John Carter with Matt Singer

♪ Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Blank Jack with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack. ♪ When I saw you, I believed it was a sign that something new can come into this podcast. That was my bad defoe, Tars Tarkas. That was the big line they used in the trailer to sort of hint at the mystery of the film. Now, I was saying before, I think this movie famously didn't have a tagline. And we'll spend roughly half an hour on this movie's disastrous marketing campaign. Kind of as big a legacy as the film itself. But it did in fact have a tagline, and it's quite poor, I would say. What is the tagline? Let me guess. He's from Mars. No, I don't know. Lost in our world. Found in another. And then, of course, the title is John Carter, so Mars is nowhere on the poster. Oh, you have to watch the movie to find out what world he was found in. And the poster is just bright red. That was their big move. This wasn't the one that had the JCM? That was the teaser poster. I want to say that was even maybe before the title had been changed. But that was big JCM, black and white. It says John Carter arrives. That was the tagline. It's telling you John Carter's coming. People were excited. The classic poster, classic, of course. The all red. Right, was this. Very red. Very red. I mean, it's kind of a cool image, I guess. It's not bad. You know, it's every Mars movie did this. Yeah. And this movie is post the Mars craze. I like to think about the Mars craze. Sure. Because I recently watched Species 2. And I forgot that Species 2 is the first Mars movie of this wave. Well. Because it was right after they'd found the meteorite. You're on Mars with, or the thing on Mars. Well, what? What are you? I was going to say, I think some credits Total Recall, which was a secret Mars movie. It was a hidden Mars movie. No, no, that doesn't count. He gets his ass to Mars. That doesn't count. There are pre-Mars craze Mars movies. Yeah. There's a few. There's the one that I bought the DVD for and keep me need to watch where Sean Connery's like a cop on Mars called Outland. Just Outland. Outland. Okay. Yeah, it's Total Recall. But there's, it's like Species 2, Mission to Mars, Red Planet. Yes. There's a fourth one. Like, there's a bunch. There's a bunch of them all together for like two years. Mission to Mars and Red Planet were a true deep impact Armageddon thing. It's an Armageddon deep impact. Yes. Right. And then they ended up moving a little further apart in dates because they were worried about the competition. I think they were eventually a year apart. But they were made simultaneously. Yes. It was like, which of the Mars movies is going to work? I throw out Total Recall just because I think people kept pointing to that as, look, there was a successful Mars movie. Because they kept bombing and they kept doing it. No. It's the different. It's about humans going to Mars. To Mars. Total Recall, we live on Mars. Total Recall is a fact. He got his ass to Mars. Well, he did get his ass to Mars. We colonized it. Yeah. Like. Yes. Oh, Ghosts of Mars. Oh, of course. Ghosts of Mars. Those are the four. No, I know what you're saying. And it's all just like, how do we crack Mars? And zero of them crack Mars. What if there were ghosts this time? Mission to Mars, I defend, and has very cool stuff. Huge stuff. The other three, they all do badly. Right. And the other three, Species 2 is basically like, they go to Mars and what happens to the guys who went to Mars? They get species. Sexy, horny alien stuff, like, is inside them now. Uh-oh. Yes. You know. And all of us, ultimately. It is funny. Probably all of us. But even Species 2, Species 1, poster is green. Species 2, how do we change it? Red. Red. Ah. Is there a subtitle for Species 2? For Species 2, no. Right? There was no subtitle, but I, of course, could tell you the tagline. Please. Mating season begins. Really good. It's not bad. Really, really good. It's better than the John Carter tagline by a wide margin. Now, if that had been the John Carter tagline, that might not have worked. I'm going to make my third attempt at this joke. It's funny to consider that in the year 2000, Walt Disney Pictures probably looked at the box office receipts for Mission to Mars. Well, look, the good news is, this is the least successful Mars movie Disney will ever release. We will never lose more money on a Mars movie than this. It's all upwards. Uh, yes. Because that film was seen as a disaster. Absolutely, it was seen as a disaster. And then Mars Needs Mom was like, hold my beer. I didn't even remember Mars Needs Mom. Big part of the story of this movie. And then John Carter was like, don't worry, buddy, I got you. Now, in Mars Needs Moms, which I have not seen. Mars Needs Moms. Mars Needs Moms. I've never seen it either. Isn't that largely set in like an attic or whatever? It's like they've come to Earth in search of our moms. Yes. Right, like I don't, is there a lot of Mars action in it, I wonder? I have not seen it either. The poster wasn't red in my memory. The poster was not red. Right, they're aliens or species. Yes, it was very Amblin-y. It was blue, although the title. Is red. Okay, yes. The words are red. You have to, if your movie has the word Mars in the title, the title has to be red. Yes. It is a rule. Right, that was a big. It's a law of Hollywood. Fuck up on their part. But then the final John Carter poster, after everyone complained about the marketing, was this, where it goes a lot more blue. Yeah, blue and yellow. And it's just. It violated the rule that I just invented. Aliens, him riding on creatures. Thoats. Thoats. He's on a thoot. Tharks on thoats. Flanking John Carter. This movie is insane. You like silly words, man. I know. It's in that kind of, you know, lady in the water territory. Yes. Like every five minutes, let's throw a new made up word at these guys. But I feel like this is a thing that unites the three of us, is that's always kind of catnip for us. It can be catnip. Even when the movie doesn't work. It can be catnip. It is very endearing when a movie throws a bunch of silly words at you. Yeah. Right. It is. I often do respond to movies that are like, since time immemorial, like, Blarg has fought with the kingdom of Jyn. And I'm just like, yes, of course they have. Yes. Those two mighty kingdoms. They removed Blarg. That was one of their mistakes on this one. They cut him out of the movie. I know. They were saving him for the sequel that never happened. I know it's all from books. And I know we'll talk about that. And I know these books have a cultural legacy and all that. But it is funny, like, how many times someone's like, Barsoom. Like, assuming the audience is going to be like, yes, Barsoom. They said it. It's wild. It's all fake words. But then they'll, once in a while, they'll be like a normal word. Like Healy. Helium. Right. It's like, we have two cities, Zodanga and Helium. They really should have changed Helium because it's so confusing when they keep. You have to save Helium. The gas? No, our town's called that. Come on. But we are running out of Helium. We are. Okay, well, let's go get some. The movie was ahead of its time when you think about it. David is absolutely right. Let's go get some. Where is it? Let's go get some. Where's it hiding? I got bad news for you. It's on Barsoom. Oh, fuck. All right. Well, then let's get him down. We need the pendant. What are the dragonfly ships called? I don't fucking know what anything is called. This is the two-pronged problem. The movie is too confident that the audience is excited to finally see and hear all this stuff on screen. That it thinks the built-in audience is a lot larger than it is. I do think it thinks that, yes. Secondly, this is like one of the first major sci-fi adventure novels, space, you know, opera kind of things in American fiction. All of these names. The bar was really low. Right. Back then, just calling something Barsoom, we'd be like, well, I've never seen a word like this before. How original. That word's crazy. And then there's like a century of people being like, what if we made things sound cool? Yeah, Barsoom. And Barsoom's okay. Barsoom's okay. Some of the other ones I don't love. Like Zidanga. That's a little, you know. It's got dang in it. It does. That's true. I think Tars Tarkas is a great name. Tars Tarkas is a good name. I agree. That's the best name. Yeah. What's that? Tars Tarkas is Willem Dafoe. That's Willem Dafoe. Okay. Right. Tars Tarkas. As you were saying, like movie that just starts with a bunch of stuff, right? I couldn't figure out a good place to put podcasts in on this, but the opening voiceover of this movie being. Oh, love it. Mars. So you name it and think that you know it. The red planet. No air, no life. But you do not know Mars, for its true name is Barsoom. Like that is the kind of thing that does. You're right. Like it could raise the hairs on my. You're rubbing your hands together. Tell me more. It is not airless, nor is it dead, but it is dying. Intriguing. Okay. There is life, but the life's at risk. I like that. Then he says Zodanga twice in one sentence. He does. And then you're going, wait a minute. What's happening? The city of Zodanga saw to that. Now to kick our episode off. Let's cheers. Of course, a bit that's been really consistent since I established at the beginning of this year, the great coffee quest of 2026. Jesus. Where I bought different movie themed coffees that I'm going to try out to see if there's one. That's. Worthy of being served to our guests. And usually we try to test these on ourselves before we bring them to guests. But today's guest, we promised him. Yes. When I was in a separate group text planning this coffee quest. I said, I'm only coming. If I can get a big, a big honking cup of what is it? Spidey's web slinger. Spider-Man's web slinger is the name of the coffee. I believe. It's not just named. It has a special flavor though. It does. Okay. Should we all take a sip? Yes. Yeah. Cheers. I don't like it. You don't like it. I don't hate it. It didn't. It's not like strong as it smells. It does. Yeah. The, the, the smell, the aroma is quite big. The aroma is pretty. So what's the, what's the note here? What am I missing? Uh, marshmallows, marshmallow treat, marshmallow treat. Like, cause it's like guessing something sweet, like chocolate or whatever, but yeah, yes. It is, uh, from bones coffee company. Yeah. Web slinger, crispy marshmallow treat flavored coffee. It's a great looking bag. It's a great bag. Excellent bag. Good packaging. And I'd say Spider-Man's a good guy. One of my, one of my favorite guys. He's one of our buddies. yes one of your good friends yes as far as the flavor profile how is this representative of spider-man it's a great question marshmallow and and marshmallow treats look like webs sticky marshmallow webs i guess you're right there's a walk sticky sticky is what we're going with it's sticky it's a short swing to sticky yes okay yeah it's not the worst coffee i've ever had it's not it isn't as bad as i feared when we smelled it will we serve it to anyone else oh i'm sure you won't no i would not serve this because i'm gonna drink all of it exactly you're taking it home you're just gonna eat the grounds yeah you're not even gonna pour a water over it this is of course because our guest today returned to the show wrote the book on spider-man proper title a book on spider-man marvel's spider-man colon from amazing to spectacular extra colon the definitive comic art collection hell yes wrote a book on siskel and ebert opposable thumbs that's right colon how siskel and ebert changed movies forever gotta have colons in your books and and of course the way they changed movies forever is that they influenced ben hosley to recommend that we call this podcast griffal and simsbert yes right i probably knew that story long ago uh and the upcoming book yes here it is copy on task yes i have uncorrected proof or correct it's an uncorrected proof i've already corrected things that are in this version funny business that's right the subtitle is the old school wedding crashers and knocked up virgins who changed comedy forever and the book of course is about failed sci-fi franchises of the 2010s that's right that's right i don't know if we want to get into this now but while we're talking about this book please can i i'm gonna hand it to you yes the great matt singer hi matt singer welcome thank you now if you look in the back of the book there is a bookmarked part there's a uh there's a post-it i want you to look what's right above the post-it in the footnotes wow footnote number 58 quote in any minute griffin newman and david sims hosts blank check with griffin and david podcast the big lebowski with seth rogan you're a quoted source in my book was dropping bombs he was and it has a typed out link a url yes if people want to go fact check it themselves they can go listen it was an excellent i was i just happened to be working on that part of the book and i was listening to him and he's talking about uh working on the 40 year old virgin which i was working on that part of the book perfect quotes oh you can have you can have that this is a you can be shared by the yeah we got a couple of copies so you guys can enjoy that uh it is the thing i i always will take any opportunity to bring up on the show that i often complain about the death of the theatrical studio comedy but i think in people trying to do the post-mortems there is not enough study of what happened in comedy from like 2000 to 2015 well this is the book exactly i've been waiting for this book but yes but it really did build up in a way that was kind of mcu-esque yeah there there was a sort of like franchise machinery to the way the personas got built and the cross-pollination and the rise of the sort of star producer and all that stuff and i think it's a really good book and i think it's that kind of stuff um that happened kind of you mentioned the mcu and it kind of happened around the the the tail end of this wave coincides with it and i think very much of that and the cinematic universification of hollywood i think had a big effect on why these movies started to go away but i also think quietly those movies and the modern franchises pulled from what was working there i have always said that there was something that i think whether consciously or unconsciously that was wisely pulled from how apatow seeded performers in supporting roles to prep you for them in leading roles right and then he right i feel like while he's doing that they're like on set being like an interesting story in my life and he's like i love that yes work on that like write me a script like you could turn that into a movie but that also once this thing worked there was a house style there was a sensibility for sure there was a low concept this is about interpersonal relationships find a very specific dynamic and then what started to piss people off is these movies are all the same yeah it's improv runs it's an awkward romantic comedy about a dude who's the one who has to learn silly boy shrewish lady which i argue is kind of what's happening with marvel now where it's like we know the format but 10 years ago at this point but yes um i mean it's just maybe marvel you know it's impossible though just thinking about marvel he's like yeah like if marvel was like we did something totally different people would just be like like no right like isn't it it's hard it's hard the movie does not fully work you and i both quietly partially defend it but that's what eternals is trying to do i agree with that eternals was i think feige wisely saying we need to fucking mix it up because people are going to start getting tired of this quick and then they did not find the right way to mix it up right and they took the rejection of that really hard and we're like back to the old shit right yes it was a retreat it was a swift retreat i just i this is on my mind because i just filed a review of over dead body the horma tacone movie that is like i that didn't totally work for me i don't know if either of you have seen it i have not seen it yet uh but like you know i thought was okay and like had some stuff and of course stars jason siegel yes and i was like siegel is like the last of those guys right who is still making like like movie star comedies into the mid 2010s after sex tape he's released zero movies wide in theaters right zero yes like he's made a couple indies that got a theatrical release it's like end of summer it's like end of summer it's like end of the tour end of the tour mcdowell movie end of the tour and i have it here and our friend yeah are the only ones that were even like indie releases everything else was netflix which is discovery yeah come sunday sky is everywhere where he had a supporting role which is on apple uh windfall like so three of those were like charlie mcdowell movies and like yeah and like and now you know this over your dead body is getting a tiny release as well i know siegel also kind of was like i'm burned out i don't like making these like you know sex tape bad teacher gets sober has a sort of kind of like i need to pull away and work on my shit but like post you know uh forgetting sarah marshall he did for years like he did the kind of like yeah i'll do a high concept sort of r-rated comedy for you every so often and he was and they would like do all right he was often writing them or co-writing he was involved like he is a writer on sex tape like sex tape wasn't just uh sort of like fuck it i'll take the paycheck no and five you're engaged and it's just crazy like muppets he co-writes and and um you know uh yeah he has like five or six you know of those but even like bad teacher and and i love you man and like he was getting man yes that's a good one and then sex tape is just like you know i remember when it came out everyone was like you know is this a movie like is this a big concept like everyone's a little no one was like this sucks no but everyone was like it was one of those movies where it's like this thing is ending and the problem is that if you look at posters just i'm going like it's like the laziest photo they're like looking at an ipad it also felt like we had come all the way around to like the apatow wave is a correction for how high concept star comedies had become they'd gotten really big budget it was 20 million dollar stars who felt like they were kind of lazily picking up a paycheck for like a one sentence movie pitch where the title is the premise and there's usually magic or something like that or insane mistaken identity and then it was like let's bring this down to like human level and sex tape felt like the first comedy that was an output an extended reach of the apatow family tendrils yeah where the concept was like what does this make sense they uploaded the sex tape to their personal cloud but they gave everyone in their life an ipad for christmas yes and those ipads are on their cloud so their mailman has their sex tape we've all been there right you're like it's getting too sweaty here relatable but that movie also made a lot of sense because it's like 50 million domestic yeah i think it did all right i can look up you like think of it as a disaster and you're like it ends up at a number pretty similar to 126 worldwide which means it made yeah i made 40 domestic and yeah 90 world 90 international yeah the international market they love sex they love sex tapes it's a fascinating thing to talk about yes today we're talking about john carter because this is a part of the most famous r-rated sex comedies of the 2000s well i think this is an opportunity to really just discuss what was happening yes right in the movies in the early 2010s and and the apatow stuff is part and parcel with it right true bridesmaids is 2011 that is arguably the apex of the whole thing yes that is the highest grossing apatow movie it's the highest grossing and it is like it's somehow even though the formula had been said already when that was released people there was still the narrative like is this too risky like all girls are rated like is anyone gonna go for this it was a successful eternals yes yeah right i'm sure they would love that comparison yeah yeah yes yeah um which of course then leads to ghostbusters the unsuccessful eternals yes of this experiment right that's an interesting comparison yes a beginning of the end movie right oh yes well i think it had already the the they were already on the downward slope but that was a real yes yes this movie comes out in march released by as i i said before the walt disney now company what are they are they like a new indie shingle or something at that time yeah they're like a utopia and it's being released right yeah they're vertical entertainment uh it's being released by marvel basically as they are like the ink is beginning to dry on their marvel acquisition right like when is that when do they buy marvel 2012 oh no this is the timeline i was gonna say right so this film is released march 2012 right may is avengers yeah which was did that movie do it it did in fact quite well right uh i believe almost as good as john carter oh yes okay so 2008 is iron man and the incredible horse 2010 is iron man 2 and i believe after the release of iron man 2 disney buys marvel now the original paramount deal that was similar to the original pixar disney deal this is a five film slate distribution you own underlying rights right right was supposed to be iron man incredible hulk i think ant-man was supposed to be part of that original five iron man two takes that slot and then of course incredible hulk ended up being universal because of them having the original rights thor captain america avengers griffin it's universal because hulk is green and universal is our planet which is also very green well that's why unless we don't take care of it like in wally then it gets president hulk there he is please salute salute they buy it in 2010 2011 paramount releases captain america and thor but disney now knows that owns marvel and is starting to message those characters as right these are ours but you still are distributing them both of those movies do well not like absurdly well but well and then disney spends an extraordinary amount of money in my memory it was 500 million dollars to buy paramount out of avengers and iron man 3 that was and that was a good deal but we can't wait we just need it now and avengers comes out three months after this two months after this and just blows the doors off everything and now it's just like this this is what the future is it's over i think it's that's important context because you know you we've already alluded to the marketing of john carter yeah that perhaps offers a potential explanation and that they're they were already looking at the avengers there are a lot of distracted there are a lot of explanations for what went wrong in the marketing of this movie but it was well sort of discussed by the time this Disney didn't need this to be a franchise anymore because what's the other thing that happened in fall of 2011 walt disney completes its purchase of lucasfilm that's that is true so they really they really they made a couple good buys in 2011 disney buys marvel and lucasfilm and this movie is just kind of a dead man walking i don't i'm not saying they like set it up to fail because there was so much money at stake that everyone would have been happier if this had been successful right but already they were sort of like we have the two surest bets in hollywood right this is not necessary and this is coming at the end of a journey that brings you the fourth pirates of the caribbean movie we can't let that franchise rest we need another action franchise jack is back right prince of persia right well that legacy i was about the funniest thing disney plus did to me when i finished john carter was shrink the credits and be like and you're are you ready for prince of persia i was like buddy come on but they really and long ranger long ranger comes after this they're really looking for that audience and they've they've already as you're saying they have already acquired the two locks on that audience they couldn't have any bigger lock on that audience and so yes poor john carter is going what about me they kept trying to launch or relaunch something either their own ip that they had or their own ip that they had or their own ip that they had or their own ip that they had or pull ip from somewhere else that they thought had some history and some built-in audience and then they just bought the two things where they were like you did the work for us you primed the pump the audience is there you made those movies this is blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david it's a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby rarely has that intro applied more thoroughly to this the filmmaker we're discussing and the film we're talking about today is a movie that feels like it has been