On this episode, Movie Mike dives into the world of visual artistry and shares his top 5 favorite movie posters, discussing the iconic designs and captivating imagery that have left a lasting impression. That leads into an interview with acclaimed director Lee Cronin (@curleecronin) to talk about his latest movie ‘Evil Dead Rise' which is available to stream now on Max. He talks about the science behind movie posters / trailers, the creative writing process when dealing with dark subjects, and reveals just how much blood was spilled (and how much money it cost!) to bring the terrifying vision to life. In the Movie Review, Mike talks about Pixar’s ‘Elemental,' which explores the interconnectedness of the natural world and human emotions. He shares why he thinks it underperformed at the box office despite being a good movie. In the Trailer Park, Mike takes a sneak peek at 'Kraven the Hunter,' the upcoming anti-hero film from Sony’s Spider-Man universe in association with Marvel Entertainment.
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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 want to share
with you my top five favorite movie posters of all time.
Then we'll get into an interview with director Lee Cronin,
which will continue our discussion of movie posters. But he
is the director of Ewel Dead Rise, one of my
favorite horror movies of the year, so I have so
many questions about that movie, mainly regarding how much money
(00:22):
he spent on blood to get that movie done. In
the movie review, we'll be talking about Pixar's Elemental why
it didn't do so well at the box office despite
me thinking it's actually a pretty good movie. And in
the trailer park, I'll be talking about Craven the Hunter,
which is the new Marvel movie on the Sony side.
There's always so much chaos going on with that side
of Marvel, but this trailer actually looks promising, so we'll
(00:44):
get into that. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for telling a friend. Shout out to the Monday Morning
Movie crew, and now let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
ever before in a movie podcast, a man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
From the Nashville Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I feel like movie posters have gone the way of
the Western. That is my new slogan I'm trying out
on this podcast, the way of the Western, meaning they
are no longer a thing or no longer as popular
as they used to be. And when it comes to
movie posters, they used to be the thing that I
attached with watching that movie. I would always see the
poster first and base my decision on wanting to watch
(01:37):
that movie strictly based on the poster. I remember going
to Walmart, and if you were a nineties early two
thousand kid, they used to have a section where you
would just scroll through with your own hands the physical
copies of these posters that would be displayed in these
big things. And I remember going to that thing and
having so much enjoyment looking at all the movie posters.
But it's the image that you see when you actually
(01:59):
go to the movies out front. It should be the
biggest part of the marketing and packaging of a movie
creating an iconic image that stays with your mind. But
of course the world has changed, technology has changed. I
feel like studios now focus more on the trailer, getting
the views on YouTube and on Instagram and TikTok. I
(02:21):
just feel like now the movie poster ranks so low
on the list and the marketing because back in the day,
there used to be artists who would be assigned to
these movie posters to sit in a room and actually
with paint and a brush, paint these images that we
know and love and have been some of the most
historical images for movies of all time. It used to
(02:42):
be a process that there was an art to a
literal R two, But that means they took time and
they took money. Some of the most iconic movie posters
took months to make. But what I loved about it
is that it was an artist's vision on how to
represent that movie in a single image on one poster.
So they would be given scenes from the movie, maybe
(03:02):
in some cases even be allowed to watch the movie,
and then through photographs and through scene references, they would
take all of those and make one single poster. But
now they just feel like they're thrown together pretty quickly,
you throw every floating head you can get on there,
put all the actors' names, put the generic movie logo
on there, and bam, you have your poster. So maybe
(03:24):
the movie poster is the thing of the past and
I just have to let it go. But I want
to share with you my top five movie posters of
all time. These are the five movie posters I would
pick if I had limited space in my wall to
showcase all of my favorite ones. These are the posters
I would put on my wall. At Number five is
the most recent one from twenty nineteen. It is Parasite.
(03:47):
It is my favorite of the last five years. And
the saying goes a picture is worth one thousand words.
I feel like a movie poster should be worth a million,
and frankly now they're worth about one hundred words. But
not when it comes to the Parasite movie poster, which
does all the things that I want it to, and
the main thing being it conveys a sense of mystery
(04:10):
and almost creates this tension in one single image. So
if you're not familiar with the Parasite movie poster, what
you have is a look at the family in Parasite.
You have the main character standing at the front, and
in every character's face, their eyes are blacked out. And
I look at that image and think, I wonder why
their eyes are blacked out. Two characters have black bars
(04:30):
and two other characters have white bars across their eyes.
And then at the bottom of the poster you see
two very pale legs at the bottom, just laying there.
You don't see a face, You just see from about
the kneecapped down, and that creates a sense of mystery.
Why are they laying there? Is that person dead? Is
someone going to die in this movie? Why is the
sun in the background holding this big rock? And why
(04:54):
is there another character where you just see their silhouette
in the mirror their eyes are not blacked out. So
this poster perfectly captures in one single image what this
movie is going to be about, creates that sense of mystery,
and captures that this movie is going to have a
lot of social commentary and also just have suspense throughout
(05:16):
the movie. And just by seeing the title and the
image alone, you almost think this is going to be
more of a horror movie. But through the actual colors
and tones used in the poster, it makes you feel
like it's going to be more of a dramatic thriller.
So this movie poster feels very sophisticated to me. It
feels like a great visual representation of the movie, and
(05:38):
combined with the fact that it's one of the best
movies I've ever seen in my life, that is why
I put Parasite at number five. At number four, I
have teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the movie poster from nineteen
ninety which is referred to as the sewer scene poster.
If you are at a nineties kid, you have for
sure seen this movie poster. What you see in this
(05:59):
image is the four Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Rafael,
and they are all peeking out from an open sewer lid.
And that's just an iconic nineties image and it tells
you exactly what you need to know about the Ninja Turtles.
And this image shows you exactly what this movie is
(06:19):
going to be about. You see the four characters there,
one of the hands holding up the sewer lid as
they are all peeking out, showing you that they live
underground in the sewer and they can only look at
New York City from their perspective because they have to
remain hidden because they are these monstrous figures that even
though they aren't bad, just by looking at them, you
(06:42):
think they are bad. So they have to keep their
identities secret and live in the sewer. I just love
the point of view of this movie poster that you
are seeing it from their level, and you see all
the big New York City skyscrapers looking so huge, with
the Empire State Building being there in the back with
the big monstrous clouds behind it at sunset. I also
(07:04):
love the tagline on this, which I feel like that's
something that movie posters have gotten away from and says, hey, dude,
this is new cartoon because it was the first live
action representation of the Ninja Turtles. And then at the
very bottom it says lean green and on the screen everywhere.
I also loved the expression on the faces of the
Ninja Turtles that on Michaelangelo and Donna Tello you only
(07:25):
see their eyes, but with Leonardo and Raphael you also
get them kind of gritting their teeth and you see
their big old white teeth in this. So it is
just the great image. That is why I put teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles at number four at number three from
nineteen ninety, I have Child's Play two, and this is
a movie poster that scared the crap out of me
(07:47):
as a kid, with Child's Play one being one of
the first movies to ever give me nightmares, Child's Play
two was the only horror movie that the poster alone
gave me nightmares. And I later conquered my fear as
an adult, and I went to Walmart and they had
this exact movie poster on a T shirt and that
is the first ever movie poster T shirt that I
(08:08):
have purchased because it was me getting over my fear.
And I think out of any genre, horror movies just
have the best posters because of the images, because of
the emotion that they convey, the emotion of fear, they
are very impactful on a kid. But I love this
movie poster because it says a lot of things about
our character Chucky, who is a possessed doll, and you
(08:29):
see him in his most vicious face on this poster
with these giant scissors about to cut the neck of
a jack in the box. So with that image, it
gives you the entire picture of what Child's Play too,
is all about a killer doll here murdering another toy.
And then you also have a great tagline to bring
(08:49):
it all together. At the very top of the poster,
it says, sorry, Jack, Chucky's back. So I love this poster.
It conveys perfectly what the horror genre is all about.
Specific to Chucky. I love his wild red hair, his
oshkosh pagosh overalls, and it shows you how violent he is.
And it's a rather simple movie poster but yet has
(09:12):
so much effect. So at number three, I'm going with
Child's Play two from nineteen ninety and number two. Sticking
in the horror movie genre, I have nineteen seventy eight's Halloween,
another movie poster that I still have the T shirt
on this one and every single Halloween I bust out
my Halloween movie poster T shirt because I think it
(09:32):
is the best horror movie poster of all time. This
is one that I would consider getting a tattoo of,
and I'm currently looking for tattoo inspiration. Specifically, I want
a tattoo right now that represents my love of movies.
Halloween would highly be up there, Although I feel like
having a Halloween tattoo feels a little bit like it's
(09:54):
related to a season. I don't want to carry Halloween
with me all year long. Even though I I'm a
darker individual and I love horror movies, I just feel
in my mind that's a bit of a seasonal tattoo.
And even though I feel like horror movies can be
good at any time of the year, you don't have
to just watch them around Halloween. I just feel like
having one on my body would feel like wearing that
(10:15):
T shirt year round, and I only bust it out
around Halloween. So the other one I'm considering and really
moving the needle towards No pun intended, but I'm really
wanting to get a Marvel tattoo. And Spider Man has
been my favorite superhero since I was a kid. So
right now I kind of have this vision drawing board
(10:36):
where I'm just taking all of these images of Spider
Man that I love and trying to find one single
image that represents my love of Spider Man. So once
I kind of have that vision board done, I'm going
to take that to my tattoo artist and see what
they can come up with. My second one that I
was really toying around with was Stanos, and I think
because Stanos represents with one character I loved about that
(11:01):
entire Infinity saga, it would just be kind of different
to get a villain versus a superhero. But I just
haven't loved Thanos as long as I've loved Spider Man.
So those are the two I'm thinking of right now.
If I had to throw a third in there, it
would be Rocket from Guardians at the Galaxy, But that's
probably because I just watched Guardians three and loved that movie.
(11:22):
But anyway, back to the horror movie poster from Halloween
nineteen seventy eight. I love the simplicity of this movie poster.
You get the title of the movie at the very
top in its iconic font, but what it's really all
about is the menacing jack lantern that takes up basically
the entire poster. It's the eerie glow of that Jack
(11:42):
of Lennard that really conveys the entire unsettling tone of
this film. The piercing eyes, of the jagged little triangles
made on this pumpkin that at the very bottom has
these very sharp points. But then on the other end
of the jacka lantern, you have the hand of Michael Myers,
which is all big and strong and veiny, and through
(12:06):
the design of the poster has a similar color tone
to that orange of the pumpkin. So really it's that
leading image of Michael Myers's hand with the knife and
then the Jack o' lantern behind it made to look
like each of the pieces of the pumpkin are also
kitchen knives. And then again you have what I love
about movie posters. It's the one single line to sell it.
(12:29):
The tagline on the Halloween poster is the night he
came home. And this movie poster has stood the test
of time. It's right up there with the Halloween theme
being as long lasting, and just by looking at it,
you know exactly what it is. If you can convey
that message with a single image like this and be
as long lasting as the Halloween movie poster, oh my gosh,
(12:50):
that is what I look for. Let's get back to
this era. So that's my number two Halloween, But at
number one, my favorite movie poster of all time is
from nineteen seventy seven. It is Star Wars a New Hope,
And the one I'm talking about is Tom Jung's nineteen
seventy seven style A poster. So what you see in
(13:12):
this poster is a hand painted image of Luke Skywalker
with his shirt basically ripped open and a very ripped
muscular body is peeking out underneath. He has his hands
up hoisted above his head and you see the image
of his lightsaber going into three different directions. And right
below him you see Princess Leah looking very sophisticated and sexy.
