Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Griffin, David, Ben, and Marie accepted the mission. They live and pod in the shadows, for those they hold close, and for those they never meet. They also have a few notes for Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie with regards to Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Join the crew as they break down all the problems of this latest (and final???) installment of the beloved franchise. Join them as they rave over some of the most incredible sequences ever to grace the silver screen - ALSO in this movie. It’s a mixed bag, folks. But speaking of bags - we still love popcorn. And movies. If you’re in NY check out the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—Story and Spectacle at the Museum of the Moving Image https://movingimage.org/event/mission-impossible-story-and-spectacle/ Read Owen Gleiberman’s Review https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning-review-tom-cruise-1236396671/ Sign up for Check Book https://blankcheckpod.substack.com/welcome, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. http://www.patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter https://x.com/blankcheckpod?lang=en, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blankcheckpod/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@blankcheckpod?xmt=AQGzctAh4mbWTwYzCV1pzNT6AMV9o99EOfymi8TLR5mTde0 and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blankcheckpodcast/! Buy some real nerdy merch https://kinshipgoods.com/blankcheck Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/s/gpcOkQr8Sv or Discord https://discord.gg/Q6YGSR3JrA For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com https://www.blankcheckpod.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 0:03David Sims?

  Yep.

• 0:03Griffin Newman?

  We did a live show.

• 0:04David Sims?

  Yeah, remember?

• 0:05Griffin Newman?

  Ranking Scorsese at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We did the definitive power ranking of Martin Scorsese things.

• 0:12David Sims?

  It was so fun. It was very silly.

• 0:15Griffin Newman?

  Ben and Marie were with us and they're with us right now.

• 0:18David Sims?

  Yeah, hey.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone, or should I say, oh? Oh.

• 0:22Griffin Newman?

  And thanks to our friends at Dynasty Typewriter. It was livestreamed for the first time ever. But also, the replay is still up there, but only until October 30th.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  So just a few more days.

• 0:33David Sims?

  Yes.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  You can get it at dynasty.tv.

• 0:36David Sims?

  Dynasty.tv.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  It's $20. We had a blast and the Spreadmaster really got to work.

• 0:43David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. I was moving things around.

• 0:45Griffin Newman?

  Laptop was on.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'd have seen you that happy.

• 0:48Griffin Newman?

  You were thrilled. You were like a pick and share.

• 0:50David Sims?

  I was locked in.

• 0:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, very locked in and you were funny.

• 0:53David Sims?

  Thank you. You were funny. You were also funny.

• 0:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:57David Sims?

  And if you want to see like, you know, Griffin's shine box on camera, it's the only way to see it.

• 1:02Griffin Newman?

  You might see me shine Marie's shoes.

• 1:04David Sims?

  Exactly.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're into that sort of content.

• 1:07Griffin Newman?

  If that gets you off.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  So once again, that's at dynasty.tv.

• 1:45Griffin Newman?

  Blank Check, I need you to podcast with me one last time.

• 1:51David Sims?

  No, actually, we're gonna do it all, like every week.

• 1:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, right.

• 1:54David Sims?

  For the foreseeable future.

• 1:55Griffin Newman?

  Now, see, here's why I picked that quote, because I'm not buying for a fucking second this is the last Mission Impossible movie.

• 2:00David Sims?

  Oh, really? Oh, you're throwing that out right as the start of this episode?

• 2:03Griffin Newman?

  Spoilers.

• 2:04David Sims?

  You think more.

• 2:05Griffin Newman?

  Much in the way that this is not the last episode of Blank Check.

• 2:07David Sims?

  Oh, no. Yeah, I mean, unless one of us has lost in a submarine.

• 2:12Griffin Newman?

  There is one singular conflict in the way of there being future Mission Impossible movies is the fact that this film cost $400 million, took five years to film, basically.

• 2:23David Sims?

  Partly for factors beyond their control.

• 2:26Griffin Newman?

  We'll get into all of it.

• 2:27David Sims?

  Covid, the strikes, all this.

• 2:28Griffin Newman?

  And they like could not control Tom Cruise, right? Where I think there's a universe, much like what's sort of happening with the Fast and Furious franchise and Vin Diesel, which is completely bottlenecked now. We might never get a final film.

• 2:40David Sims?

  Right, because the studio is like, it's gone out of control. And if you want another one, we have a lot of like, control we want to put on it.

• 2:47Griffin Newman?

  Their wildest hope is to like, make a final film and be like, Vin Diesel, thank you for your service. We're never working with you ever again. These movies are cheaper and smaller and easier to make now. We're doing spin offs. And the problem is, much like Tom Cruise with Mission Impossible, this guy is too tied to this thing. You can't say no to him. He holds all the cards.

• 3:07David Sims?

  Well, yeah, there's no more of these movies without him.

• 3:10Griffin Newman?

  But I was, just to get out of the way, a little bit astounded. And I will get into the endings I didn't want to see, but a little stunned for how hard they're leaning into like, Final Reckoning, Final Reckoning, All Leads to This, that this movie does not even attempt to pretend that it's closing any door.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I completely disagree with you.

