Speaker 1: Weary, weary, m what did you steal.
Speaker 2: Secrets from Steven Spielberg? People have started, but it's true.
Speaker 2: What are you going to do? Full disclosure to the
Speaker 2: whole world on June twelve?
Speaker 3: Wellcus on the brink.
Speaker 2: If you do this, there's.
Speaker 4: No one doing it. Two.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is disclosure Day?
Speaker 2: Disclosure Day?
Speaker 1: Did it beat you? Thirteen?
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast and the
Speaker 4: Projection Booth. I am one of your hosts, Christashiu, and
Speaker 4: I am joined by my good friend, the host of
Speaker 4: the aforementioned Projection Booth. He is the alien that walks
Speaker 4: amongst us, your friend and mine, Mike White.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's my wife, Margaret Fairchild.
Speaker 4: And my waff Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We're
Speaker 4: here once again because it's twenty twenty six and the
Speaker 4: gods amongst us have graced us with the Steven Spielberg
Speaker 4: film about aliens in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Who to thunk it not?
Speaker 4: I well, other than the fact that we all saw
Speaker 4: the previous through this movie for the last like two years.
Speaker 4: So on this episode of the Culture Cast slash the
Speaker 4: Projection Booth slash Projection Booth slash Culture Cast we're going
Speaker 4: to be doing a little episode on twenty twenty six's
Speaker 4: Disclosure Day. So film is directed by Steve Spielberg on
Speaker 4: a screenplay by David Kepp. Abe worked together several times before,
Speaker 4: including on a little film you might have seen called
Speaker 4: Jurassic Part film stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth,
Speaker 4: Eve Huston, and man Joe Jackson himself Coleman Domingo.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: It is about the race to Disclosure Day and the
Speaker 4: people attempting to stop that from happening, and the people
Speaker 4: attempting to ferry that long disclosure Day being the day
Speaker 4: that humanity finds out that we are, in fact not alone.
Speaker 4: We will be spoiling the ever loving shit out of
Speaker 4: this movie because it's a new movie and we wouldn't
Speaker 4: be doing our due diligence if we didn't spoil it
Speaker 4: for you. However, I would say, before we spoil it,
Speaker 4: Mike Worth checking out going to the theater? Yes or no? No?
Speaker 3: Spicy, short and sweet?
Speaker 2: You like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: As I walked out of the theater, I said, well
Speaker 2: that was underwhelming.
Speaker 4: I would say I would say yes, conditionally, yes, conditionally,
Speaker 4: that you are someone who has an interest in this
Speaker 4: aang or section of the world. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you're not already amenable to the idea of extraterrestrials, OBEs
Speaker 4: just conspiracy theories in general. I'm not sure that this
Speaker 4: is something that's going to really tugging your heartstrings the
Speaker 4: way at Close Encounters of the Third Kind did.
Speaker 3: But I will say in.
Speaker 4: Terms of it being a Steven Spielberg movie, I definitely
Speaker 4: think it's the best Steven Spielberg movie I've seen in
Speaker 4: a while, which, I mean, what you're damning with fucking
Speaker 4: faint praise might even be not diplomatic enough, Right's Yeah.
Speaker 4: I would not say go see this if you're not
Speaker 4: already interested in it. If you're already interested in it,
Speaker 4: then definitely go see it, because I think it's enjoying
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg on the big screen. I wouldn't say the
Speaker 4: last time, but you never know at this point, so
Speaker 4: this is in the wheelhouse of Spielberg. So I would say, yes,
Speaker 4: go see it. But if you're not interested in aliens and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that, I would say hard pass.
Speaker 4: So with all that, by the way, Mike, you will
Speaker 4: be spoiling it from here on out, So don't blame
Speaker 4: us if you don't hear that. What did you think
Speaker 4: of Disclosure Day, Mike? I am so curious because you're
Speaker 4: no can lead me to think only one thing. But
Speaker 4: I know it's not I know because you are a
Speaker 4: very astute individual as am I that it is not
Speaker 4: just no. But I know, for sake of efficiency, no
Speaker 4: is an easy answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually a no, butt or just a no. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't do it. I wouldn't spend your hard earned money
Speaker 2: on this. I go out and buy the Blu ray
Speaker 2: of Close Encounters of the Third kind, maybe some et Hell,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to recommend more of the World, so
Speaker 2: that's for sure. But yeah, I was just really underwhelmed
Speaker 2: by this film. It's just it's a strange movie. I mean,
Speaker 2: the way we begin by being kicked in the face
Speaker 2: during some sort of like Ultimate Fighting Champion type of
Speaker 2: thing wrestling match, I guess it is, And I'm just like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: whose point of view is this? Like, because we've got
Speaker 2: the boot to the face and then we cut out
Speaker 2: to the crowd and we're just kind of zooming around.
Speaker 2: I felt like Connor McLeod was going to be there
Speaker 2: someplace and he was going to cut off somebody's head
Speaker 2: in the parking lot, but instead it's our first encounter
Speaker 2: with this alien technology that we don't know much about.
Speaker 2: But don't worry. It's really not very complicated. I think
Speaker 2: I've seen it described as basically a magic wand this
Speaker 2: weird alien technology that they have, and yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a two protagonist film between the Josh O'Connor a character,
Speaker 2: doctor Daniel Kellner, and then Emily Blunt as Margaret Fairchild,
Speaker 2: who I could only think of Morgan Fairchild every single
Speaker 2: time they said her name, and we kind of go
Speaker 2: back and forth between those two and have their shitty
Speaker 2: relationships that they have. Whytt Russell's Tars's Jackson, that's Emily
Speaker 2: Blunt's bow And of course they don't end up together
Speaker 2: Margaret and Daniel, which I think is good. Instead, Daniel
Speaker 2: is much more involved with this woman, Jane Blankenship played
Speaker 2: by Eve Houston, and that whole faith versus science kind
Speaker 2: of stuff that they have going on. I'm just like, well,
Speaker 2: this feels like it's straight from one of my least
Speaker 2: favorite movies in the world. Contact. Yeah, I just didn't
Speaker 2: give a shit I didn't give a shit about anybody
Speaker 2: in this movie. Really, it was just like so bland
Speaker 2: and it just felt like Spielberg has done all of
Speaker 2: this stuff before, like especially this whole you know, these
Speaker 2: two characters are separated and they're trying to find each other.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's Melinda Dillon and Richard Dreyfus in Close
Speaker 2: Encounters of the Third kind. I mean it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 2: they have these feelings, they have these visions, these kind
Speaker 2: of things, but I'm not compelled by any of it,
Speaker 2: and it just putting Blunt as a TV weather lady
Speaker 2: and that By the way, you mentioned the trailers. I
Speaker 2: hadn't seen any trailers for this. I kept myself completely
Speaker 2: out of the loop. The only thing I knew about
Speaker 2: this was Emily Blunt stands in front of a weather
Speaker 2: map at some point.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: So I came in very cold for this movie. I'm curious,
Speaker 2: what were your expectations going into this?
Speaker 4: So I had seen the advertising slash trailers for the film.
Speaker 4: I mean, again for the last you know, however long
Speaker 4: it's been since the first trailer came out, I would
Speaker 4: say that they did a really good job in not
Speaker 4: showing what was going to happen with the kind of
Speaker 4: the main crux of the story was not really given
Speaker 4: away in the previews up until just the last week
Speaker 4: since the movie came out, which they really love doing
Speaker 4: that where it's like, now we're going to ruin the
Speaker 4: whole fucking movie. It's like, wait a second, wait, we
Speaker 4: don't do that. It's this whole American audiences don't like
Speaker 4: to feel stupid, and so we got to give them
Speaker 4: the whole movie so that when they're watching it, they're like,
Speaker 4: I remember that from the trailer, and it's like, that's
Speaker 4: you're diminishing the quality of the movie for some people. Well,
Speaker 4: I look, trailers, you don't have to watch trailers. You
Speaker 4: don't even have to watch trailers. If you go to
Speaker 4: the movie theater, you can show up late. You know,
Speaker 4: you have like fifteen twenty minutes of trailers ahead of
Speaker 4: the movie. So I you know, when someone says, oh,
Speaker 4: the movie's at three o'clock, we got to be there
Speaker 4: at three, it's like, no, we don't have to be
Speaker 4: there until like three thirty. Really, so I all I
Speaker 4: was expecting was and this is again this was my
Speaker 4: fingers crossed. Here was a return to form for Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 4: a director who what's your approximation on the last time
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg made a good.
Speaker 2: Now, I haven't seen Meet the Fablemens, so looking back
Speaker 2: at his well, I can't even say recent, since Fableman's
Speaker 2: was twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: And sorry, it was half a decade ago.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, sorry, I thought, I honestly thought it was
Speaker 2: called Meet the Fablements.
Speaker 4: But the Fablements the Feebleman's, I think the actual title
Speaker 4: in the film. You mean Steven Spielberg the film, right, I.
Speaker 2: Didn't see West Side Story. I did see Ready Player one,
Speaker 2: and that was wretched.
Speaker 3: The close west Side Story the original, yes, I did.
Speaker 4: The Fableman's is just a retelling of Steven Spielberg's life,
Speaker 4: So I don't really know if either one of those
Speaker 4: are really original, even like I don't even know the
Speaker 4: last original movie he made.
Speaker 2: Really, I mean, was it The Post in twenty seventeen?
Speaker 4: Isn't that based on a book?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean, are you growing now? Books? I mean,
Speaker 2: even Jonas was based on I guess.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I'm not throwing out books, but I
Speaker 4: guess at this point it's it's less about a adaptation,
Speaker 4: but more, did you adapt it well was probably a
Speaker 4: better way of.
Speaker 2: Looking yeah, because there's no way anybody could adapt Ready
Speaker 2: Player one well since it was based on a pile
Speaker 2: of steaming.
Speaker 4: Shit, actual piece of BC's My God. I still to
Speaker 4: this day do not understand for the fucking life of
Speaker 4: me who that book was for, other than Will Wheaton's
Speaker 4: I don't I.
Speaker 2: I think that's an insult to Will Wheaton personally.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, that's fine, I don't.
Speaker 4: I mean he And like, I don't know, Ready Player
Speaker 4: one struck me as like a film for people that
Speaker 4: watched Big.
Speaker 3: Bang Theory, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: That same thing the corner of the world where it's
Speaker 4: like this is nerdy stuff and it's cool. It's like,
Speaker 4: this feels really forced and sloppy and ham fisted, and
Speaker 4: just because you can rattle off like eight million nerdy
Speaker 4: things doesn't mean you know or are in tune with
Speaker 4: any of them. And that for me was kind of
Speaker 4: the The excitement for a Steven Spielberg alien movie is
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg as a director, has alien DNA baked into
Speaker 4: what he's done. Et Close Encounters are the Third Kind
Speaker 4: or the Worlds even of a film that I probably
Speaker 4: enjoy more than most people.
Speaker 2: You could even say AI because the end of that
Speaker 2: you've got aliens showing up.
