Ep.#446 - Kraven the Hunter

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Kraven the Hunter.

[0:03] No prey is too powerful for Kraven.

[0:06] In this movie, he kills an entire family of non-Spider-Man-related movies.

[0:10] That's pretty good.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:38] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:39] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:41] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:42] And wait, do you guys do you guys feel that in the air?

[0:45] A sort of sense of endless possibility, a rush of pure joy and excitement.

[0:50] The anticipation that someone of the three of us will spend today asking other people

[0:54] for money.

[0:55] Yes.

[0:56] Yes.

[0:57] All those things and more.

[0:58] It's MaxFunDrive, everybody.

[0:59] Yay.

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[1:39] In honor of our founder, Maxwell Fun.

[1:42] Um, so Maxwell Funker Bean of the of the Funky Winker Beans.

[1:47] The name was was was scrambled at Ellis Island.

[1:50] Yeah.

[1:51] So we're doing.

[1:52] What do we do here?

[1:53] And this is a podcast.

[1:55] has either the audiences or the critics rejected or both or neither.

[2:00] Talk about it.

[2:01] And of course, as we announced because of MaxFunDrive, we're doing our special theme

[2:06] month, which is no Spider-Man's movies that do not make any Spider-Man featuring no Spider-Man.

[2:14] And do we want to do want to mention each of the movies that we'll be doing as part

[2:17] of the series?

[2:18] Yeah.

[2:19] Of course, there's a Crave in the Hunter.

[2:20] We're talking about now Venom, The Last Dance and Heart Beeps.

[2:25] Heart Beeps.

[2:26] Classic Paul Schrader.

[2:27] There's a slice of...

[2:28] Heart Beeps starring Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters.

[2:32] And it fits the theme.

[2:33] There's no Spider-Man in it.

[2:35] Still one of the most baffling bits to me.

[2:38] Why it was decided that Heart Beeps was Paul Schrader.

[2:41] This is one of my favorite.

[2:44] It's all going to make sense when we watch it.

[2:46] It'll be.

[2:47] Yeah.

[2:48] Look for that listener.

[2:50] It's going to turn out Heart Beeps is about a robot who falls in love and keeps a journal

[2:54] and kills somebody or tries to kill somebody at some point.

[2:58] Strap some bombs to him.

[3:00] But to save the environment.

[3:01] Yeah.

[3:02] That's what he does.

[3:03] This happens in every Paul Schrader movie.

[3:06] Well, one I can think of, but.

[3:08] This is a movie, of course, particularly notable for its lack of Spider-Man.

[3:12] It's part of Sony's, hey, we don't have the rights to Spider-Man per se universe.

[3:19] And so, yeah, they've been trying to make all this happen.

[3:21] But they do.

[3:22] They own a lot of names and some kind of like vague relation.

[3:26] There's rumors of a Spider-Man.

[3:29] They have.

[3:30] So Sony has the rights to the Spider-Man family of characters.

[3:34] Characters that fall under it.

[3:35] But they have made an agreement with Marvel or Disney, rather, that Spider-Man himself

[3:41] would appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[3:42] What does that mean?

[3:43] It means they've got to create their own universe of all these other characters whose only reason

[3:47] for existing in the comics is because they fight Spider-Man.

[3:50] And they also have to flip them all into, you know, at least anti-heroes, evil protectors.

[3:55] And they were the original plan.

[3:57] I don't know when they dropped this plan was to make a Sinister Six movie where these characters

[4:01] would all kind of come together.

[4:02] But again, the Sinister Six is a team that only exists to kill Spider-Man.

[4:06] That's all that they do.

[4:07] I mean, I would argue every single one of these characters is defined by their relationship

[4:13] to Spider-Man and are made more interesting by that.

[4:17] And when removing a Spider-Man, they become kind of bland.

[4:21] It's very well.

[4:22] It's like if it's with the exception of Madam Web, which is a perfect movie, which is, yeah,

[4:26] which is wonderful and is not doesn't doesn't in any way feel like it's missing a connection

[4:29] to Spider-Man.

[4:30] Also, it does not fit the theme because Spider-Man's in that because in the movie, because Peter

[4:34] Parker is born in that movie, I was just thinking that to remove a Spider-Man sounds like a

[4:39] lost Harper Lee novel.

[4:41] Yeah.

[4:42] Sorry.

[4:44] No, it's I was I was going to try to come up with another example of like how you could

[4:48] try to remove the central, most essential character from a world and then try to make

[4:53] something around it.

[4:54] And I feel like there's some there's some places you can do it.

[4:56] Star Wars at one point, you're able to do that.

[4:58] Yeah.

[4:59] You just yank Godot out of that bitch and it's going to be tons of fun.

[5:02] That's what happened.

[5:03] So you do the Vladimir movie, the Etrigan or Estragon movie.

[5:07] You do the Potso movie and then they all come together finally in the Waiting for Godot

[5:12] movie.

[5:14] Doesn't that make sense?

[5:15] Like, how did Potso get that servant who only who has talks in those weird speeches?

[5:18] We don't know.

[5:19] I don't remember his name, the character.

[5:20] But so I believe that, Stuart, you'll be doing the summary day for Kraven the Hunter.

[5:27] First, should we talk at all about our relationship to the character of Kraven the Hunter?

[5:30] Did you I was going to ask you to do this.

[5:32] OK.

[5:33] As I as I mentioned in a most likely deleted pre-show bit, I my my relationship with Kraven

[5:41] is mainly like I was a big Spider-Man fan.

[5:44] Not as big as Elliot, obviously, but I you know, I've read all the Sinister Six stuff.

[5:49] I read a bunch of his various appearances, including Kraven's Last Hunt, which is kind

[5:56] of like is one of the great Spider-Man stories.

[5:58] Yes.

[5:59] In my opinion.

[6:00] And I was which I was looking up and apparently it started its life not a Spider-Man story.

[6:05] It started out as a Wonder Man story, which is kind of funny.

[6:08] Well, even before that, it was originally it was pitched as a Batman story to DC and

[6:13] by that by the the writer of it, JMD Mateus, I think was the writer of it.

[6:18] And and then he brought it over and made the Spider-Man Kraven story.

[6:21] But it's so good that you kind of wonder how it could be a story for any other character

[6:25] because because it fits so well into the Spider-Man themes and the Kraven themes.

[6:29] Here's the thing, though, I would call Kraven's Last Hunt perhaps the one great Kraven story.

[6:35] And if you were being a real stickler, maybe the one good Kraven story, which is not fair.

[6:40] Since then, there've been a couple of good Kraven stories.

[6:42] There was one called the Grim Hunt for four years ago that I actually enjoyed a lot.

[6:49] And there were and Kraven for a little while became a supporting character in the Squirrel

[6:52] Girl comic where he was like a more positive version of himself.

[6:55] But up until Kraven's Last Hunt, which would probably fit as a lead in a movie better than

[7:01] what we what we did.

[7:03] Squirrel Girl or that version of Kraven?

[7:05] Like that version of Kraven, like a more positive, like slightly silly, I'm assuming.

[7:10] Yeah, he's a slightly silly.

[7:11] He's still Kraven, but he cares about the about the environment.

[7:13] And that's where he and Squirrel Girl, you know, share a common bond.

[7:17] He can't he can't stop Kraven.

[7:19] But I would say, yeah, he's great.

[7:22] He loves White Castle.

[7:23] He's always getting those Krave Sacks.

[7:24] Was there a movie tie in?

[7:25] Call up Matt Singer.

[7:26] Was there a movie tie in with White Castle for this thing?

[7:28] I don't think so.

[7:29] Yeah, they had it was a Krave Sack of 10.

[7:32] And each one of the each one had a different animal's meat in it.

[7:35] Oh, I love that.

[7:37] But there are particular Dan fans out there who are dismayed by how little I've been talking.

[7:41] I'm just letting these two run because I'm trying to work themselves out, you know.

[7:47] Here's the last thing I want to say about Kraven.

[7:48] Until Kraven's Last Hunt, he's a pretty, in my opinion, at least, he's a pretty mediocre

[7:52] character.

[7:53] He's the idea of this big game hunter.

[7:54] He's the kind of guy who goes out and captures animals.

[7:57] He looks like a really cool wrestler.

[8:01] And he's a silly guy, even in his earliest appearances, I think is kind of a silly character.

[8:06] And the idea I'm just kind of baffled by which Spider-Man characters they chose for these

[8:13] movies because it feels like except for Venom, who is who is hugely popular, it feels like

[8:18] they kind of went out of their way at times to pick characters who they could graft onto

[8:22] pre-existing story formats rather than characters that had a lot of name recognition or were

[8:27] a big fan base or even were cool characters, you know, this is me.

[8:31] I've never found Kraven a cool character, partly because of his clothes.

[8:34] He wears these funny tight capri pants and these little slip-on shoes, and he has a vest

[8:38] that seems to be made out of a lion's face, which I don't know how you do that.

[8:41] But it's very cool.

[8:43] He looks like a wrestler.

[8:44] He does look like a wrestler.

[8:46] Now, before there's one other Kraven story I do want to talk about.

[8:50] Yeah, Dan.

[8:51] Oh, no, no.

[8:52] I thought you were.

[8:53] No, I didn't know if you're leaving this topic at all, because I wanted to say my relationship

[8:58] to the character, as I was queried, and it is that I read the Wikipedia plot summary

[9:03] of Kraven's Last Dance when I discovered that Kraven's Last Dance, no, when I learned that

[9:16] this was going to be a character that a movie was going to be made about, I was like, OK,

[9:20] what's the deal with this Kraven?

[9:21] And that's that's the main thing that got referenced.

[9:23] So I was like, OK, well, he's like on the lives himself because he he killed Spider-Man.

[9:29] He thinks that's right.

[9:30] Yeah.

[9:31] But Kraven's Last Hunt is that this thing, the defining moment for this character spoilers

[9:37] for the comic storyline, the 40 year old storyline Kraven's Last Hunt.

[9:40] The defining moment for this character is when he kills himself, having succeeded in

[9:45] defeating Spider-Man, he thinks in his mind.

[9:47] So it's always a problem when you're supervillain turned antiheroes.

[9:51] The defining moment in the comics is when he takes his own life rather than like does

[9:55] a cool thing, you know, does something impressive, you know, so well, that shows, you know.

[10:00] Courage of his convictions now, but then for me, and then for me, like, uh, I, I didn't

[10:06] initially, you know, I didn't initially get to Craven's last hunt.

[10:09] I, my first, uh, uh, you know, I've been exposed to Craven before, but also it was the in a

[10:15] public bathroom.

[10:16] Yeah.

[10:17] Yeah.

[10:18] It was, uh, it was the, the Spider-Man, the, the new Todd McFarlane Spider-Man series,

[10:22] the first, the first arc, the torment arc with Calypso introduces Calypso and also introduces

[10:28] like moments of visions of Craven as like a zombie guy.

[10:32] So, so Calypso was a preexisting character before that storyline, but so little had been

[10:37] done with her.

[10:38] I feel like that, that Todd McFarlane kind of made her his own in that, but that's the

[10:41] one where like the lizard becomes a servant of Calypso, right?

[10:44] And all that.

[10:45] Okay.

[10:46] And I remember, I don't remember being like particularly good, but it was like, you know,

[10:50] it's classic McFarlane.

[10:51] There's webs all over everything.

[10:53] Yeah.

[10:55] Let's, uh, let's move into discussion of the movie.

[10:58] I think that I know something about it.

[11:00] Let's go.

[11:01] Let's go.

[11:02] Sure.

[11:03] Sure.

[11:04] Great.

[11:05] So wait, wait, I just want to say if people think, oh, Elliot's going to jump on this

[11:06] because he hates Craven the way he hates Morbius.

[11:07] No, no, no.

[11:08] I, Craven was never one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but he was never so far down at

[11:11] the bottom as Morbius or as I've mentioned, my least favorite Spider-Man villain, Molten

[11:16] Man.

[11:17] Continue.

[11:18] Um, but, uh, Elliot, at the end of the episode, I'm going to have to ask you, uh, no, I was

[11:23] going to, we're doing definitive ranking after Venom, I'd imagine.

[11:27] But I was going to say, think of any Spider-Man rogues gallery characters who would make good

[11:32] solo movie, non Spider-Man related.

[11:35] I'm going to try to think about it.

[11:36] That's a tough one.

[11:37] That's a hard one.

[11:38] So movie begins.

[11:40] We have a bunch of logos.

[11:41] The movie opens in a, with a prison transport truck, uh, driving through Siberia, going,

[11:46] heading to an isolated prison, uh, stowed aboard this truck in disguise is our hero

[11:53] Craven the Hunter.

[11:55] Uh, he gets taken into the prison.

[11:58] He meets his new roommate.

[11:59] He was a large man who seems to suffer from some kind of deformity, which I'm not always

[12:03] happy with that.

[12:04] It's constantly like, Hey, isn't the joke is the guy's got some deformity.

[12:07] Um, so he, uh, he's supposed to look like a big threatening guy.

[12:10] Yes.

[12:11] He, uh, he picks a fight with some gangsters in order for them to take them, take him to

[12:16] their leader who the lead gangsters is like arms dealer operating out of the prison.

[12:20] Turns out he reveals that's, that was his plan all along.

[12:24] He wanted to be captured because he's a hunter and he kills this gangster like Rorschach

[12:28] style, not doesn't kill him Rorschach style, but you know, the locked up in here with me

[12:33] sort of thing.

[12:34] Yeah.

[12:35] Uh, so he kills this gangster with a tooth from a tiger, a carpet, a tiger for carpet.

[12:41] Um, and then he had foolishly been allowed to keep in his jail cell.

[12:44] Yeah.

[12:45] Yeah.

[12:46] Well, I mean, I feel like the guy is basically, he's, he's one of those like criminal masterminds

[12:51] more, uh, for this protection of being in prison and less, uh, as a impediment.

[12:57] Uh, yeah, I can see that.

[12:58] I can see that.

[12:59] Um, so he, he kills this guy and then he escapes using superhuman parkour skills.

[13:06] Now Elliot, as, as I said, I was not a Craven, uh, connoisseur.

[13:11] I did not know anything about this gentleman other than presumably he hunted, um, tracking

[13:20] down information online, correct me if I'm wrong.

[13:22] So in the comics, it's not like Craven has like these like animal powers, his serum that

[13:29] gives them strength basically.

[13:31] And he has kind of like potions and like, you know, he knows the secret secrets of the

[13:36] jungle that can enhance your, your abilities in some way.

[13:39] There's always like Matt, there's always like kind of berries or herbs you can take in,

[13:43] in comic books that make you a slightly tougher person.

[13:46] But the idea that he could, there are parts of this movie where he is essentially just

[13:50] running along sheer walls, uh, as if with, with, as if gravity doesn't affect him and

[13:57] not being damaged at all.

[13:58] And yeah.

[13:59] And the fact that he gets that he gets so knocked around in this movie and it doesn't

[14:02] hurt him at all.