• 3:31David Sims?

  I would say mildly disagree with you too, but go ahead.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  We, sorry, I feel very like discombobulated that we're talking about the end of the movie at the beginning of the episode.

• 3:40David Sims?

  Why, that's the kind of impossible, I don't know.

• 3:44Griffin Newman?

  I would also argue that's almost how this movie is structured in the edit.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  True. Okay, but at the end of the film, I believe that we've achieved world peace. And therefore, there's no, you know, he did it.

• 3:58Griffin Newman?

  I kind of, I kind of agree with you.

• 4:00David Sims?

  What if he drops the USB, he's like, whoops.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Uh, excuse me, it's, it's a 5D optical drive.

• 4:06David Sims?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, what is the USB?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 4:08David Sims?

  That cartridge. The super USB.

• 4:10Griffin Newman?

  Right, okay.

• 4:11David Sims?

  Because, and the entity is so glowy that it's like, I make it glow.

• 4:15Griffin Newman?

  I think that's a good prop.

• 4:16David Sims?

  I do too.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Oh, I love, I love how it glows.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Um, but I'm also like. Why didn't he destroy it?

• 4:24Griffin Newman?

  Well, we're gonna get to this.

• 4:25David Sims?

  Why not? I think that that's very intentional.

• 4:27Griffin Newman?

  But I I agree with you that like, I I have a feeling this is based on nothing but having seen the movie twice now.

• 4:35David Sims?

  I got a feeling.

• 4:36Griffin Newman?

  It it really feels to me like there were multiple endings that had a greater sense of finality. And Tom at the last second was like, I just want ending where we all nod our heads and walk in separate directions.

• 4:47David Sims?

  What's a more final ending like that they would have abandoned?

• 4:50Griffin Newman?

  I will get into it.

• 4:51David Sims?

  Oh, he's gonna get into it now. Oh, he's gonna get into it.

• 4:55Griffin Newman?

  That final sequence, especially seeing it a second time, looks like it is shot entirely in the volume. Several of the actors seem painted in. It does not feel like they are all in the same space. They were shooting shit on this movie within the last three months.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I mean, I the actors not being in the same place, I buy. But those were real. Those were real humans.

• 5:15Griffin Newman?

  They, I think, went to.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  And none of them were looking at their cell phones because we've destroyed cyberspace. And everyone is happier.

• 5:22Griffin Newman?

  Here's what I think. I think they went to Trafalgar Square. I think they filmed people. I think then they filmed all the actors separately.

• 5:29David Sims?

  This, we're starting out with completely. You're just out of pocket, just.

• 5:33Griffin Newman?

  It looks.

• 5:33David Sims?

  Making shit up.

• 5:34Griffin Newman?

  As shit.

• 5:36David Sims?

  There's, there's fucking YouTube videos of them all filming in Trafalgar Square. Yes.

• 5:41Griffin Newman?

  Palm.

• 5:42David Sims?

  Yeah, yes.

• 5:43Griffin Newman?

  Atwell.

• 5:43David Sims?

  Yes. All of them. I think they did like a location day in Trafalgar Square. Who?

• 5:50Griffin Newman?

  Dega?

• 5:50David Sims?

  I don't know who that is.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  It's it's Tarzan.

• 5:54David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, probably him. He's one of those guys where even when I'm looking at him, I'm like, is he in this movie? Oh, there he is. Right? Yeah.

• 6:01Griffin Newman?

  There's a moment. There's a moment in this movie.

• 6:03David Sims?

  Sorry, Greg.

• 6:04Griffin Newman?

  Where they're like figuring out what everyone needs to do in the final mission.

• 6:07David Sims?

  He's like, I just kind of a no Tom Cruise.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna, I'm gonna die. I got no purpose.

• 6:13Griffin Newman?

  He says like, I guess I'll just stay behind with Dunlow and his wife.

• 6:17David Sims?

  Right. Where he said, I just don't feel important enough to go to that place.

• 6:21Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 6:22David Sims?

  I think I'll stay with the kind of.

• 6:23Griffin Newman?

  He's admitting like, I haven't earned being in that room.

• 6:26David Sims?

  I was in Maverick and clearly got along with this guy. Like, I must be nice.

• 6:31Griffin Newman?

  Everyone likes me. I got a cool name and a nice face. I'm sure I'm friendly and easy to work.

• 6:37David Sims?

  Must be nice. Lovely. Middle name is Tarzan for crying out loud.

• 6:41Griffin Newman?

  Look, that's half the magic. This is blank check with Griffin in there.

• 6:44David Sims?

  He was an elementary school teacher, so he must have like a lovely, winning personality.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  That's so nice.

• 6:50Griffin Newman?

  He does have that kind of gentle authority. He does. My name is David Sims. I thought you were about to say he was in Elemental and I was gonna knock him down.

• 6:57David Sims?

  Elemental, yeah, exactly. F.

• 7:00Griffin Newman?

  He played a cloud ball player or some shit. Yeah, what a great movie. Have you been keeping up with this cloud ball season?

• 7:05David Sims?

  So, yeah, it's so good.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  The Oklahoma City Thunder are doing really well.

