The Bechdel Cast - Moonfall

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

On this very serious and important episode, Jamie and Caitlin reverently discuss cinema's greatest achievement, Moonfall (2022)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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are all their discussions, just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's a patriarchy, F-in-Vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Caitlin. Yes, Jamie. What's the matter with you?

You're putting the fate of the world into hands of your podcast partner and some has been ex-astronaut. My intro is going to be Houston. We have a problem. What is it? The moon is falling. Oh, no.

I... Okay, welcome to the Bechtel cast for, I think, one of our most requested episodes ever? 100%. Yeah. People have been gagging. Foaming, frothing. Frothing at the mouth for a moonfall episode. Frankly, gross. It's disgusting.

It makes me sick. But we're here to finally honor the request. At least probably 500 million people have requested this. movie specifically. Yeah, which which accounts for about 20% of our listeners. So that's pretty big. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you're hearing this, it's now April, which means nothing to us except that International Women's Month has concluded. And I think that's it. I'm pretty sure. So yeah, we're here to sort of, you know, give the people what they want and honor your request for a moonfall episode. If this is your first episode, if this is your first episode,

episode of the Bechtel cast. This is a great place to start, I think. Yeah, absolutely. This is a, this is a show where we talk about your favorite movies, and we mean your favorite, using the Bechtel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what is that? Because it's going to be very relevant to today's discussion. Yes, it is a media metric created by friend of the pod, Alison Bechtel, who is, this is her favorite, but actually she's one of the people who's requested it. Yeah, she emails us every day. Not to brag. To say, where. the hell is the moonfall episode not to brag but she she was like and and then i did follow up with her once and i was like hey allison what is it about moonfall and she emailed me back fuck you which was like

whoa but you know people feel really strongly about this movie they do and i can see now that i've seen it i get multiple times to prep for this episode sure i see why absolutely absolutely so Anyway, a bectal test, many versions of this media metric. The one that we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And is that conversation about something other than a man? And I think that, you know, we're really going to, this is a fascinating stress test for the bechal test. because the protagonist, there is a woman in the leading role.

Are you talking about the moon? Yes, I am talking about the moon. And like most women, there's more to her than meets the eye in that she is actually hollow and a spaceship and full of some sort of convoluted AI messaging that as all women are. I too am filled. with a cloud of dust that does like basically just turn into a fist, right? Like it turns into a snake or a fist. Like a claw. These are the two things that the nanobot cloud can do.

Listeners, it's going to be difficult because I think that like we want to hold space for this film. I will not call it a movie. It is a film. It's an incredible film. It is a film. at his art house. It actually genuinely is an independent film,

which we'll talk about, which is... One of the most expensive, like high budget independent films ever made. Yes, and I would say, right, in terms of men's singular vision, right up there with Megalopoulos, really. Yeah.

With a movie that no one wanted that just had to happen. And we're so glad it did, because this is, we will be discussing it in the context that it is a feminist masterpiece. And there's also just so much going on with the other woman in this movie. Yes. Who is, I do think it takes us maybe a half hour to hear her name spoken.

And I don't know that it ever happens again. Justinda. Her phone name, Justinda. She is referred to as Joe. And sometimes as fowler. But I was just struck with, and this is speaking to how strong of a feminist hero she is, how few times her name is spoken in the movie. Whereas our male protagonist, Brian, we cannot stop saying his name.

Even and especially when it sounds silly. Yes, Brian Harper, disgraced astronaut. Oh, so hard for him. You know when you're disgraced and you just have to ride around on your motorcycle? on the streets of L.A. In your leather jacket. It's giving Larry Gile, honestly. Oh, wow.

We have not invoked the name of Gile in quite some time. You can't say it three times. It's like Bloody Mary. If you say Larry Jolie in the mirror three times. Yeah, yeah. You'll show up behind you. It's Candy Man all over again. I don't know why that cracked me up so much.

I don't want to, I don't want to conjure him today. Not today. No. Larry G. It's too late for that, Jamie. There he is. No.

No, he doesn't even kill you. He just slowly tries to convince you that you're not queer. You're in love with him. Oh my God. I forgot. That's what Larry Gie's story is all about. But that's. for another episode you can no longer listen to because we deleted it.

Should we recover it someday? I don't know if we, I don't know. I don't know if that's like good for the world. But you know it is good for the world. Moonfall. Moonfall. Well, I was going to pitch a double feature. Maybe this is a Matrion theme.

Gile and Chasing Amy. Oh. Are those not two movies about a man and maybe specifically Ben Affleck? And in both cases, there is a queer woman who is not interested in men, and he's like, but what if you are interested in me? Right? Is that the plot of both of those movies? I've never seen Chasing Amy.

What I do know about Chasing Amy is that it has a massive queer fan base, which I do not believe that Gile can say. It would be an interesting comparison, because there was a documentary that came out a couple years ago that Princess Weeks is talking head in, I'm pretty sure, called Chasing Chasing Amy about the queer community's fascination with that movie specifically.

And as far as I know, there's no chasing Larry Geeley. Well, I have to imagine getting back on track that Moonfall has an enormous queer following because of all the obvious queer undertone. in the film. It would be foolish for that to not be the case, I think. Yeah. Yeah, there's just, so much, this is such a rich text. Oh, yeah. It really is. And I think, you know, don't look at the

date that this episode is released on. Just let it in. Let, I will say, I kept, I listened to Skyfall by Adele like three times. It's, it is kind of distracting. for there to be a movie called skyfall and then much later a movie called moonfall. A moonfall. Maybe Adele should do a cover. Let the moonfall. I feel like they tried. It seems like this movie was willing to do really anything for $5 because it turns into randomly a commercial for men and feminist masterpiece, feminist masterpiece. Yeah, yeah. It turns into a commercial for Lexus for like five full minutes.

Yes. Which was kind of wild where he goes like, let's go hyperdrive. And then he just turns like his Lexus to sports mode. And you're like, Jesus Christ. And then it like flies and survives the apocalypse, which I'm sure a Lexus would do or something. Or something. So we are here to talk about, you know, one of the feminist modern classics. to kick off the month of April.

April. Yeah, like the first of April even maybe. Well, yeah, which is also, oh my God, I was thinking this whole time, April 1st is my dog Sunny's birthday. And is there anything more moonfall than having a sun and being like, what should we call him? What's his name? Sunny? Sunny. And I wrote down how foolish.

And then I looked to my left and I was like, wait a second. The call's coming from inside the house. I too have a son called Sunny And he too is a carjacking thief on an emotional journey Wow I know I know Yeah this movie is about Fathers and Sons this movie is about

Mothers and Sons This movie could be about mothers and daughters But it is more about a woman named Brenda And two extras one of whom I think gets a name. Well, Jamie, if you... I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Hear me out.

I'm listening. The moon, as we've established, is a woman. Yes, the mother to all. Mother moon. And then also the earth is a woman. Mm-hmm. Mother Earth and daughter Earth. Which is why we're killing her.

Because that's what we do to women. Yes. We kill them. Yeah. But as this movie establishes, which is 100% scientific, fact. The moon gave birth to Earth. So this movie is about mothers and daughters. Right. Right. So think about that. I'm so sorry. You're right. It's okay. It is a story about

women and women only. Yeah. Jamie, what's your history with this movie? What is your relationship? I had somehow never seen this. I know that everyone else had actually Actually, well, I will qualify that saying that we watched this in bed together. Romantic. Plotonically watched it in bed. Okay. Put your fingers away. I don't know, whatever.

But yes, we watched this in bed together on tour. I think in San Francisco a couple years ago because you're like, you've got to see moonfall. Odyssey Moonfall. I'm not kidding. And then we started watching it. I think we both fell asleep like 20 minutes in. So I had seen the beginning of this movie. I wouldn't even say I saw the first act because the first act really takes its time.

Yeah. Yes. But I think that, you know, again, and I mean that in a feminist. In a complimentary way. It takes its time. So this was my first full viewing. And I have to say, of the. two hours and 10 minutes that this film takes of your one life you don't get a second.

Unless you're Casey at the end of the movie getting uploaded to... Spoilers! Spoilers! Sorry, sorry! Spoilers! Oh my God. You know that feeling when they scanned your consciousness and you're part of the moon now? I know exactly that feeling. I love when they scan my consciousness and I'm part of the moon now. But yeah, I wouldn't shave a single one of all 130 minutes of this off.

No. In fact, I think it should have been longer. I think it should have been Titanic lengths. I feel like it could have been longer, honestly. The chemistry between everyone is off the charts. Donald Sutherland definitely knows he was in this movie. Sorry, that's my son. Sonny.

Oh, wow. He just got, I agreed to save the moon, so they let him out of jail or something. So, yeah, this was my first full viewing of it. Wow. What about you? I saw this movie in theaters. Wow. And I was...

Wait, really? Yes. All jokes aside, I saw this movie in theaters. Why? I'm genuinely curious. And I'm going to uphold the bit. as best I can, but why? Friend of the show, Catherine Leone and friend to us both.

Listeners, you might remember her from our Spy Kids episode. She's got to come back. It's time. Yeah, we need to bring Catherine back. Yeah. She was like, Caitlin, have you seen Moonfall? And I was like, no. This feels exactly right.

I love that she was able to alert you to this while it was still in theaters. Yes. And it was urgent. And she said, you have to go see Moonfall. and I was like, are you sure because it seems like it might not be very good? And she's like, well, Caitlin, that's where you're wrong. And especially as one of the hosts of the Bechtel cast, you're going to want to see this because it's a feminist masterpiece.

And then I watched it and I was like, oh, my God, Catherine was right. Yeah. So I don't know why there was not more discussion around how feminist this movie was. Yes. in regards to how powerful and dynamic of a character the moon is, but that's what we're here for today. That's what we're doing today. Don't let the hollowness of this movie's moon fool you.

And don't let it be a metaphor for the film overall. Instead, let the moon fall in because I think what you'll find is that it's a hollow spaceship full of nanobots that turn into a big fist. And then they turn Samuel Tarley into an immortal moon guy, right? Yeah. Also, Michael Pena is there. Michael Pena, okay, this does not pass the Bectal test. And so we'll be talking about women any second now.