Speaker 4: In there, right, and then Minority Report you have like
Speaker 4: super heavy sci fi future tech. So again, it's kind
Speaker 4: of in this world that Steven Spielberg occasionally veers into,
Speaker 4: which is sci fi. So my initial hope was just
Speaker 4: a return to form for Spielberg because to your point,
Speaker 4: the last Steven Spielberg film I saw in theaters was
Speaker 4: Ready Player one, and I remember leaving that theater and
Speaker 4: walking out to my car and just going, well, I'm
Speaker 4: really not excited to have to podcast about this with
Speaker 4: someone who loved it, which is exactly what happened, because
Speaker 4: I felt like I was on the back foot swinging
Speaker 4: the entire time because they were just like, this is
Speaker 4: a good movie. You just don't get it. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: I get it. I just don't understand why we had
Speaker 4: to bombard eight million different ips at the fucking screen
Speaker 4: to try and make up for a lack of plot.
Speaker 2: Was that that same guy that loved Rise of Skywalker
Speaker 2: talking with.
Speaker 4: You no, Matt Okay, yeah, no, no, no, no, this is
Speaker 4: a this is a friend of mine who I who
Speaker 4: just kind of he moved. He moved away right before
Speaker 4: the pandemic, and I haven't talked to him anymore, which
Speaker 4: is unfortunate because uh, it was it was a It
Speaker 4: was a decent guy. But you know, his opinion on
Speaker 4: Ready Player one is suspect, to say the least. I know,
Speaker 4: Ready Player one felt very surface level in terms of
Speaker 4: its ability to show that it understands nerd tech and
Speaker 4: nerd and the nerd culture and the nerd subculture. I
Speaker 4: would say, if you're looking at it just on the
Speaker 4: face of is Disclosure Day successful in communicating the current
Speaker 4: state of the world of conspiracy theories, aliens and UAPs
Speaker 4: and and I unidentified aerial phenomenons. I would say that
Speaker 4: this does a better job than Ready Player wanted of
Speaker 4: leaning into what is now the conversation we're having about
Speaker 4: alien life. However, I didn't dislike it as much as
Speaker 4: you did. But for me, and I pose this question
Speaker 4: to you, was it really about aliens? Because I don't
Speaker 4: think it was. I get the distinct feeling this was
Speaker 4: a Steven Spielberg is doing the horror movie thing where
Speaker 4: it's aliens are acting as X instead of just alien
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm with the with the name Disclosure Day,
Speaker 2: with the look at all this evidence, and we're going
Speaker 2: to put this out and keep everybody's going to be stunned,
Speaker 2: and it's going to stop this conflict, this vague, vague
Speaker 2: conflict that would never make really here about I'd be
Speaker 2: never really talked about very much. I guess it has
Speaker 2: something to do with North Korea question mark. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, I'm just thinking the Epstein Files the entire time.
Speaker 2: The entire time, I'm just like, oh, these people have
Speaker 2: the Epstein Files. Okay. Yeah, I don't know necessarily why
Speaker 2: we are building a house on a sound stage in
Speaker 2: order to, I guess, bring people back to their memories
Speaker 2: of things. And so much of this is about memories
Speaker 2: and repressed memories and childhood trauma, which also for me
Speaker 2: feels like it fits into the Epstein stuff as well.
Speaker 2: And then even with the wrestling match at the beginning,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, well, that just happened yesterday on the
Speaker 2: White House lawn. Okay, So maybe I'm just reading way
Speaker 2: too much into it, and I probably am. I probably
Speaker 2: have trumped arrangement syndrome, but it just felt like Okay,
Speaker 2: even if that, because we've already had this, We've already
Speaker 2: had so many revelations of things to do with and
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm not going to use your terminology, but
Speaker 2: to do with UFOs.
Speaker 3: I'm just like you, funny duddy.
Speaker 2: And there was just nothing but a you know, wet fart.
Speaker 2: It was like, oh, look at all this stuff. It's like, yeah, cool,
Speaker 2: now release the Epstein files. It's like that that's the
Speaker 2: real stuff that we want. I mean, we're we're at
Speaker 2: war right now. To take us away from the Epstein Files.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like February You've got ted Leu coming
Speaker 2: out saying the president rapes children. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: we are bombing Iran.
Speaker 4: I so I'm not And this might be the first
Speaker 4: time I say this to you. I'm not nearly as cynical.
Speaker 3: About this movie as you are.
Speaker 4: For once, I think, because I tend to feel like
Speaker 4: I'm the cynical one, and I feel like I've received
Speaker 4: a fair amount of flak online from critics of my
Speaker 4: show for being super critical. Ah, And I think for me,
Speaker 4: this might be the first time in a while where
Speaker 4: I sat and just watched a movie and just by
Speaker 4: the end of it. I think, like my takeaway was
Speaker 4: if this is a if Spielberg's films have been about
Speaker 4: a question of faith, which a lot of his films
Speaker 4: are a question of faith, like you know, the search
Speaker 4: for faith, either in something else or in someone else
Speaker 4: or in a higher power. I mean I just think
Speaker 4: to you know, I think to that scene in Raiders
Speaker 4: of the Lost Arc with uh, you know, the opening
Speaker 4: of the the arc, and we know that's that act
Speaker 4: of faith, right, you have to believe that there's something
Speaker 4: in there and that the sand in there is not
Speaker 4: just saying that it's imbued with the holy powers of
Speaker 4: the Bible. And then cut to something like Last Crusade
Speaker 4: where Indiana Jones has to take that step onto that bridge,
Speaker 4: onto that path to show that he has faith in
Speaker 4: you know, a penitent man. All of that, I mean again,
Speaker 4: it's all framed through the search for you know, the
Speaker 4: faith and faith in onesel for faith. And in this
Speaker 4: film it's it's faith in humanity, I guess is the
Speaker 4: question of you know, is is humanity worth saving from it?
Speaker 4: That's right, and the question to answer holistically, especially in
Speaker 4: this day and age, especially in our times now that
Speaker 4: are so overwhelmingly cynical. I have a hard time with
Speaker 4: Steven Spield kind of coming in and being like, well, see,
Speaker 4: aliens are about believing in humanity, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: for me, I come at this at a different angle,
Speaker 4: which is this is a movie. I wish that this
Speaker 4: is a movie that was more successful, because if it
Speaker 4: was more successful, I would say that this is a
Speaker 4: movie that we kind of need right now. But I
Speaker 4: think because it's it's not very focused in its message,
Speaker 4: I feel like it really falls apart because there, I
Speaker 4: kid you not, there are moments in this movie that
Speaker 4: moved me to tears multiple times, Wow, to full time Wow.
Speaker 2: We no, this requires a Wonder Woman nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: leap of faith at the end where it's like everybody
Speaker 2: undo your wishes kind of thing, and it's like, really
Speaker 2: like everyone's looking at their phones while this newscast is
Speaker 2: going on at the end, and I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just don't see it. I don't see people being riveted.
Speaker 3: I disagree. That is the part.
Speaker 4: I think that's maybe the main disagreement is if you
Speaker 4: believe that conceit at the end of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I just don't buy into it and yeah,
Speaker 2: like muddled and just unfocused and just even like, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the very earliest scenes you've got the h God,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna forget these, both their characters and the
Speaker 2: actors because I don't believe Josh O'Connor.
Speaker 3: I don't either.
Speaker 2: I just know him from that Third Knives Out movie.
Speaker 3: Oh didn't know.
Speaker 4: I had not seen him in anything up until this movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, when doctor Daniel Kellner and Jane Blankenship are
Speaker 2: escaping from Colin Firth as Noah Scanton, who if.
Speaker 4: You if you squint really hard, it looks just like
Speaker 4: Ben Mendelssohn.
Speaker 3: And Ready Player one, very much Ready Player one here
Speaker 3: like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: They are leaving, they they are escaping for them of them,
Speaker 2: and they're surrounded by all these people with guns and
Speaker 2: everybody just puts their guns down and just lets them
Speaker 2: move out. I was like, well, that's kind of fun up.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's because he's got that magic
Speaker 2: wand or not, but it's just like, this is very
Speaker 2: strange because then, you know, I don't know, an hour later,
Speaker 2: they're ready to push him and Emily Blunt into the
Speaker 2: side of an oncoming train. You know, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well are you killing them or are you okay just
Speaker 2: letting them go?
Speaker 4: I was not okay letting them go, but the other no,
Speaker 4: I think it's and again like I think this is
Speaker 4: one of those belief things, right, Like I think the
Speaker 4: movie is getting it something and I think it just
Speaker 4: keeps missing it, which is there will always be people
Speaker 4: that are going to be obstinate to believing in something,
Speaker 4: regardless of whether or not they're shoot and that that
Speaker 4: is the case. But the movie just it's it throws
Speaker 4: that net out and then just kind of abandons it
Speaker 4: is what.
Speaker 2: He should believe because he's there with his boss who's
Speaker 2: like astro projecting. I mean, he believes he just wants
Speaker 2: They just want to stop the message from getting out,
Speaker 2: which I guess that's just because that's their job. You know,
Speaker 2: there's there's I mean, things just don't add up in
Speaker 2: this movie. I won't talk about the incredibly horrible CG
Speaker 2: because some people can just say, well, that's because those
Speaker 2: are aliens, that's why they look so shitty. Every time
Speaker 2: the animal shows up, I'm just like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Like as soon as that bird flew in the windows,
Speaker 2: like this looks awful. What the hell are we doing here,
Speaker 2: Steven Spielberg, You made me believe that dinosaurs exist. Now
Speaker 2: I'm watching this, I'm just like, that's the fakest fucking
Speaker 2: bird I've ever seen in my life. But there's a
Speaker 2: moment where Blunt and Russell are kind of like going
Speaker 2: out of town kind of thing, right, because they've escaped
Speaker 2: from the hospital at this point, and they they're at
Speaker 2: a gas station and gas station slash convenience store and
Speaker 2: there's just all of this activity going on, and they
Speaker 2: say something like, oh, yeah, everybody's trying to get out
Speaker 2: of town or something like that, and I'm like, why, Like,
Speaker 2: is this because of the war? I think, okay, seem.
Speaker 4: They said at the one point they were like, people
Speaker 4: are trying to get away from centers of like mass population.
Speaker 2: Because they don't do a good job of they don't.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's all of this what's surprising, is it?
Speaker 4: And I would equate this to something that, you know,
Speaker 4: again to go back to something that we will not
Speaker 4: be watching in five weeks, no matter how many times
Speaker 4: they bombarred my fucking ass with trailers for it, I
Speaker 4: will not be going to see The Odyssey in five However, however,
Speaker 4: that I can already fucking tell that Nolan is going
Speaker 4: to be telling that story in the broadest goddamn strokes
Speaker 4: possible to appeal to the largest audience of people, because
Speaker 4: that is what Nolan does, and that's what Spielberg used
Speaker 4: to do. Smielberg used to be that guy. Smielberg used
Speaker 4: to make movies for everybody that had a heart, And
Speaker 4: now it doesn't feel that way because his message, his
Speaker 4: kind of universal message is no pun intended, I'm just
Speaker 4: rambling at this point. Is universal message I think at
Speaker 4: this point gets lost because it's just it's not focused,
Speaker 4: and it honestly hasn't been focused. You'd see fucking for
Speaker 4: frankly the longest time with Spielberg again, I think he
Speaker 4: when he works with a writer who really hits the
Speaker 4: really great notes, we get some really great stuff. But
Speaker 4: I don't I don't think this movie gets across what
Speaker 4: is going on in the world and how this is
Speaker 4: as important. It's it's it's a zombie movie thing where
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, there's zombies in the background, they're running
Speaker 4: around and we don't know where they came from. It's
Speaker 4: like this isn't that like there's there's a war. Maybe
Speaker 4: go into that a little bit, like maybe even just
Speaker 4: the minorist amount, just to give us an idea of like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, give us an opening title, crawl like
Speaker 4: the world is on the brink of wars something anything.
