Another Pass at Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Remember when the worst impulses of the modern film industry, like digitally resurrecting actors and sterile green screen only sets, were instead a beautiful dream of tomorrow? Well, Case and Sam, along with guest Jesse Fresco, remember. Join them for a discussion of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I generally thought this movie was fine when I saw it. The spectacle was like something cool, but like, eh, it's a curiosity.
It was a fine movie. It was like, whatever.
My big issue with it is that it's all CGI. This was a harbinger of things to come.
Yeah, that's exciting at the time because it wasn't a thing that was the.
Way yet nice to look at in some ways, but, like, not a lot of substance.

(00:25):
It's as pulpy as you can get.
I think at one point I was like, this movie has everything except character.
Arcs, emotional connection, especially physics.
Emotional connection. They're so missing on that. We should start the episode.
Welcome to certain POV's, another past podcast with case and Sam, where we take another look at movies that we find fascinating but flawed. Let's see how we could have fixed them. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another past podcast. I'm your dashing and daring host, case Aiken. And as always, I'm joined by my co host, Femme Fatale. Sam Alicea.

(01:02):
Hey there, case.
And with us today, we've got Jesse Fresco.
I'm here. Hello.
Yay.
And I can't keep that mid Atlantic or transatlantic. Pardon me. Announcer voice going for that long.
You need to host a game show now.
The mid Atlantic is the. Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.

(01:23):
Oh, yeah.
So, Jesse, thank you for coming on the show today. We are so excited to do this one. It's one I've had on the list forever. But, like, it's kind of a movie that just sort of washes over everyone because it was an interesting piece at the time and. But in retrospect, it sort of just feels like a harbinger of today.

(01:46):
Yeah.
Today we are talking about sky captain and the world of tomorrow.
Yeah. Who saw this in theater?
I saw it in theaters.
I did, too.
I did not.
It was fun in theater. I mean, I was blown away when I first saw it. I was like, wow, this is really impressive. Yeah, this is interesting. It's different.
Yeah, I was too. I was really excited about it when it was coming up. Like, this was a movie that had a lot of hype going into it. You know, it's before we get Sin City. So it's a movie that is scratching a lot of the case ache and itches there. You know, like this very stylized, old school serial kind of effect going on for everything. The tone, the fact that they use the literal fucking robots from Superman versus the machines, you know, like they're doing a lot of things that case is going to be really excited about. And then the movie came out, and I was like, fuck, this was great. You know, sophomore me in college was saying to everyone, and then I just never watched it again. I might have watched it once.

(02:45):
I think I bought the dvd, and so I probably watched it at the time and then never again.
Yeah, same. I saw it in theaters, and it was, like, 19, I think. I rented it one time after it came out on dvd, and I just watched all behind the scenes stuff. Watched the movie again, and then never watched it again until, like, a few days ago. I was like, yeah, it didn't age well, but I didn't hate rewatching it. There's a lot of stuff I like in it.

(03:09):
Yeah.
It's not the worst thing, but I will say, like we said, this is a harbinger of things to come with that timeframe. This is one year before Sin City. I think the first film to do full green screen was actually attack on the clones.
I want to say I can't imagine that they did full green screen, considering the amount of model work and set work that was in.

(03:31):
Oh, yeah, they did shoot a little bit on location.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because they had that. All this stuff shot in Venice.
Yeah, they had the Venice stuff. Yeah, I think it was. Episode three was mostly green screen.
Yeah, I mean, it certainly was. It was getting.
And that was. That was a year later.
Right.
That was 2005. Six. Six. Because it was three years apart for each film.
Right. Yeah. And, like, the thing is, this one is, like, it sells things to me based on the fact that they're doing this full cg thing where it's like, yeah, we can do this really art deco kind of style to it. All this pre world war two kind of effect that is really impossible to do without feeling kind of fake, regardless. So they could really go over the top, and there's some good uses of it where they really incorporate the fact that it's all green screen to do cool things. Unfortunately, most of those are earlier in the movie.

(04:23):
Yeah, I mean, you can do realistic looking art deco stuff. Have you ever seen Brazil? Targillians? Brazil, sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
But, like, you can do it in live action.
It costs a lot more campy. Like, there's still a suspension of disbelief in certain. Like, it's. It's got that Gilliam style to it. Like, oh, yeah, you're in for a ride. You know, you're in for a ride like that. That's what I kind of mean. Like, it's very difficult to have it all without it being super expensive, especially the level of, like, set pieces that would be going on in this movie. Like, it was promising that we could do something like that. In retrospect, most of it looks kind of like. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching season one of epic rap battles of history when I was watching this. Oh, God, they're doing all the tricks that I see, youtubers, including myself.

(05:11):
There's a lot of stuff that I've done in the past or still do because I'm aware that they are ways of making things look better. Like having, like, shadow gradients on the borders of all the shots.
Like, lots of light blooming to cover up matte lines.
Right, exactly. There's a lot of effects going on that are like, yeah, you could make this in premiere with after effects.
Yeah, yeah. There are times when I think the movie looks pretty good. There's other times where I'm like, ooh, that's so good. Yeah. So some of it has aged pretty well, some of it has not. It's just a product of a time. And for 70 million, this is only a $70 million movie. It looks pretty good. That's impressive for 70 million. Yeah.

(05:50):
And especially at the time, you know, like, again, we're talking about software now, literally 20 years later.
Yeah. You can do all this at home, on your computer, on your own.
But that's more just because of the world is. We are in the world of tomorrow.
Like, now tomorrow. Like we said, this was a harbinger of things to come in both positive and negative ways. Because after this film came out, you had so many green screen movies. Like Sin City comes out a year later. Then revenge of the Sith and the, you know, the 300, you know.

(06:20):
Right.
Basically, Zack Snyder's entire filmography after dawn of his green screen.
If you had told me that this was, like, the first Zack Snyder movie, I would have believed you.
I believe it. Yeah.
Yeah.
I would have been like, well, he uses more color.
I mean, was it. There was that owl movie he did guardians of go whole. Yeah, this looks kind of. They look kind of the same. It's the same color palette.

(06:41):
But unfortunately, now this looks to a modern eye, like the kind of schlock that you see on, like, Netflix. This looks like that space Nazi. Was it iron skies?
Iron skies, yeah.
Like, which is like, you know, a really cheap, direct to Netflix, like, Sci-Fi movie from now, like, ten years ago. It makes me think of when the zombie craze hit and everyone was making zombie movies. And there were so many cheap ass zombie movies and, like, they were everywhere. Like, and those are practical sets at least because that's why you make a zombie movie. But, like, you know, the Sci-Fi channel original movie kind of style. But like, that, like, type of schlock is what this movie feels like. And to its credit, it feels like intentional schlock. Like, it is very much the type of thing that I appreciate, which is this, like, intentionally nostalgic piece that is sort of like dealing with archetypal characters and almost acknowledging the archetypes itself. That it is a performance of an old type of theater and of pageantry.

(07:38):
I can appreciate all that. I think there's some execution issues there that keep that from being great. And then the biggest sin of this movie is it's so fucking long.
Yeah. This is almost 2 hours, I believe. This really should have been 90 minutes. Yeah, yeah. It really is a little too long. There's a lot of parts where I'm like, okay, get it. Cut that. Could have. Cut that. There's a lot of that, like, dragging out scenes.

(08:02):
Every scene is too long. Every fucking scene is too long.
Yeah, the. The editing is a little. Not great. I mean, this is apparently Carrie Conrad's only directing film. And it's a shame because, like, you watch it behind the scenes on the. The dvd and the producers were, like, defending him hard, being like, it's gonna work. It's gonna work. We promise it's gonna work. And the movie comes down to tanks and it's like, I don't think. Did any of these producers work again after this? Because if you put out a bomb like this and you're like, really that avid for it's like, that's a bad black mark on your career. Did these producers work after that? Was it John Abnett, I think was his name? Yeah. Did he work after this?

