Sardonicast - Sardonicast 201: Tron: Ares, Him, The Wailing

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Listen early and ad-free at https://sardonicast.com or https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sardonicast.bsky.social Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Sardonicast Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8AhJ0bzQgs5fb9m_ZCRqkw/featured Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@YMS Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Jake's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ManCarryingThing Jake's movie channel: https://www.youtube.com/@womancarryingman Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/yms.bsky.social Jake's twitter: https://x.com/ManCarrying Jake's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mancarryingthing.bsky.social Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Jake's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mancarryingthing Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo Timestamps: 0:00 intro + episode 200 trip 8:24 Tron: Ares 37:26 Him 1:00:15 The Wailing (2016) 1:42:40 questions 2:09:38 recommendation + outro

three, two, one. I am football. This is Adam from your movie sucks. This is Sardonicast. There was a quote from her, the Spike Jones film. How's everybody? Hello. Nice.

I'm Alex from A.C. And it's Tron in time, baby. It's Tron in time. I'm sick. Again. That happened. Well, someone should introduce themselves and then we'll talk about it. Yeah.

My name is Jake from a man-carrying thing, woman-carrying man, and I like Mozart. You know, I say if I'm being honest, I prefer Depeche Mode. Nice. Nice. That's, was that the Kojima tweet? You don't even know. It's a big part of Trian Ares, yeah. Okay.

I think Kojima referenced it. So we were both right. For sure, yeah. But I'm ill. Nice. Feeling great. Okay. Well, you two are sick.

We're both sick. Yeah. Yeah, we're in like different stages. I'm chronically ill, but no more sick than usual. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm normally fine with it. It's just, I don't know how much you're going to hear it in my voice.

I feel like it sounds worse in my own head than perhaps in the recording, but we'll see. Alex, you sound like shit. Oh, my God. Both of you sound like shit. You sound terrible. You sound delifluous and lovely. What is the beverage you're? drinking right now to cure yourself. What is that beverage? I'm sipping on a hot toddy.

You guys enjoy a hot toddy now and again? Uh-huh. What's in it? It's tea, right? It's whiskey, lemon, and honey. Okay. Usually when I'm sick, I drink less alcohol because that doesn't help your immune system. No, he's British. It works different. Yeah, yeah. I need something, man. He has a British immune system. It's a different, it functions different. Where like less hydration is better. Caffeine, alcohol. I'm a little alcoholic here. Everyone here's an alcoholic.

Like it's fine. Okay. Oh, nice. Well, um, yeah, how was, we did, uh, fucking episode 200.

We all saw each other. Yeah. I know, it's fine. Yeah, yeah. We all finally met, even though I had met you two

previously individually. Mm-hmm. We all came together as a big, happy family. Yeah. It was very nice. It was lovely. Yeah, yeah.

We had dinner. Yeah, the stream went well. Yeah, went to a me vegan place. Yeah, you met my child and Nadia and it was very nice. Yeah, it was so weird putting that into perspective of like, I forget who said it, but like the last time I saw your child was at the halfway point of his life. Yeah, he was like six months old. Yeah, and now like 10 months or something.

Yeah, and that was kind of like a mind fuck for me. I was like, what the hell? And Nadia said you were like, you've known him most, like half of the his life. Yeah. Yeah, no, that blew my mind. That was crazy. Yeah, it was great. I mean, we had, the dinner was really good. We went to a really nice vegan place and then the whole time, we were just trying to get my kid to like not grab your food and throw it at you. Yeah, yeah. That was awesome. Yeah. Shout out to meet in Yale town. There's a bunch of locations. M-E-E-T in Vancouver, really good vegan place.

They had, it just happened to be a Canadian Thanksgiving weekend when we did our episode. That's just how the stars aligned or whatever. So this was Alex's first Thanksgiving because he's British. In Canada, yeah. And his first Thanksgiving meal was like at a vegan place because they actually had like a Thanksgiving special on the menu and we did that. It was really good actually. It was yummy. It was awesome. We were so confused. We were so confused for a site. We're like, okay, yeah, early Thanksgiving, cool. Oh, yeah. We assume the world revolves around us, Americans. I still don't really understand the history of Canadian Thanksgiving.

And don't worry about it. All the Canadians I asked also said, yeah, don't really worry about it. I don't know. Yeah, I wasn't even curious enough to look it up after. Like, I don't care. Oh, we're, I think we did something to the natives. That's my understanding. How it starts. You're thankful for? I didn't get him in. Yeah, I don't know. It's probably fine.

Our history is probably great. Yeah, there's probably nothing bad there. Yeah. Yeah, so we're all best friends now. Yes. We shared our dark secrets to one another. We're renaming our podcast to the super best friends podcast. I'm actually down with that.

Yeah. I think that's a good idea Yeah I think so No it was it was great time And I'm really glad that it worked out And now we don't have to see each other For another 10 years for episode 300 Yeah, I think we were doing the math

Alex and I were kind of thinking about it So it's like every four years approximately I think right right right If it's biweekly Yeah Yeah, it's about right So you know we'll talk we'll talk later but yeah we should we should see each other again before four years

from now that would be a good yeah that'd be good yeah that'd be good um what was your favorite part of the trip for who for who Alex for either of you but I guess your trip was very short but it's fine because you have normie responsibilities a wife and a child right right I mean for me the best part was like hanging out and having dinner, you know, after the pod. Same on a thing. But the podcast was great. I mean, it was really fun, actually, because you handled everything, all the streaming. You have like a giant ass TV in your studio.

So we were just sitting there, you know, having cool cat say, you know, stupid ass shit on the stream. And it was very fun. And then you got us like this Korean. Gimba. I forgot what it's called. Gimbao. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, that was good. That was great. Yeah, so it was all very nice. The hard part was just driving there. It's like a four-hour drive from where I am to Vancouver. And it took the entire day both ways. Yes. My son has never, never been on a road trip before.

So it took a little while. But it worked up. Yeah. Yeah, I was listening to hang out, talk about article. True. Oh, yeah. It's always good to talk about article. You know what I'm saying?

I learned so much from you. Yeah. Yeah. all the bare anecdotes I have a better appreciation for their better appreciation for their culture now tequila tiku I uploaded a clip of that just as saying to tukua when we were doing the watch along YouTube thinks that there's like profanity in the title it just says tiku and then like is that like a swear word in like another language maybe maybe in

the world of matanui for sure true true yeah we should look into that first maybe he's like screaming profanity actually at the start of that. Oh, perhaps. Classic film. Yeah. It is a classic. What was your favorite, um, your favorite meal, Alex?

You know, I've been thinking about that ramen a lot. Hell yeah. Donbo? I thought the ramen was awesome. Donbo's great. Yeah. That did me solid. Yum, yummy broth.

Yeah, I actually found out what, uh, what that spice was that they used and I got it on Amazon. Oh, what was it? Um, well, I'll have to, it's like a Japanese, uh, chili thing. I'll have to check my order history. But I've been using it on like noodles and stuff at home now. Doing my own little stuff with it. Yeah, so much good Asian food.

Oh, it's so good. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was. And we'll never do it again. We have a feast ahead of us today, don't we? Yeah, of delightful cinema. Delightful is one way through.

How shall we, how shall we die? in? Well, um, I was telling Alex and Jake about all these awesome, you know, indie movies that deserve more, uh, recognition and really just like, you know, have like a spotlight put on them. And, uh, Alex was like, no, I would love to watch Tron Aries because Jake's already seen it and I said, I'm not watching it. And they're like, well, we're watching it. And I said, okay. So that, you know, note to the audience. It's not the official recommendation. there's no obligation for me to watch this. Just like they could have watched

castration movie Anthology 1 Traps, okay? Because I've already seen that. So Right. You should complain to them about it. No, we've got Jared Ledzo's gaunt face to stare at for a couple hours. His beautiful eyes that you can just fall into

and be mesmerized by, yeah. I mean, those grooming eyes. Is he intentional? like styling himself to look like Jesus? Is that like a intentional choice? Because like he's even rocking the long hair in Tronaries. He's what, 50 something?

He's in his 50s, right? With that hair? I mean, he does have the vampire thing going on. Like he doesn't look like he's in his 50s. No, he does not. It seems to be one of those like really big kind of like open secret things at this point. Like the level of which everybody thinks he's like a groomer sort of thing. Yeah.

I mean, have you guys seen the videos of him showing up to like the Tron Aries showings that are like half full? And he's just like, hey guys. And people don't even like recognize him at first. Oh, that's funny. He's that scary vampire that's just snuck him. Get him out. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the interview is very odd. It's just an odd film, I would say. Just like, Tron is an odd franchise. It is. Yeah. So apparently he produced this, right? So this was like his. project to get this, yeah, to get this off the ground, apparently.

That's funny. Oh, so yeah, everybody's like asking why they would continue with another try movie when all of them flopped. But I guess maybe Jared was like, no, we got to do this. Like that would maybe. I'm going to save it. Yeah. I'll fix it. Maybe Disney was like, yeah, if you spend money on it, sure, like, go for it.

He just talked to Bob Eiger and he looked at him with those beautiful brown eyes and just kind of like brought him into. who is cult-like devotion, and there you go. That's how we get Tron Ares. And you know what? I'm not mad about that because Tron, I like Tron. Like, it's a bad franchise, I think fundamentally. Like, there are good parts of the whole thing, but it's just such a weird, weird franchise, especially now with this being like the third and most likely last movie to ever be connected to Tron.

I'm just going to ask you because, Alex, I saw your, I saw you did a little video about Tron Airs and I was so tempted to watch it this morning to be like, what is he up to say about Tron Airs? I did not because I wanted to hear it straight from the source. So what did you think of this film? So I was going to see this either way because of how much of a fan of Nine-inch Nails I am. Oh, okay. Right.

I wanted to see the score. And, you know, I got my money's worth as far as hearing it on the big speakers, I guess. So that's one ding for it. I don't think it's the worst Tron movie, actually. I actually think the original is the most unwatchable one to me. I just like so dull and aged and just like uninteresting. There's got a couple of things, right? Yeah.

But some of the most basic stuff is just like, what are we doing here? Like, why have you done this? Because like on a writing level, it's just so, so terrible. The dialogue's atrocious, the character work, so so bad um but i was just thinking like it jake might know this and adam won't there there are versions of star wars that you can watch that like are the score only um and i was imagining that for this movie and i i'd watch tron areas again if it was just the score and there was no dialogue like that'd be fine you know as like a light show as a roller coaster it's very much one of the

scorsese memes it's a theme park ride that's very much all it is to me um it's some okay production but outside of that it feels like a missed opportunity because I don't know what like I was really thinking about this with the previous two movies the grid right it's like the digital world yeah like what is the hook of the grid it's like a video game it's like a video game digital world but like why are you the stakes so high why is it like such a big deal like the grid right because it because this is the first one where the grid is like being pulled into the real world they have like 3D printers and they're like 3D printing elements from the digital world into the real world.

And the story is about like, we need the permanence code so we can make the digital assets stay permanently instead of turning into dust after a 30 minute timer, which gives it like some urgency in the plot or whatever. And it's like Jared Letto is a program and he wants to live in the real world. So he needs to get the permanence code yada yada yada. So that to me was kind of like from that trailer seeing the bikes, driving around the city. It's like, that's kind of cool. That's like more intriguing to me than everything just going on in a digital plane, you know? It's a, it's a meme in like every kid's show or whatever. It's like, I was sucked into the game, man. I'm stuck in the game. And it's like, that concept has been done to death and something like the Matrix kind of just makes the idea of Tron kind of redundant

in a sense because it's kind of like taking that concept to the, the nth degree and, you know, turning it into something fantastic whereas like why why like they didn't really give this a hook particularly outside of that weird trailer with Mr. Beast like you have you seen this shit

did you see the Mr. Beast trailer for this fucking thing? I don't know I feel like maybe I saw like a screenshot and assumed it was a joke or something I don't remember Adam just Google Mr. Beast Tron Aries they took a shot of yeah yeah it's on YouTube it's like the first three seconds of a special like spot

special look on a YouTube okay hold on yeah special look the first few seconds they like deep fake Mr. Beast over to charge of it I thought I saw your thumbnail and I thought you edited that

it looks so bad yeah he looks so bored I don't know if I found the right thing and his delivery too It's just like, what the fuck? Let's do this. No, that's too much charisma.

