There Are No Girls on the Internet - We Watched Amazon Prime’s War of the Worlds So You Don't Have To

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Bridget and Producer Mike are taking a break from the dystopian surveillance nightmare unfolding in their city of Washington, DC, to review Amazon's new War of the Worlds movie. It stars Ice Cube and is about a dystopian surveillance nightmare that unfolds in Washington, DC. Art imitates life!  This movie is terrible, but it does raise questions like, "Is this even a movie?" It's also 90 minutes of nonstop propaganda for Amazon and surveillance technology.   We had fun doing this! Let us know in Spotify's comments what you think, and what other movies you think we should review on the show. Or send us an email at [e-mail] .    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc || youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Here we go, War of the World. Those are the opening lines of the movie. I feel like I'm talking with Ice Cube.

Producer Mike, you said that if at least three people signed off on it, we could do an episode recapping the new movie on Amazon Prime, War of the World. Three people wrote in, we're doing it. Yeah, I don't know if they were genuinely wanting to hear this or just trolling me, but either way, we watched it, and here we are, and I hope they enjoy listening to us talk about it. So usually in a movie recap episode, I usually will warn that there's going to be spoilers.

To be clear, I am going to tell you what happens in the movie War of the World in this podcast, but I'm not calling it a spoiler because you are not going to watch this movie if you have not already watched it. I don't think that you should watch this movie. Something about our conversation may make you curious, like morbidly curious.

What could this movie really be that bad? I'm telling you, it's now worth it. Yeah, it's not worth it. Don't do it. Don't be like us. A listener wrote us a very compelling email basically saying the movie, you should recap the movie, not because it's a good movie, which it's not, but because it's basically one long advertisement for Amazon and one long love letter to big tech surveillance, which it absolutely is. But it is just a bad movie. I, when I said that I wanted to review it and that I was curious about how bad it was going to be, I was assuming that it was going to be a so bad it's good kind of bad movie, like a fun, stupid bad movie in the vein of a snakes on a plane or a shark NATO or a hot tub time machine.

War of the Worlds is trying to be a real movie. It's trying to be a movie with something important to say like capital S, capital I, capital S. But that important thing that it's trying to say is something that's really, really stupid and also really muddled. A good, bad movie is a movie that knows that it's stupid is in on the joke. War of the Worlds is a movie that thinks it's smart, but is stupider than the universe of the film even has the capacity to really realize and grapple with. It takes itself seriously, which feels bizarre, given the events that are sort of unfolding.

And also feels really discordant with Ice Cube, who is a legitimate good act but he really brings a lot of like grombie to us and seriousness. You know, I feel in most of his roles, you get the sense that he is a man who has things to do and he's not here to fool around. And it just feels completely out of step with the nonsense of this movie. Truly, when we watch this movie, we stopped it and we were like, I'm not even sure how we were going to make a compelling podcast episode

about us talking about it. Because not only isn't a bad movie, I do think that it really stretches what the definition of a movie is. It's one of those movies where I'm not even sure it's fair to really call it a movie, if that makes sense. Yeah, like maybe that's its enduring legacy. It has me questioning like, well, what is a movie, you know? Like it was 90 minutes of video footage.

There was a plot. And yet somehow it doesn't feel like a movie still. You know that thing where. I might be horribly misrepresenting this since I apologize at advance, but where movie companies and movie producers will intentionally fast-track a bad movie that is meant to bomb, and sometimes they market it overseas,

and it usually will have an aging, famous actor, like a Bruce Willis in it or something like that. And the whole thing is just done as some kind of a financial scam or an investment scam of some kind. That's what I mean, I actually did some digging after watching this movie because I was so sure this movie had to be some kind of a tax scam, investment scam.

That was the feeling that I left. I was like, somebody has to be getting scammed for the math to math on how this movie came to be. I don't know if it's me as the viewer or what, but somebody's getting scammed here. Yeah, somebody's getting scammed. I totally agree. It's some kind of scam. It's not a movie.

Nobody sat down and was like, you know, I'm a tortured, creative, visionary, and I have a story I want to tell. Let me put ink to paper and share this with the world. That's not how this movie came to be. I don't know exactly how it started, but it's definitely some kind of scam. So we really are hoping that we can capture the experience of what watching this movie was like so that y'all listening at home do not have to. And I will say that the amount of people who are sharing the experience of what watching this movie is like,

it's almost sort of historic because the film is historic in the amount of hate that it's gotten. It has Letterbox's second lowest rating review ever recorded. And for a time, it had a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, which was initially what drew, like what caught my attention to this movie. It did get one contrarian kind of positive-ish review, which bumped it up to a whopping 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. To give you a sense, only 39 movies ever have gotten a 0% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That's a shockingly small number considering how many movies get made every single year. Do you have a list of what those 39 movies were? I do.

A few notable entries. Police Academy 4. Have you seen that movie? I have. And I remember kind of liking it as a child, but also recognizing that it was very bad and stupid. Another one is Problem Child, which I might have actually even seen that in the theater. I remember liking it when I was a child, but it's not a good movie by any stretch of imagination, but I don't think it deserved as zero percent. I think in my household, my mom was

like anti that movie because it was glorifying bad behavior, which she did not appreciate. It definitely, I mean, it's about a problem child. It's pretty, it's pretty, the particular, the titular, the titular child is a problem child. Yeah, your mom's not wrong. Another one is, look who's talking now, which was a follow up to the movie, look who's talking where it's like babies talk via voiceover. But in this follow-up, it's like the dogs who are talking. You know it's going to be a good movie when you've got voiceover for animals. The Garbage Pale Kids movie, which is a movie that I have seen.

I've seen that as an adult. That one I can confirm does deserve 0%. That is really a stinker. Something I remember about it. So if folks don't know what the Garbage Pale Kids are, allow me this diversion. Garbage Pale Kids in the 80s and the 90s, it was a parody of, the cabbage patch dolls, which were very popular in the 80s and 90s, but they were sort of gross out parodies. And so you would have garbage pale kid dolls named things like acne Annie, and she would

have like gross weeping acne all over her face. And the thing that I remember most about this movie, the one gag that I remember clearly is that one of the garbage pale kids, his stick was that he always wet himself. So over the course of this 90-minute movie, you watch this kid wet himself, maybe 10 times and that they're making a meal of that stick. They're really they're really using the fuck out of it. Was that a live action movie? Yeah. It's like is it CG-5?

How are you struggling with this question? Because I mean, what does that mean in like the 80s, right? Like it's it's not animated if that helps. I guess that's what I was asking. Like is it animated or like it includes human actors? They're like it includes human actors. And I guess puppets, that was kind of the thing in the 80s. You know what I'm saying?

Like, like, it's hard to explain. It's hard to explain. You're kind of making me want to watch this movie. Well, that's going to be our next rewatch. We're just going to do bad movie recap. Just going to watch garbage over and over. Let's move on. So all of this hate toward War of the Worlds has,

kind of led to this feedback loop where the movie is so bad, people like me get curious to see how bad actually. And it inadvertently fails its way into success because it is by far one of the most streamed original movies on Amazon streaming. Mike, when you and I watched it, it was at number two on Amazon Prime's top 10 list. This is like the downfall of society that we are rewarding things for being exceptionally terrible.

Like this is not going to end well for us. I mean, I do think there's kind of a collective experience of all watching a truly bad movie together. But, you know, one of those movies that's so bad it's good in the vein of like a showgirls, which I do enjoy.

I mean, one of my favorite movies is Mars attacks, right? I'm not somebody who is not down for a bad movie. But I don't think that War of the World's release, really meets that criteria in a traditional sense because it is just a really bad movie.

When we were watching it, we paused it multiple times just to ask, what the fuck did we just watch? In my notes for the movie, multiple times I wrote in all caps. Wow, what a bad movie. To the point where I'm genuinely not even sure how to recap it. Same. In my notes, I think the majority of the notes that I took, and in a question mark that's like, what?

Like, did I get this right? Why is this happening? Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how this movie came to be. So this is one of those movies where at the time that it came together, you can kind of see why they thought it was going to work. But then when you see the finished product, it's very clear that it did not work. The movie was first conceptualized in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Universal was initially intrigued by the project's use of what's called screen life technology,

which is when a movie is totally shown through screens and text messages and Facebook, time calls. They described it as, quote, having the look of a commercial event film, but at the budget of a contained thriller, which I guess is a nice way of saying this movie was cheap to put together, which no shit it really shows. But this also allowed the actors and crew members to work in individual remote work spaces. You know, this was at a time during COVID when nobody was making movies in person, so it seemed like a good idea. They fast tracked it. I read a deadline piece that seemed to suggest that the film was filmed with all of the actors. just in their houses by themselves and yeah, it kind of shows.

