Sardonicast - Sardonicast 203: Frankenstein, The Long Walk, Thor: Love and Thunder

Episode Date: November 25, 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 Fan art: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sardonicast/comments/1ougbsg/sard_training/?share_id=PsCUmRGTyjTxrNtARCEOi&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 Timestamps: 0:00 intro 1:42 Frankenstein (2025) 24:04 The Long Walk 54:36 Thor: Love and Thunder 1:53:28 Questions 2:23:51 recommendation + outro

Three, two, one. Someone else can do the quote. You don't have any quote. No. And why would I look one up? Did you hear that? What? I just called done the thing again where I play a sound effect down the mic and it doesn't...

Oh. You guys don't hear it. Like filters it out. Oh, okay. No, yeah. It probably filtered it out. I didn't hear what you played, but I'm going to see if we play the exact same quote. Yeah.

Oh, is it just the goat? screaming. You got it. Okay. Okay. So we both... It's a good one, huh? All right. Okay, cool. Well, it'll show up in the actual episode. I think that's very sweet that we both did the goat thing.

I think that's... You know, I think it's cool that Discord is protecting me. At least, you know... It's just such a funny joke. Oh, yeah. Someone's looking out for me. Thank you, John Discord. I'm Adam from your movie sucks. This is Sardonicast.

Yeah, and I'm not. Alex from my H.E. And yeah, it feels weird doing the screen first. Should have saved it. Yeah. Who cares. And I'm Jake from Sardonicast. I'm from this. Oh, nice. Yeah. We made you. Yeah. Fuck all the other stuff. Yeah. This is my, this is my job. We gave you life and we can take it away. Mm-hmm. Very thematically resonant. Mm-hmm. It's almost like you're some kind of Frankenstein's monster. Almost like I'm some kind of screaming goat Please

We saw a movie Several, we saw several movies We saw some movies Yeah, I'm super curious what you guys think Because I think it might be the old one out in this discussion For Frankie For Frankie I only know your ratings, I think

But am I correct And being the one that kind of really Really love this? Oh damn, okay, good I'm glad you did Yeah, I was really into this No yeah I mean like you're definitely not the odd

one out in terms of like overall viewers. Like people seem to like it. I just, I was the odd one out of tip. I was the person going like, damn, it was boring. Everybody else was like, it was good.

So. Really, you found it boring. I found it excruciatingly boring. Well, this is interesting. We have diversity of opinions here. This should be a good talk.

I found it so fucking boring. It was so long. And I didn't feel like it was saying anything. Like, that I cared about. But you tell me how you enjoyed it. I was kind of intimidated by that runtime, but yeah, really just, I don't know, by the time it got through the opening sequence with Victor as a kid,

I was just kind of sold by the way it was put together, that production design just so gorgeous to look at. Oh my God. I noticed there's a 40-minute extra documentary that Netflix put up of all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And I don't know, it's just so like delicately put together, but every single element, the sound design of like, just little details, the fork sliding off the finger in that dinner scene with Charles Dance,

all these small little character actors coming in and even for not long and dancing around. And I don't know, the whimsy of it, that fairy tale nature just kind of reminded me that Giyomo has basically been doing this for his whole career. Mm-hmm. This fairy tale tone.

And yeah, just leaning into that whimsy, that dark horror side of him. Yeah, I don't know how familiar I am with like the story overall other than the basics. And the basics were covered for sure. So my understanding is that like one of the, I don't know if this is like more accurate to the original source material or less, but something that made this film more unique is that they, you know, focused a bit more on like humanizing. the Frankenstein character and being like, oh, well, is his side of the story. Is that correct?

Or have other films essentially done that? Have you read the book, Jake? Yeah. It was a while ago. I read it in college. But yeah, there's so many adaptations of Frankenstein that it's basically like every possible version you can imagine has been done. Except like a very literal translation of the book, I think.

And I know there were some people going into this hoping. that's what this was going to be, and that's not what it is at all. It's super different from the book. I think the most similar aspect to the book is the structure. It has the prologue and the Arctic and that sort of thing. But beyond that, like, thematically, too, it kind of goes its own direction. And I'm not opposed to that at all. I mean, it's such an old text that it's like, you got to bring something new to it.

I just like you, Adam, didn't think that it was a very interesting take on the material. I was very bored as well. Yeah, I think what would have helped my experience is if I cared about a single character in the entire film. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was not attached to anybody. I thought everybody was an asshole and an idiot.

Really, isn't that sort of what it's going for, at least we? with Victor, his hubris and his goal that's trying to achieve. And that's all made like Mia Goth coming in and being the other side of the argument quite entertaining for me. And the way it's crossing over with the whole like, you know, it's very similar to Pan's Labyrinth or shape of water where it's kind of a period piece and has these war elements and it's taking this, you know, anti-corporate, these big company men are making bullets and whatnot and making these parallels with these powerful people and what Victor winds up doing.

with the creature and the kind of tragedy of that. And I don't know, I was, I kind of feel the complete opposite where it is one of those osmosis stories that you just know, you can't even really spoil it. True. Like the beats of Frankenstein, but the fact he managed to give it, give it its own voice. Yeah, through his decisions and the way it's put together, I just thought it, it did refresh it and kind of modernize it, but also give it that, that feeling like it's always existed, that fairy tale nature.

I didn't feel the runtime at all. Wow. Oh, I felt the runtime the entire time. Two and a half, it felt more like three and a half. Yeah. So I do want to mention about the production design. Interior, great. Exterior, like the Arctic, you know, it felt like a bunch of CG, you know.

It felt like a bunch of CG, you know. It felt like a not real environment. It felt like really phony. And a lot of the effects work, like, I don't know if maybe they like changed it since I saw it at TIF or something. I kind of doubt it. But like, because it's in the trailer too. Like a lot of the explosions and like fire looks like simultaneously expensive and cheap at the same time. So it's like, oh, you spent a lot of money on this for it to look like shit.

I don't know I feel like I had similar criticisms some points in the movie notably some CG animals I didn't love but I don't know I feel like that the huge boat set that they built for that I thought grounded it and gave it some

sense of realism for it and the whole tower sequence and the way that was set it was like a suitably kind of epic and big feeling establishing show and it looked fantastic Yeah. I felt like it was really good for the most part, but, you know, I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah. Just wade the other way. There's definitely a good amount of impressive production design within this. But just what ruined it for me was just the lack of visual consistency. It's just like there were always notable, you know, not insignificant chunks where, you know, I was taking it, taken out of the film just by how fake things look. kind of wishing for more. I don't know if maybe Netflix should have given him a bigger budget for this.

I don't know what the budget was. 120 mil. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's a pretty sizable budget. But like, yeah, just did not sell it for me in terms of like me believing that it was a world that existed, which, you know, maybe was partially contributed by the fact that I just didn't relate to any characters. So perhaps, you know, me already being detached from the narrative experience. made it so that I wasn't you know as into the or or that I was noticing more the visual inconsistencies I liked the gore a lot but it was few and far between and not enough to keep me going it was like yeah it kind of worked for me on almost a

horror level with the body horror stuff and I really love that scene where Victor first shows off his early experiments and that practical model that was built yeah I love the look of it I was really sold on the love that scene whackiness the concept and I was going against the grain and he was like convinced he was a trailblazer. That really sold me on his character. Why did he want to kill Frankenstein? Sorry, when you say Frankenstein.

No, the monster. Sorry, why do you want to kill his own monster? Why did he want, because he couldn't learn a word that was not Victor? Because being a new, being a father is hard. Adam, okay? And he's like, I'm so tired. This baby only says dad, dad. It only says Victor all that.

First, okay. This is like, what I like about this movie is also what I think is annoying is that it kind of takes the whole story of Frankenstein and turns it into kind of like a parental trauma story. Sure. And it's about fatherhood. You know, like we see his old backstory of his father was cruel and difficult to him. And his mother died because his father couldn't. Oh, sorry, are we doing spoilers? I mean, you said earlier, you couldn't even.

spoil it. Yeah, it's a hard one to spoil. So, doesn't even matter. It's hard to spoil. But the movie takes, so the movie takes a lot of liberties with the material because in the book, like, there isn't this story of his dad being this bastard who, um, you know, couldn't save his mom or whatever. Like, it's, it's a lot more, like, nuanced, especially in terms of like what Victor does and his relationship to the monster and the monster's own morality. Like, the monster isn't, uh, an immortal God, you know, once he's, like, he doesn't have, he can't be shot a billion times and survive drowning and all this stuff in the book. He's just a dude that was brought to life by another dude. And he's, like, kind of hideous. And he ends up doing, you know, murder and reprehensible things.

He's not, like, constantly, like, his morality isn't always, like, clean and simple. And I think that the same goes for Victor, even though he is, like, the monster in the book, as I see it, Victor is also like, you know, he's contending with something that he didn't ask for and doesn't understand. And it's like they're both struggling with the situation. And, you know, what the movie decides to do instead is kind of tell the story of like parental trauma, essentially. And I found that to be once I saw where it was heading with that narrative, especially in the very long, like first 30 minutes where we see him growing up and all of that. I was just kind of like, oh, okay, this is what we're doing. That's fine.

I just find it kind of boring. And I didn't connect, like you were saying, Adam. I didn't really connect with any of the characters until Jacob Lorty kind of takes over the second half of the film. At which point, I was kind of mesmerized with, you know, the effects and his performance. And it was very interesting because, you know, Garmald D'Ottor is so great with monsters. And he clearly identifies more with the monster than with anyone else on screen. I wish that more of that empathy was lent to Oscar Isaac's character, who is kind of a buffoonish over-the-top caricature of a mad scientist that was just so villainous and stupid that I was just like, okay, I don't really care about this guy, you know, let's get to the good stuff. Why do you want to kill the monster?

I don't know. Like, he just does. Yeah, like, I still don't know why he wanted to kill the monster. Because he's like, fuck it. Okay, so that's another stupid thing is that... We're doing a do-over. Well, he's just like, all right, I worked really hard to do this, but now that I achieved this, I'm just like, all right, whatever,

I'm just going to blow up the whole fucking tower and, you know... Yeah, no, he did it in a crazy way. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, it's very... Yeah, it seemed like he was kind of disgusted of what he created. But what about it? Yeah. Seeing at first to face was a moment of realization of like, oh, God, well, this isn't like quite as I pictured.

Just like the fact that he could only say Victor, though, that's what I got it. I was so confused by his motivations and especially just how he did it. But would you want to remove the, would you want to remove the whole like parental angle? From my understanding, I haven't read the original book. No, no, no. I wouldn't want to remove it. The sort of inspiration of the story being the whole Mary Shelley's relationship with her dad. and personifying that as like Frankenstein

and that longing and feeling of rejection and that kind of thing. I think that's definitely a part of like the original story and also even if it wasn't, I would be totally fine with that being the angle that it takes. I just don't think that the script does enough to like do anything interesting or new with it. It wasn't enough to engage me with the characters of the story.

I just, I found it to be kind of just simple. Like once I discovered what the theme was going to be and it kind of went through the motions of the Frankenstein narrative, I was very just removed from it until, except for very few scenes that were like, oh, this is kind of interesting. I like the feeling here between Mia Gauth and Jacob Allorty. And it just never hits that higher note where it really sings.

It's just kind of like a, it just never really gets there for me. I don't know. Yeah. Like you can tell it's directed by, Garamo, you know, if you had to make me guess. Yeah, that hard direction. Yeah. Like, it very much feels like one of his films.

It just feels like narratively, like, I don't. There's nothing to stick for me. Well, that's another aspect I did want to discuss with you guys and get your opinions on because for me, I'm discovering that I might just not like Guillermo del Toros style of cinematography and what he. does scene to scene. How many of his films have you seen also? Like which ones have you seen?

I haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth. I've seen Crimson Peak. I've seen this. I think. Okay. A Pacific Rim. I love Pacific Rim. Nice.

Shape of water. I haven't seen shape of water. But what I notice, especially when watching this one, is that I'm immediately drawn to, like, the production design. And I know he said that he's like a closeted production designer or whatever. And he also, I saw like a snippet of that Netflix documentary where he said that he wanted to shoot the tower sequence like it was a concert, you know, with a camera constantly moving around and floating and getting this big view of everything happening. And that's something that I don't like is that I felt like he filmed every scene that way. And every scene is kind of like focused on the production design, which is gorgeous and like eye candy. but I feel like the actors are kind of lost in the frame and this camera that is always floating around like this roving high that kind of feels directionless like there's not that much purpose and how it's moving and ultimately it just feels like a lot of reverse shot reverse shot and a lot of times I just I feel like it's in awe of what has been built there but it's not actually contributing to like the cinematic like the language of the film isn't like engaging me.

emotionally. He's not using the language of movies in a very effective way to my, at least to my tastes. That's an interesting point. Yeah. I mean, so that I just, it becomes dull. Like, even though the first few scenes, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember this looks really cool and interesting, but being cool looking only, I don't know, I feel like it only takes you so far, especially for a two and a half hour film when every scene is shot the same way. That's not a bad point in terms of it feeling like it is kind of showing off the production design a lot. But I wouldn't call it directionless, but I would agree that it does feel kind of like overindulgent in that sense. Yeah.

