The Bechdel Cast - Aquaman with Ali Nahdee

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special gues Ali Nahdee do a deep dive into a discussion about Aquaman!(This episode contains spoilers)Here's an article regarding the Amber Heard / Johnny Depp case that we mentioned during the episode, in case anyone wants more information: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/movies/johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial.htmlFor Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @AliNahdee on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin.

You don't tell me how to captain. I don't tell you how to pirate or something oh okay oh like the beginning of the movie yeah like like that one character says oh i wanted to the thing where patrick wilson says like you will call me ocean master like oh that would have been better that just i think is imprinted on my mind. You know, welcome to the Bechdel cast. They're not all hits right at the top. Sometimes you got to just get into it and it takes a little time. We got to find our groove. But welcome.

My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test just very much as a jumping off point. Yes. But what is it, Jamie? Oh, the Bechdel test or the movie? I'll say both. I'll do both. We're doing Aquaman today, a movie from James Wan, one of my faves. I love watching interviews with James Wan. And this isn't passing the Bechdel test and here's why. The Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. There's many different versions of it. Here's the one we

use. We require that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue there are so many three-hour movies that don't pass this simple metric and this movie was almost one of them but we'll get there later but we're covering aquaman and uh i'm i'm i'm very excited to discuss this movie particularly because we're bringing back one of the greats. We sure are. Our guest is biracial Anishinaabe, founder of the AILA test. You remember her from our episode on Frozen 2.

It's Ali Nadi. Hi. Hello and welcome back. Thank you for inviting me back. I was so happy when I got your email and I was just like yes yay been pumped about this oh my gosh and you have brought us Aquaman tell us about your relationship with this movie okay so going a little bit earlier than that when you reached out to me I was like really struggling with a movie to talk about, you know, I'm like,

oh man, because, you know, native people, you know, we're not a monolith, you know, we come from different cultures, different, you know, parts of the country, different parts of the continent. So I'm like, okay, so there's a bunch of movies I want to talk about, but I don't belong to those specific groups. Maybe someone from those groups should be the one talking about it. And then I wanted to talk about Avatar, but I'm like, you know, maybe not for Thanksgiving. Maybe not for Thanksgiving. But yeah, so I really struggled and I was really thinking about it. And then finally, Aquaman, you know, I realized that even if it's not specifically Polynesian or Hawaiian, you know, he is American, he is indigenous, and he's biracial, and so am I. That was the last film that I ever saw in a theater with my mom. So, yeah. So there's going to be a lot of moments.

I apologize in advance. I'm going to cry. Don't apologize. Probably a couple times. And, yeah, like this movie, ever since it came out, ever since I saw it with mom, really spoke to me as someone who is biracial, as someone whose mother is white and whose father is indigenous. And it really, I felt represented in a way, even if I wasn't Polynesian and Hawaiian, you know, it really, it really did tug on my heartstrings. And I felt kind of silly, like saying that just because it is a goofy superhero movie that may or may not be that good but i had a fun time

oh i had a blast but i mean everyone deserves to be represented and seen in the whole spectrum of movies whether they're goofy superhero movies that perhaps have plots that are messy oh caitlin's i mean thank you for sharing that ali i mean with that context in particular like of course this is a special movie to you and like it's i don't know i was uh i had not seen this movie i think i just generally i usually wait on superhero movies because i get i don't i get stressed out seeing them in theaters because I just feel like everyone knows something that I don't and I'm like I can't hang and they're gonna be mad at me but I really I I thought this was um it was perhaps a bit long but I I love James Wan's work and I was very like kind of surprised and impressed having very very little understanding of aquaman other than knowing him as like the

goofy superhero because he is a fish um but but outside of that i didn't know anything and i i thought that the way that the themes that were kind of chosen for this this aquaman story were was really cool and most of them worked really effectively and for me me, canonically, Patrick Wilson and Nicole Kidman wore the same wig for the whole movie. And that was awesome, too. So yeah, I'm a I think I'm a fan of this movie. Yeah, I think I am. Caitlin? Oh, gosh. Well, I saw it not in theaters, but I did see it on a plane. It's a good plane movie movie like nine months a year after it had come out because enough by then enough people had seen it and i had heard i'd heard the reviews which were i feel like pretty mixed and still are as far as like and i i was

admittedly when i first saw it i was like you know the mise en mise-en-scene is busy. I like that. And the plot is... James Wan, though. James Wan. Yeah, when I first saw the action scene, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I was having a lot of sensory overload throughout the movie. But then when we reached out to you, Allie, so this is our quote unquote Thanksgiving episode in the sense that we are releasing it on the day that a lot of Americans observe Thanksgiving. But we wanted to showcase an indigenous movie or, you know, a movie by indigenous filmmakers or a movie that has some indigenous ties to it.

And then we reached out to you ali and then when you came back to us with aquaman i was like oh right it didn't really occur to me that this would be like considered an indigenous movie and then you spoke a little bit about it and i was like oh yes of course and i knew that you would like bring this really great perspective that would give me a better appreciation for the movie which like it already has and i know that our like conversation will and like. Yeah, I still think about the Frozen 2 episode all the time because I feel like that might be like possibly the most that I've been like mind blown and swayed on a movie that I was not at all expecting to see very much in in the course of an episode.

Like, I don't know know I think about it often I'm really touched I'm really glad that you guys like that and value my insight so much yeah yeah of course yeah and um even going with Aquaman like again I had like a lot of turmoil because I'm not you know Hawaiian and I'm not Maori. Like Temura Morrison is the actor who plays his dad. He's Maori, which is indigenous to New Zealand. And it's a very important distinction that Native Hawaiians, while they are indigenous, they are not Native American. That is a big one.

A lot of people try to lump them all in because we're indigenous and it's it's not they're Polynesian. They are very adamant that, you know, they are not American, you know. Right. But still, you know, like it's still indigenous. this movie just because it isn't like lilo and stitch or once we're warriors where it is very distinctly a hawaiian film a hawaiian culture or a maori film and maori culture you know it takes place in maine so right right and um you know like even though aquaman's design in the movie is uh very distinctly you know polynes you know, with the tattoos and he speaks. I think he says a couple lines of dialogue that are in Maori.

That's what I was seeing just in the in the captions of the movie. Yeah, but he those actors could have been played by anybody, really. I mean, they could have been black. They could have been any race and the fact that it is indigenous like brought this entire perspective that really connected even if i'm not from those islands so you know i feel like i'm kind of in a safe gray area you know i i don't want to feel like i'm talking over anybody but it did speak to me and when I did a lot of research for the movie I saw that it spoke to a lot of biracial people just across the board so right

and that I mean you bring up an interesting point where some of the characters are indigenous Aquaman is biracial and that's acknowledged in the movie, but it doesn't become this thing where so much of his identity is like, oh, I'm so torn and look at me being the victim of racism all the time and stuff like that. living in which uh and like you said he could have been played by any actor of any color in a way that again just like normalizes his existence in the world which is like what we're trying to move toward when it comes to representation so yeah that was something i really appreciated about it yeah and i mean i just i love jason mom And like, you can't not love Jason Momoa. As of this recording, I feel like we always have to be like, at this time. No, but he's great.

And I feel like I really, and we'll get into this too, but going off of what you were just saying, Caitlin, I really was touched by how like thoughtful Aquaman was as a character and how he was like I mean not you know whatever every superhero has to be emotionally stunted if they're a man without fail like that's just the law but I thought I felt I feel like you know I'm trying to think of a specific example about like even when he there's that scene um when they're on the boat um Aquaman and Mira are on the boat and he is talking about how he killed oh what is the character what is the pirate character's name David Black Manta David Black Manta yes I think is his name I. I was like, what's his name?

Because I thought it was like a superhero name and I'm like, David. David slash Manta, yeah. But he's talking about how he feels like guilty for killing Manta's father and I was like, I feel like you don't get those moments from superheroes

very often and then they have a discussion about his role in the world and where he wants to be there was actually there was a lot of like scenes between Mira and Aquaman that were reminding me of like Simba and Nala in the second act of The Lion King where she like shows up and she's like you have to be king and he's like oh that's that's not my life anymore and then eventually wow obviously it is that is a great point Jamie thank you so much women be telling men they have to be the king it's just I mean it's a trope at this point um I'm so excited to get more into the discussion let's recap the movie and then we'll get into it okay so we open on aquaman's mom and dad meeting in 1985 uh his mom is atlanta played by nicole kidman she is the queen of

atlantis who fled to land to escape an arranged marriage. His dad is a human man named Tom, played by Tamora Morrison. Who is a lighthouse keeper? He's a lighthouse keeper. That is hot. In Maine. That's really hot that he's a lighthouse keeper. He is really hot, period, in anything. True.

He's really hot. Unrelated to being a lighthouse keeper, he's hot, but it doesn't hurt. He's also been the voice of Boba Fett for like nearly 20 years, I want to say. Yeah, he was Jango Fett in Clone Wars and Attack of the Clones. And then he's Mr. Fett in some capacity and has been for a while. He's back in The Mandalorian and he's doing the book of Boba Fett. The only time I have never liked him was in once for warriors because he's like violently abusive in that movie and it's like oh it's hard like get a maudi guest on the show to talk about the movie because it's good but it

is like ah i almost hated him thank god he made this movie because i love him again but yeah this one he's at he's being a good dad in a lighthouse and i love that for him so atlanta and tom fall in love and they have a baby named arthur and then when arthur is a small child orvax the king of atlantis or one of the kings because you find out there are several kings who Atlanta was arranged to be married to, he sends soldiers to capture Atlanta and bring her back. And she realizes that she has to return to Atlantis. I kept writing down Atlanta in my notes. So if I accidentally say Atlanta, to refer to either Atlantis or Atlanta. Oh, with my accent, I'm gonna call him Ackerman at least 20 million times.

