Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with Dani Fernandez

This week, Caitlin and Jamie take a break from raiding tombs to head to the studio and record an episode about Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) with special guest Dani Fernandez!

(This episode contains spoilers)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women and are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef and best
start changing it with the beck del Cast. Hi, and
welcome to the Bectel Cast. My name is Caitlin Dronte.
My name is Jamie Loftus, and we host a podcast

(00:21):
about the portrayal of women in movies. We should do.
It's called the Becktel Cast. You just like listen to
right now? This is it? What if this is a mistake?
Is there like an auto play? The app I use
for my podcast does not auto play, but I have
to assume that there are like some auto playing podcast
apps right that would just like to the next one
in your listing. Yeah, they're like, have you ever heard

(00:42):
of these broads? Anyways, now they're talking about spoiler alert.
Welcome to Never Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo. I'm Jimmy Park.
Can we do it? We're talking about tomb Raider. We
should do an episode of Never Not Funny an Pardo? Yeah,
hear that, Jimmy and find us on your podcast. Yeah,

(01:04):
or we'll just do or we'll do a cover of
an episode and he's already done where you'll be Jimmy
Pardo and then I'll be the guest Jimmy Pardo. If
you could email us what your favorite episode of Never
Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo is and then let us know,
and then we'll transcribe it and then perform it and
then release it as an episode of our podcast. How
come it's okay for like bands to do covers of songs,

(01:26):
but podcasts can't do covers of other podcast comedians do
it around Halloween at like sticker treat and stuff. True,
It's like I did a Maria Bamford joke this year.
It was very cathartic and fun. Yeah, you're like, oh,
I get to do stuff that's better than what I
can write. I think that's probably how bands feel when
they're like, let us let us cut cross song that's
way beyond our personal competence. Yeah. Sure, so, Jimmy Pardo,

(01:49):
reach out, let us know if you want us to
do a cover of an episode of Never Not Funny
with Jimmy Parto. I think that that is funny, that
that is that is the podcast you pulled out of
your asses, Like you know we've got to cover. I
don't know why I thought of that, but hey, let
me tie it back into our podcast. We just did
not pass the Bechdel test because we were talking about
a man, Jimmy Pardo. Jimmy Pardo. But I would say

(02:12):
that also unless there's other parties that I don't know about.
I'm never Not Funny with Jimmy Parto. No episode of
Never Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo would pass the Bechtel
test until he gets the two of us on it
and we don't talk to him. We can ignore him,
and we talked to each other. Part O help us
on your podcast, but please be silent, okay anyway, So

(02:34):
if you don't already know the Bechtel cast, we talked
about the portrayal of women in movies using the Bechdel test.
It's just a really just a jumping off point, a
way to start the conversation. We talked about so much more.
But the Becktel test requires that a movie has two
female characters who speak to each other about something other
than a man. There's a second Jimmy Parto podcast called

(02:57):
called Playing Games with Jimmy pro I've never heard of
that one, but I feel like maybe I should. I'll
add it to my list. What if we were getting
money from Jimmy Pardo around the back end to be like, yeah,
just bring Jimmy Parto up at some point is fine. Yeah.
I'm suspicious of everything and everyone now and I think
everything is a secret advertisement. But sometimes you really are
just talking about just accidentally started talking about Jimmy Parto.

(03:21):
Every time we say Jimmy Pardo, Jimmy Parter gives us
twenty do So thank you, Jimmy Pardo. We love you,
Jimmy part Alright anyway, so yeah, so sorry, We're here
to talk about a specific movie, as we always are.
We have a guest to help us. She's the host
at hyper Rpg and she's a co host of the

(03:43):
podcast Nerdificent on How Stuff Works. Thanks for having Danny Fernande.
I am enjoying my Celsius sparkling wild berry that you
can catch at any Whole Foods near you. You heard,
Jimmy part loves that. Ship loves it so hyper Rpg,
which is like a Twitch channel, they don't care if

(04:04):
we have drinks and stuff on while we're podcasting and whatnot.
And I always have Celsis and I'm just waiting for
them to because it's an energy drink and I need it.
It's a healthy in quotes, energy drink, and I'm always
just waiting for them to just send me packs Mike's
Hard Lemonade. Right, I'm actively sabotaging my body when I'm
doing product, and they still they followed us on Twitter

(04:25):
and then they dropped the ball. Well, I think it's
now on us to reach out to them. Okay, fine,
let's do it. Okay, let's loop in direct message us
Mike's Hard Lemonade, Jimmy, Let's make something happen playing games
with Jimmy Pardo. So anyway, thank you for joining us.
We are here to talk about Laura Croft tomb Rat. Yes,

(04:47):
so you first saw this movie when last night I
thought this morning, yeah, I saw last night when you
had emailed me and we're like, are you would you
be down to talk about Laura Croft? I was like, yeah, sure,
finally watch it and see when it's I mean, I
had the video game when I was Actually I didn't
have the video game I it was one of the
ones that my brothers and I would rent from Blockbuster

(05:09):
because one of those I had something similar, which was
Charrok Dinosaur Hunter, which that was the like hunting game
that I would play, but I didn't have Laura Croft
and we also had Golden Eye for our entry before.
But you did play the Tomb Writer video games? Yeah, yeah,
what was it like? I mean, it was like had

(05:30):
similar scenes from what she did in this I haven't
played it in like two decades, so I don't really remember,
but she had no she had some of the same
like flips and some of the same action sequences from
this movie. But it wasn't it was something that like
we would beg my mom to rent for like seven
dollars like once a month or something. So it wasn't
one of the ones I grew up with. I grew

(05:50):
up with playing Diddykong racing, so I was a racing person.
I up with Barbie Detective on PC. Yeah. Yeah. She
would go to a carnival and just stare at people
and eventually you'd figure it out. Okay, it's usually at
the clown. Yeah. I think looking back, I'm sure my
mom was like, I don't need my young boys to
be like having I'm sure that they were having a

(06:13):
thought with what my mom is extremely Catholic, so I'm
sure when she saw Laura Cross she was like, Oh,
we're gonna she's fully video game girl. Oh yeah, yeah.
She actually is a thirty six double D, which they
made Angelina. They didn't even they made her like a
thirty six D because they were like, we can't make
it anymore. So people start, yeah, frightfully huge. I would

(06:37):
love it if she used her tips to knock people out.
That would be so into it that robot. Guys, you
know who loves doom Writer. Jimmy part I does want
to make more money from Jimmy Parto. Yea thousands of
dollars by now, Jimmy Parto is ragging up up. He
didn't give us the problem with Jimmy Parto. He did

(06:58):
not give us a cap of how many times we
could say it. So when we say it in unison
and actually it's hundred dollars, it's crazy. And if we
sing it, he's in trouble. I saw tumb Writer this morning.
It's weird. It's like one of those movies where it
came out in oh one and so it's like something

(07:18):
I've been familiar. I wasn't old enough to see it
when it came out for sure, And I also just
like didn't grow up with video games in really any way,
so I just was peripherally aware of it my whole life.
I do know that I've seen some sort of like
you know, and I feel like we come up across
this a lot in our podcast is like sort of
like corporate feminist articles about like nine reasons why a

(07:39):
Laura Croft is a feminist icon when you're just like yours,
like probably I'm going to hazard a guess and say
it's a no. But I had seen a lot about it,
but I didn't know. I didn't know this was a
movie about the Illuminati. Pretty blatant opening, yeah, like a
pretty pretty like hardcore education and Illuminati base. I really

(08:01):
was not familiar with that term until I think Jay
Z referenced it, you know, maybe five years ago. I
didn't know it was a thing so illuminati before it
was hot. Well, I was reading Bragg, the Da Vinci
Code and the whatever other Angels, Yes, bitch, and Illuminati
is prominently featured in those narratives, so I already knew

(08:24):
about it there. I knew. I I do remember I
did read that was like one of those things that
you would just everyone. You had to read it, whether
you felt attached to it in anyway. We had like
a family copy of the da Vinci Code had to
get her. I got it like last It was dirty.
It was covered in you know, like cheeto dust, and
I was like, oh, I guess I've got to read

(08:45):
the da Vinci Code now. And then that horrible movie
came out where Alfred Millina isn't it? Is he really Bina?
Isn't it? Yeah? And the priest whips himself and you're like, oh, wow,
that's all I remember about the movie. Alfred Billina, isn't it?
Priest weeps himself? Tom Hanks uh in it? No? Or
is that Angels? Indean? I think? And he plays he's
in both. He plays the guy whose name will never know?

