Could you imagine Jessica Simpsons in the Notebook? Will Smith in the Matrix? Tom Cruise in the Shawshank Redemption? On this episode, Movie Mike talks about the weird (and sometimes dumb) reasons why actors turned down major roles. Mike also gives his reaction to the Oscars last night and his movie review of DC Comics ‘Birds of Prey’.
New Episodes Every Monday!
Follow Mike on Instagram: @mikedeestro
Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikedeestro
Follow Mike on Facebook: @mikedeestro
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I
am movie mic on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro
and today I am talking about weird reasons that actors
turned down major roles. Now, none of these will have
to do with scheduling conflicts or anything like that, because
that stuff is kind of boring because pretty much every
time an actor was offered a role, it was probably
(00:21):
offered to like three other actors before them. That's just
how movies work, that's how scheduling works. So I'm not
looking at anything like that where it's just like, oh, well,
I was doing this other movies, so I couldn't do
that movie. That's kind of boring. What I'm looking at
is where actors were pretty much given a role that
was going to be a grand movie and there was
something wrong within the script or with the character or
something they wanted to change, and they gave just this
(00:44):
really weird reason of like, no, I'm not doing that
movie because of this. So we'll get into a bunch
of those roles. Also give my reactions to the oscars
last night. I got a lot of thoughts on those,
and I also have a review of Birds of Prey,
which is the Harley Quinn movie I saw over the
weekend when didn't really do well at the box office,
and I was kind of surprised by but I think
(01:04):
there may be a reason for it, so I'll get
into that again. Thanks everybody for being here and listening
to the episode. If you don't mind, if you're listening
on Apple Podcasts, leave a five star review because it
helps a lot for me to kind of bump myself
up there in the ratings. And for other people who
maybe they don't know me from the show I'm on
the Bobby Bones Show, or that the show that I produced,
the Bobby Cast, they'll see it in their feed, come
(01:26):
up and be like, oh, what's this movie mix movie
podcast about? Maybe I'll give it a listen. So that
means a lot when you hit the five stars or
hit a review on that or wherever you're listening. If
you're listening on my Heart Radio, just hit that follow
button so you get brand new episodes every single Monday.
And thanks to everybody again who participated in the Oscar contest.
If you're listening to this on Monday, I will announce
(01:46):
the winner of that fifty dollar gift card and movie
prize pack on my Instagram story today at three pm
Central times. So there's a bunch of entries in that.
Thanks everybody for doing that and for listening to the podcast.
So without further ado, let's get into this week's episode.
Here we go in a world where everyone and their
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
(02:09):
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
a walking on MTV with classes from the Nashville Podcast
Network is movie movie podcast. So today I'm looking at
weird reasons why actors turned down a major roles. Now,
(02:31):
I am not going to include any actor who turned
down a role because of a scheduling conflict, because I
feel like that happens all the time, because the first
time they picked somebody for a movie, it's probably not
their first pick. They've probably had like two or three
or four or five people in mind for the role
at any given time, So you could say anybody was
offered a role before it ultimately gets to the person
(02:53):
who ended up playing them. Because I think maybe the
one of the most popular ones is that John Travolta
was offered the role of forrestco but he turned it
down to and Debt instead do Pulp Fiction, which was
also a big hit. They both ended up being nominated
for Best Pictures. So you kind of see it as like, oh,
he could have been Forrest Gump have been even more memorable. Well,
he actually ended up doing a pretty good role, but
(03:13):
all of that was because of scheduling conflicts. What I'm
looking at our movies that just have weird reasons for
an actor turning down the role because they were given
the script and either they don't like it, they don't
get it, or there's something they want to change and
the directors or the writers won't budge on it and
they end up saying no, and ed role ends up
going on to be a pretty big deal. So I
(03:35):
got the idea for this because of last week, this
story came out about Jessica Simpson saying that she turned
down the role of the Notebook because of a sex scene.
So she wrote in her recent memoir called Open Book
that she was up for the role of Ali Hamilton's
which ended up going to Rachel McAdams, who started the
movie with Ryan Gosling, and she was offered the role
(03:56):
and she kind of tried to like negotiate and budge
with them that, hey, I'll do the movie if there's
no sex scene in this, because she was uncomfortable with it. Again,
at the time, Jessica Simpson was pretty much just known
as the singer hadn't really been getting into movies yet.
She was in like the newly Ed Show with Nicholas
on MTV, but she hadn't really started a movie yet,
so she was kind of getting into it. So she
(04:17):
ended up saying no, and then later said she was
let down a bit when she found out Ryan Gosling
was cast in the film, because apparently that was like
one of her first crushes. They both auditioned for The
Mickey Mouse Club together, like back when they were twelve. So,
but that's just an example of someone turning down a
role for kind of a weird reason, aside from just
there being a scheduling conflict. So what I went through
is just found a bunch of actors who were offered
(04:39):
roles and turned them down for various reasons. So looking
at the first one, which is a pretty big one
as far as how much it could have changed this
actor's life, but I think they ended up having a
good reason for Um turning down this role that they
eventually talked about, but when they when it was first
just kind of revealed that Will s this was offered
(05:00):
the role of Neo, who has ended up being played
by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He turned it down
pretty much because saying that he didn't really get the
script when it was pitched to him. This was at
a time when Will Smith was like the biggest thing
in Hollywood. He had just done Independence Day. He gets
the script and this offer for The Matrix, and his
first idea is I'm not going to do this, mainly
(05:23):
because it's another He thinks it's another alien movie. He
just not an Independent Day, which is all about them
Um fighting aliens. And then he gets offered this Matrix thing,
which is very sci fi, and he's like, I don't
want to be known as the alien guy. And he
ends up doing Men in Black after that, and in
Black is a big hit and he's coming off of that,
and then he gets now he gets pitched for the Matrix, Like,
(05:45):
he actually goes in with the directors and again he
just doesn't get it. So it's not the fact that
he thinks the bad script. It's not the fact that
he thinks the movie doesn't work, because I can kind
of see it when you're pitched a movie that's so
kind of out there and different at the like at
the Matrix, you don't know that it's gonna be a
big hit it and having a director kind of tell
you all these crazy concepts, it's probably weird. So Will
Smith actually did this video last year where he explained
(06:07):
why he didn't take the role of the Matrix. But
there's a fine line in a pitch meeting between genius
and what I experienced in the meeting. So this is
the actual pitch that they made for The Matrix. Like,
imagine you're in a fight and then you're like jump.
Imagine if you could stop jumping in the middle of
(06:29):
the jump, Sam say that again, but then people could
see around you three sixty while you're jumping, while you're
stopped jumping, right, and then we're gonna invent these cameras
when people can see the whole jump while you stopped
in the middle of the jump. The funny thing after this, though,
is that he ended up doing that movie Wild While
(06:51):
West after this, which was a pretty big flop for him.
He didn't really know that at the time that movie
was going to be so bad. But I think the
other interesting and he kind of made with this is
that if he would have been cast as Neo, that
they would have changed Morpheus as well, because Morpheus was
played by Lawrence Fishburne. He said since he was black
(07:11):
that they would have changed Morpheus, and they actually had
Val Kilmer and to replace Morphous if that would have
been in the case. So essentially Will Smith says he
saved the Matrix. If he would have started it, it
would have been not the same movie and maybe not
have done as well. All Right, I want to stay
on Will Smith because there's another role that he passed down,
which was Django Unchained, which ended up being played by
(07:33):
Jamie FOXX. But Quentin Tarantino came to two other people
first before he came to Jamie fox Actually he went
to Michael Kay Williams who was in the Wire, but
it was really pitched to Will Smith and will Smith
ended up saying no. Because he has a kind of
specific way that he picks movies, especially during this time
when this movie was being made, is that essentially Will
(07:54):
Smith wants to be the lead, Like he doesn't really
start in many movies where he's a side character or
where the movie's focus isn't just directly on him. So
Will Smith when he read the script and was talking
to Quentin Tarantino, he was like, I think there's another
character in this movie that's essentially the lead. He also
kind of wanted to change the script up a bit
(08:14):
and give his character just kind of a bigger presence
and also like have a bigger fight scene at the end,
and he just didn't think the script was all that
brilliant and not for him. What's looking back on it
now is a bit of a bummer because I mean
Jingle and Chain went on to be nominated for like
five Oscars, one of Quentin Tarantino's probably best movies, and
the movie that Will Smith ended up doing after this
(08:36):
was that one with his son called After Earth, directed
by him not Shamalan, which did pretty bad. So I
think Will Smith has kind of changed a bit how
he takes roles now. I mean, he was in Suicide
Squad where he wasn't the main character in that also
didn't do a little. It had relatively good box office numbers,
but overall critically, he didn't get a whole lot of
(08:57):
praise for that, and he's not gonna do the next one.