So apologies to everyone. Yeah, I'm going to say the wrong names all the time. So she kind of surrenders and returns to Atlantis in order to keep Tom and Arthur safe. I'm such a fool. I was like, wow, I can't believe Nicole Kidman did this movie for two minutes. That's so interesting. But then I was like, oh, and then later I was like, oh, right, right, right. She wouldn't do that. That wouldn't make sense. She does say that one day she will return, which is foreshadowing. That's a plant. Can I just talk about like that whole introduction

to the movie? Because, you know, because you know yeah oh okay I'm gonna try to keep it together so my um my mom and I when we went and saw this movie I had just moved home from Finland I was going through a divorce and she had pancreatic cancer and was just about to go into receiving treatment for that so uh so watching this movie with her, like right next to me, she, you know, it was kind of foreshadowing things that,

not only that I was going to have to deal with. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, please take your time. But you know, also, but also things that my dad was going to be dealing with as far because, because you want to be hopeful. You want to be hopeful, but you know, you know that that's not how it's going to be you know in the end and um her absence in the movie you know like it touches the characters so much you know like when he goes down to the the dock every morning every morning yeah you know because she says that you know we'll be together again and she'll see me again and that she'll yeah she'll she's like i'll meet you here one day

and then of course arthur you know like not having his mother in his life is damaging you know like it's it's painful and especially like with this extra layer with racism and separation from your culture and not really belonging to that culture you know especially not fully belonging to a culture of someone that you love on top of that yeah you know it's uh yeah it gets to you you know when you're watching this as this biracial kid um kid you know I was like 30 but you know but you know watching it and uh yeah just kind of sitting there in the theater with mom and watching this and kind of knowing you know in the back of your head yeah what's gonna happen and uh the whole intro to the movie first 10 minutes of aquaman i'm a mess like this um but thankfully thankfully

the movie is a lot more fun than uh than this the tone the tone shifts a bit from that point onward um but it is I mean it is like it's really beautifully done like the that scene of them oh for sure oh because they they. They look just like my parents. I mean, it totally looks like my parents, so that wasn't lost on me. Yeah. I love that Aquaman

loves his dad. Especially as someone taking care of my dad, you know, as someone taking care of your dad, you know, by yourself, like I'm not really by myself, like my sisters help too, but you know, I, I live with him and I take care of them and make sure that, you know, the house is taken care of and that he's taken his medicine and stuff,

you know, and seeing Aquaman's relationship with uh his father as you know you're his son but you're also his best friend and you're also his protector you know it's uh yeah yeah i do want to talk about their relationship more because i feel like that's one of the big strengths of the movie it's I mean then just like how it's so funny because it's like I I feel like that like is a testament to the actors like you don't actually spend a lot of time with Aquaman and his dad but when you do it's you just like feel it and his dad is so like awesome yeah good. And you know, Aquaman's like, I'm not Aquaman. And his dad's like,

okay, it's awesome. Like, and again, that it, that feels like an outlier in a superhero movie where it like someone who's like very, I mean,

even though Arthur can't be with his mom for the majority of his life, she's, I mean, even though Arthur can't be with his mom for the majority of his life, he's still very connected to her and thinks well of her. I don't know. It's just I was like, oh, this superhero loves his parents so much. They love him back. It's so nice. Yeah. And then there's Patrick Wilson.

Oh, man. This guy. This asshole. The character, not the actor. The actor's good yeah he's he's about to show up before we see him though we briefly see arthur a few years later on a school trip to the aquarium with the two worst bullies ever in any movie ever brutal that was so much to me like the scene from the first harry potter movie where like yes he's talking to the snake through the glass except arthur's talking to some sharks or something and then there's like two dudleys behind him trying to bully him and they're like so much

older than he is which is even weird he looks like he's about like four and they're like they're like two feet taller than him i'm just like james wan fanning out here but i feel like things that happen in james wan movies just happen like weirdly at an 11 sometimes for no reason at all and i felt like that bullying moment i'm like why is this so intense and why are the police so old and like what is happening um yeah but then it or like the moment where it's like whatever Mira and Aquaman almost kiss and then there's an explosion like next to their heads and you're like Mr. Wan that was not necessary but I'm I'm glad you did it there's like 20 explosions in this

movie that happened it's out of nowhere I'm like why again it's quite j nowhere. I'm like, why? Again? It's quite jarring. He's just like, we have the budget. Let's do it. The important thing we learn from the scene is that Aquaman is able to communicate with marine life. Then we cut to him as an adult. He's now Jason Momoa. He's already a badass superhero. We see this sequence where he stops this pirate attack against a Russian submarine.

And the main pirate is David, aka Black Manta, who is not quite Black Manta yet, but he's like kind of having his origin story in the background. Oh, fully having his origin story. There's a Shakespearean monologue. There's a dramatic explosion death like yes yes yes yeah uh he's played by yaya abdul-matin the second so manta now has a vendetta against aquaman because manta's dad dies during this attack and manta blames aquaman i felt so bad for him like i legit ah i mean like even watching it i'm like oh man that was mean as hell right yeah because he's like ask the sea for mercy but then yeah aquaman does feel like guilty about it later i'm glad he does because i felt bad yeah that was brutal like i know that

they're bad guys and i know that they like killed innocent people and they're stealing shit but i'm like man the dude is begging you to save his dad oh my god i don't know if i could say no or fucking take him to jail you know i mean honestly makes for an interesting superhero because a lot of superheroes are so morally pure and good that it kind of gets boring boring so for aquaman to be like no dude see ya later and then and then for him to like experience like which is a pretty human thing to do he's like acting in sort of the you know the emotion of the moment and then later he has like a conflicting emotion about it and yeah that's just all very human stuff my feeling about that yeah that sequence i thought especially like thinking about it when it comes up again later in the movie because i wasn't sure if it was like when that was

going to come back was like i feel like he was doing kind of like almost like a the way that arnold schwarzenegger would handle an action scene where it's like quip shoot murder kill but then we as the audience have to stay in that scene and like watch how it affects the people who like the cool superhero leaves behind and oh that that scene of like david climbing like the ladder shot i was like yeah oh it's so like it's so sad and i was like i think that that probably happens in action movies and superhero movies all the time. But the movie doesn't be like, and we're going to stay here, too. Just so you can see how upset these pirates are. That was good, though, because I feel like that legit solidified him as a good villain with a good reason to hate Aquaman.

He's strongly motivated. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Oh, my God. Yeah, that scene at the mid-credit scene at the end with him and randall park i was like all right i'm i guess i'm excited for the next one let's go yeah i i feel like really bad for him though um on another note just because this movie it's so long but it's it's so long but it has so much stuff in it so there's so much lore there's so many flashbacks

so much history so much legend and all of it is awesome but it's like they only really have time for one bad guy and this movie has two so he kind of halfway through gets kicked out you know like oh the way black manta i'm doing other cool things it's like they should have just saved him for the second movie i agree yeah or this one and then did something with orm later but i don't know it's like i feel like he deserved a lot better every time he's in there he's great but it's like you deserved a little bit more yeah give him more space for sure yeah i felt the same way i hope that he is the main... I mean, I'm hoping that that mid-credit scene

sets him up as the character in the second movie. I hope. I hope so, too. Yeah. Let's take a quick break right here, and then we will come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do.

One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? One-ten, one-twenty, she's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen.

Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies.

On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place And we're back. So meanwhile, underwater in Atllantis there are several different kingdoms uh king orm that's patrick wilson is the king of one of them he is aquaman's half brother because queen atlanta is their mother they obviously have different fathers. His right hand man is Volko,

aka Willem Dafoe, which he keeps calling him his vizier, which I've only heard that word applied to Jafar. Same. So I was like, oh, okay. So Willem Dafoe is the Jafar of this palace. Except a good guy and not a villain. Yeah. nice jafar uh he's also i it didn't occur to me till like halfway through the movie that willem dafoe is i feel like one of the few people who's in the mcu and the dcu that's right as like super different characters he's a villain in the mcu it's also weird to see willem daf not as a villain. Yeah. So that's quite something. Yeah, I think the only time he played like a hero or otherwise protagonist was in Platoon. Oh, sure. And let's not forget The Last Temptation of Christ or whatever that movie is.

Jesus. Yes. Literally Jesus. Famously a hero. Yeah. and this is another i mean i guess willem dafoe doesn't get near the lighthouse in this movie but it's another movie with the lighthouse that he's in wow wow good point jamie thank you thank you that's why that's why they pay me the big bucks um so king orm is trying to unite at least four of the seven kingdoms so that he can become ocean master and legally declare war against the surface dwellers, which he wants to do because he thinks humans are going to be the demise of Atlantis and everyone living underwater, which we are because we are destroying our oceans. Yeah. I don't even think that's preachy like you know how in like Ferngully and stuff like that like the environmentalist issue kind of feels a little too on the nose it's like I mean that's

kind of valid man we are destroying the ocean and the ocean is massive and vast and we're fucking it all up yes so yeah that's another reason i'm really psyched on the um the randall park character because it seems like he's gonna like he's like an environmentalist like he's gonna bring all of that into the next movie as well but that yeah i mean like patrick wilson obviously big old evil villain like spouting some of the nastiest rhetoric you could imagine in this movie but humans are destroying the ocean i mean but then nicole kidman kind of shows up in the end she's like no they're not i was like yes we are we are i do like when a villain is motivated in such a way

that is compelling or that like the audience can understand where they're coming from even if we don't agree with like the execution of their plan or or whatever it is but like oh it'd be deeply fucked up character but yeah we're like yeah you're not wrong humans are destroying all of the environment okay we're back on land this atlantean woman mera played by Amber Heard, she comes to the surface to relay all of this information to Aquaman. And she's like, we need your help. We need to stop Orm. Again, Nala basically being like, you gotta come and be our king. Because he is the rightful heir to the throne, because he's the firstborn son of Atlanta. And that's the moment you realize, oh, Jason Momoa, even though he's like six years younger than Patrick Wilson, is supposed to be older than Orem's character. He's taller, and that equals older.

And then also, Nicole Kidman is supposed to be playing Patrick Wilson's mother. She's like seven years older than him. We just don't think too hard about it. And she's only 12 years older than Jason Momoa. And yeah, I'm like, okay, you did not cast an age appropriate actor to play their mother. Well, I don't know what kind of like pact that Patrick Wilson and James Wan have. But Patrick Wilson has to be in all of his movies or except for Malignant. But Patrick Wilson isn't in like literally all of James Wan's movies. So that's, I I think why he's here

got it something uh interesting that you know upon watching Aquaman uh several times was um or you know like I don't know if he's a good villain but the interesting thing about him is that there's room for like complexity because you know he benefits from a society and a system that gives him power of course and it's interesting that he doesn't hate his dad for killing his mother you know there's never a moment where it's like Atlantis was fucking wrong for what they did to my mom. This is bullshit. Right. Because it's easier to blame it on Aquaman.

