The Weekly Planet - War of the Worlds (2005) - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Aliens continue to be real on our journey through three very distinct War of the Worlds adaptations. This week it's the second collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise after Minority Rep...ort, War of the Worlds 2005. Interesting premise and time, post 9/11, Tom Cruise in his weirdest (publicially) era and a director who'd made two exceptional extra terrestrial propeties prior to this. This should be fantastic! And yet...Anyhow thanks for watching our Caravan Of Garbage reviewSUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome back everybody to another episode of Caravanagh Garbage, where we're making our way. Go on. Downtown. Yes. No, no, we're watching these at home, actually. Oh, yes. We're watching three War of the World's movies, and we're at the halfway point. Absolutely we are.
Starting point is 00:00:14 Well, not yet. No. There'll be a halfway point mark in this video. Oh, yeah. There has to be the halfway point alarm. We did that for the Wolverine trilogy. We're going to have the same thing here. Wolverine's going to pop up, and he's going to go, thanks for being part of the War of the World's trilogy.
Starting point is 00:00:27 I'm here with my good friend Rupert murder. So I look forward to that in this video. You think Hugh Jackman's on cameo? You think we can get him? We know a guy who knows him. Oh, we do know a guy who knows him, yeah. Let's get him on. So anyway, we're of course talking about Stephen Spielberg and Tom Cruise's War of the World from 2005.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Please leave a like, I need to know up top, are you happy with the font? Because last time you were like, this mash-ass font. This font's all right. Hang on, let me just get a quick squeeze at it before we. Ask Grock what the font is. Okay. Grog. Grog, do you like this font of Grog?
Starting point is 00:01:05 I mean, it's epic, isn't it? Yeah. It's epic bacon. It's of the era. Yeah, epic bacon. It's a bit... It's pre-epic bacon. No, you're absolutely right.
Starting point is 00:01:14 It's perfect bacon. But it's post-independence day. Well, yeah. Well, I think Lindsay Ellis makes the point that if Independence Day is like the definitive, destructive pre-9-11 New York movie, this is the post version of that. where everything's grim and sad and dust. Yeah. I don't know, man.
Starting point is 00:01:34 Right? It's not... What's going on? It's not innovative, like the first one was, or the 50s one. Yeah. And it's not unbelievably dumb, like the 2025 one, which we'll get to next week. It's just okay. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:49 And like you said, you know, less than a decade prior, we got Independence Day. Mm-hmm. And I think the thing that you mentioned it, like, you know, In 2001, something really important happened. The first Tenacious D album came out. Correct, and it's good too. It is. I gave it a read listen just recently.
Starting point is 00:02:08 It's a lot of fun. Check it out. Link and bio. Karate? Karate is a good song. Friendship? Good songs. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Not just tribute. No, agreed. People are going to be like, I can't believe you didn't name all the other songs. We didn't have time. Yeah. We're busy. We're busy men and we could name them. We could easily.
Starting point is 00:02:26 But yeah, sorry. But no, 9-11 happened. And so for like, you know, and prior to that, it was no big deal for aliens to show up and just blow up the entire planet, just lay waste to cities with big laser beams and what have you. But then after that, filmmakers and the general public, I think, were like quite against the idea of that. So you couldn't really do a movie on the scale of an Independence Day. And this was sort of made, was this one of the earliest examples of like attempting to bring that back into the media? But they always kind of had to have a nod towards 9-11. Like if you look at Cloverfield, like the first one, not whatever the other ones are doing.
Starting point is 00:03:06 In particular, the third one. What's with the arm? What's with the dimensional? It doesn't matter. But they kind of, they felt like they had to say something. You know what I mean? Well, if it's destruction, it has to reflect this real world thing that happened. So yeah, as mentioned, this is Stephen Spielberg.
