169: If its Not One THING its Another

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What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I'm Dave. I'm Marlena. I'm Fred.

I'm Alan. I'm Greg. And we are back for another session of the Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino my butt. I still drink coffee.

The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for the Caffeinated Movie Geek. We are coming to you live via digital recording from Green Room Coffee and Espresso Bar, where we will get together, drink coffee, fight aliens, and talk movies. So... Once again, Alan, I ask you, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week?

It looks like the Guatemala. It is fantastic. You're identifying it by sight now. That's how good I am. That's even better than if you were doing it by aroma.

That's a higher skill level, but if you can do it by sight, that's like top of the list. Nobody can smell coffee. When I did it, I would just tap the cup and hear what it was. We are a gifted bunch, let me tell you. It is true.

Gifted. Just to throw in a quick little session here on geek activities. The only thing.... Can that be the new noise of geek activity? It is.

I don't think we even have a noise. We do not. So I did recently watch Inserts. Has anybody seen Inserts? I had not even heard of it.

Is that like Jessica Harper and Richard Dreyfuss? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way back. I was just, yeah, kind of going through Netflix one day, and there was one that came up.

Once again, Netflix kind of knows better than me, because it will suggest things, and I'm just like, you're stupid. That looks, no, wait, I do want to watch that. It was one that came up on mine, and once again, I started reading through it, and I went, this does sound kind of interesting. All right, fine, and I watched it. And It's very different than I expected.

Again, on our roll from last week when we were talking about porn, this one is, and it's a weird tie-in because after the whole, the artist, you know, sweeping the Oscars, it's kind of along those lines if it went down the porn road. Basically, you've got a big up-and-coming, you know, star of the silent screen doesn't really transfer over to the talkies, and this guy instead goes into directing porn. He was the boy wonder, is what they called him in the silent era. As directors, he was the go-to, artistic, amazing director. And then things changed, and he didn't really move into that new era, and instead ends up directing porn.

I don't know, was it originally, I don't know if you know much about it, was it originally a stage play? I'm not sure. Because it never leaves the set. It is in his house. Yeah, it's the bigger one.

It very easily could be a play because new characters come in, new characters come out, but it's just his house. One day you're just kind of following him around in this big open Hollywood estate of the 30s. So it's very strange. It's got a good cast. It's got Veronica Cartwright when she was young.

It's got Bob Hoskins when he was much thinner. I barely recognized him. It's like, wow, that is Bob Hoskins. Look at him. So, yeah, Jessica Harper, it's an interesting movie.

It's, yeah, and once again, like I said last week, it's weird that porn has not changed at all. It's still, if you didn't know by the costumes and the set design, I mean, the way that they speak, and specifically all the terminologies within the porn industry are exactly the same. The way that he's shooting the movie, like, it's the same thing they do now. So it's kind of scary that, you know. Things haven't changed much in the porn industry.

This was when? Like 1973? Something like that? Early 70s. It's early 70s.

It's 74, yeah. 74, yeah. I mean, I don't know much about porn, but I would probably venture to say that porn was better back in the day than it is now. That's why we only rent the old ones. That's right.

I just am... Is... Insert says the title of the movie, is that a double entendre? Is that. I mean, they actually reference the shot itself.

I don't want to. Explain it, but technically it's a triple on top. Right. You'll hurt yourself doing one of those. You've got to warm up first.

Yeah, they do work that in, and it has a very specific tie-in. By the end of the movie, there's this whole thing that he and Jessica Harper go through, and it all sort of ties into the term inserts. It's not quite as.... Graphic, as you might expect it to be. But it's also graphic.

So yeah, for a movie in 1974, it's pretty hardcore. No, it's graphic in different areas. It's listed as NC-17 now, which is weird. I guess they re-rated it? Yeah, because I don't remember it being that graphic, but it's got some moments.

I've never been sure how graphic got to be the term for something that's explicit i always expect to see pie charts there's. Nothing hotter there's bars and pies bars and pies is what it's all. About that's what i always think honestly like hot dogs and donuts all right so yeah it's it's interesting if you like um young richard dreyfus I mean, this is him doing his Richard Dreyfuss thing, but it. Was kind of at that point, like this is right there at the Jaws era. So it's him before his thing became cliche.

His gimmick that he now sort of works into all of his movies, it's still early on for him. So it's kind of interesting to watch. Mr. Holland's opus. Yeah.

I mean, his. It's just like kind of the epitome of. Well, that's the old him, but I'm like, everything in between Jaws and that was just him doing his character from Jaws, and then he got to be old, and everything since then is Mr. Holland's open. I think the real core of Dreyfus that you see in Jaws is when he goes over to the sheriff's house, and they open a bottle of wine, and he's like, oh, do you want to let that air out?

Never mind. That's like everything he does right there. Yes. That's distinctively him. Definitely.

So, yeah, that's, you know, it's okay. It's not my favorite movie, but it was certainly interesting to watch, especially because of the way that it's set up and the way that they structure it as a movie that seems like it wouldn't be cinematic, but somehow kind of works. It's interesting to watch. Yeah, that's right before a lot of those people, like Jessica Harper. A year later, it was Phantom of the Paradise, and then Stardust Memories comes along.

I can't remember who played the director. In that. Which. I mean, he's the director. Yeah, Dreyfuss is, yeah.

Hoskins is like the money. He's the producer, I guess, but he's the one with all the money. It's been a long time since he's done that. Yeah, it's pretty. It's back when Hollywood would make a film like that.

Yeah. In the 70s, they could do some pretty edgy, weird stuff and actually get it distributed. You could see this getting made now as an indie movie, but not with major studio, major names. It's pretty unlikely that that would happen. Now we get Showgirls.

Love showgirls though oh i. Know we all love it in a sick sad way no not all of us no. I told i told my friend who i get in arguments about paul verhoeven about all the time i said if i ever meet paul verhoeven i will shake his hand i will say thank you for giving the world showgirls and i will sincerely mean it. It's it's an interesting movie once again we'll go with that way it's it's a piece of work i'll go with that. Beautiful again and i'm not the first person to say it but um That's one movie that made me get sick of nudity. you just i just got bored with it and just like it's because.

You're putting too much stock in the nudity if you just treat it as they're just people then don't need it. But that's what it becomes and that sort of takes the fun out of it if it's not fun to see them get naked anymore it kind of makes you die a little no it's still. A fun there's still a lot of stuff going on it does get the fun rape. Scene oh that Fun. Sex in the swimming pool scene.

That's scarring, is what that is. That's weird. That was like, I knew what epilepsy was after I saw that scene. No, that just reminded me of like when we catch a fish and throw it in the bottom of the boat and it'll flop around like that. Berkeley needs their medication, that's all I gotta say.

It's like what people... think sex is supposed to look. Like if they're like 12. They don't have the internet and they're not watching porn. All day i don't think so maybe in the 70s when in thirds came out but now the kids know pretty early on so yeah i think that's uh that's enough geek activity we. Better get into the movie so we will take a break and be back with this week's feature Woo, there's two we got.

Here's a bucket for England. The music's done. You do your own thing now. First you start to groove it, groove it. Groove it.

Now baby can you get on the beat now baby. Can't you feel that rhythm honey deep down. In your bones now. When you get the. Groove baby then you're gone now.

Ain't no special swing you've got to do now do. The latest dance or do your own self thing everybody have yourself a real good time moving in the crowd stepping in on time it don't matter who We are about to witness the takeoff of the. First manned rocket to outer space. We pick up the count. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0!

We're off to visit the planet that reached the. Lord of the Stars. Venus is loaded with candy. Woo! Warning.

Godzilla vs. The Thing. A shattering motion picture not for the weak of heart. Here in all its astounding realism is a soul-shocking experience. How much terror can you stand?

What was this thing of unbelievable and unequal terror that challenged Godzilla to a battle of unhuman strength versus supernatural evil? Godzilla versus the Thing. See the war of the giants. See the birth of the world's most terrifying monster. See armies of the world destroyed by the Thing.

The producers of Godzilla vs. the Thing issue warning to those who cannot take its full horror. To you with guts, you must see Godzilla vs. the Thing from the beginning in color scope from American International. Hey, this is Tom Woodruff, Jr. I'm the man inside the alien suit, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. It's time for Sofa Theater.

Kate. Shit. Sorry, Kate. These fellas said that you've been expecting them? Oh, of course.

Thanks, Hank. Thanks. Thanks. Hey. You, uh, you forgot, didn't you?

No, no, I. I just. Yeah. He just wanted to, uh. Actually, this is him, okay?

I'm Dr. Sandra Halverson. Kate Lloyd. Yes. Do you know who I am?

I do. Adam told me a little bit about you as well. He says you specialize in vertebrae and paleontology. Primarily, yes. And obviously you extracted specimens from pack ice.

I've worked on several cold weather digs. Good. An old friend of mine and colleague from Oslo runs a geological research station in Antarctica. 48 hours ago, his team found something quite remarkable. Really?

What'd they find? We're flying down there tomorrow evening to examine the site. And I need a paleontologist. Doctor, I'm sure you can understand that I need to know a little bit about what it is I'm being asked to dig up. There's a structure.

A structure? Yes. In Antarctica? And a specimen. That's all I can tell you.

And I guess I don't have any time to think about this. No, I'm sorry. I need your answer right now. Well, I'm in. You sit around waiting on this other guy.

You tell yourself he's the only one that can satisfy. Each and every night he's out in the street. You're lucky if you see him once a week. But here I am. I know I'm a man.

And I'm capable of loving you any. Way he can. I don't want you weeping over him anymore. Just come to me, girl. And let yourself go.

Hey, girl. Don't you think it's time to try a brand new thing? Hey, girl. Don't you think it's time to try a brand new thing? I've been ranting about this to my wife.

She's sick of hearing about it. She's sick of it. Go talk to some other. About the thing? The new one?

Yeah. The thing? She didn't watch it with me. She was upstairs on the computer and everything. Every ten minutes I would pause it and yell something else at her.

She's like, leave me alone! God! I'm not watching you, damn you! I tried to get her to watch it with me, but. Welcome back to Moving Out on Sofa Theater.

This week's Sofa Theater feature is The Thing, but the year is 2011. The director, and I had to work on this, so hold on a minute. Matthijs van Hengen? Hengen? Okay.

It's Dutch, I believe, and it's. Got a lot of letters, and they're putting a lot of letters together that probably don't need to go together. Like with the funny O and stuff like that? If it's wrong, sorry, dude, I don't know what to tell you. The plot, I am not responsible for this mess.

An Antarctic research site, the discovery of an alien craft, leads to a confrontation between graduate student Kate Lloyd and scientist Dr. Sander. What? What? That's the movie, really?

That's your plot synopsis? I guess they didn't want to reveal what the. It's that part of that ancient conflict between graduate students and scientists. Yeah, I don't even know if that's accurate, because I don't know that she was a graduate student. I thought she was a paleontologist, wasn't she?

I assumed she was a research student. Yeah, well... A research. Student, how do you know? There should be more action pictures about grad students.

Oh, boy. So, massive spoiler alert. As we've said previously, this is going to be an overall thing. We're mostly going to go into the 2011 version, but I think we're going to tie it to all of the filmed versions, the short story, pretty much everything else we can tie in. Sorry.

Go ahead. Here's something I have to get out of the way. This was billed as a prequel. It is absolutely not a prequel. And that really fucking annoyed me.