Like if it wasn't for you and it wasn't for your dad, my mom would still be alive. And this is your fault, which goes into like the racial implications, too, because he's totally an ocean colonizer. Like an ocean supremacist. Like he is starting to by the end of the movie, he's like an ocean colonizer. Like an ocean supremacist. Like he is starting to, by the end of the movie, he's like spouting pure blood. Like he's like, they go all the way with that character.

He's getting very fashy with his politics. Yeah. I noticed that as well. And like contrasting that with how Aquaman feels of like, I sort of assumed just based on having seen superhero movies I was like okay Aquaman's gonna blame himself for what happened to his mother and then that's the journey of like it wasn't all my fault but it's like it's more detailed than that and I really liked that scene with Aquaman teen with Willem Dafoe uh and he's saying like the opposite of what orm is saying

he's like he's furious at the system that allowed that to happen to his mother and i just feel like yeah it speaks to like how different their environments were and how different their upbringings were where like patrick wilson was raised by a fascist and you know aquaman was raised by a very kind lighthouse keeper and it makes a difference patrick wilson is white and because that's the other thing like um with aquaman there's never like a line or anything in the movie where you know he'd be like why you think you're special white people treat me like shit all the time on land you guys aren't any different blah blah you know what i mean and it's you know there's never a line of dialogue like

that but for the biracial people in the room watching this it's like oh yeah of course he would think that way you know and of course aquaman's going to be thinking you know oh it's the fucking system you know it's atlantis and these racist ass white mermaids that killed my mom for loving a brown man like human but the human in this specific example is indigenous right right and uh the other guy's like no it's you no so that's interesting like right it's not subtle i wouldn't say that it was subtle i think it's just apparent and just kind of treated like, duh. Right. If you get it, you get it.

Yeah, the metaphor is pretty clear. That's another thing. One more thing. Sorry. Yeah, no. But it was interesting to me because as awesome as Polynesian mermaids would totally be. I like that the Atlanteans are white, I guess, and the humans are indigenous, like at least in this story, because it could have been so easy, like, because I've seen this so many other times where it's flipped, where it's like,

oh, well, I'm the outcast and i'm the illusion and the allegory for racism even though i'm harry potter and super white or i'm sabrina spellman and i'm white and they're calling me half breed but you know it's like no you're not the illusion to racism it's like the racism is present but it's kind of taking the back seat to speciesism i guess right i hadn't connected that but yeah it's like that it's not the like one-to-one othering narrative that we've seen a ton of times yeah and i think that gives it a level of sincerity too as far as like the allegory because it could have been you know take away atlantis and everything it could have been another story about racism and mixed ethnicity and all this other stuff but you know it's like okay so it's going to be about this with the mermaid politics who just so happens to have a biracial polynesian

indigenous actor and i'm like okay that's better right yeah a little bit more sincere yeah I appreciate that yeah um okay so let's see Mera has shown up and she's like yeah Aquaman you gotta come be king you gotta stop Orm and she also tells him about this sacred trident that had once belonged to King Atlan, that if he can find, he can use it to dethrone Orm. And he's like, no, that trident's just a myth. Then Orm causes this huge tidal wave that destroys this coastal town. It nearly kills Aquaman's dad. It sends a lot of trash that had been dumped in the ocean

back onto land as sort of like a warning from Orm. So this causes Aquaman to agree to accompany Mera and help her stop Orm. So they go to Atlantis and meet up with Volko, who, by the way, we learned through flashbacks that throughout Arthur's childhood, Volko has been training him basically how to be Aquaman, like be this magnificent fighter and teaching him how like, you know. Nice Jafar. Nice Jafar. You can breathe underwater. You can see underwater.

You can talk underwater. All this stuff. So he's been like training Aquaman his whole life. It is so fun to see scenes of Willem Dafoe being so nice. Like, wow, or that like scene where they jump off the cliff and he's like, you want to see something cool? I'm like, I this vibe is unfamiliar to me. This is nice. Right? So good. Yeah, I love that scene. One of my favorite shots in the movie is when they're sitting on like the edge of like that cliff under the water and just watching all the mantas like swim by. Yeah, like the movie is when uh they're sitting on like the edge of like that cliff under

the water and just watching all the mantas like swim by yeah like this movie is so gorgeous in theaters like just seeing it on a big screen was just a treat another thing but uh what's his name volko volko yeah yeah yeah okay so how do i tie this in let's? So once upon a time in the United States, it was illegal for Native Americans to practice our religion, our culture, residential schools, and just government policy. You could not be Native. And if you did have anything as far as a rattle, a drum, sweetgrass, sage, anything like that, if you were caught practicing and praying, you could go to jail for it. You could be in prison for it. So this part of the movie, again, it's subtle, but when you're Native and you're watching it, it kind of clicks it's like he's learning about his culture in secret because they don't want him to know about how to be atlantean it's like you're a human and we don't want you here

anyway but it's like learning about that element of who you are when you're disconnected from it and learning about the history and the customs and how to fight and how to use your abilities i mean in this movie it's talking to fish and swimming and finding out who you are but still it's like finding out this wonderful part of your family and your history and the culture that you belong to and uh it's just a small observation i just like really i really like that totally layers this movie's i was like once we start talking to ali i'm gonna be fully like this is the greatest movie ever made you know what much like the ocean this movie is deep yeah it can be and sometimes it's shallow it's a bit. Just like the ocean.

Okay, so let's see. So Volko, they meet up with Volko, and then he has a clue about the final resting place of this sacred trident. But before they can do anything about it, Aquaman is captured and brought to Orm, who Aquaman then challenges to a duel. And the terms are that if Aquaman wins, Orm will stop the war. If Orm wins, he's like, Aquaman, you're over.

So I guess he's going to kill him. I'm not sure exactly what that will look like. Confusing terms, which quickly becomes clear that they really should have hashed out what the terms were. Because he's like, the war will be over. And he's like, but if I win, you're over. Which is funny.

So silly. Uncle Bashir just laughed at him. Yeah. Orm is evil, but sometimes he's such a petty little asshole that it's almost like it's the same like brain scratch that when you see a succession character acting out where you're like you're being so silly right now the when he screams like i am ocean master you're like okay are you though are you you're not giving me ocean master and that wig i don't think so oh i love it right here we get another quick flashback where volko is training teenage aquaman and this is also when volko reveals that his mother had died long ago

and that she was sacrificed by king orvax who had gotten very jealous when he found out that she had had another son with a human man. Okay, so I feel just because of that detail, you know, that he found out that she had a child with another person, and that was enough, not even another person, but like human that was enough to execute her yeah and i mean just judging from the fact that she fled this arranged marriage and spent years away you know out of the sea and with this person and that they came after her you know um i think it's kind of safe to assume that or may or may not have been conceived of rape i think that's fair to assume that Orm may or may not have been conceived of rape. I think that's fair to assume. I think that is definitely, yeah.

Or at least, like, coerced into, like, obviously she was forced to marry this person by, you know, Mira's being in this arranged marriage as well. Right. But she's kind of, you know, like, oh, well, whatever. You don't have to love someone to marry them. It's a political thing. But this very clearly was not the case with Atlanta. Right. And I'm glad that they just kind of leave that up in the air, you know, where it's like, yeah, this is possible.

It doesn't need to be directly harped on. Addressed. And yeah. But it's it. I mean, that is like, unfortunately. Yeah. Very, very conceivably true and i thought it was i mean just another i mean in this movie is interesting is written by two men one of whom is a former cop so you know uh former lapd police detective this is getting worse wow really amazing.

Cool and great. So I don't want to like repeatedly, I'm like someone else in the room came up with this idea because you won't see me handing it to an LAPD officer. But I did like with Atlanta and Mira, two characters who are at different points in time in virtually the same situation, but dealing with it differently and that was again just more than i expected from a superhero movie with a gigantic budget i feel like if you have two with the you know they're basically the same person and you

know aquaman is like wow mommy is girlfriend now life is wild you know but but Mira and Atlanta in spite of how similar their predicament was they think of the situation and approach the situation very differently because they're different people and I hate that I didn't expect the movie to treat them as if they were different people because I feel like we've seen mommy is girlfriend now so many times but I appreciated that at least they did that yeah and I think it's because uh like Mira and Orm have this conversation it's like very brief where she's like do you think your mother would want to see her two children kill each other and it sounds like they grew up together like she must have known Atlanta when she was younger and she must have known Orm when she was younger.

And that's probably why she's a little bit more chill about like, okay, if I got to marry my best friend, whatever, but you're wrong. To marry this fucking dork from school. Who, at least she,

is it her? Okay. So this big battle between Aquaman and Orm is about to happen in like the Ring of Fire or whatever they call it. It's so big. This fight is so large. So they have this battle where kind of

neither of them end up winning because Orm is sort of incapacitated in some way. And I think it's because of, are we to understand that mera uses her like water manipulation powers to sort of like whatever fuck him up a little bit and then it allows her and aquaman to escape is that what happens something like that it's uh all i remember was just the scoreboard where it's like look at how awesome orm is and then look at this stupid drunk native man who wants to fight him right so i feel like mera is like we can talk about this later too but i feel

like mera is playing her cards really well where she's like effectively convincing orm that she's like his ally and yeah like this freaking aquaman guy is such an imbecile or something like that and then she's really just like doing this to get away from orm because she realizes like what a scary tyrant he is yeah anyway so this fight happens mera and aquaman escape and then they head to the Sahara Desert to follow this clue that will lead them to the lost Trident. As they enter the Sahara, it just blasts the worst cover of Toto's Africa ever by Pitbull, and it comes out of nowhere. Pitbull is singing. Oh my god, I like blacked that out already somehow that there's a Pitbull song in this movie.

It comes out of nowhere because overall, like the soundtrack to the movie is pretty cool it kind of sounds like Tron Legacy or something you know it's uh and then Pitbull and then Pitbull except for the end credits song where there's a song where it's just like everything happens for a reason I also like that there i yeah this whole section of the movie i was like this is like the not obviously the same because they were all over the world but i was like this is like the national treasure section of the movie yes where they're like collecting different things and they're like we need this we need this we're going to lose to another clue and that clue leads to another clue yeah exactly the scene where j Momoa is like, and this statue means this. And this statue means that.

I was like, whoa, he's doing the Benjamin Franklin cage thing. With Romulus. Yeah. It's amazing how Aquaman becomes national treasure for like 30 minutes. I was like, all right, sure. So they go to the Sahara Desert. They find this like secret sand chamber where they're able to play King Atlan's ancient message, which then leads them to Italy.

