The Big Picture - ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ and 2024’s Comic Book Movie Nightmare. Plus: ‘The Wild Robot’!

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Sean is joined by Ringer-Verse pals Mallory Rubin and Charles Holmes to discuss a pair of films that have polar opposite energy. They start by assessing the quality of the third entry in the Tom Hardy Venom trilogy, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ (1:00), before digging into one of the most heartwarming and visually astonishing movies of the year, ‘The Wild Robot’ (45:00). Then, Sean is joined by ‘Wild Robot’ director Chris Sanders, a stalwart animation creator whose latest film is a visual reinvention of the genre (1:15:00). Recorded after a screening of the film at Vidiots in Los Angeles, the two discuss pushing the visual style forward, animation in 2024, the role of a director in a feature animation project, and more. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Charles Holmes, Mallory Rubin, and Chris Sanders Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down,

and who will never eat lunch in this town again. Follow The Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking.

Here's an RBC Student offer that turns a feel-good moment into a feel-good moment. Students, get $100 when you open a no-monthly-fee RBC Advantage Banking account. We'll be right back. March 31st, 2025. Choose one of five eligible charities. Up to $500,000 in total contributions. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Venom! Today on the show, we are talking about friendship on the big screen in two new releases. Later in this episode, I'll be talking with the wild robot writer-director Chris Sanders. Chris has worked on some of the most beloved animated films of the century, including Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon. An insightful guy. Stick around for our chat,

which was recorded after a screening of the film at Vidiot's last week here in Los Angeles. But first, Mallory Rubin, Charles Holmes, both here to talk about two very different new movies that have some things in common, Venom, The Last Dance, and The Wild Robot. First off, wait, have you guys ever, have you ever been on a pod?

You've been on a pod together. Many times, but not with you. You've never been on this show. Not with you, not on Big Dick, no. No, it's a first. Okay. You brought in the slicer of worlds. Who's the Venom and who's the Eddie Brock here?

I think we know the answer. Charles has big Venom energy. Pretending like we didn't know, but we all know. We all know. Venom the Last Dance. Interesting movie to talk about. I feel so at home at The Ringer because we've got Charles. We've got Miles Suri.

We've got a lot of Venom heads out there. I, of course, am a Venom head. Venom the Last Dance is the third film in the supposed trilogy of Venom heads out there. I, of course, am a Venom head. Venom Last Dance is the third film in the supposed trilogy of Venom features, which are produced and shepherded along by Tom Hardy. I believe he has a story credit on the last two movies in this series. This movie is written and directed by Kelly Marcel,

who is his best friend and a woman who has no experience on any movies like this in the past. And it stars Tom Hardy, as I said, and an unusually stacked cast for an absurd Venom movie, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Risa Fonz, Stephen Graham, Peggy Liu,

and Alana Ubach. Charles, I'll start with you. What'd you think of Venom, The Last Dance? I had a blast. I was laughing the entire time. And the third act i was just like oh the movies oh wait what it it felt like the movie almost washed over me in ways where i'm like i don't know if this is an actual film held together by plot or character development. But then that Maroon 5 memory song hits and they flashback to all the great times we've had

with Eddie Brock and Venom. And I'm like, weirdly, they landed this very troubled, nonsensical play. Yeah. The only thing you need to hold this together is Venom's symbiote goo. Yep. And they have it.

They have it. This was, I will say I felt about this movie the way that I feel about all Venom symbiote goo. Yep. And they have it. They have it. This was, I will say I felt about this movie the way that I feel about all Venom movies, which is to say I thought this was a pretty terrible movie

that I absolutely love. Like, I love this trilogy. I've had, when people say, when any of us say, I had fun at the movies, the first thing that pops into my mind is seeing Venom. Like any Venom movie at the theater. In the history of movies?

Fun at the movies. This movie was absolutely nonsensical and deranged, but it made me feel. It made me laugh it made me turn to all of you the people next to me and just cherish the fact that we were experiencing this thing this goopy thing together um this may surprise you but i'm going to dissent uh i don't think that this is a successful movie and i don't think it's fun enough now i really really like the first Venom movie. I think I recorded an entire YouTube explainer about how Venom became a huge success for the Ringer before we had the Ringer Movies channel. I'm a fan of Tom Hardy.

I am a 90s kid who grew up reading the Todd McFarlane Venom run of stories. I don't think that these movies come very close to what was going on in those stories, but that's okay. No, no, no. Tom Hardy has a slightly different conception. This is much more of like a Marx Brothers or Abbott and Costello style series of superhero comedies. Yeah.

More so than a hardcore, almost scary, Venom was sort of scary. Yes. He was a hardcore arch villain for Spider-Man. The second movie is absurd, but it's this like, grand guignol, like Vincent Price movie with a, with a serial killer in carnage.

It's also 90 minutes. It's so short. Directed by Andy Serkis, who's on the pod talking about it. It's shorter than like many episodes from the final two seasons of Game of Thrones. Yes. But you know what? It's basically a slasher movie and slasher movie should be 90 minutes. So I think that made a lot of sense.

This movie similarly, you know, it's runtime is listed listed at like 108 minutes but it definitely runs about 91 minutes and then the credits are super long credits the movie these movies have always been self-aware i would argue this one is too self-aware i would argue that there are too many uh acknowledgements that you don't care and we don't care about what really is going on here. Starting with the very opening sequences of Null, who is our ostensible villain in this movie, who is trapped in some sort of nether region. Null, we're told, is the creator of the symbiotes. Yep. But they were too powerful for him.

And so they banished him to another realm. Yeah. Imprisoned. Needs that codex. So he needs the codex, which is a MacGuffin that is lodged in Venom's back. Yeah. Yeah.

Like lower neck. Yeah. Because Eddie died in the first movie. And I'm just like, I have no recollection because you brought up after the screening, you're like, at one point there's a bunch of Venoms running around. They're like in the first movie,

they're just like it's so rare so hard for a symbiote and a human to bond and that's the perfect kind of thing about this movie

where you're just like oh they don't have any internal logic to this world or this trilogy they do not care this is just kind of like they're like here

God's happy yeah and I think that that spirit is a good thing honestly you guys especially but me as well. We've been taking superhero stories very seriously for the last 10 or 12 years. Too seriously, one might argue.

We can do it. I have been taking them too seriously. And so you would think that this would be refreshing. I think as the final chapter, there's something absurd about this movie that is fun at times. Yeah. I definitely, we were at a really fun,

big group screening during Ringer Core Week. Wonderful experience. That was probably the most Ringer staffers ever at one screening together, including a lot of East Coast folks.

Yeah. So that was great. And I heard a lot of you guys having a great time and I really felt like kind of on the outside during this experience. Maybe it was just because I was stressed during Core Week. That's very time. And I really felt like kind of on the outside during this experience. Maybe it's just because I was stressed during core week.

That's very possible. But more likely, I think I just, I ran out of gas with the Venom franchise personally. I do want to acknowledge like its accomplishments. I think what you're saying is on point. Like these are fun movies. They're silly movies. I don't need the Venom movie to be more serious. That's not really what I'm driving at. I just need it to not feel hacked together. And there are a few moments

in particular with Juno Temple's character and like her Christmas colleague where there are like flashes of scenes that feel like they just stop or there's no follow through on setups, that it's hard to believe this is a mainstream Hollywood movie because they're so messy. I don't believe that either of us would dream of challenging that contention, which is, I would say irrefutable. And when you mentioned like the cast and this incredible wealth of talent in the movie, I think that is the area where you most keenly feel

like the tragedy of squandering that. Because basically every scene with Commander Rex Strickland or Dr. Teddy Payne involves, even by the standards of like a film that involves clunky exposition, the characters just speaking to each other in a way that people clunky exposition, the characters just speaking to each other in a way that people never engage with each other so that we can understand in fairly rapid fire fashion

something about the Imperium or Area 55 or the need to split up and kill either Venom or Eddie in order to preserve the future of humanity. There's not really a scene between any of those characters that is compelling, emotionally rich, or sensical. But I would posit that the movie is, and I think this is what you're bumping against,

so overtly uninterested in that that it's not even pretending to care. The only thing the movie cares about is that when we see Mrs. Chen and Venom doing a full-on dance number, we will be as swept up in that moment as Mrs. Chen is in Venom's arms. And let me tell you, I was. The fact that the movie ends, we're spoiling things, right? Sure.

I don't know if there's much to spoil of an unspoilable product here one of my favorite moments of great midnight boys podcast as always was when you finish the midnight manifest you're like that was like the hardest one i've ever had to do because as soon as the movie ends the plot drips out of here yeah exactly when we get to the end of the movie i would would like to repeat once again, and this will not be the last time I say this. I thought this was a genuinely bad movie. It's bad. It's bad. That I found myself drawn to

when we watch Venom absorb and suck up the xenophage horde. These are the giant oversized dog bugs that are chasing Venom throughout the movie. I thought that was a nice character design. That was cool. I've never seen that before. I've never seen that.

That was good. That was amazing. And Venom is sucking them up and kind of like slug marching them toward the giant vat of Chekhov's acid that has been staring us in the face all movie. In terms of the plot mechanic mechanic this is all deranged but you're gonna tell us you're gonna sit here at this table with two of your dearest friends and closest colleagues and say to us that when venom put that door down uh-huh over eddie to protect him you didn't weep you didn't shed a tear you didn't feel inside of you a longing for the connection that is so rare in this life, but that Vinny and Adam found.

Eddie went to New York City to see the Statue of Liberty for his bro, and he felt nothing. Do you think this is a story about brotherhood, or is it a love story? Oh, I think- Is it an incestuous love story then? That's honestly the movie I think tom hardy has always wanted to make i agree and that is what was very funny because no especially in the comics is a very recent creation very beloved and it's as if the creators were like all right we're just gonna put no in here so sony stops asking us but the movie sings when it's just eddie and this homoerotic

relationship he has with this alien and at one point he's like we've been through so much in a year i'm like a year that was a shocking moment shocking well shocking because you thought it's it was longer or shorter you thought it was like nine days? Way longer. Way longer. I thought he's been with Venom for years. Years. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah, just hunting brains and chocolate

and cycling through various pairs of Crocs and Tevas with open toes that drunk dudes in Vegas will piss on and then finally working up toward a pair of Air Jordan 5s.

