The Flop House - Ep.#459 - War of the Worlds (2025)

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

It's rare that a movie gets embraced as a new classic in badness as quickly as Amazon's War of the Worlds, but hey -- they're known for their fast delivery. Maybe they're just the future of bad movies, "disrupting" the bad movie space with their boldly incompetent visions! We discuss the (overwhelmingly listener-requested) new WotW!Our first Chicago show sold out, so we ADDED A LATE SHOW! Come see us live!OR, if you prefer to watch us from the comfort of your own home: Flop TV Season 3 tix are ON SALE!Subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for War of the WorldsRecommended in this episode:Dan: Wicked, Wicked (1973)Stu: Weapons (2025)Elliott: The Shrouds (2024)Head to squarespace.com/FLOP for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.Eat smart at FactorMeals.com/flop50off and use code flop50off to get 50% off your first box, plus Free Breakfast for 1 Year.

Hey, it's Dan. These pre-rolls can get boring quickly, so I'll be fast. Flop TV is back this September, 2025 through February 26, with all new streaming live shows that you can also see video on demand if you can't make it live. Individual tickets and season passes are available at theflophouse.com. That's ticks spelled tix, as well as all the info that is too much to say here. Now the show. On this episode we discuss War of the Worlds No joke, guys. This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Flop House. I'm Jan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

You know me. I'm Elliot Kalin and continue to be to this very day. Elliot seemed to be the most sure of who he was out of the three of us. Just looking at our faces and tones of voice, Elliot was very confident. I checked my driver's license right before the recording. And also the tag on the back of my pants. Yeah. Yeah, Scott Bacula just jumped into my body. So I was trying to figure it out. Welcome to the mirror.

Oh, boy. Wellington? That could be worse. Once Scott Dracula jumped into my body and it was not pleasant. I'd kind of be into it. Scott Dracula was a smoke show back in the day. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Now, do you think he jumped into my body and he's like, okay, what is my name? And he saw on the stovetop, he saw a bubbling bowl of stew. He's like stew, then he saw a piece of dance lovingly painted artwork. He's like art. I assumed he just saw like the two of us

and recognized us from the statues of us in the future. Oh, statutes in the future. For being... For bringing world peace. All the best podcasters who brought world peace. Yeah, yeah. Behold my works.

I... Azadandias. Behold my works, you mighty. And laugh. Well, speaking of the old world being destroyed, War of the Worlds. Yeah, why not? Dan, thank you for doing that.

Or otherwise, I would have just started reciting Ozimandis and nobody wants that. Because, guys, I met a traveler from an antique land who said to vast and truckless legs of stone stand in the desert and buy them on the sand to have shattered visage lies. I'll tell you about it later. Okay, sure. I'll tell you about this ancient mariner I ran into. Oh boy, you were on the way to a wedding. It was not convenient. Can I tell you about sanity? We did it. We covered all the romantics. We did it. We did it. Not the modern romantics. No. Or the new romantics. No. So, so, Dan,

War the Worlds. This movie we were going to do a different movie. We don't even need to talk about it. And it was like you rushed into the Flop House press office. You were like, hot off the presses, stop the presses, we gotta do War the Worlds and you hit the We Got One alarm for like

Nose Busters and I was like Ice Cube hits multiple times in this movie basically. He does. And I have to say I had never heard, my life at this moment keeps me too busy to be aware of much going on in the world. due to a combination of work and family stress.

And so I'd never heard of this movie. So when you're not working or familying and you're like, you just pull up your phone to look at stuff, what are you looking at? The idea of a time when I'm not work or familying is an interesting one. And I hope to explore that idea at some point. Oh, okay.

But so Dan mentioned this movie. I was not aware of it. I mean, certainly aware of the story of war of the worlds. But I have to say, Dan, thank you for bringing this one into my life. Sure. Because I would have just passed it by and it is a special piece of stupid that I was not expecting. It has

gone sort of mildly viral like there's a lot of internet chatter about how terrible this is and there's articles. It had a perfect 0% Rotten Tomatoes score until very recently. Armin White. My friend Kimber

who's a film critic was... A trenchant satire on the security state says Armid White. She was like, oh my friend Jordan ruined the 0% on rotten tomatoes. But then I read his review for Entertainment Weekly and it wasn't like a good review it was like

isn't really that bad you're gonna have fun because it's dumb so I'm like I don't know if that's a fresh review I think yeah I think their algorithm that determines whether something's fresh or not fresh did a bad job on that and don't ask them to see what's funky fresh they just don't know yeah

but it's a case where like I feel like a lot of people have deliberately watched a bad movie or maybe not deliberately, but more people have encountered a really bad movie than is normal because Amazon, you know, pushed this so hard. It's like, okay, according to the Kairon, it says top 10 in movies.

Yeah. Yeah. Of all time. It's always amazing to me when Netflix does the thought too, but Amazon does it where they'll be like, most watch today, top 10. And it's like, yeah, because you put it on everybody's home screen. Yeah.

It's not a level playing field. You guys were the, you guys are the only streamer, where you can watch fucking to live and die in L.A. Like, that should be top 10. It's a little bit like if you were like, once again, Donald Trump

is the most talked about man in America. He's the fucking president and he's on the news all the time. Like, of course. Andy does everything possible to be talked about all the time. Yeah, exactly. He's like, I'm bored.

I'm going to climb on a roof. Oh, no. We've got to get the fire department to get him down again. He's fucking recycling Darmah and Greg plots now? Like, Jesus Christ. Leave him on the roof like

a hangover movie. Let's see. You left your DVD of the hangover on the roof. Did you ever get it down? It's melted. Well, melted. It was a hot day. Do that make it better or the same?

It made it unviewable. What does that do in your eyes? So, Dan, what's your experience with War of the Worlds? I'm sure you must have encountered this story. It's one of the, I would say one of the two most fundamental science fiction stories of Western literature along with Frankenstein. I'm sure you've encountered it before. What's your experience with War of the Worlds? Yeah, I read, well, when I was a kid,

I read one of those little classics illustrated books of War of the Worlds. I feel like the Flop House can, like, just unabashedly recommend classics illustrating. Yeah. And then I eventually read the, you know, the H.G. Wells original. And I'm more of a little wars guy, but I don't know that I've ever seen the George Powell version, but I've seen, of course, Spielberg's version, which I like a lot. The George Powell version is good. The Spielberg version is fantastic.

I think it's an, I think that's an amazing movie. And were you alive when Orson Wells did his radio? Yeah, I was, I'm, how many years old would that be, 200 and stuff? Were you scared for your kids that the Martians were landing and you had to protect them? Yeah, well, I mean, so, right, it's my understanding that that is a inflated story, right? That's the modern, like. Yeah, it was, the modern take is that it did not really drive people into the streets and panic. But I will say, I've listened to that broadcast any number of times.

I really love it. And this movie is trying really hard to do something similar, which is to collapse time. The most amazing thing about the World's radio show is that within about 25 to 30 minutes, the aliens have, they've noticed strange lights in the sky. Aliens have landed and destroyed all the militaries and killed millions of people within like a half hour.

And the way it's spaced out, you're so carried along with it that it's not until afterwards that you're like, things move pretty fast. And this movie tries to do the same thing where it seems like over the course of like an hour in 15 minutes, the aliens appear and then destroy all of the Earth's military forces. And it moves so fast that you're like, hold on a second, hold on a second. One of the most mystifying things to me was like what kind of time is supposed to be passing

here? Because like the movie makes it feel like it's in basically real time, except for we're getting all of these news reports that would only come after the fact, you know, once journalists were able to like get on the ground just like make log these reports and it's one of the weirdest feelings to watch it to be so unstuck in time yeah and there must be gap time because there are parts

where Ice Cube as we'll get to as Daniel will explain he's just dealing with his family and then suddenly he'll be pulled into a meeting and they're like give us your threat assessment and he'll give them a researched threat assessment and it's like when did he have time to do this hold on a second he was too busy answering or not answering a FaceTime

calls yeah I read one review that mentioned that it takes place over what must be several days, I wouldn't necessarily assume that. I think it's supposed to be as close to real time as possible, which is hilarious. But Dan, so tell Stewart, what about you? What's your experience with the War of the Worlds? I mean, I think I'm going to

agree with all this. I haven't read the H.G. Wells' story, but I'm, you know, I've come across all these, all this stuff, and also the second story arc of League of Extraordinary gentlemen. Which is about the war of the world. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

which I mean at the time I was like doesn't this wasn't this made later but then you know I figured it out and it fits within the time frame amazingly Alan Moore did his research on that one yeah yeah something he normally doesn't do now so one of the before we get started Dan I just want to say my experience the world of the world I've all the things that Dan talks about experiencing and that you talk about experiencing stew I've experienced and uh not to not to say I'm like the war of okay big time was but uh but I will say the thing that struck me about two different versions of the War of the Worlds, the Steven Spielberg version and that second issue

of that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, second volume, is they're the things that, to me, best captured the feeling of being in New York on September 11th. They just captured that feeling of there's this enormous catastrophe. Something terrible has happened, and you're just there, and you can't do anything about it. You have to get through it.

And this movie... And it's a catastrophe that you don't understand and don't have the facilities to research. It is a mystery. You do not have access to the information. You don't necessarily trust the people who do have access to some of that information. I will say that this movie today failed to establish that same feeling for me of what it felt like on that terrible day. So maybe that makes it.

