The Flop House - Sonic the Hedgehog 3, with Jamelle Bouie

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

You probably thought we forgot the hedgehog beat! We were just biding our time. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race, SONIC. We welcome our returning Senior Hedgehog Correspondent, Jamelle Bouie, who absolutely does not have anything more important to do than extend this bit, to discuss Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Why does a movie about a fast hedgehog have this much plot, and why is it all so boilerplate? We get into it. Stay updated on all things Flop House, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! Paste https://feeds.simplecast.com/EOAFriME into iTunes (or your favorite podcatching software) to have new episodes of The Flop House delivered to you directly, as they’re released. Wikipedia page for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Recommended in this episode: Dan: The Color of Money (1986) Stu: Pillion (2025) Elliott: Heat Lightning (1934) Jamelle Bouie: Wuthering Heights (1939)

On this episode, we discuss Sonic 3. A further delve into the lore of the Sonic, the Hedgehog mythology, which exists. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelan. And before we get started telling you what this podcast is about and what we do on it, I just want to mention. You may have seen that this is a hedgehog podcast. This is a podcast about Sonic the Hedgehog 3. You may ask yourself, is the Flop House able to bring back their politics and hedgehog correspondent?

Yes, we did, and he's here with us. Now, we are very happy to be joined by the great Jamal Bowie, writer for The New York Times, co-host of Unclear and Present Danger with John Gans, someone who has more serious, interesting things to do with his time than watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and then talk to us about it. But we're always so glad when he comes to join us. Jamel, thank you so much for joining us again for this Hedgehog film.

the full end of the trilogy, unless there's more, I don't know. First, it's for pleasure. Second of all, I think this movie did well. So there will be a fourth one. And third of all, honestly, you know, I was disappointed that yet another hedgehog movie, a Sonic movie,

and neither Sonic nor Knuckles is pregnant. Honestly, I was thinking the same thing during it. I'm like, when does the series go off the rails and they just start making these characters pregnant? And you know, I'm pausing the screen every time they're on there, and I'm measuring their bellies to see if they're a little bigger. They're showing a bump.

Any scene where they're hanging out, you're like, what are they drinking? Is it water or do they have actual liquor in their hands? It's always liquor. First of all, I'm glad that we got Jamel back. I wanted to clarify, unclear and present danger is another podcast. The word podcast was not said in case people wanted to go looking for them. Oh, I thought I did say it. I guess I didn't, yeah.

But also, I have to admit, like, we put off doing Sonic 3 for a while because I kept being scared. I was like, Jamel's too busy. being like one of the few people with balls enough to say true things in the media right now. He can't come back for Hedgehog show. And then he expressed interest himself. And I'm like, oh, thank God, okay? That's great.

We'll get them back. I was like, honestly, I was like, why haven't they reached out to me about this yet? The movie's been out for a minute. No, you're too busy. Every time you're like scrolling through whatever app and you see it and you're like, oh, Sonic 3, huh? You wistfully look out the wind back. You look at the window and hope that the, that the Jamel symbol is flashing in the clouds.

Yes. Saying, do I watch it? No, I should wait. So, unclear in present danger. It's a podcast where you and John Gansi talk about like kind of John Clancy style movie thrillers, right, from the 90s. Yeah, yeah. John Clancy? Tom Clancy.

God damn it. His brother. His brother. John Clancy. Yeah, which the, the, the peaceful look for Red October is a big John Clancy one. Yeah. We watched, like, the political and military thrillers of the 90s, the podcast named after the film Clear and Present Danger,

and there's obviously, you know, that and Humphor on October and Patriot Games and Air Force One, which isn't technically a Tom Clancy movie, but it basically is... It's so close to it. Yeah, yeah. That's a John Clancy movie, if ever there was one, yeah. But, I mean, the funny thing about doing the podcast is that you... This was just like a, like a healthy genre of film in the 90s. Like reliably, like every other weekend, there'd be a new one of these kind of movies at the multiplex. And so, which is to say that, like, we've been doing this like four or five years now and we're still, we're in 1997.

We're going chronologically. So we have like a couple more years left in the 90s. And if you actually date like the end of this kind of the heyday of this film to 2002, which is, I think about right, because it's kind of the last pre-9-11. films are like hitting the theaters then we have like a solid four or five years left to go and there are there are a there are a lot of these goddamn movies i'll tell you they were so popular because it was such a i feel like there was a and you i'm sure you guys have talked about this like in the i haven't listened to every episode i apologize but and i don't remember all of my apologize god jemel why you make you feel so bad on the thing but the that like people were so curious about like what's it going to be like what's

our new threat what's the thing that's going to be scary and then nine eleven hit and it's like oh this is less fun than I thought it was going to be, to have a new threat. This is really less fun. I feel like that was an era where we were able to gainfully employ older male actors to play presidents. It's true. They play presidents.

They play national security advisors. A lot of national security advisors. Now they all have to be the action star, which is crazy. The guy who wants to bomb things. Then there has to be the analyst who doesn't want to bomb things. There's a lot of roles that you kind of fill up. There's the guy who first wrote the phrase, but sir.

They got so many royalties. So many royalties. I don't know you get patent that, but Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it's like when Sealed Team 6 killed Osama and Lodin and Disney announced they were going to do something called Sealed Team 6 about seals

and they tried to copyright the phrase, SEAL Team 6, and everyone's like, wait a minute, hold on a second. You can't do it. When they came out with, what was that Day of the Dead movie that they did? The one, where the kid goes to the Land of the Dead, the Disney movie.

Coco. When they briefly tried to copyright the phrase Day of the Dead. It was like, Disney, come on. You can't take a phrase everyone has been using for years and years. Can't blame a guy for trying. Yeah, that's true. Elliot, for a second, I thought you were referencing like a George Romero film. I was like, what, what George Romero movie where a kid goes to the land of the dead?

Yeah, George Romero's 28 years later. It should have been called School of the Dead. And it would have been a kid going to some kind. Yeah, he should have made that. Guys, let's go back in time. This is the one use of the time. That feels a little to school shooter adjacent, though. Yeah, that's true.

There are all these, like, not to sound too much like an old man, but that's where the show is drifting. There are all these, like, venerable genres you just don't see anymore. Like, that was one of them, of course, because it was more tied to a specific, like, political... Zombie kids? But... The zombie kids genre, yeah.

I just went out with an old daily show friend of Elliotts and mine to see Crime 101, and it's, like, a perfectly solid, you know, middle crime thriller, but it really was like, oh, these used to be around all the time. Oh, yeah. It feels weird to get one. Because they were like, when you watch these political thrillers and you watch those movies, they're just cheap to make. Like, it doesn't really take a lot.

You don't need a ton of sets. You get a lot of like veteran character actors who just like need the work. You get like some workman-like director who knows how to like, you know, run a set and like put together a couple action sequences. Let's get Peter Hyams in here. Yeah. Some drone shots of the Pentagon. It's like what was it

Goodard who said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. And it's like for those movies, it's like you need like a gun or two suits, a conference room. Maybe some place that looks like an airfield. Yeah. Maybe if you're like spending a little bit of money, you might film like on location in Washington, D.C.

But a stock shot of the White House does just as well. Right, right. You just cut to it and then cut to a room. Yeah. I was going to segue about how this is like... The actual movie we're talking about Sonic 3. Yeah, so different from Sonic 3. But then I'm like, it's not really,

because this movie is filled with so much unnecessary plot and so much of it is like action-y plot. And I was like, Elliot, I think you're in charge of the summary today, right? No, Stuart. Stewart the Hedgehog 3 is on the summary. I look forward to explaining this movie to me because I didn't understand what was going. Ironically, this is something I should have thought about beforehand,

but I didn't, is that of all the Sonic movies, this is the closest to one of those 90s thrillers. There's so much in it about like a secret government weapon. It's a fairable geostorm of a movie. It is, I mean, and that it's almost the exact same thread as Geostorm, yes. And for a movie-based title after a main character, whose catchphrases got to go fast, this thing sure takes its time. I'm sure we'll talk about this.

This was the first Flop House movie in a while where I stopped it multiple times to see how much time was left in the movie. and was shocked at how much, how little I had watched and how much was still to come. I was like, oh, this is, they look like they're wrapping things up. I'm not even halfway through. There was a moment where I paused it and I saw 57 minutes and I shouted, what the fuck? I had that near the end when it seemed like they had saved the day and there were 20 minutes left in the movie.

I'm like, what's left to do, Sonic the Hedgehog 3? This movie should be 85 minutes long. It's for dropping off the kids at the theater and then you go run some errands. then you pick them up again. But no. Okay, so the movie opens. Obviously with the... Good way for a movie to start.

It opens on a mysterious island prison off the coast of Japan. We see a mysterious hedgehog suspended in a tank with some fluid. And that hedgehog suddenly starts hearing something. He hears some acoustic music. He gets flashes of traumatic memories. And then a hacker shuts down.

down the facility, letting that hedgehog escape after beating the shit out of a bunch of, like, guards. Yeah, they're just armed guards, yeah. He does it by teleporting around a lot, and then he bursts his way out and runs across Tokyo Bay.

This is Shadow the Hedgehog. Guys, describe Shadow the Hedgehog for me. He's the most Keanu Reevesy of Hedgehogs is. That's true, yep. Because that's the voice. He's got cool sneakers. He's got rings around his wrists and ankles.

And he's got like where Sonic Hedgehog is blue with white highlights. He's like black with red highlights, right? Like it's the same character design essentially, but with different jewelry

and shoes and just different coloring, right? Because they're all, they all come from video games where it was like, take the same character and just take the same sprite and just change it slightly,

you know, to save CPU power, right? He's haunted by trauma, which of course is what you want in your cartoon, family hedgehog. Spoiler, I was incredible.

I was shocked to find that his traumatic memory of his friend, a child being killed, was not going to be revealed that it was a trick or a ploy and that girl survived. No, that girl died. And Shadow lives with it forever. I'm like, this is not what I expected for the movie. I was, I would, I save Elliot.

For like most of the movie I was like, yeah, so she's going to show up and like help save the day, right? Like, no, they're like, movies like, no, this girl's dead as hell. Yeah. It's so, so it feels like. Granddaughter of a different character is dead as hell. This character. Sorry.

No, no, just like, I kept waiting for that moment where they're like, oh, Robotnik's grandfather lied to you. She actually survived and he's been using you. No, yeah, like you said, dead as hell. Like, they just killed this kid and Shadow is traumatized. Yeah, I thought it was a little extreme, though, when they had that scene where they exhumed the body just to confirm that she was dead.

Yeah. More than necessary. Well, when Sonic was like, we better taste some of it to make sure it's really her. And they were like, Sonic, you and your lust for human flesh. Your hunger that can never be assuage And he's like, that's me Sonic that job

The first two movies Like when was that Estably? Yeah. But the scenes are all in there. He goes, I'm Sonic the Hedgefage. I have to eat. So I don't know about you guys, but Shadow the Hedgehog

was introduced to the lore in the games kind of after my time. So everything I've learned about Shadow I've learned from the internet. So I know that he's cool. I know that he has kind of like a Tetsuo style haircut.

And I know that he apparently loves Latinas is apparently part of the Is that? A single canon? That's part of the online lore, yes. Shadow the Hedgehog loves Latinas. But they tie it into the movie

where A, the little girls named Maria, not an uncommon Latina name. But also, he's very interested in this telenovela that he's watching later on. I know I didn't even catch that, and I sincerely hope that's intentional. I hope that the writers are like, some of the freaks who watch this movie

are really going to want to see Shadow. Yeah, me. But then there's no excuse for no one to be pregnant. by the end of the movie. That's true, yes, no excuse. Well, the viewers are pregnant. Yeah, well, with possible, with excitement, yeah. Jamel, as our Hedgehog correspondent, tell us,

what's your experience with Shadow? How familiar were you with him before this movie, that kind of thing? What do you know about him? So, you know, Shadow's introduced in Sonic Adventure 2, which was the last Sonic game released for Dreamcast, and the last Sonic Game to release for a Sega console. And so I did play Sonic Adventure 2 way back when, so I am familiar with Shadow from that.

But otherwise, my Shadow, my Shadow kind of knowledge, just comes from memes at this point. Memes about Shadow liking Big Booty Latinas. Memes about Shadow maybe, you know, saying racial slurs. I'm glad they didn't do that in the movie. Because Shadow, Shadow, he's not evil,

but he's an anti-hero, right? So he'll go right up to the line. He's always testing boundaries. That's our shadow. I'm really glad that Jamel's here to back me up on the memeification of shadow. Because I feel like I would bring that up and Dan Nelly would look at me like I'm crazy. Well, literally, Dan, so Dan texted us yesterday. He texted me into a picture that he had made of the Master of Disguise from the movie Master of Disguise.

And he was supposed to be Riddick from the Riddick movies. And I was so babbled. I was like, is this a reference to something I don't understand? Like, is Dan playing off a meme that exists already? No. And I had to call Dan and leave a message being like, what is this? So what am I missing? Do I have a stroke and forget something in my...

You know, I was thinking about Riddick. I was blue-skying about Riddick. And Master's Skies, you know, came into my head because we just did that show in San Francisco. And I'm like, you know what? You just darken in those glasses. It looks like he's doing a Riddick cosplay. He's a real furious. That was the whole inspiration behind it.

