The Watch - Ep. 104: ‘Rogue One’ and ‘Black Mirror’ Re-up

Episode Date: December 9, 2016

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald get ready for ‘Rogue One’ (1:00) and the ‘Black Mirror’ episode “Shut Up and Dance” (30:07). Then they explore the increasingly thin line between ‘Black Mirror’ and reality (39:50). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, watch listeners, be sure to check out Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne is back. Join Matt Damon for the next chapter in Universal Pictures Born franchise, which finds the CIA's lethal former operative drawn out of the shadows. Get it on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray with DTSX sound today, rated PG-13. Wanted to thank American Express. American Express card members, you do not want to miss this. Now, through December 31st, there is a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood.

more and enroll your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. Terms apply. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I have an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, his cape never hits the water. It's Andy Greenwald. They don't make breathable fabrics like that in space, man. Andy, we're so close to Rogue One, bro.

I'm excited. Do you know that it's a Star Wars story? I know you thought that was a piece of original IP, but I got to tell you, it's not. It's a Star Wars story. As a charity thing, like we should do a, what's seven times 24, Zach? It's like a lot of hours. I was going to say we should do like a seven-day, 96-hour podcast about Star Wars leading up to Rogue One. just to get

to get people excited for it or to completely exhaust them and turn them off it for charity, right? Like it would be like a walk-a-thon, but it would be a talk-a-thon about Star Wars. Do you think we could, like, I don't think I could make it past hour four.

I got to be honest with you. I mean, I could probably get six hours out of just ranking every single Star Wars character. I probably could get a couple hours out of arguing about a couple of things. The point is that, Star Wars is rich text. They're making more movies about it. We're talking about Rogue One. This is kind of like your Rogue One prep course before the movie premieres next week.

Just as a little bit of housekeeping. Today we're doing Rogue One and we are doing shut up and dance. The Black Mirror episode, I know everybody has been annoyed that we started and then stopped our recap session. With that, that's on me. That's on Andy. And here's the plan for next week. On Monday, we are doing the year in music. Okay, we're going to probably have Lindsay Zollads from the rain. joining us on the phone. We're going to be doing our top tens then. And then Thursday we have a very special year

in television episode, but I don't know if it's going up Thursday, but it will be with a special guest. We have a special guest for that. We're not going to announce now, but we're excited. And we'll probably have some other year-end stuff going on. We're going to really try to get a Rogue One pod, you know, not

next month, not this coming Monday, but the following Monday. So there's a lot of stuff to look forward to. Before we get to Black Mirror, though, let's talk about Rogue One. Andy, I have like a thing I wanted to say about this. First of all, I love it when you have things. Yeah. Especially ones you want to say, hit me.

It's easy to look at this. This movie's going to make money no matter what. And I think that after with Force Awakens and there was such a long buildup to it and it came out and people were like, that was pretty good. And it was just like whether it was good or not, as long as it wasn't really bad, I think that it was within the realm of accepted results. But I think that it's worth noting that there actually are some stakes involved with Rogue One. And I don't even know if you can really determine them whether or not. I'm sure this

movie is going to make quite a bit of money, probably not as much money as Force Awakens. Although I don't really think that there's a lot else to do this December than see this movie. So if it's pretty good, I can imagine most walking people seeing it. But in terms of like what's it's at stake here, which is, you know, a relative term, I actually do think there is a lot because they've what Lucasfilm is done here and what Disney has done by picking out a guy like Gareth to direct a film choosing a story like Rogue One, which is

a little bit darker, a little bit grittier, a little bit more off the beaten path than the typical Star Wars saga, the Skywalker saga films that we are accustomed to. And then actually, even in the Hollywood sort of behind the scene stuff that happened with the movie, choosing someone like Tony Gilroy

to be the closer on this movie and rumored to have come in, done some rewrite, it's done some reshoots, worked on the final product. If this works, that's really good for movies, I think, because it shows that within the tent of these IP blockbusters, you can do creative, interesting stuff. And if it doesn't, and they're like, you know what,

people just aren't willing to accept anything in this movie, in this franchise and in this universe, other than what they are already accustomed to. then that's really bad. Because right now, you kind of have to accept the fact that these are the kind of movies that get made. These are the kind of movies that get these kinds of budgets, that get these kinds of marketing pushes, that draw this kind of talent to them. And if they're going to be really boring, and if they're going to be really safe, which, to be completely frank, I find the Marvel movies have sort of established themselves in that space, where it's like, basically, like, you guys can act like Iron Man and Captain America punching each other is the godfather too. but it's really not.