I can't even do a misdive voice. I love this so much. Yeah, I just found that when I was recording my video. I was like, what the fuck? Can you post it in the Discord thing? I don't know if I found the right thing. Sure, hang on. Let me find you.

I'm just looking at still images, to be fair, but. Also, the name of the spice is Togorashi. Oh, sweet. It was delicious. That sounds good This changes my perspective Seeing these images of Mr. Beast In the Tron

franchise I changed my mind This movie rules This is actually a fucking Adam first few seconds Enlightening Okay I did click on that video But I just like

Missed the part where it happened Oh okay yeah No I just I literally Okay Huh I wonder why He's not in the film For the record For anyone listening

Who doesn't understand I wonder why they did that This is on the official Disney channel. Why did they do this? Yeah. Do they explain themselves? I guess they wanted like kids to watch it. I don't know.

Because like he was vaguely involved with like that TMNT anime movie like from a while ago. I don't know. I think he's just like, I don't know. He isn't, there's rumors that he's going to open like a bank soon. So we're going to take out loans from Bees Bank. So I don't know. We should probably be on his good side. What the fuck?

Sorry, Mr. Bees is. Okay. Well, you said rumors. So I'm going to assume that's not true. For my own. insanity. Who knows at this point? But maybe they were trying to find some angle to try Tron again with a different generation. Is it even Zunas anymore? I feel like I'm dating myself insane by the betas. The betas love the look of Mr. Beast. Aries. Maybe it might

have done better if they actually had Mr. Beast instead of, uh, fucking Jared Letto. I mean, yeah, yeah, sure. No, yeah, I would have. Probably, actually, yes, unironically. But yeah, there's a few jokes with this movie, right? It's like, oh, it's nice of Disney to attach your $200 million music video to a NIN album is one of them. And another is like, it's actually got a decent cast outside of Jared Letto. Gratel.

It's great. If he swapped Jared Letto out, I don't think it would, like, fix this movie or anything. It would improve it. But they have people like Evan Peters and Cameron Monaghan. in here, both would have been better picks for the Ares character, in my opinion, because Jared Leto, like, I can't anymore with him. All I see is Jared Letto. He's got that kind of rock problem for me where I just can't get past that face, those eyes, that string of like Joker, the worst Joker ever, Morbius, and now this, it's just like, I can't get past it.

I thought he worked in the film when he was playing a robot henchman and without feeling and he just kind of stood there. I'm like, yeah, that's like a model. Like, that's a guy. You know, he's, he's a robot. And then it becomes spoilers, I guess. Please spoil it. Yeah, let's do spoilers. It becomes like a Jesus narrative.

He is Tron Jesus. And he ends up becoming human, which just is unbelievable seeing a Jared letter. Letto become human. The Jesus part is more believable. Well, yeah, it is kind of like, I'm the Messiah of this world. And I'm like, yeah, of course you wanted it to be that way. You're producing this film. I'm like, it's fine.

Okay, here's the thing. This movie is fine. It kind of is fun. It's a dumb, fun movie. And for all of my recollection, that's what the Tron series has always been. Tron has never been part of like the cultural zeitgeist in a huge way. It's always been kind of like off. Like they've always miscalculated and misjudged exactly what people like about Tron and what to do with Tron.

So like the original Tron felt like it is kind of a boring, weird artifact. It is cool and impressive for like what they could do in the 80s. But it was always like before Tron Legacy, it was like a joke that this is what nerds liked. Like it's the nerdiest thing that nerds like that no one else likes it except nerds. but, and this is my theory, is that part of the culture has changed so much that the kind of guys to be into Tron, you know, as like a nerd, weird thing, like computers and stuff, they're now the tech gods. They're Elon Musk.

They're, you know, this is like their little thing. They see Tron and they're like, we now own the culture or whatever. And now it's just lame in an opposite way, you know, where it's like AI bullshit. shit. Like, I feel like the kind of guy who would love, um, who would love to make another Tron movie would be like Elon Musk to be like, yeah, this story resonates with me. I'm like a robotic, uh, you know, guy and I'm, I'm not, I don't really have feelings for humanity. And I'm going to make a movie about becoming a, uh, a real boy. Um, so I don't know. It's just such a strange thing. I really like Tron, well, I don't really like it. I like Tron legacy.

I mean, we got a cool daft punk album. An incredible album. Holy shit. The Tron Legacy soundtrack is actually, it's ridiculous to you. What they did about it. That's the reason we got random access memories to you. It's a vibe. Like, it's a vibe.

It's a cool movie directed by Joseph Kaczynski who did, you know, Top Gun Maverick and F1 and stuff. So it's like a cool movie. This movie, it really only has like the visuals. Like, there are some cool visuals and the Nine Ingen Nails. soundtrack, which elevated this so much. If it wasn't there, this movie would be so boring. But there were times in the theater where I'm just like, yeah, yeah, this is cool.

Like, that's fun. This is dumb fun. I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Jurassic World, the recent one, you know, where it just like, yeah, I can enjoy this. Is it great? No, but it's fine. Yeah, it's like 95% aesthetics. That's like, everyone that's enjoyed.

it that's what they're getting out of it is nothing really deeper than that because the film isn't really saying anything it's it's sort of vaguely pro-AI that's kind of what i got from it uh yeah because like there's a the two sides of it there's the evil naughty CEO evan peters who wants to use the the grid to sell tech to military uh corporations or whatever and then there's the gretta lee good guy character who wants to use the the grid to three deep print oranges to stop world hungry or whatever. Right. Well, I mean, the CEO, the hero of the movie is the CEO of a massive tech company. So, but she's a good one. Yeah. So it's like a little out of step with the culture. Exactly. Yeah. It's kind of what I mean about like the missed

opportunity thing, not only just on the concept level with like bringing the Tron stuff into the real world. So there's a higher feeling of stakes and they could do something kind of interesting with that and that feel a bit more meaningful but then it's like what are you actually saying at the heart of it and it's there's nothing like it is just a spectacle roller coaster and i was with you for like first half an hour maybe i was like yeah this is dumb but i'm kind of kind of into this like vibe the you know the the the lights the key jangling uh just aesthetic of it there are a couple good action scenes that just like it's just the script has written in a way to not let you think It's that classic like J.J. Abrams style of just like, just move, keep moving.

Like we'll say, we'll say a string of sentences really quickly that like vaguely explain what might be happening. But it doesn't really matter because we're being chased and what we're being chased and we've got to move right now. So we just got to keep running. Right. And that can only kind of sustain itself for so long. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, it is such a dumb concept inherently that it's like you do kind of want to brush over it because at the heart of it's kind of like, what if my. microchip had feelings, you know? What if what if like the little microchips were like little

dudes and they were fighting each other with lights? You know, it's like in the 80s, it's kind of like when the general public doesn't really understand how computers work. It's like, oh yeah, the guy he goes into his computer and he just like vaporizes and he's in his laptop. And it's like, now, I don't know, every time in this movie where someone like vaporizes and goes inside of this computer and then comes out. I'm like, what happened to their matter? Like, what? Did they die? Did you kill them and then recreate them as a, like, it's just, it, it is magic. Like, it has nothing to do with science. It's just so ridiculous that to even think about how anything is working, it's like, okay, you just need to shut your brain off completely. Yeah. It's a very silly story, yeah.

Yeah, it's insanely silly, but as far as the tone is concerned, I, I kind of want them to take it even more seriously, weirdly, because the attempts at humor did not work for me. They have like these marvelous side characters that are trying to keep things kind of preppy and hey, isn't this kind of silly? What, she threw me across the room, dude? It's like, no, no, I keep this as serious as possible. So then the cringy stuff is funnier. And then when it's genuinely cool, it's like, well, that's actually kind of cool. I just, I guess it's at the heart, I just don't really get what the, like, what the fuck is the grid? It's like a video game. that everyone is obsessed with and it's like it's like if in our world some tech company figured out how to bring out like zombie pigmen from Minecraft and put them in our world it's like we're like why like what is the I don't really get that at a fundamental level like this obsession with the the grid it's like a living video game thing that's like improving itself and there's different versions of it because there's a whole like nostalgia 80s segment where they go into an old version of the grid and like intron legacy

See they're like they go into a video game and the original it's like a video game. The big thing from the big action scene towards the end, that big shape that flies around, that's like a video game asset or something. Yeah, I don't know. But it's like can kill people. Like to shoot down helicopters and it's like a weapon. But it is cool. That is the best part of the movie when that giant like stapler flies into the frame and it's like the music is going and you're just like, fuck yeah. And there's like jets flying and like planes getting split apart by like beams of light.

And it's like a fun light show. Like there are some cool set pieces like when they're riding around on motorcycles and it looked like Vancouver actually. Yeah, I did actually. Yeah. Probably was. Yeah, I liked the early action scenes. I was kind of over it though by the end. Mostly with contrasting it to Tron Legacy where I feel like it's spaced out the action better and the action was more impressive as far as like how it was.

executed the variety of it. The big like flying machine towards the end of legacy is really cool, complimented by that Duff Punk music at it. It has a more consistent vibe. It doesn't like pull you out in the same way that this movie does with the like weird. It's trying to take it seriously. Yeah. Yeah.

It's trying to be serious. But the new one is not. Like even the, um, the part when he goes into the 80s, he goes into like the original Tron and I was like, oh, that's kind of fun. Like this is cool. Are they going to have like a, battle like is the old tron going to come out leak into the real world and are they're going to

like be fighting like like just dumb ideas you know but that'd be fun to watch on screen because who who fucking cares you know but no instead he has like a 30 minute um conversation with a ghost jeff bridges who i don't even understand who he like they don't even explain if he's real or not when they like then he talks about depesh mode how he loves music and like how i really want to be human and it's like dude this isn't like what movie are you are you thinking this is yeah the jeff bridges thing was funny where like his dialogue was like i'm just kind of here because he want me to be dude like yeah you just manifested me basically it's like what so and that's when i started um clicking for me it was like oh they're they're doing the marvel formula with this

shit they're like they want to be self-referential they constantly reference like tron legacy and the original that has like a Marvel end credit stinger for a sequel that's never going to happen. It felt like they were applying that formula to it in a way that they couldn't with something like Tron Legacy because it was just before that time. They didn't have all these like sickening formulas in this down to like a T. So that to me felt like, oh, you're like, you really want this to be like a big thing, I guess. You want this to pop. Jared Lutter at the very end bringing out the photographs of the characters from Tron Legacy.

Oh, right. That's Olivia Wild. Yeah, it'll be a wild Like why? From Sons of anarchy Yeah, yeah Because I guess they want to make a sequel And you mentioned this was like his passion project

But he also got like paid 15 million bucks for this Which is like the highest he's ever been paid I love one of my passion projects Pay me $15 million Yeah exactly So it's like Great for you man

Maybe not anyone else Yeah just it seemed like needlessly overconfident It's like Where are you getting this confidence from? Jared? I don't know. I mean, it feels weird, but I feel like the only thing keeping any of the world tethered to the Tron franchise is it's those rides that they have in Disney World. Like, right?

Isn't there a Tron ride at Disney World? There is a Tron ride. I've been to Disney in so long. I don't know. Is it like a bike ride thing? Yeah, it's like a bike that's a roller coaster. Like a roller coaster, but it's like a bike seat so you can like pretend to your. in a bike.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. This might be like IP brain here, but is Bob Eiger just like, yeah, well, we have the ride? Like, we got to, we got to make a movie so people remember that the ride is there. Like, I don't know. It's going to be in the minds of it. Yeah. It's all connected.

They're probably, like, it might be the case that, like, the movies are making a good amount of money off of more than just the ticket sales, right? So if let's say the musical score by like nine inch nails, right, if let's say that that gets a lot of replay and Disney themselves have are making some percentage of that replay, then perhaps the films are a profit. Perhaps the last one was a profit because of the daft punk soundtrack, right? You never know. Yeah, I mean, they make money in so many different ways. Exactly. Yeah, it's not just box office, yeah, it's true.

Yeah, that's what people often forget. It's like a lot of the things that we think are flops aren't actually flops because they made the company money. That's true, yeah. But they just aren't transparent at all about how any, how the money works. Yeah, I wish we had those numbers. Yeah. I wish we had all that info. Yeah, and it's already getting this kind of culty, um, fittingly of Jared, I guess.