Speaker 4: Let us better understand why the aliens are doing this now,
Speaker 4: because that seems to be motivated by the conflict. Would
Speaker 4: you not say, like the world is the closest it's
Speaker 4: ever been to destruction once again.
Speaker 2: So you're talking, you're talking the day the Earth stood still.
Speaker 2: Then you're talking about you know, Clyto coming down and
Speaker 2: being like, hey, you guys are about to murder each other.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't have these nuclear weapons. Let me try to
Speaker 2: save you from yourselves.
Speaker 4: Is this that's as successful?
Speaker 3: It's yeah.
Speaker 2: The day the aarswers still the original, not the cana
Speaker 2: Reeves version, the Day of the Arts there was so much,
Speaker 2: so much better handled than this. And I would even
Speaker 2: say things like Mars attacks are better better handled than this,
Speaker 2: and it's like, yeah, I don't know. It just felt
Speaker 2: super messy to me, and it just felt like we
Speaker 2: were so going by the numbers when it came to
Speaker 2: all of these action beats, and the only thing that
Speaker 2: was interesting about it was just that you have two
Speaker 2: protagonists that will eventually meet up rather than just the one.
Speaker 2: And then you've got stupid ship where it's just like,
Speaker 2: you know, when h Josh starts to hear the message
Speaker 2: from the news broadcast where Emily Blunt was speaking, like
Speaker 2: the clicking noises and stuff, I think that's the moment
Speaker 2: where he's in a field and suddenly the grass starts
Speaker 2: laying down and making a fucking prop circle, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, what the hell are we doing here? Like
Speaker 2: this is this is like m Night Shyamalan level of stuff.
Speaker 4: This movie is one hundred and forty five minutes. How
Speaker 4: the fuck is one hundred and forty five minute movie
Speaker 4: missing another half an hour?
Speaker 3: Seriously? Like this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I almost feel like in a way, and you know,
Speaker 4: let's let's talk broadly here, because I went and saw
Speaker 4: the film with a friend of mine's nephew. I took
Speaker 4: him to the movies and when I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: do you want to go see a Steven Spielberg alien movie?
Speaker 4: He got so excited. He was like, you mean, like
Speaker 4: from the Alien franchise? And I was like, no, I know,
Speaker 4: I'm disappointed too, but it's a Steven Spielberg movie. But
Speaker 4: I thought about Prometheus a lot while watching this movie,
Speaker 4: because it's you know, Prometheus and Alien Covenant and a
Speaker 4: lot of other alien movies have come out since Spielberg
Speaker 4: attempted to do alien stuff, and I think that those
Speaker 4: movies ask the question that this movie's asking better than
Speaker 4: this movie asks it. And Steven Spielberg, in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways, is the progenitor of this question in the
Speaker 4: filmic language, which is what are the lengths you will
Speaker 4: go to for your beliefs? I mean you mentioned it
Speaker 4: in Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It
Speaker 4: is his belief that powers.
Speaker 3: Him to leave his family to you know what this means.
Speaker 4: All of that is powered by belief, the singular belief
Speaker 4: that there is something at the end of this path.
Speaker 4: And by the end of the film, when we see
Speaker 4: the aliens, we realize, oh, he was for fucking real
Speaker 4: and look, obviously we know because the movie gives it
Speaker 4: away very early on, because Close Encounters are the third
Speaker 4: kind of unlike, this film is not about hiding its hand,
Speaker 4: it's about playing its hand. Very early on, we know
Speaker 4: that there are aliens. We are made aware that aliens
Speaker 4: are in fact real. And now I'm not saying that
Speaker 4: this movie is ever like aliens real or not.
Speaker 3: It's just right.
Speaker 2: Yeahs Now, three minutes in when they finally watch some
Speaker 2: of that footage, which and that's the most upsetting part
Speaker 2: to me is that.
Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say, I think that the thing
Speaker 4: for me is the footage is the most arresting part
Speaker 4: of them, because that feels like, well, if this were
Speaker 4: to happen, which that was the other thing I said
Speaker 4: to my friends nephew and we were leaving the theater,
Speaker 4: I was like, I do hope that I am alive
Speaker 4: if this were to happen. I hope that I'm alive
Speaker 4: for this to happen. I would genuinely like to be
Speaker 4: part of the global consciousness that is involved in if
Speaker 4: there were to be a disclosure, because you and I
Speaker 4: both know that's the kind of.
Speaker 3: Footage we would be fucking seeing.
Speaker 4: Is governments or government bodies torturing alien and torturing them
Speaker 4: for the sole purpose of figuring out what makes them
Speaker 4: tick or this, that and something else, and that is
Speaker 4: the most successful part of them. Without a doubt and
Speaker 4: that should have been starting point for the movie, and
Speaker 4: it kind of feels like it was. But even something
Speaker 4: like Signs does a better job in creating a world
Speaker 4: where the aliens feel like they can exist within it.
Speaker 4: This world that we're inhabiting with Disclosure Day, it doesn't
Speaker 4: feel like there are aliens already in the world like
Speaker 4: in Signs. It's like this, you know, there were weird
Speaker 4: things already happening, and you know, strange things are afoot.
Speaker 4: In this it's like all of a sudden, just one day.
Speaker 4: And I like the idea of that that you know,
Speaker 4: we talked about it. I think we talked about this before,
Speaker 4: like Star Trek Nemesis, like just one day, data is
Speaker 4: gonna die, like and that just happens to be today,
Speaker 4: Like you don't get to pick the important days in
Speaker 4: your life, They just happen. And I like the idea
Speaker 4: of that with Disclosure Day, that it's just, you know,
Speaker 4: a fucking Wednesday afternoon and here we go. Signs kind
Speaker 4: of builds it up more, and I think for me,
Speaker 4: I would prefer a movie building it up a little
Speaker 4: bit more, giving us the idea that like there's been
Speaker 4: a swell getting to this point of this thing happening,
Speaker 4: and the movie doesn't really traffic in that when, like
Speaker 4: you said, we live in a world where and look,
Speaker 4: as someone who's had a scary you know, scary paranormal
Speaker 4: supernatural podcast before, don't believe a goddamn thing the US
Speaker 4: government leaks. Because it's the US government leaking it. Why
Speaker 4: the fuck are you believing it? Like they're they will
Speaker 4: only leak things that either benefit them or benefit them
Speaker 4: the end of story. So I wish that there was
Speaker 4: a better understanding of some of the ideas in the
Speaker 4: movie from the people writing them. And David Kepp is
Speaker 4: not one who writes bad things. He does are very
Speaker 4: great things either. His track record's kind of all over
Speaker 4: the place. But I would have thought that they would
Speaker 4: have had more of a central idea here to go from,
Speaker 4: because aliens as an idea is go anywhere. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've seen every varietal of fucking alien movie since Spielberg
Speaker 4: kind of hung up the mantle on doing alien movies.
Speaker 4: In an alien movie with voice by Seth Rogan for
Speaker 4: Fock's Sake, which is one of my favorite alien movies,
Speaker 4: but it's just the aliens almost get lost in the
Speaker 4: shuffle of their own, which to me and I think
Speaker 4: you might agree, feels very contact.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you already.
Speaker 4: Said contact, but like to reiterate your point, like that's
Speaker 4: a contact move, Like all right, aliens in the last
Speaker 4: thirty seconds of the oh okay, but their presence should
Speaker 4: have been felt throughout and it really isn't. And when
Speaker 4: those scenes show up, like the Croft Circle scene in
Speaker 4: the film, I want to understand what the fuck's going on,
Speaker 4: not because I need it explained to me, but because
Speaker 4: the movie's so goddamn abuse.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, maybe you can help me when it comes
Speaker 2: to speaking of obtus. I mentioned the whole thing of
Speaker 2: how they're rebuilding Emily Blunt's house on a sound stage.
Speaker 2: I guess to help her unlock her memories, right, And
Speaker 2: she does start to remember things. She flashes back to
Speaker 2: this moment when she was a child, and we see her,
Speaker 2: you know, on the table, the typical, you know, going
Speaker 2: to be probed kind of thing, right, And there's this
Speaker 2: kid next door, who I have to assume is Josh O'Connor.
Speaker 2: Where does he come from? Who is this kid? To her?
Speaker 3: Just a kid, just a kid.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter his memories at all, it's just her memories.
Speaker 4: Well, his memories had already been handled by that. That's
Speaker 4: again the the implication that the movie makes is he
Speaker 4: has been influenced by aliens for ten years. But I
Speaker 4: guess in him being influenced by aliens for ten years,
Speaker 4: there's never been the need to have what happened, what
Speaker 4: happened to him reappraised, or they were waiting for someone
Speaker 4: else possibly to show up. It's not explained. And again,
Speaker 4: you and I are huge fans of all kinds of
Speaker 4: challenging cinema. You know, I think someone on your Facebook
Speaker 4: when you posted the thing about The Odyssey was like,
Speaker 4: Chris Nolan makes high brow films for low brow audiences,
Speaker 4: and it's not challenging films, but people who watch them
Speaker 4: tend to seem to think that they're really challenging. This
Speaker 4: movie is not challenging either. It's obtuse, it could have
Speaker 4: been challenging. It could like like you said, like it's
Speaker 4: it's instead of being challenging and kind of a we're
Speaker 4: asking you to give a little bit because we're opening
Speaker 4: that up to interpretation. The film just doesn't explain things.
Speaker 4: And I think what they were going for is and
Speaker 4: again with the with the abductee exp people have talked
Speaker 4: about being on a bed in a spaceship and looking
Speaker 4: over and there's just somebody else there. Who that person
Speaker 4: is they do not know. Will they ever see them
Speaker 4: again remains to be seen. Why was it Emily Blunt
Speaker 4: and Josh O'Connor never explained, like you asked, Josh is
Speaker 4: Josh O'Connor part and parcel to this? I mean, we
Speaker 4: get the sense that he is because they say he is,
Speaker 4: but the film never shows that he is, And saying
Speaker 4: and showing are two very different, and that for me
Speaker 4: is kind of a big disconnect. Is I really don't
Speaker 4: understand the importance of Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor other
Speaker 4: than because the movie told me so.
Speaker 3: But I don't think the movie.
Speaker 4: Does a very good job of giving me an understanding
Speaker 4: of why them. And again it's just well just because, okay,
Speaker 4: then fucking say that.
Speaker 2: I'll blow your mind one more time. How does Hugo
Speaker 2: play into this?
Speaker 4: Well, Hugo just is essentially a whistle.
Speaker 2: Blow, but it seems like he's got mystical powers.
Speaker 3: To me, No, no, no, he's just a whistle blow.
Speaker 2: He's just a dude, okay, but dude, okay, but he
Speaker 2: knows all of the stuff that Colin Firth can do,
Speaker 2: because that's when he's like clear the set and then
Speaker 2: those dumb assss walk back. I mean, I have a
Speaker 2: real hard time with how dumb these people are sometimes
Speaker 2: where it's like Josh goes through and like cleans up
Speaker 2: the entire room, takes every little bit of evidence that
Speaker 2: they're in the Indiana Hotel or whatever, but then he's
Speaker 2: holding on to a piece of paper that says that
Speaker 2: so his girlfriend can see it with Colin Frost's eyes.
