Sardonicast - Sardonicast 159: Madame Web, I Am Sam

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

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Three, two, one. But I don't have a neuromuscular disorder. That was one of my favorite lines from the web film of all time, the most webby. I think it's going for the webby award. Adam. Her web connects them all, yeah. It do be doing that. I'm Adam from your movie sex.

This is Sardonicas. and I'm Alex Ramaiichi and what an episode we have today what a treat for everybody a true double whammy my

my quote to get us started is never go full let's get it started I feel like it has to never go in it somewhere never go full it start it start okay okay

There's something I want to get in there, but we'll get on to that later. Yeah, we'll have that conversation. Yeah, yeah, we'll put a pin in that. We got other things on the, on the mind. We have another highly regarded film here. Madam Webb. Madam, Madame. Yeah.

You're a big fan of this character, right? I know you're a big fan of Madame Webb, right? Oh, yeah. Everyone knows. Ever since, I was a little baby, boy. Adam Webb was my favorite character from Spider-Man. What's her favorite ability? What's her hook, her superhero hook to you? Well, I think, you know, it stayed true of the comics. Her secret power is running people over

with cars. Yeah, that's a good power. That's handy. That was very useful in the film. Yeah. The multiple times it was used. She knows, like, exactly where to put the car. She can go through a parking garage and come out on the other side and hit someone in midair and be fine. And the vehicle still works. That's part of the powers. The vehicle always still works after and doesn't get really damaged. I guess this is just where we are now, right?

This is the fourth film in the Sony, not the MCU, the Sony cinematic universe, right? Is it Spider-Man cinematic universe? The Sony cinematic. awesome movies universe the scam universe is what they're calling it is the scam universe yeah yeah and this one like morbius has been meme to hell um and it is very bad and boring but not really that funny to sit down and watch you know like they tried that whole stunt of releasing it again trying to be capitalized on the meme and it didn't work because the film sucks and that was that was funnier than the movie was them releasing it back in the theaters and having it

flap twice. Oh, much funnier. Yeah, that is much funnier. The memes were better than the film. Oh, much better. Whereas I don't really know what's going on here. No one had any faith in this. It wasn't, I don't know, was it really being memed in the same way as Morbius? It's been a joke from the beginning and like certain trailers have been, like, because from the first trailer, from the first announcement of this project at all, people, I feel like have been confused. Because it's just yet another in the series of, okay, we start with Venom without Spider-Man. Let's do Morbius, without Spider-Man. Now let's do Madame Webb without Spider-Man. And I guess they greenlit them long enough ago where they couldn't read the tea leaves. And they could have just canceled it and

written it off. But especially considering like even Disney's like girl boss versions of these movies have been flopping recently. Like the Marvels. I think I think you saw that. Yeah. I saw it a couple weeks ago, I think. I can remember like two seconds from it. It's like the most Marvel movie to ever Marvel movie, you know? It's like, okay. It's straight out of a machine. Yeah, there's just nothing about nothing interesting, no voice. And that's kind of what's interesting about this where it's like, there's definitely no voice, but there must be something going on here because it's what, a first time feature director, S.J. Clarkson, at the helm. But it's not like she's new on the entertainment scene. She's like quite a prolific TV director I was looking at.

She's done some fantastic episodes in shows like succession. Yeah, I've always felt that like when it comes to TV directing credits, like there are rules that people are following essentially to match the style of other episodes. You don't want to have somebody go too crazy. You don't want to have like one episode that really sticks out as like, oh, look, this is a very different director than the other ones. You don't want to be really thinking about that watching TV, at least for the most part, depending on the show. So I don't know if that's the best way to gauge someone's abilities when they already essentially have like a blueprint and they already have an infrastructure set up and ready for them to just take over and direct the actors sort of thing.

But is the level of incompetency though in Madam Webb seems like, I don't know, it seems like such studio meddling. There's like these talks of reshoots and like I'm sure that's, I don't It's just the tried and true story, isn't it? Like the director that's kind of attached to the big studio project, but they're not really proven in Hollywood, so they're able to just be strong on by companies like Sony who want to reshoot things or, you know, shove things in here or there. I'm very sure that that exists in this film. That doesn't explain away all of the problems.

The studio has nothing to do with every performance being terrible, right? You can have the studio meddling and doing reshoots and changing everything they fucking want, but a good director is still going to get, I don't know, one good performance out of all of the actors in the film. Right? Like, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, it's, it's not just some, studio meddling. It's, it's a wide array of incompetency and, I guess, a seeming lack of interest from those involved in the projects, particularly the actors that don't really seem like they are, taking this seriously at all and don't really seem like they want to be there. Fucking, uh, Dakota Johnson, like, fired her agent after the trailer came out. Like, just move to a new agency.

Yeah, I don't blame her. But, like, her in particular, Dakota Johnson, she's hilarious in this film. Like, she's so vague and clearly knows exactly what she's in. And her, like, half-ass performance. I don't know why, like, that, the, the NEPO. maybe, you know, annoying, like, half-ass performance should annoy me a lot more. But there's just something about the way she's presenting it. It's like, it's so half-hast, it almost goes into the next, yeah, into the next realm of like,

okay, you're, you were just here for the paycheck and you're, like, not even trying. It's like some kind of humor to this. It's like watching the main character's performance be actively condescending toward the film that they're in, which is very funny. It's like, yeah, it's evident that the actors just. doesn't want to be there in scenes. Isn't that the best? Which just makes it so much fun.

Yeah, there's like so much contempt. Yeah, contempt. Active contempt for the role that they're currently playing, but they have the most screen time and they're just doing the whole thing. Contractual obligation. Like, why the fuck am I here? It's a great vibe. Yeah, yeah, it's hilarious and brings a lot of pretty good unintentional humor.

Yeah. But I've got to I've got to mention this crazy anecdote that I've got associated with this movie, my experience with it, because I did something a little bit crazy for this film. I don't know if they've got this stuff in Canada, but there's like a little bit of a trend in some cinema chains in the UK. But they have this annoying push for this technology called 4DX. Oh, yeah, I tried it once, I think? You tried it, yeah. Wait, there's so many, there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of similar sounding things. Can you remind me exactly what the 4DX thing is?

So 4DX is kind of like a bunch of, they look like roller coaster seats. Oh yeah, I've done that. In rows, in these blocks. And yeah, it kind of mimics the wind. It has a little button on the armrests with like a, it just says water, question mark. Oh, okay. You get sprayed. So there's like water, there's wind, there's like fake smoke.

that comes blasting out. Yeah. Of course, you're being flung around and prodded in the back with this, like, crazy chair that, like, moves with shots and, like, pans with shots and whatever.

And it's like, I'd always seen ads for this that play before certain movies and thought, that looks stupid and dumb, and I don't get why anyone would want to see that, but this was the one. I've got, like, the annual pass or whatever to see as many movies as I can.

And there was only, the only screening of Madam Well. Oh, no. Cinema I wanted to go to was 4DX. I was like, well, I guess I'm out to play extra, so I'll try this out because I mean, this is the time to do it. Oh my God. What an awful idea. I just kept thinking about that Scorsesey quote of a, you know, talking about turning Hollywood films into like theme park rides.

And it's like, this is. You can't really argue with that. So close with this. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, that's exactly what it's mimicking. But it's also like how distracting it is to the actual film. I agree.

Who wants to be thrown around in their chair and like kicked in the back? when there's a one of the many car crash scenes in Madame Webb. Yeah. Jolt you're around and it's like even you mentioned in your quickie like how few people were in your screening. It was like the same for mine. It was like four or five people in the whole room like rows and rows of these like hydraulic chairs moving up and down with like no one in them.

And it's like this is such an enormous waste of energy and like resource and just. Yeah, right. Like quite a good screening room that like this would be fine without. the stupid chairs. So the entire auditorium is those chairs? Yes. That's crazy. Yeah, we have, in a lot of the Canadian theaters, they'll have something called like D-Box,

which is, I think, the same thing, but without the water. They just kind of like move your, jerk your chair around. I did it once and have never done it again. It was for the Dark Night Rises and like Batman would punch somebody and then the chair would move. I'm like, am I the person being punched? Who am I in this? scenario. The only times where I felt like it kind of worked was like, oh, like on the airplane,

you got a little like swaying motion or like, you know, on the motorbike, like just, you know, little little, just subtle side to side. I'm like, ooh, that adds a little bit to like the atmosphere. But they're, you know, unlike theme park rides, these movies are being made for narrative purposes, not like the goal when making the film, Christopher Nolan was not thinking, how do I make this work correctly for D-Box. No, they made a movie, and then whoever wrote the code for the D-Box experience is just scrambling to find places where they can jerk your chair around. It's like, it's so stupid.

It's so dumb. It would make sense if the entire thing was like first person and you were driving in a race car or something. But that's just a theme park ride. Those things already exist. I don't need that for the movie theater. Yeah, it's so intrusive. It's so, just such a bad idea. And it's like, I was expecting kind of what more what you were saying,

where like slight movements here and there just to enhance it a little bit. No. Because I brought like a notepad that you expected to write notes. Like, looking like the twat, like just sitting there waiting for the film to start. And then like the ad for 4DX plays and it gives you like a little tease of how it works. And you're like jolted around and thrown around. And then I just like, I just put my. Notepad back in my pocket and was like, this thing happened.

Forget about this. Yeah, awful. Awful, awful, awful, awful horrible idea. Just kind of like the film. Just pure scam. It's crazy. At least it didn't ruin something that you, like, really cared about the story for or something. At least it didn't test it out on something a bit.

On something actually cared about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure they do the same thing for, like, Dune's a big movie. They're gonna do it for like Dune 2, why not? Oh, yeah, yeah. Very, very silly. But like, you called it the scam, Sony scam universe, and it couldn't be more true.

I know. We've mentioned before how, in the advertising for like Morbius and even Venom, I think they have really misleading kind of clips and stuff that's reused from old Spider-Man films you know and like as a way to basically trick you to go see these films. And I feel like this is maybe the most egregious, one, the Vulture stuff in Morbius was pretty bad and horrendous saying like,

Michael Keaton's going to be in this in some form, but I don't know, this feels worse. I mean, the whole conceit and like what they were selling the film on with like all these spider women and they're all suited up and they're- Don't you want to see Sidney's skin-tight spider costume? That was, yeah, Johnson's, uh, she was on SNL, right? She had a pretty funny joke about it being like it's the perfect AI generated movie. I just think it's crazy that they're like dipping. their toes into like the girl boss feminist sort of like that that that's supposedly where it's

supposed to be coming from but every single one of these girls is cast for their looks and they're really they're really leaning into the like whole oh don't you want to see sidney sweetie and the spider man guys knew like i don't know that's not who is this for then but it's a whole but it's a Man, like just the titles alone, like Madame Webb, who knows this character? They never say the name. They call her Cassie Webb. No, they don't. Nobody ever calls her Madam Webb.

And she doesn't even resemble, like, how the character looks in comics and cartoons and stuff. She's normally depicted as, like, an older woman, like an old lady who, like, helps Spider-Man by looking through time. But there's an orange story. It is an orange story, which was, like, confusing me at first, because, like, I didn't even pick up on that first watch that Adam Scott was post. to be Uncle Ben. Yeah. I had to piece some things together after the first watch. What's with these links?

Like for sure. I was so confused because, all right, spoiler discussion, everybody, because honestly, I recommend watching this in theaters. It's so bad that it's good. Please go see it. Spoiler discussion. I wouldn't give a warning like this if I didn't think it was that funny or that good. Watch it.

Yeah, I was confused because I thought, I knew that they were saying Ben Parker. And I was like, okay, I was piecing that together. my head, I'm like, Uncle Ben. And I didn't realize until, like, way after, and I think after I recorded my review, I started watching some other people's reviews. And then I realized, oh, wait, the woman who was pregnant was not Uncle Ben's wife. That was Uncle Ben's sister-in-law? And so that, and then, so the implication is the baby, premature baby is Spider-Man, is Peter Parker.

But what does it mean? And they are contractually obligated to not say his name. What does that mean? Absolutely fucking nothing. But these movies, what they try to do is they sprinkle in little, see, this is connected to the universe that isn't incompetent. See, this is connected to the things you like. And so by doing so, like Marvel, Marvel has done this before, not as incompetently because

it seemed like they actually had a plan. Or at the very least, they did something that made it seem like. like they had a plan where they connect all of these different films together, but there's this overarching storyline of like, you know, we got to stop Thanos. And so then a bunch of the fans of this shit, even though, you know, they would never really want to see Thor 2 on its own,

you know, they don't really have that much interest in seeing Thor 2. It's about feeling obligated to see it to understand what the fuck is happening in the movies you do want to see. Yeah. and get all those little sprinkles, all those little tidbits, all those details, like, because they're so invested in the story, you know, they need that extra context. Sony's trying to do the same thing or they think that they are. Not working.

They're a parasite, basically. Yeah, yeah. It was funny that they got Venom in a post-credits in, like, one of the Marvel movies. I think that's an incredible win. Whoever got that to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That's insane.

This whole thing is insane. Like considering, like, I thought Craven was supposed to come out first. It was. And, uh, it got delayed by like a year. And they were saying that it was because of like the actor's strike. So I don't know why Madam Webb also didn't get delayed in that same way. I guess none of these actors are sag or something. Like, I don't, I don't know.

What is it in a certain quarter or something? I have no idea. Uh, but like Craven is, makes more sense than, Madame Webb, at least for Craven, I don't know, he was in that new Spider-Man game. Yeah. People probably know who he is more than Madame Webb. Still a horrible, dumb idea, but like, I don't know, maybe it'll do better than this. It looks way more boring.

It does look way more boring. Less, like, entertainingly bad in a net, more just, like, generic. Yeah. I just, this is something, there's very few movies that you can tell are going to be this bad, just like from the trailer. Like there's very few movies that are this funny and this bad at all. Like this is like once every five years or whatever. There's a movie that gets released that is so fucking funny and incompetent that it's just

an enjoyable experience. Like I'm going to buy it. Like give me the 4K Blu-ray. I'll fucking buy it. I would see this in theaters again in a heartbeat. Somebody wants to go see this in theaters with me. If I got the time, I'll do it. It's fucking hilarious.