[14:03] And that is not the Craven I know.

[14:04] And I, and also he has super zoom vision, which I don't believe Craven has.

[14:09] I don't remember that.

[14:10] And his eyeballs become like lion eyeballs.

[14:12] Yes.

[14:13] Yeah, exactly.

[14:14] And I think, uh, in this movie he is, he is clearly the product of a combat, an unholy

[14:18] combination of some kind of voodoo and also lion blood as we'll see later.

[14:22] And so that gives him the amazing powers to do with superhuman things.

[14:25] But in the comics he is, he's one of these many characters who is the serums they take,

[14:30] put him at peak human condition, like captain America, you know, or something like that,

[14:33] as opposed to the man with the power of the animals that would be animal man, a DC character.

[14:38] Yeah.

[14:39] Although most, you know, peak humans I know get crushed under like rubble.

[14:43] That's true.

[14:44] Most of them when they're, when they're exploded, it, it hurts them.

[14:47] Yeah.

[14:48] Yeah.

[14:49] I mean, I feel like he, in this movie he's presented as basically like a slightly tougher

[14:54] than captain America type character.

[14:56] Yes.

[14:57] Yeah.

[14:58] Okay.

[14:59] Um, so he escapes using these super abilities.

[15:00] He runs off into a giant snowstorm, he faces down a really cool CGI wolf, and then he boards

[15:05] a waiting cargo plane that is piloted by a pilot friend who we never really see ever

[15:11] again.

[15:12] I don't know if this was, I don't know if there's a reference to, yeah, he just has

[15:15] like a, a pilot on call.

[15:17] And I think this is supposed to be making him seem like kind of a cool James Bondy type

[15:22] who has like a network of support people or something, or just a pilot that he can talk

[15:26] to regularly.

[15:27] But nothing is made of this character.

[15:28] I don't know if there's a character loosely based on any one of the comics, the way that

[15:31] a lot of the others are.

[15:32] It just seems like an easy way for him to get around is he just Indiana Jones style

[15:36] in the plane.

[15:37] You know, he can like pop around the world at, at, at will.

[15:42] Orville Redenbacher.

[15:43] He's popping around the world.

[15:44] He is.

[15:45] That's not the only similarity.

[15:46] We'll get to that though.

[15:47] Okay.

[15:48] So guys, you know what time it is?

[15:49] It was originally called Craving the Popcorn.

[15:50] Yeah.

[15:51] What time is it?

[15:52] Time for a little bit of a flashback.

[15:53] Now we, you know, this is a long movie.

[15:54] There's like, it's over two hours.

[15:55] It's over two hours.

[15:56] It's too long.

[15:57] But similar to its lead actor, there is not an ounce of fat on this thing.

[15:58] I think that is not necessarily true.

[15:59] Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

[16:11] Aaron Taylor-Johnson is sliced up.

[16:15] He is shredded.

[16:17] For a guy who's described as nature's perfect predator, I'm like, if this guy has any sugar

[16:22] it will fuck him up.

[16:23] He is too skinny.

[16:25] You have to imagine, if he was lost in the woods or the jungle and did not have access

[16:28] to food, he would die.

[16:30] Like, he has no, his body has no stores of energy.

[16:32] He needs to eat like seven little protein packed meals a day.

[16:38] He has to like have a meal at 4 a.m. just to survive.

[16:42] Just to keep going.

[16:43] He's like a little baby.

[16:44] When little babies literally can't hold enough food in their body to last through the night.

[16:49] Which is, you know, speaking of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, that was one of the fun jokes in The Fall

[16:55] Guy when Ryan Gosling is making jokes about how this guy is too skinny, he needs to eat

[17:00] carbs, your body needs glucose to survive, etc.

[17:04] Okay, so flashback 16 years.

[17:08] We meet Sergei and Dmitri Kravinoff, two brothers, well half-brothers, who are attending an American

[17:17] prep school.

[17:18] They are taken out of school because their mother has died.

[17:21] She's committed suicide.

[17:22] Now I want to ask you a question here, whether you guys had the same experience I did.

[17:27] Because they're informed that their mother died by their father, Russell Crowe, in his

[17:36] late period.

[17:37] Russell Crowe playing Nikolai Kravinoff, not Russell Crowe as himself.

[17:39] His late career extravagant accent period that he's in, that we all love, elevates every

[17:47] scene.

[17:48] Everything he does.

[17:49] No question.

[17:50] Gun to my head, I'd be like, he's the best thing in this movie.

[17:52] He is self-evidently like a super villain.

[17:56] So him just appearing and telling that his wife is dead, were you set up for some kind

[18:03] of reveal?

[18:04] Either that he is lying about that, and she's still alive, and he's just doing this to cart

[18:11] the kids away, or that there was something really insidious going on with the mom.

[18:18] It seems like maybe she was killed by him, but also maybe it's just true that that's

[18:24] what happened.

[18:25] Maybe I was just so happy to see Russell Crowe show up that I'm like, I'm just taking

[18:30] these expectations.

[18:31] I just feel like I had these expectations.

[18:32] To be honest.

[18:33] But there was some payoff for that.

[18:34] Yeah, I think it was just supposed to be a tragic backstory.

[18:36] I think that I had a different feeling where later on I thought that Russell Crowe would

[18:40] be involved in a bigger twist than he was.

[18:43] There's a minimal twist, but I thought he was going to be involved in a much bigger

[18:45] twist.

[18:46] A squander Russell Crowe.

[18:49] He is evil right off the bat.

[18:50] Everything about him is evil.

[18:51] I thought you were going to say, did you have the same experience I had where I could not

[18:55] quite figure out how Russian or how American these characters were supposed to be because

[19:00] their accents were a little malleable at times.

[19:04] And for much of it, Aaron Taylor Johnson is doing the same kind of mumbly, cool guy, vaguely

[19:11] New York, vaguely Marlon Brando-y voice that a lot of guys, especially if you're watching

[19:15] this right after Venom, The Last Dance, where with each movie, Tom Hardy's voice has gotten

[19:19] more cartoonish as Eddie Brock.

[19:21] I was like, okay, he's doing a similar kind of voice.

[19:23] Having watched this movie very close to Venom 3, it's not good for Aaron Taylor Johnson

[19:30] because Tom Hardy is so much more fun in that movie.

[19:35] I feel like Tom Hardy has nothing to prove anymore in the Venom movie.

[19:38] So he's just like, whatever.

[19:39] I'm a slob.

[19:40] I'm walking around.

[19:41] I'm mumbling.

[19:42] I'm crazy.

[19:43] Whereas Aaron Taylor Johnson has to get across that he's cool in this, which is hard to do

[19:46] when you're Craven, an uncool character.

[19:49] An uncool character.

[19:50] So yes.

[19:51] These two boys are the sons of a Russian oligarch gangster who lives in a mansion outside London.

[20:00] in London. Their dad picks them up and he's like, you know what, your mom's dead. It's

[20:05] time for you guys to reconnect with nature. Let's go on a hunting trip to Ghana. So they

[20:09] go to Ghana because there has been reports of a legendary lion named Czar.

[20:16] And they go, this lion has killed two to three thousand men over the years. It's like, no

[20:19] way that's possible. I know. I'm like, way the way I said it. I thought it was like it

[20:26] sounded like the subtitles were wrong. I'm like, it can't be a thousand.

[20:33] There's no way that's possible at all. This lion is the most prolific serial killer known

[20:37] to man. Yeah, he's the real suspect zero. Unless this lion is rounding people up into

[20:42] concentration camps. There is no way he's killing that many people.

[20:45] This lion is both the ghost and the darkness. He's a man killer. How many has he killed?

[20:51] One thousand three thousand. OK, so this country is something like the other lines

[20:58] are like, damn, like I feel like like young lions are like, I have to live up to this

[21:02] guy. They're like, the pressure is enormous. Unrealistic expectations. All those other

[21:07] lines are bad. I'm cool, man. Teach me, dude. OK, so yeah, this lion went through a small

[21:15] town and just murdered everybody in it. Really? And no one tried to stop him at any point.

[21:20] No, couldn't do it. Too good a lion. Yeah, he's just jumping around and stuff.

[21:28] Lions are known for their jumping. Yeah. As just like crazy. Yeah. So this this hunting

[21:33] trip, it's you know, there's a bunch of other guys along. There's and there's also a guide.

[21:38] There's a native guide who like adds a little bit of flavor to the specifics of their hunt.

[21:44] And there's also another a young gangster who seems to be struggling with some kind

[21:48] of like asthma stuff who we will later know is known as the Rhino. Yeah. But also this

[21:54] is Alessandro Nivola, who I thought was pretty fun in this movie. He was the most fun. It's

[21:58] pretty fun. Yeah. Russell Crowe, though, dismisses him so heartily that I'm like, no, man, you're

[22:04] creating an Iron Man three villain right now. Yeah. Well, it or or or or an Oppenheimer

[22:10] villain like in it. All these guys in movies are so, so have such poor self-esteem that

[22:16] one negative comment turns them into a villain. I must rush them. Yeah. They got they got

[22:22] to become the Joker. And I would think that was crazy, except that our president and the

[22:25] shadow president behind him are basically the same guy. Yeah. Like one insult. So rectum

[22:30] that they were like, well, now I have to hurt everybody. This is terrible. OK, so, yeah.

[22:34] As we said, Rhino makes overtures to join with with Nikolai Kravinoff, but he is rebuffed

[22:41] and humiliated verbally. Yeah. Meanwhile, quietly, I don't think anyone else heard it.

[22:47] Yeah, I don't I feel like everyone's listening, you know. OK. Meanwhile, on a lion nearby,

[22:53] we are introduced to a young girl named Calypso who's visiting her grandmother. Her grandmother

[22:57] is some kind of magic. And she introduced everyone's grandmother is some kind of magic

[23:02] story. She introduces her to the magic of tarot cards and then some kind of old family secret

[23:09] potion. Yeah. Unspecified. Just a magic potion that will maybe help somebody bring them back

[23:15] to life. I don't know. Give them animal powers. They read the tarot cards and it basically explains

[23:20] what's going to happen over the course of the next the rest of the movie. There is a lion attack.

[23:27] Sergei and Dimitri find czar and Sergei almost seems to be cowing czar with his natural what

[23:34] is. And then pretty much is that blast the line with a shotgun and the lion attacks

[23:41] Sergei and drags him off, bleeding into the underbrush.

[23:46] Calypso sneaks away from her parents who are on safari and she finds she finds the lion

[23:52] and Sergei. The lion is bleeding into Sergei's wounds. Oh, that's how it happened. Yeah. And

[23:58] then the lion the lion leaves and then she gives him a taste of this magic potion and puts the

[24:05] tarot card for strength, which features a fucking lion in his hand. Now, things look bad for Sergei.

[24:12] Yeah, things look bad for Sergei. They take him to a nearby hospital. He's pronounced dead,

[24:17] but then he almost immediately revives. But I think they say he was dead for three minutes,

[24:22] much less three days that your lord was dead before reviving. Not mine. My lord. Yeah. Yeah.

[24:28] Well, Dan's maybe Dan's family's lord. Lord Krumm of the mountains.

[24:33] Krumm gives you only the strength to get to survive. And that's all the. So do you guys

[24:38] think this was this was on purpose that they're making Craven into kind of a Christ parable

[24:42] and a parallel thing that Christ should track down Russian oligarchs? He's got like all beard

[24:47] and cool hair. I mean, you know, he is ripped, too, because he didn't get a lot of food. He was

[24:50] also pretty skinny. But like, you know, there are muscles coming through, right? I've I've been to

[24:54] some churches in Bay Ridge and he is looking tight. I mean, the one difference is that he

[24:59] benches. How much do you think Christ benches? Oh, man, at least 315. The one difference is.

[25:03] So when people say, could God make us a rock so heavy, even God couldn't lift it? He probably

[25:07] can't. Yes. Just a little theological, a little theological, you know, teachings here. Like the

[25:14] one difference is once Christ was risen, he didn't make a list of people he then had to kill.

[25:19] Didn't he, Dan? Didn't he? Where's Pontius Pilate today? Answer me that.

[25:25] He got a blow dart to the neck.

[25:30] OK, so let's see. His dad takes him back home to London where they have a confrontation

[25:39] and Sergei gets mad. And we see his father has given him the gift of Tsar the Lion's head,

[25:48] which is stuffed and mounted. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want to be part of this family.

[25:51] So in the middle of the night, he runs off, leaving his brother Dmitri, who's a little bit

[25:57] weaker, but has a knack for doing impressions, leaves him to the mercies of his dad and runs off.

[26:03] Let's talk about this. Dmitri is very much the Fredo brother. You know, he's the weaker one.

[26:07] He's the one. He's the half brother who is the who's the product of an affair that father doesn't

[26:11] respect him. He can imitate anyone. Which is also like that is that is like the laziest,

[26:17] shittiest fucking writing. You make the half brother just like weaker.

[26:21] Yes. Like I hate that kind of like eugenics, weird garbage.

[26:25] And so what he's saying, he's he can imitate anyone's voice perfectly because they're just

[26:29] playing the audio from someone else's voice when he lip syncs it. But they go,

[26:33] you always were a chameleon. Now, guys, are chameleons known for their

[26:37] mimicry of voices and sounds is I mean, parrots are, but I don't really think of chameleons as

[26:43] being voice mimics. You know, what do you think, Dan? Have you do you have any experience?

[26:47] I mean, I understand it as a metaphor. You can blend in. It only exists because

[26:53] that character eventually becomes the he eventually becomes the Spider-Man villain,

[26:57] the chameleon. But the idea that he can do anyone's voice and they're like, what a chameleon,

[27:01] that's not the word you would use, I guess. Yeah, no, he wouldn't really like it doesn't

[27:05] indicate that you're fitting in and people think that you're a person just because you the voice.

[27:09] It's like, oh, good impression, dude. To pull the curtain back a little bit.

[27:13] Years ago, I was potentially being set up with a young woman to go on a date.

[27:20] So I looked at her. I looked at her MySpace page to prepare. I don't know,

[27:24] you know, to look at her bio. Yeah, cyber stock. Yeah, she. Yeah, of course.

[27:29] Cyber stock hadn't been invented yet. Only silk stockings had been invented.

[27:34] But under under her bio, she was describing herself. And one of the things it was like

[27:40] a questionnaire. And one of the questions was like, what kind of animal would you say you are?

[27:45] And she said, I would say I'm a cammy lion. And it took me like 10 minutes to realize she

[27:50] was trying to say chameleon. We did not go on a date. I just I couldn't. Yeah.

[27:55] You thought she meant a lion that was dressed like cammy from Street Fighter,

[27:59] which I'd be like, yes, sign me up. Which I meant. So so this this character,

[28:03] Dimitri, is spoiler alert. He will become by the end of the movie the chameleon,

[28:08] a different Spider-Man villain. These are two characters that were always kind of linked in

[28:12] the comic books, but it wasn't many years after they were introduced that it was revealed that

[28:17] they were actually half brothers. So this is from the comics. And they have brothers.

