Ep. #341 - Godzilla vs. Kong, with Zander Cannon

[0:00] on this episode we discuss godzilla versus kong no matter who wins we'll watch it

[0:07] that's a good tagline right yeah it's great yeah it's great

[0:30] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McGaughy.

[0:42] Hey guys, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:45] Hey, my name's Elliot Kalin, and I want to introduce, we also have a special guest with us.

[0:49] So forget our regular hosts, Dan, Stuart, and Elliot, forget about them for a moment.

[0:53] Throw us in the garbage.

[0:54] They don't need them, don't need them, because this episode's going to be all about, that's right,

[0:58] your number one favorite Xander in America.

[1:01] Not Xander Cage, the character from the XXX movies.

[1:05] No, no, no, an even better Xander.

[1:06] Joining us is Xander Cannon.

[1:08] He's a great, great comics creator.

[1:10] I'm sure you know him as the man behind books like Replacement God, Heck,

[1:14] and most importantly for the discussion of this episode,

[1:16] The Amazing Kaiju Max, one of my favorite all-time series.

[1:19] Oh, man, it's so fucking good.

[1:21] I'm sorry, Nexus.

[1:22] Kaiju Max is running neck and neck with you right now.

[1:24] You've been my favorite for years, but Kaiju Max is up there now.

[1:27] It is a, in case you haven't read it, genuinely heartbreaking story about the inmates and staff at a maximum security prison for kaiju.

[1:34] And Xander is with us today, thankfully, to discuss a movie with so many kaiju in it for an American movie.

[1:42] To be honest, for a Japanese movie, not that many.

[1:44] But for an American movie, a fair amount.

[1:45] Thank you very much for joining us.

[1:47] Sorry, I'm tripping over every single word that is coming out of my mouth.

[1:51] Can I jump in there?

[1:52] I want to throw one more credit in there because it's one of my all-time favorites.

[1:56] Xander, you did the art for Smacks, and I love that art so much.

[1:59] It's so great.

[2:00] The fucking cat dragon.

[2:01] Oh, my Lord.

[2:02] It's the best.

[2:03] Okay, now you can talk.

[2:04] Thanks for having me, you guys.

[2:06] I'm truly honored.

[2:08] I've been a longtime fan, first-time caller of the Flophouse.

[2:14] Oh, wow.

[2:14] Yeah, we try not to publicize the number or else people will be calling in all the time being on the show.

[2:19] I mean, it's just 1-800-FLOPHOUSE.

[2:21] That's the thing.

[2:22] It's the easiest number to figure out.

[2:23] Yeah, you've been a long-time listener, and you never thought it would happen to you

[2:27] until the other day when a couple of co-eds named Dan and Stuart.

[2:31] Yeah.

[2:35] So, Dan, you really gave it all.

[2:39] Gave it all for that introduction.

[2:40] Dan's got some Titan energy over here.

[2:42] We got to drill to the center of the earth to recharge Dan.

[2:47] Hold on a second.

[2:48] Hook him up to a heave.

[2:52] Elgin and I are in a constant battle about how professional the podcast should be.

[2:56] He thinks the answer is yes.

[2:58] I say not very.

[3:00] I think somewhat.

[3:02] And you think know what.

[3:03] Because I was pondering how much to let you behind the curtain.

[3:10] I moved this weekend, dear listener, and due to some stuff that I will not get into, we shuffled around some stuff.

[3:20] And I was like, oh, now I'm supposed to summarize Godzilla vs. Kong, a movie that, honestly, I'm not quite sure what happened in.

[3:29] So I was just sighing in anticipation of the mess that I'm about to create.

[3:33] Well, we'll help you through it.

[3:34] I think the thing to remember about Godzilla vs. Kong is that the plot is only the most gossamer whisper strung between the pillars of monster fights and inhabited by characters who kind of barely exist.

[3:47] And yet there's a lot of it.

[3:48] There's so much of it.

[3:49] A lot of those gossamer whispers.

[3:50] lot yeah so i want to jump in here we're talking about godzilla vs kong and xander in addition to

[3:57] do in addition to doing a book uh about monsters in prison i'm assuming you're we have you on the

[4:04] show because you're also a big kaiju movie fan oh yeah absolutely like i i mean people sometimes

[4:10] people mistakenly call me a kaiju expert and i'm like oh oh god because they're gonna then i think

[4:15] they're gonna ask me like how many mecha godzillas there are or whatever and i'm like i don't know i

[4:19] only know it to tell jokes i see elliot computing right now i'm like okay well there's that do we

[4:24] count mechagidra in there probably not he says specifically mechagodzilla but uh but then but

[4:30] yeah like and so you know yeah you end up watching just every stupid you know stupid great you know

[4:36] somewhere in between your monster movie that that comes down the pike and it's you know and the best

[4:42] thing is when you're like when you start seeing like all these things that you know like like

[4:46] trends from the mid 60s like it's like oh my god they did that in every movie what a dumb thing

[4:52] you know like what an arbitrary thing to put in you know anyway but yeah i've seen many and do

[4:57] you feel pressure do you feel pressure when a new like giant monster movie or kaiju movie comes out

[5:02] that you have to watch it because every time a movie comes out where people on twitter are like

[5:07] hey stewart this movie a dude gets his ding dong ripped off i'm like fuck i gotta watch that right

[5:11] away drop what i'm doing yeah i mean everybody's always saying like well did you see it yet and

[5:16] it's like i i'm getting to it i'm getting to it it's the horrible cycle that goes through where

[5:21] you're like i have a genuine interest in this thing so i'm going to talk about a lot uh-oh

[5:25] now people think i know a lot about it now it's work like now it's an assignment that i have to

[5:29] live up to now every gift you get is like a ceramic turtle now that's what i was gonna say

[5:35] like letting it out that you get collect rubber frogs or something i imagine you're like you're

[5:40] the guy you're the guy in the old west town who's seen a lot of kaiju movies and every now and then

[5:44] like the new young the young buck who wants to be the kaiju expert comes in to challenge you

[5:49] there's like i was i was uh thinking about these starfish monsters from ultraman and you're like

[5:55] i gotta come up with something more obscure to hit him with uh to prove that i'm still the tops

[5:59] and you can never sleep because you never know when someone's gonna walk into town and demand

[6:02] something about kaiju are you pitching like a uh eltingville anthology story or something right

[6:08] there i wish oh my god i would love to love to do that now uh so this movie right guys this is

[6:17] oh so what do we do on this podcast this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and we talk

[6:21] about it in this case we're watching godzilla versus kong uh one of the many movies that was

[6:26] going to be a theatrical release is now um was it was a theatrical release that's true that's true

[6:32] theaters are coming uh open again but it is it was day and date also on hbo max if you're dating

[6:40] charlie day you have to watch the movie with him that's what it means stay in date yeah and uh so

[6:45] you know we caught up with this one we watched uh the previous one for one of our live shows

[6:50] i mentioned that because like this is at this point weirdly the closest to another

[6:56] current successful

[6:58] like shared universe

[7:00] I guess I mean like I guess DC's

[7:02] like straightening up their game

[7:04] a little bit more in that area but like

[7:06] are they well

[7:08] I feel like we did two episodes that proved

[7:10] no they're not

[7:11] no well it depends on what your measure of success is

[7:14] right like I'm saying

[7:16] that like this

[7:18] the only

[7:19] shared universe that's currently going

[7:22] that is both

[7:24] uh financially successful and relatively critically successful is the marvel stuff

[7:29] like dc is you know has like super strong partisans but does not have the critical success

[7:37] uh and then this like i i don't know i'm just trying to place this in the idea like there's

[7:43] this vogue for shared universes right and like this is kind of talking about how the dark universe

[7:49] was on the cover of vogue yeah we all remember the success of the dark universe universes dark

[7:55] universe took the nation by swarm swarm took it by swarm yeah it works they threw copies of erwin

[8:05] allen's the swarm at america and america said no thanks and um no but this is like kind of like

[8:12] where the threads come together and where dan says to himself please no more shared universes

[8:19] because the the movie works so hard to uh set up a fight between godzilla and king kong

[8:28] and you know if you just told me that a giant lizard and a big ape were fighting i'd be like

[8:35] cool i'm in you don't need to lay so much track for this and i think a large part of the track

[8:40] that gets laid is the idea like,

[8:42] oh, we've done all this stuff

[8:43] in these previous movies,

[8:44] which I have totally forgotten most of it.

[8:47] Totally forgotten.

[8:48] And we have to weave this intricate web

[8:52] and all of it is boring.

[8:53] Are you saying that you've forgotten it

[8:55] so really it proves that

[8:57] all the extraneous characters

[8:59] that they brought along from previous movies

[9:00] didn't actually need to show up?

[9:02] I would say this movie has a case

[9:06] of Pirates of the Caribbean-itis

[9:07] where everyone walked out of Pirates of the Caribbean.

[9:10] Are you going to TM that shit?

[9:12] I can't.

[9:13] I mean, I don't own the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

[9:16] Well, by adding the itis, don't you get the points?

[9:18] The points, like on his shirt?

[9:21] He's like Jonas Salk.

[9:23] He doesn't want to lock it away.

[9:25] He wants it to be long to everyone.

[9:27] I could patent the drug to cure Pirates of the Caribbean itis,

[9:30] although we have herd immunity now.

[9:31] They're not making any more of those.

[9:32] But I do.

[9:34] I want that to be.

[9:35] That's my gift to humanity, is to be cured of that.

[9:38] But it's like, everyone walked out of Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, the first one, saying, boy, that Jack Sparrow was a fun character.

[9:45] And what Disney heard was, people love every single character in this movie, and we need to track all of them over the course of multiple movies, no matter how minor, a supporting role.

[9:55] And it feels like, in this one, it's like, but what's going on with the daughter of Vera Farmiga and what's-his-face?

[10:03] And you're like, do they have a daughter?

[10:05] What was that about?

[10:05] Like, who are those characters again?

[10:07] Do I care?

[10:07] Oh, I don't.

[10:08] I mean, I feel like getting more Geoffrey Rush in the second and third movie.

[10:12] I'm like, perfect.

[10:13] More of that.

[10:14] Yes, delicious.

[10:14] But yeah, everything else, no.

[10:16] No, thank you.

[10:16] Well, but I mean, don't you think that Millie Bobby Brown is essentially the, well, one of the closest thing you have to a star in this movie?

[10:23] Like, she's kind of like of the moment.

[10:25] Like, I think that people remembered, like, oh, yeah, the girl from Stranger Things is, you know, is in the Godzilla movie.

[10:31] Right.

[10:31] Do they remember that?

[10:33] I'm not so sure about that.

[10:34] Millie Bobby Brown is given very little to work with,

[10:38] but I do think that she is a very strong actor,

[10:42] a very charismatic actor.

[10:43] We got a lot of names on the poster.

[10:46] There's a lot of great people.

[10:46] I mean, the fact, like, Rebecca Hall's in this movie.

[10:48] Brian Tyree Henry is great in this.

[10:49] Brian Tyree Henry is an amazing actor,

[10:51] and they give him the worst one-liners.

[10:53] Damien Bashir's in this.

[10:55] I like Damien Bashir.

[10:56] I started watching this movie with my wife.

[10:59] Lance Reddick is in a small role.

[11:01] I love Rebecca Hall.

[11:02] Well, I said to my wife while we were watching this, we had just finished a long drive from Northern California, Southern California.

[11:09] I said, I really want to watch this Godzilla vs. Kong movie.

[11:12] And she said, I'll watch it with you, but I can't promise I'll stay awake.

[11:15] And she fell asleep like 15 minutes in.

[11:17] But I was explaining to her, I'm like, these movies kind of are, they're less storytelling machines.

[11:23] And they're more projects for paying very good actors to say things like Kong bows to no one.

[11:29] And talk about nonsense scientific gobbledygook, which there is a lot of in this movie.

[11:34] An unnecessarily large amount of gravity inversions and secret Titan energies at the center of the Earth and things that – it's like they just wanted to overcomplicate everything.

[11:44] But I think we should make it clear that there's a lot of great people in this movie, but the characters they are given to play are not much of anything.

[11:54] Well, and also I want to say, I mean, Adam Wingard, the director, you know, he made You're Next, which had past guest Barbara Crampton in it.

[12:05] An excellent little contained horror movie.

[12:08] The Guest, like one of my favorite little like goofy, nasty little thrillers.

[12:16] Yeah, The Guest is the best.

[12:18] It's right in there.

[12:19] Love it.

[12:20] But then, you know, he did the Blair Witch, I guess, reboot.

[12:25] I didn't even see it.

[12:25] It kind of came in without making any kind of mark on the popular culture.

[12:31] Much like the real Blair Witch.

[12:32] Death Note for Netflix, which everyone who, you know,

[12:38] was familiar with the comic, I guess, like, hated.

[12:42] It's not very good.

[12:43] It's not a very good movie.

[12:45] I watched the first half of it.

[12:47] I never returned to it because I just, like, it's one of those things.

[12:50] you like put down a book and you're like that was okay but i don't whatever like i but i didn't hate

[12:56] it like everyone else and maybe it's because i didn't have any attachment to it but like he like

[12:59] took this turn after the guest right and godzilla versus kong i'm glad to see that he's getting

[13:05] like a big paycheck job because i liked those first two movies so much but at the same time

[13:13] like the best i can say for this movie is he brings like a much like prettier look to the

[13:21] movie like the movie is no longer a swirling mass of like gray ash like the last one was no no it's

[13:28] a swirling mass of bright colors and neon signs yeah it's like it definitely there's there's a

[13:32] big fight at the end spoiler alert between godzilla and kong and it's in this like are they in hong

[13:38] kong is that we're in hong kong and it's like just neon colors and like futuristic skyscrapers

[13:43] being destroyed and it was so pretty that was almost enough for me to forget that it was like

[13:46] oh they're killing tens of thousands of people with every every blow every time kong smashes

[13:52] godzilla's face through a building and the building completely collapses like that's that's

[13:56] so many lives and stories over you guys i mean i realize that we haven't even gotten to the plot

[14:01] yet but can i confess that this is this is my main problem with godzilla in general as a thing

[14:07] Like any long-running sort of series, what was originally the monster gets repositioned as the hero in one way or another, whether it's like in these Godzilla movies where he's actually a hero or in something like, I don't know, like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies where it's just like Godzilla's in those.

[14:32] He steps on Freddy and that's how he saves those kids, but it's accidental.

[14:35] He doesn't mean to do it.

[14:36] In the first movie, like, Freddy is, like, scary, and you're supposed to hate Freddy.

[14:40] Later on, you're supposed to be like, oh, Freddy's fun to watch.

[14:43] I don't give a shit about these teens.

[14:45] You know, like, Freddy becomes the hero of the film in effect, even if he's, like, the antagonist in, like, a plot sense.

[14:54] And then there was that movie where it's like, what's Freddy like when he's not killing kids in their dreams?

[15:00] And it was so sad.

[15:01] It was just like he has so little going for him in his life, and his marriage is falling apart, and his kids never call him.

[15:07] That's shown on the screen by him eating a hungry man dinner.

[15:11] That's code for him having an empty life.

[15:14] And masturbating, sadly, in the shower.

[15:17] Which he has to be careful with.

[15:19] He's not wearing the glove.

[15:21] What?

[15:22] Why would he wear that in the shower?

[15:24] It's going to ruin the leather.

[15:25] He does wear his hat in the shower and his sweater.

[15:28] That's the weird thing.

[15:29] He's naked from the waist down, but he's storing the hat and the sweater, but not the glove.

[15:32] I get that part.

[15:34] I just have a problem with these movies where they try and position Godzilla and Kong here as heroes in a much more unambiguous sense than reality would reflect.

[15:50] Like you're saying, Elliot, I watch them fighting and I'm like, okay, well, it doesn't matter if maybe there are reasons this is happening.

[15:57] They'll team up against a greater evil later, all that stuff.

[16:00] Like, they're destroying a city.

[16:02] Well, Xander, you talk.

[16:05] You're the expert.

[16:05] You're the self-admitted, self-described kaiju expert.

[16:08] Absolutely.

[16:09] Yeah, number one.

[16:10] So, well, one of the things that I liked about Pacific Rim, you know, is that it, like, embraced some of that silliness where it was like, well, we need to have, you know, things, big things smash other big things.

[16:21] And we don't want to have people feel ambiguous and sort of, like, weird about it.

