My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 383 - REST IN PEACE JAMES EARL JONES

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Robbie and Clem are back for a quick hitter this week, discussing Destin Daniel Cretton getting the nod to be the MCU's 'Spider-Man 4' director and paying tribute to the life and career of James Earl Jones. #JamesEarlJones #SpiderMan4 #DestinDanielCretton **************************************** My Mom's Basement is a weekly podcast hosted by Robbie Fox, started in March 2019, to discuss movies, music, comic books, wrestling, mixed martial arts, and more with his friends and idols alike! Subscribe on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-moms-basement/id1457255205 Follow Robbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatrobbiefox Follow Robbie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieBarstool My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basementYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello and welcome to My Mom's Basement and a quick My Mom's Basement, well I guess it's a quick hitter, a quick quick hitter, there you go. We did an episode with Nate this week, I did an episode with Nate this week, all about the Oasis reunion, our second spin-off episode, Oasis related, talking about getting tickets and the lineup rumors and all that. So that's sort of like the longer episode this week.

But I wanted to hop on here with Clem and talk about a couple news stories because there are a couple things worth talking about in the basement and breaking some things down. So how are we doing, Clem? Doing good. Quick, quick episode. We have to make this under 10 minutes flat. Under 10 minutes flat? I don't know if we'll get that. That's quite quick. We, quick episode. We have to make this under 10 minutes flat. Under 10 minutes flat? I don't know if we'll get that.

That's quick, quick. We're wasting time here. We're debating semantics on the word quick. Double quick. 10 minutes max. And I'm traveling, so that's part of the reason why we're doing something quick. I'm in the basement this week, obviously, but tomorrow, 7 a.m., I'm flying to Las Vegas. It's finally UFC Noche at the Sphere.

So I'm going to be inside the Las Vegas Sphere seeing whatever they have planned for us. We don't know. We don't know what it's going to be. But Dana said there's a movie that's going to play throughout the night. Between Every Fight is a different chapter of the movie that talks about Mexican combat sports history, celebrates Mexican Independence Day and all that. He's also promised if someone spots all of the Easter eggs throughout this movie, they get $25,000.

The first person to spot all the Easter eggs. So this is like, it's the perfect basement boy event, I feel like. I'm always searching for Easter eggs in this Marvel, Star Wars world we've got down here in the basement. It's maybe prepared me to win $25,000 at UFC Noche. Well, I mean, that kind of affects my question of, are you going to be, you know, in a certain state of mind at the sphere? I feel like you have to kind of be in that.

No, I can't. I can't do that to the UFC. I can't show up all blazed and I have my media past. I forgot that it is like a work thing. So, all right. We'll have to wait until next time then for Bob. Next time. You know, the first concert I go to at this fear you know when oasis comes to this sphere

we'll be in a different state of mind for sure but yeah this one i'll take it in all sober i'm almost worried that i'm gonna get like motion sickness like i did in disney oh robbie fox i'm a pretty drama mean to the sphere. Is that crazy? You know what? I was going to rip you for it. I think that's the move. Just bring it just in case. Yeah. It's like if you're not – they probably sell it at like the store,

but just get it. It'll be like half the price. It'll be like $20 if you buy it at the sphere gift store. Bring something with you just in case. Better safe than sorry with that stuff. Well, I guess I was good on the Simpsons ride that we did at Universal. Star Tours fucked me up, but I guess that one also moves a lot. I think I'll be fine.