Starting point is 00:03:20 And he... This is Stephen Spielberg. This is... Here he is. Here he is. He's on cameo. He's young Stephen Spielberg? Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Here he is with his friends. George Lucas? Well, actually, he used the pre-vis technology that George Lucas used on Revenge of the Sith to do this. So he didn't storyboard it, it's that early CGI animatic. Oh.
Starting point is 00:03:40 The situation, yeah, that's fun. But Steven Spielberg is a huge fan of War of the Worlds. He has one of the last copies of... His own movie? No, no, the original. And not just the book, which is the original original. He's got one of the last copies of the Orson Wellves radio script.
Starting point is 00:03:56 He wanted to make the film, like, in the 90s, but then after Independence Day was released, he was like, ah, maybe not. So David Kep was hired to write after Spielberg wanted JJ Abrams to actually write it, but he was busy working on Lost, which was another, I guess, post-9-11 kind of commentary. Well, there was a plane, wasn't there? I guess there was a plane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was numbers.
Starting point is 00:04:16 There was numbers as well. When we think 9-11, we think numbers. We do think about the numbers. And this is also in an era of interesting Tom Cruise stuff for a number of reasons. There's some behind-the-scenes stuff that he's doing and dealing with, which we'll get into. But also he's not just... Because we are purveyors of scandal and scurrilous rumour.
Starting point is 00:04:34 I mean, it does tie into this movie directly of why Spilberg and him out of falling out. But it is this kind of grubber era of Tom Cruise. Now he's a guy who can do anything and saves the world and everybody loves him and he's completely asexual. And he's got this very sexual. But he's got this huge PR kind of team behind him to make him appear normal and have normal opinions. A peer normal and a four quadrant man Yeah, that's right, yeah But in this year he is an every man
Starting point is 00:05:02 He's not a scientist like the leads of the last movie He's baseball cappered He's a bad dad This is the scumbagger of Tom Cruise This is what he thinks normal people are like The every man's a bad dad in his opinion And he would never be a bad dad No, he would be a good dad to everyone
Starting point is 00:05:19 To all of his kids He drives like a stupid idiot He doesn't know what hummus is And he doesn't like it You don't know what hummus is Was that not a known thing in 2005? I feel I knew what Hummus was. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:32 And he's got that 2005 style of leather jacket. Oh my God. The whole memoir. He's in every man. He's got an every man's haircut, which is simultaneously no man's haircut. You know the haircut? Yeah. It looks like he's overdue for a haircut, but it's also too short.
Starting point is 00:05:47 It's springing out near the sideburns. It's weird. I don't like it. I think, though, the whole building of this character, yeah, it's a round. the idea that this movie isn't from the perspective of the army or the government or anything like that, it's what if this happened and a man in his family was caught in it? But also, he's a bad dad and he doesn't know how to make a sandwich very clearly. Have you ever seen anything that insane in your life?
Starting point is 00:06:12 He'd just throwing sandwiches at a window. Before that even, he's using a big wooden spoon to put... Well, he only had a big ladle, didn't he? You didn't look in the fridge, man? What's wrong with you? For a spoon? No, for... You didn't look in a fridge for a spoon. No, talking about a man who can't relate to the... the common man. It's butter, so there would have been butter or margarine in the fridge,
Starting point is 00:06:29 and then A draw would have had a butter knife. They wouldn't have taken all the butter knives, Mason. There's no time. They're being pursued very slowly by very slow Martians. There's no time. You use a wooden spoon or a ladle. Anyway, he's a Ray Ferrier. He's a dock worker, and he's a man with layers. Not emotionally. He's only got one emotion, but he's got a lot of layers of clothing. Not in his hair. He's got so many layers of clothing. He's like, two t-shirts and a hoodie and a jacket and a vest, but not a high-vis vest, James. Tom Cruise wears your freaking high-vis vest.
Starting point is 00:07:03 You're a dock-working. You're getting out of your fork, your crane, you don't have a high-vis vest on? Did you think his dock-working would come back into this movie? Like he'd have to shell game and alien, like at the end of the 18 movie? Or he never has to swing a big crane into one of the tripods. The shields are down, Tom Cruise. Use your working man skills.
