Fresh! I Don't Think So! — Ep. 15 of Intentionally Blank

[Music] are you ready for another food heist ooh i am so ready there's another food heist uh this one is actually an old story uh but is it in the new it's in the news now because there's a netflix series coming out that actually by the time this airs might be out called heist and it's a series on like an anthology series where they will take two or three episodes and kind of do little mini documentaries about real world heists and uh one of them is a very famous food heist a happy van winkle bourbon happy then weekly happy van winkle happy family yeah which i always confuse with the guy in oh brother where art thou but that's papio daniels this is pappy van winkle bourbon uh which is very expensive very fancy bourbon uh you know as most bourbon tends to be and somebody stole a whole ton of it an actual time this time or is it 21 i don't actually know um by by weight how much bourbon they stole but it was a lot and it is part of this uh documentary series and so if you love food heists as much as me go watch it and it's like on netflix yeah it's a netflix series heist and i'm sure the other episodes will be cool too but the one about the food is is the exciting one well i won't have you watched it no because not out yet at the time of recording i think we want to report from dan after you watch after i've watched it i will let you know if it is as good as it is in my dreams all right well today on this episode of brandon is wrong on the internet um we have had uh we had this just this last week our episode um on the last two weeks were our episodes on underrated films yes um that came out and uh there were lots of comments in the comment sections about these we appreciate you guys uh adam who which one in this latest podcast um which one of us turned out to have worse taste it's me isn't it he had a he put in the poll who has worse tapes yeah but the poll just barely went up like this morning yeah and that one's going to be in the comments so i i would actually have to tabulate that one so next week might be a better time when more people have been oh that one's in the comments that when you they can't vote on it well i do the titles in the poll and you can't you can't attach multiple questions to and then uh in the actual podcast you said man someday computer technology will advance to the point where we can attach two polls two polls two questions social media posts all right all right so we don't know who has worse taste yet i think clearly um i have worse taste oh yeah because baby drink i read that comment section and everyone was talking about how great a movie mom and dad saved the world is and there were not let's say many comments about my weird uh odin kirk dub movie yeah uh you did not have uh many if any defenders of kung pao on the other hand you do have a lot of defenders who love speed racer yes well there is that i mean you know that's just an objective that's still speed racer is awesome up in the air kung pao is the one that i know is my bad taste but these ones we're gonna this is gonna be even better because you know how last week you talked about um how you don't like to complain about things on the internet and you like to be yeah i like to be generally positive and lift things up yes and today we're going to talk about movies that brandon doesn't think deserve their rotten tomatoes scores that are high you think that they are not nearly as good as rotten tomatoes thinks they are yeah and these are comparisons i assume specifically to the critic score not the audience critic score yes and let's do a couple of uh of caveats here okay first off we use rotten tomatoes just because it is a good aggregate score um rotten tomatoes certainly has its flaws um and one of the big flaws of rotten tomatoes is that uh in a lot of the ways like the same way that actually sometimes happens with the hugo awards uh my editor explained this to me like if a lot of people like a thing okay it loving it without loving it it will still get a high rotten tomato score and it actually has a better chance because the way the hugos work of winning a hugo uh then if half the people love it is their favorite thing and half of them hate it um and the same thing on rotten tomatoes in that case that movie gets a score of 50 and yet the half that really like it really really really like it and the half that don't like it really don't and so that is one of the problems with this uh but i have picked movies that i think um in general it seems that people like way more than i like uh okay and this is not just one of them might be a very popular decision i think that the other five they actually had six are not going to be very all right so well let's hear them i actually don't know i have caveat number two oh you have another caveat and then i'll give caveat number two i was just gonna say uh i can't guarantee that i will that we will have a second episode on this topic where dan gripes about movies he hates uh because again i i like liking things i don't know how negative i want to get except about baby driver which is dumb so caveat number two is about i generally don't um talk rant about things i dislike also in fact my um you go to my goodreads page it is all five star reviews um and the reason for this being that particularly in the book world authors do not need me trashing their book right if i don't like a book i just probably won't finish it and there's like i'm not a professional critic let the professionals critics have that having brandon like with my status in the field come out against a sci-fi fantasy book it gives undue weight up to my opinion by the amount of audience and fandom that i have yeah um and an unfair it unfairly treats a new writer by lending that weight behind my dislike i don't have that fear with movies right because my voice is tiny in the movie community you come out and poop all over a movie it's not going to hurt it and the other thing is that i i kind of want to say is like some people who work on some of these films are people i know right so i don't want to trash them um i want to say i just do not think this piece of art turned out and that happens my friends write art where i'm like i just didn't like that um it happens all the time we don't talk about it much we won't talk about it much on this podcast because again with books we don't want to be like oh here's the worst book that you know such and such here's the worst arc of this comic by a friend that makes comments it's not gonna it's not useful there's no point to that um but people did ask for this and i thought you know i i think it's interesting to talk about and so theoretically this will send us down some