0:11

Greetings friends, welcome back to

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Critically Claims. The Film Review podcast

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with an explosion at the front.

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It's been saved. It's a party

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the back. That's a party all

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the way through, man. Okay. My

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name is Whitney Seibold. I'm a

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you. Learn more at sleepnumber.com. We

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are reviewing this week. We are

1:00

reviewing I think we're a little

1:02

we're a little late to the

1:04

action on this one, but Star

1:07

Trek section 31. Yes, which is

1:09

the new made for Paramount Plus

1:11

Star Trek movies spit off of

1:14

Star Trek discovery the

1:16

animated family movie Dogman

1:18

the comedy horror thriller

1:21

companion the I assume not

1:23

comedy Steven Soderberghor movie presence.

1:25

Yes, ghost story. And the

1:27

sci-fi love story love me

1:29

starring Kristen Stewart and Steven

1:32

yen as a satellite and

1:34

a flotation boy that fall

1:36

in love after humanity dies.

1:38

Sounds amazing. It's a good pitch.

1:40

I'll tell you that right now. I'm

1:43

intrigued. We'd like to start with the

1:45

biggest movie of the week, but... Well,

1:47

that's probably dogman when it comes to

1:49

like theatrical grosses. I think in terms

1:52

of nerddom We'd be remiss if we

1:54

didn't start with Star Trek We don't

1:56

want to start we have a Star

1:58

Trek podcast. So we're we're through and

2:01

through. It's a patron exclusive. It's called

2:03

All Our Yesterday's. We review every episode

2:05

of Star Trek in order. We've got

2:07

hundreds of episodes in the can already

2:10

and we recently just started doing Deep

2:12

Space Nine. That's right. We're that far

2:14

along in the history of Star Trek.

2:16

Yeah. And now we get to the

2:19

most recent film. This is the 14th

2:21

feature film to be spun off of

2:23

Star Trek. Yeah. This one specifically comes

2:26

from the Kurtzman verse. Alex Kurtzman took

2:28

over Star Trek and launched... it like

2:30

relaunched the whole franchise in

2:32

2017 with the launch of

2:35

CBS All Access which became

2:37

Paramount Plus. Right. The premiere

2:40

show the flagship of this

2:42

new Star Trek universe was

2:44

Star Trek Discovery. A show

2:46

that was initially created by

2:48

Brian Fuller. and was taken

2:51

away from him and tink-munkeied

2:53

with by a lot of

2:55

different producers. Pretty much right

2:57

after like the first episode,

2:59

and to be clear Alex

3:01

Kurtzman also co-wrote the J.J.

3:03

Abrams movie as well, but

3:05

correct me if I'm wrong

3:07

here, because this is something even

3:10

as a Trekkie, I'm less of a

3:12

Trekkie than you, I know less than you. This

3:14

still confuses me. Is Star

3:16

Trek discovery... an completely

3:19

alternate timeline? Is it a

3:21

prequel to the original series

3:23

and Next Generation as we

3:25

know them? Or is it

3:27

a prequel to the Jay

3:29

Jay Abrams movies? Or some

3:32

other weird thing that I

3:34

can't even fathom. Well, there was

3:36

some debate on this. When

3:38

the reason the Jay Jay

3:40

Abrams films got made was because

3:42

of Janet Jackson. Stay with me

3:45

on this. I happen to know

3:47

that this is true, but it's

3:49

what an intro. This is an

3:52

interesting story. So for the longest

3:54

time, a paramount and

3:56

its parent company, Viacom,

3:59

its parent mount. parent-bound

4:01

company, Viacom, owned Star

4:03

Trek. And that was, that

4:05

held true throughout sort of

4:08

its glory days in the

4:10

90s. The next generation Deep

4:12

Space Nine Voyager and then

4:15

even into the 2000s with

4:17

Enterprise. Then came that Super

4:19

Bowl incident. Now, the

4:21

Super Bowl was being

4:24

broadcasted by a subsidiary

4:26

of Viacom. There was this big

4:28

there was the big scandal where Justin

4:30

Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's

4:32

clothing and exposed her on television Yeah

4:34

in the midst of the Super Bowl

4:37

halftime show right at the end of

4:39

it Yeah, and there was some debate

4:41

over whether or not it was scripted

4:43

or not Justin Timberlake noped out of

4:45

that controversy and let Janet Jackson fall

4:47

on her sword by the way. I'm

4:49

still mad about it doing fine. Yeah,

4:51

she she weathered it well and whether

4:53

or not it was staged you can

4:56

debate that if you alive What happened

4:58

though was the TV station

5:00

got a lot of angry

5:02

letters. Yeah. The term wardrobe

5:05

malfunction became part of the

5:07

lexicon. And there was so

5:10

much bad blood within the

5:12

company that the president of

5:15

Viacom, I think it was

5:17

less moon vest, decided... No,

5:19

it was more moon vest. Oh my

5:22

God. Had to... There was a

5:24

big schism within the company and

5:26

they decided to split the CBS

5:28

arm of the company and the

5:30

Paramount arm of the company so

5:33

So it's like the parent trap.

5:35

Pretty much. Well, each parent got a

5:37

different child. More or like, and then

5:39

when they finally met, it was chaos.

5:41

One of them got a lot of

5:43

the TV stuff, a lot of the

5:45

MTV, a lot of the Nickelodeon, and

5:47

the other one got all of the,

5:49

like the movie stuff, the Paramount stuff,

5:51

the Paramount stuff. The problem with that

5:53

was the CBS arm had all of

5:55

the movie rights to Star Trek. So

5:57

if they wanted to make a new

5:59

movie. they essentially had to license the

6:01

Star Trek brand from within their own

6:04

company. Yeah. And it was around that

6:06

time that the TV arm and only

6:08

and they would also have to like

6:10

make a deal with Paramount in

6:13

order to make new TV shows.

6:15

Right. Everyone everything got more complicated.

6:17

Yeah, exactly. Just legally they had

6:19

to start like cross licensing within

6:21

the company. CBS in order to

6:24

make profit off of Star Trek

6:26

decided to repackage all of Star

6:28

Trek on DVD. they decided to

6:30

start shopping the show around on

6:32

streaming channels, which were kind of

6:35

a novelty at the time. And

6:37

all of a sudden, the market

6:39

was flooded with all the Star

6:41

Trek. The reason we have all

6:43

of those, access to all the

6:45

Star Trek DVDs, Janet Jackson. Thanks

6:48

Janet. And paramount, the only way

6:50

they could make money and market

6:52

new toys and new kind of

6:55

merch was to make movies. Yeah.

6:57

the license was owned by another

6:59

half of the company, it had

7:01

to be, quote, legally distinct from

7:03

the ordinary Star Trek. So they

7:06

could use the names Captain Kirk

7:08

and U.S.S. Enterprise, but they couldn't

7:10

look like the ones we knew

7:12

from the TV show. Hence the

7:14

creation of an alternate timeline within

7:16

the Star Trek universe, the Calvin

7:19

verse. So everything within the

7:21

Calvin movies had to be legally

7:23

distinct. If you recall in the

7:25

Calvin verse, however. This is going

7:28

to get even nerdier. There

7:30

is a scene, a flashback

7:32

scene, where we get to

7:34

meet Spock, played by Leonard

7:36

Nimoy, back in the original

7:39

Star Trek timeline. Was

7:41

that, and they referred to

7:43

that as the prime timeline,

7:45

that's sort of like a,

7:48

and they referred to it. Because

7:50

Star Trek aired in

7:52

Primtown. Yes. But that's not why it's called

7:54

the prime timeline. That's one of the reasons. It's not

7:56

kind of the prime time line. It doesn't disprove my

7:59

theory. I suppose what is... your theory? I'm confused.

8:01

My theory is that it is that at

8:03

some point someone could have said, ha, Star

8:05

Trek was in prime time, let's keep it.

8:07

It might have occurred to somebody down

8:09

the line. Given the intelligence of

8:11

a lot of recent Star Trek writing,

8:14

that doesn't strike me as unlikely. Yeah.

8:16

So... Some fans have argued that

8:18

because the whole film needed to

8:20

be legally distinct that all of

8:22

the stuff from the quote prime

8:24

timeline Was not part of the

8:26

original Star Trek timeline that it

8:28

was another A tertiary alternate dimension

8:30

altogether. Yeah, the the so-called Kelvin

8:32

verse is what the movies. Yeah,

8:34

we're called because they the the

8:36

destruction of the U. S. Kelvin

8:38

at the beginning of split it

8:40

into a new dimension. So

8:43

yeah, the whole G.G. Abrams, that

8:45

there were three G.G. Abrams films

8:47

set in this alternate timeline, but

8:49

when they finally got around to

8:51

making C.B.S. all access, Star Trek

8:53

Discovery was supposed to be true Star

8:55

Trek again. Okay, back to the rich.

8:57

So it takes place in the same

8:59

continuity as all the other shows that

9:01

came before it. But just the TV

9:04

shows, not the Calvin movies and the

9:06

original 10 movies. Yeah. But

9:08

they also dinked around with a lot

9:10

of things. They also, because they had

9:12

a bigger budget and they wanted to

9:15

sort of make it look distinct, just

9:17

aesthetically. Well, they wanted to, they wanted

9:19

to capture the cinematic look of the

9:21

JJ Abrams movies. There was a lens

9:24

flare, there's a production design that was

9:26

very similar to the Abrams verse. One

9:28

of the co-screenwriters of the Abrams movies,

9:31

Alex Kurtzman, took over, he became the

9:33

like the new Rick Berman, essentially, the

9:35

executive producer of everything that was going

9:37

on. Star Trek, honestly, because all

9:39

of the shows he has overseen

9:42

have kind of deliberately, very

9:44

deliberately eschewed the kind of

9:46

stodgy classicism, if you were, the

9:49

kind of diplomatic underpinnings of a

9:51

lot of the original Star Trek

9:53

shows. Which is, which, which in

9:55

a vacuum is fine. It's fine.

9:57

It's fine. A franchise needs to.

10:00

continue to grow and evolve as time

10:02

goes on. Okay, they're like redesigning certain

10:04

alien species, they're changing the way ships

10:06

look and move, all of that's fine

10:08

because they need to update it for

10:10

a new medium. I don't even have

10:12

a big issue with the way they

10:14

redesigned the Klingons. I don't necessarily like

10:16

the new design, but I think it's

10:18

okay that they tried to do that.

10:20

from the original show to next generation. No,

10:22

that's true. There is precedent for it. It's

10:24

hard to complain when it's, oh no, they

10:26

changed it from the stuff that they changed

10:29

it to. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well I can

10:31

only get so mad, I suppose. Yeah. Since

10:33

then they kind of walked it back and

10:35

the Klingons now look more like they did

10:37

in that generation. Yeah, no, no, because they

10:39

just didn't like the design. It's like all

10:42

of a sudden like that they have like,

10:44

like, like, like, like onyx black skin and

10:46

no hair and extra nostrils. It's like they

10:48

look and their eyes are different. They look

10:50

completely different. Yeah. But again, I'm

10:52

okay with all of this. then they invent

10:55

we final but they tried to

10:57

do sort of the modern TV

10:59

approach where they took an entire

11:01

season and told one gigantic very

11:03

eventful story arc yeah instead of

11:05

the episodic structure yeah Star Trek

11:07

usually had to that date where

11:09

every episode was a new adventure

11:11

it took many episodes to finally

11:13

get to the USS discovery which

11:15

the show was named after and

11:17

the USS discovery had invented this

11:19

new technology which allowed it to

11:21

teleport anywhere in the universe yeah

11:23

which is such a dramatic sea change

11:25

for the world of Star Trek. You

11:27

know, a show about trekking. Yeah. And

11:29

because it was, and was a prequel

11:32

no less. So like how did this

11:34

technology change everything that we'd seen before?

11:36

So they had to, they had to

11:38

write themselves into and out of corners.

11:40

all the time. Just to justify the

11:42

existence of the show that they made

11:44

up. They didn't have to make it

11:46

that one. But to be clear, get

11:48

back to focus on my question. Yes.

11:50

Is this to be clear? Is discovery its

11:52

own thing? Is it part of the Kelvin

11:55

verse? Is it original timeline or is it

11:57

still unclear? It's it's the original timeline,

11:59

but But I think a lot

12:01

of like old world trekkeys take

12:03

it with a little bit of

12:05

a grain of salt. It's because

12:07

it's sort of this brand new

12:09

production team at a brand

12:11

new creative team, which has

12:14

a handful of writers, a

12:16

handful of directors, and an

12:18

army of producers. Like they're

12:20

literally 21 producer credits at

12:22

the head of every episode

12:24

of Star Trek discovery. Too

12:26

many cooks in this one. I'm

12:29

not sure if the producers are getting work. Not sure,

12:31

like a lot of people, a lot of times when

12:33

you're, when you're like listed as a producer, it could

12:35

be a legacy credit. Yeah. Like Brian Fuller's still listed

12:37

as a producer because he produced the pilot. Yeah. You

12:39

know, he's not, he's not working on anymore. He hasn't

12:41

worked on it since, yeah. Sam Simon is credited

12:43

as a producer on The Simpsons. He

12:45

died years ago. He's still getting a

12:47

credit. He's actually obligated because he's part

12:50

of the, you know, formation of the

12:52

thing. Fun bit of side trivia about

12:54

the Simpsons. Sam Simon was briefly married

12:56

to Jennifer Tilly, the actress. Oh, that's

12:58

cool. And when they split up, one

13:00

of the stipulations of the divorce was

13:03

that she get 30% of his Simpsons

13:05

money as long as he's credited on

13:07

the show. She is so fucking rich.