[16:26] So it's like, oh, we're, and it was Hong Kong again.

[16:28] They were like, we are evacuating Hong Kong to these underground shelters.

[16:32] And they were done evacuating everybody in this, you know, the second largest city in the world in like 10 minutes.

[16:39] But you were like, okay, sure.

[16:41] And then, you know, smash everything.

[16:43] Smash away.

[16:44] Punch through that building.

[16:45] I mean, and so, and I mean, you might think like, well, that's not very likely.

[16:49] And it's like, nothing's likely.

[16:50] You might as well do that and have people stop going like, Jesus Christ, those people are, you know.

[16:56] vaporized yeah i don't i don't know why it bothers me less in something like this than say like

[17:01] superman where he's just like roasting all these buildings full of people well there's definitely

[17:07] supposed to be and also he's supposed to be the hero and he's got human intelligence so he knows

[17:13] what's going on like godzilla when he works as a somewhat heroic protector of the earth i feel

[17:18] like it's when he works in the level of a cosmic or a god-like being who humans are kind of beneath

[17:23] his notice individually but he is uh he's this force that like is is protecting the earth from

[17:30] a bigger problem but it doesn't matter you know he doesn't notice that the collateral damage

[17:34] underneath whereas in this one we'll get to it when we go to the plot the big the big thing they

[17:38] team up against is not a threat to people i guess it is because it's got it's got a bad guy brain

[17:43] in it but it's like yeah but it feels like it doesn't feel like uh in the last one godzilla

[17:48] king of the monsters it was basically a big pissing match between godzilla and king adora

[17:52] But you could buy that King Ghidorah was like an outer space monster, so he's an invader as opposed to these native-born monsters that are okay.

[18:01] King Ghidorah is like an immigrant monster that's trying to take the jobs.

[18:04] It's a Godzilla replacement strategy that is not okay.

[18:08] Every time they bring another monster in, it dilutes Godzilla's vote.

[18:13] But in this one, it felt much less like you could even spin it as, oh, well, they're saving people.

[18:19] it was just like monster grudge matches and that's okay if you do i think i agree with xander like

[18:24] if they have been like evacuate the city and then five minutes later okay we've evacuated

[18:29] everybody and then there's always like one kid that's left on the surface that they've got to

[18:33] save at the last minute but this the fight was going on for hours and they'd still cut to people

[18:37] running for safety and it'd be like wait but then i don't want to think about all the damage like

[18:42] that's terrible right godzilla had been in the city for like an hour and there was a shot from

[18:46] inside like a you know a restaurant on the 50th floor or something and people are like huh

[18:51] you guys don't look at the news or something yeah okay well let's i mean let's dive into the plot

[18:58] let's be like a godzilla and dive into the water of the plot heck yeah wait i got a better one

[19:03] let's be like the heroes of the movie and dive into the center of the plot and hopefully the

[19:07] gravity inversion membrane won't hurt us too much so that we can fight off those gross bat birds

[19:13] anyway okay well anyway so it is uh five years after uh godzilla has defeated king godora uh

[19:22] the you know we're living in a post kaiju world here they call them titans titans and i think

[19:29] that's because they are avoiding anything that they will have to conceivably pay toho more money

[19:35] to use so like it's something something that i should make clear right away is don't don't

[19:41] listen for Godzilla's trademark scream or his trademark anthem because you won't see them

[19:45] because they would have cost more money to license them from Toho yeah and there's a credit oh man

[19:50] okay wait I have to say this at the beginning of the movie it says Godzilla owned and created by

[19:56] Toho Studios and I was like a studio does not create a character like that like people create

[20:02] characters like put put a Shiro Honda's name on there somewhere like it was it made me very mad

[20:07] to see it was like um if at the end of every marvel movie they were like captain america

[20:11] spider-man black panther and hulk created by marvel comics and you'd be like no that's not

[20:16] how things work you know but they but they do say that in like marvel and dc like shows and stuff

[20:21] they're like you know using characters created by dc comics and it's like god really i don't like

[20:25] that but well and one of the things and you know not to be like a vh1 pop-up video but like the

[20:30] but yoshimitsu bono who's one of the the main japanese producers that sort of brought it over

[20:35] to legendary, was blacklisted from Godzilla films forever

[20:40] because he directed Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster.

[20:42] And one of the producers has said,

[20:46] this is the worst movie I've ever seen.

[20:48] You are blacklisted from ever directing a Godzilla movie again.

[20:52] And then he basically just outlived them all,

[20:55] and now he's in charge of it again.

[20:56] It's the best revenge.

[20:59] That's how you stun on them, right?

[21:02] Right. Living long is the best revenge.

[21:04] Godzilla taunting.

[21:05] godzilla riding a tauntaun oh he'd crush it but anyway very similar body types yeah that's true

[21:12] so dan it's five years after what's going on with our favorite monsters well kong is uh we see kong

[21:19] you know he comes out of the the jungle and there's a small uh child um from like one of the

[21:27] i guess local island tribes who can who has like an affinity with kong this is uh gia wikipedia

[21:36] tells me um i i never remember any names of anyone in any movie i see does this happen and she is she

[21:45] is deaf and she is played by a deaf actress oh that that's interesting and it's never said in

[21:50] the movie but i always assumed that she has some sort of mental like psychic bond with kong because

[21:56] otherwise it makes no sense how he can like communicate with her because she's the size of

[22:00] an ant to him but she'll frown at him and he's like what's wrong it's like i just amazed that

[22:05] he they can communicate you know but that's like that's pretty common though like uh giant monsters

[22:10] always have like a magic kid or kids that they but it's always assumed it's always implied there's

[22:14] some kind of miss like gamera always and like always had like a kenny that would that would

[22:18] follow him around and be like no no don't don't hurt gamera while gamera's destroying buildings

[22:23] It always has implied, I think, that there's some kind of psychic connection.

[22:26] I always thought it was just sort of like, obviously, these kids are cute.

[22:30] Gamera thinks that, too.

[22:32] They're little.

[22:34] They're cute.

[22:35] They're like very cute ants.

[22:36] Just like in the movie A Bug's Life.

[22:41] But not like in the movie Ants.

[22:44] No, those are very unattractive ants.

[22:46] The designs are not the best.

[22:48] The designs are not.

[22:48] So Kong is displeased.

[22:52] We see that it is because Kong is actually trapped.

[22:56] What looks like Skull Island is like some sort of electro dome keeping Kong captive.

[23:04] And safe, they say.

[23:07] Captive and safe so that Godzilla won't sense his Titan signature or whatever bullshit.

[23:12] Yeah, because they all, as we know from the last movie, they register each other's bioenergy.

[23:16] Yeah.

[23:17] And you should mention Rebecca Hall works at, this is a Monarch facility.

[23:21] Monarch, the company that deals with monsters, and first encountered Kong back in Kong Skull Island in the 1970s, right?

[23:30] And now, and Rebecca Hall works there, and she's, like, famous for it, and there's a magazine cover that shows her and says The Kong Whisperer, and it's, like, it's just always one of those things where it's weird to me that in real life—

[23:41] Good thing Godzilla doesn't get that magazine.

[23:43] No, he does.

[23:44] That's the thing.

[23:44] That's why he's looking for it.

[23:45] yeah uh it's it's oh it's like in real life yeah this stuff would be famous but it always seems

[23:50] funny to me that it's like yeah she's a famous scientist kong is famous he's a he's a known

[23:54] quantity people you know talk about him all the time and she talks about him like someone she

[23:59] knows well and that's why it's it reminds me so much of the uh the great line from the movie venom

[24:03] i'm sorry about venom that uh where it's like they just to say these characters names as if

[24:10] they're just people you know is is ridiculous you know uh anyway we're introduced to bernie hayes

[24:16] who uh is a podcaster a heroic podcaster we all know the true heroes yeah podcasters he's got uh

[24:26] and he's paper boy from uh from uh atlanta yeah yeah brian tyree henry and he does it does a

[24:32] voice in housebroken the upcoming fox animated show that i worked on that's great he's so awesome

[24:37] yeah he's great um well he has a titan conspiracy theory podcast he's a titan truther

[24:44] and uh he's uh got this scheme to get information which i guess just sort of involves an irritating

[24:52] someone inside one of these facilities until they go to the bathroom

[24:55] so he can uh take classic video game strategy and stealth video games yeah uh in the middle of all

[25:03] this though godzilla attacks the facility this is apex which is a uh a company that had we been

[25:11] introduced to them before i don't think so because their comically evil ceo yeah it was played by

[25:17] damien beshear he's great he's great and it's like you're like is this character supposed to be like

[25:23] a colombian drug lord from a 1980s action movie because he's got because he's it's the same type

[25:27] of performance which works perfectly for this character but his name is walter simmons which

[25:32] i think is great like also the fact that he has the same voice as the as the drug lords that he's

[25:38] played in all of his previous roles and that that uh that uh brian tahiri henry is playing

[25:43] bernie hayes it's just like this is this these characters were written and they just colorblind

[25:49] casted as much as possible which is fantastic but it's it's the exact opposite of the scene

[25:54] in the martian where there's a scientist who clearly the part was written to be korean american

[25:59] and they have a blonde white girl playing it.

[26:01] And I'm like, come on.

[26:03] There's no everything about this character.

[26:05] Like her last name is Park.

[26:06] Like she works on this project.

[26:08] Like just cast a Korean actress.

[26:09] Come on.

[26:10] But anyway.

[26:12] Now this facility is in Florida.

[26:13] Pensacola.

[26:15] Pensacola, Florida.

[26:16] Worst of the sodas.

[26:17] And Godzilla shows up out of the water.

[26:19] I kind of like the reveal.

[26:20] Like it's pretty cool.

[26:21] You watch Godzilla float up

[26:23] and then some jets try and stop him

[26:26] and he just beats the shit out of them.

[26:28] And, you know, we get our first good look at our boy Godzilla.

[26:30] Once again, I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but he is thick as hell.

[26:34] I love it.

[26:35] Serving up body-ody-ody with those big old tree trunk legs.

[26:38] He looks like if a mountain got up and decided to walk.

[26:41] I love it so much.

[26:42] He's great.

[26:43] And, yes, he's got a little old man face.

[26:45] The little old man face wouldn't bother me so much, except there are many shots where he looks right at the camera.

[26:50] And he's got like a Mr. Magoo, like, ooh, type look on his face.

[26:53] I love it.

[26:54] Xander, how do you feel about this Godzilla design?

[26:57] I have my issues with it.

[26:58] I mean, it's probably one of my less favorite ones.

[27:02] I mean, I really like sort of the Millennium Era Godzilla,

[27:05] sort of almost that sort of cat-like face.

[27:08] Yeah, that's a great one.

[27:09] Where he even has little ears.

[27:10] But this one, I mean, it's fine.

[27:12] I think it's too bad that, like, they make it so CGI and so movable.

[27:17] Like, on those close-ups, it's like every little part is moving,

[27:20] and it's like, it wouldn't be moving.

[27:22] He's like a big creature, you know?

[27:24] Like, you know, it's, anyway.

[27:26] But, yeah.

[27:27] He's not Clayface or something.

[27:28] Right.

[27:29] Right.

[27:30] One of my main concerns.

[27:33] He's not, he's just too Clayface-like.

[27:35] Every movie you go, I don't want spoilers, is Godzilla Clayface in this one?

[27:38] No, he's not.

[27:39] Okay, good.

[27:40] Then I'll go see it.

[27:40] Okay.

[27:41] Thank God.

[27:42] I mean, Clayface was an actor before he was a supervillain, so he could do it.

[27:45] I mean, he could be playing, and the weird thing about these characters, and I'm sure

[27:48] it's all motion capture, but it's like, they're all CGI, but they still move like guys in

[27:52] suits.

[27:52] Like, they're not really taking advantage of it.

[27:55] I think it was motion captured.

[27:55] It had to have been, but for some reason it comes off not looking as animalistic as I would like to for Godzilla.

[28:01] Maybe it's because he and King Kong punch each other in the face, which seems like a weird fighting move for a giant dinosaur to punch and kick.

[28:08] I think that was an express—I think Adam Wingard said that was an intention.

[28:12] He wanted to make it look like 80s action movies or like wrestling.

[28:17] Oh, I see.

[28:18] So, I mean, it was a choice whether or not you agree with it.

[28:22] Yeah, a lot of directors, I feel like a lot of directors say that we want it to look like guys in suits.

[28:26] It's, you know, it's part of the whole thing.

[28:28] But yeah, and I do think, my one complaint about this Godzilla design is that his head is so small.

[28:35] It's just like, it just seems like it could be a little bit bigger, like a T-Rex.

[28:39] You know, I mean, not even that big, but like, I don't know, it just seems like it just tapers down into nothing.

[28:44] So he's got a real snub nose.

[28:46] You're saying you'd rather he have like a long T-Rex type face, maybe a longer, leaner body.

[28:50] Maybe Matthew Broderick is in it.

[28:52] Maybe he's got long, long thin legs.

[28:54] Yes, exactly.

[28:54] We're heading in the right direction.

[28:55] Yeah, maybe he gets killed by just a couple lucky missile shots on a bridge.

[29:00] And you're like, that was it?

[29:01] Why didn't they do that earlier in the movie?

[29:02] I'm just worried that if his head was much bigger, it'd be a more tempting target for a nuclear axe.

[29:07] But, yeah.

[29:08] Oh, boy.

[29:09] Yeah, as we'll find out, that is a real concern.

[29:10] The rest is you take.

[29:11] So Godzilla's attacking.

[29:13] And while this is happening, it reveals to Bernie some kind of giant machine that Apex is building, right?

[29:20] There's some big, glowy machine, and when you see a big, glowy machine, you're like, this company is up to no good.

[29:25] That's probably what drew Godzilla.

[29:28] Godzilla had a sense, this company is up to no good, I've got to smash them.

[29:31] It's one of these funny things where you see the machine, and he's like, what?

[29:35] And I think you as an audience are supposed to be like, what is that machine?

[29:38] But it just looks like a big machine to me.

[29:39] I was like, honestly, I don't know, man.

[29:41] There's nothing about this that seems particularly sinister.

[29:43] It's glowing red, though.

[29:45] Jet turbine that's glowing red.

[29:47] But lots of things glow red.

[29:49] I think that sometimes you have these, you know, the production designers do such a good job of having, like, everything look like cool, weird technology that then when you are, like, you're supposed to look at this one cool, weird technology, you're like, it blends in to everything.

[30:02] I mean, everything looks cool or whatever.

[30:03] Especially since we find out later this company has hidden subterranean tunnels that can, with, like, a rocket train that can get you around the world within minutes.

[30:13] And it's, like, it seems like they're way ahead of anything.

[30:16] Like, they've already got all this neat stuff, like, that they shouldn't really have, and I don't know what it is about this thing yet.

[30:21] But, yeah, we've talked about this in an episode recently called The Final Program.

[30:25] We talked about how I'm a big fan of science fiction where labs and complexes look really slapped together with lots of wires trailing all over the place.

[30:33] And I wish it was more like that.

[30:35] Any time in the Akira comic book series that they go to a laboratory and it's clear that, like, they didn't finish bolting all the panels on the walls and there's still wires everywhere.

[30:42] Like, big fan of that.

