March 4, 2021 • 45 mins
After a delightful stroll through some fun trailers, we discuss video games, their violence, and out thoughts on when you aren't given an opt out from that part of the story. Plus Marvel and Amblin Entertainment served up this weeks mash-up idea to us on a silver platter, and who were we to say no.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerdrunk Lighter Podcast is a production of I
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
(00:28):
we are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me
as always is Jonathan will never catch up on all
of the geeky media. He hasn't watched yet. Strickland. That
is the most apt name you have ever given me,
an Ariel for you, I have a question, what is
(00:50):
your favorite fictional spaceship the Tartist. Do you really think
the Tartest as a spaceship? It's the tardest? I mean, okay,
that's fair. I should yes, and I shouldn't deny. Moya
interesting okay, cool, alright, I see where you sentient? Yes,
(01:14):
say you're going with the sentient spaceships. That's interesting. So
you're you're like, you like the spaceships that are kind
of characters. Yeah, I mean two thousand and one of
Space Odyssey. Aside, like, being alone in space is super sad,
so you really want something that can interact with you
and keep you company. So for those who don't know
(01:35):
Moya is a Leviathan, which is a sentient ship that
the crew in the show far Escape travel on Far
Scape is a great show. This is this is fascinating
to me. It really I did not expect that answer,
and it's a really like this one makes me want
to jump into a geek conversation, but that's for later
in the episode and we're not even talking about spaceships.
(01:58):
Then the thing that prompted this was that, you know,
NASA landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars recently, so it
just got me thinking about spaceships, Um, what is what
is your spaceship? Then? So there too, and they're from
the two big Star franchises, so from Star Wars. The
(02:18):
Tie Interceptor is my Yeah, it's just it looks wicked.
But then my favorite Star Trek spaceship is the U. S. S. Reliant,
which is the the ship that con flies in the
Wrath of Cohn. It's the one that has the disk
and the two Nay cells are underneath it, and I
(02:41):
always just thought that that was such a cool ship design.
It is, but doesn't it make you like a villain
just to fly it? I mean Tie Interceptors. My other
favorite ones, so like, you know, the bad guys get
get really cool spaceships. I mean that's it's not my fault.
They s all of their money on R and D
(03:01):
and not enough on like therapy. It's it's all on
aesthetics and none of it's on shields. That's the real problem.
But today we've got a lot of stories to cover
and then we have a conversation and then a mash
up believe it or not. So I guess like a
regular episode. Yeah, it is, well, you know, not like
last episode where it was all news. But let's go
(03:22):
ahead and jump into the news. Starting with San Diego
Comic Con officially announced Monday of the week that we're
recording this that they are not having their in person
uh convention, at least not at the normal time. They
might look at something smaller or different in November. Yeah,
(03:43):
and this isn't a huge surprise. Also E three and
Anime Expo, while they have not as we're recording this,
they have not officially come out and said anything, but
the city of Los Angeles has no booking for them,
and that would have then if they were really going
to be happening in person. Um. E three not a
(04:04):
big surprise. Actually, I think E three it would. I'll
be curious to see if the three ever comes back
as a real physical event anyway, because that was already
kind of on the fade out before the pandemic hit.
You couldn't really go there unless you were media, right, well,
you couldn't, But then a couple of years ago they
opened it up where they sold tickets to the public.
(04:25):
But that meant that if you were media and you
were trying to cover the event, it suddenly got much
harder to get your hands on anything because there were
just so many people there. But E three had been
kind of suffering for a while. Uh, and there are
a lot of folks in the video game space who
think it may not ever come back, not in the
form that it used to have, especially since a lot
(04:47):
of these companies have found it easier to hold their
own press events. They're not, you know, beholden to a
specific schedule or anything. And Anime Expo they haven't announced anything,
but they did do a virtual event last year, so
chances are we're going to see something like that again
this year. Personally, while I totally understand how it's a
bummer if you were really hoping to go to one
(05:08):
of these things. I think it's the best idea to have,
because we are not, by any stretch of the imagination,
out of the woods, as far as COVID is concerned.
So we understand the bummer, But I think that this
was the right call. I do as well. You know,
if if we do it virtual this year, hopefully by
next year we'll be we'll be back to in person
(05:29):
at least for a comic con. I know that, you know,
people really like having that camaraderie of being in the
convention hall and dressing up and all that. Not. It's
not nearly a socialist dragon con. We've gone over that before.
So I will digress, and we'll move on to um
our next bit of news, which is all of the
trailers ever, well not all. We picked a few trailers
(05:49):
that came out this week that we liked. We got
we got a whole convoy of trailers. Con convoy, Okay,
yes we do. And the first one is Army of
the Dead, which both Jonathan and I separately watched and said, huh,
this looks like Dead Rising, the movie. I mean, it
really does. Like I didn't even see your note when
(06:10):
and so I had just turned it on and watched it,
and I thought, is this actually Dead Rising instead of
another of the Dead series. So Snyder had previously done
the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which is the
one that's set in the shopping mall, and now he
just decided, what if we do that again, but you
(06:31):
know bigger and said it in Las Vegas, and so
Army of the Dead takes place in Sin City, Las Vegas.
And it does look like it looks like Dead Rising.
It does, honestly though, it looks so I'm surprise, surprise.
I never watched DNA the Dead. I know I need to.
I need to watch You need to watch the original
(06:52):
Dawn of the Dead. The second Don of the Dead
is the remake isn't necessarily bad, It just kind of
it kind of turns everything into an action movie as
opposed to like a social commentary movie. I didn't even
watch even Dead until the last ten years, so but
it is on my list. You know, I do feel
(07:13):
like that is a piece of media that I just
I am lacking having not watched it. Um but this
looks kind of tongue in cheek, and I the trailer
makes me want to watch it. And so you know,
after we we talk about Zax, and after Jonathan and
I have have been less and excited about the Zack
Snyder Justice League. Uh cut, you know, I'm I'm happy
(07:36):
to be excited about something that he's working on coming out.
He really does great visuals and action scenes and all that,
and this movie will really bode well for that. Yeah,
it looks like it's going to have some very entertaining
visuals in it. I am not yet sold on it.
I mean, I like a lot of the people who
are in it, but I'm not yet sold on it.
I'll have to wait and look for another trailer. I
(07:57):
gotta say. It definitely was better than one of the
other trailers you sent me that we aren't talking about,
which is called The Rookies. Uh. If you do want
to watch the Rookies trailer, just watch that. You know,
like we we aren't going to cover it, but it
you have to see it to really appreciate how bad
it looks. Yes, yes, well, um, maybe I'll add that
(08:19):
in our show notes as a bonus on our episode
www abou large Ener drink lider dot com this week.
All right, So the next trailer we've got to talk
about his shadow and bone and this is There was
a teaser that came out a while ago for it
that really showed absolutely nothing, and I was like, Oh,
another y a fantasy, blah blah. But this trailer actually
looks pretty good to me. Uh yeah, you know it's
(08:40):
it's based off of book series, and I have never
read the book series, so I came into this not
knowing anything about what it was, what I should expect
to see. But the visuals were really interesting. And moreover,
I don't know if you scrolled down to look at
any of the comments, I was curious, but the comments
(09:01):
I saw were really positive, Like people who were big
fans of the books seemed genuinely excited by the trailer
and seem to feel like it is capturing what made
them love the books. And to me, that is the
best praise you can give any adaptation. I agree, you know,
I like I like the cast in it. I it
(09:25):
looks like a take on the classic good light versus
dark theme. Um, but now it just looks it looks
like a fun fantasy to jump into. Uh. Also super
fun the trailer for Luca. Yeah, I so I forgot
(09:46):
that this was going to be a thing. It's a
Pixar film, and Luca like it starts off showing a
young boy making friends with others in Italy and having
little like childhood adventures, and at first you just figured like,
this is gonna be like a fun little child adventure
coming of age kind of story until there's a big
(10:09):
twist in the middle of the trailer that I was
not expecting. So I was very surprised, and that thought, Oh,
so it is a Pixar movie. Yeah, so the middle
of the trailer spoiler if you don't watch the trailer,
if they turned into like amphibian mer people, which made
my little aerial heart squee and my little my not
(10:31):
so little aerial mouth squee as well out loud. Um.
It just it looks obviously there's got to be some
sort of um conflict in this movie, but it just
looks so fun. Yeah. The trailer does seem to indicate
that the people of the little Italian village have a
(10:52):
a a hard um uh hatred of see monster ish things,
and so the two boys clearly are trying to hide
as humans while they explore their little adventures up on
the shore. Um and of course, if they get hit
(11:14):
by water. Then they immediately and I mean instantaneously transform. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like uh splash on speed. Um it looks cute.