interesting lanes of not just griping about things but just talking about awesome okay so the first one i picked i picked specifically so we can talk a little bit more about the nature of criticism because number six overrated movie on my list snow white no wait snow white from disney yes it's not that going along with you it's not that good yes it is no it's not it's a it's a marvelous tactical achievement for its time so the question is how many points do you give something for being a marvelous technological achievement for its time when it compares in my opinion unfavorably to the other disney movies that came out after it oh man well now i just want to rank disney princess movies yes like i i would put snow white probably last place on the world sleeping beauty yeah sleeping beauty's got a dragon yeah but it's dumb it's got it it's got an awesome villain okay so does snow white no she's fantastic she is the most evil straight-up evil villain that's ever been in a disney princess movie yeah okay maybe jafar beats her yeah the pet yeah okay she's i mean the voice of snow white drives me up the wall i just cannot take it right it is uh i won't argue with that like uh just can't take it um the like the the dwarfs are kind of annoying right they're not yeah they are the thing about snow white is that it is the first yes feature length animation ever and so it is constructed as a series of shorts yes strung together into a narrative and i will grant you that narrative technology has advanced significantly since then i don't think that's a knock against the movie i still enjoy it here's the discussion how many points do you give to that like when i watched citizen kane i was still blown away by the narrative the filmmaking the shots and the storytelling yeah when i watch snow white i'm like well this was really good for the first one i never want to watch this again oh no put on you you can find just as much filmmaking prowess in that as you can in citizen kane it's just all done better every way that they structured everything the way that they did the cute little stuff the structure works is kind of boring it just is what kind of protagonist is snow white she's useless she is useless but so with sleeping beauty yeah in wonderland so i mean most of the early years i'm going to rank most of those lower than the the ones where they're not right like um i like the disney renaissance princesses a lot more disney renaissance includes ariel who is i would argue just as useless no she's not she's not though she doesn't ever really protag for herself she protags a ton she makes decisions she goes and does things she uh she doesn't solve her own problem in the end what because eric drives a spare thing the one that does it well yes that's an i mean she tries she protags she fails yeah yes maybe i mean um actually you need to watch lindsay ellis's um uh little mermaid essay is she defends little mermaid quite well more than i would because little mermaid is the weakest of the um so man here's a tangent is um is little mermaid worse than hunchback of notre dame um no okay hunchback of notre dame for my money is the best score the best collection of songs okay uh for a disney movie uh i i wouldn't argue that it's bad so uh and that's uh mostly because it's stephen schwartz is hitting it out of the friggin park uh hunchback of an older dom is the most daring of them yeah uh it's also at the same time the most pandering yes and that's the big problem with it it is trying to be daring well is it also trying to toe the line and be as traditional and acceptable as possible if it hadn't done that it would be a great film as it is i think it's a bit of a disaster um parts of it are awesome you talk about an evil villain yeah um now uh the the thing i love about hunchback is that uh the stage version of it gets rid of all the stupid stuff man and is by all accounts brilliant and emotional and powerful without the nonsense that they can't jason alexander i think like yeah ruins that film so much for me i wouldn't put it on his shoulder no it's not because it's all three of the gargoyles but it's the casting choice right and the writing choice it's definitely not that jason alexander is bad at what he does they hired jason alexander to be jason alexander in that film and he delivered a good performance yeah as jason alexander i mean really they hired jason alexander in that film to be nathan what's his name in lion king they wanted timon and pumbaa yeah oh now i can't nathan hale nathan fields nathan i mean everyone knows this guy yeah he's one of the mothers famous yes nathan actors of all time nathan fillion no nathan different nathan nathan lane nating lane did i say nathan lane no you got dale yeah okay nathan lane they wanted anyway nathan lane or they wanted um they wanted um um [Music] from hercules oh the little danny devito they wanted that right that's they wanted that role and then they picked a story to put him into which has too many real world analogs and deep uh powerful themes that you need to deal with um a villain who is essentially a clergyman wrestling with his forbidden love and lust over a minority woman who is being oppressed by society while a disfigured person with um with disabilities is and on the one hand you can absolutely 100 understand the executive decision to be like this is too dark let's add some funny to it yep on the other hand worked in the the black cauldron yeah right yeah that that doesn't make sense that anything worked in the black cauldron um on the other hand if you just want something for kids you shouldn't have done hunchback in the first place like it was it was a horrific choice from the get-go i hunchback is one of my favorite novels and it is there's not a single happy thing in that entire story and in fact a a faithful adaptation has never been made because they always try to give it a happy ending yep whether they have esmerelda end up with you know the captain or with the thief or with the hunchback or she just goes off and is happy on her own they're always trying to give it something happy the ending of the book is that somebody finds in a mass grave her skeleton and a hunchbacked skeleton hugging her because he crawled in there after she was hung and starved to death like it's a dark story and no one has ever had the guts to you know do it straight so you heard it here dan wants you to make a straight adaptation of hunchback 100 if somebody makes a faithful to the book adaptation of hunchback of notre dame i will lend you what ever artistic or social power i have to make that happen but let me let me put you on the spot here then okay um would you rank um snow white above every other disney animated film because it is on