[30:45] but anyway so dan what happens godzilla's attacking the end of the movie where's kong

[30:49] uh i don't know i don't look look i this is a series of images in my brain guys sure so cut to

[30:59] cut to i think right around now damien beshear a an evil ceo shows up at alexander skarsgård's

[31:06] apartment alexander skarsgård is a scientist who has some kind of theory about how the earth is

[31:10] actually hollow and there's some kind of gravity inversion bullshit and like people killed his

[31:15] his brother i don't know it killed his brother his brother went to explore the hollow earth and

[31:19] there's some kind of inversion gravity when you get closer to the core of the earth that flips

[31:24] you inside out or something upside down all around uh spins you around like a record player and so

[31:29] he says he was he's the laughingstock now and uh he can't sell his book even worse he can't sell

[31:35] any copies of his book i did relate to him saying that he had 30 unsold boxes of uh of his book in

[31:41] his apartment i i've lived that life alexander skarsgård it's like i feel you and uh and with

[31:46] him and with the guy from apex is uh the new dr sherezawa the the son of the previous dr sherezawa

[31:55] sarazawa from the previous movies and oh right okay they seem to be up to no good but they have

[32:00] a they they want to his help in exploring the hollow earth because i don't remember the exact

[32:05] order of how they reveal this information in the movie but it's like there's like a power source

[32:08] these monsters have special energy and this they come from the center of the earth so i guess the

[32:12] center of the earth must be full of special energy cubes and gems and we want to go get those get

[32:16] those energy gems it's all made up nonsense that makes no sense was it is it the is it a line from

[32:22] mystery men where they're like this is why nine times out of ten you want to go with a instead

[32:28] of a mad scientist an average run-of-the-mill scientist or something like that because i feel

[32:33] like in these movies they're always like oh we got to go to this fringe scientist who's the only

[32:38] one who knows the truth and like sure sometimes everything we know is wrong you know some

[32:45] brilliant mind comes in or beautiful mind yeah and flips flips the script not as good as a

[32:52] beautiful heart but it's still okay but it's much better than an absent mind yeah now so here's

[32:58] here's what i'm gonna tell you but no but it's like uh sorry i just to finish the thought like

[33:02] it is one of these cases where it's like i will take that normally but if you're trying to sell

[33:07] me oh the earth is hollow and we can travel through it and there's like weird shit inside

[33:12] i'm like i don't know movie it's like we probably would have figured that out by now well i think

[33:16] there's a there's a uh this is one of the kind of hidden toxicities of every of of kind of classical

[33:24] filmmaking is that everyone's got to be an underdog and what that means is if you're going

[33:30] to talk to a scientist i mean sometimes i'll have a movie where they'll be like this is the top guy

[33:34] in this field but you want to have the tension of here's a character who needs to prove something

[33:38] no one believes him so that they there's an arc and they can but what that means is you have all

[33:43] these movies that are constantly pushing the idea that the science that you're told is wrong actually

[33:49] the fringe theory is the right one the same way that there are every there are no there are very

[33:54] few movies where the government is competent and knows what they're doing because it's a better

[33:58] story for there to be a conspiracy or some bad thing going on and the lone voice of reason who

[34:04] everyone treats as crazy but it means like there's this constant diet of movies and tv shows and

[34:10] stories where the mainstream of the world is lying to you and only this person on the edge who's been

[34:16] doing their own research has the correct truth luckily that's never had a negative effect in

[34:21] real life and we're not living through anything now that shows the danger of that luckily this

[34:25] all hypothetical i'm talking about yeah that's what i was thinking too like i mean that that

[34:29] sort of the zeitgeist kind of like makes that a fun movie to watch and then a not very fun movie

[34:34] to watch and then maybe it'll be a fun movie to watch again but yeah well it's funny how uh

[34:38] when i when like when the x-files was a new show i was like yeah yeah the government's always lying

[34:43] about stuff yeah yeah conspiracies and then when they did that x-files miniseries a few years ago

[34:48] and they had uh joel mckale playing like an alex jones type character and i was like looking

[34:53] forward to the to the scene where they take him down a notch and they didn't because in the world

[34:58] of the x-files the alex jones character is accurate is correct because there are conspiracies with

[35:02] aliens and i was like oh no the x-files is undermining the stable ground of society i

[35:08] never realized this before yeah so speaking of speaking of uh conspiracy theories though that's

[35:14] where uh brian tyree henry's character comes back because millie bobby brown's character who we know

[35:20] from previous movies is a huge fan of his podcast t what is it ttp titan truth podcast

[35:27] which something like that terrible name never gonna get picked up you need a fucking pun dude

[35:31] yeah yeah that's the only way to do it preferably a pun that like people aren't sure whether you

[35:36] spell it uh like as two separate words like for the pun or with one word like the normal word

[35:43] yeah and uh like maybe a pun also that people are like oh was that like financially unsuccessful

[35:50] and you have to be like no no it's a kind of a loose sort of uh interpretation and then you want

[35:54] that same pun to be used for an unrelated television show on the short-lived vice channel

[35:58] so that screw up google searches forever from that point on for history yeah yeah uh but yeah

[36:04] no he's looking she's looking for brian tyree henry and she brings her friend who's the actor

[36:10] who plays her friend oh he's great he's the kid from the hunt for the wilder people then i mean

[36:17] I got more excited

[36:18] about him showing up

[36:19] than I did about

[36:19] Godzilla Kong

[36:20] or anybody else

[36:21] it's like it's

[36:21] Ricky Baker

[36:22] that's

[36:24] and he's

[36:25] he is another one

[36:27] who's like

[36:27] he's given very little

[36:28] to do in the movie

[36:29] which is just disappointing

[36:31] and it's to the point

[36:32] where I was like

[36:32] why is he in the movie

[36:33] because I guess

[36:34] he's supposed to be

[36:35] her comic relief friend

[36:36] but Brian Tyree Henry

[36:37] is the comic relief

[36:38] in all these scenes

[36:39] and the fact that

[36:41] near the end of the movie

[36:43] he's like

[36:43] I'm a hacker

[36:43] I'll fix this problem

[36:45] and doesn't fix it

[36:46] and it's like so why is he there it's but he's but i wanted to see him do more because he's a

[36:50] great emotional sport and speaking of making a meal out of a small roll while they're tracking

[36:56] down this uh this conspiracy theory guy they get some help from a local what like grocery store

[37:01] clerk played by friend of the podcast ronnie chain oh man he's so fun i said he i sent him a

[37:11] screenshot, like he said something

[37:13] like, it was something

[37:15] about like you two kids

[37:17] or something. I just sent him a thing

[37:19] that he was creepy and he sent me

[37:21] a thumbs up. So that's

[37:23] behind the scenes. Message received.

[37:25] Message received.

[37:26] So

[37:28] we watched this movie

[37:31] guys. Anyway

[37:32] I did twice.

[37:35] So do you want me to lay out the plan

[37:38] that our hero scientist

[37:40] plus bad guy has?

[37:41] And they want to get Kong to help them go through the Hollow Earth.

[37:46] He's going to lead them into the Hollow Earth because Kong, as with all Titans, is full of this energy that calls to itself.

[37:52] And it's one of these things where they're like, Kong will be drawn naturally to the point where we need him to go.

[37:59] Except he isn't.

[38:00] They've got to transport him the whole way.

[38:02] And once he goes in the tunnel, it's just a straight line right into the Hollow Earth.

[38:05] And he even slips a little bit.

[38:07] Like crashes into the sides of the tunnel.

[38:11] it's uh but they have to they're gonna have that it's rebecca hall is like hey this is the secret

[38:18] facility that we keep kong so that he'll be safe and you are telling me basically you want to like

[38:22] borrow kong so that this evil company that is clearly evil can find some energy cubes in the

[38:27] middle of the earth and based on this theory that you have and he goes yes and she's like

[38:31] sign me the fuck up let's bring it let's throw kong in that hole to give the movie credit they

[38:36] don't waste a bunch of time like showing us how they get kong out of the boat he's just on the

[38:40] boat like thank god well i found that to be a disappointment i wanted to see them drug kong

[38:46] and drag him onto this boat and then figure out how to put him on a net and get him when it's

[38:50] there with helicopters i mean it's so funny if they're like if she's like you can't use kong

[38:54] for this and he's like well we already have an aircraft carrier with huge chains attached to it

[38:57] so like can you the outlay can we can you just make this happen that's coming out of my paycheck

[39:04] if we can't get Kong.

[39:05] You wanted more Kong logistics, is what you're saying.

[39:08] Well, I wanted them to explain

[39:10] why they were doing any of this stuff

[39:12] because it just, everything was like,

[39:14] and this is what we're doing.

[39:16] And it's like, oh, why are you bringing your daughter along?

[39:18] Like, I don't know.

[39:19] As soon as she showed up, I was like, what, what?

[39:22] But it's similar in Godzilla King of the Monsters.

[39:25] They're at a secret facility where they deal with monsters

[39:27] and Vera Farmiga has brought her daughter along

[39:29] to hang out with her.

[39:30] It's like every monarch and apex

[39:32] it's all bring your daughter to work day every day when you're dealing with titans you know

[39:36] well and i just yeah and i mean this movie in particular was like somebody put a leash on this

[39:41] girl she is i mean she clearly knows what she's doing but she's gonna get stepped on yeah now

[39:46] just just for the i want to say xander speaks only for himself and not for the podcast when

[39:49] he advocates putting leashes on girls that's not something that that not something that i advocate

[39:53] certainly but uh speaking of somebody who had a toddler or a seven-year-old or whatever it's like

[39:58] I wanted a leash on that kid.

[40:00] Don't wander into traffic.

[40:02] I'm serious.

[40:02] It is true that it's weird that they have – she just has full – I mean, and the movie Meg is like this too.

[40:07] There's a top-secret facility in a dangerous place, and a kid just has free reign to just wander – which I guess is the ultimate fantasy when you're like a nerdy kid is like to have free reign all over a monster facility.

[40:19] But I don't know.

[40:21] So they're on the boat with Kong, a sedated and restrained Kong, and Godzilla is like –

[40:27] Just as if you're quoting the Wikipedia summary that I have right in front of me.

[40:30] Shush, shush, shush.

[40:32] I mean, look, if one of you wants to, like, it's clear that I'm the most confused one, and yeah.

[40:40] You're doing great.

[40:41] This part is easy to find out.

[40:42] I think you're doing amazing.

[40:42] They've got a sedated and restrained Kong, and what happens?

[40:45] You've got a titanic task, and you're making a meal of it.

[40:48] Godzilla got attacked, and I was sort of unclear as to why.

[40:52] Is there a reason why Godzilla is attacking this boat?

[40:57] Can't have two alphas, baby.

[40:59] Can't have two alphas, exactly.

[41:00] Only one of them can be the apex predator.

[41:01] Everyone else has bent the knee to Godzilla.

[41:04] But as Rebecca Hall mentioned, Kong bows to no one.

[41:06] So Godzilla's got to force Kong to bow to him.

[41:09] And he's just been itching for that.

[41:12] Godzilla's just had a King Kong-shaped hole in his heart,

[41:15] and he's been itching to feel it.

[41:16] And now, finally, he can detect that bioenergy.

[41:18] I was like, ugh.

[41:22] I can see the whole layout of this.

[41:25] At this moment, I'm like, because, you know, part of the reason why I don't, I don't remember as much to pull the curtain back is I watched this with friends.

[41:36] It was originally not going to be for the Flophouse.

[41:38] I watched it for friends.

[41:39] We were chatting and like at this point, you know, in like the text chat, I was like, oh, you know, this is they're going to fight each other.

[41:50] Like, but then it's going to be revealed, like, obviously this company, you know, wants this technology for something bad and they're going to come together and they're going to, like, attack the worst thing.

[42:02] Like, there's good, like, it's always in these versus things, like, okay, well, how can we do this?

[42:06] Like, these two people have their fans, so we need to have them ultimately team up against the true villain of the movie.

[42:14] And, you know, I'm not fucking giving myself all that much credit to say, yes, that's what happens in the film.

[42:21] But it just seems like such rote, like, okay, I guess now that he's in the water, that's where Godzilla lives.

[42:31] They're going to fight a little bit now before the big fight later on.

[42:34] So you're saying you wanted less Godzilla-Kong fighting in your Godzilla vs. Kong movie?

[42:37] I wanted more Godzilla-Kong fighting.

[42:39] They just don't need to, like, explain it so much.

[42:42] Like, I kept thinking about that, like, Barton Fink thing.

[42:45] It was just like, it's a wrestling picture.

[42:46] What do I got to draw you a map?

[42:48] Like, this is a, like, monkey, this is an ape lizard wrestling picture that we're watching.

[42:56] We do not need all this shit that is clogging it up.

[43:01] The microcosm of that is in the opening credits, there's all these, like, images and diagrams and scientific findings.

[43:07] And they show all these anatomical drawings of, like, what Kong's skeleton would be like.

[43:11] And I just wanted them to have a piece of paper that said, like a gorilla, but bigger.

[43:15] You don't need to fill in all this junk.

[43:19] It's a big gorilla and a radioactive dinosaur.

[43:22] I thought you were going to point out that in the opening credits, they keep pairing off Godzilla with different monsters from the past movies.

[43:31] And each time they have a big stamp on them and they're like, defeated, defeated.

[43:36] And you see Godzilla going up in the rankings and you're like, holy shit, Godzilla's going to do it.

[43:40] And then it pairs them off with Kong and you're like, oh, that's the movie we're about to watch, which I feel like is what you just want.

[43:46] You want to see the title bout.

[43:47] You don't want to see the undercards.

[43:48] Well, and I think, too, like you want to see you want to see, OK, what would it look like if Godzilla fights Kong on seven boats or whatever it is?

[43:56] And then what would it be like if Godzilla fights Kong in Hong Kong?

[43:59] And it's like I actually kind of wanted like four more, you know, like what?

[44:02] What if he fought him in Hollow Earth?

[44:03] What if he fought him in the, you know?

[44:05] Yeah.

[44:05] You got to buy the DLC.

[44:07] What about on a plane?

[44:08] Yeah, exactly.

[44:09] What about on a goat?

[44:10] What about with a boat?

[44:11] Yeah, I mean, they did do it with a boat, I guess.

[44:12] Well, after you beat the main game, you unlock additional levels to battle in.

[44:16] Well, they had to show them fighting each on their home turf.

[44:19] Godzilla, the ocean, and Hong Kong being Kong's home turf.

[44:22] It's named after him.

[44:23] Because his family settled it all those years ago.

[44:26] But that's why he goes there, because he's like,

[44:29] I just have a hankering for my mom's home cooking.

[44:31] So there's a fight.

[44:34] The ships disable their power to pretend that they're out of commission.

[44:39] after godzilla totally smacks kong around yeah and then i think it's a fun fight like i think

[44:45] i liked that kong was jumping from boat to boat i thought that was kind of a cool move and that

[44:52] the the wide shot that they showed in all the trailers of like kong like just giving a roundhouse

[44:58] punch to to uh to godzilla's face i was like that was what sold me on the movie where people were

[45:03] talking about i'm like yeah you know i'll probably see it but when he punched him right in the face

[45:06] in this wide shot i'm like okay yeah that that tingled my brain stem somewhat you know i'm like

[45:12] i gotta do this maybe i think and then he's like john mcclain's off the uh off the exploding

[45:17] aircraft carrier while godzilla's nuclear breath almost roasts him it's great yeah well they they

[45:22] do i wish they didn't do this falls into what we're talking about like over explaining everything

[45:26] they do a lot to make sure we know that kong is at a disadvantage here first godzilla's attacking

[45:31] him before he and he's all chained up then they're falling into the water and it feels like the movie

[45:35] was really uh going a long way towards making sure as dan said that like the the godzilla and

[45:40] kong partisans were not offended you know at any point and it reminds me of the uh i wonder if

[45:47] we're going to say the same thing the like that article about the fast and the furious movies uh

[45:51] no no oh they were they were counting how many punches yeah because jason statham and it was

[45:57] the rock could not one of them couldn't have more punches than the other but the it but it made me

[46:02] think of like the original god uh king kong versus godzilla like king kong just wins basically in

[46:08] that movie right like it's implied anyway yeah well he had electrical powers that's right he

[46:13] did get those electrical powers that's true but like it's it's funny how uh there's this this

[46:18] series kind of takes it for granted that king kong and godzilla have to exist in the same universe

[46:24] and have to fight at some point when it happened once before like the godzilla has had so many

[46:30] adventures it's like if um like like like there's so there's so much more to godzilla's story but

[46:37] it's a little bit but it's a little bit like fights oh no no yeah i mean there's love there's

[46:42] loss no but godzilla's had so many adventures with other monsters and it's there's a little

[46:47] it's something you gotta imagine godzilla is talking to his agent about this series and he's

[46:50] like kong like yeah i worked with him once like i don't understand why do people think that we

[46:56] have a thing together like i don't get it like that was one time you know yeah yeah well that's

[47:03] hollywood for you um like if they're like if if they're like uh they're like hulk hulk hogan's

[47:11] coming back for the hulk hoganiverse we got to have lou albano in there of course why i don't

[47:15] understand what is it is there some mystical connection between the two of them like i don't

[47:18] uh but anyway that's uh anyway they airlift to the the entrance to the hollow earth

[47:25] oh boy this movie okay and uh so meanwhile madison and josh have located the podcaster

[47:33] uh and uh they're all they all sneak into this apex base and find a secret facility

[47:41] uh take a monorail to hong kong and uh no you're it's not just a regular monorail though it's like

[47:51] uh they go take an elevator deep into the earth and then they take this futuristic

[47:55] monorail thing with zero rails it's a zero zero reels yeah it's it's what elon musk has been

[48:03] promising us with the hyperloop but even though it just turns out to be a tunnel you can drive

[48:06] your car through in real life yeah it takes them from what sarasota where they at tallahassee

[48:11] pensacola and the worst soda that was the joke i made earlier pensacola and it rockets them uh

[48:19] Along with some eggs of some skull crawlers or something.

