LNC Declares "Flawless Victory"

What did we think of the Mortal Kombat 2 trailers? And did the marketing make a mistake by promoting a fake trailer ahead of the real one? Which narrative trends are we tired of? Plus, we talk about which of our favorite books from our respective childhoods we'd like to see adapted into a film.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Larger or drun Collider podcast,
the podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
about them. I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always,
is the ever stupidous Jonathan Strickland.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
What would Brian Boitano do.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
I don't know. I never watched South Park. I mean,
I have seen episodes of South Park, but I don't like.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I think. I think you kinda I mean, there's gonna
be stuff in it you don't like. But I feel,
as someone who loves musicals, you kind of need to
see the movie because it is, in large part both
a love letter and a spoof of big musicals in
general and specifically Lay Miserable.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I get that, I do. It's one. It's a gross cartoon,
like a lot of like I don't like rend and
Stimpy either. It's not quite as visually gross because it's
very simplified shapes, but it's still gross to me. And
then it's just very mean spirited. And I say this,
I have liked other things that that creative duo has done, for.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Sure, but I totally understand. I just I just think
it's one of those pieces of me. Honestly, here's a
little bit of trivia for Jonathan Strickland. South Park, Bigger,
Longer and Uncut was the first DVD I ever owned.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
The second one was The Matrix.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Wow Wow. That's okay, that is quite the whiplash.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Of I mean like, the Matrix was the DVD that
I think everyone was required to own by law.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I never personally owned it, but we do own it
because I still have a wall of DVDs because the
things that I really love and some of the more
obscure things I love, like, I don't trust streaming media
to always have it available.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Same I've got. I've actually got a growing library of
DVDs and Blu rays because of that same reason. Okay, well,
we actually decided to switch things up this week because
Ariel has a question for me.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's true, I was gonna get there. Also, you guys,
this is a very special episode because Jonathan and I
did not talk for an hour before we hit record. No.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
We like we like jumped into it. Okay, Like the
AC issue in my office continues to be a thing. Yeah,
and so if I can limit the amount of time
I spend in this room. I look for that option
because otherwise I just let me just put it to you.
This way, I'm getting all Shrek in my unmentionables.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and it's for those who because we know we
have listeners all over but for those who aren't in
the States, are specifically not in Georgia. It's like in
the nineties right now. So it's supposed to get back
down to the mid to high eighties, which just feels
like a huge relief, but it's not right now. So yeah,
So my question for you, Jonathan is do you have

(03:15):
a filter of.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Flu well a filthy children's book? Do you have a film?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I didn't even get to the children's book? Okay, do
you have a favorite children's book that you wish would
either be made into a movie or be rebooted as
a movie, just simply because you love it so much
and you want kids nowadays to also enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
The short answer is yes, And I actually have two
examples that I would like to mention. One is I
would love for there to be a faithful adaptation of
The Hobbit. The Hobbit was my favorite book growing up.
I actually have a copy of it. I have a
floating shelf that Ariel can't see because it's off to

(04:01):
my right. Yeah, I've got a floating shelf with an
early edition of The Hobbit on that shelf. It is
my favorite book from when I was a child. I
kind of went from reading little bitty children's books straight
to The Hobbit and then went on from there. I

(04:21):
think the Rank and Bass was a ranking Bass that
did the cartoon. I think it was. I think their
cartoon version is okay, but it leaves a lot of
stuff out. The Peter Jackson version. We've talked about it
on this show before. Ariel and I are not big fans.
We never even finished the trilogy. It has kind of

(04:42):
the opposite problem because not only does it keep everything,
but it adds more stuff into the Hobbit and an
effort to make it kind of thematically similar to the
Lord of the Rings movies, and Lord of the Rings
is a big epic fantasy, but the Hobbit is more
of a fairy tale. So trying to turn a fairy
te into an epic fantasy it doesn't It's not easy

(05:03):
to do, and I don't think Peter Jackson succeeded with it.
I do not like the Hobbit movies, so I would
love to see a new take on the Hobbit and
to try and make it more faithful to the original
and not feel the need to add in all the
cruft that we got with the Peter Jackson movies. The

(05:25):
other one I would mention is I would love to
see an adaptation of the Chronicles of Predaine books. We
have had one Disney did one years and years ago,
because The Black Cauldron is one of those books. Although
the Black Cauldron, technically yeah, it's technically more of an
adaptation of The Horned King, which is like I think

(05:47):
the first book in that series. I think there's five total,
and I was sad that the Black Cauldron movie was
not better. It's one of those largely for gotten about
Disney films for a lot of people. And I would
love to see an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's books that

(06:08):
was faithful to them as well. Maybe get like a
series of either like five movies or five seasons of
a show. That would be great. There's a lot of
material there, there's some fun characters, and it's a The
books themselves are very much a celebration of Welsh folklore,

(06:30):
and you don't typically see that represented that frequently in media.
So those are those are my two long winded answers.
But it's me. You knew it was going to be
like that, So Ariel, what about you?

Speaker 1 (06:43):
So you know, I have been very lucky that I
also like I read kids books like Mouse on a Motorcycle,
Cricket and Times Square, Ramona Mealy, Bideelly, all those things.
But a lot of the things that I have loved
growing up have been turned into movies or TV like
Donotopia Chronicles.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
I not necessary that.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
The one that I would like to be remade, because
I also have a couple, would be The Phantom Toll
Booth you know for me and has like a that
same vibe as like series of unfortunate events, but more uplifting.
But I love the wordplay. Maybe it doesn't quite as well,
it doesn't quite translate as well as it does when

(07:26):
you're reading the book, but I love that story and
I want that story to be a favorite for like
I recommend that story to adults who haven't read it
because I love the Phantom Told Booth, and I guess
also never ending story past the first movie because the
book goes on, I love that book. I'm actually rereading it.
I'm almost done rereading it. The second and third movies

(07:49):
absolutely and subsequent did.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Not follow it at all.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
I know I've talked about that before. I was originally
gonna say C. S. Lewis's science fiction trilogy, because I
did read that as an older young adult. But I
don't think that that actually counts as a children's series
just because you know, I read a lot of stiff
I know you did too. You know a lot of
things that were more like young adult or adult but accessible.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Sure. Yeah, Like like I remember reading the zanth novels, which, honestly,
I think, you know, with the benefit of maturity, I
can look back on and say, wow, those are Tho's
got some problematic stuff in them, or the myth Adventures
series by Robert Asprin. A lot of these were ones
that were not expressly written for kids, but were certainly accessible,

(08:43):
and like, those were the things I gravitated towards. And
then like dragon Lance series and other fantasy I was
big into fantasy as a kid. I was not so
big into science fiction. I was more of a fantasy
kid than a sci fi kid.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
I did both so like I've read versions of like
Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court, which has had so
many movie adaptations. You know, a bunch of old fairy
tales and King Arthur and all that fun stuff, but
also a lot of sci fi, probably more Asimov than
I should have read at a young age. But you know,
you go into the library and you're like, I don't know,
I went into the library. I feel like this is

(09:17):
a trend that needs to come back. You just go
into the library and you look at the shelves and
you pick out an author that you know you've liked
in the past, and then it's a crapshoot.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah. I had that neuro divergent thing where I would
read a book and then I would just keep checking
that same book out and rereading it over and over
and again. That was that was my that was my spiel.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
I had the thing where I checked out the book
and then I loved it and put it somewhere and
forgot I had it. There's also like the hindline, like
Heinland wrote a few novel a few novellas. They weren't
full novels that were like kid friendly, So like the
Rolling stones. There's one about some twins where one goes
to space and the other stays on Earth and they
do signs of experiments to see if their connection remain

