Oneshot - The Creator (2023)

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, David here. Before we get into the Creator podcast that Jean, Alicia and I recorded back in October, right when the film was released in the theaters, this podcast got delayed in editing and we were just never getting around to it. And then it turns

[00:00:18] out that it's going to be released on the 20th of December for streaming. And we thought, oh, perfect timing. We'll get the podcast finished up and out to you just in time for you to check

[00:00:30] it out over the holidays. So hope you enjoy the podcast. Welcome to OneShots, where the Lorehounds your guides to sci-fi family road trips. I'm David. And I'm Jean. And I'm Alicia. And this

[00:00:59] is our coverage of the 2023 Gareth Edwards film, The Creator. In this podcast, we're going to have a full conversation about the movie, starting with our spoiler free hot takes and notes about the production. And after a short break, we'll unlock the full spoiler code as we review the

[00:01:16] plot and story plus play a fun new game called Spot the Trope and dig further into the topics and issues that the film brings up. We will wrap up the podcast with some listener feedback before David fills us in on the upcoming programming schedule for The Lorehounds,

[00:01:31] properly Howard and updates for the World Shift Dust podcast by Alicia. A quick reminder that if you are into what we're doing and you'd like to support us, visit us at patreon.com slash the lorehounds link in the show notes below for as little as $3 a

[00:01:46] month, you can get ad free versions of all of our podcasts, early access and a bunch of other exclusive content. Another way you can help out the podcast is to leave us a rating and review.

[00:01:58] Apple podcast is a great way to help poke the algorithms which help with our visibility in on the end on the interwebs or something like that. Yes. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us or use the contact page on our website.

[00:02:14] We have a contact form and a voicemail feature. Send emails to lorehounds at the lorehounds.com. Any feedback we get for the creator, we will drop in our next Lorehounds one-shot podcast.

[00:02:27] Also join us on our discord server. We have a fun and welcoming community and we have channels set up for all the different shows and projects that we have going on. Find those links in the show

[00:02:38] notes. All right. Well, one shots. This is our one-off podcast for shows and movies, even books. I mean, anything that we want to talk about where folks in our lorehounds extended family,

[00:02:50] we can get together and talk about something. So I think this is the first time the three of us have done a one shot. It feels like we were just on the, I mean, we literally were just on the

[00:03:02] podcast for Loki. That's true. That's true. But this is our first one shot. Yeah, it might be. Yeah. Cool. I think my last one was with John and John. That's right. That's right. I think in November and December too,

[00:03:15] there's a bunch of movies and one-off projects that we don't have any big marquee shows. And so I think we're going to end up doing a bunch more of the one shots to sort of fill out the schedule. So- The Marvels, the Marvels.

[00:03:29] Yeah. Well, they're definitely doing the Marvels. But that's a one-off MCU. We don't have like a foundation or a Soka or something like that. So, okay, for this episode, our spoiler-free

[00:03:43] hot takes are going to lead us off and then we're going to do a little trailer talk. I don't know if anybody saw any good trailers and we can chit chat about some production stuff, all spoiler

[00:03:51] free. We'll take a break and then we'll unlock the codes. We'll start walking the bombs down the pathway to detonate our opinions about the show. We'll talk about the story, the plot. We'll play spot the trope and then yeah, we'll talk about some topics and feedback

[00:04:10] and we'll get into it. So I don't know, I was thinking about this for one-shot movies or even TV shows. Do you guys think we should have a ranking system or should we just leave it loose

[00:04:21] and have fun with conversations? Because if other people are doing one shots, do we have like a kind of a overall meta ranking or just do we need more rankings? I love ranking. So, I mean, but then about like just grading individual movies or

[00:04:41] we come back later and like rank the movies we've discussed? Yeah, you know, that's what I'm saying. I don't know. Anthony and I did, I think we'd have to separate out movies and TVs. And I think Anthony and I earlier did this year

[00:04:55] did the Wes Anderson film. I don't know, have we done any other one shots for movies this year? I can't remember. I think we're definitely have some more because we're going to have, what's the Zack Snyder Star Wars thing that's coming in December? Rebel Moon.

[00:05:09] Rebel Moon. That's kind of going to fit into that. I mean, there's Napoleon movie. I don't know. I didn't know if that was something we wanted to try to try to mess around with because then we'd have to get everybody,

[00:05:21] you know, that we do one shots with sort of into the same system. Yeah. We still didn't do Barben Heimer, but I can rate them too. Gosh, I know. And I finally saw Barbie, but I still haven't seen Oppenheimer. I haven't seen Oppenheimer.

[00:05:36] Everybody see Barbie? I think Marilyn wants to see Barbie. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Marilyn was also, she was a collector back in the day. So, I was a collector in like the 80s, 90s and she was a collector in like, I think she said the 60s. Very cool. Wow.

[00:05:50] And I know John has seen it. So we got to see. Yeah. It was just hard this summer, the scheduling and everything. A lot going on in the world. So, well, we should think about it. We should think about a ranking system and then

[00:06:03] maybe chat about it offline and see if we can come up with it. I've been working in the background. I'm trying to create a new Patreon benefit thing of a show tracking system,

[00:06:13] you know, with a Gantt chart so that we can see when shows are coming, but then maybe have some sort of aspect for Patreon subscribers that we could have community rankings, you know,

[00:06:24] so that way it was kind of compiling. I've got a new, found a new website too that will do calendar entries. So you could subscribe to a calendar and you could see the show times pop

[00:06:35] up in your calendar and stuff. So, kind of trying to pull all that together. It's slow going. You are like the master of spreadsheets. Although John is quickly overtaking me because his real life job has a lot to do with spreadsheets. Yeah.

[00:06:51] I do enjoy a good spreadsheet. Google sheets is... I have all respect for it. Like, I've just, you are impressive. I enjoy a spreadsheet, but you inspire me to strive for new levels.

[00:07:06] I am new and I'm not into formulas and things like that. That's a whole other level. Like there's a whole other level going on there. Well, maybe we should talk about the movie given that we're

[00:07:14] seven minutes into this podcast. Let's lead it off with John, spoiler-free hot take. Where are you on the creator? I liked the movie. You liked the movie? I did. Okay. I'm a sucker. Not going to lie.

[00:07:30] Yeah. I liked the movie. I like John David Washington. He was great. He was really awesome. And I think that's the main reason why I liked the movie. I think he pulled me into his character and I was really open. I don't normally go in wanting happy ending,

[00:07:52] but I wanted a happy ending. Do you feel it was a happy ending or no? Where do you think it fell? When I first watched it, before I thought about it, I almost had a tear, but then I caught myself and said, no, we're not going to cry.

[00:08:13] And I get back upside, get back inside my head. No tears will be dropped. And it was very sad in the moment. But when I look back on it, I think it was the best possible

[00:08:28] ending that could have happened, especially for Alfie. So I'm still 50-50 unhappy side, but I'm kind of almost leaning towards best possible, like Candida's the best possible of all worlds. And I think that's where the movie has me. Right. Cool. So would you recommend it to somebody?

[00:08:52] Yes, I would. Okay. Yes. I don't think anyone, it's not something that I would tell you, go right now and go buy a ticket and watch the creator. But given what we've had this past year,

[00:09:04] if you told me, hey, I think I'm going to go check out the creator. I'm going to be like, yeah, I think you should. Okay. Would you pay full ticket price or would you tell somebody to wait for streaming?

[00:09:17] I would tell them pay full ticket price because visually it's stunning. Right. It's a big screen. Right. Matinee or full price? Do they even do matinees anymore? Some places. They do here. Okay. All right.

[00:09:30] Some places. I'm a matinee guy. If you could get in for cheap, whatever the movie is, get in for cheap. So you'll get your popcorn, get your water. If it's a 12 o'clock matinee, 1130, do it. But definitely I would tell somebody. If they were, I wouldn't say,

[00:09:47] hey, go see this. But if someone was saying, I'm thinking about seeing it, like, yeah, I think you'll enjoy it. All right. Alicia thoughts? Yeah. I mean, the thing is, if you take this movie apart aspects by aspect,

[00:10:00] I think most of it was just superlatively great. However, the one thing that it really fumbled for me is the most important thing, which is the writing. Okay. But, you know, to touch on the good stuff, the visuals indeed, like they make it worth seeing.