Starting point is 00:07:23 I will. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't have any layers at his hair though. Would you say that? No layers at all. Half a layer. One weird length.
Starting point is 00:07:32 Yes. Yuck. Look, I think everything good about this movie is in like the first 40 minutes. Yeah. The destruction and the vaporizing Ray, not Ray Ferrier, but the, you know, just tearing through people. Like the destruction is unbelievable. The way the earth is like heaving. The bridge scene is just ludicrous, the way it's tumbling down behind them.
Starting point is 00:07:55 There's like excellent miniature work in this, like a lot of explosions and that which are comped in. The bridge scene was done. That was shot a month before it was revealed at the Super Bowl. Oh. And I think that's part of the reason why this doesn't work entirely is because the whole thing was completed in 10 months, as in filming two out the gaze. Oh, yeah. So is that a rush job in Hollywood? Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:08:18 Especially for something this scale. So Spielberg shot all the action stuff at the start so he could hand off the visual effects. And then he went, now you guys do the acting. Little Dakota Fanning, it's your time to shine. Yeah. And the other guy. Yeah, the other guy. The other guy.
Starting point is 00:08:32 Dakota Fanning still receives Tom Cruise's famous white chocolate coconut cake during the holidays. Yeah, well, good, fair enough. What about the other guy? Does the other guy still get on? The guy from Dragon Ball Evolution. Is that him? Yeah, that's him. Is he?
Starting point is 00:08:45 Is he? Is he? Yeah. You don't know Justin Chatwin-Mason? Well, I mean, in this, his hair's down. Yeah. And in Dragon Ball, his hair is very much... So I guess I didn't recognize it.
Starting point is 00:08:57 Yeah, you're right. Dakota Fanning is incredible. I agree. She's annoying. She is annoying, but she's supposed to be annoying. She's like eight. Yeah. Like the crying, she wants her mom.
Starting point is 00:09:06 Yeah, fair enough. With Tom Cruise, you can't make a sandwich. She is good at pointing out his many, many flaws. Because she's right. Yeah. Apparently Dakota Fanning's character was voted Most useless thing to happen in an apocalypse by MTV.
Starting point is 00:09:19 What about Tom Cruise? Yeah, what was he up to? Sorry, Tom Cruise's character. Tom Cruise would be very good. I think in an alien apocalypse. I think he'd turn. Oh, you think he'd betray us all? Yeah, I think he'd betray humanity.
Starting point is 00:09:31 I think he probably would, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I do think that. I think he's got excellent PR, which would make it look like he didn't portray all of us. I think he would have Mason. I think he would, and he already has in real life. And that scent of tooth would open up
Starting point is 00:09:43 and some sort of alien beacon would come out of it. Let's talk about the aliens in this. Okay. So this is the second Spielberg-Tom Cruise thing. Minority Report was three years earlier. They bring over that kind of wild. light fog kind of look from Minority Report. You know, that kind of washed out,
Starting point is 00:10:00 my saving Private Ryan kind of look. And I think because it's so rushed, a lot of the CG elements, though they look good individually, you can see often the different layers. Is that also because we are watching it on not a cinema screen, but on a very high-deaf TV, for example? And it's been put on a DVD or 4K or whatever.
Starting point is 00:10:22 We're seeing it in too much detail. We can pause. we can go, oh, that sucks. Maybe, but I think it's one of those... And if you were here, Spielberg, I'd tell you we do your face, it sucks. I think it's one of those... Too much fog. Go back in time and tell 2005 Steven Spielberg, the movie sucks.
Starting point is 00:10:37 I'm with you. I will do that. Thanks. But I think it's one of those movies that's shot on film, but there's been so much alteration that it looks like it was shot digitally. Yeah. To the detriment of the movie. Agreed. It's just something that we're all thinking about.