(08:39):
I'm not sure, frankly.
He did. He did. But not very good stuff.
So that kind of makes sense there.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. He only made four more movies.
Like, the critiques of this movie are really people getting editing and directing mixed up because I think that this is. Honestly, I think it's directed well enough. They're doing some really innovative stuff. And particularly at the beginning of the movie, there's some very innovative stuff.

(09:04):
Yeah.
But every scene just goes forever.
Yeah.
Need to be trimmed down. Like, this is the same problem that Star Trek the motion picture had. You know, where the movie itself is fundamentally fine, but it is broken in very specific ways.
Too long. Yeah. As much as I love seeing that enterprise, you know, masturbate masturbation sequence, it's like, you could have cut that down by, like, three minutes, dude. Yeah.

(09:30):
And that's why, like, the Blu ray that came out for Star Trek the most picture is, like, almost perfect at that point.
Yeah. The way you do it is you do in Star Trek to the wrath of Con, where they use the exact same footage and they just chopped it down. It's the same. It's the same footage from the first movie because they didn't want to spend more. But I think the big issue is that as much as I enjoy watching it, you know, just from a visual standpoint, it's pretty good. It. It felt very video gamey. This has been compared to a video game called Crimson Skies, which I've played. It's very good game. I wish we could have gotten a third one. It's based on a tabletop game. Essentially, the premise is that the Great Depression and prohibition hit the country so hard in the 1930s that every state seceded from the union, so there is no more United States.

(10:12):
And so the only way people can get around is through the sky because the interstate highway system was never established. Stupid premise. Makes no sense. It doesn't make any goddamn sense at all. It's like you'd still need passports to go across country lines anyways. Everyone has an airplane, and so it's like everyone's kind of like a sky pirate or something like that. This feels like that. And there's even a shot when he's going back to base, he's going back to his home base, and it's from behind, like a video game POV. That's literally the Crimson skies camera perspective when you're flying in the game, when he's going over the ridgeline, you see his base. It's like. It's. Yeah. Crimson skies came out one year before this. I have a feeling that people were in the visual effects department, were fans.

(10:48):
It looks exactly the same.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, for as much as you can be. Cause, of course, there is still lag of film production.
Yeah. But the ultimate issue is that you're just not emotionally engaged. As good looking as it is, you just. There's no real emotional investment.
No.
Any of the characters?
None of them. No, none of them.
And part of that is a casting choice. I think that Jude Law was a poor choice for the type of sky captain they have.

(11:13):
Yeah.
This is one where you could have rewritten the character. Basically, Jude Law, being british and not able to do an american accent, apparently. Should have just been a british pilot and you should lean into that. But that means the character has to be a little bit smoother rather than rough and tumble. Like, this is very much going for that kind of. Here's our classic doc savage type of adventurer type character, which I'm on record is being always down for. That's a thing I love.

(11:41):
Yeah, for sure.
The version of the character with Jude law in that role. And, yeah, you know, handsome leading man type just needs to be smooth. He needs to be a little bit more James Bond. He needs to be not quite the dad so much as the cool uncle type character.
Right, yeah, I could see that.
Or maybe the cool older brother type character. And so that needed to be with that specific thing. I think Gwyneth Paltrow was actually probably the best casting of the main. It's about to say main three, but, like, that sort of gets into the whole Angelina Jolie is, like, all over advertising for this thing. And is it for, like, 15 minutes.

(12:14):
Using, like, ten minutes.
Yeah, 15 if we're generous.
Yeah.
That even makes, like, their relationship make more sense because then you could have him be a british soldier in relation to, like, the British, like, flying, you know, shield helicarrier that he goes to. Like.
Yeah, but I say it's a shield helicarrier.
Yeah, like, that. That would all make more sense there. Like I said, I think Gwyneth is really well cast. I think Giovanni Rubisi is really well cast. I think everything else doesn't really matter.

(12:39):
I wasn't crazy about Gwyneth, though.
Yeah. Who cares about the scientists?
I wasn't. I wasn't, like, crazy about her. I didn't feel like she was, like, plucky enough, especially. I felt like she was too, like, chill about everything. Like, I was like, is, you know, is she on something? Like, she just felt too chill. Like, she didn't feel. She's like, she didn't get her. What is it, her iv of vitamins that day? She's reading lines.

(13:06):
So do you not like the character or are you just not like her?
No, no. I really honestly just didn't. I just didn't think that she was plucky enough. They were just some readings that just felt very flat to me. And it did not help that her and Jude law did not have any chemistry.
No.
Whatsoever, which was really painful. The fact that, like, they couldn't make any banter work right at all.

(13:29):
This is the big problem with shooting things entirely on green screen. You don't know what the hell you're looking at.
Yeah, that's true.
There's many interviews on the attack of the Clones DVD where Ewan McGregor is like, this is a nightmare. Trying to work like this is impossible. It's like, I don't know what I'm looking at most of the time. And I think it finally all came to a head and people kind of stopped doing it. And I think the volumetric screen took over was with the hobbit movies, where Ian McKellen has a visible breakdown on screen. Have you seen that?

(13:57):
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. He's like. Like, oh, God damn it. It's like he. He's like, he can't work like this. Like. Cause they couldn't do the force perspective trick from Lord of the Rings because they were shooting in 3d. So you have two cameras, so you can't do force perspective. It's all from separate angles, so they couldn't do it. So it's. Everything had to be composited together in post. And so you just see him, like, in a big, green void, and he just has a mental breakdown. He just can't do it anymore. That's the problem, is people just can't work properly like that. Like, actors need people to react to. Acting is mostly about reacting. If there's nothing to react to, then what's the point?

(14:30):
There was no reacting. Like. Like, and that was the thing. Like, and maybe that's why, like, some of her reading to me was very strange because I was like, who is she? Like, what is she talking to? Like, even, like, I thought the scene, first of all, the scene with the wizard of Oz movie in the background was awesome. Like, that was really good. And whatever. All of her scenes with him, some of her with the editor, just, things just felt so disconnected for almost all the performance performers in the movie. I would say, like, giovanni Rubisi and probably the ten, maybe 15 minutes of Angelina Jolie are probably the most engaged. But I was like, they just.

(15:09):
Angelina Jolie is still doing her tomb Raider accent, right?
Like, she's just owning that. And, like, we're like, we love that on her. So let's. You know, but I. I just kind of felt like these are your two main characters, and they just both felt disconnected. Like, that made it really hard for us to care about them throughout the film.

(15:32):
This movie really, really wants to be the Rocketeer. Yeah, really wants to be the rocketeering. Like, there's so many homages to so many other movies in this film. Like, there's some Rocketeer references. There's obviously the Empire strikes back reference where her camera falls in the grate and these stepped on. It's like, oh, I get it. It's like, I get it. Or when they do the sideways through the alleyway. And it's like when the two tie fighters collide in the asteroid. There's a lot of Star wars in here, but those are just moments when you actually get down on the ground and you have people talking to each other. It feels like it's disconnected.

(16:05):
Yeah. I think, actually, the really good comparison is Indiana Jones.
Oh, yeah.
It's Indiana Jones as well, doing that type of story. And I had a mental exercise throughout this movie once the Jude law ness of the movie, like, really clicked in for me as being part of the problem for, like, how he's written for as how Sky Captain has written. I was like, well, just imagine Harrison Ford giving every single line in this movie.

(16:28):
Yeah.
And Harrison Ford way better if you're.
Picturing young Harrison Ford do quick fix. Yeah.
Like, it's like, oh, my God. And that just illustrates for me just how much the casting choices were wrong for it, regardless of, like, the actual quality of the delivery. It's just they weren't the right people. People giving them.
Yeah. Were they the only ones available? Was there anybody else on the docket to be cast in this? I really don't know. I mean, I don't know if this is his choices.

