Ep. #344 - Mortal Kombat, with Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Mortal Kombat.

Stuart Wellington

[0:04] Okay, so I guess I gotta pick a character here, okay, which usually I like a big guy.

[0:12] Which one's the Zangief in this one?

[0:15] I guess this guy Shao Kahn, okay, he's got a hammer, okay, let's see how he does.

[0:21] Wait, he's not in the movie, okay, so I have to pick this other dude, okay, I'll do this guy.

[0:26] I hope he survives, what's his name, like, Rexor or something?

[0:29] Okay, cool, I'm gonna be him.

Dan McCoy

[0:57] Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00] It's me, Stuart, the number one Stuart, Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04] And it's me, Elliot Kalin, somewhere on the ranks, I don't know where I rank in comparison to other

[1:09] Elliot's.

[1:09] The tier list?

Stuart Wellington

[1:11] Yeah.

[1:11] You're definitely A, I don't know if I'd say S tier yet, but you're getting there.

[1:16] I don't think I know what this system is.

[1:18] Does S come before A?

[1:19] I don't understand.

[1:20] S is the top.

[1:22] S tier.

[1:24] Why?

[1:24] I can't believe I have to explain tier rankings.

[1:27] So like, F tier would be, I don't know, what's a bad Elliot?

[1:32] S tier is definitely Elliot Gould, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:34] Yeah, he's the best, that's true.

[1:35] A bad Elliot would be like Elliot from, like Jeremy Irons' character Elliot from Dead Ringers.

[1:41] It would be like a bad Elliot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42] Okay, that's a bad, that's an F tier, I guess?

[1:45] Okay.

[1:45] It goes like...

Elliott Kalan

[1:46] Oh no, okay, Michael Caine's Elliot from Hannah and Her Sisters, he's like a philanderer.

[1:51] Yeah, that's a bad Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:51] This is not really explaining why the letters are...

Stuart Wellington

[1:55] So you got S tier, A tier, B tier, C tier, and then usually it just goes right to F tier.

[2:01] But I feel like our guests today probably have some very strong opinions on where different

[2:06] Elliotts fall in this, right Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[2:08] Probably.

[2:09] We have guests I'd love to introduce, and then we'll talk about why Dan is feeling a little

[2:12] under the weather.

[2:13] But I'd like to introduce our guests joining us today to talk about Mortal Kombat, a movie

[2:18] they specifically requested that we allow them to talk to us about, are the hosts of the

[2:24] podcast Couples Therapy, Naomi Ekperigan and Andy Beckerman.

[2:28] You can see Naomi also on Apple TV's Mythic Quest, and they each also have their own podcast.

[2:32] Naomi has I Love a Lifetime Movie, and Andy has Beginnings, an interview podcast.

[2:36] Thank you so much for joining us to talk about Mortal Kombat with a K.

[2:41] They spelled it wrong on purpose.

[2:43] It's not a typo.

Naomi Ekperigin

[2:45] I feel so honored.

[2:47] Yeah, thank you for having us.

[2:48] And I can't believe you are allowing this to happen because I will start yelling.

[2:52] But also, I do want to know, am I the first black woman on Flophouse?

[2:56] You are not the first black woman, but I would be lying if we said we had a lot.

[3:01] I'd be lying if we said we had a lot.

[3:01] Coming right out with a Z-Way question.

[3:03] I really wanted to know.

[3:04] I thought I would be, and it was going to be very exciting for me.

[3:07] Uh-huh.

[3:07] Our numbers are not great, but you're not.

Elliott Kalan

[3:10] Yeah, we will admit to that.

[3:12] We don't get to take a victory lap yet.

Andy Beckerman

[3:15] With the tiers, by the way.

Elliott Kalan

[3:17] In terms of podcasts that have black women as guests, we're not S-tier, for sure.

[3:22] Certainly not.

[3:24] We're not F, but we're not S.

[3:26] Yeah.

[3:26] You know.

Dan McCoy

[3:27] I still don't understand them.

[3:29] So, I mean, I looked it up, and it doesn't, like, the Wikipedia on the tier system just

[3:35] says it.

[3:36] It doesn't explain it.

[3:38] It's very infuriating.

[3:39] I feel like it makes a lot of sense.

Elliott Kalan

[3:42] Like, where is it?

[3:43] What's the origin of this system?

Stuart Wellington

[3:44] So, like, if you're, I mean, I'm assuming a lot of, we just got a whole bunch of new

[3:49] listeners today because they're all very interested to hear us talk about Mortal Kombat.

[3:53] So, let's talk about a different fighting game.

[3:55] Let's talk about, say, something like Smash Brothers, if you want to say, if you want

[3:58] to rank Smash Brothers characters in order of, I don't know, like, annoyingness to play

[4:03] against.

[4:04] You could put them in a tier system where S-tier would be by far the most annoying, but F-tier

[4:09] would be the lowest annoying.

[4:11] No, I understand which letters correspond with quality.

[4:16] I don't know why that's better.

[4:16] So, like, Wario, my favorite character, of course, he would be an S-tier annoying character

[4:20] because he has that move where he farts on you, which I think your son Sammy would

[4:23] love.

[4:24] He would love that.

[4:25] Is that because you love Elon Musk, too?

[4:27] Yeah.

[4:29] That, I mean, I didn't, you know, I've watched a lot of Saturday Night Live.

[4:36] I like to jokingly refer to it as the TV show, the worst TV show I've seen every episode of.

[4:42] But I have not watched that episode except I've seen pictures on Twitter.

[4:45] Should I watch that episode, Andy?

[4:48] Okay.

[4:48] You're shaking his head.

[4:49] I said no as if I watched it.

[4:51] I know.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] I was like, you wouldn't watch it unless you were secretly watching it when I was asleep.

[4:54] You know what?

Dan McCoy

[4:54] Audrey likes Saturday Night Live, and we watched it, and oh, goddamn, there's some bad sketches

[5:00] in that Elon Musk episode.

Elliott Kalan

[5:01] No, Dan, we should, we should, wait, before we get into that, I want to explain.

[5:04] You sound a little different.

[5:05] You have a cold right now.

[5:06] So that people.

[5:06] Yeah.

[5:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[5:07] So the world is healing, which means that I am not.

[5:11] Like, the fact that I am, you know, vaccinated and out in the world, even though, you know,

[5:19] I'll still wear my mask inside, you know, with people, but I am now being exposed again

[5:26] to the viruses that my lousy immune system cannot handle.

[5:32] Oh, no.

[5:32] So I have a cold.

[5:33] I am in Buffalo, New York.

[5:35] I am, my family is seeing one another for the first time since quarantine.

[5:40] We tried to pick a place to see one another.

[5:43] For some reason, we came up with Buffalo.

[5:45] It's still kind of a mystery.

Elliott Kalan

[5:46] You wanted to be in the place where William McKinley was shot.

[5:49] Yeah.

[5:50] Like, that's how you rate vacation spots.

[5:53] We're president shot here.

[5:54] There's Texas.

[5:56] There's Washington, D.C.

[5:57] There's Buffalo, New York.

[5:59] That's it.

[6:00] There's no, that's the only place you go on vacation.

[6:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:02] Either one of my family members gave me this or I gave it to my other family.

[6:08] Some of my other family members are now sick, you know.

Naomi Ekperigin

[6:10] Wait, are you not from Buffalo?

[6:12] Like, I don't understand why you would ever be of Buffalo.

Dan McCoy

[6:14] Yeah, this is, okay.

[6:15] So.

Naomi Ekperigin

[6:17] This is very upsetting.

Dan McCoy

[6:19] After, I mean, other than like a few stopovers in the Philippines, where her family is from

[6:25] and Florida, Audrey is a lifelong New Yorker.

[6:30] And I have been there for, you know, a couple of decades now.

[6:33] And I just cannot drive.

[6:35] And so we picked a nearby place that we could get to and was on the East Coast.

[6:42] Or my family who's in Boston, they drove up.

[6:45] It's close to Niagara Falls, which we went and saw, but it is not Niagara Falls, which is a horrible

[6:50] place to be.

[6:51] Buffalo is a very depressed former industrial town, but does have some interesting stuff.

[6:58] Yeah.

[6:58] You can see where Millie McKinley was shot.

[7:00] Yeah.

[7:00] It's been nice, except for the fact that I am now miserably sick.

Elliott Kalan

[7:05] I should mention, Dan, I forgot one place you can go on vacation on your president's shooting

[7:09] tour.

[7:10] Milwaukee, where Teddy Roosevelt was shot after his presidency.

[7:13] Yeah.

[7:13] It was another episode of Who Was?

Stuart Wellington

[7:15] I can't take it, Kalen.

Elliott Kalan

[7:17] Where was Reagan shot?

[7:18] In D.C.

[7:19] No, where in his body?

[7:20] Reagan and Lincoln and Garfield were all shot in D.C.

[7:22] What?

[7:22] Where in his body?

Dan McCoy

[7:26] Yeah, let me know.

[7:27] So.

[7:27] Look into it.

[7:28] Let me look that up on my map of president's bodies.

Stuart Wellington

[7:31] You go to Mar-a-Lago in an alternate dimension.

[7:34] Dan, if you're feeling a little under the weather, why don't you eat some of those famously spicy

[7:39] buffalo wings to clear out those sinuses?

[7:43] That'll wake you up.

Elliott Kalan

[7:44] Or have some of those famously spicy buffalo chips.

Dan McCoy

[7:48] So, if I don't talk that much.

[7:50] Okay.

[7:52] Just, you know, I've died.

[7:54] Okay.

[7:55] Okay, that's fair.

Naomi Ekperigin

[7:56] That's fair.

[7:57] It's good.

[7:58] You have two guests for coverage.

[7:59] I'm dialing nine and one on my phone.

[8:01] I'm just going to.

[8:01] Just hover.

[8:01] Okay.

[8:02] And just say, he's somewhere in Buffalo.

[8:03] I don't know.

[8:06] And so, he's got a white door.

Dan McCoy

[8:07] Look for an Airbnb that is not as nice as his sister-in-law keeps claiming it.

[8:17] Rare.

[8:18] Oh, we know that one.

[8:18] We know which one he's talking about.

[8:20] We know exactly which one.

[8:20] It's turned into a Bravo show for a moment.

Stuart Wellington

[8:22] Yeah, spilling tea.

Dan McCoy

[8:25] So.

[8:26] No, Stuart.

[8:26] No, it's good that she has a.

[8:28] Stuart just spill and tea.

[8:29] It's good that she's got a lot more optimism than I do.

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] So, you're listening to The Flophouse.

[8:35] This is a podcast where we rag on the Airbnbs that are sisters-in-law rent.

[8:40] But it's also a podcast where we watch a bad movie or maybe it turns out to be a movie we like and we talk about it.

[8:46] And as you may know if you saw it listed on your app or you heard Dan mention it at the beginning or heard us mention it also afterwards.

[8:53] Today, we're talking about Mortal Kombat.

[8:56] It came out this year.

[8:57] It's based on the fantasy video game of the same name, a martial arts fantasy video game.

[9:01] It's the direct world debut of Australian filmmaker Simon McCoy, which is possibly the most Australian name I can imagine.

[9:09] And now, Mortal Kombat, I'm going to be relying – I'm going to be doing the summary today, but I'm going to be relying on Stuart's knowledge of the game franchise the most because – a lot.

[9:17] Because it's a franchise I know a little bit about when it comes to fictional universe continuity.

[9:23] Let's say Marvel Comics is like my S tier.

[9:25] That's what I know the most about.

[9:27] I know it.

[9:28] It's in my bones.

[9:29] It's in my blood.

[9:30] And let's say my F tier is like Outlander, something I know exists, but I don't – I've never seen more than a few snippets as I walk through the room while my wife watches it.

[9:38] I know it's super sexy and there's time travel, but I don't know anything else about it.

[9:41] Mortal Kombat is like near – it's not quite in the middle, but in the bottom half of my knowledge.

[9:45] I know that like – I know Get Over Here and I know Flawless Victory, but otherwise I don't know too much about it.

[9:53] But Stuart, you're a year old man.

[9:55] Did you watch either the movies?

[9:56] I did watch the original movie when it came out in the theaters.

[9:59] That was 20 years ago almost.

[10:01] I don't remember it that well.

[10:02] The only thing I really remember about it, as I think I might have mentioned on the podcast before, is the lackluster intro for Pagoro, who is just – who is a four-armed giant man wearing little underpants and who has a ponytail.

[10:14] And in the old movie, he just kind of walks on screen as if it's no big thing and you're not supposed to care or be impressed that there's a four-armed man walking around.

Stuart Wellington

[10:21] Hey, folks.

[10:22] And why did you guys pick Mortal Kombat to be your movie of choice?

Andy Beckerman

[10:28] Yeah.

[10:29] Okay.

[10:29] Andrew?

[10:30] Andrew?

[10:31] I was saying to Elliot before we started that I think there's a little bit of like quarantine euphoria that was involved in this.

[10:39] Because when we watched this, when it came out – we watched pretty much every film that came out on HBO Max.

Naomi Ekperigin

[10:46] Absolutely.

[10:47] We're Maxinistas.

Andy Beckerman

[10:50] We shop at TJ Maxx.

[10:52] We watch HBO Max.

[10:53] Absolutely.

[10:54] At all times.

[10:55] Mad Max, anything.

[10:56] Sam and Max.

[10:58] HBO Sam and HBO Max.

[11:00] Yeah.

[11:03] And we watched this.

[11:05] I had so much fun watching this.

[11:07] And I don't like – I am very aware of my mortality.

[11:10] So I don't purposely watch bad movies.

Naomi Ekperigin

[11:13] Oh, we'll also – I will stop, okay?

[11:15] This is a household that does not need to see it through.

[11:17] Okay.

[11:17] So if I'm watching it and I'm like, oh, absolutely not, I am stopping, okay?

[11:23] There are animes to watch.

[11:25] I don't need to sit through this.

Andy Beckerman

[11:26] My Hero Academia's new season just debuted.

Naomi Ekperigin

[11:28] New season of My Hero Academia.

[11:30] The only reason why I know about S-Class is from One Punch Man.

[11:33] Yep.

[11:33] Because they have classes and he wants to be an S-Class.

[11:35] Oh, we can talk about One Punch Man instead if you like.

Elliott Kalan

[11:38] We're really supposed to talk about Mortal Kombat today.

Dan McCoy

[11:40] I mean, I'd have to wait until Audrey gets back.

[11:42] She could tell you a lot about One Punch Man.

[11:44] That would be a switcheroo.

[11:46] It's been a podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[11:47] Does she know anything about Outlander?

[11:49] Because I don't know anything about that.

Dan McCoy

[11:50] I will say, you know, with the Mortal Kombat – what do you call it?

[11:54] Mythology.

[11:55] I was watching this being like, why did they make up this complex mythology to, like, just

[12:00] have people fight each other?

[12:01] And then Audrey was like, no, no, this is from the games.

[12:03] Like, she knew somehow.

[12:04] Like, this is all from the games, a lot of it.

[12:06] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[12:06] Well, the games, they started out pretty straightforward.

[12:09] And I know that as they went on, they got more and more story elements to them.

[12:13] Right, Stu?

[12:13] Oh, but anyway, so – but we should finish.

[12:16] We should finish your story about watching the movie.

Dan McCoy

[12:17] So you asked Stuart a direct question and then you –

Elliott Kalan

[12:20] I remember that.

[12:21] I remembered we were in the middle of them answering Stuart's question from earlier.

Andy Beckerman

[12:26] So I think – so we had so much fun watching this and we made – and also, okay, so I think

[12:31] there was some quarantine euphoria.

[12:33] Also, I think we've been out here in Los Angeles for about almost four years now, right?

[12:38] And this was, like, one of the first movies that I watched where I saw the producers' minds

[12:44] working in the background.

[12:45] You see the seams.

[12:46] You can see the seams in Mortal Kombat.

[12:48] I saw all the decisions the executives and the producers made that had nothing to do

[12:52] with, like, wanting to make a good film, that had to do with, like, we have a budget.

[12:56] Can we stick to the goddamn budget?

[12:58] All those kind of decisions I saw for the first time.

[13:01] And I was like, oh.

[13:03] It was like The Matrix.

[13:04] It was like when Neo gets his powers in The Matrix.

Naomi Ekperigin

[13:08] And you started to see – see, that's funny because that was your reason.

[13:10] For me, I love action, okay?

[13:12] I'm here for a good time.

[13:14] I want to quip.

[13:15] I want to see you defy gravity.

[13:18] And now this motion picture absolutely bored me.

[13:22] And I was living.

[13:23] And I screamed.

[13:24] I screamed the entire time.

[13:26] And so I wanted to talk about – because, like, for a genre, like, I came in ready.

[13:29] You know what I mean?

[13:30] Like, I was like, I don't need much.

[13:32] And yet, you made me real mad.

[13:36] And so it just felt like, to me, I thought, what a good motion picture to unpack.

[13:41] Right.

Andy Beckerman

[13:42] But also that was part of my excitement about it was that, like, all I want from these movies is fights.

[13:47] Like, I saw Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

[13:50] Is that the one before the last one?

[13:51] Yeah, Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

[13:53] I saw that in the theater with my friend, and I fell asleep in the middle of it.

[13:57] Because all I want – I just wanted them to fight.

[14:00] I don't care about Kyle Chandler or Eleven or –

Elliott Kalan

[14:05] Didn't you want to know how they could use biofeedback to attract the monsters to each other?

[14:10] That's a good question.

Andy Beckerman

[14:11] Did not care for a second.

[14:13] Not a molecule of my essence.

[14:16] Not an electron care about that stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[14:18] You're regretting me –

[14:19] Yeah, you didn't go on the internet and look up, at what point do they fight,

[14:23] and then show up late to the movie just so you can see the movie.

[14:26] Yeah.

[14:26] So two hours in.

[14:27] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[14:28] Two hours in.

[14:29] And this – what I did appreciate was that it was the thinnest amount of exposition to get you from fight to fight.

[14:37] Yeah.

[14:37] And that I appreciated.

[14:39] Again, seeing the producer be like, no one gives a shit about any of their motivations.

[14:44] Just have them fight.

[14:45] Just put in some stuff and a little bit of peanut butter and jelly in the middle.

[14:50] And that is all they want to see.

Elliott Kalan

[14:52] The fight is not the peanut butter and jelly?

[14:54] What is the fight then in this metaphor?

[14:55] Yeah, the fight's the bread.

[14:56] The Nutella.

[14:57] I mean, look, I love bread.

[14:58] Oh, Nutella.

[14:58] I see.

[14:58] So you're eating Nutella with peanut butter and jelly on the outside.

[15:01] No bread.

[15:02] It's just –

[15:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[15:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[15:03] No bread.

Stuart Wellington

[15:04] It's a disc.

[15:05] It's a hard disc.

[15:06] That's the double down of sandwiches.

[15:08] So now –

Naomi Ekperigin

[15:09] I guess the double down is a sandwich.

[15:11] No, no, fair.

[15:12] It's barely a sandwich.

[15:13] Double down of condiments.

[15:14] Yes.

[15:14] It's just a double down condiment disc.

Elliott Kalan

[15:16] The con double down.

[15:17] Now, Stuart, let me get back to the question I asked you and then interrupted you.

