Five Night's at Freddy's

Weird way, get pumped by a big animatronic bear. I was waiting for you to say get pumped with scat because I didn't want to say it, but you didn't, so I have to say it, get pumped with scat by a big animatronic bear. There we go. We got there. If an animatronic bear scats in the woods, does Josh Utcherson see it?

Oh my god. So on this episode of the Culture Cast, Uh, we're just going to get right into it. I'm joined by two people who I'm joined by on other things that aren't this, and this is the second time now for one of them, and I don't know how many times at this point. Dustin, we we lost track after Thrillamities, which feels like a lifetime ago now if you think about it, that was like a year ago we did that. But on this episode of the Culture Cast, I'm still your host Christashi, much to the chagrin of many, and I'm joined by my two good friends from Surreal Tube.

It's a thing that we do with scary stories. We tell maybe it'll be its own thing one day. Who knows your friends in mine? Emma and Dustin, Hello, Hello, here to talk about some some animatronics here to talk about. We're here to show our age is what some some some frebbyes, some frebby fas bear?

What is bear thing? You kid talking about? What the animatronic bears? What d halling you're talking about? Why carnation?

Yeah? Right. I actually have a very close friend who told me that he had never heard of Five Nights at Freddie's the game before seeing the movie, like the movie come out, which I found to be not strange, but I don't know. I was under the impression that Five Nights at Freddie's made more of a pop culture impact on the wider world. But then I thought to myself, and this is something that I was wondering about two other YouTubers, and this is I think five Nights of Freddy's in YouTube are kind of intrinsically linked on this And we'll ask the question after we introduced the movie.

On this episode of the Culture Cast, we're gonna be talking about the essentially brand new it's been out for two weeks now, twenty twenty three, based off of a video game, Five Nights at freddy All right, this is Mike. I was just going to see if that job that you offered was still available, Yes, a security guard. I will take anything. This place was huge in the eighties with the kids. They shut it down years ago.

The owners just not ready to let it go yet. I will work and you will sleep. I understand. Come here in all you have to do just keep your eyes on the monitor. Welcome to Freddie Fazbear's, where fantasy and fun come to light.

We must be new security guards. Can I help you? Officer? Have you met them yet? Met whom?

In the eighties kids went missing. The police searched Freddy's top to bottom. Well, they never found them. That's why the plays shut down. There are ghost children possessing giant robots.

Thanks for the heads up. Technically they're animatronics. What do they want? They want to make her like them? Tell me how to stop them.

It's too late, Brobby go where to? I always get the weardos. So. The movie is directed by Emma Tammy, who is making a name for herself directing movies about killer animatronics because she also directed Megan and three Gan earlier this year. This movie is based off a screenplay by Emma Tammy, Seth Cut It Back and Scott Coffin who's that you ask, Well, Scott Coffin is the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, which this movie is based off the video game of the same name, the point and click horror game from twenty fourteen that because of certain YouTubers and certain twitch streamers became much bigger of a thing than I think anybody, including including Scott Coffin, thought it ever could be.

What is the premise of the movie. Well, Josh Hutcherson plays Mike Schmidt, a security guard at fred fas Bear's Pizzeria, a restaurant that is essentially Chuck e Cheese but with four creepy err animatronics that just not hospitable, right, just possibly maybe are possessed by the ghosts of murdered children, and they just hang a lantern on it about halfway through the movie in a really weird way that most of these movies don't. We'll be talking spoilers because this is a relatively new movie, if not more or less brand new, you'd still smell the new movie stink on it. So before we talk spoilers in the movie kind of hole, you know, specifically, we'll talk a little bit holistically about it. Kick it to you first, Dustin, would you suggest someone who has never seen Five Nights at Freddy's or knows very little about it like you did?

Because we are kind of on the spectrum, on a range here between the three of us, would you suggest someone who's never had any exposure to Five Nights at Freddie's check out the movie. Did it do a good job as a movie outside of it being a fan service extravaganza. Yeah, I mean being someone that doesn't know anything about the lore or much of the background of it at all. Yeah. I enjoyed the movie.

It was entertaining. It was not not a as original in that. You know, there's other movies that've had animatronic restaurant horror films, like Wallly's Wonderland and what's called Banana Splits. Banana Splits mind you, they both do exist in a post five Nights of Freddy's universe, though, I mean, right, Willie's Wonderland is literally ripping off five Nights of Freddy's, like I mean, for good and bad? I think right, Like Willy's Wonderland came out in twenty twenty one, I mean they changed, they changed characters in Willy's Wonderland I'm pretty sure to be less obvious fact similes of the characters five Nights of freddy But to your point, Dustin, the idea of a this five Nights of Freddy's is an idea that someone else came up.

It's called literally Chuck E Cheese. But I think what I liked about it is it kind of was a little bit nostalgic in that way. If you've ever been to a Chuck E Cheese or a showbiz pizza as a kid, you peek behind that curtain and you see these, like you know, I mean, they're in the dark behind the curtain, freaky looking animatronics. I mean, that's exactly what this brought up, except these actually come to life and kill people. Emma, same question to you.

But your level of exposure to five Nights at Freddy's, I think even Trump's mine. I've learned about it recently and kind of thrown myself in headfirst. But exposure to five Nights of Freddy's before watching the movie, thoughts is some And then thoughts as you know, someone who's seen and heard of this long before, you know a lot of people seeing the movie did. Yeah, So I mean I was aware of by nights at Freddie's. When the first game came out, I believe I was in high school at the time, was watching a lot of Let's plays at the time.

I still do, but that was around the time that I really got into watching YouTubers and let's plays. I think I primarily saw Beautie Pie more than Market Player. I know, Mark I uh is kind of more iconic for the memes, but yeah, I watched a lot of like Beautie Pie playing the first game, and then I saw bits and pieces of other games as it came out. It didn't quite pull me in lore because I didn't really know that there was deep lore when it first came out. I was just like, oh, an interesting jump scare game, okay, and like, you watch it a few times and the formula is pretty similar, so once you watch somebody beat it, it kind of to me it felt a little stale.

Obviously, they evolved the series like completely beyond that, but at the time it didn't like really pull me in. I had never played the games myself, but ever so often I'd hear that a new one came out, and I'd watch a couple of clips here and there. Eventually I would say back in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen ish, a bunch of like the Lore videos started coming up on my feed and I had nothing else better to listen to, And so that's when I really started learning about like the overarching story, which like I was vaguely aware of after seeing bunch of clips, But that was like the first time I was like, oh, wow, this is actually genuinely interesting. I didn't have like a negative opinion of it before that, I just wasn't entirely interested.

But yeah, I started like binching a bunch of the Lore videos and getting really into like the nitty gritty of the characters at the time. And so much has changed since then too, And I've noticed that like the lore in and of itself is so complex, most of it is head cannons, uh more than anything else. Like very little has been confirmed by Scott Coffin exactly. I'm so affirmed in the way of just like offering information to confirm fan theories but never really confirming them, which is yeah, not bizarre, but it's I don't know, like it seems very uniquely obnoxious in a way, right, And like because the games in and of themselves are so self contained in whatever experience they're trying to elicit all of like you'll get like bits and pieces of like somebody set a line here, and oh, there's a thing in the background here, but like anything to substantiate that is taken from either other games or the book series or like uh, there's like little like uh Easter eggs or like uh, there was like a lore book that they did release that did that was like an official lore book, and they I feel like it gave people more questions than answers.

Are you talking about like the in universe Lare book or the out of universe lore book, the one that I could go on Amazon and buy. There's one, but there is one that is like this is a thing that a character in the universe finds, and then there is a essentially like an encyclopedia of character. I think I think the first one, okay, which is which is like in and of itself kind of fucking insane, like yeah, the lore for again, like and and this is me as someone who's spent the last two weeks just like watching tons of five nights at Freddy Lare videos which, let me tell you destin Yeah, the the levels to which they come back in on themselves multiple times. Is just it's the movie just scratches the surface, and I hope to god the movie just does it in a way that doesn't make everybody who has never seen this go okay.

So now I'm checking the fuck out, like, and that's obviously a concern with something like this when you have so much pre existing stuff that I mean ten I mean almost ten years worth of external lore that is being mined. You know, if you if you go and look up interviews with Scott Coffin about this movie. There were three different ideas for movies that they were kicking around, and then he took the idea that they came to him with and said, I don't want to do that period the end. And that was that. Like, he has had an immense amount of control over this too, which I think is good my opinion personally.

But what did you think of the movie? I'm as someone who's kind of been with five Nights for like you said, since the Jump, almost yeah, I would say uh again, I would say I'm a casual consumer of this series, not like super hardcore. I do have friends that are so much more into it than I could ever dream of being and I honestly going into it, I did watch with one of those friends, and my opinion was going to entirely ride on how they felt about it other obviously, like I was going to go in like with my own like Okay, this is sort of what I'm expecting, and come out with like, Okay, that was enjoyable or not. But for me, the real litmus test was did you like it? Me saying that too my friend who was way deeper into the lore, because like, if you were able to satisfy both a new audience and the dedicated audience, I think that's pretty impressive.

But ultimately, like, I enjoyed it. It was fun, I would say my biggest gripe if anything. Honestly, if I were to nitpick, I just wish it were scarier, not like the story, but the jump scares. So much of the games are centered around jump scares that are you know, genuinely like loud and in your face and like they're meant to be like cheesy, and they're meant to elicit those like strong reactions. And that was like how the original game got so much traction is because it made all of these lets players on YouTube you know, have all these silly, shareable, viral reactions and like that was what I personally, what I think gave it the popularity that it had is that those reactions to the jump scares were so viral.

I think without that, it probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as popular. That's my opinion at least. And so seeing the movie and hearing that it's supposed to be for an older audience, and then they don't go all out on the jump scares, like not even one, like uh like even my friend said, like the scariest thing was balloon Boy and then other and then the ongoing joke online is that the only real jump scares Matt pat and so like. But that's so that's a general consensus is like if you played these games, this movie will not get you because you're expecting more, You're waiting for the bigger one, and it just never really comes. I mean, like if you're watching, like in the dark with headphones by yourself, and like maybe just maybe if you have it like turned if you have the volume turned up, but like other than that, you or you startled real easy, and I startled pretty easy, which is why I was a little disappointed.

But that was that's my biggest gripe. I feel like if they were able to go a little bit harder on the jump scares, I think I would consider this movie roughly perfect in terms of this was overall a very entertaining watch, So that that's my one grade. But I mean otherwise, I have no real complaints. They did and I'm sure we're going to talk about this later, but they did change a lot of things with the Lore, and so that was where I was most concerned about with fans, like how would that be perceived? But I'm sure you want to get into that later.

So my my feelings on the movie obviously, like we've kind of mentioned, are our three varying levels of entry points here, So I'm kind of in between Emma and Dustin. And and again, like I said, I kind of threw myself into the Lore just so I could, I don't know, just so I could hyper fixate on something for two weeks who the fuck was? And so I spent a lot of time watching Lore videos and stuff. And again I don't know how much it informed my ability to enjoy the movie other than or any more than say, either you were or Dustin. Given that again, like I would think some of this should be the movie should be able to be enjoyed in the absence of knowing any of these things.

And like you already mentioned, Dustin, you're I think obviously your feelings are pretty well proof of that. You can enjoy this movie and have zero idea any of Purple Guy and William Afton and any of that. You don't have to know any of that coming into this. The movie does a good enough job giving you the basic things, the basic kind of guard rails right now. We're not going up the steepest or the most complex hill right now, but there's enough guardrails where it's their kids, they're in these animatronic suits and there's a golden bunny or yellow bunny that killed them.