(16:56):
Listen, they both look amazing.
I mean, it is a relatively low budget movie, and I don't see any notes about the casting. I'm sure, like, once they got them, like, on the hook, it was like, oh, yeah, we got you, law. Fuck, yeah.
Right? I mean, listen, they both look amazing, right? Like, every shot. And the way that the lighting hits, like, hair and all of that stuff, like, it's. It's so fun. Pulp, right? Like, it, like, looks great. They do a lot of that, like, 1930s, like, over the eye lighting that I love. And so Jude law's eyes always, like, really pop, right? And so, like, they look incredible. The film looks cool, right? And you're like, this should be awesome. But you don't care about them. And it's a huge problem. I think I cared more about the supporting cast. Even, like, one of the, like, the scientists from the beginning. Like, I was like, where is he? Where has he gone? I cared more about him than I did about our main characters. And we're supposed to think of them as charming and funny.

(18:02):
And I honestly did not buy that they had a previous relationship. Like, they told me they had a previous relationship, which was troubling. And, you know, all that back and forth, that Indiana Jones magic that just never really came through.
Yeah, it's really weird because there's that moment when they're in Shangri la, they're in bed naked, and she's just. She's looking over at him, like, turn around. Turn. Like, dude, if you had a relationship, you've seen her naked. It's like, what? Like, why is she so weirded out by this? Like, she wouldn't be.

(18:33):
Well, but that felt like a thing from the forties.
That's true. But I feel like she should have been like, more like, what are you doing here? What. What did we do? You know? Like, I think it would have been, but then you wouldn't get the turnaround part and then have their lovely friend be there, too.
Oh, yeah. I love that. That was great. That's where the movie is working. Yeah.

(18:54):
Yeah. I think that shows the problem here, which is that scene being awkward is because it's too long. We need to get to that punchline faster. Cause that punchline is really good.
Right.
Too much bickering and bantering. They could have trimmed it up quite a bit. Like, that's mostly what editing for television is. Like, cut a few seconds here, here. But if you cut enough of it gets. It trims it up, and you can get it to where it needs to be.

(19:16):
Yeah. And that's what I keep coming back to, that this movie is way too long. Now, the other thing that I want to bring up, and I've mentioned this in passing a couple of times now, which is that there is interesting stuff that they're doing in the edit that is impossible for a live set piece kind of thing.
Yeah.
The big shot for me that really hit it was when we see Gwyneth typing at her typewriter and the windows are being filled up with her headlines, like, what she's working on.

(19:39):
Oh, yeah.
Like, shots like that, I think are really cool, and I think that we just lose them completely towards the end of the movie. So I think there's a lot of artistry in what is fundamentally the updated version of the short that got this made the world of tomorrow short that Carrie Conran did.
I was about to say, like, a lot of that stuff is from the short. Yeah.
And, like, it's made. It's updated, and, like, they're doing, you know, with a bigger budget. And that's all amazing stuff. It shows that the rest of the movie doesn't have that level of, like, thought out kind of process to it. It's not another pass at a pre existing short film that he had done.

(20:09):
Yeah. Because he had been working on that, like, on his own while he was still doing his main job. So he'd come home at night and just work on it on his computer. So he was, like, designing all the models in his own computer and, like, putting them in. And it's like he would shoot small things with friends of his to fill in the roles. It's like, what's the short film? Only, like, six or seven minutes, right? Yeah.
I mean, it was a short film. Like, it was under 20 versus.

(20:33):
Yeah, it's, like, way too long here. Yeah, yeah.
I think what's interesting is that, like, the truth is that even though, you know, you watch this film and it is too long and there are parts that can be really edited down and our main characters have. You can tell that the person who created it or the people that were creating really, like, loved this idea.

(20:54):
Right.
They loved this genre. They liked. So, like, there is something still really lovely in the film, despite its incredible flaws, which is mostly.
There's a vision here. There's a vision here. Yeah, there's a vision, for sure.
And there's a love of this pulp stuff, just like what you said earlier, these references that you can kind of hearken back to the things that you would love about a 1930s 1940s serial, but adding all the dirigibles and the giant robots and just all of that. So cool. The twists and turns. It reminds me of, like, a radio serial. Right? Like. And then she was a robot.

(21:32):
Oh, I mean, there was. I mean, when sky captain is flying back to his base, there's that radio announcer, and it sounds like he's reading off one of the serials over the radio. So not quite sure why an aircraft is getting normal radio frequency that doesn't work like that. Even to the point where they reference Buck Rogers. They have Buck Rogers comic book show up in the movies. Like, okay, I get it. Isn't the gun he gets also, isn't that Buck Rogers gun? So, yeah, it's interesting that they put all these things in here and there's clearly vision. It's just, I think that maybe Carrie Conrad got a bit over his head. He was trying. Really trying. I wish he could have made more movies, but he's only ever made this one film. Yeah, that sucks.

(22:14):
And that's so wild when you actually look at the finished project, which is, again, nothing bad. And when it came out.
Not bad. No, it's good.
When it came out, were all hyped up because, like, the hype about making this movie, like, Conran's, like, enthusiasm for the project that he was creating was infectious. Like, the. The marketing for it was like, look, this is really fucking cool that we're able to make a movie like this, because, like, think about, like, the contemporaries, like, for full cg movies. Like, that was hot. That was exciting. And were getting things like, you know, toy story, we're getting things like the incredibles, and then we're getting things like Polar Express. And, like, it was very clear that to do the kind of crazy, you know, aesthetically pleasing CG 3d environments that we're putting out there, we had to have, like, stylized main characters or.

(23:03):
And this was presenting an option of, like, well, what if you, like, who framed Roger Rabbit and, like, integrate them completely? And, like, that was really exciting. And being like. And look, we can create, you know, on a shoestring budget, relatively speaking, a fully fleshed out world with giant robots and all these kind of things that normally would be associated with, like, ballooning budgets and all that. It's just not put together in a way that will keep you excited and back on it. But it is like we keep saying the forebear of, like, what were going to get for all movies ultimately. And, like, it's hard to be mad at this one because it is infectiously optimistic about it all. It is like a futurist in that regard. And then you look at the dystopia that we're currently in.

(23:45):
I mean, this movie has Lawrence Olivier dead being recreated through the magic of technology to be the main villain in this thing. This is literally the thing we're concerned about all the time now. We just had a strike about this.
Yeah, this is something that I want to complain about, which is like, a huge negative I have is putting Lawrence Olivier in the film. Like, I love Lawrence Lavier as an actor. He's fantastic. But I do think that there's no reason to have him in here at all. Like, you could say, oh, we got permission from his estate. It's like digging someone up from their grave and, like, puppeteering them on screen. It's like, it's so creepy to me.

(24:20):
But you've had time to think about that and really come to that conclusion. Like, prior to this, there's what Forrest Gump like, you know, the amount of.
Well, that's different because they used, like, archive footage, right.
And which is like.
But this is like, they literally resurrected him and put him CGI on screen.
Right. But you've had time to, like, actually process and, like, come to. Come to an opinion about that type of necromancy. You know, like, yeah, like, this is a movie that is, again, a futurist. And everything they're trying to do is trying to push the envelope in this shoestring budget. And so, like, it's like, hey, this is exciting. And we have, like, one of these, like, great actors of our lifetime brought back and, you know, a perfect fit from the standpoint of, you know, like a film career that plays to this kind of genre.

(25:10):
Yeah, I mean, were just off air. We were just talking about the flash and how they put in multiple dead people in that movie. Like, you know, George Reeves is in there, Chris Reeves is in there. Adam west putting in dead people in your movie. It's a bit in bad taste now. I mean, I think the worst offender is probably rogue one with Peter Cushing. It's because they just recreated the character and just had someone else stand in and then put words in his mouth and they just said, oh, we're just going to use his face. And then now we're having strikes over all of this stuff that's happening with AI.

