July 8, 2021 • 55 mins
When is a Star Wars movie, not a Star Wars movie? What makes a great director? And who would win in a fight - a xenomorph or an ewok. Join us this week as we talk about all these things and more
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider Podcast,
the podcast that's all about pikiky things happening in the
world around us and how very excited we are about them.
(00:29):
I'm Ariel casting and with me, as always is Jonathan.
He's going to be pretty upset at me for moving
my pop filter right now, Strickland, I am not the
co host you are looking for. You should go about
your business. You are not. Move along. Okay, that was
a short episode, guys. I'm sorry, I'm just just just
(00:51):
just fooling. Hey, Ariel, I got a question for you, Okay, Ariel, So,
as always, it's more of a scenario than a question.
But we're gonna be talking about some stir Wars today,
some some wars in the stars, as it were. And
(01:13):
so my my question to you is that, so imagine
you are a a character, not a specific character, but
like you inhabit the mythology of Star Wars. Would you
be a Jedi, smuggler, bounty hunter, something else? What what
kind of rolled you envision yourself playing within Star Wars? So,
(01:37):
having played the Old Republic a whole bunch. Um, I
think I would probably be a smuggler. They are the
funnest they you know, they're the dashing rogues of Star Wars,
So that is what I would be. Bounty hunters. They're
(01:58):
either a little too evil for me or they're a
little too like if you look at Mando, he's he's
a bit too upstanding. Um, and Jedi's can be cool,
but that whole like living by a code thing. What
about you? Um? So I have a joke answer, which
(02:21):
is that i'd want to be I'd want to be
one of the band members at the Moss Eisley Cantina. Um.
I mean list that as an option, Jonathan I said,
or something else that includes It's just like with every
job description where it says other duties as a signed right,
it covers everything. Uh, but yeah, I thought about that.
(02:44):
Or maybe gambler like Lando Calrissian is more of a
gambler than a smuggler, which I think is kind of
a fun and I could be at least as good
or bad of a gambler as Lando Calrissian seems to be. Um,
you know, those are those are the kind of things
that I was thinking of. Is like, I agree with you,
Like Jedi was something I thought was super cool, But
the further we get into the mythology, the more restrictive
(03:08):
and sort of twisted the Jedi seem to be. Like
part of that is just because you have different people
bringing their interpretations into Star Wars, right, But we've had
a lot of stories that explore the restrictive nature of
the Jedi code and how that in many ways is
(03:29):
not a good thing and that it doesn't benefit people
very much. And so you then get like these crazy extremes.
You've got this very repressed, restrictive Jedi order and then
you have the uninhibited and self destructive Sithe and there
doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Um. I know
that some of the games have explored that, but like
(03:51):
in the Cannon of what is officially Star Wars, there's
not a whole lot that deals with that. So for
that case, I'm going Gambler, I think, because I think
it's it's sort of along the same lines as Smuggler.
It's that sort of rakish, rogue ish kind of character
that I find really appealing. Yeah, speaking of characters that
(04:16):
are kind of more rogueish, let's talk about our first
news item. Yeah, so the thing we wanted to chat
about is an upcoming animated series that's going to play
on Adult Swim and it is blade Runner. It's a
it's a new blade Runner uh anime series, blade Runner
(04:39):
Black Lotus. And we've learned a little bit about some
of the voice actors who are going to be portraying
characters in this. We don't know a whole lot about
the specifics of the plot, but we know that the
series is going to follow a character named l who
is a replicant, so that that history is cleared up
(05:01):
right away. We know she's yeah, we know she's not
gonna have to take the test and figure out whether
or not she'd help a turtle that was on its back. Um,
So L is play is a replicant who is created
for a secret and unknown purpose, played by Jessica Henwick.
We know that some interesting actors like Brian Cox is
(05:23):
going to be voicing a character he's I mean, when
you hear Brian Cox, you're like, oh, clearly he's going
to be one of those big business ee, you know,
vaguely antagonistic characters. Sure enough, that's who he's playing. A
Neander Wallace SR. So Blade Runner. Like if you're not
familiar with Blade Runner, the world a Blade Runner. It's
set in sort of a um it's an alternate future
(05:45):
because the original Blade Runner was set I think in
like it was. It's definitely in our past now, but
it was this very super corporate, uh, dystopian world not
that different from what we have now, except we don't
have flying cars and we don't have replicates, and you've
(06:06):
got these these replicants that are kind of like, um,
a mix between androids and a genetic creation that there
they purposefully live very short lifespans and they're meant to
do like manual dangerous labor, essentially the stuff that we
make robots to do. But they have thoughts and feelings
(06:27):
and often have implanted histories in their heads, uh in
the Blade Runner series, so that they don't realize the replicants,
so that might it kind of sounds a little bit
like Westworld if you've watched Westworld, it's a similar kind
of a theory, although in Westworld the replicants for the
(06:47):
hosts are more thought to be more contained. Um. But uh,
Stephen Rude is in it, and he's playing the chief
of Police and I know that he plays a bunch
of serious characters, but I always picture him from off
a space. And if he played the chief of police,
like like like Milton, the low mumbling character that I mean,
(07:07):
it would not fit at all, I'm sure in the story,
but it would be hilarious and I'd be all there
for it. Have you have you seen Buster Scrugs? The
Ballad of Buster Scrugs? Not yet. I watched like five
minutes of it, but I need to sit. And he's
in He's in one of the vignettes and that, and
it's another one of those I mean, it's a Cohen
Brothers film, right, so it's and he's been in some
(07:28):
Cohen brother stuff. It's it's another um, very quirky character
and like and he plays in that one. He's a
he's a bank teller essentially in the Old West. But
he does some guns slinging a little bit in that.
And so I immediately went to that character, which again
would have not fit into the Blade Runner universe at all,
(07:51):
but would be really entertaining. It would be really entertaining.
That being said, he's a very versatile actor. Yes, I
think that's why some of his more quirky characters stick
out to me is just because he is so versatile,
he's phenomenal. And Barry, he's absolutely amazing in that series.
Barry is such a fun show and it's great. It's
one of the best. Like, I didn't know I was
(08:12):
going to enjoy it so much until I started watching
it and I thought, Wow, this is a uh this
is a very dark but very funny show. Uh. And
it hits a little close to home at times for
me as an actor. Yeah, there's some actor stuff in
it that does it rings very true. But yes, this
series looks like it's going to be really interesting. There's
(08:34):
actually all the all the parts are are most of
the parts anyway, are double cast because they have a
Japanese cast as well. I think one of the characters
might be played by by a single actor who might
be fluent in both, but most of them are are
obviously played by two different actors who are providing either
(08:55):
the English or the Japanese language versions of that. And Yeah,
I'm really looking forward to seeing it. We don't have
details on when it's coming out. It just says that
it's going to be airing on Adult Swim Swim and
also crunchy role later this year. Yeah, yeah, you know,
it's not often that adults swim has something that really
grabs me, but I think I will definitely take some
(09:17):
time to check this one out. Something else that I'm
going to take time to check out once we finally
get it, regardless of what the details are on. It
is the new series that Jamaine Clement and Tycho Edhiti
are working on, which we have little to know details
about other than it's going to be kind of action
adventury comedy, and I'm just I love what they do.
(09:39):
I love what we do in the Shadows, And I
guess we haven't gotten Wellington's Paranormal yet. I wanted to
watch that one as well. Yeah, so, so of course
what we do in the Shadows, in case you're not familiar,
is it's done in the documentary style but follows the
misadventures of vampires and sort of the the trials and
(10:01):
tribulations they go through having a vampiric existence, and it's
very silly. Uh, it's it's The movie is fantastic in
the series really really expands upon it in a very
fun way. So highly recommend those. But yeah, and of
course Tayko what TV. He's made a huge name for
himself directing films in the m C. You you know
(10:24):
he did He did Thor, Ragnarok. He's doing Love and
Thunder the next Thor movie. Yeah, and Jo Rabbit, which
was a phenomenal movie Jojo Rabbit, Yes, and a difficult
movie to sell to people when you tell them the premise,
but yes, it is is an amazing movie. And Jermaine Clement,
of course, obviously a brilliant comedian and musician as well
(10:48):
part of Flight of the Conchords, has done a huge
amount of work that a lot of it I think
is under seen. There's a lot of stuff he's done
that I don't think America and audiences have really seen. Well,
he was in Legion, and he was he was a
serious character in that bizarre but serious character because I
raised Bizarre and Legion, but just brilliant. I had only
(11:10):
seen his comedy up to that point. But yeah, he's
very multi talented. Yeah, it makes me sick, but we're
going to We're going to get some sort of action
adventure comedy. But as we say, there's not really any
more detail about that to me. When I hear action
adventure comedy. My thoughts go back to some earlier shows.
(11:31):
Like I was telling Ariel before the recording, it reminds
me I would describe Wizards and Warriors as it was
more of like a fantasy action comedy series. But it
was the sort of thing that kind of later evolved
into stuff like Hercules and Zena and The Adventures of
Briscoe County Jr. And like these shows that did seem
(11:52):
to try and pair comedy with action. Uh two different degrees, right.
Some of those series were less comedic than others, but
they all had elements of comedy, sometimes like Zaney, like
corny comedy, and and some of them were not intending
to be quite as comedic as they were. I mean,
(12:13):
look at Karl Urban playing Cupid in Xena, Like they
probably probably didn't mean for it to be quite as
humorous as it was, especially now. But it's interesting because
I feel like this is a niche that really hasn't
been filled, Like there there are series out there. First
of all, I don't think there's that many action adventure
series out there. Everything's like procedurals and stuff, right, you
(12:36):
don't get a lot of action adventure stuff anymore at
least not in TV, so that that I'm really excited
to see, Like I wanna kind of find out what
their vision is for that sort of thing. I'm sure
it's gonna be hilarious whatever it is, so I am
I am eagerly anticipating that, even though we have next
(12:56):
to no information about it. Yeah, yeah, equally hilarious. The
new Aliens television show Alien Television. Yeah, Alien, It's it's ah.
So it follows Alien, a xenomorph who's in New York
City as a stand up comedian. He has a wacky
neighbor named Kramer, and uh, there's a lane and no,
(13:17):
now this is this is a series that Noah Holly
has been working on for u f X, and it's
going to take place on Earth. So a very different
approach to what we've see in the Alien films, which
are almost always taking place in like a spaceship or
a deserted lunar lunar colony, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:43):
you know, Fargo and Legion are both a little bit
surreal um and if they can lean a bit more
on that surreal nous in this television show as opposed
to the last Alien movie, I think I've talked about
this plenty of times before on this podcast. Just the
the further into the Alien franchise we get, the more gruesome.