Where we go from there? Who they really found a happy medium of like how do we explain the mechanics of this world to new people without it feeling boring to people that have been with us for so long. That's what honestly, that is what impressed me more than anything. Obviously, Like the animatronic suits that they made, and like the sets in and up themselves are very impressive, but the fact that they were able to have like not exposition exposition. It was nothing too crazy for people that were new to not be able to grasp, and yet it wasn't boring.

And I think that is a really hard balance to strike between, you know, like new fans of it and old, dedicated veteran fans, like how do we satisfy both ends of the extreme spectrum? And I think they they struck a pretty decent balance. I haven't seen any negative from like in the online community at the very least. Uh, there's plenty of negative reviews, but I'm not talking about critics. They're invalid.

They're valid, but it's like you again, Okay, so let's talk about it. I think three of us are in agreement. This is a movie worth checking out if you even have like a passing interest. It's fun. I will give it the seal of approval of it is a fun watch, which in this day and age, that's not more than enough.

Yeah, that's really needed. So let's talk spoilers, let's talk specifics. So, yes, this is a movie that hughes close but not directly to the lore. They make a lot of changes. The character of Josh Hutcherson is playing a character from the game, who more than likely will not be going on the journey of the character in the game, which makes perfect sense given that the character in this movie doesn't even embark on the same journey that the character from the game does.

Frankly, and this might sound like a take, I think the lore actually when it's being written by and diffused through the filter of professional screenwriters and screen and people who work on screenplays. Be it screenwriters, be it screenwriter like screenplay doctors, because I'm sure that there are plenty of people uncredited on these scripts, the lore can actually make sense. And you know what, I don't feel bad saying that, because I've spent probably thirty hours reading and watching things about the lore, and the lore can't keep its TLD straight. But that's also kind of what happens when you have something that is a thing, that is not a thing, but now it has to be a thing, which means you got to explain all the things that nobody yourself specifically thought you'd have to explain or go in depth on, or give meaning to.

Freddy Krueger doesn't get explained until the third movie of Nightmare on Elm Street. Why because the first movie he's just Freddy Krueger. There's no pomp and circumstance. I just rewatched Doctor No for the first time. They don't really make a big deal out of the fact that he's James Bond until I think the second or third movie, because at one point it's not a thing, and this for a lot of people is not a thing, which means they can approach it in a way that is like it's new to these people, and that is what they do, I think, with a shocking amount of success and restraint, because this is a rather tight story.

Again, I think it kind of goes some weird places, But I for one, am more interested in the movie Lord moving forward then some of the video game lore, because the video game lor is now well, the video game lore is also now trying to fix the problems from the previous games conning, and the movie is not gonna have to do that because again, this is starting its own universe of things that is separate from This is not in the same universe as the video game, so this is its own thing completely. So I mean, my initial takeaway from this movie is, Yeah, the critics have really roasted the shit out of this movie, and I understand why. But like you mentioned, Emma, if you're a fan of the series, I don't know how you could dislike this movie unless you just want to be nitpicky about the eye colors different or this ill golden Freddy this and kids names that fun.

No, they want it to be what they have always known it to be. And you know, Scott Coffin giving the keys to you know, Blumhouse and Universal, you know, that can be seen as people coming into you know, the castle and painting it their own color, which I get, but it doesn't invalidate all of the five Nights at Freddy's Lord that exists because it is literally its own thing, right, And I think the interesting thing is here. And I'm sure when you were watching your eight hour lore recap they brought up the books quite a lot too. Now I haven't read any of the books, and this is I think what I struggle to understand, and that is, are all of these supposed to be within the same universe or taking place within adjacent universes?

Because I think that answers enough questions in and of itself, because of all of these different stories, like I feel like the games are supposed to be the through line and then I feel like the books at are like flavor texts, Like these were ideas I didn't get to explore, like through the games, so now I get to explore them through the books, and like, yes, it's the same you know, mechanisms of the universe, but it's its own thing. And I feel like that's what the movie is. It's like it's the same pieces, it's the same mechanics, it's the same rules, but just rearranged in a different, new, interesting way. You know, what if this character wasn't this character, but they're still like this character, but they're not from they don't have that you know journey, like what you said, and like just playing around with like the different puzzle pieces and like, I wonder what would what would happen if this was the story instead?

I wonder what interesting you know, things that we can explore here. And I feel like when you look at it with that lens, it feels less frustrating personally. So I'm curious because I did do a LORI recap before this, but you are the one that hyperfixated on it for two weeks, So what is your opinion on that? I think, look, obviously, what they've done is they've, like you mentioned, they've taken a lot of the things from all over and condensed it into one thing. I mean, the character of Vanessa is in the game, has just been introduced to the last couple years.

Essentially the character basically a brand new character. Right. The character that Mary Mary Stu Masterson plays is not even in the game, which which I mean, to be fair, given what the character ends up being in the movie, that more or less is obvious, just just the weirdness of the character. But yeah, I ultimately feel like you were talking just about like the lower things that that they've done and the way that they approached it. It really was just distilling everything as much as they could down to something that would be approachable for a mainstream audience.

I mean, I know I read what like their other ideas for other movies were, and it was like, Oh, we're gonna talk about this one specific random side story from the game, and we're gonna use that as and it's like no, no, no, no, you need to tell this story, but you need to figure out what this story is if you're gonna tell it in a movie form and going Okay, we've got this guy. He has a sister, his brother got kidnapped, his parents are dead, and he is down on his luck and he wants to work somewhere, but he can't seem to hold a job because he has this trauma about his brother being kidnapped. Like, you know what, that doesn't sound like five nights at Freddy's on the face of it, because it's really not.

But yet somehow it totally makes sense now that this is the direction. I mean, talking in your sleep's not in five nights at Freddie's either, But now it's like, I don't know if you can unconnect that with five nights at Freddy's. And like, just if you are now going to become a fan of this, that is going to be something that you associate with this that was never associated with the franchise before. So as far as I'm concerned to speak again, to not get bogged down in the previous lore, that almost doesn't matter anymore other than to just go, well, this is different, this is the same, This is how you do this, And if anybody wants to make video game movies moving forward, this is a good example on how to balance fan expectations from the last decade, almost almost decade of lore plus bringing in people that have zero lore exposure, and all they know is, oh, this is like a chuck E cheese, or this is like a Showtime pizza, or this is like a and it's like all you know is the thing that it's like.

But that with what they've done, paring everything down and really laser focusing it. I again, like you know, the very streamlined dustin. You and I have watched plenty of video game movies in our lifetime, and maybe Emma you've seen some of the bad ones. But video game movies get a bad rap, and we're now living in an age of like video game movies not sucking anymore. Either way, bulls stop making video game movies.

Yeah, I mean ouve bulls just making movies now. But I mean scause video game movies sucked right well, I mean again, they they are so far removed from what the source material is that it's like, well, why why call this House of the Dead because there's a house with dead people in it? Like, you could make a video a movie based on House of the Dead and it'd be pretty compelling because that story is basic and dumb enough that you could really build it out and make something fun out of it. I mean, they did it with Resident Evil, and Resident Evil's lore is as complicated, if not more complicated and complex than Five Nights at Freddy's. But I think to your point, Emma, and this is probably the spot to start.

This is a great Five Nights at Freddy's movie. This is a bad horror Yeah, it is like a bad and then it's such a shame to say it, but yeah, it's a bad horror movie because it's not scary. The jump scares, which is this is a jump scare simulator the game. That's what this movie is based on. I mean, look, we all know that that jump scares are kind of pass and horror now, and people will think if I'm expecting it anywhere, I expect it here, this is the this is the time and place on guys could have done more.

I mean I have them, but they're just they're not quiet, and the thing is like subtle, I scarce shouldn't be subtle. And my thought is on that, well, maybe instead of doing a jump scare, maybe the idea of less emulating the game is more just doing I mean, there are moments in this movie again I laugh, but that's only because like the puppet. The animatronics have really weird personality and yeh, and they always remind me of like a killer Ferbie and they're like fight me, little bitch, like that's what they look like. They're always like making these like really like they're closing their eyelids really small and they're like squinting at you and like I can't help but laugh and I'm not. It's a little campy.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's a problem that I'm laughing. But they're supposed to be scary theoretically, yeah, theoretically. I know it's a complex thing because they're the spirits of dead kids stuffed into animatronics. So are they really scary? Are they really menacing?

Or is this like a level of misunderstood Sharks don't know their strength, dogs don't know their strength, so they're just fucking around and killing people by accident. It's a little bit of Column A, it's a little bit of Column Bee. But the problem for me is this is just not a scary movie at all. And it's literally being billed as a horror movie and it's not scary. It's just it's five Nights and Freddy's that's what did right?

And I think at this point where the games have gone now it is less scary. It's more mildly unsettling at times. But like I just watched both like Security Breach and the dlc Ruin, which is like the newest installments, and I would not call those scary either. I feel like they're evolving past, you know, what they originally were, and like they're they're keeping the same undertones of this is an unsettling thing. There are there is some unsettling imagery, but we're not trying to necessarily scare you the way we used to.

And I'm okay with that. That's the direction you want to go. But you can't call it a horror movie. A thriller maybe, would you? I don't know what would you call it?

If not a horror movie, what would you call it? It's a movie? Oh no, I mean it is a kid's movie, isn't it like so Hugere's okay, I don't know, like it it's like Hunger Games. How's that it's It's like, sure, it's like Hunger Games. It's like Harry Potter.

It's it is an adaptation of something that is ostensibly for children, but adults enjoy it because adults have because it's been out for ten years now. Someone started fourteen, we're seven years old watching Five Nights of Freddy's. They're an adult now, like and you know part of it. I mean, look, I like Harry Potter because I liked it in my early twenties and my late teens. I still kind of like it now.

I like Lord of the Rings for the same reason, Like, those are things that have stuck with me, and those were the things that could have stuck with me at that age because those were the things that were around Five Nights if Freddy's was around for a certain group of people at a certain age. And now they're adults, And like you mentioned, this is being tailored for an older audience. But it, or at least that's what I've heard it's supposed to be. But also I don't think the games ever had a child target audience. That's the thing.

I guess that's just watching the Let's plays though, because Let's plays are targeted towards the younger audience. Less so now. But like at the time of like the the you know when Mark a Plier, Jack Septecai, Peudiepie, when all of them were like at their peak, they were the YouTube case. Like, don't get me wrong, they absolutely still are in their own right, but like I feel like YouTube has evolved past, like you know, these communities being so niches shit pervasive, and like now it's just kind of like, you know, the idea of a let's player is less, like only the select group of people know it online. Like now it's like, okay, yeah, you watch people play video games on YouTube, sure, whatever, And like at the time, it felt like it was almost like a secret club and yet they were so big.

It was like it was a very range time honestly, But like, yes, it was targeted towards children because children primarily were the ones on YouTube, like young adults, children, that was YouTube's main target audience. That's who YouTube attracted. And so most of FINEFF, you know, built its audience because of let's Players on YouTube, And if not for that, it probably would have been a much smaller title, but it would have had its intended target audience from the beginning. And I think that's what it comes down to it because like kids definitely latch on to funny viral things and also edgy things, like it was a perfect storm to like make it into something so much bigger than it originally intended to be, and it held up.

That's the thing too, is that it held up and the quality evolved with the audience. But the games are still at this point. I would say the games have now widened to allow a much broader audience rather than like how the first game you know was so dark and dingy, and like that was the aesthetic. Like Security, Breach and Ruin are colorful and bright and engaging, and like not to say that adult things can be colorful, but like, I feel like things being colorful inherently makes it feel more for children, because that's how that's what we're like sort of coded to believe. So so it feels like it encompasses a much larger group.