(09:09):
Dan Brown probably yeah. Dan Brown was like, what if
I was cool? Robert Langley? Is that it? I don't know?
And you literally knew the whole time, And he just said,
I don't know. I do that all the time, or
I might not even be in right now. And then
I name an extremely specific fact like where was he
last night? Was he had this address? I'm just hazarding

(09:29):
a guess. Sure, I was going to say I didn't
see this movie when it came out. I think I
was telling K this came out the same year as
nine eleven, and I just was like, I'm I'm busy.
There was other things going on, what time of year,
and so I didn't see this. I also, it was
a time when I was like, I was in middle
school and my family had moved me to Texas, and

(09:51):
so I just was not I don't know, I was
not watching a woman like kicking ass and some paroids.
This was this was pre nine eleven. It was June, okay,
so it was Yeah. I wouldn't have seen it in
theaters anyways, but I didn't catch it at the Blockbuster
because of nine eleven. So it's so interesting. We have
done sort of a weird amount of movies that came

(10:12):
out right before, and I left Shrek being the most
prominent of like, wow, truly the last stand of innocence.
We got Shrek and then the whole fucking world fell
Apart draw your conclusions, but yeah, yeah, I I didn't
see this movie when KY. Also didn't see Shrek when
it came out because my parents were But I did
see the Master of Disguise when it came out, So

(10:33):
it's not that we had good taste, it's just that
we had twenty dollars. When we had twenty dollars, Yeah,
like if we had disposable income that month, then we
would see whatever garbage pile was currently in theaters. I
first saw lower Craft Tumbat not when it came out either,
but I think shortly after that, so I didn't see
in the theater, but I want to say I probably
saw it within the next year of it being out,

(10:55):
but I only saw that once, so I didn't remember
it that well, except for the only thing that I
remember is her being in a towel and the scene
in the movie taking it off and then you're seeing her.
That was the one thing I remember about it until
I rewatched it the other day. I think that speaks
to a lot about what this movie, what message it's

(11:18):
sending before we dive into because this is like, this
is sort of like an interesting thing for us in
a number of ways where I think we figured out
before we started that this is the first video game
to movie adaptation we've done on the podcast that we
can think of. It's also actually played Heather's the video
game a lot. So that was well. I played the

(11:39):
great gad. If you guys want to have a silent Hill,
you can talk about Silent Hill. Silent Hill would be
a really interesting one. I haven't seen the nurses are
like murders. That game terrified me. But yeah, silent Hill,
Silent Hill, that would be an interest. Yeah. Woof, it's rough,
it's really rough. But this is the first video game

(12:01):
adaptation that I think we've done on the show. And
it's also there's a number of scenes in this movie
that I would be interested to see the script for
this movie because there's the first scene of this movie,
and then I'll let you get into the recap. The
first scene of this movie, I think on paper would
look pretty much fine. Where the first scene in this movie,
Larcroft is fighting a robot. There's a bunch of fancy

(12:23):
you know, she wins, you know, it's it's an action scene,
and she wins. But then every other part of the
movie makes it so that she's like a sexual object
from the way it's filmed. The way this movie treats
her body in frame is extremely you know, objectified. There's
also and I feel like this is kind of a
carryover from video games, and literally anyone correct me, because

(12:46):
I don't know a lot about video games. But there's
so many like action sequences in this movie where you
hear it almost sounds like the same three like vocal
reactions over and over where she's like ah ah, she's
making fight sex is mid orgasm both and like how
she's vocalizing things and what she looks like and her

(13:09):
face look content like she just orgasm. And then the
I don't know if the cost I mean the costumes
sort of is built into the adaptation, but it's like,
you know, certainly not. She's not really protected in any
way that we can see. So it was just like
from the get go, it's like, Okay, here is in
theory a character that looks capable on paper, and the

(13:30):
movie is actively basically working against it, which I think
is something that we see in Transformers as well. Angelina
Jolie actually didn't want to wear the shorts, she said that,
but then she knew that it would make the fans happy,
so she wore the little tiny shorts, the lower cropt shorts,
but you can see she switched out of them a
couple of times. Yeah. When pants, Yeah, it's like whenever

(13:52):
she's got sensible pants, and I was like, she still
looks hot, like it's not it's not like she looks
like ship now like Angela and Jelli can wear cargo pants.
She's also wearing like these this weird like gravity reversing
bro throughout the entire movie, where like it just like
to heaven. Yeah, it's Illuminati to the light. Okay, So

(14:17):
I'll do the recap and then we have a lot
to talk about after that. So Laura Craft to is
about Laura Craft. She is a rich lady Laura or
Laura Laura, Lara, Laura, Laura Craft. It's that was where's

(14:38):
mines like Spanish Laura Croft La. I'm just gonna say
Laura Laura. I don't know, it'll go. I'll say whatever. Craft.
There's a very there's a transatlantic vague accent that continues
through this movie. We don't know, we don't know. So

(14:59):
Lara Croft has an ancient tomb in her house and
she's fighting a robot in it. So we learned, Okay,
she's like she does stuff with tombs. Maybe she's even
a tomb writer, dare we say? Dare we say? So
we meet her and established that fact about her. Meanwhile,
there's this guy named Manfred and he and his Illuminati

(15:20):
friends are looking for again classic they're looking for a
key that when put in a certain place at a
certain time, in that certain time being the alignment of
all nine planets, which is also known as a total
solar eclipse. I thought you were going to say a
total lie. Total line has very strong videas about the planet.

(15:44):
That scene was so crazy of just like there's a
lot of parts in this movie that you're like, Oh,
that's fucking lazy, but that's oh my gosh, is like
a row of old white men in ornate chairs, and
they're like, this is the exposition for the scene. The
planets five thousand years, one week. It must happen now.
I was like, who are you, Like, what is this? Yeah,

(16:07):
so this event only happens once every five thousand years,
and if they put the key in the right place
at the right time, they'll find this triangle artifact things
that will enable them to control time. The stakes are
high and everyone wants this. Who's the actor playing the
bad guy. His name is Ian's Something. He's from. He's

(16:28):
in Game of Thrones. He hangs out with the dragon
his name is whatever, denarest targarian. There you go again,
you did it again? Whatever. I don't know. Her name
is Robert Langley. I love that. Angelina Jolie was British,
British and quotes whatever that acts it was. But Daniel

(16:50):
Craig was American. Why doing the worst American accent I've
ever heard. He was all over the place. I hope
they were just trolling each other, like seeing how awful
they could do it. They're like, let's see if anyone
notices if we do the worst job. It's not okay, Sorry,
it's not Robert Langley's Robert Langdon. So I didn't even

(17:12):
know Rogdon wasn't Langdon. Yeah, well I was by making
fun of you, thank you so much. So back to
she has a dead dad and she really misses classic
classic love when the daddy's dead. So she's all like, Daddy,

(17:33):
I miss you. Meanwhile, the planetary alignment starts happening, and
she finds this clock in her house that apparently her
dad left behind, and it starts taking and inside of
it is the key that's going to unlock the location
of the triangle that controls time. So of course Daniel
Craig shows up. He and her are like kind of