I'll kind of get into more about Suici High Squad
later in my review of Birds of Prey, but I
think he has changed a bit of taking on roles
where he's not the lead. But I think that's the
one that actually may have worked. Like Will Smith is
Jango Unchained, I think would have still been a pretty
good movie. This next one, however, This next one, however,
I'm pretty glad that it didn't happen because Tom Cruise
(09:19):
was initially offered the part of Andy Dufrain and the
Sea Shank Redemption, and the only reason he turned it
down is because he was uncomfortable with the director who
was It's his first time ever directing. Now, I've heard
a lot of interesting things about how hard it is
to work with Tom Cruise, not because of like he's
a jerk or anything, but he is like so serious
(09:40):
and so like like he is a straight on, I guess,
a controlling actor, and he's very particular of how he
likes things, and he goes in and he's all business.
And he was coming off the movie A Few Good Men,
which was just like nominated for a bunch of Oscars
the year before, so he was hesitant to come into
somebody who had never directed a movie before and get
such a big actor like Tom Cruise, And even after
(10:03):
being offered tons and tons of money, he still said
no because he was uncomfortable working with this director. A
big miss on Tom Cruise's part, because it ended up
being nominated for like seven Oscars. It pretty much made
Tim Robbins career. And I'm pretty glad he didn't do it.
I know, I'm just not a big Tom Cruise fan
and I could not see him in that role. This
(10:26):
next one is kind of funny because kind of along
the lines of the way Will Smith didn't want to
be known as the alien guy. The same thing kind
of happened with Russell Crowe when he was offered the
role of Wolverine. So he was just coming off of
doing Gladiator, which was a big success for Russell Crowe,
and he was offered the role of Wolverine and the
new X Men movies like the very first ones that
(10:47):
came out, and he was the director's first choice, like
way before it even got to Hugh Jackman. But since
he was so close to coming off of Gladiator, he
felt that it was a bit too similar to his
character Maximus in that because he said, at the beginning
of Gladiator, his character, you know, he had a wolf
with him and he didn't want to be known who's
the wolf guy, which he thought Wolverine was some kind
(11:09):
of wolfman, and by doing the world of Wolverine and
then being in Gladiator before that with a wolf, that
people were gonna be calling him the wolfman. And obviously
Wolverine has nothing to do with wolves. That's just the
name of his character. Yes, like the razors and stuff
come out of his fists, but overall, he doesn't turn
into a wolf at any point. It has nothing to
(11:30):
do with him really being a wolfman, aside from maybe
his facial hair. And this is actually what Russell Crowe said.
He said, now, I'm no Mr Wolfman. I can't do
movies that only have things to do with wolves. But
it is the way he thought it was a wolfman.
So we told the director he would not do it,
and he ended up missing out on a bunch of
money because they did a bunch of sea wolves. And
(11:52):
I really think it would have been a lot harder
to warm up audiences with Russell Crowe as Wolverine because
Hugh Jackman just he's one of the very few people
who is that role. Like, I don't think they could
do another Wolverine with any other person. And I think
a lot of that has to do with Hugh Jackman's
personality and how he played Wolverine. So maybe even those
(12:13):
first X Men movies, which were a big success, would
not have been the same with Russell Crowe. And yeah,
maybe he didn't lose that on that payday. So Sean Connery,
who did James Bond movies, has been in a bunch
of older movies. So going back to the matrix for
a bit, I talked about Morpheus, who ended up being
played by Laurence Fishburne. Well, that role was initially offered
to Sean Connery, before it even got to Laurence Fishburne
(12:36):
or even Val Kilmer was considered for it. And in
addition to that, I'll do a double here because Sean
Connery was also offered the role of Gandalf in The
Lord of the Rings. But he gave the same reason
for both of these movies why he didn't take the roles.
He read the scripts and after reading them, he simply
said I don't get it. He didn't get the world
of the Matrix and he didn't get what they were
(12:56):
trying to do in Lord of the Rings. And even
after Peter jack Sen convinced the producers of the film
to offer him ten million dollars for every movie they
were going to do for The Lord of the Rings,
as well as a fifteen percent cut of the trilogy's
box office, he still said, you know what, I don't
understand the script. I don't get it. It's not for me.
I won't do it, So just off the Lord of
(13:17):
the Rings movies alone. He would have made four hundred
million dollars by taking this role. I mean he's still
were like a hundred million dollars, but next ra four
hundred million dollars and the legacy of the Lord of
the Rings would have looked pretty good for all. Sean Connery,
I just think it's so interesting when actors are offered
just like pretty much like movies. You know we're gonna
(13:37):
be hits, Like you know, when they're making The Lord
of the Rings, like that's not a risk to take.
You have like a great director like Peter Jackson and
a book franchise that's already successful. You know, those who
are going to be great, So why would you read
that script essentially telling them that, oh no, these books
are terrible, like highly successful books. And he still says
that he doesn't get it. So he essentially had all
(13:58):
this money just teed up for for him to hit
out of the part and said, no, how hard it
is for an actor to get like a successful role,
even at the caliber of where Sean Connery is in
his career. But just pretty much be handed a role
to you, like, just play as a part in this
movie and it's going to be a guaranteed hit, and
you still don't take it. Oh man, that's a lot
(14:19):
of money. I gotta call myself down here for this
next one. But Christina Applegate, who you know from Mary
with Children, She's been in a bunch of other things,
but she was coming off from doing that show while
she was offered the role of l Woods and legally Bond,
which ended up going to Reese Witherspoon. Now I kind
of think that Christina Applegate has a pretty good reason
(14:40):
for not doing this movie. I still think it's a
little weird. I don't really get this concerned that actors
have a being type cast, like, I don't think that's
a I feel they think it's like a like a
bad thing to be type cast as a specific character.
But I think even for audiences, I think it's not
the worst thing in the role to like kind of
know what an actor is kind of gonna be on
on screen and what kind of characters they play. I
(15:02):
don't think that's a kill all for for actors now.
But she was coming off of that that TV show
and she was offered this movie and she just didn't
want to be the ditzy blonde. She said she had
spent like a decade playing Kelly Bundy, un married with children,
and she was worried that taking this role would just
be leading her to just be typecast in movies and
always just taking roles at the dumb blonde, which I
(15:24):
get for her. Maybe on script that legally blonde character
was just seen as maybe a dizzy blonde, but it
kind of glosses over the fact that I think the
movie ended up not being that exactly. I think Reese
Witherspoon ended up fighting like a smart way to play
the character almost relatably to where you don't just see
I mean, you don't just see Reefs Witherspoon as a
(15:45):
dumb blonde during this movie, and even afterwards, Christina Applegate
was like, Yeah, that was probably a stupid move on
my part to miss out on such a big paiday
for that. And by the way, they are making a
Legally Blonde three. There's still no official release date, but
Reese Witherspoon is posted about it on her Instagram. There's
no real word I want to leave in hit theaters,
but I think right now they're saying pre production is
(16:06):
about to start here in May, so a new Legally
Blonde on the way to that's something to look forward to,
all right, So I have one more here for you.
So Ralph Maccio, who you know as the Karate Kid,
and pretty much that's it. He was offered the role
in Back to the Future, so he wasn't initially the
first pick for this movie. Like they already wanted Michael J.