rotten tomatoes ranked above every other disney animated film none of the others made the top hundred and snow white is really in the top ten um no and that is uh the nostalgia and the history factors bumping it up um i do think that it is without question a monumental masterpiece of cinema um but no i mean i i do have to admit plenty of other disney princess movies have been better i would say tangled and moana off the top of my head are both better movies i love tangled uh i actually wrote half of a video essay or a whole video essay on tangled and didn't actually release it because we were waiting for this other one to come out i actually think i wrote the whole thing yeah we'll have to look at it i wrote i wrote a video i say on how awesome i i would probably put tangled as my very favorite disney princess movie although i would say moana is my favorite disney princess if that is a meaningful distinction i can make okay yeah you can i mean moana has such good music like it's the first disney film since the renaissance that i have downloaded the music and just listen to it lin-manuel miranda is just amazing and i really like it and that surprises me because um the the big love song entangled is one of my favorite disney songs ever all right are we ready to move on from i guess we'll move on you're still wrong it's uh i think that's probably the most controversial most controversial so before we move on i'm gonna ask because i think i think i agree that it is not you know the the absolute like hundred percent or whatever it is on rotten tomatoes where would you put it where would i put it let's so the question is do i remove all if this came out today in the theaters no other context and it came out right now i don't know i probably 50 percent like i probably wouldn't enjoy going to it it's not a tragedy like you know the emoji movie or something but like am i going to sit in this movie with my children are they going to enjoy it am i going to enjoy this and we're going to go there for whatever run time it is it's probably not even fully 90 minutes no i guess like an hour um and are we just going to be bored out of our skulls and have this shrill voice in our ears and uh be like why is the music sound so bad um and snow white were released today without any context it is the voice of snow white that would kill it like more than anything else if you release citizen kane right now today it would still be acclaimed as a great film you think with no other context yeah i i sincerely think that probably because it's in black and white and critics love that yes they do love that the lighthouse proves that but yeah all right all right okay let's move on let's see what other bad opinions you have is going to be controversial but not on the same level number five what about bob no i'll totally agree that's not a good movie eighty-four percent yeah on rotten it's not deserved in 84. i hate the movie now part of my hate is emotional right now if we take the emotional aspect out i still think it's kind of a mediocre film um the part that pushes me down is i cannot watch that film and empathize with bill murray i i have to be um oh i had his name in my mind in my mouth just second before i said bill murray um richard dreyfuss i have to be richard dreyfuss in that film i watched that film about a home invasion essentially by this con artist turning a man mad and taking his family away from him and it is horrifying and it the film is playing it for laughs yeah now on that regard it is a piece of art that's provoked a powerful emotional response to me and i bet if the filmmakers were here they'd be like we expected some people to have that response and that is part of the art we're creating and in that case good job right you have created a freddy got fingered style piece of discomforting art that is nauseating to watch and good on you i do not like this film i it i don't like the entire genre uh stuff like freddy got fingered or um meet the parents yep anything and you know even the office i could never get into because it just relies on annoying people being annoying yeah i mean the office is more about kind of taking awkwardness to an artistic level rather than annoyance but i don't have time for that like one thing that i always try to teach when i am teaching you know writing classes is nobody has to read your book no one's going to read it just because you wrote it except maybe your mom everybody else you have to give them a reason to invite these characters into your head and what about bob simply doesn't have a reason outside of yay bill murray i'll give this a shot no you make it 10 or 20 minutes into the movie before you're just i don't want him in my head anymore i was forced to watch it through all the way once by like forced meaning i was in a social setting and it's like walking out would have been awkward but every other time someone has said give it another try i last like yeah like you said 15-20 minutes i'm like i just cannot take this can we turn this off and do something else i i am aggressively uncomfortable for this poor other character and want nothing more to do with this film yeah well and it's i mean the one redeeming feature of it is uh i mean richard dreyfus does a good job as the straight man and he's always likable in everything he's in um bill murray you want to love it because you love bill murray yep every other movie he's made including the bad ones like meatballs those are still better than what about bob yeah bill murray is an interesting kind of case study right like in being like cultivating this air of jerkiness that makes him lovable as a person which is kind of weird because um i wonder if number one that's a product of its time can you still cultivate an air of jerkiness and have people be like oh he's such a lovable jerk because everyone knows bill murray like on the set of ghostbusters he's like no you can't put that puff stuff on me um and he's like you can put a little bit in my hair which is why in the scene maybe this is apocryphal but you know this is the image that he's cultivated for himself right um is this i is you see dan aykroyd there just swimming in the stuff and next to him is bill murray who's barely been touched because he just doesn't want to put the crap on and then the second movie's like no i'm not wearing the stupid costume i'm gonna i'm gonna wear my day clothes and he's walking around and you know normal clothes when the rest are in their ghostbusting outfits because he just isn't gonna do it well see i've always assumed that's apocryphal because uh he gets fully and totally slimed halfway through the movie yes and so he's clearly not averse to being abused a little bit by the production design i think