And I think that's exactly what the movie is doing, even though they say their target audience is you know, the older gen Z and millennial. Well, and that brings me back to the initial question that I wanted to ask you guys. So this is a thing that was popular on Twitch and you which as popular as we may find it to be, as much as we may watch YouTube and Twitch, that's not mainstream, and so I was. I was thinking about this yesterday when I was watching another set of YouTubers who I think, in my mind have struggled with finding legitimacy and popularity outside of their platform, which is good mythical morning. They have like a very big popular presence on YouTube, but they had a food Network show that ran like five episodes and then was canceled or wasn't renewed, and it's like five Nights at Freddy's.

Now has transcended what I would consider to be Internet culture and is now and is now part of the mainstream. But then I also sit and wonder is that the case because the people that are part of the mainstream rejected the movie because they were like, well, this, this is not you know, this isn't a good movie. I mean that was the critics. The critics rose to this movie unto the ground. I was like twenty six on Rotten Tomatoes, which matters nothing to anybody who actually knows anything, because Rotten Tomatoes is a fucking aggregator, and those scores mean nothing.

They don't affect the quality of the movie, and they sure as hell don't affect the amount of money that the movie made. This movie cost twenty million dollars and made two hundred million dollars as you're two hundred and fifty as of right. But it's weird to see something that has been par of internet subculture, very niche internet subculture, being presented to a mainstream audience, and it's seemingly somewhat resonating because I feel like, like you mentioned with market Plier, Peutie Pie and Pet because he's in this video you have. It's I'm not saying YouTube isn't like, oh you're not popular, Oh you're not like well known. Oh, but like if you're a YouTube personality, that means you're on YouTube.

Yes, you're not on YouTube. You're not any considered mainstream, the same way that if you see something on TV is. But I think that's the takeover now is things on YouTube are getting significantly more views than things on TV. There are so many people that I know that haven't turned on like a cable television in ages, Like if I'm gonna watch something, I'm gonna find it online at this point, Like why would I wait for something to play, you know, on the TV, Like I have to wait for a specific time and like make sure that and like deal with commercials when I can just look it up online. And I feel like that is the shift now, and that's why so many like things are like turning to streaming services and that and of itself has become more popular and more mainstream, But like there is still that disconnect of target audience, and I think anything that is interpreted for a younger audience is inherently considered not even less mainstream, but just not to be taken as seriously, like, oh, you're not a real celebrity, even though you know this person has like fifty million subscribers on YouTube, like how many people like view their videos?

I mean, you would consider that person if they got that many views on their you know, recent TV show like that is absolutely a mainstream celebrity. But it's just because of it, right, Like I always ask the question, like who watches mister beasts videos. It's like somebody must because he's immensely popular, But yet I don't know anyone personally who sits down to watch it. But he has, like, however, many millions of subs. But again, go onto the street and ask ten people if they know who mister Beast is.

I don't know what percentage any one of us would feel comfortable saying it would be at But I don't know if it would be higher than fifty percent, right, because I think again, it depends on target audience. I think mister Beast, I mean, I'm not sure about this, but my gut feeling is that a good chunk of mister Beast audience is children, and children are not taken seriously in this world. And it's like, if you make content that children consume primarily, then your thing is inherently invalid. And it's sad that that's how it's interpreted. It really is.

And like, it's interesting because I've seen so many things over the past decade, things that were so niche that have like creeped its way into more mainstream culture and just like all like the little you know, fandoms and things that I was interested in and like was you know, ostracized for liking, and now like so many people like the fact that anime has become so mainstream and like now it's like all over Netflix and people are like, oh, have you seen the live action one piece? And it's like where were you ten years ago? It's really fascinating to see how all of this is evolving so fast because of the Internet. And you know, people used to get made fun of for being like video game nerds, and now it's like you're somebody that hasn't played a video game.

Now it's surprising if you haven't seen a Marvel movie, which Dustin you and I both know if you were a comic book reader in the eighties, like, go fuck yourself, Go fuck yourself, nerd. Like it's insane how that shifts, like, and we're seeing it more and more every day. So even though Finaff doesn't feel mainstream because it has been consumed primarily as a as a non serious children's pastime, you know, it's obvious proving to be more than that, and for good reason. There is something so fascinating here. And just because something is consumed by children does not mean that it is not adult topics.

You know, when you really distill what Finaffe is like, it's disturbing shit, Like I's meta text. There's subtext to it that's never mentioned, and it reminds me a little bit of Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger was a child molester in that first I didn't know that. Wow, I learned something it's they never like say it outright, but it is very heavily implied. And then that stopped being the case very quickly for a multitude of reasons, namely one of them being you can't have a character go, you know, welcome to time, bitch and everybody, Yeah, because you can't do that if he's a child molester.

There is a subtext to characters in Five Nights at Freddy's that if this were not for kids, it would have been William Afton is a child molester on time of everything else, and he murders kids, but like apparently the murdering of the kids is okay for the kid. Yeah, kids can consume media about kids being murdered just fine. So okay, So all of the lore and shit aside, because again, like I'm not saying it's shit, but like there's just so much of it. It is literally like piling up every day, is what it. I mean.

I almost before you want to move on, I just want to ask Dustin one question, Dustin, I want to know how you feel about this, and that is when it comes to the lore. So you knowing nothing about you know previous and like we're talking like so many things have been retconned and so many things are different. How do you feel about the fact that, up until the movie, Michael is William Afton's son. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, right, he is his son from the first game up until the moment he dies. And Michael Aften, that is the character that we knew up until the movie, Michael Afton.

It's been Michael Afton from the beginning, and now all of a sudden, it's Mike Schmidt. And but he was Mike Schmidt in the video game that was just out well it was he was using different last names or something. That's what I thought it was, right, So it's a little bit of you know, lip service, but right, I mean, from what I'm understanding, at least from what I've seen of other theory videos, it's the idea that the family structures have flipped. And so here's the other thing that people that I have seen the movie but don't know the lore Michael sorry, William Aften had a partner, Henry, and they both worked on the animatronics together, like they were the ones that created it together. And so Henry had one daughter and Michael had three children.

And so right now it seems that the two have swapped, and so now it's that William has one daughter and Henry. Supposedly, if we are to believe that the you know, the father in Michael's dreams is Henry, then you know, it's like those family dynamics have swapped. And then the reason why people look backed up that the father that we see in the dream sequences is Henry is that in one of like the welcome videos, during like Michael like going to the pizzeria and like seeing like the videotapes, there's somebody working in the background all in one of the animatronics, and those two characters look very similar. I don't know if it's confirmed that they're the same person, but like it would make a lot of sense.

And so that's what I've seen, is that basically the children of the two creators of the animatronics basically got flipped. That being said, Vanessa is not the name of Henry's daughter in the original what was it? I forgot? Do you remember that? One?

And so? But that's the thing, right, I can't remember everything. I would have had no answer for you. I'm so proud of you. So, but put dustin question still stands like that is obviously a major change, so it's huge and that again, that's why I was like, I want to know, you know, how people feel about like especially like I was going to bend it to the opinion of my friends that are much bigger fans, Like, how do you feel about these massive changes?

Because these are huge changes to the Lord like and they were fine with it, and so knowing this now, like, Howard, how do you feel about that? It seems like, I mean, just listening to you guys talk about a lot of the background of it all that this game was created probably with no lore in mind, like create the game, period and let the game live on, right, and that's the assumption, and then fans took it and ran with it kind of kind of created the story for the original creator and then he got stuck having to fill in some blanks that he didn't know he was going to have to do. So this movie, you said, it sounds like he had a lot of creative control. It is kind of probably his chance to reset a little bit and tell the story he wants to tell about.

Yeah, that's my feeling too. Honestly, I think I'm not about it, And like again like just I mean, like again Dustin just like hearing the way we're talking about it, like you can tell how fucking convoluted this is. Oh, that is so surface level. That is if you're looking at like the iceberg, this is like the tip of the ice. There's so much well it else it's easy and easy exit strategy is what Marvel did with the MCU, right, different universes.

Yeah, it's a multiverse, like it can all live in the same space, but it's parallel universes. Well, and then like that, well that's the crazy thing here. So in the video and then the later videos that the one of the VR games that came out Wanted, they say that five Nights at Freddy's one, two, three, and four, five and six as well are all and this is how convoluted they're all actually in the universe of Five Nights at Freddy's being made by Freddy Fasbear's Pizzeria to make light of real things that happened in that universe to try to regarner public support for the Five Nights at Freddie's brand. That's how fucking insane they have to get to retcon their own things as they have to go. Well, those games that are that everybody felt were about lore are actually just the lore being interpreted by a rogue game developer.

See that as Scott Coffin, who again like the video games are in universe, that is child murders, right, and to cover it up to again to get people to once again go to five nights for real things. This is just a silly video game. Nobody actually died, is that? Like that was the purpose. That's how convoluted this this lore ends up getting is that they have to get out of their own sphere to bring it back to explain things that were already explained but now have to be unexplained, re explained and then recontextualized.

And you know what I can compare this to like you kind of mentioned, you know that comic books, you make movies, but comic books kind of already had their own large universe, well put together right, well together, a large universe. This almost feels like an SNL skit turned into a movie. You know, you see a repeating SNL skit on Saturday Night Live. You know, maybe it's the Roxbury Brothers, you know, Night at the Roxbury And that was a repeating skit. There was no story behind it.

It was just a thing that they did and then all of a sudden they had to come up with a story for interesting and I actually, I actually think that's a that's a very interesting comparison because it does it does smack of like, again, if you play the first five Nights at Freddy's, there is some lore, but all it is is like posters that you can see if you go out of your way to see them, and all they talk about is thinly veiled things that happened. And then they have phone guy who just exposition dumps and they kind of do that in the movie. But again, it's all so well done in the movie that it really makes everything else feel like just ten years worth of research, ten years worth of yeah, beta testing ideas to see what sticks, and now they're like, well, this is gonna be the thing that carries Look, you know, people say security breach and they have problems with it because it kind of makes light of or makes this thing a lot more fun than it used to be and not scary.

I think what the movie is doing is actually making this a story that makes sense that they can continue for a while and actually go some different places. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more Five Nights at freddy Associated things that come out of this movie being successful, like a five Nights of Freddy's cartoon as if it were the characters in the universe or something like that. But you can only get to that point if you take your fucking lore and turn it into something that makes sense that normal people are going to be able to understand, which is, like you mentioned dustin what they had to do with the MCU, Like we are now at the point where people go, right, a talking tree and a talking raccoon.

Okay, there was a time where that was something that was as hard to wrap your mind around mainstream wise as Five Nights at Freddy's is expecting you to be or expecting you to get there. I do like in this movie, how they just go, well, yeah, of course, it's little kids ghosts inside of animatronics. How do you think they move? And when when the character in the movie said that, I literally thought my brain exploded because I was like, wait, said, way, you don't just do that, but they did. But they did, and it's like, okay, fine, you know what.

I kind of don't care because you don't care. And the fact that neither one of us care allows me to enjoy this a little bit more. They're poking fun out it too, like us, can you accept it? Yeah? Like what you don't get it?

Get with the fucking program, Like that's the vibe, right, yeah, And but I will say that the way that they have condensed and streamlined, you know, the story for the movie in comparison to the games, is refreshing. Like that's like the only way I can really view it, is like, especially after like reviewing the Lore because again, I hadn't watched some of these Lore videos in a while, and keeping up with everything is hard and I have short term memory problems, and so like catching back up with it and being like, oh my god, right, yeah that happened. Oh god, yeah that's the order of events. Maybe things are head canons, and like trying to keep straight like which part of this has been confirmed and which part of this is your interpretation?

