September 9, 2021 • 54 mins
This week we are talking about movie gimmicks, how we feel about them, and which ones we thought were super cool. Then we level up to do a fan suggested mashup.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerd
Drunk Collider Podcast, the podcast that's all about the geeky
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with
(00:31):
me as always. Is this super awesome Jonathan Strickland yellow arial?
Do you say that because I'm wearing a yellow shirt?
Oh my gosh, you're wearing a yellow shirt. I didn't
even notice. Uh, Okay, yeah, So hey, Ariel, I got
a question for you. All right, here we go, and
(00:55):
once again we have a scenario leading up to it.
So you are having the freaky of freaky Fridays and
you have found yourself in a body swap with a
fictional character for twenty four hours. Which fictional character would
you want it to be? Okay, So I'm gonna say.
I was gonna say Ben Grim because I really do
(01:17):
want to be Ben Gram in the New Fantastic Four movie.
I'm gonna keep holding onto this hope until they cast him.
But no, it would be the Little Roomaid. I just
got to get it out of my system. I mean,
pre or post transformation pre obviously, Like, there's no point
in changing into another redheaded normal girl. I've had he'd
(01:39):
be engaged to a prince whatever. Whatever. Look, I've had
laryngitis before. It's no fun. But like I liked scuba diving,
but I always I always like get a jaw ache
from the gear. So like this would just allow me
to like scuba dive without having to wear the wetsuit
or the fins or the mouthpiece, just it seems and
(02:04):
then I could just say I've done it, and I
could get all those those menis off my back. Yeah,
I got you, Okay, alright, acceptable answer. How about you? Well,
my answer it's interesting because you came at it from
the perspective of what sort of experiences could I have
as someone else? In twenty four hours? I went the
other way. I thought, who the hell could fix my life?
(02:28):
I want a body swap with Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins
for twenty four hours, because when twenty four hours is up,
my my house is gonna be clean. I'm gonna have
a promotion, I might get to fly a kite. I'm
gonna my life is going to be so much better
after just twenty four hours, and yeah, I mean she's
gonna have a mess to clean up when she comes
(02:48):
back to her body. But I'm just thinking about me
right now. Alright, alright, So, so like that seems good
on the on, like at face value, but realize then
you're to have to live up to the standard that
Mary Poppins set while she was in your body, and
that's going to be frustrating. You're gonna end up being
more like yawn do I mean, I don't care. I
(03:11):
just I just need my house to get clean. Okay.
So like higher, that alone is going to take her
about sixteen hours of the twenty four so and then
she's got to sleep sometime, right, so I think I'll
be fine. Um, but yeah, my my option, my option
is I need someone to get my life in order
because clearly I'm not up to the task. And that's
(03:32):
Mary Poppins. And now we both see how each other's
brains work, and we can move on to the news
items for this week. Yes, and the first one is
that apparently we will be getting a and I say we,
and by we, I mean the world will be getting
a Game of Thrones convention. Yeah, a specific geared to
(03:53):
game of Thrones. Yeah, and Las Vegas, as you said,
and you know, obviously science fiction and fantasy, comic book,
horror conventions. These are things that have been around forever,
and Game of Thrones nearly always has a presence at
any major con these days. But this one is specifically
dedicated to Game of Thrones, and there's something else that
(04:13):
sets it apart from the kinds of conventions that Ariel
and I typically go to, which is that Warner Brothers
is sort of organizing it so and Creation Entertainment, So
it's very official. It's an official con. I would guess
at that point it's not going to be a social
con like Dragon Con is. It'll be closer to a
(04:36):
comic con. But at the same time, there there's enough
subject matter and Game of Thrones that one makes me
really glad that it's not a social convention where everybody
is caused playing Game of Thrones and too, I don't know,
it just the there's a lot of stuff in Game
of Thrones that makes me feel like I wouldn't want
(04:56):
to convention that is solely devoted to that. I would
need a breather. Yeah, so by by you're dancing around it,
we're talking about some of the subject matter, like, well,
first of all, obviously there's an incredible amount of violence.
There's a lot of sexual graphic content as well. In
Game of Thrones. There's also very taboo subjects. There's things like,
(05:16):
you know, multiple characters in the Game of Thrones are incestuous,
which is there's some big questions to be asked about that.
The fact that it's not just it's not just a
pair of characters where that happens. It happens a couple
of different places in the canon of the characters, and
that's ikey as all get out. Um, but yeah, yeah,
(05:39):
it's it's I mean, I'm sure there's gonna be lots
of cause playing. I'm sure all of that sort of
stuff is going to happen. The one thing that I
would say is a huge benefit is that with Warner
Brothers behind it, you can expect that they'll pull some
pretty top tier talent to come in and be part
of it, so that you could you might end up
(06:00):
seeing people who otherwise don't do the convention circuit outside
of something like a San Diego comic con. I mean,
and and also because it is an official convention run
by you know, not not just fans. Uh, You're going
to get some cool behind the scenes information like on
(06:21):
on production and costume design and things like that. I
can see as being very cool story writing things like that.
It's just it's a lot just to be on this
one property. Yeah, convention, I get it, Like I feel
the same way about pretty much any convention that's solely
devoted to a single thing, even for something that has
(06:41):
as much content as Game of Thrones, which has obviously
multiple seasons of shows, the books, you have the upcoming
prequel series of which I'm sure will be heavily promoted
at this event. I bet one of the big attractions
for this event is going to be come and see
an early look before anyone else does. I bet that's
gonna be a thing. It's in Las Vegas, that's not
(07:04):
too far from Los Angeles, so again we can probably
expect to see quite a few celebrities there. And if
you're interested, it's February. Yeah. I will not be going
for a couple of reasons. One, I'm sure I'll still
be concerned about health and safety. Uh. Two I was
I've read all the books in the series that have
(07:26):
been written up to this point, but rapidly decided I
did not want to go any further after reading the
last of those books, and I've yet to watch anything
more than the first episode of the television series. Like
I'm aware of it. I know how it ends in
the series and everything. I know, all because you know,
you can't you can't be a geek and not know,
(07:48):
because it was everywhere because people had such a visceral
reaction to the way that show ended. But um, yeah,
it's just it's not for me. But I hope for
anyone who wants to go that they have an amazing time,
that everyone is really safe, and that ultimately it becomes
a great memory for them me too. And and remember,
(08:09):
if you are going to these conventions to be safe,
test beforehand, make sure you're not carrying COVID, get tested
after two because even if you're vaccinated, you can still
get the delta variant. Um. I was really happy at
Dragon Con the very very brief amount of time that
I was there that most people were in fact wearing
their masks and wearing them correctly, and it wasn't very crowded,
(08:29):
so uh, props to the geeks out there who are
doing it right. And then we're going to talk about
some other geeks that are doing it right. These are
geeks over at Marvel, and that's the doing it right
is that they got shung Chi out there and it's
doing great. Okay, I say doing it right, but honestly, honestly,
thank you, thank you. I'm a master of the seg you.
(08:51):
But yeah, I uh, okay, I say doing it right.
But they did insist on releasing it to theaters, and
that's still kind of kind of ruse me the wrong
way because i haven't seen it full disclosure. I'm waiting
for it to come out on streaming because I'm still
not quite comfortable going to a movie theater. But I'm
glad it's doing well me too. I was hoping to
see Shanchi at the drive in, but the drive in
(09:13):
close to me is not currently having movies outdoors, but
you can still rent their drive in. But we have
a big one in Atlanta, Starlight drive In, and I
thought they were going to have it there, but it's
not playing on any of their screens right now, so
I'm a little disappointed. Something I've heard a lot of
people doing though, is renting out theaters which have like
a maximum capacity when you rent it out, they have
(09:36):
a minimum, but they also have a maximum that isn't
full capacity. So I've got a few friends who have
rented the theater and are having basically private showings for
their friends who are they know are being careful and vaccinated,
which I feel like is a good middle ground. I
wonder how expensive that is. I have not looked into it.
I feel like if if you rent a theater for
a few hundred dollars and then each of your friends
(09:57):
who goes gives you like twenty or thirty bucks for
private showing, you know that's that's you'll probably recoup most
of that cost um. I know one person Atlanta is
doing it, has done it a couple of times. It's
very important to them that this movie succeeds, and it
seems like it is so far. But you know, also
if you do that, then you're less likely to have
(10:18):
those jerk wads in the movie theater who are talking
through the movie you want to listen to. That's true.
So yeah, Hung Chi has been doing well at the
box office all things considered. I mean, like, even outside
of the pandemic, it's done well. But in the pandemic
it's doing incredibly well, which is great, great news for Marvel,
great news for all the people connected to shung Chi. Um.
(10:42):
I know a lot of people who are really jazzed
about it. I am now actively avoiding spoilers as best
I can, despite the fact that I keep seeing like
here's what the ending means, like, I don't can you?
Can you stop recommending this to me? Search engines and
Google because I don't want see it. I still have
to wait forty days before I can watch it. Well,
(11:04):
you know, I'm just happy right now. It is the
number two highest opening of the pandemic, right after Black Widow,
but better than uh, Fast to the Furious Nine, says
F nine. I keep every article I see that says
F nine. I keep thinking Final Fantasy and that's not correct.
Yes that too. But also U shang Chi is the
(11:29):
now top scoring Labor Day holiday weekend movie. The last
person to hold that title was Rob Zombie's Halloween in
two thousand seven. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, uh and
um do the folks that I know who saw it,
their reaction ranged from it's pretty good too, it was amazing,
(11:50):
So I am very much looking forward to seeing it. Um.
The trailers had me convinced when I saw the very
first one, and each trailer that came out after it
made me want to see it more. But I'll be
waiting a little bit longer to see it. But congratulations
to everyone connected to shuan Chi. It's funny because before
we started recording this episode, Arial sent me a tweet
(12:13):
that referenced the the fact that there were a lot
of haters for shaan Chi who are from you know who.
They were all predicting that the movie was gonna bomb
and that it did not do so, which confused me
because I was like, who the heck thought movies were
gonna bomb? And then I fell down a rabbit hole. Aerial.
Let me just tell you, they're a bunch of really
(12:34):
bad faith YouTube channels out there that are just devoted
to crapping all over everything and essentially saying everything is
going to be a big colossal failure. They're they're dumpster
fires of YouTube channels, and they don't they're not built
on anything substantive, Like they don't have any any real
(12:56):
argument for why they say the things they say. And
in fact, I tried watching one of the videos not
for shoan Chi, but for something else didn't know it
was one of those types of channels, got about a
minute in and said, this person has nothing valid to say,
and I don't like the way I feel when I'm
listening to it, so I'm gonna bounce and it just
(13:18):
it shocks me that those channels do so well. They're
do incredibly well, by the way. That's the most depressing thing. Yeah,
I don't I don't understand it. I don't understand it,
but I do like that. The lead actor of shang
Chi tweeted out when he was saying, you know we're
doing great. Uh, you haters are wrong. He used a
(13:39):
picture of himself from when he was doing stock footage shoots.