It does now maybe it'll be maybe it'll have a
super dark turn. I mean the theme song is uh
you Are My Sunshine, which is remarkably peppy and dark.
(11:38):
So yes, uh something else that looks peppy and dark
in a hilarious way. This was something that the Ariel
sent me a link to a couple of days ago.
I want to say, and said that you I absolutely
had to watch it, but I did not watch it
until just working on this episode. It's the trailer for
Modoc Modoc being a villain in Uh in Marvel. This
(12:04):
is the more traditional version of boat dock, which look
like a big floating head with lead to media arms
and leggs poking out like an angry marshmallow, voiced by
Patton Oswalt. Uh you know what it really reminded me of.
It reminded me of Robot Chicken a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
well it is stop animation, and you know it's I
(12:24):
don't know, it's it is dark. It's on Hulu. It's
not on Disney Plus. Despite being a Marvel property. Um,
but it doesn't look it looks the right amount of
adult cheeky for me. Like, it doesn't look like it's
trying to be too edgy, not like not always sunny
in Philadelphia level of edgy, just just edgy enough to
(12:46):
be adult humor. Um. And it's Patton Oswald, So um,
I'm all about it. Yeah. No, it looks like it's
gonna be pretty funny, very very much in the style
of like we were saying, Robot Chicken. I think about
whenever Robot Chicken does an episode in which there's like,
(13:06):
um uh Cobra Commander or skeletor, it's kind of that
version of a villain. So yeah, yeah. And our last
piece of news is that there's a new Superman movie
coming out. Um, maybe one that Jonathan can finally get behind.
Yeah this one. I saw the news and thought it
(13:28):
was really interesting. And it's a a version of Superman
that would be produced by J. J. Abrams, which could
go either way for me. I like some of Abram's
work and some of the others I'm not so crazy about.
They've got Tom Nahassy Coats writing the screenplay. Uh, as
(13:49):
we're recording this, there's no director yet attached to it,
but it has raised a lot of speculation as to
what this is actually gonna be like for um, you know,
in the in the DC universe. First of all, I
don't think it's going to be connected to the d
C EU stuff like Justice League. It might be more
(14:10):
like a Joker type movie, yeah, but hopefully a lot
more positive. Yes, I really do think, like, like, in
my opinion, that actually ends up being a plus for
this project in that DC has already established that it's
making a lot of films that don't connect directly into
the overarching storyline. So, um, I think that's okay. I
(14:36):
mean it really should be the d C E M
you which is the multiverse extended multiverse. So what I
hope to see from this is a version of Superman
that is, you know, heroic and inspirational. And one of
the the rumors has been that there's a great possibility
(15:00):
at they will be making a um this with a
black actor playing Superman, so we would get a black Superman,
and to me, that's really exciting. It's really an interesting
idea to take that approach and create a heroic character
(15:20):
that an entire section of the population has never been
able to see portraying Superman playing that role and being
truly inspirational. I think that has a lot of opportunities
to it. Now, there are a couple of black Superman's
in d C already. Calvin Ellis is one, Valsada is another.
There's a third who I can't remember, so I do
(15:42):
know that. There's also a rumor that Michael B. Jordan's
has stated an interest in playing Calvin Ellis in the past,
so I would be happy to see that casting. Yeah,
that would be really that would be really interesting too.
I can't wait to learn more about this particular version
(16:03):
of Superman. Uh. It really does have me looking forward
to it. I'm hopeful that it will be a more
coherent story than some of the other DC movies we've
we've seen. Like the first Wonder Woman was pretty good, um,
apart from the third act, which I thought kind of
fell apart. The Second Wonder Woman was not as good
(16:24):
in my opinion. Aquaman was entertaining, but also kind of
a messy film. I want to see a good, tight,
inspirational story. Yeah, hopefully J. J. Abrams will go closer
to Star Wars or Marvel and less towards Lost agreed,
And on that note, I think it's time for us
to take a quick break. Okay, now it's time for
(16:57):
our conversation. And this is one that you kind of
had sort of sitting waiting for us to to dive into,
because it was one of those early topics that we
said we should tackle at some point, and it's about
darker video games and games that that in particular ask
(17:18):
you the player to do some pretty nefarious and dark
stuff and how does that make you feel as a player. So, first, Aerial,
do you ever play any games where you're playing either
as a character who has to do some pretty questionable
things or is outright a bad guy? Uh? So it's
(17:39):
no surprise that I've played Mass Effect and you do
have the option of taking noble choices or kind of
nefarious choices. Um, you kind of end in the same
place regardless, but your journey there is different. I tend
to with those usually unless it's something that really speaks
to my barbarian heart. Pick the neutral or the the
positive choice as opposed to the negative, darker choice. But
(18:02):
I will say that, um, I've played a whole bunch
of the Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic,
I think, and um, I have like five light side
and five dark side characters. Like it's I like, I
like playing the gamut there, but there's also it's also
(18:23):
very fantasy and sci fi. It's not um very real
life stakes. I think with games that are are closer
to reality, I like playing the good guy. I don't
there's enough darkness in the world. I don't like playing villains.
What about you, Jonathan, Mr, I'd fly a villain spaceship.
It's really interesting that you said that because Knights of
the Old Republic was actually one of the games I
(18:43):
was going to cite as one where I physically feel
bad when I play on the dark side, like I've
I tried to do it to get achievements and stuff,
but I didn't like it. Uh, Knights the Old Republic
actually has a thing. It's kind of like Fable to
Fable had this same sort of mechanic where your character's
(19:04):
appearance changes as you go further to one extreme or
the other. So the more to the light side you go,
the more you kind of get this ethereal glow about you.
The more to the dark side you go, you get
like these nasty looking veins on your face and you
are glowing red and that kind of stuff. And moreover,
(19:24):
I mean, apart from the aesthetics, you obviously have to
make choices that lead you down these pathways. And even
though it's fantasy, even though it's Star Wars, even though
I like the bad guys spaceships, I didn't like having
to make bad choices. Uh. It's very weird because it
depends on the game. Um. For instance, I'm playing through
(19:48):
the Hitman series. They the more recent Hitman series. I've
been playing through that. Now you could argue, yeah, all
your targets are bad people like you are being your
sent out to get them, but the game also goes
to great links to explain these are bad people. They're
like human traffickers or their you know, weapons dealers or whatever.
(20:11):
So you don't feel as badly about executing them in
increasingly over the top ways. But you should feel a
little bit. You should. I mean, the character you're playing
is a sociopath. He has no emotion whatsoever, so you
know you're But it's kind of weird to play in
that because I mean, obviously I have emotions. There are
(20:33):
times in hit Man where either something I'll do will
go wrong and I'll accidentally kill someone besides my target
and I feel terrible, even though it's just a fake character, right,
Or I kill my target in such a visceral way
that I flinch, Right, even though it's not like over
(20:55):
the top gruesome and gory, I still have that react. Uh.
And one of the reasons I wanted to bring this
up is that, so the Last of Us is a
game where you you have to make some pretty tough choices,
and in fact, some of them aren't even up to
your choice, and the Last of Us, the Last of
(21:18):
Us is just pretty tough period, right, Yeah. I mean
like there, there's the ending of the first game has
the main character makes a decision that you don't really
get a hand in, not really, and um, and it's gruesome.
But then that's what precipitates all the action of The
Last of Us Part two. And I'm not going to
(21:40):
get into all of the Last of Us two, like
all the story or anything. But something that I found
really difficult to handle with the Last of Us two
is that the messaging seemed to be that violence and
revenge begets more violence and revenge, and it becomes this
self actuating cycle and that it's trying to teach you.
(22:03):
The lesson of this is you know this, this pathway
is destructive and it leads to more misery, but it
never gives you the option to not follow that pathway,
and and and these games get pretty graphic too. Yeah yeah,
but see, for me, it's not even so much the
graphic as it is, is it. It's the basic ethics
(22:26):
and morality. Right If if the point of the game
is to say violence is not the answer, but it
forces you to commit the violent acts in order to
progress the story, then the game is guilty of making
you do the thing that the game says is bad, right,
Like it doesn't give you the freedom to say, Okay,
(22:48):
let's figure out a different approach, Like, you don't have
that freedom. You have to learn the lesson even if
you already know the lesson, and that to me is problematic.
I don't even like games where you so like Fallout,
which is a lot less dire than Last of Us.