People would disagree with you, but... No, no. Before we even get to that, here's my main thing, before we even. Get to the story arc. Why, if you're saying it's a prequel, which they did, why would you call it The Thing?

If it's a remake, you would call it The Thing. If it's a prequel, wouldn't you give it a subtitle? The Thing Before The Thing? Thing 2? Electric Boogaloo?

The other thing. I mean, wouldn't you. The first thing. This, that, and the other thing. Yeah, see, why wouldn't you...

The new thing, you know. I don't know. Why would you not give it a title that's not the exact same thing as the movie you're claiming to lead directly into? I don't know. That bothered me more so than the movie, really, but... that's, I don't know, bad marketing.

It's just marketing. Bad marketing. It's the thing. It's a familiar title. It is.

They're looking for the proper. A lot of the young people going to see this will probably have seen Carpenter's film on cable at some point. Or they've heard of it. Or they've heard of it. They've heard the name.

And I think they thought maybe they'll get some people in there if they say it's a prequel. There might be... A different story, but of course there is not a different story. Some things are more prequel than others. Do you want to go into your stand on it, Dave, before he goes into his rant?

Or how do you guys want to structure it? Well, my stand is simple because I refuse to see it. It's not just specifically the thing. It's just this whole cycle we're in where it's nothing but remakes or nothing but adaptations of television shows. I'm at the age where I just don't have the time.

And I've seen the good ones. And I don't want to feed into it. I don't pay to see a whole lot of movies anyway. I've got too many friends in the theater business, but I just don't want to support it. I mean, I missed out on some, well, not some, probably one or two good movies.

I heard Planet of the Apes was pretty good. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes? Yeah. I heard it was pretty good. Oh, I hated that movie.

I'm glad. Other people in the city. I refuse to see it. I just don't want to support the mentality that keeps making these movies over and over. And so the thing, I heard it was a prequel.

I know some guys who worked on it, special effects guys. There's some creative work in it, but it's just, to me, looked like a straight remake of a film that I like the two previous incarnations of very much. So it didn't have anything new to offer me. So I just didn't bother. Well, I did see it, and you're exactly right.

Go ahead, Alan. I saw it. It was watchable. It was a movie? I just barely remember anything about it.

There was nothing for me to latch onto. It was like, it was watchable. It was okay. I question a few things about it, but I don't care enough to make a big deal about it because I really just, I'm, I'm trying to remember and I don't remember much about it. See, I make a big deal out of things that I don't care about.

Like I, I ranted about real steel for another thing. My wife got sick. Of me talking about it. Um, There were two major things that I don't see how anybody can see the Carpenter one, then see this one, and then honestly call it a prequel. The first thing is in Carpenter is when they come across the Norwegian station and they find the video, and they see the video of them finding the spaceship there in the circle, which was exactly like the 50s one.

And then they blew it up with thermite, and in the 2011 one, that didn't happen they you know it was way down it stayed intact and everything right the other big thing was was the ending like I was waiting for it to end because the carpenter one starts with the last Norwegian guy in the helicopter trying to shoot down to the dog and then he gets shot himself and thought what a great way to end this movie and for some reason they don't all the Norwegians are dead and the only person who survives is the Kate whatever her name is and so I'm just wondering if this is a Prequel. Well, no. Lars is still alive. No, he died, presumably. No.

Because they said they didn't kill him, and then he comes out of the room at the end. He comes out and checks the guy's fillings, and they get in the helicopter and chase the dog. You fell asleep. That's the last scene. Did you stop at the credits?

Because if you let the credits play. There's a little afterbite. You got scammed. It's like Her Majesty at the end of that Beatles album. It seems like it's over.

There's a hidden track on this one. They trick you. Well, that sucks. What about the discovery of the ship, though? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's a little off, but they've kind of called themselves out on a few little errors. That's a huge error. Well, but we don't even see most of that. Again, they skip over that part.

I guess because we've already seen it in one of the other movies, so we don't have to show that. I thought it just. Reeked of mirroring things that it shouldn't mirror uh and it's like oh well how are we going to have the you know the reenactment of the most tense scene from the carpenter one with the blood it's like we're gonna rewrite it i don't know i. Just But in a way, wouldn't you have to have that scene? You would have to have that scene.

And they killed, because again, if the story played out the way it was supposed to without the interference, they would have had that blood scene again. And they sabotage it, literally, and they find another way to do the test differently. I thought that was kind of. Clever, and definitely fits the alien storyline. But then they overdid it.

In the end, they overdid it. I thought it was kind of stupid. They do the spoiler alert well we threw it out it's like um oh you know how i knew you weren't your earring it was the other ear okay this thing replicates somebody so it can speak fucking english and knows how to drive and but it can't remember where its fucking earring was. You know that really it just that part like i like the fact that It was going on pretending like it didn't know the difference, but the fact that it reached for the wrong ear is kind of stupid. It tried to make that a dramatic moment, and it's like, well, what if he had reached for the right ear?

But she'd go, but now I'm not sure. Maybe you lost it. So I don't know. What am I going to do? And they threw in that horrible slow motion with the really dramatic music.

I hate slow motion so much. Here's a question that I have. So did it replicate the human, and the human is naked, and then they go back to the house and put clothes on? Or did it replicate the human fully clothed? Is that just a detail that.

It left out? It can't do clothes, so I mean, I guess. But how are their clothes? Yeah. But I guess that's always been an issue that we've never really gone and went into.

I just think like, okay, so you've replicated this human... And they're only gone for two minutes, but they had time to run through the house naked and go to their room and get dressed. You get really good at that after a while. But they can't remember their fucking earring. Yeah, exactly.

Which ear was it? My life could depend on this. Well, the way I live, one guy on the airplane splits open. His clothes are, or the helicopter splits open. His clothes are wrecked, but all of a sudden it was.

No, they'd go to a different guy. They never explain in, like, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers what happens to the old body. It just lays there, doesn't it? I thought that would. In the original, they did.

In the remake in the 70s, they were kind of just taking them out and throwing them in the trash. They were sneaking out. And chucking them in the trash cans. But they would just, like, stay there waiting for you in the original, I thought. With this one, I.

I alluded to it. I literally, four separate nights, tried to watch this movie every single time I fell asleep. I found it. Now, I have to watch later at night because I don't want to completely scar my children. And they're very inquisitive.

No fun. And they'll run out and see. That's where you and I disagree. That's right. And it just...

And I've mentioned it on the show before. It seems like movies are. Intentionally poorly lit. Yeah. That's true.

That and some other movies I saw, it's like, why is everything so fucking dark? This was intentional because I heard the director talking about how much they kept trying, like his, you know, DP guy was just like trying to light it normally and he wanted it dark. Because they're in Antarctica and the power was cut. They're also making a horror film ostensibly so they think scary is darker. Yeah.

And scary's gonna hide. There's nothing scary in it. Yeah. I mean, If you can't tell what's going on, you just lose interest. There are lots of.

Moments where I'm like, I can't see what that is. It's too dark. I spend a lot of the time pausing my DVD player and trying to adjust the brightness. Exactly. And my TV kind of has problems with that anyway, so I figured it was just my TV.

Well, I fiddled with it too, trying to turn it up. And since the last time I went off of it, we have a different TV, a nice TV, finally, that everything looks great in. And I started watching and I was like, fuck this. And I was squinting at things and That just makes me more tired. But I was falling asleep.

Like the action scene where it's first revealed and they run outside, which is overly dark when it's underneath the building or whatever it has. And I understand that it's supposed to be dark. You're in the Antarctic, but you've got to see a little bit more. And the CG there just seemed... extremely cartoonish yeah and I was at an action scene I fell asleep in that moment I was bored that bored with it so yeah yeah I'm more scared because I went back and watched The Thing Carpenter's The Thing and I'm more scared and I've seen that movie I don't know 15 times and I'm more scared by that movie and more The tense moments are more tense than this ever could have dreamed of them. I was going to say that the first transformation that was really dark, it turned out, in my opinion, that was a good thing because I was actually okay.

I was enjoying the movie up to the point of the transformation in the helicopter when we. See it clearly i was like oh it's a cartoon yeah well. I everything cgi is gonna look like a cartoon like it was. Bad and i'm just wondering in the original carpet one like you said it's actually scary and why not you don't need cgi and it's scarier without. You do today though that's that's one thing i was going to bring up is is the way that the studio system works now you don't get to do that anymore like very rarely yeah I mean, they were talking, again, the director and producer were talking about this one, and they're like, in the Carpenter version, you know, Bodine had, like, a year of prep time to do all those creatures, to plan everything out.

They found out they were directing this movie three months before shooting. You don't have time to do anything CG at this point. To even have someone sculpt a model of what it's going to look like. To even be able to show an actor... Here's what it's going to look like.

This is what you're responding to. Now it's just they're looking at a. Little ping pong ball on a stick. How are you supposed to respond to that? Like I said, some of the guys I know from ADI worked on this film, and they did some really creative work, but they ultimately had to kind of half and half it.

They had to build a partial suit, and the rest had to be CG. And nobody knew how it was going to fit together. And a lot of money was spent on that aspect, but If you can't see it, if you can't react to it, it does become a cartoon. You know, there's such a thing as good CG. You can see it employed very well.

And they still put a lot of time into those suits that they built. An enormous amount of time. But the studio just wants to do it because they think they're saving money. Yeah. And they're not.

They're spending a lot of money on stuff that doesn't look real. I will say, I did love the scene in the rec room where the two faces get melded together. Yeah. That's awesome. That part I thought was.

Really great with the how the guy was having the arm over the shoulder and all of a sudden just kind of detached. That sequence was pretty cool. Those are all kind of like echoes from Carpenter's movie. They took some visuals and then made some cooler things out of it. It's working backwards and realizing, okay, we have to.

And that's what I want to give him credit for, is it does not come close to what Carpenter did. But, I mean, that's one of the best movies ever, in my opinion. It's on the top of that list. So that's asking a lot anyway, but... For what they did, I kind of liked it.

I still think when you're working against the huge shadow of that, they still found a way to make it a decent companion. They really did work backwards, and if you're a big Carpenter fan, you realize, oh, that thing they find in the snow and drag back with them, that's this creature, and they found a way to make it happen. The axe in the door that he throws there, that's the axe they. Find in the door when they get there in the Carpenter version. The guy who offs himself in the chair, they worked that into the storyline.

So the fact that they found a way to work and tie the two together as well as they did, again, you can fault them for a lot. Of things, but not for half-assing it. They really did want to pay tribute to it, and maybe a little too much, I'll give you. But they did do their homework and at least try to piece together most of the stuff. I'm just wondering why they put that piece after the credits rather than right after.

I think I'm curious. It wasn't very far. It was like two credits in. I was so ready to be done with this movie. It attacks its prey.

Copies it perfectly. And then hides inside it. Waiting. Waiting. Is it still amongst us?

Could be any of us. We've got to get out of here. Yeah, right now. And you could be getting in a vehicle with it. You'd be alone.

Vulnerable. That's exactly what it wants. Not to mention you'd be giving it away out of here. Way to spread. It's like a virus.

So what do we do with any virus? Quarantine. We isolate it. And then we kill it. Yeah.

One thing I'm curious about in the thing, the way it thinks, is like it it goes way out of its way to exactly replicate somebody, so nobody suspects it. But then there's that certain point at which it's like, fuck it, I'll be as nasty as I want to be. And then it's like this spider-like fucking thing. It's like, no, I don't care anymore, fuck y'all. But you don't even know if that's it, or if that's some other creature that it replicated.

