Don't Bother the Monkeys - After Earth: Media Club Plus S02E07

Speaker 1 Greetings from Media Club Plus, a podcast about plunging into the media that thrills us and the stories that chill us.

Speaker 1 As always, we have been dragged to you by friends at the table. This season, we'll be subjecting ourselves to the twisted mind of M.
Night Shamalan.

Speaker 1 My name is like some flavor on that one. Carberry, yeah, a little.
I try to give it a little flavor each time. Okay,

Speaker 1 I meant like a little extra flavor.

Speaker 3 It just occurred to me, you're going to get like fully canceled for next season's intro.

Speaker 1 Who's going to cancel me?

Speaker 1 I'm going to get canceled by the...

Speaker 1 Please. Please.
Well, you have to bleep that. We don't have to bleep that.
Oh, you read that. You don't bleep that because it was a spoiler.
Yeah. Okay.
Because

Speaker 1 it's a spoiler. Not because you said

Speaker 1 that word.

Speaker 3 But it'll be funny to have people then guess what word you said.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Power.

Speaker 1 This movie's pissing me the fuck off, you guys. Really?

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 After all that?

Speaker 1 Yeah. This movie's pissing me the fuck off.

Speaker 1 This movie has me, I'm acting like Will Smith. I'm struggling to have an emotion about this one.

Speaker 1 This is exactly the movie I thought it would be. It's exactly the movie I thought it would be.

Speaker 1 It's funny.

Speaker 1 I didn't know anything about it. I had no, I knew that it was sort of Will Smith, and I only recently remember that it was also Jaden Smith.

Speaker 1 And I knew that it was sort of post-apocalyptic. And that's all that I I knew.

Speaker 1 And I was kind of excited to see what was going to happen because we had a sort of a pre-apocalyptic movie just a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 1 But I'm excited to get into it because it was really strange. It was a very strange movie.
My name is Keith Carberry. You can find me online by searching Keith J.
Carberry. I changed my blue sky name.

Speaker 1 I'm just at Carberry.deals now.

Speaker 1 It was too long before. It was too long before.

Speaker 1 But you can still search Keith J. Carberry.
I show up.

Speaker 1 You can find the let's plays going to do at youtube.com slash run button. We're almost done playing Silent Hill F over on Run Button.
That's been really good, actually.

Speaker 1 So that's interesting. With me as always is because I don't like any of the other ones.
Sylvie Bullet.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Sylvia. You can find me most places.

Speaker 1 If you search Keith's name, you can search mine. Sylvie Bullet.
You'll find me, hopefully. I thought you were going to say that if you search my name,

Speaker 1 they'll find you too somehow.

Speaker 1 Probably eventually on the same podcast. It'd be pretty easy.

Speaker 1 You should also, speaking of, you should go to friendsetable.net and listen to Friends at the Table. It's an actual play podcast that we do that is very, very good.
Yeah. I'm excited to

Speaker 1 enjoy that this week.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Weekend, yeah.
Yeah, weekend, yeah.

Speaker 1 Aliakampora?

Speaker 2 Hi, my name is Aliakampura, and I'm just going to double plug. I strongly encourage that you listen to Friends at the Table.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 The actual podcast that we do.

Speaker 1 Powerful.

Speaker 2 Maybe you like these movies. Maybe you don't like these movies.
Maybe you listen to the show and you're like, well, how good would any of them be at writing a movie?

Speaker 2 There's like hours and hours and hours and hours of footage.

Speaker 1 I find that movie, to that end, I find this movie really inspirational. Anybody could make a movie.

Speaker 1 Really anybody could do it, I think.

Speaker 3 I mean, anyone can make a movie as long as you spent the previous 30 years making very successful movies.

Speaker 1 Well, you say that, but I also saw that what we do in the the Shadows movie eight years ago, and that was

Speaker 1 Taika YTD's first movie.

Speaker 1 And I also got the distinct, anybody could make this vibe from that movie. It was inspirational in a similar way.

Speaker 1 The Alan Moore Read Terrible Books quote.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I've heard that one.

Speaker 1 We've got Art Martinez Tebble.

Speaker 3 Yeah, hi. You should go to friendsetable.shop and pick up some merch.
There might be some for this show soon.

Speaker 3 We've sort of been talking about about it because I think what this movie shows is anyone can make a movie as long as they have $130 million,

Speaker 3 and you can help us take that step toward having $130 million

Speaker 3 or something.

Speaker 1 With much less money, they could have made a better movie here, I think.

Speaker 3 They could have made this movie for a lot less money.

Speaker 1 And, well, I'm very excited. We have Jaden Smith's personal friend and confidant, Austin Walker.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 That's true. Known to be in the crew of Jaden Smith.

Speaker 1 Someone recently asked me, I was at a wedding and they said the classic, like, I'm stuck talking to someone at the table. I don't know who you are.
Yeah. What's one fun fact about you?

Speaker 1 And I said, I once, without realizing it, cut off Jaden Smith and delivered a speech while standing next to him.

Speaker 1 Much like in this movie, he wasn't doing anything.

Speaker 3 So I mean, I would say that if this movie was the attempt to launch Jaden Smith, you docked Jaden Smith.

Speaker 1 You did. This is second, okay.
Hold on, we said the hold earlier and we needed it.

Speaker 1 Turn on the table.cash.

Speaker 1 I told you that was the opposite of launching was.

Speaker 3 I don't

Speaker 1 crashed. Uh, this is the end of the like Jaden Smith vehicle

Speaker 1 like movement because this is like after Karate Kid and right after

Speaker 1 much way after person, yeah, this is

Speaker 1 three years after Karate Kid. Yeah, yeah, he was a child in Karate Kid, right? Yeah, um, it is, however, is it before Neo Yokio? Oh, it is, yeah, because this is the one that made him stop acting.

Speaker 1 Now, this is interesting because is maybe the problem with Jaden Smith's acting career,

Speaker 1 talent aside, nepotism aside, is that they keep trying to cast him way too early for stuff. He's like a baby in the karate kid, and he should be much older.

Speaker 1 And then he's also like, what is he, like 14, 15 in this movie? And this is a movie about like an 18-year-old.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Uh, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they're just like, we got to get this kid out there. He's too good.

Speaker 1 He's too good to hide.

Speaker 1 I just want to say two things. One, again, friends of the table.cash.
That is the number one way you can support our work.

Speaker 1 That is where you can give us money to keep doing this. We don't

Speaker 1 want to make a movie.

Speaker 3 If you have $130 million, give us a movie. We will take it.

Speaker 1 We will make a movie. And the second thing I want to say is: so far, we've had this movie inspires you because it's so bad.
We've had we can make movies with 130 million dollars.

Speaker 1 I want to say, as someone who has, and we've had from Allie, if you want to hear us make store tell stories, you can go to the front of the table.

Speaker 1 I want to say, as someone who has tried to tell stories in the kind of science fiction fantasy space for a decade,

Speaker 1 I felt some sympathy because it's really hard to get a new franchise off the ground in 20 minutes.

Speaker 1 I think we've done it twice pretty well. I think the beginning of Partisan is really strong.
And I think the beginning of

Speaker 1 Marielda, I think like once we're in Marielda proper, it's really, it goes.

Speaker 1 Everything else, there is like some real we have to find our footing over the first 10 episodes. And so I was very sympathetic for the very stumbly first half hour of this movie.

Speaker 1 But there's one big difference, which is that like we go into it without a script and without $130 million.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not saying I wouldn't maybe do better than this, but I'm very sympathetic. I come from a place of,

Speaker 1 I would love to talk shop with M. Night Shyamalan.
Oh, yeah, of course. I think we actually have one other big difference, which is one of my big feelings about this movie.

Speaker 1 I never have Will Smith whispering in my ear that he's the money man and I need to cast his son in something.

Speaker 1 If Jaden Smith had to be in the next season of Friends at the Table so that we could all make millions and millions of dollars,

Speaker 1 I would be bad.

Speaker 1 We would all say yes because of being broke.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But then we would have to deal with Jaden Smith.
It'd be all right.

Speaker 2 Neo Yokio is fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't know, Allie, I'm starting to quit.
You just said this movie was fine, I think.

Speaker 1 What do you mean you just said this movie?

Speaker 2 You know, I think I'm coming from a little bit of what Austin's saying here, which is like

Speaker 3 genre-wise, it's fine.

Speaker 2 World building-wise, it's fine. It's kind of boring, it's an interesting setup.
The performances are not there for how much

Speaker 2 this movie is a guy

Speaker 1 in front of a geeky. I have here written, I'm glad, Ali, I'm just going to get this note out of the way.
Uh, uh, that I wrote down here. Sorry, this is, I'm quoting my notes.

Speaker 1 So, this is what I wrote: Movie constructed in such a way that Will Smith has nothing to do, he just gets to sit there.

Speaker 1 This movie is a real... Sorry, Ali, finish your thought.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just, I mean, basically, that is the thought that, like, the structure of the movie is fucking weird. And a lot of the, like,

Speaker 2 decisions around how the scenes work and how the situations are are really fucked up.

Speaker 2 But, like, I think the, like, the, like, oh, it's your first time on a planet and you're also like going through this like emotional like distance and the distance is still there and like you've only related to your family through like

Speaker 2 phone calls and then you can only talk to your son be it like it's i mean there are ingredients there i don't know that anyone cooked but i can't like i'll snack on some raw broccoli that's fine by me

Speaker 1 there's a carberry in the karate kid there's a There's an actor named Luke Carberry. Great rejoinder, Keith.
Sorry, I just don't want to.

Speaker 1 I was listening fully to everything Allie was saying, and then my eyes went to the word Carberry up on my screen, and I was like, what's going on? You're interpolating.

Speaker 1 I've never seen anybody called that before, but me.

Speaker 1 Carberry.deals. What about your parents?

Speaker 1 Oh, I forgot about them. Yeah.
Okay, so I guess it's no big deal. Yeah, yeah, man.
Sorry, Allie. It's no big deal.
I thought it was a

Speaker 1 cousin. You thought a cousin showed up.
I thought a cousin showed up. Shout out to Lou Carberry from the Karate Kid.

Speaker 1 To what Allie was saying, I'm not entirely sure that the world building of this holds up. I agree agree with the list of things that didn't hold up and that the like the theme,

Speaker 1 they manifested the theme of the distance between them well.

Speaker 1 But like

Speaker 1 this, this is this is a big,

Speaker 1 oh fuck, what's the stupid show where they ding you?

Speaker 1 Cinnamon.

Speaker 1 This is a big Cinnamon Sins ding video. Like, I'm just like, they have to, why do they have to have oxygen? We gotta break this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we gotta, we gotta, we got why do they have dang no oxygen juice it's full of plants here

Speaker 1 because the whole

Speaker 1 the baboons are they do explain this they do explain this what do they say

Speaker 1 sorry

Speaker 1 oh someone cinnamon says

Speaker 1 cinnamon says cinnamon says things yeah

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 i will wait till austin gets back because i do have a take on on

Speaker 1 this that i think that's worth saying

Speaker 1 funny though the dang doorbell was topic yeah that was like cosmic comedic timing. Wow, anything is possible in Montani's New York.

Speaker 1 Was that part of the part that

Speaker 1 will send people to finish jokes over Zoom? Yeah, yeah, no, it was a lesser known part of it.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Zora Mondani. I heard your joke needed finishing, so I rang your doorbell.

Speaker 1 All right, bye.

Speaker 1 I have more doorbells to ring. This

Speaker 1 cinema

Speaker 1 said,

Speaker 1 keep our name out your mouth. That's what they said, which is weird.
We're going to cease to exist. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What was the explanation for the. I mean, I knew that they talked about why they needed it, but I remember being on the ground.
The Earth has evolved to be toxic to humans.

Speaker 1 Without the humans there, again, this is a whole part of it. Why, with a thousand years of no humans, would things evolve to be a

Speaker 1 human? Well, now you're nitpicking. It's not nitpicking.
This is, this is, they got to write anything they wanted, and they choose to construct a world that doesn't make any sense from the ground up.

Speaker 1 Talk about

Speaker 1 Keith here.

Speaker 3 It is silly to be like, everything here evolved to kill humans, and we've been gone for a thousand years, and it's still evolved to kill humans.

Speaker 3 There's a nitpick.

Speaker 1 The nitpick is a thousand years isn't enough time for anything to evolve. That this is the actual

Speaker 1 design.

Speaker 1 But thankfully, there are evil aliens. Maybe you've heard of them.
I love them

Speaker 1 called the Skrell or whatever.

Speaker 1 And they really like the Ursas. There's the Skrell or something like that.

Speaker 1 Don't worry. I heard them call them Skrunts.
No, the Skrunts are.

Speaker 1 We will talk about Srunts. Interesting during this episode.

Speaker 1 I will talk about scrunts. Can I just give like my

Speaker 1 what I think about this movie really quickly?

Speaker 1 Totally. This feels like the adaptation of a young adult novel that doesn't super dust.
Yeah, 100%. I was thinking about this five minutes before we started.

Speaker 1 This is like coming right off the heels of the Hunger Games is a year prior to this. And right after this, you get Divergent, which is just another one of those.

Speaker 1 Like, this is, we're in the middle of the young adult, like, kind of movie boom of the 2010s. This is probably not an actual boom, but I was a teenager when this happened, so it felt like one.

Speaker 1 It is missing one really important thing from those movies. I mean, maybe two, depending on how you count them.

Speaker 1 Like really wrote romance. Really wrote romance.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It really is.
And partly, I think it's because he's too young.

Speaker 1 But if you remake this movie with two people survive and it's him and a girl he doesn't like but is secretly in love with and then they and then she hates him but

Speaker 1 falls in love with him

Speaker 1 and it's not jaden smith i think maybe i may think maybe they cook financially instead of i mean

Speaker 1 it didn't do did this movie bomb i couldn't i thought this movie did was like a critical bomb but like did at least its money back it did okay it did okay yeah yeah okay it made its money back yeah it made uh apparently 243 million if you believe that a movie has to hit double its budget to be profitable it was not profitable but like

Speaker 3 no one it people buy Like, no one's upset, and also it didn't turn into the franchise they wanted it to be.

Speaker 1 That's exactly it, right?

Speaker 1 Art is like when you when you're doing the sort of um accounting for a franchise or a would-be franchise, part of what you pay that much money for up front and invest in is you're doing like all the world building, all of the for instance, accent and dialect creation.

Speaker 1 You've got it.

Speaker 1 You're trying to launch something that doesn't need that work indefinitely because you've already drawn what Space Future Nova Prime or whatever is, yeah, and so you can just build on all those world-building

Speaker 1 assets going forward.

Speaker 1 And they did not get to do that.

Speaker 1 So it's like, yes, they spent $130 million to make 243, but they were hoping to spend 130 so that, you know, in two years, they could spend 100 or 200 to make a billion.

Speaker 1 They wanted to make a whole thing. There is definitely things in here that you feel like they would want to do

Speaker 1 like sequels on, such as the aliens we never see,

Speaker 1 the skrell. Yeah, they're mentioned in two scenes, I think.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They also, they've set up a whole military dictatorship that they never talk about.

Speaker 1 No. The Rangers.
Gesture at it. Yeah.
But I think I will say, like, this is the stuff where I have a lot of sympathy for. Because do you know what would have made this movie way fucking worse?

Speaker 1 Is another 20 minutes of what's happening on Nova Prime? What's up with the Rangers? That's not the movie.

Speaker 1 Frankly, rare thing for me to say about an M Night Shamalon movie. It should have been shorter.
They should have have gotten to Earth quicker.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I'm sorry, this is the length of an M-Night Shyamalan movie.

Speaker 1 It can't be shorter or longer. This is how long his movies are.
It's an immutable movie. It's a glorious constant.

Speaker 3 No, it's 100 minutes. His movies are 100 minutes.

Speaker 1 Great. His movies are all between like 90 minutes.
100 to 107 minutes. Yes.
107, I believe, is

Speaker 1 the special number.

Speaker 1 He should have gotten to the 90. If he should have gotten this to 90, I think it would have been better.

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 3 that'sn't have had every weird television star in this movie.

