TRIGGERnometry - Critical Drinker: The Real Problem with the Odyssey

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

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Celebrate this long weekend with rates from 0%. They might be closed. Performance Auto Group is open to serve you. Join Performance Auto Group this Saturday or Civic Holiday Monday 9 to 5 for the best time to shop this summer. I still stand by my overall assessment in my video, which is, it's meh. I've heard some people talk about this as being one of the greatest movies ever made. And it's insane. It's like, how many movies have you watched? I defined The Odyssey as a hero's journey with no hero. Do you think Hollywood might actually be waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee?

Yes, they are. They very much pivoted away from all that political, identity politics, pandering. and it took tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue probably over a decade to finally realize it. But they got there in the end. It's just a shame that, you know, so many of these pop culture franchises that we grew up with, you know, whether it's Star Trek or Star Wars or Indiana Jones, whatever it might be, they've all been casualties of war in the process. Trigonometry is proudly independent and sponsors like Hillsdale College make that possible. Access their free library of world-class, educational,

educational courses at Hillsdale.edu slash trigger. Many of you have commented that you are seeing too many ads in our videos. We've listened to your feedback and disabled YouTube ads in the middle of our interviews. Can we ask you a favor in return? According to our analytics, most of you who watch our show are not subscribed to the channel. Please help us to continue bringing you fantastic content by subscribing today, hitting that like button and leaving a comment with your thoughts on this video. Critical Drinker, welcome back to Trigonometry.

Pleasure to be here again. It's great to have you, man. You're crushing it. You're really enjoying your reviews, and there's a lot to talk about. There is, yes. It's been a busy time in movies, isn't it? It has been, which is somewhat exciting in many ways, but we'll get into all the different ones.

The first thing you said when you sat down here, and I was like, well, I really enjoyed your review of the Odyssey, and you were like, I have got so much hate. I thought you gave a very bad. balanced and fair review, which actually is what generates hate on the internet nowadays. Well, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people won't even have bothered watching the review. They'll just assume that I hate it. And then, yeah, the reality is, like, I was fairly meh on the movie overall. You know, I praised some technical aspects of it,

recognized that Christopher Nolan's a very competent director. And really, yeah, my only real issue was the lack of emotional engagement and how kind of removed and cool and sterile it is. but that's just a hallmark of Christopher Nolan movies at this point. So, yeah, it's become a very contentious film, unfortunately. It's just the way it's gone. Yeah, and why do you think it is so contentious? It's probably because of the race-swapping and the casting choices that they've made.

Because when it was first announced, everyone was pretty enthusiastic about it, myself included. It's a Christopher Nolan movie. He did great with Oppenheimer. Now he's going to tackle The Odyssey, like one of the foundational stories of Western civilization, fantastic. I'm sure he's going to do a great job of it. And then you see the first trailer that came out. You know, you find out that Lapita Njongo is going to be playing Helen of Troy. Obviously, that's quite a change from what we know Helen of Troy to be. Elliot Page is going to be in it. The assumption at first was that they were going to be playing Achilles,

which would have been really hilarious. But it wasn't that in the end. But still, it just generated this crazy pushback online. I'd never seen anything like it since probably Snow White with Rachel Zegler and all the stupid things that she was saying. That same level of vitriol was suddenly leveled at the movie. And like I say, it's not what I would have expected from a Christopher Nolan film. What was interesting to me is seeing that reaction, which, by the way, look, somewhat understandable, given the sort of era of constant, you know, inserting artificially in many cases a sort of artificial devil. into things. But actually, interestingly, watching your review, it was very similar to what I wrote about it,

which is, yes, Helen of Troy probably didn't look like Lepid Nongo, but, and Elliot Page, again, but they didn't really, that casting didn't really massively affect your experience of the movie, and mine either. No, I mean, it was one of the first things I wanted to dispel when I did my review. The both of them are in the movie for a grand total of like five minutes. And it is a lot of, Like a Christopher Nolan movie, so it's like seven hours long. Exactly, yeah. And so, you know, the focus is much more on other characters. They're very much just ancillary to the main story.

And so it didn't really impact my perception of the film. Like I say, my bigger issue with it was just the lack of emotional engagement with it. Other people certainly have issues with its fidelity to the original text. That's me. Yeah. Obviously, what I've discovered as well is that there's a lot of people who've suddenly decided they're absolute experts on The Odyssey. and that they are online.

So again, that's another fun aspect of this. You don't know how much you really want to believe from people. But, yeah, as I understand it, he has taken quite a few liberties, particularly with the characterization of Odysseus, you know, turning him from this brave adventurer with this burning desire to get home to his family into basically a Vietnam vet with PTSD and Survivor's guilt. That's a very big change to the meaning of the story. And again, people who are familiar with it, took issue with it.

But apparently that all just lumps everyone into the same boat of just the casting became the focal point of everything. So if you had any criticism of the movie, it had to be because of that, not anything else. So it's an interesting approach. One of the aspects I thought your review was bang on was when talking about the character of Odysseus, because in the original text, he's actually very smart, very sharp, very bright, but also very arrogant, which leads to his own down, not only his own downfall, but also the downfall of his men,

all of whom died. But I think what's more important is the way that the industry is looking at it, and it looks like it's going to be kind of a shoeing to do very, very well at the Oscars. And you're thinking to yourself, well, looking at it, you're going, it's not that good, is it? No. But, I mean, how to describe it?