(10:00):
because they talk about how people talk about how twins
have like that mental connection, So like things like that
would also be fun. Really, there's just there's a lot
of good media that I think should be that that
does hold up that I wish people would read. Uh
you know, I had a friend recently do a fairy

(10:20):
tale improv show with some kids and was surprised to
find out that beyond like the ones that Disney has
kind of covered or the big ones, people don't know
fairy tales as much anymore. And that may be sad.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
So that's kind of well, yeah, if they're not if
they're not being tiktoked, then you don't get it.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, I hope, I hope. You know, cottage core is
a thing. I hope we have a resurgence of.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Uh wind Uh Yeah. I would love to see more
people reading books and fewer people using books as an
aesthetic choice to create the the atmosphere that they want
in their cozy home.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
And you know, I say this as a person who
has not finished a book outside of things that I'm
required to read. So sometimes I have to read stuff
for work or for acting or whatever. Outside of the
the recent here there be Gerblin's graphic novel I bought
I got for Christmas, and also The Never Ending Story.

(11:18):
Those are the first books that I've like, I'm gonna
finish in the last ten years.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Wow. Yeah, I mean it's I can see how I
can get challenging. Like I was recently reading entries in
the one hundred Wicked Little Witch Stories, which was a
book that I want to say it was Barnes and Noble,
I can't. It might not have been Barnes and Noble.
It might have been a different bookstore chain, but it was.

(11:43):
This bookstore chain ended up acting as like a publisher
for collections of short stories that were typically centered around
a theme, so like ghost stories or which stories or whatever.
And my dad wrote a story in the particular anthology.
It's called a spell of Research. So I was like,

(12:05):
I need to get a copy of this book because
I remember really enjoying Dad's story and I'd kind of
like to read the other ones in there. So I
actually bought a used copy online because it's no longer
in print, and it's long since been out of print.
And I reread Dad's story and as I was reading it,
I was like, oh my god, my style is so

(12:26):
similar to Dad's.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
For what it's worth. And you might disagree, I totally
count listening to an audiobook as reading.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
I do too. It's just this one would not have
been available as an audiobook because, like it, it came
out before audio books were really a big thing, Like
you could get books on tape, but there was no
such thing as audible at that point.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
So yeah, yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
This that was interesting. Thank you for that great question.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, thank you for answering it. Also, I want to
before we move on, I just want to say, hey,
thank you to our listeners who have written out to
us to either say that you love that we brought
the questions back, hey, or to tell us about you know,
last week we abloviated on Pirates of Penzance a little bit,
and we had an awesome listener reach out and share
their experiences of both seeing Tim Curry in that show

(13:18):
and also seeing an enterprise version. And I'm very jealous
because I would love to see an enterprise version of
Pirates at Penzance.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
An Enterprise version.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Like it was said on the Enterprise like the start.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Okay, all right, all right, I was thinking like corporate,
like corporate, I.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Mean also also would watch.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
It would work like there's not I'm not complaining. I
was just like, what a wild high concept take. I
mean the Enterprise like the Star Trek version also very
high concept but cool.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, thanks for I just wanted to
give you all shout outs for writing because those are
awesome things to share and we love hearing from you.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Okay, so let's talk about stuff we've seen since the
last time we gathered together, and we each have some
some entrees. You want to go first? Or shall I
go first?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
I can go first. Mine's gonna be quick. I have
been watching task Master, so I just finished season nineteen
with Jason Manzukus, and it hilarious. I have left so
hard during that. I've seen some task Master here and there,
but like, I don't know right now, it's just hitting
that really comfy, happy fun spot for me. So that's

(14:29):
been my main binge. Finished the first season of murder Bot.
It has been renewed for season two thankfully, who because
I love this show I love this show so much,
and that's why I was yelling at you, Jonathan to
watch it, because I was like, the more people who
watch it, more likely you'll get rended. But it's been renewed,
so you're off the hook. Other than that, just you

(14:49):
know Game Changer, Cloudward Hoe, the kind of stuff that's
on Dropout and playing Baulder sk three. That's it.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
So you haven't seen Super Duperman yet.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
I that on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Okay, good. I saw Super Duper Man last weekend. I
thought was super duper I really enjoyed it. My partner
and I, I think more or less agree like I
think we both feel that we liked it but didn't
love it, like we fell short of loving it. But
there were lots of things to really enjoy in that movie.

(15:22):
The performances were nearly across the board perfect. We had
a couple of quibbles with one character in particular. But
I won't spoil it because I don't want to color
your perception. You might you might go and see it
and have a totally different take than I did. I
will say, I mean, this does eliminate one possibility from

(15:43):
that list. I think Nicholas Holt played one of the
most detestable versions of Lex Luthor I can ever think
of seeing, and I loved it. He was I hated
him so much.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
So I've really enjoyed like the nicer characters he's played,
like in Bodies with No raj or whatever, the Romeo
and Juliet zombie movie he did Warm Bodies That's It,
or you know X Men. He plays an amazing villain,
like he is the main reason that I stuck it

(16:17):
out through all of the seasons of The Great because
who that show gets it gets a bit much for me.
But he is so like to be able to play
someone so charismatic and so detestable, he just nails it.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
I think he's phenomenal in the Menu, where he plays
also a detestable character who is not charismatic, but he
does it so which just shows his range. Like I
think he's an incredibly talented actor, Like he's probably up
there on my man crush list, Like and then he

(16:52):
and on you, Taylor Joy, We're both in the Menu,
so I'm just like, well, well, just just lock the
door because I'm here for the next two hours.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
And then okay, so Superman has done something really well,
first of all, they didn't release I feel like personally,
they didn't release too many, too many clips from the
movie prior to the movie happening, like they released a couple.
Fantastic Four has been releasing so many I've stopped watching them,
and I think Jonathan has two just because at this

(17:22):
point you are getting spoilers from the movie. If you
love watching them, that's great, but we aren't going to
talk about them on the show. To watch the movie
comes out.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
We do have a story that relates to Fantastic Four,
but it relates to something that was cut out of
the movie.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah. Yeah, But the press tour for Superman has been
so like wholesome.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I haven't watched any of it. I need to now
that I've seen the movie, because I did see like
a clip of it was the one where actors ask
each other questions while being connected to a polygraph. Huh.
And I saw it was Corn Sweat, who plays Superman,
and hol who plays Luther, asking each other, and I'm like, Oh,

(18:06):
this looks like this is fun. I'm going to have
to search this out. I just haven't done it yet.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Like Nicholas Nicholas Holt and Krn Sweat have this romance
going on, which is delightful. They do a lad Bible
snack thing which is very funny. All these you can
find on YouTube, because I know you're not super on
social media. I know that like KRN Sweat at one
point was doing stupid jokes to Rachel Brosnahan, who plays
Lois Lane.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
And.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Didn't get some of the gen Z slang, which is
or Jen Alpha slang, which is hilarious because technically, like
he's young, he's.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Young, not that young though, Alfa is very young.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Alpha's very young. Okay, so gen Z, but he's like
thirty two, so he's solidly i'd so gen Z well
maybe not.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Still millennial, yeah, very young millennial.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, young millennial.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah. I so I say Superman is well worth a watch.
I don't like. I don't think it was a as
good as some of James Gunn's other superhero films, like
I think The Suicide Squad is better. I think the
Guardians of the Galaxy movies are better, better movies. But