• 7:10David Sims?

  Don't get me started. Um, God, the two weeks my daughter was sort of into Elemental, although I feel like she was, even she was kind of faking it.

• 7:18Griffin Newman?

  Those are the two weeks that you put her up for adoption.

• 7:21David Sims?

  It's just a tough movie to watch over and over. It's tough enough to watch it.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  So, hey, guys, so you're Griffin and you're David and this is Blank Check and what are we doing?

• 7:30David Sims?

  And who are you?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm Marie Barty Party Salinas, Barty Salinas, whatever my name is.

• 7:38David Sims?

  Who's here? Oh, hey, what's up? It's Ben. Hi, Ben, producer. The Bantity.

• 7:43Griffin Newman?

  The Bantity.

• 7:44David Sims?

  And we are here to discuss Christopher McQuarrie's very normal movie, Mission: Impossible M- The Final Reckoning. The last movie in this franchise, probably.

• 7:56Griffin Newman?

  I agree with you, Marie, that I do think this movie makes the choice to basically raise the stakes as high as they could possibly be raised. Where you're just like, I don't know how you do another one after this. Well, well, well.

• 8:11David Sims?

  Here comes Galactus.

• 8:13Griffin Newman?

  Every time I see some piece of Fantastic Four marketing material and I get goosebumps, I immediately go like, I'm so angry at myself.

• 8:21David Sims?

  For like, it's getting me.

• 8:22Griffin Newman?

  Forgetting me and that fucking final shot of the most recent trailer where you just see Galactus's big boot. I'm just like, oh, God, they still have me. They have me exactly where they want me. Just seeing some big goofy boot and I'm like, oh, he's not a cloud.

• 8:36David Sims?

  Remember when there was like some, you know, one comic book reporter, one of those guys who was like, they're looking for Javier Bardem. Galactus Latino. Like, there was something like that. I'll never forget it. Just the idea that Marvel in some conference room was like, I think Galactus needs to be Latino.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  That's like literally that episode of the studio.

• 8:54David Sims?

  Yes.

• 8:57David Sims?

  Galactus Latino.

• 8:58Griffin Newman?

  A podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby.

• 9:09David Sims?

  Oh, it was Jeff Snyder who said, "The main villain is Galactus and I'm told he will be Latino."

• 9:16Griffin Newman?

  The In Snyder himself?

• 9:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 9:20David Sims?

  He thinks he was out Snyder on that one.

• 9:24David Sims?

  I mean, it's a big looking boot.

• 9:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:27David Sims?

  Well, he's a large man.

• 9:28Griffin Newman?

  Ben, do you know what Galactus does?

• 9:30David Sims?

  Yeah, I think so. He just gobbles up planets.

• 9:34Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 9:34David Sims?

  He sure does. That's his food. Some of us like turkey subs. Galactus like planets.

• 9:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Oh, it's played by the dad and the vich?

• 9:41David Sims?

  Yeah, Ralph Aniston. I think that is awesome.

• 9:43Griffin Newman?

  The Green Knight?

• 9:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Griffin Newman?

  The titular Green Knight?

• 9:46David Sims?

  They made a choice that makes a lot of sense.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  He's not Latino.

• 9:48Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 9:48David Sims?

  Not that I checked. I mean, maybe, maybe I, I don't know something.

• 9:53Griffin Newman?

  Did you see the promotional art that leaked out, David?

• 9:55David Sims?

  Yes, I did.

• 9:56Griffin Newman?

  Of the full Galactus?

• 9:56David Sims?

  It looked cool to me.

• 9:57Griffin Newman?

  You know what it looks like?

• 9:58David Sims?

  Ralph Aniston is Galactus.

• 9:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It looks like a Jack Kirby drawing of Galactus and I cannot believe we've gotten this far that they're just like, "We don't need to make this look any less goofy. We're just gonna own this."

• 10:08David Sims?

  I really, I'm, you know.

• 10:10Griffin Newman?

  I'm very, very cautiously optimistic to take my first steps. But listen, here on this podcast, on the main feed, we talk about directors and their filmographies and their careers, right? We have a Patreon feed, Blank Check Special Features, where we talk about franchises and primarily franchises that don't have one dominant director. But Christian McCrory made a little movie called Jack Reacher.

• 10:35David Sims?

  True.

• 10:35Griffin Newman?

  That you and I love.

• 10:37David Sims?

  Great movie. We did a podcast on it once.

• 10:39Griffin Newman?

  This is the thing. So, early in the days of this show, when we'd be like, "Fuck, we gotta find more new releases to cover. Get that sweet new release bump." Jack Reacher 2 was coming out and we're like, "Great opportunity to do an episode on both Jack Reachers." Then, on our Patreon, Mission Impossible Wins, our March Madness thing?

• 10:56David Sims?

  It definitely did.

• 10:57Griffin Newman?

  I think one in a hundred. We cover all the Mission Impossible movies there. Then we realize, oh, if we do Way of the Gun, which we did, we've covered all

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Unfortunately.

• 11:08Griffin Newman?

  Christopher McQuarrie episodes.

• 11:10David Sims?

