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Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 4: Don't expect to be.
Speaker 5: Night time straight from the.
Speaker 4: Take, because you'll find no be survived Side Coast.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, and welcome to side Quest. The episodes we
do between the episodes for which the podcast has been named.
I am Drew Hayes. Joining me tonight is special guest
Ben Robinson. Hello, And people who don't get their own
special introduction are Rick vol Terry, Robert Bevett and Steve
Weatherall Hello, friends. Yes, and tonight we're gonna do what
every time a bunch of middle aged guys get together.
We're going to talk about the state of movies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jory, I should point out because I think some
people think that I just really like being a miserable
prick about movies. Did It wasn't my idea to talk
about movies tonight. We were supposed to do something else.
The technology completely failed, So I can only assume that
God wants me to be unhappy with movies.
Speaker 6: Well, we were recording like forty minutes late because of this.
Speaker 7: There's also some middle edge guys that get together and
talk about minorities, So.
Speaker 3: Movies not so bad different podcasts. Yeah, the probably a
bigger Patreot on you.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Oh God.
Speaker 3: The impetus of this was a little bit that we
saw some of us saw Deadpool versus Wolverine. And that's
not to say that we feel the need to drill
down on that movie for an hour. But regardless of
what you thought of it, the fact that it has
been as successful as it has been under the Marvel
banner at a time when Marvel is pretty thirsty for
a hit, it's a significant It's a significant moment in
where we are in cinema, whether whether it be a
peak or at Valley. Overall, you know, this is where
we are and this is what is happening, so it's
worth examining. And then we also have the fascinating events
such as I believe Megalopolis the big it's Martin Scorsese, right,
I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, the one he's been working on
for like twenty years or.
Speaker 3: Something forever, like the self financed it. Well. Just today
there was a big scandal that broke because Lionsgate had
to apologize. The trailer for Megalopolis they released featured a
bunch of quotes from critics that were either a made
up or b misattributed and used entirely out of context.
Speaker 4: It's not most critic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. To give you a quick like summation, of it
was trying to establish the narrative that like people had
always like bet against Martin Scorsese on critical things. Like
it was trying to say, like I think one of
them was like, you know, all substance over style, you know,
as if it had referenced The Godfather, but it was
talking about Batman with Michael Keaton and so. Yeah. So
they were just like all these different quotes that were
just completely either not real or falsely attributed.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows that that, you know, scrappy under duck mindscorse.
You know, he's tried so many times, he's never quite
had a hit. No, I think that's yeah, wild they
miss attributed. He's I think he's a fairly established guy.
He must be fairly confident with his with his output
by now.
Speaker 3: I mean this is like a his big, big thing.
Like I honestly, from the bottom of my heart, I
don't think he gives a flying fuck what any critic
or audience member thinks of it. Sure, I think he's like,
I made this goddamn thing. I won.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's what he said, just like you put some
quotes in there. He's like, what kind of quote side?
I don't give a shit, maybe that's way he is.
Speaker 1: Right now, just make some shit up, plug it into
the AI. That's what we do these right.
Speaker 3: The idea that that would happen to a Martin Scorsese film,
it is sort of a bit like, holy fuck, where
are we right now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that doesn't happen by accident.
Speaker 3: No, no, I Now let's be clear. I doubt he
did that because I doubt he is involved in all
the movie marketing bullshit, and is why would he want.
Speaker 4: To be totally does not? He strikes me somebody is
way over that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so it was just but yeah, some executive
producer or marketing executive got the idea of like, all right,
how do we sell people on the new Martin score? Sase, Phil, you.
Speaker 4: Know what's happening? And I haven't heard Mega Lapolis yet.
My finger is not on the pulse. My finger, as
always is right up my ass.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I wouldn't support your finger.
Speaker 4: So no, you didn't get to know that.
Speaker 6: That's it.
Speaker 1: It's a different one.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh hang on, we're all fucking idiots.
It's Francis Ford Coppola. It's not Martin Scorsese. It's Francis
fucking Ford Coppola.
Speaker 6: What's what's his we what's this weird fu?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well you all, you all blindly went along with
my ship without checking for yourselves. Motherfucker. This is my.
Speaker 6: First Martin Scorsese for not making Megalopolis.
Speaker 3: Yeah all right, Steve cut all of the Scorsese top.
Speaker 4: I think it's still relevant. The audience can just mentally
replace the word in that. I have faith in our audience.
Speaker 3: I don't think Francis Ford Coppola was fucking around with
the marketing department.
Speaker 6: No, I know, Yeah that's true.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is my first time hearing about it, so
uh it worked.
Speaker 5: God.
Speaker 6: I hope Francis Ford Copola is listening to this podcast
at the first ten minutes, just like I'm.
Speaker 3: I will I will parlay this into the point that
Steve was making. It's not a great sign that we
don't know who the fuck is making Megalopolis off the
top of our head, because like that should probably be
the thrust of their marketing. Is just Francis Ford Coppola.
Francis Ford Coppola, Hey, motherfucker, it's Francis Ford Copa this.
Speaker 5: Guy, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Nicholas Cage's uncle made a.
Speaker 4: Movie I like that. Probably ninety percent of uh, the
gen Z audience would have been, all right, the wacky
guy has an uncle because they're not watching fucking movies.
They're just watching off movies.
Speaker 3: And you know, I respect the humility of that move.
Bill me his Nickson. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: That's the guy whose wine mommy drinks.
Speaker 4: Oh man, Yeah, my wacky aunt has a has a
cushion with that guy's face on it. His uncle's sweet.
That's it. That's how you hit the older, lowered millennial target.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 3: It's probably worth circling back just to touch on the
fact that the underdog narrative is also fucking stupid for
Francis Ford Coppola, like a perfect Yeah, the most what
uh near trouble film he probably had was Apocalypse Now.
I mean, Heart's Dart is a great fucking documentary of
like how what a ship show? That thing was behind
the scenes, but he fucking pulled it together like it
worked in the end.
Speaker 4: You think that would have gave him some some credit
going forward. But anyway, I mean, he did.
Speaker 3: A dog for a long time because that took so long,
like that that was like the one thing.
Speaker 4: But like when Capella exactly, and they felt really good.
Speaker 1: I mean, this one took him twenty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it like that scort of like
fuck you all Bucalypts.
Speaker 6: Now, you know, I want to see every big directors
do this, like I want I want Avatar three to
come out and James Cameron be like, nobody likes me,
but I made this film anyway.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's just Avatar epides its Disney World. What
was the collective reaction? What I liked?
Speaker 4: But by the time Avatar Too came out? What the
Blue Cat people face like?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: That was that was a mean for about twelve months,
everybody was having sex with Blue Cat people. We're done.
Now we've maybe done, but it's.
Speaker 3: Worth that's good critical praise and it makes a lot
of money, but it just doesn't exist culturally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is fine. I mean what does exist truly?
Speaker 3: I mean, whether you like it or not, Deadpool has
existed within our culture since that first one came out.
I mean obviously he existed long before that. Comics blah
blah blah. We're on a timetable, everybody, we're talking movies.