You know what I mean? Like there's not a lot at stake there. There's not a lot of consequences in those movies. And I'm not saying that there are going to be in Rogue 1. But I do think it's going to be very interesting to see how this is received because I do think that this is a different kind of Blockbuster IP experiment. I think in the broad strokes, you are right, and I agree with you. I think that you are expressing a viewpoint that I admire,

and I think is at its core more optimistic than I am. That's very nice of you. Well, I think that... What are you reaching across the aisle? I'm trying to. This is a time for comedy. It's time for... Not comedy, but comedy with a T.

We've been at each other's throats for too long in this country in this year. I think that in a vacuum, without knowing all the stuff that had gone on behind the scenes, I think that your reading would be 100% not just the right reading, but the only reading. What makes me concerned is not just the generally stultifying groupthink and, you know, accountant-minded business practices that fuel the movie studios, which is to say blockbuster movies because they're interchangeable at this point, but also what the facts on the ground, the taunton feet in the snow of Hoth in this case, because let's run it back for a second and remember that up to a certain point, as far as we were concerned,

concerned. This movie, the first official Star Wars sort of spin-off or standalone film, was doing absolutely everything right. And to be clear on what I mean by that, I mean they chose a unrelated story, but a very, very cool, thus far unexplored story, which is stealing the plans for the Death Star that sets up the actions in episode four, a new hope. Like that is a, you talk about rich text, like that is a great thread to pull because that, you know, had to have happened for the movies that we know and love to have happened, but no one's ever considered it. And then furthermore, to be like, we have the main thread of these new trilogy, so we're going to go off and do different genre films and give filmmakers a chance to flex, perhaps directly in opposition to

the way the other major tent pole factories like Marvel operate. You know, Marvel, the movies are a little bit different, but essentially they're all exactly the same. And then, I'm going to take you back to a time that we actually commemorated in a podcast. The first trailer for Rogue One, which I watched again recently, which dropped when it, when did it drop in the spring? That was right around when we started doing the watch, I think. Wasn't it? Wasn't it last fall? Well, no, that's before Force Awakens. So it had to have come after that. But it was definitely, I think it was before Throne. So it was in the spring. Yes, it was in the spring. And I rewatched it in preparation for this podcast because I felt like I should do something to prepare for our podcasts. And I think that it

remains maybe my favorite Star Wars movie. Just the two-minute trailer. It is everything I have ever wanted in a Star Wars movie. And what is so exciting about it in that moment was I had this vision, much like your optimistic vision that you just laid out. I did for a minute believe that what we most hoped would happen with this franchise was going to come true, which is to say that Disney understood that, as you said, Star Wars movies are going to make crazy IMF money regardless. Like that is just a given. That Christine LaGrand money. Yeah. Exactly. Especially because they had chosen exactly the right steward for the main spine of their stories in J.J. Abrams. And I don't even mean that as a compliment. I mean it just as a point of fact, like he is the most responsible steward of major IP

that probably exists in this world. And he made a movie that, you know, the further we get from it, the more it rankles me a little bit that it kind of hits every beat for everyone. It is close to a universal and universally designed movie as one could ever imagine with all the flaws that entails. But it pleased everyone. Literally everyone on planet Earth was the lowest they thought of it was that it was fine or derivative and it made a billion dollars or more, right? I thought that bought them a lot more wiggle room and a lot more goodwill.

But it seems to be the case that the opposite thing happened, which was the accountants were like, oh, Star Wars doesn't just equal guaranteed money and we can play with some of that money. It guarantees the most money. And that was the time when that first trailer where Felicity Jones says, this is a rebellion, isn't it?

I rebel. Led to the last trailer where she's like, rebellions are based on hope. And everybody's like, I'm with you. We got this. And it's like, they actually definitively don't got this

because if you remember in a new hope, their fates are written. Now, I mean, some of them, I think whatever the line is where it's like, Many Bothans died to bring us this information. That doesn't mean all. But it's not going to be a bright and happy movie unless they kind of betray the internal history of the franchise.