Starting point is 00:10:49 Anyway, the alien ship design is good. Agreed. I like Spielberg's idea that they're already buried in the Earth. I mean, nobody ever found one, I guess. Sure. I guess. Didn't dig. I mean, what are the chances?
Starting point is 00:11:01 Because how many of them around the world? Like, the chances are that you probably wouldn't find one? I'd find one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if there are aliens buried in the earth. I would have already found them.
Starting point is 00:11:10 So there's not. I'll never tell. Until the time is right. They're not from Mars. Spilberg's mentioned that they're from as far away as E.T. But from a darker part of the universe. Oh. So he's done.
Starting point is 00:11:24 Well, he's about to have a fourth one. But this is the capping off of his aliens trilogy. Close encounters. Yes. Et. This movie. Disclose your day. Yes.
Starting point is 00:11:32 Rip Rob. Great. I like the tripod design though. They've gone, well, that's what it says in the book. Let's do big terrifying alien tripods. There's kind of a, the gate is quite fun. Don't you think? Yes.
Starting point is 00:11:45 I'm doing it now. What do you think? I love it, James. That's good. I agree. The plane crash is incredible. Agreed. That whole sequence and walking, I mean, that's lost-esque, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:11:54 and just garbage scattered everyone or garbage like pieces of people and airplane but that like that's all that's all amazing obviously the car scene you know where he gets the car taken from him and he pulls out the gun that was one moment where I was like how was he the only one here with a gun with a gun exactly oh no there's another guy with a gun there's two guys with a gun but who like astounding that in that scene of like did Spielberg forget what country this was set in the fact that of all those people only two guys brought a gun. And a handgun, that's all? Yeah. Come on, man. I think if you had to give like an annoying kid award, it would be the son, right? Agreed. Because he keeps trying to join the army,
Starting point is 00:12:36 like mid-battle. What are you doing? There's a procedure for this. What do you think's going to happen? They're going to just give you a helmet and a gun and let you, maybe. Maybe. Maybe they're maybe they've been a few years of that, you know? And at the end, he wants to run over the hill and Tom, Chris, is like, what, what are you doing? And he's like, well, I just want to see this. I have to see this. I miss my mom. Also, she's over there.
Starting point is 00:12:58 Yeah, it's fine. Also, you've seen it. You've been pursued by aliens like across the state. What do you mean you're going to go and have a look? You get it, right? A good look.
Starting point is 00:13:08 A real good look. Yeah, a good look at all the explosions that are happening. Yeah, right on you and whatever. And he dies, doesn't he? Not really. We'll talk about it.
Starting point is 00:13:17 How does the Tim Robbins scene feel from this? This is like a character that's, that is in the original book slash, I don't actually, I don't know if he's in the radio. play. But this paranoid guy living in a basement has all these theories about the aliens and whatever and he's like me and you Tom Cruise, we're going to start a underground resistance. But first, I'm going to scream a lot. I'm going to scream so much and make so much noise.
Starting point is 00:13:38 We're going to scuffle and then you're going to have to kill me. That's right, exactly, yeah. Well, originally it wasn't going to be Tim Robbins that he stomps to death. There was going to be a scene where Tom Cruise stomps on a baby alien that slithered out of a pod. Okay. Because the idea was, and this isn't explicitly said, the red weed. that the aliens are spreading, that's to feed their infants. I see. So I thought it was some kind of terror-forming thing, and I guess it is to a degree,
Starting point is 00:14:03 but no, it's for baby aliens. For baby alien grazing, I understand. Maybe Tom Cruise doesn't want to be seeing stomping a baby alien to death. Sure. Yeah, which, I don't know, man. I think that'll be patriotic, honestly. Unless you're a turncoat. What if the aliens come and there's footage of Tom Cruise stomping on an alien?