We're going to go from movie time friends. But I
kind of get that. I mean, like like thirty years
later or however.
Speaker 6: Long it is, I'm still quoting Jaws. I've never heard
anybody quote Avatar. I wouldn't even I wouldn't even be
able to recognize it if they quoted Avatar.
Speaker 4: What's that any quotes?
Speaker 5: I think somebody yawned, I'm.
Speaker 3: The Avatar motherfucker.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I need an example of a really
stupidly named plot device, I.
Speaker 3: Oh god, you know what movie had I think the
most exponential cultural staying power as compared to its relative
audience and like theatrical reception.
Speaker 4: All right, okay, because that's gonna be my second choice.
Speaker 3: If I tell all of you, I'm Weekend at bernieing somebody.
You know, I'm puppeting a dead body around, Like how
many people went to see Weekend at Bernie.
Speaker 5: I've used that exact phrase in one of my books.
Speaker 6: Rat to two.
Speaker 4: We tried to take it, but it's like, no, they're alive.
Weekend at Bernie's is still dead dead. It's very important
distinctions that you can't Rat to two. We at corpse.
That's a Weekend at Bernie situation.
Speaker 1: And I love that there was sequels to Weekend at
Bernie's too, Like.
Speaker 3: Wait, there was more than one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a sequel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean Bernie too. But he said sequels
like there's a three.
Speaker 1: I think there might be. But even even the sequels
like this, like corpses rotten, Yeah, like a weekend all right, that's.
Speaker 3: Kind of they used magic. They covered their bases.
Speaker 7: My my son looked that up this evening because I
asked he was talking about Weekend of Bernie and said,
what do they do about the rotting corpse? He said, uh,
he looked it up right then and there he said a.
Speaker 6: Voodoo It was yeah, yeah, that was sure.
Speaker 3: Why the fu Yeah, well, because he danced every time
he heard music. I remember that.
Speaker 5: I never saw the sequel.
Speaker 3: Oh we should at m the sequel.
Speaker 4: You definitely got to do that. That's culturally important. Yeah,
I think Weekend at Bernie's Free was just the director
of week End at Bernie's one watching Weekend at Bernie's
and talking over it in the ultimate kind of fuck
you to the premise of the movie.
Speaker 3: It was he was actually have a mountain of cocaine
to stay true to the Weekend at Bernie's vibe.
Speaker 1: They could rather the director was actually dead and someone
was just moving his mouth.
Speaker 7: There could be a happy medium between Weekend at Bernie's.
Rounded to me if the corpse was just full of rats.
Speaker 3: Confused yata.
Speaker 1: To get it to go one one way or the other.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like the like the like the Gnomes and gravity Falls.
Speaker 6: Just like the Nomes of gravity Falls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by which I mean movies about rat puppeted corpses. No,
I missed the mid budget comedy, you know, like I was.
I was cruising Prime the other night and I saw
a movie and it made me so nostalgic because it
felt like somebody slipped a comedy from the mid aughts
into the you know, into the twenty twenties. I haven't
watched it yet. It's probably terrible. It's called Ricky Stanicky.
It stars John Cena and zach ef Fron.
Speaker 4: Not great, It's fuck it's bizarre. But that was the
example I was going to give you. Like they're still
doing it. It's just that just really weird niche things
with a bunch of comedians and their mates probably doing it.
Speaker 3: They always were.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: Formula Yeah, how hot rod?
Speaker 3: I mean like, but just so some times it hit Yes,
and when you do a bunch of mid budgets, you
get to roll those dice a lot more, and then
you know, occasionally you just get like a fucking whoa
that movie or a super Bad or a.
Speaker 4: Anchorman Ricky Anchorman. Yeah, is not the next anchor Man
by any stretch. You know, you can watch it for
minutes as fun.
Speaker 3: No, but I'm glad.
Speaker 1: It's weird that they're not making them, though, because because
they're so cheap, like, I mean, you could make them
for five to ten million dollars and they don't need
to do that. It's like, you know, the Blumhouse horror movies.
You can just pump them out and if two of
them are out of the ten are good, the studio
makes money. But they just don't anymore.
Speaker 6: I think that was Netflix's plan with Adam Sandler, except
Adam Sandler just took their money and just said I'm
just gonna make weird as ship with my friends.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's still he's still hitting, and you know
what he did numbers. They're not mad at their deal.
Speaker 4: One every hundred. Adam send the movies that he makes.
Speaker 6: He's really good.
Speaker 3: You'll you just you gotta roll the dice more. But yeah,
Ben touched on like, we don't get mid budget comedies anymore.
So I was like, oh, fuck, yeah, one exists. But
I have a hunch we're gonna be seeing more of
them than probably the next decade, because I'm gonna go
real brief movie history for everybody who not aware of
the studio system and the road shows. But way way
back in the day, movies were huge, elaborate productions, with
millions upon millions invested in everything. They would do these
elaborate rollouts called road shows with like musical numbers and parades,
and it was just so expensive, and so they would
do more and more for each one, and then less
and less movies overall, until eventually, I believe it was Cleopatra.
I could be wrong, but basically one of them failed
so spectacularly that they don't I believe it took down
to the studios. Yeah yeah, and then.
Speaker 4: Etically they were doing everything they'd already done.
Speaker 3: Stopped me. If you've heard this.
Speaker 1: Before, somehow it wasn't the one where John Wayne was
playing Genghis Khan that took the studio.
Speaker 4: No, well, that had you know, intriguing racism, which was
big at.
Speaker 3: The time, so that probably was a selling point back then.
Speaker 4: They didn't go far enough with Cleopatra that should have
like I mean, Taylor obviously white, but at a time
that just wasn't racist enough to be compelling, so.
Speaker 3: They had to step it up.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, so that one catastrophically failed, and that was sort
of like the tipping point because the ones they kept
trying to do that format and it kept falling apart,
and eventually they had to start breaking up and going
into smaller productions that cost less money and rolling the
dice a bunch of times rather than spending all their
money on one to two big ass movies a year.
So I'm pretty sure at this point in the history
lesson you can all guess what. I think we're probably
gonna start seeing mid tier comedies in the next ten years,
because I think we're starting to hit the tipping point
of like these And this is not new thought by
any means, but like the billions and billions of dollars
into these one movie at a time ship it can't sustain.
Speaker 1: No, well, well it's not even one movie at a
time though, Like it's not like one big failure and
they're like, oh, we've learned our lesson. It's giant failure
after giant.
Speaker 4: Failure in production for a long time. So by the
time we realized, oh this is not working man, the
next ten years ain't gonna be great. But it's too late.
They've already started. In fact, they didn't that. They pulled
an entire Batman movie or Batwoman movie. Yeah, that's the
fucking DC property in the middle of the comic book
boom or well at the end of the comic apparently.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The real kick in the penis was fucking what was
it Acme versus or Coyote versus Acme, which was a
like a face Jam style comedy with Will Forte and
by all accounts, fucking hilarious, Like everyone was really proud of.
It was supposed to be very good.
Speaker 1: It was done too, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh it was done, It was ready to go, and
they just burned it for taxes.