And like all of it's so confusing and it's fun, don't get me wrong, but like there when you watch a movie, this is the difference I think is like when you watch a movie, you don't want to be left afterwards thinking I now need to hyper fixate on the Lore for two weeks in order to understand what I just watched, unless I want to, unless I want yes, But like when you watch a movie, you're supposed to come out of the theater and be like, that was a good watch. And like as much as people nowadays really do like getting into the lore and the nitty gritty of you know, all of the different possibilities of the story and headcanons and all of that, I think that that makes more sense when you consume something piecemeal, like the way that this video game franchise has come about, because like you slowly start digging into more and more and more.

But if it had to be like that whole eight hour recap that you watched, Chris after seeing this movie, if that's what you needed understand the movie in and of itself, that's not okay. You just explained most of those Star Wars movies that came out. Oh, Emperor Palpatine is back, as told in Fortnite, I'm sorry. That was in the most recent Star Wars. In the most recent Star Wars movie that came out, the mainline movie Rise of Skywalker, the plot point of Emperor Palpatine being resurrected was revealed in Fortnite.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of having to do additional homework to enjoy something. No, I agree, it's you know, like if it was a TV show again, it comes out piecemeal and like you can sort of pick apart like what is real and what is you know, a head canon and like you know, digging from this and this was foreshadowed here, and like it feels more satisfying. It's unwrapping a presence slowly. But like when I'm watching like a two ish hour film all in one sitting, I don't want to be like, wait, who is that character? Wait, like what was that scene about?

What was this supposed to mean? Oh? They mentioned like five names and then they never came back to it. Like that's not fun. There's a fun way to do extreme lore, and in my opinion, in a two hour movie, that's it's not the right way to do it.

Like, if you're gonna do something that's super lore heavy, it has to be something that people can digest in small batches, because this is just overwhelming. I mean, Chris, Like when I was searching up like, uh, you know, revised enough timeline videos and the eight hour one came up on like the in the results, and I was like, no, watch it should enjoyed every singular minute of it. I will tell you, as somebody who's seen enough of it already, I was not going to do that to my never have enough fin floor. Okay, Golden Bonnie, spring trap, glitch trap, a burn trap. I could keep going.

I understand, I do, I do reunderstand now the spring lock suits and why that is the way it is the I get it now. It's it's It was like that because it wasn't just a mascot costume. It was also an animatronic at the same time. I feel like that was something my mind completely glossed over. They were supposed to be able to be converted from animatronics two mascots all in one, and so the locks were supposed to keep all of the mechanical bits to the outside.

But yet the springs go inward. Yes, but at least now I understand why they're there, But yet they still go inward to kill the person. Again. It's it's the most unsafe safety thing short of like, oh, this airbag has a giant spike in the set. I'm just don't make sure your airbag if your airbag goes off, You'll be fine until the spike penetrates your skull and kills you.

So you know, I'm just saying. Most people that I watched, like do a timeline video when they talked about them, were also saying like, I don't know how in this universe those got green lit. But anyway, right Dustin, I think one of us may have cut you off at one point. Oh, I was just gonna say, I think this creator also kind of seeing what the fan base did with it, realized the monster that he had and this movie, this movie is a way to take control of that monster, not only in terms of story but merchandising. I mean, yeah, I agree, yeah, because now now you've got total control of that world.

And I mean there's already stuff out there, but now it can be more cohesive. And like we mentioned the MCU, you think about Disney Plus and all the little side projects and shows they have just totally paves the way for that. Oh, you have a John Wick TV show on Peacock. There's no way they don't do something with this on Peacock TV. Like it's just it's too good.

They heard it was on Peacock. To date, I wouldn't be surprised. Like, that's the thing. You know. We joked about this, Emma before we watched the movie, before the movie came out, or before we could watch the movie, the reviews were coming out and it was like, this movie is shit, and I was like, oh, no, the people that love Five Nights of Freddy's are going to be really disappointed.

No, it actually turns out that the movie is just not for the critics, because again, it it is a movie. It hangs together, there is a story, there are performances. They're fine, fine to great varying degrees. But I again, I understand why the people that don't like this movie don't like it. But I do think that there has never been a case made more for the idea of the separation of the fans of something and the critics of everything that that thing is in the medium of kind of needing to we need to have the conversation of if something is not made in the way that someone else wants it to be, well, I appreciate that you may not like it, the person who it is made for may like it, and that does not make their opinion less valid.

And I'm not saying that the critics are saying it isn't. But this I mean again living in a post Rotten Tomatoes being put on box art for movies so that people can be like, oh my god, this is a good Rotten Tomatoes score. That must mean it's a good movie. No no, And you know what, it's so hard to say that out loud as someone who spends so much time watching movies. But you know what I personally find to be the worst part about Rotten Tomatoes that it exists at all, that we have any sort of aggregator for people's opinions that can take my opinion and boil it down to five sentences.

And I'm sure I've been guilty of this in the past, five movie five word movie reviews. I don't do that anymore, you know why, because it's not fun for anybody, And frankly, boiling somebody's idea down to five words is just it's just trying to be clever. And there's people that can do it that don't make it seem like it's snide, But some of it comes from that snidness and the dismissiveness. And I understand you can dismiss this movie, and plenty of critics have is it's a dumb movie for kids? Who is this for?

I don't get it. Animatronics make me want to give them a hug. They're not scary. I agree with that one. But ultimately there does have to be this weird conversation that has to be had of if you're a fan of something and this thing is made for you, your opinion is not invalid because you liked it before.

It's just it's a weird, complex conversation to be had because, yeah, the critics reviews for this movie beyond low, the audience response beyond high. So how do you how do you differentiate? How do you take those two things and have a conversation about it? Well, well, I think it's what comes down to like and this As somebody who isn't like a huge movie buff, I think this is my disconnect. What are critics looking for?

That's what I want to know. Are they look at person right? But like, what I'm assuming is like the at least like my idea of what a movie critic is meant to, at least like the mainstream movie critics, like the people that like go on aditional thank you. That's that's because I mean I'm not lump and again I didn't look at what he thought. But I'm not lumping a Chris Stuckman or some of these other YouTubers who do reviews in there, because again, yes they are on Rotten Tomatoes, yes their scores are aggregated, but it feels like some of them have their finger on the pulse of these things, or at least they're willing to acknowledge it, as opposed to, in my opinion, having their finger, thumb and head firmly planted up their asshole.

Because again, judging this movie against Raging Bull, like what movie? Are you really doing a disservice to this movie or Raging Bull? I would actually contend you're doing a disservice to both because this movie's not made for the same reason Raging Bull was, And that might be unpopular, that may get me flack from certain people, or certain people may think my opinion doesn't hold any water, But to be self aware is important in twenty twenty three, especially if you're spending any time talking about anybody else's stuff. And I have to be just as self aware as Scott Coffin is about your place in the world and how much or little. Your opinion is going to matter the moment you say I didn't like it because I don't know anything about Five Nights I Freddy's, and I'm not gonna bother myself to learn anything about it.

And my unwillingness to learn about it is also going to color my opinion because like justin you didn't learn anything about it ahead of time, you still enjoyed the movie. There have been reviews I have read that people have essentially said, I don't know the lore, don't care, and you know what, this movie not for me, not good, And it's like you have told me already you have zero interest in viewing this movie fairly, so they came in. It sounds like you come up with a preconceived notion that like this is a thing for children. I don't care about it, so it has to really blow me away or I'm gonna think it's bad. And I think, like when it comes to art in general, like the what art is so many people It kind of reminds me of like the people that are super critical of modern art.

You know, things that are super you know, minimal and not easily understood on the surface, and how they're what it comes down to isn't necessarily what art looks like or the technique that was used, but it's what it was trying to represent or what it was trying to elicit, And as long as those things come across, it aren't as considered successful. It might not be considered beautiful, it might not be considered you know, technically, you know, impressive, but it still will be successful because the artist was able to elicit the reaction that they were looking for. And if a movie is meant to be fun and you had fun watching it, it is a successful movie. It just probably won't you know, critics have seen it all, I guess, or at least they want to believe that they have, and they don't know joy.

I guess, like that's what That's what it feels like, is that like you have to be so anti joy either that or like this is just not your cup of tea, which is fine, like not everyone's gonna love this, of course, like if you're not subjective, but that's subjective, and then they treat it like objective truth. And I don't know how I feel about that, because not everything has to have some big, deep, you know, metaphor behind it all. Not everything has to has to say like a million things. Sometimes a story can be simple. Sometimes it you know, it doesn't have to have like some some big moral or mean something.

It can just be a fun ride. And so many things that our fun rides are discredited because they're not artsy enough, I think is the general feeling. Yes, it doesn't have to make its mark in cinema history, like it doesn't have to be a defining moment, but in order to be enjoyable, And yet I think it did. But yet, this movie is going to be something that people will fucking put on for days on end. It will be their comfort movie.

I've literally, I mean, I've already seen these comments of like, I'm never gonna turn this movie. I'm gonna leave this movie on. I'm gonna constantly come back to it and watch. And you know what, I don't think that's hyperboly at all. I think that that is.

I think that that again, that's a good thing. And to your point, Dustin and Emma, this is part This movie inserts itself into a larger conversation, either by choice or by design, of at what point do we all acknowledge, yo, the world as fucked? The everything around us is insane, and us being able to find simple solace in a movie or TV show for an hour or two or however the fucking long you want to is something that I feel like is underappreciated, if not rarely acknowledged anymore we talk about the quality of things. I'm as guilty as the rest of the people because I always drag on the office. But I know that there are so many people out there that if the office did not exist tomorrow, but existed up into that point, there would be people that would have a hard time because it is a thing that they go back to on a bad day or X, Y and Z.

And you know what that cannot be overstated how fucking important that is in this state right. So much of media, you know that, I think people tend to scoff at, or at least like the uppity people tend to scoff at. Are be up uppity, be uppity. It's the idea of media feeling like a warm blanket, you know, Like for me, that's Studio Ghibli, Studio Ghibli. Movies to me feel like just a comforting, warm blanket.

And I've seen them a ton of times, especially like my neighbor Totoo and like that one is absolutely the target audience is children. But what sticks with me is the feelings, the way that it elicits a feeling of nostalgia for a simpler time I was never a part of. Like that's what it does for me. Like the way that it romanticizes connecting with nature in a way that I really never got to experience, and that it is able to provide that for me, that even though I know the story is simple, even though I know that it is not my like if if it was made today, I'm not the target audience, and yet it feels so comforting in a way that I know I could return to it and it can still elicit those same feelings for me.

I wouldn't even necessarily have to like watch it and be completely engaged to feel those things. You know. It's the music, it's the colors, it's the it's the general vibe, it's the dialogue. It doesn't have to be some like crazy story to be impactful, you know, sometimes media just needs to be a warm blanket. And now everybody's trying to differentiate themselves, and everybody's trying to do something new and different, and I feel like it's it's starting to go to a place that feels too obscure, like it's it's just starting to collapse in on itself.

And like, during a time like this, having something that is easy to understand, easily digestible, and just a fun fucking romp during a spooky season like and sometimes in easy watch is necessary. And this fills that niche successfully extremely successfully for a wide audience, not just in age, but in interest, Like the fact that my parents even said, hey, Emma, there is this movie that came out. I don't know if you've heard of it, The Nap Finnits of Freddy's. Have you heard of this? And I was like, actually, well, here's actually we open as you Will with William Afton.

