The Flop House - Ep.#446 - Kraven the Hunter

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

We start out our special "Films Without Spider-Man" theme month (in honor of Max Fun Drive -- please consider supporting our show!) with one of the more ostentatiously-Spider-Man-free films of last year: Kraven the Hunter. C'mon, Kraven, we KNOW you guys know one another--remember that last hunt? Just swallow your pride and phone Spidey to drop by! We're cravin' it!We're doing a ton of extra stuff for Max Fun Drive this year -- check out our event calendar!Wikipedia page for Kraven the HunterRecommended in this episode:Dan: Last Stop in Yuma County (2023)Stuart: The Monkey (2025)Elliott: Mr. Vampire (1985)

On this episode we discuss Craven the Hunter. No prey is too powerful for Craven. In this movie he kills an entire family of non-Spider-Man related movies. Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Jan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. And wait, do you guys, do you guys feel that in the air? A sort of sense of endless possibility?

A rush of pure joy and excitement? The anticipation that someone of the three of us will spend today asking other people for money? Yes, yes, all those things and more because it's Max Fun Drive, everybody, yay! It's Max Fun Drive, the one time of the year when Max Fun shows celebrate those generous, brilliant, and sexually attractive listeners who become members of Max Fund.

And we remind them, Dan are you saying they're not attractive? And we remind them- I'm not saying anything, strategically. And we remind those members that the only reason this show exists at all is because you, you, you generous, brilliant, sexually attractive Max Fund member, you support it for at least $5 a month or more. We'll talk more about the Max Fund drive, what it means to us, what it means to you. But if you just can't wait to become a member or upgrade your membership, you can find out more at maximumfund.org slash join.

Yeah. In honor of our founder, Maxwell Fun. Maxwell Funkerbean of the funky, Maxwell Fun. Mm-hmm. So. Maxwell Funkerbean of the Funky Winkerbeans. The name was scrambled at Ellis Island, yeah. So we're doing, what do we do here on this? This is a podcast. Oh, right. We watch a movie that has either the audiences or the critics rejected or both.

Or neither. And we talk about it. And of course, as we announced, because because of Max Fun Tribe we're doing our special theme month which is No Spider-Mans. Movies that do not feature any Spider-Mans. Featuring no Spider-Men. Do we want to mention each of the movies that we'll be doing as part of the series? Yeah, of course there's Craven the Hunter, the one we're talking about now, Venom the

Last Dance and Heartbeats. 100 along we're talking about now venom the last dance and heart beeps Starring Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters and it fits the theme. There's no spider-man in it The most baffling bits to me was Paul Schrader. This is one of my favorite store bits. It's all going to make sense when we watch it. It'll be a, yeah, look for that listener, a perfect payoff to this long- Because it's going to turn out Heartbeats is about a robot who falls in love and keeps a journal and kills somebody or tries to kill somebody at some point. And straps some bombs to him to save the environment. Yeah, to save the environment.

As happens in every Paul Schrader movie well one I can think of but This is a movie of course particularly notable for its lack of spider-man. It's part of Sony's Hey, we don't have the rights to spider-man per se universe And so yeah, they've been trying to make all this happen, but they do, they own a lot of names and some kind of like vague relationship. There's rumors of a Spider-Man. They have, so Sony has the rights to the Spider-Man family of characters. Characters that fall under it, but they have made an agreement with Marvel, or with Disney rather, that Spider-Man himself would appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What does that mean? It means they've got to create their own universe of all these other characters whose only reason for existing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What does that mean? It means they gotta create their own universe of all these other characters whose only reason for existing in the comics is because they fight Spider-Man. And they also have to flip them all into, you know, at least anti-heroes. Yeah, lethal protectors. And they were, the original plan, I don't know when they dropped this plan,

was to make a Sinister Six movie, where these characters would all kind of come together. But again, the Sinister Six is a team that only exists to kill Spider-Man. That's all that they do. I mean, I would argue every single one of these characters is defined by their relationship to Spider-Man and are made more interesting by that.

Yes. And when removing a Spider-Man, they become kind of bland. It's like if you- With the exception of Madame Web, which is a perfect movie. Which is, yeah, which is wonderful. And it doesn't in any way feel like it's missing a connection to Spider-Man. Also, does not fit this theme because Spider-Man's in that.

Because in the movie, because Peter Parker is born in that movie. I was just thinking that to remove a Spider-Man sounds like a Lost Harper Lee novel. Yeah. Sorry, go on. No, I was gonna try to come up with another example of like how you could try to remove the central, most essential character from a world and then try to make something around

it. And I feel like there's some places you can do it. Star Wars at one point you're able to do that. Yeah, you just yank Godot onto that bitch and it's going to be tons of fun. That's what happens. So you do the Vladimir movie, the Ettergan or Estragon movie, you do the Potso movie and then they all come together finally in the Waiting for Godot movie.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Like how did Potso get that servant who only, who has talks in those weird speeches? We don't know, I don't remember his name, the character. So I believe that Stuart, you'll be doing the summary day for Craven the Hunter. First, should we talk at all about our relationship character. But so I believe that Stuart, you'll be doing the summary day for Craven the Hunter. First, should we talk at all about our relationship to the character of Craven the

Hunter? Did you guys? I was going to ask you to do this. As I mentioned in a most likely deleted pre pre show bit. I my my relationship with Craven is mainly like I was a big Spider-Man fan, not as big as Elliot, obviously. But I you like, I was a big Spider-Man fan, not as big as Elliot, obviously. No one is, well, a couple people. I've read all the Sinister Six stuff, I read a bunch of his various appearances,

including Craven's Last Hunt, which is kind of like, is one of the great Spider-Man stories, in my opinion. And I was looking up, and apparently it started its life not a Spider-Man story. It started out as a Wonder Man story, which is kind of funny. Well, even before that it was originally, it was pitched as a Batman story to DC.

And by the writer of it, J.M.D. Mateus, I think was the writer of it. And then he brought it over and made it a Spider-Man Kraven story. But it's so good that you kind of wonder how it could be a story for any other character. Because it fits so well into the Spider-Man themes and the Kraven themes. Here's the thing though, I would call Kraven's Last Hunt, perhaps the one great Kraven story.

And if you were being a real stickler, maybe the one good Kraven story, which is not fair. Since then, there've been a couple of good Kraven stories. There was one called The Grim Hunt for, that years ago that I actually enjoyed a lot. And Craven for a little while became a supporting character in the Squirrel Girl comic, where he was like a more positive version of himself. But up until Craven's last time.

Which would probably fit as a lead in a movie better than what we get. Squirrel Girl? Or that version of Craven? No, I mean like that version of Craven. Like a more positive than what we get. Squirrel Girl or that version of Craven? No, I mean like that version of Craven. Like a more positive, like slightly silly. I'm assuming. Yeah, he's a slightly silly, he's still Craven,

but he cares about the environment. And that's where he and Squirrel Girl, you know, have it share a common bond. He can't stop Craven. But I would say until, yeah, he's crazy. He loves White Castle, he's always getting those Crave Zacks. Was there a movie tie-in? Call up Matt Singer. Was there a movie tie-in with White Castle for this thing?

I don't think so. Yeah, it was a Crave Sack at 10, and each one had a different animal's meat in the burger. I love that. Are there any particular Dan fans out there who are dismayed by how little I've been talking? I'm just letting these two run, because they're trying to work themselves out, you know

Here's the last thing I want to say about Craven until Craven's last time. He's a pretty in my opinion At least he's a pretty mediocre character. He's the idea of this big game hunter He's the kind of guy who goes out and captures animals He looks like a really cool wrestler. Yes, and he's a silly cat even in his earliest appearances I think it's kind of a silly character. Yeah, and he's a silly character even in his earliest appearances. I think it's kind of a silly character Yeah, and the idea I'm just kind of baffled by which spider-man characters they Chose for these movies because it feels like except for venom who is who's hugely popular It feels like they kind of went out of their way at times to pick characters who they could graft onto

pre-existing story formats rather than characters that had a lot of name recognition or a big fan base or even were cool characters. You know, this is me, I've never found Craven a cool character partly because of his clothes. He wears these funny tight Capri pants and these little slip on shoes and he has a vest that seems to be made out of a lion's face, which I don't know how you do that. But Stuart.

It's very cool. He looks like a wrestler. He does look like a wrestler He now before There's one other Craven story do you want to talk about? Yeah, Dan. Oh, no. No, I thought you were no I didn't know if you're leaving this topic at all because I wanted to say my relationship to the character please as I was queried and it is that I read the Wikipedia plot summary of Craven's last dance when I

discovered that Craven's last dance. The dance between him and vermin. Mary Craven's last dance. No, when I learned that this was going to be a character that a movie was going to be made about, I was like, okay, what's the deal with this Craven? And that's the main thing that got referenced. So I was like, okay. You're like, whoa, he like unalives himself

because he killed Spider-Man, he thinks? That's nuts. But that's the thing is Craven's last hunt is, this thing, the defining moment for this character, spoilers for the comic storyline, the 40 year old storyline, Craven's last time, the defining moment for this character is when he kills himself,

having succeeded in defeating Spider-Man, he thinks in his mind. So it's always a problem when your super villain turned anti-heroes defining moment in the comics is when he takes his own life rather than like does a cool thing, you know, does something impressive, you know, so. Well, that shows, you know, courage of his convictions.

Now, and then for me, like, I didn't initially, you know, I didn't initially get to Craven's Last Haunt. My first, you know, I'd been exposed to Craven before, but also it was the- In a public bathroom, yeah. Yes, it was the Spider-Man, the new Todd McFarlane Spider-Man series, the first arc, the Torment arc.

With Calypso. Introduces Calypso and also introduces moments, visions of Kraven as a zombie guy. So Calypso was a pre-existing character before that storyline, but so little had been done with her, I feel like, that Todd McFarlane kind of made his own in that. But that's the one where the lizard becomes a servant

of Calypso, right, and all that? Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. And I don't remember being like, particularly good, but it was like, you know, it's classic McFarland, there's webs all over everything. Yeah, yeah. There is like, every panel is made out of lamps.

Spider-Man's constantly contorting himself. It's all in this. Let's move into discussion of the movie, a thing that I know something about. Yeah, let's jump into this. Sure, sure. So wait, wait, I just wanna say, if people think, oh, Elliot's gonna to dump on this because he hates Craven

the way he hates Morbius. No, no, no. Craven was never one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but he was never so far down on the bottom as Morbius or as I've mentioned, my least favorite Spider-Man villain, Molten Man. Continue. But, Elliot, at the end of the episode, I'm going to have to ask you. Defintive ranking?

No, I was going to. We're doing definitive ranking after Venom, I'd imagine. Oh, I see. But I was going to say, think of any Spider-Man rogues gallery characters who would make good solo movie non-Spider-Man related. I'm going to try to think about it. That's a tough one.

That's a hard one. Okay, so movie begins. We have a bunch of logos. The movie opens with a prison transport truck driving through Siberia, heading to an isolated prison. Stowed aboard this truck in disguise is our hero Craven the Hunter. He gets taken into the prison.

He meets his new roommate, who's a large man who seems to suffer from some kind of deformity, which I'm not always happy with, that it's constantly like, hey, the joke is the guy's got some deformity. So he- I think he's just supposed to look like a big threatening guy. Yes.