  You weren't even on that.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  No, but I had to watch it or I got stuck in traffic.

• 11:14Griffin Newman?

  Something happened.

• 11:15David Sims?

  Something happened.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  But I did watch it and it was god awful.

• 11:18David Sims?

  It's not my favorite.

• 11:19Griffin Newman?

  No. Uh, that having said, I have pre-ordered the 4K Steelbook because I'm a fucking simp. And it's a limited edition.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Did you get that Fletch?

• 11:28Griffin Newman?

  Then, no, the Fletch box is for you, Ben.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 11:31Griffin Newman?

  Chevy Chase on chevychase.com is selling a limited edition Flex Fletch box.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  It's actually official chevychase.com.

• 11:38Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:40Griffin Newman?

  That is a combination ID cards and pins and buttons.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And stickers.

• 11:45Griffin Newman?

  And stickers. There's seven typos.

• 11:48David Sims?

  Yeah, it refers to Gina Davis, G I N A. Couple of things that maybe like an intern to give a once over here.

• 11:55Griffin Newman?

  There's a Post-it note where Chevy wrote Fletch on it. And then that's signed by Burton Gilliam.

• 12:02Griffin Newman?

  We were trying to convince Ben to buy the Fletch box.

• 12:04David Sims?

  There's $200.

• 12:05Griffin Newman?

  Listen.

• 12:06David Sims?

  There's no way I'm doing it.

• 12:07Griffin Newman?

  We did the Way of the Gun episode, right? Because we were like, if we've done this, then we've covered all McQuarrie and we can make it like Mission Impossible, like a sneaky mission under everyone's noses that we have retroactively now covered this man's entire career and he counts as a main feed director. And so last year, we talked about Mission Impossible, colon, Dead Reckoning.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Previously, part one.

• 12:32Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry, Mission colon Impossible, M dash Dead Reckoning, space, part one?

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 12:40Griffin Newman?

  And of course, today we are talking about Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, part two. Wait, no, scratch that. The final reckoning.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  The final reckoning.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  This time, it's final.

• 12:52David Sims?

  Uh, Christopher McQuarrie's film with, uh, Tom Cruise is in it.

• 12:56Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Tom Cruise is in this movie.

• 12:58David Sims?

  Uh, Haley Atwell, Bing Rames, Simon Pegg.

• 13:03David Sims?

  Henry Cerny.

• 13:04Griffin Newman?

  Are you going a billing order?

• 13:06David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 13:06Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Well, cause I think Palm Clementeef is up before.

• 13:10David Sims?

  The billing order is Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Bing Rame, Simon Pegg. No, no, cause there's some ands and whys. So I don't actually know.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Angela Bassett gets the and.

• 13:16David Sims?

  I feel like she only get the and.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  She's the only one that gets the and.

• 13:19Griffin Newman?

  Cerny with a with. So then it's only Bassett with an and. So then I think that's correct.

• 13:22David Sims?

  Okay, great.

• 13:23Griffin Newman?

  I think that's right.

• 13:24David Sims?

  Good job. And you've also got Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso, Tramell Tillman of Severance, Shay Wigam of My Dreams.

• 13:35Griffin Newman?

  The aforementioned Greg Tarzan Davis.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Of elementary school.

• 13:41David Sims?

  Chris Parnell and Mark Gatiss.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Charles Parnell, Chris Parnell.

• 13:46David Sims?

  Carl Charles Parnell. But no, Chris Parnell's here too, actually.

• 13:49Griffin Newman?

  Fuck, Parnell would be good in a mission.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  You could plot him in.

• 13:54David Sims?

  Cause they had what? Who's the Twitter guy with the mustache?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Rob Delaney.

• 13:58David Sims?

  Rob Delaney in the last one, right?

• 14:00Griffin Newman?

  Basically replacing this movie by Nick Offerman, also Holt McElhenney.

• 14:03David Sims?

  Holt McElhenney's there.

• 14:04Griffin Newman?

  Also two time Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer.

• 14:09David Sims?

  Yeah. And she was good. She kind of has the presence required, I feel like, you know what I mean? Like, like she's playing like a sort of a nothing character, but like she just, she's good at just kind of glowering.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  She seems really responsible.

• 14:20Griffin Newman?

  Sure. But all of this is even just in listing this cast emblematic of some of the core issues of this movie for me, which is basically like you have Hannah Waddingham and Janet McTeer and Angela Bassett?

• 14:32David Sims?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 14:34Griffin Newman?

  You have Holt McElhenney and Nick Offerman. You want two square jawed, slow talking gravel voiced men who explain how important things are in the same room?

• 14:43David Sims?

  Yeah. What if they're sitting down?

• 14:45Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they're both sitting down.

• 14:46David Sims?

  You know who I really liked? I mean, Tramell Tillman, I think is sort of like secret MVP, but Katie O'Brien.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I love her so much.

• 14:54David Sims?

  Anytime she's in a movie, I'm happy.

• 14:56Griffin Newman?

  I agree, but we're like 20 names down on this list and she shows up and immediately I'm like, fuck, this movie's not going to give her enough to do, right?

• 15:04David Sims?

