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January 2, 2025 69 mins
Debating 'Passengers' - Redemption, Romance, and Sci-Fi Thrills Today Steve and Mustache Chris duke it out in response to last week’s episode on 2016 film 'Passengers,' starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. The discussion gets heated as they explore the film's polarizing reception, storytelling elements, and the intense moral dilemma faced by the protagonist Jim. Discover different perspectives on Jim's controversial decision, the aesthetic brilliance of the movie, and the balance between its sci-fi and romantic elements. Tune in for a passionate and thought-provoking analysis that might change how you see 'Passengers.'
00:35 Debating 'Passengers': A Polarizing Film
01:53 Storytelling Issues and Strong Opinions 
03:16 Visuals and Aesthetics of 'Passengers'
06:52 Genre Mashing and Character Depth
34:39 Jim's Dilemma: Opening the Pod 
35:38 Aurora's Agency and Jim's Intentions
37:39 Moral Quandaries and Personal Reflections
39:21 The Role of Knowledge and Skills 
41:06 Hypothetical Scenarios: Family and Choices
43:38 The Betrayal and Its Consequences

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/aBGbtGNGWB1 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Beyond the Big Screen Podcast with your host
Steve Guera. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Big
Screen podcast, where we talk about great movies and stories
so great they should be movies. Find show notes, links
to subscribe and leave Apple podcast reviews by going to

(00:23):
our website Beyond the Big Screen dot com. And now
let's go Beyond the Big Screen.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome back to Beyond the Big Screen. Last week, me
and my guest at a movie Passengers, and Steve has
a very strong opinions on this movie. He disagreed with
us very much about our positive review for The Moon
And just to kind of give you guys a quick rundown,

(00:55):
a film that came on twenty sixteen ands directed by
Martin Tilden, stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, and it
was a very polarizing film when it first came out.
So I'm not surprised that people will probably have issues
with me and Chris's review of the film. But Steve

(01:15):
has had serious issues with the film, where I think
we were arguing about it for like a so initially
when we recorded the thing, Steve had seen it and
we argued about it for a good two weeks and
then I edited, and then Steve was filling in some
of the background music and stuff like that, so he
ended up listening to it again, and I think we

(01:36):
argued for argued about it, for sending messages back and
forth for another four days about it. I'd be at
the gym, like in between doing like bench press and
stuff like that and responding to Steve Steve's Facebook messenger
message about like whatever issue was having with the film
at the time. So but I did point out, I

(01:57):
said at the time, I said, you know, four days later,
we're still arguing about this film. I said, that says
something does it go? So? Why do you like? What?
You know? What are your main issues with the film?
And for the most part, from what I gathered from
our interactions, it seems to be more from a storytelling
aspect of the.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, I think that for me, it was a really
big storytelling problem with this, with this particular movie. And
like you said, when you first said you were doing
this movie, I had heard of it, but I had
never seen it. So this is going back a couple
of weeks ago, maybe a little bit longer than that,
when you said you were going to plan to talk
about this with the with the other Chris, and I was, oh,

(02:39):
I'll check out this. I like, who doesn't like Chris Pratt,
Jennifer Lawrence and a sci fi movie. So I thought
I'd check it out. And I just got so mad
about this movie from beginning to end. And then we
started talking about it and I was like, I cannot
believe the things that you like about it. And then
when I went back and I to review the episode

(03:02):
before publishing the arguments that the chris As were making,
was like I was yelling at my computer while I
was editing it. And so I think that my problems
really they'd break down into storytelling and then also some
of your interpretations of it, and I think that's how
we'll kind of go with this now. I do want

(03:25):
to say that I didn't hate everything about the movie.
There were some things I really loved about the movie.
I think the sci fi aspect of it, of them
going into the suspended animation, the machine failing like that
was all interesting stuff. And the visuals of it, I
think they nailed it that all of the setting, the

(03:47):
kind of the soft tones they used and everything, the
soft color, soft filters, the technology, everything was just spot on,
and even though the movie it's not super old, what
was it from twenty sixteen? I think, yeah, but it did.
There's no dated element to it. I think that it
was It's classic classic sci fi as far as the

(04:11):
settings go, everything crisp and clean, the uniforms that they wore,
the clothing like, nothing was way out of whack. I
think it was super tight on all of that, and
the filming was really well done. The special effects were
well done, so I'm not going to say that it
was terrible in that way, and I think the acting

(04:33):
was was good as well for that sort of sci
fi movie. Not spectacular, but not the worst either, like
solid upper tier of sci fi. I think it's it
breaks down when it starts getting into the story more,
and maybe that was why it was. It was trying

(04:53):
to do something, maybe innovative, but I think that overall
it just failed on that. What did you You and
Chris didn't talk about the aesthetics as much, and I
know that you're big on aesthetics. What did you think
about that in the movie.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
I thought it was beautifully shot. I loved it. I mean,
there's for quite some time now there's been this like
kind of drive to kind of do like space is dirty,
like everything has to be dirty. I kind of blame
Aliens for this like that, which I really enjoy I
really enjoyed that aesthetic. But for a long time everyone
tried to copy Alien, and this film was like in

(05:31):
the sense you could kind of think of it as
like the anti Alien in terms of the aesthetics. Everything
just looks really nice, like it looks clean, it looks modern,
the choice of coloring. I mentioned the final shot too
in the film where she's swimming in the pool and
they're looking out to outer space as just breathtaking. It's something,

(05:52):
honestly with some of the better like in terms of
just pure beauty and pure art on film, Like you
could take that shot of the two of them in
that pool and they're looking into outer space and just
stop it there and just you could hang that up
on your wall. That I do truly believe it's really stunning.
It's one of the better without like doing like a

(06:12):
ton right in terms of like all this expansive world
or whatever. It's mainly just that ship, and there's some
absolutely stunning cinematography and stunning set pieces in the film.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
I really do think that they set the scene that
this isn't a grungy space scene. This is these are
upper class people, middle upper class people who are booking
this flight to go to a form plan and like
they're not going to be on a garbage scal They're

(06:47):
going to be on something that's pretty nice. And I
think that that everything it's set the it did set
the scene for the movie, and it's set the expectation
for it that we should feel, we want to feel comfortable,
and it makes you feel comfortable in the ship, and
then it starts to play with that later as Jim

(07:08):
becomes very uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You said it positive right off
the bat, So what's your what's your negative?

Speaker 3 (07:16):
So for me, the real so in the storytelling, the
real negative, I think is one of the big negatives
is that it's really it has too many genres in there.
It's sci fi, it's romance, it's redemption, there's loss, there's action, adventure, drama,
a hero's journey going through all of all of it.