And maybe on its home planet, it's kitten you know no it could be from the planet of the kittens that can replicate other. Life forms kittens are badass you gotta watch kittens yeah. I got the impression it was just like just like well like she said it's like a virus that maybe it is just a virus that. Takes yeah and that's kind of what I think actually have a form in this movie I think that's what they went with is that that's it has no original form it is just a virus it is continually mutated I guess that's the most efficient way to attack and kill people is that form but it does just continue to mimic and do whatever it needs to wherever it goes. I just i mean i know it wasn't really like important in the context of the movie but i would have liked to have some insight i mean i know they didn't know much about the creature but why would it just replicate and kill and replicate and kill like what's the point of all that i kind of thought they were going to go somewhere when she was in the the ship and it was like a pixelated i thought it was maybe like taking DNA data from the humans that it had replicated and sending it back, but it never went into that.

I was kind of disappointed. I thought maybe it would say, like, why. The ship goes into a different area that I kind of wanted to get into. I mean, before that, as far as the why it replicates, I mean, you've got the real-world answer, but not the story world. I mean, the real-world answer is because it plays on that fear that we all, the same thing as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that you can't trust anyone.

And it works well. I mean, that's why the carpenter one is so fucking scary is because you can't trust anyone. You don't know, you know, from one minute to the next, even when you knew this person was on your side, five minutes later, he walked out of the room. Now you can't trust anyone again. So.

And that's really what Carpenter changed from the 50s. Right. Because in the 50s when you could trust, it is the nicest world. It is. Into which the thing.

Except for scientists. You can't fucking trust them. Wait, you know why? Because they haven't slept. That's right.

And they need a nap. Come on. Science gets carried away when it hasn't had its nap. If we want to veer off into the hawk's world, you can't trust them because they're not part of the military. Oh, yeah.

And I didn't realize that. I'd seen it a million years ago, but I went back and rewatched it this week, and it is so funny how pro-military it is and how, you know, the system is awesome and scientists and educated people, you know, fuck them. It's all about might. But it's kind of the exception to the 50s on the other hand. Yeah, it is.

You've got David Erston still where. You know, the military know everything. The scientists know everything. So it kind of stands out, but it's also very early. It's very...

1949, 50, right after the war. It's very Howard Hawks, too. But the story element makes much more sense in the Hawks version because the alien does have a purpose, which is to conquer. Yeah. And, you know, Keeping it from being a shapeshifter actually helps the plot, where it's a vegetable, and all it has to do to reproduce is plant itself over and over and replicate itself, and it can grow an army in a matter of days.

So it's much more efficient than just copying people and tearing them to pieces. But it doesn't play into that fear. It works better, I guess, as a normal sci-fi movie, but as the weird, creepy horror movie, it works better in the Carpenter movie. Yeah, the Carpenter movie is a horror movie. The 50s movie is a sci-fi movie.

Sci-fi. The Carpenter one is actually really, really close to who goes there. And the 50s one is absolutely not. Well, they took the basic idea, which is finding a ship out there, because it's funny that he skips that. It's like, we don't get the ship part at all.

That takes place in the 50s one, and in the prequel... But, like, you don't get that in the Carpenter version, which is the closest to the book, to the short story. So it's funny that he skips that. The 50s one may be the nicest world I've ever seen depicted in film. Everybody is so not...

And then, like, the lead guy, when he gets really angry at that woman for the prank she played on him, she doesn't look worried. No, she's not. Oh, he's all. Mad at me. Aw, isn't that cute?

You know, like, I. I looked into, after I read the short story as well, Campbell was, he was a little bit crazy. And I think he was probably paranoid as well. Yeah, which ties into the world at that point, too. Yeah, it makes you kind of look at, especially the Carpenter thing and the short story a little bit differently that he, you know, he was at the top of his game.

He was sci-fi. He was. We wouldn't have sci-fi, pretty much. Yeah, he was the editor of, like, the major magazine, you know. Yeah, and he could do whatever he wanted to, almost, at that point.

He was the editor, basically was him, and I think he became, as later, he almost intentionally pissed people off, It was the way it read. His biography read that he was paranoid, like I said, about everybody. So he may have had that constantly brewing in him that he just didn't know who everybody really was or their motives and couldn't trust them. And that's pretty early when he wrote Short Story. It was.

But it's funny that they took it out of the 50s movie when... that really became kind of overrun. It was still, I guess, a little early, but as you get into the 50s, that mistrust and you don't know who's who and who you can trust kind of thing takes over the country, basically. Well, and because sci-fi kind of became campy then and later in his career as well, and I think he probably didn't like that. He didn't, no. He was a hard science type guy.

He was actually pretty smart, I thought. He was stupid sci-fi. It was actually pretty interesting and well-written. Yeah. Actually, talking about.

One thing I actually really liked about the 2011 one is when we first meet Kate and she's doing something that... Was that the dinosaur she was. I think that was her normal job. But again, as old as this thing had been there, I guess that's what they were placing it at. She's digging up old.

Millions of years ago when this thing landed. I really liked how they were playing the Nine at Work song, Who Can It Be Now? Yeah, I noticed that. So they did make it a period film? Oh, yeah.

At least sort of, amorphously 80s. Yeah. Well, at least they did that. Yeah, I noticed that too. On the Walkman, wasn't it?

Yeah, which I thought was funny. And again, I'm not normally that big of a hardcore nerd, but I did for, again, because people like to nitpick once we get into these on this level. I wanted to check. I was like, was that out then? right truthfully it was but kate had to be pretty damn cool to be listening to it assuming she's in america or anywhere other than australia because really when it was released in 81 it was only in australia it wasn't till late 82 that it was like number one in us so that's. What i was thinking.

I'm assuming she's been around though. So i'm assuming she had a friend in australia he's like dude this band is. She might have had a dig in Australia. You know, she probably thought that Minutework was much cooler when no one else listened to it. She was into Minutework when nobody in this country had even heard of them.

I heard this band. That was really, like, the only signifying thing that this took place in the 80s. And really, I mean, you can listen to Minutework today, so it doesn't really give it away. They had the date at the beginning. Yeah.

Yeah, but it doesn't identify itself. It doesn't seem like it. But it doesn't seem now either. No. It comes off a little more timeless than I expected.

I mean, they even tried to. I think they were using older lenses. They were trying to make it look as dated as possible, but it doesn't come off massively dated. It just comes off a little generic in the middle, so that way they don't get called out for being too... I did, again, have to check nitpicky.

I was like, did they have porcelain fillings in the 82s? They did, actually. They started in the 60s, so if anybody else was wanting to be nitpicky, they weren't overrun when the industry until about the 90s, I guess, but they came up with them in the 60s. That's interesting. While we were being super nerds and calling them out for minor things.

Again, they did their homework. They were accurate on a lot more stuff than I expected going into this. Yeah. I had an interesting observation about the carpenter one, because I re-watched it the day before, and when they're doing the blood test where they're cutting themselves with the scalpel, they all use the same scalpel. So if one of them is the thing, everybody after them is going to get a little bit of the blood in them, and then everybody after them is.

And also, when he torches that one guy, after he's had this realization about the blood, all the parts being separate, then he throws. A grenade at it. Why would you do that? That's like the worst thing. Let's atomize this.

Because, you know, there's got to be some drop of blood in that thing that hasn't been burnt to a crisp just yet. And then you throw a grenade at it. I don't know. Basically, the world is doomed. I mean, I figured that the guy at the end with McCready is the thing because of the scalpel thing, if nothing else.

Mm-hmm. Well, this was the pre-8 scare, so nobody worried about it then. They were just, ah, use the same. But after the blood, but after the one incident, I would not do this. If I did the thing where I touched the blood and it went everywhere, I would not pick up the next one and hold it there in my hand.

I wouldn't do that. I don't know. I'd have grabbed the blowtorch and said, fuck you all. I would hold it at some distance, have the blowtorch, you know, but that's just me. Things like that make me a little jittery.

How many Antarctic expeditions have blowtorches hanging around everywhere? That is one they sort of called them out for. When they were up there, they were like, they really don't have blowtorches. Like, why? Other than it's so necessary for this story to happen, but.

Yeah, they were like, I don't know why anybody would have a blowtorch. In case they need to go to work on some motherfuckers with a pair of pliers. And a blowtorch. Dan's great. Charlie Barrett for you.

In case they want to make water out of ice, I can just hold it. We really need a whole lot of water. I did kind of like the cast. I thought they did get, and they did, I mean, they did get Norwegians. Like, they weren't messing around like a lot of those guys are famous actors in their own homeland we don't know who the hell they are here in norwegia in norwegia they are uh they're actually like the guy with the beard the the red hair the beard yeah he's like their big superstar like he's in norway yeah he's in a ton of movies and kind of goofy like you've seen behind the scenes he's like has the little hand alien and it's like it's his pet He's making out with it.

I thought that death, especially when they came back to it, was a little creepy. It's creepy. See, that's the thing. I think the monster stuff they did, it is stuff that they couldn't have done in the 80s. There is no way you could have one up and running around in the 80s.

And they do that here. Because that scene with the Juliet monster is fucking scary. I mean, it's whether or not you buy the CG, the basic setup of the monster and the way that it just then... I mean, it's equally as evil and hostile as the alien and the carpenter, but now it's mobile and it can, you know, run after you. When they do the autopsy on it and, you know, the...

I forget which character it is, is inside of it or being replicated inside of it. Yeah. And, you know, the face... That's probably the best... effect of the movie. I thought that was really good.

And they held on it, but that probably looked like there's a lot more practical effects. I'm sure that's all practical, more than likely. It was pretty creepy. I really didn't think the CG was that bad because I went into watching this movie thinking it was going to be awful. Yeah.

Compared to a lot of other stuff, compared to the Clash of the Titans and stuff like that, to me this is. And again, I think it's because they did the mixture. I think there is. physical stuff there when that creature is walking across the floor the basics of it are there walking across the floor they're adding in tentacles because they can't do again you can't do that in the real world but the basic creature is probably Tom Woodruff yeah Tom Woodruff in the suit yeah so it's yeah it's I mean there is somebody there actually physically moving a. Lot of the stuff in a lot of the scenes. They you know again had to CG in a lot more than they probably wanted to but For what it is.

I think it's better than a lot of other Hollywood crap out there. Yeah. It's just that we've just gotten so used to looking at spectacular stuff. And when Carpenter's film hit in 82, it really was way ahead of the curve, which is why nobody really liked it. The critics were like, oh, this is disgusting.

And it was a bomb in 82. It was a lot. Well, it was the big summer, but it was an R-rated film, and it was extremely gross for the time. But if it had been released maybe two years later, it would have been a big hit. People were used to that.

Kind of work by then. And you look at stuff like The Blair Head when it jumps off and the crab legs come out and crawls across the floor. It's still amazing. But people, really critics, Ebert, all those guys were just tearing it up because they thought it was just too gross. Ebert's an asshole anyway.

Yeah. But he had a lot of clout back then. A lot. Siskel and Ebert. It was also that they said that because it came out, what, two weeks after E.T.?

Yeah. E.T., which is the feel-good hit of E.T. And here comes the thing. And that's the alien we want is E.T. We don't want this horrible.

Bloody mess. Back in the 80s, they used to have a lot of sneak preview screenings, especially in Louisville. Louisville was considered a great middle American market test. So almost everything got snuck here. Like I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark three weeks before it came out.

