November 17, 2025 • 54 mins
Movie Mike Deestro is revisiting 7 movie quotes that carry surprisingly deep truths about life, purpose, and perspective. He goes through each quote and the deep lessons he got from movies you wouldn’t expect from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle to Pokémon: The First Movie! In the Movie Review, Mike talks about The Running Man starring Glen Powell. It’s the remake of the 1987 movie about a man who joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are pursued by "hunters" hired to kill them. Mike talks about the good and bad of Glen’s performance, why it doesn’t quite feel like an Edgar Wright movie, where it lost him but why he thinks Glen should be in the MCU and what superhero he should play. In the Trailer Park, after years of waiting, we finally got our first look at the Michael Jackson biopic "Michael." The King of Pop's nephew, Jaafar Jackson, plays the pop legend. Other cast members include Kendrick Sampson as Quincy Jones, Miles Teller as Jackson’s attorney, and Colman Domingo as his father Joe Jackson. Will this be the music biopic we’ve been waiting for and will it be the first music biopic to make $1 Billion Dollars at the box office?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I have for you
seven prolific movie quotes from unlikely sources. These quotes taught
me lessons, but they're not from your typical movies that
you would think would teach you a lesson. In the
movie review, we'll be talking about The Running Man starring
Glenn Powell and in the Trailer Park one of the
biggest music biopick trailers of all time. But do we
(00:23):
really need another biopick, We'll be breaking down the Michael trailer.
Thank you for being here, thank you for being subscribed.
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
let's talk movies from the Nustville Podcast Network. This is
movie Mike's Movie Podcast. As I want to revisit seven
of my favorite movie quotes that carry a surprisingly deep
(00:46):
message about life, about your purpose in life, about your
perspectives on the world. I went through and pulled seven
of my favorite quotes that maybe at the time when
I watched these movies, because they're not essentially movie that
you would go to find lessons about life. They're not
big dramas, but I always like finding the beauty where
it's not supposed to be. You're a long time listening
(01:09):
to this podcast, you know. I say that phrase a lot,
and it's because I think that is where the good
stuff is, where you don't expect to find it. These
moments where you're watching something and suddenly it just kind
of clicks and you're like, man, that HiT's kind of hard.
Why did that go so deep? Why does this person
feel like a philosopher right now? But I'm watching an
animated movie, so in no particular order. First uff, It's
(01:32):
from a movie from two thousand and four, Harold and
Kumar go to White Castle. And when I first watched
this movie, I was like, where is there a white Castle?
And how do I get there?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Now?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Because they made this food seem so desirable. If you
don't remember or have never seen this amazing movie from
two thousand and four, it's about two friends. One of
them works an office job, total normal dude, has a
crush on a girl in his apartment. The other guy
is his roommate, who is a stoner, really smart guy,
but just has no drive to get anything done and
(02:05):
put any of his talents to use. And they go
on this crazy journey because they get stoned and they think, man,
White Castle sounds so good right now, and they will
stop at nothing to get it, because once they have
this meal in their minds, they can't think of anything else,
and nothing else satisfies that hunger for them. In this
(02:25):
line towards the end of the movie, whenever they get
arrested and end up in jail, they're sitting in this
jail and they end up with this cellmate who is
just this smart looking guy reading a book, and he
drops this wisdom on them. That is my go to
line of wisdom. Whenever there is something bothering me, whenever
(02:46):
there are all these outside sources that feel like they're
just messing with me, the whole world just kind of
picking and poking at me, pulling off my scabs just
so they can see me bleed. I go back and
think about this quote from Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
People have been messing with me my whole life.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I learned a long time ago.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
There's no sense getting all riled up every time a
bunch of idiots give you a hard time.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
In the end, the universe tends to unfold.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
As it should.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That line right there at the end, The universe tends
to unfold as it should. Such a prolific line spoken
here by the character named Tarik, who is played by
Gary Anthony Williams, who I also remember loving. He was
one of the recurring cast members in Malcolm in the Middle.
He played Stevie's dad, and it was that line that
(03:35):
I always go back to, the universe tends to unfold
as it should. That brings me a level of comfort
because sometimes when you see people around you who maybe
have done you wrong, and you think, man, that person
just did me straight up dirty, and now they're going
on reaping the benefits of them doing something dirty to me,
(03:59):
ilways think it comes down to karma, and that is
exactly what that quote says. The universe tends to unfold
as it should. What goes around comes around. And I
truly believe in that that what you put out into
the world is exactly what you get back. And I
learned that from watching Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle
in two thousand and four. Next up on my list
(04:21):
is a movie from nineteen ninety five which was highly
impactful on my taste of comedies in the nineties. The
movie is Friday the quote is from the character Pops
played by John Witherspoon. Rip By the way, he died
in twenty nineteen, which is weird to think. I was like, oh,
he just died fairly recently. Twenty nineteen was six years ago,
(04:42):
so it's now been that long without John Witherspoon. But
what Friday is about. You have Craig Smokey and it
all comes down to two hundred dollars that they owe
Big Worm. In the movie, it starts out with Craig
losing his job. Smokey tries to cheer him up, as
any best friend, should they do some things with some
(05:03):
illegal substances. That probably wasn't the best idea because that
is Smokey's business. You can't get high on your own supply,
but they do that. That leads to the mess of
trouble that they get into where they have to pay
back this money that they owe. Don't do it by Friday.
There definitely will not be a Saturday. But they are
also dealing with the villain in this movie, Debo, who
(05:25):
is the guy who goes around town stealing everybody's stuff,
beating people up, taking their money, and Craig gets mixed
up with debo, and what he wants to do is
take his gun and just go shoot Debo. And when
he goes back to his house to get his gun,
he is confronted by his dad. His dad, Pops, who
is a really old school guy, was a boxer growing up,
(05:48):
and he sees his son grabbing a gun and he
uses that opportunity to teach him a very valuable lesson.
And again, this isn't Friday a movie where you have
a character named big Worm where Smoky at one point
gets busted using the bathroom, going number two outside, all
these crazy things, but then you get dropped with this
really valuable life lesson.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
You kids to did nothing but punks, so quick to
pick up a gun, you just scared to take an
ass whippen. This one makes you a man. When I
was growing up, this was all the protection we needed.
You win some, you lose some, but you live. You
live to fight another day. And you think you're a
man with a gun in your hand, don't you.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I'm a man without it.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Put the gun down, put up your dukes. Now you're
a man.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
That is such a valuable life lesson. I was lucky
enough to grow up with a dad who looking back
on it didn't teach me all the things I needed
to know like that. I know my dad loved me,
I know he showed me the value of hard work.
But for a lesson like that, I went to Friday
where I think if more people understood that lesson, this
(06:57):
world would be an entirely different place. And I know
fighting is just not always the answer, but I would
definitely pick a fistfight over pulling out a gun because
what he says in that quote is you can live
to fight another day. You can get the crap knocked
out of you, but you can pick yourself back up.
But then you also both have to agree not to
fight dirty. So so somebody should put that right on
(07:18):
a poster. You win some, you lose some, but you live.
You live to fight another day. That is from Friday
from nineteen ninety five. Next up on my list as
my third quote, Twister, obviously one of my favorite movies
of all time. I've talked about it in length, the
only movie in my life that I've seen at least
over fifty times. What this movie is about two storm
(07:40):
Chasers are on the brink of divorce. It starts out
with Bill going back to meet up with his old
crew because Joe has not signed the paperwork to seal
their divorce and tie up all the loose ends, and
she uses it kind of as a way to suck
him back in because she's not quite over loving him.
He is there with the soon to be new wife
(08:02):
and instead of signing the papers, they start working together
again to create an advanced warning alert system. But they
have to put themselves in the danger of a tornado,
which are incredibly violent to do so. And I know,
on the surface, this movie is about people chasing tornadoes.
That is the big, exciting fun part of Twister. The
(08:23):
poster is the big Twister with all the cows and
the trucks. That is what we remember from this movie.
But movies are always about the story underneath it. While
it is on the surface a story about stormchasers, underneath
that is a story about a woman dealing with her grief,
the loss of her father. That has really fueled this
(08:45):
passion because it starts out at the beginning of the
movie with her as a kid witnessing one of the
most traumatic things ever, not only seeing her dad die
right in front of her eyes, but seeing him taken
away by a tornado. That is what motivates her to
be so passionate about finding a system that actually works
so this does not happen to somebody else because she
(09:08):
sees herself in every family that a tornado's destruction effects.
It all goes back to her childhood and her dealing
with that grief of losing her father. And while it
has been good because she has been so passionate about
this and wanting to save and help people, it has
(09:28):
also been a detriment to her own mental health because
she has had a really hard time moving on. And again,
this movie is a lot of fun. You have other
quotes like it's fatty time and food food, But then
Bill Paxton drops this line at one of the most
tense moments in the movie.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Kill things go wrong. You can't explain it, you can't
predict it. Killing yourself won't bring your dad back. Sorry dying,
but it was a long time ago. Gotta move on,
Stop living in the past, and look at what you
got right in front of you.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
What do you say me, Joe, I think that is
a lesson that just resonates with me. Now. I have
been lucky that I haven't lost anybody super close to
me knocking on wood right now. My grandma is ninety
six years old right now, just went through hip surgery
and is still as healthy as can be. So I
(10:27):
am lucky on that front, even though she is my
only living grandparent. So luckily I haven't had to apply
this lesson exactly how it is in the movie. But
what he said there about you gotta stop living in
the past and look at what you have right in
front of you, that is a lesson that really sticks
with me as somebody who struggles with romanticizing the past,
(10:50):
and I think me as a millennial. Our generation often
gets criticized for being too and too nostalgia and thinking about, oh,
the good old day. I could literally spend a day
just going back on all those memories, and it almost
feels like I'm taking some kind of drug, like it's
doing something to my brain that kind of satisfies it.
(11:12):
But it could also be affecting me in a negative way.
If I could just go back to one day going
to Blockbuster and holding up a physical movie, how better
my life would be, even just for a day. Got
to move on, because someday this is going to be
the past that we are nostalgic about and if we
have lost people along the way, even they wouldn't want
(11:34):
us to live in that moment to the point where
it made us sick. I think it is great to
remember those that we have lost, but they would want
you to move on as well honor their memory. It's great,
but you can't live in the past. You gotta pay
attention to what's right in front of you. Ironically enough,
if Bill Paxton passed away back in twenty seventeen and
I was thinking, man, if we could have got Twisters
(11:56):
with Glenn Powell also adding in a Bill Paston can
even though his son was in the movie, that would
have been amazing. I wish they would have rebooted that
just a little bit earlier. But at number three is
that quote from Twister. Next up on my list as
we get to seven, at number four is a quote
from A Bug's Life in nineteen ninety eight. The movie
(12:17):
is about a misfit ant named Flick who sets out
on a journey to find some warriors to save his
colony from a bunch of greedy grasshoppers. So he recruits
a group of bugs that turn out to be a
bunch of bugs that are just in a circus troop.
