The Flop House - Ep. #362 - Dungeons & Dragons, with Adam Rex

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

We're joined by bestselling children's book author and illustrator Adam Rex, to discuss the misbegotten Dungeons & Dragons movie from 2000. What does he know about D&D, oh, we dunno... just that he was an illustrator for a little book called... THE MONSTER MANUAL (3rd edition)? Ever heard of it? (...plus a ton of other D&D manuals, Magic the Gathering cards, and other role playing and fantasy games). Join us as we point our magic missles at this magic misfire.Wikipedia entry for Dungeons & DragonsMovies recommended in this episode:Inherent ViceThe Last DuelMr. KleinThe Green Knight

On this episode we discuss Dungeons and Dragons. The movie not to be confused with Dungeons and Dragons, the food. Told you I won, told you I won. A plus, A plus, plus, plus. We're not gonna do better than House, I'm Dan McCoy. Oh, hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington. And hey, this is Elliot Kaelin. I should warn everybody I'm battling a cold, as you can tell from my sexy Kathleen Turner

voice. But don't worry, my voice will be back to its non-sexy Elliot Kaelin version in time for upcoming Virtual Live Show on March 19th when we'll be talking about masters of the universe more about that upcoming virtual live show on March 19th later in the episode. But first I'd love to introduce our guest for today. Very excited about this guest. He's someone whose work is very celebrated in the Kaelin household and hopefully households across the country.

His name is Adam Rex. If you don't know him, he's an incredibly versatile author and artist. He's got roughly 70 hundred children's books under his belt. That's right. Some personal favorites. Yeah, some personal favorites in our house are the his two books of monster poetry. Frank, it's time makes a sandwich and Frank's and takes a cake schools for stay of school, which he wrote is a is a big one here.

And of course, nothing rhymes with orange, which I think is is maybe my favorite picture book of all time. He's the illustrator of a new book that's out now called Gladys, The Magic Chicken. Adam Rex is our guest today. Thank you so much for joining us, Adam. Thank you so much for having me. And I should warn you that my voice always sounds bad. Oh, okay.

Warning received. Yeah. And it's your guy. He's putting it in his pocket. I'm putting in my pocket. And his warning, Rolladex. Yeah. So, it would never be so warning.

He writes it down on, Rolladex, he says to him, whenever he gets a warning, he writes it down on a Rolladex page, puts it in his Rolladex and he just kind of creeds it into a pocket that's bigger on the inside than the outside, which is how he avoids bulges by putting a Rolladex in his pocket. Because I don't want to, if I go out into public and I have unsightly bulges, I got to tell you, people don't like it. Yeah. He only wants the same ones. I get negative reviews, down votes.

How many sightly bulges do you have, like three roughly? Yeah, I mean, wait, milk, milk, one, stop it, run the jump. But what's the other way around? I was wondering, what are they making around the corner? Wait, let me check. Is that, wait, you know, what it looks like, Fudge. So we're remembering from I'm remembering from Jared Leto and

House of Gucci. We should not, we should not not confuse two different things, chocolate and another thing. So yeah. Stuart, fortunately for Elliot's voice, you seemed like the proper man to talk to do the synopsis for a Dungeons and Dragons movie. Hell yeah, because today on this bad movie podcast where we watch a bad movie and talk about it, we're going to be talking about two thousands Dungeons and Dragons. Now, this was a movie that was suggested by our guest, Mr. Rex, why? Why Dungeons and Dragons? Well, I'm, you know, despite your nice introduction, I'm keenly aware that probably most of your listeners don't know who I am. And I feel like they're probably wondering why does he get to

a guest on his favorite podcast. I don't get to guest on my favorite podcast. So I wanted to pick a movie that would kind of justify... I mean, the weird thing is the person, the person thinking that is Paul F. Tompkins, who does get to guest on all of his favorite podcast. So it's really unfair of him to think that about you. But this is my first thing. And I wanted to pick a movie that would seem to sort of justify my presence. And before I got into children's books, which I considered to be my life's work, I made my living for years,

illustrating fantasy role playing games and collectible card games, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons and stuff for White Wolf. And I did just hundreds. Oh yeah. Yeah, White Wolf, I did changeling. Did you ever play changeling? Oh yeah, I mean, I played it like once or twice, but the books are gorgeous. Well, probably not because of any of my work.

I did a tremendous amount of really bad work back then for changeling. And as long as nobody takes that information and goes out and tries to find any of it, I'm comfortable with you knowing that. I did a lot of good and bad stuff for D&D, just hundreds of illustrations over the years. I thought maybe that'll translate to expertise. I think that's for me so that at least people would hear that about me and think, okay, that makes sense. So when you're illustrating, did you mostly, did you mostly specialize in dungeons or in dragons? I was more of a dragon guy than a dungeon

guy, but, but yeah, you got to, you got to take what you get. Now, I know, I know, they have a stable for dungeon guys and a stable for dragon guys. And they let them out of their stables to draw pictures and then they make them go back and I. And this is why I never made it as a, I never made it as a D&D artist because I misunderstood the concept and I sent them so many pictures of dungeon-is-crabbs. And they just accepted none of them. Yeah. Stuart, I was wondering, did you know this about our guest?

Because I was trying to read your face, assuming that your eyes would bulge out of your head and you start drooling. If it was bulge out of my head and then pop out of the eyelids and dangle down my face. Well, so you're around. A steam whistle would blow and then your eyes would turn into dice. They would roll themselves. And then the words critical hit would appear in a neon sign over your head. And then you'd have to stuff those dice back into your eyes. hit would appear in a neon sign over your head. I'm going to need to stuff those dice back into your eyes. Yeah. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. But, you know, you can, you know, listeners that don't Alex throw on a sound effect. People know what just happened. Yeah, you know, I, I feel like when we, when, because Adam, you did a, you did a limited t-shirt for us, right? Yeah, that's right.

you did a you did a limited t-shirt for us, right? Yeah, that's right. And I feel like when L.A. suggested that you were up for doing a shirt for us, hopefully I'm not misrepresenting L.A. I feel like we I looked you up and I'm like, oh shit, you did all this art that I love. Because, you know, I'm not always the best person at actually researching who does all the art in the library of role playing game tomes outside of my. You assume they're you assume their photographs of the real beasts and monsters. That's a thing that I'm assuming that's what happened drawn from life from the photograph. Yeah, in a pickman's model, Types scenario, I can't that it's been reproduced, you know. So what before we get into this,

what I need to ask you, Adam, is, did you do any of the art that graces the pages of the sewers of weight? Wait, I got to, it's called the sewers of some doll, which is the, I'm think, I think I'm saying it right. Yeah. Seuers of some doll, the robling adventure that was the coast made to, I think it was the coast made to go along with the DVD of this movie. So you went through the coast of this point. Yeah, I overlapped. I did, I actually worked for TSR and then, you know, later for Wizards out to they acquired it. And no, I had nothing to do with the tie-in adventure

to sewers of some dollars. Sewers of some dollars. Okay, well, that's better. I wonder who did that actually. It's like, they must have commissioned some art for it. I mean, take this as constructive criticism, you would be a better guest if you had. But you're still gonna be a great guest.

Still gonna be a great guest. All right, actually, I think that leads me to the next point since you're not familiar with the book. I say instead of doing this dumb fucking podcast, we just play this fucking adventure. No. No. Now, it says you just need this booklet, some D6's and three friends. I got three friends.

Oh, it's really fun because you get to play through the events of the movie while a weird version of the events because there's a zombie zoo, which I don't remember being in the movie. Oh, man. That would have been so much better. And you get to play as as our four main characters who will learn about more and more detail later. Ridley, e-nails, L would and man. L would who are.

Correct. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. L would is never named in the movie. Is he? I'm wrong about this. Elwood is never named in the movie, is he? I don't believe so. The only reason I know his name is because a caption came up on screen when I, because I had the captions on because it was loud. It said Elwood with his dialogue and I was like, and I, so from that point on, I was like,

I wonder when they're going to name this character and I don't think they ever did. So this is the dwarf talking about the Elwood the dwarf. The battleaxe who, as we'll see, joins the the joins the party because they woke him up sleeping on the street And then he's just with them for no reason like I look at a little bit of the behind-the-scenes stuff and that the dwarf You know like is played by a man of Of average height who okay had to sort of hunch and just sort of What did you say? Are you telling me they'd use movie magic? No, but but not really movie magic. They just had him sort of, what? Did you, Dan, are you telling me that you use movie magic? No, but not really movie magic.

They just had them sort of crouch. Yes, he walked around. Oh, yeah. Every, every detail. That's the thing about magic, Dan, is it's always disappointing how they did it. It's the illusion and distraction. And that's how they do it.

That's how they get you. Of course. He didn't really make the Statue of Liberty disappear. Right, he just pointed the cameras away from the Statue of Liberty. Like you get that, right? Right. Right. What?

Cloverfield. Yeah, David Cloverfield. They have the magician who made the Statue of Liberty's head come off. It was all done with mirrors. It was all mirrors. Okay, so, uh, well, this movie came out in the year 2000 and what, is it two years later? I'm trying to remember it one year or two years later, this movie was produced by New Line Cinema, who a few years later produced another fantasy film, you may have heard of it.

It's called The Fellowship of the Ring. And I think you're going to see some similarities between both these movies dwarves, elves, and a couple of weird media specific, weird points, which actually kind of politics. That's true. That's in there. So do you guys want to get into this movie real quick? Let's do it. Yeah.

Okay. Let me put away the adventure that you guys don't want to play. Okay. No, I mean, I couldn't wait. It's a sewer adventure. So I assume we meet the Ninja Turtles at some point. So maybe we can play it another time. I don't know how you guys watched this movie, but we actually rented it from like two

songs last remaining video rental store. Oh, wow. The vulnerable, uh, cost of video. And it was, I mean, I can't blame cost of video. I imagine this is a DVD that was made 22 years ago because there was never another edition that was necessary. But the whole thing looked like a poorly compressed JPEG, the menu looked like a CD ROM game from 1993.

And if ever there was a movie that should be watched on a 12 inch television with a built in VCR, it was this one. It's, it's convenient that some of the special effects also look like they're from a CD where I'm game from 1993. Right. Yeah. Okay. So the movie opens, as I mentioned, New Line's in Milogo still gets me pumped. We get narration. Yeah, because you think you think that what Freddie is going to show up?

Freddie or a later Jason. So we get some narration. We learn that the empire of Ismir is kind of a mageocracy that's ruled by a council of mages plus an empress. And the young empress wants to balance the power to share it between the commoners and the mages. a little bit of backstory. Yeah. Well, and I want to say that these two characters that we've met, well, we've heard their names. Reparations, they're all about the same. They're all about the same thing. They're all about the same. They're all about the same. They're all about the same. They're all about the same. everybody's really excited because that's how you get pumped. Is he here a little bit of backstory? Yeah, well, and I want to say that these two characters that we've met, well, we've heard their names represent the, I think, the highest and the lowest of the acting in this. I'm usually pretty easy on actors and I don't really blame the actors in this because everyone in it, I think it's bad other than Jeremy Irons, who is always an electric

anyway. Richard O'Brien as well. Richard O'Brien is pretty great in it too. If you're not a melodramatic Englishman in this, then you're in trouble in this movie. Yes. No, they know what to do with this kind of material, where store birches, the princess, and an act drive enjoyed very much in other movies, but seems totally lost here. Like, like, reading off of cue cards or something for much of it.

It is, it is the flattest princess Empress performance in a science fiction fantasy epic. And that's, you know, someone who recently rewatched the prequels that like it's, it's flatter than the Amidala performance, but I I'm going to give her a benefit of the doubt that like the this was a first time director. She was working with who his his name is Courtney Solomon, not the first flop house movie we've done by him. He directed Getaway with Ethan Hawke, which we did years ago. And she apparently she's not. That's one of Ethan Hawke just drives a car around Eastern Europe, right? Yes, very much so. And she apparently did this right that. That's one where Ethan Hawk just drives a car around Eastern Europe, right? Yes, very much so.

And she apparently did this right after she shot American beauty, but before it was released. So and it sounds like she was just so emotionally drained from the American beauty performance that I don't think she necessarily had it in her to provide the necessary stuff. Yes. And since you've already brought him up, I just wanted to say that the story behind the making of this movie seems a lot more interesting than anything else because Courtney Solomon, who wrote and directed, bought the rights to Dungeons and Dragons when he was 19 and then spent like 10 years putting together funding. And originally, it was just going to

produce it. They like, we're going to get big name directors for it, but there are a lot of that they like we're gonna get big name directors for it, but there are a lot of different things that happened as alluded to before, Dungeons & Dragons, the game traded companies, the rights to that. And so eventually he wound up making a major motion picture for his very first film, which is probably why all of the acting

and this is uniformly pretty terrible because I imagined that first time director it was out to see. And especially a movie, a first-hand director on a movie with a lot of effects. They're shooting it in Eastern Europe. And they didn't have as much money as they thought they were supposed to have. Everyone knows you need to direct one small indie movie. Then you direct a major 100 to 200 million dollar, a big budget franchise. That's how you do it.

It will be allowed to direct the action parts of that. That'll be pre-visual. No, no, and they hire professionals to do that. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so Jeremy Irons is a wonder to behold. It's like every, every month from his face should get its own credit. Like they're all working separately and at high intensity and just at each eyebrow is doing different things, you know.

It's amazing. Yeah. And at this time, Dunston Dragons was obviously an established property, but I don't think it was, it's stock wasn't as high as it is, say, like now for instance. You mean that that Saturday morning cartoon hadn't rocketed it? Well, and then it had dipped again, Dan. This was years that that Saturday morning cartoon had a rocket in it. So that's it. But and then it had dipped again, Dan. This was years after the Saturday morning cartoon.

This was, this was a BNWC, which is before nerd world conquest. So 2000 nerds were still in the process of conquering the world, not like today when nerds do conquer the world and have become bullies and control all of popular culture entertainment. Yeah. It's a real shame. world and have become bullies and control all of popular culture entertainment. Yeah, it's a real shame. So we have an opening sequence where we are flying around the of what is it? Some some doll, some I think it's some doll, which is the capital city of Ismir. It's a really cool CGI cutscene. And then we fly around the city and then immediately plunge into a sewer.