(19:17):
I enjoyed Superman very much, and the ending was while
I knew where it was going immediately when the ending
was ramping up, I thought it was a perfect way
to end the film. So, and I'm talking about the
actual like last shot of the movie proper, not the
mid or post credit sequences, of which there are two,

(19:39):
but they are inconsequential to the story. They are cute.
They're cute, but not like if you're like, I am
going to die unless I go to the bathroom, You're
not going to miss out on anything that's earthshaking if
you have to go, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
That was my first question for you, is how many
mid post credit scenes there were? So thank you since
I'll be seeing it this weekend. And the second was
The second was does this excite you for the direction
that James gunn.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Is taking DC DC uh if it means I'm going
to get a lot more Guy Gardner abso freakin' lutely absolute,
freaking lutely. Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner was not the
I'm not gonna say anything any one thing was the

(20:29):
best thing about Superman, but he was one of the highlights,
and I'm looking forward to seeing him more in Lanterns.
I do wish that he could have been able to
do this when he was fifteen or twenty years younger,
like that would have been ideal, but he's still like
incredible in it.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
I get that. I get that, and you know, I
say that, I'm sure it's a hard thing to judge
because James Gunn has said that he's not gonna like
Superman is pg. Thirteen, but it you know, it's it's
a different vibe than some of the other movies he's
going to do. Like, it's a very different vibe than
the than a SCAA movie from everything we've heard so far.

(21:05):
So like, but I think that's kind of a good choice, Like,
don't get everything to try to fit the same mold
that will keep people interested.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, I think it's like it reflects the spectrum of
comic books under DC as well, right, like not all,
not every DC comic book is like the other. You've
got some that are drastically different in tone. So yeah,
I think that's fine. One other thing I did watch
besides Super Duperman was I watched most of a movie

(21:38):
called Boss Level, And the most of is already a
key to you about what I thought of Boss Level,
which is that, Eh, it's not bad, it's just but
I was curious about it because I don't know about you, Ariel.
I've talked about this in the past though my I'm
not on social, but I'm on YouTube a lot, so

(21:59):
I get a lot of the little recommended shorts on
the YouTube landing page, like recommended for you stuff, and
I try to avoid those for the most part because
it kind of gets me into that doom scrolling habit
that I don't want to engage in. But every now
and then I do find myself doing it. And one
of the movies that keeps popping up, like it's a
great way for me to discover movies I either didn't

(22:22):
know about or had forgotten about, and Boss Level was
one of them. And it's a time loop movie, you know,
like another take on the whole groundhog Day thing. It's
kind of like an action sci fi groundhog Day sort
of deal where this guy is being hunted down by
a bunch of crazy bounty hunters and he isn't quite

(22:42):
sure why. He's a former like Delta Force soldier, so
he's quite capable, but there's a lot of them coming
after him. I started watching it because I had seen
these clips and ten minutes in exactly ten minutes in
as I'm watching him, like, oh, this was shot in Atlanta,
because that's my house, like there was. It was in

(23:05):
the car chase and I was like, wait a minute,
they just went past my house. I had to rewind
it and look and like, yep, that's my house. Like
depending on the time of day, they could have actually
had me walking timblet to the background.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
But I uh, I'm looking at the cast list for
this and it feels like whiplash even just reading the
actors who were in this movie, because to have Frank
Grillo and Michelle Yo and then also Ken Geeong and
Will Sasso like and Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson. Yeah, Like,

(23:39):
it just feels very like that's that's not ever a
cast I'd put together.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
It feels, honestly, it feels very red box ish to me,
like it's a Hulu movie. It's made for Hulu, so
you can watch it on Hulu. But it gives me
like that red Box feel, like a movie that was
made specifically for red Box. There's also an actress named
Selena Lowe in it. She plays Gwan yin one of

(24:07):
the assassins, and she's of Asian ethnicity. She grew up
in England, so she has an English accent and I
loved her so much, Like her character is such a
she's a very capable swordswoman, but she's also very snarky,

(24:29):
and I was just like, Oh, I love this character.
So I looked in to see what else she was in,
and I noticed that she was in the twenty twenty
two version of Hell Raiser, which I still haven't watched,
and I thought, Oh, I really need to watch that
because my buddy David Bruckner directed it.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Oh wow, so you didn't watch The Prince in Me then,
or all of the sequels to The Scorpion King. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I had never seen her in anything before, I don't think,
but she she is entertaining in this But yeah, like
I said, I watched about two thirds of it, and
then it was just not like the concept was interesting,
but I didn't feel there was enough depth to really
keep me engaged. Maybe it was partly by the way

(25:17):
the film was constructed, because the movie starts off with
him already knowing that he's caught in a loop, like
the loop thing's been happening by the time the movie starts,
and then you get a flashback that kind of gives
you the day before the loop started. Later on in
the movie, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't
think that they did enough to kind of make me

(25:40):
care about these characters, So I kind of bailed on
it at that point.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Gotcha. I honestly when you first put Boss level, because
I hadn't looked it up at that point, I thought
you were talking about Deep Cover, which is the improv ones.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
We plan on watching that Becca and I, but we
have not yet made time to do it. But she
wants to see it too, so I haven't. I haven't
watched it yet.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Well, everything has become a discussion topic today, which is
not bad. But let's let's take a break from the
long and go to the super short, and by that
I mean thirty seconds or less.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Oh, I start with transition, thank you.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
So the first actually has to do a Superman and
that is post the movie. Interest in dog adoptions has skyrocketed.
There has been a five and thirteen percent increase in
Google searches for adopt a dog, one hundred and sixty
three percent increased in searches for rescue a dog, rescue
dog adoption near me, and then also an increase in

(26:43):
adopted Schnauzer, which is the kind of dog that Crypto
is based off of which is based off of James
Benis Dog That is fantastic. I just sincerely hope that
anyone who is encouraged to adopt a dog based off
of this movie is in it for the long hall.
Please do not adopt a dog. I know our listeners
wouldn't do this, but please do not adopt a dog

(27:05):
and then decide it's too much work and abandon it.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Again. Well, Superman related here, My favorite Rastlin event is
WWE's Royal Rumble, as where thirty or so Wrastlers get
into a ring one point one they try to throw
each other out of it. Well, DC is kind of
doing something similar in their comic books this year. In September,
there's an event being called Dcko and like I said,

(27:29):
it's kind of a Superman story in which there will
be thirty six heroes who are duking it out tournament
style in an effort to build up enough energy to
essentially dethrone dark Side. And I got to say, twelve
year old me would be totally stoked.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
I would be too. Next, Invincible seems to actually be
the show. The cartoon actually seems to be Invincible. They
have now been renewed for season five and season four.
Has it even come out yet. They announced it with
a behind the scene video of the cast recording in
the recording studio having a bunch of fun, you know,

(28:06):
for a show that can be so dark and gruesome,
I am glad that they have so much fun making.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Same. When the new Fantastic Four film was just getting
into production, we learned that being John Malkovich actor John
Malkovich was to play a classic Fantastic Four villain named
the Red Ghost. Apparently he was to appear in a
montage near the beginning of the film, kind of showing
off the Fantastic Coors rise in this alternate Marvel cinematic