I saw E.T. before it came out, and I saw The Thing before it came out, and I was like, wow. And then two weeks later, it comes out, and it's just a bomb. I'm stunned. The same thing happened. Well, they didn't sneak Blade Runner, but Blade Runner got the same kind of reception that year.

They did not like it. Just too different from what they were expecting. It's funny, because I saw online, they took a review from that point in 82, the Carpenter review, and they said you can actually replace all the references because all they do is complain about the gross effects. They said if you replace all those mentions with CG, it reads exactly the same. It reads exactly like it would be a review now with people bitching about CG.

It's the exact same complaints, only it's been how many years now? 30 years. Yeah, people still kind of have the same reactions. Now, this is one I wanted to go into, and I guess you know the Carpenter version well. Had it ever occurred to you that that wasn't its ship?

I'd never really thought. In either of the original two versions, it's always been presented, and I always assumed that that creature flying that ship came here to take over or whatever. Of course, in the. The 50s version, it's obviously the ship, but there's no reason to believe it in the Carpenter's version. In this version, the way that they spell it out is that it wasn't that creature's ship.

And it's funny, because number one, then it comes off very much like Alien. It's another creature. Carrying this creature that then gets killed by it and crash lands, and so it's very much like Alien. So we've got Prometheus pulling the same... Which is.

Falling into the same category as the thing. Trying to prequel and readdress the story and explain things that maybe you don't need explained. But then it also, to go from one extreme to the other, it's kind of like Alien in that respect. The other extreme is, it's kind of like Creature, because the way that they envisioned it is it was a fact-finding, specimen-gathering ship, and it gathered. This one, and it obviously went horribly wrong.

So... But in the ship, originally, they were planning on shooting a segment in the beginning when they find it where they also go inside, and there were all these different, like, capsules or whatever where they had different specimens in it, and they rightfully took that out because I think it would kind of kill the big finale if we already went in the ship. But, yeah, they don't go into that, but that was their plan, and that's still how they see it in this version is that it was never that creature's ship. It just... got aboard and killed them and then ended up here and decided to conquer us too. Why in the hell not?

Would it be a better film if Klaus Kinski would have shown up? Always. Stumbled in, groped the creature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of quasi-raping women and then eating a sandwich and then disappearing.

Yeah. That's, that's, yeah. How could that make it worse, really? I mean, it's got to improve it. Klaus is a really good condiment.

You can put him in anything and he really improves it. I love Klaus. He's, he's, yeah. He's a special. He's in his own little category.

Nothing could improve Creature. I'm sorry. It can't go anywhere but up. I don't know. For me, the story just didn't find an angle that really renewed.

It didn't give me anything to hang on to that's going to be memorable. I mean, a week after I watched it, I barely remember any of it. Right. I remember. I didn't even remember it being dark because I just didn't care anymore.

But I saw it right after I saw Thor. Which is just a closet fest. It's like you're looking at shirts and shit on hangers in a closet. What the fuck is in here? I can't tell.

And I don't care. I don't know. And I watched it and it was super dark and... And, you know, it could follow the story, but the story doesn't have an angle that relates whatever it's supposed to be about to something that I might actually remember because I, you know, I'm actually interested in it. It's been a couple of years since I've seen the original thing, but I think my biggest problem with this movie is that it didn't really present any new information so much.

You know, like... couple of new things were discovered, but for the most part, it was basically like the same movie, but not as good set beforehand. Yeah, I can get on board with that. As much as I thought it was okay and liked it, I will say it doesn't feel massively original. It explains a few things, but it also follows a lot of the beats of the original. I think the thing that I have, and I don't necessarily want more information, the I always default back to Star Wars.

The problem with the prequels, no matter how good they could have been, is it's explaining the things that we really don't want to ever explain. We have a better story in our brain of what happened than Lucas could have ever put on film. Same thing with this one. The horror in Carpenter's version of what happened at this camp what would drive this guy to take himself out or what, you know, everything. That story was scarier and better not knowing what happened.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, as much as this movie is almost kind of pointless because it didn't present anything new, but I do like in the original, or the John Carpenter version, I guess, which technically isn't the original, but, you know, where you walk into the scene and the scene is so horrible because you have no idea what's going on. If you knew why everybody did that, then it's almost justified. It's not really... It loses the effect.

It violates one of the basic laws of filmmaking, which is get into the scene as late as possible. That keeps everybody's interest flowing. You don't have to have a lot of backstory to make a story move. All of these prequel things are doing the opposite of what you should be doing. You know where your destination is.

You've already seen it. So. For me, it could be good disposable entertainment, which I think is the way you look at it. I mean, I look at the first AVP that way. I'm easier on that movie than a lot of people because it's a couple monsters fighting.

It's okay. Yeah, as long as you don't go into the second one. No, no. The first one's a lot of fun. The second one, yeah, where the pizza delivery boy saves the earth.

The first one feels like a video game. It feels like a B-movie monster. Yeah. I kind of take it as WWF. Like, man, wouldn't it be cool if we took this guy and put this guy together and let him fight?

They do it pretty well. Yeah, and that's what that is. Let's just throw him in there. A lot of people hated it, but I enjoyed it. I do remember that the movie begins with a joke.

They're telling the joke about the kid who walks in on his parents having sex. I don't know. I'm from a school of thought. If you're going to open a movie with some dialogue, it wants to go somewhere or have some connectivity to something. But it's just an old joke I've heard before.

And why are they telling it in the movie? It doesn't relate to anything. I think it's just character building. And I'll give them, I buy those guys. I buy those performances.

Whether or not it meant anything to the story, I do like that cast. I do buy the Norwegian guys. Yeah, I totally buy the Norwegian guys. The American guys seem like half of them have worked in this country and other stuff. The one guy is in NCIS now or something.

Yeah. Those are just kind of normal actors, but the Norwegian guy's like, I totally buy them in those roles. Wasn't the American guy from one of those National Lampoon movies, which is the one with Ryan Reynolds? Oh, the blonde-headed guy? Yeah.

I think that's the one that's on NCIS now. Van something? Van Wilder. Van Wilder. I'm pretty sure that guy's in Van Wilder.

I saw the other day, the TV was on for a minute, And I saw Fez from that 70s show as a detective working alongside the guy from Goodfellas. Just stop watching if Fez isn't there. It was just so weird to see that. Fez is a douche. But I don't know.

In the real world, that guy is kind of a jackass. If you go back and you watch the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and they're just having casual conversation. It's a divorced doctor, and he's talking to this girl, and you're, And they're just sort of flirting and talking. But that dialogue has the kernel of what the whole fucking movie is about, just embedded in it. And it's not, you know, like, you know, we're starting a movie, here are some guys, they're telling a joke you've heard, and it has nothing to do with anything.

It's thematic. Then you have to write off, like, everything Tarantino's ever done. Because all he does is useless dialogue, and then they kill some people, but. I like it, but I'm just saying it never really plays into the plot. That's true.

Okay, that is true, but that's different. It's part of what his whole thing is. It's all about reference. It is. But at the same time, you can't compare that dialogue to Tarantino either.

No. Because Tarantino is doing a kind of credible minutia that's striking and original and nobody else can do. It is. I'm just saying thematically. Yeah, yeah.

You had writers working in the golden era who their sole reference weren't just movies. You've got screenwriters. All they know is TV and movies, and they just ape what they've seen. It just keeps losing layers. In The Thing from Another World, he references, what, Sergeant York?

He references another movie as to what to do in this scene. Exactly. It's one of the shining things about the first film is just that dialogue's priceless. The way they're delivering it is because actors are talking over each other just like real people do. which is a hallmark of what Howard Hawks did back then. You believe all those guys.

They're very well drawn. I heard the title of that Heinlein movie in the original, in the 50s version. He said, oh, well, this alien thing, it's a stranger in a strange land. Got to work your records. That's funny.

But see, that movie didn't have dialogue that was all that thematic either, but it did present a striking world that had a bizarre quality to it. I mean, that was a world that if you lived in it, and I've never lived in that world where people are that damn nice, and the one guy says, oh, he's getting kind of creeped out in there watching that thing. Maybe we can. how nice are these people? Isn't this the military? They're super naturally nice.

We'll cut those watches out. Yeah. Well, and even the scientist, he's just grumpy and he looks like, like Malfoy in like stage age makeup. Um, he does. And, but I don't know.

It's just so weird that it's this, the world has unified quality to it. Um, and although the, the dialogue isn't all that thematic, it's, It's striking. It's something. And for me, the 2011, it just doesn't have any of those things. It doesn't have dialogue that somehow goes to the theme.

It doesn't have dialogue that's just like fun in and of itself, even though it isn't thematically connected. And it doesn't really present a world that's striking to me. It's believable. As the world, but you can look out a window and see that. I think it's because it's not their world.

I mean, if you're coming into someone, they have to make it match the Carpenter version is the way that they took on this project. So all they're doing is sort of stealing from someone else's world, which there's not a lot of fun in that. So you probably don't put a lot of passion. There's not the same kind of inspiration. Yeah. that there is.

Carpenter's version just kind of takes that 50s world and turns it completely around where these guys all kind of hate each other. Everybody hates each other. They've been fed up and stuck with each other forever. They're all really just ticked off. They all hate each other.

Well, I mean, not really, but then they all get paranoid and love each other. And the Carpenter one is the only one with no women in it. The computer chess game is the only trace of feminine. And he kills her. Which I thought That's the thing.

I did want to give credit to Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I thought she actually does a good job. Again, there's other issues at work, but I don't think the acting's it. I think she ends up... Because again, I was like, when they started coming up with this idea two years ago, we mentioned it on the show.

It was like, oh God, why would they do this? And they kept changing the story and who was going to be the lead. So going with her, I guess... gets him out of that trying not to make a McReady thing. I mean, how can you try to, I mean, he's become like this huge iconic character in horror and in sci-fi and, you know, Carpenter's World in general. So, trying to recast what essentially is that, I mean, the best you can do is go 180 and bring in, which she becomes his character, basically.

She, I mean, neither of them set out to be in charge, but when it becomes time, they step up and are like, screw it, this is how it's going to go down. I think she does a convincing job. I think she's actually really good in this movie. Speaking of in charge, I did like that line when he goes, I guess she's in charge now. I thought that was well done.

They have moments. I also like the fact where they don't, Like, they will use the fact that they don't speak their language against them, and they'll be talking amongst themselves. Once they've separated, because that's kind of the best part of that test scene, is then it's like half and half. Like, half the room is over here, half of it is over here. These guys are, like, speaking Norwegian, and they don't know what the hell they're saying.

So it really adds to that mistrust. There's moments where it does stuff right, but again, I think what you're saying is true as well. There isn't enough originality, and maybe it is because... All they're doing is vamping someone else's world. They're just kind of living off of someone else's basic world that they created.

They're playing on a set that somebody else built. So you're saying they've replicated. It doesn't look quite the same as the original. It looks the same and acts the same, but there's something missing. Mm-hmm.

See, I think most, and you kept falling asleep, so I guess you disagree. I thought the tension in the scenes kind of worked. You didn't like that. I think, again, I'll give you the dialogue is not memorable. It doesn't create that.