Me and Jose, the morning of the card, are going to go on a comic haul. We're going to go get some comics in Vegas. I bet Vegas has some really cool comic stores and shit like that, so that's going to be a lot of fun. And I think the world needs more Easter egg hunts in general. Not even Easter egg hunts, but hunts where you hide stuff in like regular rooms. Easter egg is such an electric Christmas gets a lot of love because there's so many gifts,

but the Easter egg hunt is more fun than almost anything other than opening the monster Christmas gifts that are awesome. Yeah. And reminder, speaking of Jose and comics, the 26th will be the comic book club episode with Jose. We're going to be breaking down the original Secret Wars storyline. So go check it out. You could get it at your local comic store or a bunch of people told me if you just subscribe to the Marvel, like $11 a month,

you get pretty much every comic from Marvel history on your phone. I'm more of a person who likes the physical book. I like reading it like that. But if you're just in a pinch or if you just want to save some money, that's the way to go. And you could read it on there. You could get an audiobook version of it. There's tons of different ways you could go. But I think it's gonna be fun breaking down Secret Wars with a true Marvel Comics expert. I just cracked the spine. I'm going to use the lingo of the industry. I cracked the spine yesterday. And basically they give you like, I don't know, there's like 20 pages where it sets up what all the other comic books, like, oh, this happened in X-Men, this happened in Spider-Man, because obviously there's all these characters from different worlds and they didn't just go,

here's secret words, they had to get you there. So it was pretty cool reading that and then knowing what comes out of it in the past. And they give a backstory to why this happened, all very cool stuff that I can't wait to discuss with Jose in the pod. So the topics I want to discuss today, there's really two big ones. The first of which being Spider-Man four has its director, Destin, Daniel Cretton,

who did Shang-Chi and the legend of the 10 rings will be directing it. Chris McKenna and Eric Somers or Somers will return to write it. They did no way home. I saw some people people almost shitting on that decision and they were like, oh, Marvel's playing it safe with the writers. And I'm like, guys, you want connectivity. You say we should have planned the Star Wars trilogy, the sequel trilogy, and had the same director and writer throughout all of them. I agree with that. That's what they're doing here. They're trying to make sure that everything's connected. It's

rumored to have a multiversal element, although it did look like they were setting up a street level thing at the end of No Way Home. It's a little weird. I think there's still a way to make it a grounded story, but I would, I would definitely rather that I would rather be like Kingpin is the villain. You're teaming up with Daredevil going through Hell's Kitchen and you're giving Tom Holland his first real New York feeling Spider-Man movie. He doesn't really have one of those. And I was okay with the first three not being that because they give us three Toby ones and two Andrew ones, but give him a New York movie, you know? Ooh, I'd like a good New York movie. I never thought about that. That's really,

that's really it. This would be it. And I think he can pull it off really well. And it has kind of been missing. The M word. Doesn't it feel like multiversal is almost like a curse these days in Marvel? It's like, oh, really? Brother, you just said the M word. And I didn't know what you're talking about. I know you're talking about Mephisto, multiverse, mutant. I didn't know where you were going. We got a couple M words in the basement. Yeah, that says a lot of shivers. There was a lot of letdowns over the years with that word. But multiverse, I'm like, come on, we've already done this.

Especially if it means Sony-verse. At the end of No Way Home, they showed us the Venom. Oh, God. Remember that? They kind of tried to loop that shit in. Marvel couldn't pull off the multiverse with all their heroes. I'm not going to let Sony try to figure it out. I know they did all right with The Last Spider-Man,

but Marvel had all kid gloves on and like guided them through all that i don't trust them kind of going on their own and then yeah the movies that would then lead to coming down the road oh shiver down the spot i'm getting excited about the thought of a new york movie actually i want to re-watch the one which one has a mysterio in it again uh far from far from home the uk one yeah it was a good idea like i like the idea of taking spider-man and putting him elsewhere but we're ready for new york now and i'm ready to see tom holland give that like a little edge to it and fighting it like an edgy new york kind of world aj's obsessed with mysterio right now too because he just already fortnight and he's like what about what's his name what does he do what does he look like

i'm like buddy we'll just sit down and watch the movie. I don't want to answer any more. I really liked that movie. That movie and No Way Home. People have the weirdest revisionist history about. And they're like, oh yeah, those movies sucked. And John Watts had no juice. And thank God we got a new director.