This movie taught me a lot of lessons as a kid,
thinking of Flick's character, who was so innovative and ahead
(12:40):
of his time in the ant world where he was
trying to make these inventions to make their life easier,
and everybody in that ant colony was so old school,
and they pushed him aside. They thought, what are you
doing here, You're wasting your time. We've been doing this
for so many years the same way. Why change it.
If it's it's not broke, don't fix it. But Flicks
(13:02):
all potential in his ideas, and he wanted to make
their lives easier through the use of technology, and they
didn't see any value in that. They led him on
this wild goose chase, basically saying, oh yeah, go try
to find some people and just get out of our way.
And what he ends up doing and discovering on this
journey actually changes all their lives forever. But he has
(13:24):
to deal with these pesky grasshoppers who are evil. All
they do is force the ants to collect food for
them so they can spend all their time just doing
whenever they want, and then whenever winter rolls around, all
they do is go back to the ants and collect
their food. So the ants have to collect double enough
for them to have food and enough for the grasshoppers
(13:46):
to have food. And they do that because, like I
was mentioning earlier, it's just the way it's always been done.
But then you have Flick stand up against them, and
the grasshoppers do not like that because it changes the
balance of pa And this line in a bugs life
not only applies to a story in a Pixar movie,
(14:06):
can also apply to the world.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Do you let one ant stand up to us, then
they all might stand up.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Those puny little ants outnumber us one hundred to one.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
And if they ever figure that out, there goes our
way of life.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line.
That is a really powerful quote, and I didn't realize
it at the time. When I was a kid the
big lesson that this movie was teaching me. And I
don't think this movie was meant to drive home this
lesson in the kid. But just looking back on the
first run of Pixar movies that were so impactful, they're
(14:48):
just not making them like they used to, especially when
you look at Eliot earlier. This year. If we could
go back to a Pixar movie having this level of intensity,
and if you think about that quote and how could
apply to our society today. How a lot of us
are pitted against each other from one side versus the
other side. We are told to hate each other by
(15:09):
this all powerful force that just wants to keep the
order like it is the way it is and the
way it benefits them, Like the grasshoppers being able to
get their food for free because they have convinced the
ants that this is the way it should be, even
though the ants have more power than them. That's us
(15:29):
as the people, and it serves as a powerful metaphor
of the potential and the strength of collective action. If
we actually all came together and we're all on the
sides of wanting to see real change to benefit us
the majority, the ants, and as individuals, we could find
that courage to resist some of these forces that have
(15:51):
been oppressing us. How powerful that could be. That is
the message we found in A Bugs Life from nineteen
ninety eight. Moving on to the fifth quote, it comes
to us from road Trip from the year two thousand.
From the year two thousand, road Trip is a raunchy
comedy about four college friends who go on that a
road trip to get back a tape with some incriminating
(16:15):
footage on it, some R rated, maybe even X rated
footage on it that was mistakenly male to a female
friend of one of the male characters. And on this
trip they go to parties, they get into some trouble,
they get into some car trouble, and there is this
one scene where they are wanting to take a shortcut.
(16:37):
And it's a very quick line spoken by a character
named Rubin. But he's like the really insightful one, the
one who smokes Alana pot and he is kind of
the philosophical one in the group, and he drops this
line that at the time I didn't really think much
about it. But the more I think about this line,
I realize how much wisdom it actually has. Here is
(16:58):
that quote from road trip supposed to be a challenge.
That's why the code a shortcut. If it was easy,
it would just be the way. I think that is
a great way to think about life. To me, this
is what this quote means, that a shortcut is inherently
more difficult and risky than the main path you think
about achieving your goals and how a lot of people
(17:18):
tell you different things about how to achieve your goals.
If you've ever seen that illustration that shows what success is,
it has what people think it looks like, and it's
just a straight arrow pointing up, and then it has
what it actually looks like, which is basically a squiggly
line with an arrow at the end that eventually goes up.
But you have to go through all these different avenues
to get there. That is what success actually looks like.
(17:40):
It's a bunch of just squigglies until you reach your goal, hopefully.
I think what this quote means is that a shortcut
is inherently more difficult and risky than the main path.
You think about how a lot of people tell you
what you need to do to be successful. You need
to go to college. And if you decide I don't
(18:02):
want to go to college, that's not for me. I'm
just going to go do the thing I want to do.
That is seen as a shortcut, like WHOA, you don't
have to go do four years of school. You just
go do the thing you want to do. That doesn't
make any sense. I had to put in four years.
Why should you just be able to go and do
the thing. While to some that might feel like a
shortcut removing those four years of school, that is actually
(18:24):
a much riskier and difficult thing to do, which increases
the level of failure because you don't have that easy
path to walk on. Not that going to college is easy.
I did it. I have my bachelor's degree, also not
an easy thing. But I think now we are starting
to see more that you don't necessarily have to go
to college to be successful and get the job that
(18:46):
you want, especially in certain fields right now where technology
has really leveled the playing field. I don't even think
what I'm doing now I needed my degree in So
I think now that shortcut is being a little bit
more accepted as society because a short cut doesn't imply
to me that a path is easy. It's not the
(19:07):
standard route, because true success in achieving a goal still
requires that hard work overcoming challenges. Because if you do
decide to take those shortcuts and take those risks, you're
not going to see those unforeseen challenges that nobody can
really warn you about, or those complications that you get
into because you're not on the main road. But I
(19:27):
will tell you that once you do get to that
goal and you taste that sweet fruit, it's going to
taste so much better and so much sweeter because of
all those hard things you had to go through to
get there. I have felt that a lot in my life.
When I first set out on my journey of getting healthy,
all these people told me all these different things that
(19:48):
you have to do to lose weight. I tried a
lot of them, and it was unsuccessful in many ways.
First time I set out to lose weight was not
the time that it stuck. But that last time I
actually did use all those things I learned from finding
my own path to achieve that goal. Life is all
about the paths you take. None of those paths are
(20:09):
going to be easy. In the end. It all comes
down to the effort you put in the perseverance that
you have, whether you find ways to work smarter, not harder,
or you just go the traditional route. There are many
different avenues you can take to achieve your goals. Maybe
sometimes you just got to open up your mind to
a shortcut quote unquote, or maybe sometimes you just got
(20:30):
to stick in that path that is right in front
of you find the perfect way for you. But again,
this is a quote from Road Trip, one of the
raunchiest comedies of the two thousands, dropping some life knowledge there.
Next up, got a couple quotes left. Number six comes
to us from Pokemon, the first movie in nineteen ninety eight.
The movie is about scientists that genetically create a new
Pokemon named Youtwo, but as they find out, the results
(20:54):
are horrific and disastrous. As mewtwo destroys the lab that
he was created in. I don't know if mewtwo is
a guy or a girl that they were created in,
and mewtwo sets out to find their purpose in life
and does some shady things along the way. I used
to watch Pokemon a lot as a kid. One of
my favorite parts of the show is whenever they were
(21:14):
going to commercial break and they'd be like, who's that Pokemon?
And I always used to do the quote of the
Pokemon that it was because all the Pokemon just basically
say their name as their speaking voice. That's all they
can say. Some other really weird ones like star Me
just come out yelling for some reason, like Pikachu's like
peaka Pika, and then Charmander, you know, just says Charmander
(21:34):
and then for no reason, Star Mey's like, yeah, but
one of my favorites was mewtwo because mewtwo just spoke
regular or English. He just talked, and I would always
quote mewtwo and the line I would say is what
is my purpose? And that was from this movie because
mewtwo is unlike all the other Pokemon, doesn't say their
own name and also doesn't make some crazy sound like
(21:55):
star me. But this fantastic line comes to us towards
the end of the movie, after Ash has sacrificed himself
in order to save his own Pokemon, he takes a
hit from Mew two, and then it gets turned into stone.
You have Pikachu crying over his body, shocking him, trying
to bring him back to life, but he is entirely
(22:18):
made of stone. And it's not until Pikachu cries in
his tears and the tears of all the other Pokemon
in the Pokemon stadium bring Ash back to life. And
that is where it starts to set into mew of
what he has done and what it means to be
a human and what it means to be a Pokemon.
Here is that quote of the knowledge dropped to us
(22:39):
by mewtwo.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
The human sacrificed himself to save the Pokemon. I pitted
them against each other, but not until they set aside
their differences did I see the true power they all
shared deep inside. I see now that the circumstances of
one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with
the gift of life that determines who you are.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It is what you do with the gift of life
that determines who you are. Said to us by Pokemon,
I think mewtwo was done wrong in this movie. And
looking back on it now as an adult, which I did,
rewatch this movie at least once a year, I realized
that mewtwo was painted as the villain, but really wasn't.
He was created by this group of scientists for their
(23:24):
own benefit, and he broke out. He was being used
to fight other Pokemon as their weapon. He was used
as a weapon, and then as soon as he got
aware of his situations, he became too smart, he became
too strong. He blew the entire place down and escaped
and went out to this island and then was able
to get all these other Pokemon there on his island
(23:45):
to essentially do the same thing to them that the
humans did to him. I don't think he was the
villain here. I think he was born from a place
of rage. I would be rageful too. But there in
that incredible character development, he tells us that it's about
what you do with the gift of life, because he
(24:05):
has had a change of heart after seeing how selfless
ash Ketchum was as he sacrificed himself to save his pokemon.
So even though we had all this anger because he
was created by these humans put in these terrible circumstances,
he realized that it's about the decisions you make in
life and not about where you come from that actually
(24:25):
define you. So it wasn't about his awful origin story.
It's about what you do with the cards that you
work dealt. And I believe this wholeheartedly, and it's something
that I had to learn probably in my mid to
late twenties, this hard lesson because in life, you are
going to be put into awful situations, and it's about
(24:47):
how you react to those awful situations that determine what
your life is going to be like. Because we all
have crabby things happen to us, crappy things happening to
our family in the world. As a whole, and it's
about how you you react to those situations, because some
of the people who are the most successful in life
(25:07):
have had to come back from some really dark times
and it's not easy. Sometimes putting a smile on your
face and powering through is the last thing you want
to do when all you do is want to be
angry at the world. You want to do like mutue
and burn it all down and leave behind a path
of destruction that is only going to be more harmful
(25:27):
to you and you're only going to live in this
vicious cycle of being miserable. And mewtwo learn that in
that situation and taught us all as very young kids
that it's all about how you react to your environment
and how you can change your own path by doing so.
(25:48):
So it doesn't matter what your background is, how or
where you were born, that doesn't define your character. Instead,
it's your actions, your choices who truly determine who you are.
That is what I learned from that quote right there.
