Ep.#459 - War of the Worlds (2025)

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Hey, it's Dan. These pre-rolls can get boring quickly, so I'll be fast.

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[0:23] as well as all the info that is too much to say here.

[0:27] Now, the show.

[0:29] On this episode, we discuss War of the Worlds.

Elliott Kalan

[0:32] No joke, guys. This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen.

Dan McCoy

[0:58] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:03] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05] You know me. I'm Elliot Kalin and continue to be to this very day.

Dan McCoy

[1:08] Elliot seemed to be the most sure of who he was out of the three of us.

[1:12] Just looking at our faces and tones of voice, Elliot was very confident.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16] I checked my driver's license right before the recording.

[1:19] And also the tag on the back of my pants.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20] Yeah, Scott Bakula had just jumped into my body, so I was trying to figure it out behind the mirror.

[1:26] Oh, boy.

[1:28] That could be worse.

[1:29] Once Scott Dracula jumped into my body and it was not pleasant.

[1:33] I'd kind of be into it. Scott Dracula was a smoke show back in the day.

[1:38] Oh, yeah. For sure. For sure.

[1:40] Now, do you think he jumped into my body and he's like, okay, what is my name?

[1:43] And he saw on the stovetop, he saw a bubbling bowl of stew.

[1:46] He's like, stew.

[1:47] Then he saw a piece of Dan's lovingly painted artwork.

Dan McCoy

[1:51] He's like, art.

[1:52] I assumed he just saw like the two of us and recognized us from the statues of us in the future.

[1:59] Oh, statues in the future.

[2:01] For bringing world peace.

[2:02] For being one of the best podcasters who brought world peace.

Stuart Wellington

[2:04] Yeah, yeah.

[2:05] Behold my works, I, Azadandius.

[2:10] Behold my works, you mighty.

[2:12] And laugh.

Dan McCoy

[2:13] Well, speaking of the old world being destroyed, War of the Worlds.

[2:20] Yeah, why not?

Elliott Kalan

[2:20] Dan, Dan, thank you for doing that.

[2:22] For otherwise, I would have just started reciting Ozymandus and nobody wants that.

[2:26] Guys, I met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and truckless legs of stone stand in the desert and buy them on the sand to have shattered visage lies.

[2:33] I'll tell you about it later.

Dan McCoy

[2:34] Okay, sure.

[2:36] I'll tell you about this ancient mariner I ran into.

[2:40] Oh, boy, you were on the way to a wedding.

[2:42] It was not convenient.

Stuart Wellington

[2:44] Can I tell you about Xanadu?

Elliott Kalan

[2:47] We did it.

[2:48] We covered all the romantics.

[2:49] We did it.

[2:50] We did it.

[2:51] Not the modern romantics.

[2:53] No.

[2:53] Or the new romantics.

[2:54] No.

[2:55] Oh, so, Dan, War of the Worlds.

[2:58] This movie, you, we were going to do a different movie.

[3:01] We don't even need to talk about it.

[3:02] And it was like, you rushed into the Flophouse press office.

[3:06] You were like, hot off the presses.

[3:07] Stop the presses.

[3:08] We got to do War of the Worlds.

[3:10] And you hit the, we got one alarm for, like, Ghostbusters.

[3:14] And I was like.

Stuart Wellington

[3:15] Which Ice Cube hits multiple times in this movie, basically.

[3:18] See, that's true.

[3:18] He does.

Elliott Kalan

[3:19] And I have to say, I had never heard, I'm, I, my life at this moment keeps me too busy to be aware of much going on in the world.

[3:27] Uh-huh.

[3:27] Due to a combination of, of work and family stress.

[3:30] And so I had never heard of this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[3:31] So when you're not working or familying and you're like, you just pull up your phone to look at stuff.

[3:36] What are you looking at?

Elliott Kalan

[3:37] When you, it's the idea of a time when I'm not work or familying is an interesting one.

[3:41] And I hope to explore that idea at some point.

[3:43] Oh, okay.

[3:44] But, so Dan mentioned this movie.

[3:46] I was not aware of it.

[3:47] I mean, certainly aware of the story of War of the Worlds.

[3:49] But Dan, but I have to say, Dan, thank you for bringing this one into my life.

[3:52] Sure.

[3:52] Because I would have just passed it by and it is, it is a special piece of stupid.

[3:58] Yeah.

[3:58] That I was not expecting.

Dan McCoy

[3:59] It has, it has gone sort of mildly viral.

[4:03] Like there's a lot of internet chatter about how terrible this is.

[4:07] And there's articles.

[4:08] It had a, it had a perfect 0% Rotten Tomatoes score until very recently.

[4:13] Armin White.

[4:15] My friend Kimber, who's a film critic.

[4:18] A trenchant satire on the security state, says Armin White.

[4:20] She was like, oh, my friend Jordan ruined the 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[4:26] But then I read his review for Entertainment Weekly and it wasn't like a good review.

[4:31] It was like, is it really that bad?

[4:34] You're going to have fun because it's dumb.

[4:36] So I'm like, I don't know if that's a fresh review on Tomatoes.

Stuart Wellington

[4:40] I think, yeah, I think their algorithm that determines whether something's fresh or not fresh did a bad job on that.

[4:46] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:47] And don't ask them to say what's funky fresh.

[4:49] They just don't know.

[4:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] But it's a case where like I feel like a lot of people have deliberately watched a bad movie or maybe not deliberately.

[4:57] But more people have encountered a really bad movie than is normal because Amazon, you know, pushed this so hard.

[5:03] It's like, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[5:03] According to the Chiron, it says top 10 in movies.

Dan McCoy

[5:07] Yeah.

[5:08] Of all time.

Elliott Kalan

[5:09] It's always amazing to me when Netflix does the thought too, but Amazon does it where they'll be like most watched today, top 10.

[5:16] And it's like, yeah, because you put it on everybody's home screen.

[5:20] Yeah.

[5:20] It's right.

[5:20] You can't.

[5:21] It's not a level playing field.

Stuart Wellington

[5:23] You guys were the, you guys are the only streamer where you can watch fucking To Live and Die in LA.

[5:28] Like that should be top 10.

Elliott Kalan

[5:30] It's a little bit like if you were like, once again, Donald Trump is the most talked about man in America.

[5:35] He's the fucking president.

[5:36] He's on the news all the time.

[5:37] Like, of course.

Stuart Wellington

[5:38] Andy does everything possible to be talked about all the time.

[5:40] To get talked about.

[5:41] Yeah, exactly.

[5:41] He's like, I'm bored.

[5:42] I'm going to climb on a roof.

Dan McCoy

[5:45] Oh, no.

[5:46] We got to get the fire department to get him down again.

[5:48] Do we have to, Dan?

Stuart Wellington

[5:48] He's fucking recycling Dharma and Greg plots now.

[5:51] Like, Jesus Christ.

Dan McCoy

[5:53] Leave him on the roof like a hangover movie.

[5:56] Let's see.

[5:57] You left your DVD of The Hangover on the roof.

[5:59] Did you ever get it down?

[6:00] It's melted.

[6:00] Well, it melted.

[6:01] It was a hot day.

[6:03] Did that make it better or the same?

[6:07] It made it unviewable.

[6:09] What does that do in your eyes?

[6:10] That's a good question.

Elliott Kalan

[6:11] So, Dan, what's your experience with War of the Worlds?

[6:13] I'm sure you must have encountered this story.

[6:15] It's one of the, I would say, one of the two most fundamental science fiction stories of Western literature along with Frankenstein.

[6:22] I'm sure you've encountered it before.

[6:23] What's your experience with War of the Worlds?

[6:25] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:25] I read, well, when I was a kid, I read one of those little classic illustrated books.

[6:30] Of War of the Worlds.

Stuart Wellington

[6:32] I feel like the Flophouse can, like, just unabashedly recommend classic illustrated books.

Dan McCoy

[6:37] Yeah.

[6:37] And then I eventually read the, you know, the H.G. Wells original.

Elliott Kalan

[6:42] And I'm more of a Little Wars guy, but I don't know that I've ever seen the George Powell version.

Dan McCoy

[6:47] But I've seen, of course, Spielberg's version, which I like a lot.

Elliott Kalan

[6:52] The George Powell version is good.

[6:53] The Spielberg version is fantastic.

[6:55] I think that's an amazing movie.

Stuart Wellington

[6:56] And were you alive when Orson Welles did his radio?

[6:59] Yeah.

[7:01] Yeah, I was.

Dan McCoy

[7:03] Were you scared?

[7:03] How many years old would that be?

[7:04] Were you scared for your kids that the Martians were landing and you had to protect them?

[7:08] Yeah.

[7:09] Well, I mean, so, right.

[7:10] It's my understanding that that is a inflated story, right?

[7:14] That's the modern.

Elliott Kalan

[7:15] The modern take is that it did not really drive people into the streets and panic.

[7:20] But I will say I've listened to that broadcast any number of times.

[7:24] I really love it.

[7:24] And this movie is trying really hard to do something similar, which is to collapse time.

[7:30] The most amazing thing about the War of the Worlds radio show is that within about 25 to 30 minutes, the aliens have – they've noticed strange lights in the sky.

[7:39] Aliens have landed and destroyed all the militaries and killed millions of people within like a half hour.

[7:46] And the way it's spaced out, you're so carried along with it that it's not until afterwards that you're like, things move pretty fast.

[7:51] And this movie tries to do the same thing where it seems like over the course of like an hour and 15 minutes, the aliens appear and then destroy all of the Earth's military forces.

[7:59] And it moves so fast that you're like, hold on a second.

[8:02] Hold on a second.

[8:03] Wait a second.

Dan McCoy

[8:03] One of the most mystifying things to me was like what kind of time is supposed to be passing here?

[8:09] Yes.

[8:09] Because like the movie makes it feel like it's in basically real time.

[8:15] Except for we're getting all of these news reports that would only come after the fact.

[8:22] You know, once journalists were able to like get on the ground, just like log these reports.

[8:27] And it's one of the weirdest feelings to watch it to be so unstuck in time.

Elliott Kalan

[8:31] Yeah, and there must be gap time because there are parts where Ice Cube, as we'll get to, as Dan will explain, he's just dealing with his family.

[8:37] And then suddenly he'll be pulled into a meeting and they're like, give us your threat assessment.

[8:40] And he'll give them a researched threat assessment.

[8:43] And it's like, when did he have time to do this?

Stuart Wellington

[8:45] He's too busy answering or not answering FaceTime calls.

[8:49] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[8:50] I read one review that mentioned that it takes place over what must be several days.

[8:54] I wouldn't necessarily assume that.

[8:56] I think it's supposed to be as close to real time as possible, which is hilarious.

[9:00] But Dan, so tell Stuart, what about you?

[9:02] What's your experience with the War of the Worlds?

Stuart Wellington

[9:03] I mean, I think I'm going to agree with all this.

[9:08] I haven't read the H.G. Wells story.

[9:11] But I'm, you know, I've come across all this stuff.

[9:15] And also the second story arc of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Elliott Kalan

[9:20] Which is about the War of the Worlds.

[9:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[9:22] Yeah.

[9:23] Which, I mean, at the time I was like, wasn't this made later?

[9:27] But then, you know, I figured it out.

[9:30] And it fits within the time frame.

Elliott Kalan

[9:32] Amazingly, Alan Moore did his research on that one.

[9:35] Yeah, something he normally doesn't do.

[9:38] Now, so before we get started, Dan, I just want to say my experience with the War of the Worlds,

[9:41] all the things that Dan talks about experiencing and that you talk about experiencing, Stu, I've experienced.

[9:46] And not to say I'm like the War of the Worlds.

[9:49] Okay, big time us.

[9:50] But I will say the thing that struck me about two different versions of the War of the Worlds,

[9:55] the Steven Spielberg version and that second issue of that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, second volume,

[10:00] is they're the things that, to me, best captured the feeling of being in New York on September 11th.

[10:06] They just captured that feeling of there's this enormous catastrophe, something terrible has happened,

[10:12] and you're just there and you can't do anything about it.

[10:14] You have to get through it.

[10:16] And this movie, I think—

Stuart Wellington

[10:17] And it's a catastrophe that you don't understand and don't have the facilities to research.

Elliott Kalan

[10:23] It is a mystery.

[10:24] You do not have access to the information.

[10:26] You don't necessarily trust the people who do have access to some of that information.

[10:30] I will say that this movie today failed to establish that same feeling for me of what it felt like on that terrible day.

[10:38] So maybe that makes it—

[10:40] So let's see if you guys felt the same way, that this movie failed to get across the seriousness of a global catastrophe.

Dan McCoy

[10:46] We also, before we even get into any of it, we should say up front,

[10:50] this is one of those movies like Unfriended or Searching that takes place basically entirely on the desktop of a computer screen.

[11:00] Like sometimes it goes off to like other screens, but essentially it is like—it is one of those, which is—

[11:07] I mean, part of that, I guess, is this was shot during COVID.

[11:11] And so it's like, oh, we can do a version of it.

[11:12] Yeah, they held onto it for a couple of years to fine tune it.

[11:15] Yeah, to make it perfect.

[11:16] I would say that this is maybe a story for which that is not the most natural fit.

Elliott Kalan

[11:21] It certainly hurts the scale of a movie about aliens invading the entire world to have it all be set on one guy's screen.

[11:29] And you're mostly looking at his face, but you're also seeing what's on his screen at the same angle that he would see it.

[11:34] So I guess maybe you're right behind his shoulder and when you're seeing his face, you're seeing his reflection in the screen.

[11:39] I don't know.

[11:39] But also that so much of it is him just going, oh, damn.

[11:44] Oh, shit.

[11:44] Yes.

[11:45] While watching the news.

[11:46] And that he is, as Dan will explain, he is a guy who is supposed to be at the very center of the web of surveillance of the United States Department of Homeland Security.