Yeah, I'm gonna sitch it it just like at the board down start right, but the guy starts here the say crying child is yeah, it's that, but that's the other thing, and you you mentioned it, Emma, Like I have friends that I never would have thought would have watched this movie, and yet not only have they watched it, I've had conversations with them about it and they have enjoyed it. And it's like, wait a second here, like this. This is again like this has now legitimized it and it doesn't need to be legitimized because it's a it's already so pervasive in a rather large I wouldn't even say corner, but rather large part of the Internet. But yet again, I go back to the idea of good mythical mourning with two people who have an eighteen million, you know, audience reach.

But yet somehow, I'm sure they don't see themselves as as legitimate as they would like to be, because again it's on the Internet. But yet, at what point do those two things converge in a meaningful way? And I think something like Five Nights of Freddy's becoming a six overly successful movie and now again like inserting itself into the public. You know, at least geis the pop cultures geist in a more mainstream way. I hope that we see more things like this, more it's bridged a gap.

Yeah, more people like Matt Pat and Mark Player getting opportunities to do more mainstream things. I mean, again, you mentioned the thing about Mark Pleier and Pat and them pushing the conversation with Five Nights of Freddy's, those two dudes and Scott coffin, Like if they aren't, like I don't know, like if they don't think they're lucky stars that the three of them existed at the same time in reality, Like I don't know what they should be thinking, because two people made a career off of one guy's video game in a way that not only created a like I don't know, like a self sufficient community of constantly feeding the machine, but then also pushing it to such heights that it is, like you mentioned dustin merchandised into the ground.

I mean, for Fox's sake, that's we didn't mention it. You know how much merchandise existed before this movie, You know much merchandise is going to now, Like the amount of stuff that's gonna have to come out now, just based on how successful this movie has been, they're gonna have to catch up. It's like what happened with Baby Yoda. Like we're gonna see five nights of Freddy's stuff just being pumped out for the next six to eight months. I'm ready for I'm ready for the Lego set.

I'm ready for more Matt Lillards. Because let's let's talk about the movie specifically for a second. Yeah, Matt Lillard is. I mean, look, if Josh Hutcherson weren't so good in this movie, I would say Matt Lillard's the best part. But I'm so glad to see as as Mike White of the Projection Booth put it, so athleted me.

Instead of him taking the mask off of people, he is the one having the mask taken off of him because he is now I mean again, he was a villain and scream. Obviously spoilers for a movie from the mid nineties. If that's the thing you somehow missed in your exist why why did you spoiling me? Chruz? Is that real?

Yeah? I haven't seen it. There's so many things I haven't seen. Oh, that feels like a real thing. That like that does feel like a thing that like you should and would enjoy and should totally check out.

Maybe it doesn't play the same way it used to. But he was great there, right, he's great there, But he's great here, And I just I love Matt Lillard. He seems like a real, genuine human being, but he is scary. He has a physical presence to him that that again, you might not think it given that this is the guy that plays Shaggy and Scooby Doo. But when he wants to be menacing, he can turn it on.

And he turns it on at the end of this movie. And you know what, I enjoyed it immensely. He has an unhinged energy to him. He does he I like that. He needs more of that.

Yeah, I wish he had more to do in this movie, But given how he was presented in the story, how could he write? But only because I thought. I thought he was the best performance in the movie, even more than the hutcher Yeah. I mean, I think for me, the Hutter plays the same character in every movie he's in. Damn, that's a hot take.

That's fair. And you know what I mean. I made the joke like eternal teenager Josh Hutcherson because he does he does. He has a he is a childlike youth ness to him that no amount of facial hair can change, except for maybe if he had like a great, big bushy beard. I would argue that the Lawyer is the best performance.

Oh yeah, he's book Yeah. But for me, I mean, look, I went into this knowing. I only say Josh Hutcherson because I already knew that matth Matthew Lillard is a fantastic actor, right, Like I've seen him in other things, Like I have never at any point been like Josh Hutcherson. Now that's a guy who's stuff I'll watch because for the most part, I mean, he's been kind of type cast and stuck in his own kind of hell of things in a way that I would probably, you know, you could say, compared to like a Taylor Lawtner, like you're known for that thing that one like Josh Hutcherson has really since twenty fifteen, since Mocking J Part two, he's been in. This is the ninth thing that he's been in since twenty fifteen.

That's seven years. No excuse me, eight years. That's a long time as an actor to have only worked on eight or nine things. I mean, especially someone like Josh Hutcherson who came off of Mocking J Part two and like you're the main character in that movie, like one of the two main characters. So I don't know, Like it's weird because I never considered Josh Hutcherson anything other than that guy from Hunger Games, a movie series I only saw one of the movies of and then I saw a Journey to the Mysterious Eye, which he's also in with The Rock, but I never gave him much thought as an actor.

But after this movie, I was like, you know what, I'm excited to see more Josh Hutcherson stuff. He's an intriguing actor. He has weird he has weird energy, Like he plays kind of harried really well, just like a guy like constantly trying to push his way up out of things. He plays that really well in this movie, and I'd be curious to see if that's just a thing he's doing well in this movie, or if that's like a reoccurring trait of characters that he plays. Is just kind of playing not Downtroden, but definitely like against the odds of his situation.

If you've ever seen Future Man, it's a series that he's in, It's basically the same character as this, like that in this movie, he's got a little bit more of a especially when dealing with those ghost kids in his dream, he's got more a little bit more dramatic thing going on, But it's the same, it's the same guy. Interesting. I wonder, I wonder if that was kind of the motivating factor I mean one of the things that they saw we was like, this is the guy like this? I mean that could have been. Yeah, this movie's been in development for I mean what twenty fifteen.

I'm pretty sure they Universal or Warner it was in development. Hell right, yeah, I mean it changed hands some I forget I believe it's canceled. It was, it was picked back. It was a pick back up. Warner Brothers bought the rights in April of twenty fifteen, but aff had been out for less than a year.

They bought the rights, and then they spent so long getting it to do anything that it eventually Universal was like all right, we'll do it, and then they went to Blumhouse. Mike White of the Projection Booth, he actually is friends with Gil Keenan, who was supposed to direct this movie initially the craziest person I think and the person I would have loved to have seen their version of the movie because in a weird way, it's like it kind of makes sense because of the other things that he's worked on. I would love to have seen what Chris Columbus's version of this movie would have been, because I personally find the first two Harry Potter movies to be the best one because they have this weird sense of wonder and fun that the other ones kind of ignore for a number of reasons, namely because all of a sudden the movies get a lot more serious and a lot less fun.

But I would have loved to have seen someone like Chris Columbus who did Home Alone and Home Alone two and Missus Doubtfire and all these kind of whimsical movies kind of giving his whimsy harder edge and giving it kind of like a nastier, more adult edge with I mean, the kind of did it with pixels but that movies? You bid, they couldn't have got Zack Snyder right, Yeah, Yeah, it's too bad. There weren't explosions inside of the pizzeria in slow mo. Freddy Basberg biting someone's head off in slow mo. Shit, they could have done an explosion.

Enough things were set on fire in the game. It's true, It's true, But I mean again, like it's kind of sat and like you mentioned them, it's been in development health for over almost a decade now, Like on top of everything else, I'm surprised that this movie came out and was good. Like in a lot of ways like there have been movies that have taken less time in between when it was announced and when it comes out, and those movies are terrible. I mean, look at how many sequels to movies from the eighties and nineties we've seen now that have taken twenty and thirty years and they're bad. Like, ten years is a long time in terms of getting something from start to finish, And the fact that this is a it hangs together as well as it does, I think is surprising.

I will say you mentioned Dustin. I think Scott Coffin really needs to be given a lot of credit for sticking to what he wanted and standing his ground and going I want to have a story that I want representative of the thing I've created on screen to the point where I'm gonna put my It's not going to just be based on the characters or based on Five Nights and Freddy's by Scott Cough and my name is on the story, by my name is on the screenplay. And I think a lot of the success of the lore stuff and keeping to the lore and keeping to what the fans are expecting comes from Scott Cough And I mean the other stuff comes from Seth cut it back and Emma Tammy. But they're all in the room together working on the script.

They're all kicking ideas around, and for what we end up seeing on screen, it's shockingly successful for a movie that's been in production for nine years and has had three different directors attached to it, including two of them who one of which again directed Harry Potter one and two and plenty of other things, and the other one, Gil Keenan, now is directing the second Ghostbusters sequel, Ghostbusters Frozen impot and he wrote that movie as well, So like if he had directed it, who knows what it might have looked like, but it it could have been its own weird thing that might have been just as successful or not. I just I'm surprised at how good this movie is given how long it's been in production, because that is a determinate sometimes of the possible quality of the movie.

Just suffering, because nine years sometimes that's a death sentence in a way. I have two plot grapes though, Oh hit me first, yeah, first one. Yeah. Hutterer's character Mike gets this new job and like he has to get a job right, He can't screw this up. He's watching his little sister, he's got to provide for.

He's trying to make sure he has a job because he's fighting his evil aunt for custody. So there's a lot writing on this job. Right. First thing he does when he gets there takes sleeping pills and knock and conks out. Who does that on job day one?

I know it is motive, somebody who's very depressed and obsessed. But he's got all this stuff riding on this job. Day one, on the job goes to sleep, I think, and every night after he was sort of told that it wasn't going to be a difficult job, but to be fair, like he owns the place. Yeah, I will say, I read it, and I'm curious for your other one is Dustin? Before I give my biggest gripe?

What's your other? What's your other gripe? How they portrayed Nebraska. I was wondering if that was going to be first of all, the poster as the huge tall tree forest thing on the poster, not Nebraska. Second of all, all they really focus on about his time in Nebraska is his brother getting abducted.

I mean that happens everywhere. Why Nebraska, Why did they pick Nebraska they think it's some remote backwoods country. No, it's not. They could have used Florida or something like that. Wow in Florida.

Right, everybody knows what's fired at Florida, right, I will say, in keeping in line with the first gripe of like, well, this is his first job, like well like and you know, like he needs to take it seriously and all that. The idea that the aunt, who is clearly well off, needs Josh Hutcherson's sister for the money that she gets out that yeah, are you talking about watching it? It makes zero actual fucking sense because this woman shows up everywhere other than to get murder with her lawyer, who one would assume the way she's portrayed that she has money and she is paying this attorney to be there or something. So why would she need three hundred dollars additional a month? Like it?

It was the most late, It was not the most lazy, But it's a lazy, bizarre justification when you don't really need anything like it could just be he doesn't seem to be a very good uh you know, I guess steward of his sister. Okay, so what like I don't know, like that could have been enough, is my point, Like CPS sure could have just been, like, I don't think that it's a safe household because you're unable to provide why does it need to be any more than that? Like you you kind of went out of your way to explain it, and in explaining it, it sounds like you don't understand at all. But I think that might have been the point, because they never confirmed that was her motive. That was just what he assumed her.

But that is what the movie is ultimately still telling us. You know, I always telling us that you know what I mean, Like the writers wrote that line, so I always assume, and unless the movie says otherwise, that it's slyly informing us that that is their intent. Even if they don't, I want to believe and me to in in hand in head canon fashion, if I were to come up with my own plot whole filling explanation, I'm wondering if it has much more to do with the fact that being his being their aunt right and both of their parents being dead, it's well assumed that she probably is mourning the loss of I don't know if it was you know, her brother or her sister could have been the mom or the dad, and perhaps she wants to reconnect with her family, and she knows that she can't adopt Hutcherson because he's an adult, and so she wants to adopt Abby to be closer to the family, and she's just really I'm just saying, the character in the movie ain't portrayed that way.