[00:10:18] I almost never see movies in the Dolby theater because it costs more, but it just so happened that like timing wise it worked out the best. So, and I was really

[00:10:27] glad that I did not just because of that, but also because of the sound. I just shared a Mashable article with you guys, an interview with the director, and he was talking also about how the

[00:10:40] sound, yeah, it was very carefully crafted to evoke an emotional response. And that was, that was very effective and cool. The cast was great. The acting was great across the board, no weak acting anywhere. But yeah, the writing we had, the plot was transparent. There were

[00:11:05] nods to a lot of themes, but like the exploration of them was very shallow. And so, it was frustrating that it wasn't living up to, it looks like this A++ movie and it wasn't quite living up

[00:11:21] to that. I went in, I thought it was going to be something like Neil Blomkamp's one of my favorite directors. Yes, totally had that vibe, right? I thought it was going to be something like his District 9, but it was more like

[00:11:34] something like his Elysium, which is the movie I wanted to like because it has my name and Jodie Foster. But it was clear that like the studios just interfered too much and it became an empty

[00:11:45] shell of his other movies. And this is what this felt like, just a beautiful, beautiful, I want all the stills as posters, but yeah, we'll talk more about the plot.

[00:11:56] Can I call you out your note here that I saw that you have on the end of your thing here that Edwards needed Gilroy on the writing side? I like that.

[00:12:03] Yes. Yes, that would have been these two. I mean, I know he has another partner who he works with, but I think these two, like they made Rogue One together and I would have loved to have seen

[00:12:17] and or little scripting with everything that this movie did have going for it, which is a lot. Garth visuals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. David? Yeah, I was profoundly disappointed in this movie. I went in, maybe that's whatever,

[00:12:36] I went in with high expectations. I love the trailer. I love the visual look, just like you were saying, Alicia, with District 9 and Elysium, like those are, it really was fitting into that visual style. And so I was super excited, the trailers and the still shots coming out,

[00:12:59] the way that the AI and the robots looked, that looked really interesting and innovative. What's the, oh gosh, what's, I'm sorry, the name of the lead actor? John David Washington. John David Washington, sorry. He's great. I enjoy him in stuff a lot. And so I was really

[00:13:15] looking forward to this. And I saw the plot in the first opening scene. I knew exactly, parking alert, I knew exactly, well not exactly, I had strong, strong, strong suspicions

[00:13:31] about what and what and what was going to happen in the story. And then I just kind of had to sit there through the rest of the movie watching it unfold and watching a lot of overblown tropes

[00:13:43] around military and special forces. And one of the ones that gets me all the time is if people are sneaking around and somebody holds up a fist to indicate to stop the line,

[00:13:59] or the general with the big glasses and the big hat stomping around, it just got painful for me at that point. Because again, I got disinvested in the story and we talked about this in

[00:14:13] our Wheel of Time coverage, our season wrap up. It's noticeable that if you are disinvested in the plot, you're going to start picking more nits. Right. In be it visuals, be it plotting, be it script, be it acting, whatever it is,

[00:14:28] you're just going to be there. So that was me for the whole movie. Which for the record, I did not feel about the Wheel of Time, just saying. Just in case anyone doesn't listen to that coverage.

[00:14:42] So yeah, I was really disappointed visually. It's gorgeous. And I was really hoping to see something from Gareth Edwards that wasn't a thing where somebody else was brought in, stepped in, however Rogue One went down. I was really excited to see his vision.

[00:15:00] And from what I've seen and read about the production, it sounded like they did a real guerrilla style and they had a lot of fun shooting it. And yeah, I was disappointed. I was profoundly disappointed.

[00:15:13] Yeah. I mean, the shooting it part was great. That's not the problem. Yeah. I love the way that they flipped it in terms of where the action was taking place on the world, on our earth and highlighting some different places and some different political

[00:15:30] interactions. The world that they constructed made a lot of sense. So it was all, everything around it was great. And then the writing and the basic plot just was not there for me. Okay. That's the way it is. That's how it is.

[00:15:49] Yeah. And I mean, I think there's some great stuff to talk about the show. And I think I'm hopeful that this is going to be one of those productions that moves the needle a little bit

[00:16:00] in terms of how films get shot or what is available for people to make and opening up the space a little bit because it sounds like they did it in a really interesting way.

[00:16:12] But let's get into production stuff in a little bit. Just before we switch over there, trailer talk. Did you guys get any trailers at all? I got no trailers in my showing. Really?

[00:16:23] I was in an empty movie theater. It was at a local little movie theater. It was a, gosh, was it a Sunday night at a nine o'clock showing? It was in one of the medium-sized

[00:16:37] theaters that we, rooms that they have. And it was empty. It was just me and no trailers and they just fired it up and that was it. Wow. Nothing interesting for me. No trailers for you? Nothing interesting. Nothing interesting. Okay. Yeah.

[00:16:54] Yeah. I mean, I was, I have a tendency to get to the movie theater at the last second. I know how to time it. So I tend to walk in as the last trailer's playing. So I don't, I'm not really sure. That's a skill. That's a skill.

[00:17:07] It's always, this theater is predictable. It's always about 10 minutes. But this, yeah. So I don't know exactly what they played, but I do have to say my experience was completely different because I did watch it opening night in the Dolby theater. So it was sold out. Wow.

[00:17:25] What was the vibe of the audience? Okay. So, well, one thing that happened was some drunk young men showed up and the usher almost didn't let them in, but somehow they ended up talking their way. And I'm like, cause I saw them out front when I was ticketing.

[00:17:45] Right. And so they came in and of course they were sitting right behind me. Of course. And there's like a big group of them and they were obnoxious for like a couple of minutes and then

[00:17:55] they fell really silent and then they just like kind of shuffled out halfway through. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Well, we can't take anything that they do. But I think it was generally, you know, a more subdued audience. Okay.

[00:18:13] If it had been a bit more of a ripper, they probably like an aliens-esque energy, they probably would have stuck around, but there was a lot of story. Yeah. I think it was more grounded than I thought it was going to be. Right.

[00:18:26] It wasn't as fantastical as these stories tend to get. Right. Right. So they told it a really grounded story for me. And again, to both of your points, the acting in this was really, I thought they did, they were great. Right.

[00:18:48] But yeah, I went into it not thinking it was going to be like this grand adventure. Right. And I was happy that it wasn't. I was happy it wasn't Terminator. Okay. Type of explosive sets from the get-go. You know what I mean? Right. Right.

[00:19:12] Yeah. We could talk about that a bit later, but yeah, I was generally happy with it having a more grounded tale, a story that is kind of believable, given the times. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I think that the phrase grounded is applicable to what we're talking

[00:19:35] about here. Yeah. It wasn't, high fantasy is not the right word for it, but the fate of the world wasn't at stakes here, evil, or whatever. It was political in a lot of ways. Yes. It was about genocide. It was a guy that coming to eradicate all mankind.

[00:19:53] Right. And I thought that was a good way to tell an AI robot story that doesn't involve the future of mankind being in peril. Right. So, I thought that was a really cool twist on the science.

[00:20:11] Well, we can talk about that when we get later in the topics and stuff. Let's kick the ball around a little bit about production. The director and writers, Gareth Edwards, who did Rogue One and Monsters, which was in 2010. So, it doesn't feel like he's

[00:20:30] done a lot. Do you know a lot- Yeah, hasn't he? Alicia, about his career? I mean, he's done other movies, but those are the two biggest ones. Monsters was his breakout as an indie horror movie. I don't know if anyone... I actually remember it vividly, oddly enough,

[00:20:47] but it's about, there's like a plague takes over the world that create monsters and these people get stuck in Mexico and are trying to get back to the States. And anyway, yeah, it was a decent movie. And then of course, Rogue One, there's a controversy where

[00:21:04] Tony Gilroy basically took over. And we don't know how much was Gareth Edwards and Chris Weiss and how much of the final product was Gilroy. But then you see Andor and you're like, that's looking very Gilroy. That's like Gilroy. Yeah. And Chris Weiss, he's a frequent partner of-

[00:21:25] So, they co-wrote. So, Gareth Edwards and Chris Weiss co-wrote this and Gareth directed it. Yeah. Well, yeah, they sort of, they partner together a lot. But yeah, Chris Weiss, his early career is, you know, kind of very lighthearted comedies like Ants, American Pie about a boy.