it was just a really funny joke that they're all completely slathered in marshmallow cream and then he's the last one and it is great like all of these things enhance it and my knowledge of these behind the things like all the stories and again this is probably cultivated right but to get bill murray to do something listen to the stories that producers tell in hollywood he has like a voicemail system that you don't know if he's going to check your job is to call offer him a project and then wait and if he wants to do it he will show up right like a lot of times he'll say we cast bill murray in this and then we had to see if he actually showed up at set because we you never know if bill is actually going to show up or not yeah and so many stories about him hating this film or just liking working on this film or being difficult to work with that i really admire because you know now that he is old enough and famous enough that he can get away with that kind of garbage he is picking some really weird stuff to involve himself in for the last 20 years and he's basically you know sometimes he'll do a big thing like zombieland and then sometimes he'll do like some kids student film yeah just because he finds it interesting or fun i think that's kind of neat there's some story about how he did the garfield films because of some mistake in a contract or something and again i think this is all in air but this is the same sort of error that like harlan ellison had in the science fiction community and it eventually just blew up on him because his behavior was just not okay he was legitimately horrible yes he was a lot of people but that was like the selling point right he's mean that therefore you know it's his persona and he played it up and it became part of and it was like it was a thing i feel like you could do in a different era and maybe you still can you can be known as the curmudgeonly mean one um and you know people will they're definitely youtubers who are famous for being jerks that's true but i don't know if they're lovable jerks yeah and that might just be a generational gap where kids these days in their youtube videos i don't know i will say bill murray as you said he's i've never seen a bad performance he is anytime he's on screen i am i'm acknowledging that he's good at what he's doing even though i absolutely hate this movie [Laughter] what about bob all right number uh four our number when we're counting up from six yeah from six yeah okay number so when we get to number one is that going to be the most what do you think the one that i dislike the most right so snow white like i'm maybe uh maybe i was a little too much and like i think it's there's a 50. it probably doesn't right because i will accept historical context i don't think it's better than every other disney animated film ever made um i don't think it deserves a 98 on rotten tomatoes but in historical context it does i mean not to rehash snow white again but i do need to say it is visually gorgeous it is a style it is a pretty old german cottage look they hit that one out and it's pretty amazing they nailed that with the first try yeah right that it has a unique visual style like a lot of the stuff that i'll say about snow white i'm like for a first try this is a 98 movie right for a first try yeah it's it's amazing they did as well as they did on the first try it's amazing the full lake feature film isn't steamboat willy but 60 minutes of whistling and um and things like that instead it does have a narrative um and instead it's you know it it is a film um now i want to see the 90-minute steamboat willie yeah so um and what about bob it is low on the list which means it's good because i acknowledge they were trying to do this to me and that artistic decision was a deliberate one it's a very good example of the art that it's making i don't think it deserves an 84 percent yeah um i think you know a very good probably too strong it is it is an example that works of what they're trying to do you know i did a huge blog of babylon 5. uh-huh because i never watched babylon 5 when it first came out even though i would have been like right target audience for it um and for whatever reason never watched it and i don't know why so a couple years ago i decided i'm gonna watch babylon five and i'm gonna make a blog as i watch it and you know write down my thoughts about every episode yep and i made it up through about halfway through season four which is you know really where it goes off the rails yep uh before i finally gave up and the reason was i could tell this is something that is very good and it is what it is trying to be and it's just not for me and i think that's kind of where both of us probably are with what about bob yeah because it may not love it or what it is it's just not us it might not deserve to be on this list it it might deserve its score just for the people right i'm just trying to make discussion uh though number four breaks my heart actually um the rest of these all break my heart number four breaks my heart the most all right well let's hear it incredibles 2. incredibles 2 was so bad it was really bad it's a 93 it was number 72 on the list that i pulled up that had kind of normalized the rating so 100 with five reviews did not get the number one spot the number of ratings that a thing had influences where it falls on the list if that makes sense um and otherwise you just have a bunch of indie films that have five ratings that are at 100 at the top and so um some of mine aren't on that list that's just where i started but it's number 72 according to rotten tomatoes whatever algorithm best movie of all time um incredibles 2 yes but it's so bad i the story is incoherent doesn't hold together it falls into ridiculous cliches like the bumbling father long after the point where he has already figured out how to do everything that he's suddenly bad at yes um and just nothing about it works there's yeah those cleveland like the cliches were part of what really bothered me right yeah um character regression uh taking them and um you you have to have new conflicts for a sequel i get it but they basically told the first story again worse with a with a swap of the characters um and they made mr incredible bumbling they didn't seem to have any idea what type of story they wanted to tell despite having a the same basic structure as the first one um it was it was so bad um it breaks my heart because i really like brad bird he made my favorite pixar film which we've talked about ratatouille um haven't we yeah no i don't think we've talked about that because ratatouille is one of the worst pixar movies now it's my favorite it's so dumb worse than incredibles 2. it's worse than incredible