It gets to the point where I couldn't even watch
(14:04):
the most recent movie. Um, but hopefully this TV show
will pull back a little bit on the gruesome. Uh,
because they're really focusing on it seems like Wayland Utani,
who is the evil corporation that's trying to weaponize the xenomorphs? Yes,
and this is the company that first of all, was
(14:25):
in charge of sending the Nostromo out in the first place,
and then in Aliens, that really turns into like the
evil company, right because it becomes clear that that's when
they are really actively trying to go after the alien
without actually revealing to the rest of the human population
that there are these xenomorphs. Like the idea being like,
(14:48):
there's this incredibly dangerous thing. We want it, but we
don't want anyone to know that we know about it,
So we're just gonna send people out there and hope
for the best, and then when they die, well and
more of them. Yeah. Yeah, Um, So I don't think
I'm looking forward to this as much as I Am
(15:09):
to the next Tycho and TD Chermain Clement show. Yeah.
What I thought was interesting is that we you know,
we talked about Blade Runner and then we're talking about
Alien Obviously, both of those, both of those, uh, those
those franchises or whatever have as part of the story
the giant corporations that are uh a moral right. They're
(15:33):
not they're not necessarily evil, but they're a moral so
they don't have any consideration for ethics or morality. And
I mean, it's a pretty common theme and a lot
of science fiction, but I just feel like, wow, it's
interesting that this keeps coming up. It's also in the
same climate, obviously as one where more and more people
(15:53):
are questioning, um, the why we have billionaires and why
we allow them allow them to continue to accumulate the
enormous amounts of wealth. It kind of I think it
shows the certain types of concerns that rise to the top.
Right that's when we start to see it reflected in
(16:13):
science fiction. And it just feels like that's part of
the we're coming back into that kind of cycle. Yeah, Yeah,
and I look forward to that because that'll be a
nice um balance with just straight up monster show, monster
scary Monster Show. Um, I like alien I like Aliens.
I will definitely give this shot. Um, we'll see how
(16:35):
far we get into it. Yeah, and then for our
last couple of stories, we're gonna turn over to the
Star Wars. As we were talking about before, we got
to see a a kind of teaser for the Star
Wars anime series that's coming out, where this was a
pretty phenomenal thing where Disney essentially has partnered with all
(16:58):
these different anime students and from what I understand, gave
these studios like Carte Blanche to do whatever they want
with the Star Wars you know, mythology and to and
to kind of realize it in their own styles. So
we're getting like true enemy renditions of Star Wars iconography
(17:21):
and ideas. And it's not gonna be cannon. It's not
like it's going to be incorporated into the Star Wars cannon.
But at the same time, it sounds to me like
there were very few restrictions placed, which is phenomenal when
you're talking about something with I P as famous as
Star Wars. Yeah. I think it's such a smart decision too, because,
(17:41):
like everybody knows about, you know, the main Star Wars
movies the main six to nine, three to nine, depending
on depending on hell grout to you are, depending on
how grad you are, Jonathan, But sometimes I just go
in two and a half. But okay, two and a half, fine,
(18:02):
I'll I'll accept that. But there's such a like a
rich world in the comics, in the book series around
Star Wars that I think it's really smart too explore
some of that, give some of those characters and ideas
and civilizations and and such some more thought in, some
some more spotlighting. Because even though this isn't necessarily going
(18:24):
to be canon, let's say, Tattooing Rhapsody really takes off
and everybody loves it, there's nothing saying they can't expand
on that as one of their future stories now that
we're done with the Skywalkers hopefully um well. And and
and also it's interesting because it's again I'm talking a
lot about cycles in this episode, but this comes full
(18:45):
circle in that Star Wars is a series that was
in part inspired by the work of Kura Sawa, for example,
And so now we're seeing this this science fiction antsy
series that has as part of its genetic heritage this
(19:05):
cinematic history from Japan and now we're seeing a modern
Japanese take on the Star Wars mythology. So it's not
like it's out of place like it. It feels like
it's coming home in a way. Yeah, yeah, I will say.
The interesting thing to me, like the most interesting thing
is when they initially announced visions, I was expecting something
(19:28):
like Memories or The Animatrix that had super diverse art styles,
which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing.
That's just what I was picturing. It looks like a
lot of these are a lot more um mainstream anime styles.
It doesn't make me any less excited for it. A
couple of them do look a little more stylized or
a little more cartoony than others. But yeah, I see
(19:49):
what you're saying. Yeah, But like I said, that's not
like a negative or a positive. It's just it's something
interesting that they announced this thing and my brain immediately
went to this like super art how style of anthology,
and instead it's it's um, you know, a little bit
more mainstream, which I think is good to bring people
into it who maybe wouldn't normally watch anime or a
(20:12):
Star Wars cartoon. One of the other properties that's already
out there. Yeah, so this will be coming to Disney
Plus later and I look forward to seeing it. And
then our last story is what if what if you were,
you know, a famous director and you really wanted to
make a Star Wars movie and they told you know,
so you decided to go and make a not Star
(20:33):
Wars movie that's kind of a Star Wars movie, but
it's not a Star Wars movie. Um. And also was
again kind of inspired by Kura Sawa. Well, then that
would mean you are Zack Snyder. Yes, So apparently years
ago he made a mature he wrote a mature Star
Wars movie and Lucasfilmson thank you, um or something to
(20:55):
that effect. I'm paraphrasing. And now he's making a movie
in inspired by Star Wars and Cure Car Sawa for Netflix,
which you know, Netflix is really good banking on popular properties,
so not you know, it's not a bad thing. Some
people really like that and they've come out with some
very good stuff because of that. But yeah, so he's
(21:19):
going to be making a movie for them that is
called Rebel Moon. Yes. Can I can read that little
quick description that was in the A V Club article?
You certainly can this is this is a short one
and by the way, that a VY We'll we'll have
a link to the article in our show notes, but
that a V Club article, a little bit salty. Oh
I love it, I love it so much. But here's
(21:40):
the little description because it made me immediately think of
a different movie besides Star Wars, which is the story
is set in motion when a peaceful colony on the
edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of
a tyrannical region named ballast Sarious totally not Balpatine. Desperate
people dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to
(22:00):
seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make
a stand arial. Does this remind you of any other,
like really super cheesy nties era science fiction film that
we actually covered in a video episode of large Enner
Treadclator years ago. You mean the bat Will Beyond the Star? Exactly?
It is Battle Beyond This is Battle Beyond the Stars.
(22:21):
If this if this Rebel Moon movie, which I get
is supposed to be like a grim, mature take on
on the sort of stuff you would have seen in
Star Wars, But it's totally not Star Wars. Don't think
it's Star Wars. Call it's not Star Wars. But if
there are not, if they're not like twins that are
eating hot dogs and like and like in a space
(22:43):
cowboy and a valkyrie wearing almost no costume whatsoever, I
am going to be really disappointed in this movie. You know.
I am interested to see what blaster bolts and lightsabers
look like in gray scale. Uh. Two shots fired at
(23:04):
Zack Snyder's palette choice. Okay, I'm just you know, I'm
like a stormtrooper I always miss So it's fine. But
it's being written. He's co writing it with Shayhattan, who
did Army the Dead, and Kurt Johnson, who did Three
hundred Um, which were some of the things that I
liked better from him. Okay, fair enough. Zack Snyder is
(23:25):
all about the visuals, and I feel like space and
sci fi is a great place to put in pretty visuals.
So maybe it'll be awesome. I'm sure it's gonna look great.
I also feel like there will be absolutely no humanity
in it. But I feel like that because Zack Snyder
has time and time again created like I I have.
(23:46):
I have often mentioned that I feel like Zack snyder
movies feel more like a kid playing with action figures
and smashing them together than it does actual characters with
like feelings and stuff. He's Zack Snyder doesn't typically do feelings.
He does like iconic characters that again, uh, smash each
(24:08):
other as hard as they possibly can, for as long
as they possibly can. I mean, he does some feelings,
but they're usually very everybody's faulty. Yeah, well, like like
you know, I could just say two words and just
set you off. I could just say sucker punch and
we could just see you go. But there are feelings
(24:29):
in that Mine just didn't match up with the movie.
I don't want to Panzack Snyder too hard. They're like,
there are some things I think are very cool about
his directing and art style. I just I definitely I
feel like like Zack Snyder falls into a category, not
that their styles are similar, but he falls into a
(24:50):
category that reminds me of people like Michael Bay. And
these are directors who can create really captivating visuals and
really interesting action sequences, but I feel like everything around
it doesn't it doesn't work for me, or it just
doesn't hold very much humanity. Or like there's nothing for
(25:14):
me to connect to emotionally, So there's at least it's
a side of humanity that's not as pleasant to connect to. Yeah,
that's probab, It's probably a good way of putting it.
So anyway, while I'm slagging off on Zack Snyder, I'm
not nearly doing it to the level that the A V.
Club did. And uh and and to be fair, like,
maybe this will come out and I will completely eat
(25:36):
my words and I'll say like, Wow, this was just
a truly phenomenal piece of science fiction. So I don't
want to pass judgment on something before it comes out.
That's totally not fair. And you know, you can't judge
everything based upon the stuff that came before it. You
could always be surprised. Yeah, well, how about we uh
(25:57):
look at some stuff that has come out in the
past that we both really do like Right after this break,
We're going to start off this discussion with you know,
(26:18):
a little bit of sad news first, which is that
over the last week since our last episode, famed movie
director Richard Donner passed away. Uh. He had lived a
very full and long life. He was ninety one when
he passed away. He had not directed a film since
two thousand and six, so it had been a while
(26:40):
since he had actually directed a movie. But he he
was involved in a lot of of works in films
and stuff over the years, and also series, some of
which he would be removed from. But yes, yeah, we
wanted to chat a bit about some of his working
and the impact that it's had on us. Well. Well,
(27:01):
first I want to say that one of his works
is Lethal Weapon. And the only reason I'm saying that
is because you said he hadn't directed anything in years.
He had plans to come back to the Lethal Weapon
franchise last year and then pandemic Um, so he was
actually gonna jump back in recently. I said, he didn't.
I really like the Lethal Weapon franchise. But when when
(27:24):
you look at some of the movies that that he directed,
it's interesting because they have they span a lot of
different genres, right, So, like one of my favorite films
came out in the Superman movie with you know, Christopher
Reeve in it and and Richard Daughter directed that. He
also directed or he started to direct Superman too, and
(27:48):
then there was a whole studio issue that he got
removed from that film. But he did Superman, and Superman
is such an earnest and corny movie. Like if you
go and watch that original Superman film, well I say
original that Superman film, it is cornball. It is incredibly sincere.