(25:44):
And they're just recently, probably the most heinous display of it was all this AI porn that's happening right now, the Taylor Swift stuff that just happened, which is despicable and gross and creepy. Why the hell would you do that? Disgusting. But yeah, that's where we're at. Like we said, this movie was a harbinger of things to come, like putting people's faces on another person's body. It's weird and it's creepy to me and I don't like it. So because you could have gotten any other actor at the time, you know, here's what I would say. Make Jude law the main villain. Just use his face. That would make more sense to me. Then you can have a british guy in your mean villain role and have, like, I don't know, some traditional american actor in the lead role.

(26:27):
You know, like, who was the guy that played rocketeer? Was it Billy Campbell? Get him back. There you go. You got your sky capsules.
Would have been perfect.
There you go. Have the jetpacks. Have the jetpack show up at his, base, just like in the background. Somebody else like, there you go.
Wink, wink.
Also, also, by the way, am I the only one that noticed that when his whole base gets blown up. He doesn't give a about anybody else that worked for him except for Dex.

(26:52):
Just Dex. Just Dex. He's the only one who matters. He's the only one who has a name.
So there's a bunch of other planes. Are they all his? Like, does he just, like, swap them out? Like, I'm gonna take this one today.
I don't know.
It's got the red bullseye on it.
I mean, he's, are there other people.
That work for him?
It does look like he has a support crew, but it also is supposed to be kind of like similar to like an iron man or a Batman, but like the gadget era kind of Batmandeh. I don't know. I mean, it would make sense for him to multiple jets, but it also makes sense for him to have a squad. I'm not entirely sure.

(27:25):
Yeah, it's weird because earlier in the film they do say that the people, the governments of the world are turning to sky captain, his mercenary forces. His mercenary squad forces. Right. So that makes you believe that he is the captain of an actual army that flies, right? He's a mercenary, basically, yeah.

(27:47):
So it's assumed that he has people, right?
Right. Yes. It's stated he has people. And you do see people. When Gwyneth Paltrow first shows up, when Polly shows up, you see people around the base, like, fixing things, walking around in the background. But, like, those, he doesn't care about.

(28:07):
Any of these people. It's creepy.
Also, I just realized that sky captain is thus kind of like a heroic version of, like, Eric Prince.
Oh, God damn it.
Oh, my gosh.
You know what? Fuck you. Okay? Just hear that. Fuck.
I know, like, it's gross to say that part, but, like, if you don't.
Know who Eric Prince is, look up the history of Blackwater.
Yeah, but that is not the type of character we're trying to be presented here. Like, even though it is the same role.

(28:33):
Yeah, they want, like, they're trying to make him a Buck Rogers or a flash Gordon or a Dan dare. They're kind of trying to make that.
Yeah, it's kind of the vibe of like a world war one vetted, like an ace pilot kind of character who's like, no, well, I still have a plane. And, like, I found a secret base while in the middle of the war, and now I can use it to, like, fight for, fight the good fight, regardless of borders or something to that effect.

(28:54):
Yeah. What was that pulp character? What was it? Johnny Red? You ever heard of Johnny Red?
No, but, like, I mean, Garth Ennis.
Has written a couple of comics around him. It was a pulp world War two character. Basically, the idea is that he was an american pilot that was sent overseas to fight with the RAF. And so he gets his own squadron, and so he's kind of like a sky captain. He's in charge of these people, but he typically just goes out on his own and does his own thing. So he has no backup or supports. Like, I'll just take on all the nazis by myself. It's fine. And somehow he keeps surviving. He just keeps surviving every single time. So he's just got really good luck. It's an interesting character, and there's a bunch of books by a writer I really like named Derek Robinson.

(29:34):
He wrote a book called Piece of Cake, which I really love, is my favorite books about RAF pilots in World War two. It's set during the phony war, and it's like 750 pages long, but it's a breezy read. It's basically the realistic version of what it was like in that there was a lot of sitting around waiting for shit to happen, people just being pissed off at each other because they're so bored. Yeah, it's really interesting characters, and that there's some characters just kind of go off and just do shit on their own because just like, yeah, we're bored as fuck. Let's just go find some supply lines, just blow them up.

(30:02):
So that's kind of, I think what they're trying to do with this character is they're trying to create, like, this happy go lucky go out there and just fight the bad guys and live to find the day kind of thing. But the movie throws you into the plot, like, right away. There's, like, no, like, lead up to, like, anything. It just, like the movie just, like, dead starts. Like, oh, we're already dealing with this scientist thing. There's been no establishment of character, no establishment of the world. Like, if you're just, like, coming into this from a normal audience perspective, you're going to be completely confused. When I went and saw this with a friend of mine in theater, I enjoyed it because I liked that kind of stuff. He walked out and he's like, that was weird.

(30:42):
He just, it was just, there's no entry point for the average audience member.
Yeah, I mean, like, they do the radio stuff as a way of, as kind of covering it. I think the problem is that the movie is so slow, but also doesn't have a lot of lead in exposition. It's weird that it jumps almost in media res yet is also at the same time, again, two fucking hours long and doesn't need to be that long.

(31:02):
Yeah, could have been 90 minutes.
That's actually a really good observation because I do feel like at some point it felt, like, really slow, but then there were moments where I felt like, wow, it doesn't stop, right? Like, the set pieces are so long that it just feels like non stop. Just running, explosions, things like that. But they're so long. And then you don't get enough character stuff that it feels like the movie is at both times never stopping, but, like, also just dragging, which is kind of crazy to think.

(31:36):
It kind of sounds like you're describing a Transformers movie to me, never stopping, but always dragging.
Yes.
Yeah. The sickness that always goes on too long to me is when they go back to the city for the second time and the ornithopters from dunes show up. That's literally what the ornithopters from Dune are described as. Birds. They just flap their wings. I like the new design in the movies, they look like dragonflies, but what they are supposed to look like is supposed to be birds. So the owner thought was from dunes show up, and that sequence goes on for, like, fucking 15 minutes, dude.

(32:07):
Way too long.
Oh, my God, it's too long. Jesus. Too long. I see what you're saying. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Like, we have big sequences, but the movie is just, like, there's not enough in it to justify those sequences being that long.
Yeah, I think it's because we just don't get enough of, like, what's really happening, you know? And, like, you do, but you don't, like, everything's kind of short, just interactions or radio overlay, and then it's just like. And now there's a monster of a mechanical nature that they will fly away from or fight. And, oh, his airplane is also a submarine. Cool. Like, it's just like, there's so much spectacle, but not enough to, like, propel the plot forward.

(32:57):
Also, like, when sky captain gets back, I keep calling him sky, but no, his name is Joe. I keep want to call him sky captain when he gets back to base and he's just sitting in his office and I'm like, you're not going to, like, go back and talk to the authorities and investigate what's going on because apparently everybody knows who you are, so you probably have some level of authority here. You're not going to, like, investigate why they were trying to get the generators under the city. You're just going to fly back home, all right.

(33:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because we need the movie to happen. We need to come back and fight the ornithopters of Dune. So it's all good.
Does anyone else have, like, major notes that they need to date before we take a break and come back for pitches? Even though I think, I have a feeling what all those pitches are going to be.
It's all going to be the same pitch.
The plan that Totenkoff has makes no goddamn sense.

(33:46):
Oh, yeah? Why is it an end of the world situation? Like, sure, fucking make your Noah's ark rocket, whatever kind of idea, but that doesn't need to do anything else. Just fuck off somewhere. That's fine.
Yeah. Okay, so he's gonna lead animals two by two onto an ark, and he's gonna drop them as soon as the planet gets destroyed. Okay, well, number one, they're not gonna have any food, so plants gonna be destroyed, so you're not gonna have any food or water or any place for them to survive. The other issue is two of every species isn't enough to repopulate. You're really smart, but you ain't that smart.

