The Big Picture - ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Is Here!

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Sean is joined by Joanna Robinson to reflect on the passing of the great James Caan, before breaking down Taika Waititi’s latest installment of the Thor story, ‘Love and Thunder' (6:37). Then, Sean is joined by the French filmmaker Claire Denis to talk about her brilliant career and her latest film, ‘Both Sides of the Blade’ (67:11). HOST: Sean Fennessey GUESTS: Joanna Robinson and Claire Denis PRODUCER: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Are you tuning in to the Challenge USA on CBS? Well, tune in to me, Tyson Apostle, as I break down each and every episode with my co-host, Amelia Wedemeyer. I'm also a contestant on the show, which gives you all the insider scoop. Amelia, how stoked are you to do this? Tyson, I'm freaking excited. I cannot wait to sit my butt down every single week to watch the show, then come here and recap it with you on the Ringer Reality TV podcast. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about gods and goddesses. Later in today's episode, I have a conversation with the European film deity Claire Denis about her career in her new film, Both Sides of the Blade. Honestly, I was very intimidated to speak with Claire. I hope you'll stick around for my conversation with her. She is a legend. First, the big movie event of the weekend is Taika Waititi's latest installment in the MCU Norse god Thor's story. It's Love and Thunder.

Joining me to discuss it, another all-powerful being, it's Joanna Robinson. Hi, Jo. Oh, hi, Sean. What an intro for me. What an expectation to disappoint people. No, I think you'll be wielding Mjolnir with the power of a mighty Thor in this conversation. Thanks. Building Mjolnir with the power of a mighty Thor in this conversation. I got to say, before we begin, terrible news in the world of movies. Right before we got ready to record this episode, we got word that James Caan passed away.

So before we get into Thor, I just want to talk. I just want to get some feelings off my chest about Jimmy Caan, if you don't mind. And I'm, of course, willing to hear yours as well. Definitely one of my favorite actors of my lifetime who has been a part of some of my favorite films ever made. He passed away at 82 years old this week. I actually just got a chance to see him in person a few months ago.

I saw The Godfather on the big screen, the restored version at Paramount on the studio lot, which was one of the best film going experiences of my life. And before that film started, Francis Ford Coppola, Talia Shire, and James Caan spoke about their experience on the movie. And Caan, even though he was in a wheelchair, was in great spirits and also could not hear well.

And so he didn't really take any questions or follow any of Coppola's lead. He just talked about what he wanted to talk about. And it was delightful. He was charming and funny and a little weird as he always is and a little threatening, but in a soft way. He's such a unique actor. He really reminded me of the New York tough guys from the Bronx in my family. And so I always felt like a kind of personal affinity watching him. And he wasn't just Sonny Corleone, though that's the character that he's probably best remembered for. He had a lot of range. He was in musicals and comedies and

science fiction movies. And he always had this bearing of an athlete. He was best known for Brian's song when he was in Rollerball. And he was very believable in those movies as professional athletes. He was a big guy. He wasn't like the Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino diminutive, kind of angsty character actor who became movie star. He was a real handsome, strapping movie star in the 1970s who had great taste, who always worked with great filmmakers, Altman and Norman Jewison, Alan Pakula. He worked with John Wayne and Howard Hawks and El Dorado in the 60s. He worked with Jon Favreau. He worked with Wes Anderson. He's got a six-decade career. He directed movies. He made this movie called Hide and Play in Sight in 1980, which is really, really great. He was in Misery,

which was just on the rewatchables, as Paul Sheldon, who was fantastic. The Gambler, Freebie and the Bean. I mean, he really had an extraordinary career. He's somebody I just was always so happy to see. And I think was always, despite being so explosive as a personality, a subtler and more gifted actor than he sometimes got credit for. What is your relationship to Khan as a performer? You know, obviously like someone who just cropped up, as you said, in like all genres throughout my childhood and adulthood watching film. I was never in my youth like a diehard Godfather fan, but it's something that, you know, I've watched and then revisited and revisited and never disliked, but only grown to love more. And the most recent time

we rewatched it, oddly enough, around the book of Boba Fett, because it was taking some cues from the Godfather, like his performance is the one that stood out to me more than anyone else's. Like you mentioned his physicality, the image of Sonny in his like, you know, white tank top with the like hair on his shoulder, you know, like the big shoulders and the hair on his body and just like all of that stuff,

that visceral, all of the explosive energy that he brings to that. Obviously like Sonny isn't a trilogylong character, but he looms over the whole thing as such this, like, beautifully tragic, the whole thing is Shakespearean. But yeah, like, he's not just Sonny. But Sonny is so much more important than I think, you know, people with only a surface interaction with the Godfather really understand. And I think only Khan himself could have done that. And I think that, point bottle rocket is such an like one of the most interesting moves he made because like wes wes was nobody when he made bottle rock his first movie right so for con

to like lend his muscle to something like that with a cast of again nobody the wilson brothers had ever heard of them right right? That just to your point speaks to his taste and his willingness to step out of a comfort zone, to do an elf, to do something like that. So yeah, a great loss, but a great talent and a lot of opportunity for people to either revisit great movies or check out things they've never seen if they're wanting to spend some time with James Caan this weekend. Yeah, the 70s has a great reservoir of films. I think a lot of people that are our age or younger will know him, obviously, from Elf as Buddy's dad, or they'll know him from Honeymoon in Vegas or something like that. Maybe they'll know him from the show Vegas. Wasn't he on that show,

Las Vegas? I think he was. But he made a lot of very unusual films in the 70s starring these really ornery, explosive characters like Slither, T.R. Baskin, Cinderella Liberty. These movies are a lot harder to see than your standard 80s and 90s fare. Almost all of them are worth seeking out. They're all made in that very special moment in Hollywood history where odd character studies were basically the most mainstream a movie could be. So look up all of his stuff because he's just such a terrific actor. Let's make an inelegant transition away from James Caan and into Thor Love and Thunder because it's a big, big movie. This might be the last big movie for a long time.

I was reflecting on this actually with Amanda Dobbins about how it might be kind of a weird summer here on the big picture because we don't have a lot of event movies and there's not really anything until mid-September, late September in terms of like tentpole style projects for us. So we got to make this one worth it.

Thor Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi's back. He, of course, directed Ragnarok a few years back, and that was a huge success, both critically and commercially. He co-wrote this movie as well with Jennifer Kate Robinson. And before we get into Love and Thunder, can you just remind listeners why Ragnarok was such a phenomenon and how Taika kind of burst onto the scene into the MCU? Yeah, I mean, Taika was like a... Both was and wasn't a fairly standard hire for Marvel in terms of like he was an indie darling, you know, and he had been nominated

for an Oscar for a short film, but he wasn't, you know, a huge muscular force and in the directing world, he couldn't command a huge paycheck or, you know, huge muscular force. And in the directing world, he couldn't command a huge paycheck or, you know, like exactly sort of what Marvel was looking for. But what's different about Taika in that role is that, you know, Hemsworth himself brought Taika on for Ragnarok. Hemsworth, you know, as the story goes, you know, went to Kevin Feige and was like, I'm drowning. I feel like I'm suffocating in this role. I hate playing this character because he was cast as so humorless.

And at that point, Hemsworth had done Ghostbusters, at least. And we, as an audience, and those who saw him in Cabin in the Woods, knew that he had this playful, comedic spark to him that he hadn't gotten to show off. And so they brought Taika in. They kind of threw out what they were going to do with Ragnarok. Because if you look at like Age of Ultron, the Ragnarok they were pointing to is not at all what they wound up doing. And so Taika and Chris together, basically, and Stephanie Folsom is the co-writer on that film, but like to their credit, Marvel just let them sort of reboot the character in a way that was massively successful. That's a huge like party movie. And for people who hadn't spent time with Taika, like maybe they had seen What We Do in the Shadows and like that, but people who hadn't spent a lot of time with Taika, like got a taste of his, his sense of humor and like also the broader New Zealand sense of humor.

And I think it felt like a huge breath of fresh air comedically, stylistically. And yeah, I mean, people had a great time. And also, and this is the ongoing conversation we're having about Marvel, both that movie and this one are so disconnected from the larger MCU nonsense, right? Like Thor, and I say nonsense lovingly, but like Thor was not involved in like what was going on in civil war. You know, it was just sort of like, meanwhile, out in space, here's what's happening. And I think that also felt really fresh and exciting for people. So. Yeah. I would say for the most part, that is the case in Love and Thunder as well, that this feels a bit like a side story

more so than a contributory to the broader phase for MCU story, wherever that's headed, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit here in our conversation. Love and Thunder is an interesting movie. I'm very mixed on it. There are parts of it that I absolutely loved.