(28:34):
universe area. But now we've learned that he has been
sadly cut from the film because it just didn't fit
with the flow of the story that had so many
other characters in it, which is kind of a bummer.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, but also hopefully a good decision. Next, Legend of
Zelda is getting a live action movie and they have
cast their Zelda and their Link Zelda will be played
by Bo Bragison. Ragason part of Me, whose previous peeky
credits include Renegade Nell and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will be

(29:06):
playing Link and his previous Geeking credits include Pinocchio and Sandman.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Oh well, pre sale tickets for movies are nothing new,
But how about buying a ticket for a movie a
full year before it comes out? And what about cases
where those tickets actually sell out a year ahead of time.
So in this case, the movie is Christopher Nolan's epic
adaptation of the Odyssey, and the screenings are specifically for
the IMAX version of that movie. Apparently, the July seventeenth,

(29:37):
twenty twenty six debut is already sold out across most
of the United States. It's even prompted scalping.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yikes, jeez, you can't see my face right now. But
it is not a good one, okay. Citizen Kane, famous
for Rosebud the Sled.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Spoilers.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Shit, I'm sorry, I'm a swore. This movie is from
nineteen forty one, so it's probably already been spoiled for people.
I'm sure it's fine anyhow. The iconic Sled from the
movie Citizen Kane has been sold at auction for fourteen
points seventy five million dollars, which makes it the most

(30:20):
the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold,
the first being the Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz,
which sold last December. The director Joe Dante had been
holding on to it and when he was given it,
I think that, Like this article on The Guardian says
that one of the film crew is like, hey, do
you want it?

Speaker 2 (30:41):
We're gonna throw it out, So that's wild. Yeah. Yeah,
Joe Dante I think of as the guy behind Grimlins,
so it's wild to think the Grimlins dude had the
Rosebud Sled from Citizen Kane. Well, if you are in
need of an elegant weapon from a more civilized aid,
perhaps you would like to bid upon the actual dueling

(31:03):
lightsaber props held by David Prowse or stunt double Bob
Anderson as they portrayed Darth Vader and the Empire strikes
back in Return of the Jedi. The Hero Lightsaber will
go on auction in September through prop Store, but be prepared.
The pre sale estimate suggests the sucker is gonna go
for between one and three million dollars.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Cheesy, Luisy, I bet you could do more damage with
the sled though fallout seventy six is going to release
content based on the Fallout TV show. This isn't a
huge surprise. Other shows have done it. I think like
Divergent on sci Fi. That might not be the right
name of it. There was a sci fi show on
Siffy that did it as well. TV show and video

(31:47):
games kind of updated each other. But in this case,
the start of the video game and the start of
the show are very far apart, so there's a lot
of room for them to play. I'm gonna be real, honest,
I didn't realize that follow seventy six was releasing new content.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Oh yeah, it's an MMO, so it's a it's a
living game.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
I didn't know, but I didn't know if it had
gone to the MMO graveyard.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
That's fair. That's fair. It had a really rough reception
when it was first released, but I think it has
since improved drastically well. Judge Dread will be adapted for
the silver screen yet again. Previous versions featured Sliced Alone
in a pretty terrible version, and Carl Urban in a
surprisingly great movie. This new film will be written by

(32:32):
Drew Pearce, who is the writer behind movies like fall
Guy and Mission Impossible. Rogue Nation. Directing the film will
be Taika Witteth. Now, perhaps this means we'll get more
of the dark satire from the original comic book series,
and that excites me for sure.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
As much as it pains me to say it secret,
it doesn't really, but I like playing into the stereotype.
Jonathan was right. The reason that said Nautica Too was
being delayed was to avoid payouts to its staff, and
now Unknown world founders have filed a lawsuit against Crafton

(33:12):
for that. Sad. That's sad.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah. Crafton, if you don't remember, is the parent company
that owns Unknown Worlds, which is the developer for the
Subnautica series. So yeah, kind of a ugly story, all right,
last one, here we go. The Emmy nominations came in
this week, and genre shows got a lot of love
this year, so stick with me. The Penguin, The Last

(33:39):
of Us and or What We Do in the Shadows,
Black Mirror, Arcane, Love, Death and Robots, Ridgerton, Done, Prophecy,
Doctor Who Agatha All Along, House of the Dragon, and
the documentary Renfair all received at least one nomination in
a category at the Emmys. But the show that really
wrecked up the nominations was Severance, which landed twenty seven

(34:04):
in total across all the different categories. That calls for
some choreography and merriment.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Wow, that is impressive. No murder Bot Ooo.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it wasn't Maybe it wasn't
eligible from when it like, maybe its debut was outside
the nominations window. That's a possibility, that is.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Oh. Yeah, I've been watching Love, Death and Robots. We're
in season three now. That show is a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, but yeah, I thought that was great to find
out that so many genre series have received some love
from the Emmy's. That's fantastic for sure.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Peeks rule the world. But now we're going to talk
about some less geeky stuff and less like your movie
buff Like, anything can be geeky if you love it enough.
So let's do our stuff that does not fit.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah. So first up, we've got a series that's going
to be on Amazon Prime starting on August thirteenth. It
is titled Butterfly, and the basic premise appears to be
a young woman is she's like a secret agent, you know,
she's been developed as an asset for some sort of

(35:17):
black ops organization. Her father is presumed dead, like she
believes her father to be dead, and then he turns
up totally not dead, and then because he's alive, and
because he reunites with her despite the fact that they
have obviously trust issues between the two, because she's like,

(35:39):
you seem to be dead. You never bother to reach
out and say, hey, by the way, I'm not. The
organization that employed both of them now wants to take
both of them out because they of course know too much.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Man, there is like a trend of familial spy stuff
coming out.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
So we've got like there's a few things on our
list this week, both in this and in our our
actual like these are the geeky properties we want to
talk about that I feel are exactly what you're saying,
Like they are part of trends that have been going
for a while now and I'm kind of over them.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, that being said, Butterfly, you know, a good action
can be fun, and it does star Daniel Day Kim,
who is an amazing actor. I love him and lost.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
So Piper Perabo's in it, Charles Parnell's in it. It
like it looks like it's well made, It looks very
like the action looks great in the trailer. The fight
scenes look really impressive in the trailer, so I imagine
that it'll be an exciting watch. It's just that, Yeah,
I feel like we've seen a lot of these sorts

(36:49):
of things.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
We talked about one last week with Freddie Hymore also.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, although in the in that case
he is he is not indoctrinated into the world of
spies and such.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
But also fubar. So you know, yep, well the show.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
We've got, not the not the concept, Yeah we we got.
I mentioned this movie to Ariel I did not add
it to our lineup, but I'm glad you did. It's
a trailer for a drama thriller called After the Hunt,
and Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield star in it, and

(37:32):
yes and Idoha Bari and I. When I saw this trailer,
I was just like floored by the acting that was
on display just in the trailer. Yeah, you know, obviously
like this is just a tiny glimpse of what's going
on in the movie. But I was like, if this
doesn't not get some nominations for some actors in at
least a couple of awards shows that will be a crime,

(37:52):
because it looks like they're really putting in some good work.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
It definitely will it. I'm not trying to diminish the
story because I do actually think the story is one
that should be told. First of all, After the Hunt
seems to be about a woman who takes in a
young protege who then gets abused by the woman and
one of the women's friends, and the cover up behind