Pokemon the first movie continues to spew so many life lessons,
and finally, my seventh quote on the list comes to
(26:10):
us from Men in Black from nineteen ninety seven from
Agent K played by Tommy Lee Jones. The movie in
case you haven't seen it, If you haven't seen it,
where we've been maybe some younger listeners who have not
seen the greatness that is Men in Black. But it's
about a secret government agency that monitors alien life on
Earth and Agent K and Will Smith's character Agent J
(26:33):
have to recover an item that has been stolen by
an intergalactic villain, and K recruits Agent J and he
drops this line on him that is so philosophical and
doesn't really fit in place with all the other crazy
things that happened in this movie.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals,
and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew
the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred
years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flattened. Fifteen minutes ago,
you knew that people were alone on this planet.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
That quote is so impactful on my way of thinking
that you have to constantly adapt to a world that
is changing and being provided new information. And the minute
you stop learning is the minute you get left behind.
Because if you look throughout history, the dumbest people have
been the people who have not wanted to embrace change,
(27:36):
not wanted to embrace new information, not wanted to embrace
the changing of the times. Because what he says there
is how constantly our world is changing, and we have
to accept it. If we don't accept it, we are
not going to learn anything new, and we're going to
be doomed to repeat history. And I think that has
(27:58):
made me want to be constantly curious, trying to figure
out things, why they are the way they are, how
we can challenge our way of thinking in order to
advance ourselves, Because you could be presented with one piece
of information that could wreck your entire world, and I
get how that could be terrifying to some still terrifying
to me to think there could be some extraterrestrial life
(28:21):
out there monitoring us right now listening to this podcast,
ninking what is the stupid human talking about all these
stupid movies, these moving pictures, trying to pick out these
philosophical lessons. But if you look all throughout history, it
has been people trying to figure out and understand the
world and discovering new things. The world used to be flat.
(28:42):
We used to think we were alone imagine what you
will know tomorrow. It both excites me and it terrifies me,
which it should, but it should make you always want
to have an open mind. Has there been a movie
quote that you didn't expect to change the way that
you think? That is the question I want to ask
you right now. If you want to send me a DM,
(29:03):
you want to email me Moviemike D at gmail dot com,
hit me up on dms on Instagram wherever I'm all
over the place, or send me a message or comment
on my YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Mike dshro
What movie quote like this from an unlikely source has
really stuck with you? A comeback? And I get my
spoiler free review of The Running Man. Let's get into
(29:27):
it now. A spoiler free movie review of The Running Man,
or as I've been calling it lately, The Running Man,
starring Glenn Powell, directed by Edgar Wright. This is the
movie I said, It's going to determine whether or not
Glenn Powell turns into the bankable star that Hollywood wants
him to be. And I knew even way back in
the dark Knight rises whenever he gets his head smashed
(29:47):
by Baine and I was like, man, that is a
guy who knows how to take a hit. He is
gonna be a star now. I didn't really know him then,
but I think to us as just the general public,
we see somebody like him who is finally starting to
really come into focus. We're starting to see him everywhere,
and we just see that success. We think overnight he
has just become a star. But he's been around for
(30:09):
so long, and I think this is now his big
leading role that is going to determine whether or not
he is going to be that next leading man in Hollywood.
Some people are cueing him up to be the next
Tom Cruise, because I think he is as versatile as
a Tom Cruise. But what we have here in The
Running Man it is a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,
(30:30):
which I realized just last week I was talking about Predator,
which is another franchise tied to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is
really big right now, apparently remaking his movies. Also, this
is the second Stephen King adaptation I've seen in theaters
this year, and I think both of those things are
going to play into how I ended up feeling about
this movie because I thought this was going to be
(30:53):
an instant top at least fifteen for me, because I
like Glenn Powell. I love Edgar Wright, who's directed movies
like Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Baby Driver has a
really unique style that blends almost this hyper realism great action.
Although it feels like it's set in our world, it
also feels like it's set in an entirely different universe.
(31:14):
That is very Edgar Wright, and I really enjoy his style.
I think he is a great director. But I just
found myself saying, why, now, why make this movie? Now?
What are you trying to say? But what the movie
is about. It takes place in the near future. Glenn
Powell plays a character named Ben Richards who is down
on his luck. It starts out you find out about
(31:34):
his family. He has a kid who is really sick,
and in this world it is really hard for anybody
to get medicine, and the poor are the porest of
the poor, and the rich are the richest of the rich.
And the kind of last ditch effort a lot of
people who are struggling have to make money is to
go on TV and compete in these different types of
game shows that are really meant to humiliate the poor
(31:57):
and in turn also put your life on the line
just to make an enough money to survive. And Ben
Richards is in a place where he can't work, so
this is the only way that he can earn money
to save his daughter and also have money to give
back to his wife. So he is a really angry guy,
which I think was hard for me to really place
(32:17):
Glenn Powell as an angry guy. The problem I had
settling into this movie at the beginning is it felt
like his story was really just kind of thrust upon
us where you're supposed to feel instantly sad for him,
because how could you not feel bad for a guy
with a sick kid just trying to provide for his family.
But I feel like it really failed on making me
(32:38):
feel emotional early on in the movie, which eventually as
all the action unfolded, really kept me from connecting to
Ben Richards as a person. But once we got into
the actual action of the movie, once he is convinced
by the evil villain Josh Brolin to compete in these
games by telling him, I think you have what it takes.
(32:58):
Because the entire run of this show, nobody has made
it till the end, survived thirty days while being hunted
by these assassins. Were also all the citizens of the
world can report you, so that is what you're trying
to do. You're trying to outrun all the citizens from
reporting you and survive the assassins who have been sent
out to kill you. And you basically learn the rules
(33:20):
of the game. You have to keep running, and you
also have to document yourself for at least a brief
period every day to prove that you are alive. So
you have to send back these tapes, and that is
kind of the overview of the game and really all
you need to know. But I found myself just really
struggling to understand who Ben Richards was, and I think
that combined with me really only being able to see
(33:42):
Glenn Powell as a likable guy, and as Josh Brolin
is telling his character that he is the most ruthless
guy and meanest guy he's ever met, I just couldn't
really see that in him, and that really kept me
from enjoying the overall arc of his character. And while
I don't think he did a bad job at portraying that,
I just think maybe he was a little bit miscast
(34:04):
in this movie overall, because when I look around at
the entire cast, Josh Brolin obviously is a fantastic villain
Thanos himself just comes down and crushes any role where
he has to be a jerk. He is just really
good at it. And surprisingly, sometimes when an actor plays
a role or a jerk so well, I find myself
not being able to be a fan of that person
(34:26):
as a human. But for some reason, I just really
root for Josh Brolin. His entire story of being an
actor who has just put in the work at times
not even making enough money to survive. Whenever he did
No Country for Old Men, he had very little money
to his name, and that movie really just allowed him
to keep going as an actor. To think that is
(34:47):
the point he was at in two thousand and seven
and now has been in two of the biggest movies
of the year, The Running Man and Weapons. I just
really root for him, And despite him at times playing
characters that I don't like and don't identify with whatsoever,
I constantly root for Josh Brolin and have no trouble
liking him as a person and not letting his characters
affect me. With some other people who play villains, I
(35:09):
find myself unfairly hating them, even though them as people
haven't really done anything. It's a weird psychological thing by
how you see certain people. And even on the other end,
you can see somebody playing a superhero or always playing
likable people that are probably awful off camera. But Josh
Brolin is somebody who anytime he is in a movie,
he always brings it up a level. Another actor like
(35:31):
that in this movie is Coleman Domingo, who also can
elevate a movie just with his presence. Just his voice
alone sue something in my soul, and he always gives
a great performance. And his character in this movie was
really over the top, and I thought he settled into
that really well. Where this movie really lacked for me,
I just thought it was gonna have a little bit
more action for a movie that ran over two hours.
(35:54):
I never felt fully engaged in the story. By the
end of it, I thought this wasn't the greatest theater
experience I've had this year. But if I would have
watched this movie first on an airplane or in a
hotel room on vacation, I would have loved it. Because
this movie really maxed out installed in about the second act,
and the third act was just kind of a mess
(36:14):
for me. So it was still entertaining. It got me
to the end, but it really had trouble getting over
that last hurdle to become a movie that was worthy
of a remake. It felt like it was just the
Arnold Schwarzenegger version that got a little bit of a
facelift with the CGI and some of the character design
overall just looked better. But I don't really know why
this movie was necessary in the end. I also think,
(36:38):
just compared to the other Stephen King adaptation I've seen
this year, The Long Walk, the Long Walk just had
so much more emotion, and I feel like these two
stories kind of said the same thing, and I think
at the end of it, unfairly, I've just been watching
a lot of things like this recently that all kind
of have to do with the similar subject matter. You
(36:59):
have a dystopian future where most of the citizens are poor,
and you have this government who oversees everybody who is
trying to keep the poor poor, and they really only
give them this little glimmer of hope by making them
do something crazy. In The Long Walk, it was going
on this competition where the last person standing gets to
(37:20):
make one wish, but that is the only shot you
have to make money and be successful and have all
those things that you don't have right now. I felt
like it was the same thing in The Running Man,
where the only reason he competes at these deadly games
and risk losing his life to not be there for
his family was just so they would have a shot
at survival. I felt like both of these movies were
(37:41):
saying the exact same thing. And the weird thing is,
if I'm describing this movie to somebody, I'm like, it's
just like The Hunger Games in different situations. But both
of these stories came way before The Hunger Games, being
movies that came out decades before those books would ever
see the light of day. So it is interesting to
(38:02):
see how much The Hunger Games actually stole from Stephen
King concepts and Stephen King stories. I just feel like
The Hunger Games has done those the best, and that
has been the best representation of people fighting in games
and competing in games in order to win big prizes.
But I could not help thinking while watching The Running Man,
(38:22):
why is Glenn Powell not in the MCU because he
really flexed his athletic ability in The Running Man doing
a lot of the stunts on his own obviously has
the physical attributes that you need for a role in
the MCU. In this movie, you get a full Glenn
Powell butt and you see him running around and basically
nothing has one of the strongest jaw lines in Hollywood
(38:44):
right now. And just by looking at that jaw line,
I thought, Man, Glenn Powell would look fantastic as Cyclops.
Can we cast him in the post Secret Wars upcoming
X Men movie? And I want a comic book accurate
Cyclops suit. I'm talking the full blue and yellow with
the belt, the full thing. I could just see his
(39:04):
face in that suit. To me and my ex man,
I would die for Glenn Powell in an X Men
movie as Cyclops, and then also give me the solo
Cyclops movie. I think we've been deserving now for over
twenty years. Sorry, James Marsen, I know you're coming back
in the new Avengers movies, but I think we need
a new Cyclops and it could quite possibly be Glenn Powell.