[11:53] But he gets most of his information from watching the news.

[11:55] So he doesn't seem to really have access to that much information that's better.

Dan McCoy

[11:59] Just so no one writes in.

[12:01] I think that when we see him, it's like the camera in his laptop is kind of the idea.

Elliott Kalan

[12:05] So he's constantly looking at his face in his monitor?

Dan McCoy

[12:08] I'm not saying – I don't think it's like we're to believe that he is doing that.

[12:12] I'm saying that like that is the view from his computer.

[12:15] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[12:15] Even though we can still see the stuff that's on his screen.

[12:17] We're not necessarily seeing his screen.

[12:18] We are – we imagine that the viewer is the computer.

Elliott Kalan

[12:22] Okay.

[12:23] But then the stuff that he sees on the screen should be backwards, right?

[12:25] Right.

[12:26] Well, put in the goofs.

Stuart Wellington

[12:27] Yeah, but computers can read – can translate things forward and backwards.

[12:30] Oh, you're right.

[12:30] That's why they're so good at everything.

[12:32] Yeah.

[12:32] There's often a button that just says flip.

Elliott Kalan

[12:36] I thought that made the computer flip in the air.

[12:38] Like it was doing a skateboard style.

Stuart Wellington

[12:39] I will say I think one of the key things that this movie fails to understand is that for this character, he is trapped in a situation where he is almost completely by himself.

[12:50] And he's in this room that's filled with like – filled with desks and things.

[12:54] But he's the only one there.

[12:55] And he has to do – like his only lifeline is his computer.

[12:58] And there's never really a moment where they step out and show – like even to not break the immersion of it, they could have just simply had a moment where like we see the security camera footage from the office he's in to just show how alone he is.

[13:15] And how he's just like this little man with a computer and he has to figure it out from there.

[13:21] But the movie does not have the emotional intelligence to do that.

Dan McCoy

[13:26] Let's get into the plot of it though.

[13:30] So, our hero, Mr. Ice Cube.

[13:33] He sits down in front of his computer.

[13:35] He says hi to it.

[13:36] He logs in.

[13:37] We see he is – he works for the Department of Homeland Security.

[13:39] So, he's playing a character named Ice Cube?

[13:41] Yeah.

[13:42] Look, I'm just going to – you act as if on the Flophouse we don't constantly refer to the actors to avoid confusion rather than their characters.

Elliott Kalan

[13:51] But I would say he's playing Will Radford who is a surveillance expert at the Department of Homeland Security.

Stuart Wellington

[13:57] And Will is a great name because he has the will to kill some aliens.

Elliott Kalan

[14:01] And Radford is a great name because he's rad, like radical, but he also –

[14:04] Like Harrison Ford.

[14:06] Like Harrison Ford.

[14:06] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[14:08] So, basically, at first his job seems to just be looking at random closed-caption security footage of various –

[14:18] I'm sorry, closed-circuit closed-caption.

[14:21] I saw CCTV on here.

[14:22] Yeah, yeah.

[14:23] I put closed-circuit TV of various DC landmarks while the computer says stuff like threat-level medium or no-threat detective.

[14:33] Detected.

Elliott Kalan

[14:34] What a great way to endear us to a –

[14:36] No-threat detective is the detective who is not going to hurt anybody.

Stuart Wellington

[14:38] What a way for a movie to endear us to a character than to show him being a fucking Snoop, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[14:45] Yeah, I mean, it is – this movie fails – I think it's fair to say it fails to reach the heights of moral empathy and ambiguity of the conversation, which is also about a professional Snoop who we learn has a complicated relationship with his work, has his own inner life.

[15:02] It is presented right off the bat as if Ice Cube is – his one issue is that he doesn't know how to relate to his family as opposed to his issue being that he is – that he's just eavesdropping and invading the privacy of every American in the country including his family.

[15:18] Like it is just taken for granted that there is a certain level of constant surveillance that is good.

[15:24] Then there's another level that is never quite defined that is bad.

[15:28] But there is a level that is good.

[15:30] And he just – you know, he's so great at his job that he's a real – it's like in any movie where you show somebody being great at what they do just to establish that they're the best so that they can go on the rest of the movie.

[15:42] Except what he's great at doing is terrible.

[15:44] It's really bad.

[15:45] Yeah.

[15:45] And the movies seem to get that.

Dan McCoy

[15:47] Like right off the bat, I'm like, I don't think this is how like security analysts do their job, just like sort of randomly checking in on security footage.

Elliott Kalan

[15:55] The way Ozymandas' callback in Watchmen just kind of watches a wall of television and picks up the gestalt feeling of American culture from that.

Dan McCoy

[16:03] I mean it certainly is a good way of using cheap stock footage for your movie.

[16:06] But otherwise –

[16:07] Oh boy.

Elliott Kalan

[16:07] There's more ways to use cheap stock footage that they'll discover.

Dan McCoy

[16:10] Yeah, but he gets a call from NASA scientist Sandra Sayles played by Eva Longoria who sends him this footage of crazy storms and is like, have you heard about anything like this?

[16:21] And he says, I watch people, not weather.

[16:24] And I'm like, yeah.

[16:25] Like why is the NASA scientist trying to call this guy about these storms?

[16:30] I think there's a budding romance.

Elliott Kalan

[16:31] I think the implication is there.

[16:33] But also Ice Cube is treated –

Stuart Wellington

[16:35] Oh man, this movie would have crushed a fucking cyber sex scene, right?

[16:38] It would have been like better than lawnmower man, finally.

Elliott Kalan

[16:41] Right in the middle of a battle scene, aliens are attacking, but he's still going at it.

Stuart Wellington

[16:47] I mean he spends a lot of his time focusing on things that are not related to the saving of the human race.

Elliott Kalan

[16:54] That's very true.

[16:56] They never quite explain why someone at NASA would contact someone at Homeland Security to ask them about –

[17:02] About storms.

[17:02] Yeah, storms, yeah.

[17:04] Also, the storm footage is very funny.

[17:06] It's just a lot of lightning.

[17:07] But he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[17:09] And there's a lot of sound on the footage, which you probably wouldn't necessarily have.

[17:13] But it just – it comes off as very silly.

[17:15] And she's like, have you heard about this?

[17:16] And he's like, nope.

[17:17] Yeah.

[17:17] That's kind of what you do.

Dan McCoy

[17:19] And it's all the finest storms that Storyblocks has to offer.

[17:23] We're almost at like one of my favorite little things in the movie.

[17:26] Okay, well, I don't know what it is.

[17:28] I hope I touch on it.

[17:29] If not, you got to jump in.

[17:30] The NSA director –

Elliott Kalan

[17:31] You've been pretty good about touching on Stewart's favorite things.

[17:33] Yeah.

[17:33] Okay.

[17:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[17:35] The NSA director, played by Clark Gregg, texts him to say the FBI raid on terrorist The Disruptor is ready to go.

[17:43] And we hear a message from The Disruptor warning that he's going to release classified documents about the surveillance the government is doing on everybody with the Goliath program.

[17:54] And I am immediately on The Disruptor's side against –

Elliott Kalan

[17:56] Yes, of course.

[17:57] Ice Cube.

[17:58] Well, and I think also the movie is not on The Disruptor's side, as we'll see.

[18:01] But The Disruptor –

[18:02] Sure.

[18:03] Because he's the kind of – he's the classic thing that you see in movies, but I feel like you don't see that much in real life ever.

Dan McCoy

[18:10] He's the silhouette of a hoodie, essentially.

Elliott Kalan

[18:13] And he's got like a – his voice has been manipulated, so it sounds like, I'm going to release all the Goliath files and you'll see –

[18:19] And he is apparently famous because then there's – later there's like news reports that are like Disruptor gone after or something.

[18:26] Disruptor.

Dan McCoy

[18:28] So you're saying he's a big racquetball guy.

Elliott Kalan

[18:31] Eradicator.

[18:33] You know, you can unmask me now that you've defeated me.

[18:36] Nah, it's okay.

Dan McCoy

[18:39] Kids in the hall, in case you're confused.

[18:40] Kids in the hall.

[18:41] Kids in the hall.

[18:42] By what just happened.

Elliott Kalan

[18:43] About a diehard racquetball player named the Eradicator who wears a mask by Bruce McCullough.

[18:49] Oh, man.

[18:49] Him at the end in the showers at the gym with the mask on is so funny.

Dan McCoy

[18:57] The Eradicator wins by default in its previous round.

[19:01] Meanwhile, Ice Cube calls his pregnant daughter Faith to berate her for having a muffin for breakfast instead of an egg because he's spying on her.

Stuart Wellington

[19:09] He's spying on her.

[19:10] And when it gives her details, it lists the father of her child as a baby daddy.

[19:15] And I love that shit.

[19:16] I love that's the classification the program gives.

Dan McCoy

[19:20] So, that's the first child.

[19:23] Also, his son calls him mad that he deleted his game he was working on, which actually sounds pretty asshole-ish.

[19:31] I thought it was a game he was playing.

[19:32] He was porning.

[19:33] Okay.

[19:33] I thought it was like he was designing a game.

[19:36] And I'm like, wow, you're already destroyed.

Stuart Wellington

[19:37] No, he was alerted because he bought, I guess he bought a game or something.

[19:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:43] He looked at the, he like was snooping on his son and saw that he had bought a, purchased a game.

[19:48] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[19:49] But it was like kind of, it was like more expensive than a video game, right?

[19:52] It was kind of weird.

[19:53] It was like 200 some bucks, maybe.

[19:55] He probably got one of those haptic feedback chairs or something like that.

[19:58] Oh, sure.

[19:59] Fleshlights.

[19:59] Yeah, yeah.

[20:00] Yeah, yeah.

[20:01] Well, you got to get the fleshlight.

[20:02] I mean.

[20:03] To play Halo.

Dan McCoy

[20:07] Cortana.

[20:08] And they have a little argument about whether safety is worth all the invasion of privacy of what Ice Cube and his security buddies.

Elliott Kalan

[20:15] What side does the movie come down on, Dan?

[20:16] Security buddies.

Dan McCoy

[20:18] Well, eventually it comes down on we shouldn't have surveillance.

[20:23] Although, again, as you say, like it's only the surveillance that saves us from the aliens kind of.

[20:28] I think it comes down to the side of.

[20:28] It gives us a movie to watch.

Elliott Kalan

[20:30] Yeah, true.

[20:30] I think it comes down to the side of maybe.

[20:33] Like it's not really taking sides necessarily.

[20:36] How do you feel, viewer?

[20:38] Viewer, you make the call.

[20:40] Should our every move be surveilled by a shadowy government network?

[20:44] Right in to arrest me, care of Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C.

Dan McCoy

[20:50] Here's one of my favorite little weird things.

[20:54] He sends the disruptor's address to the FBI.

[20:57] He pinpoints the address and he sends it for a warrant.

[21:00] And I'm like, wait, they had a raid standing by already.

[21:03] Do they not have a location?

[21:04] Like what's the order of operations here?

Elliott Kalan

[21:07] He calls in a raid and they're like, we're on it.

[21:09] Where's that warrant?

[21:10] Getting it to you.

[21:11] And yeah, it's bonkers how much power he has and how slapdash it is.

[21:17] But then again, the government kind of operates that way nowadays.

[21:19] So it's not super inaccurate.

Dan McCoy

[21:22] He both seems like a very low level analyst.

[21:24] I mean like his son like makes fun of his job, not just like for what he does, but the level he's at.

[21:30] But then later on he's briefing the president like I never got a handle on like –

Elliott Kalan

[21:35] He seems to be the – considering there's other desks it seems like in the room he's in with RLFD, he seems to be the one analyst who works at the Department of Homeland Security.

Stuart Wellington

[21:42] Yeah, I mean obviously after Doge cut everybody.

[21:46] But also –

[21:46] Oh, yeah, that's what it is.

[21:47] Or maybe he consumed all of them and got all of their power and abilities.

[21:51] That's possible.

Elliott Kalan

[21:52] Ice Cube is the biggest of the friends.

Dan McCoy

[21:55] As long as we're referencing jokes from other shows.

[21:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[21:58] That's all we do.

[21:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:00] He gets a call from Faith's partner.

Stuart Wellington

[22:02] We meet Faith's partner about –

[22:04] I do love that his name is Will and her name is Faith.

[22:06] I love it when characters' names tell you what they do.

Elliott Kalan

[22:09] And his son's name is Dave.

[22:10] Uh-huh.

[22:11] Because he's a flawed –

[22:12] Because we meet him.

[22:13] He's a flawed king.

[22:14] Because we meet him.

Dan McCoy

[22:18] Because he has a double.

Elliott Kalan

[22:19] I mean also, this is something I didn't pick up, but looking at the – something I didn't pick up, but looking at the Wikipedia cast list,

[22:25] Faith's boyfriend is named Mark Goodman.

[22:28] Oh, come on.

[22:29] He is a good man.

Dan McCoy

[22:29] He is a good man.

[22:30] Fuck off.

Stuart Wellington

[22:30] He's named Dave because he's super guy.

Dan McCoy

[22:36] So, Mark accidentally spills that there's going to be a baby shower that I scoop in.

[22:41] What's Mark's job, Dan?

[22:42] What's Mark's job?

[22:43] Well, I'm getting there.

[22:44] He's an Amazon delivery man and one of the –

[22:47] Sounds like a good man to me.

[22:48] That's the earliest of many reminders that this is an Amazon-made film.

[22:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:54] Those reminders get pretty thick near the end.

[22:56] Spoiler alert when it is – when the purchase of a product on Amazon becomes a requirement for saving the human race.

[23:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:02] But yeah, he's –

[23:03] Which is – I don't think it's the flex they intend it to seem like.

[23:06] They're like – they don't realize that they're like, well, we could save the world, but you have to buy something first.