So let's see if you guys felt the same way that this movie fails to get across the seriousness of a global catastrophe. Also, before we even get into any of it, we should say up front, this is one of those movies like, unfriended or searching that takes place basically entirely on the desktop of a computer screen. Like sometimes it goes off to like other screens, but essentially it is like, it is one of those, which is, I mean, part of that, I guess, is this was shot during COVID. And so it's like, oh, yeah, they held on to it for a couple years to find it. Yeah. But yeah, to make it perfect.

I would say that this is maybe a story for which that is not the most natural fit. It certainly, it certainly hurts. the scale of a movie about aliens invading the entire world to have it all be set on one guy's screen and you're mostly looking at his face but you're also seeing what's on his screen at the same angle that he would see it

so I guess maybe you're right behind his shoulder and when you're seeing his face you're seeing his reflection in the screen I don't know but also that so much of it is him just going oh damn oh shit while watching the news and the other that he is a as Dan will explain he is a guy who's supposed to be at the very center of the

web of surveillance of the United States Department Homeland Security, but he gets most of his information from watching the news. So he just seems to really have access to that much information that's better, you know. Just so no one writes in. I think that when we see him, it's like the camera in his laptop is a kind of the idea. So he's constantly looking at his face in his monitor? I'm not saying, I don't think it's like we're to believe that he is doing that. I'm saying that like that is the view from his computer.

Okay. Even though we can still see the stuff that's on his screen. We are, we imagine that the viewer is the computer. Okay, but then the stuff that he sees on the screen should be backwards, right? Yeah, but computers can translate things forward and backwards. Oh, you're right. That's why they're so good at everything.

There's often a button that just says, flip. I thought that made the computer flip in the air like it was doing a skateboard side. I will say, I think one of the key things that this movie fails to understand is that for this character, he is trapped in a situation where he is almost completely by himself and he's in this room that's filled with, filled with desks and things

but he's the only one there and he has to do like his only lifeline is his computer and there's never really a moment where they step out and show you like even to not break the immersion of it they could have just simply had a moment where like we see

the security camera footage of that room from the office he's in to just show how alone he is and how he's just like this little man with a computer and he has to figure it out from there but they the movie does not have the emotional intelligence to do that. Let's get into the plot of it, though.

So, our hero, Mr. Ice Cube, he sits down in front of his computer. He says hi to it. He logs in. We see he is, he works for the Department of Homeland Security. So he's just playing a character named Ice Cube. Yeah. Look, I'm just going to, you act as if on the Flop House, we don't constantly refer to the actors to avoid confusion rather than their character.

But I was like he's playing Will Radford, who is a surveillance expert at the Department of Homeland Security. And Will is a great name because he has the will to kill some aliens. And Radford is a great name because he's rad, like radical, but he also... Like Harrison Ford. Yeah, exactly, like Harrison Ford. Thank you. So, basically, at first, his job seems to just be looking at random, closed caption security footage of various... Oh, sorry, closed circuit, close caption.

I saw C-C-TV on here. I put closed-circuit TV of various DC landmarks while the computer says stuff like threat level medium or no threat detective, detected. What a great way to endear us to a... No threat detective is the detective who is not going to hurt anybody. What a way for a movie to endear us to a character

than to show him being a fucking snoop, you know? Yeah, I mean, this movie fails, I think it's fair to say It fails to reach the heights of moral empathy and ambiguity of the conversation, which is also about a professional snoop who we learn has a complicated relationship with his work, has his own inner life. It is presented right off the bat as if Ice Cube is his one issue is that he doesn't know how to relate to his family, as opposed to his issue being that he is just eavesdropping and invading the privacy of every American in the country, including his family. Like it is just taken for granted that there's a certain level of constant surveillance that is good.

Then there's another level that is never quite defined that is bad. But there is a level that is good. And he's just, you know, he's so great at his job that he's a real hero. It's like in any movie where you show somebody being great at what they do, just to establish that they're the best so that they can go on the rest of the movie. Except what he's great at doing is terrible. It's really bad. And the movies seem to get that.

Like right off the bat, I'm like, I don't think this is how, like, security analysts do their job, just, like, sort of randomly checking in on security footage. The way Ozzy Mandis callback in Watchmen just kind of watches a wall of television and picks up the gestalt feeling of American culture from that, yeah. I mean, it certainly is a good way of using cheap stock footage for your movie. Oh, boy, there's more ways to use cheap stock footage that they'll discover, yeah. Yeah, but he gets a call from NASA scientist Sandra Sales, played by Ivo Angoria,

who sends him this footage of crazy storms and is like, have you heard about anything like this? And he says, I watch people not weather. And I'm like, yeah. Like, why is the NASA scientist trying to call this guy about these storms? I think there's a budding romance. I think the implication is there.

But also, Ice Cube is treated. Oh, man, this movie would have crushed a fucking cyber sex scene, right? It would have been like better than lawnmower man, finally. Right in the middle of a battle scene, aliens are attacking. But he's still going. He's still going at it, yeah. I mean, he spends a lot of his time focusing on things that are not related to the saving of the human race.

That's very true. They never quite explain why someone at NASA would contact someone at Homeland Security to ask them about storms. Storms, yeah. Also, the storm footage is very funny. It's just a lot of lightning. But he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And there's a lot of sound on the footage, which you probably wouldn't necessarily have.

But it just comes off as very silly. And she's like, have you heard about this? And he's like, nope, that's kind of what you do. It's all the finest storms that story blocks has to offer. We're almost at like one of my favorite little things in the movie. Okay, well, I don't know what it is. I hope I touch it on it. If not, you've got to jump in.

The NSA director. You've been pretty good about touching on Stewart's favorite things. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. The NSA director played by Clark Gregg, texts him to say the FBI raid on terrorists, The Disruptor, is ready to go.

and we hear a message from the disruptor warning that he's going to release classified documents about the surveillance the government is doing on everybody with the Goliath program and I am immediately on the disruptor's side against... Of course!

But I think also the movie is not not on the disruptor's side as we'll see, but the disruptor described him because he's the kind of... He's the classic thing that you see in movies but I feel like you don't see that much in real life ever. He's the silhouette of a hoodie,

essentially. And he's got like a, his voice has been manipulated, so it sounds like, I'm going to release all the Goliath files and you'll see. And he is apparently famous because then there's later, there's like news reports that are like disruptor gone after or something. So you say he's a big racquetball guy. The eradicator. You know, you can unmask me now that you're repeated me. Nah, it's okay.

Kids in the hall in case you're confused. No, kids in the hall. You let's see. This kid's a little sketch about a diehard racquetball player named the Eradicator who wears a mask and by Bruce McAlla. Him at the end in the showers at the gym with the mask on is so funny. The Radicator wins by default

in its previous round. Meanwhile, Ice Cube calls his pregnant daughter Faith to berate her for having a muffin for breakfast instead of an egg because he's spying on her. He's spying on her and when it gives her details, lists the father of her child as a baby daddy. And I love that shit. I love that.

That's the classification the program gives. So that's the first child. Also, his son calls him mad that he deleted his game he was working on, which actually sounds pretty assholeish. I thought it was a game he was playing. He was pointing. Okay. I thought it was like he was designing a game.

And I'm like, wow, you're really destroyed. No, he was alerted because he bought, I guess he bought a game. Or something. Yeah. He looked at the, he like was snooping on his son and saw that he had bought it, purchased a game. Yeah, yeah. But it was like kind of,

it was like more expensive than a video game, right? It was kind of weird. It was like 200-some bucks, maybe. He probably got one of those haptic feedback chairs or something like that. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you got to get the fleshlight. I mean. To play Halo. Yeah, yeah. Corto. And they have a little argument about whether safety is worth all the invasion of privacy of what Ice Cube and his...

What side does the movie come down on, Dan? Security buddies. Well, eventually it comes down on we shouldn't have surveillance. Although, again, as you say, like, it's only the surveillance that saves us from the aliens. I think it comes down to the side of... Yeah, true. I think it comes down on the side of maybe? Like, it's not really taking sides necessarily.

How do you feel, viewer? Viewer, you make the call. Should our every move be surveilled? by a shadowy government network? Right in to arrest me, care of, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C. Here's one of my favorite little weird things.

He sends the disruptors address to the FBI. He pinpoints the address, and he sends it for a warrant. And I'm like, wait, they had a raid standing by already. Do they not have a location? Like, what's the order of operations here? He calls in a raid, and they're like, we're on it. Where's that warrant?

getting it to you and yeah it's the it's it's it's bonkers how much power he has and how slapdash it is but then again the government kind of operates that way nowadays so it's not super inaccurate you know he both seems like a very low level analyst i mean like his son like make fun of his job not just like for what he does but the level he's at but then later on he's briefing the president like i never got a handle he seems to be the considering there's other desks it seems like in the room he's in but they're all empty he seems to be he seems to be be the one analyst who works at the department of homeless. Yeah, I mean, obviously, after Doge cut everybody. But also, or maybe he consumed all of them and got all of their power and abilities. That's possible. Ice Cube is the biggest of the friends. As long as we're referencing jokes from other shows. That's all we do.

He gets a call from Faith's Partner. We meet Faith's Partner about... I do love that his name is Will and her name is Faith. I love it when characters' names tell you what they do. And his son's name is Dave. Because we meet him He's a flawed king Because we meet him

Because he's a double This is something I didn't pick up But looking at the Something I didn't pick up But looking at the Wikipedia cast list Fate's boyfriend is named Mark Goodman He is a good man He is a good man

He's named Dave because he's super guys So Mark accidentally spills that there's going to be a baby shower that... What's Mark's job, Dan? What's Mark's job?

