115 BRAVE NEW WORLDS!

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115 BRAVE NEW WORLDS!

The gang tackles the real question of how Megatron could be a full-size robot, but transform to the size of a pistol that other robots can shoot! Happy Birthday, Micah! A spirited round of Godzilla vs Kong follows. 

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Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:03):
Oh, sorry, did I break your concentration?
Somewhere between science andsuperstition?
To show you Strange Aeons.

(00:31):
Strange Aeons radio is on theair. That's Eric over there.
Hey, Lou. That's Vanessa overthere. Hey, everybody. Hey.
Do you have a fun radio voice?
Good morning to you all. Top ofthe morning.
Alright, let's start. How's yourcommute?

(00:55):
Catch on I five.
I just want to say you guys hada lovely response we have gotten
for the value for value modelthat we have adopted lately. And
it was it was really neat. I'vegotten some really nice comments
and stuff, some personal stuffthat I've been talking to
people. And Vanessa, your friendMicah gave us another lovely

(01:18):
donation and I mentioned that onthe air. So Danny Williford then
contacted me, and he's like, howmuch should he donate? I just
need to know what what's thegoing rate here? And I had to
explain, and I'll explain thisto everybody. Yeah, it's, it
only has to be impactful to youthat makes it impactful to us.
It can be $1, it can be sharingand liking posts. So with that

(01:42):
in mind, I told Danny that hedonated $1,000, and that Danny
needed to start stepping$1,000 may or may not be the
about let's just put that littlecurve in there. Just so no one
thinks Yeah.
Speaking which Danny's value forvalue stuff is very, very close.

(02:04):
I know that things have movedalong and I will have something
to share with everybody verysoon. I can't wait. It's super
cool.
But along with Micah's lovelydonation, he also mentioned
something about maybe uswatching a movie and talking
about it. He did. Yeah, one ofus but Kelly had a suggestion
that we should all watch it.
Maybe not a deep dive on it. Buttalk a little bit about this

(02:28):
movie. And that movie isTransformers The Movie. From
1986 Yes, it is. I hadn't Idon't think I've ever seen this
movie sober before. I had neverseen it before. But Eric I know
you'd seen it in Jamie. Ifyou're listening on your
treadmill as you say you oftendo you were there with me at the

(02:51):
teen years when we were the twoguys going to see Transformers
The Movie in the theater and oneof the older people there that
didn't have parents with themwell, let's talk a little bit I
never got fully into thetransformer toys much but for
like two years maybe I would dothe old race home from school to
watch transformers. Oh yeah,stuff so missed event in heaven

(03:14):
with this. The Rotten Tomatoescritics is 63% but the audience
has it at 88% Wow, that's a hugespike. It's also unwarranted I
would say that huge spike shouldended about what 2530 minutes in
it's really really good until acertain giant event which of
course we're going to talk abouthappens a man Wow, it really. I

(03:36):
was pretty shocked. Well, okay,so budget of $6 million box
office of almost $6 million. Ireally didn't see Wow, that's a
bummer. Yeah, it was directed byNelson Shin who is just a huge
guy in the animation world is onThe Simpsons, GI Joe dungeon and
dragons Spider Man hole in theFantastic Four, and was written

(03:58):
by Ron Friedman, who's done aton of cartoons and everything
but also just every episode inthe world up to 1986. So my
favorite Martian gets smartGilligan's Island bewitch
partners family happy daysStarsky and Hutch Fantasy
Island. Whoa, yeah. And and thenthe voices I'm not gonna

(04:21):
ratable It's crazy. Like I waswatching going Wait, that sounds
familiar. Oh, my God. It's likethe the chauffeur from heart to
heart.
He's a great voice. The threenames that really popped out to
me, Orson Welles, Robert stackand Leonard Nimoy so good. So
good. But Leonard Nimoy isn't Idon't know. I guess I don't I

(04:41):
know nothing of transformers. SoI didn't play with him as a kid.
I didn't watch it as a kid. So Iwas like, wait, that guy with
that one voice is gone. And nowhe's the same guy, but he's a
slightly different color. Andnow he's Leonard Nimoy. Okay,
yeah. Megatron becomes Galvatronever right? And maybe
Tron is not Leonard Nimoy butGalvatron is, is very weird.

(05:04):
Sure. I'll go with that. Onemore credit thing before we
bounce off of that nerd filmmoment here. Very weird one. I'm
watching this opening creditsgoing Jesus it sounds like the
music from like rocky three orfour. Oh, yeah. So I popped it
in and looked it up and theguy's only done like 20 movies
or less. But Yep, it was thecomposer for mention. Rocky for

(05:25):
Wow. opening credits sounds justlike there are there moments but
that opening is like, yeah, mytraining montage. Who were the
guys who do the love shacks onthe 5050 Yeah, near the end,
there's a song that sounds superb 52. But bad, like real bad.
Well, I think we make anargument that a lot of the music

(05:45):
in this is real bad.
I don't know. It's pretty rockinRocco. This was, I should like
Transformers I was just a littletoo old by the time they came
out. Which is funny because nowMy house is just full of toys.
But it started out as micromanin Japan and microman. The early

(06:07):
microman stuff became themicrodots which is my favorite
toy thing. And then asmicromanage Japan continued to
evolve, they became thedifferent thing where it had
figures that could transforminto cars and stuff like that.
And then Hasbro I believe it wasbought that and brought it over
here and turn them intotransformers. So the toys that

(06:29):
made us stocks on Netflix has areally good episode on
transformers.
What happened with them? I wasworking KB toys at the time, but
by the time I was working thereit was they were on the decline.
transformer movies had come outthree or four years earlier. He
could probably put at least onezero behind that box office
because when it dropped itdropped like a stone. As far as

(06:51):
popularity goes. Yeah.
This movie takes place in thedistant future. You guys the
year 2005 Oh my god. 2005 That'sright. I was definitely
in college, I guess.
It opens with an amazing sceneof Unicron the killer planet

(07:13):
floating in and destroying this.
This other planet? TransformersI guess they are. And I was
like, What the fuck hell have Imissed this gem? It was like
right out of the movie. HeavyMetal or something is insane.
Yeah. And it's like crunchingand things are trying to escape.
And they can't I was like, thisis a kid's movie. Yeah. brutal.
I was loving off really violent.

(07:35):
Robots. And then it just turnsinto an 84 minute action scene
after that. Yeah. It was it washard to keep up what was great.
I had to write a lot of notes tolike, keep myself understanding
what was happening in the plotat that point. I was just like,
you the garb? Well, the the, youknow, the elephant in the room.

(07:55):
The music of them. Wonderful.
You've got the touch. Yeah, byStan bush was right. When I
heard that. I was like, is thissurvivor? Please? Yeah, because
it sounded so much like survivorand then then Stan bush. And
they liked that song so much.
They play it multiple times inthe movie.
Big Cat for the show. But that'sgot the dramatic moment of the

(08:17):
movie though. All the thingsgoing bad and hope Here comes
Optimus Prime to save the day inthe big battle. And of course
anybody who's seen this movieknows they did one ballsy thing
in this film It's too bad itfalls apart after that see, but
killing off Optimus Prime wasjust like holy shit. Easily 25

(08:38):
minutes in Yeah, I thought likeI knew they did it and I thought
it was at the end and I was likewe're not even halfway into the
film and his like grain corpselaying there. I was like, What
are you guys like did you reallyhave to turn him like gray and
like have his head like tilt tothe side like a dead being daddy

(08:59):
just died. Everyone's dad justdied. There was very emotional
in the theater. sniffling hurtaround the theater.
Because nobody didn't knownobody. What about the eight
year olds like I getwere inconsolable.
I mean that and that does kindof lead to some of my issues
with it like there was plenty ofthings I really liked about this

(09:21):
movie but the fact that like hedies but then who are maximum
overdrive or whoever likerottenness Brian, Hot Rod, no
hot rod, the the Magnus, openmagnet, whoever I wrote it down
somewhere. The other guy whotakes over his spot and like
puts the gem in him. Oh, this isonly a soldier guy or whatever.