(23:08):
There are certain quest lines that you know you can say,
I'm always going to make the right choice, but then
you can't complete that quest if you don't make a
wrong choice. I just I don't like the game dictating
my character's morality to me. Um. It's kind of why
I don't play Grand Theft Auto is because I feel
like there's already a morality that's dictated to me just
by starting to play the game. I know there are
lots of great people who play the game. I just
(23:30):
don't like the content. Well, I mean, you make a
great point though, because Grand Theft Auto in the fifth game,
there is a sequence that you have to do. It's
part of the storyline where you're playing a character who
has to torture someone, and you don't have an option
in this I mean the options you do have is
that you have to choose two out of three possible
(23:52):
torture methods, but all three are terrible. So you you're
watching as the character you're playing, you know, you get
to choose which of the three you're gonna use next
on this this other character who hasn't done any thing wrong,
they just happen to know some information. Um. And then
(24:13):
do you go through and torture and again you're playing
a character who just is more or less not a sociopath,
he's a psychopath. You're playing a character who is a psychopath. Um.
But I hated that section, and maybe that was the point,
was to kind of like to take away the element
(24:33):
of using torture as entertainment. I felt kind of similar.
This isn't a video game, but I felt kind of
similar whenever I would watch twenty four, because inevitably, in
every season of twenty four, there was a point where
the main character, Jack Bauer would end up torturing someone
in order to get information because he just didn't have
(24:54):
the time. I mean, obviously, it's only got twenty four hours,
it's in the name of the show, but like it
was somehow presenting that as an acceptable means of getting information,
and that always gave me a horrible, ikey feeling. I
get the same feeling when I play these games. So
and again I'm not I'm not passing judgment on people
(25:16):
who love to play these games. It's more that I
find it interesting that, you know, I have this very
visceral reaction two games that force you to make these choices,
um to the point where like, there are games that
I stopped playing and I never finished because I was like,
I don't like the way I feel when I play this.
(25:37):
I have a limited number of hours I can dedicate
to things like playing games, and I play games in
order to have a good time. Yeah yeah, same, Like
there are so many kinds of games because they're just
so many kinds of so many people like so many
different kinds of storytelling. Right. So, and then there are
some people who play games for the mechanics. I don't
play games for the mechanics. I play games for the story.
And while I want an emotional journey, I want a
(26:01):
release from real life when I'm playing a video game. Usually, um,
and so things things even like Call of Duty or
Division or stuff like that. You know, well, they're perfectly
fine games. And I really some people prefer fiction to
science fiction. Um, I'm just not one of them totally.
And you know, there's some games out there that really
(26:23):
make morality a central part of the game. The example
I'm put in our notes was Ultimate four. Ultimate four
is a game where if you aren't trying to be
as close to perfect as you possibly can be, you
literally cannot win the game because you have to be
the avatar that represents uh these I believe they are
(26:44):
eight virtues, and if you if you end up taking shortcuts,
you literally can't complete the game because you aren't upholding
that virtue, and some of the virtues actually have a
little bit of a con like with each other, so
it's a little tricky to navigate, but that's the whole point.
(27:04):
And I thought that was fascinating that the game made
that a central mechanic, that it was bucking the trend.
Because at the time when Ultimate four came out, most
computer role playing games I didn't really care if you
played it like you were the Virtuous Night or if
you were a raving psychopath just slaughtering towns like the
(27:28):
game didn't didn't register that as being better or worse
or different. So it was a very new approach to games.
And we've seen a lot of that since then. But
I am curious about our listeners if if you guys
play games, are there games where you actually enjoy playing
the bad guy? Again, I'm not judging, it's just I tried,
(27:50):
like I just can't. The closest I can get our
games like Tie Fighter, where I am playing a bad
guy technically, but I'm shooting spaceships. I'm not sure I'm
not being terrible to people. Now. It is interesting because
when I LARP, I really enjoy and when I act,
I love playing bad guys because from a from an
(28:11):
acting perspective, it's there. They tend to have a lot
more intricacies and odd twists and turns. But I don't
I don't know what that line is for me. Same here, Granted,
like when I play a villain, I typically am playing
a villain in a comedic context. So it's not just
that I'm a bad guy. I'm a silly bad guy,
(28:33):
and those I like playing those a lot. I don't
know how good I would be at playing like a
dramatic villain. Maybe something Shakespearean, probably not as far as Iago,
maybe don John, you know, Iago like that. I can
maybe do that. I can. But while we debate on
which villains we should play in our next theatrical production,
(28:57):
whenever that can happen, we were good, We're gonna take
a quick break and come back with a super special
mash up. Ariel pitch Uh. You want to explain not
(29:29):
just which two properties were bashing up, but why these
two properties the lords were meshed up. Sure, So, right
after we recorded last week's episode, as is always the case,
the cast of Spider Man came out and started posting
some pictures from set and some possible titles for Spider
(29:51):
Man three. Uh so there was spider Man Home Wreck
or is that it spider Man Phone Home, spider Man
Home Slice, spider Man Home which is a pizza place
in Austin, Texas, Like yeah, yeah, so of course we
knew next day we were going to get the actual
(30:12):
tighter title, which is Spider Man No Way Home. But
Ambling came back and said, hey, Marvel, we've already done
this with the phone Home thing, um, and that was
really funny. And then somebody made a poster of Spider
Man and Et touching a finger and I said, well,
this is an easy mash up for the next week,
and so that's what we're doing. And just a quick
(30:33):
side note, something else that is related to this sort
of is that Sam Ramy is directing the next uh
Doctor Strange movie, and obviously the Spider Man movie is
gonna have some multiverse components to it, which this title
release was kind of a nod to that. But Sam
Ramy also is well, really well known for his collaborations
(30:55):
with Bruce Campbell, the actor, and Bruce Campbell showed up
in the Spider Man movies that Sam Raimi directed. Now
it sounds like Bruce Campbell is hinting that he shot
a sequence for the Doctor Strange movie. So again with
the multiverse stuff, this all makes sense. Maybe we're gonna
see one of Bruce Campbell's mini characters that he's played
(31:16):
in the Spider Man series show up in Doctor Strange.
Maybe it'll be a totally new one. But yeah, we
thought that that was a fun little news item too.
But that leads us to our mashup of E. T
and uh spider Man. So for those who don't know,
In case you haven't seen et classic Spielberg movie, A,
(31:38):
an alien comes down to Earth. He is particularly interested
in plants, very peaceful alien. He's he's collecting samples from
Earth to return to his home planet. He gets stranded
and a little boy named Elliott finds him, befriends him,
and then they have their little adventures together. And it's
(32:00):
a very sweet movie that made me cry so hard
when I was a kid. Same same Uh. We've got
an entire episode of our old podcast The Brink where
we talked about griest pieces uh, which worked their way
into that movie. But that's another story for another time.
If you aren't familiar with Spider Man, um, why are
you listening to this podcast for yes, but you know
(32:24):
kid gets usually a kid usually gets bit by a
radioactive spider. Usually his uncle dies and he fights Christ.
There's so many versions, uh so I think I am
going to opt for you to go first. This okay,
Well that worked out well for us last week. Here
we go. This one is spider Man Phone Home. They
already gave me the title, all right. Peter Parker has
(32:47):
a problem. He's a geeky, unpopular kid in high school.
He navigates a complex social world filled with bullies, popularity
obsessed teens, and apathetic teachers who have been worn down
by the system. Plus, his parents died in a plane
crash a few years back, and now he lives with
his aunt and uncle, May and Ben. On a high
(33:07):
school field trip to Norman Osborne Science Lab, Peter gets
separated from his class after he takes a closer look
at a high energy physics experiment where a certain spider
happens to be trying to catch up to his class.
The young Mr Parker accidentally goes into a highly restricted
laboratory where he sees something astounding. Laying on the table
(33:29):
is a squat gray creature and has a big head,
long neck, rather stubby body, very long arms and fingers,
short legs, big feet. Before he could even process what
it is he's seeing, he hears people in the hall
outside panicking. He ducks behind the table in walks. Norman
Osbourne barking orders its scientists to hurry up and prep
(33:50):
for an alien dissection. Parker, horrified, makes a snap decision.
As soon as the coast is clear, he frees the
weird alien critter. He looks for a way to smuggle
the little guy out of the building, quickly helping him
into a mail cart and covering the little guy with mail.
Little does he know, however, that the mail cart had
(34:11):
just passed through that high energy lab, and in that
lab was that spider which absorbed a tremendous amount of energy.
And now that spider was also in the same mail cart. Parker,
pushing the cart and keeping his head down, is able
to maneuver through the labs pretty well. Most people don't
even bother to look at him twice. But just as
he gets the lobby, he hears an odd little voice
(34:33):
from inside the mail cart. Ahch We flash into the
cart and see that the spider has bitten the little
alien right on the end of his glowing finger. The
spider crawls away and the little alien, overwhelmed, loses consciousness.
Parker meanwhile explains that he stubbed his toe to some
concerned Osborne Lab employees who heard the ouch, and he
(34:56):
just tries to shrug it off. He makes his way
outside and ditches the rest of his school day pushing
the cart across town to get back to Queens, which
admittedly does take the rest of the day. He's not
back at his aunt and uncle's place until nightfall. He
quietly manages to smuggle the alien into his home and
learns from the alien that his name is apparently e T.