Yay. Um, little fan base growing for it. There are a bunch of people that really love it. When it goes on Disney Plus, I'm sure that's only going to grow. Yeah. I'm not really in tow with them. It's not a disaster. Yeah.

No, they're definitely worse movies. It's not like the worst movie ever made. Yeah. No, no, no. It's more just, it's kind of too long for me for how shallow the characters are. And just, just like a missed opportunity because the people they've attached to write and direct this are just like, it's just like kind of nothing burgers. It's this Norwegian dude who directed like Maleficent and Pirates of the Caribbean Salazar's Revenge. So like someone who's in the Disney like back pocket.

And then it's just written by people if you look at their credits. It's just like, okay, just like random people, I guess, who can just be told what to do, I guess. Like I don't, you don't have that much freedom when you're working on a big IP like this unless you're some kind of autot or whatever. but I feel like that's the only way you could make a film like this interesting is if you had like someone really out there stylistically like just double down on that aesthetic and just go completely nuts with it because otherwise it's just so middle of the road like just wasting like Julian Anderson and all these people of talent and just like so the first kind of chase scene when the bikes go into the real world is followed up by another chase scene where

after Jared has decided, oh, I want to be in the real world, and he's got 30 minutes in the real world to survive. So then Evan Peters sends the jetpack people into the real world to chase. And it's like, wait, see, have jet packs this whole time? Why do you even send bikes? And it keeps it escalating like that. But by the time you get to the giant stapler, and it's being 3D printed in that tiny warehouse,

and Evan Peters is like, hey, that can't fit in here. And then it just like smash cuts to it flying over the city. It's like, how did you even get that out of the warehouse? You brought attention to this. This is like, so just make the warehouse bigger or like, just show, show something. Like, it's all magic tech anyway. So, like, why are you even doing it like that? I love, I love how dumb it is.

Like, that's just, it's so fun. Like, those types of things, I'm just like, yeah, whatever. Like when the bad guy ends up just going into the Tron world right at the end to escape the police, just like all of his decisions are so stupid. It's so fun. Every time he's like telling Jared Leto in the video game to be like, no, you got to be more evil. And it's like, it's just so, it's very silly. And I enjoy, I enjoy it.

You know what? This would be great with, what are you drinking right now, Alex? Hot toddy. With a hot toddy. I'll have a hot toddy and watch Tron, Ares on TV. You need like six hot toddies to get this to hit the way you want. Bundled up in a bunch of blankets getting over a cold. That's the way to watch Tron Aries, I think.

I hear Jared Leto likes hot toddies like toddlers. Wow. He went there. Here's a question. Where does his career go from here? Because I'm looking at his upcoming films. And it looks like he's going to be in the He-Man Masters of the Universe film next year, which is currently in post-production.

Is he going to play Skeletor? He is playing Skeletor. For real? For real. That was a joke, but that's funny. That's actually being disgusting. So often my jokes come true. Okay, well, what the fuck?

Who cares? Jesus. I think you should try Joker again. We need more. I'm already cringing at imagining him doing Skeletor's voice. Like, this is already embarrassing. He's going to be. Method Skeletor.

Oh, no. Because he was method on this shit. Oh, no. He'll remove his muscular system. Okay. The way you guys are talking about it makes it sound like it would have been better if they just like went wackier. Like, could you imagine like a Tron speed racer kind of somewhere in between?

Is that kind of what would have made it better? I think they were a bit scared of because Tron Legacy, the budget was inflated so, big because so much of the movie was set inside the grid. So I think that was part of the reason that you're setting more of it in the real world this time to kind of keep the budget under control. That sucks. And that hasn't really

paid off for them. No. Really? So far anyway. We'll see what happens, but yeah. I don't know. That's most of what I really have to say about it. I've kind of already forgotten about it. I'd recommend the soundtrack. If I was to write the soundtrack, I'd give it like a 7 out of 10. It's not like

I'd say it's good. I'd say it's good. This is like the main thing for me with the Tron legacy and the Tron Ares soundtracks, right, is that for Darth Punk, it was something new and kind of out of character for them to do a score for a film first and foremost and then for the actual sounds that they whip out for that score and how kind of subtle and how much range there is on it. It's like really interesting. And I think a better score than the one here, whereas Trent Reznor and Atkus Ross have done better film scores than the one for Tron.

That's not to downplay how good the music is here, but I'd rather just listen to the actual soundtrack on Spotify than necessarily watch it in context in the film, because a lot of the songs are better on the Spotify version than the, then in the movie itself, even though it is the best thing about it. So, like, it's, it would be like a two-star at five for me. It's, you know, I've seen worse blockbusters. It's kind of fittingly tron as far as, like, how much of a mess it is. and how weird it is. Yeah. I don't even remember what I rated it. I think I forgot to even

rated out of dinnerboxed. Yeah, I didn't see you're raising on lots of books. That's how much it just went in and out of my head. And I did a, we did a full review for it on YouTube. I didn't even. Get the transcript. I think I'd give it like a four or something, four out of five, I think. Four out of five?

So no, sorry 4 out of 10 4 out of 10 Okay, we're in the same Same bullback Jesus, you guys All right I was getting confusing

It's fine It's okay Yeah, okay Well, we saw another We all saw a movie We did It's called him It's the sequel to her

Oh dear Yeah And the prequel to They slash them Mm-hmm. That's all saying a hymn for him. Hmm. Him's the name of a character in Wonder Shosen.

He's funny. Uh, so Jake saw this and said it was funny bad. Is that what I said? I mean, you said, that's what you said. I think you said it would be funny. Oh, oh, right, right, right. I did. I was very happy and excited because I thought that you would really hate it.

So I'm kind of hoping. I don't know, did you like it? Did you love it? Did you like him, Adam? Well, I didn't like, I didn't have like a super strong, like visceral experience with the hatred for it. Like, it's not good. It's shit, for sure. I wasn't like angry watching it.

But I was a little disappointed because the trailer actually looked kind of maybe interesting. Like, this is one of the biggest discrepancies in terms of like trailer to film. Right. That I can remember. Yeah, because it's not a bad idea. Like, the concept's kind of interesting, actually. um can we just go straight and spoilers like no one has seen us yeah it went straight it went straight to digital after like one week of being in cinemas the people who want to see it have

already seen it yeah it's bad all right spoiler tag yeah so like yeah the idea of a american football cult thing where they're like doing stuff with blood and having these rituals and whatnot kind of interesting but i'm i'm looking at the poster as we record this right now, which is kind of funny. Actually, the more you look at it, the one where the, the, the goal post, I don't know anything about American football, right? It looks like rugby posts, like, the goalpost thing is above Marlon Wayne's head to kind of look like double horns, which is symbolic of this whole film

and the way it uses. It's very subtle. Visual metaphors, yeah. Yeah, well, I love a subtle film. I think it'll look at this an extremely subtle horror. thing and I was mostly just kind of like confused by this like what it's trying to do early on the main character gets like attacked by someone dressed up yeah and it's it I couldn't tell if it was trying to go for like is this real is it what is real type thing right right because

I was like what did that happen and then it's like nope that was like a big thing in this character's life but it wasn't emphasized in a particularly powerful way didn't yeah feel like a big deal that trying to be like artistic and clever with it but it's so like yeah on the nose and just kind of stupid and like i i i'm like british i don't know shit about this sport and the way they're talking about it to me was more like funny i guess it's like a huge deal over there but the way they're talking about it was like so this ain't no game da da da it's all like and i was like laughing out loud when it was doing like the last supper shots and shit like that yeah oh my god like come on it's really over the top yeah it's It's, I mean, that sequence you're talking about when he gets hit with like a hammer or something and he's out like alone on the field.

That's like before, like that's right when it comes to the title. And it's like him. And it's like a big scary thing. You're like, okay, what the fuck is going to happen? Interesting. And then immediately it's like we don't talk about that. It's like he just has like a scar and like stitches on his head. And it's like metaphor for, you know, having a brain injury, concussion, whatever.

And he shouldn't be playing football. But they need him to play football. And Tim Heidecker is there. being funny. And it's like the movie immediately takes a giant leap off of reality where it's like every break in logic, every lost idea, every bad continuity, whatever. Like it's it all is just kind of like waved away because like, oh, it's it's dreamy and trippy, you know? Like I immediately started going, okay, what happened to this movie? Like something happened.

Yes. Where it had to be edited like this. And the only parallel I could find in my memory was something like Suicide Squad, the original, the David A.R. one where they had to recut it a million different ways to try to pump some energy into it. And the whole thing feels like a badly stitched together music video because this movie doesn't really have scenes or sequences or suspense so much as it has extended music video sequences. It's just like they edited this thing all it's all weird and wonky to try to give it some energy and make it feel like a movie and you could tell that they were really agonizing over getting this movie to work like it just kind of has that sweaty feel of like oh fuck all right like we got Jordan Peel's name on this now like we got to fucking figure this out and make this work and it just doesn't yeah I mean the editing was fucking atrocious And there would be some speculation as to like is it the editor's fault? I think largely a lot of it is, yes, but mostly things fall on the director. This is a film that was, it had a screenplay that is apparently available online that people are saying is like way better than the movie was. And it was written by two guys, Zach Ackers and Sackers and S.

Skip Brunkey. And this screenplay was floating around, and there were a lot of, you know, there was enough buzz in the industry about it. In 2022, I'm reading Wikipedia now. Monkey Pop Productions and a deal with Universal Pictures bought the script. At the end of the year, the script was voted onto the blacklist of best unproduced screenplays in 2022. And so this is way before the director, Justin Tipping, was involved, even before Marlon

Wayans was signed on. And apparently, Justin Tipping fucked it up. Apparently, the director just like, I don't know exactly what he rewrote or how much of it, but he is one of the credited writers. And so,

it appears as though something happened from between the original screenplay and the finished product that the director is largely responsible for. Because you would think that it wouldn't be like Jordan Peel, you know, pulling the strings at Monkey Paw destroying this, right?

So that's, yeah. That's the Vi-By God was like they didn't get the footage they needed or they were, they didn't have the budget they needed to get everything they wanted because it just feels like they were making up for something that was missing that should have been filmed. Oh yeah. A lot of it felt lazy. Yeah. Like every time they went into that weird like Mortal Kombat style, it felt like. Less of a stylistic choice and more of a, oh, we don't actually want to film this. It's too hard.

Yeah. It was like any kind of violence or whatever, it's like, oh, yeah, well, let's just toss this off to the CG department. It'll look bad, but who cares? I'd be curious if in that original screenplay, if it had that day structure in it in the same way. Probably not. The fun day, the police day, the leadership day, the resilience day, the vision day, the sacrifice day. And I just, I don't know, I didn't really feel like that added much.

No. The structure's very odd. Like, after the head injury. which is later explained to be something that was set up by the cult and he's been like basically groomed from a young boy. That's the final reveal. Yeah. That's the end of the film.

They reveal that. Yeah. I guess they're trying to make this commentary on the cutthroat nature of the industry and what it takes and what it's the sacrifice to be someone that successful in that industry. But like most of the movies just kind of like in a desert. there's some okay like shots and some okay like concepts but it doesn't doesn't really yeah as you said jake it has no cohesion it doesn't go anywhere really say anything there's absolutely no urgency and for a film that is an hour 36 minutes long it felt a lot longer yeah to me actually um

which is like how that's kind of an accomplishment in it of itself you know yeah it's insane it's not grounded it's not grounded in any way in reality so there aren't really any stakes You don't really know what the main character wants besides success. And it's like you don't really know what's going to come at the end of this football retreat that he does with Marlon Wayans. Like it's just a sequence of weird things happening. And that's it. I think I thought it was doing something like Black Swan maybe. Yes.

I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Or the wrestler. But I felt pretty early on that like one of the issues I was having is that they went too crazy too fast. Like you want to you want to escalate. things in a subtle way so that you are grounded to something and it feels like there's stakes. Because if it's immediately just like, oh no, this is weird and non-literal like right off the bat, then it's like, okay, well, what's even going on?

Dude wants to be a footballer and then why does this matter? Who cares? Yeah, you have to care about what's going on first. I think part of that is the, I was finding Marlon Wains really distracting. I know, speaking of Aronovsky, he was in Requiem, obviously. But at this point, like, I associate him a lot more with, like, little man and white chicks and shit like that. I love him. I thought he was good in this, actually.