Awesome. It does feel a little bit like the opening of like a horror movie logo, like a production company logo, but we'll get to that later. We are in a dungeon where Profion played again by the lovely Jeremy Irons and his, my Jeremy sign. Damodar played by the, the, the bald guy, like a, Yeah, damn it. Our first pain who was also in getaway with the blue lips. Yeah, he's got

the blue lips. I don't know if he's a, uh, a warlock, of course. Um, he, I gotta say, I really like his look. He looks like he's just trying to be Rob Halford. He's got this big metal armor and leather armor. He's bold. He's English. He's Rob Halford. And I can't not like that. So they're hanging out in a dungeon wall, profion shoots lighting bolts at a scepter.

And then he caresses that scepter and you know, like that scepter's got to be important. And then he lets out a really cool red dragon. And he tries to control it using the scepter. It works for a second and then it definitely does. And the door. Yeah. So he's so the the dragon gets a little bit out of control. So the only option, of course, drop that poor colus on a and kill the dragon, which

is right. Yeah. Now, I am assuming that a lot of the people that are watching the movie are already established fans of Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I am assuming that a lot of the people that are watching the movie are already established fans of Dungeons and Dragons. At that point, they're probably wondering, how did a door kill a dragon? Those things have so many fucking hit points. Yeah, the dragons in this movie are basically just dinosaurs.

They are not intelligent. They, you know, like a gold dragon dragon just to put my second pair of glasses on right now. A gold dragon is a supremely intelligent and a powerful magic user in its own right. And so my wife really appreciated me pausing the movie to tell her this time. Exactly. So, and then you ran to IMDB to put it in the goof section. Right? So he explains that he wants the scepter of Izmir, which is would allow him to control all the gold dragons. Unfortunately, that is in the possession of the Empress. Now, the Empress is played by Thorbrich. She, I think, as an attempt to kind of make her a little more involved in her performance

or to like wake her up from whatever stupor spells been cast on her. They put this weird headdress on that has these, like, little dangly balls. I think it's supposed to look like dragon heads. I can't tell. But it is very distracting. And it seems like, I don't know, it seems like an odd choice. It certainly does not look like the crown of a room. He's kind of a disco inspired look for much of the movie, I think.

Yes. Okay. So the Empress learns from this old wizard like Valdeer or something that if she can control or find the scepter, no, she already has a scepter of his mirror, but she learns that there is another thing, the rod of Savriil, which would allow you to control all the red dragons. So she's already got gold dragons in one hand, but what if she had the rod with all the red dragons? I have already reached my fill of fantasy gold. It's super awesome. However, unfortunately, this conversation is being spied on magically by profion and profion's like,

I'm going to go get that rod of savorille. Very cool. He's got his little, his own little salacious crumb, who's just like a little tittering dragon man that flies around and just listens and flies. It's an amp. Okay. And one of the few times when the movie actually uses something kind of correctly from the

monster manual. So it's an app. I mean, it's not it's an app. How about later when a beholder shows up and it just floats around, it doesn't do much of anything. That beholders basically just like a magical rockweiler, you know? Yeah. And if I drop the coast and then runs off after a stick.

I know enough about, you know, your classic Dungeons and Dragons creatures that I too was able to annoy my wife by saying, oh, that's a beholder. But then she's like, what does it do? And I, I like, well, the thing was like, I was defeated male leaves the truck. I assumed that it was kind of as as shown in this movie because my, my other biggest association with Boulder is when like a Boulder-esque creature shows up in big trouble, little Shana. And both times they see it. When Stuart plays the beholder. Yeah. That's a big deal. I think it's not welcome to the Magic Davern. That's too weird. I'm not gonna take it. Hello from the Magic Davern series.

Or the tattoo on my arm. Yeah, so I just just see what it's kind of. A guard dog. And then I looked it up and I'm like, oh, Boulder has all these magics in their different eyes. Exactly. Yeah, it's dope.

My wife actually walked into the room while I was watching this scene. And I'm like, look, Shar, there's a beholder. And she goes, did they get enough eyes on it? And then I immediately had to pause the movie so we could have sex. Like stop flirting with me babe. But you had sex while locking eyes with the paused image of the beholder on screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

I have whispering, this is for you. Yum yum. Okay, so meanwhile, Marina, who is a student of Valden Valdeer, the wizard, is- I think it's called Vildan. Vild whatever. She's trying to help him find the scroll

so they can find the rod of surreal and they find the scroll, but it's like, you know, it's in Chan and he can't figure it out. Okay, now let's cut to, let's get to the real story, guys, because we see it. We're introduced to a couple of plucky young adventurers who witnessed the results of that dragon dying because the dragon blood sent the whole river on fire. Dragon blood CGI dragon blood sets the whole river on fire. So our two, our two would-be rogues Ridley and snails decide to use that distraction to break into the magic school. Now let's talk about these two gentlemen. Now Ridley and snails cops. Yeah. Ridley

is played by an actor. uh, and act real. Yeah, I mostly know him for the guy. He took over his Andy and Charles play three and I know as he was, he was, he was Jimmy Olson in the new adventures of Lozinclark. Okay. Well, uh, here in this movie, I texted both of you to say I hate this lead because he must have put all of his points in stealth and none for charisma because of the externally. And this guy, I just felt like everything, he seems to be trying to do like, you know, Rogish pattern throughout the movie. And he always just comes off as a creep to me. And meanwhile, snails is played by Marlon Wayne's in a performance that even at the time when

I saw this one video seemed regressive to me. Like, I do not blame him for taking the part, but it is written as a caricature of like, I don't know, is it like from an earlier era of a scared dumb black dude and it was kind of unpleasant? Well, I wonder if that's one of those things where, if the part was written as a scared young black, a scared dumb black, I always just a scared dumb guy and by casting Marlon Wayans in the role,

they're playing it to bad ser... It becomes a bad ser time. What he, from what I was reading, he did a lot of ad-libbing and apparently the rule was, he got to ad-lib three lines for every three lines of the script that he said as written. So it's hard to know where the blame falls but he does he does come off as a stereotype character character. From what I read he was simultaneously shooting Requiem for a dream during this. Which is terrific. Yeah which is so confusing. I have not seen that movie. I have to admit, but I have

under the impression it is a good, pressed, pressed, these sort of movie. And, and he just, yeah, Marlon Wayne just kind of squeals his way through every scene that he's in like five seagulls wearing a human suit. Yeah, well, I mean, of those two movies, one is a harrowing experience, making you question why you're spending your time watching it. And the other is, is it a red bro dream? Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Okay. Holy grail. Holy grail. So they are breaking into the wizard of the magic school when they are. Yep, they are confronted by Marina who uses some magic to bind them up. And then she's going to show them off to a Valdan only to find out that Damodar and his crimson brigade have already arrived. And they just like, you know, one of these names. Like my brain started shutting there. Well, but would you rather their names were like, Joe Stephanie, like stuff like that?

It wouldn't work. No, I understand. No, I understand why it tells. I just, I don't know. Oh, no, Richard and his crimson brigade are here. I just have a hard time. Like my memory rejects what's what any of it means. But yeah, you have to take this over to the wizard Gary, only he can help you.

I would know who Gary was. I know that's Gary. So so damard our kills, Vildan. Marina grabs the scroll and uses some magic dust to make a portal to escape. And in the process she drags along our two would be thieves. Damodar and his crimson brigade quickly follow and we have a brief chase through the streets of some some doll and it leads them in down an alleyway where in a big pile of trash, they bump into Elwood the dwarf.

And now we have an adventuring party, guys. And he just kind of, I don't know, he seems to just join them because he doesn't have much else to do. Yes. Elwood is the, Elwood is the character where I felt watching this movie. I felt a lot like when we watched Super Mario Bros. where it was like the movie just is like okay, and go as long as we keep moving fast Nobody's gonna ask us any questions, and we don't have to answer them

And when Elwood joins it was like the movie was like you knew they were gonna get some more people like so he just comes along with them Like he doesn't need a reason he doesn't need a character You know it's so because they wake him up he fights Damodar for a second then runs away with them and the next scene He's just creeping around town with them in a cloak, and it's like, well, why did he stick with them? I don't know, like, if you're ever in a situation where you are just walking around on the street and you get in an argument with somebody and then a passerby just happens to be there. He doesn't then become part of your family that just goes with you to whatever you're doing next. Like, I found it very...

Yeah, really fun. You have to complete some kind of subquests or something. Yeah, exactly. Get them to join your party. And then you can start leveling them up. And then if you're lucky, you can do a romance plot with them. That's kind of what I was. And what do you say then?

No, just that this like, in a weird way, it feels like the most realistic to do. Just a dragon's part to me though, where like, you know, it seems like so many campaigns start with just people being like, we're all in a tavern and like, we're kind of like, yeah know, it seems like so many campaigns start with just people being like, uh, we're all in a tavern and like, we're kind of like, yeah, we're adventurers. So we'll join this thing, you know, and think about it. I guess so, but it's like, let's take a good movie. It's called Star Wars. I don't know if you guys have seen it.

It's called Star Wars Episode four, a new hope. Yep, no, I saw. So this, this, this young farmer dressed as a karate guy and this, and this old wizard who lives in the desert, they go to a bar and they're like, we gotta get off the planet. That's all I know. Okay, well, let me just say the same.

Anyway, they go and they talk to a space bear and a pirate neveste and they're like, hey, can you join us to get off the planet? Help us get off the planet. And he goes, can you pay me for it? Yeah. And he goes, we gotta rescue a princess. We'll pay you if you do it.

Okay, as if in that movie, they had gotten into a fight. Han Solo saw the flight, the fight and said, Hey, and then the next scene, they're on Han Solo's spaceship. And he's like, let's go boys. And it's like, wait, when did you meet each other? When did you agree to be part of this adventure? You know, I do, I do feel like, yeah, like the whole middle section of this movie is when I really kind of started to lose interest. I think you've put your finger on a big part of why, which it wears like at the beginning, you know, like the lead characters are framed for murder. And I feel like they have a personal stake in things beyond just kind of generalize.

Even love a little bit of world-filled war, which is like a great, don't get me wrong, let's stop this war as a great motivation, but maybe not for these particular characters who seem to be rogues who just like, you know, live with the models. And to hate mages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really as an inborn hatred of mages because they rule and he drools. Yes, exactly. So in the middle, I'm like, why do I, why do these characters care about anything they're

doing? But I do think this movie really was trying to be Star Wars though, right? Oh, for sure. I mean, they have a cantina scene. Yeah. They have a cantina scene. They have an emperor-type character who shoots lightning out of his fingers and choose the scenery of every scene that he's in. They have a Darth Vader black armored character. They, I feel like Ridley is basically just Luke and Hans smushed together and snails is basically C3PO and marina is a like a hot tea princess lea type except unfortunately nowhere near as competent as princess lea was at any point. I am just stressed like nine times out of 10, they, they, they try and

smush the Luke Skywalker and the Han Solo character together. And it almost always never works. Like the part of what makes those characters fun is that they are different. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just here. I am just complaining about stuff. Let's get back to judging the dragons on the fly. So they, they, they enlist the aid of an arrestable dwarf and escaped through the sewers. I mean, we assume they enlist his aid. They have never talked about it. It's just, there's no between scenes that they draft him in, you know, his name is never spoken in this movie.

There's almost, they almost never address him directly. I'm not sure they know he's with them for a lot of the time. And one point they ask, are you going to come with us? And he says, I guess I have no choice. But then he asks for payment, which is a terrible negotiating tactic. Yeah. But no, you always want to start from a position of weakness. When I, when I write, when I go to negotiations, I go, let me just put one thing on the table. I have no leverage and I need you much more

than you need me. So let's start the bidding. Just to let you know, I would do anything to write for the movies or TV. I do not even need payment. How much do you want to pay me? Okay, so our adventuring party then is relaxing at a tavern. As you guys mentioned, they have now been framed for murder, the murder of Vildan and Ridley and Marina start to argue and they're reading the scroll and then somehow they read it correctly and then they both get sucked into the scroll somehow somehow. A marine instrument how her her boss build in couldn't get this world work and Ridley is

like, well, when my dad used to fix wagons, he'd put his hand here and his hand here and it works. So this scroll, which is keeping the most powerful rod in the universe, secure, it somehow works the same one of the most powerful. It works under the same mechanics as a wagon, which is what you just a funny thing that like well also like how do you figure out like what part of a wagon corresponds to a scroll like a very good question. I think it's better to stand here and hand here. Okay counterpoint for madam very obvious. Okay, no. At this point, now we're left with snails and Lwood just hanging out.

You're probably like, okay, I wonder if they have a lot of cool stuff to talk about. They don't particularly have cool stuff to talk about. And Elf tracker shows up who's looking for them. Snails immediately is love struck. He will do anything he can to sleep with this elf. Lwood, however, is explaining, no, no, no, he is not sexually attracted to an elf. It's hilarious. So shortly after the elf shows up, Damodar and the Crimson Brigade show up and a brawl

starts. Perfect time for Shales and Elwood to sneak the fuck out. What? I had a question for you. So so before this canteen, I couldn't mind it is when profion implants implants some kind of a monster into Damodore's Damodar's head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, how about we fucked up? He fucked up one too many times and he now gets a monster stuck in his head. And what was that monster? Is that a real thing from the game? I know this because thanks to the fact that I did rent the DVD, I listened to the director's commentary.

Oh wow. Well, you really went above and beyond. This is the result. Well, I'm as okay. So here's the hosting this show. I watched this movie three times. One time, and then my wife and I thought, maybe we should watch it again.

Maybe you'll think of something else interesting to say. So I watched it the second time. And then I was like, feels like you just wanted to watch it again. I should have listened to the director's commentary. So today we actually put it on for about an hour with the director's commentary. Wow. That's what you've turned me into.

But well, that's what I turned myself into. This was my idea. But anyway, in the director's commentary, they refer to this thing as a mind flair, which obviously is bullshit. But a mind flair in the game being a humanoid with basically us cephalopod head that can use his tentacles to like suck your brains out. But they've referred to this as their version of a mind flair. So it has no real real.