Was he wearing 5s in the movie? Yeah, those were the escape shoes from Area 55. Oh, wow. I didn't clock that. Of course you're on that. Hype queen that you are. Also, something that I think is funny because you brought up like the 90s is that I feel like we have three superhero movies this year in Joker, Deadpool, Wolverine, and Venom,

where it feels like the creators want these movies to almost be more lofty. They have these like homoerotic tones and it's really a love story. Or this is a story about incels and all this stuff. And I'm like, can these characters support that? Because to your point, Deadpool is a very 90s silly creation. So was Venom. Joker like has a lot of great stories.

But when I watched that movie, I'm like, I don't know if you guys have the range to pull off some of this stuff. And it's interesting. Do these creators want to do too much with these very simple characters? Well, you tapped into something that I did want to talk to you guys about

that is directly related to Venom. Because Tom Hardy is not really interested, I think, in any of the world building stuff. He's obviously only interested in the comic aspect of what happens if an alien symbiote attached itself to you and it rendered in like a head-eating demon. That's a funny, that's a really funny idea. And he's obviously leveraging it a big way. And he's a ridiculous actor. And I like him a lot, even though he's only made two non-Venom movies since 2017 which is actually horrifying for one of the most gifted actors in the world nevertheless the null stuff anything surrounding you know general Rex Strickland all these figures they just feel like studio notes now I don't know if that's

the case I don't know because the movie seems to kind of sort of want to set up a wider Venom universe. We don't know if Tom Hardy is going to be portraying Venom in the future here.

But I can't tell if it's like a lofty aspiration on the filmmaker's part or just that colliding unhappily with the studio wanting to make sure that they don't

completely torpedo what could be a long-term valuable property what do you think so i i think like null is obviously the the best lens into that conversation but i i would say that like the everything with the imperium is maybe even more emblematic of what you're describing can Can you explain that? No, and I think that's the point, right? So the Imperium is this shadow organization. We like multiple times flash to the back of a head of a guy, the head of the Imperium, who Strickland and others serve watching on all of these screens surveilling Eddie

and anyone in humanity who might pose a threat. But we, and this is shocking because like we were sitting next to each other and one of the things that we kept turning to whisper is like, oh, is that going to be the brother? Is that going to be, you know, it just seemed like we were building toward a reveal that never came. Never is addressed, really. They don't reveal. And again, I think are uninterested in revealing inside of this movie who that is.

Now, we're recording this on Monday. The movie came out like Thursday night. People have spent all weekend on the internet observing. This will not be the first podcast that makes this observation that Reed Scott, icon that he is, is in the credits. Dr. Dan is listed as being in the movie and he's not in the movie. I didn't see. I didn't clock that. So people are like, is that Dr. Dan?

Okay. Oh, how interesting. Now that would be a connection not only to the prior two movies, but to a future expanded universe. But- Dr. Dan was the guy who came in and began dating Michelle Williams' character in the original film. Yes.

And so the question of like whether something else was afoot there, are we again tapping into some sort of like multiversal element to explain this? Will that just not be who that ends up being in a future movie? And it just felt like a fun little Easter egg for Venom fans. Who the fuck knows? Because the movie doesn't answer any of those questions.

Now, we have Null as the specter and then in the stinger, in the mid-credits, we are setting up like the future of Null. I think unambiguously, and this is supported by the interviews and the press around the film, Sony's Spider-Man universe, the SSU, is building toward Null as a big bad.

That's clear. So everything with Null being fairly contained and limited in this movie felt more, whether it was good or compelling or not, it felt like intentionally little drops to prime us for the building out of this villain over subsequent films. What will those subsequent films be? Great question. The Imperium to me feels like more of what you're talking about, where they're like, we need a thing on earth. We need a looming specter of someone who's watching and hunting. And I guess like Strickland on his own didn't achieve that. But I feel like that's really to the detriment of the film because if he's more actively the driver of that, he has something to do other than just repeat clunky exposition.

If we make him more of a striker from the Wolverine stories, that could have been more effective. That was all very odd. First of all, you just went into House of R mode. That was amazing. I feel like it was just like House of R just started in the middle of this episode of The Big Picture. That was amazing. Really dumb because you were explaining all of that.

I'm like, I did not clock any of that in this movie. It was just... Well, I definitely didn't know about the Dr. Dan thing. As the Imperium character, you know, the shadowy figure who's back we're seeing, I could only think that it would have been the Juno Temple character's brother because that was

the only other figure who is suggested to be a part of this mythology that we never see but there was no no reveal forget it we're like in the arcana

of a movie his Roswell t-shirt just carries over I mean she has an origin story where she gets struck by lightning and then they just never bring it up again

and then she's just a super fast symbiote by the end and I'm like wait are they setting her up as a and it's just never bring it up again and then she's just a super fast symbiote by the end and I'm like wait are they setting her up as a and it's just nothing

it just disappears does being struck by lightning make you fast I mean in a comic book movie it happened with Flash yeah oh you're right

wow they're jacking the Flash interesting this movie's a mess it's interesting because it's sort of like at war with itself it's basically what the studio is mandating versus Tom war with itself it's basically what the studio

is mandating versus Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel's journey into the absurd some of the absurd stuff is very funny like the music cues in this movie

are hilarious you mentioned the ABBA dancing queen sequence I thought that was genuinely iconic loved it it is except

it's like probably the most active example of how dumb the movie is. Because just because Venom wants to dance, he then reveals himself. Yeah. That part's terrible. And the codex.

Terrible. Which is just not supportable. Like the entire movie is a chase movie about them trying to evade capture from the xenophages. Completely right. So, but are Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel making that choice? Because they're just like, fuck all this. Fuck this mythology. We call it the last dance.

We want to have them, you know, literally dance before. Yeah, that, yeah, that was strange and it's difficult to explain. There is no logical explanation for revealing themselves

to the xenophage. I have no defense. However, were you not moved by the dance number? Were you not moved by the family sing-along in the van? The family sing-along I actually enjoyed. I thought it was kind of touching you not moved by the family sing-along in the van?

The family sing-along I actually enjoyed. I thought it was kind of touching. Wonderful. So the family sing-along is Risa Fonz and Alana Ubach are hippie parents dragging their two young children across the American Southwest to go visit Area 51. And along the way, they pick up a straggler in the desert who is Eddie Brock and befriend him.

If a man that looked like Tom Hardy in Venom, The Last Dance, stumbled upon your family in the desert, would you let him ride along with you in a car? Absolutely. What are you talking about? Like, 100%. It's Tom Hardy, okay? You weren't touched. I was like, the boy gives him chocolate. That was nice.

That was nice. Genuinely wonderful movie moment. you weren't touched I was like the boy gives him chocolate that was nice that was nice but also genuinely wonderful the family was also emblematic of like they're like oh I guess we should give Venom some type of hero arc

let's just throw this random family in there and I was like at one point I was a little disappointed because I'm like I actually thought the family was going to

become a Venom family I know that would've been sick I was like I was waiting for a little boy Venom just to be running needed it well it's weird because the movie gives you all these other great Venoms to become a Venom family. I know, that would have been sick. I was like, I was waiting for a little boy Venom just to be running around. Needed it. Well, it's weird because the movie gives you

all these other great Venoms. You get frog Venom. You get fish Venom. You get horse Venom, you know? Remarkable. There's a portly Venom. That's right. The heavy Venom.

And yet we couldn't get eight-year-old boy Venom, which I think is a missed opportunity. Tragic. I don't understand it. This movie isn't good. It seems like it isn't resonating. Its box office was significantly lower of the last couple of Venom movies,

even though it's trying to do some of this table setting. I do want to talk to you guys. I want to talk to you about two more things before we get away from Venom. One is the Spider-Man universe or whatever. Yeah, a mess. This is the second of what will be the Spider-Man universe or whatever. Yeah. Because. A mess. It's. This is the second

of what will be three films in that universe this year. Which is shocking. Stunning. Oh my. What was this year?

I was like, what was the other movie? And Kraven is coming in December. Yes, we have Madam Web and Venom The Last Dance and Kraven The Hunter. I believe.

Shocking. Kraven The Hunter definitely was supposed to be a 2023 release. It was pushed all the way to the end of 24 yes that movie has been delayed many times

which I have always considered a deliberate marketing strategy to just continue to put out new posters with slightly different angles of the abs yes

you and Joanna Robinson are very excited about this movie one of us is okay I wonder which which one

we will be talking about it on this show as well. That is the last of the comic book movies coming out this year. Yeah. But, you know, we've also had Morbius, Fiasco. Horrible movie. And then there are three Spider-Man movies that are technically in this universe, but not actually in this universe. Are they?

Because the beginning of this Venom movie confused me very greatly because at the end of the last one, they send Eddie to the MCU? Yes. Where Spider-Man exists, but then they send him back

to this universe where I'm not sure Spider-Man exists. This is Earth-680. So this is a different continuity. But the fact... But he starts in 616. Yeah, we've had the double... he starts in 616. Yeah,

we've had the, like the double, we're ping ponging in the stingers across the film, sending Eddie and Venom back and forth. Looking for those ties, you know, Eddie seeing like Peter on the TV previously. I thought opening this movie with a reference to the blip was bizarre in that respect because that's like a really active

effort to connect the things in a way that they are like just not connected also and then makes around a story that occurred six years ago in the movies yeah and then so that makes me wonder on the null front which universe is he in? What universe we're putting him in. I don't know. I mean, that's part of the question here, which is you've got, I should also say

the Spider-Verse movies are in theory kind of a part of this extended family. Exceptional. Let's not taint them. You know, I have mixed feelings

about the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, mostly leaning positive. The Spider-Verse movies, I adore, as you guys know. I think Morbius and Venom the Last Dance and Madam Web are among the worst movies

I've seen in the last 24 months. Morbius is astonishingly bad. Oh, well, Madam Web, I think that I had, I was just disassociating in the, I was like, what is happening? But I actually, I needed that movie to be even worse relative to the pre-release hype. I thought it was vaguely competent for about 40 minutes

and I was a bit, I don't know, betrayed by that. What are you expecting out of Craven? I think just dullness. It's weird though because it's J.C. Shandor who is a director that I really, really like who wrote and directed Margin Call, the Academy Award nominated film Margin Call. He directed All Is Lost. He directed A Most Violent

Year. He directed Oh My God, What Is The Netflix Action Movie That I Love So Much? Starring Oscar Isaac and Triple Frontier. Triple Frontier. Thank you so much, Bobby. Good work, Wes. It was a long week. I'm tired.

