The Big Picture - Ask Sean Anything Mailbag, ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,’ Five New Movies to Stream, and the ‘Barbie’-‘Oppenheimer’ Hierarchy

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Sean digs into his pet obsession, the ‘Transformers’ franchise, and its newest installment ‘Rise of the Beasts.’ Then, he recommends five new streaming movies, and opens up the mailbag to answer your questions. Host: Sean Fennessey Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons from The Ringer, and this is a podcast called The Rewatchables. We have been doing it really since 2017. It started with how much we love the movie Heat. We decided to structure a whole podcast with categories, most rewatchable scene, who won the movie, Apex Mountain, what age the best. But here's the thing. If you want the full archive, you can hear them only on Spotify, for free, by the way. So make sure to follow The Rewatchables on Spotify. and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about more than meets the eye. On today's show, I'll be talking about Transformers Rise of the Beasts. You got it, my friends. I'll also be answering your burning mailbag questions. I've asked Amanda to stand down on this episode because Transformers is not necessarily

a great film franchise, but it is one that I am emotionally and personally invested in. I'm, of course, a 40-year-old man. And so the Transformers cartoons and toys were meaningful to me when I was a young boy. And I've talked about this before, but in my professional career,

I made a pretty serious pivot to covering movies when I profiled Michael Bay in 2009, 2010 for GQ. And I'm a huge fan of Michael Bay as listeners of the show know. I make some apologies for the Transformers films while also acknowledging their incredible flaws. This new Transformers movie, which is the seventh live action transformers film just remarkable to think about Um is not directed by michael bay. It's produced by him It's also produced by a little guy named steven spielberg who's been producing all of these films and many other people

And um, it's directed by steven cable jr. Who was a guest on this show a few years back He's the director of Creed II. And it stars some interesting young actors, Anthony Ramos, who people will know from Hamilton, and Dominique Fischbach, who folks may know from Judas and the Black Messiah, or maybe they watched Swarm on Amazon Prime earlier this year. It also features the voice talents of Ron Perlman, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Oscar winner,

Pete Davidson, Coleman Domingo, and your standard Transformers voices, Peter Cullen, John DiMaggio, and such. This is a really weird me movie for a variety of reasons. That may sound silly. A movie with the subtitle Rise of the Beasts is a me movie, but here's why. So this is technically a sequel to 2018's Bumblebee, which if you don't remember that movie, that was a prequel to the Michael Bay quintology of Transformers movies that dominated the box office in the 2000s. So Bumblebee was loosely modeled on John Hughes' coming of age dramedies. It was set in 1987. It starred Haley Steinfeld as a California teen who is dealing with her father's death, and she stumbles upon an Autobot, which is a transformer, a good transformer,

that has taken on the form of a yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. Rise of the Beast, fast forward to 1994, shifts the action from California to New York City, golden era for a 40-year-old East Coaster like me. Particularly when we learn that this story is going to be told through Noah Diaz he's a discharged military kid who has moved back in with his mom and little brother in Brooklyn as he looks for work and the first thing we hear when we enter Noah's world in New York

is Wu-Tang Clan's cream and in his room we see posters for the Wu-Tang Clan for SWV, for Nas for the John Singleton movie Poetic Justice and we see a Puerto Rican flag this is not your average Transformers movie very quickly quickly, the soundtrack shifts to a tribe called Quest Check the Rhyme, soon Nas's Represent, which is maybe my favorite rap song of all time. And after Noah fails to get a job working security in a Manhattan high-rise, he considers a life of crime with a local thief.

As he attempts his first car heist, set to the strains of diggable planets and black sheep, it's clear that where Bumblebee was this sanitized homage to an 80s teen coming-of-age story, Rise of the Beast is basically a 90s hip-hop genre movie in the mold of Juice and New Jack City and King of New York and Clockers, all movies that are just hugely important to me personally and probably were pathways to my obsession with hip-hop

for the first 30 years of my life. So for about 40 minutes, Transformers Rise of the Beasts, and this is very weird to say this, but it's true, was the absolute dream movie for six-year-old me, the kid who obsessed over Optimus Prime and the Beast Wars, and also 13-year-old me who begged his mom to see Tupac in Above the Rim in movie theaters. I was kind of vibrating through these first 40 minutes, Bob. I was like, is this really happening? Can we really have Optimus Prime hanging with Nas in the same movie? And I saw

this movie by myself and I turned to look to my left and look to my right and I had nobody there to confirm my feelings. Wasn't it a fan screening though? Isn't that bad that you saw it by yourself? Yeah, but this is completely true. The person to my left was a 40-year-old man by himself, and the person to his right was a 40-year-old man by himself, I swear. So, I've had these crises in recent years of like, oh, I kind of got what I wanted when it comes to the toys of my youth coming to life. And I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit with Barbie in July too. But this one, even more so than the slow de-evolution of Marvel Cinematic Universe storytelling made me think about this critical middle-aged period of my life. But you know what? I was having fun. The movie basically does, after that first 40 minutes, pivot into a proper

Transformers movie. We meet Elena Wallace, who's played by Dominique Fishback, and she's an intern at a natural history museum. She's tasked with tracing the origins of this Maltese falcon-esque statuette that very quickly becomes clear as not a Nubian artifact or an Aztec artifact, but is in fact something called the Transwarp Key. Are you familiar with that? That's how I get in and out of my Brooklyn apartment. Technology's come a long way. Well, if that's how you travel from place to place, it's also how Unicron, the planet-eating demon god, travels from place to place, and he can't move from one galaxy to another

without the transwarp key. Here's the thing with Transformers movies. You sound like you have a head injury right now. But you can't think about these things. Let me think about them for you and then just watch the cars turn into robots and go,

wah, wah, wah. And then enjoy that and then enjoy the soundtrack. Like, that's what we're there for. I'm going to keep describing the plot, though, because I think

this is very funny. Okay, great. Unicron really wants to travel across the galaxy so that he can eat Cybertron, which is the Transformers' home planet. He wants to eat Earth.

He wants to eat everything. He is a world-consuming demon god. And the movie turns into this adventure where Optimus Prime, Mirage, who is a Porsche voiced by Pete Davidson as a cool 90s dude who knows a lot of contemporary culture and relates deeply to Anthony Ramos' character. Bumblebee is back. Other Transformers are back. And they team up with the Maximals. And the Maximals are sort of like, these are the beasts. You know, there's like a gorilla Maximal. There's a giant hawk Maximal.

That hawk is voiced literally by Michelle Yeoh in one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. I want Michelle Yeoh to get paid. I hope she got a fat check off of providing the voice of air razor the flying hawk robot um but it was very strange to watch there were other there's there's other maximals there's a there's a tiger maximal there's a there's a rhino maximal you know i i was calling for a beast war and I got myself a real beast war as Scourge, who was Unicron's henchman, attempted to battle the Maximals and the Transformers.

You know, ultimately, it's a very silly movie. Very, very stupid. It's about robots fighting and it's about Anthony Ramos being surrounded by stuff blowing up and trying to run away from it in a very unlikely fashion. I really enjoyed it. I really thought it was legitimately good. And honestly, I was kind of moved at the end of it. And I don't know what that says about me. I was watching it and thinking to myself, like, they did a nice job with this film. This was a quality Hollywood entertainment. What distinguishes this film meaningfully from me having an absolute emotional breakdown at

the end of Fast X? I don't really know? I was just about to ask you that same thing because about 100,005 people asked us that in the mailbag. So maybe you can finally dispel the rumors that you give favoritism to Michael Bay. Well, Michael Bay specifically, I have no problem giving favoritism to because I think he's a genuine artist. You might think what he does is stupid

and I wouldn't argue with that necessarily but i think his um technocratic vision and insane belief in continuing to modify and grow and evolve the the strictures of filmmaking is impressive this isn't a michael bay movie so this is a little different this is a much more juvenile experience um in the form of Fast X. I found Fast X to be like really ham-fisted and badly made, personally.