[15:22] Go on.

[15:22] So tell us a little bit about the Mortal Kombat series, your experience with it, and what

[15:26] is this video game series?

[15:28] Before we jump into this, the movie – this is – I mean, this is the movie event of 2021,

[15:33] Mortal Kombat.

[15:33] Sure.

[15:34] It may be the second biggest movie event of 2021 after that Sparks documentary that I cannot

[15:37] wait to see.

[15:38] Yeah.

[15:38] I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet.

[15:39] It's coming out next month and I cannot –

[15:40] Because it's not out yet, but I cannot wait to see it.

[15:43] Other than that, this is the movie event of the year.

[15:46] What is Mortal Kombat?

[15:47] Tell us.

Stuart Wellington

[15:48] Well, I mean, my history with Mortal Kombat, obviously, was with the original video game.

[15:52] I remember my – when it came out of the Genesis – I played it in the arcade a little

[15:57] bit, but when it came out of the Genesis, my parents bought it for my brother and I for

[16:00] Christmas.

[16:01] We found it before Christmas and we would – we managed to open the packaging and play

[16:06] it when they weren't home and then sneak it back into the packaging.

[16:10] Wow.

[16:11] Oh, man.

[16:11] Kids are terrible.

[16:13] So, it's a violent video game that originally used, what, like, sprites based on, like,

[16:20] photographs or film footage of actors performing?

Elliott Kalan

[16:23] They filmed actors doing – well, there was a great article that was online years ago where

[16:27] they talked to the actors who basically created the characters and the fighting styles and

[16:32] were then filmed and then they digitized the film footage and added costumes to it and those

[16:36] actors never received any payment other than, like, the day rate they got.

[16:40] Oh, yeah.

[16:40] That's crazy.

[16:41] But that – I remember as a kid seeing it in the arcades and the amazing thing about

[16:45] it was that the sprites looked like real people.

[16:47] Yeah, real people.

[16:48] Like, blocky and digitized, but they looked like video footage.

Stuart Wellington

[16:50] And then, you know.

[16:51] The gouts of fake blood would squirt out of them when you would uppercut them.

[16:55] And then it was super gory.

[16:56] Sometimes someone's spine would come out.

Elliott Kalan

[16:57] It was like, whoa, this is not your daddy's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

[17:01] Yeah.

[17:01] Which is relatively bloodless, you know.

Andy Beckerman

[17:03] Yeah, it was super violent.

[17:04] Wait, Stuart, this was a Genesis game?

Stuart Wellington

[17:06] It came out on Genesis and Super Nintendo at the same time.

[17:08] Although the Super Nintendo had, like, they altered the blood so it wasn't as gory.

[17:12] And that is bullshit.

[17:13] Yeah, because Nintendo always saw itself as –

Elliott Kalan

[17:14] Genesis is for bad boys.

[17:16] Nintendo –

[17:16] It'll do what Nintendon't.

Stuart Wellington

[17:18] Yep.

[17:19] Oh!

Naomi Ekperigin

[17:20] There it is.

[17:21] He ain't sick.

[17:22] He back.

[17:23] He back.

Dan McCoy

[17:25] I want a shirt that says that.

Elliott Kalan

[17:27] So knowing that this is the second movie based on a violent video game that's –

[17:32] Third movie.

[17:33] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[17:33] I forgot.

[17:34] So what's the other one?

[17:35] Mortal Kombat Annihilation?

[17:36] Annihilation.

[17:36] The sequel.

[17:37] Direct sequel to the first one.

[17:38] Now, was that a crossover with Phantasm Annihilation?

Stuart Wellington

[17:42] Wait, which one's Phantasm Annihilation?

[17:44] Is that the fourth one?

Andy Beckerman

[17:45] Is that the fourth one, I think?

Stuart Wellington

[17:47] Yeah.

[17:47] Maybe.

Andy Beckerman

[17:48] Was it a crossover with the Marvel crossover Annihilation?

Elliott Kalan

[17:51] Yes.

[17:52] It's all those things are crossover.

[17:53] It's all written by Dan Abnett.

[17:54] Yeah, it's all Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.

[17:56] Crossover with –

Naomi Ekperigin

[17:56] What's her name's Annihilation?

Elliott Kalan

[17:58] Oh, right.

[17:59] And Natalie Portman's Annihilation.

[18:00] Natalie Portman's Annihilation.

[18:01] Natalie Portman's Ascent.

Stuart Wellington

[18:03] Annihilation from Coventine.

[18:04] Based on the Area X series by Jeff Vandermeer, of course.

[18:07] So they made a couple of – there was a couple of games, and then kind of recently, there

[18:12] was like a relaunch of Mortal Kombat for the current generation systems.

[18:16] This was like five, six years.

[18:19] I got time wrong.

[18:20] But this was Mortal Kombat 9, just titled Mortal Kombat, and that kind of brought the

[18:24] series back.

[18:25] Like, they had kind of strayed from its basic roots.

[18:27] They tried to do all these, like, 3D shit.

[18:29] They did a crossover at DC, which then spun off into its own game, Injustice, which is fun.

[18:34] And then since then, they've released three games, which was Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 10 or MKX, and then Mortal Kombat 11.

[18:42] And one of the big things that Mortal Kombat 9 did was it, like, they took a hard look at the continuity.

[18:50] My mistake.

[18:50] I can't pronounce words today.

[18:53] And they, like, tell the whole – in MK9, they tell the whole story of Mortal Kombat.

[18:58] And then each game, the story – so for a fighting game, it has a very elaborate story mode.

[19:04] So it makes one wonder, if you have this story mode that you can just watch somebody play through on YouTube, why do you need a movie?

[19:11] Well, we'll find out while we talk about the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[19:13] We'll find out, especially since the recent Mortal Kombat entries have started bringing characters from other IPs.

[19:17] So, like, Robocop is in there, and Rambo is in there, and the Terminator, so it's like – and Freddy.

Stuart Wellington

[19:23] And Freddy, who has two claws, because they couldn't figure out how to have the character be on either sides of the board or screen and have a claw only on one hand.

[19:33] So he has two claws, and you're like, oh, I guess it's fine.

[19:36] That's fine.

Dan McCoy

[19:36] I genuinely hope that this movie, they make enough sequels to it that they get to the point where they're like, okay, what other IP does this –

[19:44] you know, this – whatever, whoever put it out.

[19:47] Dan, they're making that movie.

Elliott Kalan

[19:49] It's called Space Jam.

[19:50] It's got every character from every Warner Brothers movie in it.

[19:53] It's nuts.

[19:54] Okay.

[19:54] But let's talk about this one.

[19:55] It's got Mr. Yunyoshi.

[19:57] So, Mortal Kombat.

[19:59] Let's start.

[20:00] We begin, as most action movies do, in Japan in the year 16, 17, at the happy, peaceful household of loving dad Hanzo Hashashi.

[20:08] Or Hasashi?

[20:09] Hasashi.

[20:09] And Hanzo's out getting some water, and you know he's got a bad past behind him because his house is attacked by warriors.

[20:18] He returns to find his wife and son have been turned into sort of a frozen corpse pieta.

[20:22] And Hanzo gets mad.

[20:24] He kills a bunch of masked bad guys.

[20:25] He invents Scorpion's weapon by tying a rope to a garden spade.

[20:29] But he does not say get over here yet because he isn't speaking in Japanese.

[20:33] And then he confronts the leader of these bad guys, Bi-Han, a Chinese warrior, with ice powers.

[20:39] And they fight.

[20:40] During that fight, Hanzo gets in a great nut punch on Bi-Han.

[20:43] That was my moment of the fight.

Naomi Ekperigin

[20:45] Well, can we also talk about how Bi-Han just talks to him in Chinese for like a good 90 seconds.

[20:53] And then he's like, I don't know what you said, but I'm mad at you.

[20:56] And I just thought we didn't need all that if he didn't understand what he was saying.

Andy Beckerman

[21:01] Did you notice that Bi-Han kills the wife and child and then just sits back while Scorpion kills all his men?

[21:13] He's just sitting on a stump and just kind of like chilling out.

Elliott Kalan

[21:16] Yeah, there's a lot of action movie logic here where things happen because that's how they need to happen for fights.

[21:23] The same way that, I forgot where it was that I once saw, this like mathematical theorem of ninjas,

[21:28] where it was for each ninja you add, the ninjas lose a certain amount of fighting prowess and strength exponentially.

[21:34] And that's why a one-on-one fight with the ninjas takes a long time.

[21:37] But if 20 ninjas attack you, you can just kill them like popcorn.

[21:40] Like you're just throwing them off.

Stuart Wellington

[21:40] I mean, you can't fuck with the difficulty level of the encounter, Elliot.

[21:45] That's true.

[21:46] So if it's going to be 100 bad guys, they have to be kobolds or some shit.

Elliott Kalan

[21:49] So it's the overall difficulty level for the experience and not for each individual foe.

[21:55] It's kind of a universal, you can neither create nor destroy fight difficulty, I guess is what it is.

[22:02] Like that's the law.

[22:03] I can't remember what that term is.

[22:04] It's really bothering me.

[22:05] I can't remember it.

[22:06] The law of conservation of energy.

[22:07] Thank you.

[22:08] The conservation of fight difficulty.

[22:09] Thank you so much.

[22:11] So anyway, by the end, it doesn't matter how many times Hanzo punches Bi-Han in the nuts, Bi-Han kills him and says, for Lin-Kwai, which is his clan.

[22:21] But that's never really.

[22:23] His clan of assassins.

[22:25] Exactly.

[22:25] But his clan of assassins were like, I don't know that we ever hear that phrase again in the movie.

Naomi Ekperigin

[22:30] Not at all.

[22:31] And I'm like, what?

[22:32] And this is my problem.

[22:34] See, I'm already yelling.

[22:36] It feels like the movie gives you, like, it felt very paint by numbers.

[22:40] And so it's kind of like, furli kwe.

[22:43] Kwan kwe.

[22:44] Kwe.

[22:44] And you're like, okay, do I care?

[22:47] But he said something.

[22:48] So check that box.

[22:49] He has a reason.

[22:50] Yeah.

[22:50] Do you know what I mean?

[22:51] But it's not explained.

Andy Beckerman

[22:52] Yeah, it was like an improv 101.

[22:54] Everyone's like, wait, I have to have like a justification.

[22:57] This is very relatable.

[22:58] Relatable, yeah.

[22:59] Improv 101.

[23:00] Keep away.

Elliott Kalan

[23:00] Yeah, as long as we can bring more improv terminology into it.

[23:02] That'll be great.

[23:02] So B-Han's game is that he uses ice to kill things.

Andy Beckerman

[23:07] If this was a Harold, you know, this would be like.

Elliott Kalan

[23:10] First beats, first beats.

[23:11] And so at the end of this fight, that's when one of the other performers runs across the screen and says, that's our show.

[23:16] Good night, everybody.

[23:18] So Hanzo, you think he's dead.

[23:21] But no, he gets back up when he hears a baby crying inside the house.

[23:24] But then suddenly his body is burned to ash by magic fire.

[23:27] This is never really explained.

[23:29] But it doesn't matter.

[23:30] Then suddenly rain, lightning.

[23:32] A guy with a big hat and glowing eyes appears.

[23:35] That's right.

[23:36] Stuart, who is this?

Stuart Wellington

[23:37] That's Raiden, baby.

[23:38] Now, you would expect Raiden to be played by Christopher Lambert because that's who was played him in the original.

[23:42] It's not him.

[23:43] It's a different actor.

[23:45] Because, you know, different actors play the same character.

[23:47] It's weird.

[23:48] Have you ever heard of James Bond?

[23:49] So, and Raiden shows up, takes the baby, bounces out.

[23:54] And at this point, you should fast forward until the last fight of the movie.

[23:59] And then the movie's pretty good.

[24:01] You are very accurate.

[24:02] Sure.

Elliott Kalan

[24:03] You are very accurate.

[24:04] Stuart is right that Lord Raiden is not played by Christopher Lambert.

[24:08] He's played by Tadanobu Asano, who you may remember from Ichi the Killer or Electric Dragon, 80,000 Volts.

[24:14] He's in a lot of stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[24:14] And speaking of actors, the two actors, Bi-Han and Hanzo Asashi, are both played by great actors.

[24:21] Arguably the best actors in the movie.

[24:23] I mean.

[24:24] Yeah.

[24:24] Oh, yeah.

[24:25] Oh, for sure.

[24:26] Oh, my God.

[24:27] Asashi's so good.

Elliott Kalan

[24:28] This is something that you see in a lot of movies that have a Western and an Eastern cast.

[24:34] Like, Martin Scorsese's Silence is like this, where there aren't huge stars in this movie.

[24:40] But you have, like, the American stars or, you know, American or European stars.

[24:44] And then you have the Japanese or Chinese cast.

[24:46] And the Asian actors are so much better.

[24:49] And that's such a higher level of character reality.

[24:51] Even for a movie as ridiculous as this or character intensity.

[24:54] You know, like, you watch Silence and you're like, oh, the Japanese actors in this are so good.

[24:58] Silence, Mortal Kombat, same thing.

[25:00] Yeah, same movie.

[25:00] Same favorites.

[25:01] Look, Tadanobu Asano, also in Silence.

Naomi Ekperigin

[25:05] Andy and I believe in this household, you know, we often say we stan an international co-production.

[25:09] Yes.

[25:09] And this is just international co-pro at its finest.

[25:12] Because you've got these great actors.

[25:15] And then, like, a random white girl shows up.

[25:18] And you're like, who are you?

[25:19] How did you get here?

[25:20] International co-production.

[25:22] You don't make sense with the vibe.

[25:24] But we legally had to have her in it.

[25:26] Right.

[25:27] Like the Meg.

[25:28] Which she was in.

[25:29] Another international co-production.

[25:30] Sonya Blade, you mean.

[25:31] Sonya Blade, yes.

[25:32] But we'll get there.

[25:32] We'll get there.

[25:32] Sonya Blade, Jessica McNamee.

Stuart Wellington

[25:34] But like Joe Taslim, who plays B-Han, later Sub-Zero, is fucking awesome.

[25:39] Like he's in The Raid.

[25:40] He's in The Night Comes For Us.

[25:42] He's a fucking badass.

[25:43] Beat the shit out of me, daddy.

[25:45] He's amazing.

[25:46] And he's great.

[25:47] Like even covered in like super, what is obviously like super heavy, unwieldy armor that he later rips off in an awesome fight.

[25:55] Like he's still great.

[25:57] Like he brings such great energy to what little he gets to do in this movie.

[26:00] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[26:01] If you want a international co-pro, this is a TV show now, not a movie.

[26:07] But if you want one where the acting is like super on both sides of the continental divide, Geary Haji.

[26:16] Absolutely.

[26:17] Just think about that, guys.

[26:19] I will.

[26:19] Think about that.

Naomi Ekperigin

[26:19] We're not going to say more.

[26:20] That's all I'll be thinking about the rest of my life, probably.

[26:22] Yeah.

[26:23] Just think about that.

Elliott Kalan

[26:24] So the important thing is Lord Raiden shows up.

[26:26] He's super powerful.

[26:27] He has lightning powers.

[26:28] He takes the baby and then lightning teleports away.

[26:32] Cut to on-screen text, which explains that Earth is about to lose an interdimensional fighting competition and be invaded by the evil Out Realm.

[26:41] But a prophecy says that Hanzo's blood will raise new warriors.

[26:44] And it is a lot of concept to suddenly dump on us.

[26:47] And it's like the movie is like, you're here for the fights.

[26:50] Like you give a shit about this.

[26:51] Here's the backstory.

[26:52] Who cares?

[26:53] Like we'll just dump it on you.

[26:54] It doesn't matter.

Dan McCoy

[26:54] Let's talk a little bit about the Mortal Kombat tournament because the rules of this thing are just wild.

[27:03] They're a little flexible.

[27:05] Yes, Dad.

[27:05] Yeah.

[27:05] Because like, yeah, like apparently you have to win 10 of these tournaments to take over.

[27:12] And so this is the 10th.

[27:14] You know, we got to have stakes.

[27:16] So we're jumping in at number 10.

[27:17] But at that point, like just simplify it for the audience maybe.

[27:20] Just make this the important tournament.

[27:22] But also apparently it is totally legal that you can kill the competitors outside of the tournament.

[27:28] Ahead of time.

[27:29] In order.

[27:29] Not legal.

[27:30] They specifically say it's against the rules.

Elliott Kalan

[27:32] But also they say it's against the rules.

[27:34] But there is no authority higher than the main bad guy and the main good guy.

[27:37] Right.

[27:38] It's not like the living tribunal shows up to pass judgment.

[27:42] It's just like, Shang Tsung, you're not allowed to do this.

[27:45] And Shang Tsung is like, ooh, but I guess I'll do it anyway.

[27:48] Like there's.

[27:49] Yeah.

[27:49] Who made the rules?

[27:50] Who's the main guy?

Dan McCoy

[27:51] Like if there was no repercussions for Tanya Harding, you know, doing that.

[27:55] I mean, she did lose, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[27:56] And also it wasn't really her fault and she did lose.

[27:58] So.

Dan McCoy

[27:59] If there were none, you know, like this Mortal Kombat treats it the same way.

[28:03] Like, okay, I guess I'll allow it.

Elliott Kalan

[28:05] There's nothing in the rule book that says you can't kill the opponents before the competition.

Andy Beckerman

[28:09] Who's the main outworld guy?

[28:12] Wait.

[28:13] What's his name?

[28:13] Shang Tsung?

[28:15] Is that it?

Stuart Wellington

[28:16] Well, there's Shang Tsung and then there's, oh, in the movie it's Shang Tsung, but there's also Shao Kahn and Shinnok and all these other guys.

[28:22] In this movie it's.

Andy Beckerman

[28:22] No, because he says, leave the elder gods to me.

[28:25] And then later in the movie, I wrote this down.

[28:27] He wrote, the elder god, the other gods are too lazy to stop me.

[28:32] That's his justification.

[28:34] He says, leave them to me.

[28:35] And then he's like, nah, we don't have to worry about them.

[28:38] They don't want to get off their asses.

Naomi Ekperigin

[28:40] And you're just like, okay.

[28:42] Well, then why even have an elder god?

[28:44] These elder gods are too tired.

[28:46] Like, it doesn't even make sense.

[28:47] But here's the thing, though.

[28:48] As you said, a movie that's just about fights?

[28:51] Why not then make the whole movie these ten tournaments?

[28:55] Yeah.

[28:55] Now that would have given me something.

Elliott Kalan

[28:57] Or have the movie be the tournament as opposed to the movie being the prep for the tournament, which is ridiculous.

[29:04] Like, this is like the gory martial arts version of the Big Lebowski where there's the big build.

[29:10] They're building up to a bowling tournament that you're never actually going to see.

Stuart Wellington

[29:14] It's the unveiling of the tallest building in Philadelphia.

[29:17] It's all over.

[29:19] Yes, that's exactly what it is.

Elliott Kalan

[29:20] That movie.

[29:21] I was thinking about that the other day, just how funny it is when Split looks over to the building and is like, and now to go to it.

[29:28] And then they knock him down and he never gets there.