Triple Frontier, like, in my book, J.C. Shandor's like four for four. Yeah. And for some godforsaken reason, he's making the Kraven movie. Well.

We all need a vacation home, Sean. Maybe that means it'll be great. Remember how Andy Sarkis, before he embodied Null, directed the second Venom movie? That was, yeah. Is Gollum in the Spider-Man universe? Gollum's everywhere. Yeah, he is. the Spider-Man universe? Gollum's everywhere.

Yeah, he is. Gollum's eternal. Gollum is eternal. You mentioned that there's some sort of Sinister Six plan. I think someone after the screening yesterday was, or on Thursday, was suggesting that they thought we would,

maybe it was you, Charles. It was me, because at one point, they referenced like, all right, the Six, and I was just like, is Sinister Six going to be in this movie? That'd be dope. And then it just never happened.

And I'm like, that's actually the biggest problem with comic book fans where it's like, oh, Tom Hardy wants to make a bromance movie with him and Venom. I would like to see the Sinister Six pop out because it's also something we're getting to the point with these spider-man films where none of the stingers are ever going to pay off where morbius fucking wasn't vulture in that if i recall yeah michael keaton pops up sort of like ai michael keaton or 80 yard michael keaton it was very weird like shot from behind you can only hear his voice so i'm like they've been teasing that spider-man or someone at some point is going to go up against all these villains. And if some of the rumors are not even rumors at this point of Tom Holland.

Basically, seemingly throwing his weight around a little bit. Impressed being like, oh, no, we're really close to the script, but we just really care. And I'm really trying to make make it work. That to me is emblematic of what's going on with these Spider-Man movies, which is, I think, a feeling that returning to the core of that character

may be putting him in a more street-level position versus Sony obviously wanting Null and to build this out, having something that can be like the MCU. And I think at this point, I'm in the Holland camp

where I'm like, let's just tell a grounded Spider-Man story, please. I I think at this point, I'm in the Holland camp where I'm like, let's just tell a grounded Spider-Man story, please. I think particularly, I mean, look, it's like, it's the Sinister Six. No studio is ever going to say,

no, we don't want to do the Sinister Six. They've been wanting to do this back... But they tried. Drew Goddard was going to do it. Well, right. But also,

they, I mean, they didn't literally do it, but they came pretty close to doing it in No Way Home like they approximated the effect of doing it they created a room with five villains yeah by putting so many villains in the same movie so like I wonder if you need like a beat before you try it again but I don't know it is also funny to think that like Rucy Fonz previously played

Blizzard and now it's just here as like Marty and his fans. It's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous. Wild stuff. Yeah, this is a very, very messy situation. And it's unusual because Sony is, I've talked about in the past, a studio that is still sort of using the old way. They don't have a streamer. They essentially operate as like an arms dealer. They sell a lot of their movies to Netflix.

But one thing that they have consistently done is they have been able to use like old fashioned movie styles and get people in theaters to see them. So like Anyone But You last December is an old school, you know, trip to Australia rom com. It Ends With Us is an old school weepy that they magically turn into a $100 million movie. For whatever reason, they're terrible at this. Terrible at navigating and managing these movies.

I think you could very clearly make the case that the MCU-ification of the Tom Holland movies did wonders for both studios. It really helped them in both directions. No question. But everything else that they've navigated around this other than the Spider-Verse movies has been kind of shockingly bad or just strange.

Like hijacked by Tom Hardy. I mean, but to be fair yeah you can make the argument that sony has been actually really good steward of spider-man the character when you're like if you look at spider-verse if you look at those playstation games that are some of the most successful games of all time yeah tom holland movies successful you start to be like warner can't even do that with batman so there there is a point does sony look at the character more as like we're taking so many shots and if the venom movie fails it doesn't matter because we turned around we have spider verse or there's gonna be

another ps game so it's weird that sometimes i'm like i want the movies to be better but i could see the execs being like the movies sometimes are beside the point. No, that's a really good point and way of framing it. So is the, ultimately the takeaway there, and this is not how I felt when I was 10 years old because I loved Spider-Man and everything around Spider-Man, but is it just that the stuff around Spider-Man just isn't really worthy of these kinds of stories

because they're having a hard time anything non-Peter or Miles centric being anything worthwhile. Yeah, well, but I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's like comparing like the Lakers or Dodgers to like anyone else. It's Spider-Man. Wow. I mean, it's Spider-Man.

What are you rooting for in the World Series? I would rather die than see the Yankees win a World Series. I would rather die. You're wearing Dodger blue today. The only sensible opinion to have. Of course, I agree. Yeah, we never that. You're wearing Dodger blue today. The only sensible opinion to have. Of course I agree. We never represent

for the Yankees on this podcast under no circumstances. I have to catch my breath after you ask me that question. Do you have a baseball allegiance of any kind? Here's the thing.

Oh boy. Tread lightly. Let's go Dodgers. Okay. Went to Dodger Stadium, ate a Dodger dog. I'm LA Pilled now. Yeah.

Let's fucking go. Yeah. Okay. It was an experience. Here's the thing. I hate the Yankees. Of course. Love the Mets.

Just like, I was never like a, like, that was a team of, like, I was like my father. What a time for all of us. It was very sad

seeing them go out the way they did. It was tough. It was tough. But they had a great run and we're very proud of them. So, it's Spider-Man, right?

This is one of the most, genuinely the most iconic characters in not only comics, but stories. So of course, almost definitionally, anything is going to feel like less than Spider-Man.

But I think that's part of where like with Venom, who obviously is, you know, entwined with Spider-Man in many respects, it's a nice way to do something simultaneously connected and adjacent, but like utterly specific. And I think that's why even when the movies are somewhere between, eh, that was pretty bad or like aggressively bad, I almost like, I don't want to overstate it, but like admire them because they are so unapologetically themselves. Right. And I think that's what you're saying, Sean.

Almost like you felt like that scale tipped in this one. It did for me. Where there's a point where you can actually maybe be yourself too authentically. I think it's more like you just leaned into the bit too hard. Yeah. And sometimes you can overdo it. Are you feeling that because of this year at all too? Well, thank you for the segue.

Which is a movie I loved. This is something I'm curious about. I've obviously gone through, not unlike you, Charles, a real trial by fire of comic book movie fandom in the last five years. I was very, very into the first three phases of the MCU and had a great time at the movies. There are a lot

of DC films that I've liked over the years as well. There's still things I like. I liked Matt Reeves' The Batman. I thought it was an interesting spin. I'm behind on The Penguin, but it's a show I will watch. The movies this year, this is the nadir. This is the worst it has ever been. These are the comic book movies that have been released this year. Madam Web, Ultraman Rising, which is an animated Ultraman movie on Netflix, Deadpool and Wolverine, The Crow, Hellboy the Crooked Man, widely unseen,

The Disaster That Is Joker, Folia Deux, Venom the Last Dance, and The Forthcoming Crave and the Hunter. Now, that's eight movies. This used to be the center of movie-going culture for roughly eight or nine years. Now, Deadpool and Wolverine is still the biggest movie of the year

and has many, many, many fans. And when I saw the movie, as you and I talked about on the show when we did our crossover episode, I laughed a lot. You can't deny that at the bottom of that movie is just a,

hey, I know what that that is and that makes me feel good like largely that movie is playing a boner joke boner jokes and nostalgia um those two things are great they're they're fine they're fine i don't hate deadpool and wolverine it did make me feel bad at the end of the day yeah but if you set that movie aside and you look at everything else we've gotten commercially commercially largely unsuccessful, critically lampooned. Yes. Structurally, I don't know, disinterested, I would say. Like none of these movies feel connected to anything.

They don't feel like they have a long-term future. All of them seem like they are dripping with existential dread because we have two movies now where we have the same joke which is essentially fuck the multiverse why don't we and i'm like it was a it was a moment where i'm like there's a even i felt this way joke i'm like there isn't anger coming through in these movies i'm just like the writers the directors the actors being like how do we get out of this complicated continuity goo it almost feels like did you get to that point in your comic book journey where you're like, oh, it's too much to understand? And then the companies are like, alright, we're doing a crisis or we're doing a

you have to reboot. And it feels like Hollywood is at that point where the comics get where they're like, we need to reboot all of this. First of all, brilliant points. It makes me, it reminds me a lot of my Jets fandom because every five years we get to this point where it becomes so convoluted and unsuccessful that we have to reboot and then

the reboot is so painful to sit through for a couple of years so it but you never made it to infinity war we have we have never we've had plenty of end games let me tell you they're all they're all end games as a jet fan uh but the point you're making is right which is you can feel the create the creative people involved in these projects getting frustrated by being hemmed in in these worlds for such an extended period of time. Now, also, I will say, like, obviously, we're coming off of a strike year. One thing that the strikes have impacted pretty significantly that I think is maybe less cited is the fact that reshoots and navigating post-production was significantly impacted by the strikes in a way

that, and these movies are so reliant on that. We know Deadpool and Wolverine specifically moved dates and had to have reshoots. So that's just built into the production process of all MCU movies of most action movies and comic book movies at this point. So you can say, all right, well, it was already kind of a grim slate before we saw the movies. Everything was riding on Deadpool and Wolverine. That movie came through. We'll go to next year and we will get three significant MCU movies. We'll get Superman. A lot is riding on next year though. And there is this, here's what I sense. Setting aside the advanced ages of the two folks I'm sitting with and the even more advanced age of your host. A lot of people who grew up watching MCU and DC movies are getting older. And I think they're just less interested in the bullshit.