I'd rather watch this a hundred times over than just another piece of superhero slop or franchise, you know, some old franchise like Star Wars or Jurassic Park getting recycled for the dozenth time, you know. So it's taken a stab at least something a little more interesting. So I guess if I was pushed, yeah, I'd rather that succeeded than other films of lesser artistic merit. But still, yeah, it's ultimately, I found it to be a bit of a slog. It's very slow-paced. It's very lacking in emotional resonance, lacking in urgency, took a lot of liberties with the characters.

Yeah, I still stand by my overall assessment in my video, which is it's meh. I didn't hate it, didn't love it, it's just in the middle. Because I think it speaks more broadly to the conversation about the quality of movie making at the moment, that it's been hyped so much. Whereas, let's say, I mean, we're all of a certain age now, certain vintage, shall we say,

if this was, I'm just going to pick a movie year at random, something like 1996, would this even have been talked about as much? Would it have been hyped as much? Would everybody be as energized? Or would it just simply be seen as just another big-budget Hollywood movie, which is all right, but let's be honest, nothing special.

Maxin would have given it three out of five stars. Yeah. I think the thing that always puts it into perspective for me is I do a weekly live stream. And one of the segments that we've done on that is for each year of cinema, we'll go through some of the top movies of that year, the biggest box office earners or some of the most well-regarded films of that year. And every time we've done it all throughout the 70s, the 80s, the 90s,

you're just hit with classic after classic, and you think, my God, we were spoiled back then, absolutely spoiled. And it might be that the era we're living in now, you've essentially got what would have been considered an okay-ish film 10, 15, 20 years ago is now held as this all-conquering masterpiece. Like, I've heard some people talk about this as being one of the greatest movies ever made. And it's insane. It's like, how many movies have you watched, man? But it seems like we've all kind of got like woke PTSD in a way, where we had this narrative shoved down our throat for so long, the Topcom too comes along, and let's be honest.

I mean, maybe you think differently. But I kind of think it was like a seven out of ten, solid three out of five, perfectly enjoyable action movie. But people decrying it as this kind of anti-woke masterpiece, this return to form Hollywood's back, baby. isn't it amazing guns and all the rest of it? And you're like, really? It's literally just a normal 80s or 90s action movie.

Perfectly fun, perfectly serviceable. The plot doesn't do anything, particularly revolutionary. It's just a solid movie. And that, because that is so rare nowadays, it does get hailed as this, you know, breakthrough film that like no one saw coming. Whereas, like I say, yeah, if it had come out 20 years ago, people would have just said, it's okay, I guess. perfectly fine. It's interesting that you got a lot of hate for what you said about it being

met because to me, and you see this, I was looking at the calcium odds before we started. The movie, the Odyssey starts out as being like 50% chance of winning best picture. After it comes out, there's a significant dip, actually, and you can see that. So people are kind of going to it and recognizing it's not as good as it was built. But it's interesting you say what Francis is saying about, you know, this great desire for Hollywood to be good again. And every time we've had you on, we've talked about Hollywood becoming a bitch shit or potentially even sort of being on the way dying out. But there have been several movies since we last talked to that I thought were really, really high caliber. For me, Nuremberg, for example, I thought that was fantastic.

You gave it a mere kind of response as well. You didn't like it? I thought it was fine. I mean, I don't know. He just hates to see the good guys loose. No, I think, you know, performance-wise, like, I'm not sure how close Russell Crowe is in terms of Guring, and I think maybe it takes a few historical liberties. I would have rather seen it in a wider context, but it was fine. Like, I watched it on a flight. I didn't watch it in the cinema, but I was pretty entertained by it. You know, you kind of know where it's going, ultimately, but a perfectly fine movie, I think.

Yeah, I thought it was, for me personally, what I found interesting about it, It was something that covered, which was obviously a big topic, and I thought it did it very well. Historically, look, this is the thing we should talk about as well. It's like you say it took liberties with the original text or the Odyssey. I mean, that's what always happens, isn't it? I mean, Peter Jackson, and look, I hated him for it, to be fair. He completely ruined Faramere in Lord of the Rings, which was, to me, irresponsible. It was horrific, unacceptable.

Completely because he reversed the meaning of the character in that instance. Yeah, I mean, his part was very much cut down and simplified. They do them a bit more justice in the extended cut. But yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah. What I'm saying is, isn't this kind of what always happens, like, to make a movie, you have to change the story a little bit? Sure, I can understand, like, cutting down really long segments,

you know, trimming down really convoluted stuff to make it more digestible. I think the problems creep in, though, when you change the fundamental meaning of it. I think everyone would concede for whatever liberties Peter Jackson took with Lord of the Rings. He got the essence of the story. 100% right. Whereas you could say, well, if you change the very characterization of Odysseus from The Odyssey and his motivation for wanting to get home, you've lost the entire meaning of the story. It becomes something very different now. That's a different kettle of fish for me. I don't want to be super nerdy, but I will be. That is exactly what they did to Faramere.