worse than cars 2. no how how can you say ratatouille is worse than those two because it's so bad what's bad about it it has one good scene and it's just the the guy at the end reading his review that scene is genius that scene is genius and it's better than that the the scene where he takes the bite and is zoomed into his childhood is genius so it's not just that scene it's two scenes i consider that all the same thing that's that is genius the guy having to cook with a brat pulling his hair is legitimately great physical comedy no it's not yes it is just we couldn't figure out what movie to do this year so how about let's do something with it it is about a person who is passionate about something explaining their passion in an excellent way um and the message is great because a lot of times we talk about this message this is a good message we say you can do whatever you want to and we're lying i did a whole video essay on this you can't do whatever you want to raw personal talent plays a big role in doing a lot of things and and you know how you were born you're not above a certain height you're not going to be playing professional basketball you can't do whatever you want to do and this movie is saying you can't do whatever you want to do but a person who can do anything can come from any walk of life and that is a really great nuanced take on on the you can do anything yeah but let's go back to ebert it doesn't matter what a movie is about it matters how it's about it yeah you can have the best moral ever and that doesn't make it a good movie yeah but if the moral comes out to me and it never really has it doesn't beat you over the head with it and the moral kind of as you're watching you like i get this i understand the message just on its own that's good filmmaking um the fact that the that i like um like the the scene where uh what's his name um it's not fettuccine the kid um no linguine when linguine and remy are communicating but they can't talk and you understand oh we see here that rats can understand human language but rats can't speak it without ever saying that with the scene where the rat doesn't speak it's brilliant filmmaking it's show don't tell and it's done really really well uh that is really good jin jin guru is a wonderful actor she does a smashingly good job in that i and i love her i love her who is she is she the sorry to be rude but we are french uh is is just such a such a great line it is just me smiling astonishing to me i i i'm willing to believe that that you like ratatouille because i know i love a lot of people love reddit you're all wrong but i know that it happens uh it's astonishing to me that it would be your favorite pixar movie it's great because i dislike it so much there's nothing wrong with that movie um i'll tell you i do like that one better than up though oh well that's interesting also i really like up up is another one it's got one good scene and it's the first 15 minutes and everything after that is so so boring here's the thing the first 15 minutes are better than the rest of the film i think we talked about this we probably they legit are better than the rest of the film but there's lots of great stuff in that film um and so i disagree with you there we could rant on this forever we'll have to do pixar films thing we should um but um incredibles 2 we both agree to weak film by an excellent filmmaker do you hate the iron giant do you have anything i really love the eye okay okay well you do like good brad bird films then in some and at least and the first incredibles is fantastic um the thing about incredibles 2 is that you know instantly how bad it's going to be because it starts with the at least when i saw it in the theater the voice actors coming on and apologizing and they're like hey we've been wanting to do this for like 12 years and now we finally got a chance to and i'm thinking every little kid in the audience could not possibly care less about who you are or how old you are or how long you've wanted to finally make this late sequel get back that they thought that that was a good thing to put at the front of their movie shows that they simply did not know what kind of movie they were making not watch the rest of the movie without being reminded that the actors have aged 15 years or 12 years more than the characters and that was just stuck in my head because you don't have the voice actors come on stage before the characters because you will cement in your head the actor instead of the character one of the geniuses of animation is that any they disappear into the role and you know it's part of the problem with some of the early dreamworks films is they didn't and um yeah well and i don't want to say that that little live-action introduction ruined the movie for me i just think it is emblematic of the fact that they made a vast string of poor decisions while making that movie all right all right we agree on that one even though i am baffled by your dislike of the cute rat making pasta um let's go on to number three another heartbreaking one um indiana jones and the king of the crystal skull or whatever it's called yeah uh this is at 77 so it's not like super high um but this is just a bad film yeah it's it's not as bad as as i think people say it is it's definitely the weakest one um i mean there's no question there and it definitely has a lot of really stupid stuff in it i am not going to argue um and so i agree with you would you put it at a 77 77 um i don't know i might but that still feels high honestly i'm surprised it's that high because everyone hated it when it came out i think that they liked it but then they it wore off i remember watching that film and disliking it the whole time um now i did not have that experience with the prequels the star wars prequels i remember at least the first one going to it and coming at me like yeah i was pretty good right guys that was fun that was action-packed and uh and things like that we went to that together yeah we did them um i remembered like 24 hours for tickets yes uh i remember playing cards in the line um i remember magic in the line at trolley corners yes in salt lake city um but i remember coming out of this one being like oh no it was bad it was bad it was so bad and just feeling sick that it was there the thing is there are bits of it that i really like yeah what are the bits you like kate blanchett i think is great in everything okay and her as evil soviet like sorceress totally worked for me yeah yeah um seeing marion again made me happy i agree with that um there were even bits of shia labeouf and he got a lot of flack for like yeah or no harrison ford of course he's not harrison ford now uh so there is in my opinion there's one brilliant