Speaker 4: Well, at least we got Space Jam two.
Speaker 6: It's like for all intents and purposes, furios. I haven't
seen it yet, but it's supposed to be a pretty
decent movie. Good, but it costs like two hundred and
fifty million dollars and made like you know, twenty five
cents back at the theater.
Speaker 4: It didn't really do well at all, but it was
a great movie. It was if you like the kind
of if you liked anything about Fury Road. I think
it was like everything about Fury Road, but they had
story in between, which is entirely unnecessary. But I'm not
saying it's like there's nothing bad about it. If you
like weird gimps and leathers smashing into each other with
monster trucks, it was fantastic. I mean, it's a very
niche genre. Then Mad Max was never supposed to be
anything but that, so it did a lot. But then
it's kind of like, oh, this character development, of watching
character development and I want to see some guy with
nipple clamps drive off a clip.
Speaker 6: I mean, the original Mad Max concept was basically just like, Okay,
we're gonna go down to Australia and we're just going
to hire the local populace and how they dress and
let me say, act like yourselves on camera for you know,
and we'll make a couple million dollars off of this.
Speaker 3: And it's not like Mad Max has like been a
big budgeting, like a billion dollar franchise. I just checked
Mad Max Fury Road brought in three hundred and eighty
million dollars, so the idea of spending and Furiosa had
about one hundred and seventy million, which I think what
conventional wisdom is you have to double it for the
break even point with marketing and everything. So that means
that Furiosa had to do within forty million dollars of
the best mad Max, A best charting Mad Max. Whether
you like it the best or not, regardless, but like,
that's crazy, that that's an insane sweat.
Speaker 1: It was good, but but you know, like I was
a little I still went and saw it, but I
was a little bummed from the trailer because it was
one of my favorite things about Furry Road was they
you know, all the practical car effects, like they had
all those cars, They had the two dude on the
on the on a giant amp with a flaming guitar,
like that was a real thing that they filmed. And
this new one had a lot of CGI was mostly
pretty good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I think I think having it was. I think having
Chriss Yeah, having Chris Hemsworth with a fake nose, and
I don't think his insurance company would allow them to
stick him on top of a car that was driving
sixty miles an hour through the desert.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I'm gonna unfairly blame Ham's worth for that one.
He was great in the movie, but you know he's
gonna be in a mad Max movie. I want to
see your head inches from a spinning tire. Get the
fuck out.
Speaker 3: So I feel like Steve's just carrying the Ghostbusters grudge
at Steve Chris Hamsworth.
Speaker 4: Still, no, I've given him for that movie. I just
haven't forgiven the audience for that movie. You know who
you are.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's that's another one. I mean Frozen Umpire
was like in the theaters and then gone. You know,
I watched it recently and kind of yeah, I would
probably say it's pretty close to quality to twenty twenty sixteen.
Speaker 7: Really, I'm glad I didn't go see in the theater.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we shouldn't be spending a ka billion dollars on
that killed ninety minutes. I mean I can kill ninety
minutes a lot cheaper than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like some of these movies absolutely probably could have
been made for I don't know, a hundred million instead
of one hundred and eighty or hell, maybe chop him
on down to fifty maybe not like the action heavy
ones where you want the practical effects. But if you're
not even spending that money on practical effects, what the
fuck is the point?
Speaker 1: Did you guys see Godzilla minus one?
Speaker 3: Oh not, Yes, I've heard. It's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's brilliant. I mean there are some you're probably
going to talk about the budget, right because it was
made for like five buttons or something.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: I mean I can't remember what it was. I was
trying to google it real quick, but apparently.
Speaker 6: They said I think they said fifteen million.
Speaker 4: There were a couple of there were a couple of
effects where I was like, eh, you know, that's a
little doesn't look great. But the storytelling was so great
and the film craft was so great, you don't give
a shit. It was, Yeah, you don't need a billion
dollars at this shit.
Speaker 1: Well, because you watch a two hundred and fifty or
four hundred million dollar Disney movie and you still have
that same Eh, that was a little weak.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 6: Actually, Oh yeah, Well that's the thing. Because Disney has
been overworking their effects people, you know, to leak the bone.
We're reaching that point where it's like, okay, you know
The Avengers, going back whatever ten or fifteen years when
it came out, had really great effects. And then I'm
like looking at like some of the more recent stuff
and I'm like, this is like a high budget cartoon.
Speaker 4: Is because all the effects companies back then they were like,
we basically want visual miracles from you, and there you know,
you know what, we can do that, and here's the cost.
Speaker 6: They were like no, and.
Speaker 4: All those effect companies got fucking tanked and now we've
got basically people of ms paid and that's.
Speaker 6: What they did.
Speaker 3: Says like they fucking it for so long. It was like, Okay,
this amazing movie came from this effects company, and it's gone,
like yeah, there's they just they kept murdering all the
people that were doing the great effect.
Speaker 4: Life of Pie. Here's an oscar now a die company, die.
Speaker 3: Now all of you fuck entirely off.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean the part of the problem is like
you look at like a budget of like one hundred
million dollars, then it's like you have a couple of
name actors. Seventy million is like that's that's eating hing.
Speaker 1: That's true. Well, Also, the way Disney does things, it
seems like there's a lot of like rewrites and redos,
Like it's not like, hey, here's the script, let's make
the movie. They like cobblesome shit toge other with no
sort of fucking plan, and then halfway through they focus
tested on a bunch of audiences and they go this
is trash, and they go, oh shit, fix all this
in post, and it doesn't work that way for the
decent idea that from the beginning.
Speaker 4: I use Alien Romulus, as I recently watched, as a
counterpoint to both of those things. Now, a cowpoint two D,
you can definitely make a movie without having a big
star in it, and it's fine. There was some great
talent in Alien Romulus. There was some very mediocre tar
in Alien Romulus, but it worked fine. Also, that was
eighty million, which I think in Hollywood now is basically
like pauper for a for a massive franchise, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's less than some Super Bowl commercials.
Speaker 4: But to the point of visual effects, they had some
CG in that that they didn't really need to use,
and it was a bit off putting. They tried to
resurrect I think a dead act or a retired actor.
But the rest of it was just kind of decent
practical effects done for a reasonable budget. So whatever you
think about Alien Romulus, it's got that going for it.
But when you talk about studio interference, the thing was
this went back to basics with Alien, by which it
means it ripped off every other alien film before it
to the point where somebody puts in a no spoiler alert.
Actually no, the movie kind of spoils itself with this line.
Somebody uses the line get away from her, you bitch,
which has absolutely no relevant context in the movie at all,
because it's not Ellen Ripley the mother protecting her child
against the queen. It's just some guy shooting an alien
like that is such a suit decision. There's no way
any artist was involved in that. Some guy just kicked
down the door wearing a tide, said yeah, you have
to put this line in the movie, fuck you, and
walked out again. An Alien Rombliss was kind of had
a lot of that going on, which if they stripped
it would have been a much better movie. Still a
good movie. I enjoyed it, but and also it was
made on eighty million, which is an encouraging downward trend
for these people kind of gambling on stuff.
