Sonic the Hedgehog 3, with Jamelle Bouie

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Sonic 3.

[0:02] A further delve into the lore of the Sonic the Hedgehog mythology, which exists!

[0:31] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:34] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:35] I'm Elliot Kalin, and before we get started telling you what this podcast is about and what we do on it,

[0:40] I just want to mention, you may have seen that this is a hedgehog podcast.

[0:44] This is a podcast about Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

[0:46] You may ask yourself, is the Flophouse able to bring back their politics and hedgehog correspondent?

[0:50] Yes, we did, and he's here with us now.

[0:52] We are very happy to be joined by the great Jamal Bowie, writer for the New York Times,

[0:57] co-host of Unclear and Present Danger with John Gans,

[1:00] someone who has more serious, interesting things to do with his time than watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3

[1:05] and then talk to us about it, but we're always so glad when he comes to join us.

[1:08] Jamal, thank you so much for joining us again for this hedgehog film.

[1:11] The full end of the trilogy, unless there's more, I don't know.

[1:14] First, it's a real pleasure. Second of all, I think this movie did well, so it will be a fourth one.

[1:19] And third of all, honestly, I was disappointed that yet another hedgehog movie, a Sonic movie,

[1:26] and neither Sonic nor Knuckles is pregnant.

[1:30] Honestly, I was thinking the same thing during it.

[1:32] I'm like, when does the series go off the rails and they just start making these characters pregnant?

[1:36] And you know I'm pausing the screen every time they're on there,

[1:39] and I'm measuring their bellies to see if they're a little bigger, if they're showing a bump.

[1:43] Any scene where they're hanging out, you're like, what are they drinking?

[1:46] Is it water or do they have actual liquor in their hands?

[1:51] First of all, I'm glad that we got Jamal back.

[1:54] I wanted to clarify, Unclear and Present Danger is another podcast.

[1:57] The word podcast was not said in case people wanted to go looking for that.

[2:00] Oh, I thought I did say it. I guess I didn't.

[2:03] But also, I have to admit, we put off doing Sonic 3 for a while because I kept being scared.

[2:08] I was like, Jamal's too busy being one of the few people with balls enough to say true things in the media right now.

[2:15] He can't come back for a hedgehog show.

[2:17] And then he expressed interest himself, and I'm like, oh, thank God, okay.

[2:22] That's great, we'll get him back.

[2:24] Honestly, I was like, why haven't they reached out to me about this yet?

[2:28] The movie's been out for a minute.

[2:32] Every time you're scrolling through whatever app and you see it, and you're like, oh, Sonic 3, huh?

[2:40] You look out the window and hope that the Jamal symbol is flashing in the clouds.

[2:45] Do I watch it? No, I should wait.

[2:48] So, Unclear in Present Danger, it's a podcast where you and John Gansey talk about John Clancy-style movie thrillers, right?

[2:54] From the 90s?

[2:55] Yeah, John Clancy?

[2:56] Tom Clancy, God damn it.

[2:58] His brother.

[2:59] His woke brother, John Clancy.

[3:05] The peaceful look for Red October is a big John Clancy one, yeah.

[3:10] Yeah, we watched the political and military thrillers of the 90s.

[3:14] The podcast named after the film Clear in Present Danger.

[3:17] And there's obviously that, and Humphrey Red October, and Patriot Games, and Air Force One,

[3:22] which isn't technically a Tom Clancy movie, but it basically is.

[3:25] It's so close, too.

[3:27] That's a John Clancy movie if ever there was one, yeah.

[3:30] But I mean, the funny thing about doing the podcast is that this was just like a healthy genre of film in the 90s.

[3:40] Reliably, every other weekend, there'd be a new one of these kind of movies at the multiplex.

[3:46] Which is to say that we've been doing this four or five years now, and we're still at 1997.

[3:52] We're going chronologically, so we have a couple more years left in the 90s.

[3:57] And if you actually date the end of this, kind of the heyday of this film, to 2002,

[4:05] which is I think about right because it's the last pre-911 films were hitting the theaters.

[4:10] Then we have a solid four or five years left to go, and there are a lot of these goddamn movies, I'll tell you.

[4:16] They were so popular because it was such a – I feel like there was a – I'm sure you guys have talked about this.

[4:22] I haven't listened to every episode. I apologize, but – and I don't remember all of them.

[4:26] I apologize. God, Jamel, why are you making me feel so bad about this?

[4:30] People were so curious about, like, what's it going to be?

[4:33] Like what's our new threat? What's the thing that's going to be scary?

[4:36] And then 9-11 hit, and it's like, oh, this is less fun than I thought it was going to be to have a new threat.

[4:40] This is way less fun.

[4:41] I feel like that was an era where we were able to gainfully employ older male actors to play presidents.

[4:47] That's true.

[4:49] To play presidents, to play national security advisors – a lot of national security advisors.

[4:53] Now they all have to be the action star, which is crazy.

[4:57] The guy who wants to bomb things, then there has to be the analyst who doesn't want to bomb things.

[5:01] There's a lot of roles that you've got to fill up.

[5:03] There's the guy who first wrote the phrase, but sir.

[5:06] He's got so many royalties, so many royalties.

[5:10] I didn't know you could patent that, but it's amazing.

[5:12] Oh, yeah.

[5:13] Well, it's like when SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden and Disney announced they were going to do something called SEAL Team 6 about SEALs.

[5:20] They tried to copyright the phrase SEAL Team 6, and everyone was like, wait a minute.

[5:23] Hold on a second.

[5:25] When they came out with – what was that Day of the Dead movie that they did?

[5:32] The one where the kid goes to the land of the dead, the Disney movie.

[5:36] Oh, Coco.

[5:37] Where they briefly tried to copyright the phrase Day of the Dead.

[5:40] It was like, Disney, come on.

[5:41] You can't take a phrase everyone has been using for years and years.

[5:44] Can't blame a guy for trying.

[5:45] Yeah, that's true.

[5:46] Elliot, for a second I thought you were representing a George Romero film.

[5:49] I was like, what George Romero movie where a kid goes to the land of the dead?

[5:53] Yeah, George Romero's 28 Years Later.

[5:58] It should have been called School of the Dead, and it would have been a kid going to – yeah, he should have made that.

[6:03] Guys, let's go back in time.

[6:04] This is the one use of a time machine.

[6:06] That feels a little too school shooter adjacent though.

[6:10] There are all these – not to sound too much like an old man, but that's where the show is drifting.

[6:16] There are all these venerable genres you just don't see anymore.

[6:20] That was one of them, of course, because it was more tied to a specific political moment.

[6:24] Zombie Kids?

[6:25] Zombie Kids genre, yeah.

[6:27] I just went out with an old Daily Show friend of Elliot's and mine to see Crime 101, and it's like a perfectly solid middle crime thriller.

[6:38] But it really was like, oh, these used to be around all the time.

[6:42] It feels weird to get one.

[6:44] Because they were like – when you watch these political thrillers and you watch those movies, they're just cheap to make.

[6:50] It doesn't really take a lot.

[6:51] You don't need a ton of sets.

[6:53] You get a lot of veteran character actors who just need the work.

[6:56] You get some workman-like director who knows how to run a set and put together a couple action sequences.

[7:03] Let's get Peter Hyams in here.

[7:05] Yeah, get some drone shots of the Pentagon.

[7:08] It's like what – was it Godard who said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun?

[7:14] For those movies, you need a gun or two, suits, a conference room, maybe some place that looks like an airfield.

[7:22] Maybe if you're spending a little bit of money, you might film on location in Washington, D.C.

[7:28] But a stock shot of the White House does just as well.

[7:32] You just cut to it and then cut to a room.

[7:35] I was going to segue about how this is –

[7:38] The actual movie we're talking about, Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

[7:40] Yeah, so different from Sonic 3.

[7:41] But then I'm like it's not really because this movie is filled with so much unnecessary plot and so much of it is like action-y plot.

[7:49] And I was like, Elliot, I think you're in charge of the summary today, right?

[7:53] No, Stuart.

[7:54] Stuart the Hedgehog 3 is on the summary.

[7:56] I look forward to you explaining this movie to me because I didn't understand what was going on.

[8:00] Ironically, this is something I should have thought about beforehand but I didn't.

[8:02] It's that of all the Sonic movies, this is the closest to one of those 90s thrillers.

[8:08] There's so much in it about like a secret government weapon.

[8:10] It's a veritable geostorm of a movie.

[8:13] It is.

[8:14] I mean it's almost the exact same thread as geostorm, yes.

[8:17] And for a movie based or titled after a main character whose catchphrase is gotta go fast, this thing sure takes its time.

[8:26] Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this.

[8:27] This was the first Flophouse movie in a while where I stopped it multiple times to see how much time was left in the movie.

[8:34] And was shocked at how little I had watched and how much was still to come.

[8:38] I was like, oh, this is – they look like they're wrapping things up.

[8:40] I'm not even halfway through.

[8:42] There was a moment where I paused it and I saw 57 minutes and I shouted, what the fuck?

[8:48] I had that near the end when it seemed like they had saved the day and there were 20 minutes left in the movie.

[8:53] I'm like, what's left to do, Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

[8:56] This movie should be 85 minutes long.

[8:59] It's for dropping off the kids to the theater and then you go run some errands.

[9:03] You pick them up again.

[9:04] But no.

[9:05] OK.

[9:06] So the movie opens.

[9:07] Obviously with the –

[9:08] Good way for a movie to start.

[9:09] It opens on a mysterious island prison off the coast of Japan.

[9:14] We see a mysterious hedgehog suspended in a tank with some fluid.

[9:21] And that hedgehog suddenly starts hearing something.

[9:26] He hears some acoustic music.

[9:28] He gets flashes of traumatic memories.

[9:31] And then a hacker shuts down the facility, letting that hedgehog escape after beating the shit out of a bunch of like guards.

[9:40] He does it by teleporting around a lot and then he bursts his way out and runs across Tokyo Bay.

[9:46] This is Shadow the Hedgehog.

[9:49] Guys, describe Shadow the Hedgehog for me.

[9:52] He's the most Keanu Reeves-y of hedgehogs.

[9:56] That's true.

[9:57] Because that's the voice.

[9:59] He's got cool sneakers.

[10:00] got rings around his wrists and ankles.

[10:03] And he's got like a, where Sonic the Hedgehog is blue

[10:06] with white highlights.

[10:07] He is like black with red highlights, right?

[10:09] Like it's the same character design essentially,

[10:12] but with different jewelry and shoes

[10:14] and just different coloring, right?

[10:16] Cause they're all, they all come from video games

[10:18] where it was like, take the same character

[10:20] and just take the same sprite and just change it slightly,

[10:22] you know, to save CPU power, right?

[10:24] He's haunted by trauma, which of course is what you want

[10:27] in your cartoon family hedgehog.

[10:30] Spoiler, I was in credit.

[10:31] I was shocked to find that his traumatic memory

[10:34] of his friend, a child being killed

[10:36] was not gonna be revealed that it was a trick or a ploy

[10:39] and that girl survived.

[10:40] No, that girl died and Shadow lives with it forever.

[10:43] I'm like, this is not what I expected from the movie.

[10:46] I save Elliot for like most of the movie.

[10:48] I was like, yeah, so she's gonna show up

[10:49] and like help save the day, right?

[10:51] Like, no, the movie's like, no, this girl's dead as hell.

[10:53] Yeah, it's so, so it feels like-

[10:57] The granddaughter of a different character is dead as hell.

[11:00] This character-

[11:02] Sorry.

[11:02] No, no, it's just like, I kept waiting for that moment

[11:04] where they're like, oh, Robotnik's grandfather lied to you.

[11:07] She actually survived and he's been using you.

[11:09] No, yeah, like you said, dead as hell.

[11:11] Like they just killed this kid

[11:12] and Shadow is traumatized.

[11:13] Yeah, I thought it was a little extreme though

[11:15] when they had that scene where they exhumed the body

[11:17] just to confirm that she was dead.

[11:18] Yeah.

[11:21] More than necessary.

[11:22] Well, when Sonic was like, we better taste some of it

[11:25] to make sure it's really her

[11:27] and they were like, Sonic, you and your lust

[11:29] for human flesh, your hunger that can never be assuaged.

[11:33] And he's like, that's me, Sonic the Hedgehog.

[11:33] Yeah, and then we all flip back to the first two movies

[11:35] like, when was that established?

[11:37] That happened, but the scenes are all there.

[11:39] He goes, I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, I have to eat.

[11:42] So I don't know about you guys, but Shadow the Hedgehog

[11:44] was introduced to the lore and the games

[11:46] kind of after my time.

[11:47] So everything I've learned about Shadow,

[11:49] I've learned from the internet.

[11:51] So I know that he's cool.

[11:53] I know that he has kind of like a Tetsuo style haircut

[11:56] and I know that he apparently loves Latinas

[11:58] is apparently part of the-

[11:59] Oh, really?

[12:00] Is that official canon or is that true?

[12:01] That is part of the online lore, yes.

[12:03] Shadow the Hedgehog loves Latinas.

[12:05] So Jamel Ezra-

[12:06] But they tie it into the movie

[12:07] where A, the little girl is named Maria,

[12:10] not an uncommon Latina name,

[12:11] but also he's very interested in this telenovela

[12:16] that he's watching later on.

[12:18] I know I didn't even catch that

[12:19] and I sincerely hope that's intentional.

[12:21] I hope that the writers are like,

[12:23] some of the freaks who watch this movie

[12:25] are really gonna wanna see Shadow.

[12:26] Yeah, me.

[12:27] But then there's no excuse for no one to be pregnant

[12:30] by the end of the movie.

[12:31] There's no excuse.

[12:32] That's true, yes, no excuse.

[12:33] Well, the viewers are pregnant.

[12:34] Yeah, well, with excitement, yeah.

[12:36] Jamel Ezra, Hedgehog correspondent,

[12:38] tell us what's your experience with Shadow?

[12:40] How familiar were you with him before this movie?

[12:42] That kind of thing.

[12:43] What do you know about him?

[12:44] So, you know, Shadow's introduced in Sonic Adventure 2,

[12:46] which was the last Sonic game released for Dreamcast

[12:49] and the last Sonic game to release for Sega console.

[12:52] And so I did play Sonic Adventure 2 way back when.

[12:55] And so I am familiar with Shadow from that.

[12:57] But otherwise, my Shadow kind of knowledge

[13:00] just comes from memes at this point.

[13:04] Memes about Shadow liking big booty Latinas.

[13:11] Memes about Shadow maybe, you know, saying racial slurs.

[13:18] Glad they didn't do that in the movie.

[13:19] Because Shadow, he's not evil,

[13:22] but he's an anti-hero, right?

[13:23] So he'll go right up to the line.

[13:30] He's always testing boundaries.

[13:31] That's our Shadow, yeah.

[13:33] I'm really glad that Jamel's here

[13:34] to back me up on the meme-ification of Shadow.

[13:38] Because I feel like I would bring that up

[13:39] and Dan Nelly would look at me like I'm crazy.

[13:42] Well, literally, so Dan texted us yesterday,

[13:44] texted me a picture that he had made

[13:46] of the Master of Disguise from the movie Master of Disguise.

[13:50] And he was supposed to be Riddick from the Riddick movies.

[13:53] And I was so baffled.

[13:54] I was like, is this a reference

[13:55] to something I don't understand?

[13:57] Like, is Dan playing off a meme that exists already?

[13:59] Like, what is going?

[14:01] And I had to call Dan and leave a message

[14:02] being like, what is this?

[14:03] So what am I missing?

[14:05] Did I have a stroke?

[14:06] And did you hit something in my head?

[14:08] You know, I was thinking about Riddick.

[14:09] I was blue-skying about Riddick.

[14:12] And Master of Disguise, you know, came into my head

[14:15] because we just did that show in San Francisco.

[14:17] And I'm like, you know what?

[14:19] You just darken in those glasses

[14:21] and it looks like he's doing a Riddick cosplay.

[14:23] He's a real period.

[14:24] That was the whole inspiration behind it.

[14:26] It shows you how the internet has distorted our brains.

[14:29] And I was like, what is the 10 levels of memes in

[14:33] that this is referring to?

[14:34] Like, the way that if I see an image of the green M&M

[14:37] holding hands with a green M&M who is Dr. Phil,

[14:39] I'm like, I get it.

[14:40] Yeah, I know what that's all about.

[14:41] And like, Shrek is giving them their marriage vows.

[14:43] I'm like, I understand what this is saying.

[14:45] But with this one, I was like, I don't know what it is.

[14:47] I gotta dig back.

[14:48] I was very happy when Dan was just like,

[14:49] no, it's just random.

[14:50] I was like, oh, thank goodness.

[14:52] This is not my whole day now researching this.

[14:53] Do you guys ever find yourselves,

[14:55] we all have partners in our lives.

[14:57] Do you ever find yourself trying to explain something

[15:00] like this to your partner and realizing pretty quickly

[15:04] that you can't, but you can't back out and you're like,

[15:07] okay, so this started from when this meme happened.

[15:12] And that's why it's a green M&M in this case.

[15:15] Stuart, you are describing my life since childhood.

[15:19] And I have a very strong memory of being at the Daily Show

[15:21] when I was a PA.

[15:22] And for some reason starting to explain to two people there

[15:25] the history of the different stop motion animators

[15:27] from Willis O'Brien through Ray Harryhausen

[15:29] up to Phil Tippett.

[15:30] And as I was telling them about it in my head being like,

[15:32] you can see from their faces, they don't care about this.

[15:34] Why are you telling them about this?

[15:36] Why are you explaining this thing to them?

[15:38] I feel like a lot of this has been trained out of me

[15:40] because yeah, I've said so many things to Audrey

[15:43] that like partway through,

[15:45] I realized mostly based on her reaction

[15:48] that there's no conceivable way

[15:49] that she could be interested in this.

[15:51] And she's not afraid of being like,

[15:53] I'm not paying attention.

[15:54] And then so I'm like, okay,

[15:55] I've learned not to do this particular thing.

[15:58] It's probably really helpful.

[16:00] So now that we've established,

[16:02] we have hit the opening title credit of Sonic 3.

[16:06] Shadow is loose.

[16:07] We know this. Shadow is loose.

[16:09] We now cut to Green Hills.

[16:11] What is it?

[16:12] Green Hills, Montana.

[16:13] Where the Sonic family, that's right.

[16:16] We have Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Tom and Maddie Wachowski.

[16:21] They all live in Green Hills.

[16:22] And the three, what aliens I guess we'll call them

[16:27] are gonna have a race,

[16:28] even though it seems silly

[16:29] cause Sonic is obviously the fastest.

[16:31] They have a race, but it's all just a smokescreen

[16:33] because the whole family's throwing Sonic a B-Earth day

[16:37] or a birthday to represent the anniversary

[16:40] of him coming to Earth.

