Street Level Performers Within an Epic Universe

Ariel and Jonathan talk a lot about upcoming movies and series, how great it is to see older women portrayed in films as being cool, capable and sexy, and the downside of method acting. But they really geek out when they talk about Epic Universe, the first new theme park in the US in nearly 25 years!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the large nerdrun Collider, the podcast.
It's all about the geeky things happening in the world
around us and how very excited we are about them.
I'm Ariel Castin, and with me, as always, is the
person who I should have let you the intro this week,
Jonathan Strangling.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, hello there, my angelic voiced co host.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
I know it is I am producing some dulcet tones today.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, those who listen to our short episode, no that
Ariel was a little under the weather and really like
there was just no way she would be able to
record last week. And it's been a whole week, and
you know you can hear like she's still recovering. Meanwhile,

(00:55):
she's still kicking butt going out there tape and auditions.
Uh a challenge.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Let me tell you, if you never believed in a
greater power before, I don't expect this to change your mind, Jonathan.
But the fact that I have been like I have
had an overabundance of blessings of auditions this year so far,
which is fantastic. And then for the last two weeks,
while I was dealing with my husband being sick and
me being sick, I had nothing like, just crickets and

(01:24):
then which is great because it wasn't in a good
position to do it. And then the day I test
negative for COVID, I get two auditions and both of
them are non.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Speaking, which you're ideal for at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, So like, if ever you believed in a greater power,
it sure feels like it right now.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
And I imagine you're feeling better, and that is the
most important thing obviously. Like even a non speaking audition,
if you look like death warmed over, you're probably not
going to get the part, unless it's walking dead, in
which case maybe it'll work for you.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I mean, you can see me. I don't have makeup on,
so I probably still look like that. But yes, I
feel much better. Honestly. The worst part of it, because
I had COVID, I thought I got like my husband
got it, and then I thought that I got away
with not catching it, and I was wrong. But the
worst part is that it just gave me this incessant
cough that nothing, no medicine that I took would stop it. Yeah,

(02:23):
like twenty four to seven, So I'm I'm past it now.
I feel much better. The problem is is that all
of that, all, like my throat and my lungs and
all that million and all of the phlem that it
all produced is still healing and working itself out, just
because I did so much damage from coughing, so like

(02:43):
it doesn't hurt, it just isn't back.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, I've had I've had respiratory issues in the past
where it's kind of the similar situation where even when
you're out of the woods for the initial infection, recovery
can take some time. So I'm glad you're feeling better.
And yes, everybody, I did ask. I did ask before
we recorded to make sure that she was feeling up
to doing this because Ariel is I mean, I've told

(03:09):
the story before. Ariel's got a reputation for working hurt,
like she doesn't let that stop her.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
But I didn't take off of my day job while
I had COVID because I worked from home. I still
did it. I just slept in between.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
So yeah, I slept in between two and I wasn't sick.
So well, I'm glad you're back. I'm glad we can
actually talk about stuff. We did not include the stories
that I kind of did a quick run through last week.
We didn't include any of those because enough stuff has

(03:44):
happened since then, including stuff that technically doesn't fit on
her show, but we wanted to mention it. And like,
there's a bunch of those.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, some like the last three I think could vaguely
fit our show.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I agree. Well, I mean, even like even the horror one,
but like I just felt that it was more animal
horror and less like supernatural horror I think is an
easier fit, or even slasher horror. But when you get
to like animal attack horror, that to me anyway, we're
jumping ahead. Before we get to any of that. We

(04:17):
usually talk about stuff that we've watched since the last
time we recorded. Now, a lot of the things I
was watching are now on hiatus, and I'm all caught up,
so like already you know, obviously already finished Severan's already
finished Man Meat Mountain, the series aka Reacher. You know,

(04:37):
I've caught up on a lot of stuff, But I
am still watching Harley Quinn. I'm still like in season three,
so I'm still way behind, but I'm making my way
through that series. I'm still enjoying it. I haven't really
watched much of anything else that is in the geek
sphere that I can think of other than something that

(05:00):
we're going to chat about toward the end of this episode.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Gotcha, I am. I. I've been playing a lot of
balder skate because that's something you can do when you're
sick and curled up in a ball. So that's been
a lot of my time, and I've actually done that
over The problem is like, so I wake up in

(05:25):
the morning and I go to work, and then I
do my workout, and I do my chores and I
do my audition stuff, and then when I get done
in the evening with all of that is usually about
when Tony's kicking off work because he starts he's got
a later schedule than I do. And then we do
dinner and we hang out, and then I go to
bed because I have to get up early in the
morning again, so I don't have a lot of time

(05:48):
to play video games, whereas like he's got set because
he's a night now several hours after I go to
bed to like just chill and play video games. So
I've been trying to fit balder skate in on the
weekends on my lunch breaks because I have an extended
lunch break because I picked my own schedule. Again, I'm
an incredibly fortunate person from the life that I have,

(06:10):
and I'll sometimes do it in like if I'll like,
while I'm sick, skip doing chores or a workout because
I can't really do it without dying, and play instead.
So but one or two nights I have opted, like, hey,
we watched an episode of After Midnight. They had a
really fun gauntlet. I'm going to go play some Balder's
Gate now. So like I've been, I've been priority tizing

(06:32):
some self care during this time of illness, but I
have watched some things. We've been watching After Midnight, which
is going away I think. I don't know if you
mentioned that last week.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I didn't mention it, but I did see the news
item that I think as Taylor Tomlinson was going to
focus on touring or something, and.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, she wants to go back full time to stand up,
which is great. I'm gonna be sad because this is
it's just a fun show. Yeah, usually sometimes the panelists
with it for me. But you know, whatever I've been watching,
there's been some new dropout shows or new seasons of
dropout shows. So Game Changers started back up in the

(07:13):
first episode of that. That's the one where the contestants
don't know what the game is until they get on set.
Everything's a mystery, and a lot of people view it
as kind of like a torture game, like a torture
improv game.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, there's some elements that are similar to shows like
task Master.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, but the thing is, here's the thing, because I
have some friends who are not big into like torture comedy.
Even though they're all friends and they're okay, these people
play it up. They agree to do the show, they
come in, they know what it is, and I feel like,
probably sometimes they're very frustrated at what happens, but sometimes
they're playing into the gag because that's what people like

(07:52):
to watch.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
And a lot of the torture is pretty like it's
mild stuff. It's not like the kind of things you
would see typically anyway. It's not the kind of things
you would see on like say a Japanese game show
based around torture, where it's like, Okay, now someone's going
to slap your belly as hard as they possibly can.
It's not like that. It's like it's like having to

(08:12):
do things or just like the frustration of figuring out
a game, because sometimes that is the game is that
you're playing, but you don't really know what the game
is until you have been playing it for a while
and then it reveals itself to you. So the early
stages can be very frustrating when you're not sure why
you're getting points, so you're not getting points, or if

(08:34):
you're Brennan Lee Mulligan, you're convinced that it's another game
that's completely rigged against you.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah. I mean, but again, I also think he probably
plays that upside. He knows what he's stepping into every
time he agrees to do the show right. Yeah, but
this first episode of this new season, they were given
the challenge at the end of the I guess maybe
the episode one of the final episodes of last season
and had a year to accomplish everything. And the way

(09:02):
that the season the episode plays out, Jonathan's watched some clips,
but I insist he needs to see the whole episode.
The way it plays out, I don't know where they're
going to go from here, Like they started at the
echelon of a game changer episode.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, yeah, they they had an episode. Sam Reich had
started an episode had his contestants on there and then
reveals to them essentially at the beginning of the game,
like he gives them a set of tasks and says,
you have one year to complete these tasks, and then
sends them on their way.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
It was at the very end of the episode, not
at the very beginning, Oh was it. Yeah, So they
finished their episode of Sam says, and he goes, by
the way, as you're leaving, here's your Dossier's you have
one year.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, And so the taping of the episode happens a
year later and they have to come back and show how,
if at all, they achieved their various tasks, which I
know one of them was involving getting locks of hair.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, it's really interesting. You definitely should watch the full episode.
It is one hundred percent worth. It also the latest
episode of Very Important Person which we've talked about on
the show from Dropout, which is a comedian or an
actor gets dressed up as a character. They don't know
what until they're fully dressed, and then they see it
and they have to come up with a character and
do an improvised interview with Vic mchaelis. This week's guest

(10:29):
was Echo Kellum, who was mister Terrific on the Flash
TV show Very Funny Guy, and the episode has some
incredibly funny moments, one that broke Vic mchaeless, but overall
it's not the funniest episode. However, it is maybe the
most well thought out character and story arc in one

(10:49):
of those episodes I've seen, Like you can tell that
he approached this even on a quick run, approached this
character development in more of an actor mindset of like
that's complete the story and likes and dislikes and things
before I go in, And it really showed. I really
enjoyed it. I'm not caught up on the end of

(11:10):
Daredevil or White Lotus. I have one more episode of
each of those, and we started Paradise.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I don't if you're familiar with that, I'm not familiar.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
It's like, the log line doesn't sound at all geeky
at all. It's a secret Service agent. The president dies
in secret Service agent needs to find out what happens,
so it sounds like a CSI procedural kind of political thing.
But both our friend Chrispy and our friend Kate said

(11:43):
that they really loved it, and it's very puzzle boxy
and when you get into the episode, it's not as
geeky as Severance, it's not as bizarre as Severance, but
it is more than Meet Ci and it is puzzle boxy.
So we're a couple episodes into that.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Speaking of Severance, have we talked since you were able
to catch up and watch the last episode?

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I don't know if we have. I think we did.
I think we did, because we're like, I don't know
where it's gonna go from here.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, I can't remember if I had said that, Like
I was just trying to be really, you know, vague
about it because I didn't want to give you any spoilers.
But yeah, I wasn't sure if you had if we
had recorded one since you got a chance, did you Overall?
What did you think of season two?

Speaker 1 (12:29):
I liked it. I know that a few people were
a little disappointed at the beginning of it. I don't
know if that feeling carried through, but I think that
is less the content and more just the amount of
time that they had.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
To build up.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
I don't know if you were in this boat, the
amount of time they had to build up expectations between
season one and season two because of COVID, and the
writer strikes and the actor strikes, and it just took
a very long time to produce it. I didn't have
that problem because I watched season one as season two
was coming out for the first time, so I enjoyed it.