He picks a fight with some gangsters in order for them to take him to their leader, who the lead gangster is this like arms dealer operating out of the prison. Turns out he reveals, that was his plan all along, he wanted to be captured because he's a hunter and he kills this gangster like Rorschach style. Not, doesn't kill him Rorschach style,

but you know, the locked up in here with me sort of thing. So he kills this gangster with a tooth from a tiger carpet, tiger fur carpet. And then he escapes using- Which he had foolishly been allowed to keep in his jail cell, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like the guy is basically, he's one of those criminal masterminds

who is in prison more for this protection of being in prison and less as a impediment. Yeah, I can see that, I can see that. So he kills this guy and then he escapes using superhuman parkour skills. Now, Elliot, as I said, I was not a Craven connoisseur. I did not know anything about this gentleman other than presumably he hunted. Yeah, as said in the title, yeah.

Tracking down information online, correct me if I'm wrong. So in the comics, it's not like Craven has these animal powers. He has a serum that gives him strength, basically, and he's just a good hunter. He has kind of like potions and like, you know, he knows the secrets of the jungle that can enhance your abilities in some way. There's always kind of berries or herbs you can take in comic books that make you a slightly tougher person. But the idea that he could, there are parts of this movie where he is essentially

just running along sheer walls as if gravity doesn't affect him. And that's not a thing. And not being damaged at all. And yeah, and the fact that he gets so knocked around in this movie and it doesn't hurt him at all. And that is not the Craven I know. And also he has super zoom vision,

which I don't believe Craven has. I don't remember that many of the stories. And his eyeballs become like lion eyeballs. Yes, yeah, exactly. So there's a, in this movie, he is clearly the product of an unholy combination of some kind of voodoo and also lion blood, as we'll see later.

And so that gives him the amazing powers to do with superhuman things. But in the comics he's one of these many characters who is the serums they take put him at peak human condition like Captain America, you know, or something like that. As opposed to the man with the power of the animals. That would be Animal Man, a DC character. Yeah.

Although most, you know, peak humans I know get crushed under like rubble that falls off them. Most of them when they're exploded, it hurts them. Yeah, I mean, I feel like he, in this movie, he's presented as basically like a slightly tougher than Captain America type character. Yes, yeah. Okay, so he escapes using these super abilities.

He runs off into a giant snowstorm. He faces down a really cool CGI wolf, and then he boards a waiting cargo plane that is piloted by a pilot friend who we never really see ever again. And I didn't know if this was, I didn't know if this was referenced. She shows up again, but you know.

Yeah, he just has like a pilot on call, and I think this is supposed to be making him seem like kind of a cool James Bondy type who has like a network of support people or something, or just a pilot that he can talk to regularly, but nothing is made of this character. I don't know if there's a character loosely based on any one of the comics the way that a lot of the others are.

It just seems like an easy way for him to get around is he just Indiana Jones style, he's a friend of the plane. He can like pop around the world at will. Orville Redenbacher, he's popping around the world. That's not the only similarity. We'll get to that though. Okay, so guys, you know what time it is?

It was originally called Cravin' the Popcorn. Yeah. What time is it? Time for a little bit of a flashback. Now, this is a long movie. There's like, it's over two hours. It's too long. But similar to its lead actor,

there is not an ounce of fat on this thing. Um. I think that is not necessarily true. Aaron Taylor Johnson is. I don't know if that was hearing up to make, but. Aaron Taylor Johnson is sliced up. He is shredded. For a guy who's described as nature's perfect predator,

I'm like, if this guy has any sugar, it will fuck him up. He is too skinny. You have to imagine, if he was lost in the woods or the jungle and did not have Access to food he would die like he has no his body has no stores of energy He needs to eat like seven little protein pack meals a day He has to like have a meal at 4 a.m. Just to survive just to keep going He's like a little baby when little little babies literally can't hold enough food in their body to last through the night. That's that in this movie.

Which is, you know, speaking of Aaron Taylor Johnson, that was one of the fun jokes in The Fall Guy when Ryan Gosling is making jokes about how this guy is too skinny, he needs to eat carbs, your body needs glucose to survive, et cetera. Okay, so flashback, 16 years. We meet Sergey and Dimitri Kravinov, two brothers, well, half brothers, who are attending

an American prep school. They are taken out of school because their mother has died. She's committed suicide. Now I wanna ask you a question here and whether you guys had the same experience I did because they're informed that their mother died by their father, Russell Crowe. Nikolai Kravinov.

Russell Crowe playing Nikolai Kravinov, not Russell Crowe as himself. His late career extravagant accent period that he's in that we all love. Yes. Elevates every scene he's in. Everything he does. No question.

He's gun to my head. I'd be like, he's the best thing in this movie. He is self-evidently like a super villain. So him just like appearing and telling that his wife is dead, like were you set up for like some kind of reveal either that he is like lying about that and she's still alive and he's just doing this to like cart the kids away or like that there was something really insidious

going on with the mom rather than like, it seems like maybe she was killed by him, but also maybe it's just true that that's what happened. I don't know. I think Mingo was just so happy to see Russell Crowe show up that I'm like, anything, I'm just taking the- I just feel like I had these expectations. Anything you say, beautiful.

To be honest- There's gonna be some payoff for that. Yeah, I think it was just supposed to be a tragic backstory. I think that I had a different feeling where later on I thought it was gonna be, I thought that Russell Crowe would be involved in a bigger twist than he was. There's a minimal twist.

But I thought he was gonna be involved in a much bigger twist. They squander Russell Crowe would be involved in a bigger twist than he was. There's a minimal twist. But I thought it was gonna be involved in a much bigger twist. It's squander kind of a- Russell Crowe. He does, he is evil right off the bat. Everything about it is evil. I thought you were gonna say- Kind of charming.

Did you have the same experience I had where I could not quite figure out how Russian or how American these characters were supposed to be because their accents were a little malleable at times. And for much of it, Aaron Taylor Johnson is doing the same kind of like mumbly, cool guy, vaguely New York-y, vaguely Marlon Brando-y voice that like a lot of guys, especially after watching this

right after Venom, The Last Dance, where with each movie, Tom Hardy's voice has gotten more cartoonish as Eddie Brock. I was like, oh, okay, he's doing a similar kind of voice. Having watched this movie very close to Venom 3, it's not good for Aaron Taylor Johnson because Tom Hardy is so much more fun than that movie. I feel like Tom Hardy has nothing to prove anymore

in the Venom movie, so he's just like, whatever, I'm a slob, I'm walking around, I'm mumbling, I'm crazy, whereas Aaron Taylor Johnson has to get across that he's cool in this, which is hard to do when you're craving an uncool character. An uncool character. So yes, so these two boys are the sons of a Russian oligarch gangster who lives in a mansion

in London, outside of London. Their dad picks them up and he's like, you know what, your mom's dead, it's time for you guys to reconnect with nature. Let's go on a hunting trip to Ghana. So they go to Ghana because there has been reports of a legendary lion named Zar. And they go, this lion has killed two to 3,000 men

over the years. And it's like, no way, that's impossible. I'm like, the way they said it, I thought it was like, it sounded like the subtitles were wrong. I'm like, it can't be thousand. That's not, there's no way that's possible at all. This lion is the most prolific serial killer known to man. Yeah, he's the real suspect zero.

Unless this lion is rounding people up into concentration camps, there's no way he's killing that many people. Both the ghost and the darkness. Oh, wow. He's a man killer. How many has he killed? Hmm, three thousand. What? Okay, so this hunting is not his country.

This hunting trip, like the other lions are like, damn, like I feel like, like, young lions are like, I have to live up to this guy. The pressure is enormous, this is unrealistic expectations. Getting all those other lions a bad name. Like young lions are like I have to live up to this guy Unrealistic expectations all those other lines a bad name. I'm cool, man Teach me dude Okay, so yeah, this lion went through a small town and just murdered everybody in it Yeah, really and no one tried to stop him at any point. No couldn't do it too good a lion at any point? No, couldn't do it. Too good a lion. Yeah, he's just too good to be a lion. Jumping around and stuff.

Lions are known for their jumping, just like Craven. So this hunting trip, there's a bunch of other guys along. There's also a guide. There's a native guide who adds a little bit of flavor to the specifics of their hunt. And there's also another, a young gangster who seems to be struggling with some kind of like asthma stuff who we will later know is known as the Rhino.

Yeah. But also- This is Alessandro Nivola, who I thought was pretty fun in this movie. He was the most fun, I think. His performance was pretty fun, yeah. Russell Crowe, though, dismisses him so heartily that I'm like, no, man, you're creating an Iron Man 3 villain right now.

Yeah. It's a classic situation. Or an Oppenheimer villain. Like, all these guys in movies are so, so have such poor self-esteem that one negative comment turns them into, turns them into villains. Like, I must crush them. Yeah, yeah, they gotta become the Joker.

And I would think that was crazy, except that our president and the shadow president behind him are basically the same guy. Like one insult so wrecked them that they were like, well, now I have to hurt everybody. This is terrible. Okay, so yeah, as we said, Rhino makes overtures to join with Nikolai Kravinov,

but he is rebuffed and humiliated verbally. Meanwhile- But quietly, I don't think anyone elseated verbally. Yeah. Meanwhile- But quietly, I don't think anyone else heard it. Yeah, I feel like everyone's listening, you know? Okay. Meanwhile- The lion's heard it. Nearby, we are introduced to a young girl named Calypso

who's visiting her grandmother. Her grandmother is some kind of magic. And she introduces her- Everyone's grandmother is some kind of magic, to be honest. She introduces her to the magic of tarot cards and then some kind of old family secret potion unspecified. Just a magic potion that will maybe help somebody

bring them back to life, I don't know. Give them animal powers. They read the tarot cards and it basically explains what's going to happen over the course of the next, the rest of the movie. There's a lion attack. Sergei and Dimitri find Tsar, and Sergei almost seems to be cowering Tsar

with his natural what-ris. And then his dad blasts the lion with a shotgun, and the lion attacks Sergei and drags him off, bleeding into the underbrush. Calypso sneaks away from her parents who are on safari and she finds the lion and Sergei, the lion is bleeding into Sergei's wounds. Oh, that's how it happens.

Yeah. And then the lion leaves, and then she gives him a taste of this magic potion and puts the tarot card for strength, which features a fucking lion in his hand. Shit. Now, things look bad for Sergey. Yeah, things look bad for Sergey.

They take him to a nearby hospital. He's pronounced dead, but then he almost immediately revives. But I think they say he was dead for three minutes, much like the three days that your Lord was dead before reviving. Not mine, but your guys's. My Lord? Yeah, yeah.

Well, Dan's maybe. Dan's family's Lord. My Lord Krom of the mountains? Krom gives you only the strength to get to survive and that's all. So do you guys think this was on purpose, that they're making Kraven into kind of a Christ parable? And in parallel, they're saying that Christ should track down Russian oligarchs. He's got like all beard and cool hair.

And you know that Christ is ripped too, because he didn't get a lot of food. He was also pretty skinny, but like you knew there were muscles coming through, right? I've been to some churches in Bay Ridge and he is looking fucking tight. I mean the one difference is that- How much you think he benches?

How much you think Christ benches? Oh man, at least 315. The one difference is that- So when people say could God make a rock so heavy and God couldn't lift it, he probably can't. Yes. Just a little theological teachings here. Like the one difference is once Christ was risen,

he didn't make a list of people he then had to kill and went around the line. Didn't he, Dan? Didn't he wear Ponch's pilot today? Answer me that. I guess that's true. I'm walking around. He got a blow dart to the neck.