Yeah. He's always good. He's always good. Even his shitty comedies, like, I could imagine someone else in the role being less entertaining, you know? He's always kind of giving it his all, even if he's in so many shit movies. Mostly shit movies. He's only been in, like, one good movies. He's entertaining, but it wasn't landing.

It wasn't landing to me partially because I felt like he was being framed as a physically intimidating person but up against this main guy who was like he's enormous. Like this dude in real life he's like six four. Milam Wayans is he's not tiny or anything but just how he sits in the frame didn't feel like he was an imposing figure in the same way. Should have been the rock. I felt like that he was written. Yeah, it should have been the rock.

Honestly. But that, yeah, that didn't help for me and just, I don't know, it was two kind of understanding kind of unintentionally comedic and some of the swings towards comedic things like that that doctor character is that really strange line where he's got his diatribe where he's going on about i never get to see my kids he's like but i don't have kids it's like what what the fuck is like what are you talking about like i just don't understand like who anyone is or like yeah why should care about any of it they think that being like cryptic and weird and non-literal is like an actual replacement for making something compelling they think that that that

in a bit self is interesting. Yeah, and it results in them trying to do that. It results in zero subtext to anything or any scene. It's just all the most obvious, like, football is kind of messed up, huh? The industry, kind of bad. Like, kids get groomed into careers. And adults exploit them. Yeah, and like our lead character, he doesn't really have any, like, okay, but this is unfair

for a comparison, but to compare it to this movie because it's one of the best movies overmade. But Whiplash does basically the same thing, you know, in like a story about a mentor who's pushing the main character to the edge to try to achieve greatness. But like there are beats in that film. There are like clear motivations scene to scene. You know, the acts are clearly separate. Like things happen and change and there are literal beats in the film too. Yeah. Yeah. So like even a small amount of that kind of structure would have really benefited this movie. Any sense of like, okay, he's on this compound. He's aware that maybe like things are kind of a miss, but then things escalate. And also

he has like a sense of like geographically where he is. How could he escape? You know, like these types of things to keep the audience being like, this isn't just a movie. This is like real. And it never has that. It just relies on trippy visuals. And like another example is that there's a sequence where he puts him into like a hyperbaric chamber, right? One of those pressure chambers. And it's like instead of building and like having a sense of dread and anxiety, it like immediately just cuts to like a music video sequence of him just like freaking out. And then after each of these sequences, because there's like a million of these similar sequences where he's like freaking out because something weird is happening. And then it cuts to like, wait, was that real or wasn't it real? gosh I'm feeling crazy right now and that's it what you know repeat repeat repeat

repeat until the very repetitive it's fucking obnoxious yeah yeah and when it when it thinks is being clever like when they lean in hard into the goat thing they keep to be the that was the original title that devil analogy right was actually yeah I think they had to change it because of the Sony movie or something the animated movie yeah the same name but yeah that's the like level of satiety we're talking about so then by the time you get to this, I guess it's supposed to be kind of like a triumphant win for the main character. He like kills everyone in the football cult, slaughters them all. And like, something happens to Tim Hydecker that happens off screen. He like explodes into blood.

It's like what was happening there and they were trying to be clever with it, you know, having the jets fly over with the American flag colors and it's trying. You can see like the direction it's aiming in, but it's just like missing. the board entirely. It's terribly communicated. It's trying to have its cake and eat this too. It's trying to be like a psychological horror film and get into like these characters' minds. And it also wants to be like a big parody satire.

Like the end of the film, it's just like over the top of blood and just like people getting decapitated and it's like a tarantino violence, you know? And it's just so silly. And like you're just not even connected to any of it. Like, it's not cathartic. It's just like, all right. Yeah. Interesting.

It feels like it's trying to be so many other preexisting things, but failing in every single way. Like, just, it's so confused about what it's trying to do and how it's trying to do it. Yeah. One thing that was really, really, really, really annoying. The entire film was the soundtrack choices. Like, every single time a song played, I'd be like, what the fuck? What are you trying to do?

Like, what movie did you see that? made you think that this was a good idea and what didn't you understand about the context that it was used in in a different movie, you know? Just every single time. There was one where like a song started and it sounded like an alien rapping or something and I was so confused because in the film, I was like, is that the like gnome ornament thing that he just hit? Because there was like, there was no instrumentation yet. I'm like, what? I was so confused. It sounded like, yeah, like a weird alien. in talking. Yeah, it just, it does not work at all.

And there's one sequence that especially made me think of you, Adam, because I thought this would be like, just your type of humor, you know, where it should have been, maybe in the original script, this was like the watershed moment when he realizes like, oh, shit is bad. Like there's something really messed up here. And that's when they're doing the exercises and he's like throwing the football. And then they get one of these guys to go stand and front of this like football launcher, like an automatic football launcher. And he's standing like two

feet in front of it. And they're just launching it a football into his face just point blank. And it's supposed to be like this scary sequence. And it's shot very like awkwardly. And it's supposed to be scary. And it's the funniest shit. I was laughing so hard. I was the only one in the theater. So it was not being rude. But I was like, what the fuck? Like this is so silly. Because the main character is not really reacting like anything's happening, which I guess in the plot is supposed to be because he's getting this super blood being injected into him that's supposed to be making him an unreliable narrator, I guess is what they're going for. But he doesn't know what's real and what isn't, but that would be a scene to, yeah, escalate things and maybe apply more of a feeling like he's trapped in a situation. Because like the only way they really address it is like he has a phone call to his mom or whatever. It's like, it's kind of weird here.

I'm like seeing things that are real. They're like, oh no, it's fine. Right. Okay. Just going to inject more blood, I guess. Yeah. Every time, it could have at least had some satisfying payoffs for like gore or like any kind of action concept or anything, any kind of visual concept. But every single time it did something like right before the cut to titles at the beginning, it's just, oh, random person in a costume is behind them and is about to whack them with something.

And it's like, okay, like this is a fucking like untalented 13 year old kind of concept and like especially how it's presented to, you know, like this is this is nothing. What are you doing? Do you think that's cool? Do you think that's scary? Do you think that's interesting? Like, I don't understand. Very terribly communicated. And, you know, I feel bad too because our, the lead actor, the guy, I feel like he can't act. Like he does have sequences where he's he's delivering. But it's like, what? Or is the director communicating to him? Like, what is he trying to express as an actor in these scenes? You know, it's like he's trying to do all these different things at once of like, confusion is this real? I want to succeed, but also I'm scared. Like, it's too much.

And it resulted him just looking like blank and like checked out for half of the film. Yeah. It just, yeah, his performances does not work. Yeah. Well, we got other things to talk about and we're an hour through or so. If nobody has any more things to say about this, I'll just say that it was worth it to hear Tim Heidecker saying the words, we groomed you since you were a child.

I thought that that was funny. Yeah, that's right. He was great. Yeah. Very weird that he was in it. He just kind of shows up in things now. I mean, he's friends with Jordan, I'm sure. He was in us also.

Us, yeah. which was great. I love us. How many people do you think walked into this movie thinking it was a Jordan Peel film? Probably a fair amount. Probably most. They tricked a few. Yeah.

The average filmgoer going to see a movie, I would say most people thought that that went to see it. Yeah, he's probably kind of annoyed about that. Probably, I imagine. Yeah. Two out of ten from me. Nice. A classic. Yeah.

It was like a one and a half star for me It's not the worst thing I've ever seen There were a couple of Like okay production design concepts I quite like that weird eye thing on the ceiling With the footage and the red lighting And it's like

In another dimension I could maybe imagine this being a cool scene Not the way it's put together here Let alone the weird like Julia Fox Put in your butthole cam Like crystal, it's like what? It can't figure out what it wants to be Yeah

Just all over the place Before we end this discussion, there's one more thing I have to say because this is important, okay? When the film started not doing well and critically and, you know, not that great financially either, Marlon Wayans put out a tweet. I'm going to read, sorry, an Instagram post. I'm going to read that post. Oh, right. Just to be clear, dot, dot, dot.

I respect critics. Their job is to critique. I respect their work. It shapes our industry, but an opinion does not always mean it's everyone's opinion. Some movies are ahead of the curve. Innovation is not always embraced, and art is to be interpreted and it's subjective. I've had a career of making classic movies that weren't critically reviewed or sorry, critically received, and those movies went on to be classics in all caps.

So don't take anyone's opinion. Just go see for yourself. Love to all him in theaters now. and then the images associated with the Instagram post is all of the rotten tomato screenshots for white chicks Don't be a menace to South Central while drinking your juice in the hood Scary Movie 2 Scary Movie 1

A Haunted House which I don't know if that's a classic right now And then him and just showing like oh all of these were Received negative they have a bad tomato meter. All of these movies have bad tomato meters. But like, I'm just going to point out one of these films isn't a comedy and it's him. Right. One of, there's only one of those films that isn't a comedy, right? I don't think this one's going to get it. This is not going to be talked about in the same way as fucking white chicks. Like people like white chicks because they think it's funny. And it can be terribly critically received because you don't need to have like a good

movie if people find a funny sort of thing. Right. Yeah. I mean, historically, comedies and horror films get rated lower, especially, like, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago. But I feel like it's changed a lot. I feel like there's less of a snobbishness, I guess, in the cultural, like, critic-wise, like, horror films and comedy films, I think are taken way more seriously now. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I, like, I thought he was good in this. I just, yeah. Oh, he's always great. I love him. Yeah. I don't know. I'd kiss him. Wow.

Would you go that far, but probably not. Oh, racist. All right. We all saw the wailing. Sorry, Alex, did you want to answer whether or not you'd kiss Marlon Williams? Yeah, let us know. Depends on the day. You know, depends on the day.

Okay. All right. With a hot toddy, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Enough hot toddies, then sure. All right, Alex, introduce your recommendation. Right, yeah.

So seeing as it's scary month, and now we're through with him, the scariest film of the month so far, we got The Whaling to talk about 2016 film directed by Nah Hong Jin, first film of his I've seen, usually included in some of the best horror movies ever, like lists.

That's kind of why I put on my radar, I hadn't seen it yet. Yeah, it's about a, it's kind of a procedural at first, about a mysterious illness spreading through a small town in Korea. Love the setting. Love the mountainous surroundings and folklore horror that it's exploring. Yeah, pretty long.

And, yeah, very long, actually. But I enjoyed this. We can get more into the plot, I guess, as we go along. But my initial response is, well, I think it was slightly overstuffed. I thought the tone was very interesting. the character is really unpredictable and the way it kind of forces you to question the idea of who is evil and who is good in this universe with the way that applies to that folklore horror and the we're talking about the faith angle and how unsubtle and all over the place is in him

this is kind of the inverse where the faith stuff is kind of the more interesting introspective stuff about the movie and the way it kind of mashes these various ideas and genres together makes for a pretty unique experience that feels like it's capturing something that films like the conjuring or long legs are desperately trying to do that can't quite nail. This seems like it's actually managing to walk the walk. Even though I didn't really find this particularly scary, actually. Yeah, just, I don't know, Korean horror can get me, but what are your top level thoughts on this, guys? because I'm a little all over the place of this movie, actually.

Because some of the elements are still kind of like, I don't know if there are elements of the cultural or religious references that I need to unpack or research more to understand because I was just reading little bits here and there about like what Snapdragons represent and these dual meanings to things. And there's a lot to unpack, a lot of throws to pull out. So, yeah, how did, because you've seen it before, Adam. Yeah. Had you seen it, Jay?

No, never seen it. So yeah, that's a good perspective to get then, a rewatch and another fresh. So how did it hit you guys? Yeah, take it away, Adam. So my first experience watching this movie, I guess I should say, yeah, I've seen the director's other two films, the Yellow Sea and the Chaser. They're both good, but like, better than solid. Like, I gave them sevens sort of thing, but they didn't like stick with me in my memory as much as the whaling, for sure.

Like, I would rewatch them, but, like, they're not beloved Korean films for me. They're just like, oh, that was good. I would recommend that might be in my best of the year list somewhere. And it's kind of, yeah, yeah, in the scope of, like, South Korean directors even, it's funny that this guy, you know, consistently making good films, but like not even in my top three. And so I watched the whaling. And first of all, I found it to be like beautifully shot. Like it looks really, really nice.