I love that. That's super lame. Elephants are cool. You'd like them. Elliot because they're kind of like purple cthulose and they love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. or I love that. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love the name. I love things are that have Sonic in them that I can replace with Sionic? Boom's dinner, bro.

What? Yep, boom. That's what Gile says when he throws his attack at you. Yes, it's a Sionic boom. Which actually wouldn't make sense because it doesn't matter. Okay, so it wouldn't make sense that he's actually a powerful Sionic

because that would allow him to do such powerful attacks, attacks that a normal human could never do. I love that you told yourself it doesn't matter. And you can, good stop. So snails and L would sneak off into the woods. They open up that scroll and then Marina and Ridley pop off it. Where do they kind of explain where they were? They basically just hard to hold time. My guess is that this is a show of either the budget

for the movie or something in the editing that I have to assume there was supposed to be some kind of at least seen in that map world or adventure that they have and it just doesn't happen. And they learn some kind of information from it, right? But we never see any of it. And that's my guess is that either something was scripted and they couldn't afford to do it,

or they did it and it just worked so poorly or the movie was too long and they just cut it out. That's my guess. And they said we can cut out this adventure that explains what was going on in the map, or we can cut the conversation about what kind of mythical creatures, snails and

L would each prefer to have sex with. We can't cut that. That's gold. That's what people want from doing. It's in both their contracts. Yeah. So we, they learn that in order to get the rod, they first need to get the eye of the dragon, which is a giant ruby, and they have to go to Antis where it is held by Grandmaster Zilas, the leader of the local thieves guild. So that's great. They go to Antis, they go to a market, Snails is stealing everything that isn't nailed down or snailed down. I can't elaborate.

He like takes a candle, and a dead cat. And he's not even sneaky about it. I mean, at that point, he's not thieving for economic reasons. It's just a compulsion at that point. That's a compulsion. Good thieves because earlier when they're like plundering the the mage place, like they pick up just a a wooden cage with a mouse in it. It's one of the things they're stealing. That they go to they go to rob the magic school and they don't steal everything that snails picks up really goes, no, no, not that. And it's like, so what are you going to take? Like, what do you, I don't,

every time these thieves go into a new room, they basically treat it like it's a fucking escape room where they like pick everything up, see if there's a fucking combination written on the bottom. While I'm in the background trying to drink from a flask, they needed to lean into the D&D of it and have these two be different classes. Like, why are they both thieves? There could be the ridley competent thief character and then like a comic relief terrible bard or something. Like Marlon Wayne is could have been hiding,

trying to compose songs, heroic songs about what they were doing or anything else because he's obviously a terrible thief from the moment that he shows up. I mean, I hadn't thought about it before, but snails and scales are very similar. Similar. Similar. He could have been a dragonborn bard who is perhaps always singing about how he's blue, WDW, but you know, you want to know what that means.

Become a Max Fun member and I think are actually, those are in the adventure zone feed. So if you want to listen to a good podcast that will be occasionally broken up by us doing a podcast, go over and check out the adventures. I will say listeners of those episodes where we did the adventure zone stuff will know that I was singing that I'm blue song a lot. It is now infected. The other members of my family and my older son will, Sammy will just yell at me. I'm blue song a lot. It is now infected. The other members of my family and my older son, Sammy will just yell at me, I'm blue. And I have to respond with WD, WD, WD, WD,

and then they'll join in. And my wife hates it. And we took some time a couple weeks ago, and I was like, let's watch the video for that song. He's like, that's a real song. I was like, yeah, that's a real song. Let me show you and watch the video for it. And I forgot how ludicrously stupid it is.

And now the verses of the song are like, here's a story about who guy who's blue. And all his clothes are blue, two in his houses, also blue. And my son was like, did you write this song? Yeah. I was hoping that the punchline would be like, so we watched a song and say, I mean, the video and say, I was like, I don't like this song.

No, no, he still loves it say, I mean, the video and say, I was like, I don't like this song anymore. Oh no, he still loves it. Love the video, love the song. But it was very similar to the song as I make up that are dumb, so anyway. So in the market, they trail a purple guy with an eye in the middle of his head. Adam, what race is this guy? I'm pretty sure they just made this up. I wonder if they just had a, like, literal way. Personal leaders are made up. Okay, well, fair. But it was not brought up in the director's commentary.

I sort of came to it to think that maybe they just had a creature design sitting on the shelf already and slapped it on there. Very possible. It is very jarring too because there's not that many non-human characters in the movie. And I can't think of any others that are as non-human as that guy. Yeah, everyone's in a while. I'm like, go on. No, no, what are you gonna say? Everyone's in a while. Everyone's in a while.

Everyone's in a while. Like the tavern or in that market. That's right. You'll see like an orc walking around that kind of looks like a turtle. I'm kind of into it because it is. It feels like it's, it feels like it's a puppet almost, like the whole thing's a puppet. I thought that those were capas. I thought they went to Japan, got a capa, cast him in the background role. But among the, you're right, in the backgrounds every now and then you'll see like a monster person. But this is the only one who's like a speaking part character

who's wearing like a heavy latex mask and it felt very, I was like, either do it or don't do it. Don't have one dude be the one with an alien face. Like have a bunch of them, you know. We'll say he's probably a tiefling. Okay. So they eventually get taken before the leader of the thieves guild, Grandmaster Zylas, who was played large. Yeah. Well, that's rich. Well, that's rich little Brian writer of Rocky Har show.

He played riffraff in Rocky, and like he, I love his performance though. He's playing it. He's a big, decadent, like, you know, slying, lish man, you know, slyinglishman, you know, I'm really in the movie. Yeah, you want more of this guy. Apparently, like this is, you know, behind the scenes, I read that this is like a kind of a goof on a role that he played on television.

And like there was like some sort of, I was thinking, yeah, I think it was called the crystal maze. Yeah, that's how it's right. So it's a reference to something that like I can't imagine. I can't imagine that many people saw this and were like, oh, that's Richard O'Brien, let alone realize what it was a joke on. But it's in itself. It's fun. Similar. Another parallel to fellowship of the ring. It's like when a bore a mere played by Sean Bean picks up the shards of Narsil and he cuts his thumb on the blade and he says still sharp, which is both a reference to him playing, obviously Richard sharp from the sharp rifles. And also because he was in a series of razor commercials where he would nick himself and say, still sharp. Oh, that is such a like loony tunes level of cultural reference where it's like it expires

almost instantly. And 70 years from now people will be watching, Lord of the Rings would be like, why'd they make a point of doing that? And then someone will look it up on a website. The same way that the same way that I would look up on Looney Tunes, I would look up like, why do they say this in Looney Tunes? Oh, cartoons. Oh, that's a reference to a radio show from 1942. Yeah. You know, I guess I'm saying is I like it.

But okay. So great. But yeah, your brand's greatness. I like it all time. Yeah. He's great. He brings the time, yeah. He's great. He brings a lot of energy. He's fun. And he explains that, of course, if they want the eye, the only way is they have to go

to through this deadly maze that no one has ever survived. And then, and of course, so yeah, we're at a dungeon. So of course, the first thing this movie does, which there's multiple dungeons in this movie, and every single time the same thing happens, Ridley goes in by himself, which the first rule in D&D is you don't split the party. That's one thing you learn. Like what's the point of having a group of characters

with a bunch of different skills that help complimentary skills? You want them all together, but instead, no, let's just have Ridley the boringest, dude, do you have to be the whole of the turbine itself? I think you're right. That's the big one of the things that I'm always amazed by when we watch video game movies is how they try or don't try to include the mechanics of the game into the movie.

Like with Mortal Kombat, where it was like, we're going to come up with a reason why it's a bunch of one-on-one fights in different levels, like different locations. But you're in this one, it feels like they were running away from the game mechanics rather than embracing it. And it is weaker as a result. It like really is the only one who really does much of anything throughout. Like Marina does occasionally.

But it'd be more fun to see a group of them, like you're saying, using their different skills and playing off each other in that way. And instead, they're falling back instead on the like, there's a single hero. It's gotta be the white guy. He just is naturally the leader and naturally the one heroic one. And so he's the one who's going to end by the end of the movie.

He's like, you know, he's the hero of the empire, spoiler alert. And it's, but you're like, I don't really know what he, what was it about him that made him do this? Because he didn't see me. He got a flip. One time. Okay. that made him do this because he didn't see. He did. He did. He did. He did.

He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did.

He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did.

He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He It's really something because once he once he figured I had a time one jump in the swinging thing He was basically fine and it was and it went from dangerous to totally doable and I just was very funny Watching him still jump over each single one and I'm like even American Ninja warrior knows when to fucking fast forward Like all they do is cut away But instead we got to watch him go through what is no longer a danger to him anymore

Well, well Richard or Brian looks on going well what is no longer a danger to him anymore. Well, Richard O'Brien looks on going, mmm, whew. Oh, mm, mm. There was a room where he had to only step on the red painted tiles. And like the only wrinkle at any point was at one point like one of the red tiles like flips over to yellow.

But I was watching it like what is, so I guess he made this murder like maze but also made it, you know, gentlemanly, it follows the rules, like what you figure out that you can step on the red ones. It's fine. Like it was, it was like, why would you, like, why would you design traps where there's a key to it? It's very easy to figure out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the reason why is because he wants to entertain his friends. He's a guy with a lot of friends. He wants to show off his cool trap maze. I think it's in the eye of Ridley's sword as well. And that sword is way too nice. Ridley's whole deal just looks way too good. I feel like we're supposed to, we're supposed to

understand he's very poor. The narration at the beginning of the movie says that people who aren't mages are essentially slaves and really has a really nice looking sword, which is a really bad decision since he's given what we're supposed to understand is the nice sword later. Like, they really, and it looks the same. Yeah, they should have highlighted how crabby was and or had it like break while he's doing these stupid traps. Yeah, or cool traps, devious traps. It would have been funny if he's Richard brands like he's never, no one's ever survived

this maze. And while he's going through it, he's just besting obstacle to absolute and ritual brands like, did we forget to drug him before the end of the maze? And he just looks over in season uneaten cupcake on a tray, goes, oh, damn. Yeah. So of course, Ridley retrieves the eye and Zylas is like, actually, I'm going to break our deal, which is the first of many deals that are broken in this movie until the very end when Profion actually upholds a deal, which I was shocked by. So Zylas, break, decide to break the deal just then the, the Crimson Brigade

barge in led by who? Damodar. That's right. Damodar. Uh, of course, a brawl breaks out. Damodar manages to capture the scroll and Marina and get out of there. So our heroes are down one scroll and down one wizard friend. So they're on the run. They bump into Norda, the elf tracker from before. They all decided to join forces. Marina tries to convince Marina in a dungeon, a Damodar's dungeon, TM, tries to convince David. Danars dungeon is also is was also his family restaurant. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, Dine in or Dine out. Um, okay. I feel like kids eat their weight on Saturdays at Damardars dungeon. Uh, see, I feel like Damardars dungeon would be one of the games in the list and war games. Like, oh, what I want to play. I thought I'm a nuclear war. Damardars Dungeon.

And, and the computer goes, uh, let's not play that one. It's not that good. Okay, Joshua, whatever you say. So we get a little bit of body horror here because Marina tries to convince Damardars to let her, let her go. And for a second, you think she might actually convince him and then these weird worm things shoot out of his ears and attach to her temples. And I'm like, I wouldn't even put somebody else's earbuds in.

I wouldn't want that dude, put those things on my forehead. Well, she does really have much of a choice in the matter. I have to say, okay. Yeah, I guess that's one way to reap the scene. It's not like he goes, you can tell me, or you can use my weird, my mind-flair ear tentacles and she goes, I want to do it that way. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to do it that way. I don't want to throw a sway. I don't try anything once. I mean, when am I going to get the opportunity to do it again, like that's an experience. Obviously, if you're in her position, you say, I'm just going to tell you, but can you tell everyone else you had to use the tentacles? Yeah, that's good point. I want to see your

friend to use the tentacles. It's fine. It's cool. I'll back you up. Yeah, that's probably what happened in real life, you know, but the movie had to print the legend. Oh, so you're saying since this is Dungeons and Dragons based on the autobiography of Marina, you're saying she was talking to a ghost writer. She said, Oh, no, no, you totally use the tentacles. I would never give up Ridley. Never, never. Yeah. So the tentacles actually allow him to read her memories. Any figures out exactly what's going on. The good guys decide they're going to try and infiltrate this camp. This like a Damard ours dungeon, as we mentioned, it's in an old fortress.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate Gargierre. The bargear, Damodars dungeon, a full arcade. Yeah. The the the Crimson Gargierre. All the all the football games were on the big TV where they have the three color projector. Uh-huh. And the Damodars dungeon. Yeah, and if you get enough tickets, you can get the eye of the dragon, Ruby, or you're running tickets. You need a lot of tickets. Yeah, you're going there every weekend.

Yeah, they serve the pizza on on tin plates. That look like a little shit. Yeah. Yeah. Look, that, yeah. Yes, that Damidore's done. Jen, each table gets complimentary popcorn baskets. Uh, Damidore, are they bottomlessodar's dungeon, each table gets complimentary popcorn baskets. Damodar, are they bottomless popcorn baskets? Well, the baskets have bottoms, where the popcorn would spill. But yes, you do get free unlimited refills. Damodar's got the sense of humor.

Yeah, Damodar's like the host guy. Does he wait all the tables? It's his place and he likes to drop in and like kind of mingle with the crowd and play the kids now. That makes sense. Like COVID's so hard right now. It's so hard to find staff. It in and like kind of mingle with the crowd and play the mix and like COVID so hard right now. It's so hard to find staff. I make sense that Damodar. Yeah, well, the weird thing is that he wants, if you like, that's Damodar.