So it's nice to know that someone who had humble
beginnings Because I sometimes get calls for stock photo shoots.
I haven't done one yet, but somebody who was there
is now a Marvel superhero. That's delightful that he can.
It's also great to see a stock image used in
(14:00):
a meme by the person who's in the stock image. Yeah,
that rarely rarely happens. I can't say never, but it
rarely happens. So that's really cool. Something else that I
think It's really cool is that Lego Star Wars is
doing a Halloween special on Disney. Plus I knew that
they were doing like a Christmas special. They did a
Christmas special. We're getting a Guardians to the Galaxy Christmas special,
(14:23):
but for some reason, the Star Lego Star Wars Terrifying
Tales special eluded me. Yeah. The trailer for this is
absolutely adorable and cheeky and ridiculous, just as you would
expect from Star Wars and from Lego. And it is
a I mean, it's a lot of like you know,
back and forth between Emperor and Vader and that kind
(14:44):
of stuff. Um. I am eager to see it because
it looks very, very silly, like most Lego stuff, and
I typically find those to be refreshingly entertaining. Yes, a
lot of a lot of Halloween spe sholls tend to
be a little bit bleak for me or or mean spirited, um,
(15:07):
and so this just feels not either of those things. Now,
this one I'm looking forward to about as much as
I'm looking forward to the Muppets Haunted Mansion Halloween Special. Yes,
I cannot wait for that either. And one last thing
before we go to break, because this is going to
lead into a discussion we're gonna have after the break.
Is that the Matrix, the new Matrix sequel, has a
(15:30):
website called the Choice is Yours dot What is the
Matrix dot com where if you go to that you
are given the choice of choosing either the Red Pill
or the Blue Pill, and if you choose one of those,
you get one narrative version that kind of introduces YouTube
(15:51):
philosophies behind the Matrix. If you choose the other, you
get a different one. You get a different narrator like
Neil Patrick Harris is the narrator for the Blue Pill,
which is where you know, you want to maintain the
illusion that reality is everything it seems to be, whereas
the Red Pill is it strips away reality and you
see the Matrix. Um, it's an interesting thing. Also by
the way, it knows what what time it is, time
(16:13):
it is, it'll tell you which you know. I feel
I feel a little bad because now we've ruined it
for you, because when I clicked on it, I was like, oh,
that's so cool. It's still pretty cool. It's it's fun. Um,
it's a nice little gimmicky and it's teasing the fact
that a trailer is coming out, and by the time
you listen to this, the trailer will be out. But
(16:33):
for us, for us, we have to wait to the
same day this episode releases. Yeah, so there's a matrix trailer.
What are you listening to us for? There's a matrix trailer. No,
keep listening. You can do both. You can do both.
But but this is kind of gonna lead into a
discussion We're going to have it just a second about
different gimmicks that various movie studios and TV studios have
(16:56):
used in order to convince you to either watch something
or purchase some media, or that you know the next
big thing is going to be this new gimmick, when
in fact it may not be. But we're gonna talk
about that after we take this break. So, Ariel, are
(17:26):
you familiar with like those gimmicky nineteen fifties sci fi
movies where they would do all sorts of things like
put little vibrating buzzers in the seats so that they
would buzz and cause people to scream at at pivotal
points of really cheap horror movies. So I'm familiar with
(17:47):
things doing that. For instance, there are certain movie theaters
that have like both speakers in the seats, so it'll
vibrate when you watch the movie. That's how I watched
The Martian. I wasn't aware that that was happening as
early as the nineteen fifties. Yeah, like the Tingler was
the name of this one sci fi horror movie where
the idea was that you would feel this electric tingle
(18:08):
if the critter were to latch onto you, and so uh,
some theaters that were promoting the film installed they were
just a little vibrating motors, but it would make you
feel like you were getting like buzzed, like a hand
hand buzzer like hate. But it's just you know, it's
not really a shock, it just vibrates. But yeah, that
that that was a real gimmick, And like there were
(18:31):
a whole bunch of them that came out of the
fifties and sixties. Then you get up to like the
late seventies and into the eighties where you started seeing
three D film have its first real push, uh or
it really was a second rule push, but you saw
the big three D phase. Because I remember as a
kid seeing Jaws three D and a few other three
(18:54):
D films um that were just ridiculous and very gimmicky.
There's always that moment where someone for no good reason
is reaching out towards the camera so that their their
arm is coming right at you. Um. Three D has
gotten better over the years. Three D movies still gives
me a headache, though. Yeah, I'm not a big fan.
(19:15):
And that was something that we saw really pushed hard
in the early to mid two thousand's, Right like all
the TVs. If you wanted a new TV, it was
almost guaranteed to be three D ready, if not a
full three D television with you know, super expensive glasses
to go with it. Um. Yeah. And so these are
(19:36):
all kinds of things that we see studios throw in
either to create some sort of perceived extra value to
the viewing experience or and this is the other big one,
discourage piracy because if you throw in gimmicks, it makes
it way harder for someone to sneak a cam quarter
in and get like a cheap o bootleg version. I
(19:58):
was about to say, like you could. Your experience would
not be nearly as cool though, but you still could.
Well if it were if it were like three D,
then you would lose a lot of the effects. You
would just have like this really blurry image. Um, if
it were forty eight frames per second, you might not
have like, you might have a lot of jitter in
(20:19):
your screen because the refresh rate of your camera would
not be matching up to the UH frame rate of
the film. Um. But if it was the Tinkler, you
would just be forgiven an annoyance. So I feel like
that would be a boon in that case for all
those people in the fifties bringing their cam quarters into
the movie theaters. Well, I want to ask you if
you a few questions about various gimmicks, and then we
(20:42):
can we can have to see where this conversation goes.
So first of all, all right, what is your opinion
about three D? You said it gives you a headache?
Do you other like do you actively avoid seeing a
movie in the three D version? Do you seek it out?
What's your what's your go to? So I tend to
like to watch movies and two D. I did watch
(21:03):
Avatar in three D and it was very pretty. Um.
I prefer three D when it's on like a ride
like a Disney right, like the Avatar Flights of Passage
or the Muppet for D Theater um or a Bug's
life or something like that. Um all Disney rights, right,
That's that's where I encounter the most three D for
D experiences in a general movie theater. Um, I just
(21:29):
it gives me a headache. I don't mind some moments.
If there is a way that they could give me
a couple of moments where I could experience that without
having to wear the glasses the entire time, I might
appreciate it. The other thing is movie screens to me,
are so large, and when you put on three D glasses,
they block part of that view, So now you're also
trying to see the entire screen through these very small windows,
(21:49):
and I think that's part of what contributes to my headache.
What about you? Do you like three D movies? Actively
avoid three D for for some of the reasons you mentioned.
I also find that three D often means that you're
getting less light and the glasses are blocking some light,
so the screen looks darker than it normally would, so
(22:11):
you're not getting as bright a picture. UM. I don't
like the effects of three D most of the time.
I just find them distracting rather than adding to the experience.
There are certain times where I'm like, Okay, I want
to see this in three D because that's the whole Like,
that's the whole thing of it. Like seeing something like
gravity and three D would be pretty spectacular and probably terrifying. Right. So,
(22:37):
I don't think I saw it in three D, but
I think uh so, I typically I avoid it, and um,
I also can get a headache from it. I don't
really care for that experience. Um so, I I'm not
a big three D fan and I typically will go
with a two D over a three D any day
of the week. How about forty eight frames per second?
(22:58):
I know, I think you and I both saw The
Hobbit in forty eight frames per second as part of
a fellow friends. Well wait, no, it was your birthday,
wasn't it. I think so it was your birthday. We
went to see the first of the Hobbit films at
forty eight frames per second. What's your opinion of the
forty frames per second on movies? I think in a
(23:19):
movie experience, especially one where there's a lot of c
G I it allows you to see extra detail. Um.
I liked it as far as the way that movies
are shot, as long as it's it's complimentary to the story.
That's trying to be told or it enhances it. I'm
fine with that. You know, there are certain movies that
I really like when they shoot on old classic Kodak
(23:39):
film too, as long as it for there's a story
and allows me to see their vision the way that
they wanted to be seen outside of three D. Okay, Well,
I hate forty frames per second. I think it's an
abomination that never be is because everything looks fake to
me at forty frames per second. When we saw The Hobbit,
everything looks like it was a set. Like I think
(24:02):
of the Lord of the Ring high high definition televisions. Well,
if it's a high definition television that has a high
refresh rate, that's effectively the same sort of thing as
forty frames per second where you're removing motion blur and
that kind of thing. See for me, when we watched
The Hobbit, I felt like, this is weird because everything
looks like a set and everything like all the outfits
(24:23):
look like costumes, and everything looks like like it's fake.
And I know it's fake. I mean, I know it's
a movie. I know it's fake. But Lord of the
Fake Okay, but Lord of the Rings made it look
way more real. Like the costumes didn't like costumes, they
look like these are the clothes these characters where right.
The settings didn't look like they were sets, they look
(24:44):
like they were real locations. Um. And in the Hobbits
part for the most part, But for the Hobbit I
just felt like everything looked It felt more like you
were watching like a live action production on a very
very expensive stage set, but not not like it was
an actual location. So I finds per second really distracting.
(25:08):
I'm glad it did not become the standard, despite the
fact that that was what everyone was pushing for at
the time, just as I'm glad that three D hasn't
become the standard. Um. Something that I've never experienced, though,
I'm curious. I'm sure you have a real because you
tend to go to the movies more frequently than I do. Um.
I have never gone to see a film on an
(25:30):
Imax screen where it does that thing where the movie
expands from the normal view to the full Imax view
for certain sequences. Yeah, what's that like? Yeah? UM, it
can be really cool. Uh for me, That's that's one
of those changes that unless I'm paying attention to it
I just really don't notice. Now, like if the story
(25:50):
is crap, then you're going to start paying attention to
the technical stuff, or at least that's what I do.
But um, yeah, in that instance, my experience has in
it kind of expands and I'm paying attention to the story.
So when that moment happens where you know, all of
a sudden you fall off the cliff or whatnot, it
moves you in a way that you did not expect
(26:11):
to be moved in that moment, and it's it makes
that moment a little bit more poignant. I think. I
think it's cool. I really like that there are there
are movies that I will opt to see on an
Imax just to get some of that feeling like I'm
there without having to do the three D. I actually
really like Imax films for that reason. If if they're
um conducive to that. It's funny because, like I said,
(26:34):
I've never done it. I have yet to go see
a film on an Imax screen that has that component.
Like I know that one of the bat at least
one of the Batman films did that where a couple
of sequences expanded into full Imax mode and that Uh,
It's always made me curious what that transition is like
and whether or not I would find it distracting, like
(26:55):
oh were, because I think about like like movies where
they have that built in as part of the style,
where the screen will expand or change shape in some way.