[16:41] Man, Sonic's the fastest.

[16:44] So I don't, you know,

[16:45] all these new characters got introduced in the games past

[16:48] when I was playing the games.

[16:49] You know, I'm basically just a Sonic one person.

[16:53] Like-

[16:53] One man, one Sonic.

[16:54] That's what you believe.

[16:55] Anything else is unholy.

[16:56] Yeah.

[16:57] So fast here, like the other characters

[17:00] like have power, like Knuckles is strong

[17:02] and that's his thing.

[17:03] And then-

[17:04] He sure talks about it a lot.

[17:05] Yeah.

[17:06] Can fly cause of the tails.

[17:07] Are those the-

[17:08] Yeah, like propeller.

[17:09] Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

[17:10] Knuckles can also climb walls with his knuckles.

[17:14] Oh, right.

[17:15] He has like those spiky knuckles he can climb with.

[17:17] Mm-hmm.

[17:18] So this, you know, during this party,

[17:21] Sonic and his adoptive father, Tom,

[17:23] sneak away to Sonic's weird little cave,

[17:26] which reminded me a lot of the little cave from Together,

[17:29] our friend of the podcast, Michael Shank's movie.

[17:32] And they talk about Sonic's what adopt,

[17:36] former adoptive mother figure, Long Claw,

[17:39] which again is not a Valyrian steel blade,

[17:41] but it is an owl character who-

[17:43] Yes.

[17:44] Sacrificed herself to save Sonic.

[17:47] And this trauma-

[17:48] Way back in a flashback in Sonic 1, yeah.

[17:49] This trauma is going to inform a lot of the bond

[17:53] that Sonic will eventually develop with Shadow.

[17:55] Well, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is about loss

[17:58] and about overcoming loss and making life choices.

[18:01] And it's telling that story through

[18:03] very cartoonish talking hedgehogs

[18:05] that never quite look like they actually exist

[18:08] in the real world of the movie.

[18:09] And I had a constant,

[18:11] there would be a scene where it was mostly

[18:13] live action humans,

[18:14] and then suddenly one of our Sonic characters would show up.

[18:17] And it was, I don't know if you guys had this,

[18:18] it was always a little jolt to me

[18:20] because they never quite mesh.

[18:22] And I hate to say it,

[18:23] that original Sonic design where he had human teeth

[18:25] and looked real creepy,

[18:26] I don't think I would have had that same problem.

[18:28] So, you know, maybe I should-

[18:29] Because of the human teeth?

[18:31] I mean, partly the human teeth,

[18:32] but also he had smaller eyes, more human-like eyes.

[18:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[18:35] I mean, that original Sonic design, he did look grotesque.

[18:38] But it looked more real.

[18:39] It's like, this is what Sonic would look like.

[18:41] His little fleshy eye sockets have bloodshot orbs in them

[18:46] from straining against the wind.

[18:48] Exactly, exactly.

[18:49] Forgive me for continuing to play the part,

[18:51] which is also real,

[18:53] of guy who doesn't know the games really.

[18:56] Like, as they progress,

[18:58] do they get into more like actual storylines?

[19:01] Like, to what degree do these movies

[19:04] like really pull from games?

[19:08] You know, as someone who only played

[19:11] Go Fast, Get Rings version,

[19:13] I'm like, why does this movie have to have so much plot?

[19:17] It's cut so much plot.

[19:20] Well, I feel like some of the later games

[19:22] were probably directed by Hideo Kojima

[19:24] of the Metal Gear Solid franchise,

[19:28] which are, let's say, plot-heavy, I would describe them.

[19:31] But I actually don't know.

[19:33] I also wonder, are they filled

[19:34] with like quick-time event battle sequences?

[19:36] I don't remember.

[19:37] I don't think so.

[19:38] And also, I wonder if they're pulling it all,

[19:40] because I never read these,

[19:41] if they're pulling it all from the Sonic comics,

[19:42] which did get very,

[19:44] there was one writer who stayed on the Sonic,

[19:46] the Hedgehog comics from Archie, I think, for a long time.

[19:48] And when that happens,

[19:49] the characters start to become headier.

[19:50] And I know at some point,

[19:52] either Sonic or Knuckles,

[19:53] one of them kind of becomes a universe,

[19:54] like kind of sacrifices himself

[19:56] to become a living universe or something.

[19:57] And it's all, those get very,

[20:00] get very heady so anyway Jamel again as our hedgehog correspondent can you tell us where

[20:06] is this story coming from or is it just hollywood screenwriters being like uh how do we make another

[20:10] movie out of this i guess we'll make it like a techno thriller you know well i think i think

[20:15] some of this is coming from sonic adventure 2 where shadow is introduced i believe that in that

[20:21] game um let's see we're gonna look it up real quick this game has a plot and in the plot of

[20:29] this game um dr eggman learns of a secret weapon from the diary of his deceased grandfather

[20:36] professor jerome monick and infiltrates a high security guardian units of the nation facility

[20:43] to revive the chaos emerald the weapon shadow a black hedgehog who proclaims himself the ultimate

[20:48] life form offers to help eggman conquer the world telling him to rendezvous in an abandoned space

[20:53] colony with more chaos emeralds shadow has fulfilled the vow to fulfill a promise he made

[20:59] to his friend eggman's cousin maria before she died so yeah actually quite a bit of this is

[21:06] yeah this is actually uh i mean we i kind of don't even have to do the rest of summer

[21:12] now i wish the movie was called sonic the hedgehog 3 colon sonic adventures 2

[21:17] draws so much from that move from that game okay so as what is it guardian

[21:21] united network what's the what's the acronym for gun what's the what does that gun stand guardians

[21:26] of the united nations or something like that so this is the high-tech organization uh that kind

[21:32] of that is common throughout this movie in the previous ones it's their version of shield so they

[21:37] they show up led by captain rockwell commander rockwell played by christian ritter um and they

[21:44] need team sonic to help them with a uh an alien life form that they they need help with and of

[21:50] course sonic knuckles and tails eagerly agree and they all take a jet to tokyo and this was

[21:57] something where i was like i don't know if i love this turn of events them being kind of like heroes

[22:02] that the multinational force can turn to in times of crisis it is given them an authority and also

[22:09] like a um and they're also children they are children they are animal children uh so it seems

[22:15] very strange for them to be like yeah there's nothing we can do we need to send the animal

[22:18] children in to take care of this and i always thought they were going to be betrayed because

[22:21] i thought they were making the mistake of trusting the b in apartment 23 whatever it was but don't

[22:25] do that r.i.p man they should uh they should swing hard the other way and always call in sonic no

[22:32] matter what the problem is i this is inspired by i was i'm watching the old like uh batman series

[22:38] i'm re-watching all of it and the animated series the the 60s one and uh i see the funniest thing

[22:45] to me in those like i mean it's clearly a joke but like every episode the degree to which

[22:50] commissioner gordon's like well we can't do anything as the police where's batman

[22:56] they're like oh man if batman ever left town we'd be screwed like it really gets to that level of

[23:01] like the idea that an incompetent leader would call in a masked answer list to the public force

[23:07] to take care of to enforce laws that maybe maybe don't shouldn't be enforced in that way it seems

[23:14] it seems laughable dan is that what you're saying wake up wow anyway it is true that it

[23:19] is true they're always they're like batman a pencil rolled behind that table can you get

[23:22] that for us yeah is there an episode where batman like alfred makes batman go on a vacation and he's

[23:30] where it puts like a bathing costume over his batman suit and then meanwhile crime just goes

[23:35] crazy in gotham there should have been i mean there's definitely one where he was out of town

[23:39] and like the police chief was like i don't know what to do yeah yeah batman being out of town it's

[23:45] very funny to me yeah i don't think a business trip batman's on the flight he's getting bad

[23:51] suit on but he has like i don't know some comfortable comfortable slacks on as well

[23:55] yeah i mean these days it would just be sweatpants well he's but they'd be real fancy

[24:02] sweatpants i do wear a track suit when i fly but it's a fancy one in case i hopefully we'll get

[24:08] an upgrade now imagine bruce wayne is going to davos and he's got the cowl and the cape on but

[24:14] then he's got like a half zip fleece with a blue butt duck shirt underneath and and you know tacky

[24:19] pants and he's walking around with a headset mic on and he's like synergy global reach how do we

[24:24] accomplish these things at wayne enterprises they're like uh are you are you batman no but

[24:29] thank you for asking this guy's a little wheelie bag um okay so uh we got uh we are in tokyo uh

[24:37] the team sonic jump out of the jet and they land how many how many uh how many uh japanese

[24:43] characters are in this movie oh that's a good one why would there be japanese people what

[24:50] just because they're in tokyo i guess i just uh you're right that's silly of me so while they

[24:54] land in tokyo it's a scene of destruction and then they are greeted by shadow the hedgehog

[25:00] they threaten each other they get in a fight knuckles is not as strong as shadow

[25:04] sonic is not as fast as shadow guns he has

[25:13] he's also voiced by keanu reeves and he rides you guys did you guys have to do that i do which was

[25:18] keep checking like keanu reeves says this voice right and checking because it did not sound like

[25:22] him to me oh no i had the opposite i'm like i did i so know this voice who is and i looked up

[25:28] and i'm like oh of course of course it's i knew going in that keanu reeves did shadow and i kept

[25:32] thinking this doesn't really sound like him and it made me realize i think keanu reeves's major

[25:36] skills as an actor are his face and body and not as much his voice and so maybe that was i found

[25:41] shadow they're not giving him much of a character to me he looks kind of like keanu reeves i guess

[25:45] that's true too i found shadow to be a sort of flat character if you know that's true i mean i

[25:50] like keanu sort of spacey cadences and everything but he is like an amazing physical actor yeah

[25:58] keanu has like a distinctive villain voice and it's like much flatter like have you ever seen

[26:04] the man of tai chi where he plays it's like it's his only i think the only movie directed

[26:10] it's like a actually totally solid martial arts film but he is the villain and he sounds exactly

[26:15] like that in the movie in the movie as well kind of like very very flat um in monotone because it

[26:21] sounds like especially in all the scenes raised up against jim carrey where jim carrey is like

[26:25] well we're going to do this shadow which i mean yeah okay jim carrey at some point but i will say

[26:32] that man did not phone it in you know i will say the the greatest reason for me for them to keep

[26:38] making these movies is that it gives me i think we talked about this last time we did a song movie

[26:42] it gives the opportunity to see circa 1994 level jim carrey in a movie where i'm like he's going

[26:47] for broke being silly this is like i do really enjoy that so i was gonna say like keanu does

[26:54] a voice in uh toy story 4 right does he like uh yeah duke kaboom that's him but there i feel like

[27:01] he's a little bit more that's the thing he has more energy in that like he's i think he is capable

[27:05] of giving a bigger uh voice performance and just didn't this time maybe i thought i thought playing

[27:11] a character who's literally a shadow i should fall back into the background almost hidden the

[27:16] way a shadow is he's not literally a shadow keanu he's just called shadow he's a living shadow

[27:21] he doesn't exist unless the light is shining on another you don't even notice him sometimes

[27:24] no he's front and center he's not he's not actually a shadow he's just called that without

[27:29] the light of sonic he would wouldn't exist yeah so um yeah he's he's he's yeah he's he's the he's

[27:35] the uh dark reflection you know in the mirror of life of sonic yeah so we have a chase through

[27:41] the streets of tokyo shadow on his motorcycle which he doesn't even need because he's just

[27:45] as fast as sonic no but it means he can do a kind of he does an akira bike slide akira bike slide

[27:50] yeah which is not as good as the one in nope i'll just say that of course not yeah that was okay i

[27:55] think i would call that that one i know the second best akira bike slide after the original akira bike

[27:59] slide which is the best of course yeah everyone now don't don't call and correct me i know it's

[28:03] an akira who does the bike slide just in the movie akira it's canada who does the bike slide

[28:10] corrected you how'd they get your phone number oh you have no my phone number is public knowledge

[28:15] you know i put i put in new york and la i have billboard stuff that just don't like something

[28:20] i said on the podcast call me people are driving by is that like an entertainment thing i don't

[28:24] understand what that's advertising yeah they don't know it costs a lot of money on my part it's a

[28:29] huge drain yeah so my children will not go to college i want to make sure people know how to

[28:33] get in touch with me you know team sonic needs to regroup so they head to a mascot cafe uh and they

[28:39] hang out and then they meet with commander uh commander walters who was in the previous movies

[28:47] i think which is just kind of funny to be in this mascot cafe and then this like old man in a

[28:51] general's costume shows up as he's talking to them he explains a little bit about shadow that he was

[28:56] part of this top secret uh he was part of this top secret experiment and there was an accident

[29:02] and some people died and the scientist in charge of the experiment was put in jail for life and

[29:07] shadow was put on ice for 50 years then a bunch of egg bots show up and blast uh the commander

[29:16] and then they are deactivated by a mysterious person also on a motorcycle this comes as a

[29:21] shock to sonic who says kanichi wa and i'm like that's kind of fucked up i was i i was referring

[29:27] to telling somebody else recently that we were doing this movie this weekend he was like i don't

[29:31] think i saw that one wait is that the one where he says kanichi wa and i go it is he goes oh then

[29:35] i did see it so that was the defining memory of this movie for this other person that i know yeah

[29:41] i want to take that moment uh to say something about like or say go for it it's your podcast

[29:47] man thank you uh well i'm also stalling to look up but like uh i now jamal interrupt him this is

[29:53] what he lives for he likes being edged this way he can never say what he wants to say yeah that's

[29:57] what listeners don't understand this is for my benefit

[30:00] I want to note that right when he said my benefit, he stroked his goatee.

[30:09] Dan's practically leaking over here.

[30:11] Dan's what you call a conversation cuck.

[30:14] He really loves to be cut off in a conversation.

[30:16] The best thing you can do is he sits in a corner and tries to get a word in with his

[30:21] wife and you keep interrupting him and he's like, oh, I love it.

[30:24] This is exactly what I need.

[30:26] This gets me going.

[30:28] That was kind of my sketchfest experience.

[30:30] Like Audrey and Elliot were talking to each other and they're much more talkative types

[30:35] than me.

[30:36] So whenever I want to say something, I'm like, okay, when can I get, can I get in there?

[30:42] No, the comedy in this movie, it's just, it's bad.

[30:47] I would say these are, I would say with the exception of Jim Carrey again, because there

[30:51] are times when Jim Carrey will just do a movement that I find funny.

[30:55] The written jokes in this are fairly, and again, this is like a, if it was just a kid's

[30:59] movie, I'd be like, whatever.

[31:01] Like they can be dumb wordplay stuff, but there's so much exploding in this movie and

[31:05] there is a dead child in a flashback.

[31:08] So I'm like, it's not really like a full on kid's movie.

[31:10] So there's a lot of bad one liners and things like that.

[31:13] Bad jokes.

[31:14] And I don't know what, I agree with you.

[31:16] I think, I think it's not, not successful as a comedy, you know?

[31:20] I think I've thought that Ben Schwartz is funny and plenty of other stuff and I don't,

[31:25] you know, he's giving an energetic voice performance, but the material just isn't there.

[31:32] I don't know that anyone in the movie really is phony.

[31:34] I feel that the comedy all-stars in this one for me are Jim Carrey and Idris Elba.

[31:38] And Idris Elba's character basically has the same one note joke of talking about how strong

[31:42] he is and like phrasing things in a way that is not quite, not quite right.

[31:48] A barbarian voice.

[31:49] Like a barbarian guy.

[31:50] Those are such easy, I mean, he's one step away from like, I demand more of these fingers

[31:55] of chicken.

[31:56] You know, it's that kind of stuff.

[31:57] And he does it fine.

[31:59] I will say there were, there's a-

[32:01] That's Elliot, like soft pitching himself to be on the writing team for Sonic 4.

[32:05] Oh yeah, give me that job.

[32:07] I'll take it.

[32:08] I didn't like these movies.

[32:09] I'll take it.

[32:10] Sure.

[32:11] There were definitely times where the movie forgot about the main plot and just did goofy

[32:14] things.

[32:15] And I was like, oh, well, I like this.

[32:16] I like this one.

[32:17] I like Billy.

[32:18] You know, but it's, but anytime there's like a one-liner that's like in the middle of an

[32:21] action scene, it's like, okay, well this is not, this isn't, you're not playing to your

[32:25] strengths right now.

[32:26] I mean, I think this is maybe just inherent with, they, I understand they got to bring

[32:31] in Shadow the Hedgehog.

[32:32] I mean, he is kind of like one of the most popular characters in the franchise.

[32:36] It would be, it's the same deal with Spider-Man 3 and you have to, you have to have Venom,

[32:41] like there's not really-

[32:43] As much as Sam Raimi fought tooth and nail to not have Venom in the movie.

[32:46] You kind of can't avoid it.

[32:48] But for a ostensible kids movie, Shadow, who has a, by design, tragic backstory and whose

[32:58] whole vibe is like, this is a darker and gritty Sonic, it's just like totally doesn't work

[33:04] for the kind of movies that these are, right?

[33:07] Like you can, if you have Shadow, you have to find some way to make him gritty without

[33:11] the dead kid.

[33:12] Like, but if you have Shadow and the dead kid, then like silly one-liners just don't

[33:19] fit anymore.

[33:20] Yeah.

[33:21] Yeah.

[33:22] No, it just feels like in a more reasonable time, some studio would be like, okay, uh,

[33:28] the note is, can you take the dead kid out of here?

[33:31] What if it was just that Shadow got blamed for something he didn't do, but it didn't

[33:34] involve the killing of a child?

[33:36] Right.

[33:37] Could that be part of it?

[33:38] They learn, Sonic learns that, that Shadow is driven by this, the, you know, the loss

[33:44] of this dead child.

[33:45] He learns this, I feel like pretty early on and he's still like cracking jokes and I feel

[33:49] like there'd be a moment where he'd be like making a joke and realize, oh, wait a minute.

[33:53] I'm sorry.

[33:54] That's crossing the line.

[33:55] Dr. Robotnik's grandfather, who we'll see later, is also driven by the death of this

[33:58] child.

[33:59] You think that it's just ego.

[34:00] Oh, he's just one of these standard villains, but then he's like, they took my, they took

[34:04] my granddaughter away from me and now I'm going to take everything away from them.

[34:07] And like, he's just wisecracking all through the movie.

[34:09] And maybe that's his grieving.

[34:10] I mean, if he was like, this is how I grieve.

[34:13] I have to find a way to get through the day.

[34:15] I mean, okay, Robotnik.

[34:16] That's okay.

[34:17] I understand that.

[34:18] Kind of an Erica Kirk approach to it.

[34:19] But that's...