  I just like that the submarine is gay.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Did you get? I love. Thank you.

• 15:07David Sims?

  Everyone on the submarine is gay.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  So I said Ben and I were the first ones here today.

• 15:11David Sims?

  And so even Ethan Hunt's like, should I just like get in my briefs?

• 15:15Griffin Newman?

  Marie, I'm just sorry. Can we check the notes quickly? Who's the third one here?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Uh, so Ben, number one, Marie, number two, Griffin, number three.

• 15:22Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. And bringing up the rear.

• 15:25David Sims?

  Welcome to this debate, as I said on a different episode.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Um, but when it was just me and Ben, I was like, I loved the gay submarine and Ben was like, what? And I was like, the submarine's gay. And he's like, interesting opinion. And I'm like, no.

• 15:36David Sims?

  Not interesting.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  It's it's it's canon. That is a gay ass submarine.

• 15:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Middle of the movie.

• 15:41David Sims?

  It's just funny that Tramell Tillman's like, and who are you? You know, he's just having so much fun with it. Like, he could be like, hello, like, I am the captain of the most important submarine in the world. No.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is like, just in his underwear for most of the time that he's on the boat. Katie O'Brien's just showing her muscles. Oh, you want to poke the bear?

• 16:02David Sims?

  A plus.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  I'm the man to do it.

• 16:04Griffin Newman?

  The way he says mister.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Mister.

• 16:07David Sims?

  Tramell Tillman rocks. Where did that guy come from? Like, where, where'd he get plucked out of?

• 16:11Griffin Newman?

  He like, only started acting in his mid 30s, I want to say. I was on his Wikipedia recently.

• 16:17David Sims?

  Well, because he was on, um, the official Severance podcast, which I very much enjoy, talking about his journey where he was like, he was like a pre-med. He was like a science major in college or whatever, and was like, going to be a surgeon.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  But I think he went to grad school for acting.

• 16:31David Sims?

  He got an MFA in acting.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did a lot of theater work.

• 16:34David Sims?

  Uh, he was the first African American man to graduate with an MFA in acting from the University of Tennessee.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  That's depressing.

• 16:41David Sims?

  Kind of weird.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, because.

• 16:42David Sims?

  Maybe it's not a big program. I don't know.

• 16:45Griffin Newman?

  But that's, that's in 2014.

• 16:48David Sims?

  Yep. Yeah. He didn't, he didn't really start. He got some TV roles, I guess.

• 16:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. His first theater credit is 2018. Like, he's a very recent.

• 16:57David Sims?

  Yeah, he fucking rocks.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  He rules. While we're on the subject of Tramell.

• 17:02David Sims?

  Like, the whole magic of Severance is it's either guys where you're like, Jesus, this is like a heavyweight, or guys who are like, I've never seen this person.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Right now, I've never seen in my life, and now I love her. Um, but, okay, so not only is Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham in the show, in the movie.

• 17:19David Sims?

  She's a aircraft carrier captain or whatever.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  And we've got Severance's Mr. Milchick. Did you notice that one of the like naval helicopter pilots is played by Sydney Cole Alexander, AKA Natalie from Severance? The one with the crazy smile?

• 17:36David Sims?

  I love that actor. She's.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  To the board.

• 17:38David Sims?

  Yeah, she's wonderful on Severance. I didn't notice that. Uh, she's great, though. Good, good for her.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Which means, in my head at least, Tom Cruise watches Severance.

• 17:47Griffin Newman?

  Almost definitely.

• 17:48David Sims?

  There's no, he knows Ben Stiller.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  I know he knows Ben Stiller.

• 17:50David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  But I'm like, I, when I watch Severance, I'm like, hmm, there are a lot of Scientology vibes in this. So I think it's very interesting that Tom is a Severance fan.

• 18:00David Sims?

  You mean that it's like kind of making fun of

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:03David Sims?

  Certain, yeah, sure, sure.

• 18:04Griffin Newman?

  You know what's another movie we know he watched?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  The Master?

• 18:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:08David Sims?

  Sure. What do you mean?

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Well, but

• 18:10David Sims?

  What do you mean by we know he watched?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Well, because, no, didn't PTA say that he?

• 18:15David Sims?

  Yeah, PTA showed it.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And it was all, didn't he, didn't PTA say it was like, it didn't go all?

• 18:18David Sims?

  Right. That's what I

• 18:19Griffin Newman?

  They asked him like, how did he respond? And he was like, that's a private matter.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:23David Sims?

  Sounds good.

• 18:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm just like, I don't know. I'm, I'm curious.

• 18:29Griffin Newman?

  Look, these are, yes. As we've talked about, we've talked a lot of Tom in the 10 years, the decade of dreams of doing this show. And we've talked all the Mission Impossible movies on top of that, right?

• 18:43Griffin Newman?

  He, he is such a fascinating black box of a person. We were texting a lot yesterday in our group chat of a lot of his like recent press interviews and his like, he's so good at being like, movies, go popcorn. Yes.

• 18:56David Sims?

  It, it's truly what he's cornered, right? In this for the last few years of like, I am movies.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And then it was so sad. Someone at E News asked me about his father day, Father's Day plans. And it was like he short circuited.