But in this movie is going to make it easy. Yeah, yes. Michael Pena, first of all, was not supposed to be in this movie. Yes, I read this. It was supposed to be, I think, Stanley Tucci? Stanley Tucci, which is such a bizarre thing. swap of actors. I would not say similar energies at all.

No. But lucky for Michael Pena that he was in this movie. The two things I associate Michael, well, other than like Michael Pena is a very charismatic actor, but the two other things I associate with him is number one, Scientologist. Yes. Number two, in one of my favorite clips that I like to remind people about every so often, I know where this is going. Chucky Cheese's favorite actor.

I just want to remind our listeners that in 2020, during lockdown, Chuck E. Cheese was doing this bizarre YouTube content. They were spotlighting the straight-to-h-boh, live-action Tom and Jerry movie starring Tom Jerry, Michael Pena, and Colin Jost. And Chuckie Cheese interviewed Michael Pena on his YouTube channel and said that Michael Pena. was his favorite actor. Wow. And so every time I see Michael Pena, I'm like, oh my God, Chucky is losing it somewhere. Chucky Cheese absolutely has seen Moonfall. He loves Michael Pena.

Well, of course. Wait, is it because, wait, which one is, so of Tom and Jerry, which one is the cat and which one is the mouse? I'm glad you asked. Cat, Tom, Mouse, Jerry. And Michael Pena voice is one of those characters? Which one? No, no, no. He plays Tom and Jerry's.

friend. Okay. I thought, okay, so where my brain was going, I thought maybe Michael Pena voiced the mouse character and because Chucky Cheese is a mouse, that's why he had such a strong connection to Michael Pena. No, no, that would have, that would have made sense. No, he plays the character of Terrence Mendoza, Colin Jost plays just Ben, no last name for Colin Jost. And Tom and Jerry, they're at a hotel. I believe that Michael Piny. works at the hotel. Okay. Chloe Grace Moretz is there.

Wow. Should we cover this movie? I don't know. I don't know if the world is ready. There is actually like an interesting era of like straight to streaming movies that basically don't exist because they were released in like eight months in 2020 where you're just like the. And actually the pandemic meaningfully plays into the production history of moonfall.

Mm-hmm. And I feel like it's sort of referenced in a, and I say bizarre in a feminist way, in a bizarre way in the film Moonfall. Sure. But so if you haven't seen this movie, please, please, please, please, go and buy it on Blu-ray. Yeah, spend as much money as you can on it. Yeah, order it from another country on Blu-ray. and really let Roland Emmerich know that you stand with Moonfall. Yeah.

And like many feminist masterpiece, it was not recognized in its time. True. But it has become a cult classic. Indy film is alive and well. Thank you, Moonfall. Thank you, Moonfall. All right. Well, should we take a quick break and then come back for the recap?

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the most feminist film of the past decade, Moonfall. We open on clips and soundbites of Apollo 11, the mission famous for astronauts first landing on the moon. We cut to January 12th, 2011. Some NASA astronauts are in space, ever heard of it, repairing a satellite. So this is Brian Harper, played by Patrick Wilson. I love Patrick Wilson.

I enjoy him. And it's so great for his career that he's in movies like Moonfall exclusively. What's your favorite Patrick Wilson performance? Oh, my gosh. Mine's a tie. Okay, tell me. Mine's a tie between Phantom of the Opera, obviously. Oh, right.

And Hard Candy. He's great in that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's so great. Is there a movie where he has long, straggly hair? Am I thinking of? Phantom of the Opera, I think. Okay.

Unless you're, he was also in a bunch of movies. Well, I, I, I saw Watchman when it came out, but I don't remember it. But he was in Little Children? Yes, I've seen that. Oh, I've seen him in Insidious. I liked the first Insidious. He's in the conjuring. He's, he's Mr. Conjuring.

Yeah, right. One of which I saw, oh, you know what he's great in? Hmm. Season two of Fargo. Oh, I only ever watched the first season. He's really good in it. Yeah, he's great. And so I think, again, speaking back to the theme of this episode, it's really awesome that for

some reason for the last 10 years, he's been in movies of the caliber of moonfall and like the conjuring the devil maybe do it. Right. Oh, he's also in Aquaman. And I believe it's sequel. Oh my God. Yeah, that sucked that he had to be in Aquaman like that. Yeah. And then... Doesn't he play Aquaman's like evil brother or something?

Yes. I don't remember. We covered Aquaman and I have to say I don't remember a bar of it. Couldn't tell you a single thing. Well, I guess that's probably why Patrick Wilson is in it because he's a James Wan god. Oh, so true. Due to the conjuring of it all. Anyways, his best two movies came out 20 years ago and... And we've got to help him out. Except for Moonfall, of course, which is his best work.

His best performance. Yes. So we meet him. He plays Brian Harper. We also meet Justin DeFallor, aka Joe, played by Halle Berry. Hallie Berry. And, you know, again, thank God, her best work since the Flintstones. Yeah, really, you know, there was a large gap in between those two movies.

where, you know, I don't think she did anything, really. Certainly was never nominated for an Oscar or won. Genuinely, I feel like in the last like 10 to 15 years, Halliberry, at least from what I can tell, has not appeared in movies as much as she once did. She seems choosier about the projects that she has done. And so when she agrees to do moonfall, you know, it means something.

This is going to be good. Yes. And she plays iconic feminist, just into Joe Fowler. Yeah. And I like that we know that these characters like each other because they state that out of nowhere after what has to be weeks, if not months in space.

Don't you just love to announce your relationship to another person after spending months of unceasing time with them? She's basically my workwife. She's my workwife. She's my workwife. I would be saying, I say that about you after we've been on the road together for 11 days. Just out of context, I just find myself saying it as if there's a camera pointed on me.

Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, I get it. I see the same thing about you. And much like Justinda Fowler, Brian Harper, we are definitely in the same room for the entire shoot. And the chemistry is off the charts. Off the charts. Yeah, the two of these characters are besties.

And then there's a third guy there too. His name is Marcus. Don't get attached. Do not because so they're in space repairing a satellite. When all of a sudden a bizarre space disturbance happens, it seems like a large cloud of debris, which might be sentient, comes crashing into them and propels. Could be a fistful of nanobots. It might be. I guess we'll find out.

It propels Marcus into the depths of space. Marcus is the guy who died. Yeah. I love how people die in moonfall. I mean, my favorite is Michael Pena's death. Michael Pena's death is awesome. He literally just lays down and he goes, it really, it's such a,

and if he only could have hung in there for 12 more seconds, he would have been taking. Because iconically, and this is part of the joy of moon. 12 seconds after Michael Pena's plot death, all of a sudden, Sunny, the sun, takes his mask off and he's like, the air's back. Why is the air back? We don't know. No, no, no, no. Because the moon is a woman, and the woman had agency. And she said, air's back. Airs back. You're right. You're right. Yeah. We're getting ahead of ourselves.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I love Michael Pena's stuff, though. It's great. It's so funny. Keep walking. Yep. Okay, so Marcus dies. Brian manages to safely get back to the spaceship where Joe has been knocked unconscious. And then he sees this cloud or this swarm of sentient space debris. Yeah.

Burrow into the moon. And we're like, oh, no, that's a woman being violated. That's so true. By the masculine nanobots. Nanotechnology, yeah. Yes. Then we cut to a year and a half later. Brian has been fired from NASA following this incident.

They blame him for Marcus's death. But he maintains that this bizarre space anomaly caused the mishap. But of course, no one believes him, including his best friend Joe. And this is an important lesson. saying about is that women, and I'm glad Rill and Emmerich brought this up, women are deceitful liars who are out to get you.

Regardless of how much you think you can trust them, you can't. Yes, that is one of the core tenets of the feminism of this movie, I would say. Yeah, you can't trust a woman any more than you can trust the concept of the moon. Yeah, everything you thought you

knew about the moon. The moon's heart guess again is a moon of secrets. A deep moon of secrets. It's been 84 moons. 84 times 12 moons. Oh, because a moon equals one month. Yes. Okay, I see. I see the math. Thank you. I, okay, sorry to harp on every single bit of this masterpiece, but I just, I was so visually captivated. Kate, like maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, you were as well by the gigantic unframed high contrast photo of Patrick Wilson and his son, Sunny, that his future ex-wife Brenda is just staring at. Yeah, no, it was really quite remarkable. I've never seen a photo like that in my life.

I have never seen a high-contrast sepia photoshopped photo of Patrick Wilson and a child before. And seeing it raw and unframed, for some reason, I found kind of chilling. And you're, of course, referring to his ex-wife, Brenda, played by Carolina Bartzak. And she is his ex-wife because this whole incident with Brian and this mishapened space has ruined his life. He's fired from NASA. And it seems to have caused his marriage to fall apart. Right. So he separates from Brenda and they have a son together.

And that son, of course, is named, as we've said, sunny. It sounds ridiculous. But I did it. And so did Brian and Brenda. Yeah. Names, we have to admit are better suited for siblings and for a married couple. But whatever. Oh, sure.

The alliteration of Brian and Brenda. Then we cut to 10 years after that. We meet Casey Hausman, played by. John Bradley of Game of Thrones fame. Yes. Who works as a janitor, or at least pretends to be a janitor at UC Irvine so that he can break into a professor's office and hack his email so that he can access satellite images and data about the moon's orbital patterns.

Right. And we're like exactly. I will say this part was supposed to have originally been played. by my longtime nemesis Josh Gad. True. And I'm glad that John Bradley is doing it and not Josh Gad. I think that's fair. Some days are hard enough.

Yeah, imagine having to watch Moonfall and then Josh Gaddy there. A Josh Gad performance on top of everything else. Yeah. It just wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been right. It would have taken an otherwise perfect movie and really knocked it down quite a few pegs. Although I will say I would have loved to see Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci. I know.

In this movie. You know, but but but let Michael Pena stay. Let them do the same performance next to each other. They are, okay. Brenda is polyamorous. She has two husbands. She's poly. And they hang out in a wide range of taste.

Stanley Tucci and Michael Pena. I genuinely would love to see a buddy movie with those two. Oh, that would be great. I think it would be fun. Imagine devil wears Prada, but it's Michael Pena instead of the Stanley Tucci character. Or Michael Pena doing the same performance right next to Stanley Tucci. And they're speaking in unison.