[28:20] It continues the theme of animal characters in this movie.

[28:25] Mm hmm. Every everybody's got an animal inside him, as the rhino later explains.

[28:29] Everyone has two animals inside of them. A rhino, a chameleon and a lion. I guess that's three.

[28:34] Those are the three animals. So Sergei runs off. He boards a steamship to Russia and he runs off

[28:43] to live on the land that his mother owned, I guess. Yeah. In like eastern Russia,

[28:50] which is basically like an untouched wilderness filled with one giant herd of wildebeests and

[28:57] a couple of like snow leopards. I think they're like I think they're like they're like oxen or

[29:01] something like that or mussels. I don't know if they're wildebeests, but OK, well, I mean,

[29:05] hey, listeners, write in if you know what they are. Right. Dan McCoy,

[29:09] real street address to come. Right. Katie Hunter. Yeah. That's a special

[29:15] next one. Stretch goals. Dan shares his address. How about some feed pictures?

[29:22] Oh, man. OK, so he more privacy. So young Craven goes off to the woods. He there's like a little

[29:29] training montage where he learns about his superhuman abilities that he has gained from

[29:33] lion blood and magic potion. And then he goes and starts killing poachers. What?

[29:38] Now, he does a leap in this. And it really showed to me a kind of there's a lot of leaps in this

[29:44] movie where it's very clearly wire work, where they've erased the wires. That's OK. I don't

[29:47] expect them to literally launch someone into the air or to for him to have to climb up a tree

[29:52] or for him to learn how to jump that high or for him to learn how to jump across a crevasse.

[29:56] But when he jumps and this is and they do in a lot of these movies, you don't.

[30:00] see like his legs bend and then push off.

[30:03] Instead, he just kind of lifts into the air

[30:05] while his legs are still pinwheeling as if he's running.

[30:08] And it looks very silly.

[30:09] And I realized like, oh, they do this a lot in movies

[30:11] and it looks particularly silly here.

[30:13] This is not how a jump works, you know.

[30:14] It's not like you're just running in the air, you know.

[30:16] I mean, I wonder if that's part of the way

[30:18] that the like stunt effects work

[30:21] or the way that like, I don't know, but you're right.

[30:22] I mean, it does look silly.

[30:23] It's possible, it's possible.

[30:24] It looks silly, but maybe that's the safest way to do it.

[30:26] In which case, do it that way.

[30:27] Do it the silly way if it's safe.

[30:29] But it looks more like he's being jerked into the air

[30:32] by a wire than it is that he's jumping under his own power.

[30:36] Yeah, yeah, that he has made some kind of contract

[30:39] with Aeolus, the Lord of the Winds.

[30:40] And those winds lift him off the ground.

[30:43] Exactly.

[30:44] Okay, so years later, he is still doing the same shit.

[30:49] He's living in the woods, killing poachers,

[30:51] and he's looking at that tarot card with a lion on it.

[30:54] Go on, Dan.

[30:54] Now, the words years later

[30:58] roused me from my slumber

[30:59] to make a point that I wanted you to.

[31:01] Yeah, please.

[31:02] Dan sleeps in R'lyeh at his house dreaming

[31:05] for the moment that someone says years later, yeah?

[31:07] Now, this whole opening sequence,

[31:11] this like long flashback.

[31:13] Do we need it?

[31:14] The answer is no, Dan.

[31:15] Absolutely not, no.

[31:17] Yeah, we don't need it.

[31:18] And arguably, like,

[31:20] I don't know how you guys feel about this.

[31:22] I love it.

[31:23] Arguably, I feel like if you're going to have it,

[31:25] which I would not recommend keeping it,

[31:28] if you're going to have it,

[31:29] arguably for me,

[31:31] I'm so sick of the cold open

[31:33] and a lot of movies were like,

[31:34] we have to show you what it's gonna be like eventually.

[31:37] Because in a way, when things slow down from it,

[31:39] I'm like, why can't we just go back

[31:41] to that exciting thing I just saw?

[31:43] Why are we suddenly like hitting the brakes?

[31:46] I almost, if you're gonna have it,

[31:48] like would prefer a shorter version

[31:50] that just starts with him as kids

[31:51] and we just do it that way.

[31:53] Or the best option again, cutting it.

[31:56] And if we need any of this information,

[31:57] it can be smaller flashbacks scattered in the movie.

[32:00] Well, Dan, you texted something to us

[32:02] while you're watching it,

[32:03] which is that you said the biggest mistake

[32:04] the movie made was that it acted

[32:06] like it's supposed to be a serious movie

[32:08] that wants us to take it seriously.

[32:09] And I think that's exactly,

[32:10] they're telling this like it's a serious story

[32:12] about fathers and sons and-

[32:15] Fathers, sons, being Jewish.

[32:17] Being a rhino.

[32:18] Being a rhino, exactly.

[32:19] And it shouldn't be.

[32:21] It's a story about a super powered poacher,

[32:23] a super powered hunter who fights poachers

[32:26] and wears a lion's head vest.

[32:28] And so it should be kind of silly.

[32:30] And the movie is, at its most fun,

[32:34] kind of the sillier it gets.

[32:35] But you're right, they spend a lot of time

[32:37] trying to build up this character

[32:38] so you're gonna care about Craven the hunter.

[32:41] And it's like, it should not be working at that level.

[32:44] It should be working on a much more surface fun level,

[32:46] probably.

[32:47] Yeah, by the end, at the moment,

[32:49] there's a part where like a literal rhino man

[32:52] is fighting him in a stampede.

[32:54] And I'm like, yes, finally something

[32:56] that feels like it should be in this movie.

[32:58] I was waiting for it.

[32:59] Yeah, although I have some issues with that one.

[33:00] We'll talk about that scene when we get to it.

[33:02] Okay, so Craven, now all grown up and looking hot,

[33:08] heads back to London where he tracks down Calypso

[33:11] and they reunite.

[33:13] Played by the second Academy Award winner in the movie,

[33:16] Ariana DeBose.

[33:17] So there's two Academy Award winners in this movie,

[33:20] which is also silly.

[33:22] I don't like being hard on actors.

[33:24] Like I've liked her in other things.

[33:26] I find her performance here very strange.

[33:29] My guess is that this was not a role.

[33:32] I mean, her role barely exists in this movie.

[33:35] They don't give her much to do.

[33:36] And who knows, maybe there was such a focus

[33:38] on the action stuff in the filmmaking

[33:40] that she wasn't getting the support she deserves.

[33:43] This movie is directed by J.C. Chandor,

[33:44] who also did Margin Call, which I think is a great movie.

[33:47] And All Is Lost, which is an interesting movie too.

[33:51] And it's just a very, it's a very weird,

[33:54] it's a weird choice.

[33:55] It's a weird choice to have him doing this

[33:56] because it feels like the movie is fighting

[33:59] between who's in control,

[34:02] him or the idea of a super powered hunter.

[34:07] And it gets, and so I think Ariana DeBose's character

[34:10] kind of gets lost in the whole thing.

[34:11] I mean, in Wikipedia it describes her

[34:14] as a voodoo priestess who aids Craven.

[34:16] No, she's not.

[34:17] She's a lawyer who works at a high class

[34:20] London law firm and helps him track down people.

[34:22] She just, and at one point she uses a bow and arrow.

[34:25] But like, it would be more fun if she was a voodoo priestess.

[34:27] She dabbled in having a potion once when she was a kid.

[34:31] You have one potion, suddenly you're a voodoo priestess.

[34:35] Don't worry, we'll see that voodoo potion again.

[34:38] So he also, he has another reason

[34:40] for going back to London,

[34:41] and that's because it's his brother Dimitri's birthday.

[34:44] So he parkours up the side

[34:46] of his brother's apartment building.

[34:49] And they reunite.

[34:50] Like a fish, like using his fish powers.

[34:53] They reunite, they go out in the town.

[34:55] Now his brother at this point, grown up,

[34:56] is played by, what, Fred Hetchinger?

[34:58] Hetchinger, I don't know.

[34:59] He's had a great, he's had a great run.

[35:01] You know, he was in White Lotus.

[35:02] He was the dopey grandson in Thelma.

[35:06] He was one of the two twin emperors in Gladiator 2.

[35:10] Yeah, he's just killing it right now.

[35:12] And in this one he gets to, you know,

[35:15] borrow people's voices for a little while as the chameleon.

[35:19] Well, and he basically,

[35:21] does he own or run this nightclub

[35:23] where he just performs there?

[35:24] He performs at a nightclub

[35:26] where he sings in the style of other singers.

[35:28] Yes, I think he owns it, yeah, I would imagine.

[35:32] That it's like his nightclub that his dad hangs out at.

[35:36] Because that's what you want

[35:36] when you run your own nightclub,

[35:38] is your dad there all the time.

[35:39] And for you to be the only performer

[35:43] who has to do multiple shows a night, I guess.

[35:46] But I guess maybe that's the fun of it, you know?

[35:48] He was there for the performing.

[35:49] He's not that interested in whether the nightclub

[35:50] operates perfectly well, you know?

[35:52] Around now, Rhino starts to make some moves.

[35:55] He's taking advantage of the gangsters

[35:58] that Craven killed back in the prison.

[36:00] And he starts consolidating power.

[36:02] And then he makes a play

[36:03] to try and take out Nikolai Cravenoff at that nightclub.

[36:07] Doesn't work.

[36:08] Nikolai Cravenoff is a tough old bear.

[36:11] Not literally.

[36:12] You know?

[36:13] I was worried I missed a big plot point.

[36:16] You'd be mistaken if you couldn't understand it.

[36:18] I mean, he does have a run-in with a big old bear later.

[36:21] You know, so maybe if he wasn't a big old bear,

[36:22] it'd be better for him, yeah.

[36:24] So yeah, he's making a play, he's making moves.

[36:27] And then after Dimitri and Sergei celebrate his birthday,

[36:34] Sergei has to go sleep out in a park

[36:37] because he just can't handle being cooped up

[36:39] inside an apartment building.

[36:41] Guys, I gotta admit,

[36:41] I spaced out for a minute when bears were being mentioned

[36:45] to think about the country bears.

[36:48] Sure, yeah, okay.

[36:49] Is Craven killing them?

[36:51] Well, you said that there was a bear,

[36:53] and I thought a country bear, but I didn't say it.

[36:55] But then I got onto the thought of country bears,

[36:57] and I was like, man, if country bears had been a hit,

[37:00] 100% the sequel would be called City Bears, right?

[37:03] It would be fish out of water, bear stuff.

[37:04] Oh my God, that's...

[37:07] Like, we gotta revive the franchise

[37:09] just so we can do that.

[37:10] Dan, slap a TM on that bad boy

[37:12] so we can take advantage of this.

[37:15] I mean, there's so many more you could do.

[37:17] City bears, jungle bears, underwater bears,

[37:20] you could do all sorts of, you send them anywhere,

[37:22] and it's good, mountain bears, space bears.

[37:24] There are bears in space, but the saying, it's perfect.

[37:27] It's perfect for the anyone.

[37:29] It's fun that you bring up country bears

[37:31] because that's a movie that we talked about

[37:33] during the Max Fun Drive.

[37:35] We did a commentary for the Max Fun Drive a little bit ago.

[37:39] Elliot, you were saying something about the Max Fun Drive

[37:41] at the start of the episode.

[37:43] I was.

[37:43] This is a great time to take a break from all this action,

[37:45] all this Russian gangster animal action

[37:48] to talk about the Max Fun Drive.

[37:50] What's the Max Fun Drive?

[37:51] I'm so glad you asked.

[37:52] It's the one time of year when we come to you, hat in hand,

[37:55] and invite you to support our show

[37:56] by becoming a Max Fun member

[37:57] or boosting or upgrading your membership.

[37:59] Membership support is key to keeping our show alive.

[38:02] It's the single greatest source of funding we have,

[38:04] and it allows us to keep putting out episodes

[38:06] week after week after week,

[38:08] not only that, because we have your support backing us up,

[38:11] we don't have to go after alternative funding methods

[38:13] that might force us to compromise the show,

[38:15] either creatively or-

[38:17] Fracking.

[38:17] Morally, yeah, fracking, exactly.

[38:19] Your support means that we can say no to sponsors

[38:22] with businesses we aren't cool with.

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[38:39] Your support keeps our show independent,

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[38:45] So will you please, please join us as a Max Fun member?

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[38:51] or if you're already a member,

[38:52] upgrading or boosting your existing membership.

[38:55] If you join at the $5 per month level,

[38:57] that's the cost of one comic book nowadays,

[39:01] you get access to an entire library of bonus content

[39:04] for all Max Fun shows,

[39:06] such as the aforementioned Country Bears audio commentary

[39:09] that we recorded.

[39:10] That is dozens of hours, at least,

[39:12] of Flophouse content alone,

[39:14] and that's just part of hundreds of hours

[39:16] of exclusive entertainment across the Max Fun universe,

[39:19] the MFMCU, the Max Fun More Content Universe.

[39:26] Oh, great, you got it, you landed that point.

[39:29] We did it, phew.

[39:31] And I may talk about more about,

[39:32] I think about our specific bonus content later in the show,

[39:36] but I just wanted to keep saying

[39:37] that if you are already a member,

[39:38] you can upgrade your membership

[39:40] and you get physical thank you gifts,

[39:41] not just bonus content,

[39:43] which is more stuff for your ears,

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[39:45] At the $10 a month level,

[39:46] this year, we're doing enamel pins again.

[39:48] I always love it when we do pins.

[39:50] I love our pin this year.

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[39:52] and it says, mad about Mads,

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[39:55] and there are even more gifts at higher levels.

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[40:00] now. We still want to kick us a little extra, like a little podcasting tip that you just

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[40:21] appreciate it. I'll be back later in the show to talk more about MaxFunStuff. But for now,

[40:26] let's get back to the story of the Craven brothers, the brothers Cravenovosnov. And

[40:31] we're at the chapter titled Rhino Makes a Move. So as I said, Rhino makes a move. He

[40:42] consolidates power. He tries to kill Nikolai Cravenov. And he also enlists the aid of a

[40:48] superhuman assassin called the Foreigner, played by Christopher Abbott, which I was

[40:53] very excited by. I was hoping this meant he was going to be abused by a woman in a

[40:58] hotel room over and over since that seems to be his specialty these days. I know him

[41:03] best still as Marnie's ex-boyfriend from Girls. I have some movies I could introduce you to.

[41:09] I know one of the movies you're talking about. What's the other one? What was the one that

[41:16] was based on like a Murakami book where he's? I don't know. That was fun. He was in that one

[41:24] that was like, is this like role playing or not? Right. Yeah. Margaret Qualley. Yeah. What was

[41:30] that called? Sanctuary. OK. Yeah. I saw him in Possessor. He's great in Possessor. Yeah. He's

[41:38] a fun one. He's just a good weird. Like if you need a weird dude and I think he brings the goods

[41:46] in this movie, he's a weird dude in this. He is a weird dude in this one. He is a he. And so the

[41:51] foreigner in the comics is just another one of these guys who's just like, he's the greatest

[41:54] assassin of all. He's the greatest martial arts expert. Oh, yeah. He's great. And poor things

[41:59] as the like weird husband at the end. Oh, I forgot that was him. That's right. But the he's

[42:06] the foreigner in this movie has some sort of strange superpower where he kind of starts

[42:10] counting. And here is the is the movie where he also gets beat up. I can't I couldn't figure out.

