine every day someone being like, the current's not going to pull me. Come on. I can do this. Current's not going to pull me away. But the, this natural, you know, we've watched plenty of zombie apocalypse stories at this point, whether or not you stuck around with the Walking Dead

for a million seasons or our most recent foray into like, what does a zombie apocalypse society look like? And Jackson Wyoming, et cetera, et cetera. Like, you are cut off and coistered. You've got a wall around you because you're just sort of like, this is the us, that is the them. If you want to become part of the us, it's a, you know, it's a whole process, closes you off. And when you are raised that way, as spike is inside of this closed off community, then you look to the elders inside of your

community for information about the wider world. And if you find out that your father, you were there, you saw what you did and your father comes back to the pub and he's like, Spy E, he was great. He killed everyone. It was wonderful. You're like, what else have you lied about? What else is everyone in this town lied to me about? What is the reality of the world? You've got... So just the gateway into doubting everything. Yeah. And you just sort of like, this is growing up. And it's just sort of like, what have I been indoctrined into? And, you know, Alex Garland has talked about the way in which she wanted to create this village that was,

again, sort of similar to the way that Tony Gilroyd talks about this, not like specific critique of, let's say, like, MAGA America or conservative swings inside of Europe or something like that, but just sort of this idea of misplaced nostalgia

for an earlier time, this sort of regressive-looking, you know, this very Anglo-Saxon coded village setup that they have here, the flashes that we get to you know, Henry the Fifth and archers and all the sort of stuff like that.

So this like Anglo-Saxon make our island great again. But misremembering, he was saying like it's a very 1950s-coated island that we've created here. And you see inside of this island a father hit a child when he, you know, lashes out at him. And he's like, that's not something in contemporary parenting. I mean, you do see it. But like, he was like, that was so common in the 1950s. And so we just sort of like forget outside of our glowing memories and stuff.

And this nostalgia thing comes back again and again and it comes back again, certainly with the whole Jimmy Savile telotubbies coda of this film. But this misplaced nostalgia for an earlier time. And so this idea of growing up indoctrinated inside of this village of like, our way is the right way, this is the way sort of thing. And finding the rot at the same. the center of it or um hearing a story of dr kelson versus meeting dr kelson who represents like science uh and then meeting dr kelson like what is what are you know what have i been told

what is real we watch him in that first act it's so important to watch him in that first act lap up all the lessons that his father is giving his father is just like nonstop giving him lessons as they walk across the land and many of things that james is telling him is true and good, you know, information to have. But now Spike has to question all of it because he is of the age when he should do that. And he has had this experience that is pushing him into that. And I think that is just a really brilliant setup for what comes after. Yeah, I agree. I think like the place that we build toward later in the film of Spike, you know, returning, bringing, not returning, bringing the baby to the gate, but deciding not to go back

himself, that he needs to be on a journey of discovery through his own eyes. Like, everybody has their version of that, but what would that look like in this world and this circumstance? And to confront that, like, that his portal into that is loss in many forms, right? A loss of innocence, more broadly, certainly. A loss of trust. A loss of certainty with his father and with the community. Literal loss with the loss of his mother.

All of that leading him to a place where he needs to seek some version. of truth or understanding that he forges like with his own on his own two feet. It was really fascinating in a world where taking a single step, let alone a step that severe means courting

death at every turn. I thought that the causeway like in addition to just being again visually like stunning was so symbolically rich like the fact that you have this natural defense and protection and this ability to

see what is coming always or think you see what is coming always, right, from your perch of visibility, of enviable visibility, but then like what is it also, it's this tether to this other thing, right? You're not like fully removed.

And there's a commentary there certainly. Like, I thought that the cuts to Henry the 5th, the 1944, Henry the 5th were quite effective in terms of conveying what you're exploring there about this portrait of a certain British identity and ideal, right?

And there's also just something like obviously like this is a society where Spike grows up. And we talk about this a lot, right? He's an apocalypse kid. So he doesn't know, like when Eric shows him his iPhone, what the fuck that is? He doesn't know what the internet is. Like that's just an incredible, and of course, we understand that. There's nothing surprising about that. We understand that this is a 12-year-old child in this world where the world ended 28 years ago.

Of course he doesn't know what the internet is. But like, he doesn't know what the internet is. So there is this like generational distinction there and who is like maintaining knowledge from before, but then maybe going even further back because of what's possible because of the loss of technology and then just really like society, right? That's like a society right now is inextricable from technology. So like if that all went away, where would we be? This is obviously on the mind of the film.

It's something that the filmmakers are talking about a lot in interviews. For Spike, it's like he grew up with this life. He grew up with like, if you got bacon for breakfast, it would be an extraordinary thing. He grew up where like you have, the number of arrows that you take in your quiver, like that's what you made with your hands. Like that's what you could find. This made me really bad. The number of arrows.

They just needed to take way more. Yeah. not just take way more. They left arrows behind in many circumstances where I was like, collect your fucking arrows. Adam and I were having a little mini argument about this because he made that same point. And my, I think that's, you guys are right clearly. Like the weaponry is precious, especially once you're stranded.

My counterpoint is just like the transmission of the disease. Yeah. Like can you risk it? Can you risk keeping something that close to your person that is like coded in the disease? I don't know. I don't know if they're like holding a baby that was recently inside an infected lady. I have smiths on the wisdom of that, honestly. I was just so irritated that they were not taking their arrows, but that's, you make a decent point with the infected question. But also, like, what about spikes arrows that just like fly completely wide and don't hit anything infected?

Those I would try to go get. Once the hoard ran past or, you know, tired itself out on the festering mattress before the attic collapsed, those I would probably go get. at. They had to have more weaponry on them when they set out. But of course, to like the point from a few minutes ago about, well, yeah, they're going. They're, they're courting the risk. They're willing to accept the risk because they need supplies. They need to sustain their lives and their society. That's not what this is. This is just like you go and you kill. Like we baptize you in blood and then you're a man of Holy Island. You're a man now. Well, but also they were for- take more weapons with you then, if that's the...

How dare you say they weren't forging because they found a frisbee, and that's very important. Okay. That was honestly great. The response to the frisbee was great. I think one of the thing I want to mention that, because it's, I think, the last image, the last flash of the film is the St. George's Cross flag on fire. And just for American audiences, the St. George's Cross flag, which is the Red Cross on the White Field, which is different, of course, from, like, the Union Jack, has in, you know, people listening to UK

or feel free to disagree with me, hops and dragons at gmail.com, but has been associated with, like, regressive, extremely right-wing ideology. I was reading some articles about it just to make sure that I understood and was not mischaracterizing this, but it's just to say it's not the same as a Confederate flag in the U.S. necessarily. But kind of a similar vibe where like if you saw someone flying the St. George's Cross, you're a little like, why? Why? Why are you flying that flag? What do you have in mind there? So like the fact that we see that flag inside of this world is again meant to signal this sort of regressive idea, this like Britain pure idea. And this, you know, you mentioned Brexit and COVID a couple times. I think it's really interesting to listen to Alex Garland talk about this. again, similar to Tony Gilroy, where he's like, I didn't write this as like a Brexit parallel or a COVID parallel. But the way that I write stories, I write them sort of with the influence of what's going on around me. And those are things that have happened around me.

So like, yeah, it's in the soup. It's definitely there. I'm not saying, don't look for it. It's not there. But it's not like my agenda wasn't, I'm going to make the commentary on Brexit. Similarly to the way that when we think about 20 days later, we all viewed it in this sort of like post-9-11 sort of space. So it's just sort of like in the water and the mixture here, but not, I think,

I think similar to the themes that we talked about in and or something that could be applicable throughout history of just sort of this is human nature, this sort of tribalism and all the other things that come with it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think like the, I like the Boyle quote in the Rolling Stone article about the film. The virus needs to move forward.