Not nearly as nice as like any of the Korean directors in my top three, but still like a cut above your average movie. Like the color gradings really, really just there's something about it that's just really, really pleasant to look at. Very kind of like saturated, but not like super oversaturated. Love the the like blue tones, especially when you see something like blood and how it kind of like pops out from that. But my first experience watching this film, I will admit, felt very, very long.

And I was kind of like, you know, I wasn't checked out in the sense where I was like, oh, yeah, I'll watch something else. but I was I was definitely like okay just kind of seeing where this goes and wishing that it would pick itself up a bit more but then when I got to the ending which I'm not going to spoil yet the last like 20 plus minutes of this film like the final act were just so fucking insane to me

and what it was communicating and the visuals and the tone and everything about it, I was just like so locked in that I was like, okay, yeah, I'll watch this movie again someday for sure, and I enjoyed it overall, even if it was slow to start. So on my second watch, knowing, like, okay, yeah, what I remember most is the ending. It's a long-ass movie, and I remember, like, feeling the length. It was definitely an easier watch on the second time, just knowing that and anticipating it. But still, even with that information, I'll agree. There are things that could have been done to make the pacing more friendly to audiences, any audience.

You know, the main character could have been written in like a more compelling way or there are scenes that could have been cut out even. Yeah. For sure. But still, by the time I get to the end, on my second watch still love it like I still it's

the entire experience despite not being like the cleanest or most efficient is still one where I'm like yeah that was more than worth it and I'm happy with what I watched

yeah what about you Jake how did the first watch yeah you know it was an interesting experience I liked quite a bit about it I'll agree that it did feel very long, and I think that there are pacing issues, especially in terms of like just story-wise, just things started to feel repetitive and samey, especially, you know, throughout the middle, large part of the film. The beginning and the ending were very interesting and compelling, and there are some sequences that I really liked, which we'll get into and spoilers later, but it just did not draw me in the way I,

was hoping it would. It just like occasionally I'd be pulled in. I'd be like, oh, that's interesting. I like that. But then it would just, you know, and I think also the subject, like I'm not that interested in, I guess, like, well, I don't, I can't really say because I don't want to spoil anything about the movie. No, I thought like, like the atmosphere was very great.

Like, I liked being there. I liked feeling that. The tonally, it was kind of confused. at times and I don't have an issue with there being like comedy in like a dark film because there's a lot of like slapstick humor and the main the lead character is kind of like a silly silly dude and yeah not the brightest and I just felt at certain points frustrated and bored being like okay I get what it's doing and I I see what it's trying to do and I'm like yeah that's great. And also like the characters are really stupid in this situation. It's just frustrating in a way that I wouldn't, I wouldn't give that pass to most horror films. And with this, it feels like I'm more compelled to be like, okay, whatever, because I'm so, like, I feel so much part of this world. And I feel the dread. Like, it's really good at building up this, like, sense of dread. And it never is super scary to me, but it is very, like, uncomfortable.

in certain sequences, especially, you know, this guy is trying to save his daughter. And it's like, it is, it's weird because also at certain points, it feels like, like, the characters are overacting in certain scenes that I'm just like, I don't feel as like emotionally invested in this. When they're like screaming. Yeah. And, you know, it's just like, tonally, it's kind of all over the place. And it's packing a lot of different, like, like horror.

concepts that some work better than others will get into that in a bit. But I will say I'm really glad I saw it and I don't feel like I was cheated out of my time watching it. I'd even consider watching it again, you know, another time, you know, maybe after seeing some of the director's other work. But yeah, it wasn't my favorite. I'll just put it that way. Sure. Yeah. I just need, I need to ask you this, Jake, before anything. Yeah. How many Korean movies have you seen? Or which ones have you seen?

Like, not that many. I don't even, no, not that many at all. So it's something that I found, like, pretty consistent to be, well, not with every Korean movie, but, you know, some of the top Korean directors. Is their ability to, like, balance super serious tones and comedic tones? This director, I would say nowhere near as good at that as, like, Bongchian. Junho or like Chanwick Park, like very clearly. Uh, I'll agree that there, there are some like conflicting tones happening in this film. However, just with me having seen like a bunch of Korean movies and there being an expectation

of those, uh, varieties of tones existing in films, I think that that, you know, helps my experience just because I'm not like surprised by it. It's not like a weird thing. it is kind of like a cultural thing. Like the only director or like prominent one that I love that I can think of this. That's like in my favorites that isn't doing that is like Lee Chang Dung. And his movies are so depressing but so good. Or it's like there's not really much.

There's not much silliness happening in any of his films. Well, that was, yeah. One of the things I liked more about this actually is you're saying you didn't really enjoy this more bumbling main character, whereas that's something that kind of endeared me to the film early on, especially as it kind of escalates and he, I don't know, the performances that, in situations this character is put into, it just brings it to such a place that felt like it was selling the story to me in a way that might not have otherwise if he was fully competent the entire time. And I just think that setting is really cool of like it's a quiet mountain town.

There are like three main like cops in the in the precinct or whatever and it's like it's pretty small scale which I think it gives it like an interesting texture especially like contrasted against this mountainous wilderness and just like the mystery element of what's what's going on in the question and so I find interesting about the pace where like I definitely felt how long the film was but I wasn't I wasn't bored I was intrigued throughout the entire thing good but it was more a question of okay now this is over I could have taken that out I have questions about this here and there but it's left me thinking and I think the they're all kind of feeling and atmosphere

was really strong in the movie with the way it ramps up with the way it kind of bounces around with I really love I think my favorite character is the Japanese man hell yeah it was a big question mark over him

throughout the entire movie and that that ongoing mystery with him and the, well, the religious elements coming in. Yeah, I really like that, that side of it. I wasn't really, I wasn't really thrown off by a tonal thing, even though I wasn't scared. I was, I was fine with what it was doing because it was being interesting enough throughout the whole thing.

Right. Also, just in FYI, the Japanese guy has been in a bunch of movies that you've probably seen. Well, if you've seen some, like, Takashimi-Imike ones. He was actually in Kill Bill, Volume 1. I think he was like, yeah, he was the guy that gets his like, uh, uh, that confronts, uh, Oren Ishii at the table and a thing happens. I'm pretty sure that's the same guy in that like short little flashback scene.

All right. Okay. Um, yeah, I mean, like you were saying, Adam, I do you feel like part of me is like, um, I would have a better appreciation of the film if I have seen more Korean films, which I haven't, you know, I'm just not well versed in, in, uh, Korean cinema. So, like, that was part of, like, what I was trying to, you know, take into account when I was watching this. But, um, I think, like, ultimately, yeah, like, tonally, it, it did have issues there. But that wasn't, like, my main issue, um, with it because parts of me was kind of like, I kind of enjoy, like, this guy just being like a, a scaredy cat.

Like, these cops just, like, cowering behind desks while they see, you know, like a woman standing outside. It's just like, the fuck. Like, you just don't see that in like most horror films. And I found that kind of interesting. And like, okay, where is it? And then it just becomes something totally different where it's like not funny. It's not a funny like film. And it's like there are certain horror sequences later in the movie where I was like,

this is kind of goofy and silly, but I'm not really like tonally. Is it taking that into account? Like, is it kind of tongue in cheek? Is it like I was having trouble like assessing that. But. Yeah, I think I know exactly what you're going to. actually. Yeah, like beyond that though, like I was interested.

We can do spoiler tag if you want to be specific. Okay, yeah, if you guys are Spoiler tag. Yeah, yeah. That shift in spoilers. Like, I loved that this movie didn't have a bunch of jump scares and I liked what it was doing. That was like unique and I was like, oh, fuck, yeah, this is, I love this.

But then it does like the zombie stuff, you know, like when they're all, like these guys go out to fight the zombie. And it's just so, like, goofy. And like, there's this, like, one zombie. And they're so, like, ineffective. And they're just, like, hitting this guy. And he's, like, super slow. But they keep, like, falling down.

It's, like, one after another. It's like, okay, now he's on top of this guy. Okay, now he's on top of this guy. Now he's on top of this guy. It's just so, like... That's the big one to me, where I don't really understand that zombie scene really added to the film. Right.

Unless I'm missing something obvious. But, yeah, I agree with that one as far as... That is the only major... major tonal moment that felt like we're kind of past this goofiness I feel because that's kind of what makes the earlier endearing stuff with the main character hit harder is that once his daughter gets involved and the stakes are getting higher and higher that like right kind of has to take it seriously and he can't be bumbling anymore he's not like eating and every single scene he's in he's not like covered in filth or whatever it's different it's a different feeling and that feels like it's

moving the story along whereas yeah I just don't really get that that zombie scene kind of dips its toes back in. Right. He has to take his role as a father more seriously. Like, that's part of his journey, like, throughout the film. And, like, after a certain point, though, it does feel repetitive where he's just, like, screaming about, like, my daughter, I have to protect my daughter. And it's like, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I get it, you know. And then when it ends how it does, like, it is very powerful how bleak it is. But also it's just kind of like, I don't know. I wish I could feel more there, you know, and feel more drawn into like this character's mind or because I always feel like I'm kind of held at a distance the whole time a little bit emotionally. Sure.

No, yeah. What you're saying is fair and valid for sure. Like I might have like a bit of a bias towards Korean films. I just, I love the language that they express through filmmaking. Like so many of my favorite directors are just. uh, Korean for whatever reason. Alex,

I'm assuming you haven't seen this Jake, but Alex, have you seen the host, the Bongjunho film? Yeah, okay, good, yeah,

because that's a great example of like, bumbling main character who does have to, like, take responsibility, like a lot of similar kind of ideas

or, like, attempts, but just like, handled much better and balanced much more appropriately. For sure.

Yeah. I don't know if this would actually even be in my top 10 Korean films. Not that I didn't enjoy it. It's solid. But I'd somehow not seen memories of murder until recently. I think that's a police procedural. It's not a horror film, but it's about a serial killer.

And I found that to be more compelling than this. But I don't know. This is doing a lot. And yeah, going back to the kind of core question that you're getting at with the conflict towards the last 20 minutes, it becomes this huge dilemma for the main character who is up against this like ethereal woman who's claiming to help him but he can't trust her and it's there's a shaman that's involved it's like this three-way with the japanese man the shaman and a mysterious woman and he has to make a choice to save his daughter and it's i want to say it's kind of left open to interpretation i have a question or two about like how you guys may be interpreted where it goes and why it goes the way it goes, because there's a kind of dual twist on its face

on a first watch it came across that way where the Japanese man is the main suspect for most of the movie. But there's a point where it's the shaman, right, who explains that he's actually a monk who has traveled over in order to try and protect because he'd heard something about there being a demonic force infecting the town causing this plague to spread and all of these this misery to come from it um so there is this ongoing question of like oh who's guilty who's this they all kind of gang up on the japanese man

and then it kind of twists back on itself and he's like revealed to be a like a demon but then earlier in the movie the shaman he did in a great scene which i loved the editing a presentation of is doing this this whole ritual and it is cutting to the japanese man kind of wailing. I love that sequence. It's such a great sequence. Yeah. Great, great sequence.

But the, I guess I'm confused as the implications of what that scene is saying. Where is it like a trick where the shaman is actually like working with the Japanese man? And he's doing some kind of ritual to Hyosin, the little girl. And the mysterious woman has some. woman has some, yeah, please. Yeah, let me take a shot at it because what I interpreted it as was at some point the shaman basically becomes possessed by like the devil entity or whatever. The Japanese guy was Satan the whole time.

Sometime after they do that the kind of exorcism sequence. Yeah, the exorcist ritual is when the shaman gets possessed. And then he's. lying to the main character like, oh, no, the Japanese guy, he's actually a monk. He's a shaman too. We had it wrong. And this woman is actually the devil or ghost or whatever. But he's just lying and in effect lying to the audience as well.

So we're kind of tricked that actually the lady was good and the Japanese guy was actually the devil. So I kind of just took it on face value. and I just kind of found it kind of like, okay, yeah, like that was a little, that was a twist. The thing is with me, like, with these kinds of, like, demonic possessions concept or whatever, it just felt like there were no, like, really any rules. So I didn't really, I was just like, okay,

you can just kind of do whatever, you know, like, okay, he's a ghost, he's not a ghost. He's the devil. He's not the, like, I don't know. I just kind of, it was too much, like, of a twist to be like for me to feel super invested. I'm just like, yeah, that's fine. I mean, whoever you want the devil to be in the story, it can be that.