Starting point is 00:14:19 Oh, that's true. He's in trouble then, isn't he, Mason? That's true. Yeah. How do you feel about the aliens? design in this, the three-legged, almost like, I saw them described as like a tree frog, kind of the way that they walk. Yeah, you know, I like it more than I like the 1950s version. Yeah. It does, it always strikes me as odd that the aliens look exactly like their mode of
Starting point is 00:14:42 transport, you know what I mean? Right, okay, yeah. Be like if we walked around in big men, or we looked like cars. Okay, yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Well, the aliens didn't even recognize wheels. They're like, what's this? this. It's a wheel, you dumb ass. You miss the wheel? Yeah. What are you making...
Starting point is 00:14:58 You went straight to big leg? What's your planet like? You know how you can't use wheel? The principle of wheel. I don't know. I guess there's something about being a tripoded kind of creature. You don't know. You can't have a trike.
Starting point is 00:15:16 Oh. You know? If everything's by three, I don't know. I don't know, man. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. There is a bit of, I feel like, independent stage. designed to these aliens?
Starting point is 00:15:26 I agree too. Yeah. Not entirely, but... No, but I mean, I suppose there's been, you know, a billion trillion war of the world's alien designs. I'm sure there's been illustrated versions of the book and stuff like that. And I imagine both Independence Day and this probably took inspiration from those, i.e. ripped them off.
Starting point is 00:15:43 Yeah, sure. Which ones of these are public domain? Okay. That's what our Independence Day aliens are going to look like. Yeah, absolutely. I guess, like, the idea, though, that Tom Cruise is an ineffectual, just bystander, basically, for this. entire situation does play into the idea of the ending and they go with this ending again,
Starting point is 00:16:02 that they just die. And so this man who had no real say in any of this, who barely survived, just ran from event to event. Sometimes he's on a boat. Sometimes he's on a boat. Sometimes he's on a house. Sometimes he's got, oh, that's true. He does do a grenades.
Starting point is 00:16:16 Yeah. Sometimes he points out some birds and then they're able to shoot it with a javelin or whatever. Sure. Yeah. I mean, they would have figured that out eventually. I mean, if you gave, again, if you gave real Tom, Cruz, like a bunch of grenades, and you said, sort out this alien invasion. I think over a long enough time frame, he could do that. He could grenade each of those. He wouldn't, again, because
Starting point is 00:16:37 he's going to be on the side of the aliens, but I think he has the capability to do that. He could do it. Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, over a long enough time frame, this guy could have saved the day with enough grenades. Could you say that of anybody, though? Over a long enough time frame, anybody can do anything. It's actually very inspirational. No, no, it's not meant to be. Well, it was too bad. No, no, you've inspired a generation.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Long enough time frame could be a thousand years. Good. People are still going to be watching these in a thousand years. Great. Great. But you know what? He's changed as a man. I think maybe that's the, maybe that's the, maybe I think that is the, the arc of this one is that again,
Starting point is 00:17:16 I didn't think Spielberg wanted to mess with the structure of the original storyline, which is, you know, aliens die in their own because they're dumb. They didn't invent wheel or penicillin. Alien penicillin. Alien penicillin. Yeah. Aalicillin?
Starting point is 00:17:32 No, you're right the first time. Yeah, anacillin. When you're hot, you're hot. Thank you. We're going to inspire people for a thousand years. But I think, you know, so he was like, well, we introduce an every man and he changes for the better. Yeah, okay. You know?
Starting point is 00:17:48 I mean, he must have been pretty terrible that this was the thing that changed him. Yeah. Something this strange. Well, that's, I mean, that's, you know, Tom Cruise and Spielberg's interpretation of the every man. Awful and would only improve if the world was in peril. If he had to because his wife drove somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:07 But yeah, so they all just get sick at the end and they die. I like to think, you know, when the alien comes out of the shade, there's just a bunch of orange liquid flowing out, that that's the alien vomiting. Absolutely. Just absolutely, just chucking its guts up. And then it slides out. Like in a 7-11 car park. Exactly. It's had a big orange-yellow sluging.