He owns the place, but at the front, instead of a celebrity picture, he has his headshot sign that it says, I love my restaurant, Damodar. And it's like, it's not that impressive to get your own picture on there. Yeah, everyone's like, he doesn't even have a picture of profion and like, because profion didn't give him one. Profion's never been no. And that's the damn it. I will tell you that he didn't ask, but you know he asked and profion of course he was

here. Um, okay. So, uh, the Crimson Brigade here are backed up by a few beholders who kind of are like floating watchdogs. And they never, but they never fight the heroes, which I kept waiting for it. They never fight the heroes. So snails and Ridley sneak in, and L would like, fuck yeah, let's get in there. And Nord is like, nope. For whatever reason, this is their quest by themselves. Again, very strange choice.

Okay, thanks for the dungeons. Snails gets caught in a rug quicksane trap and is attacked by Damodar. I thought this was cool. This was a cool, radical effect. And that, that, that, that, that, that they made was actually full of oatmeal. Yeah, delicious. Well, they used oatmeal and then they, they flocked to the top of it and then I guess like airbrushed it. Now, now Adam, if you if you expected that my eyes would pop out of my

head and my my steam would shoot out in my ears at that revelation, you would be correct because while this this effect I agree it looks cool at the beginning when they step into a thing that looks like a rug. Yeah. And you can tell that Marlon Wayne's is floating in a bunch of oatmeal. Well, what happened? Dan was eating a bowl of oatmeal while watching the scene and he kept looking down and looking at a spoon and he's like, son of a bitch. Dan, Dan pushed away, he goes, what if there's a tiny Marlon Wands in there?

He pushes away. I can't. Pushes it. After Andrew'sands in there? I can't. Wishes it. After his work and right for a dream, I can't. But Wands brothers were already a limited resource as it is. I can't endanger it further. There's a new generation, Alan. That's true. Marlon does, he does get to spend a lot of time wandering around picking up props

and riffing on them. And it's great. It is. It goes on for a while. It goes on forever. And this is the scene, too, where when Damodar comes in, he delivers my favorite line. I had to write it down just like you thieves always taking things that don't belong to you.

Yep. That's what a thing. Yeah, web has to find you. No, no, shit. Well, there are a lot of very dumb lines in this. I, I'm, you're making me recall earlier when they're going through the maze and people are like betting on them and like marinas like I can't believe they're betting like they're betting on how long you stay alive. And he goes, no, my dear, they're betting on how long he's going to live and he goes know

my dear, they're betting on how long it will take him to die. And I'm like, those are the same thing in this scenario. It's real glass half full glass of empty type type situation. Yeah. There's a certain pessimism that infuses the thieves guild of Antios. Okay. So meanwhile, Ridley finds Marina and they fight their way through some guards. Ridley does a lot of spinning around swinging that beautiful sword we mentioned before. Marina hits dudes with

a flaming brand and then he gets in a fight with one bigger guard than normal. Snails manages to briefly escape from Damodar. He goes running outside, perfect place for a little wrestling match where they basically Damodar doesn't really have a weapon for a while. He just kind of like bats him aside with his, his, like, his like styrofoam armor. Ridley and Marina show up just in time for Damodar to best snails and they try and do what they try and do in exchange. Snails throws them the scroll and gets stabbed in the back and then thrown off the top of the tower. So snails xed out. He's dead. Unless they got a new spell. Ridley briefly fights Damodar. It was a real snail fail when he tried to

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah That's what the DVD chapter title was Oh, that was that's a job that I wish it there was this brief Shining moment when it was someone's job to name the chapters of movies for the DVDs And I was wondered who did that was it just somebody who was working on the box? Did they go to the director or the screenwriter and say, look, I know it's weird for you to think of every scene and this is having its own title. But can you do that right now? And now it doesn't exist anymore because people don't use, they don't make, you know,

they don't make TV's at the same volume that they once did, you know. Okay. So Damard R as best did, Damard R manages to get, he stabs Ridley. One more question, guys. Why do you think they, why do you think they started titling the chapters when they could have just had numbers? Because no one expects the parts of a movie to have titles like, I mean, it gives you some indicate, it gives you some indication where you left off. You know, you can skip to the thing you like, you know, like, you can skip to the part you want. You can skip to the part where Dalton explains, you know, the story. That's the chapter title. It's also so that like, like when you're, when you're, when you're flipping through the menu with your friends and you see a scene that you remember, you're like, oh, that's what they named it. They named it snail whale. They did.

It's like they, but it's like they thought they were like, okay, from now on, movies are like songs. We're not watching the whole thing all the way through. We're just going to our favorite scenes and we make and make a playlist of scenes from different movies. Yeah. Let me just put my DVD player on shovel and see what scenes pop up. Well, yeah, kids, Ellie, it isn't that the way your kids watch movies anyway.

Yeah, my kid only just watches the same scene over and over again That's there's a lot of watching I do that to know again skipping between Just you watch is the first 13 minutes of the same scenes over and over again never gets the ending though Yeah, well to be honest Stewart watches the first like six minutes and he knows that minutes seven through 30 are pretty much the same thing in different positions. And then he's right. He gets the like it's skip button. So he just, yeah, I do really get to the last like 45 seconds.

Yeah. Mainly because I like the funny faces. And that movie we're talking about is, of course, breakfast at Tiffany's. Now let's move on. So, um, um, um, um, damn it, our super excited ease managed to save the day. Uh, but before you can kill Ridley, he gets blasted by some wizard powder from Marina. So he just opens a portal. Any bounces, he's super excited. Um, okay, Marina and Ridley escape using another batch of portal dust. Uh, we get a fun zoom in on snail's dead body,

lying in ruins at the bottom of the cliff. For a second, I thought he was going to get up, but no, he's, he's dead. It's really just a hammer that home. Maybe that was the zombie zoo part that got down with that, that would make sense because the snail is an animal. Okay. You would see a snail in a zoo, depending on the zoo. I mean, go to the Los Angeles zoo. I bet you there's at least one snail in the layer. That's the living living amphibians in vertebrates and reptiles house. Yeah.

Come on down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, the Empress is attempting to go. Let's let's stop and go there right now. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, meanwhile the Empress is attempting to, you know, guys, let's stop and go there right now. Let's do it. I think it's a good idea. Meanwhile, the Empress is attempting to end the class divisions between commoners and mages by appealing to the council of mages. Seems like a bad idea, but that's Congress for you. Profion, however,

just keeps showing up and pointing out and calling her an evil tyrant, basically being a jerk, a lot of bad faith arguments. Uh, and she storms off. And so we are left with the feeling that there is definitely going to be a civil war between the mages and people that are loyal to the Empress. Luckily, the Empress has gold dragons, which are unstoppable, super powerful, super smart wizard dragons, right Adam? Yeah. In my estimation, yeah. Okay. so it's going to be an easy fight. We'll see what happens.

I'm maybe it's a show of how bad the class divisions are in the in the world is that they keep time at a civil war and it's really just a war between the like 30 mages and the emperor center dragons and nobody else seems to be involved except I assume they're getting crushed by dragon bodies as they fall from the sky and and. Question in the form. Yeah, then they swarm the dragon body to get the delicious dragon meat. Oh, okay. You know what? So D&D, can you? What happens in D&D if you eat a dragon? You become a dragon. Yeah. Really? Is that what happens? I don't know. I'm just making stuff up now. Okay.

No, Ellie would have believed it. I mean, I had a new retirement plan briefly. And then if you had a whole dragon, you probably die. You would never eat a whole dragon, Dan. That's what you asked me. If you eat a dragon, well, I don't know. Here, am I allowed to freeze it and eat it over time? Like a wedding cake. I don't think you're going to get it. It's hard to get because you can eat that for years. I mean, if it's blood, sex, things are fire and enough. I'm guessing it's hard to get it down to freezing temperature.

Yeah. Well, that's why you would do a kosher style. You drain all the blood first. You got to wipe your rabies there. You make your rabies there. The way? Once you got a white dragon to breathe, it's frost breath on it. Mm hmm.

Also, get a white dragon. Or just eat a white dragon. I mean, refinture ratio. Yeah, let's cut out the middle man. Let's do that. That's a very good thing. Yeah. Oh, okay, yeah, that's better. You'd probably need to cure it in some way. Is it sick? Preserve it back then? Yeah. Well, you need a salt, you need a salt dragon to breathe

it. Salt breath. Oh, yeah, you need a dry brine or a wet brine dragon to breathe it. It's breath. It's Brian breath. All over it. A cage of spice dragon just to oh, it's a breath. It's Brian breath all over it. A K-j-spice dragon just to get all that stuff. Oh, that's a spade or like a Chipotle dragon. Yeah, yeah, sure. Here on T, that'll be delicious. So, you get a Paul Prudome dragon. Now, they, of course, they, they go around in those little carts, but Paul Prudome dragon is the good version of the, of the spicy dragon. Yeah. Whereas Dr. John would be the evil version. Don't really get to see. Don't get a Dom Deleauy's dragon by mistake.

They're very easy to get very similar. That's that's then a burrennel's dragon is just going to slap it a lot of times. You don't want to see that. That's not fun. Now, I have a question guys that's, I have a question that's kind of related to this because you mentioned Dr. John. Do you think Captain Hook and Dr. Hook still talk because their brothers or are they estranged? Uh, yeah, I mean, they, I Captain Hook and Dr. Hook still talk because their brothers, or are they estranged? Uh, yeah, I mean, they, I'm sure they talk. I'm, I bet they're, yeah, I mean, I bet there's quite a bit of rivalry because they both insist on being called by their title, as opposed to their first names.

Yeah, that's fair. Now, the blues travels on the hook, which hook is that about Captain Hooker, Dr. Hook? The one that brings you back. So what is that? So Captain Hook, because he has a boat. Okay. That's true. He does have a boat. Okay. So they take Ridley to the elves. He's been morally wounded or so you think because the elves are going to heal him with magic. They don't use magic.

No, no, no, we get a lecture on how dragons, magic, life, all that shit's connected. It's, it binds us. It's the force, et cetera, et cetera. And did you catch who was playing that elf, giving that very pretentious, condescending sermon about magic? Oh, is this? Yeah, I caught it. But what was his name? What's his fate? That's right. That's Tom Baker, the famous, bescarved doctor from Dr. Who, Tom Baker, as the famous, the scarved doctor from Dr. Who, Tom Baker, as a really smug elf, just a smuggled elf with his little elf ears being, we don't use spells because we're so in tune with magic, everybody is except humans who losers anyway. Goodbye now. It's like, I feel like smug is like part of the, the like racial traits of elves, right? I mean, I didn't say it. I don't want to get canceled.

I'm comfortable with that. that elves can cancel me. Okay. So here's another question, Stuart. The character smog in the Hobbit, the dragon. What if he was called smug? And instead of like breathing fire, he was just kind of like a dick. You know, he just fully full of himself, you know? Benedict Cumberbatch, surprisingly, would be also very good at that.

Yeah. Yeah, you're ready to do that. The fact that the way that Stuart's face perked up as soon as you introduced a question about smog. And you know, to his credit, as soon as it was clear, there was not a genuine question about smog. He didn't really, his face didn't fall. He still got to talk about smog. Yeah. Yeah. He was happy. No, I don't have a real question about smog. He's got all those jewels all over his tummy. And that's why that archer has to find the one spot where he doesn't have one.

Did he do that on purpose? Or is it just because he's always lying on top of those jewels? He's got a big bezel. He's got like a really big bezel. Oh, okay, that is. He goes, you know how it is, you start with a little bit and you just can't stop. I mean, he started with a damn jacket

and then he looked at that like that's nice. And maybe I'm just gonna go ahead and do that on my stop. I mean, he started with a damn jacket and then he looked at that, like, that's nice. And maybe I'm just gonna go ahead and do that on my tummy. Do my... Yeah, I can't, I'd be like that all the time. Yeah, well, that's worth it. Yeah, that's worth it. I'm like, the first couple you get on Etsy, you know, it seems normal and then after a while

you're just, you got jewels all over you, it makes you. Yeah, I get my, well, just digesle myself. That's when a dragon puts gems all of themselves, yeah. Yeah, I get my as well just did jazzle myself. That's going to drag and put it, it's jams all of themselves. Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, yeah. Okay. So, uh, Ridley obviously super bombed his boy snails is dead. So Marina is like, I'm going to election you a little bit, then we'll make out which they do. Uh, did anyone else think that the elf place, it was basically just indoor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was was like it just looks like they took a picture of a background from turn of the Jedi, and that's where they're hanging out at night when they talk.

Later on they like wander out of the Elf place, and we see two like Elf guards that have super weird like half masks made out of foam. They look so frightening. They look great at the Elf jackets. Very weird. Yeah, it was very cool. I'm like, who's going to play for them when they're older? Okay. The same people they live for hundreds of years.

Oh, right. Just like in the yellow jackets. Okay. What if, wait, okay, guys, hold on. These are two yellow jackets. Here my pitch. Yeah, there's a jump. It turns out whatever happened to them in the forest, they're immortal now. So we do jump 300 years in the future. And it's there now, they still haven't told anyone their secrets, but they're on the

run even more because now people want the secret of eternal life from them. So that's my pitch. Yeah, it's like a tough ever lasting type thing. Exactly, exactly. Tuck every lasting. Yeah, it's like a Tucker everlasting type thing. Exactly, exactly. Tucker everlasting. And so, but meets, you know, yellow jackets, which in a, yeah, the pitch is great. I mean, you're doing a good job. Yeah. Okay.

That sounds great. Anyway, I don't do, I do have to give you money. What I'm, what I'm trying, I'm going to say, will you hire me now to do that second season the yellow jackets? All I have so far is it tuck ever lasting, but yellow jackets. Does that work? Now the tuck, the tuck that died, how did, how did, how did that end up happening? Like because eventually or, or I think Christopher Lambert chopped his head.

That's wonderful. Yeah, I think that's the only way it can happen. Yeah. Or do they just leave town once it becomes clear that they're mortal? I guess I can't believe it. Okay, because I just you know, all right, well, then I won't make a joke about the cause of death being an everlasting tech stopper. Let's Okay, so as they when they lead the meanwhile, Dan, I thank you for your restraint and not making the joke. I appreciate that. When you found that it was uncalled for due to the logic of the original property, you

didn't make the joke. And I really, I really appreciate it. But you made sure that we knew you were, which I also appreciate. That's truth and comedy. That's integrity. That's what that's what the comedians for. Yeah. To tell the uncomfortable truths about talk. So Marina and Ridley have a little emotional argument followed by a hookup that mischievous imp that we've come to love as watching the whole thing. And he's reporting back to his boss, Damodar. So what do these reporting back to Damodar that they're macking? Like, there's information does he have?