Faramir in the books is, sorry, is borne. You're passionate about this character, aren't you? Well, it's the entire point of that segment of the book, because Boromir falls for the temptation of the ring, and Faramir is his brother who resists the temptation, whereas in the movie he doesn't and he fails, right? So they did completely change the meaning, which is interesting to your point about Odysseus, because one of the things I found very odd,

which you really honed in in your review, is, like, Matt Damon's character is so emotionless, which is very weird. Matt Damon is an actor has incredible range. but he sort of plays this slightly autistic Jason Bourne character for some reason. Do we know why that was done? It's because it's a Christopher Nolan movie. So he doesn't have a reputation necessarily as an actor's director.

From what I'm told, he pretty much just says, right, there's the script, figure it out yourself in terms of your performance. That's why so many of the characters in this movie, so many of the actors, should they say, just seem to be on autopilot. John Bernthal as Manilaeus, he's just, just playing John Bernthel. Every other tough guy character he's ever played, Tom Holland is just Tom Holland. That's arguably the worst performance I think I've seen of his entire acting career. And again, he's a good actor. But in that movie, he gives absolutely nothing. Because Christopher Nolan doesn't direct people. He directs ideas. Robert Pattinson was brilliant, no. I mean, he gave it as all. Which character is? So he played the head to the most evil,

the head suit, the most evil one. Oh, he was very good. He was the Vietnam I'm draft dodger. Yeah. Yeah. He's an experienced actor. Obviously, he understood the assignment in this case and probably took it upon himself to just be, right, I'm going to be the biggest prick that I can possibly be in this movie. And he did a good job, to be fair.

Oh, he did a great job. But, you know, it's really interesting when, because I've really got back into movies recently. And it seems to me, like this idea that Hollywood is dead, it's kind of premature. because I went to watch obsession in the cinema. I mean, that's a good movie. That is a great movie. I think, yeah, I don't think anyone would say Hollywood's dead. I think it's been on a decline, certainly, in the past decade or so.

It's been kept afloat by these big, mega-budget superhero movies, things like the MCU and DC and so on. You know, when you're pulling in like $2 billion per film, you, you, you're, you're, keeping the entire industry afloat. Those are tent pole movies. Obviously, that's petered out a little bit in recent years. People are moving beyond superhero movies. But the demand is still there for interest in films.

And I think movies like obsession prove, particularly with horror, all you need is a good idea, a good hook to get people in. You don't need a huge budget. You don't need big special effects. You just need a good hook, a decent script, and some good actors. And away you go. And that movie cost $750,000 to make. it's sitting at like 450 million.

It's on track, I think, to be the most profitable film of all time relative to budget. So the appetite is there for interest in movies. Maybe not necessarily on the scale that we've seen them before, but scale down the budgets a little bit and you'll still turn a profit. So it can be done for sure. And you look at like, for instance, the cast, I'm coming to movies, not as much as I was, but I follow the directors, the actors.

I didn't recognize any of those actors. In obsession? Yeah. No, they were mostly not unknowns, but relatively low profile. Not anymore, of course. Yeah. The girl who was in that, I mean, she deserves all the awards for that performance. She absolutely carried that movie.

I think Indy Navarette is her name. But yeah, she will now be, she'll be commanding like $10 million a movie within a few years easily. And what it actually shows is what you're talking about. And this was the thing that I found most egregious about the woke people. It's just all we ever wanted as audience members was to please tell us a story. And it doesn't matter what the story is. If it's a love story, tell us a good love story. If it's an action, or there's an argument to be made that every story is a love story.

But if it's an action movie, just we don't want the other stuff. Just tell the story. Absolutely, yeah. And that was always the pushback. You know, it's like, I don't want this movie to espouse my personal politics. or reaffirm all my beliefs about the world, it doesn't matter. It's entertainment. I'm there to escape from the mundane realities of day-to-day life.

And I'm there to escape from all the politics that comes with every other part of day-to-day life. So that's all it needs to do is entertain you. It's not that hard, but they made it hard. You say they made it hard. Do you think they've learned their lesson now when we look at, for instance, The Odyssey, which isn't a woke movie, as we've discussed,

and we look at obsession. And we'll talk about Project El Mary as well. Do you think Hollywood might actually be waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee? You can spend three hours in a cinema watching Christopher Nolan's movie adaptation of The Odyssey or you can spend that same three hours understanding the actual poem for free

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and what it actually means to go home. It has held an audience for close to 3,000 years. That doesn't happen by accident. The scene that changes how you read the whole thing is Calypso offering Odysseus immortality if he stays with her and he turns it down. He picks immortal life, an aging wife, a home that might not even want him back anymore.

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You can see a lot of the pivots starting to happen within the bigger franchises. Marvel is a good example of that. They very much pivoted away from all that political, identity politics pandering. And I think Hollywood has grudgingly learned their less. And I think maybe they convinced themselves, probably based on things like what they see on the internet, on social media and so on, that the world was this progressive, like, hard left utopia, you know, and they needed to match that. And it didn't work out.