Back then, this was just an untitled Ice Cube thriller project, but it sounds like H.G. Wells' science fiction novel, War of the Worlds, entered public domain and they were like, hey, let's make it that. So the producer explained that he's sort of going for an updated modern spin on Orson Wells' War of the World. He said, if aliens invaded today, how would we experience it? most likely we'd be watching it on our phones. In this way, it's a modern spin on Orson Welles' War of the Worlds.

Back then, he used radio, the most popular technology of the time, to make people believe the invasion was real. Yeah, I mean, he also used plausible narrative. Like, people were so convinced to it's real. They started calling police stations and gathering their families and going out into the yard with shotguns. And so I kind of wish the producer had focused on that aspect of it, the good storytelling aspect and not so much the medium, which I'm a little skeptical about that to

begin with. Well, that's true because not only is this a bad movie that makes no sense, it also looks like dog shit. It reminds me of those old, you remember those sci-fi channel original movies that were known for the bad CGI and bad special effects? Like Ice Cube is meant to be working at the Department of Homeland Security the entire time, and they pretty clearly use a very obvious virtual bad. background to just simulate this. And it is the main set piece of the film. Also in the movie,

Ice Cube wears glasses the entire time. But at points, the glasses have a visible reflection, which is pretty clearly a green screen or some sort of screen in front of him, not the thing that we're told that he's meant to be looking at. And I guess nobody thought to fix that in post. Like, that is the level that we're talking about here. And this is meant to be a real movie, not a sci-fi channel original. But I will say, we, talk a lot about AI and AI Slop and whether or not AI, the overuse of AI will make movies unwatchable. This was almost sort of heartwarming in that it was a good reminder that humans can make Slop to you. It doesn't always just have to be AI Slop. This is good old

fashion human created Slop. In 2025, or I guess 2020 when they made this, it was a pretty brazenly bad level of CGI. Like it was sort of hard to tell what was going on. with the aliens. And I guess it's still not clear to me if the big alien things that were destroying buildings, if they were a vehicle or a parachute of some sort with aliens inside or if they were the aliens themselves. It's never explained. It's never explained. And it's, you know, I think it's sort of given to the viewer like, what do you think is happening?

Which is not how it's supposed to be. Oh, it almost pains me. Should we get into a plot summary of what happens in this movie? I think it's time. Oh, boy. Okay, let me just say this. Don't overthink any of this. And also, this is just me telling you what's going on.

I mean, I'm this. I can only report what I saw. So don't, don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. Okay. Yeah, maybe they were going for like a fog of war thing. So they were trying to recreate the experience of not really knowing what's happening. So again, the entire movie takes place on Ice Cube's computer screen.

Like the first scene is him opening up Amazon music and hitting play on a song. this might have been a cool thing back in 2020. I actually did see a movie that I thought was pretty well done about COVID that is in a similar style called The Code. I do think that we were all kind of interested in this sort of technology, what does it all mean, yada, yada, yada, I think in 2020. But to be clear, in War of the Worlds, we are literally looking at somebody's computer screen

as they do things like type in passwords for a fair amount of this movie. Like he's switching between applications. Sometimes he's switching from WhatsApp to Microsoft Teams. And we are taken along on that scintillating journey in real time as the viewer. So Ice Cube is a domestic threat analyst for the Department of Homeland Security. And the movie opens with him doing remote digital surveillance on the streets of Washington, D.C., which is where we live. So he is surveilling the White House, just random streets around D.C., Georgetown University, the monuments, he's got drones.

He's listening to people's conversations. Like at one point, he has technology where he can listen to people's phone calls. And he listens to a guy who's saying, dude, don't worry, no one's listening to our conversation. You're being paranoid. And dude's not being paranoid because Ice Cube is listening. I'm going to come off as kind of nitpigy here. But like that first scene, being somebody who lives in Washington, D.C., and knows about these different landmarks and the different agencies

that are petroleum, these are like all different agencies. You know, that you've got the Secret Service, you've got the Park Police, you've got the Department of Defense. And so the fact that he's surveilling all of these suggests that this is like, he's one of the top intelligence guys like in the country, which is sort of reaffirmed at some points, but then like at others, it's kind of like undermined. But he has like godlike powers of surveillance within, certainly within Washington, D.C. Oh, in this universe, Ice Cube is the guy behind the guy behind the guy, the ultimate surveyor of all, right?

He can tap into anything, any camera, any phone, any drone, any car. He can commandeer anything that he wants at any time. He is, Ice Cube is the puppet master holding the strings of all of us. This whole thing is being overseen by Ice Cube. Folks might have listened to the episode that I did breaking down what's happening in D.C. right now. And I won't say that we watched this movie while we fled D.C. But I also won't say that we watched it while not having fled D.C. We did not. We watched this movie not in Washington, D.C., in part because of everything that's going on in D.C. right now. And then watching a movie that is about, that starts with this incredible. level of surveillance to D.C.

It just really hit differently. I guess I'll just put it that way. When you've low-key fled your city because of threats of a fascist takeover of said city, watching a movie that opens with really cool deep state surveillance of the city was a little much for me. I don't know how you felt about that experience, also being somebody who's from D.C. Yeah, it was similar. And, you know, one of the big stories that people have been talking about the past couple days is is how federal agents from various agencies

are just out there with cameras, like really aggressively trying to photograph everyone that they come in contact with, people walking by on the streets, just adding to their database to have facial recognition capabilities for everyone. And it did feel a little weird to see that depicted on Ice Cube's desktop that he could,

look at any video feed and then click on a person and not just identify that person, but also get access to their telephone number. When he was doing it in the movie, it seemed, you know, like he was doing it to keep us safe. And it definitely felt differently to be in a city where there are like armed people from out of state who don't belong in this community, taking our photos, and trying to add our faces to a database. So yeah, felt kind of weird.

This was meant to be kind of an escapist movie, but that part did not feel escapist. Also, you're so right that when the movie opens and he's scanning people's faces and getting all the information about them and tapping into their phones and whatnot, it's done with a kind of a cool hip-hop score. You are absolutely meant to think this is great.

You were meant to watch this and be like, wow, you can get information on anybody. I think that we as the viewer are meant to think, this is a cool guy. What a cool job. All of this is super cool. And let me tell you, I can tell you right now, ask somebody who is experiencing it personally,

none of it's cool. It's not cool. I don't like it. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan

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That's 844-Ehart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves,

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All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. we're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. So Ice Cube takes a quick break from his unimaginably critical job of surveilling everything and everyone. all the time to have a chat with his friend Sandra, who works for NASA, played by Eva Longoria, which Evil Angoria is a real actor. Like that, like some of the, I don't, I'm curious how she got mixed up in this, but I digress. So Sandra, who works for NASA, calls Ice Cube at work via WhatsApp because she is concerned

about some unexplained weather and atmospheric disturbances. He tells her, I've got bigger fish to fry than watching the clouds. I have to be watching people. Then Ice Cube checks up on his nemesis, a hacker called The Disruptor, who is sort of like an anonymous figure. He's hooded. He uses like a voice changer.

He, we don't know his identity. And the Disruptor has made a video threatening to release top secret evidence that citizens are being tracked by the surveillance state in a project called Goliath to enslave citizens in an authoritarian takeover. Ice Cube is like, not on my watch.

I think not. Yeah. So I bet you didn't see that coming, there's like this cat and mouse game with this secretive hacker about a secretive government program called Goliath. When this first came up on the screen, I thought, oh, Ice Cube is mad that the disruptor is going to expose the tools that Ice Cube is using to spy on everyone. But later, this is a little spoiler, we find out that Ice Cube doesn't know about the Goliath project and doesn't think it's real. So even with his godlike attitude,

power is to surveil every person in America, he somehow was still kept in the dark about this super secret extra surveillance program that would be even greater surveillance. He surveils everything, yet is blind to the truth, Mike. He sees he surveils everything but can't even see what's happening right in front of his eyes. So something to know about Ice Cube is that he's not just surveilling us citizens. He is also kind of abusing this government technology to just, buy on his kids. He's spying on his pregnant daughter, Faith, who is a biomedical student at Georgetown University researching something called cannibal DNA, question mark. I don't know if that's a thing.