Yeah. Wow. Makes you think. Just an idea. This also, I would say, you know, haters. Haders would say this was maybe a rough year for John Bradley, filmography-wise. Because the other big movie he's in this year is marry me, the J-Lo movie. Do you remember that?

I remember it. I didn't see it. Is Owen Wilson in that also? Yes, J-Lo and Owen Wilson are in it together. I saw it. I saw it in theaters. That was when you were saying Moonfall, I was seeing marry me. Wow. Symmetry.

Between the two of us, we saw all of John Bradley's work that year. But yes, yeah, he's playing a guy named KC, who I thought was just KC, that it turns out it's KC. The initials KC. Yeah. Yeah. And he says the moon is hollow. And guess what? I think it's an important message that this movie holds, that conspiracy theorists are correct.

And we shouldn't worry about the various restraining orders filed against them. It was a mistake. It was a mistake because they were right all along. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Casey accesses data about the moon and its orbital patterns. And he sees something really bizarre.

We don't know what quite yet. but he tries to call NASA about it. Cut to a space center in Texas, I think, where Joe, who is now the deputy director of NASA, is told that the moon's orbit is shifting, and the moon is getting closer and closer to Earth as it continues to circle around it. And she's like, what?

That's impossible. And then she says, rather iconically, I think that, you know, for the hyper-confident characters that they are, it is wild that Joe and Brian do manage to be the last to know that the moon is falling. Because Joe is in mission control or whatever this like stage in Montreal they're in is.

And she's like, we need to make sure this remains contained. And then everyone in unison gets a push notification from like the times saying in all caps, moon is falling. Yes. Well, that's because Casey leaked the information, but the whole thing is like, we don't know the source of this and he is not a credible source. So why the world devolves into mass panic after this? Well, I mean, I think it could be interesting commentary on, you know, the state of the news cycle, the state of defunding journalism, you know, how experts are now being treated as credible sources when they may not in fact be credible sources.

However, I would say that is undercut by the fact that this conspiracy theorist, Casey Houseman. Of course, his last name being Houseman because he's a man, he lives in a house. Just like how when you're a son, your name is sunny. Your name is Sunny. And this movie went through the scriptment through many drafts, I'm sure. But that's why Casey Houseman, it's tricky because, you know, it's like it's one thing to say, oh, we are now treating conspiracy theorists with no accreditation as the arbiters of truth. This movie bravely asks, but what if they're right?

But what if every Casey Houseman prediction is right and the moon is hollow? It's the equivalent of if there was a movie about how like a flat earther was like the earth is flat and then the big reveal is that the earth is flat. maybe that was what the sequel that tragically hasn't been realized yet yet is there is a cliffhanger at the end there sure is that is very confusing in a feminist way because it is delivered by a woman and she says to kasy houseman more like casey middle of the moon man now because they copied his consciousness and now he's a part of the moon famously. She says, your work is just beginning or something like that. She says, I hope you're ready or get ready. There's a lot of work to do. So maybe the sequel to Moonfall is Earth Flat.

Maybe we're just going to kind of keep going through the big hits in terms of conspiracy theories of the late 2010s, Moonfall, Earth Flat, vaccine fake. you know, and so on and so forth. Yes, I hope so. I hope so. Me too. I really hope so. Okay, so speaking of Casey, he cannot get through to NASA. No one will take him seriously.

So he has to come up with a different plan. And he says out loud to no one, what would Elon Musk do? Now, this is interesting because Elon Musk, you know, obviously at the time you're listening to this, is a full-blown out-and-out proud fascist. Yes. And, you know, for those that have had eyes on him for years, this will come as no surprise. It is just ideology that has grown louder and louder as time goes on. I wouldn't say that his position has meaningfully shifted.

It is just increased in volume. Exactly. But there is this period, and it makes sense because this movie took so long to come out. But in the late 2010's early 2020s, where, Elon Musk is getting a lot of PR in film. I'm thinking of that Lindsay Lohan movie. Yes. We watched on Netflix, too, where it just, and I wouldn't say it's free press.

I would, I would heavily speculate that he is paying for it in some way. Sure. But yeah, about how he was for some time sort of positioned as the man who could save the world with vaguely conspiracy theory adjacent ideas. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I think the first time I got into an argument about Elon Musk was in 2018 in the writer's room for robot chicken,

in which I got into a shouting match with another writer, a man, a man older than myself, who was really infuriated that I didn't think Elon Musk was cool. And that really was the basis of the argument. Wow. And so for those of us who have been beating the... drum for a long time. You hear that line and you wonder, where is this going? And it's going to a later line that says, are friends over at SpaceX? Yeah. And then I kind of lost the thread of where it was supposed to have been going other than saying that conspiracies are real, which is a feminist idea.

The thread kits cut right then and there pretty much. It doesn't go elsewhere. Movies don't need to answer every question. No. But it would be cool. I do feel like most movies answer at least one. A question. A question. Or presents you with potential answers and you can choose which you choose to believe. Yeah. But some movies are just different. And this

are mysterious. So yeah. What would Elon Musk do? And honestly, I wouldn't be surprise if Elon Musk did something similar to Brian, which is like, wear an embarrassing jacket and complain loudly to no one. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how children's dialogue is written in this film. Oh, let's let's do that. Yeah. The way children talk in this movie is so true to life. You would think you're just walking through a Kmart. It is just really a Kmart. Amazing. Are there children at Kmart?

Well, there's, you're just walking through the world. You know, you're just, I don't know why Kmart came to. I don't even think Kmart exists anymore. You're just, you're just walking around a playground. Like, because it's, everything else sounds perverted. You're like, well, I'm not just walking around a playground. Yeah, yeah. Any kid would be saying things like, I hate New Jersey.

Any kid, there's a great scene that I really appreciated. where Casey is, Casey Houseman is impersonating Brian at the Griffith Observatory. Yes. Oh. Which is iconic in many ways. And there's what is, okay, wait, I wrote this down because. Is it the kid who says, well, are you going to teach us about the moon or not? Yeah. And he says it exactly like that. Yes. That is exactly what I was talking about. I don't know where it, went. But yeah, I wrote down the entire thing because it was so powerful to me. And then there's

like another kid who shockingly talks to the exact same cadence as the first kid, almost as no one was thinking about that. I just really, I really, really loved it. There's a scene where when the earth suddenly starts running out of air. Right. One of- Look out Michael Pania. Watch out. Targeting Michael Pena only. And pending doom for him. Just him though. His and Brenda's daughter, one of them, there's a newscast.

And it says something like, atmospheric dissipation is about to begin. And one of the daughters says, what's that? And then the other daughter who's, I don't know, maybe nine years old, says, the earth is running out of air, silly. feminism as if a nine-year-old child knows what atmospheric dissipation means i don't know what that means and i'm a hundred and don't get me started on joe fowler's son who is one of the weirdest kids ever committed to film okay so here's that exchange of the students yelling at samuel tarley at griffith observatory yes okay he's not two steps in into the observatory when this kid

clocks him and says at volume 1,000. Our teacher says you're a washed up no show and she's complaining to someone. You're like a second child says you really don't look like an astronaut and then the first kid says calling back to you, well are you going to teach us about space or what?

And it just makes you wonder does Roland Emmerich have children and does he has you ever interacted with a child? Has he met them? And then And the other kid is Joe's son, his father, because that is ultimately what the movie is about. Yes.

And if fathers and sons are separated, well, they just are like, well, here's Michael Pena. And he's a new father. So, okay, Joe Fowler's son, a great one. And I really liked that his father, Mr. Military Industrial Complex himself, is calling Halliberry on the phone and saying, how can you say, I'm not spending time with our son? I talk to him on the phone all the time. And then you cut, like, talking about him as if he is not six. And then you see a six year old. I'm like, what are you talking on the phone about with this guy?

Like, he talks about his six year old son. Like he's a full-blown adult consistently to the point where maybe at some point in the script, he was. I find the way they talk about the kid very weird. Well, okay. Sorry. Sorry. I'm being so negative. Well, yeah, Jamie.

How? I'm being a huge. bitch. You're being an enormous bitch and I can't believe it. No, but like let's be, let's think about this. Okay. Hallie Berry, she was, I think, in her mid-50s when she was-Hawley-Berry is Joe Fowler. Joe Fowler. She was in her mid-50s when this movie was being filmed and released. Sure. Her son is, yeah, like six years old. Not to say that you cannot have a baby. No, you can. You can, yeah. But I think it's one of those cases where they've cast an older actor to play a younger character.

Because heaven forbid we have a like 55 year old woman character on screen. And I would say that that's feminist, in addition to the pressure that is put on women to look much younger than they actually are in order to retain employment and entertain. and entertainment. And I think it's equally feminist how people will attack said women for merely responding to how society is insisting they behave in order to work.

And then they will attack other women who are less willing to adhere to those societal pressures and say, ooh, why do you look so old and gross? Or they will, regard women who are, you know, choosing to age naturally and infantilize them by saying they're brave. And there's just a million incredible ways to navigate talking about women. And they're all normal.

And they're all really nice. Yeah. There's also a character we meet who I think takes, again, in a way that it's like women are so complicated. In a way that it, I think, takes a very long time to determine who is this character and what is she doing. The character, Michelle. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I was wrong about who Michelle was in relation to the other characters about five times before I learned that she is an exchange student who is a nanny and perhaps a tutor.

I'm maybe still not sure what Michelle is doing. It is very unclear. I first thought she was dating Hallie. Barry. Yes, I also thought that. Or married to Harry Bill Berry. Yes. Yes. But then it turns out Hallie Berry is her boss. Right. And that she's like a nanny who's teaching her son. Mandarin. Mandarin. Yeah. But before we can decide who is Michelle, what's going on with Michelle? Well, she's sonny's girlfriend. And so then you're like, oh, thank God. Okay. I was, this woman was getting too complicated. So it's good that she's just Sunny's girlfriend. Yes. But I did I do I mean I do

genuinely feel like she and Halliberry. I thought that like you know because you made her at the house and and they have this like conversation about what seemed like their shared child. Yeah. And I was like wow queer representation but then you find out several scenes later actually not no queer representation. No. The scene was just written weird. Yes. I'm glad we got that out of the way. I felt silly because I was like, wait, it was I like, but then I rewatched the scene. I was like, no, that's, the way that they're talking to each other is very unclear. It was not giving professional relationship.