But so I, exactly. But it's weird. I mean, obviously we're having this conversation about a movie we haven't seen, which is ridiculous, except in the fact that with Star Wars, I think you can spend a lot of time, not maybe 96 hours, but you can spend a lot of time talking around the thing itself. it sounds like I'm talking myself out of it. I still couldn't be more excited for this movie because of the talent involved,

because of that cast, because of the way it looked, and because Disney pulled this crazy rope adope where they essentially removed the director that made the film or made most of it in Gareth Edwards. And they have not been shy about more or less confirming or not denying this.

I just read a Garrett Edwards interview in the LA Times where I was probably at some sort of junket and he was pretty articulate about, you know, why he wanted to do the movie in the first place and how he had really pitched this movie as if you're going to do this story, it needs to be done this way.

And then when it came to the reshoot stuff, he was like, you know, look, we had our effects shots went from 600 to 700, and why would you not try to improve the product if you could? But when he was asked directly about Tony Gilroy, he didn't dodge it, but he didn't answer the question. So he just said something else.

So, I mean, obviously if Tony Gilroy was not involved, that would have been a perfect opportunity for him to say, like, actually, that was completely overblown. Tony came in and did some consulting, or some rewrites, that was it. I'm still a little bit confused about who benefits from this information being out there. I guess Tony Burroy's agent, who's already sitting on that British Virgin Islands type bank account

because he got his man's five-mill for just cleaning up this movie? I don't know either, and it's interesting. I mean, one of the things that has always interested me about Hollywood is the stuff that no, everyone knows, but no one is allowed to talk about. And it kind of frustrated me when I was a TV critic, too, because there were certain things that either you heard or you had said to you, but it was always off the record or it was just in a direction that you couldn't write. Because if you wrote this story, you would offend so many people, you wouldn't be able to write another story, basically. And to talk, to give you an example of what I'm talking about, Chris, I know you were heartbroken the other day when Amazon announced that it was canceling good girls. revolt. Its show about the 1960s

period show about young women journalists and our girl, Grace Gumber played Nora Ephron. I know you were crushed. Because you love good girls, but you love revolution. This is a revolt, isn't it? I revolt. Yeah. But anyway, it was very odd because the whole point of these streaming services is

like they greenlight you and then they just add you to their content library and they don't tell anyone about your ratings because they don't care. That's not what they're doing. And so they did all this promotion for the first season of the show that they seem to be completely behind. And then six weeks after they put the whole season, they say, nah, and they pull the plug on it.

Right. And this is actually after the Good Girls Revolt producers. And they had cited some Symphony AM and symphony is this kind of odd company that does tracking of streaming numbers. And the producers of Good Girls Revolt were like, we actually had like the highest redirect to Amazon's commerce site, you know, which is just hilarious. like welcome to 2016, but also if you're going to be doing something on what is basically a shopping mall, you should get credit for redirecting people to vacuum wearers.

This is exactly what I'm talking about because so then it got canceled and people were shocked. It just was just not like what Amazon doesn't do that. And even if they weren't going to order a second season, why make a big deal and publicly announce it? So I don't know why they did that. But what's truly crazy is then the next day or so there was a one of the showrunners was just like basically saying like we thought we were doing well. We were very excited about the show. And then when asked directly, do you have anything to say about Amazon? She said, absolutely not.

We loved working with Amazon. Cancellations happen. Then yesterday in the Hollywood reporter, the creator of the show, Wilds out. Yeah, I saw that. She is gin also, okay, with like a fireball whiskey in her flask and Diego Luna and a six shooter by her side where she is basically like, these dudes like to sell widgets and they don't know what they're doing. And no one told us anything. And it is so refreshing and fascinating. Not that I agree with her about Amazon. I don't know any of those people involved. But no one talks about that stuff.

Well, she actually made it also sound a little bit more like a traditional studio where she was like, if you don't get Roy Price's seal of approval, the guy who runs Amazon Studios, you're just, you're screwed because he was just like, they said they were planning out season two and trying to explain it to him. And he was like, use the actor's names. I don't know any of the names of the characters, which is like fair enough. But that's like, that is definitely like Michael Gambon in, uh, in, in, in Barton Fink. Like, sure, sure. You know, it's a boxing picture. Or any of our parents talking about Game of Thrones. Yeah, right.