fated to be discussed on this podcast from the moment we decided this is what the podcast was this movie bounced similar to how john carter can jump correct great like a big flea yes yeah yeah yes and it is a movie that has become like a historic signpost a historic signpost in terms of like where franchises went and where blockbusters went or this is what i think is interesting to discuss this movie's release was greeted with a sort of like well never again lessons learned and i would argue hollywood continued to basically take the wrong lessons from this movie and also repeat its mistakes in a lot of ways i think watching this movie now a film i kind of defend and enjoy watching while not wholly successful it does feel like the world is a little kinder to this film today in contrast because other movies have gotten so much sloppier i think that is fair yes thing yes i think it is a a largely good looking movie given this what it's trying to accomplish the scale of what it's working with i do think it's an unsuccessful film i think it is a on paper just like we we stacked up all the little numbers here and it is not successful here is my my one counterpoint go ahead i don't think this movie really like functions in the way it wants to even though it has moments it has spurts the the engine will start up and then it will like sputter again i do find this movie more cohesive in feeling kind of like there is a vision that is executed here versus what i'd say a lot of these similar franchise movies that we get today where the story is they reshot all of this three times and you feel it what are you thinking of i think like what are you holding it against here like basically every morning name movie name movies name movies i mean rise of skywalker no but okay no but that that's different like that sequels to me that's a different kind of mess i mean rise of skywalker i can someone please write the tell all can we just get or can everyone just sit down and be like i'll admit it yeah it was a completely different movie that was also bad yes and then we we panicked and turned it into that movie i know none of it makes sense i'm fully aware like you know what let's sit down and watch it and i'll pause and i'll tell you like yep this was shot one year after this and i know that you know like that's completely i'm trying to think of like the franchise star all right the movie i compared this to the entire time i was watching this time is avatar yeah because i was basically just like avatar makes none of the mistakes and this movie makes most of them and it is crazy that this film bombed this hard coming out three years after avatar and is kind of really two years because it's like yeah when you're talking about like december march so it's really just a couple years it's really still like in the wake of avatar it starts production before avatar is released right it can't watch what they're doing not not that copying james cameron isn't easy or whatever right anytime in history a movie is like an out of the box out of the blue hit that big and the studios rush to find the copycats it doesn't work you look at the wave of post lord of the rings yeah what else can we adapt this shit doesn't work but the fact that it was inevitable everyone's gonna try a little parallel to the and they had a movie that could have been sold as like here's the thing that inspired avatar it's kind of like avatar a human guy goes to earth and romances an alien you can't find a an interview with andrew stanton about this movie where either he doesn't mention avatar or someone asks him about avatar it's just in the wind it's unavoidable grossing film of all time when this movie's coming out a fucking guy going to a new planet where he doesn't know the rules right and he falls in love and it's an epic romance and there's a war of civilization yeah oh but but what he was uh animal like uh space animals and what he'll always say is that this avatar was inspired by this no shit yeah true this is so much their their marketing and what he his sales pitch to people was everything you love is inspired by what i made there's a great quote where and we'll get into all the previous versions of this movie that almost happened and didn't going all the way back to the 1940s robert zemeckis they tried to sell him on doing it for disney i think we will talk about the rights in the 90s right and he hadn't read the books and and i believe either katzenberg or eisner gives him the book to to read it over and he gets back to them and he goes i can't make this lucas already plundered everything good from it it's totally makes total sense of course like the inspirations it's kind of like dune was as well we're like yeah it's hard to crack it when it's already been like little bits have been taken out of it for all the movies we like their it's their main argument for why make this movie like an andrew stanton and it is a flawed argument because yes it's already been yes strip mind for everything that's good and just because something is the first does not necessarily make it the best especially when it's made as early as this is in the history of this kind of story iteration that is helpful have any of us i know ben's read all of the bar series yeah have you ever read the i've read the first book right which is an iconic sci-fi work - Sure. - But in that way of like, you read it and you're like, It's so interesting how ideas were generated here that get built on by other works and all that stuff. But it's also pretty rough. It's a little rough. And a little weird. There's not a lot of a story. Right, right. Which this movie struggles with that by grafting on this, you know, certain elements, which I would assume, having not read the later books, are in the later books. I don't know that they are. They might be a little bit invented. I think it's pretty invented. Yes. I mean, the therns, another silly word that we're going to have to say a lot. Yeah, I'm going to say it every two minutes. The therns are in later books. They are not in the original book. The ninth ray, which is a not silly word, but it sounds silly when they say it a lot. The ninth ray, that in the book is not a, now in this movie, it is like a, it's like an all-consuming death ray, can do anything. And in the book, again, maybe in the book. In later books, it becomes that. In the first book, it is kind of a MacGuffin of, there's a artificial atmosphere on Mars and the ninth ray is what creates air inside an atmosphere factory. These are all things that they took out of, of the movie. Yeah. But that is not this like laser that you can zap at people. Right, right. And a magical like glow, like glow. The powers are too powerful. I was really struggling with that thing. This is another huge. You can't do anything with this. This is a huge problem with this movie is that they, they made it a story about a shape shifting weirdos who have an all powerful ray, which can kill anyone instantly. And the alternate force has a guy who can jump really high. And people are so excited to get John Carter on their side. Like literally there's a scene where like, where Tars Tarkas is accusing Deja Thor. She's like, you want this weapon for yourself. But he fights for the Fox. And you're going, he's, it's like, he's literally a guy who can jump. He can jump away from battle. He can jump high. He can jump. And I guess he can kill like 1000 people if they try to hurt him. If he remembers his dead wife. Yes. Right. If he remembers burying a family. Another thing. The opposite of a mother gaining strength when her child is in danger. That's right. He can, he can get stronger if he remembers. This is another thing that's not in the book. The family he didn't protect. Totally invented for the movie is to give him a tread. It's a tragic Hollywood backstory of my wife and child were killed. And so, and I'm, and I no longer want to fight. Right. He doesn't have a cause. In the books. He doesn't. Right. In the movie. Yeah. In the book. He not only doesn't have a tragic backstory, he's like, and this is another thing that's in the book that is not in the movie. He's like, he's almost like a Highlander. He's like immortal. He talks about how, like, I don't remember my childhood. I've always been 30 years old. I am as old as, you know, like I, I can't age. I've watched other people. Maybe that gets addressed later. But it's also, look, it's like the Superman thing, right? Where when the character is created, the pitch of what if a guy was so fucking awesome was all you needed to get people to lean in. And then Superman over decades is iterated to become more relatable. Right. Totally. And more complex. Let's give him a childhood. Let's give him family. Let's make this make sense. Yes. And John Carter is still kind of stuck in his original state, which is just what if a guy fucking ruled. Right. He doesn't need anything going on inside of him. Right. And again. And again, in the Burroughs book, he's he's a warrior. He can jump. He is strong because of the density of his bones and the Martian, whatever. But he's fighting other people with swords. It's like, you know, it's like, what if we drop this super cool warrior into the middle of a giant battle? OK. But in the movie, they're like, what if that was happening? But also there was death rays. It's like, again, it's just. Yeah. It's not it's not even a knife to a gunfight. It's a guy with good legs at a death laser fight. So there's stuff where I'm like, he was making the right choice. And he didn't get all the way there in terms of like, OK, so how do you give this like an emotional spine in the books? John Carter fights for the South and he's a good soldier. And he's like, well, I can't build a fucking two hundred and fifty million dollar Disney movie around a like loyal confederate. Right. So let me make it that he fought for the South, but it was against his will. And he like defected and was fighting against them. So then it kind of neutralizes him. Well, why is that the case? He lost his family in the war. So he's become so disillusioned. Oh, that means he doesn't want to fight. So once he gets to Barsoom, he's reluctant. And you're like, we're getting there. Yeah, it could work. Yeah. It's not a terrible idea. I just. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm browsing the encyclopedia Barsoomia right now, which is, of course, the name of the John Carter wiki. Yes. But yes. Did you have to drink magic liquid? I do. To understand it. To comprehend it. We all did. Yeah. That's. Oh, that's what was in there. The web slinger. Now we're speaking Barsoomian. The therns, I don't. I think are very different in the books. They are. Oh, they're not in the first. They're not in it at all. No. They're introduced later, but they are more just kind of like an old, you know, kind of like ancient Greek style. I think like the the original civilization of Mars. There's also black Martians. There's other races of Martians. Here. I feel like we have like green and red. Right. That's basically it. And then therns. Therns. Yeah. And they mentioned the white apes, which I guess are the thing he fights in the arena. Those are the big guy. Right. Monsters. But they're not that important to the to the story. I did it. They're like interstellar caretakers. That's not in the books. It's at least not in the first. According to the encyclopedia of Barsoomia, it's a Disney film invention. OK. So are the books still relevant? What do you mean by relevant? I mean, they're relevant to my life. I try to live my life. They're relevant. They're relevant. They're relevant historically. This is a lot of what this movie came up against is like Andrew Stanton was pushing really hard to be like, this is the definitive text. Like all modern sci fi adventure storytelling comes from this, which is true. And the notion of not wrong, the notion of making this, it's not even like Dune where it's like they've never gotten it right. It was no one has ever succeeded in getting to the starting line of making a movie about this. So it's going to be greeted with such excitement of they're finally fucking doing it. Right. And what? But he overstated by who? Exactly. Well, that's the problem. That was the problem they ran into. But yeah, I just like, is this like a thing that sci fi bands are? This starts out as a story serialized in pulp magazines in 1912. So the movie is coming out 100 years after it is published. This is dusty. It's like Dune is dusty, but it's very dusty. I think their notion was. Because everyone's waiting for this. And in reality, what it had become was this is the thing that all of the people who made the sci fi you actually like grew up reading. Right. And to general audiences, this only is really of interest to like hard. Big nerds. Or old people, I guess. Yeah. But I'd say like in modern audiences, it was like if you are a voracious reader and you're really interested in the history of science fiction and being able to like retrace the threads. It's sort of like it's like saying to someone, this is the video game that inspired it all. And then making someone play Pong in 2026. It's like, OK, well, it's historically important. But what I did Pong with some backstory, you know, or would I rather play that or would I rather play my PlayStation? I think I have a clear choice. The ball in Pong had a family that died. It's like making the Pong movie based off the logic of did you see how much money you money Super Mario Galaxy just made? Right. That wasn't even the first video game. We're going to make Pong. I love the work of Bruce Coville. I bring it up on this podcast a lot. The young adult author who did like Aliens Ate My Homework. Yeah, totally. My teacher flunked the planet and all that shit. And he references John Carter of Mars in those books. And it clearly was an inspiration for him. Yeah. And I would as a kid read that and he'd be like, yeah. And like, you know, my character, the character would be like, I love John Carter books like the guy who wrote Tarzan. And I'd be like, that's interesting. Never wanted to read. You know, I never liked it. I knew they existed, but I was never like, I should fuck those off the shelf. I absolutely plucked it off the shelf. He plucked it. And was like, this is dense. I can't get into this. Right. Because it's like it's like an early 1900s serial novel. I mean, like, I haven't read the fucking Tarzan books either. No, but Tarzan as a cultural idea persists in a way that John Carter does. And you'll be in our heart. Absolutely. That's the thing. Like, how many people are reading Tarzan books? Today? I don't know. But everyone knows what Tarzan is. And John Carter only exists as like the thing that he influenced in the public. I feel like we must open the dossier just because there is reams of context. On this one, I said it was gonna be a short dossier. There's not much. JJ wants to shout out at the top of the dossier because he used so much stuff is there's a Drew Taylor piece in March 2022. The 10 year anniversary. That went through everything in the anniversary. There's also a tad friend profile of Stanton. Second act twist in October 2011. That's like leading up to the release of John Carter. I cannot strongly enough. And this is the only time I feel like I'm actually issuing homework to our listeners. Read the tad. It is worth reading both of these things in full. We will pull out strands of them. But the one piece is as the movie is about to come out. And it's sort of talking about Stanton's history, his success up until this point, the trepidation from Disney. You know, it's right at the crossroads right. before the thing finally implodes. then the 10 years later piece has people speaking very openly in retrospect about everything that happened we'll have links to both articles in the episode but both really well written thorough pieces edgar rice burrows the author who goes best with you know chicken sure maybe a steak if you want steak and rice you know i was gonna say call him ned right call him ned i thought you were talking about the character in this motion picture oh what a great character played by the great daryl sabara can i reveal the spy kid please did you audition for this i did we got to put it in the can and this is this is a movie covered on the show that i auditioned has sabara beaten you out for multiple roles i feel like that's come up before oh boy that's a good question let me look it up while you continue through the dossier this is the only one i remember oh no he got the part in fucking it's complicated that was cut out right but the one i auditioned for like four times that part was nemesis it was that was complicated it was very complicated there was a whole extended scene at the beginning of it's complicated that was meryl streep hits it off with a guy in a dating app and then she goes and it's a high school which is a good good gag like yeah and it was daryl sabara was the ultimate filming of the movie was pushed back twice because nancy couldn't find the right casting for that role and the entire thing was removed but yes i auditioned for that role multiple times 1912 he releases uh their stories called under the moons of mars in the magazine all-star story then collected as the novel the princess of mars in 1917 published after tarzan uh the success of tarzan it's right his well the story the story i think is before the story is before the novel is after right because it starts serialized he writes like the first 10 more novels in the barsoom series after that yes i was just gonna say i think this is the first thing he ever wrote he was like he had other odd jobs right right and then a princess of mars in the serialized form was his first thing he wrote i mean he wrote so many other fantasy series that i don't know much about like there's the pelucidar which is like in a hollow earth kind of series there's this thing called uh the venus series which is kind of like you know you hit it with mars next stop venus right like i haven't read those so 1931 looney tunes animator bob clampett legend a true legend so much that even i've heard of him yes uh is like what if we turn these into a cartoon the barsoom books like they're so popular and they create test footage a year before the release of snow white yes that freaks people out and like that doesn't get turned into a feature it's really realistic the footage is amazing because it is it like rotoscopes they were like drawing off of live action you know snow white uses a lot of rotoscoping right like the early disney princess movies until they start getting more stylized with like sleeping beauty and and such most of the human characters would be rotoscoped uh and then you know the animals and the dwarves and everything it looks unbelievable yeah it was kind of so technically ahead of what anyone was doing at the time and it's one of those things since it was before snow white where you're like if that's completed does it kind of change the trajectory of animation to some degree because you have the 2000s late 90s early 2000s run that also i feel like is relevant to this movie of like atlantis treasure planet yeah right where they were like can we use animation to make quite a bit of animation and it's like it's like a lot of animation and it's like a lot of animation cool shit for boys yeah with like a sort of a steampunk how do we break out of it just being princess musicals and it is like 2d animation because of snow white and the impact becomes princess musicals and talking animals primarily is what is thought of but yes the clamp it tests are unbelievable uh they're very cool uh you can check out uh the in youtube there's little bits and pieces yeah very cool uh bob clamp i just want to shout out created beanie and cecil which is one of my favorite cartoon shows as a kid an old dusty cartoon show that was based on what used to be a local tv puppet show he did when he was young dinosaur and the clamp it family like puts out beanie and cecil dvd compilations because i think they own the rights and that's how i first found out that he tried to do john carter because the dvd just had like 30 minutes of john carter shit in the special features including those tests ray harryhausen in the 50s supposedly expressed some interest in like a stop motion bar soon thing perfect sense does make sense seems like his kind of thing yeah also never really gained much momentum my guess is that every time like the enormous amount of money would be required even for something animated or stop people would just kind of be like i think this is too weird this is what sells it until stanton does it but you look at like animation is the only way you could do this you couldn't do it in live action right they missed the window for animation now the idea of doing a serious realistic action movie and animation is unfathomable in the 30s 40s 50s right harryhausen creates you know his style of stop motion special effects and how to blend it with live action okay this makes a way you could possibly adapt these he can't crack it and now it's like on the table again until effects evolve right in the 80s in the 80s right mario kassar and on andrew vanya the carol co guys bring it to disney yeah katzenberg is young at disney yeah he wants to do it the flies charles pogue and uh tales from the crypts terry black these are screenwriters take a shot katzenberg basically is like we want this to be our star wars yeah and this is katzenberg and eisner coming in after disney has had the failed run of black hole tron etc black says you know they wanted the story to be dramatic the book has this very leisurely pace and you know we just clashed a lot over like how much of the book do you throw out ted elliott and terry rocio who are like kings of disney in the 90s they took a crack at it john mcturnan and tom start circling in 1990 brings in bobby gale gale's then replaced by sam resnick who had written a tv robin hood that mcturnan had produced okay tom cruise and julia roberts were supposedly courted to star i don't know how intensely involved they were but in 1990 the pitch of zemeckis gale roberts cruise makes perfect sense you can like imagine the alternate reality yeah where that movie exists definitely but mcturnan wisely and quickly is like this is just too expensive we can't pull this off yet and then very wisely it's like i'll make last action hero yes that'll go that'll go great for me that one will be easy carolico goes bankrupt then jim jacks james jacks kevin smith's buddy yeah revoked on this podcast and harry knolls who i guess is a huge fan of this yes and in his biography kept talking about what an influence it was he like beats the drum for it and then he's like i don't know i don't this is when harry knolls is still seen as he's got the touch he has the magic he can see what they want beyond the idea that he's a kingmaker there was this thing of if harry knolls is saying it does it mean that there are millions of silent nerds we don't realize are dying for the internet this starts to create the false sense ben to your earlier question of are people waiting for this wants this no but like do we not realize it that everyone wants this yes so yes jim jacks jim jacks brings in uh mark protosevich i think it's his name the guy who wrote the cell he's kind of like a hot guy back then robert rodriguez is going to direct it robert rodriguez has resigned from the dga because of sin city and and let's call out here's the other technological breakthrough they're like he wants to do his sin city thing green screen is this a way to make this fucking work now can you do green screen stylized build an extensive world without having to build crazy sets and photorealistic alien or whatever paramount doesn't want to work with him for this reason he's not in the dga so they fire him and who makes sense is the obvious next choice we'll get to him but i do want to note the thing that matt said already if they do throw it jacks does throw it to zemeckis and zemeckis does say the thing of like george plundered these like there's nothing left so then yes carrie conron carrie conron ben of course you know ben loves carrie conron no what's your favorite carrie conron from what's up look carrie conron look of fear is a man who has directed one and only one film and it is a movie called sky captain in the world of tomorrow have you heard of it no okay i'm shocked uh it was a green screen all green screen movie ben it was like the future people were like you don't need sets anymore right a couple movie stars a bunch of crazy visual effects he got like jude law gwyneth paltrow and angelina jolie for a week he shot it in like a warehouse in texas and it's like a steampunk art deco like 30s sort of is it the ghost of laurence olivier who also shows up it's a movie i have a tremendous fondness for it is unbelievably boring but weirdly compelling i find it so boring it's so boring it is so boring i've been using it recently i said this to you in a text i've been using it to help