(09:43):
Yeah, yeah. And then like hedies, but then they bring him
back. He like literally is inpieces and they're like, oh,
we're just gonna Polish you witha little like wax and you're
fine. I'm like, why is he? Hesucks. Right Well, I mean, as
You watch this and you realizeokay Megatron gets turned into
Galvatron and then Prime diesand we're you know, we're

(10:07):
introduced to hot rod and thenhe becomes rottenness, Brian,
leader of the Autobots at theend, and you realize he's pretty
cool. Oh, I am watching agigantic commercial for the next
set of two Absolutely. totallynew creatures like critters and
characters. They brought outlike the weird junk guy, junk a
trans. Yeah, from, from what Iwas reading, it sounded like

(10:27):
Hasbro didn't realize theemotional connection people had
to these figures. And they werelike, oh, we're just gonna start
a new line. This will be fun.
Let's just go ahead and get ridof the crappy toys and put in
some new ones. And like, one ofthe cameras was the writer or
who was involved who basicallysaid, you shouldn't do that.
It's gonna be real rough. Andthey're like, but do you need

(10:49):
toys? Yeah, yeah. Well, one ofthe thing too, though, with the
death of him. I'm wonderingbecause mica kind of coupled
this in the idea of it beinghindered trauma.
And I'm wondering if that wasthe moment because I couldn't
think anything else in themovie. But other than it being
at the beginning being prettyviolent killing off all the

(11:10):
Yeah, regular Autobots. Well,that I mean, yeah, sure. It's
tough when you're watching yourheroes die, especially I don't
think that many people wereaware of that going into this
film. No, no, not at all. So andit's, you know, and it's after
season two. So they've had twoyears of for kid time, that's a
long time to like really connectto these characters. Plus those

(11:30):
those shows at that time, werenot 24 episodes a season they'd
be could be gigantic seasons,like 40 episodes or something. I
don't know what Transformerswas. But I just know I've looked
at some of those box sets ofSaturday morning cartoons for
the has gone. Oh, two seasons408 episodes? What
really pumped those guys out?
Absolutely. One of the thingsthat kind of disappointed me on

(11:53):
this was that in that openingscene, that animation looks
spectacular. And then theanimation is really iffy going
through the movie. Yeah,sometimes it looks really great.
Sometimes it looks really bad.
And that's just what happenswhen you've got different
animation houses working onstuff and trying to get
something put together. But man,it was noticeably bad. I didn't

(12:16):
necessarily notice because I wasonly excited when it looked
really good. But I think thatmight have been because I
watched it twice in differentways that were very upsetting.
Yeah, I wanted to not pay forit. So I tried to watch it on
YouTube, which is it's split upinto like 80 pieces, like one
minute chunks. And so I waslike, kind of trying to get

(12:39):
through it. But then I realizedit was missing huge pieces of
plot. And I was like, Oh, Idon't know why I don't know
what's going on right now. Butanother character died and I
didn't see that. So then I hadto buy it for eight bucks on
Amazon. But I got the 30thanniversary that Yeah, shout
factory has his Bohannon. Okay,so um, yeah, so I got the 30th

(13:01):
anniversary edition. So I don'tknow if that one's cleaned up,
but it looked pretty good. Ijust rented mine on prime and it
was $1.99.
Did you get SD or HD?
I'm sure I did not pay for HD. Idon't think that that was even
offered. So interesting. Yeah, Iwonder if there's a difference
or not? Probably not. There canbe a big enough difference for

(13:24):
the different one majordifference between different
versions of it is it was shotwith the idea of knowing it's
going to be seen in 4.3 aspectratio a lot more than it will be
in the theater, interestingtheater. So it's been released
in two aspect ratios. There'sthe theatrical aspect, which was
probably just wanting five toone at but then there's also the

(13:45):
TV one, and apparently the TVone has become the preferred
version, the square because youget more because they didn't
more invaded, zoom it in theyactually cropped it. So there,
you get more animation in thefour by three. What you're
saying is real cinephiles preferthe television version of
Transformersreal Transformers five fans I

(14:06):
guess what you're saying is theSnyder cut is better.
Things that I liked and since Idon't know the Transformers at
all, Eric, was this the firsttime we get introduced to the
Dinobots? No, I think they'dbeen around. I like the day
nobody is bumped into each otherand step on each other as like

(14:29):
this. This makes zero sense fora robot. Wouldn't you be like
oh, okay, we're gonna have toput these guys down or just
reprogram them or something.
Something's off here now I did.
I only watched him for a coupleyears and haven't watched him at
all since so but I'm pretty surethey were around. At that goes
from the High Times of workingat KB toys when I was in high
school.

(14:50):
I think this movie is theintroduction of the shark robots
though. The little shark dude'sdid those actually make it to
toys? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Oh,yes.
Good day before a day or twobefore we watch this somebody
posted in one of the actualfigure forums I'm on or whatever
when that picture of the theOrson Welles character that

(15:11):
right and it's huge thing is DJIis the new one I think so okay
so yeah really good my micaactually told me that he bought
this newest version of this toyit's like almost as tall as him
and he's six feet oh my godenormous like on it stand in
fairness like on a stand butstill it's it's like having

(15:34):
another roommate and your wholething is just enormous. And I
guess it took him like six hoursto transform it
Well, there's also now thetransform itself. Optimus Prime
toy Yeah, that's I think likeseven or $800 Yeah, it's cool to
watch but um I'll just watchthis video of it transfer we go

(15:55):
cool. So I did love all of thevoice acting and and not just
the big names but the guys whoare doing the regular stuff
everybody such cool voices theguy who does the guy who does
optimist one of these kinds ofvoices, you know, and then he
gota scream clearly is the same guy
who does the voice for CobraCommander.

(16:20):
So, the three of thosecharacters together arguing that
would be a bad one maybe wouldbe like, ah, I need to get a
Megatron and stick it to myhead.
Whoa.
deep cut. Yeah, boy, he couldhave picked Megatron for the

(16:40):
second amendment style.
I'd haveto be him. Megatron is bigger
than the other Transformers buthe transforms into a gun that is
scaled to their hands. Yeah,it's
either way but the other guy wholike does the mixtapes is that
scar Starscream No, no, come on.

(17:04):
It's like our super tiny butthen they become like huge deeds
to that. I gotta say that is myfavorite of these things,
though, that he can shoot outcan turn into jaguars and hawks
and seven like fuck yeah, theyworked hard and turning in one
of the weirdest toys to soundwave. That sound great. Thank
you one of the weirdest toys andthat came. I was like a cassette

(17:25):
player.
But then in the movies like,Alright, you made him kind of
cool. Yeah. I was pretty shockedthat Bumblebee could talk. I was
like, Oh, I only know Bumblebeefrom the live action movies. I
didn't know he didn't speak.
Well. That's exciting. Yeah,well, kind of to wrap this up.
This was fun. But not myfavorite. Yeah, no, this was one

(17:46):
of those. And we always do. AndI always go to the same example.
The TV show greatest Americanhero, right, which we both loved
as kids and both went back towatch as adults and went Wow,
our parents really loved us towatch that.
This sort of had that effect onme. It's like for that first 20
some odd minutes until optimisegets killed.

(18:09):
As good as I remember then it'slike, yeah, cuz I completely
forgot the rest of this movie. Ifelt the same. I was like, This
is pretty elevated storytellingfor a kid's movie. And then and
then you know, after OptimusPrime died, it just seemed like
it was this. I found myself onmy phone a lot. I was like, I'll
take my notes now andeverything. Yeah, I was like,

(18:29):
this is just a big long actionscene and it was almost too
much. Probably great for aneight year old. I think I got a
lot of enjoyment out of it. ButI'm a huge fan of Unicron just
as like a toy, because he's agiant like round circle with
teeny tiny little arms and likelittle horns with like a mouth
that goes.
And like I just love the toy somuch. And I was like, Oh, he's

(18:52):
got like this deep, crazy voice.
He's like drunken old on thedeathbed, Orson Welles. And
so and Micah is a huge, huge fanof transformers. So he I do know
he has a room filled withtransformers. But also the
reason he probably gave us thischallenge is he does a lot of

(19:14):
toy box art. And one of hisbiggest clients is Hasbro so
yeah, so he's done a lot of ifyou go through target that's
like his gallery. Holy shit.
Yeah. Nice. Mica you nerd yourTransformers room. Have I shown
you guys my, my classroom?

(19:36):
There was a moment though. Yeah.
And you'll remember this shortfilm. Did you see when Optimus
Prime use the querque? Yes. Ohmy god. I did. I was like, Did
he just double that like, Whoa,pow. Vanessa just made it even
worse.
The whole time. Like to hand theway William Shatner used to
punch Yeah, there's a short filmand miff that did a hilarious

(20:00):
his take on that called querque.
Oh my gosh, did a great job ofhow dumb that
I am shocked I Kotick becausethere was so much going on, but
I did make a note. I was like,oh my god is a Star Trek bunch
of ins. I know you've picked outa ton of trivia, but I have a
couple things here that reallystood out to me. Yeah.