But also in that article, just as a side note, then the head of drama moved to a different position. And so the head of comedy took over his job as head of drama. And the first thing he apparently asked him to do was see if they could redo girls, good girls revolt as a comedy for season two. Interesting. I love this stuff. Anyway, that was a detour, but quite a big one, I would say. The point is, there's still a lot of rich content in the Good Girls Revolt universe,

and I hope that they do the original storyline where Nora Efron meets Carl Bernstein. Should I keep going with this, or should I, you think this is not a, this isn't a winner? It's very interesting. I don't know who it benefits exactly other than Tony Gilroy for this story to be out there that he basically redid the whole movie. but the even bigger picture is we find ourselves in this weird position where we loved very much the idea of the first version of this because it seemed like what Disney was going to do was make the spine of the new trilogy for everyone and then micro target these other ones and this one seemed micro targeted exactly at people like us who grew up with the original movies but now liked grown-up movies there's no such thing as micro-targeting anymore because micro-target also comes with limits your money it assumes a limited return on investment and obviously the success of Force Awakens because it would actually

you know we we've quote unquote learned because who knows how much of it is true and how much of it is spin but we've learned so much about the production of Rogue One but it actually isn't the first time this has happened anybody who really paid attention to movie blogs two or three

years ago was aware of the incredible development process that Force Awakens was going through which included Michael Arndt who wrote Toy Story I think in a couple of you know a lot of He was a little Miss Sunshine. And a very well-respected screenwriter. He had a Force Awakens script that J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasden essentially took apart.

But there was discussion about how the opening shot of Force Awakens was going to be Luke's hand, right? Falling from space into this desert planet. And that Luke Skywalker was going to be a major part of the Force Awakens. And they wound up. And that was a big. And if that had not worked out, you know, if Force Awakens had been a disaster, we would have had all this evidence to suggest well here's where they went wrong

they went away from Michael Ernstrip but right now what is happening is the obvious thought is there was something wrong with Rogue One and they had to come have somebody come in and fix it and if you've seen Gareth Edwards' movie they're incredible on scale they're not so strong on character sometimes

at least Godzilla is it Monsters is so clearly that's what Gilroy is brought in to do the assumption that you're making when you were like the first trailer, and it's an assumption I tend to agree with, is that what was pitched as Bridge on the River Kwai in space has now turned into an underdog, like, go get him, Tiger, Rocky story. Which, you know, look, Tony Goldroy is one of if not the best screenwriter in America.

We worship the Bourne movies. I think Michael Clayton is perfect. I'm thrilled and excited that he got to do this. and adding humor and heart to something is generally a good idea, especially when faced with the alternative. But what's interesting to think about is the sort of double-edged sword

or, well, I'm going to lose my sword metaphor here because we're not in Game of Thrones season. Ooh, that's good. Yeah. Oh, you mean like a Darth Mall kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. Or do you mean, okay. Get Sith.

Because the, basically, the impossible success of Force Awakens didn't just revitalize Star Wars as a brand like it needed to be revitalized. But basically what that said to the people who matter most, which is the Disney, well, Disney company shareholders, it didn't just say we have Star Wars all the time now. It said we have this all the time. Yeah, right. And that raises the stakes almost impossibly because, you know, I don't think anyone, I mean, Rogue One, I don't see how it does the same amount of money. Just it'll do an impossible amount of money, but I don't think it'll do the same amount. So they become a prisoner of their success in that way.

I mean, a prisoner in the fanciest, you know, Caribbean island next to Tony Gilroy's financial planner. I'm still excited to see the movie. I just think it already feels like a missed opportunity, but maybe the fact that we believed there was an opportunity there proves that we're still sort of naive. So let's talk, before we move on to... A couple of the things that are cool about it is that by all accounts reading the junket interviews that Riz Ahmed's character has been expanded exponentially. And he's talked about how his character had a different name and basically a different background and then the reshoot sort of retooled it. Now, on one hand, that makes it feel a little bit like, do you guys know what you're doing? You know, but on the other hand, it's not because of the night of is cool, but it wasn't like so popular that the streets were like,

Riz Ahmed needs to be co-headlining this movie. It was like, he's really good actor. And maybe this character could be a lot cooler if Tony Gilroy like beefed up the part a little bit or whoever beefed up the part. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. What if it's just that the plans for the Death Star have to be smuggled out in small capsules that he has to swallow? And they were like, that dude's epiglottis is malleable. Yeah.