(35:19):
He also learns that the alien has a particular craving
for Reese's pieces. Parker is up all night stressing about
what he has done. He knows Osborne is going to
be furious, and he hopes that no one tracks the
alien napping back to him, and finally he falls asleep.
The next morning, Parker wakes up to the alien standing
on the ceiling. Little guy seems confused. He's also shooting
(35:42):
webs everywhere. Parker tries to keep the situation contained, but
it's pretty chaotic. Et meanwhile, has discovered some interesting properties
of his own. Now he can not only heal organisms,
he can also wall crawl. He is much stronger than
he was before, and he can it's danger Parker convinces
(36:02):
Et to chill out in his house while he goes
to school. He gets addressing down from his science teacher
for having disappeared on a field trip, but he just
keeps his head down. He's distracted. He's eager to get
back and figure out what to do about Et. And
when he finally does get home, something amazing happens. In
his aunt and uncle's house is a man that Parker recognizes,
(36:24):
Tony Stark. Somehow, Stark has learned about the alien at
Osborne's lab, and moreover, has managed to figure out that
Parker was the one who helped the alien escape. He's
charming May and Ben waiting for Parker to get home,
explaining that the young man has earned a grant from
Stark Enterprises. But it's all an excuse to go at
to Parker's room, where Stark meets Et. And that's when
(36:48):
we get the scene we've all been waiting for. Stark
recruits Et into the Avengers, and Et becomes Spider Alien,
complete with a suit that doesn't fit so well because
let's be honest, dude's got a pretty weird shape to him.
Stark and the Alien make their goodbyes and leave Parker behind,
though he does get the grant, and moreover, his uncle
(37:09):
never stopped that awful robber, so he he gets to live.
Parker goes on to be a distinguished scientist and lives
a relatively normal life. He also turns on his heart
light the end. I loved that. That was so delightful
and uplifting compared to some of your previous Yeah, no,
I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I mean, like, there's
so many other terrible ways I could have ended that, right, So,
(37:32):
and I had a couple of different ideas, but like
my original idea was was very different. But I want
to hear yours. Sure, well, that was an origin story
and this is more of like um ongoing adventure. So
I apologize everybody in advance. This is the heroic duo
of Spider Man and Little Guy in the Saga of
Auto Octavius. It's Earth six one six and Peter Parker
(37:56):
is at his wits end. Docc has stolen a clone
of his body again. En you see dot Cox once
cheated death when being returned to his timeline after a
battle with a group called the Inheritors by housing his
consciousness in an octopot and taking over Peter Parker's body,
and Peter was able to push him out and not
I went into a living brain and then cloned bodies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
It's too much unpack here, so I digress. Anyhow, each
(38:17):
time Dot Doc showed up in a new body, he
was more and more erratic, and Peter's webs leeing ways
were just not working. So Peter decided to take a
completely different tactic to fight Dot Cock and play mind
games back. So to do so, he hacked into dock
ox psych profile and learned that Auto Octavius that's Dot
Dock for the lay person was originally named Elliott Tolliver Thompson.
(38:40):
He started having behavioral problems around the age of ten
after a classified encounter with some government agency code named
keys happened, eventually changing his alias and moving to New York.
He changed his name from Elliott Octavious in case that
wasn't clear. After hacking a little bit further Peter Lune
(39:01):
that Elliott had developed an empathic connection with an extraterrestrial
or ET, and he helped Et escape the government agency,
but ever since then his mental health had been on
the decline. Peter decided the only way to fix this
was to use his resources at Parker Corps to send
a distress signal to all the quadrants of all the
Loon galaxies and try to call Et back to Earth.
(39:21):
He left specific coordinates for where Et should meet him,
and as a peace offering, left a large bowl of
Reese's Peace. Oh man, dang it. He ate all of
his pieces on Stark's jet. Oh yeah, left. Now we're
Mary Janes the candy, not the drug. Well, hopefully one
nutty candy is as good as the next. So he
left a large bowl of Mary Jane's for the alien
to show that he meant no harm and he waited.
(39:44):
Soon enough, an alien ship landed an outwalked ET. Peter says, ah, hey,
they're a little guy in. ET response, not little guy
e T. Peter starts to explain what's going on, but
Et shushes him with one glowing finger, saying ET knows.
Then he points to his chest and says Elliott is
right here, and a faint glow starts to appear. Peter
(40:06):
knows what he what Et means and lifts Et off
the ground and starts webs slinging to find Doc Cock,
following Ets glowing heart, which seems to go brighter and
brighter as they get nearer and nearer to dot Cock.
They get to dock ox Layer and Peter goes in first,
knowing that Doc Doc has gotten exceptionally erratic and violent,
and dot Cock is about to throw one of his
eight giant tentacles. I'm sorry, he's in Peter's body now,
(40:28):
is one of his eight spider legs. When Et steps
out from behind Peter and dot Dock graises Et instead,
and Et of course says ouch and uh with a
nod to the real spider man. Et and Peter launch
out into an all out dehabilitating attack on Otto versus Elliott.
I mean this fight was spectacular, with Peter spleeeming webs
and jumping off walls, and Et well, well you just
(40:50):
have to see it to believe it. They finally prevail
and get auto slash Elliott tied up, Et realizes that
Elliott was trapped in his brain by another consciousness. Mr Keys,
the villainous government agent from Elliott's childhood Dunt Dunt Dah,
apparently had infected Elliott's consciousness with his own after Et
and escaped in an effort to get Et back and
(41:11):
recapture him. Of course, Spiderman knew all of this empathetically,
as et s english was still not that great, um
Et was sure he could separate Keys from Otto, restoring
him to his former Elliott persona, as he was a
much older and wiser et and had spent had switched
his his focus from plants to people ever since he
left Earth. But he needed a very simple computer to
(41:34):
do it, something that could house it consciousness but not
be reprogrammed for nefarious ways. Uh So Peter scoured doc
ox layer and found an old speaking spell in the corner.
Et Uh said empathetically, that's great, and removed keys consciousness
and put it into the speaking spell, restoring Auto to Elliott.
(41:55):
Just one last problem. Elliott was slash. Auto was still
in a clone of Spider Man's body, But now that
he wasn't Otto anymore and he was Elliott and he
was nice, they couldn't really kill him, so they released
him too, as Et would say, go home, and he
moved back to San Fernando Valley to be the West
(42:16):
Coast Superior Spider Man and do some good, making up
for all of the bad he had done since he
was ten. Et decided to stay on Earth as his
sidekick and make sure he didn't get into future trouble. Besides,
Space didn't have recent pieces, and he took on the
persona Little Guy because he kind of liked it when
Peter called him that to help Elliott fight crime on
the West Coast. Key's furious of being trapped in the
(42:38):
speak and spell, yelled to get out, but the batteries
were really old and low and so you couldn't really
make it out, And eventually the lights faded and the
speaking spell stopped working, and it just laid in a
dark corner of dock Ox forgotten Lair. Um I, you know,
I don't know what happened to Keys. I guess we'll
have to tune in next time for another exciting adventure
(42:59):
of the heroic do Spider Man and Little Guy to
find out? Well, that's a that's a series that um
I lament doesn't actually exist? Like I said, sorry, getting
well that is you know this was a fun one.
I will say that my original idea was that et
(43:21):
was going to be the irradiated Spider and give Peter Parker,
uh not Spider Man powers, but et Man powers. But
they just would have meant that he would have been
kind of like Read Richards because he would be able
to stretch his head really far from his body and
then I guess make parts of him glow. And the
(43:43):
more I thought about, the more I realized it would
be very difficult to do this and not make very
juvenile jokes, so I backed away quietly. I appreciate that,
but if any of our listeners know how to make
that joke not juvenile, you should write us that. You
should write us and tell us about it um and
(44:04):
and share your own map. Yes, you can send us
an email that is l in C at I heart
media dot com, or you can drop us a line
on Twitter where we are l n C Underscore Podcast
and over at Facebook and Instagram were large Nerdron Collider.
Also remember we have the website large nerdron Collider dot com.
That's where you can find every episode and the show
(44:27):
notes as well, so you can actually go and check
out the various articles and trailers that we talk about
so that you can form your own opinions. Yes, and
you know, if you like listening to us, tell your friends,
make sure you subscribe, like share our episodes. And you know,
we want to continue the conversation on with you, So
let us know what topics you want to hear us
(44:48):
talk about. Let us know your thoughts on video games.
We look forward to kicking out. Yes, and until next time.