(39:26):
And maybe he's taken the Leonardo advice of not doing
superhero movies, even though he has been in one already
had a small role in it, and I could see
why an actor of his caliber would not want to
be typecast into one of those roles. Say he does
become a cyclops and suddenly that is what people associate
him for. It's gonna be harder for him to step
outside of roles that aren't in the MCU world, which
(39:49):
I think is something that actors like Chris Hemsworth, even
Chris Evans are struggling with a bit right now. So
he is expanding his filmography right now to not be
typecast in any way. But man, that was the thing
I could not help but seeing while watching this movie.
In the end, this movie had all the ingredients to
make a really great product, but something just fell flat
(40:09):
in there. I haven't fully loved an Edgar Wright movie
since Baby Driver, and maybe I'm just hoping for something
with that level of intensity and his style for the
running man. I give it three point five out of
five jumpsuits. It's time to head down to movie. Mike
Traylor hau will the Michael Jackson biopick be the first
(40:33):
ever biopick to make a billion dollars at the box office.
That is the question I have. Oppenheimer and Bohemian Rhapsody
both got close. Those are the two highest grossing biopicks.
Oppenheimer made nine hundred and twelve million dollars worldwide. Bohemian
Rhapsody held the record before that made nine hundred and
(40:54):
ten million dollars worldwide. I think if somebody is going
to do it, it is going to be Michael Jackson,
because not only he is one of the most famous
not just musicians, but people in the world whoever walked
this earth. And the trailer alone is shattering records over
one hundred and sixteen million views in the first twenty
(41:16):
four hours, so it's not just the United States. This
is a world wide demand for a movie, and this
film is gonna cover it all, from him as a
kid in the Jackson Five all the way leading up
to his death in two thousand and nine. It's coming
out next year on April twenty fourth, twenty twenty six,
(41:37):
and even though they haven't announced it yet, there is
speculation it is going to be split into two movies
because three point five hours is a girthy runtime. My
question also going into this is how much are they
going to get into the allegations, all the controversies. Because
I often say you're gonna make a biopick about somebody,
(41:58):
one make them after they've passed, because then you get
the whole story. But also you need that grit, you
need the dirt in order to really humanize them, paint
them in a way that shows all aspects of their
life so you get the full scope of the person.
You're not just making this glamorous piece where nothing went
(42:18):
wrong and everything is beautiful. Before I get into more,
here's just a little bit of the Michael trailer.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
I know you've been waiting a long time for this.
The tracks are made, the songs are ready. Let's take
it from the.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Top, que can you launer the lights from you please?
Speaker 5 (42:37):
Okay, but remember in here, keep those feats still my man.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So the trailer opens with Michael Jackson in the studio
with Quincy Jones. That is who you hear in that clip.
Michael Jackson is being played by his nephew, Jaffar Jackson,
and I think that is what everybody is so excited about,
the fact that not only does he look like Michael Jackson,
but he also sounds like Michael Jackson. In his speaking voice.
(43:08):
There are moments in this trailer where you think it's
him and it looks really good as close as you
can get by getting somebody who was related to him.
I also think the fact that we have a well
established director behind the camera is going to make this
feel like a real story worth telling, all the little
(43:29):
intricacies of his career, because we're seeing things like this
him in the studio bringing these iconic songs to life
in the trailer. You see on the board in the
recording studio, all the titles to these different songs. Some
you would recognize, others you wouldn't because they are deep
album cuts, or some of them never even saw the
light of day. It is coming to us from director
(43:49):
Anton Fuqua, who has also directed movies like Training Day,
The Equalizer franchise, The Magnificent seven Shooter in Southpaw, So
his filmography includes a lot lot of gritty action movies.
But the guy knows storytelling, and I think that is
a perfect person to bring this huge story to life
(44:10):
because you have so much to cover and it is
such a long run time as it is right now.
And you know me, I hate it when movies get
split into two. I honestly think that you got to
make the decision to just make this movie shorter. And
I know it's a lot to cover, but splitting up
a bio pic into two movies just goes against everything
(44:32):
that I believe in. Obviously, the hardest thing to do
is take an entire person's life and put it into
two hours. Two hours is even hard. Make that two
and a half, make it three hours. That is still
hard to do. But I think you could do it
in three hours, and I think that is the longest
runtime we are willing to go to a movie theater
(44:54):
for a movie like this, unless it's like an endgame.
I mean, the longest I've spent in movie theater was
for The Brutalist, which was three and a half hours
long with an intermission. I almost think, if you're gonna
make it that long, you gotta throw in that intermission.
It really makes a big difference. You get time to
go back out into the lobby, stretch your legs a
(45:14):
little bit. If you do it at about that an
hour and forty five minute mark, then you leave and
come back, you feel refreshed, You're ready to go. Because
I can't imagine his story being split into two movies.
It just feels incomplete to me. I don't like it
because when I think about all my favorite bio picks,
it's all one movie. Walk the line la bamba selena,
They're all one movie. Ray also all one movie. If
(45:39):
you're gonna split it up so much, why not just
make it a TV series and not put it out
into theaters and then just go that way. If you're
going to make a bio pick, you have to be
able to get the job done in three hours. And
I know there were some reasons why this movie has
been delayed, and I think they are going to address
some of the controversy, some of the allegations, and one
(46:00):
of the reasons for the delay is they had to
address some legal issues involving somebody who had accused Michael
Jackson of something in the film and the way that
their story was dramatized. For the story, the estate had
to agree on a settlement with this person. So that
leads me to believe that that is going to be
(46:21):
included in the film. And I think you can't make
a movie about Michael Jackson without including that because that
is a part of the story that impacts his career,
especially when you start getting into the later half of
his career, which this is going to cover because it's
going all the way from him being a kid to
when he died in two thousand and nine, which he
died on my birthday in two thousand and nine. I
(46:43):
remember sitting on my brother's bed in our house watching
TV when the news came up, because he also died
the same day as Farah Fawcet. And that was a
really weird birthday for me because I turned eighteen years old,
but it really didn't feel special in any way. I
was about a leave from waks A Hatchet to move
to Austin, and that is the only memory I have
(47:05):
of that birthday. I didn't do anything fun. I might
have even spent that birthday alone. And now every time
my birthday comes up, I'm just reminded that Michael Jackson
died on my birthday. I know a lot of people
probably remember the time and place where they were when
they heard about Michael Jackson passing. I remember it even
more because it happened on my birthday. Seeing some of
these iconic moments that they are featuring, like the first
(47:26):
time he ever did the moonwalk, his big show at
Dodgers Stadium and seeing the scope of how crazy his
life was and how glamorized it is so far in
the trailer to this movie. I don't think I realized
that when he died, how worldwide famous he was. But
I think in my lifetime, growing up in the nineties
(47:48):
and early two thousands, where my brain really formed, I
didn't really see his explosion. I saw his impact and
his legacy, but I didn't see the craze that we're
going to get to see in this movie. And I
think another reason why this movie is going to make
a billion dollars is because how relevant his music still
(48:10):
is today, where just the release of this trailer has
sparked his streaming numbers and he is still one of
the highest earning dead celebrities. I think the demand is
swelling so much around this movie that is going to
actually get people out into the theater on opening weekend
to go see it. But if they end up splitting
(48:32):
it up into two movies, I mean they would also
do that because it would still make, if not more money,
as much money as Part one, So could also be
a great financial decision. But how many bio picks can
we take? Who is left. I feel like everybody has
a bio pick at this point. The only other person
(48:52):
I would really want to see a music bio pick
from is Kurt Cobain. I'm talking a full on bio
pick where it gets the same treatment as this Michael
Jackson movie, because this could be the music biopick we
have been waiting for. Could it be enough to earn
Jafar Jackson a Best Actor nomination, much like Rammy Mallek
(49:14):
got for playing Freddie Mercury that he went on to win.
It depends how far this movie is going to go.
But again, Michael Moon walks into theaters next year. On
April twenty fourth, if that was this week's edition of
Movie b Framer par and that is gonna do it
for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go,
I got to get my listeners shout out of the week.
(49:36):
This week, I'm going over to Facebook. I know, the
place where you don't want to go because it's mostly
people spewing hate. But every now and then I'll post
the reel over there and go look at the comments,
and I'm always like, oh my gosh, what are people
going to say? And this is a negative comment today?
But I hadn't seen anybody not like Predator Badlands, and
(49:59):
if I wanted it conflicting opinion, I knew going over
to Facebook would not disappoint listener. Shout out of the
Week goes to law Gault, which I don't think is
their real name. If you click into their profile, they
just have a Watchman logo as their profile picture. And
this guy wrote basically an essay on what was wrong
(50:19):
with this movie. So I will only read you the
opening paragraph because this thing went deep, but we'll talk
about it. Law wrote, all right, I don't even know
where to start with Predator Badlands. This movie is an
absolute train wreck, a soft, shiny PG rated disaster that
feels like it was made by people who have never
seen an actual Predator movie. It is so sanitized and
(50:42):
childish that I half expected Mickey Mouse to stroll out
from behind a tree and offer Predator a friendship bracelet.
And there are three more paragraphs of lawes ripping this
movie to shreds was an interesting thing that this movie
is from twenty Century Studios that was acquired and bought
(51:02):
by Disney. I don't really feel like that has had
much of an impact of sanitizing any franchises. They are
now making R rated horror movies over at twentieth Century
Studios that when you look at who owes them, it's like, Oh,
Disney is now in the business of making R rated
horror movies. We've even had nudity in those movies, violence, blood,
(51:25):
everything that you would expect, and I don't think that
it's really being impacted by having the Mickey Mouse hand
over it. And I even said that I have not
been the biggest fan of the Predator movies. I remember
watching the original with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day
on like a random Saturday. That is the type of
movie I associate with the mid afternoon matinee that would
(51:48):
just come on TV. And my uncle's loved any type
of movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger running around killing things. And
I could see if you grew up in that era
and those are the movies of your childhood, why you
would hate anything new. But I don't have that association
with those movies. I am a later adopter. Like I said,
it wasn't until earlier this year with the animated movie
(52:10):
and now with this movie that I'm more invested in
the character and I kind of want to go back
now and rewatch some of those movies, maybe even a
couple of those, probably around four, five and six that
I haven't seen yet. But I think with any kind
of franchise that has lived as long as this franchise has,
with seven films over several different decades, you're going to
(52:31):
have those people like law here who just don't like
it because it is new and it doesn't remind you
of what you grew up with. Same thing, when a
new Star Wars movie comes out, you have people just
like this hating on it. Now, I still think it
was a highly entertaining movie, but I also can see
why my expectations weren't let down. They were actually so
(52:54):
low that I enjoyed it so much more because I
wasn't going into it expecting anything and ended up having
a really good time. But it would be like now,
if somebody was going back and remaking I don't know,
Max Keebler's Big Move, one of my favorite movies or
my childhood, I would have much different thoughts about it
if they were to reboot that right now, which they
should reboot that movie for no other reason. Then I'm
(53:16):
the only one who apparently watched that movie as a kid.
But law, I appreciate you standing up for your beliefs.