And I'm not saying that Superman is going to flop. I'm a James Gunn believer, as you guys know. I'm not saying that Thunderbolts is going to be bad. I actually think it's going to be good. That movie looks great. Fool me three times, nine times, 14 times. Guys, he's going to be, we are three over three. I saw the Thunderbolts trailer and I'm just like,

it's the MCU thing where I'm like, they're going to pull through. They're going to pull through. I know. Shout out to them for still keeping us on the line in that way. But if half of those movies don't work, it's kind of panic time. So, okay. i have a lot of thoughts on all of this i think what you're identifying about the

and it connects to in a different way the self-aware point you're making about venom the self-aware point about the multiverse like this is not the first bad superhero movie year if it were that would be one thing but we, I think when you said like Nadir, that's right because we're on the downward slope and it feels like this continuation of a thing and the end is not in sight. And so if something like, or maybe it is, if something like

Deadpool and Wolverine really works, it's like you hit pause on the snowball for a minute or like you brought out a hairdryer and you melted melted it but then it just started rolling down the hill again when does the hill end when does the snowball make its way onto a lift and start

to rise again I don't really know how like I don't spend much time outside I was not following the way just fried my brain on a Monday morning yeah but one of the things that I like I actually really enjoyed the self refer But one of the things that I, like, I actually really enjoyed the self-referential nature

of the Deadpool multiverse comments because it's so, it felt so at home and of a piece with the tone of the movies and the,

the fourth wall breaking nature of it. Like when, when he's like, I'm Marvel Jesus or like, pegging's new for Disney but not for me.

I'm just like, this is, I think, hysterical and like very high impact it's targeted but there is that part in the back of your mind it's like you're lampooning a thing that you are definitely definitionally still a part of right right and that is like i think you feel it a little bit more keenly actually despite the the inescapable sprawl of

the mcu a cinematic universe that I love and spend a lot of time in, in Venom the Last Dance, because a shot like that, I'm sort of like, wait, but you still, you like made the choice to open your movie with a blip comment. Like you actually didn't have to do that.

Right. But you are a part of the thing that you're actively mocking and you're introducing Null to build toward clearly a villain who will be deployed across movies, but also possibly across continuities. And so then it's just not effective as commentary because you're too swept up inside of the thing. Is next year the year that saves us? I don't know.

I think like the stakes of a Superman movie that launches the DCU could not be higher. The stakes of Fantastic Four could not be higher. Like I am very excited for Captain America and Thunderbolts, but I think without question, Fantastic Four and Superman are the litmus test for where we are in terms of like the ability to sweep people back up in these fictional

universes and then to your point about like the aging public that's a really interesting one because like just like anything else the stuff all of us make anything else that is ultimately like put out into the world for people to consume you have to ask yourself the question of like are you making it for the same person forever are you making it for someone new and that gets back to your point of a reset right because like no matter how much somebody loves a thing at some point you will always always always butt up against you gave me too much of the same thing for too long or you change the thing I love and I resent it. So you've got to make it new and you have to try to sell it to someone else. And then hopefully the people who love the first version of the thing discover it again and decide they want to take the journey with you to a new place. It's a really interesting July 2025 because you've got

a new Jurassic World movie that is not related to the previous Jurassic films. It stars Scarlett Johansson and who's the other big star? Marshall Hawley. Marshall Hawley. That is another on-paper thing where I'm like, I'm so sick of Jurassic movies. And they're so important to Universal. And they're bottom line. But I'm intrigued by what I've seen on the list.

So you've got that movie on July 2nd, and then on July 11th, you have Superman, and then on July 25th, you have the Fantastic Four. So that is a very consequential movie for studio tentpole franchise filmmaking. And it's very plausible that all three of them don't work. Like, it would not stun me if they didn't work. If I know... I will be stunned if Superman isn't good maybe maybe i'm being too positive okay i do think

i don't think there's any turning this around in the short term i think people are pretty much going to be pissed until secret war is over yeah and then once the x-men are back i think a new generation of kids are going to be like this is the x X-Men. And you and I will be like 50, 60, 70 grand and be like, that's Wolverine and Cyclops. You know, it's like this. Even my fandom with comic books, sometimes even in my most negative phases, I'm like, Jonathan Hickman does House of X, Powers of X. And I'm back on the drip. I'm reading absolute batman now it's like it you do go through these phases and i think the movies are just now at a point where it's like you remember

probably i would say the 90s going into the 2000s marvel almost implodes and basically is no longer a company everybody's like after the big 90s like fuck these comics and then you have the ultimate line and you have this and that so So I do think that this is just baked into the texture of these stories. It's like, you're going to have decades where people are like, this is dead like disco. And then one story pops out

and we're like, superheroes are back. What is the one you are most anticipating? Fantastic Four. Superman. Because I, even when I don't like James Gunn, a James Gunn movie,

I'm always like, damn, Gunn, like, gets it. Like, he just gets what I like about these characters. The whimsy. Yeah.

And that's the thing where it's like, I almost have so much faith in the Fantastic Four because they've done it before. I think Feige, when, like, in that team,

really know how to make a good superhero movie, I'm not worried about Fantastic Four. Superman think Feige, when, like, in that team really know how to make a good superhero movie, I'm not worried about Fantastic Four. Superman is the one where I'm like, we haven't really gotten a good modern Superman, like, ever in live action. And if anyone can do it,

I'm like, I want to see James Gunn pull it off. I'm not totally against the, I'm totally against Bryan Singer, but I'm not totally against the Bryan Singer Superman Returns movie. I think it has some elements of what makes Superman classically interesting.

The thing that I suspect is going to happen with the James Gunn movie, and that's also my most anticipated superhero movie of the year, is that obviously he is always working to kind of upend our expectations of classic hero archetypes. And so he likes underdogs.

He likes weirdos. He likes cast-offs. He likes gross things. Yes. I think he's going to probably lean into the absurd notion of an alien landing on Earth and trying to integrate into our culture and how weird that actually is as a concept and not do the typical Christopher Reeve ripping the shirt open kind of you know the visual style that we expect from a Superman movie I could be wrong

now it's possible though that when he does something like that it won't hit I think that it's been interesting to like it's such a fascinating starting point like it's been fascinating to hear him talk about the character and his spin on it. And I think there is a clear recognition of and appreciation for the elemental, earnest nature of the character that I do think will still be present. And so to me, it's more a question of how you pair that essential element with the James Gunn secret sauce that you guys just laid out. And, like, that's what's exciting about it. That's why it feels like it could be not only an effective way to launch the DCU, but, like, something fresh. Like, what is ultimately the counterweight to fatigue?

It's like a jolt of caffeine and while i'm most excited for personally fantastic four and i do think that that will be like specific and feel like it has a sense of self in place and the cast is just like incredible it's a great cast i mean my wife vanessa kirby and pedro pascal in a movie together like twist my arm but having seen gladiator 2 I'm also on the Joseph Quinn train. Very aggressively. Really? Very aggressively.

You weren't already there with Eddie from Stranger Things? Wonderful. I didn't see that, but he is also great in A Quiet Place. Dynamite performance. Day one as well. Dynamite performance. He's good. Yeah.

But, like, right away, Fantastic Four, even with the time period they're starting in and the way they're going to seemingly do it, you said like we're building towards Secret Wars and they're introducing the Fantastic Four into the MCU ahead of that purposefully so like we will right away be like caught up in much more Superman has the chance to establish what it wants to be in a contained vacuum I would be surprised if those movies weren't successful and good. But if they are not, then it's like cataclysmic. That's what it will feel like. I'll be listening to House of R and the Midnight Boys in the meantime. Should we talk about The Wild Robot?

I would love to. Yes, please. So this is a respite, I think, from the pain and anxiety of comic book movies in 2024. This is a, you know, it's based on a book, but an original animated feature from Chris Sanders. Peter Brown's novel is, was not, was new to me, but apparently has been beloved

this century by a lot of kids. It's for, aimed at roughly seven, eight, nine year olds, I would say, you know, not really a picture book. There are a handful of drawings. I've been reading some of it at home to my daughter.

It features the voice work of Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Conner, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O'Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, stacked cast of voice actors. Amazing. It's about a robot named Roz who's shipwrecked on a deserted island

and she must learn to adapt to her surroundings. She soon builds a relationship with the animals on the island, including a gosling who she stumbles upon and begins to raise as her own. I'm like already going to cry. I know. Tears. This is a tremendously

affecting movie that just worked on me full stop. I've seen it twice now, second time, hit even harder. I saw it with my wife and my kid, and my wife is just a mess during the whole movie. I was crying when I left the theater. I was walking down like, my motherhood, my mom.

Yes. Very powerful mom movie. And I have heard Chris Sanders talk about this elsewhere and this was a great observation. I think that there's not a lot of animated movies about motherhood because moms are the characters that effectively prevent

trouble. They're the characters that effectively prevent trouble. They're the characters that avoid, like there would be no movie. The example that Sanders cited is, you know, he worked as an animator at Disney for many years and he worked on that stretch run of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, that sort of second golden age that Disney had. And Aladdin was originally supposed to have a mom. And if Aladdin had a mom, him robbing, you know, dealers at the local market would seem less plausible. It would seem strange. You'd think like, this is a kid who

he's disrespecting his mom and the way that she tried to raise him. So they removed his mother from that story. So you don't really see this very often. Dumbo was an example I thought of, where there's a mother involved, you Bambi famously the mother is killed I'm even thinking of like Lion King and that's such a father movie yes where it's like

obviously Hamlet but there's not you don't remember even what Simba's mom if he has one he's like I don't know Nairobi

is that her name yeah but she doesn't play a huge part until she comes in at the end to kind of save them so anyway

you know it is very much a movie about motherhood so you were touched by this movie I thought this movie was beautiful. I was moved to tears. Again, we're spoiling. Sure. It's been out for well over a month and is now available on VOD. Which is where I watched it in the comfort of my home under a fleece blanket with my cat on my lap. And I just like clung to him and held him and whispered into his ear about found family and the power of connection uh I thought that the whole movie

was beautiful it hits on a lot of the themes that I really enjoy across stories but like the the migration Bright Bill's migration was like I actually was wrecked by it. It was so exquisite in so many different respects, like the Roz-Brightbill relationship, all of the other geese who like judge and mock Brightbill for being different. What the movie has to say about acceptance and belonging and identity. And this is often the case in stories that are for children or young adults, right? They have these like core ideas about the nature of existence that really then stick with you. And I think a lot of stories like that, whether it's a book you're going to read to your kid

or a movie you're going to see, when you're watching it as a young person, like something about it feels formative for you. And then when you, if you're watching it, either you're revisiting it when you're older or you're watching it as an older person, you are thinking back through so many key experiences. Like, I just thought it was amazing. I thought that, as you said, the cast is astonishing. Tons of established superstars on the voice actor list, but I do want to just shout out Kit Conner, who, are you guys familiar with Kit Conner? Okay. So here's my, I'll keep this very quick, but here's my recent journey. We're covering Agatha all along over on House

of Art and Midnight Boys. And Joe Locke plays a character called Teen. I'll leave it at that. No spoilers. Plays a character called Teen in Agatha. Great performance. And Joanna, my House of Art co-host, loves Heartstopper and had been recommending Heartstopper. And Joe Locke is the star of Heartstopper. So I was like, I really like this performance. I'm curious to see what he's been up to. Let me go watch Heartstopper.