(17:54):
rival tomb raiders, but there's also maybe some like sexual
tension there, we don't know. So then some bad guys
come and steal the key. She figures out some information
that her dad left behind again about where to go
and find a triangle, because the triangle was broken into
two pieces and they have to find both pieces and
reunite them. So could I just talk about that plot

(18:17):
for a second, because Okay, so she has one piece
and they won't work unless you have both pieces, but
yet she wants to destroy them. Like I was reading
in the trivia and it was like goof, you know how,
like sometimes in IMDb it will be like movie Goof,
but it was the entire plot. It was like a
movie Goof. She's trying to combine the two pieces, but
she wants to destroy them so no one can get

(18:38):
their hands on time right to make change. They're like,
she could have just destroyed the first one and end
up movie and that's it and nobody would have access
to be able to control time. She could have just
destroyed it this but instead she's like, we have to
go find this other Plevie Goof is the whole plot
feels so dumb I did that did not even occur
to me. Yeah, this movie could have been twenty minutes

(18:59):
short her and it should have been a minute shorter.
It could have been like a whole hour shorter, like
once she finds the first piece, so they go to
Cambodia and I find the first piece, But yeah, she
could have just been like destroyed it and then nobody
would have been able to funk with time exactly. Well,
but yeah, it's when they made a second one. So

(19:21):
it's the second one about the alumni to like, No,
I just watched it for the first time last night. Yes, um,
it's about they find this orb which allows them to
find Pandora's Box, which inside of it is like I
guess I don't even know for something about who knows
it's down this hell. Watching this movie made me want
to watch National Treasure Yet, where the major plot point

(19:44):
is daylight saving. Still. I saw that movie and I
was like eleven, and I was like, this is fucking dumb.
They're like, no, actually we have forty five minutes more
because Benjamin Franklin and Ben It was just like, are
you fucking kidding me? That's how we're getting out of
the add movie. This movie made me want to watch
Writers of the Lost Dark, which you talk about later on,

(20:05):
but I'll get there. So they find the first half
of the triangle in Cambodia, and then they go to
like Siberia somewhere in Russia. They go and find the
other half of the triangle. They reunite it. There's all
the bad guys they illuminatties there and then she is
the first one to like unite the two halves together,
and she's able to talk to her dad for like

(20:26):
two to seconds and then he's like her dad, you know,
it's so funny. It looks kind of good. And I
was like, yeah, but in the picture of him, it
did it Like I saw on her desk. There was
like a picture of him, and I was like, there's
no way that man would have someone this hot. And
then I was like, oh, that's her real dad. I
was like, oh, that's her real dad. He looked like
kind of like no, I don't know. I I think

(20:48):
if John Void is like so old that he couldn't look.
But I guess, you know, two one, he looked fine, Well,
he's in your treasure. I think the first movie I
saw him in as a young man was Midnight Cowboy,
where he goes and basically he's a sex worker in
New York City. He looks like in so many movies though,
Where It Holes is another movie where John John boyit

(21:10):
looks like trash the whole time. I guess I'm more
familiar with his character actor later days. He's very good
in holes. I love holes. I love holes. Okay, that's
quite right. So basically, she gets to reunite with her
dad for like a few moments in this weird like
spacetime thing that happens because she has the triangle. But
then she's like, you're right, I have to like destroy

(21:30):
it because it can't fall into the wrong hands. Blah
blah blah. So then she destroys the triangle and that's
pretty much the end of the movie. She staves the
day and everything's fine. Now that is the story of Laura.
I want to stay with with the spinning sun planet
thing that was happening in the end, just the first
guy that got crushed for no reason that he literally

(21:53):
could have just jumped off of it and he just
like his spine was snapped. It was like so many
scenes like where I was like, this is so dumb,
Like I get that it's supposed to be high stakes,
but it didn't feel high stakes at all. I genuinely
did gasp when Daniel Craig got knife, but she didn't.
She didn't feel ship. She didn't she didn't react at all,

(22:16):
and then she just jumped into the pool. I was like,
what is the move here? He's he died? He like
you saw him die and then get hit by a
second thing there. I love that scene with her, with
with watching the man get knife and she stood there emotionless.
I love them, like do you guys like each other?
Like what? This might be a good transition into one
of the talking points I have, which is that she

(22:37):
doesn't really have a personality as a character to like
she doesn't react. We don't see her really reacting too
much of anything. We don't see any glimpses of her
having a personality, Like she's just sort of like, yeah,
I'm interested to talk about that because it's I think
some of it is like lazy, awful screenwriting, where really

(22:58):
the only thing we know about out her is that
she misses Daddy and that's why she does what she
does in life, and that's her central motivation for literally
everything is Daddy, which is like fuck fine. And then
the other thing is I'm like curious about Like adapting
a video game character must be kind of challenging because

(23:18):
you're playing as her right in the day game, So
there's like an avatar basically, right, and there's so many
like protagonists avatars that I feel like are kind of
hollow in terms of personality because you're supposed to be
plugging yourself in. But if you're adapting dating, you gotta
day something, try harder. You can't just be like, let's
make the clothes tighter and hope no one notice, right, Yeah,

(23:40):
that's because that's I mean, I would love to play
a game where we go around the room and try
to describe her personality, because I mean, she had an attitude.
My kind of a saucy minx is the best way
I could describe, I think. But even then, like I
feel like there's just there's just not much there. So
you have a protect with like no personality who's just

(24:02):
sort of going through the motions of the story. I mean,
feel free to disagree with you. I think that she
I like the fact that she didn't give a shit
about anyone, Like she wants what she wants and she
doesn't care about anyone around her. So I did like
that aspect of it and probably related to it, where
like men are telling her what to do and she's like, no, no,
I'm not gonna do it, no thanks. So I did

(24:22):
like that. I did realize that she actually I don't think,
and I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't think she speaks to a single other woman.
She speaks to a little girl, but she doesn't speak
to a single other woman, which is insane. There were
no women. It's crazy in the whole movie. I remember
how we don't exist in this planet. In this video game,
there's one the crazy Verston movie version of New York

(24:45):
where only white people are there. It's like the crazy
like this is like the action movie world where there's
exactly one woman and she's very hot. That's just so yeah,
like a parallel universe, and it's crazy because it's like,
I don't you know if we saw if any of
us saw the movie when it came out, that probably
wouldn't register as like, oh, there is not another moment

(25:06):
because we're so used to seeing movies almost entirely populated
by men, so we're like, yeah, this is just how
movies are. I also like the fact that she didn't
really have a love interest. You know, she kissed not
really Daniel Craig, like she's trying to save his life
and a sense can you give someone mouth to mouth

(25:27):
underwater in the movies? I'm like, aren't you pushing carbon
dioxide and his mouth and not oxygen? Are you killing him?
I was also I was like, is this mouth to
mouth or are they kissing? Like I did not goodbye? No,
But yeah, So I like the fact that they didn't.
I thought that that was semi progressive for two thousand
and one, that she didn't have some guy she was

(25:49):
fawning over. I also made note of that, and I
appreciated that there wasn't some like romantic subplot. Yeah, but yeah,
I guess maybe I didn't mind her action sequences. Actually
like that a lot. I know that they did make
her heavily sexual well, and obviously by pattying her tits
so much that I do wish that she was able
to use them in combat, But I understand maybe this

(26:10):
new one weaponize the tits. Yeah, yeah, like one thing
that they do at the beginning and the end, because
the last also the last mini sequence of the movie.
I also was just like, whoa, what is happening here?
Something that happens at the beginning of the end of
the movie where it's some one of the guys who
like lives at her house and is one of her servants.
You know, she comes down, she's nude, and she's walking

(26:31):
around nude in front of her employees, which is like
is this ethical? But whatever, she's walking around nude and
he's like, you know, you're not being much of a
lady or whatever, like we need you to be a lady,
and then she's like yeah, yeah, yeah, And then a
lady should be modest, and she's like a lady should
be modest. She's like yeah. She's like sometimes it feels
good to be bad, and you're just like whatever, right,

(26:54):
And then that comes back at the end. We're in
the last scene of the movie. She is dressed like
quote unquote late Sunday brunch. Yeah, like she has a
sun hat and a white dress and she goes down
and the same guy is like, oh, she's a lady,
which nothing in the movie would really lead you to
be like and now she's a lady, but she randomly is.