scene and that's the scene where harrison ford and him indiana jones and matt are at dinner and they're trying like he's trying to get a drink and harrison ford keeps stealing it from him back and forth there's a lot of is that in the diner yeah in the diner there's a lot of nuance in the scene there's a lot of really good acting they're playing off of each other um it's not a you know an over-the-top action scene and it just works and it's like spielberg being what i love about spielberg well and the scene immediately following that is a motorcycle chase which is the best action scene in the show i think yeah i think it is do a motorcycle chase through whatever university yes yes um much better than he um sword fights monkeys while standing between two jeeps going through the jungle yes which was painfully bad it was uh the decision to make mutt um both a greaser and a prep school yep dude with like fencing background was clearly terrible um however my main defense of crystal skull and i'm still let's be clear i'm not saying it's a good movie okay i'm just saying it's better than people give it credit for so many people hate the aliens in it i love that because one of the oldest oldest like the instant that european settlers showed up in the new world and started uncovering all this stuff they were already hundreds of years ago talking about aliens aliens as an explanation for pyramids has been around forever all of this stuff is not just weird crap that spielberg pulled out of his butt it's real conspiracy theories that exist all over and i really enjoyed seeing that brought out um i was okay with the cold war setting as an update to talk about some good things about the film it was hard though because um we have been socially and morally acclimatized to the idea of nazis as disposable bad guys that you do not have to feel bad killing right um and i'm kind of on board for this right um it is hard for me to accept the russians in the same way having grown up during the cold war even during the cold war saying how overly scared we were of people who were too similar to us to really fear like that's the theme of the cold war is we are much more similar than we are different despite a single ideological difference and it's hard for me to accept mustache twirling communists in the same way i can accept mustache twirling nazis yeah well and also when you take the nazis and the jewish artifacts away the entire moral core of the story falls out yes and it no longer has a theme anymore like they could have gone for some kind of red scare theme they could have gone for something about identity they kind of leaned into this a little bit because there's two or three like double triple crosses where the guy you thought was your friend is actually a communist who's actually your friend is actually they could have leaned into that more and and found a theme that worked and they didn't yeah and that's definitely missing from it and um as i mean this is just a much smaller thing but the fridge really bothered me at the beginning like it's endemic like you said of the previous um like the incredibles that starting off on the wrong foot which is just a sign that was a sign for me indiana jones does ridiculous things but if you look back at like um indiana jones the the first one like what makes it work in part is that you don't stop believing he could do this right it feels very grounded for how ridiculous it is indiana jones remaining grounded when crazy stuff is happening around him is part of what made those films work he's taking it very seriously and when he gets blown up and thrown a mile by an uh a nuke and then stumbles out of it he's like oh that there was a thing yeah um stumbles out and then runs off yeah because he doesn't need recovery time yes uh i i'm gonna put up the truck scene in raiders of the lost ark as the single greatest action scene of all time okay didn't you already have a single greatest action scene yeah and it was this one okay it's the truck um and that one works because as you say it's grounded it's clearly superhuman but it feels real because if he has to work for it yep he gets punched he gets knocked off of things it is hard he is fallible and the biggest problem with the fridge is that he is not yep he's now invincible he that thing can kill indiana jones oh well um and plus um as i recall i've only seen the movie you know once and then um clips no gimli i was waiting for gimli and i know they've got no gimmicks they've got the scottish dude they've got like a replacement gimli and i'm like john rice davies no no no no i want my john rice davies you can bring back marion um you know my favorite one of my favorite lines from film of all time is he gets lost in his own museum uh which is so metaphorically powerful and potent that uh that i love it and yeah all right that's so that's a little thing too yeah um all right we're we're to my top two okay my top two let's hear it i'm gonna give you number two and then i'm gonna have you after we talk about it try to guess number one guess number one number two because uh i should have mentioned before i'm not going with oscar winners and things on this i think we may do some time where it's like the really snooty high-class films that maybe got too much but i i looked through like the oscar winners and all the ones i've seen that like one i'm like yeah that might not be quite as good as the other one but it's still a really good movie right yeah it was hard to be like oh this one has a 94 but deserves a 90. and this other film you know it's like shakespeare in love did shakespeare love deserve to win we can talk about it in another podcast maybe not but it's a good film like that is not a bad film so at least in my opinion uh so well i'm doing blockbusters this time if you couldn't all right here we go um all right magical beasts and where to find magical see i haven't even seen this 78 on rotten tomatoes uh this movie is terrible um you know what i uh i don't have a lot to say about this and it's in large part because i actually didn't like most of the harry potter movies i got as far as halfway through four okay and realized yep these are not for me which is totally fine and i've seen trailers for the rest of them and so by the time we got to magical beasts and where to find them i was long done with the harry potter cinematic universe so i am fond of all the harry potter films um i think three is an actively good film yes i think one and two are bad um but what they needed to be bad if this makes sense like i don't know that i would go and change them um because they needed to play it really safe with these i felt like um but they're bad and bad as adaptations because they filmed the book