The characters aren't quite the same. Aside from the Norwegians, those guys are pretty good. But I think, you know, Kate and the Norwegians are pretty good. The other guys, the scientist guys, are useless, interchangeable characters, you know, whatever. But, yeah, I still think that the scenes with the monsters, what they do with it is pretty damn entertaining It steps up what they couldn't do in the 80s and lets you have this window into what if we could do more stuff back when they were doing this awesome real physical work.

So it changes it. It's not near as good, but I still found it entertaining and kind of liked what they did right in the movie. I just thought the creature stuff, it was too much in this movie. In the Carpenter one, it was kind of minimal probably because with the practical effects, it couldn't do as much. That was what made it more scary with this one.

It was just so much that it wasn't scary, especially the climax on the ship where you just had this big cartoon monster. That's probably the worst looking one is that one. And that's why I didn't sit through the credits because by the end of that, I was like, okay. You were yelling at your wife. I was yelling at my wife.

I was. It was so bad, I yelled at my wife. That's on the poster. Oh, God. I was yelling at her about stupid things, too.

She heard when they started celebrating, the guy brought out his ukulele and started singing, and she started yelling down at me, like, oh, it sounds like they're having a really great time in there. Yeah, some baritone ukulele, wasn't it? Yeah, I noticed that. So we were just kind of yelling at each other. She was just kind of listening in.

Again, that's a Norwegian song that was popular. on the radio in the 80s they really did yeah it was some sort of weird like american idol show in norwegia in the 80s and they they uh they that they asked those guys again those guys are all actually from there and they were like what was a popular song in the 80s because we need to you know they came up with this idea to just start working in the song in the middle of the scene and they were like oh this was like huge at that point so That is actually a song. Do you know what the show is called in Norwegian? We can find out. I don't have it on me. Because I heard this great story about a version in Poland is so nice.

It's kind of like the 50s world. The thing from another world. The thing from Poland. Their version of So You Think You Can Dance is called You Can Dance. Laughter It's called Dance As If No One's Watching.

I found myself wondering if Norwegians actually burst into song in celebration, or if, as Americans, because we have movies where the British do that as well, or if the Europeans actually do that, or if Americans just think they do, because they're weird in European movies. Well, they also seemingly drank every night after the shoot, so at that point they probably do burst into song all the time. Just drinking all night long. Americans in bars don't burst into song. That's because we're bitter and angry.

That's how our country works. It's our sad, pathetic attempt to be socialist European countries. You know, when Dylan's Hard Rain came out, people thought it was about nuclear holocaust. But if you look back at history now, it's clear that it predicts the invention of karaoke. oh lord i don't know i miss women in the carpenter one i just don't care that much about a world that doesn't have chicks in it that's why. I thought that was an interesting addition to this one since it's still set in the same place the same time that they still found a way to work a couple in there although it it makes it really weird in the 50s version it seems a little too at home like everybody's like you know they're just talking about going out on a date and They're having lunch, and it doesn't feel like they're isolated.

It really just feels like they walked in. Yeah, a lot more traffic in the Antarctic back then. Oh, and it has that officer's club feel. Yeah, definitely. It's so cozy, and the rooms are huge.

And their version of a journalist who's trying to get a story, he says, I've got to get a story somewhere. Yeah, there's something about that movie that just really... Well, it was funny that way, and it didn't seem to reflect... I mean, there are no black people, or there's no. But it.

A. Black person wouldn't... I mean, this is extremely stereotypical, but there's one in the new version. I was going to say, there was one. There are a couple of guys.

They wouldn't go to the Antarctic. They'd say, fuck you, I'm not going there. Most of the time, completely stereotypically, Most. Of us would say that too. Like, let's go climb rocks on a cliff for fun.

And black guys are like, fuck you. Only white people do stupid stuff like, let's go rock climbing, let's go camping, let's go, you know. You know, one thing. Go ahead. One thing I noticed that was really funny, he was like, lars hans whatever the fuck your name is go out to the whatever in the freezing cold in the middle of the fucking night in antarctica and get this for me just because i said so and the guy's like okay i would be like fuck you get it yourself are your legs broken are you kidding.

Me because they're gonna be and like in frozen they go out within a storm without. A hood on yeah she just kind of runs out in a sweater i mean i realized it was a I don't know. It was kind of a panic. She was in a hurry. Maybe she just wasn't feeling well.

I don't know anything about the actual temperature of the Antarctic, but wouldn't you pretty much die instantly if you ran out? It wouldn't take long. Probably. That reminds me of one of the things I did want to mention that I really liked. Lars, for one, that guy's awesome.

But again, the regions and Kate. The Lars and Kate relationship is really well done. I wish the rest of the stuff was... Because they don't even speak the same language, so they never really have any communication other than... There's this non-verbal partnership that they have.

That whole middle section of the movie is them against everybody else. They immediately realize... We're okay. We don't trust the rest of these people. And then she starts coming up with plans.

He becomes the bodyguard for her. That relationship is really awesome until he gets kind of taken out of the mix. But yeah, that was one of my favorite parts of it. And again, I wish more of the relationship stuff with the rest of the Americans was as well put together as Lars and Cade. I did like that part.

When he's exonerated, he just kind of suddenly... Shifts over to his side, to her side, and. Points the flamethrower at everybody. And, like, the scene with the helicopter pilots in that room, he is just in their face with it, and for no reason, like, he just met this girl, like, a day ago, but he is this weird situation has thrown them together and he has her back regardless. You just think she's hard.

She's the only woman he's seen in two years. Exactly. You would naturally tend to do that. That's why they wouldn't send women into that world anyway is because they're victims at that point if the guys go crazy in the middle of the night. As they say, try to wrap up your business quickly.

You do not want to be stranded with much of Norwegian. That's true. That's the thing with her. I mean... she's still like, and they even gave her credit for not worrying about being pretty all the time. She's, you know, you haven't slept in two days, you're stuck in the middle of Antarctica, you're fighting a monster.

But, yeah, then I, like, later just clicked on something for the movie and it brought up a picture of her at, like, the premiere. I didn't recognize her. Like, Jesus, she looks totally different when she's, like, all girlied up. She's, yeah. Yeah.

In the 50s one, like, when a man and a woman are alone together and they've had some sort of physical thing, she's going, it just seems so comfortable. Yeah. And even when one ties the other up. In the 50s. Yeah.

I was like, is it okay to be working in the bondage angle here in 1951? Is it really? Yeah. Pushing a slip stop. Yeah, he's a sneaky guy.

It takes her a long time to notice as well. Yeah, I was like, he's not going to. I was like, aren't you paying attention? It is funny, though, if you actually watch the 2011 as a prequel. And then you start to watch the John Carpenter, okay, the thing has been out, and has been hideous, and I'm just going to be a dog for a while, and.

Walk around, take my time. Everybody likes dogs. You can work yourself right. And it becomes very far side cartoon funny, because you've got the whole weight of the other movie behind it, and then you've just got this dog. It's It works for it when it lays low, doesn't it?

It works as a better bad guy, a smarter bad guy, if it lays low. It reveals itself an awful lot. The psychology becomes very funny when you've had it. It's the thing. No, no.

I'm going to be a dog for a while. That's what was confusing to me. Like I said, it's been a while since I've seen the John Carpenter version, but wasn't it a dog for, like, a really long time? Yeah, quite a while. It's a dog just trotting around for quite a while.

But the second that it's, when it's, like, in human form and it's alone with the people, it's like, I'm going to eat you. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. Well, it's hard to know what a thing is thinking. I love that shot in the Carpenter when.

When the dog kind of peers around the corner, then just kind of walks down the hall, and. You see the shadow, and the dog stops and just goes and fades away. It reminds me of that movie where Lassie. Kills a dog. I just realized I'm not going to feel the same going home to my dogs.

I asked mine if they were things earlier. I remember. I just checked their fillings. I checked her fillings. I told you that one brushes a lot, so you can't trust her.

She's perfectly straight. I just pierced my dog's ear. so she can't remember i. Mean actually if you're if you come home and your dog has no collar then i mean because how can it put a collar on itself it. Can transform it can turn the tentacles put it. On that's right it's it's a craft it can be all in between we know this it's sometimes it's all dog but if it chooses to it can have like the two meshed faces.

If you catch it in the middle of the transformation, it's all kinds of crazy shit. Once it bursts out and is like, can it go back to being just a dog? That was the exact noise from the movie. It can, because then later, in this movie, we do see him go from monster back into human form. Continue on.

I couldn't remember. I wish you could go back and edit in Merlina doing the bob. Oh, you can. That's what YouTube's for. That would be great.

If somebody wants to work on that project, get on it. The one thing they will, and I guess this is a good tie-in between the 50s and the 2011, is that the 50s did one of the first body burns. It does a really good scene where they set the. Creature on fire. And they're just slinging the kerosene everywhere.

It's just, yeah. That was so great. It was so stupid. And they give the girl a bucket of kerosene. We got a bucket of kerosene.

You just stand over here. But they really did it. That's what's cool. They don't rely on CG back then. Those mattresses are good shields for fire.

They're flame retardant. They did a lot of... a lot of firework in this new one. Like, as much as they CG'd some of it, they lit a lot of people on fire. In this movie. That's good.

It's always a mark of a good picture. With guys on fire. They did a good job with a lot of the firework. I'll give them that. Back to... voices or something was it you friend posted a clip from beauty and the beast where someone's dubbing hey girl hey girl oh yeah.

That was the bitchy version of beauty and the. Beast let's try bitch that. Was really funny in places. I mean it wasn't like yeah really funny but they're. Kind of like uh have you seen Donna's tits?

Don't they look real? It was pretty funny. I mean, it wasn't laugh out loud all the way through, but if you stuck with it, it had its moments. It did have its moments, yeah. I agree.

Disney guys, those are weird characters. It was like a very flamboyantly gay man. And he could actually sing, and he'd done summer stuff in Cape Cod or something. He could sing, and he sang this bitchy version of of Belle going around the little French town and just... Nice.

Yeah. Okay, sorry. In the new thing, was anybody. Else bothered by the fact that she cut the transmission to the vehicles and then later on they just kind of jump in and go off? I was thinking at the time, isn't there a better way to do that?

Well, I thought, wasn't he putting it back together? But, like, if it was that easy, what's the fucking point? Yeah, pretty much. That's what I was like, can't you just, like, take the, you know, spark plugs out or something? I mean, isn't there a better, easier way to fix it later without cutting everything?

No. I don't know. Well, I mean, if you're going to cut it and then it's so easy to fix it, then what's the point of cutting it? Yeah. Yeah.

But, I mean, you can't totally destroy it, because, again, they're planning on somewhere down the line. Hopefully they were planning on getting out. Well, on that note, that's something I really liked about the Carpenter one, was he said, none of us. Are getting out of here alive, so let's make damn sure it doesn't either. They understood it was important not to.

Yeah, which she actually says, too. She's just like, we can't let this... Again, they were assuming they were going to beat it, where, like, Kurt Russell's just like, fuck it, we'll all die, as long as he does, too, so... Again, it's a very Carpenter, grim, 80s-looking thing. He's not known for his happy, upbeat movies.

One thing that I liked was the humanity of these people. If you've been isolated for so long, I would think you kind of forget that the rest of the world exists. You'd kind of be like, whatever, get the fuck out of here. Don't bother me. You're in Antarctica.

Why do you care? Which, again, they all kind of did. She was the voice of reason. Yeah, I thought it was really... Interesting that they, I mean, I guess her pushing it, they were so like... we'd rather die than let this thing infect humanity it wasn't like every man for themselves kind of thing it was like let's work together to beat this save.

