524: Starship Troopers 3: Marauders

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Other notable Power Rangers tie-in coidasi here, voiced by Zordon.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I mean, it sounds like it.

Oh, yeah.

But because we don't have a lot of people who are in the world.

I'm too old to know

the Power Rangers.

Power Rangers?

No, I'm too old for that.

Yeah, sorry.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Someone listening appreciates that reference.

He wasn't at 32-bit video games.

He was like, Do you remember when grandpa would move the tiles of the shadow show against the wall and then Play-Doh would come and ruin it for everyone?

God, awful

movie.

Movie movies.

Welcome back to the Gamecast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema because the market for high-end pigeon noises is way lower than Eli expected when he was in college.

I'm your host, No Illusions.

Heath will be unable to join us this week, but sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnick.

Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir?

Well, I was a lot better before that introduction, No Illusion.

I realized

you were taking shots.

Silent treatment for the rest of the podcast.

No, okay, all right.

Well, good thing I brought two guests then.

Heath is actually on this episode.

He did a similar intro for Heath.

Heath is sitting there with his arms crossed eating a caramel.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair.

That's fair.

So the two guest masochists that I mentioned haven't been here for a while, Aaron Rabinowitz and Ursa M.

Wright are the co-hosts of the Philosophers in Space podcast, among other stuff, and are uniquely qualified to help with this bizarre shit that we are going to talk about today.

Aaron, Ursa, welcome back.

Hello, hello.

So good to be back.

Yeah, no, Eli, my old friends, we haven't ventured into hell and met Nietzsche in a while.

How are you doing?

Yeah.

That's the thing that was actually on the last episode.

That's not just a thing Aaron says when you see him.

He does not like that.

I could understand why people would think that's just how Aaron Rabinowitz gets.

I just appreciate that y'all are going to join us for another mission.

Let's go.

Hello, my darling.

We haven't journeyed into hell and met mid-nature for a while.

That's not an anti-Semitic impersonation.

That's happened more than once.

I feel like it's important.

All right, so tell us, Ursa, what will we be breaking down today?

The 2008 direct-to-DVD Smash Hit Starship Troopers 3 Marauder.

If Starship Troopers 2 wasn't enough for you,

and Eli, how bad was this movie?

Well, if you love the ironic fascism of the Starship Troopers franchise, but you wish it was actively manifesting the present moment while you were trying to write notes for your comedy podcast,

you will love this.

If my heart rate started to appear in the background of this movie, I wouldn't have been surprised at a certain point.

All right.

Here's a surprise for you.

I know, like, maybe a lot of you like me, when we announced that we were going to be doing a Starship Troopers movie, thought, oh, we must be starting that secular movie month that Heath got gifted through our patron fundraiser.

But no, in fact, we are not doing a secular movie.

So, Aaron, I'll turn this one to you.

How Christian is this movie?

It is so Christian, it would cheerfully sacrifice everything and everyone it cares about to its just and loving God.

Sure would.

It is, for those who are skeptical, the from dusk till dawn of Christian movies, if you know, you know.

Yeah.

it's a pretty good description yeah yeah so is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at

all right this is a little broad

so just bear with me it's best worst showing movement through a coherent series of images sure yeah yeah yeah

what do you call it

film filming i guess right

moving picture by the end i was pretty nostalgic for the fight scenes in gladiators also oh yeah no for sure yeah yeah I went hyper-specific.

Best, worst alien pussy depiction.

Yes.

And Ursa knows they're alien pussies.

Do I ever?

This is an expert weighing in.

Okay.

There's even a costume.

There's some real mid-orifice.

Yeah, no doubt.

We're not ready to talk about that surgery yet, but I've had it.

Yeah, no,

it's pretty amazing.

I have a lot of notes.

And so I'm going to go with, I'm going to be the first.

I read the book.

I think like all of us have read this book but i'll be the first to point out that i i read the book this was based on and i'm gonna go with best worst mech suits right because if you've read the book the fucking book opens with mech suits right the very first thing we learn is that the starship troopers have fucking mech suits so if you read the book and then you've learned that they were going to make a fucking movie about it you went to the movies hoping to see a goddamn fucking mech suit right and they were nowhere to be found in the first one because they didn't have the budget for that apparently well actually it's because the script was not written to be a starship Troopers movies and then was like retrofitted to fit this older property.

But at any rate, everybody was disappointed that there were no mech suits.

So when they get to the third one, they're like, We're going to name the fucking movie after the fucking mech suits.

So don't worry.

In this one, we're finally going to get around to those awesome mech suits that could cause you to jump like three stories high and all this badass shit.

You'll see them in this movie.

Trust us.

Asterisk.

And technically, we will.

Yeah.

See the fine print.

Yeah.

You know, The way that we see Satan in some films.

Yeah.

The way we see Norm's wife.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hinted at it at the beginning, but I wanted to go with best worst apropos, right?

By the end of this movie, I was pretty sure whoever shot Charlie Kirk was going to be in the end credit.

Tyler, what's his name?

Shooting Charlie Kirk.

Hope your weekend was good.

I am dying to prove to y'all that Starship Troopers 3 does too count as a Christian movie.

So we're going to keep the break brief.

And when we come back, I'll start making my case.

Oh, and I'll also take a Roomba.

Yes, the deluxe one.

Hey, Eli, what you doing?

Oh, Aaron told me I don't have to worry about money anymore because of philosophy.

I feel like that's not what he said.

He did.

He said everything's meaningless, so I can have a Switch 2 for every room in my house.

I did.

He didn't say that either.

Nah, you weren't there, though.

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Go to rocketmoney.com slash awful movies today.

That's rocketmoney.com slash awful movies.

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All right, Noah.

Thanks.

I guess I should return all this stuff because, you know, life has so much meaning.

Well, I didn't say that.

Okay, Roomba or no Roomba?

Why is it tied to a Roomba?

Interesting.

Okay, everybody.

Welcome to the Writer's Room meeting for Starship Troopers 3.

Yeah, look, everybody, I understand that we set out to write a fascist parody with the first two movies, and they,

well,

came true?

Parts of them came true, Craig.

Like a lot of them.

Well, yes, a lot of parts, but I I think as long as we really lay it on thick, this time most people will get it.

I mean, is Kelso going to get it?

You hired Kelso again?

Kelso's contract was for all three films, dude.

What up, knuckle fuckers?

You ready to make another amazing movie?

Hey, Kelso.

Shut up and get pregnant.

Hear me out.

Bug planet.

Psychic bug god.

Everyone is Christian now.

In Starship Troopers?

You bet your balls they are.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I stole a lime scooter and I want to ride that bad boy till the GPS calls the cops.

Get pregnant.

I mean.

Yeah, maybe people will get it.

I don't think they're going to get it.

Is get pregnant like a catchphrase or an imperative?

I don't know, man.

Nobody knows.

And we're back for the breakdown and we're going to open up with the fucking Federal Exposition Network that they introduced in the first movie.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, over on Philosophers in Space, we are aficionados of the info dump.

It's pretty essential for sci-fi.

And I feel like Starship Troopers propaganda media is like the best of the best with honors.

I will always smash that with like to know more button.

Fuck yeah.

Can I say

this is probably more fun before than now times, huh?

Yeah.

Like,

like, I know that there's a lot of fun to be had.

I'm like, man, this is just like Fox News.

But, like,

this was just like Fox News.

I used to be a comedian, you understand.

Yes.

You understand?

Some new listener, there are seven of you statistically.

Hi.

I used to be a comedian.

I would exaggerate the things that we saw in the movie for the giggles.

And now I'm just like, well, you know what that reminds me of?

Now.

Now, yeah.

I think the production values are a little better on Fox News, though.

Yeah, that's true.

This was definitely given me like better CGM.

This is more of a news max than a Fox News.

Maybe an OAM.

But there really is no law, but Poe's law anymore.

There's like the montage with the chemistry YouTuber set.

Yeah.

So they're like, they're introducing some new bugs for us this time.

They're like, okay, well, you know, kids, you got to buy all them all, right?

So now we have grenade bugs, right?

And I'm like, okay.

It was bad enough in the first one when you had bugs that could just fire plasma into orbit out of their butts, right?

That was already dumb enough.

And now you're expecting me to believe that evolution selected these bugs for ability to explode?

I don't,

it seems hard.

Yep.

That's my culture, Noah.

Yeah, not just grenade.

We got kamikaze bugs, right?

They picked up the non-Western bug DLC on this one.

Yeah.

And so, and we learn, in addition to the fact that there are now grenade bugs and scorpion plasma bugs, huh, to look forward to later, we also learn that the farm planet Roku-san used to be peaceful, but now it's like, you know, it's the front lines in the bug war.

Yeah.

And as we see all of the new bug weapons, we get introduced to the heavy tech that the humans are bringing, the new shovel.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which would be a really great 40k reference if anyone involved in this movie was actually a nerd.

But the reference that they're making here is that, you know, we've dug in and entrenched, right?

But like the bugs aren't shooting at us.

So why would we entrench?

The best tactics World War I has to offer.

Trenches and straight lines.

For folks who aren't familiar with military strategy, trenches are pretty good for defending against not super mobile enemies.

Right.

Anyone who's heard the term blitzkrieg might understand why, in this case, it's just a death trap.

Yeah.

It's also...

wildly variant how affected by the guns these bugs are.

I know we're going to talk about it a lot through the movies, but every time there's a military tactic, it either works super well or not at all, and the movie will never tell us why.

Supposedly because of whether or not there's a main character involved.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's very important.

Sorry, there's two more nuggets that we have to squeeze out of this info dump before we can flush it.

One is that you now get executed for protesting the war.

Oh, sorry.

One A is that you get executed for protesting the war.

One B is that religion is against the law because that fucks up the war effort.

Yeah.

And if you're listening to this episode in archives, this was not apropos when we recorded the episode.

We all miss Ursa so much.

Oh my gosh.

Oh no.

R.I.P.

I might die.

That's funny.

So, okay, but the other, the other nugget we got to squeeze out is that there's a general, he's the Sky Marshal.

His name is Omar Anoke,

and he is the superstar general

fucking lounge singer that everybody wants to get with these days.

Yeah, no, I think it's pronounced Sky Marshal Nookie.

Like, he's super hot if you're into the balding dill fetish, and I have no judgment there.

Sure, I can at least at least two of the people on this.

It's almost like you maybe do a little bit, and I'm going to be on this.

Yeah, no, I can see how, like, that this happens, but like, you feel like when they wrote this, they imagined a very handsome actor playing this role, right?

They sure did.

It's written in that way.

I mean, like, you know, this guy's fine, right?

Like, I could see, like,

there's an amount of drinks where I'd fuck this guy, right?

But, like, he's not, he doesn't exude hot guy the way this movie seems to think.

A lot of attacking Eli on the broadcast is because we should maybe have laid some ground rules.

Then I lashed out at Ursa and said they were going to die.

Yeah, right.

Maybe we felt like that would have played better.

Yeah.

I'm going to dig.

Don't worry.

I'm going to dig in on Ursa's death and we will find the funny.

The only way out is through.

Okay.

I do feel like this guy, if he cleaned himself up, could do a decent Will Arnett impersonation.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

Best I can say.

Absolutely.

With a wig.

I wasn't sure if you were talking about me or the actress this year, so

I'm glad you clarified.

I'm just going to plant my flag here and say this song is a fucking banger and you can all go to hell.

Oh, it's a song.

Absolutely.

It's going to be a banger.

A good day to die.

Yeah.

A good day to die.

Yeah.

And slightly less jingoistic than the programming at the Kennedy Center this year.

So, you know,

okay.

So, yeah, two of my first notes, like, can you imagine a world where federal government was cracking down on war protesters just for protesting the war?

And then, my very next notice, can you imagine federal leaders selling their own branded merch?

Because that's the next place they go, right?

General Nookie over here has like branded merch, and they're like, THE, can you imagine if the leader was selling merch with this name on it?

I feel like it's like watching The Matrix and being like, this feels like obvious lazy writing, but it's only because we're in the world that they wrote.

We're there.

Yes.

Right.

Aaron, are you offering me the ability to go back to sleep?

Because my answer is yes.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I will sell out.

I'm offering you pills.

Let's leave it at that.

Yes.

I'll take both pills.

I'll take all three pills.

I'll take 74 pills.

Purple pills.

There's some solid joke work there shining through, I feel like.

I want to respect that, even if it's dead now.

Yep.

Not much.

You know, there's not much compliment in this sandwich.

Let's get them out where we can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So then we're going to cut to this cheap.

And we should point out that this movie has like, you know, it's direct to DVD.