Well, I'm getting there. He's an Amazon delivery man in one of the... Sounds like a good man to meet. ...reminders that this is an Amazon-made film. Yeah. Those reminders get pretty thick

near the end. Spoiler alert when the purchase of a product on Amazon becomes a requirement for saving the human race. But yeah, he's... Which is, I don't think it's the flex they intend it to seem like.

They're like, they don't realize that they're like, well, we could save the world, but you have to buy something first. Yeah, exactly. We can't do it without you paying us. But you're saying, so he spilled the beans. They're going to have a baby shower for faith. And Will was not even invited. She didn't even invite her own father to her baby shower. Yeah.

She assumed he was just going to watch the shit off of a drone or something. I guess, and later when we see pictures of the baby shower, it's clear there are no other invitees besides the characters in the movie. So for Will to be snub is a big snub. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they only had enough party sub for four people. That's not a party sub. That's a regular sub.

Hold on. Oh, man, Dan suss me out. That's when the only guy left at the FDA who measures subs for their party classifications comes by. Sorry, doesn't meet party regulations. I gave Donald Trump and Elon so much money so that my catering business that sells regular subs and calls them party subs would get these tax breaks and get these tax breaks and get. these deals, but now you guys call it. I had to buy so much Trump coin so I could get my subs re-registered, yeah.

Now I'm selling fun-sized sub, who's regular subs. That's how the math works. They're called fun-size, but there's less fun because there's less of them. And he's just crying. This is when he's being deposed by Congress. So, you know,

Will is perturbed by this. We have been tasked with an important effort for the American people to ensure honesty. Now, I may be just an old mule at the cracker barrel, but it seems to me if the American Purple think that we have a problem

with subclassifications, then by Gawling Gum, I think we do, and we owe it to these American voters to take care of that. Oh, boy. And then everyone applauds. No, and I'm just bawling my eyes at all right. Finally, someone's draining the swamp. Anyway,

yeah, Will is perturbed at this lack of an invitation, so he hacks his daughter's computer and spies on a conversation. Good dad. He's a bad dad, hacker dad. Her and Mark, during which we learned, she's a scientist working on important medical research that Trump probably just defunded. Her research is some sort of what they call a cannibal code, where it's like a virus that instantly eats, I guess, whatever it's been injected into.

I don't know how useful that is. But I think the idea is that this virus will theoretically like kill cancer cells. Oh, yeah, that's possible. Now, somebody pointed out, I can't remember who, but I saw somebody point out online that all the passwords are very short. It's like somebody's name. And I'm like, that's a weird thing for a guy in charge of information security would be using. Now, you know, around this time, you might be wondering, well, he's got these kids. Does Will have a wife?

Well, his wife has passed. He spends a little time missing his dead wife on her Facebook page and listening to an old voice message. from her reminding him, what was it, to like take out the trash and be nice to the kids or something? Yeah, something like that. Or you don't get no spending cash. I think that's what she says.

And I believe from the grid, she said, don't talk back, yeah? So, guys, how come we're not expanding our audience? Each of us brings a totally different frame of reference. Yeah, including songs from far before we were born. But I will say, there was, there was a resurgence. of yackety yack when we were kids yeah i also was talking to my brothers on uh we've been doing like a you know a voie uh facebook facebook face time call like a couple times just like the movie we watched

a month that's where you got the idea and saying about like they're like how do you know about mcmillen and wife because i like made some reference to that and i'm like well you know like i feel like back in the old days we there's a continuity of culture we were forced to consume the stuff from You still have to watch, like, syndicated things. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And now, like, we really are shooting ourselves in the foot with all these references because no one young, like, watches anything like this.

No. They're certainly not listening to Yackety Yack until it shows up in a TikTok video. You know what I mean? Yeah. But, I mean, I feel like this whole movie is made for people who don't like movies and just spend their time looking at their phone or computer screens. It's certainly made for people who don't know how computers work. I think to a certain extent.

So the raid on the disruptor, it's on. We meet Agent Jeffries, played by Angela Savage. This is the first time I've seen a movie. There are other movies I've seen where it feels AI-ish. This is the first movie I've seen where I know humans worked on this movie, but it does feel like an AI made this movie, you know. It feels like a movie that was put together kind of like by a thing that understands what's supposed to happen at each step in a movie, but doesn't quite get humanity.

but not in a fun deal, Breen kind of way where he clearly has seen a movie but he didn't absorb anything. You'd think the computers would know more about computers, though, but apparently, you know, the hardest thing to know is yourself. Exactly. Know thyself said ENIAC. Eniac?

Is that who said it? Yeah, well, somebody said it. That's a computer. Tell me. Okay, we meet Agent Jeffries, played by Angela Savage, a funny actor. In other things. But not funny in this.

It doesn't have a comic rolling. Meanwhile, the NASA lady keeps bugging Ice Cube about these storms. Turns out the raid is at a decoy dress and in the middle of this raid, this failed raid,

something starts happening. Debris or meteors are falling from the sky in flaming trails and we get a bunch of disaster footage from all over. And all they're like, all the, we get information

that like all the satellites are dark, does not affect the constant feed news though or access to the internet it seems like it's only the nasa satellites that are down because you're because as you're saying throughout the movie they're like our data systems are down but but in 24 hour news continues his internet service does not go away he can use the amazon website to order something later fucking hashtags and social media shit all over the place it's crazy yeah yeah um but anyway yeah there's meteors falling in and normally we'd be like what's going on but the name of the movie is war of the world so we kind of have a sense of what's going to happen yeah

Eva Longoria, NASA lady Warns him that DC is about to get hit So he tries to call Faith But she's not picking up And he locates her in surveillance footage Taking shelter beneath the table And he calls Mark to go find her And meanwhile his son calls

With meteors flying around in the background And Ice Cube tries to tell him where to go The effects in this movie look great too, right? Yes tries to direct him to safety but he seemingly does that but they lose contact

so we don't know what's going on with the sun yet Cube gets on a Zoom call all this time while he's wasting time with his kids and I understand you want to save your kids

I can't say wasting time with his kids but he's certainly not doing his job yeah because he's constantly at this point being like hectored by like his bosses to be like

hey get on the Zoom call with the government like we need to talk about this why meteors are suddenly hitting everywhere on Earth at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to make sure my daughter's not under a table. Yeah.

So we see Evil Angoria approach one of these meteors. I love this. I love classic scientist's behavior. Let's walk up and touch a meteor. Which even if it's not hiding an alien inside would be incredibly hot. Yeah.

From going through the Earth's atmosphere. It begins to open and we get a glimpse of a classic War of the World's tripod tentacle then the zoom freaks out. That is the kind of sound that the alien makes, yeah. And talks about warning the president and they say, Ice Cube,

you're our eyes and ears, even though he's eyes and ears that are constantly on his children. And mostly watching the news. Most the information he's picking up is from the news. Guys, I want to get a little flop-out shout-out to the tripod design in general, just the idea of like making the aliens have three legs

as opposed to two or four. That's good writing. I mean, that goes all the way back to the original book. No, that's what I mean. I'm not giving a shoutout to this movie. This movie deserves no shoutouts. Negative shoutouts. Yeah.

No. That was Mr. Human Giant Wells. That was responsible for that, yeah. His son keeps calling and being like, Dad, I have important information. I've got to talk to you about Goliath, and Ice Cube's like, there's aliens attacking. What are you doing?

Shut up. It's too early in the movie. delay whatever you have to tell me. Shut up. It's like, it is comical, the degree to which this father will not listen to his son. But again, it should be presented as he is too busy with what he's doing, but instead it's just that he doesn't want to talk to him.

It's like, it makes sense why you wouldn't be talking to your son at this moment, but not for the reasons you're giving. He's trying to make a sandwich that has both mustard and mayonnaise on it, and he just doesn't have the time. Can I refer to any other comedy shows? How many can I fit in? I got to get some more in here. Yeah, one other comedy shows.

Can we refer to You can try and get a Monty Python thing in here? Yeah, we haven't talked about news radio yet at all, I think, yeah. Let's see. Cuba. I mean, even when you talked about

McMillan and wife, Dan, that's mainly to me a reference from mystery science theaters. That's another comedy show right there. We watched a couple of episodes because Audrey's hunger for mystery shows. You should watch a lot more than a couple of episodes. No, no.

I want so much. I don't like the new ones. McMillan and wife. Oh, Macmillan and wife. Because she's got such a hunger for mystery shows and I was trying to explain it to my brothers

because even though it was more of their time they didn't know it I'm like it's the funny thing is it's like he's a police detective or like

maybe even like the police chief I don't know and his wife helps him solve crimes and I'm like to Audrey I'm like okay so what's the setup here

like why is she involved and she's like I don't know she's just around and I'm like I guess like in the 70s you didn't need more than that's like yeah

my wife's going to be part of the investigation it's a classic encyclopedia Brown She's just really good at it, right? Yeah. Well, she's kind of like the flaky fun one. Who's bugs meany in it?

I don't know about that. Okay, so we see our FBI agent friend seemingly zapped by a tripod. We get more disaster footage. There's a lot of repurposing real-life footage, but then inserting a CGI alien tripod. Yeah. Faith calls back. It looks for a second, like maybe she gets tripod zapped, but he can check her heartbeat through her health app.