It shows you how the Internet has distorted our brains that I was like, What is the 10 levels of memes in that this is referring to? Like the way that if I see an image of the green Eminem holding hands with a green Eminem who is Dr. Phil, I'm like, I get it. Yeah, I know what that's all about. And like, Shrek is giving them their marriage vows. I'm like, I understand what this is saying. But with this one, I was like, I don't know what it is. I got to dig back.

So I was very happy when Dan was just like, no, it's just random. I was like, oh, thank goodness. This is not my whole day now. Do you guys ever find yourselves, we all have partners in our lives? Sure. Do you ever find yourself trying to explain something like this to your partner and realizing pretty quickly that you can't, but you can't back out and you're like, okay.

So this started from when this meme happened, and that's why it's a green M&M in this case. Stuart, you are describing my life since childhood, and I have a very strong memory of being at The Daily Show when I was a PA, and for some reason starting to explain to two people there, the history of the different stop-motion animators from Willis O'Brien through Ray Harryhausen up to Phil Tippett. And as I was telling them about it in my head being like,

you can see if in their faces, they don't care about this. Why are you telling them about this? Why are you explaining this thing to them? I feel like a lot of this has been trained out of me because, yeah, I've said so many things to Audrey that like partway through, like I realize, you know, mostly based on her reaction, that there's no conceivable way that she could be interested in this.

And she's not afraid of being like, I'm not paying attention. And so I'm like, okay, I've learned not to do this. particular thing. It's probably really helpful. So now that we've established, we have hit the opening title credit of Sonic 3. Shadow is loose. Shadow is loose.

We now cut to Green Hills, what is it, Green Hills, Montana, where the Sonic family, that's right, we have Sonic Knuckles, Tails, Tom, and Maddie Wukowski. They all live in Green Hills. And the three, what, aliens, I guess we'll call them, are going to have a race, even though it seems silly because Sonic is obviously the fastest.

They have a race, but it's all just a smokescreen because the whole family is throwing Sonic a B-Earth Day or a birthday to represent the anniversary of him coming to Earth. Now, Sonic's the fastest. So I don't, you know, all these new characters got introduced

in the games past when I was playing the games. You know, I'm basically just a Sonic one person. One man, one Sonic. That's what you believe. Anything else is unholy, yeah. So fast here, like the other characters, like, have, like, Knuckles is strong, and that's his thing. And then tails can fly because of the tails. Are those?

Like propeller. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Nichols can also climb walls with his knuckles. Oh, right. He has, like, those spiky knuckles he can climb with. Yeah, that's true. So this, you know, during this party, Sonic and his adoptive father, Tom, sneak away to Sonic's weird little cave. which remind me a lot of the little cave from together,

our friend of the podcast, Michael Shanks movie. And they talk about Sonic's what adopt, former adoptive mother figure Longclaw, which again is not a valerian steel blade, but it is an owl character who sacrificed herself to save Sonic. Way back in a flashback in Sonic 1. This trauma is going to inform a lot of the bond that Sonic will eventually develop with Shadow.

Well, Sonic the Hitchhhawk 3 is. is about loss and about overcoming loss and making life choices. And it's telling that story through very cartoonish talking hedgehogs that never quite look like they actually exist in the real world of the movie. And I had a constant,

there would be a scene where it was mostly live action humans and then suddenly one of our characters, Sonic characters would show up. And it was, I don't know if you guys had this, it was always a little jolt to me because they never quite mesh. And I hate to say it, that original Sonic design

where he had human teeth and looked real creepy, I don't think I would have had that same problem. So, you know, maybe they should... Because of the human teeth? I mean, partly the human teeth, but also he had smaller like eyes, more human-like eyes. I mean, that original Sonic design, he did look grotesque.

But it looked more real. It's like, this is what Sonic would look like. His little fleshy eye sockets have bloodshot orbs in them from straining against the wind. Exactly, exactly. Forgive me for continuing to play the part, which is also real,

of guy who doesn't know the games, really. Like, as they progress, do they get into more, like, actual storylines? Like, to what degree do these movies, like, really pull from games? Because, you know, as someone who only played Go Fast Get Rings version, I'm like, why does this movie have to have so much plot? It's cut so much plot. Well, I feel like some of the later games were probably directed by Hideo Kojima, of the

The Metal Gear's all right. Yeah. Which are, let's say, plot heavy, I would describe them. But I actually don't know. I also wonder, are they filled with like quick time event battle sequences? I don't remember. I don't think. And also, I wonder if they're pulling it all, because I never read these.

If they're pulling it all from the Sonic comics, which did get very, there was one writer who stayed on the Sonic Hedgehog comics from Archie, I think, for a long time. And when that happens, the characters start to become headier. And I know at some point, either Sonic or Knuckles, one of them kind of becomes a universe. like kind of sacrifices himself to become a living universe or something. And it's all, those get very, those get very heady. So anyway, Jamel, again, as our hedgehog correspondent, can you tell us, where is this story coming from?

Or is it just Hollywood screenwriters being like, how do we make another movie out of this? I guess we'll make it like a techno thriller, you know? Well, I think some of this is coming from Sonic Adventure 2 where Shadow is introduced. I believe that in that game, let's see, I'm going to look it up real quick. This game has a plot.

And in the plot of this game, Dr. Eggman learns of a secret weapon from the diary of his deceased grandfather, Professor Jero Jemann. And infiltrates a high-security guardian units of the nation facility to revive with the chaos emerald, the weapon, shadow, a black hedgehog who proclaims himself the ultimate life form,

offers to help Eggman conquer the world, telling him to rendezvous it an abandoned space colony with more KIS Emeralds. Shadow has vowed to a promise he made to his friend Eggman's cousin Maria before she died.

So yeah, actually quite a bit of this just comes from. Wow, it's a lot of expectation. This is actually, I mean, I kind of don't even have to do the rest of summer. Now I wish the movie is called

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 colon, Sonic Adventures 2. Draw so much from that move, from that game. Okay, so as, what is it, Guardian United Network, what's the, What's the acronym for gun? What does that gun stand towards?

Guardians of the United Nations or? Yeah, something like that. So this is the high-tech organization that kind of that is common throughout this movie and the previous ones. It's their version of Shield. So they show up led by Captain Rockwell, Commander Rockwell, played by Kristen Ritter. And they need Team Sonic to help them with an alien life form that they need help with. And of course, Sonic knuckles and tails eagerly agree, and they all take a jet to Tokyo.

And this was something where I was like, I don't know if I love this turn of events, them being kind of like heroes that the multinational force can turn to in times of crisis. It feels like it is given them an authority and also like a... And they're also children. They are children. They are animal children.

So it seems very strange for them to be like, yeah, there's nothing we can do. We need to send the animal children in to take care of this. thought they were going to be betrayed because I thought they were making the mistake of trusting the B in apartment 23, whatever it was, but don't do that. RIP, man. They should swing hard the other way and always call in Sonic, no matter what the problem is. This is inspired by, I was, I'm watching the old, like, Batman series of rewatching all of it.

Batman, the animated series? The 60s one. Oh, I see. The funniest thing to me in those, like, I mean, it's clearly a joke, but like, every episode, the degree of which Commissioner Gordon's like, well, we can't do anything as the police. Where's Batman? And they're like, oh, man, if Batman ever left town, we'd be screwed. Like, it really gets to that level of like...

The idea that an incompetent leader would call in a masked answer list to the public force to take care of, to enforce laws that maybe, maybe don't, shouldn't be enforced in that way. It seems laughable, Dan. Is that what you're saying? We'll wake up. Well, wake up. Anyway, it is true. It is true.

They're like, Batman, a pencil rolled behind that table. Can you get that for us? Yeah. Is there an episode where Batman, like Alfred makes Batman go on a vacation and he puts like a bathing costume over his Batman suit? And then meanwhile, crime just goes crazy in Gotham. There should have been. I mean, there's definitely one where he was out of town and like the police chief was like, I don't know what to do. Yeah, if Batman being out of town, it's very funny to me.

Yeah, Batman's like a business trip. Batman's on the flight. He's, again, bad suit on, but he has, like, I don't know, some comfortable, comfortable slacks on as well. Yeah. I mean, these days, it would just be sweatpants. Well, he's, but they'd be real fancy sweatpants. Wait a minute. You wear a sweatsuit whenever we fly anywhere.

But it's a fancy one in case I hopefully will get an upgrade. Now I imagine Bruce Wayne is going to Davos and he's got the cowl and the cape on, but then he's got like a half-zip fleece with a blue butt-up shirt underneath and, you know, khaki pants. and he's walking around with a headset mic on, and he's like, synergy, global reach. How do we accomplish these things at Wayne Enterprises? They're like, are you Batman? No, I'm not, but thank you for asking.

This guy's a little wheelie bag. Okay, so we got, we are in Tokyo, the Team Sonic jump out of the jet and they land. How many Japanese characters are in this movie? Ooh, that's a good point. Why would there be Japanese people? But what? Tokyo?

Just because they're in Tokyo, I guess. I just, you're right, that's silly of me. So while they land in Tokyo, it's a scene of destruction, and then they are greeted by Shadow the Hedgehog. They threaten each other, they get in a fight. Knuckles is not as strong as Shadow. Sonic is not as fast as Shadow. Shadow also has guns.

He has fucking guns. He's also voiced by Keanu Reese. And he rides around. Did you guys have to do that? I do, which was keep checking. like Keanu Reeves does this voice, right? And I'm checking, because it did not sound like him to me. Oh, no, I had the

opposite. I'm like, I so know this voice, who is it? And I'm like, oh, of course, of course it's him. I knew going in that Keanu Reeves did Shadow and I kept thinking, this doesn't really sound like him. And it made me realize, I think Keanu Reeves's major skills as an actor are his face and body, and not as much his voice. And so maybe that

was, I found Shadow, they're not giving him much of a character to play. Me looks kind of like Keanu Reeves. I guess that's true, too. I found Shatter to be a sort of flat character, if No, that's true. I mean, I like Keanu's sort of spacey cadences and everything, but he is, like, an amazing physical actor. Yeah.

Keanu has, like, a distinctive villain voice, and it's, like, much flatter. Like, have you ever seen The Man of Tai Chi where he plays... I haven't seen it now. It's his only... I think the only movie he directed. It's, like, actually, totally solid martial arts film, but he is the villain,

and he sounds exactly like that in the movie as well, kind of, like, very, very flat. and monotone. Because it sounds like, especially in all the scenes reads up against Jim Carrey, where Jim Carrey is like, well, we're going to do this,

Shadow. I mean, yeah, okay, he doesn't get to Jim Carrey at some point, but I will say that man did not phone it in. No. The greatest reason for me

for them to keep making these movies is that it gives me, I think we talked about this the last time we did a song movie, it gives me the opportunity to see Circa 1994 level Jim Carrey in a movie where I'm like,

he's going for broke being silly. This is, like, I do really enjoy that, so. I was going to say, like, Keanu does a voice in a Toy Story 4, right? Does he? Like, yeah, Duke Kaboom, that's him. But there, I feel like he has a little bit more, well, that's what I'm saying.

He has more energy in that. Like, he's, I think he is capable of giving a bigger voice performance and just didn't this time. Maybe, I thought, I thought, playing a character who's literally a shadow, I should fall back into the background, almost hidden the way a shadow is. Well, he's not literally a shadow, Keanu.

He's just called Shadow. He's a living shadow. He doesn't exist unless the light is shining on another. You don't even notice him sometimes. No, he's front and center. He's not actually a shadow. He's just called that. Without the light of Sonic, he wouldn't exist.

He needs, yeah. Yeah, he's the dark reflection, you know, in the mirror of life of Sonic. Yeah. So we have a chase through the streets of Tokyo, shadow on his motorcycle, which he doesn't even need because he's just as fast as Sonic. No, but it means he can do a kind of not quite... He does an Akira bike slide. He does an Akira bike slide, yeah, which is not as good as the one in Nope.

I'll just say that right up the bat. Of course not. That was the good. I think I would call that one a note the second best Akira bike slide after the original Akira bike slide, which is the best, of course. Yeah. And I don't call and correct me. I know it's not Kira who does the bike slide. It's just in the movie Akira.

It's crazy of Akira. He'll be crazy. Someone who called and corrected you. How do they get your phone number? Oh, you have no. My phone number is public knowledge, you know. I put in New York and L. I have billboards up that just go,

don't like something I said on the podcast? Call me. People are driving by. Is that like an entertainment thing? I don't understand what that's advertising. Yeah, they don't know. It costs a lot of money on my part. It's a huge drain, yeah.

My children will not go to college. Don't make sure people know how to get in touch with me, you know? Team Sonic needs to regroup. So they head to a mascot cafe, and they hang out, and then they meet with Commander Walters, who was in the previous movies, I think, which is just kind of fine to be in this mascot cafe

and then this like old man in a general's costume shows up as he's talking to them. He explains a little bit about Shadow that he was part of this top secret. He was part of this top secret experiment and there was an accident and some people died and the scientist in charge of the experiment was put in jail for life

and Shadow was put on ice for 50 years. Then a bunch of egg bots show up and blast the commander and then they are deal with, activated by a mysterious person also on a motorcycle. This comes as a shock to Sonic who says, Kanichi wa, and I'm like, that's kind of fucked up. I was referring to telling somebody else recently that we were doing this movie this

weekend, he was like, I don't think I saw that one. Wait, is that the one where he says Kanichi wa? And I go, it is. He goes, oh, then I did see it. So that was the defining memory of this movie for this other person that I know, yeah. I want to take that moment to say something about, like, or say that we should. Go for it. It's your podcast, man.