(27:17):
And then she goes down pays homage to her actual
daddy's grave, and then goes back upstairs and they're like,
time to fight another rope. They take a picture of
her because she's a lady, right, and then they're like,
time to fight another robot. I'm like, is this just
First of all, I would hazard to guess the scene
is just bad and stupid, but the subtext of it

(27:41):
is like you can be forced into a role you
don't want and fight a robot Like that wrung a
little hollow for me. I'm like, oh, I can also
shoot people in a sun hat, can do it in
a dress. Looks like it was from Forever one. It
was not address I don't know. I did notice that

(28:02):
the screenplay it was build like a woman was build
at the top, and then it was like two male
writers underneath, so like three people wrote this, but they
made sure to put the woman first, like it's her fault.
We've got yeah, yeah, i'ven thinking that, Yeah, let's implicate
her in this screenwriting crime. We've got three story by credits,

(28:23):
which are Sarah B. Cooper, Mike Werb and Michael. And
then we've got a writing credit for the adaptation from
Simon West, who was also the director of the movie.
And then we've got two screenplayed by credits from Patrick
Massett and John So this Ma and Jimmy as the end.

(28:45):
As most movies, if you stay to the end of
the credits, will think, I mean, well, so this is
an example of a movie with a female protagonist but
made almost entirely by men. So it's gonna be coming
from a man's first active in terms of like writer, director,
and all of that stuff, except for one story by
credit from a woman. But men are largely responsible for

(29:07):
crafting the story of Craft and we see hints of
that all throughout the movie, especially, I mean we already
touched on this, but like Laura Croft's character is its
hyper sexualized, like from minute one, even like you said,
the scene where she's fighting the robot in the verious
first sequence, on paper, that's probably a fine scene, but

(29:30):
when we see it realized on screen, you see her
in her outfit, which is this tiny little tank top
and her giant pointy boobs that like, if you're doing that,
you would be wearing a sport s bra you're not
going to be wearing this like bra that like makes
your I don't know, sorry to body a big women,
but like it just is so unpractical that the tiny

(29:51):
tiny shorts that she's wearing like these giant combat boots,
and then like just the framing of how the framing
male gaze, shots of her hips, shots of her ass.
Like there's a point where like she's sitting on the
ground and then she spreads her legs and then like
the robot like hand comes down and smashes in between
her legs. Just to even like make the male gaze
thing more egregious, there's a number of action scenes where

(30:14):
Laura Croft, I mean she is doing things once you
know that whole scene where she's just like on a
log and everyone's like, whoa, she's on that swing and
the swing dog has to poke something and then the
illuminatis released wasn't totally true what's happening there, But she's
on the log and there, but there's like action scenes
where she's surrounded by men who are just kind of

(30:36):
watching literally the male gaze. I'm just like, well, where
it's that action thing that we come up with again
and again we'll reference that mixed me use the article
again where it's like, anytime a woman does something that
implies that she's capable in an action way, cut to
a shot of a man being like, what she can do?
The thing like that? That shot happens for I some

(31:00):
times in this totally well also because I mean, her
choreography is like sexualized. Also, like she's doing a lot
of like flips and like you wouldn't see a male
action hero fight the same way as you see her,
Like men are just like flipping around and like being
all like willowy and writhing the way that she is,
and a lot of her fight choreography. So I feel

(31:21):
like there's this idea in Hollywood that action movies are
for men, and men aren't gonna want to see an
action movie that's starring a woman unless she's hyper sexualized
and she like looks like a supermodel basically. So that
was this idea that this movie for sure perpetuates, one
that sends a message to women that's basically like, oh,
if you want to do anything physical, you have to

(31:42):
look like your mid orgasm. Sorry, you have to be
as hell. But I feel like she's I mean, aside
from this character Angelina Jolie herself is hyper sexualized most
of her roles, especially at this time, but then in general,

(32:04):
her action in Mr. And Mrs Smith it's all sexual branded.
That's like a heavily sexual tension where she met her
husband that was someone else's husband. But sorry, Jennifer, that's okay,
life happened. They're hanging out again. Are they really good
for them? You know whatever? But yeah, I mean, I

(32:25):
don't know. I want to know how she felt about it. Yeah,
that would be an interesting conversation, is like how she felt,
because I feel she probably was okay with a lot
of it, But I don't know. I guess I'm making
that assumption because she seems to have taken a lot
of roles like that. That's true. Well, I mean not
to say that it's irrelevant how she feels about it,

(32:46):
but I think more importantly just the fact that we're seeing,
like we're making all these movies geared towards usually young,
impressionable audiences, and they're like hyper sexualized portrayals of women
where it's like, oh, like, look at how like I
saw the Drumanji reboot movie, and I think there is
a few illusions that I think are direct references to

(33:09):
Lata Croft tomb Writer, really, where whenever the one character
ends up in the Avatar that Karen Gillen plays, she
ends up in this very similar outfit. Short shorts, big boots,
and then like a tiny tank top and she's getting
like bitten by mosquitoes and stuff like that. She's like, what,
like what is this outfit? Like are you kidding me?
Like this is so impractical? I think that's and then

(33:32):
her skill, her special skill in the in the game Drumanji,
is that she's great at dance fighting, which I think
is an allusion to either this movie or just this
type of movie where the female action star is like this,
like I said, like a willowy, super agile. So that's okay.
So that brings me to another thing that I another
scene that I was just like, what the funk are

(33:52):
we looking at right here? When she is like in
her pajamas, these like billowing, flowy pajamas, they are purposefully
not buttoned the whole way, and then she's attached to
this like bungee cord set up and she's just like
kind of bunging around her living room. And then I'm like, okay,
what is this for what is she doing? Is this exercise?

(34:13):
Is this maybe to help with her I loved that
whatever that was. That was like I want, I want
to do that. It looks fun, but like is it
serving the story at all? No? But then I was like, Okay,
maybe it's helping with her agility. And then it got
me thinking that female action stars like this have to
be agile, like that's their thing, so like they can't

(34:35):
be like their male counterparts. They're male action stars. They
can be like tough and brutish and just like kind
of sloppy, and they don't have to be these like
super graceful, super agile. They're like dirty, gritty, Yeah, exactly,
not manicured. But a female action star has to still
be And maybe I think this is like changing a
little bit in the Hollywood landscape. But for sure, at

(34:57):
this time, like it was just like, well, no one's
gonna want to see this unless is like perfectly flipping
around and like being super delicate and agile. This is
a lot of like Bush era ship. Yeah of like
and and it does feel ultimately a little bit like
I hope that some women got something empowering out of
this movie, but Ultimately, it just feels kind of counterproductive totally,

(35:19):
Like this is the sort of thing that any number
of crummy ex boyfriends I've had would point to and
be like, what do you mean There's no representation in
movies feminist icon right, So so ultimately I do feel
like it is it kind of like gives crummy dude
something to point to to be like, what what do
you mean? Like women are underrepresented. Here's this woman who

(35:41):
has never existed. Well yeah, well so the video game
I mean was obviously I made with the intent of
young men, you know, wanting, well, why would a young
guy want to play a woman? Well, we're going to
make her with huge tits and then that might be
fun for them to play with. But it was also
kind of fired by James Bond, and I think if

(36:02):
they had approached it more in that way. Not saying
that she's the same as that character, but I agree
that so much of her is shot from the male gaze,
and James Bond is able to sleep with like multiple women,
and we see his body and things like that. But
yet it's not in a demeaning way. It's in a
power power Yes, Wow, look how fucking cool he is

(36:23):
what's the things I noticed with this? Okay, there is
a totally Kuko bananas Angelina Jolie shower scene and that's
from the video game. Yes, yeah, who in their life
has ever flipped their hair in the shower? But my
favorite thing this is like the us in movies all
the time where the hot protagonist stares into their shower spot.