(07:39):
So I think it got muddled right off the bat
with just too many genres going on, too many different,
too many different things that it was trying to get
to and it had to encapsulate all that, so then
it has to have so many different plot points to
make that work. I think that you and the and

(08:00):
Chris two got into it that it really did have
it had a hardcore, and you had said I think
one of the directors was really into Carl Jung and
it clearly had that Jungian influence of the hero's journey.
And I would have liked to if you two had
teased that out a little bit more. I think that
when you boil this movie down, it's really a one

(08:24):
man play, and for about half of maybe what about
Air a little over a third of the movie, it
really is a one man play of just Jim and
every other character, even Jennifer Lawrence's character when they bring
them in, all of these characters are just essentially NPC's
to Jim's hero journey. And I think that that, yeah,

(08:47):
I mean literally the so as far as characters going,
we'll get into this as we progress, and definitely go
back and listen to the other episode. You have Jim,
who's the main character and he's on his hero's journey.
Then you have Aurora played by Jennifer Lawrence. You have
the mechanic played by Lawrence Fishbourne, an AI robot bartender

(09:11):
played by Martin Sheen, but not that Martin Sheen, a
different Martin Sheen. And then you have at the very
very end, Andy Garcia has like two lines as the captain,
but none of them. I mean literally, the Martin Sheen
auto bartender character is an NPC's an AI computer. I

(09:32):
felt like every single character was really one dimensional to
just feed into Jim's hero's journey, and I thought that,
so then everybody else fell flat.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, you will your issues with like genre mashing, like
too many genres going into the thing like if I
don't know if you guys listen to some of our
older episodes, I for the most part enjoy that type
of stuff, Like don't listen to the very first episode
means Steve did the Prometheus episode because I was like
really green at doing this and I kind of courage
listening to it. But like I defended Prometheus and Prometheus

(10:08):
people accused of having the same problems. Right, It's like, oh,
it's trying to be like this religious, philosophical, philosophical film,
but it's also like a horror film, and it's also
like this action film. And it's this big budget sci
fi thing, and I'm like, I for the I'm not
going to sit there and say like it works all
the time. But like a genre mashing, I don't. I
like when stuff like mixes around the genres and plays

(10:31):
around the genres, Like I've talked about it multiple times,
Like my favorite TV show or is Twin Peaks, which
is famous for mixing like soap opera and horror and
sappy romance and all this stuff together that you know,
on the surface of it, it doesn't seem like it works.
But in that case, in my opinion, it really does

(10:52):
work well. But I can kind of get why people
don't like that. But it's something that I've always enjoyed.
I've always enjoyed genre mashing. And in terms of like
you're saying, like one dimensional characters, I see, I think
in certain circumstances they can work, right, Like if the
one like the Lawrence Fishburn character, I can use him

(11:16):
as an example as being like a blot device right
over to drive the story forward. I don't know if
I'd necessarily see it that way, but I mean it's
very effective at at what he does there, you know,
because really you said it's a one man show. I mean,
the movie is it's two people, right, Everybody else is
kind of there. You know, the AI robot Arthur I

(11:40):
mean he literally is an AI robot. He's an MPC.
And other than like Laurence Fishburn's characters showing up, it's
just them, right. It's about Aurora and it's about Jim
So and that's just that's just my opinion. I didn't
really see much of an issue with that.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
I think that the two man play is in one setting,
is an excellent way to discover different characters, but that
you can't have one one dimensional character. You need to
have two really strong characters. There's a great movie that's
in a way similar to this. It's called Tape. It's

(12:20):
from all the way back in two thousand and one,
if people want to see it. It's with Ethan Hawk,
Uma Thurman, and one or two other characters cycle through.
And those other side characters are maybe more npc ish
that they are just meant to carry along the plot,
but they have a lot more depth than any of

(12:42):
the side characters in this movie have. But the Uma
Thurman character and Ethan Hawk's characters are both so strong
and they can they carry off this two man play
so the point that you don't even think it's a
two man play anymore because you've been completely low in it.
I think that in this movie, Jennifer Lawrence never feels

(13:05):
in this movie that she's her own person. She always,
to me, felt that she was just there to move
Jim along in the plot, that it really was a
one man story and it was Jim's story, and that
she didn't really matter.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I don't know. I pushed back against that in the
sense of, like when she Jennifer Lawrence when it's revealed
that Jim Wide what didn't tell her that he opened
up the pod? I mean that, and I mentioned it
on the previous part. Like that look that she gives
on her face, she doesn't even have to say anything, right,
Like I personally some people have issues with Jennifer Lawrence's acting.

(13:45):
I really enjoy her acting. That look that she gives
on her face isn't there's no dialogue that's needed, right, Like,
it expresses like a thousand different emotions that somebody would
be going through in that moment right there. And I
would say, like there's moments where you know, he like
lays himself down on the believe it's the bed or whatever,

(14:07):
and he's about to and she's going to stab him
to death or what have you with the metal rod,
and she stops. I wouldn't say she's just like kind
of like a passenger in Jim's journey or anything like that.
I think that to me, I did truly feel that,
like the love that they did have for each other

(14:27):
and then like the extreme hatred that she had for
him afterwards, which it's believable. I thought it was believable
given this like impossible circumstance that they're in. Right, That's
interesting You think that her character didn't have like multi
dimensions because they, I mean, they give her a pretty

(14:47):
good backstory to me, Like my biggest complaint about the
film is I think it definitely could have used another
fifteen to twenty minute runtime to kind of flush some
of this stuff out, and that's all it would take
is maybe an extra fifteen minutes. But they give like
Aurora a pretty good backstory too, in the sense of
like she's leap, she's going on this ship, and she's

(15:08):
left her entire friends and family behind, and they're all
going to be dead by the time that she gets
to wherever she's going and then almost immediately she's going
to take a ship to go back. Basically, she her
goal is like I'm going to time travel in an
odd sense, and I'm going to write about how I
lived in this time period and now I'm going to
be living here. And you know it's but she's also

(15:32):
just not happy too, right, Like, I think that's a
part of the movie that they people miss out, is
how unhappy Aura is in her life. And to me,
this is this adds depth to her character. Maybe, you know,
maybe maybe the film could have done a better job
exploring this aspect of Aurora and maybe a little bit