Speaker 1 What? Oh, I didn't notice anything about that. You didn't notice anybody.

Speaker 3 One of the guys in like, you know, there's the group of guys who are like teasing the weirdos, yeah.

Speaker 3 Katai. One of those is Roy from the office.

Speaker 3 Oh, so true.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 3 one of the people flying the ship is the lead guy from You're the Worst.

Speaker 1 I'm not familiar. Oh, You're the Worst is pretty good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the blonde guy is

Speaker 3 one of the pilots.

Speaker 2 I think Roy from the office is an easy cat. I'm sorry to say.

Speaker 1 He got so much. I don't think

Speaker 3 the hard get in this movie was Will Smith.

Speaker 1 I knew

Speaker 1 I knew. No, it wasn't.
No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't.
No one was. It's his movie.
Art.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The hard get was M. Night Shyamala.
Well, no,

Speaker 1 what I bet his movie was was about like a a guy coming back from Afghanistan and going like on a trip with his son and a plane crashed. Because you can remove all the sci-fi shit from this movie.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, you don't know the answer to this? Does no you know what this actually was? Well, I know that he wanted to add the sci-fi stuff after seeing that concept.

Speaker 1 But I know that it didn't originally start that way.

Speaker 3 The story I've heard is that Will Smith saw like a survival documentary that's so much you're already going than it actually.

Speaker 1 A documentary is overselling it. Did he watch Pan Grills? He watched the Discovery Channel/slash Animal Planet original television show, I Shouldn't Be Alive, six seasons, 58 episodes.

Speaker 1 He saw an episode with while he was watching it with his brother-in-law, Caleb, Khaleb Pinkett, who is also one of the producers on the film.

Speaker 1 And it was about a father and a son crashing a car and then needing to, the son has to go and like rescue his father. And then

Speaker 1 he goes, what if we do that but it's science fiction oh gary widda on the phone yeah i didn't know that i so my understanding of it was that the description of that episode you gave was the original concept for the movie

Speaker 1 i think i must not i think i'm misinformed here because you're and yeah the story's really good but i don't want it to be you know his production carrying time he gets gary witta yeah who heart writes a full script

Speaker 3 and then shy malan rewrites it and this is one of those things you can tell because of the way the credits are. Yeah.
Because it's Gary Witta and then the word and.

Speaker 3 And yeah, Ampersand is people wrote together and is a rewrite.

Speaker 3 And I think you can tell that Shyamalan did a pretty extensive rerun this because a lot of Shyamalan things are in this movie. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But you know that it must have been extensive rewriter because the WGA does not like directors taking writing credits for rewrites.

Speaker 3 You have to like really prove it because because otherwise directors would try to take writing credits on every movie.

Speaker 1 Right, because directors are always writing. Yeah, directing is kind of wrong.

Speaker 3 So to direct a movie is to sort of like smooth out the script a little bit.

Speaker 3 And so for him to have gotten that credit,

Speaker 3 he would have had to do some serious demonstratable work.

Speaker 1 Maybe he should have saved some time.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think I can pick out the shy Malan bits, and I think they're some of the best bits.

Speaker 3 And maybe I'm wrong i of course have not read the draft or but like there's there's stuff that really feels like him and i think it's some of the stronger shit in here um

Speaker 1 like the thing with the bird right which we'll which yeah we'll get to the great eatlon yeah um we we should we do a recap i have a recap written yeah yes we should

Speaker 1 um i do one other production thing to say but i think we can say it after and that's fine uh like most of these recaps i tried to be both like this is just the layout of everything that happened in chronological order for the audience who's not watching along, but I imagine a lot of this stuff is not going to be as in-depth as we want it to be, and we can jump around, or not jump around, but we can get into the stuff that we actually want to talk about.

Speaker 1 I omitted some like more emotional beats because I figured that would, not omitted, but like glaze over them.

Speaker 1 Because I figured we would have actual conversations about that.

Speaker 1 So, much like the M-Night classic Lady in the Water, After Earth starts with a lore drop that feels like the opening cutscene to a mid-budget PS3 game.

Speaker 1 So, after a brief flash of a spaceship crashing, our protagonist, Kitai Cipher, played by Jaden Smith, explains that a thousand years ago, the United Ranger Corps was founded during the evacuation of Earth and led humanity to the colony planet Nova Prime.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, an alien species called the Skrell followed them and unleashed a separate evil alien species called the Ursa that see humans by smelling their fear.

Speaker 1 You have to hold down the left trigger to suppress your emotions or else they'll be able to attack you. Try it now.

Speaker 1 The guy who invented this emotion suppressing system called ghosting, or emotion suppressing technique called ghosting, just so happens to be Katai's dad, Prime Commander Cypher Rage.

Speaker 1 Played by Will Smith. No one says it like that, but it feels like you should say it like that.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 also worth noting,

Speaker 1 I don't know where else to put it. Everyone has really weird accents in this.

Speaker 1 Opening cutscenes over, and Katai is doing the tutorial. I mean, training to be a Ranger like his dad.

Speaker 1 It's the day that Cypher gets home from deployment, and Katai is really hoping to be made a full-fledged Ranger. But unfortunately, he's too emotional and can't cut it.

Speaker 1 This makes the family dinner really tense. We get a brief glimpse into the Rage family's very awkward home life.

Speaker 1 Cypher is about to announce his retirement so he can get more time with his wife Faya, who does work with

Speaker 1 something.

Speaker 1 She's like a scientist. It's like implied she's a scientist, but she kind of works on the lights.
She works on the turbines. Okay, I must have missed the specifics of that.

Speaker 1 I just was like, cool After Effects.

Speaker 1 And Katai. We're told Katai is training to be a ranger in lieu of an actual relationship with his frequently absent father.
That's how he's reaching for him.

Speaker 1 So obviously, Cypher is like, okay, you're coming with me to train the Marines.

Speaker 1 On the way there, we get the first of our many flashbacks to Katai's sister Senshi and her death.

Speaker 1 While the most normal dude, sorry, I'm laughing at the name, not her dying, while the most normal dudes in the universe decide to make this 14-year-old try to do their special space marine emotion suppression trick.

Speaker 1 It does not go great. Then the ship crashes, and wouldn't you know it, the only survivors are the rages.

Speaker 1 This is where the sci-fi window dressing, to me, stops mattering, and it just kind of becomes a by the numbers wilderness survival story with the like

Speaker 1 occasion like to me we'll get into this it feels like they're just reminding you that that it's in the

Speaker 1 science fiction sometimes. What about when his mood ring suit changes color? Yeah, that feels like they're just reminding me it's science fiction again.

Speaker 1 Cypher is unable to walk, and there's no way for the two of them to send an SOS, so it's up to Katai to go find the other half of the plane-I mean, space-spaceship, not plane, spaceship, and call for help before the wilderness of Earth, which has evolved so everything on it is lethal to humans, kills them both.

Speaker 1 The rest of the movie is pretty is a balance between Katai traversing through the forest and freaking out whenever he sees anything while his dad tries to make him do cognitive behavioral therapy exercises over their like communication system.

Speaker 1 It's it there's also you know at one point their communication system gets knocked out and it's a more literal like barrier between them. But it is it is uh

Speaker 1 most of the characterization is uh

Speaker 1 I would say

Speaker 1 between

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 various levels that you have to go through in the aforementioned PS3 game in my mind,

Speaker 1 while the two of them sort of reconnect and deal with the grief of

Speaker 1 the shared grief over the death of Senshi.

Speaker 1 With all that out of the way, I'm going to list out the various trials of Katai Rage.

Speaker 1 They are as follows. Climbing up a slippery cliff face, making sure he takes his futuristic inhaler with lung coating in it once every 24 hours.

Speaker 1 hours, encountering a monkey immediately losing his shit and throwing a rock at its head, running away from the monkey and its squad because he threw a rock at its head, getting poisoned by a freaky little river leech that forces him to use his EpiPen when his body goes numb, having to skydive because he broke two of his little inhaler pods,

Speaker 1 failing the skydiving mini-game and getting attacked by an eagle and brought to its nest, trying to defend the giant eagle's chicks from some very scrunty saber-toothed tigers who are trying to eat them and also failing to do so.

Speaker 1 Being haunted by his dead sister slash guilt while he takes a little raft down a river, almost freezing to death on a mountain but being saved by that same giant eagle from earlier who freezes to death in his place, and engaging in a final boss fight with the Ursa where he learns to ghost and symbolically avenge his sister in a really underwhelming action sequence.

Speaker 1 After all this, he earns the ultimate good boy's delight, a salute from his father. The movie ends with the two embracing on the rescue ship and joking that he wants to work with his mom instead.

Speaker 1 700 gamer score total.

Speaker 1 Missed out on a couple of achievements by failing the skydiving game and the Saber Tooth encounters, but you can just use Chapter Select to get those if you really want a perfect score.

Speaker 1 I want to say, you know, I'm glad that we brought like Lady in the Water up that this is extremely video gamey right from the start.

Speaker 1 I wrote very early on that like the whole movie is constructed exactly like a video game down to having a bodiless guide to tutorialize you and guide you through the world.

Speaker 3 Well, they were definitely going to make a video game, right?

Speaker 1 Like 100%.

Speaker 1 There's apparently a number of

Speaker 1 books that did come out. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we talked about the main for iOS.

Speaker 1 Oh my god. Yeah.
I think it's long gone now. But

Speaker 1 the other thing is that I think that Sylvie, by recapping, you've actually done the movie a favor by

Speaker 1 implying that there is some sort of progress between

Speaker 1 the father and son duo in their relationships at a certain point. Yeah.
Yeah. And the movie is...
Will.

Speaker 1 Okay. Will Smith is so unbelievably unlikable in this movie.
I don't know why a guy who for so many years seemed to like

Speaker 1 have a really strong hold of his image is making a movie where he is just an absolute fucking asshole. Well,

Speaker 3 because he wants to get his kid over. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was literally about to say the exact same thing. I'm sorry.
He wants what?

Speaker 3 He wants to launch Jaden.

Speaker 1 But the movie doesn't do.

Speaker 3 He's working heel so his kid could be the babyface. I agree.

Speaker 1 But the, but he reconciles to, like, with the heel. He doesn't, like, the heel doesn't reconcile with the son.
Sometimes that's the son goes,

Speaker 1 I have to prove to my dad that he's right and that all the the stuff he thought was good is good and that

Speaker 1 I can do it on his terms.

Speaker 1 One of the big things that bugs me about this movie is at the end, Sylvie talked about when their communication gets cut off. There's almost like a

Speaker 1 link between the father and the son, where Will Smith is like begging Jaden to do the things that he's supposed to do right. I mean, then we see Jaden do it.

Speaker 1 And it's sort of like the movie kind of erasing the possibility that

Speaker 1 Katai will become like a man on his own terms and then will just sort of like be kind of an independent avatar of

Speaker 1 Cypher Rage's will.

Speaker 1 Names are so funny. Yeah, it's really funny.
Rage R-A-I-G-E for the listener. They sometimes pronounce it Rage, but also they also pronounce it Rage.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 Well, that's because the accent work in this movie is completely

Speaker 1 rage

Speaker 1 really weird and bad. Well, that's because Jaden already has an unplaceable voice in many ways, because I think of the

Speaker 1 shape of his life as the child of some very rich people who themselves have

Speaker 1 accents that are actually very placeable.

Speaker 1 And so I think he's like, you know, Will Smith is his dad, but he didn't grow up in Philly. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 His voice is already, you could go watch some behind the scenes stuff from him of this era, and you're like, it's a little LA, but it's not LA.

Speaker 1 You know, it's a little Will Smith's kid, but it's not Will Smith's kid.

Speaker 3 But he sounds like he's half doing English in this. He's doing.

Speaker 1 Well, that's intentional, right?

Speaker 1 There is, they made, they hired a dialect coach to invent an accent that

Speaker 1 gathers and combines different elements of earth, current Earth accents into something supposedly new, representing that over a thousand years there has been a sort of blend.

Speaker 1 I think it's it's on paper comparable to something like the Beltaloa of The Expanse, another science fiction series that is interested in the way language changes over time and space.

Speaker 1 They should have all taught

Speaker 1 Tom Hanks in Cloud Atlas.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's another, listen, I that stuff sucks, but is another

Speaker 1 good comparison in the sense of like there is a systematized

Speaker 1 swing at what might language sound like in a future or how do we communicate the idea that language has shifted. This really just comes across as...

Speaker 1 Someone who is slipping in and out of various accents because there are some Caribbean, there is some British, there are times when just Will Smith, Will black ass Will Smith is talking to you the way he talks to you or me.

Speaker 1 When I say times, I don't mean scenes. I mean words in a sentence where the rest of the sentence he is pulling on Caribbean or, you know, British English or South African or Australian.
It's a mess.

Speaker 1 And yet so,

Speaker 1 seeing how

Speaker 1 I was just going to say, it's so interesting at the beginning when there is a larger cast, seeing the way it like manifests in different people.

Speaker 1 The like instructor at the beginning, it's almost like a mid-Atlantic accent on him.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It was the one thing that I just kept.

Speaker 1 That is apparently supposedly there are supposed to be different versions of this accent i believe the word that i i heard was that if you were from a lower class it was more guttural whereas if you're from the upper class like will smith's character it is elegant no you don't have enough space in this movie for this i agree with the sequel

Speaker 1 it's for the books and the sequel right yeah really

Speaker 2 much like the world building of this movie their accents just bleed away by the time you get to the like the middle point of it and they're just talking to each other.

Speaker 2 Which like I, it, it, it's, it is what makes this movie compelling in the first 20 minutes because like

Speaker 2 this strange like

Speaker 2 monoculture familiar without being familiar that you're just like kind of like, huh? It can't be a second screen sometimes when

Speaker 2 the dialogue is being

Speaker 1 you know, performed that way in a way that I think kind of heightens what they're going for.

Speaker 2 It's just a shame that there were not like

Speaker 2 more of a cast in this movie, like other characters that talk to them sometimes, or like even just like an attempt to

Speaker 2 keep it going through the entire rundown.

Speaker 1 It's so weird that the, that the movie is just like, get,

Speaker 1 get Jaden Smith on his own in the woods. It's that's wild.
That's the, yeah. I mean, so this is the thing, the other thing I was going to say about production.

Speaker 1 I've spent the last six episodes of this, uh, this at this podcast, which I, which I adore. It's one of my favorite podcasts,

Speaker 1 listening to Art and Keith quietly and then more loudly have a debate about who does acting, who's in charge of acting, whose fault is it when acting is bad.

Speaker 1 Art, you have repeatedly made the case that it is the director's responsibility to make sure the acting isn't bad.

Speaker 1 And then Keith, you've made the case that it is an actor's job to take material that is sometimes serious and sometimes laughable uh and to nail both of those and sometimes they have to learn how to blend both of those even when the director isn't giving them good direction yeah um i have generally i'm generally on art side with this especially for non-principal actors for instance if someone's feeding themselves to a lion i think that that is on the that is the director's responsibility because the person who's who is cast to feed themselves to a lion is not is not someone who you can count on.

Speaker 1 Their acting ability is up to the director to, let me finish my thought, Keith. Yeah.
It's up to the director to

Speaker 1 step in in that situation and say, hey, that take wasn't good enough. That's not what I'm looking for.
Let's do a couple more. And then to pick the right one.

Speaker 1 And if you can't pick it, to edit around it in some way that prevents the bad thing from hitting the screen. However, this movie is just about as good of a wrench to throw into that model.

Speaker 1 And it's a wrench I love to throw because it's an economic wrench. It's a material financial wrench, which is sometimes the bad actor's dad is paying for the movie.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the bad actor's dad came to you and said, I have gotten Sony to sign off on this. I have a script.
We're making this movie. Your last movie.
You're going to be

Speaker 1 a balanced.

Speaker 1 Your last, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1 And I'm Will Smith. And actually, look, Karate Kid did pretty good.
Pursuit of Happiness, which Jaden Smith was also in as an age-appropriate kid. Yeah, did great.
So maybe this is it.

Speaker 1 Maybe this is the big swing. And I think at that point, the producer, and this isn't just it's a rich dad nepotism thing.