(34:18):
Yeah.
I also find it hard to believe that a scientist would lean so heavily into religion. I don't buy that. And the last one, different animals have different lifespans, so the lifespan of a house fly is a little different from the lifespan of an elephant. So this doesn't work. How are all these animals being kept alive? If he's dead, and these machines have been doing this for years and years, how are all these animals still alive?

(34:43):
Agree. It needed to be dropping them for such a high space. Like, I was just like, I know they have little pods and stuff, but, like, some of them are gonna die on the way down. Like, it's just not a good plan. It is a horrible plan, and it makes no sense whatsoever. And how do the vials tie into the plan, exactly?

(35:08):
Oh, yeah. Was that ever explained?
I don't think they ever explained how the vials that they had to get from her. Like. Like, there was never a sequence showing how they, like, powered the rocket ship or unlocked some secret code so that the robot could complete the thing that her master programmed her to do. There was nothing to really tell us. Like, that whole journey to Shangri la and to the mine and all of that makes no sense. Also, the robot can just hire people from the other guy's team. Like, there's no human. Like, this robot is great, and I'm sorry. That they died the way that they did because they didn't deserve to. Because they can hire other people to ambush other people for vials. Just doesn't make sense.

(35:57):
Are they trying to imply that the vials are filled with the DNA of Adam and Eve? Is that what they're trying to imply?
Oh, maybe.
I thought it was some sort of, like, DNA harvesting kind of thing, which then when they actually have the full on animals, it's like, oh, well, that's different than what I thought.
Yeah. What did the mini elephant mean when they found that thing? What was that all about?

(36:17):
Well, it was one of his experiments, right? So, like, it was just showing that he was, like, experimenting on animals. I don't know.
It wasn't totenkopf, though. It was. That was Jennings's experiment. Why would he do that?
Didn't they work with them also?
I mean, I thought that was just a nod to. What was it, a tax Avery cartoon with the tiny elephant?
Oh.
Like, there's what I think is Warner Bros. Cartoon of a tiny elephant, like, wandering around a city and everyone being, like, freaked out by it.

(36:45):
Oh, I know what you're talking about. I know what you're talking about.
I thought that was a nod to it, where it's like, here's science doing the thing. Because it's all like, if you were obsessed with, like, late night tnt in, like, 1993, then this all would make sense to you. Like, all the references they make in this entire thing.
Yeah. There's also references to the island of Doctor Moreau. A lot of that is in there. Like, what the island they go to is literally just the island of Doctor Moreau. That's all it is.

(37:11):
It's with robots.
Like I said, it's pulp. It's just pulp. So we're bringing up all these questions of, like, well. Well, how are they supposed to get the animals off the ark? And how are they supposed to repopulate it's pulp. None of it matters. Which is also the problem is that this is the problem with pulp is that it's good for the immediate enjoyment, but then afterwards evaporates from your brain.
Right. And the fact that the movie is too slow keeps it from having that sort of, like, gut punched impact that, like, an Indiana Jones had where, like, that is.

(37:39):
It doesn't quite penetrate.
Like, that is pulp, but it's pulp in a way that it's so exciting that you can't help but, like, have it, like, linger with you. This movie does not. Like, I have to keep rereading what happens in the end of the movie because, like, by that point in the movie, I'm just like, all right, there's another sequence and there's just more of this shit. All right, cool. Like, and it's fine. It was enjoyable enough to watch, but it wasn't a thing that was, like, lingering with me. There's so much of this movie I didn't remember from when I watched it in theaters. It just doesn't stick with you beyond the experiment that it is. Anyway, I have a pretty good idea what we're going to say when we get to pitches, but I think we're there.

(38:13):
So why don't we take a break, shout out one of the awesome shows on our network, maybe insert an ad for anything from jaguar sharks, if you've got one. But we'll take the break here, and then when we come back, we'll have some pitches and I have a feeling how they're that's going to go. And then we'll see where we're at.
Hey.
Oh, hey, Jeff. What's going on, guys? Oh, you know, talking about Superman.

(38:35):
Oh, cool.
I could talk about Superman. I could talk some more about Supermande we know. I'll bet a few people would want to get in on this. I'm down. You know it.
That sounds like fun. I'll do it. Cool.
Let's do it. We can call the show men of steel, and you can find [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts.
Yay.

(38:57):
And we're back. So, Jesse, we have one rule on this show when it comes to the actual pitch order, although I feel like we could kind of combine a lot of things that we just said in the previous segment of the show, but it's that I'm not allowed to go before Sam. Sam has to go before me. So she can either go first or you can go first. I just can't go before Sam. And you are our guest. And if you want to take a swing, you're welcome to go first or you're welcome to put Sam out there first. Or we can say that we can kind of all just work together on what I think we're all pretty clear about how we would make it go.

(39:32):
I would just pitch this one thing to start, and then we can all just do a round robin thing.
Sure.
I would like an opening sequence that shows Sky Captain fighting in some kind of major conflict. I mean, this is set previous to World War Two.
It feels like it. Yeah.
Maybe have him a World War one.
Combat veteran, something like that.

(39:53):
Have him in the middle of a fight in World War one towards the tail end of the war when the US started getting involved. That way you can show off his skillset as a pilot because he really isn't introduced until, like, what, 1520 minutes in the movie and it's called Sky Captain. It's like, okay, that just seems weird. So, yeah, I think it would be. It'd behooved the movie to have an intro sequence to set the tone. I just rewatched the film Fury the David Ayer film, Fury that, the tank movie. I really liked that film. I think it's the last time David Ayer actually made a good movie because after that he did. What was it? Sabotage and Suicide Squad hasn't really been hitting any home runs recently. And I haven't seen the beekeeper because I don't care.

(40:35):
The opening sequence of that film is that it's just a guy wandering through a battlefield in World War Two on a horseback, and then Brad Pitt jumps out of a tank, stabs him, and then takes the horse. And then he gets into the tank and they drive away. It's like just the one lone group that survived that battle. I think that having that be the one lucky pilot that survives a massive sortie setting the tone for what's happening later on in the film.

(40:59):
Okay, yeah, I could see that. Or I could see it as like a media res. Like a fully in media res, like Sky Captain adventure. And then we get the, like, the info dump that comes after. But have it be like him solving a different crime or something like that.
A MacGyver kind of thing.
Yeah, you know, like indiana Jones. Like, open with him on previous mission, and then the next mission starts, and then that way you can have, like, the radio announcers, like, talking about who Sky Captain is before we get into the main plot so that we're at least, like, aware of who the players are.

(41:28):
I mean, I could even see it be as like a juxtaposition thing. Like, you could do it in newspaper kind of serials, like, if you don't want to do a whole sequence.
Oh, we can do the spinning newspaper kind of.
Right. And you can do it, like, you could have her in the office. Right? We can. We can still have kind of like that moment in the office. And you can have, like, the spinning, like, sky captain saves the world again.

(41:50):
Veteran of the great war continues fighting for us.
There you go. Didn't the movie overlord do that to introduce the film? Remember that. That. The Wolfenstein movie, that's not Wolfenstein. It's basically just Wolfenstein. It's. They could have just called it Wolfenstein and had Wyatt Russell's character be named BJ Blazkowicz. And it's like, yeah, it's a Wolfenstein movie. There's zombies. It's great. It's Wolfenstein. Fine.

(42:14):
See, you could have done that and kind of had her put down the paper and maybe, like, roll her eyes, which would actually, like, give us probably a little more character like, insight to their relationship than their actual banter. And then you could have still cut to the scientist getting off. Da da da. So it would be, like, very short, but at least it would introduce him, you know? Cause we don't really get to see him till much later. And I don't have a problem following Polly. Like, I have no problem with her, like, being the person that introduces us to the world. But I wish that there was, like, a more clean introduction to sky captain at the beginning.