(15:53):
less focused on Jim. But I think that comes down
to it. I think it just could have used a
little bit longer run time.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Steve here, we are amember of the Parthenon podcast network,
featuring great shows like James Early's Key Battles of American
History podcast and many other great shows. Go over to
Parthanon podcast dot com to learn more, and here is
a quick word from our sponsors. Well, I think that

(16:25):
that's the that it was already over two hours. I'm
pretty sure it was pretty close to two hour runtime. Yeah,
And I think to go to the two hours and
fifteen or two hours and thirty would have been just
too much where I think that if they got they
had paired back all of the drama that they had

(16:46):
done with the ship and all this stuff, they could
have had time to more develop her. I would have
loved to have heard more about that story of why
she was doing that. And I think they why she
was decided to go to this planet, live on the
planet for like six months, and then go back for
the and be asleep for one hundred years and come

(17:08):
back like essentially three hundred years later or something like
that to Earth. That would have been a really interesting
thing to explore and then play into tie that into
Gym and him reawakening her. And I think they could
have gotten to that if they had maybe cut back
a little bit on the drama of the ship going

(17:30):
to explode and all this working out. It just felt
to me like they had taken something of us, little
bits and pieces of all other movies, Like you get
a two thousand and one Space Odyssey vibe of him
going through that thing to save the ship, and then
you get a little bit of the shining vibe when
he's always sitting at the bar, Like, I think there

(17:51):
was a lot of dead weight that they could have
trimmed out of the movie to get into those things.
Is that you were saying that they could have that
we're very surface on there, that they really could have
dived into it. And I think to me, that is
what sci fi is all about, is getting into those

(18:12):
taking something that the it's the big story is not
this ship that's flying through space, and it's not this
asteroids crashing into the ship. It's using that one piece
that they're on a ship where you go into suspended
animation in order to tell a much bigger point, which

(18:36):
what is the real point of this story. It's a
story of betrayal, That's what it is. And it could
and you could connect this to somebody who's cheated on
their spouse or any other things are a relationship that
starts with betrayal and then they have to deal with that.

(18:57):
I think all that other stuff they could have trimmed
out and focus and made a really interesting something probably
pretty different too, of a romance set in space, and
they could have made that work.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, Like in terms of I see what you're saying, Yeah,
for sure, But then it would. I think it would
be kind of it would be kind of a different
movie though, I think right like in because you need
that sci fi aspect of like the ship blowing up, right,
because that's a big part, Like they think that's a

(19:32):
big part of it is I mean I talked about
this on the podcast too, right like, and I mean
there has to be something wrong with the ship otherwise
the final act doesn't. It just doesn't make sense, right Well.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
That's I think they needed a different ending they needed to.
I My sense with this movie from the get go
is that they had Chris pat Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence
and they couldn't make Jim look bad at the end.
They had to have Chris Pratt the hero, Chris Pratt

(20:06):
and Jennifer Lawrence as an couple at the end, And
anything that they had to do, any snakes and curves
and turns and hurdles that they had to get through
to get to that ending they were going to do.
And they didn't really care about it.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
See Yeah, but that to me, Lee and I talked
about it on the other pod, Like, to me, the
easy film would have been I guess we could get
into it in terms of like you know what could
they have done differently with the film? Like, to me,
like the easier film to make would have been, like,
I don't know, Jim wakes Aurora up and he's like
a site, he's like an actual psychopath. I mean, there

(20:47):
was that famous YouTube video where they decide they re
edited the film where gave it a different spin, where
like the opening shot is Aurora wakes up and she
finds Jim and she slowly starts realizing that Jim's like
a psychopath that like woke her up, And I'm like,
that would have been a very entertaining movie. Don't get
me wrong, I would be really interested in seeing that.

(21:10):
But it's almost kind of the easier story to tell,
like in the sense of I think the filmmaker really
tried to do something very difficult, in the sense of, like,
how can we take a character like Jim who did
something as horrible as he did and fine, like, can

(21:32):
we make a movie where the audience goes like can't
forgive him? And was his successful? In my opinion, I
thought it was very successful in doing it, And a
lot of other people's opinions they didn't think it was
successful in doing it. The biggest complaint I saw from
just reading comments and reading reviews was they didn't think

(21:52):
that Jim struggled enough, but he didn't. Like They're like
people point to like Tom Hanks and castoids, like look
at how along he was on that island for you know,
talking to that coconuts, And I'm like, okay, So if
he had waited five years or however long time was
on that island, like, I don't see. To me, I
don't see. I don't know what the difference like to me,
what's the difference if he woke her up after a

(22:14):
year or after five years, I don't he still wakes
her up.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
The the reconciliation between them two would have between the
two of them would have to come in some way
through dialogue, through something, And I don't think that the
shared adventure. I think it was just kind of corny
at the end. So I thinking through this movie. Another

(22:40):
podcaster who has a podcast called Twilight Histories, he had
always said, Jordan Harbor's his name sci fi and fantasy.
It needs to have one, maybe two fantastical technological elements.
Major plot twists that that is the thing that will
make it believe a ball and when I was looking

(23:02):
at this, at this movie, it had at least I
kept I kept following along and writing them down, and
I was thinking, initially it had four like diosex machinas
or major things that came from outside of the plot
or fantastical plot twists, and I counted ten of them.

(23:23):
You look at it, so the you start off at
least at one that it's on a spaceship and they're
in suspended animation, so that's a plot device that they
have to pick for sci Fi. Then there's the meteor
or asteroid or whatever you want to call it hitting
the ship, the malfunction that wakes Jim up, the Gus,

(23:47):
the Lawrence Fishbourne mechanic character, his pod wakes up and
he's the one who happens to have all the codes
to get to like the engineering sections of the ship
to like exid or something. Then you have multiple failures
Gus's daff, multiple hull breaches, the reactor, ship failures, eat

(24:09):
shield that Jim invents to protect himself that gives them
a miraculous save. Then Jim dead, revived by the auto
doc discovery of the auto dooc that it's also a
double era doubles for us as a hibernation system, and
there's only one of these auto docks for a ship

(24:30):
of was it five hundred or five thousand people? A
lot of people. And then last but not least, then
Aurora giving this dilemma of does she go into the
pod or does she decide not to go into the pod?
So ten eleven, twelve different bot twists, Like I think

(24:55):
that one thing that was really cheap, and I would
wonder what you would say about this. I think it
was very cheap is the Lawrence Fishburn mechanic coming back in.
He comes in and then he dies because you can't
at the end have Lawrence Fishburn hanging around there as
the third wheel as Adam and Eve, Aurora and Jim

(25:20):
go off into the sunset to each other. I think
that that was one of the elements that really it's
like stuck in my crab. Was that whole thing with
Lawrence Fishburn?