It's fun to laugh at. It's just a self-man. made mess though where the problems they have to solve by having all these stories take place in a universe that doesn't have Spider-Man in it, when all of these characters are Spider-Man characters who usually are defined by their relationship or entangling with Spider-Man. But that's kind of a big core part of these characters, you know, from Venom to Morbius to Manum Webb. So like, when they have to introduce elements like a villain and have like these Cuban spiders that have like regenerative abilities and can I thought they were

Peruvian spiders sorry yeah you're right it was peruvian but there's like a whole Peruvian spider people that live in the trees I enjoyed that a lot and I was like waiting for she's so there's going to be a scene where she goes back and like learns the truth right and by the time you get to that scene it's supposed to be some kind of like payoff it's just like one spider guy not even in the spider guy outfit explaining to Dakota just standing there in like the jungle man in shirt shows up some guy and then he gets to deliver the speech when you get a responsibility great power will come so good like that's it's that's parody right

that's every are they taking the piss because this is the same writers as Morbius do you think that they because it seemed like Sony was kind of like happy with the meme magic for a second you know when they tried to bring it back into the theaters they were like will people actually see it and then they got tricked

so why would they why would they lean into this more if they've already experienced that you know if they've already experienced being hurt like that why would they lean into into it more. I don't know. Did they? I have no idea. It's one of these things where it's

difficult to discern whether or not it's even aware of some of the comedic aspects. Like, does it know that it's that funny? It doesn't come across like it's self-aware. Some of the actors in scenes seem like they're self-aware as to the project they're in, hence they're like half-fast performances because, I know, there's plenty of like capable actors in this. Like, Dakota Johnson was really good in Susperia. You know, Sidney Sweeney's been good in few things. The fucking villain is like a really good French actor. Adam Scott. He's been in some great stuff. Yeah. And Matt, but he must have, he was done the dirtiest. Like, whatever, whatever they were doing on set with, like, filming him, like, the audio side is like, so shockingly bad.

I was questioning at first if, like, the screening was, something was going wrong with it. Because it's that egregious. Well, just nothing matches mouths. It's so frustrating. It's, it's very, much like Tommy Wazzo the room ADR. It's genuinely that level. We're not exaggerating anybody listening. It's actually that. Yeah, no exaggerating. Like actually it is that. Yeah. They, I guess

forgot to Mike like entire scenes and locations or something. Or just changed all of their dialogue, maybe. Maybe they changed all the dialogue in post. Maybe they just decided he would do a different accent. They're like, yeah, let's do a different one.

They already filmed it. whatever. Who cares? Who gives a shit? So yeah, the villain, the entire plot is happening because he keeps getting bad dreams. It's like a vision. He's like, these three girls are going to kill me. And he has a vision of the three girls and they're in their spider woman costumes and adults. and he's like, they kill me someday. And then so his motivation is to try and find them to kill them first. And I guess they scan his dreams and get like a perfect high-res image of the three girls in their masks because they have spider costumes.

And then they digitally remove and scale down their age. They're like, this is what they would look like is. teenagers and they get a real identity from that because they've hacked the NSA database, which was apparently not very secure in 2003, two years after a major event. They probably would have made it pretty secure. Yeah, yeah. The scale of all that stuff was hilarious too with the main villains like... Yeah, she was great.

She was so funny. She was just like this one woman and like a... Yeah, she was hilarious. It's like, who are you? Why you, what's this dynamical about? Like, what is happening? And he, oh, man, he had the awesome line where he's like trying to justify, I think it's to that character.

Like, these girls are teenagers right now in this timeline. You're going to be killing teenagers, right? And he justifies it by being like, they may be teenagers now. But in the future, they won't be. I was like, okay, let's go kill them then. I think the line is, in the future, they'll be adults with powers. I think you threw in the powers aspect as well in that line. Yeah.

Oh, even better. So the villain has a suspiciously similar costume to Spider-Man. Yeah, why? Did they very... Yeah, we don't know why he would... Spider-Man doesn't even exist yet, according to this timeline, if that was Peter Parker being bored.

So he's not even... So Spider-Man copied this guy, is what we're learning. But I thought, like, the spiders were made in a... lab. That's like the whole Spider-Man joke is that everything is an experiment gone wrong. They're just magic Peruvian spiders. They have like psychic powers and everything. They're just hiding. If you just take a trip there someday, you can find them hiding and try to get a cure for your baby. So the titular madam of the web, Cassie Webb, they never call her madam once. She spends her life living in

she has a disdain for her dead mother because she thinks that her dead mother hated her because she dared go to the Peruvian jungle while she was pregnant with her and thinks, you must have hated me because you were not responsible and you died in that jungle and now I'm dead.

Or now I don't have a mom. That's what I meant. There's a line. She's like reading through her fucking picture book. She says something like, I think I actually wrote this down. Hope the spiders were worth it, mom. Just like absolute contempt for her dead mother for no other reason than just her being dead. And she just takes it in the most like uncharitable and just malicious way possible.

She assumes malice first. And then it takes her up until like the fucking between the second and third. act of the film where she goes to the Amazon, even though she's like, you know, committed some crimes and kidnapping and the villain is able to like find everybody else through the NSA database, but she, I guess, takes a plane to Peru, just a little quick trip, you know, um, shows up there with like a backpack. It doesn't look like she brought any like survival equipment. It looks like she's, she looks like she's on a tour, but there's no two. guide.

She shows up and the guy's like, here, we're going to give you a vision. So she goes back and she has a flashback to when her mom was pregnant with her. And her mom's at the doctors and the doctor says, I'm sorry, the baby is going to have a neuromuscular disorder and they're never going to be able to walk. And the mom's like, I want to do an experimental treatment in the Amazon. They're like, nope. She's like, I'll go myself.

And at which point. That funny line that I quoted before, but I don't have a neuromuscular disorder. Just the timing of it, the echo, the shot of Dakota Johnson's like dumb, befuddled face, like, whew? And like, it's an internal dialogue also, like her mouth's not moving.

Oh, it was so funny. And then at that moment, she realizes, but my mom was trying to, my mom went to the Amazon because she loves me. She didn't hate me, but I'm going to the Amazon because she loves me

and then she hugs her mom in this like flashback vision and then gains after that scene she I guess gains the power of splitting herself into four people at once which she uses later yeah what it was it was a very clumsy way

to kind of visually display those abilities because there's that big hero moment where all of the all of the girls they're like stuck in the situation at the same time pun not intended Yeah, at the same time You can't save all four of them at the same time

Yeah, but then the music swells And like these strings come out of her And I guess it's supposed to be like All these four different timelines that I'm I don't know, who cares honestly I don't think it's timelines I think she's literally just splitting yourself into four people So it's not a time thing

It's not like okay It's appearing in several places at once thing She can omniscience Omni presence Omnipresence? Yeah, that's the right. That's the one. Okay, well, that's a good...

I mean, yeah, it's not a bad power, but she's... I don't know. She doesn't do anything with, like, super strength or it. Like, she just kind of, like, she just kind of helps them up. She's like, you're going to be okay. And she... And, yeah, going back to that resentment, she's so, like... There is, like, a misery to this character.

Like, the way she's, like, learning and experiencing her power is, like, contrasted to like that first time Ramey, like Spider-Man, like when he's first showing his signs of power and there's like all these like montages and fun, like scenes of him exploring and figuring himself out. Like, what does she do here? She like goes to a party and complains and makes everyone uncomfortable

and just is a misery to everyone and just doesn't want to be there. It's like a really funny character to follow. It's so resentful, so miserable. And the whole, going back to the scam thing, thing like it looks like a CW show yes like it looks horrendous it doesn't look like an 80 million dollar movie so where did that money go yeah because it wasn't into the film that's not an 80 million dollar movie I'm sorry that's not that's not what it

does just like a two million dollar movie like straight up yeah yeah like aside from some of the faces who show up who probably were getting exorbitant paychecks yeah it's like where it's not going into like it's not even going into big you know in Venom, for example, the big goo fights where you've got big CG monsters just crashing into each other. So just completely CG. There's not even that much of that. There's like a couple shots of it, but no, it's mostly just car chase. I think it was a cocaine bear was a really good example of this, where the incompetent directing was really apparent, but then as soon as like a CG sequence would happen with the bear, where you would need someone else to take over.

like a B team with an understanding of where the bear was going to be in the environment. All of a sudden, we get some wide shots and things start looking good and competent. And like, oh, wow, this is like an entirely different directing style. But then there's like that one action scene without any CG. And it's like the worst action scene, the one in the bathroom, right? It's like, okay, you can tell exactly what's happening here directing wise. You can tell exactly who's responsible for each thing. And this is a film where there is so.

little of that CG fighting kind of nonsense that almost every single action scene is just S.J. Clarkson directed. And you can tell you can tell like 99% of it is. Oh, you can so. And it's just so

funny and incompetently done the way that the camera like fucking does like a 180 or like you know, tilts to follow the character, but it tilts the wrong direction. So characters are like disappearing out of frame and reappearing all within the frame of like a second.

And so you have to like constantly move your head around, like tilt your head around to different areas of the screen. Like even if it weren't in theaters, like you're constantly trying to like follow characters that are moving from one end of the screen to the other. Like just no sense of like visual continuity or consistency. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't give a shit about the fucking 180 degree rule.

Like just a lot of like crazy decisions that you, like, Like, if you're filming an action scene, the last thing you want it to be is incomprehensible. I'm sorry. And if you don't know, you're making it incomprehensible, there's something wrong. You need to start from square one and reevaluate exactly how you're approaching these scenes or what you aim to do with them or what you're even trying to do with them. So... Yeah, all of the blocking presentation sucks.

Like, it's just straight up inept. There's no better word than inept. Yeah. There's not a lot of films where you can just, where the directing style is just so aggressively bad. Like, they're definitely trying something in that sense, like, I appreciate that much. Like, it's not, it's not like the blandest shot movie ever. It's just crazy bad, you know? It's, it's ambitious, but.

Yeah, it just doesn't fit. It trips over itself every five seconds. It's nuts. We never see stuff like this. It's a very special film. I'm glad it got made and I'm glad it never got shelved. I'm glad this is Sony and not Warner Brothers. Fucking David Saz laugh or whatever.

I'm always kind of shocked it wasn't shelved. Yeah. Because surely like analysts, they wouldn't have been predicting good results for this film, right? Especially after the Marvels, as you were saying. And it is bombing pretty bad. How are they going to make 80 million plus on this? How are they going to get that budget back? Yeah.

Even the people that are watching it for funny. reasons are probably going to torrent it so yeah the stuff that's really being shared on twitter and what is just like everybody everybody wants to watch the camera that's what people watch yeah yeah it was kind of like morbidus like everyone was just sharing that one scene the the dancing scene to have sex shit um we're like outside of that no one cared oh yeah they're not going to be buying tickets to go sit down and watch it and as soon as it hit digital people posted the full movie on twitter and shit yeah of course you know i I don't know, because I'm, I understand that, you know, people meaming on this.

A lot of it, a lot of these people, I don't know. I guess, I guess maybe it's coming from like a bit of a place of hatred. It's coming from a place of love for me. You know? Like, I'm like, I'll buy the movie. I want to see them make more dumb shit like that. If you, if you can replicate the experience of Madam Webb, I would be happy. I would like to support that financially.

Yeah, it's weird. How do you send them a message? that you don't want to support like the Mobius, their cinematic universe, but also like the, yeah, the humor cluster fuck of this. If we could prove that this was a viable business strategy, they would give Neil Breene a movie. Could you imagine how cool it would be? You guys are preventing the coolest timeline from happening right now by not buying

tickets to Madame Webb. Yeah. If we removed the $80 million that was invested in Madame Webb, so it doesn't exist anymore and just give it to Breen. We get a better movie. I imagine what you could get with the $80 million of Breen. We'd probably have like a sweeter movies for that. We'd have like Breen for a lifetime. We get a thousand Breen movies.

Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I feel like the budget thing is like getting so insane in Hollywood. It's like these numbers don't make sense. Like, where is it going? Yeah, this one's confusing. You know? And a bunch of them are straight up just hiding it too. Like, we're getting, yeah, just less and less info.

As time goes on, it seems. Yeah, just more and more scummy. I mean, Dakota Johnson and Sidney-Sweeney in the same film, like, it's probably a big chunkier budget. It's probably a big chunk. That is expensive, yeah. And it's crazy that they thought that that would just be enough for people to watch it. And it's crazy.

Like, so that, yeah, and also the market. of just like, oh, you bet you're excited to see you're in spandex and then nobody is. Ever. Yeah, true. And it's just like, just basic marketing stuff, right? Like to not include the word spider in the title or like, I don't know, just like a subtitle of like, Madame Webb, Spider-Man, Spider-Women, Spider-Women, I don't know, just something that actually indicates what it's a part of.

Because it could be anything, really. if you look at those posters it's like what is actually indicating what this is supposed to be a part of aside from all the like the spider references there's like there's some similarity with like the font and the

poster style I guess to like clue you into thinking that it's a part of that I suppose there's these overlapping contracts of like all the stuff the imagery they're allowed to use the logos and symbolism they're allowed to use is quite

I know restricted I bet. I'm willing to bet that this movie would have made at minimum twice as much money if they just had one shot of Venom in the trailer. Even if Venom never showed up in the movie. Just show one shot of Venom in the trailer and it would have gotten a shit ton of people to just buy a ticket. That's what they don't understand is like Venom wasn't successful just because it's a fucking Spider-Man villain without Spider-Man in it. It was successful because it was recognizable. Venom's a recognizable character. I don't think Sony has a grasp on which characters like, it's a part of like culture. It's a part of the public knowledge.

Madam Webb is not. Craving the Hunter is not. Morbius is now, but was not before. And even beyond that, the Venom appeal, it has the broad like just CG monster mess. It's a goppy movie. People just like, you know, people like, they just go see the Meg, they go see Venom, they just go see, they like big CG go, go, monsters just fighting whereas you don't you don't get that it scratched from here or you get it a little bit more morbius that was kind of more but I was anticipating was like the

morbiose level you know where they're turning as a CG vampires like flying through underground train stations and so yeah this is this is the same ship we've seen about that scene thanks for reminding me like the villain being crushed by the Jesus you're welcome yes a good one eh is so boring all the slow moan and everything where it's like yeah the villain is beaten by like a pee for one of a Pepsi P, right? That's like in Madame Web and it's, that's the climax. Yeah, she doesn't really do much. She just kind of drives into people.