And part of that was because the film got interrupted where they changed filmmakers halfway through. And you can understand why some of it just doesn't really work. And some of it is just,

you know, there have been 11 Fast movies and there have only been seven Transformers movies. So maybe that's part of it. Many people say that Fast films should have ended after seven, including Bill Simmons. I'm not saying this should be the

end point for Transformers Rise of the Beast. In fact, this movie has one of the funniest stingers, like universe expanding stingers that I will not spoil, but I had to laugh as a longtime consumer of Hasbro toys. Let's just say Hasbro toys. Can I recommend Rise of the Beast? Yeah. Yeah, I think I can. I have no shame in saying that I enjoyed this movie. Am I a hypocrite

who has no true north when it comes to his critical taste? Maybe. I'll let you decide. I'm starting to not care about that and I'm starting to just follow my truth.

I have to decide personally or the listener has to decide whether or not you're a hypocrite. I mean, I know starting to just follow follow my truth. I have to decide personally or the listener has to decide whether or not you're a hypocrite. I mean I know that the listeners despise my opinion but that's okay. I can live with that. I don't know.

I mean I don't think you're a hypocrite. You like some stuff and you don't like other stuff. You've never decided that some stuff is like academic and other stuff is not. Like you don't think that the the Transformers movies

need to be like put into the library of Congress no not at all it's just like this is a fun time at the movies with other 40 year old dudes in fact I think

the opposite I feel like they should only be saved for the people who want them like I actually don't want to hear about like how this movie

did amazing box office I think that's actually kind of embarrassing like I would appreciate it if they were made like just for me and the other dudes who want to check them out.

This is an interesting... Just beamed straight into your brain via the transwarp key? I don't know if that's how the technology works. If it doesn't, I'd like to figure out a way to just have the transwarp key

inserted into my body so that then I can view all of the, you know, the goings on in Cybertron on a full-time basis. No, I mean, I'm obviously... I'm joking and having fun. There's something interesting though

about the efforts of franchise entertainments to diversify publicly at, you know, casting Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, I think is actually a really cool and exciting thing just because they're both great actors. It's very funny to ask these great young promising actors to pretend to act in front of Optimus Prime and try to give realistic performances. Shia LaBeouf once upon a time was asked to do this.

Megan Fox was asked to do this. Josh Duhamel, Tyrese, these guys were all asked to do this. Um, the film is obviously much hipper cause it's attempting to be this like hip hop period piece. And it kind of works.

Like you can tell Stephen Caple Jr. At least has a real love for, you know, black sheep and, and, and biggie. Like there's a real love for Black Sheep and Big E. One of the critical fight sequences is set to LL Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out, which is just

Transformers beating each other up while LL Cool J raps. So, you know, all my hopes and dreams have come together with this film. Is there any way for you to not like that? Yeah, if i had like uh any dignity or any willingness to be ashamed of my youth um in any form or fashion but one thing that you're talking about that i think is useful in thinking about how you expand

universes like this and how you make stories feel fresh is that it works better when you change the setting entirely like it's like when you try to make a newer, diverse cast of characters seem interesting, but you're also just putting them in front of a bunch of green screen garbage the entire movie. Like, I think it's important that you note here, and of course, I haven't seen this movie, so, like, you tell me if this is not actually how it feels. But it's important that you note that there's, like, a sense of at least at the as the anchor to this movie and then that makes you kind of be like okay it's okay that we're now watching maximals yeah fight each other yeah maximal rhinos and and cheetahs um i i feeling like a maximal these days or more like a minimal i'm definitely more like a minimal after this little soliloquy about transformers

i think that um the film is shot in, is set in New York City and then Peru. I don't know if they actually filmed in Peru. If they did, what we see in Peru looks good.

And it looks like the people, the actors were actually there. I think the New York City aspect of it is just something that I like. Does this movie look and feel like juice or clockers?

No, it doesn't. It's an homage. It's like I said, it's a sanitized version of a kind of a movie that we have a lot of affection for as we look back 30 years later. But you're right, it does help. And the idea of like, if we hopscotched another seven years to 2001, the same way this movie hopscotches from 87 to 94 and changes location, I think that'd be fun. And that might be a way to kind of keep these movies fresh while also giving the robot fighting audience exactly what they're looking for. And like I said, I'm not even going

to speculate on the box office because who cares? I got another Transformers movie. There are a few movies that are available to stream or rent now that I wanted to flag. Actually, a bunch of movies that we've talked about this year that we've dedicated almost entire episodes to have now become available. I mentioned some of these on Twitter, but I thought I would flag them for the listeners too, in case they want to finally check them out. But are you there? God, it's me. Margaret is now available to rent. People should definitely check that out. Love it. Did you get a chance to see that one yet? Not yet. No, I haven't. You should. That's a good one. It just came out on streaming, right? Yeah. It just came out. I think you get it from like Apple and Amazon. You and Phoebe might like

that. I think that that's, that's a fun one. Yeah. What else is out there in the world right now? Well, my beloved Master Gardener. That's available for rent on VOD as well. I hope people will check that out. Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves.

You can see that beloved cameo that I pitched so hard when we talked about that episode, which is a shockingly successful movie. What else is out there at the moment oh magic mike's last dance is available on max right now i feel like not very many people saw that movie it didn't have strong box office um it's flawed well now that it has the power powerful force of max behind it which has universal approval rating now that i think probably millions of people will see it um

yes well maybe we'll talk about that a little bit because I have a Max movie on my list of other films. But the last one that I forgot to mention on social media is Showing Up, which is one of the best movies of the year. And we spoke to Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams for that episode. And Amanda and I both really, really loved and thought it was like a fascinating portrait

of artists at work and not high-level Jeff Ko, um, pop art artists, like art working artists living in smaller communities. So that's a great movie. A couple of other ones that are available right now. I got a chance to see this movie sick of myself, which is a Norwegian black comedy directed by a guy named Christopher Borgely, who was making an English language film with a 24 actually later this year. So, so I'm going to keep your eye on if you're interested in that sort of thing. The movie is pretty grim and funny. It's about this couple who are in a constant state of competition with each other. The man is an artist and the

woman is sort of trying to find her way professionally. And they keep looking for ways to one up each other at places like dinner parties and family gatherings, and ultimately in the media. I don't want to spoil too much about it, but there's this wave of movies like Shiva Baby, like Under the Silver Lake, like The Worst Person in the World, these kind of like reflective turning point of your young life movies that are wry and funny and a little bit dark-hearted and curious and self-loathing, and this movie fits in snugly with those. So if you liked those movies, you may want to check out Sick of Myself.

Did you see Reality? Do you know about this? No. So this one has been fairly popular this week. I think in part because it stars Sydney Sweeney. She of Euphoria and Bill recasting choices on the Rewatchables fame. She is obviously a talented young actor.

The movie is quite interesting um whether it's completely effective i think is up for debate i am mixed on it but it is worth exploring it's about this woman named reality winner who was um had served in the military and then worked uh in sort of foreign intelligence and she leaked critical information and the film is entirely capturing the transcription of her uh confrontation with the fbi when they came to question her about the leaking so every line of dialogue that you see in the film is from that transcription and there are some lines of of dialogue that are actually redacted in the execution of the telling of the story to resist sharing this prized information.

Sweeney plays Winner, Josh Hamilton, one of our favorite actors, one of the FBI agents who questions her. The film takes some interesting creative decisions that I didn't necessarily always click with, but I thought it was an interesting way to look at a docudrama and to not necessarily force intention on characters,

but really just work with what could be perceived as a raw text of their experience. So I thought it was cool. The director is Tina Satter. She co-wrote the movie as well. And it's promising.

And I think there's a big question now of Sidney Sweeney as a potential star in the world. She's obviously got a romantic comedy, a much anticipated romantic comedy with Glenn Powell coming up later this year. And this is a different kind of performance for her.

This is not some like sex bomb, euphoria spinoff. She's playing a very simple woman living a quiet life. And she's very good. She's probably the best thing about it and the reason to check it out so that's reality um are you up on whitmer thomas are you a whitmer thomas fan isn't whitmer thomas the musician he's a stand-up comedian oh and he he has a yeah i think he has like a musical album too does he um he uh he's a really funny stand-up he's had i think he had at least one special on hbo he has a small indie kind of dramedy out right now

called The Civil Dead, which kind of came and went, but I think it's quite good. It's directed by his friend Clay Tatum, and Clay Tatum also stars in it. And the very basic idea of it is it's like Ghost Dad, if Ghost Dad was about two bros.