my help myself fall asleep and it's really effective on that front yeah no i mean it's used by hospitals around the world for that but it like looks sky captain it's basically like what if you made a 1940s movie with cgi it's trying to be sort of like melodramatic and it's like an old movie and it's like a movie that's like a movie that's like a old school version of the future but it is deathly boring but when it was it was uh independently produced short film uh one producer's like fuck this is the future he bankrolls i think it was john avnett bankrolls it sure they then sell it to paramount later off of like test footage but he'd already gotten the actors because part of the pitch was like i only need a couple million dollars up front to get the actors for a week to do the green screen stage we'll do some of the animation we'll show it to people they'll give us the money to film it and then we'll do the to finish it. Paramount is like, this is the future of movies. You can just do it in an afternoon digital backlog and it just you just have to sit in this chair with like an old-timey hat on your head yeah that's your whole part your performance definitely won't seem disengaged yes um but it is a movie that bombs really hard and this guy before its release is announced as he's going to direct john carter which makes perfect sense they're like here's another kind of like retro futuristic thing and he figured out this way to make it cheaper and a lot of it is like him and his buddies and his brother who know how to do the effects themselves uh and he's on the movie for a while and then when he falls off at this film he's like never discussed again no that's the end of him i mean he's still around i assume yeah what happened to him it goes to john favreau after that who brings in mark fergus who wrote children of men favreau changes the whole ever makes a ton of sense for it favreau is similar to rodriguez like i'm ready to make my big tentpole epic i want to make my my serious kind of blockbuster epic i want to make my my serious kind of blockbuster epic i want to make my my serious adventure film and he supposedly loves it like stanton he likes the book he's obsessed with the books i wanted to do it forever and he's starting to swing back to like guys we're not doing fucking virtual backlog shit we're building sets he wants practical makeup he wants yeah like the director aspiration to eventually do the epic right that's the thing yeah and then you want to make your cubano no but all these guys are like i want to make my star wars the way i felt seeing star wars and my world exploded can i make my version of that for the next generation can i complete the circle and it makes a lot of sense that for many of these guys they're like can i do that also with the book that made me feel that way when i read it right but this has also got the sword and sandal thing it does indeed it's old school it does um his script combines the first three books princess of mars the gods of mars the warlords of mars which those were going to be stanton's three movies in his trilogy sounds great uh which he was definitely going to make too he talks a lot about that development slows john feverell decides to make iron man okay good luck with that a man made of iron he's just like can he jump really high yeah right how high does he even jump but truly like paramount is just like dragging their feet on giving him a green light and he's like i want to make something and like the iron man like sort of beacon lights up the sky and he goes off and does that and it's the most successful version of what he wanted to do right now and he levels up big time andrew stanton as we've mentioned on this podcast a very serious father who's like a basically a rocket scientist defense department like radar guy he was into like old hard sci-fi stuff and gave his son john carter novels among other things stanton grew up loving these books you know in high school uh he said his friends would call them his romance novels like he was always reading his john carter books he was supposedly a fan of the marvels comic that was how he first discovered it the 70s john carter warlord of mars comic from marvel that came out for a couple of years and is like all set in the in the space of the first book it's sort of like the continuing adventures of john carter uh marv wolfman and gil kane i mean it's a good looking book i read a little i had never read it myself it's kind of before my time and hasn't been reprinted really but i i tracked down some and read a little bit before we did this and it's you know it's fun i can see the uh the appeal but then and then he kind of yeah then he discovered the books and became he was i know he was into the books and then and and i guess this is 1977 and it's right around when star wars comes that's true so he's discovering he probably saw that before he thought it was good he's yes it probably yes he probably liked i like this he thinks watching star wars at the age of 12 but just when you're talking about filmmakers seeing this and going i want to make my star wars and it's going to be this for him they're like yes right they're both from his mind he has both awakenings maybe within the same within the same it's yes it's literally a stretch of like six months or something yeah it's like the way your fetishes develop you know it's like these things just imprinted on him simultaneously david yes did you know there's a new place where you you specifically can let your nerdy freak flag fly i did know that because it's a real digital town video game town and it's populated by some of the best freelance writers on the internet where you can read compelling editorials reviews on the latest pop culture releases get exclusive interviews with tastemakers and even get rankings of sexy mascots if you're into that video game town covers all things geek related we've got coverage on meme culture film reviews from sedanth alaka articles dissecting television both new and old and a weekly podcast with some stellar guests they deliver the kind of analysis editorials podcast videos rankings and nerdy ephemera that you can't find elsewhere so check them out at video game dot town and if you want to support the return of fully independent web media you can directly support them on patreon at patreon.com slash video game town for exclusive articles and podcasts video game dot town for new stuff every single day while he's making wally he's like you're which you spend five fucking years making an animated movie or whatever he's like i don't have an idea for another animated movie i feel a little stuck but he does kind of know that john carter is floating around there paramount's basically yeah about to let the rights lapse yes favreau departs yeah and stanton sort of swoops in and pitches them like look i got nothing to lose here i don't need another paycheck right now you know what i mean like he's like he's got the kind of the swagger of like i think also like it's about to fall into the public domain at this point maybe like we're getting to you know it's it's it's close it's like if you don't start making one now then anyone could make one but it also means like this is the last moment where you have to pay a bunch of money to make one before it doesn't cost anything i think his his point is sort of like if this goes into the public domain asylum is going to make a two million dollar version of this tomorrow they will flood the zone right do that but he's making this pitch to disney where he goes to like the higher ups of disney and basically says there's a jump ball here to take the final crack at doing the definitive origin of american sci-fi correctly yeah he's saying to them like this is serious yeah you know well he says you should get it and i i would i'm so serious i would even do it right and he's and you know he's already kind of i guess he hasn't fit like wally hasn't come out at this but finding nemo is a huge the highest grossing film disney had ever right so that's an appealing holds a lot of weight and you know even if they don't know that wally is gonna work wally is good indeed they are interested they want him happy as he says one might even say he has a bit of a blank check i was i was a little bit in my mind i would say um zemeckis of course as we said had said like i think george lucas kind of picked this clean things like conan the barbarian are cited as you know being influenced by it this film mentioned it already avatar um stanton does not agree he says no one's copied it it's just inspired things like it's you know there's plenty of meat on the bone he's a little right in that the exact mix of the elements has not been brought to screen like you bringing up the swords and sandals thing yeah that's the trickiest part of the equation but if you can pull off that juxtaposition rather than pick the elements clean and like separate them and you haven't seen a lot of guys jumping like this yeah but you know what though i really kept thinking about it i don't know if it's true or not i don't know if it's true or not i don't know attack of the clones which has obviously the jedis do be jumping like fleas like feels very stuff the sort of like the fighting pits the weird creatures creature you know like it does kind of feel like we've seen this before now that doesn't mean this movie can't be a hit but attack of the clones is fully 10 years before i mean this is this is why i fucking stick up for attack of the clones so strange as like his swords and sandals epic also his noir homage like he just three different genres he likes and is like what if i can fucking like backstop them into star wars in a middle chapter they don't hang together that's otherwise no they don't like john carter it's it's like a closet where you open someone's closet up and you're like what is your sense of hawaiian shirts and tuxedos this is weird but i mean look attack of the clones obviously just has like the most hard-boiled incredible narrative and like the kind of characters like dexter jets i have a receipt who bought these clones i have a laundry ticket we already recently i know i do just love to litigate it all the time of like if i just showed up to a planet in a brown robe they would be like the clones are ready for you no further questions yes we've been waiting you don't need to prove who you are you do not need to even seem to know what we're talking about they're not gonna fit on your ship like huh yeah and they're like yes the clones remember anyway you're gonna need a bigger ship to take them out of here you are gonna need right some large ships you're gonna need right some large ships you're gonna need right some large ships attack of the clones even 10 years old by the time this movie comes out so stanton writes the script with mark andrews who has worked on other pixar stuff incredibles ratatouille he ends up directing brave after brenda chapman is fired brave comes out this 2012 same year yeah yes then michael shabon who has the other credit on this uh comes in and i feel like shabon had done a lot of work on spider-man 2 of course and he's another guy who is a great novelist supposedly yes and loved another like huge john carter fan supposedly Most of his Spider-Man 2 work was thrown out. By all accounts. They made a big, splashy announcement because Cavalier and Clay was so big. Yeah, he was so hot. And he was comics-related. That's the thing. Like, Hollywood loves when they're like, oh, my God, there's a genius who likes, quote-unquote, low art and appreciates it. What low art do we have that we can give to him to class up? Right, can we hire a highfalutin man to make our big blockbuster? So they make this big announcement that he's doing Spider-Man 2 throughout almost all of his work and then bring in Alvin Sargent to basically do with the movie. Alvin Sargent is the one who does pretty much write it. His version was about, like, Doc Ock cucking Spider-Man. Doc Ock was, like, young and sexy. Keep talking. I'm interested. I mean, Shabon is, especially because he then went to Star Trek and people hate what he did at Star Trek too much. Yes, I do think he often is like, I have a really different big-brained idea and it will bump against people being like, we were kind of looking for, like, you know, the USS Enterprise to, like, go to a planet and maybe have an adventure. Five-year mission. He's like, you're not interested in all this stuff I'm thinking about? But Spider-Man 2 is huge. Arguably the greatest comic book movie of all time. And his name is there. And a big credit. He had also written a spec screenplay called The Martian Agent that was essentially a hodgepodge of John Carter stories, which he loved, as we say. You know, like, so, like, he also was working on a show with Darren Aronofsky called Hobgoblin that was a World War II show about magic. That sounds kind of cool. For HBO. Yeah. Doesn't sound kind of cool. Hey, Ben, would you mind slinging me another one? Gross. Wow. Wow. We gotta get rid of it. We gotta talk about Spider-Man 2. Made you, you got a little parched, huh? Thinking about Doc Ock cucking Spidey makes me want to have another cup. So, like, Stanton, Andrews, Chabon all love John Carter. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're all working together with love for the books. And they're all, it sort of feels like three little boys in a clubhouse being like, can we relocate what we loved about this? Will that be infectious? Could it have benefited maybe from someone coming in who's like, I love sci-fi adventure movies. I don't love John Carter or know about it. So maybe I can help you put it on. No polite decline on the coffee. I have non-Spider-Man coffee that I'm actually working on. In 2009's Star Trek, that was kind of the whole strategy. Right. Abrams delivered a movie for you that basically will make Star Trek fans happy, although not all of them. They're never happy. But that, like, kind of swerved away from the, you know, notions of Star Trek. But between Kurtzman, Orsi, and Abrams, you have three different levels of Star Trek fandom. Super nerd, casual nerd. I don't know what Star Trek is. Can we have the bonafides and also make it feel approachable? Abrams is like, you had me at Star, lost me at Trek. Let's just go back to Star Trek. For now, I'll take Trek until something better comes along after Star Trek. Yes, placeholder. The frontrunner for the role of John Carter was an actor named Taylor Kitsch, who gets the role. Now, we have fought on this a little bit. Let's fight. Where I feel like you bring up Taylor Kitsch as the ultimate gabbo, where the industry was like, this guy, we're telling you it's this guy, and you are. To me, this movie has two gabbos, although Kitsch is obviously a huge one. Yes. Who's gabbo? Gabbo? Well, gabbo is from The Simpsons, remember? Oh, yeah. Pressing it's canceled. But, you know, just kind of that, like, Taylor Kitsch, the big star. You know, they do this all the time. Hollywood, you know. Right. They put up billboards that just say the word gabbo. Taylor Kitsch! They're insistent. He is the man. We all agree. We love him. Industry plant, kind of. Whatever. I mean, Colin Farrell suffered from this. Yes. It's more like. A guy has a little juice, and they're like. The industry is so preoccupied on convincing you that they're already a thing. Why are you. And they think. Well, I feel like you have argued he is the ultimate. There was nothing there, and they sort of just, like, picked him and pushed him randomly. No. I have definitely not argued that because I love Friday Night Lights. Right. So there's no way I've argued that. That's the thing. Like, because I feel like the 2010s have a lot of gabbos, right? The one who I truly think of as the ultimate is Travis Fimmel. Yes. Yes. This is, I feel like, the argument we've had in the past. When he shows up in Warcraft, I'm like, I keep reading that fucking all these people can't justify a $100 million budget and this guy's the lead? He's on the A&E Viking show? You just got a guy who also has worn armor? It was on the History Channel. I'm sorry. Take it back. But Taylor Kitsch has the sort of, like, buzzy, supporting, swoony, James Dean-esque bad boy role. He was good on that show. Friday Night Lights. My brother and my mother are obsessed with that show. Travis Fimmel was just one of those guys where you're like, you're telling me he wasn't on Sons of Anarchy? Yes. They're like, no, Vikings. You're like, but come on, he's got a big old beard. He's got a bald head. I think the whole pitch on Travis Fimmel was, he feels like a biker, but we can put him in, like, armor with a sword. He'll bring the biker to the Viking. Tim Riggins, Taylor Kitsch is Tim Riggins. So Friday Night Lights runs 06 to 11, and obviously it was never a hit show. It was always struggling for life. It was always critically acclaimed. Yeah. He was always the sexiest of the boys on it, obviously. He's got the part that feels like the best show reel to be a Hollywood movie. He's the leading man. Like, torture, daddy issues. I just remember my brother. He's Dylan from 90210. He's, he's, the Hong, we all needed this. My brother and my mom watching the show every week would just be like, God, this guy is such a movie star. Like, when is someone gonna, you know, crack it? And I, I feel like I first saw him in X, I mean, in a movie, in X-Men Origins Wolverine. Like, I, I, and I know he's in, like, The Covenant and, uh, what's it called? Uh, The Snakes, Snakes on a Plane. No, but that was the real, that was the moment where Hollywood was like, we've taken notice, he's gonna have a small part in this, but it's a coveted role. A coveted role that could be bigger for him. It's like the Apatow thing you were talking about. We're gonna give him a little part here. Ten hot minutes. And you're gonna fall in love with him, and then we're gonna give him his own thing. Do we think he's good in, uh, X-Men Origins Wolverine? A terrible movie. Being okay. He's alright. He's maybe one of the acceptable parts of an ungodly bad movie. Right, maybe the least offensive parts of that movie. I mean, the movie does the same thing. With him and Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds, at opposite parts of the film. Right, Deadpool leads it off, he is in the middle. Right, where it's like, we've picked a star that we think is about to pop. Right. We're calling dibs on a character, we're placing the intent on the board. A big known character. And we're testing out how much you like this. And the rejection of both is so huge that it, like, sets back Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds has to spend the next five years of his life pushing it back uphill. But then someone leaked that footage, I wonder who it was. A mystery that shall never be solved. I remember, like, the Comic-Con footage of him as Gambit, where he's got the staff, and he goes, like, you know, he, like, jumps, and, like, and people go, like, wow! We've done it. And then you saw the movie, and they were like, oh, by the way, that's the only thing he does in the movie. That's literally crazy. Like, sorry. Like, he throws some cards. 90% of his screen time is seated behind a poker table, and then he gets up at the end, twirls the staff once, throws some cards, goodbye Gambit. That's all I remember. Right. Remy Lebeau. But, but, he, you were like, okay. He holds the screen. He did it. He's not bad. He didn't. He gave good Gambit. He gave good Gambit. The movie sucks, but obviously, no one's holding it against him. And Hollywood goes, like, that's all we need to see. Off to the races. And he books three giant movies, basically, back to back to back. All of which come out in 2012, Ben. Which was maybe, if I'm his agent, I'm sweating a little bit about that. In the span of four months, in chronological order, John Carter in March, Battleship in May. Which, of course, we've covered on our Patreon. And then Oliver Stone's Savages in July. Uh, was that July? Let's see. Yep. So when he's doing press for John Carter, they're like, you're the guy. He's the lead of all three movies. He's the guy in all three movies. And all the press is like, well, you're here promoting John Carter, but really, this is about the year of kitsch. By the end of this year, everyone will agree. It's getting kitschy. You're the biggest movie star alive. Things are getting kitschy. He has made five films total. Since then. Right. And he's like, obviously, he's done TV and he's done some other stuff, you know, but like, he has been in five movies since then. American Assassin. That's one. A movie you've watched many times, Ben? Once. Okay. And I just was struck by how. He's the sort of secondary. Trashy it was. Yeah. Keaton's the. No, it's Dylan O'Brien. One of the only Keatons I haven't seen. Keaton's the mentor. Dylan O'Brien's the hero. Kitsch is the former assassin who went bad. Is that right? I think so. Okay. I haven't seen it. But wait, I'm struggling to even name the other four. There's one you won't know. Four of them are real movies. Four of them are real movies, but he's not the lead in any of them. He's supporting parts and all. Yes. I feel like there was one thing I remember seeing him in where I was like, oh, he's pretty good. There's a movie, a Canadian movie called Don, by Don McKellar called The Grand Seduction with him and Brendan Gleeson. Have not seen that. Never heard of it. Okay. Don't know anything about it. There's a big war movie that he's like the secondary lead in that was a huge hit. Oh, Lone Survivor. Right. Right. Which that movie feels like it was Peter Berg doing a like, can I save Emile Hirsch? Totally. Can I save Taylor Kitsch? Like, bring these guys back. There's an extremely good movie that he's quite good in, although he's not a lead. He's part of the ensemble. There was a giant bomb from a great director that was a disaster movie, real true story movie. Oh, Only the Brave? Right. Yeah. Where he's, again, like Lone Survivor, one of the guys. Yeah. But he's good in it. Yeah. But it was a giant bomb. It was a giant bomb. And then there is a somewhat forgotten cop drama that was pretty good. Is it's not the Chadwick Boseman one? It sure is. 16 bridges? Keep going. Yeah. You need more bridges. Up. 24. Down. 21 bridges. Where I think I have seen, I think he might be the villain. I can't remember. But like, you know, he's just like, hey, I'm officer. Good guy. It feels. I'm following up on the case. I have a few questions. I'll see you later. And you're like, watch out for that guy. He is allergic to the idea of being the center again. Understandably. He doesn't want that weight on him. Right. I mean, again. And all of them are variations on the four. Former golden boy. In Chris' defense, obviously, he did do True Detective Season 2. which i know was like a what you know another kind of weird blank check bounce but like you know he wasn't he was in the unabomber show he was david koresh in the waco show right right he was yeah and he's been in a bunch of other stuff he's in that chris pratt show the terminal list that everyone's yeah always talking about but you get the sense understandably that the experience of 2012 kind of shook him to his core wow i just found out tentative steps now totally i just found out that he is the lead character in a terminal list spinoff oh yeah called the wolf dark wolf terminal list is really doing so well that we need a spinoff like are we sure want to see the dark wolf um how do you think he is in this movie i mean to be clear again like stanton loved him in friday night lights thought he kind of because he has the hair in friday night lights yeah thought he kind of matched the sort of classic kind of paintings of john carter and old paperbacks and stuff yeah and just was kind of like this is my guy even though i think there was some discussion of like you sure we don't want to like call tom cruise there's all this weird reporting of tom cruise being interested in the film it is confirmed that stanton met with tom cruise a few times but the rap article says that cruise campaigned for the job right and stanton says he met with him i have that feels impossible to me in terms of like if cruise had gone to you know disney and said like i would like to play john carter i imagine disney would have said yes but maybe not it's kind of a weird period it was a weird period for cruise yeah where it's like yes it would help to have a name above your title but also he costs so much he's expensive he's gonna take over like a big portion of your profit this is pre-ghost protocol which kind of like reset the cruise narrative like so it's the kind of the weird cruise version of pixar director goes to anim to live action that is true which comes out the year before this like it's also weird that you're like the things that you're like the things that you feel would have encouraged disney to green light this hadn't actually happened yet avatar hasn't come out ghost protocol hasn't come out right you're like