(36:47):
This looks so uncomfortable. Who's looking into their like washed
me daddy, Like it's so fucking weird my eyes. Yeah,
that shower scene is from SO and I think it
might be a tiny bit more graphic in the video game,
and so they toned it down. And the only thing
that they could show in this was her side boob.

(37:08):
But she does have killer side crap. Mine is so
not as perky compared to that. I've got a weird
texture to the side. It's the whole thing. You've got
to arrange it just so. Yeah, the shower scene did
make me laugh out like l O L. Well, yeah,
I mean it's her a close up of her head,

(37:31):
but she's like again mid orgasm where she's just like
throwing her head back and like staring into hot water,
writhing around in the shower. No one showers like that.
You spend yourselone there. I would say, if you had
video footage of anyone showering alone, it would be some
of the most humbling thing you ever see. I'm like, oh,

(37:52):
sudsing with their pubes makes sense, not fun to watch,
but makes sense. Being crying. She does that bumbling despot
like horrible. She does that thing where she has her
head down and then she flips it up and all
her hair comes flipping, and I've never done in my life.
No one ever held the purpose be you'd make a mess, right,

(38:15):
So that scene happens, and then she steps out of
the shower and she's in this tiny little towel, which
and she's not a lady, right yes, so her get
out of the bathroom per her. Her butler is named Hilary,
but he's a man and progressive. I'm a cycon, remember

(38:37):
Ashley Parker, Angel of Otez. Progressive and a three name
to boo. Yeah, I love a good three name. So
she comes into the shower, she's in this tiny towel.
The butler holds up a dress in this para right heeled,
and she's like, no dresses and heels for me, and
he's like, I'm only trying to turn you into a lady,

(38:59):
and she flings her towel off, and that's when you
see the famous side boob and then and then he
does the whole thing where we talked about where he's like,
I'm just trying to he's like, a ladies should be modest,
and she's like, yes, a lady should be implying she's
not a lady. She's not like the other girls. She's
a little bit different. She wears combat boots and she
drives a jeep and she fights robots. Fine, if you're

(39:20):
not conforming to this like standard. But then she's also
agreeing that, yes, ladies should be a certain way. I mean,
this is dumb. This is of like a throwaway moment,
but it's just like I feel like the movie's trying
to comment on like gender and gender roles, but like
it doesn't. You don't get to do that and then
also sexualize your main character in an insane way. But

(39:41):
the reason I brought up the shower scenes because we
do later and I was sort of like, I don't
know what I would call that. We do get it,
not quite as agreed, just but we do get adower
scene and uh and a little bit of commentary on
his full frontal, which I think is the only other
time we see a shot of just still a woman
when he answers the door and then a woman is

(40:02):
straight up horrified at whatever gnar old situation Daniel Craig
has going on, because I've never like, who would see
Daniel Craig nude and be like, oh, like, what was terrified?
What did she see down there? It was? It was
I mean, I just think just opening the door on
a naked man is gonna shock anyone who's not I mean,

(40:22):
but are you going to be are you screaming hat
off and running away? You'd be like, okay, when you're
not expecting a penis, I would probably scream. You know,
you know, we've all had the unexpected penis, so so
I would probably. I think it's not that unusual of
a reaction for her. But the point is so that
in that scene, yeah, you do see like a good

(40:43):
chunk of his naked body pretty much everything besides Dick
in the scene, but he's not framed in the same
way Angela Jolie is, where she's just like writhing around
and like I'm having an orgasm in the shower. So
the way men and women are framed in this movie
and many many action movies is very differently. And I

(41:03):
actually wanted to go back to Danny something that you
were kind of touching on, which is that Danny just
took a swig of Celsius Celsius sparkling wildberry. Get it
at Vitamin Shop, g n C Whole Foods and Airjan
and Jenny Carters refrigerator. On your way there. They're on
an episode of Playing Games with Jimmy Carter. There's only

(41:25):
six episodes. He needs your support. Yeah, so I think
you can make the argument that men are also to
some degree sexualized in action movies, like male action heroes
are different. Yeah. Well, I mean I'm gonna just sort
of like play devils advocate here and say that they're
often like very muscular, very macho, sort of this like

(41:48):
ideal standard of masculinity you see there, like glistening muscles
a lot of the time. But it's it is not
the same. I think they're sexy, they're not sexualized. I
think they're sexy because they're bachelor's. If we're talking about
Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent to them. It's like they
have to be muscular for their job because they're saving
the world, but they're not shown in a way that

(42:10):
is hyper sexualized the way that women are. And I
also think that both male and female action heroes of
this era, at least they're sexualized in different ways, but
for the same audience. There it's both for men. The
way that Laura Craft is sexualized is for a male
audience and and the same way that James Bond would
be sexualized in a different way for that same male audience. Yeah,

(42:31):
it's basically like, Oh, here's this like ideal that I
want to strive to be when it's a male action hero,
and then when it's a female action hero, it's still like, oh,
here's this woman I want to conquer and make my
conquest and not actually like identify with even though she's
the hero. Story. Yeah, I think that male superheroes are
kind of more what I see as like athletes, where

(42:52):
athletes are sexy, they have great bodies, but they're not
as hyper sexualized the way that I think female superhero are.
Superheroes are quotes because I feel like most of the
women in this era, we're not really seen as superheroes
as much as like Catwoman, Poison Ivy things like that
were like villains ish where they're super sexual totally to
the point where they're basically like handicapped, just like Catwoman

(43:15):
is so horny she can't really she cannot do anything well.
And and here's the thing, though, is that they use
the superheroes themselves, Like if we're talking about let's say
Bruce Wayne Batman, like they don't use their sexuality as
you know what I mean, Like they're so women are
using their sexuality as weapon. So that is showing how

(43:35):
they're different as far as how they're written and their purpose,
which doesn't necessarily happen that much in this movie. But
in The Tomb Writer's sequel, there's a scene where she
like is basically seducing Gerard Butler. They kiss, and then
it's basically to distract him so that she can handcuff
him to like a railing so that he doesn't run

(43:56):
off and do something stupid. There is a perfect example
of like women using like women action heroes using their
sexuality as like a weapon. Almost there's a scene that's
like sort of like that again, It's like I feel
like Laura both doesn't have much of an interest in
a romantic conquest, and also it's just kind of an
underwritten character in general, so it's hard to know what

(44:16):
she feels a lot of the time. But there's a
scene where she's with Manfred Powell, feminist icon Manfred Powell,
and he's based there in a cave of some sorty
he's threatening to kill her, but it's very set. It's
like there's one scene where it's particularly sexy where he's like,
I'm going to kill you and she's like, I don't
know what to believe. And then he's like I knew

(44:36):
you're daddy, and she's like what, And that's when he's
like he was in the Illuminati and she's like, no,
he couldn't be. That's the other thing I wanted her.
Even her voice is like this, like sultry like, but
that's also angel but she doesn't have to talk like that.