Starting point is 00:18:23 Flushy and it's just, mv. Desperately searching out for a kebab van. Yeah. And his son's alive. Yep. His son's alive and then there's some original War of the World's people there. They're the grandparents as well. I don't know, does that feel like a cop out that his son's just like, he ran over the explosion hill and then he's there.
Starting point is 00:18:40 He does feel a little bit shape, doesn't it? Yeah. And he doesn't have any skills or layers. I mean, he'll try to. His hair had some layers. He's hair, yeah, his skills is, he tries to join the army multiple times. And he clearly just kept getting knocked back. Well, maybe that was it.
Starting point is 00:18:56 Maybe he went to join the alien army over the hill. And they're like, we admire your gumption. So we won't kill you. Oh. No, I'm fine. Don't worry about it. It's just a, you know, a little, it's a seasonal thing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:13 A bit of allergic. Yeah, it might just be. I don't know. It's just, I feel like I should really like this. Right? And I just don't. Yeah. I think, for me.
Starting point is 00:19:22 It's getting worse? I mean, it's a perfectly well-made movie, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. And it's pretty accurate to the original, pays homage to the 1950s version. Special effects are pretty good. Yeah. You know, Spielberg, he knows how to make a movie. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:19:38 But look, to me, it is because it doesn't have the scope of Independence Day. Right. To me, that is the movie that all of these War of the Worlds movies are going to have to compare to. and the city-sized spaceships and the, you know, the willingness to just atomize New York City in one zap. Sure. You like that? I loved it. Just, you know, huge and fun.
Starting point is 00:20:03 Yeah, okay. But this, this, less fun. Small. And grubby. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, it's time for war trivia. Oh, yes.
Starting point is 00:20:10 This is a trivia section of this show where we bring trivia. Both of us bring trivia. Dads listen up. It's time for war trivia. I love that. We're going to get a whole new audience with this. I hope so. During the filming the underwater scene where the ferry capsizes,
Starting point is 00:20:21 director Stephen Spielberg played a prank on Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning by playing the Jaws theme. Oh, great, good stuff. No, like, yep. Good stuff. Good joke. Thanks, Stephen. That's good.
Starting point is 00:20:33 There's not really a shark though, is there? No, there is. Yeah. Dakota, just for your, there was a movie in the 70s, decades before you were born about sharks. That's what this is referencing to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So therefore it is a good prank.
Starting point is 00:20:44 We got you good. According to an interview with Miranda Otto, originally turned down the part because she was newly pregnant. However, Spielberg wanted to play the part and change the script to incorporate that into her role. You're pregnant now. And Tom Cruise is like, you look great pregnant, baby. I love that about you.
Starting point is 00:21:01 I'm sexual. I'm sexual now. I mean, I always have been. And I always will be. You got that from doing it and I approve. Because that's the thing I like doing too. Yeah, yeah, man. And everybody likes that I do it also.
Starting point is 00:21:15 The convoy scene was filmed on what of 2004's coldest day. in Virginia, so cold that the unfreezable blue liquid in the portable latrines, that froze solid. You love that, don't you? No. You love it. That's no. I don't know, man. I guess I'm not for or against it.
Starting point is 00:21:33 It's interesting, I suppose. Yeah, it is interesting, I suppose. Oh, so you're into it. I love it. We're the same. We both love it. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to be known for that for the next thousand years.
Starting point is 00:21:45 Box office on a budget of $132 million. This made $603.9. Okay, big return. Big hit, Mason. One of the biggest hits of the year. But no return of the War of the Worlds. Hmm. Well, interesting.
Starting point is 00:21:57 Because Tom Cruise made $100 million from this movie due to upfront salary and first dollar gross. But Stephen Spielberg and him they had a bit of a fallout. Oh, no. A mission of possible fallout? No, that was a different thing that they had.