Did you ever see Ghost Dad, the Bill Cosby comedy from the early 90s? I have not. Where like only his kids can see him and in this movie a guy a photographer whose girlfriend goes on vacation for the weekend and leaves him all by himself

is met by an old buddy of his who is dead and only his friend can see him and it's like a hang movie and kind of a lethargic strange shaggy dog of a movie but whitmer thomas who plays the dead guy is really funny because he's also an actor and he's like desperate to be seen and heard and understood but he's dead uh it's just like just a good gimmick maybe a little bit overwrought for a 96 minute movie but I enjoyed it

Whitmer Thomas does have music like on Spotify that I'm aware of like full albums what kind of music does he make? it's good

it's like I don't know like fun indie rock I was gonna say do you think Alice is gonna remake this movie in about 25 years in the setting of which

will be a Transformers Rise of the Beasts rep screening where you're just where I'm dead but I watch these movies all day long exactly

I guess I kind of cut you short there 20 years is kind of dying young I think I'd be okay with 60 if I can get to 60 I think I did

I did a decent job I'm not against it that's the bar I'm not against it we gotta dream bigger we gotta dream bigger but who have you ever met like a 77 year old who was like I'm crushing it right now I'm at the top of my game against it that's the bar i'm not against it dream bigger we gotta dream bigger but who have

you ever met like a 77 year old who was like i'm crushing it right now i'm at the top of my game i want to be at the top of my game martin scorsese dog i know you're right that's a great example although i have never met martin scorsese i would love to marty if you're listening he never leaves his screening room except to go on set i think those are the only two places he occupies in this world but honestly i can they seem nice. Well, I can come to the screening room if they drop the address. Drop a pin. If I make it to 77, I nailed it.

I nailed life. That's all I'm going to say. Okay, great. You might live long enough to see the Mets make the World Series again, but probably not win. We're going to get to that, I promise. Okay, great.

What does Arnold Schwarzenegger mean to you as a movie fan? It's interesting because Arnold Schwarzenegger started out more as like a meme, you know, like on motivational posters or like on posters in gyms and stuff like that. And people faking the accent, you know, the like walking around middle school yelling, get to the choppa, like that sort of thing. Oh, so to you, he's like largely a bulk god. Yeah, kind of honestly

and then like coming to it in retrospect like realizing that he was like maybe the biggest action star of a type of movie fan in the 90s like it was a real uh not like mindfuck but i guess like a a realization that i kind of know nothing about anything from before i was born oh that's so interesting. I was talking to a couple of people in the office earlier today, including Craig Horvath, and they were saying something somewhat similar. You know, because for me,

growing up, there was no bigger star than Arnold Schwarzenegger, not just physically, but in terms of box office and draw and the kind of energy around him as a famous person. He was from roughly terminator 2 through last action hero true lies um and obviously he was in conan and the first terminator and a number of other movies in the late 70s and 80s but that period of like 88 through 94 95 that he was the single

biggest he to me he was the most famous person in Hollywood. You know, and that was seen through the eyes of a teenager. You know, I'm sure that Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts and other people could lay claim to those things. But in retrospect, it's interesting to think of his fame as sectioned. And so there's this new documentary on Netflix that is called Arnold.

It's a three-part, three-hour documentary of his life. The first part is primarily about his youth in Austria and his emigration to the United States and his rise as a bodybuilder and his attempts at fame and his relationship with his family and the idea of discipline and the human body. I think some themes you might relate to there.

The second part is about his incredible rise to fame as a movie star and how he did so. The third part is about his incredible rise to fame as a movie star and how he did so. The third part is about his extraordinary journey to become the governor of California and also many of the scandals that trailed him into that era of leadership. It's directed by Leslie Chilcott. It's produced by Alan Hughes, who is, of course, he and his brother made many movies together and is a bit of a Hollywood bigwig. He also worked on on the defiant ones and has some experience in documentary he also just made a five-part tupac shakur documentary which i have not seen yet which is on fx but um it's a big glossy netflix piece about a famous person but arnold did not produce the movie and does not

did not have final cut and so it's on you so rare it's unusually honest about for example the accusations of groping and sexual impropriety that arnold faced when he was running for governor the story of the affair that he had outside of his marriage um and the child that he had out of wedlock um and his you know how he violated maria shriver's trust it He talks very candidly about a lot of those things. I think movie fans will obviously be most interested in part two and his rise to fame. And the thing that I took away from that, which I thought was so interesting,

and I've now repeated to a couple of people recently, is his incredible bald-faced lack of shame around the idea of 50% of your job as a movie star is to sell and promote. And it is not to be a great actor or a great artist. That is a part of it. But what is most important is to show up to every premiere, to give every interview, to smile, to be an avatar of success for your projects. You just don't hear people talk like this. You never hear, he's a businessman and you never hear

famous people talk like this because they don't want to be perceived as gross. And he doesn't care. He literally doesn't. He's all because I think he can also fall back on the fact that he was a world champion athlete and had the greatest success you could have in that arena. And he also was a legitimately successful politician. He was a Republican in California and his victory was very strange. He actually did quite a few good things in the state. He also did some things I don't agree with and I didn't like at all. His legacy is somewhat complicated as a politician.

The movie, I think, does a good job of identifying the fact that he attempted to be very similar, I think, to George W. Bush as a kind of like, let's unite and not divide style politician, but actually had more success in the state of California. He also erred in so many ways in his personal life and also just seems incredibly unsophisticated on certain things. But those things were not taken out of the movie. You see them, you see him talking about them in full candor. So I thought this was actually quite an interesting success.

And I would recommend people check it out if they even care a little bit about Arnold Schwarzenegger or even if you don't care about Terminator 2 Judgment Day, if you're interested in looking at the way that someone can seize the structures of fame and shift them into the structures of power, because that's something that he did. He took his notoriety, his ability to be on TV,

his ability to be on movie theaters, his ability to be on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, his ability to open Planet Hollywood and turned himself into a world leader in many ways many ways i mean he was only the governor of california but he was also someone who spoke very openly about the covid vaccine who spoke very openly about the demagoguery of donald trump during his presidency and was listened to people heard him so anyway just a really interesting guy and certainly one of a kind and i think the rare celebrity documentary that is worthy its subject is worthy of the format

and of the length of this one. Let's do some mailbag questions. Will you check out any or all of my recommendations? I always, I watch every single film that you've ever recommended on this pod. Every second that you're not seeing me on a Zoom screen,

I'm watching a film that you've recommended. You know, it's actually interesting. You kept asking me if I'm watching a film that you've recommended. Okay. You know what? It's actually interesting. You kept asking me if I've seen this or if I've been up on this. And my answer has been just no for the entire pod because I'm not watching

a ton of movies right now. Like, I'm not being able to find a ton of time for movies right now because of, like, the NBA playoffs and because of travel. It's like a weird time

of the year where it's like, for, like, two months, I was like, should I watch this movie right now that I haven't seen or should i maybe watch what could be lebron's last game of being good at basketball you know like yeah it's it's kind of an awkward time i think for like the average moviegoer but it's about to i am like banking the fact that it's about to kick up a lot in june and july and we got a lot of questions about that coming up here.

Bobby, I got an invite to Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1. Wow. I just want you to know that. Does it include some plus ones? It does not, and I can say nothing more about it. But I just want you to know

that it's happening. It's all happening. I'm so excited. You're going to watch it with strapped to Tom Cruise jumping out of an airplane on an iPad that it's attached to your helmet? Well, no, I'm not going. You're going to watch it with strapped to Tom Cruise jumping out of an airplane on an iPad that it's attached to your helmet? Well, no, I'm not going to do that.

But the onset of that film, of Asteroid City, of Oppenheimer, of Barbie, of a handful of other titles over the next couple of months, I think indicates something that I felt has been missing. There have been actually quite a few good movies that were released in April and and may and we tried our best i think to underscore them but it felt like very few of them caught the zeitgeist caught the culture super mario brothers certainly caught the culture it feels like spider verse is catching the culture which is so wonderful to see but for the most part the mainstream live action movie isn't doing much for people these days. And if it is, it's in the fast X mold or the dungeons and dragons mold. And so I'm hopeful that we're getting to something that is slightly more

adult, slightly more, um, your, your parents asking you if you saw something or your, even your grandparents asking you if you saw something. So I look forward to that moment in the, in the summer movie calendar.