[34:20] Erica Kirk's approach is like, this is how I grieve is by trying to wring as much money

[34:25] out of my ass as possible.

[34:29] I put on a show.

[34:32] It is actually funny to think about how this, how like a studio would have approached this

[34:35] material in the nineties, because they would have just been like, okay, we can have Shadow.

[34:39] The kids, the kids want Shadow, but like the Shadow we put on screen doesn't have to have

[34:43] any relationship whatsoever to the Shadow in the game.

[34:46] And it's sort of like, it's the triumph of, you know, nerds and nerd IP that, that, that's

[34:53] just not a viable thing anymore.

[34:55] People would lose their minds if you had Shadow, but Shadow was like functionally a different

[35:00] character than he is in the games.

[35:02] If they did that, there would be another January 6th.

[35:05] Probably, probably.

[35:07] Yeah.

[35:08] But it's, it's something that when I was young and I was, and I would see a superhero movie

[35:12] when they rarely made them and they, like you're saying, they would just take the name

[35:15] and maybe the costume and throw everything else out.

[35:18] You know, like those Captain America movies they made years ago, like that in the eighties,

[35:21] I was like, I'd be like, oh, but now I kind of miss that.

[35:24] I kind of miss the era when Golan Globus could buy the Spider-Man license and not know what

[35:29] the character was and assume he's a man who turns into a spider, a wolf man, and, and

[35:33] be like, this is our, this is our movie.

[35:34] He's a man turning into a spider.

[35:36] Like, um, I wish that we, in a way that we still lived in a world where, or at least

[35:40] a world where it was understood what things are worth fidelity and what things are not

[35:44] worth fidelity.

[35:45] That like, if you were, this is me being a snob, I guess, but like, if you are making

[35:49] an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, you know, just to pull a random thing out.

[35:54] Completely unrelated to current pop culture.

[35:57] That you kind of understand what things need to be in there for it to be a, an actual adaptation

[36:03] of this story and what things you can mess with.

[36:05] And to know that Wuthering Heights is on a different level, the novel Wuthering Heights,

[36:09] then Sonic Adventure two, which no offense to the people who made that game.

[36:13] I'm sure they put a lot of great work into it and a lot of imagination, but like that

[36:16] you don't need to give shadow the same fidelity you would give to like a more actually, you

[36:23] know, it is kind of more fidelity on the other hand, you know what, but that's, you know

[36:26] what, on the other hand, maybe I'm wrong because like the same way that like, anytime

[36:29] they, there's something, I remember when the Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and

[36:32] Claire Danes came out and people are like, look what he's done to Romeo and Juliet.

[36:35] And it's like, Romeo plus, plus Juliet, sorry, Romeo plus Juliet equals this movie.

[36:40] And it was like a Matt there, maybe it's the opposite.

[36:44] It's that there will be so many more adaptations of Romeo and Juliet that is an eternal immortal

[36:48] story.

[36:49] So why not mess around with it?

[36:50] Whereas I don't know how many more Sonic the Hedgehog franchises there will be like 30

[36:54] years, 40 years from now.

[36:56] Are they going to be making a new Sonic the Hedgehog?

[36:57] Maybe, maybe not.

[36:58] So maybe I'm wrong.

[36:59] Maybe I do have to do a fidelity because this is one shot and it's not thrown away that

[37:02] shot.

[37:03] Just like in Dan's favorite musical.

[37:06] I'm not sure whether this is part of your point or not.

[37:10] I think I turned around.

[37:12] I think I'm arguing all of it.

[37:13] I'll be honest.

[37:15] But it's my understanding that the new Wuthering Heights movie, which I know that you're pulling

[37:19] out as an example, like is very not faithful to the book.

[37:22] That's what I'm saying.

[37:23] There was a time when it was considered like, well, this is literature.

[37:26] We want to be at least a certain amount faithful to it.

[37:28] And this is crap.

[37:29] This is you got to have Tom Bombadil in it.

[37:31] Exactly.

[37:32] I mean, if Tom Bombadil is in Wuthering Heights, their problems would be solved.

[37:37] I feel like it would complicate things because that's just another hottie in the mix.

[37:41] That's right.

[37:42] Sorry, Heathcliff.

[37:43] I'm going with.

[37:44] You know, you got to show his dong.

[37:46] You have to.

[37:47] Is that is that is that Lord of the Rings canon that Tom Bombadil has an amazing dong?

[37:52] His way Heathcliff did terrorize the neighborhood.

[37:56] He did very much terrorize the neighborhood.

[37:58] I mean, that's the other thing is, as a kid, I always thought that I'd hear Heathcliff

[38:01] for Wuthering Heights.

[38:02] And I assumed it was the cat.

[38:04] Is there when they're arguing now?

[38:05] I wish it was canon that Tom Bombadil had a huge penis.

[38:08] They could be like, why don't we just give the ring to Tom Bombadil?

[38:10] Oh, he just lose it.

[38:12] Not if he puts it around his enormous penis.

[38:13] What wouldn't even fit?

[38:14] It wouldn't even fit.

[38:15] It wouldn't even fit.

[38:17] So, yeah, we're still still about 10 minutes into the movie.

[38:21] Wow.

[38:22] OK, sorry.

[38:23] I'm just joking.

[38:24] So the mysterious biker who shows up, who deactivates all the egg bots.

[38:29] It's everyone's favorite character.

[38:30] Agent Stone, Dr. Robotnik's right hand man.

[38:33] His Smithers.

[38:34] Yep.

[38:35] They uncover the dying body of Commander Walters, who hands them this key card.

[38:42] And he says that it's very important for them to hold on to it.

[38:45] So they take it.

[38:46] I was distracted the whole time because that key card does look exactly like the back of

[38:49] a card for the game Android Netrunner.

[38:51] And I was like, man, I want to play more Netrunner.

[38:54] OK, so Stone, Stuart, you are not allowed to you are not allowed to complain about us

[38:58] stopping you from getting further into the summary, if that's the kind of important points

[39:05] that you're going to make.

[39:06] Oh, I didn't realize I was being edited by Elliott today, but that's fine.

[39:11] That's fair.

[39:12] OK, I'll take it.

[39:13] I'll take your note.

[39:14] I'll move forward and only talk more about the different factions of the game Netrunner.

[39:19] I'm not saying I don't want you to talk about Netrunner.

[39:21] I'm just saying don't don't say, oh, we're only 10 minutes in.

[39:24] I want to I want it all.

[39:25] I want it all.

[39:26] Yeah.

[39:27] OK.

[39:28] I'm a maximalist on this.

[39:29] Yeah.

[39:30] When we talk about high tech hackers, you know, can't get more high tech than the various

[39:32] hackers and runners in the game Netrunner.

[39:34] So Agent Stone takes the Team Sonic to see Dr. Robotnik, who is living in a giant robot

[39:41] crab, and he has let himself go using the movie shorthand of a fat suit.

[39:47] Not a fan.

[39:48] He's just sitting around watching TV and he is wearing a fat suit.

[39:51] Yeah.

[39:52] That's shorthand for lost interest in life.

[39:54] Yeah.

[39:55] He does seem to be extremely jolly about having put on the weight, though, like he doesn't

[39:59] seem to have a problem.

[40:00] No, I mean, he just plays it like a drum.

[40:02] Yeah.

[40:03] He, you know, he's upset with society judging him, but in the moment, he's just, you know,

[40:09] living his life.

[40:10] And they they decide they realize that somebody else is controlling these egg bots and they

[40:14] decide to team up.

[40:16] I guess Stone thinks that this might shake Robotnik out of his funk.

[40:20] So he shaves his head.

[40:21] They put him in a new suit and they team up and start tracking those egg bots.

[40:27] Meanwhile, guys, I just remembered there was a Knuckles TV show.

[40:30] Yeah.

[40:31] Yeah.

[40:32] Yeah.

[40:33] I'm watching Paramount Plus.

[40:34] I did not watch it.

[40:35] I forgot it existed.

[40:36] Maybe I even suggested we do an episode where we watch it and get Jamel back.

[40:41] I guess maybe we don't have to do that.

[40:44] The problem is Knuckles is not a hedgehog, of course, but an echidna, right?

[40:48] So I don't know if that would fall under Jamel's purview, but we'd be happy to have him, you

[40:52] know, in a non-official capacity.

[40:53] I mean, I feel like a lot of it would be watching it, hoping Sonic would show up.

[40:57] Just like most kids.

[40:58] For sure.

[40:59] Yeah.

[41:00] Because it's just like it's Knuckles and Adam Pally hanging out the whole time, right?

[41:04] Yes, I think so.

[41:05] It'll be like when that Shields TV show started, they're like, there might be a special guest

[41:10] from the MCU who stops by and it turned out to be Colby Smulders.

[41:13] And it's like, oh, OK, well, we thought it was going to be like a superhero, but sure.

[41:17] What a while.

[41:18] Man, man, Colby.

[41:19] Colby Smulders is great.

[41:20] Don't get me wrong.

[41:21] No, she's great.

[41:22] It was just like I felt like it was not it was not inconceivable to see her on the episode

[41:26] of a television show, as opposed to if like Samuel Jackson, I'd be like, whoa, that's

[41:29] a big get.

[41:30] You know, I just want to share from Wikipedia over its premiere weekend, Knuckles became

[41:35] the most watched original series on Paramount Plus.

[41:38] So there you go.

[41:39] It doesn't feel like a very high bar to me.

[41:42] Yeah.

[41:43] Yeah.

[41:44] I think the Star Trek shows, I feel like that's the main reason anyone has Paramount Plus

[41:48] is they are a Trekkie and they're like, and also like Master Legends or whatever.

[41:54] Isn't Paramount Plus also where dads watch modern day westerns?

[41:57] Oh, yeah, that's a big deal.

[41:59] Isn't that like Yellowstone and Landsman?

[42:00] I don't know.

[42:01] We got rid of it circa Colbert.

[42:05] I never had it.

[42:06] That was Paramount Plus was one step too far.

[42:07] I was like, no, not even going to.

[42:09] I had it.

[42:10] Well, we would rotate.

[42:11] But yeah, I had it to my kids could watch Paw Patrol.

[42:13] Yeah.

[42:14] And then I realized you could buy Paw Patrol DVDs for five dollars on Amazon.

[42:18] So I'll give my money to a different corporation.

[42:23] Thank you very much.

[42:24] You guys are both dads.

[42:25] I figured you guys would want to watch Yellowstone to be able to talk to the other dads when

[42:28] you're hanging out with dads.

[42:31] We're not yet old enough for that.

[42:32] I feel like I'm approaching.

[42:33] You're in Reacher territory.

[42:34] Yes.

[42:35] I'm in Reacher territory, approaching Bosch territory.

[42:38] And then in about 15 years, I think I'll be in Yellowstone territory.

[42:42] I was excited to see there was a second season of Alex Cross.

[42:46] Whoa.

[42:47] I might actually watch that.

[42:49] That actually says much more of my alley as an African-American dad.

[42:53] I think I might watch Alex Cross.

[42:56] Okay.

[42:57] What is it?

[42:58] What is it about Yellowstone that you wouldn't feel represented by?

[43:02] Okay, so meanwhile, Shadow returns to the ruins of the abandoned base that he had been

[43:10] held at.

[43:11] He goes down a trip through memory lane where we get to see all of his origin story of him

[43:17] and Maria and how this little girl bonded with him, even though he came to earth in

[43:23] a meteor and the government was basically using him to test to try and use his chaos

[43:28] energy as a form of either a weapon or some form of energy, but they couldn't harness

[43:34] it.

[43:35] And she bonded with him.

[43:36] He felt more than just a test subject.

[43:37] They had a great time.

[43:38] But then this horrible accident thing happened that I don't quite remember.

[43:43] And in an explosion, Maria is killed and he is knocked out and stuffed in a tube to

[43:53] be held in stasis.

[43:54] And her grandfather, who we then meet, Gerald Robotnik, Grandpa Robotnik, is imprisoned.

[44:03] And modern day, Shadow is in the ruins of this base and he is greeted with a mysterious

[44:08] villain.

[44:09] Of course, that's going to be Grandpa Robotnik.

[44:12] And they decide to team up and get vengeance.

[44:14] Meanwhile, the other team shows up at this base.

[44:17] They explore it for a little bit.

[44:18] We get some comedy.

[44:20] Shadow goes around and beats them all up.

[44:22] And Grandpa Robotnik meets up with regular Robotnik.

[44:27] They bond.

[44:28] We get a lot of double Jim Carrey's.

[44:29] And I got to say, I think the what looks like primarily makeup effects on Jim Carrey are

[44:35] pretty great.

[44:36] Yeah.

[44:37] Yeah.

[44:38] There are a couple.

[44:39] There are like a couple dodgy frames here and there with the doubles.

[44:41] But I thought the effects for the two Jim Carrey's were such I thought were pretty stellar.

[44:46] And it's such a different level than the effects for our main characters where there were whole

[44:49] periods where I was like, yeah, I'm just seeing two Jim Carrey's.

[44:52] Like it didn't.

[44:53] I did not question it at all.

[44:54] Yeah.

[44:55] And for me, like these are the this is the closest the movie ever comes to coming alive

[44:57] is when Jim Carrey is acting against Jim Carrey when one of the greatest comedy stars in cinema

[45:02] history is up against himself.

[45:05] Yeah.

[45:06] Well, it's a mark of how much I found the rest of the movie drudgery that I was like,

[45:11] it's not like I was surprised that Jim Carrey was was the good part of it.

[45:15] But this just barely lit a fire.

[45:17] But it's also fun to see him play two similar roles that also feel different.

[45:22] Yeah.

[45:23] Not just two of the same thing.

[45:25] No, they definitely.

[45:26] And when he's old, he kind of looks a little bit like Matt Smith.

[45:29] Yes, he does.

[45:31] Why am I not imagining Matt Smith?

[45:34] He was a doctor who that's right.

[45:37] Maybe a little bit.

[45:38] Yeah.

[45:39] From Morbius.

[45:40] I think that's what you're saying.

[45:41] Yeah.

[45:42] OK, from the famous vampire vamping out dancing in a mirror scene from Morbius.

[45:46] So young Robotnik decides to team up with Grandpa and he thinks they are going to team

[45:52] up together and they are going to conquer the world.

[45:54] Grandpa had developed a weapon for gun to use a giant space station death ray that requires

[46:01] two key cards to activate.

[46:03] And he's going to use it to defeat gun.

[46:05] And then they're going to rule the world.

[46:07] Or so Robotnik thinks.

[46:09] And there's a there's a montage here that I found funny, except for an unsettling music

[46:13] choice, which is the Robotnik's kind of Grandpa Robotnik taking Dr. Robotnik through the kind

[46:19] of childhood milestone memories that he didn't get to experience.

[46:23] And there's some funny gags in it.

[46:25] But it sets the song.

[46:26] Wouldn't it be nice?

[46:27] Which is about two teenagers who want to have sex, talking about how how much would be better

[46:31] if they were older and they could live together and be a married couple who has sex?

[46:34] So it was a very weird song for them to have.

[46:36] It feels like they're going for the vibe of the song, but not really paying attention

[46:39] to the meaning of the song.

[46:41] And it really threw me off.

[46:42] I was like, I don't like the stuff you're implying about this relationship.

[46:45] You know, Shadow is beating up our team and chain them together around a chunk of I don't

[46:52] know, whatever.

[46:53] And our villains, our villains, that's both Robotnik's Agent Stone and Shadow all take

[47:00] the key card that the that Sonic had.

[47:03] They board the Flying Crab device and they leave a black hole generator and escape.

[47:09] The black hole almost consumes the entire mountain.

[47:11] But then Sonic and their team managed to escape the last moment.

[47:15] I'm going to be honest.

[47:16] Words that you're saying are words that should not be in a Sonic movie.

[47:18] The other thing is, I watched this movie last night.

[47:21] The particular part you're describing, I have no recollection of it.

[47:26] Okay, so they managed to escape and that teleports them just outside of the blast

[47:32] range of the rapidly collapsing mountain.

[47:35] No worry about what it might do to the rest of the world to have unleashed a black hole.

[47:39] We're going to talk about that later when they have another Akira reference when they

[47:42] Zorch half the moon.

[47:47] Sonic and team head home to meet up with their parents.

[47:51] They explain the situation.

[47:52] Their parents are currently in this moment where they are empty nesters.

[47:58] They are so excited to not have the chaos of these three alien creatures running around

[48:02] and ruling their lives.

[48:03] They have devoted all their energy to hobbies, knitting, Thomas started doing ventriloquism

[48:09] with a cool little James Marsden puppet, which I mean, I'm sure people are going to buy that

[48:14] thing off eBay.

[48:16] So and they seem happy with their current situation, but as soon as their kids show

[48:21] up with this, they are like, they need help.

[48:25] Of course, their parents are ready to jump in and help them, but this was where I couldn't

[48:29] understand.

[48:30] There's a gag here where they have, they're like, this is so great.

[48:32] And then they go, we need your help.

[48:33] And they go, yes, we're so bored.

[48:35] We're so bored.

[48:36] And I'm like, movie, what joke are you doing?

[48:38] Like, is it the joke of their life?

[48:40] You'd think their lives would be so much easier without them, but they miss it.

[48:43] Or is the joke of now that they have the time to do it, they have all these hobbies, but

[48:46] now they're getting wrenched away from.

[48:48] I felt like the movie wanted both ways, and I did not like the first one.

[48:51] But then why are they pretending that like, I think that for each other's benefit in the

[48:56] relationship that they are pretending that they don't need that.

[49:00] I didn't like it.

[49:01] It felt like the movie was trying to do one joke and then do another joke.

[49:03] I'm surprised they didn't go for the more adult joke of now that we don't have these

[49:06] crazy aliens running around, we finally have time to get busy.

[49:10] And then and then while they're in bed together and he's in mid thrust, a ring opens up over

[49:14] them.

[49:15] Sonic and Tails and Knuckles all fall on them.

[49:18] Again, we see Tom Bogdanoff's wife.

[49:21] And then there's a there's a mix up in the next thing, you know, pregnant tails.

[49:26] And that's and that's the next movie.

[49:27] Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah.

[49:29] OK, so they know that the bad guys are heading to London because that's where Gunn

[49:33] headquarters is. And that's where the second key will be located.

[49:37] This is a sign. This is a sign of how how what what what an East Coast elite

[49:44] sophisticate I am that they're like, we're going to London and I'm like, yeah, London.

[49:48] Cool. All right. Yeah, it's good.

[49:50] I've been there. You know, it wasn't like they were going to like when they're going

[49:53] to Tokyo very casually. I was like, Tokyo.

[49:56] Wow. Amazing. I've never been there.

[49:57] Yeah. Yeah.

[49:59] Yeah. But you.