She has been aerial casting, and he has been Jonathan
Respawn Strickland. M m m m m m m. The
(45:25):
Large New Drunk Collider is the production of I Heart
Radio and was created by Ariel cast In. Jonathan Strickland
is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited and
published by Tory 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 Nerdrunk Lighter Podcast is a production of I
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
(00:28):
we are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me
as always is Jonathan will never catch up on all
of the geeky media. He hasn't watched yet. Strickland. That
is the most apt name you have ever given me,
an Ariel for you, I have a question, what is
(00:50):
your favorite fictional spaceship the Tartist. Do you really think
the Tartest as a spaceship? It's the tardest? I mean, okay,
that's fair. I should yes, and I shouldn't deny. Moya
interesting okay, cool, alright, I see where you sentient? Yes,
(01:14):
say you're going with the sentient spaceships. That's interesting. So
you're you're like, you like the spaceships that are kind
of characters. Yeah, I mean two thousand and one of
Space Odyssey. Aside, like, being alone in space is super sad,
so you really want something that can interact with you
and keep you company. So for those who don't know
(01:35):
Moya is a Leviathan, which is a sentient ship that
the crew in the show far Escape travel on Far
Scape is a great show. This is this is fascinating
to me. It really I did not expect that answer,
and it's a really like this one makes me want
to jump into a geek conversation, but that's for later
in the episode and we're not even talking about spaceships.
(01:58):
Then the thing that prompted this was that, you know,
NASA landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars recently, so it
just got me thinking about spaceships, Um, what is what
is your spaceship? Then? So there too, and they're from
the two big Star franchises, so from Star Wars. The
(02:18):
Tie Interceptor is my Yeah, it's just it looks wicked.
But then my favorite Star Trek spaceship is the U. S. S. Reliant,
which is the the ship that con flies in the
Wrath of Cohn. It's the one that has the disk
and the two Nay cells are underneath it, and I
(02:41):
always just thought that that was such a cool ship design.
It is, but doesn't it make you like a villain
just to fly it? I mean Tie Interceptors. My other
favorite ones, so like, you know, the bad guys get
get really cool spaceships. I mean that's it's not my fault.
They s all of their money on R and D
(03:01):
and not enough on like therapy. It's it's all on
aesthetics and none of it's on shields. That's the real problem.
But today we've got a lot of stories to cover
and then we have a conversation and then a mash
up believe it or not. So I guess like a
regular episode. Yeah, it is, well, you know, not like
last episode where it was all news. But let's go
(03:22):
ahead and jump into the news. Starting with San Diego
Comic Con officially announced Monday of the week that we're
recording this that they are not having their in person
uh convention, at least not at the normal time. They
might look at something smaller or different in November. Yeah,
(03:43):
and this isn't a huge surprise. Also E three and
Anime Expo, while they have not as we're recording this,
they have not officially come out and said anything, but
the city of Los Angeles has no booking for them,
and that would have then if they were really going
to be happening in person. Um. E three not a
(04:04):
big surprise. Actually, I think E three it would. I'll
be curious to see if the three ever comes back
as a real physical event anyway, because that was already
kind of on the fade out before the pandemic hit.
You couldn't really go there unless you were media, right, well,
you couldn't, But then a couple of years ago they
opened it up where they sold tickets to the public.
(04:25):
But that meant that if you were media and you
were trying to cover the event, it suddenly got much
harder to get your hands on anything because there were
just so many people there. But E three had been
kind of suffering for a while. Uh, and there are
a lot of folks in the video game space who
think it may not ever come back, not in the
form that it used to have, especially since a lot
(04:47):
of these companies have found it easier to hold their
own press events. They're not, you know, beholden to a
specific schedule or anything. And Anime Expo they haven't announced anything,
but they did do a virtual event last year, so
chances are we're going to see something like that again
this year. Personally, while I totally understand how it's a
bummer if you were really hoping to go to one
(05:08):
of these things. I think it's the best idea to have,
because we are not, by any stretch of the imagination,
out of the woods, as far as COVID is concerned.
So we understand the bummer, But I think that this
was the right call. I do as well. You know,
if if we do it virtual this year, hopefully by
next year we'll be we'll be back to in person
(05:29):
at least for a comic con. I know that, you know,
people really like having that camaraderie of being in the
convention hall and dressing up and all that. Not. It's
not nearly a socialist dragon con. We've gone over that before.
So I will digress, and we'll move on to um
our next bit of news, which is all of the
trailers ever, well not all. We picked a few trailers
(05:49):
that came out this week that we liked. We got
we got a whole convoy of trailers. Con convoy, Okay,
yes we do. And the first one is Army of
the Dead, which both Jonathan and I separately watched and said, huh,
this looks like Dead Rising, the movie. I mean, it
really does. Like I didn't even see your note when
(06:10):
and so I had just turned it on and watched it,
and I thought, is this actually Dead Rising instead of
another of the Dead series. So Snyder had previously done
the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which is the
one that's set in the shopping mall, and now he
just decided, what if we do that again, but you
(06:31):
know bigger and said it in Las Vegas, and so
Army of the Dead takes place in Sin City, Las Vegas.
And it does look like it looks like Dead Rising.
It does, honestly though, it looks so I'm surprise, surprise.
I never watched DNA the Dead. I know I need to.
I need to watch You need to watch the original
(06:52):
Dawn of the Dead. The second Don of the Dead
is the remake isn't necessarily bad, It just kind of
it kind of turns everything into an action movie as
opposed to like a social commentary movie. I didn't even
watch even Dead until the last ten years, so but
it is on my list. You know, I do feel
(07:13):
like that is a piece of media that I just
I am lacking having not watched it. Um but this
looks kind of tongue in cheek, and I the trailer
makes me want to watch it. And so you know,
after we we talk about Zax, and after Jonathan and
I have have been less and excited about the Zack
Snyder Justice League. Uh cut, you know, I'm I'm happy
(07:36):
to be excited about something that he's working on coming out.
He really does great visuals and action scenes and all that,
and this movie will really bode well for that. Yeah,
it looks like it's going to have some very entertaining
visuals in it. I am not yet sold on it.
I mean, I like a lot of the people who
are in it, but I'm not yet sold on it.
I'll have to wait and look for another trailer. I
(07:57):
gotta say. It definitely was better than one of the
other trailers you sent me that we aren't talking about,
which is called The Rookies. Uh. If you do want
to watch the Rookies trailer, just watch that. You know,
like we we aren't going to cover it, but it
you have to see it to really appreciate how bad
it looks. Yes, yes, well, um, maybe I'll add that
(08:19):
in our show notes as a bonus on our episode
www abou large Ener drink lider dot com this week.
All right, So the next trailer we've got to talk
about his shadow and bone and this is There was
a teaser that came out a while ago for it
that really showed absolutely nothing, and I was like, Oh,
another y a fantasy, blah blah. But this trailer actually
looks pretty good to me. Uh yeah, you know it's
(08:40):
it's based off of book series, and I have never
read the book series, so I came into this not
knowing anything about what it was, what I should expect
to see. But the visuals were really interesting. And moreover,
I don't know if you scrolled down to look at
any of the comments, I was curious, but the comments
(09:01):
I saw were really positive, Like people who were big
fans of the books seemed genuinely excited by the trailer
and seem to feel like it is capturing what made
them love the books. And to me, that is the
best praise you can give any adaptation. I agree, you know,
I like I like the cast in it. I it
(09:25):
looks like a take on the classic good light versus
dark theme. Um, but now it just looks it looks
like a fun fantasy to jump into. Uh. Also super
fun the trailer for Luca. Yeah, I so I forgot
(09:46):
that this was going to be a thing. It's a
Pixar film, and Luca like it starts off showing a
young boy making friends with others in Italy and having
little like childhood adventures, and at first you just figured like,
this is gonna be like a fun little child adventure
coming of age kind of story until there's a big
(10:09):
twist in the middle of the trailer that I was
not expecting. So I was very surprised, and that thought, Oh,
so it is a Pixar movie. Yeah, so the middle
of the trailer spoiler if you don't watch the trailer,
if they turned into like amphibian mer people, which made
my little aerial heart squee and my little my not
(10:31):
so little aerial mouth squee as well out loud. Um.
It just it looks obviously there's got to be some
sort of um conflict in this movie, but it just
looks so fun. Yeah. The trailer does seem to indicate
that the people of the little Italian village have a
(10:52):
a a hard um uh hatred of see monster ish things,
and so the two boys clearly are trying to hide
as humans while they explore their little adventures up on
the shore. Um and of course, if they get hit
(11:14):
by water. Then they immediately and I mean instantaneously transform. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like uh splash on speed. Um it looks cute.
It does now maybe it'll be maybe it'll have a
super dark turn. I mean the theme song is uh
you Are My Sunshine, which is remarkably peppy and dark.