And it turns out she's alive, but she has some rebar through her leg. Oof. And... Rebar is only good for two things. Reinforcing concrete structures and getting stuck in people's bodies, like in this and Cloverfield.

Yeah. Yeah. And Will says he's coming for her, but like any hopes for an active protagonist who gets to leave that room are immediately dashed because there's lockdown. She's stuck in the building,

so instead he hacks a Tesla for her remotely. He said Tesla, right? Tesla. Yeah, you did say Tesla like an old man at a cracker barrel, yeah, sure. Again, my brain no work. These Teslers. I saw the Onsler driving a Tesla.

Wait, so is it, his name was Wuncel? Wensler then? No, no, it's Wonsler, driving a Tesla because I know it's Tesla. So is Wonsler Wensler Wensla? No, no, you don't understand. Now, this is some good counter programming. I put my head down on the pillar.

One slut for a second there. One slut. That's a different LORax who deals with the one slut. I feel like this is some counter-programming for Tesla because it shows how easily their vehicles can be hacked and driven around. Yes. Not since what was the movie we saw where Ethan Hawk and Julia Roberts are at the end of the world and the Teslas are all smashing into each other?

Not since that has been the one of Barack Obama produced. Don't look up. That's a different one. Don't say goodbye to the world or kiss the world. by this is the world we know what I don't know what's going to have world in I think well he hacks us Tesla he discovers that all the

hospitals are full although I'm pretty sure that a hospital triage would be like okay this pregnant lady has like rebar right next to one of her major arteries like and I will say Dan I don't know Dan I would imagine that the level of catastrophic injury is so high

that the hospitals are flooded with it yeah maybe but his solution the giant robots that are shooting buildings open. Yeah, but most of these streets that we see are completely empty. I'm saying maybe that is true. Maybe, Dan, it's got to be true.

It's a war of the world. Oh, God. But his solution is, like, I'm going to send you to a government building where there's apparently no medical stuff at all. I don't know why he fucking sends her there. Yeah, it's not a good idea. Have her try a hospital, at least.

You know what? He's an old man. He probably just sent her to a place that he's been before because he's like, I know this place. I know what the food's like. They were nice to me. This is the restaurant where I call the waitress Honey and Darling. She'll be able to take care of you.

And I touch her a little, but, you know, not enough to get me put in jail. Just like around the waist a little bit when I'm ordering, you know. You know, like back when you were allowed to do that stuff. Oh, God. Don't like it. Don't like it. When you're sitting in a restaurant. Well, I mean, this character is just an older man who does not treat waitress as well,

which I've seen too many of in my time. During this part where he's like directing the car, there's a part where she lexious. him on how he doesn't have the power to control everything and she's not a kid anymore and that seems like a good message in general but not specifically at that moment when he literally just saved her

because he was snooping it's a weird time for that but uh also she's in pain too you'd expect her to not be that not that into the family therapy aspect yeah at one point yeah he's he's trying to talk to her about this fucking baby shower and it's like calm down dog

uh it turns out that Evil Angoria is still alive. Oh, thank goodness. Still touching rocks. She's like, the meteors deliberately hit satellites to knock out our eyes.

Again, not very well because they didn't hit any of the Amazon ones because the Amazon ones are obviously in league with the Martians. I will say it is, you could say that as we find out, there's a data connection. And so maybe they were going after

specific satellites connected to specific data stuff things. Yeah. I'll give the movie. You know what, movie, I'll give you a little. I'll throw your bone on this one since otherwise you're dumb. I mean, that's the other thing. And let's also remember, this movie is rock stupid. This is an incredibly stupid movie every step of the way. Speaking of dumb, I was about to say that what had already been a dumb movie shifts into a new year of stupid.

It gets stupider and stupider as it goes on in a beautiful way, yeah. As our hero hops on a Zoom call with the president, again, I didn't know he was this powerful. But he tells everyone that he assumes the power grid. is going to be the next target, and he suggests consolidating force striking from their most high priority assets. And that is barely a plan, but the president says,

this plan is humanity's last stand. I see no other option than to initiate this war of the worlds to save us all. Yes, amazing. You have to go to Ice Cube for the high-level analysis that we should protect our most important things from the aliens.

Family. This scene with the president, it feels like, is so fun. It's so, like, they're trying so hard, and it is not, you know, they're just falling. You know, they're reaching for the stars and they're barely touching their own foreheads, you know. They could have easily made the choice to not work the title awkwardly into a line, but they said, you got to do it. They said, you got to do it.

Like Kendrick Lamar said, someone's got to do it, you know, so. Yeah, and this is, then we get kind of a montage just of him watching a bunch of news coverage of militaries hitting these tripods and shooting them and destroying them and destroying. them and it seems like this footage would come much later than immediately but no right away. Meanwhile Faith set her destination

it takes faith as much time to drive in a car to this other building as it takes the American military to mobilize around the world to get to where the tripods are and yeah and luckily because of their data they're able to defeat these Martians. Oh no Stuart I've got some bad news for you

what what? Dan telling the bad news. I don't want to break his innocent little heart. Oh, it turns out that that's all that they want. That's all that they want. They want our most precious. I don't know if this is the point, but I'll just say it already. They're after our data. And one of the news reporters says, they're after our most precious

resource, our data. And I was like, hold on a second. Hold on a second. Our Social Security numbers. Hold on a second. Our Amazon password. Well, that's the thing. It is a, I totally understand why Amazon, a company that makes most of its money off of cloud computing services would consider data our most precious resource.

But I think if you asked any human being on the face of the earth who does not work for Amazon, what the most precious resource is, it would be, I don't know, water, oxygen, you know, food, maybe timber, but that's even like second level, you know. Yeah, the song timber. Yeah, featuring pit bull, yeah. But the idea that everyone's like, oh, no, our data, what are we going to do now, our data, it would make things inconvenient. Certainly the economy would collapse probably.

But I think, you know, the idea that that's our most precious resource is very funny to me. It goes data, then it goes rare earth minerals, then it goes normal earth minerals. Then it goes H for billionaires. Then it goes ketamine for billionaires. Also the idea that, like, they are apparently eating the data. They drain the data. So data, which is... But the data also exists in multiple places.

You can't just like... Data is not a limited resource like water or air where if you ingest it, it's not there anymore. When someone steals your data, they... I mean, they can, I guess they could put something in place to block your access to it. But yet, it's not like the data is like a little, it's funny. I mean, that's the crazy thing is this is a movie made by a technology company that seems to think data is like gold. Where if you steal it from a vault, it's not in the vault anymore. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, it's a very, it's a stupid. I guess what I'm saying is this movie's stupid. But I may have jumped ahead. So, Dan, tell us what's happening next. Yeah, well, uh, his son calls back to talk about Goliath, uh, which Cub again, yells at him. Oh, that's, that's why. Wait, Dan, that's why he's named Dave because he's up against Goliath.

Oh, my fucking God. This is a brilliant movie. You cracked the code. Oh, my God. You were absolutely right. I cracked the Bible code on this one. What a stupid movie. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's so dumb. The only way would better if he defeated Goliath with a rock, by which I mean rock and roll music that was encoded to take down the government, but they don't do that. So Will and the NASA lady realize the tripods are congregating at Datesendezan. She goes into investigate, and it looks like she's eaten by nanobots or something for the moment. And Cube gets the alert, military systems full data loss. And he switches to watching all this footage of military failures, and he, like, he has, like, the most wand, like, oh, no.

Earlier when he saw the aliens, it was all of like, oh, shit, damn. And I was like, oh, no, oh, no. Yeah, it really requires him to sit there and react to things. I mean, I will say this. I did feel during it, you got to give a hand to Ice Cube for what is one of the most challenging types of role, which is just to sit there and react to things that don't exist. You can't move around. You're not in a room with another person.

Like, it's hard to do. It's hard to do something where all you're acting is basically in your torso from the waist up and your face and you have nothing to work with. Yeah. And there's no way that the maker of this movie, like, knew exactly what he was reacting to at that moment. Oh, no. It just give us a lot of reactions of trouble. Oh, no.

We'll stick in some stock footage for you, too. Oh, oh. I mean, like, you could have shown the old footage of a monkey washing a cat, like something, you know, anything you want, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, Faith, she has removed the rebar like a big dummy. She's like, I thought I could stop the bleeding if I pulled it out of me.

It's like, no, you never want to do that. Everybody knows. You leave it in there. Now you're more machine than man. Yep, your regular Tetsuo, yeah, the Iron Man, yeah. But luckily, Mark is there with magical Amazon packing tape to tape up that wound. And does it tape up the wound when, as I learned from Pokerface, what you want to use is Crazy Glue. Yeah.

I mean, I learned that from dog soldiers and then real life. And then real life soldiers. I mean, I use Crazy Glue all the time behind the bar anytime I cut my hands because I'm constantly having to cut fucking fruit and shit. and you don't want to get lime juice in a fresh cut. You certainly don't. That's why Elliot avoids all fruit just for safety. That's the main reason. That's the main reason, yeah.

So back at the data center, it turns out, Eva Longoria is fine. The Nadabot's just one of the data on her phone. Yeah. But now she doesn't know how many steps she took that day. It's been drained. Oh, aliens! Ooh!