Speaker 2: That I mean, it's just yeah, like you said, it's
Speaker 2: over two hours long. Do we have to spend ten
Speaker 2: minutes trying to run over her phone?
Speaker 3: Do we have to spend please?
Speaker 4: Can you explain that that's what?
Speaker 2: Do we have to spend forty five minutes doing these
Speaker 2: weird flashes in like Colin Firth at the breakfast table
Speaker 2: with the Josh's girlfriend kind of thing. It's like this
Speaker 2: scene is taking forever. Yes, I got it. She's digging
Speaker 2: her cross into her hand. Okay, it's the whole faith
Speaker 2: versus science kind of thing. I got it, But I
Speaker 2: got it was five minutes into the scene, not forty
Speaker 2: five minutes later. I mean, yes, it doesn't take forty
Speaker 2: five minutes, but that scene goes on for an interminable length.
Speaker 4: I would say that almost the conversation needs to progress
Speaker 4: away from faith versus science to faith in faith versus
Speaker 4: faith in science, because that should be the more interesting
Speaker 4: conversation because for a lot of people, and I wouldn't say, like,
Speaker 4: science is a religion, but if you boil religion down
Speaker 4: to a set of beliefs that your life is dictated by.
Speaker 4: For a lot of people, science is a belief system
Speaker 4: that your life is dictated by. No different than religion.
Speaker 4: It's just again, tangible evidence is different than belief in
Speaker 4: lack of evidence. I mean again, you can't see God,
Speaker 4: so you can't prove that he doesn't exist. You can't
Speaker 4: prove a negative. It's kind of always been the issue
Speaker 4: with the conversation around faith and belief is can't prove
Speaker 4: a negative. We don't see God. We just God is
Speaker 4: in ev There are some poignant moments in the movie
Speaker 4: that I don't like. There's a scene in a diner
Speaker 4: with Joshua Connor's girlf where she's talking to a nun
Speaker 4: and She's like, if if you saw that a higher
Speaker 4: power existed, it wouldn't scare you away? And she goes, no,
Speaker 4: why would I assume that God only gave us this
Speaker 4: and nobody else anything else?
Speaker 3: Go down that.
Speaker 4: Rabbit hole for five minutes longer, please, please, Like, that's
Speaker 4: an interesting direction to go, especially when you have someone
Speaker 4: of the Jewish faith, like Steven Spielberg, who's not even Christian.
Speaker 4: Mind you, no characters in this film are Jewish. They're
Speaker 4: all Christians seemingly, which I also find is very interesting
Speaker 4: because so much of the alien phenomenon experience and the
Speaker 4: alien phenomenon experience reaction is through the lens of Christianity
Speaker 4: and no other religion. But I'll be goddamned if there's
Speaker 4: not representations of large men or aliens in other religions,
Speaker 4: in Hinduism, in Shintoism, in Jianism, in Islam. I mean you,
Speaker 4: if you boil it down, you can say, well, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, these people came down from the clouds on
Speaker 4: their clouds. What does that sound like to someone in
Speaker 4: our dan It sounds like a fucking alien writing down
Speaker 4: on a spaceship. Just on the base level. They don't
Speaker 4: do any of that, there's so much we're not living
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy four. We're the only thing that's been
Speaker 4: written is Eric von Danikin's Chariots of the Gods. We
Speaker 4: are now living in a world ripe and full of
Speaker 4: interest in aliens and interest in the phenomenon and the
Speaker 4: subculture around the phenomenon. And for me, the biggest failing
Speaker 4: of the movie is it doesn't it seems to kind
Speaker 4: of rankle at the fact that it's an alien It
Speaker 4: doesn't really want to be an alien movie, even though
Speaker 4: it's clearly a movie about alien and that for me,
Speaker 4: like I said at the opening of this episode, reminds
Speaker 4: me of all these horror movies where it's like, it
Speaker 4: follows it's a movie about a slasher, but the Slashers
Speaker 4: is a sit in for STDs.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't really.
Speaker 4: Want to fucking listen to that conversation. I want to
Speaker 4: listen at thesis for an hour and a half. And
Speaker 4: this movie has that same issue where I'm just like,
Speaker 4: you don't really seem to have anything interesting to say,
Speaker 4: and if you're gonna have Steven Spielberg be an alien movie.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty six, when the world is as primed
Speaker 4: as ever to have this actually happen, and you don't
Speaker 4: have anything interesting to say, Why did you bother especially Spielberg,
Speaker 4: Like of all people, he's to your point, Fableman's came
Speaker 4: out four years. He's not cranking him out every year
Speaker 4: like Benny fucking Soft.
Speaker 2: You know how we found out years ago that Taco
Speaker 2: Bell doesn't actually serve meat in their tacos, that it's
Speaker 2: like some sort of slurry of meats, like products rights soy.
Speaker 4: It's like soy protein, right, It's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's what this feels like. This feels like a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff scraped off the floor and thrown into a
Speaker 2: burrito and just saying, Okay, enjoy it. You know, this
Speaker 2: is all the leftover shit that I've had kind of
Speaker 2: cooking in all of these movies for the longest time.
Speaker 2: Here it is, I'm going to reheat it in the
Speaker 2: microwave for you.
Speaker 4: And what's shocking to me is that Spielberg is not
Speaker 4: the kind of director who I expect that from. He's
Speaker 4: not the kind of director that I expect is going
Speaker 4: to hew closely to other people's ideas. It feels like
Speaker 4: he's always had something to say as a director, even
Speaker 4: if he's not the one writing the script. You and
Speaker 4: I both know Spielberg exerts a small level of control
Speaker 4: or big level of control, or some control over creativity.
Speaker 4: I mean it's his production company. It's right there, amblin,
Speaker 4: right on right on them. So I'm in agreement with you,
Speaker 4: Like it's just not alien enough, and it almost it
Speaker 4: smacks of not being alien enough just from the trailer.
Speaker 3: The trailer is.
Speaker 4: Afraid to have it be an alien movie, and then
Speaker 4: the movie itself just is not interested in being an
Speaker 4: alien movie. It's a movie about the machinations of people
Speaker 4: and whether or not people are ready to learn about aliens.
Speaker 4: It's not about the alien. And I have a question
Speaker 4: for you. I'm curious, does Josh O'Connor not look like
Speaker 4: Lee Harvey Oswald when they show that photo of him
Speaker 4: when the screen he totally does The'm like it's supposed
Speaker 4: to be a Patsy. He looks just like Oswald that
Speaker 4: photo of Oswald. I was like, it's supposed to be Oswald, right,
Speaker 4: Like it's got to be. You're leaning into the conspiracy
Speaker 4: theory stuff at all. Like I just I wish there
Speaker 4: was more connecting of the things like, oh, there's Roswell.
Speaker 3: Why why not? Why not?
Speaker 4: You want to be clever, why not mention something that
Speaker 4: happened in California in the eighties or something in the
Speaker 4: seventies like tie close Encounters into this tie et it right?
Speaker 3: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 4: Literally, at this fucking point, if you're probably never gonna
Speaker 4: make another alien movie again, why not?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I genuinely could not, for the life of me understand
Speaker 4: why they took such a weak thesis and stance on
Speaker 4: the alien conversation when you don't make a movie like
Speaker 4: this without having that, without having something to say. And
Speaker 4: David Kep again, like he's not always writing middle of
Speaker 4: the road stuff like Jurassic World Rebirth. He has you know,
Speaker 4: he's not an Akiva Goldsman type where it's like he's
Speaker 4: never written a single goddamn good thing in his dire existence,
Speaker 4: Like David Kep worked on Jurassic Park with Steven Spielbert
Speaker 4: a book that is as good as the movie and
Speaker 4: vice versa.
Speaker 2: Boy, yeah, boy, I disagree with that heavily.
Speaker 3: Which one I really like the other?
Speaker 2: I really like the book of Jurassic Park. I'm not
Speaker 2: a big fan of the movie of Jurassic Park. I
Speaker 2: felt like the they really shit out that movie, and
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's different, it's very different than the book. They can
Speaker 4: exist mutually exclusive.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 4: I mean I get it because I think the book
Speaker 4: has so much more to say, and I think Michael
Speaker 4: Crichton is such a like a great techno.
Speaker 3: Sci fi writer. I mean his stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've read like pretty much all of his
Speaker 4: books at this point, Michael Crichton, and he's just he's
Speaker 4: a great writer. He always has been. And it's hard
Speaker 4: to adapt someone else's work who has something to say.
Speaker 4: When you don't necessarily have something to say, you're not come.
Speaker 4: You gotta if you're gonna make a movie like this,
Speaker 4: you gotta come to the table with an opinion about it.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I want to have a conversation with
Speaker 4: someone who says I don't really care about aliens. Okay,
Speaker 4: well fuck you, I don't want to talk to you
Speaker 4: about aliens, and like that, conversations literally gonna go nowhere.
Speaker 4: Like it's like it's like the movie conversation. If I
Speaker 4: say to someone I love watching movies, and here's my
Speaker 4: favorite movie, and someone say, well, I don't watch a
Speaker 4: lot of movies. It's like, okay, that Wiley coyote moment
Speaker 4: where I've just run into a wall and that's it.
Speaker 4: Where does one go further from here? And this movie
Speaker 4: does not add to the conversation.
Speaker 2: No, no, not a bit. Yeah, just there are so
Speaker 2: many better movies that he's done. And yeah, I was
Speaker 2: just reminding myself because I was like, David Kepp, I
Speaker 2: really dislike some stuff that David Kep did. It was
Speaker 2: Trigger Effect the first movie I think he directed. I mean,
Speaker 2: he has directed a couple of good things, like Stir
Speaker 2: of Echos I liked a lot, but then he's doing
Speaker 2: Secret Window and he's doing Mordecai and stuff. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like just taste level through the basement.
Speaker 4: I almost said Mordecai because I was like, I'm pretty
Speaker 4: sure he's the guy who directed Mordecai. Yeah, he is,
Speaker 4: in fact the guy I directed Mordecai. So that's the
Speaker 4: guy who directed ghost Town. You remember that movie with
Speaker 4: Ricky Gervais where he's a dentist that can see ghosts.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I remember that or the one
Speaker 2: where he then flying.
Speaker 3: You mean the same movie.
Speaker 2: Maybe I did see this because yeah, Greg Knnear's in this,
Speaker 2: and I just remember how much I disliked Greg knear Well.
Speaker 4: You know what they say, It's not like David Kep
Speaker 4: is one third of the writing trio that brought us
Speaker 4: twenty Seventeen's.
Speaker 3: The Mummy or anything.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, that only had three writers on it. You
Speaker 2: would think it would have like.
Speaker 4: Fifteen, shocking and one of those writers is Chris McCrory,
Speaker 4: which is just well pill.
Speaker 2: Of course, because McCrory, I mean somewhere Tom Cruise has
Speaker 2: a contract sign in blood that's McCrory's blood, just like
Speaker 2: I own you.
Speaker 4: Now be the same thing that Travolta has with the
Speaker 4: Church of Scientology, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. It used to be like Robert Town
Speaker 2: had that agreement with Cruise, and I think there's one
Speaker 2: other writer and then it's like, now it's McCrory, and
Speaker 2: it's like I own you. You work for me now.