Thank you. Well, I'm also stalling to look up. But, like, I... Now, Jamel interrupt him. This is what he lives for. He likes being edged this way. We can never say what he wants to say. Yeah, that's what listeners don't understand.

This is for my benefit. No, I would have to... I want to note that right when he said, my benefit, he stroked his good tea. Dan's practically leaking over here when you interrupt. That's what you call a conversation cuck. He really loves to be cut off in a conversation. Oh, God.

The best thing you could do is he sits in a corner and tries to get a word in with his wife and you keep interrupting him and he's like, oh, I love it. This is exactly what I need. This gets me going, yeah. That was kind of my sketch fest experience. Like Audrey and Alliant were talking to each other and they're much more talkative types than me. So whenever I want to say something, I'm like, okay, when can I get in there? No, the comedy in this movie.

Oh, sure. It's just, it's bad. I would say these are, I would say with the exception of Jim Carrey again, because there are times when Jim Carrey will just do a movement that I find funny. The written jokes in this are fairly, and again, this is like a, if it was just a kids movie, I'd be like, whatever. Like they can be dumb word plays stuff, but there's so much exploding in this movie. And there is a dead child in a flashback.

So I'm like, it's not really like a full-on kids movie. So there's a lot of bad one-liners and things like that, bad jokes and I don't know. I agree with you. I think it's not successful as a comedy. And, you know, I think I've thought that Ben Schwartz is funny and plenty of other stuff. And I don't, you know, he's giving an energetic. I think he gives a good voice performance.

But the material just isn't there. I don't know that anyone in the movie really is funny. I feel that the comedy all-stars in this one for me are Jim Carrey and Idraselba. And Idriselba's character basically has the same one-note joke of talking about how strong he is and, like, phrasing things in a way that is, not quite right. A barbarian voice. Like a barbarian guy.

Those are such easy. I mean, he's one step away from like, I demand more of these fingers of chicken. You know, it's that kind of stuff. And he does it fine. I will say there were, there's a... That's like soft pitching himself to be on the writing team for Sonic 4.

Give me that job. I'll take it. I didn't like these movies. I'll take it. Sure. There were definitely times where the movie forgot about the main plot and just did goofy things.

And I was like, oh, well, I like this. I like this one. It's just silly, you know, but it's, but anytime there's like a one-liner that's like in the middle of an action scene, it's like,

okay, well, this is not, this isn't, you're not playing to your strengths right now. I mean, I think this is maybe just inherent with, I understand. They got to bring in Shadow the Hedgehog. I mean,

he is kind of like one of the most popular characters in the franchise. It would be, it's the same deal with Spider-Man 3 and you have, you have to have venom, like there's not really. As much as Sam Ramey fought tooth and nail

to not have venom in the movie. It's true. you kind of can't avoid it. But for a ostensible kid's movie, Shadow, who has a, by design, tragic backstory and whose whole vibe is like, this is a darker and gritty sonic, it's just like tonally doesn't work

for the kind of movies that these are, right? Like, you can, if you have shadow, you have to find some way to make him gritty without the dead kid. Like, but if you have shadow and the dead kid, than like silly one-liners just don't fit anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it feels like in a more reasonable time, some studio had to be like, okay, the note is, can you take the dead kid out of here? What if it was just that Shadow got blamed for something he didn't do, but it didn't involve the killing of a child? Could that be part of it? Because the thing is, Sonic learns that Shadow is driven by this, the loss of this dead child.

He learns this, I feel like pretty early on, and he's still like cracking jokes. And I feel like there would be a moment where he'd be like making a joke and realize, oh, wait a minute, I'm sorry, that's crossed the line. Dr. Robotnik's grandfather, who we'll see later, is also driven by the death of this child. You think that it's just ego. Oh, he's just one of these standard villains. But then he's like, they took my, they took my granddaughter away from me. And now I'm going to take everything away from them. And like, he's just wisecracking all through the movie.

And maybe that's his grieving. I mean, if he was, at one point, if he was like, this is how I grieve. I have to find a way to get through the day. I mean, okay, robotic. That's okay, I understand that. Kind of an Erica Kirk approach to it, but that's... Yeah. Erica Kirk's approach is like,

this is how I grieve is by trying to ring as much money out of my husband as possible. I put on a show! It is actually funny to think about how this, how like a studio would have approached this material in the 90s because they would have just been like, okay, we can have shadow. The kids want shadow, but like the shadow we put it on screen

doesn't have to have any relationship whatsoever to the shadow in the game. And it's sort of like, it's the triumph of, you know, nerds and nerd IP that's just not a viable thing anymore. People would lose their minds if you had Shadow,

but Shadow was like functionally a different character than he is in the games. If they did that, there would be another January 6th. Probably, probably, yeah. But it's something that when I was young and I would see a superhero movie

when they rarely made them, And like you're saying, they would just take the name and maybe the costume and throw everything else out. You know, like those Captain America movies they made years ago, like in the 80s. I was like, I'd be like, ugh, ugh. But now I kind of miss that. I kind of miss the era when Golan Globus could buy the Spider-Man license and not know what the character was and assume he's a man who turns into a spider like a wolfman and be like, this is our movie. He's a man turning into a spider.

Like I wish that we in a way that we still lived in a world where, or at least in a world where it was understood what things are worth fidelity and what, things are not worth fidelity, that like if you're, this is me being a snob, I guess, but like if you are making an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, you know, just to pull a random thing out. Completely unrelated to current pop culture. Unrelated in every way, yeah. That you kind of understand what things need to be in there for it to be an actual adaptation of this story and what things you can mess with.

And to know that Wuthering Heights is on a different level, the novel Wuthering Heights, then Sonic Adventure 2, which, no offense to the people who made that game, I'm sure they put a lot of great work into it and a lot of imagination, but like that you don't need to give shadow the same fidelity that you would give to like... Are you making...

Are you willing more? Actually, you know what? It is kind of more fidelity. On the other hand, you know what? But that's... You know what? On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong because, like, the same way that, like,

anytime there's something... I remember when the Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Caprio and Claire Daines came out and people are like, look what he's done to Romeo and Juliet. And it's like... Romeo plus Juliet. Sorry, Romeo plus Juliet equals this movie.

And it's like... There, Maybe it's the opposite. It's that there will be so many more adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. That is an eternal immortal story. So why not mess around with it? Whereas I don't know how many more Sonic the Hedgehog franchises. There will be like 30 years, 40 years from now.

Are they going to be making a new Sonic the Hedgehog movie? Maybe not. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they do have to do a fidelity because this is one shot. And it's not thrown away that shot, just like in Dan's favorite musical. I'm not. I'm not sure whether this is part of your point or not. I think my toy turned around.

I think I'm not arguing the opposite. All of it, I'll be honest. But it's my understanding that the new Wuthering Heights movie, which I know that you're pulling out as an example, is very not faithful to the books. No, that's what I'm saying. There was a time when it was considered like, well, this is literature.

We want to be at least a certain amount faithful to it. And this is crap. This is junk culture. You've got to have Tom Bombadil in it. Exactly. I mean, if Tom Bobadill is in Wuthering Heights, their problems would be solved. I feel like you would complicate things

because that's just another hottie in the mix. That's right. Sorry, Heathcliff. I'm going with the bomb. And you know you gotta show his dong. You have to. Is that Lord of the Rings canon that Tom Bombadill has an amazing dog?

His way Heathcliff did terrorize the neighborhood. He did very much terrorize the neighborhood. I mean, that's the other thing. As as a kid, I always thought that I'd hear Heathcliff for Weather & Heights and I assumed it was the cat. Is there, when they're arguing, now I wish it was canon that Tom Bombadil had a huge penis. They could be like, why don't we just give the ring to Tom Bombadol?

Oh, he'd just lose it. Not if he puts it around as a normal. his penis. It wouldn't even fit. It wouldn't even fit. Wouldn't even fit. So, yeah, we're still about 10 minutes into the movie. Wow. Okay, sorry. I'm just joking. So the mysterious

biker who shows up, who deactivates all the egg bots, that's right, it's everyone's favorite character, Agent Stone, Dr. Robotnik's right-hand man. His smithers. Yep. They uncover the dying body of Commander Walters, who hands them

this key card. And he says, that it's very important for them to hold on to it so they take it. I was just drank to the whole time because that key card does look exactly like the back of a card for the game Android Netrunner. And I was like, man, I want to play more Netrunner. Okay. So Stone takes... Stewart, you are not allowed to...

You are not allowed to complain about us stopping you from getting further into the summary. If that's the kind of important points that you're going to make. Oh, I didn't realize I was being edited by Elliot today. But that's fine. That's fair. Okay. take it. I'll take your note. I'll move forward and only talk more about the different factions of the game Net Runner. I'm not saying I don't want you to talk about Net Runner. I'm just saying

don't say, oh, we're only 10 minutes in. I want it all. I want it all. Yeah. I'm a maximalist on this show. Yeah. When we talk about high-tech hackers, you know, you can't get more high tech than the various hackers and runners in the game Net Runner. So Agent Stone takes the Team Sonic to see Dr. Robotnik, who is living in a giant robot crab, and he, has let himself go using the movie shorthand of a fat suit, not a fan. He's still sitting around watching TV and he is wearing a fat suit

and that's, yeah, that's short-hand for lost interest in life. He doesn't seem to be extremely jolly about having put on the weight though. Like, he doesn't seem to have a problem with it. No, I mean, he's just, he plays it like a drum. Yeah. You know, he's upset with society judging him. But in the moment, he's just, you know...

Living his life. And they decide, they realize that somebody else is controlling these egg bots, and they decide to team up. I guess Stone thinks that this might shake Robotnik out of his funk. So he shaves his head. They put him in a new suit, and they team up and start tracking those egg bots. Meanwhile. Guys, I just remember there was a Knuckles TV show.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You guys have been watching Paramount Plus or something? I did not watch it, and I forgot it existed. I believe I even suggested we do an episode where we watch it and get Chimel back. I guess what maybe we'll do. We want to do that. The problem is,

Knuckles is not a hedgehog, of course, but an Akedna, right? He's a McKinna. So I don't know if that would fall under Jamel's purview, but we'd be happy to have him, you know, in a non-official capacity. I mean, I feel like a lot of it would be watching it, hoping Sonic would show up, just like most kids.

For sure, yeah. Because it's just like, it's Knuckles and Adam Pally hanging out the whole time, right? Yes, I think so. It'll be like when that Shields TV show started, they're like, there might be a special guest from the MCU who stops by, and it turned out to be Colby Smolders. And it's like, oh, okay.

Well, we thought it was going to be like a superhero, but sure. Okay. Kobe Smolbers is great. Don't get me wrong. No, it's just like I felt like it was not inconceivable to see her on the episode of a television show. As opposed to if, like, Samuel Jackson stopped by, be like, whoa, that's a big get. I just want to share from Wikipedia, over its premiere weekend, Knuckles became the most watch original series on Paramount Plus. So, there you go.

That doesn't feel like a very high bar to me. Yeah. I think they've got those Star Trek shows. I feel like that's the main reason anyone has Paramount Plus is to a Trekkie, and they're like, it's the only way. Incmaster Legends or whatever. Isn't Paralymp Plus also where dads watch modern day westerns? Oh, yeah, that's a big deal.

Isn't that like Yellowstone and Landsman? I don't know. We got rid of it, Circa Colbert. Oh, yeah. I never had it. That was Paramount Plus was one step too far. I was like, no, not even going to. I had it.

Well, we would rotate, but yeah. I had it to my kids because watch Paul. Paul Patrol. Yeah. And then I realized you could buy Paul Patrol DVDs for $5 in Amazon. So then I... I'll give my money to a different evil corporation. Thank you very much.

You guys are both dads. I figured you guys would want to watch Yellowstone to be able to talk to the other dads when you're hanging out with dads. We're not yet old enough for that. I feel like I'm not... You're in Reacher territory. Yes. I'm in Reacher territory approaching Bosch territory.

And then in about 15 years, I think I'll be in Yellowstone territory. Guys, I was excited to see there is a second season of Alex Cross. Whoa. I might actually watch that. That actually seems much more on my alley. As an African-American dad, I think I might watch Alex Cross. Okay. What is it about Yellowstone that you wouldn't feel represented by?

Okay, so, meanwhile, Shadow returns to the ruins of the abandoned base that he had been held at. He goes down a trip through memory lane where we get to see all of his origin story of him and Maria and how this little girl bonded with him even though he came to Earth in a meteor and the government was basically using him to like test to try and use his chaos energy

as a form of either a weapon or some form of energy but they couldn't harness it and she bonded with him. He felt more than just a test subject. They had a great time. But then this horrible accident thing happened that I don't quite remember. And in an explosion, Maria is killed, and he is knocked out and stuffed in a tube to be held in stasis

and her grandfather, who we then meet Gerald Robotnik, Grandpa Robotnik, is imprisoned. And modern day, Shadow is in the ruins of this base, and he is greeted with a mysterious villain. of course, that's going to be Grandpa Robotnik. And they decide to team up and get vengeance. Meanwhile, the other team shows up at this base. They explored for a little bit. We get some comedy.

Shadow goes around and beats them all up. And Grandpa Robotnik meets up with regular Robotnik. They bond. We get a lot of double Jim Carries. And I got to say, I think what looks like primarily makeup effects on Jim Carrey are pretty great.