I am fond of Taika's comic style. There are are parts of it that I absolutely loved. I am fond of Taika's comic style. There are also parts of it that I think, because of that style, can sometimes feel tinny or cheap in this world. There's a very fine line between that kind of kitsch camp that Taika leans into and something feeling

not as developed or as solidified as I want it to. And this is an issue I'm having increasingly with Marvel films. I was very, very passionate about phase three. I really felt like I'm not sure I've ever seen a gigantic corporation quite land the plane the way that they did. And so I'm going through a little bit of an evolution of my feelings on the brand at the moment. Well, and that's unsurprising because the brand is diluting itself so much right now. Because in addition to these movies and however you feel about Black Widow or Eternals or Shang-Chi or

Doctor Strange, there's all the TV shows, which with every new installment is another moment for someone to be like, does marvel exactly know what it's doing still or does it have a cohesive vision here or are they just i say this every time i come talk to you about marvel are they just spread too thin and trying to spin too many plates at once um i liked this movie better than you did but i do think that some of that strain, I feel like if there were more time to really refine this movie, it could have been as sort of seamlessly, seamless feeling as Ragnarok. But that balance of tone, which I think is your main-ish with the movie, is something that Taika himself has always done in his filmography, right? Like, all of his stuff is deeply sad and funny at the same time.

And sometimes those combinations work, like, chef's kiss perfectly. And sometimes you feel the scenes a little more, like, controversially, possibly. I think his Oscar-winning screenplay, Jojo Rabbit, is, like, a less, you know, functional example of that. But something like Boy or Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which is far and away my favorite type of movie, like is an expert balance of that. If you look back at Ragnarok, it feels like, like when I saw, when I saw this movie, Love and Thunder, I saw it before even a lot of our press colleagues, just because I had to do an early interview. And so a lot of them asked me, they're like, are people going to like this? Is this good?

And my first thought was tone, which is why I'm so interested that that is like what you're focused on. Because I was like, Ragnarok feels uncomplicated as like a party movie. And this one is trying to be so many things all at once. And whether or not it hangs together your mileage may vary but but when you think a little deeper about ragnarok like starts with the death of odin these like boys lose their father after having lost their mother and then it ends with the destruction of their homeland and so there there is that sorrow in that film. It's just the mix is a bit, I think, smoother than what you get in this one.

And again, I think I liked it a little bit better than you, but I can't argue with you that tonally there's a lot of leaps and swings. Yeah, let's dig into that. And it set the scene. We're going to talk about the movie, I think, largely in a non-spoiler fashion for a stretch here. And then as we get into some spoilers at the end of our conversation, I'll be sure to flag it. But, you know, the premise of the film is Thor, after completing some adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the beginning of this film, is seeking a kind of inner peace. He's feeling unresolved in some ways and suddenly he's called back to action. And so he and Korg have to reunite with Valkyrie, King Valkyrie

living now in New Asgard. And they are reunited shortly thereafter with Jane Foster, who is struggling with something and who is bound to be reunited with her ex, Thor. And by way of non-spoilering, I'll just say she finds a way to wield Mjolnir and become a super heroine herself. And they have to do so in order to stop Gorr the God Butcher, who is the character that Christian Bale plays, who is a...

He's a man who has lost his religion and found a kind of rage and revenge and he is seeking a way to kind of like reckon with the absence of faith by essentially killing gods and thor has to stop gore from killing the gods and so the exploration of the gods and the god system is a big part of this story it is as all thor stories are a kind of interplanetary adventure story bouncing from place to place across the bifrost um like all taika movies it is kind of interplanetary adventure story bouncing from place to place across the Bifrost. Like all Taika movies, it is kind of neon tinted and bedazzled and very funny at times and straining for laughs at times. Has a couple of very, very cool set pieces, just like Ragnarok

did. The action is typically pretty good in Taika's movies. The tone clashing though, like you said, is a little complicated. I completely agree with the way that you described his movies, which is that they're both very sad and very funny at the same time. And that there are very few filmmakers who are capable of that balance. The tricky thing is, this isn't just two kinds of movies. It's like six kinds of movies. It's a really romantic movie. It's a movie about lost love and found love. It's a kind of kids in peril action movie. It's this kind of winking satire about comic book stories and stories about gods.

It is, I thought, a very effective gothic horror movie. My favorite parts of the movie by far were about the Bale character and the way that the Bale character kind of tortures and terrorizes this world of gods. And it's also, it's a cancer drama. I mean, it's a very sincere and straightforward story about what happens when you get sick. And that's a really tough thing to balance in a one hour and 59 minute movie. And it is mercifully brief for an MCU movie. I'm very grateful to Taika for keeping his movies short um but he's stuffing a lot into it and the leaping from movie type to movie type I think had me a little addled as I was watching it what did you think about that

well what's interesting is that so I've heard that there was initially like a four and a half hour cut of this movie um which doesn't surprise me and we've heard about some of the things that were cut out like uh I don't think this is a spoiler because they've given these interviews, but Jeff Goldblum was going to be in the movie. Peter Dinklage was going to be in the movie. There was going to be, I think, more God butchering than we got in the end. But there were other things that were cut out. And something that Taika has said is something that he loves to do in order to make sure that he nails that balance. He talked about this a lot around Jojo Rabbit. And again,

that balance didn't work well for me, but he won an Oscar. So who am I to say, is that he loves to test, use test audiences to refine and refine and refine that tone balance. I don't know if that's available to a Marvel director to get to show your film again and again and again to audiences. Internally, maybe, but I don't know that he has that opportunity to test balloon the thing to make sure that the genuinely affecting Natalie Portman arc works with the Korg hijinks. You know what I mean?

And I think sometimes it does, and I think occasionally it doesn't. And I think that's true. And also the things that I love best were Christian Bale and the Gothic Horror. There's a couple sequences with Christian Bale. I watched the movie again last night, and again, they were my favorite. And it was the first thing that I wanted to point out. But I was watching and I was like, thing that i wanted to point out but i was watching i was like is this gonna work for people bail is going so hard is our people i think it's one of the best marvel villain things i've ever seen in my life but like our is everyone gonna love it i don't know so um yeah let's talk let's talk about that because that jumped out to me too i remember when

you and i talked about eternals last fall we we talked about the kind of ever looming Marvel villain problem in terms of telling its story. This movie dispenses with a lot of BS around the character. We just leap right into Gore's story. His daughter dies in the opening segment of the film. And his motivations are clear. His pain is clear. What's driving him and the fact that like a demonic sword has kind of taken over his soul. Very quickly, we're just like, we're in MacGuffin territory, but it works very well. In part because Bale is just such a committed actor. He is not fucking around. And the thing is that this is a very winky sub-franchise.

And Hemsworth's performance is very self-aware and very self-deprecating. And that works really well. There is none of that in the Gore performance, which is not to say that there's not something kind of like, I guess, kind of comic and antic about what he's doing as a villain, but it is so sinister and so deep that you,

you're almost like, are they in two different movies there is one moment where um gore is talking to some kids and he's kind of trying to relate he's trying to scare them

but he's also kind of trying to relate to them and it goes it was very penny wise i thought yeah i think but it go oh i mean like his glowing eyes are very Pennywise. But it goes over very poorly, and there's almost this moment of like, you know, Taika loves social awkwardness. Like, that's his favorite thing. Like, what I love that Taika has done in every single one of his things is like, what if this thing that you think would be cool is actually a loser? Like, what if vampires were like loser roommates in New Zealand, right?