He's like, you haven't crushed their spirits entirely, master. You got to see this. It's time. You got to see it. It gives them a real play by play. And Damodar's like Ridley and Marina. But if I left, this is outrageous. Tell me more. Because Ridley just, Ridley is the sweetest. Okay. Now, guys, is this, is it, is it offensive of me? And maybe this is something Alex should get out that I assumed I assumed damage. I was gay the entire time, not in a not any negative way, but just because you reminded me so much of Rob Halford, I just assumed this character is gay and I liked that about him. I mean, I don't know if I would say it's wrong of you, but also I can't.

I can be the. The choice. Yeah. I can. We'll stick my head and then can and shoot it all the way to shoot it all the way to where it needs to go to make that happen. So. Okay. So we leave Ridley gets the elves give Ridley a new sword. We talked about it is slightly nicer though, right?

I mean, I mean, his original sword should have been a real piece of shit. Yeah. It was not as big a step up as you'd think for a sword that magic elves give to him. Yeah. Now, luckily, we now have an adventuring party, right? We got a wizard, we got a rogue, we got a dwarf fighter, and we have an elf ranger. Perfect. Let's go to our first dungeon. Soon as they get there, only Ridley is able to go. There's a wall of force preventing the others. It's pretty weird. I guess we'll roll with it again. We split the party. Ridley wanders around for a little bit before going down a slide and coming to a cool dragon door. He six the eye of the dragon in the door. The door opens. Hooray.

He goes in there again, filled with treasure. He thinks about stealing it for a second to honor his boy snails, but then he decides, you know what, I'm going to leave this shit. Over in the corner, there's a skeleton holding the, what is that? The rod of Savriil Helliet is, that skeleton starts, talk, new him turns out that skeleton is Savriil. And he's like, yeah, whoever used this thing, bad shit's going to happen to him. And I love this skeleton because the skeleton is just like a puppet that talks to the man and then it's like, he imparts as much exposition about this rod as he needs to. His head just sort of like slosh down. Like a puppet. He really dropped the head.

This is a part of the Caribbean, the ride level talking skeleton. And he's maybe my third favorite character in the movie after, after I think after Zilas and Damodar, I think, I know profan's on there too. Look, okay, let's just say, let's just say, yeah, well, I mean, at number one, let's just say over dramatic Englishman. That's just number one at the top. And then number two will be this skeleton. And then number three would be, I guess, the imp, that's always laughing because he sees how enjoying it.

He's having a good time. Adam, who are you three favorite characters in the movie at this point? I mean, Damien definitely, I'm not even going to say profion because I'm not even 100% sure that I have his name right. But Jeremy Irons is my favorite character in the movie. And I like to zealous. Yeah, that didn't, that the movie didn't give me a whole lot more to work with. I'm going to say I would of course because Elwoods had to work.

I like Nordic is Nordic and Elf. And I like snails because becauseic is an elf. And I like snails because because he was he's dead. And when characters are dead, they loom larger in your imagination. That's true. Yeah. Like Uncle Ben, yeah, sure. The uncle Ben from Spider-Man, not Uncle Ben, rice mascot who lives in the heart of pots everywhere. But I mean, any pots, not like rice pots, any pots. And Dan, what about you three paper characters? I think that this guy's my favorite like rice pots, antipods. And Dan, what about you? Three Fabic characters? I think that this guy's my favorite.

Later on, there's a sort of like a skeleton and a baby skeleton dragon, who looks like James on a Thorougher Burge. And it's like CGI. And it's just clearly just like a loop of the same CGI movements. Dan, are you describing the thing that Wikipedia defines as powerful

magic? Yeah. It could be in the plot. I like that one. So, so to, so to, in, so in summary, all of us, all of us skeletons and of two of the people ask this question, who are three favorite characters? Two of them could only mention two characters. They failed to even come up with three that reached the list. So, yeah. So, he gets the rod of subrheal.

It looks pretty cool. I want to talk about how this rod looks. I'll give you one of your thoughts about the look of the rod of subrheal. Because I think it looks like HR Geeger designed a back massager. It does look like that. I mean, that only sounds good to me. I can't, I imagine it would, it would pummel my back into relaxation with kind of mechanoid penises. The various

rods in this movie all kind of look similar to what Loki carries around in the adventures, but you know, obviously on a Dungeons and Dragons movie budget. Yeah, this one this I have to say this raw to surreal. I imagine something more rod like. Yeah, like a bad dragon sex toy. Yeah, we're like a batleth. You know what? It looks like a combination of a cling on batleth and that that a blade cod piece from seven that that Kevin Spacey has commissioned because of course they don't mess produce those. And then stress on the poor Leland or sir. Yeah, yeah. And it's so when it showed up, I was, they were like, the rod is circuiled.

I'm like, is that really a rod? I don't know if I'd call that a rod. It's like, maybe it's a, it's not even really a staff. Like it was, I got thrown off by that. It's poor terminology in my, in my opinion. Earlier on, there was like, you know, a line that's, you know, I saw it in the closed captions because I have two have old ears and put the closed captioning on and it said, like, what does this rod do?

And I just find it very, I was laughing at it and I was just like, what do you laugh at? And I had it very hard to explain because it's not really that funny. But something about this fantasy world putting so much weight on the word rod. It just seems like the most low-rent weight. Yeah, it is a nice. Yeah, yeah. Considering, considering everyone else gets kind of a silly fantasy name that this is just

a rod is, yeah, is a bit much. A rod that looks like a bit of a silly fantasy name that this is just a rod is, yeah, is a bit, is a bit much. A rod that looks like a, a little dishwasher, it gets very, yeah. It looks, I mean, top selling point. It looks like it go in the top rack. Bottom rack might be a little dangerous for it. Yeah. Okay. So Dan, what would you, Dan, what would you have called it?

Let's play the game that I like to call Dan on the spot improv. Dan, what would you have called it? It's also, the name of the segment is also dr. Dan movie fixer Dan What would you prescribe as a new dr. Dan as a new name for the rod of surreal I well Staff would have been acceptable, but also like why don't you do like a sector sector of surveillance? Oh, yeah And that's the right way to control. Yeah, yeah Okay, so Yeah. And after a bridge right in control. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Ridley takes, despite the warnings of the skeleton, he takes the rod. And then he looks over and he sees a pretty badass painting

on the wall at a mirror professional artist. How would you describe the the badass mural that's been painted on the wall of this treasure room. I guess I would lose the ass part of it and just refer to the painting as kind of bad. Because some of the dragons look like they have six packs. I'm going into that. There were so many D&D artists in 2000 that would have made you an amazing mural probably for free. Because even though I mean doing art for D&D and Dungeons and and and matching the gathering and stuff like that, I always enjoyed it, but there was always a sense in my mind that like, okay, this is

what I'm doing for a living right now until I can get to write and illustrate children's books, which I can't seem to break into. It took me several years. And until I could get into fine art, uh, uh, dragon painting. Right. But yeah, it doesn't get a commission from the Medici's to paint the portrait of their dragon, yeah. But being in that world and knowing a lot of D&D artists, I knew that a lot of them were doing what they had dreamed that they would do since they were five years old.

And so I was a little offended that they hadn't gotten just the top of the line D&D illustrator at the time to just really do it up for them. The mural kind of looks like the mural that the owner of an Italian restaurant would get there like netheeta paint where they're like, I want Tony soprano, the Joker. Scarface. I want all the paint on a table gather. Put a second Joker in there, but not that you're a little. No, no, no. And then you're too fat. We got to get a fucking ball. And you know, there's an up in the clouds. There's angels looking down. And those are

my kids faces on the angels. I know it's wise that my kids are dead, but it's not. It's because they love them so much that they're angels. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, and then, of course, I want, I, and then, and then, and then a rod as a centaur, you got to have that in there also. Yeah, you got to get dear Geter. Yeah, you can't miss wing. Yeah, that's, that's important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's, it's that because they looked at the rulebook and they said, nothing. It says a centaur can't play. Now, Dan, uh, you've, you've, uh've gone on the record as disliking the word rod. What would you call a rod then? A staff, a scepter, it doesn't make sense. Is it not Alex, staff regas, you know, what's that? What are you going to do? I don't think that this, I

don't think I said that this is a rule that has to be applied equally across all media and types of people. Okay. Although the word rod, I think that a big part of my problem with it is it always reminds me of the Simpsons and not one, but two ways. Number one, the inanimate carbon rod and then you rod and tie. Cause I kept thinking of rowdy, rowdy, piper and started thinking about what would a rowdy, rowdy, rowdy piper have control over? What kind of dragons? And it would have made even more sense thatdy, rowdy, piper f control over what kind of dragons? And it would have made even more sense that there are zombies since then they live the aliens

look like zombies. But, you know, okay. So, after staring at this harrowing scene painted across the treasure room wall, we got what was the trying to communicate just that dragons are trouble? Yeah. Okay. We cut to the skies above some doll where a civil war is raging between Thora Birch's army of gold dragons and the council of mages who are

atop the what tower of mages wizard tower. I don't remember what it's called. Yeah. It's a lot of like fire. It's the main business center, major international business center. Yeah. They fire a giant ballista bolt through one of the gold dragons who falls and then gets, after getting shot, falls and gets speared through its stomach by the, what the peak of a building. The torch rides a dragon round, right? Would you call her a mother of dragons, Stuart? Yeah, I would say so.

I mean, she does have, she does do this cool thing similar to that one J. Lowell look from the Met Gala where she has like a chain mail, a cloth overhead. It's dope because it kind of makes it look like her hair is armor. It's really sick. But she doesn't ride a dragon yet. She waits till things get a little bit hair here. And Jeremy Irons right now was fucking, he's flipping out, he's having a great time. I was worried he was going to give himself a stroke or an aneurysm or something. He is projecting so, so hard through his face, though. I mean, the level of professionalism that the man brings to this thing, which he must have, you know, since, as being Jeremy Irons was a disaster disaster is admirable because he's you know like he only

is in a few scenes but he is really doing primo villain yelling. I assume that he signed on because he thought they were adapting Jane Austen's Dungeons and Dragons. Oh yeah yeah. But then later I learned that it was actually because he had just recently bought a castle and need really, really needed money. Yeah, that was his quote on it. If he was like, I just bought a castle, I better get some experience with dungeons before I move in. I'll take this role.

And who knows, once you get a castle, the dragons just start showing up at your door. I mean, the real trouble was he thought he bought a castle and he went, it was just a DVD box set of castles starring Nathan Filion, and he was like, I can't live in this. I sold my house. I can't move into a DVD set. Yeah. He was like, this is like a bull, but yeah. But he tried to make a little hut out of the DVD boxes. And he would lull himself to sleep by looking up at them and reading the chapter titles for each of the episodes. And he later referred to it as maybe the best time of his life, you know, because he really

figured out what he needed in his life, which was shelter that would be like a house. But he is. I always wonder with roles like this, are there is an actually charming irons enjoying it? Like I feel like if you're doing this role, you're being an evil wizard in a kind of a garbagey movie. You have as much, I assume the fun part would be to do it as big as possible. Yeah, yeah. I was wondering if it's like, is he enjoying doing that?

If you asked him afterwards, he'd be like, or would he be like, ugh, ugh, I'm just trying to keep him alive. One more year ago when this movie first came out on TVD, I remember renting it and watching all the special features. And there's definitely like a making of feature at where you see Jeremy Irons doing one of the things that you're doing. And when this movie first came out on TV, I remember renting it and watching all the special features. And there's definitely like a making of feature at where you see Jeremy Irons doing one of these big scenes. And then literally as soon as they cut, he like drops entirely and storms off.

It's amazing. I guess that answers that question. So you don't have one of those interviews where he's like, Prophion is a character who is drawn to power. Like, I always love when you see the interviews. I don't see a profionist of villain, no. No. From Prophion's point of view, Izmir needs order and needs a hierarchy. There's, whenever I've talked about this in the podcast before, that my favorite thing

when they make a comic movie is watching the interviews where actors who are not familiar with the comic books until they read them to prepare for this role have to talk about their understanding of like who rogue is or like who you know who you know storm is a powerful character. She's one with the elements. I think that's I always think that's really funny. So anyway. Okay. So back to Ridley, he leaves the dungeon only to find that Damodar has arrived, thanks

to his mischievous little imp friend. And Damodar has captured the adventuring party and they make yet another deal for stuff. He gives Damodar the rod of Se? Damn it our bounces. We get a brief brawl where our heroes do some flipping and kicking, Norda in particular seems very good at doing those things. She should be involved in more of the fights. Not going to happen. Okay. So, damn it, our goes through a portal, quickly followed by Ridley.

Okay. We got, we're in the end game here, guys. Meanwhile, Thora Birch is now riding on the back of a gold dragon and Profion uses the rod and given to him by Damodar to summon his own army of red dragons. So now gold dragons are like the good version of red dragons. Gold dragons, brief fire, so do red dragons. Just to clear that up in case you guys weren't familiar. I don't understand how that makes gold Dragons the good version of that they both

there. But they're like, if you use an ability, like maybe you're a cleric or something and it gave you the ability to detect alignment, the alignment of the Gold Dragon would be good. So, you guys have a brief fire on you. You can be like, oh, they must have a good patch. Yeah, you know what, he's in the right here. Maybe on the baddie, yeah. I just, I thought it was strange the way you said it.

It was like if you were like sharks, you said dolphins are the good version of whales, they both blow holes. And I feel like, well, just because they share a feature doesn't mean one is good and one is evil. It's not a quality, it's more of a like an ethical thing. Yeah, okay. So, both possums and both possums and koalas are marsupials. Koalas, of course, are the good and possums, the usual.

