John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars LIVE! w/ Nick Kroll

1h 16m
A movie with flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks?! HDTGM all-star Nick Kroll returns to help Paul, Jason, & our space expert June Diane Raphael break down the 2001 sci-fi horror film John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, & a pre-bald Jason Statham. LIVE from Largo in L.A. they discuss the oxygen goggles, Big Daddy Mars' low boobs, if the Martians come from orca whales, flying a hot air balloon on Mars, the super slow train, Clea Duvall's beheading via circular saw blade, Ice Cube's Leeroy Jenkins moment, and so much more. Plus, June tells us about her recent encounter with a Geostorm and her struggle with shower loneliness.

Press play and read along

Runtime: 1h 16m

Transcript

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Speaker 1 Get jacked and ready. Double tough because we saw John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.
So you know what that means.

Speaker 1 J-Lin, Big Paul, and the beautiful June. Running pip you from the boom all the way to the room.
Rainbow gave the street fight and hopes to pour off steam.

Speaker 1 Just a sucker punch to iron life for Tiffany Breeze.

Speaker 1 Cranking 88 minutes cause they cool as ice. Cause the bad Jim Barney looking kind and nice.
All his dudes getting literal, Jason is getting lame. Jula's making sure all the monkey shots in the pain.

Speaker 1 And just a bunch of movies while they making the grave. Here's a real question for you out of this kid, pain.

Speaker 1 Hello,

Speaker 1 people of Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 And hello, people of

Speaker 1 How did this get made? We are live in Los Angeles to talk about a movie that is very hard to say because it's got double plurals in it.

Speaker 1 John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. As if there's been other ghosts of Mars to distinguish it.

Speaker 1 You know, they say, in space, No one can hear you scream. In this film, no one can hear you scream because they couldn't afford extras.

Speaker 1 Movie came out 2001

Speaker 1 to 23% on the tomato meter

Speaker 1 and 25%

Speaker 1 on the audience score. Now, you might be like, well, I didn't watch it.
What is this movie about? Well, let me tell you.

Speaker 1 It is... A movie that takes place in 2176 when a Martian police unit is sent to pick up a highly dangerous criminal at a remote mining planet.

Speaker 1 Upon arrival, the cops find that the post has become a charnel house. What is that? IMDB? What's a charnel? Anyone know what a charnel house is?

Speaker 1 Storage of bombs. Oh, wow.
IMDb fucking... Just say fucking Martians are there.
I don't know. Charnel House.
Well, thank you. Charnel House.
That's really the best description of this movie.

Speaker 1 It leaves you wanting.

Speaker 1 Like you could have said a million other things. Charnel House? That actually probably the best description of a movie ever or this movie.
We're gonna break it all down.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're gonna take you through every moment of this film in order, unlike the film.

Speaker 1 A movie that has flashbacks within flashbacks.

Speaker 1 That's the way you do it.

Speaker 1 Now, to break down this movie, I have to introduce my co-host. Please welcome to the stage, Mr.
Jason Manzukas.

Speaker 1 What's up, jerks?

Speaker 1 Yeah!

Speaker 1 Let's go!

Speaker 1 Welcome, Jason. We're back in Largo.

Speaker 1 We are back in Largo to talk about a movie that takes place in a charnel house. Holy shit.
What the f- What even the fuck was this?

Speaker 1 This is a movie, maybe the first movie we've ever done, that has flashbacks inside of flashbacks inside of other characters' flashbacks.

Speaker 1 This shit is fucking impossible.

Speaker 1 A movie that makes the bold move to do a dissolve as two characters walk two feet down a hallway.

Speaker 1 At some point, someone's like, gotta make it quicker. They didn't even move down the hall.
They just moved two feet faster.

Speaker 1 Incredible stuff. This was, I mean, and I think I can say this, the very first time for the podcast that I've watched a movie on the Criterion channel.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 1 This movie is on Criterion right now. I want.
What?

Speaker 1 I want to break down possibly why that is, but I need everyone out here to see their reaction. So let's bring out

Speaker 1 another fan of Ghosts and John Carpenter. Please welcome Johnson.
Ghosts and John Carpenter? The sequel. Please welcome June Diane Raphael.

Speaker 1 Welcome June.

Speaker 1 How are you?

Speaker 4 I'm well. How are you, Paul?

Speaker 1 I'm well. And you know, June, I just have to bring it up before we even start the show.

Speaker 1 Been a big fan of you on 911 because you are. Obsessed.
We were talking about it backstage. Obsessed.
You are in 911, if you've not been watching, in a Geostorm.

Speaker 4 That's correct.

Speaker 1 Not like a Geostorm. You are in a Geostorm.
They say Geostorm.

Speaker 1 And you are in it.

Speaker 4 And I just have to say, okay, I'm going to be so for real right now.

Speaker 4 I've heard you all. I was not on the Geostorm episode.
I wasn't at that show. And I know it became a big thing within the community.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 1 I'm not speaking about the community.

Speaker 1 Disconnect the discount.

Speaker 4 I have to say,

Speaker 4 and I'm not afraid to be vulnerable right now, honest.

Speaker 1 I never knew what it was.

Speaker 4 Wow. And I knew people would shout it out at us.

Speaker 4 We shouted it at Jason when we saw him at a cafe. We shouted it from our minivan.

Speaker 1 Oh, and I didn't know it was them. and they did it for minutes.
A long time. Somebody

Speaker 1 behind me is really pissing me off.

Speaker 1 Forced you to turn around. We were the most annoying fans of you.

Speaker 4 It was amazing. So, what's so wild is to now understand what it is and to actually be such a big part of it.
You know, and to have to have to contend with it in the way that I do.

Speaker 1 Geostorm, you live through a Geostorm. I would argue that if anything deserves to be like a second look at, it's Geostorm with June on the other side.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's interesting. I'd be happy to do it.

Speaker 1 Sometimes people ask us, would you cover a movie again or something like that? I think the only way to do it is if you were not there and we just need those eyeballs on it.

Speaker 4 Well, I will say, Paul really hurt my feelings, Jason, because I said,

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 4 I was telling him about my work on this show, and I said, I'm going to be a macronaut. It's sort of like a,

Speaker 4 what was that space, the Katy Perry, what was it called? Blue Origin. It's sort of like that.
And I said, it's really great. And then Paul saw the preview and he goes, you're in a geostorm.

Speaker 4 And I said, I guess I am. And he goes, that's why they cast you.

Speaker 1 No, I didn't say it like that. I said it like that.
I didn't say it like that.

Speaker 1 Oh, they're hoping to get that. How did this get made bump? They wanted the community.

Speaker 1 Popular show on TV. I just was saying that.

Speaker 4 You said that's why they cast you. And I said, well, I think my body of work speaks for itself.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 thank you, community members.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 without any further ado, we've made our triumphant return to Largo, and we could not do it without a true how did this get made all-star. You know this.

Speaker 1 gentleman from his tremendously amazing body of work that includes shows like Big Mouth and The League. Please welcome Mr.
Nick Kroll.

Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome back,

Speaker 1 Nick. Am I? You are.
Nick's mic's not on. Wait, let's see.
Is it not on here? I got a backup mic over here. Let's see if we we can give you that.
All right, how's that work? Good.

Speaker 1 All right, sorry. I was just talking about the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Speaker 1 By the way, you were great. I got to watch your set.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I bought the pay-per-view of the whole event. It was really fun.

Speaker 1 It was so funny. Heads were rolling.

Speaker 1 I'm back, baby.

Speaker 1 Ghosts of Mars, a movie that I watched twice. Because.

Speaker 1 What? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because at one point I was like, am I missing something?

Speaker 1 I wonder that every movie we do.

Speaker 1 And I think kind of yes and kind of no. And I want to answer this thing.
Jason said he watched it on the Criterion channel, right? You can get that on the app. It's a great service.
I love it.

Speaker 4 I didn't know movies like this.

Speaker 1 I thought.

Speaker 1 I'm just as shocked as you are. Okay, I didn't know.

Speaker 1 Well, you might be surprised a little fun fact that luca guadadino the you know director of challengers call me by your name included john carpenter's ghosts of mars on his new york times list of the 10 best movies of the 21st century

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 what are you talking about just want to throw it out there

Speaker 1 that's genuinely heartbreaking

Speaker 1 it's an odd one and i found that in my little bit of research it's a movie that people really go to bat for, and then other people are like, I am severing ties with you because of this opinion.