I don't know, like, let's just move on. He spies on her through some like very intrusive ways, including hacking into her smart fridge to scold her for not eating nutritiously enough. He has the ability to take remote access over any computer, including his kids' computers. he sees his son playing a video game so he deletes it from his computer and he's pressuring his son to get a job at the NSA. His son is like, oh, dad, spying on people's Amazon cards? Why would I want to do that? Ice Cube is like, would you rather have someone spy on you or be blown up? His son hakes this and says, you know, it sucks that those are the only two options. Give up privacy or death.

And Ice Cube is like, oh, that's a pretty easy trade if you ask me. His son hits back and says, you know what, Dad? you haven't even moved mom's stuff from the house. At first, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to think that Ice Cube and his wife were divorced, or if he's widowed and she died. I will say this, I wrote this down. If they were divorced, he is 100% spying on her using government surveillance tools. No question about that.

However, it turns out he is actually a widow. Yeah, and he's potentially trying to spy on her from beyond the grave because he, has no qualms about using any of these tools just to like see what his kids are up to, intervene in their lives in little ways, no big deal. And also he's like doing this while he's on the clock at work with his super important job of protecting America. And one other thing that he does after he, you know,

sees his son playing this video game through illegal surveillance and then remotely deletes the game, I think while the son is playing it, he gets off the phone and he hits a big red novelty button that says that was easy, like those old Staples commercials. And he hits that a couple more times throughout the first half of the movie.

I think it's supposed to be his personality, like a little quirk he does around the office for his own amusement, since like nobody else is there. But he does it like several times. And I can just picture like, it's like something a low budget version of Michael Scott might think is funny.

It's extremely sad. I'm not sure if it was meant to be sad or meant to be funny or if Staples paid for this marketing. I don't know if they even still use that advertising. Mike, so I'm so love that you brought this up. I wrote on the same thing. They actually talk about this in this hilarious piece for The Ringer called the 21 worst things about the worst movie of the year or of the world. So Ice Cube is, I can answer the question of whether or not Staples paid for this. They did not because Staples had the.

easy button, and this is like a clear knockoff. So it's a knockoff that was easy button. The piece reads, Ice Cube hits the knockoff, that was easy button three times in the first 12 minutes and then completely forgets it exists. It doesn't say easy on the button like it should. It just says the word push, like a bootleg version you'd find in a dollar store toy aisle. I was initially pissed because they used the button at all, let alone a knockoff one. It was an easy jump to irate when they button matched it three times early and never again. Why use it at all? It should go down in history as the worst use of the

That Was Easy button gag in cinema history. What a weird thing. He does hit it three times within the first 12 minutes and then it's just abandoned. They never returned to it. Your guess is as good as mine. My hypothesis is that they were trying to use it to establish his personality as like a wild and zainy guy.

around the office, I guess. Okay, so Ice Cube's daughter, Faith, is dating Mark, an Amazon delivery driver. This is a great time to remind everybody that Amazon is a wonderful company. Get used to that because Amazon is mentioned by name about a hundred more times in this movie. Ice Cube initiates a conversation with Mark, and Mark spills the beans about a baby shower that they're planning that Ice Cube wasn't invited to, and he becomes very sad. But honestly, dude, like maybe this is a little bit. what happens when you surveil your family 24-7 through kind of illegal means and show constantly

just how little trust you have in any of them. Yeah. His family relationship seems strained, to say the least. Um, which yeah, not surprising his daughter doesn't want him at the baby shower, but also, ouch, that must have really hurt him. Uh, one thing that I do like about Mark is that he holds up a grandpa shark t-shirt that has Ice Cube's face on top of the baby shark, uh, which, I don't know, maybe this is basic, but I actually felt that kind of funny. And I think this movie really could have used a few more dumb little jokes like that. So I actually do think there is a good, bad movie hiding deep, deep, deep into the nucleus of this bad, bad movie. They clearly set his daughter's boyfriend Mark up to sort of be, oh, goofy, good-natured white guy boyfriend, who is the comic relief of the film.

There's even a little ending credit scene that's supposed to be, oh, goofy, good-natured white guy boyfriend, who is the comic relief of the film. it's seen that's supposed to be funny of Ice Cube catching Mark dancing when he thinks he's alone in his Amazon delivery truck, right? So there are all these little moments in the movie where they might work for a different movie, but it's not clear how they fit into a movie that is so serious as the one that they're sort of going for. I genuinely do think a few punchups and this could have been like a good bad movie, not just a bad, bad movie. That's your opinion. I'm still not convinced. They could have helped. They could have helped. Anyway, Ice Cube types out a message to his daughter faith about being not invited to this baby shower. That's actually pretty honest and heartfelt. It's like,

why didn't you want me at your baby shower? But then he thinks better of it. And it says, no, no, no, no, no. Deletes it and decides instead to take remote access of her computer instead to read the private messages she is sending to her boyfriend about the baby shower, which honestly might explain why he wasn't invited in the first place. Yeah, you think? This scene is so confusing because I watched it several times. I still don't know. It could be, I don't know if Ice Cube is typing as the daughter with remote access through her computer

or if he's just reading the text that the daughter and the boyfriend are sending back and forth. We watched this a few times and the movie does not make it clear, in my opinion. Yeah, I still am not sure. I think we sorted it out that he would just read it. them texting back and forth, but at first I thought he was spoofing Mark and writing to his daughter as if he was her. It was confusing because it's just text in a text field.

And so you don't see anybody's fingers, you don't see anybody's face. Could be anybody writing these words. There are a few points like that in the movie that almost, I don't even know if red herring is the right way to describe them, where it's so unclear what's happening, you think it's a plot point,

and then you realize it's just sloppy filmmaking. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, that does come up several times. There's quite a few spots that we'll get into where it's just not entirely clear what's happening. But also, at those moments, I was like, well, does it really even matter?

Like, let's just keep going. It's going to be aliens. Aliens blowing up. Don't overthink it. That's, again, I'm telling this to you, producer Mike, but also to you, the listener, don't overthink any of this, underthink it, if anything. So Mark logs on the Facebook and it is revealed that his wife has died and he's still playing

voice messages that she left for him on Facebook Messenger and like messaging her on Facebook messenger, which is genuinely like sad. Yeah, it's probably one of the more like touching emotional moments of the movie where you, you see him feeling something and you understand and can relate to that feeling. But no time for those feelings about your dead wife because the search warrant comes in for the disruptor, his nemesis, and a special agent is about to bust him. But as she goes in to bust him, uh-oh, it's a decoy. So Ice Cube is watching Special Forces move in.

They're armed of the teeth. They're wearing tactical gear to arrest his hacker as if they think he might be armed with a sandwich or something. And Ice Cube is basically watching this failed raid in real time when meteors start hitting the earth. Then we get some very low budget, very janky looking footage of meteors hitting places in countries all around the world. It's one of those scenes where it's France and there's an Eiffel Tower with a guy in a striped shirt riding a bicycle with a baguette and like that's being hit by a meteor. There genuinely is a very specific episode of Rick and Morty that this almost seems.

shot for shots styled after. And I appreciate it because it's like, oh, I recognize this little montage. They're showing things happening around the world. I get it. This feels like a movie. Yeah, it feels like a movie. So DHS and the FBI and the White House and everybody, they all have a big meeting on teams and shit is bad. I will say one of my favorite bits of the movie happens here, which is that the Secretary of Defense,

in all of these video meetings about a literal attack on Earth, in all of the of these video meetings, the Department of Defense head is actively playing golf and smoking a cigar on the golf course when all of these meetings take place. He is only ever shown golfing throughout this entire movie. I'm not kidding. There is one seat at the very, very, very end of the movie where everything is okay in the end and he's like in a car. But the Secretary of Defense literally never leaves the golf course during the entire duration of this attack on the earth in this movie, which to be honest, I kind of respect. Like, you know, if we're all going to go out, I'm going to go out working on my score, okay?

Yeah, I love that detail. That's, I think that's one of those like funny, good movies hiding in a bad movie details that you mentioned. Because that's, that's some funny stuff, you know? I, and I, but the strange thing is like, I didn't even clock that when we were watching it. It wasn't until afterwards when you told me about that. It's like, oh, you're right. He was always on golf courses. But that was a good detail.

which it had stood out a little bit more to be. Yeah, same. Okay, so they're having this big meeting about what's going on and then, oh no, it's an alien. It's big, it's metal, it's got tentacles, and they're calling them tripods. So Ice Cube's son calls him and says, Dad, I have important information about what's going on to tell you. And Ice Cube is like, not now.