(28:11):
But to me, that's what makes it work. Like Superman
is a difficult character to make interesting because he he's
kind of flawless. It's sort of like Captain America. It's
a character who's who doesn't really have any flaws, so
it makes it hard to make an interesting film about them.
But when you go with that sort of corny and
(28:31):
earnest approach, it just becomes very charming. And Reeves was
amazing as the as as Superman. You had Gene Hackman
as Lex Luthor. You know, it was an engaging movie,
and of course you had the John Williams score, which
really brought it all together. That to me is one
of those iconic films that they inspired within me a
(28:54):
love of genre, uh, storytelling and films. I mean it is.
It's one of the first superhero movies I remember ever watching,
and you're right, it was very earnest and sincere, and
it balanced the humor with the super with the romance,
so very well that as a child, I loved it,
and then going back and watching it as an adult.
(29:14):
Even though it is a little cornball, as you said,
and even though some of the effects don't necessarily stand up,
it just it holds up for me. It has one
of the it is so touching. It has one of
the best visual gags of a Superman movie ever, where
Clark Kent needs to change into Superman and the famous
images Clark Kent jumping into a phone booth and changing
(29:37):
from Clark Kent to Superman and then coming out of
the phone booth of Superman. But he comes by a
not a phone booth, but so back in the day,
we used to have these public telephones that were on
like stands that were in like a had a little
dividers up, but it wasn't a full booth, right, And
he just stops and gives it a quick like double
take as he looks it up and down and realized like, no,
(29:59):
that's not gonna work, and then moves on to find
a place where you can change. It's just such a
it's it. I mean, obviously I'm describing a visual gag,
which is the dumbest thing you can do. It's like
reading out the comic strip. But it's one of those
moments that just works. Uh. He also directed one of
the few fantasy films from the nineteen eighties I thought
(30:20):
really worked, which is Lady Oh. Okay. I was thinking
you're going to talk about like Goonies or Scrooged. Well,
Lady Hawk was a lot of fun. Yeah. I don't
think of Goonies or Scrooged as a fan as I
either of those as fantasy movies. Lady Hawk was definitely
fancy film. Matthew Broderick, Rutger Howard, Michelle Peiffer um really
(30:43):
an interesting fantasy movie that I saw in the theater
when I was a kid, Like I went to that
movie when it opened up, and I think it still
holds up. It's still it's a really interesting fantasy love story.
And even though Matthew Roderick hasn't has one of those
(31:03):
accents that kind of sort of hovers around English and
then goes away. Even because even though there's that, it's
still it's really an engaging movie. Yeah. Well, I mean, plus,
you have a love for anything like medieval Renaissance stories
and Rutger Howard Man he's just amazing and you know,
(31:24):
here was Rugger Howard playing a heroic character. He's he's
a heroic character with an edge because he's he's damaged.
He's an emotionally damaged character. But this was sort of
like if you look at him in Blade Runner, where
he's a damaged character who's an antagonist. Here he was
(31:44):
a damaged character who's a protagonist. It's almost like two
sides of the same coin. And and it's a great performance.
Do you do you want me to make you really sad? John? Okay? So,
Rugger Howard, even though I've seen Blade Round and I
think I saw it before. What I'm about to mention
the first thing I remember knowing him from and recognizing
(32:07):
him and going, oh who is that? Oh his name
is Ryger Howard was ten Kingdom the two thousand's really
long mini series. Yeah, and and uh O'Neil is that
his name? Oh yeah, yeah he where he played the
(32:27):
troll I think yeah, he played the lead troll daddy.
It just sounds wrong to say, why did you say
it that way? We're gonna clip that that's gonna be
troll daddy, troll daddy. Uh so like which I actually
really enjoyed that mini series. But that's that's the first
thing I remember recognizing Rudger Howard so well. Yeah, Lady
(32:52):
Hawk is one of those those films that if you
have never seen it, uh, you should check it out.
It is no granted, it's from the eighties. The effects
are very dated, the music is bizarre like, it's very
new age with lots of synthesizers, um the like it.
(33:13):
It definitely is a product of its time. But it
again was one of those fantasy films from the eighties
that I thought actually worked. There were only a handful
of fantasy movies that came across as anything more than
just like super cheap sets and like like most of
the eighties fantasy films were like b movies, this was
(33:34):
not uh. He also did the Goonies, Like you pointed
out a movie that's very divisive. Now, yes, yes, it's
it's you either watched it as a kid and loved
it or you can't. You don't know, Um did you
hear about? What? Did you hear about? What he and
his wife did for the The actor who played Chunk,
(33:56):
I didn't know so um so Chunk was the be
kid right in in the Goonies who was made to
do the truffle shuffle and all that kind of stuff. So, uh,
when when he was getting older, like he wasn't able
to get more roles really after a little while, and
and so he was deciding he was going to go
(34:16):
and go to college. And he asked Richard Donner if
Richard would be willing to write a letter of recommendation
when he was applying to school, and uh, Donna said, yeah, kid,
let's have a meeting and we'll talk about what you
want me to say. And they had a meeting and
the actor told Donna all about his background and the
(34:38):
struggles he had and all this kind of stuff. Donna
and his wife paid for his tuition for him to
go to college. He ended up becoming an entertainment lawyer.
Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, that was a really sweet story.
It is and you know, like I know that there
are some problematic things and Goonies it like, you know,
Chunk kind of being pigeonholed. Yeah, well yeah, yeah, well
(35:02):
and there's no yeah, there's name is not Chunk. There's
tons of um, there's tons of problematic stuff in Gooon.
He's like, you have a the data character is that's
an issue, right, Like there's a again, it was a
product of its time, not to excuse it, but rather
to say, like to give it, contextualize it, to say
(35:24):
like this was an era where that level of care
and thought and empathy just did not exist in Hollywood
and that that was a bad thing. So that's something
to keep in mine, you know. But he went from
Superman and Goonies to lethal Weapon as I mentioned earlier,
and scrooged. But he also did some some horror which
(35:47):
I didn't know, so I wasn't aware that he worked
on Tales from the Crypt, which gave me nightmares as
a child. And I have never seen the Omens. So yeah,
the Omen that's one of those, um, you know, creepy movies. Uh, definitely,
definitely one of those that is worth checking out. He
was going to be a producer on a sequel to
(36:11):
The Goonies, which I have no idea that is even
still a thing that's going to happen. Um. He also,
you know, has worked in some regard with lots of
other elements that people would recognize. Um, And like it's
it's it's it's he lived to be ninety one, so
(36:35):
it's not that his his departure was a shock or
anything along those lines, but more that it really allowed
us a chance to reflect on his body of work
and kind of appreciate sort of the things that he did. Yeah,
because he was so varied in the stories that he
put out, in the styles that he put out, um
(36:58):
and and just he made worries that, regardless of whether
they're for their error or their time, they last. Like
people still know about the Goonies, people still know about
Lethal Weapon, people still know about Scrooged and Superman. So
you know, there are certain movies that just get made
and they're they're impressive for a while and then people
forget about them. But his his works have endured, and
(37:20):
that's really impressive. And uh, you know, are we salute
you Richard Donner, you know, godspeed, fair Winds and following
season all that, and thank you for the work you did,
because there's some really cool stuff. I mean, if nothing else,
if nothing else, we got Cindy Lauper's The Goonies Are
(37:42):
Good Enough music video, which is truly brilliant. I mean,
you know, you bring in bringing professional wrestlers to pretend
like their actors and Chase Cindy Lauper around, you're guaranteed
to have a masterpiece. I feel like you're biased there,
I might be. I also I also genuinely love that song.
(38:02):
I mean, it is a fun song. But if you
put like I could put, I could put professional wrestlers
into Sucker Punch, you'd probably like it. So, okay, let's
let's not throw, let's not throw through through hands here. Okay,
we're gonna we're gonna take a break. When we come back,
we're going to mash up do things that never ever
ever should be mashed up together and find out what happens.
(38:41):
So things that should never ever be mashed up together,
but we do. That has been our theme for the
past few weeks, hasn't it. Yeah, well, I mean, to
be fair, like, mash ups are a lot more fun
if you take two things that are very much unrelated
and try to make them work, as opposed to, oh,
let's take these two things that are similar and make them,
(39:02):
you know, mash them up together. Well, I mean they're
similar than you just end up with Zack Snyder's version
of a not a Star Wars movie. Yeah, yeah, So
this time we're taking a couple of our our new stories.
We're actually staying true to our news stories, and we
are mashing up alien something from the Alien universe and
(39:24):
something from the Star Wars. Yes, the best thing from
the Star Wars which walks. And now that I'm thinking
about it, I would have been an e walk. I
would be wicket yub nub. So now I I specifically
had mentioned to Ariel when we were figuring out what
we're going to mash up, I said, the e Walk movie.
(39:47):
So for those of you out there who there are
two of them, there are two of them. The second
one is it starts in a way that completely invalidates
the entirety of the first one. So for those who
are blissfully unaware that there were two Ewok movies in
the mid eighties, after Return of the Jedi came out,
(40:08):
and obviously the Walks were a boon for toy sales,
like that was I mean, by that time Star Wars
had become a true merchandise machine. It wasn't that way
with the first movie, at least not originally. But once
that once that started rolling man did Lucas ride that right?
(40:28):
So e Walks were a big hit. So they decided
to make a couple of what we're made for TV
movies here in the United States. They did get apparently
a limited theatrical release in other parts of the world.
And um, the first one involved a family that gets
i think stranded on indoor and they end up encountering
the e Walks and they are trying to to survive
(40:50):
various dangers in that. The second one starts off with
everyone in that family, with the exception of the little
girl getting slaughtered. So the family that you were following
and rooting for in the first movie gets almost completely
wiped out in the second one at the beginning of
the second one. But anyway, it was really more of
(41:12):
an excuse to have more e walk so that you
can have more twice. Yeah, I mean the girl the
girl did stick. Sindal was in both of them. Um,
And we already kind of talked about aliens. You know,
there's there's these like primordial parasitic monsters aliens doing what
they do, and there's an evil corporation that tries to
(41:32):
weaponize them and then they run them up because they're
really powerful and have survived since the dawn of time
and spaceships and it's really scary. The first movie is
a horror. The second movie is kind of a sci
fi adventure but also scary, and then it goes downhill
from there. Yes, Like the first two films are are masterpieces,
(41:54):
and they are so different, right. The first one is
this very atmospheric, oppressive, scary horror movie by Ridley Scott.