[50:00] You're London, you're like, ho-hum, who cares?

[50:02] Who cares? I have family there.

[50:04] I mean, like, I think it's a little different.

[50:06] Yeah.

[50:07] Okay, so Sonic and team head to-

[50:09] Cameras for breakfast, yeah, I get it.

[50:11] Okay, Big Ben, sure, yeah.

[50:13] They head to London, they have an infiltration plan

[50:15] that involves Tom and Maddie putting on these hologram devices

[50:19] that we had been kind of introduced to earlier in the movie

[50:22] that allows them to assume the appearance of anyone.

[50:24] So, of course, they assume the appearance of characters from previous movies

[50:28] so these actors get a little bit of extra time,

[50:30] which I'm not mad about.

[50:32] I love Natasha Rothwell, right? Natasha Rothwell?

[50:35] Yeah.

[50:36] And they- so they are going to sneak into GUN

[50:40] disguised as their, what, sister and her husband?

[50:46] Yes, yes.

[50:47] Mrs. Wachowski's sister and husband.

[50:50] Was it in the last movie or the one before

[50:52] where they wrecked their wedding with their Sonic adventure?

[50:55] It was the second movie.

[50:56] The second movie, okay.

[50:57] Yeah.

[50:58] I guess that would have been pretty insane for the first movie

[51:01] where we're being introduced to the Sonic character

[51:03] to then have a subplot about Sonic's adopted mom's sister's wedding

[51:07] and getting wrecked.

[51:08] There'd be a lot of supporting characters to introduce, yeah.

[51:10] So they- Tom and Maddie sneak in.

[51:13] Maddie gets into the control room.

[51:16] She inserts the drive.

[51:19] There's a little joke about how the thumb drive doesn't work initially.

[51:22] You have to pull it out and blow on it.

[51:24] That's for all us 90s kids.

[51:26] Cartridge kids.

[51:27] There's even a moment where they're like,

[51:29] the 90s were the best decade, and I'm like,

[51:31] what's going on here?

[51:33] What's going on is those people are now movie ticket buying.

[51:37] Yeah.

[51:38] Disposable money age, and they want to see-

[51:40] Those people, Dan says, as if it is not his generation.

[51:44] I mean, I don't think of the-

[51:45] I mean, I think of, like, late 80s, early 90s

[51:48] more than, like, the time that they're talking about,

[51:50] but I guess that's true.

[51:51] Oh, boy.

[51:52] You're right.

[51:53] Never mind.

[51:54] Forget what I just said.

[51:55] I'm slightly too old to be nostalgic about the 90s proper.

[51:58] Inside the server room, she inserts Tails' thumb drive

[52:01] only to realize there's a Dr. Robotnik thumb drive also plugged in.

[52:06] Uh-oh.

[52:07] That's because the Robotniks are also infiltrating

[52:09] with these weird camouflage suits,

[52:11] and that allows them to walk right through the laser grid,

[52:14] but why walk when they can dance?

[52:17] We have a great dance sequence.

[52:19] This is one of two moments in this sequence

[52:21] where the heroes and the villains waste a bunch of time

[52:24] when time is of the essence.

[52:26] The Robotniks dance their way through these lasers,

[52:28] which, again, it's Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey.

[52:30] They're going to do funny physical stuff.

[52:31] I don't love silly-

[52:32] this kind of silly dancing particularly, but it's fine,

[52:34] and then they're like,

[52:35] Sonic, you've got to get in before the shields close.

[52:37] He's like, got it,

[52:38] but first I'm going to run through London real fast

[52:40] doing a bunch of London jokes,

[52:41] and it was like, why now?

[52:43] Like, this is a Marx Brothers level of

[52:46] let me screw up my own plan for no reason.

[52:49] Yeah, because you can do sightseeing

[52:51] after we finish all of this.

[52:52] You can have all the beans on toast that you want, Sonic.

[52:55] Exactly, yeah.

[52:57] And you guys have children,

[52:58] and children usually when you're like,

[52:59] hey, we've got to go fast,

[53:00] they don't try and fart around or dick around.

[53:02] That's a good point.

[53:03] That's a very good point.

[53:04] Or when your podcast co-host is like,

[53:06] hey, we've got to hurry up.

[53:07] You don't, like, fuck around.

[53:11] Equal stakes, equal characters.

[53:12] Yeah, yeah.

[53:13] Yeah.

[53:14] Okay, so they all meet up, basically.

[53:19] Sonic decides, oh wait, we need Sonic's help,

[53:23] so he goes running in there.

[53:24] Finally, like the best of all Robert Altman movies,

[53:27] these disparate strands have finally come together.

[53:30] Inside this control room where the key is located,

[53:32] but the whole thing was a setup.

[53:34] We have Tom, Maddie, Sonic, both Robotniks,

[53:37] but this was all set up by Commander,

[53:40] what, Commander Rockwell?

[53:43] Commander Rockwell is Kristen Ritter's character,

[53:46] Director Rockwell.

[53:47] Do you think she's related to Thelma Ritter?

[53:49] Probably not, right?

[53:50] Well, I thought for a second, I was like,

[53:54] is it spelled the same?

[53:55] The Y is in the first name, though.

[53:57] I think it is spelled the same.

[53:58] There's nothing in her Wikipedia entry that mentions

[54:01] amazing legendary actress Thelma Ritter,

[54:03] so never mind, probably not related.

[54:04] She knew that they had the other key,

[54:06] and she was trying to lead them all here

[54:08] so she could get the key and capture them,

[54:10] and she does so with this series of hexagonal plates

[54:15] on the floor that either use gravity powers

[54:19] to either pull them to the floor

[54:20] or push them up in the air.

[54:22] And this sort of thing that I sometimes say

[54:27] kind of doesn't make any sense,

[54:29] because of course it's true,

[54:31] but in a better movie, I think this could be cool.

[54:34] I liked the idea of both things happening at the same time,

[54:39] people being totally locked down to the ground

[54:41] and then some people floating,

[54:42] and if it was a different film,

[54:45] I might enjoy a comedic set piece with that.

[54:49] Well, we still get some kind of a set piece.

[54:51] They don't do, I feel like they don't,

[54:53] it's a really neat idea that they don't do a lot.

[54:55] Yeah.

[54:56] You know, which is too bad.

[54:57] Because Sonic calls in their ace in the hole

[55:00] in the form of Knuckles,

[55:01] who bursts through the building and smashes into the ground,

[55:05] and then he smashes the key card instead of turning it off,

[55:08] which makes everything go haywire.

[55:09] People are floating or being smashed to the ground randomly.

[55:13] We get people like swimming through the air.

[55:16] We get people inching along the ground like inchworms.

[55:19] Eventually Sonic manages to get the device turned off,

[55:23] and director Rockwell gets the key card and storms off.

[55:28] Tom has a plan though.

[55:30] He uses his hologram device to disguise himself

[55:33] as Commander Walters,

[55:35] and he gets the key card back from her,

[55:38] and then he walks away.

[55:40] Unfortunately for him,

[55:41] Shadow the Hedgehog sees him disguised as Commander Walters,

[55:45] manages to extrapolate what Walters would look like as an adult,

[55:50] even though he only knew him as a young man.

[55:52] I mean, he was an adult before, but as an old man now.

[55:55] Thank you.

[55:56] He was a child soldier.

[55:57] I take it back.

[55:58] It makes perfect sense that Shadow would know

[56:01] exactly what Commander Walters would look like.

[56:03] No, the point you're making is clear.

[56:04] I was just taking issue with the idea that when he was young,

[56:07] he was not an adult.

[56:08] When he was already, I think, a captain in the military.

[56:11] He runs over and punches him almost to death.

[56:14] Tom collapses.

[56:16] I did think for a second,

[56:18] did they just kill off James Marsden?

[56:20] Yeah.

[56:21] Again, they killed a child in the flashback.

[56:23] Go for it.

[56:24] The scene ends without you knowing his fate.

[56:27] James Marsden doesn't do well in third parts of franchise movies.

[56:31] No, that's true.

[56:33] He's either being punched to shit or vaporized by his love.

[56:38] Remember in 27 Dresses Part 3,

[56:40] I think that was the one where the killer skinned him

[56:43] and made a wedding dress out of his skin.

[56:44] He became the 28th dress in that film.

[56:46] He became the 28th dress.

[56:48] So he's down for the count.

[56:51] Shadow takes the key card.

[56:52] Sonic shows up.

[56:53] He's obviously distraught by his adoptive father basically being killed.

[56:57] Shadow talks a little bit of shit, and then he leaves.

[57:00] I have a question for you guys.

[57:02] So this weapon belongs to Gunn, right?

[57:05] Yep.

[57:06] Once Kristen Ritter gets the card,

[57:10] why is James Marsden trying to get it from her?

[57:13] That's actually a really good question.

[57:15] I can understand why they wouldn't want anyone to use this weapon, I guess,

[57:18] to have access,

[57:19] but Dr. Robotnik is the bad guy that they're trying to keep it from.

[57:23] If Kristen Ritter gets the card, nothing has changed.

[57:25] We're back to the status quo of the beginning of the movie.

[57:27] So when James Marsden is like, let me go get that key card.

[57:29] I'll go undisguised and get the shit kicked out of me.

[57:32] I don't know why he's doing it.

[57:33] I wasn't quite sure what the point was.

[57:35] They already have one of the keys, right?

[57:37] You're in the moment.

[57:38] Sometimes you can't turn it off.

[57:39] I guess that's true because the best thing to do would be to keep those keys separate.

[57:42] It's like in the last Indiana Jones movie where they're like,

[57:45] we have half of the time travel device.

[57:48] You know what we have to do, right?

[57:49] Get the other half.

[57:50] No, you don't.

[57:51] Take it as far away as possible.

[57:53] Throw it in the ocean.

[57:54] Whatever.

[57:55] Get rid of it.

[57:56] It doesn't matter if the Nazis have half of it.

[57:58] Just let them have half and you just don't put them together.

[58:00] So why do they want both keys?

[58:01] Dan, I see you have an answer.

[58:03] Tell me.

[58:04] A plot device.

[58:06] It's a plot device.

[58:07] What happens in Sonic Adventure 2?

[58:09] Do they explain it?

[58:10] So Shadow frees the Robotniks from the gun soldiers and takes them to the command bridge of the,

[58:22] what is it, the Eclipse device, I think it's called in the notes.

[58:26] It's a giant space platform with a laser gun.

[58:30] It's a geostorm basically.

[58:32] Yeah, and they fire that bad boy up and it rises up out of a secret hangar underneath the Thames.

[58:40] All of London is obviously concerned because of – it doesn't –

[58:44] They're like, oh, blimey, it's rising right out of the Thames.

[58:47] It's kind of interesting though.

[58:49] It opens up the floodgates open, but it doesn't actually –

[58:52] it doesn't really look like the water level of the Thames lowers that much.

[58:55] No, that's a good goof to put on IMDb.

[58:57] Yeah.

[58:58] Dan, can you add that to our goof list?

[59:00] All right.

[59:01] Oi, what's that rising up over there?

[59:04] It's not a big spaceship.

[59:06] Meanwhile, Tom's being –

[59:07] I didn't know they had one of those under the Thames.

[59:09] There's a lot of that stuff.

[59:10] Oi, why isn't the water level dropping?

[59:12] Ah, the Kippers is burning.

[59:14] Oh, what's that?

[59:16] Our British listeners are going to be so mad at us, right?

[59:19] They're going to be so mad because they're like, am I listening to my parents talking?

[59:24] Did I end up in this podcast somehow?

[59:27] Oi, it sounds like me in that podcast.

[59:31] So meanwhile –

[59:33] Jason Statham, I didn't know you listened.

[59:35] Clive Elton.

[59:36] I'm a beekeeper.

[59:39] So out in the street, Tom is being put into an emergency vehicle to take advantage of the British healthcare system.

[59:47] And Sonic is like, yo, we need to stop these guys.

[59:52] And there's only one option.

[59:54] We need to use the Master Emerald.

[59:56] Tails and Knuckles are like, no, we agreed never to use that.

[1:00:00] for revenge, which I love that they already had like a revenge.

[1:00:03] Only for erotic adventures.

[1:00:04] Yeah, and so it looks like they're going to fight, like Knuckles is like, no, no, no,

[1:00:09] we can't use it for revenge.

[1:00:11] And then Knuckles actually backs down.

[1:00:12] He's like, you know what?

[1:00:13] More important than that than that rule is our rule to always trust our friends.

[1:00:17] And I'm like, well, that's a really good statement.

[1:00:19] Knuckles is so more emotionally stable than Sonic throughout this movie.

[1:00:22] I got to say, I did raise my eyebrow at that.

[1:00:24] It's sort of like, OK, well, the rule against using this for revenge seems pretty strong

[1:00:29] important, right?

[1:00:30] Like this is incredibly powerful.

[1:00:32] And if you're if your friend wants revenge, then maybe that's actually a situation in

[1:00:37] which you shouldn't trust them.

[1:00:39] So I don't think it outweighs the trust thing outweighs the revenge of anything.

[1:00:43] Yeah, the revenge thing trumps the trust thing.

[1:00:47] You would think so.

[1:00:48] But Knuckles is like, well, I don't like what you're doing, but I have to respect the office

[1:00:51] of Sonic first.

[1:00:54] Number one.

[1:00:55] Technically, this isn't how it's supposed to be used, but I guess there isn't a rule

[1:00:58] that says never let Sonic use it for revenge.

[1:01:00] So we have to let you do it.

[1:01:02] But there's I agree with you, but and it feels like there was probably an earlier version

[1:01:06] of this movie where they fought and Sonic was so mad that he just beat Knuckles to a

[1:01:10] pulp or whatever.

[1:01:11] Yeah.

[1:01:12] And where he's about to he's about to hit Knuckles so hard and then he's like, what

[1:01:15] am I doing?

[1:01:16] And he leaves.

[1:01:17] And I think they were like, this movie is too long.

[1:01:18] Yeah.

[1:01:19] Cut this scene.

[1:01:20] Let's just have Knuckles.

[1:01:21] He's like, rip his guts out.

[1:01:22] Invincible style.

[1:01:23] There's one where Knuckles is so Knuckles is trying to hit him with his hands and Sonic

[1:01:26] is holding Knuckles wrists down and he's vibrating so fast that it's causing friction

[1:01:31] burns on Knuckles wrist and he's going, ah, ah.

[1:01:34] And then Sonic just goes in and bites Knuckles throat out and rips his throat and there's

[1:01:38] blood everywhere.

[1:01:39] And Sonic is covered in blood and he steps back and is like, Knuckles, Sonic, what did

[1:01:44] you do?

[1:01:45] And Sonic is like, he got in my way.

[1:01:47] And then I thought he was stronger.

[1:01:50] Ellie, you should you should write this fan fiction and then you should change all the

[1:01:54] names slightly and have a literary hit on your hands.

[1:01:57] It would be a huge hit.

[1:01:58] It would be called like it would be like Mikey Muskrat's Cosmic Adventures.

[1:02:02] Yeah.

[1:02:03] Like that.

[1:02:04] OK, so Dan, if I was smart, I would do that.

[1:02:08] So Sonic runs over and gets the emerald, which is being used as a hockey puck by Adam Pally.

[1:02:15] That was exciting to see.

[1:02:16] And apparently you are.

[1:02:17] Yeah.

[1:02:18] You got to reward the viewers.

[1:02:19] The Knuckles television show.

[1:02:20] Yeah.

[1:02:21] And fans of the show, what, 101 places to go before you die or whatever party before

[1:02:27] you die.

[1:02:28] But they're watching the movie the whole time going like, where's Adam Pally?

[1:02:31] When is he going to show up?

[1:02:32] Oh, there he is.

[1:02:33] Yeah.

[1:02:34] This is this is very much in the Pirates of the Caribbean tradition of if you have introduced

[1:02:38] a character in one of the movies, that character then continues in each movie like a cat, like

[1:02:43] a Katamari, just picking up objects until it becomes impossible to admire the loyalty

[1:02:48] on a certain level.

[1:02:49] But again, these are people that I like to see.

[1:02:53] Sure.

[1:02:54] I'm not against seeing Adam Pally.

[1:02:55] Talking about side characters.

[1:02:57] This is also the moment when Agent Stone calls Robotnik and is like, yo, I got the feeling

[1:03:02] that your grandpa is actually has some bad ideas and isn't just going to rule the world

[1:03:07] that he's going to blow everything up.

[1:03:09] And Robotnik's like, oh, you're just jealous.

[1:03:11] You're fired forever.

[1:03:12] I hate you.

[1:03:13] You suck.

[1:03:14] The Harry and the Hendersons him.

[1:03:16] Meanwhile, exactly.

[1:03:17] I mean, the Harry and the Henderson is for the good of the Harry.

[1:03:22] You're saying you don't mean it.

[1:03:24] Yeah, maybe.

[1:03:25] You know, honestly, talking about things that we expected to happen in the movie that like

[1:03:30] we thought there'd be a different payoff for like I thought that at some point to be clear

[1:03:33] that like Carrie was like laying on extra thick because as like the genius Dr. Robotnik,

[1:03:42] he had realized that it was true, you know, and he was like doing it to keep his grandfather

[1:03:47] off the tail while he like working as you know, something like that, because it was

[1:03:51] such a like a kiss off.

[1:03:52] And then later on, he's like, I love you, essentially, on his like final message.

[1:03:56] I was wrong.

[1:03:57] I shouldn't have done that.

[1:03:58] Yeah.

[1:03:59] I think we are all waiting for this movie to be slightly more clever than it actually

[1:04:04] is and not in a way that is unpredictable, but in a predictable like, oh, this character

[1:04:09] was actually tricking us.

[1:04:10] But it is a very straightforward movie.

[1:04:12] What's happening on screen is exactly what is happening.

[1:04:14] Nobody has a nobody has an ulterior motive like the moment I kept again, I guess I kept

[1:04:19] waiting for that moment when Dr. Robotnik would reveal, oh, my granddaughter didn't

[1:04:22] die.

[1:04:23] I've just been using you for my own needs.

[1:04:24] No, it's just it's all straightforward.

[1:04:26] Everything you saw happen happened.

[1:04:27] It's a say it's rare to see a movie I feel like nowadays, even a kid's movie where there's

[1:04:32] no twist at all.

[1:04:33] And this one, there's no there's no twist.

[1:04:35] It's like there was that third Venom movie where the whole time I'm like, when's that

[1:04:39] when I get to bring in the interesting idea that makes this more than just venom and carnage

[1:04:43] hitting each other?

[1:04:44] Oh, never.

[1:04:45] OK.

[1:04:46] That's all it is.

[1:04:47] That's the second one.

[1:04:48] Oh, yeah.

[1:04:49] The third was the last one.