It's got like a 115th of the budget of the first one.

So we cut to this cheap ass looking military base on Roku San where they're holding the bugs at bay with an electric fence.

The bugs can fly, by the way, in the first one.

And immediately Chekhov's shovel is fired.

Yes.

Yep.

They throw a grenade bug in and somebody gets killed by an exploding exploding shovel.

Yeah, this is just like an expanding series of Chekhov's objects throughout this entire movie.

Yes, right, right.

Yeah.

And I just want to say, I was an individual who unironically thought that Starship Troopers should have beat Titanic for best special effects, and it's a travesty that it lost.

So it is deeply personally painful to me how bad the bugs have fallen in this movie.

They look so bad.

It looks very bad.

Yes to.

Yeah, I was going to say, I do miss that era where instead of like practical effects or not having special effects, movies were just like, we're just going to play Mario on the screen for four seconds.

And that's, we'll say that's the alien spaceship.

My beautiful bugs, they cyber truck my beautiful bugs.

And we should also point this out.

And of course, this is the problem that just carries over from the first one because this movie has Casper Van Deen in it.

He makes his return as the lead character.

This is a character who is named Johnny Rico, and he's from Buenos Aires and they cast a man so white he's literally named Casper for that role, right?

Casper Van Deen, I would challenge you to make a whiter name without adding, you know, Earthington III to Casper Van Deen, right?

And they kill a man just to serve his interest.

And I'm told the fact that that man had a family is important.

I can't believe you're joking about that shovel.

I do feel like some of us rewatched the original one.

Don't you feel like Casper was a little swarthier in the first?

Like, I feel like he

got whiter somehow.

He didn't want to spend that much time in space.

Maybe there wasn't a lot of sun on the set of what the bleep do we know.

I don't know.

The difference in paycheck between this movie and that one, I think, is probably at least part of the explanation.

Yeah, right, right.

Hails, you're right up.

So, okay, so we're also going to meet Lieutenant Manion and her fucking communist accent.

This is like his assistant that will fade in and out of the movie here and there.

And we learn that Sky Marshal Nookie is coming to the barracks for an inspection, right?

Yeah, and his gal Friday, who does not matter, is mostly really interested in doing her own inspection with the Sky Marshal.

Yeah.

She wants her trenches bombed hard.

So the general's like, basically, this is one of those movies where if they talk about it in this scene, it happens in the next scene, right?

So General Nookie's ship shows up.

We meet General Dix, who is very clearly like was that they were hoping that they were going to get Neil Patrick Harris back for this part.

Yes, right?

Like, it's supposed to be like his old buddy from school or whatever, but you know, the fucking Doogie Hauser doesn't need this money this fucking bad.

So, we get just some new character named General Dix that's also an old friend of his.

You just didn't meet him in the first movie, is all polished Casper's brass.

Yes, my grinder hookup did that the other day.

And I appreciate the queer inclusion this far back in the 2000s.

I highly recommend.

Yeah, exactly.

General Dicks.

So, sorry.

So they come out, the General Nookie, he's very like, you know, PR conscious.

So he has somebody filming him with a goddamn camcorder that they thought we'd still be using in the 2300s.

I think we should give full credit here, by the way.

Dick's name is full name is Dick Hauser, which I think is very clearly a porn name.

Absolutely.

And like poor Boris Kojo is doing, doing the best he can, filling some, you you know, very dancing shoes.

This legitimately just hit me.

Dix Hauser, Doogie Hauser.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

And Jolene Blalock's name is like some anagram of her name in this.

They really just did that, didn't they?

Oh, wow.

He's here to prove that the Gestapo is both post-religious, post-gender, and post-race.

Like, this is the future liberals want.

That's the point of this.

You're right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so we're also going to meet her.

We're going to meet Jolie.

This is Lola Beck, all lips.

Right.

All All lips.

And she's going to be the, I feel like she's going to be the main character of the film, really.

Right.

Yeah.

At least as far as I'm concerned.

I do hope that at least Ursa recognized her as the Vulcan from Enterprise.

Of course I poor back.

You needed to be real.

How could you even?

I know.

There are a lot of ways in which this was a very specific torture.

You mean Ursa turned to the poster on their wall?

Yeah, right.

Oh,

yeah.

Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, apparently like Denise Richards was busy doing friends and Charlie Sheen, so couldn't make it back.

So yeah, but we learned that General Dix and Lola are fucking, but Johnny is a little gringing about it.

I don't know if Lola's supposed to be like his ex or like a love interest he had in the past, but there's some kind of love triangle there.

They squeeze that in at the very beginning.

Which really breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, because if this is this post-fascist, you know, utopian society, how have they not solved love love triangles with polyamory like we did back in the aughts what's going on here yes obviously well that's the problem with fascism right it just maintains the monogamy that's why just otherwise it would eventually dissolve into communism that's wrong you're so close fascism requires sexual hierarchy to maintain its structure it does the foundation of fascism is monogamy

kind of thank you thank you actually kind of is

so yeah so the general nookie is like well why don't you guys he's psychic by the way which is another stupid thing that they forced into this movie that never matters so he's psychic and he's like hey i can sense that there's a love triangle going on here and i'm like oh am i psychic because i sense that too jesus christ pretty obvious he's like why don't you guys all go to a bar and i'll get with his girl friday and she can show me around Yeah, as someone who's spent a lot of time around magicians who don't want to admit that the things they're doing are badly disguised card tricks, I deeply identify with General Anoke being like, I'm really picking up a vibe here of the things you said and did.

I didn't have to wait for him to say that he was sensing anything.

I actually knew he was psychic because he spends the entire movie looking like he wants to fuck everyone and everything he sees.

That's his psychic face.

And touching his temple, that's important too.

Yeah, also very important.

But touching his temple like he wants to fuck something.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Again, the will or neck comparisons do stack up a bit.

Yeah, don't they, though?

So, okay, so Casper takes Dix and Lola to a bar, right?

And of course, General Nookie's song is on the radio, his banger about it being a good day to die.

And when we get to the bar, we're going to have to introduce that there's a little tension between the military guys and the farmers that were on this planet that were doing just fine before the damn military showed up.

Okay.

I want to talk about my perspective on this scene.

If I may zoom out for a bit, this scene is written like the actors playing the farmers didn't know which of their lines started the bar fight.

Like

they were improvising and everyone else had lines because they will respond to everything everyone in the bar says with quote-unquote fighting words like, that's what you say, Southerner.

And everyone will be like, So moving on.

Sorry, we had more fucking info dumped to dump here.

Yeah.

And every time, every time they forget a line, it's just...

Yeah.

And they're like, oh, shit, that wasn't in the script.

That was good.

Let's get more of that.

So while they're doing that, back on the base, the soldiers are watching the bugs.

They're just frying themselves on the electric fence, one after the other.

And we're doing this in like, it's much cheaper to render them in night vision cam.

Right.

So we're constantly just seeing like a silhouette, a gray silhouette of the bugs.

And they're like, no, trust us, it's bugs.

It's bugs.

But like, they're clearly testing the fence raptor style.

Yes.

You know, and Sky Marshall's like doing that weird talking about how impressive they are as a species, which is just never a good sign for your leadership.

Yeah.

This man has 100% stuck his penis in bug hole.

No.

100% hasn't.

And honestly, like, it not, not just like this character, this actor fucked a bug costume to get into character.

Right.

Like, that's what he is.

It's called method acting.

Yeah.

Well, no, right.

I'm not judging him.

I'm not judging him.

He called his good buddy, Daniel Day-Lewis, Lewis, and he was like, Daniel, D-Money, how do I get all the way in?

And he was like, you've got to fuck a bug.

Fuck a bug.

That's what he did for Lincoln.

Come on, it worked.

Yeah, no, he did fuck a lot of bugs.

I thought it was weird that he fucked a bug in the middle of Lincoln.

I know no one watched it except me and Aaron Rabinowitz.

And so the Academy didn't talk about him fucking a bug.

I care about history.

It's important to me.

Yeah.

Also, important directing note, the Sky Marshall here is doing a lot of what's called a Kubrick stare.

He's going to do it it basically throughout this whole movie.

And it just makes me wonder if maybe he's not entirely above board.

Just point that out.

Perhaps you picked up on something.

Put it out there.

Well, suddenly, and suddenly he slips.

And this is done in the stupidest possible way.

Everybody swamps him for autographs.

And so the girl that's like watching him turns around to get her autograph book to like, you know, get up her nerve to ask him.

And then when she turns back around, he's disappeared.

Nobody knows where he is.

But they were all surrounding him.

What is he?

He bilbo fucking baggage.

What happened?

Right.

Because like like we don't like learn later that he has the ability to turn fucking invisible.

Everybody's like, oh, where did he go?

Right.

It's a psychic thing, Noah.

Yeah, it's a psychic thing.

You notice where everyone's paying attention at the same time because you're so psychic.

Well, yeah, yeah, obviously.

Maybe learn something about other cultures.

Yes.

Before I judge them.

Before our friend Ursa dies.

All right.

So, so back at the bar.

Hey, Ursa, I'm going to need you to make it like six or seven more years or else this week.

Oh, gosh.

This episode.

I'm not getting a lot more than that.

You know, like I manifest forever and ever, but like just friend to friend, I need this not to be apropos.

That's what's going to get me through the next six or seven years.

After that, though,

after that, when I die, I'm going to be like, you should have said more years.

This is your fault.

I'm going to use my last ounce of strength to call you.

This is your fault, you fucker.

September 15th, 2031.

I mean, I wasn't sure when in the recording to kind of admit this, but I wanted to let you all know over on Philosophers in Space, we have a cursed monkey paw and we fuck around with it sometimes.

And we may have left it in the glove box of

our ship on the way over.

We have one of those.

It's called Being People Who Make Their Living on the Internet.

Yeah.

So, okay, so we're back at the bar.

The farmers are still talking shit.

They are desperately trying to start the bar fight that is their purpose.

So finally, they get under Dix's skin.

They get under Dick's skin.

Dick's skin.

There we go.

And he's like, they start fighting him.

And he's just letting them hit him because, like, if they hit him enough times, he can legally execute them.

And that's what he's after.

Right?

Because he's a bad guy.

But then he'll be a good guy and we'll never actually deal with this behavior in any fucking way whatsoever.

I really just thought he was a liberal screaming, this is illegal.

While the illegal thing goes,

makes a cell phone video and is.

Herzey Merrick Garland.

Yeah, right.

Part of the subtext here, if there's such a thing in this movie, right, is that like his girlfriend is very clearly, like vividly replaying her very extensive fuck fest with Rico from their previous employment.

Like,

just full on.

And so, yeah, I think he wants to kill some people.

Right.

Dix wants to like show how manly he is or whatever.

So, yeah, so he goes to shoot the farmer, but Rico, Casper Van Deen's character, grabs his gun and like makes him fire into the air at the last second or whatever.

Because he's one of the good ones.

Right, exactly.

He's one of the good fascists.

He just wants to kill bugs.

Yeah.

He just wants to kill the other species, guys.

Yeah.

So, but now Dix is going to have the farmers arrested, but he's also going to have Rico arrested for insubordination for not letting him kill that farmer.

So, okay.

But just as he's having him arrested, the electric fence goes down, the power goes down in the thing, and now the bugs can get through.

Yeah, we got through our real one grab ass, and now it's Chekhov's electric fence.

Here we go.

Yes, exactly.

Impeccable timing.

The bugs have.

Yeah.

And I do like that they get the news about the bug attack on Zach Morris's cell phone, right?

Again, however many thousand years in the future.

Well, Enrico listens to the broken radio transmission for way too long, right?

Because it's like, you know, power's down.

It's like, yeah, well, you know, we can see that.

Bugs are through the vents.

Well, yeah, we knew that right away.

And then he listens to it for a really long time to like the crackles to get one word here or there.

I'm like, man, you get the gist of it.

Yeah.

Do you think that maybe if you hold out, he's going to say, no need for reinforcements.

We got this one, you know?

So now this is the first time, though, that we get a really good look, you know, not through the night vision goggles or whatever, of how bad the bugs have gotten since the original movie.

I was going to say, I'm not sure I call it a good look, but now I see what you did.

Yeah, right.

A solid look, I guess.

A thorough look.

Yeah, that's the word I need.

So it, guys, it's like it's Johnny Neutron, right?

It's like a Nickelodeon cartoon from the mid-2000s.

It's amazing.

At one point, the graphics get so bad that they just splash the screen with red to be like, oh, sorry.

Can't show you any more of our super cool bugs.

Yeah, right.

It's going to be actually really good graphics behind all this boy.

Yeah.