I watched in the span of, I believe, five days, three seasons of Netflix's Heartstopperper which i cannot recommend highly enough it was a beautiful show and kit connor is the other lead in heartstopper and within two episodes i was like this is this kid is poised to be one of the most famous people alive like he is just really really really charismatic and magnetic and compelling and on the voice acting front he voiced he voiced pan any his dark materials heads in the room no no no we're now in the place where you are now citing things in culture that i think you're making up in real time where you're like and then I checked out

three seasons of Heartstopper what the fuck is Heartstopper? How old am I? Fantastic show. Incredibly popular Netflix show. It's a queer love story

young British children teens who are discovering themselves and discovering each other. It is just fantastic. Great recommendation. Very charming.

Unfortunately, I've abandoned TV. Thank you. I can't do season 10. Are you just saying that because you're a big No, no, no. Cinema Charles is here.

It's happened. When you were just like, I watched three seasons, I'm like, nothing horrifies me more than three seasons of TV. I almost had an aneurysm when you said that.

I watched three seasons and I got to the end of season three and I texted Joanna, when is season four? Andysm when you said that. I watched three seasons and I got to the end of season three and I texted Joanna when is season four? And that was when I learned that season three had just posted

mere weeks ago and I was going to have to wait probably a full calendar year. Nothing is a larger red neon arrow pointing at I don't have kids than I just watched

three seasons over a weekend. I will never do that again. As you know, one of my favorite traditions is to watch like 14 episodes of Game of Thrones in a row on a Saturday. I just love, I love to You are a maniac. A truly

a maniac. I'm in awe, as always. You liked this movie as well. You were touched. Yeah, it was, you have these kind of like circular moments where I didn't know anything about this movie. Didn't know about the director that he directed Lilo and Stitch, but it was the director that he directed Lilo and Stitch.

But it was funny. When I watch Lilo and Stitch, I remember having this moment as a kid where it was one of the last times I went to a theater with my parents to watch a hand-drawn animated movie. And Lilo and Stitch is like a foundational memory for me. I love this movie. And the theater was empty. And I having this like kid to like teen moment where i'm like oh this is the end of something like this is the end of my parents taking me these kind of films this is the end of these animated films i thought it was beautiful and i was angry i'm like why is this disappearing this movie should be more appreciated and over time it got

that and then to see this movie i was like it felt like another when I realized it was directed by the guy who made Lilo and Stitch I was like it was a homecoming moment because the theater I was in was packed I was sitting next to a father with his teenage daughter

I was sitting next to like just two 40 year old childless couples like just a couple super happy to be there there was old people in the back and I was like

oh he found a way to do it where this almost feels like a Lilo and Stitch movie where it's like it's a marriage between CG and Tron painted it has this emotional feeling to it it bowls you over and I was just like oh we're always gonna kind of come back to these stories even if it changes and it was like it was just that magical moment it was like like the heart was always there he just needed to figure out how to get it yeah it's not surprising that Sanders comes from the Disney machine you know and that he was kind of raised inside of it because like the story beats are somewhat familiar

to a lot of those stories that you'll see over the years of sort of like an outcast figure coming into a new world taking on a younger protege, helping them through the world, and then the protege becomes a kind of a hero. We've seen that story a lot of times. The visual style of this movie, I think, is what really distinguishes it. Sanders talked to me about it a little bit. He's talked a lot in the press about that combination that you cited, Charles, of the hand-drawn and the CG. And we have this unenunciated but known expectation of what we think animated movies should look like in 2024. You know, that there is a kind of depth in CG animation

that is now starting to look more flat. Like our brains have gotten used to it. And so it doesn't feel as profound as like when we did Toy Story on the rewatchables and we talked about what a mind-blowing moment that was in 1995 to see that animation style. And now it has gotten increasingly samey. And, you know, this is a DreamWorks movie. A lot of the DreamWorks movies look very samey to me.

This is the first one in a while that feels a little bit different. And you can feel like the intention and the care that the animators are putting into this new style, this painting style, that they're innovating. Also, great score by Chris Bowers in this movie. The music is beautiful. You know, the Maren Morris song just hits during that take flight sequence. That's also a trademark of the Disney movies is just like nailing the pop star song choice

inside of a critical moment in a movie. Just a lot of pieces of the puzzle that fit so well. Lupita, who I would not have guessed would have been so good as Roz, but an amazing, great voice performance in the movie. who I would not have guessed would have been so good as Roz but it's amazing incredible great voice performance in the movie yeah it's really

it's quite good I think like the animation style which I also thought was beautiful it's also like helpful in terms of doing something that feels like a shift away from

what has become the norm that like this isn't a movie that stars humans right you know we're working with like robots and animals and they are more human than us.

And that is part of the lesson ultimately. But like, we don't need to like have a certain kind of look on a human face in every frame of the film. And so I don't know if this is true, but my assumption is that maybe that felt like a little bit like liberating to like try to like land on a new aesthetic. It's interesting that you note that

because I said that to Chris. I'm like, this is the first movie that you've made that doesn't have any humans in it. Yeah. Which is unusual. Like he made The Croods. He made How to Train Your Dragon. He made Lilo and Stitch.

He made even The Call of the Wild, the Harrison Ford's movie. And I was reading an interview where it was like their original Lilo and Stitch idea was for an alien to come down. And like it was, Stitch was going to be in the forest with animals. And I think one of the notes was like their original Lilo and Stitch idea was for an alien to come down. And like it was, Stitch was going to be in the forest with animals. And I think one of the notes was like,

you can't have an alien with animals because the animal world is already alien to us. There needs, and it's like funny that coming back to this with a robot, you're like, oh, it works with a robot because it's like, she's the alien. And we understand animals a little bit better so yeah

but i also think what is interesting story-wise about this is that with pixar we've come to expect the magic trick of like this movie is going to make me cry at one point and with dreamworks what i thought was so beautiful at this i was like there was never a point in the movie where i felt like they were like this is when you need to cry it more so felt like I was having an overwhelming emotion at the scenes of like so well put you know when the flight is happening it's like I'm like oh I'm just overwhelmed about what's happening in the story yeah like you at one point you're like this kind of like a sports movie I'm getting that moment of like with my dad or my mom at a game and being like you can do this I'd watch you practice and I'm like I haven't seen that because we've been trained with the Pixar thing of like the Coco this is the exact moment it's

gonna break you and there was multiple points in Wild Robot where I just kept tearing up yeah yeah it's a genius move it's a cumulative effect instead of feeling manipulated into the moment yeah it feels really earned like I think the first thing I texted you guys was, because again, I watched it at home, was a picture of my TV when Bright Bill, like, nestles in the neck nook to activate Roz's memories again. And I was like, shattered. Now, obviously, like, that is a climax. We're building toward it is meant to be an intense and impactful moment in the film. But there was a subtlety to it. Yeah. it is meant to be an intense and impactful moment in the film, but there, there was a subtlety to it. Yeah.

And I think like the, you know, on the, the aliens and, and robots and animals and humans front, I think like the fact that we were watching a story about a, a robot in a wild kingdom really actually like, like helped amplify some of the themes that the movie was exploring because

you have, it made me think actually a little bit of, story very much about people, the last people, Station 11, but that like, Joanna and I talk about this a lot on House of R, that survival is insufficient idea. You know, like when you have, when you have the moment where Ross has like brought all of the animals back to the shelter

and worked as the battery is depleting to try to save them and like Fink who's been the comedic element in the film is making this like deeply impassioned plea for everybody to just put their differences aside you know you just feel so keenly that there is an actual moment of enlightenment for all of those figures and of course like there was a little part of my logical brain where I'm like wait okay what are they gonna eat you know they're not they're not eating each other what are they gonna eat but i like immediately just stopped worrying about any of that because i was so swept up in the emotion of watching them band together to form a community and so you have like the macro and the micro right because you have roz and bright bill and fink forming this little family unit and then you have all of these figures who we are introduced to when Roz is just seeking animal after animal after animal. Like, can I help you complete your task?

And I love that too. The way inside of this like treatise on found family, the movie explored the idea of the task and completing a task because like everybody's really busy, right? How many times even just today have we all said like oh my god i'm so tired my brain's not working people are really swept up in all the shit they have to do every day and it's like can i complete my next task can i help you complete your next task can i move on to the next thing on my to-do list and something really beautiful about the nature of the relationship between roz and bright bill is like you don't complete a task like that right yeah it is inherently anathema to the thing that is driving raz's existence and

that is specifically why it can pull her into this like human experience and that little moment and so like i had also was not familiar with the books but i have been reading up on them and i'm eager to actually read them but it's a trilogy right so the sequels and development already like it's going to be based on the second book but i didn't know that when i was watching it for the first time and so the moment when like sweet little bright bill's face just peeks around the corner and you realize that despite that factory reset and rosa's sacrifice going back to universal dynamics to try to spare the the the inhabitants of the island like she knows who he is because that's not a thing they can take away. I mean,

I also have to say it was so touching. This movie, what it does very well is it never makes it seem like parenthood is this ultimate place of being. There's a lot of jokes.