scene by scene and they don't take a lot of risks yeah um and threes where the books got too big to be able to take those risks and you end up with the best film of the lot in my opinion and the best director which i think more than anything else yes that makes a that makes a big difference um but uh harry potter films have a lot going for them beyond that the the casting was great casting was phenomenal the production design was incredible finding kid actors who all really solidly nailed their roles at their ages and then just grew up into being pretty good actors like that i wish we saw more rupert grint in the world yes because he's the one who doesn't have the career the other ones have right and he he might be the best actor of the three i think you might be right um i don't know yeah radcliffe is he is good genuinely great um i mean they're all good they're all good actors and um but he they did do ron dirty that's uh that's a running theme in the movies um that harry potter fans have pointed out and i only noticed once some some bigger harry potter fans than me pointed out if you watch the films they give a lot of the best lines that he had to another other characters and basically um turn him into comic relief um and the bumbling sidekick which you know they do run a bit dirty but all in all i like the films um i like the later ones too um three is my favorite but i think uh four through seven and eight um have their things to recommend them and the only ones i think that are weak are one and two but then we get to fantastic beasts and fantastic beasts so i have there are i can count on the fingers of one hand the number of films that i've just stopped watching okay um when i had paid for it right and things like i'm not counting i'm flipping through the channels and i land on something and then leave i'm talking about movies that i go actively to see and then just leave so did you walk out of a theater so it was a home thing buy it on prime yeah it was a home theater and we uh emily and i were both watching it and we got about a half hour in and we looked at each other like this is just dreadful uh can we do anything else um and so we just turned it off uh wow now this is it's interesting because again i think the actor uh nailed the part uh i think that the part was just written the kid no the the fantastic beast is about um is about a monster hunter essentially yeah but a good monster he keeps you know he keeps these little pets and things and he's he's an adult he's not a kid well 44 i call him a kid okay um he's the one who was in like the theory of everything yes right yeah yeah uh he does a very good job and um i think he is playing it and written uh to be on the autism spectrum and doing a very good subtle job of that um and things like this but the movie is boring just terribly boring the pacing is dreadful and the worst sin of all is it removes the art from and and whimsy from the harry potter universe um like it's so dull everything is flat there's like the scenes are shot in this flat boring way and they might be arguing that they're doing it because then the little monster things they'll be like sneaking out of his bag or something like that will be more on screen but new york feels empty it feels like lifeless yeah and it almost feels like they're doing it intentionally like here's the magical wizarding world full of life and wonder and here's dole mundane world of just washed out colors but the whole movie is taking place in the mundane world of washed out colors the sound mixing is weird it just feels flat and odd to me um nothing feels alive on screen ever and i mean the worst thing is it's just it's just horribly poorly written yeah um jk rowling broke the script and she's just she's not a screenwriter she did a dreadful job um it just it's really really really boring and uh this is a case where you're punching up like yeah we're not gonna bash other arms we're not gonna batch you can bash the best-selling author in the entire world we can time she writes a bad thing right and the thing about it is that i can see so easily how you would do this because i consider myself a pretty good writer um i could see being like well i'm gonna write the screenplay myself and this is like a warning call like i often use the metaphor like i am pretty good at writing epic fantasy books i think that writing a screenplay might be like a famous basketball player deciding to play baseball and this is i think what happened with jk rowling like she can write in the minor leagues when it comes to screenplay um and i you know don't know that i could do a better job than her but you don't have to be able to do a better job than someone to criticize that's not a valid uh argument against criticism and if you can like something without being able to do it yourself you can also dislike something without being able to do it yourself um and i think this we we can stop because you haven't read it but i think this movie is just it's backed up i it everything about it felt like a shameless cash grab from the beginning and so it doesn't surprise me at all uh and i i should say it didn't surprise me when it came out and everyone hated it because did they though it had a 77 percent it got a c7 yeah it did well enough to get a sequel yeah i mean frankly you could you know poop in a harry potter themed bucket and sell enough copies of it to get a sequel i know um people say this the sequel is worse i didn't get through the first film um i can't i can't fathom this having a 78 percent um because like i said um it's just it's just a misfire and can you guess number one i don't know if i can guess number one okay um because your list has been so bizarre so far because you've got movies on it i've never seen you've got one of the most beloved movies of all time yes it does i do so i'm not even okay you don't have to you don't have to unless it's baby driver it's not baby driver um this one actually is super painful it is all star wars movies after return of the jedi is that chicken star wars fans is that cheating i think that's cheating it might be cheating but you know on the other hand it is so hard to split up any of those movies yeah like any time i put favorite movie on you know doing a list of favorite movies i never will pick one of the star wars movies that will be the whole original trilogy right right except i do think you maybe we maybe have violated that already in this podcast but um i will put a little asterisks uh next to the force awakens um if the the trilogy had gone excellent places the force awakens would be a good movie it is a good movie it is a good movie um but you're right the the trilogy you know and by jj abram's own admission they didn't