So Rico's like, oh, we got to go fight the bugs.

He says the, he says the come on, you apes thing.

Why you?

Yeah.

That's very important.

Yeah.

Come on, apes.

You want to live forever.

But here's the problem, right?

The fact that he says it again in this movie, right?

Because this is like a catchphrase from Starship Troopers 1.

Trash.

Yeah, Muscle Ironside's catchphrase.

Yes, it's like Ironside's.

Okay.

But the fact that he says it now means that it's like a thing people say.

It really loses its power, right?

It would be like if you learn in fucking Scarlet O'Hara 2, it was just like, frankly, my dear, I don't give a, it's just a thing people said.

It was a catchphrase like, drink Coke.

Well, and we should point out that before he says that, he's like, oh, well, you know, we got to go out and fight the bugs.

Dick says, no, you can't do that because you got arrested.

I arrested you.

I arrested you.

And so Rico knocks him the fuck out.

And then he goes and he gives his, you know, big rah-rah line.

Yeah.

And hey, one of the guys, when he gives the rah-rah line, crosses himself.

Christian movie.

Christian movie.

Christian movie.

Hey, I wonder if Rico will be forgiven by the end of the movie.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

Big questions.

So in comes a grenade bug.

So everybody stares at for a while as you do.

They stare at it like, guys, wasn't that used for traumatic effect like two scenes ago?

It was we just did grenade bug.

This is third time.

We were nine minutes into this movie, and this is our third grenade bug.

Yeah.

We're going to get a few more too.

And then never again.

Yep.

Ever.

Even when they could really use one.

Yeah.

So, but the bugs are now in the trenches.

And I'm like, oh, it's a good thing you guys seized the low ground here, right?

Yeah, they're going to pull on some red coat style military strategy, get in the straight line, shoot in one direction.

Oh, no, I'm out of ammo.

I have to stay directly in the middle of the trench in the most vulnerable place possible while I reload.

Yelling for someone to give me ammo.

Yeah, right, right.

Oh, no, I died.

So, no, but deeper in the bases, Lieutenant Communist Accent is mustering her forces.

They've got another one of these great military decisions where you can see one guy, he's shooting this mounted gun.

It's mounted from the ceiling, but it's way too high for him to like see what he's shooting at.

So

that doesn't seem good to me either.

Let me me know if I'm fucking him up down there, okay?

Yeah.

The sit rep here is totally, ominously fucked up or tofu, as it's more common.

Oh, interesting.

Well done.

The military would love you.

So now it's time for Casper Van Dien to come in and do some real serious tactician shit, right?

So he's like, put your guns into bad guys and shoot them.

They'll work this time, even though they haven't up to this point in the movie, right?

And this is where we also get a better look at the guns, which I would describe as something you could buy for your children before Columbine.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

And after, I mean,

that's by your real ah, you beat me to it, you son of a floral white lie.

Let's be let's be specific here.

Oh, I'm gonna kill your kid at school.

Oh, God,

it's okay, nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

Literally, no one cares.

No one cares, it's fine.

It's fine.

No, you're right.

They won't even.

That's not worth half master.

Your kids never explicitly called for the deaths of other people.

That's no matter.

They're just like kids.

We're in the way of bullets of a right-winger.

So,

Ursa gets it in the future.

Jesus Christ, dude.

And so, okay.

The only way out is through, Noah.

You're just trying to make sure I can't edit it out is all you're doing now.

Don't try to dress this up as some high-minded comedic principle.

I'm putting a phone call to you as a shortcut on the home screen of my phone just to make sure when it happens.

Just to make sure when it happens, I now know what the last thought will be.

I mean, just open up Grindr.

We already talked about that.

All right.

All right.

So, meanwhile, so Dix has woken up from getting knocked out and he's walking through the battle trying to fulfill his grudge.

He finds the Sky Marshal who's all like injured up and shit.

And he's like, hey, we got to get this guy back to the ship and get him the fuck out.

It's not me that needs to get the fuck out.

It's him.

Yeah, everybody get paired up with their act two dance partners.

Yeah.

They're going for dazed and traumatized and confused, but I know what subspace looks like.

And so, and they, by the way, we should point out that they call the bugs Archie now, right?

Because in the first movie, they were called arachnids, even though they only had four fucking legs, six maybe, if you wanted to count the arms as legs.

Definitely not eight by any fucking way you'd count it.

So, I think they're just trying to like

back away from that without completely retconning it, you know?

Which is such a bizarre line in the sand for them to draw.

Of all the insane, impossible, stupid things this movie sticks to.

At some point in the writer's room, someone stood up and pounded their fist on the table and was like, they don't have eight fucking legs.

That's why, Greg.

Yeah.

Oh, I find it perfectly easy to believe that they're still inventing slurs 300 years.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's true.

And they still don't make any sense.

Yeah, right.

So, okay, so they get the Sky Marshall guy, Sky Marshall Nookie, back into his ship where we meet the doctor.

The Sky Marshall is in shock, but the Doctor, you know, does some doctor magic and now he's fine.

Dr.

Wiggs.

Yeah, let's be specific here.

Dr.

Wiggs.

I I know this is satire, but for fuck's sake.

Yeah, and Dr.

Wiggs instantly declares that he's in shock.

I mean, like, I'm not even talking Star Trek bee boo bee boo beep thing that so can tell you how sick you are.

He like sits on the table and he's like, shock.

Oh, yeah, you know, he's as good at it as like RFK Jr.

is at detecting mRNA.

Yeah, the mitochondria in my son.

Yeah, exactly.

He specialized in phrenology at Himmler University.

Give him some, give him a fucking break.

Never seen a fucking stethoscope.

This is exactly the the kind of doctor you'd get in a fash society.

Sure.

And Spirit Halloween, Michael Ironside fucking hates bugs a whole lot.

Your blood is haunted.

Good job, Dr.

Wiggs.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So, okay, so, but they're going to blast off and get the Sky Marshal to safety, but...

Dix is going to stay behind.

I know.

I love that they gave me that name to work with, but Dix is going to stay behind and arrest Rico for wanting to fuck his girlfriend, right?

Yeah.

Lola is super sad and is going to give us one of the saddest don't go I love you scenes ever forced onto celluloid.

Oh, she says, I love you.

And he goes, blast off, Fleet, which is exactly how Heath responds to that.

Just as good as I know.

I still thought the wedding was lovely.

I mean,

so, okay, but Dix gets on the PA.

In the middle of the battle, Dix gets on the PA and he goes, I want everybody to know I'm in charge now, not Rico.

I'm in charge of everything.

And Rico can go fuck himself.

Lola likes me best now.

Really nailing the emasculated male representative.

Really, yeah, yeah.

But just then,

he gets grenade bugged for the fourth time in 16 minutes of film or whatever we've gotten to now.

Really wanted to flash cut over to the bugs, and they're like, Should we throw another one?

They always work.

Yeah, they always just sit there and stare at us.

I do think instead of shovels, they could have given him those like cool, long hooked glove thingies from that scary ass version of squash.

And they can whip him back at the bugs at like 100 miles an hour.

Hi, alive.

Learn to respect Ursa's culture.

Are you Basque, Ursa?

So yes.

Top Basque.

You got to get on Grinder.

Ursa's been called a lot of things.

I sure have.

So, okay, so just then, a giant, oh, here's one you haven't been called.

A giant plasma scorpion attacks.

You don't know my lab.

I should have got out of your hinder.

My bad.

That's like bottom 11 things I would assume Ursa has not been called.

The like scorpion bug, which is, if we're being generous, is just a mobile dick wagon.

Yeah, it is.

Plasma jizz all over the Marines.

This scorpion bug fucks so hard, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Okay.

So now this is a practical effect.

This is not CGI, right?

They made a model of this because somebody on the staff said, hey, look, if you make it look enough like a dick, I will pay for the practical effects.

I get to keep it afterwards, but you know.

So as you all know, General Anoki ruined the bug costume that I was making plans with earlier in.

I'd like $100,000 for a big acid-spewing cyber dick.

And I honestly, I don't want to answer any questions about it.

I'm the Sky Marshal.

You don't have to.

It's my birthday.

But hey, hey, you know what?

We finally see a fucking arachnid in these goddamn movies here.

So I'm not going to complain to her.

I do think we could call this an impractical effect, though, because this is clearly like the jaws shark of the dick, of like the dick bug world.

We see it for one scene, and they can't even get it up.

They can't even keep that fucking thing hard enough.

The claymation is so bad that, like, no, great use of budget.

Yeah, they keep it up for like 40 seconds at most.

Yeah.

So Lola gets back to the, gets the Sky Marshal back to the mothership, which is, by the way, designed to have the fewest possible surfaces to animate.

Like, you can count the polygons on this ship.

We are at least 10 years past the need for blue screens and administrators to look that bad by the point this movie is made.

I just feel the need to say that very clearly.

Right.

Yes.

And there's a tone shift here.

We really truly abandon the first movie, I feel like, and like jump into a second movie where Timu Carmen is like a boss bitch.

Yes.

And

everyone, like, all right, help me with the vibes here because by the way, Ursa, I heard all the implications in that yes, and I am with you.

Okay.

You're psychic too.

It turns out.

We're doing great.

Help me with this subtext, though.

Has she fucked everyone on her crew, including the stewardess?

I don't.

They all play it like that, right?

They're called flight attendants, Aaron.

Yeah, for sure.

No, she would, I think she would pretty much self-identify as a stewardess and would consider it broke for you to suggest otherwise.

So, okay, yeah, right.

She's the Christian character.

So, and just to give you an idea how bad this fucking movie is, there's a moment here where Lola runs into the flight attendant character, right?

This is Holly, and there's like a three-second exchange between the two of them, and you're like, well, surely you'll pass the Bechdel test in these three fucking seconds.

You only have to make it three seconds.

And she's like, are you carrying food to a man?

And she's like, yes.

And she's like, oh, good.

Good.

It's the Sky Marshal

who we are now talking about.

I was scared for a second that we were going to go woke and therefore broke.

And just to answer your question about the vibe check, Aaron, we meet a character here named Jingo.

Yes, we do.

Yes, we do.

Hashtag vibe checked.

Yes.

Jingo is the chef.

He'll be important later.

Jingo unchained.

Will he?

No.

No, he'll show up later.

Yeah, good point.

So they go in to see the Sky Marshal.

A lot of eyebrow work in the Kubrick stare from the Sky Marshal here.

But as they're chatting, the ship is suddenly under this scene as boring attack, and they fall out of warp.

The cameras are shaking, you guys.

Yes, well, obviously, yeah, so it must be bad.

I wonder if he can't get the Kubrick stare quite right because he doesn't want to tip his head down far enough because they gave him a note not to show his bald spot because it ruins the whole concept.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, right.

He's trying to do the cat head cocked back Kubrick stare.

He's looking straight at the camera.

Specific subgenre.

How's this?

Is this doing it?

I feel like it's not doing it.

Am I crazy yet?

Do I look crazy?

We also meet here.

So, as everybody's running to get to the escape ship, we have to meet Bull the mechanic character who will fall in with this group of people that the movie will follow for pretty much the right.

It's going to be Bull the mechanic.

It's going to be the Doctor.

It's going to be the Sky Marshal, Holly, Lola, and Jingo the chef.

Right.

Meeting all the people who are going to die later.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's like everybody's DD character from the first half of the movie died.

And so now they're just blowing, pivoting over

to the characters they rolled up in between sessions.

Yeah, but they escape their way into a escape pod to fucking Tatooine

Schmattowine, whatever the hell they call it.

And this is the closest we have yet come to a plot.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, look, hey, damsel meet distress.

That's going to do it.

That's the plot, which means that also does it for act one.

And we get to take a break.

But we'll be back in a flash with even more of Starship Troopers 3, Marauder.

Marauder.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Hey, podcast listener.

I'm Eli Bosnick.

And I'm No Illusions.

You know, today's film tackles an issue so many of us have been faced with, changing work and personal relationships.

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Hey, I'm sorry that I'm dating your ex who also pilots my ship, by the way.

I forgive you, and I'm glad we worked this out.

Yeah.

Feels good.

Damn it, we've been hit.

All right, everybody, into the lander, especially you, Holly.

Wait, why am I going?

Well, because we're going crash right but shouldn't i stay up here in the spaceship well

we need your skills what skills oh she's like uh assistant okay now everyone's making me feel bad you brought it up i thought someone might say something i'm sorry hold on so so you were fishing for compliments during an emergency evacuation i wasn't fishing for compliments i was looking for affirmation well it's that that feels like a you thing folks are we gonna get in the lander or not fine fine.