The British human beings left to fight it are moving backwards. Just like that core inversion and distinction of the direction of these two opposed forces. If you have the contemporaneous crises unfolding in society that you are going to bring to the experience of watching the story or that you assume are on the minds of the people making them. Boyle seems to be like more active. invoking COVID and Brexit, I think maybe then, then Garland is. But, you know, I thought that the big pick, chat about this was right. It's like, again, you either you're thinking about this when you're watching the movie or you're not. And either way, it works. And I think your Gilroy comp and your Andrew comp is fantastic. Like, there are obviously going to be things that are

happening in our recent history or our current history that feel more. top of mind when watching a story like this, but the themes are, in some ways, sadly often, universal. And I think, again, the, like, incorporation of either historical footage or footage from a Shakespearean adaptation that Churchill had commissioned to, in essence, serve as, like, morale-boasting propaganda at the end of World War II. Like, you can think about that period of time, right? So it spans the decades and the long swath of history.

And then part of the question that you ask in the immersion of those ideas is, well, what does the future of human history look like when you wind up here? Right. When we're on the road, we encounter a couple of new things inside of, as you said that, quote, the virus needs to move forward. The folks are moving backwards. So, absolute gooptopia nightmare that is the sort of roly-poly worm suckers on the ground. This is what Danny Boyle said. We've evolved the virus. It throws up variants, which will have to come to the film to see.

There's three obvious ones and one not so obvious. So you and I talked about this a little bit before recording. We're like, okay, the worm suckers on the ground, the alphas are the two clearest. You think women who can give birth, like, a pregnancy could be? Or there's, like, the alpha's pack because, you know, there's the alpha, then there's, like, the alpha pack, which... Yeah. ...is more interested in, like, hunting and food than it is, like, rage attack of a person, necessarily. And then we've got the baby.

Mm-hmm. Who, to your point, your 28 weeks later illusion, like, is that baby a carrier or the virus? Yeah. Is that baby just going to infect that entire village via, like, spit up or whatever? You know what I mean? Or, like, via the breastfeeding from someone. I don't know how they're going to feed that baby. Like, I was very worried about, they have that line in there where it's like, the baby can survive on water for a couple days.

I'm like, okay, get that baby some milk, please. also he's actually here's honestly of all the things that bugged me in this movie and I've don't like please don't abandon your arrows as one of them if you're going to drug your kid your 12 year old kid spike because you're going to you've opted to go

and accept your death and die and you want your kid to sort of be in a drugged out incapacity to say don't hand him a baby and say hold this baby That's similar thought. Don't make a drug down spike, put that baby in the little cart that you found for him.

Like, what are you doing? What are we doing here? Anyway, okay. Any further ideas on this idea of three obvious ones and one not so obvious? I mean, do we want to use this opportunity? Do we want to talk here about what is happening with the pregnancy in general,

or do we want to do that elsewhere? Let's do it here. Why not? So there are, we still have some stuff to learn. Yeah. About what is going on here, right? And how this works.

We have a line about the placenta. We have a line about the power of the placenta. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're not a doctor. No, I'm not a doctor. Said it before I'll say it again. Ray Fines is.

Not a scientist, not a doctor? Yeah, I have never built, nor have I ever built a bone temple. Yes. Who am I to argue yet? Yes. My beloved Ray Fines. that is basically the only, the movie's only effort to explain how a non-infected child is born of an infected mother. Okay.

So a lot of the infected in the film are, as noted previously, naked. Yeah. We're very far into the apocalypse here on the quarantined British Isles. and it makes sense that the clothing would not be holding up as a day, run about the woods and the wilderness feeding. The pregnant woman is like wearing a garment, though. A open dress.

So I would, I think that that at least introduces the possibility that she is more recently infected. So one possibility is like, was she pregnant? and then infected? Or was she infected and then got pregnant while infected? Either way, the implication strongly is that Sampson is the... Well, father. I see two options there.

Okay. Three. Here's my third option. So either Samson sexually assaulted a live woman. I'm assuming that this woman who is uninfected would not want to have sex. with Samson, but, okay, so there's that, or they were both infected and they had sex, or she was pregnant when she was turned. Right.

He kind of claims the baby as part of his tribe, not his genetic, not his genetic material. But whatever it is, whatever the case, Samson's like mine. That baby is mine. The other, in addition to the placenta line, the other kind of like key line we get is we can't allow them to breed. Yeah. So nobody in the story has any more information that we do about how this happened yet. But like, the implication of that line is we cannot allow the infected zombies to procreate with each other as infected beings. Yeah.

That doesn't mean that's what happened in this case, but that is sort of the larger, like, and especially in the context of these overall evolutions of the infected beings. of the infected beings into these, like, more advanced and evolved states, that's certainly being strongly presented as, like, a possibility of what has happened here. So it's a lot to process no matter what. It's a lot to think about. I'll be curious if they ever decide to, like, if it's interesting to them to clarify or not. But I think that, like, when Danny Boyle has said, like, the theme of this movie is family and then the theme of the next movie is evil, sounds great.

cheerful time. So our family unit inside, our human family unit is very clear cut. Then we've got the sort of Samson family unit. And then we've got the like roly-poly worm sucker family unit because there's kids inside of that sort of like grouping too. So this idea of like the fungus loves too. Do you know what I mean? Just sort of like what, you know, what is distinctly human about your experience versus like, you know, the infected art just trying to survive like a mushroom. Apocalypse is trying to survive.

And so they're like learning how to hunt, learning how to feed themselves, learning how to water themselves, learning how to procreate. The Alpha is defending his people, his land, his territory, all of that. I just think that is fascinating to think about. Yeah. And like the fungus loaves too is the perfect couple. Like the fact that the crawlers choose seemingly to stay in that family unit and remain together. Whether it is the direct. conceiving of a child that is actually Samson's or the claiming. The alpha is, as you noted already, like in both kids, you know, Samson's not the only alpha

that we see, obviously. There's the Causeway Alpha as well earlier. That's a found family thing, or maybe more directly, like, you know, kill the one, killed the many, like kind of a, their tribe of turned beings. But they are together in units. And to the opening note of are we allowed when we're talking about the 28 movies to call them zombies, one of the things that Garland said, this was in the little Rotten Tomatoes trailer YouTube channel featurette on the film. This is what he said about falls under the umbrella of that distinction, but also feels germane when talking about this question of like, are they breeding and creating new life and just how are they thinking about family?

more generally. They haven't died and come back to life, Garland says. They're living people who've got sick and been infected with the rage virus. That dictates some stuff. They need to drink. They need to eat. If they've survived 28 years infected with this disease, what would they look like? Are they similar to anything in the animal kingdom? What would they be similar to? So that felt this, that was from like before the movie came out and it felt to me like, obviously it's applicable to many things, aspects of the film, but like kind of like a tease about the baby and like that maybe. Yeah. And it's like, time to have my own kid now. If you had to ask me to pick what I think is most likely, I think those two infected people

made that baby when they were infected. That's what I think. I have so many questions about the science. I'm like more willing to accept the placenta line if the woman was already pregnant and then turned rather than like, but I'm not a doctor or not a sinus. So I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. That's fine. The beauty, the majesty, the power of the placenta.

Okay, just a couple more things in this father chapter, I want to mention. We already talked about sort of the pub nightmare, but I do want to play this. This is actually a Dr. Kelson, a Ray Fines clip. But Carlos, will you play this clip, please? There are many kinds of death. And some are better than others. Infected, non-infected alike. Okay, obviously, in most trailers you hear this quote from Dr. Kelson talking about there

many kinds of deaths, some are other than others infected and non-infected alike. And I just really liked thinking about that. Obviously, like we're talking about, I mentioned this, this, I alluded to this Buffy Vampire Story storyline in our speeches episode, but this idea that, like, cancer can take someone inside of a zombie apocalypse, right? Like, that there is death that has nothing to do with the zombie apocalypse. And so that's obviously top of mind. We're thinking about Jody Comer's character a lot when we think about this.

But also there's this other idea of death, which we've already alluded to a bunch here, which is this like death of innocence, death of idolizing your father, death of all these other things that come for spike inside of this movie. I just think that that is in this like on the border of adulthood. moment in a child's life kill the boy, let the man be born like what has to die in order for you to move forward

into a wider world which I think this film has on its mind in such an interesting way. Yeah, absolutely. So we get this essentially like a rejection of the Jamie worldview

and Spike is about to enter his mom era. Not that he wasn't already in his mom era, obviously we see him save the bacon for his mom, like all the sort of stuff like that. Like he's very tender towards her throughout. But we're about to get to the mom chapter. Anything else you want to say about this first

Jamie-centric chapter before we move on? No. Let's hit the next stretch. Before we do that, Malar Rubin, would you fuck the zombie? Let's say. We love a tonal shift. Okay, here we go. Once again, this is mostly a makeup-based situation. This is, of course, Nicholas Holtz.