Let's give him more to do slash swallow. Yeah. Like, I think that's possible. Before we move on to Black Mirror. Before we move on to Black Mirror, and I do think we're going to find a time to, even if it's just a quick pod during the holidays to talk about seeing the movie. let's just do like the five things even though we haven't planned for the specific number what are you most excited about in this movie what are you or most curious about seeing uh all the i don't think that in a lot of ways we've had a one one of the things i didn't like about force awakens was and this is kind of just an issue i have with abrams anyway is he doesn't do set pieces particularly well i don't think i think he does a lot of setup really well and i think he creates really interesting mystery box elements to the plot but when it comes to actually um shooting like a widescreen huge set piece. I don't really, he's not my favorite.

I didn't particularly think he was good at it in Star Trek or in Force Awakens. Gareth Edwards is for sure. You know, that guy understands scale. So I'm very much looking forward to the combat sequences in this movie and any, any, any tie fighters versus, you know, X-wings that they want to throw in me, I'll be willing to see. So definitely the action sequences I'm very excited for. It's interesting you say that because my interest is almost the opposite, even though I expect there to be good action sequences, and I probably will be disappointed in this. But I really like process.

And what I mean is I am at this point in my life, I'm the guy who sees, even looks at the original Star Wars trilogy. And there's the part where they're all gathered around the like Westworld schematic table with Mon Mothma and they're planning the attack. And I'm like, where'd this table come from? Yeah. Who's she? What are they doing while they're dancing?

with Ewox. Yeah. And any movie, and The Force Awakens in these major trilogies, they don't have time for that because we're with the hero. We're on the Joseph Campbell heroic journey with these people.

But there are still, you know, there's still bureaucrats in a revolution. There are still people who are like, like even when they walk, like when Po Dameron walk past all the X-Wings, which everyone got excited about,

me included, there's always those dudes like polishing the windshields of the X-Wings. And I'm like, what's up with them? Like, what's their job? Like, are they the bat boys of space?

We did have three prequel movies about that. No, we had three prequel movies about Muppets collecting taxes. That's not the same thing. All I'm saying is I want to know more about the interesting people in those worlds. I'm not saying we need David Simon's Season 2, The Wire, the Doc's version of Tatooine. I'm just saying like this movie, even in the broad strokes, the things that probably haven't changed about it, are about a functioning revolution in between its biggest victories and failure. and anything we get about that to me is interesting because these are not characters.

Obviously, there's the Jinasso like Campbell thing going to happen with her dad and she gets swept into it. But she's at least doing something else. You know what I mean? It's as if a new hope began with Hans Solo as the main character already doing the shit that he's doing, not a farm boy in the desert. And I'm psyched about that. Right. Yeah.

And I know that there is going to be a lot of origin story in here, but I hope that they spend more time trying to break into and out of the Death Star and less time on like what my dad, why my dad motivated me to do this. And I want, I don't, I wish Darth Vader wasn't in it. I get for the stockholders and shareholders, why, I don't care. Why, why do you not want him to be in it? It just, I mean, because he just, you don't need it. It felt like gilding the lily, putting him in a trailer that already had the word Star Wars on it. But to, here's something that I want you to do, though, before we move on. Just to clear out a little space in the lane here. I want you to just give the people, they don't need a reason. Just get them hype for having Ben Mendelsohn as the villain here.

Because not only because of your deep love of Ben Mendelsohn in such things as Tate Fraser's favorite show, Bloodline, but also because we often talk about the villain problem. We talked about it with Dr. Strange. You know, like a giant spacehead caught in a time loop is not really that intriguing. But Ben Mendelssohn, in a Gortex spacecape, is about as good as it gets. Yeah, and I think that it's worth remembering that there's some speculation right now because of some things that Darth Vader says during a new hope about the death star being like a terrible weapon. Like he's not for it. I think he thinks the force can handle everything. I'm really looking forward to seeing, you say you don't want to see Darth Vader.

I'm actually looking forward to hearing that conversation between Ben Mend Mendelsohn and Darth Vader. where Mendelsohn's like, now we got to build this golf ball, my man, and we got to tea off and let the big dog eat. I want to see Mendelsohn is just one of our best actors. He's so great in Bloodline. He's so great in the Rover. He's great in Place Beneath Pines. You know, he's just one of the best character actors around.