And I have to say, if you don't like what
Disney is doing, the easiest way to show and protest
that is to cancel your Disney, plus cancel your Hulu,
which is gonna go away anyway. That is the way
(53:37):
to make your voice heard. But I appreciate that comment.
You were this week's listener shout out of the week.
Thank you to all for listening, making me a part
of your Monday. If you listen on release day or
on the weekend, if you listen over on the Bobby
Bone Show feed, wherever you listen, I appreciate you so much.
And until next time, go out and watch good movies
(53:59):
and I will talk to you later
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I have for you
seven prolific movie quotes from unlikely sources. These quotes taught
me lessons, but they're not from your typical movies that
you would think would teach you a lesson. In the
movie review, we'll be talking about The Running Man starring
Glenn Powell and in the Trailer Park one of the
biggest music biopick trailers of all time. But do we
(00:23):
really need another biopick, We'll be breaking down the Michael trailer.
Thank you for being here, thank you for being subscribed.
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
let's talk movies from the Nustville Podcast Network. This is
movie Mike's Movie Podcast. As I want to revisit seven
of my favorite movie quotes that carry a surprisingly deep
(00:46):
message about life, about your purpose in life, about your
perspectives on the world. I went through and pulled seven
of my favorite quotes that maybe at the time when
I watched these movies, because they're not essentially movie that
you would go to find lessons about life. They're not
big dramas, but I always like finding the beauty where
it's not supposed to be. You're a long time listening
(01:09):
to this podcast, you know. I say that phrase a lot,
and it's because I think that is where the good
stuff is, where you don't expect to find it. These
moments where you're watching something and suddenly it just kind
of clicks and you're like, man, that HiT's kind of hard.
Why did that go so deep? Why does this person
feel like a philosopher right now? But I'm watching an
animated movie, so in no particular order. First uff, It's
(01:32):
from a movie from two thousand and four, Harold and
Kumar go to White Castle. And when I first watched
this movie, I was like, where is there a white Castle?
And how do I get there?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Now?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Because they made this food seem so desirable. If you
don't remember or have never seen this amazing movie from
two thousand and four, it's about two friends. One of
them works an office job, total normal dude, has a
crush on a girl in his apartment. The other guy
is his roommate, who is a stoner, really smart guy,
but just has no drive to get anything done and
(02:05):
put any of his talents to use. And they go
on this crazy journey because they get stoned and they think, man,
White Castle sounds so good right now, and they will
stop at nothing to get it, because once they have
this meal in their minds, they can't think of anything else,
and nothing else satisfies that hunger for them. In this
(02:25):
line towards the end of the movie, whenever they get
arrested and end up in jail, they're sitting in this
jail and they end up with this cellmate who is
just this smart looking guy reading a book, and he
drops this wisdom on them. That is my go to
line of wisdom. Whenever there is something bothering me, whenever
(02:46):
there are all these outside sources that feel like they're
just messing with me, the whole world just kind of
picking and poking at me, pulling off my scabs just
so they can see me bleed. I go back and
think about this quote from Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
People have been messing with me my whole life.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I learned a long time ago.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
There's no sense getting all riled up every time a
bunch of idiots give you a hard time.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
In the end, the universe tends to unfold.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
As it should.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
That line right there at the end, The universe tends
to unfold as it should. Such a prolific line spoken
here by the character named Tarik, who is played by
Gary Anthony Williams, who I also remember loving. He was
one of the recurring cast members in Malcolm in the Middle.
He played Stevie's dad, and it was that line that
(03:35):
I always go back to, the universe tends to unfold
as it should. That brings me a level of comfort
because sometimes when you see people around you who maybe
have done you wrong, and you think, man, that person
just did me straight up dirty, and now they're going
on reaping the benefits of them doing something dirty to me,
(03:59):
ilways think it comes down to karma, and that is
exactly what that quote says. The universe tends to unfold
as it should. What goes around comes around. And I
truly believe in that that what you put out into
the world is exactly what you get back. And I
learned that from watching Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle
in two thousand and four. Next up on my list
(04:21):
is a movie from nineteen ninety five which was highly
impactful on my taste of comedies in the nineties. The
movie is Friday the quote is from the character Pops
played by John Witherspoon. Rip By the way, he died
in twenty nineteen, which is weird to think. I was like, oh,
he just died fairly recently. Twenty nineteen was six years ago,
(04:42):
so it's now been that long without John Witherspoon. But
what Friday is about. You have Craig Smokey and it
all comes down to two hundred dollars that they owe
Big Worm. In the movie, it starts out with Craig
losing his job. Smokey tries to cheer him up, as
any best friend, should they do some things with some
(05:03):
illegal substances. That probably wasn't the best idea because that
is Smokey's business. You can't get high on your own supply,
but they do that. That leads to the mess of
trouble that they get into where they have to pay
back this money that they owe. Don't do it by Friday.
There definitely will not be a Saturday. But they are
also dealing with the villain in this movie, Debo, who
(05:25):
is the guy who goes around town stealing everybody's stuff,
beating people up, taking their money, and Craig gets mixed
up with debo, and what he wants to do is
take his gun and just go shoot Debo. And when
he goes back to his house to get his gun,
he is confronted by his dad. His dad, Pops, who
is a really old school guy, was a boxer growing up,
(05:48):
and he sees his son grabbing a gun and he
uses that opportunity to teach him a very valuable lesson.
And again, this isn't Friday a movie where you have
a character named big Worm where Smoky at one point
gets busted using the bathroom, going number two outside, all
these crazy things, but then you get dropped with this
really valuable life lesson.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
You kids to did nothing but punks, so quick to
pick up a gun, you just scared to take an
ass whippen. This one makes you a man. When I
was growing up, this was all the protection we needed.
You win some, you lose some, but you live. You
live to fight another day. And you think you're a
man with a gun in your hand, don't you.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I'm a man without it.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Put the gun down, put up your dukes. Now you're
a man.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
That is such a valuable life lesson. I was lucky
enough to grow up with a dad who looking back
on it didn't teach me all the things I needed
to know like that. I know my dad loved me,
I know he showed me the value of hard work.
But for a lesson like that, I went to Friday
where I think if more people understood that lesson, this
(06:57):
world would be an entirely different place. And I know
fighting is just not always the answer, but I would
definitely pick a fistfight over pulling out a gun because
what he says in that quote is you can live
to fight another day. You can get the crap knocked
out of you, but you can pick yourself back up.
But then you also both have to agree not to
fight dirty. So so somebody should put that right on
(07:18):
a poster. You win some, you lose some, but you live.
You live to fight another day. That is from Friday
from nineteen ninety five. Next up on my list as
my third quote, Twister, obviously one of my favorite movies
of all time. I've talked about it in length, the
only movie in my life that I've seen at least
over fifty times. What this movie is about two storm
(07:40):
Chasers are on the brink of divorce. It starts out
with Bill going back to meet up with his old
crew because Joe has not signed the paperwork to seal
their divorce and tie up all the loose ends, and
she uses it kind of as a way to suck
him back in because she's not quite over loving him.
He is there with the soon to be new wife
(08:02):
and instead of signing the papers, they start working together
again to create an advanced warning alert system. But they
have to put themselves in the danger of a tornado,
which are incredibly violent to do so. And I know,
on the surface, this movie is about people chasing tornadoes.
That is the big, exciting fun part of Twister. The
(08:23):
poster is the big Twister with all the cows and
the trucks. That is what we remember from this movie.
But movies are always about the story underneath it. While
it is on the surface a story about stormchasers, underneath
that is a story about a woman dealing with her grief,
the loss of her father. That has really fueled this
(08:45):
passion because it starts out at the beginning of the
movie with her as a kid witnessing one of the
most traumatic things ever, not only seeing her dad die
right in front of her eyes, but seeing him taken
away by a tornado. That is what motivates her to
be so passionate about finding a system that actually works
so this does not happen to somebody else because she
(09:08):
sees herself in every family that a tornado's destruction effects.
It all goes back to her childhood and her dealing
with that grief of losing her father. And while it
has been good because she has been so passionate about
this and wanting to save and help people, it has
(09:28):
also been a detriment to her own mental health because
she has had a really hard time moving on. And again,
this movie is a lot of fun. You have other
quotes like it's fatty time and food food, But then
Bill Paxton drops this line at one of the most
tense moments in the movie.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Kill things go wrong. You can't explain it, you can't
predict it. Killing yourself won't bring your dad back. Sorry dying,
but it was a long time ago. Gotta move on,
Stop living in the past, and look at what you
got right in front of you.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
What do you say me, Joe, I think that is
a lesson that just resonates with me. Now. I have
been lucky that I haven't lost anybody super close to
me knocking on wood right now. My grandma is ninety
six years old right now, just went through hip surgery
and is still as healthy as can be. So I
(10:27):
am lucky on that front, even though she is my
only living grandparent. So luckily I haven't had to apply
this lesson exactly how it is in the movie. But
what he said there about you gotta stop living in
the past and look at what you have right in
front of you, that is a lesson that really sticks
with me as somebody who struggles with romanticizing the past,
(10:50):
and I think me as a millennial. Our generation often
gets criticized for being too and too nostalgia and thinking about, oh,
the good old day. I could literally spend a day
just going back on all those memories, and it almost
feels like I'm taking some kind of drug, like it's
doing something to my brain that kind of satisfies it.
(11:12):
But it could also be affecting me in a negative way.
If I could just go back to one day going
to Blockbuster and holding up a physical movie, how better
my life would be, even just for a day. Got
to move on, because someday this is going to be
the past that we are nostalgic about and if we
have lost people along the way, even they wouldn't want
(11:34):
us to live in that moment to the point where
it made us sick. I think it is great to
remember those that we have lost, but they would want
you to move on as well honor their memory. It's great,
but you can't live in the past. You gotta pay
attention to what's right in front of you. Ironically enough,
if Bill Paxton passed away back in twenty seventeen and
I was thinking, man, if we could have got Twisters
(11:56):
with Glenn Powell also adding in a Bill Paston can
even though his son was in the movie, that would
have been amazing. I wish they would have rebooted that
just a little bit earlier. But at number three is
that quote from Twister. Next up on my list as
we get to seven, at number four is a quote
from A Bug's Life in nineteen ninety eight. The movie
(12:17):
is about a misfit ant named Flick who sets out
on a journey to find some warriors to save his
colony from a bunch of greedy grasshoppers. So he recruits
a group of bugs that turn out to be a
bunch of bugs that are just in a circus troop.
This movie taught me a lot of lessons as a kid,
thinking of Flick's character, who was so innovative and ahead
(12:40):
of his time in the ant world where he was
trying to make these inventions to make their life easier,
and everybody in that ant colony was so old school,
and they pushed him aside. They thought, what are you
doing here, You're wasting your time. We've been doing this
for so many years the same way. Why change it.