Speaker 4: I watched a David Kep film earlier this year that
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed. He wrote Cold Storage, which was based
Speaker 4: on his book of the same name, and.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
Speaker 4: It has Joe Keery, it has Liam Neeson, it has
Speaker 4: Kevin Bacon's daughter, it's zombie ob Jason c Last of
Speaker 4: Us Jason. It's fun, it's a fun action sci fi
Speaker 4: horror comedy, and it well check you should. I think
Speaker 4: you would enjoy it. I genuinely think you would enjoy it.
Speaker 4: And I know you're not a Stranger Things guy, so
Speaker 4: it would be a good way to see Joe Keery
Speaker 4: in something where you can kind of.
Speaker 2: Hey, I watched four out of five seasons of Stranger Things.
Speaker 2: Just watch the last one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought you did not watch Stranger Things at all.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, I've watched them all. I did talk
Speaker 2: to you all about Eddie or whatever the guy's name is,
Speaker 2: shredding to Metallica and Master Puppets and all that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, butter, really, the first time I've ever heard you
Speaker 4: talk about Stranger.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well it's just because it's not that impressive.
Speaker 4: Definitely not after what do we want to say season three?
Speaker 4: I mean, again, my leedge varies after the first season,
Speaker 4: but again kept ken Wright exciting, fun, interesting film.
Speaker 3: I want to.
Speaker 4: Focus on something about this movie that you mentioned. Why
Speaker 4: were there action scenes.
Speaker 3: In this movie?
Speaker 2: Nose, these are not action people? You know, it's not
Speaker 2: like they're either one of these is a secret ag agent.
Speaker 2: It's a meteorologist, and it's a computer hacker that was
Speaker 2: in prison. I mean maybe he learned how to fight
Speaker 2: in prison and stuff.
Speaker 4: Well no, he was like well, he was like a
Speaker 4: cybersecurity guy. It's supposed to be like a Snowden type, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: But he got thrown in federal jail like zero cool
Speaker 2: from hackers.
Speaker 4: You know, I guess you know, if we take again
Speaker 4: a thousand yard look at this movie, there are two
Speaker 4: things about this movie that are successful. And it ain't
Speaker 4: Emily O'Connor and Josh Blunt. It's not either one of
Speaker 4: them with their names switched. It's Colin Firth and Coleman
Speaker 4: to me, right, and maybe not even Colin Firth for you,
Speaker 4: but Coleman to make a like the best part of
Speaker 4: this movie, he is with doubt and my god.
Speaker 2: Well he seems to be the only person who knows
Speaker 2: what the fuck is going on.
Speaker 4: You know what, the movie had been made ten years ago,
Speaker 4: he would have been Morgan, it would have been Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 4: It's very like Freeman coded that, like, oh yeah, the
Speaker 4: way he's dressed, the way he looks he doesn't look
Speaker 4: like Joe Jackson. Which that's the movie i'd watch, is
Speaker 4: where he's playing Joe. He's in the Joe Jackson makeup
Speaker 4: and everything, but it's just.
Speaker 2: Going, oh that Joe Jackson. Okay.
Speaker 3: I kept thinking of the shootless Joe Jackson.
Speaker 2: H No, the Hey girl stepping out Joe Jackson, you know,
Speaker 2: the issue really going out with him Joe Jackson.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I have something to tell you that's probably more
Speaker 4: shocking than anything disclosed and disclosure day. I watched the
Speaker 4: Michael Jackson film last week, and god damn if I
Speaker 4: did not have a great time watching Wow, it is
Speaker 4: a lot of feel what you know what, I guarantee
Speaker 4: you you would have way more fun watching that movie
Speaker 4: than you had watching this movie. And that movie might
Speaker 4: actually surprise you in terms of how weirdly. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's weird because it almost feels less problematic to watch
Speaker 4: a movie about Michael Jackson and watching the real man sing,
Speaker 4: because I know that that's just a fake person, not
Speaker 4: the real Verson. But Coleman Domingo is the best part
Speaker 4: of that the second best part of that movie, other
Speaker 4: than Jermaine Jackson's son, who plays Michael Jackson more convincingly
Speaker 4: than well other than Joseph finds It. But Coleman Domingo
Speaker 4: is really good in that movie under his like Dick
Speaker 4: Tracy villain makeup, and he's the best part of this
Speaker 4: movie here, like not even close to anybody else. Like
Speaker 4: Emily Blunt, I do not care for her. Whatever she
Speaker 4: does when he is acting. She's not my bad.
Speaker 2: I like Emily Blunt. Yeah, I like her a lot
Speaker 2: in speaking of Tom Cruise, I really like her in
Speaker 2: Edge of Tomorrow.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I enjoy her as her energy. I think
Speaker 4: that's the only thing I've seen her in that I
Speaker 4: like her in.
Speaker 2: Well, it's I mean, I was a little disappointed that
Speaker 2: Alan Firth has like maybe a Latino guy and a
Speaker 2: woman of color and an Asian lady like at his
Speaker 2: Beck and Call, but they can't be the main characters.
Speaker 2: And then you've got you know, Hugo is the black guy,
Speaker 2: but he's not really a main character. It's like we
Speaker 2: still have to keep with these white leads and these
Speaker 2: white leads who are British, but they're all playing Americans.
Speaker 2: I mean, their American accents work really well, a lot
Speaker 2: better than like ben A a Cumberbatch or somebody. But it's
Speaker 2: just like, all right, like I can't put a person
Speaker 2: of color in charge in any of these Okay, that's
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 4: Well cole Min Dibigo's in charge of the other side
Speaker 4: of the coin, but that's about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm surprised we've gone this long talking without really
Speaker 2: calling out the star of this film, which is Kinneth
Speaker 2: Tiger showing up.
Speaker 3: Uh yes, thank you, thank you. Mike White.
Speaker 4: When he showed up, I was like, I know we're
Speaker 4: gonna be talking about Kenneth Tigar Barney Miller connection.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was amazing that he's you know, that whole
Speaker 2: thing that they're doing, and I kind of wish they
Speaker 2: had done more of that where she can appear or
Speaker 2: just kind of like grab people's thoughts out of their
Speaker 2: heads and trying it is. It is such the interesting part,
Speaker 2: and like way more interesting than like the cloak of
Speaker 2: invisibility part that they have. And I'm just like, if
Speaker 2: I'm standing there in that warehouse again, like maybe I'm
Speaker 2: just trigger happy because I would just start shooting like
Speaker 2: noises that I'm hearing and hopefully I pick off some
Speaker 2: of these guys, because it's like you obviously you can
Speaker 2: hear that something is going on. You know that that's happening.
Speaker 3: You see them on the fleer thing.
Speaker 4: He's like, there's people right here, something right right exactly,
Speaker 4: open fire exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: Even when they're at the farmhouse and Josh's girlfriend's got
Speaker 2: the knife and everything, it's like, okay, that's great and everything.
Speaker 2: But you guys, you see this car right here, like
Speaker 2: you're pushing your hands up against the window, like hey stop.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, take your gun out and shoot this guy.
Speaker 2: Like what is the problem here? Like if we if
Speaker 2: they stole government information, I don't think that the government
Speaker 2: would have any problem murdering these people in cold blood.
Speaker 4: We've seen the government murder people in cold blood for less.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, just by saying like it's okay, you know,
Speaker 2: no problem, dude, or like you know, selling like hey,
Speaker 2: back off of that lady, Okay, Yeah, we're going to
Speaker 2: murder you here in the streets.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, And I think to me, to go back to
Speaker 4: what you said at the opening of this episode, it's
Speaker 4: hard to watch a movie like this in the cynical
Speaker 4: times we live in. Yeah, it is, because that's the
Speaker 4: shit that makes me like wonder, like, did you take
Speaker 4: a If you're gonna make a movie like this, you
Speaker 4: got to take a temperature check of the world around
Speaker 4: You got to take a temperature check of the world.
Speaker 3: As it is now.
Speaker 4: And this movie feels like it takes place in twenty
Speaker 4: and sixteen. It doesn't feel like this is taking place
Speaker 4: in the world we live in now. And look, if
Speaker 4: that's the case.
Speaker 2: Other than bringing on the brink of World War three,
Speaker 2: I guess, well, yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure, but the movie again like, oh, Russia and North
Speaker 4: Korea and the United States. Okay, it's so boilerplate. It's
Speaker 4: not exciting, it's not original, it's not interesting. It feels
Speaker 4: like a lesser movie. It feels like a movie that's
Speaker 4: Spielberg that it feels like, it feels like a movie
Speaker 4: that someone would make trying to make us feel This
Speaker 4: movie reminds me of Super eight.
Speaker 2: Exactly, especially the fucking lens flare everywhere in this thing.
Speaker 3: Foster for the movie.
Speaker 4: I know it's supposed to be like the the eye,
Speaker 4: the retina of the human eye, but it looks like lens. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and don't you love that? Drew Strewsen poster that they
Speaker 4: attempted to put together because his corpse was not cold enough.
Speaker 4: Like that poster is just AI generated. It's what it
Speaker 4: looks like anyways, It's not that same Drew Strewsen look
Speaker 4: and Drew Strews and Field. But yet none of these
Speaker 4: movies have lived up to that level of timelessness. But
Speaker 4: so many of those Steven Spielberg movies that smack really
Speaker 4: smack like Jaws. You said, Jaws still works. I've watched
Speaker 4: in the last six months. I've watched it twice the
Speaker 4: last two years. It's amazing. It's justuinely still an amazing film.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the most egregious things for me
Speaker 2: when I'm watching a Jurassic Park or Jurassic World rebirth
Speaker 2: and they are just copping from Jaws and the original
Speaker 2: Jurassic Park, but just copping from Jaws all over the place.
Speaker 2: When when she's shooting that creature and stuff, I'm just like,
Speaker 2: are you going to shoot a barrel at this? And
Speaker 2: how many bells? Exactly? I'm just like, this is wretched.
Speaker 2: By the way, I did a little time check on
Speaker 2: that scene with the girl and Colin Firth nine minutes,
Speaker 2: so not fifty or forty five, like I said, but
Speaker 2: nine solid minutes of that conversation.
Speaker 3: Nine minutes too long. I mean, that's the other thing.
Speaker 4: And I you know, you mentioned having the two leads
Speaker 4: in opposite angles of the movie for you know, half
Speaker 4: of the movie's runtime. I'm also really uninterested in a
Speaker 4: movie that has your villain just chilling in a chair.
Speaker 3: Most of the movie. What is this golf film? Like?
Speaker 3: Straight up?
Speaker 4: I mean, I love, love, love Colin Firth.
Speaker 3: He's an actor.
Speaker 4: He's one of my favorite British actors. He's kind of
Speaker 4: up there with Hugh Grant in terms of just like
Speaker 4: I will watch something that he is in because he
Speaker 4: is in it and his presence often makes the film better.
Speaker 4: This is not one of those movies. I mean, he's
Speaker 4: good in the movie, but he's just like gritting his
Speaker 4: teeth most of the time and just calling out where
Speaker 4: people are. And it's not, Thankfully, I will say, it's
Speaker 4: not like, oh, this is a Trump character and this
Speaker 4: is an Elon character. There's there's thankfully none of that true.