I want to say that Quentin Tarantino has done that,
but I could be wrong. I'm just trying to think
of movies where that has happened, where like the framing changes,
(27:16):
and I wonder if that's just what it would feel like,
but on a really big scale, like is it something
that is like a transition or is it just an
abrupt change? I mean, I feel like so when you
go to the movie theater, or at least if I'm
remembering correctly from way back when I went to movie
theaters two years ago. So like when you're watching the
pre movie like Real whatever it is, the commercials and
(27:40):
the trivia and all that, it's on a smaller frame rate,
and then when the trailers start, the curtains slowly start
to expand. And so that's at least what I have experienced,
is that's kind of what's happening, is so like it's
slowly your your field of vision is slowly expanding, so
it's not switching straight from like whatever the normal movie.
The aspect ratio is too full imax, like in a
(28:02):
blink of an eye. It's more of a gradual transition
in my experience. Now I can't say that that's always
the case, but well, I mean, like I've never experienced
at all. So that's why I was like, and I
realized that asking you that when you're not specifically going
to a movie to take note, it's kind of unfair
because it's it's really it's relying on memory, and memory
is incredibly you know, subjective and can be changed and stuff. Well,
(28:25):
what are some of the the like like gimmicks that
various studios have used that you found particularly compelling. I
can think of one example of something that a studio
did that I thought was incredibly brilliant. Uh, but I'll
I'll go after you go. So the one that comes
(28:47):
for forefront of my mind, I've already mentioned it. When
I went to see The Martian. It was in an
extra fancy Imax theater and all the seats had like
these both speakers built into them, so that when like
spaceships are taking off, I got the rumble, and it
was very immersive and without being too distracting, which meant
(29:10):
that or uncomfortable, which meant that I almost felt like
I had I had more of a stake in what
was happening to the character. Now, The Martian is a
fantastic movie, and I already had a stake in what
was happening to Matt Damon in that movie, but it
kind of brought me in a little bit more and
it made it feel it made the stakes feel a
little bit more real, understandable because of that sensory involvement.
(29:33):
And so that was I think one of my favorites. Um,
I don't know. Otherwise, I guess I could say, like
when movies use practical effects instead of c G I
nowadays it's shouldn't be a gimmick, but I feel like
it is and I like it better. I got you
practical effects. I think practical effects always went out over
c G. I like c G I is important and
it can really enhance a film, but when you're getting
(29:56):
into certain effects, there's nothing like having something that has actual,
real physical form inside a camera frame. UM. So I
was thinking of two actually, one that I thought was
brilliant was the way Blair Witch Project promoted itself by
creating an entire website filled with stuff that supported the
(30:17):
narrative that the movie was a found footage piece, like
it was actual, like this is something that actually happened.
In The website had tons of extra detail that doesn't
even come out in the movie. But if you read
the website, if you explored it before you saw the film,
little things in the film suddenly had a much bigger
(30:37):
impact on you because you understood the significance. Whereas in
the movie, if you didn't go to the website, like
you could still enjoy it as a film, but those
little those little almost like easter eggs, wouldn't have an
impact on you. Um. But my favorite, my favorite promotion
that I am aware of, and I have to stress
(30:57):
that I did not physically experience this one, was when
the American version of Ringoo The Ring, when it was
first coming out, there was some sort of screening where
I think people got to see a little bit of
the Ring, or maybe they even were watching the full movie.
But after the film was over, people are coming out
(31:20):
of the theaters going back to their cars, and when
they did, some of the cars had a VHS cassette
tape left on the windshield and if they brought it
home and played it, it was the video from The Ring.
I was like, for a horror movie, that is such
a brilliant promotion, Like I get that, it's it's incredibly
(31:43):
it's incredibly like targeted, right, It's not like it's not
like you're getting a very widespread but the word of
mouth on that was insane. And then in the Internet age,
word of mouth can go really far, really fast. So
I was like, what a truly innovative approach. And we've
seen similar things like alternate reality games. I think we're
(32:06):
gonna have to have a full discussion about alternate reality
games at some point because I took I took part
in a couple of the really early ones. Um and
I would like Eternal Darkness. That's not even no, that's
that's just that's just a video game. I'm talking things
like uh, oh gosh, what was the Bees one? There's
there's one that was related to Halo. There was one
(32:26):
that was related to the to the movie Artificial Intelligence.
I guess Pokemon Go would that's augmented reality. No, alternate
reality is it's kind of like augmented reality. Alternate reality
games are where you have a game that is dependent
upon some fictional universe, such as Gotham because one of
the Dark Knight did this one um. Or it could
(32:49):
be like Halo, it could be the world of artificial
intelligence like AI that that that film, and it also
involves you doing real world act is. It might involve
you having to go to a real world location, pick
up a real world telephone, and have a real world
conversation with a fictional character within the game, and then
(33:10):
you report back to an online group and say what happened,
and you all try to solve a mystery together. It's incredible. Uh,
you don't see it as frequently because, as it turns out,
it's very hard to do well. But it's it's sort
of the thing that I would say lead into the
popularity of stuff like escape rooms further down the line. Yeah,
I've had friends who run tabletops similarly, back back to
(33:33):
the doing that sort of thing for movie. So like
with Blair Witch or The Ring. You know, I think
it's really cool that they put that much thought into
the world surrounding their media. Um, but it it can
be a little scary. I mean, if you look back
to the War of the World's, like, that's one of
the first instances I can think of where they tried
(33:54):
to make people think it was a real thing, and
it was like it caused a lot of freak out.
People didn't realize this radio show was just a radio show. Um,
And so like, I don't know, it's I think it's
really cool. And at the same time, I'm like, uh,
do I really want life imitating this art? No? Well,
(34:15):
and and to be fair, I mean, like the radio thing,
I think that gets drummed up a lot. I don't
think it was nearly as big, like everyone makes it
out as if there were widespread panics too in response
to the world War of the World's when in reality
there was that was that appeared to mostly be something
(34:35):
that was a fabrication of the media. But to your point,
to your point, um, something like coming out of a
movie theater and seeing just a random VHS tape left
on your windshield, especially if you didn't go like I don't,
I can't. I think it must have been a promotion
before the movie came out, which means that these were
people who didn't see the ring. They just came out
(34:57):
of a regular theater and there was this videotape sitting
on their their windshield. They take it home and play it,
and then you get the super creepy video with with
a little thing at the end that gave either a
link or a time of when the film was coming out.
And uh, like that to me would be really unsettling,
even thoughing that it was just a totally random kind
of experience and that I wasn't targeted. Like, the brain
(35:21):
works differently, right, you might know, quote unquote deep down
in your heart, like this was just a random little
movie promotion. But there's that reptile part of your brain saying,
but what if it's seven days? Yes, yeah, Well that
reptile part of my brain can be pretty strong, especially
with scary movies. That's that's why I limit myself on them. Uh.
(35:43):
Speaking of which, I'm now starting to get creeped out
about this conversation. So let's take a break. Ye, it's
natural chatting with me, Ariel. I'm sorry, it's just kind
of happens now. It's fine, We'll take a break. I'm
going to regroup and then we'll do a mashup that's
a little bit happier. Maybe Okay, we're back an Ariel,
(36:19):
I believe that the mashup we're about to do comes
to us courtesy from a listener suggestion. Yes, so this
is this is a listener suggestion. Um, actually it is
a suggestion from one of our listeners kids. So thank
you Tip, Penny Elliott and Aaron for this suggestion. We
are mashing up The Princess Bride with Super Mario Brothers,
(36:41):
the video game, not the movie. Um, the movie is
a creature of its own that doesn't need a mash up. Well,
you might think differently, and if you do, please let
us know. And if I do, you do let us know.
Keep in mind, I know about the Super Mario Brothers movie.
I've seen little bits of it. I've never watched it
all the way through. And if you make us do
a mashup, I'm gonna have to watch it, which means
(37:04):
I'll be forwarding my therapists bills to you. That might
be worth it alone. So I think probably most of
our listeners are familiar with both properties, but if you're not.
The Princess Bride is a movie from I guess the eighties. Um,
where uh, it's a Grandpa reading a story to his
sick grandson, and um, you probably know about it because
(37:27):
Deadpool recently did a mash up with it. Um, but
you know. The story is about a farm boy who
falls in love with a girl who comes engaged to
prince when the farm boy goes missing, and then it
turns out he's a pirate, and there's high jinks. It's
low budget, it's kind of cheesy, but that's the whole
charm of it. So I know some people who love
(37:48):
it and other people who hate it. I am a
person who loves it. I think it's a perfect movie.
It is. It is charming, it is silly. It doesn't
take itself too seriously, which I think is the secret
to its real success. Has incredible performances from some truly
gifted and funny actors, as an amazing performance from Andre
(38:11):
the Giant as physic. It is is a great movie.
It's also it's also a book. It's based off a book,
and the book itself is also really charming, and a
lot of the stuff that's in the movie is directly
taken from the book. There are some things like Billy
Crystal goes off script a little bit for some of
his stuff, but to great effect. So and of course
(38:31):
Super Mario Brothers. If you don't know what that is,
I don't know why you're listening to a geeky podcast,
but yeah, one of the most popular video game franchises
of all time. Mario and Luis Gi Mario apparently their
last name is Mario. Um. They are plumbers and bro well,
no one talks about being plumbers anymore but their brothers,
and they have a whole series of different video games
(38:53):
where they go on various adventures, either trying to rescue
a character called Princess Peach, or maybe chasing spooks out
of a ghost house if you're Luigi, or maybe trying
to run down people in a little go kart in
Mario Kart, or maybe trying to just smash the heck
out of him and Super Smash Brothers. But yeah, those
are the two properties we're going to be mashing together. Yes,
(39:16):
and I'm gonna let you go first. All right, My
mashup is called Super Princess Brothers. Buttercup has a problem.
Her beloved plumber Wesley was lost in the Sewers. He
was taken captive by the dread Gumba Roberts and as
we all know, Dredd Gumba never takes prisoners. Despondent, she
(39:38):
barely had the energy to protest when Prince Bowserdink claimed
her as his fiancee. But unbeknownst to Buttercup, but benknownst
to us, Wesley did not in fact die. Instead, he
spent five years surviving and the harshest of environments. I mean,
have you seen the Mushroom Kingdom. They got bullets with
(39:59):
eyeballs flying around, and bombs with feet and stuff. Over
that time, he perfected the fireball throw, experimented with mushrooms,
but this is a family show, so we'll skip that,
and learned how to turn into a raccoon, you know,
typical adventurer stuff. All the while Buttercup despaired at the
prospect of being bowser Dink's wife. One day, when Buttercup
(40:22):
was riding her horse, the one activity that brought her peace,
she came across a troop of kopas, but not a
kopa trooper. There was one very small koopa, one very
very large koopa, and one Spanish Koopa. Pardon me, madam,
says the little kopa. But we are poor circus performers.