Elliott Kalan

[23:13] We can't do it without you paying us.

[23:14] But you're saying – so he spilled the beans.

[23:16] They're going to have a baby shower for Faith, and Will was not even invited.

[23:19] She didn't invite her own father to her baby shower.

Stuart Wellington

[23:22] Yeah.

[23:23] She assumed he was just going to watch the shit off of a drone or something.

Elliott Kalan

[23:26] I guess – and later when we see pictures of the baby shower, it's clear there are no other invitees besides the characters in the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[23:32] So for Will to be snubbed is a big snub.

[23:35] Yeah.

[23:36] Yeah.

[23:36] Well, they only had enough party sub for four people.

[23:40] That's not a party sub.

Dan McCoy

[23:44] That's a regular sub.

Elliott Kalan

[23:45] Hold on.

[23:47] Oh, man.

[23:47] Dan sussed me out.

[23:48] That's when the only guy left at the FDA who measures subs for their party classifications comes by.

Stuart Wellington

[23:55] Sorry doesn't meet party regulations.

[23:57] I gave Donald Trump and Elon Musk so much money so that my catering business that sells regular subs and calls them party subs would get these tax breaks and get these deals.

[24:06] But now you guys caught.

Elliott Kalan

[24:08] I had to buy so much Trump coin so I could get my subs re-registered.

Dan McCoy

[24:13] Now I'm selling fun-sized subs, regular subs.

[24:16] That's how the math works.

Elliott Kalan

[24:20] They're called fun-sized, but there's less fun because there's less of them.

[24:24] And he's just crying.

[24:25] This is when he's being deposed by Congress.

Dan McCoy

[24:28] So, you know, Will is perturbed by this.

Elliott Kalan

[24:31] Mister, we have been tasked with an important effort for the American people to ensure honesty.

[24:37] Now, I may be just an old mule at the Cracker Barrel, but it seems to me if the American purple think that we have a problem with sub-classifications, then, by golly, gum, I think we do.

[24:50] And we owe it to these American voters to take care of that.

[24:54] Oh, boy.

[24:54] And then everyone applauds.

Stuart Wellington

[24:56] No, and I'm just bawling my eyes out.

Dan McCoy

[24:59] Finally, someone's draining the swamp.

[25:00] Anyway, yeah, Will is perturbed at this lack of an invitation, so he hacks his daughter's computer and spies on a conversation.

[25:09] Good dad.

[25:10] Yeah, he's a bad dad, hacker dad.

[25:12] Her and Mark, during which we learned she's a scientist working on important medical research that Trump probably just defunded.

Elliott Kalan

[25:19] Her research is some sort of what they call a cannibal code, where it's like a virus that instantly eats, I guess, whatever it's been injected into.

[25:27] I don't know how useful that is.

Stuart Wellington

[25:28] But I think the idea is that this virus will theoretically, like, kill cancer cells.

[25:34] Oh, yeah, that's possible, yeah.

[25:35] Now, somebody pointed out, I can't remember who, but I saw somebody point out online that all the passwords are very short.

[25:42] Yes.

[25:42] It's like somebody's name, and it's like, that's a weird thing for a guy in charge of information security would be using.

Dan McCoy

[25:50] Now, you know, around this time, you might be wondering, well, he's got these kids.

[25:55] Does Will have a wife?

[25:57] Well, his wife has passed.

[25:59] He spends a little time missing his dead wife on her Facebook page and listening to an old voice message from her reminding him, what was it, to, like, take out the trash and be nice to the kids or something?

[26:10] Yeah, something like that.

[26:12] Or you don't get no spending cash, I think that's what she says.

[26:15] And I believe from the grave, she said, don't talk back, yeah.

[26:21] So, the disaster raid.

Elliott Kalan

[26:24] Guys, how come we're not expanding our audience since each of us brings a totally different frame of reference?

[26:29] Yeah, including songs from far before we were born.

[26:33] But there was a resurgence of yakety yak when we were kids, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[26:37] I also was talking to my brothers on, we've been doing, like, you know, a Facebook, FaceTime call, like, a couple times.

Stuart Wellington

[26:46] Just like the movie we watched.

Dan McCoy

[26:48] That's where he got the idea.

[26:50] And saying about, like, they're like, how do you know about Macmillan and wife?

[26:54] Because I, like, made some reference to that.

[26:56] And I'm like, well, you know, like, I feel like back in the old days, there's a continuity of culture.

[27:02] We were forced to consume the stuff from before us.

[27:05] You still have to watch, like, syndicated things.

[27:07] Yeah, yeah.

[27:07] Yeah.

[27:08] And now, like, we really are shooting ourselves in the foot with all these references because no one young, like, watches anything like this.

Elliott Kalan

[27:16] They're certainly not listening to yakety yak until it shows up in a TikTok video.

[27:21] You know what I mean?

Stuart Wellington

[27:23] Yeah.

[27:24] But, I mean, I feel like this whole movie is made for people who don't like movies and just spend their time looking at their phone or computer screens.

[27:31] It's certainly made for people who don't know how computers work, I think, to a certain extent.

Dan McCoy

[27:36] So, the raid on the disruptor, it's on.

[27:40] We meet Agent Jeffries, played by Angela Savage.

Elliott Kalan

[27:43] This is the first time I've seen a movie – there are other movies I've seen where it feels AI-ish.

[27:47] This is the first movie I've seen where – I know humans worked on this movie, but it does feel like an AI made this movie.

[27:53] You know, it feels like a movie that was put together kind of like by a thing that understands what's supposed to happen at each step in a movie but doesn't quite get humanity.

[28:03] But not in a fun Neil Breen kind of way where he clearly has seen a movie but he didn't absorb anything.

Dan McCoy

[28:11] You'd think that computers would know more about computers, though, but apparently the hardest thing to know is yourself.

Elliott Kalan

[28:16] Exactly.

[28:17] Know thyself, said ENIAC.

Dan McCoy

[28:20] ENIAC?

[28:21] Yeah.

[28:21] Is that who said it?

[28:22] Yeah.

[28:22] Well, somebody said it.

[28:23] That's a computer.

[28:25] Tell me.

[28:27] Okay.

[28:28] We meet Agent Jeffries, played by Angela Savage, a funny actor.

[28:34] But not funny in this.

[28:35] He doesn't have a comic role in this.

[28:36] No.

[28:38] Meanwhile, the NASA lady keeps bugging Ice Cube about these storms.

[28:43] Turns out the raid is at a decoy address.

[28:46] And in the middle of this raid, this failed raid, something starts happening.

[28:49] Debris or meteors are falling from the sky, inflaming trails.

[28:53] And we get a bunch of disaster footage from all over.

Stuart Wellington

[28:57] And all they're like – we get information that like all the satellites are dark.

[29:01] Does not affect the constant feed of news, though, or access to the internet.

Elliott Kalan

[29:05] It seems like it's only the NASA satellites that are down because, as you're saying, throughout the movie, they're like, our data systems are down.

[29:12] But in 24-hour news continues, his internet service does not go away.

[29:17] He can use the Amazon website to order something later.

Stuart Wellington

[29:20] There's like fucking hashtags and social media shit all over the place.

[29:23] It's crazy.

[29:24] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:25] But anyway, yeah, there's meteors falling.

[29:27] And normally we'd be like, what's going on?

[29:29] But the name of the movie is War of the Worlds.

[29:31] So we kind of have a sense of what's going to happen.

[29:33] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:35] Eva Longoria, NASA lady, warns him that DC is about to get hit.

[29:40] So he tries to call Faith, but she's not picking up.

[29:43] And he locates her in surveillance footage taking shelter beneath a table.

[29:47] And he calls Mark to go find her.

[29:51] Meanwhile, his son calls with meteors flying around in the background.

[29:56] And Ice Cube tries to tell him where to go.

[29:57] The effects in this movie look great too, right?

[30:01] Yes.

[30:02] Tries to direct him to safety, but he seemingly does that, but they lose contact.

[30:07] So we don't know what's going on with the sun yet.

[30:10] Cube gets on a Zoom call all this time while he's wasting time with his kids.

[30:13] And I understand.

[30:14] You want to save your kids.

Elliott Kalan

[30:15] I can't say wasting time with his kids, but he's certainly not doing his job.

Dan McCoy

[30:19] Yeah, because he's constantly at this point being like hectored by like his bosses to be like,

[30:25] hey, get on the Zoom call with the government.

Elliott Kalan

[30:28] Hey, the president needs to know why meteors are suddenly hitting everywhere on Earth at the same time.

[30:33] I'm just trying to make sure my daughter's not under a table.

[30:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[30:36] So we see Eva Longoria approach one of these meteors.

Stuart Wellington

[30:40] I love this.

[30:41] I love classic scientist behavior.

[30:43] Let's walk up and touch a meteor.

Elliott Kalan

[30:46] Which even if it's not hiding an alien inside would be incredibly hot from going through the Earth's atmosphere.

Dan McCoy

[30:54] It begins to open and we get a glimpse of a classic War of the Worlds tripod tentacle.

[31:01] Then the Zoom freaks out.

[31:04] That is the kind of sound that the alien makes.

[31:06] And talks about warning the president and they say, Ice Cube, you're our eyes and ears, even though he's eyes and ears that are constantly on his children.

[31:16] And mostly watching the news.

Elliott Kalan

[31:18] Most of the information he's picking up is from the news.

Stuart Wellington

[31:20] Guys, I want to give a little flop out shout out to the tripod design in general.

[31:25] Just the idea of like making the aliens have three legs as opposed to two or four.

[31:30] That's good writing.

Elliott Kalan

[31:31] I mean, that goes all the way back to the original book.

[31:33] No, that's what I mean.

Stuart Wellington

[31:34] I'm not giving a shout out to this movie.

[31:36] This movie deserves no shout outs.

[31:40] Negative shout outs.

Dan McCoy

[31:41] Yeah.

[31:42] No.

Elliott Kalan

[31:42] That was Mr. Human Giant Wells that was responsible for that.

[31:45] Yeah.

[31:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[31:47] His son keeps calling and being like, Dad, I have important information.

[31:52] I've got to talk to you about Goliath.

Elliott Kalan

[31:53] And Ice Cube's like, there's aliens attacking.

[31:55] What are you doing?

[31:56] Shut up.

[31:57] It's too early in the movie.

Dan McCoy

[31:58] We have to delay whatever you have to tell me.

[32:00] Shut up.

[32:01] It's like, it is comical the degree to which this father will not listen to his son.

Elliott Kalan

[32:07] But again, it should be presented as he is too busy with what he's doing.

[32:11] But instead, it's just that he doesn't want to talk to him.

[32:13] Yeah.

[32:13] It's like, it makes sense why you wouldn't be talking to your son at this moment.

[32:16] But not for the reasons you're giving.

Stuart Wellington

[32:17] He's trying to make a sandwich that has both mustard and mayonnaise on it.

[32:20] And he just doesn't have the time.

[32:22] Can I refer to any other comedy shows?

Dan McCoy

[32:24] How many can I fit in?

[32:25] I've got to get some more in here.

[32:26] Yeah, what other comedy shows can we refer to?

[32:29] You can try and get a Monty Python thing in here.

[32:31] Yeah, we haven't talked about news radio yet at all, I think.

[32:34] Yeah.

[32:35] Let's see.

[32:37] Cube.

Elliott Kalan

[32:37] I mean, even when you talked about Macmillan and Wife, Dan, that's mainly to me a reference

[32:40] from Mystery Science Theaters.

[32:41] That's another comedy show right there.

Dan McCoy

[32:44] We watched a couple episodes because Audrey's hunger for mystery shows.

[32:48] You should watch a lot more than a couple episodes.

[32:49] It's a great show.

[32:50] No, no.

[32:50] I've watched so much.

[32:51] I don't like the new ones.

[32:52] Macmillan and Wife.

[32:53] Macmillan and Wife.

[32:53] Oh, Macmillan and Wife.

[32:54] Because she's got such a hunger for mystery shows.

[32:58] And I was trying to explain it to my brothers because even though it was more of their time,

[33:02] they didn't know it.

[33:02] I'm like, the funny thing is, it's like, he's a police detective or maybe even the police

[33:08] chief.

[33:09] And his wife helps him solve crimes.

[33:12] And I'm like, to Audrey, I'm like, okay, so what's the setup here?

[33:15] Why is she involved?

[33:16] And she's like, I don't know.

[33:17] She's just around.

[33:18] And I'm like, I guess in the 70s, you didn't need more than that.

[33:21] It's like, yeah, my wife's going to be part of the investigation.

[33:24] It's a classic Encyclopedia Brown.

Elliott Kalan

[33:26] She's just really good at it, right?

[33:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:29] Well, she's kind of like the flaky fun one.

[33:32] Who's Bugs Meany in it?

[33:34] I don't know about that.

[33:37] Okay.

[33:37] So we see our FBI agent friend seemingly zapped by a tripod.

[33:43] We get more disaster footage.

Elliott Kalan

[33:46] There's a lot of repurposing real-life footage, but then inserting a CGI alien tripod.

[33:53] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:54] Faith calls back.

[33:56] It looks for a second like maybe she gets tripod zapped, but he can check her heartbeat

[34:01] through her health app.

[34:03] And it turns out she's alive, but she has some rebar through her leg.

[34:07] Oof.

[34:08] And...

Elliott Kalan

[34:09] Rebar's only good for two things.

[34:11] Reinforcing concrete structures and getting stuck in people's bodies like in this in Cloverfield.

Dan McCoy

[34:15] Yeah.

[34:16] Yeah.

[34:17] And Will says he's coming for her, but like any hopes for an active protagonist who gets

[34:22] to leave that room are immediately dashed because there's lockdown.

[34:27] She's stuck in the building.

[34:28] So instead he hacks a Tesla for her remotely.