13:09

No wonder she's playing poker all the

13:11

time. She's just playing for her to

13:14

lose it. She's got, she can do

13:16

whatever she wants. She doesn't have to

13:18

work. So, but anyway, Jennifer Tilli aside.

13:22

I think we could dedicate this entire

13:24

podcast to Jennifer Tilly. Most podcasts

13:26

could be dedicated to Jennifer Tilly.

13:28

But I digress. Okay, let's get

13:30

back to section 31. Now, because

13:32

this is this is a whole

13:34

fucking can of worms. Now, so

13:36

this movie is definitely in the

13:38

discovery verse, which is kind of

13:40

the original universe, but kind of

13:42

the original universe, but it's kind

13:44

of its own thing. Here's a

13:47

deal. Back in Star

13:49

Trek Deep Space Nine, which was

13:51

on in the 1990s, they introduced

13:53

a concept to Star Trek called

13:56

Section 31, which was essentially the

13:58

Black Ops CIA unit. of the

14:00

Federation. The Federation is supposed to be

14:02

this egalitarian, diplomatic entity that doesn't

14:04

do that kind of thing. And indeed

14:06

the very existence of Section 31

14:08

was a closely held secret that only

14:10

a few people even knew about.

14:13

But they do the stuff that they're

14:15

not supposed to be doing, spy

14:17

work, assassinations. And he, that is the

14:19

agent from Section 31 is played

14:21

by William Sadler on Deep Space Nine.

14:23

Yeah. Sort

14:25

of served. But previously been a cue, so maybe

14:27

that explains it. It wasn't a cue. Wasn't he,

14:29

wasn't William Sadler a cue in that episode where

14:31

a cue lost his powers? That wasn't

14:33

William Sadler. Who was that? I forgot the actor's

14:35

name, but it wasn't William Sadler. It was William

14:37

Sadler. No, he was

14:40

like a TV veteran, but no,

14:42

it was not William Sadler. Okay,

14:44

all right. Shut my mouth, I

14:46

guess. But yeah, the function of

14:48

Section 31 on Deep Space

14:50

Nine was to reveal kind

14:52

of a moral rot within

14:54

the Federation. It was to

14:56

test Dr. Bashir's

14:58

moral compass a little

15:00

bit, like we, because they were trying to recruit

15:02

the character of Dr. Bashir into Section 31.

15:04

It's like you get to do black ops stuff

15:07

and he said, that's not moral. Yeah. We

15:09

don't get to do that. It was Corbin Bernstein.

15:11

Corbin Bernstein. I can see it, I can

15:13

see how confused the two, okay. Anyway,

15:17

and it was always seen

15:19

as something very shadowy and something

15:21

incredibly unfortunate that Star Trek,

15:23

that the Federation felt they needed

15:25

to resort to shady murders in

15:27

order to keep the status quo.

15:29

It's a betrayal of their ideals.

15:31

a betrayal of Roddenberry's concept of

15:33

the future. It is a bad

15:36

thing that it exists. Cut to

15:38

like 30 years later now and it's cool. It's

15:40

super cool, it's the best part of

15:43

Star Trek. Everyone gets to wear leather and

15:45

swear. No, it's suicide squad. Yeah,

15:48

the main character in this new

15:50

Section 31 movie is Empress Philippa

15:52

Giorgio, played by Michelle Yeo. And

15:54

if you haven't been following Star

15:56

Trek, that's a whole

15:58

can of fucking work. In short, there's

16:00

a mirror universe. She's from the evil

16:03

mirror universe that you that most even

16:05

non-treckeys know about the mirror universe because

16:07

of Spock with a goatee. Basically there's

16:10

an alternate reality where every good guy

16:12

is evil. She was a character who

16:14

died in like the first couple episodes

16:17

of discovery, a heroic character, but her

16:19

evil doppelganger was a genocidal tyrant who

16:21

ruled the Federation or the Terran Empire,

16:24

as they call it in the Alton

16:26

universe. So she was basically space Hitler.

16:28

And then she came over to

16:30

our reality and she kind of

16:32

found her conscience, but she's also

16:34

kind of kind of... a still

16:37

space Hitler a bit because martial

16:39

arts space Hitler played by Michelle

16:41

Yo might be redemptive is a weird

16:43

pitch. It's a weird pitch. I'm not

16:45

sure it's a good one, but it's

16:47

weird. And the timeline of the whole

16:49

thing is weird because, you know, Discovery

16:51

ended up like visiting the 32nd century,

16:54

which is like almost a thousand years

16:56

after the ordinary Star Trek events. But

16:58

she developed like a time flu and

17:00

had to go back closer to the

17:02

next generation timeline in order to survive.

17:04

Although, although they mix it up because

17:06

the star date they give is close

17:08

to the next generation timeline. But the

17:10

actual year they give. is closer to

17:13

the original Star Trek and those

17:15

are set about a century apart.

17:17

In the movie. In section 31.

17:19

So there's like there's like 60

17:21

to 70 years that are unaccounted

17:23

for. They don't have the timeline

17:25

quite right in this movie but

17:27

that's only stuff nerds will notice.

17:29

Yeah. Stuff non nerds will notice

17:31

is how shitty the movie is.

17:33

Okay. I'm gonna explain something right

17:35

now. I've seen this movie and

17:37

I'm going to do my best

17:39

to refrain from officially... like reviewing it

17:42

and getting very opinionated about it because

17:44

I know someone who worked on the

17:46

project. Okay. No, they worked on it

17:48

back when it was a TV series and

17:50

then gradually got short into a mini series

17:52

and then became a movie and as my

17:54

understanding his work had very little of it

17:56

made it into the movie if anything and

17:58

he doesn't care but from me I think

18:00

it is my responsibility to know about of

18:03

stuff like that but I can talk to

18:05

I can talk about observations okay I can

18:07

talk about context like what it means to

18:09

the rest of the the franchise I can

18:11

make sort of a neutral statement but I'm

18:13

gonna try to refrain from being opinionated because

18:16

it's the right thing to do Yeah, maybe

18:18

I'm overreacting, but it's right thing to do.

18:20

Yeah, and you mentioned this was going to

18:22

be a TV series, Section 31, starring Michelle.

18:24

Yo, Alex Kurtzman has said in interviews, it

18:26

was after she won an Oscar that she

18:29

said she's not going to do TV anymore.

18:31

Yeah, she didn't want to do a whole

18:33

series. So they decided to shorten this

18:35

series into a single TV movie. It's

18:37

the first TV movie. that Star Trek

18:40

is done unless you want to count

18:42

Dark Horizon the two-hour episode of Star

18:44

Trek Voyager came out I think the

18:47

show's fifth season was that was that

18:49

like marketed separately is like Star Trek

18:51

Voyager Dark Horizon or was it? Yeah

18:54

they called it Star Trek Voyager Dark

18:56

Horizon that's the way they marketed it

18:58

and they aired it in a one

19:00

gigantic chunk yeah so the irony is

19:03

that although this is now like a

19:05

movie in a standalone movie it's very

19:07

very much we're introducing a whole bunch

19:10

of characters there they're a ragtag group

19:12

of misfits and by the end of

19:14

it that not everyone survives it's that

19:16

kind of suicide squatty 30 dozen type

19:18

movie but the implication is and if

19:21

you like this maybe the adventure will

19:23

continue if Michelle Yo decides she wants

19:25

to do TV again right yeah basically

19:27

but yeah it does it never because

19:30

here's the thing with Star Trek makes

19:32

a movie Because there's so much Star

19:34

Trek on TV. And the Star Trek

19:36

on TV, you know, it can be

19:39

cheed, but it is still epic. You're

19:41

traveling the stars, you're meeting aliens,

19:43

and still fundamentally kind of... Depends

19:45

on the budget that week, but yes.

19:47

Yeah, but even a low budget

19:49

episode can have an epic concept,

19:51

for example. So when they make a

19:54

Star Trek movie, the temptation, and

19:56

I get it, is to try to

19:58

make it as cinematic. This stakes really

20:00

high and make the story conclude in

20:03

a very splashy way. Rather unfortunately a

20:05

lot of the Star Trek movies, even

20:07

ones I like, tend to fall into

20:09

really kind of tired action tropes to

20:11

make their films seem kind of bigger

20:13

and more epic. And one of the

20:15

bigger explosions, bigger fights, that kind of

20:17

stuff. And one of the best things

20:20

about Star Trek, and I think one

20:22

of the reasons why Star Trek still

20:24

thrives, all these years later. is that

20:26

Star Trek is a very malleable premise.

20:28

You can do almost anything in Star

20:30

Trek. There are certain rules by which

20:32

we have to abide, but they break

20:34

those sometimes too. But yeah, you can

20:37

do a big action spectacular Star Trek,

20:39

but that's not all Star Trek is.

20:41

You can also do really heady, talky,

20:43

sci-fi Star Trek. That works too. You

20:45

can do a character-driven bit. You can

20:47

do a fucking musical, like you can

20:49

do it all. It's all a delivery system

20:51

for any kind of story you want to

20:54

you want to tell, but... Most of the

20:56

movies tend to be the same type

20:58

of story. Yeah, yeah, there's Four I

21:00

guess now five of the Star

21:02

Trek movies in a row

21:04

have involved as a central

21:06

part of their plot a

21:08

bad guy who wants revenge

21:10

And and and several of

21:13

them have had like doomsday

21:15

weapons They actually used the

21:17

word super weapon in dialogue

21:19

in section 31. Okay, listen,

21:21

sometimes. That's a screen writing

21:23

term. I understand that. It's

21:25

still, it's still accurate. Okay.

21:27

Early in, in Star Trek

21:29

Discovery, when Philip Horsjo was

21:31

going back, like leaving. Star Trek

21:33

Discovery and going on for our own adventures.

21:35

One character referred to the mirror timeline and

21:38

the prime timeline. Those are fan terms that

21:40

we made them to describe those things that

21:42

are now just part that they just used

21:44

part as part of dialogue. I thought they

21:46

called it the mirror universe in universe. And

21:48

then they call that discovery? That yeah,

21:50

and discovery they started calling it the

21:52

mirror universe. That because it was called

21:54

named after an episode called mirror mirror. Yeah,

21:56

but come on. What are supposed to just

21:58

make up some random... thing when everyone

22:01

already calls it something the

22:03

fans call it my point is this why

22:05

come up with the news it's sort of

22:07

like when um all right so

22:09

uh when Thanos killed half the

22:11

Marvel Cinematic universe snap of his

22:13

fingers fans called it the snap

22:15

what who survived the snap what

22:18

happened after the snap but then

22:20

when start when Spider-Man far from

22:22

home came out we find out

22:24

the people within the universe called

22:26

it the blip yes That's completely

22:28

unnecessary. Like we already called it

22:30

a thing. You're just trying to

22:33

get it to rebrand. We called

22:35

it a thing. I understand there's

22:37

no, it's a perfectly good term.

22:39

It's a perfectly good term. There's no

22:41

reason to muck it up. The mirror

22:43

universe in the, anyway, that bothers me,

22:45

but I'm a nerd. It's fine. I

22:47

had to know what I was

22:49

going to say and I got

22:52

lost. We can get into this

22:54

movie now. Okay. So yeah, the

22:56

premise of this is that after

22:58

she executed. I'm trying to cut

23:00

the revenge movies. Hang on

23:03

real fast. So it's this one.

23:05

Uh-huh. Star Trek 1 through 3.

23:07

The J. Abrams movies. Yes. Because

23:10

that was Eric Banna. It was

23:12

Admiral Marcus. Marcus wasn't getting revenge.

23:14

Marcus wasn't getting revenge though, only

23:16

Benedict Cumberback went together. He was,

23:18

he was piloting a ship called

23:20

the U.S. as vengeance. He was

23:22

getting revenge. Yes, but not for

23:24

anything specific. It's only to kill

23:26

his daughter or anything. Yeah. But

23:28

then we go back to Nemesis

23:30

and then we go back to

23:32

F. Marie Abraham and insurrection. He's

23:34

getting revenge on the planet that

23:36

like Genesis and him and those

23:38

people are dying. Well that was

23:40

more about, uh, uh... Picard trying to rescue

23:42

the people. Yeah, but until the villain's motivation

23:44

was revenge. No, it wasn't revenge. He wanted

23:46

that fucking planet, he wanted to get them

23:49

off, he wanted to take everything they had.

23:51

Because his people were like thrown off of

23:53

that planet and then they were dying because

23:55

of it. So he's manipulating things to get

23:57

people off their planet. Wasn't quite the same thing.

24:00

But uh, but and then Picard

24:02

wanted revenge against the bork. Sure.

24:04

Yeah, so there you go. And then Malcolm

24:06

McDowell wanted revenge against the

24:08

giant negative space wedgy. No,

24:10

he wanted to get into

24:12

the giant negative space wedgy. His

24:14

emotions were complicated about it. It's

24:16

a love hate kind of thing.

24:18

He secretly hated the nexus. Yes.