Fox to play Marty in Back to the Future, but
(16:28):
unfortunately he had some scheduling conflicts while he was shooting
Family Ties. So they were thinking of the scheduling of
Michael J. Fox and Family Ties filming wouldn't line up
with Back to the Future. They were gonna find somebody
else to play Marty McFly. So they went and talked
to Ralph maccio, gave him the script and he didn't
get it. Again, I don't understand these actors who don't
(16:49):
get scripts. He said, the movie is nothing more than
a kid, a car, and plutonium pills, and he declined
the role of Marty McFly and back to the Future,
which was probably pretty tough for Ralph Macio, who at
the time kind of never really replicated his success from
The Karate Kid. He's kind of one of these actors
(17:10):
really just the one hit wonder actor, which is something
maybe people don't really talk about a whole lot, but
there are actors who have pretty much just been in
one starring role and have never really replicated that success again.
And I think Ralph Machio as the Karate Kid is
probably one of those. I mean, he has come back
on like YouTube with the Cobra Kai series, which a
bunch of people like, but still he's still this the
(17:32):
Karate Kid. All right. So that is it for actors
who turned down major roles for weird reasons. Next, I'm
going to get into my reactions from the Oscars last night.
I got a lot to say about those, and also
I'll get into my review of Birds of Parade, the
new Harley Quinn movie. All that coming up later in
the episode. Alright, so let's talk about the Oscars last night.
(17:56):
I thought, overall the show was pretty good. I was
really excited for all these movies, probably more so than
I've been in a while, so I was enjoying it
just for that reason alone. But I do think it's
a little weird when they don't have a host. This
is like the second year they haven't had a host,
and I think the show loses a bit of I mean,
there's no cohesiveness to it. It feels a little disconnected
(18:17):
between segments. I think having that host, you think it's
not a big deal, but when you watch this award show,
it really feels like it needs that host. So I
thought they could have used somebody. Overall, I thought it
was pretty good. I liked the musical performances were okay. Um.
I thought Eminem coming out and I expectedly doing Lose
Yourself for from eight Mile was pretty cool. I liked
(18:38):
the whole little musical montage they had leading up to
that Billy Eilish. I thought her performance was all right.
She looked a little confused during the ceremony like she
didn't really know like why she was there. But let's
get into the biggest categories, the ones I was the
most excited for. We'll go through Supporting Actor Actresses. UM,
Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director and Best Picture.
(19:00):
UM just kind of recapping who won. So for Best
Supporting Actors, he had Laura Dern for Merrit Story, which
was my pick for who I thought was gonna win.
I thought she had the strongest performance out of all
the other movies. And I thought that movie on its
own was just a really great, powerful movie that made
you think about divorce in a way that I've never
really thought about before. It was just really it's a
(19:21):
really raw movie. There's no bills and whistles to that movie.
It's just straight on acting. And I thought her performance
kind of stick out, um from really anybody's in that movie.
So that was cool to see her when she gave
a really great speech last night. Best for Supporting Actor,
I also nailed that one. UM. It was Brad Pitt
for Once upon a Time in Hollywood. I just think
he was the standout in that movie. More soule than
(19:42):
Leonardo DiCaprio like his character, and that was just really cool.
I kind of had like this whole ominous vibe, like
what his backstory was thought overall, he was really what
made that movie and what made that movie enjoyable for me.
So it was really cool to see him when first
his first ever oscar as an actor, because he's one
(20:02):
as a producer before he was a producer on tob
Just a Slave, which won a few years back, maybe
four or five or so. So to see him go
up there and win that as an actor, I think
that's really great for Brad Pitt. That was cool to see.
And then getting into Best Actress and went to Renee's
cell Ledger for Judy, which I thought was a pretty
interesting win for her. She did win the Golden Globe,
(20:24):
and that movie it didn't really make a whole lot
of like a whole lot of noise with like critics
or even like audiences, so I thought that was a
bit of surprise. I think when you you play a
character based on a real person, I think it gives
you a stronger chance to win. And then we get
to Best Actor, which I was gonna throw a chair
if Joaquin Phoenix didn't win for Joker, and to see
(20:45):
him go up there and accept that award was pretty
satisfying just because how much of an impact that movie
had on me. And I think he is the best
Joker overall. Like I know, Heath Ledgers performance is probably
more iconic, and it's hard to say that it compares
to his because of what happened surrounding his Ledger and
(21:07):
all everything around that movie. But I think when you
put Joaquin Phoenix in this role and has an entire
movie to develop the Joker's character, I think it really
outshone any other person who's ever done the Joker before. So, um,
He's Ledger one Best Supporting Actor for the Joker back
(21:27):
um when he did that in thousand and eight, and
this is the second time an actor has one playing
the Joker, but this time for Best Actor. That was
cool to see him win. He went on a really
big speech afterwards, and um, yeah, I thought Joker was
gonna win a lot more awards. They were nominated for
the most out of anybody, but I think Joaquin winning
(21:48):
this one was just a really big win overall for
that that movie and then the final two we go
into Best Director Bong Jiho for Parasite, which was really
cool for him. I just to see how excited he
was at these awards, like he would he would go
up there and he would speak in Korean and then
have somebody translated, and even like after he won, um
it was for Best International Film. After I saw of
(22:11):
them win that, I was like, they could have a chance,
and um he was even like he said a bunch
of cool things, like he would split the award with
the other people in category. He was like, I'm gonna
go party after this. And this was all before we
get to the final one. But I think he's a
really great director. I think his vision in that movie
was spectacular, and he told a really unique story in
(22:33):
a really cool way that like moved audiences that don't
speak Korean. You. I mean, he had been advocating for
people to kind of open up their mind to foreign
films and to not be scared to go see a
movie because it has subtitles. So I really liked all
the things he said leading up to this, and to
see him win was really cool. And then we get
(22:56):
to the final category of Best Picture, which was a
shalker to me that Parasite won for Best Picture. I
love this movie, and I did see it before I
made my pick of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
But I remember leaving the movie theater. I came on
here and reviewed that movie right afterwards, and I was
so excited about that movie, mainly because I had very
(23:16):
little expectations going into it. I almost went into it
like I go into homework, like, Okay, I have to
watch this movie because it's nominated, but it's in subtitles.
I'm probably not gonna enjoy it. I had kind of
a skewed view on it because I thought it was
gonna be a scary movie, and it ended up not
being that at all. If you haven't seen it, or
listen to my review on it, it's essentially a story
(23:37):
about this really poor family in South Korea. I was
just struggling to get by, and they eventually turned into
this group of con artists that work their way into
all finding a place in a position to work for
this really wealthy family, kind of by a winter of trickery.
But it's really a great story about class and just
(23:59):
about like this ruggles you go through when you're poor,
and if you can socialize with people who have more
money than you, and like where you fit into society.
And you get all of this from a foreign film.
You're sitting in the theater reading the subtitles. You're able
to connect with these characters unlike I've connected with any
character in a very long time in a movie. I
(24:19):
was really excited for them to win. They ended up
winning four awards over the night, and really this award
the Oscars this year came down to nineteen seventeen and Parasite,
which were two really great outstanding movies. Um. I think
it's a really big win for Parasite and really for
foreign films, because no other foreign film has ever won
(24:42):
for Best Picture, and it's it ties for the most
amount of Oscars that one single foreign film has won.
So I think people are probably gonna go and watch
this movie now, and people are pretty much probably gonna say, like,
what is Parasite? I've never heard of it before. It's
a foreign film. But I'm just saying, give this movie
(25:02):
a chance. Um, you can probably you can stream it now.
Just sit down and give yourself some time to watch it.
And I think you will enjoy this movie. I know
it's it's weird to watch some things with subtitles and
you think you're not going to understand the language, you
think you're not going to get the humor. But really
it's a really great movie and it's a really novel idea,
and I think that's really what you have to consider
(25:24):
when you think of what deserves to win Best Picture.
It's not what the most popular thing is, which a
bunch of people complain about the Oscars saying that, oh,
it's a bunch of movies that no one has ever watched. Well,
it's because they're supposed to make movies that are outstanding
and they're supposed to be unique in their own way.