(13:37):
And then in the background you see a small R two,
D two and C three po That's really all you
see on the hero side, but in the back you
have a huge Darth Vader head almost taking up the
entire poster, with a death star right next to him.
At the very top of the poster you have the
tagline A long time ago in a galaxy far far away,
(13:58):
And that's really all you need to know about Star
Wars or this image conveys the entire message that you
are about to get into one of the greatest sci
fi sagas of all time. And then of course at
the very bottom you have the iconic Star Wars font
which I am a big fan of fonts. I will
get on TikTok and just follow all these accounts that
(14:18):
just talk about fonts. I am a stickler for font
and that's when it comes to anything I do, maybe
a light amount of graphic design for my job when
it comes to promo images for our podcast. When it
comes to the actual logo for Movie Mike's Movie Podcast,
I designed that myself. I drew it out on my
(14:38):
iPad because I love fonts so much. I think they're
very important and a very underappreciated aspect of design, and
Star Wars has one of the most iconic logos of
all time, and in this poster, it's actually slightly different
than the one we know. This one, I feel, is
much more seventies. So there are different versions of this poster.
(14:59):
This one's my fa There's another one where it has
more characters. You see Hans solo and at the very
front of that one is Luke Skywalker with the blaster.
I don't like that one as much. I'm talking about
the og original Star Wars poster, and I think that's
because this one, to me, feels like the real piece
of art. It's very eye catching, it's so iconic. I
(15:20):
also love that recently there was another artist on Instagram
who took this same concept and applied it to Guardians
to the Galaxy, showing you how iconic this poster is.
And if you listen to this podcast, you know I'm
a big fan of color palettes, and this one perfectly
utilizes a blue and yellow color palette with that black
just kind of offsetting it. In the back with Darth Vader.
(15:41):
You also have the starships right next to Darth Vader's face,
giving you more a sense of that action, a sense
of those high speed chases and epic battles that'll be
in Star Wars. So I think this is the most
iconic movie poster of all time. I really need to
get my hands on one because in my studio, if
you follow me on Instagram and TikTok, I have an
(16:02):
entire wall behind me filled with primarily movie art and
different things I've collected over the years. And also recently
I've gotten into collecting comic books, so I have a
few comic books that I showcase on the wall. But
I've been looking for just one iconic movie poster I
need in my background, and I realized I don't really
have any Star Wars memorabilia behind there. I think I
(16:25):
have a baby Yoda aka Grogu little figure that I
got once at like a gift shop. But I think
now it is my goal to find a style a
poster from Star Wars that looks legit. Maybe a hand
painted one, maybe an original one, maybe an autographed one.
I think I need that piece on my wall. So
that is my top five. A few honorable mentions I
(16:46):
would throw in there. I love the Honey I Shrunk
the Kids movie poster, and I think that's because as
a kid, I just remember big, fun posters that showed
you very outlandish things, because just with this image, you
know ex exactly what you're getting into. You see Rick
Moranis's face taking up basically the entire poster, and then
seeing all of his kids just there. The size of
(17:07):
ants highly effective when it comes to hand painted posters.
I love the look of the Raiders of the Lost Arc.
Even though that's not one of my favorite movies, that
is one of the most detailed movie posters of all time.
I would also throw in full Metal Jacket. And then
there's some posters that I feel like every teenager had
growing up. When I would go over to someone's house
(17:29):
and they had a movie poster, nine times out of
ten they had a Scarface poster. I love Scarface, but
I never got the fascination with that poster. It seemed
like everybody had it, whether on their wall, whether they
had a T shirt. Some people even had scarface tattoos.
It's a great poster, I just never loved it that much.
Along those same lines as the pulp fiction poster, which
(17:52):
is an iconic image, but it's really just a picture
of Uma Thurman and the credits on there. Yeah, you
have the big yellow pulp fiction font at the top,
but I don't really feel like that poster does anything
for me. I wouldn't put that on my wall. I
wouldn't get it on a T shirt. It's a good poster,
but I don't feel like it's as iconic as everyone
makes that one out to be. But I'll throw it
(18:13):
in as an honorable mention. If you have one you
want to add onto the list, send me a tweet
at Mike Distro or email me moviemke d at gmail
dot com. I will mention a few more. And that
leads us to our interview this week with director Lee Cronin,
who is the director of the new movie in the
Evil Dead franchise, which is available now on Max. It
(18:34):
is called Evil Dead Rise. It is my favorite horror
movie of the year, and I believe horror movies should
be enjoyed year round. So I love that this movie
came out at a time where I was just itching
for a horror movie in a franchise that I love
and I feel is very underappreciated, and no one really
brings it up when talking about the best horror franchises
(18:54):
of all time. So if you haven't seen it yet,
get on Max and go watch it now. We won't
ruin anything in this interview, but it was a real
treat to get to talk to Lee Cronin. He is
known for his work in the horror genre. He was
born in Ireland and started out his career as a
screenwriter and a director of short films before making his
first feature film debut, which was called The Hole in
(19:16):
the Ground that came out in twenty nineteen. He is
really good at storytelling and building tension, and that is
why he has quickly risen as one of the best
directors in the horror genre. So I was really excited
to get to talk to him and about why he
made this movie so terrifying and why he decided to
use so much blood. So again, Evil Dead Rise is
(19:37):
available now on Max. Let's get into our interview now
with director Lee Cronin.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Hey how are you, Lee? Hey, Mike, carry you? I'm good,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh, it's great to get to talk to you. As
a movie reviewer. Every time I go see a movie
out front, I like to take a picture with the
poster and the issue I have now with a lot
of modern movie posters, it's all just a bunch of
floating heads. But I feel like with the Evil Dead
Rise that was not the case. Just by looking at
that poster, I get a sense, so what the movie
story is going to be. I get a sense of
(20:06):
the terror I'm going to get going into it. So
is there a science behind the movie poster?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I think there's definitely a science. Whether it gets applied
all the time remains to be seen. And sometimes it's
a tricky thing to get right because there's a lot
of pathways that you can go. You know. I was
very fortunate. I had a really excellent team that we're
working on this movie, and we're believing in this movie
in Warner Brothers, and they were able to really drill
in and try and get to the core of what
(20:33):
maybe a really striking image was, what the essence of
the film could be, and how to draw people in
closer and make them interested. And I think the art
comes in trying to keep it simple and make it
effective and make it visually appealing, but also to try
and share a little bit of the tone of the movie.
And I think with the main poster and Evil Dead Rise,
that theatrical poster is the fact that you're showing the
(20:54):
kind of clash of seeing something so horrifying, yet why
are these children hugging her? And you know you've got
that tagline Mom loves you to death, so you definitely
want to dig deeper and find out a little bit more,
you know, in terms of what's on the other side.
If you if you open the door to the theater,
walk inside, and go beyond the poster.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, I love it. And when I think of great
movie posters, like in the horror genre, I think of,
you know, Jaws, Halloween, in the Exorcist. For you, what
are your top horror posters?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh wow, you're putting me on the spot now. I well, Jaws,
because Jaws is my favorite movie of all time. It's
not a poster. But I love the consistent artwork for
Evil Dead Too with the skull. That's something that really
stands out to me childhood. And actually in the movie
there is a little Easter egg to that poster that's very,
very subtle that not everybody would have spotted. But I'll
(21:41):
tell you about it right now. Because we're in that world,
I can talk a little bit more openly.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
About I love Easter eggs. Hit me with it.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah, so this is this is a subtle one, but
it was very intentional, which was the fact that that
Obviously that image on the Evil Dead Too artwork is
not in the movie. It's not a shot from the film.
It's a sales idea. But in the film, when Ellie
emerges from the bathroom possessed and pokes her head around
the door, I base the framing of that on the
Evil Dead two poster. So after she's gone into the
(22:09):
bath and done all her crazy screaming and then she
comes back out to surprise the family, if you look
at the angle and dynamic of that shot and the
position of her eyes, it's a direct reference to the
Evil Dead two poster and artwork.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I love that. The other thing I loved about this movie.
That first opening scene, the first maybe twenty minutes of
the movie, I really start to connect with the characters,
and I think sometimes in horror movies they just get
into oh, here's all the blood and guts right away.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, But what.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Changed the level of this movie is like, I care
about their backstory. I care about them getting together. So
what is that kind of balance you have of like, Okay,
I'm going to kind of commit to fleshing out these characters,
even though I know people came here for the horror.
You bought them in with the trailer, Like how do
you balance that?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I think you've got to just try and be true
to those characters and give them enough air to exist
and to feel real. I think that that is really important.
And I remember when I approach this, because I again
understand Evil Dead and what these type of movies need
to be. I knew that I couldn't have extraordinarily elaborate arcs.
You know, there had to be a point in time
where things turned. And maybe it's really Beth in a
(23:10):
lot of ways and Cassie to a certain extent, as
they're accepting what's happening and trying to form this new
little family unit to survive as the film progresses. But
it's funny you talk about structure a lot when you write,
and obviously I wrote the screenplay, and you know, from
that point of view, rather than looking at it as
a traditional three act structure, it was there was three
parts to it. In my mind. There was a really
(23:31):
great opening to the film that would draw people in,
give them a fright, give them some scares, give them
some of that visceral, give them a taste of what
was to come. And then I wanted to go and
spend some time with the family and hopefully have put
people on edge so that then when they spend time
with that family, they're wondering, well, when is this going
to kick in and when is it all going to
go crazy? And so I was comfortable spending time in
(23:53):
that space with that family, getting to know and love
those characters, because then when I turn it and everything
falls apart for the people and the darkness rolls in
and the evil wakes up, what you're kind of facing
them is just that roller coaster, but you're doing it
with people and characters that you care about. That was
the key. So it's not a traditional three act structure,
its structure, but it's still a story in three parts,
(24:15):
which was you know, open that movie and scare the
hell out of people, get them on board, strap them in,
give them people that they love, and then just kid
is shit out of everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, you mentioned the writing process of this, and I
always here to write about what, you know, Like if
I were writing a horror movie, I would write about
like the sleep paralysis, that face when I felt like
there was like a demon on my chest. But for
writing a movie like this, like where do you go
in your mind? Do you like draw from personal experiences?
Do you have like experiences with any kind of like
demonic presence? Where do you go?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I've got all these cheese grater wounds. And again it's
actually back to character in a lot of ways, like
I look to my family and people that I know.
I'm not a parent, I don't have children, but the
three kids in this movie are kind of loosely based
on my sister's three children, for example, So that that
was a place that I looked in terms of character.