So, I don't know. No, I mean, so, well, okay. Yeah, what people seem to agree on is that the Japanese guy was the devil and that the woman in white was trying to protect the village. Right. And then there's some debate as to whether or not the shaman was in on it the whole time or whether or not something happened after the ritual or maybe even because the police officer, main character, stopped the ritual, perhaps. Yeah, it was finishing. But yeah, people are discussing this online and there's different interpretations. In terms of like, I guess how the supernatural elements come into play in this film, I don't think it's completely just, oh, it can be whatever it wants.

Like it doesn't feel like a possessed house ghost movie where, you know, they just spook you the entire time and then only decide to kill you at the end. I think it's established enough in this film that there is like an ongoing battle, especially. with the woman trying to protect the village the whole time. Someone mentioned that like the articles of clothing or like the belongings or whatever, the objects and trinkets that these characters are stealing from people in the village. The woman in white takes objects that are associated with like the top half of someone's body to protect them. And the Japanese devilman takes objects that are associated with like the bottom half of their body. to curse them. And so I do feel as though there is enough communicated with, you know, the struggle or the battle that at no point do I believe like, oh yeah, infinite power. Someone can like Thanos snap or just

do whatever at any moment. There has to be some sort of like slow mechanism, but part of the horror of this film, part of the intrigue for me, is that they don't thoroughly explain everything. is that the main character, you know, especially near the end, like, that's a big part of what makes the end so interesting, is that he doesn't even know what he's supposed to be scared of or what's going on and trying to make what he knows are life and death decisions without even understanding what the decision should be or who to trust or why. So I think that's all just kind of a part of it is what it's going for in that sense. Which is what makes the bumbling main character work so well because you can just project yourself onto him so easily because he's just as confused as you. you are in the scene, you know? Yeah. What are you supposed to think?

What would you do? It's like an impossible decision to make. It's overwhelming. Oh, yeah. And I absolutely love how like, even despite the film kind of like, you know, not always appropriately balancing its tones, kind of like losing its seriousness at many points in the film, even despite that with me being just so. locked into the ending like consistently every single time, well, the two times that I watched it,

for me to be able to be commanded with such seriousness, despite it losing that at other points, before that point, I think that that speaks a lot towards the filmmaking, particularly in the ending, even if not everything is, you know, what it could be or even if not everything is balanced. as well as it could be. I was very much sold by the performances, especially of the main character and his little girl. I thought together. Yeah. Pretty excellent.

I agree. You know, the emotions they were communicating the places they had to go because it, you know, it gets pretty dark. And there was a point as the movie was kind of, well, you think it's wrapping up. And it feels like, oh, they're going towards like a classic happy ending type thing.

And it reveals another layer to itself. It's like, nice. this is uh they didn't really save the little girl it's like a miserable art movie so it's the end i like i like that it was willing to do that it was willing to end it in such a dark place i feel like that is the i don't know it just makes it more memorable and punchy then it just a this has got a nice bell on it it's all like clean and tidy um yeah i like the roundabout way it gets to where it ends yeah i mean i i i like that it went there and it it You know, it went to those that dark, those dark depths or whatever.

Like, I appreciate the swing it made, but it didn't feel to me like as earned, I guess. Like those last 30 minutes where we have like our false happy ending and then things flip. I just, I didn't ever really buy the main character being that conflicted like by that when he's talking to the woman in white and there's a long sequence, you know, when he's talking to her and. and there's like the three crows, right? There are the three sounds from the rooster before he can go back to the house or whatever. And I just, I didn't really buy him being conflicted because like after defeating the Japanese guy, right? After killing him, then things are better with his daughter. He already messed up the like shaman ritual.

So when the shaman is talking to him on the phone, because he's not really the brightest guy in the film, I never really bought that. he would be conflicted talking to this random, talking to this woman, you know, and like that kind of conflict within him. I didn't really buy it being like a, you know, a thing. Like it just, to me, it felt like he would just immediately go back to the house. You know, I didn't really know, like what that meant to his character, you know, if, you know, him just taking this woman's word on the faith that she's correct or something. Like, I just. I mean, she literally, he's about to, and then she literally just says if you go another step forward, your daughter's going to die,

and that's why he stops. Like, he would have went back immediate. Like, that was his initial gut reaction decision, but then, you know, the states were raised with what she said.

Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, I don't know. I, it just didn't, I don't know. I feel bad that I didn't like get,

get more of this because I do feel like there's something that I'm kind of missing in the experience. Your experience was your experience. But yeah, I wanted to like it a lot more because there were so many sequences and moments that were so like beautiful and dark and dreamy that ultimately the way it went just like plot wise. I just didn't really buy it. Yeah, the plot machinations overall. That's fair. That's fair and that's valid.

Thank you. No need to apologize. Yeah, I guess part of what was interesting about that conflict with the main character. me was for most of the movie he's he's framed as someone who's not a believer is not religious he pokes fun at the priest character right and he interrupts the ritual not because I'll correct me if I'm wrong it I didn't interpret it because he he thought it was working too well or something if he wanted to stop it because his daughter was in distress and it seemed to sort of as simple as I had yeah I didn't really buy him being like a believer but by the

time it kind of clicks in his head that the mysterious woman is the woman from earlier on that he met before that was throwing the stones and he starts believing that there's something bigger than him going on which kind of i guess i buy wood freeze you in your place and be like oh shit like how am i supposed to actually comprehend what's happening to me right now so yeah i liked that approach with the faith stuff and yeah i i guess yeah with the priest and the japanese man How do we feel about the the full reveal with him like going into the

like changing form? I love it. Literal? Do you think that was the priest? Like, is that from the priest's perspective? Were we being shown the true perspective? I think that was literal. I might be like that was literal.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. I just feel like there are so many elements and like religious elements to pick up on. Yeah, like the rooster thing. all these biblical references like in the movie the mysterious woman casting the first stone so many things like that i feel like i'm still trying to figure out exactly

what it was trying to say with some of it is so packed with this stuff and uh cultural stuff i don't understand yeah just with the setting that i feel like there i feel like i need someone who's like an expert on this stuff to like break it down kind of there there are people talking about it and like different subredits even right Yeah. Like someone, I'm reading one right now talking about what a, see, Sian, which is like one of the more popular, um, or well known Korean deities in mythology, which is like a- Exactly.

Yeah, all this folklore that like I'm just not privy to, really. Um, but that to me kind of makes it more intriguing to revisit. Uh-huh. Honestly. Like maybe if you look into that and rewatch it and, uh, see these like clues here and there and what it's getting it but it is admittedly quite overwhelming and confusing in certain ways on a on a first watch i like i like the confusing nature of it honestly i think it just adds to like the the horror elements of it maybe i'm not

looking too closely at it but to me i didn't find it that confusing i just found it kind of dull um i don't know. Like, I felt like the beats were sort of predictable. And even though I've seen like reviews where people are like, it's unpredictable, you don't know where it's going at all. Like, I'd say that's true for the first 30 minutes of the film. But once it kind of locks in on like this Japanese guy is evil and they find all these disturbing pictures there, then I was, it just kind of felt like, oh, okay, so it's like a demonic possession thing. We have like this exorcist story going on. And also So he's like this satanic figure. So I just found it kind of dull.

Yeah. Plot-wise. I did love the concept of the first time the twist is revealed of the Japanese ban, I guess not actually being a monk, but we're told he's a monk who's actually trying to save them. And then the idea of like, oh, is this like, they're trying to make a comment on like xenophobia, it, xenophobia between like Japan and Korea and this kind of stuff. Like, I don't know, that was kind of an interesting angle to me. Then it kind of goes back on itself.

Right. And again, I'm still trying to like figure out what they're saying with that. What they mean with that? Here's that line. The Japanese man, he says something like, you've already made up your mind. Nothing would change it. Like, yeah, it's like, what are they prodding at? What are they trying to say?

But I just, I find the whole aesthetic of like, folklore horror and these rituals and like ravens and all the like these weird nests and things that they build I love that kind of stuff I'm not even like necessarily scared by it I just find it intriguing like these rituals and cults and everything I love the idea of that and I love seeing it in a unique setting you don't really get to see very often like this just remote location that definitely gives it like a it gives it like an originality to me right right I get that. I mean, that is like the best part of it is like the visual stuff, the atmosphere.

You know, the whole shaman exorcism sequence was so interesting to me and my favorite part because it was like all visuals and music and like this is just powerful imagery. That really locked me into this world. one thing that did piss me off early on in the film was when the cops they finally get to the Japanese man's house and they're investigating and one of the cops finds the room full of like

all these pictures of like murder and like brutality and stuff and then they just leave and like he knows that they've seen it and I'm just like we're not going to arrest the guy or like art of like it. It was,

was just like, what? Like, why are we not doing anything with this? And they go back and, of course, it's gone. So, and part of me is just like, do I have a misunderstanding about like. Yeah, I find out that strange. You know, in like an American film, the cops are going to be pulling out their guns at this point and shooting things up, you know? E-ho.

So to me, I was watching, I'm just like, wait, they're just going back. Like, they literally have like all this evidence, like photo evidence with this guy. Like, I'm just like, what the fuck? It just kind of pissed me off where I was confused and, like, wire. I don't know. I mean, evidence of just him like having the pictures? Yeah, like all these photographs of murder. Yeah, I don't know exactly what the burden of proof would need to be in like a Korean legal situation.

But they just I agree that the cops were dumb. And they should have like at least been surveilling him after that point, right? But yeah, and I'll even go a step further and say that a good amount of what I was not frustrated with in this film, I would be frustrated with in other films. Okay. I think it's, you know, I might, A, have like a bit of a bias towards green movies, but also be kind of just the anticipation and understanding of like what kind of tones that it will be balancing and what it's trying to do, even if it's not always successful at it. I think just having that level of anticipation going into it makes it so that I'm watching the film and going, yeah, that's dumb. But I'm kind of like amused by it rather than being frustrated, you know. Like still there's a criticism, but not getting the same emotional reaction out of it that I would in like a different film with a different tone, right?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were just moments in this film where, yeah, I was just, like, annoyed at the main character for, like, I appreciate that he was like, not this heroic lead that is like a typical hero or whatever. But it got to a point where I'm just like, it's just like frustrating to me. Like, these characters are being too stupid at certain points. I'm like, I don't buy that they're behaving this way.

but yeah it is just kind of like that up and down feeling of like serious dread dreadful sequences of like intensity like anytime the dog is on screen the the guy's dog is barking at them they're fighting the dog like it's it's very harrowing and upsetting and like the and also like really whimsical but disturbing moments when the guy gets struck by lightning like that to me was like a perfect blend of like this dark but like funny like weird disturbing imagery. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, that's when it was so interesting to me.

But yeah, other moments when it's like the zombies, they're all fighting the zombies and they're just like bumbling around when it's like the three stooges, you know? Like, it was harder for me then, but yeah. No, that's totally fair. I think that this director has a

long way to go in terms of like you know, becoming one of the greats or whatever. But you know, over the course of his career, he's made like three features. Like he has improved with each one in different ways. I would consider this to be my favorite of his. And I do hope that over time, you know, like he continues to balance things better.

I think even, you know, regardless, there's a very beautiful looking film. I'm glad I got the 4K because it's like, honestly, one of the better 4Ks that I've seen in terms of like just the, yeah, look great in 4K. The quality of the image and the color, you know. Very few. films where I'll be like, oh yeah, the HDR totally makes sense here. Where this one, it's like, oh, damn. It's like, it's doing some really nice looking stuff.

And again, yeah, what you said with the tone as well, Alex, I think it does a great job with that. It's the atmosphere, the setting and everything. Sorry, I was just, I just wanted to ask you, Adam, if there are, what other Korean horror films would you recommend? Horror films? Okay, let's see. I'm trying to figure out which one's based on your taste.