The second one still has some scary elements but is
more of an action movie like and it's that one's
by James Cameron. So it's interesting that they can be
so different and yet they feel like they belong in
(42:15):
the same universe. It's just different stories and different settings. Yeah,
and something we forgot to mention earlier, but AI also
plays kind of possibly villainous role in the stories as well,
but it's so overshadowed for me by the actual aliens
and that creepy grotest because the Androids, the Androids and
(42:37):
the Alien series, they're made by the corporation that's sending
people out. So you whenever there's an android, you immediately
question that androids motivations, right, You immediately assume this android
is specifically there to fulfill the the mission for the corporation,
whether that ends up slaughtering everybody else or not. Up yeah. Yeah. So.
(43:03):
Uh that being said, let's take these very little creatures
and match them up with some evil, slimy aliens. I'm
going to go ahead and go first. Uh So this
is called The Walks and the Battle for Nostromo. After
Sindal's ship crashes on end Or, she and her brother
befriend a bunch of the Walks in an attempt to
(43:24):
find their parents who are missing. After the crash, the
kids are told that their parents were captured by that
feature Loudo, the go ax. They make a plan to
travel to the Coaxes Layer to free them. Feat. Laura,
by the way, is e Walks, But that doesn't It
just means that darn bad guy kind of essentially. Anyhow,
they make a plan to travel to the Goaxes Layer
to free them, but when they get to the layer,
(43:45):
they find something much worse than the go Axe. They
find a hundred egg like slimy objects and the go
As lying in the corner with his chest burst open.
Then they see a scorch trail that looks like a
small ship. It taken off from the gore Axes Lair.
The children and the e Walks decide to quickly leave
the lair and come up with another plan, but just
(44:05):
as they do, they are caught by a sorceress named Harold.
She's trying to leave the planet as well, in fear
after something horrible happened at her Marauders castle to her companion,
and she figured the children and e walks would be
a good bargaining tool onto any ship she found out
in space, so she throws them all into a spaceship
and flies off uh and in space they find well spaceship,
(44:27):
of course, the Nostromo. It seems to be abandoned, so
maybe she didn't need her prisoners after all, and she
completely forgets about them when she lands in the hangar
bay and there is a shadow and a chitter that
she goes off to find what it is that leaves
the kids and their Ewok friends alone. In the landing bay,
they see an escape pod that they assumed would leave
(44:47):
similar scorch marks to the one they saw on end Or,
the moon that they were on where the Ewoks live,
and they decide Cindel and her brother's parents might be there,
and they go searching for them. All along the way
they hear hittering screams and see remains of what looks
like it might have once been sentient creatures. Also a
lot more slimy eggs, lots of them, and then there
(45:08):
is a different scream. They go cautiously to see what
it is and find Harold ripped apart from the stomach
like something burst through just like the Gorax. The Wax
grab whatever improvised weapons they can pipes for, spears, knives, shrapnel,
and even a whaling utani flamethrower, and continue their search.
As they round a corner, Sindal and her brother see
(45:28):
their parents asleep in a couple of cryo chambers, or
what we would assume of the cryo chambers, they don't
really know. As the kids struggle to free their parents,
they hear a chittering screech behind them, and that's when
they see it, the queen of the Xeno morphs. She
opens her huge maw and then her smaller ma at
the e walks and they all yelled killed the monster
and ewa kas and before the Zeno Marph can cause
(45:49):
her carnage, the e walks dispatch her because e walks
are really vicious. You all feeling momentarily safe, the kids
figure out how to get their parents out of stasis.
The parents tell the kids they were taken by the
Queen Zeno Morph to the ship. They thought they were
done for with how quickly she dispatched the Corex, but
then she stuck them in stasis. Thankfully, the kids, that
e walks, and the parents all find their way back
to the escape pod without further harrowing adventures, and they
(46:13):
head back to end Or. As they land, the parents
look a bit odd. Cyndel asks what's wrong, and they
say nothing, just some indigestion. As they all leave the
ship with one e walk who we all know is Wicket,
shooting his new found flamethrower the air and screaming young Nub.
As they head back to the Ewalk village to celebrate
and repair their own ship. The camera zooms in on
(46:33):
the loading dock of the escape pot. We see an
egg tucked away in a hidden corner begin to shape,
and we hear a chittering speech cut to black. Wow,
darker than you usually go, Darker than I usually go.
I don't want to say it was good, but uh,
well no, I think I think it was interesting and interesting.
(46:53):
Take because you made it where the e Walks were characters.
Uh it's a little different than my version of this
is called aliens E walkin Roll, Here we go. Ellen
Ripley has a problem. After being rescued by a salvage
crew and awakened out of stasis, she has discovered that
the Wicked whaland Utahni Corporation has established a colony on
(47:16):
the very same moon where her crew encountered the eggs
of the dangerous alien creature, the same creature that managed
to kill all aboard the Nostromo except for Ripley herself,
oh and her kittycat, Jonesy. And now the company has
lost contact with that colony, necessitating our reconnaissance mission to
(47:37):
find out what happened. Ripley agrees to go along as
a sort of consultant. Ripley joins the crew of the Salaco.
Most of the crew are Marines and their skeptical of
Ripley's accounts of a dangerous alien. And then there's Carter Burke,
a rep from the company. Oh, and of course there's
the ship's protocol Android Bishop three p O. The Sala
(48:00):
Paco sets course for the moon now known by the
colony name of Indoor. The Salaco deploys a drop ship
down to the surface of Indoor, where the crew finds
the small colony completely empty except for one young girl
they decided to call Newt Skywalker. Newt is clearly shaken
(48:20):
up and almost completely non communicative. The crew pick up
signals of the colonists. They appear to be up in
the trees, and so after using some equipment to climb up,
the crew find a primitive village up in the trees itself.
The colonists are all comatose and they're covered in this
(48:41):
weird goo. Ripley tries to warn the others, but while
doing so, something terrible happens. One of the comatose colonists
begins to shutter and their abdomen distends horrifically. Next thing
you know, a little teddy bear like critter pops out
of the colonist Torso, oh, how cutes has corporal Hicks?
(49:01):
Are you crazy? Asks Ripley. We're going to be rich
Yales Burke, the merchandizing alone is going to go through
the roof. Before Ripley can respond, the little teddy bear
critter leaps out and latches onto another crew member. Let's
say it was Lieutenant Gorman and the teddy Bear viciously
bites into Gorman's neck, killing him. At this point, Corporal
(49:25):
Hicks kind of loses it. He will continue to kind
of lose it throughout the rest of the movie. The
group makes their escape as other furry alien critters burst
out of colonists. They managed to get out of the
trees back to the drop ship, but they find that
the ship itself has been disabled as to adult aliens
who look like teddy Bears but bigger and armed with
(49:48):
primitive weapons, have managed to damage the flight systems of
the ship and kill the pilots. Oh and the adult
Ewok aliens also have second, tinier Ewok alien heads in
their own mouths when they open up their mouths, which
is an image so horrific I hate that I wrote
it down. Having no choice but to hide in the
(50:09):
remains of the colony, the group bunkers down and that's
when they hear it. Hundreds of aliens, all chanting yub
nub yub nub. Game over man came over, says Corporal Hicks,
who continues to kind of lose it. Ripley takes over.
Burke secretly tries to capture a little teddy bear alien
(50:30):
but he gets his face eaten off by a bunch
of them in a way that is brutal and yet
satisfying because Burke rhymes with jerk. What follows is a
sequence of big action set pieces in which the Marines
get taken out by Ewok aliens who use the terrain
and primitive traps to their advantage. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and
(50:51):
Bishop managed to evade capture and death, but the others
aren't so lucky, though Beskes does get this really cool
sacrifice move advised them some time, and squishes up you
he walks. Bishop offers to make his way to the
communications station on the colony, where he'll be able to
make contact with the Slaco in orbit and deploy another
drop shop, so he leaves the group behind. They have
(51:14):
a few more close calls as hurry e walks trying
to take them out, but fortunately the e walks have
short little legs so they're not really that hard to outrun.
But Bishop eventually returns, having managed to land the drop ship.
But more importantly, he's discovered something odd. The Ewoks worship
Bishop three po as a god. That's a pretty big
(51:34):
promotion to go from bishop to god. With this newfound status,
Bishop is able to convince the Ewoks to allow Hicks, Ripley,
and Nuke Skywalker to go to the drop shop. He
joins them there, and all four make their way back
to the Silaco. Once they're Ripley turns to Bishop, nuke
it for morbit. It's the only way to be sure.
(51:55):
Bishop nods and aims the Silaco's nuclear arsenal at the
surface of Indoor, where you can almost hear the sounds
of musical celebration, and boom, a huge wave of nuclear
missiles rains down on the moon and just wipes everything out.
Ripley picks Newt, Skywalker, and Bishop all into cryo asleep
as the ship sets a course back to core space.
(52:17):
The end, that was really good, even though you killed
all of my favorite Walks, well, I mean like they
were monsters. They were. I mean, I think that's the
thing that we can agree about in our both of
our mashups, is that the e Walks are are vicious,
vicious creatures. I mean they in Return of the Jedi,
(52:38):
they capture our heroes and it's clear they're going to
eat them so and they turned Stormtrooper helmets into a
giant xylophone, which is awesome and hilarious. And then they
and then they change their their in song from one
version of Return of the Jedi to the remastered version
(52:58):
Return of the Jedidah. Yeah, yeah, that's it. The song
is different at the end, right like it. It was
a little e Walks song nu yep nub yep nub ye.
That's totally different in the the special edition. Well that's
okay because when we got the cartoon they spoke English,
so yes, now, and I guess somewhat in the movies listen,
(53:22):
they had already had the experience of the Star Wars
Christmas Special and realized what a huge mistake it was
to have Wookies only speaking in Wookies for the entire special.
That just made it incomprehensible. All right, Well, that wraps
up this episode of Large NuRD drunk Llider. We ran
a little long this time. We're gonna close it off,
and as always, if you have stuff you want to
(53:45):
share with us. Let's say you've got your own mash
up of Aliens and e Walks that you want to share,
or maybe you have a suggestion for a mash up
we should do, or or some conversation topic you would
like us to explore in the geek space. Reach out
to us. You can do so by sending us an
email that's l n C at I heart media dot com,
(54:06):
or you can reach out on the various social platforms.
Ariel what are they on Twitter? There ll n C
underscore podcasting on Instagram and Facebook. They are a large
nerd drunk Collider. Also, if you like us, or even
just tolerate us, leave us a nice review on your
podcatching system, Tell your friends and share our episodes. We
(54:26):
would love to chat with more of you and until
next time, I am Jonathan yub Nub Strickland and I
am Ariel. Fuzzy Face cast h The Large nur John
(55:01):
Collider is a production of I Heart Radio and was
created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer.