Does that dovetail at all with a question that we're going to start with? Yeah, it does. It does. It certainly does. First question comes from Julian and about 53 other people.

What is the correct watching order for a hypothetical back-to-back screening of Barbie and Oppenheimer on July 21st? I'd like to answer this question in two ways. I'll say for me,

I feel that the correct order is Oppenheimer and then Barbie. I probably will not be seeing the movies in that specific order because I imagine I'll get a chance to see them a little bit ahead of their release. I feel this way because I think I'm lifting this from someone else, but I think that the dinner before dessert strategy is wise with movies. And I think about double features all the time and the heavy followed by the light often feels like the correct approach to me. I think transitioning into Oppenheimer after a two hour Barbie movie feels quite strange, but your mileage may vary. I don't think there's any one right way to do it. In fact, Amanda may feel differently. She might say, and she should tell us when she comes back on the show next week what she's going to do first uh i think that i'm quite i'm really struggling and honestly would like to hear from the listeners of the show with how to cover these movies correctly yeah at

the right time um yeah i don't really know what to do about that i mean it's tricky because both of these movies would typically get like two episodes of this podcast and they're coming out on the same day. So I think that that, I mean, I think that that still could

and should probably should be the case. What does that mean? Does that mean that on that Friday, do we do an episode that covers both Oppenheimer and Barbie together?

And then they get standalone, full-blown follow-ups after that. And the next week. That's personally what I think because I just think that there's no way, like the lead up to these movies, so much of the discussion has been that they're coming out on the same day.

And there was even like a fake news story that broke that Oppenheimer was delayed. And there was a lot of movie fans saying, you know, Chris Nolan doesn't have the juice. He doesn't want to go up against Gerwig which is frankly hilarious like their box office history like i don't think chris nolan is he's gonna be just going up against yeah i think he's gonna be all right with oppenheimer um i i think we should cover them both on the day that they come out okay because i think enough people just based on who is asking about what you should watch in what order

i think enough people are going to see both. If not that first day, that first weekend, most likely. Yeah. I think that I would do, if I was going to watch them back to back, I would do it how you structured it, Oppenheimer and then Barbie.

But if I was going to watch one and then go do something else and then watch the other one at night, like if I was going to watch daytime showing dinner and then the other one, I would do Barbie first. Oh, that's to me feels like more of a like daytime sun is out, you know, and then we,

we exit the movie theater and we have like a, maybe like a 6 PM dinner. And then we go see Oppenheimer at night. And then that's what we kind of like contemplate into the evening. And then we compare them. I think that's a great take. Um, I fully support it.

I am the kind of weirdo who actually just wants to sit in a chair for seven hours and watch the film films consecutively. So I did, I fully support it. I am the kind of weirdo who actually just wants to sit in a chair for seven hours and watch the films consecutively. So that didn't even occur to me that you could just go to a movie and then go get a meal and then come back. So good call by you.

Okay, what's next? Jonathan asks, while the theater experience is unmatched, what's the best strategy for how you lock into watching films at home when you want to revisit an older film or especially when you have so many to watch to prepare for pods? I've been thinking about this a lot.

The theater experience is unmatched. I actually went to go see The Boogeyman, which I didn't even mention in this conversation. I was originally going to talk about it a little bit, but I don't know if it's worth a massive discussion. But I went to go see it on a Sunday night at 930. And I saw it. Um, I see a lot of movies by the way, with regular crowds and I like seeing movies with regular crowds.

I go to a lot of screenings, but I, I, my, I would, my preference is to go to a screening cause it's easier for me to focus. And I'll tell you why it's because of this experience I just had. Um,

I went to go see it on a Sunday night and everyone who was in the movie going public now knows that you can come 20 minutes late to a movie because of the ads and the trailers and everything. And I went to a dine-in cinema. And when I sat down, I was one of only three people in the theater and I was amped about that. I was like, I actually want this to be quiet. It's a horror movie.

I don't need to hear a lot of chatter. I can focus on it. Sunday, it's late. I've got a big week ahead of me. And then 25 minutes into the movie, and then even 35 minutes into the movie, lots of people started pouring in. It was opening weekend for a horror movie. A lot of teenagers, you know, of course that's totally normal and expected, but I would say about 40% of the people in the movie theater were just on their phone the whole time. And some theaters are really good about this and some are really not good about this.

But it was distracting to the point of needing, like i needed to leave like i felt like i couldn't even scold anyone and i'm not a scolder at all in the first place but i couldn't even scold anyone because i would just need to turn to the person in the other direction and scold them too there was kind of no recourse it was just like this is a free-for-all and there's no fixing it so i didn't have the greatest experience watching the boogeyman and i'm sure the makers of that film are quite dismayed to hear that that's possible. So the question is a good one, right? Because I'd love to go to the movie theater, but even in that case, it might've actually made more sense for me to just wait 13 days for the boogeyman to come to VOD and watch it that way. I try to put my phone away. I try not to second screen if I'm watching something,

especially if I'm watching it for work. But even if just my wife and I are, we watched Bam or Rush on, on Max the other night. Um, and I just tried to not be looking at my phone and just be engaged, even though that's something that you don't have to pay super close attention to. Um, sometimes that's not something I can do. I mean, in many cases I'm watching movies and taking notes at the same time or trying to figure out how I want to structure an episode or even like I have personal projects of personal viewing projects, which sounds silly. And I'm sorry for sounding such a dork, but like, I like to go through the history of filmmakers or genres or styles. I feel like I'm on this endless quest to kind of see more and more and more. Um, and so part of when you do that, like maybe I'll pull a book off the shelf and like reference the book while I'm watching the movie and I'm not like utterly, you know, ensconced in the Do Not Disturb and put it on the kitchen table or whatever.

Like, away from me. And if it starts going off, then I know that it's something that I actually might want to pause the movie for and actually go address. Like, whether that's work-related, like, for the people that I allow through Do Not Disturb. I will say, Do Not Disturb, one of the greatest inventions. One of the greatest inventions that we've had with smartphones. Especially for movie watchers. It's bad for when you have kids, though. Because sometimes my wife actually needs to get my attention.

Well, that's why you let Eileen through. I remember I had my Do Not Disturb, and I didn't know that I could do that. And Phoebe was like, you know that you can just put me on the exceptions to the Do Not Disturb. And as a matter of fact, I think you should put me on the exceptions. And I was like, okay, I will. I will do that. But pretty much how I consume movies now is just all at night after everyone else has gone to bed. And, you know, that's part of why I haven't been watching as many movies is just because I've just been exhausted and just like falling asleep early. But I think that that is like if you are a night person and you want to watch a movie that maybe the rest of the

people in your household or if you don't live with anyone else um you want to watch it alone like that is like the best way to watch a movie at home and i know that i've recommended this on the show multiple times but connect headphones to your tv so that you can hear everything perfectly without having to crank it up late at night you connect your bluetooth headphones to your smart tv if you're if you have the ability to do that And you can hear everything exactly how it's designed to be mixed. You can hear all the dialogue. You don't have to add subtitles if you don't want to. Of course, you still can.

But it's just much more commanding. I mean, subtitles are great. You know, like people use subtitles for different reasons. And I don't have anything against subtitles. They just are personally distracting from my attention span. So wearing headphones and being able to hear everything at night, all the lights off, of course, because home TVs do not handle like light coming into the room all that well. Agreed. Always lights off for sure. I think you're making me think of another reason why my viewing has been down a little bit over the last

few months is because I've been working on two TV recap podcasts. And so I've been watching and re-watching episodes of the same shows multiple times whilst taking notes. And that is like an extraordinary time suck and just ate into my ability to watch obscure folk horror from Britain in 1972, which is how I like to actually spend my free time. Recapping TV, what do you think?

Any thoughts on the bill hater experience since we got not about bill specifically but just doing shows like that uh creatively rewarding and fulfilling i think it's really interesting to hear creators uh confirm or dispel some of the things that you might think about motivations behind things um you know, like, the way that we assign meaning to certain decisions and then a creator might just be like, well, actually, no,

it was just that, like, this person was running late that day and that's why this ended up being that way. That's been my favorite part of it. That's what I love. I love when I'm like, here's my grand theory on what I think is going on here.