(38:17):
that in the school system, and that is a story
that needs to be told because it is a thing
that does happen, and it is a thing that gets
covered up, and it's not great, so not going to
be an easy watch. That kind of story does ring
of like Oscar bait, but also it looks like it's
going to be very well done.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
It Also it looks like it could be even more
complicated than that, right because like Andrew Garfield's character who's
called Hank, he seems to be saying that the young woman,
the protege, was possibly like it's all set in a university,
so it seems like he's saying that the woman was
plagiarizing and cheating. She is claiming that he has harassed

(38:59):
and or assaulted her, and meanwhile the Julia Roberts's character
who is playing this like she's sort of the mentor
to Hank and friend to Hank. It's implied that lista,
there's something at least quasi romantic between those two. Like
it looks like there's a lot of secrets and it

(39:21):
could be a case where everyone's lying. It could be
a case where everyone's telling the truth and everyone has
done bad things. It's hard to say, Like it does look,
you know, pretty complicated from the surface level. I don't
know if it if it'll ultimately be complicated, or if
it's just me reading too much into it. But like

(39:42):
I said.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Like.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Seeing everybody's acting on display, and this trailer was really
really great. I also love the fact there's a brief
moment in a bar between Hank and I don't know
what Julia Roberts's character's name is, but her character where
he's like handing her a card or something and then
she's like fumbling it as she's trying to take it,
and she's she does the the quintessential iconic Julia Roberts

(40:10):
laugh to the point where I was like, for a second,
I was transported to pretty woman.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Oh well, I mean you are supposed to put yourself
into the role.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
So oh yeah, no, this wasn't It wasn't a criticism
it was it was more like, it was more like, wow,
that was a total pretty woman. Laugh.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's that's fun that I didn't notice that, but that
is a fun, fun thing to catch the next thing.
I don't know why I stucked this in here. Honestly,
I stuck this in here when we didn't think we're
going to have much to talk about because it was
slow up until yesterday. On the New Geeky news front,
there is a Cartoon Network show called Gumball that is

(40:52):
a mixed media cartoon kind of gross like Ren and
Stiffy show that uh is getting a new series and
we got to try for it.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
I don't think it's nearly as gross as Ren and Stimpy,
but yeah, it comes out July twenty eighth. I never
watched Gumball, but seeing this trailer, I was like, Okay,
I'm vibing with the sense of humor. It's very, very silly.
I also love that there is a very brief necronomicon
reference in there.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yes, yes, like I almost put it into the fits
because of the necronomicon reference. It's not okay, it's not
gross like ren and stimpy. It's very juvenile humor. And
I also know that you have as well as juvenile
humor interests like classy humor interests. So no judgment to you.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Oh yeah, no, I love a good classy fart joke.
Uh So that's all we have to say about that.
I guess we'll move on to the Pines Still Whisper.
So this is another one Ariel where we were talking
about like movies that are part of a long trend.
The Pine Still Whisper feels like, oh, you know those
movies where you have the overprotective parent who is trying

(41:59):
to keep their child safe in a post apocalypse. This
is one of those, but from Canada with.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Some tattoos that match. That's all I've got to say
about it.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yes, So basic premise is it's again set in some
sort of post apocalyptic setting where you've got a family
that's in this remote house out in the woods, and
it's a mother and her young adult daughter. Like she's
essentially a young adult who is being told over and
over again by her mother, like she has to be

(42:32):
careful and she can't trust strangers and all that sort
of stuff. Her mom goes off for a supplies run
and is gone longer than expected. She ends up The
daughter ends up being concerned and decides to set out
to look for her mom. Encounters a stranger, has to
figure out whether or not to trust the stranger, notices
the stranger has a similar tattoo to one that her

(42:53):
mom has, and thus the mystery continues to unfold. The
movie comes out September twelfth, and I would probably be
more into this if it weren't for the fact that
we have seen so many movies with a similar basic
premise to them, like The Whole, like even thrillers, sci fi, horror,
like all three of those genres. We have seen versions

(43:15):
of this story a lot over the last two years.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
I would say, yeah, yeah. The next one that you
put in is for a horror movie called Birthright, which
to me feels like you took the upcoming Zach Kreeger
movie Weapons, where all the kids go disappearing and are
creepy with the movie we talked about last week, Descendant
about someone having weird visions after getting bumped on the

(43:40):
head and having a baby, and you get birth Right.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, it's it's described as sort of folk horror. So
it's a folk horror movie. Think of something like wicker Man,
and I'm talking about the original, not the not the Bees,
not the Bees version with Nicholas Cage, but their original Wickerman.
A young couple, two women expecting a baby, move into

(44:05):
a house in a rural area. The locals are kind
of odd. They hear about kids having gone missing in
the area, and then it appears to be that there
was a coven of witches that lived in the house
that they moved into at some point, and there are

(44:26):
references to the fact that locals want to sacrifice the
baby to something. What that's something is, we don't know.
Comes out August eighth. This one could have maybe fit
into our like streamlined this is what the show is
about stuff, but it doesn't. Like nothing supernatural is revealed

(44:48):
in the trailer, so it may simply be like, again,
just folk horror, which is fine. But to me, I'm like, well,
without a supernatural element, it's it's borderline. So I didn't
put it into the lineup.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, the next one I didn't even watch.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Because wow, you didn't watch me read.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
You sold me on it so hard that I felt
like I knew everything I needed to know.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yeah, you didn't miss anything. Okay, this requires a bit
of backstory. So the trailer I put into our lineup
are for doesn't really fit, is for a film that's
called Diced Reloaded, so it's Die apostrophe Ced reloaded. So

(45:33):
a couple of years ago there was a guy named
Jeremy Rudd who directed a short film called Diced, Die
apostrophe Ced. This ended up on two be if you
take the credits off the movie, off the beginning in
the end, you end up with a movie that's around
fifty minutes long. So it's a short film, uh, And

(45:56):
it follows the story of a family that's being stalked
by a psychotic killer who's dressed up in a scarecrow costume.
Now this killer the costume looks great, but the killer
has physicality and behaviors that are almost identical to that
of Art the clown from the Terrifier franchise. And in fact,

(46:17):
there are scenes in the movie that are clearly inspired
as being very kind, clearly inspired by Terrifier and Terrifier too.
And the trailer for this movie, which is essentially the
same film but now made on a bigger budget and
expanded to be an hour and twenty one minutes long,

(46:38):
has even more moments that look like they are lifted
almost directly from Terrifier, just with different actors in it.
And I didn't like Terrifier. I watched the first two
movies and I didn't like either of them very much.
I didn't think they were very good movies, or at
least they didn't appeal to me. So this looks like
a worse version of that. And on top of that,

(47:01):
I found accounts written by someone who claims that they
were part of the crew that was making the original Dicet,
who said that one the director was never really directing.
The director of photography ended up kind of directing the
film because the director was more interested in making behind
the scenes videos to put on social to promote the movie,

(47:22):
and that a lot of the crew remained uncompensated months
after it wrapped. They weren't getting paid. They even brought
out collections against the guy, and that like the movie,
if you watch the original short, the aspect ratio changes
because they didn't know how to edit the different the

(47:44):
footage from the different cameras properly, so it was all
in the same aspect ratio, they had issues with color correction,
they had issues with sound, and so to me, I
was just one of those things where it's like, why
the heck did anyone decide to bankroll a remake of
this movie? Because it sounds like one the guy didn't
know what he was doing, two he kind of screwed