No, because like the first time you see Michelle on screen, she has, okay, actually, this is hilarious. It's early in the morning. She has a cup of coffee that she has made for Joe. and it seems the way it's written and the way it's acted, it seems like, here is a tender gesture, a loving gesture that one partner is doing for another partner, romantic partner. Yes.

Nope, it's just that Michelle wakes up at four o'clock in the morning to make coffee for Joe. Also, she says, So she's like a live-in nanny, but like, it's just very romantic. I don't know. Maybe it's just like these actresses or, just so like compelling. I mean, they are. They're beautiful and so you want them to be married. You want them to kiss. But like, yeah. But the funniest thing about that scene is that Michelle hands Joe a coffee and she says, black two sugars. Now, if it's a black coffee, there isn't any sugar in it.

Whoa. But she says, I made coffee just the way you like it. Black, two sugars. And that's feminism. And that's feminism. And that passes the beckle test. Yes, it does. So early in the movie, it passes the bechal test in women who do have names, although they're spoken very infrequently. And their relationship to each other is completely incoherent. Because then I went on this journey where I went back to thinking that Michelle was actually dating just into Joe Fowler. Because you find out her husband, but then it said much later on, no, it's her ex-husband.

husband. And I was like, okay, so she is with Michelle. But then Michelle shows up in a scene very much acting like a nanny. And by that, we're, we're well over an hour into the movie. And I'm still trying to glean the relationships between basic characters who live together. I still don't know who these people are to each other. And then it turns out, no, Michelle is straight, single, and looking to date Patrick Wilson's car thief son named sunny duh yeah

yes okay back to the thing we're on Casey he's trying to come up with a plan to let people know that there's something wacky going on with the moon

so he goes to disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper hoping that he will help through various interactions including the one where Casey is loudly blathering on about his moon conspiracy theories to children, we learn that Casey believes that the moon is what's called a megastructure,

which is an enormous artificial construction built by aliens. And then he tells Brian Harper that the moon's orbit has shifted and the moon is about to fall into Earth. And so Brian thinks that Casey is a lunatic. Get it? Lunatic? Lunar. More like a moonatic.

Moonetic? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes. Okay. So then the movie takes a detour from the urgent moon situation to introduce a few subplots,

including Casey taking care of his mother. who seems to have Alzheimer's. And Brian's now 18-year-old son, whose name is still sunny, getting arrested after being in a high-speed car chase. Yeah, like an O.J. Simpson-style high-speed televised car chase. Yes. As all car chases are, televised like their OJ Simpson. Correct.

Yeah. We cut back to Joe. The NASA scientists have concluded that. that in three weeks, the moon will get too close to the Earth, and it will basically fall apart and fling huge moon chunks into the Earth. Moon will fall. Moon will fall. The fall of the moon.

The dark of the moon. Remember that? I do remember that. Yeah. I think there is some weird conspiratorial moon thing in that Transformers movie, too. Really? I mean, I've only seen the first one. but that that would track for me.

Yeah. I believe that Michael Bay believes in conspiracy theories. Yeah. Listeners who are familiar with transformers, dark of the moon, is the moon a transformer or something? Okay. See, that actually sounds way more fun than moonfall, to be honest. I mean, a moon being a transformer would be fun.

I don't know if that's what that movie is about, but I feel like there is something weird about the moon in that one. Anyway, so the stakes are very high. The moon will fall. The moon is very low. The moon is, the stakes are high, but the moon is low, exactly. Yeah. And so they need to send a team of astronauts to the moon to fix it or something. To tell the moon to knock it off. To say, stop falling. Get up. Pull yourself up by your bootstrab's moon. Yeah. Then the scene where we were just talking about where Casey leaks the info about the moon's orbit changing.

And now it's trending on Twitter, which everyone believes, even though no one knows the source of this information. It is wild how that line of dialogue that exists in so many movies now sounds wild they dated. Like, it's going viral on Twitter, which now would mean kind of less nothing. And it's ironic that whose fault is that? Well, Elon Musk. Yeah. What would Elon Musk do?

Amongst other things make it so that that line sounds very dated. Yes. Anyways. So there's like now mass public panic. People are fleeing from cities. People are looting, all that kind of stuff. Which again feels like a weird amalgamation. And like it felt to me based on when this movie was written and produced felt like a dishonest conflating many issues at once reflection on 2020 and in a way that I found frustrating in a movie I otherwise love and an otherwise perfect movie yes yeah I can definitely see that but we see so little because like a lot of disaster movies where there's like a global disaster, you see a lot more of the chaos that the world has descended into. In this movie, there's only like very, very, very quick cuts, mostly as like news coverage. But you barely

see anything in that regard. Well, and in an interesting way, and again, this is an episode coming out in early April. So we're going to be doing extra care in the discussion. But like, it is interesting that like Roland Emmerich is sort of playing. on some of the disaster movie tropes that he helped popularize, which are like anyone in the lower class is kind of like violent and base. Yeah. Uncivilized, et cetera. But with regard to not showing the disaster in the disaster movie, I would say, Caitlin, you know, in their defense, they only had $150 million. And so would you be able to show a compelling image for $150,000?

million dollars? No, not me. I would blow that entire budget on craft services. Yeah. Yes. Say what you will about this movie. I actually think the special effects are decent. Which I don't think they're amazing, but I think it looks like an expensive movie because it is an expensive movie. For sure. So it's not like the effects look shitty, the way that a lot of B movie effects are really like shitty looking like this movie looks like they spent money on it but it's just that the story is and if i'm being critical and i wouldn't but if i was playing devil's advocate here sure sure i would say it definitely does look expensive what i don't think is that you can you can maybe get the sense that the actors more often than that not don't know what they're supposed to

be looking at yeah because the reaction and this is not a fault of the actors because these effects were probably not even conceived of yet, much less executed. But you can sort of tell that there's a moment with Halliberry I'm thinking about specifically that the reaction just feels a little low temperature for what she is looking at on a screen. I know exactly. Astronauts being eaten by nanobots like a snake. And she's sort of like, oh, that's really too bad. Like it's really

deadpan Kind of stone-faced No reaction whatsoever It's almost as if she were directed to say Like make a facial expression that could mean anything And Halliberry is an incredible expressive actor So I'm assuming she was told to do this But it's so weird

Because what she ends up looking at Is like really a good effect but very graphically horrific. It's like her, she's the head of NASA. These are, we are to think some of her like best and brightest astronauts, astronauts she would know personally getting eaten by nanobots on camera. And she's like, and she's just like, oh, no. Wow. Well, we should probably, we should probably fix the moon.

This moon. I will say, women in power. this is a great, I think that Roland Emmerich is bringing up another feminist idea here, which is that women in power is a bad idea. Because Joe Fowler, I will say it, I'll say it, she is not really killing it running NASA. She makes a lot of bad calls, I would say. There is like a small fuel leak and she disbands NASA. She said, never mind.

We're going to get there. But I was really kind of stunned at how they're like, well, there's a fuel. We don't have the thing to put in the thing. And she's like, well, I guess we better disband NASA. And then she does, moments later, consulting no one

disbands NASA. And everyone in NASA is like, we're going to Colorado. Okay. Colorado is like, I mean, is it like some Denver airport shit? Like I know that there's a lot of conspiracy theories in Colorado. Yeah. But it also gets, you also sort of get the feeling that like,

The Tourism Bureau of Colorado maybe through a couple bucks at this movie. Like Colorado comes up, Colorado, Lexus, Elon Musk. These are just things that keep coming up. Everyone evacuates to Colorado in this movie, or at least all the main characters. Yeah. Okay. So actually, we're about to get there. So there's this like mass public panic.

Brian's ex-wife Brenda's new, rich Lexus dealership owning husband, Tom Lopez. played by Michael Pena, wants his family to go to Aspen, Colorado, for reasons that never become clear. So he starts evacuating the family to Aspen. Brian, meanwhile, is trying desperately to get his son, Sonny, released from jail in L.A. Right. His son, Sonny. His son, Sonny. There should be daughters named Daughterie.

yes it should be that that easy for us too i know dotty maybe dotty oh maybe that's it wow dorothy more like dorothy yeah okay so then brian sees something on the news about how maybe the moon is a megastructure and he's like wait a minute that guy who i thought and who belongs in the loony bin get it more lunar. The moony bin. The moony bin or the moony bin, yeah. Yes. He's like, that guy said something about the moon being a megastructure.

So Brian goes to find Casey, who continues to carry on about how something must have gone wrong inside the hollow megastructure that is the moon, and that's why it's veering off course. Right. Now, meanwhile, a now. NASA spaceship goes to the moon, discovers that there's a huge hole in one of the craters. So they drop a probe inside, which prompts the sentient swarm of spiky technology nanobots to come out and kill the three astronauts who are on this mission, which we were just talking about, which Halliberry's character has absolutely no reaction to. Right. her boss is like, fuck this, I'm out. I quit NASA. So now Joe is in charge of NASA. And so with her new security clearance, she starts digging through some classified records, which I guess is the deputy director of NASA she had no access to. But now that she's in like one step promoted, she has all the clearance. And she goes to this guy named Holdenfield, played by Donald Sutherland.

who he literally he reminds me you know who he reminds me of hmm do you know that scene in aladdin where there's like that old man in the jail I think it's like Jafar and disguise yes yes Donald Sutherland's character was kind of reminding me of that guy where he just comes out of the shadow reveals some plot and then disappears and then the protagonist is like whoa that was kind of weird. That's kind of what happens. That is kind of what happens, except the thing with Donald Sutherland's character

is that it is implied that he's about to go end his own life right after this. Right. Jafar doesn't do that. It is, it is bizarre. It is bizarre because, again, we're met with yet another Halliberry reaction that is very low temperature given the information that's just been conveyed to her.

For sure. That scene sort of ends with her being like, well, these things will happen. Like it, these moons will fall. Moons will fall. It's like Vanessa Hudgens during COVID. People die. Like it's just, it's, do you remember? I don't know why that, that lives in my head rent free.