[1:04:50] I mean, the third one was like the more like overtly romantic one between the two of them.

[1:04:53] Yeah.

[1:04:54] And there were there were twists in that you had a venom horse, you had a venom frog.

[1:04:56] Yeah.

[1:04:57] So speaking of things on screen here, we now see the space station leave orbit and is now

[1:05:02] above planet Earth and it extends its laser beam array.

[1:05:07] Oh, wait, guys, I should mention I'm just looking at the Knuckles Wikipedia entry to

[1:05:11] learn some more.

[1:05:12] Sure.

[1:05:13] He does appear as an unlockable playable character in Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble.

[1:05:16] Oh, OK.

[1:05:17] OK.

[1:05:18] All right.

[1:05:20] So if you guys were wondering if he was an unlockable playable character in this game,

[1:05:21] I've never heard of before.

[1:05:22] Did you ever play the Super Monkey Ball games?

[1:05:25] No, I am not aware of them.

[1:05:27] Didn't know they existed.

[1:05:28] The first Super Monkey Ball actually was quite good.

[1:05:30] Yeah.

[1:05:31] Oh, OK.

[1:05:32] Yeah.

[1:05:33] That's good to know.

[1:05:35] I'm not familiar with them at all.

[1:05:37] I know the character in a sitcom goes to Japan.

[1:05:38] This is like the quiz show you would see on TV.

[1:05:40] Yeah, so Sonic the Hedgehog, who is now powered up by the master Emerald, is now a being of

[1:05:46] pure light and energy.

[1:05:48] He's Goku the Hedgehog now.

[1:05:49] Yeah, he is.

[1:05:50] This is when we enter what Dragon Ball Z territory and in this case, I would imagine Shadow would

[1:05:55] be Vegeta.

[1:05:57] So he blasts through space and he blasts through the space station and he and Shadow punch

[1:06:03] the crap out of each other.

[1:06:05] We get a full-on super fight.

[1:06:07] And this is very Dragon Ball, that they're just fighting in a nondescript landscape.

[1:06:12] Punching through mountains.

[1:06:15] They don't spend that much time powering up, which is the joke about Dragon Ball Z, because

[1:06:20] they're already powerful.

[1:06:21] At some point, the master Emerald splits into its component Chaos Emeralds and they end

[1:06:26] up sharing the power.

[1:06:28] So we have a super Shadow.

[1:06:30] That's not good.

[1:06:31] Uh-oh.

[1:06:32] And they're like beating the crap out of each other.

[1:06:35] The young Robotnik realizes his grandpa is going to destroy the world.

[1:06:40] They're not going to rule it together.

[1:06:42] He sees no hope for humanity and the only justice for his dead granddaughter is destroying

[1:06:48] the world.

[1:06:49] And they will die as well.

[1:06:51] The wave of energy will destroy the earth and kill them.

[1:06:54] So it's a very nihilistic thing for a villain to be doing.

[1:06:58] It's almost as if him then turning into like a goofy scorpion armored man is not enough

[1:07:03] to overcome the idea that he's literally going trying to kill every human in existence, including

[1:07:07] himself.

[1:07:08] That that's his ultimate plan.

[1:07:09] Yes.

[1:07:10] We get a we get a fight scene where they use their nano armor to turn themselves into scorpion

[1:07:15] men or praying mantis man.

[1:07:19] And there's you know, they throw in some like cartoon style goofs here.

[1:07:24] And it is again like two Jim Carreys fighting each other.

[1:07:27] And you know, there's there's some jokes there.

[1:07:29] There's some fun jokes there.

[1:07:30] And it's slightly overshadowed by the fact that one of them is a man so in grief over

[1:07:34] the death of his granddaughter that he wants to erase humanity and end his own life in

[1:07:38] the bargain.

[1:07:39] So it's a little bit again.

[1:07:40] There's a darker Paul that hangs these the jokes about like, I hate you with a really

[1:07:46] big fist.

[1:07:47] You know, it's a battle for the soul of Gerald, Gerald Robotnik, and they do it by hitting

[1:07:52] each other with weird fists that all the bug puns in the world can't quite wash away.

[1:07:58] It's all deflection.

[1:07:59] I don't know.

[1:08:00] I was talking about this movie with my therapist this week and, you know, it's complicated.

[1:08:04] I'm kind of like a hedgehog.

[1:08:06] I've got this spiny exterior and it keeps people at a distance.

[1:08:11] I'm always running.

[1:08:12] I'm always running from intimacy, from from affection.

[1:08:15] Yeah.

[1:08:16] I'm kind of like a hedgehog.

[1:08:17] I love to eat hot dogs.

[1:08:21] I wear red shoes.

[1:08:25] I'm positive about rings.

[1:08:31] I mean, honestly, if you're going to describe Sonic the Hedgehog's personality, what words

[1:08:36] would you describe?

[1:08:37] He's just like a rambunctious kid.

[1:08:38] Right.

[1:08:39] But there's not.

[1:08:40] What's more.

[1:08:41] Is there anything more specific than this?

[1:08:42] I like before the movies.

[1:08:43] I wouldn't have.

[1:08:44] I'd be like, he's fast.

[1:08:45] Like, that's not a personality trait.

[1:08:46] No, I don't know.

[1:08:47] But that's what I got.

[1:08:49] Rambunctious kid is his personality.

[1:08:52] It's like rambunctious kid who is aspiring to be Bugs Bunny.

[1:08:57] OK.

[1:08:58] Yeah.

[1:08:59] Yeah.

[1:09:00] OK.

[1:09:01] Really wants to be Bugs Bunny.

[1:09:02] Pretty bad.

[1:09:03] That's true.

[1:09:04] So Sonic and Shadow.

[1:09:05] Now, I imagine the same movie, but they're all Bugs.

[1:09:06] They're all Looney Tunes characters.

[1:09:08] Sonic is Bugs Bunny.

[1:09:09] Yep.

[1:09:10] Knuckles is probably Daffy.

[1:09:12] Like Tails is probably Porky, you know, and who Shadow would be.

[1:09:16] They'd invent some new cool, tough ass rabbit that doesn't quite fit with the other characters.

[1:09:22] Robotnik is Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sandman.

[1:09:24] Some like cool ass rabbit that smokes, right?

[1:09:26] Yeah.

[1:09:27] Smokes and uses a gun.

[1:09:28] This honestly sounds like a better movie.

[1:09:31] Daffy should play Dr. Robotnik.

[1:09:34] I don't know who Knuckles is.

[1:09:37] Except Knuckles.

[1:09:38] It's not that Knuckles and Daffy are similar personalities, but the role of the competitive

[1:09:42] friend.

[1:09:43] Yeah.

[1:09:44] Yeah.

[1:09:45] That's a Daffy role.

[1:09:47] A friend of me, exactly.

[1:09:48] Whereas you want the villain to be like a real character that they can actually go up

[1:09:51] against.

[1:09:53] So it's probably Yosemite Sam.

[1:09:54] Yeah.

[1:09:55] And it's funny to see Yosemite Sam doing science fiction.

[1:09:56] Also, mustache.

[1:09:57] Yeah, mustache.

[1:09:58] And mustache.

[1:09:59] Same mustache.

[1:10:00] So Sonic and Shadow bond over their shared trauma.

[1:10:03] One is the death of a little girl, the other is the death of Longclaw.

[1:10:08] These two alien hedgehogs who have been powered up by a magic crystal.

[1:10:12] They bond over the deaths of the loved ones through their lives.

[1:10:15] Sitting on the moon, watching the stars.

[1:10:18] Maria? That's the name of my mom.

[1:10:19] Yeah.

[1:10:21] Why did you say that name?

[1:10:24] Is it more where Shadow's like, you know, like,

[1:10:27] even a dying star emits light or something?

[1:10:29] And I'm like, what the fuck, dude?

[1:10:31] He remembers what Maria told him, which is that the light we see,

[1:10:35] that star may have died hundreds of years ago, but we still see.

[1:10:38] Yeah. So he's like, huh?

[1:10:39] And, you know, like, you know what it is.

[1:10:40] It's just what I'm saying.

[1:10:41] Maria's dead, but the light of her life shines through me.

[1:10:44] So I know what he's saying.

[1:10:45] It's just wild.

[1:10:46] And it is wild.

[1:10:47] That the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is about these hedgehogs coming to terms

[1:10:50] with their grief. Yeah.

[1:10:51] OK, so they decide Shadow's like, oh, man, this is all my fault.

[1:10:55] And Sonic's like, you know what?

[1:10:56] The only thing we can do when we mess up is try and fix it.

[1:10:58] And so they both get their their energy and they team up

[1:11:02] and they're going to stop Robotnik's.

[1:11:05] This is what happens when you hire Atom Agoian to direct a Sonic the Hedgehog.

[1:11:08] It's going to it's going to touch on grief and desire at different points.

[1:11:11] Yeah. So.

[1:11:12] So Robotnik unleashes a wave of drone

[1:11:17] like Gundam drones for them to fight and they start blasting them.

[1:11:20] It was at this point that I was like, movie and don't care.

[1:11:25] 30 minutes left.

[1:11:26] You've you've established what you're doing.

[1:11:28] Do it. Stop throwing wave after wave of stunts at me.

[1:11:31] Yeah. Older Robotnik manages to gain the upper hand

[1:11:35] and he's about to eject his grandson into space.

[1:11:39] But he is saved at the last moment by Tails.

[1:11:42] Then young Robotnik.

[1:11:44] He's used a tail, used a ring, right?

[1:11:46] Like it's not like Tails flew through outer space.

[1:11:48] Yeah. OK, yeah.

[1:11:48] And then then younger Robotnik throws his grandpa into an energy wall,

[1:11:53] killing him and makes a joke about it and makes a joke about vaporizing his grandfather.

[1:11:59] Yeah, I thought I mean, I thought that was pretty funny.

[1:12:01] I did enjoy that whole scene.

[1:12:04] I was my own grandpa, but no more.

[1:12:07] They realized that that there's no way of turning the laser off.

[1:12:11] It's going to fire no matter what.

[1:12:12] So their only option is to try and move it.

[1:12:14] So they start to move it.

[1:12:16] Move it. Move it. Start to move it.

[1:12:18] Exactly. Yeah.

[1:12:19] They like to move it. Move it. Yeah.

[1:12:20] And then the two super powered hedgehogs use their super energy

[1:12:26] to kind of block the laser until they're able to get it free

[1:12:30] from pointing directly at Earth.

[1:12:32] This process, however, depletes Sonic, who collapses and is falling through outer space.

[1:12:37] Tails and Knuckles use rings to catch him and save him.

[1:12:41] And his blood should literally be boiling.

[1:12:43] He is falling through outer space, like extreme decompression

[1:12:46] should be killing him right now.

[1:12:48] He's so fast up on the space station.

[1:12:53] Robotnik and Shadow realize that this thing is going to explode

[1:12:57] and it's going to damage Earth.

[1:12:58] And meanwhile, when they move the laser away from planet Earth,

[1:13:01] it does slice off a sizable chunk of the moon, which will destabilize the tides.

[1:13:07] Yeah, they don't talk about that, but that's fine.

[1:13:09] I've seen Akira.

[1:13:11] OK, so it's bad news for Tokyo.

[1:13:13] It already got beat up in that fight earlier.

[1:13:15] But this is only going to make things worse for them if Akira is anything to go by.

[1:13:18] So Team Sonic escape and they make it to Earth.

[1:13:20] Robotnik and Shadow stay behind to move the the station further away from Earth.

[1:13:26] So when it explodes, it will not kill everybody on Earth.

[1:13:29] They sacrifice themselves.

[1:13:31] Yeah, Robotnik records a final message apologizing to Agent Stone.

[1:13:36] It's actually pretty touching, right, guys?

[1:13:39] As much as anything in the movie is.

[1:13:41] Yeah, I actually I think this is this moment.

[1:13:43] Jim Carrey is one of the most successful emotional beats.

[1:13:46] Yeah, I think he's pretty good in this movie.

[1:13:49] Yeah, he's I don't know if it's controversial to say it.

[1:13:51] Jim Carrey is really good.

[1:13:53] He's a great performer.

[1:13:54] Like, it's really kind of wild that like, I mean, obviously it feels like

[1:13:58] from what I can tell, he's been going through things in his personal life,

[1:14:01] but like professionally and he has the energy of he has the performer energy

[1:14:06] where it's like this guy is hiding something.

[1:14:09] It's such a weird it's this is a weird medium

[1:14:12] for us to rediscover one of the top box office stars of the mid 90s.

[1:14:17] Like he in 1994 was his was his Anna Anna Mirabilis or whatever,

[1:14:21] where he had three hit movies in one year.

[1:14:23] Two of them were in the top ten movies of the year in terms of box office.

[1:14:26] Like he was a he's a huge.

[1:14:27] It's so weird that it's through as the villain in the Sonic

[1:14:30] the Hedgehog movies that we're getting this glimpse of this guy

[1:14:32] who like was such a bright star when we were kids, you know?

[1:14:36] Yeah. And there's no reason why he couldn't be again, except I don't know

[1:14:39] whatever's going on in his in his personal life.

[1:14:41] But the whole the whole time, every time he's on screen, I'm like

[1:14:44] either just do a robotic movie or like have a movie

[1:14:46] where Jim Carrey gets to do this kind of stuff.

[1:14:48] And it's just him.

[1:14:49] And I don't have to put up with a CGI hedgehog fighting robot drones in space,

[1:14:53] you know, and pretending that I care if the space laser goes off at the wrong time.

[1:14:58] Like it's you know, I don't know.

[1:14:59] I never thought at this point of my life that it would be such a Jim Carrey

[1:15:02] proponent, you know, that I'd be like, get get him in a movie.

[1:15:05] Do this thing. You know, I don't know.

[1:15:08] So they sacrifice themselves, but the earth isn't destroyed.

[1:15:12] Meanwhile, sometime after back in Green Hills.

[1:15:15] So not really meanwhile. Yeah, not meanwhile.

[1:15:18] We have a take two of the Be Earth Day party

[1:15:22] and we have another race from our team, Sonic.

[1:15:25] Everybody's happy.

[1:15:26] And our team won the day.

[1:15:28] That's the end of the movie.

[1:15:29] But apparently there were some after credit scenes.

[1:15:32] And anybody who knows me knows I say no, thank you.

[1:15:36] As soon as Stewart finishes a blockbuster movie

[1:15:38] and the first credit starts to roll, he immediately kicks the screen out of his TV.

[1:15:44] He says, that's it for me.

[1:15:46] So it's a good thing that TVs are like commodity items these days, though.

[1:15:49] Yeah, I'll take the screen and then I slide down a brontosaurus's tail.

[1:15:55] The second one barely exists.

[1:15:56] But Dan, why do you describe what happens in the first one?

[1:16:00] I mean, in the first one, Sonic comes across.

[1:16:02] And I say this knowing that Jamel will be so much more clearly

[1:16:05] able to describe it because he knows the character that they're introducing.

[1:16:08] But I want Dan to do it.

[1:16:09] So the Sonic is running around at night.

[1:16:13] He encounters a robot hedgehog.

[1:16:17] He's just running wild doing terrible things.

[1:16:19] I don't know. He's just running through the woods because he likes to, I guess.

[1:16:23] Do you guys remember when kids could just run through the woods?

[1:16:26] Yeah. He's a real youth gone wild.

[1:16:28] He encounters this robot hedgehog that, you know, wants to kill him,

[1:16:32] but he's able to defeat it.

[1:16:34] And then there's a bunch of other robot hedgehogs that show up.

[1:16:36] And he's like, what's this all about?

[1:16:38] And then he's saved by this cute girl hedgehog.

[1:16:43] Let's not editorialize.

[1:16:45] Well, she's very meant to, like, look cute.

[1:16:49] I mean, like, obviously it's a cartoon hedgehog.

[1:16:51] I'm not particularly.

[1:16:53] I don't you're telling us more about yourself.

[1:16:54] I'm not particularly into it.

[1:16:56] What's the hedgehog's name?

[1:16:57] And I'll find out if she's got big, big eyes and like a short skirt.

[1:17:01] And, you know, this is the big, big love interest hedgehog, I assume.

[1:17:06] I know nothing about this hedgehog.

[1:17:07] So, Jamel, this is when we need your help more than ever.

[1:17:10] Who is this girl hedgehog?

[1:17:11] This is this girl hedgehog is Amy Rose, who is a hedgehog.

[1:17:15] She was first introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog CD for the Sega CD,

[1:17:20] Sonic CD, which is a great game and has a famously cool, famously great soundtrack.

[1:17:25] Also, also introduced in Sonic CD is Metal Sonic.

[1:17:28] So but this entire kind of scenario is like a Sonic CD, you know,

[1:17:33] homage for the real Sonic heads out there.

[1:17:37] So and so does that imply that, like, the next movie will be pulling from Sonic CD

[1:17:43] the way that this pulled from Sonic Adventures 2?

[1:17:45] It's possible this be possible.

[1:17:50] This game, none of these early games were made for Sonic.

[1:17:52] But Sonic CD does have time travel in it.

[1:17:55] OK, so I can actually very much see that happening, like the next time.

[1:17:58] That's how they save Longclaw or something like that.

[1:18:00] Yeah, I think we're writing Sonic the Hedgehog for right now.

[1:18:04] But what was the second post-credit sequence?

[1:18:06] So the second post-credit sequence at the near the very end, it's super short.

[1:18:10] And it's literally one of those things where there's it's like there's there's dirt.

[1:18:14] It looks like you're on Mars or something.

[1:18:15] And there's like a big ring sticking out of the dirt.

[1:18:17] And then a gloved hand grabs that and it's like, oh, I'm on Mars.

[1:18:21] And then a gloved hand grabs that ring.

[1:18:23] And I assumed it was just Dr.

[1:18:24] Robotnik, you know, actually alive again.

[1:18:27] So my guess was that the it was you don't see anyone's face.

[1:18:30] It's just a hand.

[1:18:31] I could not remember his costume well enough to probably shadow.

[1:18:34] I think it's I think according to Wikipedia, it's shadow.

[1:18:39] Oh, is it? I mean, if they killed off Shadow again, January six, part two.

[1:18:45] You know what it says in Wikipedia says elsewhere, Shadow has survived cancer.

[1:18:48] So it just tells you that Shadow is still around either way.

[1:18:50] Like, you know, like it's not like I truly believed

[1:18:54] either of those characters have died if if this movie is successful.

[1:18:58] You know, I saw it happen on camera.

[1:19:00] Yeah. I mean, surely if an exploding satellite happens right next to you,

[1:19:04] you can't come back with no explanation later in the movie.

[1:19:07] Wait a minute. Hold on.

[1:19:08] That's what happened with Samuel Jackson in Triple X.