[48:24] As you may remember from Kong Skull Island, those are the big bad guys in those.

[48:28] The skull crawlers that come from the Hollow Earth and are loosely based on a lizard we see for 10 seconds in the original King Kong.

[48:35] So it's important, but it's important that we know that they're like, why would they be transporting skull crawlers in this really futuristic train?

[48:43] Oh, I guess we'll find out when they get to Hong Kong, which we will when they get to Hong Kong.

[48:47] Well, and why would they have them there as opposed to already being like they were from Skull Island, which has got to be closer to Hong Kong?

[48:52] That's true.

[48:53] It really makes you wonder why Apex doesn't have one facility where they've been dealing with all this.

[48:58] Since they also, Apex in Pensacola is where they were building this, what turns out to be a giant eye, basically.

[49:04] But the rest of the thing is in Hong Kong.

[49:06] And it has the eye with it.

[49:08] It's logistics, dude.

[49:09] I mean, it's complicated.

[49:11] The only way this makes any sense is if Apex is related to Congress and Congress is like, we've got to get contracts for all these states, got to bring jobs to all these different states.

[49:20] That's why the big anti-Godzilla weapon, part of it's being built in Oklahoma, part of it's being built in Florida, part of it's being built in New Jersey, part of it's being built in Oregon.

[49:28] We've got to get those jobs there because it's more efficient.

[49:31] I could be wrong about this.

[49:32] I think it's probably more efficient to build a thing in one place.

[49:35] Wow.

[49:36] I'm not a supply chain expert.

[49:38] My dad is.

[49:39] I'm not.

[49:40] I'll ask him about it.

[49:41] uh well anyway they they discover basically what they discover in hong kong is they're making a

[49:47] mecha godzilla of course what else would they be doing um and uh the i i don't even know it's

[49:54] telepathically controlled by one of the dudes i'm not really sure like so dr sarah what he does is

[50:00] he gets into the severed head of godora the skull of godora that was bought by charles dance at the

[50:05] end of charles godzilla king of monsters we can only imagine what what uh what amazing adventure

[50:10] led to eco-terrorist Charles Dance

[50:12] giving the skull to corporate bad guy,

[50:15] what's his name again from Apex?

[50:18] Walter Simons or something?

[50:20] Simons, yeah, Walter Simons,

[50:23] the incredibly memorable character name of Walter Simons.

[50:25] And so Dr. Serizawa gets into this giant skull

[50:30] and places one of those helmets that doesn't touch your head

[50:32] but creates kind of like a Dyson air ring fan around your head.

[50:38] And he controls Mechagodzilla telepathically that way.

[50:41] But because he's controlling it through a King Ghidorah skull, it's pretty clear that this thing has some Ghidorah in it, which is not good because that monster was a bad guy.

[50:52] You can tell he's a bad guy, again, because he's not from here.

[50:55] He's a foreign monster.

[50:56] And Mechagodzilla, you know Mechagodzilla's bad because his laser beams are red instead of blue, which is Godzilla's color because Godzilla's a good guy.

[51:04] So basically, to sum up, they need King Kong to go into the Hollow Earth to get a power source they can use for a Mechagodzilla that is telepathically controlled through the skull of Ghidorah.

[51:21] It sounds so much more fun than it is.

[51:24] It sounds so much more fun, just by the way.

[51:26] They don't even need the power source.

[51:28] So they just need to do a scan of it, and then they transmit the data through, I guess, the best fucking Wi-Fi connection I've ever heard of to the surface of the earth.

[51:39] And I want to say something, too, about this Maya Simmons, who isn't even worth mentioning.

[51:47] Oh, right, his daughter, who's overseeing the—she's his man on the ground, you know, about what's going on.

[51:52] who's the least diplomatic person in this whole movie where she just is like oh there's the tiny

[51:58] sample that we want to take and people are like hey wait a minute and so all of a sudden these

[52:02] these soldiers pull guns on it notably the little girl yep and and everybody else and

[52:08] they're like we're taking this away and it's like chill out i'm sure everybody can like agree that

[52:13] like if you find a little thing of you know magic energy on the ground you can have it like it's

[52:18] mine nobody else is here it's all over the place in here yeah it's everywhere so we should we

[52:23] should mention uh up to the before before the guns get pulled uh there's they get into that

[52:28] hollow earth uh they convinced kong to go in because rebecca hall has convinced a little girl

[52:32] who has revealed that she can speak some sign language with kong she's taught in sign language

[52:36] that maybe his home is in there leads into the hollow earth gravity inversion luckily they're

[52:41] in the heaves which are these kind of like super armored battle toad little cruisers that they

[52:48] that they're in and there's a lot of ah as the camera shakes as they're dealing with all the g

[52:53] forces and as someone made clear on twitter it seems very heavily influenced by the back to the

[52:58] future ride that used to be at universal studios uh and there's a they kong jumps around in this

[53:05] hollow earth world for a long time yeah and there's no other gorillas there he's got to be

[53:10] disappointed there's no other gorillas they're in the middle of like a really cool album cover

[53:14] yeah you got this kind of neutral gravity thing going on so it's like floating around

[53:18] like floating through some glowing stones i guess those glowing stones are why this inside

[53:23] area appears to have a sun even though we're inside yeah yeah it has a sun and weather uh

[53:29] even though we're yeah we're in the center of the earth and it's got a bunch of fucking quetzal

[53:33] coddles that king kong has to battle and he like rips off one of their heads and he eats the insides

[53:38] It's great.

[53:39] And I'm complaining a lot about...

[53:41] This is a foreshadowing in that you know now

[53:43] that Kong's big move is to rip off a head

[53:45] and then drink whatever drips out of the bottom of it.

[53:47] Yeah.

[53:48] Which maybe we'll see him do later.

[53:50] And this movie, like,

[53:51] I'm complaining a lot about this movie.

[53:54] If this movie had gotten to, like,

[53:55] something as weird as this Hollow Earth sequence

[53:58] faster with less exposition,

[54:00] I would love it.

[54:01] Like, it is a truly strange sequence

[54:05] to be in the middle of this blockbuster.

[54:08] They go to, I mean, it only gets weirder when Kong leads them to, like, a hidden temple where he finds a magic energy axe that he uses.

[54:16] He plants into the ground and it unlocks, like, a throne room.

[54:19] It's, there's, there's so much, it, like, it gets so.

[54:22] All makes sense to me.

[54:23] It gets so, like, 70s pulp, like, Conan the Barbarian monster nonsense stuff.

[54:29] And it's, if this movie, if they went to the Hollow Earth real early in this movie and they cut out all the conspiracy podcaster stuff.

[54:36] And they cut out a lot of the other above ground stuff.

[54:39] And it was just like, like I wanted to see Godzilla show up in this hollow earth and then have, especially because as we find out later, he can burrow into it with his flame within seconds from the surface of the earth.

[54:48] But like it feels like the movie is briefly leaning into the weirdness and strangeness of a world where there's a giant gorilla and a giant radioactive dinosaur.

[54:57] And then the world, then the movie is like, that was a fun little tangent.

[55:01] Okay, back to the place where it's a lot of evil corporations, which is not as interesting to me.

[55:07] But anyway.

[55:08] I think a lot of it is the difference between what's on the screenplay, where you're like, well, and then they go to Hollow Earth, which on a screenplay doesn't look that interesting.

[55:17] But then when you realize, oh, that's going to be the most visually interesting part of the whole movie, maybe that should take up a larger share of it or have more importance.

[55:26] How did you guys feel about the revelation that Kong comes from, I guess, a race of beings that is developed enough to create axes that harness energy from the center of the earth for ultra strength?

[55:37] I mean, that axe looks like it was made out of a bone and a Godzilla scale.

[55:42] So it's not that complicated.

[55:44] I don't know how I feel about King Kong being able to construct basic tools.

[55:48] I don't know why.

[55:49] I just bump against it.

[55:50] I mean, don't – but great apes do that, right?

[55:54] They construct basic tools.

[55:55] I mean, really great apes.

[55:56] sometimes yeah well great babes wear hats too and stuff like that and jackass you know it's it's

[56:02] funny because it's like at a certain point i get to the this thing where they're like and this

[56:06] bit of lore is you know is true about about kong this 90 year old character and it's like

[56:11] oh okay you know like i give it the biggest of shrugs like i didn't need the receipts guys

[56:17] yeah i mean like in a vacuum i think a giant ape with a with a big axe is great i'm all for it uh

[56:25] But in the context of this movie, yeah, I don't know.

[56:28] I'm not sure.

[56:29] I guess it is funny the idea that Kong, the idea, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be beholden to the idea that Kong has any sort of continuity that this is, because again, like Godzilla.

[56:38] Continuity.

[56:39] Continuity, thank you.

[56:40] Godzilla has 50 years of adventures, and for a lot of that time there was some loose continuity between, you know, the different Toho movies.

[56:47] But Kong is like, he was in one movie in 1933.

[56:51] Then he's in another movie in the late 70s.

[56:53] Then he's in another movie in like 2005.

[56:55] That's until Kong Skull Island

[56:57] And there's Kong Lives

[56:59] But like that's

[56:59] Let's not talk about that one

[57:00] And King Kong Escapes

[57:02] And King Kong Escapes

[57:02] And God's Lover of Skull Island

[57:03] So like there's the Toho Kong

[57:04] Like King Kong

[57:05] I guess he's all things to all people

[57:07] It's not like there's this

[57:07] Grand tapestry of Kong continuity

[57:09] Or Kongtonuity as he said

[57:11] Well and even

[57:11] Even in the original Kong

[57:13] It's like he was

[57:14] Because of the things

[57:16] That he was next to

[57:17] It's like he was

[57:18] Like different

[57:19] All different heights

[57:20] During the movie

[57:21] You know like he's

[57:22] You know he's like

[57:22] 100 feet tall

[57:23] And then he's 30 feet tall

[57:24] Well, depending on what they had, you know, the other, like, props they had for him to be next to.

[57:29] Yeah.

[57:30] Well, I mean, I feel like that's the situation.

[57:32] And it feels like they're kind of playing loosey-goosey with size for this movie as well, right?

[57:37] Like, Kong is much smaller than Godzilla, right?

[57:39] Yeah, but not as much smaller as he was in the old movies, you know?

[57:44] Yeah, they wallpapered it a little bit in Skull Island where they're like, he's not done growing.

[57:47] Yeah, that's true.

[57:49] Because this is Kong 40 years, 50 years almost after we saw him in Skull Island, so he's a little grayer.

[57:54] He's a little tireder.

[57:56] He's always talking about how gorillas now don't do it the way they used to, you know, in his day, back when things were really cool.

[58:03] But anyway, so they go into this place.

[58:04] They've got the power source info now.

[58:07] The power source info is transmitted so Mechagodzilla can, you know.

[58:12] Gets a serious upgrade, you know, do his thing.

[58:14] And so they transfer the power source, which, as Stuart said, they don't need to actually bring the energy source with them.

[58:22] They just have to scan it and then send that information to the surface of the Earth by sat phone, even though they're inside the Earth.

[58:28] Jesus Christ, I want that service.

[58:30] And they just download it and inject it into Mechagodzilla through the computers.

[58:33] And it's like, is that how energy works?

[58:34] That energy is just information that you can just read it into the thing?

[58:38] Like if you whispered it into Mechagodzilla's ear?

[58:41] Information is power.

[58:42] So meanwhile, this is calling Godzilla to Hong Kong to the Apex facility.

[58:49] He shows up, but then he finds out that Kong is in the center of the earth using his axe to draw power.

[58:54] So he rears up and he does one of his big old Godzilla blasts and he shoots it right down into the middle of the earth, which is awesome.

[59:01] This is nuts that he is burrowing miles and miles into the into the earth with one Godzilla blast and it takes him very little time.

[59:08] And it's like if this was a powerful blast, it is a powerful blast.

[59:12] It's a Dentine Ice style blast. Everything would freeze around it.

[59:15] it was dentinized and this is the point where i think if this movie had been just goofball

[59:20] goofball goofball all the way through i would have been like yes definitely but the first

[59:25] hour of the movie they still feel like they're trying to take them seriously and so i told by

[59:31] this point it's hard for me to buy that godzilla can can burrow can bore a hole to the center of

[59:35] the earth that way when uh but if earlier if they had shown me like godzilla using his power to fly

[59:41] and stuff like that i would have been like okay whatever just you can do it and that level that

[59:46] level of hole drilling would obviously have horrible seismic reactions across the entire

[59:51] planet possibly greatly affect the tides and shit but don't worry about it and of course billy bop

[59:57] thornton would then be like oh godzilla is the greatest deep core driller not bruce willis yeah

[1:00:03] so we gotta send godzilla up to that asteroid the greatest movie underdog story where you send a

[1:00:08] A bunch of rig hounds up into outer space to take out an asteroid.

[1:00:13] I want to mention that up to this point also,

[1:00:16] after the bad guys have threatened the good guys for stealing the energy source,

[1:00:21] even though everyone, it's like, we know you wanted the energy source.

[1:00:24] That's why we came here.

[1:00:25] So why are you threatening us to take it?

[1:00:27] They're all attacked by maybe the most hideous character design,

[1:00:30] I think, monster design I've ever seen in a movie.

[1:00:32] These kind of like hairless bat bird creatures.

[1:00:35] Yeah, like vulture dactyls.

[1:00:38] They're so – and they're supposed to be hideously grotesque looking, and they are.

[1:00:41] And I was like, movie, you did it.

[1:00:43] This is a being that I find unpleasant to look at, like viscerally, like shoot them all down, exterminate them.

[1:00:49] Although the people that I follow on social media all love that fat lizard that got about five seconds earlier on and just ate one of the –

[1:00:56] Oh, he's great.

[1:00:56] I know.

[1:00:57] He's great.

[1:00:58] There's just this cool, like laid-back beach bum lizard that wanders into the frame for a moment and eats something.

[1:01:05] And it's almost one of those things where you're like, did they not know he was on camera when they were shooting this?

[1:01:08] It looks like he just peeked.

[1:01:10] Clear the shot.

[1:01:11] The same way that in Bridesmaids that Tim Heidecker just shows up in the backgrounds of shots.

[1:01:17] And you're like, because he's playing the fiance, I guess.

[1:01:19] But you're like, he has no dialogues.

[1:01:21] So you're like, did they know he was in the movie?

[1:01:23] That's what this lizard feels like.

[1:01:24] It's like a long-running goof, like a Joaquin Phoenix being crazy type goof.

[1:01:30] Yeah, and there's something about this lizard that you instantly see him and you're like, this lizard, he's got it all figured.

[1:01:35] out like he doesn't get it he doesn't get agitated all these other guys are being upset fighting over

[1:01:39] who's the alpha and the apex predator and this lizard is like man there's enough for everybody

[1:01:43] like let's just cool it let's i'm halfway down the list i'm like a theta predator yeah i'm like

[1:01:47] i'm and i'm happy about it i'm in the center of the earth i'm just chilling i'm just cooling my

[1:01:51] heels what a great lizard if i would i mean that we should all be as as laid back as that lizard

[1:01:56] you know the true hero of the film because he doesn't get involved in the violence right uh

[1:02:01] But, yeah, so Godzilla blasts that hole, and then King Kong, what, just jumps up through it?

[1:02:06] I forgot how he gets to Hong Kong.

[1:02:07] He jumps down through it and then climbs out of it.

[1:02:10] Oh, right.

[1:02:11] Oh, because the gravity is all mixed up.

[1:02:12] Yeah, because of the gravity.

[1:02:13] So he and Godzilla have this big old battle in Hong Kong.

[1:02:17] I think the lighting is really cool.

[1:02:19] It's like there's a lot of blues and purples, and it's great.

[1:02:23] And it's pretty tight.

[1:02:26] Kong is jumping off all kinds of crap.

[1:02:29] He's doing all these moves.

[1:02:30] He's flipping stuff around.