(20:21):
One i thought was interestingITW, who got the Transformers
license for comics back in theearly 2000s. They actually did
an adaptation of this film in2007. So like, Oh, that's
interesting. I guess if you wantto get the comic book version
around the one where they didthe like the whole trip they
brought in Tim and T and StarTrek, I think that this giant

(20:41):
crossover.
That's amazing. No, it wasn't.
I guess you get to look at somefun art. So yes, yeah. So when
the credits rolled, I noticedthat one of the bands was kick
x, which was a band that I'vealways liked, actually. But in
this bit of trivia, I found thatthe band kick acts when it was

(21:02):
originally released, theproducers thought that the name
was too threatening. And so theycredited that song to spectral
General, but never told the bandthey were doing that.
Oh, nice moment. bad name. Didyou recognize the which song
they had in the movie? No. Yeah,it was very well, everything was

(21:22):
so generic. Yeah, kinda. Well,this is sort of like the sound
of what's popular with the kidsthese days. Like, this is like
the bad version of that, but allright. partially correct. And
then finally, we've alreadytouched on this. This was Orson
Welles final film. But in oneinterview, he was asked to

(21:42):
describe his character andtransformers and his response
was that he was a big toy thatattacks a bunch of smaller toys.
Yes, okay. Orson Welles man,that guy is such a dick. And
it's funny, because when I waslooking up random trivia
probably from the same place youwere, I thought it was really
interesting that when heinitially got the role in the

(22:04):
script, he was reallyenthusiastic and then expressed
admiration for animated films.
So that guy just like fuckingflipped on a dime he's probably
like I got some money great. Ilove the animations. I'm a big
fan. I think do I lovemore of the voice guy scout

(22:28):
Orson you're not playingStarscream
Oh, well. Another big huge moviecame out this week. You guys
Yeah, it's true. This one withmore?
I guess based on toys or nottoys had toys. Third toys
involved?

(22:48):
You've been talking all in thenext video, which is
GVK Godzilla vs KongWould anyone like to guess what
I thought of it? I'm I know whatyou thought cuz you texted
I'm not a fan. I'm I'm prettysure because I'm there. This

(23:08):
movie was stupid. Yeah. Yeah, Iwill throw in with one of the
things I thought was reallyinteresting, but it's just a
technical thing. I like thatthey managed to give like when
Khan punches Godzilla. Yeah,it's like you know, welcome
packs. Were retiring earlierwhen Stallone punches Drago. You
can feel the impact it It feelsmore real punching than a lot of

(23:33):
animated ones happy for youknow, that's just the only part
of CGI the CGI was really good II had such a good time watching
I enjoyed it so much and I gotreally invested in Kong I was
like team Kong all the way Oh mygod I don't even know why like I
didn't I didn't hate Godzilla inthe previous two Godzilla films

(23:56):
but I in this one I was likefucking con get him Jesus stand
your ground Would you say thatit was all the character arcs
that really made you love thismovie never gonna let that go
back to Ericlunchy of Godzilla is one of the
things that pissed me off. Youget these Tomahawk missiles that
these planes are firing for somereason right next to Godzilla

(24:19):
you can fire one of these thingsfrom a mile away and it'll hit
its target but these guys liketo get in close and they get
killed and those missiles donothing but Kong's punch knocks
Godzilla over sometimes you gotto go old school I
here's you're doing somethingthat you just absolutely cannot

(24:39):
do with this film. You're right.
You're applying logic. Yeah,that's that's your first
mistake. They also go throughthe center of the Earth at one
point right and have sunshine.
So I could I was actually okaywith that because they went
through some kind of bizarregravitational thing and it was
like, Oh, it's almost likethey're in a different
dimension.

(25:00):
Or something right? Yeah. Or,except then Godzilla in Hong
Kong, blasts a hole to thecenter of the earth where Khan
can climb out of, and there's nogravitational thing now. Well,
because he's in. That's true.
But yeah, he's in Japan becausethey dug their hole so far, the
theory of the earth that theygot from wherever they started,

(25:20):
which I don't remember to Japan,and then I think Hong Kong, Hong
Kong, thank you. And that'swhere Godzilla went. Because the
thing was, he got mad that therewas another one of him. I
thought that was like a signalor something. Now he was just
pissed that he was threatened.
And he's there Hong's existence.
Yeah. Oh, no, not consexistence. The robots existence.

(25:42):
He didn't care about con. He wasthere to kill the big robot
version of there's all kinds ofproblems. I'll tell you this. I
watched this movie twice.
Because I hateWell, no, because I thought that
I had missed a bunch of shit.
And no, see you doing that?
Yeah. You don't even know what'sgoing on in the movie. And you

(26:03):
liked it. I watched it twice. Istill could not figure out what
was going on in the movie. Yeah,because, okay, we're doing some
spoiler talk here. These arereal questions I have so are we
to believe that it was like thespirit of Ghidorah. That was
rolling mechagodzilla after itblew the question mind of the
dude who was controlling or wasit just his psychic ability that

(26:25):
they somehow were able to likeharness to use as basically
wireless internet? So yeah, Iwatched it twice to figure that
still couldn't figure it asmechagodzilla but it looks cool.
Yeah.
That is not how they destroyedhim by like spilling water on

(26:46):
thething, boy, back with Chekhov's
whiskey flask. Yeah. There yougo. There's a lot of neon that
was really exciting. Boy, I justthought it was so goddamn
stupid. And and here's thething.
That little girl was probablythe best actor in the movie. And

(27:07):
her character was absolutelystupid and worthless. The
Rebecca Hall character couldhave taught Kong, the sign
language and done all of thatstuff and had some kind of
connection with him that we allcould have been into a little
bit more. But instead, wereasked to believe that a little
girl who's five or something hassuch a grasp of sign language,

(27:28):
she can teach it to an ape. Andthat ape is smart enough to also
graspconcepts like might and probably
sure and all of this stuff, butit's just like, I buy this
better. If it's an adult who'sbeen with con all her life,
instead of the one year thisgirl would have had. I mean,
they do say that she was tryingto teach him sign language, but

(27:50):
he wasn't doing anything theadult but like he wouldn't like
respond. So she was like, well,he must not be picking this up.
But then he started talking tothe mute girl, deaf girl, deaf,
deaf, and mute and everything.
I mean, again, don't apply logicto this movie. What are you

(28:11):
doing? How about this? let'stoss out the entire subplot of
Millie Bobby Brown and thepodcaster and I'm Holly You
know, when you get a podcast orin a movie like this, then
podcasting is now ubiquitous.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Even mymom pronounces it right now.
My I keep catching my momlistening to our show. Oh, mom

(28:31):
in her room, and I'm like, ah, Idon't want to hear my own voice.
Please do this when I'm gone.
This is very upsetting. But soyou introduced this this
conspiracy nut? Yeah. And weknow he's not he's washing with
bleach and all of this stuff.
But he's right about this onething and Millie Bobby Brown
then is also kind of onboardwith him. Which makes me like

(28:56):
her less if she's a conspiracynot Yeah, she is she's like, you
know, oh, no, no. tapwater inthe in the in the right.
atmosphere of our world rightnow. With all the deep strange
conspiracy going on. To make thehero of your movie. Yeah. The
connection. Oh, that's that's ano, that's a that's a stretch.

(29:20):
Yeah, I did like her. I feltlike she had more to do in this
movie than the last one. I foundher very irritating. The last
one Millie Bobby Brown'scharacter. So I was like, Oh,
you get to kind of act. Even ifit's a stupid like direction. I
was like, Oh, she's expressingmore emotions than she did last
time. Yeah, but her dad couldhave been dead.
I mean, what the hell is he didnothing. Oh, I know. I don't

(29:41):
know. I was like, Did that actorput on some weight? And then we
saw him like twice. And he's adamn good. Yeah. Like
I keep thinking back and I'mlike, I think that I think he's
damn good. Because he was sogood in that Friday Night Lights
show. Well, yeah, that's what Imade. The movie he's been good
in.
I can't think of too.
many movies he's been in. He'slike the dad and super eight.