(42:51):
Yeah, yeah. Or she's watching one of those newsreels in theater, waiting for the scientist to show up, and then she sees it. She's like, ugh, God, it's like my ex is on screen.
Yeah, that would be great.
And that would be a great transition, because you could have that whole sequence of him saving the day, and then it turns into the pre roll, like, newsreel kind of thing. And that would actually be a really fun way to do it. Oh, man. I like. I like that a lot.

(43:17):
Yeah, that would truncate so much crap. It's like that cut. That cuts out a good, like, five minutes in the movie that we don't need.
Exactly.
We don't need Dumbledore to show up early on in the film. What's that actor's name? Was it Albert Finney, I think is his name.
Well, it's Michael Gambon.
Oh, Michael Gambin. Yeah, Dumbledore. After the original Dumbledore passed away.

(43:39):
Dumbledore two.
Dumbledore two, yeah. Oh, he passed away.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know Michael again, but.
Oh, yeah. Recently.
Oh, yeah. September 27, 2023. Oh, wow. I didn't know he passed away. Oh, that's a shame. Damn. I didn't know. Well, now both dumbledores are dead. Also, didn't Jude Law go on to play Dumbledore in those movies? Son of a. Son of a bitch. God damn it. Oh, Christ. We did the first one of those on film rescue. We basically just said, okay, so the movie erases itself in the last five minutes. Why are we here? It literally erases, because they just use magic to wipe away everybody's memory. The whole thing never happened. Why are we here? Yeah.

(44:24):
But why are we here? Here now talking about sky captain and the world of tomorrow.
Yes. We'll get back.
Focus.
Yeah. So I think that, like, we kind of covered the big note, which is that it's. It's too long. It needs to be about 25 minutes shorter, roughly.
Yeah.
So I would be fine with just shaving off almost every single scene because they all just run too long. And I think we just. We covered an opening of the movie or combined.

(44:47):
Yeah, yeah. Like, the robot attack and the ornithopter attack. Why are they not having the same.
Yeah, most of the. Most of the sequences in this movie are just like, and then this, which means you could actually probably cut any one of these, and it would just, like, shorten it. But that actually doesn't shorten it the way I want it to. I want the scenes themselves to be shorter because they all run too long, and then we can have, like, our nonstop. Here's this huge train of action that you're going on from cart to cart. Just speed that shit up, like, getting between each one of them, because that's what is wrong with this movie, that it drags so that, like, by the end of the movie, you're like, finally, we're fucking done with this thing, even though it is a cool premise that, like, you're coming in too excited about.

(45:27):
Yeah.
I also do think, like, we're trying to take things away, but I would like to add, just because definitely bothered us as a collective, I would like to add a small moment of grief for the people who died at the base of the plane. But I think it should be acknowledged that Sky Captain is pissed and then, like, he's got to go get Dex, and that the reason why he has to get Dex is Dex survived, and he might be the only member of his team. Right. So, like, you kind of, like, not that you want to, like, leave a friend out there, but it explains, like, why even so, like, we are going to do everything we can to go get Dex. He's the only one left, right? Yeah.

(46:08):
Also, like, can we just bring Angelina Jolie's character in sooner just for a little bit? Like, I don't know, did she just has a cool fleet, and I just feel like that was one of the things that was shorter.
Yeah, it's. It's a wild coincidence. He just happens to be there in that area where they're gonna run out of fuel. It's just.
Right.
Crazy coincidence.

(46:28):
Right? I feel like there should be, like, more of a. Like, we're going to rendezvous, or I'm gonna work with this person because she's the best at retrievals. Like, give her, like, another.
I thought that the rendezvous. There was a rendezvous part of that. I didn't think it was. I didn't think it was a complete coincidence. I thought. Because he figured out where.
Yeah, that's right. He sends a message to her to get her to show up, and then.

(46:52):
He just happens to run out just in time.
Yeah. You didn't call her earlier.
It's like, yeah, I think it would actually be cooler for him to, like, have at least sent messages a couple times. I just feel like it would be cooler to have her there. Especially if you're going to use her for all of your advertisements. Just putting that out there because she was advertised as a main cast person.

(47:14):
She was hot at the time.
Yeah. And I feel like this is like the same thing, like, with Beowulf, where people are like, come see Angelina Jolie. And she's barely in the film.
Barely in the film.
Right. And so I feel like people, they did that a lot with her. It's fine. Just bring her in sooner. I think it actually doesn't even hurt your bullying. Although I'm kind of, like, on the fence whether or not there should have been anything romantic at all.

(47:43):
I think from the type of story they're doing, it has to because, like, it's just the archetypes that they're doing.
Yeah.
It's just innocent enough to make it silly. He did cheat on her for three months. Yes. But at the same time, it's like they don't really get intimate on screen at any point.
I mean, she almost did possibly cut the line to his engine. So she might have almost murdered him.

(48:08):
I mean, like, between Jude law and Angelina Jolie. I mean, like, the two of them, they don't, like, flirt with each other or anything like that on screen. It's like, it's just innocent enough to slide. Yeah. Whereas with Jude Laundry, with Paltrow, it's like that archetype of the gruff american hero and the kind of annoying woman sidekick that's an archetype. Like, go back to Indiana Jones romancing of the stones. It's very standard. Even like Tarzan and Jane of Edgar rise Burroughs stories. Like, that's very common. So I get why it's there. It's just not executed properly because we said the chemistry is wrong. So another thing we have to do is fix the casting.

(48:51):
Yeah. And normally we try to avoid things that are impossible. Casting changes. And in this scenario, Jude Law is a producer on this one. Like, very clearly, this movie got made because he's part of it. So I don't think we can lose Jude Law, but I do think that we can rewrite the part so that it plays to his strengths better than the movie. We got. Like we said in the first half, like, if the character is supposed to be british and that's why he has association with the british version of S h I E l D, apparently. Have him be a little bit more suave, have him be a little less rough and tumble. Just, like, play to Jude Law and, like, not pretend that he's american when he can't do an american accent.

(49:25):
Yeah.
What if he served underneath Angelina Jolie at one point? Yeah, like, that he was. He was Rafemouse serving underneath her during some. Some war. And then he went off on his own as a mercenary. He decides to call it a favor or something that makes more sense than her just showing up.
Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. I mean, have them be.
Especially for, like, a possible past dalliance.

(49:47):
Yeah. That's a cool way of, like, having the characters have, like, some connections outside of, you know, just being like, oh, yeah, it's a friend.
Yeah, he's a hot man.
Of course I'm his friend.
I have this ace in my back pocket. I'm gonna play it now. Yeah. Makes more sense to have them there. It connects them more than just, oh, yeah, it's a friend of a friend.

(50:10):
Yeah. Like, even if he's no longer working underneath Jolie, like, even if now is, like, his own private military, at least, like, it kind of plays into a structure and gives us some more background on the character. Like, we know so little about sky captain. It would be nice to have him have that military career be fleshed out when this is the era of, like, yeah, those daring pilots of World War one are still the stuff of legend. You know, like the red Baron, you know? Like, there's just names that we know because, like, hey, this was a paradigm shift in how war was done when all of a sudden we had pilots, but they weren't that powerful. But there's this, like, swashbuckling quality to it, right?