Really? I feel like it, treating the environment as important as the characters is kind of a choice in and of itself. It does emphasize the period. And I feel like, yeah, you should be in awe of these sets. And it should be shot to like emphasize and show off that work because that's part of the whole appeal of the aesthetic. And I keep saying fairy tale, but that is the vibe it has. the I feel like that emphasizes and Hammers home what it's going for and sells the point of the

story to me. It didn't feel like it was in combat with the like writing or the characters to me. It felt like it was all these prime artists like feeding into something that was really like coming together to make a unique story for me. Yeah, it doesn't bother me personally. But it is an interesting thing to like kind of note about his style at least. I don't think that I would be bothered by it at I can understand not liking it, for sure. Yeah. Like, if I just had characters that I cared about, then I would be fine. I think that my experience would be okay.

Right. Like, I mean, I respect and I understand, like, what it is. And I agree with you, Alex where, like, there's a great argument to be made that that is part of it. Like, the production design is just as important to his story as everything else is. And I just, I simply like the very clean, crisp image with a very wide angle. It does just remind me of like filming coverage for a concert or something like I wish there was a little bit more there But you know, it's not necessarily bad. It's just kind of a choice that I just I just don't gel with very well For example, there's a scene in the second half of the film where Jacob O'Lordi as the monster is climbing around in this

house like with these giant cogs and he's spying on the family the blind man's family and he's crawling around with these giant ass cogs and suddenly like those are the main characters in the film you know like he's it's just so focused and in awe of these massive cogs that i'm just thinking not about him or the story or anything i'm just thinking like wow there's some impressive looking cogs like i don't know like that's something that that really immerses me into it yeah i mean i guess it it just depends on the viewer like that for me it just it pulls me out immediately and i'm just constantly reminded of like yeah there's looks and feels like a set. I don't know.

Well, you know what? I think it's super fucking based that you don't care that Guillermo is an untouchable icon and you're sharing your perspective and you're taking him down a notch showing that we don't have kings. This is a no kings podcast. I've always had that mentality. Yeah, fuck that guy.

No. I mean, he seems like a great dude. I mean, people, I see, I mean, he has been some great. wonderful films. For whatever reason, this didn't stick with me. And I've been getting, people have been annoyed at me because they're like, oh, why, you're being too harsh on this movie. But, you know, it's one of those, it's one of those things where it's like, if it doesn't engage you emotionally and it doesn't pull you in like there's not much you can really, you know, I can't pretend to like it. Exactly.

Exactly. But I am, I do see why people are happy with the. film and engage with it like it does offer a lot um it's just not to my not to my taste yeah yeah i'm kind of surprised about how much i like it because on paper it's not the most interesting project to me to see from him with what i'm saying about this kind of repetition of these ideas of these monsters and these this commentary that he bakes in there but i don't know i think he pulled it off this is what i want more movies to be like especially in these like in the streaming Hellscape where like Red Notice costs like 200 million and so like moving around like that

this is kind of what I want like just let these artists make that art the way they want to do it and I feel like it's a good use of 120 million in my mind yeah yeah I'm glad he gets to do the things he wants I'm gonna I'm gonna have another weird like logical thing that bothered me why the fuck did those two so when Frankenstein escapes those two guys that don't know he's a monster that just see a tall guy they just start shooting at him, why? They don't even know he's a monster. They're just like, a tall man, shoot him, what the fuck?

Because it's set in America. It's actually set in the South. It's got the guns. I mean, there were several moments like that, especially that annoyed me. Just like plot conveniences too, where like the blind man is attacked by wolves and that just happens to be the exact moment

when his family returns home and they're like, oh, it must have been this monster, you know, so. Yeah, I didn't love the wolf scene. Those kinds of like plot convenes his annoy me. When he goes back to the tower, that exploded in all this gasoline and he finds little pieces of paper

that explain who he is, you know? That irked me a little bit. Just like silly thing. Another, like when he kills Elizabeth when Victor shoots her, when it's like, like, were you even aiming for the monster? Like he's holding her right in front of him.

You just shoot point blank, you know. Because he's crazy. Yeah, he's crazy. I mean, his performance is so big. And I kind of respect him going for it, but I was just like, what is happening? What is happening with this performance? It's a lot. It's a lot.

Okay. Do we have much more to say about it? I wouldn't mind talking about the other. movie we were thinking about talking about. Sure. Yeah, let's do long walk too. Well, I'm giving Frankenstein a five out of ten. Very boring.

I still understand why he wanted to kill him. Didn't connect with any characters. All right. I'm giving this a four out of ten. Ouch. Wow. Take that, Guillermo. Yeah, I like this quite a bit more than you guys.

It would be like a strong seven, three and a half star. Maybe even could go up on a rewatch All the things you're criticizing for I basically just flip on its head And that's kind of what I loved about it Didn't feel that runtime Really enjoyed the structure of it The changing of perspectives

Yeah love the Gothic Hellscape that it presented Love it All right All right We saw The Long Walk Um

I probably wasn't going to watch this movie, but I knew that both of you had. And so I figured I'd get one in the bag for a potential podcast discussion, make things easy on you guys. You don't think it's a funny premise? Instead of either of you watching castration movie Anthology One Traps, which you're never going to do because you don't want art. I'll do it. I'll watch that.

why you should fucking do it then recommend it oh it has to be the official recommendation well Alex you're up next you can save the you can save your reputation what

what happened to his reputation oh you know and I don't okay well I'm just going to gloss over that the long walk a Stephen King adaptation, one of many that exist.

Supposedly, Frank Deribund was originally going to adapt this, which makes sense because to me it feels like someone trying to do something that's Frank Derbunt, but not really hitting the mark. I believe someone told me that this was Stephen King's first book. He wrote it when he was like 19 or some shit. Yeah. Oh, really? That's what I heard.

I could be spreading misinformation. It wasn't published at first. It would know. It was like he wrote it very early and then he wrote Carrie later. But this was like another one that he wanted to publish and he published it under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman, which he used to publish. When he had too many things going on. What? They were like, Stephen, you're writing too many books.

And they're like, all right, you can publish it under Richard Bachman. What the fuck? You didn't know this? I had no idea. That's a weird problem to have. It's like a bunch of books under that pen name. A lot of books. a lot of books and

someone ended up discovering that it was him. How? And then he ended up killing Richard Bachman. They just were looking at the writing. They're like, wow, he has like a weird thing with, like why does he use the same phrase

in these books? It's very weird. That's kind of funny. That's hilarious. I feel it's very easy now when you read Richard Bachman and read Stephen King and be like, they write literally the same. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes you can always just tell from an artist. Yeah, yeah, you absolutely can.

You're like, you're not fooling me. I know this is your alt, your alt account. Yeah, so what did you guys think of this film? Hated it. Okay. I thought it was kind of fun. It's like a better concept movie than actual execution. I feel like the right filmmaker could have made this really fun

if it was a bit more like, over the top and leaned into the absurdity more because this is the director of like the Hunger Games trilogy I Am Legend and it feels about that sort of quality to me it's not going doing anything that extreme kind of reminds me of Final Destination recently actually where it

just doesn't know how to end as a very strange ending sequence that didn't work for me and what it was what it was going for without spoiling anything so that kind of hurt it but I thought it was so sort of quick and brief and the concept was kind of fun and enjoyable enough and it would just veer into answering questions to do with the concept enough.

They were like, okay, this is kind of enjoyable, flawed, but pretty enjoyable. What do you think, Jake? I really liked it. I thought it was a good movie. Like, I genuinely had a good time. I mean, I had some issues with, like, how it begins, especially. It was very formulaic and, like, the rough sketches of these characters was kind of, you know, the dialogue wasn't great, especially in that first scene where they all meet up.

But once they get on the road, I was really engaged in the story. And I really was like emotionally moved by that relationship between Cooper Hoffman and David Johnson. And I just, I really love their performances. I like, I liked really a lot of it. I thought it was a brilliant movie, but it was like really competently made. and it had some issues with like cheesiness and I didn't love how like over the top of the violence was depicted. It kind of made it cartoonish. Yes, I agree.

Yeah. I liked ultimately where it ended up and I think after a couple days watching it, kind of was still in my head. I was like, oh, yeah, I really, that's, that hit me in a good way. So, yeah, I really liked it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a part of the thing. is like if you if you connect with like any of the characters or a relationship you're going to have a better time you're going to have a better time watching it uh I'll agree the performances were pretty

good but the dialogue was holding back what their performances could be like they didn't really have that strong of dialogue to work with and yeah I I personally didn't feel as though it only applied to like the opening scene I felt like a lot a lot of the conversation was really really cheesy really clunky, really awkward, um, that it, it, more or less just harmed

the ensemble of performances and just believability of anything, honestly. Yeah, it had that issue, they had that issue where I enjoyed it more, the less they explained. So the more of the rules of the world,

they started to talk about and like the, awkward way it was wedged into the script as far as like, why are they explaining this now? Why are they dropping this rule now? It just felt, really kind of clunky and awkward. Yeah. I don't know.

I liked a lot of subtlety. It was very blunt and obvious. Yeah, it was kind of trying to be too many things at once that felt a bit conflicting because sure, yeah, if they leaned into the absurdity a bit more that could have helped it, I just, I found it so odd that according to, I don't know, like what seemed to be the premise of watching the film, like you're supposed to be scared in some way, right? This is supposed to be some sort of like thriller, horror, kind of, you know, maybe not entirely horror.

But I didn't read that into it. But, well, I mean, the concept of... Just because of Stephen King doesn't mean it's... No, I'm saying like that the concept of relating to the characters being on this long walk, like the fear would be like, oh no, something's going to happen, you're going to get shot or whatever, right? Like, they pretty clearly established that that is the conflict, that that is what the characters are scared of. And I feel like the approach to how they showed, like, particularly the deaths, like from immediately the opening death, I felt as though it would have been a lot more

effective if we stayed with the characters that were continuing to walk and then we saw the other character's death in the background or something, right? Of like, holy shit. Because that's the first reveal. That's the first like, oh my God, this is a thing that's happening. And that's what's what they're being afraid of. But instead, we get an obvious close up of by obvious, I mean like, okay, yeah, you're lining this up for the kill, basically. And then we're with the character in the back, just staying on them. And then they get shot in the face and it's this weird like, okay, is this a saw movie? Like, am I supposed to be like, oh, yeah, gore time. Right? Like it felt so weirdly sensationalized that I felt that it took away from the overall impact or what the impact could have been.

I agree on that. Yeah. It didn't need that brutality. It didn't add anything. No. It was when it was being, when it found ways to be subtle, it was actually like, this is actually a really cool, interesting tense sequence that they put together. Like, when there's a slight incline, that's like an action scene in this movie. Oh, it's great. It's like a really tense, like, well put together. Stakes are really high. high by default but just twisting it that little bit I thought was quite clever in how sutter it was I found that scene hilarious I was like yeah I thought that like there is like a kind of dark humor to it I felt like that's kind of what was cool about the the concept and the fact that that is like an effective action scene with something kind of so small just in and its idea but that was yeah I don't know it's these it's the concept movie problem where it's like it's easy to sell and it's like a cool idea and you just want to see how it plays out but they can often just be like repetitive in concept not know where to go how to

wrap themselves up I don't know I did I actually didn't love Cooper Hoffman in this I thought David Johnson was the real star um racist yeah I don't know I didn't really buy into the characters I mean I really loved I thought Cooper Hoffman was great but I do think like their dynamic worked really well and how they're like yeah some of the dialogue in the beginning was hand-fisted, but, you know, by the middle of the film and towards the end, I was like, I was just really relating to these characters and what they're having to go through and the kind of weird camaraderie that they have to create, but also try to avoid because they're all going to die except for one person. I feel like it dealt with it in like a very,

like, realistic way. And I wouldn't use that way. Especially how like young, young guys are, you know, with each other. And I think like, you know, it just, was really, especially in the wake of these big dystopian films, Hunger Games franchise and that big wave of dystopian films and young adult stuff like that to see one like this and and directed by Hunger Games director, you know, to be so like kind of stripped down comparatively, you know, and pretty simple where most of the movie is just done with these wide shots of these four guys walking next. each other down a very plain road and to put suspense into that and and make it interesting. I was I was really impressed by that. Yeah, I found it to be like really one note throughout and sure, you know, like they changed it up with like, oh, they're on an incline now and this guy's pooping himself. Right.

He'll do that a few times. Yeah. A lot of great poop scenes. Some great. So many poop scenes. That was the most graphic shot. It's stressful. Like, okay, come on, cut it off.

Get your poop out. Come on. You're going to get shot if you don't poop fast enough. It's great. I was just either laughing or bored and laughing at it, you know? I just like, I, as an alleged massive autist, I couldn't, I couldn't get past the fact that it's telling itself in a fact that it's telling itself in a sense. story where it's not showcasing its absurdities

per se. It's not like a parody film. It's not like it doesn't feel like a comedic satire or anything. Like it's trying to stay grounded but at the same time I'm sorry. These characters shouldn't be like jogging back and forth and doing all this fucking nonsense and exerting all of their energy. Like I don't know if you tried to do like kind of like a marathon either like run or walk or any kind of like long distance thing like

you're not going to be yelling at each other right the entire time like they're yapping and yapping and yapping and i get that it's you know it's based on a book and the book's got to have some dialogue right like i just i don't see a single world where any of these characters would be taking this seriously where it's like oh you have to walk for a long time or else you die and they're all just fucking like shooting the shit the entire time because that's exertion energy. Like, I'm looking at clips of the trailer right now. They're like playing catch and shit. Like, I know, you got to give him something to do for the script, but maybe that's just why this concept doesn't work for me, right?