(48:05):
over his crew, and three the movie itself looks incredibly
derivative of a different low budget horror movie. And it
just was discouraging to me because I know there's a
lot of people out there who have great ideas and
great skills and are good people who can't get a
project off the ground, and meanwhile, this thing ends up

(48:26):
getting made into a feature length film.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
For sure, for sure, I feel that frustration as well.
We'll actually kind of talk about that a little bit
in our show notes, because there's at least one movie
doing good things to get off the ground.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Talked about it. Yeah, in case anyone out there really
wants to watch it comes out August eighth and limited
release in theaters and is on video on demand on
August twelfth. I will not be watching it because unless
I hear otherwise, and hear that this, you know, alleged
crew member was actually making everything up or whatever. I

(48:59):
don't want to reward someone who treats their crew like that,
so I'll be skipping it. But if it turns out
that that's all, you know, lies or whatever, and that
this guy never did anything shady to his crew, then
obviously that's a different story. Maybe I'll check it out.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah, So now we're onto our regular well, and.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
And our first two items are about the same movie.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah, and I have feels because Okay, so two days
ago we got a teaser trailer for Moral Kombat two. Uh,
and it starred Carl The movie does star Carl or
one of the stars, Carl Urban as Luke Cage, not
Luke Cage Johnny Cage.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yep, if if Carl Urban played Luke Cage, there'd be
a lot of people saying there's whitewashing problem in Hollywood right.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Now, Johnny Cage. And the teaser took the form of
like this, like a promo for all of his action movies.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
And specifically for a new one called Uncaged Fury.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yes, and it looked hilarious and fun. And then the
real trailer for Mortal Kombat two dropped, and I watched
it and lost almost all interest.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Here's the crazy thing, well not crazy. Becca and I
have exactly the same reaction as you, Like, we were like,
we kind of would rather watch a Johnny Cage movie,
like an actual Johnny Cage action movie, rather than Mortal
Kombat Too. I have a lot of questions about Mortal
Kombat two. One big one is where the hell is

(50:47):
Cole Young in that trailer? So Cole Young was the
character they created for the first Mortal Kombat. He was
the protagonist. So in that movie, he's the one who
discovers that his ability is that he he grows like
a organic armor over his body and he can absorb
kinetic energy and then release it. But he was like

(51:08):
he was the protagonist in the first Mortal Kombat movie.
In fact, at the end of it, he's the one
who says he's gonna go and recruit Johnny Cage to
be in the Mortal Kombat Tournament. But in this trailer
for Mortal Kombat Too, I didn't really see him in it.
He's listed under the cast. But this the trailer mostly

(51:28):
follows Johnny Cage, Sonya Jax, and Katana Yeah, and a
little bit of Lou Kang in the background and a
little bit of Rayden.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah. Like, so I watched the first movie. First of all,
I hope he isn't it because I do like Lewis
Tan as an actor. I think, yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
He's that's a place Cole Young, That's who place Cole Young.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, who's also been in like Cobra Kai and he
was Sue's I can't remember. He was a throwaway character
in Deadpool and Wolverine. But in the funniest way, Shatterstar.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Oh uh yeah, yeah, he was part of the X Force.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Yeah, Shatterstar. Okay, I got it right. Okay, But so
I watched the first Mortal Kombat and it wasn't great,
but it was fine. It was a fine, slightly too
long action movie with some okay effects. I think the
problem for me is the old, like I guess, nineties

(52:26):
early two thousands Mortal Kombat movie that came out was
so good, it was so much fun to me that
this just paled in comparison. But this new trailer, I
feel like, required you to care about the things that
happened in the first movie and the characters they set
up in the first movie and have a working understanding

(52:46):
of them as if you've remembered them after all this time,
which I have not.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Well, and on top of that, not only you can't
care too much because like Kano is shown in this
trailer for Mortal Kombat too, but Kano was tots killed
in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and so you're like, okay,
so does death not mean anything at all? I mean,
I get that it's based off of video game series

(53:11):
where the same characters keep coming back over and over again,
but exactly how mortal is this Mortal Kombat if people
who are killed off are returning for sequels. So that's
that's part of what irritated me. I thought Carl Urban
looked like he was having a lot of fun, and honestly,
I think he's the one thing I would really kind

(53:32):
of dig in this film. But overall, yeah, it just didn't.
This one didn't hit for me. I liked all the
Scorpion sub zero stuff from the first Mortal Kombat movie.
That was great, That was amazing, like the prologue bit
and then I loved all that, but yeah, this trailer,
this trailer just did not. I agree with you, Ariel,

(53:54):
this trailer didn't really work for me. Like nothing I
was seeing look bad. It just didn't engage me.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, I guess we'll see. Hopefully there will be enough
Johnny Cage hilarity to uphold this second movie.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, comes out October twenty fourth.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
October twenty fourth, we also have a trailer, second trailer
for Alien Earth. I know, I'm being real bad about
not adding trailers that have already come out. I'm failing.
We were like, We're going to not do like the
second and third trailers after the second and third Deezers
that come out for movies, and yet I've included this one.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah. So this series drops on August twelfth, comes out
on FX and Hulu. The more I see of this,
the more it confuses me because I just don't understand
the timeline for the Aliens universe. Yeah, like like when
did they when did they first discover xena morphs, because

(54:57):
like in this trailer, it's pretty clear that there is
at least one Xenomorph on the loose or something similar
to a Xenomorph on the loose on Earth, you know,
thirty years before the Nostromo incident. And that just confuses
me because I'm like, how how does this work? Like

(55:19):
you can't have films or series that are set earlier
and earlier, and then every single one say, no, wait,
this is where we first found out about the alien.
I'm like, but you keep changing when that was like,
that doesn't make any sense, and so it might be
way more straightforward than I'm giving it credit for. But

(55:41):
they do say in the trailer that there were five
new life forms from distant planets that were aboard this
ship that then crashes on Earth. So maybe maybe at
least one or more of the others are not a xenomorph.
It could be some other like alien, because at first
I thought, oh, are they saying like there's a collection
of different aliens and then maybe, you know, the company

(56:06):
gets them and then through genetic engineering, that's how the
Xenomorphe is created. But no, that doesn't seem to be
the guy. I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
It might it might be I guess. I guess they're
leaving it so that we have to watch it to
find that out. I hope there's at least one not
horrible alien in the bunch, like one stitch yeah, one
six six yeah, one six yeah. You know, I have

(56:37):
to at least give it an episode because you pointed
out to me about the Peter Pan references in there,
so I'll let you know.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Yeah, which, again, this trailer there was none of that, Like,
there was no there was no hint at the Peter
Pan stuff. And then the last trailer it was like
they were pushing hard on the Peter Pan stuff. So
the marketing for this series also leaves me baffled because
it just feels very scattershot. It doesn't feel like it's

(57:09):
it's a united approach.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, I agree. So you kind of liked Tron to.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Legacy.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Yes, best segue ever, what do you think of the
new tron trailer that came out this week?