(13:07):
There were some episodes that were like slower than others,
but overall I thought that a good They did a
good job of revealing things while not feeling like, Okay,
they've solved the story and there's nowhere else we can
go from this, which is great because I want another season.
There's so much bizarre, I will say in the final
episode there and again, apologies if we already talked about this.

(13:29):
There are some things that I was a little disappointed
in the explanation of, and I hope that there is
more to it than that in the long run.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, like there's the goats, Yes, the goats. Also, like
we learn more about Cold Harbor, but there's a big
question of why that really hasn't been fully answered yet,
Like the why is this being done hasn't really been

(13:59):
exploded thoroughly, so it's a bit confusing, Like we know
what was happening to an extent, but we don't know
why it was happening. Also, like the way it ends,
it raises the question of, well, how the heck do
they do as season three where you have both Innies

(14:19):
and Audi's of the same characters like it throughout the season.
Not to spoil anything, but it ends in such a
way where it's hard to imagine a situation where the
Innies and Audis continue on. Either they're going to stay
any or they're going to stay AUTI. So, yeah, it's

(14:41):
kind of weird. The biggest concern I've heard is people
worrying that they are just kind of making it up
as they go along and they don't really have a
kind of a plan in mind. And I hope that's
not the case. I'm not willing to just assume that
they don't have a plan. I have more faith than that.

(15:05):
But I too remember such things as Lost, So.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
You know, I overall enjoyed the Lost Journey because I
didn't think about it too hard. I still enjoy that show,
but I think they have more of a plan. At
least they've thought through more of the the world.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah. Yeah. The only thing is the how important is
kir outside the doors of Lumen? And you and I
have had that conversation before on this show, in fact,
about how it is curious how Kir is almost deified
within Lumen, but then outside of Lumen it seems like
Kier has little to no presence. And you brought up

(15:49):
the potential comparison to something like scientology and l Ron Hubbard,
which makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I mean, there is that, but it does have so
like outside of Luman, it does have locally. He does
have locally a huge influence because he owns everything. The
town is called Kir. The town's around Kere, pd which
is a Season one reveal. It's a state we don't

(16:16):
know about unless it's uh Port, I don't know Rhode
Island is now Prota Port, Delaware.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
You know, there's like so the entire town is owned
by Ker. Housing is subsidized by Ker. Here has other
towns that he owns, so he is at least a
very rich mogul in the real world. We don't know
outside of those towns if those are like compounds, uh
or if like it's an equating to some giant billionaires

(16:53):
in the real world. Now you know.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
So, But the the the thing that I trip up
on is that within Lumen He's referenced in ways that
sound very close to biblical, right, like the the language
and the syntax used evokes biblical uh, very logical, yes yeah.

(17:17):
And then outside you know, no one speaks about here
in such like poetic terms, which is why again, like
you're just kind of it makes me curious as to
what is the general perception of here outside of Luman.
Like if you are just an ordinary person going throughout

(17:38):
your life, you don't work for Lumen, what do you do?
You just you know, because I'm getting increasingly suspicious that
a lot of the stories around Kre are just one
h made up and that I'm really curious to find
out if there will be a reveal later down the
line that this is a methol that the current or

(18:01):
maybe like a generation or two generations back the current
here family have have kind of fabricated in order to
create a sense of importance.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Kerr could have fabricated some of it himself. We do
know this is a slight spoiler if you haven't caught up.
On season two, they talk about ker meeting his wife
and in an ether factory in the ancient flore We
know now that is fact in some form or fashion.
We know that he worked at an ether factory, but.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
We don't know like it's it's so clear that they
play fast and loose with the rules or with the facts.
I mean, just the very nature of Milchik's gift shows
you they play very fast and loose. So but I
don't want to turn this into a severance cast or

(18:55):
anything like that. I did not get to go to
the Writers Guild of America event where it was. It
was a four year consideration event at FYC event where
you know, shows will occasionally do this kind of thing
where they're trying to convince members of the WGA or

(19:15):
other associations that have awards that they are worthy of consideration.
I got an invite to that, I did not respond
to it in time to secure a spot, and then
Ariel very thoughtfully sent me videos of all the stuff
I missed.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
It was really interesting. It was very you know thematic.
I love that you stay in New York because the
show films in New Jersey, New York and Canada, and
the Lupman Headquarters building is an actual office building in
New Jersey, I believe. So you stay in New York

(19:52):
and then they picked you up in like Lumen buses
and drove you to the event in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, you had to ride an hour and a half
to get to the UH to the office building. So
part of me is kind of glad I didn't go
because I didn't have to sit next to someone I
didn't know, or I mean, it.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Could have been fun, and I mean especially if you
had a plus one. I don't know if you did.
But also I hope that they piped in like severance
music into the bus or like kir do do do
the heir him that uh miss uh self no cobol.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Coble check. Yeah, Patrisharcat's character, Yeah yeah maybe like uh
what was it? Was it choreography and merriment? I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
I believe that's it, the Department of Choreography merriment.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
If they were, if they were to greet you at
the at the bus stop. I know that Miss Huang
was there, the actress playing Miss Wang, the young actress
was was there in character as you walked in, and
I was like, oh, that's so cool. I I would
have enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
But I wonder if what they're going to do with her,
because she already looks much older than when she started.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, but they kind of they may have taken care
of that already. Yeah, but no spoilers. All right, Well,
that's that's enough severance chat for now. I mean, we've
got ever. We probably have three years before we get
to talk about it again, so it's.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Going to be much quicker this time. I think, knock
on wood because hopefully no more writers, actor strikes, no
more pandemics. I'm hoping.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Gosh me too, like it's where you're still dealing with
the fallout of the last one. All right, well, then
let us turn, as we always do, to our section
of thirty seconds or less. Us should go quickly because
we only have four stories.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, that's my fault. I was. I was derelict in
combing through throughout the week.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
I don't think it's your fault. Also, I also looked
and checked occasionally, and it was just kind of it
was a little slow. Last week was a bit more.
I don't know if it was busier.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, there was so much good stuff last week that
I didn't get to talk about. But it's okay. So yeah,
the first story is that the Oscars are going to
start honoring stunt performers in twenty twenty eight, which should
have started happening a long time ago. Same with casting directors.
The Oscars are going I don't know if they did

(22:32):
this year, but if they didn't, they're going to start
honoring casting directors too, because those are both very important
roles in the film industry. It's weird to me that
they are waiting until twenty twenty eight to do this.
It's been in talks a while, but it will be.
They'll start including stunt performers in their one hundredth Academy

(22:53):
Awards ceremony.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, I guess they're putting significance to that one hundred number.
And I think The Fall Guy deserves a big thank
you from the stunt community because I have a feeling
that film in particular really pushed forward their cause. Okay,
I know it's thirty seconds or less. There we go.
There's a trend, mostly among teenage boys, to raise a

(23:16):
ruckus at screenings of a Minecraft movie. It's during a
scene featuring a chicken jockey, which is a small zombie
writing a chicken. Now, this is a really rare encounter
in the game, but spoiler alert, it happens in every
screening of the movie. You go to anyway. At that
point the film, some folks have been throwing food and
drinks and screaming like crazy, and in at least one case,

(23:37):
releasing an actual live chicken into the theater. And yes,
this is a trend on TikTok. Why do you ask.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Interesting this story? I actually don't fully under my recovery
brain doesn't fully understand. But CBS has lost the rights
to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Sony is taking over
distribution duties for the two shows based on a court ruling.
They say that CBS is in reach of contract apparently
for like bundling and marketing. They've bundled it with some

(24:08):
less less like desirable shows and have maybe laid off
some of the marketing and advertising people for the shows
that Sony doesn't think they should. Sony filed this, and
then CBS filed like a restraining order, and then the
court denied the restraining order, and so for now CBS

(24:31):
no longer owns the rights to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
All right, we'll put a pin on that because I
have a couple of follow ups. But first, Nintendo switched
to console is having a bumpy path to release It's
due to hit stores in early June, but the tariff
situation here in the United States has complicated matters, prompting
Nintendo to postpone pre orders for the time being. Nintendo
is manufacturing the consoles in Vietnam, which is under a

(24:56):
forty six percent tariff at the moment. However, that forty
six percent tariff is suspended for ninety days. The company
already announced the switch to would cost four hundred and
fifty dollars US, but tariffs could hike that price up further,
which is a big old yikes.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
So I'm going back to the to the CBS Jeopardy
Wheel of Fortune story. First of all, it shows how
long ago it's been since I've watched Jeopardy or Wheel
of Fortune.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
I thought you're missing out on Pop Cult Jeopardy.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
I thought they were on NBC because I remember them
being on NBC affiliates back when I was watching those shows.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Actually Pop CULTU Jeopardies on Amazon, so forgive me, okay.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Secondly, the bundling thing is a very common thing that
happens in the television industry, particularly in cable and generally
the idea is that you know a cable company wants
to sell my experience, it was always cable channels. So
you would have like a big company, I don't know,
let's say the Discovery company, and they have lots of

(26:05):
different channels, and a couple of those channels are ones
that everybody wants because it's very popular with customers, so
things like Discovery Science Channel or maybe you know, something
along those lines. But you also have other channels that
maybe are less popular. But you want to sell all
your channels. So what you do is you say, okay,

(26:27):
you can have these channels, but they come in a bundle,
so you have to take all of them. You can't
just take the big ones that you want. You have
to take everything. So I know that that happens on
a channel level. I imagine the same thing was happening
with CBS, and it's just that perhaps they didn't have
the right legal standing to do that. And that's a
big old whoopsie.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Is a big old whopsie. So that's it. Now we're
going into our second half of It's not going to
be really thirty seconds or less for this because probably
talk about them a little bit. The things that are
what not are geeky that we kind of think are
still geeky.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, they're kind of geek adjacent, or at least they're interesting.
And in some cases there are things that I'm actually
going to have a little warning about. But first up,
I saw the trailer. Did you watch this trailer for
Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme?