• 19:07Griffin Newman?

  I watched it again and

• 19:09Speaker 02

  So sad.

• 19:10Griffin Newman?

  They phrased the question as Father's Day is coming up. What would your ideal Father's Day be? I'm like, they gave him so much wiggle room in that answer. It wasn't even, what are you doing this Father's Day? And his answer was, you know, making movies, big screen adventure, live it up. Like it was truly. It looked like he short circuited. It really did. He was like the woman in the airport in Total Recall before Arnold lifts his head up.

• 19:36David Sims?

  Weeks.

• 19:40Griffin Newman?

  Making movies, big screen, big adventure, live it up.

• 19:43David Sims?

  That's why we love him. Because it is that thing where when he went to see Tenet, he was like, Tenet, big screen. And I was like, did you process what an insane movie Tenet was?

• 19:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:52David Sims?

  Or are you just like, screen big?

• 19:55Griffin Newman?

  We were in another group text talking about the videos of him eating popcorn.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  So

• 20:00Griffin Newman?

  And one of our friends was like, the technique of how he's getting the popcorn in the mouth.

• 20:05David Sims?

  The popcorn.

• 20:05Griffin Newman?

  Looks like he's palming it. Is any popcorn actually getting in his mouth?

• 20:10David Sims?

  Right. So what Tom Cruise movies have we discussed on this?

• 20:12Griffin Newman?

  We have discussed because of course he was for most of the 90s and the early 2000s, an autore driven director.

• 20:19David Sims?

  So Mission Impossible.

• 20:20Griffin Newman?

  And Mission Impossible is on tour driven franchise.

• 20:22David Sims?

  We've never discussed a movie from kind of the first 15 years of his career, the, the earlier.

• 20:28Griffin Newman?

  Let me see if I can get all the Cruise movies we've talked about. Jerry Maguire, Collateral. Obviously we've covered Ghost Protocol on.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Minority Report.

• 20:37Griffin Newman?

  Minority Report for the world.

• 20:38David Sims?

  Yep.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Reacher.

• 20:41Griffin Newman?

  We covered Reacher.

• 20:42David Sims?

  Both of them.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Both Reacher.

• 20:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And then obviously all the other missions on Patreon. There's one more, two more.

• 20:48David Sims?

  You're forgetting a big one.

• 20:49Griffin Newman?

  I'm forgetting a big one.

• 20:50David Sims?

  And it ain't lines for lambs yet. The Magro Beanfield Podcast is coming up.

• 20:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Eyes Wide Shut.

• 20:56David Sims?

  Eyes Wide Shut.

• 20:58Griffin Newman?

  Is that the big one?

• 20:58David Sims?

  Yeah, that's the big one. And we also, of course, well.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  There is one more. Yeah.

• 21:03David Sims?

  We did meet the mummy.

• 21:04Griffin Newman?

  We met.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 21:06Griffin Newman?

  The mummy on Patreon.

• 21:07David Sims?

  Who's in this coffin here? A sexy mummy?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  I saw this movie twice. I saw Mission Impossible, the, no, Final Reckoning twice.

• 21:17Griffin Newman?

  I've seen this twice as well.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  First at a press screening, Rex Reed was there. It was really exciting.

• 21:22David Sims?

  Was he having fun?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  He, he was.

• 21:24Griffin Newman?

  Did Superman say hello to him?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  No, but the lady who was checking everyone in the screening was like, hello Rex.

• 21:30Griffin Newman?

  Did you notice Rex Reed in 1978 Superman? I know you just watched it for the first time.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I didn't know until you guys called it out on the episode.

• 21:40David Sims?

  He's looking good.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 21:41David Sims?

  My stream was a snack.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  I saw, I saw this movie twice, once at a press screening and once last night at Nighthawk. The pre-show they did at Nighthawk was like impeccable.

• 21:51David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. They do a good job there.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  They do a great job. They played the Ben Stiller, Tom Cruise, MTV Movie Awards classic bit, but then they also played the, the like. Wrong export of The Mummy trailer.

• 22:05David Sims?

  Yes, which is so good.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  I had forgotten about.

• 22:07David Sims?

  It's just sound effects. But then Tom Cruise goes like, ah!

• 22:11Speaker 02

  It's just screams.

• 22:12David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right. It's like there's birds or whatever, because she like sends like evil birds

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:17David Sims?

  to crash their plane.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:19David Sims?

  But you're not hearing the birds.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  No, you're just hearing.

• 22:21David Sims?

  Instead, you're just hearing go like, ah!

• 22:24Speaker 02

  And I'd only seen that on like, you know, YouTube or Twitter or whatever, to watch that in a theater with a crowd.

• 22:32David Sims?

  Rocks.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 22:33David Sims?

  I just remember watching the trailer and being like, I like it. And then they were like, it's a mistake. And I'm like, oh, well, well, it was kind of cool. No?

• 22:41Griffin Newman?

  No, I thought it was good.

• 22:42David Sims?

  What I thought was good was The Mummy, the film. Great film.

• 22:45Griffin Newman?

  I was, I was thinking, what I, what I was doing the math on is, is that the only like complete total zero of his career?

• 22:54David Sims?

  No. Tom Cruise?

• 22:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 22:56David Sims?

  I think he's got a couple others, doesn't he? I mean, it's definitely the biggest zero sort of since entering this action movies primarily like phase.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  But you, you think about it and it's like, there are some movies like Rock of Ages are like terrible, but he's like doing something in it that makes it ultimately like.

• 23:14David Sims?

  I really do think he tries his best in Rock of Ages and has fun. That movie's definitely a cultural zero.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  It's a cultural zero.

• 23:20Griffin Newman?

  I agree. I've never seen it, but I do think he's given some credit for, he tried something he hadn't done before.

• 23:25David Sims?

  No one's.

• 23:26Griffin Newman?

  The Mummy.

• 23:28David Sims?

  But The Mummy has a weird, tiny little bit of cachet because the dark universe became such a meme.

• 23:34Griffin Newman?

  Is the failure.

• 23:36David Sims?

  But that's out of the trade, same with any of his big failures.

• 23:38Griffin Newman?

  Nick Morton? Do we have anything to say about Nick Morton?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  No, we don't.

• 23:42David Sims?

  What do you mean? Keep your eye on that guy.

• 23:44Griffin Newman?

  Versus Stacy Jackson.

• 23:46David Sims?

  No.

• 23:47Griffin Newman?

  Stacy Jackson!

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Does it?

• 23:50David Sims?

  I, I will say, I think Jack Reacher Never Go Back is a total zero.

• 23:54Griffin Newman?

  I agree with you on that.

• 23:55David Sims?

  And more of a zero than either of the two movies. Like, I think people have actively memory holed that there was a second.

• 24:00Griffin Newman?

  And I also, I find that movie more offensive because I'm like, you guys had the fucking roadmap.

• 24:05David Sims?

  You actually did a good job.

• 24:06Griffin Newman?

  You fucked up everything you got right in the first one.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  I also think that Lions for Lambs is a zero.

• 24:11David Sims?

  That is a.

• 24:11Griffin Newman?

  Lions for Lambs is a zero.

• 24:12David Sims?

  No, that's like a negative 100.

• 24:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but some of these other ones, I'm like.

• 24:16David Sims?

  Lions for lambs.

• 24:17Griffin Newman?

  He wanted to take a supporting dramatic role in a Robert Redford movie. I'm like, that movie's a zero, but I get the move.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  I know Meryl Streep's in it.

• 24:25Griffin Newman?

  That movie's, I agree with you, the movie's a zero.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  But it, no, it's, it's a, it's a major disappointment and how fucking boring, forgettable and whatever it is, but.

• 24:34Griffin Newman?

  The Mummy is the one where I'm just like, why are you doing this? And why is uh, fucking Alex Kurtzman directing this?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Ah, is he the one who died?

• 24:44Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  That was the other one?

• 24:47David Sims?

  The other one is the really weird.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  American made.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  American made rock.

• 24:50David Sims?

  Kind of fun.

• 24:50Griffin Newman?

  American made's good.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  It's like weird.

• 24:52David Sims?

  It's weird that he's in it.

• 24:53Griffin Newman?

  American made.

• 24:54David Sims?

  That movie is like, good.

• 24:55Griffin Newman?

  Is like Cruz deciding to make a porch classic.

• 24:58David Sims?

  I know.

• 24:59Griffin Newman?

  At a moment where all of his movies are like so big.

• 25:02David Sims?

  And he gets kind of scummy in it.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:04David Sims?

  He's a little scummy. What's the biggest zero from like early in his career?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Um.

• 25:10David Sims?

  I guess it's like.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  I haven't seen All the Right Moves.

• 25:13David Sims?

  No, it ain't that. That movie rocks.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Okay, cool. I'll watch it.

• 25:17Griffin Newman?

  Also, I'll tell you, that movie's not a zero. It's got about six inches in it.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Far and Away.

• 25:21David Sims?

  But you know, Far and Away, which is bad, was definitely a hit at the time. But yeah, I mean, Far and Away is pretty close to kind of, it's sort of forgotten these days. He's really bad in it.

• 25:31Griffin Newman?

  This is my bigger point is like all the other zeros like that, you're like, well, he wanted to work with Ron Howard and he met Nicole Kidman. Like the movie's nothing, but there's power surrounding the movie.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  No, but he, didn't he meet Nicole on the set of Days of Thunder?

• 25:44Griffin Newman?

  Oh, you're right. That was their, that was their victory lap.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz I was, I was going deep through Tom Cruise Getty Image Archive this week. You know, pulling out all my favorites.

• 25:55Griffin Newman?

  You found a really good one of Tom and Sydney Pollack at a UN conference?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't a UN conference. It was the, no, it was like the John Huston Symposium. It was when the, it was when Ted Turner started colorizing movies. And so it was like, we need to band together to protect artists' rights.

• 26:12Griffin Newman?

  But they're wearing like UN like translation headphones. Everyone's like leaning in behind the desk.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  It's like a panel. It looks really serious and they're, they're looking really serious.