Sure. Yeah. As are in warm bodies. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a yes for me. That's an easy yes. I mean, Nick Holt is the easiest yes in sort of the would-you-fuck-the-zambi space.

Oh, man. If you've never seen warm bodies, it's a Romeo and Juliet tale. Her name is Juliet. his name is R and he's a zombie, but is coming back to life, I think, because of love, if memory serves. Okay. Chapter 2, The Mother. All right, so we've got Jody Comer here as this sort of, you know, interesting sort of adult character. Obviously, her illness is progressing.

She is moments of clarity and moments where she is regressing towards childhood, thinks Spike is her own father, all this or stuff like that. I did watch the trailer, but unlike you, scholar of trailers, I did not... This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce, and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake.

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Closely study the trailer. So I had a moment of worry in this movie that Jody Comer was just going to rithe around in her bed for the movie. I was just like, you don't hire Jody Comer to do this. And so I was really happy to see the chapter two of this. movies essentially, Spike smuggles his mother out of the island to try to get her help with this doctor. Yeah.

How does this character archetype, which we've seen before, the sort of adult person, work for you? We both love Jody Comer. We're huge fans. How did all of this work for you? Yeah, I just, I think Jody Comer is just a. mesmerizing performer, so it's always wonderful to spend time with her. It's funny, I almost had like the opposite trailer tricked my brain experience with the character because, you know, there are shots of her holding the baby.

So I was like, wait, like, is she pregnant? Like we don't see her out on the blanket is over her. I was like, is there, like, what is going to happen here? Not that I thought that was the cause of her, her. state, but I was like... She's hysterical. Yeah, I did not know we were getting a pregnant infected woman, so had no idea there. I think, like, the way that Jamie ends, well, you know, when we hear initially in that

breakfast, you know, the cries from above, and then we first go and see Isla, like, the fact that Jamie goes from like brief concern to kind of like revulsion like impatience yeah impatience is he just tired of it or is he actually like repelled by it and to see the nurturing nature of Spike's relationship obviously he's so young that part of it is just like I am not ready to lose my mother who is at what age would you be ready for that of course but like the tenderness like the fact that he is there to care for her the sneaking of the bacon

which is really sweet but then like in a kind of of classic 28 movie fashion. Also sort of like horrifying the way that the meat is like rolled up into the into the handkerchief was like difficult, I thought, to distinguish from the bloody handkerchiefs that she also keeps in the same spot on the bedside table. And it's just like is like nurturing sustenance. At what point can you no longer distinguish that from the way that your body is like failing you?

A little childish and misguided, but like so sweet. right and and this is just sort of all of like him dragging her across the mainland yeah is I think miss on the one hand misguided but on the other hand um this death this adventure that they go on this moment that they share and this choice she gets this active choice she gets to make yeah um you know is is worth something but like um the risks you the risk he puts himself in, something that she wouldn't want him to do, you know,

is a childish, if extremely well-meant endeavor. Yeah, and like the fact that before her death and before his decision not to return to the community to set off on his own, like this is leaving the community in a different form. Like there's no promise of a return there. Not only that, like he is confronting what it feels like,

to be lied to, but he's lying, right? He's like, there's a fire that he said. That I started. Yeah, right? And endangering the community so that he can escape. And it's like, none of that is good, ultimately, when you're trying to preserve everybody's safety, but he has decided to put somebody he cares about above the community. And then the question of like, well, when you lose that person who you're willing to do that for, what does, what value does the idea of community even have for you? Um, was fascinating, I thought. Yeah. I think this speeds into a lot of the conversation. issues we had around the last of us in terms of like the social contract and um what's my us if his us just shrinks down to my mom and me uh fuck everyone else at least he doesn't like burn the walls

in order to get out right but i do have a lot of questions about the security at the holy island because first of all he sneaks that baby back like who was who was watching for the baby nobody they seem to like that they can't take down an alpha you know before and that they're not like really aware until Jamie starts screaming it's like well wait what if someone was not being chased

but the alpha and perhaps the alpha's horde had just been charging down the crossway tore your gates like like we don't have anything more than the freaking bow and air to help us here where are those rolling barrels of flame that they had at Jackson Wyoming you know and then the fact

that, like, yeah, one fire inside means everyone abandons posts at the wall, that's, that makes no sense to me either. So I have some questions. Have you met my pal, Eric Sunfist, and his stunning fiancé? This was, I thought, all great. Yeah. Genuinely all great. Yeah. You know, we have the moment where we glimpse the, where Jamie and Spike, like, glimps the patrol boat and this idea.

Again, this reinforcement. like we have the opening, you know, peppering of facts about the state of the world that tells us that like the content pushed back the virus and the United Kingdom not quarantine zone. Okay. But then it's like, you know, obviously so much of the like really powerful visual language of the end of the first movie is like, wait, there are like planes above. What if we could like make a help sign?

Make a help sign and reach them. Yeah. And here, for that constant passage of society to just be a reminder that you can never have that again, they're not there to help you. They're not there to see if you need anything. They are simply there to make sure you don't get to them. Potent commentary about the state of the world and the way that an isolated republic is received. But also, not only that, but also something that. Alex Garland has talked about that I thought was so interesting.

It's like, okay, so with our access to the internet, we are constantly aware of atrocities happening around the globe at any given time. And you are aware of that and you also go get a latte or and you also do this, that or the other thing. Like atrocities are happening around the world and Amazon deliveries are happening at the same time. And that's just like, that's not zombie apocalypse. that's just our reality of like this sort of global conscious that we all have and how it requires us to sort of dead in some of our humanity and sympathy in order to just like get through the day of what we have to do or what we not even have to do but like the small joys of being a human like you have to forget that you know this thing is happening in order to do that and that is just again a very human thing that most of us do in a given day so

Absolutely. And like for Eric and his fellow soldiers to be washed ashore and I thought it was very powerful when Eric was like, you know, the second step foot. That's it. That's right. We're never going back home. You don't get to go home back home. He's already dead. His phone's dying. He's like, yep, that's my fiance. I mean, great comedy beat. We all enjoyed it. Incredible. It's like, oh, yeah, it's shelf analogy. Right. I get it. Genuinely funny, really good. But watching him just like, yeah, just like, like watch the last seconds of his battery before it dies, that last, uh, tether to his former life. And then also his attitude, this idea of like, how do you think about death? How does Jamie think about death? How does Ila think about death? How does the doctor think about death? And how does the soldier who's like, it's doggy dog? You know what I mean? Like you do what you got to do to survive and

that's it. Think about death is like a really interesting through line of the film. Definitely. And I thought too there was something about, there is a difference between the undeniable truth when it is just plain and blatant and then still hearing somebody say it.

So like unmistakably, the rest of the world has left the United Kingdom. We know, because we're watching the movie, there's a quarantine zone, they're not allowed to leave. This, we're three decades in, right? On the one hand, the world has not like, other nations have not actively like fire bombed. I mean, we do have stretches, obviously, in earlier movies where it's like, oh, that's

Manchester, it's just like on fire. But they're not, no one's trying to help anymore, right? They've left them alone, and if they make it, they'll make it. And if they don't, everyone else is okay. That's horrifying to confront. But to hear, like Eric's presence. some men's it. There's a little part in your mind that like you're like, well, maybe, just maybe. there's some explanation for how other places and other people could, like, nobody's trying to get

the medicine, nobody's trying to get them weapons. Like, it's so... And the boats aren't there to help rescue you there to keep you in. Keep everyone else safe and keep you in the pit of horror and the descent into hell. Like, that is just so bleak. I mean, it's so, so, so bleak. And then for like, you know, like youthful face, like I should have just been a delivery guy. I was trying to prove a point. Like, do you want to see my, um, bang and fiancee before my iPhone becomes a brick guy to be the one who's like, no, yeah, this is like the rest of the world, everything is just normal. Like it is actually like the world went on. It was the most comedic part of the movie and also in some ways to be the most disturbing. And I thought that was like a, that

dissonance was very, very, very potent. Um, we've already, of course, gotten into the biological realities of how this woman got pregnant. But nonetheless, she is delivering a baby and we have this moment of like connection. Yes. Between this woman who's delivering a baby and Ila. And I wanted to play actually a Jamie clip as we talk about this. Carlos will you play this clip? Infection takes away their minds.