And it took tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue, probably over a decade to finally realize it. But they got there in the end. It's just a shame that, you know, so many of these pop culture franchises that we grew up with, whether it's Star Trek or Star Wars or Indiana Jones, whatever it might be, they've all been casualties of war in the process, and they're not really going to come back in the way that they once did. Do you think we're going to look back and go, I know you've got your criticisms of Christian Island, as do I.

It kind of reminds me of the guy you meet down the pub who's smart, but he likes to tell you how smart he is. Do you know what I mean? You know, using words like Chathonic and, you know, everyday conversation. You go, did you really, did you really need to, Christopher? But are we going to look back at him, particularly with Oppenheimer, and go, like, this is the guy who may be saved Hollywood? I mean, ultimately, as I said earlier, I would take like 10 Christopher Nolan movies over one, like, crappy, you know, franchise rehash, some dumb popcorn movie. Whatever criticism I or anyone else might have of something like The Odyssey, it's still a relatively intelligent movie grappling with some pretty challenging source material.

And, hey, there's a lot of people now that are probably going to read The Odyssey in its original. form because of this movie. It will have piqued their interest in classic literature. So, hey, if Hollywood has to go in one direction, I'd rather it was that. Well, yeah, the only thing is, like you said earlier, and I think all of us were discussing this, you kind of put it up there with the ancient world war movies, and you go, Gladiator, Troy. You know, you can throw a few others in there, but it's like, it's not even on that level. You know what I mean? And you're talking about one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, according to some people, and one of the greatest stories in the Western canon, if you like, and it's just like seven out of ten at a stretch,

unlike a gladiator that was, you know, 10. Yeah, I mean, for me, the bar for this sort of thing is, would I want to watch it again, right? And so you could probably say you were flicking through the channels, you happen to catch gladiator on. You'd probably say, I'll watch this. It's pretty good. With The Odyssey, I said at the end of my review, I'll probably never watch it again and probably not really think about it again. But then you guys are asking me about it and you're making me think about it, damn it. Well, you do this for a living, comment on movies. But we wanted to touch on Project Hail Mary as well. That's another very, very popular and successful movie.

Yes, absolutely. Again, when you guys talk about the lack of politics, the lack of pandering in it, great. It's a movie that's just entirely about adventure, science, friendship, just universal themes that basically anyone could watch. And you don't have to be like some hardcore science fiction not to appreciate it. You know, it's not pitched at the same level of a Christopher Nolan movie, which is a great compromise. You know, it makes this stuff accessible.

And it tells just a nice, charming story, a relationship between a man and a rock, effectively, a rock monster. And yet they make the thing. that creature, Rocky, more likable and they give them more humanity than all these like CGI Star Wars characters combined. It's impressive what they did there. But, yeah, I'm pleased to see things like that successful. And I want to see more movies like that as well. Don't you think when you were watching this? I was watching Ryan Gosling's performance. And look, credit where credit is due, the way that he carries that movie, he's likable,

even though he kind of plays this sort of wimping, nerdy guy. And he looks at it. like that, it's stretching the boundaries of credibility, shall we just say. But however, it shows the power of star quality. The fact that he carries that movie opposite a puppy, a puppy, sorry, a puppet. Well, you seem to be puppyish qualities. What movies are you watching, man? But he has that, that shows the power of star quality, I guess, is the point I'm making. Sure, and, you know, they're in relatively short supply these days,

actual movie stars who are box office draws. You know, there's not many of them left. Like, he's risen to that sort of level now where it's like, you know, a Ryan Gosling movie. Okay, that's interesting. Tom Cruise is obviously one that's a holdover from a previous generation, but he just refuses to age out. So fair enough.

Yeah. But there's very few of them nowadays. You know, again, like we're all by the same age. We grew up in like the 80s and 90s. You know, there was back in the day, be like, oh, there's a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or whatever. Like, that would get people's interest, but we don't really live in that world now.

So when you get guys like that who can carry a movie, partly on Star Power, partly on just, you know, the likeability of their character, again, it's proof that maybe there's a bit of life left in that world still. And do you know what? I was watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not biopic. It was this, no, it's not biopipipic,

but it was his documentaries based on his life. And it was great on Netflix. And they were going through all these movies, not just, you know, The Terminator, which is incredible. Or Terminator 2 or Predator, all brilliant movies. But things like Twins, and you just go, oh, movies were fun. Yeah, they were. They were allowed to be fun.

And again, like, you know, a lot of these movies wouldn't have made crazy box office revenue like we do nowadays, but they're still memorable. You know, we still remember twins, or you're remember Terminator 2 or whatever, like their box office would be pretty dwarfed by today's, but they had something about them. I've talked before about someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger compared to someone like The Rock, who's the closest we've got to like a modern day equivalent, an action star, big burly guy, you know, and really specializes in these popcorn action

flicks. But most people would struggle to remember any movies that he's ever done. Right. Maybe the Fast and the Furious, but that's pretty much it. The amount of money he's made over the years is dwarfed what Arnold Schwarzenegger made at his peak. But people remember Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. They don't remember the rock. But Arnold Schwarzenegger movies are better. Objectively. Yeah. A lot better. Yeah. You know. There was more care put into them in probably better writing. And, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe they came at the right time when the industry was different. Yeah. Well, Francis mentioned Netflix, and one of the things I always wanted to discuss with you is what you think the impact of the streaming services have been.