[1:02:31] He's using that axe of his to soak up that nuclear breath,

[1:02:35] which, by the way, I've got to say, like,

[1:02:37] I would imagine if I had to shoot things,

[1:02:39] like shoot a beam out of my mouth,

[1:02:41] you'd have to practice a lot to get good at aiming that thing, right?

[1:02:46] Probably.

[1:02:47] I mean, you see in Son of Godzilla

[1:02:48] that Godzilla's teaching Minya how to blast those things.

[1:02:50] And all he's getting out is the smoke rings.

[1:02:52] It's difficult, you know?

[1:02:53] That sounds horrible.

[1:02:55] Now, do you think this...

[1:02:56] Now, does Zack Snyder's Justice League make more sense

[1:02:58] if the axe that took out Darkseid with two chops

[1:03:01] so that he had to abandon his invasion of Earth

[1:03:02] was this axe,

[1:03:03] and it was powered up with Godzilla energy.

[1:03:06] Yeah, Godzilla's just off screen,

[1:03:07] just breathing into it.

[1:03:08] Yeah, he's like,

[1:03:09] we all gotta work together.

[1:03:10] Again, Darkseid's not from here,

[1:03:12] which means he's bad,

[1:03:13] so we gotta kick him off the Earth.

[1:03:15] Yeah, so yeah, bless him with the axe.

[1:03:18] Very pretty fight scene.

[1:03:20] Again, if it'd come earlier in the movie,

[1:03:22] maybe I'd be a happier camper,

[1:03:25] but there's a lot of neon.

[1:03:27] There's a scene where, like, you know, like, they hit one of them into a building and it shatters.

[1:03:33] And because there's so much neon, it just looks like it was a glitter factory that they fell into.

[1:03:38] You know, that's good stuff.

[1:03:39] But meanwhile, Mechagodzilla, oh, boy, he's being activated.

[1:03:43] That's a bad plan, guys.

[1:03:46] That's true, yep.

[1:03:47] I agree.

[1:03:48] You shouldn't let a Mechagodzilla loose on the world.

[1:03:51] Although this is all part of Walter Simmons' plan.

[1:03:54] He says, now we will be the apex predator.

[1:03:56] and it's like did you name your company after that like that's silly but okay it was all building up

[1:04:03] to this speech that was a cool thing well that's that and he has they even make a joke about it

[1:04:07] he has a real deep blue sea type moment was like i've realized this i had a dream once a dream that

[1:04:12] huh and then sarah zawa loses control of mecha godzilla and it kills simmons and brian tyree

[1:04:17] henry goes i wanted to hear the rest of that speech and that was the one joke in the movie

[1:04:20] You were just like, okay, that was a funny joke.

[1:04:22] That was a good joke.

[1:04:22] Yeah.

[1:04:23] So in their fight, Godzilla initially loses to Kong, and then he turns it around.

[1:04:30] He starts using his teeth.

[1:04:32] I mean, that's the key.

[1:04:33] He starts biting a lot.

[1:04:34] Well, I think he starts fighting like a lizard instead of like a boxer, you know.

[1:04:38] That's true, yeah.

[1:04:39] He does what Daniel Tiger would say.

[1:04:40] You take a bad thing, you turn it around, make something good out of it, you know.

[1:04:44] He's got those short arms.

[1:04:45] I mean, he's not going to beat Kong in a boxing match.

[1:04:47] Kong's reach is crazy.

[1:04:48] His arms are longer than his legs.

[1:04:50] He's a gorilla, like reaches his thing.

[1:04:52] So you want to jump on Kong's back

[1:04:54] and start biting him with your teeth.

[1:04:55] Like that's what you want to do, yeah.

[1:04:56] And that's kind of what happens.

[1:04:57] They do a lot of biting and fighting and whatnot.

[1:05:00] And eventually it ends with Godzilla stomping on Kong's chest.

[1:05:05] They fight and fight and bite.

[1:05:05] Wait, sorry, you're saying, sir?

[1:05:06] Godzilla stomping on Kong's chest.

[1:05:09] I think he's dislocated Kong's shoulder at some point

[1:05:11] and he's stomping on his chest

[1:05:13] and they're yelling at each other's faces.

[1:05:14] But it seems like Godzilla has won this round.

[1:05:17] I did like when they were roaring at each other's faces.

[1:05:20] That felt like they were real characters for a moment,

[1:05:21] even though, again, it did mean another close-up

[1:05:23] of Godzilla's mean old man face.

[1:05:25] Oh, it always looks like Godzilla's just taking a sip of prune juice

[1:05:28] and he's like, ooh, get off my lawn.

[1:05:31] Yeah, he's showing off how good the Shelbyville lemons are.

[1:05:35] Exactly.

[1:05:36] But Godzilla's all hurt,

[1:05:38] and then the little kid comes in to talk to Godzilla, right?

[1:05:41] Or, sorry, Kong.

[1:05:42] I mean, it'd be amazing if she went in to talk to Godzilla

[1:05:45] and she's like, sorry, Kong, you're a loser.

[1:05:47] I'm getting on the right train.

[1:05:48] Hey, Godzilla, want to learn sign language?

[1:05:50] Join up with me.

[1:05:51] Do they, like, electrify him, right, to revive him?

[1:05:56] Yes, they take the heave machine, the vehicle that they used before,

[1:05:59] they use the electricity from it to jolt Kong's heart back to the world living,

[1:06:04] and then Kong bashes into a building to reset his dislocated shoulder.

[1:06:08] Well, now, I would think that if the jumping off of the ship

[1:06:13] to avoid the Godzilla beam was a Die Hard reference,

[1:06:17] this has got to be a Lethal Weapon reference.

[1:06:19] Yeah, for sure.

[1:06:20] Where he smashes his shoulder back into place or whatever.

[1:06:22] I'm sure.

[1:06:23] And this is very much,

[1:06:25] I think, isn't it at the end of Godzilla King of the Monsters

[1:06:27] that they have to set off a bomb to power up Godzilla

[1:06:31] so that he has ultra-atomic power?

[1:06:33] So this movie is even homaging the last movie in the series.

[1:06:37] And that bomb, of course, is in a toilet.

[1:06:39] So that's another Lethal Weapon lift that they did.

[1:06:42] Yeah, yeah, and Danny Glover is sitting on it.

[1:06:44] Yeah, when it's happening, yeah, yeah.

[1:06:45] So, meanwhile, Mechagodzilla has shown up, and you're like, oh, man, Godzilla, he's going to stop these giant monsters.

[1:06:52] First thing it does is start roasting people and blowing up the streets, because he rules these streets.

[1:06:58] And Mechagodzilla starts fighting Godzilla, and Godzilla and Kong are already a little beat up at this point.

[1:07:04] They beat the shit out of each other.

[1:07:06] And now they're fighting this giant robot that has legs like Godzilla and arms like Kong.

[1:07:11] And missiles.

[1:07:12] The ultimate fantasy.

[1:07:13] And missiles.

[1:07:14] Sorry, Stuart, I forgot that you were probably building up to the ultimate fantasy.

[1:07:17] It's okay.

[1:07:18] So Mechagodzilla is very clearly under the control of King Ghidorah's skull,

[1:07:22] which I guess has some residual digital ghost understanding.

[1:07:26] It's a Digimon.

[1:07:27] It's a literal Digimon now.

[1:07:30] Unfortunately, not a Pokemon.

[1:07:32] It's very big.

[1:07:32] You could not fit it in a pocket.

[1:07:34] But, yeah, he's just like, I'm the monster now, dog.

[1:07:39] And he's blasting and roasting and really giving Godzilla the business.

[1:07:42] He's just dragging Godzilla around everywhere.

[1:07:44] Yeah, it's pretty brutal, actually.

[1:07:46] Yeah, well, because it feels like,

[1:07:49] it does feel like an old-school action movie

[1:07:51] where it's like the two heroes are fighting.

[1:07:54] That means that one hero is too weak

[1:07:56] to come against the villain,

[1:07:57] and so the villain is just taking it on him

[1:07:59] to the point that the audience is begging the movie

[1:08:02] to save our hero and to come fighting back.

[1:08:04] It's like the scene in, what is it,

[1:08:07] The Tenth Prophecy, the movie with Stacy Keach,

[1:08:10] where you know that he used to be

[1:08:12] a psychotic covert ops killer,

[1:08:14] Green Beret,

[1:08:16] and he doesn't want

[1:08:17] to use violence anymore

[1:08:18] and he goes to a roadhouse

[1:08:19] and these bikers

[1:08:20] are really beating him up

[1:08:21] and they're making him

[1:08:21] lick beer off the wooden floor

[1:08:23] and the whole time

[1:08:24] you're like,

[1:08:24] come on, Killer Kane.

[1:08:25] Like, just get up

[1:08:26] and destroy these guys.

[1:08:27] And the movie takes so long

[1:08:28] to get to that point

[1:08:29] that you're really begging

[1:08:30] for Stacy Keach

[1:08:31] to just tear these guys apart,

[1:08:32] which he does.

[1:08:32] It's like that.

[1:08:33] What about the ninth configuration?

[1:08:34] The ninth configuration.

[1:08:35] That's what I was saying,

[1:08:36] the 10th Prophecy?

[1:08:36] Yeah.

[1:08:37] Same thing.

[1:08:38] That's the sequel.

[1:08:38] Ninth configuration,

[1:08:38] 10th Prophecy.

[1:08:39] Exactly.

[1:08:40] Either way,

[1:08:42] it's it's interesting it's an interesting movie it's a weird weird movie um okay so they fight

[1:08:49] you know whatever they beat mechagodzilla the end i don't know they team up they learn the power of

[1:08:54] friendship yep godzilla they godzilla does the alley-oop of blowing his nuclear breath onto

[1:09:00] kong's axe powering that shit up and then he just dices him up man and just like a turkey dinner

[1:09:07] does he rip mechagodzilla's head off and then drink the oil out of it i think he does probably

[1:09:10] yeah yeah it did seem like he was about to i don't remember if he drinks it but yeah like

[1:09:16] like yeah this is this is uh blood from a robot it's awesome this is great i love it yeah then

[1:09:23] they have a little moment between them the two of them where it looks like oh is godzilla gonna

[1:09:28] fight kong or what's going on like are they gonna take pick it up if it's like they have like this

[1:09:32] moment of respect you know yeah and uh everyone is every they you know they're like yeah they

[1:09:37] they decide they're not going to fight each other they're going to go off it they can both be the

[1:09:40] alphas now and uh it takes two by uh rob bass and dj easy rock starts playing and we're like oh you

[1:09:47] you two crazy guys yeah you'll be back uh everyone's reunited with their families this is

[1:09:52] when looking at the wikipedia summary that i forgot that uh the character that kyle chandler

[1:09:58] plays is named mark russell and now i want to see a version of this where he's that mark russell who

[1:10:02] plays the parody songs about politicians but he does about dinosaurs comic book writer but yeah

[1:10:09] oh yeah yeah they or him too but i love the idea in this movie i want to see the version of this

[1:10:14] where there's like weird al does kind of a kaiju parody of a popular song like that's how deep it

[1:10:19] is into the culture you know yeah um but now yeah everyone's fine and godzilla and kong go their

[1:10:24] their own ways and uh does kong kong goes back to the hollow earth where he can like you know

[1:10:30] scratch his butt and sit around and you know carry his action he couldn't do that before when he was

[1:10:34] in the monarch facility on a throne though kong's throne in the middle of the earth now he's truly

[1:10:40] a king kong they really took the name literally even though he's never been that's why but he's

[1:10:47] a king without a kingdom there's no other gorillas there he just sits on the throne talking to nobody

[1:10:51] it's really sad yeah you're the only one by default you're the king yeah exactly it's it's

[1:10:57] it's a sad way to become a king when there's just nobody else left uh and i forget lizards and

[1:11:03] there's no credit scene or anything right there's no there's no teaser for another adventure i don't

[1:11:08] think so i was a little disappointed by that yeah it's like we've been we've been primed i was ready

[1:11:12] i was ready for the moment where they were like that you see some like alien you know some alien

[1:11:17] in a silver suit is like hmm mecha godzilla failed what do we do and then another guy just turns the

[1:11:23] camera goes get me megalon and then you're like uh-oh and i know megalon came from under the earth

[1:11:29] too i think so that's it's a reboot you know it's different so all right guys this is where we do

[1:11:36] our final judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie we kind of liked

[1:11:41] um i will go because i'm talking i did not care for this movie maybe look look i'm sorry that i

[1:11:49] uh my um understanding this movie was uh pretty weak i feel like i've let the listeners down

[1:11:58] but these movies no no you didn't these movies slide off my brain like they they put they try

[1:12:04] to lay so much track for something that's so seems like it should be so easy like i need

[1:12:09] both much less justification uh and more than the movie provides me just in the sense that like

[1:12:19] so much of the movie seems to be moving chess pieces into place uh in elaborate ways and yet

[1:12:26] like i still am not quite sure why the big monsters are fighting other than big monsters

[1:12:31] always fight like if it had been a thing it would have been much simpler to me if this guy's plan

[1:12:37] was like hey look i need to build mecha godzilla to protect us from these titans we need to be the

[1:12:44] apex humans need to be in charge in the meantime i am like i have discovered this frequency that

[1:12:53] is like i'm sending out these waves like we'll get the titans to fight one another and eliminate

[1:12:59] them each other until i can swoop in or something like that because like yeah at least that like i

[1:13:06] understand like they're they're like big animals and they need a big animal reason to be fighting

[1:13:11] you know but instead it's just sort of like i don't know man they just you know they rubbed

[1:13:16] each other the wrong way somehow somewhere along the line there's a surprisingly complicated

[1:13:21] emotional dynamic between the gorilla and the radioactive dinosaur i think it's there's a i

[1:13:26] i didn't hate this movie but it failed to live up to my hopes for it uh aside from a couple of

[1:13:33] actiony weird and and kind of weird visual scenes but it's like i see what you're saying that so

[1:13:37] there's a uh i think i mentioned on the podcast before there's an essay umberto echo wrote years

[1:13:41] ago called how to tell if you're in a porn movie and it's like you can't have a movie that's just

[1:13:46] sex scenes one after another you have to have some filler in between and so if you find yourself

[1:13:50] spending a lot of time going from one place to another place and then having sex and then driving

[1:13:55] from one place to another place then you might be in a porn movie and it feels like here they know

[1:14:00] you cannot have two hours of just monsters punching each other in the face rampage the movie they

[1:14:04] tried it they proved that you can't you can't do that uh you need to have some kind of plot some

[1:14:08] kind of characters and so they're trying really hard to explain it but they never tap into what

[1:14:14] is a really strong reason which is like in the best of these monster movies the monsters represent

[1:14:19] something you know like in the original Godzilla it's not about wouldn't it be scary if a big

[1:14:23] monster started knocking over buildings it's about it's what what is it like when an atomic bomb is

[1:14:28] dropped on your city you know and how do you how do you handle that or as goofy as Godzilla versus

[1:14:33] the smog monster is like it's a movie about how pollution is bad you know like it's it's like

[1:14:37] it feels like these movies should be about their natural forces that people feel superior to but

[1:14:43] are not and they try to manipulate them and they can't and they are trying to get at this with this

[1:14:48] movie and they just don't quite make it there and it's like they need a stronger reason that needs

[1:14:52] less what i would call informally technological gobbledygook i love a certain amount of

[1:14:57] technological gobbledygook like uh if anything if there was just a scene where a scientist is like

[1:15:01] you see here this this neutron energy explodes out from the pores and goes into these radiation

[1:15:07] finders if there's one scene of that i'd be like i love it now let's move on but instead there's

[1:15:11] scene after scene of it uh and yeah by the end of it you're like as you're saying dan you're like

[1:15:17] why are the monsters fighting again like what like what is are they what is their goal in doing this

[1:15:22] yeah so it's but the i did like that hong kong fight a lot it's super it's super gorgeous to

[1:15:28] look at as long as i'm not as long as i'm imagining that they evacuated the city ahead of time you

[1:15:33] know what do you guys think stewart stew yeah so uh i i gotta say i kind of like this movie guys

[1:15:45] even after what dan and i said i know uh you can't you can't hate on my parade you know that's what

[1:15:52] they say um but no i i think it i i don't i mean maybe maybe it's exactly the same quality of movie

[1:15:59] as the last one and i'm just at a different point in my life who knows you know that's what we're

[1:16:03] all just on our own individual journeys kind of like calling it godzilla but they weren't on their