Is all ab No, not at all. That's why I'm saying this is absolutely headcaed, and I am jumping so many conclusions. I'm just saying I think that there could have been something along the lines of that that maybe she's just, yeah, she is a horrible person and she has bad, you know, ways to go about potentially decent intentions. I don't, I don't know. It's hard to say, but it could be that she is genuinely concerned for Abby and it's just not touched on in a way because we needed a villain, you know, that wasn't uh, that wasn't a child murderer.

We needed the other villain, right. I mean, I will say I think you didn't need another villain, but we needed the other villain, right right, or the other villains because again, the I think the smarter thing that they did, you know, ignoring the Mary Stuart Masterson character. In terms of the villains in the movie, I think what was really smart was they gave the animatronics a level of ambiguity, like are they are they violent? Are they not? What are they doing?

Why are they doing what they're doing? Well, they kind of answered at the end of the movie sort of, I mean they it's a little higgleby Piggley with oh, they they don't know that he murdered them. Yeah, that's also way different from the games. The way that he has like control over them makes no never never happens. The whole thing with the drawings has nothing to do with the games.

That felt really lazy. I mean I'm mainly saying that for Dustin's sake. Yeah, I mean it's lazy and sloppy in the Yeah, it's it. If it feels lazy and sloppy in the movie, it's because it is lazy and sloppy, and it makes I don't know, it's a very convenient plot contrivance. And also, oh, by the way, it had to be on the board for them to see it.

Yeah, that's owing it wasn't enough, Like, yeah, it was a little silly. Yeah, And that's the thing I mean, I appreciate that they humanize the animatronics. They give the animatronics a level of ambiguity that is needed, because again, we're supposed to at times fear them but also find them immensely cute and fun. That being said, yeah, there's some stuff that, just like the conclusion of the movie, has happened in the game, this scene that we're seeing, and I think it works better in the game. I think the idea of William Afton getting in the suit and the suit going haywire because they're a fucking trashy suit that wasn't necessarily made to withstand the test of time.

Because that's the other thing we're led to believe and obviously understand that there has been a passage of time since Mike's brother has gone, which means these suits are old, they're not brand new. So and they've already shown us that there's spring lock suits in the movie, Like why introduce this Deus ex machina of Well, the pictures on the wall are how he's controlling. It's like, no, no, no, no, we don't need any of that because there's no need to explain. There's no need to further recontextualize why these things are taking place. Let's just leave that for a second movie so you can spend the next year and a half finding a better answer.

Because here's the thing. I genuinely believe that's gonna be one of the things they ret conn in the next movie because it's just too dumb to be continued into anything else. Yeah, I would agree with that. If they are to wreck Coon anything from the movie, it's going to be that because that they Yeah, the thing with the drawings was was pretty pretty weak, and the idea that somehow he has to be controlling them. It can't just be they're killing people that come into their space because they're protecting their space because that's the only space that they have, because they're like, ultimately somewhat like animals.

Because again that again that that could just be part of the ambiguity of the characters is they're just fighting back against a threat that they do or don't necessarily understand, and then they understand because they see their friends being threatened, people that they've come to like by this other thing. Why do you need any other explanation other than they're seeing them their friends being threatened by by Matt Lillard's character. It just seems like a lot of hoops to jump through to get to a conclusion that's right there smacking you in the face. But again, outside of that, like I think I actually found the conclusion and the third act of the movie to be a lot of fun and getting them like you, like you mentioned dustin getting Matt Lillard on screen in that suit and then with the you know, kind of the voice that is being run through some sort of kind of I don't know, like distortion, but then he takes the mask off and it's just Matt Lillard and then puts the mask back on and we get this kind of distortion of the voice.

Like I I enjoyed the end of the movie so much that I hope the next movie is a prequel movie and we just get the seaborn Matt about that. I want to know what you guys thought would come next, because obviously something is going to come next, and that was my thought too, is that they're probably going to do a prequel. That Lillard signed on for three movies, so I mean, again, that doesn't that doesn't mean anything, but yeah, they're going to I think they're going to introduce where, you know, where Henry fits into all of this, because that is absolutely missing from you know, from the plot overall, and like it. But the thing is is that it makes sense as to why why, you know, why was Garrett was his name?

The younger brother? Why was he kidnapped? Why him? And then why when William is giving uh, you know, Michael the job and like he realizes his last name, and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, it's you like, why them? Why them?

And the only thing that makes sense to me is a vendetta against Henry and lashing out against Henry's family. That is the only thing that makes sense to me, because the other ones he kills indiscriminately for the sake of remnant. I'm not going to get into that with Dustin. I feel bad about it. We're just yeah, there's a lot that just needs to be left unsaid because it's not a lot of well you will you see when So when Glitz Trapp and spring Trap have a baby, can I just point out something though?

And again, I think for me, this is my thoughts on the lore and stuff. I don't think they need to have any sort of connection to why Josh Hutcherson's character his brother was taken. I think you could just have it be William Afton as the villain and and have him come back in Nebraska. I don't live in Nebraska. He went all the way to Nebraska and then abducted why why them?

Utah? Right? Yeah? I think so in in the in the in the book canon or in the book slash video game canon. Yeah, as far as how far is utap for you guys, like a few states, like two or three states over?

Was he just Oh? I just happened to be in the area. I mean, I mean that that's the question, right, Well, that's the thing, right like, but that's it could just be that, or there could be this red con that could be Yeah, I would say, knowing Scott, I just don't want it to be a red con because thenry Emily character is a is a character that exists in the book and video game to explain something that could be explained by one character. I'm just saying it. Could it not?

Though? If you're not making him his son, could that character not just be his own character then? And him being his own character is therefore a stand in for the other other character in the series, because that's the thing in the series. Michael Aften is the protagonist, then becomes then gets his body scooped out and a robot run in, and then his body soon dies and he turns purple. But then because he becomes a zombie and he walks around town and then he's fired because he stinks it's nothing true.

Yeah, this is like again level of insanity, fired for odor. Yeah, it's all I All I'm saying is by removing the Josh Hutcherson character from being related to our villain and turning a different character into the character who's related to the villain, I don't think we need to have a secondary creator character. You just have your villain as William Afton and spring Trap, and everybody loves spring Trap and spring Traps in the video games enough, and so now we're gonna get spring Trap out the fucking wazoo because it's a serial killer in a bunny suit. And you know who hasn't seen that me? You know why, because he's not in the video games enough, and no movies have done it in terms of what this is.

And I am imminently interested in a serial killer. Serial killers. Okay, so we'll let the other dut serial killers need motive, unless if they're just straight up you know, psychopaths, the motive could just be as a psychopath. What's scarier than that? But then why go through all the trouble of what you were trying?

Because why not? Because he's a Because that's how you bring the kids in. You have to bring here to your place by animateural. I feel like, if you just wanted to kill kids, I feel like there's an easier way. Wow, would you like to inform us of that easier way, Emma?

Uh? Not creating an entire franchise that is chuck E cheese adjacent, designing characters and then stuffing children into the cost like this, it's a whole fucking but to be fair within the lore itself, the reason why William Afton kills Henry Emily's children is tenuous. CHI is tenuous at best and is rarely, if at all, completely explained on its own right. Yes, no, it just well he was drunk or he was angry because his son died to the animatronics like okay, fine, but I don't know. I just see this as an opportunity to then dreamline the I see this as an opportunity to streamline the lore, and one of the things, one of the things that can be streamlined out is a secondary creator.

You don't have to have the guy who made one animatronics and the guy who made other animatronics. He could just be one. I just want them to wreckcon the fact that his last name is Emily, because that doesn't exist. Nobody's last name is Emily. That was really bothering me.

When I was like redoing my research, I was like Henry Schmidt and like nothing would come up, and I was so lost, and so I had to like look up Henry Emily Schmidt fanaff and that I found it. Like it. I yeah, I'm I understand where you're coming from. But a great name, but I iconic. Truly.

I genuinely feel like the lore moving forward is going to be, like we've already said, it's going to be reflective of the source material, but not necessarily in the way that we or the fans the hyper fans expect, which I think like we've kind of mentioned and I think we would all agree in terms of the things that we're fans of that maybe have been adapted I'm not sure i'd want to go see a Thor movie that just shows me what I've seen in the comic book and nothing else, Just like I'm not sure I want to go see a Five Nights of Freddy's movie that's just going to be the game. Because if that's the case, there is more fanaf stuff that is not movie related than is movie related right now, And that may at some point be the case, it may swing in the other direct, but right now, like it's if you're not a fan of the movie, you've got so much stuff to go watch, like you're you're not hard up for finaf content.

So my point being, like, I think the next movie should be even more of a subversion of what the expectations are because past the first game slash movie, like Dustin kind of mentioned with the the Beast growing too many heads and you can't slay it at one point, just think if they go I'm work because here's the thing, because Five Nights Freddy's two is prequel, and they've said the next movie is more than likely going to be a sequel, not prequel, So what is that? I think? So I think that they I think that they've I think that they've said it. Maybe I'm miss maybe I'm miss speaking, but I didn't see anything that's said otherwise. I just want to believe it's going to be a prequel.

Well I mean, but again, like in my mind, the next movie probably if anything, will have flashbacks to something else, something else, right, But like again, like this is an opportunity, like dustin me, to fix a problem that is you can no longer control the thing you've created. And I genuinely think that that is what has happened, regardless of who Scott Coffin donates to politically, and people have a problem with that, like and him taking a step back and no longer being in control of the lore. I think he's in control of this, and this is an opportunity to do right by the fans and correct some of the things that maybe didn't hang together so well or didn't have a worthwhile explanation for a majority of the people who are engaged with the media listen it.

They can continue to pull off subverting expectations, things that go against the law in a way that is satisfying and not frustrating. I am all here for it, absolutely, because like as confused as I was, at first, you know, adjusting to the new familial structure, because that was really the big change more than anything else that really stands out, Like, yeah, they streamlined a ton of shit, but like in terms of like what was the big difference that stood out, it was absolutely you know, the family structure. The fact that Michael is not you know, William's son was like huge, and it took me a second to like catch up to that reality. But like once I did and I adjusted, I was like, this is fine, this makes sense for this world.

Why not If they're able to continue that trend in a way that doesn't feel forced or frustrating, I'm all for it. My thought is that it would be satisfying for me to see why Garrett and Michael specifically, like why then why that family? And they already showed potentially if this is to be confirmed that you know, the father in the dream sequence was also shown to be working on the animatronics in the videotape, and if they were going out of their way to like have that as like a hidden easter, eg, did you catch this? I feel like they might want to do more with that, like they're teasing it, and I'd be a little disappointed if they didn't dive into that, unless they came up with something significantly more satisfying, which in that case I will be fine with.

Can I point out, though, that if Josh Hutterson's characters dad was the character from the video games the way he was, how would he have not heard of five nights of Freddie Fasbeer's pat Pizzeria. Right, That's a good point. That's I mean, that's the only thing I can think of. He kept it secret. When he goes to see Steve Raglan in the career placement office, uh, he reads his name and stops before he says the last name, right, So that told me he knew who he like, he knew right that family name.

And at the very end he did say like I killed your brother, I kill you and like that was never spoken, unless, like I mean, I guess, Garrett could have said, I have an older brother named Michael, and this is our last name. Schmi comes save me, Michael Schmidt is my brother, like I guess. I guess, But it seemed like such a personal thing, because that's the only other way that I could explain his reaction to seeing you know, Michael and that last name put together. Is that I guess Garrett informed him of the fact that he has a brother, which I guess is fine, Like I don't I don't mind that, but I feel like it would be so much more satisfying if he if in that moment William was putting two and two together of like, oh, you're this person's son.