It was like such a horrific thing to say. And not that anyone should be thinking about what Vanessa Hudgens. said during COVID, but I still think about it. That's kind of Halliberry's vibe. She's sort of like, people are going to die. And that's sad. Yeah. So she now has all this new information,

including that NASA covered up the nanobot video footage that they did get from Brian's helmet cam from the scene that we saw at the very beginning of the movie. So she's like, oh my gosh, I believe Brian now.

So she's about to go recruit him. But first, the moon's orbit is affecting the tides and the ocean and stuff. So water comes gushing on to land and it starts destroying L.A. where Brian and K.C. are. And they end up trapped in a hotel. So they're just sort of like chilling in this hotel. They're like sleeping.

Hanging out. In hotel beds. There's some like hippie friends of K.C. house man there and it's like starting to feel like a movie from 1997 and it's like that's because it's Roland Emmerich directing it so in many ways it is a movie from 1997 but yeah they're just kind of hanging out they're just chilling yeah yeah who cares if the moon's falling we're just chilling just two feminist allies hanging out in a hotel nothing to see here yes then there's a part where Joe's ex-husband, Doug.

Who only appears in conference rooms, the entire movie. Yes. And like you said, he is military industrial complex, the man. He wants to take Joe and their son, Jimmy, also to Colorado for some reason. Well, because that's where it's safe. Visit Colorado. Yes. But Joe is like, I can't go to Colorado. I have to go to Colorado. I have to go to the moon. No, well, she does not really tell him that. He finds out from sunny later. Right. And that is one of my favorite non-reactions in the movie. Like, Joe and her ex-husband really found each other because they stay not reacting to gigantic pieces of news. Like, that's how

they became so powerful in the American government by not knowing what anyone is saying and being stone-faced in the face of absolute horrors. Um, where, She never informs him that she is not coming to Colorado. She's given her son over with her not girlfriend. It turns out nanny. And let's her get into this car with a known car thief. Yes. Who said, by the way, my license is suspended.

So showing no regard for her own child safety, even though we're told, but whatever. It's all about telling. It's not about showing. So even though her actions would indicate she doesn't care about her. her son's safety, we're told she does care. So she does. So she does. A half hour later, a half hour later, the husband calls, or the ex-husband calls, because they do, even in big government meetings, specify they are no longer married, as if there's a camera on them, as if there were a studio note saying, it's unclear who anyone is to each other in this movie. But Sonny,

a character this man does not know, calls him and says, oh, sorry, you're ex-wife didn't go to Colorado. She actually went to the moon. I've got your son. And he's like, oh, okay. Well, when are you going to get to Colorado? I was like, this. What?

Okay, also consider this. Okay, sorry. You're right. Huge bitch, huge bitch, huge bitch. Yeah, damn it, Jamie. I'm sorry. Stop criticizing this perfect movie. No, I'm about to do the same thing.

You're right. So the moon is famously falling. Yeah. And it's affecting gravity on Earth. Well, depending on what the plot requires, sure. Well, exactly. Yeah. But somehow it is not affecting the satellites that are orbiting Earth that would affect

people being able to make cell phone calls. Oh, yeah. Because everyone just keeps making so many phone calls, even though the satellites would be so fucked up. Gravity affected. Cell phone reception. Perfect. Verizon really should have gotten in on this.

Oh my gosh, they should have. Missed opportunity. I'm sure they were reached out to. Yeah. Yeah, that honestly didn't even occur to me. Yeah, everyone is making crystal clear phone calls, the whole movie. The whole movie. Satellites are working perfectly, even though the moon is crashing into all of them, probably.

It is really fascinating because it's like disaster movies, all disaster movies, good, bad, or not. have these kinds of plot holes present. But if the movie, if you like the characters enough and like the visuals are exciting enough, you're willing to like forget about a lot. Yeah, suspension of disbelief, baby. But it's interesting that we're noticing these plot holes and moonfall. I don't know. Plot holes, more like a hole in the moon's crater.

Moonholes. Moonhole. Also, they keep saying crater. And I was like, wow, that's, that's grants. My fiance's last name. Yeah. People are actually in sci-fi movies, they're saying his last name. And then in movies, in the movie Twisters, they're saying his first name a lot.

Because there's the Daisy, what's her name? Daisy, I forget what that actor's name is. But there's a whole thing between her and Glenn Powell. I remember me and my brother laughed so hard in theaters at Grant because there's a repeated line of, She's like, I need to go get a big fat grant to fund my research. Oh, yeah, wow. Both of Grant's names are nouns. I know.

I know. It's weird that it is his actual government name because I was like, it sounds fake, but it's real. Anyways, moonfall. I keep getting distracted, which is wild because the plot is so riveting. Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay, so then Joe goes to recruit Brian and by default, because, Brian and Casey are buddies now.

So Brian and Casey get recruited to help Joe. But they're not sure how they're going to get to the moon because according to this movie, all of the spaceships are in museums.

And don't worry about what that means. Why that is. Or who made that decision because you do get the feeling that, well, I guess would be Halliberry's boss, kind of a patriarchy, the guy kind of guy, who does quit his job, you know, you said earlier, he quits his job so he could, of course, go to Colorado.

Yeah. And then just like hands Halliberry a key card and says, you want to be the head of NASA so bad? Well, you are now. Now, why did that, assuming that's the guy who put all the spaceships in museums, what has NASA been up to? if all the spaceships are in museums. We keep cutting to present-day NASA and they seem to be fully operational. But then you find out actually all the spaceships are in museums, which is interesting because we've seen astronauts gotten eaten by nanobots today.

Today, yes. So it's safe to assume they were in a spaceship, but maybe that was the last spaceship that wasn't in a museum. Follow-up question. Why are the spaceships that are in museums so? loosely secure that there's graffiti on them that say fuck the moon that's a great question what museum are they in that security is that low it's a museum in l.A. also well clearly they didn't give roland emmerick any money because they made the whole place look pretty low rent well and then they and they flooded the whole

city it's true it's true they said they said fuck l a denver is the only safe place in the u.s or Colorado in general. Yeah. Okay. So they're like, yeah, all the spaceships are in museum, except for the endeavor, which is the ship that they were on at the very beginning of the movie. Oh, wait. That's the graffiti ship that says fuck the moon. Okay.

So, yeah, it's not in a museum. It was just in storage or something. It was just at like public storage. Yeah. Yeah. So Brian and a few other astronauts prep for this mission where they're going to go to the moon to stop it from falling. Well, and it's not a few other astronauts. It's like a lot of that.

It's most of NASA is preparing for this mission. A lot of people are there on the ground and then like a handful are actually going to go into space. But it's a big thing. Yeah. Until of course there is some sort of like coolant issue. And then NASA has to be. disbanded. Disbanded.

So they can all go to Colorado. So in the meantime, though, they're prepping for this mission. Space X gets mentioned. Casey continues to have a raging hard-on for Elon Musk. Their plan is unclear, but it seems like basically they're going to lure the evil, spiky nanotechnology bots out of the moon. and then blow up that swarm with a bomb, I think. I wasn't clear.

Are they going to blow up the moon? Or are they just going to blow up something like near the moon? That's such a good question. We're just not too sure. I wasn't able to get. But again, it's not the movies. That is actually one of my favorite things that because this is true, but I do think it's overused by a certain type of letterbox.

who will be like, it's not the movie's job to tell you all the answers. And then you're like, I do feel like it is the movie's job to tell me if the objective of most of the movie is to blow the moon up or not. There are certain questions that I don't feel are pedantic. And in moonfall, I would like to know if they are trying to blow up the moon or if they're like trying to do something else. But luckily, there's like a plot room inside of the moon in which things will become even more confusing. But that's, we're a ways away.

First, Halle Berry disbands NASA. And also before Brian leaves on this mission, he reunites with his son, sunny. Oh, yeah, because that's, that's the agreement. He will come back for one last. Hurrah. Blowing the moon up possibly. as long as his son Sunny is let out of jail. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes, it all makes sense. Then what you're referring to happens where an earthquake or something destroys one of the spaceships engines and the coolant is leaking or something, but they can't go to space anymore because there's only two engines left. That's like saying Josh Gad is no longer available. we can't make moonfall. We all have to go to Colorado. Come on. Right.

Where's your spirit? Well, KC. steps in with some new calculations. Much like John Bradley for Josh Gad. Precisely. Okay. And he's like, wait a minute. If we wait until the moon, which is falling,

is directly above us, the gravitational pull from the moon will pull the spaceship up to the moon. So we don't even need engines really. We just need the moon's gravity. And everyone's like, yeah. I will be honest, I'm so glad that that came through to you because I was like, I was really not sure what his justification for going through with it. Because it seemed like, to me, what it seemed like is like, oh no, this issue with the coolant is so bad that we have to disband an entire government agency. But then an hour later, the same person who disbanded said government agency, Hallie Berry,

is like, actually never mind, let's go to space. Let's go to space right now. Even though, like, I think canonically, NASA and by NASA, I mean, every employee of NASA who is just dismissed from NASA wouldn't have even had time to make it to the airport. Like, they could have come back. Right. She could have been like, sorry, guys. False alarm.

I shouldn't have disbanded NASA just there. But she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Never mind. Actually, could your son, who, again, this is an anti-curse rule show. But like, I would not let my young child in the car with an 18-year-old who had just been in a very dangerous car chase. Agree. I don't think that's good parenting. I think no.

But that's where Joe Fowler has me beat. I just like she's playing a game of chess. I'm not, she's amazing. She's trying to have it all. She's a woman in STEM. It's hard to have it all. She's the director of NASA.

She's got to go to the moon. She's a mom. She's just trying to make it all work, you know? Her ex-husband can't get out of that weird room in Colorado he's in. Any more than Michael Pena can get out of the weird room he's in in Aspen, which is also in Colorado. They're already in Colorado. Yeah, why are they going elsewhere in Colorado?

They're all in Colorado. So confusing. Okay, so they're waiting for the moon to position itself so that the gravity, because somehow, because even though the moon is smaller than Earth, the moon's gravity is stronger, and so it's going to pull the spaceship up to the moon. Maybe that's real science. I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a person in STEM. I think we can safely say no, but if listeners have dissenting opinions and this actually comes together quite beautifully, please let us know.