Speaker 1 I think the one thing that can really complicate things is over-eager producers, over-eager studio execs

Speaker 1 who get in the way. And so, you know, I think we are

Speaker 1 all the producers, basically. 100%.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if I'm M-Night in this situation and I'm getting these takes from Jaden Smith. I don't know what I do.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that they're obviously, here's the thing. I think there's an imaginary buck.
I think that you can say that the buck stops with the director, right?

Speaker 1 Like the actor's job is to do the material, do the best work they can with what they have, but then it's the director's job to say, no, do it again when it's not good.

Speaker 1 But you can't count on a director to be good in the same way that you can't count on an actor to act. And so it's sort of everybody's responsibility to be doing their job right.

Speaker 1 And my, I think the point that I always am trying to make with the acting is like, at some point, the actor's the one who did it.

Speaker 1 Well, here's the thing, Keith. This is why it has to be the director.
The actor doesn't decide which take goes in the movie. The actor might have done it and you didn't get to see it.

Speaker 1 The director decided they liked the other take better.

Speaker 1 That's why it's the director.

Speaker 1 Imagine if I made you redo scenes for Friends at the Table and then I didn't ask you which one to include in the final edit.

Speaker 1 yeah i i just i don't think that that takes away from that it's the actor's body doing the acting sure of course of course it's about responsibility not about uh uh you know presence or or cooperation my point being here that like i think this is a great example of where art's limited because the director does not have final authority in the same way that he might want or or the ability to do the feedback on what's happening in front of him maybe i'm wrong maybe maybe he was like a real hard director.

Speaker 1 Maybe he actually pushed Jaden to do this. Better.
Yeah. Maybe.
In which case, I'm glad because I wouldn't want to see this, but with worse acting.

Speaker 1 You don't want to be, you don't want to end up being Kubrick.

Speaker 3 You don't want to be Stanley Kubrick being like,

Speaker 3 we're going to do this. We're going to do every scene 40 times until everyone hates it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because I believe that, because, you know, Kubrick is on record as like sort of believing that you get the good performance when the actor is exhausted. And that's not not a good way to

Speaker 3 be someone's boss.

Speaker 3 It's about pretending. Acting is about pretending.

Speaker 1 I also think,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I don't know if Will Smith comes across as too soft on his kids with not high enough expectations for his son's career.

Speaker 3 Have you heard this Will Smith story that went around a week or two ago?

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 3 About Willow?

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 3 Okay, so as you might remember, Willow Smith had a hit song some time ago. Oh, yeah.
Maybe about when this movie was out.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 No, probably before.

Speaker 1 Willow Smith had a hit song. Whip Your Hair? Whip Your Hair.
Whip My Hair.

Speaker 3 Whip My Hair. And

Speaker 3 after doing this song, she was got a got a job opening for Jay-Z.

Speaker 3 And I need to figure out how old she is because it sort of affects this story. But she's young.

Speaker 1 She's born in 2000. Yeah, she's

Speaker 1 11.

Speaker 3 She would have been 11. Yeah.
Or maybe she's 12, right? But

Speaker 3 she's young. And

Speaker 3 Jada is the one who's traveling with Willow.

Speaker 3 Jada is Willow's mom. Jada is married to Will Smith, if you don't know this somehow.

Speaker 3 And they switch.

Speaker 3 The parents switch who's traveling. And Willow comes to Will and says, I don't want to do this anymore.

Speaker 3 And Willow says, and Will says, like, Will, you have an agreement with Mr. Jay-Z, or however they say it.

Speaker 1 That's what she says, Mr. Jay-Z.
I would say Mr. Carter.

Speaker 1 Mr. Carter, I think, face-to-face.

Speaker 3 Mr. Carter.

Speaker 3 And Willow responds, No, you have an agreement

Speaker 3 with Mr. Carter.

Speaker 1 I'm 11.

Speaker 1 Great point. Smart kid, sounds sounds like

Speaker 1 smart kids.

Speaker 3 And they, like, from what I understand from the story, like, they don't settle the disagreement.

Speaker 1 But the next morning, Willow cut off all her hair.

Speaker 3 And Will Smith's like, okay,

Speaker 3 I guess we're done. We're going to go home.

Speaker 3 And I think that's like a reasonable insight to what the parenting is like in the Pinkett Smith household.

Speaker 1 Wow. I found this.
Yeah. No, daddy, you promised Mr.
Jay-Z. And I was like, this is Will Smith telling the story.
And I was like, sweetie, I get it, but we promise as a family and you have to finish.

Speaker 1 She looked at me. I'll never forget the look in her eyes.
And she was like, it doesn't matter to you that I'm finished, daddy. Will Smith continues.
And I was like, well, yes, or do you matter?

Speaker 1 It matters, but you can't be finished. And she was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 And then she, then she, I quote, we got back to the hotel and Jada had just left. So I'm there.
It's my first night of daddy duty.

Speaker 1 And Willow came out the next morning and she had shaved her head bald. In the middle of her whip my hair tour, she had shaved her head bald.
And it was like a magical moment. i was like got it

Speaker 1 wow

Speaker 1 i mean i just think it's uh it's terrible to put your kids in that position yep in the first place

Speaker 1 and so this is why i'm like like you know uh

Speaker 1 if i i could see that this i could see that this movie could be playing out in real life the themes of this movie are right a kid under enormous pressure from an insane,

Speaker 1 completely emotionally detached father, who the world agrees is the best guy of all time.

Speaker 3 And who was very talented at a very young age.

Speaker 1 He was very talented at a very young age. And he's just not quite there.
On paper, it seems to work, but in practice, it's not working right. It almost feels deliberately identical to

Speaker 1 the actual father and son relationship that

Speaker 1 is off screen that you can imagine you could imagine that it is deliberately identical to that

Speaker 1 and uh

Speaker 1 i could even imagine will smith going like well if he can't pull it out if he can't pull something real out of actually doing our real relationship on screen then maybe he's just not an actor

Speaker 1 right that's a pretty high stink situation it's kind of funny because I think in the time since this movie came out, Will Smith has been in the public eye almost explicitly for big emotional moments.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The slap, obviously, but even

Speaker 1 the red table conversation stuff with

Speaker 1 Jada around

Speaker 1 their relationship and all of that, him crying. You know, there's a real,

Speaker 1 you know, emotion, it turns out maybe not a choice in the way that

Speaker 1 it is framed as in the big, the big monologue here. And you can feel very, very strongly that it is a choice until all of a sudden

Speaker 1 you're in the news again and again for your life kind of being a disaster.

Speaker 2 It occurs to me, though, that, like, I mean, Will Smith also built his career off of like

Speaker 2 the emotional son who wants to do things his own way and the militant dad.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, shout outs to

Speaker 1 cycles. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, except that that's the difference, though, Allie, right? Which I'm guessing you're teeing up,

Speaker 1 is that's a show that often does allow, not always, but often allows Will.

Speaker 1 We're talking about the Fresh Prince of Belair, Belair, Will to be his own person in the end and to find ways, like sometimes Uncle Phil is right, sometimes Uncle Phil is wrong, but often they're both right and wrong.

Speaker 1 And they find some synthesis in the final act of the episode where they realize they're actually allied against a third party, or they were both overreacting, or they both hit the meet somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1 And this is not really a meet somewhere in the middle movie. It is a, can Katai become the man he wants to be, which is his father,

Speaker 1 which is becoming the man that his father wants him to be.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's so unclear what his father wants outside of that.

Speaker 2 I think it's kind of tough to make it that that black and white through their relationship.

Speaker 2 Because, like, I mean, obviously, the stress of wanting to be his dad is there, but it's not even just wanting to be his dad.

Speaker 2 It's wanting to be better than his dad and better than the person that he was in his worst moment when his sister died and he could not get over the fear of that.

Speaker 2 And the literal fear that he has is like the end of humanity. And like, it's going to keep him from being able to perform as he wants to.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 I read those moments as as anger at like, I'm trying to be you. Everyone's telling me that I'm not good enough.
And so I'm going to like find the ways that actually you're not good enough.

Speaker 1 And that like, that's kind of this reaction to being told that you're failing.

Speaker 2 Like, there's something like, you know, you can't deny that this is sort of like a coming of age film for Katai. And we start with him being like the kid who is so ambitious,

Speaker 2 ambitious and so stubborn that he is

Speaker 2 running in front of his

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 2 commander, like

Speaker 2 training trooper, essentially, because he wants to put himself out there. He wants to beat his dad's best time.

Speaker 2 He is like overexerting himself for this level of perfection that he is only putting on himself.

Speaker 1 Are you saying

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 he's inherited at all?

Speaker 2 The fact that it is the shadow of his father is not something that you can get away from but i think like you know the the like

Speaker 2 katai you know a failure or some of the the question of like

Speaker 2 and the big you know mountain peak moment where he's like i'm not a coward you're a coward i'm gonna go do this thing anyway even though you're telling me to come home is katai like

Speaker 2 rebelling against his father and against his own emotions in that way.

Speaker 2 And the way that he is like able to complete that mission, despite his father's doubt in him initially is him becoming his own man. I don't think that like his father being like,

Speaker 2 you were having a tantrum in this moment and I wish that you did the thing that the military and I told you to and like just take a breather is so much like, oh.

Speaker 2 he is only able to create himself in this image of his father and not just like, no, you are a child who needs emotional regulation. And like,

Speaker 2 whether or not the aliens can sense your emotional regulation is a fact about becoming adults, you know?

Speaker 3 That's yeah, it's weird to have it embodied in that way because you're right, it does make him correct, he has to, he has to have to do something because otherwise he'll be eaten by this weird space bear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's the thing is, the actual it is, it is a movie on one level about a kid who wants approval from his father, but really neither they're that's a sublimated uh uh second thing, right?

Speaker 1 What they are both sublimating is their guilt about Senshi dying.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 Katai is there, and he's like, Why couldn't I save her? Maybe if I was more like my dad, I could have saved her.

Speaker 1 And I was weak and pathetic, and I and she died because I stayed inside in the fucking bubble. And his father is rage, sorry, Cypher, Cypher,

Speaker 1 Cypher, right?

Speaker 1 Mr. Rage, too.
Mr. Rage, Mr.
Rage,

Speaker 1 wow.

Speaker 1 Is away and he's absent the whole time. So he wasn't there to save her.

Speaker 1 And so he has created distance from his son and from his family so that he doesn't have to confront the fact that he is actually, that, you know, if he had been there, he could have saved her. Right.

Speaker 1 And so both of them have like, have like offloaded those guilts onto this terrible relationship.

Speaker 1 You know, he wants his son to be like him because that's what life looks like, successful life and protecting your family and all of that.

Speaker 1 But what he really wants is, or what he really needs, is to get over the emotional distance he's placed between him and his family. This is why the big moment at the end is a hug between two of them.

Speaker 1 And it's a hug that Katai has to initiate, but then he's willing to like hug back instead of this sort of like,

Speaker 1 you know, crisp military salute from the after being held up by somebody else.

Speaker 1 So I think, like, Ali, I think that you're right that it doesn't boil down completely into that.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 1 what it never does is say,

Speaker 1 and they either of them could move in the world to a different sort of modality or a different posture.

Speaker 1 The way to survive in the world is to be someone who can close off fear and emotion when the monsters who eat fear and eat you when they smell your fear and emotion show up.

Speaker 1 And I think that, like Art was just saying, that does limit how far you can push the metaphor, but they do both come to terms with their grief, which is, I guess, the actual A plot, emotionally.

Speaker 1 Well, it isn't.

Speaker 2 It isn't because

Speaker 3 they drip feed it to you so

Speaker 3 slowly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 it's like bad screenwriting to have the most important thing in the movie not become super clear until like midway through the second act.

Speaker 1 60 minutes in or something. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's the opposite of it. It really kills the momentum of

Speaker 3 a play when everyone takes a bow.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's what this movie is about. You say 70 minutes in.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, like, they allude to it and like you know like there's something there but the

Speaker 3 at that point you've seen these two like be shitty to each other and i guess i think these two being shitty it's mostly one way yeah it's mostly will smith being shitty

Speaker 3 Right. You mostly see an adult being shitty to a 14-year-old.
Yeah, that's and then at some point you're like, well, maybe he's got a point. Maybe that nine-year-old should have fought that monster.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's so, that's the, that's the part of this that like is so frustrating and depressing and irritating to me me is that you know after the the tryouts where he fails to be uh military police or whatever the fuck the rangers are uh you know no they're they're like hunters

Speaker 1 they're the government they're they're like everything yeah and the um

Speaker 1 the dinner that they have like it's very clear that their home life is

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 What the katai is a is a cadet. He is my subordinate, and that is how he treats him at home.
He's like, he has to ask for permission and call him sir.

Speaker 1 And like, you know, he can't be excused from the table because he didn't ask right. You know, this is an insane man.

Speaker 1 And the source of this rage is that he's taken his own guilt about not saving the kid. And like Art, you just said, he's put it on the son.
The son should have saved the daughter.

Speaker 1 The daughter was an adult. She was already a ranger.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 Katai was a kid. He was hiding in a glass bubble.
And they have this climactic scene of, like, what did you want me to do? And Will Smith says, like, it's not what I wanted you to do.

Speaker 1 What do you want to have done?

Speaker 1 And that is a wormy, mealy mouth way of saying, yes, I did want you to go and try to kill the thing. I wanted you to disobey your sister's orders

Speaker 1 to help and try to save her and then eventually and inevitably die in the process. And the reason that that's such an important scene is that that is what leads to him jumping off the cliff.

Speaker 1 So, even when he's quote-unquote disobeying his father to go rogue on the mission to try to save the father, he's actually exactly following his father's orders, which is in order to save the day, you should disobey, have disobeyed your order to risk your own life.

Speaker 1 And so, even by jumping off the cliff in rebellion of his father, he's actually exactly fulfilled the thing that he was supposed to do, which is be a self-sacrificing hero in order to save the day as a kid.

Speaker 1 I don't think that that scene is as clear as you think it is. I think it's

Speaker 1 crystal clear.

Speaker 1 I'm also with you, Allie.

Speaker 2 I, I, you know, not to say that you have to hand it to Cypher Rage or whatever here, but like

Speaker 2 when you say that he is an insane person, I think that when you say that they have a home life, it is important to say that they don't have a home life they have literally not seen each other for years yeah he has only been in a military environment and does not know how to

Speaker 2 you know speak or live or you know be emotional with these people be intimate like and even in the like hey how was your day today like the the the the energy that his son brings in is like i was a failure i didn't do this test like i'm disappointed with myself like there's no there's not an opportunity in that scene for them to not talk about the military.

Speaker 2 There isn't.

Speaker 2 And, like, how, you know, I'm not saying that rage makes a, or Cypher makes a good decision there and that, like, you're not supposed to look at that scene and be like, what the fuck is wrong with this dude?

Speaker 2 But, like, there is an emotional weight there that you can't, like, you, you know, this, the wounds are on both of them. Like, you know,

Speaker 1 Will Smith is an adult and is a general of the government.

Speaker 2 I know. I mean, I know, but like,

Speaker 2 it's been years. They don't have a home life.

Speaker 1 They don't have have a rapport.

Speaker 2 They don't have any other way to talk to each other.

Speaker 1 I totally agree that being in the military, being away from your family, you know, that that does something to you.

Speaker 1 But I don't, I don't think that there, I don't think there's a reading where you're like, oh, well, it's,

Speaker 1 you know, I get why Will Smith is like this because he's had it so hard, not being near his family. It's not sure.
Sorry, it's not, it's not he's had it so hard.

Speaker 1 It's he, he has not ever been away that isn't military directed. Like he doesn't, he, he was never socialized the way families are supposed to have been socialized, apparently.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, you know, it's a transitional thing.

Speaker 2 It's like, you know, there, he doesn't have any other way of speaking to people. This is the way that he speaks to people for years.

Speaker 2 He has been put on a pedestal in the society and like is the general guy.

Speaker 1 I agree. I just don't see how that that changes what I said, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Well, but well, because the flip side of that is also him saying, like, it it does not matter what I thought of you in that situation is A, because Will Smith

Speaker 2 blames himself for that situation.