Bill's like, nope, that's not it. I was tired. It's really actually quite wonderful. It demystifies. Yeah. It demystifies. Yeah. It demystifies, but also at the same time, if you are the type of person who is prone to

the mystification of something like that, you might think that there is some sort of divine reason that it shook out that way. And that if he hadn't been tired that day, then a million different series of other decisions might not have been made. And you might not have the same creative sauce of a show it's how sometimes like your favorite creators don't make your favorite thing because a series of practical things went wrong and i don't i don't think we really we talk

about that a lot on the show but i don't think that like when we talk about why a movie is good or not we consider like practical reasons why that might be the case i completely agree um i mean doing that show is was a real blast and an honor and Bill is very generous and I think very self-effacing and humble in the face of a lot of that stuff. But there's just so much practical work that goes into making a show or a film and very few people are either interested in or available to talking through decision-making. And I think it's boring for some people. And I think actually if you hear Bill on the show,

you can hear a guy who's like a project manager talking about his art, not the crazy guy who does the SNL voices, because that's not his role that he's describing as he works through the authorship and execution of his show, which I think is actually quite refreshing, but it is maybe not always the Bill Hader that people are expecting. But I quite like that about it.

Okay, what's next? Brian wants to know, just as a point of order for the podcast, with some recent episodes in mind, does Bobby cut any tangential conversations from the show? Is Brian here insinuating that there's too many tangents on the pod? Is that what this question is about?

I haven't been turning this over in my mind a little bit. I mean, obviously the drafts, we have like fully just shifted into we're sitting at the bar yelling at each other. It's just, it is just 2009. And me and CR and Amanda are just big mad about whatever stupid thing just came up. I think that's good and bad.

I almost never tell you to cut tangents. I think maybe sometimes a stray thought or a misunderstanding of what we were trying to communicate comes up. But I don't send a lot

of notes like that anymore in part because I think people want to hear a more unvarnished exchange. And I like doing it that way. Little do you know, I've actually been cutting all your best points out

for the last five years, which is why everyone's so mad at you. That explains why people are big mad at the show. They're just in a vault somewhere and it's just all of your dumbest thoughts. I almost never listen, so I don't know if that could be true. I know, that's the power. I do actually cut some tangential conversation.

But only when I find it confusing on second listen, what you were actually referring back to, you know, like I, I, when I edit a podcast just for the listeners at home, I put on my listener hat, you know, because I was a listener and a to do that day. I only cut stuff out because I think that it actually will not enrich the experience of listening to this single podcast episode. So that's like my philosophy that often does not lead to cutting out tangents because frankly, that's what people respond to most frequently. It's like funny jokes, tangents, stories. Like that's what, that's all part of chemistry. That's all part of like making a good show. I completely agree. And I basically entrust you fully to handle that unless it's something that feels like much more sensitive or more critical but um all right this next question is painful in which case we save it for jmo uh andrew wants to know what movie best describes

the 2023 mets and why is it black sunday Have you seen Black Sunday? I have not. Black Sunday is a quality 70s thriller about a terrorist group attempting to blow up a Goodyear blimp

hovering over the Super Bowl. Just a sick movie. I think that that is actually it's actually worse than that in some ways. The Mets season it's actually worse than that. In some ways. The Mets season.

It's a, I don't, maybe, maybe people will just turn the pot off now as we pivot into like three minutes of Mets discussion. But, um, let me think of a movie that. It's Black Swan Dog.

Is any of this real? It's just terrible. Slowly losing my mind. You know what it really feels like more, you know, like Armageddon and Deep Impact came out in the same year and there was this

big conversation about how could two movies about the apocalypse, the end of times, come out at the same time. And, you know, Armageddon was this really flashy,

pop, Michael Bay, almost comedy set inside the world of a bunch of space miners attempting to blow up an asteroid. And Deep Impact is a much different movie.

It's this mournful, sad, emotionally strong, and kind of powerful popcorn movie. It's a very rare type of big mainstream movie. And they don't make a lot of them for a reason. They don't make people feel good. There are some uplifting things about Deep Impact. But the thing about Deep Impact is, is that for long stretches of the movie,

everyone knows that the world is fucked and i had a moment i have a since deleted twitter thread which is what i do with all of my sports tweets as you know um that after a three game losing streak that just collates all of them all of the ones that feel free i mean what's the difference like whatever i'm tweeting about sports is easily the least interesting thing I have to say about anything nevertheless here we are on the pod talking about sports where I was just like it was early May

and I was like this team is messed up and here's why and they they're stuck between two generations and all their success last year was not a mirage but it was a lot of guys operating at the absolute height of their powers and the

leadership is really bad at this team with this team i hate the general manager i've always hated the general manager's track record buck showalter is an aging manager for a team that needs an infusion of youth like it's just a lot of things it was just like this is just a bad fit and you can kind of tell and there's something messy about them spending 400 million dollars and finishing three games under 500 but that's kind of where it feels like they're going and so yeah it's been a little bit hopeless they're not very good um how are you feeling i actually i would like to um amend my answer and i would like to say that this season feels like titanic if at the beginning of the movie all of the people were like that ship is gonna sink

it was pretty clear and then they they all still got on the ship and then they were like why is it sinking i don't understand it would be like the titanic if the titanic was the oldest ship in the water and people were like that ship is old that ship gosh how is it so old and so good you know that ship out from the depths of the ocean so many times why why are they still running it back why do people still board it i don don't understand. It's really tough. I don't know. I got nothing. I got nothing else to add. No, they stink. It's fine. I'm kind of like

I'm not emotionally checked out, but I'm trying to be externally normal so that I don't freak people out. I think last year I flew a little like a touch close to the sun and the team was a 101 win team and so it didn't, maybe it didn't seem like I was like my life was in shambles the team was 101 win team and so it didn't maybe didn't seem like i was um like my life was in shambles but i was like really high and really low with them

last year and i'm trying to just be a little bit more even keeled like i'm trying to basically have ssris but for the mets what's ssris i don't know what that is like uh like antidepressant drugs oh i see selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors but like for baseball that's how you know i'm not on any antidepressants as i have no idea what you're talking about maybe that explains my my posture on the show recently um if only we had amanda to tell you that you need to take xanax it's tough uh i think that the team is like a lot of disaster movies in that most people they're looking with an objective point of view that this wasn't going to go well i too was very high and low with them last year

and i am much more even keeled this year because i just didn't really feel very strongly about what they did um i'd like them to just punt i'd like them to be sellers i don't i don't actually believe that they should be like trying to get the wild card spot or whatever and try to sneak into the playoffs i know that that is something that worked last year for the phillies but this just feels like a poorly constructed team to me in so many ways. But you know what? What do I know?

I'm just a movie podcaster. Let's go to the next question. Marshall asks, if you could choose any movie pre-1960 to do on the rewatchables, what would it be and why? I mean, I always say The Third Man is a movie that I would love to analyze

because I think it's the perfect fusion of plot, character, dialogue, and look, style, era. Sweet smell of success crossed my mind for this one. I think that that would be really exciting to talk about New York in the 50s, to talk about the media world, to talk about the Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster and their kind of eras of fame and what they represented as actors, to talk about playwrights writing scripts for the movie business. Pretty much any Billy Wilder movie, I think, would be awesome.