Could you tell us where the nearest town is. There's
(40:43):
nothing to hear nothing from miles, says Buttercup. Then there
will be no one to hear you, scream, says the
little one, And then the big one jumps up in
the air and bobs Buttercup on the head and a
coin pops out from somewhere. But it's best not to
question where. Next thing, you know, the Kopas are on
a boat going over water, and we hear this song
Dude do do, Dude, do do do? But then the
(41:09):
Spanish Koopa keeps asking if someone could possibly be following them,
to which the little Kopa says, that's not at all conceivable,
and the Spanish one says, it's just that when I
look behind us and something is there, and they look
and there's a figure swimming and hopping in the water
and avoiding fish and occasionally throwing fireballs at stuff, which
makes this weird little coconut plink some when they hit. Anyway,
(41:31):
what follows is the Kopas and their captured princess make
a run for it, and they reach the mushrooms of insanity.
But we're not going to talk about those because this
is a family show. Anyway, They try to escape, and
the swimming figure becomes a jumping figure and it leaps
up and gains ground on the three and so the
Spanish one stays behind to try and stop the figure,
(41:53):
but the Spanish one fails, and then the very large
Kopa stays behind and is also unsuccessful. And eventually the
little figure in black runs up to a big fort
and goes inside. Do do Do Do Do Do Do
Do Do Do, And he navigates a maze like structure
and avoids traps and fireballs and stuff until he finds
the little koopa at the end, and after a quick
(42:15):
battle of wits, manages to dump the koopa into lava
and to go into the room beyond, where he finds
talking mushroom. But we won't talk about him because you
know family show, right, But the talking mushroom says, sorry,
but your princess is in another castle, all right, So
I'm gonna be straight with you. Like the rest of
(42:36):
this movie is that the figure in black, which is
obviously Wesley in the dread Gumba disguise, actually has to
clear out castles, only to be told this princess is
in another one. But this is true love, Do you
think this happens every day? No, the answer is no.
So he keeps on going. He dodges critters and bullets
and bombs and fireballs and chomping plants in the fire swamp,
(42:59):
and geo Us is gumbas of unusual size, and he
eventually gets a one up so that when he quote
unquote dies, he's only mostly dead and he actually has
an extra life, so he's okay. Now, admittedly this does
get a little repetitive. Okay, I'm gonna be straight with you,
but it's okay because somewhere around the SEV completion, Mark
(43:19):
Wesley the dread Cumba uses a warp zone to skip
ahead a bit, and so he goes straight for bowser
Dak and ultimately the two face off and Wesley is
able to dodge like a whole bunch of fireballs, and
he terrifies Bowserdink into submission, and he finally reunites with Buttercup,
who was very happy to discover her lost love is
actually fine, and the two go on to open up
(43:40):
a moderately successful plumbing business until some crazy rabbit like
creatures invade the Kingdom, but that's a story for another time.
Did you just serve Rabbit Rabbits into it, because there's
a Rabbit Rabbits and Super Mario crossover game. Did you
did you not know that it's squad based tactic al
(44:00):
So it's like you literally are doing turn based tactical
squad combat with your Mario characters against a bunch of
rabid characters and it's hilarious. I bow to your geeky knowledge,
my friend. All right, I know that everyone out there
is just as eager as I am to hear Arial's
amazing mash up because it's dedicated. I guarantee you it's
(44:23):
going to be better than mine. But before we do that,
let's take this quick break. So there are a couple
common threads between ours, but they made me laugh. So, uh,
(44:44):
mine is the plumber bride. Mario was doing his normal
thing like he normally did. You see, while his profession
was plumber, his job was to free the Mushroom people
from King Cooper's evil rain. But to do so, he
needed to find and free Princess Peach. But just like
Lucy with the football, King Coopa a k. A. Bowser
for people who don't know, kept yanking the princess away
from Mario's grasp. Mario had searched all the castles in
(45:07):
the Mushroom Kingdom to no avail, and that's when he
came upon it, a green tunnel he had never seen before.
Usually this leads towards positive discoveries, so without a second thought,
Mario jumped in. When he was in the pipe, Mario
heard a loud, screeching noise, and all of a sudden,
a giant eel appeared and he had to fight it.
When he came out the other side, he was in
(45:28):
a level of the Mushroom Kingdom he had never seen before.
There was like a sign on the wall. It said
pit of Despair Comma guilder. Uh. But it looked way
different from anything he had ever seen in the Mushroom Kingdom.
He didn't know services could have such texture to them.
And it only had one villain in the room, a
bizarre bipedal figure who had a face so pale it
(45:51):
must have been a shy guy, but again so detailed.
Then the figure said, don't even try. Don't even try
to escape. Uh. On the less, the princess didn't seem
to be in the room, so escape Mario must. He
jumped on the shy guy who did not crumple like
a shy guy normally would and escaped. Once out of
(46:12):
the pit of despair, Mario found himself in what a
sign was calling the fire swamp. I mean swamp. It
was full of flame balls and exceptionally hair and gumbas
of unusual size. Uh sound familiar. Uh, this must mean
it's true. All right. This felt familiar to Mario as well,
but he quickly escaped because he used to fireballs and
(46:34):
gumbas and things. But just on the other side of
the swamp, Mario ran into some familiar faces, but the
familiar faces didn't seem to recognize him. You see, Luigi
had traded in his green overalls for a vest and
had somehow gotten scars on the side of his face
and grown out his hair, which was exceptionally bizarre to
Mario because he had just seen Luigi this morning. Along
(46:55):
with him, was towed in a fancy doublet and Yoshi
if Yoshi were a small giant. Mario said, hey, let's
find the princess, but the three blocked his path. Toad
said that Mario could look for the princess if he
could pick the box with contents that weren't Io Kaine
powder Mario did and towed quote unquote wilted. But before
(47:19):
Mario could mourn the loss of Toad, Luigi said, bulky
ducky I'm Luindigo Montoya, you killed my father prepared to die,
and he and the giant Yoshi, who Luindigo called Yoshig,
attacked Mario. Mario bested them, but instead of jumping on
them and killing them, as he normally would do, he
offered them the opportunity to join him, especially since he
(47:43):
hadn't killed Luigi and his father, Papa Mario was retired
and living good in a distant part of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Uh Lu Windigo and Yoshik agreed to join Mario. They
had nothing better to do now that their leader was wilted.
But they told Mario he had to hurry if he
wanted to save the princess because she was going to
marry the king and Guilder. This was odd to Mario.
(48:04):
He didn't recall that being a part of King Cooper's plan,
and where the heck is Guilder this in this the
Mushroom Kingdom. Despite his confusion, they traveled along and stopped
at a merchant along the way to the princess. So
Mario could get a power up, he bought a cloak
called the Holocaust Cloak. However, when they got to the castle,
much to Mario's dismay, instead of giving him flying powers,
(48:25):
when he put the cloak on, it just caught on fire.
This is not what he wanted, but it was enough
to scare the Cooper men out from outside the castle
away and they were able to get in to try
to save the princess. Mario expected a castle full of
the normal pitfalls he usually experienced, bob bombs, bullet bills,
prana plants, but oddly he didn't see any of those.
(48:47):
And when he punched the castle bricks, it didn't free
any want to give him money. It just hurt his
hand man. This new level stinks. Mario thought the group
were almost done searching the castle and about to give
up when Mario came across Count Boogan. But this boo
didn't stop when he looked at it. What kind of
boo was this? Nonetheless, between the three in the party,
(49:08):
they were able to feat Count Boogin and find and
defeat King Cooperdink and locate the princess. Yeah, but when
they got to the princess, it wasn't Peach, it was
some princess Buttercup, and Buttercup was equally dismayed that this
wasn't her Wesley but some short workman with the gross mustache. However,
a rescue was a rescue, and they escaped. Mario was
(49:30):
tired of this new realm, so far from what he
was familiar with, and searched high and low for the
Pipe to return back to the Mushroom Kingdom. When he
finally found it, Princess Buttercup refused to leave Gilder. She
had to wait for her Wesley, So Mario returned to
the Mushroom Kingdom alone to search for the true princess.
It's a speech who could save all the people in
the Mushroom Kingdom. That was his job, after all. Later,
(49:53):
Mario decided to return to Guilder to see how things
were going with Buttercup and the strange versions of his friends.
But the Pipe was no longer there, and no one
knew what he was talking about. Recalled being there with
him the end. Yeah, you know, I like that there
were similarities, but not nothing too gratuitous. Yeah yeah, well,
(50:18):
I mean, what are you gonna do. Yeah, I was,
it's gonna be Gumbas of unusual size or koopas of
unusual size. It's gonna be one of them. Two. Um,
and I had to do the troop of Koopa's instead
of the Koopa Troopa. So no, I think that. I
think we acquitted ourselves admirably in that nation. And uh,
and it was nice to have like a lighthearted one
(50:39):
because you know what. You know, we're in the beginning
of September aerial, so you know what that means. Right,
We're gonna get a lot of Halloween news. That's right.
It's just gonna be spooky times from here on through
to the end of October. Honestly, like we've been dragging
our feet on the spooky times because they've been starting earlier.
(50:59):
I think a lot of people are kind of longing
for the spooky times because it's a nice relief from
you know, real world issues and problems. And it's a
lot easier to be to pretend to be scared of
spooky ghosts on the screen than it is to look
at the news and go oh man, So I get it.
I totally get I'm feeling the call of Halloween to y'all.
(51:21):
I I am eager for Halloween season. So um, we
even got a little bit of cooler weather in Georgia,
which was you know, fall ish fall adjacent. So yeah,
we're both very eager. We're gonna be covering lots more
Halloween stuff coming up, and um, who knows, maybe I'll
even convince arial to watch another spooky movie or something that. Well,
(51:45):
we'll see how how well that goes. It'll have to
be a time where I'm fine not getting sleep for
like a month. Well, for those of you out there
who are thinking I have an even better Princess Bride
super Mario mash up, or you've got a suggestion like
our listeners, did you know if you've got a suggestion
for two things we should mash up together. Keep in
(52:07):
mind the more different they are, generally speaking, the easier
it is to do a really fun mash up. If
they're really similar, then it feels like we're kind of
just telling the same the story that's already been told again.
But yeah, reach out to us. Let's know, you can
do that over email. We haven't gotten an email for
a while, so we miss you guys. Someone right to us.
(52:28):
It's l n c at I heeart media dot com.
Ellen c at I Heart Media dot com. That's our
email address. Send us stuff. Yes, if you send us
a mash up and we like it, will even read
it on an episode. If you want to just shoot
us a quick hello, you can do so on our
social media on Twitter where ellen c Underscore podcast, and
on Facebook and large on Facebook and Instagram. We are
(52:51):
a large new John colletter. I'm getting ahead of myself. Yeah, well,
I mean that's it's fair like we're all just rushing
toward Halloween at this point. And if you like the episode,
tell your friends, follow us on social media, share the episodes,
you know, subscribe all that fun stuff, write a review
because more people who get involved, the better conversations we have.
(53:13):
We love talking with you, yeah, and I mean otherwise
it's just to be an Ariel talk to each other.
And you know we can do that, but we don't
have to record it. So yeah, you know, we need
your help. And that's it until next time. I'm Jonathan
Spooky Stricklyn and I am Ariel. It's a me kusten m.