And, like, what if Thor, God of Thunder, like, especially the Guardians opening, which we don't need to, like, spend too much time on. It's, I think, some of the weaker stuff in the thing. But, like, what it puts Thor in the position as is, like, he's the loser on this team. And so, to make Thor, like, God God of Thunder this socially awkward emotionally unavailable like loser is brilliant

and there's a flash of that with Christian Bale with Gore when he's trying to talk to these kids and they react in a way that he doesn't he's like

I don't you know and so there was that moment but almost as if they're in two different movies my favorite scene of the whole film involves Christian Bale Tessa Thompson Natalieman, and Chris Hemsworth all together

interacting. And Bale is just like, do you think that Christian Bale knows that he made some very popular Batman movies, but also knows that the long legacy of those movies is Heath Ledger's Joker performance. And he's like, what if I got to do a Gonzo comic book villain performance? This flashed in my mind as I was watching it as well. I mean, at the risk of being a little bit, I don't know, insensitive, it feels very much inspired by Heath Ledger's Joker, the character. I mean, the look of the character, the malevolence, the kind of like, that kind of like questing,

like why is this person so villainous? As like a curiosity while you're watching him, I think very much feels like the Joker. And sure, maybe Bale was a little jealous. It is 10 full years since Bale was in a comic book movie. And so it's interesting to see him returning to this kind of space at this time too. I don't know if it was his main motivation, but I felt very much a like, see what I can do sort of thing, which is always what Christian Bale is doing. See what I can do. But I love that you mentioned Pennywise and I was thinking of the Joker and like, I love this idea of gore the god butcher is this like scary clown i think also people have made um the child catcher from chitty chitty bang bang

comparison as well so like this because taika loves to bring kids into whatever he does that's like a thing he loves to explore we have a lot more actual literal kids as opposed to like the man child that thor is like in this movie and so to give it a villain that is more of this like scary clown style of villain works in a in a film with a lot more kids involved i think i don't know it's it's it's interesting but um visually do we want to talk about that like the visual sequence of i do so at So at a certain point, there is a, as there always is, a kind of like act two showdown between the villain and the heroes.

And this sequence is almost exactly what I am often begging these Marvel movies to do, which is to take a big stylistic risk in the middle of one of your surefire IP hit franchises.

And Taika, of course, incredibly creative filmmaker. It's really exciting. They essentially travel to a planet where these children are being held captive and they have to save them. And then the film flips to this kind of chrome black and white. And it's beautiful to look at. This is essentially like a dust-laden moon that they're crawling across, questing to find gore. And in addition to being a good battle sequence, it just looks amazing.

I mean, you talk to Taika, you'll have an interview with him on the Ringerverse next week. What did you learn about this? How did they make this sequence? Yeah, so my first, like, when you see this moon that they're going to land on, my first thought was the Georges Méliies, A Trip to the

Moon, like, you know, early, early filmmaking, just sort of that. It looks so, and then you get these creatures that are CGI, but they look like Ray Harryhausen sort of stop motion creatures, you know? So you've got this like old school film technique going on. But I asked him sort of technically, or I was just so struck by it stylistically. And he, he said that he, he was inspired to do it. The reason he wanted to do it that way was he's pals with this, um, this lab that has created this new technology satellite lab. He's like, my friends created this new technology called plate light technology. And essentially you're shooting at a high frame rate and you've got points of

light constantly, points of light hitting the actors at all different angles. And so then you can decide in the final take how you want to light the thing because you've all these different options in one take, right? So you've shot, it's almost as innovative, I think, as bullet time. I mean, I don't know enough about the nuts and bolts of filmmaking to make that claim. But like it feels that way where like if you go to the satellite web satellite lab website and look at some of the example videos they have up there, it's kind of astonishing. moon that I guess has a light source constantly moving around it, which just meant that the shadows and the light are constantly, constantly, constantly shifting on these actors. And it wasn't done quite digitally. It's done in post, but it's done practically. And I feel like you can feel that if you had just sort of CGI painted this, it wouldn't have looked nearly as beautiful as it

winds up looking, you know? That's part of why I'm mixed on the movie is you can feel the effort and intentionality in a sequence like this that you cannot feel in some of the Guardian stuff in the beginning in this sort of like the God corridor sequence, you know, the sort of the God planet sequence, which feels like, you know,

I'm a little reluctant to use this phrase, but like it feels a little Xena warrior princess, you know, when Taika is attempting to mock the absurdity of a story about gods, he sometimes, I feel like, goes a little too far and it looks like a kid's play. And it takes you out of the fact

that this is supposed to be like a really immersive world that you're in. And in order to stick in the world and not feel like it's too much of a joke that you're being made fun of, stuff can't look kind of cheap. You know, Zeus is a figure in this film. Zeus's lightning bolt is in this film. His lightning bolt kind of looks like a prop. It doesn't look like an incredible weapon. I know I'm picking nits, but it's one of those things that like, it pulls me out of a movie, honestly. No, you mistake me. I would never,

I would never call you to the carpet for picking nits. I think it's important to do that. I think Stormbreaker looks kind of garbagey. I've always hated the design of that weapon. I think Mjolnir, against all odds, looks amazing. It does look cool. Yeah, I always liked Mjolnir. Yeah, Mjolnir looks amazing.

I always thought that Stormbreaker, especially, there's actually a moment. So I think especially because the way that Chris Hemsworth wields it, it looks so light. And that's because he's so strong. But there is a moment where Christian Bale gets his hands on Stormbreaker and he's dragging it. And it was the first time that Stormbreaker looked kind of cool to me because it had a heft to it, as opposed to like, often it looks like it's made of styrofoam because, you know, Thor with all his muscles is just sort of whipping it around. Anyway, I don't know. The Russell Crowe thing, like, I laughed a lot in terms of Russell Crowe. I have some questions. The accent sounds to me like John Belushi in the old SNL like hamburger hamburger cheeseburger

sketch like I was watching I was like I don't know man and then when I saw it again last night a couple people around me were like I don't know man when that accent came out that being said like a lot of I think Crowe is kind of crushing it honestly like comedically performance wise but I take your point about the setting around him. Honestly, if that had been like, if they had taken it more seriously. And that's what Taika does so well is he finds the humor in the mundane, right? So if you had made that a more, I mean, as mundane as the Hall of Gods could be, but a more literal, mundane sort of thing and had crow give that performance i think

it would have worked even better do you know what i mean i do it's it's tricky because i understand the intention of what he's trying to do and what the comic beats are with what he's trying to do i did think russell crowe was really funny but uh it just felt like it was happening in another movie and that's a kind of a constant challenge for me with some of these films. Let's talk about speaking of in another movie, Natalie Portman. So Natalie Portman has not been a significant part of the MCU for quite a long time. Remind me, was she in The Dark World? Yeah.

So that's why she hasn't been in the Marvel Universe for a while. So Natalie Portman was, was in Thor the dark world. She got Patty Jenkins hired on that film. And then Patty Jenkins got fired off of that film. And Natalie Portman was outraged that that happened. And that's why that was the last we saw of Jane Foster for a long time was because Natalie Portman was like,

and also that film was supposed to have Hella as its villain and all this sort of stuff. Like, so all this, all this stuff happened with Thor of the Dark World, even before it hit theaters and wasn't very popular, that pissed Natalie Portman off. So it was a minor miracle when she showed up at all in Endgame. And I thought she was used sparingly but well in Endgame.

And it was a huge miracle that whoever, Taika or whoever, convinced her to come back for this one. Jane Foster has never been my favorite Marvel character. It's never felt like the best fit for Portman. But I think there's some real highs to her performance here, but I'm curious to what you think doesn't work here. Well, so it's obviously understood that Taika basically completely shattered the tone of the first two thor films yeah and in doing so he's trying to bring an actor along for the ride who maybe is not quite as well suited to the tone and of performances hemsworth as we know was basically dying to do a thor performance like this and

that's why he sought out taika. Tessa Thompson was cast by Taika and is so brilliant as Valkyrie because she gets Taika's tone and knows that comic sensibility of that character. Obviously, Korg is voiced by Taika. The most significant figures in the story now have all been basically built inside of the Ragnarok world.

Jane is a very serious character. She's a scientist, and she's an earnest Natalie Portman figure, despite appearing in an MCU movie. She has a very specific acting style. Natalie Portman can be kind of funny in movies, but not really. That's not really her thing.

What I think is funny is that if you go back and rewatch the first Thor, she actually is one of the funnier things about that movie. But still being buttressed by Kat Dennings. I was going to say. Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

Still someone there to kind of land the punchlines instead of her delivering them. But like in comparison to what like Hemsworth, like the Shakespearean drama that everyone else is delivering around her. She's kind of this light, funny part of the fish out of water storyline. Like, oh my God, look how hot this Norse god is, sort of thing. But you're right that when you then transfer that over to this, she's then the least comically, I don't know, adept or armed of all of them. There's also this, so this thing that they do, I don't know if this is too much behind the scenes detail, but this thing that they do in Marvel movies in order to mess with the height ratios of people is that they build these little like walkways, catwalks around. So whenever she's the Mighty Thor, in order to make her look

taller than Tessa Thompson and nearly as tall as Chris Hemsworth, they have Natalie Portman walking on like essentially an elevated platform next to Chris Hemsworth. And like, I honestly, knowing that it almost looked to me like she was focusing a little bit on her balance than anything else, which I wouldn't blame her for. And there's some overtly comedic stuff, like her workshopping her catchphrases that lands with a complete thud for me.