Okay, so their plans to go into space to the moon are going to move forward. Meanwhile, sunny, little Jimmy, and then this woman, Michelle, who we've been talking about, played by Kelly Yu. She is Jimmy's nanny, although sometimes it seems like she is. is Joe's girlfriend also, but yes, but no, but yes, but no. And she's also an exchange student. I don't even know why they mentioned that. She loudly blurts it out for reasons. Well, people do that.

Sometimes I just am like, I'm from Massachusetts. Like, you just can't. You're always shouting your place of origin and occupation. It's just, it's human nature. So true. Okay. So the three of them get in. a truck with sunny driving and they head to you guessed it Colorado.

Sure. They have to outrun a huge gravity wave of water that's coming from the ocean. They drive for a while. Then some hijackers steal their truck. So they set off on foot in the middle of winter, it seems like, because it's snowing. And to be clear, the carjackers, what we know about them is. that they're they're poor yeah and therefore scary and violent trust them right then chunks of the moon start barreling down around them sure back in space Brian Joe and Casey set a trap for the evil

nanotechnology monster swarm thing but it doesn't take the bait so the astronauts decide to take a smaller space vessel inside of the moon where they discover that sure enough it is a megastructure and they're like whoa so which means the moon is hollow the moon is fake the moon landing was fake Elon Musk is awesome that yes I never yeah well whatever I don't I can't think about Elon Musk anymore today on our joke episode. Sorry. What?

Wait, Jamie, what? What? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Happy April folds, everyone. Okay. Back on Earth, Sunny, Jimmy, and Michelle link up with Brenda and Tom.

They have to go find some oxygen tanks because all of a sudden the earth is running out of breathable air. the hijackers from earlier show up with guns and so they're hassling sunny and friends but they're able to get away and there's a chase and blah blah blah elsewhere in Colorado

meanwhile the military is about to launch a nuclear attack at the moon which I do appreciate is repeatedly referred to as nuking the moon that's the kind of disaster movie shorthand I show up to hear

in the movie Noonfall, moonfall. Yeah. Is that if Halliberry isn't expeditious in getting the moon saved or exposing the moon or whatever the hell it is she's supposed to be doing, they're going to nuke the moon. Nook the moon. Yeah. That's a tagline if I've ever heard one. Now that's what I call stakes.

They're going to nuke the moon? All right. We better get moving. Yeah. And really they do because Brian, Joe and Casey are. The moon's so fast. They're still inside the hollow moon megastructure. Yeah.

Where the swarm of nanobots start to go after them. But then something seems to save them and kind of pull their spaceship to safety. Brian, who has gotten separated from the other two, finds himself in a room. A plot void. A plot void with the moon's operating system. which has taken the form of Sunny when he was a little son. When he hated New Jersey. When he hated New Jersey.

And this is something that the movie Moonfall seems to have lifted directly from the movie contact. Because do you remember at the end of that movie when Jody Foster is like talking to the alien and it takes the form of her father? And it's like, yeah, this is a form that will be easier to communicate with you in. Moonfall does the same exact thing, except for it's Brian's sonny. Except it doesn't work. Yeah.

It is very confusing. I, this movie, again, I think probably politically it falls on. It's attitude. I just think because attitudes towards AI have changed and clarified and I include myself in this too where like I think in 2022, I don't know how many like cogent things. thoughts I had on AI other than I don't like it. So I wasn't shocked to see a sort of bizarre incoherent view on AI. It's really confusing because it does seem to be basically anti, but except for when it's pro AI and the movie cannot decide where it lands on AI.

Because they're like because of AI, well this is, okay, so this is actually going in sequence. Like we learn in the plot void that due to AI, there was an amazing utopia. So AI was good. But then AI became sentient. And then AI was bad. And now there's two. It reminded me a lot of I Frankenstein where you find out deep into the movie, there's a war between demons and gargoyles.

And you're like, there's a war between demons and gargoyles. It feels like that, except there's like a war between two AI. There's benevolent AI and evil AI, according to this movie. So it really does refuse to choose a side as to are we pro-AI? And they're like, well, we're pro the good AI. And we cannot be more specific about what that means. Yeah. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah, we can talk more about that. I really don't want to. But we can. Yeah, I mean, I suppose we don't have to. But what happens here in the story is this construct of sunny, this AI manifestation of this little boy explains that billions of years ago, the ancestors of humans lived in a hyper-advanced utopian society that like AI made for them. It was either AI made for them or they made the AI. but we do know.

That made it for them. We don't know. Or that like maintained the world. Yeah, it says, the movie says that this utopian society was controlled by a central self-learning computer system, aka AI. Right. For a while, this went great. Human ancestors expanded and built other planets, which they lived on.

They were like doing space colonialism. And they were due yeah but then one day everything changed when the AI became self-aware and it turned into the swarm of evil spiky nanotechnology that we have been seeing throughout the movie and that started a war against all biological life because of that the ancestors built structures like the moon which was operated by benevolent AI to try to keep them safe. from the evil AI, and they would send these megastructures to various solar systems looking for a new place to inhabit, and one of them being our moon. So the moon gets shot off to our solar system, but meanwhile, the evil AI killed all of the ancestors. So now it was up to the moon to create Earth from space dust, and it gives birth to the Earth, and it puts birth to the Earth, and it puts the DNA for humans onto earth so that humans would eventually evolve, I guess. I gotta say, my eyes glazed over when I heard it in the movie and my eyes glazed over just now.

I have no idea what the hell happened in that plot void. They were like, like to me, my takeaway was like, okay, so there's a war between demons and gargoyles, basically. like pretty much and both sides sound bad but for some reason we're on the side of gargoyles yeah using my big i frankenstein brain i think i was able to basically get there yeah but the the i messaging was completely incoherent truly nonsensical it could mean i mean like i think a lot of movies that are trying to make a ton of money globally the messages that are supposed to be specific are extremely vague so that they could mean anything to anyone in the hopes that everyone will like this movie. And what sometimes happens is no one likes it. Not us though. Luckily not us. We're geniuses. Yeah. We understood that in the

War of Demons versus Gargoyles, we were of course siding with gargoyles. No, but I know what you mean. So I watched this movie twice to prep for the episode, as I always do. There were specific moments you know when you're like trying to watch a movie or like read a book as you're falling asleep and then you fall asleep at the same exact moment but then you kind of wake up and you rewind because you missed it and then you watch it again and then you fall asleep at the same exact moment again this kept happening while I was watching this movie I would just black out sometimes during the specific moments I'm really proud of you that for our sorry listeners our April Fool's episode which is supposed to be a light lift

for us at the show that you have taken it upon yourself to fully understand what happens in this movie because I was like there's no first of all with all due respect to our listeners there was no chance in hell

I was watching this a second time and I did rewatch certain scenes to be like oh my God wait I totally stopped paying attention in the middle of that because it was so confusing and like bizarre so I would like go you know try to

keep pace with it. But it was like certain sequences like this, I'm like, it's not going to happen. Yeah. No. Like, ah, I have no fucking clue. It's utter nonsense. I had to like really force myself. I had to like pry my eyes open clockwork orange style at certain points because I was like, wait, what happens? That's sort of like what it feels like with this movie and the concept of going to Colorado. You're being clockwork orange into going to Colorado. You're being clockwork orange into going to Colorado. Toronto, the only safe place that exists. On Earth. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the movie is pretty close to being done.

Wait, no, I have like so many more paragraphs of this recap. Oh my God. No, actually a lot of stuff happens at the end, but it's like staged in such an abrupt and boring. I'm kind of dropping the premise of our April Fool's episode, but it's like, it's staged in such an abrupt and boring way. Yeah. That you kind of forget how much happens in comparison to how interesting it is to watch and take in. So true. Yeah. So Sunny, the benevolent AI construct,

yeah, explains that they need a human to lure the evil AI swarm away from the moon's power core or something, which it is destroying, and that's why the moon is veering off course. Right. They need to destroy the AI swarm so that. that the moon can return to its original orbit. And it's up to Brian and friends to do this, because for some reason, the super technologically advanced moon doesn't have the technology to save itself. Sure.

And so Brian, who, by the way, has moon Jedi powers now and just can open doors with the wave of his hand. Duh, Caitlin. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. He, Joe and Casey, get into their once broken spaceship that the moon fixed, okay, to destroy the AI swarm.

We cut back to Earth where Sunny and company are walking to whatever part of Colorado has the military bunker where Doug is. Oh, Doug, by the way, that's her ex-husband. Who? Oh, yes. At some point, they just say the name Doug. And then the guy who is always like, I love talking to my son on the phone. He's in first grade. Like, Doug, a weird guy.

A weird, weird, weird guy. But, like, but sleigh. You know, good for Doug. But good for him. Why not? So, I look at Doug. I say, why not? Why not him?

Okay. Now, the earth is almost out of air. All the air leaked out while the moon was falling into it. Oh, God. And Michael Pena suffocates and he fucking croaks. He, I really, and with all due respect to those who have lost a loved one in this manner. Yes. Because of no.

This manner being the moon falling into the earth, the earth's atmosphere leaking. It really is implied that Michael Pena is among a maximum of 10 casualties. And in this mass disaster. And it really, I've never seen a death that you're like, oh, that's what the word keel over means. He just kind of falls to the side. And yeah, rough, rough break from Michael Pena in this one because you're just like, what is going on? Like, what am I looking at? And the answer is, don't worry about it.

Don't even worry about it. Don't worry about it. Just did let people enjoy things. Just kidding. Please don't let people enjoy things. This sucks. Yeah, don't, don't like, well, I mean, here, okay, here's what I'll say about Moonfall.

Please say it. Someone has to. As much as this movie blows ass. In a feminist way. In a feminist way. In a feminist way. It is a masterpiece. Women can blow.

ass too or something i do kind of love it's one it's moonfall to me is as i frankenstein is to you fair enough fair enough i i frankenstein to me is the perfect bad movie because at least it focuses on one confusing guy and not 20 confusing guys sure and say what you will about Adam Frankenstein. And I will say something. That is his name. We know who this guy is. He just is the fucking weirdest

guy to ever live for a thing. It is incredible just thinking, wow, there are so many ways that you could portray 200 years passing. But the way I, Frankenstein, does it, is the best, which is just Aaron Eckhart swinging nunchucks at the top of a mountain.

and then it fades his outfit changes and all of a sudden it's 2014. Yeah, he gets a haircut and it's 200 years later. You know, some would say that I Frankenstein walked so that Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein could run. Let's talk about that. That's so true. Yeah, thanks. That's so true.