Because there's some amazing stuff. There's some rubbish, obviously, but there's also some amazing stuff on there. You know, I'm really enjoying a house of dragon at the moment. And also, a friend of mine introduced me to Landman. Have you seen that? I have, yes. Oh, so good, isn't it? that's on Paramount Plus. So, yeah, I think Taylor Sheridan created Landman, and he's got this entire universe of shows, like, what's the Yellowstone?

Tulsa King, the Dutton Ranch. And they're all, how can I describe it? It's basically TV shows for men. Yeah. Because it's all just like manly men, like working on oil fields and like having punchups and stuff. But he absolutely understands his audience. And he said recently, like,

he almost does shows like that to piss off the Hollywood critics because they know he stands for the opposite of what they stand for and he'll intentionally just write stuff in there to annoy them because he's successful enough that he can get away with it. But again, there's a demand then for shows like that, and so they work. But yeah, in terms of the streaming services and what they're going to do to the industry, I did go through a phase where I thought they're going to be the future.

You know, theatrical releases are gradually going to dwindle, and it's going to become the equivalent of stage shows nowadays. There'll be a core audience of very committed people who still go and see movies in a cinema, but most people will catch it on their streaming service at home or even on their phone or whatever while they're on the move. Maybe we're not quite there now. Maybe there's a little bit of the streaming bubble bursting, perhaps.

We'll see. But there's a lot of, for all the good stuff that you get on these streaming services, I mean, come on, there's a lot of slop. Oh, there is a lot of slop. It blows my mind. Like, sometimes I'll just sit down. I don't know what I'm going to watch that night. I'll bring up Netflix.

Let's have a look through. And 20 minutes later, I'll still be scrolling. I haven't found anything that I want to watch. And it's insane. It's too much choice almost. There is. There is a lot of choice. But I think, I don't know,

it feels to me like the big screen will always be there because it's such a special experience. And I think partly, even if you could build a cinema in your house, it's still not the same. I think there's something about going outside of your house, going to a place and sitting down in a venue with other people. It may be lots of them, maybe a very few of them, but something about that that just gives you

the opportunity to be with this piece of entertainment, this piece of content, whatever it is, undisturbed, undistracted for two hours other than the twight next to you eating popcorn. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, look, you know, again, when we were talking about the Odyssey, it's, you know, done crazy business in iMacs because people want the spectacle of it you know that ginormous screen the huge sound system like really maxing out what you can do with cinema technology giving you the most immersive experience you can and great you know if people are still invested in that then that's good to see because i would rather it be that communal experience and that experience of

shutting off everything else because you're never going to get this at home aren't you like you're always going to have your phone there or whatever and there's always that temptation. But to switch off the phone, to not have any distractions and just focus your attention for two hours on the movie, the problem, as you say, is just the things that surround it. You know, you've got to sit through like 30 minutes of adverts and trailers. You've got to deal with the asshole in front of you who's like making loads of noise or someone who's talking behind you or whatever. But every experience is going to have its plus season, negatives, you know. Overall, though, yeah, I'd rather see movies in that format if we can.

always, this is a question I'd love to ask you. And again, it's going to show my age a little bit. To me, the apex of cinema in my life was late 90s, early noughties, because what you had were movies that they may not have done well in the cinema, but when they came to DVD, they got that second lease of life. And it seems that you don't really get that anymore. DVD was so important, particularly when you think about movies like, you know, I don't know, Goodwill Hunting, that's how I discovered Goodwill Hunting on DVDs, so many, and also classic movies as well,

watching Goodfellers on DVD. Do you think that's really hit the movie industry hard when that technology went away? Definitely, yeah, because it was factored into their financial model. They would say, like, well, there's movies that, like, might not have quite turned a profit at the box office, but we know we're going to make, like, 50% more in DVD rentals or sales further down the,

line. And so that movie then becomes profitable. And so when you do that, they are more willing to take chances on slightly unproven concepts or things that might not necessarily work in the cinema, but they'll eventually turn a profit from it. And so you get a better breadth of artistic material out there. You know, there's the movies that people are willing to take these chances on. What you got in the post-d-d-D-D world, the post-physical media world, is more and more of a reliance on proven IPs, proven properties. That's why you got these endless franchise movies, like Jurassic Park 19 or whatever, or like endless Marvel movies, because once you find that model that works, and once you find a franchise that works, oh, you just keep making more of it.

And that's why they kept raiding all these old things, like, oh, we're going to do another Indiana Jones movie, you know, like 20 years after the last. one when Harrison Ford's on a Zimmer frame. Just anything that's got like a built-in audience because we don't have anything else except the theatrical release window. It's got to make its money there. And so it's got to be a safe bet. And that's the problem is that there really are no safe bets in Hollywood. If you take the classic example of a movie that no one heard of but did gangbusters, something like Dirty Dancing.

Who would have predicted that Dirty Dancing, a movie about essentially a holiday, romance would become one of the most iconic movies of an entire decade. They somehow capture the cultural zeitgeist, don't they? And become part of it. And I think what you see now is, like, we don't have that because there's that loss of the monoculture now. We're becoming so fragmented, like, not just because there's, like, a million different streaming services.