[00:21:43] And then maybe reasons why I don't trust him with a script is, I don't know if you guys know the Golden Compass adaptation that came out with like Nicole Kidman and yeah, the bad version. His Dark Materials on HBO, watch that TV series. That's the good adaptation.

[00:22:03] But he did the bad one. Yeah. And also the bad adaptation of Pinocchio that came out last year that was nominated. He was nominated for a Razzie for it. But he did also do the pretty good

[00:22:17] Kenneth Branagh directed Cinderella from 2015. And yeah, so we'll see. I think we'll see next year. He has a horror movie coming out from Blumhouse called They Listen. And that's all him, like his baby. So, we'll really see what he can do on his own. Okay.

[00:22:38] He's getting a lot of at bats, but not a lot of good hits. Okay. So, the casting was pretty good. I mean, John David Washington, Gemma or Gemma Chan, I'm not sure how to pronounce her first name. I'd say Gemma.

[00:22:56] I haven't seen her before, so I didn't recognize her. Oh, she's in a lot of stuff. She's also has two roles in Marvel, including, did you see Eternals? No. He hasn't seen it. I did not. What is Crazy Rich Asians, Eternals, The Creator, Humans, Captain Marvel? Yeah, Humans.

[00:23:19] She's coming up in Captain Marvel? Yeah, she was one of the Kree. So, she was blue in that one. Okay. All right. Cool. She's got some solid credits here. So, that's cool. I guess I just

[00:23:28] didn't recognize her without Kree makeup on though. Ken Watanabe, I love that guy. He could read the phone book and I'd be enthralled with him. But I don't feel like I got enough of

[00:23:42] him. He was just sort of this element that came in and out, and it wasn't a core story. Yeah, agree. Agree with that. Allison Janney, she did a great job, but I didn't really buy her. Well, I mean,

[00:23:56] is that a good job? I don't know. I mean, she was acting. Well, I just think the character was kind of paper thin. Yeah. She didn't have a... She wasn't given much to do. Yeah. Very mustache twirling.

[00:24:10] Yeah, just be the villain that we all want you to be. Right. Yeah. She did well at it. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. She was acting. She was putting herself into it. That is for sure. But yeah,

[00:24:20] I don't think there was any dimensionality to the character. Amar Chanda Patel? He's probably best known for The Willow TV show. R.I.P. May it rise again for two more seasons. He...

[00:24:36] And he also, he was in the first season of Wheel of Time, but then he left to do The Willow Roll. So... Oh no. Oh wow. Oh no. He was the original Ingtar. Wow. He would have been a good Ingtar. Yeah. He would have been good. Yeah.

[00:24:51] Again, this was weird because he was in it, but then he wasn't, right? See, the thing is, because I recognized him, as soon as we saw that first replicant with his face

[00:25:01] die, I'm like, oh no, they're not done with him. And then another face of his pops up and I'm like, ah. And then we've got Madeline Una Voiles? Kudos to her. Yeah. So this was her first movie and she was seven years old while filming this. Wow.

[00:25:17] She was awesome. Yeah. She was incredible. She was awesome. A lot of presence on screen. So she was, yeah. She has a future. She has a future in this game of acting. And then it looks like we had Danny McBride as a-

[00:25:32] Yeah. And yeah, the cast was just, I think a lot more people that, a lot more names that people would recognize. Right. Yeah. There were a lot of little bit parts for folks. So it was a deep, deep cast,

[00:25:45] given what they did. And then for filming and the visual effects, we got an email about this from Shane. But so what they were basically shooting with a single camera and just running it guerrilla

[00:26:00] style and running around to all different parts of the world somehow. Did anybody read more about this? I didn't. I mean, I don't know. In that Mashable article that I shared, they were telling crazy stories

[00:26:13] also about them. Kind of like they were trying to film reference footage by Area 51, not necessarily for this, for something else. And then they ended up getting chased out by these grids of lights. And that's what inspired the lights on the Nomad ships.

[00:26:31] Okay. Wow. You mean the, okay. Well, we're still in spoiler free. So we don't want to blow anything up here. That's very cool. That's, I mean, it's cool. It's a great story from a

[00:26:42] filmmaker, from a run and gun style filmmaker. But we'll read that email later. But yeah, basically they had a mostly shot on a single camera and in a, for a lot of stuff was, I guess

[00:26:57] some other stuff they did some, you know, they had some other cameras, but you know, they kept it really simple and kept it fast and lean, which given the sumptuousness of the sets, places they

[00:27:07] were, it was incredible what they accomplished. And then they just shot the hell out of it and then took it all back and then did all the VFX in post and kept it real simple. So they didn't do

[00:27:19] a lot of green screen stuff and weird suit things. I don't know how anybody get the numbers on how well it did at the box office. Disappointing. Yeah. I mean, it should have done better, even though I'm not happy about the writing,

[00:27:37] it should have done better than it did. Looks like it had a 80 million budget and a box office of 63.9. Yeah. So you have to wonder how much is, you know, the actors can't promote. That's true. That's a good point.

[00:27:53] How much is just like general movie fatigue? I mean, I don't want to believe that it needs to be a major franchise to get people to the theatre. But then again, it ended up getting kind of tepid reviews because of the writing. So... Right.

[00:28:08] Let's see what's on Rotten Tomatoes. 67 with an audience score of 76. So the audience liked it more than the critics. That makes sense. That makes sense. And I think that, yeah, like that has a lot to do with the good cast and the visual effects that they were sold.

[00:28:26] I think it's going to stream well. Okay. I think once people can like sit down and watch it in their home, whichever... Whichever... Someone was just saying that to me today. I watched this week, I watched Oblivion because I'd seen it compared to this movie. Really?

[00:28:44] And I'll just say the comparison's quite apt. Did you put it in your spot on the tropes list? Yes, I did. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Okay. Okay. But yeah, so I was talking to, I didn't enjoy Oblivion. I actually, it made me appreciate

[00:28:57] the creator more. And my friend was saying like, well, I just liked the pretty pictures. I'm like, oh, then definitely go see the creator. And he's like, well, yeah, when it comes out in streaming. There you go. There you go.

[00:29:09] Yeah. I think it'll be a good streaming film because it sets itself up as a complex plot, but it's not. And I think it's an easy watch and you could just sit back and enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:20] All right, cool. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we will get into the plot and story and start breaking things down and see where that takes us. So we'll be right back.

[00:29:47] All right. And we're back. Okay. Here's our spoiler warning. We're going to start getting into the plot and storyline. We're going to play spot the trope, and then we'll start talking about

[00:29:56] some of the topics and issues that the movie brings up before we get into a little bit of feedback. Here's a synopsis that I got off of a Google search. The AIs helped me synopsize the AI movie.

[00:30:11] As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligence rages on, ex-special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill the creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI. The creator has developed a mysterious weapon that has the

[00:30:27] power to end the war of all mankind. As Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy occupied territory, they soon discover the world ending weapon is actually an AI in the form

[00:30:41] of a young child. Right. Alicia, how are you with this plot? Did you find this plot interesting, compelling? Did it take you anywhere? Did it do anything interesting for you? The skeleton of it is okay, predictable enough. But yeah, the problem was just in all of the

[00:31:02] details of the, you know, they just leaned time after time on what is the easy tropey answer to, you know, why is he, does he hate them? Because, you know, because there was a bombing when he

[00:31:19] was a child. Why does, I don't know. And they ignore things like, you know, the fact that when you live with a community like that for, I don't know how long he lived with them when he was

[00:31:30] getting to know his wife, that has got to have an effect on the way you see things. And they don't touch on that at all. They just completely ignore that. Like apparently he was just being fake to

[00:31:40] them and hating them the whole time, which doesn't make him very likable as a character. That's a good point. I did like the idea that they built in the world of these communities that are living together quite in a quite integrated way, but yeah, they didn't deal

[00:31:58] with much of that at all. Jean, the basic plot for you, how did it? It was fine. Here's my thing. It was a brand, it's a brand new IP, right? Are you expecting more out of this world?