I'm really glad he gets, like, such a huge role. He does smoldering better than anybody. And when I say smoldering, I don't mean, like, slow burn. I mean, literally he looks like a cigarette that's been thrown on the side. of the road. And he really is going to add a different element. And that you're right, we have not had in a lot of these movies, probably since Heath Ledger, Joker. I mean, Tom Hardy is Bain was amusing, but he wasn't, you know, I don't think he's going to be like an iconic villain. We haven't had like a really good villain in one of these movies in a long time. And so I'll be, I'm, I'm very much

anticipating seeing what Mendelsohn can do with the heavy role. It's just interesting because he, he's, there aren't that many people, I mean, maybe Steve Usami, who just, become typecast as dirt bags. And then it's really great when you get to take those attributes and the talent that makes him so good at being the kind of cigarette that's been thrown on the side of a Florida highway. And then you put him in the suit and you let him be regal and secretly a dirtbag. I'm very excited about that. I just want to ask you really quickly.

Does it, does it all dull your anticipation of the movie to know they're going to succeed ultimately? I mean, there is a kind of weird, like, on one hand, it's a success story, and on the other hand, it's a tragedy, I think. Does any of the sort of like, this is history, we know how this works out, do you think that will have an impact on people's going to see the movie? Judging by the enormous commercial success affects the Americans. Period. Period. Period entertainment set in between major world events to which the end are already known. It doesn't affect it at all. Andy, no. I don't know if you've known. the last couple months of the news, but the verdict's not in yet. America might not be safe.

That's a really, really good point. Exactly. America, too, the Russian Empire strikes back is going to be lit. No, to your point, I mean, I just think that's an opportunity. You know, it seems like limitation, but for really talented filmmakers and writers, especially, and a lot of it is going to fall in the writers. And maybe this is something Gilroy had to do because Gilroy does that sort of bittersweet. I mean, think about Michael Clayton, which is a movie in which a loser wins, but at what cost.

I mean, he can do that stuff. And it's really an opportunity to say, like, here's a little, here's a, it's a parenthetical in time. But people are going to live and die and grow and change within that. I mean, it's all, it's, Chris, this is the thing about Hollywood. It's all opportunity, baby. It's all opportunity. We just got to see how they squander it. Let's just take a quick break from our sponsor and we will come back and talk about Black Mirror, the shut up and dance episode.

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I had seed it a little while ago, but I got a thumbs up from the kid. Oh, no, no, no, you misread the text. I sent you a checkmark. Oh, you mean you just knocked it out. I wanted you to be proud of me because I have been like pleading time poverty and being like, I can't watch an hour long television show. I'm too busy. And you were getting, you know, you didn't actually shake your head and disgust.

You didn't even text SMH, but I got the vibe. I would never do that to you. I just wanted to let you know, the kid came through, took points for the team, and watched an episode of an acclaimed TV show. You wanted a participation trophy. That wasn't like, I approve of the content. I was surprised because I was like, this doesn't strike me as Greenwald core. No. I mean, here, it's, I mean, I didn't hate it.

I don't, I'm not, I'm not reading the trades anymore. Like is this, are people out on this episode? I went into a cold, which I think is the best way to come into a black mirror. With playtest and San Juan Napero, those are the two obvious standout episodes. I don't think that the original, I don't think nose dive was people's, was particularly well received. Shut up and dance, if I can paraphrase Sean Fennacy, my co-worker and friend, and yours, was like, that's real black mirror.

Like that was that was the original The original recipe right there Is like this is bad for you and nobody is going to be okay So briefly in case you haven't seen this episode You should but the elevator pitch on it is that a kid who's just like Seems like a sweet unassuming shy kid who goes to school and works in a takeout restaurant in England One day is going to Enjoy himself with some internet photography

if you know what I mean. He's going to steal the plans for the death start. He would have been a lot better off trying to do that. This kid looks at some pornography on the internet. It turns out that he has downloaded some virus or his sister accidentally downloaded a virus under his laptop that starts photographing him or capturing him on camera. And then he has then blackmailed into a series of escalating insane stunts.

He along the way is partnered with Jerome Flynn? Yes. Jerome Flynn, who we all know and love as Braun from Game of Thrones, who is in a similar predicament being blackmailed by a faceless internet force. And, you know, it's been a while since I saw this. I saw this episode when it first came out in order. And this is one of those, I got to be completely honest, man. It's one of those things that is just not as a delightful watch after the last couple of weeks.