But then there's some like earlier letter stuff. Like when we first see her in the hospital and she's explaining her, you know, she meets someone who's reading her book. Like that stuff I think is really cute and fun and light and works, you know? I think like quirky Garden State Natalie Portman is very effective.

And like broad comic punchline Taika Waititi dialogue, Natalie Portman is just not really a fit. And it's nothing against her. I'm a huge fan of hers. She's my Long Island queen. I will rep, Natalie Portman is just not really a fit. And it's nothing against her. I'm a huge fan of hers. She's my Long Island queen. I will rep for Natalie Portman every day of the week. But you could really feel it. You could really feel her and Tessa Thompson

having a moment in a hallway before setting off on a mission. I was kind of like, ah, Tessa's really here for this. Natalie Portman is not totally up to it. And it's one more thing where I was like, ah, this kind of pulled me out of an otherwise fun space adventure that I would have dug I do want to call out something um again we're like trying not to spoil like major beats or whatever but I in terms of the

there was once a four and a half hour cut of this movie I feel like maybe we would have spent more time with Valkyrie and Jane to find out. Because when we sort of check in with them, they seem to have already bonded and formed this friendship. We never see them meet. And I actually kind of liked that. It worked for me. That was a cut that really worked for me where I just bought that they were bonded. I liked having them talk to each other. Jen Robinson, it's no relation, but Jen Robinson, the co-screenwriter on this is like kind of a pal of mine. And like her, she worked on this great MTV show, Sweet Vicious, which is about two young women vigilantes on a college campus. And I felt some of that vibe

coming out. Like I would have watched a Valkyrie Jane, you know, movie or short film or something like that. And maybe that would have given Natalie a bit more room to do the kind of comedy that she is comfortable with, as opposed to like having to balance that broad comedy with a lot of the heavier stuff and a lot of the, you know, the romantic plot that she's carrying with Hemsworth here. So, yeah, it's interesting. One other little gripe that I have. You can have as many gripes as you want. Okay.

Sean fantasy. It might have been Chris Ryan who pointed this out to me recently, but the previously on quality of storytelling in a lot of these films and TV shows where we're either getting massive info dumps and conversations around tables or we have a character delivering soliloquies

about moments past as a framing device. In this case, Korg, I guess, telling some children. Who is he? I don't even know who Korg is speaking to in this film. Yeah, the first time he does it, he's talking to like a group of aliens, and then we never see who he's talking to again. To me, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Well, I just... It's clearly there to basically like, hey, in case you missed the last couple of movies, here's what happened in the Thor story over the last six years. And I understand why that's necessary

given that this is the 29th MCU film. They've had six series on television already. There's a lot more coming. But I really felt like the fattiness of that stuff, of like the recaattiness of that stuff of like the recapiness of that stuff and there are a handful of times where we see say thor and jane's relationship and it's really fun and funny and that stuff is original and it feels like it's adding to their

story but for the most part it feels like hey last time thor did this and now he's doing this and that is in addition to a return to the Matt Damon Luke Hemsworth performative yeah like and running those characters back and having them recreate a moment from Ragnarok to remind you oh yeah so this is like four times in the movie where we pause to remind you of stuff that had previously happened okay so I take I take both your point and perhaps Chris Ryan's point and like you know so, as you all, as you and Chris and everyone who reads comics knows, there's a grand tradition of the asterisk deep bench of history and homework you have to do in order to pop into one of these stories and understand the context of it. But I will give Taika credit for trying to do it creatively in both instances.

The Korg thing, things are generally going to be funnier if Taika says them, that's just true. And also the Korg thing reminded me a lot of like Into the Spider-Verse where we got the like uh introduction of all the Peter Parkers and uh and Gwen Stacy's and stuff like that and they just repeated the bit uh throughout that film uh my favorite superhero film um so I was like oh they're doing Into the Spider-Verse okay um and then the meta play stuff worked so well in Ragnarok, I thought. It was so funny,

mainly because it was surprising. Slightly diminishing returns here. But I hear what you're saying. It's like, how do they not do that? How can they not do that? Because if someone comes into this movie, and this is the first Marvel movie they've ever seen, they need to understand the context of what they're watching. But how do you do this as Marvel with a decade of films and all these TV shows and not have that in there? Is there an example you could think of of a more successful version of the recap here? Here's the thing. What you're asking me to do is Kevin Feige's job. Okay. And I will not be doing that job for him today.

Fair enough. Maybe in a future episode when I have the power and creativity that he does to execute the long story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I will find an effective way to remind people what we had previously done in these films.

It raises like an existential question, which is like, does everything have to be interconnected? Do we have to understand this stuff in this way? And then when things

are not connected, people like me gripe on podcasts about how they're not telling some bigger story that I want to be interconnected? Do we have to understand this stuff in this way? And then when things are not connected, people like me gripe on podcasts about how they're not telling some bigger story that I want to be invested in. So they're really, they're between a rock and a hard place with the way that they've built this incredibly successful mega franchise.

And I think it's more just, I think a little bit goes a long way as opposed to carving out three, four minutes of a film that is less than two hours devoted to, remember when this happened in 2015? Yeah. And I don't have a solution,

but I know that it didn't really work. I think you're right that the Jane and Thor part is the most successful one because that's information we didn't have. It's new stuff. We know that Jane left and we don't know why and so we get uh an abba banger um last summer and we get a relationship montage and it's and it's pretty definitely done um i do i do i think we all feel especially again with the with the massive rapid expansion of the tv side of things, the weight of the MCU. And I really am

of the mind that something like Moon Knight, whether or not it was wholly successful and whether or not anyone listening to a film podcast even watched Moon Knight, a refreshing thing about it is that it was completely, 100% disconnected from everything else going on. What's wild to me is, you know, you talk about the landing of the plane with Endgame, and we all agree that was hugely successful. But in order to tell that story, they had to break their world. And their ability to put their world back together has been, you know, here and there. Like Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that TV series had to carry the entire burden, it seems now, of explaining the sociopolitical, geopolitical ramifications of, you know,

half the population of the planet going away for several years. A big, cool swing that they did in a movie, but when you then have to tell the story after it. And so again, we said this already, but a great thing about this movie is that Thanos is not even like an issue, really. The specter of Gamora is maybe like slightly floating over the beginning, but other an issue, really. The specter of Gamora is maybe slightly floating over the beginning. But other than that, no. The other thing that's interesting tonally and sort of connective tissue-wise is this is the first Thor movie without Loki in it. It's a great point. You know, and so whatever is going on with shuffling the cards on Tom Hiddleston, whatever is going on with like shuffling the cards on Tom Hiddleston and in the MCU.

And I think most people agree that Loki is one of the more successful Marvel TV shows, if not the most successful. It's interesting to me to see the Thor character not through the lens of Loki, which is how we've experienced him this whole time and tyke i remember when ragnarok came out taika would give interviews talking about in order to make sure that thor is actually the star of a thor movie as opposed to what has happened with the first two thor movies where i would argue loki is maybe the star of those movies away with those movies yeah uh they had to bring him low he is constantly being like beat up electrocuted diminished like all this sort of stuff in that movie. They had to pummel Loki in order to raise Thor up. And so even more so now, they've shuffled Loki off. They're like,

okay, Tom, you can go rule the Marvel TV world. Chris gets to have his franchise that he is ostensibly the star of. So I just think that that's an interesting element to all of this. I don't know that I miss him I always miss Loki honestly but like I don't know that I I don't know that he would have added

to this movie if he had been here until you made the point it hadn't even occurred to me that this that Loki was not in this even though he is an essential part of the first parts of the story maybe it's just because I feel like his character is now off on a different kind of quest and so we don't he doesn't really fit into this story it would have been shoehorning it anyway the way that there's some other things are shoehorned one other thing before we spoil a couple of things about this movie uh whereas led zeppelin was the soundtrack of the first taika thor film guns and roses is the soundtrack of this film even more so than led zeppelin i think there was only one Led Zeppelin song used

and his Immigrant song was the only song used twice in Ragnarok. I think three Guns N' Roses songs are used in this film. All to pretty cool effect. I wish that they had not been featured. I wish Paradise City had not been featured in the trailer because then I think it would have, I wouldn't have felt like a,

kind of a fun reveal had been given away. But I will say that the needle drop that is used in the big climactic battle sequence, I thought was magnificent. And as a 40-year-old man in America, I have a very soft place in my heart for the song that they use there. He also did this thing where the Guns N' Roses chatter comes from a kid character and something that I find all the time when I'm podcasting about these things is I'll have people say, like, would a kid really be interested in that? And so, like, he put a poster on that kid's wall and he had the kid, like, explain why he liked Guns N' Roses and I kind of liked that.