(30:03):
And he was also pretty bland andthat
he was in the last Godzilla andhe was pretty bland and that was
everybody. Yeah, I'm saddened tothink that he just kind of
fooled me.
I'll disturb the horror poundsin here greatly with the trivia
I'm about to drown here.
He played the one character thatShonda Rhimes regret to killing

(30:23):
off in Grey's Anatomy. He was inone episode, and he played a
guy, a bomb disposal guy. Andhe's great in it. And she was
she wish she'd written it towhere he could have been a
reoccurring character on theshow.
Because he was so good and somuch fun to work with. But

(30:44):
hey, they can bring him backfrom the dead, right? I mean,
come on, it's Grey's Anatomy,and it's just been going on
forever. Like, I watched therandom 13 years, I watched a
random episode with my mom andlike one of them's in a coma and
having dream states and liketalking to other characters that
have died. So you mean gray?
Yes, the lead the terrify, shelooks like she's had so much

(31:05):
work done. Oh, yeah. She'sthe final thing about Godzilla
vs. Kong was thesheer amount of life lost in the
final battle. And it is just noteven touched on the fact that
they're throwing, they'rethrowing buildings at each
other. And like, well, I don'tthink anyone had time to

(31:28):
evacuate that building. I don'tknow that alarm went off. And
they did go into the undergroundpopulated space where we saw
like eight people go into thattunnel. So I'm so they're all
fine. I mean, there had to be aloss of life at like 1 million
right in Hong Kong in that bestthan that last battle. Oh, it

(31:49):
was kind of funny, consideringeverybody losing their shit over
the Superman movie, and theviolin or whatnot. I think that
I only noticed shit like that,because of everybody losing
their shit over that Supermanmovie. And now I do kind of
notice it. And this could havebeen solved with just one person
Yo, yo, you mad at something.
But they didn't they were alljust, you know, wow, look at

(32:13):
Kong and his axe, look CGIelements. But they had to move a
little look at me turn this shipthat I've been operating for
about an hour to into adefibrillator. That was amazing.
Come on. So they made such a bigpoint about how amazing those
ships were that they could gothrough that gravitational thing
and still come out which hadkilled his brother, which I

(32:36):
thought I had missed in the lastmovie. And then I started
looking it up. And I was like,Oh, no, that's just a backstory
for this movie. And that shipcan handle all of that stuff.
But at one point, the chick whogoes rogue, she gets in as
they're trying to get out thathole and con grabs it and just
crushes it. Hmm. How strong isthis guy? Yeah, I guess that's

(32:59):
strong enough to knock Godzilladown, I guess. Well, when
Tomahawk missiles can't.
But he's he had the axe. Yeah.
And he has the act ofsupercharged, made out of a
piece of Godzilla that you plugin and can run out of power.
Yeah, you have to you have toput it on the slot to charge it.
Just like the phone. There wasjust yeah, there was. There were
too many magics in this movie.

(33:22):
And there was that whole HollowEarth thing. And I was like,
this should have been a movie onits own. Yeah, that was
about 30 minutes upside down.
Calm land was pretty neat. Iliked that space. There was
there are things to like in thisphone for sure. And the battle
once you get past the fact thatthey're killing

(33:45):
dancers, popular police andkilling people was really cool.
Looks like wow, there's a lot ofneon in Hong Kong. But and the
fights were fun. The big animalwas fun. There's a lot to like,
as far as sheer entertainmentpopcorn value as far as a movie.
Yeah, it's full of problems,man. Yeah, there is. The one
thing that I had a hard timeletting go is. Why do they need

(34:09):
conch?
I'm just curious because theyseem to know how to get there
just fine. And then as soon asthey get they don't need to
follow him. It just naturallytakes them to the place. I think
they thought they didn't need tofollow him. They say they do.
But they don't. Oh, he just likeflings himself in and they fling
themselves to they're notfollowing anything. It just goes
to one place. And then oncethey're there, they just go to

(34:32):
the glowing thing. All you haveto do is go to the giant glowing
thing. Yeah, it's it's a prettybad
thing I guess the disappointedme the most was Adam winguard. I
thought, you know, oh, this is aneat choice. And they do this.
They bring in these indiedirectors to direct these

(34:52):
blockbuster films and then theycompletely rein them in and
don't allow any of their indiesensibilities to
come in to play cuz it wouldhave been neat to see some of
his his horror sensibilitiesmonster movie like this
absolutely I yeah I was I washoping a little bit more
influenced but then I thoughtmaybe he got maybe that's why
it's wacky in places. Maybe thecharacters are like a little

(35:15):
wacky because he was like yeah,I'm gonna I'm gonna push it a
little further. Not just bland,not just milk.
We're gonna jam on this.
Speaking of bland and Miltos.
When did skarsgard become such aPutz? Oh my god, here's the
word. I used to like him a lie.
And after the stand and this,I'm just like, Oh, I know you
can act are these directorstelling you to act a certain

(35:38):
way, like bad?
Maybe he's just really like, notinto these pieces. Like he's
rolling in and pretending tocare but not really giving it I
can imagine when you're justacting against the green screen
that's got a bed that you'rejust like, you know, Fuck, what
am I doing? I certainly didn'tget into acting to be acting

(35:59):
against anyone to gate that Ican't see anyone with a
skarsgard in their name. Youknow, they're good. You know,
they're good in there somewhere.
Oh.
Hang on a totally unrelatedmoment. Yeah, while we're
sitting here recording. Jasonweiss's sent us a virtual tip as
well. What Jason you sweetheart.
Thank you, man. That's great.

(36:20):
Thank you interesting time andWell, time to Yeah, he did that
on purpose. He knew record onSundays. Let's give it a shot.
Yeah, well done. Well done. Hefigured out a schedule. He's
watching us he's actuallyoutside right now has
given us a thumbs up.
Alright, I think we've beat thishorse to death. Should we take a

(36:41):
little break you guys I'd comeback and talk about our sub
genre which if I remembercorrectly is brave new worlds.
Okay, I'll be right back.
Evil Lord vortec is planning totake over all the LEGO

(37:04):
Dimensions you'll need mightBatman extra minute okay, I'm
here you'll need tobelieve fuses new teams. Awesome
cars. rebuilt awesome guys.

(37:24):
rebuilt awesome cars. good cops,bad cops.
By the ranks excavators Scoobysnacks, attitude.
And the greatest weapon of allimagination.
You can use any vehiclein any world.

(38:08):
Little dimension.
You're gonna need a biggerimagination.
We have returned. Vanessa, thiswas your sub genre? Yeah,
absolutely. So I chose strangenew worlds, which I left pretty

(38:31):
open. It could be an alternativereality alternate timeline, just
a new planet, you know, just acharacter exploring a completely
new space. And for this, what Ishould have done is
annihilation. Because that movieis exactly what this is right?
Like on every level. But Idecided I wanted to stretch my

(38:52):
wings. So I went for the 2017movie, kill switch.
If you're joining us now we areless than a minute away to
launch the final generation ofenergy solutions. Donnie comes
down here. How does that thingwork?

(39:12):
That is pure energy that isgoing down into the tower that's
going to power the whole city ormaybe the whole country is it.
The Disappearance is the latestin the line of recent reports of
vehicles gone missing. Vehiclesseemingly appearing out of thin
air and not a science fiction.
Yet many eyewitnesses havereported these phenomenon.

(39:35):
What's going on,jump over take the books to the
tower and jump back in time fordinner.
That's it.

(39:58):
The jump was successful.
One palace.
under arrest remain when you areauthorized to use.

(40:40):
We could change the world.

(41:00):
Two Worlds, we have to sacrificeone. So the other may endure.
I think I recognize the posterimage but I don't think I've
seen it. So the reason why youmight recognize something about
the poster or something aboutthe film is it actually stars

(41:21):
Dan Stevens. We all know fromDownton Abbey. Oh, is that?
An adult? The guest? Yeah, therewe go. Yes.
Legion show? Yes. Absolutely.
No, he's he's freakingincredible. And he was one of
several actors that left DowntonAbbey to pursue his career. And

(41:42):
the only one that actuallymanaged to do it. Does he have
like a thick Brit accent in reallife? Then? I yeah. Oh, wow.
He's like, he's very well. No, Iknow. He does a great American
accent like a really, reallygood. I believe he's English. I
don't want to speak at a turn.
But I'm pretty darn sure he is.

(42:03):
So just to give you guys an ideathat like the poster looks
incredible. The plot soundsamazing. I was really excited.
And then I looked at the rottentomatoes.
Critics have it at 9% Oh, wow.
The audience 20% more thandouble Yeah, double the rotten
tomatoes, you guys. So pretty,pretty impressive. undulations

(42:26):
all involved.
So I was a little nervous goingin, but the director Tim Smith,
he's he's done a couple ofthings. And he's a VFX guy he's
kind of well known for that. Andthat gave me some hope. Although
I hadn't heard of the film's soTiger house last passenger and

(42:48):
lots and lots of short movies.
The writer writers one of themonly ever has done this the
other one did passenger killswitch I don't know if he did
Tiger house. So it's pretty muchlike a I don't know how they got
the money for this. I have noidea how they put together the
money for what kind of money arewe talking about? Oh my god find

(43:09):
the budget for it. I don't youknow, I what was happening to me
when I wrote these notes,because I'm extremely concerned
about my own mental health atthis stage.
You still you know basking inthe glow of Kong Vs. Godzilla.
It was so good. It was so good.
It's great trying to look thisup as well on Wikipedia because

(43:30):
kills the movie is so far down.
It doesn't show it on thisversion.
doesn't show up a lot. That'snot unusual. No budget and box
office numbers. Oh, yeah, notnot that I have on hand. But it
looks really good. I mean, itlooks like many many millions of

(43:50):
dollars. Okay. But it the actingand there are a lot of hints in
it that leads you to believethat maybe a group of friends
threw this together in a waythat like monsters was put
together like monsters. Youknow, it feels like a fatty
indie. You know, exploring thejungle with a girl that I don't
like but like but don't likewith some really cool monster

(44:13):
moments. And this has a verysimilar feel. The girl who plays
Dan Stevens sister, and this isone of the worst actresses
Wow, they just keep making hercry. And I don't mean like she
actually cries. I mean, theythrow like the fake tears,
artificial tears that areoccasionally and I'm like why
are you crying right now Whathappened? What, why?