And then I actually wrote the film during the very
first COVID lockdown that took place, so I was kind
(25:06):
of trapped in my apartment, and that really aided me
in just looking at the basic trappings of domestic life
and how I could kind of use those. So in
a way, I'm still drawing on quite banal things like
I said, cheese great, or something you use when you're
making a sandwich or you're making lasagna or whatever it
might be. You know, you drink some wine from a glass,
or you play with a toy er, you use a
scissors to cut something, and it might seem obvious, but
(25:27):
I was able to kind of stare at those objects
and think about ways of using them. So again, I
just will always lean into what I know. I've always,
as you know, as a grown up, essentially lived in
an apartment, so also kind of that context of that
place of not knowing who's above, who's below, who's left,
and who's right, and and what might kind of walk
up the corridor in this strange place because you're in
(25:49):
your own little island, locked in a box when you
live in an apartment. So all of those things were
still kind of personal and things that I could lean
into to just try and draw a little bit of
influence out of. Luckily, how haven't faced any real world
demonic possessions yet, but you know.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, maybe for the next movie you get possessed.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I just want to be careful. I don't like,
you know, research something and dabble with the with the
wrong juju that then brings something my way that I
don't want.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
This movie has one of my favorite just single images
when Lily Sullivan has the chainsaw. She's covered in blood.
All you can see is the white of her eyes
and the white of her teeth. Did you have to
fight for the amount of blood used in this movie?
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Not?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Like not in terms of ambition. One of the biggest
battles is actually, like, when you use that volume of blood,
it's pretty expensive. It becomes like a serious budget line
when you're when you're making a film. So it was
finding the right way of making sure we could we
could get all the blood right and use all the
blood the way that we actually like needed to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What was the blood budget?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I actually couldn't tell you how much we spent on it.
I can tell you it was. It was around three
thousand gallons I think, so, which is about in you know,
I'm from Europe, so it's like six and a half
thousand liters. So it was a lot of blood, but
the expense of aspect was I made it clear really
early on that we wouldn't cheat. There was no water
with red food coloring or using something else in color
(27:07):
correcting it. It's like, it's got to be movie blood.
The cast have to suffer in a way, and they
did when they were drenched in all of that sticky
stuff that stick skin together, you lose hair, you can't
walk properly. It's like it's really intense. But it actually
added in a good way to their discomfort because it
made them feel something very very real, and that was important.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That final scene, all the blood coming down the elevator.
It just made me feel whenever you first make the
first trailer for this movie and you put that out,
do you ever worry like this might be a little
bit too scary for just like the general going like
movie person.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
There's always that line, you know, because I wanted this
movie to play to a wide audience, so I guess
we got it right. But there's of course you ask
those questions because there are certain people that just go no, no, no, no,
there's no way I can watch this. But to be fair,
those people also maybe will struggle to watch it one
way or another, and maybe they want to wait and
watch it at home. They're going to struggle to watch
it in a room with a bunch of strangers in
(28:02):
the theater or whatever. But I think you just got
to put your best foot forward. And the goal of
the trailer was to make it entertaining and scary. I
don't think there's a line that's too scary. It's like
it was a comedy. Hey, that trailer was too funny.
The one thing I was really happy with was the
trailer showed people a lot, but there was so much
more to discover. So I remember that you'd always get
comments and the trailer come out, it's like, oh, I
hope they haven't shown everything. And I was kind of
(28:22):
rubbing my hands in the background, going, you kind of
ain't seen nothing yet, because we obviously there's there's quite
a monstrous conclusion to the film, and nobody had a
clue about that until the film came out, and and
a lot of other kind of great kills and stuff
like that. So yeah, I think you've got to make
it scary. You've got to appeal to as wide an
audience as you can, but you've got to try and
push it right out to the line as far as
(28:43):
you can. And again, great team and Warner Brothers. I
think they you know, and you know, really took it
to the right place.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah. I mean, I've never been just scared off a
trailer alone going into a movie, like I felt terrified
in the theater the first time I watched it. So
that was awesome. So I thought the movie was great.
Really great time talking to you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Thank you so much. Nice to speak to you too.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We're gonna get into a spoiler free movie review. Now
let's talk about Disney and Pixar's Elemental which if you're
a frequent listener of this podcast or if you are new,
just know that right now, I kind of have a
love hate relationship with Pixar. And before you say, whoa dude,
you just turned thirty two, of course you're not gonna
like a movie geared towards kids. I feel like every
(29:28):
movie is a piece of art and deserves to be
able to be commented on. That is what I do.
I watch and I review movies, whether it's a big
horror movie, whether it's a high fly in action movie,
or whether it is a movie primarily geared towards kids.
I think there should be something for everybody, and every
piece of art has the right to be discussed, and
(29:49):
that is what I do on this podcast. So yes,
it may be a movie geared towards kids, and I
know I am not the primary demographic for a Pixar
movie like this, but I a also no what made
those original movies great, what I was inspired by as
a kid. Don't have kids myself, but I am speaking
to ten year old eight year old movie Mike what
(30:10):
he loved in Pixar movies and what I've seen in
their trends over time. I just feel like as of late,
their imagination is kind of fizzled out and they are
not only retelling the same stories, which I think is fine.
I think the same stories can be retold so that
kids now can learn the things I learned as a
(30:30):
kid with new characters. That is fine, you can do that.
But Pixar in particular has always been at the cutting
edge of animation and storytelling, and in the last really
three years, in all the movies they've come out with
have it pushed the envelope and they become so much
more abstract that I'm not really able to grasp on
(30:51):
to the story, to the characters, and they don't really
leave a lasting impression that I would have wanted as
a kid. So that is the perspective I am coming
from somebody who wants these movies to be as magical.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Maybe they are to some kids, but I really think
our children deserve better. I'm looking out for the kids, y'all,
because I know someday my future kids, I want them
to experience and have a childhood like me when it
comes to movies, And I don't think it is there
right now, but I think they can get back. Will
this be the movie to do it? And I don't
think so. Elemental was very okay. What the movie is about.
(31:27):
It revolves around this city where fire, water, land, and
air all live together. They are all the residents of
this city. It focuses on a fiery young woman named Ember,
who represents the fire element and she discovers this go
with the flow guy named Wade, who represents the water element.
And Ember is at a point in her life where
(31:48):
she's struggling with her identity. She works at this store
that sells a lot of fire things, and it's one
that her dad built from the ground up. He immigrated
from another world, had nothing. Was they able to build
this store, and now, as he is getting older about
to retire, have her run and operate it. The problem
is she has never had a successful day at running
(32:10):
the store, and Ember has a problem with her temper.
Anytime a customer gets under her skin, she explodes with
rage and fire goes everywhere. So her dad is telling her, yo,
you have to chill out. You have to be in
control of your emotions. You have to deal with these
customers successfully in order to run the business. So Ember
(32:31):
is trying to get her emotions under control, essentially failing
in That leads her to discover Wade, who is a
safety inspector and through her fit of rage, discovers that
the shop has so many violations. He reports them to
his boss and essentially is going to shut down the store.
So this entire movie is them two working together after
(32:54):
he realizes how much the store means to her and
her family, to try and get the store from being condemned.
So this Pixar movie is very much more a slice
of life story when it comes to Pixar and the
movies I tend to enjoy In the Pixar world are
really big adventures. I think of movies like Up. I
think of movies like Coco, where this small little character
(33:16):
goes on a very big journey. This movie was not that,
but it did what it set out to do very well.
And this movie really teaches us a similar lesson that
we got with Zoutopia just less than a decade ago,
not to judge others based on stereotypes, teaching us acceptance
and also teaching us to embrace the things that make
(33:37):
us different and using them to our benefit. And that
is the lesson we learned through the relationship between Ember
and Wade. They are fire and water, two elements that
are not supposed to go together, but they develop this
not only friendship, but really love throughout the movie, and
that is something different that I wasn't expecting here. Elemental
(33:58):
really played out like the first pix Our rom com.
It was these two characters who had every reason to
not be friends, not be together, but really showing their
kind of love story and I thought that was kind
of nice. And through their relationship you also get some
really good visuals in this movie. What I felt like
really shine through in this movie was their use of lighting.
(34:20):
There are some scenes where it's a nighttime city scene,
but they use almost these neon elements to bring this
life to this city. I thought that was a really cool,
fun visual aspect. When it comes to the character designed specifically,
doesn't really feel like Pixar to me, and I think
if they did make every single Pixar movie it look
(34:40):
like the classic animated Pixar style, we know that would
probably get a little bit boring. It just feels a
little too abstract for me to grasp onto these characters.
And I'm not saying that abstract is bad. If it's
done well, it can be really effective. But I just
felt like none of these characters left a lasting impression
on my mind. I don't really want to see them
(35:02):
again on a big screen. The other lesson I thought
was really beneficial to kids in this movie was showing
you that different people come from different backgrounds. Fire in
this case comes from a poorer background, comes from nothing,
which is something I related to. And on the opposite end,
Wade comes from a more wealthy background and has parents
(35:23):
who have connections, and it shows you the differences in
both of their lives and what happens if you bring
those two people together and how that can kind of
clash of one person being like I've had to work
for everything I have in my life and the other
person essentially having things handed to them, and why sometimes
(35:43):
that can be unfair to just assume that somebody who
is rich with parents who have good jobs have essentially
just had things handed to them and that they haven't
had any kind of adversity in their life, which isn't
the case. They also make a commentary with Wade being
very in touch with us emotions, which is another great
lesson for kids. It's okay to cry. Isn't had to
be viewed as a comical thing for somebody just to cry.
(36:06):
So what I'm getting to is this entire movie just
felt very safe to me. They didn't really take any chances.
They didn't really do anything that would make me think
this is the new Pixar franchise that's going to demand
an Elemental two and three. Even if that was the plan,
they didn't really do that with this movie, and within
the first weekend at the box office it would be
(36:28):
considered a flop because they spent two hundred million dollars
on this movie. When everything was said and done, so
that's not only with the production costs in this movie,
but also with marketing, which I find kind of crazy
that they spent that much money on marketing when really
I felt like they did kind of a bad job
with it. The trailer itself did not give me a
(36:49):
sense of the story. The first time I saw the
Elemental trailer, I wasn't in I had no idea what
it was going to be about. Didn't really showcase the
characters to me. So I think think their trailers did
a bad job selling this movie. But also we've been
talking about this entire episode movie posters. The movie poster
was just the water hand and the fire hand wanting
(37:12):
to touch Again. Doesn't really tell you a whole lot
about the story. So I feel like the visuals that
were pretty good in this movie weren't showcased in any
of the marketing tactics, because in the first three day weekend,
it ended up having one of the worst Pixar openings
of all time, making less than thirty million dollars. The
one Pixar movie to have a worse opening weekend than
(37:34):
Elemental was Toy Story from Back in the Day, but
it was a very much different environment for that movie
because Pixar just wasn't what it is now what it
was then when the first Pixar movie came out. So
I would honestly say this leans more towards being the
worst Pixar opening of all time. And I wasn't going
to bring this up, but I've seen so many articles
on it saying the reason this movie flopped is because
(37:56):
it has a non binary character. Everybody wants to make
Disney and Pixar movies political, when that is not the case.