[29:30] Anyway.

[29:31] Okay, so now we're going to meet our hero.

[29:35] We're meeting Cole.

[29:36] He's a youngish guy, but he's already a has-been underdog MMA fighter.

[29:40] His teen daughter is always like, Cole, dad, use your uppercut.

[29:43] He never listens to her and he loses the match because he, for some reason, maybe he made a promise.

[29:47] And it's such an easy move.

Stuart Wellington

[29:48] You just hold down and hit the punch button.

Elliott Kalan

[29:51] Maybe he made a promise to his dying master that he would never use the uppercut.

Stuart Wellington

[29:55] It's not like a sure you can, which is hard to do because you have to hit forward, down, and then down forward, which is a weird motion to master.

[30:02] Down, down, forward?

[30:04] Yeah.

[30:04] Oh, my God.

Elliott Kalan

[30:05] So we go to Outworld.

[30:06] This is where the bad guys live.

[30:07] Of course, it's like a big evil desert with mountains and stuff.

[30:10] B. Hanner's reporting to his master, Shang Tsung.

[30:13] Okay.

[30:13] Shang Tsung, he wants to take over the earth, make everybody have fun tonight, everybody Shang Tsung tonight.

[30:18] Stuart, tell us about Shang Tsung.

[30:20] What do we need to know about this mean dude?

Stuart Wellington

[30:21] I mean, he's like an evil sorcerer guy, right?

[30:23] And he sucks people's souls out of their body and he has the move where he can, like, transform into other characters.

[30:29] That's pretty cool, right?

[30:30] He doesn't do any transforming in this movie.

[30:33] Didn't have the budget, I'd imagine.

Naomi Ekperigin

[30:35] They did not have a transformation budget.

Elliott Kalan

[30:38] So he's played by Chin Han, who, according to Wikipedia, was in the Ghost in the Shell movie, so he's a flophouse repeat.

[30:46] Nice to see you again, Chin Han.

[30:47] So anyway, so Shang Tsung, he's a real mean bad guy.

[30:50] He wants to take over the earth for some reason.

[30:53] He's worried about the prophecy that says that Hanzo's blood will raise a new class of warrior that will stop him.

[30:58] He's like, Bi-Han, just go to earth and kill all the champions before the Mortal Kombat competition,

[31:02] which is very funny.

[31:04] I'm afraid that we're going to lose to them in Mortal Kombat, so go fight them where there are no rules,

[31:09] and they can do whatever they want and go kill them.

[31:11] And Bi-Han goes, I'm sub-zero now.

[31:13] And it's like, oh, sorry, dude.

[31:15] Okay.

[31:16] I didn't know you rebranded since the 17th century.

[31:19] Okay.

[31:20] Now, why do you think...

Dan McCoy

[31:21] His recording label actually owned his old name.

[31:25] Oh, that's why.

Stuart Wellington

[31:27] Did you get the email from my publicist?

[31:29] Yeah.

[31:30] Somebody stole his account as holding it hostage.

Elliott Kalan

[31:35] Here's...

[31:35] Okay.

[31:35] So Cole is going to meet ex-military tough guy Jax, spelled J-A-X.

[31:41] Absolutely.

[31:42] And Cole is like, yeah, anyway, I'm a fighter.

[31:43] I got a birthmark shaped like a dragon.

[31:45] Take a look at it.

[31:46] And Jax follows Cole's family to a hamburger stand where it suddenly starts snowing in July.

[31:52] What could that mean?

[31:53] It means sub-zero is on the attack.

[31:56] Luckily, Jax saves them in his truck.

Dan McCoy

[31:57] It's pretty cool.

[31:58] I got to say, you know, like they...

[32:00] Talk about it.

[32:02] Talk about it.

[32:02] Paint us a word picture.

[32:03] This movie is filled with...

[32:04] Thank you for the permission.

[32:06] This movie is filled with CGI, you know, and that can look cheesy.

[32:11] But I really kind of liked the snow mysteriously starting to fall and then like falling backwards up into the air and then being assaulted by ice.

[32:19] I thought that all looked cool.

[32:20] Yeah.

[32:20] Pretty good special effect.

[32:22] Also a great special effect that's a practical effect, a real life effect.

[32:27] Jax's arms.

[32:28] That guy has such huge biceps.

Naomi Ekperigin

[32:31] I said the same thing.

[32:32] I said they were too much.

[32:33] I thought they were out of control.

[32:35] I thought it was excessive.

[32:36] And I was like, is he doing that thing where, you know, you like fold your arms but then you like push them up with your fists?

[32:42] Because they were just really...

[32:44] McCod Brooks, you guys.

[32:45] McCod Brooks is always coming through, giving us very like snackable, look at me, I'm hot and buff energy.

[32:51] Do you want me to have those kind of arms?

[32:53] Absolutely not.

[32:54] I find them overwhelming.

[32:56] But if you kept your body the same except for the arms, that could be good.

[33:02] Okay, interesting.

[33:02] You can think about that.

Elliott Kalan

[33:05] Naomi, I've got good news for you about the arms.

[33:07] Bad news for Jax.

[33:09] Don't get used to those arms.

[33:10] Because we're not going to see them too much more in the movie.

[33:14] Jax is like...

[33:15] Oh, yeah.

[33:16] Sorry.

[33:16] Keep talking about his arms.

Naomi Ekperigin

[33:17] No, okay.

[33:17] First of all, yes.

[33:18] So, yes.

[33:18] Literally everything you're saying, Elliot, is as bare as it was written in the movie.

[33:22] Because Cole is like, I fight.

[33:25] He has this daughter.

[33:26] It's like, is she eight?

[33:27] Is she 40?

[33:28] And then we don't...

[33:30] And then like, they go right after the thing.

[33:32] But then it's like, where are you?

[33:34] Where are we located?

[33:35] Oh, yeah.

[33:36] Is this like Dayton, Ohio?

Elliott Kalan

[33:37] Where are we?

[33:38] We don't know.

[33:38] They could be in Texas.

[33:39] They could be in Brooklyn.

[33:40] They could be in Ohio.

[33:41] They could be in Washington State.

[33:43] It's impossible to know.

[33:43] Definitely Earthrealm, though.

[33:46] Yes.

[33:47] It is.

[33:47] They are in Earth.

[33:48] They're in...

[33:48] I think we can narrow it down to the United States of America or Canada.

[33:52] Earthrealm.

[33:52] But otherwise, you know, it's a...

Stuart Wellington

[33:55] And can I point out that Cole is a completely new character?

[33:59] This character has never been featured in a Mortal Kombat game or movie.

[34:02] Oh, really?

[34:03] Brand new.

Elliott Kalan

[34:04] Do you think it's to avoid accusations of favoritism that they made the main character of the movie a new character?

Stuart Wellington

[34:10] Well, it's weird because the main guy behind the game is this guy, Ed Boone, who famously his favorite character is Scorpion,

[34:17] which is kind of why Scorpion over the years has morphed into more of a good guy,

[34:21] because he was like a fire-breathing skeleton ninja guy with a thing.

[34:27] And like, you know, the spear that he throws.

[34:29] And Scorpion has become more and more like the face of the game.

[34:32] Like if you go to a GameStop for some reason and want to buy a Mortal Kombat game, it probably has Scorpion on it.

Elliott Kalan

[34:39] I mean, please go to GameStop.

[34:41] I bought a lot of stock and I would like the business to do better.

Stuart Wellington

[34:45] But like, I assumed they were going to just make him, make Cole Scorpion, but no, no, no.

[34:50] No.

[34:51] For some reason.

Elliott Kalan

[34:52] And I wonder if they're like trying to build him up to put him in a game or if they wanted to be eligible for the best new character Academy Award.

[34:58] Like you can't have a pre-existing character.

[35:00] But I didn't realize that.

[35:01] And that makes sense, though, because Cole is also a pretty bland kind of basic character.

[35:07] There's like not much going on with him.

Naomi Ekperigin

[35:08] He's also in Woo Assassins, this actor.

[35:11] And that's a Netflix show, you know, that's just also giving us martial arts and fun.

[35:15] I told you, I watch it.

[35:16] I don't need much.

[35:17] Yeah.

[35:17] And he's fun in Woo Assassins.

[35:19] He's like kind of like the hot, cool fuck boy of the main character, like the best friend.

[35:24] And then he's like, but he's also like a good guy underneath.

[35:27] You know, that kind of energy.

[35:28] And so like when I saw him, I was like, oh, he's fun.

[35:31] But they literally just have him smize the entire film.

Andy Beckerman

[35:35] He's what we call a CW.

[35:37] He is a model that they just put into like that.

[35:40] Like someone's like, well, we can make more money off of you if you act too.

[35:44] So they made him an actor.

[35:46] But he's really just a model.

[35:47] He doesn't.

Naomi Ekperigin

[35:47] He's also a good fighter.

[35:48] Like he knows how to fight, you know?

[35:49] So he is like.

[35:50] But in this movie specifically, he's giving you CW again, like all the CW shows.

[35:54] Like he's giving you just like looks.

[35:57] He's giving you angles, cheekbones.

[35:59] Blue steel.

[35:59] But has no response to anything that's happening to him.

[36:04] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[36:04] No one has a response in this entire thing.

[36:06] Crazy shit happens every two minutes.

[36:09] Yes.

[36:09] And no one has any kind of response except for one character.

[36:13] Well, one of the things.

[36:14] Who's yet to be introduced.

[36:15] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[36:15] One of the, we'll get to them.

[36:17] So Jack saves them in his truck.

[36:19] And he's like, I got the same dragon birthmark.

[36:21] We're marked as Mortal Kombat champions.

[36:23] Instantly, Cole and his family are like, that makes sense.

[36:25] Yeah, we're on board.

[36:27] I get it.

[36:28] Mystical champions.

[36:29] All right.

[36:29] Well, what do we do?

[36:30] And Jack's is like, go find my partner, Blade.

[36:33] And I was like, wait, Blade, the vampire killer?

[36:36] No, it's Sonya Blade.

[36:37] No such luck.

[36:38] Anyway, not IP.

Naomi Ekperigin

[36:40] He's like, go to Gary and Deanna.

[36:41] Here's an address.

[36:43] Okay, bye.

[36:44] He's like, where are you in relation to Gary and Deanna?

[36:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[36:47] Also, you know, up there with Buffalo is bad places to go.

[36:51] Before we get too far away from it, the CW.

Elliott Kalan

[36:54] Dan, I've heard nothing but good things about Gary and Deanna and the one song that I know

[36:57] about it.

Dan McCoy

[36:57] What a wonderful place.

[36:59] Name for Albert Gary of judiciary fame.

[37:02] Gary, Indiana.

[37:03] Like a Shakespeare would say, trips along softly from the tongue this way.

[37:06] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[37:08] Dan, are you channeling someone else right now?

[37:10] Where did that come from?

[37:11] I was.

[37:13] Professor fucking Harold Hill, man.

[37:14] Right, right.

[37:15] Yeah.

[37:16] No, I.

[37:17] Sorry, it was just you looked like you went to a fugue state.

[37:18] But anyway, you're saying.

[37:19] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[37:19] Before we.

[37:19] Your eyes, your pupils got white.

Dan McCoy

[37:23] Before we get too far away from the CW, I just want to say that I like what we're, you

[37:28] know, we're unpeeling what we're seeing about this relationship that you guys have a lot

[37:32] of jargon around your household.

[37:33] You know, you like there's a lot of media jargon that, you know, you build up.

[37:39] Yeah.

[37:40] That was it.

[37:41] It's true.

Naomi Ekperigin

[37:41] Thank you for understanding how our love has lasted this 11 years.

[37:45] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:45] Based on having a closed loop terminology that is impenetrable to the outside world.

[37:49] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[37:49] Yeah.

[37:50] Every relationship needs a glossary.

Elliott Kalan

[37:53] So he's like, go find Sonya Blade.

[37:56] I'm going to fight Sub-Zero.

[37:57] Not a good idea.

[37:58] After creeping around in an entirely frozen abandoned building, pretty much.

[38:02] Oh, no.

[38:02] I guess entirely frozen later on.

[38:04] Sub-Zero.

[38:05] It's the elated, yeah.

[38:05] Freezes Jax's arms and then they shatter and then Jax falls down and hits his head.

[38:09] And he's knocked down.

Stuart Wellington

[38:09] There is a great line.

[38:10] In a violent way.

[38:11] Yeah.

[38:12] When they first face off and Jax says, I did six tours, motherfucker.

[38:17] And you're like, against ice wizards?

Elliott Kalan

[38:23] Also, one of the things in this movie that took me from a surprise at first was, I forget

[38:28] like 90s action movies.

[38:30] There's tons of swearing and I just take it in stride.

[38:33] But modern action movies, because so many of them, I guess, are pegged around a PG-13,

[38:38] hopefully, audience or even like a soft R audience, they don't swear as much.

[38:41] And there's a ton of swearing in this movie.

[38:43] And for some reason, when a character would be disemboweled and their guts would fall out,

[38:46] that would shock me less than hearing a character be like, fuck this asshole.

[38:49] And I'd be like, wait, what?

Dan McCoy

[38:51] I mean, it really felt like they were doing it excessively to be like, fuck you, dad.

[38:57] We can swear in our movie.

[38:59] Like, that's the way.

[39:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[39:00] Yeah.

[39:00] This totally felt to me like it was a 90s Saturday morning cartoon that they remade in a live

[39:05] action.

[39:06] They were like, now we can put in all the swears we want.

Elliott Kalan

[39:09] Now we can finally have Reptile and Goro do it.

[39:14] Like, we were only able to hint at in the TV show.

Stuart Wellington

[39:17] I mean, that would be difficult with Reptile's acidic spittle.

[39:20] I mean, I think that would cause problems for Goro, but I mean, I'll watch anything once.

Elliott Kalan

[39:26] So speaking of, we're back in Outworld.

[39:28] Shang Tsung is talking to his lady fighter, Melina.

[39:30] But then he's like, you don't go.

[39:32] Send in Scyzoth, the reptilian.

[39:34] Now, this is the character Reptile, basically, right?

[39:37] Or is it not?

[39:38] Because he doesn't look like what I'm used to.

[39:39] I'm used to the character Reptile being just scorpion, but with different colors.

Naomi Ekperigin

[39:43] Oh, that's why that thing was there.

[39:46] I didn't put together that it was sent.

[39:48] Because I was literally like, what is this character?

[39:51] Scary Indiana, you know?

[39:53] You just thought it was his own initiative?

Andy Beckerman

[39:56] You thought the Reptile, like that wizard?

Naomi Ekperigin

[39:58] Yes, I was literally like, it's just like showing up places because it can sense the combatants, the champions.

Andy Beckerman

[40:04] I think it's like half alien, half predator.

[40:06] Because it's got like acid, saliva, but it also has cloaking.

Stuart Wellington

[40:10] Both characters that have been in Mortal Kombat games.

Elliott Kalan

[40:13] Yeah.

[40:14] What?

[40:14] And it also looks like Spider-Man's the lizard.

[40:18] Right.

[40:19] So anyway, like I said, Cole and his family, they instantly believe Jax's crazy story.

[40:23] And Cole leaves his family behind after they've been attacked by an ice samurai monster to go find Sonya Blade.

[40:29] And when he gets to her, what, like trailer home?

[40:31] It's like a, or like a mobile home that's, you know, stuck in the ground.

[40:35] Like a junkyard.

[40:36] Yeah, yeah.

[40:37] Yeah.

[40:37] She shows Cole her evidence dungeon about how people have been fighting in the Mortal Kombat tournament for centuries.

[40:42] And Cole has a hallucination of Hanzo for a moment.

[40:45] But then, uh-oh, he gets kicked out of that by Kano.

[40:49] Our next big character.

[40:51] Kano.

[40:51] Kano is a douchebag Australian mercenary that Sonya has chained to a chair in her house.

[40:57] Stuart, tell me about Kano.

[40:58] What can you tell me about Kano?

Stuart Wellington

[40:59] Kano's like, uh, was like a, like a sub villain in the, the original games.

[41:04] And he's always been an Australian, like mercenary, gun runner, bad guy.

[41:08] Uh, in the games, all his moves are like kind of aggressive and extra shitty.

[41:12] And he has this one move where he like rolls up into a ball and flies across the screen, which doesn't quite fit with his other moves.

[41:19] But it's pretty hilarious.

[41:20] And it's a, it's a good strategy to build because you can just keep slamming people around with your flying ball body.

[41:26] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:27] In my, in my marriage, we call that an FBB, a flying ball body.

[41:30] That's, that's just a term that we use in our house.

[41:34] Uh, so he turned, it turns out, so Kano is, we've set up our main characters.

[41:38] Cole is the innocent, uh, young, hot guy who is kind of too noble for this world.

[41:45] Sonya is the lady who, uh, is trying her best to be a Mortal Kombat champion because she doesn't have a dragon mark.

[41:50] And Kano, who has a dragon mark because he killed a champion and the mark transferred to him, is the like wisecracker.

[41:56] He's like the wisecracking asshole who just kind of is like, what?

[41:59] Well, I'm not going to do that.

[42:01] Boy, I ought to, that kind of stuff.

Naomi Ekperigin

[42:02] Why can you become a champion just by killing somebody else?

[42:05] Shouldn't the very nature of committing a murder be you are not champion material?

[42:09] I mean, it's, I like this.

[42:10] So the fact that Kano is even up in here because he's like, oh, I killed this guy and he happened to have a mark.

[42:14] Now I got the mark.

[42:15] Well, that don't check out.

[42:16] I thought you wanted to win, Earthrealm.

Elliott Kalan

[42:18] Now, if you want to win this, you can't just be giving any old body a mark.

[42:21] It reminds me of in the movie, at the end of the movie, Gods of Egypt, where all throughout that movie, whether you get into heaven or hell is decided by how rich you are.

[42:29] And at the end, they go, you know what?

[42:31] Maybe it should be based on whether you're a good person or not.

[42:34] From now on, only good people will get into heaven.

[42:36] And it was like, what system was this beforehand?

[42:39] Like, why would you ever have it the other way?

[42:41] What are you doing?

Stuart Wellington

[42:42] I will point out this whole, like, weird mark shit, this Arcana that they talk about, which is a weird mark that you get if you kill somebody else that has the mark.

[42:50] Or I guess you're born into a lineage of people with a mark, which is arguably worse.

[42:55] It also is keyed into some weird magic power shit.

[43:00] This is all new.

[43:01] This is not from the games.

[43:02] It doesn't make any sense.

[43:03] It feels like something that, like, an executive is like, I want to put my own stamp on the Mortal Kombat universe by introducing some dumb bullshit.

Elliott Kalan

[43:12] Well, it feels like there are a couple different parts of this movie where, and I always am impressed by this, when there's a movie based on a video game and they're like, I guess we have to come up with a story reason to explain why a ninja who can breathe fire is fighting like a vampire woman in the middle of a temple somewhere.

[43:30] Because the game, of course, you really don't need a reason.

[43:33] No.

[43:33] But they really feel like they're trying to build a backstory to explain, I think, why people have these abilities at all.

[43:39] Whereas in the game, it's just kind of like, here's a crazy bunch of weirdos.

[43:42] Like, here's a bunch of super-powered nuts.