Speaker 1 (27:20):
I did, And you know what, honestly, it's just it
just feels like, Oh, a Wes Anderson movie.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
I mean, all of his movies feel like a Wes
Anderson movie. Wes Anderson has a very particular style and approach,
but it does look it looks entertaining to me, and
has a dynamite cast, like an enormous and incredibly talented cast,
a lot of people that Wes Anderson has worked with before,

(27:49):
Tom Hanks standing in for Bill Murray. I didn't see
Bill Murray in there at all, and I was wondering, like,
maybe did they have a falling out? Because Bill Murray
was supposed to be in a previous west enders In
film but for whatever reason wasn't able to do it,
and then Tom Hanks essentially played that part. So now
I'm wondering if Bill Murray is upset about that. But

(28:10):
I don't know, but there's tons of really talented people
in it. It looks entertaining, and that's why I included it.
Then I had a trailer for a crime action film
called Havoc, and I just want to give a warning
out there to anyone who's sensitive toward violence. This is
not the trailer for you to watch because it is

(28:32):
super violent.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah it again it you know what, it is super violent.
It didn't upset me that much, though.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Well that's good. I remember I put this in early
in the week, so I now have no memory of
what actually happens in the trailer, so I'm relying entirely
upon the fact that I made a note of it
being violent in the description. Gotcha, I assume you took
my advice and did okay. So there's a this is

(29:06):
the animal horror movie I was referencing earlier. There's a
film called A Breed Apart that has a Haidden Panetiera,
and you know she was in Heroes, So that's one
reason to include it, just because we have an actress
who is known for her portrayal of a character on
a geek show. But it's a It starts off where

(29:30):
it's you see dogs that are weird and mutated. But
it turns out that's in a that's where there's a
filming going on for a horror movie, and that the
dogs are actually just dogs. They're not mutated or anything,
but they are bad dogs. And the production either gets

(29:53):
shut down or ends early or something. And then like
the next year, there's a group of influencers who come
to the island to hunt dogs because the dogs have
turned feral and dangerous, and I'm just like, everything about
this is upsetting me.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I hate that. I hate that so much I won't
watch it.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
No, I won't either. Like I started the trailer thinking
it was gonna be one thing, because I thought it
was gonna be, oh, weird mutant dogs, Okay, but no,
it's dogs that are just like, they're very organized and
dangerous or whatever. But I still don't agree with the
idea of getting a group of useless influencers and I

(30:37):
say that as an useless influencer type and handing them
guns and saying go and kill Fido. I think that's
awful And I have no interest in seeing that movie.
If anyone out there wants to see it, I'm not
gonna judge anyone for it or anything. I just can't
imagine a situation where I would sit through this.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
I don't watch old Fella, Old Feller, Old Yellow.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
I watch Old Feller all the time. He just walks
around my neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
He says, yeah, homeward bound kujo, I don't. I barely
watch airbud okay.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
The next one is for a movie called G twenty
and I really it's it's a political I think the
I think the Pentagon like gets taken over something like that.
I included it because Viola Davis is the action star
of this movie and Anthony star Viola Davis, who played
I mean award winning actress, but also plays head of

(31:37):
the suicide squad Amanda Amanda Waller. Yeah, she gets to
be and how often do we get to see Viola
Davis be the action hero? So that's really cool.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And then and the star, of course Homelander Homelander from
the Boys is the Boys the villain Amanda Waller versus Homelander.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
So it's so that alone, like, I don't think this
is going to be the geekiest movie, but the casting
sure is like almost like fan casting, right villain Yeah. Uh.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
They also make Viola Davis like like a super super
adept at taking bad guys out, so I'm sure it's
gonna be. I think she's supposed to be playing the president,
so I assume they're going to have it where she
has a background in the military or whatever before becoming president.
Otherwise I don't know. She's a real quick study.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, you know what, I'm vaguely interested in this one. Again,
I like, I don't see them all. I always say
I want to, but I don't because I'm bad at
film follow through. Sometimes it's harder than television because it's
more of a time commitment usually, but I really, you know,
as a as an actress of a certain age. But
I'm still young, and I can play even younger than

(32:51):
I am. I come across even younger on film, so
that's fantastic. But I super appreciate the trend of Hollywood
turning to these women who for a long time once
you hit like your fifties and even later thirties and forties,
for a long time, and thankfully that's not the case anymore.
But when you hit your fifties, you were relegated to

(33:13):
playing grandma and that was it. Even sometimes in your forties,
and so to see all of these beautiful and like
men as a age are always considered distinguished and handsome,
and women for a long time were just considered to
age and look old in Hollywood. Again, this is not
real life, but in Hollywood there was the stigma and
kind of bias. And so to see all these beautiful

(33:34):
women in their fifties and sixties and even older get
to be these gorgeous action stars and badass women. Still,
I'm I'm all for you know, Helen Marrin kind of
is the standout for me who started that, like with
Red and things like that. But I love it, so
I want to support that.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about is essentially why
we had films like The Substance, right, Like it was
essentially to take to and it's something that I think
everybody knows, Like you just have to be a consumer
of entertainment to pick up on this. It's not like
it's a well kept secret in Hollywood, just like some

(34:16):
of the darker sides of the entertainment industry, which are
thankfully slowly getting unraveled. You know, that was never a secret.
They're jokes about that kind of stuff, but it's nice
that these issues are being actually talked about and people
are doing things about it instead of just like, well,

(34:39):
that's just how it is. Guess we gotta accept it.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. It is also interesting because you can have a like,
what was it the guy who played Superman in Smallville,
it's like thirty or thirty five or something like that,
playing a fifteen sixteen year old. But then you could
have a thirty year old who's younger than him playing
his mom because she looks her age, or his grandma
because she looks her age.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
And yeah, so it's like the issue well perception, like
where Tom Cruise, where his leading lady was typically thirty
years younger than he. That's always kind of creepy. Well,
tell me about a Scottish samurai movie.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, this one, Like I almost put it in our
main lineup. I'm not gonna lie. It's about a woman,
a woman samurai who's being chased I guess by the
Scottish mafia or like, I don't know. It's a samurai movie,
but the lead actress is a woman named Tornado, her

(35:37):
character named Tornado, and it just looks like a fun
samurai movie. It looks really good.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Man, Tim Roth is in it, and it's supposed to
be set in seventeen ninety, which it was interesting because
as I was watching, goes like, Okay, I don't know
what era this is in, but people are using like
bow and arrow and stuff as opposed to firearms. So
I was just curious. And then I scrolled down and

(36:03):
looked at the the blurb under the trailer and it
said seventeen ninety so it definitely looks interesting.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, it's like you get a lot of like Samurai
versus Wild West, So this is that, but in Scotland
with a female protagonist.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
So yeah, uh, and then we have a a comedy
thriller kind of film. This sort of it makes me
think of, oh gosh, what's the What was the horror
movie that Alan Tudic was in? That was a comedy
horror movie? Like Dale was one of the names of
the two characters. You know what I'm talking about though,

(36:42):
right versus Evil? Yeah, Tucker and Dale? Was it? Tucker
and Dale versus Evil?

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Was that Alan Tudick?

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, Alent Tudic was in that.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
I never I mean I never watched it. You told
me it was kind of violent. It's fine, Yeah, Tucker
and Dale versus they're the ones who did that clown
thing we talked about the other week.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
So I don't understand. You reminds me a lot of
that film because the premise is that it's a couple,
a gay couple, who are they are going to adopt
a baby. They are taking a vacation in Italy before
they adopt the baby, and then, through a series of

(37:29):
unfortunate events, as you might say, they accidentally appear to
cause the death of a nice Italian nanny who was
serving them a home cooked meal as part of their vacation.
They accidentally, like the power goes out and one of

(37:50):
them accidentally bumps into her knox or down a staircase,
where she apparently dies, and then things escalate from there,
and they're just desperate to try and hide evidence of
all this stuff that's going on and getting worse and
worse and worse, because of course they don't want to
get in trouble. They want to be able to adopt
a baby, they want to be able to get out

(38:11):
of the country without being arrested. And it just looks
very like like a very dark comedy. So it's the
kind of thing that appeals to me, But it's not
very geeky. It does have I think one of the
two actors, Nick Kroll's one of them.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Nick Kroll and Andrew Reynolds, who was the originating lead
actor in Book of Mormon.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, Elder Price in the Book of Mormon. Yeah, so
I would if you like dark comedy, you might want
to check that trailer out. I think, you know, if
something like Heather's or anything along those lines kind of
appeals to you, take a look see if if it
floats your boat. For people who are not big into
dark comedy, don't know that this is the movie for you.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah, Honestly, I watched the beginning of it. I watched
them talk to Amanda Sefried because she plays the Sarah
Gate mom, and then I was like, well, this looks cute,
but it's not fitting our lineup. But I just didn't
stick with the trailer long enough. Is really what it is?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, you gotta stick with it long enough to see
while all the crazy stuff happened. But now let us
move to talk about stuff that is more aligned with
our show. Although the first one could honestly could have
gone into segment two, which is the mission impossible, the
final reckoning, we got a trailer for that, and in

(39:35):
the trailer there's a line that just tells me everything
I need to know, which is that it's doing the
same thing that other Mission Impossible movies do that irritate
the living heck out.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Of me, which is.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
So more often than not, not in every movie, but
in most of them, the story turns out that someone
either within the m I program or within some other
US based intelligence agency, is out to get m I. So,
in other words, the enemy is always from within. It's

(40:11):
always a betrayal. Every single time it's a betrayal. And
it gets to a point where I'm like, why do
you even have these departments in the first place. All
they're doing is fighting either themselves or each other, and
meanwhile exposing the entire country to external threats. What's their purpose?
I don't understand, because you're never actually fighting against, say

(40:34):
a foreign intelligence And I get why. It's because you
want to be able to sell the movie there, and
you don't want say China getting upset or whatever, because
that means they won't carry the movie and you won't
make millions of dollars that way. But it's You're just like,
why do you even have any of these organizations. All

(40:54):
they do is betray each other.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Okay, here's the thing. If this were the first Mission
Impossible movie, it would look fun. One movie of like, oh, hey,
the enemies within, that's fine. Twenty nine. I don't know
how many are in the Mission Impossible. I haven't watched all,
but like one and a half of them. That's too many.
That's too many not to have fixed the problem. That

(41:17):
being said, if this could be a standalone Mission Impossible,
if it's your first one, if you don't need to
have watched the entire catalogue of Mission Impossible movies, it
could be a fun action flick. It does have Nick
Off Herman and Tremmel Tillman in it, and so like
Tremel Tillman plays mister Milchick on Severence. How we're not
done with Severence, So like that alone could like be fun.