The possum. I was cracking up at the possum. Great stuff. Because I was like, oh, there must have been parents writing this movie because they were just like, it wasn't like, oh, you're going to become a mom and everything. It's was like, oh, there must have been parents writing this movie because they were just like, it wasn't like,

oh, you're going to become a mom and everything. It's just like, hey, it's really fucking awesome. The Catherine O'Hara character is hilarious in this movie and very real if you have endured

difficult days with your children. There's like a real frankness about how hard it is that I think a lot of parents are going to relate to. This is a great movie. I think this movie

is the front runner for Best Animated Feature Academy Award. Kind of an interesting somewhat funky year because, you know, Pixar is usually quite dominant.

Here, last year, we saw our beloved Miyazaki one, which would have been a surprise to me in June, but by the end of the awards race,

you could tell that the boy in the heron had really gathered a lot of momentum. The Pixar film this year is Inside Out 2, which is one of the biggest hits of 2024, had really gathered a lot of momentum. The Pixar film this year is Inside Out 2, which is one of the biggest hits of 2024,

but it is a sequel. Yeah. It's clearly not as beloved as the original, even though I enjoyed it. You talked about it with us on the show, Charles. And then the rest of the stuff,

we have this interesting kind of melange of foreign films and related IP, related franchise-oriented stories. So like among those stories, you've got Transformers 1, which we'll talk about momentarily.

We've got a new Wallace and Gromit movie, which is coming out later this year on Netflix. We've got a Lord of the Rings anime film. Cannot wait. So that's Malkor. It was recently announced that a new Looney Tunes movie is going to be released this year though it is not the coyote versus acne movie that was at the center of the warner brothers saga

there is an additional warner's movie or excuse me uh looney tunes movie which is not coming from warner's coming from ketchup entertainment which i know is your favorite studio it's called the day the earth blew up a looney tunes movie which i think is very focused on Daffy and Porky Pig. Those are the two main characters in the story. I don't really understand how the licensing works there, but clearly WB didn't want to release this movie either. And then there's Memoir of a Snail, an Australian film,

and Flow, a Latvian film about a cat. I've been hearing a lot of gas on Flow. I'm very excited. Flow's got dark horse energy in this race this year. Last but not least, Piece by Piece, the Pharrell movie. Did you see this yet? Sean, when you asked me on this episode, I'm like, I'm going to go see that movie,

but just, I couldn't. A Halloween weekend hit you. I just, there is something about seeing the clips as Legos where I'm like, this is hitting me. I love a Lego. I'm like, I'm not going to let it win. There's something, like I smile every, I have the Twitteros where I'm like, this is hitting me. I love a Lego. I'm like, I'm not going to let it win. There's something,

like I smile every, I have the Twitter video and I'm like, you're not going to win the battle. Half of it, you're going to love. There's half of that movie, which is just Pharrell

making beats in Lego and the Lego, the beat being represented by like a flashing Lego is when Nori shows up, it's just crack. Like, you will love it. The narrative emotional arc

of the movie is a little complicated. Did you see Transformers 1? I did. Okay. And you saw it. Modern Masterpiece. I've been waiting

for my brother and my sister to join me to discuss this movie briefly. Genuinely exceptional film. Loved it. But by the end I was like wait

so spoilers I was like wait so Optim So, spoilers. I was like, wait. So, Optimus has been gifted a monarchy by the Transformers space god. And he banishes his best friend. Immediately, I was just like, no. Now we know why Megatron is so salty. I will say, I was not expecting.

Because we were in a group chat. And you're like, I love this movie. love this movie and I was watching it I was like this isn't my Megatron and Optimus Prime and by the end when their voices change into the voices we kind of like are approximating it I'm like the movie got so dark after the final third maybe of the movie i was like wrapped watching so i think it's actually kind of a tough sit through the first 30 minutes you can feel the movie almost trying to figure out the tone it wants to take where it's kind of like a buddy comedy set in the world of like the proletariat on cybertron like it's very much a movie about like being held down by the man in the system yeah but chris hemsworth andworth and Brian Tyree Henry are these sort of like rollicking bros and they're trying to meet their heroes.

Lawrence Fishburne shows up about 40 minutes into the movie as a critical, what are those characters, what are those guys called? I forget. Primes.

The Primes, right. As a key Prime who survived this awful attack. And the movie kind of takes off from there and then I agree with you. Final 30 minutes,

I saw it at a fan screening. People were standing in the aisles and just cheering. They were like, this is my Optimus Prime. When Megatron echoes of Optimus and he's falling, I'm like, what am I watching? This is crack. It was so good and very intense. It is good.

Visually stunning in that stretch in particular. Wonderful. Everything on the surface looked really cool as well, visually. Also, just no surprise, but yet another iconic Jon Hamm performance. He's very good. He continues to be cast as shitheels, and he is an arch shitheel in this movie. I don't think that movie's going to make it into the race. Sad.

I think it's quite underrated. A little underseen. Obviously, nobody takes Transformers shit seriously, except for the big picture. We will continue to do so that movie very seriously because to your point the first 30 minutes I was like

I can get into some lore and when they were explaining the lore of the Transformers I'm just like dog y'all are going deep Cybertron lore in the movie

so it's a little hard to say not having seen a few of these movies I haven't seen Flow or the new Wallace and Gromit Wallace and Gromit you know famously

celebrated by the Academy in the past Lord of the Rings I don't seen Flow or the new Wallace and Gromit. Wallace and Gromit, you know, famously celebrated by the Academy in the past. Lord of the Rings, I don't think is going to be a strong contender. Maybe it'll surprise us. Feels a little slight to me based on the trailers,

personally. I'm looking forward to this movie. You like the trailers? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm excited. I saw a movie,

what did I see? I saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with Van. And the trailer for this movie came on and I was like, yo, were you hyped for this? And he was like, I don't know hyped for this? And he was like,

I don't know what this is. And I was like, this is, you host the Midnight Boys, like this is your thing, like the Lord of the Rings movie. And he was like, I don't fuck with Lord of the Rings.

Yeah. And I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah, this is a core part of Van's lore. That's so weird. You like Lord of the Rings? Yeah. Okay.

I read the book. Here's the thing with Lord of the Rings. It gets to the point where I'm like, I can do The Hobbit. I can do Lord of the Rings. I can do those both. Okay. Once read the book. Here's the thing with Lord of the Rings. It gets to the point where I'm like, I can do The Hobbit. I can do Lord of the Rings. I can do those both. Okay. Once we start- You're not going into like the Silmarillion or anything.

It's too much. I'm too dumb for my, like I don't have that level of lore accessibility to remember everyone. I'm like, I can remember The Hobbits and The Fellowship. Once we start talking about all that other shit,

I just, I can't. So, I guess this is Inside Out 2 versus The Wild Robot, right? I thought The Wild Robot was way better than Inside Out 2. Yeah. And, like, I love the first Inside Out movie, but I don't actually think this is particularly close. Like, I liked Inside Out 2 quite a bit, but it's, Wild Robot felt like special. And Inside Out 2 felt like a less good sequel.

A solid sequel. Than its original. Honestly, it's very funny that these are probably the two movies competing because I think it speaks to the state of animation, the companies where it's like disney is all in on nostalgia now pixar essentially has become a studio that is heavily reliant on these sequels i think they have kind of punted on being forward thinking where it's like dreamworks i think is now they've always kind of been the

scrappy underdog but now it seems that they're the ones who being like we don't really have anything to lose right now let's do some weird shit and see if it sticks. It's interesting because the Wild Robot, while it has been successful, is significantly less successful than Inside Out 2. Sure. So Inside Out 2, to my surprise, is a billion dollar movie. And this is in the hundreds of millions

and no more than that. Pixar's next movie is an original, Helio, which is coming out in June. And then they've got two movies in 26, one called Hoppers, and then Toy Story 5, which will be probably one of the biggest movies of the next five years, would be my guess. So, I mean, I think you're right.

I think immediately after Toy Story 5 is Incredibles 3. So you're right that those sequels are pretty important to the company's brand. And they, you know, before Inside Out 2, as we talked about, like, they were kind of a perilous state. They were like, what is our identity? You know, they went through this rebrand. There was a shift in leadership. There were layoffs, I think, for the first time.

There were layoffs. In company history, I believe. I'm sure they'll be beating their chest. But the wild robot, I don't know if it signals something new. I think it signals something classical that makes us feel good. I think it's interesting that a movie about a robot

with sentience that breaks its programming in the time of AI is being cited as a heartwarming story. I think there's an alternative read here that we could apply

if we wanted to about trusting the machines. I think James Cameron told us, be careful. Do you think that's where the book trilogy goes? I hope these films are a direct prequel

to Cameron's The Terminator. Oh, hell yes. Right? That this is the beginning of Skynet. Yeah. That Roz is one of the OGs. Is it T-100?

I don't think I would enjoy that twist. 40-year anniversary of The Terminator. Holy shit. How are you feeling? How are you celebrating? We are old.

I'm going to rewatch the film. You know, one of my dissenting opinions is that I think The Terminator is very, very good, but not an all-time movie. There's a really good column that Adam Neiman wrote on the site last week about how much The Terminator means to him and what it means to the culture.

And I thought it was very persuasive, but I've always been a little bit like, it's a very punk rock kind of a movie. It's a small movie and Terminator 2 is a movie I saw like at a critical stage of my life and I'm like that is how you make an epic film so it's always been my preference over the two you disagree I saw the Terminator for the first time in high school like we had like a move and I was like that punk rock thing i was like you can make i'm like this looks cheap and this look but like in a cool way i'm just like oh i want to do that yeah you know what i'm saying where it's like terminators i think it's like it's alien versus aliens where it's like i like alien

because it's like oh no this is like the raw and cut shit and then you the second one is the pristine fucking all major label album i think I tend to like the kind of like gritty taped together more. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I think both are good. I think James Cameron is a genius. Any closing thoughts on The Wild Robot

or Venom The Last Dance? We're all aging and we're all getting old because on my way here, I was listening to the new Tyler Creator album. How did it sound? He's rapping about being 35 and childless and it reminded me of this conversation where i'm like wow between charlie xcx and tyler the creator both being like we're in our 30s and we're not married and we don't have children and watching the wild robot being like wow parenthood is great i'm like oh i'm like i'm getting old i'm like the teens of my youth are not like children what's up with that so i'm ancient i feel really i feel

really is he really rapping about being 35 and childless first of all i love tyler i've always loved tyler followers of my work from 15 years ago no i've been writing about tyler for a long time um that's amazing that he's in that place in his career amazing to me chromocopia right that's Tyler. I love Tyler. Followers of my work from 15 years ago know I've been writing about Tyler for a long time. Worth hearing now. That's amazing that he's in that place in his career. Amazing to me. Chromacopia, right? That's the record?