I think there are a couple there are like a couple dodgy frames here there with the doubles but I thought the effects for the two Jim Carries were such I thought were pretty stellar and it's such a different level than the effects for our main characters where there were whole periods where I was like yeah I'm just seeing two Jim Carries like it didn't

I did not question it at all yeah and for me like these are the, this is the closest the movie ever comes to coming alive is when Jim Carrey is acting against Jim Carrey Oh when one of the greatest comedy stars in cinema history is up against himself Yeah well it's a mark of how

much I found the rest of the movie drudgery that I was like it's not like I was surprised that Jim Carrey was the good part of it but this just barely lit a fire. But it's also fun to see him play two similar roles that also feel different. Yeah.

Not just two of the same thing. No, they definitely And when he's old he kind of looks a little bit like Matt Smith. Yes, he does. Why am I not imagining Matt Smith? He was a doctor who? That's right. Maybe a little bit. Yeah, from Morbius, I think is what you're saying.

From Morbius, yeah. From the famous vamping out dancing in a mirror scene from Morbius. So young Robotnik decides to team up with Grandpa, and he thinks they are going to team up together and they are going to conquer the world. Grandpa had developed a weapon for gun to use a giant space station death ray that requires two key cards to activate, and he's going to use it to defeat Gun, and then they're going to rule the world or so Robotnik thinks. And there's a montage here that I found funny except for an unsettling music choice,

which is the Robotnik's kind of Grandpa Robotnik taking Dr. Robotnik through the kind of childhood milestone memories that he didn't get to experience. And there's some funny gags in it. But it set to the song, Wouldn't It Be Nice, which is about two teenagers who want to have sex talking about how much it would be better if they were older and they could live together and be a married couple who has sex. So it was a very weird song for them to have. It feels like they're going for the vibe of the song,

but not really paying attention to the meaning of the song, and it really threw me off. I was like, I don't like the, what you're implying about this relationship, you know? Shadow is beaten up our team and chain them together around a chunk of, I don't know, whatever. Our villains, our villains, that's both Robotniks, Agent Stone, and Shadow all take the key card that Sonic had.

They board the flying crab device, and they leave a black hole generator and escape. The black hole almost consumes the entire mountain, but then Sonic and their team managed to escape the last moment. I'm going to be honest. So many of these words that you're saying are words that should not be in a Sonic movie. The other thing is, I watched this movie last night. The particular part you're describing, I have no recollection of it.

Okay, so they managed to escape, and that teleports them just outside of the blast range of the rapidly collapsing, mountain. No worry about what it might do to the rest of the world to have unleashed a black hole on the earth. We're going to talk about that later when they have another Akira reference when they Zorch half the moon off. Okay. Sonic and team head home to meet up with their parents. They explain the situation. Their parents are currently in this moment where they are empty nesters. They are so excited to not have the chaos of these three alien creatures running around and ruling their lives. They have devoted all their energy to hobbies, knitting.

Thomas started doing ventriloquism with a cool little James Marson puppet, which, I mean, I'm sure people are going to buy that thing off eBay. So, and they seem happy with their current situation, but as soon as their kids show up with this, they are like, they need help. Of course, their parents are ready to jump in and help them. But this was where I couldn't understand, there's a gag here where they have, they're like, this is so great. And then they go, we need your help.

and they go, yes, we're so bored, we're so bored. And I'm like, movie, what joke are you doing? Like, is it the joke of their life? You'd think their lives would be so much easier without them, but they miss it, or is it the joke of now that they have the time to do it? They have all these hobbies, but now they're getting wrenched away from it. I felt like the movie wanted it both ways, and I did not like that. But then why are they pretending that, uh, that, like, I think that for each other's benefit in the relationship.

They're pretending that they're pretending that they don't need that. I didn't like it. It felt like the movie was trying to do one joke and then do another joke. I'm surprised they didn't go for the more adult joke of now that we don't have these crazy aliens run around, we finally have time to get busy. And then while they're in bed together and he's in mid-thrust, a ring opens up over them. Sonic and Tails and Knuckles all fall on them. Again, we see Tom Bobbittles Way. And then there's a mix-up in the sheets.

Next thing you know, pregnant tales, and that's the next movie. Sonic That's Hodge, Four. Okay. So they know that the bad guys are heading to London, because that's where, gun headquarters is, and that's where the second key will be located. This is a sign of how what an

East Coast elite sophisticate I am, that they're like, we're going to London. And I'm like, yeah, London, cool, all right, yeah, it's good. I've been there. You know, it wasn't like they were going to, like when they're going to Tokyo very casually, I was like, Tokyo, wow, amazing. I've never been there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you, you're London, you're like,

ho-hum, who cares? Who cares? I have family. I think it's a little different. Okay, so Sonic and Team. Cambers for breakfast, yeah, I get it. Okay, big Ben, sure, yeah. They head to London. They have an infiltration plan that involves Tom and Maddie putting on these hologram devices

that we had been kind of introduced to earlier in the movie that allows them to assume the appearance of anyone, so of course they assume the appearance of characters from previous movies so these actors get a little bit of extra time. Yes. I'm not mad about. I love Natasha Rothwell, right? Natasha Rothwell.

Yeah. And they, so they are going to sneak into Gunn disguised as their, what, sister and her husband? Yes, yes. Mrs. Wokowski's sister and husband. Who we saw, was it in the last movie or the one before where they wrecked their wedding with their Sonic Adventure? It was the second movie. The second movie? Yeah.

I guess that would have been pretty, it would have been pretty insane for the first movie. where we're being introduced to the Sonic character to then have a subplot about Sonic's adopted mom's sister's wedding, getting wrecked. It'd be a lot of supporting characters to introduce, yeah. So they, Tom and Maddie sneak in. Maddie gets into the control room. She inserts the drive.

There's a little joke about how the thumb drive doesn't work initially. You have to pull it out and blow on it. That's for all us, 90s kids. Yeah. Cartridge kids. There's even a moment where they're like the 90s were the best decade. and I'm like, who are, what's going on here? What's going on is those people are now of movie ticket buying.

Yeah. Disposable money age and they want to see. Those people, Dan says, as if it is not his generation. I mean, I don't think of the, I mean, I think of like late 80s, early 90s more than like the time that they're talking about. But I guess that's true. Oh, boy. You're right. Never mind.

Forget what I just said. Strike it from the record. Dan is slightly too old to be nostalgic about the 90s proper. Inside the server room, she inserted. tails thumb drive only to realize there's a Dr. Robotnik thumb drive also plugged in. Uh-oh, that's because the Robotniks are also infiltrating

with these weird camouflage suits and that allows them to walk right through the laser grid but why walk when they can dance? That's right, we have a great dance sequence. This is one of two moments in this sequence where the heroes and the villains waste a bunch of time when time is of the essence. The Robotniks dance their way through these lasers

which again, it's Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey they're going to do funny physical stuff. I don't love this kind of silly dancing, particularly, but it's fine. And then they're like, Sonic, you've got to get in before the shields close. He's like, got it, but first I'm going to run through London real fast

doing a bunch of London jokes. And it was like, why now? Like, this is a Marks Brothers level of, let me screw up my own plan for no reason. Yeah, because you can do sightseeing after he finish all of this. You can have all the beams on toast that you want, Sonic. Exactly.

And you guys have children. And children usually when you're like, hey, we got to go fast, they don't try and fart around or dick around. That's a good point. True, yes, yeah. Or when, say, your podcast is a host is like, hey, we got to hurry up. You don't like fuck around. That's a good point.

That's a good point. Equal stakes, equal characters. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so they all meet up, basically. Sonic decides, oh, wait, we need, we need Sonic's help, so he goes running in there. And there's a brief. Finally, like the best of all Robert Altman movies, these disparate strands have finally come

together. Inside this control room where the key is located. But the whole thing was a setup. We have Tom, Maddie, Sonic, both Robotniks. But this was all set up by Commander, what, Commander Rockwell? This is Commander Rockwell. Director, Rickwell. Director Rockwell.

Do you think she's related to Thelma Ritter? Probably not right. Well, is it... I thought for second I was like, is it spelled the same? The Y is in the first name, though. I think it is spelled the same. There's nothing in a Wikipedia entry

that mentions amazing legendary actor Thelma Ritter, so never mind. She knew that they had the other key and she was trying to lead them all here so she could get the key and capture them and she does so with this series of hexagonal plates on the floor that either use gravity powers

to either pull them to the floor or push them up in the air. And, you know, this sort of thing that I sometimes say kind of, you know, doesn't make any sense because of course it's true. But in a better movie, I think this could be cool.

Like, I liked the idea of, you know, both things happening at the same time, people being like totally locked down to the ground and then some people floating. And if it was a different film, I might enjoy a comedic set piece with that. Well, we still get some kind of a set piece. They don't do, I feel like they don't,

it's a really neat idea that they don't do a lot. Yeah. You know, which is too bad. Because Sonic calls in their ace in the hole in the form of Knuckles, who burst through the building and smashes into the ground, and then he smashes the key card instead of turning it off, which makes everything go haywire. People are floating or being smashed to the ground randomly.

We get people like swimming through the air. We get people inching along the ground like inchworms. Eventually, Sonic manages to get the device turned off. And Director Rockwell gets the key card. and storms off. Tom has a plan, though. He uses his hologram device to disguise himself as Commander Walters,

and he gets the key card back from her, and then he walks away. Unfortunately for him, Shadow the Hedgehog sees him disguised as Commander Walters, manages to extrapolate what Walters would look like as an adult, even though he only knew him as a young man. I mean, he wasn't an adult before,

but as an old man now. Okay, sorry. Thank you. No, thank you, yep. He wasn't child soldier. I take it back. It makes perfect sense that the shadow would know exactly what Commander Walters would look like.

No, the point you're making is clear. I was just taking issue with the idea that when he was young, he was not an adult. When he was already, I think, a captain in the military. He runs over and punches him almost to death. Tom Collector. I thought, no, I did think for a second? I was like, did they just kill off James Marston?

Yeah. Again, they killed a child in the flashback. You know, go for it. The scene ends without you knowing his. fate. James Marsden doesn't do well in third parts of franchise movies. No, that's true. He's either being punched to

shit or vaporized by his love. And you remember 27 dresses part three? I think that was the one where the killer skinned him and made a wedding dress out of his skin. He became the 28th dress in that film. He became 28th dress, yeah. So he's down for the count. Shadow takes the key card.

Sonic shows up. He's obviously distraught by his adoptive father basically being killed. Shadow talks a little bit of shit and then he leaves. I had a question for you guys. Once, so this weapon belongs to gun, right? Yep. Once, once Kristen Ritter gets the card,

why is James Morrison trying to get it from her? It's actually a really good question. Well, like, I can understand why they wouldn't want anyone to use this weapon, I guess, to have access. But Dr. Robotnik is the bad guy that they're trying to keep it from. Once, if Christian Ritter gets the card, nothing has changed. We're back to the status quo of the beginning of the movie.

So when James Rogers was like, let me go get that key card, I'll go on disguise and get the shit kicked out of me. I don't know why he's doing it. Like, I wasn't quite sure what the point was, you know. They already have one of the keys, right?

You know, sometimes you can't turn it off. I guess that's true. Because the best thing to do would be to keep those keys separate. It's like in the last Indiana Jones movie where they're like, we have half of the time travel device. You know what we have to do, right?

Get the other half. No, you don't. Take it as far away as possible. Throw it in the ocean. Like, whatever. Get rid of it. Just make sure they never... It doesn't matter if the Nazis have half of it.

Just let them have half and you just don't put them together. So why they want both keys? Dan, I see you have an answer. Tell me. A plot device. It's a plot device. What happens in Sonic Adventure 2? Do they explain it?

So, Shadow frees the Robotniks from the gun soldiers and takes them to the command bridge of the... What is it, the eclipse device? I think it's called in the notes. It's a giant space platform with a laser gun. And they... It's a geostorm, basically.

Yeah, and they fire that bad boy up and it rises up out of a secret hangar underneath the Thames. All of London is obviously concerned because of... It doesn't... They're like, oh, blimey, it's rising right out of the Thames. It's kind of interesting.

It opens up the floodgates open, but it doesn't actually... It doesn't really look like the water level of the Thames lower. that much. No, that's a good goof to put in IMDV. Yeah. Dan, can you add that to our goofs list?

All right. Oh, what's that rising up over there? Meanwhile, a big spaceship. Meanwhile, Tom is being... Oh, they had one of those under the Thames. There's a lot of that stuff.

Boy, why is it the water level dropping? Ah, the kippers is burning. Oh, what's that? Our British listeners are going to be so mad at us, right? They're going to be so mad because they're like, am I listening to my parents talking? Did I end up in this podcast? I'm...

It sounds like me in that podcast. So, meanwhile... Jason Statham, I don't know you listen. Clive Owen. I'm a beekeeper. So out in the street, Tom is being put into a emergency vehicle to take advantage of the British health care system. Sonic is like, yo, we need to stop these guys. And there's only one option.

need to use the master emerald. Tails and Knuckles are like, no, we agreed never to use that for revenge. Which I loved. They already had like a revenge. Only for erotic adventures. And so it looks like they're going to fight. Like, Knuckles is like, no, no, no, we can't use it for revenge. And then Knuckles actually backs down.

He's like, you know what? More important than that rule is our rule to always trust our friends. And I'm like, well, that's a really good state. He is so more emotionally stable than Sonic from this movie. I got to say, I did raise my eyebrow, I said it should have. like, okay, well, the rule against using this for revenge seems pretty strong and important, right? Like, this is incredibly powerful. And if your friend wants revenge, then maybe that's actually a situation in which you shouldn't trust them.