Speaker 4 What could those people be saying?

Speaker 4 There's nothing to go to bat for.

Speaker 1 Well, there is certain, I feel like this movie gets maybe a pass from people simply because at the very least, it's a John Carpenter movie.

Speaker 1 But how do you know that it's a John Carpenter movie?

Speaker 1 Because my guy's going to tell you every time you look at the movie. We've got to make sure that people do not get confused.
This is John Carpenter's Post of Mars. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm always wary of movies where they drop a bunch of exposition before I know I'm supposed to pay attention.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm like, oh, wait, I didn't hear any of that. I just watched that and now, and then I went back and rewound it.
And yes, it's 2176.

Speaker 1 Mars has been terraformed, and it has a matriarchal society, which doesn't seem to play into

Speaker 1 much of anything else

Speaker 1 in the film. But the panel is all women.
It's all women. So

Speaker 1 there you go.

Speaker 1 Check done. We did it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there is, and the movie, you know, the movie starts off like all great space movies, techno music and a train.

Speaker 4 A train. I want to talk, I guess guess that's, I'd like to start with the train, if that's okay.

Speaker 4 And I'm just going to jump to the end real quick because

Speaker 4 I was amazed. Yep, that's right.
Right. There's so many flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks.
It's hard to kind of keep track of where we were.

Speaker 4 But at the point where we really need that train to move, like we, we got to get the fuck out of there. I'm like, wow, in this future,

Speaker 4 we have the technology to go to Mars, but we don't have the technology to make trains go faster than four miles an hour.

Speaker 1 None of the transportation moves faster than, I'm going to say, a bird scooter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like everything, when they are, when they finally manage to get in the transport and all they need to do is drive to the train, it should be like,

Speaker 1 but they are easily swarmed by slow-moving. And you know what? I thought, can I just say something?

Speaker 4 Because I just was in space, Nick.

Speaker 1 If you allow me,

Speaker 1 I wanted your expert

Speaker 1 opinion.

Speaker 4 I could be a woman on a panel for a a second.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 4 Everything was moving so slowly in the transportation that I did think, is this a gravity issue? Is this,

Speaker 1 are we not able to

Speaker 1 push

Speaker 1 a gravity issue that would allow a train to move slow, but a hot air balloon to stay on track, no problem. Also,

Speaker 1 a hot air balloon on Mars. Yes.
I loved that. I loved it.
I'm also having so much trouble figuring out when do they need breathing help and when do they not need breathing help?

Speaker 1 That was a they explained that early on, right? With one sentence, and then

Speaker 1 they say something about the oxygen, uh, oxygen goggles.

Speaker 1 Let's see here. I can play the little clip here.
Oxygen goggles does sound like a Bob Doo. I was gonna say to

Speaker 1 oxygen goggles. Oxygen goggles.

Speaker 4 Rookies, use your breathers. We're not gonna have airlife earth for ten more years.
Let's go. Ten more years

Speaker 1 and the goggles are

Speaker 1 they don't cover the nose,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 They just call the glasses breathers. Yes, the glasses are breathers.
Come on now. And this is all they kind of say is like you'll get used to it.

Speaker 4 Two years ago, we were still wearing full face breathers. Yeah, it takes about a month to get over the headaches out here.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, what?

Speaker 1 I just think to

Speaker 1 why did the breathers just stay over the eyes? Like, just give me a little thing over the nose. Give me, you know, anything.
Well, I guess, Juna, someone, again,

Speaker 1 who has spent a lot of time at this point in space. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Is it possible that more oxygen is passed through the eyeballs and eye sockets

Speaker 1 than through the respiratory, natural, what we would think of as respiratory naturalists?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, as far as I know, the eyes are, they're an opening to the body, so it's a good

Speaker 1 sorfis, so it's possible to connect it to your lungs at all.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's such a good question.

Speaker 1 I'm sure,

Speaker 4 I'm sure you could breathe through your eyes in the future.

Speaker 1 True. You know, I have a related question, June.
What's up?

Speaker 1 If you ever brush your teeth in the shower and you get a little toothpaste on your finger and then you mistakenly rub your eye, do you think the eye tastes the mint?

Speaker 4 I don't know about that, but you can smell through your eyes.

Speaker 1 I know that. There you go.
So that's why it's the breather.

Speaker 1 I think only lunatics brush their teeth in the shower.

Speaker 4 By the way,

Speaker 1 I totally agree. I've never been on board with that.
I didn't understand it. I don't know.
I do it all the time.

Speaker 1 I smoke cigars in there.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you are talking to a person who has decorated our shower to be less lonely.

Speaker 4 I get lonely in there.

Speaker 4 And it's, to me, it's a long time to spend with your own thoughts.

Speaker 4 So I was on a very strange TikTok algorithm about just like people who struggle with, and I'm very hygienic, but struggle with that time.

Speaker 1 Shower loneliness.

Speaker 1 Shanether Bob Duca malady. Shower loneliness.

Speaker 4 It was a very strange

Speaker 4 wormhole I was in, but a lot of people suggested

Speaker 1 bringing

Speaker 4 plants in.

Speaker 4 And then I found a small lamp.

Speaker 1 A lamp.

Speaker 4 And I realized I can put a candle in here.

Speaker 4 And so now I have a lamp, a lovely little lamp on a shelf. And then I built another shelf.
There's a candle on there.

Speaker 1 That goes on.

Speaker 4 Some crystals, yeah.

Speaker 1 Some crystals, a billy crystal standy.

Speaker 1 All I do is bump into things in the shower.

Speaker 1 I am,

Speaker 1 anytime I lift my arm, I'm knocking over shelves. Lamps are falling on me.

Speaker 1 My movement is constricted. I have to.
That does sound like a very crowded shower. I literally raised my hand the other day and punched that shelf so hard.
I was like, ah, now I'm hurt in the shower.

Speaker 1 Do you listen to anything in the shower?

Speaker 4 Yes, I do listen to my podcast friends, of course.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay. You listen to your own podcast? Yes.

Speaker 4 To the sounds of Jessica St. Clair, Jason Mansukas.

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Speaker 1 Here's the thing I'll say about this movie: yeah, the breathers, whatever.

Speaker 1 I'm more concerned on why Natasha Hendrich wears a nice sweater that gets.

Speaker 1 It looks like she wakes up as a catalog model. She has just been in knife fights with ghost

Speaker 1 humans,

Speaker 1 something. She has the smallest nick on her neck, like as if she was shaving,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 yet her sweater is pristine. And she seems to not have any real gear on top of it.
Sometimes the sweater's on, sometimes she's wearing a jacket, but that's a good one.

Speaker 4 I'm in sweat of a long-sleeve tee.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes.
That's a

Speaker 1 mock turtleneck.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, what I wanted to really know about her was what drug is she taking.

Speaker 1 Yes. Clear.

Speaker 1 Clear. Oh, is that what it's called? Clear.

Speaker 1 I have it here listed as TSA Pre.

Speaker 1 Worth it. That was pretty good.

Speaker 1 She is weirdly kind of dressed like a clear employee, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, she feels formal, but she's not wearing a uniform, and I like that. I would love to know what, wait, Paul, can you tell me if you have it in there? How many years is this from the movie Aliens?

Speaker 1 Well, this movie is so heavy. 2001.
What? Yeah, yeah. This one is.
This movie came out in the 2000s? 2001.

Speaker 1 This movie came out in August 2001. Yes.
It's fair to say it's responsible for 9-11.

Speaker 4 I think so.

Speaker 1 They saw it and they were like, that's it. We got to go in there.
We got to shake shit. They've reached the pinnacle of their culture.

Speaker 1 Everything was going fine on those flights, but they played this movie on the in-flight engine. We expected more from John Carpenter.

Speaker 4 I will say that there's a time period between 2000 and 2010 that I feel like we can't accept movies on this podcast came out during that decade.

Speaker 4 It's never not absolutely shocking.

Speaker 1 This movie felt, I genuinely felt like you were going to say, like, this movie came out in 1987.