(11:38):
So yes, uh something else that looks peppy and dark
in a hilarious way. This was something that the Ariel
sent me a link to a couple of days ago.
I want to say, and said that you I absolutely
had to watch it, but I did not watch it
until just working on this episode. It's the trailer for
Modoc Modoc being a villain in Uh in Marvel. This
(12:04):
is the more traditional version of boat dock, which look
like a big floating head with lead to media arms
and leggs poking out like an angry marshmallow, voiced by
Patton Oswalt. Uh you know what it really reminded me of.
It reminded me of Robot Chicken a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
well it is stop animation, and you know it's I
(12:24):
don't know, it's it is dark. It's on Hulu. It's
not on Disney Plus. Despite being a Marvel property. Um,
but it doesn't look it looks the right amount of
adult cheeky for me. Like, it doesn't look like it's
trying to be too edgy, not like not always sunny
in Philadelphia level of edgy, just just edgy enough to
(12:46):
be adult humor. Um. And it's Patton Oswald, So um,
I'm all about it. Yeah. No, it looks like it's
gonna be pretty funny, very very much in the style
of like we were saying, Robot Chicken. I think about
whenever Robot Chicken does an episode in which there's like,
(13:06):
um uh Cobra Commander or skeletor, it's kind of that
version of a villain. So yeah, yeah. And our last
piece of news is that there's a new Superman movie
coming out. Um, maybe one that Jonathan can finally get behind.
Yeah this one. I saw the news and thought it
(13:28):
was really interesting. And it's a a version of Superman
that would be produced by J. J. Abrams, which could
go either way for me. I like some of Abram's
work and some of the others I'm not so crazy about.
They've got Tom Nahassy Coats writing the screenplay. Uh, as
(13:49):
we're recording this, there's no director yet attached to it,
but it has raised a lot of speculation as to
what this is actually gonna be like for um, you know,
in the in the DC universe. First of all, I
don't think it's going to be connected to the d
C EU stuff like Justice League. It might be more
(14:10):
like a Joker type movie, yeah, but hopefully a lot
more positive. Yes, I really do think, like, like, in
my opinion, that actually ends up being a plus for
this project in that DC has already established that it's
making a lot of films that don't connect directly into
the overarching storyline. So, um, I think that's okay. I
(14:36):
mean it really should be the d C E M
you which is the multiverse extended multiverse. So what I
hope to see from this is a version of Superman
that is, you know, heroic and inspirational. And one of
the the rumors has been that there's a great possibility
(15:00):
at they will be making a um this with a
black actor playing Superman, so we would get a black Superman,
and to me, that's really exciting. It's really an interesting
idea to take that approach and create a heroic character
(15:20):
that an entire section of the population has never been
able to see portraying Superman playing that role and being
truly inspirational. I think that has a lot of opportunities
to it. Now, there are a couple of black Superman's
in d C already. Calvin Ellis is one, Valsada is another.
There's a third who I can't remember, so I do
(15:42):
know that. There's also a rumor that Michael B. Jordan's
has stated an interest in playing Calvin Ellis in the past,
so I would be happy to see that casting. Yeah,
that would be really that would be really interesting too.
I can't wait to learn more about this particular version
(16:03):
of Superman. Uh. It really does have me looking forward
to it. I'm hopeful that it will be a more
coherent story than some of the other DC movies we've
we've seen. Like the first Wonder Woman was pretty good, um,
apart from the third act, which I thought kind of
fell apart. The Second Wonder Woman was not as good
(16:24):
in my opinion. Aquaman was entertaining, but also kind of
a messy film. I want to see a good, tight,
inspirational story. Yeah, hopefully J. J. Abrams will go closer
to Star Wars or Marvel and less towards Lost agreed,
And on that note, I think it's time for us
to take a quick break. Okay, now it's time for
(16:57):
our conversation. And this is one that you kind of
had sort of sitting waiting for us to to dive into,
because it was one of those early topics that we
said we should tackle at some point, and it's about
darker video games and games that that in particular ask
(17:18):
you the player to do some pretty nefarious and dark
stuff and how does that make you feel as a player. So, first, Aerial,
do you ever play any games where you're playing either
as a character who has to do some pretty questionable
things or is outright a bad guy? Uh? So it's
(17:39):
no surprise that I've played Mass Effect and you do
have the option of taking noble choices or kind of
nefarious choices. Um, you kind of end in the same
place regardless, but your journey there is different. I tend
to with those usually unless it's something that really speaks
to my barbarian heart. Pick the neutral or the the
positive choice as opposed to the negative, darker choice. But
(18:02):
I will say that, um, I've played a whole bunch
of the Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic,
I think, and um, I have like five light side
and five dark side characters. Like it's I like, I
like playing the gamut there, but there's also it's also
(18:23):
very fantasy and sci fi. It's not um very real
life stakes. I think with games that are are closer
to reality, I like playing the good guy. I don't
there's enough darkness in the world. I don't like playing villains.
What about you, Jonathan, Mr, I'd fly a villain spaceship.
It's really interesting that you said that because Knights of
the Old Republic was actually one of the games I
(18:43):
was going to cite as one where I physically feel
bad when I play on the dark side, like I've
I tried to do it to get achievements and stuff,
but I didn't like it. Uh, Knights the Old Republic
actually has a thing. It's kind of like Fable to
Fable had this same sort of mechanic where your character's
(19:04):
appearance changes as you go further to one extreme or
the other. So the more to the light side you go,
the more you kind of get this ethereal glow about you.
The more to the dark side you go, you get
like these nasty looking veins on your face and you
are glowing red and that kind of stuff. And moreover,
(19:24):
I mean, apart from the aesthetics, you obviously have to
make choices that lead you down these pathways. And even
though it's fantasy, even though it's Star Wars, even though
I like the bad guys spaceships, I didn't like having
to make bad choices. Uh. It's very weird because it
depends on the game. Um. For instance, I'm playing through
(19:48):
the Hitman series. They the more recent Hitman series. I've
been playing through that. Now you could argue, yeah, all
your targets are bad people like you are being your
sent out to get them, but the game also goes
to great links to explain these are bad people. They're
like human traffickers or their you know, weapons dealers or whatever.
(20:11):
So you don't feel as badly about executing them in
increasingly over the top ways. But you should feel a
little bit. You should. I mean, the character you're playing
is a sociopath. He has no emotion whatsoever, so you
know you're But it's kind of weird to play in
that because I mean, obviously I have emotions. There are
(20:33):
times in hit Man where either something I'll do will
go wrong and I'll accidentally kill someone besides my target
and I feel terrible, even though it's just a fake character, right,
Or I kill my target in such a visceral way
that I flinch, Right, even though it's not like over
(20:55):
the top gruesome and gory, I still have that react. Uh.
And one of the reasons I wanted to bring this
up is that, so the Last of Us is a
game where you you have to make some pretty tough choices,
and in fact, some of them aren't even up to
your choice, and the Last of Us, the Last of
(21:18):
Us is just pretty tough period, right, Yeah. I mean
like there, there's the ending of the first game has
the main character makes a decision that you don't really
get a hand in, not really, and um, and it's gruesome.
But then that's what precipitates all the action of The
Last of Us Part two. And I'm not going to
(21:40):
get into all of the Last of Us two, like
all the story or anything. But something that I found
really difficult to handle with the Last of Us two
is that the messaging seemed to be that violence and
revenge begets more violence and revenge, and it becomes this
self actuating cycle and that it's trying to teach you.
(22:03):
The lesson of this is you know this, this pathway
is destructive and it leads to more misery, but it
never gives you the option to not follow that pathway,
and and and these games get pretty graphic too. Yeah yeah,
but see, for me, it's not even so much the
graphic as it is, is it. It's the basic ethics
(22:26):
and morality. Right If if the point of the game
is to say violence is not the answer, but it
forces you to commit the violent acts in order to
progress the story, then the game is guilty of making
you do the thing that the game says is bad, right,
Like it doesn't give you the freedom to say, Okay,
(22:48):
let's figure out a different approach, Like, you don't have
that freedom. You have to learn the lesson even if
you already know the lesson, and that to me is problematic.
I don't even like games where you so like Fallout,
which is a lot less dire than Last of Us.
(23:08):
There are certain quest lines that you know you can say,
I'm always going to make the right choice, but then
you can't complete that quest if you don't make a
wrong choice. I just I don't like the game dictating
my character's morality to me. Um. It's kind of why
I don't play Grand Theft Auto is because I feel
like there's already a morality that's dictated to me just
by starting to play the game. I know there are
lots of great people who play the game. I just
(23:30):
don't like the content. Well, I mean, you make a
great point though, because Grand Theft Auto in the fifth game,
there is a sequence that you have to do. It's
part of the storyline where you're playing a character who
has to torture someone, and you don't have an option
in this I mean the options you do have is
that you have to choose two out of three possible
(23:52):
torture methods, but all three are terrible. So you you're
watching as the character you're playing, you know, you get
to choose which of the three you're gonna use next
on this this other character who hasn't done any thing wrong,
they just happen to know some information. Um. And then
(24:13):
do you go through and torture and again you're playing
a character who just is more or less not a sociopath,
he's a psychopath. You're playing a character who is a psychopath. Um.