[42:15] And maybe you guys could figure it out. Is his power that he can then move faster than time or

[42:20] is it that he put someone in a trance and they don't notice him? I think it's the trance thing,

[42:26] because otherwise, like what's the one, two, three? Like they seem to be like getting like

[42:29] queasy or whatever. So, yeah, it's we're kind of seeing it from their perspective. And it seems

[42:34] like you move fast because they black out kind of doesn't he have this superpower in the comic

[42:39] books, the foreigner? He does not know. This is one of several characters in the movie who are

[42:44] or in Marvel movies in general who are very loosely based on the characters whose names

[42:48] they supposedly thought the foreigner was Jackie Chan, right? Yeah, I think you're right. He was

[42:53] bedeviling Pierce Brosnan. No, the foreigner wants to know what love is and he wants you to show.

[42:57] Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. I got in trouble last time I showed it like that.

[43:06] OK, so and also Rhino makes the play. He has his guys go and break into Dimitri's flat and

[43:13] they capture Dimitri. They were hoping to capture Sergei, we later learned, but Sergei was sleeping

[43:20] and sleeping in the park, sleeping in the park. Yeah. So we get a little action sequence where

[43:24] Craven is chasing after his brother and these goons in a van. I like this sequence. Yeah,

[43:30] I got to say, like, like, you know, you got to find the the wheat in the chaff or whatever.

[43:35] And the I thought the sequence was kind of genuinely exciting. And maybe it's because

[43:39] it's the first time in the movie that I feel actual like urgent stakes for anything. Yes.

[43:45] Because before that, like, yeah, I hate illegal poachers. So it's kind of fun getting them all

[43:50] like murdered by Craven. But it doesn't have the same sort of like personal investment or

[43:55] like reason reason like Craven might be worried about something. And this is the first time that

[44:00] we see an action sequence where Craven does not handily just destroy everybody. Yeah. With no

[44:04] challenge where he don't worry, there's going to be more of those. That's true. Yeah. Thank

[44:08] goodness. But this is one where Craven is on the back foot and he is at a disadvantage, even if

[44:13] he can absorb unlimited hit points of damage. And at times it seems like the car that he's

[44:18] chasing stops for a couple of seconds so that he can catch up to it. But but overall, he is he has

[44:23] a disadvantage here. And it's a it's a fun chase for sure. Yeah. He's got super armor every time

[44:27] he jumps. Yeah. So he they managed to get away after dragging him through the river and with

[44:35] a helicopter. Yeah. He made the odd choice in my mind to, like, use that netting to try and pull

[44:40] the helicopter back rather than climb up. I also wondered why he didn't. I also wondered why he

[44:45] didn't climb up the helicopter. Yeah. He was in the moment. He was all caught up. It do all

[44:50] helicopters. It seems like they only do two things, which is they fly up in the air and they all have

[44:54] a beeping thing that goes off when the bad guys are being chased by a good guy. And as soon as

[44:59] that net hits the helicopter, it immediately there's that like beep, beep, beep. Oh, we got

[45:04] a net alert here. The old helicopter alarm is flashing. Thank God Thomas T. Helicopter.

[45:12] Good day. Or else we wouldn't know that Craven was chasing us. Yeah. Crazy coincidence. The name.

[45:19] So it's like Outer Bridge, the bridge that's named after a guy who's named Outer Bridge.

[45:25] That blew my fucking mind when I first learned that. I mean, that that guy for years was like,

[45:31] I got to do something with this name. So I've got to. The Outer Bridge Baby Food

[45:37] Company is not making the most sense. I got to drop that and do something else. Yeah.

[45:41] Uh, cool. So, uh, they get away. But Craven has been. Sorry. Now, for some reason,

[45:46] I'm thinking about the story of Jezidiah Whoopi, inventor of the Whoopi cushion.

[45:55] Yeah. And the Whoopi pond. Everyone else with that name is like our name used to mean good

[45:59] cheer. Whoopi, you ruined it with your invention. Yeah. Yeah. All the family reunions were big

[46:04] battles from that point on. Yeah. So they managed to get away. But Craven got Mr. Whoopi.

[46:11] When was the last time you talked to your son? I have no son.

[46:15] Uh, the bad guys get away, but Craven manages to get a good look at the leader

[46:19] and the type of cigarettes. He's not the leader. The Marvel character who is in Captain America,

[46:24] Brave New World. No. Oh, I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, they don't call him the leader.

[46:28] Is it Tim Blake Nelson? Oh, brought him back. It's nice to see him back. They really wasted.

[46:34] Oh, just like the first time. Yeah. OK, so Calypso, he used the aid of Calypso to track

[46:43] down these these mercs, these mercenaries. Turns out that they are operating out of a

[46:49] what a Turkish monastery castle or something. And she's like, I tracked him down to his family

[46:54] owned Turkish monastery castle. And I'm like, all right, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever

[46:59] reason you're going to set a set piece at this place. But it turns out this whole thing was a

[47:03] trap that the rhino and the foreigner are trying to trap, trap Craven. Yep. Which is kind of weird.

[47:12] We should mention that we should mention they make a point out of how his name is

[47:15] Sergei Cravenoff, but he started calling himself Craven. And at multiple times,

[47:18] characters are like Craven. I guess that's what he's calling himself now.

[47:22] And it's very silly to me that they bothered to call attention to that.

[47:25] And it's also funny that at one point somebody calls him Craven and he's like,

[47:29] how do you know that name? I'm like, well, you are Craven off. Like, I don't know.

[47:33] It's not that difficult. But and he's I did we ever talk about how he is a mythical figure

[47:38] among these characters that they call the hunter who hunts down bad guys. And they literally have

[47:43] the dumb line that's in every single one of these goddamn movies. The hunt, the hunter.

[47:47] That's a fable. It's a myth. It's a story to scare criminals. And can we just ban that that line of

[47:53] dialogue when someone says the such and such? It's a fable. It's not real. It's a myth. I hate it.

[47:57] I've heard it so many times in movies now. It's so lazy.

[47:59] It has lost whatever power it once had to. Yes, exactly.

[48:03] Like help juice up a character so that you think they're cool before they do anything.

[48:07] Yeah. Okay. So it turns out this whole thing's a trap, but it doesn't matter.

[48:13] It's actually a concert that he's taking his daughter to so they can capture him there.

[48:17] He has a trap looking only to luckily he locates a friendly concessions man who

[48:25] wants to stop making me think of that movie. So he heads to he heads to this monastery.

[48:30] He does some he does some hunting and kills a whole bunch of mercenaries.

[48:34] There's a couple of fun bits where he's like sneaking around,

[48:36] like crawling around on all fours. I like those bits.

[48:38] It is there. They're both fun and also silly that he is just behind some guys

[48:42] crawling around on all floors. And they just don't notice because he's behind them.

[48:46] It's like the scene in the movie Three Iron where the guy learns the secret

[48:49] of how to always be in somebody's blind spot. So he is stalking behind people,

[48:53] just going, just kind of like always turning his body slightly.

[48:57] It would have been really funny if there was one shot of a guy kind of sitting in another

[49:00] room as they went by and like, see this guy like shadow and be like, what?

[49:05] And he could say what? Because this is an R-rated movie.

[49:08] This is just go and I don't know. I guess it's their thing.

[49:14] It's as if the movie realizes as it's going that it's an R-rated movie because

[49:17] characters start to swear more and more as the movie goes on.

[49:20] Yep. So he cuts his way through all these mercenaries.

[49:25] He captures the leader just in time for them to blow up the monastery with a missile launcher.

[49:31] He gets just enough information from this guy that the rhino is the one who set him up and has

[49:38] doomed them to death. Of course, Craven's fine.

[49:41] He gets hit by a bunch of masonry, but he's OK.

[49:44] Calypso. Turns out Calypso is being tracked down by the rhinos guys as well.

[49:48] She has to escape. She's on the run.

[49:50] So Craven uses his pilot friend just burning through fuel nonstop.

[49:56] I guess he doesn't care about the environment.

[50:00] I guess he's got this movie.

[50:01] Yeah, I got it.

[50:02] Boom.

[50:03] Take that, Raven.

[50:04] He flies Calypso to his land in Russia, where he now has an airstrip because I guess he's

[50:12] in and out all the time.

[50:13] And he lives in like a geodesic dome.

[50:14] Yeah, like a cool little greenhouse.

[50:16] Yeah.

[50:17] And his kitchen has flip-down panels full of hunting knives and swords and things like

[50:23] that.

[50:24] Which is insane, because it's like, are you having guests a lot, dude?

[50:27] If people are here, there's no need to hide it, like just leave it out.

[50:33] I think it's all tiny home type stuff.

[50:34] It's just about using the space the best, you know?

[50:37] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[50:38] This table is also a bed.

[50:39] Like, this bed is also a chair.

[50:40] The sink is also a toilet.

[50:42] It's a tiny home.

[50:43] You know, everything has a double use, you know?

[50:45] Yeah, that's pretty cool.

[50:48] The toilet is also a shower.

[50:50] If you stand underneath me and I pee on you, and Calypso's like, I don't think that that

[50:54] works.

[50:55] God.

[50:56] It's OK.

[50:57] I have the world's greatest environmental diet, so my pee is super pure and clean.

[51:01] I drink so much water, because again, I'm always working out, that my pee is just pure

[51:05] water at this point.

[51:06] Yeah.

[51:07] Yeah, I don't know.

[51:08] I feel like with all the protein powders he has to be eating, it's got to be messing with

[51:12] his restraint.

[51:13] That's probably true, yeah.

[51:14] So they have a little bit of time where they're just like hanging out in the woods, and he's

[51:18] like showing her stuff, and they're, you know, they're connecting.

[51:21] But it doesn't really reach, like, actual romantic interest.

[51:26] Meanwhile, the rhino and the foreigner managed to, you know, they intimidate Dimitri, they

[51:33] chop off one of his fingers.

[51:34] We found out that they tried to get money out of his dad, and his dad's not interested.

[51:39] He doesn't care.

[51:40] He's like, they're going to kill him anyway.

[51:42] Russell Crowe's accent is way more fun.

[51:44] Yeah.

[51:45] Yeah.

[51:46] I want to suck your blood.

[51:47] Blah, blah, blah.

[51:48] So they, but they, using the, the foreigner finds some trace poison from one of Craven's

[51:55] blow darts, and he tracks down where that flower is from, this pea, is only a very small

[52:04] part, small forest in Russia, so they're like, we got him.

[52:08] So they fly over there with Dimitri, and they're going to track down Craven.

[52:12] Like Sherlock Holmes, he wrote a monograph on that particular plant, so he happened to

[52:16] know that.

[52:18] So they bring a bunch of mercenaries, and they go to track down Craven.

[52:21] Craven gets all his gear on, and they, we get a little bit of a fight.

[52:27] Craven murderizes a whole bunch of mercenaries with a bunch of Ewok-style traps.

[52:31] They all step in exactly the right places that they need to step to set off the traps,

[52:36] which is very funny.

[52:37] He's a super hunter.

[52:38] He's a super hunter.

[52:39] Yeah.

[52:40] He knows exactly where someone's going to set their boot.

[52:41] He understands.

[52:42] That's correct.

[52:44] He runs afoul of the foreigner who attacks him with his nightmare gun, which has some

[52:51] kind of poison that gives you nightmares before killing you.

[52:54] Of course, his nightmares are all spiders.

[52:56] You know, uh, you know what, spiders?

[52:59] Yeah.

[53:00] Why would it be spiders?

[53:01] Because there's a fucking Spider-Man, baby.

[53:02] Because there's no Spider-Man in this universe where the movie takes place, but, you know.

[53:06] I was just taken by the phrase nightmare gun, and I was like, thinking it's like, is that

[53:10] a better, like, direct-to-video movie, or is it like a pulp paperback, maybe, nightmare

[53:17] gun?

[53:18] Why does it have to be one or the other?

[53:19] It could be all of them.

[53:20] Yeah.

[53:21] Metal band.

[53:22] It makes sense.

[53:23] If you know Kraven's a Spider-Man character, it makes sense he has this spider dream.

[53:25] I mean, it also, it harkens back to Kraven's last hunt where there's a sequence where he's

[53:28] just eating handfuls of spiders.

[53:31] They're crawling all over, and he's just picking them up and eating them.

[53:33] So he can become the Spider-Man, right?

[53:36] Yes.

[53:37] So he can become the spider, exactly.

[53:38] Because then he puts on Spider-Man's costume, and he says, I'm going to be better than you,

[53:41] and I'm going to do the things you couldn't do.

[53:43] But it is very silly to me that this guy who's like the ultimate hunter and has kinship with

[53:49] all the animals is afraid of spiders.

[53:51] Something that is just a normal thing everybody encounters pretty much in daily life.

[53:54] It would have been so funnier if his nightmare was that, like, the forest was replaced with,

[54:00] like, a city, and he was wearing a suit, and he had to carry a briefcase.

[54:04] I have a counterpoint.

[54:05] That'd be great.

[54:06] Briefcase, you know?

[54:08] But spiders are really weird looking.

[54:10] That's true.

[54:11] Spiders are weird looking.

[54:12] They're super freaky.

[54:13] Again, it's less that spiders are inherently strange or scary, but rather that Kraven has

[54:17] been built up to us as a man of nature, a man of the wild.

[54:21] And so the idea that a little spider would scare him seems like a strange Achilles heel

[54:26] for a guy who, I guarantee you, has woken up with bugs and spiders crawling all over

[54:30] him many times in his life.

[54:32] So I'm sure he uses them as a source of protein.

[54:36] He has to.

[54:37] He's microproteining all day.

[54:39] Yeah.

[54:40] We get a little fight between the foreigner and a drugged up Kraven.

[54:43] It's mainly Christopher Abbott doing some cool kicks and knee moves.

[54:47] It's pretty cool.

[54:48] I like it.

[54:49] I like knee moves.

[54:50] He really takes his time.

[54:52] He takes, instead of just shooting Kraven in the head, he takes his time kind of stunting

[54:56] the whole time.

[54:57] Yeah, of course.

[54:58] And he even goes so far, he's got Kraven where he wants him, and he dismisses the other mercenaries.

[55:04] He's like, oh, this is done.

[55:06] You can leave.

[55:07] So they leave and tell their boss, like, yeah, I guess Kraven's dead so we can go.

[55:12] But before you do the inexplicable, I'm sorry, I know you watch Reacher.

[55:17] I watch Reacher all the time.

[55:18] Are you up to date on Reacher?

[55:19] Heck yeah, I am.