I'm coming.

You're really good at getting into landers.

No, now it's too late.

Way too late.

Thank you.

And we're back for more of this shit.

And we're going to rejoin the action by checking in with the Exposition Network again to learn more.

We learned that Rico, Casper Mantine, is taking the blame now for the Roku-san base falling to the bugs, right?

They've pinned it on him.

Defeat at Clindathu.

I mean, Roko saw.

I mean, yeah, right, right.

And hey, if your character's name is Rico, maybe you don't name your planet Roku, right?

I'm sorry.

Just small notes.

Yeah,

I just can't get enough of the fact that the peace terrorist is named Elmo.

Elmo Goniff.

Danny DeVito with a beard.

Yeah.

And also, so they spend so much time establishing this character that you just keep expecting him to pop up and like serve some function in it at some point, right?

Because we learned that there's this character, Elmo Goniff.

He is a disabled guy in a wheelchair that is the leader of the Christian anti-war movement.

And he's just like so in the background.

Yep, not just a peace note.

He's religious.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

But then, so we cut to the Sky Marshal giving a speech to everybody, and we're like, well, hold on, wait, I thought the Sky Marshal had crashed on some alien world, but no, that's a CGI deep fake.

Yep.

And Admiral Brass Polisher is having feelings about it.

Yeah.

Right?

He's the fascist with a conscience.

Yeah.

Well, he's, you know, sad and alone now.

And, you know, this is just so depressing.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

So and we meet Admiral Bad Lady.

I don't know.

Fid?

Admiral Fid.

Fid.

Fid, P-H-I-D, A-Fid, I guess.

I don't know what the fuck they're going through.

Everything is so stupid about this movie.

I just don't even want to try to figure out what they're trying to do with it.

So Admiral Fidd is the one that's like pretending to be the Sky Marshal doing the speech that's being deep faked into him or whatever.

And she's trying to like take over by pretending to be him and while he dies off on planet Shmadoween.

Yeah, using the, you know, sci-fi version of AI.

And again, just to talk about how unsatirizable the world is around us, I literally watched this scene and then I was like, okay, Eli, you deserve a little break.

Turned off this movie and watched the AI-generated video that Trump made about Charlie Kirk.

And I was like, oh, here we are.

Where I'm just living.

They might as well have turned off the hologram generator and had him be like, so what'd you guys think?

Could everyone tell I had a stroke?

What do you think?

I was that exact same experience.

I'm like, we're all fucking subruders now.

Did his hands get bigger?

What the fuck are his hands doing?

Yeah, right.

Back and to the left.

Yes.

No, he's always had seven fingers.

That's what it is.

Yeah, no.

So, but then Dix goes to work, right, to be fascist and evil.

And he goes to his office where we see he has a clear whiteboard, like a see-through whiteboard.

Because it's the future, and in the future, whiteboards will be much less useful.

Everything is see-through.

Why are all what?

Who the fuck decided that that was a sci-fi trope?

It's so dumb.

Yeah.

Apple in their next iOS release.

No, I don't know.

I don't know how to break it to you, but

take a gander at my iPhone next time I see you.

He's super mopey because he threw the only guy who can tolerate him in jail.

Yeah.

Supposed to feel fat for him.

Whoops.

He's having the elementary school level dilemma.

Like, hmm, the authority figures are supposed to be trustworthy, but they're doing bad things.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, and then to really drill that in, an informant by the name of Lieutenant Lamb will show up, right?

So Lieutenant Lamb was on duty when Lola and the Sky Marshal sent in a distress call saying that they were stranded on the planet Schmadowen.

And when she kicked it upstairs.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Proto-Deidramiro here.

I love that she

really nothing fucks over fash plans more like over-eager middle management types.

Right.

Yeah.

She says, yeah, you know, I took this to my superiors and they told me to sit on it.

And here it is.

And she hands him like a typed up report.

They type it in sci-fi font, obviously, because it's the future.

Of course.

But it's just Lola going like, hey, somebody come get us.

We're on Shmadoween, right?

Yep.

But she was ordered to stand down and let Lola and the Sky Marshal die.

So now he's going to go confront Admiral Fidd about that.

But he realizes here that the Admiral doesn't want to give up power.

So she wants to let his girlfriend and the Sky Marshal die.

Hey, no illusions.

Can I thank you personally for telling me why the fuck the Admiral does that in the movie?

I've spent the whole movie being like, I don't understand why the lady wants them to die.

I don't understand why the lady wants them to die.

Well, it's not even that.

It's going to be something dumber and more convoluted as though the movie is like, I changed my mind later, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Psyched you out.

Yeah.

So, so now we cut to, we cut to Tatooine or Schmadoen or whatever.

But what was the name of this planet?

It was stupid.

It's actually OM1, which I'm pretty sure is meant to just shorten down to OM.

Oh my God, you're fucking right.

I think that's the joke.

So Planet Ohm, so they get down there.

And so we've got that, the, you know, the motley crew that I described earlier.

The chef, Jingo, he's going to be the comic relief.

And while they're all like, you know, licking their wounds after the landing, he spots a bug in the distance.

He spots a bug and does a literal.

He almost jumps into her arms like fucking Scooby-Doo.

Yeah, they do coax him out of his part later with a Scooby-Stack.

Yeah, and the mechanic who has managed to survive, who, to be clear, we refer to him as Bull, his full name is Bull Brittles, like a golden age supervillain.

Yeah.

You know, what's going to happen here is space stewardess, and that is the correct name because fascism.

She's going to start into the Lord's Prayer, but Lola shuts her down super fast.

And then Bull has to like come to her defense, like everyone has a right to think what they want.

Yes.

And Lola claps back.

Sure, as long as they keep it to themselves.

And I swear to fuck, I could hear your entire audience cheer like we were in a theater together.

It was the best moment.

You missed a very important part where Lola gives him a noogie.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

You're right.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

With the slow motion arm twist.

Yeah.

It's incredible.

Well, and then she says she turns to Holly, the space stewardess, and she goes, can the God talk?

Which would be in our intro if we had quotes in our fucking intro.

I loved it so much.

All of us wrote it down.

And I'm like, not even with commentary.

All of us just have in our notes, can the God talk independent of anything else.

That's amazing.

This is also when the Sky Marshal reveals that he's religious too.

I'm not going to spoil how he's religious or why he's religious, but he will with his performance because she's like, oh, our Father who art in heaven, can the God talk?

And he's like, you know, I also have

a religion.

Yes, I also believe in a God.

And everyone else in the movie will be like, weird way that you phrased that, but I have no follow-ups.

All right, moving through the desert.

Let's get going.

And also, from the like gam perspective, here is where I feel like you start to see the drop coming, but it's too late and to avoid it.

And it's going to be so much worse than you think.

It's so good.

Oh, I have to ignore so many of my notes for this movie because so many of my notes were, Aaron, this doesn't count as a fucking Christian movie until.

But it does.

Retroactively.

It absolutely does.

Yeah.

I also, like, because the movie's never going to address this, right?

Because we learn here that Holly is very, very Christian.

And we imply, at least, that the Sky Marshall is as well.

And I feel like Christianity would be really hard to reconcile with malicious space bugs that are killing humans by the planetful.

I don't know.

Is it really you who is going to underestimate the ability to do that?

No, that's true.

Christians

to just to just sail on past any information like that.

Oh guys, that's what they meant by Gog and Magog, alien bugs with grenades.

Yes, with the power of space, Jesus, all things are possible.

Just write that down.

You're right.

Yep, yep.

I can leg press a button.

But like, this is also where it's going to get even harder to try to keep a handle on what this is satirizing or if...

if it is satirizing anything at this point.

Because Lola is just responding to all of this in the correct way, just the objectively right way, every step of the way.

And I'm still not convinced that she's actually supposed to be a protagonist.

She, at one point at the end, is like, all of you guys can go look for God.

I'm heading for the fleet Marine Lander.

And I just, I take back everything I said about her up to this point.

She is my one true Carmen, and I'm with her till the end.

I'm ride or die for her.

Fuck yes.

So, okay, so they're going to head to the Marine Fleet Lander, whatever the fuck that means.

I feel like there was something that explained that that wound up in the cutting room floor, but they found something that they can go to where they think they'll be safe from the bugs.

So they're going to head there.

That's going to be the rest of their part of the movie, basically.

Meanwhile, we're going to go to the prison where they're holding Rico.

Right now, I just want to point out, if I recall correctly, there are not prisons in the Starship Trooperverse.

There's a whole big thing about the immediacy of punishment being key to their entire judicial system.

But hey, you know, what do I know?

Yeah.

Should have been hung on Rico Thon.

Yep, exactly.

Exactly.

So, but now they're about to hang him.

And the announcer guy who announces the hangings goes into like what his charges are.

But there are also two other guys getting hung who like the announcer doesn't tell their stories at all.

Yeah.

It's like the two guys who were crucified next to Jesus.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

It's like, where are their stories, man?

I really wanted them to start interrupting.

I'm a rapist.

Just

in case anyone's

sorry, I just thought we were focusing on War Guy a lot.

And obviously, he's got a very strong jawline, but I raped a lot of people.

God.

Not all of them adults.

I'm holding the talking nail right now.

Can I get my words in here?

i'd like the speaking vacuum cleaner news

so

but yeah so but then they they hang the two guys on either side of him but it turns out that rico is only being fake executed all they do is drop him onto concrete from 25 feet up so he's fine yeah no which is yeah exactly how you want to do that if you're trying to make sure someone doesn't die yeah his hands are tied behind his back when this happens so yep how great would this movie be though if he just like catches his forehead on the ledge and is dead anyways he's oh

need a new robot guy now yeah dicks pulls a prestige on him it'd be funny if there was another casper somewhere that didn't make it yeah also the other two guys are like very clearly hanging where the camera can see them and he is not and i just get the sense that maybe the federation is not actually the best at secrets really yeah yep so yeah so but dick set this all up he's like you're with me now So he takes him out of the prison and he tells him the plot that he's got to go now and rescue the Sky Marshal and Lola.

Right.

This is basically Jesus too.

Space Jesus gets a reprieve for one last mission.

Right.

Pull him down off the cross so they can gun some people down.

Right.

Which also makes the plot of the beginning of the movie that he was going to execute Rico.

And then he was like, actually, you know what?

Now that I'm planning to execute you anyways, and there just happened to arise this need for a secret mission, I'm going to do a fun little shenanigan based on my murder attempt early.

Yes.

Right.

And we, by the way, never redeemed this character from that, which is going to be increasingly bizarre as we go.

I felt like at any point he was going to turn to camera and be like, so the problem is the cast of DD Minus didn't take my quest for them to go onto the sphere of Shangri-La.

So that's why when he went to get hung,

you got to go with the flow.

You wouldn't play my game.

Now we're doing a suicide squad.

Exactly.

Yeah, right, right.

Honestly, the sub-colonic of DD Minus.

We wouldn't play my game and we're doing his suicide squad.

It's okay.

So meanwhile, back on Schmat on OM, the gang is is marching across the desert and the bugs are following, but they're following them underground like Bugs Bunnies style, right?

Yeah.

Because that's cheaper to animate.

It's also apparently working fantastically, right?

These bugs appear to be like roughly elephant size and no one has noticed them in this barren desert, which is, again, impressive.

Yeah, it is.

But now she notices them, right?

She sees them on the ridgeline.

She's got her little binoculars and the binoculars apparently have a count the bugs function, yeah which is useful

which she takes credit for like a fucking college student using ai she's like i count 16.

it's like okay chat gpt counted 16.

of course there's probably like 30 of them because it's fucking chat gpt yeah right right but the bugs aren't attacking they're just following along on the ridge line we're being herded well that's what some of them think but holly thinks and the sky marshal thinks that maybe god is protecting them.

Yeah, space Mary Magdalene just starts singing a hymn.

Yes, start singing a fucking hymn.

Honestly, if Lola had just Charlie Kirked her in the back of the fucking head, this would be my favorite movie.

Yeah, first of all, I feel like we should reserve Charlie Kirks for saying the funniest possible thing you could say before it gets shot.

I don't want just him to get shooting, you know what I'm saying?

You have to be like, you'll never shoot me in the back of the head.

Right.

You got to leave something for Oswald is what we're saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she starts singing this hymn.

And I honestly can't tell if it's meant to be deliberately terrible and annoying or if she's just that kind of singer.

Yeah.

And this is, you know, you've got to make strong acting choices, people.

Absolutely.

We got to know what you're going for.

Yeah.

All right.

So now we're back to Exposition TV for a bit so that they can introduce the new Q-bomb, which is, you know, nine letters more dangerous than the H-bomb, which is already seven letters more dangerous than the A-bomb.