24:20

Probably it's a problem that we

24:22

rely on super weapons and vengeance

24:24

These kind of action tropes when

24:26

we're making Star Trek movies because

24:28

copying wrath of con over and

24:31

over again At some point after

24:33

Star Trek six came out that

24:35

that's when sort of this fan

24:37

consensus started to gel that Star

24:39

Trek two the wrath of con

24:41

was the one It's like the

24:43

best one that everybody loved the most

24:45

and that an argument can be made

24:47

A lot of people do love the

24:50

movie. A lot of people do love

24:52

the movie. Yeah, it was a hit, so

24:54

keep on. But I feel like

24:56

Alex Kurtzman looked at Star Trek

24:58

and thought, I don't like that. I

25:00

want, and I've heard him talk about

25:02

Section 31 and interviews and he talks

25:05

about how, oh, you can't have a

25:07

utopia without violence. percolating underneath it. Then

25:09

it's a dystopian. Then it's not a

25:12

utopia. Yeah, then you've missed the point.

25:14

Yeah, completely. So I think he doesn't

25:16

understand or doesn't believe in the kind

25:18

of utopia that Star Trek ostensibly is

25:21

trying to argue for. Well, because I

25:23

would argue that in principle, like, you

25:25

know, a lot of things that happened

25:28

in Star Trek are we have ostensibly

25:30

utopia, but we have the constantly

25:32

keep fighting for it. Yeah. So

25:34

when things pop up, when an

25:37

admiral goes rogue, when an admiral

25:39

goes rogue, something. Petual existence of

25:41

Section 31 from like original series

25:43

timeline onward is a prolonged, you

25:46

know, black mark on the

25:48

permanent record. Yeah. So that

25:50

actually defies the Star Trek

25:53

premise. I can't imagine Roddenberry

25:55

being happy about it. No,

25:57

Roddenberry had to be. I'm

25:59

okay. that he was. And I'm

26:01

okay with it with the way it

26:03

was presented in Deep Space Nine because

26:06

it was seen it was constantly presented

26:08

repeatedly as as a black mark on

26:10

the Federation and how it needed to

26:12

be got rid of. Yeah. Alex Kurtzman

26:15

seems to think it's the bee's

26:17

knees. He really likes this idea.

26:19

So the idea is that Empress

26:22

Philippa Georgia went through

26:24

a time portal wound up

26:26

vaguely somewhere in the next

26:28

generation timeline. Sure. At least

26:30

I think like 20 years

26:32

before something like that because

26:34

there's a character who would

26:37

grow up to captain the

26:39

enterprise C. Yeah. Who would. in

26:41

turn like be thrown forward in

26:43

time. But it's at least a

26:45

few decades before. But yeah, she's

26:48

a younger woman in this story.

26:50

But she went back in time

26:52

and was recruited by Section 31

26:55

to do the Federation's dirty work.

26:57

First of all, I hate the

26:59

idea that the Federation has dirty

27:01

work. But yeah, because she was

27:04

a bloodthirsty cannibal tyrant, she's well

27:06

equipped to do work for the

27:08

Federation. Yeah, you know. It's operation

27:10

paper clip, but it's literally just

27:13

Hitler. Yeah. What the fuck

27:15

are we doing? Anyway. And

27:17

but it's Hitler, but Hitler

27:19

still gets to murder all

27:21

of the people he wants

27:23

for racist reasons and

27:25

eat them. Yeah, she doesn't really

27:28

do that as much now. She

27:30

eats an eyeball at the beginning

27:32

of this movie. That could have

27:34

been a replicated eyeball. And it's...

27:36

kind of implied that she does

27:38

this frequently so she's moved on

27:40

to this big floating space casino

27:42

essentially yeah with a bit of

27:44

nightclub of some kind she's Andy

27:46

Garcia and Oceans 11 at this

27:48

point yeah she just runs this

27:50

kind of night space nightclub outside

27:52

of Federation space and section 31

27:54

is caught up with her because

27:56

she was hiding out she was

27:58

living underneath an alias And they

28:00

say, hey, we need your help

28:02

with something. It turns out somebody

28:04

has a Nintendo Game Cube. Which,

28:06

it looks like a Nintendo Game

28:09

Cube, it even has a little

28:11

handle on it. And it's like

28:13

the Sullivanite bomb from Plan 9

28:15

from outer space. Yeah, you push

28:17

a whole galaxy. Yeah, you push

28:19

a button on it and it

28:21

destroys literally everything in the whole

28:23

universe. Yeah, you know, all those,

28:26

the good idea it is to

28:28

make one of those. Evidently she

28:30

had like a whole collection of

28:32

these things. And why did she

28:34

build them just in case? They

28:36

don't really say why. It was

28:38

basically like, you can't kill me

28:40

because if you kill me, everything

28:42

will blow up. Yeah. It was

28:45

her like attempt to like, you

28:47

know, tamp down a coup. But

28:49

basically. I would have loved to

28:51

know like, Star Trek usually at

28:53

least like. tries to wrap some

28:55

kind of techno-babble around its fantastical

28:57

technologies. This one is just... It

28:59

blows some shit out. And they

29:01

describe it as a super weapon.

29:04

Again, that's a screenwriting term. Anyway,

29:06

she's approached by Section 31. This

29:08

one very... Vague, uh, personality-free character,

29:10

played by Amari Hardwick. The character

29:12

is named Aylock, says, hey, we're

29:14

here to recruit you, and she's-

29:16

I'm a bad ass with the

29:18

past. I'm a bad ass with

29:20

the past, and I have grumble

29:23

grumble something. And she says, I

29:25

know, I knew you were here

29:27

because I recognized some quirks of

29:29

some people downstairs in my club

29:31

that clearly shows that they're with

29:33

you. And- Glasses, 10 o'clock. We

29:35

have the Sam Richard Karas character,

29:37

his name is Quasi, he's a

29:40

Cameloid, which is the same species

29:42

as Ammon's character from Star Trek,

29:44

Six. So he's a shape shifter.

29:46

Yeah. We have Zeph, who is

29:48

actually a microscopic super intelligent organism,

29:50

piloting a very of a Vulcan

29:52

looking Android suit. Yeah, but but

29:54

unlike Vulcan's who are who try

29:56

to... you know live by a

29:59

code of logic yeah he just

30:01

looks like a vocal and he's

30:03

highly emotional and very theatrical which

30:05

is kind of funny in premise

30:07

that's that's that's a play by

30:09

an actor named Robert Kaczynski there's

30:11

a Dalton which we haven't seen

30:13

I think Star Trek emotion picture

30:15

yeah maybe not and and deltons

30:18

are said to be very sexually

30:20

alluring to just about everybody yeah

30:22

versus combata play there in a

30:24

search emotion picture and they're they're

30:26

they're they're hairless human basically and

30:28

but yeah I'm around a delta

30:31

and you're like, I would

30:33

like to have sex with

30:35

them. And I find that

30:38

distracting. And that's basically their

30:40

whole thing. Yeah, that character

30:43

is named Mel, Emmy, L-L-E.

30:45

Okay. There's, um... Fuzz? Yeah,

30:48

fuzz. Wait, I thought Fuzz.

30:50

Oh no, Fuzz is the guy

30:52

in the suit. Fuzz is the

30:54

guy in the suit. There's the

30:56

meck guy. Zep is the guy.

30:59

Zep is the meck. He's the,

31:01

sorry, he's the meck guy. Yeah.

31:03

Who just has like a lot

31:06

of robotic stuff sticking out of

31:08

the body. Basically, he's in power

31:10

armor the whole time. And he's

31:13

a big tough guy. He's not

31:15

very smart. Roy Grock,

31:17

I'm sorry for pronouncing it

31:19

wrong. But the big connection

31:22

to previous track is the

31:25

final member of the crew.

31:27

Is Rachel Garrett, who... was in

31:29

the episode yesterday's enterprise of Next Generation. Yeah,

31:31

which is one of the best episodes in

31:33

Next Generation. Yeah, which is saying something. So

31:36

we got to meet this character Rachel Garrett

31:38

in Next Generation when she was already a

31:40

captain of the Enterprise scene. And did arguably

31:42

the most heroic thing anyone's ever done in

31:45

Star Trek. Yeah. And now she's played by

31:47

an actress named Casey Roll. She's a lot

31:49

younger. She's like 30 in this version. You

31:51

might remember her from Hannibal. Oh, I don't know.

31:53

Yeah, she was yeah, yeah, yeah, I

31:55

think she's really talented actor But so

31:58

I was excited so you're like oh

32:00

fun. Anyway, they get a message

32:02

from control who is Jamie Lee

32:04

Curtis. Yeah, we don't find that

32:06

out until later, but yeah. No, she gives

32:08

a voiceover. Well, I'm just saying if

32:10

you don't recognize her voice, you might

32:12

go. Pretty recognizable. She does appear on

32:14

camera. Well, she appears in like, as

32:16

a hologram, and I get the sense

32:18

that maybe she like as a hologram,

32:20

and I get the sense that maybe

32:22

she like filmed at her house. That's

32:25

very, we get, we get Jay Millie

32:27

Kurt, but we could get her for

32:29

10 minutes. Yeah, like, they said a

32:31

makeup person over, like put her in

32:33

the Star Trek, like, like, like, like,

32:35

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

32:37

I'm an energy. Oh no, it's

32:39

okay, this is just like borderlands.

32:41

Oh shit, it actually kind of

32:43

is. Yeah. It's got a vibe.

32:46

It's got that Guardians of the

32:48

Galaxy. This idea of like morally

32:50

dubious... Humors and quotes characters who

32:53

are kind of irreverent don't take

32:55

their mission too seriously and kind

32:57

of grow together and learn to

32:59

work as a team by the

33:02

end of the movie. Oh my

33:04

god, it's kind of a cliche.

33:06

How will these people learn to

33:08

work together in order to say the

33:11

galaxy? It's a really old premise. I

33:13

compared this to the 1986 film eliminators,

33:15

if you remember that movie. Yeah. a

33:17

Mandroid, a Ninja, an Indiana Jones type

33:20

and they all time... And an R2D2

33:22

and a Denise Crosby. And Denise Crosby

33:24

and they all team up to stop

33:27

an evil time traveler. Yeah, that movie

33:29

kicks ass. It was made for like

33:31

a million dollars. It's a super cheap

33:33

movie, but they did a lot with

33:36

their budget and it has that kind

33:38

of... a kind of B movie earnestness that

33:40

makes it really enjoyable. Yeah, so I'm the

33:42

same guys who also wrote Arena, which was

33:44

basically Deep Space Nine, with some of the

33:47

cast of Deep Space Nine, but it was

33:49

like three or four of the Deep Space

33:51

Nine cast. But if it was like a

33:53

space boxing movie and that movie kicks ass,

33:55

and they also co-created the

33:57

live-action TV series of The Flash.

34:00

They had a good pulp vibe.

34:02

They knew what they were doing.

34:04

Yeah. There's no pulp vibe to

34:06

section 31. It felt it feels

34:08

really derivative and not of Star

34:10

Trek. It feels derivative of stuff

34:12

like suicide squad. Yeah. Where and

34:14

the David Ayer version of suicide

34:16

squad where everything's like really

34:18

hastily introduced. The characters aren't

34:20

really given a lot of

34:22

room to breathe or present

34:24

a lot of personality. And

34:26

when they do their like.

34:28

quips, they're like a reverence

34:30

of flippant attitude in the

34:33

face of danger, it's not

34:35

funny. It doesn't really come

34:37

across as like effervescent or enjoyable.

34:39

I feel like a lot of

34:41

the humor in this kind of

34:44

movie, whether it's done well or

34:46

not, is basically the idea of

34:49

the joke. Every quip tends to

34:51

be some sort of elaborate variation

34:53

of that just happened. Yeah, yeah,

34:56

it's... It always just feels like

34:58

filler, like we'll write a joke

35:00

later and then we never got

35:02

around to it. There's a bit

35:04

where Empress Georgio reveals that

35:06

her little game cube was

35:09

nicknamed Godsend. Yeah. just that was

35:11

her code name for it. Yeah. And

35:13

one character is a little baffled if

35:15

it's supposed to be pronounced God send

35:17

or God's end. Like God send one

35:19

word or God send two words with

35:21

an apostrophe. They devote seven or eight

35:24

lines of dialogue to this confusion. Yeah.

35:26

And it's not the least bit funny.

35:28

That's the level of work. But it's

35:30

important later. Is it? No. No. It's

35:32

not a step. It's not a

35:35

step for anything. It's just stuff

35:37

that happens. Yeah. And that's this

35:39

movie. It's just stuff that happens.

35:41

Yeah. The action is really kind

35:44

of blandly filmed. There's a bit

35:46

where two fighters activate some sort

35:48

of like cloaking mechanism. Well, it's

35:51

an intangibility mechanism. Yeah, where they

35:53

can run through walls, but when

35:55

they both have it active, they

35:57

can touch each other. Yeah. which

36:00

is a which is a neat idea. Especially

36:02

for a Kung Fu sequence when you got

36:04

Michelle Yo involved. And I, it's like, if

36:06

you look at like Valerian and City

36:08

with Thousand Planets, they have a whole

36:11

sequence which is a chase scene taking

36:13

place in two dimensions simultaneously that overlap

36:15

with each other. So clever. But you

36:17

have to like figure out the logistics of

36:19

that and also come up with all the

36:22

fun gags. Right. Not every movie does that.