If it's it's not broke, don't fix it. But Flicks
(13:02):
all potential in his ideas, and he wanted to make
their lives easier through the use of technology, and they
didn't see any value in that. They led him on
this wild goose chase, basically saying, oh yeah, go try
to find some people and just get out of our way.
And what he ends up doing and discovering on this
journey actually changes all their lives forever. But he has
(13:24):
to deal with these pesky grasshoppers who are evil. All
they do is force the ants to collect food for
them so they can spend all their time just doing
whenever they want, and then whenever winter rolls around, all
they do is go back to the ants and collect
their food. So the ants have to collect double enough
for them to have food and enough for the grasshoppers
(13:46):
to have food. And they do that because, like I
was mentioning earlier, it's just the way it's always been done.
But then you have Flick stand up against them, and
the grasshoppers do not like that because it changes the
balance of pa And this line in a bugs life
not only applies to a story in a Pixar movie,
(14:06):
can also apply to the world.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Do you let one ant stand up to us, then
they all might stand up.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Those puny little ants outnumber us one hundred to one.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
And if they ever figure that out, there goes our
way of life.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line.
That is a really powerful quote, and I didn't realize
it at the time. When I was a kid the
big lesson that this movie was teaching me. And I
don't think this movie was meant to drive home this
lesson in the kid. But just looking back on the
first run of Pixar movies that were so impactful, they're
(14:48):
just not making them like they used to, especially when
you look at Eliot earlier. This year. If we could
go back to a Pixar movie having this level of intensity,
and if you think about that quote and how could
apply to our society today. How a lot of us
are pitted against each other from one side versus the
other side. We are told to hate each other by
(15:09):
this all powerful force that just wants to keep the
order like it is the way it is and the
way it benefits them, Like the grasshoppers being able to
get their food for free because they have convinced the
ants that this is the way it should be, even
though the ants have more power than them. That's us
(15:29):
as the people, and it serves as a powerful metaphor
of the potential and the strength of collective action. If
we actually all came together and we're all on the
sides of wanting to see real change to benefit us
the majority, the ants, and as individuals, we could find
that courage to resist some of these forces that have
(15:51):
been oppressing us. How powerful that could be. That is
the message we found in A Bugs Life from nineteen
ninety eight. Moving on to the fifth quote, it comes
to us from road Trip from the year two thousand.
From the year two thousand, road Trip is a raunchy
comedy about four college friends who go on that a
road trip to get back a tape with some incriminating
(16:15):
footage on it, some R rated, maybe even X rated
footage on it that was mistakenly male to a female
friend of one of the male characters. And on this
trip they go to parties, they get into some trouble,
they get into some car trouble, and there is this
one scene where they are wanting to take a shortcut.
(16:37):
And it's a very quick line spoken by a character
named Rubin. But he's like the really insightful one, the
one who smokes Alana pot and he is kind of
the philosophical one in the group, and he drops this
line that at the time I didn't really think much
about it. But the more I think about this line,
I realize how much wisdom it actually has. Here is
(16:58):
that quote from road trip supposed to be a challenge.
That's why the code a shortcut. If it was easy,
it would just be the way. I think that is
a great way to think about life. To me, this
is what this quote means, that a shortcut is inherently
more difficult and risky than the main path you think
about achieving your goals and how a lot of people
(17:18):
tell you different things about how to achieve your goals.
If you've ever seen that illustration that shows what success is,
it has what people think it looks like, and it's
just a straight arrow pointing up, and then it has
what it actually looks like, which is basically a squiggly
line with an arrow at the end that eventually goes up.
But you have to go through all these different avenues
to get there. That is what success actually looks like.
(17:40):
It's a bunch of just squigglies until you reach your goal, hopefully.
I think what this quote means is that a shortcut
is inherently more difficult and risky than the main path.
You think about how a lot of people tell you
what you need to do to be successful. You need
to go to college. And if you decide I don't
(18:02):
want to go to college, that's not for me. I'm
just going to go do the thing I want to do.
That is seen as a shortcut, like WHOA, you don't
have to go do four years of school. You just
go do the thing you want to do. That doesn't
make any sense. I had to put in four years.
Why should you just be able to go and do
the thing. While to some that might feel like a
shortcut removing those four years of school, that is actually
(18:24):
a much riskier and difficult thing to do, which increases
the level of failure because you don't have that easy
path to walk on. Not that going to college is easy.
I did it. I have my bachelor's degree, also not
an easy thing. But I think now we are starting
to see more that you don't necessarily have to go
to college to be successful and get the job that
(18:46):
you want, especially in certain fields right now where technology
has really leveled the playing field. I don't even think
what I'm doing now I needed my degree in So
I think now that shortcut is being a little bit
more accepted as society because a short cut doesn't imply
to me that a path is easy. It's not the
(19:07):
standard route, because true success in achieving a goal still
requires that hard work overcoming challenges. Because if you do
decide to take those shortcuts and take those risks, you're
not going to see those unforeseen challenges that nobody can
really warn you about, or those complications that you get
into because you're not on the main road. But I
(19:27):
will tell you that once you do get to that
goal and you taste that sweet fruit, it's going to
taste so much better and so much sweeter because of
all those hard things you had to go through to
get there. I have felt that a lot in my life.
When I first set out on my journey of getting healthy,
all these people told me all these different things that
(19:48):
you have to do to lose weight. I tried a
lot of them, and it was unsuccessful in many ways.
First time I set out to lose weight was not
the time that it stuck. But that last time I
actually did use all those things I learned from finding
my own path to achieve that goal. Life is all
about the paths you take. None of those paths are
(20:09):
going to be easy. In the end. It all comes
down to the effort you put in the perseverance that
you have, whether you find ways to work smarter, not harder,
or you just go the traditional route. There are many
different avenues you can take to achieve your goals. Maybe
sometimes you just got to open up your mind to
a shortcut quote unquote, or maybe sometimes you just got
(20:30):
to stick in that path that is right in front
of you find the perfect way for you. But again,
this is a quote from Road Trip, one of the
raunchiest comedies of the two thousands, dropping some life knowledge there.
Next up, got a couple quotes left. Number six comes
to us from Pokemon, the first movie in nineteen ninety eight.
The movie is about scientists that genetically create a new
Pokemon named Youtwo, but as they find out, the results
(20:54):
are horrific and disastrous. As mewtwo destroys the lab that
he was created in. I don't know if mewtwo is
a guy or a girl that they were created in,
and mewtwo sets out to find their purpose in life
and does some shady things along the way. I used
to watch Pokemon a lot as a kid. One of
my favorite parts of the show is whenever they were
(21:14):
going to commercial break and they'd be like, who's that Pokemon?
And I always used to do the quote of the
Pokemon that it was because all the Pokemon just basically
say their name as their speaking voice. That's all they
can say. Some other really weird ones like star Me
just come out yelling for some reason, like Pikachu's like
peaka Pika, and then Charmander, you know, just says Charmander
(21:34):
and then for no reason, Star Mey's like, yeah, but
one of my favorites was mewtwo because mewtwo just spoke
regular or English. He just talked, and I would always
quote mewtwo and the line I would say is what
is my purpose? And that was from this movie because
mewtwo is unlike all the other Pokemon, doesn't say their
own name and also doesn't make some crazy sound like
(21:55):
star me. But this fantastic line comes to us towards
the end of the movie, after Ash has sacrificed himself
in order to save his own Pokemon, he takes a
hit from Mew two, and then it gets turned into stone.
You have Pikachu crying over his body, shocking him, trying
to bring him back to life, but he is entirely
(22:18):
made of stone. And it's not until Pikachu cries in
his tears and the tears of all the other Pokemon
in the Pokemon stadium bring Ash back to life. And
that is where it starts to set into mew of
what he has done and what it means to be
a human and what it means to be a Pokemon.
Here is that quote of the knowledge dropped to us
(22:39):
by mewtwo.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
The human sacrificed himself to save the Pokemon. I pitted
them against each other, but not until they set aside
their differences did I see the true power they all
shared deep inside. I see now that the circumstances of
one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with
the gift of life that determines who you are.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It is what you do with the gift of life
that determines who you are. Said to us by Pokemon,
I think mewtwo was done wrong in this movie. And
looking back on it now as an adult, which I did,
rewatch this movie at least once a year, I realized
that mewtwo was painted as the villain, but really wasn't.
He was created by this group of scientists for their
(23:24):
own benefit, and he broke out. He was being used
to fight other Pokemon as their weapon. He was used
as a weapon, and then as soon as he got
aware of his situations, he became too smart, he became
too strong. He blew the entire place down and escaped
and went out to this island and then was able
to get all these other Pokemon there on his island
(23:45):
to essentially do the same thing to them that the
humans did to him. I don't think he was the
villain here. I think he was born from a place
of rage. I would be rageful too. But there in
that incredible character development, he tells us that it's about
what you do with the gift of life, because he
(24:05):
has had a change of heart after seeing how selfless
ash Ketchum was as he sacrificed himself to save his pokemon.
So even though we had all this anger because he
was created by these humans put in these terrible circumstances,
he realized that it's about the decisions you make in
life and not about where you come from that actually
(24:25):
define you. So it wasn't about his awful origin story.
It's about what you do with the cards that you
work dealt. And I believe this wholeheartedly, and it's something
that I had to learn probably in my mid to
late twenties, this hard lesson because in life, you are
going to be put into awful situations, and it's about
(24:47):
how you react to those awful situations that determine what
your life is going to be like. Because we all
have crabby things happen to us, crappy things happening to
our family in the world. As a whole, and it's
about how you you react to those situations, because some
of the people who are the most successful in life
(25:07):
have had to come back from some really dark times
and it's not easy. Sometimes putting a smile on your
face and powering through is the last thing you want
to do when all you do is want to be
angry at the world. You want to do like mutue
and burn it all down and leave behind a path
of destruction that is only going to be more harmful
(25:27):
to you and you're only going to live in this
vicious cycle of being miserable. And mewtwo learn that in
that situation and taught us all as very young kids
that it's all about how you react to your environment
and how you can change your own path by doing so.
(25:48):
So it doesn't matter what your background is, how or
where you were born, that doesn't define your character. Instead,
it's your actions, your choices who truly determine who you are.
That is what I learned from that quote right there.
Pokemon the first movie continues to spew so many life lessons,
and finally, my seventh quote on the list comes to
(26:10):
us from Men in Black from nineteen ninety seven from
Agent K played by Tommy Lee Jones. The movie in
case you haven't seen it, If you haven't seen it,
where we've been maybe some younger listeners who have not
seen the greatness that is Men in Black. But it's
about a secret government agency that monitors alien life on
Earth and Agent K and Will Smith's character Agent J
(26:33):
have to recover an item that has been stolen by
an intergalactic villain, and K recruits Agent J and he
drops this line on him that is so philosophical and
doesn't really fit in place with all the other crazy
things that happened in this movie.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals,
and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew
the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred
years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flattened. Fifteen minutes ago,
you knew that people were alone on this planet.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
That quote is so impactful on my way of thinking
that you have to constantly adapt to a world that
is changing and being provided new information. And the minute
you stop learning is the minute you get left behind.