The show is produced, edited and published by Torry Harrison.
For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider Podcast,
the podcast that's all about pikiky things happening in the
world around us and how very excited we are about them.
(00:29):
I'm Ariel casting and with me, as always is Jonathan.
He's going to be pretty upset at me for moving
my pop filter right now, Strickland, I am not the
co host you are looking for. You should go about
your business. You are not. Move along. Okay, that was
a short episode, guys. I'm sorry, I'm just just just
(00:51):
just fooling. Hey, Ariel, I got a question for you, Okay, Ariel, So,
as always, it's more of a scenario than a question.
But we're gonna be talking about some stir Wars today,
some some wars in the stars, as it were. And
(01:13):
so my my question to you is that, so imagine
you are a a character, not a specific character, but
like you inhabit the mythology of Star Wars. Would you
be a Jedi, smuggler, bounty hunter, something else? What what
kind of rolled you envision yourself playing within Star Wars? So,
(01:37):
having played the Old Republic a whole bunch. Um, I
think I would probably be a smuggler. They are the
funnest they you know, they're the dashing rogues of Star Wars,
So that is what I would be. Bounty hunters. They're
(01:58):
either a little too evil for me or they're a
little too like if you look at Mando, he's he's
a bit too upstanding. Um, and Jedi's can be cool,
but that whole like living by a code thing. What
about you? Um? So I have a joke answer, which
(02:21):
is that i'd want to be I'd want to be
one of the band members at the Moss Eisley Cantina. Um.
I mean list that as an option, Jonathan I said,
or something else that includes It's just like with every
job description where it says other duties as a signed right,
it covers everything. Uh, but yeah, I thought about that.
(02:44):
Or maybe gambler like Lando Calrissian is more of a
gambler than a smuggler, which I think is kind of
a fun and I could be at least as good
or bad of a gambler as Lando Calrissian seems to be. Um,
you know, those are those are the kind of things
that I was thinking of. Is like, I agree with you,
Like Jedi was something I thought was super cool, But
the further we get into the mythology, the more restrictive
(03:08):
and sort of twisted the Jedi seem to be. Like
part of that is just because you have different people
bringing their interpretations into Star Wars, right, But we've had
a lot of stories that explore the restrictive nature of
the Jedi code and how that in many ways is
(03:29):
not a good thing and that it doesn't benefit people
very much. And so you then get like these crazy extremes.
You've got this very repressed, restrictive Jedi order and then
you have the uninhibited and self destructive Sithe and there
doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Um. I know
that some of the games have explored that, but like
(03:51):
in the Cannon of what is officially Star Wars, there's
not a whole lot that deals with that. So for
that case, I'm going Gambler, I think, because I think
it's it's sort of along the same lines as Smuggler.
It's that sort of rakish, rogue ish kind of character
that I find really appealing. Yeah, speaking of characters that
(04:16):
are kind of more rogueish, let's talk about our first
news item. Yeah, so the thing we wanted to chat
about is an upcoming animated series that's going to play
on Adult Swim and it is blade Runner. It's a
it's a new blade Runner uh anime series, blade Runner
(04:39):
Black Lotus. And we've learned a little bit about some
of the voice actors who are going to be portraying
characters in this. We don't know a whole lot about
the specifics of the plot, but we know that the
series is going to follow a character named l who
is a replicant, so that that history is cleared up
(05:01):
right away. We know she's yeah, we know she's not
gonna have to take the test and figure out whether
or not she'd help a turtle that was on its back. Um,
So L is play is a replicant who is created
for a secret and unknown purpose, played by Jessica Henwick.
We know that some interesting actors like Brian Cox is
(05:23):
going to be voicing a character he's I mean, when
you hear Brian Cox, you're like, oh, clearly he's going
to be one of those big business ee, you know,
vaguely antagonistic characters. Sure enough, that's who he's playing. A
Neander Wallace SR. So Blade Runner. Like if you're not
familiar with Blade Runner, the world a Blade Runner. It's
set in sort of a um it's an alternate future
(05:45):
because the original Blade Runner was set I think in
like it was. It's definitely in our past now, but
it was this very super corporate, uh, dystopian world not
that different from what we have now, except we don't
have flying cars and we don't have replicates, and you've
(06:06):
got these these replicants that are kind of like, um,
a mix between androids and a genetic creation that there
they purposefully live very short lifespans and they're meant to
do like manual dangerous labor, essentially the stuff that we
make robots to do. But they have thoughts and feelings
(06:27):
and often have implanted histories in their heads, uh in
the Blade Runner series, so that they don't realize the replicants,
so that might it kind of sounds a little bit
like Westworld if you've watched Westworld, it's a similar kind
of a theory, although in Westworld the replicants for the
(06:47):
hosts are more thought to be more contained. Um. But uh,
Stephen Rude is in it, and he's playing the chief
of Police and I know that he plays a bunch
of serious characters, but I always picture him from off
a space. And if he played the chief of police,
like like like Milton, the low mumbling character that I mean,
(07:07):
it would not fit at all, I'm sure in the story,
but it would be hilarious and I'd be all there
for it. Have you have you seen Buster Scrugs? The
Ballad of Buster Scrugs? Not yet. I watched like five
minutes of it, but I need to sit. And he's
in He's in one of the vignettes and that, and
it's another one of those I mean, it's a Cohen
Brothers film, right, so it's and he's been in some
(07:28):
Cohen brother stuff. It's it's another um, very quirky character
and like and he plays in that one. He's a
he's a bank teller essentially in the Old West. But
he does some guns slinging a little bit in that.
And so I immediately went to that character, which again
would have not fit into the Blade Runner universe at all,
(07:51):
but would be really entertaining. It would be really entertaining.
That being said, he's a very versatile actor. Yes, I
think that's why some of his more quirky characters stick
out to me is just because he is so versatile,
he's phenomenal. And Barry, he's absolutely amazing in that series.
Barry is such a fun show and it's great. It's
one of the best. Like, I didn't know I was
(08:12):
going to enjoy it so much until I started watching
it and I thought, Wow, this is a uh this
is a very dark but very funny show. Uh. And
it hits a little close to home at times for
me as an actor. Yeah, there's some actor stuff in
it that does it rings very true. But yes, this
series looks like it's going to be really interesting. There's
(08:34):
actually all the all the parts are are most of
the parts anyway, are double cast because they have a
Japanese cast as well. I think one of the characters
might be played by by a single actor who might
be fluent in both, but most of them are are
obviously played by two different actors who are providing either
(08:55):
the English or the Japanese language versions of that. And Yeah,
I'm really looking forward to seeing it. We don't have
details on when it's coming out. It just says that
it's going to be airing on Adult Swim Swim and
also crunchy role later this year. Yeah, yeah, you know,
it's not often that adults swim has something that really
grabs me, but I think I will definitely take some
(09:17):
time to check this one out. Something else that I'm
going to take time to check out once we finally
get it, regardless of what the details are on. It
is the new series that Jamaine Clement and Tycho Edhiti
are working on, which we have little to know details
about other than it's going to be kind of action
adventury comedy, and I'm just I love what they do.
(09:39):
I love what we do in the Shadows, And I
guess we haven't gotten Wellington's Paranormal yet. I wanted to
watch that one as well. Yeah, so, so of course
what we do in the Shadows, in case you're not familiar,
is it's done in the documentary style but follows the
misadventures of vampires and sort of the the trials and
(10:01):
tribulations they go through having a vampiric existence, and it's
very silly. Uh, it's it's The movie is fantastic in
the series really really expands upon it in a very
fun way. So highly recommend those. But yeah, and of
course Tayko what TV. He's made a huge name for
himself directing films in the m C. You you know
(10:24):
he did He did Thor, Ragnarok. He's doing Love and
Thunder the next Thor movie. Yeah, and Jo Rabbit, which
was a phenomenal movie Jojo Rabbit, Yes, and a difficult
movie to sell to people when you tell them the premise,
but yes, it is is an amazing movie. And Jermaine Clement,
of course, obviously a brilliant comedian and musician as well
(10:48):
part of Flight of the Conchords, has done a huge
amount of work that a lot of it I think
is under seen. There's a lot of stuff he's done
that I don't think America and audiences have really seen. Well,
he was in Legion, and he was he was a
serious character in that bizarre but serious character because I
raised Bizarre and Legion, but just brilliant. I had only
(11:10):
seen his comedy up to that point. But yeah, he's
very multi talented. Yeah, it makes me sick, but we're
going to We're going to get some sort of action
adventure comedy. But as we say, there's not really any
more detail about that to me. When I hear action
adventure comedy. My thoughts go back to some earlier shows.
(11:31):
Like I was telling Ariel before the recording, it reminds
me I would describe Wizards and Warriors as it was
more of like a fantasy action comedy series. But it
was the sort of thing that kind of later evolved
into stuff like Hercules and Zena and The Adventures of
Briscoe County Jr. And like these shows that did seem
(11:52):
to try and pair comedy with action. Uh two different degrees, right.
Some of those series were less comedic than others, but
they all had elements of comedy, sometimes like Zaney, like
corny comedy, and and some of them were not intending
to be quite as comedic as they were. I mean,
(12:13):
look at Karl Urban playing Cupid in Xena, Like they
probably probably didn't mean for it to be quite as
humorous as it was, especially now. But it's interesting because
I feel like this is a niche that really hasn't
been filled, Like there there are series out there. First
of all, I don't think there's that many action adventure
series out there. Everything's like procedurals and stuff, right, you
(12:36):
don't get a lot of action adventure stuff anymore at
least not in TV, so that that I'm really excited
to see, Like I wanna kind of find out what
their vision is for that sort of thing. I'm sure
it's gonna be hilarious whatever it is, so I am
I am eagerly anticipating that, even though we have next
(12:56):
to no information about it. Yeah, yeah, equally hilarious. The
new Aliens television show Alien Television. Yeah, Alien, It's it's ah.
So it follows Alien, a xenomorph who's in New York
City as a stand up comedian. He has a wacky
neighbor named Kramer, and uh, there's a lane and no,
(13:17):
now this is this is a series that Noah Holly
has been working on for u f X, and it's
going to take place on Earth. So a very different
approach to what we've see in the Alien films, which
are almost always taking place in like a spaceship or
a deserted lunar lunar colony, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:43):
you know, Fargo and Legion are both a little bit
surreal um and if they can lean a bit more
on that surreal nous in this television show as opposed
to the last Alien movie, I think I've talked about
this plenty of times before on this podcast. Just the
the further into the Alien franchise we get, the more gruesome.