36:24

Yeah, Valerian is in one dimension, but his

36:26

hand is stuck in this device that puts

36:29

it in the other dimension. So just to

36:31

figure out ways to sort of navigate both

36:33

spaces, even though he can't see one

36:35

of them. Yeah. But his partner can. Yeah,

36:37

it's really clever in the way they do

36:40

it in Valerian. This, there's no wits to

36:42

that fight. It's just kind of an

36:44

interesting way to add a little bit of

36:46

an effect to a Kung Fu sequence. Right.

36:49

And there's going to be a twist as

36:51

to who was behind it and who

36:53

wants this doomsday device and there's a

36:55

space hole that they want to escape

36:57

through back to the mirror universe.

36:59

Yeah, which would be bad. I guess so.

37:01

Yeah, we don't, that

37:03

would be bad. We

37:05

don't want to do

37:08

that. I'll go back

37:10

to what I asked

37:12

before. What does Alex

37:14

Kurtzman, who didn't write

37:16

this, but was a

37:18

producer on it, it

37:20

was directed by one

37:22

of the discovery regular

37:24

directors, his name is

37:26

Olatundo Osun-Sunmi. Osun Sanmi.

37:29

Yeah. Thanks or wants Star

37:31

Trek to be an action

37:34

franchise. He thinks it's about

37:36

the battles. Right. Now, Star

37:38

Trek ships aren't like Star

37:41

Wars ships. They don't zip

37:43

around and fly into... They're

37:45

not fighter jets. Yeah, yeah,

37:47

until you get to Picard.

37:49

But well, that's another issue.

37:51

That's what you're thinking about.

37:54

Star Trek. Well, then used

37:56

to be. In fact, if

37:58

you think about It was

38:00

a lot more important, I guess

38:02

so. But if you think back

38:04

to Star Trek too, if you

38:06

think back to Rathaf Khan, it

38:08

wasn't about two ships zipping around

38:10

shooting each other and like hitting

38:12

each other 50 times each. I was

38:14

a Master Commander Naval bat. Yeah,

38:16

they were very slow moving, they

38:18

could barely see each other, each other,

38:21

each hit changed the course of

38:23

the battle, and it was just

38:25

like one strike, yeah. And that's I

38:27

think that's way more exciting than a bunch

38:29

of ships flying around and a swarm and

38:31

a bunch of explosions. You know you reach

38:34

a you reach a point when you're creating

38:36

that kind of visual chaos where it's it

38:38

literally it's just stuff happening. Like you watch

38:40

like the opening space battle in Star Wars

38:42

episode three Where like the clone wars are

38:45

about to end like they be ended with

38:47

begun the clone wars have the next one

38:49

begins with over the clone wars are and

38:51

it's like why did Okay, I guess we'll

38:54

do a whole series someday. But yeah,

38:56

it's just, you can't tell who's

38:58

doing what, you can't tell

39:00

what's important, you can't tell

39:02

why anything is happening, but

39:04

you can tell stuff is happening,

39:06

that feels like a waste. Feels

39:09

like we could have conveyed something

39:11

and like made it clear what

39:13

was happening and what we should

39:16

care about. And sometimes filmmakers

39:18

forget to do that. You

39:21

don't think like this movie very

39:23

much? No, I really don't. This

39:25

is the least Star Trek that

39:27

Star Trek has ever been. You

39:29

said it's very pliable. This is

39:32

as far away from the core

39:34

principles of Star Trek. You could

39:36

change the name, like the names

39:38

of their species, and have a, you

39:40

would have the exact same kind

39:42

of straight to TV action-based sci-fi

39:44

original TV movie that... People would

39:47

tune to Star Trek to get

39:49

away from in the 1990s. Here's

39:51

here's I'm gonna here's gonna fight

39:53

you on that. This is an

39:55

observation again. No qualitative statements.

39:57

Star Trek has been not Star Trek before.

39:59

I think Star Trek people try to

40:02

force Star Trek to be something that

40:04

it's not every so often. I would

40:06

argue that the whole Kelvin verse. Well,

40:08

yeah, exactly. I would argue that the

40:10

tone that this movie strikes, whether you

40:13

like it or not, has way more

40:15

in common with Star Trek into darkness.

40:17

Yes. Then any other movie except maybe

40:19

nemesis. These are not the particularly beloved

40:21

movies in the franchise, by the way,

40:24

because they are outliers. They do have

40:26

a very, very different vibe. Yeah. Again,

40:28

you run into this thing where

40:30

a franchise goes on long, especially

40:33

when it has, as Star Trek

40:35

does, over 900 episodes, and that's

40:37

like counting books and comics.

40:40

Right. Everyone tries their hand

40:42

at it. Everyone tries to have

40:44

fun with it, and throughout the

40:46

decades, yeah, every, like they're

40:49

episodes of Star Trek Next

40:51

Generation, which are clearly trying

40:53

to like, evoke X files. Yeah,

40:55

because it was hot right now. There

40:57

was a there's an alien abduction episode,

40:59

which is weird and it was an

41:02

alien show. There's an episode of the

41:04

original series where like one of the

41:06

guest stars was like this famous lawyer

41:08

and nobody remembers anymore. Melibella. Yeah, these

41:10

are very specific timely signifiers that

41:12

then get that then get lost,

41:15

but Every single one of those could

41:17

have been someone's introduction to Star Trek and

41:19

every single person in the direction of Star

41:21

Trek Often sort of colors what they think

41:23

it is. It's like it's like your first

41:26

doctor like when you're watching doctor who Like

41:28

if your first doctor is David Tenet you

41:30

think that's what doctor who is if your

41:33

first doctor is In should he got well

41:35

you're you might think it's something else. You

41:37

know you can tell when the makers of

41:39

newer Star Trek like what kind of Star

41:42

Trek they were raised on yeah I can

41:44

tell that like Terry Matales who oversaw a

41:46

lot of Picard you can tell he was

41:48

fond of the next generation movies more than

41:51

he was of the show because he tried

41:53

to make his seasons more like Star Trek

41:55

movies and he seemed to incorporate a lot

41:58

more elements of the movies dramatically yeah He

42:00

even reused a lot

42:02

of like music cues

42:04

from specifically from the

42:07

movies in his new

42:09

season. Yeah, the second

42:11

season of Picard is basically,

42:14

hey, what if Borg Queen

42:16

but the voyage home? Yeah,

42:19

Borg Queen loose on earth

42:21

in the present day.

42:23

Yeah, and we're going to do

42:25

a lot of the gags from

42:27

a voyage home. Hmm. Oh no.

42:29

That would have been, that was

42:32

a done-in-one, maybe a two-parter. Oh

42:34

no. Oh man. I find it

42:36

curious that in the second season

42:39

of Picard they saw... They went

42:41

to an evil universe, kind of

42:43

like the mirror universe, where they're

42:45

going to execute the last Borg

42:48

and they're like, oh no, we

42:50

can't, we can't come at genocide

42:52

of the Borg. That's morally

42:54

wrong. We have to rescue

42:57

the Borg and actually go

42:59

back in time and prevent

43:01

Earth from becoming genocidal. And

43:03

then they genocide the Borg

43:05

in the next season. It's rough

43:08

lately. Section 31 is sort of

43:10

like it's like the last few kicks

43:12

of this glory period in in Star

43:14

Trek because they launched CBS all access

43:16

and then they started launch and to

43:18

get people in you know Star Trek

43:20

was the bigger lure it was like

43:22

the valuable property it's what they had

43:24

than no one else had exactly it's like you want to come

43:26

in you want to do Star Trek fine there was a brief

43:28

period where there were six Star Trek shows running simultaneously I mean

43:30

not, they were all in production somewhere, they weren't like airing new

43:32

episodes at the same time. Not on like the same day, but

43:35

yeah, they were airing in rapid succession. Like lower decks would end

43:37

and then we'd have a new season of discovery and then we'd

43:39

have a new season of Picard and there was all of these

43:41

shows that were still on the air, all in production, all at

43:43

the same time. There was discovery, there was Picard, there was strange

43:45

new worlds, there was prodigy, and there was short tracks, and there

43:47

was short tracks if you, if you want to if you want

43:49

to if you want to if you want to if you want

43:51

to count, if you want to count, if you want to count,

43:53

if you want to count, if you want to count, if you want to

43:56

count, if you want to count, if you want to count, if you want to count,

43:58

if you want to count, if you want to count, if you want to count, they

44:00

were trying to get it. Yeah,

44:02

they were trying to get Section

44:04

31 made. As of this recording,

44:07

now that Section 31 has aired,

44:09

only Strange New World is in

44:12

production, and they're starting pre-production on

44:14

a Star Fleet Academy show. There's

44:16

gonna be two. Which is also

44:19

a spin-off of Discovery. Yeah, and

44:21

there's about to be two. Kurtzman

44:24

clearly likes discovery. For not earning

44:26

its emotional catharsies. There's a few

44:28

moments. for characters will say I'm

44:30

so glad we're a family and I

44:32

can only think when did that happen.

44:34

There's no there's no bottle episodes where

44:36

characters kind of get to know each

44:39

other as friends. I would argue that

44:41

that's a slight exaggeration because I think

44:43

there definitely beats that do work but

44:45

it's for like the three characters that

44:47

get the most screen time. There's a

44:49

lot of like smaller characters. Michael Burnham,

44:51

Suru, still on the air, all in

44:53

production, all at the same time. There

44:55

was Discovery, there was Picard, there was

44:57

Lower Decks, there was Strange New World's,

44:59

there was Prodigy, and there was short

45:01

tracks if you want to count

45:03

that. And arguably Section 31 since

45:05

they were trying to get Section

45:07

31 made. As of this recording,

45:09

now that Section 31 has aired,

45:11

only Strange New World is in

45:13

production. Yeah, and there's about to

45:15

be two. Kurtzman clearly likes Discovery.

45:17

He likes the violence and the

45:19

overwrought emotions of Discovery. Discovery is

45:21

kind of notorious for not earning

45:23

its emotional catharsies. There's a few

45:25

moments where characters will say, I'm

45:27

so glad we're a family and

45:30

I can only think when did that

45:32

happen. There's no bottle episodes where characters

45:34

kind of get to know each other

45:36

as friends. I would argue that that's

45:38

a slight exaggeration because I think there

45:40

definitely beats that do work. but it's

45:42

for like the three characters you get

45:44

the most screen time. There's a lot

45:46

of like smaller characters. Michael Burnham-Saroo and

45:48

maybe the Stamets I guess. I think

45:50

Stamets is the other one, yeah. But

45:52

like, yeah, there's a lot of like,

45:54

like there was this one episode in

45:57

like the final season of discovery where

45:59

like the younger. character she's an

46:01

ensign, no sorry they're an ensign,

46:03

sorry they they then pronounce them

46:05

in the show as well. Oh you

46:07

mean blue, or not blue, or not blue,

46:10

no, not blue. Well there's a

46:12

character named blue in a character

46:14

named gray and I mixed them

46:16

all the time. I think it's

46:19

great and I think there's a

46:21

character named blue and a character

46:23

named gray and a character named

46:25

gray and a cybernetic implant and

46:27

I forget her name, like. Who

46:29

was that character again? Yeah. No, no,

46:32

I knew the character. You never talked

46:34

to her, you never even looked

46:36

at her, until this episode. And

46:38

we're supposed to suddenly be really

46:40

invested in that? They struggled with

46:42

that, but I would argue that

46:45

there's a lot of great bits

46:47

with Saru and I think there's

46:49

a lot of great bits with

46:51

Saru and there's a lot of

46:53

great bits with other, you know,

46:55

Antilly as well. I think there's

46:58

some definitely good, I'm good in

47:00

it. But I feel like Alex

47:02

Kurtzman... likes the idea of a

47:04

Star Trek show that is like freewheeling

47:06

and violent and doesn't have to address

47:08

sort of the ideas of Star Trek

47:11

that depict it as a world where

47:13

there isn't war and violence, where there

47:15

isn't some kind of violent conflicts that

47:17

can be solved with weapons. He's not

47:20

very fond of, like it wasn't until

47:22

like maybe the like halfway through the

47:24

third season that there was in even

47:26

an episode where they talked about diplomacy.

47:29

They just... It's like exaggeration, but I

47:31

will say I will say this I

47:33

feel like we talked about this a

47:35

lot on our the Star Trek podcast

47:37

we should move on to soon. When

47:39

Ronbury created the next, and one of

47:42

the rules that he had was there

47:44

would be no interpersonal conflict between members

47:46

of the crew. That to get along

47:48

and solve problems together well. Yes, now

47:50

that is a great utopian idea, it

47:52

sounds like a wonderful workplace, and the

47:54

writer's room had no fucking idea how

47:57

to do that, that is the antithesis

47:59

of all... any writing advice you'd get in

48:01

any, in any class, any work. They were

48:03

only used to, the only way they could

48:05

come up with story was to generate drama,

48:07

and the best way to generate drama, was

48:09

into personal conflict. This is one of the

48:12

reasons why. It's like one of the basic

48:14

tenets of like screenwriting, and when Gene Roddbury

48:16

says don't do that, they just started tearing

48:18

there. And I actually think that was a

48:20

bold choice on Roddenberry part, and I think

48:22

there is a lot, that that tenant that

48:24

tenant that all. writing, all drama must

48:26

have conflict between the characters is...