I don't know. Yeah, the Guns N' Roses worked really well for me in this. And when we get... Again, this is in the trailer. So when we get the reveal of an early Thor outfit where he's wearing the red leather vest and the... You know, just... It's pretty hair metal. It's a pretty Guns N' Roses moment.

Yeah, it's pretty hair metal. I'm not a huge hair metal person. I will say as a counterpoint to myself and the raw emotionality that Guns N' Roses brings out in me, Led Zeppelin and Guns N' Roses is some pretty basic bro stuff. So for Taika, who is this incredibly progressive, creative, risk-taking writer and director, this is two movies in a row where I'm like, okay, you're a 13 year old boy. I mean, he is in a lot of ways like that, you know, if you literally watched any interview with him, but I think, you know, there's a sequence at the end of boy where they do thriller. I feel like Taika has always had like a really basic pop rock sense. And like, that's part of his charm is that like, he is a, like a pop.

He's interested in pop along with, and I don't just mean literally, I just mean pop art. He's interested in mainstream blockbuster culture and all this other stuff. He doesn't look down his nose at it, even when he makes his artier films. I think that's all part of the seemingly contradictory Taika package, where sometimes the strong whiff I get off of Taika is a wildly immature sort of man-child sort of vibe. And then he is capable of deeply, profoundly, emotionally empathetic art at the same time. Both of those things are true in this one person. And, you know, again, that speaks to, I think, the tone balance. Sometimes it like comes together in this perfect, exquisite mix. And sometimes you're sort of like, oh, the ingredients are separate. The salad dressing is

separating out a little bit and I could see the oil on top of everything else, you know? It's a great metaphor for it. Let's do a couple of spoilery things. If you don't want to have anything spoiled for you, you haven't seen this film yet, just this will be 5-10 minutes. This will be a short chat, but there are, of course, stingers in this. There are, of course, some pretty big Zeus has survived. And I guess it seems like they're trending the future of the Thor story in a direction of Thor versus the gods and Thor versus Hercules, who is revealed in the post-post-credit sequence as portrayed by Brett Goldstein, who people may know from Ted Lasso, which has been long rumored that he would play Hercules.

And of course, I guess it is happening now. Is that right? Is this going to be? It's so, oh, it's so funny. Okay. So like, I knew no spoilers for this movie going in and I actually hadn't even seen, I'm like, I've been changed my, my tenure at the ringer. I'm like, yes. Unhooking from the, from the spoiler machine. Um, but the one rumor, the one thing I had seen was like, sort of like a blind item spoiler where it was like a recent Emmy winner will play like a character that, you know, from a highly beloved show will play a major character going forward in the MCU. And my favorite, the main guest that I saw people making that I loved was like, they were like, oh, the guest that people were making really like, oh, Jason Sudeikis is going to lead a Fantastic Four movie. Everyone was like, yes, he's going to be like, Mr. Fantastic is going to happen.

And so when the movie ended, and in my screening, the crowd went wild for Brett Goldstein as Hercules. I was like, oh, they were so close. Those guesses were so close, but so far. Here, let me talk to you a second about, let me pick some nits about Marvel for a second with you. These promise stingers are starting to really get on my nerves. Because as excited as I am to see Brett Goldstein as Hercules, which I am, when are we getting that?

Is it going to be 10 years from now? I don't know. Because do you remember that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 ends with the reveal of Adam Warlock? And that was like 1 million years ago. When, if ever ever are we ever going to see Harry Styles as Eros again like what like we're not when are we going to find out what's going on with the Ten Rings and Shang-Chi we're not ending these movies with a stinger that leads us into the next movie now we're ending these movies with a stinger that leads us to a movie that may or may not happen at some point, maybe in the future somewhere. And I,

to your point about recapping, it's my job to hold all these threads and that's fine. But like for the average film goer, like it started to be a lot of things to hold. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. When I saw the news about the Jon Snow series, potentially coming down the Game of Thrones pike,

I thought of Black Knight and Kit Harington. And I was like, oh yeah. Is he getting his own Marvel movie? Right. That's what it seemed like. Or did Eternals not land? And so they're like, sorry, Kit, you're not getting your big Marvel thing.

And then he's like, well, I guess I'll go back up north. You know, like, is that what's happening? Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. It's a very good question. I don't need a Slack update from Kevin Feige about what decisions he's made. And obviously, Marvel is going to Comic-Con. There's going to be a D23. We're going to get more information

about where a lot of this stuff is headed. I don't know why I have anxiety about where all this stuff is headed. I need to grow up and not worry about this stuff. But I have a similar feeling of like, but you showed me how much is Sylvester Stallone going to matter to Guardians 3? I need to know. You know what I mean? Like that sort of like that teasing that has consistently been happening. And then the idea of like a handful of Marvel movies that are not necessarily rising to the heights of Winter Soldier or Endgame. And then does anything that happens in any of those stingers at the conclusions of those movies just kind of get pushed to the side? Winter Soldier or Endgame? And then does anything that happens in any of those stingers

at the conclusions of those movies just kind of get pushed to the side? In many ways, it is like consuming comic books. I have to kind of remind myself of that when I watch them, especially a movie like Love and Thunder that just had five or six things in it that I really, really dug.

Where I'm like, this is kind of like reading a comic book. There are going to be jokes that you like or splash pages that you love. There's going to be a fun conclusion. And then you go to the next issue. And I think getting my head around that a little bit more and knowing that there are always unresolved or uncompleted threads in comic book stories as well is basically just

what this is for as long as this is this dominant thing where side stories are as eventized as the core story yeah first of all can you imagine getting the issue that's like thor and valkyrie and jane go to the shadow realm like that's such a solid issue like start to finish that adventure is like chef's kiss perfect when christian bale is like are you valkyrie like all that stuff is just like so good um but uh to your point it's easier to take this if this is supposed to be a side adventure it doesn't really calibrate that way anymore because as we have like as the seniors of marvel university have graduated thor is now like the most famous og superhero with apologies to like dr strange who is still like a junior sophomore

maybe you know what i mean and like maybe you could say mark ruffalo's hulk but like thor like he's he you know he he carries so much more weight so it feels odd to put him in like a side side adventure you know you know you just remind me of a point i failed to make while we were in non-spoiler territory but i'm gonna float it here too, which is that given that I thought the horror aspects of this most recent Thor movie were the most effective, I wonder if Taika and Sam Raimi had traded jobs, if that would have worked. I think tonally Doctor Strange needed a little bit more of a sure hand in mocking Doctor Strange. And I think that I wanted more horror in my Thor movie. I think, yeah. That just crossed my mind as I was watching it. It's such an interesting thought experiment.

I think Raimi could do Love and Thunder. I don't know that Taika could do Strange. Because I think taika's tolerance for bullshit would not hang with and something i didn't say about taika being hired is that like he ragnarok came out black panther had come out and those two really seemed like this answer to will marvel let a director actually be themselves in a in a movie right the post edgar wright things everyone was like directors aren't allowed to be themselves and be creative. And Ryan Rock really felt like a Taika movie, and

Ryan Coogler really felt like he got to do something with Black Panther. If you put Taika on a Doctor Strange, which holds so many threads to so many other movies and is so beholden to what it has to do to set things up, Taika, I feel like he would be like, I'm not doing that.