It's got no mind. It's got no soul. Kill it. Okay. So this is one of many lessons that Jamie imparts to spike when they go out. Infection takes away their minds. It's got no mind. It's got no soul.

Kill it, right? So he's just sort of like, this is when they encounter the man hanging upside down with Jimmy carved in his torso, the bag on his head. There are birds around. I was like, oh, my God, I know what happens when a bird gets a drop of blood. I'm so scared. I was so freaked out. Dude, we texted about this, but like, why is anyone going out without eye coverings?

Why aren't goggles everywhere? Goggles, like a covering over your mouth, as I said to you, every orifice. Earmuffs, just all of it. Crazy. Yeah. The goggles thing is just really, I'm like, did you guys not watch what happened at Brendan Gleason? I have some thoughts. Okay.

So Jamie's point of view in this lesson that, you know, You know, one of the many tenets that he imparts his bike is like, the infection takes away their minds. It's got no mind. It's got no soul. This is a soulless, mindless beast. It doesn't deserve to live. Kill it.

It is an it. Yes. Flip side of that. Here's Isla saying, there is something universal about what you are going through here. And whether or not you have to be a mother or not to recognize that, I have decided to recognize that what you are going through is something that I. want to reach out and support you through and help you through. Again, there's a lot of goop and fluids, and I, I, yeah.

She's a better person than me. It wouldn't be me. But I thought this was a stunning sequence. I thought, but also, I've also seen train to Busan and I do not get on a train when there's a zombie on that train. There's one single zombie on the train. I don't get on the train. But setting sequence and what it sets up for the baby

and the potentiality of what that baby means in terms of the threat to the village, whether or not that baby is carrying some sort of late infection or Samson is going to go fine. Right. They don't. The way that they don't kill Samson the first time because Dr. Carlson's like, I like to coexist with them.

But the way they don't kill him the second time when he tries to claw through the very earth in order to get to them. I'm like, kill. I know I just said, Jamie, I disagree with it's got no mind, it's got no soul kill it, but like this is a relentless killing machine who wants that baby and you put that baby in your old village and he's still alive out there? Do you want to warn them that there's an alpha coming?

It's hard to disagree with any of the poister raising. I think that it's, look, it's just as possible that some of the science and medicine we don't understand about how this happened in the first place leads us to this baby being like a, cure of some sort. That could be just as likely as a source of Lately infection. Yeah. But like, regardless,

our dear young Spike, um, listen, he's gone through a lot, but has also seen enough to understand that Samson is pursuing that baby. And I think bringing it back to Holy Island was a, uh, I know he's trying to save the kid,

but really put a lot of other people in parallel. That seems, that seems clear. On the like, no soul front. Yeah, this was one of the most kind of philosophically and existentially interesting aspects of the story. Like, what does humanity look like and what does it mean? And what shape can it take?

And what do you have to see in somebody else to think that they're a person still? Like, the thing that this made me think of actually was the line. I love that little moment in Early and Last of Us, season one, where Ellie and Joel are talking about killing the infected. And Ellie says, like, was it hard? Like, knowing they were people. And to take that further to like, well, what if there are people still? Like, what does that mean and who gets to decide? And if, oh, so on the one hand, like, there's the kind of rational, practical part of your brain that, like, when I was reaching out to the woman as she's giving birth, I'm just like, don't touch her.

Don't. Don't touch her. Now, of course, as we get to the next act and we understand that she has a sense of her own timeline and then obviously would be maybe thinking about her decisions differently. that doesn't really, that's not really the point. The point is that something transcendent is unfolding that, like, forges that connection and makes the threat less important than the other thing, which is ultimately like a connection in the shape of life. And, like, I thought that, um, our beloved pals at the big pick, I thought had, I really love, I'm a great episode in general, but great conversation about this. Very, first of all, very amusing, but also I thought very, um,

very, like, stimulating ideas. And Amanda was, like, very out on the Cs. Oh, yeah. The whole, the mama and me recognizes the mama and you. Yeah. And can I just say, as someone who is not a mother, I've never felt more seen than when Amanda's like, fuck this mama mental.

I really resented as a marketing tool to. I asked my sister actually once, like, I had never heard her use the word. And then, like, a couple years into being a mother, I was like, is with this word that you have started using and I hear other young mothers using. And she's like, my sister's into it. And she's just like, she's not usually that kind of person, but she's just sort of like, I think it's just sort of like, I, you have gone through this thing that I have gone through and I recognize that.

And I'm like, okay, I don't like it. But I'm not a mom. And then to hear Amanda, mom be like, I don't like it. I was like, okay, hashtag not all moms. It's fine. I do. But, yeah, of course. I thought it was like a really interesting conversation. And obviously so much of that is like rooted in specific experience and perspective. But on the one hand, the idea that, like, this shared experience could be a bridge that is powerful enough to break through the state of the world, 28 years into the rage virus, was really interesting. And also, I thought it was, like, interesting to hear a conversation, like, well, what about, like, the other aspects of that experience or people who don't have that experience, etc. So I thought that was just a good chat. A great chat. But I think also, you know,

there's something about, and again, yeah, because Amanda has, has something that she, a larger point that she wanted to make about Alex Garland's female characters, which I don't necessarily join her on, but I sometimes bump on the sort of like addled, but more enlightened than everyone around them character, which is sort of a bit more of where I see this archetype fallen. And so it's just sort of like, I can see a higher truth because I've become untethered from, you know, a lot of the things around me. So, like, that this is accessible to me because I'm operating on a different plane of, like, the tumors are eating my brain kind of existence.

And all of that is sometimes not my favorite and sometimes does work for me. So, yeah, that is a lot of where we find ourselves here. Yeah, I thought with Ila and I thought the more, like, for me, the more impactful part of it was, like, the constant, you know, moving in and out of these, states of confusion and then lucidity in the states of confusion, mistaken, as you already mentioned, mistaking spike for her father, how that then kind of connected to these larger questions about sort of the passage of time and regressing into an earlier state. And what is like shared or lost across generations was interesting. But also talking about her father as like, you know, Jamie is modeling masculinity or fatherhood in one way, but what is this other example of?

of this absent example of fatherhood, but what is that? You know, if he had been around and more active in Spike's life, what would that model of fatherhood have been like? We have one last main section to get to before we get to the Jimmy's, of course, and I'm just going to sort of perhaps ill-advisively move forward with our, would-you-fuck-that-zombie runner, and we're going to veer into more moldering territory here. And I have, for you, Myel Rube, number three, the legend Doug Jones has Billy from Hocus Pocus. Yeah.

That is Billy. Billy in Hocus Pocus. Now, here's a question. Billy is a zombie, right? Like, he's a reanimated dead guy. He's not in pursuit of brains necessarily, but is just being reanimated a dead man. you a zombie or it's been so long as I've seen

focus focus well he's not after brains he's after cutting his mouth open so that he can yell at some witches right so is undead enough to be a zombie do you think some like mummy adjase here yeah yeah yeah um

either way I'm gonna say no it's a no for Billy what if I told you that when they cut his mouth open insects come out of it? That's why it's specifically why it's a no. That haunting visual is that's a real mood killer. Okay, so we've crossed the Rubicon from Nick Holtz.

Yes, Doug Jones, no. Okay, I have only one more I'm going to tempt you with before we wrap this up. Chapter 3 of the Elder Reefines as Dr. Kelson, our wise, learned, elder, medicine man, sort of type. Would I fuck this lonely doctor covered in iodine? I would.

Does he pronounce it iodine? I think he did, and it was just exquisitely British. Iodine. Beautiful. So we're subverting the expectations of the Chris Eccleston third act sort of moment.