Because there's things that I love and I don't know if you would necessarily love. The one that I talked about, that I asked Alex about called The Host, it's 2006. That's a monster movie directed by Junho Bono. That's really great. And I think that would be an interesting one for you to check out because it has a lot of similarities to this that it just balances things way better and is more refined in terms of like creating the like perfect sort of product. Thirst is a movie that I love. I have no idea if you would love it or not, but it's directed by Park Chan Wook,

the guy who did Old Boy. It's a vampire movie. I think at the very least you would find it interesting. And I think, yeah, there's a director's cut. I watched the director's cut for that one. I think it's a bit longer. but um and then uh what's the movie called hold on er er do i have to find it by looking up the fucking actor that i remember auditions a good one auditions japanese that's takashimika oh my bad

no problem but that's that's a great movie wait i remember now i'm going to look it up because i remember that adam wingard is making a remake of this so i'm going to his IMDB to find the title. Or did that get canceled? Because I don't see it there. Okay, I'm going to look up the actor that I know is in it. I'm definitely going to check out those films, especially I'm interested in seeing thirst.

I'm actually trying. I have a goal to watch all of Park Chanwick's filmography. Oh, great. Hell yeah. Just all the way through. He's a great director. I got these nice blue rays of, what is this, sympathy for Mr. Vengeance or something like that.

And Old Boy and his other in that trilogy. Lady Vengeance. Lady Vengeance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to watch those soon. Cool. Yeah, I found the title of the one that I was looking for. It's called I Saw the Devil, but I have a suspicion that you might also have some issues with that.

Although I would argue it's like definitely not like slug. at all. It's just there's some cheesy there's some kind of cheesy and illogical things going but it's a very fun like actiony horror. It's like horror actiony. Oh yeah that's like kind of a crime one.

There's a lot of similarities with like the bigger or at least the Korean films that we find out about in the Americas or whatever there's definitely a feel to them and like

types of stories. So in the same way that, you know, you might look at some of the similarities in like Bollywood or Indian cinema and just be like, oh yeah, that's a that's a Bollywood thing. There's there's things like that in Korean movies. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to check those out, actually. They are on the watch list.

And then if you're looking for sad stuff, do Li Changdong. It's great. Oh, I don't want any sad stuff. He's fucking awesome. I think you might really actually. This one's, he's got one that's like less sad that I think you might love. And it's more of like a suspense kind of like thriller mystery sort of thing called burning. You haven't seen burning, have you?

Oh, I've heard of that. Yeah, yeah, it's got Stephen Young on it. And he's, yeah, he's speaking Korean in it too. Oh, yeah, I heard this is very good. Oh, it's awesome. It's fantastic. I got to watch it again, honestly. All right.

I'll check that one out too. Hell yeah. I'm giving the whaling. Hmm. I think maybe a high seven, if not a seven. Okay. Nice. Yeah.

Just about that. It would be a low, a star seven for me. I did enjoy my time with it. It's unique. I get why people love it the way they do. I just found it to be a little bit long in the tooth. We could trim that down a little bit, I think.

six out of ten nice oh yeah yeah I'm glad I've seen it finally yeah good wreck though good yeah good recommendation

for the spooky month stuff for the spooky time it makes up for you watching Tron Aries I enjoyed the conversation as good yeah same

question time all right let's do some questions then from the Sardonicost community head over to the suggestion thread over on the subreddit. If you want to leave questions for future episodes, just like Machibu did, who says, For all the Sards, what was the transition like going from having a day job to doing YouTube full time?

How did you know it was the right time to make that jump? What made the difference financially? And does it actually feel stable now? I imagine being a freelance content creator can be pretty demanding and stressful at times. Interesting question. This could be a whole episode. yeah yeah the idea of stability is an interesting one because it's like I don't know even if even if I'm objectively comfortable the anxiety I kind of use as fuel like to it's like never good

enough like you got a blah you got to feel like all of us in one way or another have like that workaholic you kind of drive um that even if you're you are objectively comfortable you're still be driven to do something but um yeah it's kind of a tough question time right time to make that jump i had like a plan set out as far as like right i'm trying this for like one year if it doesn't work just going to go in a completely different direction wow just happened to make it work in that year of course it's demanding and stressful what would you have done if you if it didn't work out for you um i was going to go to like uh art college or something like that just go down that direction Nice.

God knows what I would have ended up doing. How old were you when it took off? 19. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. So it's kind of all I know at this point. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. What about you guys? Well, I'll say for me, I had like a later start. So like I didn't really start posting consistently until 2020. And during that time, I was like full. on and I was in college, you know, I was like transferring to UCLA from community college and I was like getting my English degree, but it was something that Nadia was like basically forcing me to keep doing because I was like, this is a waste of time.

I don't know. I'm doing this and she was like, no, I just keep doing it. And I'm like, all right. And fortunately, she was like already out of college. So she had like a job and we could survive and like for a lot of. For most people, it's like you need that some kind of support system to try to make it on YouTube because it's a lot of no money for a long time. You know, and then when it does come, it's a very little bit. You know, and you can't really go into it expecting to like make it a career because it's very, very rare for that to happen.

And it's like even when you do, like you talk to any YouTuber, even the biggest YouTubers you might know. Like they're probably anxious and workaholics about it because there's a lot. like a lot of just unknowns and it all kind of comes down to you coming up with ideas and, you know, making it work. And it's, uh, but in a lot of ways, it's not, it's very similar to like a lot of like gig work or just like working as a contractor or whatever, like being a your own, like a small business person or whatever and being your own boss. Like it's the same type of anxiety. I imagine a lot of different careers have where it's just, you know, it's the grind. You'd like always want to be working because you're afraid if you stop, then things aren't going to work out

or et cetera. You know, so it's like, um, like there are so many great parts and aspects of doing YouTube full time. It's, it's such a privilege, you know, to be able to do it because I'm doing something that I enjoy, you know, first off. So it's like, fantastic. But, um, on the opposite side, like, yeah, it's the way YouTube works, it kind of, it motivates you to be constantly working.

Like, it is very hard to take. any time off at all ever. So that's the downside, you know, that it is always like, I never really feel like I can just kind of like turn it off completely. Like it's always like there. Yeah, that's how I put it. Yeah. I mean, I always like had the intention of, you know, at the very least like building an audience

off of it. But, you know, not. not in a way where I wasn't still doing something that I'm passionate about. Like I was doing my music stuff before the film review stuff. And I saw that algorithmically, you know, if you want your music to take off on the internet, you have to do fucking cover songs. And the cover songs have to be of artists that are super fucking popular. And, you know, at the time it was like Lady Gaga, but it's like, okay, I can make a cover of a song and it wouldn't be like passionate. be me, right? I care so much more about, like, authenticity and just, like, representing my true

self that I wouldn't want to, like, do this fake shit and then be like, oh, hey, check out my other music in the meantime. So that was never going to work out because the artists that I like weren't popular enough for that to work out. And then, you know, over time, I, as a film lover, over time, I started realizing that within, like, my own social circles that I was recommending a lot of movies to people and people would ask me for recommendations that were like tailored to their own interests and stuff. And I was like, oh, okay, interesting. And so I also had a lot of, you know, opinions on things that I thought everybody else was wrong about. And I saw Red Letter Media doing things in like a comedic edited way and was like, oh, okay, I can, I can do it like that. I don't

have to do a vlog format. And so I was working on my YouTube channel, while I was working other jobs, like two other jobs at once. And my rent was pretty cheap. I was paying like 600, 650 bucks a month with a bunch of roommates in like a basement suite. You know, it was cheap for Vancouver at the time. And I was just eating fucking hot dogs and fucking mac and cheese, craft dinner and like ramen noodles, like all the cheapest shit I could possibly eat. I didn't drink.

I didn't go out. I didn't like go to the bar or anything. I was like very frugal, I guess is the word. Yeah. And yeah, like it took me so fucking long to save up money for like a good microphone. And that was almost a disaster because it like it was defective and I was having trouble like returning it. And I was like, okay, if you don't let me return this, like I'm fucked. Like literally financially fucked.

It sucked. And then eventually after I guess doing that, yeah, my chance. started in summer of 2010 and eventually my Megan is missing review like got to the front page of Reddit because I posted it there on my cake day. I strategically planned it out. I learned what a cake day was. And I was like, ooh, people are more likely to upvote you on this day. And then I waited and then did like a, you know, cringiest movie ever made title or whatever. And it was already a video that was like doing well. So I picked one that. I thought it would do well. Yeah, yeah. And then because that got to the front page of Reddit, I then had an extra $600 in my bank account after the ad revenue went through. And there was this new website called Patreon that some people were suggesting.

And I just, I'm the type of person where I have like a fuck it. Like I'm doing it mentality. If it's something that I care about, I'm just, you know, I'll take the risk and just accept the consequences. it doesn't work out because it's better if you tried than if you didn't or at least that's how I feel. And you can always learn from an experience sort of thing. And so, yeah, I made a video just being like, hey, everybody, I'm quitting my job. And if you want to see me do this full time, go to this Patreon thing. And it wasn't a lot of money at first at all, for sure.

It was like just barely enough to make rent. But because of that, you know, then being. able to do it full time, it's kind of an exponential growth because the more content I'm making and the more I'm able to focus on the content, then the more that it grows. And so, yeah, there was never really like a, like a question of like it not working out for me. Like, sure, you know, like it was a possibility, but I just, I don't know, I was a risk taker and I, you know, still am in many ways. And I was one of the first people. to transition to Patreon

is like a full-time thing. That thing in the background of my streams that like cardboard film real thing. Yeah, yeah, they sent me that. And I got like a thank you letter and everything because... Oh, that was from Patreon.

Yeah, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but like I was like one of the people that helped Patreon grow as like a website and like gave it a sense. of legitimacy because just because I was like one of the first people that was like hey I'm quitting my job I'm doing this which was like you know what kind of what

the website was for because yeah early YouTube was kind of skittish about Patreon there was like a weird narrative about it at first but you wouldn't really even think about nowadays like it's so like standard and everyone has one yeah

but yeah I guess I didn't realize you're on it that early oh yeah super early I was literally in the top 100 earners in the first year and I never will be again. Because the only reason I was was because the platform was so small. Right. That like... It's so proving it so few. Oh yeah.

That like it was possible. Now it's like fucking porn games and making like $100,000 a month and shit. Like it's not possible to be in the top fucking 100 for me. But yeah, yeah. People like designed their like campaigns around like things that I was doing. like expectations and like uh perks and stuff like a lot of people just like looked at my page and just like did that which was kind of cool but I guess to try and fully answer the question yeah I mean like because of my like recent like health issues and you know also just

being kind of like a workaholic for however many like a decade straight biting me in the ass and now my arm doesn't work properly and other random chronic health issues. Because of that, like, I've had to, like, not do as much content or not spend as long on it, like, just literally it's not possible. And as I'm, like, figuring out all of these, uh, all of these, uh, things for how to, like, get back to making the flagship content, but also not have as much of my arm doing it. and not be literally only working and not having a social life or any kind of like personal relationships or focus on my health like trying to fit in things that I should have been fitting in this entire time you know like the the channel's not doing as healthy as it was before

and that's just kind of the reality of it um and so I've had to like restructure you know the amount of editors that I have you know I have I've had to like lay some people off and you know do a lot of work in terms of like making it work again. And it does. It does work again. But like, yeah, it's an ongoing process to figure it out.

At the very least, I'm thankful that I have like a good core audience. And I'm thankful that I have like a solid Patreon because it means that I was able to actually take some time to figure this stuff out and be sick. And like, you know. I'm very, very privileged to be able to not go bankrupt in like a disaster scenario where my health takes a fucking nose dive. Because a lot of people don't have that privilege at all.

And it's very sad. And I wish that it was the standard. And I wish there were more social safety nets. And I wish we had UBI. And I'm just like, you know, I'm fucking lucky. And yeah, I don't know if I answered the question. Went on a ramble. Sorry.

Thank you. No, that makes sense. that's good, yeah. Right, I'm starting to fade, so can we do a couple more? Yes. Let's do this one from Twerbis mite. Apologies if this has been asked before, but after watching 1973's Belladonna of Sadness, I noticed a lot of the top reviews on Letterbox

seemed to misunderstand what the film was trying to convey. They took it literally and thought the film was misogynist, and I felt the complete opposite. So my question is, do you all think that there's a lack of literacy, comprehension, skills now more than ever before and why could that be I've also seen similar scenarios with one battle after another weapons and Eddington thank you and big fan you're the reason why I now hate the MCU nice um so I'm like I'm really curious about I haven't watched it yet the uh Ben Shapiro one battle after another video that's kind of the the latest in this slew um be no

it's been an ongoing thing I feel with um a lot of people just kind of missing the point or not even wanting to exactly see the point yeah just they're just like political tools I guess or just like ammunition to just hurl in one direction without even really thinking about it or

it's like the bench bureau one's like a while because it's like do you even like movies so like you just seem to you don't even care it's not about the movies no yeah it's incredibly strange um and just kind of

once you see through it it's like it's so bare face obvious to me, but it seems like, I don't know, it kind of works on a lot of people. Yeah, I don't know if I agree that there's like worse media literacy over time. Like, I don't know if I agree that it's getting worse. I think a lot of things we think are getting worse are just because we see more of it because we're exposed to more of it on the internet. That's true.