Speaker 4: But you know, I don't want to say, like I
Speaker 4: kind of wish there was, but how are you making
Speaker 4: a movie like this in this day and age without
Speaker 4: having something a kid. All right, well, team failed because
Speaker 4: it did that, But this movie could have leaned into
Speaker 4: it a little bit.
Speaker 2: They try to say that he became a dickhead after
Speaker 2: his wife died three years ago, but I don't think
Speaker 2: he was torturing aliens three years ago. I think it
Speaker 2: was longer than that. So I think he's I always
Speaker 2: spent a deckhead, and just the wife thing made him
Speaker 2: even worse.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't understand trying to make a character sympathetic. He
Speaker 4: just should have been a villain because the sympathy that
Speaker 4: would give his character doesn't go anywhere. And you get
Speaker 4: that scene at the end of the film where like
Speaker 4: Coleman Domingo puts his hand on Colin for his shoulder,
Speaker 4: and you're like, oh, this is the moment of kind
Speaker 4: of the two halves coming together, because you know, Colin
Speaker 4: Friz just says, well, I can't do anything about it,
Speaker 4: and that's it.
Speaker 3: He could have his people shoot them. I just I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess for me, if if you're gonna do this
Speaker 4: movie this way, why not lean more into Colin Firth
Speaker 4: being conflicted about it, because that's what they're getting at
Speaker 4: I'm assuming, I mean, Colin Fritz would have told him
Speaker 4: at any point to kill them, and he doesn't. I
Speaker 4: mean he he doesn't send that guy after Emily Blunt
Speaker 4: and Josh O'Connor to kill him on the train. That
Speaker 4: guy just goes of his own volition. And I feel
Speaker 4: like that encounter should have happened earlier in the movie,
Speaker 4: and Colin Firth should have been you know, like the
Speaker 4: no stop way like that should have been the energy
Speaker 4: he's giving where it's he's hampering them, but he's not
Speaker 4: really putting. He's not putting the hurdle eight feet off
Speaker 4: the ground. He's putting it two feet off the ground,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? And I feel like
Speaker 4: that if you, if you go down that rabbit hole,
Speaker 4: that explains why he doesn't have them aim and take
Speaker 4: fire on these people. But the movie doesn't get us there.
Speaker 4: I get myself there, and that's me doing the heavy
Speaker 4: lifting for a film that cost one hundred and.
Speaker 3: Twenty million dollars.
Speaker 4: It should it should get us there. And I guess
Speaker 4: maybe Kep thought he got us there, maybe Spielberg thought
Speaker 4: he got us there, But I don't think the film
Speaker 4: gets where it's trying to get, but it sure thinks
Speaker 4: it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, I just I don't I don't buy it.
Speaker 2: I don't buy any of this, and especially I don't
Speaker 2: buy the end of it. And I'm just like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just feel like I really missed the bus when
Speaker 2: it came to this.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: I don't think that this is gonna be a movie
Speaker 4: that hangs around in the public consciousness very long. The
Speaker 4: only people that were in the theater when I was
Speaker 4: seeing it on a Monday afternoon, granted it's a Monday afternoon.
Speaker 4: We're a handful of elderly people. I don't know if
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg is a name that gets people out to
Speaker 4: the movie theaters anymore, especially people that are younger than
Speaker 4: me by ten years, in their mid twenties. I don't
Speaker 4: know if someone who's twenty four would go. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm really rushing out to see that latest Spielberg if I.
Speaker 2: Saw it on I saw it on a Saturday, maybe
Speaker 2: second screening of the day. It was like eleven fifteen
Speaker 2: in the morning. It was my wife and I and
Speaker 2: one other person in the whole theater.
Speaker 3: I believe it.
Speaker 4: I believe it because I don't know who Steven Spielberg's
Speaker 4: making films for anymore, because I don't think he's making
Speaker 4: films for the people that are going to the movies
Speaker 4: to the tune of back Rooms or obsession. I mean,
Speaker 4: and he's not like I went saw Backrooms two weekends ago,
Speaker 4: did an episode on it. It is a great film
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways. It's a film not made
Speaker 4: for someone my age, but it's made to get someone
Speaker 4: my age to understand something that I've never been exposed.
Speaker 4: This movie is not exposing us to anything we're not
Speaker 4: already being exposed to all the time. It doesn't do
Speaker 4: it in an interesting way. And I'm you know, looking
Speaker 4: at Spielberg's filmography. If you were born in let's say,
Speaker 4: let's say you were born ten years after I was. Okay,
Speaker 4: so say you were born in the year two thousand,
Speaker 4: what is your Spielberg movie that you would watch that's
Speaker 4: come out in your lifetime that you'd be like, well,
Speaker 4: this is like it's gonna be something that was released
Speaker 4: in almost a decade.
Speaker 3: Before you were born.
Speaker 4: If you were born in two thousand, I mean, Jurassic
Speaker 4: Park came out in nineteen ninety three. What has come
Speaker 4: out since the two thousands, like since two thousand. Baby,
Speaker 4: catch me if you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is still it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Who the fuck likes Tintin other than like maybe you,
Speaker 4: But I know I liked it. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you've seen it.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 2: I still haven't seen it. Yeah, if you it's good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to go to the end of the movie
Speaker 2: again and just talk about this is supposed to be well, no,
Speaker 2: I can't say that. I'm not going to say this
Speaker 2: is supposed to be Emily Blunt's big break because she's
Speaker 2: finally in the newscaster or chair. All that stuff is
Speaker 2: completely off the table by the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: But we are broadcasting out to all of these different affiliates.
Speaker 2: It's being bumped for everything. We have the one woman,
Speaker 2: and I'm curious if she's a real news anchor or not.
Speaker 2: Who's reacting to all of the footage. I'm almost curious
Speaker 2: if that was just they showed her stuff and said, okay,
Speaker 2: just talk through this, like do the thing that news
Speaker 2: anchors do, which is talking through the footage of what
Speaker 2: you're seeing. Because she is the blandest performance I think
Speaker 2: I've ever seen in a movie, like especially a movie
Speaker 2: like you said that cost over one hundred million dollars,
Speaker 2: It's like, what are you doing? Like is there awe?
Speaker 2: Is their shock? Is there any human emotions going on?
Speaker 2: It just feels very like and now I'm seeing this
Speaker 2: and I'm seeing that. Is that just because she's a
Speaker 2: newscaster and can't give human emotion?
Speaker 4: I And again I go back to what I said
Speaker 4: at the opening, which is everyone is acting really nonplus
Speaker 4: by the fact that aliens. And that for me is like,
Speaker 4: this is a movie about aliens coming into our lives
Speaker 4: at a time that we are like technologically advancing quickly
Speaker 4: and even with AI and other tools that we can
Speaker 4: use on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And I'd like how they had to say, like,
Speaker 2: we've checked this, this is not.
Speaker 3: A I right, like fun.
Speaker 4: I like that in this day and age, the newscasters
Speaker 4: is like, well we're seeing aliens here. It's like you
Speaker 4: would not be reacting that car to aliens.
Speaker 2: What I mean, this reminds me so much of twenty ten,
Speaker 2: the year we make contact, where it's like the Earth is,
Speaker 2: you know, on the brink of war. You've got that
Speaker 2: awesome cover of time that has Arthur C. Clark and
Speaker 2: Coopbrick across from him, and one's playing the American lead
Speaker 2: and the other ones the Russian premiere kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And you have all of these conflicts going on between
Speaker 2: the Americans and the Russians out in space, and just
Speaker 2: how silly it is that they are having these conflicts
Speaker 2: so many thousands of millions of miles away from the Earth.
Speaker 2: But then when like they turn Jupiter into another sun,
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, now I can understand people like putting
Speaker 2: down their weapons and being like what the fuck? Man, Like,
Speaker 2: this is way too big. I still don't get that
Speaker 2: from this. I don't get the yeah we saw seven
Speaker 2: dots disappear under the water. Wow, Yeah, let's let's stop
Speaker 2: all of our nuclear war, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's just the level of what this would mean to
Speaker 4: humanity versus what the movie thinks it means humanity is
Speaker 4: not there's not a the level is not met. You know,
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, if you and we haven't talked
Speaker 4: about this, I don't know, maybe you have not seen this.
Speaker 4: The Spielberg alien thing that I think is really the
Speaker 4: best alien thing that he's done is taken. But that's
Speaker 4: because it's a mini series and it's given like ten
Speaker 4: episodes to kind of breathe and exist and tie into
Speaker 4: real things while creating its own mythology.
Speaker 2: And is that the one where the alien calls up
Speaker 2: and he says, I have a certain set of skills.
Speaker 3: Right it is? It is?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right? That I have seen, but I haven't
Speaker 2: seen this mini series you're talking about.
Speaker 4: Taking is very good. I mean, he didn't direct it,
Speaker 4: but he's directly involved with the creation of it.
Speaker 2: And didn't he produce like the one hundred or one
Speaker 2: of those shows as well?
Speaker 3: I think no, I think this is probably the show.
Speaker 4: Okay, I think though, well, I know he has produced
Speaker 4: a lot of he has on a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. I thought they were really messing with
Speaker 2: the universal logo when they pulled back and it's the
Speaker 2: moon and I was like, oh wait, no, it was
Speaker 2: just the logo, Okay.
Speaker 3: Ambling yeah.
Speaker 4: Is this Steven Spielberg's last film? And if it is
Speaker 4: his last film, is this a worthy sendoff for a
Speaker 4: director of his cow?
Speaker 2: I don't believe this will be his last film. I
Speaker 2: think he still has a few more in him. I
Speaker 2: can't see him doing much more than making films. Yes,
Speaker 2: he's definitely slowed down a lot over the last few years,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean the guy was putting out two
Speaker 2: films a year for the longest dan time. It was
Speaker 2: like just a wild to see that. But yeah, he's
Speaker 2: seventy seven years old. Now, I think he can take
Speaker 2: a little little bit of a break. It's all right,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't have to be pushing all the time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I can see him still do one or
Speaker 2: two more things before he's gone. I mean, I would
Speaker 2: love it if it was a lot more.
Speaker 4: I would have said the same thing about David Lynch,
Speaker 4: like I you know, I would love to see more
Speaker 4: from Moore. Would have loved to have seen more from
Speaker 4: David Lynch. But I can accept if Twin Peaks three
Speaker 4: is his final thing. I would not want to accept
Speaker 4: that this is Stielbert.
Speaker 2: Did you know that there was a Minority Report TV show?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was on Fox in the mid to late
Speaker 4: two thousands, Is that right.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I must have watched that for the episode
Speaker 2: we did, yeah, twenty fifteen. Yeah, wow, Falling Skies.
Speaker 4: He was a producer of That's what it was, which
Speaker 4: is what the Noah Wiley Alien show than Noah Wiley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I do remember that one's hit and
Speaker 2: that's when they were in like Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: Maybe thing that and it's like post apocalyptic Aliens or something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can we talk about the real thing about this movie.
Speaker 4: That's honestly the biggest disappointment. They got John Williams to
Speaker 4: score this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I kept wondering because it was just so
Speaker 2: John Williams throughout the whole thing, and I was like,
Speaker 2: is this him? I thought he retired.