the math retroactively you're like it must have been they looked at those two things and said sure i think the other thing is stanton's like we wanted a young actor because the idea is we're making a series yes right like they're only we need somebody who can make three of these over the next 10 years i also feel like the implication has always been that cruise kind of came to him late that either maybe sure kitch had already been cast or he had his eye on kitch he had certainly done all the yes screen testing because there was like josh de mel and chan tatum all the people you'd assume right the guys in that pot and then cruise kind of like swept in and was like what about me and because he was so focused on the trilogy thing he's like am i gonna have to make like a third movie with a 60 year old cruise certainly a 60 year old cruise surely not going to be making action movies at that point his body will decompose lynn collins also says like everyone i tested against was like a kitch aged actor right like if cruise was involved it was not yeah i read something where stanton was talking about like i first i was like he's too young but then i looked back at you know the ages of harrison ford when he made star wars and people like that and they were always younger than he then you think they were right and so he felt like he could carry it off he had the gravitas or whatever but uh okay can we having having said that can we talk about the performance for a little bit i know we got more context to get into but you asked i think it's a good question like yes is taylor kitch good as john carter in the film john carter which was a disney release in 2012 directed by andrew stanton i i i think it like his performance half works i think it works in spurts like the movie itself right and i think it's a weird case where you're like historically at this time a man of his age would have experienced a lot of life and could be kind of hardened and broken down by said experiences but to see him in a 2012 movie you're like this guy's too young yeah i don't buy this guy having the kind of like war wounds it doesn't jibe with his backstory no you're right yeah i think he's kind of good at the charming swashbuckling thing i think he has moments where he does the indiana jones thing well i think anytime the movie wants him to sell the haunted and the sort of weary yeah he can't quite sell it and i do think he's fundamentally too modern i think he i i mean i was another person who loved friday night lights loved that show my wife and i watched it i think he's kind of good at the charming swashbuckling thing every episode right and i he was good on that show and very good and but i think what he was doing on that show was like almost and i don't mean this like insultingly like it was almost nothing it was a lot of just like presence he didn't have to sure he was just standing there looking incredible and i agree handsome and he had emotional moments but like the emotions of that show are carried more by like obviously zach gilford you know like by other actors yeah and i just think he he he was good in stillness let's say and and in this movie i don't know he's it just feels like he's trying so hard i feel him trying whereas like so laconic yeah yeah and and this character and and i don't know about anybody else but in this room but every time he speaks there's something very affected about his voice and the voice that he's using you know it's almost like he's like trying to do john wayne or something it's it's got a bit of tug speed man where it feels like the way you parody an action star rather than an actual effortless action star you know like there's that one of the scenes that like half works very well in this movie is his first encounter with tars tarkis you have willem defoe who's very good and very funny locked in he is locked in i mean like he's done it many times he can just he's just good at this alien voice and tars aquaman he's good at this role right like how many times has he done this for your knowledge ben this is defoe on set like on the stills oh my god on stilts with a mocap rig over his head and sometimes defoe who loves challenges and technical exercises and whatever is like walking in stilts in the desert he's not just walking in some scenes he's like running and they have guys you can i found like footage behind the scenes of him he has a guy literally dressed from head to toe covered completely in green yeah whose job it is is to just make sure he doesn't topple over as he's running to the front of the stage and he's like oh my god he's like oh my god as extras yeah brandishing a sword but in this scene he's doing the you know like tars tarkis and he's tall and he and he's great and virginia yes virginia yes your virginia hilarious and then they cut to the other side and it's taylor kitch going you know like yeah what's going on man captain john carter virginia i he doesn't quite bump on me as hard as he seems to be buckling on you i don't know i don't love it i am doing it so you're saying the bad impression the presence and the stillness thing what's tricky about these types of movies and why it's always really tough to be like well we need a young lead because we want to build a franchise but that also means we're placing someone into this type of film who has limited experience yes even if you've worked a lot it's like how often have you been the lead how big has the project you're in the lead been and now you're on like a shoot where you might for two or three consecutive years have been the lead and now you're on like a shoot where you might for two or three consecutive weeks have one line of dialogue something like shooting the white ape sequence is like so many tiny little pieces where i do think you kind of want to cast for presence ideally you want harrison ford you want someone who's equally good at selling the dialogue scenes and the character and the comedy but also if you're getting in the technical action pieces every one of those is going to have an energy and a presence and not just be a guy hitting choreography but there is an additional problem here with him which actually is not his fault it is the character's fault it is the character's fault it is the character's fault the conception of the character which is that they cast this incredibly handsome striking man to play a shockingly frequent like focus of ridicule especially in the beginning of this movie they you know the tug speedman thing is kind of funny because they almost do cast him as like this bumbling comic like yeah loon this a lot of the movie so much especially at the beginning of the movie is making fun of him they literally uh they like put him they treat him like a baby like they discover the martian babies he is baby they put him in a they put him in a diaper they do they put him in a diaper they do on him baby powder him they stick him in a vat of alien is it cum i don't know what it is it might be i feel like you were burning just be super to say something sims oh i'm not sure oh well sam worthington right again i can't help it but i do think it's it's vital when we're talking about taylor kitch because sam worthington's the same play yes even a less known guy who's been playing sam worthington for a long time and he's been yeah you kind of just need to be hold the center a little regular hold the center be relatable yeah have a little personality you will be blue often like unlike taylor kitch although taylor kitch briefly is blue in this movie when he comes out of the white ape yeah right yeah and i do think sam worthington is better why is that i don't think like sam worthington is incredible in avatar or anything but like is it just that he has like a little bit more good humor and like i don't kind of vibe they don't make him dress and act like a baby well sure i mean he does wear a you know there's so much it's it's just you've cast this guy who's so cool and i don't think of as a comedic actor and then like as soon as he's on mars it's all shtick actually before mars his introduction with the with with cranston with cranston is like him jumping out of windows peeing on the ground it's all shtick see this is your mileage may vary thing but i you felt this at the time and and re-watching it was pleasantly surprised I think he sells the comedy better than I would imagine I wouldn't say he's funny in this yeah but i also think if we're looking at right worthington honem headland sure right right right the guys in this so right honem is i mean uh like pacific ram i guess anything arthur later right headland is you know uh tron legacy which i like that performance in that movie but a lot of people didn't really and it's a similar kind of swaggery like is there a little bit of marlon brando wild one is there a little bit of cheeky humor in this that's what they're trying to get a modern they don't want a guy playing stoic sci-fi hero i think what works for worthington is that cameron kind of set him up to succeed in the inverse of how stanton a little bit set kitch up to fail in avatar he's like kind of the point is that you're the boring guy kind of the point is that you're just like a personality list marine and then we'll we'll build the humanity in later there's a we didn't talk about this you A Dead Poet Society but then i saw someone on the reddit call it out that hawk did this interview where he said weir was really smart about casting for the final color and what he meant by that was yes yes we can't believe we didn't bring this i know but i mean but that like in dead poet society you're like weird you're having hawk play like the timid guy not robert sean leonard's part where he's like the artsy ambitious you know passionate guy and he said you want to cast for the final color robert sean leonard will ultimately get you to the suicide scene where you need to that's his wheelhouse right and it will feel explosive when that part of him comes out likewise when hawk gets on the desk and finally is passionate overly earnest ethan hawk that will be explosive right and i think there was a little bit of cameron casting for the final color which is just like have jake sully be a little bit of a blank and then what worthington is good at is kind of the earthy earnest i care romance thing which is like casting him off of fucking somersault right yes but you're also really not asking him to be funny you're making him the joke but in a kind of lower level way and you're letting all the other characters pop around him yes the secret to that movie is it's materi is really driving everything and we're good and they cast that we'll talk about the rest of the ensemble in a second and all that that does matter i think what stan really wants is the indiana jones thing yeah and you saying that the movie is constantly embarrassing him it's the thing that at this point in time i think hollywood filmmaker are pointing at a lot we're getting a lot of blank generic kind of stoic heroes and what people are forgetting is that han solo and indiana jones fucked up a lot they were funny they weren't just cool all the time sure and a lot of it was watching them finesse a situation and feeling the struggle of are they going to be able to pull this off yeah well ford's really good at the i'm one plan ahead at best kind of like on the fly he's always scrambling and then you watch him trip but then you watch him recover right and this is a movie that builds in those moments of mid-battle john carter being like you know the moment that i felt like was really big in the trailer of the white ape the second and third white apes coming out and cutting to him sighing yeah of like oh this is a guy who has vulnerability he's stressed out that he's in this movie and it's i don't butt up against that as much as ask as much as just how goofy some of the things they i mean he's literally like i think you're also a diaper you're describing a problem that the movie has in general of it can't quite reconcile the goofiness and the epicness that well and i also tragic weight kitch also doesn't like work at the end of the movie when he's like my master plan is being revealed and i am still just like you just kind of feel 29 years old to me i do love the ending and the end i don't mind the concept of the yeah i just don't think he is i think he kind of sells it i'm a little hotter in this performance than you even though it doesn't totally work yeah again i i it's to me it's like it's an interesting way to conceive the character because it's not it's not from the books you know as much as stanton loves the books the books are not about this guy having these wacky adventures this is grand epic romance very serious and but and the books are very serious yes and you know like grand and here we have all this shtick and it almost feels like and i don't know this but it's just like well we're making a movie based on this thing from the 19 teens maybe we want to give it a little like silent comedy flavor you know there's almost kind of like a yeah when he yeah when he's bumbling around in the desert you're right there's a little buster keaton there's a buster keaton kind of a thing for sure in he's in the desert bumbling around trying to stand let's also acknowledge he's running straight from this into wally right like he gets disney to buy the rights to this while he's finishing wally this is what i was gonna say he's going into production on this a year and a half after wally is released like these things are like overlapping and wally as we covered last week he's just making a movie based on this and he's making a movie based on this and he's making a movie mainlining lloyd chaplin right like they said at pixar every week they would screen those movies they'd re-watch them they were obsessively studying the type of hero and as he said what he learned with wally is the emotional arc isn't the guy it's the way he changes the world around him i think you can feel that in this movie i had a lot of success people loved wally they loved that the way that i kind of imbued that character with that silent comedian energy yeah and it it seems to be here as well and i just don't think it fits this movie the way it fit that movie especially with taylor kitch as your guy a guy that i like a guy that i was excited to see in this movie he says he regrets that he didn't do enough personally he didn't give everything he had he kind of sounds like an athlete talking after a loss kind of like it's on me it's not anyone else like the team is great the coach is great um but he says he talks to lynn collins every day these relationships were born he says he had a huge respect for andrew i never had a fight with him even day at 80 in the miserable fucking desert because i respect him so much this isn't a production where people are like what a nightmare like everyone had a good that is true cast of this movie was into it has continued to defend it right like you read interviews with samantha morton with defoe with everybody to this day and they're like i had a great time doing that and it felt like the movie got thrown under the bus dominic west continues to defend it west who looks really good in this movie yes he does hot like you know like because now dominic west is like i play british buffoons i'm a little older you know like forget like dominic west was fucking i mean obviously we love mcnutty but like that's a little different it is funny when you watch a movie and you can tell what the director was watching at the time and you're like when james purefoy showed up i was like we don't need to be bringing i don't mind him as an actor he cannot come in this late i'm sorry you already had dominic west you can't be too british guy like a tv actor it's so much kind of rise of person prestige tv in late 2000s where you got a wire person you got a true blood person you got the breaking bad guy you got a friday night lights guy for sure yeah it's the that era all stars tars tarkas had that sitcom the guy the characters yeah it's called uh so uh willem defoe yeah obviously had worked on finding nemo he liked pixar he liked their approach and as he puts it that guy asked me to play a 12 foot tall jeddak of the green race of tharks what you're gonna say no to that i don't think so that's the willem defoe attitude because i feel like some other actors would be like uh no i do think no stilton desert no willem defoe's like let me add it when you say likes pixar likes the approach it's the other thing around this movie which is man pixar have had the best track record this is true of anyone in hollywood history and of course feels like they just work and work and work until they crack the story yes and it always just fits together perfectly and there's a growing feeling of why are these kids movies better than all the quote-unquote serious adult blockbusters that hollywood's making should they be making those how do we like infect the pixar process into the other areas of studio filmmaking and by the time this comes out the ghost protocol has come out yeah and that has only increased that that sentiment because it's like wow they he bradford really cracked maybe let these guys do everything yes i mean i i'm saying a lot of negative things about john carter but what i do want to say here i was excited about this movie right came out like i was so excited i i remember the trailer really getting pushed down our throats and all that and like starting to get a little tired of yeah that you know inevitable blockbuster sort of thing where they're just like you're all excited and i'm like teaser trailer a year in advance all right a little bit more uh five months in the desert on stilts that's that's quite an achievement according to willem dafoe mostly the four corners dominic west thought it was a brilliant film thinks uh andrew stanton is a fucking genius works with him again on finding dory right he thinks hollywood politics put it in the bin like he he's just right some of these actors are just like i don't know i loved that like no further questions there is i don't cranston also basically was like it was great yeah fuck box office fuck hollywood tracking like these jerks i don't think this film ever was going to be a mega hit but there is no denying that by the time it came out it was going to be a mega hit it was doomed there was three months of the most overwhelming press yeah the kind of trades thing where they smell a bomb and they start to exult and like did you know how much this costs and it's called john carter what are they thinking you know yeah which like then they tried to do with sinners yes and then when it blew up in their faces they were like okay but it didn't do that good for like a week and people screamed at them so much that they were they were like all right you know maybe forget it like i guess it's okay but there's also dick cook who had had this incredibly triumphant run at disney had stepped down rich ross takes over rich ross had been running the disney channel i believe right i mean rick ross was doing great at that time yeah right you know um teflon dawn over there but then he has a really shaky run like he inherits several films that end up being really successful like the first alice in wonderland and things like that but the things that he greenlights basically all start to crash and burn and he's out pretty shortly after this they hire a woman named mt carney who ran a boutique marketing agency to be put in charge of all marketing for disney films and it was a sort of shockwave announcement of like is disney trying to like do something different this is someone who does not have the experience and has not ever worked at this scale she's never worked in movie marketing period and this ended up being the main film she worked on and then i believe she got fired either a month before a month after it came out like this movie is overseen by a bunch of transitional people in the disney regime i just remember a lot of talk about the title yeah and john carter of mars or just john carter and who is john carter and there was all these articles about that and there's all this second guessing there's all this revolving door shit disney at this point in time is in a struggle which is part of why they fucking just buy marvel and lucasfilm and go like that's our live action thing solved but this movie becomes the center to focus on of what the fuck is going on at disney and how much money have they spent on this thing that we've never heard of ben just to clearly state this the book is called a princess of mars that title immediately evokes something but disney releases the film the princess and the frog covered on this show and it does well but not hugely well and their takeaway is no boy will see a movie with princess in the title they immediately pivot to the in development in production rapunzel movie being retitled tangled and they immediately pivot to the in development in production rapunzel movie being retitled tangled and the snow queen movie being retitled frozen they're like we need these kind of actiony titles and they say to stanton cannot be called princess of mars got it we'll call it john carter of mars that helps us come up with our franchise heading john carter's the guy what happens then disney releases a movie called mars needs moms aforementioned the final film in their deal with zemeckis he produces it but does not direct it is his final like mocap movie and it is a gigantic disaster and the takeaway from that is fuck mars is a problem and they zoom out and they look at the data that david mentioned before they're like fuck there were all these movies in the last 10 years and also like it sounds like a boy thing right like it's like it's funny that they're like princess is too girly and they're like mars is too boy they admit this yeah they're like girls won't go to a mars movie yes yes both things so you end up with john carter that means nothing because they're so terrified of scaring off both sides of the audience that they end up on a thing on er right like don't you want yeah of course dr john carter md uh but like yeah don't you want to go see a john carter well what's that about guy called john carter what does he do he's on mars like it's just like how are you impossible but it's like the perfect fucking like hollywood out thinks themselves into a hole i was watching the end of this movie on the train here and a woman sat down next to me and tapped on my shoulder and was like what are you watching and i'm like john carter she's like what she's probably tapping you on the shoulder and expecting you to say dune and she'll go oh that's what dune is i hear everyone talking about dune the idea that she's seeing this like expensive sci-fi movie on your phone and the title is something she hasn't heard of you i can't see you where are you oh my god david my glasses are so dirty oh no cracked wait a second what about zeni wait a second what about zeni wait a second what about that's an online eyewear shop with stylish prescription glasses sunglasses and customizable lens options at prices that make it easy to own more than one pair it's zeni.com you pick a frame you enter your prescription you customize your lenses and they ship them to you and they ship them to you and they ship them to you right to your door no store visit no pressure for under thirty dollars starting at under thirty dollars and at that price you stop asking do i really need new glasses that's the voice of someone stupid who i used to be and you start asking why wouldn't i just get a few they've got over 150 000 five-star reviews and if you narrow out classes online zeni has a virtual try on so you can see exactly how a frame looks on your face before you order yeah i got some aviators i got some cool aviators reflective so no one can see me i got some cool aviators reflective so no one can see my eyes right my soul in the eyes good prescription sunglasses i wear them out and i feel mysterious and cool and i feel the need for speed upgrade today with zeni go to zeni.com slash podcast and use code podcast 15 for 15 off your first order plus free shipping and all u.s orders over 65 the style sell out so don't sit on it that's z-e-n-n-i.com slash podcast promo code podcast 15 dune is another interesting thing to place out here we're watching this it's so similar to dune in so many ways and it feels like after this run of not just the failed disney boys adventure movies but like uh valerian you know uh patrick willems our buddy did a great video on what he called the gonzo blockbuster these movies that were sort of like very silly and operatic jupiter ascending and i don't know if you've seen it but i think it's a really good movie uh speed racer certainly falls into that and his argument is that like fury road is the only one of those movies that worked at the time there was a sort of like 10-year run of can we let guys just fucking do anything and fury road's the only one that's a hit and is well liked upon release and most of them kind