So I don't think it outweigh... I don't think the trust thing outweighs the revenge. If anything, the revenge thing trumps the trust thing. You would think so. But Knuckles is like, well, I don't like what you're doing, but I have to respect the office of Sonic first time. Number one buddy. Technically this isn't how it's supposed to be used, but I guess there isn't a rule that says

never let Sonic use it for revenge, so we have to let you do it. But there's, I agree with you, and it feels like there was probably an earlier version of this movie where they fought, and Sonic was so mad that he just beat Knuckles to a pulp or whatever. Or he's about to hurt Knuckles so hard,

and then he's like, what am I doing? And he leaves. And I think they were like, this movie is too long. Cut this scene. Let's just have Knuckles. He's like ripped his guts out, invincible style. There's one where Knuckles is So Knuckles is trying to hit him with his hands And Sonic is holding Knuckles wrists down

And he's vibrating so fast That it's causing friction burns on Knuckles' wrist And he's going, ah, ah! And then Sonic just goes in And bites Knuckles' throat out and rips his throat out And there's blood everywhere And Sonic is covered in blood And Tails steps back and is like, Knuckles, like, Sonic, what did you do?

And Sonic is like, he got in my way. I thought he was stronger. Ellie, you should write this fan thing And then you should change all the names slightly and have a literary hit on your hands. It would be a huge hit. It would be called like, it would be like Mikey Muskrats Cosmic Adventure or something like that.

Okay, so... Dan, if I was smart, I would do that. So Sonic runs over and gets the Emerald, which is being used as a hockey puck by Adam Pally. That was exciting to see Adam Pally briefly. You got to reward the viewers at the Knuckles television show. and fans of the show what a hundred and one places to go before you die or whatever party before you die but they're watching the movie the whole time going like where's adam pally when's he gonna show up oh there he is yeah

this is this is very much in the pirate to the caribbean tradition of if you have introduced a character in one of the movies that character then continues in each movie like a cat like a catamari just picking up objects until it becomes unwieldy and impossible to point admire the loyalty on a certain level but narratively unnecessary. These are people that I like to see. Sure. I'm not against seeing Adam Pally. Talking about side characters, this is also the moment when Agent Stone calls Robotnik and is like,

yo, I got the feeling that your grandpa is actually has some bad ideas and isn't just going to rule the world that he's going to blow everything up. And Robotnik's like, oh, you're just jealous. You're fired forever. I hate you. You suck. He Harry and the Henderson's him. Meanwhile.

Not exactly. I mean, a Harry. and the Henderson thing is for the good of the Harry. You're saying this, you don't mean it. Yeah, maybe. You know, honestly, talking about things that we expected to happen in the movie that, like, we thought there'd be a different payoff for, like, I thought that at some point it would be clear that, like, Carrie was, like, laying it on extra thick because as, like, the genius Dr. Robotnik, he had realized that it was true, you know,

and he was, like, doing it to keep his grandfather off the tail while he, like, worked against it. You know, something like that. Because it was such a like a kiss off. And then later on he's like, I love you essentially on his like final message. He's like, I was wrong. I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. I think we are all waiting for this movie to be slightly more clever than it actually is.

And not in a way that is unpredictable, but in a predictable, like, oh, this character was actually tricking this. But it is a very straightforward movie. Whatever is happening on screen is exactly what is happening. Nobody has a, nobody has an ulterior motive. Like the moment, I kept, again, like I just I kept waiting for that moment. moment when Dr. Robotnik would reveal, oh, my granddaughter didn't die. I've just been using you for my own needs.

No, it's just, it's all straightforward. Everything you saw happen happened. It's a say, it's rare to see a movie, I feel like nowadays, even a kids movie where there's no twist at all. And this one, there's no, there's no twist. It's like, there was that third venom movie where the whole time I'm like, when's, when they're going to bring in the interesting idea that makes this more than just vanem and carnage hitting each other.

Oh, never. Okay. That's all it is. That's the second one. Oh, yeah. The third one was the last wands. I mean the second one. The third one was like the more like overtly romantic one between the two of them.

Yes, and there were a twist in that. You had a venom horse. You had a venom frog. Yeah, exactly. So speaking of things on screen, here we now see the space station leave orbit and is now above planet Earth. And it extends its laser beam array. Oh, wait, guys, I should mention, I'm just looking at the Knuckles Wikipedia entry just to learn some more. He does appear as an unlockable, playable, playable character in Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble.

Oh, okay. Okay, all right. All right. So if you guys were wondering if he was an unlockable, playable character in this game I've never heard of before. Did he never play the Super Monkey Ball games? No, I am not. Not aware of them?

Didn't know they existed. The first Super Monkey Ball actually was quite good. Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, that's good to know. All right. I'm not familiar with them at all. I thought it was, it feels like a, like,

if a character in a sitcom goes to Japan, this is like the quiz show they would see on TV. Yeah. So Sonic Vadjog, who is now powered up by the Master Emerald, is now a being of pure light and energy. He blasts his way. Yeah, he is, this is when we enter what, uh, Dragon Ball Z territory. And in this case, I would imagine Shadow would be Vegeta.

Um, so he blasts through, uh, space and he blasts through the space station. And he and Shadow punch the crap out of each other. We get a full-on super fight. And this is very Dragon Ball that they're just fighting in a, in a nondescript landscape. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they don't spend that much time powering up, which is the, the, the, the,

joke about Dragon Ball C, because they're already powerful. At some point, the master emerald splits into its component chaos emeralds, and they end up sharing the power, so we have a super shadow. That's not good. Uh-oh. And they're like beating the crap out of each other. Meanwhile, the young Robotnik realizes his grandpa is going to destroy the world. They're not going to rule it together.

He sees no hope for humanity, and the only justice for his dead granddaughter. is destroying the world. And they will die as well. The wave of energy will destroy the earth and kill them. So it's a very nihilistic thing for a villain to be doing. And it's almost as if him then turning into like a goofy scorpion armored man is not enough to overcome the idea that he's literally trying to kill every human in existence, including himself, that that's his ultimate plan.

Yeah. So we get a fight scene where they use their nano armor to turn themselves into scorpion men or a praying mantis man and there's, you know, they throw in some like cartoon style goofs here and it is again like two Jim Carrey's fighting each other and you know there's

some jokes there. There's some fun jokes there. Again, it's slightly overshadowed by the fact that one of them is a man so in grief over the death of his granddaughter that he wants to erase humanity and end his own life in the bargain.

So it's a little bit, again, there's a darker pall that hangs over these jokes about like, I hate you with a really big fist. Yeah, it's a battle for the soul of Gerald Robotic and they do it by hitting each other with weird fists.

That all the bug puns in the world can't quite wash away, you know. It's all deflection. I don't know. I talked about this movie with my therapist this week and, you know, it's complicated kind of father-ish. I'm kind of like a hedgehog. I've got this spiny exterior.

And it keeps people away from me. I'm always running. I'm always running from intimacy, from affection. Yeah. I'm kind of like a hedgehog. I love to eat hot dogs. I wear red shoes.

I'm positive about rings. I mean, honestly, if you're going to describe Sonny the hedgehog's personality, what words would describe, he's just like a rambunctious kid, right? But there's not, what's more, is there anything more specific than that? In this? I, like, before the movies, I wouldn't have, I'd be like, he's fast. Like, that's not a personality trait. I don't know, but that's what I got. In the movie, yeah, rambunctious kid is his personality.

It's like rambunctious kid who is aspiring to be Bugs Bunny. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Okay. He really wants to be Bugs Bunny pretty bad. That's true. So Sonic and Shadow, uh, beat each other up a bunch. But they're all bugs, they're all Looney Tunes characters.

Sonic is Bugs Bunny. Yep. Knuckles is probably Daffy. Like, Tails is probably porky. You know, and who would, Shadow would be, um, they'd invent some new cool, tough-ass rabbit that doesn't quite fit with the other characters. Robotnik is Elmer Fudd or Yosemite-Samey.

Some of my cool-ass rabbit that smokes, right? He smokes and uses a gun. This honestly sounds like a better movie. Jaffey should play Dr. Robotnik. I don't know if you should... Well, except Knuckles... It's not that Knuckles and Jaffi are similar personalities, but the role of the competitive friend.

Yeah. That's a Daffy role. The front of me. A frenemy, exactly. Whereas you want the villain to be like a real character that they can actually go up again. So it's probably Yosemite Sam. And it's funny to see Osamity Sam doing science fiction. Also mustache.

Yeah, mustache. And mustache. Same mustache, exactly. So Sonic and Shadow bond over their shared trauma. One was the death of a little girl. The other is the death of long claw. These two alien hedgehogs who have been powered up by a magic crystal. They bond over the deaths of the loved ones in their lives.

Yes. sitting on the moon watching the stars. That's the name of my mom. Yeah. There's a moment where a shadow's like, you know, like even a dying star amidst light or something. And I'm like, what the fuck do you? He remembers what Maria told him,

which is that the light we see, that star may have died hundreds of years ago, but we still say, yeah, so he's like, huh. And, you know, like, you know what it is. It's just the way of saying, Maria's dead, but the light of her life shines through me still. No, I know what he's saying. It's just wild in a Sonic movie.

It is true that the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is about these hedgehogs coming to terms with their grief. Okay, so they decide. Shadows like, oh, man, this is all my fault. And Sonic's like, you know what? The only thing we can do when we mess up is try and fix it. And so they both get their energy and they team up and they're going to stop Robotniks. This is what happens when you hire Atomagoyan to direct to Sonic the Hedgehog group. It's going to touch on grief and desire at different points.

Yeah. So Robotnik unleashes a. wave of drone, like Gundam drones for them to fight, and they start blasting them. It was at this point that I was like, movie, end. Don't care. No more of this. 30 minutes left. You've established

what you're doing. Do it. Stop throwing wave after wave of stunts at me. Older Robotnik manages to gain the upper hand and he's about to eject his grandson into space, but he is saved at the last moment by Tails. Then Young Robotnik

How does... She used a... Tail used a ring, right? Like, it's not like tails flew through outer space. Yeah. Okay, yeah. And then younger Robotnik throws his grandpa into an energy wall killing him.

And it makes a joke about it. And makes a joke about vaporizing his grandfather, yeah. I thought, I mean, I thought that was pretty funny. I did enjoy that whole scene. I was my own grandpa, but no more. They realized that there's no way of turning the laser off. It's going to fire no matter what. So their only option...

is to try and move it. So they start to move it, move it, move it. They start to move and move it, exactly, yeah. They like to move and move it, yeah. And then the two super-powered hedgehogs use their super energy to kind of block the laser until they're able to get it free from pointing directly at Earth.

This process, however, depletes Sonic, who collapses and is falling throughout her space. Tails and knuckles use rings to catch him and save him, and they escape. His blood should literally be boiling. He is falling through outer space. Like extreme decompression should be killing him right now. He's so fast.

Up on the space station, Robotnik and Shadow realized that this thing is going to explode and it's going to damage Earth. And meanwhile, when they move the laser away from planet Earth, it does slice off a sizable chunk of the moon which will destabilize the tides. They don't talk about that, but that's fine. I've seen Akira.

Okay. I mean, it's bad news for Tokyo. It already got beat up in that fight earlier, but this is only going to make things worse for them if Akira's anything to go by. So Team Sonic escape and they make it to Earth. Robotnik and Shadow stay behind to move the station further away from Earth

so when it explodes it will not kill everybody on Earth. They sacrifice themselves. Robotnik records a final message apologizing to Agent Stone. It's actually pretty touching, right guys? As much as anything in the movie is. I actually, I think this is, this moment Jim Carrey is one of the most successful emotional beats in the movie, I think.

He's pretty good in this movie. Yeah. I don't know if it's controversial to say it. Jim Carrey's really good. He's a great performer. It's really good. Kind of wild that like, I mean, obviously it feels like, from what I can tell

he's been going through things in his personal life. But like, professionally, and he has the energy of, he has the performer energy where it's like, this guy is hiding something. It's such a weird, this is a weird medium for us to rediscover one of the top box office stars of the mid-90s. Like he in 1994 was his, it was his Anna Mirabalist or whatever, where he had three hit movies in one year.

Two of them were in the top ten movies of the year in terms of box office. Like he was a huge, it's so weird that it's through as the villain in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies that were getting this glimpse of this guy who like was such a bright star when we were kids, you know? And there's no reason why he couldn't be again, except I don't know, whatever's going on in his personal life. But the whole time, every time he's on screen, I'm like, either just do a robotic movie or like,

have a movie where Jim Carrey gets to do this kind of stuff and it's just him. And I don't have to put up with a CGI hedgehog fighting robot drones in space, you know, and pretending that I care if the space laser goes off at the wrong time. Like it's, you know, I don't know. I never thought at this point of my life that it would be such a Jim Carrey proponent, you know, that I'd be like,

get him in a movie, do this thing. You know, I don't know. So, they sacrificed himself. but the Earth isn't destroyed. Meanwhile, sometime after, back in Green Hills. So not really meanwhile. Yeah, not meanwhile.