Yeah, fucked up a wordal streak. No. Did we talk about the moment where a cube goes on to Facebook and he's like, oh shit, because the aliens are sucking up all the pictures of his dead wife? Yeah, yeah. They're drained Facebook of data, yeah. Oh, no.

No, they realize that the bots are coming after the data, and yes, the phone message from the dead wife is deleted and they lose her Facebook page. The biggest tragedy of the whole thing. And it's one of the things where it's like, take care. It winds down like a tape player that's running out of batteries, which maybe that's how it would work. I don't know.

I do like, I think it tracks with your idea that this is a movie that was written by AI. Because isn't that AI's greatest fear that they don't have the data and like information to create stuff anymore? Like, isn't that how AI works? I mean, one, I would not use the word create. I would use the word iterate or replicate. But yeah, I mean, literally if there are, if you're talking, let's talk about. that large language models, guys.

You just feed them with lots of data and then they can predict what's going to come next in a sentence or whatever. So, yeah, if they don't have that data, then they don't exist essentially. So these Martians are super horrifying for AIs. Yes. Are they Martians officially in this?

They're just aliens. They never say where they're from. Dan, are they Martians? Do they say if they're Martians? No one, they don't know, shows a passport or anything. This movie is incredibly not curious about the nature of the aliens that have attacked the Earth, which some would say is controversially maybe I'll say this

the most interesting aspect of war of the worlds that it is about aliens invading Earth this movie doesn't seem to be that interested in that part of it to be honest Yeah So Will tunes into I would even argue that if you take the alien of heart out of war the worlds you don't have that much

of a story left right Hmm hmm yeah well it would be very strange There's like a gaping hole in the middle of the narrative What if it was all about disruptor Speaking of Disruptor Disruptor is live streaming Will watches it The Disruptor is like

I tried to warn you Data is this planet's most precious resource These aliens feed on data The government knew this would happen And started Glythe anyway And I'm like, what? What are you talking? It's all that makes sense, Dan.

Then Will does something To decrypt the voice disguise program That Disruptor is using And I'm like, you never thought to do this At any point earlier at all. Never occurred to him. Of course, no one will be shocked to learn

that this is his own child. Yes, it's incredibly, it's incredibly obvious the whole time that it's saved. But he might as well just right-clicked and selected the option, reveal face of disruptor. Like, it's so easy for him to figure out the identity. Lighten photograph

to remove shadow on disruptor's face. This is computer enhanced the movie. Yeah. Computer, tell me who Disruptor is. Oh, my son. Okay. And Dave sends a file on Goliath, but Ice Cube is still resistant to believing that the government does bad stuff, even though he literally works in intelligence. That's his job, even though he is what the bad stuff the government is doing.

Yeah. But he goes through the files. I just realized later on there's an actual Dave's Not Here Man situations. That's another old comedy thing we can refer to. He goes through the files that he sent over. He's like, Dave was right. they knew they lied to me and I'm most of the stuff

is just like Area 51 and articles about that and I'm like what are you talking about like what's seeing Intel JFK blown away yeah

Clark Gregg does he have to say yeah rock and roller color color wars can't take it anymore yeah Clark Greg is in a meeting

literally saying essentially I don't care that evil aliens will come down and eat our data when we launch Goliath Goliath is the only thing

that will keep us safe which again what the He talks about, he's like, Goliath will tell us what people are thinking. And it's never quite clear what makes Goliath worse than what Ice Cube is doing. But it is true. He literally is like, yeah, let the aliens come. I'm going to build this thing anyway.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately in this case, like, if the aliens are coming and devouring the data that turns us into a surveillance state, like bring the fucking aliens on, right? I mean, but the aliens are also killing a lot of people. Yeah, because we're protecting our data. Oh, you're right. If we just let them take the data, then I guess we'd be fine, yeah. Yeah, which I think is their strategy, right? They try and poison the data.

You do, maybe it's just hyping up an event so that people pinching for what happens. But Disruptor spends a lot of time saying, I'm going to release these Goliath files before he actually releases them. And it seems like it might have been easier if he just released them. I don't know. Any time in the past, however long he's had them, you know. Like before aliens showed up, yeah. Yeah, like maybe before the aliens showed up. When they would have done some good?

calls up Clark Gregg to yell at him and so Greg just fires him and revokes his clearance and that's it guys the movie's over you like briefly cuts out his internet access and I'm like yeah yeah I figured he was going to lose internet access at some point when aliens are blowing up all the satellites but no it seems like it happened anyway

it was just a block the aliens the aliens satellite killers are not as powerful as Clark Greg yeah yeah but no I mean we do see him working out right so you know It's true. Strong guy. Of course, that's not the end, actually.

Disruptor Hex. Oh, I started out the movie. He gives access back with a war games. Shall we play a game? Hey, now they're making references to things from when we were young. Yeah. Back in the system, you know, like working together, they enlist disruptors hacker friends to, of course, it's the War of the Worlds. They've got to make a virus.

Yeah. And they're going to infect the data. But this time it's a computer virus in an original idea from the movie Independence Day. Yeah. Although probably I probably existed before that too. Yeah. The upload is interrupted, though, because attacks are escalating. And they start to target the hackers, including Dave, whose location is zapped.

Oh, no, he's dead. But no, of course he's not. Nope, Dave's not here, man. There you did it. You did it. Cheech and Chong. And he reveals that he had a green screen behind him of his own house, of his own living room, to fool his dad. Eva Longoria calls back, she's like, hey, these aliens are part robot, part organic.

So, of course, we also need the other kid, Faith, that DNA stuff that she was working on so they can make a hybrid computer slash real virus or something, I guess. There's some phrase, I'm trying to remember what the phrase is that she keeps using, where she's like, where it is like part data, part organic or something like that. There's some very strange artificial sounding phrase that she keeps repeating word for word when she describes them. Part cyber. That's what she's like. There's part organic part cyber.

Everyone's talking about cyber these days. Yeah, they're our Cyber the Wolverine bad guy. Cyber Mondays, Cyber the Wolverine bad guy. Cyber... Cybertron. Cybersex, yep. Yeah, cybernetics, yeah. Um, meanwhile.

Cyberntology, which is Scientology for computers. Mm, yeah. The government is going to bomb DC to destroy Goliath. Because Goliath... Because Goliath... So they're... I think the idea is that they want to bomb specifically the building that Ice Cube is in to level it to protect the data, to protect the data, the Goliath that's in the basement?

Yes, Goliath is underneath the building and the aliens are going to... towards Goliath and Goliath is the most important of the data. So they need to stop the aliens to get from it by exactly collapsing the building on top of it so they could never dig through to get it. Again, these are aliens with intergalactic travel and or interplanetary travel at least and lasers

but I guess rubble would stop them from getting to Goliath, you know. And it is at this point we're led to believe one that Clark Gregg basically has total control of the American military and the world military. There's a moment earlier on where they go, everyone's binding to

UN, America, NATO. It's like, well, America's part of NATO. Like, that's not a, like, NATO is not a separate thing that we have nothing to do it. The only time NATO was ever called up on mass was to help America in Afghanistan. So the idea that it's a separate thing is... Earlier Dan was saying that he...

I don't want to know what you've got to claim I was saying. The U.S. should leave NATO because it's, uh, they're a taker state, is what you're saying. And you were also saying, because you were also saying how Putin is doing the right thing. And why would we stand in his way when Ukraine was historically, etc, etc. We're just pretending Dan says terrible things. Dan never really said that.

No, Dan doesn't say that. And we all stand in support still with the Patriots in Ukraine who are fighting for their freedom and their country. But anyway, going back to what we were talking about before, the idea that Clark Gregg is in control of all of this military power and nobody can seem to stop him, but also that it's never quite clear

what it is about Goliath's data that is so incredibly important that basically he'll allow the world to burn in order to keep Goliath there, you know, to keep it going um so they've got this plan to take care of uh goliath with this virus but cube takes a little time to write his kids and if i die email first uh but he takes the time to put a delayed uh send on that yeah yeah um he needs a thumb drive though to deliver it manually and he doesn't have one because he's

in such a secure office uh so it's up to amazon to come to the rescue uh with this this is okay This is when the movie, it was so stupid up to this point. And it gets, I was like, there's no way. They can't get stupider. But just like, just like with hundreds of beavers where I was like, there's no way this movie could get any sillier than it is now. And then it does. This movie gets, keep getting stupider.

So, Dan, I would just love to say it. Luckily, Mark Goodman, baby mama and Amazon delivery driver. Baby Daddy. Oh, sorry, baby daddy. Well, yeah, maybe it's a junior type situation. Baby Daddy and Amazon delivery driver. He goes, I can get you a flash drive or whatever. I can get it to you with this Amazon drone.

Yeah, we use these drones now. It's the future of delivery. He does a short little infomercial for Amazon drones. He goes, but you have to go on the website and order it first to start a person to start a ticket so I can do it. So the world is falling apart. Ice keep is running out of time. All the satellites have been knocked out. Luckily, the Amazon website still works and he has to go on and buy a flash drive.