I watched this movie as an adult and I didn't
even pick up on that. I don't think this movie
is trying to push any agenda on kids. I really
think that is the headline meant to sensationalize a non
issue and get a bunch of people riled up and
(38:16):
make people not want to go watch this movie. So
articles like that are really just trying to divide people
and create this kind of hysteria that Disney is awful
and Pixar is awful for some political reason. That is
not the case. So if ever you think I have
a beef with Disney and Pixar because it's a political reason,
that is not me at all. My beef comes down
(38:37):
to the animation, the characters, and the storytelling. So overall,
I don't think it's a bad movie. I just think
it's very okay. But you cannot be putting out an
okay movie in theaters right now when we just had
one of the best animated movies of all time just
a few weeks ago, Spider Man Across the Spider Verse,
(38:58):
which is such an amazing an artistic movie that pushes
the envelope, and then you have this movie just kind
of sitting there, which looks honestly laughable in comparison when
it comes to the art, and Pixart needs to be
the one dominating animation. So I really think the reason
this movie didn't succeed at the box office, and it
may pick up a little bit of steam, it may
(39:19):
end up making some of that money back once it
goes to streaming, once the full numbers come out with
the international box office as well. But with so many
great movies coming out right now in the summer, just
one after another, so many big titles, this one just
kind of got lumped in there. So I do think
it's also a victim of the time it came out
(39:41):
Father's Day weekend. I don't really see a whole lot
of people rushing to see Elemental. It was maybe just
a bunch of dads who got dragged there by accident.
I also don't know how long family friendly movies like
this will have success at the box office. When it's
becoming more and more expensive for a family with three,
four or five kids to go to the movies, and
you're already getting them with their Disney Plus subscription. It's
(40:04):
gonna have to be something really groundbreaking to get most
people to want to spend their money to go watch
an okay movie in theaters that they could just wait
another few months for to watch it home. So maybe
Disney Plus is kind of shooting itself in the foot
with having that option. And you think of other movies
that have had great success on the illumination side, with
(40:26):
the Super Mario Brothers movie not only being the highest
grossing animated movie of the year, but at crossing the
billion dollar mark is just the highest grossing movie overall.
And look at what they did great. They had a bigger,
well known cast, they had a much more fun trailer
movie posters, there were so much more hype around that movie.
(40:46):
But of course they also had a legacy game, one
of the most famous video games of all time, probably
the most iconic video game character we will ever know
with Mario, so that also had the international interest as well.
But Illumination also gets to write with the Minions movie
last year, they had one of the top five highest
grossing movies of the year as well, So maybe Disney
(41:09):
and Pixar needs to start looking at their competitor who
was doing so much better when it comes to just
box office numbers. Are they making better art? No, I
wouldn't say that, but I think they are selling it better,
and they also aren't splitting it between their streaming service.
There's much more of a reason to go watch one
of those movies in theaters than there is to go
watch a Disney Pixar movie. So I left this movie
(41:30):
just thinking, well, that was a cute story, but nothing
I need to write home about, and nothing I think
you need to go see in theaters. You can really
just wait for it to come out on Disney Plus.
So for Elemental, I give it three out of five
water drops.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
It's time to head down to movie Mike Treylor Paul.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I did not know what to expect from Craven the Hunter.
It comes to us from Sony's Spider Verse, who has
his story? Not made the best Marvel movies, I feel
like they haven't made anything completely awful aside from Morbius.
But it's like scratching a niche. I go into a
(42:13):
Marvel movie wanting an it's to be scratched, and it's
the best feeling when you have something that just needs
to be scratched and you scratch it and you feel
completely satisfied. After going into a Sony Marvel movie is
like going into a movie knowing that it's not gonna
fully scratch that itch, you're gonna leave still still need
in that scratch. That is what these movies have done
(42:33):
for me. With movies like Venom one and two, which
I just rewatched for the second time, and as much
as I love Venom, I just can't fully say that
those are good movies. But they're not completely bad movies.
I just feel like they had everything go okay as
far as box office numbers, as far as reception, that
(42:53):
they're not really gonna change a whole lot. But after
the tanking of Morbius, maybe that gave them a little
bit of a differ perspective. Going into another anti hero story. Essentially,
these movies are exploring the villains of Spider Man, who
has the best villains. We'll get into more of that.
Craven the Hunter is coming out on October sixth. Before
I get into my full thoughts, here is just a
(43:15):
little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I mean, if you're show weakness, you will give our enemies.
And opening shot he is weak like his mother, leave him.
What happened that day.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
I stared death in the face for the first time,
I saw my true self. So this movie stars Aaron
Taylor Johnson, who is our anti hero, who is our
protagonist in this movie, and he is seeking revenge against
his father played by Russell Crowe, who essentially in this
trailer leaves him for dead. He is out on a
(44:00):
hunting trip with his father. He ends up getting attacked
by a lion, severely wounding him and in that trailer
you hear Russell Crowe saying he's weak, saying to leave
him behind. And in this trailer you essentially see his
origin story as the blood from the lion drips into
his wounds, giving him this superability to have almost the
(44:22):
same powers of a lion, being able to hunt, being
able to kill, being able to attack, and basically move
around like a lion. So he is the ultimate predator,
and isn't that the most relatable story of all time?
The greatest villain ever you have to face is your
own father, your own flesh and blood. So I think
the premise of this movie actually sounds pretty good of
(44:45):
him not only trying to fight this other super villain,
but that supervillain just happens to be his own father.
Done dun Dune, So I guess I was expecting this
movie to have a similar tone as Venom one and two,
which I feel like with Venom one tried to have
a little bit more of a serious approach. It had
the R rating, but it also had a little bit
(45:06):
of comedy, and I feel like after that first movie,
they decided we should make Venom a little bit more funny,
a little bit more charming, So they really leaned more
into that in Venom two, which I just didn't like
as much. So I'm happy to see that in this
R rated Marvel movie, it looks like they are fully
dedicating to just being a brutal, vicious action movie and
(45:30):
not straying away from the blood and violence. And Marvel
has not only good but great villains, particularly just talking
about in the Spider Verse, you have Craven the Hunter,
who I didn't really know a whole lot about before
this but looks amazing, has a great story. But I'm
talking villains like doc Och, Rhino, Vulture, Green, Goblin, hob Goblin,
(45:53):
Venom is my favorite of all time, and I just
wish that those movies were better. But I'll take it.
I'll take the Sony Spider Verse doing solo movies on
all of these villains, which is really what they are owning,
because Marvel is really split into two categories right now.
You have the Disney MCU side, who just recently got
the rights back to The Incredible Hulk, but there's always
(46:14):
been this divide on who has the rights to what characters,
and on the Sony side, they still have Spider Man
and all, if not most, of his villains. So that
is why we are getting more movies like this, And
so far they haven't made a movie that can compare
to anything in the MCU. They just have a different tone.
They don't really have their vision on what they're trying
to do here, the world they're trying to create I
(46:35):
thought more Vius was going to connect a little bit
more with Spider Man, and that's really what they keep
teasing us with and making us interested, like, oh, we're
gonna give you a little Spider Man, which we know
you love. We're gonna give you a little bit of
Spider Man, and then they kind of take it away
from us and give us just like a quick little
Easter egg, which is fine. But I just know that
our rated superhero movies can be great, so I just
(46:56):
feel like they need to make them better. But in
that this movie already looks fifty times better than Morbius.
It has a more serious tone, it's a little bit
more set in reality, and I think Aaron Taylor Johnson
looks magnificent and he looks perfectly cast as Craven the Hunter.
I loved him recently in Bullet Train. I feel like
kick Ass, which he started, is a very underrated superhero movie,
(47:20):
and he was also great as Quicksilver aka Wanda's brother
in The Avengers Age of Ultron, So I feel like
he has the experience and all the qualities I want
for a lead in this type of movie. So I
think this could be a step in the right direction
for Sony. This movie is coming out on October sixth
this year. After that, they have Madam Webb, which is
(47:40):
coming out on February sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and then
there's another Venom movie that's supposed to come out next
year in October, but that's only if everything keeps coming
out according to plan. And last week, as of now,
it looks like the Spider Man spinout starring Bad Bunny
called El Muerto has been taken off of Sony's release schedule,
(48:03):
and this is probably due to the fact that the
writer's strike is going on right now and they wanted
to make some changes to the script, but they don't
have the ability to do that right now. And then
you have the star Bad Bunny, who is a global
music icon right now about to go on tour, only
has this limited window to get this movie filmed. If
they're not able to make the changes to the script
(48:25):
during the writer's strike, he's going to miss out on
that window because he has to go back out and
tour the world. So you lose your star. So they
may shelve this movie, which I was very interested in
watching because it was supposed to be the first real
Latino lead character in a Marvel movie, elmerto is also
an anti hero. He is a Mexican wrestler who in
(48:46):
the comic books fights Spider Man. I just thought that
was going to be an interesting, fun movie. I mean,
there's another connection with Bullet Train because just like Aaron
Taylor Johnson, Bad Bunny was also in Bullet Train, and
I was curious to see how he would handle a
leading role in a movie. So I had a lot
of my favorite things Bad Bunny, who I'm a fan
of his music, I'm a fan of him as a person.
(49:08):
You have a Spider Man villain getting his origin story,
and then you have the Latino representation, which I was
excited for. But now it looks like it's been ripped
away from me. But that's okay. I'm gonna let it go.
I'm gonna let elmertodae much like the meaning of his name.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And that was this week's edition of Movie Lin.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Tramer Bar And that's gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. Before I go, I gotta give
my listeners shout out of the week. This week's listener
shout out comes to you from my Instagram comments on
my flash review, and it's from Lizzie, who also shared
her review on the movie, and Liz wrote, it was
a giant bummer. I had such high hopes, even though
(49:50):
Ezra Miller is a trash human. Those hopes were dashed
ten minutes into the movie. Once the Hospital Secrets came on,
I knew it wasn't getting any better. Two hours later,
I didn't even stay for the end credits. Such a letdown.
I agree with you, Liz, that opening sequence. Although when
I first watched it, I thought, Okay, they're doing something
different here, but the CGI in that was so weird
(50:12):
and off putting. It gave me this bad taste in
my mouth like that I couldn't get out for the
rest of the movie. And like you, Liz, I wanted
it to get better, and it just never did, even
when Michael Keaton came out. And for the first time,
it was also hard for me to separate the art
from the artist. And Ezra Miller has been accused, has
been arrested of some pretty awful things, and I just
(50:35):
got a sense that they didn't really take a whole
lot of consideration of what they wanted the Flash character
to be in this movie, and the message they wanted
to convey and the tone they wanted to portray. That
I never felt connected with Ezra Miller's Flash, and that
is a big part of a superhero movie. I feel
like they should have recast the Flash. So that's also
(50:57):
how I still feel about this movie. Thank you Liz
for that comment. You are this week's listener of the week.
And oh my gosh, anytime you say anything negative about DC,
you get people coming after you. You should have seen
my dms and comments this week. People telling me I
was dumb, telling me I was hating on a movie
just for the sake of hating on a movie, which
(51:18):
is not the case for me. If you listen to
this podcast, you know in the past I have defended DC.
I still get dragged from my Shazam to review because
I still think that was a pretty good movie. I
enjoyed Shazam two better than Shazam one, and maybe it's
because I had low expectations going into that movie that
I had a lot of fun, and the opposite was
the situation with the Flash that I had such high
(51:40):
expectations that were not met. So I don't go into
any DC movie with any kind of agenda I want
it to be good. I want to believe in DC,
but they just continue to let me down. So I
am not one of those people who just has a
negative opinion about everything DC and jumps on with everybody else.
I don't look at any other reviews before I give
(52:02):
my review for that exact reason I don't do it.