of miss and it feels like dune is the final correction for that which is you need to just ground the shit out of this if you're gonna make these kinds of movies you have to really just like place it in you know intimate human emotions and hard details and versamilitude versus just like i don't know there's like a ship that flies i mean i guess i have to give this movie some amount of credit that they didn't water it down i mean i love that most about it i mean it's got these crazy green four armed aliens not just that they kept the names and the just the kind of like that it's about a bunch of intermartian politics yeah that they in my opinion could have maybe done a better job explaining could have simplified but they are definitely trying to get it all across um and as much as they make him a comedic figure this movie is mercifully devoid of you're called the what there's no john carter is it's more them making fun of john carter than john carter being like barsoom okay now i've heard that is true that is on mars over an hour for 51 minutes 51 he's already met why do you keep saying barsoom he he's already met why are you green he's met four armed green skinned 10 foot tall aliens right he has seen alien creatures burst out of eggs and he's like where am i montana flying he's seen flying ships and he's like what is yeah he's like which state am i and here we are on earth and she's like no you are on bassoon his wildest thinking literally says i'm on mars his wildest thinking is this must be that canada i've heard so much about well like they're like us but a little different again again they're just treating him as such a dunderhead like i want i want to just kind of shake him a little bit and be like i get with the program get with the program we're not yeah we're not in canada we're not in montana clearly this is we got to be able to keep up with this buddy um now the film is made in initially made at long cross studios which is in london which i don't know if you guys have been to london does not resemble mars no at all interesting dan mendel who shot this movie who's like a big i would say like does a lot of these big kind of productions basically the film he makes in between star trek and star wars the force awakens yeah he also shot star trek into darkness yes he shot amazing spider-man 2 he also shot a little film starring the hottest movie star in the world taylor kitch savages oh man he was the hottest movie star in the world this guy got to lens taylor kitch so much uh he's currently making my most anticipated film of all time godzilla x-con supernova nice he's basically like the studio was fucking being cheap we should have shot the entire thing in the four corners like you know deserty america yeah we eventually did end up there but it was way too late so much of it was done on stages it doesn't feel textured enough like he he's very anti um like that they did england's stuff it is maybe the best thing this movie has going for it especially now 14 years on is any time they are in a fucking like john ford vista it's remarkable you're like we don't get this anymore you don't get people and cgi creatures in a beautiful organic landscape that isn't the volume yes and it is cool that it starts in monument valley and then you're in this alien landscape and wherever they shot it it just it feels it has a a realistic texture to it going for the mars version of monument valley i think is a smart strategy And anytime the movie is deploying that and making it a parallel to the actual like West we see at the beginning, it is effective. But they shot this on film. Yes. There was already the 3D push that they fought up against. Of course, there was one of those last minutes. Right. Post-conversion. No concessions or adjustments for 3D. They shot on 35. Yeah, Mandela and Stanton were like, it's going to be too hard to figure out how to do this. We don't want to do it incorrectly. Right. I mean, the look of this, I don't think the look of this movie is a problem. Even if what he's saying about the stages. I mean, there are sort of like green screeny bits that you're like, OK, I don't think it looks bad. I think it looks I mean, there's a lot of really cool props and set design and costumes. I think all the production design in this movie is good. The aliens are cool. The Tharks are really cool. The way that they move, how, you know, like Tars, Tarkus gestures with his arms and uses his hands to like some of his hands are gesture hands. And some of them are like he'll move. He'll use all of them in different ways. One thought I had watching this again this week was like, I know it's John Carter of Mars, but what if it was about Tars? He's kind of Tars of Mars is a winner. Yeah. You got Willem Dafoe. Willem Dafoe is maybe just just because I just think he's so locked in and he did such a great performance. I want more Tars. I also think it's the single biggest story mistake this movie makes maybe is like having him vanish. I think this Samantha Morton character does not work at all. And I think I parsed what they were. Trying to do. But you're watching it and just going like this whole thing should be buddy movie with John and Tars. Lose her, have Dafoe play that role. Totally. That is one of the things that is pretty faithful to the book is that that character, the Sola character, has even more screen time in the book. Yes. And has a backstory. They make much more of the backstory of her with Tars. And she has a whole chapter that explains her backs where she tells John Carter her backstory. It's not like him. Like, I guess. And the movie, John Carter, just kind of intuits what's going on with like, she's your daughter. A scene I don't write that does not work. And he's like, she's your daughter. Right. And he's like, how do you know that? Right. And he's like, intuition. And I'm like, into what the fuck are you doing? These creatures are born out of eggs. You literally just went through their hatch. Like, how the fuck would you know that? Yeah. They all also not to be racist. Kind of look the same. Yeah. And then DeFoe's like, you have successfully guessed that the one in a million, like she was kind of. Raised as my daughter thing is true of her. Yes. Anyway. In the book, that's all literally explained to John Carter by Sola. Lynn Collins talks about this a lot in that 10 years later piece, but that the character was originally a lot flintier and spikier. Her character or the Sola character? Yes. And that would make sense. Have her be fucking Neytiri. Yes. And that there were like, you know, the three rounds of reshoots on this movie, basically. And I think when you're calling out the couple little pieces that feel more apparently. Green screeny. Those are like the brief moments that feel like these were the last reshoots. Yeah. Because part of what made this cost go up so high is every time they did reshoots versus how they usually do them today, where they stick out like sore thumbs. They would just fucking go back and reconstruct the sets or go back to the four corners like they were doing, like full production cost. We're just redoing. Indeed. Of course. Stanton says when we're at Pixar, we basically make a movie four to seven times. And I've never been part of a movie. Where you don't do that. Because obviously he never made a live action movie before. The way the stories get this great. He wasn't really prepared for how you do that. And a thing they said at Pixar all the time that I think Steve Jobs sort of passed on to them was the goal is to be wrong as quickly as possible. It's not to try to get it right immediately. It's to try to identify the wrong moves fast so that you can correct them. Right. Like you make your animatics, you put your own voice on it. You see what works. You see what doesn't. And you're like, fuck. If you can identify with the problem. If the problem is, then you can actually solve it. It's not about being a genius who has the whole thing figured out from the beginning. We talked about in the WALL-E episode that it's one of the biggest kind of like, and certainly the most successful Pixar, fuck, I got it wrong. We have to reanimate mostly finished footage. We're like less than a year before it comes out. He's like, I fucked this up. I had Eve getting damaged and WALL-E needing to save her for the last act. And they have to scrap and redo almost everything. That's not. It's not like a small change that affects everything in the plot. And then he sort of was like, oh, and it needed to be this all along. And the ripple effect. It's part of why WALL-E was so expensive. It was the most expensive animated film at the time. We talked about that on the WALL-E episode. But he's able to point to that and go, guys, I know that was an expensive choice and people would have said good enough. But didn't the results bear out the decision? Right. He's running off of that kind of confidence. I mean, again, this is a real blank check movie. Yeah. But here's. And WALL-E was a blank check. Which was. Yes, that is. And clear. With flying colors. So then he's in kind of like a Nolan post inception state of I did my risky, expensive thing that you were letting me do just to stay in business with me. And that exceeded expectations. I will say one of the ways in which I do think this movie is interesting is as the kind of larger meta allegory of John Carter, the guy from Earth who goes to Mars. Andrew Stanton, the animator, making his first very tentative. Very bobbly steps into live action. There is something that's interesting in that. I think it's in the New Yorker piece. But he said when they finally greenlit the movie, he was like, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. Yes. I'm going to run like a mile or two every day. And when I'm on set, I'm never sitting down. I'm never going to my trailer. I so badly want to fight the notion that I'm like an animation guy. I'm a nerd at his desk. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. And look, again, everyone speaks highly of him on set and all that. Now, it is maybe a mistake by him to do an incredibly frank profile in the New Yorker before the movie comes out. In which he talks about the fact that he showed a two hour, 50 minute cut of the film to Disney in December of 2011. Okay. So four months before it comes out. The Pixar guys who watch it at this meeting immediately are like, we could post this. We could post it. You know, like start doing all of that. And like, but we're confused by the beginning and the lecture about Barsoom. It doesn't feel really personal. And the Pixar process obviously would be like, yeah, yeah, that was our first go. Right. And we'll now let's get to work on fixing it. Thank God we showed it to you in the story reels stage rather than finished production. And then obviously at this point, there's only so much that can be done. They do do many reshoots. Lynn Collins felt like, you know, as you said, like in the original script, she slaps John Carter a few times. That was her audition scene. She's smart. She's a warrior. Yeah. And Disney basically was like, this character comes off too hard, too bitchy, like they soften her. At a certain point, she says during the reshoot, she was just like to Andrew, like, just tell me where to stand and what to do. I've lost the character. Like, whatever it is you need from me, I'll do it. There's like 20 minutes of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray. And it's frustrating because you're like, I know there's an hour and 20 minutes. There's a John Carter, the missing pieces. Yeah. And I want to see all of it. And I'm sure a lot of the deleted footage. Footage is like alternate versions in like a choose your own adventure book way of what could have been in the movie. But there's an alternate opening that starts with her that Lynn Collins is doing the opening narration. Beginnings are difficult times or whatever. Yes. And then it cuts to her sort of like meeting with all the leaders trying to sort of, you know, and her piece. And then there were several deleted scenes that sort of were more focused on her and the Samantha Morton character were beyond it just being. Well, that's from the books. It felt like they were trying to. They make a sort of parallel story of the two of them, you know, not trying to be defined by their fathers and trying to be leaders. And when you nerf her character down, the Samantha Morton character just feels like she is there. And the whole time you're to invoke another Simpsons thing asking, where is Tars Tarkas? Where is Tars Tarkas? But also, I think when. Yeah. What's her? What's the character? Lynn Collins. But what's the character? Deja Forrest. Deja, of course. She also is mostly just there and is kind of just a problem of like, we need to get to helium. And then it's like, I'm getting married. And I don't. I don't want to get married. Stop that, please. Right. Yeah. Some Andrew Stanton quotes that, again, perhaps I might not say to a reporter before my movie comes out. The demon I'm chasing is, can I figure out what my story is before I run out of time? Featers March. See him in March. You know, he admits like the second act of the movie, I never cracked it. It sags. And I would agree. Like the second half of this movie is pretty boring. Yes. First and third acts. More is happening. Actions a little better. You know, like, right. You know, he. In the Pixar brain trust, liked the reinvention of Carter, the family backstory, tortured Confederate soldier kind of thing. I don't really think that works, but I get that it's something. This is what's also fascinating is the single most fascinating thing about this movie to me. So when the marketing is in free fall and the buzz is negative, there are all these stories about the Disney fuck it up or did Stan fuck it up with the marketing? Was he too confident weighing in too much of, you know, I want the trailer to be soundtrack to this. The Super Bowl ad was set to cashmere, but the original teaser trailer was Peter Gallagher doing a cover of Arcade Fire is my body is a cage. It was like all these things in the marketing that were his personal taste. And they were like, does this make sense to audiences? But then when Disney threw something out, that didn't work either. So one of the Hail Mary past things they do for the marketing is they're like, how do we get people to, like, understand Andrew Stanton's track record and invest in the idea of him as a filmmaker? He does a TED talk. - where he explains the story - Oh, yes, I watched this. Yes. of the Finding Nemo thing, we of course discuss in that episode where he had Marlon's wife's death and the death of all the other babies scattered as flashbacks across the movie and the audience didn't like him. And that when he stopped being clever structurally and put it at the beginning, they understood his tragedy and then they were with him the rest of the way. And he, while promoting this movie, points out, I learned a very important lesson about storytelling that day and then this movie does the opposite thing. This movie does the, why is John Carter so angry? Why does he have so much contempt for the military? Why doesn't he want to fight anymore? Why does he want to run away? And we're just going to keep giving you little flashes and focusing on the ring and something bad happened. You know it. It's not a surprise when it comes, but it's what he talks about learning with Finding Nemo of, if you let the audience experience it with the character, they feel it. It's not like it's a satisfying twist ending to be, oh, oh shit, something bad. Something bad happened to him. It's if you can dramatically pull that scene off correctly, then the audience is endeared to that character. And this movie has the moment where it finally all like is shown to you is an abstracted flashback in the middle of what is his biggest action sequence. Big action where he's flailing wildly. It's like an interesting conceit of filmmaking. It's a very much right where you're like, wow, that's a big idea. It's a huge, it's a big idea. But it's self-defeating emotionally. I think it is. And I really, it's like the fact that it's his wife and child. Yeah. Do they burn up? Were they killed? We don't really know. They don't even fully explain it, but they show their, they show the aftermath of this. I'm just like watching it. I'm like, I'm just kind of bummed out right now. Like I'm not feeling very triumphant. But this is the Finding Nemo thing of, if you start with that and then you get it out of the way and then the movie's fun, we can ride with it. Yes. If you drop it in the middle, it bums us out. And the scene that should be exciting then becomes really heavy. I watched that TED Talk and there's a lot of stuff around the buildup to this movie of storytelling, the importance of stories and being a good storyteller. And here is the secret. We at Pixar have cracked the secret of good storytelling, which at the time, as Pixar fans, we were all like, yeah, you have. You absolutely did. But then you watch this movie and there are all these strange story choices that don't work. That aren't in conversation with you. Which is the thing about the Pixar golden run is that these things feel so holistic and so tight and they don't feel algorithmic. And you saying, David, like, why would he admit all this shit in a fucking New Yorker piece, right? Yes. He has always been a very frank interview subject. Right, which is great. Good for him. And I think he likes the idea of being a bit of an open source filmmaker like the guys he grew up with, where he's explaining the process and Pixar is so at the tip of DVD special features. We're showing you our mistakes. And it's like, this is part of creativity is you get things wrong and then you learn. And I think he's doing that because he's also assuming it's going to turn out the way the last two did. It always worked out before. A lot of things didn't work and then we figured out the last moment. Because the end of the article is like, it tested pretty well. We just held our first test screening. It got a 75. Disney rounded that up to an 80 because it was unfinished. And like, there's the hubris of like, you're hearing that and you're like, well, that doesn't sound that good. That sounds okay. It should be a hundred. Right. Nine should at least be involved. Right. But the iterative process, which when he gets tagged a little with, is this guy coming in way too cocky? Yeah. And again, it is this guy. And he had this incredible success at, not just as a director. I mean, you look at all the movies he helped write at Pixar. He kind of was like this guy who had the magic touch who was sprinkling it all over. Making a serious effort to reestablish this in every episode on this show. In this series. It is really important to understand that he was the story guy at Pixar. Yeah. That he is credited with being, he was the best in-house screenwriter. He's the one who always was cracking stuff, taking the lead on the script, you know, launching the original idea. Right. But ironically, this movie, it has some good things in it. There are aspects I like. It's not a good story. No. And, and. No, not really. We have barely talked. I mean, like, we barely talked about the third one. Which are a huge part of this movie that makes absolutely no sense. Which is also the biggest problem. It's the reshoot opening and what feels like such a clear reshoot of. We start with a big action sequence after a Willem Dafoe voiceover of like two warring parties that look silly. And they look so much alike. We don't know who's fighting and why. Talking grimly and you don't know what's going on. And then it cuts to the actual superstructure of the movie. Yes. Which is the Edgar Rice Burroughs thing. Yes. That this is, a dramatization of the author of the book who is now changed into the nephew of the character. Right. Who is being told of his uncle's death and is locating his diaries and reading the story. Yes. But that, and then once you get. I would not have done that. And then the story starts with John Carter on Earth. So it's like a rushing Nessie doll thing. Yes. Some of the structure in terms of Burroughs and the, and like finding his manuscript. That is from the books. Like that is a, that is, is something that he took from the books. But again, this notion of the, of the thorns and like, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? Why do we care? What do they want? You know, they eventually, there is that scene where Mark Strong does get to kind of explain what he is doing and why. But his explanation is wholly like unsatisfying and you, it doesn't clarify anything. And you're like, you know, he, every, there's all these scenes because again, John Carter is a guy who jumps a lot. It's like, why don't they just kill this guy? Yeah. And every, every time Dominic West is about to zap him, he's like, no, let him live. Right. We must further study him. And you're sitting there going, they even have Dominic West being like, what's the point of all this if I can't use this thing? And you're like, he's right. Why can't he just kill this guy? What is the explanation? I don't know. It's just the kind of Dune-esque, like our plans are measured in centuries. But like, the thorns don't make sense because, are they like a parasitic race? They like, they say they like manage the disease and the destruction of planets. They're like galactic. They like to manipulate. They're bigger than Mars. They're just for like, they're in it for the shits and giggles. They're in it to the watcher, but they get their hands dirty. What's the Dune, the Bene Gesserit? Bene Gesserit. Is that kind of the thing? I mean, I guess so. That's, that's what he sort of explains when he's in, Mark Strong's character, of course. But at least in Dune, the name of that character is Matai Shang. Yes. Well, no, in Dune is, they have a goal that they actually explain. And here it's just, we're going to, yeah, these people are going to rule because we say so. It's a little League of Shadows-y from Batman of kind of like, we're always behind the scenes. We, right. We're like, we're in charge of the ends of civilization. And they're also on Earth in the movie. They actually are watching and doing things on Earth and they're immortal and they, and they live forever. Right. And they're all, they only have one weakness, being shot one time. Which happens two different times in the movie where these unkillable immortal beings are like, they sneak up behind John Carter and he shoots them once and they fall dead immediately. With like a 1910 gun. Yes. Let's also consider, he's like, I don't want to do the thing where the movie has to start with an endless like, spiel of, at the beginning there was yada, yada, yada. Right. And he's like, the Edgar Rice Burroughs thing is a way to ease us into it to create a sense of mystery. What was happening here? It's giving us a slightly more relatable character, a more modern, sort of normal dude. And then we sort of like, slowly ease into all of this. And then they do the screening and Pixar is like, this, we're just like, too much fucking happening. Because in that version, he shoots the guy in the cave and then Mark Strong doesn't appear until like an hour and a half into the movie and start explaining stuff. And they're like, this is too much to drop too late. So then they come up with the new opening where you cold open with him and the idea that something's going on here. And as admitted in the New Yorker piece, that realization that that needed to be an opening, necessitated 18 new scenes. They were like, the ripple effect of this is if this is happening here, then this is this and this is this. And Disney's like, okay, we'll write you a check for more reshoots. Right. Because Disney is essentially like you were on budget and on time. The first time. Yeah. Like the shoot was not a problem. At all. Right. And you made successful films. Yeah. And now you're saying you need reshoots and that's kind of how you do it at Pixar. Right. So I guess the answer is yes. And he's, he's even saying, I'm here to sort of try to show Hollywood why our movies work. Right. Why our process makes sense. Yeah. And that more movies should be like this. Let's iterate. Let's just like, right. You need to, yeah, it's about seeing the whole thing and then going back and circling back. And what's fascinating to me is that everyone goes like, hey, dude, you fucked up. This doesn't work in live action. Go back to your animation corner. And then immediately it feels like the studios start making movies this way all the time. But like, but cheaper. Like where the reshoots are not quite as involved. They're lazy. Right. And they're just sort of like the first shoot is going to be almost a dry run. That's your, that's your first draft. Right. And we'll make that a lot simpler and a lot shorter. And if we don't have a finished script, then let's just get what we need to get. Speaking to those kinds of movies that are coming, you do watch