[55:20] There is an episode.

[55:21] I don't want to spoil anything too much for people, so, you know, jump ahead if you're

[55:24] worried at all.

[55:25] But there's an episode where Reacher's like, I'm going to let you go do this thing alone.

[55:28] And I'm like, no, Reacher, why would you do that?

[55:32] You're the big burly one.

[55:34] He's got to be there.

[55:35] This is not going to end well anyway.

[55:38] Sorry.

[55:39] So the Farner then alone with Kraven kills him, right?

[55:44] He's about to do his coup de grace and he starts doing his count off.

[55:47] But of course, he is interrupted.

[55:48] Calypso shoots an arrow through his eye socket, killing him instantly.

[55:52] She gives us a little tagline, like three, bitch or something.

[55:57] He counts one, two, and then she just goes three, motherfucker.

[56:00] And it's like, what a cool move.

[56:02] And also, like, so did she hear him mumbling the numbers to himself from far away?

[56:06] Yeah, I don't know how magic works.

[56:09] She comes over, Kraven's dead from all the toxins.

[56:14] She gives him a little nip of the old super juice, a little swig of that, a little hair

[56:18] of the dog that brought you back to life.

[56:21] Brings him, puts him back in the game.

[56:23] He gets a one up.

[56:24] And I wish, I wish it's not Pilgrim style, a one up had then just gone ding and floated

[56:30] up to the top of the screen.

[56:32] He's a whimsy in the whole movie.

[56:37] So the Rhino manages, and we find out the reason he's called the Rhino, and we're gonna

[56:41] learn more in a second, is that both out of his attitude, that like a Rhino, if he sees

[56:47] an opportunity, he charges forward without thinking.

[56:50] But more importantly, in his quest to overcome his physical frailty, he underwent experimental

[56:58] treatments from a doctor in New York.

[57:00] A doctor in New York, he drops the name Dr. Miles Warren, who is another Spider-Man villain,

[57:05] the Jackal, who is better known as the creator of the Spider-Clone.

[57:09] And he's the guy who's behind every cloning thing in Spider-Man.

[57:12] He's a real crappy villain.

[57:16] He's the kind of villain who is not that interesting to look at, not that fun to see stories with,

[57:19] and he has caused way more trouble than it's worth.

[57:21] But anyway, he says, Dr. Miles Warren, he's the one who gave me this treatment to make

[57:25] me stronger.

[57:26] And what kind of treatment is it, Stuart?

[57:27] The treatment, it seems to have been some kind of a failed treatment, because what it

[57:32] does is it makes him very strong and indestructible.

[57:34] His skin turns hard like a Rhino's.

[57:38] It makes him indestructible like a Rhino, and I'm like, I'm sad to report, Rhinos are

[57:43] not indestructible.

[57:44] No, they are endangered, actually, because they're so easy to kill, yeah.

[57:48] But if he is not connected to some kind of a medicine, his body rapidly crusts over into

[57:57] this, like, armored form, basically, right?

[58:00] Yeah.

[58:01] He looks kind of like the Thing or like the Rhino, basically.

[58:05] But also, just kind of-

[58:06] He looks like the character of the Rhino, yeah.

[58:09] I kind of love how, like, low-tech it feels, because it feels like he's just got, like,

[58:12] a gas can, like one of those plastic rubber gas cans, like, hooked up to his back.

[58:18] Yeah, he's got, like, a Camelback backpack that just goes into a port in his side and

[58:22] just fills him full of no Rhino juice.

[58:24] What's this liquid?

[58:25] This is what keeps me from being a Rhino.

[58:27] Yeah, and I mean, like, it is a thing where he kind of dresses like a little kid going

[58:32] to school wearing a little backpack, so I could see why other gangsters might not take

[58:36] him seriously, but-

[58:37] Yeah.

[58:38] So, Rhino and his remaining goons scoop up Dimitri, they're like, I guess we'll try and

[58:43] ransom him anyway.

[58:45] And they start driving off, they're like, job's done, Kraven's dead, hooray.

[58:50] Of course, now Kraven shows up with a stampede of, what do you say, oxen, I call them wildebeests,

[58:56] some kind of large-

[58:57] I think they're some kind of large-

[58:58] There's some kind of large pack animal.

[58:59] Large-

[59:00] Quadruped.

[59:01] Cattle-like quadruped.

[59:02] Rontos, are they Rontos?

[59:03] They're probably Rontos.

[59:04] Yeah, they might be Rontos.

[59:05] Yeah, they could be, yeah.

[59:06] And they smash into the convoy, they smash all the stuff, all the goons get smushed.

[59:12] They used to have a great big convoy.

[59:14] That's a joke for, I guess, people who remember novelty songs from the 70s.

[59:21] Sure, yeah.

[59:22] Feels like our audience, yeah.

[59:23] That's the right podcast.

[59:24] Guess so.

[59:25] So, Dimitri gets knocked around, but he's okay, Rhino's like, it's Rhino time.

[59:32] So he unhooks himself and he gets all crusty and he grows a couple of horns on his head,

[59:37] that looks cool.

[59:38] I want to talk about the Rhino, I want to pause for a minute to talk about the Rhino

[59:41] design.

[59:42] So the Rhino is a fully CGI character at this point.

[59:45] You're not seeing a real actor, it's probably even a mo-cap thing, but they decided for

[59:49] some reason, it also means that this character has been a very talkative character up to

[59:53] this point.

[59:54] When he's the Rhino, he just bellows and screams and roars, he doesn't have any lines of dialogue.

[1:00:00] I know in the comics is a pretty like a pretty big round guy like he has a body like a rhino

[1:00:07] like he's like a walking tank.

[1:00:09] He's huge.

[1:00:10] Yeah.

[1:00:11] Whereas this rhino has a very tiny waist and is super cut just like Craven.

[1:00:14] And I thought this looked hilarious to me that this rhino has like a wasp waist.

[1:00:18] No, you're right.

[1:00:19] Huge shoulders and huge pecs.

[1:00:20] It kind of looks like they at all for this guy.

[1:00:22] Yeah.

[1:00:23] Vin Diesel had a rhino head.

[1:00:25] Yeah.

[1:00:26] Sort of.

[1:00:27] Yeah.

[1:00:28] I don't know why they don't work out their lower body.

[1:00:31] I don't know.

[1:00:33] It's kind of cool that like his shirt rips off, but his pants stay pristine.

[1:00:37] Yeah.

[1:00:38] He has those stretch pants that can move with with rhino muscles.

[1:00:41] He has scrunched butt yoga pants.

[1:00:45] His waist was just so narrow that I kept thinking that Craven was going to snap him in half.

[1:00:49] Like it seemed like a like a real weak point.

[1:00:50] I was trying to think of like where you buy the Hulk pants like H&M Hulk and Monsters.

[1:00:56] Is that where you get the stretchy pants?

[1:00:59] Yeah.

[1:01:00] That's the fast casual place for pants that you wear when you're when you're a surprisingly

[1:01:03] more expensive than than you would think.

[1:01:06] Yeah.

[1:01:07] So, yeah.

[1:01:08] So they fight.

[1:01:09] There's a couple of like jokes here and there about how heavy Rhino is eventually like and

[1:01:13] it seems like Rhino is getting getting the best of Craven.

[1:01:18] He's like punching him and throwing cars at him and stuff.

[1:01:21] It is kind of weird, though, because I feel like because becoming the rhino causes him

[1:01:25] so much pain, he wouldn't actually like train as Rhino very often.

[1:01:30] Right.

[1:01:31] Like, I would think so.

[1:01:32] Like the trained fighter would probably do better.

[1:01:36] I don't know, because the rhino is so much bigger and stronger that if Craven didn't

[1:01:40] have protagonist protection, then you would think that Rhino would very easily just pick

[1:01:45] him up and tear his head off, especially since he's recovering from a fatal dose of poison.

[1:01:50] Well, also, he also had a non-fatal dose of magic potion CBD.

[1:01:54] So, yeah, that's the cancels out, but also like until Craven like notices, oh, right.

[1:02:01] The rhino is useful.

[1:02:02] Like there's literally no weakness on the rhino that he can take advantage of.

[1:02:08] Rhino thick skin.

[1:02:09] Yeah.

[1:02:10] Unfortunate for the rhino.

[1:02:11] Yes.

[1:02:12] He does have an open medical port on his side and his shirt ripping off reveals that, yeah,

[1:02:17] which is which is probably helpful that he has that that that's his route into the rhino

[1:02:23] when he stabs a pipe into the end of the port and he starts bleeding everywhere.

[1:02:28] That is a cool way for him to stop it.

[1:02:29] What if he had to do that and like blast his eyeballs out or something?

[1:02:34] So that he could create a vacuum, like you're siphoning oil, so the blood will just pour

[1:02:38] out of him.

[1:02:39] Well, and then he drinks all the blood and then his skin becomes rhino skin and then

[1:02:43] we have an equal battle.

[1:02:44] Oh, no, that would be cool.

[1:02:45] So he blasts him and the rhino is pretty fucked up at this point.

[1:02:48] And then he wraps a tow chain around him and then throws the tow chain into the herd of

[1:02:52] wildebeests who then drag him around and he gets all trampled.

[1:02:57] But then his chain disappears like and then he's he's he's dragged on and trampled.

[1:03:02] And then when Craven goes over to him, the chain is gone.

[1:03:04] And I'm like, all right, well, I guess that I guess the wildebeest took it.

[1:03:07] The wildebeest are like, oh, a free chain, let's untie you so we can use it.

[1:03:11] Do you know what they say?

[1:03:12] Fuck off.

[1:03:13] Yeah.

[1:03:14] Yeah.

[1:03:15] Well, we're going to we're going to create a society built around the beautiful worship

[1:03:18] of the chain.

[1:03:19] Oh, we worship the chain.

[1:03:20] We finally have something to protect our boat.

[1:03:26] Yeah.

[1:03:27] Yeah.

[1:03:28] To wrap around our tires when it gets snowy.

[1:03:32] What?

[1:03:33] Tintin's dog?

[1:03:34] Snowy?

[1:03:35] Yes.

[1:03:36] When Tintin's dog Snowy shows up, you need to have chains on your tires.

[1:03:41] Otherwise, you cannot drive over it.

[1:03:43] Oh, I understand.

[1:03:44] That makes sense.

[1:03:45] I won't drive over Snowy.

[1:03:46] Don't do it.

[1:03:47] He's such a cute little terrier.

[1:03:48] Oh, no.

[1:03:49] I'm a drunk sea captain.

[1:03:50] And that's you know, I'm going to be driving over the snowy.

[1:03:54] And that's when Tintin goes out for revenge.

[1:03:56] Like, and it's like John Wick, but it's Tintin.

[1:03:58] Oh, man.

[1:03:59] Oh, man.

[1:04:00] That's two things mushed together.

[1:04:02] That's 90 percent of the T-shirts that are sold to me on Facebook.

[1:04:05] Is that what the movie Tin Men is?

[1:04:07] That's what Tin Men is about.

[1:04:08] Yes.

[1:04:09] Tintin is grown up.

[1:04:10] Snowy is dead.

[1:04:11] He's a salesman now.

[1:04:12] Terrible.

[1:04:13] Yeah.

[1:04:14] And then the last one is the Tin Commandments where he explains his philosophies of life.

[1:04:23] Yeah.

[1:04:24] That's when he goes up to the mountain when he comes down there worshiping a golden snowy

[1:04:29] and he has to smash it.

[1:04:30] So.

[1:04:31] He goes up and the drunken sea captain is like, I guess we need a different religion

[1:04:37] now.

[1:04:38] Let's worship the dog.

[1:04:39] Yeah.

[1:04:40] The sea captain throws his bottle of booze at him.

[1:04:41] Where's it gone now?

[1:04:42] Never again.

[1:04:43] Yeah.

[1:04:44] So.

[1:04:45] Yeah.

[1:04:46] So Craven approaches a thoroughly stompified, rapidly dying rhino who is missing.

[1:04:53] There's no chain anywhere to be found.

[1:04:56] Huge flaw.

[1:04:57] Rhino's dying.

[1:04:58] Someone out there.

[1:04:59] And this is where the rhino reveals he's like, he's like, of course, you know, he he hints

[1:05:07] at how he was able to find out Craven's true identity, which we'll later find out was that

[1:05:13] his father had leaked the information.

[1:05:15] This is also where the rhino says his final words are, I wish I'd never met you Craven

[1:05:22] off.

[1:05:23] Yeah.

[1:05:24] No shit.

[1:05:25] It went real bad for you, dude.

[1:05:26] Yeah.

[1:05:27] I had so much potential.

[1:05:28] Look at what I accomplished.

[1:05:30] Your life would have been much better without meeting the Craven off.

[1:05:32] Yeah.

[1:05:33] You wouldn't be a rhino man for one thing.

[1:05:34] So rhino's dead.

[1:05:36] Everybody's happy.

[1:05:37] Now we now we begin to get up.

[1:05:41] Now we begin.

[1:05:42] There are now multiple locks now.

[1:05:44] Now celebrate that the end of the rhino tyranny is common.

[1:05:47] They topple statues.

[1:05:48] There's fireworks.

[1:05:49] And you're like, oh, great.

[1:05:50] The movie's over.

[1:05:51] Nope.

[1:05:52] We have a bunch of epilogues.

[1:05:53] There's more epilogues in this movie than in fucking Venom three.

[1:05:57] Both movies were movies where I'd be like, oh, we're in this is that has to be the end

[1:05:59] climax of the movie.

[1:06:00] And I'd pause it.

[1:06:01] And there would be twenty five minutes left in the movie.

[1:06:02] Although what?

[1:06:03] Luckily, Stuart, out of the two, you're summarizing the one that doesn't have credit sequences.

[1:06:09] What?

[1:06:10] We'll get to it.

[1:06:11] OK, so epilogue one, this is where Craven tracks down his father, who is on a solo hunting

[1:06:17] trip somewhere.

[1:06:18] He they talk some shit a little bit.

[1:06:21] He's not hunting with the Marvel hitman Solo, who is another character who does not is not

[1:06:26] in this movie, but is a more solo from the movie Solo would be pretty cool if Solo and

[1:06:30] maybe like Silver Sable showed up.

[1:06:32] Sure.

[1:06:33] Yeah.

[1:06:34] Silver Sable, Farner's ex-wife in the comics.

[1:06:37] Yeah.

[1:06:38] Yeah.

[1:06:39] That played by played by what?

[1:06:40] Allison, what's her name?

[1:06:41] Marnie from.

[1:06:42] That would be amazing if it's Allison Williams playing Silver Sable and it was a girl's reunion.

[1:06:47] Yeah.

[1:06:48] I love it.

[1:06:49] That's the fans.

[1:06:50] That's what Marvel fans are craving is a girl's reunion.

[1:06:54] This Marvel fan is anyway.

[1:06:55] Continue.

[1:06:56] OK, so there's a so they talk some shit.

[1:07:00] You know, they they're like, you know, because because what's her name?