This is one of my all-time least favorite cliches in movies. When someone tells someone else they've got important information and that person is like, I can't, I can't, not now I'm too busy. In the time that they do this back and forth of, Dad, listen, and he's like, no, I'm too busy. The son could have spit, could have surely spit out whatever information it was that he wanted to say. It's a pretty extended back and forth with the son really wants to give him this information, but seemingly is incapable of just saying it.

He needs to like receive permission to share it conversationally first. It's pretty drawn out. I gotta say Ice Cube really does not have a ton of range in this movie. As we said, he is a good actor. Like if you've seen Boys in the Hood or Friday, he genuinely is a good actor with range. But he's not really given in his A game here. I don't know if this is true or not,

but I've read that because this movie was filmed in 2020, Ice Cube filmed all of his scenes by himself in his house before anybody else had even started filming. So he's not really responding to anyone else's, energy or voice or acting in this movie, he's just literally reading lines in his house, which makes, when I found out that, that it made so much more sense for the movie because a lot of this movie is Ice Cube just saying, damn, wow, that's crazy. And the movie is just 90% him giving those kinds of vocal reactions to what is happening on a computer screen.

Sometimes I feel those are the reactions that I give you on this show, but damn. Wow, that's crazy. I value your contributions to this podcast. Damn. That's crazy. Okay, so aliens are knocking out the communication systems, military outposts, power grids, and they were causing all the storms. And then Ice Cube's WhatsApp account blows up. It kind of seems like maybe a top secret surveillance guy wouldn't be using WhatsApp so much.

What do I know? We actually have an upcoming episode about why WhatsApp is not the most super secure messaging service. In reality, he would be using Signal, though. Well, yeah, he'd be using Signal because he works at HegSets DoD, where they just use third-party unsecure apps. So he probably would be using Signal. If he was actually following secure protocol, he would be using internally built tools that are actually secure. aliens are attacking and there's chaos on the streets. Faith, Ice Cube's daughter, unfortunately gets hit by a helicopter and takes a metal blade right

through the thigh. This injures her. Oh no! The DHS building where Ice Cube works at is on lockdown so we cannot get out to save her. And oh no, one of the aliens is nearby chasing his daughter. Luckily, Ice Cube is able to hack into a nearby Tesla so that she can get in and he hacks it so that he can drive it remotely to drive faith to safety. Yeah, and I just want to back up to, he's like one of the most important people in the U.S. intelligence community.

The United States is being attacked by aliens. They're like destroying cities. And he spends like his first move, his first 10, 15 minutes, like talking with his kid. Like, I don't think that's how it's supposed to go. No, he's a dead first. Mike. So while his daughter is essentially bleeding out in this Tesla escaping an alien attack, Ice Cube is like, you know, this would be a chill time to bring up my hurt feelings about that

baby shower snub from earlier. So he's like, hey, I get that you didn't want me at your baby shower. What's up with that? Faith lay some truth on up. She says, you think you have so much more power than you do. You think you have the power to keep the world safe and you don't. You have to let go. I'm not a kid anymore, which is pretty eloquent for someone who is bleeding out in the back of a Tesla. Yeah. And also, like, not really addressing his concern. And also, also is, like, bringing this up now while she's, like, bleeding and aliens are attacking. I don't know.

It seems like there's bigger stuff going on, but maybe not for him. Weird timing. Weird timing. So one thing to note in this movie is that Ice Cube is constantly commandeering drones around the city for his own personal use. And doing that is literally as just as easy as right-clicking on a drop-down menu that literally says, commandeer drone, question mark. Like in this universe, you basically just have to right-click on something or ask what I think is meant to be like an AI chatbot. Ask it to do things like, release top secret government information, please.

And that is all the hacking that is necessary in this universe. Yeah, he's all, all of his hacking is done through like drop. down menus and features that are built into the software that I guess his engineering team built for him. So it's not really clear what his like skill set is. But he definitely does commandeer a lot of drones. Another fun fact about DC, there are zero drones in the sky. None. None. Unless they're so that's not technically true because there was there are they are allowed to have government like the civilians are not allowed to fly drones in DC. That's true. Yeah. So like the the government

can have some drones in D.C. But civilians can't. It's illegal. And they're just like, there aren't any because this place is surveilled pretty heavily. And like some of these drones that he's commandeering them,

these presumably government drones, I guess, are armed. Like at some point later in the movie, he commandeers a Reaper drone that is armed with missiles. And that's just, it's just quiet around D.C.,

presumably, I guess not on any sort of important mission, just like killing time. waiting for somebody to commandeer it. And not only that, the process of commandeering these armed drones is just a drop-down menu, this commandeer armed drone, question mark. Okay. Shoot from armed drone? Gotcha, we'll do.

Yeah, zero latency, nothing. Just selected from the drop-down and boom, you now have the drone. So Ice-key was able to commandeer a drone to track down Faith's Amazon delivery driver boyfriend, who is really just sort of doing his own thing. He's just driving around the city in this Amazon delivery truck, even though aliens are attacking the city. And he has Mark go to faith to help her with her wounded leg. So then we get confirmation that the meteors were intentionally crashed into hundreds of satellites on Earth and that military assets worldwide are going to strike back.

The president of the United States says, I have no choice but to initiate this war of the worlds to save us all. And hey, isn't that the name of the movie that we're watching? Get used to that because they're going to say, explicitly, War of the World, no less than five more times in the runtime of 90 minutes of this movie. I'm not kidding.

Otherwise, how are people going to know what movie this is? They might have forgotten. Their brains might have melted. They're kind of trying to do an Independence Day thing here, which I know is one of your, you love that movie. Yeah, it's a great movie. Everybody loves that movie. What are you talking about?

One of my favorite things about you is that, I don't remember how that came up. I was like, oh, if you, like, wouldn't it be so cool? to be Will Smith in the movie Independence Day. You know, you're punching aliens and saying, welcome to Earth and saving the day. And you said, I would prefer to be Bill Paxton, the president who rolls up his sleeves

and makes a rousing speech. That's not exactly how it went down. That's what you said. I think that it's a very rousing speech. He rallies all of humanity to this collective defense. He gets people to put aside their differences and confront these aliens based on, the power of his rhetoric.

I think that's meaningful. This will be our Independence Day. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman,

help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Who's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Human me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves. I got to manipulate the game.

We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nasree. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night bases on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson,

we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball like, after you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things.

I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over the

that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. In Independence Day, like it hits.

What they're trying to do works in that movie. You know, you've got Will Smith punching aliens, Bill Paxton making a big speech. When the military takes out one of the alien tripods in this movie, Ice Cube, yell. take your intergalactic gases back home. Like it's clear what they're going for, but it's just not working. It's just bad. So the military is not successful

in their attack against the tripods. And then Ice Cube has the realization that the tripods are all targeting government data centers. His son calls him one more time and says, Dad, listen to me. I have information needed to hear. This is Goliath, that surveillance tracking network

that the disruptor was trying to unveil. Ice Cube is like, boo, shut up, that's a conspiracy. Because if there was really a government secret tracking program called Goliath, I would know about it because I work for the government. A funny thing about this entire movie, the way that it plays out on Ice Cube's computer monitor, is that everyone he's talking to is doing video calls with him. So even in this scene, his son is like literally running for his life from murderous aliens,

but also taking care to keep his face well framed in the shot. it makes no sense. Also, sure, you might have Zoom calls at work, but everybody that he talks to in this universe is FaceTiming him. I would be so confused if a coworker of mine needed to get in touch with me, and they FaceTimed me. I find that to be so weird. Even when you're not running from murderous aliens,

I find that to be weird. Yeah, and I think you might be a little at the extreme of, like, hating it. You know, when I used to work in an office, It was not totally unusual for coworkers to just do a video chat when we were all remote. But that's when I'm like sitting at my desk and I've got my, you know, camera right there. If I was running from aliens, I would probably be pretty focused on that. That would be like the main thing I was doing. I kept screaming.

Stop FaceTiming and just call him because you have to run. Like don't you don't need like you can't run and hold up your phone to your face. You're fleeing for your life. What are you doing? Yeah. And also the video quality was garbage anyway. So like what was he even trying to achieve? Yes. Yes.