Speaker 1 That's part of, you know, the whole theme of the movie.

Speaker 2 But also, like, again, when fear is legitimized and like emotional processing is something that you need to, like, develop like.

Speaker 2 Okay. Environmentally to, you know, to survive in the universe.
The thing of like the way that you feel about that situation is something that you have to grapple with yourself.

Speaker 2 And like, I think that he's being a father figure in that moment by saying that. That's not like, oh, but I'm secretly saying that I don't like you.
It's you were in that situation.

Speaker 2 You have to decide what that means for you and what that means for your future and the decisions that you make in the future because you're the one who is in danger. I can't help you.

Speaker 1 I think, okay, I want to draw a thread here. At the very beginning of the movie, the wife,

Speaker 1 whose name I forget, because I think they they only say it twice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 She introduces the idea that Katai thinks that the father blames him, that Cypher blames him for

Speaker 1 Sensi's death. And then they have this explosive moment

Speaker 1 at the waterfall. And

Speaker 1 Katai says,

Speaker 1 I know that you blame me.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the way that I read that scene is that he goes, Yeah, I kind of do. I kind of do blame you.
Yeah, I don't that I don't read it that way. We can play this.
I have the clip. We can play the clip.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I hope I have the whole clip. I don't remember what exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, uh-huh. I just re-watched it.
I to make sure I felt the same way about it that I do.

Speaker 4 You wouldn't give any other Ranger that order.

Speaker 1 You are not a Ranger.

Speaker 5 And I'm giving you that order.

Speaker 4 What was I supposed to do?

Speaker 4 What did you want me to do?

Speaker 1 She gave me an order.

Speaker 4 She said, no matter what, don't come out of that box.

Speaker 4 Was I supposed to just come out and die?

Speaker 5 What do you think, Cadet?

Speaker 5 What do you think you should have done? Because really that is all that matters. What do you think you should have done?

Speaker 4 And why were you?

Speaker 4 She called out for you. She called your name.
And you weren't there because you never did.

Speaker 4 And you think I'm a coward?

Speaker 1 You're wrong.

Speaker 4 I'm not a coward.

Speaker 4 You're the coward.

Speaker 1 I'm not a coward.

Speaker 1 Like he

Speaker 1 is saying what Will Smith is thinking about himself.

Speaker 1 What was I supposed to do?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 can I quickly say that I think that this scene would have been really good if one of the people in it wasn't just shouting in an inscrutable accent?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 3 with just any finesse in this scene, it would have like this. This is, I think, a Shyamalan scene.
And, of course, I don't know and could never prove it.

Speaker 3 And I think that this scene would have worked if it wasn't just being yelled.

Speaker 1 It's also, I think it's also

Speaker 1 Jaden's best acting in the movie, which is not saying,

Speaker 1 well, he does the tallest molehill I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 I mean, what are we saying here?

Speaker 1 I'm saying to agree with you. This is the best he does.
We started, it doesn't get better than this for him.

Speaker 2 He didn't think he was good when he was like, oh, my face is so swollen.

Speaker 1 I'm scared. Come and help me

Speaker 1 so i i like

Speaker 1 when just doesn't when your son says

Speaker 1 i know you blame me for her death i know you think i'm a coward and he just doesn't say anything like what else is that supposed to do like he does say

Speaker 1 he says what do you think cadet yeah what do you think you should have done which again yeah then that's where the whole coward thing and he just says nothing he literally said nothing you think i'm a coward i'm not a coward

Speaker 1 in the moment he is he's like, you're right. I was a coward.
I'm a coward for not being there for my family. That's what that's.

Speaker 1 Because there's such a huge beat in between you think I'm a coward and you're the coward. There's plenty of space for a father to say, I don't think you're a coward.

Speaker 1 I don't think that you should have gone and thrown your life away to save your sister. Yeah, he's cypher rage is a terrible parent.
Yes,

Speaker 1 you're reading that as the film saying

Speaker 1 that that's true, that he should have gotten out of the bubble and saved his sister. I think that Will Smith, Smith, the Cypher Rage, blames himself for not being there.

Speaker 1 And in order to not live that truth, instead lives in the blame of his son instead. That's what I'm saying.
I think he lives in the absence of familial affection and feeling.

Speaker 1 I don't know that he's saying you should have gotten that. Because if that's what it was, this is a movie where he would have said, yes, I do.
That's what a Ranger would have done.

Speaker 1 This is why you aren't a Ranger yet. You know?

Speaker 1 And he doesn't, but he can't even say that.

Speaker 3 But he's listening to this podcast and you work for Overbrook Entertainment and would like to sell us the rights to this franchise for basically no money, we'll buy him.

Speaker 1 I think that, you know, that's what's so strange and illegible about this movie to me is that it's about Will Smith.

Speaker 1 about Cypher Rage detaching himself from the emotion that would make him capable of responding in kind to to his son to defend himself or to attack the son or to correct the son, to correct the record, to do anything.

Speaker 1 And instead, he sits there in silence. He can't do it or won't do it.
And then the movie's position on that is, well, that's what lets

Speaker 1 Cypher Rage be the best. Rage.
That's what lets Cypher Rage.

Speaker 3 That's tricky, right? Because the movie is, I think, pretty explicitly saying that his disconnection from his emotions makes Cypher Rage a terrible parent.

Speaker 3 And then later it says, well, but you have to be able to disconnect yourself from your emotions to beat the Space Bears.

Speaker 1 And so it's good to do that. Well, that's the problem is the scene we're talking about is 50 minutes into the movie.
And the question for me isn't, okay.

Speaker 1 You know, like the final judgment of the film is what happens 90 minutes into the movie, which is when he's doing the brain connection with his son, not literal, but he's like, all right, now do this.

Speaker 1 And he's doing it. And he's worried about his son and he's dying.
That's the moment where the movie is saying what it believes.

Speaker 1 And what seems like what it believes is that the future belongs to Jaden Smith. Katai Rage is going to be the Luke Skywalker of our era.
And unfortunately, that's not true.

Speaker 1 And because it's so invested in making him have a very boring fight with a space bear, instead of Will Smith's character, who is not the protagonist of the film, having an emotional breakthrough, we just kind of have to hand wave that they, you know, reconcile through Katai's success.

Speaker 1 But it doesn't come back to, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like this, this scene that we're talking about is the moment in the film, 49 minutes in, where their relationship is supposed to be at its most heightened and contradictory, where they are supposed to be at each other's threats.

Speaker 1 And where he is, the reason that he doesn't say anything in those gaps is because he hasn't transformed yet into a father who can say,

Speaker 1 Of course, I don't blame you. I love you.
That's the journey he's supposed to be. And that's, well, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 You know, art says that they set him up as a terrible father, and they get, we have this climactic moment, but the, but the story doesn't resolve that part of the story.

Speaker 1 It, in fact affirms Cypher Rage's whole position. Well, but then Cypher

Speaker 3 have their moment after,

Speaker 3 and because we're at 100 minutes, and Madmite Shyamalan has to end the movie,

Speaker 1 but their moment isn't.

Speaker 1 It's just like, son, you were enough as you are. You always would have been enough.

Speaker 1 It was like, no, you had to prove you could beat the monster first after going through like an almost metaphysical killing of yourself,

Speaker 1 sublimating yourself psychically to my will as commander.

Speaker 3 Well, but unfortunately, you do have to kill the monster in this movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 the monster is a metaphor, but you do have to

Speaker 1 actually kill.

Speaker 3 Well, here's a because the movie was Cypher Rage says to Katai, you know what? It's okay that you are the way you are. You're my son and I love you.
And then the space bear just fucking ate him.

Speaker 1 It's actually not a better movie.

Speaker 1 He kind of like felt so big that that the bear was overwhelmed by his feelings, right? That's like a classic way that you could you take the premise, which is, oh, you have to hide your emotions.

Speaker 1 And instead, you have the special boy who Jackson. He's an anti-ghost.
He's a whatever the opposite of a ghost is.

Speaker 1 A living person.

Speaker 1 A living person, right? And then that overwhelms the goat, the Ursa. So you could have done that.
Instead, the only resolution we get is him saying, I want to work with mom, and Cypher saying, me too.

Speaker 1 And having the weirdest laugh in the world.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's a weird laugh. What a bad laugh.
I like the weird laugh. I think the weird laugh is good, actually.
I was thinking dub for Cypher, though. He does not have to go be a ranger.

Speaker 1 He can go be aware of the music. Act one already wanted to do that.
He was like, I'm going to retire and work with you. So no growth there.
He should have cut off all his hair.

Speaker 1 I think that the angle of the, like, he's the special boy who can do this at will and is also still very emotional would have been the main thing in a sequel to this.

Speaker 1 You're totally right. What I was feeling in the first,

Speaker 1 in act two is I wanted

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 1 Will to for, I can't even say the word Cypher. I wanted for Cypher

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 unknowingly be producing the fear pheromone. He's not even aware that he's afraid for his son.

Speaker 1 And while he's watching for the Ursa around his son, it's actually locked onto him. And then he realizes that he cares for his own son, right? I care for my own son.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought that's, I fully did think that that's where it was going, Keith. That would have been a much better choice, I think.
Um, but that didn't happen. Um,

Speaker 3 I guess it, but it is true that you have to like look at this as this was going to be a thing, this is going to be a trilogy, yeah. And so perhaps that we just didn't see the end of these.

Speaker 1 I feel like I don't have to look at this as shit. I have to, I think I can look at this exactly as what is on the screen.
Look, I'll

Speaker 1 reconfirm this is not shit, And that's enough.

Speaker 3 I had to watch it a second time because the Dodgers played an 18-inning baseball game the night I decided to watch this.

Speaker 1 What did you talk about?

Speaker 3 I took a big break in the middle and then was like, you know, maybe I didn't do this movie enough credit by stopping for 40 minutes in the middle.

Speaker 1 And it turns out

Speaker 3 it turns out that this movie does have a slightly better pace if you don't stop watching it for 40 minutes and watch a baseball game and come back.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a huge improvement off of The Last Airbender in a lot of ways. That's the other thing.

Speaker 1 The context of me watching this was right after Last Airbender, which is one of the worst films I'd ever watched.

Speaker 1 And so, like, genuinely, I was shocked by how competent some of the adventure and action sequences were here. Not the big final fight, but things like the skydiving.
I really like the skydiving.

Speaker 1 It's going to be compelling. Yeah, totally.
I really like the skydiving.

Speaker 1 I thought, so it made me think a lot about, because we watched The Happening, then we watched The Last Airbender, and then we watched the Airbus.

Speaker 1 You said on here that people can go listen to us talk about the Last Airbender on Patreon, right? Yes, that

Speaker 1 has been up for a week and a half as of recording.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I actually put up at the beginning of the happening, I gave a note saying that people could go to friends of the table.cash to listen to our watch along of The Last Airbender.

Speaker 1 But like,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I found the happening for me was an easier watch because it was pretty boring. It was not, didn't make me angry.
It was just stupid and boring and kind of stupid.

Speaker 1 The last airbender, it's hard because we were watching it together and that was kind of fun and laughing at it.

Speaker 1 But again, it was just a deeply boring, pretty nonsensical movie, totally bizarrely constructed, almost broken, completely broken as a film.

Speaker 1 Nothing made sense. Everything was weird.

Speaker 1 But it didn't make me angry. It was too stupid to be angry at, I think.
I would watch this movie again before I watched The Last Airbender, even with you, my good friends.

Speaker 1 That was so fucking boring and bad. It was so it was really boring.

Speaker 1 Rewatch, the idea of a re-watch throws me for a loop, but because I wouldn't, I really, I'm like, I wouldn't re-watch any of these.

Speaker 1 This movie made me really angry. The father-son stuff, I just, it just made me so irritated.

Speaker 1 From beginning to end, it only got worse. Nothing makes me angrier than a poorly done father-son story.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I mean, we all know about

Speaker 3 the website names you've bought in this area.

Speaker 1 You can go to fuckdads.com.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that still up? It's not up anymore, Keith. That's got to be up, yeah.

Speaker 1 The site cannot be reached. What?

Speaker 1 You got to get on that. Talk to you.
I thought I just paid for it like two months ago. Maybe something like weird happened with the

Speaker 1 renewal.

Speaker 1 All right, well, I'll dunk into that. That was up until last month.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 2 I want to issue a correction that supports my

Speaker 2 argument, but basically doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 2 the mom never says

Speaker 2 he thinks that you blame him for this.

Speaker 1 No, he does say that she does. Doesn't she?

Speaker 2 Does she? No, she says she blames himself and he needs a father.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, isn't that what you you said? That he said? So I guess I said that he thinks that you blame him. Oh, I see.
But it was just that he blames himself. Yeah, he blames himself.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 That is still an introduction to that plot point.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it isn't exactly what I thought it was.

Speaker 1 Can I

Speaker 3 jump off from here to something that's a bit of a tangent?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Or do we get more?

Speaker 1 I mean, okay.

Speaker 1 Well, I just, because all of every M.

Speaker 3 Night Shyamalan film, with the exception of The Last Airbender, I suppose, is sort of about

Speaker 3 not about motherhood, but motherhood is like a recurring theme.

Speaker 3 And then this script, the mother character as written is too thin and doesn't have enough time. And so they, so Shyamalan has to like get his mother stuff in with the bird.

Speaker 3 The bird as the surrogate mother for

Speaker 3 Katai.

Speaker 3 It gets the shamalan. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure that's a great

Speaker 1 beatlon, actually. What's that? I'm pretty sure that was the great beatlon, actually.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe the motherfucker.

Speaker 3 And that's a scene that I think works. I think the scene in the

Speaker 3 scene in the nest is sort of silly, but then

Speaker 3 with her.

Speaker 3 She clearly mistakes him for her baby.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 While he's skydiving. Takes him to the nest.
The rest of her babies are killed by the snarfs.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 1 scrunts. Scrunt and narf.

Speaker 3 Scrunt and narf. Sorry.

Speaker 3 Her babies are killed by

Speaker 3 the scrunts. Yeah.
And then

Speaker 3 her last baby

Speaker 3 she saves at the cost of her own life.

Speaker 1 Sorry, just be clear. They're not actually scrunts.
I'm not misremembering anything. No, they're not actually.

Speaker 1 They're just tigers. There's a movie.
There's like these weird tigers. And then a few scenes earlier on the Ursa Monitor drones, there's a hyena that looks even more like the Scrunt.

Speaker 1 Okay, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a different cinematic universe emerging that we didn't know of.

Speaker 3 Just my theory, and of course, these are digital, and the Scrunts were practical. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Famously. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But yeah, that's, that's, that's, I think,

Speaker 3 that's, I think, a chamalon touch, and I think it's, it's, it works. It worked on me

Speaker 3 It's a very

Speaker 3 It's a very sweet scene, and I'm glad that it got in there It felt a little magical out of nowhere

Speaker 3 Yes, I think magical out of nowhere is the

Speaker 3 is the the thing yeah, it is it yeah, that is how Shamalon wants to talk about motherhood at this point the earlier

Speaker 3 he wanted to have a little more nuanced discussion of it, but now he does not

Speaker 3 Like the scene the scene at the end of the sixth sense with the two of them in the car. That's like his best work on this area.
And he's just like getting worse at it as time goes on.

Speaker 3 This is a tease for next week, next two weeks, next episode.

Speaker 1 This post.

Speaker 1 Silly, what are you going to say?

Speaker 1 I just didn't read that scene as I got. So that scene faked me out, I guess.
And this is sort of the...

Speaker 1 issue with the pop cultural image of Eminite Shyamalan is because the way that they film him getting rescued by the bird makes it feel like he's getting like rescued by like a like I thought there was going to be a reveal that humanity had come back to Earth, but they were like cavemen.

Speaker 1 I also

Speaker 1 thought that. Yeah, so I was like fully waiting for the other shoe to drop and then it was a dead bird and I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 So I'd like never that just stuff never crossed my mind that that was him doing the bird. It was the bird that dragged him.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 The motherhood stuff just never crossed crossed my mind. The part that faked me out was, Art, I really like that you read on it.