I think, really on down the line, like some like a hot witness for the prosecution, like pretty much any movie that he made, I think would be dynamite. Double Indemnity, that would be a great one. Movies that have twisty plots, or iconic screen actors appearing in them very memorable lines of dialogue historical precedent around them i mean you know we're never going to do citizen kane on the rewatchables but citizen kane like when manc was coming out i felt like we basically had three to five episodes of

uh worth of podcast episodes in front of us just based on the research and how fun those movies are to talk about. So many of those 30s, 40s, 50s movies are not as slow and more fun to see. And I hear from listeners all the time who are like, I'm getting into classic films. What do you recommend? And it's like,

I don't even know where to start. There's so many movies that are worth recommending. So those are just a few. I don't know. Is there anyone that you just did your own little mini rewatchables for casablanca it was sort of a watchables actually true yeah yeah it was a watchables for me but rewatchables for like i think probably everybody listening to the show um i i don't know i like invasion of the body snatchers the original

version um perfect idea i the the first day there the original day that Earth stood still 1951. I think those are two those are two movies that were shown to me in college that I

think held up better than I was expecting to and there's like unintentional comedy to like the delivery of the lines compared to what you would

see in a movie now but if you can kind of suspend that disbelief and just kind of truly try to appreciate the set design that went into creating a movie like this in 1950 when they didn't have like cell phones you know or like air conditioning uh i think that some of that stuff is kind of amazing and fascinating to watch

yeah i mean even like the day the earth stood still is a good example of that's like one of bernard herman's first big scores then you can you got 10 minutes of talk about who Bernard Herrmann is and why he matters and then all these movies have all been remade as you said so that you can talk

about their legacy as remakes I think there have been four remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers at this point so there's a lot there

I think like the 78 one is probably the most popular one in terms of like in the canon I agree and I actually do think because I know Bill

is a huge fan of that movie I do think we will eventually do that at some point which would be fun um but the og i think it's a little bit of a stretch although i too was shown that movie in high school because it's just a marvelous cold war allegory and a huac allegory and blacklist and all those things it's a really brilliant movie okay what's next uh really great question here from amy what are we thinking about Pixar recently? My kids like them, but don't return to them over and over like Moana, Frozen, and Encanto. Early Elemental reviews have me worried. Are they fulfilling their mission?

What is their mission? This is a really interesting question. I haven't seen Elemental yet. Elemental actually comes out a week from today. And it looks quite similar to Inside Out. And I think some of the criticisms out of Cannes are that it feels a little bit plug-and-play with some previous Pixar films

that are about kind of like feelings and ideas, you know, that Soul is another movie that was about this sort of ethereal concept as opposed to characters themselves. I think they're in a little bit of an in-between spot from a commercial perspective. I don't know if I've ever seen Disney slip into second or even third place,

but it's hard to argue with the fact that Universal and Super Mario Brothers coming on the heels of the success of the Minions movies and what Chris Melandri and Illumination are doing are at least leading the pack from a commercial perspective. And then, you know, you've got DreamWorks are doing interesting things creatively. Netflix, I think, has really invested in animation in really interesting ways in a feature storytelling format. It's the first time in a long time. Actually, you know what the most

significant one is? Spider-Verse. Because Spider-Verse is everything. Spider-Verse is style and format breaking and evolutionary thinking, and also keeping up with the Joneses of modern IP storytelling and funny and for all ages. And it just feels like the absolute vanguard of mainstream animation, whereas Pixar really held the crown for 10, 15, 20 years in that respect. I think they were really misserved by Disney's Disney Plus strategy during the pandemic. I think the decision to put movies like Turning Red directly onto a platform and not put them in theaters is a huge mistake. I think it's tricky because the leadership has changed. John Lasseter is obviously a hugely influential and important figure in the history of animation who had a certain golden touch, but as a deeply problematic person who

is alleged to have done some terrible things, he now works at another company and is making animation. A lot of people that he worked with are still at Pixar, but Pixar, you know, Disney had layoffs just a few weeks ago and some critical folks in the history of Pixar were let go in those layoffs. So it's a tricky thing. It feels like they're in a really transitional period. Turning Red was still one of my, I think one of my seven or eight favorite movies of 2022. It's not like they're not still making great films and they don't still have a strong mission. And their films are getting more diverse and more interesting.

The storytelling formats are still evolving. But they were the king have a strong mission and their films are getting more diverse and more interesting. The storytelling formats are still evolving. But they were the king for a long time and it does feel like they have been somewhat dethroned in recent years. So we'll see with Elemental. But the idea that Spider-Verse is going to... Spider-Verse looks like it's going to chug along this weekend again

and it's probably going to stick around the third and fourth week. People are loving, loving this movie. So that puts Elemental in a tough spot. We'll see. Yeah. What about this part

of the question where Amy asks, are they fulfilling their mission and what is their mission? Like, what do you think Pixar means to the movies?

Or I guess to people, because Pixar is often like for parents and kids to both be able to enjoy films together do you think that they have strayed from that do you think that they're just not quite as

successful because they're not the only like shop on the block anymore I really liked the movie soul but that did not feel like a film made for kids and I do think that at a certain point they lost the sense of who they were making their films for and some of them became these kind of emotional mission statements because of the celebration of films like wally and up and maybe to a lesser extent ratatouille these films that had deep emotional thematic cores that resonated so strongly with adults that entertaining kids i think is still a part of the core mission of an animation studio owned by Disney. Um,

I think it's interesting that Disney has had a lot of success with their original animated storytelling that Moana and frozen and Encanto as Amy notes are the movies that like kids are going back to over and over again. And now we're getting into the live action remake of Moana. We'll have a live action remake of Frozen in a few years. The new history of Disney is actually being written by their animation studio.

I mean, it's passed for me too. I don't really care about those movies. But I mentioned this, I think, last summer, but when I was on vacation with my whole family last August, there were so many kids under the age of 10 and they just wanted to watch Moana and Frozen. That was over and over again.

That was their number one. They enjoyed Lightyear too. And I actually just took my daughter to the doctor the other day and Lightyear was playing in the lobby and she was wrapped by Lightyear. So it's not like it's over for them. It's not like they're like off the board. It just feels like they've been,

their status among kids even has been weakened. Okay, next question comes from Connor. I really like Pete Davidson and stuff like King of Staten Island and obviously he's in the new Transformers but it feels like generally

he's just a cameo gimmick. What is his place in film and I guess more broadly in media? I feel like he made a pivot after King of Staten Island where that was kind of a premium personal story

and Judd Apatow invested in him and I think that movie is flawed but has a lot of great things about it i think i might have liked it more than most people to be honest with you i found him to be pretty engaging and a promising dramatic actor and since then he's made a peacock sitcom a zany rom-com with kaylee cuoco he's made a cameo in Fast X. He's made a cameo or he's made a voice role in Transformers Rise of the Beasts.

What am I forgetting? You know, his choices are, and this is obviously his right, just seem very- Bodies, bodies, bodies. Bodies, bodies. That was interesting, although honestly a very small role

in the grand scheme of things when you look at that film. Yeah, in terms of screen time. Yeah. Although critical, I will say but uh he doesn't he i think he seems interested in being like um famous and being a star and maybe not as interested in whatever we would perceive as like a movie star with taste you know he's not trying to be robert pattinson he's trying to be something else and obviously it's really hard to be a comedy star in 2023 on the order of the people that he probably grew up watching,

Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey. And those guys kind of don't exist anymore. So, it's a tricky thing. I do think he's got something. He's got such an interesting face and a weird, kind of entrancing,

kind of just terrible voice. You know, there's something unmistakable about Pete Davidson. And of course, he's like the BDE guy, right? He's like the, kind of entrancing kind of just terrible voice you know there's something unmistakable about pete davidson um and of course he's like the bde guy right he's like the he's he's you know dater of the stars and so there's like a charisma a power to him i just i always just want people to pick big better projects work with better filmmakers so i don't know um danny asks will we ever see a major spoof movie again?

Feels like the last ones that made any impact were Walk Hard and they came together. Is the parody film dead? Well, I mean, part of the reason why it's dead

is that the only thing you could really parody at this point are mainstream action franchises. Those movies made sense when they were commenting on something

that was in the zeitgeist. When rom-coms were in the zeitgeist, it made sense to parody those movies made sense when they were commenting on something that was in the zeitgeist when rom-coms were in the zeitgeist and made sense to parody those movies. And now it kind of doesn't because that would just be an active nostalgia. Um, I think also they just kind of ran the well dry. Like they just, they did every possible version of them and it pivoted away from Abrams and

Zucker into like the sort of B or C tier version of those movies. I still think the scare first couple of scary movie movies are pretty funny. Um, so I think maybe horror is still like ripe for some of that. I think actually a movie that's coming out next week, the blackening has a little bit to do with this. It's not a proper spoof.

It's somewhere between like a comedy and a satire of the black experience in horror films. Um, but it has some of this energy and i mentioned this too some of uh spider verse to me feels like a mel brooks movie you know some of it feels like it is working in service of like actively parodying the most popular thing on the planet while also paying homage to it so um it's not totally dead but it's not we're not getting the naked gun anytime soon. Yeah, I do feel like more movies are self-referential or self-parodying for parts of them.