She just does a vehicular homicide attempts. This character kind of makes sense as a like kind of behind the chair giving information to a more proactive character. to, you know. Is that what she does in the comics or what? Can she actually really do? I think she's more of that kind of role, yeah. Like she's more of like a profit, I don't know, you get to her information type thing.

Yeah, yeah. She was acting like a near the end. She's like, gazintite. I haven't sneezed yet. Achoo. Thank you. Whoa. And I was thinking all the way back to Amazing Spider-Man 2 that ends on that shot that was in the trailer

of like spider man about to fight the rhino and that was like in all the marketing yeah the thing they did here with them like using all the the the visions to the future of the spider women as if that's like part of the film somehow um but just it's not present at all like that rind like the tom holland references in morbius trailers and it's just like i i i'm not even like annoyed by it at this point it's like so what else would sony do what else would they even do at this point. It's so expected. It's not even a surprise. They are maybe the scammiest. Out of like, like, out of a major studio that's not like fucking the asylum or like video brinket. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, out of like a major player that actually owns the rights to a Marvel property. I think there's the scammiest. They really just, they love lying about their movies to try and trick you into seeing them. And then even at that point, they're not the best at 16. with their goals. Yeah, it doesn't even work out for them. That's the funniest part. Morbiest didn't make heaps and their only success has been Venom and all of the takeaways they got from how much money Venom made was like, oh, I guess any random

tangential Spider-Man character, people are just going to come and watch movies. Oh, it's like, well, yeah, let's get Madame Webb, let's get Morbius on there. And even, so, so stupid. It's like, it's crazy. I feel like you could just go up to like a random 14-year-old MCU fan and be like, oh, you'd get better idea. Is this a bad idea? Yeah, they'd be like, that's who's madame, what? What's Spider-Man?

What's Spider-Man? What are they allowed? So if they're not even allowed to say Peter Parker, is it like, what are they allowed to do? They own the rights to the Spider-Man, right? And then they licensed it to be used for the Marvel thing. Yeah. But I guess in the contract, they can't also have a second Spider-Man running around for however long of a duration of time is I guess yeah there must be something in the contract to say like because I don't know why they wouldn't and you can imagine like the producers would probably love to have like Andrew Garfield come back and just be like

a different spider man that's going on at the same time you know yeah but yeah it must be contractually restricted in terms of that stuff where yeah they have almost this bartering thing so yeah you can have this character and then that means we can reference this or use this And it's all like, yeah, very fancy and bureaucratic. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. It's kind of funny because they both Marvel and Sony have benefited from their relationship in the sense that Marvel has gotten to include Spider-Man in the MCU. And Sony gets to use the wave of the, uh, the wave of interest on MCU as a way to prop up

these other bullshit films that they're doing. Yeah. And making heaps off of those MCU Spider-Man movies too for doing nothing. I think they get marketing rights as well, I think, or some weird thing like this. Yeah, it is crazy. You mentioned the amazing Spider-Man too. They were doing the same fucking scam trailer shit then, like the fight with Rhino. Yeah, the Ryano.

That's how the trailer ends. When you end a trailer and you cut to black right in the middle of the swing, like, oh they're about to fight cut to black see the movie in theaters it's like that's a direct implication

that if you buy a ticket to the movie you see the fight but the movie ended the exact same way the movie it was like but but but credits

and then you don't see the fight still and then it never happens and it's not even happening in a third movie you can't even if you made a third movie I don't believe we would have seen it

like that you were just never going to show it. That's like, that's actually a lie. Like, you should be sued over that. Like, I'm not even kidding. Like, yeah, I don't know why you would get more annoyed by that. Yeah, it's incredibly dishonest. And, uh, I don't know, that, that's a weird film because a lot of people and Spider-Man fans like, just love that film and defend it to the, oh, it's funny. To the end. Yeah. Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah, people are trying to redeem it. It's not that bad. Especially now, yeah, with the Andrew Garfield.

being in emceu or whatever people i don't know yeah it's very messy they forget about the filmmaking oh yeah we're just in such an interesting time with these kind of movies where it's kind of plateauing and unless they're genuinely like quite cool like guardians three or spiderverse people are just tired of it because i don't know if this release if this exact film release in like 2017 i bet you would have made would have made hundreds of millions more than it's going to you know um yeah people seem It's just, yeah, the bottom's falling out of this genre. I've never been happier with superhero movies.

It's good, yeah. It's just what fills the vacuum. Yeah. This is my ideal superhero movie. This is my ideal scenario. I'm glad. Just Sony's left. Oh, hell yeah.

It's funny. Like, it couldn't be funnier. Yeah, it's hilarious. I don't like you could you couldn't make a funnier movie if you tried for this to for this to even pretend to be a part of the Marvel universe is also It's just the funniest shit in the world. Yeah, but it's the the unintentional nature that gives it the humor Like what would have been the film that inspired them to green light this? I guess the success of Venom and then what you're saying of like the Captain Marvel more like girl power superhero movie thing I guess what they saw Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman were making heaps on heaps on heaps.

We'll have a slice of that with our universe this time. Yeah, I don't know what they were fucking thinking. So I'm looking at on the wiki, like during the development in like 2021. Let's see, there's a quote here. Where was it? Justin Kroll of Deadline Hollywood described the project as being

Sony's version of Doctor Strange due to Madam Webb's comic book abilities. Okay. So that was something that was floating around. Like 2021? Pre-production. Oh, what does it say?

Sony described the film as a standalone origin story and a suspense-driven thriller that diverged from the typical superhero film genre. That's kind of funny. Oh, you know what they're trying to do? They're probably trying to do fucking what DC's, you know, DC Joker or whatever, you know? Or like the DC, but like, DC has been doing these like, oh, we're going to have a superhero universe, but maybe a bit more grounded. Or, you know, different genre than we're used to seeing in the flagship ones.

We're going to deviate and do something experimental using the same. His Art House Joker. Yeah, yeah. They might have had a bit of that in mind. It's failed spectacularly. Yeah, because the entire movie, it's not a superhero movie story. It's really just, like, I have a premonition. And you could, this easily could have not had any relation to superhero characters at

Like the spider element didn't need to exist. No. Like, you really didn't. You could just have you. She could just be like, oh, I, I almost died. Now I'm getting strange visions. I'm pretty sure that movie has existed a billion times also. I'm pretty sure we've seen that movie.

We've all seen that movie. Everyone has seen this movie. Yeah. The tropes anyway. Exactly. So that didn't need to exist. But it seems like, I don't know, at some point along in the production, maybe they changed their mind or like maybe they're, maybe like,

somebody who was overseeing the project, like got swapped out with somebody else and was like, no, you got to try and make it like Venom. But we've already started making the movie. Yeah. Well, there is, there's one thing I found, a bit of trivia. According to Dakota Johnson, in an interview with the rap, the screenplay underwent extensive rewrite saying there were drastic changes and I can't even tell you what they were. The original screenplay, which was described as darker and very Terminator inspired,

would have seen Madame Webb and the spider women trying to protect a pregnant Mary Parker from Ezekiel Sims who wants to kill her to prevent the birth of Peter Parker. That's funny. That sounds like a comic book story. That sounds like probably what it should have been. It might have been in like early drafts, maybe. It sounds like more of an idea. It sounds like something that somebody thought of that they could turn into something.

Whereas I'm not sure about what we got. I'm not sure what the idea was. Yeah, definitely wasn't that what I just read. It was not that. And there are a few weird quotes of the director saying the things they're pulling from and referencing, like, like Terminator, which I guess I can see with the,

not straight up time traveling, but seeing visions of the future and trying to change the future and all this kind of garbage. It's just so tired, though, in this packaging. It was a very odd experience watching this, film. It was like every, the apathy all around, but also not in a way that, like, was, I didn't want to, like, leave. I didn't feel like I was being insulted even. It's like so strange, because I was weirdly entertained because it's just such a mess. It's so ridiculous. Yeah.

But yeah, I made it to the end and it's like, yeah, this is kind of funny and I'm like, pointing and laughing at it. And it's kind of pointing and laughing back at me. Yeah. I don't even care with this one, maybe because it's not even making money or like, no. The fact is not doing well. That does add a certain, like, if this was doing really well, it would be bothersome, I think, a bit more so, but the fact it is just such a cluster. I don't even know how I feel about that, you know? I feel like this deserves to make. But that's the thing. It's like, even if it did, even if it was a hit, Sony would never know what made this special and they would never be able to replicate it. So like, I would never, if this made money, I would still not get what I

want out of it. Yeah. You might get something worse even. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing, seeing them attempt to replicate that would just be cringe and boring. Well, yeah, yeah, which is like what you're describing as Venom too. We've already seen what they're capable of. Yeah. Oh, it's crazy how many of these we have to just like throw away at this point. Like, oh my God, there's so many of these homes. And it's, it, what makes it funnier is the very direct, clear implications at the end where they're like aren't you excited because you'll see them do

spider things in the next movie it's like did you even believe that I don't know it doesn't seem like Sony was even confident in that it doesn't even seem like the writing that right like nothing about this movie makes me believe that anybody involved on the production thinks that that's going to happen no like they're all just kind of lying out loud

and they know that they are was there an after credits No. Seen? They're so pissed. I stayed there the whole time. Oh, you stayed. Yeah, I normally just clear off, but Google it if it's like Aquaman or something.

You don't even know if there were any extra 4D motions in the credits. I needed to vomit. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I want to see like where the bottom of this, you know, like where's the true end going to be? Who's the real? Not even victim, the dunts in all this, you know. I don't know.

So the dunce hat is, I don't know, like, Sony, they've been doing their own thing for a while, and the dunce hat kind of needs to go back to Marvel. I feel like they've messed up so badly the past couple years with their Disney Plus strategy. Yeah. And their parasite nature means like... I guess they're most responsible for the fatigue, right? Yeah, yeah. So then, of course, the parasite movies like this are going to be,

level of bad even worse than you could even imagine when the thing, the parasiting on, but they're drinking, there's like no blood left. So you wind up with Madam Webb. It's getting too venom, bro. It's kind of awesome. Let's get carnage up in here. We need some other goo up in here. Damn, yeah. We're getting Venom three. Unfortunately. The trilogy. I mean, yeah, that's coming out this year, right? Oh, is it? Wait, really? This year? I think so.

Yeah. That's what it is. I know. That's what it said. It literally says Venom 3.22. That is mad. That's crazy. So there were going to be three of these Sony movies and one MCU movie this year.

That's awesome. I love that. Isn't that crazy how the tables are turned? The balls in your court, Sony. This is your year. So far. They own the genre now. Yeah, basically.

So far nothing but hits. Big, big swoosh. Yeah, I somehow doubt the Craven kind of conversation. Nobody's gonna watch it. Nobody's gonna watch it. I feel like, yeah, it'll be mocked for like 24 hours on Twitter and then we'll just never think about it ever again. Whereas this will be a meme for a while, you know, I would watch this again to make fun

of it. So what's Craven's deal, right? I've played, I'm still very slowly going through that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 game. I played like an hour and a half yesterday. What's his deal? Okay, have you got to you yet? Yeah, he's there and I'm just, he's just a, dude. Does he do anything? He's kind of that trope of like the the honorable hunter guy who

he's hunted everything and the only thing that could match his power level is that spider guy you know, um, so we got to, that's boring. Yeah, I've never really got the Craven the Hunter love. It's like a famous run or something, but um, it's not interesting. Yeah. No, yeah, especially by himself. Maybe, maybe people will go and see a Craven Spider-Man, maybe. with like adapting the last hunt storyline or something put venom in every single one of these it'll do fine that's all you got to do

honestly yeah literally yeah and Tom Hardy seems to be weirdly into it it's like the most passionate writing credit on the third one and the second I think it's yeah yeah they must be like very thankful that they got on that Venom train when they did yeah um I guess just a couple more things about

madam web just about the filmmaking and everything and everything that doesn't work. I find it funny that they, like, put in these bare bones attempts at characterizing or distinguishing character between these three girls that are all supposed to be teenagers but are, like, mid-20s at the earliest. And it literally took me until, like, the end of the movie to realize. It's like, well, like, what?

Just because of their dynamics, it's like, oh, you're actually supposed to be teenagers. is when she kidnapped, quote unquote kidnapped the girl on the train and she said like, my mom told me not to talk to strangers. I thought that was a joke. I thought that was an obvious joke of like, oh, she's saying that, you know, she's obviously an adult, but that she's just being condescending. Yeah. No, that was a line because the character's supposed to look like fucking 15 or something.

And I just, I didn't even understand. I didn't even understand until later. Yeah, I think I picked up in that awful. teenagers now line was like okay that's what they're going for I guess yeah and so one of them is rich and rude one of them is a science math nerd they eat math for breakfast and the other one is sydney swiney and they very briefly mention their character traits and they never come into play once throughout the entire film no they don't they don't get used there's no reason for them to be three different people she could have just been saving one person

Right? Yeah, true. There's no reason why three of them needed to exist. There's like literally no reason. In fact, yeah, it just bogs everything down and makes it harder to characterize any of them. Yeah, or to care about anybody or to follow the like that. Why did they do that? They don't exist.

They don't exist. Like, why would you do that? Why are there three of them? For the marketing? More faces on the poster to make it look like a big team up. People love team ups. Diversity? So the spider women you've been waiting for.

you know, they're finally on the big screen. Yes. I've been waiting. And then, yeah, she steals a cab and just drives it the rest of the movie and is like, it's mine now and nobody cares. Yeah, she like breaks the license plate off or something. Yeah, but the cabs are numbered without the license plate. Yeah. It's a cab.

It has a separate number on it that's not the license plate that you didn't take off and you're just driving around and it's fine. Obviously, also, without the license plate on it, cops are probably going to be looking for a cab without a license plate too. It's reported stolen, right? It's banged up a little. It's fucking obvious. Why are you not arrested? You got on a plane to Peru. What's going on?