Good, cool. Yeah. I mean, that's arguably not wrong. But if you look at those creatures, okay. No, no, here's the thing. Koalas, this is the classic story because koalas look cute, but they are jerks, whereas possums look like horrible little rat monsters and they're very loving. Okay. Cool. So if there's any possums listening, Elliot's down. You got to hang out. I thought you were going to apologize. I was going to put that up. If they're any possums listening,

go. I don't care. If they're any possible listening, go to Elliott, because Stuart doesn't give a shit. The doctor is out. Okay. So, but those possums need medicine Stewart. Nope. I do want to point out that when Damodar has our heroes captured and he requires Ridley to give him the rod, as soon as he gets the rod, he's like, ah, fuck it, kill him all.

You know, he breaks the deal. There's been a lot of deal breaking so that when Damodar then goes to see Profion and he's like, I found you, the Rodmaster now take this thing out of my head. I was like 100% sure Profion was going to be like, look that dork. But instead of Profan's like, no, okay, that's cool. That's fair. I'm, hey, I'm lawful evil. I'm not chaotic. Yeah. Yeah. So he removes the thing from Damodar's head, which is great, because Ridley shows up. He and Damodar have a great sword fight. Okay. And that's when we get to see that

Elf sword at work, because when he swings it, we get a little bit of extra special effects, like a little bit of extra lasers and stuff. And I really enjoyed seeing Jeremy Irons beat up our lead because, again, in terms of charisma, Irons is a much more charismatic performer, and as we just saw, keeps his promises. So, you know, yes, exactly. At one point, Jeremy Irons cast a spell by just like blowing on one of the heroes, and I'm like, that's showmanship. Okay, so Ridley fights Damodar. This fight goes a little bit differently than the last one, because as I mentioned before, he does a flip stabs Damodar in the back, pushes him off the tower where we watch him fall to his death. Then he gets in a fight with Profion, fall to his death. Um, the, then he gets in a fight with profion, uh, in the, as the scuffle goes on, our, our other heroes show up to try and stop profion. He can, he beats him all,

uh, unfortunately, in the process of beating up all of our heroes, he has lost the sector, the rod sector, even on confusing it. It's a, it's a rods to, he loose the rod, which are themselves, which it's really going to let the rod on us to ourselves, which it's really going to be more than a rod. He loses the rod, which means that the child will be spoiled because he will be spared. So it really picks up that rod and he shatters it with his sword, which I feel like you should have done that as soon as they found it. But he shatters it, which disrupts the army of Red Dragons and allows

Thora Birch to land at the council of, at the Tower of mages. What, what if, it, instead of controlling Red Dragons, it just controlled the rights to the Thomas Harris novel, Red Dragon? And so, very valid. Very valid. Proveons like, finally, I can do the job, Brett Ratner, screwed up. Man Hunter is good, but they didn't really have the resources they need to do it justice. Profion's like, finally, I can do the job Brett Ratner screwed up. Man Hunter is good, but they didn't really have the resources they need to do it justice. And it's like, he's in three man levels.

He's pretty good too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they stretched it out too long. They stretched it out too long. Anyway, like I'm saying, I'm going to do the definitive adaptation of Red Dragon now that I have the rod of severe Lidala. So the Empress shows up, and at first we're like, uh, oh, now he's going to get it. But instead, Profion uses powerful magics, which is displayed by a computer generated skeleton

dragon that like, I guess starts like wrestling with forever. It's pretty cool. Jump. So I'm like, like it wants to piggyback ride. Uh-huh. Yeah. I actually, I thought it was, it was one of these doors like that wasn't what I expected. So I thought that that looked kind of cool, but not the magic I expected him to use. And then despite being bedeviled by magic skeletons, a gold dragon arrives to

help and chomps down on profion and our heroes win the day. They get cool level up outfits. They are standing at the grave of snails, which is a beautiful monument. Which is just a can of stone. It's just a, it's just a, it's just a easily toppled can. It's a very strange monument. We hear Thora Birch being like, now I pronounce everyone equal, which I laughed at because I get why as a political leader, you have to make like an official pronouncement to try and usher in and more equitable society. But the same time, the line makes it sound like, well, everything's good now. And I'm like, would that have worth any easy? I don't think that an

equitable society can just be wished into existence for a birch, but but if anyone, if anyone's bad, she'll just have the gold dragons eat him down. I guess so. It's one of several moments near the end of the movie where you wonder why they didn't just get to it. Like, really

shows up. Profion is clearly the boss bad guy. And he is busy controlling these dragons and really goes, damodar and he starts fighting him. It's like, he's going to have to profion. Damodar's small fish. You only need him to get to the big fish. Like, come on.

He's got a good sense of snails, dude. It's true. Yeah, but you could deal with that afterwards. And then when the, when the dragon eats profion, it's like, this good have happened 15 minutes ago. I don't know why this, you know, he hasn't had those red dragons for a while now. Just eat them, you know. But I got into the great last scene. The scene that had me going, what? So they're standing in the graveyard. They're standing before, again, this beautiful tombstone made for

snails, just a phylo rocks. They're all in new upgraded outfits. They've clearly gotten to another level. Oh, yep. Okay. And Ridley is about to be knighted, he says. Ridley is about to be knighted. He places the eye of the dragon Ruby onto the Karen of stones and he's like makes a wish for some shit. And then a little bit of magic happens and

snail snail's name falls from the monument. And they're like, what? And the north of the elf is like, yeah, your friends alive now. And so they all hold hands. And then they turn into dust. And that's the end of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Literally tells tells Ridley and the audience not to question it. I feel like her, her skill in the movie is hand waving. She tells Elwood earlier that, no, you can't go in. This is something they must do on their own.

And then later on, it's like, this, don't do not question this gift. Just accept it. The movie's over now. And this is a setup for, it was intended to be a trilogy, a trilogy that will never be real. We watched it in dragons too, the search for snails. There was really, did you guys know there were sequels? Oh, right, right. I knew there was a, there was a, like a direct to DVD one, right?

There was a direct to TV sci-fi sequel. And then I think a third one that might have been directed DVD, but the only recurring character in the second one is Damodar. Even though you just killed him. It's revealed that Kofion made him an undying, you know, slave to him of some kind, and so Damodar cannot die and is there in the second movie? Now, I've never saw this equals. My friend Greg kept swearing to me.

He's like, the first one was a good, second one's actually really good, dude. You should check it out. I never got around to it. Adam, I'm assuming based on the level of professionalism you've already sprained, you've already watched these movies for some. I had to obviously in order to be able to do illustrations for Dungeons and Dragons. I had to consume everything. I watched the old cartoon.

I watched the sequels. Yeah. I mean, even the character design doesn't look of a piece with the Wizards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I feel like even by then, like people like Wayne Reynolds had done soards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I feel like even by then, like people like Wayne Reynolds had done so much of the character design work that this doesn't look like that.

This looks like, I feel like it looks like an earlier time of D&D, but not, it was not of a piece of what they were putting out in the year 2000, which was kind of, I guess that was so to my high time for when I was working with them. And they had a big old style guide at the time, just hundreds of pages to showing you really, like intricate details about how elf fashion should look different from human fashion, should look different from door fashion. And it was all very thought out stuff that did not find its

way into this movie at all. Yeah. That's kind of what I was wondering from your standpoint. Like when you're watching something like this, is it hard for you not to try and break it down and be like, I would have designed this differently. I mean, obviously you're going to say you'd design all this stuff differently. Yeah. So maybe Thoroughburtch is a cool little thing at least.

I like that. But yeah, I feel like it would be hardest and hardest not to be like, why do they do it this way? Well, I mean, as an artist too, I pretty much every shot, I was like, hmm, they should have composed that differently. They should have composed that differently. Yeah. So should have fit more magic items into that shot.

The aesthetic of the movie, I think I would describe as Halloween adventure. But like, there's not that much, I feel like you couldn't get by just going to a pop-up Halloween store and just, you know, loading up on their fantasy costume stuff. Well, they definitely visited a spirit Halloween store at the beginning when they apparently just were tossing skulls into every corner of Propheon's Lair. And I'm not even talking about the, the, the, the Sedlac also where he did, we didn't mention that, right? The, oh yeah, that it was, that part of it was shot in a real osu-wary that's particularly.

This is skills and skills and everything in the Czech Republic. Yeah. I do want to say that like, it's a, the movie's aesthetic is a weird mix, though, in, in the sense of like, all the effects definitely look janky like the practical effects look silly the CGI looks silly in the way that you know early CGI where you did not have a lot of resources looks goofy but at the same time like this was in effect an independent movie the guy who directed and wrote it like through together all this funding and made special deals with, you know, the effects people to do things on a budget.

And so it's got this weird combo of like, well, it doesn't look good. It all looks dumb, but at the same time, it all looks more impressive than you would expect for the budget that they had. Like, like, there's a lot of, it is a ambitious failure. I guess is the best way of putting it. And I think maybe some of it would have looked better if the director knew what he was doing lighting-wise. Like, there were scenes in it where I'm like, why did you do it this way? Where, like, I remember there's a scene where Marlon Wains, like, it this way where like I remember there's a scene where Marlon Wayne's like, you know,

Fintes Mark to like pick up an important piece of things and it's him walking directly into a shadow that covers his face rather than like maybe walking from the shadows to have his face illuminated. I mean, it's a small thing, but all of this like really cheap stuff also looked, I assume all the worst because they didn't know how to hide how cheap it was. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned lighting because having watched the director commentary, I can tell you that it is 90% talking about how each scene was difficult to light. Yeah. Well, some of the reasons that it was difficult to light, was it, I mean, probably because it was his first movie, I imagine. But I don't know if it was the director of photography's first movie, I haven't looked that up.

Oh, yeah. But the director's first movie, maybe not the cruise, yeah. A some of it from what I gleaned was that, you know, some of the practical, like the real world settings that they were using in different parts of Prague were just so large. The Wizards' Council scenes are set in an actual opera house that was difficult to light apparently just because it was so big and had such intensely high ceilings.

There was a lot of talk about just the library and different places that they had found in Prague that were difficult to make look good. I wonder if you go to an opera if there's like a little like plaque somewhere that's like as seen in the movie, Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah. Well, that's it seems like maybe the key mistake was that he used all of those resources to try and do something epic rather than

just to be like, okay, what's a smaller version of a Nejensvirag and maybe I can make, and like scrounge and like make do it the smartest way, like, but with like a smaller scale. Yeah, I mean, I think he had, he had, he had had this story or something like it in his head for a long time. Although I remember reading somewhere that he had written another script that was more budget conscious, but that the producers wanted him to use an earlier script or something. There was a loss to it or something. I read this too that I don't understand law enough to understand why a lawsuit would

require you to use an earlier draft of the script, but that is what I read. At one point, I think they were going to sort of turn it into like a television thing, and but there was a provision that it was supposed to be an actual movie movie, and that may have been why it had to inflate. It does look like a television thing. Yeah. It does. And then, but if you're right, they could have done a Dungeons and Dragons movie that is not

epic in scope, but it's about like an adventure party going through a dungeon. Going through a dungeon. Yeah. I really wanted to, I mean, this kept on making me just wonder what a D&D movie, what makes that movie a D&D movie and like, what could it be and what should it be? And, you know, did they need to like, Jumanji this up that it was actually where you're getting it would hold into the world or, I don't know, what do you think? I think that the, I mean, part of it, it is hard because I was thinking about this was watching that,

like, D&D is not a property that has like, beloved characters, necessarily, or like beloved storylines, like, it's a world that you create your story and characters for. So it feels like you kind of want to, I guess like I was saying earlier, like incorporate some kind of plot that resembles the game mechanics. So it feels like an adaptation of what it's like to play the game. I mean, kids get people, people get players being sucked into the game is essentially what the TV show was, the old cartoon. And the, and the like, Kieran Gillen comic die is basically the same shit. Yeah. And

that Tom Hanks made for TV movie where he gets driven insane by role playing games from the 90s. Maybe even monsters. Yeah. Maybe even monsters. Yeah. But I think like if you, there were so many kind of like old, not good barbarian movies where there's like a bar, they're very D&D type, where it's like a barbarian going through dimly lit passageways fighting monsters and there's usually like a girl he has to save and a treasure of some kind or a evil wizard to fight. Yeah, evil wizard played by a caradene. Yes, probably.

It's that it was part of Italian law that you needed to get a caradiene to do it. It feels like there's a, there's like a higher budget version of that. And it was only while researching this movie after watching it that I found out that there is a new Dungeons and Dragons movie coming out like this year, I think, and so next year. So it's, we'll find out, I guess, what a joke. Joe Manjaro in this one, I really hope so. That guy loves D&D so much. What I read was that he was apparently a big force in trying to get it off the ground, but I don't know if he's actually in it. Chris Pine is listed as the Chris Pine and Michelle

Rodriguez, right? He was right. He was listed as a star in it. You know, he's going to play an evil wizard like that. He's going to be perfect. I assume, you know, um, hot off of Paddington too. I mean, he's perfect. Yeah. And maybe Paddington will be in this movie. Maybe there'll be a Paddington D&D crossover. But they they're talking bears in the D&D world right in other owl bears, right? All bears. I don't think talk though. Unless you speak owl bear. All right. I don't. Did your neighbor back into your car bring that case to judge Judy?

Think the mailman might be the real father? Give that one to Judge Mathis. But does your mom want you to flush her ashes down the toilet at Disney World when she passes away? Now that's my jurisdiction. Welcome to the court of Judge John Hodgman, where the people are real. The disputes are real, and the stakes are often unusual. If I got arrested for dumping your ashes

in the jungle cruise, it would be an art. I don't want to be part of somebody getting a super yacht. I don't know at what point you want to go into this, but we've had a worm bin before. Available free right now at maximumfun.org. Judge John Hodgman, the court of last resort, when your wife won't stop pretending to be a cat and knocking the clean laundry over.

Hey kid, your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dorf's nose that the kid's choice awards. In Dead Pilots Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks, but were never produced, are given the table reads they deserve. When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break filming a PSA about Angel Dust, so yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes.

Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker, Dead Pilots Society, twice a month on MaximumFun.org. You know, the show you like, Thaig Hobo with a scar for lives in a magic dumpster? Doctor Who? Yeah! for lives in a magic dumpster. Dr. Hove. Yeah. The flop house is supported by listeners like you, but we also have some beautiful advertisers in this episode. One of them is Squarespace.