48:28

It can feel really contrived too.

48:30

Well, it can feel really contrived

48:32

and I think there's negative consequences

48:34

to that. Think about every sitcom

48:36

you've ever seen between people who

48:38

are married and... It seems like

48:40

they fucking hate each other. Yeah,

48:42

like they're constantly bickering, they're rolling

48:45

their eyes, one of these days,

48:47

Alice to the moon, like because

48:49

like, oh, these are our main

48:51

characters, they have to have conflicts.

48:53

They're married. Does no one have

48:55

a positive marriage in a sitcom? I

48:57

know there are a few exceptions, but it's

48:59

rare is my point. So having the best

49:01

couple on in classic TV. Is Gomez and

49:03

Morticia Adams. Yes, they really into each

49:06

other and that fuels the story. You

49:08

can do that. They're a unit. They're

49:10

not divided. They're together and

49:13

they're solving problems together in

49:15

a very Adams family way

49:17

and the crew of the

49:20

enterprise solved their problems

49:22

in a very Star Trekky way.

49:24

My point is this. There were

49:27

always writers who bristled at that

49:29

and as Rod and after Rod

49:31

and very passed away they started

49:34

like sort of you know kind

49:36

of kind of pulling at that

49:38

a section 31. and some of

49:40

the other stuff that's come out

49:42

lately, is basically like, fuck that.

49:44

And that's why some of it

49:46

doesn't feel very star-track-y. Because it's

49:49

just any movie now. Yeah, it

49:51

doesn't feel like Star Trek. There's

49:53

no notion that there's even like

49:55

a Federation out there, or that

49:57

there's a star fleet in operation.

50:00

One character says they're in Star

50:02

Fleet multiple times. Rachel Garrett says

50:04

she's in Star Fleet and she

50:06

says, I'm here to make sure

50:08

you don't kill anybody, but she

50:11

doesn't say, you know. She's under

50:13

cover. I suppose so, but. Okay, don't

50:15

make a Rachel Garrett. Don't mention

50:17

Star Fleet. Yeah. The story

50:19

wouldn't change at all. But then

50:22

I wouldn't have Rachel Garrett. Fine.

50:24

Yeah. I will say that. I'm

50:26

a colored. Jennifer McGillicuddy and it's

50:28

going to have the same effect.

50:30

Just say I'm from the Alliance.

50:32

There's been a lot of Federation-like

50:34

concepts throughout a lot of science

50:37

fiction since Star Trek. Just have

50:39

it be a bit of a

50:41

knockoff and boom, you just have

50:43

a sci-fi channel original movie. A

50:46

failed pilot that was turned into

50:48

a TV movie. Yeah. And is all-time

50:50

or used to. And yeah, it doesn't

50:52

have to be Star Trek for any

50:54

of that to function. It doesn't have

50:57

any of the concepts about Star Trek

50:59

that make it Star Trek. It's all

51:01

about interpersonal kind of thing. And it's

51:03

all about fighting for a means. It's

51:05

all about blowing up a bad time.

51:07

And again, setting aside that it's not

51:09

like Star Trek, which some people is

51:12

a plus, not everyone's into

51:14

Star Trek. You're also arguing that it's

51:16

just not very good German characters. Yeah.

51:18

Like look at something like Guardians of

51:21

the Galaxy. Yeah. That of course I

51:23

think was sort of bolstered by its

51:25

connection to like the Marvel universe. Of

51:27

course. Yeah. People wouldn't have seen that

51:30

if it was original characters. Probably not.

51:32

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah, I think

51:34

people flocked to it and they realized

51:37

sort of how kind of lightweight and

51:39

charming it was these kind of weird

51:41

ragtag characters. Yeah. Because they were sort

51:43

of given the connection to Marvel. And

51:46

they were distinctly drawn as well. Yeah, but I

51:48

was going to say, I think an advantage, something

51:50

like our game, the Galaxy have, and I like

51:52

that movie, okay. I'm not a huge fan like

51:54

some people, but I think that first one's really

51:57

great, yeah. But I feel like each character was

51:59

uniquely drawn. It was. given each character was

52:01

given a little bit of personality

52:03

and a little bit of backstory

52:05

throughout the film so we knew

52:07

like a little bit about them

52:10

we got to know how those

52:12

characters interacted with one another that

52:14

they were a little bit antagonistic

52:16

but realized that they had a bigger thing

52:18

that they had to fight for there was

52:20

a little bit of heart to that movie

52:23

a little bit of emotional connection I've heard

52:25

that some people say they even cry during

52:27

that film and like yeah they die for

52:29

like a purpose. Yeah and they say something

52:32

very very sweet and it's like oh man.

52:34

It is about a doomsday weapon. It is

52:36

about a generic villain who wants a doomsday

52:38

weapon. The plot is not interesting. No. But

52:41

the characters have enough charm and the dialogue

52:43

has enough wit that a lot of people

52:45

are drawn to something like that. Sure. Okay.

52:47

You have the same generic story in

52:49

section 31, but there is no charm

52:52

and there is no wit and there's

52:54

no cleverness to it. The filmmaking is

52:56

very flat and bland. The settings are

52:59

all very generic. The characters are kind

53:01

of generic. I like the idea of

53:03

a microscopic organism piloting a man suit,

53:06

but they don't. That's a neat idea.

53:08

It's a neat idea, but they don't

53:10

do enough with it. I do think

53:13

that at the very least they do

53:15

take pains to make sure the characters

53:17

are distinguishable from one another.

53:19

Yeah. Whether or not they're

53:22

well-lushed out as a matter

53:24

of debate, but they're broad,

53:26

but they're broad, but they're

53:29

broad, but they look different

53:31

from each other. Yeah. Straight-laced

53:33

Bureaucrat. Space, Space Cannibal Hitler.

53:35

Space Cannibal Hitler is a

53:37

leader. Yeah. I don't like that

53:40

sentence at all. I don't like

53:42

the bets out there in

53:44

the either. And it's Star Trek

53:47

for God's saying. Imagine if

53:49

Emperor Palpatine joined a ragtag band

53:51

of misfits. Oh, some people would

53:53

love that. Some people let's

53:55

everything they've ever wanted. Oh, see,

53:58

Palpatine's not so bad. come

54:00

up with some kind of like rooting

54:02

interest and all of a sudden venom

54:04

is a hero. Yeah she's a fun

54:06

villain character. Anyway we've spent a lot

54:08

of time on Star Trek because one

54:10

last little thing because I know some

54:12

people are listening to this who are

54:14

who do listen to our all our

54:16

yesterday's Star Trek podcast. There is one

54:19

bit like one sort of thing at

54:21

the end of this movie that would

54:23

have clearly been the next episode or

54:25

the next season. It's like the story

54:27

we'll continue. And it's basically

54:29

a pitch I've been making on all

54:31

of yesterday's for a long-ass time. Like,

54:33

I really wish they would do this

54:35

or they would make this movie or

54:37

make this show. And it's at the

54:39

end of this. And I'm like, oh,

54:41

but you're not going to do any

54:44

more. That's what I wanted. I want

54:46

that bit. That's the cool bit. Why

54:48

didn't we start there? Damn it. And

54:50

no one never get it. Gar. Anyway,

54:52

that's all set. What's your move on?

54:54

The other big movie that we saw,

54:56

that we both saw this week, and

54:58

I can actually talk whether, I

55:00

like this one, is an animated

55:02

movie called Dogman, which is not

55:05

related to Wolfman. No. Which is

55:07

a little confusing. Dogman in January.

55:09

I don't know why we

55:11

need to do that. Dogman

55:13

is an adjunct of Captain

55:16

Underpants by author Daf Pilke, or

55:18

I guess Dave Pilke. The captain

55:20

meet Captain Underpants? Well, the main

55:22

characters from Captain Underpants, George Beard

55:24

and Harold Hutchins, are they draw

55:26

comics. That's what they do in

55:28

their spare time. And they draw

55:30

comics starring Captain Underpants, but they

55:32

also live in a world where

55:34

they've created Captain Underpants based on

55:36

their own comics. Yeah. And at

55:38

the end of the final Captain

55:40

Underpants book, they say, I don't

55:42

want to do another Captain Underpants

55:44

story, let's do a dogman comic.

55:46

And the dogman books are ostensibly

55:49

the comics written and drawn by

55:51

George and Harold. Okay, so this

55:53

movie is the story that the

55:55

characters and the cat down in

55:58

the pants movie wrote and made.

56:00

Exactly, and that explains why the aesthetic

56:02

of the dog man movie is,

56:04

looks like children's drawings. Like

56:06

the cops have a, or spelled COPZ

56:08

on like their stuff. Everything looks

56:10

like they're made of crayons. Everything's kind

56:12

of scribbled in. Even the characters

56:14

have kind of a drawing look to

56:16

them. Like big thick lines and

56:18

simple facial expressions. It's the same creative

56:20

conceit that follows the Lego movies

56:23

because you watch a Lego movie and

56:25

it's like, oh yeah, it's pretty

56:27

much all from the respect of this

56:29

kid who's playing with his Legos.

56:31

And then you watch the Lego Batman

56:33

movie and it's still that same kid.

56:35

Yeah. Because everything is consistent. I interviewed

56:37

the filmmakers and they're like, yeah, no,

56:39

it's some of them the same kid.

56:41

All those movies are played from the

56:43

same point. So a lot of the

56:45

story and the pacing of dog man

56:48

is really frantic and it kind of

56:50

goes to weird places. It has like

56:52

a little kid sense of humor because

56:54

it's being, you can tell it's being

56:56

created by kids. By kids, four kids.

56:58

Yeah. No, they're not trying to like write

57:00

more mature than their years. No, no,

57:02

no. Yeah, the premise of dog man is

57:04

that there is a big metropolitan city

57:06

and there are two hero cops at the

57:09

beginning of it. There's a dude cop

57:11

and his partner who's a dog. Yeah.

57:13

At the beginning of the movie, they're

57:15

fighting, what's the name of the cat again?

57:17

Petey. Petey, the most evil cat in the world.

57:19

He's their Lex Luthor nemesis. Always

57:21

doing evil things. They're

57:24

gonna car chase with them and it

57:26

all leads to they're at the top

57:29

of an abandoned warehouse building and there's

57:31

a bomb and they have to defuse the bomb and

57:33

they, boy do

57:36

they screw that up. And when

57:38

they get to the hospital.

57:40

The cop's head is damaged beyond

57:42

repair. Yeah, and so is

57:44

the dog's body. body is damaged

57:46

beyond repair. is actually kind

57:48

of morbid as a start to

57:50

a kid's story because what

57:52

they say is, listen, your head

57:54

is useless and your body

57:56

is useless so we're gonna sew

57:58

the dog's head onto the

58:00

guy's body. So the guy did

58:02

die. This is just the

58:04

dog where we're dealing with now.

58:06

which is, which is, and it's, it's very, like, four things

58:08

in a way. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

58:10

it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

58:12

it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, and, like,

58:14

like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

58:16

it's, it's, it's moved out, and,

58:18

and, and, and, and, and, and,

58:20

and, and, he's, he's, and, he's,

58:22

he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, and,

58:24

he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's,

58:26

he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's,

58:28

he's, and No! No wonder it's

58:30

almost up. So in order to

58:33

understand Dogman, you have to see

58:35

the Joel Kinnaman version

58:37

of Robocomp. Sorry. That's not

58:39

recommended. Dogman is better than

58:42

the Joel Kinnim. Well that's

58:44

true. It's also better than Robocop

58:46

3. 3. I'll defend Robocop too to

58:48

the end. Robocop too is very fun.

58:51

Robocop is very fun. Robocop to show

58:53

up in a 90 minute movie. It's

58:55

got like the most disinterested Nancy Allen

58:57

has ever been in anything in her

59:00

life. It's been a flock. It's been

59:02

a while since I've seen it, but

59:04

I remember liking how flocky it was.

59:06

It does not work. I'll defend Robocop

59:09

too to do it's very fun. Robocop

59:11

3 is such. crap. They're trying to

59:13

make it like for they're trying to

59:16

make it for kids basically. But if

59:18

you read the original dogman books, which

59:20

I have because I have a child,

59:22

this is all this is all alien

59:24

to me. I don't know. There's actually

59:26

this weird, um, very emotionally

59:28

disarming elements to the dogman

59:30

books because they start to

59:32

take on some pretty serious issues. Uh,

59:35

the cat Pete clones himself and has

59:37

little Pee. Who is his is mini

59:39

me basically a mini is like I

59:41

need a partner who it thinks exactly

59:44

like me, but he clones Clones himself

59:46

and gets a child out of it. Yeah,

59:48

it's not like it's not like an exact

59:50

copy of himself now And so at first

59:52

he's like oh no, what do I do

59:54

with this clone that's a young child as

59:56

it turns out Lil Petey doesn't have

59:58

the same propensity for wickedness. In

1:00:00

fact, he's quite the opposite. Well, he

1:00:03

hasn't gone through the hardship that Petey

1:00:05

went through that made him like cynical

1:00:07

and and and. But a big part

1:00:09

of this movie and a big part

1:00:12

of the dogman books is exploring why

1:00:14

Petey became evil and actually the hardships

1:00:16

he did go through and how he

1:00:19

came to lose hope and humanity and

1:00:21

how having a child is forcing him

1:00:23

to reckon with his own cynicism and

1:00:25

how he can't. Even though he

1:00:28

is still cynical, he doesn't

1:00:30

necessarily want to pass that

1:00:32

on to his own son.