You know, you've got YouTube, you've got all the, you know, online stuff that are competing for people's attention. And so that world of like, oh my God, I just went and saw this amazing movie at the cinema at the weekend. You should go and see it too. That's dwindling now. And so we don't get those shared experiences. And so less and less these movies are becoming part of the culture and becoming memorable, which is a real shame. That's so true.

And I think it's so much driven by technology. I remember as a young boy staying with my grandparents in Ukraine in the village in the summer and walking past the tiny low. cinema, it would have been like a 10-seater, 15-seater, 20-seater. And there was a giant post. I didn't speak English at the time of Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of his movies at the time. It was in the 90s. You just, like, we now live in the era of mass customization where everything is so tailored to you that you have the exact politics that you want, the exact beverage, the exact food, the exact everything. That it's probably one of the reasons that you will never get actors who are as big as that going forward.

because not everyone is going to watch that movie because there's so much other stuff that you could watch that is going to be much more tailored to you specifically. Well, give it a bit more time. You'll be able to tailor movies to your particular tastes. Like, hey, I'll be able to rustle it up for you. You know, you can be like, give me Titanic all over again, but with a happier ending.

And it'll be able to render it for you. And that's where we might end up, where people get their own customized movie experiences and there literally won't be a shared version of a film anymore. That will be quite cool, though, because you can watch the same movie many times and see it go in different directions depending on choices you make.

That's what video games are like now. You know, it's one of the reasons I enjoy them because you make choices that take the story in a different direction, and it gives the thing repeatability and enjoyment. And also the participatory value of that is very engaging. I don't know about that.

In my happy ending, Leonardo de Capra, would always drown. But, no, it's interesting you talk about video, games there because like that as an industry dwarfs movies in terms of revenue it's like 10 times as much on an annual basis and it's only getting bigger yeah so i mean like that could well be the future of entertainment and well there's a reciprocal thing with that as well because now you're seeing more and more adaptations of popular video games in cinema you know that was always the holy grail for them like back in the 90s they would try they would fail like we've we've all seen like the

Mario Brothers movie from, but I'm still having therapy for that. But they're starting to crack it now. And like these are turning out to be very profitable. You know, like the Mario, the new Mario movie or the Sonic movies or whatever. The Minecraft movies were huge. Is there a Fortnite movie? I imagine this should be. Probably, yeah. Probably. There's definitely a Halo one.

Yes. The TV show, yeah. The TV show. I watched a few episodes that. I was decent. Speaking of which, there used to be a video game way back when called June, which reminds me of the June movies. What did you make of those? The Dune movies? Yeah, they were great.

I mean, good sci-fi. The second one especially felt like an event movie. Like there was something really, you know, significant going on there. I think it was a great adaptation of the book. I read the book when I was a teenager, so like some of the scenes they nailed pretty well. And pretty challenging world to render into movie format. Obviously, Lynch tried it back in the 80s,

and that was... Yeah. I'm weirdly ambivalent about the third one, though. I don't know. Like, I feel like the third one is going to be, Chani was right about everything, and Paul needs to get punished for it. So we'll see what comes of that.

But weirdly, it's another Zendaya movie this year. Yeah. We can't get away from her. Do you know, I'd love to talk about this with you. So I've got a theory as to why Hollywood isn't as good as it used to be. Okay. It's the death of the shagger.

It's look, and I'll tell you why, think about the bad boy, the good-looking bad boy, both the actor. I thought you were going to talk about Harvey Weinstein. I was like, I mean, he did make some great movies, but I'm just so leaning out of shot there going, ah, I'm not sure about this. So you are on your own. You carry on, sir. Let's look at Miramax's canon. Like the man, too. Exactly.

Just in an all-male environment. No. No, but if you look at, for instance, you kind of look at the Mickey Rawks at the time. You know, the good-looking bad boy who everybody kind of talked about and it would make, you know, he was problematic in many ways. You put a camera on him, boom, you got dynamite. And it's also not just off-screen, but the character's on-screen, like the John McClain's. You knew this guy was troubled.

You knew there was darkness there, but also he was magnetic. You don't get the Jack Nicholson's, you don't get that anymore, do you? Well, there's a high degree of pusification in Hollywood now, so that's probably the reason for it. Like, the actors and the characters that they play are, they're not allowed to be dangerous like that anymore. Right, so this filters into all aspects of the industry, because if they are dangerous, if they're too domineering, or they're too much of a loose cannon, they're seen as problematic. And that's scary for people. We get asked this all the time. Which VPN do you use at Trigonometry?

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and he's been in Hollywood all his life and he's quite well known. And he said something to me in a green room in a comedy club and I said to him, how's L.A.? And he went, dude, everyone's terrified. Everyone's terrified. And you just go, that is obviously awful. But how can you make great art if you're terrified?