[1:19:11] The return of what's his name?

[1:19:12] Zander Cage, where you literally see a satellite explode and his body engulfed

[1:19:17] in flame, and then later he comes back and there's just no explanation.

[1:19:19] It's fine. He faked it all.

[1:19:20] Yeah, it's they're not going to kill Shadow.

[1:19:22] It's not like they've killed any children in this movie.

[1:19:27] Maria never comes.

[1:19:28] Well, that's Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Return of Maria, where it turns out

[1:19:31] maybe she is her brain was put into Amy Rose's body.

[1:19:34] Then Sonic the Hedgehog 5 is they're looking for the original brain for Amy Rose.

[1:19:37] Yeah, this is it all.

[1:19:38] I mean, it hangs together so so tightly, this tight continuity.

[1:19:41] Yeah, well, this this tight movie, let's do our final judgments about it.

[1:19:45] Is it a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of like?

[1:19:48] And I it gives me it gives me no joy to like

[1:19:53] talk about the Sonic movies these ways, because I feel like

[1:19:57] I feel like there's probably a lot of listeners beyond.

[1:20:00] beyond these ratings, they're just so beautiful.

[1:20:02] No, I know a lot of people like these movies,

[1:20:04] and I think probably a lot in our listenership as well,

[1:20:07] because, and I include myself in this number,

[1:20:11] I'm not trying to insult,

[1:20:13] I'm saying that probably the people who listen

[1:20:15] are like me, affable nerds who are maybe too attached

[1:20:21] to the junk of their childhood,

[1:20:23] perhaps as a defense mechanism

[1:20:25] against a horrible universe that we live in.

[1:20:30] And so people have a lot of nostalgic affection for Sonic,

[1:20:36] but I would ask that people expect a little bit more

[1:20:40] out of their baby shit that they still like,

[1:20:43] the blanket that we all clutch to ourselves.

[1:20:46] I mean, I feel a little bit better about this movie

[1:20:49] knowing that it is so tied to this particular game,

[1:20:54] and that's the way it is,

[1:20:55] because without that, I'm like,

[1:20:57] this is such a generification of,

[1:21:00] like, this is just what every movie feels like these days.

[1:21:03] That's like a big blockbuster that's kind of boring.

[1:21:06] You didn't realize that the Sonic games were the template

[1:21:09] for all the blockbuster movies to come, yeah.

[1:21:11] Like, this is the sort of movie where I'm like,

[1:21:13] well, I don't know, like,

[1:21:15] why are we fighting so hard against AI

[1:21:16] if like someone presumably wrote this,

[1:21:18] but it still feels like just like a conglomeration

[1:21:22] of every type of movie that is made these days.

[1:21:24] Anyway, bad, bad, Stuart.

[1:21:28] Yeah, I mean, I think this is probably a bad, bad movie.

[1:21:31] I mean, I enjoyed talking about it quite a bit,

[1:21:33] and I find like, if you can skip over

[1:21:36] all the battle sequences,

[1:21:37] it's, I think there's stuff that's likeable,

[1:21:40] there's stuff likable in it.

[1:21:41] I mean, like, again, I enjoyed Jim Carrey's performance,

[1:21:44] and there's a lot of other actors

[1:21:46] who I think are doing fine work,

[1:21:47] and I, you know, wish they could do other things,

[1:21:51] but I'm glad to see all of them.

[1:21:55] But no, I mean, it feels very silly,

[1:22:00] and I'm a little disappointed that it reaches a point

[1:22:03] where we have these two characters

[1:22:05] who at least one of them is coded as a child,

[1:22:08] are just like punching each other over and over,

[1:22:10] and it's, yeah, that kind of sucks.

[1:22:12] I'm also gonna call this a bad, bad movie.

[1:22:15] I was really surprised looking up reviews for this.

[1:22:17] A lot of people were like,

[1:22:18] this is clearly the best of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies.

[1:22:20] Like, it really won a lot of reviewers over,

[1:22:23] and I was surprised by that

[1:22:23] because, again, like, I'm just saying

[1:22:26] the same thing you guys are,

[1:22:27] which, like, there are comedy moments in this

[1:22:28] that I think are very successful,

[1:22:30] and I wish that I could see these performers

[1:22:32] in something that was not tied to the concept

[1:22:35] of doing a serious take on a Sonic the Hedgehog story,

[1:22:40] but it's a, I wish, I think the real falling down of it

[1:22:44] is that in a movie like this,

[1:22:46] the action should be, like, the high point.

[1:22:47] Like, you should be like, this movie's real dumb,

[1:22:50] but there's a couple of action scenes that are really cool,

[1:22:52] and it's actually the stuff

[1:22:53] that is the hardest to get through in this movie,

[1:22:54] in my opinion, so I'm gonna call it bad, bad,

[1:22:57] but it's like, well, I've seen worse.

[1:22:59] You know, I've seen worse movies, you know.

[1:23:01] Part Four is set for release March 19th, 2027, by the way.

[1:23:05] Okay. Oh, okay, great.

[1:23:07] That's honestly my thinking.

[1:23:09] It's like, I've seen worse.

[1:23:11] I mean, as far as, like, blockbuster franchise filmmaking

[1:23:14] for kids goes, this is far from the worst thing

[1:23:17] you could show a seven- or eight-year-old.

[1:23:20] The fact that you do get, in each of these movies,

[1:23:23] like, a real 90s vintage Jim Carrey performance

[1:23:26] is kind of magical.

[1:23:28] Like, you know, I think you're right, Elliot.

[1:23:30] Somehow, people have forgotten that, like,

[1:23:32] Carrey is this tremendously talented performer

[1:23:35] and comedic performer, and it's fun to see him in this mode.

[1:23:40] So it's like, it's not good,

[1:23:42] but I didn't, like, feel bad watching it.

[1:23:44] I don't know.

[1:23:45] It's like, it's not good, but it wasn't, like, intolerable.

[1:23:49] Yeah, that's fair.

[1:23:50] I wish it was shorter.

[1:23:51] I feel like there are bad movies that I will watch

[1:23:53] because Peter Sellers is in it,

[1:23:55] and he's giving a funny performance,

[1:23:56] and I feel like this is not that different from that,

[1:23:58] but usually those movies are, like, an hour and a half,

[1:24:00] and this is nearly two hours.

[1:24:02] If this were 90 minutes long, it'd be decent.

[1:24:07] Put it on a poster.

[1:24:08] In some ways, I totally get where you guys are coming from,

[1:24:11] but I also feel like the longer we've engaged

[1:24:13] in this project, the more I'm like,

[1:24:17] the it could have been worse movies

[1:24:19] are the worst movies to me,

[1:24:20] the ones that are just, like, super mediocre.

[1:24:23] Like, I'd rather watch a worse movie

[1:24:24] than watch something like this.

[1:24:26] But you could watch Smurfs, the recent one.

[1:24:30] I did see that one.

[1:24:32] Yeah, that was, that's a rough one at times.

[1:24:35] Yeah, this is way better than Smurfs.

[1:24:37] Put that shit on the poster.

[1:24:38] Yeah, I enjoyed it less.

[1:24:40] Oh, you enjoyed Smurfs more?

[1:24:42] Yeah, because it was weirder.

[1:24:45] I mean, this is, like, the most boilerplate version.

[1:24:48] I feel like if, like, two people

[1:24:51] who are overpaid screenwriters,

[1:24:53] and I'm mad at them because they have jobs,

[1:24:56] are told to write an adaptation,

[1:24:58] like, this is what gets crapped out.

[1:25:01] Like, whereas, like-

[1:25:02] I think, Dan, I think, no, I think, well, one,

[1:25:04] the idea that two people wrote this would be hilarious.

[1:25:07] Right, 80.

[1:25:07] Obviously, there's three credited screenwriters,

[1:25:10] and you know there were many more

[1:25:12] that probably worked on it.

[1:25:13] But it is not like, you can't,

[1:25:15] it's not like they were like,

[1:25:16] hey, let's just crap out a Sonic script.

[1:25:18] No, they were, they had, they were,

[1:25:20] they wrote the project that they were directed to write.

[1:25:23] I'm sure they, like, earned their money

[1:25:25] simply by dealing with the number

[1:25:27] of crazy rewrites and bad ideas.

[1:25:29] You know there was, you know there was a moment

[1:25:31] where in a meeting, an executive said to them,

[1:25:33] but how do we really establish Shadow's emotional trauma?

[1:25:38] And that is worth being paid at least $200,000,

[1:25:42] just to have to deal with that moment of being told that.

[1:25:44] I think, I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast,

[1:25:46] my nightmare that I have right now,

[1:25:47] I used to have a nightmare that I was this age

[1:25:49] and I still worked at the Daily Show,

[1:25:50] and I was on a panel talking about comedy and the news,

[1:25:53] and I was like, no, no more of that.

[1:25:55] My new nightmare is, I come home depressed from a meeting,

[1:25:58] and my wife goes,

[1:25:59] so how did the meeting with Lucky Charms go?

[1:26:01] And I go, they didn't like my take on Lucky.

[1:26:03] And I'm like, that's my,

[1:26:05] that's the world of a working screenwriter right now,

[1:26:06] is what's your take on Lucky the Leprechaun?

[1:26:08] How do you get across what drives Lucky?

[1:26:11] And so, anyone who worked on this,

[1:26:13] you know they had to deal with that kind of stuff.

[1:26:14] How do we get across, what's, at some point they said,

[1:26:18] well, what's Tales' comedic fastball?

[1:26:21] What's the kind of joke only Tales can tell?

[1:26:23] And the writers had to be like,

[1:26:25] how do we answer an unanswerable question?

[1:26:27] So I have nothing but sympathy.

[1:26:29] Now you're right, they deserve their hazard pay.

[1:26:32] Exactly, they deserve it, yeah.

[1:26:33] I'm just mad at the sorts of movies that are making money.

[1:26:38] It's disappointing that this, there's a,

[1:26:39] I was complaining to my dad about this,

[1:26:41] and he didn't really understand what I was talking about.

[1:26:42] There's an entire generation, maybe more,

[1:26:45] of creative people who should be making the movies

[1:26:47] that define these times,

[1:26:49] and define what our imaginations can do in these times,

[1:26:52] and we're not getting them,

[1:26:53] because these people have to make

[1:26:54] Sonic the Hedgehog movies, superhero movies,

[1:26:56] movies based on old cartoons from when we were kids.

[1:26:58] Like, we're just not, we're gonna miss

[1:27:00] an entire generation of original ideas and imaginings.

[1:27:03] Not very sad about it.

[1:27:04] But you can't blame the people who are doing it.

[1:27:05] They gotta do the job, they gotta make a living.

[1:27:07] Or just not even, it's not original ideas,

[1:27:11] just like strange blockbuster movies.

[1:27:12] I don't know, I watched Dick Tracy

[1:27:14] for the first time recently.

[1:27:15] Oh, man.

[1:27:16] And I was just sort of like-

[1:27:17] I haven't seen that since it came out.

[1:27:17] I gotta watch it.

[1:27:18] That is a singular vision.

[1:27:19] I was just like, it boggles my mind

[1:27:23] how the movie got made.

[1:27:24] It was just, there was so much marketing behind it.

[1:27:28] I remember being so, like, going to McDonald's

[1:27:30] and being like, I gotta catch all the villain,

[1:27:32] like, stickers or whatever the fuck.

[1:27:34] Just the idea also that it was like,

[1:27:35] Batman was huge, you know it'll be big.

[1:27:38] Dick Tracy.

[1:27:38] They're both old comic book characters, right?

[1:27:41] But that was the same thing where Warren Beatty was like,

[1:27:43] I assume Warren Beatty was like,

[1:27:44] when I was a kid, I loved Dick Tracy.

[1:27:45] I gotta make this Dick Tracy movie.

[1:27:46] But instead, he made it in a strange way,

[1:27:49] as opposed to Michael Bay making an Ninja Turtles movie

[1:27:53] where it's like, how do we make these characters fuck?

[1:27:56] How do we make them super badass, you know?

[1:27:58] It was definitely marketed as Batman 2.

[1:28:00] And by the way, the first Batman,

[1:28:01] also a nutty vision in its own way,

[1:28:03] but it was one that hit with the public.

[1:28:06] I remember watching Dick Tracy in the theater

[1:28:09] as a kid and being like, I wanted another Batman.

[1:28:11] And then I saw it like, I don't know,

[1:28:13] a year ago they did a screening at Nighthawk

[1:28:16] and I'm like, this is amazing.

[1:28:18] This is like, oh, a kaleidoscope of nuttiness.

[1:28:23] I love it.

[1:28:24] I gotta watch it again.

[1:28:25] Would you describe it as colorful?

[1:28:27] It is colorful, like the comics.

[1:28:31] No, the comics were not colorful, Dan.

[1:28:33] Well, there were four color.

[1:28:35] No, I mean, I'm talking about the Sunday.

[1:28:38] Anyway.

[1:28:39] The other thing is,

[1:28:40] what's funny about the Dick Tracy movie is,

[1:28:42] if I'm remembering correctly,

[1:28:43] they actually had to clean it up quite a bit

[1:28:44] because the old Dick Tracy comic strips are very violent.

[1:28:46] He's constantly killing his bad guys.

[1:28:49] It's like, prune face committed this crime.

[1:28:50] Shoot him in the face.

[1:28:55] The original judge dread.

[1:28:57] There's flat top, stab him in the heart.

[1:28:59] Okay, Dick Tracy, like, all right.

[1:29:01] And I have a watch with a little TV on it.

[1:29:03] Anyway, kill these guys.

[1:29:04] Man, at the time, that was like the height.

[1:29:06] It was like, ah, can you imagine

[1:29:08] if you can have a TV on a watch?

[1:29:09] Ha ha ha ha.

[1:29:17] Greatest Trek is the hit podcast about new Star Trek shows,

[1:29:20] and right now, we're talking about

[1:29:22] all things Starfleet Academy.

[1:29:24] Starfleet Academy is a Star Trek show made for everyone,

[1:29:28] from lifetime Star Trek nerds

[1:29:29] to folks who only like my so-called life in Dawson's Creek.

[1:29:33] We even had a special writer and actor guest

[1:29:35] for the fifth episode this season,

[1:29:37] the hilarious Tawny Newsome.

[1:29:39] Look, there's always something fun

[1:29:40] on the Greatest Trek feed,

[1:29:42] because when the season's over,

[1:29:43] we're going back to watching the original series.

[1:29:45] And hey, if you like old Star Trek,

[1:29:48] the Greatest Generation just had its 10th anniversary.

[1:29:50] That's Greatest Trek for new Star Trek

[1:29:53] and Greatest Generation for the Star Trek you grew up on.

[1:29:56] Both shows you can find on MaximumFun.org.

[1:30:00] Ready, go. Knock, knock. Who's there? We got this. With Mark and Hal. You knew this one!

[1:30:10] You can't put that out as an ad. We just did. New episodes every week on MaximumFun.org or

[1:30:16] wherever you get your podcasts. Now it's Hewn and Rock. Hewn and Rock? Yeah. How do you hew

[1:30:22] something in rock? With a chisel. There's only one hew in rock and it's Huey Lewis.

[1:30:27] And the news is we got this with Mark and Hal. It's available every week on MaximumFun.org.

[1:30:33] I walked right into that.

[1:30:40] This podcast is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Hey, you ever go online? Huh?

[1:30:47] Huh? Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.

[1:30:53] Get paid on time with professional on-brand invoices and payments you can do online.

[1:31:01] And you can streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email

[1:31:07] marketing tools. All of the little pieces you need to have a successful business on the internet.

[1:31:15] Also, cutting-edge design. Ever heard of it? Well, Squarespace has it. They've got a complete

[1:31:21] library of professionally designed award-winning templates for your website. What is your website?

[1:31:27] Doesn't really matter because Squarespace covers all of the bases with options for

[1:31:32] every use and category. You got intuitive drag and drop editing, styling options,

[1:31:40] unrivaled visual design effects. You don't need experience. You don't need to know how to code.

[1:31:45] You don't need to know HTML. You just have to be able to log on to Squarespace and use

[1:31:52] their website builder. So head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial. And when you're

[1:31:58] ready to launch, use offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:32:07] Also, before we get back to the show, just a brief message to say that if you're listening

[1:32:14] to this when it's released, you have a very, very short time to get in those Flop TV

[1:32:20] viewings before the show goes away at the end of the Flop TV viewing window. And we said that's

[1:32:28] the end of February. Maybe there's a grace day. I don't know. I don't know. That's actually

[1:32:34] Matt's job. Matt, our tech person. But if you haven't watched Flop TV yet, check it out while

[1:32:40] you still can. And now back to Sonic three and Jamel and everything. Let's do letters from

[1:32:48] listeners like you. This one's from Declan. Last name withheld. Who writes. Hi, floppers. I'm

[1:32:55] wondering if you guys have any tips on how to write about how to write about or review something

[1:33:02] positively. In this case, I'm talking from this podcast. No. In this case, I'm talking movies on

[1:33:07] Letterboxd, but it applies to the world in general. Maybe it's just a byproduct of being on

[1:33:12] the Internet with its widespread negativity. But for some reason, I feel my reviews are more likely

[1:33:17] to focus on the aspects of a good movie that bothered me rather than the aspects I liked,

[1:33:22] almost as if I'm trying to justify why I didn't give the movie five stars rather than what I

[1:33:27] liked that gave it an above average rating. For instance, I recently watched Paris, Texas.

[1:33:34] My review is four paragraphs of how I thought the beginning hour in the desert was too long

[1:33:38] and boring. Now the movie didn't feel like it delivered on the promises that set up and how

[1:33:42] I got really close to turning it off, followed by one paragraph about how I liked it. My rating,

[1:33:47] four point five stars out of five. I don't know whether it's because I'm more comfortable

[1:33:52] verbalizing something I didn't like that I am putting myself out there and trying to describe

[1:33:56] why something made me feel. But I'm kind of afraid that this is something that might be indicative of

[1:34:00] my personality, not to mention that this brand of negativity feels like a symptom of the world

[1:34:05] we live in and it's something we should all probably try to curb. I'd also like to get

[1:34:10] ahead of the jokes and say that I recognize the irony in writing to a bad movie podcast about this,

[1:34:14] but obviously you guys love movies, have a history with professional movie reviewers,

[1:34:19] and give recommendations on each episode. So I feel like you guys are amongst the foremost

[1:34:24] experts on the subject. Help me, FloppyWineKanobis, you're my only hope.

[1:34:29] Love, Declan Lasting Withheld. I would like to jump in if it's okay. This is very unlike

[1:34:33] me to jump in and talk first and interrupt everybody. Declan, I feel like you were

[1:34:38] answering your own question in a number of ways, not in the how to, but in the why.