really have a plan yeah um which is not his fault necessarily no it's um it's baffling they didn't have a plan it is uh it's astonishing mind-boggling but then again i can see how it would happen because this is a property that's a little different than a lot of the other ones they didn't have a really i think solid plan for what are we going to do with thor right in the mcu and the third thor movie is the strongest of the three by a large measure this is because you can mostly make in most series even big series independent films that work well together and a good filmmaker can come on and build off of what's been given before and then can turn it into a great sequel yeah well and also the nature of these more disconnected franchises like the mcu or james bond or something like that you only need to have a couple of touchstones yeah and other than that it can be a wholly original story with its own tone and its own feel star wars you can't do that nope they they didn't realize that they were making an epic fantasy series without the books right um as a guide and it's like just trying to do that for lord of the rings and seeing what what happens in the third one just would not work they're all one continuous story and that's what people want from star wars it's a continuous a trilogy that's a continuous story um now i know that the prequel movies have gained some unironic love from modern audiences after the ironic um sort of love of it became a thing on the internet and i think us being able to see the sequel trilogy and match the sequel trilogy kind of to the prequel trilogy it has has helped us see the things the prequel trilogy did well yes um being able to put you know what i would essentially consider to be two pieces of fan fiction um up against each other and say well what did this one do right what did this one do wrong uh they both did a lot of things right and they both did a lot of things wrong and they those are inverted from one another yeah they are uh one thing that uh and i think i said this in the live stream that we did um i was on a panel once where a guy described the prequel trilogy as a good story poorly told yeah and i think it is not only is that very wise but it makes for the very easy and in my opinion true flip side to say that the sequel trilogy is a poor story very well told yes it is exciting it is thrilling uh i there's a lot of stuff about rise of skywalker that i felt was the wrong choice but at the same time it had absolutely incredible indelible images yep like uh palpatine hanging from this insectile thing in the cave uh the scene where uh rey hands kylo a lightsaber or probably the other way around it's the best moment i think in the sequel series um uh han solo coming back and like kylo's redemption worked yeah and i genuinely didn't think they were gonna pull it off yeah until the scene where it happened yeah uh and late in the movie you know where he's kind of redeemed and he's coming to help ray there's a scene where he's fighting bad guys and he gives a smirk that is such a perfect harrison ford smirk and that is the moment where instantly despite how much i've hated him i can see oh my gosh this is han solo's kid and i love him instantly um but you look at the sequel trilogy and you've got a first movie that leans a little too hard on what came before um would have been forgivable if um if it had all kind of come together uh yeah like uh then you have a second movie that is an artistic um rejection of the film that came before it yes uh doing really incredible things and some terrible ones mixed a lot of tens and a lot of ones in that movie yeah um but giving us a very unsatisfying pairing to the first one and then a third movie that should have been five hours long and been a disney plus show um where to make it work they had to cut out too much of the character stuff well and when you say to make it work uh what i would mean by that statement is it was an artistic rejection of the second movie yes if it had been content to follow along where the second movie was headed i think they could have done it in two and a half hours yeah but because they were trying to retcon the entire second installment you know the first half hour of rise of skywalker is a previously on section that you would find at the beginning of the tv episode yeah yeah and all for stuff that we haven't actually seen even the stuff i dislike in rice of skywalker i have liked in book form before like bringing palpatine back bringing back palpatine back has huge implications for a the original trilogy which i love yes so to do it you have to do it in a way that doesn't undermine that and you can do that but very hard to do and you need a lot of space to tell that story um and so just i i have not loved a star wars film since the original trilogy and i know a lot of you listening are being going to be like oh brandon you forgot rogue one i aggressively dislike rogue one yeah i'm one of the only people i know i i didn't really like it either i didn't hate it as much as you did yeah uh i'm the one who hates solo which a lot of people absolutely adore and i think like it literally put me to sleep i could count on one hand the movies that have put me to sleep and solo's one of them it was terrible um i do like the mandalorian more than you do um but i said you know all the star wars movies so that is my number one it is it has been heart-wrenching for me as a storyteller to watch these things and see them uncanny can you validly get so close to being really good and then failing um and because of that most of them are very high frustrating uh the only one that's not i think uh fresh is rise of skywalker on rotten tomatoes one of the eight is that one not fresh no i think it's like a 56 or something that's that interesting um but um i don't see when i took my kids to see rise of skywalker and that was their favorite one of the three like they you know the lights were still coming up and my son was already like that that's amazing i love that i don't care what anyone says that was incredible but i mean the way he phrased it implies he'd already heard some garbage about it so yep maybe there were more people who disliked it so there you go there's my list um we may or may not do a dan list as you've been indicating this isn't something that you like as much as i like or an idea that appeals to you as much as it appeals yeah i you know i'm i'm like abed i like liking things i think that is a good place to be and i think it might be a good podcast title [Music]

Channel: Brandon Sanderson

Views: 41,667

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Id: Ob4aXN0gCJw

Length: 59min 53sec (3593 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021