Everybody else so i said to my son we watched the 2011 one together and i said you know that's probably really what humanity needs is an enemy from the outside. That's the only. Way we will all unite is to have an enemy outside. And that will be the thing that unites us. And he says, well, how is that better? how is that better than us just, you know, fighting each other?

And I said, it's not. We, as a species, need to fight something. I mean, what do you think 9-11 was for America? We just need something to fight. Yeah, we blew through all that goodwill.

Wait, but the thing, though, you'll get the people who are like, we need to destroy it, and then the scientists, the scientifically minded people are like, no, we need to study it. Then there's There's going to have rights for the alien. And that's why I still think Huck Finn is like the fantasy figure that is most truly American because he's a kid who feels guilty, yet he's innocent. And he's our fantasy because we're guilty and we feel innocent. That's America.

Yeah, that's us. Oh. But now that we have anything else before we wrap this thing. Up, I wanted to bring up something that's, that's geeky. And I don't even know who I talk about it, but.

Since we're talking about check the date on porcelain fillings, okay, you can't get any more nitpicky. No, this is, I don't know the, the Norwegian pop songs. It's a pretty good job. No, this is a, this is a tangent. And again, I'm going towards star Wars, but we're, we talk about prequels and this one's a quasi prequel.

Here we go. Um, And I guess because it's timely. I've seen this in a couple of places now on the Internet. I don't know if anybody else has seen this yet. They've revealed some genius came up with the right way to watch the Star Wars films so that they're actually good.

I just heard this on the show that you posted the other day. Oh, yeah, that's on there. So I didn't want to steal theirs, but if you think it's worth it. Theirs was stolen from a couple. Of other people that have all the references.

Okay, okay. Yeah, we'll steal this from another podcast. Do you want to. I say we wrap up the thing and you can round it out with that. Because that's its own...

It's pretty cool. I was going to bring it up and see if you'd heard him go into it too. I say we come back to that. The other thing I was going to do to wrap up, I was going to say, number one, I do like, and this only works if you go through the credits, I do like that they do perfectly tie it in. They have their entire own theme the rest of the movie and they they have a pretty impressive well put together you know theme but at the end when you get to that credit scene the carpenter theme kicks in And you see him get into the helicopter, and you're following him.

Into the movie. Thumping bass. Yeah, you're following that. That was kind of at the beginning of the movie, too, though. They worked in that little thumping heartbeat kind of noise, but the whole middle portion, they have their own theme, which is pretty good.

I was listening to some of it. They brought in that sort of thumping synthesizer. The most Carpenter theme I've ever heard that he didn't write. That's more Coney, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good score. But they tie it in with that scene, and it leads right into the helicopter and right into the next movie. So if you buy it as a prequel, they do a really good job of gearing you up and leading right into it with that theme, especially because that theme is fucking awesome. If they wanted you to watch it under the credits, they needed to make it better. Well, there are a lot of things about the storyline and the plot elements that they piece together.

But there's something about the psychology in the way the thing behaves and just the way people behave that really is disconnected between the two of them. It doesn't necessarily, like we said earlier, it doesn't make sense exactly. It makes sense within the context of the movie for it to be creepy and hide and look like everybody else. But within the story, it's like, If it can just be that monster. And run around and take over, wouldn't it just take over the whole place at once?

Like, why even bother? Like, it's pretty damn powerful. If you can grab a couple of people, make a couple more of those monsters, wouldn't you overrun it in, like, 15 minutes? No. Then you wouldn't have a movie.

Yeah. In a way, it's only for the sake of the movie that they work that aspect in. If you want to go into the psychology of the monster, it doesn't necessarily make sense. Maybe it needs, like, some time to recharge or something. We don't really know the inner.

Workings of the thing. That's true. Mm-hmm. But I don't know, that always occurs to me. Like when we watch the creature from the Black Lagoon, it's like, why would he be there at the edge of the thing with his hand up?

What's he doing? He's trying to find that girl up there. Where's he got that hand up? Can he see out of it? Where's that hot.

Human chick at? She looks pretty good. It is funny, like other species do like our women. That's the weird thing. That's why you can't trust this thing from outer space.

It doesn't want to mate with anybody. It just wants to take them over. It doesn't want to have sex. Yeah, but it doesn't get off on it. What kind of sex is that if you don't get.

Off on it? That's why I don't trust the thing. He doesn't want to mate with our women. That's what you come to this planet for. You don't know with the thing whether it's nude or not.

You can't tell what some of that stuff is. Plus, he discards the clothing and everything, you know. I know. Much like showgirls, after a while, if you don't care that they're naked anymore, it just takes all the fun out. Of it.

Maybe the thing likes dudes. Maybe it's female. Yeah. Well, either way, but he doesn't seem like he cares about them either. He just kills and mates with their face indiscriminately of whoever it is.

Again, it doesn't look like it's enjoying it. It's going to be my. Next Valentine's Day card. I want to mate with your face. We should go.

Ahead and start making those up now and selling. Them for February. That would be a great Valentine's movie meltdown shirt. Get to work on it. Somebody start sending in the money.

Oh, man. Speaking of things, we were out walking the other day, and we saw, I think they're Japanese beetles. They're just having a damn orgy. All of them were locked together and crawling around. And they're going to take over.

You just wait. So the last thing I wanted to round it out with, and this leads me to two different questions. Number one, so in this one, Kate sort of survives, right? What do we think happens to her? Amelia Earhart.

She finds the lost Amelia Earhart and they have another buddy pictured again? Yeah. Maybe she goes to the Russians and there could be a sequel. That's what I was going to say. Because initially you're like, oh, she's just going to freeze like in the other movie.

But no, he specifically brings up the fact that there's now, because all right, we've had the American base. We've got the Norwegian base. So now, yeah, he also brings up that there's a Russian base within driving distance. So I think now we can have a prequel, old movie, sequel, and you can work in a whole other, or like a timeline alternate, like same day as the Carpenter one going on. Because that's the thing, all this, then they went into the timeline, and they also have to figure out where Kate's at because she can't run into any of the other characters.

If she gets back to that base too soon, she'll run into Lars before he leaves for the helicopter. Right. If she waits too long, she'll run into Kurt Russell and the rest of the guys. So it's like she's got to time it just right to not fuck up the next movie. So did the Carpenter one have the worst radio communications?

Because it seemed like. In the 50s they could get messages that were broken up and sort of late. But in the Carpenter one, it was the guy who was named Windows Figures. And he was like, I can't get anything on this thing. He couldn't get, like, they never got a message through.

They'd been dead for weeks or something is what he said. And is that, do you think that's why they named it Windows? The software was maybe named after this movie? Yeah. Yeah.

Uh the the point of their the initial point of their science expedition was to study like glacier patterns right. Something like that which one the one there i think it was that one yeah because the american one's just like a radio base or something wouldn't it yeah it was just gathering information i mean. Science equipment in general i would assume i mean from what i know is pretty specific you know you're not gonna like You're in the Arctic. You didn't fly in this girl in an entirely new laboratory. You're not going to have the stuff to study this.

It just didn't make a lot of sense to me. I just want her to thaw it out for them. That's what he said. They just wanted a girl up there, really. Find somebody who's a grad student and a chick.

I mean, couldn't... Any regular person thaw a creature? Don't they have a microwave? It's 82. They had microwaves.

No, but her graduate thesis on thawing had caught their attention. There you go. Can you hire, like, a Maytag repairman to do this? Do you really need a graduate student? I think you just get the electric blanket from the.

I think her thesis was thawing undead creatures and underground Australian music. I think that was her areas of expertise. I mean, because that would make sense, but then. All they did was, like. sit the ice block in the room. Yeah it was very oh they drilled they drilled and she fucking told him.

Not to she didn't have anything to do with that. That's what pissed it off it would have just laid there and taken a nap but they were like to fucking stab me while i'm trying to. So what were the guys doing there in the carpenter one I mean, I know that Kurt Russell was a helicopter pilot. It's just kind of a permanent base. It's just a base.

It's a McMurdo base. Because they didn't really seem to have a lot of scientific wonder when they were looking at the thing. It's this thing, and they were looking at it like, newman in basic instinct looking at a vagina they just look sort of like sweaty yeah. Well that's i mean that's something that is kind of interesting and i guess that's why people like that carpenter version so much is it's just blue collar guys it's just it's same thing as alien it's it's blue collar guys thrown into the middle of a situation they're not prepared for and this is how they deal with it where these are And I guess that's why we get the big scientific scene of, you know, all we had was Wilford Brimley the first time to tell.

Us what the hell was going on. Yeah, he's just the doc. He's the doc. But this one, I mean, we've got the guy cutting him open, telling you how it's, you know, mimicking this thing. And she's looking through the microscope, seeing how, you know, the cells are taking over.

So, I mean, it's definitely more scientific. Pac-Man. Pac-Man's awesome, and we all know it. If the 80s taught us nothing, it's that Pac-Man's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, it definitely takes a different angle. That was a very good microscope, by the way. Hell yeah. That was an exceptionally good microscope. They've got a lab.

To look at that. And I don't know. I don't know. And I don't like, there was a, when you talk about all the scientific jargon they're using, there was so much telling. And that's when I'm, that's when I fall asleep is times like that.

I'm like, I don't need you to explain this. I don't want you to explain it. Just get to the good stuff. Have a conversation, but don't, you know, hear class and get out his pointer or whatever. Yeah, but we're dumb.

I know. Well, literally, I think that's some of why they did that is because they were assuming this is sort of a prequel, but at the same time, this truthfully does work without having seen the other ones, so... You do almost have to explain things to these new... Again, a whole new batch of kids. Or at least they feel they have to explain things.

Again, you really don't. That's the big problem with producers. Because the Carpenter version does it, and the first time through, we all made it through just fine and understood it. So you don't have to. But now, again, the industry, what it is now, they feel like they have to explain it to dumb kids who haven't seen the previous one.

Tell that to the people who made Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Seriously. I mean, I like the movie, but my boyfriend was talking about it this morning. He's like, you know... If you think about it, and he saw this synopsis of why it was not a good movie, because in the book, most people lose interest because it's like 40 pages of Swedish economics, which explains why the guy that they hate in the movie is a bad guy.

They skip that in the movie, and then at the end, she's like, trying to take this guy down, but they never explained why he's bad, so it kind of just seems like a bitch. She's just an evil businessman. Yeah, but by the end, she's a rich bitch, and that's really all that matters. Yeah, basically, I think in a movie, you can just assume a businessman is evil. Does he have a tie on?

All you have to do is say corporation, and it's like evil. The ultimate evil in most movies. But then he's working for them. The Wenger Corporation, which are the good guys. Except, no, no, no, they're all Nazis.

Oh, wait a minute. Wenger Corporation. Wait a minute. That reminds me. There's a story.

I think, like, this month, scientists have managed to create, like, a life that replicates itself. Is it the Wenger Corporation? Institute. It's something like that. This story's going around now.

They've got a strand of DNA they wrote. So the thing is being created and it's replicated and they've tried it many times before and this time it worked. So when we don't get killed off by a zombie outbreak it will be the thing outbreak instead. It's one or the other at this point. Cool.

Can Gwyneth Paltrow be the one to die first? Let's hope so. Sorry Gwyneth. That was mean. And after she's been on the show.

Oh, wait, no. She's a future guest. She's coming on later. Yes. We didn't mean it, Gwyneth.