Speaker 6: Franchises, Love to like Know, Love to Grave, Rob what
has come before? I mean like like by, like what
buddhas by, like the third like the fourth Pirates movie,
every joke was you know, why is the rum gone?
It's okay, we get it. It's not funny anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a difference between like a repetition and a
uh uh yeah and drilling a joke to death. I
was going to toss out to uh to ben. I
do have one fun example of you can find it
in post. It's not easy. There are people who built
their careers on it. Yeah. Most famously was the guy
who edited Caddy Shack. Because if y'all don't know, I
don't know the last time you watched Caddy Shack, the
you're like, and it's okay if you don't, because most
people don't. There's a Caddy in that. It's like a
young kid out of college who's like trying to hook
up with one of the golf ladies. Entirely Forgettable was
the original star of the movie. Like the original Caddy
Sheck was following these caddies around like on their summer break,
like young love dumb kind of like screwball thing like that,
not screwball like sort of more that sort.
Speaker 4: Of gentle sex comedy.
Speaker 8: No, No, because that that's fortunately because all of the
golfers were brought in to be the comedic balance to it,
because that was supposed to be more like a heartfelt.
Speaker 3: Like you know, coming of age shit story. And then
they got it and they're like, oh, this is dog shit.
We can't use almost any of this, and so they
just the guy recut it until so it was a
story about the comedic guys that they'd had just to
be filling in. So they just used fucking every.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, same thing with like Star Wars is supposedly
was saved in post. I mean, like you can do it,
but like you have to have some people with like vision,
and that's not what Disney does.
Speaker 4: M I don't think Star Wars. I think Star Wars
everybody talks about it being saved in post. I don't
think it's as dramatic as that. It just had a
good editor, which most movies do. But speaking of franchises
robbing from themselves, we're saying that's a bad thing. But
we took we hope in talking about Wolverine to Deadpool,
and that's like one of the big selling points, right.
It's just basically not even robbing from itself, just robbing
from me in every comic book movie and even some
comic book movies that didn't actually happen.
Speaker 1: I think, other than the violence, I think that is
its only selling point.
Speaker 3: Let's flight into the wolver and Deadpool Minor spoilers alert.
If you haven't seen this one, it is out. But honestly,
Disney has spoiled the shot. That's what they're following at this.
Speaker 4: Point, exactly seen. I feel like I've seen it.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm not the biggest of the Deadpool fans.
I enjoy the movies just fine. It's not like a
oh should I got to go out as soon as
they hit, but there I like a comedy. But I
really liked the way they used nostalgia in that one,
both to kind of acknowledge like the fuck ups of
what had come before and the unsung glory of what
had come before, of like, because some of those characters
got buried in a way that they didn't necessarily deserve
and I thought choosing to focus on the ones that
didn't get cool send offs was I don't know. I
thought that was a take that made sense. It wasn't
wielding nostalgia in a more considered way.
Speaker 4: It's kind of of its time, a useful kind of
rebuttal to the way the entire kind of comic book
movie ship has been going down in chaotic flames ever
since sort of the the end of the the good
Marvel run.
Speaker 3: Let's say, I mean Endgame really was the end.
Speaker 4: Yes, we could have just ended there, we didn't. It's
been a bizarre spiral since some good movies. Definitely, But yeah,
I thought from what I've seen, it's like that was
kind of maybe a commentary that needed to happen in
a way. So again, I think it says to me
because I always complain about these people robbing from corpses
like a bunch of coked up vultures. But it's when
somebody says, we always get the question like, oh, what
tropes do you hate? As an author, It's like, there's
no such thing as a bad trope, it's just how
you use it. And yeah, so and now I continually
bitch about things robbing from the grave. I quite liked
Alien Rommels and I imagine how like Wolverine Deadpool once
I say it.
Speaker 6: Properly, Well, one thing is like, you know, the robbing
the grave like like also there's a set of expectations
and Wolverine Deadpool you know, won't spoil it, but literally
the opening scene yeah, hits the nail on the head
with grave robbing and uh and pretty much sets sets
the tone for what for that. So there's also that
expectation like you know, as opposed to say, throwing a
throwing a line like you know, get away from her,
bitch just out of nowhere. Yeah, you know, there is that,
there is that setting of expectations. And while narratively Wolverine
Deadpool is just a complete fucking mess, do not try
to think during this movie that's not why Ima. It
was still a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: And I will say, yes, definitely there the plot could
use a rework, but there was I thought they structured
the emotional threads very well. Like that suit could have
been a one off. It could have been a background
joke to tether it into a character moment and have
like the gradual reveal mean something and like you know,
put some pathos behind it, because that is so frequently
a thing that we criticize the Disney and Marvel formula
for is cutting the pathos out constantly. I'll be like,
all right, heavy moment, silly joke. I think that probably
it's weird to say, but Deadpool and Wolverine probably did
the best job of a Marvel movie in a while
of letting big moments feel like a heavy moment.
Speaker 4: You gotta give Ryan Redda's credit for that, because he's like,
he's uber, look at me, I'm sarcastic, millennial hot throp.
That's his entire stick. But yeah, he took Deadpool seriously.
I mean, it's not a serious character at all, but
he's very passionate about a character and has been very
good about kind of respecting a character that it is
only purpose in the comics is to kind of, I guess,
disrespect the entire medium. Yeah, he's done really well with that.
I think it's like the first Deadpool movie did have
some decent emotional friends. The second one not as much,
but still very much cared about the characters in the
world he lived in. So yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: It had a paper thin plot.
Speaker 4: Just just a button on that because that sounded too positive.
A lot of Marvel movies are like, Okay, this is
a person from a currac comic. We'll get somebody to
play this character. I don't give a shit about anything else.
These people would just eat it up, put a cape
on the screen. Fuck them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it like the plot was pretty paper thing Like
it was basically a vehicle to get to the next thing,
the next joke, the next action sequence, the next cameo reveal,
really because there was a lot of those, but it
was still like character wise, it was still better written
and then a lot of the Marvel stuff of late
because it did the characters well most of them had
at least a little bit of depth to them. But
the the movie, the movie was a lot of fun.
I would definitely recommend seeing it. I don't think I
ever need to watch it again though, Like it's like
I think I got a lot of the A lot
of the joy was out of the surprises and and
unexpected stuff and seeing it like, I like, in ten years,
am I going to go back and watch this movie.
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it's very much a critique,
Yeah it is. It's perfectly fine. But it's very much
a critique of the current state of Marvel and of
movies in general, and it works for that and in
you know, unless Marvel's still in the same state in
ten years, which is possible, I don't know if it
would hit the same.
Speaker 4: It's just about to say, Ben, if things carry on
as they are, which sustainably they probably cannot. Teneo his time,
there would have been like seventeen more Deadpool movies. It'll
be fine. It'll be a doc Pool movie. There'll be
just a there'll be a Steve Pool movie.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I think. I'm I'm worried the most
about Deadpool doing well is Disney taking all the wrong
lessons from it, because it was taking the piss. Yeah,
it was taking the piss out of what they got,
what they've been doing. And I'm worried that they're gonna
be like, oh, I get it, we just need to
play harder into nostalgia and and some suit is gonna
gonna orchestrate a bunch of just absolute nostalgia bait trash.