(41:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, there are eight movies in the franchise.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's the same thing. I think there might be one
film in the series where it's not someone from either
the m I program or some other US based intelligence
agency where that's the bad guy. But you know, it
would be like if every James Bond movie. It turned
out the villain was secretly part of the Double O

(42:11):
program or as part of like I six or something.
You it just gets old anyway. That's my big issue.
Like the outlandish technology and crazy stunts and all that.
I think are fine, it's movie magic whatever. I'm just
tired of the trope of oh, we've been betrayed, Like

(42:34):
you're always being betrayed. That's that's your status quo. You're
always being betrayed, that's your secret.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
You're always being betrayed. Speaking of old though, yeah, we're
getting another thing that maybe didn't need another sequel, and
that's Tron. We finally got the trailer. We knew about
this for a while. We finally got the trailer for
Tron Aries.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah. This was one that confused me at first, and
I had a really like knee jerk negative reaction because
in this one, some of the computer generated creations make
their way into the real world, and I was like,
wait a minute, that makes no sense. And then I thought, Jonathan,
you idiot. Does it make any sense that a human

(43:20):
being could be digitized and put into a computer in
the first place, and then re integrated like to be
put back together at the end. No, none of that
makes sense. So of course this is perfectly fine. But
it's so funny to me that initially my reaction was, well,
that's impossible, this is dumb.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Did you have that same like reaction to like inception
or no.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
That's the thing is that it's just like again, like
I questioned my own reaction after I had it, it
was like Matri. It was like, within thirty seconds, I
went through the whole thing of like this is stupid.
To wait a minute, why is it stupid? Like the
initial premise is already ridicted. If you buy into that,
then this should just be fine.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Here's the thing, Like seeing a light cycle cut through
a police car is kind of cool and fun that
that effect was neat. It's very dark trailer, so it's
kind of hard and there's a lot going on. It's
kind of hard to tell what actually is happening through.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yeah. I think it has to be dark though, because
all the characters from the Tron world are all light up,
and if it was bright daylight outside you wouldn't be
able to see the looks good.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, but in the trailer there's like this giant spaceship
thing flying around and it's hard to Maybe it's because
I just don't remember the first two movies well enough.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
It's the one that has the two long legs that
stick down. It's that one which has a name, and
all the Tron fans out there are screaming it at me,
but it doesn't matter. You're not in my room, so
I can't hear you. It starts with an R, but it's.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Hard to see what's going, Like, what's actually happening on
the screen.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah for me? For me, recognizer, it's a RECOGNI recognizer.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, So like, honestly, it's because I don't remember. I
watched the original Tron a few times. I saw the
second Tron movie when it first came out because I
was in Fort Lauderdale to go on to Joco Cruise
and so we were chilling an evening and watched that
and it was fine. I don't remember a lot, honestly,
So that's my problem.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
The second movie is not very memorable, but it has
a great soundtrack. THATNK is a great soundtrack.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
I think that's what they're leaning on for this one too,
because the big the big thing about Tron three is
that nine Inch Nails is doing an original soundtrack for it,
and I'm like, that's not enough to sell me on
a movie.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
I'm sorry, well, what about Jared Leno? Doesn't that absolutely not? Yeah,
we both had a we both like I think we
both maybe forgot that he was in it. I know
we've talked about him being in it, because we talked
about it back when this was just a film that
was in pre production. But it still was just like, oh.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
I mean, here's the thing. If you don't if you
are a newer listener and you don't understand why we're
responding this way, it's because Jared Leto is one of
those actors who takes method acting to and what we
view as an unhealthy place. You know, there's in a
place that I think Stanislovsky, the originator or the person

(46:20):
who kind of put method acting down on paper for
actors as his method. It's a Stanislovsky method kind of
didn't intend. So you're supposed to be able to draw
on real life experiences and emotions to inform your character
right yourself in imaginary circumstances. And there is something to

(46:44):
be said for like figuring out you need to know
how your character walks, acts, talks things behaves in a space.
But when you take that to living your life as
that character, if that character is an unhealthy person and
you just decide to live for months or years as
that unhealthy person, and you you affect yourself negatively and

(47:08):
also other actors negatively.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, you do things.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
That are not cool, like sending people dead dead pigs
or rats or whatever.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, you know it may be okay.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, to pulling out your own teeth, like, these are
things you don't need to do. It's it's taking the
method to an unhealthy place, like it's still acting. You
need to be able to draw on these tools and
then leave them when you're not in that character.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
And a lot of the criticism we've seen about the
taking method to the extreme this way, often people remark
about the fact that it's odd that you never seem
to embrace that when you're playing someone who is healthy
and happy and like a compassionate character like you're never
you don't see them like embracing method. Then you're embracing

(47:59):
method in characters who often have really bad behavior, and
it starts to feel more like, oh, you're using this
as an excuse to behave badly as opposed to this
is a real tool for you to be able to
do your craft. Well, why aren't you doing if you're
playing mister Rogers, why aren't you being the nicest person
in the world. Like that's a bad example because it

(48:21):
was Tom Hanks, and he's pretty he seems to be
a pretty good guy. But you know, you get what
I mean.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
So so I mean, like again, there is There's something
I've heard several of my acting teachers say, which is
it is easier to play someone opposite you, you know,
then then to play someone like you, because when you're
playing someone like you, that's that's burying your soul. That's
a very that's a very.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Vulnerable, vulnerent thank you.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
That's the word vulnerable place to be when you're playing
someone evil. I can understand maybe doing research into understanding,
like if you're playing Ted Bundy or somebody right, doing
the research understanding where he was going from, where his
mind was at, figuring out why he did the things
he did. That's important to playing that character. As an actor.

(49:12):
You need to make sure you have the tools that
when you aren't doing the research, you can step outside
of it. You should not be living in that place.
Twenty four to seven. If you need that to play
the role effectively, I personally don't believe you are the
actor to be playing that role. I have auditioned for
bad guys, killers, violent people, things like that. I'm not

(49:36):
that person. I have to think about situations. I have
to think about, like what would be a circumstance that
would get me to this place? And yes, that is
hard work to do. Is acting is not easy. You
often have to go to places that are not great.
But I have the tools in place that when I
am done doing that work, I step outside of it.

(49:59):
Even when I was doing the I'm sorry, I'm getting
real deep down a rabbit hole, even when like I
played the mother of one of the Columbine shooters in
a play last year, and that was a really hard
place to go because I had to understand all of
the nuances of her grief and her denial and the

(50:19):
effects of other people on her life and her effects
on other people's lives, and like it was, it was hard.
That was a hard role for me, and like it,
it was a hard role to step out of. But
I didn't live my life as her. I did my
research and then I took time and I took self
care and I stepped back into my regular life and

(50:39):
at the end of a show or at the end
of my scene in the show, I would I came
up with a process to be able to step out
of that character again so that I'm not living my
life in this unhealthy place of grief. It was a
struggle to do, but you need to do it. Like again,
if be if stepping into a role is unhealthy for you,

(51:00):
you should not do that role. There's no amount of
money that makes that okay.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, and Jared Leedo just has a reputation for a
kind of not following that same philosophy. And perhaps, like
I said, perhaps, and this may just be my biased perception,
but perhaps leaning on method as an excuse to do
like outrageous and negative things. Anyway, Tron areas. If you

(51:27):
asked me what if what I thought about it, I'd
say it's Pixels. But with Tron, I didn't watch Pixels.
You shouldn't, it's not good.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
I also didn't watch the first five Nights at Freddy's movie,
though I did enjoy, and by that I mean the
new one. I did enjoy watching all of like the
behind the scenes of Jim Henson doing the animatronics and
how they would seemingly move on their own. I thought
that was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I didn't see that. I uh yeah. The reason when
you bring this up is because we got a teaser
for five nights at Freddy's two. I am only familiar
with the games. I never watched the first film. This
trailer didn't do much, or this teaser, I should say,
didn't do much for me. I could see where this
could be fun for either big fans of the game

(52:16):
who are really into the lore, or younger horror fans,
like people who are just starting to get into horror.
I could see where that could be appealing. Like I
think about when I was a kid and the movies
that got me into horror, movies like Gremlins and the Gate,
stuff like that, Jaws to some extent. If you consider
Jaws a horror movie, I don't know. Some people probably

(52:38):
think of it as I don't know what they think of.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
It as in the first scene, that first scene where
the woman is getting intact in the water is terrifying.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, no, it's it's a great movie for well, I mean,
since it allows you to use your imagination to figure
out what might be happening out of view. It's an
incredibly effective film, but that's you know, people have talked
about that to death, and certainly more eloquently than I could.
But yeah, I thought Five Nights If Freddy's Too teaser

(53:07):
was was just okay, But it's not. It's not a
movie that was made for me.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, I you know, there's there's this contingency of young
teenage girls, and I'm sure there always has been. It's
just I've got a lot of friends who've got like
kids who are like tween age years now. We're really
into like dark stuff and horror, light horror and darker
anime stuff, and this like feels like that, except for

(53:35):
I've had a couple of my friends who have like
tween age kids who went to go see that movie
and it was too scary for them.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
So but yea, yeah, it's an interesting place to be
in because, like I said, like the games are pretty intense,
like they rely I mean they rely heavily on jump
scares right like very quiet and then it gets really
loud and something's jumping out at you. That there's not
a whole lot of subtlety or artistry that goes into

(54:01):
that kind of thing, like it's it's good to know
when to do it, when to pull the trigger. But yeah,
there's not a whole lot of like cranking up the
atmosphere and making it really creepy. There's some elements of that.
Most of that is like the lore around it, and
you know, the early game is really light. It's also
one of those things that got like a big fandom

(54:21):
that the fandom themselves were almost generating the lore, you know,
like they were kind of filling in the gaps, creating
the reasons for the things that were happening. So interesting experience,
like I would actually I would love to read a
book about the phenomenon more than I would like to
see this movie.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Yeah, speaking of reading, I did send you an article.
I know this is great audio. I sent you an
article about the animatronics moving. I've also seen videos of
it and it's really cool. But I don't know if
the article has the video of it just for your.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
But I almost jumped into a discussion about animatronics moving
and then realized, wait a minute, I can wait, because
that's going to be our last story.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Yep, yep, we will, you know, but I prefer like
family friendly heartwarming horror, which is what our next trailer is. Apparently. Apparently,
if you want heartwarming horror, you just cast comedians in
serious horror roles, is what I'm learning from this trailer.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah, the movie is called Sketch, and it's about a
young kid who's feels like an outsider. And so this
kid draws a pretty extreme acts of violence, usually with