[1:07:04] Mammoth, who's also in girls.

[1:07:05] She was in Madden.

[1:07:06] Yeah.

[1:07:07] Yeah.

[1:07:08] We're just one.

[1:07:09] We're just Allison Williams and Lena Dunham away from a nose from a from a Sony.

[1:07:12] Sure.

[1:07:13] One.

[1:07:14] Oh, yeah.

[1:07:15] Jenna.

[1:07:16] Jenna.

[1:07:17] That's right.

[1:07:19] Yeah.

[1:07:20] She could be the she could be the kangaroo, you know, just make that character of a woman

[1:07:23] instead of a man.

[1:07:24] Yeah.

[1:07:25] So we they they talk some shit.

[1:07:27] There's the like, we're not so different, yada, yada, yada.

[1:07:30] And then Craven wanders off and then a giant bear shows up and kills his dad and he has

[1:07:35] taken his dad's bullets.

[1:07:36] So he's taking his dad is helpless against this bear.

[1:07:39] Yeah.

[1:07:40] Yeah.

[1:07:41] We don't actually see him die.

[1:07:42] So we might show up later.

[1:07:43] It's like a bear man.

[1:07:45] I mean, there's there's a Spider-Man villain called Grizzly.

[1:07:49] He could come back as that.

[1:07:50] Yeah.

[1:07:51] Yeah.

[1:07:52] Epilogue two.

[1:07:53] This is technically a year later because it's Dimitri's next birthday.

[1:07:56] They're hanging out at Dimitri's club.

[1:07:58] They're catching up.

[1:08:00] Dimitri Dimitri has a bit of a heel turn.

[1:08:03] It turns out that he has now taken over his father's empire and he is now the supervillain,

[1:08:07] the chameleon, and he can morph his face and voice.

[1:08:10] But also he like basically like dresses down Craven for being like, oh, you're like so

[1:08:16] high and mighty.

[1:08:17] You think you're so moral.

[1:08:18] You're just like dead.

[1:08:20] And like Craven's sort of like attitude at the end of the movie kind of suggests that

[1:08:23] he accepts that this is true.

[1:08:26] And in a slightly better movie, I kind of thought this was sort of cool at the end.

[1:08:31] The brothers like, hey, guess what?

[1:08:33] If you're just going out and murdering a list of people, maybe you're not the hero.

[1:08:39] What happened to dad?

[1:08:40] Hunting accident.

[1:08:41] Hmm.

[1:08:42] Yeah.

[1:08:43] But let's not forget.

[1:08:44] Let's not forget the funny part of this, which is when to reveal his power to meet Dimitri

[1:08:50] walks off and Sergei is like, hey, hey, talk to me.

[1:08:52] And Dimitri turns around and he has Craven's head on his much shorter body.

[1:08:57] And it is hilarious to see this guy looking at a shorter version of himself.

[1:09:02] And he's got a smirk on his face like, I see what I can do.

[1:09:04] Oh, that's what I'd look like as a shorter man.

[1:09:06] He went to doctor.

[1:09:07] Exactly.

[1:09:08] So he went to Dr. Miles Warren and got chameleon face powers.

[1:09:12] But it is very funny.

[1:09:13] This is just like to be confronted by a much shorter version of yourself.

[1:09:17] Mm hmm.

[1:09:18] Yeah.

[1:09:19] You're like, is this what I look like as a kid?

[1:09:20] No, no, no.

[1:09:21] I didn't have a beard back then.

[1:09:23] OK.

[1:09:24] And then we have a final epilogue.

[1:09:25] This is where Craven returns to his father's house.

[1:09:28] Everything is packed up in boxes.

[1:09:30] But there is a gift for him with a note.

[1:09:32] He opens up that box.

[1:09:34] You know what that shit is?

[1:09:35] It is his it's his cool lion vest.

[1:09:38] The whole time you're like, why isn't Craven dressed like Craven?

[1:09:41] It's because they had to wait till the very fucking end like they always do.

[1:09:44] He puts on this cool vest, takes his shirt off so you can see all those fucking abs.

[1:09:48] He's got the fucking King's Hawaiian fucking abs there.

[1:09:51] It's amazing.

[1:09:52] It's really like he has he has extra abs that other human beings don't have.

[1:09:56] It's and then he and then he sits down in the big.

[1:10:00] throne style chair from the classic Craven pose and he like you know man

[1:10:05] spreads sits in that chair with that cool-ass fucking vest and you're like

[1:10:09] hell yeah that's what I've waited this whole movie to see yeah sitting down but

[1:10:15] didn't they just put that shit on the poster like yes come on I mean that was

[1:10:18] that it was one of the posters so you have to wait the whole movie to get to

[1:10:21] the image that the poster shows you yeah and then that's the end were there I

[1:10:26] don't recall there were there were no I think by the time this movie was coming

[1:10:31] out I think there was an understanding writing was on the wall that this

[1:10:34] experiment had run its course this no spider-man spider-man universe and they

[1:10:38] might have they might have at some point intended one of the at least one of

[1:10:43] those epilogues to be a post-credits as possible yeah I could see that I could

[1:10:47] say I could definitely see if the the chameleon scene being a mid-credit scene

[1:10:50] instead of a instead of a and then in the chairs the very is the final

[1:10:56] post-credits yeah yeah okay so that was co-co-co-co-co Craven thank you for

[1:11:02] taking on summary duties and now for our several judgments our final judgments of

[1:11:09] whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie we kind of like I

[1:11:14] I'm just gonna say like I apologize if this is sort of getting ahead of

[1:11:17] ourselves I don't know if we'll return to this topic with the venom episode

[1:11:22] which we're recording later I don't know which one we're releasing first but I

[1:11:26] think this is at the bottom of my spider-man without spider-man Sony

[1:11:33] villain films because it is so just sort of joyless like it does not have either

[1:11:42] the wacky fun of Madame Web which is my favorite love it or even you know Tom

[1:11:50] Hardy's joy in making venom movies like clearly this is the love of his life

[1:11:55] whether the movies are that great or not this just feels like unfortunately they

[1:12:02] made a worse movie by trying to make a better one yeah and well I think it's

[1:12:07] bad but we'll talk about the venom movies probably when we talk about venom

[1:12:10] three but I feel like makes sense the venom movies are very feel like

[1:12:15] straightforward movies that managed to fit a lot of weirdness into the margins

[1:12:19] yeah and this movie for the most part is very straight-faced and very boring I

[1:12:25] like that there were kind of more like super villains than I expected like I

[1:12:30] the as soon as Christopher Abbott showed up I'm like okay I like this stuff but

[1:12:36] yeah it's this this one's kind of this this is a fairly boring mess it's like

[1:12:41] it it I just don't know who it's for like who yeah it feels like destined to

[1:12:48] just like be a like an afternoon action movie like direct you know like cable

[1:12:55] launch you know what I mean I agree that I'm that this is one I feel similarly

[1:13:00] it's it's a movie that is kind of afraid of having fun or of being a fun which is

[1:13:05] strange for a Kraven the hunter movie yeah and I agree that there's a

[1:13:09] surprising amount of like superpowers in it for a movie that I expected to have

[1:13:12] none I thought this was gonna be like a just a guy just stabbing guys in suits

[1:13:17] basically who fire guns at him and so it's nice that they could they really

[1:13:21] leaned into the fact that some of the characters have have extraordinary

[1:13:24] powers but it really wants to which wants you to take it seriously which I

[1:13:29] think is a hard ask for this movie and with the venom movies at the very least

[1:13:33] they don't want you to take it fully seriously all the time where does this

[1:13:37] portrayal on-screen portrayal of the Rhino fit for you is this better or

[1:13:42] worse than Paul Giamatti as the Rhino I feel like that was that was a little bit

[1:13:48] too much having fun instead I mean that would that's the kind of the opposite

[1:13:51] where there they were like we're not even gonna bother trying to take anything

[1:13:54] any of this seriously so I don't know I feel like the I like his performance

[1:13:57] until he becomes the Rhino yeah visual on screen and there I feel like that

[1:14:03] visual doesn't quite doesn't quite work for me he has a little ways he's got

[1:14:06] tiny hands but huge shoulders so there's something very kind of like weirdly at a

[1:14:12] proportion with him that instead of creating a sense of power and strength

[1:14:15] to me created a sense of like oh I hope this guy's okay you look like an action

[1:14:20] figure based on a cartoon yeah he's Johnny Brock he does look like Johnny

[1:14:24] Bravo yeah there's something very Popeye about him too the so uh but this movie

[1:14:29] is um I was gonna say in terms of these no spider-man spider-man movies that

[1:14:34] we've watched it's also pretty far down and in some ways like I think Morbius is

[1:14:39] a worse movie but I think it is a more fun movie to watch than this one I

[1:14:43] totally agree actually competently dull for the most part yeah at least Matt

[1:14:48] Smith has fun in and there's wacky stuff like when they're like they cut to that

[1:14:53] Chiron that's like international waters and you start rubbing your hands like oh

[1:14:58] he can do his bad he works at a New York hospital but he has a secret man

[1:15:07] sized cylinder full of bats boss the cleaning crew was in here just dusting

[1:15:15] things they found this cylinder of bats in your office it's okay the guy we

[1:15:20] hired is a Nobel Prize winning scientist and also a vampire so it's okay boss

[1:15:24] you're a chewy order showed up it's the guano delivery guy I got a I've got a

[1:15:33] call to come to this hospital and remove some guano so I can deliver it oh yeah

[1:15:37] just a sideline I have selling the guano yeah big money in guano anyway I think

[1:15:44] you had something else to say maybe at this point I did have something else to

[1:15:48] say at this point I mentioned bonus content before let's talk a little bit

[1:15:52] about it it's the max fund drive I've told you a couple times I won't I'll

[1:15:55] tell you this time and at least one more time before the show is over bonus

[1:15:59] content what is it it is a library of episodes of your favorite podcast that

[1:16:03] you can only listen to when you're a max fund member and that library just grows

[1:16:07] every year there's not it's not like each year we clear out the vault and put

[1:16:11] new stuff in it just grows so the library has gotten really big over the

[1:16:14] course of the past I don't know what decade or more that we and other shows

[1:16:18] have been putting together bonus content some of these are team ups between

[1:16:22] different maximum fun hosts some are maximum fun hosts taking over each other

[1:16:25] shows episodes of special guests and as we've said we've done some audio

[1:16:28] commentaries for movies we've done extra episodes where we talk about different

[1:16:33] movies last year we did three extra full episodes talking about the the movies of

[1:16:38] great and Clark I believe it was and the including the all-time video game

[1:16:43] classic joysticks and this year we are going back to the game playing well very

[1:16:49] excited about it we are once again doing a flop tails or as it's called

[1:16:53] this time slop tails game where Stuart has run us and our good friends you've

[1:16:57] been praying through a new role-playing adventure set in a new setting but using

[1:17:02] variations of our beloved characters what are you doing going out and slopping

[1:17:05] the pigs wouldn't you guys have fallen into my restaurant trap oh yeah it's a

[1:17:11] restaurant themed role-playing game and it was super fun I had such a good time

[1:17:15] doing it we got to play characters that were a little bit at least in my case

[1:17:18] out of my usual comfort zone and it was it was really fun it was I think you're

[1:17:23] really gonna enjoy it I like it when you sort of provide notes of what sort of

[1:17:29] genre tone we're aiming for in there like I enjoyed the dog ones because it's

[1:17:34] like oh you're you're like a Don Bluth cartoon and this one you're like oh

[1:17:37] you're in kind of an old-fashioned three camera sitcom set in a restaurant and so

[1:17:43] I think that was a lot of fun it worked out really well so if you join or you're

[1:17:46] already a member you get access the entire library bonus content every

[1:17:50] single maximum fun show hundreds of hours of extra entertainment that you're

[1:17:54] gonna need to get through these hard times we're living in when you join it

[1:17:57] just five dollars a month and higher than that you get extra stuff but you

[1:18:01] still get access that bonus content and if you're thinking strictly about value

[1:18:04] that's a great value five dollars a month for hundreds of hours of extra

[1:18:08] shows and we're excited about the bonus content we're doing this year it was like

[1:18:12] I said super fun it's I think you're really gonna enjoy it it's a great game

[1:18:15] that Stewart brought us through and it was great to have our friends you've been

[1:18:19] coming in and joining us because he always brings a little bit extra comic

[1:18:22] spice as I said while we were recording it there's nothing funnier to me than a

[1:18:26] jubin performance as a character who is a tempting to exude confidence and

[1:18:31] authority and failing consistently to do that so to listen to that show to listen

[1:18:36] to all of our bonus stuff will you please join us as a member by going to

[1:18:40] maximumfund.org slash join and either joining at the five dollars a month

[1:18:44] level or upgrading or boosting your membership and one last thing I want to

[1:18:47] talk about this is a different kind of bonus from your membership it's not

[1:18:51] bonus content that affects you necessarily but it is a way that this

[1:18:55] show affects other people we just to toot our own horn for a minute we hear a

[1:18:59] lot from people who say thank you for doing this really ridiculous show

[1:19:04] because I had a hard time and it really got me through it or something you know

[1:19:08] tragic or sad happened in my life and I needed to laugh about something that was

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[1:19:17] membership that helps us to keep this show alive that makes that possible so

[1:19:21] you're not just providing entertainment for you you're providing the kind of

[1:19:25] escape valve that so many of us need when stressful things happen in our

[1:19:30] lives I've had a very stressful past year and a half to two years and doing

[1:19:35] this show has provided such a necessary thing for me to have fun and to enjoy

[1:19:40] myself to be with my friends to feel like I am making other people laugh it's

[1:19:44] been really wonderful and so your membership makes it possible not just

[1:19:47] for you to enjoy it but for other people enjoy it especially at those times when

[1:19:50] they need enjoyment the most. I want to hop in for a second sorry and just say

[1:19:54] something about gift memberships just because you kind of bring up this area

[1:19:56] sure I'm very it's nice to think that MaxFun has

[1:20:00] done where you can actually gift a membership to someone else. And I know that this is like a very

[1:20:06] weird time right now. I don't think we need to get into it, but I'll just leave it there.

[1:20:11] And if you feel like it's not a time that you can do this sort of supporting,

[1:20:16] certainly understand. But these gift memberships are kind of nice because people who are in a

[1:20:20] better position, maybe are no Maximum Fun fan can be like, you know what, I'm going to get a

[1:20:26] membership for you. And I think that is sort of a sweet thing that the network allows to happen.

[1:20:33] Yeah. As Rabbi Hillel famously said, if I'm not for myself, who will be?

[1:20:36] If I'm only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? So do something for yourself,

[1:20:41] do something for others, do it now. Go to MaximumFun.org and join or upgrade or boost

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[1:21:02] Hey, you. Yeah, you with the Giga Pet. Me? Do you like supporting artist-owned podcasts?

[1:21:08] Totally. What about limited edition gifts, hours and hours of bonus content and more?