Yeah. Okay, so let's see. His dad takes him back home to London where they have a confrontation and Sergey gets mad and we see his father has given him the gift of Tsar the Lion's head, which is stuffed and mounted. He doesn't want to be part of this family, so in the middle of the night he runs off,

leaving his brother, Dimitri, who's a little bit weaker, but has a knack for doing impressions, leaves him to the mercies of his dad and runs off. Let's talk about this for a moment. Dimitri is very much the Fredo brother. He's the weaker one. He's the half brother who is the product of an affair that father doesn't respect him.

He can imitate anyone's voice. Which is also like, that is like the laziest, shittiest fucking writing to make the half brother just like weaker. Yes, just physically weaker. Like I hate that kind of eugenics weird garbage. And so, but here's the thing, he can imitate anyone's voice perfectly

because they're just playing the audio from someone else's voice when he lip syncs it. But they go, you always were a chameleon. Now guys, are chameleons known for their mimicry of voices and sounds? I mean, parrots are, but I don't really think of chameleons as being voice mimics, you know? What do you think, Dan?

Do you have any experiences with chameleons? I understand it as a metaphor, like you can blend in. It only exists because that character eventually becomes, he eventually becomes the Spider-Man villain, the chameleon, but the idea that he can do anyone's voice and they're like, what a chameleon, that's not the word you would use.

I guess, yeah, no, it wouldn't really, it doesn't indicate that you're fitting in and people think that you're a person just because you have a voice. It's like, oh, good impression, dude. To pull the curtain back a little bit, years ago I was potentially being set up with a young woman to go on a date.

Oh, can you take her fall? So I looked at her MySpace page to prepare, I don't know, to look at her bio. Yeah, cyberstalk, yeah. She, yeah, of course. Cyberstalking hadn't been invented yet. Only silk stockings had been invented, yeah, that's true. But under her bio, she was describing herself

and one of the things, it was like a questionnaire. And one of the questions was like, what kind of animal would you say you are? And she said, I would say I'm a cami lion. And it took me like 10 minutes to realize she was trying to say chameleon. We did not go on a date. I just, I couldn't, yeah.

You thought she meant a lion that was dressed like cami from Street Fighter? Which I'd be like, yes, sign me up. What time is it? So this character, Dimitri, is, spoiler alert, he will become by the end of the movie, the chameleon, a different Spider-Man villain. Different Spider-Man villain.

These are two characters that were always kind of linked in the comic books, but it wasn't many years after they were introduced that it was revealed that they were actually half brothers. So this is from the comics, they're half brothers. It continues the theme of animal characters in this movie. Everybody's got an animal inside of them, as the rhino later explains.

Everyone has two animals inside of them. A rhino, a chameleon, and a lion, I guess that's three. Those are the three animals. So, Sergey runs off, he boards a steamship to Russia and he runs off to live on the land that his mother owned, I guess, in like Eastern Russia, which is basically like untouched wilderness filled with one giant herd of wildebeests

and a couple of like snow leopards. I think they're like oxen or something like that, or mustahs, I don't know if they're wildebeests. Okay, well, I mean, hey, listeners, write in if you know what they are. Right into Dan McCoy, real street address to come. Right to K.T. Hunter. Yeah, that's a special Max One Stretch Goals,

Dan shares his actual address. How about some feet pictures? Oh, oh man. Okay, so he- More privacy in it. So young Craven goes off to the woods. There's like a little training montage where he learns about his superhuman abilities

that he has gained from lion blood and magic potion. And then he goes and starts killing poachers. What? Now, he does a leap in this and it really showed to me a kind of, there's a lot of leaps in this movie where it's very clearly wire work, where they've erased the wires, that's okay.

I don't expect them to literally launch someone into the air or for him to have to climb up a tree. Or for him to learn how to jump that high. Or for him to learn how to jump across a crevasse. But when he jumps, and this is something they do in a lot of these movies, you don't see like his legs bend and then push off. Instead, he just kind of lifts into the air

while his legs are still pinwheeling as if he's running. And it looks very silly. And I realized like, oh, they do this a lot in movies and it looks particularly silly here. This is not how a jump works, you know? It's not like you're just running in the air, you know? I mean, I wonder if that's part of the way that the like stunt effects work or the way that like,

I don't know, but you're right. I mean, it does look silly. It's possible, it's possible. It looks silly, but maybe that's the safest way to do it, it does look silly. It's possible, it looks silly. But maybe that's the safest way to do it, in which case, do it that way. Do it the silly way if it's safe. Yeah, absolutely.

But it looks more like he's being jerked into the air by a wire than it is that he's jumping under his own power. Yeah, yeah, that he has made some kind of contract with Aeolus, the Lord of the Winds, and those winds have whipped him off the ground. Exactly. Okay, so years later, he is still doing the same shit. He's living in the woods, killing poachers,

and he's looking at that tarot card with a lion on it. Go on, Dan. The words years later roused me from my slumber to make a point that I wanted to. Yeah, please. Yeah, because Dan sleeps in Raleigh at his house dreaming for the moment that someone to. Yeah, please. Dan sleeps in Raleigh at his house dreaming for the moment that someone says use later, yeah.

Now, this whole opening sequence, this is like long flashback. Do we need it? The answer is no, Daniel. Absolutely not, man. Yeah, we don't need it, and arguably, I don't know how you guys feel about this. I love it.

Arguably, I feel like if you're going to have it, which I would not recommend keeping it. If you're going to have it, arguably for me, I'm so sick of the cold open in a lot of movies where like we have to show you what it's gonna be like eventually. Because in a way, when things slow down for a minute, I'm like, why can't we just go back

to that exciting thing I just saw? Why are we suddenly suddenly hitting the brakes? I almost, if you're gonna have it, would prefer a shorter version that just starts with him as kids and we just do it that way. Or the best option, again, cutting it, and if we need any of this information,

it can be smaller flashbacks scattered in the movie. Well, Dan, you texted something to us while you were watching it, which was that you said the biggest mistake the movie made was that it acted like it's supposed to be a serious movie and that wants us to take it seriously. And I think that's exactly, they're telling this like it's a serious story about fathers and sons and-

Father, sons being Jewish. Being a rhino. Yeah, being a rhino, exactly. And it shouldn't be. It's a story about a super powered poacher, a super powered hunter who fights poachers and wears a lion's head vest. And so it should be kind of silly.

And the movie is at its most fun, kind of the sillier it gets. But you're right, they spend a lot of time trying to build up his character so you're gonna care about cravin' the hunter. And it should not be working at that level. It should be working on a much more surface fun level Probably yeah by the end like it at the moment

There's a part where like a literal Rhino man is fighting him in a stampede and like yes Finally something yeah feels like it should be in this movie. I was waiting. Yeah, I'll have some issues with that one We'll get to we'll talk about that scene. Yeah to it. Okay, so Craven now all grown up and looking hot, heads back to London where he tracks down Calypso and they have a they reunite. Played by the second Academy Award winner in the movie, Ariana DeBose. So there's two Academy Award winners in this movie, which is also silly. I don't like being hard on actors. Like I've liked her in other things.

I find her performance here very strange. My guess is that this was not a role. I mean, her role barely exists in this movie. They don't give her much to do. And who knows, maybe there was such a focus on the action stuff in the filmmaking that she wasn't getting the support she deserves. This movie is directed by J.C. Chandor,

who also did Margin Call, which I think is a great movie. And All Is Lost, which is an interesting movie too. And it's just a very, it's a very weird, it's a weird choice. It's a weird choice to have him doing this because it feels like the movie is fighting between who's in control, him or the idea of a super powered hunter.

And it gets, and so I think Arne DeBose's character kind of gets lost in the whole thing. I mean, in Wikipedia it describes her as a voodoo priestess who aids Craven. No, she's not. She's a lawyer who works at a high class London law firm and helps him track down people. She didn't just, and she at one point she uses a bow and arrow But like it would be more fun if she was a free sis she dabble in having a potion once when she was a kid

You have one potion suddenly your voodoo priestess, you know Don't worry. We'll see that voodoo potion again. Um, so he also he has another reason for going back to London That's because it's his brother Demetri's birthday So he he parkour is up the side of his brother's apartment building. And they reunite. He's gonna be swam there like a fish, using his fish powers. They reunite, they go out in the town. Now his brother at this point, grown up, is played by, what, Fred Hetchinger?

I don't know. He's had a great run. He was in White Lotus, he was the dopey grandson in Thelma. He was one of the two twin emperors in Gladiator II. Yeah, he's just killing it right now. And in this one, he gets to, you know, borrow people's voices for a little while as a chameleon. Well, and he basically, does he own or run this nightclub

where he just performs there? He performs at a nightclub where he sings in the style of other singers. Yes, I think he owns it, I would imagine. That it's like his nightclub that his dad hangs out at. Cause that's what you want when you run your own nightclub is your dad there all the time. And for you to be the only performer

who has to do multiple shows a night, I guess. But I guess maybe that's the fun of it, you know? He was there for the performing. He's not that interested in whether the nightclub operates perfectly well, you know? Around now, Rhino starts to make some moves. He's taking advantage of the gangster that Craven killed back in the prison, and he starts consolidating power. And then he makes a play to try and take out Nikolai Kravinoff at that nightclub. Doesn't work. Nikolai Kravinoff is a

tough old bear. Not literally. You'd be mistaken if you could understand it. I mean he does have a run-in with a big old bear later. So if he was a big old bear it would be better for him. So yeah, he's making a play, he's making moves. And then after Demetri and Sergey celebrate his birthday, Sergey has to go sleep out in a park because he just can't handle being cooped up inside an apartment building. Guys, I gotta admit, I spaced out for a minute when bears were being mentioned to think about the country bears. Yeah, okay.

Sure, yeah, okay. Is Craven killing them? Well, you said that there's a bear and I thought a country bear, but I didn't say it. But then I got onto the thought of country bears and I was like, man, if country bears had been a hit, 100% the sequel would be called City Bears, right? It would be fish out of water bear stuff. Oh my god, that's... Like we gotta revive the franchise just so we can do that. Dan, slap a TM on that bad boy so we can take advantage of this.

I mean, there's so many more you could do. Me on Disney property. City Bears, Jungle Bears, Underwater Bears, you could do all sorts of, you send them anywhere and it's good, Mountain Bears, Space Bears. There are bears in space, but the saying, it's perfect, it's perfect for the anyway. Yeah, sure.

And it's fun that you bring up Country Bears, because that's a movie that we talked about during the Max Fun Drive, we did a commentary during, Oh, that's true, we did do that. for the Max Fun Drive a little bit ago. Elliot, you were saying something about the Max Fun Drive at the start of the episode? I was, this is a great time to take a break

from all this action, all this Russian gangster animal action to talk about the Max Fund Drive. What's the Max Fund Drive? I'm so glad you asked. It's the one time of year when we come to you, hat in hand, and invite you to support our show

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Content universe MFMCU, the Max Fun More Content Universe. Oh great, you got it. So you landed that plane. We did it. Phew. And I may talk about more about, I think about our specific bonus content later in the show, but I just wanted to keep saying that if you are already a member,

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of the Craven brothers, the brothers Cravenov-ov-ov-ov-ov. The brothers Karis Cravenov. You'll get there. And we're at the chapter titled Rhino Makes a Move. So as I said, Rhino makes a move. He consolidates power, he tries to kill Nikolai Kravinov, and he also enlists the aid of a superhuman assassin called the Foreigner, played by Christopher Abbott,

which I was very excited by. I was hoping this meant he was going to be abused by a woman in a hotel room over and over, since that seems to be his specialty these days. Oh, see, I know him best still as Marnie's ex-boyfriend from Girls. So it's very funny to see him as a-

I have some movies I could introduce you to. I know one of the movies you're talking about. What's the other one? Or ones? What was the one that was based on like a Murakami book? Where he's- Oh, that's- I don't know.