(55:39):
monsters committing the violence, and then through a series of
hilarious events, the sketched monsters become real in the real
world and start wreaking havoc. And there's the Oh I
don't even know the actor's name, but he was in

(56:01):
Arrested Development to Tony Hale plays the dad, and and
he he's not as useless as his arrested Development character is,
but he's not super competent either.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Well. And then Darcy Cardon plays the mom, and she
was Janet in the good place, yes, and also she
was in like a league of a league of their
own and things like that. So two great comedic actors
kind of playing these serious but not super effective parents
as far as we can tell. But it looks it
looks fun. It just looks fun. It doesn't look I
wouldn't even.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Call it horror. I mean, like the acts of violence
I think are going to be on the level of horror,
but we'll see. Yeah, I almost put it as horror comedy,
but it's it's certainly more.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Of like a it's like a goosebumps level thing.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
I think by the end the family will be closer.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, there's elements of comedy in it, there elements horror,
and it's one of those movies it's not super easy
to classify, which is not a bad thing. I actually
kind of like movies that are like that.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Yeah, not to one note.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
No, maybe if you want one note six times, how
about you watch Predator Killer of Killers.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
I watched this trailer. You know what, here's the thing.
I didn't hate it. It's by Trackenberg who did Pray,
and all of my friends who have watched Prey, which
is the Predator prequel that's set in Indigenous America, I
don't remember what what tribe it dealt with, but they

(57:38):
really liked it.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
So yeah, it's It's one of a couple of different
Predator projects that are coming out this year, the other
being Predator of bad Lands. So this is an animated
anthology film, so it's multiple stories told within one movie

(58:01):
and uses animation as opposed to live action. And it
looks good, like I thought the animation looked good. I
thought the trailer looked good. It's very interesting to me.
It's going to be released on June sixth on Hulu
and Disney Plus, at least outside the United States, I

(58:24):
don't know about in the US. In the US, it
maybe that it's going to the big screen first.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Speaking of looking pretty good, we got, at least in
my circles, a long anticipated trailer for the new Apple
Apple Plus murder Bot television show based off of the
murder Bot Diaries book series that everybody I know absolutely loves.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Yeah, Martha Wells wrote those books. And the trailer looks
like it looks like it's a satire, like a nice
kind of satiric old dark, darkly comedic sci fi film
or sci fi series. And I liked. I liked what
I saw.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Have you read the books?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
I have not read the books.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
The books are phenomenal, Like every single one of my
friends who has read the books has loved them. I've
started on the audio books. My in laws love the
books like it is it's the story is it's a
it's a robot that was kind of it's a security

(59:34):
detail robot that is named itself murder Bot. I might
be getting some of the details wrong, but it doesn't.
It doesn't actually like interacting with people or being a
heavy or doing security or fighting or murdering or any
of that stuff. It just wants to sit and be
left alone and watch daytime television. And so it's very funny.

(59:55):
It's kind of I've had some friends compare it to
like a certain places is of like being on the
spectrum even like that kind of a personality. And I
was originally pretty pretty hesitant about the casting of Alexander's
Scars Guard as murder Bot, because that's who's playing the

(01:00:17):
main character, because he has in the past been known
as like a pretty a pretty boy. He's the pretty
boy Scars Guard. But you know what, in this role,
he looks pretty awkward and like, like, I didn't want
murder Bot to be murder Bot in the books, I think,

(01:00:37):
if I'm recalling correctly, doesn't even because he's a they're
an android. They don't even really affirm to a gender.
They're just an android. And so to cast like pretty
boy Scars Guard. It was like a little bit like,
I don't know, but he doesn't he looks awkward, he
doesn't look too pretty, he doesn't look too Hollywood. He
looks pretty fantastic in the role. I think.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah, I identify a lot with murder Bot because I
have made it very difficult to get in touch with
me and I don't want to leave the house ever,
So I totally understand where he's coming from.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Yeah, Like, we bought Apple TV for severance, but I
was really hoping and I'm so glad that I'm right
that murder Bot would come out right after so that
we wouldn't have to get rid of it and then
remember to get it again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah. Yeah, So I'm looking forward to this. This is
definitely one that's on my watch list. I think the
trailer was great. It gave me a good feeling for
the tone of the show, which appeals to me. So
I am I'm very optimistic about this. I feel like
it's going to be one of those where I'm going
to really click with the series.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, lots lots of action, lots of comedy, and then
there's also like they show some of the shows that
murder Bot watches in the trailer, and the casting in
the fake show within the show is so like crazy
like so many well known actors that I just I
can't wait to see what they do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Yeah, it's a great attention to detail, so I'm looking
forward to that too. I'm also looking forward to Thunderbolts.
I want to say that this is this is probably
the Marvel film that I'm looking forward to most. Like it.
I definitely was. I still haven't seen the latest Captain

(01:02:28):
America film. I feel like a bad Captain America fan.
And while I'm interested in the Fantastic Four, I've never
been a huge Fantastic Four fan ever. But that doesn't
mean that this movie won't change that. I mean, I
could say the same about Guardians of the Galaxy before
those movies came out, but it still doesn't change the

(01:02:49):
fact that I'm just not really that invested. Like I'm
excited that people who love Fantastic Four are going to
get their movie, and hopefully it'll be a really good
representation of the characters for them that I think is fantastic.
I just personally don't really care Thunderbolts. While I'm not
like super familiar with all the characters beyond what we've
already seen in the mcuh. I like the chemistry that

(01:03:13):
I see on screen in these trailers. And so we
got another another trailer. This one shows off a bit
more of Century the Big Bat. Although I don't know
if they're going to give him his name. He does
have a buckle that has a big S on it.
So Sam, Sam, Sam, the murder Man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Yeah, Honestly, this one, like Century, is the least interesting
part of of Thunderbolts to me, murder Bowl.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
It's often a problem with Marvel movies, though, right where
the villain ends up being the least interesting component of
the story.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
I don't know if it will remain that way in
the story, but honestly, it kind of feels like a
boy's rehashing to me, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
It feels like that, and also like the first Suicide
Squad movie. It kind of feels like that. Not and
oddly not for the reason that I would normally think,
because if I said, oh, Thunderbolts looks like Suicide Squad,
you're like, oh, you mean the fact that you've got
a bunch of at best anti heroes together to form
a somewhat heroic squad. Like No, actually, that's not what

(01:04:17):
I meant. What I meant is the problem in Suicide Squad,
where Amanda Waller creates her own problem by empowering the Enchantress,
who then becomes the big bad for the whole movie.
And that never would have happened if they had not
done the Suicide Squad stuff. So Amanda Waller manufactures her
own big bad. Same thing here, except this time it's

(01:04:39):
Julia Louis Dreyfus manufacturing her own big bad by creating
Sentry or something.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Yeah. Well, and she works for an organization.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
But the Contessa. I should call her the contessa.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Yeah, it's not it's not real life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Why did we give Julia Louis dreyf has so much power? Like,
I don't. I thought you knew. I was just going
along with it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
I would expect better of her. Yeah, I mean it
looks fun. I wasn't super excited for this one, but
the trailers have made it look like it'll it'll be
a fun journey. Honestly, I wasn't super excited for Avengers
Doom Patrol or whatever. The next Avengers movie is called
either Doomsday but yeah, doomsday. But if it were a

(01:05:28):
Doom Patrol crossover, I would be so in But the
having Allan Cumming and Winston King and there's one other
in there, oh and Channing Tatum. Those aren't spoilers at
this point. I'm pretty sure you can't have avoided.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
That news, right, Patrick Stewart, Ian mckella, and Kelsey Grammar.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I mean all of those are great. Kelsey Grammar too,
But like the ones that I mentioned are the ones
that I'm most excited about being in the new movie.
And now I'm excited because I just want to see
Allan Cumming is Nightcrawler Marvel movie and I want, yeah,
correct choice for mystique, correct choice.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
I think it's really interesting, Uh, the cast that they've created.
I mean, obviously there's gonna be a whole multiverse thing
happening here. For one thing, if you watched the last
Doctor Strange movie, you know that at least one of
the Professor X's, as portrayed by Patrick Stewart, is no
more because Scarlett Witch done him dirty. But yeah, I

(01:06:33):
did you watch that at least the fast version of
the reveal where it's going across all the director chairs
with the names on the back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
I mean, once you told me about it, I went
in and I I watched the entire rest of the thing.
Yeah slow, because it was a great background.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Like you said, yeah, it's like every every thirteen minutes.
I think they did another reveal.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
I did watch the how It Should Have ended spoof
on the chair where they're like, geez, spoiler, now we
know this person survives this movie, and well, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
The thing is, since it's multiverse, you don't yeah, because
it could be the multiverse version of the character and
not the one that's actually yeah, because like there were
there were several of the actors who are in Thunderbolts,
Like I think all the major ones are listed, but
again that might be those might be Thunderbolt's characters from

(01:07:26):
a multiverse and not the ones that we're seeing in
the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
It was a fun little bit for the cartoon though,
and they also played on the fact that everybody wanted
I think it was like Moonnight.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Yeah, everyone was hoping for Moonnight. Moonnight was a big one.
There was another one that people were calling out for
they were hoping but I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Hulk.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Hulk was another one. Yea Hulk does not show up
in that. Mark Ruffalo was not one of the names listed, but.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
I I do wonder if, like Deadpool and Wolverine, we're
going to get a bunch of surprise appearances.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
I'm sure, and it's gonna set it up for the
second one of the big Avengers movies. We're probably even
more Like I don't expect all those characters to survive. Like,
if I had to guess, I'd say, like, the X
Men ones are not gonna make it, like maybe they'll
They'll get set back to whatever dimension they came from.
They kill Gambit, he's already well, Gambit might survive.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Gambit em Beast need to survive, and Gambit Beast to Nightcrawler.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
That's all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Well, I'm just saying like they're setting up X Men
within the MCU as well, and they had not previously existed.
So my guess is that we would get like MCU
native versions of the X Men at some point, and
yet another variation of them. I mean, we we've gotten