We have a take two of the Be Earth Day party, and we have another race from our team Sonic. Everybody's happy, and our team won the day. That's the end of the movie, but apparently there were some after-credit scenes, and anybody who knows me knows, I say, no, thank you. As soon as Stewart finishes a flop-pouse movie and the first credit starts to roll,

He immediately kicks the screen out of his TV. He says, that's it for me. It's a good thing that TVs are like commodity items these days, then. I kick the screen out and then I slide down a bronosaurus's tail. The second one barely exists. But, Dan, why do you describe what happens in the first one? I mean, in the first one, Sonic comes across... And I say this, knowing that Jamel will be so much more clearly able to describe it

because he knows the character that they're introducing. But I want Dan to try to do it. So the Sonic is running around at night. He encounters a robot hedgehog. He's just running wild doing terrible things. I don't know. He's just running through the woods because he likes to, I guess. Do you guys remember when kids could just run through the woods?

Yeah. He's a real youth gone wild. He encounters this robot hedgehog that, you know, wants to kill him, but he's able to defeat it. And then there's a bunch of other robot hedgehogs that show up. And he's like, what's this all about? and then he's saved by this cute girl hedgehog. Let's not editorialized. Well, she's very meant to, like, look cute.

I mean, like, obviously it's a cartoon hedgehog. I'm not particularly... You're telling us more about yourself that I'm not particularly into it. Wait, what's the hedgehog's name, and I'll find out if she's cute or not? She's got big, big eyes and, like, a short skirt, and, you know, this is the love interest hedgehog, I assume. I know nothing about this hedgehog. So, Jamel, this is when we need your help more than ever. Who is this girl hedgehog?

This girl, hedgehog is Amy Rose, who is a hedgehog. She was first introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog CD for the Sega CD, Sonic CD, which is a great game and has a famously, famously great soundtrack. Also, also introduced to Sonic CD is Metal Sonic. But this entire kind of scenario is like a Sonic CD, you know, homage for the real Sonic heads out there. So does that imply that like the next movie

will be pulling from Sonic CD the way that this pulled from Sonic Adventures 2? It's possible. Possible. None of these early games really applauds, but Sonic CD does have time travel in it. Okay. So I can actually very much see that happening.

Like the next Sonic movie being. That's how they save Longclaw or something like that. I think we're writing Sonic the Hedgehog for right now. But what was the second post-credit sequence? So the second post-credit sequence at the very, near the very end, it's super short, and it's literally one of those things where there's like, it's like there's dirt, it looks like you're on Mars or something, and there's like a big ring sticking out of the dirt, and then a gloved hand grabs that ring, and I assumed it was just Dr. Robotic, you know,

being actually alive again. So my guess was that the, it was, you don't see anyone's face, it's just a hand. I could not remember his costume well enough to actually. It's probably shadow. I think it's, I think according to Wikipedia's shadow. Oh, is it shadow? I mean, if they killed off Shadow again, January 6, part two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what? It says in Wikipedia says elsewhere, Shadow has survived the cancer. So it just tells you that Shadow's still around. Either way, like, you know, like, it's not like I truly believed either of those characters have died if this movie is successful. Damn, we saw it happen on camera. Yeah. I mean, surely if an exploding satellite happens right next to you.

to you. You can't come back with no explanation later in the movie. Wait a minute. Hold on. That's what happened with Samuel Jackson in Triple X, the return of, what's his name? Santa Cage. You literally see a satellite explode and his body engulfed in flame and then later he comes back and it's just no explanation. It's fine. He faked

at all. Yeah, they're not going to kill Shadow. It's not like they've killed any children in this movie. Maria never comes. Well, that's what Sonic the Hedgehog for, return, Maria, where it turns out maybe she is her brain was put into Amy Rose's body. Then it's not like The Hedgehog 5 is they're looking for the original brain for Amy Rose. Yeah, this is it all, I mean, it hangs together so tightly, this tight continuity.

Yeah, well, this tight movie, let's do our final judgments about it. Is it a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like. And I, it gives me no joy to, like, talk about the Sonic movies these ways. Because I feel like, I feel like there's probably a lot of listeners. Because they're beyond, they're beyond these ratings. They're just so beautiful. No, I know a lot of people like these movies And I think probably a lot in our listenership as well

Because, and I include myself in this number, I'm not trying to insult. I'm saying that probably the people who listen are like me, affable nerds who are maybe too attached to the junk of their childhood Perhaps as a defense mechanism against a horrible universe that we live in. And so like people have a. lot of nostalgic affection for Sonic, but I would ask that people expect a little bit more out of their baby shit that they still like the blanket that we all clutched to ourselves.

I mean, I feel a little bit better about this movie knowing that it is so tied to this particular game and that's the way it is because without that, I'm like, this is such a genericification of like this is just what every movie feels like these days. That's like a big blockbuster that's kind of boring. You didn't realize that the Sonic Games were the template for all the blockbuster movies to come. Like this is the sort of movie where I'm like, well, I don't know. Like, why are we fighting so hard against AI if like someone presumably wrote this, but it still feels like just like a conglomeration of every type of movie that is made these days.

Anyway, bad bad, Stuart. Yeah, I mean, I think this is. this is probably a bad, bad movie. I mean, I enjoyed talking about it quite a bit, and I find, like, if you can skip over all the battle sequences, it's, I think there's stuff that's likeable, there's stuff likable in it. I mean, like, again, I enjoy Jim Carrey's performance, and there's a lot of other actors who I think are doing fine work, and I, you know, wish they could do other things, but I'm

glad to see all of them. But, no, I mean, there's, I mean, it's, it feels very, it feels very silly. and I'm a little disappointed that it reaches a point where we have these two characters who at least one of them is coded as a child are just like punching each other over and over and it's, yeah, that kind of sucks. I'm also going to call this a bad, bad movie.

I was really surprised looking up reviews for this. A lot of people were like, this is clearly the best of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. It's like it really won a lot of reviewers over and I was surprised by that because again, like I'm just saying the same thing you guys are, which like there are comedy moments in this that I think are very successful.

and I wish that I could see these performers in something that was not tied to the concept of doing a serious take on a Sonic the Hedgehog story. But it's a, I wish, I think the real falling down of it is that in a movie like this, the action should be like the high point. Like you should be like, this movie's real dumb,

but there's a couple of action scenes that are really cool. And it's actually the stuff that is the hardest to get through in this movie, in my opinion. So I'm gonna call it bad bad, but it's like, well, I've seen worse. You know, I've seen worse movies, you know. Part 4 is set for a release March 19th, 27, by the way.

Okay. Oh, okay, great. That's honestly my thinking. It's like, I've seen worse. I mean, as far as like blockbuster franchise filmmaking for kids goes, this is far from the worst thing you could show a seven or eight-year-old. The fact that you do get in each of these movies, like a real 90s vintage Jim Carrey performance is kind of magical.

Like, you know, I think you're right, Elliot, somehow people have forgotten that, like, Carrie is this tremendously talented performer and comedic performer, and it's fun to see him in this mode. So it's like, it's not good, but I don't, I didn't, like, feel bad watching it. I don't know.

It's like, it's not good, but it wasn't, like, intolerable. Yeah, that's fair. I wish it was shorter. I feel like there are bad movies that I will watch because Peter Sellers is in it, and he's giving a funny performance. And I feel like this is not that different. different from that.

Yeah. But usually those movies are like an hour and a half and this is nearly two hours. If this were 90 minutes long, it'd be decent. Put it on a poster. In some ways, I totally get where you guys are coming from. But I also feel like the longer we've engaged in this project, the more I'm like, it could have been worse movies are the worst movies to me. The ones that are just like super mediocre.

Like I'd rather watch a worse movie than watch something like this. You could watch Smurfs, the recent one. I did see that one. Yeah, that was, that's a, that's a, that's a rough one at times. It's way better than Smurfs. Put that shit on the poster. Yeah, I enjoyed it less. Oh, wait, you enjoyed Smurfs more?

Yeah, because it was weirder. I mean, this is like the most boilerplate version. Like, I feel like if like two people who are overpaid screenwriters and I'm mad at them because they have jobs. are told to write an adaptation, like this is what gets crapped out. I think, Dan, I think, no, I think, well, one, the idea that two people wrote this is,

would be hilarious. Obviously, there was a, there's three credited screenwriters, and you know there was a, there were many more that probably worked on it. But it is not like, you can't, it's not like they were like, hey, let's just crap out a sonic script. No, they were, they were, they wrote,

the project that they were directed to, right, you know. I'm sure they, like, earned their money simply by dealing, with the number of crazy rewrites and bad ideas. You know there was a moment where in a meeting, an executive said to them, but how do we really establish shadows emotional trauma? And that is worth being paid at least $200,000, just to have to deal with that moment of being told that.

I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast. My nightmare that I have right now, I used to have a nightmare that I was this age and I still worked at the Daily Show and I was on a panel talking about comedy and the news. And I was like, no, no more of that. my new nightmare is I come home depressed from a meeting and my wife goes so how did the meeting with Lucky Charms go

and I go they didn't like my take on Lucky and I like that's my that's the world of a working screenwriter right now is what's your take on Lucky to Lepricon how do you get across what drives Lucky and so anyone who worked on this you know they had to do with that kind of stuff how do we get across you know what what's at some point they said well what's

Tails's comedic fastball what's the kind of joke only Tails can tell and the writers had to be like how do we answer an unanswerable question? So I have nothing but sympathy. No, you're right. They deserve their hazard pay. Exactly.

They deserve it. I'm just mad at the sorts of movies that are making money. It's disappointing that there's a, I was complaining to my dad about this and he didn't really understand what I was talking about. There's an entire generation, maybe more, of creative people who should be making the movies that define these times

and define what our imaginations can do in these times and we're not getting them because these people have to make Sonic the Hedgehog movies, superhero movies, movies based on old cartoons from when we were kids. Like, we're just not, we're going to miss an entire generation of original ideas and imaginings. Not very sad about it. But you can't blame the people who are doing it. They've got to do the job.

You know, we've got to make a living. Or just not even, even, it's not original ideas. Just like strange blockbuster movies. I don't know. I watched Dick Tracy for the first time recently. Oh, man. And I was sort of like. I haven't seen that since it came out.

I got to watch it. That is a singular vision. I was just like, I, it boggles my mind. how the movie got made. There was so much marketing behind it. I remember being so, like, going to McDonald's and being like, I got to catch all the villain like stickers or whatever the fuck.

Just the idea also that it was like, Batman was huge. You know it'll be big. Dick Tracy. They're both old comic book characters, right? But that was the same thing where Warren Beatty was like, I assume Warren Beatty was like, when I was a kid, I loved Dick Tracy.

I got to make this Dick Tracy movie. But instead he made it in a, in a strange way as opposed to Michael Bay making like an Ninja Turtles movie where it's like, how do we make these characters fuck? How do we make them super badass? It was definitely marketed as Batman, too. And by the way, the first Batman, also a nutty vision in its own way. But it was one that hit with the public.

Like, I remember watching Dick Tracy in the theater as a kid and being like, I wanted another Batman. And then I saw it like, I don't know, a year ago they did a screaming at Nighthawk. And I'm like, this is amazing. This is like a kaleidoscope of nuttiness. I love it. I got to watch it again. Would you describe it as colorful?

It is colorful. Like the comics. No, the comics were not colorful, Dan. Well, there were four-color. No, I mean, I'm talking about the Sunday. The Sunday, anyway. The other thing is, what's funny about the Dick Tracy movie is, if I'm remembering clearly, they actually had to clean it up quite a bit because the old Dick Tracy comic strips are very violent.

He's constantly killing his bad guys. It's like, prune face committed this crime. Shoot him in the face. The original judge dread. There's flat top, stab him in the heart. Okay, Dick Tracy. Like, all right. And I have a watch with a little TV on it.

Anyway, kill these guys. Man, at the time, that was like the height. It was like, can you imagine if you can have a TV on a watch? Greatest Trek is the hit podcast about new Star Trek shows. And right now, we're talking about all things Starfleet Academy. Starfleet Academy. is a Star Trek show made for everyone, from Lifetime Star Trek nerds

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That's actually Matt's job, Matt, our tech person. But if you haven't watched Flop TV yet, check it out while you still can. And now, back to Sonic 3 and Jamel and everything. Let's do letters from listeners. Like you? This one's from Declan last name withheld who writes, Hi, Floppers. I'm wondering if you guys have any tips on how to write about or review something positively.

In this case, I'm talking movies. From this podcast, no. In this case, I'm talking movies on Letterbox, but it applies to the world in general. Maybe it's just a byproduct of being on the Internet with its widespread negativity. But for some reason, I feel my reviews are more likely to focus on the aspects of a good movie that bothered me rather than the aspects I liked. almost as if I'm trying to justify why I didn't give the movie five stars rather than what I liked

that gave an above average rating. For instance, I recently watched Paris, Texas. My review was four paragraphs of how I thought the beginning hour in the desert was too long and boring and how the movie didn't feel like it delivered on the promises it set up

and how I got really close to turning it off, followed by one paragraph about how I liked it. My rating, 4.5 stars out of five. I don't know whether it's because I'm more comfortable verbalizing something I didn't like that I am putting myself out there and trying to describe why something made me feel. But I'm kind of afraid that this is something that might be

indicative of my personality. Not to mention that this brain of negativity feels like a symptom of the world we live in and is something we should all probably try to curb. I'd also like to get ahead of the jokes and say that I recognize the irony and writing to a bad movie podcast about this. But obviously you guys love

movies, have a history with professional movie reviewers, and give a recommendations on each episode. So I feel like you guys are amongst the foremost experts on the subject. Help me floppy wine canobies. You're my only hope. I would like to jump in if it's okay. This is very unlike me to jump in and talk first.