Speaker 2 (25:35):
I to me, okay, the one I grant you that
they said, Okay, so at the beginning, the at the
whatever they're in hibernation, that's just that's just storytelling. The
ship gets hit by an asteroid, that's just right from
the get go, right like that's not It's not like
halfway through the movie they're like, oh, wait then the
ship gets hit by an astroid or something like. That's
right from the get go. So that's just baked into

(25:57):
the cake, right, I'm fine with all that they do
set up that the ship is overcompensating too, right, So
at first it's like everything's kind of just running fine.
But because like other hard drives are overcompensating the deal
with the damage done by the asteroid, it's making other

(26:19):
aspects of the ship progressively get more and more haywire.
So I can go with you know, other pods start
up malfunctioning, and maybe it was like a chief engineer,
like we talked about this on the pod and I
don't and I'm trying to remember a movie. There's AI
technology on this ship, right, so if they if the

(26:42):
ship knew that, it would need somebody who had access
to you know, the internal hard drive. I guess where
the internal engine they would wake somebody up and why
you know, why not the mechanic right or like Jim's
pod malfunctioning could be just you know, it's just happened
because the asteroid got hit. I don't know they don't

(27:03):
make it clear in the film. Maybe it was like
the asteroid hits and then Jim Pod just opens up.
They don't make it clear in the film. I guess
they could have done a better job making that clear,
so I can kind of go with that. The one
thing I'll give you that is kind of ridiculous is
the fact that they only have one medic dog. For
five thousand passengers that they have on the ship. They

(27:23):
would have at least I would assume probably fifty, right,
It wouldn't be just the one. Right. That's where, like,
you know, it's pushing it a bit far in my opinion,
but I don't know. It doesn't bother me a ton.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I think the movie is just fighting back and forth
between this romance element and then the action, and they're
way far away from each other, and there it's like, oh,
the opposites of the magnet are the trying to push
those two of the magnet together. They can't make it work,
so they're just trying to force it to work. If

(28:05):
they had gone as this movie is a straight romance,
I think it could have worked. They could have made
this work as a straight sci fi romance and exploring
in this sandbox of the kind of the ridiculousness of
being stuck on this ship of ultimate betrayal. You can

(28:27):
think about other movies where they start off as an
ultimate betrayal where the guy says that he's like a
millionaire and then it finds out that he's just like
a you know, a loser, unemployed guy, and then they
find a way to work it out. And I think
that if they had done that, they could have made
something really interesting with all the elements that they already

(28:50):
had in place, that yeah, of course she's gonna be
pissed off beyond all imaginations and every right to be
that way, that he's basically signed her death sentence, but
she could she's obviously, like they had started to build
that she's a person who has really disconnected herself on Earth,

(29:12):
that she had no problem like dropping out of Earth
and leaving all of her family and friends to die,
Like they could have built that up more, that this
is actually a thing, like this was a blessing of
what Jim did to her, And I don't think that
they ever created that enough to make it believable. And

(29:33):
then you have the autodoc and this and that, and
the heat shield and what it really turns into is
instead of her accepting Jim for the failed person that
he is, it turns into this thing that, oh, Jim's
redeemed himself because he's willing to die for Aurora and

(29:53):
the cheap like chivalry thing, when it could have been
giving Aurora more of a bit of self determination. In
the movie she's been everything has been taken away from
her for self determination, but that could have been given
back to her in a real way, not just this, Oh,
we've got through this whole thing and Jim's an awesome hero. Now, oh,

(30:17):
you can get into the auto doc and go back
to sleep and leave Jim to die. And then what
kind of movie is that? You know, what's Jim gonna do?
If she jumps back and she's like, peace out, I'm
getting back into the auto doc, what's the movie after that?
Like Jim just standing there as she's closes the roof
on her odd like, of course Jim has to get

(30:42):
the girl at the end. That's what they've been setting
us up for the whole time. Steve here with a
quick word from our sponsors.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
To me, the easily could have done it where she decides,
you know, I don't think you're a monster anymore, but
I can't ever forgive you for what you did. And
she goes back to sleep in the pod. And Jim,
in a sense, he redeems himself and the fact that
he saved everybody else on the ship, right, but he
could never he could never get Aurora's love, and then

(31:15):
for the rest of his life, spending this time on
the ship, he has to think about the love that
he could never get back, you know, almost like kind
of like a divorce, right, you know, somebody has spouse,
cheats or whatever, and it doesn't matter what that person does.
They could do everything right, but once that's broken, there's
no getting it back. And they could have ended the

(31:37):
movie like that. They really could have, and it would
have been super, super depressing, And I think, I think
that ending could have really worked. Now I'm thinking about it,
and I'm like, you know, I've been thinking about it
during the week too, when we were discussing doing this podcast,
But now, you know, the wheels are turning in my head.
I mean, like, man, that would have been like like

(31:58):
a sledgehammer to the heart, you know, like a little
like instantly a little beyond the big screen or whatever. Like, uh,
I like sappy stuff, right, I love melodrama and that,
you know, that kind of genre of like sappy romance.
Like I like the Notebook. I love the Notebook. You know.
I know it sounds kind of weird if people go

(32:19):
through my Facebook see like some of the stuff that
or even listen to this pod some of the stuff
that we've talked about on this podcast and what have you.
But like, I love the Notebook, And man, that would
have been devastating if she's like, I don't think you're
a monster anymore, but I I just I can't. I
don't love you for what you did. I can't love

(32:39):
you because of what you did, and she goes to sleep.
I mean, they could have done that, and.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
That could have been a natural outcome to this movie
if they wanted to. That's where I think that the
genre blending and the too many genres came in to
the full effect is in the end of the movie,
because when you have to have a good romances ending
and a good action sci fi action ending, then you

(33:05):
have to naturally get to this ending that I think
was just kind of a letdown where I think that
if you had that end, if you had built it
out as a romance where she learns that what Jim
gave her was really a gift to live her life meaningfully,
not just go off to the planet, you know, waste

(33:29):
her time on the planet, then waste more time going
back to an Earth that's nothing, like leaving an Earth
that was nothing to her, going on this trip that
was a nothing to her, and then going back to
Earth that was a nothing, and that Jim's like stupidity
and Jim's own his faults allowed her to in a
way redeem herself and to find out who she really was.