Yeah. Like, none of this makes any fucking sense. It's crazy. Too much driving. Why is there so much driving in this movie? Oh, yeah. All the action is just... Chase scenes.

How she stops the villain twice. is by ramming him with a vehicle, which is so funny. It's like a punchline. People do that in comedy movies to be funny. But this is not, yeah, yeah. Like that part of the movie

is not trying to be funny. It's crazy. Do you think there'll be a commentary track on the... I would love for there to be. I don't know what the hell it would. If it's Dakota Johnson, that would be ideal. I really hope so. I will buy the 4K.

Yeah, she has to. I hope. that's in the contract somewhere. Yeah. All of her, uh, all of her, uh, all of her, like, press stuff for this film is, it's, like, hilarious. Yes. Like, the way she's conducting herself, the way she's talking about it is, it's, it's honestly

awesome. She's, she might as well be saying, like, don't watch this one. Just don't watch the movie. She just, just gives negative fucks about it. It's like a really funny dynamic. Um, all right, um, I was debating between a one or a 10. I think if it was made with more sincerity I would give it a 10

like a Neil Breen type of thing but I think I think I'm fine with a one but I just just so nobody gets confused it's a great one out of 10 like it's a really good very entertaining never bored

always engaged but not for the reasons the movie thinks or intended it's a perfect one out of 10 it's like it couldn't be better yeah

it's perfectly inept Yeah, another example of It's kind of like the inverse Like original suicide squad in a way But that was like annoying to me In the Failure that came together from that Just studio tragedy

Whereas like yeah This is funny In this tired subgenre that is Where the bottom is falling out This is just such a good like Cherry on top Like joke just to kind of Send us away

I've got this on letterbox There's a one star or I guess a two out of ten. But I probably should add a like on there to balance out of a little bit. Got to add the leg. Yeah. You got to have that like on there to communicate. Yeah, this is funny.

This is one to put on to make fun of. Yeah. Memes are good. All the advertising is hilarious. I love all the posters and just, it's so shameless, so clawing, so pathetic. And there is something funny about that. It's funny that they got like one picture out of her and they just keep using it. Yeah.

Same B and G. The weird smirk. That was the best she ever looked. It's the same contempt, yeah, on the poster as in every scene she's in the film. It's funny that she just gets to do that. Like, she's so confident about, like, you know, just existing. She's so connected. She's not worried about herself, like, profession.

She's like, she's got, all of her family is, like, rich Hollywood people anyway. So she doesn't need this. Like, what's on the line for her? Yeah, nothing's on the line. She gets to shit on the movie. yeah she's already said like she hasn't seen it and she probably will never see it yeah I bet she'll never like why would I might see it maybe someday I don't know trailer looks great she got her bag yeah congratulations she's the real winner oh she's definitely the real winner yeah yeah oh man well look

what an awesome gig you know millions of dollars to be in like the lead character and something like this like you don't even have to try yeah there's no expectation to even care or try Yeah, really. There's not even like the baggage of the character having like a bunch of expectations. Like, no one knows who this is. Yeah, nobody even cares. There's nothing on the line. So I can't blame her how she's conducting herself.

No, perfect movie. Everybody goes to see it. Not in 40X though. Don't see any movie in D-Box. Don't see any movie in 40X. Don't see any movie in ScreenX. That's a different one. That's a very terrible experience.

That spray liquids on you. What's the difference? No, Screen X? They're like... Screen X. X. So imagine, you know those curved monitors? Yeah.

So there's some screens that are even like I've seen that are curved. Imagine instead of the curved monitor, it was three monitors, but the two monitors on each side are your walls. So screen X is like, what if you had to turn your head behind yourself to see things that were happening in the movie? Oh, like it wraps around me at home. Like literally it goes to the back of the theater. Yeah, it's so stupid.

Doesn't everything look a warped and... Yeah, no, it sucks. I think I've watched Venom 2 like that actually. Yeah, I never again. Surely makes it look like a fish eye kind of like, yeah, what a weird idea. Yeah, hold on, I'll send this to you. Screen X. And they're still doing it.

Like, look, there's... Hold, shit, yeah, I got to send this to you. Just so you know what the hell is going on. Yeah. I don't know if this is like... I don't know where the hell that, yeah. So this is just skim around in there. And then imagine you're not at the very back of the theater.

Because that, it goes all the way to the back. Right. The image that they put here. I like screenings that have a big curve, but this... Yeah, it's not a curve. It's literally three different projections happening at the same time. Oh, the funniest part for the Venom 2 one was that one of them, like the far left projector had a slight delay.

And so everything, yeah, it wasn't even like... all sing. Like even if that wasn't the case, that's like the dumbest fucking idea. Why would I want to have to look behind myself to see things that are happening in the movie? Don't the, the screen, like the edge of the screens of that first middle screen, that line? Does that not like break up the image and kind of ruin the composition? It looks dumb. It's the stupid. Screen X.

I can't believe they're trying all these dumb gimmicks. Like, I can't believe they're all, they're still trying to think of ways to upsell, building like entire theaters and yeah like kind of died yeah like what are you doing what's the point yeah well they're scrambling they're panicking i guess and spending millions on these elaborate screens and chairs that throw you around and squirt you with fucking liquids most of the money they make is off of concession anyway just fucking just just let everybody drink in your theater you'll you'll make way more money than you know what to do it just Let people drink alcohol.

That's it. Easy. I figured it out. I fixed your fucking problem. Some smaller cinemas are starting to screen shit like skibbitty toilet. What? Yeah. Damn.

I need to see skibbitty toilet in D-box. In screen X. Screen X and D-box? Yeah. It will happen soon enough. Oh, my God. We'll get there. Gibbty, yes, yes.

Screen E-Gree. YouTube videos and yeah when when the memas are in charge of everything it will I'm sure that will become a standard weird meme screenings fucking YouTube poop nostalgia on the big screen. All right. So it was my recommendation this faithful, fateful episode. I'm Sam 2001 film dropped mere months after 9-11 this came out. God Honestly Following up Madam Webb Watching this It seemed less

Impressive to me Because this is This is a crazy film I actually watched it twice Oh It was so insane Yeah Because I watched it once by myself

And then I had to watch it With someone else Did I like imagine this film It feels like a fever dream Or something But yeah The 2001 film The 2001 film directed by

Jesse Nelson The premise here Being a Sean Penn is the main character who plays a intellectually disabled man who has a child with a homeless person who I guess was living with him. We'll delve into that a little bit more a second, but yeah, they skip over that conveniently.

And yeah, most of the film is a courtroom drama with Sean Penn acting as this mentally challenged individual with the Dakota Fanning introduction of this daughter character and the trials and tribulations and incredibly unearned drama of it all. This is a wacky film. In the introduction to this episode, I kind of tease the Tropic Thunder quote

of what goes on about. And so that's one of the more notable things about this movie is that this film that is being parodied in Tropic Thunder towards that line. It's its legacy. It is its legacy. That and an Oscar nom for Sean Penn and a interesting disconnect between, I notice this on IMDB, the user rating and the critical rating. Oh.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah. 7.6 right now from 155,000 users and a 28 metastore. Very interesting seeing that and trying to figure out like, what's going on here? What's the truth to this? And you figure it out pretty quick. It takes me in moments. Because to me, when I saw the premise and the fact it's like, intellectually disabled man fights for the custody of his seven-year-old.

So, like, to me, the idea is like, oh, part of this story must be explaining this situation to begin with. But within the first few minutes and the whole Starbucks gag ending with Sean Pan in the hospital room with the baby being born. Yes. in the most in the most cop-out like also you don't even care to address this you just you just want to create the most manufactured unowned drama yeah so you can have these manipulative our scenes where the like the worst john power music you've ever heard is blasting yeah i was disappointed when i saw that he was responsible for that actually i didn't know until like that point of the movie i was i was very shocked i normally quite like his music my boy john yeah i'm normally into his stuff but this this was i There was like an immediate irony with the fact we're talking about like there's a lot of like autistic characters and people who struggle with these kind of things, including overstimulation. And so much of this film is like an overstimulating mess. Like the music is overstimulating. The editing is overstimulating.

Just fucking everything about it is so, it's too much. It's shot like the office. And we're talking about the unintentional humor in fucking Madam Webb. The unintentional humor, like the timing of everything is edited. as if it's a comedy. It's very strange. Yeah. But they're trying to play it as a straight-up drama. There was definitely...

You have this insane tone. There's definitely... It feels like a disconnect of different people working on the project with differing ideas of what it's even supposed to be. It strikes me as the type of film where the director, you know, assuming that they have some sort of vision, which I assume that they would have. It doesn't seem like that's what they thought the scene would have been

when you see the end result of the scene. Yeah. You know, like where Michelle Pfeiffer criticizes her assistant and her assistant starts crying. And like you were saying, the way that it's shot, almost kind of like the office, just this aggressive, like, shaky cam, it kind of reminded me of like Black Swan,

but not as good, obviously. Just like an Aronofsky drama. And I feel like maybe that's kind of closer to what the director might have been thinking, thinking because you look at the, you know, emotional weight of the scene, like, there's characters like crying and there's like some serious type things happening. But then the music just absolutely ruins it. And the editing absolutely ruins it. And just these things that are taking place in post after the scene has already been shot that are drastically altering the way that it comes

across. And I'm, I have to believe that there's no way the director thought that that's how the end product of the scene would look. Right? I have to, it's confusing, it's confusing. I don't understand. It seems so conflicting. It's stylistically, I can't remember the last time I've seen such a disconnect with like the technique they're using to present it, but the subject matter and the writing just like really clashing.

Yeah. It doesn't complement what it's trying to achieve. And it's, yeah, it gives it this really confusing tone where it's like, we keep talking about these films that are like parodies of themselves, but it almost feels like a gag at point it's it's crazy how it comes across have you seen riding the bus with my sister no but you've you've mentioned it before there are so many similarities and it came out in 2005 so like four years after this and i guess it was like a made-for-tiv-tiv-movie um performance-wise very similar like a lot of the similar tics and a lot of the similar like inflections in the voice um and also

tone-wise immediately when the music started playing in this film i just i just don't understand why Hollywood's approach to people with, you know, mental disabilities or ticks or OCD or autism or, you know, any variety of these things. I don't understand why the mid-2000s Hollywood approach to this was to force this bizarre tone of like, aren't they quirky? This is, this is so silly, but like a sprinkle of like almost attempted empathy in there as well. But really, like, the tone of it, it almost, it seems like kind of condescending and mocking, right? Like, it's a, what, what are you going for? Because the message, the message is normally, it's a character, like the Michelle Fyfer character, comes to realization. Oh, he's a human being as well. That's, that's normally like, in the takeaways.

It's like the audience is going through that journey. Like, who's this made for? Like, people that want to pat themselves on the back and are like, I finally learned something about this movie. They be people, too. They do be people. Yeah. And it's like, the music might as well have had like a fucking like out of tune tuba just like following them around like diageetically. Just some guy in the background following them around with the tube.

Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. Like that's what the soundtrack really feels like. Is it just something that's just kind of like joking at them? Yeah, exactly. It kicks in to enhance a comedic tone usually. It's like so lighthearted. goofy. Yeah.

Yeah. It's absolutely irritating. And it ruins a lot of it. And the editing choice, what was with all those freeze frames? The freeze frames are hilarious. That's crazy. Again, feeding into the like parody of itself type thing. It's always on face.

Nothing feels, it doesn't feel like people interacting, like none of it. It's so weird. Like, Sean Penn's going around, he works in Starbucks, I guess, and is trusted around like boiling hot drinks. scolding hot drinks, I guess. Everyone he kind of interacts with is like so over the top, like nice all the time. Yeah.

The complexity is ripped out of every character. To the point, it's highlighted crazy during some of the courtroom scenes where the, the quote-unquote villain lawyer who's kind of being framed as the villainous role, he's kind of making points. Like what he's saying is kind of like, well, yeah, given what has been established here,

there's a scene. where Sam is told that he has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old about, and that's kind of where the drama comes from, or the conceit, at least, of like, we're worried about when Dakota Fanning turns eight, and you have the mental capacity of a seven-year-old, so you're not going to be able to keep up, or whatever. But, yeah, by the time, it all kind of, like, wraps up in these courtroom scenes, and you're siding with the villain, really, with, like, how it's being framed.

And that's, that's, that's, that's not right. You're not exploring it in like a complex way or expanding on these black and white concepts you're bringing up. That's crazy. The surface level casual manipulative way they try to manipulate the audience with these like really basic unearned drama beats. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense. Like none of this would happen. Like she lives with him for what like seven years.

Yeah. How did you get to age seven without even without this being an issue? Exactly. They didn't even know. Nobody knew about this child Without social services getting involved She is smart Right is the problem is like

She's perfectly smart perfectly capable She is getting smarter than her dad So obviously he did a fine job raising her Like if you're looking at like the child itself Like what they are developmentally Then there is no issue You're just creating an issue out of nowhere You know in the context of this universe

Like it seems to be perfectly fine So And it makes you ask yourself So why did they have to have This dynamic of her being the daughter of him instead of like, I don't know, you could have it. So Sam has a brother and the brother has a daughter and they have some kind of bond and there's drama from different angles there.

Yeah, who knows? You could have had a kid and then had like a head injury or something that there's so many different ways you could take it and have it be less insulting than what they do here and how like lazy and, yeah, unearned is the real word for it. Like it's just, that's all I'm thinking about in every scene of drama. It's like, well, none of this would happen this way or get to this point. Yeah. To this manipulative drama that you're trying to sell.