[1:21:14] Sounds sweet. Then stay tuned for Max Fun Drive 2025.

[1:21:20] www.maximumfun.org on the World Wide Web next week.

[1:21:29] Hi, I'm Alexis. And I'm Ella. And we're the hosts of Comfort Creatures. We could spend the next 28

[1:21:34] seconds telling you why you should listen. But instead, here's what our listeners have said

[1:21:37] about our show, because really, they do know best. The show is filled with stories and poems and

[1:21:41] science and friendship and laughter and tears sometimes. But tears are from your heart being

[1:21:45] so filled up with love. A cozy show about enthusiasm for animals of all kinds, real and

[1:21:50] unreal. If you greet the dog before the person walking them or wander around the party looking

[1:21:54] for the host's cat, this podcast is for you. So come for the comfort and stay for Alexis'

[1:21:58] wild story about waking up to her cats giving birth on top of her. So if that sounds like your

[1:22:03] cup of tea or coffee, Ella, we're not all brits, then join us every Thursday at MaximumFun.org.

[1:22:09] Um, shall I read some letters, boys? Yeah, why not? Okay, sure. Individual ones. G, K, R.

[1:22:21] That's certainly the kind of joke that's worth $5 a month, right? Sorry, guys.

[1:22:29] Yeah, well, that's what we need the money for. You gotta keep buying that serum.

[1:22:32] Yeah. Um, this, uh, this, uh, this letter is what's in this episode. This letter is from Sam

[1:22:39] Lasting Withheld, who writes, Oh, yes, Samity, Sam. Yeah. Hey, guys. Dear Flophouse. Oh,

[1:22:44] that varmint. Oh, bracken, fracken. Sam says, Hey, guys. New listener. Longtime MaxFun supporter.

[1:22:51] I've got a weird prompt for you. One of my favorite small pleasures in life is the feeling

[1:22:55] of bathing after doing something that makes me feel real grimy. Oh, hiking, camping, yardwork,

[1:23:01] et cetera. So whenever I'm watching a movie where a character has gone through a really

[1:23:05] harrowing physical experience that leaves them filthy and disheveled, I like to imagine how

[1:23:09] satisfying the subsequent bathing experience is. A great example is John McClane at the end of Any

[1:23:16] Die Hard. Yeah. Shawshank Redemption tries to deliver that satisfaction, but presumably that

[1:23:20] pond was full of sewage, which seems like a real vibe killer. Is this something you can even relate

[1:23:25] to? And if so, what movie's characters come to mind? Thanks. Love the show, Sam. I mean, this

[1:23:31] absolutely looks like a weird stress comes upon me when someone seems really dirty in a movie.

[1:23:38] I'm like, oh, man, I don't want to deal with that. And all their stuff. Yeah. I the thing that I

[1:23:44] don't know if this is the one, but the thing that came to mind is in Raising Arizona when they come

[1:23:48] out there, I actually have to. I mean, it's much like the Shawshank scene. Yeah.

[1:23:54] Same level of heroism. I think for I also similarly have had that thought of like, oh,

[1:24:00] it's going to feel so good when they wash off all that stuff. Usually think about the actors.

[1:24:04] But the end of Jurassic Park, I got I remember getting that feeling even as a kid watching how

[1:24:09] the kids in that are like dirty from their adventure and just like, oh, it's going to be

[1:24:14] that moment when they're like eating ice cream in the before they're attacked, I guess it's like,

[1:24:19] oh, if only like if only they could like bathe and clean off, then this would be they'd really

[1:24:24] be able to recover from being chased by dinosaurs and electrocuted by by. Yeah, no, that's I mean,

[1:24:31] I feel like that's such a like a natural human thing. The problem is when the movie shows

[1:24:35] somebody getting to wash off, you're like, when's the other shoe going to drop? Yeah,

[1:24:39] the dinosaur going to pop into the shower and eat them. Yeah, it's always a it's a bad moment

[1:24:44] when you get to see it. Yeah. Oh, it's like the at the end of Gremlins when Billy is he when he's

[1:24:50] fighting with he's got that baseball bat and Stripe has the has the chainsaw and all those

[1:24:55] wood chips are flying onto him and sticking to his blood from the cuts on him. That's another

[1:25:00] one where I'm like, oh, it's going to feel good to wash all that off for sure. And but then you

[1:25:04] don't want the gremlin again, as you're saying, Stuart, to get into the shower with you because

[1:25:06] he'll get wet. Multiply. Then you got a bigger problem. Yeah. Then you have to drop your your

[1:25:13] shower radio into the shower to electrocute the gremlin. But you're that kills you as well. Yeah.

[1:25:17] Yeah. Yeah. Our only hope is that you're going to come back like Ernest and more problems. Yeah.

[1:25:24] Have electric problems. Yeah. Electric problems. That's not a good title.

[1:25:29] OK, this is from that. That's a great either band or new wave album.

[1:25:33] Yeah. Electric Problems was a discarded Philip K. Dick.

[1:25:41] That was his that was his placeholder title for a lot of his books.

[1:25:46] Just sort of generally what I have.

[1:25:50] Pete, last name withheld, says, hey, Flopsters, I was listening to your Rebel Moon episodes and

[1:25:55] thinking about something Elliot said regarding about regarding how fun is the factor that

[1:26:01] makes Star Wars work? And I was thinking that a lot of franchise stuff goes the ways of seriousness

[1:26:06] and remakes with mixed results like that. Batman and Ninja Turtles kind of oscillate between serious

[1:26:11] and less so. Transformers and Ghostbusters seem to have gotten a little more sincere.

[1:26:15] The Robocop remake was less goofy. Superman got more serious. The mummy with Tom Cruise

[1:26:19] is a lot more dour than the Brendan Fraser one. It's crazy that the Robocop remake got

[1:26:24] both less goofy and also had less to say. Yeah, I see this a lot in comics.

[1:26:30] Previously, silly character storyline that someone adapts to be less comedic,

[1:26:33] although Elliot Spider-Man, the X-Men was fun and had sincere moments. And I loved it.

[1:26:38] Still see it memed. And you can find more of that in the Harley Quinn series currently in DC.

[1:26:44] There's some exceptions that come to mind. Fury Road is definitely sillier than Mad Max.

[1:26:50] Rocky IV is the silliest Rocky movie, but not the last.

[1:26:54] But as a fan of silly things, I'm mildly alarmed that things are often made less fun.

[1:26:59] What do you think it is about remaking things that causes people to take it down that road,

[1:27:02] as opposed to making things that were serious before more wacky, like a wacky John Wick,

[1:27:08] John Wack? Thanks. John Wack is a series of movies that were kind of outside the purview

[1:27:16] of the flophouse. Outside the purview of the flophouse. Thanks. I've had so many laughs

[1:27:20] and good times listening, sorry, that I'm going to need you all to take really good

[1:27:25] care of yourselves. So it goes on forever. Last name withheld. I have a lot of I think

[1:27:31] everyone has a lot of thoughts on this. I just want to say that I what comes to me immediately

[1:27:36] is like sequels in a row tend to get wackier and wackier and wackier most of the time.

[1:27:44] And then when you reboot something, it tends to be serious. So there are a lot of things that

[1:27:49] are going on here, including like cultural shifts. But I think that part of it is,

[1:27:55] it's often like a reboot of like, oh, that franchise got so wacky by the end,

[1:27:58] we have to take it back to basics. And by doing that, they like make it even

[1:28:01] grittier than and more joyless than the original was. That's definitely been the Batman storyline

[1:28:06] going back to the West Batman series, which is wacky. So Tim Burton's Batman is less wacky.

[1:28:11] But by the time it gets the Joel Schumacher sequels, it's very wacky. They reboot it with

[1:28:15] the Christopher Nolan movies, which Dark Knight Rises is fairly wacky at times. And so they reboot

[1:28:20] it again and make it joyless. Yeah. So it's I think you're exactly right, Dan. You've anatomized

[1:28:24] that really well. But I mean, I feel like shifts, too. And I feel like there's a thing where,

[1:28:31] especially when you're talking about bigger properties that like the sillier you make it,

[1:28:36] the more likely people are going to audience are going to struggle with how to

[1:28:41] accept it. Like they're going to be like, is this a comedy now? And especially with certain things

[1:28:46] like people like to to put things into very specific genre boxes. And when they become

[1:28:52] a certain thing, it's I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to sound like an old man, but I

[1:28:58] do have this sort of general feeling that people were more accepting that multiple tones could

[1:29:05] exist in something at a point. And it's become harder for people to parse that somehow. I don't

[1:29:12] know. I think that is true. I would I would call that if I was being if I was coming up with a

[1:29:18] theory off the top of my head based on very little, I would say that is a combination of

[1:29:24] the thing, the people who make the decisions about what is being made,

[1:29:28] being people who themselves have less of a sense of aesthetic understanding in that way.

[1:29:33] And so the things that get made, that audiences learn how to watch things from,

[1:29:37] especially young audiences, don't have that experience of watching something that has

[1:29:41] multiple tones in it. Even The Godfather has jokes in it. You know, the good like Goodfellas is a

[1:29:47] very just talk about gangster movies. Goodfellas is a like super funny movie, but also a really

[1:29:51] hard hitting and meaningful movie and emotionally rough at times. And but those are both movies

[1:29:56] that are made by master artists. And I feel like.

[1:30:00] In the old days, there was often a better mix,

[1:30:03] often not a better mix,

[1:30:04] but there would be more of a mix of tones,

[1:30:08] whereas now it feels like the best you can hope for

[1:30:11] is a really, in mainstream entertainment,

[1:30:13] seems like a really gritty thing

[1:30:14] that has some one-liners in it,

[1:30:16] or something that's super goofy,

[1:30:18] where at the very end, they throw in a scene

[1:30:20] of an attempt at high emotion,

[1:30:22] you know, to get a character arc in there.

[1:30:24] And I think that's a, I think you could put more,

[1:30:28] the onus of that, I think, is more on the,

[1:30:31] I think, the economics of what gets made and what doesn't,

[1:30:33] and how it gets made,

[1:30:34] more than any individual creative choice

[1:30:37] that anyone is making.

[1:30:38] But that's a more complicated thing

[1:30:40] than I know how to talk about.

[1:30:42] But it's a, but it does-

[1:30:43] For the love of us.

[1:30:44] For the love of us, I've been Ellie Galen.

[1:30:47] But it is frustrating sometimes

[1:30:48] when something is unrelentingly dour, or not having fun,

[1:30:52] or I think there's a misunderstanding sometimes

[1:30:55] about what audiences want

[1:30:58] out of the things that they're watching,

[1:31:00] and what they're going to enjoy from it.

[1:31:02] But there's also the negative pressure

[1:31:04] that we've seen so often in the past 15, 20 years,

[1:31:07] I feel like, of people who enjoy a thing

[1:31:10] that is essentially a, this is talking very broadly,

[1:31:13] now I'm gonna sound like Alan Moore,

[1:31:14] who enjoy a thing from their childhood,

[1:31:17] and they want to continue to enjoy it,

[1:31:18] and they want it to grow up with them.

[1:31:20] And maybe that thing is not really a good fit

[1:31:23] for the kind of mature storytelling

[1:31:25] that they really should be getting at this age.

[1:31:27] And also when a lot of things are catered

[1:31:29] toward an existing audience for that thing,

[1:31:31] that the people making that product are nervous,

[1:31:34] that content, are worried that they are going to,

[1:31:38] by making it silly, that they're being disrespectful for it.

[1:31:41] It's similar to the way that a certain,

[1:31:44] let's say vocal, faction amongst Marvel fans

[1:31:48] were complaining about the She-Hulk TV show

[1:31:50] as being a comedy, and it's like,

[1:31:52] you never read fucking She-Hulk then, did you?

[1:31:55] That was a funny comic book.

[1:31:56] She-Hulk has been a comedy comic for 40 years now,

[1:31:59] 35 years, like yeah, it's a, but they, yeah,

[1:32:03] I think there's a sense of defensiveness about it

[1:32:08] that makes it harder for them to have fun,

[1:32:09] harder for creators to have fun with it

[1:32:11] because the fans are defensively open

[1:32:14] to feeling like they're being ridiculed.

[1:32:16] There was a theory I read years ago,

[1:32:18] not years ago, like a year ago,

[1:32:20] and I wonder if it's like, that there's a kind of person

[1:32:22] who is a fan of these things who feels like

[1:32:24] they have very little control over their lives,

[1:32:27] either politically, economically, any of that stuff,

[1:32:30] but this is one thing they feel like

[1:32:31] they can have control over, and they can feel

[1:32:33] they can have possession or ownership of,

[1:32:34] and it creates a kind of a negative fan base

[1:32:38] for superhero content specifically, or genre content,

[1:32:41] that the people making the new stuff

[1:32:44] feel like they have to cater to, certainly,

[1:32:45] and that's a, it's a, but I think,

[1:32:48] to go back to the original question in the thing,

[1:32:51] it is disappointing sometimes that you can't have,

[1:32:54] that they feel like they can't have fun

[1:32:55] with some of this stuff because it's gotta be,

[1:32:58] it's gotta be serious enough that people feel,

[1:33:01] that people can feel like it's being taken seriously, yeah.

[1:33:03] I mean, occasionally, I think it can swing backwards,

[1:33:05] but it has to be something where it probably

[1:33:08] should have been a goofier tone in the first place anyway.

[1:33:12] I'm thinking about how the terrible Michael Bay

[1:33:16] either made or produced Turtles movies,

[1:33:19] and then they made the Mutant Mayhem cartoon.

[1:33:22] Which is great.

[1:33:23] Which swung back goofy correctly.

[1:33:25] I mean, like, oh, you know what?

[1:33:27] Like, I think that this is the world this works best in,

[1:33:31] a little lighter than what you came up with.

[1:33:34] I mean, for the reasons that-

[1:33:35] No, we have to tell this story

[1:33:36] about mutant ninja teenagers.

[1:33:38] And look, don't-

[1:33:38] Who are turtles.

[1:33:39] Who are turtles.

[1:33:40] I understand.

[1:33:41] Whose dad is a rat, you know?

[1:33:43] I understand that the listeners out there are thinking,

[1:33:46] oh, but the Eastman and Laird comics, right?

[1:33:47] I know, but like, that was also kind of-

[1:33:50] That was a pretty good straw man impression.

[1:33:51] It was a parody of, oh, I absolutely guarantee you

[1:33:55] someone was thinking, oh, the Eastman and Laird comics.

[1:33:58] But when Ceramis showed up, those were,

[1:34:01] started at least as kind of a parody

[1:34:03] of that sort of Frank Miller stuff

[1:34:05] before taking themselves seriously.

[1:34:07] But those are also fun comics.

[1:34:08] Like, as much as they're like more serious

[1:34:10] than mutant mayhem, like, the thing that I always loved

[1:34:14] about the Eastman and Laird comics was the characters,

[1:34:17] they were basically like prototypes in some ways.