I think if you don't buy into the concept, yeah, they're like, it's just not going to work. Exactly. I get that. You know, like, if you just are like, okay, this is kind of stupid, which it is. Yeah. But, you know, like, I think they do enough world building. That's very minimal, but it's enough to be like, okay, all these guys, they're selected. through a lottery and basically all the young male kids in the country submit to the lottery. So it's not like they're all prepped or anything. It's just that's what you do. And then they're selected.

And I like seeing the range of the guys, how they deal with it. And, you know, there's the one who's, like, trained for this and is, like, ready to go. You know, you have others who are not taking it very seriously at all or just kind of like. Nobody stretched beforehand. Nobody's straight. They're all wearing pants, you know. But, jeans, jeans and shit. I think that at least to this world and how it's depicted,

where it kind of feels more like 1960s-ish vibes. Everyone's an idea. I didn't find that too insane, you know. And once you get past the concept, then, yeah, if you buy it to the concept, it's going to work. Yeah. But if you don't, it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I wish they did a bit more with the 60s, like, production design and the references to that, because it's it's like a post-apocalypse type situation right it's like after some war that isn't described it's like very loose and this is like some battle royale type thing where it's entertainment and they do it for morale or something um yeah for uh the feeling good about doing things for the society and people work harder when they see it on the television productivity goes up. Here's what I like about the movie and from like a thematic level because yeah, you can look like literally at the concept and oh, that's kind of silly. But if you buy into the concept and be like, okay, this is a metaphor or this is a framing device for something that's kind of a little deeper,

is that the whole idea of what like David Johnson and Cooperhoffman, their friendship is like they're constantly going back and forth of like, okay, we're friends and we're forming an alliance, but we can't because we're enemies because only one of us can win. But also it's like the most unhinged Mr. Beast video or not even the most unhinged, just like an average Mr. Beast video. A really tame Mr. Beast video. Yeah, but it's like they have to like make a choice. Like they make a choice of like even though we're going to die, like we can still have this

friendship in the now and it's about the present and like having, finding that love and happy because it's like a metaphor of life. It's the walk of life, you know? And it's like, yeah, they're all going to die. but you got to make the most of it. And we can have this joy together and this love for one another now, even if it doesn't end well. And I just found that like the emotional pull between them was just so, it just elevated the movie so much for me beyond what it could have been. So I just, you know, like for it to be, you know, kind of a period piece, I think it would have helped the experience for me is if like the filmmaking reflected that.

a bit more, you know, like that would have been cool to have like an older style. I agree. I am so fucking annoyed that almost every like recent normie film that I see uses this, I think it's called a pets, petsville lens, P-E-T-Z-V-E-L, where every time it's like a, you know, close-up, background is like blurred foreground you know you see the character the the background is like smudged in this weird circular pattern this like almost kind of like a spiral and if it's done in a way where there's like I don't know an artistic purpose to it right I believe that the lens was used in poor things a couple times where like the entire you know the whole style of that movie is like, hey, look at the style sort of thing. But I just see, I see it popping up

completely randomly, zero motivation, not to say anything, but just distracting the fuck out of me. I think I first noticed it in the film like 65 with Adam Driver. And now I just see it fucking, it was in fucking materialists, right? It was in this movie. And sure, it's not like every shot, But it pisses me off. And it's just like every time I see it and it's not used with any like intent or motivation, I'm just like, oh, wow, this is this is just like a person directing something. And they're just going like, oh, okay, here, I guess we'll use this lens. It never feels motivated. It never feels purposeful.

That's my exact issue with this movie where it just doesn't have much of a personality or as far as directional style. Yeah. It's concerned how the, it could be like so many poor. Hoven could do like a fun like over the top thing, Sam Ramey. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I could imagine Frank Darabont like tidying this up and making it into just getting that tone right, getting the feeling right.

I'm starting to notice, uh, I'm trying to notice within myself. And this is an interesting comparison, especially after watching Frankenstein. Mm-hmm. Is that you guys are more forgiving, it seems, towards that film. Um, because stylistically it is different. Like it is making choices. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whereas this movie isn't really making choices. It's just kind of competently made without any very, it's not doing nothing impressive. But like I, I think I prefer the style. I'm able to forgive this more even though it's not doing anything impressive stylistically because I bought into the story. Whereas with Frankenstein, even though it is doing stylistically something interesting, I, I could buy into the story. So I guess that's like, it's interesting what you prioritize.

when you watch films. And like we all prioritize certain things, even though we try to like judge everything objectively or as objectively as possible. Like it's... I mean, our own experience, really. Yeah. It's just, I'm willing to put up with like a more boring style that tries to be invisible, quote on quote, even that's not possible.

Yeah, I mean, it's not invisible to me. It pisses me honest. No, no. No, yeah. To me, the lack of choice is a choice, right? And I agree with your earlier statement during Frank. Like yeah, you should use the language of cinema. You should use the language of filmmaking, right?

So to me, it's just as distracting as like any of the shots in Frankenstein. Interesting. That's how I feel anyway. It's just... Okay. Yeah. For a film to be like truly, like, oh, I don't notice the cinematography, there would have to be like more competency within it, right?

But I feel like also at the... In the way we're watching movies and specific... we're watching these to be like, okay, we're going to make reviews and critique them. Like, we're always going to be paying attention to the cinematography regardless. Yeah. And like noting it. But I do think a movie like this to ignore me would be more invisible in terms of cinematography compared to Frankenstein. Oh, of course.

One other thing that bothers me way more than anyone else on the planet is the music. And this movie was filled with so much fucking annoying. annoying garbage music that's right I've ruined some scenes for me yeah would have been better without any soundtrack

without overbearing and again with that lack of subtlety I just feel like yeah you got the right person for that it would have really helped yeah or just no music you know yeah

yeah I didn't necessarily demand it yeah it's quite a minimalist kind of concept yeah it's kind of funny because like we we bring up you know like what if it was like more absurdist

or something I would have you know know, this is just me. This is not going to apply to anyone else. I would have probably enjoyed like a much more grounded one as well. Could you imagine fucking like Michelle Hanukkah doing this? Or like, or like someone who was like painstakingly thinking of like, okay, what would someone actually do in this situation? Like maybe they wouldn't talk. Maybe it would be like a weird fucking Jean-Dillement type situation where you're just like kind of watching. It definitely

needed like an extreme style to come to that extreme. concept. What if it was in a one-er? That would have been cool. Yeah, that would have been cool, too. And you're, like, actually putting the actors through, like, a... I mean, you wouldn't be able to set it over the course of days. But, like, oh, that would be a cool concept. I wonder what you could do with that. And then someone, like, actually fucking, like, twist their ankle and you're just like, keep shooting! Yeah. This is in the script now. We're killing off this character. It does just feel like it would work better on the page of a book than when you see it visualized, because then you start. going through how kind of ridiculous certain parts of it are. And yeah, they do try to answer it.

Like, where do they get their water from? Where and how are they go into the toilet? And it's like a super unfair circumstance. But I don't know. The more things they answer, the kind of dumber the concept got. The only way to counter that would be to go bigger or smaller. There's a medication called laparamide, which was invented before the timeline of this film, that if any character would have taken it, they wouldn't have shat their pants.

I can't remember how long they're supposed to be walking for. Right. Have they not all seen the broadcasts? This is a widely publicized event that happens what? Every year or something? Nobody prepared. Nobody was like, oh, I'm going to take some. Nobody wants to stop themselves from shitting their pants.

They just didn't think about that. They didn't think that funny. Why didn't they dipe up? Nobody diped up. They're 16-year-old American boys. Come on. They're not going to put diapers on to walk. None of them.

They want to look cool. If I was 16 and I was invested in not dying, I think I would figure out something. You know? You know, when I was 16, if anyone was going to force me to wear anything besides jeans, I'd just probably, like, just not go to the function. I don't know. I get where you're coming from, but also, like, again, if you just buy it. Okay.

The thing is also, like, I've read a ton of Stephen King. I haven't read this Stephen King book, but I've read a ton of Stephen King books. And it's like, what this adaptation does is it kind of is the ideal version of a Stephen King story. Because when you read like Stephen King books, when you read enough of them, it's like his, his pitfalls are that he's super sentimental and not very subtle. And the best ones are kind of avoid those two things to some degree or like mitigate the issues there. And this movie kind of does that. It just, it isn't subtle, but it's not like.

stupidly, aggressively in your face, unsubtle. So to me, I'm like, yeah, this is like a best case scenario of a Stephen King adaptation. Yeah, I don't know. Like, yeah, there could have been more interesting directions to take, but then it just would not have been the Stephen King story in a lot of ways. Yeah. He's also known for not being very good at endings, right? Can we talk about the ending for this movie and what it was going for? Yeah, let's talk about the ending.

Spoiler territory. Spoilers, everybody. We're spoiling the ending. The ending was shit. So can we break it down? Because it kind of suddenly these rules appear where you get, you have like a wish granted. Like if you're the winner. Yeah. And then the wish becomes grabbing the gun. The carbine. And then it kind of becomes like a dream thing. Like it, it didn't seem like literal to me. I was trying to figure out what it was communicating with that. Well, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. And so they decided to be as ambiguous. as possible because they couldn't figure out how to end it doing that. So they said, you figure it out, audience. And, you know, an ambiguous ending. If the writers had some sort of purpose to it or meaningful decision making in it, that can work. But it really seems as though they just couldn't figure out how to end it and said, you figure it out, actually. And they were hoping for probably some sort of like, ooh, ending explained discussion.

sort of thing to like help the the marketing what people will talk about this that's how I feel I feel like I what are we talking I love the ending what I thought I thought it was great I thought you said the ending wasn't good no I like the ending I what you get out of it I mean the very very ending like the last shot was kind of like you know it's fine but I've seen people who love the book also criticize how this ends because Because in the book, it's different. In the book, the David Johnson character dies and the Cooper Hoffman character just keeps walking. At least that's from what I've seen.

And I was on edge the whole time all the way going up to the end of like, okay, one of them is going to sacrifice themselves. And it ends up being Cooper Hoffman. And I just, I thought it worked. I liked the whole him shooting Mark Hamill worked. And then him walking into the distance was just a very bleak. I didn't really see it as ambiguous. I just thought of like a very bleak kind of like a 70s downbeat ending that was kind of like, oh, okay, cool. They're going for that.

I mean, like the ambiguous part is like, okay, why why did everyone disappear and he's allowed to walk free and nobody shot at him? And he's just, yeah, always no I'm reacting. That's the, that's the ambiguous part is like wondering, because. Because, you know, if you're to like be, if you're, if you're to project yourself into the character, like, you're going to shoot the guy and then you're going to get shot back by somebody else or arrested or your life is over or like something would happen. But rather than ending it at that moment, they're like, oh, yeah, he's walking away. But who knows what that means, right? Who knows if that's just something in his head or like why that would be important to show it that way? You know, well, I mean, I didn't mind it because, yeah, I guess there are questions like, okay, what happens immediately after this?

And yeah, I could see those questions being there, but also it ties into his character of being like a wanderer, you know, a walking always on the fringes of the world. And this whole exchange, this whole ordeal he went through it, has not changed that, you know. And it's just kind of like a circular situation for his character. And yeah, I don't know. I didn't mind. I think it could have been better, I guess. I think honestly, I do think there were maybe some issues with, like, production. Like, they needed to have more people there.

And you could tell that maybe they were having issues with getting crowd sizes to be appropriate in that scene. I do think they were kind of trying to hide the limited resources somewhat, especially in that scene. that could have made it feel more realistic, but yeah, I kind of just bought it for what it was. I don't know. I feel like what you're describing could have worked if he like didn't shoot the guy.

Yeah, could have. Like maybe if he even like did the carbine thing and then like thought about it and then changed his mind and then did the nomad walking thing, like, I don't know. But it felt like they really wanted to have that revenge, you know? Like they really wanted that, but still didn't want the character to die or get any consequences from it. So they just kind of like, you figure it out. I bet you they did a lot of, I bet you they did several versions of that ending and then test screened it and tried to find it.

Edited them all together. Yeah, try to find a version. I don't know if it would have bothered me as much if the rest of the movie had kind of that kind of storytelling. If it was a bit more like unreliable as far as what it was presenting, if there was a bit more to intend. interpret from what it was doing, but it seemed quite literal up until just, it just feels like throwing a hands up to me. Exactly. So it just doesn't feel like a satisfying, like, oh, kind of like question. It's more like a, huh?

Yeah. Like, why did you just whip the rug out from under me right at the end here? Oh. I like that cat. Oh. All right. Well, I thought, yeah, it was a waste of time. Bullshit movie.