No, thank you. know no you're right i just think that that that vanishing moment in multiverse of madness where america chavez and dr strange are jumping through the multiverses i was like let ty unleash taika on 20 minutes of that that would be so fun he would be so deaf adept at that and i wanted more of that in that movie anyway so i don't know just just something across my mind um a couple other spoilery things no more gore i guess bummer but also it feels like the same with hella it feels like a kate blanchett or christian bale is going to be like i'll come i'll come have fun and do one movie with you similarly possibly

natalie portman i mean we get this like post-credits Heimdall and Jane and Valhalla. So like they could come back if we wanted to them to, to do something, but also like Jane Foster, you're in spoiler territory, right? So Jane Foster dying at the end of this movie really feels to me like Natalie Portman being like, okay, Marvel, I'll come back and we'll say goodbye to Jane Foster in a way that isn't just me being like, fuck you, Marvel, I'm not coming back to do your movies after you fired my director, like, sort of thing. And so we'll give Jane this beautiful send-off. And I actually found that stuff really emotional, really profound. I thought her, like, the moments where Jane is making the decision to go back in Thor's face when he like realizes what she's decided there.

Goodbye. All of that really worked well. Very good. Very good for me. But it does feel like Natalie's like, okay, I don't want to come back and like be in the MCU forever, but I'll come back and do this movie.

That sounds fun. So yeah, it was interesting to kind of close the loop on two pretty significant actors in the whole franchise. One other thing. This is the first time we've seen eternity in an MCU film, right? We've seen, I believe, the Temple Vault on Morag shows us the four entities, right, that made the stones. Entropy, infinity, death, and eternity. Now, death is a figure, a character, a thing that

has been much teased over the years and much debated about whether or not it could be introduced, whether Galactus is going to be introduced, whether Mephisto is going to be introduced, all of these big intergalactic spiritual figures that Marvel really tangled with in the 70s as it was getting more and more experimental and more and more psychedelic. I thought that the sort of like wordless representation of eternity was interesting. It reminded me a little bit of Eternals where it was like, how much, this doesn't matter if we don't explore it really in a significant way, but there's a part of me that wants this kind of genuinely intergalactic psychedelic version of Marvel storytelling. What did you make of just

featuring that figure, that idea in this movie? I liked that it was used sparingly and not explained that much. And then it's just sort of like here, they call it a wishing well at one point, right? Like it's just sort of like, because I, getting bogged down in, Eternals gets so bogged down in that sort of big picture. And once you interrogate how the universe is made, things start to feel like they fall apart. Whereas you're just sort of like, here's the thing and it's a wishing well, and don't think too much about it. And your main thing that you need to worry about is like, Gore the God Butcher is just a dad who is devastated that his child died. And that is always so, like, in terms of the Marvel villain problem like hella hella is a daughter who feels

spurned by her father right and so like gore is a father who has lost his daughter works so much better than like i don't know lee pace's rodent who's just like a genocidal maniac you know like stuff like that so i like that they kept as small stakes as someone called the god butcher could feel i like that they kept those stakes feeling kind of small. Do you know what I mean? Or it's not small to lose your child, obviously, but it felt human, if that makes sense. Speaking of that child,

that child that is revived at the end of this film, or sort of reimagined by eternity's power, I guess it's a little unclear what the science is on how eternity works. But I gotta say, I'm getting a lot of dad content these days Thor Thor as surrogate father just very moving to me is that Hemsworth's

real child I believe it is and I also read that the wolf woman who in the beginning of the film is played by Elsa Pataki who is Chris Hemsworth's real life partner and mother of that child making her return to the MCU as she after she doubled for Natalie Portman like that's that's how done partner and mother of that child making her return to the mcu as she after she doubled for natalie portman like that's how that's how done natalie portman was that

chris hansworth's real wife had to come in to do like the kiss at the end of the dark world because is that true is that did that happen yeah it's her it's her in like a wig um anyway um the uh yeah i love the kid stuff and like as i said earlier taika love the kid stuff. And like, as I said earlier, Taika loves the kid stuff. And so you could, like, Thor and his daughter in the space Winnebago making pancakes and getting their boots on. I'm, I've such an appetite for that entire movie. You know what I mean? And so it's just, it's hunt for the wilder people, but make it Thor. And like, Hercules is also there, I guess. Like, happily. That would be really fun, but I just, you have to assume Tyka's not coming back to the story,

right? Given all the opportunities he has and all the stories he wants to tell. Do you think he'll be back for a third film? I think if he is, it would be a while from now. And that's my question of like, when are we going to see Brett Goldstein? How long does Brett Goldstein have to stay in Hercules shape? Like, you know, like, when are we going to come back to that? So I don't know. The other challenge of even doing another Thor movie is

if it's not Taika, can you do another big tone shift? And if not, can you replicate a comic actor, a comic director who can hit on what Taika does? He's so singular. I don't, it's, it's a tall task. Like I'm,

I wonder if you're right that we may never see some of these other stories that maybe they'll have to find a way to kind of like soft retire Thor in a way. Also this movie not getting the best reviews ever. I'll be fascinated to know if it succeeds beyond. I noticed it was 70% on Rotten Tomatoes this morning. That's not great. I don't know. We'll uh they you know they hit us the old thor will return at the end they did so you know we'll see i can see i mean like because tyke is gonna make a whole entire star wars film right theoretically yeah that's what he says if lucasfilm wants to take a ball to the end

zone anytime soon but like the um uh that's such a long process making a Star Wars movie and he's got this other movie that he made and all sort of stuff so like if Thor if there's a Thor 5 directed and written by Taika I feel like we're not getting it for like another five years I was just gonna say 2028 that feels right let's talk a

little bit more about Taika before we wrap, because we don't have some sort of superstructure here. We just, I think, want to put a spotlight on some of his work that is really interesting. There's a New York Times profile of him recently by Dave Itzkoff. The premise of the piece was effectively, boy, this guy's doing a lot of stuff. He seems really busy, and he is relentlessly pursuing new opportunities, and perhaps at the expense of himself. And I wonder if that's also something that may have plagued this movie just a little bit that he's got so much going on right now. Because when I look back at his very contained,

very focused early films, you see a guy who's got total command of the unusual tone that he's in pursuit of. The first three movies are Eagle versus Shark, Boy, and What We Do in the Shadows. All very clever, all very emotional, all very kind of twee, but not in a way that I find offensive.

And as the worlds get bigger and the opportunity gets bigger, I feel those things getting pulled apart in various ways. Of those first three, if you, if this was, you're a Taika novice listening to this episode, should you start at the beginning and barrel through?

What's the best place to start with Taika? I feel like it's not hard to do a complete Taika watch through. There's not that many movies. So if you want to do Eagle vs. Shark,

you can. 2007. I went to go see Eagle vs. Shark not because I knew who Taika was but because I was a Flight of the Conchords fan even though he was involved in Flight of the Conchords

but I was a huge Flight of the Conchords fan so if you like Jemaine Clement maybe go see this but it is essentially just Jemaine and Taika doing Napoleon Dynamite which was a very popular independent sort of thing this film got bought in 2006

Miramax bought it based off of like a seeing a trailer so like that's how everyone was chasing that in a bowling and dynamite sort of thing so like sure maybe start with eagle versus shark but if you want to do like hits only i mean i do think boy is worth watching it's very shaggy but i think it's taika's most personal film uh you know, it tells a similar-ish story. You know, his mom met, in real life, Taika's mom met his dad when she was, like, doing a literacy project in jail. So this is about a boy and his, like, convict father

and, like, his visions of who his father is versus who his father actually is. And Taika plays the father, plays his own father, essentially. It's not biographical, but it kind of is. And there's a lot of flights of fancy, a lot of really fun, like early, watching a creative person with a low budget and what they can do. I think that's always interesting.

And then I think a lot of people have seen what we do in The Shadows, so I don't know that I need to stump for it. What do you think of those first three, Sean? Well, I wonder if at a certain point, the television show has sort of subsumed the film in a way it might have you know taika is obviously the star of um what we do in the show is one of the stars and he's not the star of the tv series but um i i probably would start with boy just because i feel like it's kind of the skeleton key to a lot

of the sincerity that you find in his movies i'm'm not as big into Eagle vs. Shark. I find it to be a little too like Wes Anderson slash like I don't know like they might be giants. It's on the wrong side of twee. I think.

But there's a lot of like there's animation and like stop motion and there's very early aughts like indie vibe.