I think they're in Italy. I think it's like Sicily somewhere, that region. Right, right, right. Yeah, because there's like a Pinocchio joke that is planted and paid off when they go to Italy for some reason. You're like, what's happening? Hilarious.

I really like that scene, though, in Sicily, just because earlier when she takes Aquaman to Atlantis for the first time. And I think I read in an interview where James Wan was talking about this, how he wanted the audience to like experience Atlantis the way Arthur does, you know, for the very first time. And just the wonder and the amazement of it when he's flying through and he's seeing this metropolis under the ocean and all of this amazing, beautiful things, you know? So that scene is amazing. And then when he and Mira are walking around the desert and she's talking

about people destroy our oceans, you dump all your garbage into our seas and blah, blah, blah. And this is the worst place ever. And he's like, yeah, but we've got, you know, big mountains and beautiful forests and big lakes, you know? I mean, like we got some stupid people running the place. But, you know, like, the land is beautiful, too. And she doesn't really, like, pay that any attention until she's in Sicily. And then we see her, you know, experiencing Sicily for the first time.

And seeing all the flowers and the fruits and the people. And that little girl at the fountain. And she's just, it was so good. And then she starts eating roses. And then she's like, yum, yum. Like, this is strange. It was good. I like that.

I don't know. The movie has scenes that work so, so well. And it almost feels like a different movie because it's like, when it's excellent, it's excellent. And then when it's like when it's excellent it's excellent and then when it's really really clumsy it's just very clumsy it's all over the place yeah yeah yeah so they're they're following this next clue but then black manta shows up who has been absent for a while who's been absent for a while but who has also established this alliance with orm and so orm is like kind of making manta do some of his bidding and trying to get him to kill aquaman

so he shows up and attacks aquaman and mera there's a big fight sequence there they eventually get away and head toward the location of the trident which is in this kind of like underwater oasis cave place where surprise guess who's there queen atlanta guess who's gonna cry again very soon i did not see that coming i did not see it coming i thought she died i thought it was oh yeah yeah the audience and aquaman has everyone basically everyone has been led to believe that she died because she was sacrificed to the trenches but she managed to survive and she's been like hiding and living in you know seclusion this whole time so she and aquaman reunite They have a nice tender moment. And then Aquaman goes and gets the trident, which he's able to do because he is the one true king. He gives this whole kind of

speech about how he didn't come here because he thinks he's worthy. He came here because this is the only choice he has to save humanity, basically, because he's also talking to this giant fish creature who sounds like Flotsam and Jetsam from Little Mermaid. Whatever that was, I loved that big scary fish. I was like, I watched that scene twice because I was like, oh, it's just this this mean fish that has like a really hard grip. Like he's like, you're never going to get this trident from me. And then Aquaman's like, well, if I did. And he's like, oh, you can hear me?

And Aquaman's like, yes. And he's like, all right, see if you can get it. And then just like totally neutralized threat in the space of like one kind of cute. Jason Momoa's performance in that scene also was like I I just I just uh Jason Momoa was so fun like his delivery in that scene where I don't know if maybe maybe it was a choice maybe he just like there was scratch audio and he wasn't hearing the voice he was responding to but the the scary flotsam jetsam fish is like wait you can hear me and jason bemoan like yes i can hear

you and i can understand you and it was just like oh it was just so funny i loved that scene yeah there are two wonderful lines in this scene uh it's when arthur is talking to uh his mom he's saying you know he still walks to the end of the dock every morning waiting for you which you know ugly cry but then um she says something she's like you need to be more than just a king or whatever and he's like what could be greater than a king and she says a hero and i'm like you know that was the point where I'm like this is the indigenous representation that I really just want for like little kids you know what I mean like you know just a hero you know like I wonder if that is how like uh because I used to work at a

gym for a little bit and you know would work with little kids so one of the bonding experiences between me and these kids would be superhero movies and just how much my black students loved Black Panther so much you know like that was their hero and it's like Aquaman when she said that line I'm like this is what more than ever I feel like the little kids in the audience, you know, the little biracial kids, the Native kids, the Hawaiian kids, you know, like they don't need a king. They need a hero. They need someone who's going to do these incredible things and who lookhu monster and she's telling him, you know, you're not worthy and blah, blah, blah. What makes you think that you're worthy? And he just straight up tells her, he's like, I came.

Let me read it. It says, I came to save my home and the people that I love. The Trident is their only hope. If that's not good enough, then screw you. I'm like, i love it our king batman who batman who wonder woman who right which is like again such an interesting deviation from so many superhero movies or so many like i guess um like chosen one narratives where it's like you have to prove your worth and you have to like do the thing that

prove like, but in a way that feels different from because he proves his worth by like acknowledging that he's like, No, I'm not any more worthy than anybody else. I'm just here in this time of need. And I'm like, I need to take action against this tyrant. And like's you know if that makes me worthy then so be it and that is what ends up happening but like i feel like so many other chosen one narratives or i don't know it's just i really liked that about this where it's just like he's like no i like i'm not special i just like am here to help and then it's like cool that makes you worthy oh hell yeah but that means you are special like but he is special he is i know i was like jason don't be so humble you obviously are gonna get the trident that is the other thing is like legit he he like is saying

you know like i i know i'm not worthy i know i probably can't be king i know i'm probably not the best choice i'm like motherfucker you were fighting with superman and batman and wonder woman in the previous movie and you haven't mentioned that once like bruh i would have thrown that in warm space you're welcome mr humble i have i always forget that because i just, I don't have the correct brain for it. I'm like, oh, yeah, he knows Batman. Superman. Everybody. Yeah, those are his past. Yeah, I didn't see Justice League, not the theatrical cut, nor the Snyder cut.

So I always forget that. So Aquaman has already been introduced as a character into this cinematic universe a year prior to this, I believe, because Justice League was released theatrrically in 2017 so he's already existed in this universe as this character fighting alongside yeah the and i think chronologically that all happens before the events of this 2018 aquaman movie takes place too so yeah he's already done all this like superhero shit and then now he's like saving the world on his own uh yeah yeah i always forget that because i skipped justice league it's not very good i'm sure that they sort of want you to forget that they don't want you to like hyper fixate it on all the cool shit because it kind of undercuts the story but i i mean i don't know the script did make me forget i just sort of assumed i was

like well i guess he just hasn't met them yet. Because like you're saying, Ali, I'm like, I wouldn't shut up about it. Yeah. I would have said, listen, Orm, you wouldn't have an ocean if I hadn't saved the planet from Steppenwolf. So you're welcome, Ocean Master. Yeah. Mr. Ocean Master. How do you like that? Oh, that Ocean Master line read really killed me.

I was like, God, how do you say that with a, that Ocean Master line read really killed me. I was like, God, how do you say that with a straight face? Very funny. Wild. Okay, so there's just a little bit of the story left. So, you know, Aquaman's getting the trident. Meanwhile, Orm is launching an attack against some of the other sea kingdoms because I think he's trying to, like, gain control over them so that he can launch this

attack against the surface that whole thing i was like i do not totally understand what he's trying to do but then aquaman shows up with the trident to stop orm there's another big battle aquaman and mera kiss at some point um because she does have to be his girlfriend. Not only like, ah, it comes out of nowhere, but it's like, you know, it's Jason Momoa and she could die in the next scene, so fucking get him. But also

I wonder if that's what kissing Jason Momoa is like, where you just like, the chaos just kind of stops, that there's like explosions, that it's just uh time stops i mean like fucking lisa bonet i know i was like is that every day could she comment and confirm is that what it's like to kiss aquaman yeah please let us know lisa i also had that thought that i was like oh if i kiss jason momoa i probably would also feel like a whale just took

me away to some a second location afterwards because a whale just shows up and she's like gotta go and like later i hope that that is the jason mama experience that i that a free willy shows up and uh just takes you where you need to go afterwards right so they're having the big battle. Aquaman eventually wins against Orm. Atlanta shows up and she's like, my two sons. And then Aquaman shows Orm mercy. Orm is taken away as prisoner. And then the people of Atlantis accept Aquaman as their king, a.k.a. King Arthur, which is also funny. I love it.

It makes you think. And then the movie ends with Aquaman's mother and father reuniting on the dock and having a beautiful kiss. And then we get some voiceover from Aquaman saying that their love that probably never should have, or like, you know, wasn't supposed to happen, it did happen and it ended up saving the world. The end. And then you cry.

Cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry so much. Let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to cry and discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

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It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120.

She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything?

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Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown.

I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of

conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Where would we like to begin? I mean mean there's not a ton ton ton of um there are a few context things that we should touch on before jumping back into the story maybe but the things that stuck out to me was i did i was like god the screenplay ultimately was was co-written by a cop uh so will beal what the fuck um co-written with david leslie johnson

mcgoldrick which is a lot of names in a row we've also got a story by credit from jeff johns yeah question mark all i just i mean most of this crew seems to be like with kind of the outlier of will beal i don't really know why why he's here and i would kind of wish he wasn't but um it seems like james wan was allowed to kind of bring his like team of people he usually collaborates with to this movie which is cool because it looks like a james wan movie and not like they just threw all these dcu house people at him and he didn't get to make the movie he wanted that said a lot of men really male heavy uh production like top level production stuff is all all guys and are they uh i know james wan isn't white but are the other writers are they people of color or are they uh let me double check but i do not believe so yeah james bond is

chinese australian will beale is a white cop uh yeah i was doing it i was doing a quick google of everyone and it is it is mostly white guys at the top of this project yeah that's a little i don't know that's a little surprising especially with all the nuance that this film kind of has with the racism i i know that like just tangentially that like these movies are like there's writers rooms that take place around these movies and those writers don't get credited so i'm assuming i just am assuming that whatever goes right in this movie, a white cop didn't write. He wrote all the Nazi shit probably. Yeah, yeah. He's like, oh, Orm.