It gets to the point where I couldn't even watch
(14:04):
the most recent movie. Um, but hopefully this TV show
will pull back a little bit on the gruesome. Uh,
because they're really focusing on it seems like Wayland Utani,
who is the evil corporation that's trying to weaponize the xenomorphs? Yes,
and this is the company that first of all, was
(14:25):
in charge of sending the Nostromo out in the first place,
and then in Aliens, that really turns into like the
evil company, right because it becomes clear that that's when
they are really actively trying to go after the alien
without actually revealing to the rest of the human population
that there are these xenomorphs. Like the idea being like,
(14:48):
there's this incredibly dangerous thing. We want it, but we
don't want anyone to know that we know about it,
So we're just gonna send people out there and hope
for the best, and then when they die, well and
more of them. Yeah. Yeah, Um, So I don't think
I'm looking forward to this as much as I Am
(15:09):
to the next Tycho and TD Chermain Clement show. Yeah.
What I thought was interesting is that we you know,
we talked about Blade Runner and then we're talking about
Alien Obviously, both of those, both of those, uh, those
those franchises or whatever have as part of the story
the giant corporations that are uh a moral right. They're
(15:33):
not they're not necessarily evil, but they're a moral so
they don't have any consideration for ethics or morality. And
I mean, it's a pretty common theme and a lot
of science fiction, but I just feel like, wow, it's
interesting that this keeps coming up. It's also in the
same climate, obviously as one where more and more people
(15:53):
are questioning, um, the why we have billionaires and why
we allow them allow them to continue to accumulate the
enormous amounts of wealth. It kind of I think it
shows the certain types of concerns that rise to the top.
Right that's when we start to see it reflected in
(16:13):
science fiction. And it just feels like that's part of
the we're coming back into that kind of cycle. Yeah, Yeah,
and I look forward to that because that'll be a
nice um balance with just straight up monster show, monster
scary Monster Show. Um, I like alien I like Aliens.
I will definitely give this shot. Um, we'll see how
(16:35):
far we get into it. Yeah, and then for our
last couple of stories, we're gonna turn over to the
Star Wars. As we were talking about before, we got
to see a a kind of teaser for the Star
Wars anime series that's coming out, where this was a
pretty phenomenal thing where Disney essentially has partnered with all
(16:58):
these different anime students and from what I understand, gave
these studios like Carte Blanche to do whatever they want
with the Star Wars you know, mythology and to and
to kind of realize it in their own styles. So
we're getting like true enemy renditions of Star Wars iconography
(17:21):
and ideas. And it's not gonna be cannon. It's not
like it's going to be incorporated into the Star Wars cannon.
But at the same time, it sounds to me like
there were very few restrictions placed, which is phenomenal when
you're talking about something with I P as famous as
Star Wars. Yeah. I think it's such a smart decision too, because,
(17:41):
like everybody knows about, you know, the main Star Wars
movies the main six to nine, three to nine, depending
on depending on hell grout to you are, depending on
how grad you are, Jonathan, But sometimes I just go
in two and a half. But okay, two and a half, fine,
(18:02):
I'll I'll accept that. But there's such a like a
rich world in the comics, in the book series around
Star Wars that I think it's really smart too explore
some of that, give some of those characters and ideas
and civilizations and and such some more thought in, some
some more spotlighting. Because even though this isn't necessarily going
(18:24):
to be canon, let's say, Tattooing Rhapsody really takes off
and everybody loves it, there's nothing saying they can't expand
on that as one of their future stories now that
we're done with the Skywalkers hopefully um well. And and
and also it's interesting because it's again I'm talking a
lot about cycles in this episode, but this comes full
(18:45):
circle in that Star Wars is a series that was
in part inspired by the work of Kura Sawa, for example,
And so now we're seeing this this science fiction antsy
series that has as part of its genetic heritage this
(19:05):
cinematic history from Japan and now we're seeing a modern
Japanese take on the Star Wars mythology. So it's not
like it's out of place like it. It feels like
it's coming home in a way. Yeah, yeah, I will say.
The interesting thing to me, like the most interesting thing
is when they initially announced visions, I was expecting something
(19:28):
like Memories or The Animatrix that had super diverse art styles,
which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing.
That's just what I was picturing. It looks like a
lot of these are a lot more um mainstream anime styles.
It doesn't make me any less excited for it. A
couple of them do look a little more stylized or
a little more cartoony than others. But yeah, I see
(19:49):
what you're saying. Yeah, But like I said, that's not
like a negative or a positive. It's just it's something
interesting that they announced this thing and my brain immediately
went to this like super art how style of anthology,
and instead it's it's um, you know, a little bit
more mainstream, which I think is good to bring people
into it who maybe wouldn't normally watch anime or a
(20:12):
Star Wars cartoon. One of the other properties that's already
out there. Yeah, so this will be coming to Disney
Plus later and I look forward to seeing it. And
then our last story is what if what if you were,
you know, a famous director and you really wanted to
make a Star Wars movie and they told you know,
so you decided to go and make a not Star
(20:33):
Wars movie that's kind of a Star Wars movie, but
it's not a Star Wars movie. Um. And also was
again kind of inspired by Kura Sawa. Well, then that
would mean you are Zack Snyder. Yes, So apparently years
ago he made a mature he wrote a mature Star
Wars movie and Lucasfilmson thank you, um or something to
(20:55):
that effect. I'm paraphrasing. And now he's making a movie
in inspired by Star Wars and Cure Car Sawa for Netflix,
which you know, Netflix is really good banking on popular properties,
so not you know, it's not a bad thing. Some
people really like that and they've come out with some
very good stuff because of that. But yeah, so he's
(21:19):
going to be making a movie for them that is
called Rebel Moon. Yes. Can I can read that little
quick description that was in the A V Club article?
You certainly can this is this is a short one
and by the way, that a VY We'll we'll have
a link to the article in our show notes, but
that a V Club article, a little bit salty. Oh
I love it, I love it so much. But here's
(21:40):
the little description because it made me immediately think of
a different movie besides Star Wars, which is the story
is set in motion when a peaceful colony on the
edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of
a tyrannical region named ballast Sarious totally not Balpatine. Desperate
people dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to
(22:00):
seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make
a stand arial. Does this remind you of any other,
like really super cheesy nties era science fiction film that
we actually covered in a video episode of large Enner
Treadclator years ago. You mean the bat Will Beyond the Star? Exactly?
It is Battle Beyond This is Battle Beyond the Stars.
(22:21):
If this if this Rebel Moon movie, which I get
is supposed to be like a grim, mature take on
on the sort of stuff you would have seen in
Star Wars, But it's totally not Star Wars. Don't think
it's Star Wars. Call it's not Star Wars. But if
there are not, if they're not like twins that are
eating hot dogs and like and like in a space
(22:43):
cowboy and a valkyrie wearing almost no costume whatsoever, I
am going to be really disappointed in this movie. You know.
I am interested to see what blaster bolts and lightsabers
look like in gray scale. Uh. Two shots fired at
(23:04):
Zack Snyder's palette choice. Okay, I'm just you know, I'm
like a stormtrooper I always miss So it's fine. But
it's being written. He's co writing it with Shayhattan, who
did Army the Dead, and Kurt Johnson, who did Three
hundred Um, which were some of the things that I
liked better from him. Okay, fair enough. Zack Snyder is
(23:25):
all about the visuals, and I feel like space and
sci fi is a great place to put in pretty visuals.
So maybe it'll be awesome. I'm sure it's gonna look great.
I also feel like there will be absolutely no humanity
in it. But I feel like that because Zack Snyder
has time and time again created like I I have.
(23:46):
I have often mentioned that I feel like Zack snyder
movies feel more like a kid playing with action figures
and smashing them together than it does actual characters with
like feelings and stuff. He's Zack Snyder doesn't typically do feelings.
He does like iconic characters that again, uh, smash each
(24:08):
other as hard as they possibly can, for as long
as they possibly can. I mean, he does some feelings,
but they're usually very everybody's faulty. Yeah, well, like like
you know, I could just say two words and just
set you off. I could just say sucker punch and
we could just see you go. But there are feelings
(24:29):
in that Mine just didn't match up with the movie.
I don't want to Panzack Snyder too hard. They're like,
there are some things I think are very cool about
his directing and art style. I just I definitely I
feel like like Zack Snyder falls into a category, not
that their styles are similar, but he falls into a
(24:50):
category that reminds me of people like Michael Bay. And
these are directors who can create really captivating visuals and
really interesting action sequences, but I feel like everything around
it doesn't it doesn't work for me, or it just
doesn't hold very much humanity. Or like there's nothing for
(25:14):
me to connect to emotionally, So there's at least it's
a side of humanity that's not as pleasant to connect to. Yeah,
that's probab, It's probably a good way of putting it.
So anyway, while I'm slagging off on Zack Snyder, I'm
not nearly doing it to the level that the A V.
Club did. And uh and and to be fair, like,
maybe this will come out and I will completely eat
(25:36):
my words and I'll say like, Wow, this was just
a truly phenomenal piece of science fiction. So I don't
want to pass judgment on something before it comes out.
That's totally not fair. And you know, you can't judge
everything based upon the stuff that came before it. You
could always be surprised. Yeah, well, how about we uh
(25:57):
look at some stuff that has come out in the
past that we both really do like Right after this break,
We're going to start off this discussion with you know,
(26:18):
a little bit of sad news first, which is that
over the last week since our last episode, famed movie
director Richard Donner passed away. Uh. He had lived a
very full and long life. He was ninety one when
he passed away. He had not directed a film since
two thousand and six, so it had been a while
(26:40):
since he had actually directed a movie. But he he
was involved in a lot of of works in films
and stuff over the years, and also series, some of
which he would be removed from. But yes, yeah, we
wanted to chat a bit about some of his working
and the impact that it's had on us. Well. Well,
(27:01):
first I want to say that one of his works
is Lethal Weapon. And the only reason I'm saying that
is because you said he hadn't directed anything in years.
He had plans to come back to the Lethal Weapon
franchise last year and then pandemic Um, so he was
actually gonna jump back in recently. I said, he didn't.
I really like the Lethal Weapon franchise. But when when
(27:24):
you look at some of the movies that that he directed,
it's interesting because they have they span a lot of
different genres, right, So, like one of my favorite films
came out in the Superman movie with you know, Christopher
Reeve in it and and Richard Daughter directed that. He
also directed or he started to direct Superman too, and
(27:48):
then there was a whole studio issue that he got
removed from that film. But he did Superman, and Superman
is such an earnest and corny movie. Like if you
go and watch that original Superman film, well I say
original that Superman film, it is cornball. It is incredibly sincere.