That's what's great about the Oscars. It's not just what
the most. It's not a popularity contest. It's about what
(25:47):
movie cut through the most and kind of identifies that
year of movies. So that's what all the movies in
this category did. I think the biggest shocker out if everything,
was Toy Story for winning for Best Animated of Film,
mainly because I didn't think that was the strongest movie
in the franchise, and it's really hard for a Part
four to win anything. My biggest letdown was probably Scarlett
(26:09):
Johansson not winning for Marriage Story. I just thought her
acting was so great in that I really loved her
in that movie, and I really would have liked to
see her win just because, um, I think her acting
was just so straightforward to that movie and so raw.
But I guess a bunch of people have just thought
that movie was a bunch of yelling. So maybe that's
why she didn't win. But that was the Oscars last night.
(26:31):
Let me know what you thought about the winners, all right.
Going to get into my review now of Birds of Prey,
which is the Harley Quinn movie. I just going to
preface thissterview by saying, I am not a d C
comics fan. I'm pretty much all Marvel. I do like
Wonder Woman, of course, Batman, and then I kind of
wanted to like The Suicide Squad, but every other movie
has really just kind of let me down. And I
(26:53):
went into this one wanting it to be good because
I didn't really love Suicide Squad. But the one kind
of redeeming quality of that movie was Harley Quinn. I'm
a big Margot Robbie fan, so I thought this movie
would be pretty good of her just kind of exploring
that character and exploring that role hasn't really done that
great as a box office So we'll get into all
of that. But here's a bit of Birds of Prey.
(27:15):
This was started when the Joker and I broke up.
It was completely mutual and I was back on my
seat ready to embrace the fierce goddess within. Are we
ready to? So, first of all, everything you read online
right now is saying that Birds of Prey was just
(27:36):
a really big flop. So let's just clear that up.
It's really not a flop. I mean, it happens to
be the lowest box office numbers ever for a DC,
opening at thirty four million dollars, which it was expected
to make about forty five, but it's not a flop
thanks to the million dollar budget that the movie was under,
and it will eventually make that money back over the
(27:56):
week's coming and of course with them ticket sales worldwide.
But it was just didn't meet expectation. But it's not
really a flop, and I think overall it's a pretty
good movie. The action is really good. They actually work
together with the director of John Wick to kind of
work on these action sequences which are pretty brutal, like
there's a lot of bones breaking, not a whole lot
(28:16):
of bloodshed. Really, I think it's a little lighter than that,
like the John Wick movies would be, but it's a
lot of cracking of legs and stuff and limbs. So
it is an R rated movie, which maybe it heard
it a bit because the kind of cool thing about
this movie it's it's all centered around female characters, and
maybe it could have been a movie for young girls
to kind of go see and be like, oh, there's
(28:37):
a superhero movie where they're all female, which Harley Queen
is actually kind of anti hero. She's pretty much like
she's essentially a villain in a way, but you kind
of root for it, so it's an antihero. But the
fact that it's an R rating it keeps kids out
of the theater, so that's a big kind of number.
Maybe you're losing out on a bit. I think the
movie is kind of just struggling to find its audience
(28:58):
because I mean, I'm just a big comic book movi
be nerd, and I'll go pretty much watch anything that
just looks appealing to me. And I think the movie
has a really great aesthetic, but I don't know if
this movie was really particularly made for me. I think
it's just struggling to find its audience and who they're
trying to get into the theater for this one. Maybe
it's even that people aren't that familiar with Harley Quinn
(29:19):
because I know the story of Harley Quinn because I
grew up watching the Batman animated series which Harley Quinn
was in that she actually wasn't even in comic books
before she was in that show, but she was with
the Joker and her story was kind of told throughout
that cartoon. But I think overall audiences and probably you
they're listening to this right now, don't really know much
about Harley Quinn, so maybe to give her her own
movie is a bit of a risk at this point.
(29:40):
So for that reason, I think maybe they could have
teamed her up with somebody else, like Poison Ivy or
a catwoman and made it more of like characters or
villains that people were a little more familiar with, and
pitched it as that kind of movie. Because I know
what they're trying to build up too, is the suicide
squad that they're making in one which Harley Quinn will
be back in that, so I don't know, maybe introducing
(30:01):
more characters would have been bad for that. I also
think maybe that d C has just kind of burned
audiences movie after movie. Like I said, I was done
with DC after Batman Versus Superman. Now, I've never walked
out of a movie before because hey, I've paid money
for a ticket. I'm gonna stay and watch the whole movie,
no matter how bad it is. But after that movie,
I fell asleep during that movie. It was so boring
(30:23):
and it was just so bad. But even after that,
I still went back for Justice League, and I, like
I said, I loved Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad, so
I was excited for this one. But I think there
is a fact that just audiences have lost confidence in
d C movies. But it is a pretty good movie, Like,
not only is it getting good reviews from critics, but
everybody who's going to see it is actually enjoying it.
(30:43):
But I think the people who have been burned and
have been just kind of tired of getting bad movies
from DC aren't going to see it. So that's kind
of where they're losing out on this one. Overall, I
thought the movie was fun. It was funny without being corny.
I really liked the aesthetic in this movie, like the
colors in the US, the costume design. It just has
a unique feel to it towards It's very quirky and
(31:05):
just fast paced, and the action is just very brutal
and head on, just the action movie. I love all
the characters in it. All the actresses in it are
just amazing together and it just has you like rooting
for Harley Quinn in this one and you kind of
get to know her story a little more. I think
maybe they could have just marketed this movie just a
different way, because I like, even just looking at it.
(31:26):
When I look at movie times on my phone, you
see Birds of Prey and you don't see Harley Quinn's
name even in the very beginning of this. So maybe
people are just scrolling through looking at things and you
don't even know what it is exactly, or you just
don't know enough about the character to want to go
watch an entire movie about him without really knowing what
it's going to be about. I do like the fact
that they stay away from the Joker in this one.
(31:47):
They didn't try to bring back like Jared lettle Is
having a cameo in it. There's like one scene maybe
where it's like an older kind of flashback where you
just see his back, but there's no face of him
in it. And there are also no really ties to
Batman and or anything in this one. So I like
that they just focused on Harley Quinn. So overall, I
give it a three point five out of five, which
is a pretty high rating for me to give a
(32:09):
d C movie. I think it's a fun movie. I
think it's a really well done movie. I love that
it has a female director and that Margot Robbie produced
a movie that's awesome. It's not up there with Wonder
Woman by any means, but I think it's a good
step for d C in the right direction. Maybe one
you don't have to go see in theaters. But I
think later down the line, if you're interested in Harley
(32:29):
Quinn's story before a new Suicide Squad movie comes out,
I'd say check it out. Then. I've just become a
really big Margot Robbie fan. I guess from once upon
a time in Hollywood. I just realized, Hey, she's a
really great actress. I really just like her as a person.
When I see her in interviews, and the fact that
she was a producer on this movie. I really wanted
to see it do well for that reason alone, and
the fact that I saw it kind of underperforming and
(32:50):
getting slammed online, I kind of felt bad for her.
So I just liked it a lot more than I
was expecting to and was just sad to see it
not do as well. All right. So that's my review
of Birds of Prey, all right, And that's gonna do
it for this week. But before I get out of here,
I gotta get my Instagram shout out, which I do
every single week to what are you guys listening? And
to this week it goes to Who's Your Mama? Underscore
(33:11):
a k a. Leslie Arnold, who said that she was
catching up on the podcast and she was actually listening
in her car, and she took a picture of her
like her screen where you can see my logo and
the name of the episode, which I thought was really cool.
Like when you listen in your car and have my
picture on in there, that's pretty cool to see. So
that's another way to do it. But all you have
to do to get an Instagram shout out is just
screenshot wherever you're listening to it, and then post it
(33:34):
in your Instagram story and tag me, and I'll repost
a bunch of those throughout the week and then i'll
give somebody a shout out. But if you're listening in
your car and my artwork comes on in your car,
that's really cool for me to see, so I'll definitely
shout those out. So if you have that feature in
your cool car, so yeah, you can follow me on
Instagram at Mike Destro or on Twitter at Mike Destro
(33:54):
as well if you want to see all my tweets
from the Oscars last night. I had a lot of
thoughts on those, so go check that out and I
will see you next week on another edition of Movie
Mix Movie Podcast Later m HM.
Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I
am movie mic on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Destro
and today I am talking about weird reasons that actors
turned down major roles. Now, none of these will have
to do with scheduling conflicts or anything like that, because
that stuff is kind of boring because pretty much every
time an actor was offered a role, it was probably
(00:21):
offered to like three other actors before them. That's just
how movies work, that's how scheduling works. So I'm not
looking at anything like that where it's just like, oh, well,
I was doing this other movies, so I couldn't do
that movie. That's kind of boring. What I'm looking at
is where actors were pretty much given a role that
was going to be a grand movie and there was
something wrong within the script or with the character or
something they wanted to change, and they gave just this
(00:44):
really weird reason of like, no, I'm not doing that
movie because of this. So we'll get into a bunch
of those roles. Also give my reactions to the oscars
last night. I got a lot of thoughts on those,
and I also have a review of Birds of Prey,
which is the Harley Quinn movie I saw over the
weekend when didn't really do well at the box office,
and I was kind of surprised by but I think
(01:04):
there may be a reason for it, so I'll get
into that again. Thanks everybody for being here and listening
to the episode. If you don't mind, if you're listening
on Apple Podcasts, leave a five star review because it
helps a lot for me to kind of bump myself
up there in the ratings. And for other people who
maybe they don't know me from the show I'm on
the Bobby Bones Show, or that the show that I produced,
the Bobby Cast, they'll see it in their feed, come
(01:26):
up and be like, oh, what's this movie mix movie
podcast about? Maybe I'll give it a listen. So that
means a lot when you hit the five stars or
hit a review on that or wherever you're listening. If
you're listening on my Heart Radio, just hit that follow
button so you get brand new episodes every single Monday.
And thanks to everybody again who participated in the Oscar contest.
If you're listening to this on Monday, I will announce
(01:46):
the winner of that fifty dollar gift card and movie
prize pack on my Instagram story today at three pm
Central times. So there's a bunch of entries in that.
Thanks everybody for doing that and for listening to the podcast.
So without further ado, let's get into this week's episode.
Here we go in a world where everyone and their
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
(02:09):
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
a walking on MTV with classes from the Nashville Podcast
Network is movie movie podcast. So today I'm looking at
weird reasons why actors turned down a major roles. Now,
(02:31):
I am not going to include any actor who turned
down a role because of a scheduling conflict, because I
feel like that happens all the time, because the first
time they picked somebody for a movie, it's probably not
their first pick. They've probably had like two or three
or four or five people in mind for the role
at any given time, So you could say anybody was
offered a role before it ultimately gets to the person
(02:53):
who ended up playing them. Because I think maybe the
one of the most popular ones is that John Travolta
was offered the role of forrestco but he turned it
down to and Debt instead do Pulp Fiction, which was
also a big hit. They both ended up being nominated
for Best Pictures. So you kind of see it as like, oh,
he could have been Forrest Gump have been even more memorable. Well,
he actually ended up doing a pretty good role, but
(03:13):
all of that was because of scheduling conflicts. What I'm
looking at our movies that just have weird reasons for
an actor turning down the role because they were given
the script and either they don't like it, they don't
get it, or there's something they want to change and
the directors or the writers won't budge on it and
they end up saying no, and ed role ends up
going on to be a pretty big deal. So I
(03:35):
got the idea for this because of last week, this
story came out about Jessica Simpson saying that she turned
down the role of the Notebook because of a sex scene.
So she wrote in her recent memoir called Open Book
that she was up for the role of Ali Hamilton's
which ended up going to Rachel McAdams, who started the
movie with Ryan Gosling, and she was offered the role
(03:56):
and she kind of tried to like negotiate and budge
with them that, hey, I'll do the movie if there's
no sex scene in this, because she was uncomfortable with it. Again,
at the time, Jessica Simpson was pretty much just known
as the singer hadn't really been getting into movies yet.
She was in like the newly Ed Show with Nicholas
on MTV, but she hadn't really started a movie yet,
so she was kind of getting into it. So she
(04:17):
ended up saying no, and then later said she was
let down a bit when she found out Ryan Gosling
was cast in the film, because apparently that was like
one of her first crushes. They both auditioned for The
Mickey Mouse Club together, like back when they were twelve. So,
but that's just an example of someone turning down a
role for kind of a weird reason, aside from just
there being a scheduling conflict. So what I went through
is just found a bunch of actors who were offered
(04:39):
roles and turned them down for various reasons. So looking
at the first one, which is a pretty big one
as far as how much it could have changed this
actor's life, but I think they ended up having a
good reason for Um turning down this role that they
eventually talked about, but when they when it was first
just kind of revealed that Will s this was offered
(05:00):
the role of Neo, who has ended up being played
by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He turned it down
pretty much because saying that he didn't really get the
script when it was pitched to him. This was at
a time when Will Smith was like the biggest thing
in Hollywood. He had just done Independence Day. He gets
the script and this offer for The Matrix, and his
first idea is I'm not going to do this, mainly
(05:23):
because it's another He thinks it's another alien movie. He
just not an Independent Day, which is all about them
Um fighting aliens. And then he gets offered this Matrix thing,
which is very sci fi, and he's like, I don't
want to be known as the alien guy. And he
ends up doing Men in Black after that, and in
Black is a big hit and he's coming off of that,
and then he gets now he gets pitched for the Matrix, Like,
(05:45):
he actually goes in with the directors and again he
just doesn't get it. So it's not the fact that
he thinks the bad script. It's not the fact that
he thinks the movie doesn't work, because I can kind
of see it when you're pitched a movie that's so
kind of out there and different at the like at
the Matrix, you don't know that it's gonna be a
big hit it and having a director kind of tell
you all these crazy concepts, it's probably weird. So Will
Smith actually did this video last year where he explained
(06:07):
why he didn't take the role of the Matrix. But
there's a fine line in a pitch meeting between genius
and what I experienced in the meeting. So this is
the actual pitch that they made for The Matrix. Like,
imagine you're in a fight and then you're like jump.
Imagine if you could stop jumping in the middle of
(06:29):
the jump, Sam say that again, but then people could
see around you three sixty while you're jumping, while you're
stopped jumping, right, and then we're gonna invent these cameras
when people can see the whole jump while you stopped
in the middle of the jump. The funny thing after this, though,
is that he ended up doing that movie Wild While
(06:51):
West after this, which was a pretty big flop for him.
He didn't really know that at the time that movie
was going to be so bad. But I think the
other interesting and he kind of made with this is
that if he would have been cast as Neo, that
they would have changed Morpheus as well, because Morpheus was
played by Lawrence Fishburne. He said since he was black
(07:11):
that they would have changed Morpheus, and they actually had
Val Kilmer and to replace Morphous if that would have
been in the case. So essentially Will Smith says he
saved the Matrix. If he would have started it, it
would have been not the same movie and maybe not
have done as well. All Right, I want to stay
on Will Smith because there's another role that he passed down,
which was Django Unchained, which ended up being played by
(07:33):
Jamie FOXX. But Quentin Tarantino came to two other people
first before he came to Jamie fox Actually he went
to Michael Kay Williams who was in the Wire, but
it was really pitched to Will Smith and will Smith
ended up saying no. Because he has a kind of
specific way that he picks movies, especially during this time
when this movie was being made, is that essentially Will
(07:54):
Smith wants to be the lead, Like he doesn't really
start in many movies where he's a side character or
where the movie's focus isn't just directly on him. So
Will Smith when he read the script and was talking
to Quentin Tarantino, he was like, I think there's another
character in this movie that's essentially the lead. He also
kind of wanted to change the script up a bit
(08:14):
and give his character just kind of a bigger presence
and also like have a bigger fight scene at the end,
and he just didn't think the script was all that
brilliant and not for him. What's looking back on it
now is a bit of a bummer because I mean
Jingle and Chain went on to be nominated for like
five Oscars, one of Quentin Tarantino's probably best movies, and
the movie that Will Smith ended up doing after this
(08:36):
was that one with his son called After Earth, directed
by him not Shamalan, which did pretty bad. So I
think Will Smith has kind of changed a bit how
he takes roles now. I mean, he was in Suicide
Squad where he wasn't the main character in that also
didn't do a little. It had relatively good box office numbers,
but overall critically, he didn't get a whole lot of
(08:57):
praise for that, and he's not gonna do the next one.