I could watch both of those movies back to back tonight and enjoy the hell out of both of them. So I don't like the revisionist history. I also have faith in these writers i thought the ending of no way home is so well done and it's like yeah it's convoluted with the rules of who remembers them and who doesn't how does that work and whatever but just the the fact that spider-man chose to be like yeah i'm gonna make the worst possible decision for myself to save the multiverse. And the way that's played and the way it's acted and Peter and happy at May's grave, like that's some good shit right there.

So I'm hopeful for this still. Now, I will say the director, I'll give him a chance. I enjoyed some parts of Shang-Chi. It's very much a very different movie than especially a crowded New York movie, right? Yeah. Some parts, the San Francisco stuff, some of it's cool. I could see that. The action he really excelled at, I felt like. I felt like out of Shang-Chi, the action and the comedy he really succeeded at.

And you do need both elements for Spider-Man. So it is, like you said, it's a different movie, but similar elements that you need to work. Like the quippiness of Shang-Chi I think will work well with Tom Holland's Spider-Man. And also I think there's the opportunity for some cool like web swinging sequences. Think back of how he shot that bus scene where they're all fighting through the bus. Like give me a sweet Tom Holland swinging

through New York City to open the movie. Spider-Man is the king of the public transportation fights. That's what he does. So you throw this guy, Daniel, Destin Daniel Cretton, to add Spider-Man to that. Let him cook.

Let him cook on that. I will say, this is always the case of directors. I go through and I'm like, I don't know any of these other movies he did. So I can't really have any. I know. I don't either.

And they're all like 7.1, 7.3 ratings. So I'm like, ah, whatever. I can't even make a decision. So those things i leave to the jeff d lowe's of the world tell me if they're good or not and then we get excited from there

the there's a little other spider-man news that was like rumors that was kind of shut down there was a rumor that beyond the spider-verse was just scrapped at some point like they were midway through it or they were a large percentage of the way through production and they scrapped it and went back to the drawing board and that's why we haven't gotten a release date since the guy who wrote the score i think christopher miller philip lord they've all come out and been like yeah it's totally false we're still working on it like it just takes a fucking long time i am inclined to believe them as well because i think if they scrapped it we would have heard earlier and we would have heard

from like the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. I feel like all of these sites' deadline would have been like, hey, some major shit is happening. Sony is just throwing hundreds of million dollars down the toilet. I think these movies just take forever to make because they have animators making every frame look like a painting. We also heard that they might not have treated the animators the best on the last one. Oh, yeah. You know. They sped them up. Maybe give them that extra time. Don't put a release date out there and put a deadline on them. Just finish the movie when you're done with it, and we're going to be happy with it. I'd be more happy with a perfect movie than a rushed movie, especially when it comes to something like CGI. And something that I think you get the trilogy

together, you can say this is one of the greatest trilogies. You don't want to fumble the ending there. Right. So I hope they don't do it. Just take care of my girl. You don't even know. This is morale's mom. As long as she's all right, I'll be all right. Oh, what punk should do before beyond the spider verse comes out, maybe we'll put out miles. Mom' mom has got it going on.

That would be funny. And then got to end the Quick Hitter with some somber, sad news. But we wanted to pay tribute to an absolute legend and an icon of the movie business who passed away this week, James Earl Jones, one of the voices of both of our childhoods in that he was, I mean, the list of credits for star Wars, obviously Darth Vader, we know that, but the Sandlot and the Lion King and field of dreams and coming to America, some of his older movies, this guy, an absolute icon, a legend of the business. He was 93 years old. Great run.