this and you're like, I guess I realize why every Marvel movie ended with them. Needing to close a portal and kill a bunch of guys because it's just kind of like the audience can grapple with these clear video game-y goals very easily, whereas I'm watching John Carter, and that's before we get to the epilogue, which is the end of the movie, right? Which is not one minute. It's six or seven. And I'm just like, what does he need to do, and what will that accomplish? Like, I get that Mark Strong is bad. Although I'm not totally sure how you kill him. You shoot him one time with a gun. I'm aware that you could shoot him one time. But then I'm like, is Dominic West good or bad? Bad, I guess, but like pragmatic. He's pragmatic. He's sometimes he spends a lot of the movie being like, I love you, Dejah Thoris. You can kill me if you want. Take my blade. And then at the end of the movie, John Carter shows up, and he's like, Death to you! He's not a Gaston, but you're also like, clearly the movie doesn't want me to want them to get married. Right, and like, this wedding, you know, Mark Strong is like, of course after they've exchanged their vows, we'll kill her, and that'll be the final step in us taking control of her city, and I'm like, why? He's like, the fallout of that, and I'm like, why would that be good for you? Like, that you killed the princess, or what? And he doesn't really explain it, except for the sort of like, I'm the puppet master, and everything I do works out, you know? Your question, Ben, this is a perfect example to me of a movie that does the exact wrong amount of explaining. You either need to explain way more, or way less. Or just like, don't worry about it. Either you need to have a real specific answer that you can eventually sell us on, or you just need to be like, for a century, these two species have been waging war, and just go like, they've just been fighting forever. They're different, and they don't like each other. And instead, they keep getting into it, and you're like, I still don't think I have my arms around it. I know you're telling me stuff. And I never quite engage with like, do the Red Martians and Green Martians hate each other, or just not vibe? Right. Because they're not actually at war with each other, but they don't like each other. Yes. But the Red Martians are at war with the Therns, who are not Martians. But it also feels like the Therns are just kind of manipulating everyone to what end. Even, we all make fun of fucking Unobtainium, right? To your point of like, we make fun of the portal in the sky. We need the thing that's there. Yes. It's the reason these movies do this, is they're just like, there is just one thing we're fighting over. And this, you're like, what is the technology? There are several swirling around. What is the goal? Swirling around. What do they want to do? The thing is sort of the Ninth Ray, but they don't, again, they don't make it clear what exactly you can do. What that is, what it, right. How it works, where you get it. See, Deja Thoris has discovered it also in the beginning of the movie, and she's giving like a PowerPoint presentation about it. Right, and they're treating her like someone who's like, I found something called Unobtainium, you know, where they're like, you're making this up, or it's just fringe science. And then there's a Thern in disguise, which is another aspect of the Therns that we may not have even mentioned, which is they can look like anyone, and be anywhere, and then he like zaps her Ninth Ray with his Ninth Ray, and destroys it, and then somehow, you know, like everyone, again, no one believes her, and then she's gonna have to marry Dominic West, and yeah, it's just baffling. Let's also acknowledge that she's an inventor, and we need to shout that out. She makes a, she's a woman in STEM. Yes, and she's a woman in STEM. We haven't discussed Lynn Collins. I saw on Letterboxd that you praised her performance in this film in a prior, not recently. Years ago, like when it first came out. You've revisited this movie a couple times, though. We noted that you've given it a couple at-bats on Letterboxd. I keep trying. I keep trying. Yeah. Because I, because again, I like Andrew Stanton. Yeah. And I, this just feels like the kind of movie I should like. And there's stuff in it that works. And there is stuff in it that works, like Tars Tarkis, and the design of it. I do kind of like going to Mars. Yes. I kind of like Mars dog works. Yeah, what's the thing? We haven't mentioned Woola, who actually is a very good boy, and is very likable. I agree that he's a good boy. Yeah. He is kind of in and out of the movie. Yes. I remember the marketing being like get ready to meet Woola. That was also last gasp marketing. That kind of despicable me pivot to like, wait, should we go to the little guy? It's just Woola. Right. What are the things that are testing well? And he was probably one of the few. But he's got a nice little face. It's funny that he's like an alien dog with a lot of legs, and he's really fast. It does also mean that sometimes the movie is just like zip, and he's gone, and then he's just back. That is shockingly pretty faithful to the book, actually. Sure. He kind of like will tell him to stay somewhere, and he'll just wait there, sadly, with the puppy dog face. And then a few scenes later, John Carter will be in trouble, and who will save him? Woola will come to the rescue. So that, I mean, that is kind of, again, it speaks to like the episodic nature of the book. The book was written as episodic. It was written as chapters serialized in pulp magazines. Yes. So it didn't have like a superstructure of, it's the story of John Carter doing this. It was the continuing adventures of John Carter wandering this strange ethnographic. Here's some new cool shit I made up. It was an ethnographic report on this strange lost civilization on this other planet. It's also why comic book movies are not adapted this way. You know, no one goes like, I'm gonna try to adapt the first 30 issues of Spider-Man literally. Right. Because it was not. written in a form that helps you in adapting to a closed loop narrative, you know? You more like extract the feeling. But Lynn Collins, who I know from three things, I think. I think when I'm looking, I mean, obviously she's got other credits, but it's like she's on six episodes of the first season of True Blood. Yes. Like she is out of that season before the season wraps. But it was a buzzy show. It was a very buzzy show. And she was like the bombshell in it. She was the big hottie. Although the first season of True Blood like all subsequent seasons of True Blood is insane. And people die all the time kind of randomly. Which is what happens to her. And then like, she's in X-Men Origins Wolverine the next year. She's also, she's another X-Men Origins Wolverine. And it was sort of like, who is this? Who is this? But it had a little bit of this sort of like, the studio being like, we found our next fucking Hugh Jackman. And I must acknowledge Kayla Silverfox. I must acknowledge. She gets to give him the name the Wolverine. Is that what you're going to say? No, no, no. To your great consternation and frustration, I must acknowledge she was a graduate of Juilliard. She was from Juilliard. So when she is discovered, it is also like, this is a serious actor. She has the chops. You know, she's in the Michael Radford Merchant of Venice movie with Al Pacino as Portia, which is an incredibly important role in 2004. When she's barely been in anything. Yeah. I have not seen that movie. Neither have I. Like, there's no. I'm sure Pacino gives a subtle, sensitive performance as Shylock, the moneylender. That was one where I. I, look. I saw the poster and I was like, this feels like an attack on my people. I studied Merchant of Venice in school. I know the play very well. I've never seen the movie. I should watch it. I'm just looking at. I know. Yeah. It was one of those movies that was DOA, obviously. Yes. But like, that she had that role. Unless she stinks in it, which is possible. I should watch it. Like, that's definitely. That's a sign of some chops, you know? It also feels like, you know, a couple years later, Pacino discovers. She's in Bug? Well, she's very good in Bug. Yeah. I haven't seen that movie in a long time, but I don't remember her being bad. Um, but, uh. She's in, um, uh, number 23, although not in a big role, I don't think. She plays number 2. Um. What do you remember? That. It's not that I remember, but just a couple years after, uh, Merchant of Venice, Pacino discovers Jessica Chastain similarly, who is a Juilliard person. He does the Wild Salome, Salome thing with her. And then it takes her a couple years for the industry to sort of, like, accept her. But it felt like both of them were a similar, like. Pacino has found a young female Juilliard bombshell who he is working into the classics and presenting as I approve of this person. I think they have the goods. Which, like. By all means, Al. Like, that's fine. I don't like X-Men Origins Wolverine. It's a dogshit movie. I remember her role being incredibly thankless in it. Totally. It sucks. I do not remember her being good at all in it. Like, she's a blank in that movie. She has a hat? She's forced to explain a dream that involves a Wolverine. Cool. That's how he gets the name The Wolverine. She has, like, one of those lame powers where it's just like. She's a human. You're like, oh, this is his human love interest. His tragic love interest before he became Wolverine. And then the reveal at the end is that she's a mutant whose power is that she can emotionally manipulate people. Right. Which feels, like, vaguely misogynistic. Yeah, she touches you. It's a woman who can make you just, like. No. It's Will.i.am who has the hat. I'm sorry. Will.i.am has the hat. Will.i.am's character was. I got a cowboy hat on my head. And he's in the movie. He's in the movie playing a role. His character's name is Blink, and he can teleport. Like, Nightcrawler? Yes. No, he's not. Blink. No, he's not Blink. Isn't he? John Rafe. He's. Right. Yeah, he's at. The whole thing with X-Men Origins Wolverine was you could tell that Marvel was like. They were like, can we have Blink? And they were like, we don't even want to give you Blink. You can have, uh. And, like, just dug in the bucket. It also feels like. John Rafe? HBO's Lanterns where they're like, no one will wear a costume. Everyone is wearing a leather jacket and a hat. Totally. Dominic Moynihan plays a guy who can turn light bulbs on. Which character is he? So, he is weirdly. Chris Bradley? He's. Yes. He's Chris Bradley, who was sort of known as Maverick. maverick is how i would know he had been initially announced to be playing beak who is a grant morrison character who's like a living bird yes and then i bet you someone was like we'd have to like put a bird face on him can he just be someone who turns off light bulbs or whatever and then and then there's agent zero isn't it ben who of course is a mutant whose mutant power is he's good at shooting guns guns yeah this movie sucks like agent zero's power is guns deadpool's power is sword like you know like look x-men can teleport wolverine it is it is neither lynn collins nor taylor kitch's fault but for the infinite trust i had in andrew stanton the first warning sign was i've announced my two leads i've discovered the stars of tomorrow both of them are in the cast of x-men origins and i was like i feel like we should treat that movie as like a three mile island stay away at all costs especially since it ends on three mile island yes it's true it's also funny in a thrilling and coherent sequence just not in it no he's in it sabertooth is like he has sideburns and a jacket he's played by liam some little fingernails you should google liam schreiber like running as sabertooth and we're gonna watch your face as you watch this man jumping like a dog he's got like a kind of like right like a dog gallop i think liam schreiber is the one good performance in that movie he's he's got a take but it's also funny that already less than 10 years in the x-men franchise was like we're just retconning everything now here's sabertooth who is nothing like the previous sabertooth and is also his brother yes this is true do we think lynn collins is good in john carter i don't think she's bad does not work at right no it's kind of the same thing with with taylor kitch where it's like i don't necessarily dislike her yeah the problems are sort of putting her into this role which has all these these issues the the the structure of it is is way off i i find like i don't really get the accent she decided on this kind of like vaguely english regally kind of accent i mean she hits it harder than i remembered i'll give you that she's also kind of similar to natalie portman in attack of the clones as we talked about yes she's like brown like or well tan bronze she's red because she's a red my wife kept being like what she's supposed to be and i was like red martian and my wife was like and that is and i was like what do you want from me i don't know i mean like desert i guess in the books everyone is like bright red which makes them look like aliens even though they are otherwise humanoid it is visually distinctive i feel like stan communicates that it they thought it would feel a little silly and they wanted to make it a little more grounded they end up at heavily tanned they end up in this red kind of with some makeup tribally tattooed no i also feel like it just feels like college student who went to morocco and still thinks they can be like that yeah it was unspoken but i have to imagine part of their concern was like if if they are bright red and and too caked and tribal stuff do we get into touchy native american territory i suspect that that was a consideration where they end up in trying to avoid that almost feels more uncomfortable i would agree and i i think you're right it's very padme where it's like what is your weird like mid-atlantic accent yes right what is this skin tone what are we culturally pulling from none of this is her fault he kind of makes the star wars decision of like all of the aliens and the villains are british right like the humanoid the sort of they're they're coded as kind of the roman empire i'm casting people from the rome tv show on hbo right to the point where right i do think like mark strong kieran hins dominic west james purefoy like can we at least remove one of these guys like you've got maybe too many kind of uk ireland types of pig-based meat on one slice of pizza yeah yeah yeah i'm sorry david schwimmer is in this i think just like a cameo is one of the arcs because he's another random person who loves john carter and fabbro also did a little cameo all right i watched it what do you think what do you think good stuff stinks you see you see his fucking nails grow his nails grow he and he this is a movie that is so obsessed with not doing any goofy comic book stuff that they're like well you can't just have saber tooth be a big wwe wrestler with like a mane of yellow hair and like big closet roaring and you're like why everyone liked that and they're like no he's a guy who like talks quietly and his nails grow a little grow and he wears a black duster but then anytime it does something like him running on all fours you're like well now that's twice as silly because you haven't built a movie that can support comic booky shit it's so bad it's so weird have you you haven't seen this movie i truly was thinking when you're talking about it i mean love wolverine yeah he's my guy wolverine i've don't remember this at all this is another franchise death thing he's got to google another thing then you have to google final battle yeah final battle deadpool and you got to see what they make deadpool so ryan reynolds really wanted to play deadpool like early on he called dibs on that yeah and i want to make my own movie as deadpool then they go we've written deadpool into x-men origins wolverine this is a good launching pad but it's going to be early deadpool before he really becomes deadpool so he's just wade wilson and he's going to be deadpool and he's going to be deadpool and he's going to be deadpool a merc with a mouth he looks like he's mercenary he's ryan reynolds with a red tank top who's got double swords yes and then they decide fuck he popped in the first act right he's the only thing people like in this and we dispense of him so they do extensive reshoots to make deadpool the villain at the end of the movie where they've kidnapped deadpool and tortured him and made him into like a mega mutant where now he has like seven different powers he has a cyclops's optic blast he has teleport he can teleport just like john wraith everyone's favorite teleport exactly favorite and ryan reynolds is like i refuse to do this so scott adkins legendary great scott adkins martial artist hero king of the dtv action movie is in ryan reynolds makeup as mouthless deadpool which is a joke to spite the fans of well deadpool is famously the merc with a mouth danny houston the second of four actors to play william striker there's been a lot keep saying why won't you shut up wade and so when they do all these weird operations on him the first thing they do is sew his mouth shut right you know that thing that everyone hates when deadpool can make jokes during action sequences to be fair i i did grow to hate it we do hate it but it has made billions i'm gonna say confidently that john wraith aka maverick is no those are two different people john wraith aka what what's his name i don't know i think it might just be i think his name is wraith maverick is maverick was yeah exactly dude i can't watch this anymore this is dog shit yeah but this was they know he is called maverick you guys are thinking you guys already forgot what the other guys by is this this is no goodest they had made the third x-men and they were like that is the proper end to the bradley was also known as maverick there we go wow they did it for both the wikipedia says john wraith's other name is kestrel they were like x-men was a trilogy we are done and the ongoing future of the x-men franchise is doing spin-off origin movies we're gonna do everyone's backstory and this one bombs so hard they take the script for x-men origins colon magneto and retrofit that into first class yes the sort of nazi hunting stuff was supposed to be the whole pull it off yeah kind of pull it off that movie kind of i think wraith is okay so the most famous x-men who teleports is nightcrawler obviously number two is blink i would say blink was a very popular character for a while there yeah number three with a bullet i'm going for magic i was gonna say magic magic magic magic magic magic because she can dimensionally travel yes and she has a cool sword number four let's talk about him nightcrawler's weird brother azazel is that how you say it i don't i never even know how to say it or azazel azazel azazel yeah he can do kind of like red teleport and i say azazel number five dad which gives him like he's a nepotism but it's red because he read instead of red instead of blue purple yeah yeah and mystique is his mom yeah that's true number five i think it's got to be pixie pixie pixie and she was hot in the 2010s or whatever yes like matt fraction era maybe correct yeah i think i'm comfortable putting john wraith at six good right given that he was anyone that would go above him everyone else listed with teleporting powers are people like hope summers who just copy other powers or people like apocalypse who just kind of have like all the it's a bonus right yeah it's sort of like that's his like 20th power it's also funny and then we're going to close the loop on x-men origins wolverine maybe we reopen we're just counting x-men right yeah x-men universe right because like lockjaw is obviously right it's a better marvel and you know what there was that gateway character who okay we didn't forget gateway so maybe he's maybe rates down to eight rates gotta be above she makes star star portals that's true but she's not really x-men right no i'm saying if we're opening it up to marvel yeah they're like so afraid of letting any of these characters be comic booky but they also include blob who had been cut out of all three mainline x-men movies up until that point and they're like oh my god they do but i feel like their take on blob is like he's large has suit on like has like a makeup suit on aesthetic suit but like he's not actually blobby he's kind of tough no punch their take is rather than blob's power being like this endless kind of growth of mass that it like has so much power behind it they're like he was a guy whose power was bulletproof skin and then he let himself let himself go that is that is the take i forgot be like an extension of a mutant evolution They're just like, this guy just eats too much junk. food now yes wolverine served with him in the war and he was really cut and then he goes to a boxing gym he's just a fat ass eating cheetos and they make fat jokes for five minutes yes and he has a voice they gave him a voice it's kevin kevin durand who i who i always enjoy a lovely actor um like that x-men origins wolverine problem of where they're like meet all these new characters oh okay no no no meet them later when they suck we'll meet them before they're we'll see them for two minutes at the start and then later he'll rebuild a team that you don't know anything about you only see them before they figure their thing out and after they're washed up after they suck and then we kill them and then they all die immediately anyway so who cares right okay so i can't believe that movie didn't work yeah david yes red alert uh-oh there's been an outbreak biohazard of a new patreon series yeah it's contagious oh that's so true it's it's uh it's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure from the fine folks at the umbrella corporation we are covering resident evil the film franchise yes we've got the first franchise six movies yes that beautiful second franchise how many six seven it's got uh the one oh it's got the one we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing commentaries on yes the resident evil apocalypse extinction afterlife retribution the final chapter welcome to record sydney this is an exciting time uh zach crager friend of the podcast has a new resident evil coming out and we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of resident evil movies why not why not why can't we why can't we we can check in for that august 1st and it's going to be running all the way through november 1st followed by your march madness winner dracula dracula himself that's so fun so that's great that's great thank you thank you so much john carter john carter yeah so obviously origins wolverine here's another story issue this movie has in my opinion i forgot thomas hayden church is the bad uh yeah thark he's doing a voice it doesn't even sound like him really no does it he's kind of going yeah yeah you basically give john carter the dorothy wizard of oz thing of all i want to do is get home i don't want to be here right before i got teleported i discovered a cave full of gold yes i was running away from the cavalry they were gonna kill me but now i'm about to be so rich save my city become our warrior and he's like where is the exit like i want to leave the gold cave it's not just i miss home but he keeps cranston's getting all the gold he's like i was a minute away from being a millionaire and owning you know the railroads and whichever which you already know he succeeded in doing because when ned burroughs is called to his dead uncle's estate you see that he is now a very wealthy man yes oh and we know for sure he is definitely dead right oh yeah when they really sell it's so weird his tomb can only be open from the inside it's almost like it's a weird puzzle thing anyway here are his books here's the picture of vim and vigor yeah not five minutes before he passed it is funny how taylor kitch again 29 when he makes this movie he's like the performance of him being like call for my doctor might as well get the attorney to you while you're out of the deal that was like very well sir i do love any movie where they create the device of this thing will make you look dead for 15 minutes a little thing pufferfish it's a venom of a pufferfish is that i don't even know is that a thing can we i would i think in the days before ekg's heart rate monitors possibly you could simulate coma right there were more i don't know there were more primitive versions of nyquil and people would just accept you guys fucking dead i've never seen someone sleep that hard you gotta think if they were real the jackass guys would have used it in one of their movies at it would be an incredible actual prank to be like okay the final prank of knoxville died do we think the jackass five jackass best and last yes right which is coming out shortly after this episode's release yeah it's coming out