So this is pretty bad shit.

The Q, of course, standing for controversy.

Yes, controversy.

Because the Q-bomb can, quote, crack an entire planet.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Now, okay, I have to point this out.

There's a survey that they said, you know, while we're watching Exposition TV up in the upper right corner, and

the question it's asking is, Q bomb, what do you think?

Now, here's the results of that question.

83% of the people think yes.

Yes, to the question, what do you think?

They think yes.

18% think no.

And the remaining

11%

are undecided.

Okay, so the numbers constantly move, but I paused at like eight different fucking times, and there is no point at which those numbers add up to 100.

Okay.

They're not even close.

So that's because 100 is communist math, obviously.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So,

yeah.

During this, we get what is the most amazing point by counterpoint, I think, ever to encapsulate sort of exactly what we see all the time.

From the man on the street shit.

Yeah.

So the first guy is like, and he looks like what this universe's version of the neoliberals would be, or the Democrats, if we're being honest, right?

He's like, a bomb seems kind of dangerous.

The second guy is like, there are so many fucking planets out there and the universe blows up all the time.

What's the fucking deal?

Chuck not blowing one up.

The third guy is like, God decides who and planets go boom.

Yes.

I'm like, that covers our entire political spectrum.

Nailed it.

The three genders.

Yes.

I get to make that joke.

None of you do.

You get to play your G card on that one.

No, I'm sticking.

Don't worry.

I'm staying to the safe humor where you die.

Oh, you thought I left that behind in the commercial break?

You're wrong, puckett.

You're wrong.

Ursa's dropping Q bombs where the cue is queer.

Ursa, we're going to need you to laugh a little bit louder at that one before me to make this okay.

I don't know if you could tell the perfectly silent laughs that Noah and I indulged in just now, but we're going to need you to lead the way

so okay no okay you aaron speaking of speaking

with micronistric

friend ursa when i say fuck you i'm leaving now

speaking of queer though this hotline on him ursa get him but so i'm trying so hard

speaking of queer we get the queerest fucking fleet ad right where there's just like this little twink that's just going like i might suck your dick if you join the uh you i might not but i might

right after the line that's like, you think 16 is too young?

Think again.

Oh, God, it is, isn't it?

Wow.

Directly after that is, is, I give great HED.

Come on.

I mean, it's really clear that Jeffrey Epstein set up a large part of the space fleet system, as we'll learn later.

Yes, definitely their robot sizing system.

It could be something to do with that.

So, okay.

So, then we cut to sanctuary, which is a space base that they clumsily introduced eight fucking seconds ago in the fleet ad, right?

Yeah, it's a hugely important secret location, a hidden fortress, if you will.

Yes.

Yeah.

Now, I will say this was nice because after it all made so much sense and was so relevant to our time, I was like, okay, see, Trump will never get us to space.

So that's just you and I don't have to feel is

relevant to today's times.

So, yeah, so we introduced this fucking thing as though they're going to try to sell me the sanctuary play set now, right?

Like they're like, the sanctuary is the most important thing in the whole universe.

And I'm like, really?

Oh, okay.

And they're like, yeah, because if the bugs find out about this place, then we're completely fucked.

And we're like, oh, and then like, and Lola knows where this place is.

I'm like, oh, okay.

So, so does Admiral Bad Lady know that she knows where this place is and that this would be like a devastating and terrible thing if they found out?

I'm like, yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay.

So is she ignoring that anyway and giving her up to the bugs?

She's like, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Will that ever make any sense given some new revelation about the character?

Oh, no, no, no, not something like that.

So that's where we are with this stupid fucking movie.

I just want, I want to listen to the people who don't know where this thing is.

Like, it seems to me that almost everyone in this movie probably knows where this thing is.

And that seems like it's a big problem when we get to the brain bugs.

Well, you know, Dick says, like, you know, only a few select pilots know where it is.

Lola is one of them.

And I'm like, dude, you just came here, though.

Right?

Like, you're here.

You knew where it was, and you're not a fucking pilot.

Also, it's a spaceship.

Famously, they move.

I have been told.

So, okay.

But then we have to cut over to, they're now on,

okay, I'm just going to read this to you.

I don't know where the commas go here.

They're on Starship Shiloh Athena class Marauder Project.

I don't know.

It's just a bunch of fucking words there.

Or Shackmop for short.

So, yeah.

So, but he's like, I'm going to send you in to rescue the Sky Marshal and Lola.

And yeah, I mean, like, I can, I'm sorry, I can swallow a lot.

I would have qualified for flight school, obviously, but I just can't accept that Rico is so dumb.

He cannot grasp the concept.

New leaders don't want old leaders back so they can take over.

Yeah, right.

It takes him a long time to puzzle through that one.

Yeah.

Dick says to lead him through the by the hand through it.

And he says, Yeah, I'm going to send you in.

He's like, Okay, I'll need a whole team.

He's like, Nope, you only get six other people.

He's like, Oh, okay.

Well, surely there'll be characters that we've met at this point in the movie because like we're we're more than halfway through an hour and 40-minute movie.

Now he's like, oh, one of them will be.

Sure.

Would you settle for the actors and actresses who were willing to show their naked butts and breasts?

Because that's what we've got for you.

Yeah.

Why am I only getting seven?

That's what we got left in the budget, dude.

Yeah, I was going to say that that's where I was going.

The people who will do that for pay.

Yeah, exactly.

I got four extras from the Red Shoe Diaries.

How's that hit you?

Speaking of weird costume choices.

If you understand my Red Shoe Diaries reference, your back hurts.

Yes, it does.

It sure does.

Anyone else, maybe just me starting to hallucinate at this point.

When they're walking down the hallway, I swear they did something to Rico's costume where they like bulked up his shoulders and torso with padding for just this one walking shot and then made him act like he was walking like an ape just to convey that he was somehow dumb enough to not understand the plot to take over the government.

I guess, yeah.

Ooh.

So there's also, there's a, which is weird because they're about to show him naked where they can't do that.

Yeah.

No.

But then there's also like a big tease here, right?

Where he's like, there's no way that me and six people can take out a whole bug armada or whatever the fuck they're supposed to be taking out.

And he says, well, you'll have a little help.

And they turn around and they look at the big mech suits, which we only see the shadows of because the budget for this one was only $20 million.

Mech suits.

Mech suits.

Right?

Mechs.

Cardboard cutouts are cheap.

Don't worry.

We will see those an hour and 36 minutes into this hour and 40 minutes.

Don't you worry, Ursa.

Any second now.

What do you think the day was like where they had to tell everybody we're not showing the mexes?

Do you think they gathered everyone around, or do you think they just kept the light up until, and then at the rap party, he sort of got up and was like, all right, everybody.

I don't want us all to find out in the theater.

There's no fucking mixes.

There's none.

Given the difference in budget between this movie and the first one, I have to imagine anyone hired to work on it doesn't have hope for much of anything.

But that's fair.

Also, Neil Patrick Harris isn't coming.

I just said that so you guys wouldn't go.

Monic Duty Hauser, am I right?

So meanwhile, back on Schmadoween,

folks are getting mighty tired and they're sick and tired of walking through the desert.

And while they're all complaining about that, the doctor and Lola are chatting about the fact that the Sky Marshal is being so damn religious.

They specifically use the phrase, got the religion or get the religion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just, I couldn't help but finish the sentence.

I just got the diagnosis during my regular testing.

I don't know.

I thought it burned with IP because I wasn't drinking enough water, but it turns out I got the religion from that airline.

I didn't know that was from that airline steward.

I see the first time at least.

the doc's a little cagey about this too again to play the theme he's like i wouldn't say religion more like spirituality which for me really drives how much i hate that word yeah it's just i believe in supernatural shit but in a cute fun way so don't be worried about me leading the government right yeah

so yeah but so and also like Fucking HIPAA violations gavore here, right?

Always.

They're just talking about like, this is this guy's patient.

And she's just like, so tell me about his religious conversion and his psychological health in your estimation.

He's like, oh, yeah, no, I'll tell you all about that.

It'd be fucking bizarre if the Starship Troopers universe still had HIPAA, though.

Okay, no, that's fucking enough.

All right, yeah, no.

Not to shit.

I know that's a no-and of the joke, which is kind of comedy poison, but I do also love the idea of them being like, look, you either join the Federation or hang, but we're not going to fucking tell people where you got your cults.

Where you got your religion.

It's not like there's anything interesting to hide here, though.

It's pretty straightforward.

Dumbass white guy went off into the desert and did wandered in the desert space ayahuasca with robo peter teal or something

also like they're having this conversational hush hush but like the sky marshall's fucking psychic we can tell by the kubrick stare right he's so he's kubrick staring at them the whole time it's like he knows what you're saying guys he does i love this moment so much he does a passive aggressive temple touch like um just a reminder i'm a psychic i'm doing the temple touch

super bigoted though of y'all to assume that psychics are always in everybody's mind all the time like you're respecting their fucking privacy.

Respect Ursa's people.

Thank you, Eli.

You're welcome.

So welcome.

Welcome shifting your attitude.

Thank you.

What are you talking about?

It's been awesome.

This whole episode.

It's been cash money.

You can chill.

Throughout the edit.

Yeah.

And when Aaron earlier said that thing, I was like, whoa, Aaron.

Not cool.

I'm an ally.

No, this moment is really brutal for me because Lola's like, Is he fit for command?

A fairly straightforward question.

And the other dude is like, this conversation makes me very uncomfortable.

Well, right.

But if the answer was yes, he'd have said yes, right?

Like, it's one of those type of situations.

It just, I, I feel so much like we're all Lola in this moment.

And the other dude is Chuck Schumer.

And we're just like,

do something.

So, okay.

So, but he's like, well, you know, he talks to God a lot.

And she's like, okay, would you want me flying the fucking spaceship if I told you I was talking to God?

And he's like, hey, look over there.

It's very lovely.

And then you see the sunset over there.

Witch God.

I get it.

The DSM-4 does the same thing.

Look, it's not that someone can't say they are Jesus.

It's that they've got to be specific in what they're doing as Jesus.

They can't say they're that Jesus.

Can we make homosexuality illegal again?

God

like we were crushing it when we did that one.

They're God.

So, okay.

That's what Aaron would do.

So.

Am I right?

I mean, like, just homosexuality only.

Yeah.

I mean, like, yes.

You can't be just that.

You've got to do at least two other things.

That's the one.

Nice.

All right.

So that night, everybody's gathered around the cook stove.

Jingo makes him some good food because he's the cook.

That's his fucking thing.

Holly wants to say grace before they eat.

Lola's like, I would rather not eat.

So she wanders out where the bugs are.

Yeah, I got to get set up here for our last supper.

Before the final

Christian movie.

So weird how their planet that they're on has a moon that is the same size and color as our moon, isn't it?

So weird.

Yeah, it's clearly not tattooing.

There's only one moon.

Why don't you stop being a dick about it, guys?

Yeah.

Only one sun and everything.

So also, there's a moment here where Bull turns to the Sky Marshal.

He goes, hey, man, you're a psychic, right?

So don't you already know if we're going to get rescued?

And he's like, no, no, no.

I'm a psychic in a vague way that only counts when it's convenient to the plot.

Okay, don't just think of a card now.

Pick a card and then

and then i i you'll shuffle eventually but i'm gonna shuffle it first i just i'm gonna

right no don't don't put it back hey look over there at that sunset in the universe you're ruining everyone's bar mitzvah

oh god i bet things are gonna go so great for blondie and bull like i just at this moment i know that their lives are gonna oh be trad cat influencers after all this is over

So, okay, but just then as they're having this argument about,

so the Sky Marshal goes around and asks everybody about their faith.

They're like, hey, everybody, justify your inclusion in God Alpha Movies, the podcast.

You start.

Right.

Yeah.

And Dr.

Wiggs does what I do when I'm around strangers who I don't want to have an argument with.

He's like, I think whatever makes you all feel

cool and vibing.

It's not Jesus-y enough, so he gets the double Kubrick stare.

He does, yeah.

And just then, there's a fucking Tatooine quake or whatever, but it turns out that it's under the ground bug movement of some sort.

And the person who said, fuck off at the praying is the one who saves them all.

Oh,

that's true.

Beck decided to watch the perimeter instead of closing all their eyes and just facing towards the fire on bugs.

Right.

Yeah, away from the bug.

And also, the guy who is wishy-washy and agnostic gets swallowed up by the crack in the planet.

What's the movie saying?

I hope he learned his lesson.

And maybe none of y'all caught this because you may have watched it somewhere where the effects weren't on point enough.