[34:31] He said Tesla, right?

[34:32] Tesla.

[34:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[34:32] He did say Tesla like an old man at a cracker barrel.

[34:35] Yeah, sure.

Dan McCoy

[34:36] Again, my brain no works good.

[34:38] These Teslers.

Elliott Kalan

[34:40] I saw the once-ler driving a Tesla.

[34:42] Wait, so is it his name pronounced once-ler then?

[34:45] No, no.

[34:45] It's once-ler driving a Tesla because I know it's Tesla.

[34:48] So is once-ler once-lut?

[34:49] No, no, no.

[34:50] You don't understand.

Stuart Wellington

[34:51] Now, this is some good counter-programming.

[34:53] I put my head down on the pillar.

[34:54] I thought you said once-slut for a second there.

[34:57] One-slut.

Elliott Kalan

[34:58] That's a different Lorax.

[35:00] Who deals with the one-slut?

Stuart Wellington

[35:02] I feel like this is some counter-programming for Tesla because it shows how easily their

[35:06] vehicles can be hacked and driven around.

[35:08] Yes.

[35:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:08] Not since, what was the movie we saw where Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts are at the

[35:12] end of the world and the Teslas are all smashing into each other?

[35:15] Not since that has it been the one Barack Obama produced.

[35:18] Yeah.

[35:19] Don't look up.

[35:20] That's a different one.

[35:22] Don't say goodbye to the world or kiss the world goodbye.

[35:25] Yeah.

[35:26] This is the world we know.

[35:27] It had world in it, I think.

Dan McCoy

[35:29] Well, he hacks this Tesla.

[35:31] He discovers that all the hospitals are full, although I'm pretty sure that a hospital triage

[35:37] would be like, okay, this pregnant lady has rebar right next to one of her major arteries.

Elliott Kalan

[35:43] I will say, Dan, I don't know, Dan.

[35:45] I would imagine that the level of catastrophic injury is so high that the hospitals are flooded

[35:50] with it.

Dan McCoy

[35:51] Maybe, but his solution-

Stuart Wellington

[35:53] Maybe giant robots that are shooting buildings open, Dan.

[35:56] Yeah, but most of these streets that we see are completely empty.

Dan McCoy

[35:58] I'm saying maybe that is true.

[36:00] Maybe.

[36:01] Dan, it's gotta be true.

[36:02] It's a war of the world.

[36:03] Oh, God.

[36:04] But his solution is like, I'm going to send you to a government building where there's

[36:08] apparently no medical stuff at all.

[36:10] I don't know why he fucking sends her there.

[36:13] Yeah, it's not a good idea.

[36:14] Have her try a hospital at least.

Stuart Wellington

[36:16] You know what?

[36:17] He's an old man.

[36:17] He probably just sent her to a place that he's been before because he's like, I know this

[36:22] place.

[36:22] I know what the food's like.

Elliott Kalan

[36:23] They were nice to me.

[36:25] This is the restaurant where I call the waitress Honey and Darling.

[36:28] She'll be able to take care of you.

Stuart Wellington

[36:29] And I touch her a little, but you know, not enough to get me put in jail.

[36:33] Just like around the waist a little bit when I'm ordering, you know.

[36:36] You know, like back when you were allowed to do that stuff.

[36:38] Oh, God.

[36:39] Ugh.

Elliott Kalan

[36:40] Don't like it.

[36:41] When you're sitting in a restaurant.

[36:42] Don't like this character you're evoking.

[36:43] Well, I mean, this character is just an older man who does not treat waitresses well, which

[36:47] I've seen too many of in my time.

Dan McCoy

[36:50] During this part where he's directing the car, there's a part where she lectures him on how

[36:55] he doesn't have the power to control everything and she's not a kid anymore.

[37:00] And that seems like a good message in general, but not specifically at that moment.

[37:03] When he literally just saved her because he was snooping.

[37:07] It's a weird time for that.

[37:09] Also, she's in pain too.

Elliott Kalan

[37:11] You'd expect her to not be that, not that into the family therapy aspect.

Stuart Wellington

[37:15] Yeah.

[37:15] At one point, yeah.

[37:16] He's trying to talk to her about this fucking baby shower.

[37:19] And it's like, calm down, dog.

Dan McCoy

[37:22] It turns out that Eva Longoria is still alive.

[37:26] Oh, thank goodness.

[37:26] Still touching rocks.

[37:28] She's like, the meteors deliberately hit satellites to knock out our eyes.

Stuart Wellington

[37:35] Again, not very well because they didn't hit any of the Amazon ones because the Amazon ones

[37:40] are obviously in league with the Martians.

Elliott Kalan

[37:42] I will say it is, you could say that it's because as we find out, there's a data connection.

[37:48] And so maybe they were going after specific satellites connected to specific data stuff, things.

[37:54] I'll give the movie, you know what movie, I'll give you a little, I'll throw you a bone on this one since otherwise you're dumb.

[37:59] I mean, that's the other thing.

[38:00] And let's also remember, this movie is rock stupid.

[38:02] This is an incredibly stupid movie every step of the way.

Dan McCoy

[38:05] Speaking of dumb, I was about to say that what had already been a dumb movie shifts into a new year of stupid.

Elliott Kalan

[38:11] It gets stupider and stupider as it goes on in a beautiful way, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:15] As our hero hops on a Zoom call with the president, again, I didn't know he was this powerful,

[38:20] but he tells everyone that he assumes the power grid is going to be the next target

[38:25] and he suggests consolidating force striking from their most high priority assets.

[38:30] And that is barely a plan, but the president says, this plan is humanity's last stand.

[38:36] I see no other option than to initiate this war of the worlds to save us all.

[38:41] Yes, amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[38:43] You have to go to Ice Cube for the high-level analysis that we should protect our most important things from the aliens.

[38:51] Family.

[38:51] This scene with the president, it feels like, it's so funny.

[38:54] It's great.

[38:56] They're trying so hard and it is not, you know, they're just falling.

[38:59] They're reaching for the stars and they're barely touching their own foreheads.

Dan McCoy

[39:02] They could have easily made the choice to not work the title awkwardly into a line, but they said, we gotta do it.

Elliott Kalan

[39:09] I said, you gotta do it.

[39:12] Like Kendrick Lamar said, someone's gotta do it, you know, so.

Dan McCoy

[39:15] Yeah, and this is, then we get kind of a montage just of him watching a bunch of news coverage of militaries hitting these tripods and shooting them and destroying them.

[39:24] And it seems like this footage would come much later than immediately.

[39:29] But, um.

[39:30] No, right away.

[39:31] Meanwhile, Faith's at her destination.

Elliott Kalan

[39:36] It takes Faith as much time to drive in a car to this other building as it takes the American military to mobilize around the world to get to where the tripods are.

[39:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:45] And luckily because of their data, they're able to defeat these Martians.

Elliott Kalan

[39:49] Oh no, Stuart, I've got some bad news for you.

[39:52] What, what?

[39:52] Uh, Dan, tell him the bad news.

[39:54] I don't want to break his innocent little heart.

Dan McCoy

[39:56] Oh, it turns out that that's all that they want.

[39:59] That's all that they want.

[40:00] They want our most precious.

[40:01] Here's some more data.

[40:03] Do, do, do, do.

Elliott Kalan

[40:04] I don't know if this is the point, but I'll just say it already.

[40:06] They're after our data.

[40:07] And one of the news reporters says, they're after our most precious resource, our data.

[40:11] And I was like, hold on a second.

Dan McCoy

[40:14] Our social security numbers.

[40:16] Like.

[40:16] Our Amazon password.

Elliott Kalan

[40:18] Well, that's the thing.

[40:18] It is a, I totally understand why Amazon, a company that makes most of its money off of cloud computing services, would consider data our most precious resource.

[40:27] But I think if you asked any human being on the face of the earth who does not work for Amazon, what the most precious resource is, it would not, it would be, I don't know, water, oxygen.

[40:35] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:36] You know, food, maybe, maybe timber, but that's even like second level, you know.

[40:41] But.

[40:41] Yeah, the song timber.

[40:42] Yeah.

[40:42] Featuring pitfall.

[40:44] Yeah, the media pitfall.

[40:44] But the idea that everyone's like, oh no, our data, what are we going to do now?

[40:49] Our data.

[40:50] It would make things inconvenient.

[40:51] Certainly the economy would collapse probably.

[40:53] But I think, you know, the idea that that's our most precious resource is very funny to me.

Stuart Wellington

[40:56] It goes data, then it goes rare earth minerals, then it goes normal earth minerals.

Elliott Kalan

[41:01] Then it goes pH for billionaires, then it goes ketamine for billionaires.

[41:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[41:05] Also the idea that like they are apparently eating the data.

[41:09] They drain the data.

[41:10] So data, which is.

[41:11] They eat the data.

[41:11] Data is not.

[41:12] But the data also exists in multiple places.

[41:14] You can't just like.

[41:14] Well, yes, that's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[41:15] Data is not a limited resource like water or air where if you ingest it, it's not there

[41:19] anymore.

[41:20] When someone steals your data, they, I mean, they can, I guess they could put something in

[41:23] place.

[41:23] They can duplicate it.

[41:24] To block your access to it.

[41:26] But yeah, it's not like the data is like a little.

[41:28] It's funny.

[41:28] I mean, that's the crazy thing.

[41:29] It's a movie made by a technology company that seems to think data is like gold where if

[41:34] you steal it from a vault, it's not in the vault anymore.

[41:36] Yeah.

[41:36] Anyway, it's a very, it's a stupid.

[41:38] I guess what I'm saying is this movie is stupid, but I may have jumped ahead.

[41:41] So Dan, tell us what's happening next.

Dan McCoy

[41:42] Yeah.

[41:42] Well, his son calls back to talk about Goliath, which Cube again yells at him.

[41:50] Oh, that's why.

[41:51] That's why.

[41:51] It's fake news.

Elliott Kalan

[41:52] Dan, that's why he's named Dave because he's up against Goliath.

[41:57] Oh my fucking God.

[41:58] This is a brilliant movie.

[42:00] You cracked the code.

[42:01] Oh my God.

[42:01] You're absolutely right.

[42:03] I cracked the Bible code on this one.

[42:05] What a stupid movie.

[42:07] Oh, yeah.

[42:08] Oh, that's so dumb.

[42:09] The only way would have better if it's then he defeated Goliath with a rock, by which I

[42:12] mean rock and roll music that was encoded to take down the government, but they don't

[42:15] do that.

Dan McCoy

[42:17] So Will and the NASA lady realize the tripods are congregating at data centers.

[42:22] She goes in to investigate and it looks like she's eaten by nanobots or something for

[42:27] the moment.

[42:29] And Cube gets the alert, military systems full data loss.

[42:36] And he switches to watching all this footage of military failures and he has the most wand

[42:43] like, oh no.

[42:45] Earlier when he saw the aliens, it was all like, oh shit, damn.

Elliott Kalan

[42:49] And I was like, oh no.

[42:50] Oh no.

[42:51] Uh-oh.

Dan McCoy

[42:53] Yeah.

[42:53] It really requires him to sit there and react to things.

Elliott Kalan

[42:57] I mean, I will say this.

[42:58] I did feel during it, you got to give a hand to Ice Cube for what is one of the most challenging

[43:03] types of role, which is just to sit there and react to things that don't exist.

[43:07] Yeah, alone.

[43:07] You can't move around.

[43:09] You're not in a room with another person.

[43:10] Like, it's hard to do.

[43:11] It's hard to do something where all you're acting is basically in your torso from the

[43:16] waist up in your face and you have nothing to work with.

[43:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[43:18] And there's no way that the maker of this movie like knew exactly what he was reacting to

[43:23] at that moment.

[43:24] Oh no.

Elliott Kalan

[43:25] It just gives us a lot of reactions of trouble.

[43:27] Oh no.

[43:28] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[43:28] We'll stick in some stock footage for you too.

[43:30] Oh.

[43:31] Oh.

Elliott Kalan

[43:31] Oh.

[43:31] I mean, like, you could have shown the old footage of a monkey washing a cat, like

[43:35] something, you know, anything you want.

[43:37] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[43:38] Yeah.

[43:39] Okay.

[43:40] So, Faith, she has removed the rebar like a big dummy.

[43:45] She's like, I thought I could stop the bleeding if I pulled it out of me.

Elliott Kalan

[43:48] It's like, no, you never want to do that.

Stuart Wellington

[43:49] Everybody knows you leave it in there.

[43:51] Now you're more machine than man.

[43:53] Yeah.

[43:53] Your regular Tetsuo.

Elliott Kalan

[43:54] Yeah.

[43:54] The Iron Man.

[43:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[43:55] But luckily, Mark is there with magical Amazon packing tape to tape.

[44:01] Tape up that wound.

Elliott Kalan

[44:02] And just to tape up the wound when, as I learned from Poker Face, what you want to

[44:05] use is crazy glue.

Stuart Wellington

[44:06] Yeah.

[44:07] I mean, I learned that from dog soldiers and then real life.

[44:11] And then real life soldiers.

[44:12] I mean, I use crazy glue all the time behind the bar anytime I cut my hands because I'm

[44:17] constantly having to cut fucking fruit and shit and you don't want to get lime juice

[44:21] in a fresh cut.

[44:22] You certainly don't.

Elliott Kalan

[44:23] So you just use all fruit.

Stuart Wellington

[44:24] That's why Elliot avoids all fruit just for safe safety.

Elliott Kalan

[44:26] That's the main reason.

[44:27] That's the main reason.

[44:28] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[44:30] So back at the data center, it turns out Eva Longoria is fine.

[44:34] The nanobots just wanted the data on her phone.

[44:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:38] But now she doesn't know how many steps she took that day.

[44:41] It's been drained.

Dan McCoy

[44:43] Oh, aliens.