pretty soon the trailer dropped today it dropped today do we think they try to do a flat liners that does feel like the final frontier kill me and then bring me back can we do it it would be it would be appropriate given the theme of this is the last one best and last yeah i do feel like i worry about them like the the sort of narrative and narrative they're putting forward with it of like we we know that as the last one this has to be like the biggest one ever yeah i'm just like i really just enjoy same y'all being together and having fun like i don't need you actually to try and top yourselves you're older yeah like i think your your physical peaks have passed we don't actually want them to die we enjoy their not only not die just like whatever like just have fun guys my read on that situation is that that was very much their intent for four right and covid fucks with four exactly and so i think knoxville and crew got a little itchy and we're like we didn't really get to do everything we wanted to do on four and people loved four four is really good they got a lot of suddenly now everyone the critically every every jackass movie has gotten better reviews than the one before it is the funniest thing this phenomenon and jackass is the best example of it where the fourth movie comes out is a new york times critics pick and also it said obviously not as good as the earlier entries right and you're like all of these were trashed at the time oh they were seen as a sign of a declining culture by older critics and all that the best of us right right um so anyway puffer fish venom we're gonna taste it yeah right it's in you you put it in the spider-man coffee you just didn't mention it yes we're all about to attain a certain yeah comatose state definitely and then hopefully our nephews will send us to bar okay so the idea is that a copy of him has been made this is a thing the movie also makes a bit of an avatar weirdly it's a bit of a like your body's actually on earth well they say they sent a copy just like a telegraph which is not how telegraph works which is very a very funny explanation where he's like it's like a telegraph that's a copy and you're like that's not how that's some 1912 shit this is stupid to even ask but we see that when he comes back to his body that the colonel is like bones now yes and he's been there for a really long time does he shit his pants great question is that breaches is john carter's breaches just full i mean look i think he hasn't been eating yeah but i'm saying he's just been laying there yeah he's not in a regular what are the rules well we don't know but he's not in a regular coma he's in like a your your spirit and body have been transported to mars a third right so maybe he is truly like just frozen in time right and not it's fascinating because if you're in a regular you do poop yeah oh it's all happening but it feels like a prestige where oh at this moment a new version of you is being made that is birthed at this other spot god yes right yes yes that is avatar it's like we've built a thing we've placed it there and now we're going to transfer your consciousness and there's one consciousness going in between the two but in this it is at this moment you are copied that copy is sent there right and your consciousness is being transferred but i think copy is misleading because his earth body is just lying in the cave right yes it's not to suggest like there are two john carters walking around on two planets you know what i mean there are two john carters but only one of them can walk at a time there's just one then really the other one's bodies though it needs the the body needs to exist two carters one one carter two cups and which one's pooping i'm just saying give me a big old rumple still skin beard yeah i did that would be fun same thought which is why isn't yeah shouldn't he have a big old bushy beard when he wakes up and also maybe have like that built a nest on his head and can he wake up in the 80s can he like wake up with the beard and be like where am i and then he hears like blondie on the like someone's like and he peeks his head out and he's in the back of a sam goodies all good ideas right now i'm sweating i'm like uh-huh uh-huh yeah no maybe maybe maybe i do that maybe yeah i do like when he wakes up back on earth and there's like crackling noises yeah he's all dusty that is kind of fun and yeah he looks over and brian cranston's a skeleton man that's kind of fun i like the cranston sequence i like the him constantly trying to escape and getting put in more and more restraints the cranston sequence is fine i think the movie it's interesting because like the mars adventure ends with him falling in love with deja thoris getting married which i would say marrying her and becoming the prince of helium a little unearned that they get there that is fucking complete they only get married i feel like because they're like i mean all the shit's already here so i guess we'll do that they're very space balls they've kissed one time implied because he forgot he wasn't talking to his dead wife and then he immediately walks away and apologizes and then like it feels like six hours later they're married their chemistry is not like it feels like they got they get married in the movie because they get married in the books and they probably get married in the books because it's like wow you're a dirty single woman i'm doing you a favor it's 1912 yes in the books they get married and then even though they don't describe it this is like literally one paragraph they say like 10 years past he basically they're they're he lives there for 10 years they have a egg not even a full bone like they don't she doesn't give birth to a child like a baby she somehow they don't get into the details produces an egg and the egg is about to be born when he is pulled back to uh earth in the book and there's this whole thing that is again not in the movie at all involving the atmosphere factory that creates the air of mars where it stops working they've established earlier in the book this atmosphere factory and if it ever goes down there's going to be a big problem at the end of the book it goes down he heroically goes to save it or like repair it he's the only one who can do it he knows the secret password that can open the unopenable door because he's awesome the secret password of ned yes he opens thank you he opens the door and is like he doesn't even understand why he's like sucked back to earth and then has to figure out how to get back to his wife and his unborn child and that's the end of the book it ends on like a huge cliffhanger which this one really doesn't the other thing about the marriage which we haven't mentioned one time i feel like we should at least mention is in the book he and everyone is naked on mars oh sure he shows up totally naked well well they describe how all the tharks are naked yeah and deja thoris is naked like most of the sort of so like the whole book is everyone's just running around with you know their hogs hanging out and whatnot most of the visual sort of history cultural memory of john carter is from when frank frisetta does a bunch of additions of frank frisetta is like sort of the main conan artist you know that sort of classical kind of oil painting barbarian look and um they were very scantily clad like it was sort of like deja thoris is wearing like a ribbon bikini right yes very and john carter's wearing like the the skimpiest loincloth and so that was another thing where sam was like that would look silly it can't be that cheesecakey um i think the furthest this movie could successfully go and sell me is that by the end of the movie he's identified that he's fallen for her that they have a connection and then he gets that back and that's why he wants to go back you can't sell me by the end of it they've settled we're obviously madly in love with each other i'm ready to be here forever right i mean because that is the movie is like right the triumph is he's decided to be john carter of mars right he's gonna throw away the medallion he's gonna like he this is it his new life is here in the kingdom where he now lives right the medallion that he sometimes is like he literally leaves behind in places like and in other times is like desperately like scrambling to grab such a focus shot when he's jumping away the first time with the medallion there and i go oh right so the movie's gonna be he doesn't realize this is valuable and the rest of the film is he has to get the medallion back no which feels like a cleaner thing to track in terms of us saying like what is the movie like what are the stakes what is he gunning for if it's oh he left the fucking ruby slippers behind yeah just give it to dominic west have him have it the whole in order to get back to the gold cave he's got to get the medallion and that's what's driving him the whole movie that's what keeps him in the battle stan like a year or two after this movie came out was like well seems like they're never gonna be sequels i'll tell you some of the stuff i was thinking and posted like the logos for the sequels and his opening for the second film which it was gonna open with the story of john carter being told and then the reveal that it was deja thoris telling it to their son okay and that's like opening title then it cuts to john carter like in the coffin ned activating him him going back up he gets there many years have passed deja and the son have gone missing and the movie is him trying to find them and then discovering the atmosphere machine okay right uh so it feels like it rushes to the wedding because he's already like i'm planning out i want to go to the wedding i want to go to the wedding i want to go to the start with the kid look this is fucking trilogy brained bullshit that fucked up the 2000s but whereas to bring it up one more time avatar yep the end of avatar they shoot the villain that you hate full of arrows until he dies yes which rocks and i clap and cheer yeah humans leave home tree is saved awa has heard us yeah great and it's like oh what will the sequels be and it's like we'll figure it out later i don't care right you need an ending and a sense of triumph here the triumph is like well we definitely took mark strong off the board and i'm like okay and i get to be the prince and you're like a prince of helium what does that mean i don't know look i've decided to live on mars and that's what's important 10 to 15 years of this as a fucking cancer in the industry and i blame lord of the rings for all of it and it's so annoying that they never stepped back and went oh right but lord of the rings was a trilogy of books that worked on paper we were adapting a thing that was rock solid right versus anytime there was a new attempt at a franchise whether it was adapted from something or original it was littered with all of these threads that were and that's going to be really important in the second movie right the third movie is going to pay that off right and there was a lot of i think backlash against this movie that was the anger from audiences having seen this 15 times already of i don't want to watch the movie that's how good the next movie is going to be make the fucking movie right right now this problem moved to tv obviously which you know it has its own similar issues it's the thing that marvel cracked that helped for a while which is oh thor one doesn't need to be setting up thor 2 no one needs to sell you by existing right right and then what it's setting up is your continued investment in the marvel universe little tease of captain america right and the sequels to each sub-franchise are kind of standalone yes they they aren't feeding off of the things set up here or there or whatever it's more just the larger buy-in you feel like you're kind of getting a complete meal and then they're teasing you with what the next meal a lot of the ones that don't work were the ones that avoided that and instead tried to make it too heavy on lore dr strange like oh the whole first movie baron morto is his friend and at the end he's like i might think about being evil he's still thinking about it he's still thinking about like 10 years later he's like maybe do you think chihuahua's agent calls once a week once a month once a year i heard you guys are doing an avengers movie he'll be in that one right what about morto and you still own his ass like you still have him under contract when's he gonna be a baron okay my jet x jet x jet x jet x anything else we want to talk about uh as far as john carter anything from the movie you haven't covered john carter mars ah there's nothing else i want to talk about i have seen this movie three times i think same i have always uh thought that it's an impressive swing that doesn't work the first 45 minutes to an hour every time i watch it i'm like does this work there's nothing about it that i out and out hate same there's very little of it that i love though like there's nothing that i'm like i'm unambiguously into that and like there's a good amount of stuff i like i would agree with you that there's nothing i love like do you which also has like flying bug ships right is much more my vibe same because like that one just as much as it's silly and insane there's a little bit of a better idea giving you like the power struggles i agree because it simplifies them every performance is big i was gonna say it's also bigger it's like more bombastic it's messier but it doesn't and it has that wachowski i don't give a fuck thing that this one's like you're saying it's trying like we could be the next star wars right presenting is like we're not the next star wars anything this is just crazy okay it's also this weird balance of this movie doesn't feel that studio managed outside of maybe the kind of nerfing of lynn collins character down to like the most one-dimensional damsel in distress definitely does it it feels pretty pure but it does feel like they're um not self-censoring but they're so in their heads about how do we make this cool versus how do we make like it's the disney problem right like they're always a little too worried about being uncool because they know they're not that time legacy has that whole thing where you're like everyone loves this first movie but also it was too nerdy at the time right can we make this a little more badass i just think the iterative we're going to reshoot it three times we start filming with an unfinished script kind of thing we'll fix it in post we'll find the story beats later we'll fill in the gaps but comes how basically almost every marvel dc and star wars movie is made it's more the exceptions to the rule the ones like the last jedi where you're like that seemingly was what they planned they shot it the way they wanted to every other disney star wars movie was by all accounts made like this and you saying sims i wish they would write the fucking book on rise of skywalker certainly notably there used to always be these very transparent making of books and lucas would allow the making of docs there was one that was announced for force awakens and then was pulled and canceled something nothing about mad singer when you write an entire book oh they don't let you publish oh yeah no that's never happened to me that i can speak about on the record but the answer was they changed a lot of shit substantially and i think learning a little from the lesson of john carter they're like we don't want people to know that we didn't have it all figured out from the get-go yeah we don't want to communicate to people that we figured it out on the go but then you get disasters like justice league being shot two complete times and then you get disasters like justice league being shot two complete times and then you get disasters like justice league being shot two complete times and times. Solo being shot two complete times with different directors that are this again and like disney is the one who is more often than not green lighting movies and allowing them to happen this way and it was a too big to fail thing where the star wars movies and the marvel movies in particular kept on just making enough money that it wasn't stupid to spend 300 million dollars to shoot a film three times yeah i just again this it's just at best to me it's like i agree with what you said david i would also just say it's like you noticed on my letterboxd i keep watching it it's like a movie right it's a movie that i'm sort of inexplicably drawn to even though i don't particularly like it it's like a classic five out of ten it's like i wouldn't say i like this movie but i guess maybe it's just because i do like and respect andrew stanton as a filmmaker that i'm just always trying to figure out where did it go wrong i think there's something kind of peculiar about it i think there's something kind of peculiar about it i think there's something kind about it right it's very pure in its intentions and it doesn't feel that meddled and so even if the movie feels a little self-conscious and a little bit wary of like letting its freak flag fly right other movies we're talking about are you get to something like doctor strange in the multiverse of madness which was by all accounts shot 27 times and every every is just scene to scene flows with no issues every time elizabeth olsen does an interview she's like at a certain point i was i don't i don't fucking know yeah she's in the lynn collins thing of like just tell me where it is tell me what to do two versions ago i was the hero now i'm the villain is this before wandavision or after wandavision right and that's a very managed movie that doesn't feel cohesive but has like explosive ecstatic sequences that fucking rule yeah it has flashes of rainy shit but you're also like this is a weird exquisite corpse of a movie sure and in an odd way john carter feels more coherent to me even if it can't figure out what it's saying it is like a straight line sure i mean it's clear that it is no i'm agreeing i'm saying it is you feel that the the the passion of andrew stanton for the material it's just you know and and look a lot of times that is where the best stuff comes from is that love of the material and wanting to try to transmit what you loved about it into the film version it just some something uh didn't get translated he didn't get the martian juice that magically translates i don't know but something got lost in the in the translation he's also just such a supremacist visual storyteller in my opinion that you have sequences that feel really thoughtfully designed it's not just that there's a cool creature there's like really deliberate shot sequencing and rhythms where even if none of the sequences like fully levitate they are well made versus the types of movies we're talking about like justice league where you're watching an action sequence and you can tell the parts of this were shot three years apart you're cutting in with random jokes and you're like oh my god this is what this movie was designed in post or any of that sort of stuff there is just a little bit of like i don't know there's there's a a clarity to this movie in its messiness that feels um that i'm almost a little nostalgic for sure that's a nice way to put it and i there's a reason this era you know uh is gone right uh and that the marvel era happened the superhero franchise era happened and i don't know if you've seen it but i don't know if you've happened and the superhero franchise era got out of hand too but did have its highs it is fascinating to be talking about this movie in the year when star wars is about to return right and now we're in a new era is the big swing of can we save marvel and both of these franchises are like on their heels being like can you give me one shot to win you back with star wars i will basically i'm always like you know like i'm like star wars can continue to flop and we'll always be there for someone to kind of grab the ball years later if they want right like i could buy pretty much three flops in a row but like who cares like maybe 10 years marvel the doomsday thing it's a little bit more like if that doesn't work a harder reset may be required yeah like a very hard reason i'm also i'm watching this asking myself what are the chances i prefer the mandalorian and grogu to this and i i would love to be pleasantly surprised but everything i see from the marketing of the movie makes me feel like it is going to be basically john carter vibes interesting in that favreau yeah wanted to make a john carter i don't know mandalorian grogu look to me it looks so good i just know what it's about and it looks good like that's the thing you know people on twitter have been like rise of skywalker looks good it does it has sets it's got lighting choices right he's very good dp flop movie we can all agree but it's crazy that now not even this new star wars movie does looks like a verizon commercial like what the fuck is going on i'm just like they let stanton shoot it his way they went to places they built giant sets you know they put people in a ton of costumes i'm looking up i'll tell you okay i was right so we're talking about favreau wanted to make john carter uh which has the tharks a lot of arms i'm looking right now martin scorsese's character in mandalorian he's got a lot of arms he's not tall he's not big i believe like a little thark martin scorsese is playing a species that is the same thing that john favreau is in solo and they are i saw some tweets saying they were related yeah and someone being like i can't believe like scorsese is playing a glupshido which is of course the sort of the internet playing like glupshido's uncle exactly like that they're like we finally got scorsese to be in star wars how fun he's who is he well you remember the guy in solo no oh i was hoping you did because he's his uncle like you know it's very funny i mean like everyone i know under the age of 10 seems a little excited by mandalorian and grogu just because it is the first star wars movie being released in theaters in their conscious lifetime it's just oh right star wars hasn't been movies my kids are my kids are psyched and i like grogu right every adult i know has no excitement for it save for our friend allison wilmore is not like overall excited for the movie and i feel like this has not manifested that many times on mic when we've been recording critical darling but before after almost every record she brings up how into hot java son she is oh the jeremy allen white six-pack road to the hut look hot java's son is at least a choice play exactly like lawson and fresh and i are shitting on mandalorian and grogu she's like but what about hot java well i'm told he's a large part of the film i believe right he's like the third lead or something poster i believe the billing is oh boy uh pedro pascal jeremy allen white and sigourney weaver there are only three credited actors on the poster who's the villain great question me great question truly this is i i'm like the movie has done nothing to sell me on what the story of this film is it's an issue that i do not know what the story is except like grogu will be asked to do a task and get distracted by some cheese nips or whatever mandalorian is hired to do a thing and maybe the person who hired him isn't trustworthy right double crosses him but if you're doing a movie that's the payoff of three seasons of television even if those seasons of television are popular and beloved i think your marketing immediately wants to communicate this is why this had to be a movie here's a clean hook story we came up with couldn't have just been an episode he baby yoda he baby he do he do be small baby yoda let's play the box office game for john carter yeah i don't know if you notice ben when you were watching it on the train with the woman looking over your shoulder but at the end credits when john carter gets zapped back to mars uh the it says john carter and then of mars fades in and that was stanton being like i my real title right and then it goes j c m like they have a logo but i like fought to get it at the end and i'm hoping that retroactively people just call it john carter of mars and maybe it's sort of that he doesn't really become john carter of mars until the end so the title changes but of course this movie is dead on arrival in the sequel yeah just a couple more things from the dossier i should mention of course uh there was a lot of fighting over the marketing which we sort of talked about but um it was stanton who insisted on cashmere yeah being used the led zeppelin song yeah right in the trailer even though that was the super bowl teaser um you were seeing clips from the movie and as the camera pulled back you realized the clips were inside the letters john carter as cashmere plays some of the disney executives were like isn't that like an old song that young people won't care about he he went for that but this is where it's a perfect storm because then disney goes like you gotta let us take control of the marketing and then they make