[43:43] Yeah.

[43:44] Yeah.

[43:44] But we don't have time.

[43:45] I want a Kano movie, by the way.

Naomi Ekperigin

[43:47] Yeah, he was the only one having fun with it.

[43:49] Kano was having fun with it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:50] He was having fun with it.

[43:51] But the lights go out.

[43:52] Uh-oh.

[43:52] That invisible reptile monster with the acid blood attacks.

[43:55] Scyzoth.

[43:56] Working together, they kill it.

[43:57] They manage to, like, stab a flare into its body so that they can see where it is.

[44:01] And Kano rips out its heart and says, Kano wins.

[44:04] Which is one of many little eye winks at the audience.

[44:08] And Kano was like, I saw Lord Raiden's temple.

[44:11] I could take you there for $3 million, mate.

[44:14] And they tell him they'll pay him there.

[44:16] That's so good.

[44:16] That's amazing.

[44:16] That was so good.

[44:17] I was practicing.

[44:17] It's like a Hemsworth.

[44:19] Yeah.

[44:20] I feel like I'm in Melbourne right now.

[44:22] Yeah.

[44:23] On the way there, Cole has another vision of Hanzo.

[44:27] But don't have time for that.

[44:29] And the visions don't really matter.

[44:30] It doesn't matter.

[44:31] They parachute into the desert.

[44:33] Where instead of parachuting to the place where they want to go, they parachute, like,

[44:36] a couple miles away so that they can walk the rest of the way.

Naomi Ekperigin

[44:39] Right.

[44:39] Okay.

[44:40] And those are his favorite.

[44:41] It's like, okay, is that what you consider a story turn?

[44:44] Like, we need to pad this a bit.

[44:46] Maybe they don't.

[44:47] They have to walk a little.

[44:48] And it's also, again, we have to go, because this is from the beginning, like, we are starting

[44:53] with Cole, right?

[44:54] We are supposed to, our entree into this world is supposed to be this guy who is a fighter,

[44:58] who's not very good, though, but he has a daughter.

[45:00] And you know, whenever a man has a daughter, he's our hero.

[45:02] Yeah, he's got heart.

[45:03] And so he has his daughter.

[45:05] But you're like, Cole, like, these people just showed up.

[45:09] Somebody made it snow in July and then froze the street.

[45:13] And then you had to go to Gary, Indiana.

[45:16] How are you feeling?

[45:17] Where are you emotionally with this journey?

[45:21] And he's just walking.

[45:22] He's just walking.

[45:23] He's just hanging.

[45:24] He ain't got nothing to say.

[45:26] And that is so strange to me.

[45:28] For all the work of building the backstory.

[45:30] Maybe he's dead inside.

[45:32] But he has that daughter.

[45:33] If you have a daughter, you can't be dead inside.

[45:34] That's the hero code.

Elliott Kalan

[45:36] That's the rule.

[45:37] Well, he's a family man.

[45:39] I mean, in his perfect world, he'd be played by a young Tom Hanks.

[45:42] And that's how you, and he'd bring all that, you know, character to him.

[45:45] I mean, the young Tom Hanks would be ripped in this version of the scene.

[45:48] Yeah, yeah.

[45:49] You know.

[45:49] Love him.

[45:50] Like Bosom Buddies era, when he was like really like.

[45:52] When he was working out a lot.

[45:53] Bosom Buddies era, when he was like, he had those 40-inch pythons.

[45:56] Yeah, definitely.

[45:58] But yeah, there's, Cole is, I mean, he's just a, he is a total blank.

[46:01] He is an open doorway for us to walk into the world of Mortal Kombat.

[46:05] And there is otherwise not much there.

[46:07] Yeah.

[46:08] But, and there's this rivalry between Kano and Sonya that is instantly, has so much more

[46:13] personality than anything that Cole is doing.

[46:15] And Kano taunts Sonya into attacking him.

[46:18] And he's like, kill me then.

[46:19] Take my dragon mark.

[46:20] But she won't do it.

[46:21] But that's okay.

[46:23] Because suddenly out of the sunset, who's walking in?

[46:25] It's Liu Kang with his karate firehands.

[46:27] Stuart, tell me about Liu Kang.

Stuart Wellington

[46:29] Liu Kang was always kind of like the, was like kind of the bland good guy who.

[46:35] Until Cole came along.

[46:35] Yep.

[46:36] Exactly.

[46:37] And I mean, Cole kind of is filling the role that Liu Kang normally would fill.

[46:41] At some point, he's like the lover of Princess Katana, who's the daughter of Shao Kahn.

[46:47] And he is like a monk and he can turn into a dragon in some of his fatalities.

Dan McCoy

[46:54] You know, guys, the, like the collective amount of bullshit that is in all of our brains, you

[46:59] know, I don't know what we could do with it, but if we could harness that power somehow.

[47:04] We did.

[47:05] It's called the Flophouse.

[47:06] Yeah.

[47:06] This is the only way to do it.

[47:08] I don't.

Andy Beckerman

[47:10] It all swirls together.

[47:11] It creates some kind of like Lovecraftian dark God that will destroy the earth.

[47:17] Made of fictional mythos and things.

Elliott Kalan

[47:20] Good news.

[47:21] They get to Raiden's cave.

[47:23] They know, they learn about the past because the cave is decorated with historical Mortal

[47:26] Kombat murals.

[47:27] And as we know from the Zack Snyder Justice League.

[47:28] It's all about wall work.

Naomi Ekperigin

[47:30] That's what they do in this movie, right?

[47:31] Yeah.

[47:31] Like Sonya has a wall and now there's a wall in this cave.

[47:35] And just let the wall tell the story.

[47:37] Okay.

[47:37] No one has time to talk to you.

[47:39] No one has time for a flashback.

[47:40] Just let the wall.

[47:41] Do it.

Elliott Kalan

[47:41] It's just like in the Justice League movie, murals are the best way to communicate complicated

[47:45] backstories.

Stuart Wellington

[47:46] And that's the interesting difference between Earthrealm and Outworld because the heroes

[47:49] of Earthrealm decorate their walls.

[47:51] Whereas Outworld, they have no walls.

[47:53] Not even the throne room.

[47:54] It's just like a cliff.

[47:57] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[47:57] What were those people doing in the background, by the way, in Outworld?

[48:01] They were just like wandering around.

[48:03] Is that what happened?

[48:03] Yep.

[48:04] Going on a pilgrimage.

Elliott Kalan

[48:05] I think so.

[48:05] I mean, no wonder they want Earthrealm because there's stuff here.

[48:08] There's like nothing in Outworld.

[48:09] So like who wouldn't want?

[48:11] I mean, if anything, you totally sympathize with the people of Outworld who just see Earthrealm

[48:15] when they're like, look at all the things they have.

[48:17] Like we have nothing.

[48:19] And they're not offering it to us.

[48:20] So we better go in and take it.

Andy Beckerman

[48:22] Outworld looks.

[48:23] Right.

[48:23] Remember the George Carlin bit about how Outworld doesn't have stuff and Earth has that.

[48:28] Yeah.

[48:28] The famous most combat stuff bit.

[48:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:30] Yeah.

[48:30] That's great.

[48:31] Yeah.

[48:31] The seven fatalities you can't do in the Saturday morning cartoon.

[48:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:37] Outworld is all one big like concept art drawing for like a desert.

[48:45] That is Outworld.

[48:46] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:47] Outworld is your basic Tatooine, Arrakis place that the tuning forks take you in Phantasm

[48:52] where it's just like an open desert and there's no stuff.

[48:54] Two Phantasm references.

[48:56] I've been thinking about Phantasm a lot lately.

[48:58] Yeah.

Naomi Ekperigin

[48:58] It's cheap.

[48:59] I think that's the point.

[49:00] You know?

[49:01] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[49:01] And it's very cheap.

[49:02] Yeah.

[49:02] Because there's no stuff.

[49:03] You don't have to fill it with anything.

[49:04] Oh, wait.

[49:05] Can I quick point out something that we only saw on the second time watching the movie?

[49:10] Please do.

[49:12] When they're fighting the reptile.

[49:14] When they're fighting the reptile.

[49:16] When like Kano.

[49:17] Kano.

[49:18] Kano.

[49:18] And Sonya Blade.

[49:20] Kano.

Naomi Ekperigin

[49:22] When Kano's speaker.

Andy Beckerman

[49:24] When Kano Lorber is fighting the reptile.

Elliott Kalan

[49:27] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[49:28] Or someone asked Sonya where's your marking?

[49:30] And she goes, I don't have one.

[49:32] And then Kano in the background goes wah wah.

[49:36] That's great.

[49:36] And I only saw that the second time and I died.

Naomi Ekperigin

[49:40] It was so funny.

[49:41] And that's what I wanted more of.

[49:43] That's what I love.

[49:44] I'm like, give me the wah wah in the back.

[49:46] And I also love that it was in the background.

[49:48] There was no need to cut to him.

[49:49] Just like, let me hear that and really enjoy that.

[49:52] And that was very delightful.

Stuart Wellington

[49:54] It was the kind of energy that like the first Mortal Kombat had where it was like this weird.

[49:59] The original Mortal Kombat movie had this.

[50:01] It was like a weird tournament at this rich sorcerer's magic island.

[50:05] Where like all these weirdos just showed up because they're like, I want to fucking battle.

[50:10] And you had like a little bit of everything.

[50:12] You had like jerks like Johnny Cage.

[50:14] You had jerks like Kano.

[50:16] You had Sonya Blade who wanted to kill Kano.

[50:18] You had Agoro.

[50:19] It was great.

[50:20] But this movie, it's like the motivation is just like protecting Earthrealm.

[50:24] Who gives a shit about that?

[50:25] I want people who want to go to a fucking tournament on a magic island.

Elliott Kalan

[50:28] Well, because the first Mortal Kombat is very much still in a time when martial arts means enter the dragon.

[50:34] Like it's still living in that world where like if you're going to have martial arts fighting, it's going to be kind of a enter the dragon type of space.

[50:40] But now it's in the world of Marvel movies where it's like if we play this right, every single one of these characters is going to have their own movie.

[50:47] And we're going to have like a trilogy where they go to Outworld and overthrow Shang Tsung or whatever.

[50:52] So it's, they got to add all this junk when, yeah, it would be so much more fun if it was just like you just saw all these characters getting on planes and buses heading to the tournament, you know?

[51:01] It's way better.

[51:03] Yeah.

[51:03] Anyway, Jax is also at Lord Raiden's temple.

[51:06] His arms are gone and he is unconscious.

[51:08] Uh-oh, what's going to happen to Jax?

[51:10] Oh, God.

[51:10] Liu Kang is like, you guys need to train or Earth will be ravaged.

[51:13] And he introduces them to Lord Raiden who is visibly disappointed that these are the people who showed up.

Naomi Ekperigin

[51:21] Absolutely.

[51:21] He's like, you don't even have a mark, woman.

[51:23] I don't know what you're doing here.

[51:24] You're a liability.

[51:25] Who invited her?

Dan McCoy

[51:26] Three or four of them show up, right?

[51:28] Like it's just like this tiny group.

[51:30] Like, hey.

Naomi Ekperigin

[51:31] Hey, we thought we might fight.

[51:33] I heard this wasn't a birthmark.

[51:34] So I'm here to fight.

[51:35] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[51:37] Do I get like a coupon for some Dairy Queen or something?

Elliott Kalan

[51:41] He turns to Cole and he's like, and what are you?

[51:43] Like, who are you?

[51:44] What is your deal?

[51:45] Like, why are you here, Cole?

[51:46] I have a daughter.

Stuart Wellington

[51:47] That's not enough.

[51:48] That's not enough.

[51:50] I don't think they could give away a coupon to Dairy Queen because blizzards are Sub-Zero's weapon.

[51:56] Uh-oh.

Elliott Kalan

[51:57] Very well put, Stuart, because Sub-Zero shows up and he starts fighting Liu Kang, but then he gets saved by a guy with a really wide hat.

[52:05] Stuart, who's this guy?

Stuart Wellington

[52:06] Elliot, the funny thing about you asking me this is that when, it's a funny thing we talk about Kang Lao of all people, is when I went and saw this in the theater, I went with my buddy Riff.

[52:16] We went to a five o'clock.

[52:18] Riff?

[52:19] Yeah, my buddy Riff.

[52:20] He was a junkyard cat.

[52:22] Yeah.

[52:24] We went to a 5 p.m. screening.

[52:27] We were the only people in the movie theater.

[52:29] So I felt totally comfortable any time a character like, for instance, Kang Lao would show up.

[52:33] I could turn to him and be like, hey, Riff, that's Kang Lao.

[52:36] He obviously knew it was Kang Lao already, not only because the character announces it as soon as he arrives, but also because he's a fan of the video games like me.

[52:43] And we would, but oh, we would laugh.

[52:46] It's so funny.

Dan McCoy

[52:47] I would like to say, you know, as someone who knows Riff, the person you are imagining when you hear the name Riff is Riff.

[52:55] That's Riff.

[52:56] Thank you.

[52:57] Absolutely.

[52:58] Thank you, very.

[52:58] It's like my friend Thor.

[53:00] He's a total Riff.

[53:01] Oh, yeah.

[53:02] Thor is a real Thor, too.

Andy Beckerman

[53:03] Wait, what?

[53:04] Yeah.

[53:05] That wasn't a joke?

[53:06] Nope.

Naomi Ekperigin

[53:07] What a life you live, Stuart.

[53:09] With his cabinet of figures and eating whole mangoes, no bites.

[53:15] Just giant, you guys, he was having giant chunks of mangoes, no bites.

Andy Beckerman

[53:19] He just put the whole mango in his mouth and pulled out the skin and the pig.

Elliott Kalan

[53:23] Pulled out a fish skeleton, which is the weird thing.

[53:27] Right, him and Riff.

[53:28] So, Liu Kang is like, hey, you each have special powers called Arcana, and you're going to figure what that is.

[53:33] They're going to merge through training.

[53:35] The more you fight, the more your Arcana comes out.

[53:37] But only if you have a dragon mark, Sonya.

[53:39] And also, Jax gets robot arms, but they're really, like, little and wimpy.

[53:43] Like, they look like Johnny Five's arms.

[53:45] Yeah.

[53:46] Yeah.

[53:46] Yes!

[53:47] And so, now it's a lot of training.

[53:49] Cole is training against Kung Lao's razor hat.

[53:50] And there's this part.

[53:52] I think it's the only part of the movie.

[53:53] There's a lot of synth on the score, and I was loving it.

[53:55] Like, I loved the score in that part.

[53:56] I'm a big sucker for synth.

[53:58] Again, as I said, it's the Sparks movie.

[54:00] That's what I'm most excited about.

Stuart Wellington

[54:01] There's a lot of fighting that takes place in this, like, sand pit area.

[54:05] And I hope you like it, because that's basically where all the fights are going to take place.

Elliott Kalan

[54:08] You're going to see a lot of fighting in the sand.

[54:10] It's training, training, training.

[54:11] And Jax's confidence is down, because he's got these skinny robot arms that don't punch very well.

[54:16] And Sonya gives him a pep talk.

Naomi Ekperigin

[54:18] And Cole can't get his Arcana.

[54:19] Cole can't get his Arcana.

[54:20] But here's the thing, too.

[54:21] Again, so we have this fight, right?

[54:23] We know it's the last fight.

[54:25] They're in this realm that's just like a sandbox.

[54:29] Are they there a day?

[54:30] Are they there an hour?

[54:31] No idea.

[54:32] What's happening on Earth?

[54:33] Right.

[54:33] The wife and the daughter are in some house where I'm like, whose house is this?

[54:35] They're like a cabin somewhere.

[54:37] Yeah, a cabin.

[54:38] And stuff like that to me, where I'm like, you could give me a sense of how time is passing and why maybe we care.

[54:45] Whenever Earth is in danger, right?

[54:48] There's nothing I love more than a little pop to Earth and suddenly locusts fall from the sky.

[54:53] They're like, oh, God, the bridge is breaking.

[54:55] The space time.

Andy Beckerman

[54:56] Or put a calendar in the corner.

[54:58] Put a calendar in the corner.

[54:59] And the pages fly off.

[55:01] Yeah, sure.

[55:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[55:01] My beard grows super long.

Naomi Ekperigin

[55:04] Super long.

[55:05] I think Cole should have a long beard by the time he's done training.

Dan McCoy

[55:09] Or if you're ZZ Top, your long beard gets longer.

Elliott Kalan

[55:12] Yeah, even longer until you're tripping over it.

[55:14] I want to see them.

[55:15] They have a page of day calendar in the corner and you just see the pages falling off.

[55:18] And then Liu Kang is like, close that window.

[55:20] It's blowing all the pages off the calendar.

Andy Beckerman

[55:23] What about just a clock and you see the thing spin like a helicopter?

Elliott Kalan

[55:28] Hey, someone fix that clock.

[55:29] It's spinning too fast.

[55:30] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[55:31] Fans of the games would clearly see that's a reference to Kronika, the bad guy from one

[55:36] of the later Mortal Kombat entries.

[55:38] Wow, Stuart.

[55:39] Absolutely.

[55:39] Sneaking in Easter eggs.

[55:41] The marijuana-themed Mortal Kombat villain?

[55:42] Is it Kronika an album?

[55:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[55:44] Sure.

[55:45] Yeah, yeah.

[55:46] She used the Necronomicon.

Elliott Kalan

[55:48] Oh.

[55:49] Necronomicon.

[55:50] Now, we know they're there at least two days because they're eating dinner at one point.

[55:53] And Kano is super rude to everybody.

[55:55] And Liu and Kang, they just taunt him until he starts shooting eye lasers out of his eyes.

[55:59] And he's like, yes, my arcana.

[56:01] It's an eye laser.

[56:02] Kohl's still won't come out.

[56:04] Even after they hit him a bunch of times.

[56:05] It just won't come out.

[56:06] They don't know.

[56:07] And Raiden is like, hey, Kohl, you're descended from Hanzo's baby that I saved.

[56:12] Go to your family.

[56:13] I don't need you here anymore.

[56:14] You're just a baby to me.

Naomi Ekperigin

[56:15] He's like, you are very disappointing.

[56:18] You can leave.

[56:19] And then he opens a portal.

[56:20] And Kohl's like, okay.

[56:22] He's like, sad.

[56:23] But he doesn't really put up a fight.

[56:24] He's like, okay.

Andy Beckerman

[56:25] Does anyone explain why Earthrealm waited so long to gather everyone?

Dan McCoy

[56:30] They really put it off to late.

[56:30] I feel like someone's memo didn't get sent.

[56:33] It really seems like a letter got lost along the way.

[56:36] And they're like, oh, shit.

[56:37] Is it that day already?

[56:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[56:38] The email was in the draft folder.

[56:40] They forgot to hit send.

[56:41] Also, that Lord Raiden is like, I have three people to choose from.

[56:45] Kohl, you're one of them.

[56:46] You're going to have to pack your knives and go.

[56:48] I don't want you here anymore.

[56:49] He's like, you have nobody else.

[56:51] What are you doing?

[56:52] You have no one.

[56:53] I mean, it's just like.

Stuart Wellington

[56:54] I can assume that they were sending emails to the U.S. Senate.