Dumb. Hated it. Bad music. Dumb story. Three out of ten for me. For me, this is more of like a low three star. I do like the concept. I did find it enjoyable.

I could still shave maybe 10 minutes off. And despite that short run time, I just felt like the concept didn't have enough oxygen to keep it going. But it was fine. It was okay. I just wish. And I just wish there could have been someone that could have elevated this. But I don't know.

It just seems like more of a book concept to me. Eight out of ten, fuck you guys. No kings. Yeah. No, I respect your opinions. But as the Norma representative of the podcast, I have to speak my truth. Yes. Yeah.

It is a Normie masterpiece. It's not a masterpiece. It's not a masterpiece. It's just a normie. It in a 10 is pretty good. It's a good time on, you know, TBS afternoon, eating some chips. That's good. Okay, cool.

All right. All right, Jake, if you want to talk about the film you decided to recommend. Gladly, I would love to talk about the film that I recommended. That would be 2022's Thor Love and Thunder. A little backstory on this film. Great. Tyca David Waititi, known professionally as Taika Waititi. He's a New Zealand filmmaker, actor, and comedian.

He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. Weird. His feature films, Boy, 2010, and Hunt for the Wilder People, 2016, have been the top-grossing New Zealand films. YTidi's 2003 short film Two Cars One Night earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film He co-wrote, co-directed and starred

In the Horror Comedy Film What We Do in the Shadows with Jermaine Clement Which was adapted into a television series of the same name in 2019 The series has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award For Outstanding Comedy Series Should I keep reading the Wikipedia? Well, I don't know It feels like an on-cinema, the cinema episode.

It feels like a Greg Turkington review. I'm very interested in Taika Waititi as a person, and his career trajectory has been very interesting because I recall when this movie came out, he was kind of like a big, a very big deal. And I feel like, at least critically, his filmography has been, viewed differently since this film came out. I personally think that Thor, Thor Ragnarok is a pretty good movie. It's a fun movie. I think that it brought a lot of energy to Marvel at a time when it really needed it. It does not take itself very seriously. So at the time,

everyone was pretty excited that Tycho Waititi was going to be doing a sequel to Thor Ragnarok. and then Thor, Love and Thunder came out, and it was the worst movie ever made. And it was one of the earlier signs that Marvel was dying. And it was dying faster than we all realized. So, you know, I'm curious to know what you guys thought. Alex, I'm pretty sure you saw this when it came out, correct? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. So you're a fan. Love it. Adam, I know you watched this recently. So it was my first Thor movie, actually.

I didn't see the other three. Oh, really? Yes. Wow. Okay. Oh, dear. Do you want it? Who wants to go first?

Go for it. I don't know. I feel... I was so into Taika Watiti. I just feel like... This film made me look like an asshole, you know, like talking about for so long. God, it's really... It's got a hubris to it, weirdly, this film. Tyco Wittiti didn't write Thor Ragnarok. There was obviously a lot of improv and his style just complimented that script better, I think.

Had way more going for it. Whereas this, on a just base level, it can't figure out its tone. It doesn't know what it's doing if it wants to take itself seriously at all. Like, everything just feels like a breezy joke while overlaid on this really serious story about, like, cancer and, like, dying of cancer. And it just feels like a, what are you doing with this? Why have you taken this direction when surely this followed right after, like, fat Thor, right, from the Avengers? Yeah. And it was supposed to, it's like Thor with the Guardians.

And it kind of opens on that, but it fast forward's past all the interesting things that associate to that concept. Like he's left in a really kind of dark place at the end of the Avengers and whatnot. And it just skips over his like return to just looking like hot Thor so he can be shirtless and ripped and it's like, it's not interested in anything to your characters, which is kind of, I guess, my core issue. You have these people like Christian Bail in there. and Ashley Portman, you do nothing with them.

You utterly waste them for this like under two hour, just nothing movie that accomplishes nothing and even tries to set seeds for the future that like, they're never going to see the light of day. It just feels like a waste. It said Thor will return at the end. But it didn't say in what? He will.

But do you think Hercules will? Did you get that far at him? Like you looked like defeated in the, in the screens they saw. Yeah, no, I would. I watched the whole thing like a good boy, okay? You sat through all the credits. Nice.

Yeah, I said I watched the entire fucking movie. So you're hype for Hercules, son. No. No, is that going to happen? Well, that's what I'm saying, probably not. Let me ask you real quick, Adam. I just want to quiz you and ask which movie, which of these movies have you seen? This is from phase four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I don't fucking know. I haven't seen Black Widow. Shang-Chi. No. Eternals. Yes. Oh. You got to check out Eternals.

Well, that was a Chloe's... That one's kind of interestingly bad, at least. I don't know. It was more of a swing and a mess where this is like, there's nothing. Spider-Man, no way home. I saw that one, yeah. Okay. Dr. Strange and the multiverse of madness.

Yeah, that's because of Sam Ramey. That's why I saw it. Okay. You've now seen Thor Love and Thunder. That was July 2022. What about Black Panther Wakanda forever? I think. You did for Oscars?

I did. Yeah, for the Oscars. Yeah, I did. That's kind of boring. Okay. Phase 5, Ant Man in the Wasp, Quantumania. Nope. Okay, that's a great one.

Great one. That's a fucked one. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3. Nope. The Marvels. Mel and Rokes. No. Oh, I thought you would because you like Nia Dacosta.

Do you not? Not that much. Okay, Deadpool and Wolverine Nope Sean Levy Great So you guys have seen all of these or what I reject the idea

That people are supposed to watch these movies Just to be a part of like a cultural conversation Everybody's got fucking Stockholm syndrome Like Like when they're enjoyable They're like fun It's just they were really bad around this time How many of those were enjoyable

Spider-Man was good. Guardian's 3 was good. I didn't finish. Captain America, Brave New World. No. Thunderbolts. No. Fantastic four.

First steps. No. Okay, great. Well, we're caught up. The next one to come out will be Spider-Man brand-new day in July 2026. Maybe I'll watch it. Yeah. I like Spider-Man.

Okay. Well, that's interesting. So this was your first Thor movie. Yes. And how many other Tycho YTD films have you seen? I've seen Boy. I've seen what we do in the shadows. That's probably my favorite.

I've seen Hunt for the Wilder people apparently. I don't remember watching it, but I guess I gave it a seven. Maybe I should lower it. I've seen Jojo Rabbit. And then this one. And I've never given any of, his films like higher than a seven even what we do in the shadows i gave a seven i think i'd give that a high seven maybe that could be an eight someday but yeah i mean like he's not a director where i'm i've

like creamed over him or anything i've just been like oh nice that's cool that's nice i think at some point there comes a time where taika y titi should learn that you cannot just ride by on having a New Zealand accent instead of writing jokes. Because sure, that helps with the comedy. Everybody finds it funny. Same dialogue. That accent. It's a bit, it's a funnier dialogue.

But, uh, there were no good jokes. There were no good jokes in this film. And it was trying. It was trying to make jokes the entire time. It was nothing but jokes. and none of them were funny. There were butt jokes. Quite a few goat jokes as well.

The like 2014 goat joke. I've got a question for you. Why did you do this? Why did you recommend this? That's a great question. Because... Did you want to hurt Adam? You know, because I threatened doing this earlier

and then I didn't follow through and I thought it would be fun. And also, look, come on. You didn't want to save it for like if I were to, like, do an actual spite recommendation? I get that like, you know, some of the things I recommend are not your cup of tea, but I don't recommend them because they're not your cup of tea. And I don't even know if they're going to be your cup of tea before I recommend them. Okay. I'm recommending them because there are movies that I want to watch because I enjoy things. Okay. I don't recommend things for all of us to suffer. I'm not mean. Okay, okay, okay, fair, fair. Or not. We could we could argue this later. But the point. is I'm I recommended this not for the the movie not to have about rewatching it it it's about the conversation we'll be having right now because we'll be discussing important themes we'll be discussing trauma we'll be discussing love romance cancer and you know our feelings about modern cinema I mean this movie is like it signals the the doom that was to come

both literal and metaphorical with Dr. Doom. I mean, this is, this is like just the quotes. The quotes around this movie, Chris Hemsworth recently spoke on this film. I read this. He said that, I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself. I didn't stick the landing. And he was talking about this movie. Okay.

Now, does that sound like this was Marvel's problem, or was this Taika Waititi's problem? That's something I wanted to investigate here because this is an interesting situation where in the majority of bad Marvel movies, you can look at this situation and go, okay, well, it's Marvel, Kevin Fy, I mean, it was clearly a bad situation. The director probably didn't have much to say here. But Taikoaiti was at the peak of his success. He could basically do whatever he wanted with this movie and he chose to do this. And I do think that the majority of the blame falls onto him. And I do think that he genuinely did not want to make this fucking movie. and you can feel it in every frame of this movie

like they just do not give a single fuck. He phoned it in because you can see the same actors playing the same roles in different movies and doing a better job. Like, Chris sucked in this. Both Chris is. Hemsworth and CP. They fucking sucked.

No one is good in this. Oh, yeah. Like, it was crazy seeing the Guardians of the Galaxy. You call him CP. He prefers that. He does like that himself. He prefers that I'm not going to dead name this guy, no matter how insistent you are.

Okay, he prefers to be called CP. Look it up. It is true. I'm not going to look it up. I'll send you the article later. Okay. I think it was People magazine. Actually, I would say...

But anyway... Christian Bell's decent. His performance. He's like the one who is actually treating it like it's a movie and not just like hang out of time with buds. Christian Bale, like they just wasted him, opening it on this serious scene with this character, and then immediately having, like, funny, goofy Thor, destroying this, like, ancient civilizations, like, temple and, like, treating it as, like, humor.

And it's never built upon or to, nothing's just, nothing matters. Like, when the characters aren't treating anything like anything matters, why would you care about anything that's going on? Yeah. Christian Bale was going for the Oscar, and everybody else was going for their lunch break. Boom, got them. You know what? I had a revelation watching this recently, and it was that this is like if a Doug Walker film had a huge budget.

It's funny how many things we compare to Doug Walker films, but yes. That's kind of true. I mean, really, like, it kind of feels like Thor and Valkyrie and Natalie Portman's character. They're kind of like their own content creators showing up and kind of not really taking it seriously. and just kind of like, you know, riffing to a point where it just goes, and like very obvious stupid jokes that go on for way too long with kind of like this very slim architecture of a narrative. It just was like, oh yeah, this does feel like a YouTuber movie about like content creators

and they aren't really taking it that seriously and they're just kind of there having fun. And it is like a shitposty inside joke. Yeah, it's just like a, a, joyless experience and you just feel how much like they think they're being like witty and clever and they're trying to like show off how clever they're being and it it just kind of comes kind of comes across like epic bacon reddit humor and true oh yeah it was a very reddit movie i hated it yeah which is crazy because i feel like i don't get that from or at least i didn't feel that way about thor ragnarok because i think in a lot of ways it's the

way the characters are treating themselves in the film. I never once felt like that was Thor on screen. It was Chris Hemsworth pretending to be Thor. And in Thor Ragnarok, at least, like, he's taking the threat seriously. He's not quipping and making jokes. And it is like the parody of Marvel humor in this of like, did that just happen? You know, every single possibly serious thing is treated like a gag, you know? Oh, all these children were kidnapped. Oh, well, isn't that silly? We're just going to, you know, like, tickle Thor while he's communicating with these kids who are, like, traumatized and kidnapped. Like, none of the gags makes sense. Like, it's just, he spends half of this movie talking to his, his hammer. Like, he's going to fuck that hammer. Yeah. Yeah, three-way

love triangle between the hammer and the axe. That just goes on and on. That's like basically the main plot. It's like the main arc with the main character is a love triangle between weapons. But I don't know, like, for me, I think the, speaking of Reddit movies, Tycho Wattiti and Free Guy. Exactly. The year just before this was like, dude, this is like a warning of like what's to go.

True. You have to stop. Oh my God. It just, it feels like that, that character from Free Guy directed this movie. It feels like that annoying. How was he the worst part of Free Guy? I know, right? Crazy.

And then it's like, God, when you see how much this film costs to make, $250 million, does it look like that to you? Like, it actually looks straight at bad at points. Like, for a lot of the movie. There's no, like, depth to anything. It always just feels like they're on the soundstage. Yeah, it doesn't feel like they're interacting with their environments. It doesn't feel like they give a shit about the environment.

So it just kind of jumps around aimlessly. Yeah, super, that's fine. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Like, that fight scene at the end, like, just how dark it was, like, with all the kids or whatever. I was like, did they just, like, run out of money and, like, like, we got to, we got to have this one cheaper for the CG department. Like, fuck. The, the Thor, sorry, the Zeus. Russell Crow scene, that looked ugly.

Holy shit. The lighting, the colors, like everything. And then, you know, as you mentioned, like it's just them on a soundstage, no motivation, no creativity. Like, if at any point it was just like, I don't know, shot interestingly in the slightest, it would have helped it out. That was the longest feeling scene that I can remember. I'm trying to think of a scene that I've watched in the past like 10 years that felt longer than that. That was excruciating.