And then the rest of the movie, they're like, well, we've checked that box. And maybe people don't quite have the attention span for a full two hours and 20 minutes of it the way that they did in 1984. Yeah, I mean, Deadpool is a parody of deadpool like in like in in real time it's doing the work of um making fun of the fact that it's a movie called deadpool about uh super assassin um so i mean get out is a parody of horror movies you know like in a lot of ways and then also at the same time it's like the best best horror movie in black comedy that came out of the 2010s. Completely. Completely. Um,

so I, I mean, that's, you could make the case that that's a good thing that like the spoof is not necessarily the most pure format of storytelling. I do think that we're, there's missed opportunity in finding something like blazing saddles that is parodying something that is more historical.

It says something about 50 years of a genre, and there's still an opportunity to do that, but we don't see that as much. Okay, next question. Tapakip asks, with Oppenheimer releasing on July 21st, will Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 really only be shown in IMAX for one week?

Will they choose not to show Oppenheimer? Unlike most other formats, theaters typically only have one IMAX screen one week. Will they choose not to show Oppenheimer? Unlike most other formats, theaters typically only have one IMAX screen and will have to choose. Yeah, our colleague Matt Bellany has done some great reporting about this and the fact that Tom Cruise seems very frustrated by the fact that Christopher Nolan has claimed so many IMAX screens, but the truth is that Oppenheimer claimed the date of July 21st much earlier than Mission Impossible claimed their date. Also, Christopher Nolan shot his movie on IMAX film stock specifically in 70 millimeter

and this new technology. And he has been probably the single most vocal filmmaker advocate for the format of anyone in the world. And so he is like borderline business partners with IMAX. And so it's no surprise. I think that there's an idea there, there's some sense, and this is not just my typical Nolan trolling,

but there's some sense that like a mission impossible movie maybe feels more appropriate than something like a historical drama like Oppenheimer. I know Oppenheimer is going to have incredible visual storytelling and explosions. And I know what's coming. But 11 miles, 600 pounds, 11 miles of film, Sean. Come on, just if you got it, bend the knee to the sheer length of the film. I will do no such thing. But I don't know.

I mean, my advice is to go see them both right when they come out. You know, like that's you want it. You want cool adult filmmaking on a grand stage with big budgets you can have both versions you can have a historical drama with incredible uh visual storytelling in oppenheimer and you can have a mainstream action franchise that is really doing it the right way in mission impossible just show up just show up i've decided that i'm gonna make um everyone in my life watch all of the mission impossible movies in the week leading up to mission impossible fall or mission impossible dead reckoning so uh i invite the listeners of the big picture to join me on this quest force everyone in your life who has or has not seen the movies to sit down and watch all six

with you you put up it will be an enriching enriching experience that you will not regret um there's no bad mission impossible films it's the best active film franchise in the world It will be an enriching experience that you will not regret. There's no bad mission impossible films. It's the best active film franchise in the world. And even two, which I have a lot of problems with, has a couple of John Woo set pieces. So what are you going to do? All right, next question comes from Cameron.

What do you think the time should be between a theatrical run of a movie and the digital physical streaming release? This has obviously been something that has been changing a lot in the last digital physical streaming release this has obviously been something that has been changing a lot in the last couple years uh with the pandemic but also with some of the business interests of some of these these companies so what do you think is the ideal time um well we had a perfect system we had we had a wide. And even though the business was, quote unquote, shrinking over a period of time, that was really the symptom more of something that had been happening over the course of 70 years and not just five years. So I thought that something in the 45 to 60 day window exclusively in theaters before moving to a PVOD, a premium video on demand output,

followed by a streamer taking on the film, would be for the best health of the films. It's basically confirmed now that movies that open theatrically have better marketing and awareness and a better perception of quality from audiences who have not seen the films yet. That is basically over with i think what we saw with air confirmed what i think that the strategy will be for the most part um

which is that most big corporations that have streaming services that need content at a high level will use maybe like a 30-day window something along those lines before moving their films onto their streamers but there was just some reporting recently about Universal's take on a couple of these movies that they have put into PVOD circumstances. And the numbers were interesting. I mean, that's basically box office when you rent a movie for $19.99 three weeks after it's been released in movie theaters. And if a movie like the Super Mario Brothers movie, after doing gangbusters in theaters, can also generate a quick $30 million in the span of a few weeks, that's really good business for the studios. Universal has a shorter window than the other studios. Even for films that cross certain thresholds, they still have a fairly short window. Universal seems to be doing quite

well right now. And so I'm loathe to criticize the business strategy of a successful theatrical distributor. But I do think where we were in 2019 was still a good system. I still think it made sense to leave Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and movie theaters for three or four months and let people continue to screen it if they wanted to,

if it could drive business in your certain town and then wait for it to come to home video and to streaming and everything else so i um i don't feel a strong need to radically shift those things i will say from as a the maker of a movie podcast it was really interesting to watch the performance of certain episodes after short windows of time when people would tune in when films specifically would go to HBO Max. There were a handful of films like Elvis, like The Banshees of Inisharen. There were a couple more that I'm forgetting.

But because those services have a lot of subscribers, people are just much more likely to check out specialty films like that in those streaming environments. And they'd heard about them, but they hadn't quite experienced them. And so like those episodes for us actually ended up doing quite well relative to the box office performance of the films, because there was an awareness of those films and

people felt like they needed to see them, but they were willing to wait. And now it feels like we have once again changed the strategy where we are once again, like going to do longer windows gonna do more extended pvod periods and then send movies to streaming so we'll see i mean it's always changing i think everybody has a varying perspective it's very similar to like the streaming disruption where it was like cable tv the cable tv bundle was like awful but also genius and worked and everybody got fat and then they just broke it and they still don't know how to fix it. And it feels that way about movies right now. It feels like they broke it a

little bit during the pandemic. And part of the reason why so many of the episodes that we did during that time just feel so unhinged is because we're just like, oh my God, they're ripping up this thing that we had that was kind of working well for about 30 years there. And they still have not totally figured out how to reset um the structure what do you what do you what i mean if you're not seeing movies you want them to come to streaming faster i mean i like movies to be in theaters for longer because i prefer to watch movies that are being released that year in theaters so if it's like only available for three weeks i don't make it out in those three weeks, I think I'm actually more likely to just

not watch it than to figure out when it's actually going to come to streaming versus premium video on demand. Because I'm not like a huge PVOD person. Like I'm not really paying $20 a pop for movies very frequently because I already pay for so many streaming services and there's already so many things that I could watch on those streaming services, many of which are still new releases and that I still, that I want to watch just as much as another movie. So if it's a tie break,

like I'm not going to pay the PVOD for it. I'm just going to wait for it to come to streaming. I find it interesting that you bring up Elvis because I think Elvis is an interesting example

of how being in the awards race can be really good for your movie on streaming because people are much more likely to give it a shot when it's just being when austin butler's performance specifically is being talked about week in and week out on podcasts on videos that variety is making on talk shows in the morning or whatever but like if elvis was not available on hbo max do you think anybody would have really paid for just to see his performance specifically in that? Probably not. But I think it does lower the bar for people giving a movie like that a shot.

I mean, one thing of note is that it's crazy expensive to go to the movies. I know. Especially if you have a family. It is stupid expensive. And I think that people are paying more on PVOD now because that feels like the halfway point between bringing their entire family to the movies and just waiting and hoping that it comes to the streaming service, one of the three streaming services that you have. Because I think that it's like, you are making that bargain with yourself, like, oh, I'll pay $20 instead of $120.

And I'm not going to get it for the $9 that I already paid. Completely agree with that. I think that that's something that like over time, we talk about sometimes just the extraordinary expense that it can be. And I think especially for parents, there are two factors that they're taking into consideration when they're thinking about taking their kids to the movies. One is how expensive it is. That if you have three kids,

that could be $150, $180 a day. You're paying for parking, you're paying for concessions, you're paying for the tickets, you know, you're paying for, God knows, you got to board concessions, you're paying for the tickets, you know, you're paying for, um, I, God knows you gotta board your dog. Like, what the hell, whatever else you have to do to

get out for three hours. The other thing is that the movies have gotten longer, so it's a longer stretch of time. So it's a bigger time commitment. And as the parent of a young child, it's just really hard to get a sitter. It's really hard to get out of the house. And if you know that if you can watch a movie waiting three weeks and you're not a freak like me who wants to see everything on opening weekend, just wait.