Absolute great run. But very sad. You know, we're starting to lose some of our heroes from Star Wars. That's it's very, very sad. Yeah. I saw the news come across the timeline. And I think James Earl Jones was at the point where every time he'd see his picture across the timeline, you kind of lose your breath. And then there's also the time you're like wait did

he pass already and then the biggest thing was he signed his voice over to ai so they can use it in the future so that story let me know he was alive so i kept that pretty fresh in the mind but it's like you said you raised on that voice one of the all-time great voices great villain uh voices in darth vader and like great hero voice in mufasa you just so funny how that voice can go both ways i learned the other day actually mom was telling me my uncle uh he was a mason he would he used to do work on james earl jones's house and can you imagine you know he'd be like hey robbie would you like a drink of water how cool would it have been to hear james earl jones's voice like just talking to you in just everyday conversation that must have been the coolest fucking thing in the world

so i i was thinking this like i'm thinking greatest movie voice by an actor and i think it's basically it's james earl jones versus morgan free right i think so as well yeah we were talking about that uh when when he passed me jeff and Ken Jack were all kind of debating who's the most iconic voice. We said it's probably one of those two. It has to be. And I think Darth Vader and how gigantic Star Wars is puts James Earl Jones over the edge for me. I got James Earl Jones 10-9 to borrow the fighting terms that you guys use. It's close, but he was the this is CNNnn guy because cnn's like we need to have the

voice and i always think he is the voice the voice of god the voice of whatever you want to call it so uh i think for all the the fellow nerds out there let's pay our respects as only we know how and go on youtube and view the vader sessions which is one of the greatest videos in the history of mankind is basically all of james rachel's other roles dubbed over darth vader so it looks like darth vader's saying them and it's just so it's one of the funniest videos i've ever seen and that's saying something on the internet so i'll put it in my top 100 internet videos it's on there and that's the way to honor the man who didn't need to have the black suit so you know be the greatest obviously wasn't inside it but he was so much more and uh rest in peace jg j e j i actually wrote down some stuff about him i was reading

a little bit about james earl jones after he passed reading his wikipedia some of the fun like stories about his history his career and fascinating guy who's born january 17th 1931 in arca butler mississippi his father was a boxer and one of the first black actors ever. Like he apparently left James Earl Jones pretty young. James Earl Jones was raised by his grandparents in Michigan. Also went to the University of Michigan, a class of 55. And yeah, he was raised by his grandparents, had a stutter throughout his entire childhood, and poetry and acting helped him overcome some of the challenges that came along with that. Served in the military during the Korean War, wasn't commissioned until after the war ended and wound up going out to Colorado, the Rocky Mountains, where his battalion served as a training unit. Did tons of Shakespeare, and I found this to be very interesting.

He won a Tony in 1968 for his role in The Great White Hope. I didn't realize that was a play before it was a movie. And when they made the movie two years later, he got to reprise his role there, got nominated for an Oscar. He was only the second African-American to ever be nominated for an Oscar at that point. Sidney Poirier yeah he was the first james earl jones was the second and to loop it back around to star wars you say and he didn't need the black suit he barely even considered his role in the first two star wars movies a role he famously got paid 7 000 7 500 depending on who's telling the story for his first movie, Star Wars. And he finished all of his lines in two and a half hours. So he was like, yeah, like, I don't think you need to credit

me for that. He did an interview in 2008 where he said when Linda Blair did the girl in the exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was a lot of controversy as to whether or not Mercedes should get credited in the movie. James Earl Jones thought, no, she shouldn't get credited. Her voice is just special effects. So when he recorded all his lines for Star Wars, he said, nah, I'm just special effects. You don't have to put me on the movie. Didn't put him on Empire Strikes Back either. It wasn't until Return of the Jedi that he said, okay, I'll let them put my name on it. And then they would go back. Now, if you watch them, since the 97 re-release,

they put his name in the credits, as it should be. I mean, come on. This guy, he's giving a performance. He's not just special effects. Those are some fun-ass facts, Bob Fox. Good work on that. It's crazy. The amount of people that grew up with speech impediments of some sort and

became huge in the industry one way or another speaking. It's fucking inspiring is what it is. That's nuts. I had no idea, and I had no idea that he was like the crediting all that stuff. When I think Empire Strikes Back, I almost think of James Earl Jones more than anything. It's the Vader movie, and he's talking

his shit, you know? The line reading of, no, I am your father, you could say is the greatest line reading in the history of movies. I'd say, apology accepted, Captain Nita, but I mean, that's top two, we'll say. I'm sure people would give the, surely I don't give a damn or whatever, Gone with the Wind and shit.