How long was that? It was only like what, five, 10 minutes? It felt like an hour. Holy fuck. Yeah. That sucks. And it just like, it makes a mockery of the whole kind of hook of the movie. The villain's supposed to be this god killer and the gods are supposed to be afraid that this is something that happening or is not believing that that's a threat that's coming.

but you just, nothing's enforced through the filmmaking. It's just like so fucking flat. Like uninteresting and then it's just them like ad-libbing in the least funny way possible. You like old spice. Not only that, it's like a parody of the,

the meme of like the villain being like, yeah, I believe like in good things. Like I'm against these gods being horrible because he's totally justified. to like hate this god who like let his kid die and the god is like so being such an annoying dickhead at the start of the film that you're just like yeah fuck these gods and then the rest of the movie thor is acting like an irresponsible maniac yeah yeah and he's just

an asshole and he's like not there's no reckoning in his character where he's like oh wow I'm being a huge piece of shit it's just like oh we're supposed to side with thor because he's Thor and he's just being silly and like there's no doesn't really matter but then you also have this narrative of this guy played by Christian Bail who's like kid died and he's like trying to kill the gods and it's like why should we as audience members not be on his side oh well it's because he has an evil sword that's making him evil oh okay in his kidnapping kids oh okay it's like oh well the bad guy has all these great beliefs and everything oh but he wants to kill a baby damn it well I guess he's the bad you know it's like it's just so silly it's so

So, such bad characterization that it just doesn't add to anything. It's so, so pointless. I, I, just hearing you describe any of the plot. Like, I just, I start disassociating. I start yawning. Like, my stress levels have been very high recently. Okay. I've got like a night guard because I keep like grinding my teeth in my sleep and I got a free one because I chewed through it so fast that it was still within the six months warranty.

And then yesterday before I watched the movie, I had a little tiny little snack at the beginning of my day like this this tiniest thing called a high chew which is like kind of like a tough gummy that's not quite good. gum, you know, it's edible. It's like an interesting Asian thing. And I blew out my fucking jaw on my right side at the beginning of the day with that high chew. And I was in a lot of pain. And then the pain kept resurfacing throughout the movie, not because it was residual pain of the jaw, but because I was yawning so much that my jaw kept opening and re-injuring the same wound because I couldn't stop yawning. I was being physically and mentally tormented. Okay.

So I physically attacked you by recommending this. I think so. All right. You chose violence for the second time in this podcast history. Oh, come on. I think, you know, something occurred to me while I was watching this and that it, you know, this movie isn't. that bad. I mean... Oh, yes, it is. What are you talking about? He got screaming goats. I mean,

okay, but here's the thing. Screaming goats, that's a meme that everyone loves from like 2012. It was already fucking dated. I think it was like debunked by that point that they don't even make those noises and somebody just fucking put it over top of the video and everybody got duped. But... They didn't even make those noises. But it's funny, right? It's not. What if we just do it the whole time? Every, every scene.

It gets funny at every time. I wanted to shut it off. Okay. But I'm a trooper. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. What do we call it? Is it a sadist? What do we?

What's the word? Sado-Mexicist? You made us watch Human Centauri trilogy. You chose it. You chose it. You chose violence. That was the first time you chose violence. This was the second time.

Go back and listen to the episode. episode. I said, I've got two things that we could watch because I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to inflict violence on you. So I said that you could choose and you chose violence. I just, I know what this podcast is now. And I think that it's part of our role to, to look at art like this and, and have a conversation about it. What? I think it's important. You've gone for the jugular with this one. I think, I think what we're doing and saying here is important. And I would love to hear your opinion, Adam, on Natalie Portman's characterization as, you know, her character. You know, props to the movie for making cancer funny again.

Like, I don't know. Like, fuck. It was hilarious. Mommy, don't leave me. I actually think it was trying to me. And then cut to a fucking gravestone, shitty child acting. Fuck you. It was trying to kind of have like a fun with it.

like kind of be like, uh, make jokes about cancer. It's kind of like with that scene with Kat Dennings where she's just like, uh, well, it's stage four cancer. It's like how many more stages? They're, you know, it's only stage four. It's like how many stages can there be? And it's just like, was that ad line in the film? I couldn't remember it.

Yeah. Yeah. They're just like joking about the stages of cancer in it. And, you know, from what I understand, Jason Aaron did like a much loved run of the Thor comic books and this movie takes a lot from that, especially the cancer stuff. So I wonder if they were trying to do something with that. That wasn't like, it all feels very pointless, especially with the fact that she, she kind of just serves to maybe give Thor a bit of a character arc, but he doesn't really

have a character arc because they just stayed in the beginning of the film. Like, I don't know who I am anymore. And that's not really like a character because it's like we know who you are by seeing your actions on screen and you're just like a selfish rude person. So unless that's addressed in any way whatsoever later in the film, I don't know what we're doing here. I really feel like Marvel was buying into the idea that he was some kind of new James Gunn. Yeah, probably. People like trust in him and he made it work. And they're like, you know what?

Tyco's our new James Gunn, man. He gave him the guardian character. He's $250 million and you can write it this time because you're like this critically acclaimed. Do you get an Oscar nom's. Yeah. You know. Jojo Rabbit. This happens.

Yeah, exactly. There's no focus to the film. It has a pointlessly large cast like corg and Valkyrie throughout the movie. It just stuffs it. Gay corg. Gay corg and bisexual Valkyrie. Well, I mean, that's why the movie was bad. Cawks one of those characters that's fun in like small doses, but he's just in it too much.

He's like framed as the narrator. And defenders of the movie will say like he's the unreliable narrator. So it's not completely literal and like parts of it are just his goofy recalling of it. Oh. If that actually was taken to its extreme could maybe be like interesting or fun. But it's so lazily implemented like everything in the film and how just none of these characters have any purpose or art. because that really should be the focus is the like cancer story and probably the gore thing and the tone should be a lot more serious or just like make a make a more lighthearted film it just doesn't he's not a good pick for this character and like the grievous like a big fancy character like that needs i could see him with someone like squirrel girl or something a bit more like inherently goofy it needs like the big theatrical side is that's still happening what makes him good is when it is like a smaller scale like in boy where it's a bit more like inherently goofy it's like a big theatrical side is that's still happening what makes him good is when it is like a smaller scale like in boy where it's a a very lighthearted kind of tonally filmed but it will be serious now and again it can it can still

connect on a human level and care about its characters beyond just the goofy comedy but it never gets out of that or finds an angle or even gives a shit about it in this one yeah i mean that's a that's a that's a great question i think that um i think they did not know like i i i think that there was a point when they were like let's try to do all this stuff that would be fun and I just don't think like it is an element of like them not putting in the effort genuinely I don't think they did they were like we can just kind of coast we've got this we've got all these people here we can get like there's so much um just like rubbing it in your face of like yeah whatever like you can fucking like with the cameos and the scene because there was the scene in thorragnerok

where they had like Matt Damon cameo and it was kind of like oh this is like funny and random and And in this, it's like a five-minute sequence of them with all these different cameos and Melissa McCarthy. And it's like, you're overdoing the joke. It's just, it's cute when you throw it in there. But it's like nothing has any weight or when it does. It's just so jarringly, like, poorly done. Like, but the cancer plot.

It's like, it's borderline offensive, how, like, little weight is given to it. It's just, it's, it's insane. and in terms of the gay allegations to this film. I'm going to read this from the Wikipedia at the London premiere Q&A in response to the question, how gay will the film be? Waititi exclaimed that it would be super gay. Critics and moviegovers who saw the film express disappointment that this statement was false and that Marvel queer baited the audience.

But then again, if you're a Marvel fan and you're expecting a film to be super gay, like you're just fooling yourself like they they show corg corg has a at the end of the film he I guess meets hooks up with a dude right he falls in love with another corg rock that's the implication and they touch hands another rock man named dwayne yeah yeah and that's super gay yeah gay rogues and that's you know I'm glad that that was you know explicit enough to, you know, have people not be left in the dark about why the movie was bad.

It's because it's woke. Like, now we know why the rest of the movie was bad. Thank you. Thank you for saying it. Well, did you feel represented by this film, Adam? Did you enjoy the... No, no, not at all. Fuck this movie.

I'm dying. I'm wondering if this movie is better or... I don't know, maybe Alex, you can help me with it. Is this better or worse? than Captain America Brave New World. Oh, they're so they're bad in different ways.

Yeah. Because it's not even about like the director at all for the Captain America one. Yeah. It's more like just doing damage control and doing it really badly

whereas this is giving too much control to one individual and letting it run wild. That's so true. Is it better or worse than Deadpool and Wolverine? What about quantumania?

Like, I feel like this this one is sad because it is it's a success they made a shit load of money these thorn movies are just safe 750 million dollars yeah yeah so it didn't really matter with this one

and that's what's kind of more curious to me about the recent stuff like quantum media like bombed hard which is like yeah okay at least there's a little bit of like justice to that it feels like you've pushed it now you've like taken the piss and you've like ruined your core audience for

no reason like why have you done this? Like why? Why? When there's so much on the line. Yeah. I mean, I think Kevin Feigey would generally murder children in order to get, in order to get $750 million global box office for Thunderbolts.

Yeah. Well, Fantastic Four didn't even get close to that. No, and Fantastic Four is actually like a fine movie. That's a lot better than this movie. But yeah, they've worn out the goodwill that came from end game. And it's like, it's weird that they're kind of like at zero goodwill right now, right before their huge mega projects of Doomsday and Secret Wars. Maybe people should stop watching them.

You know, I think that there's a place. for these films. In the garbage. I'm not opposed to them. I think they can be good. And there have been good ones. They just need to... Is it worth it?

I think that they need to relearn what makes like comic book movies fun. Or any movie. Or any movie. And like what makes a movie like Spider-Man Sam Ramey film work? That's a big budget

movie and it works because it has like this character and this very limited intent. It's not trying to be everything all at once. And that's another issue also just with like film industry in general. Like when did Spider-Man come out in 2001, 2002? Like there's just not a diversity of movies to be to watch in theaters these days in the same way. Like you can't just go to theaters and have a huge full course meal of like mid-sized movies to supplement a superhero movie. Oh, we could if people made better decisions with what movies they watch. I don't want to blame audiences. Who else do you blame? Who else do you blame? You vote with your wallet. What are you talking about? I think that it's a bit of like a limited thing to blame audiences

when it's like there are very clear direct choices that these studios and companies are doing in order to limit what we see in theaters. They're not putting movies and theaters because they put all of their money over the past decade and invested everything into streaming to destroy the model that worked for filmmakers. And that made it possible for a smaller budget movie to survive with DVD sales. Now it's like the technology changed, yeah, but they bought so far and moved so far into it with this tech world that now there is. way less room for them to find success with mid-budget films. And like, yeah, audiences could be smarter with their wallet, but also audiences are inundated with all these other options. At the end of the day, audiences have less and less money to be able to go spend on a film

in theaters. And it's just not realistic for them to go watch a smaller budget film that may not even be in their theater compared to something like this. Like, I live out here in the suburbs way out, you know, in the woods. And we don't get like the majority of regular mid-budget films, you know, in our theater. And so it's like at the end of the day, when you can watch movies like this or not even like this, just like a indie film or a smaller budget film or a mid-budget film. And it'll be on Netflix or whatever streaming in a couple of weeks. Then it's like, what the fuck can you do?

So, no, I don't like to really blame audiences about this. I think that there's way more going on than just audience. No, I know, but it's a result, right? Like the, the lack of accessibility towards better films is because of a lack of demand and the lack of demand is caused by a lack of education, really, if we want to call it that. Right. Awareness of these other films, right? Like, that, I don't know, maybe this is more of like a philosophical question in terms of like how beholden to our environments and propaganda we are, right? But like, Do we not blame the electorate for, you know, Donald Trump, right? Like, sure, you can make the exact same arguments about, you know, the system only giving you a limited selection of candidates, but at the end of the day, you're still voting, right? Like, you have options. You have some options. Yeah, but you're never going to win people over to watch these movies by scolding them or being like, hey, like, you're stupid for wanting to go see these films.

And it's like, maybe. Like, you know, go watch the good movies. And it's like, well, you know, most people can't or don't have access to them or they're not being shown. Or they're not being marketed. They don't know about them. If my entire presence was only shitting on movies and being like, well, there's no good options. Then, yeah, you know. But I do go out of my way to promote like smaller films.

No, I know you do. I know you do. Absolutely. Yeah. But I mean, the studios, they're not promoting. They're not pushing them out there. Yeah, yeah. But if we make it known to the studio.

is that there's a demand for this, we can influence change. I am anti-dumer on this particular subject, okay? I believe that we do have the power to change things, and we can demand better, more varied films even. We can demand better choices or better availability of choices. We just have to make our voices heard, and we just have to inform ourselves and be aware and make the effort. I agree with you.

I think it's a good thing to like promote smaller movies and to put voice out there that like, yeah, this is what we want. And I think like even just for a good example is Frankenstein, like a movie that I didn't love. But I think it's a travesty that it had such a limited Netflix release when it clearly could have made money and done well. But that's not in Netflix's interest to to make money that way because their model is streaming. So it's like it's counterintuitive. And it's like they are hurting themselves in order to profit in this other area or to be like get the market share or whatever. Or this vision of a potential profitability down the road once the competition has been destroyed. And now we see all these streaming services raising the prices now because they can't survive without making money for so many years or whatever.