Yeah, it's like Michelle Gondry you can feel in there. A couple of other stylistic leaps. I feel like he really kind of, you know, it's, you already mentioned it hunt for the wilder people. I think many people believe is this still is his best movie. Um,

his most fully conceived, most emotional movie, great performance from Sam Neill on this movie. Um, that's, I, that might be one of my favorite movies of all time. I've rewatched it so many times i saw it randomly at a south by screening and not even like the mate like a random

afternoon south by screening and uh i didn't know i didn't know anything about it going into it and it just absolutely blew me away and every time i watch it i love it more and that elusive tone balance i think is most perfected in that in that movie i agree it's been funny to watch julian dennison become more and more of a star in like deadpool 2 and godzilla versus kong because he'll always be the the kid from wilder people for me yeah and ragdrag we've already discussed it and i think you and i are very aligned on Jojo Rabbit, which I'm still a bit mystified by. It's like a success. It does make me very curious about Next Goal Wins,

which is his next movie, which I think has been completed, but it's not going to be released until next year, starring Michael Fassbender about a, is it, it's a soccer team, but where is the soccer team located? Is it Hawaii? Is it native New Zealand?

I can't recall where the team is, but this has been like pegged as an awards movie, but it may not be coming till next year. So who knows if it's going to be an awards film. I think Elizabeth Moss is also in it give him some laurels and say something that he's done with his rising star. And my theory around that Jojo Rabbit win is that it is much about people loving Thor Ragnarok and also Taika being a really fun interview. Yeah, he's a cool guy. Yeah. He's really fun to be around. As anything else. Like, honestly, that's, I think think why jojo rabbit uh won that oscar

but uh i don't begrudge him i just pretend it's for hunt for the world of people and then i'm i'm zero percent mad about it but um the uh what he's done with his power is he's used it to like lift up other creators um one uh project that comes to mind is like the Breaker Uppers, which was this like cute little New Zealand film made by like a couple women that he has like, you know, so it's like Taika Waititi brings you the Breaker Upper, but like, he didn't really have anything to do with making that film.

He just like splashed his name on it. Similarly with like Reservation Dogs, the FX show, fantastic FX show, but like Sterling Harjo is a great creator but like people didn't know who he was so people are like oh taika ytt's reservation dogs even though taika again really had very little to do with that or what we do in the shadows like jermaine is the driving force on that tv show it's not taika but he's like sort of billboarding and sort of like the

way that bad robot is sort of like billboarding his name in order to sell these things done by creators that he backs and supports or our flag means death which he showed up to like star in which has been something of like you know a little phenomenon he showed up to star in it's not a taika show he's in it reese darby his longtime collaborator is in it it's uh but like david jenkins is the creator of that show but like so there's this taika tv brand that he has sort of created in order to lift up queer stories and stories about you know native kids and all sorts of stuff like that and i think that's a really cool thing to do with your marvel you know you can you could date rita aura and you can also champion these projects, you know? I agree.

It's an awesome thing that he does. And all those shows that you mentioned, with the exception of Our Flag Means Death, which I just haven't had a chance to watch. But What We Do in the Shadows and Reservation Dogs are both great. And if his name on that billboard helps more people check it out, that's fantastic. I'm a fan of his, despite being a little bit mixed on this movie i am really excited to see him outside of the mcu and outside of his established world of ip and see what next goal wins looks like because i believe with a small amount of reservation that uh he's like a singular voice who can kind of cut through what it means to be a big name director

right now which is not having to lean on the Marvels and Star Wars of the world. But he seems to be trying to balance in the one for them, one for me mode these days. But to your point, and he gave this great interview. I'm going to plug another interview he gave to my pal, Katie Rich from the Little Gold Men podcast. Really great long form interview, mostly about our flag means death, but also about the 90 things that he was doing once. Cause he was like doing our flag means death, which meant getting into like major hair and makeup for hours every morning. And Katie was basically like, how do you have time to do

that? If you're trying to bring a Marvel movie across the finish line, you've got the soccer thing that you've done, got all this other stuff going on. So again, to my point about Marvel being stretched thin, like we don't want to dilute the Taika magic, which I think is what you're saying, where it's like slight diminishing returns if you're everywhere, doing everything everywhere all at once, right? So my ideal, I want a Taika Star Wars only because I'm very curious what that looks like.

But I would, I do less Taika. I agree. Joe, you have a long conversation coming about Thor Love and Thunder on the house of R on Monday you have a conversation with Taika coming on Monday you and Ben Lindbergh coming back on the prestige TV pod to recap Better Call Saul you're recapping Westworld with Shoemaker and Heifetz what what else you're everywhere right now on the on the network everything everywhere at once childlike content is still going strong content oflike content, of course. Yeah. You're doing like

eight pods a week? You're in the CR zone? Something, no, no, like six. Like, I'm still in JV, I think.

We'll see, we'll see if I get make varsity this year. Okay, Joe, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks, Sean. Okay,

let's go to my conversation now with Claire Denis. It is an honor to be joined by Claire Denis. Claire, how are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you for doing the show. Both Sides of the Blade, your newest film, was made during the pandemic. I'm wondering if you can describe what it was like to make a film during that time. It was the best. The best that could happen during the pandemic is being able to do that film, you know, like something.

I thought maybe we had to be tested three times a week. Now everybody's doing that, you know. But at that time, we were like slightly afraid, especially because we were mostly shooting in cars and one apartment and a small house, not in large locations. But I think most of us were really happy to get, you know.

Did that period in our history do anything to your creativity? Did you feel more or less creative? Did you struggle with thinking about how to make a film in that period? cooking a lot and I was afraid by the amount of people contaminated and in hospital and suffocating and I was afraid by the pandemic but for some reason I felt more afraid for for other people than for me myself you know it's always like that I feel I was feeling like I was well protected washing my hands wearing masks I don't know and even during the shooting no I think we we we felt lucky more than in danger I read that you were preparing to shoot the stars at noon as this started to happen and that you had to pause that and change some plans of course i i wanted to shoot stars at noon but then the end of march so i had been already doing location scouting you know in central america and suddenly

there was no way to travel anymore and also, especially people coming from England or America, we could not connect by Zoom or phone, you know, and to do casting was impossible almost, you know. Would you have never made both sides of the blade if that had not happened then? Or is this something that you had been thinking about making for a while? Not at all. I was working on a script with Christine Angot, the writer. And then because the story took place, I thought I had to forget for a while Stars at Noon. So we had this work with Christine going on for another project. And then Vincent Landon and my producer and Juliet, we decided, the four of us, maybe let's do something in Paris instead. And we changed completely the project. I used the structure of one of Christine's novels

and changing things, of course, because in that novel, Christine was speaking in the first person. She was the woman and speaking in the first person. So I had to change a lot of things to make the film for those actors. And I don't know, it was like rushing through script writing

and we were ready end of November. And it was not easy to do location scouting, even in Paris. And we had a very small budget. But I have to say, yeah, I'm sure this film would not have happened without the pandemic. I think so. It feels like a reunion of sorts of a lot of your films sort of coming together with Vincent and Juliet and Christine and Gregoire and Tindersticks. And so many of your past collaborators are all sort of meeting together at this time. Is that something that you sought out? Is it just because these are your friends and so it was easier

they're always there yeah i mean unless one day they might say no but as long as i say yes yeah i'm lucky and happy now grégoire was the perfect person for me because as there is a dialogue scene between Juliette and Vincent, when she said, oh, I'm sorry, when the past is coming back and Vincent says, ah, the past is coming back. And then I thought, well, then maybe the past for me would be Grégoire. No, I, I thought Gregor was the perfect guy for the film. This is one of your most intimate movies, I feel like. The close-ups and the intensity of the encounters and the mystery of the love at the center of the story.

When a story is this intimate, and especially in this period when you're making a movie in a pandemic with a small cast and small locations, period when you're making a movie in a pandemic with a small cast and small locations how do you accomplish that what do you think about when you want to make a movie feel this way i think it's not a joke i think it could be also a result of the pandemic because there was this thing that we were mostly all in our apartments, not with a crew around. And suddenly we were used to be closed, you know. I mean, there was no really need for a large shot anywhere in the apartment would have been difficult.

But suddenly it fit completely this moment we were in, you know, to be in an apartment, to be in a corridor of a subway, wearing a mask, to be in a car. I mean, all those closed locations were not only convenient, but in a way we were used to, you know? And the subway just reopened, by the way, at that time. And the only thing we did with another perspective was the opening in the sea when they are swimming. And that we did that scene with a cell phone. It was such a small budget. I really wanted to open the film like that. Like a statement to say they are still in love with each other. It's not like a couple tired of each other. It's a real couple. They feel good together. You know, they come back home. And I thought it was important. After the pandemic, it was the first time we were by the seaside, you know, the beaches were empty. I mean, it was just a sort of

prologue to say they feel good together. I love how you opened the film that way too, because it feels like the rest of the film takes place in, in rooms and in darkness and at night. And this is the only time in winter. Yes. And it's like that there is, it's almost like their last moment of bliss, you know, before everything unravels.