They let you create a beautiful new website. Turn your cool idea into a new website with Squarespace, blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds, and more. You can do this with Squarespace because Squarespace gives you beautiful customizable templates created by world class designers with everything optimised, sorry, for mobile right out of the box.

I'll slow it down, so it sounds like this. A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions, free and secure hosting. Why not go over to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This podcast is also sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. We talk about therapy a lot. And one of the big obstacles with mental health in general

is that people view therapy as something to look to when they are having trouble. And it's important to consider seeing a therapist as a form of maintenance, maybe before you're in a rough spot. I don't know about you, but I think I'm like many people where I had been relying on a lot of different coping mechanisms in my life. And when the pandemic hit, a lot of those coping mechanisms either kind of went away or they just became overburdened and seeing a therapist online has been really helpful for me to kind of get myself centered

again. And that's the type of thing that better help offers. It's customized online therapy that offers video phone or live chat sessions with your therapist. That type of thing is very convenient for me because I like having to physically go somewhere to is another obstacle for me with therapy. I like being able to just be in a comfortable place to speak with a mental health professional. And yeah, so why don't you give it a try and see why over two million people have used better help online therapy.

So the podcast, this one, the one you're listening to right now is sponsored by BetterHelp and flop house listeners can get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash flop. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com slash flop F-L-O-P baby. But that, but baby is not part of the, no, don't, you were out right. L O P baby. But that but baby is not part of the. No, don't put the baby in. Yeah, no, no, don't take that baby out. Yeah, the baby. Don't put it in a corner.

Nobody should do that. No, like, don't all things. PSA, nobody should put a baby in a corner. And hey, we're also sponsored by ourselves. What do you mean by that? Will I'll tell you? We've got another flop house live show. Remember that show I mentioned at the top of the show?

I'm mentioning it again. That's right. March 19th at 9 PM Eastern 6 PM Pacific. We're going to be appearing live on your computer screen if you log in. Unfortunately, we can't lawnmorm or lawnmormant our way onto your screen and just take over. Oh, lawnmormer.

But if you, lawnmormer will way onto your screen and just take over. Oh, lawnmower, oh, lawnmower, lawnmower will not help you with a computer. But lawnmower man movie, it really, it created an incorrect notion in a lot of people's minds that lawnmowers could get you onto the internet. It's not how it works, not what the title means. Yeah, I mean, I keep showing up to Apple stores and I'm like, hey, where are all your lawnmowers?

Man. They love that. Yeah, they love it. Yeah. So anyway, Saturday, March 19th, 9 PM, Eastern six PM Pacific, we're going to be live online. We're talking about the movie Masters of the Universe. That's right. For our first live show in several months, many months, we're going to be talking about

a movie that I know I saw in the theaters, but have not seen since. We're going to talk probably about our memories of the human characters. Again, a show I watched religiously as a kid that I have very few memories of. So I'm excited to watch this movie and see if it actually turns out to be great. I mentioned on Twitter, the only thing I remember about the movie is that at one point they chicken. So we'll see if that scene is as important as it looms in my imagination and my memory. So Dan, are you going to, are you going to cosplay as, as everyone's favorite character?

He Dan, or are you going to be Danny Faces or Ram Dan? Well, I'm all Stan. Yeah. You know what? Be Stan, you're really making a me a lot of the fact that my name or right. Dan a tour. Yeah. Skella Dan. What can't you do if you see like I can't change Tila to stula right. That's crazy. You can do whatever you want.

Man, stula tour. I believe. Yeah. Oh, stula tour. Yeah. Or Horde Dan and his amazing Horde or whatever the guy's name was called. It was more chirovilla. And I guess. So if you've seen our previous liveorde, or whatever the guy's name was called, it was more Chira Villain, I guess.

So if you've seen our previous live shows, you know, there's going to be an opening power part presentation from each of us. That's going to be really funny. We're going to do a Q&A chat with the audience at the end of it. There'll be some kind of funny bit in the middle TBD and most importantly of all, you'll get our honest, unvarnished opinions of the 1987 message of the universe. Taking on the relevant issues of the day. We don't care whose toes we step on. In today's world, there's nothing more relevant, nothing more important than the 1987 film masters of the universe. So you want

to buy tickets, go to theflophouse.simpletix.com. That's theflophouse.simpletix.com. That's the flop house dot simple T I X dot com. If you can't make it on March 19th, don't worry, buy your ticket and it will get you access to a week's worth of time with the recording of the show. Well, you think the person's the ticket buys you the time per say, but you extra week of life. When you buy the ticket, you will have access for one week afterwards to a recording of the show so you can see it after the fact. After that week, the recording will disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Nothing but a memory like tears in the rain, just dripping away and evaporating. And once everyone who's seen the show dies, there will be no record ever, ever again.

And so make yourself one of those people who sees it and will someday die Saturday, March 19th, 9 PM Eastern, 6 PM, Pacific, Masters of the universe, the flop house style. Again, that's the flop house, simple ticks, and dot com. Go buy your ticket today. You're going to regret not doing it if you don't do it. Yes. And we have no jumbo jumbo trunks this week, but if you want to get up on the jumbo tron, remember you can do so by visiting maximumfund.org slash jumbo tron where you can purchase a personal message for $100 or promotional one for $200 before we, you know, we do the

ads at the end. So before we let Elliott go rest his voice, you guys have anything to plug. I'll anything to plug? I'll continue to plug my current comic series, Maniac of New York, The Bronx is Burning from Aftershock Comics. It's on store shelves now. Pick up the trade paperback of the first series, Maniac of New York, The Death Train, and then pick up the new issues of Maniac of New York. The Bronx is burning as we record this, well issue three will be released. I think the week that this, the week before this comes out. So if you hear this episode, run to your comic store, put on a mask, go in masked and by

issue three of many African New York, the bronzes burning. It's four issue limited series coming at now from aftershock comics. Yeah. And I just want to do a little quick promotion plug for the Flop House podcast. It's just three dudes being silly buns. I think it's time to do our final judgment song, Digest and Jerry. Whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie. You kind of liked, personally, I will go and I will say that I, for like the first half an hour,

I was like, oh, maybe this is gonna be a good bad movie. Like, I have affection for the type of thing this is trying to do, and I definitely have affection for low budget special effects of the period. But it gets so bogged down and boring for me in the middle that I wanted to, you know, find it funny. But I would say it's bad, bad with the proviso that like go on YouTube and maybe look at some highlights of the movie and you'd have highlights for kids. But what do you say, Stu?

I'm going to say, I think this is for me, this is a good bad movie. If you have an affection for kind of, you know, like kind of poor special effects and the and like cheesy fantasy adventure movies in the pre-Lord of the Rings era, I would say that there's enough funny stuff and dumb stuff that it's worth checking it. I'm going to agree with Stuart. I think it's a good bad move. I feel like the older I get and the farther we get from when these movies like this came out, the more nostalgic I came for this kind of junk.

Yeah. Just because it's different than the junk we get now. So yeah, I'd say if you were like, if you're our age, go ahead and watch this as a good bad movie. I don't know how it will work with people who are not of our generation. Adam, what do you think? You saw it the most time. Yeah, I feel like it wore me down.

I think if you would ask me after the first viewing, I would have said that bad. My wife tells me that this movie has a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. So that's a one in 10 chance that it is a good movie. Oh, not a lot of tomatoes. I have my 10-sided die. I'm going to run my 10-sided die and see if this is a movie I kind of light or merely a good bad movie. If I get a if I get a zero, then it's a movie I kind of light. And that's a red 10-seater. That's probably from your changeling the dreaming days. I'm afraid I got a six. I got a six. So this is merely a good bad movie.

Okay. Okay. That's fair. We left it up to the fates and they decided. The gods who were not really talked about in this Dungeon of Dragons movie, but are a big part of Dungeons and Dragons indeed. And you said indeed, like that was something you knew, but I don't really. I think you would just jump in on the band. When I said indeed to honestly, I was already looking at the next thing that we do on the podcast, which is letters, letters from listeners. Sorry, I'm trying to find the letters that I sent to myself. I swear, but now I'm having trouble discovering them in my email. So why don't you guys chat amongst yourselves?

Alex, do you want to keep this part in or do you want to take it out? I leave it up to you. Yeah, Alex, maybe we'll just chat about stuff. Uh-huh. Oh, oh, no, that's not it. Oh, that's the end of the video. Wow, so Adam, you didn't watch this movie with your kids?

No, that's weird, right? I guess maybe my nine yearyear-old would have had some interest in it, but to be honest, he prefers his stories grounded. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, I mean, I can't get them into superhero stuff either, which is like the great stupid tragedy of my life that I'm such a Marvel person, and he doesn't really want to watch Marvel movies most of the time.

So that's too bad. He would rather watch an adaptation of Ramona and Bezos than adaptation of Nudgers and Dragons. I mean, that's still quality source. I mean, absolutely. But I just want to know more than Marvel. Yeah. You like, don't you want to watch Avengers? And he's like, can't we watch Topsy Turvy again?

But, uh, yeah. Can we watch Squid and the Whale, dad? Okay. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Mystery solved the, this, uh, this wound on the trash for some reason. Oh, wow. I don't know why circular filing cabinet email that I sent to myself wound up there. But, uh, I mean, it's these volumes about yourself, a steam right now, Dan, you know that you're great, right? You're not trash. When you send

things to yourself, it shouldn't go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Um, this first letter, there's from Claire last name with held. It's titled The Star Wars Peter and Treesaga. Hey, peaches, I thought, I bet you thought you were done with this particular saga. Guess again, it's coming back for another installment. Yay. A few episodes back. L away, L away, L away, L away, put my legend. I couldn't think of anyone more different than L. Yeah. If you look at the spectrum of human men, it is probably John L. Way and one end in me at the other. Yeah. A few episodes back. Elliott made a throwaway comment in which he implied that the back half of Star Wars a new hope took place over a single day.

Then in a later episode, you received an email correcting Eliot's quote mistake, but as soon as you started reading it, I immediately noticed a major problem. This correction was completely wrong. Eliot got it right the first time. In a scene toward the end of the film, Darth Vader says to grandmawph Tarkin, quote, this will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi and will soon see the end of the rebellion implying that the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Battle of Yavin take place in the same day. I thought of emailing a correction to defend Elliot's honor, but then I decided against it. I

didn't want to be the person who said an email because someone on the internet was wrong about Star Wars. And besides, I figured you would get a veritable deluge of emails about this and I didn't want to toss another one on the pile. But then weeks passed and no mention of it. Then in a recent episode, Elliot made a self-deprecating joke, implying that he still believes that he was wrong about Star Wars. And this listener corrected him correctly. I just couldn't take it anymore. I had driven

demand. Allie. So I saw the injustice and spoke out. I appreciate that. Elliott, fear not. You're wonderful and brilliant. And you know, in excessive amount about Star Wars into the dude who wrote in previously, if you're going to waste the flapper's time with Star Wars,ed and tree, at least get your facts straight. Claire, last name withheld. So.

Well, thank you Claire for defending your honor. Claire, thank you for being the hero I need. Even though I don't necessarily, if you're not necessarily the hero I deserve, I really appreciate it. Yeah, feels good to be vindicated, you know? The things that haunt you. And this one, yeah.

Did you throw that email in the trash because it was making Ellie feel. I think so. So I've consciously been like, well, drag this to wear belongs. First and it is certain. His normal search for the emails for the phrases Dan sexy, Dan rate and Dan love. Didn't find those found that email and said, we can't let Elliot see this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no see this. No, no, no, no. That's spirited it away. Okay, well, well, if it was spirited away,

I'd have to like figure out which pigs are my parents, you know, and you know, it would be, that's a whole other kettle. But in the end, everybody's friends, so it's okay. Yeah. I do love in that movie when she picks that, she, she chooses it right, spoiler, and everyone goes, yay, you did it.

Like, oh, yeah, they, they, they were pulling for her. Yeah. Um, there's one more letter. Uh-huh. It goes like this. What, what am I right about this time, Dan? Now it goes, dear peaches, light syrup or heavy syrup. Let's go round Rob and starting now with the most captivating of the big three, Dan McCoy.

I assume this is referring to which, uh which would kind of peach packaging there is, whether we're peaches in the line. Wow, that's a logical leap I wasn't expecting. You know, I didn't get it until this time reading the email. I think the proximity features. And yet you chose to ask this email. You chose to read the same one as the question, not really understanding what it was. Just like, zero preferences in general.

Dan, zero is not necessarily light or heavy. It's kind of specific grade system. The grade recognizing both flavor and color. Well, that's why I think that it must be about the peaches because you do hear peaches and light or heavy syrup, whereas like, yeah, maple syrup would be like grade amber, grade, whatever, you know, it's really fascinating to be part of your process like this. This is great. Yeah.

Yeah. I am a syrup detective. Um, I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most.

I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most.

I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most.

I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like the most. I like it when their excitement in the show has already been downgraded to interest is now downgraded to when does the show end when when do I get adding now I have family I should be what what what monkeys pod did I wish to be a fluffhouse guest on you know what I get I'll skip the syrup talk I'll go to the second question in here that's good because I had a nightmare, I had a nightmare last night about peaches for millions of peaches. Peaches are free. And it was millions of peaches. And I just, it was too many. Don't do this. Well, you, I mean, you don't live in the country. So it's not a, you know, you're going to get with, um, turning to Elliot. What do you think of the chances?

We'll see a Ray Dennis, Stekler biopic in Stuart's lifetime. I feel like it'd be super easy to get Ray Dennis look like an accaged play cash flag himself on account of all these castle bills. Faithful years for a stain with held a boo boo. So what do you think? Well, unfortunately, the problem is Nicholas Cage would have been a perfect Ray Dennis Steckler, but he's a little old for the part now, unless it's an older Ray Dennis Steckler, but you want to see him when he was younger, when he was making like incredibly strange creatures and stuff like that. And he really had no idea what he was doing. But I know I'm curious why it was in stew's lifetime that they were asking since it's probably

shorter. I don't know. You take better care of yourself. Yeah, I would assume that you might be the host long live. I mean, physically, I'm a donness, but mentally, you know, I'm a mess. I mean, physically I'm a donnis, but mentally, you know, I'm a mess. I mean, the thing is also that like, yeah. It rots from within, you know?