Also, when Ice Cube realizes that all the aliens were going to these top secret government data centers, he realizes this after he clicks the show sensitive U.S. government locations button on his workspace, that again, this is like a pre-programmed button that the engineering team has built for the software that he's using. He doesn't have to enter a password or multi-factor authentication or anything. He just clicks the button. Because that's how it works. That's how it works. Just a drop down. Show sensitive U.S. government locations, question mark. Okay, there we go. So we're back at Faith's House, where she has taken the metal shard out of her leg, which I don't think you should do if you

ever are impaled with something. I think the guidance is to not take it out until you're with a medical professional. That's my understanding, too. Quick PSA for listeners. If you've got a giant chunk of metal embedded in your body, don't take it out until you've got a medical expert there. This, I mean, it wasn't a Like a helicopter blade But when I was a kid, I was moving boxes barefoot in my garage I don't know why I was doing this

And I barefoot stepped on a metal, an upside down metal gaufty And it went right through my foot was horrible. So, yeah, it sucks. Yeah, oof, ouch. So she's taken out the shard in her leg And she's really bleeding rapidly. But luckily, Mark, her boyfriend, knows how to make a tourniquet out of packing tape because he works at Amazon.

And as he says, that means he's a pro. Amazon, what a wonderful company. Yeah, like, what does he mean by that? Are people constantly getting severe cuts in the warehouse and they don't have access to first aid supplies? So they've got to just, they all have to know how to create tourniquets out of packing tape. Is that the implication here? I don't feel like that's the flex Amazon thinks it is about what the work

conditions at their warehouse as must be like. If it's like, oh, we're all pros at making tourniquets out of packing tape here at Amazon. Amazon, what a wonderful company. Next up, we'll show you how to fashion a synthetic leg out of a box. And had a pee in a bottle because you don't get bathroom breaks. That's a real thing. Look it up. So back to one of these data centers, Andrea, the FBI agent, has found these little

insect-like cyborg aliens inside the tripods that are inside this data center and realizes that it eats data. The more data it consumes, the smarter it gets, she says. So they realize that the attacks by the tripods are a diversion to get the tripods to data centers and that these big tripods are actually a Trojan horse to get these little cyborg bug things into the data centers to eat the data. This is sort of a big reveal, but they just sort of say this and then Ice Cube and Eva Longoria just look at each other and they both give each other like a really weird look and then the scene changes. It's for this being like the big

reveal of the movie, it is handled very awkwardly. But I can understand why they would need to just like take a minute to sit with this new insane information. These little bugs that eat the data. You know, because it's not like they're reading the gana and

gaining insight or even gaining strength. They're literally consuming it and after they eat it, it is gone. Where does it go? We don't know. Why do they want to eat it. We don't know. There was a Futurama movie where the bad guys consumed information, but

shockingly, the way those weird, creepy alien scammers and that movie got off on sniffing information seems way more plausible and thought out than these lazy little Beatles ex machina. They don't even explain really how they came

to know this and how, like, what do you mean eating the data makes them smarter? The way that they're just, they're like, oh, it's so matter of fact. Like, oh, they're attracted to data. They eat data. It nourishes them. That's it. It doesn't feel plausible because they don't give you any other explanation for what's going on. They just sort of lay that on you and then move on. And also, this is happening in real time. So it's been like less than an hour and Andrea has figured this out. I am so glad you brought that up because

the movie presumably takes place in real time. Like we're watching this unfold on a screen, so we're seeing it in real time. This is all over the course of one afternoon, right? Aliens have attacked. Meteors have hit all over the world. Global communication systems are down, but every global military has come together to strike back. Andrea has figured this out, and it's not even like lunchtime yet.

The timing of this movie is one of the, in a movie where you have to suspend a lot of disbelief, the timing of how this all goes down is one of the biggest glaring problems with what we're being told is happening in this film. So Ice Cube tells Andrea that he's going to circle back. So now all the grids have been down. Financial data is wiped out because the bugs ate it. So the whole world is bankrupt. GPS is down.

Oil rigs are exploding. At this point, during a footage of a newscast, we're told that the FAA has grounded commercial airline flights, which were halfway into the alien invasion and attack on Earth. And we're to assume that commercial air travel was just running as normal this entire time. What? Yeah, like they're dodging meteors as the, They try to take off.

And yeah, but sure, sure. Yeah, they were still running. You know, those planes got to run. The world is going dark with that its most precious resource, our data. So everything has gone dark, but somehow not YouTube because the disruptor goes live on his YouTube channel and says that the Goliath program has collected all of our data. And that is the reason why these invaders will not stop until they eat all of it. And in fact, all of the social media websites and news outlets and retailers are still up

and running just fine. Even though all of the world's communication systems and financial systems have been crippled and collapsed, Ice Cube is still getting push notifications from a bunch of different apps. And stepping back, it does kind of give the impression that the writers of this movie think the internet

is like a magical force and not a system of companies and physical infrastructure, like literally running over wires and from antennas. It honestly would have taken, I'm not saying this would be a plausible explanation for why, for this

fucking glaring plot hole that you could drive a semi-truck through, but it could have just given you one nod. Like, oh, looks like some of these platforms have backup whatever's or something. Just say something. It doesn't have to make sense.

It don't got to check out. But the fact that they're like, all of the globe has gone dark. There's no communication systems whatsoever. And then in the next scene, he's getting a Facebook notification. Like, just say something. Just give us a little nod to this. Yeah.

Just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. notifications. So Ice Cube listens to this disruptor YouTube live stream about the surveillance project, Goliath. And he says, that voice. Sounds kind of familiar. So he saves the audio on his computer, right clicks, and does a vocal analysis on the digital.

on the disruptor's voice and dun dun dun it's his own son what? I have to give you credit you called that tens of minutes before it was revealed on screen. I feel like it was fairly obvious when the son called and says

I have something important to tell you about what's going on and the dad is like I don't have time to hear important stuff about what's going on on a pretty good sense that something was going on well yeah you called it I thought maybe his son was mixed up with some some other hackers who had information about the disruptor, but I just wasn't thinking big enough.

So Ice Cube calls his son and his son is like, for someone who watches everything, you sure miss a lot, which I think is the only poignant line of the whole film so far. Yeah, clearly the hacker's son is the hero of this movie because he gets the good line. Ice Cube's son sends him the information that he has hacked from DHS, Ice Cube's own workplace about the Goliath program,

which is not a conspiracy theory. The Goliath program is real. The hacked information that you see on screen is just a list of files with names like CIA, NSA, NHS, DoD, Rodwell, Skinwalker Ranch. Don't you see how deep this thing goes? Wake up, Sheeple? Like, it's just a list of scary sounding government agencies and happenings. Yeah, and I feel that's about, that's about right.

That's about the right tenor for this movie of just like a list. of conspiracy theories and like vaguely menacing sounding things. Like that's as deep as this is going. Totally, totally. So this is where we get the big reveal of kind of what's going on here in this movie. Basically, and this is, I have to say, this is my sense of it because none of it makes any fucking sense. So basically, government data collection programs going back to the 1940s is what initially

attracted aliens to Earth. So when you heard about like Roswell, that's why they were. coming here because of these government data collection programs. These aliens eat data to become more advanced, I think, question mark. And the government knew about this and hit it. Briggs, who is the head of the Department of Homeland Security and Ice Cube's boss, has secretly continued to do this dangerous government data collection, even though he knew that it met setting Earth up for this very invasion. So the head of DHS, Ice Cube's boss, Briggs, has been behind this whole whole thing the whole time, Ice Cube has been directly reporting to this monster.

I think he did a nice job summarizing this insane story. Like, it's not explained why these aliens are only interested in government data or like how the government knew about it. And there's so much that's not explained, but I think I think you did a nice job with that. Another thing to know is that the government did not want DHS director Briggs to activate the Goliath program because it's this massive data collection apparatus. And they said it was going to be like ringing a dinner bell for all the tripod aliens who want to eat our data. But Briggs is on audio being like, I'm so drunk on the power of having everyone's data that I am blind to the obvious reality that it might cause aliens to attack the planet. And there's a pretty good chance I'll probably die if they do. He's

just like, what do you mean? How could we give up all this sweet, sweet data? Because we're the government. So Ice Cube calls Briggs on it. And Briggs says, the government is like mommy and daddy. If we can't track our babies, how can we protect them? Which when you think about it, is kind of like how Ice Cube is as a daddy tracking his own babies. I mean, really makes you think, right?