(44:57):
I've seen her in other movies where she's not being
all like, hello, this is I'm Lara Kraft. But that's
like but I think that's like a conversation of because
to me, I don't know, it doesn't bother me as
much because I feel like I feel really conflicted. Like
if I were in a superhero movie, I would want
to be sexy as fuck. I want to like crush

(45:17):
someone with my ass, but like also people respect me.
Like I feel like we're in an air where like, yeah,
I want to be able to do what the guys do.
I want to be James Bond and fucking like Fux
some guy and be like Sia, you know, and like
hop into my helicopter and leave him a basket or
whatever a Rod does to the women days, leave him

(45:37):
a basket or whatever. Like I want to do that.
So I want to be as sexually progressive as the men.
But then I want to be respected. And that's that's
an issue where people still respect people like James Bond
or Bruce Wayne who Fox Chicks and then leaves, but
yet we're not respected as as women much of the time.
There's no way they could have done that with wonder woman,
you know what I mean, and showing her in that

(45:58):
way where she's just like sucking a bunch of guys.
I mean, they could have, but it would have been received. Yeah,
she has to be extremely classy. She has to be
like a mother essentially, she's like the mother of Earth
in a way that her counterparts in the Justice League
are not where Jason Momoa and Bruce Wayne and people
like that, where they're kind of like yeah, chicks, you

(46:19):
know whatever, and she has to be like super classy. Well,
I think so we might get there. It's too early
right now in the Hollywood landscape to have a like
a female action sorthing like that, right, but so I think, like,
I think we just need to. Yeah, I like an
action hero, a superhero who's a woman. I think can
be sexy without being sexualized the way we were talking

(46:40):
about how they frame male action heroes where they're like
the buff Like you've got your John mcclean's and your
James Bonds and you're like all the superheroes who are
like muscular and sexy, but they're not framed in a
way that's hyper sexualizing them. So I think, like we
just it's not hard to do that with women either.
Like we have Jessica Jones, who I feel like it
is a very conflict did you know? It shows her

(47:01):
dealing with mental illness and alcoholism and things like that.
So we do have her, and she's she I'd like
the fact that she's not one dimensional, and she's not
very sexualized, even though she does have sex. She has
sex with Luke Cage that they show, but and probably
other people. So I will say that they are working
towards that where we do have flawed female characters that

(47:23):
don't have to be, you know, as classy and put
together as Diana Prince, but not enough, not enough, not yet.
And I do think that I do think that the
cinemamatography of this movie works against its protagonist totally quite
a bit. And I looked it up. You're not gonna
be shocked. Man was the cinematographer for this movie. Also
has done die Hard, with a Vengeance, The Incredible Hulk,

(47:46):
the most recent Why Uh, and then Clash of the Titans.
So it's like this, this is not even a cinematographer
who doesn't know what cinematography on an action movie should
look like. But because it's a female protagonist, there are
times where there is action happening, but we're looking at
an ass. It's just like, it's great that the ass
is there. It's not even that I don't want to

(48:07):
see the ass. But when someone's getting stabbed, show me
the person getting fucking stabbed. That's just how a movie
should look. Well, I think it goes back to the
fact that there's an assumption I think still that only
men like action movies, So if there is going to
be a female hero, then they're going to have to
cater to that male audience. But that's like, first of
all ludicrous because guess what, I'm a woman and I

(48:28):
love action movies. So the fact that like there's this
assumption that like, oh, well, we can't have like a
female action star. That's just like, you know, a normal
woman who we aren't showing her ass and tit's the
entire movie, like we have to cater to this male audience.
With the new one that's coming out with Alicia, and
I noticed that they didn't bump up her tips to

(48:50):
thirty six double D, so that's progress. I mean they
let her have her her body, her body. It's very
much about her own body. Um, which is fine, you
know either way, But I mean, like they let her, yeah,
have her body, is what I meant. So if you
have thirty six double ds, I'm very jealous, and I
think you should be in a superhero movie. But I
don't know if that's the only representation. I was watching

(49:14):
the trailers, and it seems as though the framing in
the cinematography and stuff like that doesn't seem to be
as through the lens of the male gaze as much,
or maybe not even at all. It's going to be
hard to tell exactly until you see the whole movie,
but to me, it seems as though it's a little
bit more respectful of its female heron, which is then

(49:34):
I hope it is. That would be awesome. She also
looks like she's like five too, so I'm like, she's
so scrappy, yeah, and I just want to see her like, yeah,
like using like a shard of glass to stab someone
in the in the neck or something, which is like what, Yeah,
what I want to see, Like I hate that there's
that whole stupid like dance fighting thing that has to
happen in this two thousand one tomb rater, which is

(49:56):
what I think what that Jumanji references to, where she's
like she's good at dance fighting because she has to
be super dancy and sexy and her fight choreography, where
like I think this new tomb Writer is we're going
to see her be a bit more scrappy and sloppy
because like, I think this one is setting up that
she's not already an adventurer. Like she finds information from
that her dead dad left behind, so she doesn't have

(50:18):
a dead but like she's like, we're gonna go on it,
like she hasn't she's not yet an adventure seeker. So
I think it's going to be like a like a
made hero type of story. That's cool. Yeah, I didn't
mind how like Lada was set up in this movie
where it's like, oh, she's already done ship. She has
what she's doing. I'm not exactly sure what she's done

(50:38):
or why, but it's clear she's done ship. She's got
bungee cords in her house, she's shooting robots and sex stuff.
I was like, Okay, she's got some sort of established something.
But actually I have a good point about that. Get
ready brag? Okay, So Laura Croft Tomb Writer is very
similar in story structure to Writers of the Lost Arc,

(51:01):
the first Indiana Jones movie. I'll just kind of go
quickly through the main story beats of both, and that
they both have an opening sequence where we meet the
hero and learn that they do shit in tombs because
they are archaeologists. I guess we for sure know that
about Indiana Jones. We're not so sure about what Laura
crofts credentials are. They both have a bad guy who
has their hearts set on acquiring an artifact that will

(51:24):
allow them to wield tremendous supernatural power. We see the
hero get their hands on a round medallion type object
that will lead them to said artifact, and that they
Medalian adjacent Medalia adjacent, and then they seek to The
hero seeks to destroy it so that the bad guys
can't get their hands on it and abuse this power.

(51:44):
The hero and the bad guys both travel to a
different country to use the medallion key thing to figure
out where the artifact is, and then the bad guys
exploit the locals to do a lot of the heavy
lifting in terms of trying to figure out where this
thing is. Happens in both movies. Then the round key
medallion thing has to be in a certain place at

(52:04):
a certain time to show them where the artifact is,
and then the hero and the bad guys come in
contact with each other, they find either all or part
of the artifact, depending on which movie we're talking about.
There's some scary things that happen to the hero that
they have to fight off, either snakes or statues that
come to life. Um, we forgot about that. And then finally,
in both movies, the hero and the bad guys travel

(52:27):
to a second location, either to perform a ritual with
with the artifact or to find the other half of
the artifact, and then basically they both end with the
hero either destroying or getting the artifact away from the
bad guys and them saving the day and winning. So
very similar movies in terms of storage structure. However, there's well,

(52:48):
there's a few key differences, and that Indiana Jones is
not hyper sexualized the way that is there. Indiana Jones
is a good movie. And Indiana Jones is able to
find stuff or figure out a lot of this stuff
for himself, either because he like already has the knowledge
to get him to the next step, or he just
does the work himself to figure out the next clue

(53:10):
or to find the next thing. Whereas Laura Croft gets
a lot of help and it's usually from men because
she's never met a woman before. She never I think
that would be interesting, that would be kind of how
I would judge her characters, how she treats other women. Yeah,
so would she be one of the people that's like,
I'm not like the other girls, you know? Yeah guy girl? Yeah, yeah,

(53:33):
I mean she does. She doesn't even well, don't you
don't know, she's never met a woman, but we don't know. Yeah,
we don't know if she would be all like these dudes.
She might not even know that other women have Well,
she knows that she had a mom because she never
met her mom. Yeah, she's her dad and her mom
are dead, but she does not give a funk about
her dead mom. She only cares about her dead dad.