I'm not buying any of this. This is like, this is an insane else world story you've kind of created. It seems like the movie's entire point of existing is to be emotionally manipulative. Like the whole concept of the story and the angle at which they're presenting it, it literally serves no other purpose than to be emotionally manipulative. This is aiming to be like a tear-jurking. Oscar Bate sort of thing where the heavy lifting doesn't have to be done by the script and you're just doing the most basic

surface level foot ship possible and it's actually honestly astonishing just how basic this is because it's an over two hour long movie so it just winds up being repetitive as fuck like it just keeps going through the same motions over and over and over again like make a simple story just don't have it be two hours and 12 minutes you can be simple if you want make a 90

minute movie. What the fun? What's your business? Why do you think you can make a movie over two hours and you're not even going to do anything? Complex. Nothing interesting. On the unknown drama type note, like, things can't just happen. They have to be the most intense,

exaggerated form of drama. You know, like, oh, she's taken away from him on her birthday and the pictures and the picture booth are being taken and he's got the copies of the cops yanking, poor little, fanning away and

that's how he convinces the lawyer to go pro bono on his case by manipulating her with the pictures I still understand why she was doing that for free especially I got the impression that she was peer pressure by she was like lying to him to try and get him to go

away because she's like mean loyal woman and that's her arc she learns he's a human being but yeah she's like being peer pressure basically because he's speaking loud or whatever. And yeah,

all of her colleagues are like making fun of her for never doing pro bono work. I can do pro bono work. Isn't that the dumbest way to set something up though? Like, why?

We got to figure out why a lawyer would be working with him. How about we have a lawyer that gets made fun of for not doing work for free? It's peer pressure. And she has to prove

that she's going to do work for free because otherwise she feels socially ostracized for not doing that. And it's literally just it's it's for her own personal self benefit her self fulfillment Like I just like to prove that I can do this She's bad in this she's supposed to be oh she's awful she's really bad at this

horrendous um but I I find it hard to blame a lot of the actors in this movie where my eyes look more to I feel like director and writer like the script like The script doesn't help. How could you sell this? Like, how good an actor sell this, you know? You can't. You genuinely can't. Like, it's so rotten at its core.

I don't know how you would pass some of this off. Something that I noticed was, you know, there's a lot of really blatant moments in the film where Sean Penn breaks character. A lot of these are brought on by the script because there's no consistency to how the character is written. given what we know and what has been established and what has been shown about his mental capacity

and how he talks and how he communicates and how he sees the world, it really conflicts with every time it goes back to like the super like, oh, this is an important line for a super emotional part, then he'll start talking like an entirely other character. Like they desperately need to get these like core ideas

into the film and they, don't know how to do it other than have that character say it. It's like, you know, literally it's established mind of a child. But then he just starts talking like an adult just for that line that, you know, every once in a while happens in the film just to plot device line or a super manipulative emotional moment line like this is going in the trailer line or whatever. And it's just like, okay, well, if the character's not written consistently, I don't know how it could be performed consistently. right you yeah you don't have a great foundation to start with and like the extremely unsubtle themes that they're trying to explore like arcs or points they're trying to make with like yeah the

Michelle Pfeiffer character who they make an effort to give a seven-year-old son to mimic Sam and kind of make and she's like a overworked lawyer and a loveless marriage with her husband and they make this really obvious point of like well looks stuff can be how as well if you're not like Sam. Yeah, it's a very, very weird that the parallels they tried to draw and her changing over the course of the film to be like, oh, yeah, you know what, I like this guy. And I, I treated you wrong. And I, you know what?

I think I actually got more out of this relationship than you as the lawyer, all this kind of stuff. It's like so fucking saccharine and she's got some of the more like out of pocket dialogue, I feel like, because she has a lot of the, with her having the main kind of arc of the character changing, she has got some pretty interesting dialogue, like in some of these scenes where she's, yeah, in court or whatever, whipping out lines like, something like,

have you ever felt a task is so unbelievably challenging, it makes you feel, and the R, the R, sorry. Yeah, she does say it. Yeah, she straight up says it, and that's how they refer to his date. in the movie. They say he has autistic tendencies and yeah, the rest. I asked you this question before we started recording this one.

What was the etiquette with that word in regards to a film from 2001? And yeah, how do you like, it's like in the dialogue a bunch. It's in, I don't know, it's like referenced a lot. It used to be what you would call. It was like a medical term. Yeah, every single. single insult that exists to describe a mental deficiency has been a medical term at one point, because that's why people use them as insults, right? The word dumb was a medical term.

Right? Like, it's absolutely inescapable. And I don't know. The arsler, the reason why I'm saying arsler is because I know enough people get offended at it, that even though I don't think that it's, like, a bad thing to say as long as you're not calling someone with, you know, a mental problem that, like an actual person that's struggling. Like, you don't want them to feel bad, right? Just the word in of itself removed from context, I don't think is bad, but I'm not going to say it. Well, I, you know, I do say it sometimes, but I'm not going to go out of my way to say it and be malicious about it just because socially, you know, it's not really that big of a deal for me not to. However, I will say that because of these people that have taken issue.

with this word out of context in this way and have all banded together saying that it's like a real slur like it's I don't know it's not the N word it's not the F slur like I don't think it's up that high and what we're doing because of what I said earlier like we're literally just like okay well if it's not that word it's going to be another one

I don't want people to start using the word autistic in that way um it's already too late I know we've really like people kind of already are and the part of the reason why is because the our slur is becoming less socially acceptable. So now let's just play your game. Let's play your game. Instead of that, I will say, it started. Black-eyed peas, let's get it started. Look up the original lyrics. I think that the comparison is pretty clear. We can say it start. We can say,

sometimes I say whenagade. That's a fun one. People say regarded. Yeah, every, I've seen, the one that's taking off the most right now is regarded. So in online communities, and, you know, I'm saying it now, I've seen in a couple communities. It's spreading like wildfire. And pretty soon, we're not going to be able to say a perfectly fine word like regarded. And it's your fault. It's your fault for taking issue with the arsler in the first place. Now we're ruining other perfectly fine words.

Right? We had a word for it. We're always going to you. Like, that's the planet we live on. We want to promote like, we want to promote things like. intelligence and critical thinking. So if you're in an argument with somebody on the internet and you're behind a keyboard or something, right, and you want to describe someone not using critical thinking to their fullest or being, you know, absolutely obtuse, you know, how many words are we going to use,

right? Like, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like we're creating more problems by not understanding that it's that it's a completely unwinnable goal to just keep chasing the new word and being like, oh, you can't use that anymore. It's like, well, okay, it's just going to be the next word. What are you doing? We've got to settle on something eventually. I found this one interesting, especially because

I think it's like the only word in my lifetime where it's like really, or maybe like gay and a couple of other words like that. Um, yeah, it was, it was probably gay in the R slur with a big, like, that's just what everyone said all the time and like, watch Judd Apatel movies from the early 2000s. Oh, hell yeah. Just any comedy, basically. Like, it's like every other word. And it's like, oh, wow, this weird, like, it's just what we were raised on, basically.

Yeah, and it was, it was socially acceptable to say it at the time. And now it's not. And now we got to look back on these things and be like, well, this has an entirely different context now for no good reason. you know a lot of people like they reclaim their slur or whatever if they're part of the community like what how does that work with this word as a furry like i am claiming the r word yeah it's like quite it's quite broad that's what yeah that's probably why it's a bit more preferable than just calling people autistic because it is broader you know yeah yeah

on someone who's, I don't know, it's a bit different. It's one of those things where, like, I don't know, I feel like there's so many words out of context removed from context on their own, I just, there's so many much more offensive things that one could say, right? Like, if somebody's casually, if somebody's quoting a film and they say the word faggot, or like they're talking about cigarettes, or they're even talking about it in reference to a gay person, but there's no even inkling or, um, um, um, implication whatsoever that it's done with any sort of malicious intent, I think that that is much

more socially acceptable in my mind or accept that, like, that's a much preferred outcome to someone not saying any swear words, but saying, oh yeah, gay people don't deserve to live or don't, like, shouldn't get married. Or like, you could, it, it matters where it's coming from, right? It matters, like, what the intent is from the person. So I just, like, single words removed from context is just such a not only easy but like really dumb and thoughtless way to try and enforce you know some sort of like social grandstanding i'm not sure in that sense like i said earlier if a word has so much history and um there's enough people that take offense to it in that immediate way i'm not just going to be saying it and being like oh yeah it's so important for me

to say this word. I'm not going to like run around shouting the N-word of people, obviously. And even in that sense, you know, I'm trying to cool back my R-sler thing, even though it was a bit more of my vocabulary at a certain point in time. I'm trying to cool it back and I'm trying to stop using it. However, we're just going to use other words. I'm just going to say regarded. Yeah. Like there, I'm not using it. Like, who cares? I have a, it's like a core memory of like a heartfelt email I got from someone once after using that word. In some content years ago. And yeah, they basically did convince me like, yeah, I probably don't need to rely.

If I feel like I need to rely on this word to be entertaining or humorous, then I'm probably not very entertaining. So it's like, yeah, it's not going to take much for me to just pluck this out. You know, if the, it feels different on public platforms where there are like thousands of eyes. And he's listening. You don't know all these people are where they are in the world, like what they're going through, whatever. It's complicated and difficult to navigate.

And yeah, this, it's just something about this word that's quite, I know, quite difficult to wrap my head around. It's, it's the one that is definitely the subject of the most debate in terms of whether or not it's actually something that people should stop using. It's stuck around. Yeah. Like, even past its point of being, like, socially unacceptable, like, people are still using it. And then, you know, there's like this almost kind of like people are trying to redeem the word. Like, I'm all for it. Who cares?

but I'm just going to say regarded or it started or when a gate. It doesn't matter. It means the same thing, right? I'm not talking about actually mentally disabled people, right? If I'm using it as an insult, I'm not, you know, I'm talking about somebody who's promoting the film Sound of Freedom, right? Like, this is a different category. If we're literally at a point where we're just, we're just subbing it in for regarded,

it's like, well, what is the difference of that? There is no difference. Like, what? I could just say like, okay, instead of the arsler, I'm saying dumb now. now dumb means something more than it did before. Like you gotta have a word to use in like a insulting someone's mental capacity. Like that that's a thing that has existed forever and will continue to exist. And I don't care who you are, you've done it.

And you're going to continue to do it. Even if you don't use that exact same word, you're going to keep doing it. Because that is one of the great human struggles is trying to get some simple ideas through people's heads that are being like, so obtuse and thick skulled about it, you know, in context of not actually having mental disabilities unless, you know, we're going broadly enough to, you know, everybody has mental disabilities in some way, but, you know, that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about somebody that, like, went to special ed. It just makes me wonder, like, okay, if this is, like, a pattern in another 20 years, what we're going to look back on and be like, oh, it was just so normal in

2020 whatever when we're saying blank and now that's not accepted anymore or uh yeah it's a it's a very fascinating i think language and like uh the power of language and trying to control language is like a really fascinating subject actually um and how it can be weaponized and manipulated and yeah things can have some really good george orwell like uh uh there's a really good essay about that i've read like a year ago. Yeah, so it's all very, just language and etymology is, yeah, it's just a fascinating subject, especially just like in my lifetime what I've seen change, what I'm told, like just, just the out of pocket stuff like my, my grandparents say, it's like,

it's not really not that much time and the language change is that much. Yeah, yeah, I love thinking about that kind of stuff, but it's just like, yeah, where do you stand? Where do you, where do you draw the line? Like when you can't just stop, like, learning or trying to, with, adapt. Yeah. Also, like the regarded thing, it does get kind of ridiculous.

Where do you stand? I'm team It Start. I like using that one because it brings, I would like to see a world where, despite the Black Eyed P's best efforts to become radio-friendly, I would like to see that radio-friendly edit being looked back on in the same way retrospectively that people see the original version. I would like people to start ubiquitously using It Started and It Start so that we can look at the Black Eyed Peas song Let's Get It Started and they will not have successfully escaped from making a very weird, cringe socially unacceptable chorus. That's my goal.

I'm very, I'm very just spite driven against Will I Am and Fergie. Yeah, the dissonance there is watching that live show. of that song. It's just like, I was raised on this. That's great. The funniest part about that song is they knew exactly what they were doing.

The first line, like, in the verse, is like, in this context, there's no disrespect. Like, you're already on the defense. Pushing the envelope. It's not like they can claim ignorance. It's not like, and the way that they use the word. So, like, when I'm talking about using the word, you know, you could, if you were Will I Am and Fergie, you know, you might want to use the argument like,

okay, like it doesn't mean, it doesn't have anything to do with like an actual disability or mental deficiency. We're just talking about getting crazy, right? That would be a defense. But then you look at other lyrics in the song and they say, get it started, get stupid. And then they also say things like, that's right. Something, something like an epileptic. So like literally just dragging in like clinical disabilities that don't even have anything to do with what they're and it's like okay Well, we can see that this wasn't even coming from like a good place and you trying to like it's it's almost way worse that they've Change the lyrics in that way to try and hide the original intent and it's funny that people play that on the radio and it's like well I guess this is fine It's a hilarious reflection of the time though like it wasn't it didn't really stand out at the

time it stands out now i mean it stood out enough that they changed the lyrics a little bit of that you know but like the filtered radio version like that's not too crazy you know um i don't know it's just different expectations uh weird era the early 2000's like feels a lot more more based happy go lucky yeah kind of yeah it was before the internet i mean before everyone was using the internet anyway like yeah yeah early days. Yeah. Um,

I want to talk about Dakota Fanning because she's honestly good. Mm. She's like, she's one of those once in a generation child stars that is just so fucking talented. I said that to the person I was watching with like, what were they feeding her to like give her that talent?

Like a poor girl. Like, what was her life? Oh, yeah. How was that good of an actor? Yeah, you're like seven years old and you're like that good. Like what is going on here? Like what is in the water? A very strict regimen.

Yeah. Yeah. I just hope it pays off for her or at least pays for her therapy at some point. Yeah, I hope she's doing fine now. A lot of child actors don't. She's genuinely excellent. A lot of child actors get like fucking addicted to drugs and go crazy. Like I honestly, we're going to, when we're done talking about this movie,

I'll ask a question that's kind of, like related to that ethical question yeah oh yeah a lot of Beatles covers yeah that was one of the themes isn't it because like sounds the Beatles he's obsessed with the Beatles and there's a lot of the dialogue is just it wasn't yoko's fault or paul thought this it's like yeah a very annoying kind of repetitive note and it's like going for this whole all you need is love baby like message you know it's like Michelle fifer she doesn't know how to love because she She's in a loveless marriage and hates her kid and everything. And she just needs to learn a bit of love from Sam because sound pure.