(44:38):
All the wayall the way home. So aside from
Dan Stevens, we also have oneother actor in this who's pretty
well known, which is a BerniceMara bar loan he she's been in
only 23 things but two of those.
She was in Skyfall a submarine.
She's beautiful.

(45:00):
On this movie, and then she wasalso in the 2017 Twin Peaks as
French woman, but she's very,very well known French actress.
Okay. The rest of the actors hada lot of credits behind them
except for the sister. I didn'teven bother looking her up.
Obviously, she's never doneanything before.
She has like 150she's an avid listener strange.

(45:21):
Yeah.
We just lost one guys, the otheractors and her all German it
looks like and they just had aton of credits by I have no idea
who they are. So it seems likethere's a pretty some pretty
well known cast members, butit's a joint American and Dutch
production. So you're getting alot of these really interesting

(45:42):
European people in here. Sothe story of killswitch,
this is going to be short.
Alright, so I'm going to try tomake this as interesting as
humanly possible. In the nearfuture. I'll drink a bunch of
shit up.
Now I'm just gonna really focuson the only plot points we've

(46:03):
got to hold on to in the nearfuture alter Plex, which is the
big like tech company has comeup with an energy solution.
They're going to crap this hugetower, and it is going to tap
into an unlimited energy supply,which is going to give it
quantum energy you will Porterwhich is our lead played by Dan

(46:24):
Stevens, a former NASA pilot andcurrent current surrogate dad to
his nephew and kind of keepinghis sister around for some
reason. That's like his his onlycharacter info is he's like, Ah,
sorry, guys, I can't possiblycome work for you. I'm busy.
They're like, being a stand indad for your nephew. Sometimes.

(46:48):
Really? That's what you're busywith. And he's like, I guess you
coach me? Hey, Dad, and dad hasa full time job. I mean, it like
he literally has nothing elsegoing on. I guess even though
he's young and smart and builtand knows how to fly. Well
spends all their time workingout. Yeah. Oh my god, he just
spent a lot of time probablyworking out. He's very, very

(47:10):
buff in this. Um, anyways,autoplex hires him on a mission
to literally take a black boxand put it in a thing at a
certain time. And they're like,it'll be easy. And he goes,
Okay, and they don't really tellus why. And I don't think they
tell him why they just are like,you're gonna, we're gonna send

(47:32):
you somewhere and you're gonnaput this black box in this
thing. And the reason why doesshift through the film. So I
think initially, the idea is itstabilizes something. But later,
it doesn't I don't know, anyway,doesn't matter. We then flash to
him crash landing into this sortof slightly colored differently

(47:56):
worldwhere we're just instantly in
this new place. He's got a HUDon his eyes, it's POV it's
completely first person, we goHardcore Henry, all the way. And
he wakes up into basically avideo game. And we are now in a
video game for the rest of thismovie, like a video game plot.

(48:16):
Like it is half life. What thefuck? Yeah. It's bananas. So it
has things like his health metergoes up and down. Like at one
point, he's fighting a giantmachine and the health meter of
the machine goes down until itgets to zero and explodes. I'm
like, this is some weird shit.

(48:37):
Wow. Yeah, the world is like hisworld. But difference. This is
what's called the echo. And inthe Echo, it is supposed to be a
mirror universe of our own,which is where they're getting
the energy from, but it'ssupposed to not be inhabited by
any life whatsoever. So he getsto this place to do this thing

(48:57):
with this box.
In the Echo, there is life. Infact, there's a replication of
everyone from his world overhere.
And it's very strange, becausehe runs into somebody he knows
pretty quick, and they're like,this is impossible. Why the fuck
are you here? Who are you? Andhe's like, dude, I'm your like,

(49:19):
friend, and the dude's like, no,you're dead. I watched you die.
So some characters in thisuniverse are dead or alive or
have different trajectories thanthe other world.
This world also has a sort ofmilitia that's been fighting
against alter alter Plex is thatwhat I said this places and

(49:43):
alter Plex has done some kind ofevil and people have risen up
and taken over it. In themeantime, the sky keeps opening
up and dropping things likesubway trains and ships and all
kinds of just large vehiclestransport via
Like straight into the city,there are dead bodies
everywhere. There's graffitilike anti multiplex stuff

(50:06):
everywhere. So this place isfucking crazy. And again, it's a
video game.
There's a lot of missions andbattles, little side quests, you
get a couple of side charactersgoing on other other players in
the game with him, or is it allNPCs? Or let's let's go. Um,
it's all NPCs. So there's a lotof moments where you're

(50:27):
wondering if you're in Ender'sGame, where you're like, Is this
like them testing him to see ifhe can like actually be like the
hero of this battle thing? Butno, it's just that they
implanted some brain thing inhim. And so we're watching the
movie through his perspective,it's just it's told exactly like
you would have a video gamestory told.

(50:51):
Meanwhile, we keep flipping backto the past, and how he got
here. So, but unfortunately,that story isn't much of
anything. How he got here is hegot the job, he moved to Dutch
Amsterdam, he moved toAmsterdam, with his sister and

(51:12):
nephew, and then got into athing, and now is here. So like,
I don't know why we keep goingand flashing back other than
they're like, but he has aconnection to his nephew and his
nephew was playing with hislittle toy. And later, you're
going to see Dan Stevens playwith this toy and go I'm, I'm
doing the thing I'm doing forhim. So now I'm going to get

(51:34):
into some spoiler territoryhere. Oh, please don't.
Because there really isn't any.
There's no real plot to talkabout. He's running around, he
runs into a friend of his andthe chick who's supposed to be
employing him. They run frombattle to battle with drones
shooting at them, with militiashooting at them. And with

(51:56):
ultraflex people shooting atthem, his HUD display tells him
how to start cars, how to takeover drones at one point, it
tells him when he's under arrestand that he needs to surrender.
It's the hut is really theentire story. And then he
discovers that the box is a killswitch. Hence the title, hence

(52:19):
the title. And the kill switchis going to kill one of the two
realities so that the other cansurvive. So this is where it
gets a little murky for mebecause they built this thing to
get unlimited energy from theother place. But at the same
time they had this box that theywant him to insert in the like

(52:40):
echo world but the echo when hedoes it, it kills the place
they're getting the energy fromand then the thing stops
working. Click alright what elseis on Amazon?
It's realYeah, I have questions but I

(53:01):
want to wait till you getthrough all your stuff. Okay,
maybe they will be answeredOkay. Um, so anyways, he gets
Yeah, he gets the place he putsthe thing in the movie basically
ends except for we see like aflash over to his nephew and his
sister watching the thing turnoff. And then that's the end of
the movie.

(53:24):
It feels like it Uber I mean,clearly heavily borrows from
like half life into the pointwhere the reason why this got a
lot of attention in the firstplace is because a bunch of
video game journals wrote aboutit when they saw the trailer
thinking that it was a halflifemovie trailer. Because it looks

(53:45):
so much like it. The bad thingsabout this movie. camera angles
are a little rough especially atthe start no shot options. We
are in a medium and you betterlike it. There is no fun
emotional moments. The sister isan intolerable, but at least
with a little boy the nephewthey know he's bad so they never

(54:06):
let him talk and that's like hischaracter. He's like been
through some kind of trauma andso he doesn't say anything so
they just like play with littlespaceships together. So that
works extremely well. This isyou can tell that like I said
the edges where it's low budget,the super hot chick who is the
only other actor you know, andthis she at one point goes from

(54:26):
wearing like an outfit with aspecific makeup in a scene where
she's asking to hire Dan Stevensto do the mission. And then
several weeks later, we see himlater in a flashback and she's
wearing the same thing and hasthe same makeup and I was like
is this like a uniform for you?
And it's not like subtle makeup.