Speaker 1 Well, I also will say, you know, as a bald man, I'm always watching bald people, how they've made their choices.

Speaker 1 And what a great choice for Jason Statham to be like, no, no, no. Get this fucking peach buzz out of here.

Speaker 1 I got to shave this dome because it does not, that kind of

Speaker 1 does not look good. It's so rare to see him with that much hair, so much so that you see it thinning.
You know, you're like, oh, wow, there it is. Oh, yeah.
He's a man that is going bald.

Speaker 1 Like, it is, it is, a lot of it has left town. It's also his first on-screen kiss.
So. Oh, wow.
You know, he's getting close. And that's because you keep that.
You still keep that website?

Speaker 4 I keep a website called

Speaker 1 First Kiss

Speaker 1 and Last Bald.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's before you go

Speaker 1 still bald.

Speaker 1 And yeah, First Kiss, Last Bald is, it's a beautiful website. It's Bonfire of the Vanity.

Speaker 1 I wish this became the future of Jump the Shark. It's one of those, you know what I mean? It's one of those First Kiss, Last Balds where they went to space.
It was totally First Kiss, Last Bald.

Speaker 1 But this cast is like all of my favorite people. Bangers.
Like Like 100%.

Speaker 1 And none of them seem to be excited to be there ultimately.

Speaker 1 I did read an interesting fact that this was written as a sequel to Escape from New York, Escape from LA. Yeah.
And this would be Escape from Mars. But

Speaker 1 I did almost zero research to be told by someone else who did research

Speaker 1 that that is not true. Oh, good.
I'm glad. Well, there we go.
Blank check. Blank check said it was not true.

Speaker 1 That's who I heard it on. Because I was trying to do research to do this podcast.

Speaker 1 And you're listening to the blank check podcast? Yeah, it's so great.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I'm sorry if I could do this. You guys at home, I mean, you guys here in the theater, you're stuck here.
But if you're listening to this podcast,

Speaker 1 go check out the blank check podcast.

Speaker 1 Wait a second.

Speaker 1 Take on Ghost of Game.

Speaker 1 If you're going to listen to it, listen to maybe the used car episode. Yeah, we have.
Jason and I are on that. That's a good one.

Speaker 1 But if you like the used car episode, check out their blank check episode.

Speaker 1 Like the episode about blank check, the movie blank check? Yeah. I will say, Ice Cube is dressed like snake.

Speaker 1 He's wearing the same black top.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to say, and but Ice Cube is, he's grace under fire in this movie.

Speaker 1 This is, I mean, and I do feel like this movie, the characters I love are so dumb.

Speaker 1 And I think that that's why I don't like them at all because they walk into this town that is so aggressively a ghost town. Like there's no signs of life.

Speaker 1 And they're like, oh, people must be partying on the inside of these buildings.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 They are a military unit. They are the police, rather.

Speaker 1 They are all kidded out. They don't show any tactical acumen whatsoever.
They don't have a plan. They don't know what.
They never make a plan.

Speaker 1 They are freestyling at every turn, and every single one of them dies. Except for Natasha Henstridge, right? Who is, I guess her secret weapon is being super high.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Which, in that moment, give everybody those drugs.

Speaker 4 Yes. Well, it's weird because she doesn't, but that's not even her superpower because.

Speaker 4 Jason Statham gives them to her and like stuffs it down her mouth.

Speaker 1 Oh, right.

Speaker 4 She doesn't think to do that and they don't think to take them for themselves.

Speaker 1 Nope, they just put it in her mouth and then lock her outside.

Speaker 1 But then the other thing is, this to your point, Paul, about how dumb people are, how dumb this unit is.

Speaker 1 Even long after they've figured out that if they kill someone who's got a ghost inside of them, the ghost exits and goes into someone else, probably one of them. Yeah, well, whoever's

Speaker 1 just killing people. They're just killing people, letting all the ghosts loose.

Speaker 1 Contain them.

Speaker 1 Contain the ghosts. That's it.

Speaker 4 Well, but they are in a hard, they're sort of between a rock and a hard place, Jason, because

Speaker 4 if they don't kill them, they will be killed by them.

Speaker 1 Well, no. Clea Duval kills that man who is in a cell.
He's not doing anything. And then she's like, guys, I got to shoot this guy, which is true police brutality.

Speaker 1 Like, in that moment, maybe there's a remedy. Maybe there's a cure.
He was not doing, he wasn't almost out. And then when they say, like, why'd you do that? She's like, fuck this guy.
Fuck him.

Speaker 1 She goes, fuck this guy.

Speaker 1 Crazy.

Speaker 1 I also

Speaker 1 texted Clea Duval. Did you?

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. So I did a lot.
What I'm saying is I did a lot of stuff. Oh, you did a lot of research.

Speaker 1 Wow, you got in a lot of, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I watched almost half the movie. Oh.

Speaker 1 She said she had a blast making it. Two months in the desert.
Great.

Speaker 1 John Carpenter didn't like to shoot early. He didn't like to get going before 11.
They said that, yeah, he

Speaker 1 required night shoots because he's a night person. Yeah.
And so when they were shooting nights and it was night out, that made sense.

Speaker 1 But then when they moved back to L.A., he's like, we're going to keep that night schedule.

Speaker 1 We're on sets. He's like, I'm a night person.

Speaker 1 Well, he did the music, and music business people tend to be night. They really like to make their night owls, right? Yeah, he did do the music on this movie.

Speaker 1 Oh, he does the music on all of his movies. Yes, and he called in like a crazy crew of people to like help him out from like anthrax and guns and roses and buckethead, you know, like and the cars.

Speaker 1 Like, he had here's what I'll say: John Carpenter still tours. I believe he's playing here.
He played. Or did he just play? Is it just? Okay.
So, like,

Speaker 1 these are iconic soundtracks, and to see him play them live is bananas. So it's great.
He's even made soundtracks for movies that he hasn't made.

Speaker 4 Let me ask a question about the ghosts.

Speaker 1 It sounds like a joke, but it's true.

Speaker 4 Let me ask a question about the ghosts for a second to the group, to the panel.

Speaker 4 Is it the ghosts of Mars or the ghost of Mars?

Speaker 1 No, ghosts. It's John Carpenter's ghosts of Mars.
I still don't know

Speaker 1 where the answer was.

Speaker 1 Is there an S or not? Is it a plural or no? A plural. Okay, thank you.
Multiple ghosts. It's a possessive and a plural.

Speaker 1 Yeah, John Carpenter is.

Speaker 4 Right, because they belong to him.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 ghost.

Speaker 1 But is it John Carpenter's ghost of Mars?

Speaker 1 Or is it John Carpenter's ghosts of Mars as if the of Mars belong to the ghosts? Like, so ghosts.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is something, maybe that's why Luca Guadadino likes it so much. Just the lay the question.

Speaker 4 Well, I guess this does go to my question because I didn't know ultimately. We find out that the scientist with the spiky hair who arrived via weather balloon was.

Speaker 1 When a weather balloon blows up, by the way,

Speaker 1 I guess they shot it once. They're like, we just loop it back.
Like they rewind it and fast forward it to make it look longer. Like, boop, bloop, bloop, bloop.

Speaker 4 So she let go of, she found the tunnel and opened the Pandora's box. The tunnel that seemed like it was very nicely designed.

Speaker 4 Also, just like had a nice aesthetic to it.

Speaker 1 She opens a tunnel that just

Speaker 1 is beautiful, looks nice, but you're like, not human made. Yeah, it looks

Speaker 1 human. It looks pretty human.

Speaker 1 That was the thought I had. I was like, wow, aliens are just like us.

Speaker 1 Except that when they talk, it sounds like,

Speaker 4 okay, so that's my question, actually, Jason.

Speaker 4 I don't know. And I actually, my interpretation and my reading was

Speaker 4 that actually, because we did get to see, I think, we saw the ghost's point of view in the red ghost cam. Yeah, yeah, and where we got,

Speaker 4 we got to follow, we got to be, it felt like we were the ghost cam.

Speaker 1 I don't know about you, but I felt chills.

Speaker 1 So, when we were,

Speaker 1 or is it red because they've ripped off people's faces and the blood from the skin of the faces is

Speaker 1 that's in the movie. I'm not being gross.
I assumed it was red because the mist is red. Oh, and the red isn't Mars the red planet?