(53:56):
And I guess you could argue like she didn't know
her she didn't remember her mom. But even so, like
her dad, it seems died when she was a child,
and I understand like still being hung up about it,
but it's basically her main character trait. And this is like,
what else is about? Why don't you care about knowing
anything about your dead mom? I returned. There's a few
other movies that we have come across where there's a

(54:18):
young female protagonist where that is the main the family
of the opera. The main thing we know about Christine
Die is that her dad died and it's because of
that she actively self sabotages her own life and ends
up making out with Gerard Butler, who looks like shit.
And now and there's there's another one. I'll all of
my Disney movies are dead, mom, but um, I have

(54:42):
to please or save my dad, which is Beauty and
the Beast, the Little Burmaid, Aladdin, and that kind of
brings me to the climactic scene of this movie. It
is I thought, great that at no point in this
movie that I could identify like Laura is never damseled.
She always does save herself, sometimes with help. She's never
met a woman before. That's all interesting, and she even

(55:05):
has to she ends up saving Daniel Craig, right, and
there's that that that reverse that was like, okay, that
that is good. That is to an extent progressive. But
all the steaks in the climactic scene for Laura are
connected to two male characters, which are her dad and
Daniel Craig, who gets straight up knife and she feels
nothing where she's like and then she just like she

(55:29):
didn't gasp. She was just like, oh, maybe she knows
that she's going to be able to reverse time and
save him. I think she just was like, you, motherfucker,
I gotta do this thing well because the climactic scene
she goes into whatever the time whole thing, John Void's there,
and instead of we could have had some sort of
satisfying character driven moment where we get to know Laura

(55:52):
a little better because we don't really know her that well,
but instead of her discovering it for herself, John Voight
literally livers the lesson to her in the time whole
and it's like, you know, some stupid turn of phrase
with like you can't steal time, you have to give
back time. And then she's like, but Daddy know, and

(56:14):
he's like, but Daddy yes, And then they touch fingers
and then it's over. And so she's told what the
lesson is and then goes back and and executes what
she was told by Bye bye Daddy. But it was
that was just like one of those little moments where'm like, oh,
that's a big missed opportunity where we could have had
a moment of seeing her work through an emotional thing,

(56:37):
which we haven't seen her do the entire movie. Instead,
Daddy does it for her and then she goes back.
That's the thing. Anything she learns about the key clock thing,
anything she learns about anything else is really information delivered
to her or left for her by her dad, or
she has to go and consult like one of her
dad's old friends. Like you often don't really see her

(56:59):
figuring it out for herself. Like she is an active
character and that she does drive the story forward. She
is making decisions that steer the direction the story takes.
But unlike, like I said, Indiana Jones, who already has
a lot of this knowledge or is just more active
and that he is finding things out for himself, She's
getting a lot of the information necessary to push the

(57:19):
story forward through someone else. Someone else is giving it
to her or helping her in a way that like,
I think a male counterpart action hero would not need
that much help, So that's frustrating. I don't like when
female protagonists are robbed of Catharsis because men can't write movies.

(57:40):
Bugs me a lot of them. Yeah, can I just
say that there's a character named Bryce, which is Lara
Croft's kind of technology. I liked, I kind of liked him.
I like him in Paddington too. I'm I'm glad that

(58:02):
he skipped this one also, Um, Aristotle gets mentioned in
this movie where one of the characters is like, Oh,
this thing that only happens every five thousand years, blah
blah blah, even predate. So shout out to ast Aristotle. Yea,
and our other producer, Jimmy Pardo. Can I just say

(58:23):
shout out to Jimmy partout because he does owe us
a lot of money? Um? Does anyone have any other
final thoughts about Lara Craft tumb Rader. What a classic film.
It's timeless, feminist text for sure, feminist masterpiece. Couldn't be
not possible without Jimmy Parto. I think that's all I had.
I think that's all I had as well. One last

(58:44):
thing I wanted to mention is I like how this
is one of those movies that anything could only really
happen because the character is excessively wealthy, like Bruce Wayne,
like Tony Stark, where like they just have a bunch
of gadgets and wealth and that enables them to like
go on with the adventures you need to go on.
The one laugh line for me in this movie, there

(59:06):
was like that one part where like the ups guy
shows up and her whole house is a mess because
she's shot. She killed like twenty people the night before,
and she has that line where she's just like I
woke up this morning and I just hated it everything.
That's like, that's kind of funny. I wrote that down
because I feel like that's one of the few times
in the entire movie where you see a glimpse of
her having a personality, like she had a joke. Other

(59:29):
than that, she's just so like, I don't know, stiff
and just I mean, maybe that's her personality, but it's
just kind of boring to watch her because she's not
fun really to see her interacting with people. Like I said,
she's kind of a little saucy, and like you said,
she's like defiant and that like sometimes men try to
get her to do a thing and she's like, no nothings.

(59:50):
But other than that, she barely has a personality. And
that's why did they go through that weird thing of
making her dress like a late at the end. What
was that commenting on? What was that for? I don't know. Yeah,
I guess it was something that they wanted to see
because she's always been I imagine that they kind of
are her caretakers in the same way that Alfred is

(01:00:12):
to Bruce Wayne because her dad died, so maybe her
butlers were her caretaker daddies. Daddies were so many daddies
were her like caretakers, and they were like, you're always dirty,
running off, you know, shooting things, like you're not doing
anything lady like. So she wore a son hat for
the daddies. I don't I don't know that that part.

(01:00:33):
I was like, but but at the end, it is nice.
There's so many movies with male and female protagonists where
they'll go out of the way at the end to
be like and don't worry they ended up together, because
I was expecting Daniel Craig to be in that last
scene of like, I mean, I made you an egg
or whatever, you know, Like he could have very easily
been shoehorn into that, and I kind of appreciate that

(01:00:54):
he wasn't the same because I don't really care if
they ended up together. Yeah, I don't think she cared either.
I don't know if she may sense or mattered. It
seems like they like from the second they meet, and
I'm like, oh, these people have weird sex every couple
of years, and that's okay. Let's figure out whether or
not the movie passes the Bechtel tests. No, there's one

(01:01:16):
scene that's a contender, and it's when they're in Russia
trying to find the other half of the triangle and
they're trying to buy these dogs from the locals and
a young girl comes up to her. They speak Russian
with no subtitles, so we don't know what they're talking about.
And that little girl also does not have a name,
and also might not even be a real girl because

(01:01:36):
then she like Lara around and the little girl's actually
a jasmine flower and she always think it was just
jasmine I think, But no, that scene didn't because they
were talking about her dad. We can assume. But it's
in again, it's in a different language. And that's two
different girls you're talking about. I was talking. You're talking

(01:01:59):
about the one where the little girl is sitting she's
like sitting down and and yeah, they say something to
each other and then she picks she like points to
the flower. Right. There's another scene when they're trying to
buy the dogs that is subtitled and she says, you're
making a mistake. Yeah, at least on my TV, it
was in Russian. Or whatever, and it said, you're making
a mistake by going back to find him, and she said,

(01:02:21):
who are you? Who are you talking about? She said
your father? Okay, so that definitely, and we don't know
their names. And then the other little girl that she
interacts with in Cambodia, I think I don't think they
actually speak like she she just points. Yeah, so there's
not even exchange of that. Such an easy thing to do.
But but there were no women allowed in this movie,
so it was it was a whole I guess that

(01:02:43):
makes me feel good that there are no women in
the Illuminati. That's true. It's just all men. Yeah. Gosh, well,
this is certainly a movie that was released there around
it Actually I think did really well. I was reading
and it said it was like the highest gross same
movie with a female protagonist since Aliens. I mean it did, yeah,

(01:03:06):
especially when you account for international box office. I think
it at least doubled its budget. So it did well
and a lot of people went to see it. But
it's just that, as we've already discussed, a very convenient
form of quote unquote empowerment. Right, Oh, I'll play Devil's
advocate one more, try to pass the back to the test.