Not actually having to do anything to Trump, but just about the way that, in front, information is almost poisoning people or the basically do the way the internet and the way the digital technology is in a lot of ways poisoning people or it's become weaponized yeah i mean yeah i think that this is a it's an interesting episode of black mirror to sort of carve out of the show as a whole because i think it's representative of the things that the show does better than anything else and does brilliantly and also unfortunately representative of some of its worst instincts and ticks just on a core level, this idea of being spied on and then being blackmailed is so brutal and portrayed so so efficiently. You know, it's just a remarkable way to take an idea that has crossed everyone's mind and whether they're currently, you know, whether in a moment of stealing the death star plans or not.

And, and it takes, I mean, I'll repeat myself. The show takes the idea narratively and weaponizes it to just incredible dramatic effect. So that when these events are sort of scaling up and up and up, when this kid who's brilliantly played, I forget the name of the actor, but and Jerome Flynn, who's just incredible and should be in everything and is so well cast. Yeah, the kid's name is Alex Lothar, L-A-W-T-H-E-R. He's terrific. And there's a moment when they're about to, you know, fucking rob a bank where you get that feeling of just, giddy nervous laughing. Like you can't believe what you're watching. It's such a high wire act and it's so thrilling and horrifying that it's just tremendous. Like some other Black Mirror episodes, I think it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own conceit because much like White Bear, which kind of left me in a similar state where I was just dazzled by what it did and then kind of felt like I had the knees taken out from under me by the one twist too many. The big twist in this episode, since we're talking about it, is that the kid is, isn't as nice as we thought and the thing that we you know and again they're so good at plotting there's

that moment in the beginning of the episode where he's nice to a kid and and as that scene happened I was like oh well this is just tv 101 they give us this moment so we know he's a good guy but of course charlie brooker is a you know acidic satirist and so that moment actually is to show us that he's the kid is kind of a monster because the kid is a it's pretty into the little kids uh that's what he likes to look at that for me was one twist too many and felt like that's when the show, I feel like it stops pointing things out and starts hectoring us. And I think that's an impulse that's hard to avoid in a show like this, but it, it disappointed me because so much of the rest of the episode was brilliant. I was reading a director's roundtable today of a bunch of the, a bunch of filmmakers from this series like Oliver Stone,

and Marinere and Damien Chiselle and Denzel Washington and Mel Gibson. They were talking about making their work, and I can't remember. I think it was either Mel Gibson or Oliver Stone who was quoting Stanley Kubrick to say, it takes you years to make a movie in two hours for somebody to write about it. And they were talking about the criticism that they often face. I think it was Stone because he was talking about Snowden. And what you just said about taking Black Mirror and almost extracting it from the flow of the series to analyze it was interesting to me because I think that the inverse of what Stone is talking about for films

happens with television, where we now are basically, I don't want to see over-analizing because it makes it sound anti-intellectual, but we're basically taking things out of the flow of the way they are being produced and received and putting a lot of weight on top of them. Now, if you're going to make a show like Black Mirror, that's about what it's about, you've got to deal with people kicking the tires on you a little bit. But this is just one of those situations where if you watch four hours of Black Mirror, if you watch like the first four or five episodes or it's a whole season or whatever you know if you just go through and watch it i don't know that shut up and dance holds up under scrutiny but i also don't know that i would necessarily

uh punish it or penalize it for doing the things that black mirror always does which is just take these scenarios and continue to push them till it goes past the red and into some shade of purple that we don't even know about yeah i i appreciate that point of view on it i think that that's also the nature of making making more of them frankly. I mean, the degree of difficulty on this show is higher than just about any other that I can think of. They basically have to make a finely tuned, finally considered original, you know, not just, I mean, I was going to say masterpiece, but it doesn't have to be a masterpiece, but it has to be like this perfectly humming little black box of ideas and intention and execution. And when it works, it's as good as anything else and totally dazzling. the nature of entering, bringing this type of show, this jewel box of a show into more of the American television market is, A, you're making more of them.

But B, that means, and you can look at that one of two ways. You know, it's generally, you get more times up, you get more chances at bat, which means you're going to potentially get more hits, but you're also going to strike out. And so we're going to get to see them cover more ideas and take more chances. And there's no way they're all going to hit. I guess the thing to say is to take one step back and be like the thing that I when I do criticize Charlie Berker the thing that I sometimes criticize him for is probably the thing that makes him who he is. So I should probably consider that,

which is to say he always goes for the next idea. He always goes for the weirder idea. He always reaches past the expected one. And sometimes he reaches too far. That's what I thought about White Bear. And we talked about White Bear, you know, in the preview of this season of Black Mirror, I mentioned an interview where he said that they were on set about to start filming that episode when the idea of the final twist occurred to him.