[1:16:08] own individual journeys they were tied together by a mystic energy bond that's true um so i like

[1:16:15] that uh i feel like the movie is fairly light on its feet like it doesn't get bogged down too much

[1:16:21] despite being despite your opinion i think i think it actually moves pretty quickly um i like the the

[1:16:29] fights i think they're all in kind of like different environments you get a lot of different

[1:16:33] environments in this movie um it's pretty to look at uh and you can actually see the monsters i like

[1:16:39] the godzilla design uh yeah and jen like i think it's certainly a fine movie um that i'm sure

[1:16:48] there's a ton of things wrong with but for like a big blockbuster and i also think like i kind of

[1:16:52] wish i'd seen it in a movie theater i bet it was those big those big fight scenes would look

[1:16:56] fucking great in a movie theater yeah i bet they probably did yeah yeah i think i mean well i'll

[1:17:04] let you in a little secret there's virtually not a monster movie that i don't like and so i mean

[1:17:08] so it's probably a movie that i kind of like but i mean i agree with dan and that it did slide right

[1:17:13] off my brain like i i watched it twice because i watched it uh again when you guys when you guys uh

[1:17:19] contacted me and i was like oh that's what was happening in this movie like i had totally

[1:17:23] forgotten that there some things were had happened and i was like oh i finally sort of pieced the

[1:17:29] plot together and it's like this movie made no impression on me whatsoever in terms of like

[1:17:33] drama you know it was just sort of like i saw a bunch of stuff um and i have to say this is the

[1:17:40] thing that really bugged me throughout the whole movie because i was sure it was going to happen

[1:17:43] i couldn't believe that like somehow king kong wasn't knocked into an apex sign

[1:17:48] knocking off the x and then rising triumphantly with ape that's why that's why you're the best

[1:17:54] in the biz yeah it's like it's not like i think that's the greatest like visual of all time but

[1:17:59] i couldn't believe that this movie didn't do it like it's not like it would be too dumb but a

[1:18:03] movie that had the confidence to do something that over the top on the nose like that's a better

[1:18:08] version of this movie that's a movie that's not ashamed of being like it's a monster fight movie

[1:18:12] let's go all out and like it's it's getting towards that with Godzilla blasting a hole

[1:18:17] into the center of the earth but like yeah I wanted to go more I feel like if the movie

[1:18:21] had more comfort doing zany things like that and also had like one character who's a had a

[1:18:30] memorable thing about like the characters are just kind of a little too cardboardy and I wanted one

[1:18:34] of them to be weird or surprising or something the way that like i used to think about how uh

[1:18:39] the japanese godzilla movies they have tons of talky scenes that are very boring in between the

[1:18:44] monster fight scenes but there would always be like one character i'd be like what's this deal

[1:18:48] wait a minute so this is just this like bachelor scientist who has a son but it's not his son it's

[1:18:53] just like a little kid who lives with him and works with him in the lab like there's always

[1:18:56] there was always something that was like wait so she's a robot like there's there's always like

[1:19:00] something that was a little out of the ordinary and here the characters are just so kind of by

[1:19:04] the numbers yeah and they they never it was never sort of like defined who was in charge of what

[1:19:09] like you know there was there was like alexander skarsgård was giving commands to people who were

[1:19:14] clearly like military people that he had nothing to do with whatsoever you know he's he's telling

[1:19:18] people stuff that he doesn't know about i don't know i thought that that was it was you didn't

[1:19:23] have a chance to sort of say like well here's the by then by the book you know military guy and then

[1:19:27] here's the wild you know theory dude and like you know so in the characters there was no uh there

[1:19:33] was almost never a scene where a character and another character like argued really well character

[1:19:37] would be like we got to do this thing another character would say no and the first character

[1:19:40] be like let's do it and the second character be like i hope you know what you're doing and that

[1:19:43] would be the extent of the conversation you're right it's like a private company a private

[1:19:48] corporation goes to a quasi-governmental organization monarch and says can we borrow

[1:19:53] a giant monster the u.s military helps the private company transport this monster who i don't know

[1:19:59] who owns you know i don't know who has jurisdiction over that monster rebecca hall i guess massive

[1:20:03] damages losing several ships losing aircraft anybody like losing like real and and like

[1:20:10] and and people you know sailors and things like that i felt kind of the i felt kind of more bad

[1:20:15] for all the poor sailors on those boats that were getting exploded because i'm like like oh man they

[1:20:20] don't have a chance they're just everybody else is sort of like well you know that didn't work

[1:20:24] very well i mean it's all i mean this is it part part of the course for these movies but the fact

[1:20:29] that by the time they get to the hollow earth tunnel they're like yes let's do it and it's like

[1:20:33] were you not affected at all by the naval battle that you were just a part of like right they're

[1:20:38] like no i was in a big green room where they were like shaking a bunch of tennis balls at me so i

[1:20:41] didn't know what was going on i don't know i full figure it out later they told me i'm seeing a big

[1:20:45] tunnel so i guess i'm excited now but yeah there's a and it and again like if the movie was like

[1:20:51] confident enough to point out how it's the difference between a movie like um like i

[1:20:54] wanted this movie to be less like uh godzilla king of the monsters which is trying to explain

[1:21:00] everything all the time and more like hausu where it's just like there's a bunch of stuff happening

[1:21:04] here like let's get there a watermelon is laughing for some reason in the background of the scene

[1:21:09] like okay i would have loved i would have loved your pitch to this studio i want you to invest

[1:21:13] a ton of fucking money

[1:21:15] in a monster movie

[1:21:16] that's more like

[1:21:17] Housu

[1:21:17] I think they'd be

[1:21:18] okay with it

[1:21:19] when you get that

[1:21:19] hollow earth

[1:21:20] why aren't the guys

[1:21:21] from Yellow Submarine

[1:21:22] stomping around in there

[1:21:23] come on

[1:21:23] let go all the way

[1:21:24] with it

[1:21:24] you know

[1:21:25] we are the host

[1:21:31] of My Brother

[1:21:32] My Brother and Me

[1:21:33] and now

[1:21:33] nearly 10 years

[1:21:34] into our podcast

[1:21:36] the secret can be revealed

[1:21:37] all the clues

[1:21:38] are in place

[1:21:39] and the world's

[1:21:40] greatest treasure hunt

[1:21:41] can now begin

[1:21:41] embedded in each episode

[1:21:43] of my brother my brother and me is a micro clue that will lead you to 14 precious gemstones all

[1:21:49] around this big beautiful blue world of ours so start combing through the episodes uh let's say

[1:21:54] starting at episode 101 on yeah the early episodes are pretty problematic so there's no

[1:21:59] clues in those episodes no no not at all the better ones the good ones clues ahoy listen to

[1:22:06] every episode repeatedly in sequence laugh if you must but mainly get all the great clues my brother

[1:22:13] my brother me it's an advice show kind of but a treasure hunt mainly anywhere you find podcasts

[1:22:18] or treasure maps my brother my brother me the hunt is on max fun drive 2021 is coming it'll

[1:22:27] be may 3rd to may 14th to get in the spirit we asked folks like you to let us know what maximum

[1:22:32] fun and our shows mean to them you know the maximum fun network is really important to me

[1:22:38] because it is not just a collection of podcasts,

[1:22:42] but it is a lifestyle and a value system.

[1:22:46] The podcasts frequently and deftly float between meaningful and irreverent,

[1:22:51] in one moment drawing attention to social issues,

[1:22:53] and in another making dick jokes about Klingons.

[1:22:56] It shouldn't work, but it does.

[1:22:58] And I have to believe it's because Max Fun's podcasts are, at their core,

[1:23:03] thoughtful, and kind, and human during a time that has often felt cold and isolated.

[1:23:08] So keep being great and doing what you do.

[1:23:13] Max Fun Drive will be May 3rd to May 14th, 2021, and you won't want to miss it.

[1:23:18] Brilliant eps, drive-exclusive gifts, and maybe some surprises.

[1:23:22] Want to directly support the hosts of the show we just jumped into?

[1:23:26] Come back May 3rd for Max Fun Drive.

[1:23:32] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by Squarespace, the service that helps you create a beautiful website where you can blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds, and much, much more.

[1:23:44] Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers, everything optimized for mobile right out of the box, a new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions, free and secure hosting.

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[1:24:05] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:24:13] Dan, I had an idea for a website, and I was wondering if you thought Squarespace would be able to help me with it.

[1:24:18] Hey, lay it on me, man.

[1:24:19] Okay.

[1:24:20] So I've been watching these movies, these monster movies, and I keep thinking, in a world where all these new types of life form exist,

[1:24:29] These animals that we have never seen before.

[1:24:32] Godzillas, King Kongs, that super cool laid-back Beach Bro lizard that shows up just for a couple seconds.

[1:24:40] The Quetzalcoatls, those kinds of gross vulture bats.

[1:24:44] It's hard to know.

[1:24:46] Can I eat them?

[1:24:47] And that's where www.kaijewish.com comes in.

[1:24:51] Your source online for the kosher or non-kosher ratings for all the new monsters.

[1:24:56] Titans, as they're called in the new movies.

[1:24:58] Kaiju, as I know them.

[1:24:59] So kaijewish.com is your place to find out, can I eat a Godzilla or is it considered not kosher?

[1:25:06] Does that determine which titans are Jewish or kosher?

[1:25:11] Well, it depends on the titan.

[1:25:13] A titan like Kong is fairly humanoid.

[1:25:16] It's possible that he is, we can't see if he's circumcised in the movie, but kaijewish.com would be able to answer that question.

[1:25:25] But something like, you know, Ghidorah, I doubt that he is, unless he's converted upon reaching Earth, I doubt that is Jewish.

[1:25:34] Certainly not.

[1:25:34] I don't think that his family is Jewish.

[1:25:36] But at KaiJewish.com, all those answers would be answered for you.

[1:25:40] KaiJewish.com, a guide for the perplexed about monsters.

[1:25:45] So, Dan, do you think that Squarespace will be able to help me with that?

[1:25:48] I think Squarespace would be a perfect service to set up this new business that definitely will exist and be used by people.

[1:26:00] Yeah, certainly by rabbis.

[1:26:02] And also laymen who are, again, perplexed.

[1:26:05] If you're looking also, maybe you set up a website and you need, you know, some video content.

[1:26:14] well worry not because we're also sponsored by storyblocks now more than ever storytellers and

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[1:27:00] unlimited all access plan you can get unlimited downloads of everything in their library

[1:27:06] and even if your subscription ends everything you've downloaded is yours to keep uh you know

[1:27:12] i used uh storyblocks uh the last time we did a live show we've talked about it before i did a

[1:27:18] song about peeing and they helped out tremendously if you want to be like me not do a song about

[1:27:26] peeing but use storyblocks you can explore the library yeah sorry disney i didn't realize you

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[1:27:47] have some jumbotrons.

[1:27:49] Time for a j-j-j-j-j-jumbotron!

[1:27:51] Coming into the ring

[1:27:53] is Elliot Kalin, ready to read his

[1:27:55] jumbotron! I got it. I'm ready.

[1:27:58] I'm shaking my head the way boxers do when they're

[1:27:59] going in there. Okay, this is a message

[1:28:01] for alex this message is from jeremy and the message goes like this alex exclamation point

[1:28:07] it is your birthday or maybe it was depending on when this makes it happy birthday pandemic suck

[1:28:13] but i'm glad we're healthy i miss you i can't wait for future adventures outside canada to see these

[1:28:18] three sophisticated new york perverts live maybe we can even hear a letters song i know how much

[1:28:23] you love those oh that's a very sweet message i take a little bit of issue with being referred to

[1:28:28] as a pervert but sophisticated my perversions are so yeah which i which i assume just means

[1:28:35] i'm into girls with glasses yep uh i guess i'll write it in my fucking elliot journal put it in

[1:28:43] my dossier yep uh i have a jumbotron so i enter the ring i'm shaking my head also like a boxer

[1:28:52] but like i think i'm shaking it even more intensely wow i have a message for david wogan

[1:28:57] and the message is from wogan's in austin hey there doctor that's two exclamation points

[1:29:05] we wish you the happiest of birthdays the greatest of years and continued success and good times in

[1:29:13] tokyo l-w-a-t-c-d-r we'll see you in the fall enjoy

[1:29:22] I don't know what that

[1:29:24] I don't know what those

[1:29:25] letters are

[1:29:25] I hope we didn't

[1:29:26] activate a Manchurian

[1:29:28] candidate

[1:29:28] I sincerely hope I didn't

[1:29:29] somewhere or

[1:29:30] yep

[1:29:30] that was a trigger phrase

[1:29:31] and now

[1:29:32] now the end

[1:29:33] has begun

[1:29:34] uh huh

[1:29:35] Bucky Barnes is gonna

[1:29:36] burst through the wall

[1:29:37] and punch me

[1:29:38] with that arm of his

[1:29:38] not the metal one though

[1:29:40] the other arm

[1:29:41] that's what I meant

[1:29:42] the other one isn't his arm

[1:29:44] yeah that's true

[1:29:44] it doesn't belong to him

[1:29:45] they can take it from him

[1:29:46] uh hey Dan

[1:29:47] I had a small plug

[1:29:48] I wanted to plug

[1:29:49] in this plug section

[1:29:50] of the plug show

[1:29:50] of the plug house

[1:29:51] sure

[1:29:52] uh as people may know who have listened i have a comic book out right now it's called maniac of

[1:29:56] new york it comes from aftershock comics uh i wrote it the art is by andrea moody and it's in

[1:30:02] stores now unless it has sold out at your local store in which case it is available online but

[1:30:07] as always please support your local comic book store they need your business now more than ever

[1:30:11] and they are great places to go so that's maniac of new york issue three is on the stands as we

[1:30:15] record this issue four will come out in may it's a five issue series i think i can't stress enough

[1:30:21] how uh cool it is that the writer of probably the best friday the 13th riff uh in recent memory

[1:30:33] is a close friend of mine so ellie good job on that comic oh thank you very much that means

[1:30:37] thank you that's sweet okay well let's uh take some letters from listeners listeners wait are

[1:30:45] these we're just ripping them out of their hands because this is private mail that's a felony to

[1:30:49] just take letters from people oh no no these are actual letters i i took the letter e

[1:30:53] uh okay the most useful one i just have a q uh what do i do with that uh well you try to undermine

[1:31:02] the government of the united states oh yeah oh yeah because the storm is coming anyway yeah i

[1:31:06] know that because all these movies have told me that the government is lying to me about monsters

[1:31:09] or aliens or whatever you know right uh no this letter is from dan last name withheld mccoy who

[1:31:16] writes i just want to tell you i discovered your pod at the beginning of the series of

[1:31:20] unfortunate events that have befallen the globe your catalog has been a ray of sunshine in

[1:31:27] otherwise dark times tell me what horror movie villain would you attack in single combat

[1:31:34] given the choice much love dan last name withheld i'm gonna i'm drawing a line in the sand i'm gonna

[1:31:41] to say to this you know what dracula ain't shit wow he can come for me anytime like i mean you've

[1:31:50] just invited him into your house oh yeah he will come anytime while you're sleeping or something

[1:31:54] that undermines my scheme which was that you know like vampires like look i get the frightening idea

[1:32:01] behind them uh both the idea that and the alluring idea behind them but the idea that someone will

[1:32:08] feed on you and sort of like

[1:32:10] the horror and loneliness of

[1:32:12] immortality

[1:32:13] but it seems like they're also like

[1:32:16] pretty weak

[1:32:17] if you come on I mean they can turn into

[1:32:20] wolves and mists I don't know

[1:32:21] some of them can if they're powerful enough

[1:32:24] they're super strong

[1:32:26] oh so by Dracula

[1:32:27] so when you said Dracula

[1:32:29] the king of the vampires what you meant was like

[1:32:32] more like a weaker

[1:32:34] like cartoon vampire

[1:32:35] he's been on top

[1:32:37] What you meant was Chocula

[1:32:38] What you meant to say was Count Chocula

[1:32:41] And that's the one you want to come after you

[1:32:43] I'm going to stake him and I'm going to eat his chocolatey remains

[1:32:46] He's a horror movie villain

[1:32:48] Count Chocula

[1:32:49] Vampires like you just find them

[1:32:51] Cereal boxes are movies right

[1:32:52] You find them when they're asleep you stake them

[1:32:54] They sleep when you're awake vice versa

[1:32:57] Just do it

[1:32:58] Yeah it's the cycle of life

[1:32:59] What do you guys have to say

[1:33:02] Monster

[1:33:05] When you take in single combat

[1:33:07] Okay, well, I mean, I think this is probably colored by my experience with the movie,

[1:33:10] but I would have to say the killer dwarf at the end of Don't Look Now, I think I gotcha.