That one was fun. He was in that one that was like, is this like-playing or not, right? Yeah, Margaret Qualley Yeah, what was that called sanctuary? Okay? I was like I saw him in Possessor And I saw him in like that. He's great in Possessor. Yeah, he's in the- That's a fun one It's a real fun one He's just a good weird like if you need a weird dude,

and I think he brings the goods in this movie, he's a weird dude in this movie. He is a weird dude in this one. He is a weird, and so the foreigner in the comics is just another one of these guys who's just like, he's the greatest assassin of all. He's the greatest martial arts expert. Oh yeah, he's great in poor things,

as the like weird husband at the end. Oh, I forgot that was him, that's right. But the, he's a. But the foreigner in this movie has some sort of strange superpower where he kind of starts counting. Piercing is the movie where he also gets beat up. I couldn't figure out, and maybe you guys could figure it out,

is his power that he can then move faster than time or is it that he puts someone in a trance and they don't notice him moving? I think it's the trance thing because otherwise like what's the one, two, three, like they seem to be like getting like queasy or whatever. So I think that it's, we're kind of seeing it from their perspective

and it seems like he can move fast because they black out kind of. Ellie, doesn't he have this superpower in the comic books, the foreigner? He does not, no. This is one of several characters in the movie who are, or in the Marvel movies in general, who are very loosely based on the characters whose names they supposedly I thought the foreigner was Jackie Chan, right? Yeah

I think you're right. He was bedeviling Pierce Brosnan. No, the foreigner wants to know what love is and he wants you to show Oh, that's right. Oh I got in trouble last time I showed Like that I got in trouble last time I showed it. Oh, good. It's not like that. No. Okay, so, and also Rhino makes the play. He has his guys go and break into Demetri's flat, and they capture Demetri.

They were hoping to capture Sergey, we later learned, but Sergey was sleeping in the park. Sleeping in the park, yeah. So we get a little action sequence where Craven is chasing after his brother and these goons in the park. Sleeping in the park, yeah. So we get a little action sequence where Craven is chasing after his brother and these goons in a van. I like this sequence. I gotta say, you gotta find the wheat and the chaff

or whatever and I thought the sequence was kind of genuinely exciting and maybe it's because it's the first time in the movie that I feel actual urgent stakes for anything. Because before that, yeah, I hate illegal poachers, so it's kind of fun getting them all murdered by Craven, but it doesn't have the same sort of personal investment or reason

Craven might be worried about something. And this is the first time that we see an action sequence where Craven does not handily just destroy everybody. With no challenge. Don't worry, Elliot, there's going to be more of those. That's true, yeah, thank goodness. But this is one where Kraven is on the back foot and he is at a disadvantage, even if he can absorb unlimited hit points of damage. And at times it seems like the car that he's chasing stops for a couple seconds so that he can catch up to it.

But overall he has a disadvantage here and it's a fun chase for sure. He's got super armor every time he jumps. Okay, so they managed to get away after dragging him through the river with a helicopter. Yeah, he made the odd choice in my mind to use that netting to try and pull the helicopter back rather than climb up the helicopter. I also wondered why he didn't climb up the helicopter.

He was in the low man, he was all caught up. Do all helicopters, it seems like they only do two things, which is they fly up in the air and they all have a beeping thing that goes off when the bad guys are being chased by a good guy. And as soon as that net hits the helicopter, immediately there's that like beep beep beep beep. We got a net alert here. hits the helicopter and immediately there's that like beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep sleep So it's like Outer Bridge? The guy, the bridge that's named after a guy who's named Outer Bridge?

That blew my fucking mind when I first learned that. I mean, that guy for years was like, I gotta do something with this name. So he's gonna build this out of the bridge. I've got to. The Outer Bridge baby food company is not making the most sense. I've gotta drop that and do something else, yeah.

Cool, so they get away. But Craven has. Sorry, so they get away, but Craven has- Sorry, now for some reason I'm thinking about the story of Jezadiah Whoopi, inventor of the Whoopi cushion. Yeah, and the Whoopi pie. And everyone else with that name is like, our name used to mean good cheer, Whoopi!

You ruined it with your invention. Yeah, all the family reunions were big battles from that point on, yeah. So they managed to get away, but Craven got a good- Mr. Whoopi, when was the last time you talked to your son? I have no son. The bad guys get away, but Craven manages to get a good look at the leader and the type of cigarettes he smokes.

Not the leader, the Marvel character who is in Captain America Brave New World. No, oh, I didn't know that. The leader of the, yeah, yeah. Oh, they don smokes. Not the leader, the Marvel character who is in Captain America Brave New World. Nope. The leader of the, yeah, yeah. Oh, they don't call him the leader. Is it Tim Blake Nelson? Him again. Tim Blake Nelson, yeah.

Oh, brought him back. I mean, it's nice to see him back. They really waste him. Oh, just like the first time he showed up. Yeah. Okay, so Calypso, he used the aid of Calypso to track down these mercs, these mercenaries. Turns out that they are operating out of a,

what, a Turkish monastery castle or something in Turkey? She's like, I tracked him down to his family-owned Turkish monastery castle. And I'm like, all right, whatever, sure, whatever. Whatever reason you're gonna set a set piece at this place. But it turns out this whole thing was a trap that the Rhino and the foreigner are trying to trap Craven. Yep.

Which is kind of weird. We should mention that they make a point out of how his name is Sergei Cravenoff, but he started calling himself Craven, and at multiple times characters are like, Craven? I guess that's what he's calling himself now, and it's very silly to me that they bothered to call attention to that. It's also funny that at one point somebody calls him Craven, I guess that's what he's calling himself now. And it's very silly to me that they bothered to call attention to that and make him point of that.

It's also funny that at one point somebody calls him Craven and he's like, how do you know that name? I'm like, well, you are Craven off. Like, I don't know. It's not that difficult. But, and he's, did we ever talk about how he is a mythical figure among these characters that they call the Hunter, who hunts down bad guys.

And they literally have the dumb line that's in every single one of these goddamn movies where they go, the hunter, that's a fable. It's a myth. It's a story to scare criminals. And can we just ban that line of dialogue when someone says the such and such, it's a fable. It's not real, it's a myth.

I hate it. I've heard it so many times in movies now, it's so lazy. It has lost whatever power it once had to make you to help juice up a character so that you think they're cool before they do anything. Yeah. Okay, so it turns out this whole thing's a trap, but it doesn't matter.

It's actually a concert that he's taking his daughter to so they can capture him there. Yeah, it's a trap. Fucking only, dude. Luckily he locates a friendly concessions man who... Man, stop making me think of that movie. So he heads to this monastery, he does some hunting and kills a whole bunch of mercenaries. There's a couple of fun bits where he's like sneaking around, like crawling around on all fours.

I like those bits. They're both fun and also silly that he is just behind some guys crawling around on all fours. And they just don't notice him because he's behind them. He gets to the... It's like the scene in the movie Three Iron where the guy learns the secret of how to always be in somebody's blind spot. So he is stalking behind people,

just going, just kind of like always turning his body slightly. So he's always in their blind spot. It would have been really funny if there was one shot of a guy kind of sitting in another room as they went by and like see this guy like shadow and be like, what the fuck? And he could say what the fuck because this is an R rated movie.

And they just go, shh. And then be like, I don't know, I guess it's their thing. It's as if the movie realizes as it's going that it's an R rated movie because characters start to swear more and more as the movie goes on. Yep, so he cuts his way through all these mercenaries. He captures the leader just in time for them

to blow up the monastery with a missile launcher. He gets just enough information from this guy that the Rhino is the one who set him up and has doomed them to death. Of course, Craven's fine. He gets hit by a bunch of masonry, but he's okay. Calypso, turns out Calypso is being tracked down by the Rhinos guys as well. She has to escape, she's on the run, so...

Kraven uses his pilot friend, just burning through fuel non-stop. I guess he doesn't care about the environment. Uh, and he flies... I guess he's got this movie. Yeah, I got it. Boom. Take that, Kraven. He flies Calypso to his land in Russia, where he now has an airstrip, because I guess he's in and out all the time.

And he lives in like a geodesic dome. Yeah, like a cool little greenhouse. Yeah. And his kitchen has flip down panels full of hunting knives and swords and things like that. Which is insane, because it's like, are you having guests a lot, dude? If people are here, they probably,

there's no need to disguise. Yeah, there's no need to hide it. Like, just leave it out. I think it's all tiny home type stuff. It's just about using the space the best, you know. Yeah, I guess you're right. This table is also a bed, like this bed is also a chair. The sink is also a toilet.

It's a tiny home. You know, everything has a double use, you know. Yeah, that's pretty cool. The toilet is also a shower, if you stand underneath me and I pee on you, and it's just like, I don't think that's how it works. It's okay, I have the world's greatest environmental diet, so my pee is super pure and clean.

I drink so much water, because again, I'm always working out that my pee is just pure water at this point. Yeah Yeah, I don't know. I feel like with all the protein powders he has to be eating. It's got to be messing with his Yeah, so they they have a little bit of time where they're just like hanging out in the woods and he's like showing her stuff And there you know, they're connecting but it doesn't really reach like actual romantic interest. Meanwhile, the rhino and the foreigner managed to, they intimidate Demetri, they chop off one of his fingers. We found out that they tried to get money out of his dad

and his dad's not interested, he doesn't care. He's like, they're gonna kill him anyway. I look weak if I pay. Russell Crowe's accent's way more fun. Yeah. I want to suck your blood. Oh, blah, blah. So they, but they using the foreigner find some trace poison from one of Craven's blow darts

and he tracks down where that flower is from, this pea, is only a very small part Small forest in Russia, so they're like we got him So they fly over there with Demetri and they're gonna track down Craven like Sherlock Holmes He wrote a monograph on that particular plant. So he happened to know that So they bring a bunch of mercenaries and they go to track down Craven Craven gets all his gear on and They we get a little bit of a fight. Craven murderizes a whole bunch of mercenaries with a bunch of Ewok-style traps.

They all step in exactly the right places that they need to step to set off the traps. He's a super hunter. He's a super hunter. Yeah, he knows exactly where someone's gonna set their boot. Eventually, he runs afoul of the foreigner who attacks him with his nightmare gun, which has some kind of poison

that gives you nightmares before killing you. Of course, his nightmares are all spiders. You know why? Spiders? You know why spiders? Because I'm fucking Spider-Man, baby. Because there's no Spider-Man in this universe where the movie takes place. Sorry, I was just fucking Spider-Man, baby. Because there's no Spider-Man in this universe where the movie takes place, but.

I was just taken by the phrase nightmare gun. And it was like, is that a better like direct-to-video movie or is it like a pulp paperback maybe, nightmare gun? Why does it have to be one or the other? It could be all of them. Yeah. Metal band. It makes sense, if you know Craven's a Spider-Man character, it makes sense he has this spider dream.