[56:58] And the U.S. government's like, the American people don't care about stuff outside of America.

[57:03] Okay.

[57:03] They don't care about Outworld.

[57:05] Yada, yada.

Elliott Kalan

[57:06] Well, the Democrats kept sponsoring bills that would increase funding for Mortal Kombat fighters.

S6

[57:10] And Mitch McConnell would get up and be like, I don't think we need to have all this government support of Mortal Kombat fighters.

Elliott Kalan

[57:17] You know, this isn't necessary.

[57:20] Honestly, is this Elliot's real?

Andy Beckerman

[57:22] Is this his video real?

[57:23] Because he's doing so much.

[57:24] I've got to do two more voices.

[57:25] By the way, this is the movie I want to see.

[57:27] You want to see, yeah, the Senate turning down funding for Mortal Kombat.

Elliott Kalan

[57:29] When the Senate is debating over it and Mitch McConnell's like, I think Lord Raiden has more than enough fighters.

[57:35] There's already his command.

[57:36] I don't see why we need to increase government funding from our taxpayer dollars.

[57:41] He's already got a Kano.

[57:44] He's got a Liu Kang.

[57:46] What might Bernie Sanders say now?

[57:48] And Bernie Sanders would be like, it is unconscionable that in European nations, the government fully supports Mortal Kombat fighters.

[57:55] But here we have to put it on the average American to fight against outworlders.

[58:00] It's unconscionable.

[58:01] We can't allow it.

[58:02] And we're not going to allow it.

Dan McCoy

[58:03] You know, I mean, if you were a little bit sort of like beefier, Elliot, you would be a dead ringer for like a younger Bernie Sanders.

[58:10] Because I'm Jewish.

[58:11] I mean, just that I'm Jewish.

Elliott Kalan

[58:13] Wow.

[58:15] I'm a Jewish guy with glasses.

[58:17] But thank you.

[58:17] It's the biggest compliment of all to be told I am a thinner Bernie Sanders.

[58:21] Thank you.

[58:24] So anyway.

[58:25] And then, yeah.

[58:26] And Elizabeth Warren.

[58:26] And now I'm just doing all my impressions.

[58:28] Elizabeth Warren would be like.

[58:30] Elizabeth Warren's like, we need Mortal Kombat fighters.

[58:33] I've got a plan for that.

[58:34] Here's my plan for that.

[58:35] Anyway.

[58:36] What is happening?

Stuart Wellington

[58:39] They've got a sub-zero.

[58:40] We've got a cyber sub-zero.

Elliott Kalan

[58:43] Well, we need to take this episode and kick it back to like two years ago, basically, when there were still all these candidates in the running.

[58:49] Then we make it my reel.

[58:51] I get on SNL.

[58:52] It's a terrible experience.

[58:53] I don't enjoy it.

[58:54] Right.

[58:55] Right.

[58:55] But that's how I get catapulted into having small roles in lots of comedy movies that I don't enjoy.

[58:59] Okay.

[59:00] So.

[59:02] Let's meet some more baddies.

[59:04] Because Shang Tsung's about to bring up K-Ball.

[59:08] K-Ball.

[59:09] Yeah, K-Ball.

[59:09] Nitara, who gets a big buildup and is killed instantly later on.

[59:12] And General Riko, who was, I think, the one I was least interested in.

[59:17] He's just like a big dude with a lot of hammer or something.

[59:19] He seemed like there was less going on with him.

Stuart Wellington

[59:21] Two characters.

[59:23] Him and who's the one with the wings?

[59:26] Nitara.

[59:27] Two brand new characters of the series.

[59:28] So fans of the series are like, I know who's getting a fatality performed on them.

Naomi Ekperigin

[59:34] Oh, so the woman with the wings is not from the video game.

[59:39] Now, I just really, I was like, there's not enough going on in the actual video game that they had to make a woman with wings?

[59:44] Because I really felt like they have enough characters to play with.

Stuart Wellington

[59:47] They have a ton of characters, but I don't think they want to kill them off with fatalities so quickly.

Naomi Ekperigin

[59:52] I see what you're saying.

[59:53] But like, okay, so as a person who had played the game, when the characters you recognized came on screen, were you satisfied?

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:00] Were you sated?

[1:00:01] Well, I immediately turned to Riff and said that character's name out loud.

[1:00:05] Absolutely.

[1:00:06] Yep.

[1:00:06] But I mean, I don't know.

[1:00:09] Not, I don't care.

[1:00:11] I mean, the roster's so large and they only showed a few characters.

[1:00:16] Didn't get to see any of my favorites like Johnny Cage or, man, I guess like, I feel, I was a big fan of Kano.

[1:00:23] And I feel like Kano is represented as like a shitty asshole who you shouldn't like, but by the fact that there is no other interesting characters, you have to root for the like racist asshole.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:35] Yeah.

[1:00:36] He's the only one with personality.

[1:00:38] So Shang Tsung is like, I want you to strike, but first you have to take down Raiden's shield at his headquarters.

[1:00:44] So yes, it's the same thing that the heroes have to do in Justice League, but backwards.

[1:00:48] It's the villains doing it now.

[1:00:50] And it's weird because, and Cabal hates Kano.

[1:00:53] He hates him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:54] Yeah, they're like former, they're former colleagues.

[1:00:57] They're former colleagues.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:58] And you get the feeling that, that Cabal, who's in like a suit of, like a living, like he's a cyborg.

[1:01:05] A Mad Max suit.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:01:06] He's like in a Mad Max outfit.

[1:01:08] And he says he has an iron lung.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:10] Yeah, that Kano probably put him in that situation.

[1:01:12] But so, so Cabal visits Kano and I'm like, so the shield that's stopping them, he did, that didn't bother him when he went into, it's one of the things where like, there's a shield keeping us back.

[1:01:22] So go in there and turn the shield off.

[1:01:24] Okay.

[1:01:24] Or we could just go in.

[1:01:26] Like if that's, if it's not that big an issue.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:29] Maybe if you go really slowly through it, it's not an issue.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:32] It's like a really slow one at a time thing.

[1:01:35] I get it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:36] I get you.

[1:01:37] And he's like, Kano, you should shut down that shield and turn into a bad guy.

[1:01:40] And Kano does exactly that.

[1:01:42] And Shang Tsung shows up.

[1:01:43] Meanwhile, who shows up at Cole's family's house?

[1:01:47] Goro.

[1:01:48] Prince Goro.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:49] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:50] And everybody starts fighting and battling.

[1:01:52] Battle, battle, battle, battle.

[1:01:53] You get your first really gory death as Kang Lao's hat becomes like a spinning saw blade that cuts Nitara right down the middle.

[1:02:00] Classic, classic fatality.

[1:02:01] That's fun.

[1:02:02] Yep.

[1:02:02] And she's the slipknot of the film.

[1:02:04] Big buildup character dies almost instantly.

[1:02:06] Yeah.

[1:02:06] And Kang Lao says, flawless victory.

[1:02:09] Another tip of the big, wide, razor-brimmed hat to the true fans.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:12] Normally, to get a flawless victory, you have to not get hit at all.

[1:02:15] And I feel like he got hit somewhere in there, but I have to check the tapes.

[1:02:19] I mean, to be the fact—

Dan McCoy

[1:02:19] But did his life bar go down any, though?

[1:02:22] That's the thing you've got to figure out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:23] Well, he might even take chip damage on block.

[1:02:26] It just depends on the attacks he was blocking.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:28] Well, and also, it seems to be pretty clear that they kind of all make up the rules and judge themselves the way Shang Tsung is like,

[1:02:34] I guess I'll kill all of my competitors beforehand.

[1:02:36] And Kang Lao is just—

[1:02:37] When you're judging your own match, of course it's going to be a flawless victory.

[1:02:40] Like, come on.

[1:02:41] There's no way it's not going to be.

[1:02:43] Cole is fighting Goro.

[1:02:45] Cole's wife—

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:02:45] Can we talk about how Kano, though?

[1:02:47] Yes.

[1:02:47] And this is another thing to me, like this finesse of, like, for instance, I like Kano.

[1:02:51] I know he's a wild card.

[1:02:52] I know he's going to bring us down, naturally.

[1:02:54] Yeah, yeah.

[1:02:55] But this is where the laziness of the motion picture annoyed me.

[1:02:57] Because literally, this guy's like, I fucking hate Kano.

[1:03:00] And then he's like, Kano, you stupid bitch.

[1:03:02] Come fight with me.

[1:03:03] I fucking hate you.

[1:03:05] And Kano's like, all right.

[1:03:06] And, like, that was it.

[1:03:08] Like, that—you know, there was no sense of, like, Kano needing—

[1:03:13] No drama.

[1:03:14] Yeah, like, no sense of—

[1:03:15] No hiccup.

[1:03:15] No challenge.

[1:03:16] No need to be seduced.

[1:03:17] Because I thought they could at least play that a little longer.

[1:03:19] Like, Kano maybe with him, like, slowly creeping around.

[1:03:23] The seduction of Kano.

Andy Beckerman

[1:03:25] Now, is that not a film?

[1:03:27] Now, Mortal Kombat, colon.

[1:03:28] The seduction of Kano.

[1:03:30] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:30] Yeah.

[1:03:31] And so, like, so Cabal is, like, laid out on pillows and stuff.

[1:03:34] By Zalman King.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:03:35] Yeah.

[1:03:36] Yeah.

[1:03:36] He's laid out.

[1:03:37] But he's, like, so mean.

[1:03:37] Like, the whole time, he's like, I hate you.

[1:03:39] But also, come do this for me.

[1:03:41] For some money.

[1:03:42] And I'm like, is money even going to mean anything?

[1:03:45] In Outworld?

[1:03:46] Right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:47] There's nothing to—if Cabal is just like, take all my money, dumbass.

[1:03:51] There's nothing to buy here.

[1:03:52] Like, it's useless.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:53] I feel like in the games, if you get, like, combat coins, you can just spend them on different

[1:03:58] outfits for your character, which—

[1:04:00] Okay, outfits.

[1:04:01] I mean, that kind of thing looks great.

[1:04:03] I mean, hey, we've all opened up one of those boxes in Overwatch to get the cool outfits,

[1:04:07] right?

[1:04:07] The Halloween costumes.

[1:04:08] But, you know—

[1:04:09] Yeah, we've all.

[1:04:10] We've all done it.

[1:04:11] The universal experience.

[1:04:12] But it's not necessary.

[1:04:13] You know, you don't need it.

[1:04:14] But you kind of need it.

[1:04:16] You know what I mean?

[1:04:17] It's a gray area.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:18] Yeah, sure.

[1:04:19] I have two things I want to say.

[1:04:20] One, Dan, you mentioned Zalman King, which is a great name for a Mortal Kombat character.

[1:04:26] Two, no, you're right.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:27] Some sort of king, I'd imagine.

[1:04:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:29] I have to assume so.

[1:04:32] You mentioned—I kept expecting Cabal to be like, Kano, join us and take down the shield.

[1:04:38] And then Kano would do it, and then Cabal would kill Kano and be like, you shouldn't

[1:04:41] have trusted me.

[1:04:42] But that's not what happens.

[1:04:43] Kano's just a bad guy now.

[1:04:44] It doesn't—

[1:04:45] Yep.

[1:04:45] Yeah, there's no—the characters are not consistent.

[1:04:48] Anyway, the Goro fight.

[1:04:49] Cole's wife, she runs up.

[1:04:51] She's got to save her man.

[1:04:52] She chops Goro on the side with an axe.

[1:04:54] Justice League comparison, unlike wussy Darkseid, he does not instantly give up after being

[1:04:59] hit with an axe once.

[1:05:00] But then Cole's Arcana—

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:02] Darkseid featured in the Injustice video game made by NetherRealm Studios, who also make

[1:05:07] Mortal Kombat.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:08] Ah, okay.

[1:05:08] Okay.

[1:05:09] This is a lot, Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:10] This is too much, Stuart.

[1:05:11] Sorry if I'm stunting on you.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:15] Just take a picture of your wall with all the connections and yarn and send it to a guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:21] Between different video game companies.

[1:05:22] It's all publicly available information.

[1:05:24] There's no reason for him to do it.

Andy Beckerman

[1:05:25] It's like the Tommy Westfall universe on TV.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:29] Exactly.

[1:05:30] Okay, so—

Andy Beckerman

[1:05:31] Oh, that's a common reference, right?

[1:05:33] The Tommy Westfall universe?

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:34] Yeah, that's a relevant, topical, recent reference.

[1:05:37] Sure, yeah.

[1:05:38] So it's Cole's Arcana kicks in to save his family because he's a family man.

[1:05:43] What's his Arcana?

[1:05:44] Yeah.

[1:05:44] It's a little confused.

[1:05:45] He gets metal skin and he has blade wrists and a super uppercut.

[1:05:49] And he just cuts Goro up and he blinds him.

[1:05:51] I think he pokes his eyes out and then he disembowels him and Goro's guts come out.

[1:05:54] And I was like, this is pretty gory.

[1:05:57] This is pretty disgusting.

[1:05:59] So Goro, once again, Mortal Kombat movies don't do justice by him.

[1:06:03] He doesn't get much time.

[1:06:05] Probably because he's an expensive character to show a lot of because he's a giant.

[1:06:09] He's an all-CGI giant with four arms.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:11] Another missed opportunity is when Cole finally unleashes his fucking uppercut.

[1:06:16] Just like in the game, blood flies everywhere.

[1:06:18] But what they don't do is have somebody's head pop into the corner of the screen and say,

[1:06:22] Toasty!

[1:06:23] Which is a key part of the game.

[1:06:25] It's hilarious.

[1:06:26] Never happened once.

[1:06:27] And other characters get burned alive.

[1:06:29] Doesn't say, there's no Toasty moment.

[1:06:31] I think it's terrible.

[1:06:31] Was there ever a friendship moment in this?

[1:06:33] Or no?

[1:06:35] Well, I don't think so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:36] I wish that a hero had helped another hero and then gone, friendship.

[1:06:40] That would have been great.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:41] You would fight for a whole time and then you would give them a teddy bear.

[1:06:44] And then instead of fatality above their body, their dead body, it would be the words

[1:06:48] friendship written in balloon animals.

[1:06:50] Sorry.

[1:06:50] That's another thing you can do in Mortal Kombat.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:06:52] Why would you give them a teddy?

[1:06:54] I don't understand.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:55] In Mortal Kombat, if you don't want to do a fatality, you can do a friendship.

[1:06:59] And you give them like a cake or a teddy bear or a heart and it just says friendship.

[1:07:02] And you don't kill those.

[1:07:03] And it stops the fight?

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:07:04] Like whatever fighting you're doing, you just stop it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:06] Yeah, because that's your victory move at the end.

[1:07:07] And it's over.

[1:07:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:08] Your victory is the moral victory of knowing that you could have won.

[1:07:11] Yes.

[1:07:12] You are magnanimous in victory.

[1:07:13] But you've chosen.

[1:07:13] Yes.

[1:07:14] Right.

[1:07:14] Or if you really.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:15] Moral combat.

[1:07:16] Or if you want to make your opponent feel terrible.

[1:07:17] Yeah, moral combat.

[1:07:17] Exactly, yeah.

[1:07:18] If you want to make your opponent feel terrible, if you did not use the block button a single

[1:07:23] time during the match, you can perform a babality, which turns your opponent into a baby.

[1:07:29] I wish that had been in the movie.

[1:07:31] I was waiting.

[1:07:31] Wait, I had to show up in the movie too.

[1:07:32] It turns them into a baby version of their character.

[1:07:34] Yeah, that's a babality.

[1:07:35] Do they take care of the baby?

[1:07:36] I don't think you.

[1:07:36] I mean, we don't follow the life of the baby afterwards.

[1:07:39] So I can assume yes.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:42] You raise them?

[1:07:43] Now, is this in the later version?

[1:07:45] So could one make like a Freddy Krueger baby?

[1:07:48] Yeah, theoretically.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:49] Okay.

[1:07:50] I can't remember if they had babalities in MK9 with Freddy Krueger, but I'm pretty sure

[1:07:55] there's one where like you get a little Jason Voorhees baby in MKX.

[1:07:59] This is crazy.

[1:07:59] I mean, but that's just the end of Friday the 13th part eight, a little Jason baby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:03] Exactly.

[1:08:03] It's the same thing.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:08:05] Yeah.

[1:08:05] This is crazy.

[1:08:06] Wait, I don't even, I still don't even understand why these other characters can be in the video

[1:08:10] game, but that will be a separate episode, perhaps for your Patreon.

Andy Beckerman

[1:08:13] It involves intellectual property law.

[1:08:15] It's really exciting.

[1:08:16] The IP house.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:17] Okay.

[1:08:18] So yeah, let's, so we'll keep moving with this because there's not that much movie left.

[1:08:22] Jax's Arcana finally kicks in.

[1:08:24] It means that his robot arms become big versions like his, like his human arms were.

[1:08:28] They're just big robot arms.

[1:08:29] And he saves Sonya from a bunch of fallen boulders.

[1:08:32] Lord Raiden brings Cole back to the cave and Shang Tsung steals Kung Lao's soul and just

[1:08:36] dries him up like a withered husk.

[1:08:38] And Raiden teleports the good guys to a void.

[1:08:40] He's like, I don't know what to do.

[1:08:42] We don't have a lot of good guys on hand.

[1:08:43] And Cole, master strategist that we know him to be from throughout the movie.

[1:08:48] He goes, they don't want a competition.

[1:08:50] Let's give them one.

[1:08:51] We'll each split up and take on a different opponent in a different place.

[1:08:54] And I'm like, yeah.

[1:08:56] Like the work that a screenwriter has to put into explaining why you have one-on-one fights

[1:09:00] in different backgrounds.

[1:09:01] Like that's, that's, that's really funny to me.

[1:09:03] So, but it's funny because it's like the ideas will split them up and take them on one-on-one

[1:09:08] as if teamwork was the secret strength that Shang Tsung's people had.

[1:09:12] And that's why they were losing.

[1:09:13] They were all one-on-one fights.

[1:09:15] It doesn't, why does it matter if they're in different places?

[1:09:17] But anyway, that's what they do.

[1:09:19] Super battle, super battle, super battle.

[1:09:22] Jax fights Raikou.

[1:09:23] Head smashes him, Sorya Ricky style.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:25] So that's the thing.

[1:09:26] Like, obviously that's a classic Jax fatality, smashing that dude's head.

[1:09:29] However, they're having the fight on the fucking pit on the, you know, on this bridge above

[1:09:34] a pit.

[1:09:35] And that had a stage fatality where you could uppercut your opponent off of the bridge and

[1:09:39] they would land in the pit bottom on some spikes.

[1:09:41] And then sometimes you'd go down there and fight Reptile.

[1:09:43] Why didn't they do that guys?

[1:09:44] Can anyone answer that?

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:09:45] Yes, absolutely.

[1:09:46] You're correct.

[1:09:47] You're correct.

[1:09:48] This is, but then here's a question.

[1:09:50] Like, do you think this is a movie that was like so many blockbusters written, like,

[1:09:56] you know, rewritten a hundred times?

[1:09:57] Cause it to me feels like a first draft.

[1:09:59] Like, it feels like a movie that was not written enough.

