Upstream - Episode 17.5: Spy Kids 2

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

You know our rules. It's the second movie in a series or nothin, Babey! And to this end we watched the incredible 'Spy Kids 2; The Island of Lost Dreams' with our dear friend Tom Walker. Written, Directed, Produced, and I think even Scored by Robert Rodriguez, It's got a star-studded cast, it's fast-paced, irreverent, and it's executive producer is Harvey Weinstein! Whats not to love? you can find Tom on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/tomwalkerisgood and follow his podcast with the wonderful Demi Lardner, BigSoftTitty.png, at https://open.spotify.com/show/5adssOBSA6usmO9Ec1gs88?si=XbbfBrsUTnKKmGDqO860Dw&dl_branch=1 and watch his twitch streams where he drives a big beautiful truck at https://www.twitch.tv/tomwalker Find the full episode at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/posts/56442801  *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond Do you think God stays in heaven for fear of what he's created, here on earth?

Do you think God stays in heaven because He too lives in fear of what He's created? Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am Alice Gortvock, Kelly joining me, Devon, Abigail Thorn, and we are joined by very special guest Tom Walker. Tom, how's it going? Alice, it's so good to be here. I just said before we started the recording that it's incredible being on the call because the three of you have kind of combined intellects and knowledge bases where this is a waste of your time. Whereas for me, this is pretty much a good use of me.

This is about where old Timbo maxes out. It says, you can put me in for the kids movie. I'll watch it. I'll say wow a few times. Just watch and sounds for old Timbo. That's right. Podcast microphones are deploying very slickly in a CGI way out of tiny suitcases.

It does not look good. Just watching a fucking kids movie clapping like a seal. That's right. That's right. This is the same response as I would have to a mobile over my crib. The amount of whiten sounds is movie A plus plus. Thank you so much, Robert Rodriguez.

This is, the technology is about as sophisticated. Absolutely a movie to say wow to, and just sort of what slack, dude, we watched Spikids too. The island of lost dreams. And the reason why we watched Spikids too, the island of lost dreams and not Spikids, is because we have a rule on this podcast that when there's a non-bond franchise

involved, we're never going to watch the first one of that franchise. We're jumping right in at the middle instalments. Absolutely. No way we're getting in at the shallow end. Oh boy, has that paid off for us this time? I'm so glad. I'm also not seeing spikids. I don't know if I can do what the fuck was going on. That's made like...

Well, I think the premise is very much in the title, isn't it? No, we're the Spice so little. What are they doing down there? And again, what's happening? How'd they get all that small? You've got to assume a bunch of these guys were introduced in Spy Kids 1 and like you're supposed to know who they are because there's a point in this where they just ring up a guy who has four heads. Yeah.

No fucking idea who this guy is. Plane Mike Tony Shuhub. Fuck, that was genuinely like that's the other big thing about spy kids too. The island of Lost Dreams is the cast that they got for this. It's so good. Looking Alan coming isn't it? It's a studded cast. They got Alan coming.

Alan coming. The camera and it genuinely felt like a flashbang had gone off in my apartment. It was incredible making eye contact with Alan coming through my laptop. It felt great. They got Alan coming, they got Ricardo Montalban, they got Antonio Banderas, they got cheats from Cheats and Shung, they got Steve Bussemit, like Robert Rodriguez called in

every single casting favor. Donnie Trayow. You've never had Donnie Trayow. Oh, I want to know. I mean, I want to know if he asked San Mahayek, right? Because he must have done it. And she must have said no to spike heads to the island of lost dreams.

I think the first one was like surprisingly, a total smash hit. And everyone was like, whoa, what, like this could be the next big franchise. Like, is it the first one was like surprisingly a total smash hit and everyone was like, whoa, what's like this could be the next big franchise. Like, the first one, I, I dimly remember seeing it as a child. Oh, I think I've seen some of it. And like, I don't remember it being all that good, but I think like it just came out of nowhere and just like made shit tons of money and everyone was like, oh, wow, like, I guess like, let's do spike it for now on.

It's 2002. It gives a shit like. There's no rules. We can do anything baby. 9-11 just happened like fuck it's spike it's fucking. Yeah, we're fighting their child. We haven't gone to war in Iraq yet. This is what a divided nation needed to heal after 9-11 was spike it's to the island of lot streams. If they'd made a few more of these, then they wouldn't have gone into Iraq, you know. That was a third one, which you might watch at some point. I was in a particular position watching this because I remember having watched this a shit slowed as a kid. And while I was a target audience for this movie and I remember being like, wow, this is great.