Because great art is about risk. it's about taking that chance. It's about going, I don't know if this is going to work, but let's try anyway. Well, it's also having the ability to tell the truth. Because that's what art is, really,

isn't it? Ultimately, it's expressing truth and allowing people to make their judgments on it. But if you're not allowed to express whatever truth you have in mind and it's just got to be the pre-approved version, well, then you're just going to get the same crap over and over again,

the same exact viewpoints, the same exact worldview. And you see it. You see it in Hollywood movies. Like, the only one I think that's different from that is maybe the Taylor Sheridan's of the world that we talked about before, where he sort of leans slightly the other way and he's not afraid to say that now because he's successful enough that he can get away with it. But generally speaking, yeah, I think the climate is one of fear because all it takes is for an actor to say the wrong thing in an interview, to express the wrong opinion about one particular issue, some hot topic. And that could be it. That could be their career down the tubes.

I was just going to say, I mean, Taylor Sheridan to me is a very interesting example because I do think, you know, we talked about the kind of woke era. I think the woke era also produced this idea that, you know, the way to make a great movie is to be like really, really, really, really not woke. And then it sort of dragged in a lot of people who were leading with that. Whereas Taylor Sheridan is clearly very good. I mean, did he also direct 19-20? 23 and the 1887, the prequels, those just purely from an artistic point of view are incredible.

For me, way better than Yellowstone, which I actually wasn't that much of a fan. But those two prequels are really, really high quality. And that's kind of where I always wanted it to go. I didn't want a woke movie, because it's annoying. I also didn't want an anti-woke movie or something that's expressly political. Yeah. I see this on my videos occasionally where I might be criticizing some movie, whatever, that's not woke by any normal measure. And so sometimes people will say, like, well, it's not woke. I mean, what do you want?

And I'm like, well, I want a good movie as well. Like, there's plenty of reasons why a movie can suck. Right. It doesn't have to be just because it, like, pushes identity politics. It could be badly written, badly directed, whatever it might be. And so, yeah, I think there's, we have to be very careful that we don't just, you know, lump everything into that one basket. Like, oh, well, it doesn't push any obvious politics, therefore it must be good. No, we still want to champion good art.

And that's a whole separate question. But as long as I think if we can get back to that era of, you know, assessing films on their own merits, not about the politics that they push, then that's great. I mean, that takes the horrible, like, culture war stuff out of it, and it allows us to just get back to, you know, being geeky over Star Wars or whatever it might be, rather than, you know, oh, your politics disagree with mine. Guess you're going to have to die then. That's what the level of discourse is like in a lot of cases. Well, right.

And, look, in sort of defense of the people who feel strongly about the culture, well, I mean, it really does matter because it is, you know, certainly in my conception, attempt to undermine the very essence of our civilization. And it was important to counter. But I think what has happened is, you know, if you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you. And now people are walking around with this sort of like woke, anti-woke filter in their brains. And they see everything through that. Yes. And you can end up seeing enemies around every corner with this sort of thing. I think the most ludicrous example I ever saw was a remake of a video game. I think it was called Dead Space, some like survival horror game in space. And there's a

restroom in it at one point on this space station that's overrun with horrifying monsters. And it's some like gender neutral bathroom. And people lost their minds over that. So this game is woke. And it's like you're stomping like mutated creatures into the ground with your boots or like chainsawing them in half. How is this? You know, that's where it becomes absurd. Yeah. And so yeah, yeah, There needs to be that perspective, I think, and just try not to go crazy with it. And I think it's interesting because we're looking at the last movie stars with Ryan Gosling. And one of Ryan Gosling's superpowers is his intense likeability is that even though he's this big, handsome guy who could pretty much get any guy he wants, you still really like him. Whereas we compare him with the movie stars of earlier, particularly like the Mickey Rourke's, there was something fundamentally broken about

Mickey. And as a result, to my taste, is it made for a more interesting performance on screen. You look at the wrestler, for instance, the Aronofsky movie. I don't know any particular actor now who would be able to have that type of performance on screen. It's the tortured artist effect, isn't it? Yeah. And yeah, he's a prime example. Obviously, he paid the price for it long term. You know, if you've seen him recently, he's not in a good place. But I think, generally speaking, yeah, like you kind of expect a certain intensity from your artists, you know, over and above like big popcorn movies or whatever, but the people who are creating more serious films, they should have that balance of light and dark in them, whether it's trauma, whether it's inspiration or drive,

whatever it might be. It creates a more interest in performer ultimately. And I've heard it described nowadays as like these actors, they seem like they just come across like. from an assembly line. You know, they've all had the same experiences. They all had that Southern California upbringing, same worldview. They've never really had anything bad happen. And so you don't get the same level of nuance from them. You don't get the same interest.

You don't get the same intensity. And maybe it's the same with writers as well in Hollywood. Again, like people who are working there now have lived less interesting lives than the hard drinking, hard smoking, hard party, and guys of the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, those people all came from a lot of the time a tough background. They had to claw their way into the industry.

They had interesting life experiences that molded them into interesting people. That then came across in their writing. Maybe you don't get quite as much of that now. It's much more controlled, safe, coddled and boring. Well, you look at it like, again, just to go back to Ryan Gosling, I think he was in, you know, the Mickey Mouse Club, was he, was that, or was that Ryan Reynolds, maybe?