I'll kind of get into more about Suici High Squad
later in my review of Birds of Prey, but I
think he has changed a bit of taking on roles
where he's not the lead. But I think that's the
one that actually may have worked. Like Will Smith is
Jango Unchained, I think would have still been a pretty
good movie. This next one, however, This next one, however,
I'm pretty glad that it didn't happen because Tom Cruise
(09:19):
was initially offered the part of Andy Dufrain and the
Sea Shank Redemption, and the only reason he turned it
down is because he was uncomfortable with the director who
was It's his first time ever directing. Now, I've heard
a lot of interesting things about how hard it is
to work with Tom Cruise, not because of like he's
a jerk or anything, but he is like so serious
(09:40):
and so like like he is a straight on, I guess,
a controlling actor, and he's very particular of how he
likes things, and he goes in and he's all business.
And he was coming off the movie A Few Good Men,
which was just like nominated for a bunch of Oscars
the year before, so he was hesitant to come into
somebody who had never directed a movie before and get
such a big actor like Tom Cruise, And even after
(10:03):
being offered tons and tons of money, he still said
no because he was uncomfortable working with this director. A
big miss on Tom Cruise's part, because it ended up
being nominated for like seven Oscars. It pretty much made
Tim Robbins career. And I'm pretty glad he didn't do it.
I know, I'm just not a big Tom Cruise fan
and I could not see him in that role. This
(10:26):
next one is kind of funny because kind of along
the lines of the way Will Smith didn't want to
be known as the alien guy. The same thing kind
of happened with Russell Crowe when he was offered the
role of Wolverine. So he was just coming off of
doing Gladiator, which was a big success for Russell Crowe,
and he was offered the role of Wolverine and the
new X Men movies like the very first ones that
(10:47):
came out, and he was the director's first choice, like
way before it even got to Hugh Jackman. But since
he was so close to coming off of Gladiator, he
felt that it was a bit too similar to his
character Maximus in that because he said, at the beginning
of Gladiator, his character, you know, he had a wolf
with him and he didn't want to be known who's
the wolf guy, which he thought Wolverine was some kind
(11:09):
of wolfman, and by doing the world of Wolverine and
then being in Gladiator before that with a wolf, that
people were gonna be calling him the wolfman. And obviously
Wolverine has nothing to do with wolves. That's just the
name of his character. Yes, like the razors and stuff
come out of his fists, but overall, he doesn't turn
into a wolf at any point. It has nothing to
(11:30):
do with him really being a wolfman, aside from maybe
his facial hair. And this is actually what Russell Crowe said.
He said, now, I'm no Mr Wolfman. I can't do
movies that only have things to do with wolves. But
it is the way he thought it was a wolfman.
So we told the director he would not do it,
and he ended up missing out on a bunch of
money because they did a bunch of sea wolves. And
(11:52):
I really think it would have been a lot harder
to warm up audiences with Russell Crowe as Wolverine because
Hugh Jackman just he's one of the very few people
who is that role. Like, I don't think they could
do another Wolverine with any other person. And I think
a lot of that has to do with Hugh Jackman's
personality and how he played Wolverine. So maybe even those
(12:13):
first X Men movies, which were a big success, would
not have been the same with Russell Crowe. And yeah,
maybe he didn't lose that on that payday. So Sean Connery,
who did James Bond movies, has been in a bunch
of older movies. So going back to the matrix for
a bit, I talked about Morpheus, who ended up being
played by Laurence Fishburne. Well, that role was initially offered
to Sean Connery, before it even got to Laurence Fishburne
(12:36):
or even Val Kilmer was considered for it. And in
addition to that, I'll do a double here because Sean
Connery was also offered the role of Gandalf in The
Lord of the Rings. But he gave the same reason
for both of these movies why he didn't take the roles.
He read the scripts and after reading them, he simply
said I don't get it. He didn't get the world
of the Matrix and he didn't get what they were
(12:56):
trying to do in Lord of the Rings. And even
after Peter jack Sen convinced the producers of the film
to offer him ten million dollars for every movie they
were going to do for The Lord of the Rings,
as well as a fifteen percent cut of the trilogy's
box office, he still said, you know what, I don't
understand the script. I don't get it. It's not for me.
I won't do it, So just off the Lord of
(13:17):
the Rings movies alone. He would have made four hundred
million dollars by taking this role. I mean he's still
were like a hundred million dollars, but next ra four
hundred million dollars and the legacy of the Lord of
the Rings would have looked pretty good for all. Sean Connery,
I just think it's so interesting when actors are offered
just like pretty much like movies. You know we're gonna
(13:37):
be hits, Like you know, when they're making The Lord
of the Rings, like that's not a risk to take.
You have like a great director like Peter Jackson and
a book franchise that's already successful. You know, those who
are going to be great, So why would you read
that script essentially telling them that, oh no, these books
are terrible, like highly successful books. And he still says
that he doesn't get it. So he essentially had all
(13:58):
this money just teed up for for him to hit
out of the part and said, no, how hard it
is for an actor to get like a successful role,
even at the caliber of where Sean Connery is in
his career. But just pretty much be handed a role
to you, like, just play as a part in this
movie and it's going to be a guaranteed hit, and
you still don't take it. Oh man, that's a lot
(14:19):
of money. I gotta call myself down here for this
next one. But Christina Applegate, who you know from Mary
with Children, She's been in a bunch of other things,
but she was coming off from doing that show while
she was offered the role of l Woods and legally Bond,
which ended up going to Reese Witherspoon. Now I kind
of think that Christina Applegate has a pretty good reason
(14:40):
for not doing this movie. I still think it's a
little weird. I don't really get this concerned that actors
have a being type cast, like, I don't think that's
a I feel they think it's like a like a
bad thing to be type cast as a specific character.
But I think even for audiences, I think it's not
the worst thing in the role to like kind of
know what an actor is kind of gonna be on
on screen and what kind of characters they play. I
(15:02):
don't think that's a kill all for for actors now.
But she was coming off of that that TV show
and she was offered this movie and she just didn't
want to be the ditzy blonde. She said she had
spent like a decade playing Kelly Bundy, un married with children,
and she was worried that taking this role would just
be leading her to just be typecast in movies and
always just taking roles at the dumb blonde, which I
(15:24):
get for her. Maybe on script that legally blonde character
was just seen as maybe a dizzy blonde, but it
kind of glosses over the fact that I think the
movie ended up not being that exactly. I think Reese
Witherspoon ended up fighting like a smart way to play
the character almost relatably to where you don't just see
I mean, you don't just see Reefs Witherspoon as a
(15:45):
dumb blonde during this movie, and even afterwards, Christina Applegate
was like, Yeah, that was probably a stupid move on
my part to miss out on such a big paiday
for that. And by the way, they are making a
Legally Blonde three. There's still no official release date, but
Reese Witherspoon is posted about it on her Instagram. There's
no real word I want to leave in hit theaters,
but I think right now they're saying pre production is
(16:06):
about to start here in May, so a new Legally
Blonde on the way to that's something to look forward to,
all right, So I have one more here for you.
So Ralph Maccio, who you know as the Karate Kid,
and pretty much that's it. He was offered the role
in Back to the Future, so he wasn't initially the
first pick for this movie. Like they already wanted Michael J.