Speaker 4 Mars is the red planet. I know that from some of my work in the solar system.

Speaker 1 No spoilers.

Speaker 4 I felt when we were in the ghost cam

Speaker 4 that it was rather peaceful and the length wasn't moving so frantically. We were kind of tracking and smooth movements.

Speaker 4 But then, when we saw the humans possessed by the ghost, they were acting a fool. They were crazy chaos monsters.
Finally, we were teeth. No, no, I don't.
I can't even.

Speaker 4 I actually can't talk about what. No, Jason, I can't talk about what they were doing.

Speaker 1 I can't talk about what they were doing.

Speaker 1 How did they find so many files? They were all.

Speaker 4 But it felt like, it felt.

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess it's a mining colony.

Speaker 4 It felt like they were

Speaker 1 they were piercing cheeks they were still they're piercing fingers

Speaker 4 i hate them so much but it didn't feel like that was the ghost

Speaker 1 right the ghosts

Speaker 4 that's not the ghost

Speaker 1 the ghosts take over these miners

Speaker 1 hundreds and hundreds of miners so many miners um the ghosts take them over but yes i agree with with junior the sentiment which is why did the ghosts we never see, do we ever see, I don't think, representation of the Martians of the past.

Speaker 1 No. No.
So are we to assume that the finally the teeth... We do? In Natasha's hand.

Speaker 1 In her flashback, when she takes the drug, I feel like she goes in,

Speaker 1 you get their story a little bit. You don't think she's seeing the.
You see the form, and the form does not look.

Speaker 1 Because the ghosts have.

Speaker 1 The ghosts.

Speaker 1 We do have we can watch and see if we can by the way, this is a masturbation

Speaker 4 I guess it is a sweater Paul it is a sweater exclusively a masturbation scene

Speaker 1 Okay, so we're saying so there is this was when they were pirates and conquistadors

Speaker 1 So hot so hot

Speaker 1 fish people that was fish people

Speaker 1 oh that looked like that looked like a shark what oh yeah.

Speaker 1 They look like there's some fish people. Can we frame by frame? Yeah, that's a fish person.

Speaker 4 That was

Speaker 4 like Martian.

Speaker 1 That was Senalian. That was for sure Abe Sapien.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how I say it. I believe this is the fish man from the Shape of Waters first movie.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Also Abe Sapien. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, that looked like a cat of orca.

Speaker 1 There's definitely an orca in there.

Speaker 1 That's an orca. Yeah, that is.
That's a shark. That's an orca.

Speaker 1 For sure. What? That's a shark.

Speaker 1 Or an orca. That's orca, yeah.
What is happening? And Mars is Mars, notably, does not have a lot of water.

Speaker 1 And doesn't it seem like this is what she's thinking about while she jerks off? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Orca. Oh, orca.
Oh, orca. Oh,

Speaker 1 lizard guy.

Speaker 1 All the water.

Speaker 1 What's interesting is why do the Martians have such a memory of water on a waterless planet? Is it just that that's how old it is? Or probably. Yeah, I mean.
Because fucking, Jason,

Speaker 1 when back in the day, Mars was all water, and when it exploded,

Speaker 1 all of the orcas got shot to Earth. And I think you're right, Nick.
Leaving just the red clay behind.

Speaker 1 You fucking idiot. Wow.
Wow. You know, and this is why I'm glad you listened to blank check because this is kind of the facts that we needed.

Speaker 1 We don't get fact checked enough, and now we get it. I will say this.
You know, we get away with too much.

Speaker 1 Nick, thank you for coming on the show and setting us straight.

Speaker 1 Talking some orca truth, I will say

Speaker 1 the big leader,

Speaker 1 which, you know, is out of body proportion from everyone else.

Speaker 1 Where did he come from? Like, did they just be like just a minor, right? A giant ass minor. Everyone else looks like a human because I'll find this weird fucking creature and I'll be him.

Speaker 1 I think that's got to be it. There's what other reason is there?

Speaker 4 That guy is an alien.

Speaker 1 He's got to be.

Speaker 4 If we see a picture of his chest, Paul, yeah, his chest is low. It seems like he has low

Speaker 1 boobs. Well, what he's got?

Speaker 1 What num, what numb, what he, I believe, he has like a human jaw but they all have they're all wearing parts of other people which make them seem like

Speaker 1 Like there's the woman who has hands as a bra right some other person's hands are we have right oh it's very like a call like a nod to jaw someone was holding

Speaker 1 her boobs can i okay i can i say if i were one of them i would have taken pam greer's boobs and made them my own yes you can say that.

Speaker 1 You can say that. Can I say that? I don't like you looking at me so intensely and like holding eyes saying it, but you can say it.
By the way, Pam Greer killed off-screen, a major character.

Speaker 1 We don't see her death. We're just kind of left to be like, what happened?

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden, we just watch her head just be put on a pike, which apparently was done practically and to much pain of Pam Greer.

Speaker 1 Wait, she actually had to get beheaded? Well,

Speaker 1 they built a very special rig for her, and it was

Speaker 1 apparently incredibly painful, but they were able to create all the other heads next to her for no.

Speaker 4 Yeah, see, here's the thing: there's certain choices, there were a couple choices that were made in this movie that I absolutely loved.

Speaker 4 And I loved that we didn't see her death. I loved that we had to paint a picture for ourselves based on her final expression in her resting place, which was

Speaker 4 I laughed so hard that her face was,

Speaker 4 it was so funny.

Speaker 1 Did you? She was hitting on Natasha Hendrich, right? Yeah, right. She was sexually harassing her.
And that's why.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 4 That's why the commentary on like, oh, it's a matriarchal society was tough for me because I felt like they were trying to say, like,

Speaker 4 you guys are just as fucked up.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 4 And I was like.

Speaker 1 Clearly, these women didn't solve the problem of ghosts of Mars. They just let it happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what happens in a matriarchy.

Speaker 1 The ghosts take over all the gigantic mutant miners. At the end of the court case, the person's like, I guess we just say, what? There were ghosts on Mars?

Speaker 1 Guilty.

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Speaker 1 when the guy when the guy chopped his own thumb off trying to open the can that scene in the movie i was like what on earth are we on that's not

Speaker 1 because he took his like his like nitrous yes yeah i also blew himself up with a hand grenade i all but i thought that like i yes he had the nitrous but i also thought he was just trying to impress somebody and just messed up like i feel like when you were a kid didn't you ever try to do that thing that they did in aliens where you put the knife between your fingers and stuff like that uh i just feel like he was trying to

Speaker 1 i feel like you were setting yourself up for a story did you do that i mean yeah i did it but like

Speaker 1 i got all five um

Speaker 1 but uh it was you know we had one of those uh those knives that had like the retractable blade like

Speaker 1 the retractable blade. So he did that a lot at lunch.
And then, you know, and you even hit yourself more often than not. I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 1 Because you would have no fear with the retractable blade. And you'd be like, well, I can do it now.
You can't. I couldn't understand the ghosts' rules.
In my mind, ghosts can go anywhere. Sure.

Speaker 1 These ghosts are bound by the physical world.

Speaker 1 They can't go through doors. They can't go through windows.
They can't go through

Speaker 1 bars. Neither can orcas.
Like, my question, yeah. My question was, like, at one point, one of the ghosts gets loose, right?

Speaker 1 When they're in the jail, in the structure, rather. And the ghost could go into anybody, and it goes into one of the guys in a prison cell.
And I'm like, this ghost is a fucking idiot.

Speaker 1 Because now all this guy does is peel his own skin off in a prison cell. Like, why not take over any of the good people who are outside with ghosts? It's done.

Speaker 1 Jason, who are you to judge who the best host for the ghost is? Ghost host.

Speaker 1 Ghost host.

Speaker 1 I do believe that, like, what I like about the aliens is, like, is we will infect you and then we'll destroy your body because we feel like you are a piece of shit. Like,

Speaker 1 I like that energy. Can we talk about the allegory of this? That is...
Is it an allegory for like

Speaker 1 former vice vice president. This is 2001.

Speaker 1 He's just lost Bush v. Gore.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And what is Al Ghory, what's the allegory element to this?