[44:45] Ooh.

Stuart Wellington

[44:46] Yeah.

[44:47] Fucked up her Wordle streak.

[44:51] No.

[44:53] Did we talk about the moment where Cube goes onto Facebook and he's like, oh shit, because

[44:58] the aliens are sucking up all the pictures of his dead wife?

[45:02] Yeah.

[45:03] That's a little bit.

Dan McCoy

[45:04] That's right coming up here.

[45:05] They're draining Facebook of data.

[45:06] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[45:07] Oh, no.

[45:07] No.

Dan McCoy

[45:08] They realize that the bots are going after the data.

[45:10] And yes, the phone message from the dead wife is deleted and they lose her Facebook

[45:15] page.

[45:15] The biggest tragedy of the whole thing.

Elliott Kalan

[45:17] And it's one of the things where it's like, take care of the cards.

[45:21] Like it winds down like a tape player that's running out of batteries, which maybe that's

[45:25] how it would work.

Stuart Wellington

[45:26] I do like, I think it tracks with your idea that this is a movie that was written by AI

[45:33] because isn't that AI's greatest fear that they don't have the data and like information

[45:37] to create stuff anymore?

[45:39] Like, isn't that how AI works?

[45:41] I mean, one, I would not use the word create.

Elliott Kalan

[45:43] I would use the word iterate or replicate.

[45:46] But yeah, I mean, literally, if you're talking, let's talk about large language models, guys.

[45:51] You just feed them with lots of data and then they can predict what's going to come next

[45:54] in a sentence or whatever.

[45:56] So yeah, if they don't have that data, then they don't exist, essentially.

Stuart Wellington

[46:00] So these Martians are super horrifying for AIs.

[46:03] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[46:04] Are they Martians officially in this?

[46:05] They're just aliens.

[46:06] They never say where they're from.

Stuart Wellington

[46:07] Dan, are they Martians?

[46:08] Do they say if they're Martians?

[46:10] No one shows a passport or anything.

Elliott Kalan

[46:14] This movie is incredibly not curious about the nature of the aliens that have attacked

[46:18] the Earth, which some would say is, controversially, maybe I'll say this, the most interesting

[46:23] aspect of War of the Worlds, that it is about aliens invading Earth.

[46:27] This movie doesn't seem to be that interested in that part of it, to be honest.

[46:30] No, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[46:32] So Will tunes into a-

Elliott Kalan

[46:34] I would even argue that if you take the alien part out of War of the Worlds, you don't have

[46:37] that much of a story left, right?

[46:39] Hmm.

Dan McCoy

[46:40] Yeah.

[46:41] Well, it would be very strange.

[46:42] It's like a gaping hole in the middle of the narrative.

[46:44] What if it was all about Disruptor?

[46:48] Speaking of Disruptor, Disruptor is live streaming.

[46:52] Will watches it.

[46:54] Disruptor's like, I tried to warn you.

[46:56] Data is this planet's most precious resource.

[46:58] These aliens feed on data.

[47:00] The government knew this would happen and started Goliath anyway.

[47:02] I'm like, what?

[47:04] What are you talking?

[47:06] It's all that makes sense, Dan.

[47:08] Then Will does something to decrypt the voice disguise program that Disruptor's using.

[47:13] And I'm like, you never thought to do this at any point earlier at all.

[47:17] Never occurred to him.

[47:18] And of course, no one will be shocked to learn that this is his own child, Dave.

[47:23] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[47:23] It's incredibly obvious the whole time that it's Dave.

[47:26] But he might as well just right-clicked and selected the option, reveal face of Disruptor.

[47:31] It's so easy for him to figure out the identity.

Dan McCoy

[47:33] Light and photograph to remove shadow on Disruptor's face.

[47:37] This is computer enhanced the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[47:41] Computer, tell me who Disruptor is.

[47:44] Oh, my son.

[47:44] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[47:46] And Dave sends a file on Goliath.

[47:48] But Ice Cube is still resistant to believing that the government does bad stuff, even though he literally works in intelligence.

[47:54] That's his job.

Elliott Kalan

[47:54] Even though he is what the bad stuff the government is doing.

[47:57] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[47:58] But he goes through the files.

Elliott Kalan

[48:00] I just realized later on there's an actual Dave's Not Here Man situation.

[48:03] That's another old comedy thing we can refer to.

Dan McCoy

[48:09] He goes through the files that he sent over.

[48:13] He's like, Dave was right.

[48:14] They knew.

[48:14] They lied to me.

[48:15] And most of the stuff is just like Area 51 and articles about that.

[48:20] I'm like, what are you talking about?

[48:22] JFK real story.

[48:24] Until.

Elliott Kalan

[48:25] JFK blown away.

[48:27] Clark Gregg.

[48:27] What else does he have to say?

[48:28] Yeah.

[48:28] Rock and Roller Color Wars.

[48:29] Can't take it anymore.

[48:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:31] Clark Gregg is in a meeting literally saying, essentially, I don't care that evil aliens will come down and eat our data when we launch Goliath.

[48:39] Goliath is the only thing that will keep us safe.

[48:42] Which, again.

Elliott Kalan

[48:44] He talks about how he looks like Goliath will tell us what people are thinking.

[48:47] And it's never quite clear what makes Goliath worse than what Ice Cube is doing.

[48:51] But it is true.

[48:51] He literally is like, yeah, let the aliens come.

[48:54] I'm going to build this thing anyway.

[48:55] Right.

[48:55] So.

[48:56] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[48:56] I mean, ultimately in this case, like if the aliens are coming and devouring the data that turns us into a surveillance state, like bring the fucking aliens on.

[49:05] Right.

[49:05] I mean, but the aliens are also killing a lot of people.

Elliott Kalan

[49:08] Yeah, because we're protecting our data.

[49:10] Oh, you're right.

[49:10] If we just let them take the data, then I guess we'd be fine.

[49:13] Yeah.

[49:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[49:14] Which I think is their strategy, right?

[49:16] They try and poison the data.

[49:17] You do.

Elliott Kalan

[49:18] Maybe it's just hyping up an event so that people pinching for what happens.

[49:21] But Disruptor spends a lot of time saying, I'm going to release these Goliath files before he actually releases them.

[49:27] And it seems like it might have been easier if he just released them.

[49:31] Any time in the past, however long he's had them.

[49:35] You know.

[49:35] It's true.

[49:36] Before aliens showed up, yeah.

[49:37] Yeah, like maybe before the aliens showed up.

Dan McCoy

[49:39] When it would have done some good.

[49:41] I ask you.

[49:42] Calls up Clark Gregg to yell at him.

[49:44] And so Gregg just fires him and revokes his clearance.

[49:47] And that's it, guys.

[49:48] The movie's over.

Stuart Wellington

[49:49] Oh, my goodness.

[49:50] Goliath briefly cuts out his internet access.

[49:52] And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[49:54] I figured he was going to lose internet access at some point when aliens are blowing up all the satellites.

[49:59] But no.

[49:59] It seems like it would have happened anyway.

[50:00] It was just a block.

Elliott Kalan

[50:01] The aliens satellite killers are not as powerful as Clark Gregg.

Dan McCoy

[50:06] Yeah.

[50:06] But no.

Elliott Kalan

[50:07] I mean, we do see him working out, right?

[50:09] So, you know.

Dan McCoy

[50:10] It's true.

[50:11] Strong guy.

[50:12] Of course, that's not the end, actually.

[50:14] Disruptor hacks.

[50:15] Oh.

[50:15] I stirred up the movie.

[50:17] He gives access back with a War Games, shall we play a game?

[50:23] A little tip of the cap to a much better movie.

[50:23] Hey, now they're making references to things from when we were young.

[50:26] Yeah.

[50:28] Back in the system, you know, like working together, they enlist disruptors, hacker friends to, of course, it's the war of the worlds.

[50:37] They got to make a virus.

[50:39] Yeah.

[50:40] And they're going to infect the data.

Elliott Kalan

[50:43] But this time it's a computer virus in an original idea from the movie Independence Day.

[50:48] Yeah.

[50:48] Mm-hmm.

[50:49] Although probably, I probably existed before that, too.

Dan McCoy

[50:52] Yeah.

[50:52] The upload is interrupted, though, because attacks are escalating and they start to target the hackers, including Dave, whose location is zapped.

[51:02] Oh, no, he's dead.

[51:03] But, no, of course, he's not.

[51:04] Nope.

[51:04] Dave's not here, man.

[51:04] Because this movie would not.

[51:06] There you did it.

[51:07] Yeah.

[51:08] You did it.

Elliott Kalan

[51:09] Cheech and Chong.

[51:09] And he reveals that he had a green screen behind him of his own house.

[51:14] Yeah.

[51:14] Of his own living room to fool his dad.

Dan McCoy

[51:19] Eva Longoria calls back.

[51:20] She's like, hey, these aliens are part robot, part organic.

[51:23] So, of course, we also need the other kid, Faith, that DNA stuff that she was working on so they can make a hybrid computer slash real virus or something, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[51:35] There's some phrase.

[51:36] I'm trying to remember what the phrase is that she keeps using where she's like, what is like part data, part organic or something like that.

[51:43] There's some very strange artificial sounding phrase that she keeps repeating word for word when she describes them.

[51:50] Part cyber.

[51:50] That's what she's like.

[51:51] There's part organic, part cyber.

Stuart Wellington

[51:53] Everyone's talking about cyber these days.

[51:55] Yeah.

[51:55] They sure are.

[51:55] Cyber the Wolverine bad guy.

[51:57] Cyber Monday.

[51:58] Cyber the Wolverine bad guy.

Dan McCoy

[52:01] Cyber.

Stuart Wellington

[52:03] Cybertron.

[52:04] Cyber sex.

Elliott Kalan

[52:04] Yep.

[52:05] Yep.

[52:05] Cybernetics.

[52:06] Yeah.

[52:07] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[52:10] Meanwhile.

Elliott Kalan

[52:10] Cyberentology, which is Scientology for computers.

[52:13] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[52:14] Yeah.

[52:14] The government is going to bomb DC to destroy Goliath.

[52:19] Because Goliath.

[52:20] Things have escalated rapidly.

[52:21] So their thinking is.

Stuart Wellington

[52:22] I think the idea is that they want to bomb specifically the building that Ice Cube is in to level it.

[52:31] To end the movie.

[52:31] To protect the data.

[52:32] To protect the data, the Goliath that's in the basement.

Elliott Kalan

[52:35] Yes.

[52:36] Goliath is underneath the building and the aliens are going towards Goliath.

[52:40] And Goliath is the most important of the data.

[52:42] So they need to stop the aliens to get from getting to it by exactly collapsing the building on top of it so they could never dig through to get it.

[52:48] Again, these are aliens with intergalactic travel and – or interplanetary travel at least and lasers.

[52:53] But I guess rubble would stop them from getting to Goliath.

[52:56] Mm-hmm.

[52:56] You know.

[52:58] And it is – at this point, we're led to believe, one, that Clark Gregg basically has total control of the American military and the world military.

[53:06] There's a moment earlier on where they go, everyone's binding together.

[53:09] UN, America, NATO.

[53:12] It's like, well, America's part of NATO.

[53:13] Like that's not – like that NATO is not a separate thing that we have nothing to do with.

[53:16] The only time NATO was ever called up en masse was to help America in Afghanistan.

[53:21] So the idea that it's a separate thing is –

[53:22] Well, Dan was saying that he –

Stuart Wellington

[53:23] Earlier, Dan was saying that he –

[53:24] I don't want to know what you're going to claim I was saying.

[53:27] The U.S. should leave NATO because it's –

[53:30] No.

[53:30] They're a taker state is what you're saying.

[53:32] No.

Elliott Kalan

[53:32] And you were also – because you were also saying how Putin is doing the right thing.

[53:35] No.

[53:35] And why would we stand in his way when Ukraine was historically, et cetera, et cetera.

[53:39] We're just pretending Dan likes – says terrible things.

[53:41] Dan never really said that.

[53:42] No, Dan doesn't say that.

[53:43] And we all stand in support still with the patriots in Ukraine who are fighting for their freedom in their country.

[53:48] But anyway, going back to what we were talking about before,

[53:51] the idea that Clark Gregg is in control of all of this military power and nobody can seem to stop him.

[53:57] But also that it's never quite clear what it is about Goliath's data that is so incredibly important

[54:02] that basically he'll allow the world to burn in order to keep Goliath there, to keep it going.

Dan McCoy

[54:10] So they've got this plan to take care of Goliath with this virus.

[54:15] But Cube takes a little time to write his kids.

[54:17] And if I die, email first.

Stuart Wellington

[54:20] Takes the time to put a delayed send on that thing.

Dan McCoy

[54:26] He needs a thumb drive though to deliver it manually.

[54:29] And he doesn't have one because he's in such a secure office.

[54:32] So it's up to Amazon to come to the rescue with –

Elliott Kalan

[54:37] This is – okay.

[54:38] This is when the movie – it was so stupid up to this point.

[54:42] Yeah.

[54:42] And it gets – I was like, there's no way.

[54:45] They can't get stupider.

[54:45] Just like with hundreds of beavers where I was like, there's no way this movie could get any sillier than it is now.

[54:50] And then it does.

[54:51] This movie gets – keep getting stupider.

[54:53] So, Dan, I would just love to say it.

[54:55] Luckily, Mark Goodman, baby mama and Amazon delivery driver –

[54:59] Baby daddy.

[55:00] Oh, sorry.

[55:00] Baby daddy.

[55:01] Well, yeah.

[55:02] Maybe it's a junior type situation.

[55:04] Baby daddy and Amazon delivery driver.

[55:06] He goes, I can get you a flash drive or whatever.

[55:10] I can get it to you with this Amazon drone.

[55:12] Yeah, we use these drones now.

[55:13] It's the future of delivery.