Starting point is 00:22:11 No, they didn't do that together. So there's been rumblings and none of this has really been confirmed. that during the filming of this, Cruz's behaviour was... Erratic? Erratic? You did the handsing signals for erratic.
Starting point is 00:22:24 Yeah, he was talking up like Church of Scientology stuff. He did the Oprah Winfrey couch jumping situation. Oh, that was then. Yeah. Where he hit it with the lightning bolts. Exactly, yeah. It's interesting because Spielberg was also supposed to be
Starting point is 00:22:36 on an episode of Oprah and he pulled out and I don't know whether that was related or not. Because he can't do lightning bolts. Yeah, that's probably... He's got limits, this guy. He's one of our greatest living filmmakers, but he can't do lightning bolts. Yeah, you might be right.
Starting point is 00:22:45 I mean, it says that he had a, you know, he had last minute post-production work, so maybe that is the case. But also, apparently Cruz was ranting against the use of riddling in children with ADD. He angered one of Spielberg's psychologist friends after he was harassed by Scientologists, after Spielberg mentioned the doctor's name in Cruz's presence. So, yeah, so they didn't make him, they haven't made a movie since. But after the return of Top Gun Maverick, Spielberg said this, about Tom Cruise. You saved Hollywood's ass and you might have saved. theatrical distribution.
Starting point is 00:23:17 Seriously, Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry. So there you go. He might be right. And maybe, maybe it was Barbie and Oppenheimer as well. Oh, yeah. Maybe it was, maybe it was. Maybe it was, War of the World's 2025. Yeah, maybe it was.
Starting point is 00:23:33 Did that go straight to streaming? Yes. I mean, I think if there was ever a movie which encouraged people to leave their homes. Yeah. It was that one. It went straight to phones, I think. Did it? It was like that U2 album.
Starting point is 00:23:44 Oh, great. I love straight to phones. streaming technology that's automatically there. It went straight to phone, but also like the little thumbnail one. Okay, so you could still do other phone stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant stuff, Mason. Well, speaking of, that's the movie we're going to be covering next week.
Starting point is 00:23:58 I've never seen it. I've only seen clips of it, so I'm very excited. You came in White Hot into our podcast, The Weekly Planet, telling me that you saw it. Oh, it's a treat. It's special. And not just because the format, because we'll talk about it next week, because there are movies with this format that work quite well. But boy, this does not.
Starting point is 00:24:17 But also it works incredibly well for what they were attempting to do, which is to make a really bad movie, I think. Because why else would you make the movie? Yeah, yeah. Like that. I couldn't tell you. That video is going to be early at big sandwich.com. Along with a bunch of stuff we have there exclusively. It's like our private Patreon Mason.
Starting point is 00:24:34 I love a bunch of stuff. Agreed. There's video game let's plays. There's bonus podcasts. We do a comic book club. Oh, yes. We've got a bunch of commentaries, including the original Independence Day. And for the Cloverfield movie, the original...
Starting point is 00:24:45 original Cloverfield movie, the good one. Actually, the second one's a good one too. But the first one's a good one also, isn't it? First one's good. Yeah. As mentioned, we also have a podcast called The Weekly Planet that comes out every Monday. If you are interested, it's got its own YouTube channel, Spotify, Apple. Check it out.
Starting point is 00:24:59 It's $100 worth of content for free. Wow. Yeah. What do you think of that? For free? I can't argue with that. I was going to say it's worth more, but it's not. $100 is very generous.
Starting point is 00:25:12 Yeah, yeah. But it is free. It's nourishing, but just to the soul. And it's free. Yeah. Thank you so much to Ben and Lawrence for the edit. Thank you, Ben and Lawrence. Let's all leave.
Starting point is 00:25:20 It's all leave. Some inspiring words. Yeah, go outside. Just for a little bit. But come back inside. It's safer inside. It's better. All your stuff's there.

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