(33:52):
I think that could have been a fantastic movie or
the drama. The drama that they never find a way
to really gel and at the end she's like, you
know what, Jim, I learned a lot from you. I
respect what you did, but I've got to go on
my journey now. Click. And then Jim, you know, comes

(34:12):
to realize it. And the end could have been almost
similar that the captain opens up the logs and he's like,
what the crap just happened here on my ship and
learned you know, learns the story of Jim and a
couple of artifacts or something.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
I think either one of those would have been a
much better ending than this, like mashup ending that's really
not a great ending to either of the genres.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, I mean, I think I do a pretty good
defense defending the ending and the previous podcast. But I mean, okay,
so before we kind of get into like things we
could have done a little bit differently about the film.
One of the biggest issues you said you had with
the film was this idea of like Jim's redemption, right.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
And I don't want to put words into your mouths
of you and the other Chris, but I got the
sense that you think that you guys were coming to
the consensus that Jim was redeemed by his actions, that
he did this horrifically bad thing. He essentially he lies

(35:28):
to her, so he not only plots he's Well, that's
one thing that we can talk about right off the bat.
Is I think that definitely the other Chris and maybe
we can get back him on for a rebuttal rebuttal,
but I think that he he said that anybody would

(35:48):
have done this, that anybody who was cast away on
this ship would have brought somebody back to life and
probably would have brought back the hot Jennifer Lawrence back
to animation, and I just don't. I don't write it
off like that. I don't think that a that everybody

(36:10):
would do that, and that in some way that makes
it at least understandable. I don't think it's understandable to
do that to someone. I don't think in any way,
shape or form, it's understandable. And I don't think that's
being like moralistic or anything. I think that honestly, most

(36:32):
people wouldn't do that. I don't or they wouldn't or
wait what they wouldn't do it after plotting about it.
I think they maybe would have done it on a whim,
but I don't think they would have gone and searched
through to find the perfect person to bring back and
all these things that Jim did that really looked psycho.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I don't think that most people would not have done
what Jim did in my my opinion, right, I'll straight up,
I'll tell you, like, if I was in that situation,
I would like to think that I wouldn't open the pod.
I really do. And I've been through some like really
crazy stuff in my life and I can deal with
a lot, but that situation, I just that was one

(37:21):
of the reactions to the films I thought was crazy,
was everyone was so sure that they would know what
they would do if they were in Jim's situation, and
it's just blows my mind. It's really how would you
know what to do? Why? I mean, what would you
do in that situation? You know, I'm just being honest,
I haven't. I don't know what I would do, you know,

(37:43):
And I believe Chris was saying he would he would
at least open up some pods because I'm just out
of necessity, right, Like, especially when things were going wrong
with the ship or what have you. It's like, well,
I'm going to I need help, right, you know, otherwise
there's there's something seriously wrong going on here. In terms

(38:04):
of like you're saying, like kind of stalking Aurora, I
do truthfully believe like he was looking through all those
pods and I'm he saw her and was struck by
her beauty obviously, and decided to start reading all as
much as he could possibly about her before he made
that decision of like, well, if I'm going to open

(38:25):
the pot, I want to try to make sure I'm
opening up, you know, the right pot, you know, like
almost in a because in the sense like you're without
even asking them, you're kind of like almost marrying this person.
Like you're going to be stuck for the rest of
your life together. You want to make sure you're making
the right decision. That's the way I kind of interpreted it.
I do think that, I do. I did get a

(38:47):
sense that he did all in love with her from
just reading her diaries and watching her you know, her
video blogs or whatever they were, whatever those things were.
And I mean it would have been I don't know
how how much was actually there, Like I assume a
big chunk of her writing was there too, So he
was like reading her writing, you know, because she's a writer.

(39:11):
And yeah, I don't know people who can call it stocky,
I guess stalker. I mean, I don't know. I would
I probably do something like that similar in that situation.
I know for sure I would start watching people's videos
and reading whatever they had there, just out of pure boredom.
You're on the ship by yourself.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
I don't know. I don't think it's that easy to
say that, Yeah, you would just just do that. Just
five thousand people and you're it's psycho to go through
to find it like the woman who you think you're
going to be able to live the rest of your
life with it. To me, it just and it goes

(39:52):
back to this is Jim's story. This is not Aurora's story.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Oh yeah, for sure, Like this is it is Jim's story,
like he's the main protagonist, right, I don't think. I
don't take it as far as saying like the Aurora
doesn't have any agency in the story, as you were
saying earlier. I pointed out like examples of where she
does have agency and she is like a three dimensional character.

(40:18):
I mean, it's an icky thought to think about, you know,
like being stuck on the ship and being like would
I do that? Like would I just you know, when
I start like reading this person's diary and like kind
of falling in love with them even though I'd never
even really talked to them. But I'm not stuck on
that ship. I don't know, you know, But to me,

(40:38):
it seems like something I think a lot of people
would probably do. I also think that there would be
a fair amount of people, you know, because the arcagem
was like he panics and he tries to figure out
a way to get back into the pot right and
comes to the conclusion like that's impossible. I cannot do this.
So then he kinds of it, kind of accepts it, well,

(41:03):
kinds of it, kind of accepts it and starts, well,
this is my new life and tries to live it
a bit and then realizes like, I just I can't
do this, and then it becomes like suicidal up to
the point where he's like within you know, a couple
of feet of just jumping off the ship and killing himself. Now,
I think a lot of people would probably. I think
a lot of people would probably do that and then

(41:25):
jump off the ship and just kind of kill themselves,
as you know, as rough as that sounds, I think
I think a fair amount of people would do that.
But I also think like a probably a fair amount
of people would probably they would probably open somebody up
if they had the opportunity to do it, you know,
like me, I wouln't. I don't. The thing too, is

(41:45):
Jim's a mechanic, Like, I don't even know if I
would know how to open up a pot if I
wanted to. You know, I'm not a I work on
an auto recycler, but I'm not like I'm not a
mechanical engineer, I don't know anything like about like electrical stuff, right.
He actually kind of had like a bit of the
know how to do this because I'm assuming that there's
no manual sitting around being like, oh, in case of emergency,

(42:08):
open you know, this is how you open up another
pot or what have you.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Well, that was another element to the movie is that
Jim knew enough about how to hot wire the different systems,
the entertainment system, and he knew enough how to open
up another pod, but then he didn't know how to
fix anything else on the ship, and he didn't know
that the auto doc could also had a hibernation chamber.

