Ep.#446 - Kraven the Hunter

On this episode, we discuss Craven the Hunter.

No prey is too powerful for Craven.

In this movie, he kills an entire family of non-Spider-Man-related movies.

That's pretty good.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalen.

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Yeah, in honor of our founder, Maxwell Fun.

Maxwell Funker Bean of the Funky Winker Beans.

The name

was scrambled at Ellis Island.

Yeah.

So we're doing, what do we do here on this?

This is a podcast.

We watch a movie that has either the audiences or the critics rejected or both

and neither talk about it.

And of course, as we announced because of Max Fun Trive, we're doing our special theme month, which is No Spider-Man's.

Movies that do not feature any Spider-Man.

Featuring No Spider-Man.

Do we want to mention each of the movies that we'll be doing as part of this series?

Yeah, of course, there's Craven the Hunter, the one we're talking about now.

Venom, the Last Dance, and Heartbeats.

Heartbeats.

Classic Paul Schrader directed.

starring Andy Kaufman and Brunette Peters, and it fits the theme.

There's no Spider-Man in it.

Still one of the most baffling bits to me why it was decided that Hart Peeps was Paul Schrader.

This is one of my favorite tours.

It's all going to make sense when we watch our games.

It'll be, oh, yeah, look for that listener.

A perfect payoff to some block shows.

It's going to turn out Hart Peeps is about a robot who falls in love and keeps a journal and kills somebody or tries to kill somebody at some point.

Drap some bombs to him.

To save the environment.

Yeah, to save the movie does.

As happens in every Paul Schrader movie.

Well, one I can think of.

This is a movie, of course, particularly notable for its lack of Spider-Man.

It's part of Sony's, hey, we don't have the rights to Spider-Man per se universe.

And so, yeah, they've been trying to make all this happen.

But they do, they own a lot of names and some kind of like vague relationships.

Rumors of a Spider-Man.

So Sony has the rights to the Spider-Man family of characters.

Characters who fall under it, but they have made an agreement with Marvel, or with Disney, rather, that Spider-Man himself would appear in the Marvel cinematic universe.

What does that mean?

It means they got to create their own universe of all these other characters whose only reason for existing in the comics is because they fight Spider-Man.

And they also have to flip them all into...

you know, at least anti-heroes.

Yeah, evil protectors.

And they were, the original plan, I don't know when they dropped this plan, was to make a Sinister Six movie where these characters would all kind of come together.

But again, the Sinister Six is a team that only exists to kill Spider-Man.

That's all that they do.

I mean, I would argue every single one of these characters is defined by their relationship to Spider-Man and are made more interesting by that.

And when removing a Spider-Man, they become kind of bland.

It's like if you're...

With the exception of Madam Webb, which is a perfect movie.

Which is, yeah, which is wonderful.

And

doesn't in any way feel like it's missing a connection to Spider-Man.

Spider-Man also

even though Spider-Man is a theme because Spider-Man's in there because in the movie because in the movie because Peter Parker is born in that movie

To remove a Spider-Man sounds like a lost Harper Lee album

No, it's I was I was gonna try to come up with another example of like how you could try to remove the central most essential character from a world and then try to make something around it and I feel like there's some there's some places you can do it Star Wars at one point you're able to do that Yeah, you just yank Godot onto that bitch and it's gonna be tons of fun

so you do the Vladimir movie the Etragan or Estragon movie you do the Pozzo movie and then they all come together finally in the waiting for Godot movie yeah that makes sense like how did Pozzo get that servant who only who has talks and those weird speeches we don't know I don't remember his name the character but uh so uh I believe that Stuart, you'll be doing

the summary day for Craven the Hunter.

First, should we talk at all about our relationship to the character of Craven the Hunter?

Did you?

I was going to ask you to do this.

Okay.

So

as I mentioned in a most likely deleted

pre-show bit,

my relationship with Craven is mainly like I was a big Spider-Man fan, not as big as Elliot, obviously.

Not as well.

But I've read all the Sinister Six stuff.

I read a bunch of his various appearances,

including Craven's Last Hunt, which is kind of like is one of the great Spider-Man stories.

Yes.

In my opinion.

And

which I was looking up, and apparently it started its life not a Spider-Man story.

It started out as a Wonder Man story, which is kind of funny.

Well, even before that,

originally it was pitched as a Batman story to DC

by the writer of it,

JM Demateus, I think was the writer of it.

And then he brought it over and made it a Spider-Man Craven story, but it's so good that you kind of wonder how it could be a story for any other character

because it fits so well into the Spider-Man themes and the Kraven themes.

Here's the thing, though.

I would call Craven's Last Hunt perhaps the one great Kraven story.

And if you were being a real stickler, maybe the one good Kraven story,

which is not fair.

Since then, there have been a couple of good Kraven stories.

There was one called The Grim Hunt

for

years ago that I actually enjoyed a lot.

And Kraven, for a little while, became a supporting character in the Squirrel Girl comic, where he was like a more positive version of himself.

But up until Craven's Last Hunt

probably fit as a lead in a movie better than what we what we get squirrel girl or that no i mean like a that version of craven like a more positive like slightly silly slightly i'm assuming yeah he's a slightly silly he's still craven but he cares about the about the environment and that's where he and squirrel girl you know have a share a share a common bond he can't he can't stop craven but i would say until yeah he's crazy he loves white castle he's always getting those craves was there a movie tie-in call up matt singer was there a movie tie-in with white castle for this thing i don't think so yeah

they had it was a crave sack at 10, and

each one had a different animal's meat in the

birds.

I love that.

If there's any particular Dan fans out there who are dismayed by how little I've been talking, I'm just letting these two run because

they're trying to work themselves out.

Here's the way the last thing I want to say about Craven.

Until Craven's last hunt, he's a pretty, in my opinion at least, he's a pretty mediocre character.

The idea of this big game hunter, he's the kind of guy who goes out and captures animals, and he's always looking for the biggest thing.

He's a really cool wrestler,

And he's a silly character, even in his earliest appearances, I think, is kind of a silly character.

And the idea, I'm just kind of baffled by which Spider-Man characters they chose for these movies because it feels like, except for Venom, who is who is hugely popular, it feels like they kind of went out of their way at times to pick characters who they could graft onto pre-existing story formats rather than characters that had a lot of name recognition or a big fan base or even were cool characters.

You know, I've missed me.

I've never found Craven a cool character, partly because of his clothes.

He wears these funny, tight capri pants and these little slip-on shoes, and he has a vest that seems to be made out of a lion's face, which I don't know how you do that.

But Stuart,

it's very cool.

He looks like a wrestler.

He does look like a wrestler.

Now, before

there, there's one other Craven story I do want to talk about.

Yeah, Dan?

Oh, no, no.

I thought you were, no, I didn't know if you were leaving this topic at all because I wanted to say my relationship to the character

as I was queried.

And it is that I read the Wikipedia plot summary of Craven's last dance when I discovered that Craven's last dance.

Craven's Last Dance.

Mary Craven's Last Dance.

No, when I

learned that this was going to be a character that a movie was going to be made out about, I was like, okay, what's the deal with this Craven?

And that's...

That's the main thing that got referenced.

So I was like, okay.

Whoa, he unalives himself because he killed Spider-Man, he thinks?

the thing is Craven's Last Hunt is the this thing the the defining moment for this character spoilers for the comic storyline the 40-year-old storyline Craven's last hunt the defining moment for this character is when he kills himself having succeeded in defeating Spider-Man, he thinks in his mind so that it's always a problem when your super villain turned anti-hero's defining moment in the comics is when he takes his own life rather than like does a cool thing, you know, or does something impressive, you know?

So well, that shows, you know, courage of his convictions.

Now,

but then for me, and then for me, like, I didn't initially,

you know, I didn't initially get to Craven's Last Hunt.

My first,

you know, I'd been exposed to Craven before, but also it was the...

In a public bathroom, yeah.

Yes.

It was the Spider-Man, the new Todd McFarlane Spider-Man series.

The first arc, the torment arc with Calypso.

Introduces Calypso and also introduces like moments of visions of Craven as like a zombie guy.

So Calypso was a pre-existing character before that storyline, but so little had been done with her, I feel like, that Todd McFarlane kind of made her his own in that.

But that's the one where like the lizard becomes a servant of Calypso, right?

And all that.

Okay.

I don't remember being like particularly good, but it was like, you know, it's classic McFarlane.

There's webs all over everything.

Yeah, Spider-Man's constantly contorting himself.

Let's move into discussion of the movie, a thing that I know something about.

Yeah, Yeah, let's go back to the corner.

Sure, sure.

So wait, wait, I just want to say, if people think, oh, Elliot's going to dump on this because he hates Craven the way he hates Morbius, no, no, no.

Craven was never one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but he was never so far down at the bottom as Morbius or, as I've mentioned, my least favorite Spider-Man villain, Molten Man.

Continue.

But, Elliot, at the end of the episode, I'm going to have to ask you...

Definitive ranking?

No, I was going to...

We're doing definitive ranking after Venom, I'd imagine.

But I was going to say, think of any Spider-Man Rogues Gallery characters who would make good solo movie non-Spider-Man related.

I'm going to try to think about it.

That's a tough one.

That's a hard one.

So movie begins.

We have a bunch of logos.

The movie opens in a, with a prison transport truck driving through Siberia, going heading to an isolated prison.

Stowed aboard this truck.

In disguise is our hero.

Craven the Hunter.

He gets taken into the prison.

He meets his new roommate, who's a large man who seems to suffer from some kind of deformity, which I'm not always happy with that it's constantly like, hey, isn't the joke is the guy's got some deformity.

So he's...

He's supposed to look like a big threatening guy.

Yes.

He picks a fight with some gangsters in order for them to

take him to their leader, who the lead gangsters is like arms dealer operating out of the prison.

Turns out he reveals.

That was his plan all along.

He wanted to be captured because he's a hunter, and he kills this gangster, like Rorschach style.

doesn't kill him Rorschach style, but you know, the locked up thing here with me sort of thing.

Yeah.

So he kills this gangster with a tooth from a tiger carpet, a tiger fur carpet.

And then he had foolishly been allowed to keep in his jail cell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I feel like the guy is basically, he's one of those like criminal masterminds who is in prison more for the protection of being in prison and less as a impediment.

Yeah, I can see that.

I can see that.

So he kills this guy and then he escapes using superhuman parkour skills.

Now, Elliot,

as I said, I was not a Craven connoisseur.

I did not know anything about this gentleman other than presumably he hunted.

Yep, as said in the title,

tracking down information online.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

In the comics, it's not like Craven has these animal powers.

He has a serum that gives him strength, basically.

And he has kind of like he has kind of like potions and like, you know, he knows the secret, secrets of the jungle that can enhance your, your abilities in some way.

There's always like Matt, there's always like kind of berries or herbs you can take in comic books that make you a slightly tougher person.

But the idea that he could, there are parts of this movie where he is essentially just running along sheer walls

as if gravity doesn't affect him.

And like

and not being damaged at all.

And yeah, and the fact that he gets that, he gets so knocked around in this movie and it doesn't hurt him at all.

And that is not the Kraven I know.

And also he has super zoom vision, which I don't believe Kraven has.

I don't remember that.

And his eyeballs become like lion eyeballs.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

So there's a, in this movie, he is clearly the product of an unholy combination of some kind of voodoo and also lion blood, as we'll see later.

And so that gives him the amazing powers to do with superhuman things.

But in the comics, he's one of these many characters who is, the serums they take put him at peak human condition, like Captain America, you know, or something like that, as opposed to the man with the power of the animals.

That would be Animal Man, a DC character.

Yeah.

Although most, you know, peak humans I know get crushed under like rubble before.

Most of them, when they're when they're exploded, it hurts them.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like he, in this movie, he's presented as basically like a slightly tougher than Captain America type character.

Yes, yeah.

Okay.

So he escapes using these super abilities.

He runs off into a giant snowstorm.

He faces down a really cool CGI wolf.

And then he boards a waiting cargo plane that is piloted by a pilot friend who we never really see ever again.

And I mean,

I don't know if there's a race.

Yeah.

He just has like a pilot on call.

And I think this is supposed to be making him seem like kind of a cool.

James Bondi type who has like a network of support people or something, or just a pilot that he can talk to regularly, but nothing is made of this character.

I don't know if this is a character loosely based on any one of the comics the way that a lot of the others are.

It just seems like an easy way for him to get around is he just Indiana Jones style has a friend for the plane.

He can like pop around the world

at will.

Like Orville Redenbacher, he's popping around the world.

He is.

That's not the only thing we're going to do.

Okay, so

guys, you know what time it is?

It was originally called Craven the Popcorn.

Yeah.

What time is it?

For a little bit of a flashback.

Now,

this is a long movie.

There's like, it's over two hours.

It's over two hours long but similar to its lead actor there is not an ounce of fat on this thing

i think that is nice

aaron taylor johnson

up to make but aaron taylor johnson is sliced up he is shredded For a guy who's described as nature's perfect predator, I'm like, if this guy has any sugar, it will fuck him off.

You have to imagine, if he was lost in the woods or the jungle and did not have access to food, he would die.

Like he has no, his body has no stores of energy.

He needs to eat like seven little protein-packed meals a day.

He has to like have a meal at 4 a.m.

Just to survive.

Just to keep going.

He's like a little baby.

When little babies, they literally can't hold enough food in their body to last through the night.

That's

which is,

you know, speaking of Aaron Taylor Johnson, that was one of the fun jokes in The Fall Guy when Ryan Gosling is making jokes about how this guy is too skinny.

He needs to eat carbs.

Your body needs glucose to survive, et cetera.

Okay, so flashback 16 years,

we meet Sergei and Dmitry Kravenoff,

two brothers, well, half-brothers, who are attending

an American prep school.

They are taken out of school because their mother has died.

She's committed suicide.

Now,

I want to ask you a question here and whether you guys had the same experience I did, because they're informed that their mother

died by their father,

Russell Crowe, and Nikolai Kravenoff and his late career.

Russell Crowe playing Nikolai Kravenoff, not Russell Crowe as himself.

His late career extravagant accent period that he's in, that we all love.

Yes.

Elevates every scene.

He's in.

No question.

Done to my head.

I'd be like, he's the best thing in this movie.

He is self-evidently like a super villain.

So him just like appearing and telling that his wife is dead.

Like, were you set up for like some kind of reveal?

Either that he is like lying about

that and she's still alive and he's just doing this to like cart the kids away or like that there was something really insidious going on with the mom rather than like

it seems like maybe she was killed by him, but also maybe it's just true that that's what happened.

I don't know.

I think maybe I was just so happy to see Russell Crowe show up that I'm like, anything.

I'm just taking it.

I just feel like I had these extra

beautiful

payoff for that.

Yeah, I think it was just supposed to be a tragic backstory.

I think that I had a different feeling where later on I thought it was going to be, I thought that Russell Crowe would be involved in a bigger twist than he was.

There's a minimal twist, but I thought he was going to be involved in a much bigger twist.

Squanderer, kind of Ussell Crowe.

He does, he does, he is evil right off the bat.

Everything about his is evil.

I thought you were going to say, kind of German.

Did you have the same experience I had where I could not quite figure out how Russian or how American these characters were supposed to be because their accents were a little malleable at times.

And

for much of it, Aaron Taylor Johnson is doing the same kind of like

mumbly, cool guy,

vaguely New Yorky, vaguely Marlon Brando-y voice that like a lot of guys, especially after watching this right after Venom the Last Dance, where with each movie, Tom Hardy's voice has gotten more cartoonish as Eddie Brock.

I was like, oh, okay, he's doing a similar kind of voice.

Having watched these two, this movie very close to Venom 3,

it's not good for Aaron Taylor Johnson because Tom Hardy is so much more fun in that movie.

I feel like Tom Hardy has nothing to prove anymore in the Venom movie.

So he's just like, whatever, I'm a slob.

I'm walking around.

I'm mumbling.

I'm crazy.

Whereas Aaron Taylor Johnson has to get across that he's cool in this, which is hard to do when you're craven.

An uncool character.

An uncool character.

So yes.

So these two, these two boys are the sons of a Russian oligarch gangster who lives

who lives in a mansion in London, outside of London.

Their dad picks them up and he's like, you know what, your mom's dead.

It's time for you guys to reconnect with nature.

Let's go on a hunting trip to Ghana.

So they go to Ghana because there has been reports of a legendary lion named Czar.

And they go, this lion has killed two to 3,000 men over the years.

It's like, no way.

I am possible.

I know.

I'm like, no way.

The way they said it, I thought it was like, it sounded like the subtitles were wrong.

I'm like, it can't be thousands.

That's not, there's no way that's possible.

This lion is the most prolific serial killer known to man.

Yeah, he's the real suspect zero.

Unless this lion is rounding people up into concentration camps.

There's no way he's killing that many people.

Both the ghost and the darkness.

Oh, wow.

He's a man killer.

How many has he killed?

3,000.

What?

Okay, so this hunting

country.

This hunting trip.

Like, the other lions are like, damn.

Like, I feel like

young lions are like, I have to live up to this guy.

The pressure is enormous.

This is unrealistic expectations.

Getting all us other lions a bad name.

I'm cool, man.

Teach me, dude.

Okay, so.

Yeah, so this lion went through a small town and just murdered everybody in it.

Really?

And no one tried to stop him at any point?

No, couldn't do it.

Too good a lion.

He's just doing

a lion.

Lions are known for their jumping.

Just like creation.

So

this hunting trip, it's, you know, there's a bunch of other guys along.

There's

also a guide.

There's a native guide who adds a little bit of flavor to the specifics of their hunt.

And there's also another, a young gangster who seems to be struggling with some kind of like asthma stuff, who we will later know is known as the rhino.

Yeah.

But also,

this is Alessandro Zebola, who I thought was pretty fun in this movie.

He was the most fun.

He was pretty fun.

Yeah.

Russell Russell Crowe, though, dismisses him so heartily that I'm like, no, man, you're creating an Iron Man 3 villain right now.

Or a classic situation.

Or an Oppenheimer villain.

All these guys in movies

have such poor self-esteem that one negative comment turns them into

villains.

Which I would think that

they got to become the joker.

And I would think that was crazy, except that our president and the shadow president behind him are basically the same guy.

Like one insult so wrecked them that they were like, well, now I have to hurt everybody.

This is terrible.

Okay, so yeah, as we said, Rhino makes overtures to join with

Nikolai Kravenoff, but he is rebuffed and humiliated verbally.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, quietly.

I don't think anyone else heard it.

Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like everyone's listening, you know.

Okay.

Meanwhile, on a

near nearby, we are introduced to a young girl named Calypso who's visiting her grandmother.

Her grandmother is some kind of magic.

And she introduces her.

Everyone's grandmother is some kind of magic steward, to be honest.

She introduces her to the magic of tarot cards

and then some kind of old family secret potion.

Yeah.

Unspecified.

Just a magic potion that will maybe help somebody, bring them back to life.

I don't know.

Give them animal powers.

They read the tarot cards and it basically explains what's going to happen over the course of the next rest of the movie.

There is a lion attack.

Sergei and Dimitri find Zar and Sergei almost seems to be cowing Zar with his natural what Riz.

And then

his dad blasts the lion with a shotgun and the lion attacks Sergei and drags him off bleeding into the underbrush.

Calypso sneaks away from her parents who are on Safari and

she finds the lion and Sergei.

The lion is bleeding into Sergei's wounds.

Oh, that's how it happened.

And then the lion leaves, and then she gives him a taste of this magic potion and puts the tarot card for strength, which features a fucking lion in his hand.

Now, things look bad for Sergei.

Yeah.

Things look bad for Sergei.

They take him to a nearby hospital.

He's pronounced dead, but then he almost immediately revives.

But I think they say he was dead

for three minutes, much like the three days that your lord was dead before reviving.

Not mine.

Your name is?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Dan's maybe.

Dan's family's Lord.

My Lord Crom of the Mountains.

Crumb gives you only the strength to get to survive, and that's all.

So do you guys think this was on purpose that they're making Craven into kind of a Christ parable?

And a parallel and they're saying that Christ should track down Russian oligarchs.

He's got like all beard and cool hair.

And you know that Christ is ripped too because he didn't get a lot of food.

He was also pretty skinny, but like, you knew there were muscles coming through, right?

I've been to some churches in Bay Ridge and he is looking fucking tight.

I mean, the one difference is...

How much do you think he benches?

How much do you think Christ benches?

Oh, man, at least 315.

The one difference is so.

When people say, Could God make us a rock so heavy even God couldn't lift it?

He probably can't.

Just a little theological, a little theological

teachings here.

Like the one difference is once Christ was risen, he didn't make a list of people he then had to kill to win around LMA.

Didn't he wear Pontius Pilate today?

Answer me that.

Not walking around.

He got a blow dart to the neck.

Okay, so

let's see.

His dad takes him back home to London

where they have a confrontation, and Sergei gets mad.

And we see his father has given him the gift of Czar the Lion's head,

which is stuffed and mounted.

He doesn't want it.

He doesn't want to be part of this family.

So in the middle of the night, he runs off, leaving his brother Dimitri, who's a little bit weaker, but has a knack for doing impressions, leaves him at some mercies of his dad and runs off.

Let's talk about this moment.

Dimitri is very much the Fredo brother.

You know, he's the weaker one.

He's the half-brother

who is the product of an affair.

The father doesn't respect him.

He can imitate anyone's voice.

Which is also like,

that is like the laziest, shittiest fucking writing to make the half-brother just like weaker.

Yes.

I think that kind of like eugenics weird garbage.

But here's the thing.

He can imitate anyone's voice perfectly because they're just playing the audio from someone else's voice when he lip-syncs it.

But they go, you always were a chameleon.

Now, guys, are chameleons known for their mimicry of voices and sounds?

I mean, parrots are, but I don't really think of chameleons as being voice mimics, you know?

What do you think, Dan?

Have you...

Do you have any experience with chameleons?

I don't understand it as a metaphor.

Like, you can blend in.

It only exists because that character eventually becomes the, he eventually becomes the Spider-Man villain, the chameleon.

But the idea that he can do anyone's voice, and they're like, what a chameleon.

That's not the word you would use.

I guess, yeah, no, he wouldn't really like, it doesn't indicate that you're fitting in and people think that you're a person just because you knew the voice.

Good impression, dude.

To pull the curtain, pull the curtain back a little bit.

Years ago, I was potentially being set up with a young woman to go on a date.

So

I looked at her MySpace page to prepare.

I don't know, you know, to look at her bio.

Yeah, Cyberstock, yeah.

She, yeah, of course.

Cyberstocking hadn't been invented yet.

This is

only silk stockings had been invented.

Yeah, that's true.

So, but

under her bio, she was describing herself.

And one of the things

it was like a questionnaire.

And one of the questions was, like, what kind of animal would you say you are?

And she said, I would say I'm a cami lion.

And it took me like 10 minutes to realize she was trying to say chameleon.

We did not go on a date.

I just couldn't.

Yeah.

You thought she meant a lion that was dressed like Cammie from Street Fighter?

Which I'd be like, yes, sign me up.

Which I meant.

So this character, Dimitri, is, spoiler alert, he will become by the end of the movie, the chameleon, a different Spider-Man villain.

These are two characters that were always kind of linked in the comic books, but it wasn't many years after they were introduced that it was revealed that they were actually half-brothers.

So this is from the comics, they're half-brothers.

It continues the theme of animal characters in this movie.

Everybody's got an animal inside them, as the rhino later explains.

Everyone Everyone has two animals inside of them.

A rhino, a chameleon, and a lion.

I guess that's three.

Yep, those are the three animals.

So Sergei runs off.

He boards a steamship to Russia, and he runs off to live on the land that his mother owned, I guess,

in like eastern Russia, which is basically like an untouched wilderness filled with one giant herd of wildebeests and a couple of like snow leopards.

I think they're like, they're like oxen or something like that, or mustaches.

I don't know if they're wildebeests, but.

Okay, well, I mean, hey, listeners, write in if you know what they are.

Dan McCoy, Real Street address to come.

Right when they are to KT Hunter.

Yeah.

That's the special Max Fun Stretch Goals.

Dan shares you with his

address.

How about just some feet pictures?

Oh, man.

Okay, so he.

More privacy in it.

So young Craven goes off to the woods.

There's like a little training montage where he learns about his superhuman abilities that he has gained from lion blood and magic potion.

And then he goes and starts killing poachers.

What?

Now,

he does a leap in this, and it really showed to me a kind of, there's a lot of leaps in this movie where it's very clearly wire work, where they've erased the wires.

That's okay.

I don't expect them to literally launch someone into the air or to, or for him to have to climb up a tree.

Or for him to learn how to jump that high.

Or for him to learn how to jump across a crevasse.

But when he jumps, and this is something they do in a lot of these movies, you don't don't see like his legs bend and then push off.

Instead, he just kind of lifts into the air while his legs are still pinwheeling as if he's running.

And it looks very silly.

And I realized, like, oh, they do this a lot in movies, and it looks particularly silly here.

This is not how a jump works, you know?

It's not like you're just running in the air, you know.

I mean, I wonder if that's part of the way that the like stunt effects work or the way that like, I don't know.

But you're right.

I mean, it doesn't work.

It's possible.

It's possible.

It looks silly, but maybe that's the safest way to do it.

In which case, do it that way.

Do it the silly way if it's safe.

Yeah.

But it But it looks more like he's being jerked into the air by a wire than it is that he's jumping under his own power.

Yeah, yeah, that he has made some kind of contract with Aeolis, the lord of the winds, and those winds lift him off the ground.

Exactly.

Okay, so years later.

He is still doing the same shit.

He's living in the woods, killing poachers, and he's looking at that tarot card with a line on it.

Go on, Dan.

Now,

the words years later roused me from my slumber to make a point that I wanted to.

Yeah, because Dan sleeps in Relea at his house, dreaming for the moment that someone says years later, yeah.

Now, this whole opening sequence,

this like long flashback.

Do we need it?

The answer is no, Dana.

Absolutely not.

No.

Yeah, we don't need it.

And arguably, like, I don't know how you guys feel about this.

Arguably, I feel like if you're going to have it, which I would not recommend keeping it.

If you're going to have it, arguably for me, I'm so sick of the cold open in a lot of movies where like, we have to show you what it's going to be like eventually.

Cause in a way, when things slow down for a bit, I'm like, why can't we just go back to that exciting thing I just saw?

Why are we suddenly like hitting the brakes?

I almost, if you're going to have it, like would prefer a shorter version that just starts with the him as kids and we just do it that way.

Or the best option, again, cutting it.

And if we need any of this information, it can be smaller flashbacks scattered in the movie.

Well, Dan, you texted something to us while you were watching it, which was that you said the biggest mistake the movie made was that it acted like it's supposed to be a serious movie and it wants us to take it seriously.

And I think that's exactly they're telling this like it's a serious story about fathers and sons and

fathers, sons being Jewish,

being a rhino.

Being a rhino, exactly.

And it shouldn't be.

It's a story about a superpowered poacher, a superpowered hunter who fights poachers and wears a lion's head vest.

And so it should be kind of silly.

And the movie is at its most fun,

kind of the sillier it gets.

But you're right.

They spend a lot of time trying to build up his character so you're going to care about Craven the hunter.

And it's like,

it should not be working at that level.

It should be working on a much more surface fun level, probably.

Yeah, by the end, like

at the moment, there's a part where like a literal rhino man is fighting him in a stampede.

I'm like, yes, finally something

feels like it should be in this movie.

I was waiting for that.

We'll have some some issues with that one.

We'll talk about that scene when we get to it.

Okay, so

Craven, now all grown up and looking hot,

heads back to London where he tracks down Calypso and

they reunite.

Played by the second Academy Award winner in the movie, Ariana Habose.

So there's two Academy Award winners in this movie, which is also silly.

I don't like being hard on actors.

I've liked her in other things.

I find her performance here very strange.

My guess is that this was not a role.

I mean, her role barely exists in this movie.

They don't give her much to do.

And who knows, maybe there was such a focus on the action stuff in the filmmaking that she wasn't getting the support she deserves.

I don't know.

This movie is directed by JC Chandor, who also did Margin Call, which I think is a great movie.

And All Is Lost, which is an interesting movie, too.

And it's just a very...

It's a very weird...

It's a weird choice.

It's a weird choice to have him doing this because it feels like the movie is fighting between between who's in control,

him or the idea of a superpowered hunter.

And so I think Arnon DeBosa's character kind of gets lost in the whole thing.

I mean,

in Wikipedia, it describes her as a voodoo priestess who aids Craven.

No, she's not.

She's a lawyer who works at a high-class London law firm and helps him track down people.

At one point, she uses a bow and arrow, but like, it would be more fun if she was a voodoo priestess.

She dabbled in having a potion once when she was a kid.

You have one potion, suddenly you're a voodoo priestess, you know.

Don't worry, we'll see that voodoo potion again.

Um, so he also has another reason for going back to London, and that's because it's his brother Dimitri's birthday.

So, he uh, he parkours up the side of his uh brother's apartment building.

You know, like a fish, like using his fish powers.

Uh, they reunite, they go out in the town.

Now, his brother, at this point, grown up, is played by, what, Fred Hetchinger?

Hetching, I don't know,

Is that a great run?

You know, he was in White Lotus.

He was the adopt grandson in Thelma.

He was one of the two twin emperors in Gladiator 2.

Yeah, he's just killing it right now.

And in this one, he gets to, you know,

borrow people's voices for a little while as the chameleon.

And he basically...

Does he own or run this nightclub or he just performs there?

He performs at a nightclub where he sings in the style of other singers.

Yes.

I think he he owns it.

Yeah.

I would imagine.

It's like his nightclub that his dad hits out at.

Because that's what you want when you run your own nightclub is your dad there all the time.

And for you to be the only performer who has to do multiple shows a night, I guess.

But I guess maybe that's the fun of it.

You know, he was there for the performing.

He's not that interested in whether the nightclub operates.

perfectly well, you know?

Around now, Rhino starts to make some moves.

He's taking advantage of the

gangster that Craven killed back in the prison, and he starts consolidating power.

And then he makes a play to try and take out Nikolai Kravenoff at that nightclub.

Doesn't work.

Nikolai Kravenoff is a tough old bear.

Not literally.

You'd be a big plot point.

You'd be mistaken if you could understand it.

I mean, he does have a run-in with the big old bear later.

So maybe he was a big old bear, it'd be better for him.

Yeah.

So, yeah,

he's making a play.

He's making moves.

And

then after after Dimitri and Sergei celebrate his birthday, Sergei has to go sleep out in a park because he just can't handle being cooped up inside an apartment building.

Guys, I got to admit, I spaced out for a minute when bears were being mentioned to think about the country bears.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is Kraven killing them?

Well,

you said that there was a bear, and I thought, a country bear, but I didn't say it.

But then I got onto the thought of country bears, and I was like, man, if country bears had been a hit, 100% the sequel would be called City Bears, right?

It would be Fish Out of Water Bear stuff.

Oh, my God.

That's.

Like, we got to revive the

franchise just so it can get a lot of fun.

Do we, Dan, slap a TM on that bad boy so we don't see it?

So we can take advantage of this.

I mean, there's so many more you can do.

City Bears, Jungle Bears, Underwater Bears.

You could do all sorts of, you send them anywhere, and it's good.

Mountain Bears, Space Bears.

There are bears in space, but you know, but the saying, it's perfect.

It's perfect for anyone.

Yeah, sure.

And it's fun that you you bring up Country Bears because that's a movie that we talked about during the Max Fun Drive.

We did a commentary during the

Max Fun Drive a little bit ago.

Elliot, you were saying something about the Max Fun Drive at the start of the episode.

I was.

This is a great time to take a break from all this action, all this Russian gangster animal action, to talk about the Max Fun Drive.

What's the Max Fun Drive?

I'm so glad you asked.

It's the one time of year when we come to you hat in hand and invite you to support our show by becoming a Max Fun member or boosting or upgrading your membership.

Membership support is key to keeping our show alive.

It's the single greatest source of funding we have, and it allows us to keep putting out episodes week after week after week.

Not only that, because we have your support backing us up, we don't have to go after alternative funding methods that might force us to compromise the show either creatively or fracking.

Morally.

Yeah, fracking, exactly.

Your support means that we can say no to sponsors with businesses we aren't cool with.

For instance, without your support, this show will be brought to you by companies like National Napalm, Consolidated Kid Poison, and the American Heroin Corporation.

Thanks to your membership, we don't have to do that.

We can stay anti-heroin and anti-poisoning kids.

Your support keeps our show independent, which allows us to put out the show we love making and that you love listening to, we hope.

So will you please, please join us as a Max Fund member?

Please, you can do that by either joining as a new member or if you're already a member, upgrading or boosting your existing membership.

If you join at the $5 per month level, that's the cost of one comic book nowadays, you get access to an entire library of bonus content for all Max Fun shows, such as the aforementioned Country Bears audio commentary that we recorded.

That is dozens of hours at least of flophouse content alone.

And that's just part of hundreds of hours of exclusive entertainment across the Max Fun universe, the MFMCU, the Max Fun

more

content universe.

Oh, great.

You got it.

You landed that point.

Yeah, we did it.

And I may talk about more about, I think, about our specific bonus content later in the show.

But I just wanted to keep saying that if you are already a member, you can upgrade your membership and you get.

physical thank you gifts not just bonus content which is more stuff for your ears but physical stuff at the ten dollar a month level this year we're doing enamel pins again i always love it when we do pins i love our pin this year it's got mads mickelson on it and it says mad about mads just one of our longtime mottos and there are even more gifts at higher levels if you can't afford to upgrade your membership right now, but you still want to kick us a little extra, like a little podcasting tip that you just throw in the cup at the end, that'd be super cool too.

You can boost your monthly payment by a few extra dollars or whatever you feel our show is worth.

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Go right now to maximumfund.org/slash join and please become a member or upgrade or boost your membership today.

We'd really appreciate it.

I'll be back later in the show to talk more about Max Fun stuff.

But for now, let's get back to the story of the Kraven Brothers, the brothers Kravenovosnov.

And the brothers Karas Gravenov.

And we're at the chapter titled Rhino Makes a Move.

So as I said, on ITV, Rhino Makes a Move.

He consolidates power.

He tries to kill Nikolai Kravenov.

And he also enlists the aid of a superhuman assassin called The Foreigner, played by Christopher Abbott, which I was very excited by.

I was hoping this meant he was going to be abused by a woman in a hotel room over and over, since that seems to be his specialty these days.

Oh, see, I know him best still as Marnie's ex-boyfriend from girls.

So it's very funny to see him.

I think the movies I could introduce you to.

I know one of the movies you're talking about.

What's the other one?

Or ones.

What was the one that was based on like a Murakami book?

Where he's...

I don't know.

That one was fun.

He was in that one that was like, is this like role-playing or not?

Right?

Yeah, Margaret Kwally.

Yeah, what what was that called?

Sanctuary?

Okay.

Yeah.

I saw him in possessor.

And I saw him in like he's great in possessor.

Yeah.

And he's a funny one.

That's a fun one.

It's a real one.

This is fun.

Yeah, that's cool.

He's just a good weird.

Like, if you need a weird dude, and I think he brings the goods in this movie, he's a weird dude in this movie.

He is a weird dude in this one.

He is a weird.

And so the foreigner in the comics is just another one of these guys who's just like, he's the greatest assassin of all.

He's the greatest martial arts expert.

Oh, yeah.

He's great in poor things as the like like weird husband at the end.

Oh, I forgot that was him.

That's right.

But the,

he's a, but the foreigner in this movie has some sort of strange superpower where he kind of starts counting.

Piercing is the, is the movie where he also gets beat up.

I, I can't, I can't quickly figure out, and maybe you guys could figure it out.

Is his power that he can then move faster than time, or is it that he puts someone in a trance and they don't notice him moving?

I think it's the trance thing because otherwise, like, what's the one, two, three?

Like, they seem to be like getting like queasy queasy or whatever so i think that it's we're kind of seeing it from their perspective and it seems like he can move fast because they black out kind of la doesn't he have this superpower in the comic books the foreigner he does not know this is one of several characters in the movie who are or in the marvel movies in general who are very loosely based on the characters whose names they supposedly

thought the foreigner was jackie chan right yeah i think you're right he was bedeviling pierce prosnien no the foreigner wants to know what love is and he wants you to show it oh that's right oh

i got in trouble last time I showed it.

Not like that.

No.

Okay.

So, and also Rhino makes the play.

He has his guys go and break into Dimitri's flat and they capture Dimitri.

They were hoping to capture Sergei, we later learned, but Sergei was

sleeping in the park.

Sleeping in the park, yeah.

So we get a little action sequence where Craven is chasing after his brother and these goons in a van.

I like like this sequence.

I got to say, like,

you know, you got to find the wheat and the chaff or whatever.

And I thought this sequence was kind of genuinely exciting.

And maybe it's because it's the first time in the movie that I feel actual like

urgent stakes for anything.

Because before that, like, yeah, I hate illegal poachers.

So it's kind of fun getting them all like murder fied by Craven, but it doesn't have the same sort of like personal investment or like reason and reason like Craven might be worried about something.

And this is the first time that we see an action sequence where Craven does not handily just destroy everybody with no challenge.

Don't worry, Ella, there's going to be more of those later.

That's true.

Yeah, oh, thank goodness.

But this is one where Craven is on the back foot and he is at a disadvantage, even if he can absorb unlimited hit points of damage.

And at times, it seems like the car that he's chasing stops for a couple seconds so that he can catch up to it.

But overall, he has a disadvantage here, and it's a fun chase for sure.

Yeah, he's got super armor every time he jumps.

Okay.

So he they managed to get away after dragging him through the river in a with a helicopter.

Yeah, he made the odd choice in my mind to like use that netting to try and pull the helicopter back rather than climb up the helicopter.

I also wondered why he didn't climb up the helicopter.

He was in the moment.

He was all caught up.

Do all helicopters, it seems like they only do two things, which is they fly up in the air and they all have a beeping thing that goes off when the bad guys are being chased by a good guy.

And as soon as that net hits the helicopter, immediately there's that like beep, beep, beep, beep.

Oh, we got a net alert here.

The whole helicopter alarm is flashing.

Thank God, Thomas T.

Helicopter.

Or else we wouldn't know that Craven was chasing us.

Yeah.

Crazy coincidence, the name.

So it's like Outerbridge, the guy, the bridge that's named after a guy that is named Outerbridge.

That blew my fucking mind when I first learned that.

I mean,

that guy for years was like, I got to do something with this name.

So he's the end of the book.

I've got to.

I've got to.

The Outer Bridge Baby Food Company is not making the most sense.

I've got to drop that and do something else.

Yeah.

Cool.

So they get away.

The Craven has...

Sorry, now for some reason I'm thinking about the story of Jesediah Whoopi, inventor of the whoopee cushion.

Yeah, and the whoopee pop.

And everyone else with that name.

It's like, our name used to mean good cheer, whoopee.

you ruined it with your invention.

Yeah, all the family reunions were big battles from that point on, yeah.

So they managed to get away, but Craven got

Mr.

Whoopee.

When was the last time you talked to your son?

I have no son.

The bad guys get away, but Craven manages to get a good look at the leader and the type of cigarettes he's.

Not the leader, the Marvel character who is in Captain America, Brave New World.

Nope.

Oh, I know.

The leader of the.

Yeah, yeah.

Although they don't call him the leader.

Is it Tim Blake Nelson?

Tim Blake Nelson.

It's nice to see him back.

They really wasted him.

Oh, just like the first time he showed him.

Yeah.

Okay, so

Calypso, he uses the aid of Calypso to track down these

mercs, these mercenaries.

Turns out that they are operating out of a, what, a Turkish monastery castle or something?

She's like, I tracked him down to his family-owned Turkish monastery castle.

And I'm like, all right, whatever.

Sure,

whatever reason you're going to set a set piece at this place but it turns out this whole thing was a trap uh that the rhino and the foreigner are trying to trap uh trap uh craven yep uh which is kind of weird we should mention that we should mention they make a point out of how his name is surge sergei kravenoff but he started calling himself craven and multiple times characters are like craven I guess that's what he's calling himself now.

And it's very silly to me that they bothered to call attention to that.

And it's also funny that at one point somebody calls him Kraven and he's like, how'd you know that name i'm like well you are craven off like i don't know it's not that difficult but and he's we i did we ever talk about how he is a mythical figure among these characters that they call the hunter who hunts down bad guys and it went and they literally have the dumb line that's in every single one of these goddamn movies where they go the hunt the hunter that's a fable it's a myth It's a story to scare criminals.

And can we just ban that line of dialogue?

When someone says the such and such, it's a fable.

It's not real.

It's a myth.

I hate it.

I've heard it so many times in movies now.

It's so lazy.

It has lost whatever power it once had to make to help juice up a character so that you think they're cool before they do anything.

Yeah.

Okay, so it turns out this whole thing's a trap, but it doesn't matter.

It's actually a concert that he's taking his daughter to so they can capture him there.

He has a trap.

Fucking only, dude.

Luckily, he locates a friendly concessions man who

stop making me think of that movie.

So

he heads to this monastery.

He does some hunting and kills a whole bunch of mercenaries.

There's a couple of fun bits where he's like sneaking around, like crawling around on all fours.

I like those bits.

They're both fun and also silly that he is just behind some guys crawling around on all floors and they just don't notice him because he's behind them.

He gets to it's like the scene in the movie Three Iron where the guy learns the secret of how to always be in somebody's blind spot.

So he is stalking behind people, just going, just kind of like always turning his body slightly.

So he's always,

it would have been really funny if there was one shot of a guy kind of sitting in another room as they went by and like see this guy like shadow and be like, what the fuck?

And he could say, what the fuck, because this is an R-rated movie.

I don't know.

I guess it's their thing.

It's as if the movie realizes as it's going that it's an R-rated movie because characters start to swear more and more as the movie goes on.

Yep.

So

he cuts his way through all these mercenaries.

He captures the leader just in time for them to blow up the monastery with a missile launcher.

He gets just enough information from this guy that the Rhino is the one who set him up and has doomed them to death.

Of course, Craven's fine.

He gets hit by a bunch of masonry, but he's okay.

Calypso, turns out Calypso is being tracked down by the Rhinos guys as well.

She has to escape.

She's on the run.

Craven uses his pilot friend, just burning through fuel non-stop.

I guess he doesn't care about the environment.

And he flies.

He's got this movie.

Yeah, I got it.

Boom.

He flies Calypso to his land in Russia where he now has an airstrip because

he's in and out all the time.

And he lives in like a geodesic dome.

Yeah, like a cool little greenhouse.

Yeah.

And

his kitchen has flip-down panels full of hunting knives and swords.

Which is insane because it's like, are you having guests a lot, dude?

If people were here, they'd probably need to.

Yeah, there's no need to hide it.

Like, just leave it out.

I think it's all tiny home type stuff.

It's just about using the space the best.

You're right.

This table is also a bed.

Like this, this bed is also a chair.

The sink is also a toilet.

It's a tiny home.

You know, everything has a double use, you know.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

It's a toilet.

It's also a shower.

If you stand underneath me and I pee on you, and Cooksa's like, I don't think that's how it works.

It's okay.

I have the world's greatest environmental diet.

So my pee is super pure and clean.

I drink so much water because, again, I'm always working out that my pea is just pure water at this point.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like with all the protein powders he has to be eating, it's got to be messing with his

time where they're just like hanging out in the woods and he's like showing her stuff.

And they're, you know, they're connecting, but it doesn't really reach like actual romantic interest.

Meanwhile, the rhino and the foreigner manage to, you know, they intimidate Dimitri.

They chop off one of his fingers.

We found out that they tried to get money out of his dad, and his dad's not interested.

He doesn't care.

He's like, they're going to kill him anyway.

Russell Gross accent's way more fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to suck your blood.

Oh, blah, blah.

So they,

but they, using the

foreigner finds some trace poison from one of Craven's blow darts, and he tracks down where that

flower

is from.

This pea is only a very small part, small forest in Russia.

So they're like, we got him.

So they fly over there with Dimitri and they're going to track down Craven.

Like Sherlock Holmes, he wrote a monograph on that particular plant, so he happened to know that.

So they bring a bunch of mercenaries and they go to track down Craven.

Craven gets all his gear on and

we get a little bit of a fight.

Craven murderizes a whole bunch of mercenaries with a a bunch of Ewok style traps.

They all step in exactly the right places that they need to step to set off the traps, which is very funny.

He's a super hunter runner.

He knows exactly where someone's going to set their boots.

Eventually, he runs afoul of the foreigner who

attacks him with his nightmare gun, which

has some kind of poison that gives you nightmares before killing you.

Of course, his nightmares are all spiders.

I've just taken a lot of spiders.

Wild

Why would it be Spider-Man?

Spider-Man, baby.

Because there's no Spider-Man in this universe where the movie takes place.

Sorry, I was just taken by the phrase Nightmare God.

I was like thinking,

is that a better direct-to-video movie or is it like a pulp paperback, maybe?

Nightmare God?

Does it have to be one or the other?

It could be all of them.

And so

it makes sense.

If you know Craven's a Spider-Man character, it makes sense he has this spider dream.

I mean, it also, it harkens back to Craven's Last Hunt, where there's a sequence where he's just eating handfuls of spiders.

They're crawling all over and he's just picking them up and eating them.

But so he can become the Spider-Man, right?

Yes.

So he can become the spider, exactly.

Because then he puts on Spider-Man's costume and he says, I'm going to be better than you, and I'm going to do the things you couldn't do.

But

it is very silly to me that this guy who's like the ultimate hunter and has kinship with all the animals is afraid of spiders, something that is just a normal thing everybody encounters, pretty much.

It would have been so funnier if his nightmare was that like the forest was replaced with like a city and he was wearing a suit and he had to carry a briefcase.

I have a calendar,

you know?

Yeah.

But spiders are really weird looking.

That's true.

Spiders are weird looking.

They're freaky.

Again,

it's less that spiders are inherently strange or scary, but rather that Craven has been built up to us as a man of

nature, a man of the wild.

And so the idea that a spider would, a little spider would scare him seems like a strange Achilles heel for a guy who I guarantee you has woken up with bugs and spiders crawling all over him many times in his life.

So and he I'm sure he used them as a source of protein.

So we have a little bit of a fight.

He's micro proteining all day.

Yeah.

We get a little fight between the foreigner and a drugged up Craven.

It's mainly Christopher Abbott doing some cool some cool kicks and knee moves.

It's pretty cool.

I like it.

And

he really takes his time.

He takes his, instead of just shooting Craven in the head, he takes his time kind of stunting the hole the whole time.

Yeah, of course.

And he even goes so far, he's got Craven

where he wants him, and he dismisses the other mercenaries.

He's like, oh, this is done.

You can leave.

So they leave and tell their boss, like, yeah, I guess Craven's dead, so we can go.

But before he's done,

inexplicable, I'm sorry, I know you watch Reacher.

I watch Reacher.

Are you up to date on Reacher?

Heck yeah, I am.

There is an episode, and I don't want to spoil anything too much for people.

So, you know, jump ahead if you're worried at all.

But there's an episode where Reacher's like, I'm going to let you go do this thing alone.

And I'm like, no, Reacher, Reacher, why would you do that?

You're the big burly one.

Yeah.

You got to be there.

This is not going to end well.

Anyway, sorry.

So.

So the farner then alone with Craig.

Yeah,

he's about to do his coup de grace and he starts doing his count off.

But of course, he is interrupted.

Calypso shoots an arrow through his eye socket, killing him instantly.

She gives us a little tagline,

like three, bitch or something.

He counts one, two, and then she goes three, motherfucker.

And it's like,

it's like, what a cool movie.

And also, like, so did she hear him mumbling the numbers to himself from far away?

Yeah, I don't know.

She comes over,

Craven's dead from all the from all the toxins.

She gives him a little nip of the old super juice.

A little swing of that little hair of the dog that brought you back to life.

Yep.

Brings him, puts him back in the game.

He gets a one-up.

And

I wish Scott Coatrum style a one-up had then just gone

and floated floated up to the top of the screen.

That was the life part of the one piece of whimsy in the whole movie.

So the rhino manages, and we find out the reason he's called the rhino, and we're going to learn more in a second, is that both out of his attitude that, like a rhino, if he sees an opportunity, he charges forward without thinking.

But also, more importantly, in his quest to overcome his physical frailty, he underwent experimental treatments from a doctor in in New York.

A doctor in New York.

He drops the name Dr.

Miles Warren, who is another Spider-Man villain, the jackal, who is better known as the creator of the Spider Clone.

And he's the guy who's behind every cloning thing in Spider-Man.

He's a real crappy villain.

He's the kind of villain who is not that interesting to look at, not that fun to see stories with, and he has caused way more trouble than it's worth.

But anyway, he says, Dr.

Miles Warren, he's the one who gave me this treatment to make me stronger.

And what kind of treatment is it, Stuart?

The treatment, it seems to have been some some kind of a failed treatment because what it does is it makes him very strong and indestructible.

His skin turns hard like a rhino's.

It makes him indestructible like a rhino.

And I'm like, I'm sad to report.

Rhinos are not indestructible.

No, they are endangered, actually, because they're so easy to kill.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he, it, if he is not connected to some kind of a medicine,

his body rapidly crusts over into this like armored form, basically, right?

Yeah.

He looks kind of like the thing or like the rhino, basically.

But it also just

he looks like the character of the rhino.

I kind of love how like low-tech it feels because it feels like he's just got like a gas can, like one of those

plastic rubber gas cans like hooked up to his back.

He's got like a camelback backpack that just goes into a port in his side and just fills him full of no rhino juice.

What's this liquid?

Oh, this is what keeps me from being a rhino.

Yeah, and I mean, I like

it, it is a thing where he kind of dresses like a little kid going to school wearing a little backpack.

So I could see why other gangsters might not take him seriously.

But

so

Rhino and his remaining goons scoop up Dimitri.

They're like, I guess we'll try and ransom him anyway.

And they start driving off.

They're like, job's done.

Craven's dead.

Hooray.

Of course, now Craven shows up with a stampede of, what do you say, oxen?

I called him Moldebeast.

Some kind of large.

Some kind of large

quadrupet cat.

Rontos?

Are they Rontos?

Yeah, they might be Rontos.

Yeah, they could be.

And they

smash into the convoy.

They smash all the stuff.

All the goons get smushed.

They used to have a great big convoy.

That's a joke for, I guess, people who remember novelty songs from the 70s.

Sure.

Yeah.

See our audience.

It's a red podcast.

Guess so.

So Dimitri gets knocked around, but he's okay.

Rhino's like, it's Rhino time.

So he unhooks himself and he gets all crusty and he grows a couple of horns on his head.

That looks cool.

I want to talk about the rhino.

I want to pause for a moment to talk about the rhino design.

So the rhino is a fully CGI character at this point.

There's no, you're not seeing a real actor.

It's probably even a mocap thing.

But they decided for some reason.

It also means that this character who has been a very talkative character up to this point, when he's the rhino, he just bellows and screams and roars.

He doesn't have any lines of dialogue.

But they just, the rhino in the comics is a pretty, like,

like, a pretty big round guy.

Like, he has a body like a rhino.

Like, he's like a walking tank.

He's huge, yeah.

Whereas this rhino has a very tiny waist and is super cut, just like Kraven.

And I thought this looked hilarious to me: that this rhino has like a wasp waist.

No, you're right.

These huge shoulders and huge pecs, and they have no greater size legs.

Vin Diesel

had a rhino head.

Yeah.

Sort of.

Notoriously, rhinos notoriously don't work out their lower body.

They don't know.

And it's kind of cool that his shirt rips off, but his pants stay pristine.

Yeah, he has those stretch pants that can move with rhino muscles.

He has scrunch butt yoga pants.

His waist was just so narrow that I kept thinking that Craven was just going to snap him in half.

Like it seemed like a real weak point.

He kind of

think of where you buy the Hulk pants.

Like I was HM Hulk and Monsters.

Is that where you put the stretchy pants?

Yeah, that's the fast, casual place for pants that you wear when you're when you're

surprisingly more expensive than you would think.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so they fight.

There's a couple of like jokes here and there about how heavy Rhino is.

Eventually, like, and it seems like Rhino is getting the best of Craven.

He's like punching him and throwing cars at him and stuff.

It is kind of weird, though, because I feel like becoming the Rhino causes him so much pain, he wouldn't actually train as Rhino very often, often, right?

Like, he wouldn't be

so like the trained fighter would probably do better.

I don't know, because the rhino is so much bigger and stronger that if Kraven didn't have protagonist protection, then you would think that Rhino would very easily just pick him up and tear his head off or something.

Especially since he's recovering from a fatal dose of poison.

But he also had a non-fatal dose of magic potion TPD.

Yeah, that's the cancels out.

But also, like, until Craven notices,

oh, right, the rhino juice full.

Like, there's actually literally no weakness on the rhino that he can.

Yeah, he's covered in rhino thick skin.

Yeah.

Unfortunate for the rhino, yes, he does have an open medical port on his side, and his shirt ripping off really reveals that.

Yeah, which is, which is probably helpful that he has that.

that that's his route into the rhino when he stabs a pipe into into the port and he starts bleeding everywhere.

That's kind of cool to stop.

He had to do that to blast his eyes.

He sucks on the end so that he can create a vacuum like you're siphoning oil, so the blood will just pour out of him.

Well, and then he drinks all the blood, and then his skin becomes rhino skin, and then we have an equal battle.

Oh, no, that would be cool.

So he blasts him, and the rhino's pretty fucked up at this point.

And then he wraps a tow chain around him and then throws the toe chain into the herd of wild beasts who then drag him around and he gets all trampled.

But then

his chain disappears.

like and then he he's he's he's dragged around and trampled and then when craven goes over to him the chain is gone and i'm like all right well i guess the i guess the woodlebees took it the woodbees are like cool free chain let's untie you so you can use it

yeah

yeah

we're gonna we're gonna create a society built around the the beautiful worship of the chain

oh we worship the chain that's why we listen to feeder ryan we finally have something to protect our boat when we

yeah

uh yeah to wrap around our tires when it gets snowy.

What?

Tintin's dog, Snowy?

Yes.

When Tintin's dog snowy shows up, you need to have chains on your tires.

Otherwise, you cannot drive over it.

Oh, I understand.

Drive over Snowy.

Don't do it.

He's such a cute little terrier.

Oh, no.

I'm a drunk sea captain.

And you know, I'm going to be driving over a snowy.

And that's when Tintin goes out for revenge.

And it's like John Wick, but it's Tintin.

It's called Tin Wick.

Oh, man.

Oh, man.

That's two things mushed together.

That's 90% of the t-shirts that are sold to me.

Is that what the movie Tin Men is?

That's what Tin Men is about.

Yeah, it's about Tin Tin is grown up.

Snowy is dead.

He's a salesman now.

Terrible.

Yeah.

And then the last one is the Ten Commandments, where he explains his

philosophies of life.

Yeah.

That's when he goes up to the mountain when he comes down there worshiping a golden snowy and he has to smash it.

So

he goes up and the drunken sea captain is like, I guess we need a different religion now.

Let's worship the dog.

Yeah, the sea gavin throws his bottle up.

He's like, never again.

So, yep.

So, Craven approaches a thoroughly stompified rapid

rhino who is missing.

There's no chain anywhere to be found.

Huge flaw.

But

Rhino's dying.

someone out there and this is where the rhino reveals uh he's like i he's like of course you know he he hints at the how he was able to find out craven's true identity um which we'll later find out was that his father had leaked the information um this is also where uh the rhino says the the his final words are i wish i'd never met you kravenoffs

it went real bad for you dude right i had so much potential look at what i accomplished your Your life would have been much better without meeting the Kravenovs.

Yeah, you wouldn't be a Rhino man, for one thing.

So, Rhino's dead.

Everybody's happy.

Now we begin.

Now we begin.

There are now the movies.

The Muskox now celebrate that the end of the Rhino tyranny has come and they topple statues.

There's fireworks.

You're like, oh, great, the movie's over.

Nope.

We have a bunch of epilogues.

Epilogues.

There's more epilogues in this movie than in fucking Venom 3.

Although both movies were movies where I'd be like, oh, this has to be the end climax of the movie.

And I'd pause it, and there would be 25 minutes left in the movie.

Although,

what?

Luckily, Stuart, out of the two, you're summarizing the one that doesn't have credit sequences.

What?

We'll get to it.

Okay, so epilogue one, this is where Craven tracks down his father, who is on a solo hunting trip somewhere.

They talk some shit a little bit.

He's not hunting with the Marvel hitman, Solo, who is another character who does not, is not in this movie, but is in Marvel Hitler.

Or Solo from the movie Solo.

It would be pretty cool if Solo and maybe like Silver Sable showed up.

Sure, yeah.

Silver Sable, Farner's ex-wife, in the comics.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Played by what, Allison?

What's her name?

Marnie from Girls Sable.

That would be amazing if it's Allison Williams playing Silver Sable and it was a girls' reunion.

Yeah, I would love it.

That's what the fans, that's what Marvel fans are craving is a girls' reunion.

This Marvel fan is.

Anyway, continue.

Okay, so there's a,

so they talk some shit.

you know they they're like you know wait because because uh because what's her name uh uh mammet who's also in girls she was in madam web web yeah we're just the one we're just allison williams and lena dunham away from a no from a from a sony spider university girls

oh yeah jenna gemma that's right also yeah but she'll yeah put her in put her in tap she could be the she'd be the kangaroo you know just make that character a woman instead of a man yeah So

we

they talk some shit.

There's the like, we're not so different, yada, yada, yada.

And then Craven wanders off, and then a giant bear shows up and kills his dad.

And he has taken his dad's bullets.

So his dad's bullets is helpless against this bear.

Yeah.

We don't actually see him die, so he might show up later as like a bear man.

Epilogue number two.

I mean, there's an episode of

Spider-Man.

There's a Spider-Man villain called Grizzly.

He could come back as that.

Yeah.

Epilogue two, this is technically a year later because it's Dimitri's next birthday.

They're hanging out at Dimitri's club.

They're catching up.

Dimitri has a bit of a heel turn.

It turns out that he has now taken over his father's empire, and he is now the supervillain, the chameleon, and he can morph his face and voice.

But also, he like basically like dresses down Craven for being like, oh, you're like so high and mighty.

You think you're so moral.

You're just like dead.

And like Craven's sort of like attitude at the end of the movie kind of suggests that he accepts that this is true.

And in a slightly better movie, I kind of thought this was sort of cool at the end.

The brothers like, hey, guess what?

If you're just going out and murdering a list of people, maybe you're not the hero.

What happened to dad?

A hunting accident?

I think that you're, but let's not forget, let's not forget the funny part of this, which is when to reveal his power,

Dimitri walks off and Sergei is like, hey, hey, talk to me.

And Dimitri turns around and he has Kraven's head on his much shorter body.

And it is hilarious to see this guy looking at a shorter version of himself and he's got a smirk on his face like eh see what i can do oh that's what i'd look like as a shorter man he went to doctor exactly so he went to dr miles warren and got chameleon face powers but it is very funny this visual just like to be to be confronted by a much shorter version of yourself

yeah you're like is this what i look like as a kid no

no i didn't have a beard back then Okay, and then we have a final epilogue.

This is where Craven returns to his father's house.

Everything is packed up in boxes, but there is a gift for him with a note.

He opens up that box.

You know what that shit is?

It is his, it's his cool lion vest.

The whole time, you're like, why isn't Craven dressed like Craven?

It's because they had to wait till the very fucking end, like they always do.

He puts on this cool vest, takes his shirt off, so you can see all those fucking abs.

He's got the fucking King's Hawaiian fucking abs there.

It's amazing.

It's really like he has extra abs that other human beings don't have.

It's amazing.

And then he sits down in the big-ass ass throne style chair from the classic craven pose and he like you know man spreads sits in that chair with that cool ass vest and you're like hell yeah that's what i've waited this whole movie to see yeah

and i'm sure that you're

sitting down but didn't they just put that on the poster like yes come on i think that was that it was one of the posters so you have to wait the whole movie to get to the image that the poster shows you yeah um and then that's the end were there i don't recall there there were no

there were no i think by the time this movie was coming out i think there was an understanding writing was on the wall that this experiment had run its course this no spider-man spider-man universe and they might have they might have at some point intended one of the at least one of those epilogues to be a post-credit sequence oh it's possible yeah i could see that i could say i could definitely see if the the chameleon scene being a mid-credit scene instead of a instead of a uh

and then him sitting in the chair is the very uh is the final post-credit scene yeah yeah that's it okay so that was coco coco craven thank you for uh taking on summary duties uh and now for our summary judgments our final judgments uh of whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie we kind of like uh i i'm just gonna say like i apologize if this is sort of getting ahead of ourselves i don't know if uh we'll return to this topic uh with the vidim episode which we're recording later i don't know which one we're releasing first but i think this is at the bottom of my

Spider-Man without Spider-Man, Sony, villain films.

Because it is so just sort of joyless,

like it does not have either the wacky fun of Madam Webb, which is my favorite of all of these.

Yeah, I love it.

Or even, you know, Tom Hardy's joy in making Venom movies.

Like clearly, this is the love of his life, whether the movies are that great or not.

This just feels like, unfortunately, they made a worse movie by trying to make a better one.

Yes.

And

I think it's bad, bad.

Well, we'll talk about the Venom movies probably when we talk about Venom 3.

But I feel like

the Venom movies are very

straightforward movies that manage to fit a lot of weirdness into the margins.

And this movie, for the most part, is very straight-faced and very boring.

I like that there were kind of more

super villains than I expected.

Like as soon as Christopher Abbott showed up, I'm like, okay, I like this stuff.

But

yeah,

this one's kind of,

this is a fairly boring mess.

It's like,

I just don't know who it's for.

Like who, yeah, it feels like destined to just like be a like an afternoon action movie, like.

direct you know like cable watch you know what i mean i agree that i'm uh that this is one I feel similarly.

It's, it's a movie that is kind of afraid of having fun or of being fun, which is strange for a Craven the Hunter movie.

And I agree that there's a surprising amount of like superpowers in it for a movie that I expected to have none.

I thought this was going to be like just a guy stabbing guys in suits, basically, who fire guns at him.

And so it was nice that they could, they really leaned into the fact that some of the characters have have extraordinary powers, but it really wants to wants you to take it seriously, which I think is a hard ask for this movie.

And with the Venom movies, at the very least, they don't want you to take it fully seriously all the time.

Where does this portrayal, on-screen portrayal of the rhino, fit for you?

Is this better or worse than Paul Giamatti as the Rhino?

I feel like

that was a little bit too much having fun instead.

I mean, that's kind of the opposite where there they were like, we're not even going to bother trying to take anything, any of this seriously.

So I don't know.

I feel like the, I like his performance until he becomes the rhino

visual on screen.

And there I feel like that visual doesn't quite, doesn't quite work for me.

He has a little waist.

He's got tiny hands, but huge shoulders.

So there's something very kind of like weirdly out of proportion with him that instead of creating a sense of power and strength to me, created a sense of like, oh, I hope this guy's okay.

He looks like an action figure based on a cartoon.

Yeah, like Johnny Bravo.

He's Johnny Bravo.

He does look like Johnny Bravo.

Yeah, there's something very Popeye about him, too.

But this movie is,

I was going to say, in terms of these no Spider-Man, Spider-Man movies that we've watched, it's also pretty far down.

And in some ways, like, I think Morbius is a worse movie, but I think it is a more fun movie to watch than this one.

This is like

competently dull for the most part.

Yeah, at least Matt Smith has fun in Morbius.

And there's wacky stuff like when they're like, they cut to that Chiron that's like international water.

And you start rubbing your hands like, oh, he can do his back experiment.

No one can touch him because he's on a ship out in the ocean.

He works at a New York hospital, but he has a secret man-sized cylinder full of bats in his office.

Boss,

the cleaning crew is in here just dusting things.

They found this cylinder of bats in your office.

It's okay.

The guy we hired is a Nobel Prize winning scientist and also a vampire.

So it's okay.

Hey, boss, your chewy order showed up.

It's so full of bat chow.

Why do you want me to get this thing?

I'm the guano delivery guy.

I've got a call to come to this hospital and remove some guano so I can deliver it.

Oh, yeah, just a sideline I have selling the guano.

Yeah.

Big money and guano.

Anyway,

I think you had something else to say maybe at this point.

I did have something else to say at this point.

I mentioned bonus content before.

Let's talk a little bit about it.

It's the Max Fun Drive.

I've told you a couple times.

I'll tell you this time and at least one more time before the show is over.

Bonus content, what is it?

It is a library of episodes of your favorite podcast that you can only listen to when you're a Max Fun member.

And that library just grows every year.

It's not like each year we clear out the vault and put new stuff in.

It just grows.

So the library has gotten really big over the course of the past.

I don't know, what, decade or more that we and other shows have been putting together bonus content.

Some of these are team-ups between different Maximum Fun hosts.

Some are Maximum Fun hosts taking over each other's shows, episodes with special guests.

And as we've said, we've done some audio commentaries for movies.

We've done extra episodes where we talk about different movies.

Last year, we did three extra full episodes talking about the movies of Graydon Clark, I believe it was,

including the all-time video game classic, Joysticks.

And this year, we are going back to the game playing well.

Very excited about it.

We are once again doing a flop tails, or as it's called this time, slop tails game, where Stewart has run us and our good friend Juben Prang through a new role-playing adventure set in a new setting, but using variations of our beloved characters

from other fluff channels.

Going out and slopping the pigs?

What is that?

You guys have fallen into my restaurant trap.

Yeah, it's a restaurant-themed role-playing game, and it was super fun.

I had such a good time doing it.

We got to play characters that were a little bit, at least in my case, out of my usual comfort zone.

And

it was really fun.

I think you're really going to enjoy it.

I also, just a side note, Stuart, I like it when you sort of provide notes of what sort of genre tone we're aiming for in there.

Like I enjoyed the dog ones because it's like, oh, you're in like a Don Bluth cartoon.

And this one, you're like, oh, you're in kind of an old-fashioned three-camera sitcom set in a

restaurant.

And so I think that was a lot of fun to do.

And it worked out really well.

So if you join or you're already a member, you get access to the entire library bonus content, every single Maximum Fund show, hundreds of hours of extra entertainment that you're going to need to get through these hard times we're living in.

When you join at just $5 a month and higher than that, you get extra stuff, but you still get access to that bonus content.

And if you're thinking strictly about value, that's a great value.

$5 a month for hundreds of hours of extra shows.

And we're excited about the bonus content we're doing this year.

It was, like I said, super fun.

I think you're really going to enjoy it.

It's a great game that Stuart brought us through.

And it was great to have our friend Zhubin coming in and joining us because he always brings a little bit of extra comic spice.

As I said while we were recording it, there is nothing funnier to me than a Zhubin performance as a character who is attempting to exude confidence and authority and failing consistently to do that.

So to listen to that show, to listen to all of our bonus stuff, will you please join us as a member by going to maximumfund.org slash join and either joining at the $5 a month level or upgrading or boosting your membership.

And one last thing I want to talk about, this is a different kind of bonus from your membership.

It's not bonus content that affects you necessarily, but it is a way that this show affects other people.

We, just to toot our own horn for a minute,

we hear a lot from people who say, Thank you for doing this really ridiculous show because I had a hard time and it really got me through it.

Or something, you know, tragic or sad happened in my life, and I needed to laugh about something that was goofy or ridiculous or dumb, and you guys helped me with it.

And it is your membership that helps us to keep this show alive that makes that possible.

So, you're not just providing entertainment for you, you're providing the kind of

escape valve that so many of us need when stressful things happen in our lives.

I've had a very stressful past

year and a half to two years, and doing this show has provided such a necessary thing for me to have fun and to enjoy myself, to be with my friends, to feel like I am making other people laugh.

It's been really wonderful.

And so, your membership makes it possible not just for you to enjoy it, but for other people to enjoy it, especially at those times when they need enjoyment the most.

So, I want to hop in for a second, sorry, and just say something about gift memberships, just because you kind of bring up this area.

Sure, sure.

I'm very, it's nice the thing that MaxFun has done where you can actually gift a membership to someone else.

And I know that this is like a very weird time right now.

I don't think we need to get into it, but I'll just leave it there.

And if, you know, if you feel like it's not a time that you can do this sort of supporting, certainly understand.

But these gift memberships are kind of nice because people who are in a better position, you know, maybe are no Maximum Fun fan.

can be like, you know what, I'm going to get a membership for you.

And I think that this is sort of a sweet thing that

the network allows to happen.

Yeah, as Rabbi Hillel famously said, if I'm not for myself, who will be?

If I'm only for myself, what am I?

And if not now, when?

So do something for yourself.

Do something for others.

Do it now.

Go to maximumfun.org/slash join and join or upgrade or boost your membership to keep the flop house rolling along, singing a song side by side.

Hey, you.

Yeah, you with the Giga Pet.

Me?

Do you like supporting artist-owned podcasts?

Totally.

What about limited edition gifts, hours and hours of bonus content, and more?

Sounds sweet.

Then stay tuned for Max Fun Drive 2025.

www.maximumfund.org on the World Wide Web next week.

Hi, I'm Alexis.

And I'm Ella.

And we're the host of Comfort Creatures.

We could spend the next 28 seconds telling you why you should listen, but instead, here's what our listeners have said about our show because really, they do know best.

The show is filled with stories, poems, and science and friendship and laughter and tears sometimes, but tears that are from your heart being so filled up with love.

A cozy show about enthusiasm for animals of all kinds, real and unreal.

If you greet the dog before the person walking them, or wander around the party looking for the host's cat, this podcast is for you.

So come for the comfort and stay for Alexis's wild story about waking up to her cats giving birth on top of her.

So if that sounds like your cup of tea or coffee, Ella, we're not all princes, then join us every Thursday at maximumfun.org.

Shall I read some letters, boys?

Yeah, why not?

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Individual ones.

G, K, R,

Chesterton.

Oh, man.

That's certainly the kind of joke that's worth $5 a month, right?

Sorry, guys.

Sorry.

Somebody gave Elliot his stinker serum.

Yeah, well, well, that's what we need the money for.

We got to keep buying that serum.

This

letter, as much as this episode, this letter is from Sam, last name withheld, who writes, Oh, Yosemite, Sam.

Yeah.

Hey, guys.

He writes, Dear Flop House.

Ooh, that arm it.

Ooh, bracken, fracking.

Sam says, hey guys, new listener, longtime MaxFun supporter, I've got a weird prompt for you.

One of my favorite small pleasures in life is the feeling of bathing after doing something that makes me feel real grimy.

Oh, okay.

Hiking, camping, yard work, etc.

So whenever I'm watching a movie where a character has gone through a really harrowing physical experience that leaves them filthy and disheveled, I like to imagine how satisfying the subsequent bathing experience is.

A great example is John McLean at the end of Any Die Hard.

Yeah.

Shawshank Redemption tries to deliver that satisfaction, but presumably that pond was full of sewage, which seems like a real vibe killer.

Is this something you can even relate to?

And if so, what movie's characters come to mind?

Thanks, love the show.

Sam.

I mean, this absolutely, it's like a weird stress comes upon me when someone seems really dirty in a movie.

I'm like, oh man, like, I don't want to deal with that.

All their stuff, yeah.

I, the thing that I don't know if this is the one, but the thing that came to mind is in Raising Arizona when they come out there.

I actually absolutely love it.

I mean, it's much like the Shawshank scene, yeah.

Same level of heroism.

I think for, I also similarly, I have had that thought of like, oh, it's going to feel so good when they wash off all that stuff.

Usually think about the actors, but the end of Jurassic Park, I got, I remember getting that feeling even as a kid, watching how the kids in that are like dirty from their adventure and just like, oh, it's going to feel that moment when they're like eating ice cream in the

before they're attacked, I guess.

It's like, oh, if only, like, if only they could like bathe and clean off, then this would be, they'd really be able to recover from being chased by dinosaurs and electrocuted by.

Yeah, no, that's, I mean, I feel like that's such a like a natural human thing.

The problem is when the movie shows somebody getting to wash off, you're like, when's the other shoe going to drop?

Is the dinosaur going to pop into the shower and eat him?

Yeah, it's always a bad, it's a bad moment when you get to see it.

Yeah.

Oh, it's like

at the end of Gremlins when Billy is, he's, when he's fighting with, he, he's got that baseball bat and Stripe has the, has the chainsaw and all those wood chips are flying onto him and sticking to his blood from the cuts on him.

That's That's another one where I'm like, ooh, it's going to feel good to wash all that off for sure.

But then you don't want the gremlin again, as you're saying, Stuart, to get into the shower with you because he'll get wet, multiply.

Then you got a bigger problem.

Yeah.

Then you have to drop your

shower radio into the shower to electrocute the gremlin, but you're

going to get yourself, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Our only hope is that you're going to come back like Ernest and Ernest.

More gremlins, more problems.

Yeah, yeah.

Have electric problems.

Yeah.

Electric problems.

That's another good title.

Okay, this is from

that's a great either band or new wave album.

Electric problems was a discarded Philip K.

Dick

Story collection.

Pete Last Name

that was his placeholder title for a lot of his books.

It's just sort of generally what I have.

Pete Last Name Withheld says, Hey, Flopsters.

I was listening to your Rebel Moon episodes and thinking about something Elliott said

regarding how fun is the factor that makes Star Wars work.

And I was thinking that a lot of franchise stuff goes the ways of seriousness and remakes with mixed results.

Like crazy.

Batman and Ninja Turtles kind of oscillate between serious and less so.

Transformers and Ghostbusters seem to have gotten a little more sincere.

The RoboCop remake was less goofy.

Superman got more serious.

The Mummy with Tom Cruise was a lot more dour than the Brendan Fraser one.

It's crazy that the RoboCop remake got both less goofy and also had less to say.

Yeah.

I see this a lot in comics.

a previously silly character storyline that someone adapts to be less comedic, although Elliot's Spider-Man and the X-Men was fun and had sincere moments, and I love it.

Thank you.

Still see it memed.

Yeah.

And there's, and you kind of find more of that in the Harley Quinn series, currently in DC.

There's some exceptions that come to mind.

Fury Road is definitely sillier than Mad Max.

Rocky 4 is the silliest Rocky movie, but not the last.

But as a fan of silly things, I'm mildly alarmed that things are often made less fun.

What do you think it is about remaking things that causes people to take it down that road as opposed to making things that were serious before more wacky, like a wacky John Wick, John Wack.

Thanks.

John Wack's

a series of movies that were

kind of outside the purview of the flophouse.

Outside the purview of the flop house?

Thanks.

I've had so many laughs and good light times

listening, sorry, that I'm going to need you all to take really good care of yourselves so it goes on forever.

Pete, last name withheld.

I have a lot of, I think everyone has a lot of thoughts on this.

I just want to say that I, what comes to me immediately is

like sequels in a row tend to get wackier and wackier and wackier most of the time.

And then when you reboot something, it tends to be serious.

So there are a lot of things that are going on here, including like cultural shifts.

But I think that part of it is it's often like a reboot of like, oh, that franchise got so wacky by the end.

We have to take it back to basics.

And by doing that, they like make it even grittier and more joyless than the original.

That's definitely been the Batman storyline going back to the M West Batman series, which is wacky.

So Tim Burton's Batman is less wacky, but by the time it gets to Joel Schumacher sequels, it's very wacky.

So they reboot it with the Christopher Nolan movies, which Dark Knight Rises is fairly wacky at times.

And so they reboot it again and make it joyless.

Yeah.

So it's, I think you're exactly right, Dan.

You've anatomized that really well.

But I think there's probably a little shifts too.

And I feel like there's a thing where,

especially when you're talking about bigger properties, that like the sillier you make it, the more likely people are going to have audiences are going to struggle with how to

accept it.

They're going to be like, is this a comedy now?

And especially with certain things, like people like to

put things into very specific genre boxes.

And when they become a certain thing, it's, I don't know.

People don't.

Yeah, I don't want to sound like an old man, but I do have this sort of general feeling that people were more accepting that multiple tones could exist in something at a point, and it's become harder for people to parse that somehow.

I don't know.

I think it is true.

I would call that if I was being,

if I was coming up with a theory off the top of my head based on very little, I would say that is a combination of...

The thing, the people who make the decisions about what is being made being people who themselves have less of a sense of aesthetic understanding in that way.

And so, the things that get made that audiences learn how to watch things from, especially young audiences, don't have that experience of watching something that has multiple tones in it.

Even The Godfather has jokes in it.

You know, the good, like, Goodfellows is a very, just talk about gangster movies.

Goodfellows is a like super funny movie, but also a really hard-hitting and meaningful movie and emotionally rough at times.

And it, but those are both movies that are made by master artists.

And I feel like in the old days, there was

often a better mix, often not a better mix, but there would be a more of a mix of

tones.

Whereas now it feels like the best you can hope for is a really, in mainstream entertainment, it seems like a really gritty thing that has some one-liners in it or something that's super goofy, where at the very end, they throw in a scene of an attempt at high emotion, you know, to get a character arc in there.

And I think that's a,

I think you could put more,

the onus of that, I think, is more on the, I think, the economics of what gets made and what doesn't and how it gets made more than any individual creative choice that anyone is making.

But that's a more complicated thing than I know how to talk about.

But it's a, but it does frustrate me sometimes.

I've been.

Ellie Keelan.

But it is frustrating sometimes when something is unrelentingly dour or not having fun.

Or I think there's a misunderstanding sometimes about

what audiences want out of the things that they're watching and what they're going to enjoy from it.

But there's also the negative pressure that we've seen so often in the past 15, 20 years, I feel like, of people who enjoy a thing that is essentially a, this is talking very broadly, now I'm going to sound like Alan Moore, who enjoy a thing from their childhood and they want to continue to enjoy it and they want it to grow up with them.

And maybe that thing is not really a good fit for the kind of mature storytelling they really should be

getting at this age.

And also when a lot of things are catered toward an existing audience for that thing that that the people making that product are nerfed that content are worried that that they are going to by making it silly that they're being disrespectful for it it's it's similar to the way that like uh a certain let's say vocal uh faction amongst marvel fans were complaining about the she-hulk tv show as being a comedy and it's like you never read fucking she-hulk then did you know funny comic book she-hulk she-hulk has been a comedy comic for 40 years now 35 years.

Like, yeah, it's a, but

they, yeah, I think there's a, there's a sense of

defensiveness about it that makes it harder for them to have fun, harder for creators to have fun with it because the, the fans are defensively, you know, open to feeling like they're being ridiculed.

There was a, there was a theory I read years ago, not years ago, like a year ago, that I wonder if it's like that there's a kind of person who is a fan of these things who feels like they have very little control over their lives, either politically, economically, any of that stuff.

But this is one thing they feel like they can have control over and they can feel they can have possession or ownership of.

And it creates a kind of a

negative fan base for superhero content specifically or genre content that

the people making the new stuff feel like they have to cater to, certainly.

And that's

it's a, but I think to go back to the, to go back to the original question in the thing, it is disappointing sometimes that like you can't have that they feel like they can't have fun with with some of this stuff because it's got to be it's got to be serious enough that people feel that people can feel like it's being taken seriously yeah i mean occasionally i think it can swing backwards but it has to be something where like it probably should have been a goofier tone in the first place anyway like i'm thinking about how they're the terrible michael bay uh either made or produced turtles movies and then they made the mutant mayhem cartoon which is great which swung back goofy correctly being like yeah oh you know what like i think that this is the world this works best in, a little lighter than what you came up with.

I mean, we have to tell this story about mutant ninja teenagers.

And look,

whose dad is a rat, you know?

I understand the listeners out there who are thinking, oh, but the Eastman and Laird comics, right?

I know, but like, that was also kind of.

That was a pretty good straw man impression.

It was a parody of, oh, I absolutely guarantee you someone was thinking

Eastman and Laird comics.

But when Cerva showed up, those were

started at least as kind of a parody of that sort of Frank Mueller stuff before taking themselves seriously.

But those are also fun comics.

Like as much as they're more serious than Mutant Mayhem,

the thing that I always loved about the Eastman and Laird comics was that the characters...

Like, they were basically prototypes in some ways.

I don't know that Mike Magnola would say this, but prototypes for Hellboy as characters who would go on adventures and then just be like, oh, that sucks.

Anyway, let's go have a drink.

Let's have a beer.

Great.

Cool, dude.

Like, they spent a lot of time hanging out, you know, and things like that.

And so they felt there was a lighter element that ran through that still, even as they were stabbing people.

So let's recommend some like silly ones.

Let's do a couple of silly ones.

I know mine is silly.

No, you can do whatever you want.

Because I'd like to recommend last stop in Yuma County.

Is that a silly one?

Are we doing recommendations now?

Yeah, we're doing recommendations.

Okay.

Is that okay, Elliot?

Yeah, no, it's fine.

It was a very natural segue, but I was not quite sure we were

six hours driving the segue.

We had to gamble up the works by asking about it.

Yeah, no, I saw this

return to movies Dan saw on a plane.

I saw it on a plane.

It's a continuing series of screenings.

Very small.

See, some people do extra flights so they can get like miles or points or whatever.

Dan doesn't so he can watch more flips.

Is what he calls him.

No, this is a small little

contained noir.

Stuff goes wrong at a diner.

There's a tense standoff over an afternoon.

I don't want to get too much into it because

the twists and turns are the fun of it.

But it is

directed beautifully.

Sam Raimi, I think, tapped this director to be a future Evil Dead director off of this.

picture it has a small part for our friend friend of the show Barbara Crampton is in it

Can't go wrong.

And, you know, it has some of the flavor of like an early Cohen Brothers movie.

I mean, not quite to that level, but it's, you know, it's in, it's in the conversation.

Or like a Red Rock West type.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool.

So, what do you got, Stu?

I'm going to recommend a movie that fits within the silly theme.

I'm going to recommend The Monkey,

Osgoode Perkins horror comedy.

What was that, Dan?

That's right.

I just started buttering.

Can't stop doing The Monkey.

I think I just watched that episode of The Simpsons, by the way.

Yeah.

Go, go, Ray.

Yeah, it was funny.

So,

yeah, the other night, the night before my birthday, I went to a pre-birthday screening of The Monkey.

I dragged my buddy Dan, as well as a couple of my other Brooklyn movie bros, to go see this thing.

I got incredibly wasted, but I was not too drunk during the movie.

So you're going to get a full-on normal Stewart review.

So let's let's continue reviewing The Monkey, shall we?

The monkey is...

That was the mid-review pause.

Traditional intermission.

So

this is an adaptation of the Stephen King short story, The Monkey.

It was also adapted as Monkey Shines at one point.

But this is a movie about

twin brothers who encounter a toy monkey that is some kind of death elemental that can cause the death of anything it wants when

its key is turned.

And the movie

is, it's an interesting.

This is a director whose previous movies have all been very like grim-faced

horror pictures.

And this is much sillier.

It's still shot with a lot of style, and it is incredibly gory, but it's very fun,

almost like it has kind of the same sense of fun as like a Final Destination movie.

And the performances are all good.

It manages to make Theo James not an incredibly sexy man, which is a challenge.

Like, that's some heavy lifting.

I think the one outfit kind of helps.

But

and Tatiana Masalani's in it.

She's great.

I think

it felt like a very kind of fresh take on a horror comedy, and I had a really good time.

Yeah.

So if you're looking for kind of a silly one that I'm sure has been probably misinterpreted by people who are like, oh, why isn't this scary movie just scary?

Like, well, it's a silly movie.

It's fun.

Just show up.

Also, I apologize for playing Flophouse Pedent just for a moment, but I believe Monkey Shines is unconnected because that's a movie about a man who had a cultural monkey that's a helper because he's paralyzed.

I messed it up, okay?

So

I'm shielding you from angry listeners now.

Okay.

I mean, there's angry listeners furious.

Yeah, they're going to email you.

Dan and the straw man,

the new CBS show where he tries to email the straw man.

Tell Stuart he's wrong.

And Dan's like, I tell Stuart he's wrong all the time.

He doesn't like it.

I'd like to let you guys know on this occasion so you can thank me that if I get any emails like that, I delete them.

Oh, good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dan, for doing that.

I'd also like to recommend a movie, and I'm also going to recommend a silly one that's also kind of a horror movie, but also pretty silly.

And I'm recommending, of course, Mr.

Vampire from 1985, directed by Ricky Lau and starring, let me look at the names, starring Lam Ching Ying, Ricky Hui, and Chin Sui Ho.

And this is the first of the Mr.

Vampire horror comedy series from Hong Kong.

It's

set in the kind of early 20th century China.

And there's a bunch of kind of battle priests whose job is to

keep it just a key.

You don't have to tell me what a fucking battle priest does.

I know all about this shit.

But their job is very specific to keeping vampires under control.

And these are your classic Chinese hopping undead vampires.

And a vampire gets loose.

Unrelated to the vampire getting loose, a ghost falls in love with one of the apprentices and is trying to take him away.

Now,

is the vampire in the loose when you remove the piece of paper from their forehead?

Or does that is that or when the piece of paper is placed on their forehead?

It's a piece of paper where it's that there's like a bit of wax that goes on their forehead, and the paper is stuck to that.

And

was produced by Samo Hung.

It's a very Samo Hung style comedy kind of action movie.

And it's just super fun.

And it's one of these movies.

It's very silly at times.

And

the action is, and the martial arts are great.

Some of the comedy is of the very broad

comedy that you get in, especially 80s Hong Kong movies, but it's super fun.

So if you want to see a horror comedy that really is not taking itself seriously seriously to the point where it's not really scary so much as it is a comedy about people fighting vampires, then I would highly recommend Mr.

Vampire.

Was Mr.

Baseball a vampire?

No, he was a baseball Dan.

Oh, okay.

Hey, I think we're almost at the end here.

Elliot, is there any final thought you want to share with our audience?

There is a final thought that I'd like to share with the audience.

You know, I'm just going to talk briefly because the show is ending and it's time to pack up the old circus tent and wipe off the grease paint and sweep up the spotlight.

Sweep up and put it in our caps.

Take up my makeup.

But

I put his wig back on the shelf.

Suddenly I'm doing a Max Fun pledge drive donor spot.

And I'm telling you that if,

again, this is the Max Fun Pledge Drive.

This is the time of year when we talk to you about this.

We're going to do three episodes where we're talking to you about this.

And then that's it for the year.

You don't have to hear about it again.

If you've never been a Max Fun member, please, we ask you, try it out for just $5 a month.

Again, that's the cost of one comic book a month.

If you don't buy comic books, that's great.

You've got that $5 sitting in your pocket.

Oh, I see.

And you could just, and you just do it for a month.

You just have a pseudo.

You switched it around.

Yep.

And enjoy that bonus content.

If you're already a member and you'd like to support a little more, we'd really appreciate you upgrading your membership to a higher level or just boosting it by a few dollars per month or so.

If you support multiple shows on Max Fun, and if you do, thank you.

If you support multiple shows, the amount you pledge gets split between those shows.

So boosting by just a couple dollars means everyone just gets a little bit more, which is wonderful.

Please do it now.

Going to maximumfund.org slash join before you forget.

And you can look at what kinds of thank you gifts you get at the different levels.

You can check out the bonus content once you've signed up.

There's a lot of great stuff on there.

So that's maximumfund.org slash join.

And I said at the top that this is the time of year when we celebrate.

our members.

And I know you're like, where's the celebration?

I've heard a lot about what you need.

What about what I need in terms of praise and recognition?

Well, let me tell you, it means so much to us that you are pledging and becoming members.

It means so much to us that you are supporting us as we do this show because we really couldn't do it without you.

And especially during these times when life is uncertain, the world is in chaos.

There's nothing that I feel like I need more than an outlet for my nonsense.

There's nothing I feel like I need more than to hear the nonsense of other people to help me remember that there is laughter and enjoyment in the world.

And we really appreciate your support in doing that.

You know, we've been part of Maximum Fun for many years now.

And I've always been really amazed and really impressed and really touched by the support that we get from our members and from our listeners.

And it just helps keep us going.

It means that we can do this show for you.

It means we can do this show for others.

It means that people who, as Dan mentioned earlier, cannot afford to be members right now on their own, that they still get to enjoy this show.

You can gift a membership to someone or just by supporting us.

You make the show available.

We want to keep this show free to listen to, aside from the bonus content, which you get if you get, if you join at $5 a month or more.

And we can do that because of your support.

We don't have to charge for tickets and we're not beholden to sponsors.

And I'm sure you've had some kind of TV show or movie or something canceled or pulled off the market or just removed from your access in the past year because some business was like, well, we're not making enough money off of this to justify you enjoying it.

And your support of us means that you don't have to worry about that happening.

We're our own bosses thanks to your support.

We make the decisions thanks to your support.

And we're going to keep doing this as long as we can, as long as we have your support.

We can only do it with your help.

And we're so grateful and we're so thankful that you've been giving us that help all this time and that we hope you will continue to.

If this is the year that you feel like you can afford to help us, please do.

If it's not the year you can afford to help us, then please consider it in the future.

But we ask you to go to maximumfund.org slash join and give us your support for as little as $5 a month or boost or upgrade your membership if you feel like you can right now.

And we're just really thankful for it.

I would thank you all individually, but I think it would make the episode go long.

So instead, I'll just say thank you very much.

We're so grateful.

I'm going to insert your name here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dan.

Actually, that's what I should have done.

And we, and I did want to take this moment to celebrate you, the listeners, and especially the members.

for keeping this show alive.

We really couldn't do it without you.

So thank you.

Go to maximumfund.org slash join.

If you aren't a member, and if you are, then you get to take part in that thank you.

Otherwise, please put the thank you down.

It is only for members right now.

And yeah, I think that's all we got to say except to say thank you also to Alex Smith, our producer.

You can find him under the name Howl Dotty in various corners of the internet.

He does great work for us.

And you get the paid because you pay us.

Yeah, I was just on his Twitch channel this week

watching a crazy Abel Ferrara movie.

Oh, nice.

For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

And I'm Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalen, reminding you to go to maximumfund.org slash join to join.

Thank you.

Bye.

On this episode, we discuss Craven the Hunter.

It's a tight adaptation of Craven's Last Hunt, my favorite comic book.

It's not accurate.

Not really.

How about do I?

Hey, I am putting energy out of the universe.

Maybe I'll get what I want.

Manifesting is what it's called.

You should have heard about it.

You live in Los Angeles.

Yeah, people talk about manifesting.

I'm talking a lot.

Can I try one?

Can I try one?

Sure.

Yeah.

Maximum Fun.

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