[00:32:15] No, not with this movie. I'm just expecting the groundwork of this world. If they took this world and did more storytelling in it, I would watch it. For sure. For sure. Yeah. I would be definitely be curious. Yeah.

[00:32:29] I would definitely watch it. But I think the building blocks are there. But somebody else can write it. Yes. I don't have a problem with somebody else. Right. But I do think the building blocks, the structure that they've laid down, the foundation that they laid down is something

[00:32:49] that I'd be interested in seeing built out. Right. It's a house that I would like to visit when the house is being constructed so I can see what the interior design is going to be like.

[00:33:02] I'm big on HGTV. I like watching that stuff. I like to see how houses are built. I would watch how this house was built and I would like to see the finished big reveal of the product.

[00:33:15] So I was okay. I don't think I went into it with, again, grand expectations aside from I really wanted it to work because I really want new IPs to be out there. Right.

[00:33:35] To what Alicia said. My fear is I don't want folks to only go to cinema to watch things that they know about. I want to be able to go to a movie that I don't know. I don't know these

[00:33:53] characters. I don't know this world. Pull me in. It's not from a book. It's not from a comic. It's not from a movie that was done 70 years ago. This is something totally brand new. For that,

[00:34:08] I was okay with the plot. Was it then? Absolutely. Yeah, it was. But I can point back to I want to give it a chance to breathe. I'm going to watch this movie again.

[00:34:23] When it comes out on streaming, I'm going to watch it again. I want to see if I feel anything different from when I watched it the first time because I'm definitely going to see it again.

[00:34:36] So that's where I'm at. Okay. For me, the plot just fell apart in the first five minutes. It was obvious that Maya was the person that they were after and that her pregnancy

[00:34:51] was related to the AI. Even though it wasn't a one-to-one, it puts John David Washington into the position of being a parent. It was right there on screen. I wasn't trying to figure out what the

[00:35:10] plot was. I was ready just to go for it. Then it was like, oh, oh, oh. Then the rest of the movie, the plot, the twists, the turns of the story, the fact that it was an AI kid that has magic powers

[00:35:24] that can just stick his hand out, stick their hand out and turn off things. Stick our hands together. Stick our hands. Okay, sorry. Stick our hands together. It's been a minute since we saw the movie. There are levels to this, David. She put her hands together in prayer.

[00:35:40] This AI is praying to the Lord to turn off the machines. Turn off the machines. Think about it. Think about it. This is a deep dive. I have some questions about how technology works. Like at the other time, the character's checking

[00:36:00] what is up in her head and just kind of sticks like, I don't know, the creator equivalent of a sonic screwdriver into the gap in her head and then is like, oh, this is advanced tech. What are you reading? What are you doing?

[00:36:15] What is all this sticketry about? What is going on with these wires? It looks cool as hell. The positron brain. The way her head was, but yeah. The positron brain. What is this? Again, I'm cool with all of that because this is a new thing, right?

[00:36:32] So it's not going to be fleshed out in the way that a second or third potential go at this world would probably be. These are questions that you're going to have, like, okay, why is this this way? Maybe they don't have the answers for that in this movie.

[00:36:54] But was it worth my two hours and change to watch it? Yeah, I think for me it was. Given all the, given the thinness and everything, because I'm not disagreeing with you guys on the plot. I'm not disagreeing with it, but I'm okay with it.

[00:37:17] AO. Alpha Omega. What did they go? Alpha O is what they called it. Yeah. Oh, I just put my hands in my face and I was like, oh, really? We're doing that? We're just,

[00:37:28] we're not calling it Alpha Omega. We're not calling it AO. We're calling it Alpha O. What is that? I just did not understand the, it was so thin. I'm sorry. So can I tell you what, you've got me thinking about if there were more films in this world.

[00:37:48] And so I thought of a film that I would like to see in this world. Okay. I would like to see, because I thought it was cool. Just like they had this concept, like the rough sketches of the world were cool. You know, they have,

[00:38:02] they have something called new Asia. They never explain what that is or how it came to be or why everyone seems to be able to understand every Asian language. But so I would like to see that

[00:38:14] that would be like, I would like an origin film and I would like it written by Asian writers. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, have Gareth Edwards do the cool camera stuff and the, you know,

[00:38:26] the get the VFX team back that did this, because that was all great. Get the cast back. Plurkin. I think that would be a fleshed out world would be really, really a good thing to try to do.

[00:38:43] We'll probably never see it, but that would be a great start. Yeah. I think that's disappointing too, because if I knew that this was part of some sort of startup of a franchise and me like you, John, giving it a little bit more latitude

[00:38:59] and let them build the world for me and go, okay, yeah. You know, simple simplified plot. And I could get what's supposed to be engaging about the plot. It just feels like I've seen

[00:39:13] this movie over and over again. You know, I've seen parts of this movie and other things. It just didn't feel like they gave the script any depth or complexity to it. Agreed.

[00:39:24] But yeah, the world was fascinating. Did the twist that the AI, that the nuclear detonation in LA, that it was a coding error, did that surprise you guys at all? Did that do anything for you, Alicia?

[00:39:42] I mean, it was very predictable. And you know what did it for me more was seeing when they were at the beginning of the movie, he was on a cleanup crew in this area. Right.

[00:39:57] And they discovered an AI person who's just crying and calling out for his wife or something. And yeah, just, and the partner who was there with him on the cleanup crew was just like really

[00:40:13] emotionally affected by it. That for me was one of the most emotionally affecting moments. Finding out the twist, the thing that made me like it better was I just think about it as like a 1984 tribute, you know, where the government's always telling you that you're being bombed by

[00:40:30] the enemy just to keep you in line. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. I think I knew the twist. I knew there was something that was not being, that they were not responsible for the bombing. Right.

[00:40:44] Like, nah, they didn't do it. I don't know how they're going to say they didn't do it, but they did do it. I thought the saying that it was a coding error was just saying that they

[00:40:56] bombed them. You know what I mean? It's not a, they bombed them. They let loose a nuke for whatever purpose to start this war, baby. You know, I thought that would have been, for me,

[00:41:08] that would have held more weight than to just simply say it was a coding mistake. It was a mistaken thing. You know, it didn't do anything for me in terms of like, wow, that's a great twist. But

[00:41:18] the twist worked for me inside of this story where this story was at. I didn't have a problem with it relative to everything else in the thing. It made sense in a way. Right.

[00:41:29] And I think you were talking before about how this was a grounded script. This is a very, there is a lot of political stuff in there in terms of like, nomad and sort of hegemony. Thank you. Hegemony of the North Americans and not, it's not even colonialism. It's

[00:41:52] this sort of security and control thing. We're going to dominate the global space so that we maintain our safety. We're not necessarily going to colonize you or explicitly exploit you, but we're going to not, our security is going to run overshot over your health and wellbeing.

[00:42:14] It's also about, go ahead. I was to say, it's also about like the propaganda to get you fearing the other so that you're obedient and supporting whoever wants to be in charge. Yeah. And also the bombing is very reminiscent of what the US did in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.

[00:42:38] Sure. During the sixties and early seventies, the indiscriminate bombings of cities and villages who hit quote unquote Viet Cong or communist. And this is in the same vein. I think the general

[00:42:57] even said that we're not at war with the people of new Asia. We're just at war with the terrorists or the people who inflicted the harm on us, which is what we heard in Afghanistan 20 years ago.

[00:43:15] So it's in that vein of American military power being able to enact this sort of violence on populations indiscriminately. And I thought they captured that very well. I think we were going to do the spot, the trope game, but I'm going to kick it down

[00:43:36] because we're kind of starting to talk about a bunch of the issues that the film brings up, which I think are interesting things, even though maybe the plot wasn't great. The film

[00:43:44] does bring up a bunch of stuff. And so this idea of the global politics and AI and robotics. And so as you're talking, John, I was thinking about, well, there's a part of this world where people

[00:43:59] have made peace with and are deeply integrated with AI. And what did they call the... They weren't robots, but were they replicants? It's been a while. Apologies listeners. We all saw this movie like a week ago, more than a week ago. More than that.