But I hated that section, and maybe that was the point,
was to kind of like to take away the element
(24:33):
of using torture as entertainment. I felt kind of similar.
This isn't a video game, but I felt kind of
similar whenever I would watch twenty four, because inevitably, in
every season of twenty four, there was a point where
the main character, Jack Bauer would end up torturing someone
in order to get information because he just didn't have
(24:54):
the time. I mean, obviously, it's only got twenty four hours,
it's in the name of the show, but like it
was somehow presenting that as an acceptable means of getting information,
and that always gave me a horrible, ikey feeling. I
get the same feeling when I play these games. So
and again I'm not I'm not passing judgment on people
(25:16):
who love to play these games. It's more that I
find it interesting that, you know, I have this very
visceral reaction two games that force you to make these choices,
um to the point where like, there are games that
I stopped playing and I never finished because I was like,
I don't like the way I feel when I play this.
(25:37):
I have a limited number of hours I can dedicate
to things like playing games, and I play games in
order to have a good time. Yeah yeah, same, Like
there are so many kinds of games because they're just
so many kinds of so many people like so many
different kinds of storytelling. Right. So, and then there are
some people who play games for the mechanics. I don't
play games for the mechanics. I play games for the story.
And while I want an emotional journey, I want a
(26:01):
release from real life when I'm playing a video game. Usually, um,
and so things things even like Call of Duty or
Division or stuff like that. You know, well, they're perfectly
fine games. And I really some people prefer fiction to
science fiction. Um, I'm just not one of them totally.
And you know, there's some games out there that really
(26:23):
make morality a central part of the game. The example
I'm put in our notes was Ultimate four. Ultimate four
is a game where if you aren't trying to be
as close to perfect as you possibly can be, you
literally cannot win the game because you have to be
the avatar that represents uh these I believe they are
(26:44):
eight virtues, and if you if you end up taking shortcuts,
you literally can't complete the game because you aren't upholding
that virtue, and some of the virtues actually have a
little bit of a con like with each other, so
it's a little tricky to navigate, but that's the whole point.
(27:04):
And I thought that was fascinating that the game made
that a central mechanic, that it was bucking the trend.
Because at the time when Ultimate four came out, most
computer role playing games I didn't really care if you
played it like you were the Virtuous Night or if
you were a raving psychopath just slaughtering towns like the
(27:28):
game didn't didn't register that as being better or worse
or different. So it was a very new approach to games.
And we've seen a lot of that since then. But
I am curious about our listeners if if you guys
play games, are there games where you actually enjoy playing
the bad guy? Again, I'm not judging, it's just I tried,
(27:50):
like I just can't. The closest I can get our
games like Tie Fighter, where I am playing a bad
guy technically, but I'm shooting spaceships. I'm not sure I'm
not being terrible to people. Now. It is interesting because
when I LARP, I really enjoy and when I act,
I love playing bad guys because from a from an
(28:11):
acting perspective, it's there. They tend to have a lot
more intricacies and odd twists and turns. But I don't
I don't know what that line is for me. Same here, Granted,
like when I play a villain, I typically am playing
a villain in a comedic context. So it's not just
that I'm a bad guy. I'm a silly bad guy,
(28:33):
and those I like playing those a lot. I don't
know how good I would be at playing like a
dramatic villain. Maybe something Shakespearean, probably not as far as Iago,
maybe don John, you know, Iago like that. I can
maybe do that. I can. But while we debate on
which villains we should play in our next theatrical production,
(28:57):
whenever that can happen, we were good, We're gonna take
a quick break and come back with a super special
mash up. Ariel pitch Uh. You want to explain not
(29:29):
just which two properties were bashing up, but why these
two properties the lords were meshed up. Sure, So, right
after we recorded last week's episode, as is always the case,
the cast of Spider Man came out and started posting
some pictures from set and some possible titles for Spider
(29:51):
Man three. Uh so there was spider Man Home Wreck
or is that it spider Man Phone Home, spider Man
Home Slice, spider Man Home which is a pizza place
in Austin, Texas, Like yeah, yeah, so of course we
knew next day we were going to get the actual
(30:12):
tighter title, which is Spider Man No Way Home. But
Ambling came back and said, hey, Marvel, we've already done
this with the phone Home thing, um, and that was
really funny. And then somebody made a poster of Spider
Man and Et touching a finger and I said, well,
this is an easy mash up for the next week,
and so that's what we're doing. And just a quick
(30:33):
side note, something else that is related to this sort
of is that Sam Ramy is directing the next uh
Doctor Strange movie, and obviously the Spider Man movie is
gonna have some multiverse components to it, which this title
release was kind of a nod to that. But Sam
Ramy also is well, really well known for his collaborations
(30:55):
with Bruce Campbell, the actor, and Bruce Campbell showed up
in the Spider Man movies that Sam Raimi directed. Now
it sounds like Bruce Campbell is hinting that he shot
a sequence for the Doctor Strange movie. So again with
the multiverse stuff, this all makes sense. Maybe we're gonna
see one of Bruce Campbell's mini characters that he's played
(31:16):
in the Spider Man series show up in Doctor Strange.
Maybe it'll be a totally new one. But yeah, we
thought that that was a fun little news item too.
But that leads us to our mashup of E. T
and uh spider Man. So for those who don't know,
In case you haven't seen et classic Spielberg movie, A,
(31:38):
an alien comes down to Earth. He is particularly interested
in plants, very peaceful alien. He's he's collecting samples from
Earth to return to his home planet. He gets stranded
and a little boy named Elliott finds him, befriends him,
and then they have their little adventures together. And it's
(32:00):
a very sweet movie that made me cry so hard
when I was a kid. Same same Uh. We've got
an entire episode of our old podcast The Brink where
we talked about griest pieces uh, which worked their way
into that movie. But that's another story for another time.
If you aren't familiar with Spider Man, um, why are
you listening to this podcast for yes, but you know
(32:24):
kid gets usually a kid usually gets bit by a
radioactive spider. Usually his uncle dies and he fights Christ.
There's so many versions, uh so I think I am
going to opt for you to go first. This okay,
Well that worked out well for us last week. Here
we go. This one is spider Man Phone Home. They
already gave me the title, all right. Peter Parker has
(32:47):
a problem. He's a geeky, unpopular kid in high school.
He navigates a complex social world filled with bullies, popularity
obsessed teens, and apathetic teachers who have been worn down
by the system. Plus, his parents died in a plane
crash a few years back, and now he lives with
his aunt and uncle, May and Ben. On a high
(33:07):
school field trip to Norman Osborne Science Lab, Peter gets
separated from his class after he takes a closer look
at a high energy physics experiment where a certain spider
happens to be trying to catch up to his class.
The young Mr Parker accidentally goes into a highly restricted
laboratory where he sees something astounding. Laying on the table
(33:29):
is a squat gray creature and has a big head,
long neck, rather stubby body, very long arms and fingers,
short legs, big feet. Before he could even process what
it is he's seeing, he hears people in the hall
outside panicking. He ducks behind the table in walks. Norman
Osbourne barking orders its scientists to hurry up and prep
(33:50):
for an alien dissection. Parker, horrified, makes a snap decision.
As soon as the coast is clear, he frees the
weird alien critter. He looks for a way to smuggle
the little guy out of the building, quickly helping him
into a mail cart and covering the little guy with mail.
Little does he know, however, that the mail cart had
(34:11):
just passed through that high energy lab, and in that
lab was that spider which absorbed a tremendous amount of energy.
And now that spider was also in the same mail cart. Parker,
pushing the cart and keeping his head down, is able
to maneuver through the labs pretty well. Most people don't
even bother to look at him twice. But just as
he gets the lobby, he hears an odd little voice
(34:33):
from inside the mail cart. Ahch We flash into the
cart and see that the spider has bitten the little
alien right on the end of his glowing finger. The
spider crawls away and the little alien, overwhelmed, loses consciousness.
Parker meanwhile explains that he stubbed his toe to some
concerned Osborne Lab employees who heard the ouch, and he
(34:56):
just tries to shrug it off. He makes his way
outside and ditches the rest of his school day pushing
the cart across town to get back to Queens, which
admittedly does take the rest of the day. He's not
back at his aunt and uncle's place until nightfall. He
quietly manages to smuggle the alien into his home and
learns from the alien that his name is apparently e T.