Really makes you think. That's some subtle stuff there. Some real subtle stuff. This is not a subtle movie. This is a movie that like really is like, we are saying something. Honestly, when we were watching it, it made me think of the shows that my eight-year-old nephew watches. Because it's the same sort of thing where like there's no subtlety. They are saying the thing that is happening so that children can follow along.

And I kind of feel that's what they're doing here. It absolutely is. So Briggs fires Ice Cube from the DHS and locks him out of everything. Even teams. How will the movie continue without teams? Luckily, his son is this big time hacker who can override the system

and give him a little war games reference. Do you remember what he types out? Shall we play a game? For folks who have not seen it because you're younger than 40, that's a reference to the movie War Games. So they team up with his son, crew of hackers with excellent hacker names like burnout, Fancy Bear, and Thelma and Louise, and their plan is together they are going to infect data centers with a virus,

which I feel like is the MO of like every movie like this where they're like, oh, we have to defeat the alien by infecting it with a virus. Literally how they solved the alien invasion in Independence Day. And that was back in, what was that, like 1998 or? or something. We have not really progressed a lot. The hackers agree to work with Ice Cube. At first, they're like, he's the government.

Why should we trust him? And then Ice Cube is like, oh, well, I'll delete all of your criminal records from the government data, which he can just do by right click, delete government to records on said hacker. Easy Peezy, done. Hit that easy button because you're done. That actually would have been a great time to make use of that button again. Yeah, they could have brought it back there.

That would have been great. That would have been funny. What a miss. So I will say the scene when they're like getting the rag tag crew of hackers together reminds me of an actual good, bad movie about this kind of thing. Hackers with Matthew Litherd. Have you ever seen that movie? Oh, yeah, of course.

It's a classic. Oh, I had a little bit of a crush on every person in that movie. I feel like Angelina Jolie has never looked boxier. And they're all kind of like hot gender queer punks wearing oversized trench coats and like weird colored little sunglasses and shit. I had the hots for everybody in that movie. It really made an impression on me when I saw it. And I think it gave me this attitude that if you're a hacker, you're wearing like a, like a trench coat and like a cool hairstyle.

You know, it really set what I think was the aesthetic for what we were told hackers would be in the 90s. Absolutely the truth. As somebody who entered college as a freshman in 1999 as a computer science major, that would very much the world that I thought I was stepping into, and I quickly learned that I was incorrect. We're like, first things first, I got to buy some black leather, fingerless gloves to let the world know I'm a hacker. Right, got to have the fingerless gloves, got to have a trench coat, probably some like Doc Martin boots. Yeah. Spiky hair. It really, I mean, when we're ready as a country to talk about it, Matthew Lizard in that movie, that's all I'm going to say. We're not,

We're not ready yet, and I'm the lone voice who is going on record. But when folks are ready to talk about the truth, I'll be here. I'll just say that. I mean, you haven't really gone on record. You've just said his name a couple times and then trailed off. I think people know what I'm getting at right here. I'm just saying. I'm just saying.

All right. Just asking questions. Yeah. Okay, I'll say it. As a country, when are we going to be ready to have the conversation that Matthew Lillard kind of hot? That's all I'm saying. You heard it here first.

Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter.

There's that worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name.

The Harvard Yardt. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get to fly. He running up the court, licking his fingers,

why he got the ball, like, After you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats.

I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story.

You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So Ice Cube has now been, like, recruited to team up with this crew, this ragtag crew of hackers. And he says, okay, Disruptor, let's disrupt this shit.

And he puts all the Project Goliath evidence on the Disruptor's YouTube channel, essentially becoming a whistleblower, and this goes viral and blows up on social media, which again is somehow still up and running, even though there's a total global communications blackout. Genuinely, do not overthink it. As I said, and as I wrote and underlined in my notes at this point, this is a very bad movie. Yeah, like, aliens are collapsing cities. I have to assume hundreds of millions of people are dying. And somehow this like government surveillance program becomes a viral sensation. Like, that shit is happening

in our government right now and nobody gives a damn. Aliens part of it, I don't know about that, but like this is not even a conspiracy theory. This is happening now. So the hackers unleashed this virus, but it does not work,

and the tripods end up hacking the hackers and they become even bigger and also can fly for some reason. The movie really starts going off the rails here. The tripods... start attacking the hackers in their homes with lasers and explosions. Ice Cube's house, where Ice Cube thinks his son is, is exploded by the tripods. But luckily, his son has been at his friend's house the entire time to confuse the

tripods. After finding out that his son did not get exploded by aliens, Ice Cube immediately says, why didn't you set up your IP address to show that you weren't at our house so that your friend's house would be exploded? I don't have alien explosion homeowners insurance. Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. Yeah, what a line. Somebody realizes that the aliens have blood and silicone,

which means that they are both hybrid, cyber, and biological creatures, which is why a virus alone did not kill them. Sure. So I guess all of that it means that these creatures have DNA. And luckily, Icekeeps daughter Faith works with DNA at Georgetown, that she does a research on that. Why do I feel like blood and silicone is going to become a like rallying cry of the tech bros?

It actually has a little bit of, if it does, I want credit for that. It has a little bit of a ring to it. It kind of does. Also, another big thing, I'm sorry to keep like bringing these up, but another thing that this movie doesn't address at all is like the implications of these aliens having DNA, meaning that they're related to all life on Earth. Like, did they come from Earth? Did they populate Earth in like a way?

similar to like the aliens movies? Is this proof for the existence of God that all organisms throughout the universe were created from the same DNA? Like, none of these are discussed. Mike, they do not even address it. It is not even a question that is posed at any point in the film by anybody.

They do not even address it. Yeah, sure. So these aliens have DNA. Got it. Yep. So because the aliens have DNA, they decide that their plan is to up, I just need to upload Ice Cube's daughter, Faith, upload her DNA cannibal code into Goliath. I genuinely don't know.

I've just said that sentence. I'm going to keep on going. Yeah, they just need to upload Faith's DNA cannibal code into Goliath. Was that the sentence that I paused the movie and I said that to you and we just were quiet for a minute and then this left? I think that happened a couple times. Like, there actually is a lot happening in this movie. I remember we were like 15 minutes in

And I was like oh well surely we're almost done here And it was like only 15 I mean the movie is a slog They're like for a movie that is kind of dull And does it make any sense? There a lot happens. I like like there's a lot going on in the movie. Yeah, that's a good point that I don't think we've touched on That it like it is a slog

Like it's it's just not fun to watch. No, it's not it's not for a movie that's this bad And they could have made it more fun. And that's what that's I do. I know you don't agree, but I do stand by it. That there is a fun, bad movie, like deep, deep, deep in this,

like several rewrites and several edits and several reshoots. Maybe it would take, but there is a little something there. I agree. There's a little bit. Like the general taking its calls from the golf course. There are a couple little things in here, but they're just buried by, plot holes and bad dialogue and choppy, grainy video that is shaking because somebody is running.

And lighting being weird, like the final scene is all shot in red light. I believe as a way to distract from the horrible CGI is like, oh, the CGI looks so bad. We can't put this on the air. Make it red. Nobody in love the difference. No, redder. No, more redder. It's like an Argento film.

but at a certain point. Ice Cube starts repeating his lines backwards. Yeah, like shit gets real weird. Next thing you know, it's an art house film. Got a little David Lynch in there. Mm-hmm. Okay, so this is part of the movie where I genuinely, this might be wrong.

This is my interpretation of what I saw. So like, I genuinely don't know if I'm, if I'm reporting this as it actually happened. My understanding is that, Eliath is underground under the DHS building where Ice Cube works. So in an attempt to protect Goliath from the tripod aliens, Briggs, the DHS boss, has ordered the military to bomb D.C. within a five-mile radius of DHS. D.C. is not a very big city, so that's essentially all of D.C., so I'm going to die, I guess.

In an attempt to collapse the DHS building, which houses that big data center project underground to keep the aliens from getting to Goliath. I don't know why this would be a protective measure. Like, why is it harder for the tripods to get to Goliath underground if the DHS building on top of it was destroyed? I don't know. This is not a question I can answer. But is that your read of what's going on at this point of the movie?