Right. And that's cool. That's an exciting way to work. And what a fun brain to be on a ride with. And if I was making TV, I'd be like, yeah, let's just try it, man. But sometimes that bites you in the ass. So I just, it didn't, the last thing didn't work for me, but the rest of it, I mean, there was a feeling of giddiness in this episode that I was not expecting considering the subject matter.

and it was it was pretty pretty brilliant well let's take a step even further back because one thing you don't have to really we don't have to talk about this that personally if you don't want to but i was kind of curious about that thing we were talking about in the beginning of this segment about the idea of the context around these episodes sort of changing our interpretation of them and you know i think that when black mirror first came on whenever that was 2012 you know whenever we were first sort of getting into these episodes. Yeah. I was a lot more like just jokes, brov.

Just a bit of bets. You know what I mean? Like it was, I knew and I know that there is a huge dark side to these technological advancements that we were making. But, you know, it was more of a thing that I was watching in a diorama. I wasn't really feeling it.

And it's been sort of chilling. You can't really say we are living in a Black Mirror episode anymore. And no matter where your political leader, are, I think that you have to admit that this has been a pretty surreal couple of months and continue to be so. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I've been really thinking about was, what do you do when you do start to come to some of the conclusions that these things aren't good for you, that maybe some of these innovations are detrimental to society or are detrimental

to people's stability and even your own happiness? I mean, and how does that affect a show or appreciation of a show that grapples with that? Well, you do what I do and you quit. But you're right to say that. I mean, when we were watching the first few seasons of Black Mirror and I wrote about them for Granland and I was working at Granland, we were. You know, I was completely inundated in the Internet and watched the shows that were cautionary tales with the attitude of, well, you know, it's fun to entertainment is best when it explores the extremes, the extreme possibilities. but I definitely didn't carry much self-reflection or fear. You know, I found things disturbing, but I also kept that scrim of, well, this is entertainment.

This is someone whose job it is sort of surf on the bleeding edge of what's possible and what's mortifying. And I no longer feel that way. But just to keep it apart from politics, I also wonder if that's just being a little bit older and also not being in the scrum every day as I was then. But certainly the react, you know, seeing something that you think, thought you could control or you thought that everyone could control spiral to this point where, you know, fake Russian hacks of fake news may have tipped a U.S. presidential election and everything else that happened in the last six months or the last year, you know, it's so horrifying to me

that I, I, I, I've not been on Twitter, not even to peak since election night. And I don't know when I'm coming back or if I'm coming back because I just, I couldn't handle what it was, what it was becoming, or more accurately, I couldn't handle not knowing what it was or being able to wrap my arms around it. It felt a lot more dangerous. It felt suddenly this thing that was this, you know, friendly website with a bird on it, the Disney room, you know, apparently wanted to buy felt like the type of internet that Jimmy Simpson likes to hang out on in season two of House of Cards. You know what I mean? Or the one, the one with the real guinea pig. Yeah, the real death star plans. This is, I don't know what a, I don't know what a tour is,

but this is what I thought it was. And my response was not unlike the kid and shut up and dance after the video plays, was to slam the computer shut and just like walk away. Right. And that's what I think that a lot of people are grappling with right now is this, because I was thinking about this today, reading some stuff. And I was just kind of like, there still is an opt out here. You know what I mean?

Like we didn't even have 80% of this technology six years ago. I mean, 10 years ago, I don't know. like we weren't really using Twitter that I mean like nobody really used a lot of this stuff the way they use it less than 10 years ago but because of I don't know can you know like a kind of collective psychology and this pressure of consumerism and also this need to be connected not to each other but to like an idea or a churn of ideas I think that there's this feeling like you can't possibly leave it alone forever. Even you, who have walked away from it for now, acknowledge that you might come back. No, yeah. Yeah. I'll have to come back for professional reasons or personal reasons or whatever. There's no question.

Yeah. They need you on that wall. You're the Colonel Nathan Jessup of Twitter. You need me on your Facebook wall. It's the truth. You need me liking this stuff. I think that that's as uplifting a place as any. Andy, until Monday with the best music, I will talk to you soon, man.

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