[1:34:42] I think that we live in a world where it is very hard to make yourself vulnerable by saying,

[1:34:48] I like this thing, because it's so easy for someone else to say, that thing is bad,

[1:34:52] you're wrong for liking it, you're dumb. And the internet, which should have created a world where

[1:34:57] there's a certain level of anonymity so you can say, I like this thing without fear that someone's

[1:35:00] gonna come at you, because who gives a shit if someone you don't know in real life comes at you,

[1:35:05] is the opposite. It's much easier for somebody who you've never met to shit on you for saying

[1:35:11] you like a thing that they don't like. And so I think that it's very hard for anyone right now

[1:35:16] to be, to make them, or it's harder than it once was to make yourself vulnerable by saying,

[1:35:20] I like this thing, it really means something to me. And it feels like all of politics right now

[1:35:25] is based around, it's easier to say what I hate than to say what I like, to say what is good

[1:35:30] rather than what is bad. And so I would say, this is what, this is my theory about this,

[1:35:36] this is my thing we have to do. I feel like we've got to drop the kind of nihilistic fear

[1:35:42] of vulnerability that has typified a lot of culture since, let's say that those 1990s that

[1:35:48] Sonic the Hedgehog was trying to teach us were so great, and go back to the more, like,

[1:35:56] sincere, more innocent, kind of cornier, goofier, in a lot of ways, kind of like,

[1:36:02] less cool way of living that I would say existed from the romantic era into, you know,

[1:36:09] roughly the 1970s, 1980s, with some bumps here and there, when it was like, people were really

[1:36:14] excited about things they'd liked and really wanted to share things they liked. And I feel

[1:36:17] like that's a lot of where science fiction fandom comes from, is, I like these things that the

[1:36:22] people around me don't like. So I'm going to find other people like me by being extremely vocal

[1:36:27] about what I like and searching out the people who also like those things. And now we've kind

[1:36:31] of gone the other way where I think people glom together based on sharing that they don't like

[1:36:36] things. And the first step is just to, like, try to be okay with being vulnerable. And if someone

[1:36:42] says, I don't like that thing you like, to be like, okay, cool, well, I still like it, you know,

[1:36:47] but it's hard to do. I know, I certainly, when I was a younger man, I felt it was much easier to

[1:36:52] be funny about the things I didn't like than to be genuine about the things I did like.

[1:36:56] And when I hosted a film series at the Nine to Watch Rebecca, it was a lot easier to get

[1:37:00] people to come see movies. If I was like, this movie is so bad, you're going to love it. Then

[1:37:03] if I said, this movie is great, you're going to love it. And I think it's all that, it's all that

[1:37:07] fear of being vulnerable, I think, at a certain level. So I would say you got to just gird yourself

[1:37:13] for those moments and try it when you're writing the next, this is my assignment I'm going to give

[1:37:18] you. The next time you write a letterbox review, I don't want you to mention anything in the movie

[1:37:22] you didn't like. I only want you to mention the things you did like. And don't feel like you need

[1:37:26] to justify your star rating, you know, in any way. The star rating and the write-up can be separate

[1:37:31] things, in a way. You can just focus on the things that you like. That's my assignment for you,

[1:37:35] Declan. And for the world. Guys, prove me wrong. I don't care. I'm not letting this, I'm letting

[1:37:40] myself be vulnerable here. How can I even prove that? I don't... Debate me, Dan. Debate me. No.

[1:37:47] Tell me why it's not good to like things. Oh, look at Mr. Loves-to-Write-Positive-Reviews over here.

[1:37:51] No, I mean, I found that, like, even in my, like, non-review, like, life, I have a problem with,

[1:37:58] like, leading with the negative and just sort of assuming that the positive is understood to be

[1:38:04] positive if I don't mention it. It's like, that's okay, you know, and like, the baseline. And I

[1:38:09] don't think that that's a good, you know, I've had trouble, you know, talking with Audrey because

[1:38:14] of that sometimes. I've had trouble with my friends sometimes where it's just like, oh,

[1:38:17] the negativity is obvious, but the positivity is left unsaid. Stuart's nodding his head,

[1:38:24] probably because he's, you know, remembering a cool song he heard once and he's bobbing his head

[1:38:28] along to it. But... Yeah, probably the Addams Family song. No, it's good to be aware of this

[1:38:35] sort of thing. I think in, like, if you want a how-to, I think in reviews, like, it's the only

[1:38:40] thing to do is to think, like, you know, why did this affect me positively? Like, what did I think

[1:38:48] was it that I responded to and write about that? Or, like, even if it didn't affect you per se,

[1:38:56] like, what is the movie that you're watching? Like, what's it trying to do? And did it succeed

[1:39:02] at that? And why? And, like, talk about why it succeeded in that. Because, like, you know,

[1:39:08] as sort of a side note to that, I think a lot of people get very negative, like, imagining the

[1:39:14] movie that they thought they were going to watch. And if it doesn't live up to that, they're mad

[1:39:18] rather than engaging with, like, what is actually in front of them. And, you know, a lot of that's

[1:39:23] advertising and expectations. But do you have any thoughts? Yeah, it's just like my girl, right?

[1:39:28] You get mad about those bees. I am mad at those bees years later. I don't know. Yeah. I mean,

[1:39:34] I think I mean, one, I know that I was raised in a family and an environment where if I shared

[1:39:43] a particular affection for something that became ammunition for people to make fun of me for

[1:39:48] liking it. And I and while I feel like I've gotten over most of that, there's also, you know,

[1:39:55] that's lingering. And the but I do know that, like, as somebody.

[1:40:00] who deals with depression a lot that like I try to focus on the things that I like because

[1:40:05] you know it's hard to find joy in the world sometimes and you need to figure out what

[1:40:10] you like so that you can get that and so I guess I just find myself I guess thinking

[1:40:17] about the positives of a lot of things more often that doesn't necessarily help you with

[1:40:22] your reviews I would recommend sticking to the things that you like and follow what Elliot

[1:40:27] said because that was well thought out but yeah yeah I Elliot said something that I thought

[1:40:31] was quite useful just to separate a star rating from just what like what you're gonna write

[1:40:36] about the movie right like if there are plenty of movies for which I would give a two star

[1:40:41] rating on the letterboxd I might write about the things about the movie that I just like

[1:40:44] that like you know made it worth watching or even if I sometimes I'll give a movie a

[1:40:50] low star rating we give it a heart and that's just a signal that like you know this movie

[1:40:53] isn't particularly good but I still enjoyed it and I enjoyed it for these reasons and

[1:40:58] I think it's worth just sort of but recognizing that there is the internet premium on negativity

[1:41:04] but doing what you can to push against it and like I always said be being a little vulnerable

[1:41:11] is is worthwhile being a little cringe is worthwhile you know like I think I think I

[1:41:16] think one thing not to bring too much of my day job into this conversation but one thing

[1:41:21] that I think is true is that I think our politics at this moment are somewhat downstream

[1:41:30] of a cultural belief that negativity and cynicism are somehow more authentic and more true than

[1:41:40] positivity and the things you might label as cringe that like for whatever reason we

[1:41:46] view that stuff is insincere as a virtual virtue signaling when I think that virtue

[1:41:53] actually needs to be signal that's a thing virtue is a public performance and it has

[1:41:59] to be demonstrated and that is going to look embarrassing and you just have to power through

[1:42:06] that yeah there's a there's a there's something this is kind of a semi unrelated but I feel

[1:42:11] like it's similar in that there's in one of Chuck Klosterman's essays he talks about being

[1:42:15] like a young punk and going to a bar where there was a group of like hair metal guys

[1:42:20] who would dress up in really ridiculous outfits and then play hair metal at this bar and then

[1:42:24] and he and his friends would just sit in the back and laugh at them and be like oh that

[1:42:27] sucks look at that and in the essay he's like and you know what those guys probably did

[1:42:30] later that night had sex with like with their girlfriends like they were having a really fun

[1:42:35] time and we were and our idea of a fun time was just to sit on them sit and shit on them

[1:42:39] having a fun time which is not fun like that he was so they were so afraid of not looking

[1:42:44] cool that they were cutting themselves off from enjoying themselves and it's a little bit like

[1:42:49] I feel like we're a lot of terms of like political reporting and our national culture right now it's

[1:42:54] like the people who refuse to dance at weddings which I was one you know for many years where

[1:42:59] it's like oh because I don't want to look stupid it's like well why not have a great time yeah

[1:43:02] who cares if you look stupid everyone else is like just have a good time and you're like

[1:43:05] who cares if somebody films it and puts it on the internet like everybody looks stupid on the

[1:43:09] internet it's okay like is that happening or people are people putting wedding dancing up I

[1:43:15] mean I think that is a concern for some young people is that because everything is filmed

[1:43:19] people are nervous about being filmed in a way that they can't control yeah that makes sense

[1:43:24] but it's a but you're I think if like what you're saying I think is is great to know like you have

[1:43:28] to be a little cringe in order to in order to engage sincerely and and enjoy life to a certain

[1:43:34] extent you know yeah um and you can't just always hold yourself back and be like and you can't always

[1:43:38] be Daria yeah and you can't always if you keep finding ways to not do something you'll never

[1:43:44] fucking do anything yes um so Declan you have no excuse now that was more expiring inspiring

[1:43:52] you gave you gave him an assignment Ali and I feel like that's that's better than a lot of our

[1:43:56] letter responses uh speaking of letters there's one more this is from Aaron last name withheld

[1:44:02] who writes why do movies suck so hard this guy Declan writes the dumbest reviews what do I say

[1:44:09] to him to get him to stop uh why don't you Dan why'd you pair these two letters because he's got

[1:44:15] to be shown um I know I this is from Aaron who writes I'm listening to your Smurfs episode with

[1:44:22] guest Jesse Thorne and he mentioned Field of Dreams as a baseball movie he enjoyed I saw Field

[1:44:28] of Dreams for the first time this summer in Iowa City at an outdoor movie event when the line is

[1:44:33] this heaven no it's Iowa came up everyone there said it along with the movie and then we all

[1:44:39] cheered it was really fun to be there and witness that especially for my first time seeing the flick

[1:44:46] thinking about that experience I was wondering whether there are any movies that you

[1:44:50] strongly associate with place it could be because you watched it in the location where it happened

[1:44:55] or that it brought up a particularly strong memory of a place for you my second question

[1:44:59] less related to movies are there physical spaces whether from your past or present without doxing

[1:45:04] yourself of course that really stuck out to you and shaped you into who you are or want to be

[1:45:10] thanks Aaron last name withheld p.s I was at the late uh Chicago show had a really great time thanks

[1:45:16] for all you do and I hope Stuart and Elliot aren't too mad at Dan for the roast because I had a great

[1:45:21] time oh yeah Dan's referencing a powerpoint he does uh where he roasts me and Elliot and uh

[1:45:28] I'm still livid yeah what's up he's shaking I'm vibrating like an angry sonic yeah um the vein in

[1:45:38] his forehead is throbbing I mean I feel like the the cheat on a question like this always is Dan

[1:45:45] sorry I thought about not saying it and then I said it I mean I have

[1:45:50] my podcast um I mean the cheat for me is always movies that are like Stuart says what would Tom

[1:45:55] Bombadil do you wouldn't pay that goddamn ring uh the cheat is something like you know I uh as

[1:46:03] somebody who has chosen to live in New York I obviously have an affection for New York

[1:46:09] and growing up I saw a lot of movies set in New York and I still have a thing where like

[1:46:14] seeing movies that are clearly set in the city that I choose to live in uh I I had like it already

[1:46:22] gives me an affection for it especially like in particular if it shows like a New York slightly

[1:46:27] before my time uh that's like even better like give me a 90s New York I'm like oh take me there

[1:46:33] because that was kind of the feeling I had when I was going when I was like where do I want to live

[1:46:38] that was the type of movie that I would see and those were the things that kind of pushed me over

[1:46:41] the edge uh I have a couple of thoughts of movies for slightly different reasons in each case uh I

[1:46:48] saw um why am I blinking Night of the Hunter uh for the first time it was being uh screened like

[1:46:57] someone had a 16 millimeter probably print that they were playing uh in an airplane hangar uh near

[1:47:05] where my ex uh her family is from this sounds like a way that the cops entrap nerds

[1:47:12] but no it was just a wonderful like it was like semi-outdoors like a unique way to see that movie

[1:47:18] and I've you know I've seen a lot of movies at different like interesting venues but this one

[1:47:24] stuck with me for some reason uh possibly because I was also seeing a great movie for the first time

[1:47:28] um and I think I mentioned before that there was like a documentary about the Eugene Merman comedy

[1:47:34] festival that I watched uh somewhat recently that just had a cavalcade of like stages I had

[1:47:42] performed on or people I'd seen when I was first in New York coming to comedy shows uh that you

[1:47:47] know felt very specifically interesting to me when maybe someone else wouldn't be as fascinated by the

[1:47:53] movie um what do you guys think I so this isn't a memory of a good movie um but when I was just at

[1:48:03] a college I went to a recently defunct soon about to be brought back drive-in movie theater in the

[1:48:09] middle of nowhere Virginia and saw the 2000 saw the movie that came with that year uh obsessed

[1:48:15] with Beyonce, Halle Larter and uh Idris Elba and it was just like such a great time like watching

[1:48:21] this terrible movie with a bunch of my friends uh uh eating snacks and like hanging out and just

[1:48:27] sort of like that's I I associate drive-in movies with that experience and whenever I see

[1:48:32] Halle Larter or Beyonce or Idris Elba I do think about that movie obsessed and

[1:48:37] that's the stretchy arms right that's the stretchy arms one where somebody's hanging

[1:48:41] in their arms look like they're really long yeah I think so years ago yeah uh similarly I have

[1:48:48] there are two movies that stick out to me particularly for the the time and the place

[1:48:53] which was one was when I was a kid uh my my mom took me and my brother and sister to a uh to

[1:48:57] Mystic Connecticut for the weekend because Penn and Teller were performing there and our car broke

[1:49:02] down we missed a school and we went to the movies and we saw the Sandlot in an otherwise empty

[1:49:07] theater it was just the the four of us and nobody else and so the Sandlot will always be associated

[1:49:12] with Mystic Connecticut to me for that reason um but also on the day of my wedding in Sonoma

[1:49:18] California earlier that day while my wife and her friends were getting ready uh Dan and Stuart and

[1:49:23] I and a bunch of my other groomsmen and friends we went to go see Piranha 3D and so now my my

[1:49:30] wedding day is forever intertwined with Piranha 3D and when I go and when I'm in Sonoma which we

[1:49:35] go to regularly because my my wife's parents still live there um the it's uh I often well

[1:49:42] let's just think about like yeah this is where I got married and I saw Piranha 3D

[1:49:46] two equally important things there's something so fun about this pile of rowdy weirdos showing up

[1:49:51] to a multiplex that is other like just like we're waiting there for them to open the doors

[1:49:56] and there's no one else in this empty parking lot and we're like

[1:50:00] Yep, 10 tickets for Piranha 3, please.

[1:50:03] And I think there were like two other people in the theater who were not with us.

[1:50:08] Yeah, they had to put up with us.

[1:50:09] And we dragged them to the wedding.

[1:50:13] Great friends now.

[1:50:14] They're very close friends now.

[1:50:15] Yeah, yeah.

[1:50:16] Are there like personal spaces, like she asked, but I mean, the thing for me is like, you

[1:50:22] know, everything imprints on you, you know, like, I don't know if I made a silly buddy.

[1:50:27] I don't know, I have a better answer, you know, like the first 17 years of my life,

[1:50:34] I was in a small, small Midwestern town where I was born all the time.

[1:50:39] And obviously, that looms large in my life, just because it was where I grew up.

[1:50:45] But I can't really like, I mean, certainly, like when my when I first got married, and

[1:50:51] things were very strange.

[1:50:54] And and my husband was, like, was still enthralled to the memory of his first wife, the first

[1:50:59] Mrs. De Winter, I often find myself still dreaming of Manderley, you know, I'm still

[1:51:03] back there.

[1:51:04] So made a big impression on me.

[1:51:06] Yeah.

[1:51:07] Well, there you go.

[1:51:09] That's where you get a Rebecca reference.

[1:51:11] Yeah, exactly.

[1:51:12] It's a movie, Rebecca.

[1:51:14] Let's say, if any, for more, see the Mitchell and Webb sketch where they're talking about

[1:51:17] how they made the mistake was making we were back over the saying, no, no, that's the room

[1:51:21] the second Mrs. De Winter will not be allowed into that they had to convince Hitchcock to

[1:51:25] make Hitchcock to make the movie about the second wife as opposed to the first one.

[1:51:29] And Hitchcock's that superhero guy, right?

[1:51:32] That's right.

[1:51:33] Yeah.

[1:51:34] That's Hancock.

[1:51:35] Hancock is it's Hitch and Hancock put together a superhero who teaches Kevin James how to

[1:51:40] fall in love.

[1:51:41] Yeah.

[1:51:42] Half cocked is what you should never go off.

[1:51:44] Now, Mr. Woodcock is what they call a bomb, a forceful event full of ants were filled

[1:51:55] with Mr. Woodcock.

[1:51:56] Yeah.

[1:51:57] Yeah.

[1:51:58] That's why Goldberry was always smiling, right?

[1:52:03] Let's move on to our final segment where we recommend a movie that we saw that we liked

[1:52:08] perhaps better than Sonic three.

[1:52:09] I last night, if possible, just last night, I watched the color of money.

[1:52:15] Which is one of the few Scorsese movies screen I hadn't.

[1:52:18] Thank you.

[1:52:19] A plus.

[1:52:20] I mean, in other countries, it's other colors.

[1:52:24] What they had.

[1:52:25] That's the thing for that.

[1:52:26] When they release it in other countries, they had to redub the part where they said, what

[1:52:28] color?

[1:52:29] Yeah.

[1:52:30] When Paul Newman looks directly into the camera, the color of money is green.

[1:52:33] That's the last line you mentioned, Paul Newman.

[1:52:38] They're like, well, we had to bring in for ADR for the for the international.

[1:52:41] It just looks like it was the color of money is blue.

[1:52:44] OK, great.

[1:52:45] We got that.

[1:52:46] OK, now for the next now for Italy or whatever, the color of money is orange, yellow.

[1:52:49] OK, great.

[1:52:50] Keep moving.

[1:52:51] The color of money is a little Petit Prince on it.

[1:52:56] I think that this movie sort of had like a middling reputation for a long time because

[1:53:04] it was a it was a, you know, is a pretty big hit for Scorsese standards.

[1:53:10] But it was also, I think, among critics, like looked at as like, oh, he's doing something

[1:53:15] commercial, like even money, even though you look at it now and it's like a damn art film

[1:53:21] compared to like most movies that are released.