And also all of the... I was watching an interview with Danny Boyle, I think it was, where he was talking about how Ray Fines gave an interview where someone was like, what is it like to be? You're going to be a batty in this movie. And he's like, no, no, no, I'm a good guy. I'm actually quite nice.

And David Boy was like, we were going for something here, Rafe. You just said it. Okay. But anyway, so, like, all of the trailers, he's covered in iodine. But, like, you know, you think he's covered in blood. And he's building a bone temple. And you're like, this guy is cuckoo bananas and has lost the plot. We're thinking of Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness,

all of this sort of stuff. Alice Garland's like, I'm doing a reverse Kurtz. Actually, he is more in tune with what is going on than anyone else around him. That is what we are getting instead. And I, like I said before, when Ray Fine shows up,

he is both spouting like beautiful philosophical ideas and genuinely funny and just kicks the movie up into a different level of existence. is just incredibly good, I thought. Yeah, I mean, he's spectacular as always, just a genuine one of one. I thought this stretch was beautiful and hypnotic and sort of hallucinatory at its quality when we're watching all of the morphine dart-induced swirling mites of fire.

I, again, in terms of like the complexity of the idea, like on the way, one hand there is the version of our expectations based on the trailer, based on the visual rendering, based on the Kurtz comp. And that was a warm and welcome surprise in the film, that this was not that our Bone Temple Doc is not an active threat, that he is going to bring not only insight, but clarity, right, that he will help you. bring peace, mercy. This was a beautiful stretch. We'll get to the momentum more of it all in a moment.

Again, though, nothing is simple and straightforward in these movies. And, you know, the fact that when Spike confronts Jamie about the plume of smoke and what waits beneath it, and Jamie shares this story, and we see these just unbelievably disturbing visuals of a younger, Kelsen, collecting and then meticulously lining. up corpse after corpse after corpse. He is building this bone temple. There is something beautiful about it. It is a way to honor the dead,

the fact that this allows Spike to scale to the top and place his mother's skull so that she will always see the sunrise, like incredibly moving. What does it say that a person, that a character who is this enlightened about the fleeting nature of humanity and the inescapable role of death, who has the ability to help and to provide information and insights, who knows how to neutralize, won't kill,

as you noted, Samson in a moment where he should have, but to neutralize the infected in a way that other people do not is not communing with his fellow man. Now, some of that is their choice. They are scared of him. They avoid him. They have decided not to go back. but some of it is also his. They're like, we don't want the iodine, Beth.

That's not how we choose to live our life. Yeah, we're going for like a different kind of complexion out here in the Northern English son. But like, you know, he is waiting ultimately at the center of this bone temple and he does not turn them away until he does. He does say to Spike at the end, like, you should go. And that's interesting. And it's also interesting that he has not, as far as we know, like really absolutely. actively try to work his way into this community. He is content to be on his own.

And so I found that like somber and just sad and heavy. Very sad, very heavy. Can I just say that I don't want to be part of the Holy Island community either? So I don't... Bone Temple, more your vibe? Yeah, I'd rather hang out in the Bone Temple. Okay, my pal that I saw this movie with had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. two things that she wanted to point out specifically.

One is Conalingis is really having a moment and she said that when Jamie gone on his knees for Rosie. Number two is and she was speaking from personal experience with her dad, et cetera, et cetera, is that's not how it works

in terms of rendering flesh off the bone. So if you at home were like, I can build a backyard smoker. and just sort of like get a fresh white skull in mere minutes or hours. Don't try it. It's not how we're, apparently it's a lengthy boiling.

Keith's kind of lingus you can try at home. Absolutely. And we encourage it. But, but first and foremost, you can't just like burn it off. You have to like boil it off. It's a whole thing. Yeah. And secondly, if you were to burn it off, the bones would be charred.

They wouldn't be this beautiful glimbing white. I didn't know how much was that he had really perfected the timing. I will say of all the disgusting things in a very gross movie, the chunks of flesh washing away from the skull was like that was the one my skin crawled most. It was the worm slurping for me, but we all have our things. But the comedy of mistaking the shoelace for the worm, this just made it all worth it.

Did it? Okay. You tease this idea of Memento Mori and let us hear from the good doctor himself. Carlos, we play this clip. know the words Memento Mori? It means remember death. We don't need to do a whole side lesson about

the origins of Memento Mori in ancient Rome, or how it has permeated the stoicism movement, or how it permeates centuries and centuries of art. Any given great artist has done something that is skull-centric in their time and their day.

But the idea, and they articulate the film, so I'm just underlining what the film already does, but the idea of juxtaposing, especially in the art movements, juxtaposing something quite vivacious and full of life, something that is blooming, something that is like lush and all of that with a skull in any given still life or something like that, is to just say, death comes for us all, enjoy and relish what you have, like, and we talk about this a lot, this idea of, like, the, the fact that things end is what makes them worth having and, and, and, and worth living. Marcus Aurelius, you might have heard of him.

Yeah. Has this quote, think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. And I was thinking about this, there's this ancient Egyptian custom where during times of festivities, a skeleton we brought out with people. people cheering. Drink and be merry for when you're dead, you will look like this. I was trying to understand this glimpse we get again and again of this girl in this mask. The mask we see

used in target practice, we see it on the dummy when the young men of the village are practicing their archery. We see it on the dummy, and then we see it on the sort of like archery master has it on the top of his head in a sort of rakeish comical way. But we see this young girl with the mask on. I can't tell if it's real or not. But there's this like specter of her in the center of all the women bustling around getting getting the hall ready for the celebration for Spike. And then in the midst of the celebration of Spike, the girl with the death mask on her face. And so I was like, is this sort of like that ancient Egyptian custom of like a skeleton would be brought out in the midst of all the drinking and all the merriment to be like, yep, enjoy. Tomorrow you may die.

It's later than you think, whatever it is. I don't know. That was a visual that really haunted me and an eluded clear explanation from me. It does feed into this larger idea of folk horror, which, you know, if you saw Midsomar or if you saw Alex Garland's film Men, which is like just a pure to his bone folk horror kind of experiment.

But I was like, do they have their own memento more? practice on the Holy Island. Nowhere near as elaborately architectural as the beautiful bone temple that the good doctor has built here. But all of this is really interesting. What did the momentomori aspect do for you? First of all, I'd just like to compliment you not only on the beautiful history lesson, but on doing mere moments before what you then described, which was juxtaposing something

lush and pulsing with life with a skull, which is what happened when you talked about the cave kind of lingus and then the bone temple back to back. Yeah. Good work. Good work by you. Thanks. Thanks so much.

I just thought this was like, this whole stretch of the movie was incredible. Yeah. You know, it helps to have one of the greatest actors of all time imparting these lines, but like... Pretty nice. I mean, he's just, God, he's great. You know, on the one hand, it has to...

to be poetry. It has to be history. It has to be religion. It has to transcend something about the day-to-day experience. And also, like, the 12-year-old on the receiving end of it has to understand it innately, right? It has to speak to something like core to the human experience. I had not considered what you're identifying as a possibility about the masks and the role of maybe bringing that further into the camp as like a reminder. I was like, shouldn't be walking around with anything that for even a half a second looks like a face with blood oozing out of its eyes just seems unkind, honestly. Could be mistaken for an actual infected. So I found that worrying and also just kind of like a mood killer, but maybe like you're noting it has a purpose.

You know, there's like, I think that on the one hand, the way that this Momentumori idea is presented in the film is so big. like it is, and it's intended to be, right? It is intended to be something that is true for everyone, no matter what. That's the point, right? There's an inescapable aspect to this and it is the great unifier more than any other thing. Right. For that to work in such beautiful harmony with something that is so intimate and specific, the relationship between one mother and her child was just beautiful.

Like, it would, it's, that's a delicate thing to try to pull off in a story. but when a story does it, it can just, it's like a mentos in a Coke bottle, explosion of just potency in a good way, not in a messy way. It's like, a lot of explosions of fluids in the movie is noted. You know, I think that one of the like tendencies in life can be like, well, you don't understand. This is my thing. This is my pain. This is my loss.