Chromacopia. So like, I brought that up to say while Robot probably wouldn't have worked on me probably five years ago, I'd be like, kids,

parenthood, fuck all that shit. Like, you know, and now I'm like, man, this is sweet. They got you right where they want you. Melanie, you know, and now I'm like, man, this is sweet. They got you right where they want you. Melanie, closing thoughts?

Just two beautiful films about the nature of connection. You know, great to share them both with you. It was nice to be connected to you both. Thanks, guys. Let's go to my conversation

now with Chris Sanders. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage, bacon, and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing.

Bet they taste amazing, too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax. At participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Give it up for the wild robot. And please give it up for the director of the Wild Robot, Chris Sanders.

So Chris, I thought we could start here. The Wild Robot is a beloved book, and that's a big challenge in adapting a book that so many people, maybe some people who are here today, have read. So what were the challenges with adapting it, and how did you turn something that was beloved into a movie? You know, the translation from the book to the screen, it was so critical that we kept the heart of the story intact, while just making sure that we made enough room

that all these beautiful themes that Peter had created had room to develop and to really resonate fully. There's really two thematic pillars that are load-bearing within the story. And one of them wasn't really memorialized in the book in an obvious way. And our very first conversation with Peter Brown was over Zoom. And he said, the thing that was on my mind when I was writing the book, the guiding principle was the notion that kindness could be a survival skill.

So I immediately wrote that down and thought, okay, that must be on screen. And the other one, of course, that Roz states at a certain point is the idea that they may all need to change their programming in order to survive. So these are the main themes that we wanted to make sure that we made room for and protected and developed. You mentioned when we were speaking earlier that there is a significant difference between a book and a movie. You mentioned when we were speaking earlier that there is a significant difference between a book and a movie. You liken it to two different things. Can you talk about that?

You know, I feel like a book or a novel is like a boat and it can carry more of a load. You read it at your own pace. And so the whole thing can just, you can pack it with more detail, more stuff. But a screenplay and a film is more like an airplane. You only have a certain amount of time and everyone is going to watch this in one sitting. So it's a more disciplined thing. So that is the visual in my

mind as we pick and choose the things that we're going to represent inside a screenplay. It has to be lighter weight. It has to move. And it's only got about, say, like an hour and a half to get its message out. Roz is an unlikely character for a movie. A robot is by nature unemotional. Can you talk about what appealed to you about Roz in trying to find a way to navigate that particular challenge? Yeah. In any, I think, show, TV, novel, movie about a robot, I think inevitably that robot is going to grow in emotional dimension. It's going to get more human. I think that's just inevitable. This particular story had all those kinds of things within it, but there was the unique characteristic of Roz specifically becoming a mom to this little orphaned gosling. And that was really fresh.

I always felt like Roz was going into the emotional deep end on this particular journey. So that was one of the aspects that really, really captivated me about Peter's story. One thing that I don't know how to put words to, but I know when I see is an animation style. This movie has an unusual style. It has a different kind of depth. It has a different kind of texture to it than maybe we're used to seeing in a movie like this.

So what am I seeing? Can you help me understand why it feels different? You are seeing something that is so amazing. So as I read Peter's book for the very first time, the imagery that was coming to mind, I would say was relatively sophisticated. I would liken it to the imagery from Bambi. Tyrus Wong's beautiful stylization of that forest really, really stuck with me and a lot of us that got into animation. And so because of the elements, the animals, the robot, there were a lot of things in this that were just going to appeal to kids automatically. Plus a lot of kids have read the book. It's at a certain grade level. Lots and lots of children read this particular book.

I was really concerned that the adults, the parents, see this the way I was seeing it as well. So I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. DreamWorks had the novel sitting around for about four years before I came along and said, this is the one I want to work on. And in those four years, DreamWorks continued to develop this really beautiful illustrated style that you saw in Puss in Boots The Last Wish and Also in Bad Guys. So they were getting away. They were finally pulling away from that gravitational pull that Or they were beginning to escape the gravitational pull of that CG look that we were obligated to Technologically, I guarantee any film you, the style of it is going to represent

the very outer edge of that particular studio's technological ability at that particular moment. So we had a chance to leverage off of that illustrated look that they had developed for those other two films and go further. And we went way further on the wild robot to getting the softer, more painterly look. And one of the things that I saw during this journey was a demonstration where one of our artists, Baptiste, sat at a station with a Cintiq and a tablet and a stylus, and he began to paint. And I was looking at a screen and as he created these brush strokes, they were appearing on the screen. And it wasn't just that, he began to turn them. So he was painting dimensionally. So he could create a tree or a rock or a soft ground plane. And because it

was dimensionally painted, we could light it and we could move characters through it and we can move a camera through it. So we finally broke away from the need to build structures under the trees, under the rocks, and we could freehand our environments. And there's a moment where Fink, for example, he jumps into this bed that he had Roz prepare for him. And as he's scrunching himself around, you'll notice these little dots of color that are part of this soft moss that are the surface of the bed. They're just floating in the air in front of his tail. And if you look at some of the leaves and the branches, likewise, they're just floating in air. There's like little breaks and gaps in them, just like an oil painting would have on a brush stroke. And that's completely unique. And here's the last, I keep dominating this whole thing, but I'm so excited about the look. One of the things that was really interesting and amazing

to me in breaking away from that obligate photo realism that we had all wrestled with in a traditional CG realm, by breaking away from that and going to these brushstrokes. A good example I'm going to give is the surfacing of the characters were likewise painted. So they would harmonize and blend in and belong to this world. They would wed with the environments. But those brushstrokes mean that the business as usual look for animals where you get really close up and you can see every little single solitary hair. Now it was just a brushstroke and the effect it created is that of matted fur. So the weird thing is the animals in some ways are more abstracted,

but the overall effect is much more believable and shockingly real. So in getting away from that photorealism, oddly enough, we created another sort of realism that I never expected. Can you talk about your role as a director, particularly when it comes to that? Because you're not holding the stylus, doing this work specifically. But I think it's a little bit of a mystery to all of us what an animation director actually does, especially on the technical side. Absolutely. That's why I love having these events and having either Ramon Zeeback, our production designer, or Jeff Budsberg, our VFX supervisor here, because they can talk about the details of how they actually did it. And I only know so much because I'm working on

the narrative. I'm working on the cutting and the story and just the dialogue, as they are working in parallel on the look of the film so that hopefully all this stuff joins up. So an animation director, imagine a live action set. Every discipline that is right there on set is separated. So our camera, our lighting, the dialogue recording, all these things are in different departments. And one of the things that I do is I make sure that there's a consistency in vision so that when these things do begin to meet up, they add up to something cohesive and yeah, sensible, pretty, enjoying, appealing. I don't know if this says something that you've thought about before,

but your films have this sort of recurring theme where your lead character's lives are interrupted by an unlikely visitor and they turn everything upside down. That seems to occur in Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, this film. Why do you keep coming back to that idea? I like stories.

I like to work on stories where the situation is fanciful and the characters can be pretty extreme. But the stuff that's happening is hyper-believable. The emotional back and forth, characters' reactions, their feelings are things that we would feel as well. And that, I think, grounds the whole thing. Do you hunt for stories like that purposefully? You know, in the case of The Wild Robot, when I went and visited development and they laid out,

quite literally, a bunch of projects on the table, amongst them was this book. And just a brief description of it told me that's the one I wanted to work on. So in this case, I gravitated towards one that was like in the vicinity. I've worked on fairy tales and I love fairy tales. I worked on Beauty and the Beast and I love them. But when it comes to something that I'm going to take the lead on, I tend to veer away from those in favor of things that are a little bit more complex, if that makes sense. It does. This movie has great voice performances,

which is also a kind of a mystery, I think, to those of us who get immersed in stories like this. Lupita Nyong'o is Roz, which is quite amazing. She also, much like any movie with a robot, has this difficult challenge of portraying an emotionless figure, figure machine but also making us connect with her the entire time so can maybe talk us through how luke peter can be part of the movie and then how you direct actors is something i'm curious about as well absolutely so um i don't

think we understood what an incredibly good choice luke was because we gravitated towards her because of course her incredible acting ability and quite frankly just the sound of her voice which we thought would be like a very beautiful and perfect you know choice for Roz but Lupita really took the lead in deciphering who Roz was I didn't simply simply write this. And I don't write any character and then just show up and have somebody read the lines and we're done. There's always a customization process.

So the moment we have someone commit to that character, I'll immediately go back to the script. I write enough of the script that we know what character we're looking for. But as soon as the actor joins us, I immediately do my best

to try to predictively rewrite the character. And I'm trying to now customize it for that particular character, like Catherine O'Hara, for example. But then when the rubber meets the road and we really arrive in the recording studio, inevitably we will make more changes and we will customize. But in the case of Roz, it was a far greater scale of, I think, deciphering that we had to do. Lupita

really, really took the lead in trying to figure out the architecture of Roz's brain, because she is a machine, and she's got programming. So she's going to start in one place, and then she's going to begin to shift and change the way that she responds to things, change the way she sees the world. And so it was absolutely fascinating to watch how Lupita took her apart and the questions she asked and the things that she would say about that particular character. And Roz is arguably a neurodivergent character because she has this very structured way that she sees things and responds to things. I'm very fond of the moment, for example,

when she's talking to Fink and he's explaining how the world on the island works. And she says, you're programming. And so she's putting the situation in terms that she understands. And so, and then Lupita went further than that to actually create a voice. So the way that

Roz sounds when she's fresh out of the box and she's brand new it has this engineered optimism as we coined it that sort of enthusiastic like can-do sort of happy voice that an Alexa or a Siri might have and she I think she just sort of stressed her voice a little bit so now it's like hello and she like pushes herself into this higher range. And then as the movie develops, we go into phase two and phase three voice for Roz, which are much more just Lupita being Lupita. And she begins to use contractions, for example. Our very first recording session in New York, we didn't even record anything for a good hour or so because we just began by talking, talking about Roz, her journey, her arc, you know, how does she begin? And it was an ongoing thing.