Fox to play Marty in Back to the Future, but
(16:28):
unfortunately he had some scheduling conflicts while he was shooting
Family Ties. So they were thinking of the scheduling of
Michael J. Fox and Family Ties filming wouldn't line up
with Back to the Future. They were gonna find somebody
else to play Marty McFly. So they went and talked
to Ralph maccio, gave him the script and he didn't
get it. Again, I don't understand these actors who don't
(16:49):
get scripts. He said, the movie is nothing more than
a kid, a car, and plutonium pills, and he declined
the role of Marty McFly and back to the Future,
which was probably pretty tough for Ralph Macio, who at
the time kind of never really replicated his success from
The Karate Kid. He's kind of one of these actors
(17:10):
really just the one hit wonder actor, which is something
maybe people don't really talk about a whole lot, but
there are actors who have pretty much just been in
one starring role and have never really replicated that success again.
And I think Ralph Machio as the Karate Kid is
probably one of those. I mean, he has come back
on like YouTube with the Cobra Kai series, which a
bunch of people like, but still he's still this the
(17:32):
Karate Kid. All right. So that is it for actors
who turned down major roles for weird reasons. Next, I'm
going to get into my reactions from the Oscars last night.
I got a lot to say about those, and also
I'll get into my review of Birds of Parade, the
new Harley Quinn movie. All that coming up later in
the episode. Alright, so let's talk about the Oscars last night.
(17:56):
I thought, overall the show was pretty good. I was
really excited for all these movies, probably more so than
I've been in a while, so I was enjoying it
just for that reason alone. But I do think it's
a little weird when they don't have a host. This
is like the second year they haven't had a host,
and I think the show loses a bit of I mean,
there's no cohesiveness to it. It feels a little disconnected
(18:17):
between segments. I think having that host, you think it's
not a big deal, but when you watch this award show,
it really feels like it needs that host. So I
thought they could have used somebody. Overall, I thought it
was pretty good. I liked the musical performances were okay. Um.
I thought Eminem coming out and I expectedly doing Lose
Yourself for from eight Mile was pretty cool. I liked
(18:38):
the whole little musical montage they had leading up to
that Billy Eilish. I thought her performance was all right.
She looked a little confused during the ceremony like she
didn't really know like why she was there. But let's
get into the biggest categories, the ones I was the
most excited for. We'll go through Supporting Actor Actresses. UM,
Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director and Best Picture.
(19:00):
UM just kind of recapping who won. So for Best
Supporting Actors, he had Laura Dern for Merrit Story, which
was my pick for who I thought was gonna win.
I thought she had the strongest performance out of all
the other movies. And I thought that movie on its
own was just a really great, powerful movie that made
you think about divorce in a way that I've never
really thought about before. It was just really it's a
(19:21):
really raw movie. There's no bills and whistles to that movie.
It's just straight on acting. And I thought her performance
kind of stick out, um from really anybody's in that movie.
So that was cool to see her when she gave
a really great speech last night. Best for Supporting Actor,
I also nailed that one. UM. It was Brad Pitt
for Once upon a Time in Hollywood. I just think
he was the standout in that movie. More soule than
(19:42):
Leonardo DiCaprio like his character, and that was just really cool.
I kind of had like this whole ominous vibe, like
what his backstory was thought overall, he was really what
made that movie and what made that movie enjoyable for me.
So it was really cool to see him when first
his first ever oscar as an actor, because he's one
(20:02):
as a producer before he was a producer on tob
Just a Slave, which won a few years back, maybe
four or five or so. So to see him go
up there and win that as an actor, I think
that's really great for Brad Pitt. That was cool to see.
And then getting into Best Actress and went to Renee's
cell Ledger for Judy, which I thought was a pretty
interesting win for her. She did win the Golden Globe,
(20:24):
and that movie it didn't really make a whole lot
of like a whole lot of noise with like critics
or even like audiences, so I thought that was a
bit of surprise. I think when you you play a
character based on a real person, I think it gives
you a stronger chance to win. And then we get
to Best Actor, which I was gonna throw a chair
if Joaquin Phoenix didn't win for Joker, and to see
(20:45):
him go up there and accept that award was pretty
satisfying just because how much of an impact that movie
had on me. And I think he is the best
Joker overall. Like I know, Heath Ledgers performance is probably
more iconic, and it's hard to say that it compares
to his because of what happened surrounding his Ledger and
(21:07):
all everything around that movie. But I think when you
put Joaquin Phoenix in this role and has an entire
movie to develop the Joker's character, I think it really
outshone any other person who's ever done the Joker before. So, um,
He's Ledger one Best Supporting Actor for the Joker back
(21:27):
um when he did that in thousand and eight, and
this is the second time an actor has one playing
the Joker, but this time for Best Actor. That was
cool to see him win. He went on a really
big speech afterwards, and um, yeah, I thought Joker was
gonna win a lot more awards. They were nominated for
the most out of anybody, but I think Joaquin winning
(21:48):
this one was just a really big win overall for
that that movie and then the final two we go
into Best Director Bong Jiho for Parasite, which was really
cool for him. I just to see how excited he
was at these awards, like he would he would go
up there and he would speak in Korean and then
have somebody translated, and even like after he won, um
it was for Best International Film. After I saw of
(22:11):
them win that, I was like, they could have a chance,
and um he was even like he said a bunch
of cool things, like he would split the award with
the other people in category. He was like, I'm gonna
go party after this. And this was all before we
get to the final one. But I think he's a
really great director. I think his vision in that movie
was spectacular, and he told a really unique story in
(22:33):
a really cool way that like moved audiences that don't
speak Korean. You. I mean, he had been advocating for
people to kind of open up their mind to foreign
films and to not be scared to go see a
movie because it has subtitles. So I really liked all
the things he said leading up to this, and to
see him win was really cool. And then we get
(22:56):
to the final category of Best Picture, which was a
shalker to me that Parasite won for Best Picture. I
love this movie, and I did see it before I
made my pick of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
But I remember leaving the movie theater. I came on
here and reviewed that movie right afterwards, and I was
so excited about that movie, mainly because I had very
(23:16):
little expectations going into it. I almost went into it
like I go into homework, like, Okay, I have to
watch this movie because it's nominated, but it's in subtitles.
I'm probably not gonna enjoy it. I had kind of
a skewed view on it because I thought it was
gonna be a scary movie, and it ended up not
being that at all. If you haven't seen it, or
listen to my review on it, it's essentially a story
(23:37):
about this really poor family in South Korea. I was
just struggling to get by, and they eventually turned into
this group of con artists that work their way into
all finding a place in a position to work for
this really wealthy family, kind of by a winter of trickery.
But it's really a great story about class and just
(23:59):
about like this ruggles you go through when you're poor,
and if you can socialize with people who have more
money than you, and like where you fit into society.
And you get all of this from a foreign film.
You're sitting in the theater reading the subtitles. You're able
to connect with these characters unlike I've connected with any
character in a very long time in a movie. I
(24:19):
was really excited for them to win. They ended up
winning four awards over the night, and really this award
the Oscars this year came down to nineteen seventeen and Parasite,
which were two really great outstanding movies. Um. I think
it's a really big win for Parasite and really for
foreign films, because no other foreign film has ever won
(24:42):
for Best Picture, and it's it ties for the most
amount of Oscars that one single foreign film has won.
So I think people are probably gonna go and watch
this movie now, and people are pretty much probably gonna say, like,
what is Parasite? I've never heard of it before. It's
a foreign film. But I'm just saying, give this movie
(25:02):
a chance. Um, you can probably you can stream it now.
Just sit down and give yourself some time to watch it.
And I think you will enjoy this movie. I know
it's it's weird to watch some things with subtitles and
you think you're not going to understand the language, you
think you're not going to get the humor. But really
it's a really great movie and it's a really novel idea,
and I think that's really what you have to consider
(25:24):
when you think of what deserves to win Best Picture.
It's not what the most popular thing is, which a
bunch of people complain about the Oscars saying that, oh,
it's a bunch of movies that no one has ever watched. Well,
it's because they're supposed to make movies that are outstanding
and they're supposed to be unique in their own way.