Speaker 1 What I was feeling when I saw it was that the bird was kind of thanking him for trying to save the babies. The babies.
Yes. Yes.
I also thought that for a moment.

Speaker 3 That, yeah,

Speaker 3 it's combined with

Speaker 3 the interception makes me think that that's how I got to where I got to, but you could be right.

Speaker 1 I think that your take on it is extremely legible that makes a ton of sense to me yeah because he's flying in the flying suit at first i was like are you talking nonsense but he is flying he is

Speaker 1 it's a cool suit it's uh again a very video gamey thing yeah we love this movie

Speaker 1 game when when was when did far cry 3 come out and everyone was that was out the year before gary widow wrote this wrote this gary widow the game writer you know yeah so i think maybe there's a time to make a movie right how it does i don't know when product when this went into production.

Speaker 1 While you're looking that up, I want to read three guesses as to what the plot twist of this movie was going to be from before it came out.

Speaker 1 It's from an online Star Trek form. The options were to vote.
The whole thing is a VR combat training simulator. Okay, Ender's game.
Got it. Swear.

Speaker 1 Cypher died in the crash, and it's actually Katai hallucinating him.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 That's much better than the first one. It's actually Earth of the distant past, and Katai is Adam.

Speaker 1 That's the worst thing I've ever heard. Hilarious.

Speaker 1 This is obviously, just to be very clear, these are not theories of, these are not, I watched the movie and I believe this. These are pre-release fans going, what could it be?

Speaker 1 You know, I want to say that that's the worst thing I've ever heard, the Adam one, but... That was in Assassin's Creed almost completely 100% unchanged.

Speaker 1 And I loved that in Assassin's Creed.

Speaker 1 This movie is kind of Assassin's Creed-y. Also, really funny that you mentioned that first theory is so Ender's game because guess what came out the exact same year as this? Oh, the Ender's Game.

Speaker 1 Ender's game adaptation. Yeah, I never saw that.
Again, this is so within the sci-fi ecosystem of the time. And is this Oblivion the same year the Tom Cruise

Speaker 1 post-apocalyptic sci-fi astronaut comes back to yeah in 2017 aliens don't scavenge attack earth and destroy the moon triggering global natural disasters 60 years later humanity returns via Tom Cruise.

Speaker 1 So it's like the same movie.

Speaker 1 Wait, sorry, what is that one called? Oblivion. Oblivion? I've never even heard of that.

Speaker 1 Here's something I like about this movie. That one doesn't have a Scientology section on the page for some reason.
I don't know. Weird.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to have to get into that because I have no idea what that's about.

Speaker 1 I found that there was a cheapness to the props and the sets in this movie, despite its $130-something $130-something million-dollar budget, that were, it was very charming.

Speaker 1 I liked that there's a C-PAC machine rebreather on the ship. I also saw that.

Speaker 1 I liked that the syringes looked like plastic little toys.

Speaker 1 I liked that the destroyed ship was full of stuff that looks like it was from Bed Bath and Beyond and Joanne's Fabric.

Speaker 1 And then also the way to show that it was destroyed was they covered it in toilet paper or something.

Speaker 1 All of this stuff, I was like, wow, if this movie was good, I would really like the cheesy

Speaker 1 set design here.

Speaker 1 What did y'all think generally of its vision of sci-fi future, which is like beige and willowy? And the tissue paper is actually another

Speaker 1 good word. Like, there's a lot of like fabric or

Speaker 1 soft materials,

Speaker 1 and also lots of stuff that's kind of like organic in shape, like bone-like or skin. There's a light thing going from the happening with some of the ships.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of like

Speaker 1 it, there's like hex honeycomb patterns all over the ship on the interior. And

Speaker 1 I do actually like the sort of weird organic feeling of the ship, especially after the crash when like the

Speaker 1 sort of membranous doors open and fly away and stuff like that. Like there's a few fun effects in here.

Speaker 1 And then sometimes it is nothing.

Speaker 1 I think all the the stuff on Nova Prime does not look good.

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 the hanger scene in particular looks really like when the guy's like, I need to help me up. I need to salute.
Cypher Rage.

Speaker 1 A name I love saying.

Speaker 1 Like that stuff looks really bad. He's a character.
He's a Mortal Combat character. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Katai Rage is the character that they introduce in Mortal Kombat 10 when they have the new generation come in. That's right.
I hate that. Katai Rage is the son, yeah.

Speaker 1 The happening, when we watched The Happening, it never came up that this was a movie that had like nothing beyond surface-level eco-fascism to say about the environment, which was regrettably its central theme.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 like this movie is kind of similar. There is a sort of eco-fascist vibe to the New World Order on Nova Prime.

Speaker 1 I kind of liked that the hangar, I mean, it looked stupid, but it was like built into out of a cave instead of being its own building.

Speaker 1 But that is kind of incongruous with like

Speaker 1 the general lives in this gigantic window palace. It's very kind of confused, I think, the aesthetic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it sits a little all over the place. I'm curious.
I will not be buying any of the books.

Speaker 1 Or I think there might have been a comic. I'm not looking at any of it, but I am curious maybe about looking at some of of the world-building concept art stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I thought the spaceship was very cool.

Speaker 1 He's cool.

Speaker 3 And like the fabric-y doors and the way that it

Speaker 3 looked like it felt.

Speaker 1 How did everyone like his Swiss Army knife, lightsaber, his cutlass? His sword. His cutlass.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was so silly. Because all of the modes are basically the same thing.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 If I was fighting Ursas, I would have a different weapon than a short-range melee weapon. Yeah.
I would use gun.

Speaker 1 I think I have a list here of all of the cutlass types.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Cutlass, various modes. We have at rest, where it's just a double-sided lightsaber,

Speaker 1 which is important because this is also a group of people who have to learn how to control their emotions and not have attachments.

Speaker 1 Sickle, two blades, dual spear slash blade, ice picks, that's just two blades. That's just two blades again.
Slashing blades, that's just dual spear slash blade, but smaller. Fighting sticks.

Speaker 1 I guess they're blunt. Yeah, they're blunt, yeah.
And then spear staff. That's dual spear slash blade again.

Speaker 1 Look how many modes it has. This thing has so many modes.
When he says, like, oh, this is the C40

Speaker 1 cutlass is so funny because it means they make shittier ones. They make shitty.
Well, yeah, because in the the second half of the movie, he's using a shittier one because he finds it on the ship.

Speaker 1 You're right. Yeah.
And that's the one that actually he uses at all. He doesn't use the one from the dad at all.
Maybe the one from the dad had gun function.

Speaker 1 Oh, maybe the one from dad had gun function. Oh, yeah.
Maybe he did say it had like 27 functions or something. I'm just saying.
One could be gun.

Speaker 1 But then why would he throw the rock at the monkey?

Speaker 1 He don't know guns. Shoot the monkey.
Yeah, he doesn't know the input from guns. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He didn't put that into his skill tree. Funny.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's such a skill tree ass movie. Yeah.
It's such a, he took the

Speaker 1 futuristic asthma,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 debuff or whatever.

Speaker 1 Sorry, the planet has that. It's not in him.
It's in the but very clearly, to your point in the summary, Sylvie, this was a plane crash and the kid had asthma and he was 100%

Speaker 1 gun inhaler. It was like he either had asthma or like to keep with the schedule thing, he was diabetic and had to do shocks.
Like it was one of those two things.

Speaker 1 I literally, when he was getting

Speaker 1 the leech poison, I was like, this is how people describe, like, this is going off what anaphylactic shock is described as, but it's, like, obviously amped up to... So his, he does.
You know what?

Speaker 1 Another Will Smith thing that happens, he gives his son the hitch allergy scene

Speaker 1 because of the leech. His face puffs up like that.
His face does puff up. It just crossed my mind, man.

Speaker 1 I want to watch Hitch. Hitch only just crossed your mind? I know, right?

Speaker 1 I love that movie.

Speaker 1 Which Kevin James movie are you thinking about instead when you're not thinking about Hitch? Is that Kevin James? That is Kevin James. You nailed it.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Here Comes the Boom. The only other one I can name off the top of my head.

Speaker 1 I'll search for best Kevin James movie, and the number one, the first one that it lists is Playdate from this year. It's not out yet, so that's a bad answer.

Speaker 1 I think this is about games, or maybe about kids.

Speaker 1 Safe bad either way. Looks bad.
Anyway, a Kevin James movie looks bad. Yeah, I know.
Hard to believe.

Speaker 1 Oh, I bet they're so different because it's got a bus guy and then also Kevin James. So I bet they have so much that they don't know they have in common or something.

Speaker 1 We got to talk about this movie.

Speaker 1 I'll riff too long on the King of Queens.

Speaker 1 They go so hard to make,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 to make Katai seem like a terrible Ranger.

Speaker 1 You know, he gets, he obviously, they're like, you fall apart in the field. And then they really show him fall apart in the field.
He gets bit by a spider and lies. He throws a rock at a monkey.

Speaker 1 Will Smith is very clear. For no reason.
For no reason. Will Smith is very clear.
Do exactly as I say, or we'll both die.

Speaker 1 And then the first thing that he does is lie about getting bit by a spider, which then eventually leads to the leech that poisons him

Speaker 1 because he had, they, it's super subtle. He starts bleeding from his hand, a very tiny bit.
And that's exactly where the leech attaches to.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, the monkeys show up, and Will Smith is like, don't fuck with the monkeys. And then he picks up a rock and throws it.

Speaker 1 He throws it right into his head. Wild.
And then he's running away from the monkeys. And then Will Smith says for like nine straight minutes, they're not following you anymore.
Stop running.

Speaker 1 You're not running away from anything. Stop running.
They're not following you. You can stop.
And he just keeps running.

Speaker 1 I don't think he should be a cadet.

Speaker 3 He should not be 14.

Speaker 1 A cadet. He doesn't have it.

Speaker 3 It's okay.

Speaker 1 It's okay.

Speaker 1 But what if he learns to stop feeling fear instead and kills the weird crab bear?

Speaker 1 Is that where we want to go? We have not really walked through this movie much.

Speaker 1 No, we had a lot to say about the middle and the end.

Speaker 1 There's kind of not a lot. Like, I said, it's mostly just sort of like

Speaker 1 the action set pieces don't really have a lot of, like, there's no real stakes to them. I never really feel like anything is.

Speaker 1 Like, I know Jaden Smith is not dying in this movie that's made so Jaden Smith can be famous.

Speaker 1 Like, I thought maybe the dad, like, uh, Will Smith would die, um, but, like, he's, he's Supreme Commander, uh, Cypher Rage. That was silly of me to think, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like the only time there's... Like, we've talked about all of the real

Speaker 1 emotional or thematic underpinning of those scenes. Like,

Speaker 1 I feel like we've covered their relationship fairly well.

Speaker 1 There is the one big speech that we haven't talked about, which is about...

Speaker 1 Fear is a lie, or fear is the mind.

Speaker 1 Fear is a choice. Fear is a choice.
Fucking crazy thing to say. Especially in a cosmology where you literally emit fear pheromones and that's how your enemy kills you.
Right.

Speaker 1 The thing that he has is the ability to control his pheromones, I guess. Right.
Yeah, no.

Speaker 1 Again, weird young adult novel vibes. Yeah.
What is the context that this conversation happens in? This is like halfway through the movie. Yeah, it's so

Speaker 1 before the jump. This is is before the jump, but after he recovers from the poison, I think.
And the thing that struck me as weird is that the context is just

Speaker 1 Katai asks Cypher, hey, how did you first

Speaker 1 ghost? Right. And that's a weird thing.

Speaker 1 Well, it's, it's, they don't have, this goes to Allie's point before. He has not been home.
They do not have a relationship.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but this is, I just feel like there's even other places to learn for this from. Learn it from his mom.
Learn it from the sister, learn it from a history book.

Speaker 1 I don't think this is in the history book. This is like the most important guy in the world.
He's like the president.

Speaker 1 He's not the president. He's out.
They don't send, they wouldn't have sent him

Speaker 1 this place, or they didn't send him to this place. He's the guy they made American Sniper about.
Is what he's right. That's what he is.

Speaker 1 That's true, but he's the commander of the Rangers, and the Rangers are the government.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of assuming that. No, that says the Rangers lead the settlement of mankind's new home, Nova Prime.
Is he

Speaker 1 the is he a commander or is he the leader? Uh, here, well, look, King of the humans, or is he just like King of the Humans? I'm here.

Speaker 1 Let's listen to the beginning of the very beginning of the movie, the monologue. I think that it might be in here.
Do you have that? I do have that. Okay, let's hear.

Speaker 1 The Rangers would lead the settlement of mankind's new home,

Speaker 1 Nova Prime.

Speaker 1 But we were not alone.

Speaker 1 That sounds great, Jaden.

Speaker 1 No, it's bad. Don't it's bad, because they're not alone.
The aliens released the Ursa.

Speaker 1 Monsters, bred to kill humans.

Speaker 1 Technically blind, the Ursa sees humans based on the pheromones we secrete when frightened. They literally smell our fear.

Speaker 1 Humankind was again in danger of extinction and again turned to the rangers for the answer.

Speaker 1 And that answer came in the form of the prime commander Cypher Raj, the original ghost.

Speaker 1 He's believed to be so completely free of fear that to an Ursa, he is invisible. This phenomenon is known as ghosting.

Speaker 1 Which is what he did to my family. Bad first impression.

Speaker 1 That's a bad first impression. I don't think that that's the same.

Speaker 3 Like, the Rangers led

Speaker 3 the settlement.

Speaker 1 They led the settlement. They didn't lead them to the settlement.
They led the settlement.

Speaker 1 See, I think we're getting just we're just miss we're both we're interpreting that different ways i'm sure this is probably answered in the books yeah but i'm not reading good for you i'm sorry that happened i'm not reading all that

Speaker 1 oh

Speaker 1 there's a prequel book i'm not i will not be reading it uh yeah they're called

Speaker 1 uh prime commander

Speaker 1 yeah i don't that's a fake it's all fake regardless yeah i know this hasn't happened yet

Speaker 1 Be on the lookout from the for the Ursa. Look out for the Skrell.

Speaker 1 Who aren't in the movie. Another thing,

Speaker 1 if this got sequels, the Skrell would be revealed to just be other humans. 100%.
Oh, 100%.

Speaker 1 And maybe they would also be emotionless. And then, wow.
And then Cypher would have to learn that actually, you know, emotions are what make us real. You taught me that, Katai.

Speaker 1 And that's why if you were able to genetically create a monster to attack humans, you'd make them sightless and able to smell fear instead of just giving them sight

Speaker 1 as a backup.

Speaker 1 Right, because you have no emotion. You don't want them to attack you.
And

Speaker 1 if your people have no emotions, then they can't smell you. If they had eyes, there might be casualties on your side.

Speaker 1 You're telling me, I want the sequel now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I want to see what happens next.

Speaker 1 After Earth.

Speaker 1 After Mars.

Speaker 1 Which goes through the

Speaker 1 solar system. Yeah.
And then eventually it gets to Jupiter ascending. And I go, yay.

Speaker 1 i was also thinking about that movie a lot during this i was like oh yeah this is like a couple years off from the wachowskis trying to do this type of thing and at least that one's fun it's right in he's like a year off right is it is it 2014

Speaker 1 2015 yeah

Speaker 1 2015 that's crazy i've never seen that i would have guessed that was 2017 that's crazy Y'all should watch that for some reason. I don't know why.

Speaker 1 I love that movie. You don't know why we would watch it or you don't know why we should watch it? I know why you should watch the movie, but I don't think there's a framework here for it.

Speaker 1 I don't think I can make that connection.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, the reign is when he asks the thing about,

Speaker 1 hey, where were you when you ghosted the first time? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I have a theory about

Speaker 1 this movie, but specifically, I think that Will Smith practiced this monologue that

Speaker 1 I think you have some of it at least recorded. We don't have to hear the whole thing, but I think it was four minutes longer, so I do have only a chunk of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think you need the whole thing. My read is like, this is what he practiced the dialect, the accent on.

Speaker 1 And he nailed it, he

Speaker 1 well, you know, with quotes, I think this is what the accent's supposed to sound like throughout the rest of the movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't think he practiced the rest of the dialogue or was coached on the rest of the dialogue in the same way throughout the movie. But that's it's easier to practice a monologue.