And that idea was immediately reinforced when they announced Robert
Downey Jr. As Doctor fucking doom.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that was in the works before Tedpool
and Wolvery, but I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was, like I should have like, yeah, yeah,
I came out of the movie thinking like, hey, maybe
this is a hopeful future for Marvel. And then like
two days later they announced that it was like Nope.
Speaker 4: That announcement doesn't have anything the whole marks of somebody
not really understanding things like well, why did they like
the old movies? Was it Robbie Dandy J Yeah, that's.
Speaker 6: A part of it.
Speaker 4: But also, you know, you used to give a fuck
back then, and.
Speaker 3: Somebody used to set up whole movie, like multiple movies
for characters to establish them and make us care about
them and flesh them out. And like now they're just
doing what DC did when DC was trying to catch them,
which is just blasting through the introduction shit like it
doesn't matter so they can get to the they've forgotten that,
like if a movie is a cake, some of the
parts are icing and some are the actual cake. And
I know icing is sweet and we like it, but
if you don't have cake in, it's just it's all.
Speaker 6: It's a big pile of goose, Like they broke the mold.
They broke them out purposely. I guess what's with Spider
Man Homecoming as opposed to making an origin film. It
was got like an already like Spider Man in progress
and that was cool, But it seems like they're kind
of going that route now for everything, and it's like, no, no, no,
you know, some of these origin stories are pretty important. Yeah,
you know, because yes, we do want to get to
know the characters. We want to see what what makes
them tick. And I'll be the first to admit, like,
you know, Iron Man three, which is pretty much iron
Man without iron Man, my least favorite of the three.
You know, I still want superheroes. I didn't like the
First Door movie because I don't want to see just
Chris Hemsworth. I want to see like Lightning and like,
you know shit. But at the same time, you know,
just basically saying, oh, well, like you know, this hero
has been around for like for ages, We're just gonna
jump in that worked once, but you can't that's not
a well really you want to keep going to it.
Speaker 3: And even for Spider Man, that was the third fucking
Spider Man in like twenty years, Like that origin story
had been covered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you gotta do it the right character, Like
Spider Man's a phenom, Like people know who Spider Man is,
people know who Batman is, people know who Superman is.
People do not know who Miss Marvel is.
Speaker 7: Or there's a there's a big pile of dead Uncle Ben's.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's foundational. You got a big foundational.
Speaker 3: Pile of Bens in the middle of the multiverse.
Speaker 4: You need you need a character, not a costume. Basically,
you can't just go, oh, this is we can't just
rip something from a comic page. You go and a
nads are like this, right, And I tried to do.
Speaker 6: That a lot.
Speaker 3: So like Marvel has to know they're in trouble, right,
they've seen the box offices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if Disney's learned anything about nerds, they will not
like it. Like they are the most critical motherfuckers you're
going to find. Like you you know, you can't just
throw service at nerds like they they will eat you alive.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like with the live action of The
Lion King. I always thought that movie probably made enough
money to power a small country. Most of these movies
probably do. But it's like they said, it's like oh,
remember the Lion King. People really liked that. What do
they like about it? I guess they like animals. We'll
just we'll just do give them more realistic animals. You're like, no,
you you fucked this out? This is this looks weird
and horrible and I don't like It's one.
Speaker 1: Of the few places where Disney is consistently making money though,
is on these weird live action remakes. I got to
say in quotes, because there's nothing live action about them.
They're all one hundred.
Speaker 3: It's just and I feel like they're starting to get
diminishing returns on that because they've been slowing up. Now
what that's because they're running out of properties or the
money's not flowing like it used to is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I wonder how they're doing with like, you know,
Lion King, Like figurines and stuff were probably selling in
Disneyland for decades after the movie. But this live action shit,
I'm like, I don't want to cuddly toy of that.
Speaker 6: That's weird.
Speaker 3: I bet there's no way there's for that ship, Like
it's got to be all the.
Speaker 4: Vintage, Yeah, the ones with character.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys have seen it, but
apparently they're doing a prequel to the live action line
thing now based on whatever his what was his dad's name? Move? Yeah, Yeah,
they're doing a Mufasa movie. And like I saw when
I went to go see what we're in Deadpool, they
had a trailer and I'm sinner, going, why does this
need to be a thing? Literally? Why does he need
to be a thing? It's a story about cgi lions.
We don't need more of this in our in our
in our universe.
Speaker 4: Hamlet to the origin of Hamlet's.
Speaker 3: Daddles, Like Mufasa got kidnapped by aliens and fought in
a galactic war, then I want to see that. If
you last Starfighter Moufasa, I will watch that fucking movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That feels like a real barrel scrape. It's like,
what did people like about Lion King? It's dead dad,
Let's do a movie about him.
Speaker 3: That's kind of their only move right now. It's again
not to just pair it the most obvious thing in
the world, But at this point it does not feel
like Disney strategy involves new properties. It all seems to
involve expanding on existing properties.
Speaker 1: And I don't I think they Yeah, I think they
slowly killed off creativity within the company. Like like creativity
for the last thirty years there has not really been rewarded,
and so like like, if you want to if you're
a creative person and you want to make something new
and interesting, there's no fucking reason to work for Disney.
That's what they do anymore, and so they've eroded their base.
Speaker 4: This guts back to what we started with with diffreended
forward Compella movie. That's having quotes just randomly thrown from
other projects. And how do you make that mistake? I
don't know if I've just come way too late to
this realization. I've been very neive for my entire life,
but I'm starting to realize that the world's not run
by like exceptionally smart people. I always had this idea
that I could I just had this faith is like
these are high powered, powerful people, like you know that
they must know what they're doing, But now I'm starting
to think maybe they don't. This.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't take great intelligence to rule the world.
It just takes uh a willingness to be morally flexible.
Speaker 6: And just just remember one of the first things that like,
you know, somebody does once they get rich is fire
all the people who tell them no, you know, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did it. There'd be a trailer for a
Friends It's for Compella movie that for some reason Drew
has mind Scorsese's name on it. It wouldn't suppress me.
Speaker 3: I mean, hey, why not? That could have been their
fault too. Let's just throw that on them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, it would be great if it completely bombed.
And then like the next time you see when it
comes to video, it's like a film by Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's going to completely bomb. Like I
heard like a review of a guy that saw it
at Cans and it just seems like a weird fucking
mess of a movie.
Speaker 4: It's is that the remake of the Robot movie from like.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, Like it's it's super artsy, super like metaphorical.
Everyone's got like weird Roman names, and it's in like
this weird version of New York with like moving statue buildings,
and like it's it's his commentary on society in the
most obtuse artistic I've been thinking about this for twenty years.
Way possible with a ton of stars in it. Uh,
but uh, it looks pretty It looks pretty dense. I
don't think it's gonna see a wide audience.
Speaker 4: I think he'll be bummed.
Speaker 3: But at least he didn't absolutely do it for the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at least he didn't just pick a comic book
off the ground, wipe his ass with it, and then
hand it to a bunch of in writers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wrote something new.