(01:03:26):
If an unnamed woman screams at Daniel Craig, does that
interaction pass well? Her in the penis his penis is
actually identifies as a woman. Yeah, exposed penis. Yeah, but no,
I do not think the movie passes the backtel tests,

(01:03:47):
which it would have been very easy as you have
a female protagonist. You could have just seen she could
have had a woman character who lives in the house
with her and helps out. Like there were several opportunities
for lazy opportunit. Whatever, we wash our hands of it,
we hope, we hope for the best for the reboot. Indeed,

(01:04:07):
So with that, let's rate the movie on our nipple scale.
We have a scale of zero to five nipples where
we rate the movie based on its portrayal of women.
I think I'm going to give it like a one
and a half or two. I'll stick with one and
a half. This movie had a lot of potential. I
think on paper it was probably a much better version

(01:04:28):
than we see on screen because it's a female action
hero kicking ass and saving the world. Again, when you
talk about how very rarely do we see women get
to save the day, like steaks are usually pretty low
when a woman is the protagonist of a movie. So
the usually the thing at steak is is she gonna
get married? Yeah? Is it? Is it? Boy gotta love

(01:04:50):
her back? So it's I always like it to see
when it's like a woman starring in the movie and
the stakes are high and that she's saving the day,
but because she is hyper sexualized in a way that
male action heroes aren't, because she needs a lot of
help and she isn't as active as she could be,
and that a lot of information gets handed to her

(01:05:12):
rather than her seeking it out herself. Just the fact
that there are no other women in the entire fucking
movie the big thing. It's like where I'm gonna say,
they literally go across the globe and still no women
this version of the world. Angelina Jilia is the only woman.
And also there is a rogue woman who will show

(01:05:33):
up and scream at Daniel Craig. There's also there's there's
a scene where she goes into an auction that's happening
to talk to someone and she sits down and she
accidentally bids on something, and it's a hilarious joke that
we all just laugh and we've all been there, We've
all been. There's an extremely relatable there's another woman who's

(01:05:56):
also bidding, So that's another woman we do see in
the movie, So congratulations, feministize was the same woman, and
she's just wearing a different disguise each time, like when
she just has a mustache, and then another she has
like a top hat, so like ask good or like

(01:06:17):
some absurd scarf memoirs. Sorry, that was a Paddington two
referenced Wait who are you giving your nipples? Um? One
of them goes to Lara because I think she could
have been a really great character that could have represented
women really well. But because this movie was made by
men four male audience, adapted from a game that was

(01:06:38):
targeted towards young boys, it's just catering toward a very
male audience and therefore it ends up being bad. So
I feel like she there's a lot of potential. She
deserved a lot more. So Laura gets one of them,
and then my half nipple goes to Bryce because he
was in Paddington too. I'm going to give it one

(01:07:00):
and a half as well. There's like a number of
breakdowns for why this movie doesn't work for me, Like
it sucks because there are scenes that I could clearly
see working on paper, and then the active sabotage that
takes place is in the cinematography and in the editing
and in the costume design. The costume design where it's
just like a signal to me of just like, oh,

(01:07:21):
we need more women working behind the scenes, and this
wouldn't be fucking happening because it is a you know,
vastly male dominated beyond the scene crew. And then there's
other parts where it's like, well, there is a writing
breakdown because there is only one female character. So it
doesn't do it doesn't bode well. I'll give one of
my nipples to to Laura as well, because I think
she deserved better. Hopefully she'll get better in the reboot.

(01:07:45):
Cautiously optimistic, but we saw what happen with flatliners. She
can't you can't you never know. Uh, And I'll give
my I'll give my half nippy to Daniel Craig, but
when his nippy is stabbed, Okay has stabbed Nippy? Cool? Yeah,
I just wanted to clarify that, Like, I do feel

(01:08:07):
like you can be a superhero and be sexy and
also have huge tits. I think all those things can happen,
but I think it was the way that she was
shown and portrayed in this un whatever. Yeah, yeah, I'm
afraid I might have come office on perhaps body shamy
to Angelina Jolie because of her ginomous but I mean,

(01:08:31):
but they pad them to be even bigger. That's what
we're seeing is like, dude, we know you did that
for the dude, like you you that's the way that
she was made in this game, and instead with Alicia
they're kind of keeping that her normal body. And so
it's just like, you know, when you don't let a
woman have her own like they didn't do that for
Wonder Woman. Is what I'm saying, Like, when you're changing

(01:08:53):
a sexual part of a woman so that men will
be more interested in it, I think is what we're
saying exactly right where it's Angelina and Julie is that
she doesn't need assistance today looking very hot. But yeah,
it's all I mean it totally, and just in the
same way that in Transformers you see Megan Fox and

(01:09:14):
it's like, yeah, she's beautiful, that's not the issue. The
issue is the way that we see her because we're
seeing her through a male lens and in crops or
you're dressing them in a way that's unrealistic for fighting crime,
you know, Like that's that's something that I do like about.
So they have Captain Marvel is another one that's coming
out with Bree Larson, and like they just released some

(01:09:34):
of her armor and it looks like she's going into battle,
you know what I mean, it's not like a crop
top and like this tiny little where she's still hot,
like shocking. Yeah, yeah, I love that scene in a
Wonder Woman where she puts on the glasses and at
a candy's like and suddenly she's not the hottest woman
you have ever seen in your life. Like they're still
gonna be fucking gorgeous as ship there millionaire movie model actresses.

(01:09:59):
So uh yeah. But I think what we mean is
when you're altering the way a woman looks so that
a man will be more interested in the movie, and
that's highlighting those features of her body. Yeah, pretty much
exclusively to cater to a male gaze. That is what
I have a problem with, not her body, And that's
like just that's how a lot of nineties comic book

(01:10:19):
women were drawn with tiny, tiny snatched waist. Yeah, yeah,
and it's just like showing women with with all body
sizes would be a lot nicer to me, especially if
you have superpowers. You don't actually have to be super tiny.
If you have superpowers, you can do you know, right,
So honestly, if you can be But that shouldn't be

(01:10:42):
the only representation of a superhero woman is. But yeah,
I guess I would give it two nippies, one to
Laura Croft because I did think that some of her
action sequences were kind of badass and she was good
with guns. Appreciate. And then my other I'm gonna give
it to you know what. I liked all of the

(01:11:05):
Husky Dogs the dogs scene at the end where she
burst out of the tune with the Husky dogs. That
was very exciting. Yeah, that was actually really cool. I
liked that she looked badass when she was in that scene,
So I'm going to give it to that scene. Yeah. Well, Danny,
thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Well,
would you like how can people follow you? What would

(01:11:27):
you like to play? Yeah, I'm I'm at Miss Danny
Fernandez tweet a lot about superhero stuff, so you can
follow me on there and also anime, which that's a
whole another thing about representation of women. Um, but some
of the ones I'm into have really you know, they
have women as genius scientists and things like that, so
I love that as well. I am a host over
at hyper RPG, so you can if you're on Twitch,

(01:11:48):
you can check out that. And then my co host,
Iffy Wadaway and I have a new podcast coming out
called Nerdificent where we tackle different issues and nerd culture,
and that's going to be on how stuff works. So yeah,
oh wait, I did want to say one more thing.
I want to take my nipple back from Daniel Craig
and give it to Jimmy part thinking, oh yes, he

(01:12:08):
says obviously he's never not fine, he's always playing games.
You can follow the back to cast on all the platforms.
You can tweet at us, you can rate and review
us on iTunes. You can subscribe to our Patreon. It's
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every month and it helps us on it helps you out, um.
And you can get our march on our website dot

(01:12:31):
com slash which so many and you can listen to
Never Not Find Me with Jimmy part. You can do
that as well. Check out if you want, the New
Tune Writer movie and tweet at us about your thoughts
on it. We're gonna see it, I'm gonna see it. Yeah,
totally all right, by bye,