Again, but... He just liked the Ryan's. Yeah, just like the Ryans. Anyone called Ryan. Anyone call Ryan. But if you look at like the Steve McQueen's, for instance, like you look at Steve McQueen's journey, how he started out, I mean, he was in, I think he was in a care home for kids,

and then when he left, and then he did a variety of jobs, and slowly made his way. But that bled onto the screen. It gave an authenticity that, for me, nobody is able to match that. No, the same with guys like Kirk Douglas or Charles Bronson, like these guys all came from tough backgrounds and went through all kinds of deprivations in their childhood to eventually like claw their way into an industry that wouldn't accept them necessarily, but they forced it to. And you don't get so much of that nowadays. They're manufactured now. And I guess that's, to me, that's a real problem because ultimately, and again, you could argue this is a taste thing. it creates a less interesting and compelling story because I like nice people.

I like nice people, nice people, nice people are nice to work with and nice to hang around with and whatever else. Do I want to see a nice person on screen? Do I want to listen to a nice person's album? Not particularly. Yeah. It's the same with what would I compare it to? So, you know that new TV show, what's been out for a few years now, the Rings of Power

on Amazon, right? that's their adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, all that the Tolkien lore and so on. You compare the actors that you see on that. They're all very soft, very amiable. They look like they just want to wear a nice cozy jumper, and have a cup of cocoa. Compare that with, like, the Lord of the Rings from 25 years ago,

you had guys like Vigo Mortensen and Sean Bean. Those guys looked like you could just dump them in the wilderness and they would survive no problem. You know, they had a different upbringing, different experiences, it molded into much more interest in people, not just in their performances, but how they look, how they carry themselves, the confidence they have. And we're just kind of losing that, I think, now in cinema. And that's, to me, the real problem because, again, but I just don't think

nice people create great art, if I'm being honest. You look at, you know, people go, for instance, Picasso, and they'll go, oh, Picasso was like this and he was problematic, or any other. other type of artists. And I just go, yes, but what did they create? What would you rather go to? A nice person who creates art that's, eh, or would you rather go and see a great artist who, let's be fair, maybe a bit of a cun. Yeah. So basically what you're saying is you want to see actors suffer more. Yeah. And you know, you read about the Kubricks of this world. I don't think being an actor on a Kubrick set was particularly enjoyable or fun. Yeah. Having said that, being evil doesn't make you a great artist.

Hitler would be a good example of that. And, you know, I've done many videos about, like, movies that have had difficult productions, whether, you know, it was actors, directors clashing with each other, whatever it might be. And sometimes it results in great art or great movies. Like, you know, James Cameron is a notoriously hard-driving director, Stanley Kubrick, obviously. Other times you end up with complete garbage at the end of it, like the island of Dr. Moreau.

So obviously there needs to be talent behind it all. But yeah, as you say, a bit of friction is necessary, I think, to create something really good. Speaking of challenging production, you reminded me, we went to the premiere of The Rise of Merlin. Have you seen that? The, is that the TV show?

It's the Daily Wire made, Jeremy Boring, made... Yes. Have you seen that one? I've seen, like, the first episode of it. What do you think? It was interesting. They were trying to cram a lot into it. There's a lot of lore, there's a lot of characters, there's time jumps and stuff. And I feel like they were trying to do a lot of heavy lifting very quickly. Yeah, I'd agree with that, definitely. What I found was it was interesting rather that I think they didn't have a massive initial release in the US,

but it's now on the stream. I think it's on Amazon now. Yeah, and it's become very popular. Yeah. Very, very popular. So good on them for doing that. Critical Drinker. Great to have you back. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in the second. But as you're going to ask you some questions from my supporters in the second, you know, final question, always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Oh, man, I had a good answer for this last time, and now I'm not sure, because we've talked about so much in this. Why is Zendaya in everything all of a sudden? She was so horribly miscast as Athena. She frowns a lot. That was her role. I don't understand. Like, Athena is meant to be this majestic,

imposing figure who's a mixture of the warrior and the intellectual. We didn't get that really from The Odyssey, did we? She sort of came across as more like his conscience than a goddess. This is the bit where actually I'd agree with Francis where it was so inauthentic to the ancient Greeks because to them, gods and goddesses were, they had agency, they were living beings who had their own agendas, their own flaws, their own faults. and to sort of have a goddess be this sort of almost like a spiritual thing that just is there to reflect you back to you in some way and guide you along the path.

That's not the way the Greeks thought about gods and goddesses at all. No, and I think it's what happens when you get a man of science who fundamentally doesn't hold with religion or with mysticism or spirituality, and then ask him to weave a story in a world that's saturated with that and demands that stuff. you get this weird attempt to rationalize the gods as, well, they're just Poseidon is now a storm on the ocean and, you know, Zeus is like thunder in the sky or whatever. And it doesn't fundamentally work with a story like that.

They should be an active part of the story, the narrative. All right. Great to have you on. Thank you. Head on over to triggerpod.com.uk, where we're going to ask the critical drinker your questions. Don't forget to click the link in the description of this. episode to grab the special CyberGhost VPN discount. It's completely risk-free, so check it out today.

Besides the recent success of The Odyssey, it appears that the Hollywood model for producing movies, i.e. creative casting, shoehorning ideology into storylines, is failing. Why hasn't the ship course corrected yet?