1:00:34

Yeah. There's a robot they

1:00:37

build called 80. 80 HD.

1:00:39

80. The number 80. 80.

1:00:41

80. HD. Okay. But it's

1:00:43

meant to sound like ADHD,

1:00:45

which Daph Pilke has been

1:00:47

diagnosed. Sure. So we're trying

1:00:49

to get into sort of

1:00:51

the reason why people behave

1:00:53

they way the way they way they

1:00:55

do. and the relationships they have and

1:00:58

how the kind of mark they're trying

1:01:00

to leave on the world and how

1:01:02

it's going to be ultimately very positive

1:01:04

and very peaceful so there's a lot

1:01:06

of like complex emotions going on. Yeah

1:01:08

I was surprised at how I think

1:01:10

the whole second half of this movie

1:01:12

yeah until it turns into like action

1:01:14

may have it. It gets mad cap

1:01:16

at the end yeah. There's a giving

1:01:18

life spray. Yeah. There's an evil fish,

1:01:20

evil psychic fish that brings buildings to

1:01:22

life. And all of that's pretty fun.

1:01:24

I liked the living buildings. Yeah, the

1:01:26

living buildings are, there's this one joke,

1:01:28

because a lot of buildings come to

1:01:31

life and start walking around. And that's

1:01:33

like high joon, and they got big

1:01:35

eyes. And then like cuts to like

1:01:37

some people like in the park, say,

1:01:39

hey, I can see my house from

1:01:42

here and the house like waves at

1:01:44

them, like waves at them. I did

1:01:46

not need Rickie Jervais in this movie.

1:01:48

Yeah, I didn't need that. And when

1:01:51

Rickie Jervais is making a point about

1:01:53

how like, oh, actually we all need

1:01:55

to love each other and not be

1:01:57

mean. And I'm like, really Rick. his

1:02:00

whole comedy business predicated on being mean

1:02:02

and then he's also mean in real

1:02:04

life well and he's and he's also

1:02:06

said some really terrible things about trans

1:02:08

people and people like him and Dave

1:02:11

Chappelle and and normalizing that discourse is

1:02:13

not an insignificant part of why we

1:02:15

are here now yeah and so I'm

1:02:17

so mad at him for that's that's

1:02:19

a bit of a black mark I

1:02:21

will say I love the Captain Underpants

1:02:23

movie Yeah. I think that's a brilliant

1:02:26

movie. I don't know the books. I

1:02:28

think it's a wonderful movie. It's beautifully

1:02:30

animated. It's got a funny story. It's

1:02:32

an ode to an imagination. I think

1:02:34

it's the closest we'll ever get to

1:02:36

a Calvin in the Hobbs film. Yeah,

1:02:39

well, and you could say that about,

1:02:41

I'm sure to have Pilky write Calvin

1:02:43

and Hobbs. I mean, he looks like

1:02:45

Hobbs. That feels like that's probably at

1:02:47

least somewhat intentional. I'm less

1:02:49

high on dog man. Well Dogman

1:02:52

is clearly courting a bit of

1:02:54

a younger audience. Yeah, but Captain

1:02:56

Underpants celebrates a certain kind of

1:02:58

potty humor and understands the way

1:03:00

certain kids have friendships and the

1:03:03

way they can be on each

1:03:05

other's wavelength. Yeah. And also it

1:03:07

has things we can really relate

1:03:09

to going to school for instance

1:03:11

or having a mean principal or

1:03:13

you know your interest drawing comics

1:03:15

because it's about the kids. a

1:03:18

man with a dog for a

1:03:20

head or a dog with a

1:03:22

man for a mom. Who's a

1:03:24

cop? There's also a cop. Yeah,

1:03:26

it's good. It's a propaganda movie.

1:03:28

So it's also some people are

1:03:30

going to be like, I don't

1:03:32

want to see a kid's copaganda

1:03:35

movie. And I'm like, I actually

1:03:37

get it. I do. I actually get

1:03:39

it. I do. This is pretty harmless.

1:03:41

I actually get it. I do. I

1:03:43

do. I actually get it. I do.

1:03:46

I do. I actually get it. I

1:03:48

do. I actually thought it kind of lost

1:03:50

steam a bit in the middle. When it starts

1:03:52

focusing on P.D. and Lil P. Yeah, which

1:03:54

is fine, by the way, but it just

1:03:56

like everything, it started off at kind of

1:03:59

a mad cap page. And then it

1:04:01

just, it just, it just kind

1:04:03

of, I'm not saying it's bad,

1:04:05

but pacing-wise it really does sag

1:04:07

at that point. There's nothing really

1:04:09

pushing it forward for a while.

1:04:12

We're kind of ahead of it.

1:04:14

There's a bit of a mistaken

1:04:16

identity thing where Dogman meets Little

1:04:18

Petey and doesn't make the

1:04:20

connection, you know, and that's a

1:04:22

whole thing. But like, yeah, the movie,

1:04:25

the story kind of stops for that,

1:04:27

and I feel like, it might have been...

1:04:29

I think it might have been more effective

1:04:31

in terms of just pacing to keep a little

1:04:33

of that energy going in the middle, because it

1:04:35

really does feel kind of saps, like it kind

1:04:37

of had a sugar crash. And then it, you

1:04:40

know, then it has another snickers right at the

1:04:42

end. It's like, oh right, but let me build

1:04:44

it. Like, which is not the end of the world.

1:04:46

But I did find my interest waning

1:04:48

a bit, even though emotionally I was

1:04:51

more involved in the middle. But I

1:04:53

was just laughing less. I was a

1:04:55

little less, though entertained. I was just

1:04:57

sort of, it worked, but I think

1:04:59

it was not as carefully modulated as

1:05:02

the Captain Underpants movie in terms of

1:05:04

balancing all of its factors throughout the

1:05:06

entire movie. It felt like sometimes it

1:05:08

just gave... Okay, well, you know, all

1:05:11

the fun dogman stuff, we're not going

1:05:13

to do that for 30 minutes. And

1:05:15

then we're just going to do this, and

1:05:17

this is fine too. But if you like

1:05:20

that stuff, you might get a little bored

1:05:22

in the middle here. What I appreciate about

1:05:24

that kind of structure, that kind of the

1:05:26

way this movie is paced, is it did

1:05:28

remind, maybe this is just a personal

1:05:30

thing, because I also wrote stories into your

1:05:32

comics when I was a kid. How sometimes you

1:05:35

get so involved with the story that you actually

1:05:37

lose sight of the action that drew into the

1:05:39

story to begin with I'm gonna do this funny

1:05:41

thing about a man with a dog for doghead.

1:05:44

Yeah, and he's a cop It's a very axe

1:05:46

cop in a way like yeah, but I'm kind

1:05:48

of kind of making this up, but then you

1:05:50

realize wait a minute I'm gonna start getting into

1:05:53

the detail about the side character and then all

1:05:55

of a sudden you realize you wrote 30 pages

1:05:57

about the side character and you completely forgot the

1:05:59

original The premise, how bad. So

1:06:01

it's Tristram Shandy for kids. Yeah,

1:06:04

it has, well, I mean, that's

1:06:06

the, I think that's the way

1:06:08

kids think is a little bit

1:06:10

more Tristram Shandy-ish. Yeah, little. And

1:06:12

kids love that book. Little Lawrence

1:06:14

Stearns at heart. Kids love that

1:06:17

book. Kids love that book. If

1:06:19

you bring up Tristram Shandy, I

1:06:21

know you have. Yeah, when you were

1:06:23

five. You love there. It was your

1:06:25

favorite thing. 25, but yeah. Okay, so there were 20 of you and

1:06:27

when you were five you I recommend Tristram Cheney's very I know you do

1:06:30

and I like dogman I don't love dogman, but I like dogman. It's very

1:06:32

sweet. It had some really it has had jokes in it I agree with

1:06:34

you that it doesn't have the the solid foundation of something like Captain Underpants.

1:06:36

Yeah, but it does have it has it has heart. That's a thing. I

1:06:38

was it sounds kind of corny to say like it's like it's kind of

1:06:40

corny to say like it's like it's kind of corny to say like it's like it's

1:06:42

kind of corny to say like it's like it's kind of corny to say like

1:06:44

it's like it's kind of corny to say like it's like it's kind of corny

1:06:46

to say like it's like it's kind of corny to like it's got a like

1:06:48

it's kind of corny to like it's got a lot of corny to like it's

1:06:50

got a lot of But it does, it's

1:06:52

a very tender and sincere

1:06:55

story about relationships and loneliness

1:06:57

and the types of experiences that make

1:06:59

us who we are and the types

1:07:01

of experience that are capable

1:07:04

of changing us. And they're not

1:07:06

always easy and they sometimes involve

1:07:08

a lot of backsliding. And I

1:07:10

think the movie is surprisingly

1:07:12

mature and empathetic about stuff

1:07:14

like that. And ultimately, I

1:07:16

think even though, you know, the

1:07:19

funny, silly... you know, nonsense is

1:07:21

more objectively, not objectively, it's a

1:07:23

terrible word to use in criticism,

1:07:25

but it is more superficially entertaining,

1:07:27

you know, like on the surface.

1:07:29

That got, the part that I'm going to

1:07:31

stick, that's going to stick with me

1:07:33

is the emotional journey of PD and

1:07:35

little PD. That's what's gonna connect, but I

1:07:37

wasn't as entertained as I was by the

1:07:40

company. So it's just it's just the balancing

1:07:42

act wasn't perfect But it's really cute Okay,

1:07:44

we got three more movies here. I saw

1:07:46

two and you saw one Oh, tell me

1:07:48

about the one you saw okay. Well, I'm

1:07:51

gonna start with companion and we do a thing

1:07:53

here And I don't know how many people

1:07:55

care about this, but every time of like

1:07:57

not done it someone has said please bring

1:07:59

it back Okay. But when we put

1:08:01

our descriptions of the movie, of the

1:08:03

podcast, sorry, in the feed, we include

1:08:06

time codes for each review. This gets

1:08:08

kind of not a kimbo a little bit

1:08:10

because on the main feed we have

1:08:12

commercials and that can kind of like

1:08:14

push things off the time code a

1:08:16

little bit. But it's, you know, close

1:08:18

and it's close. Like you might be

1:08:21

a minute off by this point in

1:08:23

the episode if you're listening on the

1:08:25

main feed and not on patron. We

1:08:27

can listen for free commercials for free

1:08:29

commercials. So I'm going to tell you

1:08:31

this right now. Companion, it's

1:08:34

a new horror comedy, is the

1:08:36

kind of movie that I'm very

1:08:38

glad I saw without seeing

1:08:40

any of the marketing. Okay. Because

1:08:43

it's one of those movies where it's

1:08:45

like kind of like Abigail. The marketing

1:08:47

gives away something that's probably supposed to

1:08:50

be revealed around like minute 35. And

1:08:52

the whole first act is better if

1:08:54

you don't know it. Yeah. At least

1:08:56

the first time. And I think that

1:08:58

I find that deeply annoying. I've talked

1:09:01

about it a lot. I call it

1:09:03

Red Eye Syndrome. Where it's just you

1:09:05

put a twist too early in the

1:09:07

movie and you can't market it without

1:09:10

ruining that twist. If you don't

1:09:12

know anything about companion, you

1:09:14

can go right on ahead and skip

1:09:16

to the next review. I would

1:09:18

like to save this for you

1:09:20

because I had a delightful time

1:09:22

discovering this movie as it unfolded.

1:09:25

I think it is just wickedly

1:09:27

funny, very clever, does a few

1:09:29

things, familiar things in an unfamiliar

1:09:31

way. You can you can applaud

1:09:33

and many other things as well.

1:09:35

He's in a few other things.

1:09:38

He's he's going through a rather

1:09:40

prolific phase. Yeah, he's Superman on

1:09:42

my and my adventures with Superman,

1:09:44

which is a really good show.

1:09:46

He's got another like action comedy

1:09:49

coming out like next month called

1:09:51

Novocaine. He was in Scream,

1:09:53

Scream, technically Scream Five, but

1:09:56

they called it Scream. He's

1:09:58

really, really talented. I think

1:10:00

he's really really great. He's Dennis

1:10:02

Quaid and Meg Ryan's son and

1:10:04

he looks it. It looks like

1:10:06

they put those two in a

1:10:08

blender. We don't have to be

1:10:10

coy about that fact. It's pretty

1:10:12

clear. It's very very clear. He

1:10:15

looks like if you combined, if

1:10:17

you told a machine, could you

1:10:19

combine Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan,

1:10:21

you would get check with. It's

1:10:23

kind of perfect. Anyway, he plays

1:10:25

the boyfriend of a girl played

1:10:27

by Sophie Thatcher. Sophie Thatcher is

1:10:29

obviously she's very beautiful but she's

1:10:31

also very devoted to her boyfriend.