Speaker 1 Listen, it's an inconvenient truth that these miners. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 We got to move to Mars.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of hanging. There's a lot of hanging out

Speaker 1 on those posts.

Speaker 1 Well, there seems to be some sort of, but it's not, I can't quite get the moral of it, which is like, if you invade, if you try to take dominion over someone else's land, then

Speaker 1 these men have

Speaker 1 to get you, they'll get you, they'll get you back.

Speaker 1 Right, because I mean,

Speaker 1 I do think that there are some Native American themes in this. Like, not like not put out fully in front, but I feel like that's like what they're going for in a way.

Speaker 1 Right, but then it's like, but the moral is like that, like, they're like they're gonna be shitty about it once like it doesn't make any

Speaker 1 like you don't quite get what well at the end they're basically like mars isn't theirs anymore it's ours and it's like wait a minute did did like the bad guy are like the bad guys i think are winning i'm rooting for the bad guys but also it seems but it also seems like when they got to mars they were all dead it wasn't like we got to mars we killed all them and then we started terraforming it's like we got to mars it was a dead planet and then the ghosts were like whoa whoa whoa we're still here.

Speaker 1 We're ghosts.

Speaker 1 We're just in search of corporeal forms.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I do think that that's the interesting part of the moral question mark because

Speaker 4 they are ghosts, after all. They're not,

Speaker 4 they couldn't enjoy the resources of this planet

Speaker 1 if they wanted to.

Speaker 4 They'd still be in that tunnel, that very nicely designed tunnel.

Speaker 1 They're floating around, or even if they got out and there's no bodies it seems like they're in some sort of like crypt or like underground like that they have they been trapped or like what's the well they clearly

Speaker 1 well you see all right here's my lore that i've been writing on reddit about it

Speaker 1 there were there was a species on mars that encountered this very violent tribe of people

Speaker 1 and they're like they condemned them to this underground tomb and they were like lock it away because these are bad people. But then these dummies from Earth come and they're like, what this tomb?

Speaker 1 Open it up. And then they let it out again.
So they are repeating. Like, it's like, oh, the people already solved it for you, but you're opening it up.

Speaker 1 I mean, right there. I think that they're.
So those ghosts are stuck in there in that tomb. They got to wait for somebody to let them fall.
I think you're right. I absolutely think you're right.

Speaker 1 I'm just upset that the ghosts didn't obey ghost rules. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think they're really ghosts in that sense.
They weren't, they weren't like going through stuff.

Speaker 4 They just weren't. I do think you're right because that one ghost, we met a couple of prisoners in the holding cell and all of them are interesting characters.

Speaker 4 And when we're in the ghost cam, he does, or he or she,

Speaker 4 does decide to take the body of the least interesting guy. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, I was like, oh, and see.

Speaker 1 But they're wind, right? I think they're just finding whoever. They're just going to the front.

Speaker 1 they're just going like who's in front no there's a number of occasions where they go and it's almost like a goldilock yeah it's like not you that's in that seat

Speaker 1 not quite right but then why does the go when then why does she vomit out the ghost like does the ghost like oh i think

Speaker 1 i think the ghost didn't like all the all the drugs the ghosts are anti-drug yeah they're straight edge they're straight edge

Speaker 1 Didn't you notice everybody when the ghost took them over had X's on their hands?

Speaker 1 They're all straight edge. they're all going to hardcore shows.
Yeah, but that's actually

Speaker 4 interesting because it does seem like

Speaker 4 I don't know if you're possessed by a ghost, if you're not possessed by a ghost, like everybody seems to be on drugs, though. Yes, so it was interesting.
Like, why what is she taking?

Speaker 1 But by the way, why are you looking right at me?

Speaker 1 I did not give her those drugs.

Speaker 1 I mean, I will tell you that she said that she improvised that. This is from

Speaker 1 a major plot point.

Speaker 1 But you know, Natasha, you guys did level one together at UCLA. That's true.

Speaker 4 She's always coming up with things that people are doing.

Speaker 1 She said it's a combo of acid and ecstasy.

Speaker 1 And I feel like everyone is saying, like, you are fucking wasted. And I can't see a more like

Speaker 1 wide awake.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, she doesn't look right now. She looked like 10 hours last night.
Like, yeah, she looks ready to go.

Speaker 4 Doesn't look beaten down, bright-eyed, and bushy tails.

Speaker 1 And when she suffers injuries, they look great.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's just like a little cut here and a little cut here.
Otherwise, she looks great. Meanwhile, Clea Duvall's out here getting beheaded

Speaker 1 by someone who threw like a circular saw blade at her. I think multiple people get beheaded because someone frisbees a circular saw blade at them, and they're like, head gone, goodbye.

Speaker 4 So quickly, like, no resistance at all.

Speaker 1 I will say that if we're talking about props, Scott, our producer, found this prop of giant film reel and some lights. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So at one point, maybe there was a movie studio on Mars as well.

Speaker 1 They seem to be walking. Well, no, this is where they fake the moon landing.

Speaker 1 I will say in this movie that takes place on Mars that when they say his name, they're like, whoa, he's a bad dude.

Speaker 1 It's like, We you know about this guy who's been accused of murder three times and gotten off because of self-defense.

Speaker 1 Seems to me like that wouldn't be the top of the food chain of bad guys, like, oh, self-defense. Like,

Speaker 4 and that's why I,

Speaker 4 what I needed, the only thing I needed, otherwise, it's a perfect movie. The only thing I needed was a little bit more of an understanding of like

Speaker 1 why,

Speaker 4 what's our main character's name?

Speaker 1 Our main character's name?

Speaker 1 It is it's Melanie Melanie Melanie I needed to understand the audience all got it wrong too a lot of different names out there

Speaker 4 Melanie Ballard I I needed to understand why she needed to keep him under her dominion

Speaker 4 Why why not leave him why did they have to

Speaker 4 care?

Speaker 1 Oh

Speaker 1 because she knows that he's wrongly accused and she says that to him she says like look I'm going to bring you back because that's my job, but I don't think you did it.

Speaker 1 But she still insists that she's going to bring him back. Yes, when he handcuffs her in midnight run,

Speaker 1 which I was like, this is so strange. He pulls her arm so far.
What? I'm like, at some point, she has to be like,

Speaker 1 what are you doing?

Speaker 1 Why am I agreeing to this? Meanwhile,

Speaker 1 meanwhile, she has her gun right here with the other hand.

Speaker 4 Easily. Easy, easy.

Speaker 1 That's the whole point of this.

Speaker 4 I guess the thing that confounds me, though, is the world is ending around her.

Speaker 1 Like, we've got bigger alien fish to fry the ghosts of mars are are here yeah i mean they they also set off a nuclear device oh they blew up a that's right a nuclear so wait wait okay i had a question the tribunal right that is also on mars and that's matriarchal yes yes the tribal sorry like i would say the matriarchal tribunal is i say that that's in new york and this is probably happening in california like that's what i feel like but it's all on mars yeah yes so i mean at some they don't even mention, like, you set off a

Speaker 1 multiple-ton nuclear explosion on the planet we currently reside on as a matriarchy.

Speaker 1 They don't even ask her about it. I mean, I think that she makes some very odd choices.
Like, when Jason Statham is like, yeah, I brought you in here to like fucking hit on you.

Speaker 1 And she's like, cool, I like it. I'm like, what? When did that happen?

Speaker 1 Oh, at one point, she, we're in her flashback for most of the movie because she's telling the story to the tribunal inside of her flashback We go into Jason Statham's flashback Which is a shit talent where he's talking about he sees Pam Greer's head and then he finds the guys who are looking for cube in the shed at which point we go into cube's brother's flashback.

Speaker 1 We are four flashbacks deep currently from the reality, which is the present tense scene is only ever the tribunal.

Speaker 1 And I think the way that they justify that is because at one point she's like, I only know what they told me. So I feel like she's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so while we were in there, Jason Stason was out there and he sees her head and he's like, what?

Speaker 1 But what's so interesting is that, you know, I was talking to Ice Cube and his brother, really interesting backstory on him. He,

Speaker 1 like, she's like telling a real rant. Like, yeah, but where were you? No, hold on.
So when he was young, he had a tricycle. It was a really cool tricycle.