Oh, I had hate in my heart. I didn't know that made me sad. I just had to put love in there. This might be the first film where I've had like a strange psychological, like physical reaction from. I genuinely felt like my skin was like itchy while watching the film. But like there's something so just like. misguided and crazy about it. It's like, we kind of talked about it with Crash a few episodes ago in a similar way where it's like maybe at one point there was some something earnest

going on at the heart, some some ideal or something they wanted to communicate, but man, has that got lost along the way? Yeah, it does seem kind of like self-fulfilling when you have a film that is, you know, loudly exclaiming like, oh yes, we are morally, morally, good, have love for other people and don't judge and everybody kumbaya and just hold hands and the world is the best place on earth. Meanwhile, it's like very clearly just being used as a vehicle to get an Oscar, right? And the lack of sincerity in the writing and the presentation and the editing especially. Like when you have a lack of sincerity but that message, it's never good.

It just always comes across. It's just like completely self-fulfilling. So like we haven't mentioned Laura Dern. and like just shows up towards the end of me fucking laura durn jump scare me yeah she's like she takes over to go to fanning she kind of is the one caring for her for the time being they only have like two or three scenes together but in the space of those three scenes laurne goes from oh this guy sucks i hate this guy i want i want to go to fanning for myself and then by the the end of the third scene she's in tears saying like I was going to say in court that she's never had the love

that she deserves but I know that's not true now I know that you love him Sam and it's like everyone's in tears and the music's swelling and it's like oh my god shut up like it's so un-earned all of it and every character kind of does some version of that like Michelle Pfeiffer does a similar thing with the whole I think I got more out of this relationship than you in the end like type kind of condescending beat yeah it all feels very phony And what was the purpose of like Sam's like entourage where it's like five or six people with like various different conditions, some kind of support group or whatever, like friendship group who keep recurring as an emotionally use of comic relief like including their conditions.

Again, it's one of those like, aren't they so quirky derp de durp de durp? And it's like this well that seems like that like it's contradicting. contradictory towards like the humanizing message that you claim to be yeah right it's not it's the complete inverse yeah like it's almost like borderline on spectacle mm-hmm and the out of the five or six of that crew like two of the actors were actually disabled in some way and they all the other yeah performing that's what I found fascinating I'm like imagine being a person with down syndrome you show up on set and then Sean Penn turns off his regular voice and starts doing, I am Sam

in front of them. That's kind of weird. It's very weird. And I kept, this is the perfect companion piece to music from a couple years ago. Oh yeah, C has music. I forgot about that.

The difference there, that's another film I've seen like two or three times. I'm just like, oh my, like, how the, you actually got this mate, like hundreds of people coordinated to get this shit made. Yeah. Luray. But there's more, there's more kind of like, I don't know, it's like a different vibe when

the main character in music, she's so young. I feel like, I don't know, Sean Penn, he's a grown-ass man, or everyone, everyone involved in this project, apart from like Dakota Fanning. I don't know, there's, these are all like professionals. These are all, these people, it's crazy. Yeah. It's shocking that everyone got together and was like, you know what, we're doing a good thing here. We're making a positive message.

and all these big names are going to be in it. And we're going to go for that Oscar baby. And we're going to get a nod. What do you think inspired them to do this? Because it seemed to be like the concept alone and the way that they approach the subject matter had this kind of nostalgic vibe to me. Well, I mean, I was very much reminded

of riding the bus with my sister. But that came out like four years after. But even there's a part of me that feels that even if that movie didn't exist, that this definitely just feels very much like a part of its time in a way, right? Yeah. It seems like the type of thing that had some sort of prominence in the early 2000s or whatever. Like the pre-9-11 optimism. Or just, or just what's it?

Optimism is not even the word, like naivety. Yeah, naivety. It definitely comes across as naive because they're not going for the stereotype. like autistic savant type good doctor character they're going for more of like an ultimate sympathy I don't know they they just they just beat around the bush they never really actually go into their health site particularly or anything to do they want to keep it vague because the more questions you ask the more the the basic setup just falls apart yeah it it really really would have benefited from being more grounded and sincere you know maybe like a

bit better researched on the subject or you know you'd need to write a different story the more cynical it the more cynical of a place it feels like it comes from the more harm it's doing to the film yeah it starts a melodramatic place instead of just trying to figure out yeah the earned drama or something like a yeah something more reasonable or you know something believable something you buy it's quite important that you buy into the conceit. If it falls apart in literally the first five minutes, it's not a good sign. If you're left, like, scratching your head, like, how do we even get here? Like, this, like, what do you mean?

She's just, like, a homeless woman. Like, who is, who is she? Like, the implications of that, like, what? This is the character you're saying has the mind of a seven-year-old. Like, why is that not, okay? Just got to get to go to Fanning. That's all that matters. Just really brushed over, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, such a cop out. The whole film's a cop out. And like, some of the technical stuff they whip out, very odd. Like, towards the end, when it's the down point for the Sam character, the low point, he's like in his apartment making origami. And he makes this, like, elaborate walls of origami.

And there's this whole sequence between Sam and Pfeiffer. And it's shot from both of their perspectives, like, they're up. looking through a hole in this origami wall. And it's like this really weird set and this weird vibe and it's shot so close. It's just like, what the fuck? This stylistically is so odd. And there's like another scene where Sam goes to see a therapist, which is like he has to go to for his court demanded or whatever. But the lighting in that therapist office is shot like was lit like a noir film.

Like, there's no lights on in the therapist office. It's all, like, dark except for the light that's coming through the blinds. Like, it's just like, what the hell is going on with the mood right now? Like, why have you lit it like this? And there's lots of, there's heaps and stuff like that. Odd choices. Again, I think it's just a lack of cohesion from what the director thought they were making versus what everyone in Post thought they were making.

Yeah. Like, I don't know. Did they have an idea of what it wanted to be before? before they started shooting is the real question. They must have. I just think the thing they thought they were saying is way more simplistic and half-baked than it actually is, you know, like there's just no, there's no grunt, there's no, there is no backburn at all.

Yeah. But yeah, what kept me going was just like the, that inherent clash of the writing and the presentation and the way it's edited together, this just wicked unintentional comedic timing. It's like, you could probably read. read it some of this and like just say oh it's like a an episode of the office they never release it's like it's like a rest of the development like the zooms and everything and like the handheld stuff it's like shot just like a sitcom it's like it's yeah yeah much of it

a very I I was very impressed by one shot where he like falls down the stairs on his face I'm like that's totally him in the shot too oh he's like carrying a cake and it yeah yeah yeah yeah I did sell it yeah and he went down like three stories Just like fucking literally threw his face into the floor. Yeah. That was a great fault. That was a really impressive little stunt shot. On that note, well, we haven't really talked about Sean Penn and his performance.

And I've got to say, I find it difficult to assess. That is the Oscar nod for the film is Sean Penn's leading performance. And going back to what I was saying about the actors, I don't know, like, did he do a good job in this role with what he was given? Like, he hits the emotional beats. he needs to, I guess. He's doing, I guess. There's parts where he's great, but it's just, it's so, it's not well realized from the get-go in terms of what the project is.

And like I said earlier, the lack of consistency in the writing with the character is really hurting his chances at making a consistent performance happen. That was the problem. There are points where he breaks character and then many points because of the tone in editing and writing of the film, where, you know, no matter what he's doing, you can't really take the character seriously. And that's a big problem

when you're doing such an ambitious attempt at a character, when you're doing something that like, you know, you should probably know before going into it, you could really, you could, this could turn out not great, you know? Well, a real high risk role here. Yeah, and the kind of exploitational, aspect is interesting to think about when it's okay and when it's not um because i don't know there's like in

under the skin for example there's a brief role in that movie or someone who's got like a crazy condition um but that doesn't come across like it's exploiting someone or using something to i don't for shock value or comedy something cheap like that there's there's a greater point being made um whereas yeah the the the greater point being made here is so surface level and half baked it's just great i just i would i just imagine being a fly on the wall like in those rooms where you've got the producers and writers and directors all like talking about like cast in and they're like yeah you know what this is i think we're going to win an oscar here guys i think this is going to be this is going to be good Like we got Laura Dern, we got Sean Pann, we got all of these...

Fucking Dakota Fanning in this bitch. Introducing... And that probably does go to show how good of an actor she is, the fact that this, you know, it was the start of a career. It wasn't the only thing she was ever in. She kind of owned the early 2000s for a bit in Hollywood. Yeah, she's just in everything. Yeah. Once in a generation child actor.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, what else is even of note? There's that character. It's kind of the only way they explain that seven-year gap of how Sam manages to get that far as he has a neighbor with... It's called Agrophobia? Dian...

Agoraphobia? Agoraphobia, yeah. Elgorophobia. Oh, God. The climate change of phobia. Yeah. Yeah, and that whole... Again, it's kind of play for laughs. She's like sat in Fife's car, doesn't want to leave.

She's like, oh, in the Porsche, the handles like over there. And she like screams comedically. So, oh, I'm not ready. Oh, my God, this is so. Oh, and with that character in court as well, when she's giving her testimony or whatever, when there's that insane out of pocket line from one of the lawyers, when it's like, when your son, oh, dude, did you feel you'd made mistakes? and like just making this woman have like a breakdown on the stand. It's like, where's this going? Who are you? Like, where's this coming from? It's like, that's like a really hilarious scene to me, like the way that all unfolds. The unintentional timing is just, it's like chef's kiss, like perfect.

It's bizarre for a comedy. But they're presenting a courtroom drama. Yeah, that's probably why I watched it twice. It was like, what the, what is going on here? Was it better on the second watch? It wasn't as shocking on the second watch. Yeah. But I felt like I was like disassociating on that first one.

This is crazy. Yeah. This is a mad film. This is insane. Am I just making this up right now? But no, I'm Sam is very, I am real. It's real. It's real.

And it made, got down, did it make a lot of money as well? $22 million budget here. Gross worldwide. 97 million, nearly, nearly hitting 100 million in 2001. Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty impressive. And that will probably also explain this way. I don't think it really has anyone's career in here as well.

No. Nobody, nobody had their career ruined over this. And Sean Penn wound up winning two Oscars later. Yeah. Yeah, so it didn't really hurt anyone involved. Maybe the director. I don't know what Jesse Nelson's up to now. Not much.

I don't think they've done anything in a while. This is like their best received film. Yeah, they've got like a random few credits on there. Like they did like one episode of curb. Yeah, and like season nine. Yeah, yeah. But then like Christmas with the Coopers and I'm Sam. I think I've actually seen Christmas with the Coopers.

Awful. Two out of ten. Two out of ten for me. There's some things that, you know, I appreciate them trying in some ways. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm in the same spot as you, the one star. Uh, two out of ten. Just, just fascinating this whole thing.

The fact that it got made it all. Yeah. It is a little piece of history. Yeah. Yeah. Time capsule. It's definitely a time capsule. Yeah.

See, it's one of those things like if I were Sean Penn, that would be my like, I can't sleep. I'm thinking about this. It would keep me up at night. Yeah. I'd be like, damn, do people remember that movie? Fuck, that was surprising. Yeah, I don't know how much shame a lot of these actors have, to be honest. Yeah, and the fact that it got Oscar nominated just like adds to the longevity of it, you know.

It adds a bit to the humor. Exactly. That he did get that nomination. Who did he lose to? Let's see. 2001. You look that out. That's actually good.

Best actor, Denzel Washington and Training Day won. Okay. And then a beautiful mind came out the same year. Russell Crow was nominated. Bill Smith's in there too. Tom Wilkinson had a best. actor, no? All right. Question time? Yeah, let's

see some questions from the Sardona Coast. Wait. Oh, do we forget some? I was going to talk about a thing that, well, yeah, because even if this wasn't asked as a question, AI is getting fucking crazy. Yeah, there's stuff you sent me. Yeah, it can do like a 60 second long video. And a lot of it looks very realistic.

There's still some glitches, but it's like very dreamlike. Yeah. And this is a very fast progression, right? Yeah. Yeah, because we'll making fun of that Will Smith eating spaghetti from a couple years ago. Yeah. The spaghetti, the spaghetti clips were great. But yeah, there's still like people that exist that will say like this year, like,

AI doesn't know how to draw hands. It's like, I think we've, we're past that point. Yeah, I think it's all that point. Sure, there are some glitches that happen. It is, you know, it's, we're getting. pretty crazy. It's moving at a very exponential pace, which is anybody paying attention.

That's how tech works, yeah. Would know that that's what happens. Yeah, I can foresee a lot of companies using AI instead of hiring

animators, depending on the scene, depending on what they're making. And we're getting close technologically to that being like a pretty real thing for like major studio. You think Sony, you think Sony's not going to use AI? You think Sony's not just going to like

AI some venom in there? They're going to do it, right? And this is all inevitable. And even if we were to like make a law against it that, you know, I don't know how you'd stop that. And I think it's pretty clear that the United States doesn't want to not participate in the global economy.

Yeah. You know, when you have major companies. Major company, like Microsoft investing like fucking billions of dollars into this shit. Like obviously there's a huge future and a lot of potential for the technology here. And even if it fucks over the average person, like this isn't new, right? That's just how things work. So, you know, the thing I've been saying this entire time is support concepts like universal basic income, make sure your elected representatives know that it's something that you would at least

like to see like a test pilot for unfortunately I think you know we're kind of dropping the ball here we're doing a little bit too late it is still a possibility I think it's not just a possibility it's an inevitability it just depends on which countries implement something like that first and the time frame of it yeah yeah right like you we need to get out of the idea that jobs exist to make people money, like the people doing those jobs. They don't exist to make you money. They exist to fulfill a service, a need, right? And if you're being paid by somebody else, right?

Like my job even. Like, I exist to fulfill a need to either, you know, the people paying me that are like my patrons or my audience or to some extent to Google or YouTube. if we're moving towards a future where, you know, our jobs are being replaced by AI or automation or technology. And again, this is not new. This is just a different variation of it, a different flavor, a different tool. Universal basic income or something like that seems to be, from what I can tell, the best way to mitigate damage and to prevent, you know, a lot of poverty and social crisis. We're just not reactive enough. No.