This is the thing I want. Right. Nobody else understands what it's like. And that is true, right? Like Spike's relationship with his mother is his own. and losing that, sends him on a journey that will be uniquely his. Right. But for our iodine, I can't bring myself to say iodine, but I am not really fine since so,

nor am I you, nor am I you. And so that's okay. I, if, you know, for this coded, dart blowing, eccentric to be the person who helps Spike accept something about, like the inevitability of an end without then like having a tip into, and so don't appreciate. It's like, no, actually, the point is to appreciate, to recognize this moment that will come so that you cherish what you have while it's there, you know, again, that's like, it's a bigger idea than it could fit in an entire movie, and it was like one stretch in one act of one film,

and it was certainly the highlight. So I love that, and I can't wait to see what they do with this character, because, like, again, maybe the tonal dissonance will remain kind of core moving forward. But, like, this is just a very different vibe than track suit Jimmy at the end. So I'm, like, curious to see how that all fits together moving forward. But maybe that's, maybe that's the point. All right. So we're about to get to Trach Suit Jimmy.

And we're going to talk about the Bone Temple briefly after that. We're going to zip through the rest of this. One final, would you fuck this zombie moment for you. This is, and again, definition of zombie may vary. you might disagree with me, that's okay. Is it the Night King's Army? The Night King's not a zombie, but the whites, you know, is it the Night King's Army? No.

I didn't think about the White. I should have done Carcy. Carcy is zombie carsey. I would talk Carsey for sure. Yeah. That was a real mess for me. Okay. Speaking of beautiful women, this is the corpse bride as played by Helena Bottom Carter.

Yeah, absolutely. That is the corpse bride is played by Helena. Okay. So you are, so it's just Billy from Hocus Pocus is where you draw on the line. The Corpse Bride has exposed ribcage. Yeah, that's usually, as I stated earlier, I know it from me, but... Just like, bone o'clock, but bone o'clock in every sense for you, for the corpse bride? Okay. You heard it here first. All right, three out of four, Mallory Wood. Fuck that sounds like open-minded. All right, let's zip through the Jimmy Gang and the Bone Temple,

what we know about the Bone Temple. Okay, so we get a book-ended approach. As we mentioned, we open with Jimmy. we close with Jimmy and the other Jimmy's. And we've got telitubbies. We've got the well-known UK media figure Jimmy Saville here. And we've got a clockwork orange, sort of all in the mix of this very surprising, totally different approach to the very end of this movie. Spike is cornered. He's being chased by the hoard. And then here come these pop-coloured.

flipping through the air, almost supernatural levels of martial arts. You refer to them as a track suit mafia. Why not? The Jimmy's are here. The Jimmy gang is so interesting to me. Again, we'll talk about what we know about the Bowden Temple in a second, but this idea of a couple things.

Mastopolitan nostalgia, once again, from Alex Garland. So there's like the telitubbies, which is the last thing. that Jimmy was watching before everything went to hell. So that is something that is imprinted on him. And then Jimmy Saville, who is an absolute creep show of a human being, but at the time of the outbreak of this particular rage virus, had not yet been exposed. As sort of like, what if Bill Cosby in 2002 or something like that for American audiences?

So to revere Jimmy Saville without knowing the reality of Jimmy Saville, to elevate Elevate the telotubbies of all things inside of this package of pop culture that, again, Spike who grew up on Holy Island that has, whereas there's no electricity. So there's certainly no telitubbies. And probably people aren't talking to him about Jimmy Saville. So there's no exposure to pop culture. So like thinking about Spike alone in the world, lost his mother, rejected his father, kicked out by Dr. Kelson, right, is particularly vulnerable, I think, to something. as market-friendly cultish as what we find in the great Jack O'Connell. My guy, I love Jack O'Connell, the fact that he crushed it in sinners and shows up to do this

at the end of this movie. And season two of Rogue Heroes is his year, like, just an all-timeer banger year for Jack O'Connell. But, like, makes me so worried for Spike and what influence he might sway he might fall under because he has no defenses against marketing of branding of this variety. It's a very muted green and brown color palette throughout, you know, like his dad is wearing this like dark maroon and then we get to these like candy colors, skittles. And it's like, what is this kid to do?

How dazzling? Taste the rainbow. So I just think this is jarring in the moment, exceedingly jarring when you're watching the film, but makes me, and probably should have been a post-credits tease for the sequence. It's basically a Marvel post-credit sequence pre-credits at the end of this movie, but teasing the already shot Bone Temple sequel. I think that would have been a better structural choice, even though it's literally just the difference of moving it back behind a few scrolling names.

Yeah. The marketing potency point is such a good one. I love that. And, like, you know, in terms of what is similar, but then, like, rendered in a different form, Spike has a lot of exposure to faith and religious scripture. They're wall hangings all over the village and these ideas, right, about the role that faith has in society are both, like, literalized in the text of the community and then also just obviously, like, on the mind of the movie. Confronting. this perversion of like the flock. Like TV and you know evangelical sort of.

Yeah. Yeah. Like let's let's sprinkle some righteous gemstones like into our 28 years later. Like the idea of like perverting faith and like seeing zealotry in some sort of extreme form and the way that a person who is in a position of. power or control amasses and then maintains a following. I think this is a great thing for the... I thought the end of the movie I was like, wait, what? But like, this is a really rich text for the films to explore,

and I'm glad they're doing it. Like, of course, a lot of people are trying to survive and build families, but also there would be people who were trying to do horrible things, and there would be people who would try to control other people. And there would be people who, right? So like to explore that in the form of this person we met as a young boy at the beginning of the film who is just in this frozen state of arrested development at the moment where the world ended for him with blood splattering across his little television. Yeah. That was another one where like, you know, it's the beginning of the outbreak at that point.

So nobody knew. But when he's hiding under the grate in the, I'm like just the, oh my God. Yeah, close your mouth, kid. Close your eyes. your mouth. Oh, man. All right, Bone Temple. Yeah.

Here's what we know. We're just going to run through this quickly. No spoilers, obviously. This is just sort of like what's out there. Jack O'Connell and the other jimmies are going to be there. So Jack O'Connell is Sir Jimmy Crystal. But then we've got Aaron Kellerman, Meph's Nest herself. The Flag Smashers are here as one of the jimmies.

Robert Rhodes, Silver Dennis from House of the Dragon is here as Jimmy, Jimmy. So we've got the jimmies. Ray Fines is definitely back as Dr. Ian Kelson. Obviously, Alfie is here as Spike. I believe Aaron Taylor Johnson is in this as Jamie, because would we be surprised if Jamie breaks the rules and goes out to find Spike, we would not be surprised. But they're keeping it a little vague.

So maybe they intend this as like a day six machina surprise. Dad's here. Killian Murphy as Jim. Jim, our original protagonist from 28 days later. I say bring back Naomi Harris as well while you're out of you, you cowards. But I'm thrilled to have Killian Murphy here as well. Written by Alex Garland, directed by Nia DeCostas. Mallory already said this is coming out in January.

They already shot it. So soon. Back to back. And Ray Fines has said that his character is even more eccentric in the next movie. And that, no, duh, the Bone Temple is a main location of the film. And it's sort of setting up this, like, Dr. Kelson versus the Jimmy's. And for the soul of Spike or something like that, I don't know, inside of the context of the Bone Temple.

Anything, any predictions, we've already, like, alluded to a couple ideas, but any predictions you want to make for Bone Temple? Or what are you most interested in watching? All of it, honestly. I think that overall, to thinking about the fate of the third film, I'm like, I'm happy that this next, the second movie is coming out so soon. That's really fun. I don't love the idea of getting two of them within like a six-month window and then having no idea if we're going to have to wait for years on end to see the third one. That's not the pacing that I consider ideal. You know, I, on the one hand, I'm so interested in Spike's journey and thought this was just such a impactful character or performance that like, how can Spike not be my pick. On the other hand, as you noted, we're in the Jack O'Connell moment, so that's just pretty fun to look forward to. But how can my answer not be like, right, fine? Especially given that it's called the Bone Temple, that certainly promises that we're going

to be spending a lot of time rooted in his world and his experience. If the jimmies are out there slaughtering left and right with very vivid, flashy acrobatics, and Dr. Kelson is like, I know how to neutralize these horrors and I still won't kill them. That's a pretty core tension. Yeah. So I'm curious to see that. And yeah, my expectation would be that Jamie would go try to find Spike based on how the movie ended and the letter that they, you know, that Spike leaves with the baby.