Speaker 6: A lot of this just shows that, like you know,
like of like these great movies happen because of it's
a team effort of like you know, of people's but
when you have that one person who gets like all
the credit for and then that one person is then
just given the reins, like for example, you know, the
transition from uh from Thor Ragnarok to Thor Love and Thunder.
You see that, you can you kind of see how
that like falls apart where it's like, like I hate
to say, it's you know, I love mel Brooks movies,
but when mel Brooks movies were like that effort, that
creative effort of like you know, mel Brooks and a
whole bunch of people locking themselves in a cabin for
a week to write a movie versus you know, Okay,
this is just this is just written by mel Brooks.
There's a difference in quality.
Speaker 1: Are you shitting on Dracula Dead and Loving It?
Speaker 5: Right now?
Speaker 6: I would never do that.
Speaker 4: This podcast for having a nice time. Yeah, all the
times what Milbrooks just kind of stepped aside and other
people take over. He's he's kind of his name on
some production credits of some absolute classics to the point
where it's like, don't put my name on this some
pig letters because people will think it's weird. So yeah,
I think he had kind of had a bit of
self awareness, which you wouldn't think from watching Dracula Dead
and Loving But they.
Speaker 3: And man, everybody needs a patriock sometimes. I was gonna
say for the like the not getting the nose anymore. Famously,
that's supposedly what happened between Star Wars the First Batch
and Star Wars the Prequels is George Lucas went from
a guy who was like collaborating and listening and a
new director who was, you know, hungry to do his
best to a guy who's like, well I made fucking
Star Wars. Everything I say is right.
Speaker 6: Isn't it.
Speaker 4: It's something called the Peter principle or something that everybody
eventually gets promoted to the level of the of the
over the level of their competence. So eventually it's like Rick,
when you said, oh, it's like in a group project
where somebody does really well in the group project and
then gets kind of promoted above that, and you gave
an example. I thought your example was going to be
every group project has ever happened in history, So yeah,
I get it.
Speaker 6: You only have we only have so much time to like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Just anytime anyone kind of outshines deck necessary collaborate is
and they're like, hey, let's get this guy and you
can do everything he wants. Without the foundational support of
the people who actually made this work does seem to
go badly.
Speaker 1: The flip side of that, though, is when you get
shit that's written by committee, and you get a lot
of that now where there is nobody with a cohesive
vision who's pushing it through, Like it's it's like, hey,
we've got this writer's room of thirty five people watched
writing this movie and nobody is in a real agreement
and they put together some ramshackle shit show.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think that also comes into play with like,
you know, I think that kind of goes hand in
hand with studio studio interference. Like you know, yeah, you
get you get a couple of like really funny guys
in a room, right and stuff. It's probably gonna be
pretty decent. You get like, yeah, thirty five underpaid, overwork
guys who are about to die of nicotine addiction, with
the studio head who keeps coming in and being like
a Superman miceed fight a giant spider. Yeah, we've got
these tribute tribute pittograph.
Speaker 3: Actually that brings up I'm gonna I'm gonna circle back
around to something we had talked about. I think one
of the fixes for this is again, spend your money
on more movies, because if a studio has two movies
in production, the executives are going to be up those
movies fucking asses every.
Speaker 1: Especially if you're spending two hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, per per movie. So now let's take that five
hundred million. Let's say they're making fifty ten million dollar movies.
Now they are getting dailies, they're able to keep an
eye on thing, but there's no way they've got their
anger on the pulse of fifty fucking movies. That's that's
too much. So now you've got some oversight to make
sure nobody's spending all the budget on cocaine. But there's
too much for them to be jamming their hands into
shit that doesn't need to be jammed into.
Speaker 6: M Yeah makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully they're listening.
Speaker 3: No, I know, right, God, that's all you have to do, Hollywood.
Just give up your power. Spend less money, buy less cocaine.
Speaker 6: That's easy.
Speaker 3: Sound we're fucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean A twenty four is one of those studios.
Like when I see something coming out from A twenty four,
I'm like, okay, I will, I will consider it. It's
like they're not all winners, but they they they're doing
interesting shit and it's not you know, it's not formulaic.
It's not a bunch of fucking franchise bullshit. Like they're
doing unique things. Doesn't always work, but I'm excited to
see it. I'm like, Okay, I might, yeah, I might
check that out. Like I've got some faith in that.
Speaker 3: Experiments fail sometimes you have to be okay with that.
But that's how I feel about Blumhouse. I'm like, I
haven't liked everything they've done, but I've been like, Okay,
this is I get what you're going for.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've liked everything they've done. I think
that's the whole point is they're throwing like they're like, hey,
we can make yeah, ten five million dollar movies a year,
and if one of them does fifty million dollars, we win.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's kind of like, I think people like
scary dolls. Right, Let's do a scary doll movie and
somebody will be like, does it have to be good? No, no,
just just make a scary doll movie and it's good.
Speaker 3: It has to be fun.
Speaker 6: It's I kind of like when unnecessary sequels or like
remakes fail because basically they're throwing a bunch of money
behind something that they're like, oh, this, this will one
make us money. So it's it's almost kind of like,
you know, kind of like a Okay, did you learn
a lesson from this? And of course the answer is no, no.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 3: I'm waiting for a crash man.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's why Alien Ron was just quite interesting because eighty
million for an alien.
Speaker 6: Movie not that much.
Speaker 3: That's shocking.
Speaker 4: Half the movie was well made, passion project, with a
seeming like young kind of enthusiastic cast. Half the movie
was definitely a studio executives go, there has to be
the fucking line from the other movie in this movie
or I gotta have you killed. But yeah, they did
it for a lower budget. They definitely tried to squeeze
some great filmmaking in there. So that's maybe we're a
tipping point if.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so damn expensive to make movies, like even
a small production is is you know, like like if
I mean, you guys made a movie, you know, a
fucking expensive.
Speaker 6: It well, I mean sh shingles. The movie definitely did
not have a budget ready million.
Speaker 1: Budget, but the budgeted Yeah, but the budget it did have,
like you know, it's a lot like it's not like
the kind of thing that you can you know, do
in your backyard. And you know, and and it's gotten closer.
Speaker 3: But you still any go go fund that that that
got made by the generosity of the of the fans.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And like you need to if you want
to make something ambitious in any sense, you need to
sell it to a studio of some sort, like some
you've got to get someone to invest some money in it,
Like if you want to make a proper, like theater
worthy movie, you're gonna need at least ten million bucks
and that's not easy.
Speaker 6: To keep, yea.
Speaker 5: Or we need to have more fans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just we don't need the stadium. We just
need both people who want to see is do dumb Ship. Yes,
I think that's the future.
Speaker 5: But yeah, you're right, that's certainly one avenue.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean the crowdfunding thing worked. I mean, you
guys got a movie made which is fucking mind boggling.
Like that's fucking rad. Like the idea that you can
reach out to work with the budget.
Speaker 6: He had he did. Yeah, I think he did film
a few scenes in his backyard.