Fuck all that shit. James Earl Jones, motherfucker. Some of his amazing credits, though. Dr. Strangelove was his first movie. Pretty good, the start of Kubrick. The Great White Hope, though. Dr. Strangelove was his first movie. Pretty good to start off with Kubrick. The Great White Hope, as I mentioned. The Man, a movie in 1972 where he played a black president, which was very out there. And, you know, he's kicking down doors.

He was also kicking down doors with a movie called Claudine. It's a black character drama in the early 70s when a lot of black actors were only in like horror slasher comedy movies he was truly someone that was like a revolutionary figure for black actors coming to america as i mentioned field dreams sandlot lion king coming to america the sequel he actually got to make an appearance in in 2021 22 that was his final appearance on screen and i believe his final appearance as darth vader's final performance as darth was Rogue One. I think after that, obviously, we know Obi-Wan, they used the AI software to retool his voice, which sounded great, by the way. There's some AI that sounds off. Lucasfilm, I think they did it right. It's a Ukrainian software company called Respeecher.

And as you mentioned, he signed a deal where they'll be able to do that forever. And that's great because his voice is always going to be a part of Star Wars. How could you not have a part of Star Wars? You know, Vader will always exist in one form or another. And it's a cool way, in my opinion, to keep his legacy alive, where his voice is always going to be part of our lives. It wouldn't be right. I don't even what vader becomes with star wars because it's like that's the thing on star wars there's so many little pieces like if john williams doesn't do the score if james earl jones doesn't do the voice if you know this this and this if it just doesn't hit it's like it may not fall apart but it's certainly not the same so uh i mean legend is

thrown around so like willy nilly these days, but absolute legend. I know I was actually thinking that way. It takes it's a shame to say this, but so many people when they pass, people say, oh, my God, one of the greats. They were a legend. They were an icon. And it almost takes one of the real greats to make you be like, oh, but there's a small list of the true like the-tier echelon of these people, James Earl Jones was in that top tier. So rest in peace. Obviously, condolences to his family and his fans and everyone. It's a sad week in the nerd world where we got to put Vader to rest. Can you imagine getting yelled at by James Earl Jones, like, as your dad? Oh, yeah, no. He must have yelled at someone at some point yeah that

would feel bad especially like the sandlot he's so wholesome like he and that's another thing you brought up the fact that he was darth vader one of the most iconic villains in movie history and then they cast him as mufasa and he's one of the most iconic hero voices in movie history it's funny that him and mark hamill got flipped in that way. Mark Hamill is the good guy in Star Wars. And then he went and voiced the Joker and became as iconic as any voice actor, you know, in that world. So funny little thing.

Mark Hamill also had a nice post. He said, rest in peace, dad. That was a great line. Great line. Made me laugh. Yeah. Made me laugh in a, in a, you know, somber time. But 93 was a great run, you know? Amazing run for James Earl Jones.

So rest in peace. And that was pretty much all we had to talk about on the Quick Hitter. We could mention Dave Grohl having a baby out of wedlock. I don't think anyone's talking about it anymore. So I don't think it's worth talking about. PR rep deserves all the praise in the world. He or she said, this is before the debate. Let's get this done.

And like you said, Taylor Swift announces her endorsement. So it's not even the number one music story on the world. No, nobody's even talking about it. Right along that, obviously, if Dave remembers today on 9-11. So the Dave role didn't even happen in my mind. It didn't even happen. No. Good work, Dave.

All right. We'll talk to you next week. Follow along for some Sphere coverage this weekend. And We'll talk to you next week. Follow along for some Sphere coverage this weekend, and we'll talk to you next time.