We're just kidding. I do want to make a quick note of something. Just coincidentally, I discovered this past week, so it was really appropriate. I started watching The X-Files recently. I've never seen it before.

Ah! Oh wow you got to the episode so. I got to episode nine i was five minutes and. I was like wait. Chris carter calls himself out he's just like yeah this is my thing like.

I read about it after i watched it and it was intentionally based on who goes there the character campbell after john cam was like yeah that's pretty cool and really timely. Yeah, that's what I thought was fun, is if he just ripped it off, that's bad. But if he calls himself out, I'm okay with it. Like, feel free to rip other people off and own up to it. That's fine, because Hollywood does it all the time.

They just lie about it usually. I love David Duchovny. Does anybody else notice that, like, in the early 90s, he sounds like Gene Wilder? He doesn't look like him. No, but it's really distracting.

I've got to close my eyes to imagine that, but it could be. I told a friend about it who told me to watch the X-Files, and I showed him, and he said, Yeah, it does sound like Gene Wilder. I'm now picturing Gene Wilder in Californication, and this is really scary. Please, stop sleeping with those young girls, Gene Wilder. Or Gene Wilder.

And David Duchovny. Or Gene Wilder and Dragon Twin Peaks. That might be hot. Wait a minute. How many episodes is it before Scully smiles?

78. Is it? It's well into the... It's pretty far in. That was actually one of my criticisms.

I would text my friend all the time, like, Gillian Anderson has cold, dead, emotionless eyes, and it's getting a little better with each episode. Oh, man, I could. Just watch her all day. See, you said it the way I love it, and I wish that was her name. I don't think she pronounces it that way.

I think she says it Gillian, and I was so let down when I heard that. Because Gillian is an awesome name, I think she pronounces it Gillian, and I was so sad. That's so normal. It's lame. It's so funny, because Emily Deschanel's character on Bones is so... wannabe Scully.

She's so dry and emotionless. Early on, her character is really cool, but Later, she's seen so much shit, and she still doesn't believe it. That's what doesn't make sense. She just seems dense. Yeah.

She just starts to seem stupid. I mean, if you want to call out a show, call out Fringe, because it's exactly the same show. Which I think they acknowledge it, too. They're just like, well, that show's over. Let's make a new one.

So eventually, she's got stuff implanted in her neck. She's been probed by aliens and shit. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's OK. I'm making it up.

OK. Don't worry. Even within the context of the show, they changed their own story about 12 times. So get ready for that. You're not going to ruin anything.

No, you can't. To hear zero spoilers over the years. You can't ruin it. Yeah, no, there's no way. It's still, it's good up, well.

Up to the movie. You'll know when it. Jumps the chart. Up to the movie. Yeah.

The movie's good, and then after that, it starts steadily down the hill. I don't know, in the end, they keep trying to wrap it up, but there's so much repressed emotion longing between the two of them. They're looking at all the weird stuff in the world, but the thing they don't understand is that they should fall in love. The only way to really have wrapped it up with a movie would be porn. Which there is.

That's the only way. Just go looking for it. There's an X-Files porn. And the thing is, they both look frighteningly close. It's kind of scary.

So if you've got a Jillian thing going on, go find that X-Files porn. Well, you know, she's interesting because... She's really. Beautiful sometimes, but sometimes. She's very troll-like and ugly, and you can't really tell when it shifts.

She's wearing that overcoat, and sometimes she's so beautiful, and then it's like, wait, she's fugly. What's going on? When she starts yelling at people, it's really fucking hot. Yeah. In the movie, when she starts barking orders at those people behind, when they have the bombs in the building, oh shit, that is hot.

It just makes her really interesting to watch. You know, unlike many people in movies who are just, you know. It's the lighting. Yeah. Which is the difference between lady, can I buy you a drink?

And lady, can I call you a. Cat? And the same thing, the same relationship, is on Castle now. Yeah, it is. It's in all of those.

It's like the professionalism, science, or police relationship. The witty, fun believer. The mentalist is Castle. It's the exact same show, only he's got a different job. But basically the dynamic is exactly the same.

So now we're veered off into TV talk. We're just not good at thinking of new dynamics. They throw a lot of literary references into it because he's a writer. And so you get references from other shows. You get references from other books.

Even great works of art, they'll throw things in. It's fun. It's smarter than most crappy mainstream TV shows. And they just gloss over it. They'll throw you a couple of things and you won't even miss it.

It's still pretty mainstream, but Nathan Fillion makes up for it. He's fucking awesome. And you get you get at least three Firefly references. You know that's worth it here's the thing I tried to watch Firefly I'm not a big sci-fi guy. Don't go there man uh oh no no.

I'll throw punches. Address that to Fred the emails to Fred I tried to. Watch the first episode and in the first five minutes there are like three Saving Private Ryan quotes and a couple of them are the same one I don't know I couldn't do it He does the kissing the cross thing like in. I don't know. It's just fucking weird.

I can't get past it. I don't know. It's my problem. I know it's my issue. Now that we've had our TV breakdown, do we want to...

Are we done with the thing in all its forms? Are you going to play Teenage Breakdown as a TV breakdown thing? No. There's too much thing music to go into, so we will... take a break, fire off some thing music, and come back with Greg's story, which is pretty genius, that we've stolen from six other places. So, yeah, it's pretty awesome, though.

You'll have to listen to it. So, we will be back. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I remember there was one dark and dreary night.

The sky was dark and not a trace of light. That shortcut through the graveyard. Didn't feel too good. But nothing was going to happen, at least I didn't think it could. Then I heard a noise that sounded like.

Great big feet. Then I thought about the smarts that craved on human meat. Was it the creature from the black lagoon? No. Was it the creature called Frankenstein?

No, no, no, no. Was it the. Creature called Wolfman? No creature. Was it?

It must have been that thing. . . Tweaked Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds. Available in three styles and seven colors, durable and designed to sound great for both music and those chatty podcasts, like the one you're listening to now. Tweaked Audio earbuds come with a one-year warranty, and now there's a special deal for Movie Meltdown listeners. Just go to tweakedaudio.com, and when you check out, enter the discount code MELTDOWN.

Then you'll get 33% off and free shipping. Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. You know that feeling you get when your podcast is trapped on a feed that costs way too much money and has little to no functionality? I do.

That's why Chinstroker vs. Punter, the film podcast out of Birmingham, England, is moving. You can now find all new episodes at www.csvsp.libson.com. So update your feed, subscribe, and continue to enjoy the vitriol. That's part of your problem, you know.

You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's. Riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. All you can do is move the loop.

Changeling and respect too. Here's a dance from a brand new beat. Do this dance till you fall out on your feet. Do the thing. All right.

Come on and do the thing now. Come on. Come on, baby. Do the thing. What I'm trying to do is gradually, over the episodes, spread out all the things that are eventually going to alienate me from everyone on Earth.

You're doing pretty good. I do a pretty good job, too. No one I know will ever, I will not want anyone to listen to this show. Most people I know won't, so I don't worry. My mom keeps asking for the website, and I just make stuff up.

Most people I know that would ask that kind of question would not have the patience to listen to an episode. They get 15 minutes in and be like, what are you guys talking about? Yeah. So, I don't worry about it. Nobody listens to me.

Nobody I know would care. Yeah. Everybody I know that would care is on the show. I broke them all in. Just like, hey, you're like this kind of...

And Randy, which if he lived here, would be here every damn week. All right, so we're back, and if... I don't know. Do you want to go into the... Do we need to pull up who originally came up with this concept?

Yeah, I mean, you could look it up. While you're telling it, I'll come up with the guy's name. Go ahead and you can... Some genius out there, geek genius, thought like I do, lying awake at night, of how to fix Star Wars and the prequels. Well.

Assuming the prequels exist. Assuming the prequels exist. If they have to exist, what's the best way? Right, what's the best way to actually do this? And the best way to introduce the person, like if you're going to introduce it to your children for the first time, how to introduce it to them.

I like that they brought that in there too, because that is something we've discussed on this show before. And the best way is a brand new order to all the movies. Start with A New Hope, which everyone else in the world did, or that matters, started with A New Hope. Continue on to Empire Strikes Back, and then you get the greatest literal and physical cliffhanger of the series of Luke finding out that his father is Darth Vader, and he falls off a cliff, you know. Well, then, at the dire moment when you know, the Empire's now winning, Han's gone, Luke's lost his hand, it seems like everything's lost, you go into flashback mode.

Because at this point he's wondering, well, how did Darth get to be my father? Right, and you... completely erased the first movie, Phantom Menace. It never existed. You don't get to see it. He said if you had to, you could put it in there in that order, but nobody gives a rat's ass.

If Darth Maul wasn't in there, you'd just burn the whole damn thing. And the good thing is you get rid of the midichlorians. Yep. You get rid of the whole trade disputes, trade federation thing. All the clunkiness of the young boy, all of that's gone.

And Jar Jar. And Jar Jar. Jar Jar has like five lines. 45 minutes. Podricks.

Yeah, the Podricks. Nobody cares. So you have cleaned up, and then you jump into the two movies that aren't as bad if you get rid of the first one. You get, what, four lines from Jar Jar? You get some awesome lightsaber fights.

You get the whole Padme, Amidala, Switcheroo thing that doesn't make any sense gone. Yeah, that's gone. And then you just go into the action of There's a dispute. There's good guys. There's bad guys.

You get the Sith coming in. You understand how the clones come into power. Blah, blah. That stuff still takes place. Right.

But you still don't have to worry about all of the... This person was this person's Padawan. No. You just... Obi-Wan is training Anakin.

They're good friends. Let's go. And then you get Revenge of the Sith, which is a pretty good movie as far as action and adventure and violence, and then you can go right back into, you've built it back up, and oh, now I understand the gravitas and can watch Return of the Jedi. And the other thing that way. The cliffhanger, because we...

Also, I like that, that it keeps both cliffhangers in this order. The best, yeah. Because if you watch one through three, you ruin the father. I don't want to spoil it, but the whole Darth Vader thing. You kill that.

If you were a little kid and you didn't know that, you'd lose that moment, which... It was a fucking huge moment in our lives. But the other thing that it keeps in this order is the twins thing. Right. You don't know anything about the twins.

By the time you get to three, you haven't watched Jedi yet. You're like, wait, she had twins? And you don't know until you get to Jedi. Then it's like, oh, hey, it's Leia. Which, by the way, seems really... tacked on anyway.

We've always kind of thought that, but. But still, you don't get that. But you don't ruin that moment. Right, and then by then, you're prepared for all of those things. You've gotten the backstory of how it could happen.

You see him fall, and then... Which, the other point that is made is... Empire's so good that you lose how good Jedi can be. Yeah. And.

Because you're coming off of it, and you're like... It's not as good. If you're watching Jedi compared to the prequels, Jedi is pretty good. It feels like, oh, we're back in the real world now. We're back out of the flashback.

We get to see Jedi the way it was originally intended. And everything's in a nice, neat package and not as bad as it was before. Rod Hilton is his name. A blog post by Rod Hilton that came up with this whole plan. I have to say, it's pretty interesting.