Because if you look throughout history, the dumbest people have
been the people who have not wanted to embrace change,
(27:36):
not wanted to embrace new information, not wanted to embrace
the changing of the times. Because what he says there
is how constantly our world is changing, and we have
to accept it. If we don't accept it, we are
not going to learn anything new, and we're going to
be doomed to repeat history. And I think that has
(27:58):
made me want to be constantly curious, trying to figure
out things, why they are the way they are, how
we can challenge our way of thinking in order to
advance ourselves, Because you could be presented with one piece
of information that could wreck your entire world, and I
get how that could be terrifying to some still terrifying
to me to think there could be some extraterrestrial life
(28:21):
out there monitoring us right now listening to this podcast,
ninking what is the stupid human talking about all these
stupid movies, these moving pictures, trying to pick out these
philosophical lessons. But if you look all throughout history, it
has been people trying to figure out and understand the
world and discovering new things. The world used to be flat.
(28:42):
We used to think we were alone imagine what you
will know tomorrow. It both excites me and it terrifies me,
which it should, but it should make you always want
to have an open mind. Has there been a movie
quote that you didn't expect to change the way that
you think? That is the question I want to ask
you right now. If you want to send me a DM,
(29:03):
you want to email me Moviemike D at gmail dot com,
hit me up on dms on Instagram wherever I'm all
over the place, or send me a message or comment
on my YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Mike dshro
What movie quote like this from an unlikely source has
really stuck with you? A comeback? And I get my
spoiler free review of The Running Man. Let's get into
(29:27):
it now. A spoiler free movie review of The Running Man,
or as I've been calling it lately, The Running Man,
starring Glenn Powell, directed by Edgar Wright. This is the
movie I said, It's going to determine whether or not
Glenn Powell turns into the bankable star that Hollywood wants
him to be. And I knew even way back in
the dark Knight rises whenever he gets his head smashed
(29:47):
by Baine and I was like, man, that is a
guy who knows how to take a hit. He is
gonna be a star now. I didn't really know him then,
but I think to us as just the general public,
we see somebody like him who is finally starting to
really come into focus. We're starting to see him everywhere,
and we just see that success. We think overnight he
has just become a star. But he's been around for
(30:09):
so long, and I think this is now his big
leading role that is going to determine whether or not
he is going to be that next leading man in Hollywood.
Some people are cueing him up to be the next
Tom Cruise, because I think he is as versatile as
a Tom Cruise. But what we have here in The
Running Man it is a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,
(30:30):
which I realized just last week I was talking about Predator,
which is another franchise tied to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is
really big right now, apparently remaking his movies. Also, this
is the second Stephen King adaptation I've seen in theaters
this year, and I think both of those things are
going to play into how I ended up feeling about
this movie because I thought this was going to be
(30:53):
an instant top at least fifteen for me, because I
like Glenn Powell. I love Edgar Wright, who's directed movies
like Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Baby Driver has a
really unique style that blends almost this hyper realism great action.
Although it feels like it's set in our world, it
also feels like it's set in an entirely different universe.
(31:14):
That is very Edgar Wright, and I really enjoy his style.
I think he is a great director. But I just
found myself saying, why, now, why make this movie? Now?
What are you trying to say? But what the movie
is about. It takes place in the near future. Glenn
Powell plays a character named Ben Richards who is down
on his luck. It starts out you find out about
(31:34):
his family. He has a kid who is really sick,
and in this world it is really hard for anybody
to get medicine, and the poor are the porest of
the poor, and the rich are the richest of the rich.
And the kind of last ditch effort a lot of
people who are struggling have to make money is to
go on TV and compete in these different types of
game shows that are really meant to humiliate the poor
(31:57):
and in turn also put your life on the line
just to make an enough money to survive. And Ben
Richards is in a place where he can't work, so
this is the only way that he can earn money
to save his daughter and also have money to give
back to his wife. So he is a really angry guy,
which I think was hard for me to really place
(32:17):
Glenn Powell as an angry guy. The problem I had
settling into this movie at the beginning is it felt
like his story was really just kind of thrust upon
us where you're supposed to feel instantly sad for him,
because how could you not feel bad for a guy
with a sick kid just trying to provide for his family.
But I feel like it really failed on making me
(32:38):
feel emotional early on in the movie, which eventually as
all the action unfolded, really kept me from connecting to
Ben Richards as a person. But once we got into
the actual action of the movie, once he is convinced
by the evil villain Josh Brolin to compete in these
games by telling him, I think you have what it takes.
(32:58):
Because the entire run of this show, nobody has made
it till the end, survived thirty days while being hunted
by these assassins. Were also all the citizens of the
world can report you, so that is what you're trying
to do. You're trying to outrun all the citizens from
reporting you and survive the assassins who have been sent
out to kill you. And you basically learn the rules
(33:20):
of the game. You have to keep running, and you
also have to document yourself for at least a brief
period every day to prove that you are alive. So
you have to send back these tapes, and that is
kind of the overview of the game and really all
you need to know. But I found myself just really
struggling to understand who Ben Richards was, and I think
that combined with me really only being able to see
(33:42):
Glenn Powell as a likable guy, and as Josh Brolin
is telling his character that he is the most ruthless
guy and meanest guy he's ever met, I just couldn't
really see that in him, and that really kept me
from enjoying the overall arc of his character. And while
I don't think he did a bad job at portraying that,
I just think maybe he was a little bit miscast
(34:04):
in this movie overall, because when I look around at
the entire cast, Josh Brolin obviously is a fantastic villain
Thanos himself just comes down and crushes any role where
he has to be a jerk. He is just really
good at it. And surprisingly, sometimes when an actor plays
a role or a jerk so well, I find myself
not being able to be a fan of that person
(34:26):
as a human. But for some reason, I just really
root for Josh Brolin. His entire story of being an
actor who has just put in the work at times
not even making enough money to survive. Whenever he did
No Country for Old Men, he had very little money
to his name, and that movie really just allowed him
to keep going as an actor. To think that is
(34:47):
the point he was at in two thousand and seven
and now has been in two of the biggest movies
of the year, The Running Man and Weapons. I just
really root for him, And despite him at times playing
characters that I don't like and don't identify with whatsoever,
I constantly root for Josh Brolin and have no trouble
liking him as a person and not letting his characters
affect me. With some other people who play villains, I
(35:09):
find myself unfairly hating them, even though them as people
haven't really done anything. It's a weird psychological thing by
how you see certain people. And even on the other end,
you can see somebody playing a superhero or always playing
likable people that are probably awful off camera. But Josh
Brolin is somebody who anytime he is in a movie,
he always brings it up a level. Another actor like
(35:31):
that in this movie is Coleman Domingo, who also can
elevate a movie just with his presence. Just his voice
alone sue something in my soul, and he always gives
a great performance. And his character in this movie was
really over the top, and I thought he settled into
that really well. Where this movie really lacked for me,
I just thought it was gonna have a little bit
more action for a movie that ran over two hours.
(35:54):
I never felt fully engaged in the story. By the
end of it, I thought this wasn't the greatest theater
experience I've had this year. But if I would have
watched this movie first on an airplane or in a
hotel room on vacation, I would have loved it. Because
this movie really maxed out installed in about the second act,
and the third act was just kind of a mess
(36:14):
for me. So it was still entertaining. It got me
to the end, but it really had trouble getting over
that last hurdle to become a movie that was worthy
of a remake. It felt like it was just the
Arnold Schwarzenegger version that got a little bit of a
facelift with the CGI and some of the character design
overall just looked better. But I don't really know why
this movie was necessary in the end. I also think,
(36:38):
just compared to the other Stephen King adaptation I've seen
this year, The Long Walk, the Long Walk just had
so much more emotion, and I feel like these two
stories kind of said the same thing, and I think
at the end of it, unfairly, I've just been watching
a lot of things like this recently that all kind
of have to do with the similar subject matter. You
(36:59):
have a dystopian future where most of the citizens are poor,
and you have this government who oversees everybody who is
trying to keep the poor poor, and they really only
give them this little glimmer of hope by making them
do something crazy. In The Long Walk, it was going
on this competition where the last person standing gets to
(37:20):
make one wish, but that is the only shot you
have to make money and be successful and have all
those things that you don't have right now. I felt
like it was the same thing in The Running Man,
where the only reason he competes at these deadly games
and risk losing his life to not be there for
his family was just so they would have a shot
at survival. I felt like both of these movies were
(37:41):
saying the exact same thing. And the weird thing is,
if I'm describing this movie to somebody, I'm like, it's
just like The Hunger Games in different situations. But both
of these stories came way before The Hunger Games, being
movies that came out decades before those books would ever
see the light of day. So it is interesting to
(38:02):
see how much The Hunger Games actually stole from Stephen
King concepts and Stephen King stories. I just feel like
The Hunger Games has done those the best, and that
has been the best representation of people fighting in games
and competing in games in order to win big prizes.
But I could not help thinking while watching The Running Man,
(38:22):
why is Glenn Powell not in the MCU because he
really flexed his athletic ability in The Running Man doing
a lot of the stunts on his own obviously has
the physical attributes that you need for a role in
the MCU. In this movie, you get a full Glenn
Powell butt and you see him running around and basically
nothing has one of the strongest jaw lines in Hollywood
(38:44):
right now. And just by looking at that jaw line,
I thought, Man, Glenn Powell would look fantastic as Cyclops.
Can we cast him in the post Secret Wars upcoming
X Men movie? And I want a comic book accurate
Cyclops suit. I'm talking the full blue and yellow with
the belt, the full thing. I could just see his
(39:04):
face in that suit. To me and my ex man,
I would die for Glenn Powell in an X Men
movie as Cyclops, and then also give me the solo
Cyclops movie. I think we've been deserving now for over
twenty years. Sorry, James Marsen, I know you're coming back
in the new Avengers movies, but I think we need
a new Cyclops and it could quite possibly be Glenn Powell.
(39:26):
And maybe he's taken the Leonardo advice of not doing
superhero movies, even though he has been in one already
had a small role in it, and I could see
why an actor of his caliber would not want to
be typecast into one of those roles. Say he does
become a cyclops and suddenly that is what people associate
him for. It's gonna be harder for him to step
outside of roles that aren't in the MCU world, which
(39:49):
I think is something that actors like Chris Hemsworth, even
Chris Evans are struggling with a bit right now. So
he is expanding his filmography right now to not be
typecast in any way. But man, that was the thing
I could not help but seeing while watching this movie.
In the end, this movie had all the ingredients to
make a really great product, but something just fell flat
(40:09):
in there. I haven't fully loved an Edgar Wright movie
since Baby Driver, and maybe I'm just hoping for something
with that level of intensity and his style for the
running man. I give it three point five out of
five jumpsuits. It's time to head down to movie. Mike
Traylor hau will the Michael Jackson biopick be the first
(40:33):
ever biopick to make a billion dollars at the box office.