(42:33):
Like his gaps and knowledge and the things that he
did know were very inconsistent. That's why they had to
bring in that Lawrence Fishburne character for like five minutes
to you know, be the say it, you know, miraculously
save some things. And then oh wait, he also has

(42:53):
a system failure based on a medical system failure that
he's going to die. Why doesn't he go into the
auto dock. Then I think that whole auto dock thing,
and then per false dilemma at the end of whether
to get into the auto dock or not. I think
to all of that stuff, that just like starts to
build up your disbelief to the point where it's just

(43:17):
like I don't even really care what happens anymore.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Well, I will say, like with the medic doc thing is,
he didn't even have access to that until Lawrence Fishburn
showed up, right, Like, that wasn't a separate that was
the the in the wing of the ship that he
didn't have access to. So he didn't even have a
chance to look at that, right, because their pods were
just designed to put you to sleep, that's it, right,
They weren't designed to do anything else. And I assume

(43:42):
like with certain patient patients, like say if they've I
don't know, gone on another massive surgery or something like that,
that the hibernation setting is there so while they you know,
they recover from their injuries. So I mean, I can
go with that. I don't know the Lawrence Fishburn care dirent.
I see people's issues with it. I do, I just

(44:04):
I don't think it's it's not as big of an
issue for me personally.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
And then you and Chris had gotten into an issue
discussion that it really related of what if so, you
change it from Jim just waking up a rando. Do
what if Jim was laying next to is kids or
his wife kids would have been an interesting one. Now

(44:29):
with your wife, you're saying, and I think not again, Chris,
I'm pretty sure he said that he felt that it
would have been the same thing as waking up some
random person is waking up your wife, which I very
much disagree with that.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Well, the way I look at it is like, okay,
so I'll use like a metal for an example. Right,
like you and your wife you're dating or whatever, and
you ask your wife to marry you, and she's says yes,
and you guys decide to be and you know, together
for the rest of your lives. Right, you didn't ask
her whether she wanted to be woken up on this pod.

(45:09):
I mean to get woken up out of the pod
and be on the ship stranded just the two of
you for the rest of your life. I don't think
that was part of the agreement either. No, I will
say it's more it would be less worse than just
a random person, right, because you know this person you
kind of have like you know, you're married to them, right,
you know better than anybody else. I get that part

(45:32):
of it right. And then like kids, there's no way,
there's no way. Even if even if my wife and
kids were there and I decided I'm going to maybe
wake up my wife, I couldn't wake up the kids,
because like, what do you tell that the kids. It's like, well,
you know, we're all in the ship together, but you know,
you'll never get married, you'll never have a first kiss,
you'll never do this, you'll never have friends, You'll you know,

(45:58):
you're damn you're dooming them to like this like terrible,
terrible existence, which is probably one of the reasons. Like
in the film, like it's implied that Aurora and Jim
never had kids, and I totally get why that would
be just to me, would make sense why they wouldn't
have kids With the kids, for sure, I couldn't do

(46:21):
no way, non chance. I'd be like, it's it's horrible
and you have to sit there and walk by the
pod and see them in there every single time, and
it would probably cause drive most men to commit suicide
or most why you know, women to commit suicide to
have to deal with that. I just it would it's
difficult to even imagine. But with at the end of

(46:43):
the day, it's like, you're not really you didn't ask
your wife, like you asked your wife to marry you, right,
you didn't ask your wife to get woken up from
this pod either. And like and I I and the
last part I did mention that it's not that Jim
had a moment of weakness and woke somebody up. It's
his great evil. And I guess you can say they're interconnected.
But is the fact that he didn't He took that

(47:06):
choice away from a rors she didn't have a choice
the matter. He just did it.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. Now,
think about it. If you say your wife gets you're
on the ship, you're laying next to each other, her
her uh pod pops open, and she has the knowledge
to get you out of your pod. You wouldn't have
wanted to been awaken.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Me personally, Yeah, yes I would, But that I don't
know if that's everybody's relationship though.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
And I think that in a in a legal sense,
your spouse has has that authority. Like if you're on
your deathbed, your spouse has the authority to pull the
plug on you. I think that you're I would think
that it would be a no brainer to wake up
your spouse. I think that in ninety nine point nine

(48:02):
percent of the cases they would want to. And then
you're going to leave it that when they wake up
eighty or ninety years or whatever it is later, and
they're going to know that you died having lived like
another thirty years or something on the ship and what
they would have to live with with that so that

(48:23):
they could go to this planet and do whatever you
had planned to do together there.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
But at the same time, it's if you do if
you'd say you did wake her up or whatever, and
she's like, well, why did you do? Like why did
you do this? Like you condemned both of us to
stay on the ship for the rest of our lives.
Like we're never going to have We're never going to
be able to do anything right, Like eventually, like all
this stuff is going to get boring, and like, you know,
what about all my friends and family and all these

(48:52):
other people or whatever that there were, say they had
friends and family that were sleeping these pods too, right,
Like in terms of magnitude, it's not as bad as
we're waking up a random person, but it's still at
the end of the day, you're taking away that person's agency.
You know, somebody's on their deathbed. They're on their deathbed
right for the most part. They're you know, they're they're
going to die anytime soon, or they're potentially brain dead,

(49:15):
you know, and essentially it's literally it's just a machine
that's keeping them alive. I mean, I get the comparison,
but it doesn't entirely work, you know.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
But we're just by definition, is a person who you
you've given up some of your agency and you're will too,
and she's given up some of her will to you
as well. They're not a complete just free agent. I
think that there's to get to the back to the

(49:49):
gym and Aurora. The main thing is betrayal. And I
don't see that it's a betrayal to wake up your spouse.
I just don't see it. Maybe it's a a bad decision,
and maybe it's a decision that they wouldn't have agreed with,
but I think that it's a decision that you do
have some right to make and it's not betrayal.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Well, I'll use like a you, I'll use like another example,
say like a husband, I don't know whatever. It's like
cliche or whatever. He's going through a midlife crisis or whatever.
You and you know, drives in the driving in the
driveway or whatever. And he's got it like the land rover,
you know, like all the bells and whistles and everything
like that, and the families are kind of struggling by
and be like, look at what we got, honey, And

(50:36):
you didn't ask you know, you did read this buy
here at all or anything like that. It's it doesn't
work entirely, but that's something you should ask about beforehand.
It's like, hey, do you think we can afford this?
I really want this car? YadA, YadA, YadA. It's like, well, no,
stop being silly. You don't need a land rover. You
work at a your plumber or so, I don't know whatever.

(50:57):
You work at a you work in a warehouse. We
can't afford this or right, that's probably what would happen.
But do you understand does that comparison make sense to you?