(01:08:49):
different variations of Johnny Storm, so it's possible. I think
we'll definitely get some surprises. My favorite part of the
reveal was they did one joke well too, if you
count Robert Donney Junior being you know too cool for
school at the end of it. But one joke in
the like in the first third of the reveals where

(01:09:11):
Paul Rudd his name was revealed, but they had a
smaller director's chair since he's ant Man.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Yeah, they should have just had all the director chairs
on a giant director chair that was also Paul Rudd
for Giant Man.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Yeah. And I noticed on the the faster version where
they're just doing a quick, faster pan across all of them,
Paul Rudd's chair on that one. I mean, it's all CGI,
but his chair on that one is the same size
as everybody else's. I'm like, oh, well, that was the one. Like,
I'm glad that they had the joke in the reveal

(01:09:47):
where you're waiting thirteen minutes to find out who's next, but.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
I am sad that we didn't get a chair that
said Seth Green Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
To get Howard the Duck.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
It was also fun that they would play music related
to characters, so you got like the the X Men
cartoon theme playing for some of the X Men characters.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Weird ass music before chant I'm sorry for the language,
the weird weird music before chanting Tatum's.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Chair though, Yeah, now there were some odd choices, but yeah,
that was a fun reveal. And as I said, Thunderbolts,
I'm more excited about Thunderbolts they am for Avengers Doomsday
if I'm being honest. But maybe by the time we
get around to seeing actual like teasers and trailers for
Avengers Doomsday, maybe I'll change my tune. I honestly, I

(01:10:38):
feel so out of the loop with Marvel now, like
it's weird because I've only missed a I've missed a
few things, but now I feel like I am so
far behind because this is the downside of Marvel having everything,
at least on some level integrated with all of its
other stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
I think a lot of it though you you don't
have to watch. You can also just like Rita, what
do I need to know before I go into a thing?

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Yeah, it just doesn't feel it doesn't feel like I'm participating.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Then, though I've really only missed Secret Wars and I
don't plan on going to finish it. I don't plan
on finishing it. I also feel out of the words.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Do you see Captain America? Yeah, okay, I talked about
it on the show. I couldn't remember. I thought you had,
but I wasn't sure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
I thought that the story you could tell that there
were a bunch of rewrites. I mean, you couldn't really tell.
It's just as a story wasn't that strong, right, but
all of the acting in it, Like, I was kind
of worried about Harrison Ford going in because he's taking
over somebody else's role, somebody who did a great job
in the role because that actor passed, and he's playing

(01:11:49):
a hulk, and he's kind of had a reputation for
I don't not greatly selling some of the stuff that
he's done recently, not like some of the geek erst
his like Apple TV Shrinking, I think has gotten great
review but like his Indiana Jones and his on solo stuff,
people are like, it doesn't feel like his heart's in it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
So I was a little bit worried.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
But his acting is beautiful and nuanced in this, and
he doesn't overplay turning into a Hulk, and I loved it,
and Anthony Mackie is brilliant as Captain America and so like,
even though the story wasn't as strong as I wanted
and the end teaser was just flat out poop in
my opinion like it gave us nothing. It wasn't fun,

(01:12:33):
and it didn't give us anything new. I did feel
like the performances were a joy to watch, so I
enjoyed watching it. I'm glad I saw that. One I
don't plan on seeing Secret War, but also I also
feel behind. But it's because Marvel, we talked about this

(01:12:55):
last year, has decided that they were just putting out
way too much Marvel stuff and they really need to
make sure that the stories that they're putting out are
Captain America side, are like interesting and diverse and less
like same same same. So they or at least they
talked about this last year that they were going to

(01:13:16):
put out less Marvel stuff and make sure that the
Marvel stuff they were putting out was a better quality.
We'll see if they live up to that. But that's
that was Kevin Feige's plan.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Yeah, well, I mean that was it was clear that
the reaction to stuff like the Eternals was not what
they were hoping. And so I do hope that Avengers
Doomsday ends up being, you know, a return to form,
and I do plan on seeing Captain America. But like
if I were to list all the stuff I haven't seen.

(01:13:46):
It would be pretty significant. Like we're talking about now
that the Netflix shows are more or less canon, there's
a whole lot I haven't seen because I never watched
any ofte Cage or Iron Fist, and I know I
don't need to, but I'm saying, like, I haven't watched
The Defenders, haven't watched The Punisher, I haven't watched season

(01:14:08):
three of Daredevil.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
You might need to watch these three. I don't even
think you need to watch these. You might. You might
need to watch these in three Daredevil, but I'm not
certain to watch Born Again. You could probably just watch
Born Again as a standalone. Again.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
We watched Echo.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
I was disappointed in Echo. I was really looking forward
to it, and then I was very disappointed.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
At it and some of the things I'm like, I
haven't watched. But then I was like, wait, no, I
don't think that's come out yet, because it was like
I haven't watched iron Heart, Like, no way, I don't
think iron Heart's out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Is fantastic or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
I haven't watched Blade, but neither is anyone else because
it's been taken off the slate and now we don't
know if it's ever going to get made.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Yeah, okay, odd, we're going to go on to something wholesome,
because every once in a while you just need new
dinosaur content, new happy dinosaur content.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
If you if by happy you mean occasionally these are
dinosaurs that are eating each other or getting eaten. Shut up?
Like that was what? Like that was like sixty percent
of the trailer you set me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Yeah, that's true. It's not happy, but just like new.
Like so BBC is coming out with a new series
called Walking with the Dinosaur, Walking with Dinosaurs. They're like
walk with Dinosaurs like you never have before. Honestly, it
doesn't feel that like new to me, unless they're just
incorporating new information we have learned about dinosaurs since the
last Dinosaurs like educational series came out, which is entirely possible.

(01:15:38):
We're always learning cool new stuff about fossils. But it looks,
you know, like dinosaurs are a geeky thing. It's like
the earliest geeky thing I can remember for many many
kids is like liking dinosaurs.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
I'm not. I'm not disagreeing, so you don't need to
you don't need to pick a fight with me. Now,
I think like I liked I liked how some of
the dinosaurs had feathers, right, because that's something we have learned.
Like when I was a kid, you never saw the
dinosaurs depicted in any of the specials or whatever. Like
I think about the stuff I would watch when I
was in school or you know, on my own when

(01:16:12):
I was a kid, I don't remember ever seeing dinosaurs
with feathers. Even when in high school when I started
to learn that many of them had feathers or feather
like follicles, I never saw them depicted that way. I mean,
they certainly weren't depicted that way in the documentary Jurassic Park,

(01:16:33):
so so, but yeah, this looks like it's a new
take on something that we're all kind of familiar with.
Because if you were ever one of those kids who
got into dinosaurs, I know you must have watched some
specials where you know, animated or even computer generated dinosaurs

(01:16:53):
are are running around and doing stuff. I will say
that the CGI in this runs a spectrum. There's some
shots that looked really good and a lot of shots
that didn't look as good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, this doesn't feel new to me.
This feels like early two thousands dinosaur from Disney maybe
in the late nineties, late nineties, but you know, dinosaur
content is for a lot of people. But then again,
I also consider dinosaur content like The Land Before Time
and Dinotopia and what was it Land of the Lost.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Yeah, I loved Land of the Lost seventies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
I want to find out one day that dinosaurs were
more intelligent, like the slee stas what they were called, yes,
and that they just they dressed themselves up in like
feather boas and feather coats, and that's why dinosaurs have feathers.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Now you're more like into dinosaurs the Jim Henson series.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Listen, if we find out one day that dinosaurs were
more intelligent than we believed and they did that, I
would be delighted.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Well, it does look like it's it's like if you
were one of those kids, or if you have a
kid who's into done or is it totally looks like
it's gonna scratch that itch? Something that is definitely not
for kids, Absolutely, no, not for kids. Is the series
Love Death and Robots. They're going into season four. We

(01:18:24):
got a trailer for season four and yeah, within like
the first fifteen seconds of that trailer, you're gonna be like, WHOA, Okay,
do not show this to kids.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
I was surprised, So my friend shared this trailer with me.
I'm gonna be real honest, I didn't watch the first season.
I didn't know there were two other seasons after it,
so that that we're on a fourth was a surprise
to me. And going into that trailer that adult content
was definitely a surprise to me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Yeah, I mean it's it looks well done. Like again,
the animation looks great. The it's hard to get a
feel for why the plots are necessarily but they all
look like they're like each each story is told in
a different style of animation, a different approach to animation.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
Star Wars did a different animation like I don't remember
what they were calling that series, but where they had
the different animation styles for each anthology episode.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
Yeah, but it looks good like it looks it looks
like it's it's super slick. It looks like it's really
well done. But I don't have any sense on how
well written the individual episodes are. And usually in an
anthology you typically have at least like a couple will
rise above the rest, and then they'll typically be a
bunch in the middle of the pack, and if you're

(01:19:38):
really lucky, there may be just you know, a clunker.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Well, let me tell you. Here's what my friends have
said about it. Loved volume one. Need to get caught
up on the other. Yes, Well, if you haven't caught up,
you haven't seen the Christmas episode, should probably rewatch. It's
quite a treat. It's a little like eatingssido ssheto peppers.

(01:20:05):
You never know when an episode will melt your face off.
Yeah that sounds right, yep, So that's fun speaking of
things you don't know if we're going to melt your
face off. We got Apple did this too, but we're
not going to talk about the Apple one because we've
talked about enough of their content that's coming out. HBO
did a sneak peak trailer.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Yeah, where they just showed real quick snippets of various
things that are coming out over the next few months.
So that included there was like a documentary about Pee
Wee Herman, which I very much look forward to watching. Yes,
they had clips of Last of Us, They had a
clip of the was It Welcome to Dairy, the prequel

(01:20:46):
to the It story, and they also had a very
quick glimpse at season two of Peacemaker. I'm liking Peacekeeper.
If you're Aeriel, I listen.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
Farscape had such a profound effect on my geekato.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
I would get it wrong every time if I didn't
have it written in front.

Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
Of me, So I don't like reading no.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
I'm just saying no. I'm just what I'm saying, though,
Ariel is that we both know my habit of saying
the wrong name. Like if there are two names that
are similar, I'm going to say the wrong one whenever,
and not on purpose. I wish I could say I
was doing it just to troll people, but no, that's
just how my brain works.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
So here's the thing. I was mad because when it
came across my YouTube feed because I saw it before
I saw you put it here, They're like, HBO, first
peek at Peacemaker, and I'm like, this is not that
you butt heads. But it didn't make the Welcome to
Dairy look pretty good. I didn't know about the pee
wee Herman thing. I'm looking forward to that, but pee

(01:21:52):
wee Herman reminded me of Bronson Pinchot and I just
needed to say I also finished the Residence.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Yeah, which I quite enjoyed. I'm glad you did. Yeah,
I personally, Well, i'll tell you after the show. Yeah. Yeah,
there's stuff I don't need to say on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
There's a couple of episodes that I was like, this
is a little slow, and then the last episode was
a lot of exposition. It was almost entirely Who's Aduba's
monologue soliloquy. But but there were some episodes in there
that I truly truly enjoyed. Anyhow, Yeah, I HBO is
making some content that I might actually watch.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
Yeah, I gave up on The Residents. I think I
watched only the first episode all the way through, and
then most of the second episode, and then I noped out,
not because like, it wasn't that the content was particularly
I don't know, it wasn't clicking for me. I think
it felt like it was built to have lots and

(01:22:56):
lots of padding in it, and I was I didn't
have the patience for it. I was already at the
same time, though, I was also anticipating the man Meat
Mountain confrontation that I've been waiting for throughout all of
season three of Reacher, and when it finally happened, I
was incredibly disappointed.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
If you get if you got inspired to try Paradise,
I was talking about earlier that we started. Man, my
voice is going, I'm glad we've only got one story
after this. It's not that I don't love talking to
you or friends, but I'm gonna have to like vocal
rest for a bit. Yeah, but uh, it is slow.
It's pretty slow, That's what I'll say. It's a slower

(01:23:37):
pacear type pace.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Yeah. I mean I might be able to like if
it's if I find it entertaining enough. Like the thing
about The Residents was I like so many of the
actors who are in that, and I find them very
entertaining to watch. I just found the writing like it
started to feel a bit self indulgent in parts, and

(01:24:00):
it felt like things were padded out so that it
would last. Because I was like, how can this mystery
last for eight episodes? Because I would figure by episode three.
The way that they've created the detective character in the Residents,
she seems so incredibly capable and so much more intelligent
than anyone else around hers, it stretches credulity to think

(01:24:24):
that it would take her eight episodes to figure out
the mystery.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Yeah. Yeah, but regardless, a bunch of good stuff to
look forward to on HBO. I do like some of
their content. A lot of their content honestly just goes.
We've talked about it with like White Lotus and I
haven't watched Righteous Gemstones, but Jonathan's brought it up a
little bit. Sometimes they put in adult content that feels
like it's there just so they can say they put

(01:24:50):
it in.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there that's kind
of in there for shock value, where maybe it's meant
to stand in either as u you know, to try
and serve some purpose in the story, But it almost
always feels to me like it's someone taking a shortcut. So,
for example, the Righteous Gemstones, the nudity on that more
often than not it's male nudity, and more often than not,

(01:25:13):
it feels like it's being done as a punchline. And
but then like on Game of Thrones, it was often
done as a shortcut to talk about, you know, someone
in power exerting that power over someone who is power less.
Right like, and after a while, I'm just like, can

(01:25:34):
you tell the story some other way than just the
cheap way of Let let's take this actor and strip
off all their clothing and make them stand naked in
front of the camera.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Yeah, then some of the nudity in and honestly some
of the dialogue in White, a lot of it is
gratuitous and definitely more adult than like more adult and
more in depth than it needs to be to get
the point across.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
So yeah, I don't object to and to be clear,
I don't object to nudity being used in storytelling. It's
just that, like it needs to be used in a
way where it doesn't feel like it's a cheap shortcut
to me. And that's the problem is that a lot
of HBO shows, I get the feeling that's the cheap
shortcut approach. Like if you ask the question of did

(01:26:19):
that actually add anything to the scene, you know, was
it really necessary apart from giving like a shocking thrill
to the audience, because otherwise that just feels gross to me.
I don't know. I'm I'm old, So that's part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
I mean, well, you say that, but I think I
think I don't remember if I read this or I
saw it on after midnight that like it's either gen
Z or Jen Alpha is like we they're looking for
something more meaningful, so they're not as into the gratuitous
nudity in sex, and they all like they want more meaningful. Really,

(01:27:00):
I mean everybody wants more meaningful relationships, so that's kind
of funny. But yeah, like it's not just an old thing.
Some of the younger generations are also like, yeah, we've
had enough of this, which is kind of cool because again,
I like storytelling. I was watching White Lotus and there
was an there was like a scene where two actors
and I enjoy their story. We're talking about stuff and

(01:27:22):
having a moment, and then they started to have sex
and I looked away to say something to my husband,
and then I was like, well, now if I look back,
I'm just watching people make out naked and there's no
more story happening. It's just then making out naked. So
I'll wait for the scene to pass. It's not that
like I'm offended by it, but I at that point
it felt varyeuristic to go back and look at it,

(01:27:43):
and I didn't need that. So that's just me. But
we all know that I'm I'm I'm a bit of
a prude.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Well let me assure you that your prudish tendencies will
not become an impediment to your ability to enjoy all
of what Epic Universe has to offer. A universal's Epic Universe.
They held their media preview event where tons of like

(01:28:14):
YouTube influencers, in particular YouTube TikTok that kind of stuff,
got to attend a special pre opening because they don't
open this park until like May twenty second, I think,
so we're still a month and a half out from
this park being opened. But they did allow influencers to

(01:28:35):
come in and most of the time most of them
were like with vip tours who were taking them to
specific spots at specific times in order to kind of
maintain a good flow of traffic. And I've watched i
think four of them, four different videos from four different creators,
including It's Mammoth Club or something like that, It's it's

(01:29:01):
a woman, it's it's a husband wife team, but it
was just the wife who was going and she was
so overwhelmed, like it it's like one of those things
where a kid is so overwhelmed with something that they
have no method of expressing themselves other than to just
start to cry because and it's not that they're sad,

(01:29:23):
they just it's the emotion's too big, and I identify
with that because I will cry at the drop of
a hat, and so like I was crying because she
was crying, and I was like, I'm so happy, she's
so excited, and like she just over and over, like
when she went into the Isle of Burke. Well, so,
if you're not familiar, Epic Universe's first new major theme

(01:29:47):
park in the United States in like twenty five years. Yes,
and it's it's got since one.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
That's not that's since it's twenty sorry, since twenty two
thousand and one.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
Okay, I was gonna say twenty twenty one.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
That was that's like, I think the one that they're
talking about is the most recent one since before that
was disney Landed California Adventures. They're not counting like Galaxy's
Edge or Avengers Campus. They're not talking.

Speaker 2 (01:30:16):
About are those are lands that open within a park.
This is the first all new parks. So it's got
the Celestial Park, which is kind of the Hub World,
Isle of Burke, which is How to Train Your Dragon,
Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic on is another one,
the Super Nintendo World, and then the the Dark Universe

(01:30:39):
or Classic Universal Horror Monsters Land.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
I think I'm going to have some controversial opinions about
these videos though.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
So they didn't you didn't you weren't excited when you
watch them.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):
I am excited because I think it would be a
fun experience. I feel like the videos maybe don't because
it's a lot of like you know, influencers. Their videos
don't necessarily capture the full magnitude, I will say, and
I hate to say this exception of that, the Magic
of Ministry ride at the Harry Potter Land, which I

(01:31:13):
don't really want to go to, especially now, that looked
insane and the the Q is crazy. Q is crazy,
and the animatronics you see walking around that part of
the park look very very real to me, like their
movements are very real. Some of the animatronics at the

(01:31:35):
other parks, including How to Train Your Dragon in Dark Universe,
didn't look as believable to me, and I think again,
it's because of the video that I'm watching it through.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Yeah, I think I think the toothless animatronic figure in
the Isle of Berg looked really impressive to me, and
the little baby toothless one, which I'm guessing is like
a Boston Dynamics. That's dog robot that's made like.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
The I've also looked a little fake on that one.
To me, again, I'm being super nitpicky because I'm just
sitting here watching videos if I were there.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
Well, it's also it's also translating a cartoon character into
a non cartoon setting, which is always going to have
some issues. The questions that I came away with were,
so these are influencers, it's a media day. It's still
like a month and a half out until they open,
but this is universal putting on their best show so

(01:32:32):
that it looks great for all the influencers who are
sharing their videos. That included lots of interactions with strolling performers.
You know, they had musicians, they had characters, so there
were a lot of character interactions in those videos. Isla Burick,
Ministry of Magic and Dark Universe all had didn't see

(01:32:52):
any for Super Nintendo, but the other three I definitely
saw lots of actors dressed up in you know, appro
re attire, depending upon what part of the park they
were in, playing these roles. And my question is is
that what is that going to happen on an actual
day at the park, Like, if you go in, can

(01:33:14):
you expect to encounter people strolling around in character? Is
the invisible man going to be insulting you? Is igor
are going to be like casually picking up body parts
in the graveyard? Are you going to have a conversation
with a Viking an isle of Burke or is that

(01:33:36):
something that they did specifically for the media day that
they might not be doing on a day to day basis.
I don't have the answer to that. My hope is
that what we saw is a good representation of what
would actually happen on a park day. But it's impossible
to say because again it's a month and a half away,
and you know, this was almost like an audition for

(01:33:57):
Epic Universe, So I.