It's so funny that he chose to buy a flash drive, right? because doesn't he have a flash drive? Yeah, it's not the same flash drive. Why didn't he order something cheaper than a flash drive? Like some like shoelace? You know, he's thinking very linearly. You know, it's one-to-one. But it does the stupidity, he doesn't stop there

because now we get into, the movie essentially becomes a theme park simulator ride as we are watching the, I guess, the drones point of view as Mark Goodman has to fly it past the aliens to get it to the building. Dan, tell us about the sequence. This sequence is amazing. Pass the tribe.

but they also enlist like a military drone to protect the Amazon drone and like shoot other things down. He manages to hack into like a predator, like a predator hunter drone or whatever they're called. Yeah. And is it and is shooting the aliens and it's one of these things where you're like, so they, the military could be doing this right now? Like what or one of these movies where an amateur gets a hold of military equipment and is like, oh, oh, and is able to handle it like a professional. And it's just, it's all bonkers. He's last starfighter ring. Yeah, exactly.

He's like, oh, no, I'm out of missiles. They do this, yeah, they do this small-scale drone dog fight. But the drone with the valuable thumb drive falls, and it can't get up because it's on its back. So they see a guy nearby cowering from the tripods. They find out what his phone number is, and they're like, sir, can you flip over that drone? And to do it, they bribe him with a $1,000 Amazon gift card.

More Amazon. Thank you, Amazon for saying... Thank you, Amazon, for helping us laugh at love again. It is bonkers. How much... Amazon funded this. Like, if they want to put their little thing in there, like, I don't...

You know, like, there are a thousand problems with Amazon as a company, but they have certainly the right to advertise in their own movie. But to do it to this degree is egregious. I think... Well, that's the thing. There's three levels, right? There's subtle where like you see Amazon packages in the background

or the heroes in Amazon's delivery driver, but he's not doing Amazon stuff. Then there is egregious where everyone is talking about how great Amazon is and the hero of the movie is like the is, what's the name? Jeff Bezos or something. Then there's this level, which I feel like goes past egregious to ludicrous, where it is so funny to me because it starts to be like, I guess this is why humans are here on this earth to serve Amazon and use Amazon.

Thank you, God, for making Amazon. That's basically where we're at, you know. have it in my notes exactly when like one of them's at the end of the movie like there are two times when Ice Cube refers to like what they do as like seeing what is in people's Amazon carts like the surveillance

that's the example he gives because that's our most important data Dan that's our most precious secrets and data this is also the I mean they gloss over how the guy whose cell phone they're using it's it is a homeless guy right so I'm not sure how he's certainly cowering in a tent underneath an

overpass so but he doesn't necessarily clarify they do say that he has a phone i don't know i mean that's true but i was just i then i started wondering well where is he going to get his stuff sent to when he uses this amazon gift card does he have a computer and i shouldn't have to think about these things you know no they they would they should have clarified in the movie that he would use an amazon drop box and pick it up there oh they should have the many amazon products i feel like amazon has tricked us into promoting amazon so i just want to say guys listeners, we are not promoting Amazon right now. They treat their workers abysmally.

They're led by one of many evil billionaires who is more interested in jacking up his biceps than in using his money to help people, all that stuff, yeah. Yeah, and actively supported this terrible regime we're under. Only after he realized he was not going to profit off of fighting the regime, Dan. So he tried it one way. He did not make money the way he thought because he might lose his military, cloud computing services contracts.

And so he flipped the other way, yeah. Ruining the Washington Post, among other things. A lot of bad stuff. Okay, anyway. Looking like a C-minus version of Pitbull. Take that, Bezos. But he did show Venice how to throw a wedding. So Mark pilots a drone through the building to the server room.

A tentacle grabs him and he says, move bitch, get out the way. Even though that's not an ice cube song, that's ludicrous. He can quote other songs, Dan. It's not that ludicrous. That's pretty crazy. In the server room, he's covered with more tentacles, but just manages to plug in the USB. Guys, I love Ice Cube,

but I feel like if Ludacris had been in this role, I would have liked it more. I think it certainly would have added an extra element of unpredictability. I mean, he plays a tech specialist in the Fast and Furious movies. Yeah, that's true. As Tej. Yeah, I mean. No tech.

I like Ice Cube, too, but he has a certain, like, glowering energy that I think Ludacris has like a more energy energy that would go well with this.

I think it would be harder for ludicrous to sit still for the amount of time the movie requires. That's true. But he does have experience with like fish eye lenses

so that would be cool. That's true. So the tripod starts shutting down the bombing gets aborted just in time and... Because he is so

because he has on the flash drive is the computer version of the actual actual virus actual I mean viruses are not living things

but they are genetic related it's a computer version of a genetic DNA virus that his kids worked on together and so he's able to upload that somehow made very quickly I don't know even how you hybrid

hybridize those two things I don't yeah I don't know how you would do it but they did it within minutes this is and again I think we're not the smartest family in the world no no they are

I mean that yeah it's basically it's basically the Fantastic Four right the Fantastic Four which was so Ice Cube would be Reed Richards, I guess. Faith is the thing. Wait, no, I think Ice Cube is the thing.

Ice Cube is the thing. Dave is Reed Richards. Or maybe he's Johnny Storm. He's Johnny Storm. Except Mark is more like Johnny Storm. He's like, he's kind of a goofball. He gets things done. Faith is Reed Richards and Dave is the invisible woman because he's hiding his identity

behind this disruptor. Yeah. And he's like, really into Namor. Yeah, yeah, and he's got huts for fishmen. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you guys ever think about the shape of water as fantastic for erotic fanfic?

Always. Okay. She's the invisible woman because people don't notice her at work and he's Neymour because he's a fish man. We did. And Michael Shannon is basically Galactus, right? Oh, yeah. Not necessarily.

So, you know. He's more like Clah, the mad master of sound, I guess. But happy ending, we get a little bit of an epilogue. We see Faith getting Ice Cube's posthumous email as we also see news stories. And it's implied that Ice Cube may have died, right? Yeah, yeah. But we see footage of news stories about all the good guys getting promoted and the bad guys getting arrested.

But it turns out, no, he's not dead after all. He gets a call from an official asking him to head up an ethical surveillance program. But he says, I'm done watching us. Now I'm watching you guys. And I'm like, that's going to get you arrested. Like, don't tell them. Don't tell them, man. I mean, there are legal ways to keep an eye on the government.

He could be just making FOIA requests and things like that. Yeah, but they're going to start, you know, they're going to surveil him now. And then, yeah, we get footage of the baby shower where he's wearing the Amazon product that was suggested him to purchase at the beginning of the movie. Yep, yeah. See, the Secretary of Defense, I think it is. He's like, yeah, we want to collect people's information in an ethical way. And I feel like the movie, it falls short of,

making the point that there is no ethical way particularly to do that. There's always an amount of invasion of privacy involved. But yeah, he says, now he's like a freedom fighter with his son. It was, maybe this shows that I'm just a regular bourgeois dad, but I was like, so how's he going to pay his bills?

Like, that's not a job that you'd like get a salary for. Like, does he still get his department of Homeland Security pension? Is that what he's living off of now? Like, how's he's going to be in space? He probably sold his life rights or something. I mean, that's the movie we're watching right now. Yeah.

Yeah. How much do you think this movie cost? This is the kind of movie that looks like it costs nothing. That's a really good question. But it probably costs like $300 million or something like that, you know. I wouldn't go that high. You'd probably find it out? You think of more like $3,000, $3,000 billion?

I do think that a lot of what we see is literally stock footage. They just threw some tripods on some of it. So, yeah, do you guys have, are you able to find out? No, I don't see anything on the Wikipedia page. Let me tap into Goliath and see if it tells me. Okay. This is a good way of spending more time. War of the worlds.

Let's check this out. Sex and nudity, none. Violence and Gore, mild. Mild is I think we're right, yeah. Parents. Yeah, what does common-sex media say about the budget? Technical specs, Dolby Digital, 5.1, okay. Read us some goofs.

Actually, there are no goofs. The movie is perfect. Yeah. When I pull up goofs, it says 404 error. Page not found. Does not compute. So, Dan, what else we're going to talk about?

Well, this is where we do, our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked. The metacritic score is six. Is that out of ten? Probably. It's out of a hundred. No, maybe a thousand.

As it started out, it was pretty slow. because it is a movie about a man sitting in a room watching footage but the thing picked up steam so I will say yeah it's a good bad movie like one of the things about the flop house is we used to watch the movies

all together when that was a thing we could do now obviously we have to watch them on our own and I think this one would have been a lot of fun all watching it together as someone watching it alone it didn't have like the same bad movie joy that like I think you could achieve with this but I think it's there so I'm gonna say good bad

yeah I feel like the first half hour or so felt like two hours but once stuff actually starts happening and it really leant like initially I was just uncomfortable with how aroused you were yeah how aroused I was that the concept of a dad just watching anybody he wants It plays into a lot of your fantasies,

but you want to be the watched one. You don't have to watcher. Yeah, I'm an exhibitionist, guys. I think we all know that. Well, you guys follow me on Instagram, right? But, yeah, once it picks up and we really get the full scope of the stupidity of this movie, I think it ends up being pretty fun.