(28:11):
But to me, that's what makes it work. Like Superman
is a difficult character to make interesting because he he's
kind of flawless. It's sort of like Captain America. It's
a character who's who doesn't really have any flaws, so
it makes it hard to make an interesting film about them.
But when you go with that sort of corny and
(28:31):
earnest approach, it just becomes very charming. And Reeves was
amazing as the as as Superman. You had Gene Hackman
as Lex Luthor. You know, it was an engaging movie,
and of course you had the John Williams score, which
really brought it all together. That to me is one
of those iconic films that they inspired within me a
(28:54):
love of genre, uh, storytelling and films. I mean it is.
It's one of the first superhero movies I remember ever watching,
and you're right, it was very earnest and sincere, and
it balanced the humor with the super with the romance,
so very well that as a child, I loved it,
and then going back and watching it as an adult.
(29:14):
Even though it is a little cornball, as you said,
and even though some of the effects don't necessarily stand up,
it just it holds up for me. It has one
of the it is so touching. It has one of
the best visual gags of a Superman movie ever, where
Clark Kent needs to change into Superman and the famous
images Clark Kent jumping into a phone booth and changing
(29:37):
from Clark Kent to Superman and then coming out of
the phone booth of Superman. But he comes by a
not a phone booth, but so back in the day,
we used to have these public telephones that were on
like stands that were in like a had a little
dividers up, but it wasn't a full booth, right, And
he just stops and gives it a quick like double
take as he looks it up and down and realized like, no,
(29:59):
that's not gonna work, and then moves on to find
a place where you can change. It's just such a
it's it. I mean, obviously I'm describing a visual gag,
which is the dumbest thing you can do. It's like
reading out the comic strip. But it's one of those
moments that just works. Uh. He also directed one of
the few fantasy films from the nineteen eighties I thought
(30:20):
really worked, which is Lady Oh. Okay. I was thinking
you're going to talk about like Goonies or Scrooged. Well,
Lady Hawk was a lot of fun. Yeah. I don't
think of Goonies or Scrooged as a fan as I
either of those as fantasy movies. Lady Hawk was definitely
fancy film. Matthew Broderick, Rutger Howard, Michelle Peiffer um really
(30:43):
an interesting fantasy movie that I saw in the theater
when I was a kid, Like I went to that
movie when it opened up, and I think it still
holds up. It's still it's a really interesting fantasy love story.
And even though Matthew Roderick hasn't has one of those
(31:03):
accents that kind of sort of hovers around English and
then goes away. Even because even though there's that, it's
still it's really an engaging movie. Yeah. Well, I mean, plus,
you have a love for anything like medieval Renaissance stories
and Rutger Howard Man he's just amazing and you know,
(31:24):
here was Rugger Howard playing a heroic character. He's he's
a heroic character with an edge because he's he's damaged.
He's an emotionally damaged character. But this was sort of
like if you look at him in Blade Runner, where
he's a damaged character who's an antagonist. Here he was
(31:44):
a damaged character who's a protagonist. It's almost like two
sides of the same coin. And and it's a great performance.
Do you do you want me to make you really sad? John? Okay? So,
Rugger Howard, even though I've seen Blade Round and I
think I saw it before. What I'm about to mention
the first thing I remember knowing him from and recognizing
(32:07):
him and going, oh who is that? Oh his name
is Ryger Howard was ten Kingdom the two thousand's really
long mini series. Yeah, and and uh O'Neil is that
his name? Oh yeah, yeah he where he played the
(32:27):
troll I think yeah, he played the lead troll daddy.
It just sounds wrong to say, why did you say
it that way? We're gonna clip that that's gonna be
troll daddy, troll daddy. Uh so like which I actually
really enjoyed that mini series. But that's that's the first
thing I remember recognizing Rudger Howard so well. Yeah, Lady
(32:52):
Hawk is one of those those films that if you
have never seen it, uh, you should check it out.
It is no granted, it's from the eighties. The effects
are very dated, the music is bizarre like, it's very
new age with lots of synthesizers, um the like it.
(33:13):
It definitely is a product of its time. But it
again was one of those fantasy films from the eighties
that I thought actually worked. There were only a handful
of fantasy movies that came across as anything more than
just like super cheap sets and like like most of
the eighties fantasy films were like b movies, this was
(33:34):
not uh. He also did the Goonies, Like you pointed
out a movie that's very divisive. Now, yes, yes, it's
it's you either watched it as a kid and loved
it or you can't. You don't know, Um did you
hear about? What? Did you hear about? What he and
his wife did for the The actor who played Chunk,
(33:56):
I didn't know so um so Chunk was the be
kid right in in the Goonies who was made to
do the truffle shuffle and all that kind of stuff. So, uh,
when when he was getting older, like he wasn't able
to get more roles really after a little while, and
and so he was deciding he was going to go
(34:16):
and go to college. And he asked Richard Donner if
Richard would be willing to write a letter of recommendation
when he was applying to school, and uh, Donna said, yeah, kid,
let's have a meeting and we'll talk about what you
want me to say. And they had a meeting and
the actor told Donna all about his background and the
(34:38):
struggles he had and all this kind of stuff. Donna
and his wife paid for his tuition for him to
go to college. He ended up becoming an entertainment lawyer.
Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, that was a really sweet story.
It is and you know, like I know that there
are some problematic things and Goonies it like, you know,
Chunk kind of being pigeonholed. Yeah, well yeah, yeah, well
(35:02):
and there's no yeah, there's name is not Chunk. There's
tons of um, there's tons of problematic stuff in Gooon.
He's like, you have a the data character is that's
an issue, right, Like there's a again, it was a
product of its time, not to excuse it, but rather
to say, like to give it, contextualize it, to say
(35:24):
like this was an era where that level of care
and thought and empathy just did not exist in Hollywood
and that that was a bad thing. So that's something
to keep in mine, you know. But he went from
Superman and Goonies to lethal Weapon as I mentioned earlier,
and scrooged. But he also did some some horror which
(35:47):
I didn't know, so I wasn't aware that he worked
on Tales from the Crypt, which gave me nightmares as
a child. And I have never seen the Omens. So yeah,
the Omen that's one of those, um, you know, creepy movies. Uh, definitely,
definitely one of those that is worth checking out. He
was going to be a producer on a sequel to
(36:11):
The Goonies, which I have no idea that is even
still a thing that's going to happen. Um. He also,
you know, has worked in some regard with lots of
other elements that people would recognize. Um, And like it's
it's it's it's he lived to be ninety one, so
(36:35):
it's not that his his departure was a shock or
anything along those lines, but more that it really allowed
us a chance to reflect on his body of work
and kind of appreciate sort of the things that he did. Yeah,
because he was so varied in the stories that he
put out, in the styles that he put out, um
(36:58):
and and just he made worries that, regardless of whether
they're for their error or their time, they last. Like
people still know about the Goonies, people still know about
Lethal Weapon, people still know about Scrooged and Superman. So
you know, there are certain movies that just get made
and they're they're impressive for a while and then people
forget about them. But his his works have endured, and
(37:20):
that's really impressive. And uh, you know, are we salute
you Richard Donner, you know, godspeed, fair Winds and following
season all that, and thank you for the work you did,
because there's some really cool stuff. I mean, if nothing else,
if nothing else, we got Cindy Lauper's The Goonies Are
(37:42):
Good Enough music video, which is truly brilliant. I mean,
you know, you bring in bringing professional wrestlers to pretend
like their actors and Chase Cindy Lauper around, you're guaranteed
to have a masterpiece. I feel like you're biased there,
I might be. I also I also genuinely love that song.
(38:02):
I mean, it is a fun song. But if you
put like I could put, I could put professional wrestlers
into Sucker Punch, you'd probably like it. So, okay, let's
let's not throw, let's not throw through through hands here. Okay,
we're gonna we're gonna take a break. When we come back,
we're going to mash up do things that never ever
ever should be mashed up together and find out what happens.
(38:41):
So things that should never ever be mashed up together,
but we do. That has been our theme for the
past few weeks, hasn't it. Yeah, well, I mean, to
be fair, like, mash ups are a lot more fun
if you take two things that are very much unrelated
and try to make them work, as opposed to, oh,
let's take these two things that are similar and make them,
(39:02):
you know, mash them up together. Well, I mean they're
similar than you just end up with Zack Snyder's version
of a not a Star Wars movie. Yeah, yeah, So
this time we're taking a couple of our our new stories.
We're actually staying true to our news stories, and we
are mashing up alien something from the Alien universe and
(39:24):
something from the Star Wars. Yes, the best thing from
the Star Wars which walks. And now that I'm thinking
about it, I would have been an e walk. I
would be wicket yub nub. So now I I specifically
had mentioned to Ariel when we were figuring out what
we're going to mash up, I said, the e Walk movie.
(39:47):
So for those of you out there who there are
two of them, there are two of them. The second
one is it starts in a way that completely invalidates
the entirety of the first one. So for those who
are blissfully unaware that there were two Ewok movies in
the mid eighties, after Return of the Jedi came out,
(40:08):
and obviously the Walks were a boon for toy sales,
like that was I mean, by that time Star Wars
had become a true merchandise machine. It wasn't that way
with the first movie, at least not originally. But once
that once that started rolling man did Lucas ride that right?
(40:28):
So e Walks were a big hit. So they decided
to make a couple of what we're made for TV
movies here in the United States. They did get apparently
a limited theatrical release in other parts of the world.
And um, the first one involved a family that gets
i think stranded on indoor and they end up encountering
the e Walks and they are trying to to survive
(40:50):
various dangers in that. The second one starts off with
everyone in that family, with the exception of the little
girl getting slaughtered. So the family that you were following
and rooting for in the first movie gets almost completely
wiped out in the second one at the beginning of
the second one. But anyway, it was really more of
(41:12):
an excuse to have more e walk so that you
can have more twice. Yeah, I mean the girl the
girl did stick. Sindal was in both of them. Um,
And we already kind of talked about aliens. You know,
there's there's these like primordial parasitic monsters aliens doing what
they do, and there's an evil corporation that tries to
(41:32):
weaponize them and then they run them up because they're
really powerful and have survived since the dawn of time
and spaceships and it's really scary. The first movie is
a horror. The second movie is kind of a sci
fi adventure but also scary, and then it goes downhill
from there. Yes, Like the first two films are are masterpieces,
(41:54):
and they are so different, right. The first one is
this very atmospheric, oppressive, scary horror movie by Ridley Scott.