I'll take Orm. I got it. But yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge. And then also just for the 500th time this episode, shout out James Wan because you got to love him. And if you haven't really gone into the Wanaverse, he made I never get like, I don't know, there's certain people you think of and you're like, I'm so upset at you for being so smart, so young. And so like he made the Saw movie, the first Saw movie when he was like 25 or something it's ridiculous he did saw he did the conjuring he did

insidious he did like he did he just did malignant he's like 43 i was like this man and he seems like such a sweetie pie james i wonder i wonder if super yaki has made James Wan shirts. I would like one. I think another important piece of context for this movie is that canonically early, I guess, at least as far as like comic book character. Aquaman was created in 1941 as a white character. character and then when zach snyder whoever was in charge of casting jason momoa as aquaman in 2017 justice league basically was just like this doesn't need to be the white character that we saw in the comic books right we can just kind of cast whoever they cast jason momoa who is native hawaiian and to some extent native American on I believe his mother's side but he I think doesn't necessarily claim as much yeah heritage there so he um just uh give that some

clarity hang on yeah yeah Jason Momoa is a bit of a problematic fave just because he has played Native American characters in the past. He was in a movie called Road to Paloma, I think is how you say it, where he played a Native character. He was on a show called The Red Road, where he plays a Native character, and he was on Frontier, where he plays a Native character. And again, you know, the important distinction there is, you know, like Hawaiians are not Native American and Native Americans are not Hawaiian because it's, you know, different cultures, different histories, different cultures. So in an interview for the Red Road on Sundance TV, the lady interviewing him asked him if he has any Native heritage. And he says, you know, know my grandmother she has a little bit of Pawnee but I wouldn't say that I have enough and I think that that's an important distinction

kind of problematic phrasing you know in a way you know you don't really want to talk about blood quantum and go into that hurrah but you know the fact that he does acknowledge like you know i'm a little bit uncomfortable claiming to be pawnee even if grandma might have been i am hawaiian so i'm glad that you know at least with aquaman it's like yes this is hawaiian this is right polynesian but it's also indigenous and American and you know like he can really I don't know I feel like this creation was very much part of Jason Momoa's influence and it feels more sincere that way because it's like dude stop fucking playing native characters let a native person play the character I honestly wasn't aware of the full like the full context of

of his history there thank you for for uh letting us know uh we started to touch on this and ali you were speaking to this already but i'm interested to hear uh you speak more about kind of your connection with this movie especially in terms of like it's indigenous representation it's an indigenous superhero that there aren't really any other examples of that biracial representation i mean yeah yeah if you want to speak to that anymore well it was interesting when i did my research and um so many people you know like wrote these articles about Aquaman being like the first actual big biracial superhero and like I even was like trying to you know I'm like is that correct you know like I'm going back and the only one I can really think of was Brandon Lee and the crow because he's Chinese and white but little kids were not watching the crow you know like the same audience watching the crow

was not you know like it's not as accessible as aquaman was so in the same way that blade and black panther are different like people try to say that black panther isn't the first black superhero that was blade and i'm like yeah but children were not the target audience for blade they may have seen it that was like r-rated right it was like it's very gory and graphic yeah and blade wasn't presented as like look at this role model for children like no no right yeah and even jace momoa like in an interview so he says honestly, to be the first mixed race superhero in 2018 is like, really? Is there not one? He's like, that's a huge honor. And to play it so close to who I am in all of his imperfections, I get to play it in a way where you can really slip between those two

worlds. And I'm excited for the world to see it. He says, I haven't seen Aquaman yet because I'll be able to see something with my kids for the first time. And I'm going to be really emotional and affected. And to hold their hands, it's going to be a really cool moment to be a dad with a 10-year-old and 11-year-old. It's pretty special. And, yeah, you know, like that's what I think, too. Like, again, you know, I used to work with kids at the gym and stuff. And there was this one specific little boy, you know, and he's black. I don't know if he was biracial.

I think both of his parents are black. But he had these beautiful, like amber colored sort of their brown eyes, but they kind of had like yellow in them a little bit. And he would like, Oh, I have eyes like Aquaman. You know, I look like Aquaman. You know what I mean? It's like, I love that, you know, like, this kid who clearly is like, even if Aquaman isn't black, there's something, you know, it's a brown superhero, it's biracial superhero, it, some elements of him look like him. And it's like, like you know that's what I want for these kids you know especially indigenous kids you know who really might not have a role model like Superman or Batman or something to that extent you know like seeing yourself on screen is is very important especially like

when I think about representation for me, you know, there's a million actresses out there who look like me. There's a million characters who look like me, but I don't feel like they are me. But then when I see native actresses, you know, in shows like Reservation Dogs or, you know, anything else really. I'm like, I don't feel like that's representing me either because I'm so white passing and biracial and not really connected to the culture. And I think that's why I gravitated so much towards Frozen 2 when it came out because it was, you know,

and Aquaman 2 in this extent, especially with the dad and you know the parents looking so much like mine and all the other stuff I hope that answered your question I kind of went no that's like that's so that's so lovely to hear like yeah this movie I mean this and again it's like this movie is it's so interesting to me because this movie wasn't marketed in that way at all like it was just like here's the aquaman movie and then like i just and and i and maybe i just wasn't engaging with i feel like i'm my my feed does not superheroes don't come up in my feed a lot uh so maybe i missed this discourse but i didn't hear much about it either. I mean, it was like I was very pleasantly surprised. And it just fits into the story so seamlessly. being biracial, even though it's never explicitly stated in the movie, like he's half Atlantean and

half specifically indigenous human. It's always just like he's half human and half Atlantean. Like we've mentioned, there's like a clear allegory that can still be drawn because he, you know, he still has indigenous roots. And you can see this allegory of like yes he's half white because Nicole Kidman's a white woman and half indigenous so even though there's like not an explicit discussion happening about that in the movie really there's like this you know clear allegory that's being presented even so in the movie him being mixed is a thing that gets commented on quite a bit both by his like enemies who see him being mixed as like a travesty you know he's called whatever clearly like slurs by Patrick Wilson's character by King Orm versus other characters you know his allies are constantly

reinforcing this you know you're the bridge allies are constantly reinforcing this, you know, you're the bridge between these two worlds. We need you. And this is part of what makes you worthy because you have these two experiences. You have backgrounds from both of these worlds, both of these people that can unite us because there, you know, there's Nicole Kidman shows up at the end and she's like, there aren't two worlds, actually. It's not, you know there's Nicole Kidman shows up at the end and she's like there aren't two worlds actually it's not you know the surface people and the underwater people we're all from the same planet we are one and again like the voiceover the voiceover in the end is you know Aquaman saying you know my father was a lighthouse keeper. My mother was a queen. They never were meant to meet, but their love saved the world.

They made me what I am, a son of the land, a king of the seas. And it's like this celebration of his like kind of bicultural identity is what saves the world. Let me comment on that one. The end of the movie let me comment on that one please ah the end of the movie kills me okay so um when he says that i know he's like you know speaking in terms of like atlantis and people you know but so saying you know like they were never supposed to meet, but their love saved the world. It's like, that got to me, you know, like, for a number of reasons. You know,

all things considered, my parents were never supposed to meet, you know. And my dad's parents certainly were never supposed to meet, you know. It's like with residential schools and colonialism and all these terrible things that have happened, you know, in the United States and Canada, it's like grandma was never supposed to be alive, you know. It's like dad was never supposed to be alive you know it's like dad was never supposed to be alive you know like technically none of us are supposed to be here and you know like when you put it in that perspective what do you think that you know against all odds like we're here and we're here because grandpa loved a native woman and they had children and then my dad met my mom you know like how easily could grandma have been sterilized at those schools or could have died at those schools like we're still finding you know all of these bodies of these

children you know that are buried at different residential schools and stuff. And it's like, that could have been any of them, you know, that could have been auntie, that could have been grandma, you know, like the state could have taken dad away from her, you know, and it's like, so many things could have happened where they were never supposed to meet and they did and uh even then like once upon a time like interracial marriages were illegal until like the 70s you know like they could have went to jail for being married you know or you know having interracial children so it's uh you know against all odds finding each other in this life i mean it's kind of beautiful and i'm happy that the movie ended on a happy note i'm glad that aquaman's mom didn't get fucking fridged like usually yeah you know so the end where you know she's the end where she's there and he finds her again it's like when you're

sitting in the theater with mom and you know that that's not how it's gonna end because she's sick it was still kind of healing and it's like you know I'm not really religious or anything but it's like at the end of all things I kind of hope that that's where we find her someday you know i'm not really religious or anything but it's like at the end of all things i kind of hope that that's where we find her someday you know i'm so happy i'm not the only person on the planet who fucking cries over aquaman because like the other articles that i've read where people said that they got very emotional too ah yeah i don't know if this movie meant to go so deep, but I interpreted it deeply. So that's the beautiful thing about art and stories and movies is that they can be interpreted any which way they can be.

You know, the experience that you're any viewers bringing into the viewing experience will kind of inform i think it's really beautiful that a james wan superhero aquaman movie is something that's so like profoundly important and like impactful and effective to you i'm so glad and i'm so glad you have that that memory with your mom too that's really beautiful. That's really great. Yeah, me too. It was a good last movie. And a happier memory was when we were watching it is at the beginning of the movie when he breaks into the submarine. Yeah. Because mom, she would watch all of the the mcu with us all the time and her

favorite was thor like she loved thor and then when aquaman broke into the submarine and is just beating everyone's ass she's like oh no i don't know if who i like more now do i like thor more or do i like aquaman more and then that dude hit him and he like did that little head tilt before he like kicked his ass and we're both like yeah aquaman sorry chris oh that's awesome your mom had a type uh long-haired muscly men huge man who's also a teddy bear right oh that's so funny another lovely memory yeah man we're going we're going deep on aquaman i'm so happy ah it's good it's good movie i like it even if it kills me it's a good movie and it made i i wanted to just shout out how again i mean i feel like at this point

for the majority of people it's a commonly accepted truth but like this movie made a shitload of money this movie made over a billion dollars yeah like globally i think yeah like i didn't i guess i didn't remember how wildly successful this movie was um because i just don't pay attention to the dcu because i assume it's boring but then i'm like well if it's James Wan, it's not going to be boring. And it made a billion dollars. I know. The DCEU just hasn't been like...

None of them are really any good. I would say they only had like three really, really good ones. And that would be this one, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Birds of Prey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, those are the ones yeah those are really because the Superman ones haven't really been that good the Batman ones really haven't been good

Wonder Woman 1984 is awful oh my gosh what a turd so bad really and I mean not for nothing the three good DCEU movies were directed by women and people of color not a white guy to be seen wonderful yeah but yeah i mean it's huge box office success which by the way it's as of this recording it's the 20th highest grossing film of all time but hilariously only the fifth highest grossing film of 2018 which means there were four other movies in 2018 that grossed more, which was like an Avengers movie, Black Panther. Oh, my God. Incredibles 2. And I'm forgetting the other one.