But after he gets eaten, the Sky Marshal looks down and sees a giant fuck off eyeball in the fissure, and they very clearly share a moment.

They head bump.

Yeah, they feel like, hey, how's it going?

Are you guys?

Was he tasty?

Get enough?

You get enough to eat?

You want another guy?

You want to know?

You want Jingo?

He's annoying.

I've seen that look so many times.

But they do get.

I got to stop offering to feed Ursa Jingo at atheism conventions.

No, but seriously don't.

So, but yeah, Jingo falls into the crack and they pull him out.

They're like, no, no, you don't die until later in the movie.

He's like, oh, great.

Awesome.

So then we cut to Rico.

He's now filling his troops in.

He's like, we will show up shockingly late in the third act.

You'll be really surprised, but I'm going to yell militarily at you for a little while so that nobody forgets we're in the movie yet.

Yeah.

He's got his crack team of Hitler youth here.

They are at best 15 to 16 years old, which is going to get really awkward in a second when we get to the fitting room.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just, I just kept thinking, like, I lived for scenes of this variety when I was like 12 and like HBO and before I knew how the internet worked.

Yes, it is genuinely one of the hardest things to explain to young people today that there was an entire genre of movie whose sole purpose was, we'll show you some boobs for like 10 seconds out of the whole two hours and it will make all of it worth it.

Right.

But it'll be late enough in the movie that mom will have left by then.

And yeah, right.

Yeah.

So yeah, but then we get dicks calling lamb.

I know what I'm just saying what happens.

I have a lot of people who are.

The name of the god-awful movie porn.

There it is.

Dick's calling lambs.

You're just saying what happens.

I know.

It's so my job is so easy today.

But Lamb, the informant that told him about Lola's distress call is nowhere to be found.

So he starts looking into it, by which I mean he types her name into a computer and it says, Oh, yeah, no, she's getting executed any minute.

So this is where he goes to have it out with Admiral Bad Lady, right?

Where he threatens to take her down.

And she's like, Yeah.

But I'm in charge, though.

It goes predictably poorly, given that she has basically absolute power to hang whoever she wants at any moment.

Right.

Yeah.

But even if she didn't, his attempt to physically threaten her is one of the funniest things in this movie.

He's like a 12-year-old doing Malcolm X cosplay.

It does not land.

Yeah, no, it's

an odd thing.

Earlier in the movie, he's like, I fought my war with numbers.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

No, he's pretty badass.

And lost.

Yeah.

I also, I just want to throw out there that this scene, so he's like, threatens her, and then it's like that, like, the consummate like click of the gun behind him moment, which whenever I see one of those scenes on any movie, but especially this one, it means that the Admiral had to do a little shenanigan before he walked in the room, right?

Where she was like, okay, Chris, Chris, go hide in the closet.

Okay, because here's what's going to happen.

Dix is going to walk in and he's going to be like, you're corrupt.

I'm corrupt, by the way.

He's going to be like, you're corrupt.

And I'm going to be like, what are you going to do about that?

And then he, if he does literally anything except focus his attention solely on me, we're fucked.

But luckily, he will.

And I want you to do a really ominous, like, click,

you know, really, really milk the click of your laser weapon.

Yes, of your laser weapon.

Right.

All right.

Well, I'll tell you what.

We've bumbled our way into a full-blown plot at this point.

So I think we can take another break.

But first, let me give Acts three the hard sell.

Will Lola find Jesus and pray for deliverance in time?

Will God provide with Jesus?

Are all things possible?

Find out the answers to literally those questions and more when we return for the is to Christian conclusion of Starship Troopers 3 Marauder.

Okay, Eli, you could do this.

Hey, Eli.

Damn it, Noah.

I was just getting myself psyched up.

Psyched up for what?

To eat this pumpkin, of course.

Oh, my God.

You're going to eat an entire pumpkin?

Yeah, man.

I got to get my diet ready for fall.

I don't want to get taken out by my first PSL.

PSL?

Pumpkin spice latte.

Oh, right.

Look, Eli, if you want to capture fall flavors the easy way, why don't you just try Green Chef?

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Three minutes?

That sounds great.

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That's code 50awful at greenshef.com/slash 50awful.

All right, Noah.

Thanks.

I feel bad that I wasted this pumpkin, though.

Yeah, I can see I already cut a hole in it.

Oh, you know what?

This one's actually Heath's.

Hmm.

All right, men.

I selected you because you're the best of the best.

Nobody knows where we are, and if you tell anybody, they will hang you.

What's the mission, sir?

You don't need to know.

Oh,

uh,

how are we supposed to do it then?

Damn it, Sergeant.

Do you want your neck in a noose?

Okay, um, can we guess?

Um, but

yes.

Oh, you're doing charades.

Uh, two words.

Movie.

Movie.

Movie.

No, no, it's not movie.

Fight.

Fight.

Nice.

Movie.

It looked like the movie gesture because the fists were in circles.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Second word sounds like hug.

Chug?

Thugs.

Ooh, we're fighting thugs.

I don't love that terminology.

Yeah, honestly, I think we should probably take a step back.

Oh my god, it's bugs.

We're fighting bugs.

Oh,

that makes more sense.

I get it now.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, everybody, take off your clothes.

Wait, what?

It's for the robots.

Sure.

Fine already.

And we're back for still more of this shit.

And once again, we're going to open the act with more from Exposition News, right?

We learned that they've staged a bombing at the Sky Marshal building and they're pretending that the Sky Marshal and Dicks got killed in that bombing.

Hate when a peace bomb explodes.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're pinning that on peace activist Christian Elmo Goniff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But don't worry, when it turns out to be one of the Admirals, they're going to completely forget about it and not want to talk about it anymore.

Yep.

Nancy Mace knows that if Elmo Goniff just sat across from Admiral Day.

All right.

So back on Schmadowen, Jingo is starting to freak out.

He's getting to be less comic relief, more guy who we need to kill off because he's getting annoying, right?

He is suddenly 10 years old.

Yeah,

he's going to full Hudson at this point.

Yeah, he's indulging literally every guy who's about to die in a horror movie trope.

He might as well call his wife and kid and be like, Daddy's coming home.

I promise.

All right, we get it, man.

Yeah.

I still think we're playing up the action element of this a little too much.

There's just going to still be a bunch of walking here.

This is where I felt like I needed to metaphorically and literally reinforce that this long walk is going to be worth it.

We're going to get somewhere with this, I promise.

It is.

Don't lie, Aaron.

Don't come on that way.

Come on.

We get somewhere.

So, okay.

So, but like, he's freaking out.

Lola smacks him and he just turns to you and he goes, bitch.

Right?

Like, you know, you're kind of expecting the whole, yeah, no, yeah, thanks.

I snapped out of it.

And he's just like, what a mean fucking thing to do to somebody who's obviously having a hard time traumatically with the fucking situation we're in.

That was very uncalled for violence.

So, but we also were reinforcing here that she is not very good at being in command and she's starting to lose everybody, right?

There's starting to be insurrection in the ranks.

She says to Jingo, you're wasting water.

And he just says, I hate you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, because he's crying.

He's crying from being smacked around while he's having a fucking PTSD episode or whatever.

And she says, you're wasting water.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, lady.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

They've also, I think.

They've accidentally saved up like two-thirds of their R rating for the last 20 minutes of this movie.

So she's going to to drop F-bombs right and left here.

And the space hostess is like, you shouldn't talk like that.

That's blasphemy.

Yeah.

And like, that's what happens when you enable this shit.

All of a sudden, you can't say fuck anymore.

There's no freedom left.

Noah, just on a click of one to super problematic, how was Aaron's southern accent there?

That is unfair, given that I am from Virginia.

I will both do a southern accent and have a southern accent when and where I want.

Thank you.

We're not from anywhere except that place in the desert.

Okay, fair enough.

That was where I was set up.

That was my position.

I apologize.

All right.

I'm also, I'm from Detroit, so I don't think I can say shit.

So, okay, but so there's another Tatooine quake.

Jingo guy, he's ready to fucking insurrection.

Damn it.

But they have the moment where like, he's like, look, come on, we're going back this way.

And they're like, the bugs are right behind you, Jingo.

And then the bugs, like, all hide.

And he turns back and he goes, real funny, guys.

It's the scene in the movie where all the little things that are trying to kill you run away and you shouldn't relax, but they couldn't afford anything.

So it's just a little thing.

Yeah, right.

What's Jingo going to do?

The wrongest thing.

Yes.

Repeatedly.

Yeah, right.

So, yeah, so he runs to these little fucking termite mound things or whatever to hide within them.

But it turns out that they're secretly spider legs and they break out and grab him and eat him or whatever.

He is poorly composited into the ground.

Yeah.

I feel like they should have been worried when this guy Marshall's like, he belongs to God now.

Yeah, but I mean, that is the Christian thing, too, right?

Like, he would then belong to God.

Yeah.

That's the problem, right?

Poe's law cuts both ways.

You're just, are you satirizing me?

Yeah.

I can't tell.

Right.

So, like, Holly cries over Jingo's memory, right?

Because he gets sucked into the ground all dead and shit.

And Lola comes up and gives her a sick atheism burn right in the middle of that.

She gives her the worst, where's your God now ever.

It's so soulless.

It's like Jimmy Buffett having to grind out another margarita.

It is brutal.

I'm like, timing, Lola.

I mean, right, I get it.

You are correct.

You got

win.

Right.

But timing, Jesus.

Got to play the hits.

All right.

So meanwhile, Rico and his guys are still stalling until it's their time to be in the movie, but up until now, they've been stalling with their clothes on.

That's about to end.

It's naked time.

The British doctor just comes in apropos of nothing and says, please remove your clothing.

And everybody just gets naked.

And of course, it's all fucking waist up naked.

Right?

Look, guys, equality.

Yeah, we got to see this.

As folks mentioned earlier, we have a very, very famous shower scene to live up to here, people.

So tits and ads.

out and proud.

Yep, yep.

So, yeah, they, so they, they, they get everybody naked.

They march them into this room where they're, each of them has a little crotch guard stand right in front of them.

Yep, it's like an Austin Powers-designed scanner in the Jeffrey Epstein memorial wing of this building.

Oh, no.

They're all also doing a shtick where they're all clearly needing to check out each other's junk while none of us are, while we're all just deprived of some swinging pipe because this is not, in fact, HBO.

Right.

The fat guy has a small dick.

Yes, yeah, right.

We have a small dick moment for the fat guy.

To be clear, this fails the Philosophers in Space version of the Bechtel test, which is if boobs are boobing boobily, dongs better be donging dongly.

That's

my expectation.

I also called for dong.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

This movie cheated us out of dong.

Yep.

Also, we get possibly the dumbest techno-babble I have ever heard.

Once everybody's naked and standing all spread out like they're at airport security or whatever, the fucking computer goes commencing Gamma Jeddah Bonza.

And then it's time for the Power Rangers morphing time on Todd.

I love this so much because there was a design meeting somewhere where they were like, no, we need a semicircle of the exact same kinds of scanners.

You can't just use one for each, you know, like put each person through it.

No, they need to all be lined up so that all the teenagers who can't get real porn can pause it on this one shot, please.

That's right.

Correct.

Yeah.

Well, and then it goes through, like after like we watch them all get like laser scanned nakedly for a minute and a half.

It then goes through and it names all the various characters and it shows us a picture of them like, you know, like their fucking ID, but tits out, like tits out pictures of them on their ID.

Because we don't care about tits at all, you guys.

We are so progressive about this.

This doesn't even matter to us.

Yeah.

Are your ID photos not Titsa?

They Photoshop my shirt back on to me.

I try.

So, okay.

So now we're at an underground research facility.

This is below the prison that Dix broke Rico out of earlier.

This is where they keep...

Sorry if you're not up to speed on the Starship Troopers first.

This is where they keep the brain bug that they captured at the end of part one.

Yeah.

Right.

That was the denuma of part one was that they managed to capture the bug that did all the thinking for them so they could study it and figure out how to kill him.

Now we're there with that thing.

So much veteran presence in this.

And we found out earlier, ominously, the brain bugs just keep growing forever.

They don't know how big they get.

Nudge, nudge.

Well, and so, and we established in the first film that only psychics can commune with these brain bugs, right?

So, what we're going to learn now, the Admiral Bad Lady is going to explain to Dicks that the Sky Marshal, who is psychic, has been communing with this brain bug, but he's gone native, right?

He started to believe in the bug religion.

This is super weird because Dix, as far as we know, is the Sky Marshal's Charlie Young and seems to have no idea that his Sky Marshal went rogue in this religious kind of way.