I mean, it also, it hearkens back to Craven's last hunt where there's a sequence where he's just eating handfuls of spiders. They're crawling all over and he's just picking them up and eating them. So he can become the Spider-Man, right? Yes, so he can become the Spider, exactly. Because then he puts on Spider-Man's costume

and he says, I'm going to be better than you and I'm going to do the things you couldn't do. But it is very silly to me that this guy who's like the ultimate hunter and has kinship with all the animals is afraid of spiders, something that is just a normal thing everybody encounters pretty much in daily life. It would have been so funnier if his nightmare was that

the forest was replaced with a city and he was wearing a suit and he had to carry a briefcase. I have a counterpoint. I have a counterpoint. Three piece cage, you know? But spiders are really weird looking. That's true. Spiders are freaky. Again, I would, it's more the point, it's less that spiders are not inherently strange

or scary, but rather that Craven has been built up to us as a man of nature, a man of the wild. And so the idea that a spider would, a little spider would scare him seems like a strange Achilles heel for a guy who I guarantee you has woken up with bugs and spiders crawling all over him many times in his life. So and I'm sure he uses them as a source of protein. So we get a little bit of a fight.

He's microproteining all day. We get a little fight between the foreigner and a drugged up Kraven. It's mainly Christopher Abbott doing some cool kicks and knee moves, it's pretty cool, I like it. And it looks like he's- I like knee moves. He really takes his time, he takes his,

instead of just shooting Kraven in the head, he takes his time kind of stunting the whole time. Yeah, of course. And he even goes so far, he's got Kraven where he wants him and he dismisses the other mercenaries, he's like, oh, this is done, you can leave. So they leave and tell their boss, yeah, I guess Craven's dead, so he can go. But before you can do the-

What is inexplicable? I'm sorry, I know you watch Reacher. I watch Reacher all the time. Are you up to date on Reacher? Heck yeah, I am. There is an episode, I don't wanna spoil anything too much for people, so jump ahead if you're worried at all, but there's an episode where Reacher's like,

I'm going to let you go do this thing alone, and I'm like, no, Reacher, why would you do that? You're the big burly one. Yeah. You gotta be there. This is not going to end well anyway, sorry. So. So the foreigner then, alone with Krayvon, kills him, right?

He's about to do his coup de grace, and he starts doing his count off, but of course he's interrupted. Calypso shoots an arrow through his eye socket, killing him instantly. She gives us a little tagline, like three bitch or something. He counts one, two, and then she says, she goes, three motherfucker.

And it's like, what a cool move. And also like, so did she hear him mumbling the numbers to himself from far away? Yeah, I don't know how this magic works. They rehearsed this earlier actually. She comes over, Craven's dead from all the toxins. She gives him a little nip of the old super juice. A little swing of that, a little hair of the dog that brought you back to life. Yep. Brings him, puts him back in the game.

He gets a one-up and... I wish, I wish Scott Coltrane style. A one-up and then just go, ding, and float it up to the top of the screen. Here's a little life bar. The one, he's a whimsy in the whole movie. So, so the Rhino manages, and we find out the reason he's called the Rhino, and we're gonna learn more in a second,

is that both out of his attitude, that like a Rhino, and we're gonna learn more in a second, is that both out of his attitude that like a rhino, if he sees an opportunity, he charges forward without thinking. Yeah. But more importantly. More importantly, in his quest to overcome his physical frailty, he underwent experimental treatments from a doctor in New York. A doctor in New York, he drops the name Dr. Miles Warren,

who is another Spider-Man villain, the Jackal, who is better known as the creator of the Spider-Clone. And he's the guy who's behind every cloning thing in Spider-Man. He's a real crappy villain. Like he's the kind of villain who is not that interesting to look at, not that fun to see stories with, and he has caused way more trouble than it's worth.

But anyway, he says Dr. Miles Warren, he's the one who gave me this treatment to make me stronger. And what kind of treatment is it Stuart? The treatment, it seems to have been some kind of a failed treatment, because what it does is it makes him very strong and indestructible.

His skin turns hard like a rhino's. It makes him indestructible like a rhino. I'm like, I'm sad to report, rhinos are not indestructible. They are endangered actually, because they're so easy to kill. Yeah. But if he is not connected to some kind of a medicine,

his body rapidly crusts over into this like armored form basically, right? Yeah. He looks kind of like the thing or like the Rhino basically But also just looks like the character the right Oh, yeah I kind of love how like low-tech it feels cuz it feels like he's just got like a like a gas can like one of Those rope there's a plastic rubber gas cans

Like hooked up in his back Backpack that just goes into a port in his side and just put fills him full of no Rhino juice What's this liquid? Oh, this is what keeps me from being a Rhino. Yeah, and I mean, I like... It is a thing where he kind of dresses like a little kid going to school wearing a little backpack, so I could see why other gangsters might not take him seriously, but... Yeah. So, the Rhino and his remaining goons scoop up Demetri.

They're like, I guess we'll try and ransom him anyway. And they start driving off. Rhino and his remaining goons scoop up Demetri. They're like, I guess we'll try and ransom him anyway. And they start driving off. They're like, job's done, Craven's dead, hooray. Of course, now Craven shows up with a stampede of, what do you say, oxen? I called them wildebeests, some kind of large. I think they're some kind of large pack animal.

Large quadruped, cattle-like quadruped. Rontos, are they Rontos? They're probably Rontos. Yeah, they might be Rontos. Yeah, they could be. And they smash into the convoy, they smash all the stuff, all the goons get smushed. They used to have a great big convoy. That's a joke for, I guess, people who remember novelty songs from the 70s. Yeah, sure. It feels like our audience.

That's the right podcast. Guess so. So, Demetri our audience. That's the right podcast. I guess so. So, Demetri gets knocked around, but he's okay. Rhino's like, it's Rhino time. So he unhooks himself and he gets all crusty and he grows a couple of horns on his head. That looks cool. I want to talk about the Rhino.

I want to pause for a minute to talk about the Rhino design. So the Rhino is a fully CGI character at this point. There's no, you're not seeing a real actor. It's probably a mocap thing, but they decided for some reason, but that also means that this character who has been a very talkative character up to this point,

when he's the rhino, he just bellows and screams and roars. He doesn't have any lines of dialogue, but the rhino in the comics is a pretty, like a pretty big round guy. Like he has a body like a Rhino. Like he's like a walking tank. He's huge, yeah. Whereas this Rhino has a very tiny waist

and is super cut just like Craven. And I thought this looked hilarious to me, that this Rhino has like a wasp waist. No, you're right. And these huge shoulders and huge pecs. And then like no other size legs. It kind of looks like they're all for this guy, yeah. Vin Diesel, pet a rhino head.

Yeah, sort of. Rhinos notoriously don't work out their lower body. They don't know. It's kind of cool that like his shirt rips off, but his pants stay pristine. Yeah, he has those stretch pants that can move with rhino muscles. No, he goes for bulks. His waist is up. He has scrunch butt yoga pants.

Yeah, his waist was just so narrow that I kept thinking that Craven was going to snap him in half. with rhino muscles. He goes from Hulk's stuff. He has scrunch butt yoga pants. His waist was just so narrow that I kept thinking that Craven was going to snap him in half. It seemed like a real weak point. I was trying to think of where you buy the Hulk pants. Like H&M, Hulk and Monsters. Is that where you get them? Yeah, that's the fastest casual place for pants that you wear when you're a... Surprisingly more expensive than you would think.

Yeah. So yeah, so they fight. There's a couple of like jokes here and there about how heavy Rhino is. And it seems like Rhino is getting the best of Craven. He's like punching him and throwing cars at him and stuff. It is kind of weird though, because I feel like becoming the Rhino

causes him so much pain, he wouldn't actually train as Rhino very often, right? I would think not. So the trained fighter would probably do better. I don't know, because the Rhino is so much bigger and stronger, that if Kraven didn't have protagonist protection, then you would think that Rhino

would very easily just pick him up and tear his head off. Especially since he's recovering from a fatal dose of poison. Well also, until- But he also had a non-fatal dose of magic potion TBD. Yeah, that's, the cancel's out. But also, until Kraven notices,

oh, right, the Rhino's useful. There's literally no weakness on the rhino that he can take advantage of. Rhino thick skin, yeah. Unfortunate for the rhino, yes, he does have an open medical port on his side. And his shirt ripping off reveals that. Yeah, which is probably helpful that he has,

that that's his route into the rhino, when he stabs a pipe into the pork, and he starts bleeding everywhere. That's better than life sucks on him. That is a cool way for him to stop him. What do you like if he had to do that than like blast his eyeballs out or something? He sucks on the ends so that he can create a vacuum

like you're siphoning oil, so the blood will just pour out of him, yeah. Well, and then he drinks all the blood, and then his skin booms Rhino skin, and then we have an equal battle. Oh, no, that would be cool. So he blasts him and the Rhino's pretty fucked up at this point and then he wraps a toe chain around him

and then throws the toe chain into the herd of wild beasts who then drag him around and he gets all trampled. But then his chain disappears. Like, and then he's dragged around and trampled. And then when Craven goes over to him, the chain is gone. And I'm like, all right, well, I guess the- The little beast took it. The little beast are like, cool, free chain.

It's untied so he can use it. Free chain, see lace, suck up. Yeah, yeah. Good quality chain like this? We're gonna create a society built around the beautiful chain. Worship of the chain. We worship the chain. We're gonna roll out the lace.

We finally have something to protect our boat. Yeah. Yeah, to wrap around our tires when it gets snowy. Tintin's dog snowy? When Tintin's dog snowy shows up, you need to have chains on your tires. Otherwise, you cannot drive over it. I understand that. That makes sense. Don't drive over Snowy.

Don't do it, he's such a cute little terrier. Oh no. I'm a drunk sea captain. You know I'm gonna be driving over a Snowy. And that's when Tin Tin goes out for revenge. And it's like John Wick, but it's tinted. It's called Tin Wick. Oh man, oh man, that's two things mushed together.

That's 90% of the t-shirts that are sold to me on Facebook. 10 men is? Yeah, that's what 10 men is about. Yeah, it's about 10, 10 is grown up, Snowy is dead. He's a salesman now. Terrible. Yeah. And then the last one is the 10 commandments where he explains

philosophies of life. It's an older man. Yeah. That's when he goes up to the mountain, when he comes down there worshiping a golden snowy and he has to smash it. So... He goes up in the drunken sea captain is like, I guess we need a different religion now.

Let's worship the dog. Yeah, the sea captain throws his bottle of booze at him. He's like, never again. Yeah. and he throws his bottle of booze at him. He's like, never again. Yeah. So, yeah, so Craven approaches a thoroughly stompified, rapidly dying Rhino who is missing.

There's no chain anywhere to be found. Huge flaw. Rhino's dying. Someone out there. And this is where the Rhino reveals, he's like, of course, you know, he hints at how he was able to find out Craven's true identity, which we'll later find out was that his father

had leaked the information. This is also where the Rhino says the, his final words are, "'I wish I'd never met you Cravenoffs.'" I'm like, man, this shit, It went real bad for you, dude. You're right. I had so much potential. Look at what I accomplished.

Your life would have been much better without meeting the Cravenoffs. Yeah, you wouldn't be a Rhino man for one thing. So Rhino's dead. Everybody's happy. Now we, now we begin. You're saying a yum-num. Now we begin. There are now multiple.

The musk ox now celebrate that the end of the rhino tyranny has come and they topple statues, there's fireworks. And you're like, oh great, the movie's over. Nope, we have a bunch of epilogues. Epilogue one, there's more epilogues in this movie than in fucking Venom 3. Out of both movies were movies where I'd be like,

oh, this has to be the end climax of the movie and I'd pause it and there would be 25 minutes left in the movie. Although luckily, luckily Stuart, out of the two, you're summarizing the one that doesn't have credit sequences. What? We'll get to it. Okay, so, epilogue one, this is where Craven tracks down his father who is on a solo hunting trip somewhere.