(53:57):
The Large Enner Drunk Collider is production of I Heart
Radio and was created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is
the executive producer. This show is produced, edited, and published
by Torri Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
The Large Nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerd
Drunk Collider Podcast, the podcast that's all about the geeky
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with
(00:31):
me as always. Is this super awesome Jonathan Strickland yellow arial?
Do you say that because I'm wearing a yellow shirt?
Oh my gosh, you're wearing a yellow shirt. I didn't
even notice. Uh, Okay, yeah, So hey, Ariel, I got
a question for you. All right, here we go, and
(00:55):
once again we have a scenario leading up to it.
So you are having the freaky of freaky Fridays and
you have found yourself in a body swap with a
fictional character for twenty four hours. Which fictional character would
you want it to be? Okay, So I'm gonna say.
I was gonna say Ben Grim because I really do
(01:17):
want to be Ben Gram in the New Fantastic Four movie.
I'm gonna keep holding onto this hope until they cast him.
But no, it would be the Little Roomaid. I just
got to get it out of my system. I mean,
pre or post transformation pre obviously, Like, there's no point
in changing into another redheaded normal girl. I've had he'd
(01:39):
be engaged to a prince whatever. Whatever. Look, I've had
laryngitis before. It's no fun. But like I liked scuba diving,
but I always I always like get a jaw ache
from the gear. So like this would just allow me
to like scuba dive without having to wear the wetsuit
or the fins or the mouthpiece, just it seems and
(02:04):
then I could just say I've done it, and I
could get all those those menis off my back. Yeah,
I got you, Okay, alright, acceptable answer. How about you? Well,
my answer it's interesting because you came at it from
the perspective of what sort of experiences could I have
as someone else? In twenty four hours? I went the
other way. I thought, who the hell could fix my life?
(02:28):
I want a body swap with Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins
for twenty four hours, because when twenty four hours is up,
my my house is gonna be clean. I'm gonna have
a promotion, I might get to fly a kite. I'm
gonna my life is going to be so much better
after just twenty four hours, and yeah, I mean she's
gonna have a mess to clean up when she comes
(02:48):
back to her body. But I'm just thinking about me
right now. Alright, alright, So, so like that seems good
on the on, like at face value, but realize then
you're to have to live up to the standard that
Mary Poppins set while she was in your body, and
that's going to be frustrating. You're gonna end up being
more like yawn do I mean, I don't care. I
(03:11):
just I just need my house to get clean. Okay.
So like higher, that alone is going to take her
about sixteen hours of the twenty four so and then
she's got to sleep sometime, right, so I think I'll
be fine. Um, but yeah, my my option, my option
is I need someone to get my life in order
because clearly I'm not up to the task. And that's
(03:32):
Mary Poppins. And now we both see how each other's
brains work, and we can move on to the news
items for this week. Yes, and the first one is
that apparently we will be getting a and I say we,
and by we, I mean the world will be getting
a Game of Thrones convention. Yeah, a specific geared to
(03:53):
game of Thrones. Yeah, and Las Vegas, as you said,
and you know, obviously science fiction and fantasy, comic book,
horror conventions. These are things that have been around forever,
and Game of Thrones nearly always has a presence at
any major con these days. But this one is specifically
dedicated to Game of Thrones, and there's something else that
(04:13):
sets it apart from the kinds of conventions that Ariel
and I typically go to, which is that Warner Brothers
is sort of organizing it so and Creation Entertainment, So
it's very official. It's an official con. I would guess
at that point it's not going to be a social
con like Dragon Con is. It'll be closer to a
(04:36):
comic con. But at the same time, there there's enough
subject matter and Game of Thrones that one makes me
really glad that it's not a social convention where everybody
is caused playing Game of Thrones and too, I don't know,
it just the there's a lot of stuff in Game
of Thrones that makes me feel like I wouldn't want
(04:56):
to convention that is solely devoted to that. I would
need a breather. Yeah, so by by you're dancing around it,
we're talking about some of the subject matter, like, well,
first of all, obviously there's an incredible amount of violence.
There's a lot of sexual graphic content as well. In
Game of Thrones. There's also very taboo subjects. There's things like,
(05:16):
you know, multiple characters in the Game of Thrones are incestuous,
which is there's some big questions to be asked about that.
The fact that it's not just it's not just a
pair of characters where that happens. It happens a couple
of different places in the canon of the characters, and
that's ikey as all get out. Um, but yeah, yeah,
(05:39):
it's it's I mean, I'm sure there's gonna be lots
of cause playing. I'm sure all of that sort of
stuff is going to happen. The one thing that I
would say is a huge benefit is that with Warner
Brothers behind it, you can expect that they'll pull some
pretty top tier talent to come in and be part
of it, so that you could you might end up
(06:00):
seeing people who otherwise don't do the convention circuit outside
of something like a San Diego comic con. I mean,
and and also because it is an official convention run
by you know, not not just fans. Uh, You're going
to get some cool behind the scenes information like on
(06:21):
on production and costume design and things like that. I
can see as being very cool story writing things like that.
It's just it's a lot just to be on this
one property. Yeah, convention, I get it, Like I feel
the same way about pretty much any convention that's solely
devoted to a single thing, even for something that has
(06:41):
as much content as Game of Thrones, which has obviously
multiple seasons of shows, the books, you have the upcoming
prequel series of which I'm sure will be heavily promoted
at this event. I bet one of the big attractions
for this event is going to be come and see
an early look before anyone else does. I bet that's
gonna be a thing. It's in Las Vegas, that's not
(07:04):
too far from Los Angeles, so again we can probably
expect to see quite a few celebrities there. And if
you're interested, it's February. Yeah. I will not be going
for a couple of reasons. One, I'm sure I'll still
be concerned about health and safety. Uh. Two I was
I've read all the books in the series that have
(07:26):
been written up to this point, but rapidly decided I
did not want to go any further after reading the
last of those books, and I've yet to watch anything
more than the first episode of the television series. Like
I'm aware of it. I know how it ends in
the series and everything. I know, all because you know,
you can't you can't be a geek and not know,
(07:48):
because it was everywhere because people had such a visceral
reaction to the way that show ended. But um, yeah,
it's just it's not for me. But I hope for
anyone who wants to go that they have an amazing time,
that everyone is really safe, and that ultimately it becomes
a great memory for them me too. And and remember,
(08:09):
if you are going to these conventions to be safe,
test beforehand, make sure you're not carrying COVID, get tested
after two because even if you're vaccinated, you can still
get the delta variant. Um. I was really happy at
Dragon Con the very very brief amount of time that
I was there that most people were in fact wearing
their masks and wearing them correctly, and it wasn't very crowded,
(08:29):
so uh, props to the geeks out there who are
doing it right. And then we're going to talk about
some other geeks that are doing it right. These are
geeks over at Marvel, and that's the doing it right
is that they got shung Chi out there and it's
doing great. Okay, I say doing it right, but honestly, honestly,
thank you, thank you. I'm a master of the seg you.
(08:51):
But yeah, I uh, okay, I say doing it right.
But they did insist on releasing it to theaters, and
that's still kind of kind of ruse me the wrong
way because i haven't seen it full disclosure. I'm waiting
for it to come out on streaming because I'm still
not quite comfortable going to a movie theater. But I'm
glad it's doing well me too. I was hoping to
see Shanchi at the drive in, but the drive in
(09:13):
close to me is not currently having movies outdoors, but
you can still rent their drive in. But we have
a big one in Atlanta, Starlight drive In, and I
thought they were going to have it there, but it's
not playing on any of their screens right now, so
I'm a little disappointed. Something I've heard a lot of
people doing though, is renting out theaters which have like
a maximum capacity when you rent it out, they have
(09:36):
a minimum, but they also have a maximum that isn't
full capacity. So I've got a few friends who have
rented the theater and are having basically private showings for
their friends who are they know are being careful and vaccinated,
which I feel like is a good middle ground. I
wonder how expensive that is. I have not looked into it.
I feel like if if you rent a theater for
a few hundred dollars and then each of your friends
(09:57):
who goes gives you like twenty or thirty bucks for
private showing, you know that's that's you'll probably recoup most
of that cost um. I know one person Atlanta is
doing it, has done it a couple of times. It's
very important to them that this movie succeeds, and it
seems like it is so far. But you know, also
if you do that, then you're less likely to have
(10:18):
those jerk wads in the movie theater who are talking
through the movie you want to listen to. That's true.
So yeah, Hung Chi has been doing well at the
box office all things considered. I mean, like, even outside
of the pandemic, it's done well. But in the pandemic
it's doing incredibly well, which is great, great news for Marvel,
great news for all the people connected to shung Chi. Um.
(10:42):
I know a lot of people who are really jazzed
about it. I am now actively avoiding spoilers as best
I can, despite the fact that I keep seeing like
here's what the ending means, like, I don't can you?
Can you stop recommending this to me? Search engines and
Google because I don't want see it. I still have
to wait forty days before I can watch it. Well,
(11:04):
you know, I'm just happy right now. It is the
number two highest opening of the pandemic, right after Black Widow,
but better than uh, Fast to the Furious Nine, says
F nine. I keep every article I see that says
F nine. I keep thinking Final Fantasy and that's not correct.
Yes that too. But also U shang Chi is the
(11:29):
now top scoring Labor Day holiday weekend movie. The last
person to hold that title was Rob Zombie's Halloween in
two thousand seven. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, uh and
um do the folks that I know who saw it,
their reaction ranged from it's pretty good too, it was amazing,
(11:50):
So I am very much looking forward to seeing it. Um.
The trailers had me convinced when I saw the very
first one, and each trailer that came out after it
made me want to see it more. But I'll be
waiting a little bit longer to see it. But congratulations
to everyone connected to shuan Chi. It's funny because before
we started recording this episode, Arial sent me a tweet
(12:13):
that referenced the the fact that there were a lot
of haters for shaan Chi who are from you know who.
They were all predicting that the movie was gonna bomb
and that it did not do so, which confused me
because I was like, who the heck thought movies were
gonna bomb? And then I fell down a rabbit hole. Aerial.
Let me just tell you, they're a bunch of really
(12:34):
bad faith YouTube channels out there that are just devoted
to crapping all over everything and essentially saying everything is
going to be a big colossal failure. They're they're dumpster
fires of YouTube channels, and they don't they're not built
on anything substantive, Like they don't have any any real
(12:56):
argument for why they say the things they say. And
in fact, I tried watching one of the videos not
for shoan Chi, but for something else didn't know it
was one of those types of channels, got about a
minute in and said, this person has nothing valid to say,
and I don't like the way I feel when I'm
listening to it, so I'm gonna bounce and it just
(13:18):
it shocks me that those channels do so well. They're
do incredibly well, by the way. That's the most depressing thing. Yeah,
I don't I don't understand it. I don't understand it,
but I do like that. The lead actor of shang
Chi tweeted out when he was saying, you know we're
doing great. Uh, you haters are wrong. He used a
(13:39):
picture of himself from when he was doing stock footage shoots.
So it's nice to know that someone who had humble
beginnings Because I sometimes get calls for stock photo shoots.