Speaker 3 (51:08):
I think like that one with that one. So it's
just a complete whim for him. He has the right
to do it, and maybe it's it's a bad decision.
It's a decision that he should have asked her for,
and that's a decision that can ultimately hurt the family.
But let's just let's change that scenario just a little bit.

(51:29):
Let's say that you're at your job and the owner
says that he comes up to you and says that,
you know what, I have this opportunity that I'm in
a quadruple your pay. But you've got to go and
move five towns over, like in two hours away in

(51:53):
order to the another office of the job. And you've
got to tell it to me right now.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Now.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
That's a pretty ridiculous thing, but something that it could be.
It's something that you have to make a snap decision
on and you can't necessarily consult your white with and
it could be good, it could be bad. She might
disagree with it, she might agree with it, but you
have to make it without her input. You have the

(52:21):
right to do that, and sometimes you may have to
just do that. Maybe a better thing is like something
with like the kids, like in the hospital and you
can't get in touch with her and this surgery it
could work, or they could die on the table, and
you've got to make this decision. Now, there's no time
to go and consult over it. You have to make it,

(52:43):
and it is it is in your moral legal purview
to make decisions like that without a full consultation, because
you have to impute some of what her motivations are.
And with your own spouse you know a lot more
of how they're motivated than you would with say Aurora,

(53:05):
who's just completely a random person who he didn't thinks
he's known because he's watched her vlogs.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah, it's to me. This is one of the reasons
I like the film too, right, because we can have
conversations like this and you know, what is actually the
right decision and what's still I still stand by the
fact that, like you know, it is such a magnitude,
like by a million, life altering decision, and you know,

(53:38):
at the end of the day, I'm not asking her,
you know, as well as we know our significant others.
It means Steve are quite lucky in the sense of
like we have like very happy marriages. I still don't
know my wife one hundred percent, you know, truthfully, I don't,
and she doesn't know me one hundred percent either. Right,
you can't really inhabit the mind of another person. You

(54:01):
can understand others better than other people obviously, right, especially
you know with close proximity, and you know the type
of relationship that you have. But truthfully, you don't. You
don't one hundred percent know exactly what they would want.
You have a better idea, the most you know, I'll
give you that.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
You would say that you have a moral authority to
make a decision on her behalf.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
In this particular circumstance of like should I open the
pod or not? Like, I don't know if I have that.
I really don't. I don't. I can't say I don't know.
I can't say with one hundred percent certainty either way.
I really can't. I can't say it was like moral,
like feel morally right in the sense of my pod malfunction.
So now I'm going to have to wake my wife

(54:50):
pod up too, and We're both going to be stuck
on the ship for the next I think it was
like one hundred years or something or ninety years, effectively
like sentencing her to prison on this ship.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
But so that is what So what I'm kind of
getting at here is that you have you do have
the moral authority to make that decision to either say yes,
I'm gonna leave her in the pod or no, I'm
going to leave her in the pod. That you legitimately

(55:23):
would have that choice. Yeah, where with Aurora, he really
didn't have legitimately have the authority or the anything to
make that decision for her. No, no, what with your wife.
It could be the wrong decision. It could be the
right decision. It could be Oh, Chris, pick up dinner

(55:45):
on the way home. You can, and you have a
choice of Burger King or Pizza Hut. And she's like,
what the hell you came home with Pizza Hut? You
know I love Burger King. But you that was your
right to make that decision, whether it wound up being
a wrong one or the right one or the wrong
one at the end, that was your right to make

(56:06):
that decision.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Honestly, I'm fascinating what the audience thinks, like, let us know, like,
what do you think about this discussion. I'm fascinating what
people think about the perspective that I'm having with this
and Steve's perspective on this, because it really is, man,
it's such as I know, we're keeping it kind of
nice and light, but like, man, it's really like dark,

(56:29):
like the discussion that we're having just like right underneath
the surface, and I'm fascinated in hearing what other people
have to say in terms of like would you wake
your wife up or not wake your wife up? I
guess you could use girlfriend too, right, depending on how
long you guys have been dating for and what have you.
But it doesn't really matter, right, like you've been dating

(56:51):
for fifteen years. Like my response to being like, why
didn't you get why aren't you married?

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Well, then digging in to another really deep dark hole
of decision making and a questioning is now I think
you and Chris were getting to this, And again I
don't want to missing interpret what you were saying, but
I think the movie definitely gets this to Aurora changes

(57:20):
her at least in my eyes, that she changes her
thought pattern on Jim from pure hatred to grudging love
and endearment. Is through his sacrifice for her. He does
something really lousy, but then he does something really good
to save the ship, and those kind of cancel each

(57:41):
other out on the redemption meter, and it was maybe
it didn't even cancel out, it got him slightly above
and then oh, okay, now I love Jim. Is that
what we were supposed to feel is that how Jim redeemed
himself as by doing a selfless act.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
No, I think what the film is trying to get across,
and I do. I think I thought he did a
pretty good job. Was the fact that she so before
the lie comes out, right, like all those interactions they're
all genuine, right, Like they're all genuine, like in the
sense of she doesn't know that she just knows that
her bot woke up and she's with this guy, and

(58:22):
you know, I do truly believe that they started falling
in love with each other. And then the lie comes out, obviously,
and she's, you know, thoughts are racing through her head,
like am I dealing with the psychopath? Am I dealing
with the you know, Ted Bundy light? And also on
dealing with the fact that she's dealing with a broken

(58:42):
heart him like saving everybody else on the ship and
saving the ship and up to the point that he's
willing to sacrifice his own light to do it. It's
supposed to be symbolic. It's supposed to be her like
kind of realizing like, you know what, like he's not
a monster, he made a decision and like this extreme

(59:06):
circumstance and weakness, and everybody has their weaknesses, and she
begins to realize, like all the like, all the things
that I felt for him before were real, and he
is that guy. He's not a psycho, he's not a lunatic.