It's just more convenient. I don't take any issue with people. I advocate strongly for the theater business because I think it's actually quite fundamental to the ongoing health of movie making. Like that is the thing that I care about the most. But I also know that convenience matters most to people in this day and age and so i totally get it i will i want to say just going back to elvis though i saw plenty of people groaned when we thought about when we you know suggested that oscar season had started with past lives and i cited that everything ever

all at once was released in march of last year el Elvis was released in June of last year and rode that wave that you're describing, that six-month period, to strong box office, strong VOD, and strong streaming performance. I think that the movie industry should really consider giving up on the winter and fall season as Oscar time and maybe consider more aggressively moving these films earlier into the year. Because I think that the dispersal of experience, the fact that people are not all watching things all at the same time unless they're franchise entertainments, means that you have to give a longer shelf life to these movies. I thought June was a really smart time for past lives. And I think it will let the movie simmer in the culture for a long period of time. So whether or not that movie's going to be best experienced

by people who wait six weeks to watch it on VOD, I don't really know. I don't know when it's coming to VOD. I can't even suggest that. It doesn't even go wide for another two weeks. But the moving things up,

I think, also creates a longer shelf life for these movies. And we don't feel like we have to turn the page on the movie year as quickly as we usually do. Yeah. I think also, though,

part of the problem is that we've kind of screwed the timelines of these things though because like a movie might come out earlier but is it going to be in theaters long enough in enough places that that even matters like by the time people hear about it on a podcast or whatever is it going to be available in the place that they're that they are living and able to go to the movie theater and actually see it or is it going to run long enough for people who are like waiting to hear from other people whether they should actually pull the trigger and go to the movie theaters and spend the exorbitant amount of money that it costs to go to the movie theaters and then by the time

they've actually made the decision to go see xyz film past lives elvis once upon a time in hollywood is it now out of theaters because it's on PVOD and now you've just completely forgotten about it and now it just exists on the internet, which is a fake place that you can easily forget about. We hear this all the time from listeners. I don't really know what to say. I mean, we're fortunate to live in New York and Los Angeles. And so we have access. We actually have increasingly awesome access. There's actually more theaters now than there were two years ago, and there are more rep theaters. And we have this extraordinary ability to go see movies that we

want to see. Past Lives is a good example of that right now, where I know there's frustration that people can't see it yet. I think part of the reason why we do the show the way that we do it is because we're trying to be heralds for things that we care about. And so putting it on your radar so that you will putting it on your radar so that you will put it on your calendar when the movie comes along is definitely part of the mission for me of the show is to just make people aware of what we think is good and worth your time. And so it does require a fandom. It does require a commitment to the idea of attending movies. That's unrealistic for most living humans. Most living humans don't

organize their calendar around the movie release calendar. I'm very aware of that. But hopefully, if you listen to shows like this, you can hear us say, go see this movie. It matters. When you see it playing in your local theater, check it out. And if it doesn't play in your local theater, that sucks. I don't know what to say. I mean, the business has just changed so dramatically in the last 20 years that some things just aren't going to come to your town and you're going to have to wait a month to see it on streaming. Do you want to do one more? Yeah. One final question. This comes from Ilu Vatar. How do you prepare for recording? Lots

of reading, preparing documents or other stuff. And if you watch a movie together, do you avoid talking about it afterwards until you're recording? I'll answer the last part first. In the case of something like Past Lives, I knew the moment that I saw it that I would want to have a long discussion about the movie with Amanda and that I didn't want

to speak to her about the movie. In fact, she and I saw each other socially on Saturday after she had had a chance to see the movie and we did not discuss it.

And even though it is the kind of movie that we want to discuss even in our personal friendship and not just on the show but i knew that for the show it would be much more exciting for us to talk about it that way i think she felt the same we didn't even discuss that we didn't strategize we were just like this is how we do it um we probably don't have enough deep discussions about new movies like we did with past lives um we're trying to cover so many things at so many different times

we're trying to not ruin movies for people at various times. So it's a little challenging to figure that out, but I do like those deep and long discussions. And when I do that, I want to know I'm going to do that. I read a lot of interviews with the filmmakers. I read a lot about the inspirations. If there are critical movies, I thought in the run up to Bo is afraid,

uh, Ari Aster programmed a series of films at the, uh, Lincoln center, Lincoln center cinemas um and i hadn't seen half of the movies that he said were direct inspirations or somehow connected to bow is afraid and so i just went and watched those movies to kind of get a sense of what he was thinking i love doing that that's like my favorite thing ari is like one of five living directors who could put

a list of inspirations out that you haven't seen half the movies i i mean his his bag is so deep so deep it's so deep um but you know i i was sad that i couldn't be in new york to go see any of those movies but also like half of them were just on the criterion channel so you can just fire them up there's some convenience there too so um i i will watch a lot sometimes i'll read a book not often at this point um we get a lot of questions about'll read a book. Not often at this point. We get a lot of questions about book recommendations. And I don't know. I've read a lot of film books over the years.

I do sometimes like to, you know, I read Killers of the Flower Moon years ago. Not really in preparation for the movie, but kind of in preparation for the movie. And so I'll read some nonfiction with the expectation that something will be covered. I'm reading about Napoleon because of the Napoleon movie. So I will pick up on those things. Like I took your recommendation about the podcast. I will listen to the things like that. Truthfully, I think the actual making of the show for me personally is not unlike what I was doing after I came home last night from the fan screening of Transformers Rise of

the Beast, which is I got home. I chatted with my wife for 45 minutes about whatever's going on in our lives. She went to bed. I went downstairs to the garage. I cracked open a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I put on the animated Transformers movie on my TV. And I just started writing my thoughts into a document. And it wasn't my review of the movie it was

recounting what had happened in the movie so that i could better understand what i liked or thought about the movie and that's usually my process that's usually how i get to where i want to go sure i'll look at the transformers wikia so i can figure out you know what the the trans warp key means. But honestly, it's just like my fast typing. It reminds me of when I was a writer and would like write on deadline. Like it's just, it's that same sensation. Yeah. Yeah. And just trying to like catalog your thoughts in your brain

and then being frustrated because you forgot one that you think is like probably going to be your best thought that you're going to share. Like that's just a constant. it's getting harder and harder the older i get too it's i know in preparation for a podcast i will say so we joke all the time about like save it for the pod you know but if you're a listener at home who has your own pod or is starting your own pod save it for the pod is like kind of a core tenant of you gotta do it like do not waste all of your best conversation because there's no way to make it seem like you haven't had this conversation already if you've

already had this conversation that is just a fact of human interaction your brain knows you've had this conversation already it's hard to fake it unless you're trained in acting frankly which i don't think any of the ringer podcasters are except chris who's classically trained british actor but even chris like i hope i'm not revealing state secrets here like he will tell you what he thinks about something but he will holster all the best bits you know he's never going to use the material and i'm not saying he's pre-writing anything that he shares but he's thinking about it you know what i mean he's a performer you're performers when we do this you know like you can't just give away what you're going to tell someone. You want authentic reaction

when you're having these experiences. You think we knew that Frog Sheriff was coming? Come on. The reaction tells you everything. The reaction tells it all. That one in particular, I might have taken that back

if I had known it was coming. You know, I might have said, this is, this is... I would never. Come on, that's gone on the sizzle reel. For what? For our induction into the Podcaster's Hall of Fame.

Spons sponsored by me personally it's brutal with sponsored sponsored by the trans warp key brought to you by the trans warp key and the Maximals well with

that in mind we're going to trans warp key out of here this is this is the end of our mailbag thanks as always to people who send such fun interesting weird and

and quite invasive questions I appreciate it Bob thanks for calling these together for us and thanks for your work as the producer of this podcast episode. And as a man who accepted my Transformers queries, I appreciate that. It's my pleasure. My distinct pleasure. Next week, we're drafting again. It's very exciting. We're doing a year that I've been holding on to for a while. It's an interesting year, a top-heavy year, an important year. It's 2001.

Chris Ryan will be back, Amanda will be back, and we will see you then.