even worse decisions when like deadline was doing it sort of post mortem on the box office failure they had a bunch of marketing people and they were like you gotta let us make sure that we're doing it right and i was like okay let's make sure we're doing it right and they were like okay let's make sure we're doing it right and i was like okay this is the most disastrous marketing campaign in the history of hollywood it is like going to be studied for decades they fucked every made every mistake or whatever by the premiere the vibes are horrendous you know it's like the premiere was not celebratory at all lynn collins tells a story of watching taylor kitch walking down the red carpet rich ross the boss of disney films disney who is about himself to be fired about to be fired kind of not over this just over general sort of mismanagement at disney i feel he like whispers something into taylor kitch's year and she's like i watch him like react as if he's been struck by lightning and i follow him and go what did he say and he said the head of disney just leaned in and whispered it's a disaster oh wow before the premiere and then they went down the press line colin says she thinks she like borne the brunt of it and like she at one point she says like you know taylor went on to continue to work he did battleship and other things and i think she's just kind of forgotten that like battleship was the same year yeah like he'd already i mean obviously yeah he did not like he did make more movies but like he no longer was allowed to they had different problems i feel like everyone learned taylor kitch's name and he became the shorthand for guy being shoved down our throats in movies we don't want to see versus she kind of just like retreated back into anonymity but she talked about that her reps like the week before it came out said like you're gonna just need to hide out like you need to disappear for a year or two that everyone around her was kind of telling her you're radioactive and and she yeah like fire the whole she no longer i mean she it's not like she's never worked again she did some tv she was on walking dead for a year but she obviously never made a movie like this again no and tars tarkas he had i mean he had a lot of trouble getting work well but he also you're forgetting the sex scandal i was about to say he had some off uh camera stuff some weird tweets weird tweets yeah should have left those eggs alone i'm saying the film opens on march 9th 2012 at number one of the box office surely surely it's number one romley's birthday i will say it also was like the meme with anakin and padme was like number one of the box office right number one right it was the rare case of usually movies that feel this ominous with the cloud over it they keep pushing it off as far as they can they pulled this one up they were so they were like let's rip the band-aid off baby let's make this a q1 right in the summer and they were like maybe in march it will overperform if there just aren't other blockbusters i believe it comes out the week before the hunger games that's a good question the first hunger games that's the other thing is they were like march no one releases a blockbuster in march we'll have the month to ourselves it's two weeks before the hunger games but the week a week before 21 jump street which also is a hit wildly overperformed right so but it's opening to 30 million dollars which is bad because they want it because it costs a lot of money if it had opened to 50 they would have been worried if it opened to 50 it would have been a regular bomb the 30 makes it a kind of like bomb that gets written about in like the new york times like 600 or 700 many people think this might have been the biggest write down on a movie ever but also after this studios stop being as open about how much movies cost yes that's true really did kind of change things where they were like i don't know it cost some money what do you want from me how much did avengers endgame cost i don't know the receipts are here somewhere we never added them all papers so many papers in the blu-rays and the rights that's that's another thing about this movie is for how much money disney invested in it there was no merchandising there were no tie-ins like all there's no merchandise spotlight you didn't eat one pancake with carter juice on it i was looking this up i mean it's very telling and it but it's also red pancakes and red pancakes that stuff has to be like figured out years in advance yeah and that is often a way they help buffer the cost of these things where it's like there are vinylmations do you have the vinylmations i've been looking for the cheapest one i can find on ebay vinylmation was a series of like kind of little leblubu-esque blind bag figures that all looked like mickey mouse they have so they had his form factor in the ears but then they paint them to look like other characters and they made four vinylmations they made john carter deja thoris tars tarkis and the white ape everyone's favorite characters the only pieces of john carter merch that exist but the fact that you know getting fucking denny's to do a meal or whatever helps get them free marketing merchandising these companies pay for the licensing these things help cover the cost and this was a movie that cost 260 million dollars that was all just disney putting their neck out how they didn't make you know like john carter milk like the white group that they stuck him in i'll never know no other ancillary sort of revenue streams on this it's opening 30 million dollars it's gonna gross 73 domestic 282 worldwide yeah which is bad but like it is amazing how like even a bomb like this made almost three million dollars so but it's number two it's number two what's number one it's just hilarious to lose to this it's the second weekend of an animated film holdover in 2012 it's not rio is it no perfectly good guess is it a dream works i think yes right i can it's it's an illumination i think no so it's universal yeah i just i can never remember who had what when you know is it the lorax dr seuss is the lorax over weekend too though lorax opening weekend was 70 it was something crazy and that was a movie that had an ihop tie-in where they had pancakes with a mustache on it yeah pancakes with a lollipop in the top of it i don't know i don't know i don't know that was a 70 opening right yeah 70 crazy it's so second weekend is 40 something 38 38 so it's dropping dropping hard for an animated but that's the thing we're like you know the guys at disney are like i mean we'll beat weekend two of the lorax right like and the lorax just like like kicks you in the behind is crazy that in four consecutive weeks john carter is the only movie that doesn't hit where you're like lorax works hollywood generally is like 21 jump street right hunger games mega hit so number two is john carter number three is um a comedy film that uh opened the week before uh with kind of like a kind of a format twist to it um never seen it format twist an r-rated teen comedy film oh it's project x that's right never seen this one which is a found footage right high school party movie because like it is not sinister right like it literally is just about like what about the wildest party ever happened and you're watching it like there's no like supernatural right it's yeah it's nerds throw a party to be cool um and one kid is filming it a weird wildly out of hand perhaps oh it goes crazy whoa uh one weird thing about that movie is miles teller is in it it's it's part of the early wave of hollywood trying to make mars teller a star plays himself versus the taylor kitch thing what felt like a slow evolution yes he plays himself his character is named miles teller and he's the coolest guy in school right it's like what if the guy from rabbit hole was a minor celebrity at your school yeah produced by todd phillips yeah and joel silver that movie was really extensively in uh in your funny business of course but like that i feel like project x was really pushed just like that genius phillips has found another great angle on and like it kind of it was also it was called project x because it was this top secret project it was like todd phillips has come with a radical pitch on how to reinvent the high school movie and they're keeping it under wraps i auditioned for that one like six times for every fucking character but it was project x was the code name and then they just decided it sounded cool they didn't you did you audition to play miles teller no but i probably auditioned to play every other virgin in that movie um uh this it made 54 domestic i'm sure everyone was happy very cheap i was gonna say it couldn't it could it must have cost 10 million bucks all right let's get into it let's get into it let's get into it let's get into it all right so now we're getting into weird though all right number four is one of those early 2010s action movies war movies like war is it act of valor act of valor wow because that's such a weird where that where you're like who does it star and they're like real soldiers yes yeah it was trying to do the 1517 to paris it was directed by two like action sort of stunt guys yeah uh is it mccoy and scott wall i remember the poster with just like shadowy figures like soldiers in the distance it didn't you know you couldn't see anybody they're gonna do an act of valor yes pretty well and was also cheap it made 18 81 million dollars worldwide on a 12 million dollar budget like you know i i don't think it's a masterpiece but it did exist and it made a little bit of money yeah uh number five at the box office is a horror film that uh had debuted at sundance the year before so january 2011 oh that has a very high concept sort of thing going on um it's the elizabeth olsen one that's correct it's a real time silent house i was gonna say safe house yeah the safe house is the denzel ryan reynolds i've never seen it yeah it's one take real time she's being haunted yeah yeah but it was all about the concept yes it was got a lot of buzz for being yes like a single take and she was hot that and martha were at the same sundance so there's this explosion of holy shit she's in two movies as the lead and certainly uh silent house is a skill piece because it's one take how'd she do that how'd she do it and then they waited a year to release it assuming that her star was going to explode and by the time it came out everyone was like people liked this at sundance it's opening yeah it sucks no it was opening number five it only made 12 domestic uh number six opening at number six which is bad news for this movie is the eddie murphy movie a thousand words oh that was a true nadir for him it was it was a delayed several years that's when eddie murphy goes into the wilderness and doesn't make a movie for like five or six years yeah because like that is basically the kind of thing where it's like your name above the title seems to do nothing anymore yeah it's like we're not even gonna just clear year like 30 million dollars on the fact that you're in a kind of family friendly comedy he had a couple family flops in a row including meet dave and imagine that and then he signed on to do tower heist and the promise of tower heist was it's going to be old eddie right he's going to be the wild card he's going to curse and so they pushed a thousand words to come out after tower heist and also after he was going to host the oscars so they were like eddie murphy's about to have a comeback and he did a great job he's he's going to do a raunchy movie with brett ratner and then he's going to host the oscars directed by brett ratner and everyone's going to love eddie again and we'll be in the halo effect and tower heist bombs and he quits the oscars because brett ratner is fired for using slurs having used slurs in his life yes no no he used them right he said like on howard stern talking about i forgot about the oscars he's gonna do i mean brett ratner had just never put a foot wrong you until then it's crazy it's insane uh yeah yes and then and then brett was supposed to my buddy brett was supposed to direct beverly hills cop 4 right after that he was like i'm the guy who's gonna bring eddie back i'm getting to host the oscars he's gonna do stand-up again and and eddie retreats for years number seven is wow safe house they're both they're both in the top 10 so that's denzel and ryan reynolds x-men origins wolverine's own ryan reynolds never seen daniel espinoza extremely forgettable action no one is safe i have seen that it is uh doug benson joke what if there was a safe house yes it but it is a real pre-pandemic right movies like that used to just come out make a hundred million dollars disappear right where you're like what's the premise it's like have you not seen the poster they both have gone there were two stars right there's two guys will they shoot them at each other are they friends of the enemies and they're like watch the movie it gets figured out probably probably you know the apex of it being two guns yeah like where are they like it's denzel and walberg what do they do they're shooting money that's in the air i think yeah i don't know like maybe they'll have to shoot all of the money who could say safe house was like the only hit ron ryan reynolds had in that run yes yeah you mean post-proposal of like him doing like lantern and and whatever and uh but everyone just gave denzel all the credit on totally because what the fuck who even knows what that movie is yes and then ryan reynolds goes into his forgotten movie and he's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm where he's like i'll be in the woman he tries some stuff buried yes i'll do mississippi grind he tried some stuff and then he stopped trying stuff yes uh and started making i guess in his defense oodles and oodles of money and running a cell phone company very well i assume what yeah i haven't checked in with them lately uh you've also got funny that we used to have to do ad reads for that uh i love mint mobile i would use it if i didn't have other cell service i don't know that matt's a good guy i don't know if he's a good guy i don't know if he's a good guy that's a great question if the whole value of mint mobile is that he does the ads why were they spending money to have david and i in like 2019 be like i love dialing numbers and having a phone call go through number eight of the box office is the channing tatum rachel mcadams uh film the vow a big hit this is the year where channing tatum talk about manifests what hollywood wants all these other guys we're talking about to be i'm going channing tatum john carter 21 jump street makes sense the vow magic mike are all in the same year he would i'm he would be a good john carter and he could be funny it could be funny he could be he could be dunked in the goo the vows one of those movies where you're like is this based on nicholas sparks and they're like no but that's what we're going not literally but metaphorically yes like weirdly based on nothing no based on nothing just original screenplay about i assume the vibe of all that must have been a bestseller it's serious 50 first dates number gets amnesia and they're married and he has to make her fall in love with him again yes love it number nine at the box office i assume it's great uh is another mega flop much hyped mega flop of this q1 uh which is this means war uh the uh mcg yes is that talked about in your book at all no no oh yeah that was like a 90s high concept spec by that went through every permutation of if they're never going to make a bad boys sequel is this the way to reteam will smith martin lawrence and then there was a version that was supposed to be seth rogan and another kind of frat pack guy it was gonna be martin lawrence was like often attached and they like bradley cooper seth rogan every sam worthington at one point they're like should it be martin and chris rock yeah like kind of try to do a new bad boys with martin and another like major black superstar and uh like by the time they're like we got reese witherspoon that's fun yeah so now it'll be spy versus spy versus the gray spy the girl one you know because it was the old one was kind of more of a spy versus it was always them fighting over a woman right but i think the woman was less of a character right and they were like we've hired a megastar to play the woman then they get bradley cooper off of the hangover and then he's like i want to do other things and they they're like it's okay it's okay chris pine and tom hardy and everyone's like i guess like they're brand new like they're both like such recent stars they picked the right guys but sure i tried watching that movie recently and they are just floundering it's a bad it's a bad it's a disaster it's one of those movies where it bombs everyone says it's terrible and you go well how bad could it be right and then you watch it and you're like oh yeah it was bad it it was bad it was bad number 10 of the box office is journey to the mysterious island a big hit wow we hit three hours again ben it's a problem this is a problem to check needs finessing we got to do it don't worry our martin scorsese series i'm sure we'll be filled with lots of shorties definitely i don't want look i don't want to call a shot i do think the next two stantons will be shorter uh yeah yeah yeah yeah well our guest for dory it could be some tangents and he he's coming in with a full-throated defense of its star a full thoted did you say full thoted full thoted uh though too small that's what you said oh boy oh boy um it's a fascinating movie and it is like it feels like such a flash point of everything that was going on at that exact moment of what had happened before of what's to come uh and and like stan unsurprisingly takes it very hard he does a piece i think with the la times like six months after it comes out rarely does a filmmaker own a flop that quickly that way and was like i decided i'm gonna take a year i'm gonna go to new york where my daughter's in school i'm gonna read books i'm like pull back uh and reset my batteries what had also happened in the background is that of course disney had bought pixar yeah they start immediately saying can we start up the sequel machine they're begging for a finding nemo sequel they always sort of have the respect of we won't do it unless the original filmmaker approves he oversees the 3d re-release of nemo that i think is in 2011 the year before this and he said that when he was overseeing it and he got to the scene where dory's says i where is my family he went there is possibly a sequel there so he goes to pixar and he says i would let this happen they hire a writer and he was not intending to direct it it was i'm clearly in the john carter right i'll be i'll be on mars right yeah i bring this up only because the obvious perception would be john carter flops he runs panic back to pixar and says can you let me do finding dory right kind of similar to bird eventually doing incredibles 2 after a flop or two the reality is it was it was in the works and then he said actually maybe i want to do it myself right but still rarely i mean rarely do you see a director you know make these crazy big swings and then immediately i i see what you're saying it wasn't created with that in mind but he does then go make a sequel but there's really like then how many careers are like this of it's an interesting animation to live action back to animation then tv and then back to live action and animation this is what's interesting and we'll talk about it in the next two i'm looking forward to hearing this in the blink of an eye i'd like to hear you guys talk for three hours about in the blink we're gonna keep that one 90 ben's giving me a dirty look the dirtiest look but he is like he is lucky and it's from his own doing that he has in his possession a get out of jail free card from the moment this movie flops he is lucky he's also lucky that he's already made uh whining nemo and wally right that's cool but but rocks but saying what if i want to direct finding dory no one's gonna question him on that absolutely they're not gonna be hovering over his shoulder they're like we trust that you're good you don't have to spend any time in movie jail if that's what you're doing next yeah yeah um yeah i say goodbye to matt i mean he'll be back but uh you know i think we gotta wrap this up maybe in three more years or whatever it's been has it been three years no it would yes it was when the book was published when the last book came out was i was here i think you're forgetting something there was something around more recently let's see yeah in fact let's see if you've made like a five time planet of the apes i definitely first spider man is your fourth yes wow it has been three years what the fuck since alien three we suck we do suck what a disaster that was three years ago yeah that's actually maybe more the uh sticking point at a certain point i was like if i ever want to do another blank check i better write another book i better write another book apatow was in march madness and it didn't feel like I was feeling like, oh, man, if he gets in, I'm in. I'm going to be. i'm golden no we were overdue to get you on either way um oh great news uh jj has texted us sony taps brian hedgeland to script helgeland i think it's helgeland zoro versus jango which is another movie that has been in the works for so long it was part of the sony hack i mean because tarantino wrote it as a comic i was gonna say didn't they make a comic book out of that already i'm sorry at one point gerard kermichael was supposed to write it cool what and that's it's so it's jango teams up with zoro the hero the folk hero yes and will jamie foxx be back presumably but but people don't realize all these things came from zoro this is the original jamie foxx almost 60 i guess these things don't matter anymore yes nothing matters um interesting anyway um it's been a while but i'm glad to be back the book is coming out in october comes out october 6th you can pre-order it right now anywhere you pre-order books please do it please do it please do yes it's very helpful and uh hopefully i can write another book and come back in three years and and review we all be back super bad or something yeah motherfucker no but that's not apatow i know but i'm just saying yeah we i want to do apatow too i do i don't think we're gonna do apatow would be a great blank check subject he would be yeah it feels like the last couple years we've been pushing and people are like why and this year in march madness people got it for the first time he did win a match-up he did yes i was watching i was voting and it felt like we have enough distance from it that it's worth studying in the way that you did in your book well i i certainly think so and if people agree they can check out the book uh business thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe tune in next week for finding dory with zach cherry that's right who is not actually defending on the generous is that's been a running bit for a year has it i feel like there's been a year of texting with zach he's like get ready for the ellen defense yes uh i don't really remember that but that's i but as i said to you when you floated that idea long ago i was like zach cherry finding dory episode sounds good to me it just sounds funny sounds fun we look at the spreadsheet and we chuckle sounds pretty good it sounds pretty good pretty good movie too it's a movie i've seen many many times because my daughter and i i enjoy it yes i don't like love it no like i enjoy it yeah there's fish there's fish dory and there's an octopus there's octopus he's a septipus sorry uh tune in next week for that yep and as always bar soon i love the sound of that poor it would be bad if it was like if it was thick clunk clunk this is like a ben and jerry's coffee david it's got a lot of objects mix it mix it mixings chunky oh oh there was a tagline wow okay let me do the tagline i think i think in fact that's probably your best bet could do a couple things thank you it's a potent a potent aroma it's a potent mix that is a potent mix blank check with griffin and david is hosted by griffin newman and david sims our executive producer is me ben hostley our creative producer is marie bardy salinas and our associate producer is aj mckeon this show is mixed and edited by aj mckeon and alan smithy research by jj birch our theme song is by lane montgomery in the great american novel with additional music by alex mitchell artwork by joe bowen and alex mitchell our production assistant is minnick special thanks to david cho jordan fish and nate patterson for their production help head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all the real nerdy shit join our patreon blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes follow us on social at blank check pod subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on substack this podcast is created and produced by blank check productions Thank you.