Wait sec plants a seed for the prequel. Right, well wait a second here, hold on, but wait a second. If a child goes missing, there there are ways that people are informed about a child going missing, including parents being on the news pleading for the child to be returned. Are we to believe that in this universe that didn't happen, which would mean they're all on the news, which means Matt Lillard would have seen it. Nebraska?

Whoa, Now, I mean, that's what's gonna He's gonna go back to Utah. He's not gonna see that shit. You know that that's not going to go next. All I'm saying, it's a small white child, is kids from Nebraska. It is a small white child.

There is a zero percent chance it doesn't go national. How do I know? Because I live in the universe that we live in now where that happens all the time. I don't know. I'm just say have it so then I don't see it on the news.

So all I'm saying is they have an out, a logical out right. And again I would be more excited if they did something different because I already kind of know what those beats are going to be. I perfixated too close to the sun. I just wanted to know what I was missing out on for the last ten years with all this five Nats at Freddy's. Did you enjoy the William Personal Hell Game?

Oh? Yes, an alf World, thank you? The Custom Night, oh, Ultimate Custom Night. So here's the funny thing. I've actually tried playing some five Nights at Freddy's.

I know you had Sister Location. I have them all, abou doubt you have them on your phone. Yeah, you can get them all on your phone for varying prices between seven dollars to like two dollars. It's the cheapest way to play five night. Actually going to say that the lower number first usually, but I'm unusual about like seven and what twenty and you're like seven and two.

But the cheapest way to get five Nights of Freddy's is on your phone. I know that was a thing. Yeah, and I will say I I understand the appeal. I'm not the kind of person who would play that kind of game anyway, so it is kind of lost on me. I am a huge fan of the designs of the characters, the character quirks and personalities.

I like some of the weirder characters. I think that any series with a breadth of characters that you know, a dirge of characters the way this one does with versions of the characters and then subversions and then knockoff versions. And yeah, the mediocre melodies characters are probably my favorites because those are sufficiently strange. All I'm saying it, But I do like the hippo, and I do like Orvil the Elephant as well. I actually don't think Five Nights at Freddy's as a game is for me.

Like I've played it enough and I don't think I would And do understand why you would watch someone play it but would have no interest in playing it yourself. Yeah, that's me. Absolutely. It's not much of a It's not much of a game to play. If I played it, you guys would probably have a fun time watching me play it.

For a number of reasons, but for me playing it was like, okay, so the gameplay loop is look left, look right, look at the cameras, look left, look right, look at the cameras, look left at the door, look at the power. That's it. It's like, I mean, I under I mean, there's something to be said for simplicity, but there is also something to be said for acknowledging that this is not much of a game and it is really just a jump scare simulator, which again he would like a security breach a lot. Sure, but that's a game. Now, Yes, it's a one of the first that's like game game.

Yeah. Have they ventured into VR, Yeah they have. I could see that even if that's helped want that's that is the game where they introduce the idea that all of the other games in the series are in universe games, not actually things that are we're seeing happen. We're just watching someone else interpret something they think happened as a video game. That's what I think.

In VR, this concept like this is much scarier. I think it works better. Yeah, yeah, it totally does. I mean, I think most horror things are when it's a more immersive experience. But this is like fucking pit like what I think, to Dustin's point, like this thing specifically as pared down as it is in the original form.

Like I have been tempted to get the VR thing because I'm interested what that would be like, but I really don't like what the gameplay loop of five minutes of Freddy's is. It is not fun for me personally. I find it to just be kind of didn't Yeah, yeah, and I'm with you, Dustin. It is the VR version seems way more engaging. Click click click.

Well, I get that too. I also wear glasses and not context. I get that, and apparently it's not close enough to your eyes for it to not peo blurry. That's right. So that's right, you know, honestly kind of ablest.

I mean, I mean, you can get you can get you can get lenses to stick inside of your VR that are prescription. That's the thing that sounds. They're not super expensive all unnecessary. They're not. I mean they're not.

Yeah, they're not super expensive. I looked into it. It's not it's not like it's two lenses that you just it's like fifty sixty bucks maybe if I mean, I mean I may be wrong, but like they're just two little lenses you stick inside of your glasses are usually like four hundred plus dollars, right, right, but it's just it's just the lens. And again, like you just have to I mean, look, huh. Ultimately, ultimately, I think the thing that we have a custom night, right, the thing we haven't mentioned in terms of the movie.

Yes, how cool are those animatronics that they make? Oh they're awesome. I love them, I really do. They look so authentically robotic and yet they're not except for Foxy. Foxy is the only like full animatronic that can hide a body in there if they wanted to.

I'm really impressed. I mean, they're obviously done by the Henson Studios, so you know, again you have the right people making the right decisions. But they look like the video game almost to a fault. And it's not uncanny, and the movements like it's the way that it's puppeted. It works really well.

You're saying that it's that it is uncanny. I mean, but I think that's the intention is for it to be unsettling, and so it's kind of human. I mean, it's it's uncanny in the way that you would expect it animatronic to be, but it's not uncanny, and like the comparing from the video game to the movie is more so what I mean, But like animatronics in and of themselves are uncanny to an extent. I think I'm just very desensitized because I've seen these things for like a decade. That's fair my my favorite thing I would say while watching other people play the games, it's really easy to forget during gameplay that these are being possessed by children.

It's so easy to forget that because they don't act like children during like in the gameplay, like during like the scary monotonous gameplay types stuff. I completely forget that they're supposed to be ghost children completely. And even though at first I was a little weirded out with like how you know, like, oh, let's build a fort, and I was like, you know what, it actually does make sense in a way that the games don't, and I liked that. It took me a second. Again, it's like one of those things I have to adjust to, but like once I did, I was like, you know what, this is fine.

I prefer it because it makes sense because they are children in the games, it's so easy to say they're possessed animatronics, but like in the movie, you're like, these are possessed animatronics by children. And I think that's the difference because the only time you really think about them being children is when you're watching cutscenes of like Crying Child and you know, the little the little kid sprites in the like That's like the only time is that you really think about it being kids. Otherwise I think that's like the last thing on your mind. Well, and that is the other thing again, Like I mentioned the idea that like they're humanizing these characters. I mean, you know a show that came out earlier this year, The Last of Us, Like so much of that video game is action based, and it's like shooting and killing zombies and or whenever the hell they're called in the lock click walk, clicker is whatever the hell?

Right, So the question that everybody at Walker is this is the other one. The question that everybody always had was like, what are you going to do if you make a show? Are you just gonna have it being Pedro Pascal killing clickers for an hour? And there's very little of that in the show because there's so much of it in the game. And what's interesting is in this in the Five Nights of Freddy's movie, they're so little scary stuff because it's all about again informing us as to who these characters are, and again, like you said, really reinforcing that these are kids in animatronic suits.

And yeah, the idea that they're making like a pillow fort, essentially a pillow fort, but with tables and chairs. It's like, these are not the characters from the game, but again they could have been, I guess theoretically, Like it's such a tonally different thing that that's why I said, like I kind of want them to just keep doing their own thing and ignoring whatever else came before, because whatever they're driving at here and whatever this is supposed to be is again it's like a better version of the finaf Floor because it is it makes sense in a way that the other It makes sense right out of the gate, in a way that the video game has been trying to make sense for the last decade, because they I mean, yes, I don't think Scott Coffin was expecting I think if you told him when he came up with Five Nights of Freday's oh By when he launched the fucking Kickstarter, You're gonna become a multi millionaire, You'd be like, no way, not a shit chance in hell.

Am I gonna have a movie based off of my property making almost or probably by the time you hear this over three hundred million dollars? No way, But you got Coffin's networth is a lot. But at the same time, like, that's the magic of something like this. You found your audience, your audience found you through whatever means necessary, and now we have an immensely successful movie. It's backwards business seventy million.

I don't know it's backwards for you. I mean, I believe, I believe it that, but that's estimated. But that's my point. It's just isn't it great that we live in a world where a video game about a animatronic bear suit stuffing you into another suit can become a multi million dollar franchise that now has a movie that will probably be more culturally relevant for the next five to ten years than it was in the last five to ten years. And I think I don't know what that means for the franchise either, Like right now that it has so much visibility in the mainstream.

I mean, like I mentioned, there's undoubtedly going to be more things, merchandise, TV shows, other things, and I would not blame them for doing any of it, because this is a thing that exists outside of Marvel and Star Wars and Disney. It's its own fucking thing, and in this day, everybody give us was there what the fuck? I mean, hard Pass. I would watch a Disney version of Five Nights at Freddy's if it were like the animatronics at Pirates of the Caribbean killing people. Oh, I would watch it if it was like the original, like two D animation style of what that'd be cool?

Actually, like Disney two D, wasn't it bendy? No, I don't mean no, no, I don't feel like Steamboat Willie. I'm talking to like Beauty and the Beast, like Disney ran oh oh oh, I like it. You're like, wait a second, I was like, what did you know that game is obviously not Tootioli. Yeah, well, like ads, it's that you meant that you meant the character.

Yes. Anyway, I think something because I mentioned earlier how this bridges the gap between like niche culture and mainstream culture, and I think some people might hear that and go, well, the Pokemon movie was really successful and people really liked the Mario movie, and it's like, yes, those are multi billion dollars. Like Nintendo was fucking huge. Nintendo was not niche. Nintendo became extremely popularized over the last twenty years, like probably more.

It wasn't like Nintendo probably, you know, it started as a niche when it was probably you know, just in Japan doing its own thing, and then it obviously became a worldwide phenomenon and it only grew and like Pokemon go in and of itself, like all of it, it is main like Nintendo is mainstream. This is indy. This was started by like a dude in his like in his house at his computer. Like that is the cool part for me. When I say like it's bridging the gap, I mean it's bridging the gap from like indie small projects and bringing that into the limelight that it deserves rather than like and don't get me wrong, like Pokemon movie was fun, The Mario movie was fun, and like, I hope we do see more of that.

But I think that this is filling a different niche that those did not. Yes, they are you know, movies that are able to say like, hey, you know, we're video games too, and like that's fun and all, but like this is you know, some you know, an indie video game that you had to download from the bowels of Steam, Like you had to hunt this thing down. It wasn't advertised. It was put on Steam so long ago that it was part of the Steam Creator program when you had to pay money to put your game on Steam. Like that's that's the that's the universe that this came out in was a universe where Steam wasn't really even the indie game platform at the time, right, Yeah, it's I don't know, it's it is very crazy to see how far it's come.

But in a lot of ways, it reminds me of like teenage I mean again to speak of something with giant animatronics. Suit's kind of like teenage Muni Ninja Turtles. Those weren't a thing until one day. But they weren't a thing until they were and and now it's like you can't escape it, and the movie and the cartoons were put it over the top because at one point, like we all know, Teenage Ninja Turtles was just a comic book made for adults, so on top of everything else, it was a comic book made for adults that got super popular with kids because it was a kid's cartoon. Because they realize the value of turning something for adults into kids.

Can they do that with five nights at Freddy's. They don't think that they have to. I think it's a different equation. You're aready done well. I think they have to figure out a way to balance this four kids but still allowing the adults to have a good time.

I think this movie did a good job. I don't know beyond this if it will, because the source material kind of has always struggled with maintaining that balance. But again, there's a lot more time, effort, and money and creative heads collectively being put into making a movie than, like you mentioned, just one guy trying to keep up with the whims of the community, the creators in the community who are creating theory videos, because like you said, Dustin can't overlook the fact that there were definitely people who, by creating the theories involved themselves unironically in the creation of the fucking lore itself. Because again, if you don't have a direction to go and someone else is saying, well, that seems like the direction you're going.