Exactly. Exactly. How did you collaborate with Eric Gaultier? Cause I think this is the first time you've worked with him as a DP. Yeah. Yeah. Not only because of the COVID, a lot of schedule of the people I work with were changed. And Agnes was preparing, staying at home by Zoom, film. And then Eric was free to work with me and ready to do so and we knew each other

and so i asked him would you do that and i think it was a for some reason i i don't know. We were like another couple, you know? We were always next to the actor. I was walking by him and the camera. I mean, it was a very close collaboration with Eric. Very great. Very interesting. Yeah. Both Sides of the Blade reminded me a little bit of Bastards

as I was revisiting your films. And I was wondering if you think of your films in relationship to one another. I don't think, no, I, no, I'm sorry to say so,

but I'm not such a well organized person. It's not that I'm badly organized, but I think it's hard to connect what I'm going to do, a new film to a film from the past. You know, it's hard to connect what I'm going to do, a new film, to a film from the past. It's like The Lover from the past. But to start a new movie, it's good to have the less burden as possible, not a heavy weight on my shoulder.

So to think about the previous film, it's not my type of solution. It makes sense. The reason it made me think of that way is because, you know, the big theme of that film is also how the past can kind of haunt you and seeing Vincent and actors' faces that are memorable. But in the same vein, I was wondering, I saw in some marketing materials, this film described as an erotic thriller, Both Sides of the Blade. And I'm not sure I agree that it's an erotic thriller, but I was wondering if the market wrote that, you know, somewhere. If I remember well, I think, but it's certainly not my style. Erotic thriller, I would never say that. Erotic thriller, no, no, no, no.

Do you think of your other films that way though? You know, do you think of Trouble Every Day as a horror film or anything like that? Do you think of these films in genre stereotypes? Even when I did Trouble Every Day, before I started writing the script, I asked, are you ready to do... I was asked to do a movie for a producer, for an American producer. And I told him, I'm afraid I am not able to do a genre movie because knowing me, if I try to do an horror movie,

it will really be horrible. You know, it will really be horror. So genre is great, but genre means a sort of, it needs a sort of distance, a sort of relation with a distance to horror or fear, you know? So I think for me, it was like diving into a sort of horror. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about your experience on High Life and working in English with some American and English movie stars and a bigger budget and all these other things. Did it change how you think about the kinds of films you want to make in the future at all? No.

You could ask Robert. I don't think it was such a big, big budget. For a film like that, it was a rather small budget, except the only luxury was to have a set in a studio in Germany. So that was, of course, necessary for the film, you know, and very little special effect. So I never felt when I was shooting I life and I think no nobody else on the set felt we were doing a huge science fiction movie and certainly Robert was not complaining we were shooting fast and and Robert was part of the crew.

Robert was such a, I mean, all the actors, Mia, Juliet, Andre Benjamin. We were like a sort of a group of people in that small set, you know. If I think about the film, the only thing I see is that long corridor. And the film takes place in a sort of corridor and a garden, you know? I never thought I was on the way to a big movie, you know? I was happy to work with those actors and actresses. Very happy. Honestly, I really love to work with Rob.

And even the English thing was not so difficult because also when I met Rob or Mia, most of the time we were speaking English on the set, very little German and no French. So it was like the way to do that movie, it was not on the way to bigger movie to Hollywood. No, it was like, I remember when I started the script, I said, after all, if it takes place in space, what are the language we could use?

English? I mean, American, Russian, and maybe Chinese. That's all. Nobody will use... There is no... Of course, there could be Spanish-speaking... But there's no French-based program. There is a French-based program in Guyane. Only to send satellites, you know, not with people.

And I think in the American, both American and Russian program, there have been three or four French space astronauts. With the Stars at Noon coming out later this year, this is going to be your most prolific year ever, I think. Yeah, it's true. And they're both adaptations, which I thought was interesting. Very different adaptation.

We had not in mind to adapt that novel at all. It's suddenly in the process of writing for Vincent, Juliette, Grégoire, and also the story of the boy, the young boy, and Bélaugier, and he's his grandmother. All this we could find in a common trunk of memory and story. And the couple and the ex-lover

was something I knew there was in a Christian novel. And we find it great. But Stars at Noon, it's a very different thing. When I discovered Dennis Johnson's novel, I didn't start reading Stars at Noon. I read other novels first. And when I read Stars at Noon, I was devastated by his style, the melancholy reading Dennis Johnson was finding a kind of way to tell a story

that I felt really close to me, you know. And then, as usual, I took my time and then I had a meeting with Dennis and his wife and it was great. And then he told me, don't ask me to adapt this novel. I would never do it

because I tried before and it's not a good memory. So he told me a lot about this novel. That was really the true story of him. And I don't know, I think, I thought maybe Stars at Noon will be only a project, will never be a film. Although I had Robert read it and it was a sort of project. And then for Robert came Tenet and after Tenet, Batman. And then the pandemic altogether seemed put in a distance. But when we were shooting I Life with Robert I was told one day in the middle of shooting that Dennis just died and I told Robert it's strange because now that I know he's dead it's as if I was obliged to do the movie I cannot go on

dreaming about I'll do that movie I'll do the movie. I cannot go on dreaming about, I'll do that movie. I'll do that movie one day. Suddenly it became very important for me. Just because I had met him, I thought it was a way to be true to him, you know, and

true to my admiration also. So as soon as I could travel and cast in foreign countries, then I thought with more or less money, whatever, I tried to do it. And then we were helped by A24. And in the end, we were on the edge of the pandemic but then actors could travel come to Panama because also yeah the origin was to shoot in Nicaragua but in the meantime because of the pandemic and because the president of Nicaragua decided to be re-elected, there was a sort of impossibility to go there.

The border was not open anymore and no insurance company would not accept us to go there. So then because I had that plan B with Panama, we went there, you know? It's exciting that you're adapting that book. I love Dennis Johnson as well are there other projects that are like that that you've been thinking about for years and years that you've been wanting to tackle but it hasn't worked out for some reason we started knowing it

was not to work out it was just like you know time is a very flexible material and I thought, oh, I have time. I have time, you know? And it's the, when the news of Denis' death, I freaked out. I thought, oh, time is not as long as I thought. It's not as flexible as I thought. So there is a play written by a French playwright that I want to adapt also, maybe, sometimes. Yeah, I don't know you don't scheme you don't strategize these things you just you take them one at a time the play if I adapt the play it means

probably going to Africa to find a location in Africa and I know I need a brave producer and a brave crew, brave actor. And I need myself to be brave because it's going to be... These days are not so easy, you know. I know a lot of tourists are traveling back now. It's like a rush of tourism. But on the other hand, the fact is the world is not at peace, you know, and the pandemic is not completely finished. And some countries are suffering more than others, you know.

So I don't know if a project to go back to do the film in Africa is realistic or not. I don't know yet. It's been a long time since you made a film in Africa is realistic or not, I don't know yet. It's been a long time since you made a film in Africa. It's obviously such a significant part of your life and your story. It's been almost 15 years, something like that? But as I tell you, time is

when you say it's almost 15 years, for me, in a way, it was yesterday. The time is so location scouting, writing, shooting. White Matter was great, great. I loved shooting the film with Isabel and Isaac. I loved it, but that's why it seemed to be yesterday.

But I know it took me a time, a long time to be ready for that. I love that film. I hope you make another film in Africa. I hope to, yeah. Claire, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing they have seen. Have you seen anything that has moved you recently? Yeah, films.

Going back to theater moves me always, you know. And I've seen a few films that are opening in Paris from Cannes. So I've seen a few. I think the most incredible recent memory of watching a film in a theater was Memoria. It's Memoria by Apicapu.

I felt with the pandemic and this cruel time we are living through and dangerous and full of craziness, you know, we live near Ukraine. Yeah. I think in America, a lot of tragic things are happening. Europe is also facing a crisis. I mean, some people cannot travel yet. There is not such a peace in my spirit.

But when I was in a theater watching Memoria, I felt I was in harmony. That is a wonderful recommendation. Claire, thank you so much for your time and for your films. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you to Claire Denis. What a thrill. Thanks to Joanna, of course. Thanks to our producer, Steve Allman, for his work on today's episode, filling in for Bobby Wagner. Stay tuned next week. Little more Thor love and thunder, little more Marvel.

We'll see you then.