Something like that. Yeah, like Goliath is under the DHS building. And so they're going to bomb. effectively all of DC to, I think they were going to try to, like, destroy it. You know, maybe they're going to use one of those big bunker buster bombs to

penetrate through the building to flow it up, I guess. But, I mean, sure, you know? Like, they run this damn thing. Couldn't they just, like, right click and hit delete Goliath program? Well, that's why at one point I thought perhaps

this was Briggs's way of sort of covering up the evidence by bombing DHS so that no one would know that he was unveiling Goliath against protocol and against orders. But then I was like, wait, they've never even hinted at that. So I'm forced to take the exposition at its word because I don't know what else would be going on. I don't want to overthink it. That's my sense of what was happening. But at this point, I have to admit that I'm having a little bit of trouble following along just literally what was happening and why. Yeah. And also at this point in the movie, it has been, become clear that like shit

does not make sense. And so my brain just starts to turn off at that point of a movie where it's like I no longer have confidence the filmmakers that like any of this is going to make any sense. So I'm not going to put in the effort to even

understand what the hell is happening. You're not seeing the vision. You're not seeing the vision. I get it. So we're kind of off the rails at this point. But here's what I think is happening. They need to get Ice Cube's daughter Faith, they need to get her

DNA cannibal code to Ice Cube in the DHS building, which is currently locked down because the military is going to bomb DHS to protect Goliath from the tripod alien. By destroying

it. And also destroying the whole city. Just wiping out all of the District of Columbia. Yep, that's where we're at. You know, so Ice Cube and his son team up to hack into Goliath and to crash the surveillance system with a virus because then the aliens won't have anything to eat anymore and they will get hungry and go home. Sure. Yeah. And if they do this, then the bombers won't need to drop those bombs. And like we keep seeing, I think, stealth bombers in the air, like they can see that from their surveillance system.

I don't know what camera is filming. These bobbers just like flying around. Supposedly en route to D.C., they keep saying they're like five minutes out from D.C., but they're showing them flying over like giant mountains and fjords and shit, which like that's not what the area around D.C. looks like. A lot of this is supposed to be D.C. doesn't look like it. That's actually one of my little nitpicky pepves about not just this movie,

but so many movies when they're showing like a plane flying into D.C. I was a big X-Files fan and I will say X-Files sometimes got this wrong where they would say Dulles Airport and they would depict it in ways that just like that's not Dulles Airport sometimes they would show like big skyscrapers and be like Washington D.C.

And it's like, well, D.C. has a height ordinance and so there are no big skyscrapers in D.C. Those are illegal here. Or they would show, I've seen it where they show big cavernous mountains and it's like well that's definitely not D.C. It's very legal here. very flat. But yeah, this is a, I don't know what the cameras on these fighter jets are showing, but they have access to it. So at this point, Ice Cube needs to put Faith's DNA cannibal code

on a thumb drive, but he doesn't have one. But luckily, Mark works for Amazon. They're a wonderful company. And he has access to Amazon Prime Air Drones. It's the future of delivery. But But Mark has to place an order with Amazon if he wants to use this wonderful delivery option from Amazon. So they actually take the time to show Ice Cube going to like Amazon.com and clicking purchase on a thumb drive and being like, oh, it'll come to you between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. today. And he actually like clicks through on his cart to complete this Amazon transaction and they show all of this.

So again, even though we have been told that global banking, information has all been wiped out to the point where the entire world is bankrupt and there's no communication system, Amazon somehow is still up and running. I don't remember what method of payment he used. I believe they showed it to us, but yeah, all the financial systems have been taken down. So how did he pay for this? Thankfully, the Amazon Fulfillment Center logistics is still up and running at normal capacity, despite the end of the world being like essentially at the precipice. And Mark is able to get this thumb drive shipped out immediately.

Sure. And it's also funny that like, I don't know if Mark just like can't or won't violate company policy until Ice Cube places that order. Like the end of the world is at stake here. And he's like, no, I'm sorry, man. I could not put that thumb drive on a drone until you check out that order for this like $20 on a drug. Yeah, the Amazon promotion here is really shameless. Like, it's over the top. At this point, they give you marks, like, POV operating the Amazon delivery drone

using, like, virtual reality headset. And it has a Amazon Prime Air logo up at the corner. The fate of the world is literally hinging on the logistics of Amazon's delivery services. Amazon, they're a wonderful company. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me.

I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers,

why he got the ball, like, After you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and

life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix, so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other.

And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So bear with me here.

Ice Cube has to make it down to the basement of the Department of Homeland Security building where Goliath is. Mind you, earlier it was a plot point that he was essentially locked in his office. office because he couldn't get to his daughter face. That's not a problem anymore. We don't know why. His intention is to put the cannibal DNA code that is on this thumb drive into Goliath that Mark is sending via Amazon Air Delivery Dron. I had to pause the movie at this point,

and I said that plot point out loud to you, Mike, to make sure I was not losing my mind. And we both just, like, laughed at the ridiculousness of this plot point. Yeah, but I think that's it. I think that's what was happening. You know, he's got to rush this thumb drive that contains the cannibal DNA code to the DHS building

so that Ice Cube can insert it into the servers and infect Goliath with the cannibal DNA code. And it's also a race against time because they have to do all of this before the fighter jets hit the DHS building and annihilates all of D.C. but oh no, the drone gets knocked down before it gets to Ice Cube.

They're able to commandeer a different surveillance drone one of the typical ones that are flying around DC just doing nothing in particular. Yeah, and specifically they call it a Reaper drone. That's one of the ones that they use in like Yemen and they were using Afghanistan. These are like serious drones. Yeah, they can kill people.

They're just hanging around DC. Anybody can operate that. You could just right click on any computer. pick from a drop down. Yeah, they got one just, you know, looping around over the zoo just in case. So got to make sure none of those zebras get out of line. You know how it is. So they're able to commandeer this drone and they see like a random unhoused guy on the street

near the drone carrying the thumb drive and they're able to hack into his cell phone to ask him to run out of his tent to turn it over even though these alien tripos are basically destroying the city. First, they say, if you do this for us, the government will give us. you free internet and he's like what so they can track me pretty clever pretty clever yeah he doesn't know that they just like saw his image on a surveillance camera in the alleyway that they somehow have access to and we're able to like right click identify person identify phone number and uh start texting him because of that but uh i i respect that this homeless guy doesn't want to be tracked no i respect

I mean, like, he's right. He just doesn't know how right he is, I bet. So then they're like, okay, the sweetened the deal, they offer him a $1,000 gift card to, you guessed it, Amazon. And of course, he goes for it because who wouldn't? Amazon, they're a wonderful company. They have all the best products everyone wants. I gotta say, I'm genuine.

This was the one time I feel like Amazon showed a little bit of restraint because I am genuinely surprised. They did not have a scene where the viewer sees the perspective of the guy, like browsing Amazon and making a purchase that turns his life around and helps him get off the street and back on his speed and reunited with this kid and giving back to the community. Like that is the level of Amazon advertising that is embedded within this movie. Maybe they're going to give him a series, like a spin-off series. Yes. So I got to say for an action movie, this is the big ending sequence.

It is so tedious. It's just Ice Cube running around in an office building basement. again the whole scene is shot in red which I think is meant to distract from the horrible graphics in CGI at one point he punches a tripod and then quotes the rapper ludicrous for some reason he says move bitch get out the way which topical guys really topical uh he's able to get the thumb drive into goliath and the cannibal code uploads i could not tell you what any of that means but it is a sentence that I have just said. In any event, it works. The tripods power down. They retreat. So it all works out in the end. The family ends up being heroes for data privacy.

Ice Cube kind of becomes like an anonymous whistleblower figure. His former boss, Briggs, of DHS, is arrested. At the end, we see Ice Cube's computer desktop, and it just has an image of his face and his son's face wearing a hoodie. and it has all these big, bold, all-caps expressions and phrases written around them like big media lies, illegal surveillance, false flags, suppression of rights. And in the end, even our old friend of the show, Joe Rogan, is tweeting about how they are heroes of data privacy. At the end of the movie, Ice Cube is asked by the president to start a new data collection project, but one that doesn't invade people's privacy. Ice Cube says no. You know why? Because there's more important things to do on this earth

than worry about what's in other people's Amazon carts. I'm done watching us. From now on, I'm watching you guys. Like a real who's watching the Watchmen vibe over here, am I right? So I hated so much about this movie. Yeah, it was not good. But I think the thing that I hate most is that this comes out of absolutely nowhere. like Ice Cube was not grappling with the implications of surveillance at any point during this movie.