The second one still has some scary elements but is
more of an action movie like and it's that one's
by James Cameron. So it's interesting that they can be
so different and yet they feel like they belong in
(42:15):
the same universe. It's just different stories and different settings. Yeah,
and something we forgot to mention earlier, but AI also
plays kind of possibly villainous role in the stories as well,
but it's so overshadowed for me by the actual aliens
and that creepy grotest because the Androids, the Androids and
(42:37):
the Alien series, they're made by the corporation that's sending
people out. So you whenever there's an android, you immediately
question that androids motivations, right, You immediately assume this android
is specifically there to fulfill the the mission for the corporation,
whether that ends up slaughtering everybody else or not. Up yeah. Yeah. So.
(43:03):
Uh that being said, let's take these very little creatures
and match them up with some evil, slimy aliens. I'm
going to go ahead and go first. Uh So this
is called The Walks and the Battle for Nostromo. After
Sindal's ship crashes on end Or, she and her brother
befriend a bunch of the Walks in an attempt to
(43:24):
find their parents who are missing. After the crash, the
kids are told that their parents were captured by that
feature Loudo, the go ax. They make a plan to
travel to the Coaxes Layer to free them. Feat. Laura,
by the way, is e Walks, But that doesn't It
just means that darn bad guy kind of essentially. Anyhow,
they make a plan to travel to the Goaxes Layer
to free them, but when they get to the layer,
(43:45):
they find something much worse than the go Axe. They
find a hundred egg like slimy objects and the go
As lying in the corner with his chest burst open.
Then they see a scorch trail that looks like a
small ship. It taken off from the gore Axes Lair.
The children and the e Walks decide to quickly leave
the lair and come up with another plan, but just
(44:05):
as they do, they are caught by a sorceress named Harold.
She's trying to leave the planet as well, in fear
after something horrible happened at her Marauders castle to her companion,
and she figured the children and e walks would be
a good bargaining tool onto any ship she found out
in space, so she throws them all into a spaceship
and flies off uh and in space they find well spaceship,
(44:27):
of course, the Nostromo. It seems to be abandoned, so
maybe she didn't need her prisoners after all, and she
completely forgets about them when she lands in the hangar
bay and there is a shadow and a chitter that
she goes off to find what it is that leaves
the kids and their Ewok friends alone. In the landing bay,
they see an escape pod that they assumed would leave
(44:47):
similar scorch marks to the one they saw on end Or,
the moon that they were on where the Ewoks live,
and they decide Cindel and her brother's parents might be there,
and they go searching for them. All along the way
they hear hittering screams and see remains of what looks
like it might have once been sentient creatures. Also a
lot more slimy eggs, lots of them, and then there
(45:08):
is a different scream. They go cautiously to see what
it is and find Harold ripped apart from the stomach
like something burst through just like the Gorax. The Wax
grab whatever improvised weapons they can pipes for, spears, knives, shrapnel,
and even a whaling utani flamethrower, and continue their search.
As they round a corner, Sindal and her brother see
(45:28):
their parents asleep in a couple of cryo chambers, or
what we would assume of the cryo chambers, they don't
really know. As the kids struggle to free their parents,
they hear a chittering screech behind them, and that's when
they see it, the queen of the Xeno morphs. She
opens her huge maw and then her smaller ma at
the e walks and they all yelled killed the monster
and ewa kas and before the Zeno Marph can cause
(45:49):
her carnage, the e walks dispatch her because e walks
are really vicious. You all feeling momentarily safe, the kids
figure out how to get their parents out of stasis.
The parents tell the kids they were taken by the
Queen Zeno Morph to the ship. They thought they were
done for with how quickly she dispatched the Corex, but
then she stuck them in stasis. Thankfully, the kids, that
e walks, and the parents all find their way back
to the escape pod without further harrowing adventures, and they
(46:13):
head back to end Or. As they land, the parents
look a bit odd. Cyndel asks what's wrong, and they
say nothing, just some indigestion. As they all leave the
ship with one e walk who we all know is Wicket,
shooting his new found flamethrower the air and screaming young Nub.
As they head back to the Ewalk village to celebrate
and repair their own ship. The camera zooms in on
(46:33):
the loading dock of the escape pot. We see an
egg tucked away in a hidden corner begin to shape,
and we hear a chittering speech cut to black. Wow,
darker than you usually go, Darker than I usually go.
I don't want to say it was good, but uh,
well no, I think I think it was interesting and interesting.
(46:53):
Take because you made it where the e Walks were characters.
Uh it's a little different than my version of this
is called aliens E walkin Roll, Here we go. Ellen
Ripley has a problem. After being rescued by a salvage
crew and awakened out of stasis, she has discovered that
the Wicked whaland Utahni Corporation has established a colony on
(47:16):
the very same moon where her crew encountered the eggs
of the dangerous alien creature, the same creature that managed
to kill all aboard the Nostromo except for Ripley herself,
oh and her kittycat, Jonesy. And now the company has
lost contact with that colony, necessitating our reconnaissance mission to
(47:37):
find out what happened. Ripley agrees to go along as
a sort of consultant. Ripley joins the crew of the Salaco.
Most of the crew are Marines and their skeptical of
Ripley's accounts of a dangerous alien. And then there's Carter Burke,
a rep from the company. Oh, and of course there's
the ship's protocol Android Bishop three p O. The Sala
(48:00):
Paco sets course for the moon now known by the
colony name of Indoor. The Salaco deploys a drop ship
down to the surface of Indoor, where the crew finds
the small colony completely empty except for one young girl
they decided to call Newt Skywalker. Newt is clearly shaken
(48:20):
up and almost completely non communicative. The crew pick up
signals of the colonists. They appear to be up in
the trees, and so after using some equipment to climb up,
the crew find a primitive village up in the trees itself.
The colonists are all comatose and they're covered in this
(48:41):
weird goo. Ripley tries to warn the others, but while
doing so, something terrible happens. One of the comatose colonists
begins to shutter and their abdomen distends horrifically. Next thing
you know, a little teddy bear like critter pops out
of the colonist Torso, oh, how cutes has corporal Hicks?
(49:01):
Are you crazy? Asks Ripley. We're going to be rich
Yales Burke, the merchandizing alone is going to go through
the roof. Before Ripley can respond, the little teddy bear
critter leaps out and latches onto another crew member. Let's
say it was Lieutenant Gorman and the teddy Bear viciously
bites into Gorman's neck, killing him. At this point, Corporal
(49:25):
Hicks kind of loses it. He will continue to kind
of lose it throughout the rest of the movie. The
group makes their escape as other furry alien critters burst
out of colonists. They managed to get out of the
trees back to the drop ship, but they find that
the ship itself has been disabled as to adult aliens
who look like teddy Bears but bigger and armed with
(49:48):
primitive weapons, have managed to damage the flight systems of
the ship and kill the pilots. Oh and the adult
Ewok aliens also have second, tinier Ewok alien heads in
their own mouths when they open up their mouths, which
is an image so horrific I hate that I wrote
it down. Having no choice but to hide in the
(50:09):
remains of the colony, the group bunkers down and that's
when they hear it. Hundreds of aliens, all chanting yub
nub yub nub. Game over man came over, says Corporal Hicks,
who continues to kind of lose it. Ripley takes over.
Burke secretly tries to capture a little teddy bear alien
(50:30):
but he gets his face eaten off by a bunch
of them in a way that is brutal and yet
satisfying because Burke rhymes with jerk. What follows is a
sequence of big action set pieces in which the Marines
get taken out by Ewok aliens who use the terrain
and primitive traps to their advantage. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and
(50:51):
Bishop managed to evade capture and death, but the others
aren't so lucky, though Beskes does get this really cool
sacrifice move advised them some time, and squishes up you
he walks. Bishop offers to make his way to the
communications station on the colony, where he'll be able to
make contact with the Slaco in orbit and deploy another
drop shop, so he leaves the group behind. They have
(51:14):
a few more close calls as hurry e walks trying
to take them out, but fortunately the e walks have
short little legs so they're not really that hard to outrun.
But Bishop eventually returns, having managed to land the drop ship.
But more importantly, he's discovered something odd. The Ewoks worship
Bishop three po as a god. That's a pretty big
(51:34):
promotion to go from bishop to god. With this newfound status,
Bishop is able to convince the Ewoks to allow Hicks, Ripley,
and Nuke Skywalker to go to the drop shop. He
joins them there, and all four make their way back
to the Silaco. Once they're Ripley turns to Bishop, nuke
it for morbit. It's the only way to be sure.
(51:55):
Bishop nods and aims the Silaco's nuclear arsenal at the
surface of Indoor, where you can almost hear the sounds
of musical celebration, and boom, a huge wave of nuclear
missiles rains down on the moon and just wipes everything out.
Ripley picks Newt, Skywalker, and Bishop all into cryo asleep
as the ship sets a course back to core space.
(52:17):
The end, that was really good, even though you killed
all of my favorite Walks, well, I mean like they
were monsters. They were. I mean, I think that's the
thing that we can agree about in our both of
our mashups, is that the e Walks are are vicious,
vicious creatures. I mean they in Return of the Jedi,
(52:38):
they capture our heroes and it's clear they're going to
eat them so and they turned Stormtrooper helmets into a
giant xylophone, which is awesome and hilarious. And then they
and then they change their their in song from one
version of Return of the Jedi to the remastered version
(52:58):
Return of the Jedidah. Yeah, yeah, that's it. The song
is different at the end, right like it. It was
a little e Walks song nu yep nub yep nub ye.
That's totally different in the the special edition. Well that's
okay because when we got the cartoon they spoke English,
so yes, now, and I guess somewhat in the movies listen,
(53:22):
they had already had the experience of the Star Wars
Christmas Special and realized what a huge mistake it was
to have Wookies only speaking in Wookies for the entire special.
That just made it incomprehensible. All right, Well, that wraps
up this episode of Large NuRD drunk Llider. We ran
a little long this time. We're gonna close it off,
and as always, if you have stuff you want to
(53:45):
share with us. Let's say you've got your own mash
up of Aliens and e Walks that you want to share,
or maybe you have a suggestion for a mash up
we should do, or or some conversation topic you would
like us to explore in the geek space. Reach out
to us. You can do so by sending us an
email that's l n C at I heart media dot com,
(54:06):
or you can reach out on the various social platforms.
Ariel what are they on Twitter? There ll n C
underscore podcasting on Instagram and Facebook. They are a large
nerd drunk Collider. Also, if you like us, or even
just tolerate us, leave us a nice review on your
podcatching system, Tell your friends and share our episodes. We
(54:26):
would love to chat with more of you and until
next time, I am Jonathan yub Nub Strickland and I
am Ariel. Fuzzy Face cast h The Large nur John
(55:01):
Collider is a production of I Heart Radio and was
created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer.
The show is produced, edited and published by Torry Harrison.
For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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