[00:44:21] Yeah. No, replicants is what they're called in Blade Runner. Yeah. Yeah. I have to find out the word. Yeah. I forget. But go ahead with your thought. Yeah. I just thought it was a really interesting world setup that they gave us. And now that we're

[00:44:36] on the verge of an AI revolution, at least in work and productivity for white collar work, and who knows how that's going to step down. I read- Well, I mean, of course, that's already been affecting factory work and things like that.

[00:44:53] Sure. Yeah. We have robotics there, right? Which are hard programmed. What happens suddenly if those robot assembly lines have a little bit more AI built into them? I just saw the other day that

[00:45:05] the latest update to Microsoft Windows 11, that it's got a bunch of AI built into the operating system to be an assistant to help you with a bunch of stuff. So Clippy is actually getting a brain

[00:45:18] as opposed to a bunch of hard coded responses. So I thought that the film overall brought up this interesting question of what does it mean to be human in a world that looked like that? Simulant. Simulant. That's what it was. This is what they're called, simulant.

[00:45:39] Thank you. Right. Well, okay. I think it draws even a brighter highlighting line underneath this question of what does it mean to be AI? What does it mean to be human if you're a simulant? Right? What is that? You're

[00:45:52] simulating. And they keep saying that in the movie throughout the movie, right? They do. Yes. Yes. And I think one thing that I will note was that this idea of new Asia and

[00:46:06] being in harmony with the simulant as opposed to our Western culture, a lot of times in the shots of new Asia, it was very rural, natural. Yes. Right. And I hate that.

[00:46:29] That's one thing that I hate. I'm sorry. I know we're kicking the tropes down, but I couldn't. No, no, it's all right. Because it's in line with what we're talking about, right? Right. Yeah. One thing that I hate that Western filmmakers do with this romanticized version

[00:46:46] of the other, right? Being in tune with nature and being more grounded literally. Right. As opposed to our high tech ways that... Some of the most advanced cityscapes are in Asia right now. Exactly. Currently. Right. Currently. Right. Yeah. Right now. Where they've got all the-

[00:47:06] And some of the most interesting architecture and the- Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Some of the cleanest well-run cities are there. Fastest train that- Yes. You can get to Washington and New York in an hour where it takes Amtrak four and a half. Right, right. It's ridiculous. That's another thing.

[00:47:26] Anyway. So yeah. But to be fair, the Americans were also a caricature, so... Oh, yeah. Right. With a hardheaded general and Allison Janney's character. Yeah. We're gonna kill you all. Bang, bang, bang. Is it really a caricature? Well... You know, coming from...

[00:47:48] Is it really a caricature given the history of American foreign policy? I mean, I think- I think that we're dangerously close. I mean, yeah, I don't wanna veer into a current political conversation, but I think the US is dangerously close.

[00:48:06] Right, right. So I just wish that some of that would have been taken out of the film. You know, to show the cohesion between folks. I think when they went to... Where were they in the city that they almost caught Joshua? Was that in the factory or...

[00:48:28] In the factory. It was the factory, right? Okay. I can't remember. It's kind of hard. I think it was the factory and it was very dark. It wasn't the city at night, almost. You know what I mean? And I kind of want different takes by our films

[00:48:43] on places that are not Western identifiable. Right. That's my rant. We started to talk about it, but let's talk a little bit more about magic in our science fiction. I love it. You love it. All right. Yeah, come on, guys. I mean, I love it.

[00:49:01] I mean, I think, you know, it was supposed to be science. Like, she just knows how to instinctively... Hack into the Wi-Fi and get into the firmware code. Get on the wavelength of any machine and get its parts to move, ignite.

[00:49:17] I just felt that that was one more weak element in the storyline. They didn't explain it all. Okay. Our powers, yeah. Yeah. It was just this holy ability that the AI had created. And they didn't

[00:49:35] talk about how it arrived there or what it does. It was just given to us as is, kid praise, and things turned off. And yeah. Do you think that was meant to be seen in a religious light? I know Jean was always... I do. ...the praise.

[00:49:53] No, I mean, I think I didn't see it that way myself because that's not my framework. But as soon as Jean said it, I'm like, oh, yeah. I thought it was. Maybe I'm wrong that it was deliberate, but as a reformed, not even reformed,

[00:50:07] as a lapsed Catholic, you know? Yeah. I thought it was very religious in the way that she turned things off. I think for me, part of the disappointment was that there was a lot of

[00:50:22] quote unquote, hard sci-fi in this movie where we've got robots, we've got simulants, we've got AI, we've got this new mad thing flying around, computer code, whatever. And then, oh, magic, right? Don't question it. And it really was a disconnect for me between the two things.

[00:50:44] Why? Yeah. Why? Because I wanted this... The show was dealing in so much hard sci-fi stuff. I mean, for me, I see it as hand wavy, literally hand wavy. Literally. Hard sci-fi. But I definitely didn't interpret it as magic. But a cool thing that I wanted to say

[00:51:06] about Nomad though, since you mentioned it, is that apparently we got that... It was one of the most visually striking aspects of the movie. Totally. Absolutely. And it was a constant throughout the film, right? Right. So, we were waiting for it to strike.

[00:51:19] A hulking threat, yeah. Apparently, it was first going to be a ring around the entire planet. Okay. And so, the ring would just like adjust, but then they decided it'd be better to be more mobile

[00:51:33] like this. So, they designed it to look like a bird of prey, which you see like that head in triangular shape. So, yeah, I have to give kudos to this. I do think that they took a lot of design

[00:51:47] cues as did the film Oblivion from In The Loop. I'll bring that up in the trope section, but... Okay. Yeah, it did have a very strong... It gave me a lot of Elysium vibes as well. Yeah. For better and worse. Elysium looks cool.

[00:52:03] Yeah. I thought it was a great way to visually represent foreign power, projecting power around the world and reminding everybody who the alpha dog is. We do that with... At least, yeah, the United States does that with its fleets and its aircraft

[00:52:23] carriers. If an aircraft carrier shows up somewhere, then you know that policymakers back in Washington, DC are serious about an issue. So, I thought it was a really good device. It worked well and it was constant sort of countdown like, okay, here it comes right now.

[00:52:41] The clock is ticking and the heroes got to move because the big lights, the big crosshair lights are coming for you. So, it's been interesting. I have to read the story about what happened when they were at Area 51 and they got lit up by something like that.

[00:52:59] I mean, I need more of that story. What were they doing? They just thought that they could sneak up on Area 51 with a camera? I don't know. Well, as long as they stayed out, I suppose there's nothing illegal about it. Many people have tried. Yeah, they have.

[00:53:16] Many people have tried. But I agree. Let's talk a little bit about the character that John David Washington was playing, Joshua. And this whole thing with Maya and the child. So, we're talking about love and surrogacy, grief, and then how that plays into sort of creativity and destruction.

[00:53:40] I thought the idea that they were playing with about love and surrogacy was really interesting. I remember talking once to a fellow parent whose children are adopted and he said, they're mine. I don't care biology or not. The moment that we became a family, that was it. I

[00:54:02] was their parent, end of story kind of thing. And I thought that was a really interesting way. He was all in and it was all encompassing for him. And it had the same sort of profound psychological

[00:54:15] change that somebody who has a live biological birth might respond in the same way. We think of, oh, well, hormones flip and all these kinds of things. And it's like, no, it can be extended beyond that and it doesn't have to be something that's biological.

[00:54:34] But didn't they kind of cheat by making it an AI version of his actual child? Well, but I think that's what was interesting was that they did- I mean, they're kind of cheap and it's not really an adopted child that you learn to love. It's like,

[00:54:52] oh wait, no, actually this is my own child. There are genetics that make Alfie part of him in a way that it wouldn't have been if she was a simulant. Because she's more than a simulant. She's more than a simulant because she actually

[00:55:14] has human DNA as part of her existence. So, she's much more than, she's more simulant, she's more than a simulant and she's more than a human. She's something else. Right. Right. It's interesting to then butt this movie up against Blade Runner and talk about replicants

[00:55:33] and were replicants, they were born in a tank, but they were born from human DNA at some point. DNA. Right? They were engineering DNA. And then fusing that, well, they were doing mechanical stuff in other places, but at least I would assume with replicants that they were

[00:55:52] quote unquote flesh and blood all the way through. There wasn't an exoskeleton, there wasn't a metal skeleton on the inside of the replicant. Like the Terminator or something like that. Exactly, yeah. They weren't cyborgs. Right, right. Interesting.