Speaker 1 It would be amazing if it was revealed that like,

Speaker 1 what's it called? Usual suspects at the end. She's made the whole story up.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 She rips off her blonde face. Ah!

Speaker 1 She's filed all of her teeth down. And she's like, I'm a man.
We've beat you.

Speaker 1 I genuinely.

Speaker 1 The matriarchal society. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Are you leaving? I'm going to get out of here.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go to the audience. I'm going to see what the audience has to say.
And I have some gifts for the audience as well.

Speaker 1 We have some great people out here tonight. All right.
Jafar is here, and Jafar is in costume. So again.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Great work, Jafar.

Speaker 4 Amazing.

Speaker 1 With the hand bra.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Incredible. Full, great costume here.
Amazing costume. Job well done.
All right. so what do you want to bring to the table? You have a lot of good stuff.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so once again, I watched all of the special features on the DVD.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 4 A lot of great stuff.

Speaker 4 So, John Carpenter says the reason he made it a matriarchal society was literally just because he wanted to set up Natasha Henstridge and Pam Greer making out at some point.

Speaker 4 And he thought he would have an easier time convincing everyone if it was like part of the ethos of the universe that they were in.

Speaker 1 It's smart. It's a fucking chess match.
Yep. Yep.
But the only kiss, right? The only kiss is between her and Sathem, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 But they have like the sexual tension thing. They might have filmed more.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 4 the other thing is Natasha Henstridge was actually cast like a week before they started shooting. And her role was originally going to be played by Courtney Love, who was...

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who didn't love that? Interesting. Courtney loved that.

Speaker 4 Samsies, yeah. But the reason she wasn't able to is because her boyfriend at the time ran over her foot with a Volvo.

Speaker 4 And so she had to pull out at the last second, and then they called in Natasha Henstridge.

Speaker 1 That's a terrible thing to have happen.

Speaker 1 I mean, a real failure of the pull-out method.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 the worst thing that's happened to Courtney Love in a row. Definitely.

Speaker 4 Definitely. Can't imagine anything else.

Speaker 1 Oh, and the fact that we know it was a Volvo is somehow so much not so much. She was dating like a local professor from like a small liberal arts college.
She was visiting Phillips Exeter.

Speaker 1 Teaching

Speaker 1 11th grade honors English class. He's driving like a boxy maroon Volvo.

Speaker 1 All right, what do we got over here? Okay, I'm going to, yeah, you lean over to me. Okay, perfect.
Hi, what's your name?

Speaker 4 Hi, my name's Amy. I just wanted to point out that in the credits, the scary like white-faced Martian guy was called Big Daddy Mars.

Speaker 4 I just wanted to see if that's an

Speaker 1 apt name nomer for him. I love Big Daddy Mars.
Big Daddy Mars.

Speaker 1 Big Daddy Mars. That's what I think is like the host,

Speaker 1 the ghost knew that he was the host with the most. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so I think that was the leader ghost, and he was like, that's Big Daddy Mars. For sure.
I'm going to get myself over. It doesn't seem like...
I'm going to slide right into his ear.

Speaker 1 Maybe Big Daddy Mars had been the leader when they were corporeal in the past, maybe. Correct.
Oh, definitely. And then he found the biggest miner.
You believe that big miner for me.

Speaker 1 I'm Big Daddy Mars.

Speaker 1 Have you guys watched that reality show, Biggest Miner?

Speaker 1 I watched a documentary about it, and it was actually really terrible what they did to those miners.

Speaker 1 They made them so small. Some of them are back being minors now.

Speaker 1 Or should they say not being minors?

Speaker 1 Hi, hi. What's your name? What's your question? Ryan, when they were at the ghost rally and the

Speaker 1 Big Daddy was swinging the sword, were those just the beheadings or was something else going on there? I was really unclear.

Speaker 1 It was beheadings. Okay.
All right. Why do they want to put so many heads on sticks? They're hanging people up from the ceiling.
Like, that's a lot of work, a lot of energy, a lot of effort.

Speaker 4 It is. And that's why I have to continue to question these ghosts.

Speaker 1 What do they want?

Speaker 4 It's like that's more, that's so extra of them. Like if they're just trying to get from host to host, like why that fanboy?

Speaker 1 I think, aren't they saying it at the end, like, oh, they see us as like a disease here and they're trying to wipe us out kind of thing, right?

Speaker 4 Again, that's fine, but why put our heads all facing in the same direction?

Speaker 1 I agree. What's the problem? Well, because I don't think they fully,

Speaker 1 I feel like they've integrated with humanity in certain ways. So

Speaker 1 they are these ghosts have taken this human form, but they've still integrated some

Speaker 1 human behaviors into their

Speaker 1 beheadings? Beheadings and stakes.

Speaker 1 This is a fact that I just made up. This is that

Speaker 1 is where George R. Martin got the idea for the heads on the stakes for Game of Thrones as he watched John Carpenter's Carpenter's

Speaker 1 confirmed about the heads on the stakes and challengers. That's what Luca Guadenino was inspired by.
Originally, the tennis balls were supposed to be heads.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing: the heads on stakes are often put outside like a

Speaker 1 town, right? And to be like, don't come in here because what we do to bad people, you know, like it's to scare away people. But if it's a whole town of these ghosts, it looked like just a cemetery.

Speaker 1 Like, this is where So, they want to respect the dead.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest, it did not feel well thought through.

Speaker 1 And I don't mind saying it.

Speaker 1 All right, that is a fair point. We all disagree with you.
But can I just say, as someone, like, all I can think about was Pamger having to do that full face prosthetic, like

Speaker 1 makeup. Not the makeup.
It wasn't her head, right? It was. It was.
That's the thing. They made it.
They built a rig so they did not want to spend money on the prosthetic. She had to do a life game.

Speaker 1 So she had to stand there with her mouth open next to a prosthetic of Harry Knowles from Aina Cool News.

Speaker 1 Wait, really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 What on earth is this movie?

Speaker 1 It's not on Earth.

Speaker 1 All right, yeah. What on Mars?

Speaker 1 All right. Where we got?

Speaker 1 If you were the last ghost on Mars.

Speaker 1 Hi, what's your name? What's your question?

Speaker 1 My name is Dan, and we were talking about the vehicles earlier.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about the battering ram because that was a full-size metal vehicle being pushed by like four people that somehow broke through the prison front door. Right.

Speaker 1 Guys, battering ram thoughts, questions, answers. What do you mean? You know, they I don't think you're accounting for ghosts having like super strength.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like you should see what an orca can lift. Again, like, if I threw, if I threw even a very sharp

Speaker 1 rotary saw blade at you, maybe it would lodge. Maybe the fact that it's able to cleave off a head, severing the spine

Speaker 1 is for a clean shot, like brr. Well, so they're so strong.
And I will just say, like, we don't know,

Speaker 1 but when you have someone motivating you, like Big Daddy Mars,

Speaker 1 you know, like win one for the Gipper, like Newt Rockne level, and his speech, Jason, I think you do it probably best.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's like,

Speaker 1 It really is like, they so often talk about creating actual languages for Game of Thrones. Yeah, for the first time.
For Lord of the Red.

Speaker 1 This is where George R. Martin got the idea for another

Speaker 1 language. They're just like, just do a bunch of gibberish.
Who cares?

Speaker 1 We got it. He's got it.

Speaker 1 He's saying

Speaker 1 win one for the gipper. All right, you have a good notebook here.
What do you got?

Speaker 1 Well, this is something I kind of just was thinking about hearing Big Daddy Mars.

Speaker 1 Is this just an allegory of matriarchal versus patriarchal society?

Speaker 1 That that's what's at stake here?

Speaker 1 Big Daddy Mars versus

Speaker 1 versus, yes, mommy.

Speaker 4 I don't know because the matriarchal society seems very patriarchal.

Speaker 4 And I think that's what he's trying to say. And to that, I'm like, let us try.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Once.

Speaker 1 He would let you try, but you're too busy making out with each other. That's what would happen.

Speaker 1 Not like men who don't make out with each other. That's how we figured it out.
Hey,

Speaker 1 what's your question?