Speaker 1 Jaden was coached on his dialect. Oh, yeah.
And his is, I mean, it's totally true that Will Smith is popping in out of it and it's changing and it's weird.

Speaker 1 But for some reason, even though he's giving like maybe five percent of his acting ability in this movie tops, uh,

Speaker 1 uh, he, it's not as irritating coming from him. The way that that Jaden is not able to nail it is really distracting to me.
Maybe just because he has way more lines.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've got do you want to hear that monologue?

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 5 I see his pincer through my shoulder,

Speaker 5 and I decide

Speaker 5 I don't want that in there anymore.

Speaker 5 So I pull it out

Speaker 5 and he lets me go.

Speaker 5 And more than that, I can tell

Speaker 5 it can't find me.

Speaker 5 Doesn't even know where to look.

Speaker 5 And it dawned on me.

Speaker 5 Fear

Speaker 5 is not

Speaker 1 real.

Speaker 5 The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future.

Speaker 5 It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist.

Speaker 5 That is near insanity, Katan. Now, do not misunderstand me.
Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.

Speaker 5 We are all telling ourselves a story,

Speaker 5 and that day mind changed.

Speaker 1 Arn, I'm curious if you feel like that is M-Night or if that's Wida.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 3 I don't

Speaker 3 think it feels like Shyamalan.

Speaker 3 because i have to believe that like this was in the

Speaker 1 that they couldn't have they couldn't have gotten this far without that right you know right the the big speech about the thing the movie is about and i might be i might be influenced by the big conspiracy theory but you know to me it feels like shy men to have

Speaker 1 a monster that smells the literal fear coming off your skin and then also have a character be like fear's not even real

Speaker 3 that feels kind of shy to me i disagree yeah

Speaker 3 yeah i don't think i don't think that this

Speaker 3 feels like his other monsters

Speaker 1 say same you don't think it feels like the signs monster there's a secret track no to to getting him

Speaker 3 no i don't the the the signs monster is just an alien it's just a guy

Speaker 3 just a guy from another planet who has poison that comes out of his wrists. I mean, it's weird, but it's it's not like this.
It's not

Speaker 3 it's not this kind of metaphor You beat the signs alien by having an asthma attack

Speaker 3 Not by like transcending emotion.

Speaker 1 I just think it's just two different kinds of trick

Speaker 1 I think you have a water trick and you have a fear trick.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 because the water trick is is IMO a clear homage to war of the worlds and this is

Speaker 3 stupid

Speaker 1 not mutually exclusive i guarantee it um i didn't say it i mean

Speaker 3 i mean i think that the homage is sort of like inherently protected in that way

Speaker 1 I think this is also a sequence that we, I just kind of mentioned it. I don't know if anyone else read about this stuff, but at the time, there was a lot of,

Speaker 1 there were a lot of feelings that this movie was Scientology propaganda,

Speaker 1 which I expected to be way more obvious to me, I think, if

Speaker 1 like coming into it because I remember that response. But I do think that this is one of those places because Dianetics.
is often my understanding of Scientology to some degree.

Speaker 1 It's a lot about memory. It's a lot about overcoming your

Speaker 1 innate emotional reaction to those

Speaker 1 to the emotions tied to memories. Usually, if we don't throw the rocks, it's because of the thetans.

Speaker 1 It's like the like ghosting is is actually quite easy to compare to the concept of like becoming clear, becoming clear, sure, Scientology, yeah, sure. Um,

Speaker 3 I think this sounds more like just like dime store,

Speaker 3 um,

Speaker 3 what's the word, uh, mindfulness, yes, it does.

Speaker 1 That's how it reads to me, too. Yeah, 100%.
Well, it's got that big volcano. It does have the big volcano.

Speaker 1 I think the thing for me, having watched this movie, I left it being like, well, if that's Scientology, a lot of stuff is Scientology.

Speaker 1 Or the other way, which is like, if that's what our beef is with Scientology, then we should have that same beef with a lot of mediocre sci-fi.

Speaker 1 And obviously, that's not what our beef is with Scientology. Our beef with Scientology is like about the way that, and I say R, I don't mean like everyone on this podcast.
podcast. I mean the cultural

Speaker 1 artist and Scientologist, so also

Speaker 1 very careful. And that's kind of clear.
That's the kind of view that art is. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 You know, I want to be clear that

Speaker 1 there is... clear documented history of people being separated by their families and people being emotionally and physically abused and all this other stuff.
That is the problem.

Speaker 1 It's not that they believe in aliens and thetans and whatever. I don't give a fuck what your religious beliefs are in that way.

Speaker 1 But I do have issues with the other stuff, which they aren't the only religion that does that stuff either. So, no.
Yeah. In any case, I want to at least bring that up here.

Speaker 1 I don't know if anybody else had done that reading or has thoughts on it that I don't have the information for because I don't know about Scientology at all.

Speaker 1 Sylvie, maybe it sounds like you know more than I do, but what I do know is the a couple documentaries. Okay, that's true.
There's a couple documentaries more than I've got. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The only thing that I could possibly add to this that maybe someone else here knows more about is that I do know that

Speaker 1 Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are connected to a weird Scientology school that they claim wasn't a Scientology school, but the headmaster of that school was like, yeah, it was kind of a Scientology school.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know about that. So they claim to, I think it's Google-able.

Speaker 1 They claim to not be Scientologists, but they are always, they're sending people Scientology books all the time.

Speaker 1 They hired a bunch of Scientologist teachers and they made mandatory things that you had to go to Scientology classes to teach at the school. So it sounded like a pretty red teacher.

Speaker 1 The Scientologist teacher is raising a lot of questions about

Speaker 1 my ties to Scientology.

Speaker 3 The Smiths were widely speculated to be Scientologists, especially like around this time. And it is because of their involvement in this school.

Speaker 3 The Wikipedia page claims it's the New Village Leadership Academy in Calabasas.

Speaker 3 And that it closed shortly after this movie came out.

Speaker 1 Well, because it wasn't working.

Speaker 1 I will say students have been killed by bears.

Speaker 3 If the Smiths were Scientologists, the things that have happened to them in the last 10 years, I don't think would have happened.

Speaker 1 He wouldn't have slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, you're saying?

Speaker 3 I do think that's one of them. And I also don't think the whole

Speaker 3 very public nature of their relationship would have

Speaker 3 come out. Because

Speaker 3 not having all that shit public is like the point of this giant cult apparatus for celebrities.

Speaker 1 I think that you could go like, well, this is why they're not all the way in because it's not quite working for them the way that it is for Tom Cruise, who also has very public, weird relationship stuff that isn't quite as public.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't. I certainly don't know the truth of the situation.

Speaker 1 I don't

Speaker 3 and and that they could be sort of like duped by Scientology Methods or Scientology adjacent stuff is not surprising to me because

Speaker 3 actors are easily tricked by things like this, you know, because the the the the skills you need to be an actor are not critical thinking skills.

Speaker 3 They're emotional access skills, and that's not the same thing

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I don't think that this movie is proof of anything.

Speaker 1 No, I just don't think that.

Speaker 1 It makes sense if there's interest around the movie because of the interest around the Smiths.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think there's a fair amount of smoke, but I'm not sure that there's fire.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 3 But it's a weird movie. But again, I don't think the weirdness of the movie is anything like you wouldn't see it like a yoga class.

Speaker 1 Are they talking about fear and yoga class? I guess maybe i haven't taken yoga class

Speaker 1 fears fear tightens up your tendons and your ligaments it probably does

Speaker 1 it definitely does i was just actually just reading about why when you get sad or afraid you feel it in your chest and it does it's part of the reaction like the physical we don't have to go down the screen

Speaker 1 You release pheromones that then the Ursa can smell is what I read. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you just don't want the Ursa coming to yoga.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And this is a way better movie than Battleship Earth if we're just like keeping score here. Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that a Scientology one? Battleship Earth. It's the Battleship Earth is like, right? The Scientology.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a very explicitly Scientology film.

Speaker 1 It's like based on a true Ron Hubbard novel. Oh.
The one with Brianna?

Speaker 1 No, that's not. No,

Speaker 1 it's Battleship. Okay.

Speaker 3 Which is based on the board game

Speaker 1 where you link the battleship.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to make everything clear.

Speaker 1 Again, hey, maybe some Scientology connection then.

Speaker 1 Allie wants to make everything clear.

Speaker 1 I frequently and now will no longer get this movie confused with Battlefield Earth, just because they both say Earth and they're both sci-fi, I guess.

Speaker 1 Sure. But now I've seen one of them, so I know what they are now.
Battlefield Earth is the one where

Speaker 1 John Travolta has alien dreadlocks. Oh, John Travolta is in it.
John Travolta. He's the villain.
He's the villain. And he said something like super weird in the.

Speaker 3 Because he had just done pulp fiction. He was like, this movie is also like pulp fiction.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 John Travolta doesn't understand

Speaker 3 pulp fiction.

Speaker 1 John Travolta doesn't understand. John Travolta doesn't understand.

Speaker 3 Yeah, pulp fiction for the year 3000. And then like Star Wars only better.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 1 at least he's positive. Maybe not, dude.

Speaker 1 We should watch it.

Speaker 1 Do we have what else do we have to say about this movie? Is there anything, any parts that we missed? I know that we talked a lot about what was going on in it without.

Speaker 1 I wrote here that Jaden's acting is actually totally fine when he isn't talking. Yes.
I think that there is some physical acting in this movie that he does just fine with. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think he was really hampered by having to do the voice. I was going to say, I like wonder.

Speaker 1 Right under that, I have. Oh, go ahead, Allie.

Speaker 2 Well, just exclusively acting with his dad. Like, I mean, the moments like when he's having weird flashback, like psycho

Speaker 2 conversations with his sister and acting from Zoe Kravitz, I think, his sister is all really good and like are kind of the best parts of this movie, honestly.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure Jayton has any scenes with Zoe Kravitz. No, on the raft, there's one.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they have, well, I mean, it's mostly him talking to her talking to him, I guess. But,

Speaker 2 you know, any other characters in this movie, I think, could have brought out...

Speaker 2 a better performance that is not just like i am locked in a warehouse with my dad and a green screen and 20 people on crew. And I have to do a really good job.
It's

Speaker 1 the disparity between how well I think they can act and how well they're acting is way bigger for Will Smith.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 What is he doing? He's a very experienced actor. Well, that's what I'm saying.
Why is he doing it, doing this? Like every scene he's in, I'm like, why is he acting like this?

Speaker 3 Okay, here's my theory.

Speaker 3 And we're going to have to come with me on a little journey here. And also, I just learned that the person who plays Baby Katai was named Sincere L.
Bob.

Speaker 3 And that's just a, I think it's a funny name.

Speaker 1 Listener for Bob.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay. So does anyone remember the

Speaker 3 what was that movie with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper?

Speaker 1 America Cyber. A Star is Born.
A Star is Born.

Speaker 3 And there's that song from that movie, Shallows.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's huge.

Speaker 3 And in that movie, in that song, Lady Gaga is a lot better singer than Bradley Cooper because Lady Gaga is a singer and Bradley Cooper is an actor.

Speaker 1 Right, true.

Speaker 3 I then heard a cover of that song by country music couple

Speaker 3 Garth Brooks and the lady that Garth Brooks is married to.

Speaker 3 Oh, this is embarrassing.

Speaker 1 Mrs. Brooks.

Speaker 3 No, because she's like famous in her own right. Trisha.

Speaker 3 Trisha Gearwood.

Speaker 1 Oh, Chris Gaines.

Speaker 3 And they do a cover of this song. And unfortunately, Trisha Gearwood is not as good a singer as Lady Gaga.
So she's sort of singing like worse than Lady Gaga.

Speaker 3 And to like respond to that, I think I'm getting text from my wife yelling Tricia Gearwood because she can hear me talking.

Speaker 3 So she's singing a little worse than Lady Gaga. And I think trying not to upstage his wife, Garth Brooks then comes in worse than Bradley Cooper.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 3 And Garth Brooks isn't like a voice guy, but he can sing better than Bradley Cooper.

Speaker 3 And I think that's what's happening here: is that Will Smith wants to come in under

Speaker 1 acting worse.

Speaker 3 By acting worse, yeah.

Speaker 1 If that's true, that is a bad tactic.

Speaker 1 This movie was a failure, and I think that's one of the reasons.

Speaker 3 I think if this was like a Will, a capital, W, capital S, a Will Smith movie, this movie makes twice as much money like every other fucking Will Smith movie does. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's a that.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Maybe it's just like tough to tell Will Smith,

Speaker 1 how about you be a really low emotion, really uncharismatic guy?

Speaker 3 I don't know why he chose to be in a fucking chair for 100 hands in the chair.

Speaker 1 But you can be no emotion and be charismatic. It happens all the time in the real world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's hard for a movie. It is hard for a movie.

Speaker 1 It's hard to have your character trailer.

Speaker 3 He doesn't do emotion.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that this is...
I think he's playing the character as intended.

Speaker 1 I don't think this movie is better if I like fucking Cypher Rage more.

Speaker 1 No, I understand.

Speaker 1 They have an energy to him. The performance is bad, and also there's no energy in it.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, well, maybe this is a much better movie if he just brings his bad boy's character to this movie. If he's just playing whatever the hell that guy's name is.
he should have played Hitch.

Speaker 1 He should have played Hitch. Hitch would have fixed all this.
That's his job.

Speaker 1 He would have made all the Ursas fall in love with each other.

Speaker 3 Is this movie the reason he didn't do the Independence Day sequel?

Speaker 1 Maybe. Who knows? I mean, he talks about this movie as being like Wild, Wild West.

Speaker 1 He compares it unfavorably.

Speaker 3 That's exactly what I mean in terms of the Wild, Wild West is a much better movie than this.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 i agree

Speaker 1 uh sorry in the middle of saying that i was reminded of the time that art and his friends trolled the college we went to

Speaker 1 uh uh by playing the very beginning of wild of will smith's wild wild west over and over again for two or three hours and like scratched it and cut it to be like west west wild west wild wild wild wild west and it was like that for hours in the student center art i'm i wasn't even there i i i I authorized the project and then didn't show up.

Speaker 1 I know you were there because it was when you had that mustache.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I was only there for like a minute. You were

Speaker 1 a minute. I didn't know.
I didn't stay for two because I was there to try to recruit for our gaming club. Oh,

Speaker 1 I was tabling.

Speaker 3 Did it help? And it was the end of the song. It's the Wild, Wild West.
It was the Wild, Wild West from the end.

Speaker 1 You're right. Okay.
I'm sorry. Yes.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 West, it was very funny. Anyway.

Speaker 3 When I roll into the water.

Speaker 1 What was the authorization that was needed to do this?

Speaker 1 No one would stop this guy.

Speaker 1 Art was the editor-in-chief of Hofstra University's only intentional comedy magazine. There's an unintentional comedy magazine?

Speaker 3 Oh, Hofstra was full of unintentional comedy.

Speaker 1 Every other publication that students put out, that's the subtext.

Speaker 3 And yeah, I said do it, and then they made it so.

Speaker 1 You're really mixing your sci-fi series there with do it and make it so. But okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let me read through my.

Speaker 3 I think Will Smith should have done a song for this movie, too.

Speaker 1 Oh, that would have fixed it. Yeah, that would have been great.

Speaker 1 It's a diegetic song. If he does.

Speaker 1 If he's also a pop star in universe, I think. In the voice? He should have done the voice.

Speaker 1 Ha ha.

Speaker 1 After earth. After earth.

Speaker 1 I made a note. This is another extremely visually dark movie.

Speaker 1 The happening was not, but Lady in the Water, of course, no movie's ever been darker than The Last Airbender. And then this one.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 really hard to see

Speaker 1 M-Night's movies, even while watching them.