[00:56:09] And grief, this movie had a lot to do with grief as well. I thought the part when they told them that they couldn't pull the plug on her because they couldn't. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. They're pro-flip it now. Yeah. I thought that was like, man, okay. That's heartbreaking.

[00:56:31] It was. It was so tough to watch because I cannot even imagine myself being put in a position where my loved one who I haven't seen for five years, and I finally get to see her, him, and I have to let them go immediately. Right.

[00:56:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they had ended more on that kind of note, that would have hit better or left, it would have felt more bittersweet. But then instead they're like,

[00:57:04] oh no, actually we're going to go up and do a whole nother act in the air where we bring her back from the dead again and then kill both the parents off. Like, okay, whatever. Yeah. That was an attempt at a happy ending.

[00:57:18] Yeah. I guess they had a chance to talk but- Yeah. Let's give them a happy ending. And it didn't work. Yeah. It didn't work. So, in the interviews, they said that the theme, the central theme of the film was creation versus destruction. Interesting. Okay.

[00:57:33] Yeah. So, do you guys see that as a central theme or I don't know if I do. No. It was grief. The primary character- I agree with David. David Washington, his character was driven by grief. And the only reason that I see,

[00:57:50] I mean, there's lots of attributable reasons. But for me, the emotional reason that he was trying to do this was to find his wife. And when that's how they get him engaged is like,

[00:58:05] hey, we got a hologram video thing of her and he suddenly, I'm in. And then when he finds that Alfie is this child and then he was supposed to be a father. So, all of his primary

[00:58:23] motivations for me came about to grief. And so, the whole fate of the world is this guy's dealing with the loss of his wife who was his target. Right. He was supposed to go after and kill in the first place. So, creation and destruction,

[00:58:41] I don't see those being played out in a grander scheme. Maybe I'm looking too big for those. And maybe it's at a smaller scale. I don't know. Are you seeing that? I guess it's there. We have the destruction. It's not there. Yeah.

[00:58:58] Right. It's a destruction of all the one race or another versus the creation of this child that could maybe bring them all together in peace. But I don't know. It's just, yeah. It's just thin as we said.

[00:59:13] Yeah. I didn't see it. I didn't see creation and destruction at all. Right. I didn't see those themes at all. Yeah. I mean, you could have told a story of possibly creating a new society with stimulants and humans living peacefully. Could have told something like that

[00:59:34] where we're trying to have one side. It would have been interesting because normally in this type of movie, we get the machines are trying to end humanity. Right. That's the standard. And in this movie, we got humanity trying to end the machine.

[00:59:51] Where the machines are just trying to live their normal lives. Trying to do their thing. They're not bothering nobody. They don't want any beef. They don't want any problems. They just want to chill in new Asia, whatever. Is your governor not ours?

[01:00:08] Right. And then here we have humanity hunting them down where we normally have the opposite of this. Right. It's always the machines that were hunting humanity to the last breath. Right. And here

[01:00:22] we have humans trying to eradicate the stimulants and it doesn't matter if other humans get caught up in the lion fire. Right. So I didn't see any overarching theme of creation and destruction. Yeah. It could have been. It could have been.

[01:00:40] Too grounded, like you said. The plot is too grounded in real politic as opposed to big creation destruction. Yeah. I didn't see any of that. Right. I didn't see any of that. Right. Well, let's do this. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back,

[01:00:57] we can play spot the tropes and then we can read a little bit of feedback before we jump off. Cool. Okay. And we're back. All right. So while I was sitting in the theater by myself, mind you,

[01:01:23] I pulled out my phone and started writing down the names of other movies that I felt were present in some way, shape or form in the movie that I was watching. So I sort of roughly called

[01:01:36] it spot the trope. And it's not necessarily other, there's lots of different kinds of tropes, but these are more about the titles of films that I saw elsewhere. I think Alicia used it. Spot the tribute.

[01:01:48] Instead of spot the tribute. I picked out 16 titles that I could easily call out to see that there are plot elements or visual things that were the same. So I don't know if this sounds like

[01:02:01] a fun game or not, we can give it a try. And I told everybody to not share each other's list so that we weren't sort of, you know, that we'd get sort of a real time review. So Alicia, how many did you pull up? 19. 19.

[01:02:17] John, did you have a count by chance? No, I'm looking at your 16. God, 19. If I were playing, if we were playing a team sport, I would look at the coach and say, coach put me on the bench right now. Because what's happening right now, I don't need,

[01:02:39] I don't got the game for this. That's where I'm at. So let's just get into it. Okay. I posted mine into the outline. How many did you have David? 16. Oh my gosh. So do you want to post yours in? Sure, sure.

[01:03:00] But then, okay, so we're going to, we'll see how many we haven't, I'm sure we have a good number in common. In common, you have to. Yeah. And we can just kind of breeze through these. We don't have to get too deep.

[01:03:13] So why don't you all go down my list and then if you've got the same one, Alicia, then you can cross it off, call it out and then we'll see what's left and then you can run through yours. Okay.

[01:03:26] So definitely got an aliens vibe at several times when they were flying around in the chopper things and I got avatar. Where did I get avatar? Was it water related stuff? Avatar, okay.

[01:03:39] No, no, no. I know what it was. It was when Alice and Janie and them were flying around in their choppers because it was like the big bad general in avatar when he was coming with his big aircraft to attack the tree.

[01:03:55] Can I say that was more Starship Troopers? Okay, well there's a good one. Okay, there you go. That's a good one. I don't have that on there. Okay, so we're going to put that on your list.

[01:04:06] Starship Troopers. What else did I have here? Avengers Age of Ultron, right? With the flying base thing. You know, that was cruising around in the atmosphere. Blade Runner, obviously. Yes, I had Blade Runner too. Yeah. Okay. Chappy. I had Chappy too.

[01:04:24] Yeah, because the robots, especially the police robots, they had a very similar vibe to that. This is an obscure film from, oh, when is Dark Star? Sci-fi film, 1974 about a ship that they cruise around and they blow up problem planets that are unstable and they have intelligent bombs.

[01:04:48] And so, they have this whole problem with this one bomb that short circuits and wants to keep blowing up, but they have to keep talking it down. It's a really bizarre film. 1974, really super interesting. Okay. District 9, obviously. Elysium, obviously. Independence Day. Okay, I see it. Huh.

[01:05:09] There was, where was Independence Day in? I think it was towards the end, maybe? Leon the Professional. What? When the police were storming the building and they were holed up in the apartment. Yeah.

[01:05:25] In Leon the Professional, there's all, you know, all the cops are descending on the building. Yeah. Platoon, right? It had a very Vietnam War era vibe to the whole thing. Okay. Okay. Return of the Jedi. Why did I have Return of the Jedi in there?

[01:05:41] Because she used the force, obviously. Well. Silent Running, another 70s era sci-fi movie about little walking robots and AI stuff. Star Trek, which one, when, spoiler, Spock dies. Star Trek 2 or Star Trek 3 when they try to recover Spock? Everybody dies eventually.

[01:06:05] Right. And so, that got in the whole thing of Maya dying and, you know, saying goodbye. Right. And Westworld, obviously. So, it's 15 because I just had a general category for Vietnam. Okay. So, Westworld. Yeah. So, that's my 15.

[01:06:22] Okay. Okay. So, yeah, in addition to the ones I had in common with you, also AI. Oh, I didn't see that one. Okay. And Humans, which also stars Gemma Chan. Yeah.

[01:06:33] And she plays a robot who becomes, you know, she ends up being taken in by a family to be the sort of like nanny housekeeper, but then it turns out she has a past and a memory that's been wiped. Cool.

[01:06:47] And obviously, it's all about the line between human and artificial intelligence. I mean, obviously, we have to bring up Rogue One. Good call. Pinocchio, because of this whole like, I'm a real child thing.