[1:10:03] Like, even what you were saying, Elliot, too, about like, you know, it's like, okay, we're

[1:10:08] in the void now.

[1:10:09] Why don't we just go fight them one-on-one?

[1:10:10] Right.

[1:10:11] It's like, okay, first thought, best thought?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:13] They took Elliot's synopsis and they turned that into the movie.

[1:10:16] They did.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:10:16] Like, it's just like really.

[1:10:17] That's a shooting script.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:19] Yeah.

[1:10:19] It fell back in time and they were like, yeah, let's just do the movie that way.

[1:10:22] It sounds like we did.

[1:10:24] So, Jax kills Raikou.

[1:10:26] Sonya fights Kano, stabs him in the eye with a garden gnome and his dragon mark, transfers

[1:10:31] her arm.

[1:10:32] Looks like she's a champion now.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:10:34] Which is all she wanted.

[1:10:35] All Sonya wanted was to be in the movie.

[1:10:37] That's her character.

[1:10:37] She just wanted to be a plus one.

[1:10:39] She had a little Dolezal energy.

[1:10:41] We were calling her kind of Rachel Dolezal, but for champion.

[1:10:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:45] Audrey was asking me, she was like, do you think this is like a commentary?

[1:10:48] Like the one woman like needs to prove herself to get the mark?

[1:10:52] And I'm like, I don't think they thought about it that much.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:56] I think it is more a symptom of that kind of assumed misogyny than it is a commentary

[1:11:00] on that kind of assumed misogyny.

[1:11:02] Like Liu Kang, he just lures Cabal into some tar and then makes a fire dragon that eats

[1:11:09] him.

[1:11:09] It's not, Cabal kind of just walks right into that one literally.

[1:11:12] And Sonya can shoot like plasma blasts or something and kills Melina, who is the kind

[1:11:18] of sidewalk.

[1:11:18] Josh Melina?

[1:11:19] Yeah, exactly.

[1:11:20] Yes.

[1:11:21] The writer.

[1:11:22] Alfred Melina?

[1:11:23] Alfred Melina.

[1:11:24] Kills Alfred Melina.

[1:11:25] Oh, it's terrifying.

[1:11:27] Sub-Zero kidnaps Cole's family.

[1:11:28] I don't know why.

[1:11:29] Not sure why, but he does.

[1:11:32] Cole is already itching for a fight.

[1:11:34] There's no reason to bring the family into it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:35] Maybe he knows the family is susceptible to ice attacks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:39] Maybe, yeah.

[1:11:41] Unless he was like-

[1:11:42] The bloodline is susceptible to ice attacks.

[1:11:44] Well, the thing is, he could have said, they could have had something in there, maybe

[1:11:46] there was and I missed it, about like cutting off the Hanzo bloodline.

[1:11:49] Because Cole's daughter, obviously, is the next in that line.

[1:11:52] But he doesn't say that.

[1:11:53] Because Sub-Zero is a man of very few words.

[1:11:55] He's B-Han.

[1:11:55] Absolutely.

[1:11:56] The only thing he says is, I'm Sub-Zero.

[1:11:59] So Cole fights him for a while.

[1:12:01] And the building that he's hidden in now, his kind of Ninja Turtles abandoned warehouse

[1:12:06] lair, is now fully frozen.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:07] And it's like an MMA arena, right?

Andy Beckerman

[1:12:11] It's the one from the beginning.

[1:12:12] This is where I, again, I could see the producers going, look, we built the stupid MMA ring.

[1:12:19] Can we just use it a second time?

[1:12:20] We don't have the money.

[1:12:21] Just put some ice on it and make that the final place.

[1:12:24] Make it look slightly different.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:26] They fight for a long time.

[1:12:27] And then who comes back with very little explanation?

[1:12:30] Hanzo.

[1:12:31] He's back from the dead as Scorpion.

[1:12:32] Hanzo's there.

[1:12:33] He explains it himself.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:35] He says, literally, I returned from hell to kill you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:39] What more do you need?

[1:12:40] Yeah.

[1:12:41] And he didn't do that earlier or ever in the last 400 years.

[1:12:44] It's been like 400 years.

[1:12:45] Exactly.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:12:46] I'm like, OK, why were you coming back now?

[1:12:48] He had stuff to do.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:49] Just because we love you as an actor.

[1:12:51] Again, the letter got lost in the mail.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:53] Yeah, he didn't realize what was going on.

[1:12:55] There's so much paperwork.

[1:12:56] He says, get over here, finally.

[1:12:58] This fight goes on for a long time.

[1:13:01] And it's like, there's that three-man fight scene in the raid that goes on for a long time.

[1:13:05] And this feels like it's not quite at that level.

[1:13:08] It's trying to be something like that, where you're awed at the sheer endurance of them fighting for so long.

[1:13:12] It's still a great fight sequence.

[1:13:13] It's pretty good.

[1:13:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:15] I mean, I think this is like the selling reel.

[1:13:19] Like, they shot this and they're like, hey, give us more money, please.

[1:13:21] Because this looks great, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:23] And it goes on for a long time until Scorpion breathes fire in Sub-Zero and then he dies.

[1:13:28] And it's like, again, were you building up your turbo bar with each punch?

[1:13:32] And that's until you can get fire breath?

[1:13:34] Hanzo disappears, everyone reunites, and now Shang Tsung is mad because all of his champions have been killed.

[1:13:41] And he says, next time I'll come back with armies, which is, again, also the end of the Justice League Zack Snyder cut.

[1:13:46] Like, this movie has so much in common with that movie.

[1:13:48] And Raiden says to our heroes, I'll help you find some more fighters.

[1:13:52] And it's like, dude, just find them.

[1:13:54] Like, don't give them clues.

[1:13:55] Like, just go find them yourself.

[1:13:57] What are you doing with your time?

[1:13:58] Nothing.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:13:59] Yeah, what does he have to do?

[1:14:00] He's literally been alive forever, ever.

[1:14:02] Yeah.

[1:14:02] He has so much time to kill.

[1:14:03] There's nothing going on in his cave.

[1:14:06] There's no cable.

[1:14:07] There's no Wi-Fi.

[1:14:08] And it's like, you have one wall that you've already decorated.

[1:14:11] So it's like, you might as well go look for fighters.

[1:14:13] You have time to kill.

[1:14:15] Why doesn't Outworld invade in the first place?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:18] Wait, what?

[1:14:19] Yeah, why don't they?

[1:14:19] Because of the law.

[1:14:20] Because of the, I don't know.

[1:14:22] Why?

[1:14:23] It's one of those things where, like, I think about it sometimes where the way that, and the answer is budget.

[1:14:29] Like, why do aliens always invade with either a minimal force in a big city or a big force in the middle of nowhere?

[1:14:36] Because budget.

[1:14:37] And, like, when in reality, when you want to invade a place, like, you send, or the same way that, uh, it made me so mad in Avengers, was it Infinity War or Endgame?

[1:14:45] I think it's Infinity War, where Thanos attacks, and first he sends his foot soldiers, then he sends his super foot soldiers, then he sends his heavy artillery and tanks.

[1:14:54] And it's like, that's not the way you would do that, dude.

[1:14:56] Like, soften them up with your heavy weapons.

[1:14:58] Like, how many worlds did you defeat, dude?

[1:15:00] Exactly.

[1:15:01] This is how you did it?

[1:15:01] Or in the Justice League movie where Darkseid, Darkseid has spaceships that he could bomb from above, but instead he sends his guys down to fight hand to hand.

[1:15:10] And he sends them to the place all the good guys have already landed.

[1:15:13] Go somewhere else.

[1:15:14] Like, there's a whole world.

[1:15:16] Establish a beachhead.

[1:15:17] Like, get your bases.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:17] Yeah, I mean, maybe he's just working under, like, some sort of outdated intergalactic sense of, you know, fair play.

[1:15:24] Like, he's the British in the Revolutionary War, and we're the scrappy gorilla planet.

[1:15:32] I don't know.

[1:15:32] I guess so.

Andy Beckerman

[1:15:33] Right, or the Intergalactic Geneva Convention.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:35] Yeah.

[1:15:35] So anyway, end of the last scene, Cole is now a Mortal Kombat champion.

[1:15:39] He's got to go seek out some other heroes.

[1:15:41] He tells, I guess, his trainer, or he tells the guy at the MMA gym.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:45] Who books his, like, black market fights.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:49] Yeah.

[1:15:49] His fights, I know.

[1:15:51] That he's going to Hollywood.

[1:15:53] And he goes, okay.

[1:15:53] And then the trainer or whoever, Booker, walks by a poster for a movie called Citizen Cage, starring Johnny Cage, who's wearing a big butt buckle that says Cage.

[1:16:01] And I was like, do they not know how movies and movie posters work?

[1:16:05] Like, or is everyone in this movie playing themselves?

[1:16:08] Because usually when you make a movie, your name's not in the title, and you don't have a belt buckle with your name on it.

[1:16:14] Like, usually you're a character in the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:15] Charlie Kaufman wrote this screenplay for Citizen Cage.

[1:16:18] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:19] Now I get it.

[1:16:19] Never mind.

[1:16:20] Now I understand.

[1:16:21] It's a meta commentary on action movies.

[1:16:23] Now I get it.

[1:16:23] And so they're teasing that at some point in the future we're going to get Johnny Cage, who is a movie star?

[1:16:30] What is he, Stuart?

[1:16:31] Yeah, he's an action movie star.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:16:33] He's an action star, and they're going to get him for real.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:35] Okay.

[1:16:36] Because he's a champion.

[1:16:37] He's really put his skills to the test.

[1:16:38] And he was the one who had the famous nut punch ability that he used on Goro in the Mortal Kombat movie from the 90s.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:44] Oh, right, where he does a split and then he punches Goro in the nuts?

[1:16:47] Oh, okay.

[1:16:48] You know what?

[1:16:48] Johnny Cage is my favorite.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:49] Just so he can get on nut level?

[1:16:51] Is that what the split does?

[1:16:53] And it's a show off.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:55] Yeah.

[1:16:55] It's him showing off, look what my nuts can do, yours can't, and then he punches them.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:59] Because I've got to say, a nut punch ability seems like the worst arcana.

[1:17:03] I mean, I could do a nut punch.

[1:17:05] That would be my mortal.

[1:17:07] Not the same way.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:08] I'm going to call your bluff on that one, buddy.

[1:17:10] We're going to have to see those cards.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:11] Well, I'm not going to get enough fight.

[1:17:13] I don't, you know.

[1:17:14] Nut talent.

[1:17:15] Look at me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:15] Nut talent?

[1:17:16] Yeah.

[1:17:17] So yeah, Dan's brag about his nut punch abilities was mainly to dissuade people from fighting him.

[1:17:23] Yeah.

[1:17:24] Guys, don't come try to fight me.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:26] I'll punch him in that and I'll run away.

[1:17:32] So that's Mortal Kombat.

[1:17:34] Let's...

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:35] Should we do our final judgments, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:17:37] Let's do our final judgments.

[1:17:39] Oh, sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:40] I was just going to say, we get a theme song over the credits that is not as good as the

[1:17:44] original theme song from the original Mortal Kombat movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:47] Now, is the original one the...

[1:17:48] Yes.

[1:17:49] Yes.

[1:17:51] Okay.

[1:17:51] I didn't even...

[1:17:52] Wait, what is it, Elliot?

[1:17:54] Yeah.

[1:17:54] Do it.

[1:17:55] Mortal Kombat.

[1:17:57] Do they ever use it?

[1:18:01] No, they don't.

[1:18:02] I don't think.

[1:18:02] It's the same way that you don't hear Godzilla's roar in the new Godzilla movies because they

[1:18:06] don't want to pay for it, I think.

[1:18:07] I assume they're like, somebody owns the rights to that.

[1:18:10] We don't want to use it.

[1:18:11] I thought it was weird to replace it with, oh yeah, from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but

[1:18:14] you know, in the Twix commercials.

[1:18:16] But okay, that's, you know, whatever you want to do, you know?

Andy Beckerman

[1:18:19] Right.

[1:18:20] This one was done by Katie Lang, which I thought was maybe a little understated.

[1:18:23] Understated, definitely.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:25] Constant combat.

[1:18:28] Yep.

[1:18:28] Works.

[1:18:29] Yeah.

[1:18:29] Works.

[1:18:30] Perfect.

[1:18:30] Yeah, and it stands for Combat D. Lang.

[1:18:32] Yeah, of course.

[1:18:33] Yeah.

[1:18:33] Because combat is spelled with a K in the Mortal Kombat universe.

[1:18:36] So Dan, should we do final judgments?

Dan McCoy

[1:18:38] Yeah.

[1:18:38] Final judgments is when we say whether we thought this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie,

[1:18:43] or a movie we kind of like.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:44] Now, if we knew what we were doing, we were professionals.

[1:18:46] We would say whether this movie was a flawless victory or one of the other ones, but we didn't.

[1:18:51] So we're still going with our same categories as usual.

[1:18:53] Babality.

[1:18:53] Or a babality.

[1:18:55] Babality, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:56] Man, you guys have really locked onto this babality idea.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:19:00] Wait, what did you call it before?

[1:19:01] A nutality?

[1:19:02] A nutality.

[1:19:03] Or a nutality, yeah.

[1:19:04] Or a nutality.

[1:19:06] Nutella.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:07] So Dan, what did you think?

[1:19:08] Nutality sounds like a terrible candy bar.

[1:19:12] You know, I kind of like this movie.

[1:19:14] I got to say, it benefited from my absolutely low expectations and the fact that it was nice

[1:19:21] to watch like a new big dumb action movie at home after a year of like not having stuff like that.

[1:19:32] I agree with Andy that I liked that they had the absolute minimum of plot in between fights,

[1:19:37] even though the plot was also unnecessarily complex.

[1:19:40] But like they didn't linger over it enough for me to be like, oh, come on.

[1:19:44] And I don't know, they put more care into it than I would have expected out of a Mortal Kombat movie.

[1:19:50] So I'll give it that.

[1:19:51] It's not that great.

[1:19:52] But I was not mad after watching it.

[1:19:56] Let's just put it that way.

[1:19:58] So let's go to Stuart.

[1:20:00] What do you have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:01] Yeah, I mean, I think my closeness to the source material is probably a hindrance here.

[1:20:04] But yeah, I mean, I feel like especially introducing this whole Arcana idea where you get magic powers by getting a weird birthmark.

[1:20:14] Like that feels weird.

[1:20:15] Like the idea that Jax's magic powers that is already weird metal arms just got bigger.

[1:20:21] Like what?

[1:20:24] So like what would have happened if his arms didn't get frozen off, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:20:30] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:32] Maybe his arms would have gotten bigger than anyway.

[1:20:33] He would have had even bigger arms.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:36] Or maybe he would have had like little arms growing out of his regular arms.

[1:20:39] That's what I want to see.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:40] It's like when only parts of the Hulk, only when parts of the Hulk hulk out.

[1:20:43] Yeah, yeah.

[1:20:44] Exactly.

[1:20:45] Everybody's right on this.

[1:20:46] So I'm going to say, I think this is a, I would say this is kind of a bad, bad.

[1:20:51] I didn't care for this.

[1:20:52] Although I think the opening and the end fight are both pretty fun.

[1:20:56] And I'll watch Joe Taslim do anything.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:59] Well, let's give our guests the final words.

[1:21:01] Elliot, what do you have to say?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:02] I think, you know what?

[1:21:04] I think similar to Dan, I think my expectations going in were so low that this ended up being not exactly a movie I kind of liked, but a movie that I didn't mind.

[1:21:13] And the fact that it, I mean, this movie is somehow almost two hours long, but it didn't feel that long.

[1:21:18] Maybe because like the movie, maybe it was because the movie kind of moves relatively quickly.

[1:21:22] Maybe it's because I was doing dishes the whole time that I was watching it.

[1:21:25] But either way, I thought this was not a movie necessarily that I kind of liked, but I don't, it wasn't quite bad, bad or good, bad for me.

[1:21:31] But again, I have no, if this was a group of characters that I cared about, I would have been like, what is this?

[1:21:37] Like, what's going on here?

[1:21:38] But since I have no connection to the MKU, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:42] And to our honored guest, what do you have to say?

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:21:45] Madir, would you like me to go?

[1:21:46] It is bad, bad.

[1:21:48] You want to tell me this is based on a video game.

[1:21:50] I want cheekiness, honey.

[1:21:52] I want jokes.

[1:21:53] I want to have some fun with it because it's nonsense, right?

[1:21:57] So you've got to have these people at the very least be fun to watch as they go about this very silly journey.

[1:22:05] And they weren't having fun with it.

[1:22:06] And that's what made me so mad.

[1:22:08] It felt very lazy.

[1:22:09] It felt very like guy, fighter, daughter, realm, fight.

[1:22:16] Oh, no.

[1:22:18] We did it.

[1:22:19] And I just thought they should have had some fun with it.

[1:22:22] They should have called, had a punch-up room, something.

[1:22:24] Because it was just like, who are, Kano was the only one.

[1:22:28] And then he's like only in it for like 30 minutes.

Andy Beckerman

[1:22:32] I think that, I'm going to say good, bad.

[1:22:35] And again, with the asterisk that it could have been quarantine euphoria that made me enjoy it so much.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:22:43] Not that you were euphoric in quarantine.

Andy Beckerman

[1:22:45] No, that like Dan, I'm seeing something new.

[1:22:49] Yes.

[1:22:49] There's something new.

[1:22:50] It could have also been, you know, we have a tradition in our house where we play Boggle on our phones while we watch things.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:22:59] We call that Boggle Toggle.

[1:23:01] I'm kidding.

[1:23:01] It doesn't have a phrase.

[1:23:03] It does now.

[1:23:04] It's Boggle Toggle.

[1:23:05] Now and forever.

Andy Beckerman

[1:23:07] So it could have been, I was like partly distracted.

[1:23:09] I liked Kano.

[1:23:11] I like, I like that actor.

[1:23:13] That actor is from like House of Lies and Superstore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:16] And he also apparently played Paul Hogan in a two-part miniseries called Hoag's The Life of Paul Hogan.

[1:23:21] What?

[1:23:22] For Australian TV.

[1:23:23] What?

[1:23:24] Hoag's The Paul Hogan Story.

[1:23:26] A two-part Australian miniseries from 2017.

[1:23:29] But now I really want to see it.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:29] Only two parts for Australia's biggest export and most respected human.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:37] Dan, Australia has a really respected film community.

[1:23:40] I mean, not to shit on Paul Hogan.

[1:23:42] Like, he's fine.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:43] I say we queue up both seasons of Hoag's, order ourselves some Hoagies, and watch that shit.

Andy Beckerman

[1:23:48] Was this Mare of Easttown?

[1:23:50] Yes, very Mare of Easttown.

[1:23:52] I'm going to get one of them Hoagies.

[1:23:53] So I love that Captain America hat guy.

[1:23:57] I love the, just how stupid it all was.

[1:24:01] I needed stupidity.

[1:24:02] All right.

[1:24:03] I think it just came at me.

[1:24:04] I think this particular amount of stupidity came into my life at the right time.

[1:24:11] It was like a meet cute.

[1:24:13] And that's what made me enjoy.