I haven't done one yet, but somebody who was there
is now a Marvel superhero. That's delightful that he can.
It's also great to see a stock image used in
(14:00):
a meme by the person who's in the stock image. Yeah,
that rarely rarely happens. I can't say never, but it
rarely happens. So that's really cool. Something else that I
think It's really cool is that Lego Star Wars is
doing a Halloween special on Disney. Plus I knew that
they were doing like a Christmas special. They did a
Christmas special. We're getting a Guardians to the Galaxy Christmas special,
(14:23):
but for some reason, the Star Lego Star Wars Terrifying
Tales special eluded me. Yeah. The trailer for this is
absolutely adorable and cheeky and ridiculous, just as you would
expect from Star Wars and from Lego. And it is
a I mean, it's a lot of like you know,
back and forth between Emperor and Vader and that kind
(14:44):
of stuff. Um. I am eager to see it because
it looks very, very silly, like most Lego stuff, and
I typically find those to be refreshingly entertaining. Yes, a
lot of a lot of Halloween spe sholls tend to
be a little bit bleak for me or or mean spirited, um,
(15:07):
and so this just feels not either of those things. Now,
this one I'm looking forward to about as much as
I'm looking forward to the Muppets Haunted Mansion Halloween Special. Yes,
I cannot wait for that either. And one last thing
before we go to break, because this is going to
lead into a discussion we're gonna have after the break.
Is that the Matrix, the new Matrix sequel, has a
(15:30):
website called the Choice is Yours dot What is the
Matrix dot com where if you go to that you
are given the choice of choosing either the Red Pill
or the Blue Pill, and if you choose one of those,
you get one narrative version that kind of introduces YouTube
(15:51):
philosophies behind the Matrix. If you choose the other, you
get a different one. You get a different narrator like
Neil Patrick Harris is the narrator for the Blue Pill,
which is where you know, you want to maintain the
illusion that reality is everything it seems to be, whereas
the Red Pill is it strips away reality and you
see the Matrix. Um, it's an interesting thing. Also by
the way, it knows what what time it is, time
(16:13):
it is, it'll tell you which you know. I feel
I feel a little bad because now we've ruined it
for you, because when I clicked on it, I was like, oh,
that's so cool. It's still pretty cool. It's it's fun. Um,
it's a nice little gimmicky and it's teasing the fact
that a trailer is coming out, and by the time
you listen to this, the trailer will be out. But
(16:33):
for us, for us, we have to wait to the
same day this episode releases. Yeah, so there's a matrix trailer.
What are you listening to us for? There's a matrix trailer. No,
keep listening. You can do both. You can do both.
But but this is kind of gonna lead into a
discussion We're going to have it just a second about
different gimmicks that various movie studios and TV studios have
(16:56):
used in order to convince you to either watch something
or purchase some media, or that you know the next
big thing is going to be this new gimmick, when
in fact it may not be. But we're gonna talk
about that after we take this break. So, Ariel, are
(17:26):
you familiar with like those gimmicky nineteen fifties sci fi
movies where they would do all sorts of things like
put little vibrating buzzers in the seats so that they
would buzz and cause people to scream at at pivotal
points of really cheap horror movies. So I'm familiar with
(17:47):
things doing that. For instance, there are certain movie theaters
that have like both speakers in the seats, so it'll
vibrate when you watch the movie. That's how I watched
The Martian. I wasn't aware that that was happening as
early as the nineteen fifties. Yeah, like the Tingler was
the name of this one sci fi horror movie where
the idea was that you would feel this electric tingle
(18:08):
if the critter were to latch onto you, and so uh,
some theaters that were promoting the film installed they were
just a little vibrating motors, but it would make you
feel like you were getting like buzzed, like a hand
hand buzzer like hate. But it's just you know, it's
not really a shock, it just vibrates. But yeah, that
that that was a real gimmick, And like there were
(18:31):
a whole bunch of them that came out of the
fifties and sixties. Then you get up to like the
late seventies and into the eighties where you started seeing
three D film have its first real push, uh or
it really was a second rule push, but you saw
the big three D phase. Because I remember as a
kid seeing Jaws three D and a few other three
(18:54):
D films um that were just ridiculous and very gimmicky.
There's always that moment where someone for no good reason
is reaching out towards the camera so that their their
arm is coming right at you. Um. Three D has
gotten better over the years. Three D movies still gives
me a headache, though. Yeah, I'm not a big fan.
(19:15):
And that was something that we saw really pushed hard
in the early to mid two thousand's, Right like all
the TVs. If you wanted a new TV, it was
almost guaranteed to be three D ready, if not a
full three D television with you know, super expensive glasses
to go with it. Um. Yeah. And so these are
(19:36):
all kinds of things that we see studios throw in
either to create some sort of perceived extra value to
the viewing experience or and this is the other big one,
discourage piracy because if you throw in gimmicks, it makes
it way harder for someone to sneak a cam quarter
in and get like a cheap o bootleg version. I
(19:58):
was about to say, like you could. Your experience would
not be nearly as cool though, but you still could.
Well if it were if it were like three D,
then you would lose a lot of the effects. You
would just have like this really blurry image. Um, if
it were forty eight frames per second, you might not
have like, you might have a lot of jitter in
(20:19):
your screen because the refresh rate of your camera would
not be matching up to the UH frame rate of
the film. Um. But if it was the Tinkler, you
would just be forgiven an annoyance. So I feel like
that would be a boon in that case for all
those people in the fifties bringing their cam quarters into
the movie theaters. Well, I want to ask you if
you a few questions about various gimmicks, and then we
(20:42):
can we can have to see where this conversation goes.
So first of all, all right, what is your opinion
about three D? You said it gives you a headache?
Do you other like do you actively avoid seeing a
movie in the three D version? Do you seek it out?
What's your what's your go to? So I tend to
like to watch movies and two D. I did watch
(21:03):
Avatar in three D and it was very pretty. Um.
I prefer three D when it's on like a ride
like a Disney right, like the Avatar Flights of Passage
or the Muppet for D Theater um or a Bug's
life or something like that. Um all Disney rights, right,
That's that's where I encounter the most three D for
D experiences in a general movie theater. Um, I just
(21:29):
it gives me a headache. I don't mind some moments.
If there is a way that they could give me
a couple of moments where I could experience that without
having to wear the glasses the entire time, I might
appreciate it. The other thing is movie screens to me,
are so large, and when you put on three D glasses,
they block part of that view, So now you're also
trying to see the entire screen through these very small windows,
(21:49):
and I think that's part of what contributes to my headache.
What about you? Do you like three D movies? Actively
avoid three D for for some of the reasons you mentioned.
I also find that three D often means that you're
getting less light and the glasses are blocking some light,
so the screen looks darker than it normally would, so
(22:11):
you're not getting as bright a picture. UM. I don't
like the effects of three D most of the time.
I just find them distracting rather than adding to the experience.
There are certain times where I'm like, Okay, I want
to see this in three D because that's the whole Like,
that's the whole thing of it. Like seeing something like
gravity and three D would be pretty spectacular and probably terrifying. Right. So,
(22:37):
I don't think I saw it in three D, but
I think uh so, I typically I avoid it, and um,
I also can get a headache from it. I don't
really care for that experience. Um so, I I'm not
a big three D fan and I typically will go
with a two D over a three D any day
of the week. How about forty eight frames per second?
(22:58):
I know, I think you and I both saw The
Hobbit in forty eight frames per second as part of
a fellow friends. Well wait, no, it was your birthday,
wasn't it. I think so it was your birthday. We
went to see the first of the Hobbit films at
forty eight frames per second. What's your opinion of the
forty frames per second on movies? I think in a
(23:19):
movie experience, especially one where there's a lot of c
G I it allows you to see extra detail. Um.
I liked it as far as the way that movies
are shot, as long as it's it's complimentary to the story.
That's trying to be told or it enhances it. I'm
fine with that. You know, there are certain movies that
I really like when they shoot on old classic Kodak
(23:39):
film too, as long as it for there's a story
and allows me to see their vision the way that
they wanted to be seen outside of three D. Okay, Well,
I hate forty frames per second. I think it's an
abomination that never be is because everything looks fake to
me at forty frames per second. When we saw The Hobbit,
everything looks like it was a set. Like I think
(24:02):
of the Lord of the Ring high high definition televisions. Well,
if it's a high definition television that has a high
refresh rate, that's effectively the same sort of thing as
forty frames per second where you're removing motion blur and
that kind of thing. See for me, when we watched
The Hobbit, I felt like, this is weird because everything
looks like a set and everything like all the outfits
(24:23):
look like costumes, and everything looks like like it's fake.
And I know it's fake. I mean, I know it's
a movie. I know it's fake. But Lord of the
Fake Okay, but Lord of the Rings made it look
way more real. Like the costumes didn't like costumes, they
look like these are the clothes these characters where right.
The settings didn't look like they were sets, they look
(24:44):
like they were real locations. Um. And in the Hobbits
part for the most part, But for the Hobbit I
just felt like everything looked It felt more like you
were watching like a live action production on a very
very expensive stage set, but not not like it was
an actual location. So I finds per second really distracting.
(25:08):
I'm glad it did not become the standard, despite the
fact that that was what everyone was pushing for at
the time, just as I'm glad that three D hasn't
become the standard. Um. Something that I've never experienced, though,
I'm curious. I'm sure you have a real because you
tend to go to the movies more frequently than I do. Um.
I have never gone to see a film on an
(25:30):
Imax screen where it does that thing where the movie
expands from the normal view to the full Imax view
for certain sequences. Yeah, what's that like? Yeah? UM, it
can be really cool. Uh for me, That's that's one
of those changes that unless I'm paying attention to it
I just really don't notice. Now, like if the story
(25:50):
is crap, then you're going to start paying attention to
the technical stuff, or at least that's what I do.
But um, yeah, in that instance, my experience has in
it kind of expands and I'm paying attention to the story.
So when that moment happens where you know, all of
a sudden you fall off the cliff or whatnot, it
moves you in a way that you did not expect
(26:11):
to be moved in that moment, and it's it makes
that moment a little bit more poignant. I think. I
think it's cool. I really like that there are there
are movies that I will opt to see on an
Imax just to get some of that feeling like I'm
there without having to do the three D. I actually
really like Imax films for that reason. If if they're
um conducive to that. It's funny because, like I said,
(26:34):
I've never done it. I have yet to go see
a film on an Imax screen that has that component.
Like I know that one of the bat at least
one of the Batman films did that where a couple
of sequences expanded into full Imax mode and that Uh,
It's always made me curious what that transition is like
and whether or not I would find it distracting, like
(26:55):
oh were, because I think about like like movies where
they have that built in as part of the style,
where the screen will expand or change shape in some way.