Speaker 1 I think this one's a little, it is dark, but it's, again, coming right after Airbender was so, it was so bad. Totally different kind of dark.
What this was

Speaker 1 underexposed blacks. This was like super, like when it was dark, it was too dark to make stuff out.
The last airbender is everything

Speaker 1 is black. They're in the Arctic in the day, and it's kind of hard to see.
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's worth saying, really quick, because we've been talking about the green screen, which there is green screen in this movie, but they did shoot on location in Costa Rica for this movie.

Speaker 1 That volcano is real. That mountain is really back there.
That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 And there's an alien monster on it, if you want.

Speaker 1 That alien monster, I mean, I will say one of the behind-the-scenes clips I watched was about how they had a team of wildlife experts constantly patrolling the sets and the tent like camp that they'd set up for poisonous animals.

Speaker 1 And they were constantly needing to bag poisonous spiders.

Speaker 1 And I know it was unbelievable. They must have slipped up in that moment.

Speaker 1 Jaden Smith says, He once woke up with a four-inch cockroach in his bed with him.

Speaker 1 They are constantly like finding vipers, including, including like jumping, jumping pit vipers, which are very poisonous.

Speaker 1 That was in the movie, they got that him, they got him, they got that one, they just put that one right in.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so um, who knows how long they were there, but yeah, if I've told this, if I've like talked about this on a on a podcast, I think I've said it to at least one of you in person.

Speaker 3 But there's like a story from the from the office where Brian Cranson was directing an episode, and due to like a like a it's an episode where they're all on a bus and they off they all almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning because the exhaust from the bus was being fed back into the marketing system.

Speaker 3 And I've thought about like what it would have been like if in the middle of the office and the middle of Breaking Bad, the entire cast of the office and Brian Cranston died

Speaker 1 in a day

Speaker 1 the movies died.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 And I'm sort of thinking like the same thing of like, what if making this movie and Will and Jaden Smith both died from a poisonous spider and it's like...

Speaker 1 I'm surprised surprised this hasn't happened, frankly, with someone in our lifetime in that way. Has it? It must have.
And not like a, not like, I mean, that would be very tragic, I should be clear.

Speaker 1 But not like suicide or just a car accident, which is also terrible.

Speaker 1 But this sort of like...

Speaker 3 The crow, right?

Speaker 1 The crow.

Speaker 1 That's the only one I can think of.

Speaker 1 And Twilight Zone. The Alec Baldwin one.
Not my life zone.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, the...
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Twilight Zone, pretty bad one.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I might have been technically alive when that happened.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 2 re-green screens. Yeah.
The like

Speaker 2 Jaden's like standout scene in this movie when he is standing on top of that mountain just shouting to nobody. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's not on top of a mountain. Like it's in front of like a Windows podcast.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, they can bring Lizjack there. Yeah.
They are shooting a location, so like, why not just find the location to do that?

Speaker 1 I guess because it's not near the waterfall, presumably, because there isn't one.

Speaker 1 The waterfall doesn't exist, you know. Right.
It's just so dangerous to go on an outcropping.

Speaker 2 Sure. It's just such a standout scene for it to look like shit, for it to look like that.

Speaker 1 Like, it looks like

Speaker 2 the end of the first or second Harry Potter movie when he, like, it does the like weird zoom in on his face from the like

Speaker 2 bottom quarter of the screen. Like, the way that Jaden is like centered that

Speaker 2 and the emotion on his face is just really uncanny

Speaker 1 I'll say this sort of thing does not really bother me in movies

Speaker 1 like I'm looking at these shots and you know

Speaker 1 I don't know why they've got to have it but I'm also like it's a movie whatever

Speaker 2 but it's the scene it is the scene yeah

Speaker 1 it's the one that should look pretty good you can just face him to look at the screen and be like, wow.

Speaker 3 You know, if he's just facing the other way and they don't have to the waterfall and all the stuff and you just do that when he jumps off, I don't think it like makes the scene worse visually.

Speaker 3 And you could have done it in a real location.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. But the flip side is that I haven't...

Speaker 1 I don't think... And my Chaman has proved that he can film in a forest yet.
There's been a couple really striking shots of the forest only in the village.

Speaker 1 But every time they're just like in the forest, I feel like it's a really uninteresting location. It's a location issue where it's like lots of small trees and branches and it's like medium dense.

Speaker 1 I found the forest in this to be pretty underwhelming looking.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I, yeah.

Speaker 1 And presumably that real.

Speaker 2 It's it's tough because, you know, when we were saying before, the interiors of some of the

Speaker 2 sci-fi spaces looked amazing. Like their apartment looked amazing.
The like weird seats that they're in in the spaceship were pretty cool. The like weird fan doors were all great.

Speaker 2 And then it's like, oh, you're on Earth. And it's the spectacle of returning to the home of humanity.
And everything looks like shit.

Speaker 1 Like, it just doesn't. I don't know.
Yeah. I don't know.
I I think

Speaker 2 the mountain scene also like stands out to me because

Speaker 2 I just feel so bad for Jaden feeling how empty the set is in that moment, especially because he's like pacing back and forth on this cliff and like sort of coming in and out of the light in a way that feels uncanny.

Speaker 2 And like it just, it's such a disservice to him.

Speaker 2 in trying to have a standout scene in this movie that it like

Speaker 2 makes me feel bad when I watch it, and like not for the character, for him for the actor.

Speaker 1 If only they had the volume, yeah, man.

Speaker 1 You know, maybe it would have, you know, I do kind of wonder if things like the volume, um, which is the studio that I, it started with the Mandalorian, but now has been used throughout a lot of Disney productions.

Speaker 1 A lot of the Marvel TV shows use it.

Speaker 1 And then the technology has been kind of spread out across the industry for that scale of production, which is a interior studio space where instead of using blue screen or green screen,

Speaker 1 or sets,

Speaker 1 it is a projection of background that then can also cast its light onto the actors, such that both they have sight lines to work with that will be identical to the shots that are then used in the final film, or at least close enough.

Speaker 1 And then also, theoretically, it's producing the light that you would get, for instance, from a flat plane with the sun high up behind some mountains in the distance or something, right?

Speaker 1 Um, on their face, that that doesn't have to be done in post or with a different lighting rig that's set up.

Speaker 1 Um, and reportedly, there are ways in which this has worked really well for certain actors because it puts them in the space in a way that you can't get in a studio, you can really only get on location, uh, or it helps with composition because you can

Speaker 1 kind of like see what different sorts of lighting situations are, you can change those on the fly, etc.

Speaker 1 And I do wonder if for an actor like Jaden, if being more in it in that way would have been useful for him,

Speaker 1 especially someone who's like new at acting, but who knows?

Speaker 1 You know, I don't think that that, I don't think that that's going to save the movie, you know? But yeah, I always think about, you know, you see an interview with

Speaker 1 Kermit the Frog.

Speaker 1 I love that guy. Yeah, I love that guy.
And

Speaker 1 Jim Henson is there, obviously. And, you know, you talk anybody who's been around the Muppets, you know, they talk about like,

Speaker 1 it's crazy how you just fall into talking to them as if they're real. You just fall into it.

Speaker 1 Jim Henson's sitting right there on the couch, and Johnny Carson is glued to Kermit the Frog, talking to Kermit like Kermit's a real guy.

Speaker 1 And that is what's great, I think, about

Speaker 1 fully practical sets. The volume is really controversial because anything that Star Wars fans look at and can maybe be angry at is controversial.

Speaker 1 As an idea, I kind of like it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It gets used bad. It got used

Speaker 1 bad uncorrelally. Tons of things can get used bad.
That Loki show that came out, that first season of it, has some of the most aggressively bad scenes I've ever seen shot on volume.

Speaker 1 I think it's like it became a

Speaker 1 very quick fix for the problem of actually staging.

Speaker 1 And really, what it is is, it goes to what we were saying before. I think, Keith, you were like, or a set, there were like interior restaurant shots being shot on the volume, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and to be clear, I think this was that show was being shot in COVID. And so there were ways in which they were like, well, we could just shoot on the volume and then we could shoot in parts.

Speaker 1 I get how you get there, but by God, it's bad. Yeah.
It's some of the worst shit I've ever seen. So there's just like, you know, there's a magic to being surrounded by a fake little world.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, there's this is it's not just because

Speaker 1 people don't like CG in movies that that people

Speaker 1 cry about the decline of

Speaker 1 practical sets and practical props and stuff like that. That's me.
I do that. But I also do that.

Speaker 1 But it's because of that it helps every other part of the movie for the actor to feel like they're actually, you know, in a place.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I've been to a theme park and you go into a theme park and it's a big set.

Speaker 1 Sometimes you walk through a big set at a theme park and you feel like you're there in a way that you can't by just imagining,

Speaker 1 you know, maybe me with a famously bad imagination.

Speaker 1 I'm like, well, I need to see the stuff around me in order to feel something.

Speaker 3 It's tricky, though, right? Because that's true. And also, it seems pretty clear that Jaden just doesn't have it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's hey, he went off. He was a 14 year old

Speaker 1 right he's also really young too young he's a ranger too young to be

Speaker 1 heading up a franchise wait really quick he doesn't have an oscar well the movie has an oscar

Speaker 1 the pursuit of happiness it's not his oscar it's not his oscar

Speaker 1 he was in a movie that won an oscillator but it won best picture right so that's

Speaker 3 it did not it oh did not it

Speaker 1 in fact it didn't win it didn't win anything he will smith was nominated uh will smith was nominated

Speaker 1 I thought it was a good idea. Oh, you know what? Jaden Smith does have an MTV Movie Award as Best Breakthrough Performance.
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not the awards.

Speaker 3 Not an MTV Movie Awards than anyone on this podcast has.

Speaker 1 That's so true.

Speaker 1 That's true. I thought that Will Smith and the movie were both nominated and that the movie won.

Speaker 1 But I have a bad memory for Oscar winners.

Speaker 3 It was not nominated. And,

Speaker 3 you know, I don't want to pile on too much, but I don't think Jane's ever going to beat the nepotism allegations. I don't know what Jaden's current job is.

Speaker 1 Is he like,

Speaker 1 is he on the board of a company?

Speaker 2 Is he like producing his dad's heavily produced Instagram videos?

Speaker 3 Nope. This is better than all of these.

Speaker 1 Is he in the music industry?

Speaker 3 He's not.

Speaker 1 Okay. We'll do 20 questions of style.

Speaker 1 Asking art some questions to clarify. Is it a creative job?

Speaker 1 Yes. We're on the career ladder right now.
That's what we're doing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's a creative job. Is it an executive role in a creative job? Yes.
Is it related to the podcast that his mom and sister and grandmother do? No. No.

Speaker 1 Is it related to a different celebrity who's actually successful?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Is it related to

Speaker 1 an

Speaker 1 agency?

Speaker 3 Like

Speaker 3 a talent agency? No. Okay.

Speaker 1 Is it related to... So we said, no, it's not music.

Speaker 3 It's not music.

Speaker 1 Is it film?

Speaker 3 It's not film.

Speaker 1 Is it advertising? No. Okay.

Speaker 2 Is he still doing stuff for Netflix?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 1 He doesn't have a job. Is my guest? No, no, no, no, no.
I think art wouldn't do this to us. No.

Speaker 3 Well, because he said film.

Speaker 1 He said that it was

Speaker 1 an executive position in a creative position. Advertising.

Speaker 1 No, that was not. No, that's been asked.
Yeah. Oh, sorry.
A fashion.

Speaker 3 Fashion. Yes.
It is fashion.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, does he have his own

Speaker 1 fashion line?

Speaker 3 No, that would be much more understandable, I think.

Speaker 2 Didn't he, didn't someone recently become like the creative director for

Speaker 2 maybe not Nike, maybe something?

Speaker 1 Are you thinking of Pharrell and Louis Vuitton?

Speaker 2 Maybe, but no. I think there was something even more embarrassing on that.

Speaker 1 You are almost certainly on the right track here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, creative director of thing where you know is it h m

Speaker 3 no okay

Speaker 3 it could be it was believable right but is it is it i will tell you that the title is creative director he is creative director of

Speaker 1 the fashion brand okay so it's got to be like one of the luxury ones no it's not dior

Speaker 3 dolce and cabbana No, do you want to tell you at this point?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's not Gucci.

Speaker 1 I don't know any fashion brands, so you're going to have to to tell me. Who's left?

Speaker 3 It's Christian Louboutin.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, dude.

Speaker 1 Creative director.

Speaker 3 Creative director.

Speaker 3 The first male creative director for this brand.

Speaker 1 I like the karate kid, but what the fuck does he know about shoes?

Speaker 1 He's always wearing stuff, right?

Speaker 1 He is always wearing stuff.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it was about this, but I remember seeing a quote of being like,

Speaker 2 there are people who've been working in this department for years who like have experience in this and are now like answering to him in a way that's not.

Speaker 3 Well, one of those people is definitely doing the real work of this job.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 1 This isn't. Unlike Pharrell, who is doing the

Speaker 1 actual Louis Vuitton. He like did release a line that no one liked.
So

Speaker 1 he's trying. Does he really? Do you mean that he's doing the work or just that? Yeah, he like had a, he was doing the, he was like in the, he moved his studio to the Louis Vuitton office.

Speaker 1 Hey, it's this year that, uh, that, that, uh, Jayden moved to Paris to do this job. So there we go.
Wow. Yeah.
No, he's so committed.

Speaker 2 I, I mean, to circle back to my point,

Speaker 2 like nepotism aside, and it's a big aside,

Speaker 2 there's so many barriers to Jaden actually having a good performance here. And like the main one is

Speaker 2 only being able to talk to his actual father yeah and they've acted you know against each other in a lot of things but like imagining

Speaker 2 any emotional depth in this movie that comes from a different relationship or a different character or a different

Speaker 2 actor with a different affect it's like it could have been in the script of this movie.

Speaker 1 Is it possible that part of it's that he's not even acting opposite his father, but his father's not even there?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're not like rude to digest. They're on Zoom calls.
Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 1 but even if he is, I don't think they're, they're not making eye contact explicitly, right? He's, he's talking.

Speaker 1 He needs to not be looking at his father in order to convey that he's, that they're on a phone call. So Katai is imagining a camera that he can't see.

Speaker 1 Because he knows that his dad is watching him through a feed.

Speaker 1 He isn't even getting the the people who are in the positions that we talk about with green screens where he has like a balloon to look at right like or like a guy who is going to be turned into thor or whatever you know like i i if i was directing this movie i would tell and of course you have to say you have to i have to also be able to tell will smith something i would tell will smith you've got to be here to act opposite him even though you're not technically there like he needs to you need to do your lines with him there and then but some of the shots aren't compatible with well you just film it twice

Speaker 1 sure

Speaker 1 that's what i mean every movie is filming everything five times yeah but i just i just mean like you know he's walking through the field and it's a wide shot and he's talking to his dad like he can't be close enough to act against in that shot he has to this is keith yeah for you this is what their job is right like yeah totally i yeah if that's going to be a problem then we just have him off camera giving his lines or something.

Speaker 1 Because the other thing, the other, the alternative is you do the fake phone call where you're talking to someone on the phone, but there's actually no one on the line. It's a deadline.

Speaker 1 But there's totally, you know, there's totally a version of that that is,

Speaker 1 you know, there is someone acting on the other end of the phone, so you can act opposite someone. You could have him piped in over a PA.

Speaker 1 That's probably the, like, maybe the most convenient, but least effective version of this. Some version of giving him his dad actually there to act against.
That is what I would do.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm just saying that's what I would do.

Speaker 1 I wish that there was a Star Wars Episode I, the beginning style 90-minute documentary about this movie. About making this movie.
If you haven't seen that, that is the episode one documentary that

Speaker 1 they released officially through Lucasfilm that is incredible and is like, it isn't meant to be this, but it absolutely is like a

Speaker 1 documentation of everyone who failed George Lucas and all of the ways that Lucas failed.

Speaker 1 I have not seen this. I actually

Speaker 1 have to watch it. It's incredible.
What's it called? It's just called The Beginning. It's called Episode 1, The Beginning.
It's official.

Speaker 1 You know, the producers blowing smoke up.

Speaker 1 Lucas's ass, and then like all the great, like the incredible successes of that filmmaking.