[1:24:16] I enjoyed making fun of it with Naomi.

[1:24:18] And that could have just been part of it.

[1:24:19] Well, that's part of what keeps us going.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:24:21] Right.

[1:24:21] You know, making fun of things.

[1:24:22] And that meet cute.

[1:24:23] I just imagine Mortal Kombat drops all its papers in the hallway.

[1:24:26] And then you pick it up.

[1:24:27] And like, that's how the romance begins.

[1:24:29] That's a friendship.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:30] You're walking your dog.

[1:24:31] And Mortal Kombat is late for a big job interview.

[1:24:34] And you bump into each other.

[1:24:37] And the dog like runs around the two of you so that the leash pulls you close together.

[1:24:42] And you just keep, after that, you just keep running into each other and you do not like it until suddenly you're in love.

[1:24:47] Yep.

[1:24:48] Yep.

[1:24:48] And that's what I would call a friendship.

[1:24:53] Okay.

Andy Beckerman

[1:24:54] Yeah.

[1:24:54] So good.

[1:24:55] I think good, bad.

[1:24:56] I'm proud of you.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:24:58] I'm proud of you for being honest.

[1:25:00] I'm proud of you for being honest.

[1:25:00] Hey, it's John Moe.

S6

[1:25:07] And look, these are challenging times for our mental and emotional health.

[1:25:11] I get it.

[1:25:12] That's why I'm so excited for my new podcast, Depresh Mode.

[1:25:16] We're tackling depression, anxiety, trauma, stress, the kinds of things that are just super common but don't get talked about nearly enough.

[1:25:24] Conversations that are illuminating, honest, and sometimes pretty funny with folks like Patton Oswalt, Kelsey Dara, and Open Mike Eagle.

[1:25:31] I have this public-facing self, and then I have my emotional self that tends to stay hidden.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:25:36] It was about finding a way to communicate to somebody that, like, there's terrible shit going on back here.

S6

[1:25:42] Plus psychiatrists, psychologists, and all kinds of folks.

[1:25:46] On Depresh Mode, we're working together, learning, helping each other out.

[1:25:50] We're a team.

[1:25:51] Join our team.

[1:25:52] Depresh Mode from Maximum Fun, wherever you get your podcasts.

S7

[1:25:56] Hi.

[1:25:57] Are you someone who thinks that when one door closes, another one opens?

[1:26:00] Someone who always sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

[1:26:03] If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, good for you.

[1:26:07] We are not those people.

[1:26:08] Nope.

[1:26:08] I'm Annabelle Gurwitch, and I'm a, you know that other door opening?

[1:26:12] It probably leads to a broom closet kind of person.

[1:26:15] And I'm Laura House.

[1:26:16] When I see a light at the end of a tunnel, I assume it's a train headed right toward me.

[1:26:20] Laura and I have created a brand new podcast for people like us.

[1:26:24] It's called Tiny Victories.

[1:26:25] We're sharing personal Tiny Victories or things we've read or seen that inspire resilience.

[1:26:31] So if you're looking for a tiny reason to get out of bed each week, subscribe to Tiny Victories.

[1:26:36] Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:26:40] Let's get tiny.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:42] The Flop House is sponsored in part by Squarespace.

[1:26:46] Squarespace helps you create a beautiful new website where you can blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds, and much, much more.

[1:26:56] And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful customizable templates created by world-class designers, everything optimized for mobile right out of the box,

[1:27:04] a new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions, and free and secure hosting.

[1:27:11] So head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:27:16] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:24] Hey, Dan, I had an idea for a website.

[1:27:26] And I was wondering if you thought Squarespace would be able to help me with all the amazing stuff.

[1:27:29] Lay it on me, brother.

[1:27:31] Okay, I was inspired by basically a combination of this movie and also my recent interest in marsupials.

[1:27:39] And look, I'm just going to say it.

[1:27:41] At times like these, all of us are sharing the same worry.

[1:27:44] Is my pet marsupial going to outlive me?

[1:27:47] Because I'd like it to.

[1:27:48] That's why mortalwombat.com is where you would put in all the information about your marsupial pet,

[1:27:53] and it will tell you an estimated longevity.

[1:27:57] How mortal is this wombat?

[1:27:58] You're going to find out on mortalwombat.com.

[1:28:00] This is just for education and recreation purposes.

[1:28:03] Please do not make any life decisions based on our estimates.

[1:28:08] But finally, there's a place online where marsupials can have their life expectancy accurately, but not legally, predictive.

[1:28:18] And if it's a non-marsupial pet, I'm sorry.

[1:28:20] There are other places that already do that.

[1:28:21] You don't need us.

[1:28:22] This is for marsupials.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:23] Yeah, don't tell your marsupial to quit its job and then, you know, like do some kind of bucket list scenario because it thinks it's dying because based on the information provided by mortal wombat.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:34] Yeah, mortal wombat.

[1:28:35] Again, it is legally, and you have to sign a disclaimer.

[1:28:38] It is just for entertainment and partly education purposes.

[1:28:41] It is not an actual longevity test.

[1:28:43] But finally, you'll know how long your wombat will live.

[1:28:47] Again, not legally responsible.

[1:28:49] So I think Squarespace could really help me with that, right, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:28:51] I think they could.

[1:28:52] So, you know, go over to squarespace.com and use offer code FLOP.

[1:28:57] Now, Elliot, I believe you also have another word from another sponsor.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:02] That's right.

[1:29:03] We got two, two, count them, two sponsors today.

[1:29:05] And the second major sponsor is Storyblocks.

[1:29:08] Look, guys, now more than ever before, storytellers and content creators are challenged with producing more video content at a higher quality than in human history.

[1:29:17] In the Middle Ages, you could get away with making a tapestry, maybe a year.

[1:29:21] But now you got to keep that sweet content coming, and it's got to be at higher video quality than anything you can weave on a loom.

[1:29:26] You can keep up with the growing demand for that modern video content without sacrificing your vision with the stock media from Storyblocks.

[1:29:33] Storyblocks, it's great.

[1:29:34] It's a huge collection of stock video that you can use for any project.

[1:29:38] It's dedicated to being the world's best royalty-free stock media subscription service.

[1:29:42] There's no royalties.

[1:29:43] Once you've got your Storyblocks membership, you can use whatever you want on there.

[1:29:47] There's over a million high-quality stock assets, and the library is constantly growing.

[1:29:51] They've even got 4K HD footage.

[1:29:54] Looks great on those modern televisual sets.

[1:29:56] They've got After Effects and Premiere Pro templates.

[1:29:59] Not sure what those are, but they sound great.

[1:30:01] They've got music, images, sound effects, more.

[1:30:03] About the most fun thing you can do.

[1:30:05] They have affordable subscription plans.

[1:30:06] And with the Storyblocks Unlimited all-access plan, you get unlimited downloads of what's in their library, and you get to keep it, even if your membership ends.

[1:30:15] Anything you've downloaded remains yours to use, keep, show off to your friends, turn into the kind of video content that the world is craving right now.

[1:30:24] And as part of their ongoing stock initiative, Storyblocks has released a new round of collections, the Queer Spaces and Faces collection, created by some really incredible LGBTQ plus creators that will feature the layered experience of the LGBTQ plus community.

[1:30:38] So they're extending out to people, giving them a chance to get their voice heard through the medium of stock media.

[1:30:45] Sounds great.

[1:30:45] As you've maybe heard talk about in the past, we had our own very positive experience with Storyblocks.

[1:30:51] Dan made a hilarious video about needing to pee.

[1:30:53] It came out great.

[1:30:54] All thanks to Storyblocks.

[1:30:56] So go to it.

[1:30:57] Explore their library and subscribe today at storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:31:02] That's storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:31:04] Use that library of media and prove Dan wrong.

[1:31:08] Do better than Dan.

[1:31:09] That's the challenge.

[1:31:09] Do better than me.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:10] Please.

[1:31:11] Please, everyone do better.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:12] Uh-oh.

[1:31:14] And what's this?

[1:31:14] I think up next we got a J-J-J-Jumbotron.

[1:31:18] That's right.

[1:31:19] Employees are the heart and soul of a business and taking care of them is the most important thing a business owner can do.

[1:31:28] Circles, spelled C-I-I-R-C-L-E-S.

[1:31:33] Note the second I.

[1:31:35] Circles.com helps create people first, fulfilling businesses.

[1:31:40] Our tagline is how working together should work.

[1:31:45] So please visit circles.com.

[1:31:47] Again, extra I-C-I-I-R-C-L-E-S.com slash flophouse to learn more.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:55] Yeah, remember how there's no I in team?

[1:31:57] Take that missing I from team.

[1:31:59] Move it on over to circles.

[1:32:01] Circles.com.

[1:32:02] Uh-huh.

[1:32:04] So let's move on to letters from our listeners.

[1:32:10] That's right, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:10] It's time for listener questions.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:32:18] Stuart has been grazing this entire podcast and I cannot concentrate.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:24] I was a grazer.

[1:32:25] Hey, you know, I got to get my, got to pack my podcast snacks.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:29] Is mango now the official fruit of the Flophouse podcast?

[1:32:34] Definitely in my top five fruits.

[1:32:36] Yeah.

[1:32:38] Well, maybe one of the list of cues is what Stuart's top five fruits are.

[1:32:43] So.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:44] Can you put them in those classes?

[1:32:46] Yeah.

[1:32:46] Put them in the tiers.

[1:32:47] Put them in the tiers.

[1:32:48] Mango's S tier.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:50] Yeah, totally.

[1:32:52] Bananas are A tier.

[1:32:54] I mean, these are my top five.

[1:32:56] So I would say watermelons also A tier of the melons.

[1:32:59] I would say there's some other melons are rated a little bit lower.

[1:33:03] I would say raspberries are my favorite berries.

[1:33:05] So that's an S tier berry right there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:07] What I like is this is a tournament competition right here is you've got,

[1:33:10] you've got the winners of each of these different weight classes.

[1:33:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:13] And, and then I would say pears.

[1:33:15] I like pears.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:33:17] Wow.

[1:33:17] Okay, we're not hearing enough about pears as a culture.

[1:33:20] We're not hearing enough about pears.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:21] It's like more mellow than an apple for me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:24] I'm working on an article for Teen Vogue about it where pears used to be everywhere.

[1:33:29] What happens?

Dan McCoy

[1:33:30] Now, and of course, Elliot famously hates all fruits.

[1:33:34] So.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:34] Except my son constantly corrects me that cucumbers are a fruit.

[1:33:37] So I guess I like one.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:33:39] Oh, wait, do you really not like fruit?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:40] Don't like them.

[1:33:41] Don't like the taste, smell, texture.

[1:33:42] It's disgusting to me.

[1:33:43] Anyway.

[1:33:44] Is there any fruit?

[1:33:45] Do you like sweets?

[1:33:46] Not particularly.

[1:33:46] I don't really have much of a sweet tooth, to be honest.

[1:33:48] Okay, you don't.

[1:33:49] So that's part of it.

[1:33:50] I'm not much into.

[1:33:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:33:51] I like, I like savory things.

[1:33:53] And I like things that, I like parts of animals.

[1:33:55] That's basically.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:56] Do you like an, do you like something that, you like something that's unctuous?

[1:34:00] You know, like an unctuousness?

[1:34:01] I don't really know what that word means, but yes.

[1:34:04] It's like an oily fattiness, you know.

[1:34:06] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:06] Oh, then yes.

[1:34:07] Yes, very much so.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:07] Yeah, sure.

[1:34:08] Yeah.

[1:34:09] So, well, we've got that going for us.

[1:34:11] Anyway.

[1:34:12] So, the first letter is from Ryan Lastname Withheld, who writes,

[1:34:16] Dear Floppers, recently while relaxing after COVID vaccine dose number two, I took a chance

[1:34:21] on watching Willy's Wonderland.

[1:34:24] This recent Nick Cage film is so fun, I won't even say more about it, other than it involves

[1:34:28] everyone's favorite member of the Coppola family trapped in a Chuck E. Cheese-style nightmare

[1:34:32] with fully real costume actors playing the heck out of some really wonderfully designed

[1:34:37] murderous animatronics outfits.

[1:34:41] I was blown away by how genuinely, sorry, genuinely funny, frightening, and kick-ass this movie could be at times.

[1:34:48] Especially since I only clicked on the movie for after the rare for me anyway urge to watch something stupid.

[1:34:56] Okay, well, that's why I tripped up because there was a typo.

[1:34:58] Okay, that's why you tripped up.

[1:34:59] It wasn't the fever.

[1:35:00] No, it's not that.

[1:35:01] No, blame the text.

[1:35:02] I'll blame Ryan Lastname Withheld.

[1:35:04] When was the last or best time you picked a dumb movie that turned out to be a genuine delight to watch?

[1:35:11] Bonus points for one you wish you'd seen in theaters because, man, I'd have loved to see this on the big screen.

[1:35:17] Floppers, Rise Up, Ryan Lastname Withheld.

[1:35:20] So, does anyone have an example of a good movie that they picked thinking, like, oh, this will be a dumb lark,

[1:35:28] and then realizing that they actually genuinely enjoyed it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:32] I mean, in a way, I did get that experience in the theaters with a little movie called Cats,

[1:35:37] which we've talked about plenty on The Flophouse.

[1:35:40] Really?

[1:35:40] Went to see it because we were doing it for The Flophouse, and it's one of those movies where, at this point,

[1:35:46] my ironic liking of it has gone into a new level where I'm just like, oh, God bless those people who made Cats.

[1:35:52] They didn't know what they were doing.

[1:35:54] But, like, certainly they didn't come up with what they wanted to make, but they came out with something, you know.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:36:00] Interesting.

[1:36:01] I mean, Andy, did you have one?

Andy Beckerman

[1:36:02] I do.

[1:36:03] Yeah, go.

[1:36:04] Yeah.

[1:36:06] Clifford, starring Charles Grodin and Martin Short.

[1:36:10] I thought it was just going to be some dumb crap, and I'm just like, well, I'll just put it on.

[1:36:15] Charles, first of all, I mean, Martin Short is just, like, playing the heck out of an insane 10-year-old.

[1:36:21] But Charles Grodin is, I mean, duh, it's Charles Grodin, but he is incredible.

[1:36:26] His timing is incredible, and he is so good at playing that character.

[1:36:33] And does anyone, do you guys, have you seen Clifford?

[1:36:36] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[1:36:36] It's on HBO Max.

[1:36:38] No, it is, I like how genuinely sort of mean-spirited that movie is.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:44] Like, you think it's just going to be, like, a dumb, like, I don't know, like, problem child or whatever.

[1:36:48] But it is mean.

[1:36:49] It is a mean movie about mean people doing mean things to each other, which makes it a lot funnier.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:36:55] Yeah, I hadn't seen, it wasn't for me, but I will say, like, I didn't expect that ending, like, when Charles Grodin does kind of go off on Clifford, and it's like, I'm going to ruin you.

[1:37:05] I thought that was very satisfying, because I usually hate when, like, a kid is bad, and then, of course, no one else sees it.

[1:37:10] And then the person, like, feels like they're taking crazy pills.

[1:37:13] So I like that part.

[1:37:14] Like, I didn't think that was going to happen.

[1:37:16] I want to say Mason.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:19] Clifford.

[1:37:21] You're upset.

[1:37:23] Yeah, I mean, this sort of thing happens to me every once in a while with, like, TV shows.

[1:37:28] I mean, I remember when my wife and I were, like, trying to figure out something to watch, and I was probably, like, fucking around with a miniature or something.

[1:37:35] And she's like, well, why don't we put on this show called Instant Hotel, which is a show where Australian Airbnb owners compete against each other to have the best Instant Hotel, which is a term I'm assuming they made up for the show because they can't say Airbnb.

[1:37:52] And within, like, halfway through the first episode, we were totally hooked.

[1:37:58] Now, the first season, you can't catch that lightning in a bottle twice, so the first season's great.

[1:38:02] I totally recommend that shit.

[1:38:04] And to have seen it on the big screen, that would have been amazing.

[1:38:09] Instant Hotel on the beach.

[1:38:11] Instant Hotel on Netflix.

[1:38:12] First season's wild.

[1:38:13] But I would say for movies, Kidnap, the Halle Berry SUV thriller.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:38:19] Kidnap with a P.

[1:38:20] Just a P.

[1:38:21] Not kidnap.

[1:38:22] Kidnap.

[1:38:23] Just kidnap.

[1:38:24] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:26] Yeah.

[1:38:26] I mean, I'm having a hard time with, like, one that I think is maybe, like, genuinely, like, I would unabashedly recommend to folks.

[1:38:35] But I think I've mentioned on the show in the past that we started watching Doppelganger, the Drew Barrymore 90s thriller about Drew Barrymore, who may or may not have a Doppelganger going around murdering folks around her.

[1:38:51] Doppelganger.

[1:38:51] Oh, my God.

[1:38:52] Oh, my God.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:52] Yeah.

[1:38:53] And I was, we put it on at, like, 1230 at night.

[1:38:57] I think it was after, like, we recorded a Flophouse mini.

[1:39:00] And I just wanted to, like, have something on for a couple minutes to come down, you know, like, before bed and figured, like, oh, we'll turn it off.

[1:39:08] But we ended up watching the whole thing.

[1:39:10] And it is, I, you know, it straddles the line.

[1:39:14] And one might call it a good, bad movie because so much of the joy of it is how weird everyone is acting.

[1:39:23] And some of them are not acting particularly well.

[1:39:25] But the film spirals into madness in a way that I was not expecting.

[1:39:32] And I don't, like, it ends up in a place that I don't think anyone watching the first, you know, 10 minutes would expect.

[1:39:37] And I really enjoyed that.

[1:39:40] Elliot, do you have anything?

[1:39:41] You look confused.

[1:39:43] You don't have to.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:39:43] I don't think I have one.

[1:39:44] I don't have one.

[1:39:45] I feel like, because I guess Clifford should have been mine, but I still don't like it enough.

[1:39:50] Because I was like, why is he so evil?

[1:39:52] I hate evil children.

[1:39:54] So I don't have, and, like, also in real life, I don't like precocious children.

[1:39:57] So, like, anything that kind of lives in that world, I'm like, mm-mm, mm-mm.

[1:40:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:02] Yeah, when a child acts like an adult in a movie and we're supposed to find that charming, it's just like, what are you all seeing here?

[1:40:11] This is.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:12] Yeah, it's always horrible.

[1:40:13] Well, that's the book of Henry Syndrome, where Henry is such an unlikable, like, know-it-all jerk.

[1:40:19] And everyone is like, Henry, he's the best of us.

[1:40:22] Henry, you're so wonderful.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:24] His parents let him order.

[1:40:26] Yeah.

[1:40:26] His parents let him order from the waiter by himself.

[1:40:30] And it's like, no, you should order for him.

[1:40:32] He's just a little kid.

[1:40:33] They don't get paid to deal with your children.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:38] So we have another letter.

[1:40:39] It is from John Lastnamewithheld, who writes,

[1:40:41] In reading about the 1994 movie North, I saw director Rob Reiner defend it by claiming it was a, quote,

[1:40:50] modern-day fable.

[1:40:51] And I realized that any movie that's described by the director as a fable or fairy tale for adults is bound to be terrible.