I don't want anybody else to influence me. So just
know I always give you my honest opinions, my honest thoughts,
and I never expect you to agree with everything I say.
I let you know my bias if there ever is one,
I will always just give you my truth. So to
everyone online, assuming they know who I am from one
(52:25):
single clip, much like I do my homework before giving
a review, do your homework on me before you leave
those dumb comments. And until next time, go out and
watch good movies 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 want to share
with you my top five favorite movie posters of all time.
Then we'll get into an interview with director Lee Cronin,
which will continue our discussion of movie posters. But he
is the director of Ewel Dead Rise, one of my
favorite horror movies of the year, so I have so
many questions about that movie, mainly regarding how much money
(00:22):
he spent on blood to get that movie done. In
the movie review, we'll be talking about Pixar's Elemental why
it didn't do so well at the box office despite
me thinking it's actually a pretty good movie. And in
the trailer park, I'll be talking about Craven the Hunter,
which is the new Marvel movie on the Sony side.
There's always so much chaos going on with that side
of Marvel, but this trailer actually looks promising, so we'll
(00:44):
get into that. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for telling a friend. Shout out to the Monday Morning
Movie crew, and now let's talk movies.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
ever before in a movie podcast, a man with so
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
From the Nashville Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I feel like movie posters have gone the way of
the Western. That is my new slogan I'm trying out
on this podcast, the way of the Western, meaning they
are no longer a thing or no longer as popular
as they used to be. And when it comes to
movie posters, they used to be the thing that I
attached with watching that movie. I would always see the
poster first and base my decision on wanting to watch
(01:37):
that movie strictly based on the poster. I remember going
to Walmart, and if you were a nineties early two
thousand kid, they used to have a section where you
would just scroll through with your own hands the physical
copies of these posters that would be displayed in these
big things. And I remember going to that thing and
having so much enjoyment looking at all the movie posters.
But it's the image that you see when you actually
(01:59):
go to the movies out front. It should be the
biggest part of the marketing and packaging of a movie
creating an iconic image that stays with your mind. But
of course the world has changed, technology has changed. I
feel like studios now focus more on the trailer, getting
the views on YouTube and on Instagram and TikTok. I
(02:21):
just feel like now the movie poster ranks so low
on the list and the marketing because back in the day,
there used to be artists who would be assigned to
these movie posters to sit in a room and actually
with paint and a brush, paint these images that we
know and love and have been some of the most
historical images for movies of all time. It used to
(02:42):
be a process that there was an art to a
literal R two, But that means they took time and
they took money. Some of the most iconic movie posters
took months to make. But what I loved about it
is that it was an artist's vision on how to
represent that movie in a single image on one poster.
So they would be given scenes from the movie, maybe
(03:02):
in some cases even be allowed to watch the movie,
and then through photographs and through scene references, they would
take all of those and make one single poster. But
now they just feel like they're thrown together pretty quickly,
you throw every floating head you can get on there,
put all the actors' names, put the generic movie logo
on there, and bam, you have your poster. So maybe
(03:24):
the movie poster is the thing of the past and
I just have to let it go. But I want
to share with you my top five movie posters of
all time. These are the five movie posters I would
pick if I had limited space in my wall to
showcase all of my favorite ones. These are the posters
I would put on my wall. At Number five is
the most recent one from twenty nineteen. It is Parasite.
(03:47):
It is my favorite of the last five years. And
the saying goes a picture is worth one thousand words.
I feel like a movie poster should be worth a million,
and frankly now they're worth about one hundred words. But
not when it comes to the Parasite movie poster, which
does all the things that I want it to, and
the main thing being it conveys a sense of mystery
(04:10):
and almost creates this tension in one single image. So
if you're not familiar with the Parasite movie poster, what
you have is a look at the family in Parasite.
You have the main character standing at the front, and
in every character's face, their eyes are blacked out. And
I look at that image and think, I wonder why
their eyes are blacked out. Two characters have black bars
(04:30):
and two other characters have white bars across their eyes.
And then at the bottom of the poster you see
two very pale legs at the bottom, just laying there.
You don't see a face, You just see from about
the kneecapped down, and that creates a sense of mystery.
Why are they laying there? Is that person dead? Is
someone going to die in this movie? Why is the
sun in the background holding this big rock? And why
(04:54):
is there another character where you just see their silhouette
in the mirror their eyes are not blacked out. So
this poster perfectly captures in one single image what this
movie is going to be about, creates that sense of mystery,
and captures that this movie is going to have a
lot of social commentary and also just have suspense throughout
(05:16):
the movie. And just by seeing the title and the
image alone, you almost think this is going to be
more of a horror movie. But through the actual colors
and tones used in the poster, it makes you feel
like it's going to be more of a dramatic thriller.
So this movie poster feels very sophisticated to me. It
feels like a great visual representation of the movie, and
(05:38):
combined with the fact that it's one of the best
movies I've ever seen in my life, that is why
I put Parasite at number five. At number four, I
have teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the movie poster from nineteen
ninety which is referred to as the sewer scene poster.
If you are at a nineties kid, you have for
sure seen this movie poster. What you see in this
(05:59):
image is the four Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Rafael,
and they are all peeking out from an open sewer lid.
And that's just an iconic nineties image and it tells
you exactly what you need to know about the Ninja Turtles.
And this image shows you exactly what this movie is
(06:19):
going to be about. You see the four characters there,
one of the hands holding up the sewer lid as
they are all peeking out, showing you that they live
underground in the sewer and they can only look at
New York City from their perspective because they have to
remain hidden because they are these monstrous figures that even
though they aren't bad, just by looking at them, you
(06:42):
think they are bad. So they have to keep their
identities secret and live in the sewer. I just love
the point of view of this movie poster that you
are seeing it from their level, and you see all
the big New York City skyscrapers looking so huge, with
the Empire State Building being there in the back with
the big monstrous clouds behind it at sunset. I also
(07:04):
love the tagline on this, which I feel like that's
something that movie posters have gotten away from and says, hey, dude,
this is new cartoon because it was the first live
action representation of the Ninja Turtles. And then at the
very bottom it says lean green and on the screen everywhere.
I also loved the expression on the faces of the
Ninja Turtles that on Michaelangelo and Donna Tello you only
(07:25):
see their eyes, but with Leonardo and Raphael you also
get them kind of gritting their teeth and you see
their big old white teeth in this. So it is
just the great image. That is why I put teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles at number four at number three from
nineteen ninety, I have Child's Play two, and this is
a movie poster that scared the crap out of me
(07:47):
as a kid, with Child's Play one being one of
the first movies to ever give me nightmares, Child's Play
two was the only horror movie that the poster alone
gave me nightmares. And I later conquered my fear as
an adult, and I went to Walmart and they had
this exact movie poster on a T shirt and that
is the first ever movie poster T shirt that I
(08:08):
have purchased because it was me getting over my fear.
And I think out of any genre, horror movies just
have the best posters because of the images, because of
the emotion that they convey, the emotion of fear, they
are very impactful on a kid. But I love this
movie poster because it says a lot of things about
our character Chucky, who is a possessed doll, and you
(08:29):
see him in his most vicious face on this poster
with these giant scissors about to cut the neck of
a jack in the box. So with that image, it
gives you the entire picture of what Child's Play too,
is all about a killer doll here murdering another toy.
And then you also have a great tagline to bring
(08:49):
it all together. At the very top of the poster,
it says, sorry, Jack, Chucky's back. So I love this poster.
It conveys perfectly what the horror genre is all about.
Specific to Chucky. I love his wild red hair, his
oshkosh pagosh overalls, and it shows you how violent he is.
And it's a rather simple movie poster but yet has
(09:12):
so much effect. So at number three, I'm going with
Child's Play two from nineteen ninety and number two. Sticking
in the horror movie genre, I have nineteen seventy eight's Halloween,
another movie poster that I still have the T shirt
on this one and every single Halloween I bust out
my Halloween movie poster T shirt because I think it
(09:32):
is the best horror movie poster of all time. This
is one that I would consider getting a tattoo of,
and I'm currently looking for tattoo inspiration. Specifically, I want
a tattoo right now that represents my love of movies.
Halloween would highly be up there, Although I feel like
having a Halloween tattoo feels a little bit like it's
(09:54):
related to a season. I don't want to carry Halloween
with me all year long. Even though I I'm a
darker individual and I love horror movies, I just feel
in my mind that's a bit of a seasonal tattoo.
And even though I feel like horror movies can be
good at any time of the year, you don't have
to just watch them around Halloween. I just feel like
having one on my body would feel like wearing that
(10:15):
T shirt year round, and I only bust it out
around Halloween. So the other one I'm considering and really
moving the needle towards No pun intended, but I'm really
wanting to get a Marvel tattoo. And Spider Man has
been my favorite superhero since I was a kid. So
right now I kind of have this vision drawing board
(10:36):
where I'm just taking all of these images of Spider
Man that I love and trying to find one single
image that represents my love of Spider Man. So once
I kind of have that vision board done, I'm going
to take that to my tattoo artist and see what
they can come up with. My second one that I
was really toying around with was Stanos, and I think
because Stanos represents with one character I loved about that
(11:01):
entire Infinity saga, it would just be kind of different
to get a villain versus a superhero. But I just
haven't loved Thanos as long as I've loved Spider Man.
So those are the two I'm thinking of right now.
If I had to throw a third in there, it
would be Rocket from Guardians at the Galaxy, But that's
probably because I just watched Guardians three and loved that movie.
(11:22):
But anyway, back to the horror movie poster from Halloween
nineteen seventy eight. I love the simplicity of this movie poster.
You get the title of the movie at the very
top in its iconic font, but what it's really all
about is the menacing jack lantern that takes up basically
the entire poster. It's the eerie glow of that Jack
(11:42):
of Lennard that really conveys the entire unsettling tone of
this film. The piercing eyes, of the jagged little triangles
made on this pumpkin that at the very bottom has
these very sharp points. But then on the other end
of the jacka lantern, you have the hand of Michael Myers,
which is all big and strong and veiny, and through
(12:06):
the design of the poster has a similar color tone
to that orange of the pumpkin. So really it's that
leading image of Michael Myers's hand with the knife and
then the Jack o' lantern behind it made to look
like each of the pieces of the pumpkin are also
kitchen knives. And then again you have what I love
about movie posters. It's the one single line to sell it.
(12:29):
The tagline on the Halloween poster is the night he
came home. And this movie poster has stood the test
of time. It's right up there with the Halloween theme
being as long lasting, and just by looking at it,
you know exactly what it is. If you can convey
that message with a single image like this and be
as long lasting as the Halloween movie poster, oh my gosh,
(12:50):
that is what I look for. Let's get back to
this era. So that's my number two Halloween, But at
number one, my favorite movie poster of all time is
from nineteen seventy seven. It is Star Wars a New Hope,
And the one I'm talking about is Tom Jung's nineteen
seventy seven style A poster. So what you see in
(13:12):
this poster is a hand painted image of Luke Skywalker
with his shirt basically ripped open and a very ripped
muscular body is peeking out underneath. He has his hands
up hoisted above his head and you see the image
of his lightsaber going into three different directions. And right
below him you see Princess Leah looking very sophisticated and sexy.