Like it's it's all bullshit numbers and it's all fake. So it's like what can you do? Like yeah, you do show up and you do like a filmmaker like Guillermo Deltore who has an audience who wants people to go and people will go out and see these movies and wants to see them. But they're not they're just refusing to show it. It's like what what can you do? Like get filmmakers to not have Netflix produce their films or release their films and it's like these limited options. I mean, it's just, I mean, I mean, we all know. We talk about this every time.

Yeah. It's a, it's a hard, hard thing to solve. There's pros and kinds to the streaming model. You know, you can make the argument that, you know, it is easier for a director to get their films greenlit and seen in many cases, right? And I do believe that, you know, if there is, let's say, like a medium or lower budget film that does really, pop off even on the digital market that other studios that, you know, might be more familiar with the theatrical market, they're still paying attention, right? Any success that is seen even in one section of the market is noticed throughout the market because these people want money,

right? And so when you're voting with your wallet, even if it is just, you know, watching something on Netflix or posting about it on social media or just trying to like drum up hype, these things do become more available when they know that there's a demand for it because they want to make money, right? You know, at the end of the day, like, you were still able to see begonia. You were able to see Shelby Oaks, right, in theaters. You know, those are smaller movies. Yeah, I mean, I just, I just think, I just think that people need to ditch the idea.

That we're supposed to be watching Disney movies as if it's some sort of like tradition, as if it's some sort of like, you know, oh, you know, it's like Thanksgiving or whatever. You know, you might not enjoy it, but you just do it. I do think that's slowly going away. And I think that they're going to have to make these movies with a smaller budget and expect fewer people to go see them because you can only like capture the zeitgeist for so long and have this trend. Like, I think people expected the superhero trend and to go on forever and ever and ever. And I do think that it's kind of run its course for now and maybe down the road it'll have another huge boom.

Or maybe Avengers Doom's Day is going to be that. Maybe that's going to be like, yeah, hell yeah. Or maybe just occasional superheroes are going to get big releases like Spider-Man brand new day. But ultimately, I think that like there's this idea, especially at Disney, that there was going to be infinite gross because that's, That's capitalism. That's what they need to happen. You know, that infinite growth, we're just going to be making more and more Marvel.

This is what people want without, like, considering the fact that maybe, you know, the quality will decrease if you do that. And that's exactly what happened. And, you know, bringing it back to Thor, Love and Thunder is like this movie was hit also with COVID. There were lots of delays around this movie. And I think you can feel it with the ugly way that is shot, especially in certain scenes, how it feels like people.

aren't really in the same room at certain times when they film things. So, you know, that's an aspect too that they're just pumping out this content, especially at the time to get Disney Plus off the ground. And it's just, there's just a lot of shit, a lot of bad choices and things got out of hand. And it's funny now that Kevin Feige has been doing interviews and he said like exactly that point of like, I usually have my hand in all of these movies. personally. Like he is like consulting on all the stories and all these movies. His greedy little pus.

He is a micromanager. Like he's super involved in these films. And when Disney and Bob Eager was like, and I guess Chepec as well at the time was like, hey, come on. We've got to pump all this content into Disney Plus and make some more movies. Then he is like literally, he's like, I literally couldn't like work. It's spread too thin. Yeah.

It's spread way too thin. Yeah. Yeah, it's the art factory scene from the Holy Mountain. Yeah, yeah. But at like a core level, big blockbusters don't have to be as bad as this. Correct. I specifically Thor Love and Thunder. Like, it really doesn't have to be this way.

And I feel like it's, it's not even, it's not inherit to the genre, really. I feel like films like a Spider-verse or a Dark Knight or Spider-Man too can be used as a way to, I don't know, like a filmmaker to leverage and use the mythic status of a. character to make something big and poppy and like something that will connect with the culture. I think that's what's cool about these characters when they're done right. But it's just they got, yeah, they got kind of complacent and yeah, streaming just changed everything for the worst for them. It's a Disney thing.

They're not protective of their brands enough weirdly. They just spread them thin. So then you just, there's too much of it. So you don't, you can't give a shit about any of it. And then it's kind of like wrong dry. Here's the conundrum. the people making the business decisions are not familiar with like what a good movie is they just have a bunch of numbers and stats and even if we're in a position where we're you know as audience members and you know i'm sure that they they've heard this criticism uh throughout social media at this point like trust the artists or whatever right and maybe they might see some examples where that's a successful thing, you know, whether it's James Gunn or another example. My brain's a little

fried thinking of this stupid Thor movie. But this is a situation where, you know, maybe, allegedly, we don't really know. It seems like they might have trusted Tycho Waititi, and it just fucking, it just ruined them, right? There's too many situations where like, you know, we, we in some ways get what we want. And someone gets a lot of, money and a lot of creative control and then it just winds up being a flop and, you know, moderately received anyway. So that's the conundrum. Is they're trying to have guaranteed successes? And right now, I think the success rate is unfortunately higher for just recognizable IP than it is for trusting an artist, right? And so that's something that we need to change. And the more times

we just see something because recognizable IP, we are enforcing that discrepancy. We are enforcing that. We are causing this reality to happen. Yeah, it's like a week hatch 22. If you guys don't fucking watch Nirvana the band, the show, the movie, when it comes out on February 13th, I'm going to do something that you're going to, you're going to regret. If you guys don't watch that fucking movie Wait, what?

Was that, are you threatening? I'd watch it now by good. I feel like, yeah, that's part of it like that. The Catch 22 of these smaller films that do have more limited access and advertising budgets so the voices around them are just smaller. And you just see it, the Catch 22

while we talk about a film like Mars Express and it's like the worst performing episode ever. Yeah, fuck everybody. What do you do about that? Oh, dude, I had so. many more concurrent viewers on my fucking watch-along stream than usual from the fucking Thor movie. I was pissed. You're welcome.

I was pissed. So you guys, I'm watching other movies, but I guess they just wanted to see me suffer. Like, that's my brand is suffering. Right? I think the secret is they need to be used as kind of a, like a jumping off point or a way to get people in and then, like we do with the podcast. Exactly. We'll talk about this in the same episode or something. more obscure and kind of carve people off or direct people and that's what was cool about like a

James Gunner or Taika-a-Titi like directors that I had been watching from the earlier weirder works and just seeing the maneuver through the industry in the same way Gilma did with the hellboy stuff and going through the big studio system and now he's been given like can't say blanche don't leave the comment for fuck to say every time to do you know what you want and we're seeing that like pay off and dividends now that he's like trusted in his own that position but it just I think it just didn't work out with Tyker because he hasn't really made a

interesting film I don't think since gosh I guess Joe Joe Rabbit that felt like he was like trying something felt like him it was fine it felt like him it was fine it felt like okay like he's trying to do a Wes Anderson thing let's see where this goes but it just kind of it felt like he stopped doing the one for them one for me and he's just doing

One for no one. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of for no one. Yeah. So I think he needs to like take a, I don't know, just get those budgets down. If he wants to work in this space, like, I'm so glad that Star Wars shit, he doesn't seem to be coming together because I don't know. You just got like too popular, too quick. And just kind of expended all of that goodwill from the indie scene instead of maybe trying to write it a bit more. Jake, is Nirvana the band the show the movie on your radar?

Oh, yeah. Okay, ever since, no, I've seen good stuff about it. You've talked about it, so I'd like to see it. I've seen it four times now. Wow. Which shouldn't be possible. Yeah, that's wild. You know, it's interesting, like, raising this question about, like, what our responsibility is or responsibility, whatever, to, like, viewers and to people, like, wanting to spread interesting movies and share these movies and stuff.

But there's also another value I really think in like just talking about things, especially like when something like a war of the world happens. Like there's so much like interest online about a shitty movie because people come to us or our channels or whatever to see us discuss these films so that they don't have to experience it themselves. Because it is like a it is like a very warm, friendly experience to be like, oh, I kind of understand this person's. personality and I get to filter it through them and it's enjoyable. And I remember that's why I used to, uh, you know, watch the podcast, this podcast back in the day because you guys would talk about the Madagascar trilogy and I'd get to vicariously enjoy the suffering that Adam goes through. And it's, uh, it's, it's fun to, to do that. Whereas with like a good film, a lot of times it is like, uh, yeah, this is a good film. Go experience it and have a good experience with that film in your,

and you're having a relationship to that film, whereas when you're talking about a shitty movie, you're having an experience with the person talking about that movie more so. And it's like, yeah, we love talking about good films on this podcast, but I do think there is like value and something nice about talking about a piece of shit like Thor Love and Thunder because it in a lot of ways, is just way more instructive to an easier way to figure out

where something can go wrong, where a movie can go wrong, where movies are going wrong, when you have such a glaringly bad example. Yeah. Well, it was too woke. Well, yeah, I mean, that's what I'm always saying. This was super gay.

And I guess, yeah, the difference is, I don't really find it boring like Adam. I find it more like interesting or angry, like in this case. Whereas I don't know, like I just watched the first three episodes of all's fair. The Ryan Murphy

Oh God. It's like atrocious. It's so fucking bad. Oh, is it like funny bad? Yeah. Is it like the idol almost? It is kind of reminiscent of the idol actually. Oh, wow.

I mean, just how much it's missing the tone it's going for. And it's like trying to be cool and slay and just like, it fucking sucks. But I love that kind of thing and trying to unpick and unpack and figure out like what has gone on here, especially with like, I feel like I can bring it up constantly, but just the money associated with this stuff like it just doesn't fucking make sense

all's fair it was like a hundred million bucks basically and all these like tax breaks and it's like so interesting to me how no one gives a fuck about it either um so yeah i i find that kind of interesting disposable disposable films yeah i mean it is i mean that's part of why i wanted to discuss this again too and revisit it because i remember having such a visceral reaction to it out of the years i'm being so disappointed

But also, like, there are so many, like, interesting and stupid and weird ways they went wrong with this story. Like, just from, like, a scene to scene level with all the jokes and, like, the pacing of the jokes and how it's edited together. And also, like, the emotional themes and the beats, like, how it tries to hit it. It's so bizarre. Like, we have Natalie Portman smashing a sink with her Thorhammer. And then, you know, Tessa Thompson comes in and they're, like, doing a little dance on, like, a portable speaker. It makes no sense How the information is delivered

And I just I don't know I just find it fascinating and interesting Like this movie has like a very long first act And like it has a 20 minute second act Where they're hanging out with Zeus And then it has a super long final act That is just a lot of Christian Bale acting like Voldemort

Yeah Yeah, I felt attacked. I felt like I was being attacked. Do you like guns and roses? Because I don't like hearing them that much. I find the voice to be very annoying in film

context, especially. It was used very badly here. It felt like I'm just using the formula from Ragnarole. Welcome to the jungle! Yeah. It was like, oh, I'm just going to use the same bag of tricks. aggressively it was so much

I don't know there's just something about the like hero falling aspect of like this this franchise like there was something they managed to get this lightning in a bottle kind of it was a lightning rod to have a character like Thanos be in like one of the biggest movies of all time if you knew who he was in like the early 2000s

you get like beaten up and people wear him on t-shirts and he's like memed and he's quoted and he's like a dove Vader figure. It's like crazy. Yeah, he's in Fortnite, as is everyone at this point. He's twerking. To then fast forward to here.

And it's like, even fans, like super fans of Marvel, don't even like this one. It's like that bad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, like, because fans have such a weird relationship to the Thor movies, especially Thor fans like the comic books, because in my opinion, the first Thor is just not good. I haven't seen Thor the Dark World. And then Thor Ragnarok is like a pretty fun time.

It's not good. But also there were a lot of fans of Thor who did not like Ragnarok where it wasn't taking him seriously. And they didn't like what Avengers Endgame did to him. But it is also kind of like this. It's hard with fans of like comic books or any source material because there are a lot of comic book fans who are just like, I know who the character is. This is the character. And you're not doing the character justice. And it's like they'll do this with Batman or whatever.

Like, no, no, no, this is the wrong Batman. You have a bad idea. And it's like, he's fake. Like, he's not a real guy. Like, he can be whatever. But also, there's that point where it's like, if you're adapting the character and you're just making him something totally different, then, yeah, you're totally, fans have a right to be pissed at you.

When, especially if you're taking like a beloved run of the Thor comic books and bastardizing it and turning it into whatever this is, I mean, it's like a movie about. cancer edited like a Mr. Beast video, TikTok style editing. It's I get why fans are upset. And I mean, one of my big questions when I left the movie was, would this have worked better if it had just been Natalie Portman's character and Thor had just been a supporting character who came in later? Because I do think if they front-loaded Natalie Porman and like dealing with cancer and

and explain like what was going on there because it all felt so random of just like oh yeah now i have the hammer and i'm going to be a thor now and it's like what the fuck this makes no sense why you're even here yeah that should be the emotional core of the movie yeah but it's just like if you're playing in this playground with these characters you need some some like intention or at least the slightest bit of reverence where it feels like it just doesn't even give a shit about this character or anything that you could represent or do anything interesting with him. And it's not like a, you know, like a watchman situation where it's supposed to be like cynical or darker in its tone.