Oh, Jurassic World. Whatever Jurassic World came out in 2018. Oh, my God. Yeah, I guess that's so wild. And all the while, we couldn't get a better wig for Mira with a billion dollars. She looks so much like Ariel from Disney's Little Mermaid that it's distracting. I did. Obviously, I mean, maybe this is the part where we can like kind of say it like as we talk about Mira. Yeah. Yeah. So like, there is definitely obviously a

conversation to be had about domestic violence and abuse, and it's not something that should be ignored or overlooked, of course. Several places have already discussed this, and, you know. As far as Amber Heard. Yes, as far as Amber Heard and everything that's surrounding that the controversy um so that's why we really just wanted to focus more on the indigenous aspect of the film um because there is a lot to be said without really even mentioning her right yeah but now that we are going to mention her you know not to give not to like um it's not framing her in a positive light so to say more like the character just kind of separating the two right yeah right we want to acknowledge that we are well aware that this is i mean an ongoing

case and we'll i mean well let's let's link to some resources to that effect in the notes of the show so if you're if you're not aware of the situation we're not going to get into it here because we would be here for hours and it would it would take away from what we do want to discuss about this movie but we are aware of the ongoing case with amber heard and johnny depp domestic violence is always something that we want to never ever erase in the scope of our show um but yeah so we just wanted to acknowledge it that that is something that's ongoing at the time of this recording in terms of like the case is still going. And I believe that Amber Heard is not coming back for the second Aquaman movie. I think she is. I think they are filming.

Yeah, well, there was a lot of controversy around her casting in the second movie because they wanted to recast her. And people wanted to boycott Aquaman 2 because of that and it's like you know I know this is an unpopular opinion I mean whether she's in Aquaman 2 or not I'm still going to see it because he is the only indigenous biracial superhero right like period and, why let her ruin that? You know, like for lack of better terms. I mean, why take it away? You know. According to IMDb, she does appear to be in the sequel that's coming out in about a year from now in December 2022.

So. Okay. Well, yeah, we wanted to make sure that we acknowledge that. And, you know, it would have felt weird to not say it. Address it, yeah. Address it, yeah. But we'd rather focus on other aspects of the film. We're focusing on the story here.

We'll leave a link in the description of this episode. Right. But, you know, just separating Mira from the actress. The character herself, I mean, is strangely pretty capable, I think, you know, just separating Mira from the actress. The character herself, I mean, is strangely pretty capable, I think, you know. I tend to agree. Yeah, to an extent. I like that her motivation really isn't, you know, oh, I'm in love with Arthur. You know, it's like, no, my soon-to-be husband is a fucking lunatic.

And, you know, we have to save the world. And I have to, like, kind of teach this we have to save the world and i have to like kind of teach this guy how to save the world she's kind of the impetus that gets aquaman even involved in the plot of the movie um which is pretty cool i was all over the place with her honestly like there are certain scenes where i was like because i i totally agree with like she is the one that brings him into the action but she's like I think unless I miss something the first time she participates in the action of the movie like she fights is an hour and a half into the movie and the movie is two and a half hours long to be fair so she is involved in the act once she is involved in the action of the

movie she remains involved in the action and she's in the rest of the battles but it it took a while for her to like become and there there was a and maybe i'm being like overly i don't know maybe maybe i'm being overly sensitive to this thing but the first time that she fought there was this music cue that i'm like i know this music cue it's guess who's fighting now. Like there is that music cue the first time she fights where it's a long stare. Like she looks at the bug guy. I don't know. Like she looks at the scary guy and she's like, Oh, you don't think a girl can fight? Like she doesn't say it, but the music tells you that. And then she fights and then you're like, all right, I guess we broke the seal there. And then she fights and then you're like all right i guess we broke the seal there and then she continues to fight and like we know why she knows how to fight

like all this stuff because she she had a mentor growing up as well so it's not a mary sue situation or anything like that but i wish she i i do i i sort of wanted her to get involved in the action a little sooner because there were i think like, like at least one, possibly two large fight set pieces where she's sidelined. And I didn't think necessarily had to be. Right. That's fair. Yeah. But I was also I was also paying attention to things like, does she ever have to be saved by a man?

Is she doing any of the saving? And I found that she she saves him twice she saves him twice one when the the first like that big tidal wave that orm throws at them she saves both aquaman and his dad by also like kind of giving him like atlantean cpr basically like using her powers to like extract the water from his lungs and then she saves saves him from Patrick Wilson's fashy rage. Yes. After the Ring of Fire battle. And yeah, I mean, when we do see her fighting, she is a competent fighter.

She can turn wine into swords. That's pretty cool. I know. I was like, wow, what a live, laugh, love moment. Well, I mean, technically Jesus is her teacher, so. Whoa! Oh, did we connect that? William Dafoe was like, guess what you can do with the wine?

Wow. Love it. It's so deep. Yeah, I think I just like, whenever that like, girl fighting now music cue plays, I'm just like, come on, come on, James Wan, you know, women can fight.

You've been doing that forever, but whatever. But, and then toward the end, there's, there is someone who saves Mira as they're approaching like the Tridents resting place. And they're being attacked by all these like sea creatures.

And at first I thought it was Aquaman, but then it turns out to be this like unknown figure who ends up being Nicole Kidman's character. So I was like, oh, okay. She at no point has to be saved by a man unless I'm like missing something or forgetting something. I don't think so. I don't think that happens. No, she doesn't. Cool. Okay. So that was, I was like, all right, that's, that's something for, you know, that's kind of unusual.

And she's fighting with weapons, like the bars is on the floor but like she fights with weapons it's not like random stuff that's around and has like powers i feel like a lot of superhero movies don't really equip if there is like one woman in the story she isn't like thinking of the first like avengers movie where black widow all these other characters have like out of this world powers and then Black Widow's like I can wrap my legs around a man's face and pussy slam him to the ground feminism but she's got actual powers also in the like when the movie turns into national treasure for a while and they're like having to use like clue solving skills she knows what to do with the first artifact she knows where to go and how to find it she knows how to access the recording which leads them to the next clue she memorizes that recording which aquaman like didn't even think to do or couldn't do or you know i relate to that too

because i legit would be like what did he say? And what do we have to do? I would have to watch it 47 times and like write it down. Yeah. And I like that. It's like, it's not just I feel like very often. I mean, I think you could even make this argument for National Treasure of like, even when there's a capable woman, she's along for the ride. I mean, in the case of National Treasure, she's a hostage for a while. And doesn't do any of the clue solving, even though she's along for the ride i mean in the case of national treasure she's a hostage for a while and doesn't do any of the clue solving even though she's like a historian so but but in this case it's not only is mira a very very important active participant they also share a common goal like her their fates are connected and so the stakes are extremely high for her it's not just like i have a crush on this guy so i'm gonna help him out or nicholas cage is taking me hostage so let me see what i can do like you know right and then the second big clue aquaman figures that out because he's like oh romulus was the king we have to put the bottle and the statue's hand and then that's how we find the

thing but it just means that there's equity between like she solved the first thing he solves the second one they're like equals in this endeavor yeah which again is not it's like should just be this standard thing that we can expect but it's almost never that way it's almost like you know the man doing all the work the woman's there along for the ride to look pretty and to kiss at the end which does happen in this movie too i would argue that this love story feels very wedged in doesn't really need to be there it doesn't really develop in any meaningful way except for that one scene where she's like look at me eat flowers and he's like haha you're you're cute and then each one and then they're kissing right there yeah there were a few like hand brushes and then meaningful glances. And it's like, is this necessary?

I mean, sure, I guess. It didn't like super bother me because the characters do have chemistry. But it was like, I agree. It's like it is wedged. It could have been potentially like cuter, I guess, if she was more like a younger sister or something as opposed to a love interest. Yeah. Yeah, because the optics of like well i mean i guess who cares but it's like she was gonna marry him she was being forced to marry his brother and then she's like oh i guess i'm just actually gonna marry your hotter brother

which feels very like classically royal story that felt like this felt like such a modern story and to have that like royal brother conflict felt more dated i don't know i don't know they would have taken the kiss out of that big fight scene and then at the end where he's like what do i do now she's like be their king and he like kind of kisses her on the forehead before he does that thing i'm like how cute would that have been if that would have been like a big brother like i'm gonna be the king or whatever instead of oh we just made out and you know what i mean like something a little bit right more wholesome yeah than tacked on yeah i like the little sister thing or like i'd like to just see more examples of like men and women being a man and a woman being platonic friends in a movie that they don't have any fine

they can still both be like movie star hot but also like it doesn't automatically mean they're going to be attracted to each other and gonna want to kiss so mad max and furiosa two hot people who don't kiss and they are just allies and i love that. Just let hot people be friends. Just let the hot people be friends for once. I would say, I mean, as far as like Samara, I don't know, I would have liked to get to know her a little bit better. She doesn't have that much of an arc.

She doesn't feel like that nuanced or complicated of a character to me. I don't know, I feel like there could have a character to me. I don't know. I feel like there could have been more like, I don't know, just emotional nuance to her, which I think could have been explored if she was like a member of their family,

like the little sister or, you know, a friend of the family who, I don't know. It just, I felt like there, there could have been more to develop her, but I was generally impressed with the way her character was handled

and the amount that she was given to do and the agency that she had i was i was generally impressed with all of that great i agree there is though a scene which kind of like pinged for me when it's toward the end aquaman and mera have shown up at this like cave place where the trident is supposed to be Nicole Kidman's also like oh by the way I've been hiding for 20 years and then we're also like does that mean that Aquaman is only like 25 because I think she he was like a small boy when she oh right so I'm like okay I guess Aquaman's 25 or something I'm thinking about it too hard Jason Momoa's like 40 something. I think. Yeah. And she's

supposed to be Patrick Wilson's mother. Like Patrick Wilson's like 50. You're like well I guess it's all relative. We don't know how people in Atlantis age. Right. Aging might work differently. This is just a goofy Atlantis observation but there would be some of the scenes in Atlantis

where you would just you would just be seeing the actors from like the chest up and then they would suddenly cut to a wide shot and you're like oh they're floating there it's just like that guy's hair is just like Dolph Lundgren has like red hair and he's just like sort of floating around and his hair is all going everywhere the scene where they take Willem Dafoe's nice Jafar character to the dungeon or whatever, they cut to a wide shot and like Willem Dafoe's like kicking. And I just was like, that's so funny. I forget that he's swimming in this scene while he's going, he's being taken to the dungeon.