[01:07:02] That's a really good, I didn't even think of that. That's totally in line, right? You know, am I a kid or am I a robot? Am I going to heaven? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That whole thing. Yeah. That's good.

[01:07:11] Yeah. Yeah. So, 1984, just because of like the whole bombing propaganda thing. Good one. I like it. And about, you know, how can we dissolve love? And yeah, War of the Worlds, mostly because of the Nomad and then just visually. Wait a minute. What do I see here?

[01:07:27] Wait a minute. The show that shall not be named. I'm sorry. Wait a minute. I'm naming it. I said Secret Invasion, LOL. Oh, no. We'll move on quickly. John is hurt. He's mortally wounded.

[01:07:43] We'll move on quickly. I do, we'll say that Secret Invasion does make this look like a better movie as does the next one on the list, Oblivion, which I'd like to point out that Rotten Tomatoes in their summary calls visually striking, but thinly scripted. So.

[01:08:01] There you go. I don't think I even saw Oblivion. I don't even recognize it. Yeah. It's a 2013 Tom Cruise movie. Tom Cruise. Yeah. Vaguely. I'm seeing him on this pod landing pad thing. Yeah. Yeah. Watch Edge of Tomorrow instead. That's a much better movie. Yeah, definitely.

[01:08:20] All right. Yeah, Edge of Tomorrow is fun. I enjoy that a lot. Not only because I am a big... She also played Mary Poppins in River Jungle. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Now I'm suddenly the wife of John Krasinski. Emily Blunt. Yes. I'm a big Emily Blunt fan.

[01:08:36] She was my favorite in one of my very favorite movies of all time is The Devil Wears Prada. I think that's a perfect movie. Really? It's a good movie. Okay. It's tight. The script is tight. Okay. Words. Okay. So anyway.

[01:08:52] Yeah. So your next on the list was, I mentioned earlier, Tales from the Loop, which I think both Oblivion and the creator got some visual cues from. And for anyone who's not familiar, it started

[01:09:05] as a series of books from a Swedish author and illustrator named Simon Stalinhag. And it's really a Swedish friends that I've had. You just walk into their home and they have it as art on their

[01:09:18] walls. It's a really popular thing. And it was turned into a tabletop game that I've gotten to play with some friends before. And also there was a TV adaptation on Amazon Prime and it has just very iconic, bare rural landscapes with like hulking machines floating over them. Very

[01:09:39] minimalistic steampunk. Yeah. I've always been entranced by the art from Tales of the Loop. How was the show? Was that any good? I mean, it would have been better, I think if they had gotten another season because

[01:09:56] they kind of laid some mysteries that they didn't really get to address. It was, as you would expect from a Swedish adaptation, it was slow and thoughtful. So some episodes were better than

[01:10:12] others. Overall, I liked it. If you're curious, I say give it a shot. They put a lot of the visuals on screen, but it asks more questions than it has time to answer.

[01:10:25] Okay. Yeah. I've always loved the visuals of that. And yeah, I did note that there is a role playing game version. So. Yeah, it was fun. If anyone wants to give that a go, it was a good time. And yeah, Ex Machina,

[01:10:39] for obvious reasons. Children of Men, which kind of has a similar thing where there's, it's Clive Owen is protecting in this case, the only woman who can get pregnant. Yeah. It's such a good movie. Alfonso Cuarón is one of my favorite directors. That sounds familiar. Great movie.

[01:10:57] Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's kind of, he's protecting this key to saving the world on this road trip sort of thing. And yeah, The Last of Us, because we've got it again. Sure. Good one. You know, road trip, protecting, bonding. Right. Right.

[01:11:11] But this time they had to actually bond. No actual blood to cheat. Right. Yeah. Very, very lone wolf and cub. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah. And yeah, the Terminator movies. Oh, obviously. I can't believe I missed that. Minority Report.

[01:11:28] How many is that in one? That's like, you can 2x, 3x your entry there. Yeah. Minority Report, I guess just because of the way that, see underneath the facade, the government showing you and yeah, iRobot for obvious reasons. Yeah. Right. Good. John, what do you think about those?

[01:11:49] Yeah. I mean, you guys. You guys. We're just having some fun. You guys are great. You guys are great. Trying something new. I'm sticking with my Starship Trooper. Right. You're one on your list. That was a good call. Those helicopter scenes.

[01:12:07] It's one of the things that I'm noticing that's hard for doing this one shot too, is that when I saw the movie was, was it more than a week, 10 days ago, two weeks ago now until

[01:12:18] the time that we got to record? We really got to, I think if we can shorten our time between all watching it and then recording it, I think that would really help. Yeah. But it was the time of Turbo Blessings.

[01:12:29] It was. It was Turbo Blessings. We are done with that now. Cool. All right. Well, that was fun. I hope everybody enjoyed that a little bit. And we'll see in the future if we can pull something like that off again.

[01:12:42] So we got a couple of pieces of feedback. We've got two emails, one from Shane L who is our newest Patreon subscriber. He also got the annual membership. So that's one thing that you can do is if you're interested in

[01:12:56] that, we can, you can bill for a year. It makes things a little bit easier. So Shane wrote in, how was this movie made for only 80 million exclamation point question mark?

[01:13:07] Truly unbelievable. So I did a little research and I think Shane is a bit of a film buff as well. I know that they were at the New York Film Festival and posting a bunch of photos on our discord from being there.

[01:13:19] Shane quotes a quote from the director, Gareth Edwards. I took a camera and a 1970s anamorphic lens, which is a particular kind of lens that, oh, I forget. I looked this up before and I forgot what it does now.

[01:13:33] Alicia, can you look that up for me really quick so we can quote that properly? We went location scouting in Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Nepal. Our whole plan was just to go to the greatest locations in the world

[01:13:46] because the cost of a flight is way less than the cost of building a set. We're going to hop scotch around the world and shoot this film, then layer in the science fiction on top afterwards. If our film is trying to achieve

[01:13:57] something visually, it's trying to feel real in the terms of science fiction. Do you got some on anamorphic there? Yeah, it's basically when you shoot in a standard 35 millimeter film, but then kind of stretch the visuals to create a widescreen image.

[01:14:17] That's right. Yeah. So you get a particular look from that where you can get really wide scenes without having to have a big super wide lens, which does a whole bunch of other weird

[01:14:27] stuff to it. Shane continues, he used this camera, a Sony FX3. So cool. Reminded me a bit of Apocalypse Now. Sure, the story had some overplayed chosen one plots, but the visuals are incredible.

[01:14:40] He often shot on location with natural lighting and just four crew members on set. A lot of the extras in the movies weren't even aware a film was being made. So that's pretty cool details there.

[01:14:52] I think thin on plot, but great on execution, this story, this movie gets. No, I mean, I definitely, please make more films, just don't write them yourself. Right. Get some different writing partners. Yep. All right. Stu, AKA Dove71, one of our Loremaster subscribers wrote in as well.

[01:15:17] Stu says, Hey David, I've been looking forward to the creator as I followed Gareth Edwards since his debut with the technically and visually amazing monsters. I also enjoyed Godzilla though that story was tissue thin, a bit of a theme unfortunately, but again, his eye for an arresting

[01:15:34] image and great use of sound and music is compelling. I can't forget the scene where the paratroopers halo jump into the city through the clouds, just stunning. So I think we got a trend going here with Edwards, right? Yeah, we do.

[01:15:51] Yeah. Good visually, but needs better writing partners. We all know the difficulties on Rogue One and the need for Tony Gilroy to reshoot, but I for one would like to have seen his full vision,

[01:16:03] which was more Dirty Dozen Heist. That's a World War II era film, which is a great, it's on my list of old man movies that I'm making John watch for our second breakfast coverage.

[01:16:16] Stars Lee Marvin and he takes a group of military convicts and they lead a behind the enemy lines type of raid, which was more Dirty Dozen Heist than Guns of Navarone, which is another classic

[01:16:31] World War II movie about blowing up some big guns, German big guns behind enemy lines. Then we got in the final film, which is among my top three Star Wars movies. So with all that in mind,

[01:16:44] I was looking forward to the creator as the trailer definitely hit my sweet spot for sci-fi AI robots, battle scenes, and a central mystery of the child, right? So this is where

[01:16:55] I was super excited. It had all the things that I would love in a film like this. And they did a really great job of teasing it before we actually got to the movie theater.