Yeah,

the doctor knew all about it.

Why wouldn't Dix know about it?

Yeah.

Baffling.

So, but she shows him a video where we're seeing it from the waist up, and the video plays very much like he's fucking that bug from the waist waist down, right?

Because he's just like spooning it.

Come on.

Yes, he's big spoon in the bug, and he's just going, like, oh, I do have deleterious effects on me, daddy.

But he's going, like, you know, I will turn off the power at the Roku San thing so that the bugs can come in and kill everybody.

And then I'll sabotage my ship.

And we'll get, oh, yeah, baby, we'll get caught on schmedouen.

And then, oh, yeah, I'll tell you where the fucking base is that you wanted to know about.

And I'm like, why would he say all of that?

He knows he's on camera at this point.

This isn't secretly recorded.

Plus, he's psychic.

You'll have to say it out loud.

You can just be psychic about it.

What the fuck are we doing here?

My favorite thing here is that the bug has a name.

Oh, yes.

The bug is named.

He wants to take a swing at this one.

Go for it.

Let's go.

Behemakoidal.

It's named Behemako.

Behemoidle.

Wow.

Right.

And now I am also named Behemakoidal.

I'm non-binary.

I get to know.

I was going to say, nailed it on that first fucking try.

Yeah.

I feel like behemothoidal is probably Quetza Coidl's annoying bug brother.

He's like, oh, my brother's fucking flying snakes.

Fucking cool lookage.

I'm really sorry about him.

It's not just a coidle, it's a behemoth coidle.

It's so stupid.

He's on the god incel sites like

Charlie Kirk.

Sky Marshall's going for some behemakoidal.

So yeah, so then the brain bug, they're giving all of this backstory while standing next to the brain bug for no reason, right?

They don't want him to feel left out.

Right, yeah.

And so when he realizes that they're on to him, he starts using his brain powers to make their heads explode.

Yeah, he goes full scanners on them.

Yes, exactly, right.

The bug us he is so mad.

Yeah, he tries to shut down.

There's like a big gate that's between them and the and the bug.

And the guy tries to shut it down, but it's so slow that his head explodes.

And I'm like, wow, I didn't realize that was a level of slowness, but I guess here we are, right?

Trades to squeeze his giant, gooey body through a very, very small orifice until Dick's blasts enough of the weak points to take him out.

Relatable, right?

Yeah, right.

Talk to me, Aaron.

So, yeah, but

well, and it's funny too, because like one guy shoots him and it's like, no, no, no, no, that didn't work.

And Dick shoots him and he's like, oh, yeah, right.

Because he's a named character.

Of course.

It works when he does it.

You got to shoot the flashing red eyeballs.

Come on.

Yeah, obviously.

New move.

So, yeah, but he kills the brain bug.

And, like, everybody's head has exploded except for Dix and Admiral Fidd, right?

The bad guy lady, who's now, I guess, a good guy lady because she's actually trying to get the guy who's a traitor to the human race killed.

I don't know.

It's hard to figure out.

But yeah, but like everybody's head has exploded like two seconds ago.

And the Admiral is like, hey, you know what?

This religion thing might actually be a really good thing to weaponize.

Timing, lady.

Yeah, it never came up before in hundreds of years of fascist society.

Never came up to use blind religious faith.

Nobody ever read a Marx text at all, just for funsies, I guess.

Clearly not.

Yeah.

So, okay, so back on Schmadowen, they're all walking along in the desert having the same stupid fucking religious discussion they've had the entire goddamn movie, right?

It's the same fucking scene again.

How in the world am I supposed to keep introducing this same scene and make it feel like we're making progress through the goddamn movie?

I love this.

She's like, faith is more powerful than a Q-bomb.

Without it, you're nobody.

And that's why I'm only going to listen to the captain.

That was where I was desperate for Lola to shoot her in the neck and be like, yeah, not more powerful than a bullet.

Who's fucking nobody now?

But this is to, this is also where Bull proposes to Holly.

Which is weird because they're not dating yet.

Got to pick your moment.

Yeah, I thought he was turning around to ask her out.

He's like, I don't suppose you'd ever consider.

And I was like, oh, a meat-cute.

And he's like, having my three children.

I was like, ooh.

And she's like, only if God is in bed with us at all times, that's a boundary.

And it's okay for me to set boundaries.

Yep.

I'll have a thrupple with you and Jesus.

Only in the church.

You take God and you can take me.

Purity culture nailed to a lowercase T right there.

So,

yeah, but just then when she agrees to marry him, if he, is the right religion, they find like the fucking thing that they were looking for, the lander that they were looking for that they've been walking to this whole time and this is where the sky marshal starts to really tip his hand beyond just the obvious looks that he's given everybody he goes yes soon we will all meet the one true god behema coidle

so good because everybody's like who the bug god what yeah right it's crazy well but holly at first is like well you know i know that uh god has a lot of names i don't know about that one i'm not sure if i've heard behemoth

i like that holly holds out hope that that he's going to be her god still.

She's like, you know, I'm not up on my Latin.

Yeah, I don't really speak Hebrew.

I stopped watching Dan McClellan on TikTok because it's usually just him arguing with bigots.

So maybe that's what I missed.

I hope y'all all caught the throwaway line where he refers to it as brain of brains instead of king of kings.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

That's a deep cut, I feel like, for our team here.

It's beautiful.

So yeah, but at this point, Lola's like, no, you idiot.

Behemoth, he believes in the bug god.

And I'm like, why would she know that?

Is she watching the movie with us?

I really wanted him to break into song at that moment and like explain himself through song.

But instead, he just says behemoth coidle like several more times.

I guess in the way that like, if you just say it enough times, it stops sounding weird.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Where it becomes a sound.

So there's also, there's an interesting moment here where Holly's like, oh, wow, you know, he's, these religious beliefs are really dangerous.

Should we kill him for apostasy?

And I'm like, wow, ramp that way the fuck up, huh?

That's pretty accurate.

That's about as long as it takes, right?

It's fucking Twitter.

Let's go.

We've got to say grace to you can't say fuck to let's kill the apostates right away.

Yeah.

And then Lola is like, oh, are we killing people for having dangerous religious beliefs now?

Is that what we're doing?

And Holly's like, well, the wrong, he has the wrong dangerous religious beliefs.

Yeah, she goes, full new atheist on her.

His beliefs are just like yours.

Why should he have to die?

Yeah.

Now, who's not a?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Holly's response is just, it's the wrong God.

That's a quote.

That's the wrong God.

That's a quote from the goddamn movie, it's the wrong god from them.

Yeah.

From their side.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

It really reminds you that it can be super fun to banter until you remember that we're still all totally fucked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're supposed to help people escape from that, Aaron, on their, on their commute.

Whatever.

Your Facebook group grew a terrorist, Aaron.

It's fair.

That's fair.

You got me.

I did that.

Ursa, have you ever grown a terrorist?

Not on purpose.

All right.

So

they reach the ship or whatever that they've been looking for.

So you're not on field.

Yeah, right.

So they're checking the ship out.

And I'm trying, guys.

I am.

I'm going to push through.

The only way out is through.

Oh, I got them with that one.

I got them good with the field jokes.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So they're checking out this ship.

that they found and they're like holly why don't you stand guard and she's like i can think of a lot of reasons why i don't stand guard but okay.

I don't know how this gun works.

It's fake anyway.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah, right.

It doesn't matter.

You're just going to scream when the bad guy shows up anyway.

So come on, Lola.

At what point did you feel like a useful character?

Just fucking...

Come on.

So, but there's a moment here where Lola has her gun trained on the Sky Marshal and she's like,

she knows that he's betrayed the entire human race, but will she shoot him?

Why wouldn't she fucking shoot him?

Right?

If she knows that, what?

But okay.

Yeah.

She doesn't, though.

She's just going to get up off planet.

Like, she's still trying to, like, just be okay with the spy.

He's worshiping the bug god.

You figured out the answer.

What are you doing?

Right.

I feel like we know now.

So, okay.

But then, like, Bull gets the ship running again.

So Holly's like, oh, pretty lights.

I can turn my back on the thing I'm supposed to be guarding.

Yep.

Right.

Of course.

So we get this great moment, like, where it's almost a great comedy moment.

Lola gets on the radio and she says, you know, we need a rescue for the Sky Marshal and three additional survivors.

And then we cut to Holly getting snuck up on.

And I really wanted her to go, make that two additional survivors.

Yeah, we can take one of the cheaper Ubers.

It's fine.

We don't got that many people.

So, but yeah, so Holly gets knocked down by another Tatooine quake or whatever.

And something's coming up to get her.

We can't see it because they didn't, you know, they only had so much animation budget.

Yeah, the bug's defense budget was slashed.

Turns out it's not just humans that have budget problems.

That's right.

They got doged.

They're renaming it the Department of Bucks.

There's only so much clay to go around, guys.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so, but, but Holly thinks of get up and run way too late in the game, but she does.

She does think of that.

There's all these like weird spider fingers things that pop out of the ground to get her, but they don't get her because

presumably she's protected by God.

She's protected by Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The real God.

Yeah,

right, right.

We need her for the next shtick.

Right.

Yeah.

So Bull comes out to rescue her, right?

Because God can't do it all.

Of course.

And he starts fighting the spider leg.

She gets away.

He gets a spider leg through his leg, which is fatal, I guess, in this universe.

He's an engineer class.

They're pretty fragile.

Oh, well, no, that's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

Low armor class.

So, yeah.

So, but they've now traded their mechanic who knows how to get the fucking ship running and seems to be pretty good with a rifle.

For the hysterical flight attendant, Jesus Freak is the trade they just made.

Who is favorited by the Lord Christ of Nazareth?

Well, no, you're right, though.

It is going to turn out to be the correct trade.

Yeah.

So, okay.

So they all run onto the ship and they're like, ah, you know, we ran the whole movie was us getting to this ship so that we could get away.

Now let's get away.

And then the alien tears the ship in half.

And so all of that was useless.

Yeah.

It's fucking job of the bug.

Let's go.

Fuck.

Yeah.

We finally get to the payoff.

I'm so fucking happy to drop a Star Trek V Final Frontier on y'all like this.

I love that this ends up just being what does Bug God need with the starship?

Yes.

Especially Ursa.

I feel like dropping Final Frontier on someone like Ursa is the sci-fi atheist equivalent of Rick Rolling somebody.

Yeah.

They did.

Never going to give God.

Yes.

No, we did that movie together.

Yeah.

That's the last time we had Ursa on the show.

Never gonna let Bug God down.

So no, okay.

So to be clear, This is where Behema Coitel bursts to the ground.

Now, Behemoth Coitel is supposed to be like a most of the planet thing, which is way bigger than their animation budget.

So it's very much like, I'm speaking to my fellow olds here.

It's like a 16-bit game where they had to make the bad guy out of background tiles.

So he just like kind of went up and down on a black screen and just like his tongue and his arms were animated things.

Right.

Yep.

I understood that reference.

Okay.

Awesome.

Awesome.

You're a fellow olds then.

I'm sorry to say.

He's big because he's far away.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

Oh my God.

They might as well just be filming this in front of a picture of their monster.

It's so bad.

Right.

But of course, this is where we get Ursa's best worst, the giant face vadge that queefs Adam at this point.

The behemakoidusi.

Yes.

Would so, would so be in communion with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just to understand, there's a basic rule.

Every orifice is also a pussy.

I know there was some confusion in the notes about whether this was a mouth or not, but like, it could be a mouth.

It's also a pussy.

Just like every tentacle is also a dick.

I'm just a coward.

That's why I went ahead and said mouth.

You know,

we're the experts for this.

Y'all are here for the god stuff.

We're here for the orifices.

We're going to work together on this.

I didn't say pussy.

I said face vag, but hey, no, I agree with you.

That is totally right.

You were on the money.

I appreciate that you understood.

You know, each guest brings a different data to our show.

Michael Marshall does research, and Ursa, Ursa memorized how to say behemoth, could

Because I know that wasn't one take.

I know Ursa spent the week like doing their work through their life.

Behemaka Today.

See, you got it right.

I watched this movie for the first time 30 minutes ago.

Yes.

Wow.

I saw you going through the notes last second.

Eli's like, oh, I'm going to have to start 15 minutes later.

And Ursa's like, oh, no.

Oh, no.

And Ulsi Savant, if you will.

Yes.

No,

I watched it very early this morning and then I watched it a second time and took notes because I'm a diligent guest.

Thank you.

Thank you for having confidence in it.

I didn't even watch the movie the first time.

Yeah.

I've just been kind of yes anyway what you guys think.