I want to say that Quentin Tarantino has done that,
but I could be wrong. I'm just trying to think
of movies where that has happened, where like the framing changes,
(27:16):
and I wonder if that's just what it would feel like,
but on a really big scale, like is it something
that is like a transition or is it just an
abrupt change? I mean, I feel like so when you
go to the movie theater, or at least if I'm
remembering correctly from way back when I went to movie
theaters two years ago. So like when you're watching the
pre movie like Real whatever it is, the commercials and
(27:40):
the trivia and all that, it's on a smaller frame rate,
and then when the trailers start, the curtains slowly start
to expand. And so that's at least what I have experienced,
is that's kind of what's happening, is so like it's
slowly your your field of vision is slowly expanding, so
it's not switching straight from like whatever the normal movie.
The aspect ratio is too full imax, like in a
(28:02):
blink of an eye. It's more of a gradual transition
in my experience. Now I can't say that that's always
the case, but well, I mean, like I've never experienced
at all. So that's why I was like, and I
realized that asking you that when you're not specifically going
to a movie to take note, it's kind of unfair
because it's it's really it's relying on memory, and memory
is incredibly you know, subjective and can be changed and stuff. Well,
(28:25):
what are some of the the like like gimmicks that
various studios have used that you found particularly compelling. I
can think of one example of something that a studio
did that I thought was incredibly brilliant. Uh, but I'll
I'll go after you go. So the one that comes
(28:47):
for forefront of my mind, I've already mentioned it. When
I went to see The Martian. It was in an
extra fancy Imax theater and all the seats had like
these both speakers built into them, so that when like
spaceships are taking off, I got the rumble, and it
was very immersive and without being too distracting, which meant
(29:10):
that or uncomfortable, which meant that I almost felt like
I had I had more of a stake in what
was happening to the character. Now, The Martian is a
fantastic movie, and I already had a stake in what
was happening to Matt Damon in that movie, but it
kind of brought me in a little bit more and
it made it feel it made the stakes feel a
little bit more real, understandable because of that sensory involvement.
(29:33):
And so that was I think one of my favorites. Um,
I don't know. Otherwise, I guess I could say, like
when movies use practical effects instead of c G I
nowadays it's shouldn't be a gimmick, but I feel like
it is and I like it better. I got you
practical effects. I think practical effects always went out over
c G. I like c G I is important and
it can really enhance a film, but when you're getting
(29:56):
into certain effects, there's nothing like having something that has actual,
real physical form inside a camera frame. UM. So I
was thinking of two actually, one that I thought was
brilliant was the way Blair Witch Project promoted itself by
creating an entire website filled with stuff that supported the
(30:17):
narrative that the movie was a found footage piece, like
it was actual, like this is something that actually happened.
In The website had tons of extra detail that doesn't
even come out in the movie. But if you read
the website, if you explored it before you saw the film,
little things in the film suddenly had a much bigger
(30:37):
impact on you because you understood the significance. Whereas in
the movie, if you didn't go to the website, like
you could still enjoy it as a film, but those
little those little almost like easter eggs, wouldn't have an
impact on you. Um. But my favorite, my favorite promotion
that I am aware of, and I have to stress
(30:57):
that I did not physically experience this one, was when
the American version of Ringoo The Ring, when it was
first coming out, there was some sort of screening where
I think people got to see a little bit of
the Ring, or maybe they even were watching the full movie.
But after the film was over, people are coming out
(31:20):
of the theaters going back to their cars, and when
they did, some of the cars had a VHS cassette
tape left on the windshield and if they brought it
home and played it, it was the video from The Ring.
I was like, for a horror movie, that is such
a brilliant promotion, Like I get that, it's it's incredibly
(31:43):
it's incredibly like targeted, right, It's not like it's not
like you're getting a very widespread but the word of
mouth on that was insane. And then in the Internet age,
word of mouth can go really far, really fast. So
I was like, what a truly innovative approach. And we've
seen similar things like alternate reality games. I think we're
(32:06):
gonna have to have a full discussion about alternate reality
games at some point because I took I took part
in a couple of the really early ones. Um and
I would like Eternal Darkness. That's not even no, that's
that's just that's just a video game. I'm talking things
like uh, oh gosh, what was the Bees one? There's
there's one that was related to Halo. There was one
(32:26):
that was related to the to the movie Artificial Intelligence.
I guess Pokemon Go would that's augmented reality. No, alternate
reality is it's kind of like augmented reality. Alternate reality
games are where you have a game that is dependent
upon some fictional universe, such as Gotham because one of
the Dark Knight did this one um. Or it could
(32:49):
be like Halo, it could be the world of artificial
intelligence like AI that that that film, and it also
involves you doing real world act is. It might involve
you having to go to a real world location, pick
up a real world telephone, and have a real world
conversation with a fictional character within the game, and then
(33:10):
you report back to an online group and say what happened,
and you all try to solve a mystery together. It's incredible. Uh,
you don't see it as frequently because, as it turns out,
it's very hard to do well. But it's it's sort
of the thing that I would say lead into the
popularity of stuff like escape rooms further down the line. Yeah,
I've had friends who run tabletops similarly, back back to
(33:33):
the doing that sort of thing for movie. So like
with Blair Witch or The Ring. You know, I think
it's really cool that they put that much thought into
the world surrounding their media. Um, but it it can
be a little scary. I mean, if you look back
to the War of the World's, like, that's one of
the first instances I can think of where they tried
(33:54):
to make people think it was a real thing, and
it was like it caused a lot of freak out.
People didn't realize this radio show was just a radio show. Um,
And so like, I don't know, it's I think it's
really cool. And at the same time, I'm like, uh,
do I really want life imitating this art? No? Well,
(34:15):
and and to be fair, I mean, like the radio thing,
I think that gets drummed up a lot. I don't
think it was nearly as big, like everyone makes it
out as if there were widespread panics too in response
to the world War of the World's when in reality
there was that was that appeared to mostly be something
(34:35):
that was a fabrication of the media. But to your point,
to your point, um, something like coming out of a
movie theater and seeing just a random VHS tape left
on your windshield, especially if you didn't go like I don't,
I can't. I think it must have been a promotion
before the movie came out, which means that these were
people who didn't see the ring. They just came out
(34:57):
of a regular theater and there was this videotape sitting
on their their windshield. They take it home and play it,
and then you get the super creepy video with with
a little thing at the end that gave either a
link or a time of when the film was coming out.
And uh, like that to me would be really unsettling,
even thoughing that it was just a totally random kind
of experience and that I wasn't targeted. Like, the brain
(35:21):
works differently, right, you might know, quote unquote deep down
in your heart, like this was just a random little
movie promotion. But there's that reptile part of your brain saying,
but what if it's seven days? Yes, yeah, Well that
reptile part of my brain can be pretty strong, especially
with scary movies. That's that's why I limit myself on them. Uh.
(35:43):
Speaking of which, I'm now starting to get creeped out
about this conversation. So let's take a break. Ye, it's
natural chatting with me, Ariel. I'm sorry, it's just kind
of happens now. It's fine, We'll take a break. I'm
going to regroup and then we'll do a mashup that's
a little bit happier. Maybe Okay, we're back an Ariel,
(36:19):
I believe that the mashup we're about to do comes
to us courtesy from a listener suggestion. Yes, so this
is this is a listener suggestion. Um, actually it is
a suggestion from one of our listeners kids. So thank
you Tip, Penny Elliott and Aaron for this suggestion. We
are mashing up The Princess Bride with Super Mario Brothers,
(36:41):
the video game, not the movie. Um, the movie is
a creature of its own that doesn't need a mash up. Well,
you might think differently, and if you do, please let
us know. And if I do, you do let us know.
Keep in mind, I know about the Super Mario Brothers movie.
I've seen little bits of it. I've never watched it
all the way through. And if you make us do
a mashup, I'm gonna have to watch it, which means
(37:04):
I'll be forwarding my therapists bills to you. That might
be worth it alone. So I think probably most of
our listeners are familiar with both properties, but if you're not.
The Princess Bride is a movie from I guess the eighties. Um,
where uh, it's a Grandpa reading a story to his
sick grandson, and um, you probably know about it because
(37:27):
Deadpool recently did a mash up with it. Um, but
you know. The story is about a farm boy who
falls in love with a girl who comes engaged to
prince when the farm boy goes missing, and then it
turns out he's a pirate, and there's high jinks. It's
low budget, it's kind of cheesy, but that's the whole
charm of it. So I know some people who love
(37:48):
it and other people who hate it. I am a
person who loves it. I think it's a perfect movie.
It is. It is charming, it is silly. It doesn't
take itself too seriously, which I think is the secret
to its real success. Has incredible performances from some truly
gifted and funny actors, as an amazing performance from Andre
(38:11):
the Giant as physic. It is is a great movie.
It's also it's also a book. It's based off a book,
and the book itself is also really charming, and a
lot of the stuff that's in the movie is directly
taken from the book. There are some things like Billy
Crystal goes off script a little bit for some of
his stuff, but to great effect. So and of course
(38:31):
Super Mario Brothers. If you don't know what that is,
I don't know why you're listening to a geeky podcast,
but yeah, one of the most popular video game franchises
of all time. Mario and Luis Gi Mario apparently their
last name is Mario. Um. They are plumbers and bro well,
no one talks about being plumbers anymore but their brothers,
and they have a whole series of different video games
(38:53):
where they go on various adventures, either trying to rescue
a character called Princess Peach, or maybe chasing spooks out
of a ghost house if you're Luigi, or maybe trying
to run down people in a little go kart in
Mario Kart, or maybe trying to just smash the heck
out of him and Super Smash Brothers. But yeah, those
are the two properties we're going to be mashing together. Yes,
(39:16):
and I'm gonna let you go first. All right, My
mashup is called Super Princess Brothers. Buttercup has a problem.
Her beloved plumber Wesley was lost in the Sewers. He
was taken captive by the dread Gumba Roberts and as
we all know, Dredd Gumba never takes prisoners. Despondent, she
(39:38):
barely had the energy to protest when Prince Bowserdink claimed
her as his fiancee. But unbeknownst to Buttercup, but benknownst
to us, Wesley did not in fact die. Instead, he
spent five years surviving and the harshest of environments. I mean,
have you seen the Mushroom Kingdom. They got bullets with
(39:59):
eyeballs flying around, and bombs with feet and stuff. Over
that time, he perfected the fireball throw, experimented with mushrooms,
but this is a family show, so we'll skip that,
and learned how to turn into a raccoon, you know,
typical adventurer stuff. All the while Buttercup despaired at the
prospect of being bowser Dink's wife. One day, when Buttercup
(40:22):
was riding her horse, the one activity that brought her peace,
she came across a troop of kopas, but not a
kopa trooper. There was one very small koopa, one very
very large koopa, and one Spanish Koopa. Pardon me, madam,
says the little kopa. But we are poor circus performers.
Could you tell us where the nearest town is. There's
(40:43):
nothing to hear nothing from miles, says Buttercup. Then there
will be no one to hear you, scream, says the
little one, And then the big one jumps up in
the air and bobs Buttercup on the head and a
coin pops out from somewhere. But it's best not to
question where. Next thing, you know, the Kopas are on
a boat going over water, and we hear this song
Dude do do, Dude, do do do? But then the
(41:09):
Spanish Koopa keeps asking if someone could possibly be following them,
to which the little Kopa says, that's not at all conceivable,
and the Spanish one says, it's just that when I
look behind us and something is there, and they look
and there's a figure swimming and hopping in the water
and avoiding fish and occasionally throwing fireballs at stuff, which
makes this weird little coconut plink some when they hit. Anyway,
(41:31):
what follows is the Kopas and their captured princess make
a run for it, and they reach the mushrooms of insanity.