And last, the only other option is to have Topher Grace re-edit your movie. Have you heard that one? No. Topher got a hold of Prince of the Original Three, and I think he wants to get into filmmaking, so he was trying to sort of like just work on stuff and kind of step up his editing skills. So he took the original three prints of one through three, not the original good movies, the prequels, and re-edited them down to a shorter running time than any one of the prequels. cut out once again cut out the entire first movie it it kicks in with it does like a crawl he made his own crawl that explains the intro and then it kicks in with the darth maul battle kill qui-gon go right into obi-wan you get like a minute with the little kid the little kid's out of the way after that and then he edited down all of the the still leftover nonsense in the second one and the third one and combined it into one movie that's a shorter running time you lose a lot of the crazy romance stuff that we probably don't care about you keep the battle at the end and you get the movie all wrapped up in one so it really could have been one movie to tell this whole story that he drug out over three oh easily nobody cares about it there's.

Another version of of it out there which is if i remember right it's My girlfriend who has never seen Star Wars explains Star Wars. I've seen versions of those, yeah. That's very good. That's an excellent version. So Topher Grace apparently like down in his parents' basement smoking weed.

Right. Came up with this. Allegedly I don't know for sure but it's one of those he's never going to be able to release it like he did it and he invited friends of his and he invited certain people from like different websites and a little like geekier members of the press to come to this one. Like showing that he had so I don't know I guess. It could make like convention showings or something but he's never going to be able to release it you know obviously it's not his movie and no.

Matter how you edit it you're still missing the scene of that should be in there when Leia has to get into that harem costume. You keep waiting for that. That director's cut behind-the-scenes footage. It's dramatic logic. And it works like a novel would work.

Here's the setup, the big reveal. We show you how you get there. We go back to the end. It was interesting. I like that idea.

It made me very happy, but also made me a little sad that I couldn't reveal that to my... kids in that. Way yeah it's too late for them they've already been ruined maybe they're. Kids i feel like george lucas later in life i mean i remember in elementary school we learned about it was like a it's like a little mountain like how a how a story should go you know it's like you forgot. That No, he didn't back in the day because the climax is in the middle and he went, I just want to tell this story. It's like he forgot that when he got old and went, oh, wait, I need some more money.

Let's go back to this first boring low end of the scale. But he's not about to let anybody with any real storytelling or writing ability do a script. No, of course not. It's got to be his. He works best as an executive producer.

When he was young and kind of a hungry filmmaker, he knew what to rip off. Yeah. And so he ripped off, you know, Jack Kirby comics and Kurosawa. And that worked great. I mean, he was good.

And then, uh, Kirshner came in and made a better movie. But I mean, you didn't like that. So he remade Star Wars. I mean, I've read several things over the years saying how much that ruined you as a film. I mean, it would, it would, I mean, think about it.

You're this kid out of film school. You've made two movies and then you make this thing that changes the world. Like it, It creates blockbusters. Marketing in movies will never be the same. Every studio in town suddenly wants to throw money at you.

You can't ever make a normal movie again. You make sequels and you make crap down the line. You make a lot of things up about your own history. He was going to make six movies and then he was going to make nine movies. He didn't make anything for a decade.

I really liked American Graffiti. He's a good filmmaker, backed in. It's one of my favorite films. Did you like more American Graffiti? Mm-hmm.

Did you like more American Graffiti? Actually, all I remember from that was, like, the little crawl at the end about what happened to the characters later. And that's all I remember about it. Lucas, you know, told his own life story in American Graffiti. He did it very well.

Yeah. Star Wars came along. I was like, wow. But. The one thing I am happy about, though, with my children is I'm going to think long and hard about when and how I show them back to the future.

And we won't get to three. What's wrong with three? It's a repeat, but it's a fun repeat. It's so funny. Do you think we're losing that sense of seeing things when they happen?

Right. Yeah. It's very important to me. I'm starting to realize, oh, I'm going to reveal this at the right time. Same thing with...

With Raiders of the Lost Ark. I know my son is... He is going to fall in love with it like I did. I know he will. But it's got to be the right time that I show it to him.

Because it's such a... That's such a wonderful series, I guess. To a certain point. For a while. Oh, that film.

The first one, especially. Until once again, George Lucas lost his damn mind and wrote this crazy bullshit at the end like he likes to do now. You know, I still think The Temple of Doom, I think maybe I saw it and had more access to it or something. It just, well, and it feels more like The Goonies, I guess. But it's a lot of fun.

It's a good kids movie. It's a different movie than the other two, but it's a lot of fun. So, I.... You know, I revisited a movie that I had seen as it happened. I went into a hotel room and turned on the TV, and it was a movie about Lead Belly.

It was that movie. And in it, there was a version of his song, Bring Me a Little Water, Sylvie. And I play guitar, and there's a little guitar riff at the turnaround in the song. And I hear it, and it's like, man, that's a cool thing. And I try to I try to memorize it when I first hear it, and then it comes back around to the chorus.

It's like, what? And I can't predict it. It starts at a different point. It's like, but I don't know. Did they play a different run?

So I try to memorize it again, and it comes back around, and then it's gone. and I've never been able to see it, then it's on Netflix now. And it is really hard to scroll through a fucking movie on Netflix. It is. Because you have to, like, place it. And the first time through, I couldn't even find the song.

And I felt like I saw the movie four times, which is more than enough. I would like to see that. Lead Billy's awesome. He, like, stabbed a bunch of people in the neck. Yeah, it's not really a great movie.

That does make him awesome. Because you know what they do when they make a movie about an orc? well, especially about a musician, is they make it into kind of a showcase musical where people get to showcase their versions of the songs. And so he has a meet cute with Blind Lemon and I don't know. But anyway, I eventually got to find the song and I could learn that little riff, which I thought was cool. But by then it's totally lost its charm.

It was just amazing when it happened. You never get to see it for the first time again. I think we went to the diner that's in... This is completely unrelated to what I'm talking about, but I'm saying it in a tone as though it naturally flows. Nice try.

So we went to Mel's Diner when I was visiting my sister. And I think on the menu in that diner, They have grits. And you know how they write a description? It was either that. Place or a place nearby.

Under grits it said, the white stuff they gave you in prison. I assumed it would be totally kissable, but. I don't know. So that was my discourse on Lead Belly. But you remember something when it just happens and it unfolds and it's completely different when you can just go back and go through it.

And I really think what Topher Grace has done is just the beginning of something that people are going to be doing a lot. There's actually a, in New York, it's like a one-time play thing there's no recording there's no you're not allowed to take anything from this play with you the point of it is that it is happening here now and you had to watch it firsthand you can't see it on youtube you can't you'll never see it again it'll never happen again and i think that's really interesting because we take for granted like things that our parents may have seen or even some of us you know like they'll never be able to see that again. Everything that has happened in my life in the last five years since like cell phone cameras, like it's probably somewhere on the internet.

I can probably experience it again. There's no such thing as myth anymore. We've killed the idea of what a myth can be in the world because nothing can even be a story anymore without a picture or a quote or a video of it. And so you can't even have a fish story anymore because, and say it was this big. No, it wasn't because I've got a video of it.

It's on your Facebook page. When it comes to the sense of experience too, this is what television was like when I was growing up before cable. If I saw that Bride of Frankenstein was going to be on Fright Night on Saturday night, I had to watch it. I couldn't record it and I couldn't count on it coming back around again for maybe two years. Oh, yeah.

So there was that sense of experience, which now we have all this accessibility. It's kind of rough. us of that sense of experience. Yeah. And we can go back and watch a movie anytime we want or remake a movie the way we like it. It's true.

But at the same time, you sort of mourn the passing of that. It is really awesome to be able to go find things. It's both. It is. And we're ahead.

I just miss the broadcast quality. of things I sit down on Saturday night with my six year old girl and we watch Batman on ETV because it's cool to watch it on Saturday night at 7 because we can't watch it any other time and it's just a nice flashback for me to re-experience. I noticed my kids like when stuff was on they liked watching it even though we've got it on the shelf on DVD it's not the same when it's. Just you find it on if you. Have no control that's kind of fun. I just bought the Muppet movie for my kids more than anything.

Well, for myself and for me. And for them. And I was telling them it was Friday evenings and my mom would make the homemade pizza and we would watch. It was like the only time of the week where we all sat and watched The Muppet Show. And it wasn't on any other time.

Saturday morning cartoons were on and The Muppet Show and you might get Sesame Street. But there really weren't. shows like that for a kid and it was an event and you know you talked about it the next day with your friends or you know whatever and it blew my kids minds like wait you had to wait or you know you had to. They weren't even able to fathom that it's so funny because if you think about it that really is another contributing factor to like the loss of like family togetherness you know at first it was like we lost family dinners. Because you don't have to wait till mom cooks dinner you can get in anytime you want you can put it in the microwave or you can go to mcdonald's or whatever you don't have to have dinner with your family at this certain time and now you don't have to sit with your family and watch this movie at this time you can watch it whenever you feel like it on whatever device that you have you can watch it on your iphone you can watch it on your laptop you know like there's no We've got to get together and do this thing.

Which is why you have people in the same household, in the same family, texting each other from one room to the next, which I have witnessed recently. I was like, you did not just text them in the kitchen, right? That's why I yelled at my wife in the loft. Oh, the good old days. Old school.

Yeah, people are not going to be able to yell. They're going to grow up without yelling. Although, on the other hand. Capital letters. Capital letters.

But one of the great things about cell phones is there's a lot less people pulling up in front of a house and honking the fucking horn. Eventually, I was going to kill somebody. It's not also a doorbell. Get out of the damn car. And they won't even park it when there's like a mile of open space.

They just pull out, park in the middle of the street, and honk the horn. Changes in society. Look at that. We took our doorbell off the front door so that you have to knock on it. just one of those little controlling things that I have and I ripped it out so you have to knock on my door they're. Going to just text you first.

People don't come as often I swear they get up there and. They're like never mind how are you going to know that I'm here we. Push buttons now dammit I don't know how to use my hand. I call people and tell them I'm at their house nice. All right, I think that better round things out.

We will go on to more problems with society. With that, okay, kids, get out your decoder pins. Set your pins to V2. Here is the message. It is time for the movie countdown secret circle reveal of the next exciting feature, which, again, we're going to branch out.

We're doing some new stuff. We're actually going to be. crossing over with a theater here in town who does the midnight movies. Bo's kind of responsible for it. I think he's called himself out for that. So we're going to try to do a couple of crossovers, one of which they're doing Taxi Driver.

You can't not want to watch Taxi Driver, let alone I think we need to talk about it. So yeah, we're going to take a break from our cheesy B movies and actually watch a fine cinematic classic. So Prepare yourself for that, because I don't know what the hell is going to happen either. I can't dress up for the taxi driver thing, really. You can shave your head and have a mohawk.

That's what I was going to say. Because Brad did that last time. I'm not going to do that. So yeah, if nothing else, go watch some Taxi Driver. Before we're out of here, thank you once again to Green Room Coffee for letting us hijack the shop and loiter around.

Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week, same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Can it be knocking at my door Go away Don't come round here no more Can't you see that it's late at night Very tired And I'm not feeling. Right All I wish is to be alone Stay away Don't you invade my home That's not if you hang outside Don't.

Come in. Who can it be now? Who can it be now? Who can it be now? Who can it be now?

Who can it be knocking at my door? Make no sound to throw across the floor If he hears, he'll knock. All day I'll be trapped Here I'll have to say I've done no harm. At all to myself. There's nothing wrong with my state of mental health.

I like it here with my childhood friend. Here they come. Two spielings again. Who can it be now? Is it the man come to take me away?

Why do they follow me? It's not the future that I can see. It's just my fantasy. Now. Thank you.

This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, Email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!