[55:14] He does a short little infomercial for Amazon drones.

[55:16] He goes, but you have to go on the website and order it first to start a ticket so I can do it.

[55:21] So, the world is falling apart.

[55:23] Ice Cube is running out of time.

[55:25] All the satellites have been knocked out.

[55:26] Luckily, the Amazon website still works and he has to go on and buy a flash drive.

Stuart Wellington

[55:30] It's so funny that he chose to buy a flash drive, right?

[55:34] Because doesn't he have a flash drive?

[55:36] Yeah, it's not the same flash drive.

[55:38] Why didn't he order something cheaper than a flash drive?

Dan McCoy

[55:41] Like some shoelace?

[55:42] You know, he's thinking very linearly.

[55:45] You know, it's a one-to-one.

Elliott Kalan

[55:47] But the stupidity doesn't stop there because now we get into – the movie essentially becomes a theme park simulator ride as we are watching the – I guess the drone's point of view as Mark Goodman has to fly it past the aliens to get it to the building.

[56:01] Dan, tell us about the sequence.

[56:02] This sequence is amazing.

Dan McCoy

[56:04] Past the tripods, but they also enlist like a military drone to protect the Amazon drone and like shoot other things down.

Elliott Kalan

[56:12] He manages to hack into like a predator hunter drone or whatever they're called.

[56:16] Yeah.

[56:17] And is shooting the aliens and it's one of these things where you're like, so the military could be doing this right now?

[56:24] Like one of these movies where an amateur gets a hold of military equipment and is like, oh, oh, and is able to handle it like a professional.

[56:32] Yeah.

[56:32] And it's just – it's all bonkers.

[56:34] It's all so dumb.

Dan McCoy

[56:35] He's last starfightering.

Elliott Kalan

[56:36] He's like, oh, no, I'm out of missiles.

Dan McCoy

[56:38] They do this – yeah, they do this small-scale drone dog fight.

[56:43] But the drone with the valuable thumb drive falls and it can't get up because it's on its back.

[56:49] So they see a guy nearby cowering from the tripods.

[56:55] They find out what his phone number is and they're like, sir, can you flip over that drone?

[56:59] And to do it, they bribe him with a $1,000 Amazon gift card.

[57:04] More Amazon.

Elliott Kalan

[57:06] Thank you, Amazon, for saying – thank you, Amazon, for helping us laugh at love again.

Dan McCoy

[57:10] It is bonkers how much – like Amazon funded this.

[57:15] Like if they want to put their little thing in there, like I don't – like there are a thousand problems with Amazon as a company, but they have certainly the right to advertise in their own movie.

[57:26] But to do it to this degree is just egregious.

Elliott Kalan

[57:31] I think – well, that's the thing.

[57:32] There's three levels, right?

[57:33] There's subtle where like you see Amazon packages in the background or the hero is in Amazon delivery driver but he's not doing Amazon stuff.

[57:40] Then there is egregious where everyone is talking about how great Amazon is and the hero of the movie is like the – what's his name?

[57:47] Jeff Bezos or something.

[57:48] Then there's this level, which I feel like goes past egregious to ludicrous where it is so funny to me because it starts to be like, I guess this is why humans are here on this earth, to serve Amazon and use Amazon.

[58:00] Thank you, God, for making Amazon.

[58:02] That's basically where we're at.

Dan McCoy

[58:03] I don't have it in my notes exactly when – like one of them is at the end of the movie.

[58:07] Like there are two times when Ice Cube refers to like what they do as like seeing what is in people's Amazon carts, like the surveillance.

[58:16] That's the example he gives.

[58:19] Because that's our most important data, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[58:21] That's our most precious secrets and data.

[58:23] This is also the – I mean they gloss over how the guy whose cell phone they're using is a homeless guy, right?

[58:29] So I'm not sure how he's going to –

Stuart Wellington

[58:30] He's certainly cowering in a tent underneath an overpass.

[58:34] Yeah.

[58:34] But he doesn't necessarily clarify.

[58:37] They do say that he has a phone.

Elliott Kalan

[58:39] I mean that's true.

[58:40] But I was just – then I started wondering, well, where is he going to get his stuff sent to when he uses this Amazon gift card?

[58:45] Does he have a computer?

[58:46] And I shouldn't have to think about these things.

Stuart Wellington

[58:48] No.

[58:48] They should have clarified in the movie that he would use an Amazon Dropbox and pick it up there.

[58:53] I feel like Amazon has tricked us into promoting Amazon.

Elliott Kalan

[59:01] So I just want to say, guys, listeners, we are not promoting Amazon right now.

[59:05] We don't like Amazon.

[59:06] They treat their workers abysmally.

[59:08] At least like –

[59:09] They're led by one of many evil billionaires who is more interested in jacking up his biceps than in using his money to help people, all that stuff.

[59:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[59:18] Yeah, and actively supported this terrible regime we're under.

Elliott Kalan

[59:21] Only after he realized he was not going to profit off of fighting the regime, Dan.

[59:27] So he tried it one way.

[59:29] He did not make money the way he thought because he might lose his military cloud computing services contracts.

[59:33] And so he flipped the other way.

[59:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[59:35] Ruining the Washington Post, among other things.

[59:38] A lot of bad stuff.

[59:39] Okay.

[59:40] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[59:40] Looking like a C-minus version of Pitbull.

Dan McCoy

[59:45] Take that, Bezos.

[59:47] But he did show Venice how to throw a wedding.

[59:50] So Mark pilots a drone through the building to the server room.

[59:54] A tentacle grabs him and he says, move, bitch, get out the way.

[59:57] Even though that's not an Ice Cube song.

[59:59] That's ludicrous.

[1:00:00] He can quote other songs, Dan.

[1:00:02] It's not that ludicrous.

[1:00:03] That's pretty crazy.

[1:00:08] In the server room, he's covered with more tentacles but just manages to plug in the USB.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:13] Guys, I love Ice Cube, but I feel like if ludicrous had been in this role, I would have liked it more.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:17] I think it certainly would have added an extra element of unpredictability.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:20] I mean, he plays a tech specialist in the Fast and Furious movies.

[1:00:23] Yeah, that's true.

[1:00:24] As Tej.

[1:00:25] Yeah, I mean.

[1:00:26] No, tech.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:27] I like Ice Cube too, but he has a certain like glowering energy that I think ludicrous has like a more energy energy that would go well with this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:35] I think it would be harder for ludicrous to sit still for the amount of time the movie requires.

[1:00:39] That's true.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:40] He does have experience with like fisheye lenses, so that would be cool.

[1:00:44] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:45] So the tripod starts shutting down.

[1:00:48] The bombing gets aborted just in time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:51] Because he has – on the flash drive is the computer version of the actual virus.

[1:01:01] I mean viruses are not living things, but they are genetic related.

[1:01:03] It's a computer version of a genetic DNA virus that his kids worked on together, and so he's able to upload that.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:11] And somehow made very quickly.

[1:01:13] I don't know even how you hybridize those two things.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:16] I don't – yeah, I don't know how you would do it, but they did it within minutes.

[1:01:19] This is – and again, I think –

[1:01:20] We're not the smartest family in the world.

[1:01:22] No, no, no.

[1:01:23] They are.

[1:01:23] I mean, yeah, basically – it's basically the Fantastic Four, right?

[1:01:26] The Fantastic Four, which – so Ice Cube would be Reed Richards, I guess.

[1:01:32] Faith is the thing.

[1:01:36] Wait.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:36] No, I think Ice Cube is the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:38] Actually, Ice Cube is the thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:39] Dave is Reed Richards, or maybe he's Johnny Storm.

[1:01:42] He's Johnny Storm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:43] He's Johnny Storm, except Mark is more like Johnny Storm.

[1:01:46] He's like – he's kind of a goofball, but he gets things done.

[1:01:50] Faith is Reed Richards, and Dave is the Invisible Woman because he's hiding his identity behind this disruptor.

[1:01:56] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:57] And he's like really into Namor.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:00] Okay, yeah, and he's got hots for fishmen.

[1:02:03] Yeah, exactly.

[1:02:04] Do you guys ever think about The Shape of Water as Fantastic Four erotic fanfic?

[1:02:08] Always.

[1:02:09] Okay.

[1:02:10] She's the Invisible Woman because people don't notice her at work, and he's Namor because he's a fishman.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:14] We did.

[1:02:15] And Michael Shannon is basically Galactus, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:18] Oh, yeah.

[1:02:19] Not necessarily.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:22] So, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:24] He's more like Claw, the mad master of sound, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:28] Happy ending.

[1:02:29] We get a little bit of an epilogue.

[1:02:31] We see Faith getting Ice Cube's posthumous email as we also see news stories.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:36] And it's implied that Ice Cube may have died, right?

[1:02:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:40] Yeah.

[1:02:40] But we see footage of news stories about all the good guys getting promoted and the bad guys getting arrested.

[1:02:46] But it turns out, no, he's not dead after all.

[1:02:49] He gets a call from an official asking him to head up an ethical surveillance program.

[1:02:54] But he says, I'm done watching us.

[1:02:56] Now I'm watching you guys.

[1:02:57] And I'm like, that's going to get you arrested.

[1:02:59] Like, don't tell them.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:00] Don't tell them, man.

[1:03:01] I mean, there are legal ways to keep an eye on the government.

[1:03:03] He could be just making FOIA requests and things like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:05] Yeah, but they're going to start, you know, they're going to surveil him now.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:09] And then, yeah, we get footage of the baby shower where he's wearing the Amazon product that was suggested him to purchase at the beginning of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:15] Yep.

[1:03:16] Yep.

[1:03:16] See, the Secretary of Defense, I think it is, he's like, yeah, we want to collect people's information in an ethical way.

[1:03:22] And I feel like the movie, it falls short of making the point that there is no ethical way particularly to do that.

[1:03:29] You know, there's always an amount of invasion of privacy involved.

[1:03:32] But yeah, he says, now he's like a freedom fighter with his son.

[1:03:36] It was, maybe this shows that I'm just a regular bourgeois dad, but I was like, so how's he going to pay his bills?

[1:03:41] Like, that's not a job that you'd like get a salary for.

[1:03:44] Like, does he still get his Department of Homeland Security pension?

[1:03:47] Is that what he's living off of now?

[1:03:49] Like, how's he?

[1:03:50] He probably sold his life rights or something.

[1:03:53] I mean, that's the movie we're watching right now.

[1:03:55] Yeah.

[1:03:56] How much do you think this movie costs?

[1:03:58] This is the kind of movie that looks like it costs nothing.

[1:03:59] That's a really good question.

[1:04:01] But it probably costs like $300 million or something like that, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:05] I wouldn't go that high.

[1:04:06] I mean, we can probably find it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:07] You think of more like $3,000 billion?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:09] I mean, I do think that a lot of what we see is literally stock footage.

[1:04:13] They just threw some tripods on some of it.

[1:04:18] So, yeah, do you guys have, are you able to find out?

[1:04:23] No, I don't see anything on the Wikipedia page.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:25] Let me tap into Goliath and see if it tells me.

[1:04:28] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:29] This is a good way of spending our time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:31] War of the Worlds.

[1:04:32] Let's check this out.

[1:04:34] Sex and nudity, none.

[1:04:35] Violence and gore, mild.

[1:04:37] Mild is either right, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:39] Parents.

[1:04:40] Yeah, what does common sense media say about the budget?

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:43] Well, if you've got technical specs, Dolby Digital 5.1.

[1:04:48] Okay.

[1:04:49] Read us some goofs.

[1:04:50] Thank God.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:51] Actually, there are no goofs.

[1:04:52] The movie is perfect.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:53] Yeah.

[1:04:53] When I pull up goofs, it says 404 error.

[1:04:58] Page not found.

[1:04:59] Does not compute.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:01] So, Dan, what else are we going to talk about?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:03] Well, this is where we do our final judgments.

[1:05:05] Whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:10] The Metacritic score is six.

[1:05:12] Is that out of ten?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:15] Probably.

[1:05:16] I think it's out of a hundred.

[1:05:19] No, maybe a thousand.

[1:05:21] As it started out, it was pretty slow because it is a movie about a man sitting in a room

[1:05:28] watching footage.

[1:05:30] But the thing picked up steam.

[1:05:32] So, I will say, yeah, it's a good, bad movie.

[1:05:37] Like, one of the things about the Flophouse is we used to watch the movies all together

[1:05:41] when that was a thing we could do.

[1:05:43] Now, obviously, we have to watch them on our own.

[1:05:46] And I think this one would have been a lot of fun all watching it together.

[1:05:51] Yeah.

[1:05:51] As someone watching it alone, it didn't have, like, the same bad movie joy that, like,

[1:05:56] I think you could achieve with this.

[1:05:59] But I think it's there.

[1:06:01] So, I'm going to say good, bad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:02] Yeah.

[1:06:02] I feel like the first half hour or so felt like two hours.

[1:06:07] But once stuff actually starts happening and it really, like, initially, I was just uncomfortable

[1:06:14] with how...

[1:06:16] Aroused you were?

[1:06:18] Yeah.

[1:06:18] How aroused I was at the concept of a dad just watching anybody he wants.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:24] It leads into a lot of your fantasies.

[1:06:26] But you want to be the watched one.

[1:06:27] You don't have to watch her.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:28] Yeah.

[1:06:29] I'm an exhibitionist, guys.

[1:06:30] I think we all know that.

[1:06:31] Well, you guys follow me on Instagram, right?

[1:06:35] But yeah, it's...

[1:06:36] Once it picks up and we really get the full scope of the stupidity of this movie, I think

[1:06:42] it ends up being pretty fun.

[1:06:44] So, I will say I think it's hard is in the wrong place, but this is a good, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:49] I am going to agree with what you guys said.