Speaker 1 I just want to say I saw on IMDb that John Carpenter said that Natasha Henstridge downplayed some of the flashback framing sequences, and she replied that he should have directed her better.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I read this quote as well, and I didn't understand. Downplayed it.
Like, I don't know how you downplay a scene that you're acting in. It's like, she didn't act it, I guess.

Speaker 1 She downplayed the flashback? Yeah, so when she was...

Speaker 4 It's all a flashback.

Speaker 1 Like the

Speaker 1 trial.

Speaker 1 But I don't know how you downplay. Yeah, I mean, I've never heard that term.
Like, oh, she really downplayed that scene. Like, she's just testifying.
Well, I think it's because

Speaker 1 they shot them. From my understanding, they shot all of the flashback stuff, right? And then she fully improvised

Speaker 1 the tribunal scenes. And she downplayed what had happened in those scenes.
So then they had to go back and reshoot all of the flashbacks. Oh, it's going to make it mad.

Speaker 1 Based on her performance and what she improvised as what had happened. Now it makes sense.
All right, there it is. Wow, now that, yeah, so that really

Speaker 1 makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because they couldn't just reshoot the tribunal.

Speaker 1 You know, that was one location and just like two setups. That's impossible.
They got disrespectful to the actor.

Speaker 1 That was in the can. So they had to go back and

Speaker 1 to match to how much she had downplayed what had happened.

Speaker 1 Obviously, we had opinions about this movie, but there are people out there with a different opinion. And it is now time for second opinions.

Speaker 1 Hi, my name's Ned.

Speaker 1 Well, the train from Shining Canyon is coming, running slowly up those tracks. And we'll learn about the space cop on board, but we'll do it in multiple flashbacks.

Speaker 1 Well, they went to pick a bass cube from jail, but they got there, it turned out that everyone had gone insane.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 baby, Statham wants to fuck everyone, and Cube's little two-gun run isn't gonna do much good.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 science lady had a hard ever balloon, which is a real weird thing to only see in a single flashback.

Speaker 1 Pam Greer's head on a spike, and this town's looking like an abattoir because that rolling red mist, baby, we're the ghosts of mom.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Springsteen in theaters now.

Speaker 1 Yes. Wow, wow.

Speaker 1 Jeremy Allen White is in the audience. That was great.

Speaker 1 Can I just say

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 I, you know, because you guys, you guys do this show all the time, and you guys, like, to watch people

Speaker 1 get up and sing

Speaker 1 is, to me, like,

Speaker 1 that would scare the living

Speaker 1 shit out of me. Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 You won't get it.

Speaker 1 The fact that everybody just did that so well is like unbelievable.

Speaker 1 It's really amazing. Truly great.
It is. And they're not.

Speaker 1 It is. And on top of all that, yes, they're in in front of people singing a song that they wrote.

Speaker 1 Like, yes, they may have a familiar melody, but they wrote it. And that's like, that's even crazy.
Well, no, I actually have notes on the writing. Oh.

Speaker 1 John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars has an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars. All right.
There are 2,797 reviews. 69% are five stars.
Yeah, only only 3% are one star.

Speaker 1 And we start off with Stormy, maybe Stormy Daniels. Stormy Daniels?

Speaker 1 Who writes, Wish Ice Cube and Natasha Hendrich did a second one to follow up this one. I could have done without all that rock music, though,

Speaker 1 because after the first 45 minutes, it was driving me crazy. And I'm a big rock music fan.

Speaker 1 But that was a bit much.

Speaker 1 One person found this helpful. Five stars.
Great movie.

Speaker 1 Can I read one? You want to? Yeah. No, I have one.
I have my own to cover.

Speaker 1 This one is from Ultra Girl

Speaker 1 43.

Speaker 6 I thought this movie

Speaker 6 was terrific. I didn't think it was weird at all that

Speaker 6 Statham had hair like that. I thought it looks really good and natural.

Speaker 6 I also thought for a first kiss, he nailed it.

Speaker 1 I feel like that may have been Jason Statham who wrote that. Do you think he wrote that? I don't know.
I don't know. It just feels like that.

Speaker 1 But it was Ultra Girl for the first audio second opinion we've ever had.

Speaker 1 You know what? We can't judge it. It's the future.

Speaker 1 Patty Lizenby wrote this: My disc of this movie got jammed in the DVD player.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 still played the other movies. And after two months of unsuccessfully trying to get it out, I ordered this one.
It arrived in good condition and on time.

Speaker 1 Just after the arrival date promised.

Speaker 1 That's not on time.

Speaker 1 I want to be very clear. That is, in fact, not on time.
It is one day late.

Speaker 1 She was just downplaying the flashback.

Speaker 1 But Patty goes on to say that when the disc did arrive, the jam movie did drop down and came out. So I'm keeping that one in case this movie gets jammed.
Five stars goes to Mars. What?

Speaker 1 Two for one. Two for one.

Speaker 1 I would like to go into that person's review history to see what they wrote for the DVD player.

Speaker 1 I also feel like, why would you ever need to have five DVDs loaded up at any given note? I get like CDs, sure. Sure.
DVDs?

Speaker 4 I didn't even know you could do that with DVDs.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's more of a thing. Like, I remember people used to have cars where you're like, yeah, I put 10 CDs in your trunk.
That's awesome. Yeah, you can do it.

Speaker 4 C D's, yeah, but.

Speaker 1 DVDs?

Speaker 4 You're not going between movies.

Speaker 1 Or are you?

Speaker 1 I think this fucking idiot is putting DVDs

Speaker 1 in a CD player and be like,

Speaker 1 Huck a movie no play.

Speaker 1 Huck a movie no play, disc in machine.

Speaker 1 I did

Speaker 1 I write review.

Speaker 1 I speak Martian.

Speaker 1 I did have a hundred disc changer at one point.

Speaker 1 I had a hundred disc changer. C D's.
C D's.

Speaker 1 And you would put them all in like a big carousel. And it was, it was.
So did you have to remember what was where? You could type it in like T9, like tink, tink, tink, BB. I must have taken I whole.

Speaker 1 Tink, tink, tink, L, L. B, B.
Like, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. And this was a disc, man? This was a disc.
I would carry it.

Speaker 1 I would carry it. It was heavy.
It's like a backpack. You need a plug.

Speaker 4 You walked around with a backpack.

Speaker 1 A backpack, and I need a power source, too.

Speaker 1 A car battery, I remember.

Speaker 1 I remember seeing you on the subway in New York and you had a car battery. Yep.
But if I wanted to switch from ACDC to Weird Al, it was no bigger. No problem at all.

Speaker 1 Both in the A's. It took about 30 seconds.
Both in the A's.

Speaker 1 I put it by the Y.

Speaker 1 Lois writes this. My company.

Speaker 1 Lois wrote this. My company made all the sweaters for this movie.
Five stars.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 I have so many. That's the kind of one I wish there was so much more to that.
I know. So, this is the sweater that you were.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to say, like, obsessed with.

Speaker 4 He was. He was.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's. Let me be clear.
I don't think it's the sweater. I think it's the sweater wearer.
Va-va-va-vu.

Speaker 1 I like a nice, high-quality sweater, which is why I always shop at Quince.

Speaker 4 Lois must be so happy, though, that those sweaters held up through some serious sweets.

Speaker 1 I was.

Speaker 1 Lois,

Speaker 1 drop a link in here where is these sweaters Lois send us some sweaters

Speaker 1 get us in a sweater

Speaker 1 CM writes this I love this movie criminals and police come together to suppress the last native Martians

Speaker 1 it demonstrates It demonstrates just how tough colonization can be.

Speaker 1 Ice Cube was perfect.

Speaker 1 I think John Carpenter should do a sequel and include Ice T2.

Speaker 1 The Ice Duo would be unstoppable.

Speaker 1 And I think they would both destroy Ghost Martians. Five stars.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 So he's been waiting for this story to be told.

Speaker 1 This pro-colonizer story.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
So much, so much to unpack in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.

Speaker 1 Would you recommend it? Is the question. I've watched it twice.
No.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, I absolutely hated watching this movie.
I had to, I looked at the clock and I thought, June, just do just do nine minutes and then you take a break.

Speaker 4 I was taking breaks. I was suffering through this.

Speaker 1 But you see, when you were watching it and I walked in on you watching it, I was like, oh, I'm missing some subtlety here. I need to re-watch it.