(13:37):
And then in the background you see a small R two,
D two and C three po That's really all you
see on the hero side, but in the back you
have a huge Darth Vader head almost taking up the
entire poster, with a death star right next to him.
At the very top of the poster you have the
tagline A long time ago in a galaxy far far away,
(13:58):
And that's really all you need to know about Star
Wars or this image conveys the entire message that you
are about to get into one of the greatest sci
fi sagas of all time. And then of course at
the very bottom you have the iconic Star Wars font
which I am a big fan of fonts. I will
get on TikTok and just follow all these accounts that
(14:18):
just talk about fonts. I am a stickler for font
and that's when it comes to anything I do, maybe
a light amount of graphic design for my job when
it comes to promo images for our podcast. When it
comes to the actual logo for Movie Mike's Movie Podcast,
I designed that myself. I drew it out on my
(14:38):
iPad because I love fonts so much. I think they're
very important and a very underappreciated aspect of design, and
Star Wars has one of the most iconic logos of
all time, and in this poster, it's actually slightly different
than the one we know. This one, I feel, is
much more seventies. So there are different versions of this poster.
(14:59):
This one's my fa There's another one where it has
more characters. You see Hans solo and at the very
front of that one is Luke Skywalker with the blaster.
I don't like that one as much. I'm talking about
the og original Star Wars poster, and I think that's
because this one, to me, feels like the real piece
of art. It's very eye catching, it's so iconic. I
(15:20):
also love that recently there was another artist on Instagram
who took this same concept and applied it to Guardians
to the Galaxy, showing you how iconic this poster is.
And if you listen to this podcast, you know I'm
a big fan of color palettes, and this one perfectly
utilizes a blue and yellow color palette with that black
just kind of offsetting it. In the back with Darth Vader.
(15:41):
You also have the starships right next to Darth Vader's face,
giving you more a sense of that action, a sense
of those high speed chases and epic battles that'll be
in Star Wars. So I think this is the most
iconic movie poster of all time. I really need to
get my hands on one because in my studio, if
you follow me on Instagram and TikTok, I have an
(16:02):
entire wall behind me filled with primarily movie art and
different things I've collected over the years. And also recently
I've gotten into collecting comic books, so I have a
few comic books that I showcase on the wall. But
I've been looking for just one iconic movie poster I
need in my background, and I realized I don't really
have any Star Wars memorabilia behind there. I think I
(16:25):
have a baby Yoda aka Grogu little figure that I
got once at like a gift shop. But I think
now it is my goal to find a style a
poster from Star Wars that looks legit. Maybe a hand
painted one, maybe an original one, maybe an autographed one.
I think I need that piece on my wall. So
that is my top five. A few honorable mentions I
(16:46):
would throw in there. I love the Honey I Shrunk
the Kids movie poster, and I think that's because as
a kid, I just remember big, fun posters that showed
you very outlandish things, because just with this image, you
know ex exactly what you're getting into. You see Rick
Moranis's face taking up basically the entire poster, and then
seeing all of his kids just there. The size of
(17:07):
ants highly effective when it comes to hand painted posters.
I love the look of the Raiders of the Lost Arc.
Even though that's not one of my favorite movies, that
is one of the most detailed movie posters of all time.
I would also throw in full Metal Jacket. And then
there's some posters that I feel like every teenager had
growing up. When I would go over to someone's house
(17:29):
and they had a movie poster, nine times out of
ten they had a Scarface poster. I love Scarface, but
I never got the fascination with that poster. It seemed
like everybody had it, whether on their wall, whether they
had a T shirt. Some people even had scarface tattoos.
It's a great poster, I just never loved it that much.
Along those same lines as the pulp fiction poster, which
(17:52):
is an iconic image, but it's really just a picture
of Uma Thurman and the credits on there. Yeah, you
have the big yellow pulp fiction font at the top,
but I don't really feel like that poster does anything
for me. I wouldn't put that on my wall. I
wouldn't get it on a T shirt. It's a good poster,
but I don't feel like it's as iconic as everyone
makes that one out to be. But I'll throw it
(18:13):
in as an honorable mention. If you have one you
want to add onto the list, send me a tweet
at Mike Distro or email me moviemke d at gmail
dot com. I will mention a few more. And that
leads us to our interview this week with director Lee Cronin,
who is the director of the new movie in the
Evil Dead franchise, which is available now on Max. It
(18:34):
is called Evil Dead Rise. It is my favorite horror
movie of the year, and I believe horror movies should
be enjoyed year round. So I love that this movie
came out at a time where I was just itching
for a horror movie in a franchise that I love
and I feel is very underappreciated, and no one really
brings it up when talking about the best horror franchises
(18:54):
of all time. So if you haven't seen it yet,
get on Max and go watch it now. We won't
ruin anything in this interview, but it was a real
treat to get to talk to Lee Cronin. He is
known for his work in the horror genre. He was
born in Ireland and started out his career as a
screenwriter and a director of short films before making his
first feature film debut, which was called The Hole in
(19:16):
the Ground that came out in twenty nineteen. He is
really good at storytelling and building tension, and that is
why he has quickly risen as one of the best
directors in the horror genre. So I was really excited
to get to talk to him and about why he
made this movie so terrifying and why he decided to
use so much blood. So again, Evil Dead Rise is
(19:37):
available now on Max. Let's get into our interview now
with director Lee Cronin.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Hey how are you, Lee? Hey, Mike, carry you? I'm good,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Oh, it's great to get to talk to you. As
a movie reviewer. Every time I go see a movie
out front, I like to take a picture with the
poster and the issue I have now with a lot
of modern movie posters, it's all just a bunch of
floating heads. But I feel like with the Evil Dead
Rise that was not the case. Just by looking at
that poster, I get a sense, so what the movie
story is going to be. I get a sense of
(20:06):
the terror I'm going to get going into it. So
is there a science behind the movie poster?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I think there's definitely a science. Whether it gets applied
all the time remains to be seen. And sometimes it's
a tricky thing to get right because there's a lot
of pathways that you can go. You know. I was
very fortunate. I had a really excellent team that we're
working on this movie, and we're believing in this movie
in Warner Brothers, and they were able to really drill
in and try and get to the core of what
(20:33):
maybe a really striking image was, what the essence of
the film could be, and how to draw people in
closer and make them interested. And I think the art
comes in trying to keep it simple and make it
effective and make it visually appealing, but also to try
and share a little bit of the tone of the movie.
And I think with the main poster and Evil Dead Rise,
that theatrical poster is the fact that you're showing the
(20:54):
kind of clash of seeing something so horrifying, yet why
are these children hugging her? And you know you've got
that tagline Mom loves you to death, so you definitely
want to dig deeper and find out a little bit more,
you know, in terms of what's on the other side.
If you if you open the door to the theater,
walk inside, and go beyond the poster.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, I love it. And when I think of great
movie posters, like in the horror genre, I think of,
you know, Jaws, Halloween, in the Exorcist. For you, what
are your top horror posters?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh wow, you're putting me on the spot now. I well, Jaws,
because Jaws is my favorite movie of all time. It's
not a poster. But I love the consistent artwork for
Evil Dead Too with the skull. That's something that really
stands out to me childhood. And actually in the movie
there is a little Easter egg to that poster that's very,
very subtle that not everybody would have spotted. But I'll
(21:41):
tell you about it right now. Because we're in that world,
I can talk a little bit more openly.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
About I love Easter eggs. Hit me with it.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yeah, so this is this is a subtle one, but
it was very intentional, which was the fact that that
Obviously that image on the Evil Dead Too artwork is
not in the movie. It's not a shot from the film.
It's a sales idea. But in the film, when Ellie
emerges from the bathroom possessed and pokes her head around
the door, I base the framing of that on the
Evil Dead two poster. So after she's gone into the
(22:09):
bath and done all her crazy screaming and then she
comes back out to surprise the family, if you look
at the angle and dynamic of that shot and the
position of her eyes, it's a direct reference to the
Evil Dead two poster and artwork.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I love that. The other thing I loved about this movie.
That first opening scene, the first maybe twenty minutes of
the movie, I really start to connect with the characters,
and I think sometimes in horror movies they just get
into oh, here's all the blood and guts right away.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, But what.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Changed the level of this movie is like, I care
about their backstory. I care about them getting together. So
what is that kind of balance you have of like, Okay,
I'm going to kind of commit to fleshing out these characters,
even though I know people came here for the horror.
You bought them in with the trailer, Like how do
you balance that?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I think you've got to just try and be true
to those characters and give them enough air to exist
and to feel real. I think that that is really important.
And I remember when I approach this, because I again
understand Evil Dead and what these type of movies need
to be. I knew that I couldn't have extraordinarily elaborate arcs.
You know, there had to be a point in time
where things turned. And maybe it's really Beth in a
(23:10):
lot of ways and Cassie to a certain extent, as
they're accepting what's happening and trying to form this new
little family unit to survive as the film progresses. But
it's funny you talk about structure a lot when you write,
and obviously I wrote the screenplay, and you know, from
that point of view, rather than looking at it as
a traditional three act structure, it was there was three
parts to it. In my mind. There was a really
(23:31):
great opening to the film that would draw people in,
give them a fright, give them some scares, give them
some of that visceral, give them a taste of what
was to come. And then I wanted to go and
spend some time with the family and hopefully have put
people on edge so that then when they spend time
with that family, they're wondering, well, when is this going
to kick in and when is it all going to
go crazy? And so I was comfortable spending time in
(23:53):
that space with that family, getting to know and love
those characters, because then when I turn it and everything
falls apart for the people and the darkness rolls in
and the evil wakes up, what you're kind of facing
them is just that roller coaster, but you're doing it
with people and characters that you care about. That was
the key. So it's not a traditional three act structure,
its structure, but it's still a story in three parts,
(24:15):
which was you know, open that movie and scare the
hell out of people, get them on board, strap them in,
give them people that they love, and then just kid
is shit out of everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, you mentioned the writing process of this, and I
always here to write about what, you know, Like if
I were writing a horror movie, I would write about
like the sleep paralysis, that face when I felt like
there was like a demon on my chest. But for
writing a movie like this, like where do you go
in your mind? Do you like draw from personal experiences?
Do you have like experiences with any kind of like
demonic presence? Where do you go?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I've got all these cheese grater wounds. And again it's
actually back to character in a lot of ways, like
I look to my family and people that I know.
I'm not a parent, I don't have children, but the
three kids in this movie are kind of loosely based
on my sister's three children, for example, So that that
was a place that I looked in terms of character.
And then I actually wrote the film during the very
first COVID lockdown that took place, so I was kind
(25:06):
of trapped in my apartment, and that really aided me
in just looking at the basic trappings of domestic life
and how I could kind of use those. So in
a way, I'm still drawing on quite banal things like
I said, cheese great, or something you use when you're
making a sandwich or you're making lasagna or whatever it
might be. You know, you drink some wine from a glass,
or you play with a toy er, you use a
scissors to cut something, and it might seem obvious, but
(25:27):
I was able to kind of stare at those objects
and think about ways of using them. So again, I
just will always lean into what I know. I've always,
as you know, as a grown up, essentially lived in
an apartment, so also kind of that context of that
place of not knowing who's above, who's below, who's left,
and who's right, and and what might kind of walk
up the corridor in this strange place because you're in
(25:49):
your own little island, locked in a box when you
live in an apartment. So all of those things were
still kind of personal and things that I could lean
into to just try and draw a little bit of
influence out of. Luckily, how haven't faced any real world
demonic possessions yet, but you know.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, maybe for the next movie you get possessed.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I just want to be careful. I don't like,
you know, research something and dabble with the with the
wrong juju that then brings something my way that I
don't want.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
This movie has one of my favorite just single images
when Lily Sullivan has the chainsaw. She's covered in blood.