Yeah, it looks very silly anyway so the three of them have all kind of reunited it's uh aquaman and his mother and then mera and there's a scene where like aquaman's like all right gotta go find the trident and he goes and like does the very important thing of the movie and then he comes back to where mera and atlanta or atlanta are just like well we had to wait for the man to do the important thing. And then we were just the two women who were sitting here waiting. Well, they don't want to fuck with Cthulhu. I think that's fair enough. You do not want women with a tentacle monster in this movie because fandom is weird enough without that.

Oh, God. Fair. Fair point. Fair enough. That pinged for me as well and i i feel like that could have been remedied by just like writing a short scene for them yeah because i forget who was saying it earlier but like she would have known queen atlanta since she was very young they would have plenty to talk about she was gonna be forced to marry her bad son she's falling in love with her good son they just have known each other for a long time maybe they'll

reminisce about something what has Nicole Kidman been up to like there's so many questions and there could have been a scene with them wait would they have known wouldn't have Nicole Kidman's character been banished probably before Mara was even born I don't know because I think Mara says something I think Mara says something like this goes against everything your mother taught us or something right like it's sad that was yeah it sounds like they at which again you have to suspend your disbelief and believe that Patrick Wilson and Amber Heard are the same age which is very obviously not true but yeah i like i think that they would have known each other but even if not there's plenty to talk about yeah or if like if we want to throw in another like fight

sequence in there where if like some of the sea creatures had like infiltrated this place and then we have to see these like two women you know kick some ass like it is an action movie after all like it just felt so weird to me that like he comes back and it's like these two women were just like okay we wait we were here waiting for you the man to do the important thing and we were just sitting here waiting and i was like that could have been handled way better yeah probably yeah but bottom line especially compared to superhero movies and the way women are treated in them for years prior to this uh Mara's involvement in the story is pretty decent yeah motivated there's

action like it's good yeah I wouldn't call it trinity syndrome either you know I there's plenty for her to do it's not like she just showed up and it's like now what do i do and i'm here look how cool i am what do i do yeah nothing yeah it's not like morpheus sent me it's like i sent myself because i see that uh this man that i've been forced into a marriage uh is trying to kill the world so i have to um stop him yeah and then in in the same way, I mean, I think we've kind of covered this at this point, but Queen Atlanta has a full arc. You know, it does seem like you're kind of led to believe for the majority of the movie that she is fridged,

but then not only is she not fridged, but she gets to go on this, like, beautiful journey that makes me cry when I think about it. So, you know know there are certainly more characters of consequence in this story that are men for sure there's brother conflict there's pirate merman conflict there's fathers and sons there's a lot of you know male relations and i don't even necessarily mean that in a bad way because there's a wide variety of them and then there are like two women in the story basically and they are both white ladies which i but the the women who are there i think that this script does

right by them and they have fully realized stories and they're motivated and involved and yeah i wanted to talk a little bit more about the relationship between aquaman and his dad because i think it's beautiful and we do joke a lot on the show about how like ultimately all stories are about fathers and sons um this one doesn't bother me though this one's beautiful this one doesn't bother me it's it's a very sweet and supportive relationship between the two of them. I feel like a trope you see a lot is like the younger man, the son trying to prove himself to his dad and like kind of being toxic along the way,

or like the dad character needs to redeem himself because he's been a shitty absent dad for his whole life. But there's like none of that in this story. It's just like, they've been together. They're supportive that in this story it's just like they've been together they're supportive of each other there's no like masculinity contest that either of them are trying to win they're just like having a nice time together and they love each other and i really appreciate that representation of like a father-son relationship in a movie because

we don't usually get anything like that yeah there is a there's a line of dialogue that Aquaman says toward the end that I found to be confused or I don't I don't know if this was a joke or what but it's when Mara is saying she said something like we need to like encourage diplomacy or we need to like try to talk this out or like get it so that the different like kingdoms of Atlantis are like, it's something along those lines. I didn't write down specifically what it was, but Aquaman's response to that was, I learned from a young age not to show weakness. I solve my problems with anger and my fists. I'm a blunt instrument and I'm damn good at it. And I'm like, is that actually even true? Like, I feel like your father wouldn't have taught you that.

I think he's just trying to be like, yeah, I'm just tough. I'm a tough man. The way the guys will pull you aside and be like, look, I'm a little fucked up. And you're like, can you relax? He was partying with those guys in that scene earlier. But it was so wholesome. It was so sweet. Can we get a picture?

Oh, I love that. That was the nicest. Yeah, you don't see Batman doing that shit. Aquaman is so much better. He's a friendly neighborhood Aquaman. Yes. Wholesome boy. wholesome boy yeah no that that relationship but that was really well done and it also didn't like it was so I don't know yeah it didn't like overtake the story in a way that I feel like

those relationships sometimes do and like like you were saying at the beginning of the episode Ali there's all of these like pretty nuanced themes in this movie that just it's just seamless. You don't feel like the movie is like really pushing any particular theme on you. It's just like it's just happening and it's good. Yeah, that's really surprising because in like lesser hands, you know, like this could have been so messy. Yeah. In a movie that's already kind of messy i'm happy that part wasn't you know it's right i did appreciate lee like pro environmental

conservation message of the movie although it was kind of weird that it was the motivation for the villain and that it wasn't also the motivation for like the good guys that's a little ghostbusters for me yeah we're like the epa is the devil uh yeah i feel like they uh they didn't want to make the the villain too sympathetic you know where it's like right killmonger you know like made so many good points and it's like well we can't have y'all you know rooting for the bad guy so let's make him a misogynist you know what i mean like right like panther uh otherwise i mean people would be like uh yeah you know what i mean right like yeah see your point maybe i should follow you actually yeah so then orm is like you know well you're not wrong but you're also like a fascist dictator yeah like orm recognizes the environmental issue in a way that aquaman doesn't as much but also his proposed solution is violence and like racial

violence and uh like would not resolve the problem but he acknowledges it so it's weird right and then at the end that line that nicole kidman when she comes to like i whatever it's weird. Right. And then at the end, that line that Nicole Kidman, when she comes to like, I whatever, it's a comic book story. So when she goes over and hugs her son, she's like, don't do a fascism. And he's like, oh, man, I feel so silly. And like, he's like, I'm sorry, mommy. I really I wasn't going to I definitely wasn't going to do a fascism. And then I'll go to jail now.

Go think about what you did in the dungeon and like in the swimming dungeon or whatever. And so it's like all very whatever end of movie stuff. But then Nicole Kidman says something like that makes sense thematically with Aquaman's narrative where she's like the land and the sea, you know, we're all she's kind of like this is a monoculture baby. And it's like, OK, that is I see that is, I see why she's saying that, but that really pushes the environmental stuff aside because we've been seeing, I mean, that's why I'm intrigued by the Randall Park character and how he is going to team up with,

be held hostage by, unclear with Black Manta. But it seems like the movie setting, like the franchise is being set up to address that in a more meaningful way in the next movie. I hope so. Seems like it. I hope that there will be in the sequel. I hope that there will be more women of color in it, especially like Polynesian women. Yeah. will be more women of color in it especially like Polynesian women yeah or more Polynesian characters in general because you know yeah it's the Polynesian superhero right and also uh I guess

the uh the environmental issues I wonder if it was also now that I think about it I wonder if it was kind of swept under the rug a little bit because Jason Momoa was protesting Mauna Kea around the time and then was also standing in solidarity with Standing Rock. Yes. And they were probably like, well, we don't want it to get too preachy because we're still Hollywood and,

you know, don't want to make too many waves. Right. We don't want to be pro- waves right we don't want to yeah be pro environment that would be absurd that would be a bad look for us it's like what do you mean oh god i mean yeah and then you think about whatever you can't you can't you just can't think about it like the carbon footprint of a movie like this is gigantic and there aren't enough um i mean that's a conversation that i we should have on the show someday but I just haven't done enough research on it. But just like the massive carbon footprint that movies have and how there's basically no regulations on how much energy you can just bust into the air, making, you know, Willem Dafoe swim or whatever it is like.

Right. Right. Yeah. I would like to learn more about that, too. I feel like we like very, very minimally scratched the surface when we talked about Babe on the Patreon. And I did a little deep dive onto like how certain practical effects have like killed nearby animals on movie sets. There have been a few examples of that. But like, yeah, it's not just wildlife. It's just the kind of ecological impact that a lot of movie productions have is, I'm sure, not great. The next big, big blockbuster we cover, maybe you'll do a section on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Avatar 2, probably.

Because you know that that's going to... Oh my god! When we do the Avatar episode that would be that would be because it's like oh this that movie does claim to be a lot of things but you're like bull but what was the carbon footprint of that mr cameron can can we get some numbers there among other things yeah yeah yeah yeah um does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie that they'd like to discuss? I want to say yes, but I'm blanking out. I think that's everything that I had.

There's so much to love about this movie. Yeah, I do have a newfound appreciation for it. I mean, for me, like when I watch a movie, I'm mostly analyzing it until I analyze it through like the Bechdel cast lens. I'm just looking at it from like a mostly like story point of view and like how well are the characters developed? How compelling are the themes? How structurally sound is the story? How like effective is the world building? And I feel like some of those things in this movie

is like what made it feel very like clunky like most of the world building is done through like very clunky dialogue and i'm just like come on lots and lots and lots of exposition but visually for me some of the choices were strange and again I was experiencing a lot of sensory overload but um yeah I do have a I have way more appreciation for this movie than I did before we started talking about it on this show so I every time I see I was telling Caitlin this off mic before we started recording but I was like everything that I found confusing about this movie I suddenly was like i actually like it because it's all james wan stuff like james wan created jigsaw who if can you think of a more expositional character than jigsaw he the movies are not particularly well written and they look absolutely weird every

single time but it just it just works his movies are just vibrating that's the james wan way yeah jigsaw is the ultimate i i guess listeners let me know if there's a character that um is more inherently expositional than jigsaw we should do a saw month on the patreon we gotta do oh goodness does this movie pass the bechdel test i forgot to pay attention it does uh i i saw it passing one time it is a two and a half hour movie maybe i missed something but there was one interaction that jason momoa is present for And it's shot from the back. So it could have even been ADR. But maybe someone flagged that and James Wan was like, oh, shit. But Nicole Kidman and Mira have an exchange where Mira says something like,

and you've been here for 20 years? And she's like, yes, I've been here for 20 years and then they're like anyways Aquaman but it does technically it does pass okay yeah well good for the movie they also had two and a half other hours to to maybe do that and but that is like that's I think an extension of a problem we've been talking about for five years now. That the first time I remember talking about it was in our Star Wars episode four episode where it's like, how could this movie pass the Bechdel test? There's only one woman she's got to want to talk to. And it's like, there's only two women and they only appear in one scene together.