Speaker 4: We used a couple of people's.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's I mean, it's cool that that's possible
now that you could. You know that you can reach
out to people directly who are sick of bullshit and
get something.
Speaker 6: I think it's always been possible. There's always been indie filmmaking.
There's always been low budget filmmaking. I mean, the whole
reason the asylum exists is to look and say, hey
that hey, that's a really that's a big budget movie.
We can make it for one one thousandth of the
cost and make it suck, but it'll still make back.
It's money for.
Speaker 4: The people's Yeah, they still had a platform. I think
the platform is the main, the main part of it.
But you think about it all these kind of again.
I talked about gen Z a lot. They're not really
watching movies. They're watching influences, which is terrible. But surely
one of those influence could say, you know what, I'm
going to make a movie. Each of you give me
fifty cents, and I'll make the most expensive movie about
bullshit it was ever made. They're just I guess it's
easier just to I don't know far on camera whatever
they did.
Speaker 1: If only it was that interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hell if I could file on camera for that
much money, and I know from experience I can't, so
you know, I was just bitterness talking here.
Speaker 5: I don't remember that video, to be fair.
Speaker 1: I watched a guy part on camera today. He was
an instructional video of how to capture a pure fart.
Speaker 4: Nice. Yeah, the internet's great when you think about.
Speaker 6: And also terrible. Yeah, terrible, but.
Speaker 5: I agree with you.
Speaker 4: I don't know where the the movie system is going.
I don't know if this is kind of like we're
seeing a studio collapse. Now probably i'd imagine I think
the days are spending two hundred million on something with
zero fucking substances. Maybe not over, but certainly winding down.
I feel they have to write, yeah, you'd think so.
Speaker 1: Well, here here's the thing there. They are a bunch
of ignorant fucks. So the thing that I worry about
here is that the lesson they're going to take from
that is like, hey, let's is not don't spend two
hundred and fifty million dollars on something with no substance.
It's all right, don't spend two hundred and fifty million
dollars on a comic book movie with no substance, But
let's spend two hundred and fifty million dollars on a
video game movie with no substance. Like that was the
problem people are done with superheroes, Like, no, you dumb motherfuckers,
it'll just be the same.
Speaker 4: Instead of picking up a comic book, wiping or accids
with it, and handing it to some intens, they'll just
be like one of the kids, like skivity toilet. Okay,
I'll pick that up, wipe my ass with it. And
give it some intense. I do think like gen Z
are immune to this bullshit.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: The stuff they like is just pure unadulterated brain rotten.
They're quite proud of it. I don't think Hollywood can
touch them.
Speaker 6: I mean, it also doesn't help the people at the top.
I mean, you know, they're bringing in millions of dollars
that's guaranteed, and they know if they get fired, they
have a contract that's going to give them millions of
more dolls. Yeah, so that doesn't necessarily breed you know,
I don't think that breeds competence, you know, golden parachutes.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of no. It seems to me
the Hollywood system is very much in a very similar
sort of situations the American healthcast system.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's it's all massively overinflated bullshit that once you take
away that smoke and mirrors and look at what you're
actually getting. This is just a foreigners perspective, you understand.
Speaker 6: No, I mean, well, I mean no, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, theaters in general, never they didn't
make it it. They're never going to be what they
were pre COVID. Like they've they've taken a hit and
they have not recovered and they probably never will get
back to what they were, but you know, they're still
limping along, but it's not a reliable income stream anymore.
And then streaming doesn't give them the same residuals that
like DVDs and shit did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so last time, it's last three time I've been
in a cinema, it's literally been maybe five or six
people for How is this sustainable? This can't be sustainable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean hypothesis. Is it possible that they the
the movies have gotten worse because the cocaine has dried up,
Like they've got enough movie money to make movies, but
not enough money.
Speaker 4: To get the cocaine necessary.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 7: I think it's meth is more in fashion, and that
does not lend itself to quality filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Drugs very different.
Speaker 6: High Let's do a series of jump cuts during this
action scene.
Speaker 1: The camera wasn't supposed to be shaky.
Speaker 7: I like to think that Drew's theory that uh, mid
budget comedies are going to come back, but I I
have a sneaking suspicion they're going to be more like
the the Adam Sandler, Rob Scher bullshit.
Speaker 3: B What do you think mid a bunch of comedies work?
Speaker 7: No, like, uh, you know, all right, I'm going back
a bit, but yeah, my favorite top secret real men, just.
Speaker 5: A low budget Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: Like that's the thing is, there's gonna be a lot
of bad ones. That that's sort of the nature of
that gamble. You're they're always passing the dice of Like
if I give this many people create a freedom, somebody's
gonna make a masterpiece. Somebody's gonna be a top secret.
Speaker 7: I mean that's true. Huh yeah, I don't know. I'm
gonna I'm in a bad place when it comes to
recent comedies.
Speaker 3: Oh well yeah, I mean recent would be great if
what recent comedies?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What what is the thing? I thought about this the
other day, Like, what's the last great comedy you saw?
You have to go back to, Like, like it's more
than ten years ago. I haven't seen a great comedy
in ten years.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure Tropic Thunder, maybe I'll pop Star Never Stopped,
Never Stopping two great comedy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but twenty sixteen, that's almost ten fucking years ago.
Speaker 3: Yes, true, yeah, yeah, I know the same year as
Mike and Dave need wedding dates, which is also one
I really like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's been a long time, it's been such
a comedy, like stand Up's killing it right now. Stand
Up's fucking great, but like the film, comedy is fucking dead.
Speaker 3: I mean, even big budget comedy if it's not. Like
I feel like, comedy kind of got rolled into Marvel
in a way that I don't like.
Speaker 1: In the worst, Like that's not it's not funny.
Speaker 4: It's no, you're talking about fucking Kim Hio something. It's like, hey, look,
I and Man's talking about a regular food for too long. Okay,
all right, that was funny, and I man one U
or do you have avengers? I guess, which was a
long time ago. The doctor Strange is talking about donuts.
Speaker 1: It was like Deadpool Wereine had some laughs in it,
but it wasn't a great comedy.
Speaker 6: It was a good movie, but there was plenty of
jokes that they milked way too long. I'm not going
over milking of jokes.
Speaker 4: That's kind of I had. You know, I gave a
Ghost versus twenty sixteen a lot of stick about it.
It's like this joke ended twenty seconds ago. Move the
fuck on. But that's kind of just where comedy is now.
And again, twenty sixteen was ten years ago.
Speaker 3: Oh no, they were ahead of the time.
Speaker 1: At least Mike Myers had the decency to do it
over multiple movies and he still mentioned the same.
Speaker 6: Movie he had on it.
Speaker 3: He pushed it a little far, but his was at
least an attempt to walk the line. There was, there
was an effort paid in that direction, and part.
Speaker 1: Of the company was the fact that he yeah, that
he was pushing it too far, like.
Speaker 4: He knew him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was part of that. There is that zone
of like you you take a joke and then you
push it so far that it becomes funny again. Yeah,
but like you really don't want to fuck with that
unless you really know what you're doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's like that's like surgery.