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah, So we got a new trailer for Tron Aries.
We see Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger. I don't know.
I don't know what Dillinger's relation is to Ed Dillinger Junior,
who was one of the characters briefly in Tron Legacy.
So in the original Tron, Ed Dillinger Senior is the

(57:50):
human bad guy. He also the same actor also played
one of the program villains in the Tron World. Ed
Dillinger Junior is the new head of that company and
is you know, kind of a kind of a minor
antagonist in Tron Legacy. He doesn't really show up in

(58:10):
the movie very long, so it doesn't he's not really
an antagonist. And then Julian Dillinger, I'm guessing maybe his
younger brother, Like I can't. I think Evan Peters is
too old to have been the son of the Ed
Dillinger junior character, but I don't know. Anyway, he has
found a way to bring digital entities into the real world.

(58:36):
So it's the opposite of what was happening in Tron,
where a real person is getting digitized and put into
the computer world. He's doing the reverse. He's taking computer
stuff and digitizing them into the or not digitizing but
essentially downloading them into the real world. And Jared Lido's
aries character is one of those who then comes to
the real world and appears to be seeking out and

(59:00):
sers to big existential questions while also causing enormous amounts
of damage. So it's like philosophy and mass catastrophe at
the same time. And I would definitely be more into
this if Jared Leno weren't part of it.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
That is my thing, Sorry, I mean one I enjoyed
the first Tron movie and the second Tron movie was fine.
Neither of them really stuck in my head beyond light
cycles and racing.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
And maybe Michael Shean dancing because he was so good
in Tron Legacy.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
I forgot about that too.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
So good. He's like David Bowie. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
I mean, now that you've said it, I recall, but
like it took. It took up no space in my
brain after watching it. It wasn't bad, but it was
just I mean, I was also going I've said this
on the episode, I was going on a Joco cruise
immediately after watching it. So, uh, you know, paled in comparison,
but uh sure, but one I they come so far

(59:57):
in few between that the story I and then the
I'm not like Nine inch Nails has made some good music,
but I'm not a huge Nine inch Nails fan, So
like the soundtrack being made by them has no weight
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Yeah, it's not like Daft Punk, where their soundtrack was this. Honestly,
Shean's performance and the soundtrack are the best components to
Tron Legacy in my opinion. And yeah, so like, I
think Tron in general is a is a film series

(01:00:34):
where it's cooler in concept than it is an execution. Like,
I don't think any of the movies so far, I
mean there's only been two. I don't think the two
movies so far have been really good. They've been great ideas,
but they're kind of clunkers when it comes to movies.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah, hopefully tron Aries will be better. You know, I
don't like Jared Leto's personal viewpoint and process for acting
and getting into character. We've talked about that at nauseum
on this show before. But at least it looks like
he's playing a more upstanding character. So maybe he wasn't
a bear to work with on this one. I mean,
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
I heard that to get into character he would go
and xerox his butt forty times.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
I don't know if you're telling the truth or not,
which therein lies the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Yeah, I'm not going to tell you if I'm telling
the truth or not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Listen, if you're if you're young, is to xerox your butt.
As long as you're keeping those xeroxes to yourself, more
power to you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
No. No, he sent them each to his you know,
mostly to mostly to uh, oh darn it, I forgot
the actor's name, the guy who plays Flynn. I was
so excited to be able to tell I forgot his name.
Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges, correct. It might be my brain.

(01:01:57):
My brain, no worky work right now. But yeah, okay,
So this movie comes out October tenth. I probably, I mean, like,
if I want to see this, I guess I need
to see it in the theater because certainly the Tron
movies are more like theatrical experiences, like it's if you're
going to enjoy it at all, you kind of need

(01:02:19):
that big screen and big sound system for it to
really work, because I don't think they hold up that
well when viewing them on a home system.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
No. No. We also got a trailer for Hoppers, which
is a new Pixar movie about some scientists who make
a fake animal, which is they make a fake animal
so that they can interact with real animals, which is
you know, mirror to like. National Geographic has made some
animal looking drones to get better footage of animals in

(01:02:49):
their habitat without them feeling like there's a camera there,
so you know, art imitates life.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
This does go an extra step, and that you can
put a human consciousness into the robot animal.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
And then the robot animal understands the other animals. It
looks cute, it looks funny. There is a moment at
the end of the trailer about the circle of life
that genuinely made me laugh but also made go, this
movie is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Not what I can watch. Oh, I can totally watch this.
This is it's so silly. But they I mean, I
love the fact that they actually do lampshade, the fact
that this is Avatar. It's just not Avatar the Last Airbender,
but Avatar in that there is an Avatar of an
animal and a human consciousness inhabits that that animal robot

(01:03:39):
and then can you know, interact with the animals out
in nature, and that the scientists are adamant that this
is not like Avatar. No, it totally is Avatar.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
Yeah, go, just it was.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
It was cute. I mean, they own both properties, so
like it's it's not a big deal. But yeah. The
bit that you were mentioning Ariel, that little circle of
life bit is that the animal that the young girl
there's a young girl character who's the protagonist. She very
rashly projects her consciousness into a robot version of a

(01:04:17):
little beaver, and she goes to a pond and sees
another beaver sitting there, and then a bear rushes out
and scoops the other beaver up into the bear's mouth,
and so the protagonist intervenes to rescue this beaver, and
both the bear and the beaver are confused by this
because it's the laws of the pond. If the bear

(01:04:40):
catches the beaver, then the bear gets to eat the beaver.
And it's a little like fatalistic and wild to see
a cartoon where an animated character is just like, yeah,
it's fair play, she caught me, she gets to eat me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Yeah, but also funny. But yeah, I did not expect it.
I haven't seen that really a lot before in a cartoons.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
So yeah, and this one, this one comes out March sixth,
twenty twenty six. So I like the fact that it,
I mean, apart from the fact that it is Avatar,
but for animals, it's an original idea, like it's not
another sequel, So for that I'm thankful and I'll probably
check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Yeah, yeah, I just don't like animal movies, so I won't.
But it does look very funny. I can appreciate it
even if I don't watch it. We also got the
official teaser for Stranger Things. Teaser is the wrong word.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Yeah, it's like two and a half minutes long.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
It looked fine.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
I haven't watched Stranger Things since season one, so I
have no idea what's going on, and I have no
way of really contributing anything other than obviously. It was
like stakes have continued to be raised and that there
is a final confrontation being teased. But I can't tell
you who the heck most of the characters are, or
what their relationship is to each other or to any

(01:06:12):
of the weird critters that are coming from the upside down,
Like I don't. I don't know any of that. So
I watched it and I was like totally lost. I
do know that their release schedule is brilliant because Volume
one comes out, which is the first chunk of episodes,
comes out November twenty six, so right around Thanksgiving. Volume

(01:06:34):
two comes out Christmas Day, and volume three, the finale,
really just the finale comes out in New Year's Eve,
so they have timed it for all the holiday releases
when people are you know, off work and are able
to watch stuff, or are.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
Too busy because they're entertaining family to watch stuff, which
is my case.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Not everyone, and not everyone invites the entire world into
their home every holiday. Are you sure? I am one
hundred percent sure. You can watch Boss Level and you
will see a distinct lack of people at my house.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Yeah. I like, I enjoyed the first four seasons of
Stranger Things, so I will watch this last season. It's
not that I'm unexcited for it. I just I don't
feel like the trailer gave me anything in particular new
to be excited about.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
That's fair. Yeah, yeah, okay, ma, well it just got
a couple more stories to go. One is that Ariel
found this because it was on Facebook, and I am
no longer on Facebook, so I did not see it
at all. But Sketch the movie We've talked about a
couple of times. That's the kind of dark fantasy horror

(01:07:49):
sort of film where a little girl's drawings are coming
to life and wreaking havoc. Sketches having a pretty cool contest.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Yeah. So the contest is if you buy movie tickets
through Angel Studios, which is the studio that made this,
you can be entered to win a bunch of like
movie making stuff, so like lights and after effects and
software and hardware, and also a trip to go like
take a movie making workshop in La with the people

(01:08:19):
who made the movie. Kind of is like one as
a way to encourage people to use to be creative
on their own and not use AI, right because you
don't need AI to do it. You can still use
computers and all that other stuff. You don't necessarily need
AI for your movie. And two, like that's a brilliant
marketing tactic to get people to buy tickets for your movie.