But we're not going to talk about those because this
is a family show. Anyway, They try to escape, and
the swimming figure becomes a jumping figure and it leaps
up and gains ground on the three and so the
Spanish one stays behind to try and stop the figure,
(41:53):
but the Spanish one fails, and then the very large
Kopa stays behind and is also unsuccessful. And eventually the
little figure in black runs up to a big fort
and goes inside. Do do Do Do Do Do Do
Do Do Do, And he navigates a maze like structure
and avoids traps and fireballs and stuff until he finds
the little koopa at the end, and after a quick
(42:15):
battle of wits, manages to dump the koopa into lava
and to go into the room beyond, where he finds
talking mushroom. But we won't talk about him because you
know family show, right, But the talking mushroom says, sorry,
but your princess is in another castle, all right, So
I'm gonna be straight with you. Like the rest of
(42:36):
this movie is that the figure in black, which is
obviously Wesley in the dread Gumba disguise, actually has to
clear out castles, only to be told this princess is
in another one. But this is true love, Do you
think this happens every day? No, the answer is no.
So he keeps on going. He dodges critters and bullets
and bombs and fireballs and chomping plants in the fire swamp,
(42:59):
and geo Us is gumbas of unusual size, and he
eventually gets a one up so that when he quote
unquote dies, he's only mostly dead and he actually has
an extra life, so he's okay. Now, admittedly this does
get a little repetitive. Okay, I'm gonna be straight with you,
but it's okay because somewhere around the SEV completion, Mark
(43:19):
Wesley the dread Cumba uses a warp zone to skip
ahead a bit, and so he goes straight for bowser
Dak and ultimately the two face off and Wesley is
able to dodge like a whole bunch of fireballs, and
he terrifies Bowserdink into submission, and he finally reunites with Buttercup,
who was very happy to discover her lost love is
actually fine, and the two go on to open up
(43:40):
a moderately successful plumbing business until some crazy rabbit like
creatures invade the Kingdom, but that's a story for another time.
Did you just serve Rabbit Rabbits into it, because there's
a Rabbit Rabbits and Super Mario crossover game. Did you
did you not know that it's squad based tactic al
(44:00):
So it's like you literally are doing turn based tactical
squad combat with your Mario characters against a bunch of
rabid characters and it's hilarious. I bow to your geeky knowledge,
my friend. All right, I know that everyone out there
is just as eager as I am to hear Arial's
amazing mash up because it's dedicated. I guarantee you it's
(44:23):
going to be better than mine. But before we do that,
let's take this quick break. So there are a couple
common threads between ours, but they made me laugh. So, uh,
(44:44):
mine is the plumber bride. Mario was doing his normal
thing like he normally did. You see, while his profession
was plumber, his job was to free the Mushroom people
from King Cooper's evil rain. But to do so, he
needed to find and free Princess Peach. But just like
Lucy with the football, King Coopa a k. A. Bowser
for people who don't know, kept yanking the princess away
from Mario's grasp. Mario had searched all the castles in
(45:07):
the Mushroom Kingdom to no avail, and that's when he
came upon it, a green tunnel he had never seen before.
Usually this leads towards positive discoveries, so without a second thought,
Mario jumped in. When he was in the pipe, Mario
heard a loud, screeching noise, and all of a sudden,
a giant eel appeared and he had to fight it.
When he came out the other side, he was in
(45:28):
a level of the Mushroom Kingdom he had never seen before.
There was like a sign on the wall. It said
pit of Despair Comma guilder. Uh. But it looked way
different from anything he had ever seen in the Mushroom Kingdom.
He didn't know services could have such texture to them.
And it only had one villain in the room, a
bizarre bipedal figure who had a face so pale it
(45:51):
must have been a shy guy, but again so detailed.
Then the figure said, don't even try. Don't even try
to escape. Uh. On the less, the princess didn't seem
to be in the room, so escape Mario must. He
jumped on the shy guy who did not crumple like
a shy guy normally would and escaped. Once out of
(46:12):
the pit of despair, Mario found himself in what a
sign was calling the fire swamp. I mean swamp. It
was full of flame balls and exceptionally hair and gumbas
of unusual size. Uh sound familiar. Uh, this must mean
it's true. All right. This felt familiar to Mario as well,
but he quickly escaped because he used to fireballs and
(46:34):
gumbas and things. But just on the other side of
the swamp, Mario ran into some familiar faces, but the
familiar faces didn't seem to recognize him. You see, Luigi
had traded in his green overalls for a vest and
had somehow gotten scars on the side of his face
and grown out his hair, which was exceptionally bizarre to
Mario because he had just seen Luigi this morning. Along
(46:55):
with him, was towed in a fancy doublet and Yoshi
if Yoshi were a small giant. Mario said, hey, let's
find the princess, but the three blocked his path. Toad
said that Mario could look for the princess if he
could pick the box with contents that weren't Io Kaine
powder Mario did and towed quote unquote wilted. But before
(47:19):
Mario could mourn the loss of Toad, Luigi said, bulky
ducky I'm Luindigo Montoya, you killed my father prepared to die,
and he and the giant Yoshi, who Luindigo called Yoshig,
attacked Mario. Mario bested them, but instead of jumping on
them and killing them, as he normally would do, he
offered them the opportunity to join him, especially since he
(47:43):
hadn't killed Luigi and his father, Papa Mario was retired
and living good in a distant part of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Uh Lu Windigo and Yoshik agreed to join Mario. They
had nothing better to do now that their leader was wilted.
But they told Mario he had to hurry if he
wanted to save the princess because she was going to
marry the king and Guilder. This was odd to Mario.
(48:04):
He didn't recall that being a part of King Cooper's plan,
and where the heck is Guilder this in this the
Mushroom Kingdom. Despite his confusion, they traveled along and stopped
at a merchant along the way to the princess. So
Mario could get a power up, he bought a cloak
called the Holocaust Cloak. However, when they got to the castle,
much to Mario's dismay, instead of giving him flying powers,
(48:25):
when he put the cloak on, it just caught on fire.
This is not what he wanted, but it was enough
to scare the Cooper men out from outside the castle
away and they were able to get in to try
to save the princess. Mario expected a castle full of
the normal pitfalls he usually experienced, bob bombs, bullet bills,
prana plants, but oddly he didn't see any of those.
(48:47):
And when he punched the castle bricks, it didn't free
any want to give him money. It just hurt his
hand man. This new level stinks. Mario thought the group
were almost done searching the castle and about to give
up when Mario came across Count Boogan. But this boo
didn't stop when he looked at it. What kind of
boo was this? Nonetheless, between the three in the party,
(49:08):
they were able to feat Count Boogin and find and
defeat King Cooperdink and locate the princess. Yeah, but when
they got to the princess, it wasn't Peach, it was
some princess Buttercup, and Buttercup was equally dismayed that this
wasn't her Wesley but some short workman with the gross mustache. However,
a rescue was a rescue, and they escaped. Mario was
(49:30):
tired of this new realm, so far from what he
was familiar with, and searched high and low for the
Pipe to return back to the Mushroom Kingdom. When he
finally found it, Princess Buttercup refused to leave Gilder. She
had to wait for her Wesley, So Mario returned to
the Mushroom Kingdom alone to search for the true princess.
It's a speech who could save all the people in
the Mushroom Kingdom. That was his job, after all. Later,
(49:53):
Mario decided to return to Guilder to see how things
were going with Buttercup and the strange versions of his friends.
But the Pipe was no longer there, and no one
knew what he was talking about. Recalled being there with
him the end. Yeah, you know, I like that there
were similarities, but not nothing too gratuitous. Yeah yeah, well,
(50:18):
I mean, what are you gonna do. Yeah, I was,
it's gonna be Gumbas of unusual size or koopas of
unusual size. It's gonna be one of them. Two. Um,
and I had to do the troop of Koopa's instead
of the Koopa Troopa. So no, I think that. I
think we acquitted ourselves admirably in that nation. And uh,
and it was nice to have like a lighthearted one
(50:39):
because you know what. You know, we're in the beginning
of September aerial, so you know what that means. Right,
We're gonna get a lot of Halloween news. That's right.
It's just gonna be spooky times from here on through
to the end of October. Honestly, like we've been dragging
our feet on the spooky times because they've been starting earlier.
(50:59):
I think a lot of people are kind of longing
for the spooky times because it's a nice relief from
you know, real world issues and problems. And it's a
lot easier to be to pretend to be scared of
spooky ghosts on the screen than it is to look
at the news and go oh man, So I get it.
I totally get I'm feeling the call of Halloween to y'all.
(51:21):
I I am eager for Halloween season. So um, we
even got a little bit of cooler weather in Georgia,
which was you know, fall ish fall adjacent. So yeah,
we're both very eager. We're gonna be covering lots more
Halloween stuff coming up, and um, who knows, maybe I'll
even convince arial to watch another spooky movie or something that. Well,
(51:45):
we'll see how how well that goes. It'll have to
be a time where I'm fine not getting sleep for
like a month. Well, for those of you out there
who are thinking I have an even better Princess Bride
super Mario mash up, or you've got a suggestion like
our listeners, did you know if you've got a suggestion
for two things we should mash up together. Keep in
(52:07):
mind the more different they are, generally speaking, the easier
it is to do a really fun mash up. If
they're really similar, then it feels like we're kind of
just telling the same the story that's already been told again.
But yeah, reach out to us. Let's know, you can
do that over email. We haven't gotten an email for
a while, so we miss you guys. Someone right to us.
(52:28):
It's l n c at I heeart media dot com.
Ellen c at I Heart Media dot com. That's our
email address. Send us stuff. Yes, if you send us
a mash up and we like it, will even read
it on an episode. If you want to just shoot
us a quick hello, you can do so on our
social media on Twitter where ellen c Underscore podcast, and
on Facebook and large on Facebook and Instagram. We are
(52:51):
a large new John colletter. I'm getting ahead of myself. Yeah, well,
I mean that's it's fair like we're all just rushing
toward Halloween at this point. And if you like the episode,
tell your friends, follow us on social media, share the episodes,
you know, subscribe all that fun stuff, write a review
because more people who get involved, the better conversations we have.
(53:13):
We love talking with you, yeah, and I mean otherwise
it's just to be an Ariel talk to each other.
And you know we can do that, but we don't
have to record it. So yeah, you know, we need
your help. And that's it until next time. I'm Jonathan
Spooky Stricklyn and I am Ariel. It's a me kusten m.
(53:57):
The Large Enner Drunk Collider is production of I Heart
Radio and was created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan Strickland is
the executive producer. This show is produced, edited, and published
by Torri Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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