[1:33:15] And if I don't gotcha, if somehow confronting you makes me, drives me into like a world of madness

[1:33:22] and I end up getting stabbed to death, well, then at least I get to be with the spirit of my daughter in heaven.

[1:33:26] So, hooray.

[1:33:27] This is how I imagine Stuart getting into that situation is you use Donald Sutherland as your bait

[1:33:34] and while the killer is stabbing

[1:33:36] him, you just jump out and push him

[1:33:38] into the canals of Venice. Gotcha!

[1:33:40] Yep. You know what another good

[1:33:42] one to kill would be is a werewolf

[1:33:44] because they're just a regular

[1:33:46] human most of the time.

[1:33:47] But when you kill them when they're just a regular person, that's

[1:33:50] murder, Dan. It's not

[1:33:52] self-defense so much when they're just a

[1:33:54] person. The question is just

[1:33:56] who would you attack in single combat

[1:33:58] given the choice. So if there's

[1:34:00] like a rogues gallery of

[1:34:02] monsters in front of me and i'm like okay i'll take that guy the guy who will be a wolf later

[1:34:06] but what if he's a wolf when you're making the choice though dan you can't guarantee i mean he

[1:34:10] is only a wolf once a month so it's likely he's not going to be a wolf then you wonder why he's

[1:34:15] volunteering to fight you if he's not a wolf at that moment i'm just saying we can each put whatever

[1:34:18] conditions we want to on this hypothetical question about made up but dan what if you

[1:34:23] challenge him and he goes all right then i choose the weapon basketball and you're like oh no

[1:34:27] werewolves are great at this it's true i'm terrible escape from la all over again yeah

[1:34:33] i hate it when something turns out to be escape from la again oh man i gotta i gotta i gotta

[1:34:41] sink on that is it's one of the funniest things in that movie where it's like yeah this is the

[1:34:45] most la thing i guess he could have to do but it's not that exciting to just watch

[1:34:48] kurt russell play basketball i love that scene it's so and there's no music right it's just

[1:34:53] everyone silently watching him sink baskets like i took this in a different way i i guess i wasn't

[1:35:01] thinking about attacking to the death and i was thinking that i would go after the spider gremlin

[1:35:04] from gremlins 2 and then when i defeated it i could train it to be my pet and i could ride it

[1:35:09] around all over the place because that would be super fun at night obviously i can't ride him

[1:35:13] around at day because the sun would boil him and melt him but you know yeah then you could finally

[1:35:18] uh uh one up your alter ego the brain gremlin well he i him i mean if it was me against him

[1:35:26] it would just be too evenly matched you guys would just end up talking about i don't know

[1:35:30] like old broadway shows that you both saw yeah yeah well you can tony randall doing the voice

[1:35:34] definitely i mean i saw him on broadway in the odd couple with jack clogman oh no sorry what

[1:35:38] wasn't the odd couple was the sunshine boys uh xander i'm sure surely you've thought of this

[1:35:43] uh what's your answer oh yeah all the time i'm always daydreaming about it i don't know like uh

[1:35:48] I mean, it's like, you know, maybe the strategy would go for like a Norman Bates when he's just like not looking.

[1:35:52] You know, he's just he's just going about the business, you know, like mopping or whatever.

[1:35:57] You just get him in a headlock or something.

[1:35:59] Yeah. Well, first, first, you got to Mrs. Doubtfire him.

[1:36:02] So he thinks you're his mom and then you kill him.

[1:36:06] Oh, yeah. Then he's all discombobulated.

[1:36:08] You can do whatever you want.

[1:36:09] Yeah. Kick him out a window or whatever.

[1:36:11] Yeah, either that or, you know, somebody like Mama from the movie Mama,

[1:36:17] the freaky, like, thing.

[1:36:19] But she'd take care of you for a while,

[1:36:21] and then you'd probably just, like, leave home and never call.

[1:36:24] Like, wait, the evil ghost Mama?

[1:36:27] Yeah.

[1:36:28] Yeah, that makes sense.

[1:36:29] But you'd just never call, and then, you know, she'd kind of break her hip,

[1:36:32] and you'd put her in a home or whatever.

[1:36:34] Make a ghost tip, yeah.

[1:36:35] You'd just break her heart that way.

[1:36:36] Yeah.

[1:36:36] At one point, isn't Mama just a wig walking around on the ground like a tribble?

[1:36:41] that seems like a pretty easy time to get rid of oh yeah yeah that'd be your moment yeah uh but

[1:36:46] that's the it really made this question really made me think about like what is what do i consider

[1:36:51] a horror movie villain uh and what's a horror movie you know because i guess gremlins 2 is not

[1:36:57] what's a movie a cereal box and what's and a movie's just a cereal box so i guess i'd say

[1:37:01] it's count chocula or maybe like maybe i'd go after boo berry because i'm like come on man

[1:37:05] you're not even a specific thing you're just a ghost come on there's a lot of discourse last

[1:37:09] week about uh that horror movies can't be set in space somebody somebody made that the hot tape

[1:37:14] wait where was this discourse oh on twitter you know the hell hole of the universe yeah like

[1:37:19] somebody somebody just said that horror can't be set in space for i mean for the most dubious

[1:37:24] reasons and of course everybody had to pile on this poor person and then samuel ripped out his

[1:37:29] eyes and was like check this out dude i can see so much now and then and this and the the xenomorph

[1:37:35] is sitting there being like excuse me excuse me excuse me sir chopped liver xenomorph did a spit

[1:37:42] take and then it's little mouth did a spit take wait so does he have two two glasses one for the

[1:37:50] big one for the big mouth and a little one like a shot glass for the little mouth

[1:37:53] what is your favorite of the serial monsters i i i am partial to boo berry because i think he

[1:38:01] looks kind of like he's like a cool jazz musician and uh yeah he's the ghost from soul i like his

[1:38:07] vibe uh but like what do you got you got that you got frankenberry you got there's count chocula

[1:38:14] you got fruit brute who is a werewolf yeah only in the tarantino universe yeah

[1:38:20] i like that blueberry it's got a hat that's all it takes i like a frankenberry i think

[1:38:28] frankenberry is pretty cool yeah like i'm always i'm always drawn to frankenstein type monsters

[1:38:33] see i'm a monster type monsters thank you oh thank goodness uh i i think i'm gonna have to

[1:38:39] go with count chocolate because i like chocolate and i do like vampires no matter what dan says

[1:38:43] i like them i think they have they embody the scariest thing sex and so that's and unlike

[1:38:48] frankenstein's monster who is not sexy at all although you know what i don't know he's got a

[1:38:53] certain kind of kind of affection to him he's got he feels like a he's like dracula there's no long

[1:38:58] term relationship there which is ironic because he's immortal but frankenstein's monster i feel

[1:39:02] like he could really make a connection with him he's looking for love that's why he's so sad at

[1:39:05] the end of bride of frankenstein you know what marry frankenstein fuck dracula and kill boo

[1:39:11] berry he's already dead so i don't have to kill he's already dead what does that what does that

[1:39:16] leave me with who do i who do i get to be uh you get to be uh the lucky charms leprechaun who's

[1:39:21] kind of a monster he's always tricking those kids you know yeah i guess yeah i guess i guess the

[1:39:25] tricks rabbit he's kind of a monster because he loses all the time so tricking yeah really i guess

[1:39:29] the kids are the monsters the kids you don't know what kind of war crimes he had to do to get those

[1:39:35] medals yeah and and tony the tiger with his blood red kerchief around his neck uh uh there's one

[1:39:43] more letter it's from jerry yeah yeah there's one more cereal mascot it's the toucan from fruit

[1:39:47] loose but i didn't have anything to say about him so thanks dan for bringing it up put me on the

[1:39:50] bot i guess yeah he's got like a maurice chevalier type which makes sense he's a toucan anyway

[1:39:54] continue yeah one more letter from jared last name with hell who writes actually i guess he's more of

[1:39:58] a david niven type okay forget more yeah forget it i said david niven as as as the toucan from

[1:40:04] fruit loops uh to play count chocula probably like um you know frank langella he did he played

[1:40:10] dracula that one time like bob hoskins can play the cookie crisp uh burglar for sure for sure

[1:40:16] that's that goes without saying that's a great call that's a great call yeah uh jared last name

[1:40:23] withheld writes dear peaches when maniac of new york inevitably becomes a hit film would you

[1:40:29] consider deviating from your format and having a maniac of new york episode could i sit and listen

[1:40:34] to it while playing with all the burger king tie-in toys would you be able to give it some

[1:40:40] playful jabs can't wait for the 2027 premiere p.s thanks in advance for the surprise stewart

[1:40:46] cameo as zoo snake expert i will have been delighted to see that jared last name with

[1:40:52] it's actually it's actually too bad i'm going to be playing two roles in that movie one of them

[1:40:56] has a mustache uh zoo snake experts one the other of course my larger role that has a line is going

[1:41:02] to be uh the uh the morgue attendant who is eating a sandwich yeah yeah that's that thing

[1:41:07] ravenously i'm working on something now that has a mortgage attendant at one point and i'm like

[1:41:12] should he be eating a sandwich they always do elliot my career needs this you have to

[1:41:18] the scariest thing about this letter was not the idea of a burger king tie-in for maniac of new

[1:41:23] york which this is not for kids uh it's not your it's not your granddad's friday the 13th type

[1:41:28] thing or or nightmare on elm street where you could merchandise it with with dolls for children

[1:41:32] uh but the idea that we would still be doing the podcast in 2027 which is effectively what

[1:41:37] 20 years of us doing the podcast at that point um i mean i'm game if you guys are but that seems

[1:41:42] like a long time to be talking about bad movies what do you think xander as the pivot will they

[1:41:47] still be making bad movies by then i think maybe they'll have figured it out by then they'll have

[1:41:51] the they'll have the formula right they'll all be making good ones okay i can just see you guys

[1:41:55] taking your hat off and just throwing it on the ground they've stopped making bad movies

[1:41:59] it's just so frustrating there's a big headline in the newspaper oh no i'm walking down the street

[1:42:04] and I'm like, life is sweet.

[1:42:05] Gonna celebrate 20 years of the Flophouse next year.

[1:42:08] And then a newsie runs by and goes,

[1:42:09] extra, extra, they figured it out.

[1:42:11] No more bad movies, only goodies from now on.

[1:42:14] Hand me that paper, hand me that paper.

[1:42:16] Tarnation.

[1:42:17] You're like reading through the paragraphs like,

[1:42:21] oh my God, it checks out.

[1:42:23] They did it.

[1:42:24] That would work.

[1:42:26] It all checks out.

[1:42:26] How am I gonna pay my mortgage?

[1:42:28] I'll finally have bought a house by then.

[1:42:32] Oh, good, good.

[1:42:33] That has a mortgage.

[1:42:34] I mean, I don't think you're paying cash.

[1:42:36] I mean, if we're fantasizing, why do you have to have a mortgage in this?

[1:42:40] But I'm not wearing pants.

[1:42:43] That's the fantasy part.

[1:42:44] Okay, that's the fantasy.

[1:42:44] Because normally in life, I'm forced to wear pants at all times.

[1:42:48] Even in the bathtub.

[1:42:51] By social customs, and even in the bathtub.

[1:42:53] Yeah, but you do take a bath in a store window, so that's why.

[1:42:57] I do, yeah.

[1:42:58] Yeah, Stuart's famous.

[1:43:00] With all the other puppies.

[1:43:00] If you're ever in New York City, just go to the pet shop that Stu works part-time in as a display window bathtub being in her, hanging out with puppies in pants.

[1:43:10] Don't worry, he's wearing pants.

[1:43:11] Xander, would you stick with us to the year 2027?

[1:43:14] Oh, absolutely.

[1:43:16] I still got comics to draw.

[1:43:17] Like, what do you think?

[1:43:18] I'm listening to nothing or music?

[1:43:21] Like an idiot?

[1:43:22] You're listening to something.

[1:43:22] Like a moron?

[1:43:24] Wasting your time on musical notes?

[1:43:28] Have you heard Nate Booberry, you jazz musician?

[1:43:31] Get out of here.

[1:43:31] Listening to something that might soothe you or bring you joy or feel emotion

[1:43:37] rather than just three idiots yap about something dumb.

[1:43:40] Infuriate me?

[1:43:41] Yeah.

[1:43:42] Yeah.

[1:43:43] Okay.

[1:43:45] Well, let's move on.

[1:43:47] Three idiots who yap about something dumb.

[1:43:49] And then I just start crying.

[1:43:50] Let's move on to recommendations.

[1:43:54] I got a quick one.

[1:43:57] This is called The Wolf House from 2018.

[1:44:02] You can find it on—

[1:44:04] Wolf Hall?

[1:44:04] No, not the—

[1:44:05] Yeah, I think you mean Wolf Hall.

[1:44:06] Not Wolf Hall, the Hilary Mantel books.

[1:44:10] In the Company of Wolves?

[1:44:12] Or the adaptation of the same.

[1:44:13] I think you mean Wolf with Jack Nicholson.

[1:44:16] No, not the weird Mike Nichols movie about—

[1:44:20] Do you realize, like, I went back and looked at that.

[1:44:22] Like, I saw it at the time.

[1:44:24] I had forgotten everything about it.

[1:44:26] Because you were such a big Mike Nichols fan at the time when you were a kid.

[1:44:28] I was a fan of things that involved wolves.

[1:44:30] I mean, that sure changed.

[1:44:34] You were just telling us what weak babies werewolves are.

[1:44:36] Well, the man part is the weak part.

[1:44:39] Oh, fair.

[1:44:40] I had forgotten that that's in the high-powered world of publishing,

[1:44:43] like the cutthroat publishing world.

[1:44:46] And it's just so funny now that publishing has gone through so many travails.

[1:44:52] I mean, that part's not funny.

[1:44:54] I wish that we had a healthier publishing world.

[1:44:57] But that's what he needs to be bitten by a wolf to succeed at,

[1:45:01] the cutthroat world of...

[1:45:03] I'd assumed it was big business or something, but anyway.

[1:45:06] The Wolf House, it is available.

[1:45:11] You can watch it on Shudder.

[1:45:12] It is an animated movie.