We're not proactive enough. Yeah. Yeah. The problem is when it's like a horrible. When it's already happening. It's so deeply ingrained where it's like, oh, yeah, you can't close Pandora's box once you've opened it. Yeah.

It's like kind of what happened with the internet. Just on a different, just a different tack basically. Exactly. Exactly. Right. There's a lot of bad shit that came from the internet. Yeah. We still don't really know the long-term effects of it too.

So this is another. Yep. No. Let's just see. What happens, baby? No. It's just right. I mean, we're forced to at this point.

We don't, we can't stop it. There's literally you can't. Literally you can't. So what do you think, when do you think we're just going to be able to like feasibly and realistically just like generate a short film basically or, you know, and in a way where it's not, if this year would be in like five years. Yeah. I don't know.

I could see it in like 10 years. Like that being like an actual option. I think that a major hurdle that's, going to have to be addressed by AI is if, let's say, you're generating like a short film or something. I don't think that any of the existing AI software as it is right now, or programs or algorithms or whatever, I don't even know the technical term, but I don't think that as it exists right now, it understands how to sync audio and video in a way where it understands where audio would be coming from in a sensible way.

Right now, every existing piece of AI-assisted art or whatever we want to call it, or AI-generated images and video and audio, those are all kind of separate entities, right? So people will still be a part of like a very manual editing process where even if they generate an AI image or AI video or use AI to generate any of that stuff, if they have a voice appearing on a character, like the AI voice being generated is generally like separate, right? So maybe they'll record something and then feed it through an AI software to give it a different voice. Maybe like combined different AIs. There's still an editing process there.

I don't think that AI knows, you know. The editing process will be automated though as well, right? Yes. Well, there's already doing that. Yeah, yeah. There's editing software that is using AI to do that. And I've never used it. I'm kind of curious about it.

I've used a couple of the Adobe thing. He's just messed around with, like, in Adobe Audition, for example, you can, like, do, like, passes with, like, AI stuff that take out noises or that Photoshop feature. Yeah. You can, like, generate certain things. So it's pretty powerful, pretty crazy. But it's the copyright thing where it's the big question, right?

Like, if you're generating short films based on already existing copyrighted material, where does that start now? How does that work in fair use? It depends how closely it relates to the copyrighted material in the first place. I don't know, like perhaps we can have some sort of legislation that requires

every existing prompt to credit what sources are being taken from. That would be interesting. I don't see that being a bad thing. Yeah. But then in terms of like, I don't know, an actual licensing payout,

then we would have to, we would also therefore have to, like if you're inspired by another movie, you know, the director of fucking Madam Webb said she watched like Nicholas Rokes don't look now. It's a funny clip, right?

You could be inspired by something and use it even, you know, to some degree, depending on how closely, like even as like a mental blueprint to create what you're doing. You still don't have to pay, like, licensing or royalties to that. Like, there's some, like, if you're creating something new out of existing things,

and also, you know, fair use or, like, parody or, you know, one of the factors in fair use is whether or not you're serving a different purpose from the original or creating something new, independent, or, like, are you creating your own thing? Does it, I think that people are scared of the idea of humans not being involved in art. I think that humans always will be. I think that that's something that is kind of inherent to what we get out of art. Because remember, to view art or experience art, there has to be subjects. And right now, we're the subjects.

So until we get to a future where AI are like real people hanging out, you know, human beings are always going to have some sort of a thirst for human art. Isn't the question when you can't tell what is human art and what is simulated? I think a lot of people are scared and feel like an existential crisis when they think of the concept of like an AI being able to create something that resembles human art in a way that we can't tell. Like I think at some point in time, there's going to be something that is made by AI that especially to fucking people that watch Normie movies anyway is going to emotionally impact and affect. people in as significant of a way that is if it weren't AI and if people don't know whether or not it's AI then there is no difference right at least from the perspective of the the viewer experiencing the piece of art I'm like you know I'm I'm I'm a person that adapts I'm a person that you know

when COVID happened you know it was two years of my life where I'm like okay I'm making some drastic social changes lifestyle changes but it's all temporary and the world is changing and we need to do this right now and I need to adapt. It was a lot easier for me to get into that mentality than I know a lot of it was for a lot of other people, case and point just how many people just didn't do it, right? Yeah. And I've always been the type of person where, you know, I use the tools that are available to me at any given point in time. The world is changing. You have to accept that the world changes. I don't know what, like, you either adapt or you die, right? In that sense, I've already, you know, had

many thoughts in my head and about way before this AI thing was even like a popular thing right now, but I've pondered the idea of, you know, machines or artificial intelligence and what that means in terms of like personhood or what that means in terms of like an experience, right? If you get really, yeah. Yeah, right? Like what's to, I don't know that anybody exists outside of my own head anyway. And neither do you. neither does anybody listening, right? So, you know, you could be an AI. I don't know. If there's a

point in time where it's indistinguishable, then I don't know what the difference is. Oh, like the simulation theory. Right. Well, yeah, because people have this weird, like, purist mentality about things. And I don't know. Like, people, I, I, there's something weird and inherent and, like, caveman brained, just in our DNA where we have this sort of like, no, that's not legitimate and we just we look at other things and we go like no it's even though it's the same thing this one's real when i don't know if i i don't know if i follow that as a rule i think that i'm more willing and open to accept different things existing and you know yeah not put that same sort of judgment in certain ways and you can't yeah can't stop the inevitable um but there also seems to be this

tension, or at least in my mind, between these kind of almost different belief systems with how they apply to AI, because there is, on one hand, there's this, like, really romanticized idea of the creative process and, like, what that means. And there's, like, ethereal nature to it and something we do associate with humanity and our expression. It's not magic. Like, our brains are fucking algorithms. Exactly, yeah. Then there's the more kind of realist, or you could almost say it can veer into being nihilistic at points where if you break down every single, you know, signal in the brain is like a, yeah, it's like an electronic. We're literally just a product of code, right?

We're just biological code. Who cares if, who cares if it's, you know, like one's squishy and one's made a metal? Who can, like, I don't care. it's we're all just functioning off of code we're all we're all exactly a product of our environment I don't believe in free will yeah this is I think like you has been something on my mind for a long time as well and part of why I've loved like science fiction be it when I first saw blade runner or the mass fat games with the geth yeah all the conversations that come from that yeah those are characters right we can emote with them the exact same way I think that if we survive long enough

as a species, we could see that becoming a very real thing to deal with in the future is personhood of artificial intelligence, right? Yeah. Or is there some arguments you made that it's almost like a, it's like a manufactured evolution in a way. But it's an extension of us. Exactly. Yeah.

And we're natural. There's nothing that exists in the universe isn't natural. It's an extension of us. We're a part of nature. We're doing nature, right? It's the next step in our own evolution. It's something we created. If it surpasses us, it's still us.

We did it. Right? We're the end result of like surpassing other previous versions of our own DNA, of our own species, right? But now we're doing the Jurassic Park. We're becoming the God type. We're making the extension now instead of letting time. evolution.

Yeah, there's nothing pure about it. Fuck, like, it's, they're, that's like trying to argue against, like, artificial insemination or anything we've done, right? Or, like, surrogacy. You know, people are still fucking mad about that. It's so weird. Like, so imagine, imagining, imagine, imagine looking at consenting adults doing a thing and being like, no, that's not pure.

It's not real. God told you, you have to be straight, basically, is the argument. And you know, um. You're cheating. I don't know. You just know that like if we could see what 2060 looks like, it would make us feel weird. Just like how it makes you feel weird if you look at what's going on in 1950. It's like so different.

This is so unrelatable. This is like I could barely even keep up with the dialogue. Dialogue if I was put in like 1910. Like people wouldn't know what I'm talking about. I think that, you know, I, in some ways I'm excited to see where AI goes and I'm fascinated and there are bad things that will come of it. I can bet a million fucking dollars that as soon as, you know, AI video is convincingly real, there's going to be people that are going to generate trans people doing a bad thing and then

use that to further their bigotry. Like that's 1,000% going to happen. The way it will affect politics. Not looking forward to that. Yeah, politics is going to be fucked. Witness, you know, video evidence is going to be like not admissible in court anymore, or it shouldn't be to the point where you can't distinguish it anymore, right? This is like already happening.

I heard an anecdote about the secondary school I went to. There was a teacher there who very recently, the last few months, had a student who taught under him. And this teacher happens to be gay. and this student of his generated something damning of this teacher and started spreading it around school. And he'd adopted a boy. And they get social services rocking up, like, explain this picture. Like, police getting involved. That's awful.

That's actually happened. Like, we're in that timeline. So now they're, like, scrambling, like, yeah, trying to figure out, like, what's the truth? Like, now the impetus is on him. And it's like, oh, my God, this is awful. I think that existing laws in place should exist. Like, if you generate, if you're generating imagery in attempt to make it look like somebody committed a crime that they didn't, then that should, you should be held to the same standard

where as if, like, you were trying to, like, you know, you should get charged with wasting police resources. I forget the difference between libel and slander, one of those. Yeah, yeah. You know, there should definitely, you should definitely be criminally prosecuted if, if you're doing that in the same way that, like, you should, if you're swatting someone or, you know, like, just because I'm not, like, absolutely hysterical over AI existing doesn't mean that I support every instance of it. There's obviously going to be some bad shit that happens and even in relating

to, like, copyright and, um, what you create on, you know, perhaps, you know, the, whatever I create is eventually going to be so replicatable through AI. someone can just be like, ooh, YMS Lion King Part 2, it's out now, and then publish it, and then who knows, right? I think that existing copyright protections would still, you know, it would still apply to that in the sense that, oh, someone's using my branding and trying to trick people into watching something that I didn't create and they're making money off of something that is a part of my actual market, right? So, like, whether or not it's AI, those existing things would, you know, existing restrictions would be in place. So I'm not, I'm not that. I don't know if that's a huge concern, but we'll see. I hope that.

Yeah, I wonder how limiting it's going to be in that sense as far as like. Yeah, I don't know. If what you're generating is usually stuff that already exists, well, it has to be stuff that already exists. That's all it can pull from. And what people are going to want to see and do with it will be like, I want to see Batman fight Spider-Man. I want to reskin Uncharted to have, I don't know, a meme as Nathan Drake. I want to see Nathan Fielder as the Flash in the Xxon Lakers. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. So it would be like that Frank Zapp and nostalgia quote of like, yeah, it's just smaller and smaller pool of like IPs and things. And I don't know, I don't know how you could like penetrate that world at that point. you know, when we're in... I don't know, because I think that what's fascinating about AI is it's not... I think people have like a weird misunderstanding of

what its capabilities are. It's not just like, oh, it takes five different drawings and then like morphs them together. It can understand like what a texture is and apply the texture to something that has not existed before previously, right? It can create new images,

sure, using other images as a reference in the same way that we do, right? Like people act as though AI using other images as reference. Like, we also do that, right? Every, my understanding of art is based off of what other artists have made. And that there's a catalog in my brain, whether consciously or subconsciously, right, that I don't, I don't trace something. Like, as I said earlier, I don't even watch other people's reviews of a movie just because I want to make sure it's my own thoughts that I don't, like, subconsciously pull from somebody before.

making my own, for the, you know, absolute most part. I want to just make sure that it's like my own pure thing. But we all, you know, even if it's like, oh, I've never seen anyone else's review of this movie, my idea of reviewing movies, like that as a concept even, right, there's inspirations from, you know, Plinket reviews. And I've obviously, you know, turned it more into my own thing. But like even, you know, my, the entire language, you know, our understanding of like what colors are. Like, if somebody asks you to, like, pick color blue and just make, just make a blue background. Like, sure, I'm the one doing it, but my understanding of what the color blue is is based

off of other things I've seen. Like, I'm taking from a library in my own head, whether consciously or subconsciously, of other existing things. So, you know, I'm not trying to say it's the exact same. It's just automated on a scale we can't really relate to. Yeah. If it's complex enough, and if it's not. if there's enough difference between the existing catalogs and images or video or whatever,

that it's not doing any sort of copyright infringement, right, inherently. Like if a human being created the same image and it's not like a copyright infringing sort of image or whatever, like, I don't know. I think we're going to have to adjust how we think about ourselves and what, even is art and creativity and originality especially. I think that's what makes people so uncomfortable. Yeah, it comes from a place of fear, I think. It's the same reason why people want to believe that you survive your own death.

It's the same reason why people want to believe that they have free will, right? I'm like well past all of these things. And I'm like big brain fucking, you know, I'm not a genius. I'm just, it's my perspective of the world. It's a, what do I call it? it's like a philosophical type of thing, but I'm just so like not even concerned about those. Like they don't ruin my life in an ethical way. Like they don't cause me to have an existential crisis.

I'm comfortable not having free will. I'm comfortable not surviving my own death. And I'm comfortable knowing, you know, or at least entertaining the idea that human beings and what we consider to be all of our greatest thoughts and achievements and cultural milestones and all of it, right? Like, we're all just kind of fucking insignificant at the end of the day. And we don't really matter. And everything is just only through the lens of us as human beings and what we've decided matters, right? Like, it's all subjective, right? The most emotional, the most significant things that have ever

taken place, it only really matters whether or not it's significant to you. There is no objective standard for that. there's no objective meaning meaning is what you find in other things try to enjoy your life the best you can it's not the end of the world to to realize that you're nothing it's a sigh of relief to realize oh yeah yeah relief is the word there's like a there's like a piece in the when you get over that hump of like trying to trying to control the chaos that we're just like put into you're on a ride yeah we're saying this last episode uh i think that is a healthier attitude and it was one of the things I really liked about everything everywhere was like them going yeah nothing matters and instead of that being a nihilistic like life-ruining concept

that is destroying your whole purpose it can be more of a nothing matters and it's okay it's fine it's true it can be empowering it depends how you think about it yeah exactly I'm hoping you know, obviously we mentioned some like really unethical uses of AI if we get to the point where AI is good enough like I was watching I am Sam

I was like looking at the frames and like okay like shot on film like the old look of like 2001 filmmaking and I like I was doing a watch along I just told people like soak this fuck soak this in right now we're in the last few years of being able to tell that something's not

AI like we're there's going to be point in time where we're going to look at something that could look like that and we won't even know, like eventually. Like, we're going to see this within our lifetimes, is my understanding. Yeah, that's the question. It's the timeline. Yeah. And so I, I looked at someone like Dakota Fanning and thought about how unethical it is that child actors even exist in the first place. Like, I'm sorry, this is literally child labor. They don't even get to keep the money, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Their parents do. They're being, they're literally just being exploited. They're most of them are being like tortured to get to the level of, uh, talent or, um, yeah,

you know, psychologically, you're going to do something. And so if we're at the point where AI, let's say in five years, let's say in 10 years, 20, I don't care. If we can get to the point where you can AI generate just a child character or child, like a human child in a movie, realistic looking child for a narrative purpose, then we should just outlaw child actors. We really should. That could be an ethical use of AI. We could be moving past the point where we, you know, create monsters like Lindsay Lohan, like sad tragedies, right?