That is the question I have. Oppenheimer and Bohemian Rhapsody
both got close. Those are the two highest grossing biopicks.
Oppenheimer made nine hundred and twelve million dollars worldwide. Bohemian
Rhapsody held the record before that made nine hundred and
(40:54):
ten million dollars worldwide. I think if somebody is going
to do it, it is going to be Michael Jackson,
because not only he is one of the most famous
not just musicians, but people in the world whoever walked
this earth. And the trailer alone is shattering records over
one hundred and sixteen million views in the first twenty
(41:16):
four hours, so it's not just the United States. This
is a world wide demand for a movie, and this
film is gonna cover it all, from him as a
kid in the Jackson Five all the way leading up
to his death in two thousand and nine. It's coming
out next year on April twenty fourth, twenty twenty six,
(41:37):
and even though they haven't announced it yet, there is
speculation it is going to be split into two movies
because three point five hours is a girthy runtime. My
question also going into this is how much are they
going to get into the allegations, all the controversies. Because
I often say you're gonna make a biopick about somebody,
(41:58):
one make them after they've passed, because then you get
the whole story. But also you need that grit, you
need the dirt in order to really humanize them, paint
them in a way that shows all aspects of their
life so you get the full scope of the person.
You're not just making this glamorous piece where nothing went
(42:18):
wrong and everything is beautiful. Before I get into more,
here's just a little bit of the Michael trailer.
Speaker 5 (42:24):
I know you've been waiting a long time for this.
The tracks are made, the songs are ready. Let's take
it from the.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Top, que can you launer the lights from you please?
Speaker 5 (42:37):
Okay, but remember in here, keep those feats still my man.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So the trailer opens with Michael Jackson in the studio
with Quincy Jones. That is who you hear in that clip.
Michael Jackson is being played by his nephew, Jaffar Jackson,
and I think that is what everybody is so excited about,
the fact that not only does he look like Michael Jackson,
but he also sounds like Michael Jackson. In his speaking voice.
(43:08):
There are moments in this trailer where you think it's
him and it looks really good as close as you
can get by getting somebody who was related to him.
I also think the fact that we have a well
established director behind the camera is going to make this
feel like a real story worth telling, all the little
(43:29):
intricacies of his career, because we're seeing things like this
him in the studio bringing these iconic songs to life
in the trailer. You see on the board in the
recording studio, all the titles to these different songs. Some
you would recognize, others you wouldn't because they are deep
album cuts, or some of them never even saw the
light of day. It is coming to us from director
(43:49):
Anton Fuqua, who has also directed movies like Training Day,
The Equalizer franchise, The Magnificent seven Shooter in Southpaw, So
his filmography includes a lot lot of gritty action movies.
But the guy knows storytelling, and I think that is
a perfect person to bring this huge story to life
(44:10):
because you have so much to cover and it is
such a long run time as it is right now.
And you know me, I hate it when movies get
split into two. I honestly think that you got to
make the decision to just make this movie shorter. And
I know it's a lot to cover, but splitting up
a bio pic into two movies just goes against everything
(44:32):
that I believe in. Obviously, the hardest thing to do
is take an entire person's life and put it into
two hours. Two hours is even hard. Make that two
and a half, make it three hours. That is still
hard to do. But I think you could do it
in three hours, and I think that is the longest
runtime we are willing to go to a movie theater
(44:54):
for a movie like this, unless it's like an endgame.
I mean, the longest I've spent in movie theater was
for The Brutalist, which was three and a half hours
long with an intermission. I almost think, if you're gonna
make it that long, you gotta throw in that intermission.
It really makes a big difference. You get time to
go back out into the lobby, stretch your legs a
(45:14):
little bit. If you do it at about that an
hour and forty five minute mark, then you leave and
come back, you feel refreshed, You're ready to go. Because
I can't imagine his story being split into two movies.
It just feels incomplete to me. I don't like it
because when I think about all my favorite bio picks,
it's all one movie. Walk the line la bamba selena,
They're all one movie. Ray also all one movie. If
(45:39):
you're gonna split it up so much, why not just
make it a TV series and not put it out
into theaters and then just go that way. If you're
going to make a bio pick, you have to be
able to get the job done in three hours. And
I know there were some reasons why this movie has
been delayed, and I think they are going to address
some of the controversy, some of the allegations, and one
(46:00):
of the reasons for the delay is they had to
address some legal issues involving somebody who had accused Michael
Jackson of something in the film and the way that
their story was dramatized. For the story, the estate had
to agree on a settlement with this person. So that
leads me to believe that that is going to be
(46:21):
included in the film. And I think you can't make
a movie about Michael Jackson without including that because that
is a part of the story that impacts his career,
especially when you start getting into the later half of
his career, which this is going to cover because it's
going all the way from him being a kid to
when he died in two thousand and nine, which he
died on my birthday in two thousand and nine. I
(46:43):
remember sitting on my brother's bed in our house watching
TV when the news came up, because he also died
the same day as Farah Fawcet. And that was a
really weird birthday for me because I turned eighteen years old,
but it really didn't feel special in any way. I
was about a leave from waks A Hatchet to move
to Austin, and that is the only memory I have
(47:05):
of that birthday. I didn't do anything fun. I might
have even spent that birthday alone. And now every time
my birthday comes up, I'm just reminded that Michael Jackson
died on my birthday. I know a lot of people
probably remember the time and place where they were when
they heard about Michael Jackson passing. I remember it even
more because it happened on my birthday. Seeing some of
these iconic moments that they are featuring, like the first
(47:26):
time he ever did the moonwalk, his big show at
Dodgers Stadium and seeing the scope of how crazy his
life was and how glamorized it is so far in
the trailer to this movie. I don't think I realized
that when he died, how worldwide famous he was. But
I think in my lifetime, growing up in the nineties
(47:48):
and early two thousands, where my brain really formed, I
didn't really see his explosion. I saw his impact and
his legacy, but I didn't see the craze that we're
going to get to see in this movie. And I
think another reason why this movie is going to make
a billion dollars is because how relevant his music still
(48:10):
is today, where just the release of this trailer has
sparked his streaming numbers and he is still one of
the highest earning dead celebrities. I think the demand is
swelling so much around this movie that is going to
actually get people out into the theater on opening weekend
to go see it. But if they end up splitting
(48:32):
it up into two movies, I mean they would also
do that because it would still make, if not more money,
as much money as Part one, So could also be
a great financial decision. But how many bio picks can
we take? Who is left. I feel like everybody has
a bio pick at this point. The only other person
(48:52):
I would really want to see a music bio pick
from is Kurt Cobain. I'm talking a full on bio
pick where it gets the same treatment as this Michael
Jackson movie, because this could be the music biopick we
have been waiting for. Could it be enough to earn
Jafar Jackson a Best Actor nomination, much like Rammy Mallek
(49:14):
got for playing Freddie Mercury that he went on to win.
It depends how far this movie is going to go.
But again, Michael Moon walks into theaters next year. On
April twenty fourth, if that was this week's edition of
Movie b Framer par and that is gonna do it
for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go,
I got to get my listeners shout out of the week.
(49:36):
This week, I'm going over to Facebook. I know, the
place where you don't want to go because it's mostly
people spewing hate. But every now and then I'll post
the reel over there and go look at the comments,
and I'm always like, oh my gosh, what are people
going to say? And this is a negative comment today?
But I hadn't seen anybody not like Predator Badlands, and
(49:59):
if I wanted it conflicting opinion, I knew going over
to Facebook would not disappoint listener. Shout out of the
Week goes to law Gault, which I don't think is
their real name. If you click into their profile, they
just have a Watchman logo as their profile picture. And
this guy wrote basically an essay on what was wrong
(50:19):
with this movie. So I will only read you the
opening paragraph because this thing went deep, but we'll talk
about it. Law wrote, all right, I don't even know
where to start with Predator Badlands. This movie is an
absolute train wreck, a soft, shiny PG rated disaster that
feels like it was made by people who have never
seen an actual Predator movie. It is so sanitized and
(50:42):
childish that I half expected Mickey Mouse to stroll out
from behind a tree and offer Predator a friendship bracelet.
And there are three more paragraphs of lawes ripping this
movie to shreds was an interesting thing that this movie
is from twenty Century Studios that was acquired and bought
(51:02):
by Disney. I don't really feel like that has had
much of an impact of sanitizing any franchises. They are
now making R rated horror movies over at twentieth Century
Studios that when you look at who owes them, it's like, Oh,
Disney is now in the business of making R rated
horror movies. We've even had nudity in those movies, violence, blood,
(51:25):
everything that you would expect, and I don't think that
it's really being impacted by having the Mickey Mouse hand
over it. And I even said that I have not
been the biggest fan of the Predator movies. I remember
watching the original with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day
on like a random Saturday. That is the type of
movie I associate with the mid afternoon matinee that would
(51:48):
just come on TV. And my uncle's loved any type
of movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger running around killing things. And
I could see if you grew up in that era
and those are the movies of your childhood, why you
would hate anything new. But I don't have that association
with those movies. I am a later adopter. Like I said,
it wasn't until earlier this year with the animated movie
(52:10):
and now with this movie that I'm more invested in
the character and I kind of want to go back
now and rewatch some of those movies, maybe even a
couple of those, probably around four, five and six that
I haven't seen yet. But I think with any kind
of franchise that has lived as long as this franchise has,
with seven films over several different decades, you're going to
(52:31):
have those people like law here who just don't like
it because it is new and it doesn't remind you
of what you grew up with. Same thing, when a
new Star Wars movie comes out, you have people just
like this hating on it. Now, I still think it
was a highly entertaining movie, but I also can see
why my expectations weren't let down. They were actually so
(52:54):
low that I enjoyed it so much more because I
wasn't going into it expecting anything and ended up having
a really good time. But it would be like now,
if somebody was going back and remaking I don't know,
Max Keebler's Big Move, one of my favorite movies or
my childhood, I would have much different thoughts about it
if they were to reboot that right now, which they
should reboot that movie for no other reason. Then I'm
(53:16):
the only one who apparently watched that movie as a kid.
But law, I appreciate you standing up for your beliefs.
And I have to say, if you don't like what
Disney is doing, the easiest way to show and protest
that is to cancel your Disney, plus cancel your Hulu,
which is gonna go away anyway. That is the way
(53:37):
to make your voice heard. But I appreciate that comment.
You were this week's listener shout out of the week.
Thank you to all for listening, making me a part
of your Monday. If you listen on release day or
on the weekend, if you listen over on the Bobby
Bone Show feed, wherever you listen, I appreciate you so much.
And until next time, go out and watch good movies
(53:59):
and I will talk to you later
Host
Mike D
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