(59:26):
He's not Ted Bundy, He's not any of these things.
He was a guy who made a decision in a
moment of weakness, and like, look at what he's willing
to kill. He's willing to kill himself at this to
save everybody else on this ship, you know, and the
only reason he's willing to do this, And people say, well,

(59:48):
you know this is self serving, right, But like if
he didn't actually love Aurora, I don't why would he
even bother trying to save the ship? You know, he
even then, I don't even a he wouldn't have been
able to do it, and by himself just would have
been impossible, and he probably would have killed himself before

(01:00:10):
that happened, and then this ship would have just exploded
and they all would have died anyways. I mean, truly,
what it's showing is is the love that two people
can have for each other, like just two people, just
too regular everyday people has the potential of saving in
thousands of lives, whether directly or indirectly. And I said something,

(01:00:32):
and maybe it's the sappy side of me, but I
do truly believe that. I do really truly believe that,
like all this stuff going on in like Israel and
Palestine and what have you, I do truly believe. Like
you see, like you say, maybe like a Palestinian in
ISRAELI like it's a girl and a guy or what
have you, and they're like in love, you know, and

(01:00:54):
people see that and they go like what are we doing?
You know, And it's not going to end the war,
but it's a step in the right direction.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
I think they could have gotten to them. That's where
we can wrap up today with just some different ways
they could have gone with this movie and some different endings.
I think that that whole action scene at the end
was not necessary, or maybe Jim did need to get
killed at the end in order to prove himself to Aurora.

(01:01:28):
And then somehow, you know, if we're just going to
keep throwing in bot twists, is that oh she sees
that the auto dooc does she can get into that
medical chamber and go back into hibernation somehow after Jim
gets toast or or something like that. I think that

(01:01:51):
I don't know, I think that that end the happily
ever after ending and where they have become almost like
a new Adam and Eve. Just I don't know it
was it. It just didn't hit. I felt it was
just kind of corny and just kind of cheat like
that just sugary, like eating your donut at the end
of having eaten a whole bunch of donuts already. I

(01:02:14):
was like, yeah, it's an ending.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
I see. I love the ending. And I talked about
that on the last pot how they decided to end it,
which is so it sounds weird like me saying that
because I'm like the horror guy and I'm like I'm like, oh, yeah,
we got to do this movie. And it's always like
super depressing stuff, like I sent books to Steve to
read and it's just like, man, like how do you
read this stuff? All the time? But I love I

(01:02:39):
love the ending for this one. But like I had
like a couple of different ideas, Like I like your idea,
like say Jim dies and she goes to sleep in
the hibernation and then we get a shot of her
like she's writing the book. You know that was that's
the book, right, is the love yeah, they had for
each other, you know, and she goes on and become
this best selling author or whatever. I also had like

(01:03:04):
another idea that was like kind of floating in my
head in the sense of, they don't change anything about
the movie, right, just keep it all as it is,
and then like the final shot is say, like Jim
as like an old man, and he has written a
book because he knows that Ura is an author and
likes reading, and he wrote. What you find out is

(01:03:26):
he's been reading that story to her that he wrote
about this all this events on the ship as like
his love letter to her, and he just leaves it
on top of her pod, so when she wakes up
she'll read it. I thought that would have been a
nice ending too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Yeah. I think that, like an old Jim writing it
right before. Yeah, I think that that would have been great. Yeah.
I think that in the end this movie really did.
It had a lot of promise if it had just
picked a couple of things and ran with those and
not tried to do everything. That's why it had to
have so many plot quests and turns and devices that

(01:04:10):
made a drag on is that it it didn't pick
something and run with it. That's what I think in
the end.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Yeah, well, I mean you're not in the minority in
that there's a lot of people that have like certain
issues with the film. There's a lot of people that
defend it too. But there's I mentioned on the previous
pot too. It's one of these interesting films, like as
soon as it came out, everyone was like, man, there's
like such a great movie here if they only just like,

(01:04:41):
did this slightly different? And I just I really love
like the film that they ended up making. And I
do truly believe that it was the difficult film to make.
I really do. How can they find a way to
have the audience regive Jim, And in my opinion, I
think they did a successful job in doing that. Now,

(01:05:03):
you know, I've read other reviews and read you know,
other people's comments and stuff like that, and you know
they have issues in the sense that they think the
film failed in doing that. I personally, I think they're wrong,
And I did like an hour and a half podcast
describing why I think they did it right. So people are,
you know, welcome to listen to that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
And I think you're I do think that you're right.
In a way, I think they didn't make. The hard
hard movie to make would have been cutting out the
sci fi action and making it a true space romance
that and Jim find Jim finds redemption through his love

(01:05:46):
with Aurora, and Aurora comes she comes to the realization
through time and through dialogue and through acting that Jim
really is, that he brought brought out something in her
that she desperately needed. And I think they could have

(01:06:08):
done that movie and that I think that, honestly, if
that would have been the hard movie to make, I
think that would have been the hard movie to sell
to an audience that's expecting a Chris Pratt movie where
he's the action man and it really just turns into
kind of a tear jerker romance. But I think like

(01:06:29):
that set in space, that would have been fantastic, and
I think it would have hit the points that you
really loved in this movie. I think I would have
done it in a much more interesting way.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Yeah, that's interesting to think about, actually, you know, in
terms of just kind of tightening everything up, like I said,
like I said on the podcast, like I said, what
did I call it? I think I said a flawed masterpiece,
and that you know, that can be interpreted in a
lot of ways in terms of, you know, like how flawed, right,
you know, you know, it's like it's not you know,

(01:07:04):
two thousand and one Space Odyssey, right, Like, it's not
it's not at that level, right, And I just I
think there was like a really really really good film
here if they, you know, maybe did a couple of
things slightly different and maybe an example that you were saying,
maybe those are one of the things they could have
done differently, you know. To me, my biggest complaint is
I would have liked a little bit longer running time

(01:07:27):
to explore Auror's backstory in Jim's Moral Struggle. I was
also thinking about it too, in the sense of this
story would maybe have worked really well as a book
because you could really get into Jim's head, really get
into a war's head, which in film, you're you don't

(01:07:49):
really have an opportunity to do that. It's just it's
a different medium, right, It's you have to express these
things in terms of like facial expressions and lighting in
music and all that stuff. And actually, well, now that
you mentioned the music is probably one of my favorite
parts of the film. I absolutely love the score for

(01:08:10):
this film. You know, it's sappy, but it won an Oscar,
so obviously, you know, people are fairly intelligent built film
and film scores in general. Thought it was really well
too right. I think it blows my mind. And I
actually that that did win an Oscar because the film

(01:08:31):
itself was luke warmly received, and typically that doesn't happen
like it's usually like a film that's well received ends
up winning Oscars. You know, I wonder how often that's happened.
I'd have to look that up.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
We talked about this movie for an hour and a
half in a previous episode, for over an hour today
for a movie that was about two hours long. Though,
we definitely would love to hear what you think about
this movie, and if you have ideas for other movies
that you think are challenging like this, or that you
have a completely different idea than almost anybody else does,

(01:09:08):
send that in. Send in those ideas and we will
talk to you next time.
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