[1:45:14] It is a movie that it helps to have the context ahead of time

[1:45:20] that like uh you know in chile under uh pinochet there was this uh cults uh there was a lot of like

[1:45:29] horrific abuse that took place and part of this cult it's uh you know it's there's a very horrifying

[1:45:37] real life history that this uh movie gestures to and uh without some sort of context i think it

[1:45:44] would be sort of baffling what's going on uh because the plot is sort of not there in a

[1:45:52] traditional way it's about a young girl who you know finds this uh a house in the forest a manned

[1:46:00] house and it's sort of like this fairy tale situation where the house kind of morphs around

[1:46:05] her and you know she adopts these two pigs that turn into children and it's basically it's all

[1:46:15] getting at kind of the the rot the mental rot of having been subjected to this trauma and how that

[1:46:23] stays with you and how places can be sort of infected with this you can pass it along that's

[1:46:29] all very like upsetting uh but the interesting thing about the movie that i have not mentioned

[1:46:35] yet is this is an animated film and it is done in a very interesting way like it is uh the house

[1:46:42] itself is like a physical set that they then paint on the walls to do animation like there are like

[1:46:49] 2d characters that are painted that will move across the walls sometimes they'll leave the

[1:46:53] walls and sort of come into the 3d space and it's a paper mache like big sort of herky-jerky dolls

[1:46:59] like the character will sort of uh disassemble itself into its component paper mache parts and

[1:47:06] reassemble itself differently like the the space is in constant flux the characters are in constant

[1:47:12] flux as an animated movie it is one of the most sort of ambitious and interesting to look at

[1:47:19] things i've ever seen as a traditional movie movie it plays more like kind of an art installation

[1:47:26] than a film but it's you know under 80 minutes long um if you can handle kind of that length

[1:47:34] if you can handle the disquieting parts of it the upsetting parts of it it's a very interesting

[1:47:39] thing to see so that's and it's animated so it's for fun for the family uh no do not watch this

[1:47:43] with any children all right uh i'm gonna uh it's time for stewart to make a recommendation so you

[1:47:51] know what i'm doing i'm pulling up my shutter viewing history oh boy uh so yeah i'm going to

[1:47:56] recommend a movie that is on shutter it's a movie from 1981 so i'm straying close to elliot territory

[1:48:02] for an oldie i'm recommending a movie called butcher baker nightmare maker uh kind of a

[1:48:10] a weirdo horror movie uh about a young man who is living with his young orphaned man who is living

[1:48:17] with his aunt who has this like weird uh dominant uh almost sexual uh fascination with her nephew

[1:48:27] uh the aunt is played by this woman susan terrell who is incredible she is like way out there uh

[1:48:35] this is a great like uh kind of i would say this is a great like good bad horror movie uh that is

[1:48:44] weird and has some straight like a lot of twists and turns and over-the-top performances uh it's

[1:48:50] definitely if you like like a fun uh cheapo good bad horror movie totally check this one out i will

[1:48:57] say that it does have uh it came out in 1981 and it has a a gay panic uh subplot uh that is i'm not

[1:49:07] in no way am i going to say it's progressive but it is it didn't quite go in the directions i

[1:49:12] expected it to for being a movie that came out in 1981 uh and all in all i think it's if if you like

[1:49:18] weirdo good bad horror movies uh check it out uh before i get to my recommendation i want to

[1:49:23] mention here's a way to tie that into previous discussion in this episode so it seems less like

[1:49:28] i was just talking about random nonsense susan terrell was also in the great movie fat city with

[1:49:32] stacy keach so that's why i talked about stacy keach earlier in the episode okay okay it all

[1:49:37] ties together it all makes sense oh yeah you're on base you're on base okay good good uh uh xander

[1:49:43] do you want to go with your recommendation next group oh sure so i'll i'll keep uh i'll stay in

[1:49:48] my uh in my on brand for uh for the kaiju guy who comes in but uh uh two so i have a couple

[1:49:55] recommendations one of course is uh these are all a couple years old uh shin godzilla um which is

[1:50:03] the the the most recent japanese uh kaiju movie and it's interesting in that one there's only one

[1:50:10] monster and two uh it as a godzilla movie it doesn't even take into account uh the original

[1:50:17] godzilla movie which most sort of like reboots of godzilla have sort of said oh we haven't seen

[1:50:22] this monster since 1954 but he he came that one time but but never again um but this one is like

[1:50:29] this is a never before before seen thing and instead of sort of saying oh it's you know it's

[1:50:34] a metaphor for nuclear power nuclear uh weapons it's a metaphor for like the fukushima nuclear

[1:50:41] disaster and um and the absolute mess that the that the government made uh with that and uh it

[1:50:48] has beautiful monster design it is uh it's done by um the guy made a neogenesis evangelion so it's

[1:50:55] like super fast and paced and uh um and a beautiful film um i do not recommend watching

[1:51:02] the original king kong versus godzilla because i was re-watching that a little bit ago and uh

[1:51:07] it is extremely racist there's a whole section of uh blackface that you will go wow i i really

[1:51:15] forgot that that was in that you know that and that every movie in the 60s had to have that kind

[1:51:20] of like bewildered uh natives being given a radio and freaking out about it um and uh and then my

[1:51:31] final recommendation is if you enjoy the kookiness of um godzilla versus kong i recommend king kong

[1:51:38] escapes the uh um the rankin bass slash toho production where they uh uh where king kong

[1:51:46] fights his metal doppelganger the mecha kong which uh is the first mechanical kaiju to appear

[1:51:54] and it is horrible it's a horrible movie and it's delightful it's one of the best movies i've ever

[1:52:01] seen i remember as a kid really loving that movie and loving the design of that robot kong and yeah

[1:52:07] it's just like that's a movie where it's like they're like we're making this for kids right

[1:52:12] okay good let's just do it like let's get it up well and it's the opposite of all the modern sort

[1:52:16] of like uh mechanical design where it's like there's very few shapes you know it's just like

[1:52:21] here's the the mouth shape here's the eye shape and it's and it's like elegant instead of just

[1:52:26] being a whole bunch of stuff crammed together yeah super busy lights flashing things whirling

[1:52:31] around with that was with the mecha godzilla design in in this one in godzilla versus kong

[1:52:36] it was like yeah there are a lot of moving parts and it was hard for my eye at sometimes to like

[1:52:40] make a humanoid or godzillaoid shape out of them you know because there was so much stuff going on

[1:52:45] but yeah that that that robot kong is just like yeah there's a lot of curved metal pieces that

[1:52:51] are just kind of bolted together like he always reminded me i guess it looks like a king kong

[1:52:54] it's like an it's like if king kong was a was an antique submarine kind of like that's that's kind

[1:52:59] of kind of the design to me right yeah and that there would be like bolts as if he were made in

[1:53:03] 1962 or whenever this movie came out yeah uh i i don't have a godzilla movie to recommend but i do

[1:53:09] have a japanese movie to recommend oh yeah because they you know i hadn't watched japanese movie in a

[1:53:16] while and i said oh i'm gonna watch one so i watched a cult is my passport uh it's a yakuza

[1:53:21] film from 1967 it's directed by takashi namura and it stars joe shishido who you may know as

[1:53:27] the japanese actor from the 60s who had his cheeks artificially big end so he always looks like a

[1:53:33] chipmunk that's carrying nuts in his cheeks and it's very off-putting until you get used to it

[1:53:37] uh i've seen a bunch of of crime movies with him in them and he's always supposed to be the

[1:53:42] toughest baddest ass guy but he's got these like weird chipmunk cheeks anyway uh he it's it's an

[1:53:47] interesting thing that he did to differentiate himself from other japanese actors at the time

[1:53:51] but uh long-time listeners will know i am not a fan of hitman movies usually but uh this is one

[1:53:57] where joe shishito plays a hitman he and his partner are hired by one yakuza family to kill

[1:54:03] the boss of another yakuza family and after they do it they get totally sold out and now they're

[1:54:08] in hiding and on the run and now they're up against these these two families working together

[1:54:12] basically and it's super kind of 60s new wave cool style it's very like laid back and uh and

[1:54:21] very jazzy uh with a lot there's a lot of neat things with like fast cuts and stuff and there is

[1:54:26] a gunfight at the end which takes place in a totally featureless void of a desert kind of

[1:54:33] space in which joe shishito somehow still manages to kill everybody and never get hit by a bullet

[1:54:38] even though there's nothing to hide behind and they're all just kind of standing there uh that

[1:54:42] sounds like the end of a lot of comics that i've drawn where you're like you know what would really

[1:54:46] speed this along there's no backgrounds well the same or the same way godzilla movies they know

[1:54:51] even if they started in a city they always ended up on some kind of like grassy plain with like

[1:54:55] little trees and maybe a small hills and you're like weren't they in a city like a second ago

[1:54:59] like but uh it's a it was a it's a fun tight little uh kind of uh you know new wavy uh you

[1:55:09] know uh crime movie where it's all about how basically the life of crime is a really depressing

[1:55:14] one in an existential fashion so a cult is my password it may be on the criterion channel

[1:55:19] right now i don't know but it is available through them on dvd well that's a lot of recommendations

[1:55:26] a lot of them a lot of recommendations someone there's got to be one in there for someone to

[1:55:31] like all of you must do your homework over this next uh space until the next episode uh but for

[1:55:38] now uh thank you xander for coming uh and being a guest at short notice as well is there um a place

[1:55:46] where people can find you?

[1:55:47] Is there a thing

[1:55:48] that you would like to plug?

[1:55:49] I mean, within reason.

[1:55:50] I know you don't want people

[1:55:50] showing up at your house.

[1:55:51] Well, I mean,

[1:55:52] I'm offering him.

[1:55:53] He said would like.

[1:55:54] Would like.

[1:55:55] Okay, that's fair.

[1:55:56] I mean, it's not like Dan

[1:55:57] challenging a vampire

[1:55:58] to show up at any moment.

[1:55:59] No, just one vampire, Elliot.

[1:56:03] Dracula.

[1:56:03] The big, the main one.

[1:56:05] Dracula, I only have time

[1:56:07] to fight at four

[1:56:08] in the afternoon.

[1:56:09] Right, exactly.

[1:56:11] Well, I mean,

[1:56:14] people can find me

[1:56:15] on Twitter,

[1:56:15] Xander underscore Cannon.

[1:56:17] And if you want to find me on Facebook, you could, but I'm not going to answer anything because I don't even look at that thing.

[1:56:22] And, yeah, my comic is called Kaiju Max, and you can find it virtually any online retailer.

[1:56:31] I actually recommend bookshop.org if you want to not feed Amazon for a moment because it will sort of source it from local bookstores.

[1:56:41] I don't know how they do it, but they figure it out.

[1:56:43] They just order it off of Amazon and they tell you.

[1:56:45] They were up on Amazon at deep discounts.

[1:56:47] I've got to say, when I bought the first Kaiju Max trade, I bought it for Ben Planet in New York.

[1:56:54] And I think it was filed in the young adult children's section.

[1:56:59] And I'm like, that's fucking crazy.

[1:57:02] Yeah, I can't tell you how many times people tell me that they got it in the children's section.

[1:57:06] And it's like, oh, God.

[1:57:08] or i had to i had to explain to a woman at uh at a paris comic-con uh that that her child who was

[1:57:15] looking through it was i was like please don't and she only spoke italian and i was like uh

[1:57:19] so we're trying to find a a language that we spoke in common and uh so she had to hear some

[1:57:26] second grade or you know some some sixth grade spanish from me um yeah but uh but yeah it's

[1:57:32] really i mean i need to do something that's for all ages next because people think that

[1:57:37] they always think that it's yeah oh they really do and kaiju max like i can't i can't say enough

[1:57:43] what a what a great series it is and how you take something that seems like it should be

[1:57:48] kind of like a sketch premise like a kind of like a joke premise about oh there's a there's

[1:57:53] as there's a prison for the big monsters and turn it into like oh these are real characters and they

[1:57:58] have real hates and loves and bad pasts and and tragic futures and like they and their their

[1:58:06] traumas linger from one you know experience to the next and it just it every time i read it i'm like

[1:58:11] there there are parts where i'm laughing and then by the end of the series i'm like

[1:58:14] crying and i'm like why am i crying about this this like this mechagodzilla character you know

[1:58:19] these dumbest possible characters yeah no i mean it was it was that when i when i proposed it it

[1:58:25] was just like here's here are these two mashed up things here's the list of gags you know that's

[1:58:29] about 28 items long and then uh you know and then i get bored with doing that and so i have to make

[1:58:35] it really depressing or or really melancholy i should say yeah yeah there was a run i can't

[1:58:39] remember which season it was but there was a run where it's like i would i'd have to like prepare

[1:58:43] myself for each issue i'm like this is gonna fucking crush me okay no i gotta get ready for

[1:58:49] this it's i mean it's great though no but it is and it that you do uh it i mean it's another prison

[1:58:54] thing but like like in orange is the new black you'll introduce a character as kind of a background

[1:58:58] character and then give that character their moment later too i'm thinking of there's the um

[1:59:02] the like elder god lovecraft style uh a woman character who she's got like a it's like a cattle

[1:59:09] skull with with worms coming out of it and yeah goat is her name yeah and how like when she first

[1:59:15] showed up it's like oh i get this joke that it's like she's like a you know a like a poor drug

[1:59:21] addict but who's an elder god and then when she gets her story you're like oh this is heartbreaking

[1:59:26] like i want i feel for this character i feel i feel for ghosts so badly you know it does and

[1:59:31] it makes it sound it makes the book the way we're describing it sounds depressing but it's just it's

[1:59:35] a it's a it's a book that could be just a joke but it's a really moving book you know yeah i have a

[1:59:41] lot of respect for taking something that seems silly and treating it deadly serious but i mean

[1:59:48] i do want it to always be absurd like i there's a there and i feel like people have said that like

[1:59:54] oh i didn't like the artwork when i first saw it because i didn't think it was you know substantial

[1:59:59] enough but it's like but then they realized oh if it were i don't know more vivid or more realistic

[2:00:04] you wouldn't like it you would you wouldn't tolerate it it would be so it would be so

[2:00:08] unpleasant you know i need to be steven bassett level detail right well and i mean i there was a

[2:00:17] ryan brown who you may know he does a comic called the curse words and god hates astronauts

[2:00:21] was going to be the original artist on it

[2:00:23] and I feel like I would have written it very differently

[2:00:25] for him because it would have been so

[2:00:27] his style is really

[2:00:29] you know it's like he

[2:00:30] feels more solid and it feels

[2:00:33] more realistic and it feels more sort of

[2:00:35] I don't know I don't know it would be

[2:00:37] the difference between sort of like a 60s monster

[2:00:39] movie and a

[2:00:40] and you know the Godzilla vs. Skong

[2:00:43] you know like it's with the

[2:00:45] how silly the and how unreal

[2:00:47] things seem you know if

[2:00:49] he were doing it it's like

[2:00:51] all these really unpleasant stuff would be like twice as unpleasant and I don't yeah there are

[2:00:56] some things in there that are I mean we should also say for for people that there are certain

[2:00:59] uh there are things that happen to characters that are very unpleasant and very uh uh there's

[2:01:04] sensitive material in there you know yeah yeah I I thought I mean when I was first doing it I

[2:01:10] I didn't like trigger warnings and content warnings weren't really a thing but I would

[2:01:15] definitely sort of say that now or it's like yeah there's some assault and you know and I

[2:01:19] kind of regret putting that in to a degree i think it was i played it off okay but you know

[2:01:24] but it's but as i look back and i'm like i was probably doubling down on sort of like

[2:01:29] edgelordy stuff that i should have maybe maybe thought twice about

[2:01:33] anyway it's it's really upsetting and it's a terrible book don't pick it up

[2:01:39] no it's a great book and uh thank you so much for joining us today uh so we can have you on

[2:01:47] there's there's no one we trust more with kaiju right good good i'm glad to be the absolute

[2:01:53] number one uh expert you know yes thank you again well thanks you guys i really i mean i love the i

[2:02:00] love the flop house i list i mean i really do whenever i have to pencil a whole issue i listen

[2:02:05] to probably i don't know 18 episodes back to back and uh you know sometimes i'll look at like a way

[2:02:11] that i've drawn a hand and i'll be like i remember they were talking about doolittle or something

[2:02:16] so when i'm watching uh when i'm reading an issue and i'm like man these guys all look

[2:02:23] fucked up i can blame myself you can point those fingers right back at yourself

[2:02:28] if listeners pick up the book now just remember while you're reading it like we were talking

[2:02:33] about do little or some shit well thank you to jordan cowling for producing the show thank you

[2:02:41] to MaximumFun.org

[2:02:43] Go over there

[2:02:45] to find all sorts of other great

[2:02:47] podcasts. If you like

[2:02:49] this show, please spread

[2:02:51] the word either by leaving us a review on iTunes

[2:02:53] or via all your favorite

[2:02:55] social media or just

[2:02:57] talk to a human being for once in your

[2:02:59] goddamn lives. Come on, people.

[2:03:01] Yeah, or take out a billboard ad or an ad in a

[2:03:03] local newspaper. They need the business. Skywriting.

[2:03:05] Probably the

[2:03:07] least effective, but sure, if you want to.

[2:03:09] Unless you happen to be

[2:03:11] at that beach.

[2:03:12] At that second.

[2:03:13] I should listen to the floor...

[2:03:16] Okay, it's all...

[2:03:19] Oh, no, it's all gone.

[2:03:20] Maybe it wasn't it.

[2:03:21] Maybe it was just clouds

[2:03:22] to begin with, just clouds.

[2:03:23] But anyway, for the floor porse,

[2:03:25] I've been Dan McCoy.

[2:03:26] Hey, I've been Stuart Wellington.

[2:03:28] I'm Ellie Kalin,

[2:03:29] and we've been joined by...

[2:03:31] Xander Cannon,

[2:03:32] kaiju expert number one.

[2:03:34] Bye!

[2:03:41] on this episode we discuss wait hold on no no i i'm i'm looking at the i was looking at the

[2:03:54] name because like it's i can't remember but it should be kong versus godzilla yes i i never

[2:04:01] remember which okay anyway

[2:04:03] MaximumFun.org

[2:04:07] Comedy and culture

[2:04:09] Artist owned

[2:04:10] Audience supported

Ep. #341 - Godzilla vs. Kong, with Zander Cannon

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