We didn't have one big conversation and that was it. Every single time we sat down in a recording session, bit by bit, we would really question the choices of how Roz speaks and we would continue her development. In fact, the very last sequence that went into production is the first sequence where she walks through the island because that subtle zone that she's in, it was a very hard one thing

because we tried lots of different angles on Roz, little subtle changes, and it had an effect on how we felt about her and how believable her plight really was. I'm curious about the other voice actors as well, because you know, a lot of animation film directors make lots of movies with talking animals. You actually don't do that very often.

In fact, you have a lot of humans in a lot of the stories that you tell, but this is a movie with no humans. So when you're with Pedro Pascal or you're with Matt Berry or somebody else in this film, is the conversation like, here's what I think a Fox sounds like. Here's what I think a bear sounds like. And this is the way they would talk. Like, what are you saying to each other? You know, as far as like the quality

of the voice, I think it became much more prominent in the case of Thorne because he has very few lines and Mark Hamill has the ability to manifest this massive resonant voice. And so we talked as much about Thorne's performance as just the sound of Thorne because he had to maintain, he's the alpha predator on the island. So he has to maintain that kind of scale and intimidation factor.

In the case of like Pinktail, we just wanted Catherine to be Catherine as far as like her vocal qualities. And that became much more about just like talking about she has three families a year. It is no longer magical. It's all worn off a long time ago. So she has this very unsentimental view and perspective on the whole parenting thing, which ended up being just such a wonderful thing. And there was a lot of lines in there that she improvised.

Like when Bright Bill is struggling to stay aloft for his 24 hours so that he can join the migration, that bit where she just explodes and says, get your butt back in the air. That was a Catherine thing. Instead of like, oh, come on, you can do it. She just jumped in there as a mom and shocked him and got him back up in the air.

So yeah, absolutely, everybody was a customization. Fink was really fun because Pedro's being, I think, more Pedro than he is in many of his roles because he's a leading man in lots of his very popular roles. But in this case, Fink is, he's just a more vulnerable guy. And so we were always, whenever Pedro would do something really,

I think as Pedro, we would always go, oh, that's it, that's it. We would jump on that and identify that as a vibe that we liked. In fact, there was a moment, it is no longer in the film. We have a lot of iterations, but there used to be a moment

where Roz produced that tablet and there was a bunch of accessories that you could order. And Fink was interested in ordering some things that would super power his robot and make Roz more intimidating to the other animals. And so the line was, ooh, ooh, can we get that?

But when Pedro read it, he said, ooh, ooh, can we get that? And he read it like, he said, ooh, ooh, can we get that? And he read it like a little kid sitting in a shopping cart in a grocery store pointing at Twinkies. And I immediately identified that as like, that's Fink. He's kind of got this little kid vulnerability and level of excitement in him that, yeah, that we tapped into.

The movie has this fascinating balance. I was watching it with my wife just now and she was in tears. I don't mean to embarrass her by saying that, but I think any most parents were probably in tears watching this movie. It's a very powerful story about parenting. It's also weirdly a sports movie. It didn't really occur to me until I watched it the second time, but there's a training montage. There's basically a big game and Bright Bill needs to take flight and survive. And there is like a survival sequence here too.

It is an action movie in some ways. That's a lot of big shifts in tone. I was hoping you could talk maybe about how to balance those things and make sure a movie is funny and touching and just a little scary and making sure it all fits together. Absolutely.

So one of the questions that I was always wondering before I got into animation is how does the story department work and where does editorial fall in all this? And frankly, I would say editorial is the hub of the whole story wheel. We do more work, I think, on story while sitting in editorial than any other place in the film. There would be times I would come in with a pad of paper and Mary would be at the editing console and we would just be talking and I would spend the whole day just doing drawings and I would tear them off the pad and they would scan them and put them in. So what I guess I'm saying is it is a hard one balance. It doesn't come out immediate like that, not

immediately. We try many things. We have many iterations. And at a certain point in production, your film will begin to tell you what it needs. And certainly we have to be listening and be sensitive to that. We have to be sensitive to the wavelengths that the film is speaking to us on. And suddenly something will feel too long or it won't feel like we indulged it enough. And that's all going through Mary and her cuts and experimenting with things. And she's just brilliant. There's so many times I will overwrite something and then we'll board it and I'll come in to watch it and she'll show it to me and I'll say, oh, that works great. And she's like, so do you notice what I took out? And I'm like, uh, you took something out?

And it worked so well, I wasn't aware that she removed something, thus proving that it was extraneous. I love Chris Bauer's score. It literally sounds to me like the digital world getting dumped into the natural world. Maybe you could talk about how you develop a score with a composer to me like the digital world getting dumped into the natural world. Maybe you could talk about how you develop a score with a composer and what is that conversation like? We started with Chris fairly early in the process, so he had a lot of time

to begin experimenting and exploring and developing themes. Roz has a theme and Bright Bill has a theme and the future world also has this theme going and how they weave together and then develop is something that exists in the realm of Chris and his incredible capabilities and just artistry when it came to the score.

I learned a long time ago to write in homes for music within the stories I create. Places where the characters can stop speaking and music becomes the biggest voice of the film. And that certainly is on display like Crazy and the Wild Robot, partially because there were so many moments that just transcended dialogue. You can only write your way so far

and then hand it to music and let it take everything the rest of the way. So certainly the montage in the middle, that would be one of the few places I actually, and Chris reminded me of this, I didn't remember this, but the first time he wrote the music for the migration, it was relatively joyous. And I came back and said, there's more going on in this moment because there's a lot of unspoken

things. So there's a level of regret and pain that are infused into that moment because we want to come out of that moment feeling like, oh, they didn't have time. He ran out of time. Bright Bill is there and the music begins and the music is evoking the feeling of a train beginning to pull out of a station. And that train's not going to stop and Bright Bill has to be on it. So his window of time to make amends and to ask questions or say whatever he needs to say just closed. So the best he can get out is I could use a boost. And Chris memorialized that moment with this beautiful drumbeat because Roz straightens up at that point.

She didn't expect to hear that. And it surprised her just like Bright Bill was surprised just a moment before by the revelation that Long Neck laid on him, that had that accident not occurred, he wouldn't be here. He's showing him another side to the whole situation. So I love that all these things are happening quietly and quickly, but they are profound things.

And Chris illustrated that so beautifully. I read an interesting statistic this morning that five of the top 10 movies at the box office this weekend, and we're all watching a movie in theaters this weekend, were animated, and that that had never happened before. Wait, really? That's what I read. If it's wrong, I apologize.

That's neat. But what accounts for that? What do you think that is about? You've been working in animation for decades. I love the way that we see animation and the way that it speaks to us. I think there's a different part of our brains that is engaged when you're watching an animated film, if that makes sense. It's something I've never seen analyzed, but Peanuts comic strip. Those graphic characters are just so powerful and so charming. And in so many ways, they go beyond that simple drawing to really exude so much.

So animated films have a way of communicating that is so efficient and powerful. And they also have a way of enduring. And I think that's why we're all just drawn to them because of those reasons, I guess. Yeah. Something related to that is two films that you've directed are now being converted to live action, which is a relatively recent phenomenon, but a very powerful phenomenon. Why do you think people want that? I cannot speak to the motivations of the studios that do these. Lion King, I worked on Lion King and Mulan as well. Beauty and the Beast.

So quite a few have gone through that conversion. I think there's a curiosity about what would happen if you had those resources, I guess, on a live action set to do things we couldn't necessarily have done. Especially in the more traditional films like Beauty and the Beast and stuff like that, I think there's a curiosity about, ooh, if you had a set and all these things, what other things could you illuminate?

You've also talked about, you've made one film that's sort of hybrid, that is using live action and animation and digital technology, and that's something you have a passion for. That seems actually harder than animation, but I don't know if that's true. That's just a gut thing. Is it the most challenging way to make a movie? It was the animated element. You're talking about Call of the Wild. The animated element was prominent enough that it gave me confidence that at least 50% of the movie I would understand how to make um and then the other 50 percent I figured I could like I could probably learn it um which is pretty much exactly what happened um

yeah I think um when it when it came to that part of it um it was it was very similar it was truly familiar to me um one of the differences was um rather than building the characters we scanned them as a shortcut to getting the dogs in the film to look good. We had a casting call at Gentle Giant and people brought dogs in. It was my favorite casting call day of all time. And all these amazing dogs and the ones that we picked out, like immediately we sent in and they were scanned. Save for the main dog, Buck. As described in the book, it's a very, very specific breed. It's a combination of a St. Bernard and a Scotch Collie. So it's a very handsome St. Bernard.

And we thought, okay, let's build that one from scratch. And we struggled and struggled, and it never looked right. Just pointing out how wise it was to scan existing dogs because immediately it works. It makes sense. It's just, it has all the things in the right proportion. And we were on set shooting and we still hadn't finished Buck. And my wife was on Pet Finder, which she should never be on. And she saw this dog in Emporia, Kansas that was in a shelter. He'd been picked up wandering the streets, starving, and they named him Buckley. And he was a Scotch Collie combination with a St. Bernard. And we're like, oh my God.

So she like paid $25 for him and drove out because he was on special. He was marked down. So she drove out and got him and drove back onto the set. And as soon as the producer saw him walk on the set, he said, we'll just make him the dog. So we scanned Buck and now he lives with me. That's amazing. Chris, we end every episode of our show by asking filmmakers,

what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything great recently? Oh, I did. I love horror movies. And I just now watched seen anything great recently? Oh, I did. I love horror movies and I just, just now watched the first Omen. Oh yes. My favorite horror movie of the year. Tell me about what you liked. Uh, I, I, I'm a fan of the original. Oh my gosh. The story was great. The cinematography was, they so tapped into the vibe of that era of filmmaking, just so many successful things.

Just perfect. That's an excellent recommendation. Your film is excellent. Give it up for Chris Sanders. Thank you to Chris Sanders. Thank you to Mallory and Charles. Thanks to Jack Sanders as well. And thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner,

for his work on today's episode. Later this week, CR and I will look to see if there's white smoke over the Vatican as we discuss Conclave. We'll see you then.