Yeah. We really shouldn't be having child actors. If we can get away from that, that would be an ethical use of AI. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. yeah it's just how much of the conversation and excitement on how fast it's moving like how much what how does that actually adapt to the timeline of this people losing their jobs straight up people huge swaths of like I don't know in there in Hollywood or

whatever they're like I don't need concept artists don't need animators don't need you know a lot of the biggest expenses we can you can just chop oh yeah people are going to trying to save money no matter what. I find it absolutely insane that the entire writers and actress strike ended as this was becoming like a bit of a topic of conversation but included

no protections. I don't think they even touched on AI. They closed the deal. It's like what, you're not going to have another protest for like what, another 10 years? It's already going to be too late by that point. You should have tried to get something in here about AI. Because billion fucking

percent, you know, studio are going to be generating scenes right yeah it's probably really higher less people I'm sure many scripts are being written with it now yeah I know like I've I've heard podcast with um like people in the games industry like who are working on you know pitches and early stuff uh like in Sony or whatever like they'll confidently proclaim how they use chat GPT and various AI to bounce ideas off and it's just kind of here now um and it's going to be a standard for sure. It's just that you go with the money.

It's like they can save so much money. So of course they're going to be incentivized to do it. We're just talking about the inflated budgets and all this craziness. What better way to cut back expenditure a little bit if your automated systems can just cover it for you. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting. There's going to be a lot of hiccups along the way. And who knows if, you know, we don't know what's going to happen.

but I'm going to try my best to adapt. I'm going to try my best to support and promote ideas that can help mitigate some of the damage that seems inevitable. Yeah. I think politically we need to have like change the way we view work, the idea of work. Oh, definitely. We need to socially change that huge, in a huge way. Some countries will fare better than others on that. Yeah.

There's a, there's a very, there's a large stubbornness to the United States of America. There's a, there's a very large unwillingness to change anything. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the same here. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a lot everywhere. I'm just saying in particular, the United States is pretty egregious. Oh, right.

Yeah. Yes, okay. Even more exaggerated version of the UK. Yeah. It's like a part of the identity culturally. It's just being stubborn. like look at look at a look at a look at a world map of countries with the metric system and imperial look at a world map of countries that use Celsius and Fahrenheit right you can see these things pretty clearly all right we can do like a couple questions this was a fucking big episode a lot of big meaty big ideas this is a this is a Joe Rogan type podcast true all right let's a wrap up here with a couple questions from the Saldonikas community.

Then head over to the suggestion thread on the subreddit where you can leave questions just like Bablio too did. Thoughts on the SNL biopic with Jason Reitman to direct. So I was reading a bit about this. Seems like a weird idea. I was going to ask you about, is SNL like big in Canada?

Because my exposure to SNL is very minimal in the UK. And all I've ever heard is Americans talking about like how shit it is, especially now. Yeah. It was like good in the 90s or something, like depending on the cast. It was one of those things that people watched, but I never really gave a shit about. So I didn't. Normally seems quite cringy when I've like watched bits and clips from it.

Like I've never really liked much of what I've seen. But it must, I don't know, it's like a, it's been running a few decades, right? There must be something about it. Mm-hmm. Connect to them. A lot of big names have come out of S&M. I guess we're getting an origin story now. Um.

that's what everything gets an origin story an orange story a yeah glassy origin story by a pick where all of the meat of the story is hidden away because it will make people look back yeah yeah well uh rachel sent it's in it i like her she's funny

she deserves more roles so that's the only thing i have to say about it otherwise i have no fucking idea and i don't know about jason brightman like ghostbusters movie was yeah more like jason wrong man Hmm Well it seems we've talked about a bunch of tech anyway Let's do this one from Ozieric Thoughts on the new Apple Vision Pro

Do you think this is a sign of a technological revolution Or just a passing fad When the first trailers or whatever came out for this thing There's a moment in the trailer where I don't know if it's like a concept trailer or what But there's a guy who's like on a plane And he puts this thing on and like turns

his immediate space into a theater basically. And that was like the main part to me. I was like, that's kind of cool. I could, yeah, imagine like the people in Japan in like the coffin apartments. So they could probably do with a way to make this space. Like you have more space. Yeah, yeah.

Just become surrogates that Bruce Lewis Lewis movie from ages ago. But I don't know if it's one of these, like I remember when they showed off like AirPods for the first time. I'm being like, that's good if you look in every, you look stupid wearing those, but now like I don't think twice when I see people wearing them. Apple branding has always been like just kind of an obnoxious, like no matter how impractical something is, people will just buy it and show it off just to show that they have it. It's got to like the people that take photos with iPads. Like that's got to be the most inconvenient fucking thing in the world.

You know it is. You know you're not, you know it's not convenient and you're doing it just to show everybody that you have an iPad. Right? It's such a status symbol branding thing with Apple that like I yeah fuck it. I don't know if it'll take off or not it seems like there's a lot of videos of people being obnoxious with these things on the internet right now so we'll see. Yeah the price is insane. Yeah. It's a big one. But again it's just to show off it's a status symbol right? Yeah. I don't know. It's like jewelry. It's just more I don't know if the putting the big clunky headset thing on if it's still too intrusive. I feel like. Yeah. Bring back Google Glass. I forgot about Google Glass too. God,

I completely forgotten about that. Yeah. Well, this is basically Google Glass, but if it was released as something you could buy. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. It's probably like a little glimpse

into the future of like, yeah, we'll probably be, we won't be looking at our phones to like navigate and whatnot. There'll probably be like HUDs, basically like a fucking Spartan helmet. You know,

with your Twitter feed in the bottom row. and you got your goon material in the top left. Yeah. Just fucking, just give me, wait another, like, 50 years. Give me the contact version. Give me something I can just place in my eye. I don't want something bulky.

Yeah, yeah, that is the setback. Give me the brain chip. Give me the neural link. No, I don't. I would never trust Elon Musk to fucking put a chip in my brain. Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking about... Or anyone for that matter.

What's the... Dream scenario is that whole gag. Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking about it. Good movie. Yeah, so far, like, what's the battery life on this fucking thing? I'm just wondering. There's like that annoying cable you've got to have like going like into your pocket.

Yeah. I, it's early adopters. Maybe over time, you know, version 2 will be less bulky and annoying, right? I still, I still play my VR headset. I still got my VivePro. And I was actually thinking to doing some Beat Sabre today because I'm trying to get more cardio in. Oh, yeah.

But yeah, I like it. I can't wait to see where VR goes. I just don't fucking Apple, though. I'd rather have something with a bit more freedom. Yeah, I'm sure they discover through their tech. Well, everyone else will just copy it and make it cheaper anyway. Yeah. I think it's good enough.

Well, if there's a market for it. Yeah. I don't know if we're quite there yet with the big bulky headset ready player one thing yeah well with the augmented reality people are like walking around on the street with it which is kind of funny yeah yes it's proper like I couldn't imagine nonsense like I'm already just paranoid like no matter of the neighborhood just like about my fucking couldn't imagine walking out in the street in like a major city with that fucking on your head like you're wearing like five thousand dollars that anybody could just yank it

Yeah. That's the risk or reward. They probably like it. You just want to show off. Mm-hmm. Look at me. All right. We'll see.

I don't know. Let's end on this one then from Lady Paramedic. What do you guys think of fan theories? Where a fandom or single fan crafts an alternate narrative about what's actually going on during a movie slash show. Popular examples of this would be that Donnie's a figment of Walter's imagination in the Big Lebowski. Breaking Bad is a prequel to Malcolm in the middle and that all of Tarantino's movies take place. in the same universe to which Tarantino himself has confirmed. Fan theories.

Why'd Breaking Bad be a prequel to Malcolm in the middle? I guess it's just the funny observation that it's the same actor. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's like an actual fan theory or just more like a little gag. I'm a indoctrination theory believer. That's my fan theory. Yeah, I need to believe that. Otherwise, the story is worse.

It's our cope. I don't care. It makes a better story. It's definitely. We willfully believe it. Yeah. Have you ever got really into a fan theory? Do you care?

Have you seen the one that Snowpiercer is Willie Wonka? Oh, I think I, yeah, I watched that video on the flight back from Tiff, I think. Yeah. That's a good fan theory, yeah. Not sure. I've heard this big Lobowski one before, but I don't know if I buy that one. I would prefer for a fan theory to mean something and not just be irrelevant, like an inconsequential to anything. Yeah, like what would that change? Yeah. Like it doesn't matter. That's why the big Lebowski one is weird to me because it's like, okay, then what if we accept that? Like, what does that mean?

Yeah, exactly. I don't think got Darth Jar Jar Jar in there. some crazy ones there's heaps of like the more broad and big the fan bases the crazier some of the fan theories yeah

looking at you Matt Pat I don't think you believe I don't think you believe the overwhelming majority of the shit that you've said in your videos he's just yeah he's just good at selling it it's making it sound like what if I put this here

and this over here yeah and then I'll tell you in part three finally what I'm talking about I'll finally tell you what the fuck I'm trying to say in three videos from now that's like the sodi shit you know where they're not

they're not gonna be getting their powers in this movie we'll tell you in the next one we'll show you the rhino fight in the next film like is it is even a fan theory to Tarantino I've always heard that about his films before that there's you know

it doesn't really matter or affect anything but the certain products the cigarettes and stuff that are in multiple different movies. Yeah. I like, I like the, that used to be way more of like an allure with, before the MCU like did something.

Oh yeah, his own little. That you used to be like a cool like cute idea. Everything's kind of like linked. Yeah, yeah. It's like just not a really cool concept anymore. Yeah,

but yeah, even that is like kind of inconsequential, but just like a little nice treat for the fans. It's like a reference basically. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. Same thing happens with Pixar movies too. Like apparently all, a lot of those are in the same universe, kind of maybe.

They at least reference their other films. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely feel like Easter eggs. Yeah. But people, they go, you know, they get the whiteboard out and get the string and start connecting the dots with some of the shit. Yeah. I don't think there's a giant consistent plan.

I don't think they're building up to a Thanos. No. I think that elemental. is pretty hard to fit in the Cars universe. You never know. Maybe they'll find a way. They'll pull the flash and then you'll see all the different planets and one of them will be black and white.

He'll be like, you know, this universe is like totally collapsing on itself, bro. The Cars universe. Have you read the Nick Cage interview with that? Oh yeah, where he said he showed up for a day and like most of what they showed in the movie just wasn't even like him? Yeah. He's like, yeah, then I went to see it and like, I'm there with a spider. Yeah, like it.

You just had no idea. They just caged it. Yeah, I like the Willy Wonka snowpiercer fan theory. I like that one. It's a good video. I think there's a part two that I haven't seen. Oh, there's a part two. Yeah, but I'm willing to, you know, there's ways that people can be inspired by certain things.

I'm willing to entertain that idea. Agreed. I dig it. All right. I guess that was questions. I think, sure. You've done it. And I guess it's time for me to write.

recommend a movie, but, so I noticed that a lot of my recommendations were just good movies that I was looking forward to. And I'm like, you know, got to change it up. Got to change it up every once in a while. But I'm like, but I've already seen like a lot of bad movies. Like, I don't know if I want to pick one that's just like notorious. You know, I don't know if I want to pick one that's, that has that sort of history. Once upon a time, Alex, you were begging me to watch the sound of freedom. And I was trying to figure out how to make that possible because, you know, we wanted to talk about it.

I think this was before you had even seen it. I found what I thought was a torrent for Sound of Freedom. And in the title, it said, it said Sound of Freedom, but it turns out it wasn't. And it was actually a movie called To Freedom. So somebody, like, either tricked, like intentionally, maliciously tricked people into thinking that, like, oh, because you couldn't find. to Torrent for Santa Freedom, but this other movie of 2023, 2

Freedom, T-O-Space freedom. And so I skimmed around just like for, I don't know, five seconds was like, oh, wow, this looks pretty bad. It's got 89 ratings on IMDB, 3.4 out of 10. And it's

a real movie that exists, and I have no idea what the fuck it is, but it looked kind of funny. And so I'm kind of like I think I might still have a copy. Yeah, let me know if you need a copy it's yeah it's definitely a

I don't know we're taking a gamble and I think if we're talking about a Dooney movie next episode anyway and we can afford to take a little bit of a gamble here be safe see whatever happens whatever will be will be

K sarah sirrah if you don't want to be spoiled for to freedom directed by bio done Stephen written by Tiger Fire Rose 2023 watch it before the next episode comes out these episodes come out every two weeks

you can listen to them early and apparently we're recording the episodes particularly early for the next few weeks just because of scheduling shit so you'll listen to them pretty significantly early for the next few weeks at least yeah get in there

sign up for premium sardonicast.com only $2 a month that's nothing. Also, Patreon.com slash sardonicast. You can support the show and feel good about yourself. You dingus.

We also got merch. Link in the description. We also have a Sardonicast highlights channel. Yeah, have a happy Shrek. Happy to freedom. Happy freedom.

We got the, we got a real freedom type type film going on. Yeah, we need one more, get the freedom. Trilogy wrapped up. Damn.

The FCU. That's like UFC, but we're at your range. Anyway, happy Shrek, everybody. Thanks for listening. Bye. May.