Oh, that's, yeah, that's life. That's like, I'm bleak. Very bleak. But not as bleak as the prospects of a raid and a stécular movie, because it's like the, yeah, I don't know. I don't know enough about his life story to know

if it has the character interest that say Edward Edward did because that's the closest parallel. The Edward and Dolomite are basically the closest parallels you get for those who may not know, Raida is Tecler. Of course, the director of such films is ret think of Boo Boo, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies and other. He did blood sucking freaks, right? Also, which I think he did bloodstuck in freaks, where I think it's on the poster that where it says, warning this movie features freaks who suck blood, which I think is the funniest message you can ever post. It's just telling you don't look the title is true in this.

Maybe maybe I'm looking at now. You know what? I don't think he did bloodstuck in freak. Yeah, I think it would. Yeah, but yeah, he did do rat finka booboo, which is nearly unwatchable. Have you guys ever seen it? I mean, it is unwatchable. It's, it is so boring.

And our end, the, there's so much of it that is just the camera following this one woman's butt as she walks down the street in kind of tight 60s pants. And you're like, it goes from titlating to incredibly boring so fast. And you're like, when do it, when does rat think come out? And the story about this, I don't know whether it's true or not, right? Those that it's a, it was supposed to be called a rat think and booboo, but they didn't correct it.

Yes. Yes. The title came out wrong and it was too expensive. So they fix it. Yeah, it's so just ret think a boo boo, which means nothing. Yeah. I mean, the other thing also means nothing, but it is easier to understand. You're like, Oh, there must be a person called ret think and a person called boo boo, which is correct. It's part of the movie, not even the home movie, which

is a strange thing. Part of the movie is a is a parody of Batman and Robin. So once you didn't see that they're superheroes and it's called ret think and boo boo, you're like, I get it. It's like Batman and Robin, So once you didn't see that they're superheroes, and it's called Ratfink and Boo Boo. You're like, I get it. It's like Batman and Robin, but Ratfink, a Boo Boo sounds like a dish. You would get in a foreign restaurant. Like, you don't know what it is. I thought it was like, I got a dance.

Yeah. I'm having, I'm having, I'm having Ratfink prepared in the style of Boo Boo. I don't know what this, or it's like, Ratfink is a thing that you're supposed to do to a boo boo like one of the bears from. Yeah, if there are multiple boo boo's perhaps look go rat think a boo boo.

Yeah. Now, this is what I'm looking up as credits now. This is what I have not seen, but he did make a movie called The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire, which is, which is funny name. It's a pornographic horror film apparently going to Wikipedia. That is a funny name. But I mean, I mean, his movie, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies is mostly made up of local cabaret footage. And it does have a, I mean, he does have one of the strengths of low budget filmmaking of that

time, which is that you get to see a lot of interesting shots of what L.A. looked like in the mid 60s, you know, because he couldn't afford to shoot it anywhere, but the streets of the city he lived in. But anyway, I would be I'd be curious to see that movie, but I don't think it's likely that it's going to happen. Certainly not in my lifetime. Okay. Well, let's close up the mail bag and move on to the final portion of the show, which is where we recommend movies that maybe it could be a better use of your time than Dungeons and Dragons. Or Red think a boo-boo, yeah. I'm gonna recommend. I recently rewatched Petey Anderson's inherent vice, which is a movie that I saw when it came out and I thought I could see where it was good,

but I didn't connect with it at all. I mean, it was a very hard movie to follow intentionally, not made any easier that, you know, walking beanings, Phoenix, who is a very mumbling man in most roles, is mumbling it up even more so as the stone protagonist of the movie. Just throw on the captions, dude. But this time rewatching it, it unlocked for me in a way. Like, I realized that a lot of the sort of confusion of the movie was meant to mirror his sort of stone days

that he lives life in. And that part of the joke of the movie was meant to mirror his sort of stone days that he lives life in. And that part of the joke of the film is that there's a big conspiracy that would be easily dismissed as marijuana paranoia except for the fact that it is real thing. It is real stuff that is happening. And it is sort of about how there are all these sort of real terrible things being put in place

because of money and power at all times that can easily be dismissed as paranoia, but are happening and in the midst of that, you know, like all that can be done is this man does what he can to at least eke out the smallest, you know, personal victory while this crazy stuff is going on. And I found it a lot funnier than I had before. I understood enough of the plot the second time around to kind of be able to be cool with the stuff that I didn't understand going on. Anyway, it was just a movie that sometimes

if a movie is complex, but you sense that there's something there. Obviously like any other work of art, returning to it, letting it open up, you know, seeing it at a different time in your life is, can be a great thing, and I really liked it a lot more this time around. So, inherent vice is my recommendation. this time around. So inherent vice is my recommendation inherent vice steward. Okay, I'll recommend a movie that's available currently on HBO Max. I'm going to recommend Ridley Scott's little movie, The Last Dual. It is a historical sword and sorcery. No, it's a movie that fucking rocks. It's not swords, Dan.

The dead parts true. Yep. We got, and we have the movie magic of Matt Damon and Adam Driver and Ben Affleck. Matt Damon plays Jean de Courouge, prickly squire, and Adam Driver plays Jacques Lagrie, his buddy who thinks, who fancies himself a womanizer. And Ben Affleck is kind of like the, the duke that's above them. And Matt Damon's wife is played by Jody Comer, and the movie is a collection of tellings of a specific event where Matt Damon's character's wife played by Jody Comer claims that she has been sexually assaulted by

Adam Driver's character and we get kind of tellings of this story from the different characters. It's great. The performances are all super fun. And the duel at the end is fucking wild. And Ben Affleck delivers one of his best performances of all time. It's great. Movie Rocks Ridley Scout was right. We were wrong. We should have seen that shit in the theater. It's great. Check that shit out. I don't think it was a case of writer. No, he's right, dude. It's your honor. He was a pandemic. He either wrong or you're a Ridley. Yeah. That's reasons not to go have a little more.

But it's fun. It was especially fun to watch after watching House of Gucci. Because House of Gucci, we kind of talked about one of its flaws being that like Ridley Scott might not have been the best director suited for this material. But he is like it. Last tool is great. It is a great movie and he is great with that type of shit. I'm looking forward to watching it. I haven't seen it yet. And I'm hoping too soon.

It's great. What movies have I been interested in watching? Well, here's one that I watched recently that was very depressing, but a very good movie. I watched recently the movie Mr. Klein or as it's known in its original France Monsieur Klein, which is a movie from 1976, starring Elan De Long, who is, he plays an art dealer in 1942 in France. His name is Robert Klein and he has started as a specialty now of basically taking advantage of Jews who are fleeing the country

and have to sell off their art collections cheap. And then he makes a big profit off of it. Due to a, what seems like it could be a misunderstanding of identity involving a piece of male, or it could be a plot against him. He doesn't know why. He starts getting confused with a different Robert Klein who is Jewish and who the French police are looking for because they're preparing to round up all the Jews to ship them to the camps.

And Klein becomes so obsessed with finding this other Robert Klein. And at first proving that he himself is not Jewish, so that he'll be saved. And then eventually, he becomes more obsessed with finding this man. And he keeps, seems to keep always just missing, discovering his true identity or why he seems to have trapped him into this.

And he becomes so paranoid and obsessive that by the end of it, he is racing headlong into his own destruction and completely ignoring any chance of escape or getting out of what is becoming a more and more dangerous situation as Paris becomes a more and more dangerous place to live. And it's a really chilling movie. It is super kind of depressing and bleak,

but I thought it was really good and really well made and just the dread and the almost inevitable doom that he is chasing throughout the movie because he just has to know who this other person is and he can't like of it, becomes very, it just, it really drew me. So that's Mr. Klein. I would recommend it.

Just don't expect to have a good time when it's over. It's super. What about Robert Klein's standup set in the middle of it? That's the weird thing is that this movie came out when Robert Klein, I guess, was performing but was not yet a huge star. Or maybe he just wasn't well known in France. So for a while during the movie, I was like, yeah, Robert Client, look him up. He's probably performing in an LA right now, like go see him. But if you can ignore that, the same way that the novel, day of the locus, the main character is named

Homer Simpson. And it's hard to read it now and not imagine Homer Simpson from the show, get, you know, being drifting through L.A. as a, as a man with no point, no point to his life, eventually leading to tragedy. Elliot, real quick. I kind of zoned out during your description is Mr. Klein, a biopic about actor Chris Klein, star of Chun Lee, the Street Fighter movie. It is not at all. It came out before I believe he was born. Okay. Okay. So, yeah.

Adam, do you have a recommendation? I'm going to recommend the movie that I watched immediately after Dungeons and Dragons, or which, I guess technically that was Dungeons and Dragons, because I watched it a second time and then a third. But then after that, just last night, I watched a movie that I know the three of you have probably already talked about before The Green Knight. And it seemed appropriate just because obviously they're both medieval fantasies, but just the first minute of The Green Knight, fantasies, but you know, just the first minute of the Green Knight. It's such an intense scene set, sort of in symbolic scene in which Dev Patel's Gawain, as King, is seated in a throne, he's holding his symbols of power. There's this very forceful and kind of sinister

sounding voiceover, overlaid on top of it. And we watch as Dev Patel's head bursts into flames. And at that moment, I was just like, I think I would rather watch the first minute of this movie, 120 times in a row, than have to watch Dungeons and Dragons for a full time. I spoke of, I got some bad news for you. I just got word, you have to watch it. Sorry, it's out of my hands. I'm just the messenger on this one. I spoke earlier about how I just, from an artist perspective, I just felt like so many

of the scenes and shots were just kind of poorly composed. They weren't composed the way that an illustrator would compose them. And almost every frame of the Green Knight is a painting. It's exquisitely chosen colors and it's perfectly aligned. And the values are really thoughtfully set against each other, the values of light to dark. And just a lot of times during the movie, I just thought, geez, that that assemblage of children watching a puppet show looks like an odd

nerdroom painting or that approach to the green chapel looks like a Friedrich painting. You know, it's over and over again, I just felt like I was getting an art history lesson watching it. Yeah, it's over and over again. I just felt like I was getting an art history lesson watching it. Yeah, um, and it's just a jizz dripping down a build. Okay, yeah, I'm not my, not my favorite shot there, but it was, it was just so beautiful and, you know, jizz and all. And I, I just was really in awe. I think a lot of people thought it was slow. I liked the pace of it. I liked the mood of it. I liked the way that I just couldn't stop thinking about it for a long time afterwards.

So the Green Night rented it a cause of video in Tucson. I feel like, and I feel like the Green Night specifically, like it leaves you, like it ends so strong that it kind of leaves you thinking about it. Like yeah, it's stuck in my head for a couple of days afterwards. I think it's probably my favorite movie of last year. So I wow on board with that.

Well, Adam, thank you so much for being with us as our guests. I was nice to have someone with some insider knowledge and to do so much homework. Is there anything that you want to plug before we go? I think Elliott kind of plugged everything at the beginning. I write and illustrate kids books. My most recent is Gladys the Magic Chicken, written by Adam Rubin,

actually. I didn't write this one. I illustrated it. It's about a chicken who may or may not be magic who goes on an epic adventure that she largely does not notice. That sounds great. I mean, the title kind of gives away that she's magic. Yeah.

Well, it's up to you, the reader, Elliot, to decide. But if you read the title, it's kind of right there. Glad is the magic. I'll take it up with the writer. Like I said, I did it. Yeah. But if you read the title, it's kind of right there. Well, I'll take it up with the writer. Like I said, I did not write this one. All right. And I want to say that the all of Adam's books are Adam Adam Rex right now. Adam Rubens great.

Sure. But now I'm now Adam Rex. I've been a big fan of his work for such a long time and you will not go wrong with pretty much any book with his name on it That you can pick up there ones that are favorites of mine, but there are none where if you asked me if you should get it I would say no get anything you see with his name on it Pick it up. You won't regret it. You'll love it. Then you get the other ones. Thank you. Well, yeah, that's why I'm putting his name on my book when it comes out Yeah, that's theoretical book. I'm not there's I don't

so on my book when it comes in. Yeah, that's a theoretical book. I'm not there. I don't. So thank you listeners. If you have a moment, go to iTunes and leave us a review to help spread word about the show. You can follow the Flapphouse pod on Twitter. You can follow the Flapphouse pod cast on Instagram. And if you're enjoying YouTube, I like that streamlined branding. It's just consistent across all platforms. Too late now, youtube.com, the Flophouse podcast is where you can find some videos of our stuff. If you want to go to the Flophousepodcast.com, you can click on the merch tab. If you want Flophouse merch, like t-shirts and such posters, we are a member of Maximum Fun podcasting network. That is located at MaximumFun.org. You can check out all of the great podcasts on the network. I'm almost at the end of the spiel. And that means I'm going to thank

our producer Alex Smith, who is at Howell Daudy on Twitter. You can see what he's up to. who is at Howell Daudy on Twitter. You can see what he's up to. Thank you for listening. But until next time, I have been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Ellie Kaylin. And I'm Adam Rex. Bye.

[♪ OUTBEAT MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Mmm. See, now we have an outtake. Outback, outback, outtake. We have an outback. Now we have a steakhouse from the Land of Mothers. It's all that back. Oh man, that's not about blooming onions.

Finally, we've got a place for me to put all these onions that keep blooming. Guys, I try to get to the onions before they bloom. And I can't. It's just who I'm always late. I'll set an onion down on a plate. I'll turn away. I'll turn back. It's bloomed. I don't understand it.

Yeah, I feel like somebody's gaslighting you at this point, Elliot. Like Daniel has a big sack's bloomed. I don't understand it. Yeah, I feel like somebody's gaslighting you at this point, Elliot. Like Daniel has a big sack of bloomed onions, and she's just waiting for you to put one down so she could swap it so she can get her inheritance. It's gonna be great. A bloomin' onion sounds like something that, boom, the dad and my fair lady would say about it.

Yeah. Maximumfund.org, comedy and culture. Artists-owned, audience supported. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.