And interrupt everybody. Declan, I feel like you are answering your own question in a number of ways, not in the how to, but in the why. I think that we live in a world where it is very hard to make yourself vulnerable by saying, I like this thing. Because it's so easy for someone else to say, that thing is bad, you're wrong for liking it, you're dumb. And the internet, which should have created a world where there's a certain level of anonymity

so you can say, I like this thing without fear that someone's going to come at you because who gives a shade of someone you don't know in real life comes at you, is the opposite. It's much easier for somebody who you've never met to shit on you for saying you like a thing that they don't like. And so I think that it's very hard for anyone right now to be, to make them, or it's harder than it once was, to be, make yourself vulnerable by saying, I'll say, I'll like this thing. It really means something to me. It feels like all of politics right now is based around it's easier to say what I hate than to say what I like, to say what is good rather than what

is bad. And so I would say this is what, this is my, this is my theory about this. This is my thing we have to do. I feel like we've got to drop the, the kind of nihilistic fear of vulnerability that has typified a lot of culture since, let's say that in those 1990s that Sonic the Hedgehog was trying to it just were so great, and go back to the more, like, sincere, more innocent, kind of cornyer, goofier, in a lot of ways,

kind of like less cool way of living that I would say existed from the romantic era into, you know, roughly the 1970s, 1980s with some bumps here and there when it was like, people were really excited about things they've liked and really wanted to share things they liked.

And I feel like that's a lot of where science fiction fandom comes from is I like these things that the people around me don't like. So I'm going to find other people like me by being extremely vocal about what I like and searching out the people who also like those things. And now we've kind of gone the other way where I think people glom together based on sharing that they don't like things. And the first step is just to like try to be okay with being vulnerable. And if someone says, I don't like that thing you like to be like, okay, cool, well, I still like it. But it's hard to do. I know, I certainly when I was a younger man, I felt it

much easier to be funny about the things I didn't like than to be genuine about the things I did like. And when I hosted a film series at the 9-2-I-T Rebecca, it was a lot easier to get people to come see movies if I was like, this movie is so bad, you're going to love it. Then if I said, this movie is great, you're going to love it. And I think it's all that, it's all that fear of being vulnerable, I think, at a certain level. So I would say you got to just gird yourself for those moments and try it when you're writing the next, this is my assignment I'm going to give you. The next time you write a letterbox review, I don't want you to mention anything in the movie you didn't like. I only want you to mention the things you did like.

And don't feel like you need to justify your star rating, you know, in any way. That the star rating and the write-up can be separate things in a way. And you just focus on the things that you like. That's my assignment for you, Decker. And for the world. Guys, prove me wrong. I don't care. I'm not letting myself be vulnerable here.

How can I even prove that? I don't. Debate me, Dan. Debate me on it. Tell me why it's not good to. loves to write positive reviews over here. No, I mean, I found that, like, even in my, like, non-review, like, life, I have a problem with, like, leading with the negative and just sort of assuming that the positive is understood to be positive if I don't mention it. Like, that's okay, you know, and, like, the baseline.

And I don't think that that's a good, you know, I've had trouble, you know, talking with Audrey because of that sometimes. I had trouble with my friends sometimes where I was just like, oh, the negative. is obvious, but the positivity is left unsaid. Stewart's nodding his head, probably because he's, you know, remembering a cool song he heard once and he's bobbing his head along to it. But, uh...

Yeah, probably the Adams family's song. No, it's good to be aware of this sort of thing. I think in... Like, if you want a how-to, I think in reviews, like, it's the only thing to do is to think, like, you know, why did this affect me positively? Like, what did I think was it? that I responded to and write about that.

Or like even if it didn't affect you per se, like, what is the movie that you're watching? Like, what's it trying to do? And did it succeed at that and why? And like talk about why it succeeded in that? Because like, you know, that's sort of a side note to that. I think a lot of people get very negative, like imagining the movie that they thought they were going to watch. and if it doesn't live up to that, they're mad rather than engaging with, like,

what is actually in front of them. And, you know, a lot of that's advertising and expectations. But do you have any thoughts? Yeah, it's just like my girl, right? You get mad about those bees. I am mad at those bees years later. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, one,

I know that I was raised in a family and an environment where if I shared a particular affection for something that became aminational, for people to make fun of me for liking it. And while I feel like I've gotten over most of that, there's also, you know, that's lingering. And the, but I do know that like, as somebody who deals with depression a lot, that like I try to focus on the things that I like because, you know,

it's hard to find joy in the world sometimes. And you need to figure out what you like so that you can get that. And so I guess I, I just find myself, I guess, thinking about the positives of a lot of things more often. That doesn't necessarily help you with your reviews. I would recommend sticking to the things that you like and follow what Elliot said because that was well thought out. But, yeah.

Yeah, Elliot said something that I felt was quite useful, which is to separate a star rating from just what you're going to write about the movie, right? Like, there are plenty of movies for which I would give a two-star rating on the letterbox. It might write about the things about the movie that I just like that, like, you know, made it worth watching. Or even if I... Sometimes I'll give a movie a low star rating. We give it a heart and that's just a signal that like, you know,

this movie isn't particularly good, but I still enjoyed it and I enjoyed it for these reasons. And I think it's worth just sort of... With recognizing that there is as the internet premium on negativity, but doing what you can to push against it. And like I always said, being a little vulnerable is worthwhile. Being little cringe is worthwhile, you know? Like I think one thing, not to bring too much of my day job into this conversation, but one thing that I think is true is that I think our politics at this moment are somewhat downstream of a cultural belief

that negativity and cynicism are somehow more authentic and more true than positivity and, and the things you might label is cringe, that like for whatever reason we view that stuff as insincere as virtue signaling. I think that virtue actually needs to be signaled. That's a thing. Virtue is a public performance and it has to be demonstrated

and that is going to look embarrassing. And you just have to power through that. Yeah, there's something, this is kind of a semi-unreligious. but I feel like it's similar in that in one of Chuck Klosterman's essays he talks about being like a young punk and going to a bar where there was a group of like

hair metal guys who would dress up in really ridiculous outfits and then play hair metal at this bar and then and he and his friends would just sit in the back and laugh at them and be like oh that sucks look at that and in the essay he's like and you know what those guys probably did later that night had sex with like with their girlfriends like they were having a really fun time

and our idea of a fun time was just to sit on them sit and shit on them having a fun time which is not fun. Like that he was so, they were so afraid of not looking cool that they were cutting themselves off from enjoying themselves. And it's a little bit like,

I feel like a lot of, in terms of like political reporting and our national culture right now, it's like the people who refuse to dance at weddings, which I was one, you know, for many years, where it's like, oh, because I don't want to look stupid. It's like, well, why not? Have a great time.

Who cares if you look stupid? Everyone else is. Like, just have a good time. And you're like, who cares if somebody films it and puts it on the internet? Like, everybody looks stupid on the internet. It's okay.

Like, as somebody... Are people putting wedding dancing up on the other? I mean, I think that is a concern for some young people is that because everything is filmed, people are nervous about being filmed in a way that they can't control. Yeah, that makes sense. But it's a, but you're, I think if, what you're saying, I think is great to my like, you have to be a little cringe in order to, in order to engage sincerely and enjoy life to a certain extent, you know. Yeah.

And you can't just always hold yourself back and be like, eh, you can't always be Darya. Yeah. And you can't always, if you keep finding ways to not do something, you'll never fucking do anything. Yes. So, Declan, you have no excuse now. That was more expiring. I mean, you gave him an assignment, All right? And I feel like that's better than a lot of our letter responses.

Speaking of letters, there's one more. This is from Aaron Last Name Withheld. Who writes, why do movies suck so hard? This guy, Declan, writes the dumbest reviews. say to him to get him to stop. Aaron, why'd you pair these two letters together? Because he's got to be shown. No, this is from Aaron, who writes,

I'm listening to your Smurfs episode with guest Jesse Thorne, and he mentioned Field of Dreams as a baseball movie he enjoyed. I saw Field of Dreams for the first time this summer in Iowa City at an outdoor movie event. When the line, is this heaven? No, it's Iowa. Came up. everyone there, set it along with the movie,

and then we all cheered. It was really fun to be there and witness that, especially for my first time seeing the flick. Thinking about that experience, I was wondering whether there are any movies that you strongly associate with place. It could be because you watched it in the location where it happened,

or that it brought up a particularly strong memory of a place for you. My second question, less related to movies, are there physical spaces, whether from your past or present, without doxing yourself, of course? that really stuck out to you and shaped you into who you are or want to be. Thanks, Aaron last name withheld.

P.S. I was at the late Chicago show. Had a really great time. Thanks for all you do. And I hope Stuart and Elliot aren't too mad at Dan for the roast because I had a great time. Oh, yeah. Dan's referencing a PowerPoint he does where he roasts me and Elliot. And I'm still livid. Yeah.

Look, he's shaking. I'm vibrating like an angry Sonic. Yeah. The vein in his forehead is throbbing. I mean, I feel like the cheat on a question like this is always... Dan. Sorry, I thought about not saying it and then I said it. I mean, I have my penis out while I podcast.

I mean, the cheat for me is always movies that are like... Stewart says, what would Tom Bombadil do? You wouldn't take that goddamn ring. The cheat is something like, you know, I, as somebody who has children, chosen to live in New York. I obviously have an affection for New York, and growing up I saw a lot of movies set in New York, and I still have a thing where, like, seeing movies that are clearly set in the city that I choose to live in, I, like, it already gives me an affection for it, especially, like, in

particular, if it shows, like, a New York slightly before my time, that's, like, even better. Like, give me a 90s New York. I'm like, oh, take me there, because that was kind of the feeling I had when I was, going when I was like where do I want to live that was the type of movie that I would see and those were the things that kind of pushed me over the edge I have a couple of thoughts of movies for slightly different reasons in each case

I saw um why am I blinking night of the hunter for the first time it was being screened like someone had a 16 millimeter probably print that they were playing uh in an airplane hanger uh near where my ex her family

was from. This sounds like a way that the cops entrapped nerds. But no, it was just a wonderful like, it was like semi-outdoors, like a unique way to see that movie. And I've, you know, I've seen a lot of movies at different, like, interesting venues.

But this one stuck with me for some reason. Possibly because I was also seeing a great movie for the first time. And I think I mentioned before that there was like a documentary about the Eugene Merman Comedy Festival that I watched somewhat recently that just had a cavalcade of like stages I had performed on or people I'd seen when I was first in New York coming to comedy shows that, you know, felt very

specifically interesting to me when maybe someone else wouldn't be as fascinated by the movie. What do you guys think? So this isn't a memory of a good movie. But when I was just at a college, I went to a recently. D. Fonogne, about to be brought back drive-in movie theater in the middle of nowhere Virginia and saw the 2000, saw the movie that came with that year

obsessed with Beyonce, Halli Larder, and Idris Elba. And it was just like such a great time, like watching this terrible movie with a bunch of my friends eating snacks and like hanging out and just sort of like I associate drive-in movies with that experience and whenever I

see Ali Larder or Beyonce or Idris Elba, I do think about that movie obsessed and that particular time. The stretchy arms, right? That's the stretchy arms one where somebody's hanging in their arms look like they're really long. Yeah, I think so.

That's a flop-ass movie. Yeah. Similarly, I have, there are two movies that stick out to me particularly for the time and the place, which was one was when I was a kid, my mom took me and my brother and sister to a to Mystic Connecticut for the weekend

because Penn and Teller were performing there. And our car broke down and we missed a day of school and we went to the movies and we saw the sandlot in an otherwise empty theater. It was just the four of us and nobody else. And so the sandlot will always be associated with Mystic Connecticut to me for that reason.

But also on the day of my wedding in Sonoma, California, earlier that day while my wife and her friends were getting ready, Dan and Stuart and I and a bunch of my other groomsmen and friends, we went to go see Piranha 3D. And so now my wedding day is forever

intertwined with Parana 3D. And when I go, and when I'm in Sonoma, which we go to regularly because my wife's parents still live there. It's a, I often will just think about like, yeah, this is where I got married and I saw Piranha 3D.

Two equally important things. There was something so fun about this pile of rowdy weirdos showing up to a multiplex that is other, like just like we're waiting there for them to open the doors. And there's no one else in this empty parking lot and we're like, yep, 10 tickets for Pirata 3D please.

And I think there were like two other people in the theater who were not with us. Yeah, they had to put up with us talking. And we dragged him to the wedding. Great friends now. They're very close friends now. Yeah, yeah. Are there, like, personal spaces like she asked about it? I mean, the thing for me is, like, you know, everything imprints on you, you know?

Like, I don't know if I have a... Especially if you're made a silly potty. I don't know. I don't know. I have a better answer, you know, like the first seven. years of my life, I was in a small, small Midwestern town where I was bored all the time. And obviously that looms large in my life just because it was where I grew up. But I can't really like.

I mean, certainly like when I first got married and things were very strange. And my husband was like, was still enthralled to the memory of his first wife, the first Mrs. De Winter. I often find myself still dreaming of Mandurley. you know, that I'm still back there. So made a big impression on me, yeah. Well, there you go. That's where you get.

A Rebecca reference. Yeah, exactly. So it's the movie Rebecca. Let's, uh... For more, see the, uh, Mitchell and Webb sketch where they're talking about how they made. The mistake was making the movie Rebecca where they're saying, no, no, that's the room the second Mrs. DeWinter will not be allowed into. They had to convince Hitchcock to make, Hitchcock to make the movie about the second wife,

as opposed to the first one. Um... And Hitchcock's that, uh, superhero guy, right? That's right. No, that's Hancock. Hancock is Hitch and Hitchcock book together. He's a superhero who teaches Kevin James how to fall in love. And half-cock is what you should never go off.