[1:40:59] Do you guys have any red flags in movie summaries or trailers that make you think the movie will be garbage?

[1:41:05] Thanks for all the fun.

[1:41:06] John Lastnamewithheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:08] I just want to jump in and say, I think Andy was pointing out that North features plenty of precocious children that everyone loves, right?

[1:41:16] Oh, boy.

[1:41:17] Yeah.

[1:41:17] Woof.

[1:41:18] What was it?

Andy Beckerman

[1:41:19] The movie North.

[1:41:20] Yes, which they talked about on a previous episode.

[1:41:23] Which is my only knowledge of the movie is from the movie.

[1:41:26] Oh, okay.

[1:41:27] Sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:27] You also might have gotten from what we were talking about that the modern-day fable is surprisingly retrograde when it comes to the presentation of ethnic groups and genders.

[1:41:37] But I'll jump in here and say that something I've never liked in – I'm not a fan of the structure that movie trailers use now.

[1:41:45] They all use it.

[1:41:46] I find it really super manipulative and boring.

[1:41:50] But any time a trailer – they don't do this as much, but I feel like in the 90s there were a lot of trailers that would just be made up of people saying the main character's name over and over again.

[1:41:59] And it would be like, Mumford, Mumford, Mumford.

[1:42:03] And you'd be like, well, if you had something fun to show me, you'd show it to me.

[1:42:07] But instead you're just showing me that the main character of the movie is in the movie and people are identifying that character.

[1:42:14] So it's always – it's a real sign to me that they didn't have a lot to advertise for the movie.

[1:42:19] But also there's certain – when you watch like an action movie and you see someone in the trailer say, kick the tires and light the fires, people.

[1:42:26] Or like be in the middle of an action scene and you see someone go, I told you this was going to be fun.

[1:42:30] I know that that movie is going to be not very good.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:33] Or at least it's going to be disappointing.

[1:42:36] Similar to that like saying the name over and over, there's always the trope where it's like, you know,

[1:42:42] Columbia Pictures would like to introduce you to a special character that will, you know, change your life forever.

[1:42:51] Once you meet them, you'll never be the same.

[1:42:54] You know, it's like, fuck you.

[1:42:55] I don't –

[1:42:56] Each of us has within us a Billy Madison.

[1:42:58] Bullshit person you want to let me know about.

[1:43:01] I don't care.

[1:43:01] Go away.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:02] If the trailer mentions a visionary director, I'm like, we'll see about that.

[1:43:09] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:09] Yeah.

[1:43:10] Or anytime there's a quote that says specifically an American classic that always bugs me because I don't know what that's supposed to mean.

[1:43:18] I don't know what the modifier American means on classic except that like a middle brow Academy Award winning movie that like is not as good as a movie from another country is what you're telling me.

[1:43:27] Or like not good enough to be a real classic.

[1:43:29] It bugs me.

[1:43:30] I don't like the devaluation of the word American.

[1:43:32] Guys, I'm a patriot.

[1:43:33] Anyway, have you been reading my substack or following me on Parler?

[1:43:37] I've got a lot of stuff to talk about.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:43:38] I don't like when anybody returns home and you watch them on a porch.

[1:43:44] I'm not here for like any indie like I'm back home in my small town.

[1:43:52] I don't want to be there, but I'm about to learn a lesson.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:57] Like it's like the part and there's always the part in the trailer where now it's switching gears and they're going to show you scenes from the second half of the movie where everyone learns their lesson.

[1:44:04] And there's like acoustic guitar or some kind of sad kind of folky type song, but it's supposed to be uplifting.

[1:44:10] And it.

[1:44:10] Yeah.

[1:44:11] Gross.

[1:44:12] Yeah.

Andy Beckerman

[1:44:12] Yeah.

[1:44:13] I had two of them.

[1:44:14] One is that that THX metal sound like the metal bat bending sound.

[1:44:20] If I hear that, I know it's not a good movie.

[1:44:23] I just need that one sound.

[1:44:24] It's like Pavlovian, Pavlovian in my brain.

[1:44:27] Right.

[1:44:28] You hear that.

[1:44:29] Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

[1:44:30] That sound?

[1:44:31] What's the THX metal sound?

[1:44:32] Yeah.

[1:44:32] That like.

[1:44:33] That thing.

[1:44:34] Yeah.

[1:44:34] Like a big drop.

[1:44:35] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:35] Yeah.

[1:44:36] Also.

[1:44:36] And if the song Salisbury Hill has played the trailer, I should have mentioned that's.

[1:44:40] Yeah.

[1:44:40] I'm not going to see that movie.

[1:44:41] But anyway, you're saying Andy, I'm interrupted.

Andy Beckerman

[1:44:44] And anyone that says we're going to need a bigger.

[1:44:47] Anyone that like takes like an old like thing, like from Jaws or something.

[1:44:50] Yeah.

[1:44:50] And says, we're going to need like a bigger gun or whatever.

[1:44:53] Like, you know, see a monster comes on screen and they turn to each other.

[1:44:56] Something like that.

[1:44:56] I'm just like, man, we're done.

[1:44:57] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:58] Or if one of the Smurfs turns to the camera and says, what the Smurf or something like

[1:45:02] that?

[1:45:03] And you're like, oh, I get it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:06] We're going to need a bigger Smurf.

Andy Beckerman

[1:45:07] You're like, just say it, Rainey.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:08] Yeah.

[1:45:09] You know the word.

[1:45:10] Just say it.

[1:45:12] Yeah.

[1:45:13] Coward.

[1:45:13] The thing is, if I'm watching a trailer and a record scratches, like, wait a minute, what?

[1:45:17] I know it's going to be hilarious.

[1:45:18] This is going to be hilarious.

[1:45:19] That's true.

[1:45:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:22] Okay.

[1:45:22] Well, we do have one final segment on the show and that is called recommendations.

[1:45:26] Movies that might be more worth your time than the one we talked about.

[1:45:30] I'll kick us off.

[1:45:33] I've had a big blind spot in the world of Japanese animation just because, and it's a dumb reason,

[1:45:39] I realize.

[1:45:39] Because the way they animate, the frame rate is different and it looks herky-jerky to me

[1:45:46] and I've never quite adjusted, but I have slowly started coming around.

[1:45:51] And so, while here on vacation, we watched The Castle of Cagliostro, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

[1:46:01] It is like, you know, I've seen some of the later Miyazaki movies, you know, the more sort of gentle, whimsical ones.

[1:46:08] And it is fun to go back to an earlier one where it's like this, it's still got a lot of the weirdness,

[1:46:15] but it's also tied to this almost like swinging 60s vibe.

[1:46:19] And I don't know, it was just like this goofy, goofy spy story.

[1:46:25] Like, well, not really spy, but like it's got that vibe.

[1:46:28] He's a gentleman thief.

[1:46:30] I had a lot of fun.

[1:46:32] I'm not going to say a lot about it because I'm sick, but I enjoyed it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:35] Dan, it is, Castle of Cagliostro is one of my all-time favorite movies.

[1:46:39] I love it so much.

[1:46:41] Thank you for recommending it.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:43] Oh, I'm glad to have brought a smile to Stuart's face.

[1:46:46] Stuart, what do you recommend?

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:47] Oh, man.

[1:46:48] I just watched on Hulu last night a great little sex comedy, sex positive comedy called Plan B,

[1:46:59] directed by actress Natalie Morales.

[1:47:01] Natalie Morales.

[1:47:01] And it's super great.

[1:47:04] It's about a pair of teenage girls in, I want to say, North Dakota.

[1:47:10] And it involves one of them having to get the Plan B contraceptive and the various travails of having to try and procure this.

[1:47:20] It is the interesting thing.

[1:47:22] My wife and I were watching it and she brought up the idea that like when there's been a trend of like these sex positive comedies with a gender switch,

[1:47:30] whereas traditionally it was like boys being boys, whatever.

[1:47:33] But with women, there's sometimes the like threat of gendered violence makes the stakes so much higher.

[1:47:40] I don't know.

[1:47:41] And also just like the results of misbehavior can be significantly more damaging.

[1:47:47] But it still manages to be, it's so funny and heartwarming and just fucking great, man.

[1:47:53] Check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:57] I'm going to recommend a movie now.

[1:47:59] Watch out.

[1:47:59] It's me coming at you.

[1:48:01] Now, people who have been following the show recently know that I'm on a check new wave kick on the Criterion channel.

[1:48:07] But I'm going to take a break from that today.

[1:48:09] I did briefly consider recommending another check new wave movie.

[1:48:14] But I also took a break and I was like, I haven't watched an old, old, old movie in a while.

[1:48:18] And I watched a movie called Picture Snatcher from 1933.

[1:48:21] It's a James Cagney movie directed by Lloyd Bacon, the director with the most delicious name of all directors.

[1:48:27] And James Cagney is a guy who's getting out of jail and he gets a job as a photographer for kind of like sleazy tabloid newspaper that runs on shocking photographs.

[1:48:37] And it is a very pre-code movie where it is like the main character is, it's like, I got to sneak into this prison and take a picture of a woman getting electrocuted in the electric chair without the police finding out.

[1:48:49] And then he does it.

[1:48:50] And it's like, and by the end, you're like waiting for him to learn the lesson that he shouldn't do these things.

[1:48:54] And he never really does.

[1:48:56] And James Cagney is so charismatic in it.

[1:49:00] And the movie kind of careens wildly from comedy to drama and back again.

[1:49:06] Like it's the kind of thing that's mostly comedy, but then it ends with a character being shot to death on camera.

[1:49:11] So like it's not, it's not entirely comedy.

[1:49:13] But it was a real, it was a real fun movie.

[1:49:18] Are women treated with as much respect as they deserve in it?

[1:49:21] No, not quite.

[1:49:22] But it is a movie from 1933.

[1:49:25] It's super short.

[1:49:26] It runs at a real fast clip as a lot of those Cagney movies do.

[1:49:30] And it was real fun.

[1:49:31] It's called Picture Snatcher.

Andy Beckerman

[1:49:35] And what might Jimmy Cagney sound like, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:39] Yeah, he'd be like, well, I don't see why we have to put all this money into Mortal Kombat champions.

[1:49:46] The private sector seems to be handling the issue perfectly well.

[1:49:51] So that's my Jimmy Cagney impression.

[1:49:53] How was that?

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:49:55] Thumbs up.

[1:49:55] He didn't even specify how to be Mortal Kombat.

[1:49:57] I didn't even specify that to be Mortal Kombat.

[1:49:58] Is S tier good?

[1:49:59] I still don't know, by the way.

[1:50:01] S somehow is better than A, which doesn't make any sense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:04] Yeah, I don't get it.

[1:50:04] But what movies...

[1:50:05] Alphabetically.

[1:50:06] What movies have you been watching that you liked other than Clifford?

Andy Beckerman

[1:50:11] Tell me if this counts or not.

[1:50:13] This is a series of feature-length documentaries by Adam Curtis.

[1:50:18] They are feature-length.

[1:50:20] Called Can't Get You Out of My Head.

[1:50:22] And if that doesn't fit the criteria, then his 2016 documentary, Hypernormalization.

[1:50:30] I love Adam Curtis a lot.

[1:50:32] I think he's a great documentarian.

[1:50:33] He makes...

[1:50:35] It's in the same...

[1:50:36] Who's the thin blue line kind of guy?

[1:50:38] Errol Morris.

[1:50:39] Errol Morris.

[1:50:39] Same like, I'm going to make a documentary, but it's going to have style to it.

[1:50:44] And Adam Curtis just does these really interesting documentaries about basically like...

[1:50:50] They're basically like philosophical dissertations on how did we get to the hell we're living in right now.

[1:50:58] And every one of his is just a different kind of...

[1:51:01] Looks a different facet of the 20th into the 21st century.

[1:51:06] And he just starts with these little stories.

[1:51:08] And then he takes the little stories and he expands them to explain like these larger cultural kinds of patterns.

[1:51:19] And the new one, Can't Get You Out of My Head, is like a six-episode series of these feature-length documentaries.

[1:51:26] Just like looking at how like individualism took over for collectivism and how that is...

[1:51:34] The positives of that and also the negatives in the 20th and 21st century.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:51:40] That's like very fancy.

[1:51:42] Yeah.

[1:51:42] Very fancy.

[1:51:43] And I think it'll show us our dynamic in the household because what I'm going to say is Little Shop of Horrors, Rick Moranis' version.

[1:51:49] Oh, yeah.

[1:51:49] It is a fun time.

[1:51:52] And you reminded me of that because you were like...

[1:51:54] Because I was like, what movies do we watch?

[1:51:56] Because we had been on an 80s, 90s kick over quarantine.

[1:51:59] I could have also said Cruella, by the way.

[1:52:02] We saw Cruella last night.

[1:52:03] That was also pretty great.

[1:52:04] Too long, but gorgeous.

[1:52:07] But yeah, Little Shop of Horrors, Rick Moranis is so funny to me.

[1:52:11] It's like timeless.

[1:52:13] I could like still go back and just like...

[1:52:15] It's so funny.

[1:52:16] And I think that like...

[1:52:17] It's also one of the few for me movie musicals that is actually good.

[1:52:22] I think movie musicals are really hard and people keep trying to make them, you know, nowadays.

[1:52:25] And they're just like, don't work.

[1:52:27] But I'm telling you Little Shop of Horrors.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:29] And plus you can sing it with a loved one.

[1:52:31] I think one of the best things about Little Shop, other than, you know, how funny it is and how like amazing the effects still are,

[1:52:38] is also like in terms of making it work as a musical, it walks that line between looking kind of like a stage production,

[1:52:49] very stylized while still looking like a movie.

[1:52:52] And that makes it work really well.

[1:52:57] Guys, thank you so much.

[1:52:59] This has perked me right up.

[1:53:00] Thank you, Andy and Naomi.

[1:53:02] Thanks for having me.

[1:53:03] You sound healthier, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:04] It's like laughter might be the best medicine.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:08] Patch Adams is not my...

[1:53:11] It has become my attending, so...

[1:53:13] Before we go, we're going to ask, I believe, if you had any plugs and if you wanted to mention your...

[1:53:22] Where you can be found on the web and such and such.

Andy Beckerman

[1:53:26] Sure.

[1:53:27] Naomi and I host a podcast called Couples Therapy, where it used to be a live show.

[1:53:32] And then after quarantine, we basically talk to comedians and comedic actors about their relationships and then answer listeners' advice questions.

[1:53:41] That's a good time.

[1:53:41] Natalie Morales.

[1:53:43] Yep.

[1:53:43] Plan B.

[1:53:44] Great.

[1:53:45] Who was just mentioned, has been on the show before.

[1:53:47] Was James Cagney ever on the show?

[1:53:49] What might he sound like, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:51] If he was on the show, answer his relationship question.

[1:53:54] Well, it's me, James Cagney.

[1:53:58] What's going on around here?

[1:53:59] Harvey.

[1:54:00] That's James Cagney, right?

[1:54:01] Yeah.

[1:54:02] Yeah.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:54:04] That's fun.

[1:54:05] Yeah.

[1:54:05] I guess for me, I guess we could...

[1:54:07] Yeah.

[1:54:07] I just plug Couples Therapy.

[1:54:08] Watch Mythic Quest on Apple TV.

[1:54:10] I think we're having a real good time.

[1:54:12] Naomi's...

Andy Beckerman

[1:54:12] Naomi's episode just debuted where she is basically the main character.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:17] That is very sweet, but you know, Carol's just in the back.

[1:54:20] I have to admit, I have watched and enjoyed Mythic Quest, and it was only after I followed

[1:54:29] you on Twitter, I'm like, oh shit, she's the HR person on Mythic Quest.

[1:54:33] It's so good.

[1:54:34] I really enjoy that show.

[1:54:36] Thank you for coming on for our video game episode.

[1:54:40] It's a real tie-in.

[1:54:42] I know.

[1:54:42] Perfect.

[1:54:43] No, it's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:44] It's the kind of thing that we really should have made more of a big stink about at the

[1:54:47] top, that there's an actual theme reason other than Andy just harassing on Twitter, saying

[1:54:52] that you guys should talk about this movie.

[1:54:54] Wow.

Andy Beckerman

[1:54:54] Harassing is a strong word, Elliot, for you to bring that out here.

[1:54:58] Okay.

[1:54:59] Okay.

[1:54:59] Maybe not harassing.

[1:55:00] Wow.

[1:55:00] In the last two minutes, we get how you really felt.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:02] I've been holding it back this whole time, just this rage I've been feeling.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:06] Andy's been serving you these James Cagney softballs all day.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:10] I know.

[1:55:11] I should really be thankful.

[1:55:12] It's too bad that James Cagney is one of the people that I have no good impression of.

[1:55:17] Not that my other impressions.

[1:55:18] Just one.

[1:55:18] As opposed to my other impressions, which are spot on amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:20] Just super flawless.

[1:55:23] Flawless victory.

[1:55:23] So rich.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:26] Well, thank you again.

[1:55:27] Thank you to MaximumFun.org for being our network.

[1:55:33] I mean, that's not the name of the network.

[1:55:34] That's the name of the website.

[1:55:35] You can go to check out a bunch of other podcasts.

[1:55:37] I'm fading.

[1:55:38] I'm fading.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:38] It's finally happening.

[1:55:39] No, no.

[1:55:39] It's just like the other day I went and picked up lunch at Popeyes.com.

[1:55:43] Yeah.

Naomi Ekperigin

[1:55:45] You made him die, Elliot.

[1:55:47] Stop it.

[1:55:48] He wants it to be done.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:49] Sorry.

[1:55:50] Sorry.

[1:55:50] Yeah.

[1:55:50] Thank you.

[1:55:51] I'm just going to speed through it.

[1:55:52] Thank you.

[1:55:54] You know, tell people about us.

[1:55:56] You know, thank you for supporting us.

[1:55:58] Anyway, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:00] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:56:01] And also thank you to Jordan Cowling for producing our show.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:04] Yes.

[1:56:04] Thank you, Jordan.

[1:56:05] Sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:06] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:56:07] Or am I?

[1:56:08] Perhaps I'm James Cagney.

[1:56:10] And thank you for joining us tonight.

[1:56:13] Naomi at Peregrine.

[1:56:14] Andy Beckerman.

[1:56:16] Bye.

[1:56:17] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:23] You know, Stuart's the one who actually eats mangoes all the time.

[1:56:26] And yet, I've somehow been painted with that brush.

[1:56:28] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:29] It's not that.

[1:56:30] The problem is not the eating of mangoes.

[1:56:31] The problem is that you once missed part of a movie we were talking about.

[1:56:33] Because, as you said, you had to go cut a mango up.

[1:56:36] It took longer than I expected.

[1:56:38] That's become shorthand in our house.

[1:56:39] Sammy, my older son, he's always like, I'm like, Dan didn't do this thing.

[1:56:42] And he's like, what was he busy, cutting a mango?

[1:56:46] That's shorthand in our house for what Dan is busy with at the moment.

[1:56:51] MaximumFun.org.

[1:56:53] Comedy and culture.

S8

[1:56:54] Artist owned.

[1:56:55] Audience supported.

Ep. #344 - Mortal Kombat, with Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman

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