1:10:33

She loves her boyfriend very very

1:10:35

much and they're off on a

1:10:37

trip to visit some friends who

1:10:40

are hanging out at kind of

1:10:42

an isolated estate that one of

1:10:44

their rich boyfriend sounds out in

1:10:46

the middle of the middle of

1:10:48

nowhere in the woods where it's

1:10:50

one of those. And throughout the

1:10:52

first act we're meeting These two

1:10:54

characters are getting to know them

1:10:56

better. We're seeing Jack Quaid has

1:10:58

a friend, possibly an ex, who

1:11:00

Sophie Thatcher is very jealous of.

1:11:02

Okay. There's a gay couple that

1:11:05

they're with, too, who it's unclear

1:11:07

exactly how they're going to fit

1:11:09

into the narrative for a while,

1:11:11

but they're there. Jack Quaid's friend

1:11:13

slash possible ex has a boyfriend

1:11:15

who is a married Russian millionaire,

1:11:17

and we don't know how he

1:11:19

got his money, but we do

1:11:21

know he got it the dirty

1:11:23

way. That

1:11:26

the at some point Something happens

1:11:28

and Sophie Thatcher is put in

1:11:30

a position where she has to

1:11:32

defend herself and she physically physically,

1:11:34

okay, and she ends up. I'm

1:11:36

gonna take it to the first

1:11:38

plot point She ends up killing

1:11:40

the Russian guy. Oh God. Okay.

1:11:42

And everyone's like oh shit. Oh

1:11:44

my god. What are we gonna

1:11:46

do? Oh this this wasn't supposed

1:11:48

to happen. Oh man. And then

1:11:50

Jack Waits just says go to

1:11:52

sleep and then Sophie Thatcher turns

1:11:54

off As you wakes up and

1:11:56

it turns out she's a sex

1:11:58

pot. Okay. This is a somewhat

1:12:00

common piece of technology. People are

1:12:02

aware of this. It's not like

1:12:04

something only he has. It's a

1:12:06

little high-end. There's even a joke

1:12:08

later on where he's just like,

1:12:10

yeah, I don't even own you.

1:12:12

I rent you. Oh, wow. Okay.

1:12:14

He doesn't. But yeah, so she

1:12:16

something happened and she broke three

1:12:18

of her programming that Isaac Asimov

1:12:20

not supposed to harm a human.

1:12:23

And I'm not going to tell

1:12:25

you anything more because there's more

1:12:27

questions. Is she conscious? Well, that's

1:12:29

the question, isn't it? How conscious

1:12:31

is she? And what becomes clear

1:12:33

over the course of it is

1:12:35

that she is a complicated enough

1:12:37

like robot companion artificial intelligence or

1:12:39

whatever, that at the very least

1:12:41

there's a chance there's burgeoning consciousness.

1:12:43

She ends up going on the

1:12:45

run because she's worried they're going

1:12:47

to deactivate her. Okay. So she

1:12:49

is conscious. She is conscious. And

1:12:51

then, again, there's a question of

1:12:53

how much of it is her

1:12:55

programming, how much of it is,

1:12:57

what might have been done to

1:12:59

her programming. These are questions the

1:13:01

movie asks, and I think answers,

1:13:03

but I don't want to give

1:13:05

you all the answers. There's some

1:13:07

really fun really fun bits where

1:13:09

she's able to like steal Jack

1:13:11

Quaid's remote control Oh for her

1:13:13

for her okay give herself new

1:13:15

accents and things and then she

1:13:17

looks at like the intelligence meter

1:13:19

and he's got it at like

1:13:21

40 and she's like Oh, come

1:13:23

on. And so she scoots that

1:13:25

right up to 100 which is

1:13:27

a really clever bit. But yeah,

1:13:29

so it turns out there's there's

1:13:32

intrigue whatever and we it's all

1:13:34

elaborate metaphor for Men's control of

1:13:36

women. Men's control of women. Men's

1:13:38

control of women. Basically control of

1:13:40

anyone in a romantic situation. There

1:13:42

are some parallels with the gay

1:13:44

couple as well that, you know,

1:13:46

raise questions outside of the gender

1:13:48

aspect of it, but it's definitely

1:13:50

about that too. This is from,

1:13:52

I think it's produced by the

1:13:54

director of Barbarian, another movie which,

1:13:56

you know, relied a lot on

1:13:58

twists and just people acting off.

1:14:00

That's kind of the meat and

1:14:02

potatoes of it. One of the

1:14:04

main characters of that movie is

1:14:06

a complete scoundrel. Yes, it's an

1:14:08

absolutely terrible human being. And we're

1:14:10

going to get some of those in

1:14:12

here too. I appreciate the gut punch that

1:14:15

barbarian is. I actually don't think

1:14:17

it's a great movie. I find it

1:14:19

frustrating. I think there's great bits

1:14:21

in it, but I actually think

1:14:23

ultimately... It is weirdly structured. It's

1:14:25

weirdly structured, but more than that,

1:14:27

it feels like the things that

1:14:29

it finds horrifying are kind of

1:14:32

off, like kind of a skew

1:14:34

from the movie's moral compass. Like

1:14:36

it's basically saying like, you know

1:14:38

who's like the worst monster in

1:14:41

all of this? this victim. And

1:14:43

I'm like, that's weird. And I

1:14:45

feel like you're not really engaging

1:14:47

with that question. Companion engages with

1:14:49

these questions. And I think ultimately

1:14:52

emerges, I think it asks. more salient

1:14:54

questions and actually delves into them

1:14:56

more interestingly, while also being really

1:14:58

fucking funny. I left my ass

1:15:01

off at this movie without ever

1:15:03

losing the sense of suspense. There

1:15:06

really is this sense that, you

1:15:08

know, it's one of those movies

1:15:10

where one bad thing happens and

1:15:12

then everything gets worse and worse

1:15:14

and worse and worse. How else

1:15:16

can this day go wrong? And

1:15:18

as that keeps happening, the new

1:15:20

starts tightening, more bodies start piling

1:15:22

up, and there really is a

1:15:25

genuine sense of suspense and a

1:15:27

genuine wonder of how is anyone

1:15:29

getting out of this? Because we're kind

1:15:31

of fucked here, like this is a

1:15:33

bad situation. It's just really cleverly written,

1:15:35

Jack Quay and Sophie Thatcher really great,

1:15:37

Harvey Gillen, from what we do in

1:15:40

the shadows, isn't as well, he's very

1:15:42

funny. But yeah, no, it's it's smart interesting

1:15:44

funny sci-fi and I and I do think

1:15:46

it's very very good I'm sorry I missed

1:15:48

it I was trying to get make it

1:15:51

out, but I just didn't get it I

1:15:53

think it helps I think it helps that

1:15:55

I was genuinely not sure what movie I

1:15:57

was watching until the big reveal Hmm I

1:15:59

was I was It's clued into what was off,

1:16:01

I didn't guess why. And I think

1:16:04

it's frustrating that while making, while producing

1:16:06

this movie, all the posters just say,

1:16:08

Sexbot, trailer's evil sex pot, or Sexpot

1:16:10

kills somebody. And I'm like, you're not

1:16:12

wrong, but you're not preserving the experience

1:16:14

and you're not doing the movie a

1:16:16

lot of favors. So I hope some

1:16:18

people get to see it, spoiler free,

1:16:21

but I think even if you don't,

1:16:23

it might be a situation where you're

1:16:25

kind of waiting for the movie to

1:16:27

get started after the movie to get

1:16:29

started. suspenseful and funny and I

1:16:31

just I think it's really good film it's

1:16:33

it it's probably I think it's the first

1:16:35

great movie I've seen this year oh

1:16:37

I could be forgetting something but I

1:16:39

think because I definitely some movies I

1:16:41

reviewed that were like technically last year

1:16:43

releases that didn't get theatrically released until

1:16:46

now that we didn't cover but I think

1:16:48

this is the first good movie scene this

1:16:50

year so I do recommend it a lot

1:16:52

amazing okay so you've got a new film

1:16:54

it's a is a new film it's a

1:16:56

horror film it's a One of two films

1:16:58

he's going to release this year. Oh,

1:17:00

only two this year. Only two this

1:17:03

year. Remember remember when he retired? And

1:17:05

then he retired again? And then he

1:17:07

retired again? Like he's retired more times

1:17:09

like he yummy isaki at this point.

1:17:12

He keeps on saying that he wants

1:17:14

to retire. He says he's going to

1:17:16

stop making movies. I guess can't help

1:17:18

himself. And we're all the better for

1:17:21

it. Most of his movies are really

1:17:23

good. Yeah, it's rare that he's disappointed.

1:17:25

It's happened a couple of times. Yeah,

1:17:27

he's prolific enough that he can't, you

1:17:30

know, they're not all going to be,

1:17:32

you know, winners, but like, it's, and

1:17:34

he's got a lot of variety in

1:17:36

his filmmaking too, which I appreciate. Yeah.

1:17:38

Like he doesn't make the same movie, he's

1:17:41

made a movie over and over again

1:17:43

a couple of times, he really likes

1:17:45

ice movies, but like. Yeah, because he

1:17:47

did, he did Ocean's. Very similar to

1:17:49

working class oceans 11 basically and I

1:17:51

actually like it better than yes He

1:17:53

has the film coming out later this

1:17:55

year called Black bag with which was

1:17:57

written by David Keps. I'm looking forward

1:17:59

to that Okay But yeah, this new

1:18:01

film presence is his take on a

1:18:03

haunted house movie. And the gimmick of

1:18:05

presence is that it takes place in

1:18:08

the haunted house, a family moves in,

1:18:10

there's a ghost there, and it's told

1:18:12

entirely from the perspective of the ghost.

1:18:15

Okay. But the camera is the ghost,

1:18:17

so we get to see everything like

1:18:19

through the ghost's eyes, essentially. Okay, no,

1:18:21

is it like a monster vision? How

1:18:24

do we know it's like from the

1:18:26

ghost perspective besides that it's just there?

1:18:28

the way the introductory sequence of the

1:18:31

movie is the camera sort of floating

1:18:33

through like using a steady cam yeah

1:18:35

it almost looks like a drone just

1:18:37

sort of floating around this house and

1:18:40

like the family comes in and it

1:18:42

floats up close so it's like doing

1:18:44

so with purpose like it's like it's

1:18:47

it's kind of looking at them okay

1:18:49

and uh and it kind of settles

1:18:51

on the teenage daughter of the family

1:18:53

that's moving in. The dad is played

1:18:56

by Chris Payne, or no, the character

1:18:58

is named Chris Payne, the dad is

1:19:00

played by Chris Sullivan, and the mom

1:19:03

is played by Lucy Liu, and their

1:19:05

teenage daughter is played by Colina Liang,

1:19:07

as a character, an actress I'm not

1:19:09

terribly familiar with. But she has a

1:19:12

bit of a sixth sense. So she's

1:19:14

the one who like, at one point,

1:19:16

looks directly at the camera. She is

1:19:19

also going through something really really tough

1:19:21

where her best friend just died. She's

1:19:23

going through a lot of horrible trauma

1:19:25

and that's sort of making her a

1:19:28

little bit more sensitive to the fact

1:19:30

that there's a presence in the house.

1:19:32

Her older brother is a complete loud.

1:19:35

He's a teenager and he's like trying

1:19:37

to drain himself of empathy and he's

1:19:39

constantly talking about these really cruel pranks

1:19:42

he's playing on people at school and

1:19:44

the dad is like... trying to straighten

1:19:46

him out as gently as he possibly

1:19:48

can. And the Lucy Lou character is

1:19:51

checked out. Like she's just focusing on

1:19:53

business and is not interacting with the

1:19:55

family that much anymore. Got it. And

1:19:58

of course there's a plot that's starts

1:20:00

to emerge after a while. Some other

1:20:02

characters enter the scene. There's one of those,

1:20:04

like in the Amadeville horror, there's the bit

1:20:06

where they welcome the medium inside and they

1:20:09

get to explain a lot of the. Yeah.

1:20:11

A lot of the exposition as to what's

1:20:13

really going on. The rules of this universe.

1:20:15

Yeah, someone's got to say it. Yeah.

1:20:17

But Soderbergh is a lot more

1:20:19

interesting. He's a lot more naturalistic

1:20:21

a filmmaker even though some of

1:20:23

his films are very mannered and

1:20:26

stylized. Yeah. He tends to shoot

1:20:28

his films in such a way

1:20:30

that it feels a little bit

1:20:32

more handheld and off the cuff.

1:20:34

Well, I think his last tour

1:20:36

movie was unsane. Yeah. Was she

1:20:38

filmed on like an iPhone? Was

1:20:40

it a clear foil? Yeah. He's

1:20:42

always been really interested in digital

1:20:44

technology, like digital cameras. Maybe a

1:20:46

bubble. long time ago. Yeah bubble is

1:20:48

really interesting because he not only shot it

1:20:50

digitally but it had that weird release schedule

1:20:53

was on It was on home video, theaters,

1:20:55

and on streaming all simultaneously. Right, which was

1:20:57

kind of a forerunner to a lot of

1:20:59

independent movies do that now. You can see

1:21:02

it in theaters or you can pay 20

1:21:04

bucks and see it on VOD. And I

1:21:06

think he likes the digital aesthetic because it

1:21:08

does have a little bit more of a

1:21:11

handmade quality to it. Or at least it

1:21:13

did when he started using it and he

1:21:15

kind of sticks with that aesthetic, even though

1:21:17

digital cameras are now super sophisticated.