It was his whole thing, his whole job, his whole relationship with his kids. Everything about him was surveillance. He loved surveillance. He was just really into surveilling. That was like his favorite thing. And then all of a sudden, like now he's into privacy. How did he get here? What journey did he go on that we, the viewers, did not get to see?

it's literally the only adverse consequence of excessive surveillance that we've seen in the movie is that it attracted aliens who eat data. So is he afraid that that's going to happen again? And I think maybe the reason that it really bothers me is because it is such an actually important thing. Like, that's why we're talking about on this show. It's why we do this show because you and I and our listeners really value privacy and understand what is at stake when. everything is given to surveillance.

And certainly I'm down to like have fun with a serious topic. But it's not even like they had fun with it. It's just kind of like thrown in after the fact in a totally non-serious way that I guess I kind of resent a little bit. As one reviewer put it, if the movie were any good, I might fear the implications it lays out. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. It's like the old adage like show me don't tell me they've just told us they haven't showed us anything what a fucking slog this thing is I will say there is something the movie I think inadvertently kind of gets right and one that felt especially true in 2020 which is the mundaneity of living in a tech dystopia

if aliens truly were invading earth we would all still probably be answering teams calls and getting slacks from your boss that say, emergency Zoom meeting now. While watching the footage of global landmarks being destroyed on mute in another window, this movie makes a lot of use of that friendly little Microsoft Teams chime, you know, do-to-do, do that little noise. That going off constantly. And then the person on the other end of the team's call when you answer is literally being attacked by aliens.

I think that is like how shit would go down if there was an alien attack. Also, the way that the aliens are tearing apart. the world and the film's main characters are largely just sort of going about their business. That also rings true to me. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, you know, I think a lot of people feel that that's kind of what's happening right now. It's not happening over the course of a single afternoon with aliens smashing things. But there are any number of things happening outside my window right now that arguably are

threatening humanity, threatening civilization. And, you know, people are still going to work, taking teams calls, do it all the mundane stuff. So, yeah, and I think you're right. I guess the movie does capture some of that, although the acute urgency of the alien invasion kind of masks it a little bit, I think. Yeah, I agree with that. More after a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents. made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-4-4-4. I heart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed.

And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Rees, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court,

licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast.

How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening. on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45.

How high can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered and ask, How hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura Podcast Network

available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. I don't even know that it's worth asking the question of what this movie gets wrong. Not this about technology, but about filmmaking, storytelling, acting. But insofar as I want to ask what the first. fuck is going on in this movie. I do have a sense of what I think the filmmakers were going for. I think this movie is meant to be about surveillance as a proxy for protection, love, and connection. Like at the end of the movie, Ice Cube has queued up this scheduled email to his kids,

explaining that he promised their late mother that he would keep them safe, along with screenshots of the various surveillance that he's done of them over the years. And at the end of the movie, you kind of get the sense that Ice Cube has gotten to a healthier place. He is able to attend the baby shower with his daughter and Mark. But ultimately, we are still meant to feel that his surveillance, both of his children and of everybody in the country, is a good thing because ultimately it led to everybody being kept safer. At the very end of the movie, we are to understand that he is still doing this kind of surveillance because the very last scene of the film is him spying on March. in this Amazon delivery van. So the message is, does seem to sort of be,

surveillance can be a reasonable expression of like wanting to protect people, but also be wary of it, I guess. I guess. Yeah. Like, honestly, I don't think that they even know, you know. It's just feels kind of muddled. Muddled is a good word for it. And, yeah, muddled and told to us.

It's like a lesson that is told, like, eat your vegetables. Don't do surveillance. Don't do surveillance. You know, but it's like, but tell me why. Like help me understand the why of these things so that I can internalize them. That's what I want from a movie. It's heavy handed and not subtle, but also says nothing. That's how I feel about it.

So the sun. It's a really good way to put it. It's heavy-handed and not subtle, but says nothing. So father and son resolving their issues is not the only kind of hero of this movie. The big hero of this movie is big tech surveillance, along with Amazon, a company that we know is a wonderful company. This movie is really just like a real hand job to Amazon. It's essentially one long ad for Amazon, even though you have to watch like two minutes of actual Amazon ads before it starts. Yeah, clearly produced by Amazon.

You know, Mark is a unlikely hero, the capable Amazon employee, and just like subtle things, like the prime drones. Yeah. I do think in the universe of this film, Amazon is sort of positioned as aligning with privacy. Like government surveillance is equated to the government

snooping at what's in people's Amazon cart. The reality is that Amazon has a direct hand and the exact kind of government surveillance the movie is, I think, criticizing, here's how one review from Wired put it. These scenes in War of the Worlds would have been just outrageous enough to be chalked up to comedy if it wasn't for the film's heightened focus

on government surveillance without any mention of the tech industry's role in all this. From anonymous style live streams featuring the U.S. Constitution to Ice Cube digitally stalking his children to the secret data-stealing project that beacons the aliens to Earth, the true enemy is clear,

the U.S. government and its technology. In fact, the only time privacy is threatened as it relates to private business is when the government interferes with it, like in that Tesla scene. So it just really seems like a big, weird, glaring omission for a movie made by Amazon to not deal with the ways that we know

Amazon itself is involved in surveillance, not keeping people's privacy safe, and also is mixed up in the kinds of government surveillance that I think the movie is critiquing. That is also such a good point, and I think helps me understand part of my reactance against this movie.

It is such a huge omission. You know, when I think about why I am not cool with total surveillance, yes, government surveillance is a big part of it, but an equally huge part of it is surveillance by companies like meta, Google, even Apple, a whole smattering of other companies that we haven't even heard of that are just trying to mine our data so they can sell products to us or just sell our data to other people.

That is an enormous part of the concern about privacy and surveillance that we are confronted with in 2025. and it is completely absent in this movie that purports to be saying something about surveillance. It's just like an unforgivable omission. And as if all of the different messages the movie is trying to grapple with did not ring hollow enough, that omission, you can't take any of this seriously with that being such a glaring omission. Yeah, exactly.

And I did really struggle to take this movie seriously. And one of the questions I keep asking is like, are the aliens a metaphor? And if so, a metaphor for what? Like, are they a metaphor for intrusive government, for private entities that want to surveil our data, or capitalism? Like, it feels like they have to be a metaphor for something.

And yet I have no idea what it might be. I've just left grasping at common metaphors that sloppy movies use. you know, like, oh, it's capitalism and society. But I don't know, maybe they're just aliens. Maybe the real data-eating aliens were the friends we made along the way. Maybe. Are friends bad?

Are my friends going to eat my data? So the reviews of this movie are a delight to read. Can I read you one? You know what? I was reading ahead on our script and I misread that as we got to read some bad news. And I was like, oh, no. Is she going to talk about any? number of terrible things. I mean, but no, you just want to read some bad reviews. Absolutely.

Yeah, we got to read some bad reviews. Let's read some bad reviews. And enjoy it. Let's have a good time. Okay, so this is my favorite from Defector. To call this movie Halfass would be to overstate its qualities by order of magnitude. There might literally never have been a less asked creative undertaking than this one. And thus, it is entirely unworthy of your attention. In a world any less cynical than ours, War of the Worlds would have never been released. You should take its presence on the homepage of a streaming service that you pay for in real dollars as an insult. Maybe you consume some entertainment calories in early 2021 that you're not proud of today.

But it is time now for self-respecting grown-ups to reach a little higher for diversions. That this or that diabolically conceived detention scam manages to stumble into moments of viral-grade entertainment value does not mean that you should sacrifice to it any of the irreplaceable moments. of your one precious life. Skip it, man. Still, I cannot deny that I felt some affection for poor, lost ice cube during the final acts of this mess. There he was, schlubby, physically creaky, hysterically wayward along multiple axes of existence, rattling around and abandoned we work like the universe's most screwed ghost, and the two of us having paid the much greater cost for having arrived together at this moment.

And then that review is filed under the tags Ice Cube and Bad Art. So that's good art. That's an artful review. That's a good art about bad art. Yeah. And the reviewer is right. I totally agree. We deserve better.

We need to demand better. We can't just keep watching the worst of the worst. We got to raise the bar here. Come on, people. Yeah, we deserve art like Problem Child and Police Academy for and the Garbage Pale Kids. Maybe we should just give up. I don't know. Mike, I know you didn't want to do this episode.

Thanks for being a trooper. And thanks for folks who, I don't know, validated this delusion that this would be a good idea. Yeah, it was fun. I'm glad we did it. I really appreciate the people who took the time to write in and tell us they wanted us to do it and share their thoughts about it. You know, I complained a lot. But it was actually fun. It's always fun to do something like this with you, Bridget.

And I hope listeners enjoyed it too. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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