(54:47):
It's like fucking smoky all theway eye shadow like it is like
she got blasted in the face withsome like black like, dust. I do
like that look.
It looks hot as hell. I amright there with you. But I was
like, she didn't mix it up.
She'd do something different.
And she's wearing the samething.

(55:07):
Okay, I guess like they don'tpair enough for her to wear
something different. The goodthe CGI is extremely good. Yeah,
the CGI looks amazing becausethat's what the director does.
Like that's his life. He's a CGIartist.
The dude, the bad actor DanStevens does great. He does a
great job. He really puts putsus all in and a lot of the other

(55:29):
actors were like heavy hittingGerman actors, they do a really
good job, too. For the mostpart, the actors that are good
are good. eats really, if you'rewatching when you watch it,
you're like man, Cloverfield andhardcore, Henry sure are really
good movies.
To me, and Half Life is a fungame. And I would love to play

(55:52):
that again. I can't say Idisliked it, because I do play
video games. And I spent a lotof time analyzing the way in
which they were using tropesfrom video games and inserting
them in. But I think if you donot play video games, you are
going to hate this film. I don'tknow, I, I don't know how you
would enjoy anything about itnecessarily. Because it doesn't

(56:14):
have a lot to provide. Otherthan being like, wow, I like how
they use the HUD here or thereor man, that's shitty what they
did with it there because it'sannoying. And I feel like I'm
gonna have a stroke.
trivia,almost nothing. American Dutch
production. The company alterPlex energy takes its name from
Latin adjective meaning dividedor double or two. Which makes

(56:36):
sense because there's twoplaces. It's based on Tim Smith,
the director of short movie,what's in the box, which had 2.6
million views on YouTube. Andthis is where the gaming
journalist got really excitedbecause they thought that this
was the halfway thing coming.

(56:57):
done. I'm done. I havequestions. Okay. And they
weren't answered. So maybe youdon't know. Okay. Is this a
legitimate other dimension? Oris he put into something the way
you said that he got somethingput in his brain? We were seeing
it through his I thought he wasmaybe still in our world. But
seeing things differently? No.
So it's the idea from what Iunderstand is that a second

(57:19):
world is created when they makethis energy thing, or at least
that's what they tell him. Theytell him a copy of our universe
is made, so that they can takeenergy from it. But that copy is
not supposed to have any life init. So it doesn't matter.
There's like no consequences. Sothey create an alternative
dimension to take the energyfrom it. And is he trying to the

(57:43):
kill switch that he needs to?
Switch? Yeah, it? If that'slet's say, that's the Eco world
and we're in the real worldwhere he starts out in Yeah, in
the movie, is he trying to endthis world or the echo world
echo world, he doesn't knowthat. That's his mission. He

(58:04):
just thinks he The box issupposed to stabilize something.
But he discovers through theheart check that it actually
will destroy the other world. Soat one point, actually, the bad
guys try to take the kill switchfrom him. And they want to do
the opposite and come to hisworld to destroy it.

(58:27):
And then, but he is there, theysomehow transport him to his
place. It's just they he haslike implants and stuff.
I realized that I just don'tcare anymore. So my other
question I was done that youeven
everyone's like, Really? Youwant to know more? No, it's fun
trying to figure out how toexplain it. That's all. How

(58:49):
about I go next? Yeah. Why don'tyou know, I don't know. It was
fun to find something that was Ihad not come across before. And
it was pretty exciting to checkit out. It's better than a
silent movie there. I use thissub genre to do something
similar to see a movie that Ihadn't seen before.
And I wish that I still hadn'tsaw Oh, I chose from 2001 ghosts

(59:14):
of Mars.

(59:45):
He was supposed to be a routineprisoner transport.
Williams was arrested onsuspicion of murdering six rail
workers. The bodies were hungand decapitated.
A million miles from home.
Anybody here?

(01:00:09):
They're about to discovernothing is what it seems.
Everybody inthe hell is going on?
We used to live here we will getup. It takes us talking about a
kind of possession.
Something's kicking out there.

(01:00:32):
Us none of us could survive.
Come on, Tom stay alive.
From the master of terror.

(01:00:59):
JOHN Carpenter'sdamn girl like you already?
Oh no, I haven't seen coaches OhKelly budget of $28 million. If
you can believe that box officeof 14 million worldwide, I can't

(01:01:22):
believe you did. This RottenTomatoes critic is 21% and the
audience is right there with24%. That's high. It was
directed by john carpenter, whoyou might know from Memoirs of
an Invisible Man and the ward.
It was written by john carpenterand Larry sulcus and Larry
sulcus has done a couple ofshort films and DVD extras.

(01:01:47):
That That makes sense. Yeah.
Those DVD extras were johnCarpenter's films.
It stars Natasha Henstridge whoyou would know from the species
franchise and just a ton of TV.
I was really surprised that shedoes so much acting I thought
she was just kind of a model whokind of dabbled in in alien
movies, but it also stars IceCube who you would know from

(01:02:09):
fucking the police.
And then the movies right alongbarbershop and 21 Jump Street
and 22 Jump Street.
Jason Statham you would knowfrom in the name of the king a
dungeon sink, dungeon siegetale, huh? When I saw this, I
had no idea who that was. Um,you know, the Jason Statham

(01:02:32):
thing had not occurred yet forme. Yeah, interesting. He's
good. Not Jason Statham yet andit's really full head of hair.
Oh, wow. He's got his accent butnone of the gravel Do you know I
mean, oh, yeah.
So and then it also starts PamGreer. gravel was in coffee and
Foxy Brown, Mars, Tex, and otherpeople that I will probably

(01:02:56):
mention as I get going throughhere, if I get bored enough
a year 2176 the brave new worldis Mars, which we are told has
been 84% terraform, allowinghumans to walk on the surface
without pressure suits, whichseems like a fantastic way to

(01:03:17):
avoid big budget affects me.
And we need police lieutenantMelanie Ballard who is Natasha
Henstridge who is sent to aremote mining outpost to
transport prisoners snakeplissken Oh, no, no, it's it's
desolation. Williams.
What is the name of this guy?
Yes, played very, very badly byice cube. Yeah.

(01:03:42):
Arriving at the mining townBallard and her police team.
She's just part of the team. PamGrier is the leader of the team.
Her police team, which includesStatham Pam Greer and Claire
Duvall, you remember claydevolved from like Carnival and
a couple other things.
And then a couple other redshirts that are there with them.
And they find that the town isdeserted. So they do they do a

(01:04:06):
little more searching and find afew survivors barricaded in the
town jail with desolation.
Done dun dun dun person not thelocation, right? Yeah. What you
didn't get that.
We learned from the survivorsthat the miners had discovered
an underground doorway createdby an ancient Martian

(01:04:27):
civilization. And when the doorwas opened, it released the
disembodied spirits of theghosts of MMA.
Which then took possession ofthe miners.
So far, so good. I'm kind oflike, you know, I can do my my
heart and my sci fi together.
I'm a fan of that stuff. Themovie looks like shit but

(01:04:48):
Statham is still pretty cool.
And, you know, I'm like, Okay,this is I'm writing on this,
even though he has here.
When possessed the miners canMet horrific acts of death and
destruction along with weirdself mutilation. They scraped
the faces and apparently put onbad spirit Halloween store ghoul
makeup and teeth. And then theyattack our team.

(01:05:15):
When Pam Grier is murdered bythe by one of the ghosts of
Mars, Ballard assumes commandand the group fights his way
through the miners.
Unfortunately, when you kill apossessed human, the ghost just
jumps into another human which Iwas like, Oh, this is pretty
fucking great. I mean, thisseems like an unbeatable the
following Coronavirus. Yeah.

(01:05:36):
But and in fact, Ballard,Natasha Henstridge, she kills
somebody in the ghost jumpsright into her and you're like,
Oh, fuck, somehow she is able toget the ghost out of her. Well,
you know, if you're if you'regood enough, if you have a
powerful enough disposition, ifyou eat a turkey sandwich that
day, for no real reason, otherthan the story needs to be able
to do this on a holiday and shegets she's able to break the

(01:06:01):
possession. And it does allowher though, when the Spirit is
in her to find out what is goingon. And all that's going on is
that the spirits aren't theydon't realize that they're the
ghosts of Mars. And they theysee the humans as invaders, and
that the humans will destroy alllife on Mars invaders. They

(01:06:23):
don't realize that all life onMars had been dead already. And
it is only occupied by theghosts of Mars Islam. Yes, yes.
Yeah, so I'mthe I'm just saying what wrap
this up, theythey're able to break away from
the ghost and get to a very badlooking miniature of a train.