All you can see is the white of her eyes
and the white of her teeth. Did you have to
fight for the amount of blood used in this movie?
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Not?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Like not in terms of ambition. One of the biggest
battles is actually, like, when you use that volume of blood,
it's pretty expensive. It becomes like a serious budget line
when you're when you're making a film. So it was
finding the right way of making sure we could we
could get all the blood right and use all the
blood the way that we actually like needed to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What was the blood budget?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I actually couldn't tell you how much we spent on it.
I can tell you it was. It was around three
thousand gallons I think, so, which is about in you know,
I'm from Europe, so it's like six and a half
thousand liters. So it was a lot of blood, but
the expense of aspect was I made it clear really
early on that we wouldn't cheat. There was no water
with red food coloring or using something else in color
(27:07):
correcting it. It's like, it's got to be movie blood.
The cast have to suffer in a way, and they
did when they were drenched in all of that sticky
stuff that stick skin together, you lose hair, you can't
walk properly. It's like it's really intense. But it actually
added in a good way to their discomfort because it
made them feel something very very real, and that was important.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
That final scene, all the blood coming down the elevator.
It just made me feel whenever you first make the
first trailer for this movie and you put that out,
do you ever worry like this might be a little
bit too scary for just like the general going like
movie person.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
There's always that line, you know, because I wanted this
movie to play to a wide audience, so I guess
we got it right. But there's of course you ask
those questions because there are certain people that just go no, no, no, no,
there's no way I can watch this. But to be fair,
those people also maybe will struggle to watch it one
way or another, and maybe they want to wait and
watch it at home. They're going to struggle to watch
it in a room with a bunch of strangers in
(28:02):
the theater or whatever. But I think you just got
to put your best foot forward. And the goal of
the trailer was to make it entertaining and scary. I
don't think there's a line that's too scary. It's like
it was a comedy. Hey, that trailer was too funny.
The one thing I was really happy with was the
trailer showed people a lot, but there was so much
more to discover. So I remember that you'd always get
comments and the trailer come out, it's like, oh, I
hope they haven't shown everything. And I was kind of
(28:22):
rubbing my hands in the background, going, you kind of
ain't seen nothing yet, because we obviously there's there's quite
a monstrous conclusion to the film, and nobody had a
clue about that until the film came out, and and
a lot of other kind of great kills and stuff
like that. So yeah, I think you've got to make
it scary. You've got to appeal to as wide an
audience as you can, but you've got to try and
push it right out to the line as far as
(28:43):
you can. And again, great team and Warner Brothers. I
think they you know, and you know, really took it
to the right place.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah. I mean, I've never been just scared off a
trailer alone going into a movie, like I felt terrified
in the theater the first time I watched it. So
that was awesome. So I thought the movie was great.
Really great time talking to you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Thank you so much. Nice to speak to you too.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We're gonna get into a spoiler free movie review. Now
let's talk about Disney and Pixar's Elemental which if you're
a frequent listener of this podcast or if you are new,
just know that right now, I kind of have a
love hate relationship with Pixar. And before you say, whoa dude,
you just turned thirty two, of course you're not gonna
like a movie geared towards kids. I feel like every
(29:28):
movie is a piece of art and deserves to be
able to be commented on. That is what I do.
I watch and I review movies, whether it's a big
horror movie, whether it's a high fly in action movie,
or whether it is a movie primarily geared towards kids.
I think there should be something for everybody, and every
piece of art has the right to be discussed, and
(29:49):
that is what I do on this podcast. So yes,
it may be a movie geared towards kids, and I
know I am not the primary demographic for a Pixar
movie like this, but I a also no what made
those original movies great, what I was inspired by as
a kid. Don't have kids myself, but I am speaking
to ten year old eight year old movie Mike what
(30:10):
he loved in Pixar movies and what I've seen in
their trends over time. I just feel like as of late,
their imagination is kind of fizzled out and they are
not only retelling the same stories, which I think is fine.
I think the same stories can be retold so that
kids now can learn the things I learned as a
(30:30):
kid with new characters. That is fine, you can do that.
But Pixar in particular has always been at the cutting
edge of animation and storytelling, and in the last really
three years, in all the movies they've come out with
have it pushed the envelope and they become so much
more abstract that I'm not really able to grasp on
(30:51):
to the story, to the characters, and they don't really
leave a lasting impression that I would have wanted as
a kid. So that is the perspective I am coming
from somebody who wants these movies to be as magical.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Maybe they are to some kids, but I really think
our children deserve better. I'm looking out for the kids, y'all,
because I know someday my future kids, I want them
to experience and have a childhood like me when it
comes to movies, And I don't think it is there
right now, but I think they can get back. Will
this be the movie to do it? And I don't
think so. Elemental was very okay. What the movie is about.
(31:27):
It revolves around this city where fire, water, land, and
air all live together. They are all the residents of
this city. It focuses on a fiery young woman named Ember,
who represents the fire element and she discovers this go
with the flow guy named Wade, who represents the water element.
And Ember is at a point in her life where
(31:48):
she's struggling with her identity. She works at this store
that sells a lot of fire things, and it's one
that her dad built from the ground up. He immigrated
from another world, had nothing. Was they able to build
this store, and now, as he is getting older about
to retire, have her run and operate it. The problem
is she has never had a successful day at running
(32:10):
the store, and Ember has a problem with her temper.
Anytime a customer gets under her skin, she explodes with
rage and fire goes everywhere. So her dad is telling her, yo,
you have to chill out. You have to be in
control of your emotions. You have to deal with these
customers successfully in order to run the business. So Ember
(32:31):
is trying to get her emotions under control, essentially failing
in That leads her to discover Wade, who is a
safety inspector and through her fit of rage, discovers that
the shop has so many violations. He reports them to
his boss and essentially is going to shut down the store.
So this entire movie is them two working together after
(32:54):
he realizes how much the store means to her and
her family, to try and get the store from being condemned.
So this Pixar movie is very much more a slice
of life story when it comes to Pixar and the
movies I tend to enjoy In the Pixar world are
really big adventures. I think of movies like Up. I
think of movies like Coco, where this small little character
(33:16):
goes on a very big journey. This movie was not that,
but it did what it set out to do very well.
And this movie really teaches us a similar lesson that
we got with Zoutopia just less than a decade ago,
not to judge others based on stereotypes, teaching us acceptance
and also teaching us to embrace the things that make
(33:37):
us different and using them to our benefit. And that
is the lesson we learned through the relationship between Ember
and Wade. They are fire and water, two elements that
are not supposed to go together, but they develop this
not only friendship, but really love throughout the movie, and
that is something different that I wasn't expecting here. Elemental
(33:58):
really played out like the first pix Our rom com.
It was these two characters who had every reason to
not be friends, not be together, but really showing their
kind of love story and I thought that was kind
of nice. And through their relationship you also get some
really good visuals in this movie. What I felt like
really shine through in this movie was their use of lighting.
(34:20):
There are some scenes where it's a nighttime city scene,
but they use almost these neon elements to bring this
life to this city. I thought that was a really cool,
fun visual aspect. When it comes to the character designed specifically,
doesn't really feel like Pixar to me, and I think
if they did make every single Pixar movie it look
(34:40):
like the classic animated Pixar style, we know that would
probably get a little bit boring. It just feels a
little too abstract for me to grasp onto these characters.
And I'm not saying that abstract is bad. If it's
done well, it can be really effective. But I just
felt like none of these characters left a lasting impression
on my mind. I don't really want to see them
(35:02):
again on a big screen. The other lesson I thought
was really beneficial to kids in this movie was showing
you that different people come from different backgrounds. Fire in
this case comes from a poorer background, comes from nothing,
which is something I related to. And on the opposite end,
Wade comes from a more wealthy background and has parents
(35:23):
who have connections, and it shows you the differences in
both of their lives and what happens if you bring
those two people together and how that can kind of
clash of one person being like I've had to work
for everything I have in my life and the other
person essentially having things handed to them, and why sometimes
(35:43):
that can be unfair to just assume that somebody who
is rich with parents who have good jobs have essentially
just had things handed to them and that they haven't
had any kind of adversity in their life, which isn't
the case. They also make a commentary with Wade being
very in touch with us emotions, which is another great
lesson for kids. It's okay to cry. Isn't had to
be viewed as a comical thing for somebody just to cry.
(36:06):
So what I'm getting to is this entire movie just
felt very safe to me. They didn't really take any chances.
They didn't really do anything that would make me think
this is the new Pixar franchise that's going to demand
an Elemental two and three. Even if that was the plan,
they didn't really do that with this movie, and within
the first weekend at the box office it would be
(36:28):
considered a flop because they spent two hundred million dollars
on this movie. When everything was said and done, so
that's not only with the production costs in this movie,
but also with marketing, which I find kind of crazy
that they spent that much money on marketing when really
I felt like they did kind of a bad job
with it. The trailer itself did not give me a
(36:49):
sense of the story. The first time I saw the
Elemental trailer, I wasn't in I had no idea what
it was going to be about. Didn't really showcase the
characters to me. So I think think their trailers did
a bad job selling this movie. But also we've been
talking about this entire episode movie posters. The movie poster
was just the water hand and the fire hand wanting
(37:12):
to touch Again. Doesn't really tell you a whole lot
about the story. So I feel like the visuals that
were pretty good in this movie weren't showcased in any
of the marketing tactics, because in the first three day weekend,
it ended up having one of the worst Pixar openings
of all time, making less than thirty million dollars. The
one Pixar movie to have a worse opening weekend than
(37:34):
Elemental was Toy Story from Back in the Day, but
it was a very much different environment for that movie
because Pixar just wasn't what it is now what it
was then when the first Pixar movie came out. So
I would honestly say this leans more towards being the
worst Pixar opening of all time. And I wasn't going
to bring this up, but I've seen so many articles
on it saying the reason this movie flopped is because
(37:56):
it has a non binary character. Everybody wants to make
Disney and Pixar movies political, when that is not the case.
I watched this movie as an adult and I didn't
even pick up on that. I don't think this movie
is trying to push any agenda on kids. I really
think that is the headline meant to sensationalize a non
issue and get a bunch of people riled up and
(38:16):
make people not want to go watch this movie. So
articles like that are really just trying to divide people
and create this kind of hysteria that Disney is awful
and Pixar is awful for some political reason. That is
not the case. So if ever you think I have
a beef with Disney and Pixar because it's a political reason,
that is not me at all. My beef comes down
(38:37):
to the animation, the characters, and the storytelling. So overall,
I don't think it's a bad movie. I just think
it's very okay. But you cannot be putting out an
okay movie in theaters right now when we just had
one of the best animated movies of all time just
a few weeks ago, Spider Man Across the Spider Verse,
(38:58):
which is such an amazing an artistic movie that pushes
the envelope, and then you have this movie just kind
of sitting there, which looks honestly laughable in comparison when
it comes to the art, and Pixart needs to be
the one dominating animation. So I really think the reason
this movie didn't succeed at the box office, and it
may pick up a little bit of steam, it may
(39:19):
end up making some of that money back once it
goes to streaming, once the full numbers come out with
the international box office as well. But with so many
great movies coming out right now in the summer, just
one after another, so many big titles, this one just
kind of got lumped in there. So I do think
it's also a victim of the time it came out
(39:41):
Father's Day weekend. I don't really see a whole lot
of people rushing to see Elemental. It was maybe just
a bunch of dads who got dragged there by accident.