Speaker 4: Too many times now it just seems to be a
bunch of actors going so, like we all know we're
saying a joke, right, Yeah, we know we're saying a joke.
We're saying this joke. We're going to carry on saying
the joke for a bit now, Yeah, we're going to
carry on saying the joke, and about maybe ten seconds
too long of Tay where I'm just like, yeah, I
understand it's a joke, but you move the fuck on.
Come on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of just a pure comedy,
like an not mid, not high, not low any.
Speaker 6: It's probably low in the low budget space. I think
there's plenty of stuff there, but like, you know, is
there sense in streaming we're not talking.
Speaker 1: Send me a list, please. I would love to watch
these great low budget comedies that like, if they're if
they're out there, I want them.
Speaker 4: That's the thing, because it's streaming. I feel like there is.
But maybe I'm just watching things from the past and
getting confused.
Speaker 3: I think there's like Palm Springs was time travel.
Speaker 6: I was thinking about again funny, but but we discovered
I mean, come on, we discovered Okay, we didn't discover it,
but when we did an ATM, like you know of
like Carousel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, that's horror comedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's not. It's not pure comedy.
Speaker 3: It's horror comedy. But I mean, I would I would
describe the Murderous uh unic or the Murderous Carousel Horse
movie as horror slasher first comedy.
Speaker 6: I guess so yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean it uses the horror framework more than I
guess a comedy framework. It's a horror with jokes.
Speaker 3: But yeah, now there's absolutely low budget horror comedy that is.
I would give you that rick. That ship is an
abundance because it.
Speaker 1: Because it's a good vehicle, because you can use the
comedy to cover for the low budget, because you're self
aware of.
Speaker 4: Yeah your budgetary sweet yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the genres, you can do low budget for
some reason, and the audience is okay with it.
Speaker 6: Actually, I have I have an example, and a lot
of people hated this movie, but I liked it argyle.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, I didn't see it.
Speaker 6: Was it good?
Speaker 3: I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm assuming I.
Speaker 6: Went into it with really low expectational I said it sucked,
and I watched it and I was like, this is
pretty good.
Speaker 4: I watched it. I was drunk. I probably shouldn't have
been as angry at the movie as I was, And
I do agree it was It's definitely kind of like
a referential kind of action comedy, but a lot of
it was just kind of like bubblegum action.
Speaker 5: Listen, I've never I've never heard of this movie. Tell me.
Speaker 7: It's a story about the Limo driver from Diehard, so
much better.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised they haven't made that movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they, if they replaced the cat in the
trailers with the limo driver from die Hard, I would
have been there.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's all we need to start there, just replace
a cat with a human being, no dialogue, just making
cat noise is still Kevin Hart. He seems ideal for
that role.
Speaker 1: I think they tried that Cats. It didn't didn't work.
Speaker 6: You're right, it did work though with the Grumpy Cat movie.
Speaker 4: There we go.
Speaker 6: We got two premium example of cats movies.
Speaker 3: Are Plaza taking control of the movie?
Speaker 6: Hey, whatever works, you know, tour.
Speaker 4: I do think making fun of the audience for thinking
that this, this grumpy Cat movie has got to be
anything but a dumb cat movie was a pretty slick
move on Grumpy Cats. But I don't know if if
making fun of the audience means it's a comedy or
if you're the butt of the jokers?
Speaker 6: Is that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Okay, so I felt bad watching it, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't like being It's hard to think
of comedies over the course of a decade. Is not
a great sign.
Speaker 4: And we're talking about lots of different comedies and but
what you're talking about is the mid budget comedy. And
I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 3: The Ricky Sinicky I mean, I say, but that is
the most modern one I have think I've found, like
I haven't watched it yet, but just it exists.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like it used to be, like, you know, a
couple of times a year, did you get like a
John Candy comedy or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: You get like Sisters or fucking was that one after Popstar?
Speaker 4: We don't have the environment is bubbling up an anchor
man every five years.
Speaker 3: Like some right, we're not taking those No, we're not
taking the swings.
Speaker 4: Some game changing quotable comedy that annoying office people are
going to be quoting.
Speaker 3: Okay, now you're selling me on no more comedy.
Speaker 4: It's necessary, it's necessary for the environment.
Speaker 1: Even outside of comedies like the you know, we haven't
had a year like nineteen eighty nine or nineteen eighty
four in a long time where like you look at
those years and you're like, fuck, that was a lot
of good yeah.
Speaker 3: Or nineteen also was a lot of movies.
Speaker 4: Weird, yeah, weird, Yeah, there were a lot of bad movies.
Probably yeah. But we had this discussion when we were
watching RoboCop, and we said, do we like this movie
just because of nostalgia or do we like it because
it's actually a fun movie. And then Ghibbie was just
reading out movies from nineteen eighty nine, and there were
so many classics just from one year, Like you would
have been absolutely spoilt from choice if you had to
pick one movie from that year. And I think it's
not nostalgia. There was just something in the zeitgeist and
something in the system.
Speaker 6: At the time.
Speaker 4: It was just churning out a lot of memorable bullshit.
But I definitely don't think we're in that situation now.
Speaker 5: Either.
Speaker 1: Matter we're just old men yelling at clouds. And I
don't know, like, I don't feel like these days were
like this was a great year for movies, Like I
don't think anyone's like, I don't even think they're excited
about these years.
Speaker 4: Don't think the kids these days are even watching movies.
They're watching skiddyby Toilet And I don't understand it. I
don't want to understand it. I'm glad they're happy in
there's only they keep away from me, and but no,
I don't think they're they're lamenting the fact that they
don't have their generation's anchorman, because their generation's anchorman is
going to be some prick on TikTok speaking in a
language that sounds like English. But I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I think I'd have to pay my daughter to watch
movies with me. It's it's frustrating.
Speaker 4: We should point out I mentioned earlier that comic books
are a dead medium. Of course they're not. You can
go to space Artisty's free kickstarter right now. You absolutely
should support great art support great artists. Ben Robertson, thank
you again for joining us. The Bitch About Movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, I can bitch about movies all day long.
That's that will never die.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, if the audience wants to pretend to
that while we're not recording this podcast, we're still just
really unhappy about movies, they can do it.
Speaker 3: It's not hard to picture. For Steve.
Speaker 4: A few days on Facebook, I remind you of just dounehappy,
how unhappy I am about movies.
Speaker 3: Reminder, we're only two more years from revisiting Ghostbusters twenty sixteen.
For an Anthem movie, so breaks up, Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in two years the edition, they might make a
sequel to that movie, bring all the ladies back and
make your day, Steve.
Speaker 6: Or or they might make a remake.
Speaker 3: It sounds like Frozen Empire sucks too, so remember one
just do that one man?
Speaker 4: What have they made a ghostbuster movie with all dudes?
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, thank you for joining us on this
episode of side Quest, and thank you again to Ben
Robinson for joining us. I have been Drew Hayes, joined
by Rick will Terry, Steve Weatherill, and Robert Bevan. Until
next time, Bye bye bye friend. Uncors and Dragons brought
to you under Creative Commons License, meaning you were free
to share this material so long as credit is given
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