Okay, so, so yeah, Michael Pena keels over and dies. Yeah. This, I will say, Patrick Wilson, shortly will have really no reaction. There is an iconic scene at the end where they all meet at the tip of the Chrysler building. Very unclear where this actually is. No, this is still in Colorado. They're still in Colorado.

Okay. Because theoretically, I don't know how they would have gotten out of Colorado. But they all meet up and then they just sort of state what their relationships to each other are at the end of the movie, much like they did at the beginning of the beginning. Okay, so this guy died. Oh, that's sad. This guy died. Oh, that's sad.

But we're friends and you're my son and you're my ex-wife. And here's, oh, and here's little Jimmy and my ex-husband is nearby, but he's not here. And we're friends. The end. Oh, yeah. And Kate. Oh, wait, well, we need to talk about how Casey dies. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Let me. Well, we need to get to the climax of the movie, too. So what would you say is the climax of the movie really? Well, actually, I think it's pretty, I think it's clear. Okay, okay. No, I'm sorry.

I'm being a bitch. Quit being a bitch, Jamie. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. All right. So whatever. Michael Pena dies. Sunny goes looking for him. Michelle goes looking for sunny.

Moon chunks are plummeting to the earth. You said it's like moon chunks is the name of a character. Is it not? I think we should write a character named Moon Chunks, but okay, no, sorry, we're back. We're back. Okay. So New York City, ever heard of it? Right.

It is being ripped apart. The military is minutes away from launching their nuclear attack on the moon. So the stakes are higher. The farther the moon falls down, the further the stakes rise up. Yeah. Well, to the people of Colorado, we're really not sure what's going on outside of Colorado. Elsewhere, we don't give a shit. Colorado is freaking out.

Yeah. Okay, so back inside of the moon, Brian and friend. And let's just pause for a minute to really reflect. I'm not laughing. Sorry, that was rude to laugh. That statement of being inside of the moon. Brian and friends are flying around in their ship. The evil AI swarm is chasing it.

Brian reveals his plan that he is going to act as bait and sacrifice himself to destroy the swarm. But Casey is like, no, I will be the one to sacrifice myself. And I have a whole spiel on why I think that is. We'll get to it. Caitlin is already two hours in this episode. How much are we going to talk about? Okay, fine. All right.

Okay. I'll say it now. So the other two astronauts on this mission, are Brian and Joe, they each have a kid. Casey does not have a kid. And I feel like the movie basically suggests that it has to be him who sacrifices himself and dies because he doesn't have any children. Therefore, he is, quote unquote, expendable. The only family he has is a mom with Alzheimer's.

Well, that's also, like, right. So he's a caretaker. I mean, it's so hard to, like, because I. I think I totally agree. I think that's one of the reasons. But there's also, this movie is so playing on so many broad tropes that it's like so many reasons. I feel like it has to do with like the least famous person in the scene has to die. The least Western beauty standards, attractive person in the scene has to die.

The comic relief as opposed to the dramatic hero has to die. There's like a bigillion tropes at play here all at once and all of them unfortunately indicated. that John Bradley must die. But John Tucker must die. But John Bradley does not die. His consciousness is melded with the moon and then he's a part of the moon. So. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I'm kidding. It is bad. It's like playing on every trope. And I mean, it just, and it's playing on a number of fatphobic tropes. It's playing on, so many tropes are present here. except really with our two protagonists who are so bland

that you're like... That there's sort of nothing going on. They're just dead behind the eyes. And they don't even bother to imply that maybe these... And again, I'm not saying... I honestly, this is actually the rare... The rare story where I think that having some romantic chemistry

between these two actors would have helped make the movie more interesting to watch. Where I know that like it's the Bechtelcastle. We're not like... Not every man, woman pairing needs to be romantically interest. But it's like, what is there between these two people? I'm not feeling the friendship. I'm not feeling the resentment of the betrayal.

We might as well just make the hot people kiss. But they don't even touch at the end of the movie. There's not even a friendly handshake. Like, there is nothing between these two people. It feels like Arrested Development Season 4. It's like they're not even like in the same room. together. Wow, so true. Well, you're forgetting that they have a running inside joke about the lyrics to... About Toto's Africa? Yeah. That is referenced twice 15 years apart. And they're like,

ha ha, yes. Remember that? Remember that? He's also referencing the wedding of a failed marriage, which I wouldn't necessarily bring up in front of my dear friend. But whatever. Yeah. Yeah. If these two characters had been kind of like forced together and a romantic kiss at the end or something, I would have been like, boo, but also there's nothing between them. So I'm also like, boo. You can't do nothing between two characters. Yeah. I just was like, you know, romantic interest. It would have been half-assed. It would have been trite. It would have been vaguely sexist. But it also would have been something. and what happens is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Including when KC. is like, no, I'm going to be the one to sacrifice myself. And Brian and Joe are like, no, stop. Okay, you can go ahead and do it.

Well, I mean, to be fair, they've known this guy. They've been allegedly best friends for a decade and they just met this guy. And also, not for nothing. Hallie Berry's character allegedly has an active restraining order against John Bradley's character. Oh, yeah. Which is referenced once in passing, but is said basically as a joke. So, I don't know. They all should have blown up, honestly.

The moon should have just fallen all the way. Yeah. Okay. So back on Earth. Sunny has been trapped under a fallen tree because the moon isn't the only thing that's falling. Trees are also falling. And he's lightly dying. And then Michelle finds him, but then we cut back to space.

And this is the climax. Casey does the sacrificial act of being the human bait and he hits the button for the bomb, the electromagnetic pulse thing, I'm a do. Right, right. And it destroys the evil AI swarm. Back to Earth, Michelle saves Sunny, but it's mostly gravity doing the heavy lifting and talk about irony. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

So yeah, Michael Pena and John Bradley are the only ones who die. And honestly, John Bradley doesn't die. Michael Pena is the only character who dies. Yes. Permanently. RIP. Michael Pena does not become one with the moon. No, no he doesn't.

No. Sad but true. Okay, we cut back to space. Brian has passed out. So Joe flies her and Brian back to Earth. So, I mean, look at all these women saving men. Michelle saves Sonny. Joe saves Brian.

And that's feminism. Yay. Then Brian and Joe, who have conveniently landed in Colorado of course. Reunite with their families. There's that scene you just were describing where they just kind of list all the people that they know who have also died. They're like, all right, so movie's over. The moon is returning to its regular orbit. And then we cut back inside the moon where an AI construct of KC appears in a void as well as his mom and his cat whose name is Fuzz Aldrin.

Boo. Okay, see, I, here's what I wrote down. Of all the attempts at comedy in this movie, which there are a lot, I think that Fuzz Aldrin is maybe the cleverest one and that's saying something because it's not even that good. Bleak if true is what I'll say. But it's because. But it's because. That is a Lizzie McGuire ass joke.

But listen to this. It's because the jokes keep falling flat. Moonflat. Moonfall, more like joke fall. Joke flat. Gravity is fucking with the jokes and how they land. A. But yeah, so it's something, something his mom and his cat appear in the AI Hollow Moon

and set up a sequel. that will never be produced. Because this movie was produced on a budget of $150 million. Independently raised. Independently. Which is actually pretty impressive. It is impressive. It really speaks to because if you're not familiar or you don't remember who Roland Emmerc is,

he is a German director who is most famous for disaster movies like Independence Day, the Day After Tomorrow, 2012, etc. And so there is a lot of goodwill. for him. And he is like a proven talent at, you know, at making iconic movies that make a lot of money that generally glorify the war industrial complex. But so he raised this money independently after it sounds like years in development hell on this. And in a rare situation of the Hollywood machine being totally correct, he should not have made this movie.

He should not have made this movie. He hasn't made a movie since. Yeah. It seems like it's really kind of. And it was a huge flop at the box office. It only earned $67 million. It didn't even come out in Canada. Canada said they didn't even bother.

They said, our theaters are closed due to COVID pass. Yikes. Although, I mean, what I will say about Roland Emmerich, outside of Moonfall not being good, he is a queer icon he does have a you know a pretty you know solid record in terms of

his his politics especially for someone this powerful I mean I he has repeatedly advocated for in two of his disaster movies independence day and the day after tomorrow there are interracial couples that the studios did not want him to have

and in moonfall for some reason he's like I don't die there but well I guess Michael Pena and and Brenda but either way either way I'm just saying like Roland Emmerc seems like a totally lovely person and also he made moonfall and he made moonfall which I mean there's not a whole lot else that we need to spend time talking about yeah I think that like at the end of the day

there are women in this movie There are. One of them is a woman in STEM. One of them is a woman in STEM. The rest of them are wives and girlfriends or acting as mother. Their mothers or mother figures or caretakers of some kind, including the moon who let's not forget is the mother of the earth. Yes. And in the case of Joe Fowler and the moon, they are liars. So they're Seetful. They, I'll push back on Joe being a liar because she. I guess she, she was gaslit.

She was gaslit by NASA, which, you know, unsurprising that a federal agency of the United States government would be doing some fuck shit. And honestly, she doesn't just automatically come to a man's defense. And that's true. That's actually feminism. So. I guess. I don't know.

I mean, she and her husband are interesting in that. And again, it's our April Fool's episode. So this isn't going to be the degree of analysis you would normally get. But this episode is two hours long, so you're welcome. The plot is simply that convoluted. Like, I think that she, NASA has always been an interesting branch of the American government where, like, it is a military, industrial complex tool. But I don't think it is publicly perceived as being so.

It has been very effectively marketed. And I think to some extent, I still kind of drink the Kool-Aid on NASA of like space exploration is cool. Like, it's people like, in my mind, it's people like Elon Musk who ruin it where they're turning it into colonization and not just learning more about the universe that we exist in that is very exciting and cool. But here we have, and I think that this is more effectively done in other Roland Emmerich movies like Independence Day where. it almost feels like he's like reheating his own nachos a little bit of like, okay, so there is like this big industrial judicial or whatever, executive branch,

the war cabinet. And that is represented by Doug question mark. Yeah. And then they're the scientists and they are government scientists and they are patriots and they love America so much. But they're not that. and it is an interesting sort of tool to encourage kind of unquestioning patriotism while seeming countercultural.