[1:53:24] But, you know, at the time it was seen as the equivalent of him taking on like a Jurassic

[1:53:28] Park.

[1:53:29] Yeah.

[1:53:30] Yeah.

[1:53:31] I mean, especially because it's, you know, it's a sequel to a long ago classic film,

[1:53:34] The Hustler.

[1:53:35] And so people were on him for that, I think, too.

[1:53:37] But, you know, it's great.

[1:53:39] So it's written by Richard Price off of a novel by the same man who did The Hustler.

[1:53:45] And I I just thought that like I specific I particularly was impressed, like right out

[1:53:52] of the gate by the first scene, which I think sets up all the characters in such an elegant

[1:53:57] way with like, you know, the Scorsese camera moving back and forth like Paul Newman is

[1:54:02] talking to the woman he's sleeping with about, you know, she she owns the bar and she's he's

[1:54:09] like a booze distributor.

[1:54:10] And he's having this whole conversation while John Turturro just keeps coming in asking

[1:54:13] for more money to be staked because he keeps losing to Tom Cruise, even though he's supposedly

[1:54:18] a hustler himself.

[1:54:20] And, you know, Newman slowly becoming more interested in the pool game that's going on

[1:54:25] than the woman he's talking to.

[1:54:27] And Tom Cruise being set up as this cocky weirdo.

[1:54:30] It's all in there.

[1:54:32] And you get so much character and sort of exposition about who these people are without

[1:54:35] it seeming like it.

[1:54:37] And, you know, it's just a if you give someone who's masterful a pretty basic story, they're

[1:54:43] going to make something masterful out of it.

[1:54:45] And I really enjoyed myself.

[1:54:46] One thing I like about that movie, which I also I've been a big fan of for years, is

[1:54:52] how wild the camera gets during the sequences.

[1:54:57] And it's it's fun because, you know, it's an example of seeing a technique that Scorsese

[1:55:02] would use to great effect and like much more, you know, obviously classic films like Goodfellas.

[1:55:08] But like it seems much more like appropriate subject matters applied to pool.

[1:55:14] So like in Scorsese's hand, like a game of pool is the most dynamic thing that's ever

[1:55:20] happened on the planet Earth.

[1:55:22] Something that's played on a stationary piece of furniture.

[1:55:26] Stuart, that's great.

[1:55:30] I am going to recommend a movie I saw this week that just saw a U.S. release.

[1:55:35] It's the movie Pillion starring Alexander Skarsgård and Henry Melling.

[1:55:42] It's a movie about a young kind of timid, nervous man who begins this kind of whirlwind

[1:55:50] complicated romance with a very handsome biker who is part of the BDSM community.

[1:55:58] And it's really funny and it's also hot and like sweet.

[1:56:03] And I think it deals with the BDSM community in a really sensitive way.

[1:56:11] And it's yeah, it's just really like it's just beautiful rom-com that is jokingly been

[1:56:15] called a dom-com.

[1:56:18] But this is also a really good, this is also Dom DeLuise, I mean, you don't have to say

[1:56:23] com if Dom DeLuise doesn't because you know it's a com.

[1:56:26] He brings the com.

[1:56:27] Dom implies com, that's what they used to say about him.

[1:56:31] It's a really strong performance from Alexander Skarsgård, who is a guy who can, who was

[1:56:35] often called upon to be this like silent brooding figure.

[1:56:39] And I think he is able to add layers to this otherwise kind of like, like kind of stationary

[1:56:46] character in a lot of ways.

[1:56:49] And he like, he imbues this character of very few words with a lot of emotion.

[1:56:54] And I think it's, it's a really beautiful movie.

[1:56:56] And it's a like the perfect Valentine's Day movie.

[1:57:02] Speaking of perfect Valentine's Day movies, maybe not, I don't know.

[1:57:06] Every now and then I have to wash out my brain by watching an old movie that I don't, I haven't

[1:57:10] seen before and I don't know about.

[1:57:12] And this time I watched the movie Heat Lightning from 1934, which I really loved.

[1:57:17] It stars Aileen McMahon, one of my favorite kind of 30s supporting performers.

[1:57:22] You may know her best as the most gold diggery of the gold diggers of 1933, one of the all-time

[1:57:27] great 30s musicals.

[1:57:30] And but she often was like a supporting character, but here she gets to be the star.

[1:57:34] And she plays a woman who with her younger sister runs a kind of like gas station and

[1:57:39] lunchroom in the middle of the desert and lives an isolated life out there.

[1:57:43] She does all the, all the, what they keep calling the man's work in it.

[1:57:46] She runs, she fixes the cars and pumps the gas and things like that.

[1:57:49] And it's because she has a scandalous past.

[1:57:52] She doesn't want her younger sister to know about.

[1:57:54] But then the man from her past, by coincidence, shows up at the roadside lunch stand after,

[1:58:00] while he's on the run from a robbery that he committed in which he killed a man.

[1:58:04] And a couple other characters were also around and adding their kind of like little bits

[1:58:08] of personality to it.

[1:58:11] And it's a real tight movie.

[1:58:12] This is one of those movies that's barely over an hour long, but where I feel like you

[1:58:16] get a full idea of who these characters are and what they're feeling.

[1:58:20] And it, you know, ends somewhat in tragedy as it has to.

[1:58:24] But I really love it.

[1:58:25] It's such a shot of like real, like 1930s, like filmmaking in a way where the story moves

[1:58:33] fast.

[1:58:34] The characters are sketched in really strongly.

[1:58:36] The acting is really fun.

[1:58:38] And it looks really good.

[1:58:39] It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who was, you know, one of the one of the big, big directors

[1:58:45] of that period.

[1:58:46] And I just really enjoyed a lot.

[1:58:47] So that's Heat Lightning.

[1:58:48] If you want to watch a quick, fast old movie, that's fun to watch.

[1:58:52] I've been watching the LeRoy films on Criterion as well.

[1:58:56] I think this is in that set.

[1:58:57] Yeah, I think this is in there.

[1:58:58] Yeah.

[1:58:59] He's got he's he's one of these directors were like, they people don't talk about him

[1:59:02] because he's not.

[1:59:03] I guess he doesn't fit the idea of like what a what a great director is.

[1:59:06] He's got so many fun, good movies to his.

[1:59:08] I mean, he did Gold Diggers of 1933 also, which has some of the best musical numbers

[1:59:11] of any.

[1:59:12] I really like I was a fugitive from it.

[1:59:15] I am a fugitive from a chain gang.

[1:59:17] Not even was.

[1:59:18] Yeah.

[1:59:19] Still is.

[1:59:20] Yeah.

[1:59:21] I'm currently a fugitive from a chain gang.

[1:59:22] I continue to be a fugitive from a chain gang.

[1:59:24] That one's great.

[1:59:25] He did Little Caesar, which is great.

[1:59:27] Yeah.

[1:59:28] I'm going to recommend we mentioned Wuthering Heights earlier, the new film, but I'm going

[1:59:34] to recommend the 1939 William Wyler Wuthering Heights that I recently watched.

[1:59:41] And it's just it's it cuts out half the book, cuts out that they cut out the whole second

[1:59:47] half.

[1:59:48] Yeah.

[1:59:49] Because of the second half dealing with the children of everyone, like the next generation

[1:59:53] of the Lentons and the whomevers.

[1:59:59] The urn.

[2:00:00] Linton's in the urn, Shaw's in Heathcliff, in the book.

[2:00:02] But what it does cover, which is basically,

[2:00:07] then let the spoiler spoil everything

[2:00:08] up to Catherine's death, is great.

[2:00:12] And it stars Laurence Olivier.

[2:00:14] So it's sort of like, yeah, Laurence Olivier is Heathcliff.

[2:00:18] Do you want to watch that for an hour and 40 minutes?

[2:00:20] Because it fucking rules.

[2:00:21] So that's what I'm going to recommend.

[2:00:26] Yeah, the 1939 Wuthering Heights.

[2:00:29] William Wyler's another, oh, sorry, I wanted to say.

[2:00:31] I recommend reading Wuthering Heights as well.

[2:00:33] My wife is reading it for the first time right now,

[2:00:34] and I think she likes it.

[2:00:36] Tess, do you like it?

[2:00:37] She likes it.

[2:00:39] I know I really enjoyed it when I read it in high school,

[2:00:42] along with Jane Eyre, the Charlotte Bronte novel.

[2:00:47] The three Bronte sisters all produced

[2:00:50] highlights of Victorian literature,

[2:00:52] and they're worth reading, worth checking out.

[2:00:55] I wish, so when I was in high school,

[2:00:56] I didn't give them a fair shot,

[2:00:57] because I had to read them for school.

[2:00:59] And there were always other books I wanted to read more.

[2:01:01] And I remember one summer where I had to read Jane Eyre

[2:01:03] for my senior year coming up.

[2:01:06] But I also had Hell's Angels,

[2:01:07] the Hunter S. Thompson book, lined up after that.

[2:01:10] So I was like, come on, Jane Eyre,

[2:01:12] let me get done with this so I can read Hell's Angels.

[2:01:14] And I need to go back and re-look at it.

[2:01:16] But William Wyler, who did that,

[2:01:18] he's another one of those directors who,

[2:01:19] his stuff in the 40s and 50s is astounding.

[2:01:22] He has such an amazing run of movies, he's so good.

[2:01:24] I was the same way as you, L.A., with Jane Eyre.

[2:01:27] And I was like, oh, this is boring,

[2:01:28] I want to get back to reading

[2:01:29] my Vampire the Masquerade rule book.

[2:01:30] But then it gets to the point

[2:01:32] where the other wife shows up,

[2:01:34] and you're like, what, man, hey.

[2:01:36] Where was this, where was this the whole time?

[2:01:38] I loved Jane Eyre all the way through.

[2:01:39] I would much be more sure than that than,

[2:01:43] what were you saying, Hunter S. Thompson?

[2:01:45] Hell's Angels?

[2:01:46] No, thank you.

[2:01:47] Yeah, Hunter S. Thompson.

[2:01:48] Oh, man, I love how much of the book,

[2:01:50] I feel like it was really eye-opening

[2:01:52] to read a book where she spends the whole time

[2:01:54] talking about how ugly and weird this dude is,

[2:01:56] but she can't not be obsessed with him.

[2:01:58] And I'm like, wow, okay.

[2:02:00] People's brains are different than I thought.

[2:02:02] The stuff with Rochester's all really,

[2:02:04] what my trouble was, once she's done

[2:02:06] with that storyline for a while,

[2:02:07] and she's with St. John for a while,

[2:02:09] I was like, oh, boy, this guy is a drip.

[2:02:12] Like, I don't want to do this.

[2:02:13] This was a really cool story about a weird guy

[2:02:15] who keeps his wife in an attic.

[2:02:17] It's like something out of a horror movie.

[2:02:18] And now suddenly she's with this missionary

[2:02:20] who's just kind of like a boring dude, you know?

[2:02:23] If I were going to try to sell

[2:02:24] reading 19th century literature to younger people

[2:02:28] outside of the context of school,

[2:02:30] is that you have to remember

[2:02:31] this stuff was mass entertainment.

[2:02:33] It's the same deal with Hollywood.

[2:02:36] I think younger teens, people in their 20s

[2:02:40] may imagine 30s and 40s Hollywood

[2:02:43] as being sort of like homework,

[2:02:45] but this was all mass entertainment

[2:02:46] for almost lowest common denominator.

[2:02:49] So a thing like Jane Eyre, yeah,

[2:02:52] weird guy with his wife locked up in the basement

[2:02:56] is meant to be titillating to audiences.

[2:03:01] And it's worth reading that stuff

[2:03:04] and watching that stuff with that in mind.

[2:03:05] This is not really homework.

[2:03:08] This is supposed to be entertainment for you to enjoy.

[2:03:11] It was meant to be enjoyed, yeah.

[2:03:13] It makes me feel like, though, that in 100 years,

[2:03:15] people will be like,

[2:03:16] young people don't want to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

[2:03:18] They think it's going to be boring, but that's a lie.

[2:03:21] At the time, children loved watching movies

[2:03:23] about dead kids.

[2:03:28] Okay, well, before we-

[2:03:31] Now the kids only want to watch strobing lights

[2:03:33] and colors that have no narrative content whatsoever.

[2:03:37] They don't realize stories were meant to be enjoyed, yeah.

[2:03:40] Before we go, Elliot plugged for you at the beginning,

[2:03:43] but in your own words, Jamelle,

[2:03:44] is there anything you would like to bring up

[2:03:46] before we say goodbye?

[2:03:47] Sure, if you want to read my stuff,

[2:03:49] it's up in New York Times.

[2:03:51] I have my podcast with my buddy John Gans

[2:03:52] on Clear and Present Danger,

[2:03:53] and I'm on YouTube and TikTok and the like,

[2:03:56] so you can watch me do videos about our crumbling society.

[2:04:01] Yeah, if you want a smart person

[2:04:03] being justifiably mean to some awful people.

[2:04:08] I mean, I feel like there are a lot of people in the,

[2:04:11] not to blow too much smoke up you, Jamelle,

[2:04:14] but I think there are a lot of people in the press

[2:04:16] who, like you're saying, are built on cynicism

[2:04:19] and that cynicism becomes a like,

[2:04:21] well, I have to pretend that everything's okay

[2:04:23] or that things are normal.

[2:04:24] Like, I have to show I'm above caring about this.

[2:04:26] This is just normal stuff.

[2:04:27] And I feel like your work is such a corrective

[2:04:30] where you're like, this is bonkers.

[2:04:32] This is not how this is supposed to work.

[2:04:34] This guy, he's an insane liar.

[2:04:36] This is not, you know,

[2:04:37] and my mom is frequently forwarding me your newsletter

[2:04:40] and I'm like, yeah, I subscribe to it.

[2:04:42] I've read this, you don't have to send it to me.

[2:04:44] Yeah, I think, I mean, I think just,

[2:04:46] thank you, first of all, Elliot,

[2:04:48] but I think just to kind of observe my own approach here,

[2:04:53] I think people mistake what I'm doing

[2:04:56] for a kind of like Pollyannish optimism,

[2:04:59] but it's not really that at all.

[2:05:01] It's more sort of like, I do take this stuff seriously

[2:05:04] and I do, you know, sincerely, you know,

[2:05:07] believe in the ideals and aspirations

[2:05:09] of our country and such.

[2:05:10] And so I think it's important to just, you know,

[2:05:12] say that you shouldn't take this kind of,

[2:05:17] this kind of deviance as sort of just the way things are.

[2:05:21] It's actually, they've often been this way,

[2:05:25] but they don't have to be this way.

[2:05:26] And like how it is, is often very,

[2:05:29] like literally up to decisions we make as individuals.

[2:05:33] Yeah, I found it very refreshing

[2:05:35] and maybe we'll be turned out to be wrong, who knows,

[2:05:37] but part of being honest is being aware

[2:05:40] that you might be proved wrong at some point

[2:05:41] if things change, but recently you online

[2:05:44] have been arguing with people who were like,

[2:05:45] Trump's gonna shut down all the elections.

[2:05:47] And you're like, that's not how our election system works.

[2:05:49] Like, let's take a look at how the system actually works,

[2:05:51] what can actually be done.

[2:05:52] And that, I think your point that by buying

[2:05:55] into that fear, we are helping them basically,

[2:05:57] like we're doing their job for the same way

[2:05:59] that when AI people are like,

[2:06:01] it's gonna take over the world and people parrot that.

[2:06:04] It's like, well, you're helping them sell their products.

[2:06:05] Only if people, yeah, let it, like you don't have to.

[2:06:08] Yeah.

[2:06:10] You're not a visitor from the future,

[2:06:11] like Sam Rockwell telling us that it's already happened.

[2:06:14] You know, we can make that choice.

[2:06:17] Very topical about your visitors from the future, man.

[2:06:19] You picked the current one.

[2:06:21] And that you are, I think you're,

[2:06:24] especially when you connect things to historical things,

[2:06:26] I feel like you are in the tradition

[2:06:29] of the great Robert Caro as presenting things as choices

[2:06:32] rather than inevitabilities.

[2:06:34] You know, and that we continue to live in a world

[2:06:36] where choices can be made rather than, you know,

[2:06:38] just being pulled wrong by the current of whatever.

[2:06:40] So I appreciate it.

[2:06:41] Thank you for doing that.

[2:06:42] Thank you.

[2:06:43] Thank you for taking time out of doing that.

[2:06:44] Thank you for talking to us about this stuff.

[2:06:46] Oh man, if that's taking Jamel away,

[2:06:49] really like it was a butterfly effect thing.

[2:06:51] I'm going to be so upset.

[2:06:53] As soon as the episode is done,

[2:06:54] me with an eye patch is going to jump out in a scar

[2:06:56] and is basically going to jump out of a portal.

[2:06:57] Quick, you don't have Jamel in the podcast.

[2:07:00] He needs to be doing something else right now.

[2:07:01] Oh, it's too late.

[2:07:02] We have two hours too late.

[2:07:03] We already recorded it.

[2:07:05] Oh no.

[2:07:06] Well, from something inspiring to a bleak sci-fi scenario.

[2:07:12] Yeah, what a way to end the podcast.

[2:07:15] Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[2:07:16] Go to maximumfun.org for all the other great shows

[2:07:19] that they put out.

[2:07:21] They're wonderful people.

[2:07:22] Check out the other shows.

[2:07:24] Thank you to Alex Smith, also a wonderful person.

[2:07:27] Our producer goes by the name of HowlDotty on the internet

[2:07:30] for his own music and comedy stuff.

[2:07:34] Check him out.

[2:07:35] But for now, for The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[2:07:39] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[2:07:41] I've been Elliot Kalin, and we've been joined by-

[2:07:43] Jamel Bui.

[2:07:44] Bye, gotta go fast.

[2:07:47] We said that for a two-hour podcast.

[2:07:51] Yes, thank you for coming back, Jamel.

[2:08:01] We'll start the actual-

[2:08:02] We appreciate it, Jamel.

[2:08:03] You continue to potentially wreck

[2:08:07] your very respectable career as a major public thinker

[2:08:11] and you're going to continue to talk to us

[2:08:12] about hedgehog movies.

[2:08:12] That's something that I really appreciate.

[2:08:13] I feel like this does not have the footprint

[2:08:14] to wreck his career.

[2:08:16] I was just observing.

[2:08:18] I was like looking at my camera feed here

[2:08:20] and it occurred to me that I have gray

[2:08:22] and you can see the progression of the gray on me

[2:08:24] based on these hedgehog episodes.

[2:08:30] Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network

[2:08:33] of artist-owned shows.

[2:08:34] Supported directly by you.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3, with Jamelle Bouie

Chapters

Transcript

Description