[01:17:06] Stu continues, without going into the film too much, that's what the one-shot pod is for. Some of the things I really loved was just the amount of world building done without endless exposition dumps. Yeah. There was really light on exposition. For better or worse. Yeah.

[01:17:25] For better or worse. They just took us right into the world and they did take us, I'll give the credit for that. They took us right into the story, right? Right. But they created the world visually more than explaining it to us.

[01:17:37] It's true. Stu continues, you understood the position of the West after LA was nuked. The only thing a bit underbaked was the fact that New Asia just let Nomad nuke sovereign territory with

[01:17:47] no repercussions, only dealt with by a very limp. We have no quarrel with the people, just the AI. This was a plot hole that was so big, it devalued the brilliant and visually stunning scenes in

[01:18:01] New Asia that showed AI was an intrinsic part of their society. John, thoughts? Yeah. No. The idea that there were no repercussions is spot on. That's absolutely true. But I stand by wanting to see more out of non-Western locality.

[01:18:20] Right. I want to see more dynamic places and peoples, and we can show how fully invested and how fully integrated the AI and the peoples of New Asia were without having them in some sort of rural community. Yeah. Oversimplified, over-idyllic. Yeah.

[01:18:47] All right. Stu continues, I was continually impressed with the lived in feel of the world and the Blade Runner-esque cityscape visuals. Edwards knows how to do big vistas and images that will stick in the brain. Agreed. He definitely has a compelling visual style. He nailed a world where

[01:19:05] AI is every day, and it was an interesting choice to show AI in an Asian setting, especially the spiritual aspects to reinforce that these were sentient beings, not just machines. Slightly counter to your point there, John, about I think maybe that was intentional, right? To show-

[01:19:25] No, I know it was intentional. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying it wasn't intentional. You're saying it wasn't, right. Yeah. I know it was intentional. I just don't like the intention. Mm-hmm. Fair enough. The Spec Ops teams led by a gloriously scene chewing Alice and Janie,

[01:19:44] yeah, she was chewing the scenery, that is for sure, helped drive the story on. And the actor playing the child was just right and pushed the emotional beats when needed. I did not like

[01:19:53] the crazy military guys, you know, the whole sort of screaming over the top stuff. Those dudes are calm and cool and collected. They are not rough shot like that. I don't know. It just strikes me- And it would be eerier if they were calm and collected. Right?

[01:20:09] Calm and collected, right. It would be much scarier, American Psycho-like. Yeah. Right. And that's a caricature, right? We're playing again with that caricature. Stu wraps up, it wasn't the satisfying three-course meal I was hoping for, but instead was the tasty burger that will, quote unquote, just do.

[01:20:27] That's great. I want to see more of Edward's visions on the big screen. Just think he needs a tip-top writer to sort out his plot issues. Namaste, Stu. All right, well, there we go. I volunteer as tribute. We all agree. Yes. Alicia is tribute. I like it. Yeah.

[01:20:44] So, cool. Well, let's wrap this up. Thanks guys for jumping in on this. It's more fun when there's a film that we all like to talk about, but I think it's- There's a lot of interesting stuff that comes out of this film. And I think,

[01:21:00] even if we're not like singing its praises from the rafters, right? That's the word? Rafters. Yes, it happens when you podcast, man. Your brain- I'm like, rafters? I don't know. No, that's dinosaurs. Well, now you've got the nomad, right? Because the nomad was a- Exactly.

[01:21:16] I would at least, I would tepidly recommend it. I would just recommend, it's like, watch it, but keep in mind, it's for the visuals and the sound. Yeah. Yeah. Pick it up on a matinee on a big screen or yeah, when you've got streaming,

[01:21:33] turn out the lights and put on some earbuds or some headphones or something and sink into it. Oh, it'd be great with headphones. Yeah. For sure. You have good bass. I'll probably watch it again on streaming. I probably will. I think it's,

[01:21:45] I'd like to sit with the visuals a little bit more. Yes, so would I. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, let's wrap it up here real quick. Quick shout out to Properly Howard Movie Reviews, one of our affiliate podcasts. Anthony and Steve do movie reviews and this

[01:22:01] season they've been doing a bunch of remakes. They just did one on the 1982 John Carpenter classic, The Thing. Great choice for spooktober. I rewatched it based on their podcast recently. It was a lot of fun. Next week, they'll be dropping The Sorcerer, a 1977 remake.

[01:22:22] And they did a bunch of stuff. The Departed, Wicker Man, Wolfman, Robocop, Dune. Alicia and I were on that Dune podcast and they did White Man Can't Jump. So it's been a

[01:22:32] hilarious season, a lot of fun. And I don't know, did you guys, did either of you listen to The Thing podcast yet? No, not that one yet, but yeah, I like the movie, so I'm definitely going to listen.

[01:22:44] Yeah, it's definitely a good movie and it's a good podcast for it. Alicia, you are getting back into the swing of things on Wolshift Dust. You have plans within plans within plans, I think?

[01:22:56] Yeah, so that basically The Thing's coming up have to do with, there's going to be some cross pod coverage on the House of Usher, which was just released on streaming as we record.

[01:23:09] And yeah, there's also going to be some ongoing coverage after that of Beacon 23, the next Hugh Howey adaptation to come out. And yeah, and there will also be intermittently, we'll be covering the

[01:23:24] Dune things in between the other things, building up to whenever the release date is going to be now. Do they kick it again? Well, no, it's just, we'll see. We'll see. Things have taken a sour turn in the actor negotiations. I was just going to say. Oh, okay.

[01:23:44] Yeah. So, if SAG-AFTRA drags out and they will not, I don't think that they will release Dune 2 without actors doing promo. I mean, yeah, I think if they were going to do that, they should have done that when they were going to do it in November, you know?

[01:24:00] Well, you can't have Zendaya in a film and then not have Zendaya promoting the film, right? If you're thinking from a studio standpoint. We're going to go see it regardless. It doesn't matter

[01:24:09] what Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya do. We're seeing it. But I think for to get big audience like they really want, I think they need some star power to get the word out. So, awesome. And they better start negotiating again. Exactly.

[01:24:24] That's right. Quick shout out to our Patreon Lore Masters. They're our top tier lore masters. They help keep the lights on and keep us all happy and spiritually and financially sort of

[01:24:38] better off than we were if we didn't have them. So, Samartian, Cyrus, Mark H., Michael G., Michelle E., David W., Brian P., Nick W., S.C., Peter O.H., Bettina W., Adam S., Nancy M., Lavinia T.,

[01:24:52] Dove71, Brian8063, Frederick H., Sarah L., Gareth C., Eric F., Matthew M., Sarah M., DJ Miwa, Andra B., Kuan Yu, Laura G., Deadeye Jedi Bob, Nathan T., Alex V., Aaron T., Subzero, and Adrian. Woo! 32 names. That is incredible.

[01:25:14] So, thank you all so very much. And again, if you're interested in supporting what we do, check us out on Patreon. Three bucks a month, you can do a seven-day free trial. You can

[01:25:23] also do an annual subscription if that works for you. And yeah, we've got a bunch of exclusive benefits there. We've got our second breakfast podcast. We do some live watches. We've got some

[01:25:36] areas on the Discord where folks can chat. And we're coming up with some more things. Anyway, that's enough of that. John, Alicia, I guess we'll – it's a Loki tonight, right? In about half an hour. Yeah. Yeah. At this point, I'm just going to stay up and watch it.

[01:25:54] Thanks for staying up. Thank you so much, Alicia, for doing this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's good fun. No, I want to watch Loki live. Last week, I was dodging spoilers. Oh, right. Right. Yes, exactly. And you had some other stuff going on in your life,

[01:26:09] so you couldn't get right around to it immediately, I think. Right. Well, I might have said, love you, mom. I'm going to watch Loki. Right. All right, guys. Well, we'll see you on the Loki podcast, which should be out in a few days. Thanks. Good night.

[01:26:26] The Lorehounds Podcast is produced and published by the Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the Lorehounds.

[01:26:41] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening.