Ep. #440 - Borderlands

Hi, floppers.

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This time, it's personal.

On this episode, we discuss borderlands.

Borderlands.

Think that I'm going to lose my hands.

You just keep on pushing movies over the borderlands.

Borderlands.

Is that what the movie's about?

I was so close to doing the same thing.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

I still have a little bit of a cold, so I may be coughing my way through the episode, but don't worry.

That's all right, Elliot.

Hey, Elliot, it's that time of year.

It's that time of year, guys.

We all got colds.

Yeah, plus there were like whole years of the podcast when I was sick.

So, you know,

sick and bad.

Your turn.

All right.

Dan, that was the name of your Calypso album.

You can't get mad at Stewart for referencing it.

That's my genre apparently.

So this is a podcast where I get roasted, but it's also a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

A movie that society has deemed bad.

We will be the final arbiters eventually.

Yeah,

for all time.

In this case,

oh boy, we got a big

sweet meatball here.

The sweet ball.

Borderlands.

The movie based on a video game.

Let's start out here.

I have no familiarity with this video game.

I have to admit.

I was

kind of stopped playing games regularly in the platformer era and haven't done that much later.

Stuart, you put your hand up.

You're more of a Prince of Persia type.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan was like, is there a Mario in this?

So, yeah, I have played, I think, the second Borderlands, maybe the third.

I don't remember.

I picked up one of the random ones.

They are described as a role-playing game, which I feel like is a misnomer because you're not really role-playing.

You're just running around shooting things.

And you occasionally have missions where you have to go around and shoot other things.

And the the idea is that you're constantly shooting and fighting and enemies are constantly dropping better and better weapons and the whole idea is that it's it's a loot-based game so you're like you're constantly killing people for their weapons with the hope of getting a rare or like crazy loot weapon thing and you can play with your friends online and run around and kill more stuff so it sounds like there's a lot of socially redeeming value to the gameplay and the message of the game and an exciting story to buy

is that what you're looking for in your video games, Elliot?

Is that your.

Not entirely no, but it just, the more the older I get, the more I have to think about what lesson would my child take from this game if they were playing it.

And, you know.

Yeah, I mean, they're going to take the right lesson.

Goombas need to be stumped up.

They're going to take the right lesson, which is get that loot.

I mean, I guess that's a what-if scenario, but if you're playing the game alone, I think it's fine.

Yeah, I don't, yeah, Borderlands.

This movie, I have to say, there's a certain like zippy neon-ness to some of the aesthetic, or at least like bright colors, that I actually enjoyed as cheap as the movie can look sometimes.

But I assume that that comes from the game.

I assume that that's all stuff lifted from the game.

Is that true, Stuart?

Yeah,

the game is notable for being very bright.

And also, I don't know if this is the most accurate description, but it has a kind of like cell shading classic art or animation style that I've seen replicated on Warhammer figures to great contrast.

Yeah, I was talking to someone last night about this, and they were saying the same thing: that it's like it has like kind of lines on the outside

to make it look a little more comic booky, maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so maybe this would have been a

good thing.

Maybe this would have been served better as an animated movie, possibly as an adult animated movie.

A hundred percent.

It's also, it's also a game that is like constant things being thrown in your face: bullets, uh, like loot,

like ravagation.

Rabbit bombs.

Rabbit bombs.

And there is, of course, a lot of it is being narrated by a very annoying robot here voiced by

all-star voice actor Jack Black.

Now, does the game also feel like it is desperately trying to be Guardians of the Galaxy, or is that just this movie?

I feel like this is kind of an attempt to take

that kind of general like snappiness and sassiness and turn it into, I mean, I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy is at least the most palatable way to do this.

And that this they're trying to take this and push it toward something that's a little more accessible for, say, a normal person as opposed to a, I don't know, like Mountain Dew code red-fueled teenager.

Yeah.

Well,

I mean, I guess let's get into it.

This is, you know, this is a movie, I will say, also up front,

went through a lot of production difficulties.

Like, Eli Roth's name is the only listed director name, but I, it is my understanding that at least half of this was

shoots done by a later director.

No, it was done by the guy who did Terminator Dark Face.

They brought him in.

Yeah, Steven Spilberry did that.

Late in the game.

Okay.

I thought you said D.B.

Cooper.

There are several more.

Director, better Cooper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's several more screenwriters who worked on this, as is always the case.

I mean, that's been our case.

Every movie has extra screenwriters.

Yeah.

But it went through a lot of like originally, you know, they're supposed

Roth delivered an R-rated cut, apparently, and then they didn't want that.

They wanted a PG-13 cut.

It got wildly changed.

Nothing but dicks, I believe, is what that cut was called.

One of the screenwriters is what, Craig, Craig Maison, Craig Maison of Internal.

Yeah.

Wow.

Similar

tone.

He's the one.

He's the screenwriter.

I mean, he also wrote like the hangover movies and things like that.

You know, like that's the, he's

similar tone to Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is the outlier in his.

Chernobyl is the ultimate hangover, if you ask me.

But yeah, his name was, he had his name removed from the credits at a certain point.

Well, it's interesting that it went through so many hands, including, you know, some big screenwriters.

Considering that every line in this seems like a cliche that was lifted from a different film.

Like, I don't feel like there's any sort of line of dialogue that I'm like, yeah, that's new.

You know, it all feels like

it does feel like it.

There are certain movies where you're like, oh, oh, they started using the AI program.

Okay, that AI program, they started using it to make movies.

And this is unfortunately one of them, even though we know from the documented history that human beings worked on this movie and made it, you know.

Yeah, so there's like at any one point a character is going to be saying something like, well, that happened.

Or

I don't know.

Yeah, it's all on that basic level.

That's got to hurt.

So let's start talking about the movie.

This movie, of course, does what all great flophouse films do, and it leaps right into the narrator voiceover right away.

We learn.

But this narrator, Dan, this narrator voiceover has got a little bit of attitude as well.

A little bit of a sass.

A little bit of a sass.

Not at the beginning, though.

At the beginning, it's deadly serious until she changes.

So we know know

it's going to be a little different.

A little bit of

a record scratch.

We do things a little differently here at Borderlands.

Some say a little bit worse.

Bottom line.

I'm serving you the dessert first.

Yeah, Iridians.

Iridians, these

aliens to us, not to them.

They're just

going to stop you right there.

Okay.

Marty Border.

Let's check this one real quick.

Okay.

You want to talk about another movie?

How's Indiana?

You're on the road, Wes.

yeah yeah i've spent a lot of time with my parents uh we started watching foundation so that's going to keep me busy for a while

interesting choice i mean last time i came to visit it was shogun i just popped shogun on and they were like whoop

they're like ipad kids

yeah distract them distract them a little bit iridians used to uh rule the universe and they left fragments of their highly advanced technology around uh and that was what you know civilization sprung up from this.

But there's a vault, a fabled vault on the planet of Pandora where all their like real good stuff is hidden.

And that's turned.

What?

Stu?

Real quick,

when you name something Pandora, does that mean it's full of good stuff?

Yeah, unobtanium and whatnot.

It's all there.

Yeah, yeah.

It usually means that

there's no bad effect.

Yeah, everything's good.

So

just in case

you've forgotten because you're in a different town, you don't have to raise your hand, although I do appreciate it.

I do appreciate that you do that rather than interrupting me.

So maybe I shouldn't argue with it.

It's like a little visual cue for all the listeners at home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You guys ever been to an Aubon Pandora and you just get like a chocolate croissant when you open it up, all the evils of the world come out?

I like to call it a Pandora chocolate.

Sure, that's what they call it in France, yeah.

Okay, so because

you ever been to Pandora Express and you just want to get that like orange chicken and then it turns out all the evils of the world are in it?

Yeah, but at the end,

you open up the fortune cookie and there's hope inside.

So that's good.

Oh, yeah.

In bed.

How do they get the hope inside the cookie?

That's the thing I always wonder.

I don't know.

Corporations and treasure seekers.

Vault hunters, Dan.

They're called vault hunters.

Vault hunters.

They all want to find what's in this vault.

And of course,

you know it.

There's a prophecy.

Gotta be.

Who prophesies this or why?

The Iridians like this before they died.

A daughter of Aridia would be the one who will open the vault and restore order to the planet.

And

then we see Stuart respond to that with what I believe the children understand as a jerk-off motion.

But like a real, like, soft and sensitive one.

Like, I

care about the ghost.

Yeah.

He's saying that this is a great turn of events because it causes pleasure.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Gives the gift of pleasure.

Dan, so Dan, and the and the person doing this voiceover, they're like, I believe in this prophecy, and this is great, right?

That's the way that they leave us?

Uh, they're pretty sardonic about it.

I don't remember exactly what they say, but this is

a lot of shit or something like that.

You know,

so uh, we see this space station

where uh, Tina, who's uh, you know, a sassy, amoral girl, uh, is being

it's it's unclear what's going on here because it seems like it's a rescue by her dad later on we find that it's quite the opposite uh and i couldn't tell whether that was the movie deliberately misleading me it was the movie being difficult to understand or it was just my fault but uh i think you're i think you're supposed to have those questions in mind because it looks like she's being rescued from a prison of some kind yeah

because there's other people imprisoned on this on this thing this space yes yeah my my question is why is why so why is she imprisoned on like a if she's being we'll find out later she's being held by this corporation because they want to they've genetically created her as a clone to open up this vault so why is she being held on like a prison satellite with krieg a monster psycho who is just violent but yeah he's actually a good guy

you'd think you'd keep her somewhere that was probably like a little bit safer and also not as liable to be part of a prison riot but again that's just me i'm not borderlands that's just me i'm not i'm not the head of an intergalactic company, and maybe I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

If Elliot was in charge, he'd store in some kind of nursery with a bunch of other kids, like little wrinkled-up kids with tattoos on their hands.

Like blue skin with wrinkles and tattoo numbers on their hands.

There'd be a huge rabbit right there, like a huge rabbit that can turn into a monster.

Yeah.

That'll keep those kids from freaking out and blowing crap up.

Look, look, you got a powerful kid.

You keep them in a nursery so they feel like a baby.

Otherwise, yeah, they're going to blow stuff up with their minds.

I don't want my little blue wrinkled kids getting out.

Yeah.

This guy, this guy gets it.

What you definitely don't do is you don't introduce a street punk who just got mind powers to this group of kind of sheltered kids because he's going to give them bad ideas.

Suddenly, there's going to be like milk dripping out of those giant rabbits.

You don't want that.

Elliott, those waveforms.

It's unprecedented.

That's true.

He does have unprecedented waveforms.

Yeah.

You're talking about Akira.

Yes, we're talking about Akira, Daniel.

Yeah.

She mentions the Akira.

Yeah, the fact that she seems to be on this prison thing is part of, I think, what confused me because it seems like she had been kidnapped and she's being rescued.

But in fact, quite the opposite is happening, sort of.

Anyway, Roland, Kevin Hart, shows up to named, of course, after the hero of European myth.

Yeah.

And

yes,

as you mentioned before,

Krieg, who kind of looks like a big Jason

from Friday the 13th kind of guy, is also prisoner here.

You think he's going to be creepy, but he's a gentle giant.

His main thing is that he fights, and also he says like two-word kind of crazy phrases to describe things.

Which I think is, I think is game, is game accurate.

He's also, that character is also the poster boy.

I believe he's on the covers of all the games.

Great visual.

Look, he's this big shirtless brute with a with a mask on.

Masks always look cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um

so anyway, we cut to Prometheia, a different place, a planet.

We're not bought.

Not the comic book Promethe.

I have a little more enjoyment.

I was I knew we we were going to talk about this.

Which beautiful book, beautiful book.

I did lose a little bit of interest in the, what, 16-issue rundown of the levels of the Kabbalah.

You know what?

Elliot, if you can't love him at the 16-issue rundown of the Kabbalah, you can't love him at the, what, painted doll doing backflips and shooting biblical accurate demons.

Yeah, I guess you're right.

You're right.

I'm currently reading Alan Moore's book of short stories, Illuminations, and I'm finding that there's a certain point in each of the stories where I'm like, oh, I feel like I'm kind of like full.

Like, I got it.

How much more?

It's like a lot of language here, and I feel pretty full.

How much more is there to this story?

35 more pages.

Oh, okay.

So,

yeah, there's a certain point.

Maybe you just switch over to novels, sir.

Oh, he's written novels, Dan.

He's written very novels.

I know, but just switch them over, switch over.

Careful what you wish for.

Okay.

Anyway, on Prometheus, we meet Lilith, the bounty hunter, who's played by Kate Blanchett, our main character.

And let's just say it.

Let's just say it because we're going to be tiptoeing around it the whole time.

Looks amazing.

We'll just mention she looks incredible.

Just

dyed red hair.

She's got cosplay bounty hunter stuff on.

She looks cool.

I would love to see Kate Blanchett in this kind of thing if it was better.

It would be great.

And like the idea of Kate Blanchett getting to do this and get to be an action hero.

It's awesome.

That's what I wish.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish it, I wish it it lived up to like the, you want to see, you want to see action tar.

You want to see tar as an action hero, and it's not, it doesn't get you to that, that place, you know.

There is a scene later on where she picks up a flamethrower and roasts a bunch of dudes, and I'm like, I think I came a million times.

But also, when I was looking up...

I brought this up because I didn't want it to seem creepy later, but

when I was looking up Waterlands the game on Wikipedia, like the very short explanation of it made it sound like, oh, you know, a ragtag group of treasure hunters.

And I'm like, yeah, treasure hunting aliens.

That could be really fun.

But then I don't know to what degree stuff from this is like lifted from the sequels, but it all gets mucked up with stuff about like a chosen one and all the like a...

all the bullshit you don't need in these things.

I would rather just see like a heist.

And people dealing with their issues with their parents.

Yes, plenty of that, please.

Flashbacks to mommy leaving, like letting her chosen one go.

Yeah.

Anyway, Lilith is, you know, Lilith is a character from the games, though, right?

I think so.

She's not honestly,

she's not just from Frasier.

She's also

from Frasier.

We are literally in the second scene of the movie.

There's been so many interruptions.

We've got to move this along a little better.

So she's on Prometheus.

She's what?

She's just, she caught a bounty or something?

Yeah, yeah.

But it gets interrupted by a bunch of people trying to shoot at her.

She kills them all, of course, because she's our hero.

She's the badassiest, badass, whatever.

Life means nothing

in the rough world of borderlands.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Turns out this has been a test from Atlas, who's kind of like, I don't know, just like a big shot.

Like he's a rich guy.

He rules a lot of stuff.

He's an evil rich guy, evil corporate.

He's like an Elon Musk.

He's not the Atlas that has to hold the Earth up all the time.

Yeah.

Imagine if that guy shrugged because, oh, boy.

Oh, boy, would we be in trouble?

Disaster.

Oh, boy, would we have to learn about a bunch of economic garbage?

Bullshit.

So, but this has all been like a test from Atlas.

He,

this is kind of fun.

He projects himself like via hologram onto one of the dead guys.

And then the one remaining living guy has to sort of bear his message.

Yeah, it's like he's got, he's got, it's like a,

one of the things that looks neat in this movie is these kind of like hologram masks that people wear.

And here, yeah, it's there's a guy who is wearing a hologram mask so that the boss can talk through him.

Yeah, and then that guy gets killed.

So the one underling who's left alive has to take that mask off and put it on so that the boss can talk.

It's a fun idea.

That's a funny idea.

It's like a personal portable deep fake machine.

Yeah, it's also one of those things.

It's one of those things that is.

a future and pace of a piece of future technology that is actually that functions a little bit worse and less naturally than the technology we have now.

But that's the the world we live in.

Most of the new technology that comes in functions worse than what we have.

So

it's realistic, you know.

But he wants

her to go find his daughter, Tina, who he says been kidnapped,

the amoral kid with the bunny ears that we saw earlier on.

I don't know she had the bunny ears when we saw her the first time, did she?

Could be, could not be.

Who knows?

Hey, let's pause the podcast, go back, rewatch it.

Let's find out when the bunny ears enter the picture, enter the picture.

Well, we know the bunny ears stay in the picture, as in Robert Evans' famous memoir.

She gets a beacon to activate when she finds a daughter.

Anyway, we go to Pandora and she arrives in this

transport pod.

We learn that this is the planet that she's from,

which has become

a big junkie from people fighting over it,

trying to find this vault for centuries or what I guess just decades.

I don't know how long the timeline on this thing is.

But here's the first part of the movie where I'm like, wow, this really shows how this movie must have been chopped up.

Because there's like a long sequence of her being like, yeah, I talked to these kids and they directed me here.

And then I was attacked by these marauders, whatever.

And it's all a narration.

And we just get like a couple of shots of it.

And I'm like, this has 100% got to be stuff that they shot.

And they're like, well, we don't want to get rid of all of it.

So let's just...

It's really slowing so let's just keep the scene where she rides a bus for a while and that keeps calling her a treasure, a vault hunter and it never pays off ever.

Let's just, let's just do that instead.

It does feel like

it would be funny if the movie made a little bit more out of that.

If we were seeing clips of something really exciting and she's like, yeah, so I got attacked by this stuff and yada yada, it sucked.

Anyway, I got to keep going.

So let's let's like I wish they had made more of a joke out of the fact that we're not that she's just yada yada us through this thing.

But you're right.

It does feel like they were like, this movie, it it does feel like Eli Roth, you handed in a two-hour and 30-minute Borderlands movie.

So you got to cut some stuff, you know, as opposed to a, a deliberate choice, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, I will say that the next thing that we get, the bust is at least kind of a funny idea.

It's not necessary, but

it gives the sense of like, okay, this is a place where everyone comes to treasure hunt to the degree that there's now this whole like tourist industry basically that has sprung up around it.

And,

but we flash forward a couple weeks again through that narration.

any, she doesn't want to be mistaken for a vault hunter.

So she keeps saying, I'm not a vault hunter.

I'm not a vault hunter.

Because as with James Bond, when you're on a secret mission of some kind, you want everybody to know why you're there and who you are and not have the wrong idea because they might be, they might pay less attention to you if you don't tell them.

I think

the problem is that she is so incredibly capable that it's not like...

Like if people get the right idea and they're like, oh, you're a bounty hunter trying to find the chosen one.

It's not like she wouldn't be able to just shoot them to death.

No, that's because she could.

Well, the thing about it is like, this is one of the cases, you know, Audrey hasn't watched a lot of the more recent bad movies with me, but she watched this one and she immediately was like, spoiler alert for the end of the movie that we're going to explain later.

Like, oh, Kate Blanchett's going to be the one who's going to be able to open the vault.

And part of that is.

you know, by the diagram, diagrammatic nature of this storytelling, like she's the one who doesn't care about it.

So she has to be the one.

And Tina, who keeps saying, I'm the special one, I'm special.

I'm special.

You know, she's not going to turn out to be special.

Exactly.

The thing about this bus thing is it's a funny idea, but there's no actual jokes in it.

It just kind of like

the driver's like, oh, Vault Hunter.

Ah, welcome.

I'll drive you, Vault Hunter.

And she's like, I'm not a Vault Hunter.

And then he starts playing a video that's like, Vault Hunters, welcome to Pandora.

But then it's just him talking about guns they might need.

Like there's no, there's no jokes in any of it, but it's presented as if there's jokes.

Yeah, the thing I wrote down about the dialogue for this movie is everything in this movie is either exposition, a cliche, or mirthless jokes.

Like, there are things that are supposed to be jokes, but none of them are funny.

Like,

I have to admit, I chuckled at some of the stuff in the movie, but it was mostly just like, wow, this is like, what's this movie doing?

And I feel like this sequence...

Feels like part of the like on-ramp element in the game where you're like, this is how you play.

Welcome to the game.

While you're waiting, why not press the A button to

control your camera?

That kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you need to crouch now.

But a very important thing is about to happen, which is, of course, that Jack Black enters the picture in the form of a little box robot named Claptrap.

And

I don't know if this is true.

I should have confirmed this, actually.

I was talking to...

a friend about the production of this movie and they said that they had heard that he like all the Jack Black stuff was recorded way early.

like he didn't even know kind of what he was reacting to it was just like some of the earliest stuff that was I don't know maybe we can figure out later on whether that's true but seems like the best idea yeah

but uh somebody some unknown person somebody once told me somebody once told claptrap that he was programmed to protect lilith

should she ever return to the planet.

Who was it?

We don't know, right?

We don't know.

Luckily, he happens to be in the right side of the planet for her to meet up with him because, again, this is a planet.

So even a small planet is very big.

And Claptrap is a very small robot.

So it's lucky they happen to meet up in the right place.

Maybe it's one of those little planets that has the exact same gravity as Earth, though.

Oh, maybe like the Little Prince lives on on the cover of the Little Prawn Prince.

Yeah, could be.

The Little Prawns.

So.

Claptrap is able to locate Tina.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Here's, so here's a Clap Trap.

I do like one thing about Clap Trap, which is I like the concept of him where he is programmed to serve Lilith, but he does not like her.

So he's very openly derisive of her, but he has to listen to what she's saying.

I mean, is this kind of Marvin?

Passively aggressive derisive.

Like he's very passive aggressive, like, oh no, it would be terrible if you died.

Yeah.

Is this kind of like Marvin from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Yes, very much so.

Like a high-energy Marvin.

But at the same time, it's a funny attitude for a robot.

And I just wish the, I wish the things that he said were a little funnier because I like that concept that I have to follow you, but I don't want to.

So she finds Tiny Tina in the quarry.

She introduces herself, I believe, as Tiny Tina, or like the movie does or something.

I'm like, okay, I guess that's your full name that you go by is Tiny Tina.

From the desk of Tina Tina.

Guys,

how shocked were you that this movie did not have like freeze frame, like paint swatch title cards every time one of our main main characters showed up.

I am so shocked.

Very surprised.

I am so shocked that my memory supplied the possibility of one

just now.

I'm like, did the movie do that?

Like, no, it does do the thing where it'll like cut to a planet and it'll just say like Pandora in big yellow letters on the screen or something like that.

But

yeah, we didn't get we didn't get freeze frame paint swatch intro

moments, you know, suicide, suicide squad, suicide squad style.

Oh, you you idiot.

You sound so stupid.

Yeah.

So, Tina at first seems like she's like, oh, great.

You rescued me.

But of course, she's an immoral hit girl, amoral hit girl style,

you know, character.

She's not actually.

There's nothing funnier.

There's nothing funnier or more fun than little kids who are violent little maniacs.

It's the world we're developing.

And Les Enfants Tarible, you know what I mean?

She tosses.

Stuart is being so bilingual today.

I love it.

She tosses.

It's really bringing out the enfrancais in him.

The in France?

Lilith tosses Tina an exploding bunny.

And these bunnies, I got to say, these are some of the least effective bombs.

They occasionally seem to work on bad guys.

If they're tossed at a character we care about, they will at best knock them out.

And they also have a blinking red eye light that signals to someone that they're holding a bomb, which seems like a bad thing to do if you're trying to discuss it.

Let's give them credit for this.

They don't, you can carry them on your person without it showing or without even having a bag or any sort of carrying thing.

They just appear when you need them,

as if you're keeping them in your butt.

So you got to give them credit for that.

I mean, there's other options, Elliot, but you're probably right.

It is the butt.

Yeah.

I don't know who else in your body you're going to be able to carry that many stuffed bunnies.

Yeah.

We don't have flesh sacks as humans.

No.

Because unfortunately we're not descended from marsupials.

The marsupials had the right idea.

Yeah.

That is on the body.

With the pocket on the body, you know?

Krieg is there with Tina also, you know, protecting her.

And, but then, and they fight a bit, Lilith and Krieg, but then Nox shows up, the commander of the Crimson Lance, which is, I guess, Atlas's army force.

And

they're going to take them in.

When Tina throws another bunny bomb, there's a big, you know, things collapse.

In the chaos, they escape with Roland, who has returned.

Have we explained who Roland is?

That Roland is Kevin Hart?

Roland is Kevin Hart.

He was part of the Crimson Lance in the past.

He seems to have gone rogue.

There also seems to be some sort of romantic history with him and Knox.

Yeah, and

this is a grim portrayal by Kevin Hart.

This is not the jokey, smiley Kevin Hart we've come to know from nearly every other performance he's given on film.

This is a very serious, very dour Kevin Hart.

I very much love a movie where it feels like everybody but one person is slumming it.

And that one person is Kevin Hart.

Like, I feel like when he showed up just said, he's like, oh, yeah, I can't wait to be in this great movie.

And everyone else is like, this piece of shit.

And the kid.

I feel like the kid was probably excited about it.

Yeah.

But I read that Kevin Hart, I don't know if this is true because it's just something I read on the internet, that he trained with a Marine

for the audition.

for the movie.

And I'm like, that's hard.

That's hardcore to be training for the audition.

When you're a big superstar like Kevin Hart, like, that, then maybe they just

should be offer-only, right?

He should be offer-only.

Kevin Hart, if you're listening to this, if your reps are not making you offer-only for this kind of movie, then call me.

I will be your management.

I will represent you because you should be offer-only.

You should not be auditioning for these roles.

You'd be really, you'd be a really good talent manager, Elliot.

Oh, I'd be great at it.

Oh, yeah, because I love conflict.

I love really pushing people.

I love getting down to brass tacks and really like putting screws to people.

Sure.

But you have like an auctioneer's mentality.

You talk and stuff.

I mean, I can talk fast, but

that's the main thing that is necessary from, as I understand it, from pop culture.

Is fast talking.

Fast talking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then I'd have to wear a suit.

I'd have to have a ponytail.

I'd have to drive around.

You could probably talk into two different cell phones at the same time.

I probably could do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

And then I'd go, you guys talk to each other and just smoosh the cell phones together.

And then the scene would start with me and whoever just walked into the room.

Yeah.

Oh, I thought you'd be like yelling into one and being really sweet in the other.

And then at some point, you get a mixed up.

I I get mixed up.

Yeah, police hairstyle.

Sure.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Anyway, so they're escaping in a car with Roland.

They go through a gully full of pee and feces.

So that's funny.

And there's a monster that we see, a tentacle monster that they kill, and they have to, like, the tire gets blown.

They have to take a little break.

For some exposition, we find out that Lilith's mom died trying to find

this vault.

Roland's deal is he wants to keep Atlas from finding the vault himself because Atlas cannot be trusted with whatever's inside.

He's such an evil guy.

He's such an openly evil guy.

Yeah.

But not like fun evil.

Like, he's evil in the way where it's like all the characters should know he's evil, but it's not like

he's not like Denzel Washington and Gladiator 2, who's just having the time of his life.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, there's like a there's a tripart key, I guess, and they have one.

You gotta find three things.

Yeah, it's like Zelda or whatever.

Yeah.

So anyway, we go to Sanctuary City.

Moxie's red light.

I don't do Sanctuary City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty because Gina Gershon is there.

Yeah.

Gina Gershon is playing Moxie doing a May West impression, basically.

She's like a southern May West.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She knows what movie she's in.

Like a southern fried May West who's with like, you know, cabaret makeup and a little top hat and stuff.

Yeah.

Um, and Moxie knows where the scientist is who kind of raised Lilith.

Uh,

and, uh,

you know, like there's, you know, parent issues, like you said, like, uh, Lilith's, like, why did she send me away?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We're going to learn.

There's reasons, of course.

Because this is because Lilith is, she's now, this is now, we're now at the stage in the movie where Lilith is encountering people from her life on Pandora.

So, like, when they go, Moxie knows everybody.

Everybody knows Moxie, you know, and the,

so it's, yeah, we get some backstory there, you know.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, someone from the army knows Roland.

His roommate.

His former roommate.

Yeah.

They have a little comedy scene where they both try and pretend like that's Bobby Lee.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, he's going to rat them out, of course.

So they have to knock him out and escape.

And then we meet Tannis, who is played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

And Tannis is, it's helpful for making wine, right?

Yeah, those are Tannins.

Oh, Tannins.

Sorry.

My apologies.

Those are the sort of the astringent thing that you find in wine or tea.

So

this is our second Academy Award winner in Borderlands.

But to be fair, I don't think she had won her Academy Award when they made Borderlands yet, right?

Because she just won.

That is probably fair.

Although maybe she did.

I don't know.

But I mean, she's still a legend.

I mean, she's still bit Jamie Lee Curtis.

It was so long.

So

Tannis was supposed to kind of take care of Lilith after her mom

was, I don't know, like, like we see later on, she's like, there's some sort of siege that she can't.

It's one of these things where a secret has been kept from Lilith about what her mom was doing and her true identity for no reason, only to create resentment.

And I feel like if Tannis had been played a little bit more absent-minded, then maybe I would get that like it just didn't occur to her that

she would want to know these things about her past.

But also,

why is Tannis the person you're going to leave your child with?

Like it doesn't, there's, it's one of these things where this movie is a lot of characters doing the things they need to do to keep the movie going so that it hits movie beats, as opposed to characters doing things that make sense for them to do.

Like there's a part where Lilith is like, all right, I guess I have to work with you guys because of that fight with Crimson Lance.

And it's like, I don't see why.

Like, I don't know.

I don't see why you couldn't just take the girl and bring her back now or why you couldn't just tell Crimson Lance, yeah, I was trying to capture her when you guys showed up.

Like, I don't, there's no, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of just, well, I guess this is part of the part of the movie where I do this now.

You know, yeah, it's time to team up.

I do like how Tan Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis is dressed up kind of like a drum major.

She's wearing like a red little coat and with like, she almost looks like Dr.

Robotnik.

I really like that.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, this is the person who's supposed to sort of be a surrogate mom to Lilith, but

she left Lilith with tradespeople so she could continue her vault chasing ways.

She's been studying this for years.

And

so here we learn also from Tina that Atlas created her, like that Atlas is her father only in the sense that he is her creator, that there was a piece of DNA from an Iridian on an old on the vault key that he used to clone an Iridian because

an Iridian is who's supposed to be able to open the vault.

Yeah, there's a problem.

She is Atlas's child in the same way that the Marvel characters are Disney's children, you know,

been acquired rather than rather than a natural

creation.

The moon.

Miracle life, you know.

Tannis has the information that the second

vault key is in

caustic caverns.

So that's where they got to go on their next fetch quest.

And meanwhile, caustic caverns, it sounds like something at like the Itchy and Scratchy Land amusement park.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, you know, someone's seen Claptrap in Sanctuary City, and so they have to.

What's amazing here is, okay, we haven't mentioned Claptrap very much, and you would think that ClapTrap is not a visible presence in the movie as a result.

But Claptrap Claptrap is a constant, constant nattering, chattering presence in this movie.

And he is impossible to forget for a second because he's constantly just wheeling up and we're like, hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you guys,

and the scene where he's in Sanctuary City, I don't know what he's doing.

He's just walking around going, spare parts, anybody got some spare parts?

And like hitting on a vending machine.

I don't know why he's there.

They just need to have someone see them so that they can be chased.

But it's just what it's like that Claptrap is such a,

it's just that he's such a through line for the movie.

But for no, it's like if someone sees Star Wars and they're like, yeah, guess you got to have droids that are just kind of making noises and talking during the movie.

And it's like, well, are you going to give the droids like a, like, much of a personality or like a thing that they do?

Do you have to?

I don't think so.

Well, I mean,

I will say that, like, you know,

he's a funny guy and

he's a talented voice actor.

Like.

He's not doing a bad job with what this character is, but they give him so much.

Like, he's talking all the time, like you say.

And a little of Claptrap goes a long way it does it's it's like a point is he's annoying when when you go to it's like you go to a restaurant and on the menu it says like like a house sauce you know on the hamburger and you're like all right i'll try that i guess and then you and it comes back and the sauce is covering the bun it's dripping off the plate

you know like it's a house

you know it's the house

which means ghosts cats yeah there's a laughing watermelon in the background

cuts off your fingers but there's but you are not allowed to forget for one moment that Clap Trap is a character in this movie.

Like, it's just all over the place.

You know what make this scene better?

Clap Trap.

But I agree.

Jack Black, I think, is doing his best with what they've given him.

I feel like nobody in this movie is necessarily

completely sleepwalking through it, but nobody is given a lot to succeed with.

We go into caustic caverns.

They're immediately, they they can't get by because there's a bunch of these uh bloodshot people.

They're as the movie says, they're psychos that the psychos are afraid of, and there's a lair, and they're like, and blood.

And Claptop's like, there's a 0% chance we can get through without being detected.

You never see that, which is actually pretty funny.

I like that.

And I and I.

Is that as funny as the part where he has to poop bullets and he's saying, don't look at me, don't look at me?

We'll get there.

Don't

skip to dessert like the restaurant I said before that does things a little differently.

I do kind of like, I admit, this next bit where they're like, Well, did you run a thing where you're the distraction?

And the way he does the distraction, where he's like,

Even though it would make no sense for me to say this to all you violent people, you know, who will just shoot me

if there's any other reason that I was making it a distraction, but then he like insults them in a very dumb way.

And

again, I got a

little bit of a

little bit of claptrap goes a long way.

Yeah.

Some of these moments where he actually is doing something and doing an actual joke

as opposed to just doing shtick in the background

is better, I would say.

Yeah.

No, I agree.

And I think this sequence is

when they're being chased eventually by the bloodshots.

I think it's one of the better sequences in the movie.

I think it does get across that idea, Stuart, that you were talking about from the game of like, there's just constant stuff coming at them.

And as we said, it it feels like the script in the dialogue is written by AI.

The choice for this big action sequence to be set to Ace of Spades feels like an AI decision.

Yeah.

And it, yeah.

I was, we were watching this.

They start attacking, they get caught.

They start attacking.

And it's, and Ace of Spades just comes in out of nowhere.

It's non-diegetic.

That's fine.

And I had a brief moment of like, they weren't listening to it.

It's not, it's not like they were listening to it.

I had a brief moment of like,

oh, I love this song.

Like, why isn't this movie?

And I was like, you know what?

There's some 14-year-old kid who thought Borderlands was going to be a real badass, kick-ass movie and went to go see it and is not enjoying it.

And then at least it's going to introduce them to this song the same way when I was 10, the young ones introduced me to this song.

And it just really blew my mind.

So, like, I was like, you know what?

If this is just an Ace of Spades delivery method, then that's fine.

You know, I'm glad that you answered this question for me because while watching it, I had the question in my head.

I'm like, okay, is Elliot sitting watching this being like, oh, they're used to Ace of Spades, they use Ace of Spades in this dumb movie.

I hate this.

Or is Elliot like perking up because, oh, at least I get to listen to Ace of Spades.

No, there's, there's a little bit of, I mean, when I listen to Ace of Spades, I like to hear it without the sounds of, oh,

get out of here.

That's kind of hurt.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

But, but no, it is fun.

It's, you know, and it just, but honestly, it reminded me of when they played Ace of Spades in Shoot Em Up.

And I was like, oh, I wish I was watching Shoot Em Up.

Like, that's a movie that feels like it's doing something.

But it also reminded me of when Whiplash, the Metallica song, plays in, was it That's My Boy?

Oh.

And

that's a funny thing.

In the movie Whiplash, I'm like, when are they going to play Whiplash?

Like, there's a drum, there's a whole drum sequence in that.

But

that Whiplash plays, I think, in that Adam Sandler movie we watched years ago with him and Andy Sandberg.

And it flashed me back to that.

And I was like, well, I didn't like that at all.

So I don't know, guys.

I guess this like

Proust's Madeleine, more excuses for Stuart to drop some French on us.

This brought back a lot of memories for me.

But I will say, Ace of Spades is going to survive fine from Borderlands.

And I'd rather they play, here's the thing.

I will say, I'd rather they played one of the greatest kind of kick-ass metal songs

of all times during this action sequence than play an ironic kind of like a Dean Martin song or like, you know, like a children's song or something bright and fluffy that's supposed to be an ironic counter.

Or like a 70s funk song or something.

Yes, exactly.

Like I didn't, like, it wasn't like Argyle, you know, or, and so, and one of the things that were in, um, and it didn't bother me as much as in Guardians when uh, they're fighting those pig monsters and uh, no sleep till Brooklyn comes up.

And I was like, come on, dudes, like, can we have, can we, can we find a new song?

Can we find a song that I haven't heard in another movie this year?

You know, so uh, so you know what, guys, this is my review.

If my review of Borderlands was entirely about their use of the song Ace of Spades, then I'd probably give it a pretty good review, to be honest.

Well, anyway, Claptrap,

you know, having served as the

having having served as the distraction, was shot the hell up.

So then we get the teased pooping scene where he's like, like they've gotten through the first part of trying to evade these people without

detected.

Yeah.

And

suddenly he's making all this noise because he's expelling the extra lead from him, which is him.

shitting out bullets and he says, as you said, don't look at me.

And

I didn't realize at the time, but I, of course, sent a screenshot from the Wikipedia page that this was like a seminal moment in the making of Borderlands or the conceiving of it.

And I have to, I'm going to read it to the audience who did not receive it in text form.

It would have been invasive, I think, if you had texted the entire audience.

Yeah, I would have been liking that YouTube album.

Eli Roth stated that his French bulldog pooping gave him inspiration while pitching the film.

I have to look away because she gets really shy.

But one day I filmed her.

She had that shy look on her face and I was like, that's claptrap.

A scene of claptrap pooping was included in the final film.

So there you go.

Movie magic.

A dog pooping turns into a robot pooping.

It's a real Shakespeare in love moment, you know, just inspiring art, you know, from something.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, Ben Franklin put a kite up in the thing and got hit by lightning.

That's exactly like this thing.

He did put a kite up in the thing and got hit by lightning.

I think you misunderstood the story a little bit.

But that's

a new inspirational poster that I have in my dentist's office.

The dentist's office.

But this, yeah, this is Newton's apple or Newton's crapple, if you will.

Thank you.

Well, anyone.

Anyone.

Any who.

Him shooting.

shitting bullets.

Shooting bullets.

Him shitting bullets.

He's kind of shooting them at his butt.

That race.

Again, just like that Meganeth song, pooping bullets.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know about you guys, but every time I go to the bathroom, every time I make a little poop, I make a little gun sound effect with my mouth just to just to keep it exciting.

You know, just to be silly.

I do do the thing that I, that I do.

Sorry, that I'm sure that many men do, though, where when you're peeing into a urinal, you pretend that you're a gunner who's firing

the anti-aircraft

plane or something, you know?

Yeah.

There's another scene scene of them evading people.

They're chased.

Roland has to stay.

If you're asking if that means I don't pee

just a stream, but instead individual bursts, like

kind of fly parking.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Roland has to stay behind to fix the elevator so the rest of them can escape.

He promises that he'll return.

So then they go to a new place,

an old mine.

A new place in the old mine, yeah.

They put the two keys together to form a map to the vault, and uh, Tannis reveals that Tina's the third key, and uh, the vault will consume all the keys to open.

We don't know what that means.

She says, I don't think that means she'll die, but who knows?

Um,

and Tina does not know that she may die when the vault is open.

She's just super, she's like, I'm special.

I'm going to open the vault.

La, la, la, la.

You know, she just, she's, you know, really, really powerful.

Especially literally her her lines, I believe.

And then she skips around.

Yeah.

She skips around with her bunny ears on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm like, ma'am, shouldn't you be in one of the Purge movies?

Clap Trap has fixed Atlas's transmitter, which Lilith breaks again, but a drone shows up with his hologram saying that the transmitter was a tracker.

Yeah.

Transmitter was a tracker.

The Crimson Lance is going to come collect Tina and the keys.

And Tina, of course, overhears only the most incriminating, easy to misunderstand part of this conversation and thinks that Lilith is still working for her quote-unquote dad and throws another useless bomb at Lilith.

It does knock Lilith off her feet for a moment, right?

Yeah.

It puts her to sleep for a little while.

I'll say to Tina that a bounty hunter came and said to you, I'm here to take you back to your dad.

And then within like 30 minutes, you felt like you were best friends.

And then later, you think you found out that she's still working for your dad.

This is on you, Tina.

This is not, you can't blame Lilith for this.

Like, you, you know, shame on, fool you once, shame on you.

Fool you twice, shame on me.

It's uh, it's, you can't, you can't do it.

Yeah, this is, this is on you, Tina.

Yeah.

Um,

Clap Trap briefly thinks also where do you think she got that bunny bomb from?

Where do you think she was storing it?

Yeah, Dan.

I guess it's got to be the butt, like you said before.

It's the only place on the human body that things can be stored.

And you, and we've we've established that things end up in people's characters' butts in this movie because Clap Trap just pooped out all those bullets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaking of Clap Trap, he's briefly excited to think that Lilith is dead, but she's not.

Tell us, Dan, what are we what are we talking about when we talk about Clap Trap?

Lilith, in Lilith's old home, she finds a picture of her and her mom.

Now, wait, now, did they go deliberately to her own home or did they?

I'm not really sure why why this happens.

And I'll be honest, like, my notes are not.

I'm sure there's a lack of caring as well.

Lack of caring when it happens.

I think there's a chance I got hit by a bunny bomb around here because it's all pretty fuzzy at this point in the movie for me.

But this triggers.

I will also admit, yeah,

from the middle of the, from the middle of the, as soon as Ace of Spades stopped playing, I think I also kind of found the word to make it.

Lights got a little bit dimmer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This movie is not a good movie movie all the way through, but I will say that I think I would say it's not a good movie even from the start.

But there's something about like the relentless, like, we're just going to throw a bunch of stuff at you and it's all going to be brightly colored, at least rather than like gray digital sheen.

Like, it kept my interest for a while, and then it did sort of become less and less interesting to me.

Maybe it's mostly around the time that the movie gets less colorful, to be honest.

Yeah.

They start being in more dark rooms.

They start

just kind of being

sadder.

And and I was wondering whether like those were parts of the research shoots because it does like there is a distinct shift in sort of the visual quality at a certain point, and I don't know which part was which, but

anyway, um, probably the parts that look cheaper probably came later.

Yeah, this triggers a hologram, uh, R2D2 style, uh, that to clear a few things up from Clap Trap.

Um, Claptrap shows uh,

my end of Act Two circuit has been tricked.

Lilith's mom shows up explaining that via hologram that she sent Lilith away on purpose because when she found out, quote, what Lilith was,

and she programmed Claptrap to find her and protect her and tell her that she loves her.

Okay.

This is the kind of stuff that she finally has to vault.

This is the kind of stuff that might have been better communicated in, say, a letter that she could have taken with her.

Sure, earlier on.

As a book, hey, I've got to make sure that Lilith knows that

she's the chosen one and that I love her.

I guess I'll record a hologram and stick it in a robot and leave it on a different planet that Lilith is on in the hope that she finds it someday.

And I better make the robot real annoying.

Yeah,

I feel like deep down, most parents are just jigsaws in disguise.

You know, they just want to make things complicated.

You got to do it in a way that makes her hate my memory.

How can I do that?

How can I make it?

How can I make her feel bad for hating me legitimately up to this point?

And this is, and this is, what's her name?

As the mom.

Haley Bennett.

I looked it up.

Never mind.

I thought it was somebody different.

Can't remember what all she's been in, but she's been in.

Never mind.

I thought it was someone else whose name I couldn't remember.

So at the vault opening, guys, you go into the big vault opening.

Everybody's going to be there.

So Tina talks a lot about how special she is.

And of course, that means that when she steps on the little vault thing, the glowy vault thing, nothing happens.

Yeah.

Turns out Atlas has been watching the whole time behind, you know, like a disguise-y shield

that has been projecting.

Yeah, it's like a hologram thing.

Yeah.

Stuff.

And Atlas is like, well, we're just going to kill you now.

And Roland also shows up.

He makes good on his promise to not die earlier in the film.

Oh, yeah.

So

did we mention that he seemed to have sacrificed himself in order to save them from

the bloodshot psychos?

I did.

I didn't make a big deal out of it because we all knew that he was going to come back.

Yeah, of course.

There's no way.

But the movie made it seem like we were supposed to believe he was going to die there and really sacrifice himself, right?

Yeah, do you think that they had originally had some shots of him being like torn apart by the bloodshots and they had to cut those out?

Probably when they decided to bring him back.

It would have been pretty funny if they showed him being torn apart.

And then when he came back, he had like big stitches stitching it back together.

Maybe that's a better movie.

That'd be great.

I would love that.

He found Dr.

Frankenstein there on Pandora.

Yeah.

So, guys, here's my question about some of these movies.

Is the audience supposed to be fooled by some of this kind of schmuckbait stuff where this character is a cynical, hard-bitten bounty hunter?

They definitely can't be the chosen one, or, oh, he's giving his life.

We'll never see him again.

Or are we supposed to be in like just like, well, this is how movies go?

Because

here's my theory, and then I want to ask you a question, and I'm going to answer it.

My theory is.

This movie originally, I guess, was supposed to be rated R, and they were like, no, make it PG-13 or whatever for kids.

Kids seem to be the only audience that I think would be able to follow this movie the way that it seems to be intended to, the same way that when my older son saw the Pokemon Detective Pikachu movie,

the minute Bill Naey showed up on screen, he did not like me go, oh, that's the bad guy.

He's going to turn out to be the bad guy later.

So when that character was revealed to be the bad guy, he was like, what?

Like, he was genuinely surprised by it.

Did he have the same reaction when you guys watched Minority Report?

And he's like, Max von Seidow, he's got to be the good guy.

You know what, Dan, you're going to take, you're going to call, you're going to call

Protective Services.

I've not yet shown minority reports to my children.

But is it, is it a, is it kind of, is the movie saying to the audience, you know how this is going to turn out, or is the movie expecting us to be surprised when these things happen?

What do you, what do you think?

Well, I,

first I want to call out the use of the term schmuckbait, which is a term of art that I think that the audience probably can guess what it means.

It's an industry term.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the stuff that you lay in there that, uh, yeah, it's supposed to fool people.

Um, but it's really only going to fool people who have never seen a movie or television show.

Yeah, I think I don't think that

you're going to believe that Roland's really dead just because

I don't know.

It's, it's, it, it is supposed to be a sacrifice, but it's not lingered over that much.

And it's so cursory.

Like, it really feels like, yeah, yeah.

No, he's going to make good on this.

Like, I'll be back.

I do think that people aren't necessarily supposed to know, like, Lilith is really the one who's going to be able to open the vault.

I think that's what I'm saying.

That's what I thought.

Because I do wonder that a lot because it seems so telegraphed from so early on.

But maybe that's just because we've seen so many movies that have a similar, similar mechanic.

I don't know.

Could be.

Yeah.

Is this the type of movie that's operating under the assumption that their audience has never seen a movie before?

And they're like, oh, wow, this is so novel.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, are they expecting that?

The train's coming right at me.

Are they expecting the Paul Schrader audience where they've been raised not being allowed to see movies because they're strict Calvinist upbringing?

And so it's all new to them.

I don't know.

What did Paul Schrader think about this?

Did he do a letterbox review of it?

I'm sure he did.

We should try them.

I'm still delighted by the idea that that man went and saw Twisters based on his letterbox.

He loves movies.

Danny loves movies.

You know who loved Jurassic Park?

Ingmar Bergman.

People who love movies love movies.

You know?

Yeah.

There's that.

Bob Hatt Goldstwaite has talked about Martin Scorsese coming up to him and going, oh, I really like Shakes the Clown.

Like that, like people who like movies like movies, you know?

Yeah, that's true.

Anyway, so back at the vault, Knox, the captain of the Crimson Lance,

briefly is like, you were right, Roland, and like tries to stand with him and immediately gets vaporized by guns from the ship, which was pretty shocking, actually.

But

also,

why is this the moment when she changes sides?

Like, what is she learning about her evil boss now?

Her evil boss who has a private army that he's been using to try to track down a child to open a vault?

Like, what is she learning?

It's because Atlas is immediately like, I'm just going to kill this kid.

I think that's

I think that's it.

But it doesn't seem like that should be the final straw if she's, you know, I feel like she had been like

the whole time.

She had been like, let's capture these guys.

And then at this point, he's just like, kill them all.

And she's like, wait a minute.

That could be it.

I need to sign off on for that.

um lilith comes in she's like hey i'm i'm the daughter of aridia we get flashbacks to all the clues like we need them things like gina gershon being like your mom always told me you were special which is the dumbest of clues like i mean people with very dumb children tell me that their kids are special

Also, the moment when she teleported everybody to safety, but Tina thought she was the one who teleported everyone to safety.

That's a clue, you know?

She agrees to open the vault if Atlas leaves everyone alone.

She also tells Tina, memories are more powerful than anything Atlas can create, which I don't, that just seems like nonsense to me.

I don't know how that's true.

Nope.

But the act of opening the vault turns Lilith into a champion.

She grows sort of these like...

plasma wings, fire wings around her.

Yeah, she's like, she turns into like a dark phoenix.

Yeah, she's the firehawk now.

And she's got superpowers and she zaps all her friends with protective plasma so they can't get hurt until Atlas uses his gun that had previously vaporized the lady to shoot Lilith, who, of course, being the firehawk is not killed by it, but it does seem to hurt her.

Yeah, we don't know the level of her powers.

Yeah, it puts all of her support powers into cooldown.

Here's something, something that it just surprised surprised me this happened because the whole Chosen One thing was presented as she's the key to the vault.

There was never any mention of superpowers or that the Iridians ever had giant rainbow-colored flame wings or the ability to then give people bullet-stopping body flames that protect them.

Again, some of this stuff looks great.

I think those wings look the actual wing effects I liked a lot.

But it does come out of nowhere that this is, it's not.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

By the way, the Chosen One also is a superhero,

not just like keyed to this lock at this vault.

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's pretty boring.

I don't know about you guys.

I think this is pretty boring.

I mean, it is pretty boring at the same time.

Yeah.

Any of the stuff that hews closer to the chosen one stuff is boring.

Like, I don't, again, I don't know what the game was like, but it feels like some of this is,

oh, this is how a movie has to be.

Stuff that has been laid on top of whatever that was.

And that's.

The climax of movies now with heroes often is not, oh, this is when the hero is pushed to their biggest challenge and they've got to go the distance.

It is, well, this is the moment when the hero's power unlocks and then they get to just beat the shit out of everybody, you know, which is, which can sometimes be very cathartic in a certain movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like in Sword of Doom.

Yeah, like in Sword of Doom.

When he's literally damning himself with his addiction to violence, yeah, very

as he mows through one attacker after another, yeah, very much.

That's your stand-up and cheer moment.

That's his stand-up and cheer moment.

It's not even like he wins, Stuart.

His life is now just a never-ending battle.

He's achieved eternal damnation in a way.

But yeah, that it's a...

There's a moment in The Iron Giant, which I always feel very cathartic, when the giant finally unleashes and is just walking through troops and blowing up tanks because Hogarth has been hurt and it's pushed him over the edge.

But that's not like the end of the movie.

The end of the movie is him then making the sacrifice to

and possibly destroy himself taking out that missile to save everybody and it feels like the current the modern version of that movie which is would just end with him mowing down the army and hogarth being like that's my friend you know and that would be the that would be the client that's like that's what we have here you know rather than him rejecting his violent nature yes um or at least or doing something difficult like having to do something that is difficult for him that may harm him in order to save other people you know

anyway when when last we left off Lilith, she was being buffeted by guns from the ship, which was hurting her a bit, but she manages to take the ship down.

She's stronger than ever.

Atlas has Tina,

makes Lilith take them into the vault where there's like a bit of a face-off, but not much of anything, honestly.

How could there be?

Atlas is literally just a dude.

And Atlas is taken away by

the

Redeemer of Souls.

Yeah.

He's taken away by a tentacle monster who, like, why is he in the vault?

I don't know.

I don't care.

There's a tentacle monster down there.

It'd be very funny if they were like, oh, yeah, the prophecy also mentioned there might be a tentacle monster in the vault.

But yeah, it's just a monster.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, so after that, they're having a big walk celebration.

There's all the wonders that are in the vault, right?

It's like

just a bunch of boxes, it seems, right?

Yeah.

Floating boxes, glowy Tron floor yeah that's basically

i feel like that's the thing atlas at that point is like worth it baby yeah

anyway as i was saying by then everyone's singing yub yub nub yeah that night what are they celebrating exactly well i guess that now it's like it's this sort of vague like the balance is back because they have a they've opened the thing The riches are theirs.

Like they have a protector.

You know, outsiders aren't going to be plundering their world or whatever.

Why are outsiders not going to be plundering their world?

All that stuff is going to be.

That's the firebirds back, baby.

Why aren't the vault hunters like that the vault hunters on Pandora aren't still going after that stuff?

It's like they're celebrating.

They're celebrating like.

Elliot, shut up.

Shut up.

They won, all right?

And the people of Pandora know this?

Like, they're aware of this crystal thing?

Like, it's a...

Yeah,

they got an Amber Alert or whatever.

Because then they're like, what does that sound like?

Sounds like peace.

Let's keep it going.

And it's like, what is peace of what?

Like, what were people

Anyway, it seemed like nobody seemed that like to have that much of an issue with Pandora except Lilith up to this point.

So, but anyway, like the movies ends with like Tina basically being like,

I don't know, she's like one owner writer at the end of Beetlejuice.

Do the thing.

The thing in this case being that, like, Lilith goes up into the sky with her wings and turns into a big firebird in the sky.

And then credits, and we get a brief credits thing that Stuart may or may not have seen where Clapper

Trap is dancing, but the scrolling of the

names in the credits pushes him off screen, which was, you know, kind of fun, I guess.

Like, as those things go, it was pretty short.

I mean, this movie gets a lot of credit from me for not setting up a sequel.

Yeah.

Well, maybe the sequel would be the stuff that you're talking about, where Pandora is still under, you know, attack from various people.

Or just, it's just full of people who are trying.

So

they were going for the idea that Pandora is like this lawless, chaotic, you know, wasteland.

You know, it's this Mad Max type land.

And then at the end, something happens.

Everyone's like, hey, let's get along with each other.

And I'm like, I don't know.

I don't really know what happened.

I don't understand why.

At the same time, I don't want to watch more of the movie.

So it's not like I'm saying movie, explain this to me.

Well, as long as we're in that zone, let's get into final judgments: whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

I am going to say that it's a bad, bad movie, but Roman Mars was right.

Doing the show for decades has warped my brain.

And on the sliding scale of the stuff we've, we watched, like, this movie is a disaster in a lot of ways, but it's a way that kind of charmed me more than other movies because you rarely see a big budget movie with big stars that feels this like chopped up and slapdash and you know, like something really went wrong.

And like I said, some of the brightness of it appealed to me.

Some of the really bad effects in it, I was like giggling at the way they looked.

You know, like there was more fun in this movie to be had than I was led to believe, but I wouldn't, you know, tell anyone to watch it or anything.

Yeah, I would say this is a bad, bad movie.

It's like, it's kind of charming to see a crummy video game adaption

by people who don't seem to forget how to make movies and also what makes video games fun.

But what I will say is that like compared to something like the fucking,

what are those Rebel Moon movies, which is I feel like the closest equivalent to this that we've seen recently, I would watch a million borderlands over Rebel Moons.

Rebel moons are so like overly serious garbage.

And this at least moved relatively quickly.

I will join Stewart in damning this with the faintest praise possible, which is yes, I would rather watch it than the Rebel Moon movies.

But it's similar to the Rebel Moon movies to me in that it feels like,

it makes me, it's a bad, bad movie to me.

It makes me sad watching this movie because it feels like, well, this is the kind of movie, not to sound like Martin Scorsese, you know,

that old superhero-hating geezer, you know, but that this is the kind of movie that is getting made a lot now where it's like, there's no reason to make it.

It's not doing anything fun or interesting.

It just kind of

fills the plate and hits the checkpoints.

And I kind of miss the world we used to live in where a Borderlands movie would get made and it would be a mid to low budget kind of like flyby night movie just trying to cash in on a name.

Maybe there's one famous British actor in there playing like the king of the borderlands or something to give it a little bit of cache.

Brian Blessed.

Brian Blessed.

Yeah, Brian Blessed

or Ralph Richardson or something like that or Peter O'Toole.

And then everyone else is just kind of like

young actors that are trying to catch their break and it's really slapdash and it's made really fast.

And as a result they might stumble into something really fun and something really like neat and original and interesting in a way that will stick in like a kid's mind when they see it in the middle of the day on HBO you know or something like that yeah and it it's it's it's just sad to me that instead the version of borderlands that we get is like this kind of like it is it is kind of slapdash but just kind of like derivative and and pull off other things and a lot of people who should be making more interesting stuff are instead kind of spending their time on this and

you know, it's just kind of like

it was hard for me to watch it and not see it as an indication of a larger problem with

my beloved movies right now, you know.

But that's enough of me and my, that's enough of Kaitin's Corner soapbox, you know.

So on a score of one to five exploding bunnies, I give it one exploding bunny.

Okay.

Well, this podcast, The Flop House, is made possible in large part by members of the MaxFun community

who give every month to help it keep going.

But we also have a couple of people.

And we want to thank those people, right?

Thank you.

I want to thank them.

Thank you, members.

Dearly, dearly thank them.

It may surprise no one to learn that my newsletter doesn't pay the bills.

Well, this is your personal newsletter.

Yeah.

But we also have some sponsors.

The first of those is Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

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Hey, everybody.

We also have some live shows coming up.

Well, one live show coming up and then other kind of live on-your-computer shows.

We are going to be appearing in person.

That's right.

We're appearing in person on Sunday, January 19th at Cobbs Comedy Club as part of the San Francisco Sketch Fest.

We're going back to San Francisco.

That's right, to the Sketch Fest.

We're going to be doing an all-new show, and we're going to be talking about one of the biggest flops in film history.

Dan, what's that flop we're talking about?

It's It's called Cutthroat Island.

It's all about pirates.

It's all about pirates.

Remember how pirates were really big after Pirates of the Caribbean?

There was a movie before that that did not have that effect on the American popular culture.

The opposite, in fact.

Yes.

So go to sfsketchfest.com where you'll find the schedule.

And I think there's some tickets still available.

That's San Francisco Sketchfest Sunday, January 19th, 7 p.m.

at Cobb's Comedy Club, 7 p.m.

Pacific time, of course, because it's in San Francisco.

Don't show up at 4 p.m., thinking it's 7 p.m.

Eastern.

And we're going to try to get away from the camera.

You might want to get in line, right?

You want to get in line at 4 p.m.

So you can show off your cosplay and all that stuff.

Yeah, show off which one of us you're dressed up as, or one of the cutthroats, perhaps.

And you're going to tailgate, right?

You're going to tailgate.

You're going to cook out of hibachi.

Right there on the street.

Right there on the street in San Francisco.

And we will hopefully do more live shows this year, but we don't have any others lined up at the moment.

So this is your chance, if you are in the Bay Area, to see us live Sunday, January 19th.

Go to sfsketchfest.com.

If you are not in the Bay Area and you want to, or maybe you're in a different Bay Area, like Green Bay, that's a different Bay with a different area.

You can start using it.

Maybe you just like Old Bay.

Yeah.

Maybe you just like Old Bay.

Yeah, that could be it.

Well, anyway, what I'm getting at is

Dan.

Dan's my old bay.

We are also still doing Flop TV.

As you may have heard at the top of this show, Flop TV Season 2 continues.

There's two more episodes left.

That's our one-hour televised version of the Flop House, the first Saturday of every month.

That's at 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 p.m.

Pacific, the first Saturday in January and February.

Every episode this season is about a sequel.

And this next episode on January 4th, we're going to be talking Ski School 2.

Uh-oh, we're getting into the Ski School franchise.

Finally, a good movie.

We'll be talking Ski School 2.

There's going to be a presentation.

There's going to be video components of some kind.

We've been having a lot of fun with this season.

I think people have been really enjoying it.

The videos have been driving us a little mad, as you may have seen from the last couple, just a descent into insanity.

I can't, can't guarantee.

I'm doing the one for January 4th.

Can't guarantee it's going to be quite as bizarre as Stuart and Dan's recent ones have been.

Can't make it to the show at that time, January 4th at 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 p.m.

Pacific.

That's okay.

Your ticket gets you access to the video recording of the show through the end of February.

All videos will stay up through the end of February when they will come down and go back to the Flophouse vault to be found by a vault hunter thousands of years from now, who's the chosen one, a child of Danridia.

And so

you want to get a ticket or you might also want to get a season pass.

A season pass is six episodes for the price of five.

And again, it gets you access to all the videos for all the episodes.

Why not just binge it?

Just binge the whole season when it's all over.

Why not?

We can't stop you.

So that's Flop TV season two, next episode, January 4th.

And for tickets, go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

I also wanted to mention one of my own things, guys.

Can I mention one of my own things?

Okay.

You're crazy, buddy.

I'm still writing the Harley Quinn comic series for DC Comics.

So that's coming out once a month.

Check your local comic book stores.

Harley Quinn from DC Comics.

I pre-ordered the eventual collection because

I'm not one these days to keep up on individual issues, unfortunately, but I do want to read this.

I understand.

As long as you're paying money for it, that's all I care about.

How sweet.

What a sweet sentiment.

Oh my gosh.

Hi.

It's me, Dave Holmes, host of Troubled Waters, the pop culture battle to the ego death.

Okay, everybody, word association with Troubled Waters, first one to fumble, loses, go.

Comedy.

Panel show.

Guests.

Celebrities.

Games.

Oh, sound rounds.

Improvised speeches.

Puns disguised as trivia.

Um, a very niche Flash Gordon clip.

Of Jevy Rowan.

Oh, no, Riley.

I'm sorry.

She will not return our phone calls.

I am afraid you're out.

A girl can dream.

Oh, but dreaming will not earn a girl any points.

Troubled Waters.

Listen on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Yucky Jessica.

I'm Chuck Krudsworth.

And this is Terrible, a podcast where we talk about things we hate that are awful.

Today we're discussing Wonderful, a podcast on the Maximum Fun Network.

Hosts Rachel and Griffin McElroy of Real Life Mary

discuss a wide range of topics.

Music, video games, poetry, snacks.

But I hate all that stuff.

I know you do, Yucky Jessica.

It comes out every Wednesday, the worst day of the week, wherever you download your podcasts.

For our next topic, we're talking Fiona, the baby hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo.

I hate this little hippo.

Let's move on to some letters from listeners.

this first one is from james last name withheld james heffield yeah who writes hey peaches longtime listener first time writer shamelessly attempting to appeal to elliot's special interest this is at least half a brag but i sometimes appear in my friends pornographic videos what on a recent occasion we shot a scene in a hotel room and i left on the bedside table the paperback copy that i was currently reading of robert caro's masterpiece biography of of Robert Moses, The Power Broker.

Meaning,

what a funny thing to bring to a porn video shoot.

It was visible in a large number of shots, and once I realized that, it was hard to focus on anything else while watching the video.

Sidebar, I could tell that Elliot was like, What is he saying that porn is my special interest?

No, we're getting on to, of course, the power broker, the porn of books.

Man, it's so great that there is a uh this porn that I can just send to Elliot as a Christmas gift.

That's perfect for the holidays.

Track it down.

So my question, since you...

I just hope it doesn't get pulled off of YouTube as a copyright infringement thing.

Yeah.

You put porn lives.

I don't know, guys.

I don't know where porn is.

So my question, since I don't think you're equipped to answer, am I the first person to put the power broker in a porn video, but I am curious about that as well.

Is has there ever been?

You know who's the only person who'd be able to do the research for that?

Who?

Robert Carrow.

True.

He has the tenacity.

Has there ever been a prop or piece of set dressing in a movie that drew your attention totally away from the things you're supposed to be paying attention to by its specificity?

I'm not talking about that's a Pokemon toy in the medieval setting or anything that belongs in IMDb's goof section.

I mean things that could validly be in the place they're shot, but that nevertheless distract you personally.

Thanks.

James last name withheld.

And I got to admit, I put this in thinking it was a great email.

I don't necessarily have a great answer to it because I know that this has happened to me.

I know that I'm like distracted by something, like, oh, I've got that thing.

Or

I, but I can't think.

I mean,

it's not the same thing

as

it being so specific or weird.

But I remember watching Mad Men and being like, Those are the exact same Rocks glasses I have.

Look at it.

Don Draper's drinking out of the same glass as me.

You're like, I'm like Don Draper.

I'm like, I should be called Dan Draper.

I should be called Dan Draper.

I don't know if this fits into the goofs thing because the thing that came to mind for me was...

I mean, partly it's whenever you see, whenever I see a movie that's shot in a place that I know, like if I see a movie that's shot in Park Slope in Brooklyn, it's like, it distracts me because I'm just thinking about my memories of that neighborhood where I lived for so long.

But

in the movie 40-year-old Virgin, he's supposed to be be like a big comic book nerd or something, and he has framed comic books on the wall.

And the comic books they chose are, unless he worked on those comics, there is no reason to frame them.

They're just kind of random books that somebody put in a frame and then slapped on the wall.

And that did really distract me because I was like, why is he, like, why is that the book he chose to frame and put on the wall?

Like, it's just some random thing.

Like, are they autographed, maybe?

Maybe they're autographed.

Maybe that's it.

I mean, he never gets close enough to them.

I guess I'll have to check the DVD special features to see.

Maybe there's a deleted deleted scene where he is doing close-ups and taking them on to like Antiques Roadshow or some shit.

Yeah.

I would say, I don't know if there's the same thing, but I'm very distracted anytime I see like a glass brick wall in a movie, like ideally in a bathroom or something, because that's just the coolest thing in the world.

It's just the height of class.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There is also a scene, I recently watched the movie Thelma, and there's a scene where Parker Posey is riding in the passenger seat of a car, and she is wearing a pair of sunglasses over her normal glasses.

And she is wearing them in such a way that I'm like,

this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Sure, I can't remember.

I may have said this on the podcast before, but my online bad movie Watching Crew, they will shout out

GBA on the chat, Glass Brick Alert, whenever one shows up, one of those walls shows up.

Because I mean, particularly low-budget movies, there's a lot of glass glass brick walls that show up.

I mean, I was watching the uh, there's this, there's this old thriller with uh James Spader and Rob Lowe called Bad Influence, where James Spader plays like a buttoned-up guy who meets like a bad influence in a bar and he goes a downward spiral.

It is James Spader.

At that point in time, it felt like it made sense for James Spader to be the button-up innocent guy, Rob Lowe to be the bad influence.

And James Spader's apartment is in LA, and it's like the, it's like everything is class brick walls it's crazy there's also a scene where he goes to uh they go to like a club with like

performers dancing on everyone's table and they're like playing skinny puppy or some shit it's pretty crazy it's a crazy movie guys it's a i believe that's an early curtis hansen movie that's uh you're you believe correct yeah uh this next letter is from rob last name withheld rob low right have you guys seen my movie bad influence

i was trying to be the normal guy, and they're like, nope.

Nope, be the weirdo.

Well, not weirdo.

You're right.

The bad guy, the bad guy.

Yeah.

Hi, Peaches.

I was re-listening to episode 374, Firestarter, 2022.

And another listener, Matthew, mixed a song from a mini-episode called Flophouse the Movie.

I was only half listening, so instead of hearing palm trees, jet skis, I heard palm trees, skexies, a la the dark crystal.

Thank you.

Skexies versus skexies.

It made me think of them soaking up the sun in California and then also maybe writing jet skis.

This then immediately led my imagination to think of you guys talking about Freddie and Jason vacationing on firearms.

Imagine someone going, hey, one of them,

are those jet skis over there?

Yeah, yeah,

It's got to be like poker or something, right?

Do you think they made a lot of those noises for the same reason that like anime has a lot of those noises?

Because Dark Crystal originally was not supposed to be in English.

Like Henson was like, we'll have it all in fantasy language.

And then they saw it cut and they're like, no, no, Jim.

It doesn't make any sense.

You can't do it like this.

So maybe there's extra noises because they have to like...

match the lip flap.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Possibly.

Oh, maybe.

It feels a little bit more, it feels a little bit more natural than it does sometimes in anime where they're like, what did you say?

We have to go over there and then we have to do this?

Huh?

You know, like that's the.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This then immediately led my imagination to think of you guys talking about Freddie and Jason, vacation in Fire Island with Pennywise and the Babadook.

I couldn't stop laughing at myself on the train.

My question, where do you think famous movie monsters and villains would like to get some RR?

Love the show, Rob Lasting Withheld.

I mean, I feel like they're always going to New York or space, right?

You think those are tourist destinations?

Yeah, I guess they turn into work trips, right?

Yeah, that's the problem.

It's hard to get away from it.

Like,

Jake Zaw says that he wants to just get away and not have to do the work and make decisions, but he can't.

Once he goes on vacation, he just can't help himself.

You know, he just, he doesn't know how to relax anymore.

Luckily, there's a whole hotel just for monsters.

It's in Transylvania.

Yeah.

And they apparently also then go on a cruise together, even though that seems like a bad place for many monsters to be.

Yeah.

It's true.

A lot of sun, you know.

What about the feature of the black lagoon?

That feels perfect, right?

Yeah, for him, sure.

The whole vampire family that's involved there, though, maybe not so much.

Maybe not.

And I'm sure there's some, some of those monsters have trouble being around running water.

You know, to be surrounded by the ocean is probably not great.

Yeah, they can't cross it, but maybe.

Yeah, it's tough.

I mean, like, then how do they get on with the gangplank?

Like, you got to cross some water there, right?

I mean, maybe they just

watch Last voyage of the demeter.

Maybe that'll yeah, I assume it does not answer the questions that we're asking

anyway.

That's what we call the letter segment.

Let's move on to recommendations.

Recommendations, of course, movies that might be a better use of your time than borderlands, than borderlands.

Um,

I, I, you know what, I was like looking at my um

oh, you know what?

I want to recommend, I want to recommend a movie called Drive from 1997.

Not the Nicholas Winning Refin Drive, but from 97, there was a movie called Drive that starred.

Let me, I'm going to, I got to check on the.

Is it licensed to drive?

Is that the movie?

No, it's just.

Is it Drive My Car?

No, it's just Drive.

The lead is Mark DiCascos.

Hell yeah.

DiCostos.

Yep.

You may have seen him most recently in John Wick 3, probably, as the bad guy.

He's like nice bad guy.

He also plays Manny in...

Mark DiCascos plays Manny in Brotherhood of the Wolf, right?

Yes, he's in Brotherhood of the Wolf.

It also has Kadeem Hardison, who I, of course, think of as Dwayne Wayne from a different world, but is always sort of charming when he shows up.

Never had the career that I think he probably could have had if he was a little more fortunate.

But it's a buddy comedy.

One year before Rush Hour, you got this,

you know, this black guy in LA teaming up with

a martial arts master to fight some baddies.

And it's just a lot of fun.

It is a fun action comedy, very silly.

Didn't get a lot of attention because it was released straight to HBO.

It was produced direct-to-video.

Brittany Murphy also shows up for a little while to remind us about how sad it is that she's not around anymore because she does a great job.

It's just like a fun, silly action comedy of a kind that I'm like, oh, I, you know, sometimes I feel like I've seen all of like the good stuff in that vein, like the really like popcorn-y, fun shit from the past.

And it's nice to know like there's still stuff out there to find that is maybe a little more under the radar.

So I would look it up.

It is like so many things on Tubis.

So you can find it.

Yeah.

I'm going to recommend a movie that I saw with Dan McCoy

as a matinee the day before Thanksgiving, which shows how long it's been since we've recorded one of these full episodes.

I'm recommending one of my favorite movies of the year, Luca Guadagino's Queer,

starring Mr.

Daniel Craig.

You might know him as Jimmy Bond.

And

yeah.

I don't.

This is an adaptation of a Burroughs, short Burroughs novel.

And I'm not familiar with the resource material.

Yep.

That's what I meant.

That's right.

That's what I meant.

Pulp novel.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's a,

it's like, I found it to be a really, in a year when he, uh, Guadalupe also made or had Challengers released, it's so great to see him kind of falling back kind of into his like sweet spot of this like kind of smaller story that

is filled with characters that have like intense longing and a desire for connection and like all these great little like physical and like character moments.

But it also like this one is also like

like less immediately satisfying than something like Challengers.

I just found to be a really beautiful movie that's really well acted and really interesting.

What do you think, Dan?

I liked it a lot.

It's

yeah, Jason Schwartzman is also very fun.

He is

supporting part.

Yeah, he provides this like weird sort of grounding of like a more normal guy, but still silly.

Like it's still like a he's still a funny, like weird guy in his own way, but he's he also provides a lot of warmth in a supporting part.

Yeah,

it's a very

interesting movie in that like it doesn't have a lot of plot thrust, but I found myself really engaged by just the main character's sort of desperate need for connection.

So check it out.

It's queer.

Yeah.

I was going to recommend something similar.

It's also about the need for connection

between people who are otherwise lonely.

This is the new Wallace and Gromit movie, which I took my kids to see a screening of yesterday.

It's called Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul.

And it was, I'm a big fan of those, their stuff and those movies.

The last one that they had done, A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was years ago, I was not such a fan of.

It seemed like it didn't quite have it.

But this one, I found it was just super fun and super funny and had a lot of that Wallace and Gromit, Ardmann, Nick Park inventiveness that

is the hallmark of the series.

And

it moves fast and doesn't get weighed down.

And it's got like lots of fun sequences in it.

And the animation looks great.

And it was great seeing those characters again.

So if you want to see something that is going to be fun, then why not check out Wallace and Grommet, Vengeance Most Foul, when it's available?

I've been looking forward to that one.

I want to see it.

I really enjoyed it a lot.

There are a number of sequences in it where I'm like, oh, yeah,

this is top Wallace and Gromit stuff.

That's three recommendations I'm pretty excited about.

Hey,

this has been the Flophouse.

That's how we end it, right?

This has been the Flophouse.

It's been a while since we've actually been recording one of these things.

Yeah.

it's been a while since we started the show and identified what this show is.

Yeah, I like to reset right at the end.

What was I listening to?

Oh, yeah, the flop house.

The flop house is on the maximum fun network.

If you go to maximumfun.org, you can find other great podcasts on the network about all kinds of different stuff.

I'm sure if you like this, you might find another one there that you like as well.

Why don't you check it out?

Uh, our producer is Alex Smith.

He does a great job for us.

Happy holidays.

Holidays, Alex.

Thank you so much.

You can find him online as Howell Dotty, which is the name under which he makes a lot of music.

He does some Twitch streams.

Check his stuff out.

And I guess that's it for the Flophouse.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalen.

Okay.

See you.

Deuces.

What?

On this episode, we discuss Borderlands.

Sort of an unconventional remake of the movie Badlands.

Let's retake that only because I think you said the word a little weird, unconventional.

I did.

Yeah.

It was an unconventional way of saying unconventional.

Yeah.

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