But yeah, I don't think that like there would be more people understanding a film if it were a really 20 years ago than today sort of thing like I don't I don't think that that's necessarily the case I do agree that like perhaps the bigger problem isn't even necessarily like a lack of comprehension understanding a movie versus a lack of willingness to even try to understand something because people like ben Shapiro and also I don't know a lot most the most popular uh channels things on the internet discussing media at this point. A lot of them, it's not about like a genuine experience. It's about conforming to a culture war worldview.

And they talk about things that conform to it in ways that they know kind of how they're going to spin it before they've even seen it, really. You know, so like I think dishonesty is more of an issue than like the, media comprehension is just the incentive structures that people have for bad faith engagements yeah like not even wanting to understand something like that's not the goal yeah yeah i um i watched the uh new mistress corsese uh documentary series on apple plus um apple tv uh this past weekend it's like a five episode series fantastic i recommend you guys check it out it is so good It goes through his whole career and everything.

Really well edited, a great documentary. But in the... What's it called? This just... It's called Mr. Scorsese. It's on Apple. In the documentary, it goes through, of course, when he made The Last Temptation of Christ.

And the backlash to that, I didn't realize it was so massive, where it was like, kind of also the rise of the religious right politically in the 90s. In the U.S., So there was like a huge backlash even before the movie came out where people were like, if you go see this, it's a sin. It's anti-Catholic. It's, you know, it's a sacrilege. It's bad. And of course, then they explained that like they haven't even seen the movie, but they're like, why would I want to see this? I know already what it's going to be. So it's like the same exact type of thing where I'm sure most of the people who are watching these like bad faith reviews of one battle after another through this political. lens, this conservative political lens, aren't going to watch it, weren't ever going to watch it, you know, they want to watch their favorite conservative media figure criticize Hollywood and talk about how they're woke and dumb, you know? And it's like you can, I think maybe the problem now is less media literacy. It's there are so, you could find literally any voice, any person online who's making a money selling some narrative. You can find anyone to fit whatever you want. So, it's like there's so many voices out there that you can buy into. So, yeah, maybe it is kind of like what you're saying, Adam. It's just we're seeing a lot more of it.

This kind of bad faith takes because there's more voices shouting into the void. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just the incentive. It's not to all three of us, we're doing the things that we're doing because we're like passionate about doing them, right? it's not like oh there's a worldview that a oil company is telling us to promote right like it's just yeah maybe maybe the media literacy issue isn't necessarily with films but maybe it's with like internet content and people not being able to properly understand like who is being good faith and not

yeah definitely and the algorithms and what they're feeding you yeah some Awareness, we really have a higher awareness than an average user of it just because of the nature of how long we've used it and making stuff for it. You're just going to understand it a little bit better, I feel. But yeah, that's a big conundrum. If you're entertaining enough and you're good enough at speaking, you can literally make a career online, on your own with a video camera, just being mad at anything. Like, you just pick any topic. You can be mad about video games. You can be mad about.

And, you know, like, we've done that, you know. Women. I think women, exactly. I mean, we've done that to some extent because part of what fuels the internet and discourse is anger, but it's like we tried to comment it from like an honest lens and lend our perspective. So it's like there's a difference, you know, between just trying to sell a narrative and being like an honest actor online.

And I feel like maybe a benefit to media literacy in the future will be more and more people recognizing that when they're watching things. You know, it can't, it's sometimes it can be hard. Even if like you're, you know, I can be tricked sometimes by maybe a left wing political commentator. And I think they're operating in good faith and maybe they aren't necessarily all the time. You know, like we can all be fooled. It's it's about like questioning your biases constantly, I guess. Yeah, and being trying your hardest to be skeptical and questioning yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Literally just what you said. And let's wrap up on continuing on with the One Battle thing, this one from Reddit fan. Considering how you all loved one battle after another, how do you guys feel with the latest news about how it's predicted to lose around $100 million? Do you think it means Warner Bros? are less likely to give this large budget, this large over budget to a all great, to an all-time great filmmaker like PTA.

It's like not even true. It's not even true, really. I mean, like, it, again, like, if you're purely looking at box office numbers just from, like, theatrical, right? There's movies that didn't become hits until they were on digital because of, you know, like there were enough people checking them out on digital after. you'd think that regardless of whether or not it's going to come from digital or the theater sales there's going to be like an Oscars re-release

or some kind of a release right? Yeah. People are going to watch it then. It's going to be a fucking like classic over time. Like more people are going to watch it over time. Yeah. It doesn't matter whether or not it's like an immediate success in the moment. Like I'm excited to watch it again.

I'm excited to show more people. Word of mouth is going to spread this film like, you know, it already has, but like even more so for sure. Oh, that classic thing is such a good point that I feel like so many studios are scared of like embracing because they're so risk-averse. But like these things will pay dividends if they're like as good as something like one battle after another. Exactly.

And even if it wasn't, even if it was more of a bomb, right, I feel like a Warner Bros. It should be part of the business model, right, where you have your Minecraft movies, your Jurassic Parks, you whatever, that are bringing in so much, so much fucking money that you can afford a one battle maybe every year. So you have like an your awards movie. You're getting like that positive buzz. But it's being like paid on the back end by the dumb shit.

You know? I don't know. I just feel like it's more flexible than just this movie didn't make all the money. Yeah. Yeah. Warner Brothers didn't green light one battle after another expecting to make a billion dollars. Like they are

aware, you know, that I'm sure they put a lot of thought into, okay. well, how much can we afford to lose on this and factored that into it? I'm sure it's actually kind of doing better than they expected, you know, on some level. You also have to remember, like, these studios are not transparent at all, ever with how much money they're making on the back end, ever. Like, you just can't really trust. And again, like, I'm sure over time this movie is going to pay for itself and then some. So, um.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not an indication of quality. Like, a hate I was always leveraged like that. Because it's really not important in that way. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there's like some weird, like, incentive almost to create like a narrative that these things can't or shouldn't be successful, you know?

Or maybe it just gets clicks just because the title pisses people up. Yeah, true. Like the one they were trying to spin sinners as a flop, you know, when it was clearly. doing very well. I can understand the incentive there. Because the way that his contract was negotiated. Oh, yeah. Like he was able to retain.

Exactly. Like the rights. The rights. Yeah. Yeah. And so I understand why there would be like a media push to like pretend like that movie. It's like, you shouldn't make these.

Like, okay. At least I can understand that one. Yeah. I don't know. Hollywood's a weird. Hollywood is in a really weird place right now. Evil. I mean, yeah, Tom Hanks and his, you know, evil cult.

Whatever. No, but I mean, like, we've gone through COVID and also, like, the actors and writer strikes happening at the same time. So it's like a lot of upheaval, but it's like the same, it's the same thing that's been happening for the past, you know, decade or whatever. Like, there is the issue is like new media and technology. and everyone's on their fucking phones and people aren't going out to watch movies as much. Like that's just like at the heart of it. Yeah.

Like they just are not as much of a required entertainment culturally anymore. And that kind of sucks. Yeah, there's so much competing with it. In a theater specifically too. It's not like people are like maybe, yeah, people are watching less movies. It's just people don't want to go to the theater as much.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's always seen as like the end all be all of like a film success is like, oh, the box office. numbers at the theater when in reality it's like okay well I'm sure the home video and streaming revenue is way more than it was 10 years ago like that makes up a big bigger chunk of the pie yeah so yeah if you think the back end is bad on like box office and that kind of stuff like the streaming thing is a whole other kettle of fish like whatever is going on with that money oh yeah so strange

these like lost leaders and the way they invest it's just like what the most random shit would just have like a hundred million dollar budget like pumped into it. So yeah, what is going on with these numbers? Like it's so fascinating to me. And I wish that was transparent because that would be a really interesting conversation in terms of like whether or not a film was financially successful for streaming numbers, you know, but yeah, you never now, now it's like even harder to just find out whether or not a film was successful.

Yeah. From a financial success. No, it's almost impossible because it's so abstract, you know, when you find out that K-pop demon hunters has like a hundred million hours every day. What is like what does I even mean? Like how does that translate? Like yeah. I don't know.

Means a lot of kids watch it. And a lot of parents don't want to babysit. So they put on the TV. That's what I do. I just throw on, you know, Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography. So I have fun. Funny games. Yep.

All right, cool. Yeah. Thanks for the questions. We do it. Thank you. Thank you. We're all. We're all fading.

We're all fading. I'm doing great. I can feel my voice going. You two are sick in the head. Yeah. Yeah. But this was good. Thanks for toughing it out.

This is a good episode. Sure. Yeah, I like that. Nice variety of movies. A bit scary. Yeah. We're not just talking about Tron Ares. I think it's my turn to recommend.

Yeah, it is. Go for it. Adam's Rock. Where you go? Well, so there's like, there's the, The in theaters, you know, kind of, this stuff I want to check out that's new before next episode is not like big name. It's not Tron sort of thing, right?

So I want people to click on the video. So I'm going to go with a classic here that I think enough people have seen to click on the video for. And the star is kind of aligned because this has both Jared Letto and Marlon Wayans in it. Requiem for a dream. Oh, we're doing Requiem. Nice. Jake's never seen it, right?

Never seen it. Nope. Okay. I hope you love it. It's the, it's a high anxiety film. That's all I'm going to say. I fucking love it. Yeah.

A lot of people consider it to be not a pleasant experience sort of thing, but ever, yeah. I would agree with that. There's so much about it that, yeah. I'll see this movie anytime. Well, I feel like you, you're always recommending such a good time. You're always recommending such fun, good, good feeling, good vibe movies. So it's, yeah, yeah, I think it's fine for you to recommend one slightly disturbing film. Yeah, for sure.

You know, someone's got to do it. Someone's got to do it. Someone's got to do it. Sure. It's been a while, but I'm looking for people to revisit. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you don't want to be spoiled for Requiem for a Dream, 2000.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Watch it before the next episode comes out. I don't even think that's how it goes. Oh, wait. No, yeah, no, you've got the rhythm totally wrong. No, I was doing it perfectly. No. I think it was fun on.

Yeah. Watch it before the next episode comes out. These episodes come out every two weeks. You can listen to them early by going to sardonicast.com. Sign up for premium. Or patreon.com slash sardonicast. or hit the join button below, the members thing. You can listen to them early as well.

We post the unlisted versions in the community tab for members. So you can listen to them without having your phone screen on if you want. Because for some reason, YouTube doesn't do that for members' exclusive videos, but we can do an unlisted video in the member's exclusive post. And that's how we get around it. Don't listen to our podcast on your fucking phones. Actually, I don't care. Yeah, where do you want to get the podcast on vinyl.

Oh my God, that would be such a weird thing to sell. We're releasing the next episode on vinyl. Speaking of selling things, we're getting our merch thing figured out. Right now, let's see if, yeah, okay, yeah, there's a, we're going to make a URL for the Sardinacast stuff. But right now, there's a certified Normie master. masterpiece stickers. Oh, yes. Yeah, baby.

YMSmerch.com is where they are right now. Oh, my God. And we're going to have some more Sardongas merch stuff, and they're going to be in their own little storefront thing. But right now that's where they are. YMSmerch.com. I'm so happy. The Normie Masterpiece Stickerset.

You can put them on any film. Oh, I'm looking at it right now. You can, yeah, you can put them on movies that you think are certified norm. me masterpieces or on people. Oh my God, yeah. With their consent. With their consent. Yeah.

Oh, man. I'm getting 10 of these. Perfect. Yeah, all right. Thanks, everybody for listening. Have a happy football. Happy whaling. Happy whaling.

Happy Jared Letto. Happy Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans combo. Two episodes in a row. Okay, let's keep that streak going. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.