Well, I guess, I guess it was the direction I was going. You're right, Oh yeah, you got a bullshit it. I meant that from the beginning. Tommy wise figured it out. Tommy WISEO said that the room was meant to be a comedy all along were right.

It's like, we get it, dude, Like if you can pivot, pivot whatever. Yeah, don't try to convince me that that was the case. So I don't know, like in my mind, like this is the first in a long line of five nights at Freddy's things we're going to be seeing from here until probably twenty thirty at least, So I don't know. I'm excited. I think this is a good first entry.

Is it perfect? No? Is it kind of exactly what I wanted it to be in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's dumb, fun. I laughed more than I was scared, And I would watch Freddy fasber bite somebody else in half Yeah needs more blood.

I would accept more blood. Yeah. Yeah. I want to see the r read version of this movie. So I want to see see spring Trap on the ground just in a pool of his own blood.

That's what I want to see. So that was the thing I wanted to mention Dustin to you. So that just to give you an idea of how fucking bananas this can get. So at the end of this movie, to address the kind of the hanging chads of the So William the hanging chads. Okay, I'll let you I know, Dustin, can we for once go you don't know what we're talking about?

Got her? Got her here? Continue, I'm gooding. So at the end of the movie, William Afton is sawed, and by that, I mean he's left in a room to rot by the animatronics, the way that Lee Wanell at the end of Saw is left to rot by Jigsaw, and uh, you know that's where the story is left with Spring. However, in the video game, I don't know if they're gonna go hear in the movie, but I figure to inform you of how crazy this gets.

In the video game, William Afton, his body stays within the suit. However, his soul possesses the suit the same way the souls were possessing the other suits, and twenty thirty years in the future, his body is found in the back room by people who are opening a haunted attraction called Fasbear Frights, and they introduced by accident, a real haunted animatronic into their fake haunted attraction. That is where this story goes. However, I will continue he was hibernating and Emma, you can check me if I'm wrong. Michaelten finds out about this, goes and burns down the attraction.

However, spring Trap survives and comes back to the final location of Five Nights at Freddy's or freddie Fasbear's, which is created solely to trap all of the possessed animatronics within it so that it could be burned down by the other guy in the lore who created the animatronics with William Aft Yeah checks out, but then he still doesn't actually die. He sort of dies, so they say that like there always comes back, he always comes back. That line that he says in the movie is indicative of a character who in the video game literally continues to be the villain even when he uses to die. The lore has moved past him as a villain, and yet they continue bringing himself. Basically, they say that remnant, which is in the most like fundamental way uh souls and the remnants of souls being able to possess things and kind of almost like a building block of life in it of itself.

They call that, they call it remnant. They say it attaches to metal. That doesn't matter. Point is is that they say throughout the games that or at least like once they start introducing this concept, that remnant can't survive high temperatures, which is why they keep wanting to set the shit on fire. And so when they trap them all, they're hoping to finally release all the soul.

Then everybody can move on, and ever most of them will go to heaven, and at least one of them is going to go to Hell. That's the idea Ultimate custom Night, which we mentioned earlier when I said that that's his personal hell. His consciousness rather than going to I guess hell, Hell is taken to his own personal hell through the spite of one of the ghost children that he killed, basically saying I'm going to make I'm going to torture you for eternity like I am, I am your satan now. But here's the thing. He always comes back a part of his consciousness latched onto some sort of like what was it, like a fucking motherboard.

It infected part of the circuitry of the machine with which his body was decaying inside of that and then whatever that was, and then that circuitry is introduced into the new Pizza Plex that they're introducing and creating new animatronics for. So the new animatronics at the new Pizza Plex that is meant to exist to bring people in to rehabilitate the Five Nights at Freddy's brand is now infected by accident, by the character from those video games that exist in the universe. It's see what I mean, It's like fucking it's so many it works and works. It still all still above man. It's because there are books about the series that are about things in the series, but it's talking about the things in the series that the video games are inspired by.

So you have to decipher whether or not it's talking about one of the characters, you know, but with a different name. It's like I said, it's like three levels. I know. It's like I said, this is what happens when you work yourself into a corner and then instead of just going we don't know what to do, we need help just going up the wall instead. Yeah, blinding.

Yeah, you know what I mean by they need to streamline this sh sh which is why I am so like I said, it's an easy watch. It is a departure from the main series and the fact that it absolutely simplifies and streamlines what we have come to know Fineff as, which is the lore. Like everything about Fineff at this point, it is the lore. It is the like. It's the lore more than anything else.

And so this was a nice like callback to like the original vibes, like in a way that's still very easy to digest and was still entertaining. And that's why I think it was more than successful and absolutely deserves a watch. I don't know why you were listening to this and not watching it first if you haven't seen it, because you should have. But it absolutely the entire audience take your daily dose of cheek a lore. Motherfucker.

Well, I was gonna say and the final thoughts, but Dustin, I think it's yours. Now I'm done. I'm checking out. I mean, I echo that I like the movie. It's I'd probably watched again.

The whole time we've been doing this, I've been trying to decide what I liked more. I think I liked Willy's Wonderland more, but I still like this one. That's fair. I haven't seen it, but I've heard it's really funny, so yeah, that's fair. And I've heard that sentiment as well.

I mean, this has made me want to watch it. I've heard similar things where it's like, I, I this is fine, but Willy's Wonderland is is better. And I'm sure some of that comes from having to do the lower dance, you know, just a f they wanted Mr, right, which is like, I bet that's fun, but that's more fun, frankly, and it's got a little more horror. It leans more horror, right, which I mean again that for me, this is a I echo both of you, you guys like this is a watch. This is something worth checking out.

I've seen it three four times now, and it's fun. It's fun. It doesn't need to be more than that. Does a second movie need to be more than that? Yeah, the second movie does need to be more than fun.

I think it needs to do a little bit more. It needs to bring a little bit more to the table because it's a world built a little yeah or something, and this is a good starting place. I think this got enough people's asses in the seats, enough enough people through the door to you know, continue a franchise in a substantive way. And I think Emma Tammy, if she wants to come back, she did a good job. This movie looks nice.

It looks looks really well put together. It's a good looking movie. And I know that I've said before, well that's much of a compliment. In twenty twenty three, it does just a theory. Sorry, I think that this for me again, This is a good looking movie on top of being a fun movie to check out.

And yeah, I would consider myself a fan of five nights of Freddy's now by just sheer amount of time spent with the goddamn thing, which I just I want to inform our lovely audience that you, I don't think you had an actual strong opinion about it before. I think you were just making fun of it for the sake of making fun of it, But you did not have a positive opinion of it before seeing this movie. Hey again, it's just like I always thought it was for kids, and like it is for kids, but you know what, we could take fun in that. And again, like you did a whole one eighty on your perspective, like I'm the movie alone. But not really though, because again, like I mean, I had the games on my phone before this, like I just never really played.

I think the problem is the games were just I had played the games when they came out, and they were so not my bag and still not my bag, that if all the games were gonna be was just that over and over again, which ostensibly for the most part they are still the thing of looking at the cameras and doing the doors or some variation on that, that's just not something I want to do gaming wise. I never got into the let's plays, like that's the disconnect for me if I really like sit and look at it is not the game, but it's the vehicle through which I could have enjoyed the game without playing it, which in twenty fourteen was not something I really did and I don't do now. I don't watch Twitch streamers.

I have watched whole games played by people. But I'm watching it because I know that this has a certain amount of episodes and it will end, and it's more of a series less a like I'm just playing to continue playing, and this is the thing that I do so the disconnect came ultimately from that. And like we've mentioned, who was watching if not preteens and teens, and I was twenty four, you know what I mean? Like that there is some of this that did just pass pass me, pass me and past you know, past Dustin and I by. And that's, like I said, you are really like the person who quote grew up with five Nights at Freddy's, like all into Let's plays and the horror content.

I mean, I loved watching silly people on YouTube freak the fuck out, probably more than they actually would have otherwise that they weren't performing right, and it was great, and I loved watching it with my friends and laughing especially. I mean like Paudie Pie Amnesia Dark Descent that was like the Gateway. I cannot explain to you guys how much of a phenomenon that was and how many like inside jokes there, like it was a whole thing. And then just being able to see them play other games that were also popular and also like significantly viral and you know, more inside jokes that built off of that. Like it was a really fun time to be like into YouTube and finding that like type of niche content because it has such an active fan base of like the players themselves and the games.

But yeah, I mean I definitely am more of a watcher than a player, because I it's a lot easier to pause a video than it is to put down a game, and it also takes a lot less effort to watch video than to play a game, which is how I think most sports fans feel. I've got them. That's my that's that's you know what. Same, Let's all sit on our couch and watch other people do stuff. Fucking roast roasted.

I mean, look, I definitely think right you should watch the Security Breach, though, Chris, if you haven't seen clips of it yet, I want you don't have to, I want to play Security Breach because it's an actual video game. Do it again. That's fine. Again, that's my point here, Like the video game that is Five Nights at Freddy's ultimately is just a movie to be watched. Like I don't know, Yeah, it's uh yeah, I have I don't know.

Again, Like one eight might be a little drastic. I definitely will say that I won aidid on the Marvel stuff pretty hard. Back in the day, I used to tear that stuff apart and I want eight on that. But yeah, I mean, look, ultimately, anything that is a quality video game adaptation in film form I'm gonna be a fan of. Because for the longest time, video game movies were literally the worst thing you could watch in terms of adaptations, and that's not the case anymore.

Like you mentioned Detective Pikachu, the Mario movie, which exists in spite of the fact that there was a Mario movie that was so bad they vowed to never make another Mario movie again. But yet it took them twenty plus years and they did. So there you go. It's like everything eventually comes back around, and even something like Chuck E Cheese can become perverted in a way that now it has become more Five Nights at Freddy's is more popular than Chuck E Cheese could ever hope to be, and they have made more money. It has never got a movie, no that it sure didn't.

And you know what, there you go. I think that in and of itself is the transformative nature of art. We have someone creating something that is then more or less parodied and has turned into something imminently more successful than the thing that it was parroting or aping or however, you inspired, so gotta love it, folks. Yeah, no, this was fun. I'm I'm glad that we finally got here, and it was kind of advantageous timing given that we had covered the Walton Files, which I kind of want to go revisit now.

Yeah, I kind of do, because I want to see how much of it really is cribbed Five Nights of Freddy's Bear But you know what, that's the other thing, Like, so much of the five Nights at Freddie's thing is like the community and like the community creating fangames and doing their own thing with other things that is like five Nights at Freddy's. Like, that's another weird thing that you could do a whole show on, but we won't. So on that note, you can find dustin, Emma and I over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where we do another show called Scary Stories we Tell where we do Surreal Tube together, which is all about things like five Nights at Freddy's on the internet, surreal, weird, sometimes analog horror content.

You can find all that at Scary storieswetell dot com and at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. As for this show, Culturecast dot com, Patreon dot com, slash culturecast ten, twenty and fifty. Those are the levels you can get in at if you want to support the show, but like, rate and review it ever you get it. That helps us find our audience. Dustin Emma, thank you both so much for joining me.

This is fun and this is the first time we've done this together. This is a proper long episode. Oh it sure was. You're not a movie we had. We had a little thing about.

I'm happy. I'm happy with this. I hope anyone listening we haven't offended your five nights at Freddy's Lower sensibilities too much, but if we did. Hey, uh, it's just a game about a bear that bites people at past they'll take it so seriously. Yeah, that's all it is.

It's just that exactly, and we'll catch you on the next episode. Past the Pass The Fame for Stern