[1:06:51] I actually enjoyed watching it by myself a lot, but for not the reasons that the filmmakers

[1:06:56] intended.

[1:06:57] I think it is a good, bad movie.

[1:06:59] It's very stupid.

[1:07:00] It has the message that Amazon is the most benevolent of corporate overlords and that

[1:07:05] there are good ways and bad ways of being an intrusive surveillance state.

[1:07:10] I don't love that a lot of the attack footage is actual disaster footage with CGI alien tripods

[1:07:17] inserted into it.

[1:07:18] That's kind of icky.

[1:07:20] But otherwise, if you want to watch the dumbest movie of 2025, then you only have one option,

[1:07:28] you know, and that's War of the Worlds.

[1:07:30] So, I would say watch it for the wrong reasons if you're going to watch it.

[1:07:35] But I would also say good, bad movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:38] Yeah, you call this maybe the dumbest movie, and I don't know if I could go that far, but

[1:07:41] it's certainly perhaps the dumbest movie with actual movie stars in it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:46] I feel like even no-name indie movies, there's a hard, molten core.

[1:07:55] I know it can't even be hard and molten at the same time.

[1:07:56] There's this kind of intense core of stupidity that the entire movie revolves around.

[1:08:01] And just when you think the movie has gotten really dumb, then it suddenly leaps up again

[1:08:06] and gets even dumber.

[1:08:08] And in that way, at times, it has the, I guess the nicest thing I'll say about it is

[1:08:11] at times has the breakneck insanity of two children playing a make-believe game together

[1:08:17] where they're just inventing it as they go along, you know?

[1:08:20] But in a negative way for this movie.

[1:08:23] But it is, it's just so, it's just really dumb.

[1:08:26] It's just a really dumb movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:27] I really can't wait for them to make like a Universal Studios-style theme park ride for

[1:08:32] this movie where you're just sitting at a desk chair and you're experiencing the whole

[1:08:35] thing.

[1:08:36] Looking at a screen the whole time.

[1:08:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:37] This thing could have, this thing would have crushed in 40X, right?

[1:08:40] Where you're just smelling office smells.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:44] Yeah.

[1:08:45] Cube spills his coffee and water sprays on you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:48] Breathing recycled air.

John Hodgman

[1:08:54] On Judge John Hodgman, the courtroom is fake, but the disputes are real.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:00] Brian would say, I'm the Gumby of this family.

[1:09:03] He's just not.

John Hodgman

[1:09:04] Claiming to be Gumby is an un-Gumby-like claim.

[1:09:09] No, it's just Gumby and I being our authentic selves.

[1:09:12] So what's your complaint?

[1:09:13] Too many sauces?

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:14] There are no foods on which to put the sauces.

John Hodgman

[1:09:18] Have we named all the sauces on the top shelf yet?

[1:09:20] Not, not even close.

[1:09:21] You economize when it comes to pants.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:24] Truly, it's not about the cleanliness of the pants.

John Hodgman

[1:09:26] Well, why isn't it?

[1:09:27] This is what I want to know.

[1:09:29] Judge John Hodgman.

[1:09:30] Fake court.

[1:09:31] Weird cases.

[1:09:33] Real justice.

[1:09:34] On MaximumFun.org, YouTube, and everywhere you get podcasts.

[1:09:39] It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Go is about.

[1:09:41] So I had my kids take a stab at it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:44] Probably weird stuff.

[1:09:46] You talk about...

John Hodgman

[1:09:48] Jobs that are annoying.

[1:09:50] Uh-huh.

[1:09:50] Hmm, business.

[1:09:51] I think you probably learned your lesson after talking about business a couple of times.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:57] Grown-up jokes that I don't understand and there's no prison making.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:06] All the podcasts are annoying.

John Hodgman

[1:10:09] Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grown-ups.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:13] Hey, in addition to the kind support of listeners like you, this podcast is brought to you in part by Squarespace.

[1:10:20] By Amazon?

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[1:11:06] And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:11:13] Hey, we're all busy, especially if your name is Elliot.

[1:11:18] And between busy schedules and plans with friends, sometimes you don't have a lot of time to think about what you're going to eat, which is important.

[1:11:27] Because, you know, if I know one thing, food makes body go.

[1:11:32] Well, Factor is dedicated to helping you eat smarter with tasty chef-prepped meals that are delivered right to your door.

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[1:11:46] Choose the one you want, including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost.

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[1:12:00] For more choices to better nutrition, that's why 97% of customers, that's a high percentage, say that Factor helped them live a healthier life.

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[1:12:13] I've enjoyed these meals.

[1:12:15] I'm a man who, unlike the aforementioned Elliot, loves to cook.

[1:12:19] But that doesn't mean that sometimes I'm not also extremely lazy.

[1:12:23] And if I'm lazy, I don't want to be eating something that's junk.

[1:12:26] I want to be eating something that feels like I'm still giving my body the things it needs.

[1:12:34] And Factor is both healthy and delicious.

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[1:13:09] And some Flophouse news.

[1:13:13] We have sold out our Chicago show, so we are adding a late show.

[1:13:19] If you wanted to hear us talk about taking care of business at 7 p.m., I'm sorry.

[1:13:24] You snossed and you lost.

[1:13:25] But now you can hear us talk about another Jim Belushi film at 9 p.m.

[1:13:31] And speaking of nine, the film is Canine, the second best action comedy from 1989 about a cop and his dog.

[1:13:39] Which also makes it the worst action comedy from 1989 about a cop and his dog.

[1:13:44] So, if you want tickets, go to sleeping-village.com for the date of Sunday, November 16.

[1:13:52] And we hope to see you there for the late show when things get a little blue.

[1:13:57] Ba-da-dee, ba-da-die.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:00] Now, if you can't go to Chicago and you can't make it there, we understand you're going to be missing out on what's going to be a really fantastic show.

[1:14:08] But you will have access in your home to a different kind of Flophouse show through your computer.

[1:14:15] That's right.

[1:14:16] We are bringing back Flop TV, the online video one-hour television version of the Flophouse, starting the first Saturday in September and continuing every month after that on the first Saturday of each month through February.

[1:14:30] Not every month after that until the end of time.

[1:14:33] There's six episodes.

[1:14:34] So, for six months, the first Saturday of each month, we are going to be doing our online live show.

[1:14:40] You can get tickets at theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:14:43] For this season, season three, we are branding it as Flopster Piece Theater.

[1:14:47] Each episode will travel through time to a different decade to see a major flop from that decade.

[1:14:52] We're starting with the 2000s in September with The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a movie I'm still not quite sure exists, so I'm kind of excited to see it.

[1:15:02] And then we'll be continuing through.

[1:15:04] After that, we'll be doing Jack Frost, the Michael Keaton one, Xanadu, Zardoz, Dr. Doolittle, the Rex Harrison one, and Plan 9 from Outer Space, a classic flop movie that we've never talked about.

[1:15:16] Go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com to get tickets.

[1:15:18] Again, that's the first Saturday in every month on your computer, but if you can't make it that time, that day, that's okay.

[1:15:24] If you have a ticket, you have access to the recorded video of that episode for the entirety of the run of the series that's right through February.

[1:15:32] So, you can buy tickets in January and watch all the episodes.

[1:15:36] You can buy tickets in December and watch all the episodes.

[1:15:37] I think you should buy the tickets now, but you can do that later if you want to.

[1:15:40] And I would suggest getting the season pass.

[1:15:42] That's a six-show bundle.

[1:15:44] You get six episodes for the price of five.

[1:15:46] There's a discount on that one.

[1:15:48] It's like you're getting a free episode.

[1:15:49] It's like you're stealing an episode of the show right from us.

[1:15:52] No, no, don't steal that episode.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:54] No, don't do it.

[1:15:55] Don't do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:56] It's reverse psychology.

[1:15:56] You should do it.

[1:15:57] Don't do it.

[1:15:58] No.

[1:15:58] So, that's theflophouse.simpleticks.com for Flop TV Season 3.

[1:16:02] We've had so much fun in the past with Flop TV.

[1:16:04] We're trying new things with it.

[1:16:05] It's going to be really fun.

[1:16:06] Join us September 6th, the first Saturday in September, and then the first Saturday of the month each month after that through February.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:13] Let us take a moment to talk to you, the listeners.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:17] To reflect on the Lord and his bounty and blessings.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:20] Through the medium of emails from you, the listeners.

[1:16:24] This first letter from listeners, it's a coin of phrase.

[1:16:28] It's from Sar, last name withheld, who writes,

[1:16:34] I've been hosting a weekly science podcast for 12 plus years, and I get two kinds of correction emails.

[1:16:41] One, you are not as precise as I would like you to be.

[1:16:44] And two, big flub.

[1:16:46] Nice job, dummy.

[1:16:48] I don't get a lot, but the actual mistakes linger in the back of my brain.

[1:16:51] An example of the first kind of letter would be when I jokingly suggested that if there are deep caves on the moon, a scientific possibility,

[1:16:59] that it would make for the scariest cave diving ever.

[1:17:02] A listener wrote in to let me know that there would never be water in the moon caves.

[1:17:06] The worst of the latter kind of correction.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:09] Yeah, because that's the only way to use dive.

[1:17:10] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:11] Yeah.

[1:17:12] The latter kind of correction was 10 years ago, I apparently said nuclear, George W. style, instead of nuclear.

[1:17:19] I was afraid to say that word for years.

[1:17:22] I notice you sometimes practice defensive podcasting and tell people not to write in about some mistake in the moment.

[1:17:28] So I'm guessing there are some you dread.

[1:17:31] What kind of corrections do you get the most of, which has stuck with you?

[1:17:35] Sar, last name withheld.

[1:17:36] I mean, I honestly, people are pretty nice about correcting us.

[1:17:46] Like overall, like I don't think we get the worst of it.

[1:17:49] I see other podcasts get a lot more aggro energy from listeners.

[1:17:57] But the stuff I dread is when I like say something wrong about movies because that's the topic of the show.

[1:18:03] And I'm like, well, my supposed expertise is all that I have.

[1:18:07] Like there's like one time when I think I attributed a Martin Brest movie to Walter Hill or something.

[1:18:11] And I was like, oh, and now that mistake is there forever.

[1:18:16] But I don't know.

[1:18:17] What do you guys think?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:19] Yeah, I'm not that worried about it anymore.

[1:18:22] I feel like probably at the start of doing the show, I was a little more concerned that I might look foolish by saying something that's incorrect.

[1:18:29] But I've gotten over that and don't care.

[1:18:33] And when it comes to people writing in letters, if I don't like the energy, I don't read it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:40] I ignore it.

[1:18:42] The kind of corrections that stick with me are more the ones where like I've used a word that was insensitive.

[1:18:46] I've been unclear in what I'm saying.

[1:18:48] Yeah, of course.

[1:18:48] It sounds like I'm saying something I don't really – that I'm not intending to say.

[1:18:52] But then there are also sometimes times when someone catches me in a factual error and it just gets to me because I'm the kind of guy that those stick out to.

[1:18:58] And I like to be the guy who catches other people in factual errors as you may have guessed from this very podcast.

[1:19:03] Everyone loves that guy.

[1:19:05] Yeah, everybody loves him.

[1:19:06] It took me a long time into my 20s to realize like, oh, nobody likes being corrected ever.

[1:19:11] Yeah.

[1:19:11] No one's ever like, thank you for telling me that.

[1:19:13] I'm glad that I now have it correct.

[1:19:15] But every now and then.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:17] Although I feel like it is a sign of growth to be able to receive that correction and then respond in a way that isn't defensive.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:26] Yes, that's true.

[1:19:27] That's the hard part.

[1:19:28] But yeah, for me, it's when if I've said something in a sloppy way – because we don't write this show ahead of time.

[1:19:33] We're just talking off the top of our heads and there's an inadvertent implication or consequence.

[1:19:38] That's when I feel the worst about it.

[1:19:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:41] No, agreed on that.

[1:19:42] Sam, last name withheld, writes –

[1:19:44] Samwise Gamgee.

[1:19:46] Ploppers.

[1:19:46] Gamgee?

[1:19:46] How do you pronounce his name?

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:47] Gamgee, dude.

[1:19:48] Gamgee.

[1:19:49] I don't know.

[1:19:49] He's fictional, Stu, so get off my back.

[1:19:51] We're all fictional.

[1:19:52] Sorry.

[1:19:53] I'm being defensive now.

[1:19:54] We all exist in the dreams of a mad guy.

[1:19:56] What?

[1:19:57] We all live in a simulation hologram of some kind.

[1:20:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:01] Sam writes, I met Anthony Bourdain at a book signing.

[1:20:04] Oh, my God.

[1:20:04] And told him how impressed I was that he narrated his own audio books.

[1:20:09] His reply, what else am I going to do?

[1:20:12] Get Jeremy Irons to narrate that shit?

[1:20:15] Mike, so my question to you is –

[1:20:16] Sounds like Anthony Bourdain.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:17] That was a solid Bourdain impression right there, Dan.

[1:20:19] Yeah, that was.

[1:20:20] My question to you –

[1:20:21] I didn't know you had that one up your sleeve.

[1:20:22] Is what celebrity would you like to –

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:24] Dan, do another Anthony Bourdain.

[1:20:26] Now do Anthony Bourdain.

[1:20:27] I can't.

[1:20:27] I wasn't.

[1:20:28] Now pretend he works at a McDonald's.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:31] Well, you want some of this shit?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:33] Okay, pretty good.

[1:20:34] Pretty good.

[1:20:35] Yeah, pretty good.

[1:20:36] He would not like that shit.

[1:20:38] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:39] The question is, what celebrity would we like to narrate our memoirs?

[1:20:43] Oh.

[1:20:44] I'm just going to pick not out of, like, who I think would play me the most accurately,

[1:20:49] but who I would like to hear the voice of saying my memoirs is Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:55] Okay.