(50:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
To become an ace pilot in World War one, I believe he only had to get, like, five kills because it was so hard to get a kill it was so difficult. Then there was one pilot, I think I like, 25 kills. It's interesting seeing, like, kind of like, there used to be a time when it's like, being a pilot was, like, a cool thing. Now it's like.
Right.
It's not as cool anymore.
Well, and this is an era where it's less, like fleets and more like individual aces. You know, like, versus. You get to World War two, and it's much more like, here's our aircraft carrier, and here we're launching, like, this number of vessels. And, like, the bombers are the big, important ones. And, you know, all of that. Like, not to say that there weren't still, like, hotshot pilots and there's still hotshot pilots to this day, but it isn't catching the imagination the way it was during World War one. And this is supposed to feel kind of like the continuation of that story.

(51:36):
Yeah. Like, adding in that opening where it's him in World War one would bring that back. It would make it feel like.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, it kind of reminds me of the tagline for the original Superman. You'll believe a man can fly. It's like, yeah, that's what you should feel.
You won't believe how well this man can fly.
Yes. There you go.
You can even put Angelina in high fiving him, which gives her two more minutes in the movie.

(52:00):
Oh, Jesus Christ.
For your advertisement time, can I just.
Make an executive decision here? Can we not make the airplanes in the submarines?
I mean, that's, like, the grand tradition of, like, weird gadget device kind of.
Ones, but it's like. It's like a get out of jail free card. It basically means that there's no danger for anybody.
I don't hate it, but also, we're looking to cut things down. I'm also fine with cutting those sequences, so, like, sure.

(52:25):
Yeah, sure.
Fuck it. Yeah.
It's called sky captain. I'd like him to stay in the sky, please.
Fair.
It's not called sea captain. It's sky captain. They'd have it be like, an airship that he has to take on or something like that. Or there's a shield bubble around the island.
That's true, because otherwise it would just be the captain.
Yeah. He ain't Captain Nemo. He's Sky captain. I would prefer it if he stayed in the sky.

(52:45):
Yeah. Have a submersible sequence, so if you want to, like, show off, like, how water looks in this, like, CGI kind of environment. But, yeah, keep the main, like, combat all in the sky with. With Jude Law's character. So I feel like we've kind of crossed a lot of the things that we wanted. Like, we kind of covered it all because the movie is, like, is such an interesting piece of history. And it was fine when it came out. It didn't do that well, and it didn't do that well because no one was, like, that excited about it afterwards. But it was a proof of concept of, like, what you can do. And unfortunately, that proof of concept is now our dystopian nightmare that we are living under.

(53:22):
Oh, God. Any Marvel movie at this point. Thanks a lot, man.
But the movie was made in good faith, I believe, and, like, it was.
Made with good intentions. Yes.
Yeah. There was a lot of enthusiasm about, like, recapturing a world that is gone and having that sort of, what is it called? Z rust or whatever, like, where it's, like, retro futurist kind of elements, advanced science, but from a perspective of, like, 1940 stuff. Because, like, those pulp cereals were so cool and, like, you know, sold a bill of goods that didn't really happen. Like, we are in the future. We have amazing stuff. My phone is more powerful than the computer I took to college by, like, a considerable amount.

(53:57):
Yeah. You could do literally anything on your phone now. Your phone has all the technology you would ever need in your life.
Yeah. This is just an aside because, you know why? Nothing. Right before I went on paternity leave, I tried to see if I could go a week using just my phone and not having a laptop. So I still had my USB C hub setup at my office, which plugged into a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor. And I used Dex mode on my Galaxy fold four. And the Dex mode was perfect for just about everything, except for a few issues with having to dig up some files that I just needed that were only locally stored. Because I had Dropbox, I had Excel, I had word, I had Google Docs, I had all of that. I was just using a perfectly fine setup for everything.

(54:43):
Like, I could Google map all the locations that I had, like, route people to all the software because it was all web based, was available to me. And it was fine on my goddamn phone. And I had no, like, I probably had, like, 50 tabs open at one point and it was working fine. Like, phones are insane now.
Yeah. If you have 50 tabs open on your laptop, it typically slows the goddamn thing down. Like, whereas with your phone, it's fine. Yeah, yeah. We've reached that point where nothing is exciting anymore.

(55:10):
I mean, like, we are in the future. We are in the world of tomorrow today. The problem is that world of.
Tomorrow, I just want my rent lower, dude.
Exactly. That world of tomorrow is still a world where we're looking back to the yesterday and thinking, like, God, that was, like, kind of nice, wasn't it? And that kind of sucks. But looking at this movie and looking at it as a curiosity, looking at it as a piece of, like, hey, this is what is possible in movie making. I'm still happy that it came out. I was excited for it when it came out. The gist of it is definitely the kind of thing I would enjoy. Even though I think if it was just fucking shorter and, like, just grabbed you by the balls more than it does, it would really stick it as an action classic.

(55:53):
But instead it was a technical demonstration and, like, that's fine and dandy and, like, no one really needs to go rewatch it, but no one's mad that it came out. It's, like, good that it did. Even though, like I said, every sin of the modern era is represented in this movie.
Yeah. I mean, a year later, you had Sin City that came out, and that did amazingly well. Got high reviews. It did really well financially. I mean, granted, that was made on a much lower budget, and it was made in a very piecemeal fashion against the green screen. And it was shot black and white with a little bit of splashes of color. Granted, that film didn't age very well from a political standpoint. There's a lot of racism and sexism in that film. I don't want to get into it. That's a totally different subject matter, but people can use it to create interesting visual images. And while I don't like 300 as a film, it is visually interesting.

(56:42):
Yeah. And I would say that is the thing that shows where this movie faltered. Sin especially because it's directly taking comic book frames from the comic Sin City. There's a lot of very stylized shots all throughout the movie.
The whole movie stylized?
Yeah, because the comic was already stylized in 300. There's stylization going on there, so there's, like, there's cool stuff you can do with it. And while we might be kind of tired of a lot of it, clearly this is the foundation for a type of movie and a type of movie that can be good even though it's really easy for it to be, like, overly indulgent and not that great or not that interesting.

(57:18):
Right.
So I don't know. Like, I walk away from this being like, yeah, this movie could have been a lot tighter. And the cast could have, like, gelled better. But it's not fundamentally broken.
No, it's completely functional. It's just the engine is just kind of gummed up.
Yeah.
Just can't. Can't quite get into gear. You know, it can't quite get there. It's like. It's like a sputtering engine. It's like it goes fast, it slows down. It goes fast, it slows down. It can't quite get up to speed.

(57:43):
Yeah. I think earlier I said something to the effect of it's fundamentally broken. What I meant there was the pacing. Like, I think that the overall package of the movie is fine. It's inoffensive and you're never gonna want to rewatch it.
Yeah.
But it's fine that it exists.
I also think a big problem in the movie is that by this point, the era of pulp was kind of over. The whole film feels kind of like a pastiche of an era long since gone. Yeah. Like, try to make a Buck Rogers movie. Now who's gonna show up?

(58:13):
This reminded me of the shadow.
Yeah.
But less interesting. Like, the shadow at least had a very strong viewpoint in terms of how it was presenting the world. This one felt a bit more surface because it's, you know, from a rookie director who wouldn't do anything else. It just feels like a love letter to, like, those old pulps and those old cereals and. And all of that. And, like, that's cool. But it was from someone who hasn't really been tested. And because there wasn't, I think, more control overall in terms of, like, getting it edited down. Then I, you know, it didn't have the George Lucas problem.

(58:45):
Like, yeah, sometimes you need some friends.
Exactly. Like the infamous, like, sit down that he had with his film school buddies where they decided, like, okay, well, we're gonna completely rewrite the crawl. We're gonna re edit this movie. We're gonna rebuild it from scratch. Never happened here.
Yeah. You need somebody to step in and say, no.
Right. Like, this is a perfectly fine first edit.
Yeah. Your best friends will tell you with honesty, no.

(59:10):
Yeah, this is indulgent here.
It's okay to step in and be like, no, please don't do that. It's like, no, George, we don't need to have all of this explanation of the backstory of this entire universe within the span of about the first ten minutes.
But what about the big starklighter?
We don't need it. God, you've read that original crawl, haven't you?