(35:19):
He also learns that the alien has a particular craving
for Reese's pieces. Parker is up all night stressing about
what he has done. He knows Osborne is going to
be furious, and he hopes that no one tracks the
alien napping back to him, and finally he falls asleep.
The next morning, Parker wakes up to the alien standing
on the ceiling. Little guy seems confused. He's also shooting
(35:42):
webs everywhere. Parker tries to keep the situation contained, but
it's pretty chaotic. Et meanwhile, has discovered some interesting properties
of his own. Now he can not only heal organisms,
he can also wall crawl. He is much stronger than
he was before, and he can it's danger Parker convinces
(36:02):
Et to chill out in his house while he goes
to school. He gets addressing down from his science teacher
for having disappeared on a field trip, but he just
keeps his head down. He's distracted. He's eager to get
back and figure out what to do about Et. And
when he finally does get home, something amazing happens. In
his aunt and uncle's house is a man that Parker recognizes,
(36:24):
Tony Stark. Somehow, Stark has learned about the alien at
Osborne's lab, and moreover, has managed to figure out that
Parker was the one who helped the alien escape. He's
charming May and Ben waiting for Parker to get home,
explaining that the young man has earned a grant from
Stark Enterprises. But it's all an excuse to go at
to Parker's room, where Stark meets Et. And that's when
(36:48):
we get the scene we've all been waiting for. Stark
recruits Et into the Avengers, and Et becomes Spider Alien,
complete with a suit that doesn't fit so well because
let's be honest, dude's got a pretty weird shape to him.
Stark and the Alien make their goodbyes and leave Parker behind,
though he does get the grant, and moreover, his uncle
(37:09):
never stopped that awful robber, so he he gets to live.
Parker goes on to be a distinguished scientist and lives
a relatively normal life. He also turns on his heart
light the end. I loved that. That was so delightful
and uplifting compared to some of your previous Yeah, no,
I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I mean, like, there's
so many other terrible ways I could have ended that, right, So,
(37:32):
and I had a couple of different ideas, but like
my original idea was was very different. But I want
to hear yours. Sure, well, that was an origin story
and this is more of like um ongoing adventure. So
I apologize everybody in advance. This is the heroic duo
of Spider Man and Little Guy in the Saga of
Auto Octavius. It's Earth six one six and Peter Parker
(37:56):
is at his wits end. Docc has stolen a clone
of his body again. En you see dot Cox once
cheated death when being returned to his timeline after a
battle with a group called the Inheritors by housing his
consciousness in an octopot and taking over Peter Parker's body,
and Peter was able to push him out and not
I went into a living brain and then cloned bodies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
It's too much unpack here, so I digress. Anyhow, each
(38:17):
time Dot Doc showed up in a new body, he
was more and more erratic, and Peter's webs leeing ways
were just not working. So Peter decided to take a
completely different tactic to fight Dot Cock and play mind
games back. So to do so, he hacked into dock
ox psych profile and learned that Auto Octavius that's Dot
Dock for the lay person was originally named Elliott Tolliver Thompson.
(38:40):
He started having behavioral problems around the age of ten
after a classified encounter with some government agency code named
keys happened, eventually changing his alias and moving to New York.
He changed his name from Elliott Octavious in case that
wasn't clear. After hacking a little bit further Peter Lune
(39:01):
that Elliott had developed an empathic connection with an extraterrestrial
or ET, and he helped Et escape the government agency,
but ever since then his mental health had been on
the decline. Peter decided the only way to fix this
was to use his resources at Parker Corps to send
a distress signal to all the quadrants of all the
Loon galaxies and try to call Et back to Earth.
(39:21):
He left specific coordinates for where Et should meet him,
and as a peace offering, left a large bowl of
Reese's Peace. Oh man, dang it. He ate all of
his pieces on Stark's jet. Oh yeah, left. Now we're
Mary Janes the candy, not the drug. Well, hopefully one
nutty candy is as good as the next. So he
left a large bowl of Mary Jane's for the alien
to show that he meant no harm and he waited.
(39:44):
Soon enough, an alien ship landed an outwalked ET. Peter says, ah, hey,
they're a little guy in. ET response, not little guy
e T. Peter starts to explain what's going on, but
Et shushes him with one glowing finger, saying ET knows.
Then he points to his chest and says Elliott is
right here, and a faint glow starts to appear. Peter
(40:06):
knows what he what Et means and lifts Et off
the ground and starts webs slinging to find Doc Cock,
following Ets glowing heart, which seems to go brighter and
brighter as they get nearer and nearer to dot Cock.
They get to dock ox Layer and Peter goes in first,
knowing that Doc Doc has gotten exceptionally erratic and violent,
and dot Cock is about to throw one of his
eight giant tentacles. I'm sorry, he's in Peter's body now,
(40:28):
is one of his eight spider legs. When Et steps
out from behind Peter and dot Dock graises Et instead,
and Et of course says ouch and uh with a
nod to the real spider man. Et and Peter launch
out into an all out dehabilitating attack on Otto versus Elliott.
I mean this fight was spectacular, with Peter spleeeming webs
and jumping off walls, and Et well, well you just
(40:50):
have to see it to believe it. They finally prevail
and get auto slash Elliott tied up, Et realizes that
Elliott was trapped in his brain by another consciousness. Mr Keys,
the villainous government agent from Elliott's childhood Dunt Dunt Dah,
apparently had infected Elliott's consciousness with his own after Et
and escaped in an effort to get Et back and
(41:11):
recapture him. Of course, Spiderman knew all of this empathetically,
as et s english was still not that great, um
Et was sure he could separate Keys from Otto, restoring
him to his former Elliott persona, as he was a
much older and wiser et and had spent had switched
his his focus from plants to people ever since he
left Earth. But he needed a very simple computer to
(41:34):
do it, something that could house it consciousness but not
be reprogrammed for nefarious ways. Uh So Peter scoured doc
ox layer and found an old speaking spell in the corner.
Et Uh said empathetically, that's great, and removed keys consciousness
and put it into the speaking spell, restoring Auto to Elliott.
(41:55):
Just one last problem. Elliott was slash. Auto was still
in a clone of Spider Man's body, But now that
he wasn't Otto anymore and he was Elliott and he
was nice, they couldn't really kill him, so they released
him too, as Et would say, go home, and he
moved back to San Fernando Valley to be the West
(42:16):
Coast Superior Spider Man and do some good, making up
for all of the bad he had done since he
was ten. Et decided to stay on Earth as his
sidekick and make sure he didn't get into future trouble. Besides,
Space didn't have recent pieces, and he took on the
persona Little Guy because he kind of liked it when
Peter called him that to help Elliott fight crime on
the West Coast. Key's furious of being trapped in the
(42:38):
speak and spell, yelled to get out, but the batteries
were really old and low and so you couldn't really
make it out, And eventually the lights faded and the
speaking spell stopped working, and it just laid in a
dark corner of dock Ox forgotten Lair. Um I, you know,
I don't know what happened to Keys. I guess we'll
have to tune in next time for another exciting adventure
(42:59):
of the heroic do Spider Man and Little Guy to
find out? Well, that's a that's a series that um
I lament doesn't actually exist? Like I said, sorry, getting
well that is you know this was a fun one.
I will say that my original idea was that et
(43:21):
was going to be the irradiated Spider and give Peter Parker,
uh not Spider Man powers, but et Man powers. But
they just would have meant that he would have been
kind of like Read Richards because he would be able
to stretch his head really far from his body and
then I guess make parts of him glow. And the
(43:43):
more I thought about, the more I realized it would
be very difficult to do this and not make very
juvenile jokes, so I backed away quietly. I appreciate that,
but if any of our listeners know how to make
that joke not juvenile, you should write us that. You
should write us and tell us about it um and
(44:04):
and share your own map. Yes, you can send us
an email that is l in C at I heart
media dot com, or you can drop us a line
on Twitter where we are l n C Underscore Podcast
and over at Facebook and Instagram were large Nerdron Collider.
Also remember we have the website large nerdron Collider dot com.
That's where you can find every episode and the show
(44:27):
notes as well, so you can actually go and check
out the various articles and trailers that we talk about
so that you can form your own opinions. Yes, and
you know, if you like listening to us, tell your friends,
make sure you subscribe, like share our episodes. And you know,
we want to continue the conversation on with you, So
let us know what topics you want to hear us
(44:48):
talk about. Let us know your thoughts on video games.
We look forward to kicking out. Yes, and until next time.
She has been aerial casting, and he has been Jonathan
Respawn Strickland. M m m m m m m. The
(45:25):
Large New Drunk Collider is the production of I Heart
Radio and was created by Ariel cast In. Jonathan Strickland
is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited and
published by Tory 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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