I also don't know how long family friendly movies like
this will have success at the box office. When it's
becoming more and more expensive for a family with three,
four or five kids to go to the movies, and
you're already getting them with their Disney Plus subscription. It's
(40:04):
gonna have to be something really groundbreaking to get most
people to want to spend their money to go watch
an okay movie in theaters that they could just wait
another few months for to watch it home. So maybe
Disney Plus is kind of shooting itself in the foot
with having that option. And you think of other movies
that have had great success on the illumination side, with
(40:26):
the Super Mario Brothers movie not only being the highest
grossing animated movie of the year, but at crossing the
billion dollar mark is just the highest grossing movie overall.
And look at what they did great. They had a bigger,
well known cast, they had a much more fun trailer
movie posters, there were so much more hype around that movie.
(40:46):
But of course they also had a legacy game, one
of the most famous video games of all time, probably
the most iconic video game character we will ever know
with Mario, so that also had the international interest as well.
But Illumination also gets to write with the Minions movie
last year, they had one of the top five highest
grossing movies of the year as well, So maybe Disney
(41:09):
and Pixar needs to start looking at their competitor who
was doing so much better when it comes to just
box office numbers. Are they making better art? No, I
wouldn't say that, but I think they are selling it better,
and they also aren't splitting it between their streaming service.
There's much more of a reason to go watch one
of those movies in theaters than there is to go
watch a Disney Pixar movie. So I left this movie
(41:30):
just thinking, well, that was a cute story, but nothing
I need to write home about, and nothing I think
you need to go see in theaters. You can really
just wait for it to come out on Disney Plus.
So for Elemental, I give it three out of five
water drops.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
It's time to head down to movie Mike Treylor Paul.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I did not know what to expect from Craven the Hunter.
It comes to us from Sony's Spider Verse, who has
his story? Not made the best Marvel movies, I feel
like they haven't made anything completely awful aside from Morbius.
But it's like scratching a niche. I go into a
(42:13):
Marvel movie wanting an it's to be scratched, and it's
the best feeling when you have something that just needs
to be scratched and you scratch it and you feel
completely satisfied. After going into a Sony Marvel movie is
like going into a movie knowing that it's not gonna
fully scratch that itch, you're gonna leave still still need
in that scratch. That is what these movies have done
(42:33):
for me. With movies like Venom one and two, which
I just rewatched for the second time, and as much
as I love Venom, I just can't fully say that
those are good movies. But they're not completely bad movies.
I just feel like they had everything go okay as
far as box office numbers, as far as reception, that
(42:53):
they're not really gonna change a whole lot. But after
the tanking of Morbius, maybe that gave them a little
bit of a differ perspective. Going into another anti hero story. Essentially,
these movies are exploring the villains of Spider Man, who
has the best villains. We'll get into more of that.
Craven the Hunter is coming out on October sixth. Before
I get into my full thoughts, here is just a
(43:15):
little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I mean, if you're show weakness, you will give our enemies.
And opening shot he is weak like his mother, leave him.
What happened that day.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
I stared death in the face for the first time,
I saw my true self. So this movie stars Aaron
Taylor Johnson, who is our anti hero, who is our
protagonist in this movie, and he is seeking revenge against
his father played by Russell Crowe, who essentially in this
trailer leaves him for dead. He is out on a
(44:00):
hunting trip with his father. He ends up getting attacked
by a lion, severely wounding him and in that trailer
you hear Russell Crowe saying he's weak, saying to leave
him behind. And in this trailer you essentially see his
origin story as the blood from the lion drips into
his wounds, giving him this superability to have almost the
(44:22):
same powers of a lion, being able to hunt, being
able to kill, being able to attack, and basically move
around like a lion. So he is the ultimate predator,
and isn't that the most relatable story of all time?
The greatest villain ever you have to face is your
own father, your own flesh and blood. So I think
the premise of this movie actually sounds pretty good of
(44:45):
him not only trying to fight this other super villain,
but that supervillain just happens to be his own father.
Done dun Dune, So I guess I was expecting this
movie to have a similar tone as Venom one and two,
which I feel like with Venom one tried to have
a little bit more of a serious approach. It had
the R rating, but it also had a little bit
(45:06):
of comedy, and I feel like after that first movie,
they decided we should make Venom a little bit more funny,
a little bit more charming, So they really leaned more
into that in Venom two, which I just didn't like
as much. So I'm happy to see that in this
R rated Marvel movie, it looks like they are fully
dedicating to just being a brutal, vicious action movie and
(45:30):
not straying away from the blood and violence. And Marvel
has not only good but great villains, particularly just talking
about in the Spider Verse, you have Craven the Hunter,
who I didn't really know a whole lot about before
this but looks amazing, has a great story. But I'm
talking villains like doc Och, Rhino, Vulture, Green, Goblin, hob Goblin,
(45:53):
Venom is my favorite of all time, and I just
wish that those movies were better. But I'll take it.
I'll take the Sony Spider Verse doing solo movies on
all of these villains, which is really what they are owning,
because Marvel is really split into two categories right now.
You have the Disney MCU side, who just recently got
the rights back to The Incredible Hulk, but there's always
(46:14):
been this divide on who has the rights to what characters,
and on the Sony side, they still have Spider Man
and all, if not most, of his villains. So that
is why we are getting more movies like this, And
so far they haven't made a movie that can compare
to anything in the MCU. They just have a different tone.
They don't really have their vision on what they're trying
to do here, the world they're trying to create I
(46:35):
thought more Vius was going to connect a little bit
more with Spider Man, and that's really what they keep
teasing us with and making us interested, like, oh, we're
gonna give you a little Spider Man, which we know
you love. We're gonna give you a little bit of
Spider Man, and then they kind of take it away
from us and give us just like a quick little
Easter egg, which is fine. But I just know that
our rated superhero movies can be great, so I just
(46:56):
feel like they need to make them better. But in
that this movie already looks fifty times better than Morbius.
It has a more serious tone, it's a little bit
more set in reality, and I think Aaron Taylor Johnson
looks magnificent and he looks perfectly cast as Craven the Hunter.
I loved him recently in Bullet Train. I feel like
kick Ass, which he started, is a very underrated superhero movie,
(47:20):
and he was also great as Quicksilver aka Wanda's brother
in The Avengers Age of Ultron, So I feel like
he has the experience and all the qualities I want
for a lead in this type of movie. So I
think this could be a step in the right direction
for Sony. This movie is coming out on October sixth
this year. After that, they have Madam Webb, which is
(47:40):
coming out on February sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and then
there's another Venom movie that's supposed to come out next
year in October, but that's only if everything keeps coming
out according to plan. And last week, as of now,
it looks like the Spider Man spinout starring Bad Bunny
called El Muerto has been taken off of Sony's release schedule,
(48:03):
and this is probably due to the fact that the
writer's strike is going on right now and they wanted
to make some changes to the script, but they don't
have the ability to do that right now. And then
you have the star Bad Bunny, who is a global
music icon right now about to go on tour, only
has this limited window to get this movie filmed. If
they're not able to make the changes to the script
(48:25):
during the writer's strike, he's going to miss out on
that window because he has to go back out and
tour the world. So you lose your star. So they
may shelve this movie, which I was very interested in
watching because it was supposed to be the first real
Latino lead character in a Marvel movie, elmerto is also
an anti hero. He is a Mexican wrestler who in
(48:46):
the comic books fights Spider Man. I just thought that
was going to be an interesting, fun movie. I mean,
there's another connection with Bullet Train because just like Aaron
Taylor Johnson, Bad Bunny was also in Bullet Train, and
I was curious to see how he would handle a
leading role in a movie. So I had a lot
of my favorite things Bad Bunny, who I'm a fan
of his music, I'm a fan of him as a person.
(49:08):
You have a Spider Man villain getting his origin story,
and then you have the Latino representation, which I was
excited for. But now it looks like it's been ripped
away from me. But that's okay. I'm gonna let it go.
I'm gonna let elmertodae much like the meaning of his name.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And that was this week's edition of Movie Lin.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Tramer Bar And that's gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. Before I go, I gotta give
my listeners shout out of the week. This week's listener
shout out comes to you from my Instagram comments on
my flash review, and it's from Lizzie, who also shared
her review on the movie, and Liz wrote, it was
a giant bummer. I had such high hopes, even though
(49:50):
Ezra Miller is a trash human. Those hopes were dashed
ten minutes into the movie. Once the Hospital Secrets came on,
I knew it wasn't getting any better. Two hours later,
I didn't even stay for the end credits. Such a letdown.
I agree with you, Liz, that opening sequence. Although when
I first watched it, I thought, Okay, they're doing something
different here, but the CGI in that was so weird
(50:12):
and off putting. It gave me this bad taste in
my mouth like that I couldn't get out for the
rest of the movie. And like you, Liz, I wanted
it to get better, and it just never did, even
when Michael Keaton came out. And for the first time,
it was also hard for me to separate the art
from the artist. And Ezra Miller has been accused, has
been arrested of some pretty awful things, and I just
(50:35):
got a sense that they didn't really take a whole
lot of consideration of what they wanted the Flash character
to be in this movie, and the message they wanted
to convey and the tone they wanted to portray. That
I never felt connected with Ezra Miller's Flash, and that
is a big part of a superhero movie. I feel
like they should have recast the Flash. So that's also
(50:57):
how I still feel about this movie. Thank you Liz
for that comment. You are this week's listener of the week.
And oh my gosh, anytime you say anything negative about DC,
you get people coming after you. You should have seen
my dms and comments this week. People telling me I
was dumb, telling me I was hating on a movie
just for the sake of hating on a movie, which
(51:18):
is not the case for me. If you listen to
this podcast, you know in the past I have defended DC.
I still get dragged from my Shazam to review because
I still think that was a pretty good movie. I
enjoyed Shazam two better than Shazam one, and maybe it's
because I had low expectations going into that movie that
I had a lot of fun, and the opposite was
the situation with the Flash that I had such high
(51:40):
expectations that were not met. So I don't go into
any DC movie with any kind of agenda I want
it to be good. I want to believe in DC,
but they just continue to let me down. So I
am not one of those people who just has a
negative opinion about everything DC and jumps on with everybody else.
I don't look at any other reviews before I give
(52:02):
my review for that exact reason I don't do it.
I don't want anybody else to influence me. So just
know I always give you my honest opinions, my honest thoughts,
and I never expect you to agree with everything I say.
I let you know my bias if there ever is one,
I will always just give you my truth. So to
everyone online, assuming they know who I am from one
(52:25):
single clip, much like I do my homework before giving
a review, do your homework on me before you leave
those dumb comments. And until next time, go out and
watch good movies and I will talk to you later
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