Speaker 4: He did, but then he's come back like three times, right,
Speaker 4: because he came back for something else, But he didn't
Speaker 4: come back for that Indiana Jones movie in quotation rights,
Speaker 4: which I've you know, the funniest thing about that Indiana
Speaker 4: Jones movie. Spielberg didn't direct it, And I kind of
Speaker 4: forgot that he didn't direct it because it feels like
Speaker 4: a lesser Steven Spielberg movie in like every shape, form
Speaker 4: and fashion, other than the fact that it's shockingly somehow
Speaker 4: better or some somehow not better than Crystal Skull.
Speaker 3: Isle of Destiny is the worst Indiana j still.
Speaker 4: Yeah, John Williams has come back for Fableman's Indiana Jones
Speaker 4: and Disclosure Day. So he did come back for Indiana Jones.
Speaker 4: I thought it was Giacchino who did Indiana Jones.
Speaker 2: I would have said, you were right. Yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 2: feel a little bad for the guy. You know, every
Speaker 2: time he thinks he's out, Scoolbert pulls them back in.
Speaker 2: We've got this montage at the end going back and
Speaker 2: forth between the footage of that's being aired, people looking
Speaker 2: at it, all this kind of stuff. I got really
Speaker 2: upset when they had a shot of I think it's
Speaker 2: people on an airplane watching stuff, and I'm like, who
Speaker 2: whoa whoa whoa bo. No, No, you don't get signal
Speaker 2: up there, and you shouldn't be watching that stuff. Put
Speaker 2: away your phones.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like everybody had their phone Continental.
Speaker 3: If you're on a Continental flight now they have like
Speaker 3: TV on.
Speaker 2: They do have TV on the air, but I'd be
Speaker 2: watching on the seatpack rather than watching it on my phone.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 4: I mean you can watch stuff on Southwest. You can
Speaker 4: on their app. You can watch the same stuff on
Speaker 4: your phone that you can on the screen. I don't
Speaker 4: know if I mean again as if you fly Southwest. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I think it's more I think what's more funny
Speaker 4: is to go back to the reactions of everybody. Everyone
Speaker 4: is just so fun nonplused. I know that they're making
Speaker 4: this like face of shock and surprise and bewilderment, but
Speaker 4: that's not the real reaction people giving.
Speaker 2: If this, it's the famous Spielberg moment of awe, but
Speaker 2: just stretched out across all of humanity.
Speaker 4: I suppose boy, he checked that box.
Speaker 3: He really did.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, And the moment that the
Speaker 2: actual alien shows up at the very end of the movie,
Speaker 2: because it's like, oh, are we gonna go without actually
Speaker 2: seeing an alien other than in her flashback? No, no,
Speaker 2: we'll get that, And just looking at the creature design,
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, like, I don't know, the galaxy is
Speaker 2: on a Ryan's belt, you know. I just kept thinking, like,
Speaker 2: of better alien movies, other alien movies I would rather
Speaker 2: be watching than this one.
Speaker 3: Like Close Encounters of the Third kind.
Speaker 2: Like Close Encounters are the third kind. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: basically that at the end of this and then I
Speaker 2: kind of feel bad. This alien seems like he's really
Speaker 2: having a hard time.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He's in this like wheelchair and gets stood up, and
Speaker 2: then when he trying to stand up fully. It's just
Speaker 2: kind of like Rickety and stuff. I'm like, is this
Speaker 2: guy like from the original Roswell Crash or what.
Speaker 3: The name dropping Roswell does not do enough? I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the alien at the end of the movie God
Speaker 4: completely unnecessary. Again, I understand the moment that they're trying
Speaker 4: to get to, but what ultimately is the message of
Speaker 4: the movie? Is it that humanity should be more empathetic
Speaker 4: with one another and listen to one another? Is that's
Speaker 4: the message the movie's trying to get across.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming empathy is a weakness. Haven't we learned that
Speaker 2: from the World's First Trillionaire?
Speaker 3: I mean to be fair and you will laugh.
Speaker 4: I don't know what they show at your movie theater
Speaker 4: before you watch the film, but they showed a advertisement
Speaker 4: for the rebranded Department of War, which we have a
Speaker 4: strength through power, whatever the hell the fucking branding was,
Speaker 4: and then having to listen to Boso one and Boso
Speaker 4: two shill their bullshit for thirty seconds to then pivot
Speaker 4: to a movie where it's about the world on the
Speaker 4: brink of war and disaster and only the aliens can
Speaker 4: save us. Like, what, man, can you imagine how triggered
Speaker 4: right wingers must have been at the idea that aliens
Speaker 4: can save us, but the kind extraterrestrial kind.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, not the ones from outside of our country.
Speaker 3: Right right?
Speaker 4: You know it's you know, empathy is Empathy should be
Speaker 4: the language of the universe. Empathy is the most important
Speaker 4: thing that I think we can have for one another,
Speaker 4: especially now with the world being the way that it
Speaker 4: is and everybody being so amped up all the time
Speaker 4: and just ready and willing to jump all over each
Speaker 4: other at a moment's notice. Being empathetic towards other people
Speaker 4: is important, and I think that that is an important
Speaker 4: message that the film is trying to convey. Just doesn't
Speaker 4: do a good job and bang it gets lost in
Speaker 4: everything else. Just cut like half of this movie's plot lines.
Speaker 4: Out Cut why rustle out of this movie. Cut fucking
Speaker 4: half of the people that Coleman Di Mingo's working with
Speaker 4: out of this movie. Cut one of the leads out
Speaker 4: of this movie. Just do something to make it a
Speaker 4: more singular message. Like, you know, there's the idea that
Speaker 4: Emily Blunt's dad had Parkinson's that goes absolutely fucking nowhere. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I thought about that in comparison to the scene of
Speaker 4: Promethee where David is talking to uh doctor Shaw about
Speaker 4: her father and he's like, you know, don't you feel
Speaker 4: like God left you that day when your father died
Speaker 4: of ebola? And it's like that one fucking line alone
Speaker 4: evokes so much more emotion and like meaning from that
Speaker 4: character and the way she responds, like it gets you
Speaker 4: there two lines, and this movie spends two hours doing that.
Speaker 4: The emotions of like of that like belief and how far
Speaker 4: do you go for your belief?
Speaker 3: And what is belief mean?
Speaker 4: Like this movie can't even nail what Prometheus just kind
Speaker 4: of threw into the movie and it works better than
Speaker 4: this movie focusing on it the entire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was just really rough.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I just I guess I'm hoping that Spielberg has another
Speaker 2: one in them so you can kind of wash this
Speaker 2: taste out of my mouth. But this is Yeah, It's
Speaker 2: not something I'm going to be going back to anytime soon,
Speaker 2: that's for sure.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't even say that this was an entertaining I
Speaker 4: felt like this Watching this movie was kind of a
Speaker 4: I feel like I was just going through the motions
Speaker 4: along with the movie, Like well, this is Fielberg's last
Speaker 4: alien movie, and it's going, Like you said, it's covering
Speaker 4: things that isn't covered already and there you go. Okay,
Speaker 4: I mean okay, like it's just it. It seemingly limps
Speaker 4: along from the start of the movie. It just limps
Speaker 4: along to the finish, and the action is uninteresting. The
Speaker 4: actors are relatively uninteresting, if not given anything to do,
Speaker 4: or just under characterized or just written out of the
Speaker 4: movie completely like Wyatt Russell's character serves no purpose. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it I wanted so much to like this
Speaker 4: movie because I personally believe it, you know, want to
Speaker 4: believe in the existence of extraterrestrials and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: And you know that's the moments, you know, to speak to,
Speaker 4: the moments in the movie that got to me, where
Speaker 4: those moments where it's like, again, this is answering a
Speaker 4: question that's bigger than all of us, really, and I
Speaker 4: it is like, if there are in fact things exterior
Speaker 4: to us and our planet that is something that affects
Speaker 4: all of us period, And that's an interesting question. This
Speaker 4: movie just doesn't understand how to ask it or answer
Speaker 4: it in an interesting way. And it doesn't do that
Speaker 4: from the start, and there's no way to redeem it,
Speaker 4: like none, Like the movie doesn't even attempt to redeem
Speaker 4: itself at any point. It just kind of goes, well,
Speaker 4: we kind of have all these disparately tied together things.
Speaker 4: We can get a collage montage at the end of
Speaker 4: the movie of all these things out and it kind of.
Speaker 3: You you put it together.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, no, just no, you do the
Speaker 4: heavy lifting for me, because what you're expecting me to
Speaker 4: do the heavy lifting on on the other side of it,
Speaker 4: there's nothing to be gained. If you're doing the heavy lifting,
Speaker 4: I don't feel like I don't feel as disappointed if
Speaker 4: it doesn't land. But if you make me do all
Speaker 4: the heavy lifting and it doesn't land, I'm going to
Speaker 4: be much more disappointed because you really asked a lot
Speaker 4: of me as the audience, and I think this movie's
Speaker 4: asking more of the audience in a movie that's a
Speaker 4: summer blockbuster in quotation should be because it's just asking
Speaker 4: you to fill in far too many blanks without giving
Speaker 4: you proper guidance as to what it's expecting from you
Speaker 4: as an audience. And it's not fun, which a summer
Speaker 4: blockbuster should at least be somewhat fun.
Speaker 2: It's not fun. It's not funny. I just I'd rather
Speaker 2: be watching pretick Hail Mary again.
Speaker 4: See that's a movie I had no interest in watching.
Speaker 4: It just didn't look interesting to me. And it kind
Speaker 4: of just reminded me of The Marsian, a movie that
Speaker 4: I found to be just kind of fine. Maybe it's better.
Speaker 4: Is it better than the Martian?
Speaker 2: I liked it better than the Marsha.
Speaker 3: And yeah, Ridley Scott, so there is that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one it had some fun to it.
Speaker 2: It had some serious moments to it, so yeah, I
Speaker 2: kind of liked it.
Speaker 3: So it seemed more Spielbergian than this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it did have more of a sense of
Speaker 2: wonder to me and just like oh wow. Like and
Speaker 2: also even though it's not an action hero, he's not
Speaker 2: being asked to do action hero stuff. He's being at
Speaker 2: to solve shit with his brain. Yeah, I could see
Speaker 2: the Josh O'Connor character being much more of like, why
Speaker 2: I can't fight my way out of this, but how
Speaker 2: about I actually think of a way out of things?
Speaker 3: How about I alien my way out of this?
Speaker 4: Because the aliens have made me super smart apparently, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: aliens speak in the language of the universe, Mike, that's mathematics.
Speaker 2: I can hear math.
Speaker 4: I hear colors and sea sounds.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Being in tune with the aliens is just like dropping
Speaker 4: a whole page with a blotter acid.
Speaker 3: It's what we're being told. Just like, whoa, my.
Speaker 4: Eyes start to dilate. I see all sorts of wild shit.
Speaker 4: The animals are staring at me, like, man, that's that's
Speaker 4: the thing that like, again, you have a movie where
Speaker 4: you introduce the idea that aliens have been here this
Speaker 4: whole time, that is the implication. And they don't even
Speaker 4: go down that road very far. They like, drive one
Speaker 4: hundred feet down the road and go, Man, not interesting,
Speaker 4: Let's go the other ways.
Speaker 3: No, that's interesting.
Speaker 4: The aliens having been here all the time disguised as animals,
Speaker 4: that's not interesting to you.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: The crop circles forming on their own, that's not interesting.