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
Suspect it will be at least at first. I know that,
like if you look at like Galaxy's Edge or something
like that, there are definitely things that they had early
on that have since phased out, but at least at
the inception of the park, and hopefully they're bringing some
of them back. I think the pandemic had a lot
to do with a lot of phasing out of street
content at Disney World. I think they will keep it,

(01:34:21):
because that's part of what makes that park so immersive. Right.
We talk about this as a fault at the Renaissance
Festival that we've left, that like getting rid of those
street performers, even if you're not a person who wants
to like directly interact with them, not having them there
takes the immersion out and puts you just back in
a theme park with a couple of rides again. So

(01:34:43):
my hope is that I will say, like, it looked
like they were walking around without handlers. And I haven't
been to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure in a very
long time since they've added the Harry Potter stuff. I
know in videos I've seen of those parks, like the
Death Eaters walk around. I don't know if they have
handlers or if they're just free roaming like a normal
street character. But if they have handlers, they were really

(01:35:07):
good at hiding them from the videos.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
Yeah. I think the only characters I ever saw at
Universal were the bo boton and I can't remember what
the Dormstrong is that the name of the ones that
are like the big Russian dudes or whatever. Anyway, it
was the characters from the Goblet of Fire from the

(01:35:31):
other two schools in Goblet of Fire, who compete with Hogwarts.
They have shows where the Bobaton would come out with
like little you know, do a little dance, and then
the derm Strong would come out and they would do
their manly dance. And they would also have like the
toad Chorus, where the Hogwarts students have the toads on

(01:35:53):
pillows and they're actually little puppets, but the toads are singing.
I've seen those sort of things, but I've never seen
just like freely walking around. But then I didn't go
a ton of times. I've been a couple of times.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
I know, I've seen pictures with people just seeing the
death theaters they come out at like certain times, but
just walking around. I know. The first time I went
to Islands of Adventure, I went to the Jurassic Park area.
I saw a John Hammond walk past, but it was
like from one character entrance to a character exit across
the park. It was so like low key it blew

(01:36:30):
my mind. It's like, this is just John Hammond walking around.
I just saw the back of him, and he wasn't
doing anything, he wasn't being big, he was just and
I was like what what, Oh my god, I'm in
Jurassic Park. But I know that, like they will have
street characters out like Beetlejuice and something and stuff like that.
But I know, like a lot of times if you

(01:36:51):
see the Bride of Frankenstein or Frankenstein, even at Universal
Studios proper, they're usually at a photo op with like
a handler.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Yeah, And the video I saw it looked like for Franken,
Science Monster and Bride that they were, they were in
an area for like a meet and greet photo op,
as was the Invisible Man. Igor looked like he was
more free roaming and then like the in the Ministry
of Magic section. And I agree with you, Ariel. I

(01:37:20):
also don't part of me wants to see it simply
because of the work that went in it into it
from yeah, from a design perspective, that kind of thing,
But I like you also feel very complicated about that
whole thing. Anyway, the actors who work there, I mean,
I don't hold anything against them. They're doing a job.

(01:37:42):
But you know, I don't know, I didn't see any
handlers for them, but who knows. Like they're face characters,
so they've got a little bit more awareness than someone
who's like in a full.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Face characters, and there may be not a character that
everybody be like, oh my god, it's this person I write.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
Ye, they're not playing like Harry Potter or whatever. They're playing,
you know, random wizard character. So but yeah, these videos
are great, Like there's a ton of them you can see.
I even saw one that was a woman who was
going around trying all the food items she could try.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
The garlic steak pretzel. I want to try.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):
That was one of the ones that Becca really wants
to try too. I want to try the chicken sandwich
over and Dark Moore that's on a black bun.

Speaker 1 (01:38:31):
Yeah, that looks good.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
Yeah, I want to try that. There's stuff over in
the Super Nintendo World like that cafe I want to try. Man,
I wish they had a a like a Beyond Meat
or Impossible Burger version of the Giant meat ball that
you can get there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
Yeah, for sure. I am a little disappointed that it's
the I don't remember the name. It's not the Cloak
and Dagger, but at the name of the place where
you can get like the black bun stuff. There's two
restaurants at Dark Universe. One steakhouse in one's like a tavern.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
It's the steakhouse. It's the steakhouse that has the chicken
sandwich thing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:06):
Yeah. Yeah, in theory, they are vampires at the steakhouse.
I didn't I didn't get to see any of that.
I only saw the one with the monster hunters. They
didn't look like Samon Dean Winchester, and I'm very sad
about now.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
They they look kind of like the traveling Merchant in
Resident Evil four. I was waiting for the boy you buoying?

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
What are you selling?

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
Boy you're selling? Yeah, that's the burning Blade because it's
a windmill that occasionally catches fire. I will say, like
I thought from the videos, like the design of the park,
where you can't really see these lands until you walk
through the portal and then you can. Like they're so

(01:39:47):
well designed, you would think it'd be very hard to
hide that stuff, but they use very clever tricks, especially
when you consider, like in the Harry Potter section, some
of those buildings are like seven stories tall, So they're
really good about using the landscape in such a way
as to mask the lands until you walk through the portal,

(01:40:10):
so that you have that kind of aha reveal moment
and the one thing I wish I had seen because
they talked about it. But the media day they closed
at seven pm. Like open at ten am, it closed
at seven pm, so it wasn't a full day. But again,
this is again a month and a half before they opened,

(01:40:31):
and they said they had not fully rehearsed like nighttime operations.
So one of the things that I really wanted to
see that I haven't seen yet is on one end
of the park closest to the Helios Hotel, which is
like on the far end of the park, they have
a statue of Apollo, and on the closer to where

(01:40:54):
the entrance is for if you know, if you were
to park in the parking lot and walk up go
through the Kronos, they have a statue of Luna, the
goddess of the Moon, and apparently every day as the
lights are getting dim enough for or the days getting
dim enough for the lights come on, Apollo fires his

(01:41:15):
fiery arrow and in a light show, the light goes
all the way across to Luna and then the park
lights up.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
Yeah, I really want to see it, but obviously, like
they were closing at seven that day, so no one
has any footage of it, but that sounds that sounds
like a really cool effect to me. It's one of
those things where it's like, if I were in line,
I'd be like, oh, we're gonna miss the arrow.

Speaker 1 (01:41:41):
Yeah. The have you seen video? Like, have you seen
any video of the Stardust Racers.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
The roller coasters?

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
Yeah? That lights up at night. That's so beautiful, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
Yeah, the tracks are dark, but the coasters light up. Yeah.
That's a dueling coaster where you have side by side
coasters that intertwine with one another, and apparently that effect
is really impressive. That's a ride I will never get
becca on. So if we're ever at Epic Universe and

(01:42:13):
you don't mind riding it, I would love to ride
with you, because otherwise I have to go by myself
if I.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Can ever afford to go to Epic Universe, because if
I go, I'll probably want to visit the other parks
as well. There are some like the Men in Black
ride I love. I just want to go back to that.
But if I go, if I ever can afford to go,
and I'm there with you, I will ride that ride
with you as many times as you.

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
Want awesome, Yeah, because I know that Becca won't get
on it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
So I like, there are certain thrill rides I won't do.
But for the most part, I really enjoy the thrill rides.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Yeah I can. I feel like Epic Universe is one
of those where I would The thing I would most
need to be careful about is if I were to
ride the Ministry of Magic ride just to see what
the heck is, It's like I would need to make
sure that my next ride was not the Dark Universe ride,
because if I do two of those style rides back

(01:43:08):
to back, then that gets my motion sickness going.

Speaker 1 (01:43:12):
Or the Curse of the Werewolf roller coaster, because that
thing looks like it'll.

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
Make you that one. I might be able to handle
that one a little better. I mean, it does spin,
so like the the way that coaster is designed is
each car has two forward facing and two backward facing seats,
and each car is on its own little axle and
can spin around. But the amount of spinning that happens

(01:43:39):
is dependent upon the waiting of the car. So if
everybody weighs pretty much the same, you don't really spin
that much. But let's say like a two little kids
get on one side and then my big fat butt
is on the other side. We're going to be going
for a ride. Let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
The people I saw riding it, we're spinning pretty effectively.

Speaker 2 (01:44:00):
Uh but anyway, Yeah, I think I think it looks
like a very impressive park. The thing that excites me
the most is I think, undoubtedly Disney has to be
looking at the reception of Epic Universe so far and
thinking we've got to knock it out of the park
when we do the expansion to the Magic Kingdom that's
coming out, So Villain's Land is going to have to

(01:44:22):
be like phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (01:44:25):
Well, all the expansions because they're also expanding Animal Kingdom
and they're all starting they're also adding some stuff to
to Hollywood Studios.

Speaker 2 (01:44:35):
So and taking the Muppets out.

Speaker 1 (01:44:39):
Yeah yeah, I'm not happy about that, but they're moving
over to They're moving over to rock and roller Coaster,
so yeah, that goes Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
Well, and that's that's it for this episode. It was
a long one, A very long one I expect it
to be. But but you know, we got to talk
about some stuff that we're really excited about, and that's
always fun and yeah, so I guess. I guess this
is the point where you have to ask me how
people get in touch with us?

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):
Yeah, Chonathan, how do people get in touch with us?

Speaker 2 (01:45:10):
That's gonna be tricky because I make it really hard
to get in touch with me, and it turns out
like I don't really want to talk to anybody. I
just want to sit down on a couch and watch
my shows. So you're gonna have to You're gonna have
to address it to murder bot at murder dot bot,

(01:45:30):
and the email header should be llenc question mark, And
if you don't put that subject in, I'm not even
gonna bother opening it. Once I open it. You're gonna
need to supplicate yourself to me in such a way
that you can flatter me and inflate my ego, but
not make it so obvious that you come across as

(01:45:52):
a try hard. So if you can do that and
make me feel important and really cool and awesome, but
not do it in such a ham fisted way that
it's just obvious that you're trying to butter me up,
then maybe I'll answer your question, or you can do
whatever I'll tell you to do.

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
Yeah, whatever I tell you to do is to reach
out to us on social media on Facebook and threads
and Instagram. We're a large nerd drunk lider. Man. It's
been a week. I don't remember anything on Blue Sky,
which I don't really do anything on yet. I'm sorry, guys.
We are LC Underscore podcast on seed dot podcast check
both find us. You can also join our discord. Our

(01:46:35):
discord is Large Nerdrunk Colllider. You can find an invite
to that dipport on our wofully out of date website.
I have failed at all promises to update it, but
our website is www dot Large Nerd drunk Ladder. Hopefully
this weekend at some point I will actually get it updated.
Knock on anyone. Also, if you want to send us
a long form email you always love to hear your thoughts,

(01:46:57):
you can reach out to our gmail. It is large
nerd at gmail dot com. We love hearing from you,
We love geeking out with you. Tell your friends because
we'd love to geek out with them as well. And
until next time. I am Ariel.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
It's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):
The stand of the episode casting.

Speaker 2 (01:47:17):
I am I have Jonathan Firebad Strickland.

Speaker 1 (01:47:25):
That's my flow key.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
The large Nerdron Collider was created by Ariel Casting and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted,
published again. Curse That by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin
McLeod of Incomptech dot Com one