And a Mr. Woodcock is what they call Tom Bombadale. Those fours full of ants were filled with Mr. Woodcock. Yeah, that's why Goldberry was always smiling, right? Let's move on to our final segment where we recommend a movie that we saw that we liked perhaps better than Sonic 3. Is that possible? Just last night, I watched the Color of Money,

which is one of the few Scorsese movies. It's green. I hadn't. Thank you. A plus. I mean, in other countries, it's other colors. That's the thing. What?

That's something for when they released it in other countries, they had to re-dub the part where they said what color of money was. Yeah, when Paul Newman looks directly into the camera The color of money is green. It's the last line. Can you imagine Paul Newman? They were like, well, we had to bring in for ADR for the international. It just looks like everyone goes,

The color of money is blue. Okay, great, we got that. Okay, now for the next, now for Italy or whatever. The color of money is orange or yellow. Okay, great. Keep moving. The color of money has a little petite prance on it. I think that this movie sort of had like a middling record.

reputation for a long time because it was a you know it was a pretty big hit for Scorsesey standards but it was also I think among critics looked at as like oh he's doing something commercial like

even though you look at it now and it's like a damn art film compared to like most movies that are released but uh you know but at the time it was seen as the equivalent of him taking on like a Jurassic Park movie yeah I mean especially because it's you know it's a secret to a long ago classic film, The Hustler, and so people were on him for that, I think, too.

But, you know, it's great. So it's written by Richard Price off of a novel by the same man who did The Hustler. And I just thought that, like, I specifically, I particularly was impressed, like, right out of the gate by the first scene, which I think sets up all the characters in such an elegant way with, like, you know, the Scorsese camera moving back and forth.

Paul Newman is talking to the woman he's sleeping with about, you know, she owns the bar. He's like a booze distributor. And he's having this whole conversation while John Detour just keeps coming in asking for more money to be staked because he keeps losing to Tom Cruise, even though he's supposedly a hustler himself. And, you know, Newman's slowly becoming more interested in the pool game that's going on than the woman he's talking to. And Tom Cruise being set up as this cocky weirdo. it's all in there, and you get so much character and sort of exposition about who these people are without it seeming like it. And, you know, it's just a, if you give someone who's masterful a pretty basic story, they're going to make something masterful out of it.

And I really enjoyed myself. One thing I like about that movie, which I also have been a big penit for years, is how wild the camera gets during the pool sequences. And it's fun because, you know, it's an example of seeing a technique that Scorsese would use to great effect and, like, much more, you know, obviously classic films like Goodfellas, but like it seems much more like appropriate subject matters applied to pool. So like in Scorcezi's hand, like a game of pool is the most dynamic thing that's ever happened on the planet Earth. Something that's played on a stationary piece of furniture. Stewart. Sounds great. I am going to recommend a movie I saw this week that just saw a U.S. release.

It's the movie Pillion, starring Alexander Scarsgaard and Henry Melling. It's a movie about a young, kind of timid, nervous man who begins this kind of whirlwind, complicated romance with a very handsome biker who is part of the BDSM. community. And it's really funny and it's also hot and like sweet and I think it deals with the BDSM community

in a really sensitive way. And it's, yeah, it's just really, like, it's just beautiful rom-com that has jokingly been called a Domcom. But this is also a really good... Because Dom Deloese is in it.

Yes. I mean, you don't have to say calm if Dom Deloese's saying, because you know it's a com. He brings the calm. But this is also, I think this is also... Dom implies calm. That's what they used to say about him.

It's a really strong performance from Alexander Scarsgard, who is a guy who can... who was often called upon to be this, like, silent brooding figure. And I think he is able to add layers to this otherwise, uh, kind of like,

like, kind of stationary character in a lot of ways. Um, and he, like, he imbues this character of very few words with a lot of emotion. And I think it's, it's a really beautiful. beautiful movie and it's a like the perfect Valentine's Day movie. Speaking of perfect Valentine's Day's movies, maybe not, I don't know. Every now and then I have to wash out my brain by watching an old movie that I don't, I haven't

seen before and I don't know about. And this time I watched the movie Heat Lightning from 1934, which I really loved. It stars Eileen McMahon, one of my favorite kind of 30s supporting performers. You may know her best as the most gold diggery of the gold. diggers of 1933, one of the all-time great 30s musicals. But she often was like a supporting character, but here she gets to be the star. And she plays a woman who with her younger sister runs a kind of like gas station and lunchroom in the middle of the desert and lives an isolated life out there.

She does all the, all the, what they keep calling the man's work in it. She runs, she fixes the cars and pumps the gas and things like that. And it's because she has a scandalous past. She doesn't want her younger sister to know about. But then the man from her past. by coincidence, shows up at the roadside lunchstand while he's on the run from a robbery that he committed in which he killed a man.

And a couple other characters were also around and adding their kind of like little bits of personality to it. And it's a real type movie. This is one of those movies that's barely over an hour long, but where I feel like you get a full idea of who these characters are and what they're feeling and it ends somewhat in tragedy as it has to. But I really loved it.

it's such a shot of like real like 1930s like filmmaking uh in a way where the story moves fast the characters are sketched in really strongly the acting is really fun um and and it looks really good it was directed by mervin la roy who uh was you know one of the one of the big big directors of that period and i just really enjoyed a lot so that's heat lightning if you want to watch a quick fast old movie that's fun to watch i've been uh watching the loroy films on criterion as I think this is in that set. I think this is in there. Yeah.

He's one of these directors where, like, people don't talk about him because he's not, I guess he doesn't fit the idea of like what a great director is, but he's got so many fun good movies to his. I mean, he did Gold Diggers of 1933 also, which has some of the best musical numbers of any. I really like, I was a fugitive from a, I am a fugitive from a chain gang.

Yeah, not even was, it still is. He is. I'm currently a fugitive from a chain gang. I continue to be a fugitive from a chain gang. That one's great. The Little Caesar, which is great. Yeah. I'm going to recommend, we mentioned Wuthering Heights earlier, the new film,

but I'm going to recommend the 1939 William Weiler, Wuthering Heights, that I recently watched. And it's just, it cuts out half the book. It cuts out the... They cut out the whole second half, basically, right? It cuts out the second half dealing with the children of everyone, like the next generation of the Lentons and the... and the, you know, whomevers.

The Earnshaws, Linton's and the Earnshaws in the Heathcliff in the book. But what it does cover, which is basically that's not the spieling thing up to Catherine's death, is great. And it stars Lawrence Olivier. So it's sort of like, yeah, Lawrence Olivier is Heathcliff.

Do you want to watch that for an hour and 40 minutes? Because it fucking rules. That's what I'm going to be. to recommend. Yeah, the 1939 Wuthering Heights. William Wilerston, oh, sorry I want to say. I'll recommend reading Wuthering Heights as well. My wife is reading it for the first time right now, and I think she likes it.

Tess, do you like it? She likes it. I know I really enjoyed it when I read it in high school, along with Jane Eyre, the other, the Charlotte Bronte novel. The three Bronte sisters all produced, you know, highlights of Victorian literature, and it's worth reading. It's worth checking out. I wish, so when I was in high school, I didn't give them a fair shot because I had to read them for school.

And there were always other books I wanted to read more. And I remember one summer where they, I had to read Jane Eyre for the next, for my senior year coming up. And but I also had Hells Angels, the Hunterstompson book, like lined up after that. So I was like, come on Jane Eyre. Like, get, let me get done with this. So I can read Hells Angels. And it's, I need to go back and relook at it. But William Weller who did that. He's another one of those directors who like, his, his stuff in the 40s and 50s, like, is astounding. Like, he has such an amazing run of movies. so good. I was the same way as you, L.A. with Jane Eyre, and I was like, oh, this is boring. I want to get back to reading my Vampire the Mascarade rulebook. But then it gets to the point where the other wife shows up and you're like, what? Man. Where was this? Where was this the whole time?

I love Jane Eyre all the way through. I would much be more shit in that than what were you saying? Honduras Thompson. No, thank you. Yeah, Hunterst Thompsonian. Oh, man. I love how much of the book. I feel like it was really eye-opening to read a book where she spends the whole time talking

about like how ugly and weird this dude is but she can't not be obsessed with him and I'm like wow okay people's brains are different than I thought the stuff with Rochester's all really what my trouble was when once she's done with that storyline for a while and she's with Shingen for a while I was like

oh boy this guy is a drip like I don't want to do this stuff this was a really cool story about a weird guy who keeps his wife in an attic it's like something out of a horror movie and now suddenly she's with this missionary who's just kind of like a boring dude Yeah. If I were going to try to sell, like, reading 19th century literature to younger people outside of the context of school,

is that you have to remember this stuff was mass entertainment. It's the same deal with, like, Hollywood, you know, I think, I think, you know, younger teens, people in their 20s, may imagine 30s and 40s Hollywood as being treated with homework. But, you know, this is all mass entertainment for, like, almost lowest common denominator. So a thing like, you know, Jane Eyre, yeah, weird guy with his wife locked up in the basement is, it's meant to be, you know, titillating to audiences. And it's worth reading that stuff and watching that stuff with that in mind. This is not, this isn't really homework.

This is supposed to be entertainment for you to enjoy. It was meant to be enjoyed, yeah. It makes me feel like, though, that in 100 years people were like, young people don't want to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3. They think it's going to be boring, but at the time, this was... At the time, children love watching movies about dead kids. Okay, well, before we...

Now the kids only want to watch strobing lights and colors that have no narrative content whatsoever, they don't realize stories were meant to be enjoyed, yeah. Before we go, Elliot plugged for you at the beginning. But in your own words, Jamel, is there anything you would like to bring up before we say goodbye? Sure, if you want to read my stuff I'm at the New York Times

I have my podcast my buddy John Gans on Clear and Present Danger and I'm on YouTube and TikTok and the like so you can watch me do videos about our crumbling society. Yeah, if you want a smart person being justifiably mean

to some awful people. I mean, I feel like there are a lot of people in the not to blow too much smoke up you, Jamel, but like the there are a lot of people in the press like you're saying are built on cynicism and that cynicism becomes a like,

well, I have to pretend that everything's okay or that things are normal. Like, I have to show I'm above caring about this. This is just normal stuff. And I feel like your work is such a corrective where you're like, this is bonkers. This is not how this is supposed to work. Like this guy is a, he's an insane liar.

This is not, you know, and my mom is frequently forwarding me your newsletter. And I'm like, yeah, I subscribe to it. I read this. You don't have to send it to me. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think, I think just, thank you, first of all, Elliot, but I think just to kind of observe my own approach here,

I think people mistake what I'm doing for kind of like polyanish optimism, but it's not really that at all. It's more sort of like, I do take this stuff seriously and I do, you know, sincerely, you know, believe in the ideals and aspirations of our country and such. And so I think it's important to just, you know, say that you shouldn't take this kind of,

of this kind of deviant as sort of just the way things are. It's actually, they've often been this way, but they don't have to be this way. And how it is is often very like literally up to decisions we make as individuals. Yeah, I found it very refreshing and maybe it will be turned out to be wrong. Who knows? But part of being honest is being aware that you might be proved wrong at some point if things change. But recently you online have been arguing with people who are like, Trump's going to shut down all the elections, and you're like, that's not how our election system works.

Like, let's take a look at how the system actually works. What can actually be done? And that I think your point that by buying into that fear, we are helping them, basically, like we're doing their job for it. The same way that when AI people are like, it's going to take over the world. And people are at that. It's like, well, you're helping to sell their products. Only if people, yeah, let it. Like, you don't have to.

You're not a visitor from the future, like Sam Rockwell telling us that it's already happened, you know? We can make that choice. Very topical about your visitors from the future, and you pick the current one. And that you are, I think you're, especially when you connect things to historical things, I feel like you are in the tradition of the great Robert Caro as presenting things as choices rather than inevitability.

Yeah. And that we continue to live in a world where choices can be made rather than just being pulled wrong by the current of whatever. So I appreciate it. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Thank you for taking time out of doing that. Talk to us about this.

Oh man If us taking Jamel away Really like it was a butterfly effect This thing I'm gonna be so upset As soon as the episode has done Me with an iPad Is gonna jump out in a scar and his face Gonna jump out of a portal

Quick you don't have Jamel New Podcasts He needs to be doing something else right now Oh it's too late Two hours too late We already recorded it Oh no Well from something inspiring

To a bleak sci-fi scenario Yeah what a way to end the podcast Thank you to our network Maximum Fun. Go to Maximum Fun.org for all the other great shows that they put out. There are wonderful people. Check out the other shows. Thank you to Alex Smith.

Also a wonderful person. Our producer goes by the name of Howell Doughty on the internet for his own music and comedy stuff. Check him out. But for now, for the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. I've been Elliot Kalen, and we've been joined by Jamel Bowie.

Bye. Gotta go fast. We said after a two-hour podcast. Yes, thank you for coming back, Chabelle. We'll start. We appreciate it, you continue to

potentially wreck your very respectable career as a major public thinker to continue to talk to us about hedgehog movies. I feel like this does not have the footprint. to wreck his career. I was just observing, I was like looking at my camera feed here and it occurred to me that I have gray

and you can see the progression of the gray on me based on these hedgehog episodes. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.