It's just straight up feels apathetic towards its own franchise. So of course it's not going to connect with anybody. One of my favorite details is the little, um, infinity gauntlet like ice cream shop that they have on the as, as guardian like, um, thing. It's like, it's like, didn't he like wipe out and have, it's like having a Hitler themed ice cream. It's just so like removed from, it's just like such an obvious like fan service dumb joke that is so removed from the context of, oh, this is supposed to be a believable or semi-believable coherent world that exists. And it just, it doesn't whatsoever. I also really love the moment where Thor just adopts Gore's kid and is just like, yeah, this is my kid now.

And that's how it ends. Yeah, they were trying to give it some heart, some like emotion, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not trying very hard. It's just so totally unurned by that point. All of the stuff with the kids is just like, what? Annoying. Do we supposed to know these people?

It's just using the fact that they're kids just to manipulate it. I know, I'm so scared they're going to get hurt for real. It's Chris Hemsworth's actual daughter, I believe. Yes, you're right. Cool. Well, this film really put the Y in Taika Waititi for me. I feel like we can do another hour on Thor Love and Thunder. Do you want it?

No. Still plot synopses breakdown. Yeah. No, please. I want to get into the lore behind Valkyrie's character. No, no. Okay. Thank you.

You see, she was dating the director at the time, so she needed to be in the movie. The child? No, Valky. Tessa Thompson. One out of ten. This was pain. This was pain. This was what I would call a sleepy headache movie.

All right. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'd give it a one star. generous it's yeah when you're rooting for the villain like more than anyone else

out of the entourage of good guys of which there are many it's just a it's just wrong everything about it sucks it is just I just hate that it was rewarded for it too that really gets me

at the end like it didn't even matter in the end like it sucked so hard but everyone went to somewhere anywhere it made a bunch of money in sucked so hard They got so far in the end. So fucking true.

It didn't even matter. Three out of ten. Wow, that's pretty good. Yeah, and I'm giving it the extra stars because I do think that it has like an interesting commentary on the post-9-11 era. I knew you were going to say it. I knew you're going to say. It's very, very, very much speaking upon those themes. So, yeah, three out of ten.

Call on. I think I'm discovering that I pee more frequently when I'm under stress. Because I had to pee a lot during that movie, too. You would not, you wouldn't do well on the long walk, I'm afraid. No. I mean, you could still pee and walk. I'm a shy peer. I'd just be like, guys, turn away.

Don't look. Don't look. I'd be dived up. Yeah, but then you got to change the diaper and that's the whole thing. I'd have a backpack full of dipes. Yeah, I guess so. I enjoyed zero movies out of the discussions today. I'm so sorry.

Thank you. Yeah, you didn't, does you? Yeah. No, that happens. Well, yeah. Too many Normie movies. You went some, you lose some. Question.

time. Yeah, let's do some questions then from the Sardonicast community. Head over to the suggestion thread over on the subreddit. If you want to leave questions for future episodes just like Good Fighten did, we often see films that are expertly directed but lack in the writing department. I'm curious to know if there are any movies you think had a fantastic screenplay but were poorly directed. The Man from Earth 2007, great example. Movie still works. It's a great script, great concept very dialogue heavy but like poorly directed and acted

but it's like you kind of just roll with it because the story is so good what came to my mind was have you seen that film dream catcher a long time ago very long time ago that's a weird but that would be kind of an interesting wreck maybe one day but um

yeah it had this William Goldman screenplay which uh had a bunch of potential but Lawrence Kasden and just couldn't bring it together. Didn't work out super weird film. I don't want to re-watch it now.

Or maybe something like a cure for wellness, another kind of interesting screenplay that was going to have something, it's kind of gothic mystery thing. I didn't find that to be, like, poorly directed. I think I enjoyed that more than most people did. I didn't like love it or anything, but yeah, I got my, I got my Verbinski out of it.

Right, yeah. I feel like he could have done more with it. Yeah, I think I gave it a five. This is such an interesting question because it is like usually the issue is the screenplay more than anything. And like bad direction can be distracting. But it's like, I don't know. Like it's if you have a good script like fundamentally, then it's kind of hard to fuck it up unless you just really doing something wild or out there or bad. I mean, I guess some examples would be maybe like certain musicals are.

Like, I think Le Miz was like, there were some really poor choices in how that film was directed, that it could have been much better. Yes, that's a good pool. Maybe musicals are a good example of that. The Russar Crow one? Yeah, the Russell Crow one. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, a lot of times, even when you do have, like, a bad script, like, sometimes there's, like, a good concept trapped in there. You're like, damn, if you just reworked it.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, the story, the story is important. Story is important. Characterization, motivation, relatability, intrigue, you know, deeper meanings, philosophy. All that stuff is very important. It can make or break,

depending on the movie. Sometimes it can get by with like really cool visuals, but then, you know, it's always with that caveat. Yeah. There are a lot of good movies that, have like a good script but are kind of hampered not by bad direction but by clearly like not enough budget um which can come across like bad direction you know what i mean yeah yeah well what i feel like is more common is like a director ignoring maybe the intent of what the

screenwriter is going for doesn't necessarily mean it's bad though like a like a natural born Killers is kind of an interesting example where like that Tarantino script he famously doesn't really like the film because he was intending for something else and it's still like interesting but I don't know that kind of answers the question from what I feel like is more common actually yeah there's like a there's a movie that I haven't seen um and maybe I will one day um that uh George Clooney directed and Charlie Kaufman's one of the screenwriters and people tell me like George Clooney kind of like ruined it called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I'd be interested in seeing it. Oh yeah. But yeah

Charlie Kaufman is one of those writers where like he's constantly struggling to get anything greenlit because his scripts are too good basically. Too risky I guess. Too good that they're not going to make money. Yeah. Yeah, that's a shame. Yeah. What about this one from Mecca Mayhem? This kind of came up a little bit earlier, actually, but I'm curious what you guys have to say.

I've sometimes heard critics say that a film setting is so good that it could be considered a character, Middle Earth, for example. What does it mean for a setting to act as a character? Yeah, I mean, Mars Express is a great example of this. The world building is so incredible. A lot of show don't tell. You kind of just, like, I know that, like, it wouldn't make any sense for them to do like a sequel or anything but like I don't know if you could

maybe a spin off in the same universe like I don't know if if Jeremy Pettian didn't want to do it then it's not going to happen and I don't want it but like love that world a lot of cool stuff going on in that world it's part of the storytelling right yeah yeah if you can flesh out the environment and make it make sense and sell the world then it's elevating it's acting as a character itself really it's communicating something it's informing you on something It's so important to the story. Yeah. A lot of my favorite films will do this, make the setting as equally as important as the characters.

And I mean, you could even make that argument for something that, you know, not as many people would attribute that sort of thing to, you know, like black dynamite. To me, it's like the world is the meta world of like the character of the filmmaker in the film that you never see or meet making this movie, right? It's like a movie within a movie, but not explicitly. It's so interesting to me. I want to see more shit like that. We're like you learn about the fake filmmaker by watching it. Yeah, I still want to see that. Oh, that's great.

But, no, I just feel like it's an easy way to just say that the world felt vivid. It's just kind of like, oh, yeah, it was like a character. Things to chew on. Things to want to know more about. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I like it when I'm watching something and I'm actively interested and curious about how things work in a way that's not like, you know, maybe you don't even have to explain, but is at least consistent and could make sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, 7-0 tricks has another curious one. Um, we've had some forms of this kind of question over the years, but it's nice to check back in now and again as more time passes. After discussing how influential Requiem for a Dream was for movies in the 2000s, what movies from the 2010s? Would you say a similarly influential to movies we see now? Well, speaking of like, uh, Marvel shit, I feel like that's a huge part of the 2010s.

Yeah. Probably the first Avengers is maybe the most influential, like straight up movie if we're talking. as far as like wider effect. Yeah. If we're talking about films that like represent the decade well or at least have only gotten better with time, I feel like a parasite.

The timing of that is so interesting. I feel like the more time that is going, the more truth at the heart of what it's getting at is kind of coming to fruition in a really interesting way. Similarly to something like her through the lens of like technology and not like class relation in the same way, but I feel like these are predictive and...

Get Out. Yeah, get out's a good example. Yeah, yeah, that's another good one. Inception. Yeah. La La Land. Moonlight. Moonlight, Moonlight.

Moonlight. Star Wars, the Force Awakens. That's kind of like... Unfortunately influential. True. No, that's huge. Huge. Yeah.

That's just as big as like the Avengers shit. Frozen. Frozen. 2015, the human centipede volume 3? Very. Very influential. That's the biggest one. Mad Max Fury Road, I feel like that's been pretty influential.

Are we on the same Google search? No. I'm looking at my letterbox. For like indie film bros, I feel like drive. Oh, yeah, that's a great example. Thank you. Drive. Yeah.

Drive influence so much. That brought back the whole 80s nostalgia thing. That popularized it so hard. Johnwick? That drive is like one of the most influential films of any decade, like recently. People still wear those scorpion jackets. Yeah, yeah, that's a great example. Thank you.

Because, you know, I could look through my best of the year lists for the 2010s, but I feel as though maybe not every influential film is going to be in there for me because influential doesn't necessarily mean one that I enjoy. Although, you know, all the ones that we mentioned would probably, you know, a good chunk of them would probably be on there. Maybe I should be looking through my lists here. I don't have everything logged for...

Honestly, think Joker as well, like 2019. Yeah. In your guys' opinion, does the 2010s stand out to you as a very good decade in film? Yes. Okay. Yes. There's plenty of excellent stuff in there. It's hard to say because it's like there's always, there's good movies that are going to come out of any decade, I guess, just like.

And it's so recent, too, that it is very hard to say if it's going to be. Yeah. Well, I mean, like with parasite and, you know, other examples. I do feel like there was something special about the 2010s in terms of like the cultural awareness of certain types of films being brought to the forefront. Because, you know, like we complain about a lack of accessibility for sure, but it seems like there's more conversations now happening, like, you know, amongst film heads, but that that net is getting wider and wider in terms of like what you would consider.

to be a filmhead or just people talking about films online that I feel I feel like the 2010s did like a really great job in terms of helping to popularize foreign films even right like the 2010s is when the Oscars were like oh yeah we can have one in the best picture category or or nominated for more than one category right like a more was like a best picture contender of the year. And, you know, people don't really talk about that one as much. I love that film. So perhaps that wasn't like hugely influential or anything. I love Amor. Hey, I've seen Amor. I think Amor is great. Yeah, it's an army masterpiece. The raid, the raid redemption, right? Like the, the 2010s, there were a lot of things that came out that were getting their own legs from the help of the internet as well. Like, that's a big thing

that I think a cultural shift that was happening that I'm all for. Here's an alternative narrative to this because I'm being a little more cynical here, but I'm thinking like decades from now how like the narrative collapses and there's going to be a lot more of a simplistic reading. I do think that like film students or whatever will look at the 2010s and be like Marvel, peak Marvel. That's when like Marvel movies took over the box office and mid-budget movies died. until the 2020s when Marvel kind of waned and there was a more like auteur driven bigger budget like successful movies.

You know, because although like Adam, you're totally right about movies like Parasite getting more notice in especially like the Academy and like foreign films getting more of a highlight in that world. But in terms of the box office, I do think that it is like the story of Marvel crushing. all of these smaller films and then leaving in its wake this kind of like broken like what are we doing now 2020s? Sure, but only if you look at the larger narrative. Yeah, sure, but only if you look at like the top of the top, which is what those movies are going for is like we want to we want to dominate the box office. We want to make a billion like their goal is a billion dollars, right? Whereas, you know, when I look at the landscape of filmmaking, the successes that I see are not billion dollar successes. Their success is like A24 becoming like a household name, right?

Where they're making money and they're they're creating a brand and people are getting interested and excited where you can see a fucking A24 logo and people go, oh yes, hype, whatever, right? Like hopefully, you know, neon gets to that point too. Um, you know, I, I think that there's a lot of good that has come from the 2010s in terms of like the landscape of, uh, film discussion and, you know, even, even the accessibility of films, even if in terms of theatrical accessibility, it's not ideal, it's not what it should be. You know, like we're the fucking, I was in Atlanta and I was able to see decision to leave, you know, in a theater. And I found that to be really fucking cool, like a Korean movie, you know, uh, and it wasn't even like

a big Korean movie. Yeah. In, in major cities, especially, like art cultural hubs like these things are are accessible and available for the people that want to see it and it's the fact that there are enough people that want to see it that makes those things accessible and available which again ties back to my point like be the change you want to see vote with your wallet and if you don't have the option of seeing these things that you want to see make yourselves known type on the internet tag the fucking studios or whatever make some hashtags say you want to see it you got you got to make yourselves known so that they know that you would like to buy their things

mm-hmm you've made me think about like elevated horror now too yeah like um hereditary and exactly 24 type movies they've really taken off in the last decade and there's also just something interesting about this kind of being the last decade that is unscathed by stream dreaming. Like it just meant something different, um, especially like from a, the economics of it too. Like, yeah, it's going to look just completely different on a graph after the 2010s, you know, basically, basically perfectly cut off by 2020. Like, everything just looks different. Everything operates differently. So through that lens, it's quite interesting to see the high point, really, as far as I just like, all this random shit making a billion bucks. Like a fucking Aquaman movie

made a billion dollars. Like, what? Because it was epic. Well, yeah, but yeah. What the fuck was going on? It's so strange. I like James 1.