Sursa is just an expert on the third act involving a random Usy.

It's just how 100% of our content goes.

You've seen one.

You've seen them all.

So, okay, so now this is the part where the Sky Marshal is going to like give up the human race to the alien, right?

Where he steps up and he says, oh, Behemoth Coitel, I've worked really hard at saying that name with a straight face, and so I'm going to do it a bunch of times now.

And another Power Rangers tie-in,

see, there, I can't do it now.

It's gone now.

Yeah,

it's jinks there.

Never gonna happen again.

This is how they go.

Put an Usi at the end.

Put an Usie at the end, and it's your superpower, Ursa.

That's your guess.

It's the lack of Ussi.

There it is.

Yep.

Another notable Power Rangers tie-in, Bahima Koidasi here, voiced by Zordon.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I mean, it sounds sounds like it.

But because we don't want to be able to do that.

I'm too old to know

the Power Rangers.

Power Rangers?

No, I'm too old for that.

Yeah, sorry.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Someone listening appreciates that reference.

He wasn't at 32-bit video games.

He was like, do you remember when Grandpa would move the tiles of the shadow show against the wall and then Play-Doh would come and ruin it for everyone?

Who's drinking tonight?

Who's fucking tonight?

But the Sky Marshal at the end of this, he's like, you can get the location of Sanctuary and win the war from Lola's brain.

And so the alien very slowly eats him first.

Trust us, that's what happens.

They didn't have the CGI budget for us, so it happens off-camera, right?

But that is what happens.

Well, we should be clear, because they also couldn't.

do a lot of usy animating in this particular thing bug jesus is actually going to talk to its loyal servant by puppeting their dead loved ones john edwards style yes yeah right yeah yeah

for his pleasure right and and like the sky Marshal really appreciates the fact that Bug Jesus has had to embody a dead dude so he can talk to the Sky Marshal as a man.

Do you get it?

Bug God, Bug Jesus.

There's a bug Holy Ghost somewhere.

Yes, appears as a human.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is kind of funny when he's like, you know, I did this so it wouldn't creep you out.

And I'm like, you did this so it wouldn't creep him out.

This is

every Catholic thing ever.

This is not supposed to be creepy, you guys.

Okay, death cult.

And here, here at the moment of the final reveal, he gets to go fully mask off.

And he's just like, can you please just kill these women?

Yeah.

Literally, just kill these women, please.

Just full-blown misogyny at this point.

Yeah.

But just then, Holly asks Lola to pray with her.

There are 10 minutes left in this movie, not counting the credits, guys.

The heroes have not shown up.

Lola, though, she's like, I can't pray.

I'm the atheist character.

But she changes her mind, right?

Holly goes, Lord, send us an army of angels with fucking sweet mech suits and bombs and shit, right?

Yep.

Here's the fucking reveal, right?

Yes.

Chick prays for an army of angels.

And as she does, the mech team drops in, creating a halo.

And like, it is the most Warhammer 40k thing you will ever have fucking seen.

So, yes, there's literally a halo behind her of the mech suits just like landing on the planet.

It's such fucking cheese.

So then we get the nine seconds of mech suit versus bug aliens that they could afford to animate.

Yeah, they're basically the Cybermen from Doctor Who.

And I don't mean like the reboot.

I mean the original.

It is so fucking bad.

I don't think any part of them turns.

No.

It should take two bugs to peel them open like a sardine can.

But instead, we have to wait until we are completely surrounded, literally buried in bugs before we can fire a weapon.

Wait.

Yeah, right.

That's his stand.

It's It's amazing, right?

Because they're trying to make it seem like that's his strategy.

He's like, everyone hold perfectly still.

Don't move at all.

Divisions based on movement.

Yeah, right, right, yeah, exactly.

We can't afford to animate the fucking shit.

The fucking, come on, just, we already had the bugs.

Right.

So the reason for this is, to go back to Noah's point at the beginning of our conversation, the original mech suits are supposed to make you jump around.

That's why the phrase for the mobile infantry is on the bounce.

Yes.

But they couldn't afford more than one jumpy bounce.

Yep.

So we're going to get him literally jumping straight up once and doing a weird bomby thing.

And that's it.

Okay.

Aaron, I am so glad you clarified that on the bounce thing because I have several notes in our document where I'm like,

my financial strategy made a difference.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, he finally

lets him pile up on top of him.

He uses the kill everything around you button, right?

And then they just machine gun bugs with their mech suits for, you know, a minute and 15 seconds or something.

Standard 40k comp until they switch to flamethrowers.

Well, yeah.

Sometimes they punch them with a Gatling gun, bathing them in holy fire.

Maybe it gets even more religious.

And the mouth of the gun is shaped like a crucifix.

It's pretty great.

Now, I want to take this moment to issue an apology.

Not to Ursa for how many times I mentioned that they're going to die.

That I'm sticking down on.

We all liked it.

We all thought it was cool and cash money.

No, I want to apologize to Aaron Rabinovich Moitze Rosenberg because the entire time I was watching this movie, I was like, Aaron, this is not a Christian movie.

This is a movie where people say the word religion multiple times.

So I can see why you're confused, but we make fun of Christian movies.

And it was as the blazing guns took crucifix shape that I knew true humility and would like to say that this is a Christian movie.

Yeah.

Never fucking question me.

Ursa has learned this the hard way.

The horrors that I will release upon you.

It's good.

It's good.

That means several things.

So, right.

So, yeah.

So the mech suits take out all the bugs and then like they stop and Rico goes to step out.

And he's not naked.

I mean, like, I feel like, why were they naked then if you didn't have to drive the things naked?

But at any rate.

It's the last chance to see some dong here, people.

What the fuck?

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Totally blew it.

Now, of course, in the movies, there actually is an inner suit and an outer suit, or in the book, rather, there was an inner suit, the muscle suit, and then there was the outer suit, which was the mech suit.

So maybe it was a reference to that.

Anyway, but yeah, but he takes Lola by the hand and they escape to space.

Not just by the hand.

They do the full cysteine chapel reference.

They really

do, don't they?

Because as they're fading, you can see the pattern of the like moon or planet or whatever behind them.

And it is like very deliberately textured to look like an old

chapel ceiling.

It's incredible.

The cinematographer worked exactly one day on this movie, and it was on that shot.

And by the way, in case that was too subtle for you, when we get back to the Starbase or whatever, Holly walks by cloaked like the fucking Virgin Mary for no goddamn reason.

She's got like a nun habit over her fucking head.

It's like her rescue blanket, though, and she's been putting over her head.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So because this movie has deep religious implications, belongs on Cam.

And so then we, Admiral Bad Lady, who is now Admiral Good Lady, I guess, she shows up to, hey, howdy, everybody, right?

I guess it's now time to deploy that Q-bomb we were telling you about.

Yep.

All's forgiven.

Threpple's back together.

Everything's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will admit, look, I don't want to give this movie a lot of credit, but the romantic coming together in the foreground while the planet is blown up by the Q-bomb in the background.

Pretty fantastic.

I stole it from True Lies.

But yeah, no, it was pretty good.

So this, okay, this is a weird generational thing because you're like True Lies.

And I'm like, that's very clearly Space Fight Club.

I expect Lola to take his hand and say, you met me at a very strange time in my life.

I just contracted Space Jesus.

There you go.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, yeah, because he's like, at this point, he's like, you know, will you marry me?

He doesn't do the one knee thing, which is freaking stupid.

I don't know why they didn't do that.

But, but she's like, only if you become Christian now.

I, I believe in Jesus because of the timing of when Rico showed up.

And he's like, huh, weird.

She goes, I got the religion.

I got it bad.

Yes.

That's the only way you you can get it, girl.

And he's like, well, Po, but he's nerfed.

You know, you really hope they're going to figure out space divorce because they feel like that's just not going to last.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

He's like, I would have loved it if he goes.

Okay, then.

So

let's get food.

You're probably hungry, huh?

So, okay.

So now it's time to check in with the Exposition Network one last time.

So the Sky Marshal got a state funeral, right?

Do loving memory for him.

They don't have to die.

Medal of Freedom from what I heard.

Also, and then the news even comes on and says, also, God is real now and he's on our side.

They actually say that, like experts, most experts now agree that God exists.

They do specifically say God exists.

He's on our side and he wants us to win.

B and C feel pretty redundant.

What's the difference?

Yeah.

Yeah, it would be weird if

he was rooting for the bugs despite.

And I guess Holly is the new Pope or or something yep pope karen of the new space church yeah

religion is acceptable peace is not yeah the goal of all trad wives everywhere yeah

and then admiral bad lady is now sky marshal bad lady she did get that promotion and they executed the peace protester elmogoniff remember him he's dead now along with 51 people yeah which again it feels like a waste they could be cannon fodder i don't understand this is an inefficient system And again, they say they have a good moment here where they say it's the most execution since the 21st century.

And I was like, again, if you're listening in the backlogs, that was not apropos when the episode came out, but now

the compliment sandwich moving situation.

Not apropos when it was recorded.

There's a week, buddy.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no.

So, yeah.

And so, and then fucking the Dixon Lola get married in a church.

That's on the news.

Apparently, that's news that everybody on the planet needs to see.

And we have this moment where they try to have the mech suits walking behind everybody in like broad daylight.

Wow, did you guys not have the budget for that scene?

What the fuck were you even thinking?

Yeah.

With dead shit.

Yeah, the first rule of CGI, don't put it in daylight unless you've got a lot of fucking money.

Yep.

Wow, that was bad.

Possibly the worst CGI I've ever fucking seen.

Outside of,

well, about 17 movies we've done on this.

They don't count because they were done on three-hour budgets.

All right.

Well, that's it.

That's the whole fucking movie.

Ursa, Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks.

No, no, you don't.

No, you don't have to thank us.

We're very welcome as always.

Pleasure as always.

At best, at best, we're welcome.

That's what we hope for.

So, okay, so we've already told our listeners about Philosophers in Space, where y'all use popular sci-fi to make different points about philosophy, which is an awesome show.

You should check out the episodes that I've been on.

And, of course, you'll find that that show linked in the show notes.

But that's only one of the many projects that y'all have.

Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners about what we've got here?

I've got Embrace the Void if people want to listen to that.

And also, I can tease, I just got under contract for a book that'll hopefully be out sometime by next year.

Oh, shit.

Oh,

yeah.

Will look, will books still be legal?

Of course.

Enjoy it in the camp.

We'll pass it around as a like a Z, a Zoon or whatever.

When they burn it, we will all be warmer for it.

Yeah.

I like that we're going to pass it along as a Zoom.

Yeah, right.

On our Zooms, right?

Yeah.

No, Philosophers and Space is the only thing.

I spend the rest of my life playing roller derby.

Yeah, awesome.

Good for you.

And well, that does it for our review of Starship Troopers 3 Marauders.

That's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to start the cycle all over again.

So Eli, tell us what's on deck.

When two Mormon missionaries are arrested for preaching in a small town, attorneys and best friends, Thomas and James, stir the town into a frenzy by taking opposing sides in a court battle over the validity of the missionary's religion.

We'll be watching Day of Defense.

Oh, a Mormon movie outside a Mormon movie month.

Very exciting.

So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 524 to a merciful close.

Once again, a huge thanks to Aaron and Ursa for all their help this week, and an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that helped make the show go.

If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash godawil and thereby earn early access to an after-version of every episode.

You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms.

And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our siblings shows, The Scathing Adeas, Citation Native, DD Minus, and The Skeptic Rat, available wherever podcasts live.

If you have questions, comments, or send them out as suggestions, you can email GodawfulMovies at gmail.com.

Tim Robinson takes care of our social media.

Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slatnick and Philip Dross on Mars.

All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission.

Thanks again for giving us a trick of your life this week.

For Heath Enright and Neil, Boston, I'm an illusion's promise to work hard to earn another chunk next week.

Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti close.

Aaron promised to only use his powers for good.

He immediately broke that promise.

Dix went on to pretend to believe in Jesus until Lola got over it.

Ursa went on to be mercifully euthanized after 10 straight years of singing the It's a Good Day to Die song.

See, it was a call forward the whole time.

Eli was open to an offer from Bug God.

Call me, Bug God.

All right, Aaron, you're on a little bit more of a delay than Ursa or Eli is for me.

So just be aware of that.

If everybody seems to be talking over you, that might be.

It's because we hate you.

It's because we don't like you.

And your jokes aren't very good.

Jew face.

Ursa said that was Ursa.

Hey, that is our love language.

You don't know what we do in private.

Well, you do now.

Well, yeah, right.

Well,

you got love language.

This content is canned-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025.

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