That's what's great about the Oscars. It's not just what
the most. It's not a popularity contest. It's about what
(25:47):
movie cut through the most and kind of identifies that
year of movies. So that's what all the movies in
this category did. I think the biggest shocker out if everything,
was Toy Story for winning for Best Animated of Film,
mainly because I didn't think that was the strongest movie
in the franchise, and it's really hard for a Part
four to win anything. My biggest letdown was probably Scarlett
(26:09):
Johansson not winning for Marriage Story. I just thought her
acting was so great in that I really loved her
in that movie, and I really would have liked to
see her win just because, um, I think her acting
was just so straightforward to that movie and so raw.
But I guess a bunch of people have just thought
that movie was a bunch of yelling. So maybe that's
why she didn't win. But that was the Oscars last night.
(26:31):
Let me know what you thought about the winners, all right.
Going to get into my review now of Birds of Prey,
which is the Harley Quinn movie. I just going to
preface thissterview by saying, I am not a d C
comics fan. I'm pretty much all Marvel. I do like
Wonder Woman, of course, Batman, and then I kind of
wanted to like The Suicide Squad, but every other movie
has really just kind of let me down. And I
(26:53):
went into this one wanting it to be good because
I didn't really love Suicide Squad. But the one kind
of redeeming quality of that movie was Harley Quinn. I'm
a big Margot Robbie fan, so I thought this movie
would be pretty good of her just kind of exploring
that character and exploring that role hasn't really done that
great as a box office So we'll get into all
of that. But here's a bit of Birds of Prey.
(27:15):
This was started when the Joker and I broke up.
It was completely mutual and I was back on my
seat ready to embrace the fierce goddess within. Are we
ready to? So, first of all, everything you read online
right now is saying that Birds of Prey was just
(27:36):
a really big flop. So let's just clear that up.
It's really not a flop. I mean, it happens to
be the lowest box office numbers ever for a DC,
opening at thirty four million dollars, which it was expected
to make about forty five, but it's not a flop
thanks to the million dollar budget that the movie was under,
and it will eventually make that money back over the
(27:56):
week's coming and of course with them ticket sales worldwide.
But it was just didn't meet expectation. But it's not
really a flop, and I think overall it's a pretty
good movie. The action is really good. They actually work
together with the director of John Wick to kind of
work on these action sequences which are pretty brutal, like
there's a lot of bones breaking, not a whole lot
(28:16):
of bloodshed. Really, I think it's a little lighter than that,
like the John Wick movies would be, but it's a
lot of cracking of legs and stuff and limbs. So
it is an R rated movie, which maybe it heard
it a bit because the kind of cool thing about
this movie it's it's all centered around female characters, and
maybe it could have been a movie for young girls
to kind of go see and be like, oh, there's
(28:37):
a superhero movie where they're all female, which Harley Queen
is actually kind of anti hero. She's pretty much like
she's essentially a villain in a way, but you kind
of root for it, so it's an antihero. But the
fact that it's an R rating it keeps kids out
of the theater, so that's a big kind of number.
Maybe you're losing out on a bit. I think the
movie is kind of just struggling to find its audience
(28:58):
because I mean, I'm just a big comic book movi
be nerd, and I'll go pretty much watch anything that
just looks appealing to me. And I think the movie
has a really great aesthetic, but I don't know if
this movie was really particularly made for me. I think
it's just struggling to find its audience and who they're
trying to get into the theater for this one. Maybe
it's even that people aren't that familiar with Harley Quinn
(29:19):
because I know the story of Harley Quinn because I
grew up watching the Batman animated series which Harley Quinn
was in that she actually wasn't even in comic books
before she was in that show, but she was with
the Joker and her story was kind of told throughout
that cartoon. But I think overall audiences and probably you
they're listening to this right now, don't really know much
about Harley Quinn, so maybe to give her her own
movie is a bit of a risk at this point.
(29:40):
So for that reason, I think maybe they could have
teamed her up with somebody else, like Poison Ivy or
a catwoman and made it more of like characters or
villains that people were a little more familiar with, and
pitched it as that kind of movie. Because I know
what they're trying to build up too, is the suicide
squad that they're making in one which Harley Quinn will
be back in that, so I don't know, maybe introducing
(30:01):
more characters would have been bad for that. I also
think maybe that d C has just kind of burned
audiences movie after movie. Like I said, I was done
with DC after Batman Versus Superman. Now, I've never walked
out of a movie before because hey, I've paid money
for a ticket. I'm gonna stay and watch the whole movie,
no matter how bad it is. But after that movie,
I fell asleep during that movie. It was so boring
(30:23):
and it was just so bad. But even after that,
I still went back for Justice League, and I, like
I said, I loved Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad, so
I was excited for this one. But I think there
is a fact that just audiences have lost confidence in
d C movies. But it is a pretty good movie, Like,
not only is it getting good reviews from critics, but
everybody who's going to see it is actually enjoying it.
(30:43):
But I think the people who have been burned and
have been just kind of tired of getting bad movies
from DC aren't going to see it. So that's kind
of where they're losing out on this one. Overall, I
thought the movie was fun. It was funny without being corny.
I really liked the aesthetic in this movie, like the
colors in the US, the costume design. It just has
a unique feel to it towards It's very quirky and
(31:05):
just fast paced, and the action is just very brutal
and head on, just the action movie. I love all
the characters in it. All the actresses in it are
just amazing together and it just has you like rooting
for Harley Quinn in this one and you kind of
get to know her story a little more. I think
maybe they could have just marketed this movie just a
different way, because I like, even just looking at it.
(31:26):
When I look at movie times on my phone, you
see Birds of Prey and you don't see Harley Quinn's
name even in the very beginning of this. So maybe
people are just scrolling through looking at things and you
don't even know what it is exactly, or you just
don't know enough about the character to want to go
watch an entire movie about him without really knowing what
it's going to be about. I do like the fact
that they stay away from the Joker in this one.
(31:47):
They didn't try to bring back like Jared lettle Is
having a cameo in it. There's like one scene maybe
where it's like an older kind of flashback where you
just see his back, but there's no face of him
in it. And there are also no really ties to
Batman and or anything in this one. So I like
that they just focused on Harley Quinn. So overall, I
give it a three point five out of five, which
is a pretty high rating for me to give a
(32:09):
d C movie. I think it's a fun movie. I
think it's a really well done movie. I love that
it has a female director and that Margot Robbie produced
a movie that's awesome. It's not up there with Wonder
Woman by any means, but I think it's a good
step for d C in the right direction. Maybe one
you don't have to go see in theaters. But I
think later down the line, if you're interested in Harley
(32:29):
Quinn's story before a new Suicide Squad movie comes out,
I'd say check it out. Then. I've just become a
really big Margot Robbie fan. I guess from once upon
a time in Hollywood. I just realized, Hey, she's a
really great actress. I really just like her as a person.
When I see her in interviews, and the fact that
she was a producer on this movie. I really wanted
to see it do well for that reason alone, and
the fact that I saw it kind of underperforming and
(32:50):
getting slammed online, I kind of felt bad for her.
So I just liked it a lot more than I
was expecting to and was just sad to see it
not do as well. All right. So that's my review
of Birds of Prey, all right, And that's gonna do
it for this week. But before I get out of here,
I gotta get my Instagram shout out, which I do
every single week to what are you guys listening? And
to this week it goes to Who's Your Mama? Underscore
(33:11):
a k a. Leslie Arnold, who said that she was
catching up on the podcast and she was actually listening
in her car, and she took a picture of her
like her screen where you can see my logo and
the name of the episode, which I thought was really cool.
Like when you listen in your car and have my
picture on in there, that's pretty cool to see. So
that's another way to do it. But all you have
to do to get an Instagram shout out is just
screenshot wherever you're listening to it, and then post it
(33:34):
in your Instagram story and tag me, and I'll repost
a bunch of those throughout the week and then i'll
give somebody a shout out. But if you're listening in
your car and my artwork comes on in your car,
that's really cool for me to see, so I'll definitely
shout those out. So if you have that feature in
your cool car, so yeah, you can follow me on
Instagram at Mike Destro or on Twitter at Mike Destro
(33:54):
as well if you want to see all my tweets
from the Oscars last night. I had a lot of
thoughts on those, so go check that out and I
will see you next week on another edition of Movie
Mix Movie Podcast Later m HM.
Host
Mike D
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.