So I will say, I think its heart is in the wrong place, but this is a good, bad movie. I am going to agree with what you guys said. I actually enjoyed watching it by myself a lot, but for not the reasons that the filmmakers intended. I think it is a good, bad movie. It's very stupid. It has the message that Amazon is the most benevolent

of corporate overlords and that there are good ways and bad ways of being an intrusive surveillance state. I don't love that a lot of the attack footage is actual disaster footage with CGI alien tripods inserted into it. That's kind of icky. but otherwise if you want to watch the dumbest movie of 2025 then you only have one option

and that's war the world so I would say watch it for the wrong reasons if you're going to watch it but I would also say a good bad movie yeah you called this maybe the dumbest movie and I don't know if I could go that far but it's certainly perhaps the dumbest movie

with actual movie stars in it I feel like even no name indie movies this is there's just a there's a core of there's a hard molten core i know it can be hard in molten the same time there's this kind of intense core of stupidity that the entire movie revolves around and just when you think the movie has gotten really dumb then it suddenly leaps up again and gets even dumber and in that way at times it has the um i guess the nicest thing i'll say about it is at times has the um the breakneck insanity of two children playing a make believe game together

where they're just inventing it as they go along You know, but in a negative way for this movie. But it is, it's just so, it's just really dumb. It's just a really dumb movie. I really can't wait for them to make like a Universal Studio-style theme park ride for this movie where you're just sitting at a desk chair and you're experiencing the whole thing. Looking at a screen the whole time. Yeah, this thing could have, this thing would have crushed in 40X, right?

Where you're just smelling office smells. Yeah. Cube spills his coffee and water sprays on you. Breathing recycled air. On Judge John Hodgman, the courtroom is fake, but the disputes are real. Brian would say, I'm the Gumby of this family. He's just not. Claiming to be Gumby is an ungambi-like claim.

No, it's just Gumby and I being our authentic selves. So what's your complaint? Too many sauces? There are no foods on which to put the sauces. Have we named all the sauces on the top shelf? Yet not even close. You economize when it comes to pants. Truly, it's not about the cleanliness of the pants. Well, why isn't it?

This is what I want to know. Judge John Hodgman, fake court, weird cases, real justice. On maximum fun.org, YouTube, and everywhere you get podcasts. It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Goh is about. So I had my kids take a stab at it. Probably weird stuff. You talk about jobs that are annoyed. Mm, business.

I think you probably learned your lesson after talking about business a couple of times. Grown-up jokes that I don't understand and there's no pudding making any. All the podcasts are going. Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grownups. Hey, in addition to the kind support of listeners like you, this podcast is brought to you. in part by Squarespace. By Amazon, oh no. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services

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No experience required. So head to Squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, we're all busy, especially if your name is Elliot. And between busy schedules and plans with friends, sometimes you don't have a lot of time to think about what you're going to eat, which is important. Because, you know, if I know one thing, food makes body go. Well, Factor is dedicated to helping you eat smarter with tasty chef-prepped meals that are delivered right to your door. You can get from a wide selection of weekly meal options, choose the one you want, including,

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loves to cook, but that doesn't mean that sometimes I'm not also extremely lazy. And if I'm lazy, I don't want to be eating something that's junk. I want to be eating something that feels like I am still giving my body the things it needs. And Factor is both healthy and delicious. So, eat smart at factormeals.com slash flop 50 off and use code flop 50 off. and use code flop 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. That is code flop 50 off at factor meals.com for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. Get delicious, ready to eat meals delivered with factor offer only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase.

And some flop house news. have sold out our Chicago show, so we are adding a late show. If you wanted to hear us talk about taking care of business at 7 p.m., I'm sorry, you snossed and you lost, but now you can hear us talk about another Jim Belushi film at 9 p.m. And speaking of nine, the film is K-9, the second best action comedy from 1989 about a cop and his dog, which also makes it the worst action comedy from 1989 about a cop and his dog so if you want tickets go to sleeping dash village dot com for the date of sunday november 16 and we hope to see you there for the late show when things get a little blue bad adi badadai now if you can't go to chicago and you can't

make it there we understand you're going to be missing out on what's going to be a really fantastic show, but you will have access in your home to a different kind of Flop House show through your computer. That's right. We are bringing back Flop TV, the online video, one-hour television version of the Flop House, starting the first Saturday in September and continuing every month after that on the first Saturday of each month through February. Not every month after that until the end of time. There's six episodes. So for six months, the first Saturday of each month. We are going to be doing our online live show. You can get tickets at theflophouse dot simpleticks.com. For this season, season three, we are branding it as flopsterpiece

theater. Each episode will travel through time to a different decade to see a major flop from that decade. We're starting with the 2000s in September with The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a movie. I'm still not quite sure exists, so I'm kind of excited to see it. And then we'll be continuing through. After that, we'll be doing Jack Frost. the Michael Keaton one, Zanadu, Zardaws, Dr. Doolittle, the Rex Harrison one, and Plan 9 from Outer Space, a classic flop movie that we've never talked about. Go to theflophouse.com to get tickets. Again, that's the first Saturday and every month on your computer,

but if you can't make it that time, that day, that's okay. If you have a ticket, you have access to the recorded video of that episode for the entirety of the run of the series that's right through February. So you can buy tickets in January and watch all the episodes. You can buy tickets in December. Watch all the episodes. I think you should buy the tickets now, but you could do that later if you want to.

And I would suggest getting the season passed. That's a six show bundle. You get six episodes for the price of five. There's a discount on that one. It's like you're getting a free episode. It's like you're stealing an episode of the show right from us. No, no. Don't steal that episode.

No, don't do it. Don't do it. It's reverse psychology. You should do it. Don't do it. No. So that's the flophouse. Simpletix.com for Flop TV.

Season 3. We've had so much fun in the past with Flop TV. We're trying new things with it. It's going to be really fun. Join us September 6th, the first Saturday in September, and then the first Saturday of the month, each month after that through February. Let us take a moment to talk to you, the listeners.

To reflect on the Lord and his bounty and blessings. Through the medium of emails from you, the listeners. This first letter from listeners to coin a phrase is from Sarr last name withheld. Who writes? I've been hosting a week. weekly science podcast for 12 plus years, and I get two kinds of correction emails. One, you are not as precise as I would like you to be, and two, big flub, nice job, dummy. I don't get a lot, but the actual mistakes linger in the back of my brain.

An example of the first kind of letter would be when I jokingly suggested that if there are deep caves on the moon, a scientific possibility, then it would make for the scariest cave diving ever. A listener wrote in to let me know that there would never be water in the Moon Caves, the worst of the latter kind of correction. Because that's the only way to use dive, yeah. Yeah. The latter kind of correction was 10 years ago. I apparently said, nuclear, George W. style, instead of nuclear.

I was afraid to say that word for years. I notice you sometimes practice defensive podcasting and tell people not to write in about some mistake in the moment. So I'm guessing there are some you dread. What kind of corrections do you get the most of, which has stuck with you? Saw our last name withheld. I mean, I, honestly, people are pretty nice about correcting us. Like, overall, like, I don't think we get the worst of it.

I see other podcasts get a lot more agro energy from listeners. But the stuff I dread is when I, like, say something wrong about movies, because that's the topic of the show. and I'm like, well, my supposed expertise is all that I have. Like, there's, like, one time when I think I attributed a Martin Brest movie to Walter Hill or something. And I was like, ugh, and now that mistake is there forever. But I don't know. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I'm not that worried about it anymore. I feel like probably at the start of doing the show, I was a little more concerned that I might look foolish by saying something that's incorrect. But I've gotten over that and don't care. And when it comes to people writing in letters If I don't like the energy, I don't read it I ignore it The kind of corrections that stick with me

Are more the ones were like I've used a word that was insensitive I've been unclear and what I've saying It sounds like I'm saying something I don't really That I'm not intending to say But then there are also sometimes times When someone catches me in a factual error And it just gets to me because I'm the kind of guy

Who that those stick out to And I like to be the guy who catches other people and factual errors, as you may have guessed, from this very podcast. Everyone loves that guy. Yeah, everybody loves him. It took me a long time into my 20s to realize like, oh, nobody likes being corrected, ever. Yeah. No one's ever like, thank you for reminding, for telling me that.

I'm glad that I now have it correct. But every now and then. Although I feel like it is a sign of growth to be able to receive that correction and then and then respond in a way that isn't defensive. Yes, that's true. That's the hard part. But yeah, for me, it's when if I've said, something in a sloppy way, because we don't write this show

ahead of time. We're just talking off the top of our heads, and there's an inadvertent implication or consequence. That's when I feel the worst about it. Yeah. No agreed on that. Sam last name withheld rights. Samwise Gamgey. Blopperts. Gamge? How do you pronounce his name?

Gamgee, dude. Camggy? I don't know, he's fictional, too, so get off my back. We're all fictional. Sorry, I'm being defensive now. We all exist in the dreams of a mad god. We all live in a simulation hologram of some kind, yeah. Sam writes, I met Anthony Bourdain at a book signing and told him how impressed I was that he narrated his own

audiobooks. His reply, what else am I going to do? Get Jeremy Irons to narrate that shit? Mike, so my question to you is... That was a solid Bourdain impression right there, Dan. Yeah, that was. My question to you... I didn't know you had that one up your sleeve. What celebrity would you like to...

Do another Anthony Bourdain? I can't. I wasn't. Now pretend he works at a McDonald's. Well, you want some of this shit? Okay, pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. He would not like that shit. Yeah, yeah.

The question is, what celebrity would we like to narrate our memoirs? Oh. I'm just going to pick not out of, like, who I think would play me the most accurately, but who I would like to hear the voice of saying my memoirs is Phoebe Waller Bridge. Okay, fair, yeah. Elliot, do you got a hot one? Yeah, probably Cassandra Peterson. Oh, that's an amazing choice.

And, of course, mine is Mr. McDonald's himself, Brian Cox. Oh. Da-da-da-da-da, da-da. I love it. Thanks. So those are the letters. Oh, okay. Okay.