Where else is this going to pass? That's like a structural flaw. I mean, yeah, that does speak to how there are a lot of characters in this movie and most of them are meant we get another like there's a scene where orm kills like the mermaid king man and then his daughter he's like teen daughter is now like the heir to the throne so then she shows up in a later battle and she's like doing some stuff here and there barely. I mean, blank and you'll miss her. But other than that, yeah, there really aren't any women. But like, for example, Willem Dafoe's character easily could have been a woman.

Like one of the villain, like other of the villains could have been a woman. There are. And I'm sure that that connects to like the comic books as well. But it's like this movie already this franchise already made changes independently of the comic book that improved the source material so why not why not keep going with it what if black manta's dad would have been black manta's mom mother right because then that really would have been shitty if he would have left his mom to die you know after what he did like no fuck you i mean black manta could have also been

a woman like what's what's to stop that from happening but i do like the idea of it being his mother instead of his father because then that's like aquaman has like mommy problems and that would like heighten the conflict between the two of them if they have this like shared like right loss of mother and like ah yeah it was right there true it was right that's why you don't let an lapd officer write your movie they're gonna fuck it up yeah um as far as our nipple scale goes uh zero to five nipples, analyzing it through an intersectional feminist lens. I would say between Mara and Atlanta, even though they are the only two women in the story, and they don't really interact hardly ever. But as individual characters, like there's interesting things happening there, there's more equity between like Mara, who is positioned to be the love interest,

but she's also more than that in this movie. She's out there. She's doing other stuff. She's fighting. She's solving clues. She has the agency to like seek out Aquaman to begin with. So, you know,

she's far more important to the narrative than a lot of other like superhero movie, female counterparts of hers have been in the past so that's cool the fact that this movie is representation of an indigenous superhero a biracial superhero uh that kids adults alike have seen themselves represented in is like really important really powerful very meaningful the relationship between Aquaman and his dad and how there's like again so many father-son relationships are in movies are so steeped in like some weird form of toxic masculinity

and the fact that that's absent from this relationship I think is a very positive thing to see on screen. And so yeah, there's a lot of things going for the movie that, again, when looking at it through the Bechtelcast lens, I appreciate it way more. So with that in mind, I'll give it like three and a half nipples because there's still some stuff that you know kind of rubbed me the wrong way the fact that the only black characters are villains like why weren't there black Atlanteans who are just existing in that world why aren't there other from a different kingdom or just like any yeah any people of color yeah elsewhere in the story because it's still yes a predominantly white cast.

And then the only black characters we meet, like they're immediately sidelined until the credits of the movie. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got like Randall Park, who seems like a very fun character. I was like, where is he? Give me more of him. I'm pretty sure he has a very large role in the second movie.

I did a little digging. And I love Randall Park. Yeah, he's great. So I think there could have been more just diversity overall. But yeah, even so, three and a half nipples. And I will give one to Jason Momoa. I'll give one to Nicole Kidman's wig. I'll give one to...

Always got to give one to her wig. And never to her. And never to her. I'll give one to Randall Park and I'll give my half nipple to the... How do you say this word? Corinthian? No, not Corinthian. give my half nipple to the um how do you say this word current corinthian corinth no not corinthian whatever the giant crab monster the fun monster yeah it's yeah so that gets my that's my half nipple uh i'll meet you at three and a half that sounds right to me um yeah i i i agree with what you're saying I feel like this movie is

doing so much for a superhero movie I absolutely loved and really appreciated you sharing your connection to it Ali like it is just like I'm so glad this movie exists and I'm so glad that yeah that just

that's how this world is and that it I don't know like it subverted a lot of my expectations of just what I expect from superhero movies in general but also just you know including a biracial character in a meaningful way in a very like authentic and thoughtful way that was also true to like who the actor himself is and just all this wonderful thematic stuff and then and then i i mean in terms of how i mean and and i i agree that the two female characters that we have are wonderful and they have these fully realized stories they're very motivated they're they're also very white and i really hope that you know in like like we've discussed already that there is diversity

across gender in this franchise as it continues to develop which I I want to believe is going to happen um also know like body diversity too like there's a shot where like the two women are standing next to each other and it's like oh oh, you have the same exact body type. Well, you forgot Nicole Kidman is taller than her husband. What if Mira was cast by like a big, hulking, gorgeous woman like Gwendolyn Christie? Give it to me. Yeah. Hell yeah. Or if that would have been Aquaman's mom, you know, like Nicole Kidman's beautiful.

What if it was... Right. We're fish people. We're gigantic. Which is why he's fucking gigantic. That would make sense to me. Sorry, I interrupted you, Jamie. No, I'll go three and a half.

I am now officially amped to see Aquaman 2. Who knew? James Wan's directing the new one as well. I appreciate James Wan. Okay. Three and a half nipples. Gotta give one to James Wan. I'm his biggest fan. Also, I'll give one to the Cthulhu as well. I'll give one to Jason Momoa. He is fantastic. I really love him. And I'll give my

last half to Randall Park. Nice. Ali, what about you? Yeah, I think three and a half is fair because, you know, obviously the movie meant a lot to me for a bunch of different emotional reasons. But yeah, it does have a lot of clunkiness in it uh the exposition like i said is all over the place there's a lot of information a lot of backstory um but all of it is cool so i'm a little bit more forgiving but it just could have been done better birds of prey kind of does that too actually it's just a little sloppy a lot packed into yeah yeah a lot of characters i feel like it's like when you have that many characters you're like well someone's gonna get lost in the mix like and yeah yeah i think it was supposed to

be two movies and they just kind of like combine them and it feels that way yeah it does feel that way but like i said like a lot of the stuff the stuff that's clumsy is clumsy but not terrible i've definitely seen so much worse in the dceu on top of that like just right but uh the stuff that they did well they did very very well like surprisingly well so uh yeah i'll give it three and a half also. I'll give one of these nips to Jason Momoa. I'd like to give him two, but he can just have one. I'll give another one to his dad because Mandalorian, Temura. I'm going to give the third one to Black Manta just because.

Yaya is so hot. And I know that's not what yeah is important right now but i just had to say that he's hot but man he was also like i know that there's a problematic element obviously with the black guy being the villain but man at least he was a good villain right which wouldn't have been an issue again if there were other black characters yeah right right but because he's he and his dad were the only ones, and his dad dies, it's like, okay, well, that's pretty glaring. Anyway. Right, of course. Yeah.

But then, yeah, my half, I guess, will go to Nicole Kidman. Just Nicole Kidman. Just get that. I have to give the full ones to the people of color and the indigenous folks. And you can just have half. Just half. Well, Allie, thank you so much for coming back and joining us in this wonderful discussion. And for sharing your connection with this movie.

It's, like, really moving. And I was, like, tearing up. Yeah, me too. Thank you for putting up with me during that oh my god oh my god please come back anytime like truly i will come back for avatar properly i called this yes nobody else gets to do it but me you've got avatar done deal just give me a call and be like all right we're doing this and i will be like yes we are my time wait when does the next when does avatar 2 come out 20 years from now probably yeah like not for another year

and a half we can't wait it can't it can't wait we can't wait another decade it's never coming out oh god but yeah i would love to come back And thank you for inviting me again. I love talking about movies. Yes, and we love having you. Where can people, you know, check out your stuff, follow you online? Tell us about the AILA test. We've talked about it before. But tell our listeners who might not be familiar what the AILA test is. Okay, so the AILA test started off on Tumblr.

It's the-aila- dash test dot tumblr.com and it was when i was in finland and came up with a bechdel test inspired litmus test i suppose for native and indigenous women where i noticed that when they appear in movies they're usually not a main character or a white guy's girlfriend, or they get murdered or they get sexually assaulted and every single thing I've seen. So I'm like, okay, let's look for characters who are the main character. So an indigenous woman who is a main character, who is not the love interest to a white guy and doesn't get sexually assaulted or killed at any point in the story and it took off like I don't know people just really responded really well to this which I was kind of surprised by but I guess when you have like

hard evidence you know where it's all like no I i don't think i'm making this up by seeing this pattern and it's a very disturbing pattern that keeps happening and people are like yeah actually that is kind of fucked up you know why aren't more characters passing the ala test yeah and it was kind of like i mean it was i believe like the first of its kind as far as like an like a test examining representation of indigenous women in media. And like when you have something like that, that's like also like easily quantifiable or like qualifiable. Like, yeah, I'm not surprised that it took off because it's like it's a great way to like open up that conversation about representation of indigenous characters and women in media. And that's all I really wanted it to do, you know, is just like start the conversation. And then hopefully it leads to better movies and better characters, which I hope it has.

Like people have been talking about it a lot. I think I mean, it seems like it has. I feel like I don't know, it already has like such a cool like impactful legacy the gina davis institute called it out so yes that's amazing congratulations that's so cool that was amazing she got me into the goddamn league you're part of the justice league now fuck yeah but um yeah and then i did another test i think i was talking about this when we were talking about movie talks with caitlin yes yes yes where it was does the indian live which is also like does the native american character show up in the movie and does he die okay if he does he doesn't pass

you know so right uh that one hasn't quite as taken off, but that's mostly because I am not organized and don't know how to run a website. So I'm figuring it out. It'll happen. But other than that, you can find me on Twitter, Allie Naughty on Twitter, Allie Naughty on Tumblr, Allie Naughty on TikTok, if you really want to see me embarrass myself. And on Instagram. I love your one minute movie reviews. They're really great. I haven't done one in a long time. I need to do it again. Yeah, bring it back.

Bring it back. And then you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. We've got our Matreon, which is at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. And that's $5 a month. And you get two bonus episodes every single month plus access to the entire back catalog, which is over 100 bonus episodes. This month, we did two of our most popular rom-com requests that we've just never done for some reason. So if you want to hear us absolutely hand You've Got Males ass back to it, that's where you can go to do that. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days as well. Yeah, the Matrion community is so lovely and so fun and is loose.

You know, we're hanging loose on the Matrion. So head over there. It's holiday time. And it's loose. You know, we're hanging loose on the Matreon. So head over there. It's holiday time. If you want to get some merch, you can go to tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And I think that's everything. We'll see you in December. All right.

Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Bye. days. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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