(59:30):
Yes, I have.
So it's so bad.
So I wish this movie was shorter, but if you're a film historian, it's worth checking out from that perspective. Like, what did, like, one of the first, like, truly cg, but with human actors, but basically animated movie look like. And it was one that was this nostalgic fanfic, effectively, yeah, it was basically a fanfic.

(59:52):
You're so right.
Not bashing fanfic, but it was like, hey, weren't those cool? And I've written those. Like, I wrote a radio script that is Superman meets the shadow. Like, it's out there. People have read it. Like, we've talked about adapting it at some point. It exists out there. It's the type of thing that, again, is totally my jam, but this is one that I don't need to rewatch that much. Maybe in another 20 years I'll rewatch it. But, like, right now, it's just like, yeah, we're good.

(01:00:18):
I'd show it to your kids maybe one day. Yeah, it's good for kids.
Oh, you're into movie making. Like, you want to see what it looked like the first time that we did.
Yeah. Yeah. I would prefer this over any of the Star wars prequels because at least, you know, this is a better vision than the Star wars prequels.

(01:00:38):
I think that's a much more complicated rabbit hole to go down.
That's a deep rabbit hole. We don't need to go down it. But I would say at least this one went in with the best of intentions as opposed to the Star wars prequels, where it felt like, oh, we're just cashing in. We're trying to make some money.
You see, you're preventing me from just saying yes, like, automatically. That's the rabbit hole. Stop baiting me with this goddamn rabbit hole.
Hey, phantom menace. She was like, we're never going to beat Titanic.

(01:01:02):
I know, dude.
You just did it for the money. I knew it. But, yeah, I think there was two sets in this film. There was, like, two actual practical sets. It was her office.
I think that was just a desk.
I think that's, like, an actual, like, there was a door and there was a wall and there was a cabinet. There was one set, and then the other one is the. The airplane. When she steps off, when they get on the air, the helicarrier. Like, half of the plane was built, and I think that was about it.

(01:01:26):
Yeah, they definitely had the cockpit to work with. Jesse, thank you for bringing this. It's good to finally get you on, even though. I feel like we've had these kind of conversations so much because I've been a guest a bunch of times on film rescue.
Yeah, yeah.
But where can people find you online? What have you got going on? Who are you?
I'm on Twitter. Or X. If you want to call it X, stupid, that's fine.

(01:01:49):
Just call it Twitter.
Yeah, just Twitter. Whatever Elon Musk decides to sell it off, it'll go back to being Twitter. I'm over there at hardcore b shots. I do have an Instagram as well. It's just my name. Jesse Fresco. My other account got hacked, so I had to make a new one. So it's just my name now. We're over at Jaguar Sharks. We've got five separate shows about to go down to four. Film rescue, our flagship show, is coming to an end this season. We're recording this on February 4, 2024. Film rescue. We're wrapping up in the middle of June. We just got to the point where it's like, ten seasons of crap. We're like, we can't do this anymore. We have been through the depths of hell and back again. Like, we can't do it anymore.

(01:02:30):
And it just got to the point where were kind of covering the same subjects over and over again. How many more times can we say, for the Marvel films, please put in more character development and less CGI? So one more season of that, and then we have split the difference comparing original films and remakes to whatever's way up, where we just shoot the shit about things that are interesting to us. We have a bunch of different movies we're talking about this year. I think Seth wants to talk about the adventures of Tintin, the Spielberg animated film. I've actually never seen it. I've actually never seen it.

(01:02:59):
That's another one that is sort of the straddled line in terms of the technology versus the filmmaking side.
Yeah, I'm actually never seeing it. I'm interested. And then we also have Mindbrain movies, where we analyze films from a psychological perspective as, like, film therapy. And also recently, we started up a new show called Game Rescue, where it's basically film rescue, except we do it with video games. We just covered anthem because nobody else is talking about that forgotten piece of crap.

(01:03:26):
It gets brought up when people talk about Bioware, but that's. That's about it.
Yeah, it was a thing that happened, and then we just. We just move on from the conversation, so. But, yeah, that's what we got. Film rescue is coming to an end. Yeah.
Yeah, that's sad. We've been kindred spirits for so long, and it's nice that we've been able to interact so much recently with. With you and Seth and, like, for me to be on so much recently, so.

(01:03:48):
Well, it also got to the point where if we're trying to become legitimate filmmakers, we can't keep throwing shit across the room. So we're filmmakers, too, assholes. We can't keep doing that.
That is why we try to take this from a. From a more positive standpoint. We generally try not to bash so much as offer constructive criticism, but I do sympathize with that situation.
Yeah, we are still going to have film rescue in some capacity. It's just going to go down to a, like once a month or once every two months situation. And patreon only if you want us to watch crap, you got to pay us. So it's like, it's reset point. Like, of course we're going to cover Rebel Moon at some point, but only once both extended editions are released and all the junk is dumped on Netflix. Okay, now we'll cover it. Like, there's no point in covering part one because it's not a finished movie.

(01:04:34):
Right.
We'll wait a year. Once it's all out, then we'll be like, okay, now we can see how much of a rip off of seven samurai it is.
God, if you want us to cover crap, you have to pay us. Sam, can you imagine if we forgot that up and running? Yeah, it would allow patrons to dictate a few of those. Those crappy ones. But generally, we try to come from a more positive standpoint. Like. Like today, I feel like were pretty positive overall, even though, yeah, the movie's fine.

(01:05:06):
It's. It's not the worst. It is. It's a solid c. Yeah, yeah.
Solid c. And very easily could have been a b minus with only the most minor of tweaking and could have been a solid b or b with. With, like, some heavier editing.
Yeah. But if you're cleaning your house and it's on, like, you don't have to turn it off. Like, it's fine. It's fine in the background.
It's a really good thing to have on at a party and turn the sound off and just have it as, like, a pretty thing on the tv.

(01:05:30):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Which, again, gets back to the Snyder stuff because, like, I've often said that if you just had sucker punch on, but, like, only the soundtrack played and nothing else, like, it would be a perfectly fine movie.
Oh, that brings up one other positive I have with the movie. The score. I like the score.
Oh, yeah. We didn't talk about the score.
That was the score. Yeah, it's a good score. Who was the composer on this? It was rousing Edward Shaumner. I have never heard of this person. What else is this person done on?

(01:05:57):
Worked on a decent number of movies.
Oh, wow. A bunch of stuff.
Yeah.
Wow, look at that.
Still working to that pretty good roster. So again, Jesse, thank you for coming. Thank you for bringing this specific movie, because it is one that I have wanted to rewatch.
Yeah.
Which is why I'm thinking, like, probably in 20 years, I'll want to rewatch it again. But, yeah, Sam, where can people find and follow?
You can find me here. Of course, every time we post, and occasionally I do check our discord. Discord. But other than that, I don't want you guys to find me. I'm in the world of tomorrow. And if you have any complaints about anything I said about Gwyneth Paltrow's diet habits, I think she's a great actress. But her diet habits, which are terrible, or the fact that case was really not nice to pilots. You can find case at.

(01:06:41):
Well, you can find me on the Goop website. Any other place that uses an symbol for finding things at case Aiken, except for Instagram, where I am holding on to my damn aim, screen name for dear life. And so there you can find me at Quetzalcoatl five, but otherwise Aiken on all the socials, as I've heard them called sometimes. Or you can find me on the discord, where you can interact with us, you can interact with the hosts of other great shows, and you can find sneak peeks for what's coming up next. Sam, what is coming up next on this show?

(01:07:13):
Next time we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass this on.
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.
Another pass is a certain POV production. Our hosts are Sam Alicea and case Aiken. The show is edited by Jeff Moonan. Our logo and episode art is by case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri. And.