(01:06:45):
And looks like they will surviveto fight another day. But no.
Henstridge she convinces theteam after they have escaped
that they have to go back andblow up a nuclear reactor to
vaporize all of the ghosts.
What?
Ghosts can't handle nuclearexplosion. Will they triumph?

(01:07:07):
Vanessa cares. Remember, it isnot worth watching this piece of
shit to find out. I am alwaysstunned by carpenter who has
played literally a couple of thebest horror films I think, ever.
Yeah, but man when he misses itis so far it's not like oh, this
is all right. It's just like,Well, let me let me pull up a

(01:07:29):
little thing I don't know aboutCarpenter here. Concerning this
movie, or Carpenter has statedhe was intentionally trying to
make a campy film. Looking backon the film and its criticism.
He stated he was frustrated thatmost people thought the film was
meant to be a serious horrormovie, and feels that he should
have made the film more openlycomedic and in on the joke say,

(01:07:50):
it's called ghosts of Mars. ForChrist's sake. Why would people
take this movie series?
Beautiful Oh, I love that somuch. That's very smart. Movie
opens reviews come shed, what doI say about this?
JOHN Carpenter has revealed thathe'd become burned out after he
made this film and made thedecision of leaving Hollywood

(01:08:10):
for good. It would not be untilnine years later when he made a
full feature film, which was theequally shitty award.
Return to filmmaking.
The script was originallywritten as a sequel to escape
from New York, really, with thecharacter snake plissken as a
prisoner, but Paramount wouldn'tback it because of the financial

(01:08:33):
and critical failure of escapefrom La plissken was therefore
rewritten as desolation.
WilliamsJC Statham was originally hired
to play desolation Williams, butwas replaced by Ice Cube for
star power. Good, good jobparamount.

(01:08:53):
In a 2006 interview, icecubenominated this as the worst
movie he had appeared in, whichis really something a calling it
unwatchable in many ways. Here'sa quote from him. JOHN Carpenter
really let us down with thespecial effects on that one. It
looked like something out of afilm from 1979.
Well, no, it didn't actually,wouldn't. It would it look cool

(01:09:19):
if it was, it was ice cube.
Okay. I know. Oh, I can'tbelieve you watch this movie,
the film score music. Bruce Robbrought in famed heavy metal
band anthrax to play to picturefor director john carpenter, who
had originally filmed the movielistening to Metallica. The film
score is entirely original andwas recorded by Rob at his
Cherokee studios in Hollywood.

(01:09:42):
The film's DVD offers a bonusfeature with behind the scenes
footage in the studio with themusicians carpenter and Rob one
last note, Cherokee studios iswhere my brother's band recorded
their very first album, and mybrother's band is the band that
plays the Strange Aeons songthat that the
Trove our podcasts. Oh my god,that's so cool. I wonder if she

(01:10:03):
did that because it sounds sogood. It is good. They're good.
What's the name of yourbrother's fan? The the change
names halfway through. So theywere called q five back in the
80s. They released a couple ofalbums that got
critically good results and sovery few copies open for some
good bands though. Oh, yeah,yeah. And then in the 90s, they

(01:10:25):
reformed as night shade and putout three other albums. One of
the albums has the our songStrange Aeons part one on it.
And then they have reformed as Qfive and put out another album.
Wow, are recording another albumsounds exactly like every bands.
Yeah. Um, and they do have theclassic. We're big in Europe.
And they are. That was the bigsurprise as they found out. They

(01:10:48):
were big in Europe, and theywere asked to come over there
and play as Q five and they werelike, Oh, well, I mean, okay,
and they did it. And my brotherwho was just like in tears, he
called me from after the show.
He's like, Oh, my God, I had10,000 people singing my lyrics
back. Oh, he's just like, I hadno idea that we were big. Oh my
god. That's so cool. Yes. Well,that's better than the movie.
Yeah.

(01:11:09):
So yeah, I ended it on a highnote. Okay. Well, as you always
like to toss out I guess I'm thewinner on this one because I
enjoyed the hell out of thisfilm. Oh, good.
Movie. So my pack was also one Ihad never seen 2013 coherence.

(01:11:40):
Laurie Mears a total jackass.
I got zero views. You know,they're talking about the
comment. Yeah. Commentafterward, past people get lost.
They would end up in the wronghome. Why they keep telling
people that this can happen. Thechicken tastes like that must be

(01:12:04):
the whole neighborhood is out ofpower. Except for a house about
two blocks.
away from the door.
See that? Oh my god. This isbad. This is really what's the
box that was at the other house?
Did you even belong?

(01:12:32):
Everybody knewthis except me. We have to just
get through the night. Okay.
You're not from this house? Weare visitors.
I don't want to be stuck here.

(01:13:00):
This is a good girl. Not we haveall seen this one. Yes. Now.
Yes, it is 88 critics 81 fromthe crowd. So a grade budget of
50,000, which I think isprobably stretching how much
they spent on it from what Iread afterwards, at a box office
of 139,000. Unfortunately,directed by James ward. Burkett.
His first feature is he's done alittle bit more with video games

(01:13:25):
where he did Rango. And he wasstoryboard artists for several
of the Pirates of the Caribbeanmovies, which is where he found
some of the actors to be inthis. He's also the writer along
with Alexmanagin, who was he's a story by
credit and writer for 13 Grey'sAnatomy episodes. And also is in

(01:13:46):
the movie as a character, whichI'll get to a stars. Emily Bell,
Donny. It's done lots of TV. Imean, lots of TV. Murray
Sterling, who's also tons andtons of TV but has also done
Andre the butcher smoking out. ISue's and Beverly Hills
Chihuahua. Yeah, I've never seenthat. But oh, and many random

(01:14:09):
very voices from Star Wars TheOld Republic.
Like if a soldier talks orjanitors I'm
Elizabeth Grayson 29 episodes ofHighlander and 22 episodes of
Highlander The Raven. No, Ididn't realize there were that
many episodes of The Raven, Idid not either. And from Buffy

(01:14:31):
and kitchen confidential,Nicolas Brandon
plays and out of work actorwho's having a hard time with
alcohol. Moving on quickly.
It starts off and what I thoughtwas really encouraging, saying
I'm kind of a big fan of RobertAltman, who we don't talk a lot
on this show for obvious reasonsyet. What I like about him is

(01:14:52):
his handling of large group ofpeople, his scenes with multiple
actors and his ability to weavethe way the stories are told
with seven orpeople in the room at the same
time and never turn it into aconvoluted mess is what I really
like about his work. And thismovie does that incredibly well,
right from the start. Andthe when I first started

(01:15:13):
watching it, and I Wow, okay,the budgets definitely showing
here. Because you could see theyput a light in this corner, they
put a light in this corner, andthey just shot stuff, which is
actually exactly what they did.
But my first thought for thefirst scene was this, that's,
you know, budget, they didn'twant to do that. But that's how
the whole movie shot. So it'sthe whole thing is it's a dinner

(01:15:35):
party. And the energy and thesmooth flow of dialogue is
incredibly impressive. And theydo stuff to generate the
storyline where they're kind oftalking about comments and
strange things that happenedwith comments of past in the
overworld in the past, and howwe're phenomenon often follows
it or precedes it, gee, no onehas cell service. And their

(01:15:57):
phone screens keep breaking.
Then the power suddenly goesout, except for one house a few
blocks away. And then they gooutside, they look up to see the
comment, which apparently was apractical effect that the
director will not reveal howthey did. Oh, and it looks
pretty good. Yeah. I justfigured they got stock footage
of a comment.

(01:16:18):
But turns out this house has agenerator too. So they turn
their generator on and havepower. Couple of them go to
Let's go see what's happeningwith this other house and they
come up with a box full ofphotos, and the backs of them
are numbered. At this point, Iwrote Holy shit, this movie's
good.
Really, really enjoying the flowof the film, there's a

(01:16:39):
I'm going to get very cryptichere and go into trivia pretty
soon. Because this whole moviejust needs to be watched and and
experienced, there's a knock atthe door that gives an amazingly
good review, reveal aboutsomething strange is definitely
happening. And that's the notethe group of them, get back to

(01:17:00):
the house and again, and have anamazing WTF moment, they get a
book that talks about thetheories of what might be going
on and is fairly well explained.
And they bring the Schrodingercat idea into it.
Which is also explained betterthan I've heard and a lot a lot
of places just talk about thebasic idea of shorter your cat,

(01:17:23):
they talk a little deeper aboutit, which helps him to the
movie, there's a moment or twoin the film where it drags a
little bit. Or it's kind oflike, okay, we're trying to
figure out what's going on. Butwe're not to a point where we
want to push what's going on.
too quick. My last note, I'mjust gonna say, what's going on
here.