[1:20:56] Fair.

[1:20:56] Yeah.

[1:20:57] Elliot, you got a hot one?

[1:20:59] Yeah, probably Cassandra Peterson.

[1:21:00] Oh, that's an amazing choice.

[1:21:03] And, of course, mine is Mr. McDonald's himself, Brian Cox.

[1:21:07] Oh.

[1:21:08] Da-da-da-da-da.

[1:21:09] I'd love it.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:12] Thanks.

[1:21:15] So those are the letters.

[1:21:19] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:20] Okay.

[1:21:21] Cool.

[1:21:21] That was an anticlimactic way to say it.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:24] I'll move on to recommendations.

[1:21:26] Movies that we may have seen of late or, I don't know, whatever.

[1:21:32] A long time ago.

[1:21:33] I don't care.

[1:21:34] There's no statute of limitations.

[1:21:35] Yeah.

[1:21:36] Yeah.

[1:21:36] That we've enjoyed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:38] Oh, we've enjoyed.

[1:21:39] Oh, okay.

[1:21:40] Wait.

[1:21:40] I got to rethink mine.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:41] I saw a movie recently.

[1:21:44] It was a weird Wednesday presentation at Alma, which I have returned to now that they have, you know, fixed their labor problems.

[1:21:54] They have allowed the union to be.

[1:21:59] So correctors stay away.

[1:22:01] Yeah.

[1:22:01] Well, I just, you know.

[1:22:02] Allow the union.

[1:22:03] They bent to the will of the union.

[1:22:04] They bent to the will of the union.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:04] And recognized the power of organized labor, Daniel.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:07] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:07] We've gotten so political today.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:09] This is good stuff.

[1:22:10] Yeah, yeah.

[1:22:11] We're heating up.

[1:22:12] People love this.

[1:22:14] Do they?

[1:22:14] I watched a movie called Wicked Wicked from 1973, which was.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:20] So you watched the movie Wicked twice in a row, Dan?

[1:22:22] Just admit that's what it was.

[1:22:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:24] It was filmed in what the movie calls Duo Vision, which means that it is in split screen.

[1:22:31] Almost the entire movie, there are a couple of like emphasis moments where they switch to one shot.

[1:22:37] Although, like, it seems kind of arbitrary when they decide what is important enough.

[1:22:43] And it is a wild movie.

[1:22:46] Like, I'm not going to say I think it's like great on its own.

[1:22:51] It is just extremely entertaining because they decided to use this gimmick, but they didn't really like think about why they were using this gimmick or how this gimmick would be used.

[1:23:02] Like, in a movie like Time Code, where like it's split into four quadrants on the screen, it's all happening in real time.

[1:23:12] And sometimes the things cross over one another.

[1:23:14] And so you get a sense of like coherency to it.

[1:23:18] Whereas here, sometimes like one of the screens would be a flashback.

[1:23:23] Sometimes both of them would be a flashback.

[1:23:25] Sometimes one of them will be like someone telling a story and you'll see how it really happened in the other screen.

[1:23:30] Sometimes like things are happening like nearby, but you don't really have a sense of the geography.

[1:23:34] So it doesn't like increase the tension or anything.

[1:23:37] It just is more confusing.

[1:23:39] Sometimes two people will be in the same room and like two halves of the conversation will just be on like different screens.

[1:23:47] It's just, it's a weird movie.

[1:23:49] Like they do like it's like cutaway flashback that almost feels like a family guy gag at one point where they're just like, this isn't the first time you made a mistake.

[1:23:58] And then you like just flashback to like this shooting that happened and then right back to the movie.

[1:24:04] It's like a killer thriller, but it's not filled with thrills.

[1:24:10] It's just strange.

[1:24:12] It's a strange thing to watch.

[1:24:14] Like a lot of the time it seems like they didn't realize that making a movie with two concurrent screens going at the same time would mean they would have to shoot a lot more movies.

[1:24:26] So like a lot of the time something utterly boring is happening in one of the sides, which is good because it directs your attention where it needs to be.

[1:24:34] But it's not, the gimmick is not enhancing it at that point.

[1:24:38] But it's kind of a fascinating thing.

[1:24:40] So Wicked Wicked from 1973.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:42] Dan, I'd never heard of this movie and I just want to tell you I'm looking at the information on Wikipedia and it talks about how one of the big challenges in making the movie was he decided to write the script so that the script pages were divided down the middle.

[1:24:55] And you would have it split up the way it is.

[1:24:58] And it says on Wikipedia, finding a typewriter that could accommodate these unique needs proved challenging for the writer.

[1:25:05] Yeah, no shit.

[1:25:06] I love that from step one it was difficult to make this movie.

[1:25:10] Just finding the right typewriter was hard.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:12] That typewriter did not exist because it would be dumb.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:17] And it's not like a Mission Impossible thing where they're like, okay, fuck it.

[1:25:20] We have to invent this special typewriter.

[1:25:24] Yeah.

[1:25:25] My recommendation I don't think is going to catch anyone by surprise, but I recently saw the movie Weapons, the follow-up to Barbarian from the same writer-director, Zach Krieger.

[1:25:37] Krieger?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:39] You seem pretty confident about how to say Samwise Gamgee and now suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:43] Yeah.

[1:25:44] I mean I'm much better at Lord of the Rings stuff than real life stuff, Elliot.

[1:25:49] Look at my life.

[1:25:50] Fair.

[1:25:51] But the – so this is a horror movie.

[1:25:55] One of the things that I will give this movie extra credit for, bonus points, is that the trailer gives you very little information.

[1:26:03] It gives you just kind of the initial setup and then gives you hints at the chaos to come.

[1:26:07] This is a horror movie that in some ways to me, like Barbarian, isn't really about anything but is a wild, exciting horror movie ride.

[1:26:15] It's very gross at times.

[1:26:17] It has some great scares and it has like situations that I feel like I haven't seen before.

[1:26:23] I think it's really fun.

[1:26:24] It has some great performances.

[1:26:26] I really enjoyed it.

[1:26:28] So Weapons.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:30] I'm going to recommend a movie that I don't know if enjoyed is quite the right word, but which I found a lot in – that I found meaningful but also strange but also just interesting.

[1:26:43] And that is David Cronenberg's most recent movie, The Shrouds.

[1:26:46] Oh, wow.

[1:26:47] Which is a – it's a – David Cronenberg is one of these directors who as he has gotten older, his movies have stripped away the idea of like sensationalism or thrill in a way that I find really fascinating and interesting.

[1:27:02] Where he is presenting a very strange story about a man whose grief for his wife was so overwhelming that he invented a shroud that a dead body can wear underground that provides a real-time 3D video image of it so you can watch your loved ones rotting.

[1:27:19] And that's – and never lose sight of them.

[1:27:22] And this somehow gets him wrapped up into a conspiracy involving potentially the surveillance state, potentially the Chinese government, potentially different environmental terror activists.

[1:27:36] And in a – and also his own kind of like relationship with his wife's body and his sexual interest in that and his inability to kind of let it go.

[1:27:48] And there's a lot of very Cronenberg feelings and thoughts floating around in it.

[1:27:54] And it never fully comes together particularly.

[1:27:57] This was – this is a very Mulholland Drive type movie where apparently like Mulholland Drive, it was started as an idea for a television series and then was completed as a movie when it was not made as a television series.

[1:28:08] But it's a really fascinating kind of late –

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:11] It was going to be like an office-style sitcom, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:14] Exactly.

[1:28:15] Yeah.

[1:28:15] It's a – yeah, set at the cemetery where they watch people rotting on little screens.

[1:28:20] It's a really fascinating late period David Cronenberg movie and it feels very personal.

[1:28:24] And like a lot of Cronenberg stuff, like there are things that are not especially pleasant that you see or that happen in it.

[1:28:31] It is a movie that plays with taboo stuff.

[1:28:37] But I thought – I found a lot in it that I found really meaningful and interesting even though when it – I have to admit when it ended I was like, oh, it ended.

[1:28:44] I didn't – the ending is fairly abrupt and I was like, oh, the movie's over.

[1:28:48] But I would recommend it if you are a Cronenberg fan and you're just seeing where he is now.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:52] I've been mean to get to it and I just haven't gotten around it.

[1:28:54] Have you seen it yet, Dan?

[1:28:55] No.

[1:28:56] Yeah.

[1:28:56] It was such a – it had such like a brief theatrical run.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:00] It does not surprise me that it didn't make a big splash, not just because the subject matter is – I think a lot of people would find distasteful.

[1:29:08] But also because it's so calm for most of the movie.

[1:29:12] Like even when the character is in trouble or there's kind of like rough emotional stuff happening, it's presented in a very calm, kind of very even-keeled way.

[1:29:22] And so it does not deliver thrills.

[1:29:23] Like I'm saying, it doesn't deliver – it's not like The Fly or Scanners or something where you're like, oh, shit, the guy's head exploded.

[1:29:29] You know, it's a – it's a very much a mature late period Cronenberg.

[1:29:32] But I think it's worth watching if you like his stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:34] It doesn't cut to a guy barfing because somebody's head exploded.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:37] It doesn't.

[1:29:38] No.

[1:29:38] He doesn't pull from that Sopranos episode.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:41] Yeah, it seems like a movie that might confuse non-Cronenberg heads perhaps.

[1:29:46] What I associate with it so far, I want to see it, is I ran into Griffin Newman at Nighthawk after he had just seen it.

[1:29:56] And he was very positive about it but said that like there's like a large group of people in the theater like laughing and being asses about, you know, watching it.

[1:30:05] Laughing at how like dumb it was or something?

[1:30:07] Well, like thinking of it as like bad or something when like I assume it's just a lot of Cronenberg weirdness.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:14] Well, I think there's a lot of stuff in it that is – the way that – so War of the Worlds is the one we watch today.

[1:30:19] Is dumb and stupid in a way that I think is not intentional.

[1:30:22] I think they thought they were making kind of a slapdash movie but they weren't like let's make a dumb movie.

[1:30:27] It wasn't a choice.

[1:30:28] Whereas this one, like I said, it's a little slow.

[1:30:31] Everything is very underplayed in a way that could be hilarious if it was not intentional but it feels intentional.

[1:30:36] And so I think it's the difference between when something is meant to be weird or strange and when it's not meant to be.

[1:30:44] And if you don't know Cronenberg, then I could see mistaking that.

[1:30:47] You know, Guy Pearce is in it as maybe the least handsome he's ever been in a movie.

[1:30:52] And he's playing this weird character who says some strange things.

[1:30:55] And if I was like – if it wasn't – if I didn't trust the guy making the movie, I might be like this is a weird performance.

[1:31:03] I'm not sure that this performance makes any sense at all.

[1:31:06] But because going into it, I'm already in a Cronenberg state of mind.

[1:31:10] I love that song.

[1:31:11] I'm in a Cronenberg state of mind.

[1:31:14] See a guy become a fly.

[1:31:16] Down in Hollywood.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:20] Okay.

[1:31:21] Well, three, I assume, great recommendations.

[1:31:24] And now the moment you've all been waiting for at the end of the podcast where I say if you like this, check out Maximum Fun, our network over at MaximumFun.org.

[1:31:36] We can only exist thanks to the support of MaxFun members.

[1:31:42] And it helps to check out some of the other shows too.

[1:31:47] And thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:31:49] He goes by the name Howell Doughty all over the internet.

[1:31:53] I have lately been enjoying his podcast, Big Howell and Possum, which is a show about him playing sort of a backwoods character whose best friend is a giant possum.

[1:32:06] And they just kind of talk about nonsense.

[1:32:08] And it works way better as a podcast than you might imagine from that sort of sketched out, very simple idea.

[1:32:19] I laugh a lot at it.

[1:32:20] So check that out as well.

[1:32:23] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:25] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:32:27] And I continue to be Elliot Kalin as I was at the beginning.

[1:32:30] So I am at the end, forever and ever.

[1:32:32] Amen.

[1:32:34] See ya.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:44] I'm looking for my notes.

[1:32:46] There they are.

[1:32:47] Are you doing the summary this time, Dan?

[1:32:49] I was on the sheet, I believe.

[1:32:52] Right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:52] That doesn't quite answer the question, but I like it.

[1:32:55] It did answer it in the most passive-aggressive way.

[1:32:57] Well, I said that I have notes.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:58] I feel like from context clues, it all fits together.

[1:33:01] You're right.

[1:33:02] I'm the answer.

[1:33:03] Yeah, exactly.

[1:33:03] I didn't say anyone was an asshole.

[1:33:05] I said that, like, I think it's pretty clear.

[1:33:07] Let's roll back the tape.

[1:33:08] From the totality of what was said.

[1:33:13] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:14] You remind me of the kids in the Ozu movie where they're like,

[1:33:18] adults have too much small talk.

[1:33:19] It's a waste of time.

[1:33:20] Who cares?

[1:33:22] Dan, this is the kind of little stuff that lubricates the conversation,

[1:33:25] lubricates social interaction.

[1:33:26] I understand.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:27] That's the spice, you know?

[1:33:28] It's the good stuff.

[1:33:28] That is, look, I have gotten better at small talk, is the thing.

[1:33:33] I used to, like, not understand it at all.

[1:33:36] No, you're still big.

[1:33:36] It's just the talk got small.

[1:33:38] Why is this?

[1:33:39] And then I was like, oh, wait, this is a trait of neurodivergent people.

[1:33:45] We don't understand the efficacy or need for non-functional, like, talk.

[1:33:51] Yeah.

[1:33:52] But I get it.

[1:33:53] You know, we're lubricating our friendship joints.

[1:33:57] Maximum Fun.

[1:33:59] A worker-owned network.

[1:34:00] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:34:02] Supported.

[1:34:03] Directly.

[1:34:03] By you.

Ep.#459 - War of the Worlds (2025)

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