So that would be my hope. As far as Killian Murphy returning his gym, I'm trying not to get too excited because I don't want to like hype myself up and then be disappointed by like the volume of his presence. skip ahead 15 seconds if you don't or like whatever. But my understanding from what Danny Boyle has said, and I really think part of this is a gambit to get funding, is Killie Murphy very minimal in the second movie, but will be central in the third movie if Sony gives us the money to do it.

So, you know. Sounds great. Very smart. Very smart, Danny Boyle. All right. Anything else you want to say about this movie? I don't think so. I've got a blast talking to you about it.

Same. Again, I really don't want to rewatch it, but I have really good time thinking about it and talking about it with you. Can't wait for Bone Temple. Very excited for that. The last thing we're doing today, and we've already got a little long, so we might just zip through this. But the last thing we're going to do today is our pop culture zombie survival team, and here are the rules. We can pick any fictional character. This is a joint team that we are coming up with we just decided to do.

Any fictional character from any house of our friends. friendly IP that we would agree best fill the following archetypes. Any fictional genre characters allowed except for one category with parameters. Okay, so these are our categories. The leader, the weapons expert, the medic, the bite hider, the apocalypse kid, the most heartbreaking death. And here's the one parameter. No kids, no pets in this category.

Yes. And then the last one's standing. Great. So as we put together our team, who do you want in the leadership role, Mallory Rubin? So our, first of all, I'm excited to doing this as a shared experience. It feels right for the prompt. The goal is to move forward together. If we bring people from a fictional universe, they come with their, they're in the world of 28 years later, but they come with the powers or weapons or tech from their world. Within reason, I think. We don't want to build a team of like just everybody. Can't be bitten.

So, like, what's the point? Yeah. But next tier of, like, the thing that make them eligible, like, are relevant in addition to just their experience, which is probably a big, big factor. Okay. I'm going to try to not repeat my, like, not repeat universes in my prime nomination. Here's my pick for leader, John Snow from Game of Thrones. He doesn't want it, but that's why he'd be well-suited for it, Joe. Listen, has faced the Night King, looked into his eyes, as he might tell us in Tavos,

has beaten White Walkers, has faced the army of the dead. That experience feels vital here. The curls, the fur, perhaps just helps block an orifice or two, if there's a spray of blood thinking about that as well. Listen, he's got long claw. He's got a valerian steel sword, dragon glass. These fuckers and 28 years later are just getting by, as previously discussed, with some wood arrows that they whittle at home. John coming in with Dragon Glass and Valerian Steel is going to prove vital for our group's survival.

He is, while we have had some notes over the year on his military strategy, he is a seasoned military leader. He's a family man. He will do anything for the people that he loves and also crucially, because this is set at the very beginning of the film in the Scottish Highlands and then in the north of England, he's used to bad weather. And we need that. We can't have somebody who's like, sorry, it's snowed. I'm out. Like, John's been beyond the wall. John's been at Castle Black. John's been at Winterfell. He's ready to roll. He's my nominee for leader. Who you got? I think these are like the most on-brand things that we could possibly come up with because you have presented for years. And I have a similar thing where I don't want to repeat Worlds is my main nominee for each category. Yeah. Stephen Rogers. And I know

that this is really boring. And we talk about Steve Rogers all the time. But like we just talked about him on our speeches pod as like in terms of keeping morale up with love and respect to John Snow. Like I don't know that he was like the greatest like speech giver. He's a brooder. Yeah, he's a brooder. He's not like a we can do this. Also thinking about Steve Rogers' skill set, like even if he isn't like as super soldier serumy as, you know, if let's see he loses some of that potency inside of this world, he still has the shield that he can throw that can probably decapitate like an entire horde in one go. Certainly.

So again, once again, these fuckers with their bows and arrows have a lot to learn. And I think either long claw or a freaking shield will do a lot of extra damage. So which do you want to pick? Okay, well, let me ask you a question that might influence our decision. We both limited ourselves to like one character per fictional universe in our nominations. But what about for our shared team? I ask because we might need to put a pin in this until you hear my Marvel, my MCU nominee. I know.

I have another Marvel nominee that I'm actually more attached to than I am to Steve. Okay, so maybe we like, should we do John? Pencil and John. We can always come back to a category. I'm going to pencil and John Snow and we can come back. Okay. My MCU nominee is in the next category. Okay.

I do have a runner-up nominee that I'm very open to here, but this is the Tony Stark spot, I think weapons expert. Listen, weapons evolution across many experience sets from the arms race to just his basement lab. Genius inventor, I'm not sure if you've heard.

It's also a billionaire. Yeah, Playboy, Anthropist. Joanna, what could be more useful, genuinely what? In the zombie rage virus apocalypse,

then Tony Stark built this in a cave with the box of scraps. No matter what. Do you think just taking apart Dr. Kelson's skull smoker, he could build himself a new set of armor? Yeah. Well, I'm like also, this is one of the questions. Like, does he have his armor with him already? Because if he has the nanotech, this is another, like,

not only is that super helpful for him, activate the tech. Every orifice is covered. He's not going to be infected, but he can also activate the nanosheel, offer protection to other people. Obviously, tons of weapons to use for the fight, but also to protect others. He can get it done on his own. He can work inside of a team willing to make the sacrifice play, as we know. The fact that whatever is around them in a given part of the countryside at any moment in time, he will be able to turn into something useful feels really valuable.

I don't know that he can do a lot with, like, mud and sticks, but built it in a cave. with a box of scraps. Yeah, but scraps were metal. Okay. What could he do with that frisbee? Great question. Think about it. I'm tempted to go with your first two picks here.

I need to skip ahead to my main Marvel entry, though. Tell me. Okay. To let you know. Which category? It's the bite hider. This was the category I had the hardest time with. And it's definitely Loki.

Like, it's definitely Loki. in terms of the person in the zombie movie. This is basically a personality hire. This is someone who's going to be kind of a bastard, but really, really fun. Some other options I have here are Dr. Gaius Baltar or Benjamin Linus. You know what I mean? Those are great.

They are fun. Yeah. But they're going to hide the bite and that's going to cause some problems. Yeah. So, okay, the bite hider was the one I struggled with the most because, like, we need them to be capable of hiding the bite, but also still a viable member of our team, which is difficult balance to strike. So, like, obviously, Ellie has hidden her bites many times, but that's distinct to that universe. I don't know if it carries over as much.

I was thinking, like, would this be a good spot for a Star Wars character? It has to be a character who would be capable of making the choice to hide the bite, but then also, like, someone who, you know, a little like, these aren't the bites you're looking for, right? I feel like this category is not about the ability to hide the bite. It's like who is the asshole that you want on your team anyway? Yes. Right. Yeah. My Star Wars suggestion was going to be Ezra because he like, you know, dabbles in the seduction to the dark side without telling people that he's like keeping a stiff holocron around for example.

Yeah. I was going to ask you for bite hider what you thought about, about Louie from interview of the vampire. Oh. But I don't know if we're mixing too many. All of this is fun. I'm going to bites there. I feel so bullish about Loki, though. How about this?

Can we compromise? Let's do Loki there, and I have an alternate to present you for weapons expert. Okay, tell me. Dingerian. Love it. Let's get Star Wars in there. We have, just like Tony, all of the Orifice is recovered, which is just super helpful. He's got tons of weapons with him and experience with various different weapons.

I love this. We've got battle prowess, but also, most importantly of all, we want our weapons expert to all have a heart of gold. Who loves a fucking found family more than did Jarn? No one. I love this. My candidates were, I had John Wick in there. But does not, your, your armor argument is like, is a really, is a really good one.

Okay. Fantastic. Loki for Bight hiders. It's absolutely inspired. All right. So our leaders, John Snow, our weapons expert is Mando. Ando. Bight hider is Loki.

Medic. Medic. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I've got three people I would like to put forward here. Let's have it.

And you may note, as is a theme often with our, we've got a lot of men here on the list. I have a woman to present here. I'm thrilled to say I have a woman. I've got Dr. Martha Jones. Okay. From Dr. Who? I've got Dr. Juliet Burke from Lost.