They talk some shit a little bit. He's not hunting with the Marvel hitman Solo, is another character who does not is not in this movie? But it's a mark solo from the movie solo wouldn't be pretty cool if solo and maybe like silver sable showed up Sure. Yeah Silver sable foreigners ex-wife in the comics. Yeah. Yeah that played by played by what Allison? What's her name? Marnie from Amazing it was Allison Williams playing Silver Sable, and it was a girls reunion.

Yeah, I would love it. That's what the fans, that's what Marvel fans are craving, is a girls reunion. This Marvel fan is. Anyway, continue. Okay, so there's a, so they talk some shit, you know, they're like, you know.

Wait, cause what's her name? Mamet, who's also in Girls. She was in Madame Web. Madame Web, yeah. We're just Alison Williams and Lena Dunham away from a Sony, Spider-Man, Universe, Girls are Alien. Oh yeah, Jemma, that's right also, yeah. But yeah, put her in, put her in.

She could be the kangaroo, you know, just make that character of a woman instead of a man, yeah. So, they talk some shit, there's the like, we're not so different, yada, yada, yada, and then Craven wanders off and then a giant bear shows up and kills his dad. And he has taken his dad's bullets. So his dad is helpless against this bear, yeah.

We don't actually see him die, so he might show up later as like a bear man. Epilogue number two. I mean, there's a Spider-Man villain called Grizzly. He could come back as that, yeah. Epilogue two, this is technically a year later because it's Demetri's next birthday. They're hanging out at Demetri's club.

They're catching up. Demetri has a bit of a heel turn. It turns out that he has now taken over his father's empire and he is now the supervillain, the chameleon, and he can morph his face and voice. But also he basically dresses down Craven for being like, oh, you're so high and mighty. You think you're so moral.

You're just like dad. And Craven's attitude at the end of the movie kind of suggests that he accepts that this is true. And in a slightly better movie, I kind of thought this was sort of cool at the end. The brother's like, hey, guess what? If you're just going out and murdering a list of people, maybe you're not the hero.

The movie's gonna acknowledge that. What happened to Dad, a hunting accident? But let's not forget the funny part of this, which is when to reveal his power, Demetri walks off and Stregae is like, hey, hey, talk to me. And Demetri turns around and he has Craven's head on his much shorter body.

And it is hilarious to see this guy looking at a shorter version of himself and he's got a smirk on his face like, eh, see what I can do. Oh, that's what I'd look like as a shorter man. He went to Dr. Exactly. So he went to Dr. Miles Warren and got chameleon face powers.

But it is very funny, this visual, just to be confronted by a much shorter version of yourself. Yeah, you're like, is this what I looked like as a kid? No, no. No, I didn't have a beard back then. Okay, and then we have a final epilogue. This is where Craven returns to his father's house. Everything is packed up in boxes,

but there is a gift for him with a note. He opens up that box. You know what that shit is? It is his, it's his cool lion vest. The whole time you're like, why isn't Craven dressed like Craven? It's because they had to wait till the very fucking end like they always do.

He puts on this cool vest, takes his shirt off so you can see all those fucking abs. He's got the fucking King's Hawaiian fucking abs there. It's amazing. It's really like, he has extra abs that other human beings don't have. It seems like. And then he sits down in the big ass throne style chair

from the classic Craven pose. And he like, you know, man spreads, sits in that chair with that cool ass fucking vest. And you're like, hell yeah, that's what I've waited this whole movie to see. Yeah. And I'm sure they just- Sitting down.

But didn't they just put that shit on the poster? Like, come on. I think that it was one of the posters. So you have to wait the whole movie to get to the image that the poster shows you. Yeah. And then that's the end. Were there...

I don't recall there were... There were no... There were no... I think by the time this movie was coming out, I think there was an understanding... The writing was on the wall. ...that this experiment had run its course. This no-Spider-Man, Spider-Man universe. And they might have, at some point, intended one of the...

At least one of those epilogues to be a post-c. Oh it's possible yeah. I could see that I could say I could definitely see if the the chameleon scene being a mid credit scene instead of a instead of a and then sitting in the chairs the very is the final post credit. Yeah. Okay so that was K K K K K Raven. Thank you for taking on summary duties and now for our summary judgments, our final judgments of whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kinda like. I'm just gonna say, I apologize if this is sort of

getting ahead of ourselves, I don't know if we'll return to this topic with the Vidim episode, which we're recording later, I don't know which one we're releasing first, but I think this is at the bottom of my Spider-Man, without Spider-Man, Sony villain films, because it is so just sort of joyless. Like it does not have either the wacky fun of Madame Web,

which is my favorite of all these. Love it, yeah, love it. Or even Tom Hardy's joy in making Venom movies. Like clearly this is the love of his life. Whether the movies are that great or not. This just feels like unfortunately they made a worse movie by trying to make a better one. Yes.

And I think it's bad. We'll talk about the Venom movies probably when we talk about Venom 3. But I feel like the Venom movies are very, feel like straightforward movies that manage to fit a lot of weirdness into the margins. And this movie, for the most part, is very straight-faced and very boring.

I like that there were kind of more, like, super villains than I expected. Like, as soon as Christopher Abbott showed up, I'm like, okay, I like this stuff. But yeah, this one's kind of, this is a fairly boring mess. It's like, I just don't know who it's for. Like who, yeah, it feels like destined to just like be like an afternoon action movie,

like direct, you know, like cable launch, you know what I mean? I agree that it's one that I feel similarly. It's a movie that is kind of afraid of having fun or of being fun, which is strange for a Craven the Hunter movie. And I agree that there's a surprising amount of like superpowers in it for a movie that I expected to have none.

I thought this was gonna be like just a guy stabbing guys in suits, basically who fire guns at him. And so it was nice that they really leaned into the fact that some of the characters have extraordinary powers, but it really wants you to take it seriously, which I think is a hard ask for this movie. And with the Venom movies, at the very least, they don't want you to take it fully seriously

all the time. Where does this portrayal, onscreen portrayal of the Rhino fit for you? Is this better or worse than Paul Giamatti as the Rhino? I feel like that was a little bit too much having fun. That's kind of the opposite where there they were like, we're not even gonna bother trying to take any of this seriously.

So I don't know, I feel like the, I like his performance until he becomes the Rhino visual on screen. And there I feel like that visual doesn't quite work for me. He has a little waist. He's got tiny hands, but huge shoulders so there's something very kind of like Weirdly out of proportion with him that instead of creating a sense of power and strength to me created a sense of like oh I hope this guy's okay. It looks like an action figure based on a cartoon. Yeah, like Johnny Brown Yeah, he's Johnny Brown. He does look like Johnny Bravo.

Yeah, there's something very Popeye about him too. But this movie is, I was gonna say in terms of these no Spider-Man, Spider-Man movies that we've watched, it's also pretty far down and in some ways, I think Morbius is a worse movie, but I think it is a more fun movie to watch than this one. I totally agree actually Competently dull for the most part. Yeah, at least Matt Smith has fun and

and there's Wacky stuff like when they're like they cut to that chiron. That's like International waters and you start rubbing your hands like oh he can do his bad He has a work he works at a New York hospital, but he has a secret man-sized cylinder full of bats in his office. Boss, the cleaning crew was in here just dusting things and they found this cylinder of bats in your office. It's okay, the guy we hired is a Nobel Prize winning scientist and also a vampire so it's okay. Hey, boss, your Chewy order showed showed up it's full of bat chow. Why do you want me to put this thing? I'm the guano delivery guy I got a call to come to this hospital and remove some guano

so I can deliver it. Oh yeah just a sideline I have selling the guano yeah. Big money in guano. Anyway I think you had something else to say, maybe at this point. I did have something else to say at this point. I mentioned bonus content before. Let's talk a little bit about it.

It's the Max Fund Drive. I've told you a couple of times. I'll tell you this time and at least one more time before the show is over. Bonus content, what is it? It is a library of episodes of your favorite podcast that you can only listen to when you're a Max Fun member. And that library just grows every year.

It's not like each year we clear out the vault and put new stuff in, it just grows. So the library has gotten really big over the course of the past, I don't know what decade or more that we and other shows have been putting together bonus content. Some of these are team ups between different Maximum Fun hosts.

Some are Maximum Fun hosts taking over each other's shows, episodes with special guests. And as we've said, we've done some audio commentaries for movies. We've done extra episodes where we talk about different movies. Last year we did three extra full episodes talking about the movies of Graydon Clark, I believe it was. And the, including the all time video game classic joysticks. And this year we are going back to the game playing well, very excited about it. We are once again doing a flop tales,

or as it's called this time, slop tales game, where Stuart has run us and our good friends, Jubin Prang through a new role playing adventure set in a new setting, but using variations of our beloved characters. What are we doing today? Just going out and slopping the pigs? What's the...

What does this mean? You guys have fallen into my restaurant trap. Oh. Yeah, it's a restaurant themed role playing game and it was super fun. I had such a good time doing it. We got to play characters that were a little bit, at least in my case, out of my usual comfort zone

and it was really fun. I think you're really going to enjoy it. I also, just a side note, Stuart, I like it when you sort of provide notes comfort zone and it was it was really fun it was I think you're really gonna enjoy it I Just a side note sir I like it when you sort of provide notes of what sort of Genre tone we're aiming for in there like I enjoyed the dog ones cuz it's like oh you're you're in like a Don Bluth Cartoon and this one you're like oh you're in kind of an old-fashioned three camera sitcom set in a Restaurant and so I think that was a lot of fun to do. And it worked out really well. So if you join or you're already a member,

you get access to the entire library bonus content, every single maximum fun show, hundreds of hours of extra entertainment that you're gonna need to get through these hard times we're living in. When you join, it's just $5 a month. And higher than that, you get extra stuff, but you still get access to that bonus content.

And if you're thinking strictly about value, that's a great value. Five dollars a month for hundreds of hours of extra shows. And we're excited about the bonus content we're doing this year. It was, like I said, super fun. I think you're really going to enjoy it. It's a great game that Stuart brought us through. And it was great to have our friend, Juben, coming in and joining us

because he always brings a little extra comic spice. As I said while we were recording it, there's nothing funnier to me than a Cuban performance as a character who is attempting to exude confidence and authority and failing consistently to do that. So to listen to that show, to listen to all of our bonus stuff, will you please join us as a member by going to maximumfund.org slash join

and either joining at the $5 a month level or upgrading or boosting your membership. And one last thing I wanna talk about, this is a different kind of bonus from your membership. It's not bonus content that affects you necessarily, but it is a way that this show affects other people. We just to toot our own horn for a minute. We hear a lot from people who say,

thank you for doing this really ridiculous show because I had a hard time and it really got me through it or something tragic or sad happened in my life and I needed to laugh about something that was goofy or ridiculous or dumb and you guys helped me with it. And it is your membership that helps us to keep this show alive that makes that possible. So you're not just providing entertainment for you,

you're providing the kind of escape valve that so many of us need when stressful things happen in our lives. I've had a very stressful past year and a half to two years and doing this show has provided such a necessary thing for me to have fun and to enjoy myself, to be with my friends, to feel like I am making other people laugh.

It's been really wonderful. And so your membership makes it possible not just for you to enjoy it, but for other people enjoy myself, to be with my friends, to feel like I am making other people laugh. It's been really wonderful. And so your membership makes it possible not just for you to enjoy it, but for other people enjoy it, especially at those times when they need enjoyment the most. So- I wanna hop in for a second, sorry, and just say something about gift memberships, just because you kind of bring up this area.