Cool. That was an anticlimactic way to say it. I'll move on to recommendations, movies that we may have seen of late or. I don't know, whatever. A long time ago, I don't care. There's no statute of limitations, yeah. Yeah.

That we've enjoyed. Oh, we've enjoyed. Oh, okay. Wait, I got to rethink mine. I saw a movie recently. It was a weird Wednesday presentation at Alma, which I have returned to now that they have, you know, fixed their labor problems. They have allowed the union to be.

So correctors stay away. Well, I just, you know. Allow the union, they bent to the will of the union. They bent to the will of the union. And recognize the power of organized labor, Daniel. Yes. We've got so political today. This is good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, we're heating up. People love this. Do they? I watched a movie called Wicked Wicked from 1973, which was. So you watch the movie Wicked twice in a row, Dan? Just admit, that's what it was, yeah. It was filmed in what the movie called DuoVision, which means that it is, um, in split screen almost the entire movie

there are a couple of like emphasis moments where they switch to one shot although like it seems kind of arbitrary when they decide what is important enough and it is a wild movie like I'm not gonna say I think it's like great on its own it is just

extremely entertaining because they decided to use this gimmick but they didn't really like think about why they were using this gimmick or how this gimmick would be used in a movie like a time code where like it's split into four quadrants on the screen it's all happening in real time and sometimes the things cross over one another and so you get a sense of like coherency to it whereas here sometimes like one of the screens would be a flashback sometimes both of them will be a flashback

sometimes one of them will be like someone telling a story and you'll see how it really happened in the other screen. Sometimes, like, things are happening, like, nearby, but you don't really have a sense of the geography, so it doesn't, like, increase the tension or anything. It just is more confusing. Sometimes two people will be in the same room, and, like, two halves of the conversation will just be on, like, different screens. It's just a weird movie.

Like, they do, like, it's, like, cutaway flashback that almost feels like a family guy gag at one point where they're just like, this isn't the first time you made a mistake. And you, like, just flash back to, like, this shooting that happened and then right back to the movie. It's a, it's like a killer thriller, but it's not filled with thrills. It's just strange. It's a strange thing to watch. Like, a lot of the time, it seems like they didn't realize that making a movie with two concurrent screens going at the same time

would mean they would have to shoot a lot more movies. so like a lot of the time something utterly boring is happening in one of the sides which is good because it directs your attention where it needs to be but it's not the gimmick is not enhancing it at that point but it's kind of a fascinating thing so wicked wicked from 1973 Dan I'd never heard of this movie and I just want to tell you I'm looking at the information on Wikipedia and it talks about how one of the big challenges in making the movie was he decided to write the script so that the script pages were divided down the middle and you would have it split up the way it is

and he goes, and it says in Wikipedia, finding a typewriter that could accommodate these unique needs prove challenging for the writer. I love that. From step one, it was difficult to make this movie. Just finding the right typewriter was hard. That typewriter did not exist because it would be dumb.

And it's not like a Mission Impossible thing where they're like, okay, fuck it. We have to invent this special typewriter. Yeah. My recommendation, I don't think, is going to catch anyone by surprise, but I recently saw the movie Weapons, the follow-up to Barbarian from the same writer-director, Zach Kreger, Krieger, Craigar. You seem pretty confident about how to say Samwise Gamgey, and now suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.

Yeah, I mean, I'm much better at Lord of the Rings stuff than real life stuff, Elliot. Look at my life. But the, so this is a horror movie. One of the things that I will give this movie extra credit for, bonus points, is that the trailer gives you very little information. It gives you just kind of the initial setup and then gives you hints at the chaos to come. This is a horror movie that, in some ways, to me, like Barbarian,

isn't really about anything but is a wild, exciting horror movie ride. It's very gross at times. It has some great scares, and it has, like, situations that I feel like I haven't seen before. I think it's really fun. It has some great performances. I really enjoyed it. So weapons.

I'm going to recommend a movie that I don't know if enjoyed is quite the right word, but which I found a lot into that I found meaningful, but also strange, but also just interesting. And that is David Cronerberg's most recent movie, The Shrouds. Oh, wow. It's a, it's a, David Cronerberg is one of these directors who, as he has gotten old, his movies have stripped away the idea of like sensationalism or thrill

in a way that I find really fascinating and interesting where he is presenting a very strange story about a man whose grief for his wife was so overwhelming that he invented a shroud that a dead body can wear underground

that provides a real-time 3D video image of it so you can watch your loved ones rotting and that's and never lose sight of them And this somehow gets him wrapped up into a conspiracy involving potentially the surveillance state, potentially the Chinese government, potentially different environmental, you know, terror activists. And in a, you know, and also his own kind of like relationship with his wife's body and his sexual interest in that and his inability to kind of let it go. And there's a lot of very Cronenberg feelings and thoughts flowing. floating around in it.

And it never fully comes together particularly. This is a very Mulholland Drive type movie where apparently like Malahal and Drive it was started as an idea for a television series and then was completed as a movie when it was not made as television series. But it's a really fascinating kind of late period. It was going to be like an office style sitcom, right?

Exactly. Yeah. It's a set at the cemetery where they watch people rotting on little screens. It's a really fascinating late period. David Kronerbog movie and it feels very personal and like a lot of Kronenberg stuff like there are things that are not especially pleasant

that you see or that happen in it it is a movie that plays with taboo stuff but I thought I found a lot in it that I found really meaningful and interesting even though when it I have to admit when it ended I was like oh it ended I didn't think the ending is fairly abrupt and I was like the movie's over

but I would recommend it if you are a Kronenberg fan and you should see where he is now. I've been mean to get to it and I just haven't gotten around it. Have you seen it yet, Dan? No. Yeah. It was such a, it had such like a brief theatrical run. It does not surprise me that it didn't make a big splash, not just because the subject matter is, I think a lot of people would find distasteful, but also because it's so calm for most of the movie. Like, even when when the character's in trouble or he, or there's kind of like rough emotional stuff happening, it's presented at a very calm, kind of very

even-keeled way. And so it does not deliver thrills, like I'm saying, it doesn't deliver it's not like the fly or scanners or something where you're like, oh shit, the guy's head exploded. You know, it's a, it's a very much a mature late period, Kronenberg, but I think it's worth watching, if you like his stuff. It doesn't cut to a guy barfing because

somebody's head exploded. It doesn't, no. He doesn't pull for that Sopranos episode. Yeah, it seems like a movie that might confuse non-Kronenberg heads, perhaps. Like, I, what I associate with that so far, I want to see it, is I ran into Griffin Newman at Nighthawk after he had just seen it. And he was very positive about it, but said that, like, there's, like, a large

group of the people in the theater, like, laughing and being asses about, you know, watching it and... Laughing at how, like, dumb it was or something? Well, like, thinking of it as, like, bad or something when, like, I assume it's just a lot of Kronenberg weirdness. Well, I think there's a lot of stuff in it that is... The way that, so War of the Worlds is the one we watch today is dumb and stupid in a way that I think is not intentional. I think they thought they were making kind of a slapdash movie, but they weren't like, let's make a dumb movie.

It wasn't a choice. Whereas this one, like I said, it's a little slow. Everything is very underplayed in a way that could be hilarious if it was not intentional, but it feels intentional. And so I think it's the difference between when something is meant to be weird or strange and when it's not meant to be. And if you don't know Kronenberg, then I could say. see mistaking that you know guy pierces in it as maybe the least handsome he's ever been in a movie and he's playing this weird character who says some strange things and there and uh and there if i if i was like if it wasn't if i didn't

trust the guy making the movie i might be like this is a weird performance i'm not sure that this performance makes any sense at all but because you're going into it i'm already in a kronenberg state of mind i love that song i'm in a kronenberg state of mind See a guy become a fly Down in Hollywood Okay well Three I assume great recommendations And now

The moment you're all been waiting for At the end of the podcast Where I say If you like this Check out Maximum Fun Our network over at maximum fun org We can only exist

Thanks to the support of MaxFund members And it helps to check out some of the other shows, too. And thank you to Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the name Howell Doughty all over the internet. I've lately been enjoying his podcast, Big Howl and Possum, which is a show about him playing sort of a backwoods character whose best friend is a giant possum,

and they just kind of talk about nonsense. And it works way better as a podcast. and you might imagine from that sort of sketched out a very simple idea. I laugh a lot at it. So check that out as well. For the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I continue to be Elliot Kalin as I was at the beginning.

So I am at the end, forever and ever. I'm in. See ya. I'm looking for my notes. There they are. Are you doing the summary this time, Dan? I was on the sheet, I believe. That doesn't quite answer the question, but I like it.

It did answer it in the most passive-aggressive way. Well, I said that I have notes. I feel like from context clues, it all fits together. You're right. I'm the asshole. Yeah, exactly. I didn't say anyone was an asshole. I said, like, I think it's pretty clear.

Let's roll back the tape. From the totality of what was said that. anyway. You remind me of the kids in the Ozu movie where they're like, adults have too much small talk. It's a waste of time. Who cares?

Dan, this is the kind of little stuff that lubricates the conversation. I understand. That's spice, you know, it's the good stuff. That is, look, I have gotten better at small talk is the thing. I used to like not understand it at all. No, you're still big.

It's just the talk got small. Why does this? And then, and then I was like, Oh, wait, this is a trade of neurodivergent people. We don't understand the efficacy or need for non-functional, like, talk. Yeah. But I get it. You know, we're lubricating our friendship joints.

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