Great one. And I've got, this is my number one, Dr. Dana Scully from The X-Files. those are all really good um i have a doctor who nominee coming elsewhere for you which i can either mention now if we want to consider martha or we can we can is it under heartbreaking death it's not it's under last one standing okay um oh i like all three of your suggestions let me throw my my two out out there to you and we can consider them all i went less core medical professional and more um the ability the healing prowess Okay.

So. Oh, supernatural healing powers? Could be, or just the expertise or both. So my first nominee is Hermione Granger. First of all, just in which you can do magic pretty handy, but also like someone with potion's prowess, the ability to like navigate the wilderness and say like, okay, our traditional medicine has run out, but I can make you a pulsist. I can make you a sound.

Someone who could do magic is good in any category. Someone who can do magic feels like we should pick, we should make. We do have Loki. That's true. You know, okay. So who's your other pick? Elrond. Elron's really good.

Can we come back to this one? Let's come back to this one. This is a really hard one. And that's my old, that's my, well, I had like a possibility for Lord of the Rings elsewhere, but that's my, that's my main Lord of the Rings. My last one's standing is Lord of the Rings. Okay. All right.

So let's put a pin in that. So we're on Apocalypse Kid. Apocalypse Kid. 11 from Stranger Things. Daphne Keene is either Lyra Bell Aqua or X-23. Lira was my next suggestion. So if we both have Lira, maybe we should go in Lira. I think the case for 11 is like being able to snap next with your mind feels pretty useful.

The ability to change channels on the TV not as useful. The ability to stop fans not as useful, but the ability to just quirk your head in someone's neck snaps is pretty useful. Listen, does that work on a zombie? Or can a zombie keep going with a broken neck? You know what? Here's the thing about 28 years later, days later, or weeks later, all. the loyators. The zombies are actually pretty easy to kill. The infected are pretty easy to kill. He had her heart. Head her heart. I mean,

header heart is like pretty easy. Eleven can just explode on a heart pretty easily. Eleven can disintegrate other beings. Now granted, you do run the risk of opening a gate to another dimension when you do that and that's tough. But yeah, had Lyra and Will both. Yeah, what about Lyra and Will as a package deal? Let's do that. Okay. And we get the subtle Yeah, we get the subtle name. It's great. We can hop through worlds if one gets too zonvified. Okay.

Most heartbreaking death, no kids or pets allowed. What do you have? Why are you giggling? All right. So, oh, my God. This is hard. I was like, I didn't pick a character who has died in a story. Just like, the way I thought about this was who would, who can we all agree?

This would shatter us. Right. And so I'm being a little meadow with this, right? Because I think you have to have a performer portraying the character who has a universal approval rating. Okay. And so I am nominating for most heartbreaking death. The tragedy that would unite us all. Cobb, Van. Mr. D. as portrayed by Jason Manzuchas in Percy Jackson. That's illegal. That's illegal. This is illegal.

Nothing, there could be what I, would any of us want to happen, no. We can put a friend of the pod in the team. But what great air force would unite the team and then losing the god of tits and wine? Mr. D. Nothing could stop us after such a heart. Counter. Counter. This is my doctor who.

Oh, okay. All right. And it's Wilf. I can't handle that. I can't handle that. It's too painful still. It's too painful. Now I'm going to cry. Now I'm going to sob. Let's go back to Z. Who's your last one standing? All right. So I have two nominees for last one standing. They're both a little, I think, on the nose and obvious, but I still think they work. The doctor. Yeah. From Doctor Who? Obviously, the Tartis, helpful in a zombie apocalypse with quarantine zone limits for conventional travel.

The time lord. I was thinking way too mortal, honestly. I'm trying to make it out. Regeneration. Yeah. The experience is certainly that is needed to meet the moment. But in terms of this like time lord lifespan, the long life of a time lord, on the one hand, the loneliness of watching everybody around you die in the zombie apocalypse, sadly all too familiar for the doctor.

But because of that, able to withstand, able to withstand the tragedy, the unrelenting tragedy and also just can maybe live long enough, can live long enough to see the resurgence of man, which I think. sounds great. And then kind of a related like... Yeah. Spiritual cousin pick would be Ang from Avatar

the last airbender. Listen, what's a causeway to a remote island when you can be the bridge between realms? Wow. You know? Reincarnation, once again,

master of all the elements and all the forms of bending. You just water bend the water out of the way. You know what I mean? Then you can use the causeway whenever you want. Or you could just like airball

speed his way across. Okay. All of these are great picks. Here's my argument. And again, I went way more mortal than you did, and I think that was an error, but that's okay, this is a collaborative team. Frodo saved the Shire, but not for him, but he did save it for Sam-Wise Gamgee. So that Sam-Wise Gamgey and Rosie Cotton could live happily ever after in the Shire.

I'll never pick against Sam. Never. It is very important to me that Sam survive the zombie apocalypse. I'll never pick against Sam. Never. Okay. Never. That means I think you can have Jason Minticus for most...

I'm just going to put Jason. It's not even Mr. D. No, it's Mr. D. It's just Jason. No. No. It is Mr. D. the god of tits and wine. And if Elron is off the map for Medic, because we're doing Sam, let's wrap up Medic.

We could also do Dr. Guy's Beltar. He would like. I mean, that would be... If I were picking non-house of our properties, I would go to the pit and pick Dr. Mel King. Just shout out Dr. Mel King, an absolute legend. But who did you have other than Elrond? Hermione. Oh, Hermione Granger.

Who did you have you, Martha? Martha Jones, Dr. Juliette Burke from Loss and Dana Scully from the ex-fuss. Boy, that's a hard one. They're all good. They're all good. Do you want to do Hermione? I mean, it feels like having magic would be helpful. Yeah.

It would also help us. She said Loki can do magic, so we have magic. It would help us in our reputation. I think we should pick a woman here for our reputations as women in a podcast space. This should be a woman. Because we don't even have a single woman in her by yourself. We put Lyra and Will. Yeah, that's out to make the cut.

What's wrong with us? Oh, man. Great stuff. Is Rosie with Sam? Maybe we can get a couple of chicks in here. Sam was Gingji and Rosie Cotton. Let's do Hermione Granger. Okay.

Oh, man. So our zombie survival team is the leader is John, I think this is a terrible pick for a leader, but that's fine. The leader is John Snow. Weapons expert, Mando. Medic, Hermione Granger. I was willing to take a L on all of those categories so I could get my W on, bite hider, Loki, the most important thing to me. Yeah.

Apocalypse Kid, Lyra, Bel Aqua, and Will. Most heartbreaking death, our pal Jason Mendeke's. No, Mr. D. And last one standing, Samwise Gamji. Oh, man. I think it's strong. I think we have a lot of big personalities, but also a lot of team players. We have some supernatural aptitude and tools.

I look forward to watching John Snow try to manage Loki and Jason Manzerkins. I think he's up for it. I think he's up for it. We could still, it is not too late to sub-Steeve Rogers and his leader, but we would have to pick a different bite hider. No, Loki is non-negotiable for me. Okay. We're stuck with John.

John Snow is. We could always put... Oh, man. Ellen Ripley was another idea I had for leader. Or Buffy Summers, have you heard of her? but we'll come back to Buffy once you've actually watched a buffy. Yeah, okay. On Buffy, yeah.

Anything else you want to say about any of this, including any more time you want to spend on Samson and his giant dong? She thought it was a very memorable movie penis. The Bone Temple itself. Very memorable indeed. Okay. Great to chat about this film with you. I guess we'll be doing it again if I'm alive.

In January. In January. Yeah. See you back here. Half a year away. For Bone Temple. example. Thank you to Arjuna Ranka Pal, who helped us come up with some ideas for what we were doing on the pod today. Thank you to John Richter for his tremendous work on this podcast now and always. Thank you to Carlos Chirobogo, who surprised us with a few zombie moans and groans, and it was astonishing stuff. Excellent soundboard work. Thank you so much, Carlos. And thank you to Joe Me at Dinner on social. I'm Jonah Robbins and that's Malie Rubin. We'll be back with Stranger Things and a bunch of other stuff this summer. Really, really excited to.

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