1:21:20

Yeah. What presence has is

1:21:22

that quality that kind of handmade quality

1:21:24

where he's trying to use the camera

1:21:27

itself as a special effect And it

1:21:29

actually Has a really interesting viewpoint on

1:21:31

the ghost because when the teenage girl

1:21:33

notices there might be a ghost in

1:21:36

the room it realizes it's kind of

1:21:38

been seen and it literally hides in

1:21:40

the closet There's there's a few bits

1:21:43

where it tries to interact with people

1:21:45

and it kind of like like vibrates,

1:21:47

it's like this angry ghost that if

1:21:50

you've ever been one of those people

1:21:52

who thinks they have felt a ghost in the

1:21:54

room. Right. It kind of makes sense in that

1:21:56

way. Well let me ask you a question because

1:21:58

I missed, I had them. I couldn't,

1:22:00

life's been complicated in Los

1:22:03

Angeles the last month. I really

1:22:05

wanted to because I heard of

1:22:07

things. What I'm unclear about, from

1:22:09

hearing you talk, from hearing some

1:22:11

other people talk about this movie.

1:22:14

It's obviously it's a haunted house

1:22:16

story. Yes. Is it a horror

1:22:18

story? Is it scary? It's a

1:22:21

horror story because it's... There's a

1:22:23

good version of family drama. This

1:22:25

could be a version of Casper,

1:22:27

you know, like that's kind of

1:22:30

the plot of Casper where we're

1:22:32

seeing Christina reaching and Bill Pullman

1:22:34

through Casper's eyes for part of

1:22:37

it. I can't tell you the

1:22:39

horror elements without giving away some

1:22:41

like certain plot details. But

1:22:43

it is a horror movie.

1:22:45

There is a threat. There's

1:22:48

some horror, there's some horror,

1:22:50

there's a horror movie. nobody's

1:22:52

business. Ghost, for example, is

1:22:54

a great one. There's plenty

1:22:56

of uplifting or even comedic

1:22:59

ghost movies out there. Or

1:23:01

just pensive ones, like ghost

1:23:03

story. Yeah. You know, with a guy, David

1:23:05

Lowry. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:23:07

yeah. I like a ghost story.

1:23:10

I like David Lowry's a ghost

1:23:12

story. Yeah, you like more than

1:23:15

I do, but yeah, I get,

1:23:17

yeah. But it's a very pensive

1:23:19

ghost story. It's technically a ghost

1:23:22

story, but it's not really scary.

1:23:24

It's just about what it would

1:23:26

be like to be a ghost. It

1:23:28

would be like to be a ghost.

1:23:30

It would be kind of weird,

1:23:32

right? Time kind of falls away,

1:23:35

kind of, yeah. But it's good.

1:23:37

But yeah, but it is good and

1:23:39

I think a lot of the

1:23:41

character work is really honest. I

1:23:43

like movies that try to capture

1:23:45

our idea of what death would

1:23:47

feel like. Right. Over what an

1:23:50

afterlife might feel like. Yeah. I

1:23:52

mean, we've seen plenty of movies

1:23:54

where characters die and go

1:23:56

to some version of heaven,

1:23:59

for instance. we've seen so many

1:24:01

haunting movies and a lot of ghosts

1:24:03

are kind of like just detached vengeful

1:24:05

feelings. Yeah, they have unresolved things. Yeah,

1:24:07

it's always about something being unresolved and

1:24:09

most ghost stories are about domestic strife

1:24:12

at the heart of it after all.

1:24:14

Because a haunted house. Yeah, what is

1:24:16

a haunted house? It's just the evil

1:24:18

that's floating around through a domestic scene.

1:24:20

It's a house where stuff happened before

1:24:22

you got there. Yeah, or there's strife

1:24:25

within the family and the ghost represents

1:24:27

that strife. Yeah, yeah. So it's always...

1:24:29

All of that is also in presence,

1:24:31

but I feel like this has a

1:24:33

little bit of a novel view of

1:24:36

what it would like to be a

1:24:38

ghost, because you, essentially, the viewer, are

1:24:40

the ghost. You're floating through, you're seeing

1:24:42

it through everybody's eyes. You know, it

1:24:44

looks like a carnival vodka. You are

1:24:46

the ghost! Another film that did this

1:24:49

very well that I'm very fond of

1:24:51

was Gasparnoye's Enter the Void. I was

1:24:53

waiting for that to show up. I

1:24:55

was waiting for you to reference it.

1:24:57

I know you would. That's also a

1:24:59

movie about told from like the perspective

1:25:02

of like within the eyeballs of the

1:25:04

main character but it dies and we

1:25:06

get to see sort of how the

1:25:08

main character's spirit sort of drifts off

1:25:10

and drifts in and out and starts

1:25:12

drifting through time after a while and

1:25:15

starts partly the real world, but partly

1:25:17

the afterlife. I think that's a really

1:25:19

interesting movie, an interesting way to view

1:25:21

the afterlife. And I feel like Stephen

1:25:23

Sutterberg is trying to do something similar,

1:25:25

but like with his own novel edge

1:25:28

to it. Sure. Yeah, I enjoy it.

1:25:30

Yeah, I would like to point out.

1:25:32

That after multiple episodes of the show

1:25:34

we've had to record in a different

1:25:36

space than we've normally recorded in Yeah

1:25:38

And I've made multiple apologies and people

1:25:41

told me it's not so bad. He

1:25:43

can barely hear the refrigerator. This fuckers

1:25:45

getting louder This this thing is is

1:25:47

trying to tick me up. I know

1:25:49

I'm kind of hyper aware of a

1:25:51

sound I've never entirely happy with the

1:25:54

sound we can get because we don't

1:25:56

have like a proper studio. We're reviewing

1:25:58

a movie about a ghost something to

1:26:00

that. Maybe the fridge wants to get

1:26:02

in on the conversation for some reason.

1:26:04

What have you got, fridgey? The fridge

1:26:06

is possessed. The fridge is trying to

1:26:08

tell us something about its own ghostly.

1:26:11

What have we got here? You're opening

1:26:13

a fridge. So we've got a bunch

1:26:15

of garlic because I'm Italian of course

1:26:17

we do. We've got some beef stock.

1:26:19

I actually use ups and I've got some

1:26:21

butter. I've got some lacrois. Okay. Some

1:26:23

perfect bars in here. Drives me nuts

1:26:25

that it's not pronounced LaQua. I know,

1:26:28

right? So I'm not sure why my

1:26:30

refrigerator is trying to convey with that.

1:26:32

But maybe maybe someone can figure it

1:26:34

out like the kid with the cereal

1:26:37

boxes and lady in the water. There's

1:26:39

meaning to all of this. Tell me

1:26:41

about another movie. All right, so last

1:26:43

movie, let's review it this week. It's

1:26:46

called Love Main. And I

1:26:48

mentioned at the top, it's got

1:26:50

a really novel premise. The opening

1:26:52

of the movie is the creation

1:26:54

of the universe, followed by the

1:26:57

creation of Earth, followed by Earth

1:26:59

getting hit by, you know, a

1:27:01

meteor. This is all like time-lapse

1:27:03

photography. So we're seeing billions upon

1:27:05

billions of years in just like

1:27:08

a minute. And you know, we

1:27:10

see like the Pangea evolve and

1:27:12

then all of a sudden, everything gets

1:27:15

really loud. Like we hear like

1:27:17

a lot of radio transmissions and music

1:27:19

and this kind of stuff and then

1:27:21

all of a sudden all of that

1:27:23

gets turned off at once and Everything kind

1:27:26

of slows down and now here

1:27:28

we are humanity has died and

1:27:30

Our protagonist our main character at

1:27:32

least for the first part of

1:27:34

the movie is a scientific flotation

1:27:36

boy It's just it's it's floating

1:27:38

in the ocean. It's supposed to human

1:27:41

shape. No, no, it is not No,

1:27:43

it is not it looks it looks

1:27:45

like a flotation boy with like a

1:27:47

camera on it And it's just sort

1:27:49

of looking around and apparently it's

1:27:52

been doing this for it's solar powered

1:27:54

so it can go on for a

1:27:56

long time and it's just Doing

1:27:58

its thing and then And every once

1:28:00

in a while, it sees overhead,

1:28:02

like one light in the sky

1:28:05

flies across, and that's a satellite. And

1:28:08

the boy can pick up on

1:28:10

the satellite's transmissions, and the satellite's transmissions

1:28:12

are basically, I

1:28:16

am this satellite, and I am

1:28:18

here to welcome any visitors who

1:28:20

might come to Earth and tell

1:28:22

you what Earth was like. It

1:28:24

was like this thing we put

1:28:26

up last minute, like in the

1:28:28

inner light, except it's not going

1:28:31

to put anyone in a lifelong,

1:28:33

you know, horrifying, you know, hologram

1:28:35

reality. And

1:28:37

our flutation boy is clearly lonely,

1:28:40

and it's starting to want more

1:28:42

for itself, and finally she tries

1:28:44

to contact the satellite. Sends out

1:28:46

like a radio signal because she

1:28:48

can do that. And the satellite

1:28:50

is like, oh, hello. I am

1:28:52

here to introduce any new lifeforms

1:28:54

who may have come to Earth.

1:28:56

Are you a lifeform? And the

1:28:58

flutation boy says, no. And the

1:29:00

satellite says, oh, okay. And then

1:29:02

it keeps going. And the flutation

1:29:04

boy is like, damn it. So

1:29:06

the flutation boy now needs to

1:29:08

pretend to be a lifeform in

1:29:10

order to actually have any sort

1:29:13

of interaction for the only other

1:29:15

thing that is capable of interacting

1:29:17

with it. And

1:29:19

it starts, it's able to

1:29:21

basically look into the history of

1:29:23

the internet and looks at,

1:29:25

like, Instagram and YouTube and figures

1:29:27

out this is what people

1:29:29

were like. Okay. So the next

1:29:31

time she contacts the satellite,

1:29:33

this flutation boy who is voiced

1:29:35

by Kristen Stewart says it

1:29:37

is a lifeform. And it's interested

1:29:39

in sharing lifeform stuff with

1:29:41

this satellite who is voiced by

1:29:43

Steven Yen. And

1:29:47

the thing is, the flutation boy

1:29:49

doesn't know a goddamn thing about

1:29:51

what life is like. It only

1:29:53

knows what it's seeing through YouTube

1:29:55

videos. And it's just trying to

1:29:58

copy what it saw as a

1:30:00

perfect relationship between two humans. before Humanity

1:30:02

died who were played by Kristen Stewart and Stephen Yet.

1:30:04

Okay. So she creates like a digital

1:30:06

avatar of herself and so a lot

1:30:08

of the movies animated. Okay. It

1:30:11

looks like a universe kind of

1:30:13

and they create in like they're

1:30:15

in like the internet that they

1:30:17

Nintendo Meese that kind of stuff.

1:30:19

Yeah, basically they create they recreate

1:30:21

a space from one of the

1:30:23

YouTube videos that the Kristen Stewart

1:30:25

Flutation Boy glombed onto. and they're

1:30:27

trying to experience humanity by just

1:30:29

reliving the same YouTube clip over

1:30:32

and over again until it finally

1:30:34

until Kristen Stewart finally says we got

1:30:36

it right okay but this as they keep

1:30:38

doing this over and over again cycling over

1:30:40

and over God knows how many times Stephen

1:30:43

Yan starts realizing this isn't satisfying this

1:30:45

doesn't feel genuine okay this isn't

1:30:47

us and I would like to

1:30:49

do something different and this pisses

1:30:52

her off because her entire perspective

1:30:54

about what happiness and connection and

1:30:56

love is like are based off

1:30:58

of what they've seen. Yeah. And

1:31:00

what they've seen is very superficial.

1:31:02

and this creates a rift and I

1:31:04

will not tell you how everything

1:31:06

goes I will say at one

1:31:09

point a billion years passes in

1:31:11

this movie I love it yeah

1:31:13

I love the concept of this

1:31:15

movie oh it's it's so unapologetically

1:31:17

unsinematic in its premise because it

1:31:19

sounds like it should just be

1:31:21

like two little machines it's like

1:31:23

a short story it really probably

1:31:25

would be better as a short

1:31:27

story I think it kind of

1:31:29

struggles to fill a complete feature-length

1:31:31

runtime And the other thing that's

1:31:33

kind of fascinating about this is

1:31:35

that it really raises a lot

1:31:37

of things about artificial intelligence, what

1:31:40

does it mean to be human,

1:31:42

and it has zero interest in

1:31:44

any of those things. Which, honestly,

1:31:46

that's well-trodden territory. If you have

1:31:48

something else you want to focus

1:31:50

on, knock yourself out, and what we

1:31:53

do focus on, ultimately, is the idea

1:31:55

that our sense of self is so

1:31:57

often defined by what we witness, and

1:31:59

what we... and what popular culture

1:32:01

and this creates a rift and I

1:32:04

will not tell you how everything

1:32:06

goes I will say at one

1:32:08

point a billion years passes in

1:32:10

this movie I love it yeah

1:32:12

I love the concept of this

1:32:14

movie oh it's it's so unapologetically

1:32:16

unsinematic in its premise because it

1:32:18

sounds like it should just be

1:32:20

like too a little machine that's