And now watching it as a grown adult. That's right. There was a point where I realized I was in for it, and it was two minutes into the fucking movie where the president's daughter had appeared and a man introduced himself to her with the sentence, Yeehaw, I'm Dinky Winks. I'm Dinky Winks. And I went, okay. I'm dinky winks. I'm dinky winks. Okay. I'm dinky winks. Dinky winks

because we still. Paxton. Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton. I did look this up and dinky winks is a recurring character in the latest Spy Kids movies where he appears with a much better opening line and I think Spy Kids 3 where he shows up and says somebody ring the dinkster and that has been in my head for about a week now. Somebody, somebody ring the dinkster. Oh, I just a beer for which I could enter a signed bar. I'm letting it wash over me like a high-cook. Yeah, I mean, it was a riff of that in my brain. I guess I did. I could say dip poem.

Yeah. I guess somebody must have rung the dinkster. So who not ask for whom the dinkster rings. We begin at a theme park in Texas. I think it's like six likes over Texas, where somebody has rung the dinkster. And the dinkster, dinky winks, operates this theme park,

at which the president's daughter is visiting. And I just sort of put this together, right, with this sort of like, Texas president. I had just had a bunch of my blood taken out before I started watching this. She's surrounded by secret service agents. And so I just put this together, and it's just like,

us, the theme park version of JFK. Dinky Winks leads like a cabal of Texas oil man. Just sort of like, leaning out of the sixth floor window of the Texas book depository with somebody ring the dinkster. You're taking that to be the last thing you hear. Which is pretty instantly.

JFK rung the dinkster, yes. He did, and he answered that call I don't know what was in the blood that they took out But you might want to look into having a put back in Get the stuff that I need to make me normal They were important enzymes or the movie understanding yeah, there's no there's something really weird about the way this movie looks, right? And it's partly like 2002 effects, but also just the way it's shot. And so like the lighting and stuff for Texas is fully like, it looks like there's a pretty film to me.

I don't know. Maybe like they just, all of my movie understanding enzymes are gone. But I was unable to shake this thought of somebody ringing the dinkster right into JFK's fucking cranium. Truly, truly JFK got wrong by the dinkster. The reason why it looks so dog shit is because they fucking all of it was filmed on digital. Like maybe they just hadn't figured out how to make that look good, but 90% of this movie looks like it was green screened in even when they were fully on location. Yeah, it looks a bit like one of those sort of like 90s full-motion video games.

I was absolutely going to say yes, it looks like the trailer for a video game that isn't actually gameplay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it has this sort of weird air unreality about it. But yeah, it's like weirdly slick. I couldn't tell whether it's because the effects were dated, which they are, or whether it was just because this is a different kind of CGI than you might see. And like, because a lot of like Marvel films, like it all looks kind of the same. It's very like slick. Whereas this Whereas this, I couldn't tell, but maybe this is a different studio doing it, and it's a different style, but yeah,

the special effects are like weirdly nauseating is the word. Yeah, yeah. So the president's daughter, Alexandra, goes on a theme park ride, and then strands herself at the top of it with... Deliberately. Yeah, with a device, a little muguffin that she has stolen from the Oval Office

that day. So the secret service, call in the Spy Kids because they're all too heavy to climb up the thing. And we get introduced... This is quite funny line where they go, don't we have any smaller agents? And then they kind of look at each other like, shit, we've got a fucking call the spike. Oh wait a minute. Multiple times, yeah, multiple times the dialogue

in this movie made me laugh. Oh yeah. Which is why you want for a comedy move. It's wonderful. Yeah. And not something I was expecting from a kid's movie from 2002. No, no, no.

It's just like there's little nods to the stupidity of, or the ridiculousness, I should say, not the stupidity of the... It's all very tongue-in-cheek. Yes, and also, I feel like some of that extends to the CGI where it feels like what they're looking for is not realism because, hey, that's not possible. No.

But there's some nods later on to the old style of stop motion and it feels like what they're trying to capture with a lot of it is like an action figure feel. That's a very interesting point that Tom's making, isn't it? Would be a shame if I stopped you listening to the rest unless you go to patreon.com slash kill James Bond and sign up to get bonus episodes every two weeks.

Just five pounds a month will get you access to our backmark, which is damn near an entire day's worth of content. If you were to just listen to it all through and one go, which I wouldn't recommend, maybe you should listen to it while you're doing something. So take your mind off it, or maybe while you're trying to go to sleep. I don't know, I don't tell you how to do these things. Sorry, I've had a little bit of a drink. I love you.