Speaker 1 And also things like you see him live becoming the person who's going to like make the movie in the edit and inventing contemporary digital filmmaking because that's what that movie did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a, it's fantastic. Like I really think you will come away from that movie being, or that documentary being like

Speaker 1 anybody listening being like, holy shit, it's kind of amazing that anything got made. And also, oh my God, I can't believe they released this officially.
themselves.

Speaker 1 Because if you were going into it being like, I think there were some mistakes made on that movie, it captures a lot of those mistakes and a lot of the overambition and a lot of the like delaying decision-making until everything everything is already shot and like you see lucas fail to be a good director yeah because he doesn't know how to tell anybody how to act um and i wish we had that for after earth but after earth is uh no one cares about it no one cares about it so we didn't get the book either so that's uh i mean you can't you can't uh escape your legacy you might as well explain it yeah

Speaker 1 Do we have any more thoughts on After Earth?

Speaker 1 I've written down here, right under the line about his acting being good when he's not talking. I've written down here in quotes, my suits turn black.
I like it, but I think it's something bad.

Speaker 1 I need to find a weapon so I can defend myself. Type dialogue.
This is another example of like,

Speaker 1 how did he get to the fucking Ranger final exam without knowing that his suit changes color based on stuff?

Speaker 1 Like, I know that this is for the audience, but again, there's always when you have something sloppy and it's like, well, we needed this information, it's like, yeah, do it not sloppy then.

Speaker 1 Um, all of this, I don't, it could have been anything else.

Speaker 1 Just do it better, dummy, do it better, dummy. Yeah,

Speaker 1 sorry, all right. What were you gonna say?

Speaker 3 It's so weird seeing like a movie like this with the sort of like

Speaker 3 the pedigree of some of the people involved, you know, Shamalan and

Speaker 3 Will Smith,

Speaker 3 Will Smith,

Speaker 3 you know, the guy from Rogue One,

Speaker 3 Gary Witta.

Speaker 1 Oh, people who like

Speaker 3 have made

Speaker 3 competent movies,

Speaker 3 and this is just like such a like video you make for your kids' bar mitzvah level

Speaker 1 production.

Speaker 1 That is like expensive bar mitzvah.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 not to Will Smith, it isn't.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, I know Will Smith can't spend $130 million every day, but

Speaker 3 he can spend it a lot more freely than most, you know.

Speaker 3 I don't know. It's

Speaker 1 you said that.

Speaker 3 And like, he would talk about how hard this was that he feels like he brought his kid into this, but like, Will Smith has been in really good movies. When did he, like,

Speaker 3 look around on this set set and be like, fuck, this sucks?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 he's also made some real bad movies, too, though. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's made a lot of bad movies. But he's made up for it with Hitch.

Speaker 1 That is so true. Unironically, love Hitch.

Speaker 3 Hold on.

Speaker 3 I'm just going to do a quick good versus bad on some Will Smith movies here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 What do you want to say he called this the

Speaker 1 most painful failure in his career. Yeah.
Yeah. I can see how it feels like he let down his kid.

Speaker 3 I mean, Will Smith has an all-time hot run coming out of the gate.

Speaker 3 I'm just going to ignore the movies that don't fit this. But, you know, Bad Boys, Independence Day, Men in Black, Enemy of the State.
Like, those are all bangers.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Then he's in Wild Wild West. Wild Wild West, bad.
Legend of Bagger Vance, bad.

Speaker 3 The Muhammad Ali movie, good.

Speaker 3 Men in Black 2, pretty bad. Bad Boys 2, the funniest movie I've ever seen.
Wow.

Speaker 1 iRobots.

Speaker 1 Jersey Girl. It's a cameo.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Get to it in the Kevin Smith season of this show coming soon.

Speaker 1 Hitch.

Speaker 3 Yeah, iRobots.

Speaker 1 Shark Tail.

Speaker 3 Shark Tale.

Speaker 1 Shark Tale was not good.

Speaker 1 Okay, hold on.

Speaker 3 Shark Tale is not good.

Speaker 1 But it was a success. It was a huge success.
Oh, okay. I thought you were talking quality, not gross.

Speaker 3 But there's more good movies than bad here.

Speaker 1 It's worth it. Also, he's not rocking.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 Up until about I am legend, and then I would say it turns.

Speaker 1 You're not rocking with Hancock?

Speaker 3 I am not rocking with Hancock.

Speaker 1 You're not rocking with seven pounds?

Speaker 3 I am not rocking with seven pounds. I saw that in five years.
I think the interesting years he produces this movie, and then, like, because of this, sort of stops producing movies for a while.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And he must have been in production already.

Speaker 1 Oh, Bright was so bad.

Speaker 1 Bright was really bad. He was the guy.
I forgot that he was the genie in Guy Ritchie's Aladdin. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I can't believe you're calling it Guy Richie's Aladdin.

Speaker 1 I just need everyone to know that that's who directed that movie because every time I remember it myself, it makes me laugh.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 3 Gemini Man was a very funny but bad movie.

Speaker 3 Angley is another person who likes, even when the movies are bad, they're fun to see. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bad Boys for Life was pretty bad. Bad Boys Rider Die is really bad.

Speaker 1 I can't even get two legacy sequels. Damn, yeah.

Speaker 1 Men in Black only got one.

Speaker 1 Did it? Is there another Men in Black three? Yeah, only three. No, no, but there's been another Men in Black since then.
It just doesn't have him in it.

Speaker 1 Sorry, he is credited on the Knuckles TV show because archival footage from Bad Boys is used, which I think is really funny.

Speaker 1 That's so funny. That's really funny.
Is that about Knuckles, our Knuckles, our friend? Yeah, the Echidna.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Echidna, yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay. There is a fourth whole.

Speaker 3 How have I not seen the fourth Men in Black movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Texas?

Speaker 1 A lot of people. I think people haven't.
I didn't even see the third one. And I liked the verse two.
I liked Men in Black 2 kind of fine.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you something

Speaker 3 really silly that really bothers me about Men in Black 2?

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 The pizza place in it is like down the block from the house that we lived in until I was four, the apartment we lived in until I was four in New York. And they made the street go the other way.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's annoying.

Speaker 3 For the movie. So like, it's the weirdest fucking thing for the moment.

Speaker 1 Pretending that it's on the other side of the street, basically.

Speaker 3 No, like instead of going south, the street goes north.

Speaker 1 It's a one-way street. Oh, yeah, I see.
I see.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I don't understand why they did it.

Speaker 3 And I guess most people, of course, would have no idea, but I know what way that streak goes.

Speaker 1 That's the other one. Yeah, okay.
So, here's here's my meta question: which is, we are approaching, as we were talking about before we started recording art, uh, a turn in this is this is the

Speaker 1 I was gonna say the zenith, but actually, I guess it's the nadir of Shyamalan's like arc, right? Like, this was, oh no, he's done, like, this is it.

Speaker 1 And then we get, we have the second era of him starting after this movie. Yeah,

Speaker 1 Do we think Will Smith is going to live to have another era where

Speaker 1 he gets another hot streak? He's only 57, unless you know something I don't.

Speaker 1 Well, he might just stop, you know, maybe a lot of people stop acting and become producers. Or just like, you know, he's an extremely wealthy dude.
His kids are grown up.

Speaker 1 Maybe he just doesn't do it again. I don't think that that's

Speaker 1 sometime he'll be in a Softy Brothers movie.

Speaker 3 It's hard to say because on one hand, he's four years removed from winning best actor on the other hand he hit chris brock in the face on the night he won that oscar could have killed him yeah

Speaker 1 and it's it could have killed him he hasn't had like

Speaker 1 the god i think that's funny every time

Speaker 3 you know most people win best actor and then like do a few movies right away and he did a bad boy sequel right

Speaker 1 I think they did King Richard. Chancellor.
That was who he won for. That was who he won for.
Oh,

Speaker 3 I'd have to assume that Emancipation was already in production.

Speaker 1 I thought that King Richard was the year after he the punch.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a punch slap.

Speaker 1 It was an open-hand.

Speaker 1 Before he fucking was biting Chris Rock, he would scratch his face.

Speaker 3 When he hit Chris Rock with a wrench,

Speaker 1 when he used his cutlass on him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I see 50 cutlasses. Him and Martin Lawrence pulled guns on Chris Rock.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they shot Chris Rock in Cuba at the end of a movie that should have ended 20 minutes ago. I see.

Speaker 3 Yes, right? I think that Will Smith has to be capable of

Speaker 3 another

Speaker 3 run.

Speaker 3 I don't think America is done with Will Smith. I think he is correct that he should probably chill for a minute here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 Or, I don't know, make three more Bad Boys movies.

Speaker 1 That's chill. Those are made for TV movies, as far as I'm concerned.
That's chilling.

Speaker 1 That's getting that TNT syndication money down the line.

Speaker 1 Yeah. My mom loves Bright.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 3 gross.

Speaker 1 Jesus. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I've heard that if done correctly, it could be the next Star Wars.

Speaker 3 I am seeing that Bad Boys 4 made $400 million.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 So maybe he's back

Speaker 3 to make a Bad Boys movie every two years.

Speaker 1 I think it's... I thought we were just like, yeah, I assume that he's just gone back to doing the sort of like

Speaker 1 crowd pleaser blockbuster stuff for a bit to rebuild some goodwill afternoon.

Speaker 3 You'd think if he were doing something.

Speaker 3 You know, Bad Boys 5, 4, whatever came out two years ago,

Speaker 3 two and a half almost. That if he were about to, if he were still working, that it would be out by now, or we'd be seeing trailers or something.

Speaker 1 This is from the BBC.

Speaker 1 Critics are sometimes told we shouldn't analyze Hollywood blockbusters. We should just switch our brains off and enjoy them.

Speaker 1 Well, not many films are as dependent on our brains being on standby as Bad Boys, Ride or Die.

Speaker 1 The plot is nonsensical, the grenade dodging stunts are even more nonsensical, and the internal logic is non-existent.

Speaker 1 The assertion that Marcus has to avoid stressful situations after his heart attack is forgotten within 30 seconds. But the film is fun enough.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, that's, again, that shit's ready to be shown on TNT right this second.

Speaker 3 I watched this movie and I could figure out when. I watched this movie like shortly after my daughter was born, but that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 There's a...

Speaker 3 Oh, I guess it does. It would have been released on digital platforms two days after she was born.

Speaker 1 Wow. The box office office section on Wikipedia has a racial breakdown, which I don't think I've ever seen before.

Speaker 1 Am I just like noticing?

Speaker 3 I've never seen stuff like this before.

Speaker 1 It says

Speaker 1 50% of the audience was under 35, 44% being black, 26% Hispanic and Latino, 18% Caucasian, 12% Asian slash other. That's very weird to need to know or to even have.

Speaker 3 Oh, they always have different racial.

Speaker 3 I remember there was a cop movie. I think it was called End of Watch, and it made a ton of money.

Speaker 3 And people were like, How did this happen? It wasn't tracking that well. And it eventually figured out that everyone who saw it was a Mexican living in Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 There's enough people in Los Angeles alone to make a movie a success?

Speaker 3 I mean, it wasn't that successful.

Speaker 3 It was like number one in the movie the weekend it came out.

Speaker 1 And it costs nothing. It costs 7 to 15 million.
Yeah, I guess I've just never seen it on the Wikipedia page, which is normally where I get box office stuff.

Speaker 3 The people whose job this is know a lot about who's seeing movies. We've gotten pretty far afield.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, do we have anything else to say about that? I have one more important note here because I need to know if anyone else's brain is bad like mine is.

Speaker 1 At 1:32.06 in the movie, for a split second, this is as they're pulling away from Earth on the spaceship, and Katai has his hands on Cypher's like chest and is like, you know, making sure he's okay.

Speaker 1 The music starts to swell, and I really thought that we were going to get a you can't always get what you want needle drop. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 I it like it does the beginning of the choir, you can't always get what you want, and then it changes, and it's not that. But I

Speaker 1 started laughing so hard just before

Speaker 1 important because in only a couple of minutes, we'll get the strangest laugh on film

Speaker 1 from Will Smith. Or maybe that was before this, maybe it was like right before this this when he wins or whatever.
It's so stupid to end this movie on a dumb joke.

Speaker 1 It's so weird. It plays so weird.
The moment we're going to be able to do it, well, the event came out last year, so you got to have a quip.

Speaker 1 God, that's actually really interesting. It's like this movie gets made two years later and it's completely different, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 My last movie. Yeah, this movie gets made two years later.
At one point, Will Smith would have said, Welcome to After Earth.

Speaker 1 All right, we're done with the podcast. Why didn't he suck up the loose juice from the breath disc?

Speaker 1 He just threw those away. There is juice in there still.

Speaker 3 I don't know that it works if you suck it.

Speaker 1 Also, he just had

Speaker 1 a bunch of people.

Speaker 1 Is the next one the visit? I believe it is. Or is I thought maybe split and glass came first.
Split is after. No.
Okay, so it's visit, then split, then glass.

Speaker 3 Is the M-Night Shamal on comeback vehicle?

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah. So I know nothing about the visit.
I hadn't even heard that this movie existed. I never heard the words the visit until we started doing this podcast and we put it on the list.

Speaker 1 So my best guess is that it's got to be a holiday movie.

Speaker 1 Okay, man. Because you got to like visit your parents for Christmas or Thanksgiving or something.
And so it's going to be like evil over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. We go.

Speaker 1 It's like that, but evil.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or like a killer in the woods. That's the wolf.

Speaker 1 The wolf is the killer? The killer is a wolf?

Speaker 1 In Little Red Riding Hood? I mean a man killer.

Speaker 1 No, no, that's not. Yeah, that's not.

Speaker 1 Wolves are man killers, but I mean a man who is a killer.

Speaker 2 Are we sure that the comeback movie is not the Devil Elevator one?

Speaker 1 That one came out before After Earth. Yeah, that came out the same year as last Airbound.
That came out in 2010 and was

Speaker 1 already reviled.

Speaker 2 okay i just remember that being the like trailer that i saw m night's name on again yeah that people were like oh this guy looks okay

Speaker 1 that was one it's one of the reasons why it it got his name took a hit it for at least like anecdotally to me a lot of people i remember being like yeah that new mnight shyyamalon movie with the evil hell elevators

Speaker 1 especially because there's another hell elevator movie that people kind of like

Speaker 1 What? Drag Me to Hell does not have an elevator. Are you sure?

Speaker 1 Yes. They don't do the dragging through an elevator.
No.

Speaker 1 There's an elevator scene, I think. Well, there you go.
Elevator.

Speaker 1 Elevator movie.

Speaker 3 And we're done. But yes, the visit is the comeback.

Speaker 1 I might be wrong about that. I might not have an elevator at all.

Speaker 1 Well, I got to find this out now. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Not now. Sorry, not now.
I I mean, in my life, I now have to know this. Who is in.
Do you have any idea who's in that movie? Oh, God. No clue.
It could be literally anybody.

Speaker 1 It could be Clint Eastwood.

Speaker 1 In

Speaker 1 the visit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I have no idea.
It could be.

Speaker 1 You know, I've been saying it over and over again. Maybe Kevin Costner.
Every time I think maybe. Has anyone seen this movie or know what it is? I really like this movie.

Speaker 3 I've seen this movie. I saw this movie theatrically.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 I think that everything that I know about this movie is actually what I know about

Speaker 2 a knock at the cabin or whatever.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.

Speaker 2 I think I know nothing about this.

Speaker 1 And no one knows who produced or who, what, who, uh, what the production companies were. Art probably does.

Speaker 3 I, I do, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I, I have, I have never heard of this movie in my life. I think of course one of the production companies is shot.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, right. Yeah.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 Don't say the other one because I do think knowing the other one is sort of like knowing an actor in it in that it will help you shape what the film is in your mind.

Speaker 1 I might say you know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 I think you're overestimated my knowledge about production companies. Maybe.
I think you know. Is it the horror movie one?

Speaker 1 I'll have to wait and see.

Speaker 2 With a C?

Speaker 1 Well, okay, tune-in flies.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 3 Now

Speaker 3 I want to know what's the C one.

Speaker 1 It's okay to say it in the UK, but with me in your family.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right. Okay, bye.
Bye. Bye.
Bye.