(01:17:43):
And I'll go into thoughts andtrivia which made me even more
impressed with this film after Iread these, but I'll just say
this movie is should feel deeplyconfusing, but I did. It
doesn't. It's very much what isgoing on. But it's not the
frustration. What is going on?
Like you're not stringing thistogether? Well, this doesn't
make any sense. It is strungtogether incredibly well. It's
incredibly smartly. Well, I'llsay outlined, because it wasn't

(01:18:06):
really written.
Oh, there's also some weirdsound and that we're getting to
which probably goes to theeither the version I watched or
the original budget when I wasfor reference in the way it
looks. I would say like ifyou've watched the shield or
Battlestar Galactica, it's verysimilar in style to that. It's
not really it's not a foundfootage style, but it's not a

(01:18:28):
lockdown camera style in anyway. Apparently, they shot out
side one time and wanted it tolook completely desolate and
dark. But just down the street,somebody was shooting a Snickers
commercial.
So they had to work around thatand then had to work around the
company coming down and knockingon their door every once in a
while to let them know they'rethere.

(01:18:51):
The movie was shot over fivenights in a single location,
which almost entirely improviseddialogue. Wow. which ironically
won the filmmaker to BestScreenplay awards at Film Fest.
Oh my god, that's so good. Butyeah, that floored me when I
read pretty insane. Really,really, especially for

(01:19:13):
something. So it's such acomplex concept. Yeah, for a
movie for that to still stay onthe rails. With improv. Yeah,
it's insane. It was amazing.
Well, to that point, the theother co writer was one of the
actors because for that exactreason, he was sent in sort of
as a mole for the the moviemoving forward, they'd spent

(01:19:36):
well over a year mapping out howthe film would be constructed
and how it put together so theactors were not given any
script, but they were eachgiven. Its at the beginning of
the day there a paragraph or apage of where they were supposed
to go. This is a stuff we'regonna introduce and you need to
find this destination. And ofcourse, actors being actors.
They all want to talk a lotexcept for one

(01:20:00):
Ever wonder was veryuncomfortable with the improv.
But she eventually gotcomfortable with it. But so that
was one of his hardest parts ofdirecting it was settling them
down, making sure that he'd getthem to this. You know, follow
him aside, say this is the pointyou need to get to make sure you
don't skew so far away. They hadone point when the two people

(01:20:20):
that went to the other housecame back, apparently, there's a
45 minute segment of themarguing about letting them in,
after they come back and belike, okay enough. Just let him
in. He did a great job in theend of making sure that all the
ideas were presented and all thepeople were
character movement, there wasstuff going on interaction

(01:20:43):
between the characters and theirhistory was present and
relevant. It wasn't just, Oh,these people are uncomfortable
for that. Let's just have thatbe a thing. It's like, no,
there's a reason for thesethings happening. The entire
crew was five people to soundguys, the DP, the director, and
producer, who wasthen a bow saagar, who was based

(01:21:04):
in London, but flew over to makesure the film got done. Wow. Oh,
my God, that's so few people.
They use two cameras for thewhole thing. Except for the
dinner scene when they were allat the table. And once they
added a third camera for thatnight, the director wanted to

(01:21:24):
use his own house. And ofcourse, he had to get his wife's
agreement on that. She was eightand a half months pregnant and
one of the home birth. Ah, soshe agreed that they could do it
as long as it only took fivedays. Wow. Oh my god.
There's a scene in there whereone of the characters goes out,

(01:21:46):
trying to figure out what'sgoing on in the different
houses. That the night thatscene was shot was the same
night that his wife gave birth.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my God. strange littletrivia thing I came across that.
director says again, sosignifying something, but he is
not going to tell what it is.
But the movie cuts to black Iwant two seconds, three seconds,

(01:22:09):
five seconds, seven 919 in likesix or seven other times. And
apparently it all adds up tomean something. Oh, because
there's other scenes where itseems like it should have cut to
black, but they don't. But youwon't say what it is. Like, come
on, man.
And the entire film was shotchronologically. That makes

(01:22:31):
sense. Yeah, I think you'd haveto. Yep. Yeah, this one floored
me. Man. I haven't enjoyed afilm like this in a long time.
Yeah, this is like the perfectmovie for your tastes,
especially knowing how much youlike.
I don't know, similar films. Idon't want to I could say
anything that's going to giveanything away.

(01:22:52):
But I mean, you could give handsI don't think you're going to
give much away just because itit doesn't unfold To me it
didn't feel like you know,you're watching some of these
films where there's, let's justsay time change or dimensional
changes. And about halfwaythrough, you're going okay, this
is definitely what's going onthis film, you could probably

(01:23:12):
reach a conclusion, and youmight be correct, but at the
same time, it unfolds sosmoothly and seamlessly that you
wouldn't care like, Oh, I didn'tfigure it out. But still, I was
awesome to watch. And it's toobad. Because you know, Brandon's
incredibly good. And this.
Everybody's good enough,everyone. Yeah, I was like, Is
he a train wreck? Because like,he's so good in this movie. He

(01:23:35):
really holds himself togetherand his talent is very present.
Yeah, yeah. So and apparentlythey're all people. James knew
well enough, he could just callthem up and say, Hey, we want to
do this. Give me five days. Andthey said, Okay.
Yeah, cool movie. Cool choice. Iyeah. Even though you're Vanessa

(01:23:59):
and I had a bad time with thischoice. I think this is a choice
that would be fun to revisitagain. Yeah, I agree. There's so
many cool you know, films outthere though. It would be great
to explore with us.
Okay, well, I guess that meansthat it's my pick next. Dun dun.
Dun dun dun. I was justcomplaining about Godzilla

(01:24:20):
versus King Kong for kind ofmixing magics which is what I
call it when you throw when youthrow something weird into a
film. That's fine. But when youthrow another something weird in
that doesn't quite match up. Ihave a problem with that. Now
some movies can do that verywell. For example, the Marvel
movies you don't have too muchof a problem knowing that one of

(01:24:43):
those guys got bitten by aradioactive bug. One of those
guys that got a super soldiershere, I'm one of them's a god
from Asgard. You know, all ofthose things are magics that mix
well because comic book moviescan do that. But there's movies
like Do you guys ever watchwaxwork
To now it's a it's a bizarrelittle movie about these

(01:25:05):
creatures in the waxworks comingto life, but it also has time
travel in it. And it's justlike, watch what's going on
here. OrWell, you know, personally, the
Kong Vs Godzilla sequence goinginto that.
I keep wanting to call it MiddleEarth Hollow Earth.

(01:25:26):
Could have been a Middle Earth,going into that felt like a
magic that did not belong inthis movie. Yes. Yeah, it was
certainly an exploration Journeyto the Center of the Earth kind
of movie when what we weresupposed to be watching was, you
know, monkey fights, whateverthe way. You mentioned, Marvel
the way Marvel might have donethat, because they're so ballsy
in the way they do movies,you're going to do a con movie.

(01:25:48):
Forget Skull Island, good Kongmovie. And then they're going to
do a movie about a journey tothe center of the earth where
everybody learns, oh, this iswhere all these creatures are
coming from. And then the thirdmovie would be King Kong and
Godzilla going at it. Sure. And,you know, I think that comic
books, get away with it, it justin general, because that's what
the actual physical comic booksdo. So your movies Can you know,

(01:26:11):
they they kind of say, look,these are the rules, and you
know, the rules going in. But,so I would like to pick mixing
magics for the next sub genre.
And it can be either a moviethat you think, does it well, or
a movie that doesn't do it.
Well. Sure. Hopefully, we'llfind ones that you like this
time. Well, we'll see. I'm goingto toss out again, another
thanks to Jason because heactually asked me a question

(01:26:33):
during this about how we canhelp us out and I said, Yeah,
you've got the right idea. Andhe sent the full amount of when
he sent and I was like,Thanks, Jason. You're covering
some expenses with us. Andthat's fantastic.
You rock. All of you rock.
Thanks so much for everybodyjumping on board with this value
for value model. I think thatit's I think it's the way to go.

(01:26:55):
And I'm really pleased with howeveryone's responding to it.
Yeah, absolutely. I think thishas been a really fun episode.
And I really enjoyed thechallenge that we got from the
mica value for value and I alsojust want to shout out a quick
Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
Happy birthday mica.
So okay, guys, that's it forthis week, and we will be back

(01:27:17):
in one more week we're talkingmixing magics.
Our show is recorded somewherehigh above Naval Station Everett
at the nexus of all realities,and is engineered and produced
by Eric Margaret. Our thememusic is Strange Aeons part one
by the band name shade isusually permission. Find Strange
Aeons radio on Facebook, Twitterand Instagram, wherever find

(01:27:39):
podcasts