(01:08:41):
Another one I saw after posting this. The person who
kind of talks about it is Freddie Wong, who is
a very funny, like geek creator. He was on the
Mentopolis season of Dimension twenty, which was brilliant, so that
also was a delight. The other thing the studio is
doing is if you buy tickets for your kids, parents
can get tickets for free. And again I think that

(01:09:04):
those are just some phenomenal ways to get people excited
about your movie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's it's it's neat to see
other ways of marketing a film besides just the you know,
having your your talent, go on a press junket, that
kind of thing. This is. This is interesting and also
I love seeing the encouragement of the filmmaking community out

(01:09:29):
there to experiment and get involved because I do think
in many ways the barriers to getting something made and
seen by people are much lower than they used to be.
I mean, there was this one horror short film called
Dice that was terrible, and it got a full feature
film reboot. So I'm just saying, like, like there's precedence

(01:09:53):
out there, and if a bad thing can be remade,
maybe a good thing could too. So but you know,
I think that's super cool. Like I looked at some
of the equipment and everything. That's really impressive. I'm going
to let someone else enter it, because honestly, I am
more on the writer producer side, not so much on
the actual shooting side, so I would not get as

(01:10:17):
much out of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Same. I just hope that this encourages everyone who sees it,
and I hope a bunch of people see it. Like,
I'm so excited for this movie. I really hope it
holds up just to be creative, because you know, like
the movie is about a creative child who is who
puts her her emotions into art, and I hope that
this encourages children and adults alike to do the same.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
And finally we got another trailer, a full trailer for
Dead Take. This is a video game, not a movie
or a computer game. We talked about it previously where
it was it looked like it was two different voice
actors being pitted against each other to play the same character.
And this one, am I right? Is that the same one?

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
It is? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
For as I was talking, I was like, wait, could
I be conflating two different games?

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Then Starr and Neil Nubhn being the voice actor or
the actors straight up actors. There's live action video clips
in this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
The game kind of looks like a mystery slash, almost
like a scape room kind of experience where you find
like video clips of different voice actors doing lines and stuff,
and that by combining different clips together you can start
to unravel a mystery, where like you might just have
one side of a conversation when you find one clip,

(01:11:42):
and later on you might find another clip that's the
other side of that conversation. You can combine the two
clips and get the full thing. H And that that's
kind of an interesting take. I've never seen anything quite
like that in a game like this. And also I'm
excited because Alana Pierce plays one of the characters in
this game, and she's someone I followed from She was

(01:12:04):
in a group called Funhouse years ago, and then she
was working as a video game developer with Sony and
I just like her work. I like her work, and
I like her perspective on the video game industry. So
it was cool seeing her pop up in this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Yeah, she's in it. Like I said, Ben starrs in it,
Neil Nubhn who was a Starian in Balder's Kate three,
and a bunch of other They've both done tons of
other stuff. Matt Mercer's in it, and so is Laura Bailey.
It's a really great cast. And yeah, the synopsis you
pretty much nailed it. Jonathan is Chase Lowry. Neil Neubon
is an actor searching for his friend and fellow actor

(01:12:40):
Vinnie Monroe then Starr, who went missing after Glamor's party
at a secluded mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and players
step into Chase's shoes to explore the mansion and solve
escape rooms and puzzles and piece together the videos to
find the truth behind the disappearance and the dark secrets
of the entertainment industry. That's just reading the synopsis. But

(01:13:01):
it is interesting. It's probably gonna be very dark because
it is based off of the creative doctor, the creative
director's personal experiences in the acting industry yikes, or at
least inspired by So I am so curious about how
it plays out in what the actual secrets are.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time I
disappeared inside some Hollywood executive's mansion, I would have Well,
let's not go into it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Like I think in the trailer they show someone splicing
two videos together to make a completely new video, And
I wonder if that's some like commentary on how you
can be so easily taken out of context to tell
a narrative in the industry.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, I was curious if that was either like I'm
not entirely sure if that's a game mechanic or simply
a plot element, right, like that you uncover this or
that that actually becomes a fundamental component to how you
navigate this game. I don't know. I will say, like,
it's interesting enough to me it looks different from other

(01:14:10):
stuff that I am definitely curious about it. It comes
out on July thirty first on the Epic Games Store,
which I do have, so I may be checking out
this on the thirty first.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
Yeah, you'll have to let us know what you think
about it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
If you do, sounds good to me. And with that,
we have made our way through all the stuff, and
even with our long digressions, like this is still a
slightly shorter episode than several of our more recent ones.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Yeah, so thank you for listening, Jonathan. If people have
comments that they want to tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
How they do that, well, you're going to have to
project your consciousness into a shrew, and by that I
mean the little burrowing animals. So you're gonna have to
find yourself a little shrew bot shoe, not yeah, not
Kate from Taming of the Shrew, but an actual little
robot shrew. If you do come at me in a

(01:15:11):
other version of shrew like Kate from Taming of the Shrew,
I will certainly pay attention to you because you will
scare me. But I don't know that you'll get your
question answered. If you want your question answer, you got
to project your consciousness into a robot of the animal
shrew and then burrow your way to where I'll be.
If you want to know where I'll be, well, you're

(01:15:31):
gonna have to watch Boss Level and wait till you're
about ten minutes into the movie and then look in
the background and it's a blink and you'll miss it
kind of moment because it's during a car chase sequence,
But somewhere in that general vicinities where I'll be because
I'll be walking my dog. Just be sure that when
you do come up to ask your question, you do
so from a safe distance, because that dog's leash is

(01:15:52):
about six feet long and he does like to go
after critters. And I would hate to see your consciousness
trapped inside I had a defunct shrewd robot because that
would be sad and it would really bumm me out,
and also I wouldn't do anything about it. So but
that's how you can get in touch.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
If you don't want to do that, you can reach
out to us on social media on Facebook and Instagram
and threads. We are a large nerdron collider that's also
our discord handle. You can find the invitation to discord
on our website www dot Large Neurdron Collider dot com.
I'm not upset. I'm just trying not to burthen the microphone.

(01:16:32):
You can also reach out to us long form or
email is Large Neurdrum Pod at gmail dot com. Website's
pretty up to date. I'll get it up to date
with this week's notes as well in case there's anything
you want to look more into, and that's the easiest
way for you to do it. Thank you for listening,
thank you for writing us, thank you for being awesome
members of the geek community. And until next time, I

(01:16:55):
am Ariel. I hope this episode was interesting because my
cat is snoring at me.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Caston and I have been Jonathan if ib waspish best
beware my sting Strickland classy that's tearing out the truth.
The Large Nerdron Collider was created by Aeriel Caston and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted,

(01:17:22):
published again. Curse That by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin
McLeod of incomptech dot com.