Well, so do I. Exactly. So, yeah, I think it's not too. Yeah. Loads of good examples. No, 2010s were good. 2010s were great, honestly. I can't think of like a bad decade for movies because

I'd go out of my way to find the good movies in a decade. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a part of it. Some of these things might not be as obvious or notable, right? Fucking magical girl, 2014, Spanish film. Not enough people have seen it.

It's awesome. I think most people would love it. I think that's like a super accessible movie, but just, yeah, less people are aware of it. I think the most, I think the most it got was like it was on Netflix for some point in time and then some people saw it there. Like great, people saw it, but you know, not a lot. Carlos Vermeux a really interesting director. I'm thinking, um, in the realm of animation,

doesn't really get more influential than Spiderverse. True. Fucking everything is Spiderverse now. Everything. I saw they're even doing like a stranger thing. Spiderverse style bullshit. Yeah. The monkey's paw.

Yeah. We talked about this last time. Uh-huh. So yeah. Those are good examples. How about we do this one from DMAC 0755? Do it. With Brendan Fraser's The Mummy, apparently getting a fourth movie,

what are your thoughts on the first? While it's not high art, I can't help but have a blast every time I see it. Have you guys seen this? Do you have any fun memories for this? I remember watching it as a kid. Yeah. We're never going to get Indiana Jones again type way, so this will do type thing. I do remember watching it as a kid.

I don't remember much from it, but I do feel. is that it would be a fun, nostalgic little time capsule rewatch. I think I would enjoy watching it as an adult. Because that was early 2000s, right? It was kind of corny fun. Oh, it was 99. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah, I don't know how well that that CG is going to hold up? Not at all. It's kind of notoriously like bad, right? It's like awful. That's probably like helped it weirdly. There's a, there is a charm to that time period with like the kind of jankiness. Yeah. of what it was doing. Depending on like the genre you're watching, right?

Yeah. I do like Brendan. Oh, Brandy. Could you, sorry, I feel like I think I got cut out a little bit. Could you repeat the question? It was about the mummy. Oh, sure. Have you seen the mummy?

Oh. The 1999 Brendan Fraser mummy movies? I thought you were talking about the whale for a second. No. I love the mummy, yeah. Yes. Are you hoping they're making another one? I think they're going to be able to capture that mummy magic.

Yeah, yeah, it's one of Nadia's like favorite movies. It's like a comfort movie. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. But I don't think it's like amazing. I do think there's some nostalgia there. I thought Xavier Dolan's version was an interesting take. Mommy.

Yeah, mommy. Such a bad joke. Thanks for figuring it out. Thank you. I wasn't going to explain it if you didn't get it. I'm glad you know about that film, Jake, actually. Yeah, I've seen that. I saw that.

What do you think? It was pretty interesting. I liked it. I love it. I think that's his best for sure. Okay. Yeah. I didn't love the aspect ratio thing.

Wow. Really? Why'd you just come warrior out there? Yeah, you did. Wow. You know. It's my spirit animal. But it's been a while.

I've only seen it once. It was when 2015, 2016, maybe? Yeah. That's a fucking awesome movie for me. It does so much. Yeah, I would enjoy rewatching the mummy. I should. Yeah, I don't know how they're going to do the fourth one,

because the last time they tried, it had, like, I don't know, it missed. I'd like these Yetis, and it was quite a weird film. The Tom Cruise 2017 one is still. Oh, the real, yeah. The best thing that came out of that was the trailer where they forgot to put in all the audio tracks. Have you seen that? Classic. That's all I know about that movie is that trailer.

That's so funny. There's no other thing about it. They released that, right? They like, oh yeah, there was an official release. Yeah. That's nuts.

That was hilarious. I could never be undone. Oh, my God. I just like picturing that for every single bit of advertising, like if you just mute the music layer. No, yeah. I think the world would be such a better place if you were just able to have access to all of the different.

like layers and like effects in any movie like I've been saying for a while like I want I want the no effects versions like the no cg versions of any movie especially Marvel movies like it would be it would be such a useful like learning tool for filmmakers and also the memes would be great oh the names be awesome yeah yeah like when you see the behind the scenes of like the jungle book it looks completely unhinged release the call of the wild cut with just the guy pretending to be a dog, please. You cowards, you don't understand, it would sell. It would sell. Do you want my money?

Do you want everyone's money? People would be talking about it. People would be talking about it. Put me in charge. I mean, I don't think anyone has talked about that film since it came out. Exactly. Understand what you have. Understand the properties that you own and how to actually sell them.

be self-aware. Be self-aware. Yeah. I still want to watch the of the planet of the something. Yeah, I haven't seen that cut yet. I've seen clips,

but it's kind of a funny idea. I'd love to watch that for the first time watching the movie, you know, and not watch the real version. I just feel like we keep going back to this streaming idea, but I think people just care less

about behind the scene stuff with just that format. It's annoying, because I don't know why it has to be that way. I don't know why they can build it into the menus and have... Yeah, some streaming services do. More behind the seams options. Yeah, and only if it's like huge, like Frankenstein I mentioned earlier, that's got some material, but it's more like marketing.

Yeah. I just want everything to have that level of coverage that, you know, Lord of the Rings had. Yeah. Really goes into every single element of the filmmaking and goes through it in detail, and it's like so proud to... There's no reason not to... You do what's doing. Well, because it...

At a certain point, like, that was one of the perks of DVDs. They're like, okay, what can we offer to add value to this physical thing we're selling? It's like, oh, yeah, it's a movie on a disc, but also you get all this other cool shit. Right? And that just became the standard. So every movie had it with like some exceptions. But now it's like, you know, I'm still wondering why there was never a release for the soundtrack to I'm thinking of ending things, you know? I'm like the only person on the planet.

planet that's not a part of the production team for that that actually has the soundtrack. So I feel like I feel like I would I would like other people to have it too, but I'm not about to leak it because that would be an extremely bad thing that would blacklist me. And I think people would figure out that I did it. Definitely know. Yeah, I have the soundtrack. It's crazy. Wow.

It's great. It's nice. Yeah. But lame has to be that way. Especially if it's something that doesn't get a physical release at all. Like, you'll probably just not going to have anything. All you do is click a button and then people can have it. Just upload it to fucking Spotify or whatever.

Like, what the fuck? Why are you? That would be a small extra bit of revenue by clicking a button. Yeah, they must be leaving millions and millions off the table. Yeah. Just the pure access to this stuff. So much of this shit. Like, there are enough niche things that, like, if they just made them more accessible and available, they'd be making some money.

I think more studios should look at their catalog of things that are like, okay, you know, maybe there's not a lot of people buying the Blu-ray or whatever, or like they're not paying for the money or for it, like, $10 on iTunes or Amazon or whatever. And just upload it to YouTube with like a shit ton of ads, right? I feel like if every movie was on YouTube, that'd be great. Like, I think that YouTube should be a library because that is where people go for things to search up, like, especially even copyrighted content, you know, people just family guy episodes and shit. I feel like if they actually fine-tune their system and got, you know, convinced and were persuasive about, you know, deals with publishers and studios. and rights holders, that would be a cool future just to have everything being available

like a click away in an easy way for consumers. And, you know, that might even make it so that people are less intimidated listening to episodes of this podcast or other review things, talking about movies they haven't seen because it would be really easy just to like, oh, click on the movie and see it, you know?

Yeah, I'd love to see like high-quality, rips for everything that enters the public domain. Like if enough time passes and humanity's still around, you could theoretically have a really, like, robust media library, as you're saying. Yeah. Or films, all available on YouTube. That would be awesome. Really helpful, like, discussion and memes and edits and not having to worry about, like,

copyright stuff in the same way. Yeah. It would be nice to just be able to, like, show a full scene and, like, really break down and go in depth without having to edit around these restrictions. But I think they're just they're old, old companies. You can just see the contrast with video game coverage and how it's a younger industry. So as far as cover, they understand how that relates to, if we allow access over YouTube, it's just endemic advertising, basically. It's based out of fear and being complacent and used to an old system.

when in reality, like, the infrastructure is there to be able to make it happen, and YouTube could very easily implement, like, a revenue sharing of any of these things, because they already do that with cover songs. And they've already had to, like, you know, bend the knee and, like, make adjustments to their shorts because they realize that, like, oh, no, the entire reason why TikTok is so popular is because people are using copyrighted music without any restrictions, right? and so YouTube had to figure out oh yeah in shorts we're going to allow you

to do that for shorts and there will be some sort of like revenue share associated with it so the infrastructure is there right they can do it easily it's just yeah we need like a change in the way people perceive

what's possible or what could be possible or what would be beneficial you know yeah there's a lot we have to figure out let's do it yeah right should we do one more here let's do it kind of a cute one from can you be kawaii says what would you consider the best time of day to enjoy a movie simple and clean in a theater i would say earliest show possible for me i like seeing early

movies i quite like it a song i don't know i also like seeing a horror movie later at night um but i generally agree i like the earlier showings too Yeah, like less people and I feel like I don't know my brain functions better earlier in the day too I don't want to be like you know low energy going into a movie I feel like movies go by quicker and I'm more engaged naturally the earlier that I watch them and that's really nice for film festivals too because they have so many that are early slots if you do press it TIF like some of the screenings are like eight in the morning you know yeah yeah well some movies demand like an audience to make it better you know like of course i want to see neil breen of like 9 p.m oh yeah with a crowd a drunk movie is good in the evening raldy yeah yeah

midnight movie madness and all that hell yeah agro drift i feel like a morning morning movies fuck with my day i feel like it oh or at least you used to you know where it's just kind of like now i'm just thinking about that movie all day and i feel like All right, I already watched a movie in the morning. Might as well just sit around and watch a bunch of more movies, you know? Huh. At least that's how it used to be. Now I'm like, I like an early afternoon movie, especially going to the theaters.

Like early afternoon and then right when you're done with the movie, you go out for dinner with whoever you saw that movie with and you talk about the movie. And it's really nice. You have a drink. You know, I like going into the theater when it's like daytime and then you leave the theater and it's nighttime. I don't know. I like it. What do you think about daylight savings time? I think it's fucking bullshit.

I think it's so stupid. It's really annoying. What the fuck? Yeah. I mean, it's like 4 p.m. now. It's like dark out. Yeah. Like, why?

Let's steal the light from people for no reason. It's low-key, fuck it was my head. Like, I'm just feeling worse. And people's pets that assume to be, like, fed at a particular time, like, what do you adjust it? Yeah, I know, it's fine. Yeah, my dog was getting crazy. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah, it's mean. People's babies who, uh, you know, it's kind of messing with when they want to go to sleep too. Yeah, it affects up everyone's routine. Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right.

Is that it? Yeah. All right. Cool. Nice. We did it with the questions. All right. Alex, I believe it's your turn for a recommendation.

Please fucking save me. So it's my turn. I'm not going to do more spite things I'm going to leave that to you guys to sort that out amongst yourselves I'm gonna I don't know

I've got like a weird one which I think might give us an interesting conversation I want to do the 1949 film The Fountainhead directed by King

Vidal I think this could have like an interesting discussion it should I found it like on daily motion if those out there want to just watch it cool

yeah it's so old I don't know anything that this could be interesting oh iron rand that's a great wreck yeah this is going to be such an interesting conversation I'm really excited for this interesting okay an iron rand written film I see yeah

okay Gary Cooper right yeah directed by King Vidore I'm sure how you pronounce that one. All right, if you don't want to be spoiled for the Fountainhead, 1949, watch it before the next episode comes out. These 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 click the join button below. You can join up the membership on YouTube. It gets you the same thing. Also, make sure that you check the community posts if you do this on YouTube, because YouTube for the members-only videos, they don't allow you to play in the background on your phone for some reason. It's very silly.

So we've circumvented that by also posting an unlisted version of the ad-free episodes, but you have to go to the community tab to find it. And you can get notifications for the community tab if you turn those notifications on. But that's where they are, and they're available. So we've circumvented YouTube's dumb bullshit Support the show Notice how we don't do sponsorships Unlike fucking Thor,

Love and Thunder for fucking old spice Yeah Notice how we're all just in it Because we love what we do And we love watching me suffer So thanks Thanks for yeah thanks for everything Yeah

Thanks Jake Thank you Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, thanks a lot. The discussion went better than... Happy to be here. Rogue one.

Oh, Christ. I was, like, I couldn't offer anything for that one. That's an infamous one. I feel like that gets brought up a lot in the comments. Like, I don't know. If you're going to recommend a movie where I'm, like, disassociated, I don't know what you expect me to do. But yeah, with three of us, the conversation went well. So thanks.

Yes. Thank you, everyone. All right. Thank you. Have a happy thank you. Have a happy love and thunder. Have a happy fountainhead. Yeah.

Have a happy cancer. Bye. Me. Bye, bye, bye.