Speaker 4: What is interesting to you? Then, like Colin Firth with
Speaker 4: a mouthguarden gritting his teeth really hard, that's apparently what's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that would have been fine once not for
Speaker 2: not for nine minutes and not consistently going back to
Speaker 2: and just like, oh, well, now I'm going to have
Speaker 2: a conversation with this person. It's like okay, Like this
Speaker 2: is your way of Like that's basically his way of
Speaker 2: getting out of the office is by doing what he's
Speaker 2: doing with the little magic wand thing.
Speaker 4: It really, yeah, the mcguffin that they hold in their
Speaker 4: hands and turn it into a television remote at one point.
Speaker 4: It is really Star Wars sequels of it to have
Speaker 4: like the main characters being able to talk to each
Speaker 4: other remotely.
Speaker 3: Like that's what it reminded me of.
Speaker 4: Remember when Ben Solo is showing up and like taunting Ray, Like,
Speaker 4: that's what that remind me. I'm just like this didn't
Speaker 4: work then, and that mechanism and that made about as
Speaker 4: much sense as this did, which is to say, it
Speaker 4: doesn't make any fucking sense at all. And if you're
Speaker 4: gonna have two characters in a scene occupying the scene together,
Speaker 4: get them in the fucking scene. Just get them in
Speaker 4: the fucking scene. Don't have me opposite CGI animals or
Speaker 4: any of that other nonsense.
Speaker 2: I think it takes them about an hour and a
Speaker 2: half out of a two hour film before they actually
Speaker 2: get together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. I feel like there
Speaker 4: were good intentions here. I feel like Spielberg came back
Speaker 4: to the alien sub genre, and I like how people
Speaker 4: are like it's the culmination of Close Encounters, a third
Speaker 4: kind of et Hey fuckers, there's.
Speaker 3: Another movie in there. I mean, he directed War of
Speaker 3: the Worlds.
Speaker 4: What are we just gonna give Chris Nolan all the
Speaker 4: credit for directing one hundred year old thing or thousands
Speaker 4: of year old thing? What everyone forgot? Spielberg's done it
Speaker 4: a couple of times, including.
Speaker 3: War of the World.
Speaker 4: I honestly think War of the World is a much
Speaker 4: better capper to Steven Spielberg's through two alien films than
Speaker 4: this one. If you just say that's the last alien
Speaker 4: thing he made, I would away from that a much
Speaker 4: more interesting experience in this movie, because that movie is
Speaker 4: a total one to eighty from all the other alien
Speaker 4: things he'd ever done. This is just if you're not
Speaker 4: gonna tie this into the things you've done before, because
Speaker 4: this is kind of of a piece, why are you
Speaker 4: doing it? I just I don't know. I just I'm
Speaker 4: maybe I defend War of the World's way too much.
Speaker 4: But I remember being in the theater seeing that film,
Speaker 4: and just the feet are fucking shaking from the base
Speaker 4: in that movie. And I remember enjoying just the experience
Speaker 4: of that and that kind of nine to eleven adjacent movie, right,
Speaker 4: because that was kind of the whole.
Speaker 3: Thing with that movie.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Tom Cruise running around in the streets covered
Speaker 4: dust in the dust right like that evoked something that
Speaker 4: felt real and lived in much more than this movie
Speaker 4: ever gets to. And again I'd like to point out
Speaker 4: that this movie exists once again in twenty twenty six
Speaker 4: post one of the largest shared experiences we have ever
Speaker 4: had as humankind, which is the pandemic. It affected every
Speaker 4: single one of us. Why not make this a movie
Speaker 4: where the alien or stand in for COVID in some way,
Speaker 4: in some capacity, do that, even I don't know, the
Speaker 4: next time there will be a shared experience that we
Speaker 4: all can relate to, like COVID Because for a lot
Speaker 4: of people that was never even a thing in their lifetime,
Speaker 4: Like they never experienced anything like that, And now we've all.
Speaker 2: Lived and for me being of my generation, the last
Speaker 2: big shared experience before that was nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: So right, same, I mean yeah, same, Like I'm the
Speaker 4: last generation to remember nine to eleven. Essentially, I was
Speaker 4: eleven years old when it happened, which is why War
Speaker 4: of the World's probably resonated more with me, because that's
Speaker 4: like that unpacking of the post nine to eleven world
Speaker 4: that we lived in and the isolation because you have
Speaker 4: the tim Tim Robbins in that movie. Is that the Yeah,
Speaker 4: you have that like isolationist character thing going about in
Speaker 4: that movie. To like, that feels like much more of
Speaker 4: a rumination on things than this movie ever gets to.
Speaker 4: And that movie, I think is less well reviewed than
Speaker 4: this film. It's this film is yeah, not that this
Speaker 4: film's getting kind of panned, but I've seen more or
Speaker 4: less of a fifty to fifty split on the people
Speaker 4: that I know that I've seen this movie because friend
Speaker 4: of ours Adam Long saw it. He didn't seem to
Speaker 4: like it. I think another friend of ours, Aaron Peterson,
Speaker 4: did like it, Like I've seen other friends of mine
Speaker 4: say they liked it and didn't like like, there doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to be a good answer on this film, like
Speaker 4: We're the World. People were just like, Hey, that's a
Speaker 4: fucking War of the World's adaptation.
Speaker 3: Who cares?
Speaker 4: This movie seems to be people are on off side
Speaker 4: of the fence or not, which Bielberg film being divisive
Speaker 4: is kind of surprising this device.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, for me, I was not a fan
Speaker 2: of War of the Worlds. I felt that the ending
Speaker 2: was really cheap, and I would go for Cloverfield as
Speaker 2: being a much better reaction to nine A lot of one.
Speaker 3: Sure, but that means you have to watch clover I.
Speaker 2: Like Cloverfield, I don't like the Well I like ten
Speaker 2: Cloverfield Lane, but I definitely don't like the third one.
Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say, talk about it, talk about
Speaker 4: a movie who's ending ruins the film ten Cloverfield Lane. God,
Speaker 4: I love ten Cloverfield Lane more than I love clover Fiel.
Speaker 4: The ten Cloverfield Lane has the same problem that Cloverfield did,
Speaker 4: which is the end of the movie doesn't live up
Speaker 4: to what the movie had set up. And this movie,
Speaker 4: I think, is kind of in that same alien camp
Speaker 4: of you have a mystery at the center of things,
Speaker 4: you have a mystery that's going to be answered, and
Speaker 4: when the mystery is answered, it's just like you said
Speaker 4: at the opening, a wet fart and not a wet
Speaker 4: fart worth seeing Adobe at mos, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: No, I haven't shaked the walls, that's right. Well, Chris,
Speaker 2: when you're not talking about Steven Spielberg, what are you
Speaker 2: up to these days?
Speaker 4: Well, nine times out of ten, ninety nine times out
Speaker 4: of one hundred, I'm not. I'm not talking about Spielberg.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about everything but Spielberg, and those conversations can
Speaker 4: be found over a weirding Way Media, where my show,
Speaker 4: The Culture Cast has been posting an episode once a
Speaker 4: week for twelve years, going on twelve years, which is crazy.
Speaker 4: Along with my show, you can find Mike Show, The
Speaker 4: Projection Booth, Susan Lambert Adams Show, ADCD Ladies, Father Malone's Show,
Speaker 4: Midnight Viewing, m Mark Begley Show, Cambridge and Was Shawn,
Speaker 4: and Wakeup Heavy. All those shows can be found Awake
Speaker 4: at weirding Way Media, which is where this show is
Speaker 4: found right now. And if you're finding this on YouTube
Speaker 4: and you think that this is supposed to be a movie,
Speaker 4: it's a podcast. I'll just keep saying for your benefit,
Speaker 4: all these people yapping, that's what we do. It's a podcast.
Speaker 4: You know in movies they talk too, but I guess
Speaker 4: maybe not in the movies people are watching. Can I
Speaker 4: want to just decide, did missus Mike White go to
Speaker 4: this film with you?
Speaker 3: She did, right, Yes she did.
Speaker 4: Did she pop for the trailer for you? Because I
Speaker 4: feel like that's a film that you might be going
Speaker 4: to theaters.
Speaker 2: Royal Boy, Yes, we will be there.
Speaker 3: I will want to see that trailer.
Speaker 4: And I was just like, this feels like the kind
Speaker 4: of film that Mike and his wife are going to
Speaker 4: see in theaters.
Speaker 2: Under percent though, and my.
Speaker 4: Parents, Man, if you guys lived in the same place,
Speaker 4: you guys would be watching those movies and theaters together
Speaker 4: because something about Jason Stathan resonates with my folks, and
Speaker 4: I just get it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: When when they lead though with from the director of Plane,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, don't don't do that. Yeah, I like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm so I'm like, what's the name of this movie?
Speaker 3: Boat?
Speaker 2: It took me because that's the second time I saw
Speaker 2: that trailer and I was just like, wait, what is
Speaker 2: this movie called again? And then when they say from
Speaker 2: the director of playing, I'm like, oh, yeah, Boat, It's
Speaker 2: like no, No, it's mutiny.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm under siege three.
Speaker 4: If it had been under Siege three I would have popped,
Speaker 4: so fucking oh yeah, yeah, when did you see the preview?
Speaker 3: When did you see the preview?
Speaker 2: The other time might have been before Mortal Combat two.
Speaker 4: Okay, I saw it before I saw the Red Band
Speaker 4: trailer for it, before a scary movie. When I saw
Speaker 4: a scary movie last week. That's three weekends in a row.
Speaker 4: I've seen a movie in theaters. What is happening, right?
Speaker 2: And are we going back next week? Or is the
Speaker 2: two weeks when we have the double feature of Jackass
Speaker 2: and what's the other movie? Super Supergirl?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I like how I remember Jackass. I don't remember Supergirl.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know which one. I'm way more excited
Speaker 3: to say. I think that's in two weeks.
Speaker 4: We're gonna be two great Supergirl and then we're also
Speaker 4: gonna be covering Jackass. I hope it's in two weeks
Speaker 4: because I have been preparing for Jackass by watching the
Speaker 4: entire MTV show It Nice. And then I get to
Speaker 4: watch the movies, which my friend Lindsey and I, who
Speaker 4: we watch a lot of movies together, she has not
Speaker 4: seen any of the movies, I don't think, and I'm
Speaker 4: so excited to watch them because they're fucking good, especially
Speaker 4: that third one. Man, that third one. Oh, I'm I
Speaker 4: know that this movie is like half of a fucking
Speaker 4: clip show. Uh, but I don't care. I will show
Speaker 4: up for a Jackass movie to see people get hit
Speaker 4: in the nuts and have shit jammed up their asses,
Speaker 4: and I have no I'm not even gonna, not even
Speaker 4: gonna apologize. They take my fucking money, take it. They've
Speaker 4: taken it several times now and they will continue if
Speaker 4: this is in fact the last one. And how many
Speaker 4: times have they said that now? Three other times, two
Speaker 4: other times?
Speaker 2: So yeah, well they're getting kind of geriatric.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they sure are.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's when you can hear Mike and I
Speaker 4: again coming to you to talk about new movies. Is
Speaker 4: in two weeks. We talk about Supergirl and Jackass on
Speaker 4: two separate episodes on our respective feeds, which can both
Speaker 4: be found at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Like rate and review
Speaker 4: this show on iTunes, Spotify, and if you're listening to
Speaker 4: this on YouTube, subscribe to our channel. But just remember
Speaker 4: this is a podcast no movies.