Sure, sure. I'm very, it's nice thing that MaxFun has done where you can actually gift a membership to someone else. And I know that this is like a very weird time right now. I don't think we need to get into it, but I'll just leave it there. And if you feel like it's not a time that you can do the sort of supporting,

certainly understand. But these gift memberships are kind of nice because people who are in a better position, maybe are no maximum fun fan can be like, you know what, I'm going to get a membership for you. And I think that's sort of a sweet thing that the network allows to happen. Yeah, as Rabbi Hillel famously said,

if I'm not for myself, who will be? If I'm only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? So do something for yourself, do something for others, do it now, go to maximumfun.org slash join and join or upgrade or boost your membership to keep the Flophouse rolling along, singing a song side by side. Hey you. Yeah, you with With the GigaPet!

Me? Do you like supporting artist-owned podcasts? Totally! What about limited edition gifts, hours and hours of bonus content, and more? Sounds sweet! Then stay tuned for Max Fun Drive 2025! www.maximumfun.org on the World Wide Web next week. Hi, I'm Alexis.

And I'm Ella. And we're the hosts of Comfort Creatures. We could spend the next 28 seconds telling you why you should listen, but instead here's what our listeners have said about our show because really they do know best. The show is filled with stories and poems and science and friendship and laughter and tears sometimes, but tears that are from your heart being so filled up with love. A cozy show about enthusiasm for animals of all kinds, real and unreal. If you greet the dog before the person walking them or wander around the party looking for

the host's cat, this podcast is for you. So come for the comfort and stay for Alexis's wild story about waking up to her cat giving birth on top of her. So if that sounds like your cup of tea or coffee a coffee, Ella, we're not all brits. Then join us every Thursday at MaximumFun.org. Shall I read some letters, boys? Yeah, why not? Okay, sure.

Individual ones, G, K, R. G, K? Oh, man. That's certainly the kind of joke that's worth $5 a month, right? Sorry, guys. Oops. Oops. Oh no.

Somebody gave Elliot his stinker serum. Yeah, well that's what we need the money for. We gotta keep buying that serum. This letter, I just wanna say this episode, this letter is from Sam Lasting Withheld, who writes? Oh, Yosemite Sam, yeah. Hey guys. He writes, dear Flophouse, ooh that varmint.

Ooh, bracken fracken. Sam says, hey guys, new listener, long time Max Fun supporter, I've got a weird prompt for you. One of my favorite small pleasures in life is the feeling of bathing after doing something that makes me feel real grimy. Oh, okay.

Hiking, camping, yard work, et cetera. So whenever I'm watching a movie where a character has gone through a really harrowing physical experience that leaves them filthy and disheveled, I like to imagine how satisfying the subsequent bathing experience is. A great example is John McClane at the end of Any Die Hard. Shawshank Redemption tries to deliver that satisfaction,

but presumably that pond was full of sewage, which seems like a real vibe killer. Is this something you can even relate to? And if so, what movies characters come to mind? Thanks, love the show, Sam. I mean, this absolutely, it's like a weird stress comes upon me when someone seems really dirty in a movie. I'm like, oh man, like I don't want to deal with that.

All their stuff. Yeah, the thing that, I don't know if this is the one, but the thing that came to mind is in Raising Arizona, when they come out there, I'm actually absolutely slathered. I mean, it's much like the Shawshank scene, right? Yeah. Same level of heroes. Mm-hmm.

I think for, I also similarly have had that thought of like, ooh, it's going to feel so good when they wash off all that stuff. Usually think about the actors. But the end of Jurassic Park, I got, I remember getting that feeling even like, oh, it's gonna feel so good when they wash off all that stuff. Usually think about the actors. But the end of Jurassic Park, I got, I remember getting that feeling even as a kid, watching how the kids in that are like, dirty from their adventure and just like,

oh, it's gonna fit, that moment when they're like, eating ice cream in the, before they're attacked, I guess, it's like, oh, if only, like, if only they could like bathe and clean off, then this would be, they'd really be able to recover from being chased by dinosaurs and electrocuted by a fence. Yeah, no, that's, I mean, I feel like that's such a, like a natural human thing.

The problem is when the movie shows somebody getting to wash off, you're like, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Yeah. Is the dinosaur gonna pop into the shower and eat him? Yeah, it's always a bad moment when you get to see it. Yeah, it's like at the end of Gremlins when Billy is, when he's fighting with, he's got that baseball bat and Stripe has the chainsaw and all those wood chips are flying onto him

and sticking to his blood from the cuts on him. That's another one where I'm like, oh, it's gonna feel good to wash all that off for sure. But then you don't want the gremlin again, as you're saying Stuart, to get into the shower with you because he'll get wet, multiply, then you got a bigger problem. Here we go again. Then you have to drop your shower radio into the shower

to electrocute the gremlin, but you're going to electrocute yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Our only hope is that you're gonna come back like Ernest and Ernest goes to jail. More gremlins, more problems. Have electric problems, yeah. Have Electric Problems, yeah.

Electric Problems, that's another good title. Okay, this is from Pete. That's a great, either band or New Wave album. Electric Problems is a discarded Philip K. Dickens short story collection. That was his placeholder title for a lot of his books. It's just sort of generally what I have. Pete Lesch, name withheld, says, hey, Flopsters, I was listening to your Rebel Moon episodes and thinking about something Elliot said regarding how fun is the factor that makes Star Wars

work. And I was thinking that a lot of franchise stuff goes the ways of seriousness in remakes with mixed results. Like Kray. Batman and Ninja Turtles kind of oscillate between serious and less so. Transformers and Ghostbusters seem to have gotten a little more sincere. The RoboCop remake was less goofy.

Superman got more serious. The Mummy with Tom Cruise was a lot more dour than the Brendan Fraser one. It's crazy that the RoboCop remake got both less goofy and also had less to say. Yeah. I see this a lot in comics, a previously silly character storyline

that someone adapts to be less comedic, although Elliot's Spider-Man the X-Men was fun and had sincere moments and I loved it. Oh, thank you. Still see it memed. And you kind of find more of that in the Harley Quinn series, currently in DC? There's some exceptions that come to mind.

Fury Road is definitely sillier than Mad Max. Rocky IV is the silliest Rocky movie, but not the last. But as a fan of silly things, I'm mildly alarmed that things are often made less fun. What do you think it is about remaking things that causes people to take it down that road as opposed to making things that were serious before more wacky, like a wacky John Wick, John Whack.

Thanks. John Whack is a series of movies that were kind of outside the purview of the flop house. Outside the purview of the flop house. Thanks, I've had so many laughs and good times listening that I'm going to need you all to take really good care of yourselves so it goes on forever. Pete last name withheld.

I have a lot of, I think everyone has a lot of thoughts on this. I just wanted to say that what comes to me immediately is like sequels in a row tend to get wackier and wackier and wackier most of the time. And then when you reboot something, it tends to be serious. So there are a lot of things that are going on here,

including like cultural shifts, but I think that part of it is, it's often like a reboot of like, oh, that franchise got so wacky by the end, we have to take it back to basics. By doing that, they like make it even grittier and more joyless than the original was. That's definitely been the Batman storyline

going back to the Adam West Batman series, which is wacky. So Tim Burton's Batman is less wacky, but by the time it gets to Joel Schumacher's sequels, it's very wacky. So they reboot it with the Christopher Nolan movies, which Dark Knight Rises is fairly wacky at times. And so they reboot it again and make it joyless.

Yeah, so I think you're exactly right, Dan. You've anatomized that really well. But I think it is probably cultural shifts too. And I feel like there's a thing where, especially when you're talking about bigger properties, that like the sillier you make it, the more likely people are going to, audiences are going to struggle with how to like accept it.

Like they're gonna be like, is this a comedy now? And especially with certain things like, people like to put things into very specific genre boxes and when they become a certain thing, it's, I don't know. Yeah, I don't wanna sound like an old man, but I do have this sort of general feeling that people were more accepting that multiple tones could exist in something at a point,

and it's become harder for people to parse that somehow? I don't know. I think it is too. They've been crazy. I would call that, if I was being, if I was coming up with a theory off the top of my head, based on very little, I would say that is a combination of the thing,

the people who make the decisions about what is being made, being people who themselves have less of a sense of aesthetic understanding in that way. And so the things that get made, that audiences learn how to watch things from, especially young audiences, don't have that experience of watching something that has multiple tones in it.

Even the Godfather has jokes in it. Yeah. You know, The Good, like Goodfellas is a very, just talk about gangster movies. Goodfellas is a like super funny movie, but also really hard hitting and meaningful movie and emotionally rough at times. And it, but those are both movies

that are made by master artists. And I feel like in the old days, there was often a better mix, often not a better mix, but there would be a more mix, often not a better mix, but there would be more of a mix of tones, whereas now it feels like the best you can hope for is a really, in mainstream entertainment, seems like a really gritty thing that has some one-liners in it, or something that's super goofy, where at the very end, they throw in a scene of an attempt at high emotion, you know, to get a character arc in there. And I think that's a, I think you could put more,

the onus of that I think is more on the, I think the economics of what gets made and what doesn't and how it gets made more than any individual creative choice that anyone is making. But that's a more complicated thing than I know how to talk about. But it's a, but it does- For the love of us.

For the love of us, I've been, Ellie Galen. But it is frustrating sometimes when something is unrelentingly dour or not having fun. Or I think there's a misunderstanding sometimes about what audiences want out of the things that they're watching, and what they're going to enjoy from it. But there's also the negative pressure

that we've seen so often in the past 15, 20 years, I feel like, of people who enjoy a thing that is essentially, this is talking very broadly, now I'm gonna sound like Alan Moore, who enjoy a thing from their childhood and they want to continue to enjoy it and they want it to grow up with them. And maybe that thing is not really a good fit

for the kind of mature storytelling they really should be getting at this age. And also when a lot of things are catered toward an existing audience for that thing, that the people making that product, or that content are worried that they are going to, by making it silly, they're being disrespectful for it. It's similar to the way that like,

a certain, let's say vocal faction amongst Marvel fans were complaining about the She-Hulk TV show as being a comedy and it's like, you never read fucking She-Hulk then, did you? That was a funny comic book. She-Hulk has been a comedy comic for 40 years now, 35 years. Like, yeah, it's a, but they, yeah, I think there's a, there's a sense of defensiveness

about it that makes it harder for them to have fun, harder for creators to have fun with it because the fans are defensively, you know, open to feeling like they're being ridiculed. There's a theory I read years ago, not years ago, like a year ago, and I wonder if it's like, that there's a kind of person who is a fan of these things,

who feels like they have very little control over their lives, either politically, economically, any of that stuff, but this is one thing they feel like they can have control over, and they can feel they can have possession or ownership of, and it creates a kind of a negative fan base for, you know, superhero content specifically,

or genre content that the people making the new stuff feel like they have to cater to, certainly. And that's, but I think to go back to the original question in the thing, it is disappointing sometimes that like you can't have, that they feel like they can't have fun with some of this stuff because it's gotta be serious enough that people feel, that people can feel like it's being taken seriously.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, occasionally I think it can swing backwards, but it has to be something where it probably should have been a goofier tone in the first place anyway. I'm thinking about how they're the terrible Michael Bay either made or produce Turtles movies, and then they made the Mutant Mayhem cartoon,

which swung back goofy correctly. I mean like, oh you know what, like I think that this is the world this works best in, a little lighter than what you came up with. I mean for the reasons that see. No we have to tell this story about mutant ninja teenagers. And look. Who are turtles.