[1:34:19] I don't know that Mike Minola would say this,

[1:34:21] but prototypes for Hellboy,

[1:34:22] as characters who like would go on adventures

[1:34:24] and then just be like, oh, that sucks.

[1:34:26] Anyway, let's go have a drink.

[1:34:27] Let's have a beer.

[1:34:28] Great, cool, dude.

[1:34:29] Like, they spent a lot of time hanging out,

[1:34:31] you know, and things like that.

[1:34:31] And so they felt, there was a lighter element

[1:34:34] that ran through that still,

[1:34:36] even as they were stabbing people.

[1:34:38] So let's recommend some like silly ones.

[1:34:41] Let's do a couple of silly ones.

[1:34:42] I know mine is a silly one.

[1:34:43] Do you have to be a silly one?

[1:34:44] No, you can do whatever you want.

[1:34:46] Because I'd like to recommend Last Stop in Yuma County.

[1:34:51] A silly one?

[1:34:52] Are we doing recommendations now?

[1:34:53] Yeah, we're doing recommendations.

[1:34:54] Okay.

[1:34:55] Is that okay, Elliot?

[1:34:56] Yeah, no, it's fine.

[1:34:57] We're all on board?

[1:34:58] It was a very natural segue,

[1:34:58] but I wasn't, I was not quite sure we were-

[1:35:00] So we had to gum up the works.

[1:35:00] That's because you were driving the segue.

[1:35:02] We had to gum up the works by asking about it.

[1:35:05] Yeah, no, I saw this, it's returned to movies.

[1:35:08] Dan saw it on a plane.

[1:35:09] I saw it on a plane.

[1:35:11] It's a-

[1:35:12] A continuing series of screenings, yeah.

[1:35:13] Very small.

[1:35:14] See, some people do extra flights

[1:35:16] so they can get like miles or points or whatever.

[1:35:18] Dan does it so he can watch more flicks.

[1:35:20] Optimal viewing conditions.

[1:35:21] Live flicks is what he calls them.

[1:35:24] No, this is a small little contained noir.

[1:35:29] Stuff goes wrong at a diner.

[1:35:32] There's a tense standoff over an afternoon.

[1:35:39] I don't want to get too much into it

[1:35:40] because the twists and turns are the fun of it,

[1:35:44] but it is directed beautifully.

[1:35:48] Sam Raimi, I think, tapped this director

[1:35:50] to be a future Evil Dead director off of this picture.

[1:35:54] It has a small part for our friend of the show,

[1:35:57] Barbara Crampton is in it.

[1:35:59] Barbara Crampton.

[1:36:00] Can't go wrong.

[1:36:01] And, you know, it has some of the flavor

[1:36:03] of like an early Coen Brothers movie.

[1:36:06] I mean, not quite to that level,

[1:36:07] but it's, you know, it's in the conversation.

[1:36:10] Or like a Red Rock West type.

[1:36:11] Yeah, yeah.

[1:36:12] Cool.

[1:36:13] So what do you got, Stu?

[1:36:14] I'm going to recommend a movie

[1:36:17] that fits within the silly theme.

[1:36:19] I'm going to recommend The Monkey,

[1:36:22] Osgood Perkins horror comedy.

[1:36:25] What was that, Dan?

[1:36:26] That's right.

[1:36:27] I just started buttering,

[1:36:27] I can't stop doing The Monkey.

[1:36:32] I think I just watched that episode of The Simpsons,

[1:36:34] by the way.

[1:36:35] Yeah.

[1:36:35] Go, go, Ray.

[1:36:37] Yeah, that was funny.

[1:36:38] So, yeah, the other night, the night before my birthday,

[1:36:42] I went to a pre-birthday screening of The Monkey.

[1:36:46] I dragged my buddy, Dan,

[1:36:47] as well as a couple of my other Brooklyn movie bros

[1:36:51] to go see this thing.

[1:36:52] I got incredibly wasted,

[1:36:54] but I was not too drunk during the movie.

[1:36:56] So you're going to get a full-on normal Stuart review.

[1:36:59] So let's continue reviewing The Monkey, shall we?

[1:37:03] The Monkey is-

[1:37:04] That was the mid-review pause,

[1:37:07] a traditional intermission.

[1:37:09] So this is an adaptation

[1:37:12] of the Stephen King short story, The Monkey,

[1:37:15] that was also adapted as Monkey Shines at one point.

[1:37:18] But this is a movie about twin brothers

[1:37:22] who encounter a toy monkey

[1:37:25] that is some kind of death elemental

[1:37:29] that can cause the death of anything it wants

[1:37:31] when its key is turned.

[1:37:34] And the movie is,

[1:37:38] it's an interesting,

[1:37:39] this is a director whose previous movies

[1:37:41] have all been very, like, grim-faced horror pictures.

[1:37:47] And this is much sillier.

[1:37:49] It's still shot with a lot of style,

[1:37:51] and it is incredibly gory,

[1:37:52] but it's very fun,

[1:37:54] almost like,

[1:37:55] it has kind of the same sense of fun

[1:37:57] as like a Final Destination movie.

[1:37:59] And the performances are all good.

[1:38:01] It manages to make Theo James not an incredibly sexy man,

[1:38:04] which is a challenge.

[1:38:06] Like, that's some heavy lifting.

[1:38:09] I think the one outfit kind of helps.

[1:38:10] But it, and Tatiana Maslany's in it, and she's great.

[1:38:15] I think it's like,

[1:38:16] it felt like a very kind of fresh take on a horror comedy,

[1:38:21] and I had a really good time.

[1:38:23] Yeah, so if you're looking for kind of a silly one

[1:38:26] that I'm sure has been probably misinterpreted

[1:38:29] by people who are like,

[1:38:30] oh, why isn't this scary movie just scary?

[1:38:33] Like, well, it's a silly movie.

[1:38:34] It's fun.

[1:38:35] Just chill out.

[1:38:36] Also, I'm sorry.

[1:38:37] I apologize for playing Flophouse Piedmont

[1:38:39] just for a moment,

[1:38:40] but I believe Monkey Shines is unconnected

[1:38:42] because that's a movie about a man who had a-

[1:38:44] With a helper monkey, right?

[1:38:45] Actual monkey that's a helper because he's paralyzed.

[1:38:47] I messed it up, okay?

[1:38:49] I just, you know.

[1:38:51] I'm shielding you from angry listeners now.

[1:38:53] Okay, I mean, they're just gonna email-

[1:38:54] Because our listeners are furious all the time.

[1:38:56] They're just gonna email, yeah, they're gonna email you.

[1:38:58] Dan and the straw man, the new CBS show

[1:39:03] where he tries to stop the straw man.

[1:39:04] They're gonna email Dan, they'll be like,

[1:39:04] tell Stewardy's wrong,

[1:39:06] and Dan's like, I tell Stewardy's wrong all the time.

[1:39:08] He doesn't listen to me.

[1:39:09] I'd like to let you guys know on this occasion

[1:39:13] so you can thank me,

[1:39:14] that if I get any emails like that, I delete them.

[1:39:16] Oh, good, thank you.

[1:39:18] Thank you, Dan, for doing that.

[1:39:19] I'd also like to recommend a movie,

[1:39:20] and I'm also gonna recommend a silly one

[1:39:22] that's also kind of a horror movie, but also pretty silly.

[1:39:25] And I'm recommending, of course,

[1:39:27] Mr. Vampire from 1985, directed by Ricky Lau

[1:39:31] and starring, let me look at the names,

[1:39:33] starring Lam Ching-Ying, Ricky Hui, and Chin Sui-Ho.

[1:39:37] And this is the first

[1:39:38] of the Mr. Vampire horror comedy series from Hong Kong.

[1:39:41] That's awesome.

[1:39:43] It's set in the kind of early 20th century China,

[1:39:48] and there's a bunch of kind of battle priests

[1:39:52] whose job is to just keep-

[1:39:54] Battle priests grow into an army.

[1:39:56] You don't have to tell me what a fucking battle priest does.

[1:39:58] I know all about this shit.

[1:40:00] is very specific to keeping vampires under control and these are your classic Chinese

[1:40:05] hopping undead vampires and a vampire gets loose, unrelated to the vampire getting loose,

[1:40:12] a ghost falls in love with one of the apprentices and is trying to take him away.

[1:40:17] Now are they on the loose, is the vampire on the loose when you remove the piece of

[1:40:20] paper from their forehead or does that, is that, or when the piece of paper is placed

[1:40:25] on their forehead?

[1:40:26] It's a piece of paper where there's like a bit of wax that goes on their forehead and

[1:40:30] the paper is stuck to that and this is, it was produced by Sammo Hung, it's a very Sammo

[1:40:36] Hung style comedy kind of action movie and it's just super fun and it's one of these

[1:40:42] movies, it's very silly at times and the action is, and the martial arts are great.

[1:40:48] Some of the comedy is of the very broad comedy that you get in especially 80s Hong Kong movies

[1:40:55] but it's super fun.

[1:40:56] So if you want to see a horror comedy that really is not taking itself seriously to the

[1:41:00] point where it's not really scary so much as it is a comedy about people fighting vampires

[1:41:05] then I would highly recommend Mr. Vampire.

[1:41:09] Was Mr. Baseball a vampire?

[1:41:11] No, he was a baseball, Dan.

[1:41:14] Oh, okay.

[1:41:15] Hey, I think we're almost at the end here.

[1:41:17] Elliot, is there any final thought you want to share with our audience?

[1:41:21] There is a final thought that I'd like to share with the audience.

[1:41:23] You know, I'm just going to talk briefly because the show is ending and it's time to

[1:41:26] pack up the old circus tent and wipe off the grease paint and sweep up the spotlight, sweep

[1:41:31] up and put it in our caps, take off my makeup, but I put his wig back on the shelf, suddenly

[1:41:39] I'm doing a MaxFun Pledge Drive donor spot and I'm telling you that if, again, this is

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[1:41:55] If you've never been a MaxFun member, please, we ask you try it out for just $5 a month.

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[1:42:32] is wonderful.

[1:42:33] Please do it now.

[1:42:34] Go into MaximumFun.org.join before you forget and you can look at what kinds of thank you

[1:42:40] gifts you get at the different levels.

[1:42:41] You can check out the bonus content once you've signed up.

[1:42:44] There's a lot of great stuff on there.

[1:42:46] That's MaximumFun.org.join.

[1:42:47] And I said at the top that this is the time of year when we celebrate our members.

[1:42:51] And I know you're like, where's the celebration?

[1:42:53] I've heard a lot about what you need.

[1:42:54] What about what I need in terms of praise and recognition?

[1:42:58] Let me tell you, it means so much to us that you are pledging and becoming members.

[1:43:04] It means so much to us that you are supporting us as we do this show because we really couldn't

[1:43:08] do it without you.

[1:43:10] And especially during these times when life is uncertain, the world is in chaos, there's

[1:43:15] nothing that I feel like I need more than an outlet for my nonsense.

[1:43:20] There's nothing I feel like I need more than to hear the nonsense of other people to help

[1:43:24] me remember that there is laughter and enjoyment in the world.

[1:43:28] And we really appreciate your support in doing that.

[1:43:31] We've been part of Maximum Fun for many years now and I've always been really amazed and

[1:43:36] really impressed and really touched by the support that we get from our members and from

[1:43:40] our listeners.

[1:43:41] And it just helps keep us going.

[1:43:43] It means that we can do this show for you.

[1:43:45] It means we can do this show for others.

[1:43:47] It means that people who, as Dan mentioned earlier, cannot afford to be members right

[1:43:52] now on their own, that they still get to enjoy this show.

[1:43:54] You can gift a membership to someone or just by supporting us, you make the show available.

[1:43:59] We want to keep this show free to listen to aside from the bonus content, which you get

[1:44:03] if you join at $5 a month or more.

[1:44:05] And we can do that because of your support.

[1:44:08] We don't have to charge for tickets and we're not beholden to sponsors.

[1:44:12] I'm sure you've had some kind of TV show or movie or something canceled or pulled off

[1:44:17] the market or just removed from your access in the past year because some business was

[1:44:23] like, well, we're not making enough money off of this to justify you enjoying it.

[1:44:28] And your support of us means that you don't have to worry about that happening.

[1:44:32] We're our own bosses thanks to your support.

[1:44:34] We make the decisions thanks to your support and we're going to keep doing this as long

[1:44:37] as we can.

[1:44:38] As long as we have your support.

[1:44:39] We only do it with your help and we're so grateful and we're so thankful that you've

[1:44:43] been giving us that help all this time and that we hope you will continue to.

[1:44:47] If this is the year that you feel like you can afford to help us, please do.

[1:44:51] If it's not the year you can afford to help us, then please consider it in the future.

[1:44:54] But we ask you to go to maximumfund.org slash join and give us your support for as little

[1:44:58] as $5 a month or boost or upgrade your membership if you feel like you can right now.

[1:45:03] And we're just really thankful for it.

[1:45:04] I would thank you all individually, but I think it would make the episode go long.

[1:45:08] So instead, I'll just say thank you very much.

[1:45:11] We're so grateful.

[1:45:12] Insert your name here.

[1:45:13] Thank you.

[1:45:14] Thank you, Dan.

[1:45:15] Actually, that's what I should have done.

[1:45:18] And I did want to take this moment to celebrate you, the listeners, and especially the members

[1:45:22] for keeping this show alive.

[1:45:23] We really couldn't do it without you.

[1:45:24] So thank you.

[1:45:25] Go to maximumfund.org slash join if you aren't a member and if you are, then you get to take

[1:45:29] part in that.

[1:45:31] Otherwise, please put the thank you down.

[1:45:33] It is only for members right now.

[1:45:36] And yeah, I think that's all we got to say except to say thank you also to Alex Smith,

[1:45:42] our producer.

[1:45:43] You can find him under the name HowlDotty in various corners of the internet.

[1:45:48] He does great work for us.

[1:45:49] And he gets paid because you pay us.

[1:45:52] Yeah, I was just on his Twitch channel this week watching a crazy Abel Ferrara movie.

[1:45:58] Oh, nice.

[1:45:59] For The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:46:02] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:46:04] And I'm Elliott Kaelin reminding you to go to maximumfund.org slash join to join.

[1:46:09] Bye.

[1:46:10] On this episode, we discuss Kraven, the Hunter.

[1:46:23] It's a tight adaptation of Kraven's Last Hunt, my favorite comic book.

[1:46:27] I don't think so.

[1:46:29] It's not accurate.

[1:46:30] How about, Dan?

[1:46:31] Hey, I am putting energy out of the universe.

[1:46:36] Maybe I'll get what I want.

[1:46:38] Manifesting is what it's called.

[1:46:39] You should have heard about it.

[1:46:40] You live in Los Angeles.

[1:46:41] Yeah, people talk about manifesting a lot.

[1:46:43] Can I try one?

[1:46:44] Can I try one?

[1:46:45] Sure.

[1:46:46] Yeah.

[1:46:47] Maximum fun.

[1:46:48] A worker owned network of artists owned shows supported directly by you.

Ep.#446 - Kraven the Hunter

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