I think it's like how astronauts are very frequently portrayed in film. And we've talked about this in other episodes, but I do think it's like an interesting kind of tool that is used that is, I guess not really worth talking about here because it's not effective and it doesn't make any sense. but I was thinking about it because there are a few lines that either Patrick Wilson or Halliberry say that are like, we're not this, we're scientists. And yeah, well, I do think that a lot of Halliberry's actions do sort of lightly push back or like push back on an idea of the government versus what I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like for sure. Do I believe that the American government particularly at present would say, we're just.

going to nuke the moon. Yes, I do. Yeah. But I feel like it's like, whatever, presented in a cartoonish way so that we are not to question an institution like NASA. Well, I mean, this movie also does something that a lot of other movies that are about a global disaster do, and we've talked about this on episodes about movies where there is a global disaster. But the movie, because it's an American Hollywood movie, it will completely center the U.S. and act as though the U.S. is the only country with people and technology who can figure out what's going on, who can handle the disaster that's affecting the whole world. Specifically, people in the U.S. who live in Colorado. Like, it is wild how for a movie shot in Montreal, which is also very funny given to this movie, I will repeat, did not ever come out. theatrically in Canada, which had to do with COVID restrictions, but I just think it's funny

that Canada, like, you could not have seen this movie in Canada if you wanted to. And also that this movie came in second place at the box office behind Jackass, the Jackass reboot and Jackass made three times more money than Moonfall did in its first weekend. Wow. It is interesting. I wonder if, I don't think there's really an appetite for it right now. Disaster movies don't tend to perform very well during disastrous times. There is not an element of escape. I am not wanting to see a disaster movie right now because I could also just look outside. I could check the news.

So very true. You know, disaster movies tend to be more commercially successful during times historically where they feel more fictional. And that's not where we're at historically. and so I was not surprised to see that moonfall did not perform better, which is a shame because it is a feminist gem. A masterpiece, we've said it before, we'll say it again. Yeah. Yeah, is there anything that's like burning in your heart that you need to talk to talk about with regards to moonfall? Because I do have notes, but I'm also like, I think a lot of them came out in the recap. Same. I'll just rattle off a few. very quick things. Please.

Fuzz Aldrin. There are too many subplots because everyone has a son. Oh my gosh. Yes. I did really like that when Patrick Wilson can no longer be around his son named Sunny, they're just like, so how does Sunny feel about Michael Pania? And you're like, who cares? Who cares?

Who cares? They just are like, we don't know. It's truly like they cannot think of equality for the son named Sunny outside of having a father. So they just give them a different one. And there's like one scene between them before Michael Pena like suffocates. He's like, there's not much time left here on earth because the moon is falling into us. Let's not hate each other in these last hours. And then Sonny is like, I don't hate you.

And then Michael Pena's character is like, I'll take it. End of supply. Okay. The line I was thinking of earlier. And again, I don't mean to come on. off anti-NASA. I'm obviously not anti-NASA. I just mean science as a branch of government and all the complications they're in. But there's a line that Patrick Wilson says where he says, I'm an astronaut, not a soldier. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah, yeah, that's more what I was thinking of. Anyways,

there's a part where Sunny says, extremely deadpan. Oh, shit, the moon is rising. And then Michelle, also very deadpan, says, gravity's going to go crazy. also we didn't talk about Sunny's gigantic tattoo wait I didn't even notice it oh my god there's a whole joke about it where Sunny shows his gigantic tattoo which I think is supposed to be like a Chinese character and then Michelle says oh that says

the Jonas brothers and he goes because this movie was almost certainly written in 2009 and she's like just kidding and then I don't think we learn what it actually says She doesn't say. But we know what it doesn't say, which is it does not say Jonas Brothers. Another thing that I had a note of here that made me laugh is when the evil, poor people steal Sunny's car. They come in with this like weird opening line.

I think this is when they come back. They come up to Sunny and they say the menacing line. So are you a college boy? I was like, okay. Yeah. No, here's what happens. He just says everybody calm down. And then the hijackers are like, oh, okay, smart ass.

Are you a college boy? And it's like, he didn't say anything they would indicate. He literally just said, can we calm down? It was really funny. Oh, another good moment with Sunny. A lot of things happened too sunny. I would say Sunny does very little. And just to make sure you know who this character is supposed to be, they do go through

the trouble of naming her Karen. Yeah. There is a woman who is a neighbor to Michael Pena in this richy-rich Aspen neighborhood that has turned into a compound overnight due to the moon falling. She has an AK-47, which I think could be a reference to a number of things. Clearly a riff on the Karen. Yeah. But she has a big, gigantic AK-47 and almost shoots sunny.

And then Michael Pena comes out and says, hey, Karen, relax. Stop that. Stop shooting my stepson. I think it's a joke. I don't know. But I honestly am not sure. It is never referenced again. Well, again, the jokes fall flat because joke fall, moonfall.

Also, the fact that it's interesting that you referenced that everyone has perfect reception the whole time. That is true, but they also seem to all have Nokia phones. Why was that? Oh, yeah. No one has like a smartphone. No one has a smartphone. Because I think that maybe Roland Emmerich was like Apple. do you want to give me money and they said no and he's like fine then everyone has a Nokia

Nokia gave me $10,000 yeah I don't know there are technically daughters but they like you're saying like like you said earlier one of them says something precocious and that's it and one of them walks away from a dying Michael Pena she said fuck you dad and that's kind of all that happens um yeah those characters are very undercooked Michelle I would say is one of the most undercooked characters committed to film in recent years. It takes us for an hour to even know what she does. Truly. What is she?

She's an exchange student. So you're like, okay, she's a student. Is she stuck? But she works full time as a nanny and lives there. Does she? How does she have time to study? I'm curious because Roland Emmerich is a queer icon, I'm wondering if that was supposed to be a queer relationship and then like that was like,

reversed or something. That introduction scene, I just have like, it felt like they were together. I know. And obviously Roland Emmerich is like, you know, very, he's been very involved in queer activism over the years.

I'm just wondering if like that was how it was originally written and then the script kept changing or maybe they were like, oh, we want this movie to show everywhere, including wildly homophobic countries. So we're going to revert. But like, yeah, her character ends up coming off unbelievably vague.

And then they give her the worst boyfriend available. I mean. And also what is there, what are how old like sunny is supposed to be 18. He's 18. I have no idea how old she's supposed to be. But the actor is in her 30s. Right. I didn't quite pick up on as,

I know that like she saves him and that sometimes is like a movie telegraphing. And they're going to end up together. But I wasn't getting any like romantic vibes between them. Oh, really? That's so, this movie is so confusing. I thought for sure that was what was intended. That's so interesting. Hmm.

Well, again, everything about this movie is confusing and nonsensical. So honestly, you could interpret anything and it would be both exactly right and exactly wrong. I like that we've turned on our own episode. That was our idea. You know what? When you said it at one point and I was like, oh, we should have done that for April Fools. And you said the word trap.

I'm like, we should have done trap. that's what we should have done. We should do that for Father's Day. Traff. I mean, fathers and daughters. Fathers and daughters. I love Trapp.

That moment in Trapp where Josh Hartnett points at the hole in the floor and it's like, should we go down there? It makes me laugh so much. I love. Because Trapp is about fathers and daughters in a meta way, because it's also about M. Night Shylin

trying to make his daughter's career happen. His daughter. His daughter. daughter. Anyways. Do you have anything else to say about moonfall? No. Me either.

Oh no. I mean probably, but I'm tired. Thank you. Thank you to all 500,000 people who requested this episode. 500 million. Yeah. Which again is just a billion people. A portion of our listenership.

A tiny portion. You know, if anyone, if any Hollywood power players are listening, can someone please utilize Patrick Wilson well. Like, just please. And Hallie Berry. And Hallie Berry. I just like these are two great actors who have been given dog shit in the last decade. I feel like Hallie Berry made Catwoman.

And then after that she like could not get. They blamed it on her. She was still in X-Men movies after that. But that, but yeah. Oh, right. And she was in robots. But then she was also in, was it New Year's Eve? or Valentine's Day?

Oh my gosh. Wait, let me. She was in New Year's Eve. She played another episode I have absolutely no recollection of recording. She played a character named Nurse Amy, who I think also had a military husband. Let her live. Leave her alone. Oh, my God.

All right. We got to get out of here. We got to get out of here. Happy April Fool's Day to all the fathers and sunnies out there, to all the Patrick Wilson's send her sonny. This movie, even if it does... It does pass the Bechal Test. Oh, yeah, during the...

It does. During that scene where they're definitely not together. And it's an employer and an employee having an intimate conversation over Sunrise Coffee. Sure. And she says, here's your black coffee. It has two sugars in it. Women's wrongs. It passes the Bechal Test and that's why I'm giving it five nipples.

I'm giving it five nipples and I'm giving it five moons. And what is a nipple but a moon? and what is a moon but a giant sky nipple? What? Do you ever think about that? They have the same shape. Oh, that people are always... Yeah, are you ever on a romantic date?

And then someone puts their arm around you and says, look at that big old nipple in the sky. Should we kiss? When the moon hits you, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am going to give it five big sky nipples. and I'm going to give them all to Joe Fowler, feminist icon.

I aspire, she inspired me to look with an absolute distant 40-yard glaze as I watch people I've known for years get eaten by nanobots in high resolution. It's iconic. It's iconic and that's feminism. And that's our moonfall episode. Happy April fools to our listeners. If you enjoyed a silly one, if you enjoyed a looser episode with just Caitlin and I,

you might enjoy our Patreon, aka Matrion. So true. Which is linked in the description of this in every episode. It is the best way to support the show. It's five bucks a month and you get access to two new episodes a month on a theme of usually yours, but sometimes ours if you're behaving in an unruly fashion choosing. And it also gives you access to nearly 200 of our back catalog episodes on the Matrion,

a real investment, you could say. I could say that, and I will say it. And you just said it. We just said it. We'll be back next time with a really serious... With a real one. We'll be back next week with the normal show. Yeah.

Love you. Bye. Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeartMedia. hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?

That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan. With vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski.

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