Who are a giant turtle. I understand. Whose dad is a rat, you know. I understand the listeners out there are thinking, oh but the Eastman and Laird comics, right? I know, but like that was also kind of- That's a pretty good straw man impression. It was a parody of, oh, I absolutely guarantee you someone was thinking that. Oh, the Eastman and Laird comics.

When Cerebus showed up. Those were, started at least as kind of a parody of that sort of Frank Miller stuff before taking himself seriously. But those are also fun comics. As much as they're more serious than Mutant Mayhem, the thing that I always loved about the Eastman Laird comics was the characters, they were basically prototypes in some ways, I don't know that Mike Manolo would say this,

but prototypes for Hellboy as characters who would go on adventures and then just be like, oh, that sucks. Anyway, let's go have a drink. Let's have a beer. Great, cool, dude. Like they spent a lot of time hanging out, you know, and things like that. And so they felt, there was a lighter element

that ran through that still, even as they were stabbing people. So let's recommend some like silly ones. Let's do a couple of silly ones. I know mine is a silly one. Do you have to be a silly one? No, you can do some silly ones. Let's do a couple of silly ones. I know mine is a silly one. Do you have to be a silly one? No, you can do whatever you want. Because I'd like to recommend,

last stop in Yuma County. Is that a silly one? Are we doing recommendations now? Yeah, we're doing recommendations. Okay. Is that okay, Elliot? Yeah, no, it's fine. We're all on board.

It was a very natural segue, but I was not quite sure we were running. So we had to get up the works. That's just driving the segue. We had to get up the works by asking about it. You know, I saw this return to's returned to movies Dan saw on a plane. I saw it on a plane. It's a...

A continuing series of screenings. Very small. See, some people do extra flights so they can get like miles or points or whatever. Dan does it so we can watch more flicks. Optimal viewing conditions. High flicks is what he calls them. No, this is a small little contained noir. Stuff goes wrong at a diner. There's a tense standoff over an afternoon.

I don't want to get too much into it because the twists and turns are the fun of it, but it is directed beautifully. Sam Raimi, I think, tapped this director to be a future Evil Dead director off of this picture. It has a small part for our friend of the show, Barbara Crampton is in it. Can't go wrong.

And it has some of the flavor of an early Coen Brothers movie. I mean, not quite to that level, but it's in the conversation. Or like a Red Rock West type. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So what do you guys do? I'm gonna recommend a movie that fits

within the silly theme. I'm gonna recommend The Monkey, Osgood Perkins' horror comedy. What was that, Dan? That's right, I just started buttering. Can't stop doing The Monkey. I think I just watched that episode of The Simpsons, by the way, yeah.

Go, go, Ray. Yeah, it was funny. So yeah, the other night, the night before my birthday, I went to a pre-birthday screening of The Monkey. I dragged my buddy Dan, as well as a couple of my other Brooklyn movie bros to go see this thing. I got incredibly wasted, but I was not too drunk during the movie, so you're gonna get

a full-on normal Stuart review. So let's continue reviewing The Monkey, shall we? The Monkey is... That was the mid-review pause. The traditional intermission. So let's let's continue reviewing the monkey shall we the monkey So this is a this is an adaptation of the Stephen King short story the monkey That was also adapted as monkey shines at one point, but this is a movie about twin brothers who encounter a toy monkey that is some kind of death elemental that can cause the death of anything it wants

when its key is turned. And the movie is, it's an interesting, this is a director whose previous movies have all been very like grim faced horror pictures. And this is much sillier. It's still shot with a lot of style and it is incredibly gory, but it's very fun. Almost like it has kind of the same sense of fun as like a final destination movie. And the performance are all good.

It manages to make Theo James not an incredibly sexy man, which is a challenge. Like that's some heavy lifting. I think the one outfit kind of helps, but it and Tatiana Maslany's in it and she's great. I think it felt like a very kind of fresh take on a horror comedy and I had a really good time. Yeah, so if you're looking for kind of a silly one, that I'm sure has been probably misinterpreted by people

who are like, oh, why isn't this scary movie just scary? Like, well, it's a silly movie, it's fun. Just chill out. Also, I apologize for playing Flophouse Pedant just for a moment, but I believe Monkey Shines is unconnected because that's a movie about a man who had a actual monkey that's a helper about a man who had a with a actual monkey That's a helper because he's paralyzed. I messed it up. Okay, I just you know, so I'm I'm shielding you from angry listeners now

Okay, I mean they're not Yeah, they're gonna email you and Dan and Dan Dan and the straw man the New CBS show where you email Like tell Stuart he's wrong intense're like tell Stuart he's wrong and dance like I tell Stuart he's wrong all the time it doesn't like I'd like to let you guys know on this occasion so you can thank me that if I get any emails like that I delete them thank you thank you Dan for doing that I'd also like to recommend a movie and I'm also gonna wreck this recommend a silly one that's

also kind of a horror movie but also movie, and I'm also going to recommend a silly one that's also kind of a horror movie, but also pretty silly. And I'm recommending, of course, Mr. Vampire from 1985, directed by Ricky Lau and starring... Let me look at the names. Starring Lam Ching Ying, Ricky Hui, and Chin Tzu-Hoe. And this is the first of the Mr. Vampire horror comedy series from Hong Kong. Sounds awesome. comedy series from Hong Kong. It's set in the kind of early 20th century China and there's a bunch of kind of battle priests whose job is to just keep it... You don't have to tell me what a fucking battle priest is. I know all about this shit. No, but their job is very specific to keeping vampires under control. And these are your classic Chinese hopping,

undead vampires and a vampire gets loose, unrelated to the vampire getting loose, a ghost falls in love with one of the apprentices and is trying to take him away. Now, is the vampire in the loose when you remove the piece of paper from their forehead or does that, is that, or when the piece of paper is placed on their forehead? It's a piece of paper or it forehead or does that, is that, or when the piece of paper

is placed on their forehead? It's a piece of paper or it's that there's like a bit of wax that goes on their forehead and the paper is stuck to that. And it's, this is, it was produced by Sam Ohung. It's a very Sam Ohung style comedy kind of action movie. And it's just super fun. And it's one of these movies, it's very silly at times.

And the action is, and the martial arts are great. Some of the comedy is of the very broad comedy that you get in especially 80s Hong Kong movies, but it's super fun. So if you wanna see a horror comedy that really is not taking itself seriously, to the point where it's not really scary, so much as it is a comedy about people fighting vampires,

then I would highly recommend Mr. Vampire. Was Mr. Baseball a vampire? No, he was a baseball, Dan. Oh, okay. Hey, I think we're almost at the end here. Elliot, is there any final thought you want to share with our audience? There is a final thought that I'd like to share with the audience.

You know, I'm just going to talk briefly because the show is ending and it's time to pack up the old circus tent and wipe off the grease paint and sweep up the spotlight, sweep up and put it in our caps. My makeup. I put his wig back on the shelf. I'm doing a Max Fun Pledge Drive donor spot. And I'm telling you that if this again, this is the Max Fun Pledge Drive donor spot. And I'm telling you that if this, again,

this is the Max Fun Pledge Drive, this is the time of year when we talk to you about this. We're gonna do three episodes where we're talking to you about this. And then that's it for the year. You don't have to hear about it again. If you've never been a Max Fun member, please we ask you try it out for just $5 a month.

Again, that's the cost of one comic book a month. If you don't buy comic books, that's great. You've got that $5 sitting in your pocket. Oh, I see. And you can just do it for a month. It's like Judo, you switch it around. Yep, and enjoy that bonus content. If you're already a member and you'd like to support a little more,

we'd really appreciate you upgrading your membership to a higher level or just boosting it by a few dollars per month or so. If you support multiple shows on Max Fun, and if you do, thank you. If you support multiple shows, the amount you pledge gets split between those shows. So boosting by just a couple dollars means everyone just gets a little bit more, which is wonderful. Please do it now going to maximumfund.org slash join before you forget. And you can look at what kinds of thank you gifts you get at the different levels. You can check out the bonus content once you've once you've signed up. There's a lot of great stuff on there.

That's maximumfund.org slash join. And I said at the top that this is the time of year when we celebrate our members. And I know you're like, where's the celebration? I've heard a lot about what you need. What about what I need in terms of praise and recognition? Let me tell you, it means so much to us that you are pledging and becoming members.

It means so much to us that you are supporting us as we do. It means so much to us that you are supporting us as we do this show, because we really couldn't do it without you. And especially during these times when life is uncertain, the world is in chaos, there's nothing that I feel like I need more than an outlet for my nonsense. There's nothing I feel like I need more

than to hear the nonsense of other people to help me remember that there is is laughter and enjoyment in the world. And we really appreciate your support in doing that. You know, we've been part of Maximum Fun for many years now. And I've always been really amazed and really impressed and really touched by the support that we get from our members and from our listeners. And it just helps keep us going. It means that we can do the show for you.

It means we can do this show for others. It means that people who, as Dan mentioned earlier, cannot afford to be members right now on their own, that they still get to enjoy this show. You can gift a membership to someone or just by supporting us, you make the show available. We wanna keep this show free to listen to, aside from the bonus content,

which you get if you join at $5 a month or more, and we can do that because of your support. We don't have to charge for tickets and we're not beholden to sponsors. And I'm sure you've had some kind of TV show or movie or something canceled or pulled off the market or just removed from your access in the past year, because some business was like, well, we're not making enough money off of this to justify you enjoying it. And your support of us means that you don't have to worry about that happening. We are our own bosses.

Thanks to your support, we make the decisions. Thanks to your support. And we're going to keep doing this as long as we can, as long as we have your support. We can only do it with your help. And we're so grateful and we're so thankful that you've been giving us that help all this time and that we hope you will continue to. If this is the year that you feel like you can afford to help us, please do.

If it's not the year you can afford to help us, then please consider it in the future. But we ask you to go to maximumfund.org slash join and give us your support for as little as $5 a month or boost or upgrade your membership if you feel like you can right now. And we're just really thankful for it. I would thank you all individually,

but I think it would make the episode go long. So instead I'll just say, thank you very much. It's, we're so grateful. Insert your name here. Thank you, thank you, Dan. Actually, that's what I should have done. And we, and I did want to take this moment to celebrate you, the listeners,

and especially the members for keeping this show alive. We really couldn't do it without you. So thank you. Go to maximumfund.org slash join if you aren't a member, and if you are, then you get to take part in that thank you. Otherwise, please put the thank you down, it is only for members right now. And yeah, I think that's all we got to say except to say thank you also to Alex Smith, our producer.

You can find him under the name Howell Doddy in various corners of the internet. He does great work for us. And he gets paid because you pay us. Yeah, I was just on his Twitch channel this week watching a crazy Abel Ferrara movie. Oh, nice. For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliott Kalin, reminding you to go to maximumfun.org slash join to join. Thank you. Bye. ["The Last Hunt"] On this episode, we discuss Craven the Hunter. It's a tight adaptation of Craven's Last Hunt, my favorite comic book.

Uh, I don't think so. It's not accurate. How about, how about, Dan? Hey, I am putting energy out of the universe. Maybe I'll get what I want. Manifesting is what it's called. You should have heard about it. You live in Los Angeles. Yeah, people talk about manifesting a lot.

Can I try one? Can I try one? Sure. Yeah. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly.

By you.