Speaker 1 Now, and you, and June, you watched this in the shower. Is that right?

Speaker 4 Over the course of several showers this last week.

Speaker 1 Your showers, our water bill is extensive. Yeah.
I mean, you put a desk in our shower now.

Speaker 1 MacBooks do not work well in showers.

Speaker 1 I am also a no on this one. This one is joyous.

Speaker 1 Especially for a John Carpenter movie. There's stuff here.
And I do think for the episode, tune into some of the movie absolutely just to see the madness therein. But it's

Speaker 1 being that it's such an obtuse plot that I just, at the end, was like, I don't know what this is in service of.

Speaker 1 This feels like a bunch of nothing and

Speaker 1 as great as Cube was. And I'm always in for Cube.

Speaker 1 When he shows up at the end of the movie to take Natasha Henstridge out, and he shows up with new chrome guns, and now they're in like black leather dusters. I was like, where was this movie? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm into

Speaker 1 this thing. I'm into this moving forward from here.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 the movie itself was really tough. Yeah.
Now, what did Blank Check say? Well, I was going to say, like, I can't recommend this movie, but I really can recommend the episode of Blank Check

Speaker 1 talking about this film.

Speaker 1 Joan Ray is

Speaker 1 that's a good listen. I like Jonah Ray.
He's great. I like the blank check guys.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you this much. This movie is,

Speaker 1 I feel like what John Carpenter will say is you didn't get it. This is a comedy.
I guess I had to make the jokes bigger. And that I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he has said.
I made a comedy.

Speaker 1 You fucking idiots needed a spoon fed to you. But I think that that's like retroactive.

Speaker 1 I think that that's like Tommy Wizzo going like, yeah, it was always the room was meant to be funny I feel like he like he

Speaker 1 yeah it the end felt like it was on tone

Speaker 1 it's not a fun watch it's not a fun watch although I will say if you know tune in for the action no not for that either the action looks like something that you would see at a theme park stunt show yes it looks like I was watching this I'm like is this like did they just hire the actress from Halloween horror nights to do like punches that are so broad?

Speaker 1 I'm like, Water World with spectacular is way better than this.

Speaker 1 It looks like Halloween Horror Nights, but the maze is Mad Max. Yes, but they didn't license Mad Max, so it's like it's an adjacent sounding thing.
It's like bad,

Speaker 1 bad Drax.

Speaker 1 Nope, that's there is a Drax, forget that. Hmm.

Speaker 1 I have a lot of people.

Speaker 6 We worked really hard

Speaker 6 on older stunt scenes

Speaker 1 i will say in in

Speaker 1 oh i have a question about the movie yeah how come throughout the movie they do so much shooting shooting shooting or shotguns rifles but then they seemingly run out of bullets and just use their machine guns and guns as bats okay but then one scene later shooting shooting shooting shooting where'd they get the ammo ammo?

Speaker 1 Why are they using it? Why are they clobbering people with the guns? Well, I think they were just saving bullets. Okay, okay.
I mean, the movie. They were making a call based on who their foe was,

Speaker 1 whether they could knock them cold with just a baseball swing. I will say the moment that really made me laugh the most in this film was when Ice Cube does like Leroy Jenkins.

Speaker 1 If you're familiar with that moment in pop culture history, this is something that happened online a handful of years ago. It's a game.

Speaker 1 All right, thumbs up. ready guys.
Let's do this. Leroy

Speaker 1 Dragons!

Speaker 1 Oh my god, he just ran in. Save him! Oh, geez, stick to the plane.
Oh, geez. Let's go, let's go.
Let's go, let's go. Stick to the pledge, Jeff.
Stick to the plane.

Speaker 1 That is the moment.

Speaker 1 Just completely disregarding the plan and running into a room full of zombies.

Speaker 1 All right, well,

Speaker 1 that's a four, no recommend.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Luca Guadadino.

Speaker 1 But it does make sense now why at the end of A Bigger Splash, the orca comes out of the pool and eats Dakota Johnson.

Speaker 1 If you haven't watched that movie, everybody watch a bigger splash.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Now we're getting somewhere 9.56.

Speaker 1 So everybody in the audience was like, we are done.

Speaker 1 Nick, you want to plug anything? You want to tell us anything we should be aware of?

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a blank check that covers this package. More than part of the channel.
Oh, boy. They're currently doing the Cohen brothers, and it is a dynamite series.
Cannot wait. Maybe

Speaker 1 two people you know will come back on it. I'm going to be

Speaker 1 starting to go out and do some dates around the the country

Speaker 1 performing around, so keep an eye out for some live dates. And that is your jazz band.
Yes, this is my jazz band. It's me, Jeff Goldblum, and

Speaker 1 Jeff Goldblum. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 I'm very excited. All right, so Nick will be on the road.

Speaker 1 June and Jason, anything you want to talk about?

Speaker 4 Obviously, 911, the television event that I'm a part of, is still ongoing.

Speaker 4 And also, I know Plan C was in the lobby, so and they're still, I think, passing out some literature. So please feel free to stop by on your way out

Speaker 4 and you can learn about safe

Speaker 4 at-home contraceptive that can be mailed across many states. It's pretty amazing.
So, yes, thank you to Plan C for being here and for

Speaker 4 all that you do.

Speaker 1 I will continue to plug season 19 of Taskmaster that is

Speaker 1 available on YouTube wherever you are.

Speaker 1 I'll also say I'm in a bunch of the next season, season two of A Man on the Inside, the Ted Danson Mike Scher show that's on Netflix starting next month, as well as season two of Percy Jackson, which is coming back.

Speaker 1 If you want to see me scream at children, Percy Jackson season two.

Speaker 1 I'll also promote the movie I made with Andrew. Oh, I don't understand he's on Hulu now.
That's great.

Speaker 1 And it might be a movie that one day you guys

Speaker 1 would do here on this. No, it's got a great rotten tomato score.
People love it. All right, well, I'll go see if the blank check guys want to check it out.
Jeez.

Speaker 1 Thank you, everybody. That's our show.

Speaker 1 That's a wrap on John Carpenter's Ghost of Mars. Love being back at Largo.
Love doing live shows. And speaking of live shows, how did this get made? We'll be on the road in New York and Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 That's right. And on the 7th and 8th, check us out.

Speaker 1 But more importantly, see Jason and I in Boston, D.C., and New York doing Dinosaur, which is your favorite people from TV, improvising on stage based on your suggestions.

Speaker 1 You can get tickets for our shows in Boston, D.C., and New York by just going to hdtgm.com. Our t-shirt design for this episode says Big Daddy Paul.

Speaker 1 To get that design on a t-shirt, a sticker, or a mug, or many other types of products, please click on the merch link at hdtgm.com.

Speaker 1 As always, if you have a a correction or omission for this episode, leave me a voicemail at 619-PAULASK.

Speaker 1 Write a comment on our discord at discord.gg slash hdtgm, and I'll respond to your messages next week on Last Looks.

Speaker 1 Plus, Jason and I will be chatting with comic book legend Ed Brubaker, who claims to be a ghost of Mars expert. So don't skip out on next week's Last Looks.

Speaker 1 And remember, if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure you're subscribed to our feed and have automatic downloads turned on in the show settings. It helps us, and we appreciate it a lot.

Speaker 1 And last but not least, I got to thank our entire team for who this show could not be done without.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about our producers Scott Sanny, Molly Reynolds, and our movie picking producer Averill Halley, our engineer Casey Holford, and our social media manager Zoe Alpelbaum, as well as our intern Quinn Jennings.

Speaker 1 That's all I got, people. See you next week on Last Looks.
Bye for now.

Speaker 4 Unplanned pregnancy is one of life's unexpected twists, and in this age of restrictions and confusing online information, it can be difficult to know where to turn.

Speaker 4 PlancyPills.org shares up-to-date information on on options for abortion pills and virtual support in all states with a focus on how people are getting pills by mail.

Speaker 4 The site also shares information on how people are getting pills delivered in advance to store at home in case of future need. Visit plancypills.org.
That's plancpills.org to learn more.

Speaker 4 This message is offered as a public service of How Did This Get Made and Plan C, a 10-year-old nonprofit initiative.

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