• 26:19Griffin Newman?

  Tom has an unbelievable look. He almost looks like he has an ombre.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's got, he's like kind of grunge era. It's like really cute. But it's him and Sydney Pollack sitting next to Amy Heckerling and Twink Caplan.

• 26:30Griffin Newman?

  Just eagle eyed Marie Barbie.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  I will post the photo the week between Look Who's Talking To and this episode.

• 26:37Griffin Newman?

  It's a great cast.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  You know, as to mark the transition. But uh, there were like photos of, and I could be like misremembering the timeline here, but it was like Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers at NASCAR races, which I'm like, oh, so he's in days of thunder mode here.

• 26:56Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  That's when, where he needs to call.

• 26:58David Sims?

  She divorced in 1990.

• 26:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 27:00David Sims?

  Uh, Mimi Rogers, normal lady as well.

• 27:04Griffin Newman?

  Look, let's just get, let's get, let's just say this, this movie's a mess, right?

• 27:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:10David Sims?

  A little bit.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  You can say it's a mess, which I agree with. I think it's a mess. I just want to get out there and say like, I don't care.

• 27:17Griffin Newman?

  So in a nutshell, the first time.

• 27:20David Sims?

  I would say that I care quite a bit.

• 27:22Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 27:23David Sims?

  Sad to say.

• 27:23Griffin Newman?

  David and I saw this at a press screening as well. Uh, kind folks at Paramount, uh, helped us out, uh, all getting in to see this movie early, which made our lives a lot easier in terms of our score, the schedules and such. So thank you for that. David and I saw it at a press screening. I went again last night, uh, for like the fucking IMAX fan first, whatever. It is officially coming out today on the day that we're recording it. Going into the screening, we had two friends who had seen it in advance and one was like, it's good. And one was like, it's bad. And I was like, huh, no middle ground between these two, right? Uh, was really worried. I sat there, was so fucking stressed out during our screening. I had this feeling that I.

• 28:05David Sims?

  You're stressed out because the movie wasn't working for you?

• 28:07Griffin Newman?

  I was like, this feels like a, a bumpy takeoff on an airplane.

• 28:11David Sims?

  I just felt myself not shifting gears.

• 28:14Griffin Newman?

  This is gonna crash. Yes.

• 28:15David Sims?

  Oh, I was just more like, why am I not, you know, doing the thing I do with Fallout or whatever, where I'm like, yep, up, up, up, up, you know, like, yes, yes. I never got out of like second gear.

• 28:24Griffin Newman?

  I was feeling that. And then the longer I wasn't feeling that, I, the more I got worried of like, is this a disaster? Like I started having that sinking rise of Skywalker feeling. The best thing I, well, the best thing I can say about this movie is it does get better as it goes along rather than worse. So it ends on a pretty good note. And I came out of it and I was like, first hour is like a total wash. The second hour is okay. The third hour is really good. Uh, and then I saw it again last night. It's three hours.

• 28:52David Sims?

  That's very long.

• 28:52Griffin Newman?

  I saw it again last night and the stuff that really fucking bugged me the first time didn't go down any smoother for me, but I had removed the stress.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:02Griffin Newman?

  Of being like, is this thing gonna fucking crash? Which made me a little more analytical about it. I got a little bit more into I don't care mode. I find this very disappointing. I saw with a group of people, including our friend Ben David Grabinsky, past and future guest. And he said, I cannot think of a movie with higher highs and lower lows. Like where the best stuff in it, I think is like as good as modern blockbuster filmmaking can be. And the stuff that is bad in it is like so emblematic of the cancer of what drives me crazy about modern movies. And I feel that kind of way. I come out, I'm like, this movie ultimately lands on the positive for me. Some of it is, I just like Mission Impossible movies. I like these characters.

• 29:43David Sims?

  That's why I was basically always engaged.

• 29:46Griffin Newman?

  And these outfits and their locations and whatever. My bar is really high for these movies. Um, and it like ultimately delivers just enough of what I want out of them. And yet there's so much of this movie I find so maddening. That is like so sloppy in a bizarre, in a way that just kind of boggles my mind. Like most of all, I felt this the first time. I felt it even more the second time and I really like studied it to see if this held up. I basically think you can lose the entire first act of that movie. Everything in the first hour, other than Luther dying, doesn't need to happen.

• 30:26David Sims?

  Here's the bigger take.

• 30:27Griffin Newman?

  And the movie's three hours.

• 30:28David Sims?

  Here's, but here's the bigger take.

• 30:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 30:30David Sims?

  The two movies are one very good three hour movie.

• 30:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, here's, let's zoom all the way back. The moment they decide we're making one two-part movie.

• 30:40Griffin Newman?

  Disastrous Faustian bargain screwed all of them. They obviously

• 30:45David Sims?

  Never really work.

• 30:46Griffin Newman?

  Have anticipated fucking global pandemic and multiple industry strikes on top of that. That made this thing just like a cursed production that took half a decade. But that was the original sin of this film.

• 31:00David Sims?

  I mean, for this movie to basically for Rebecca Ferguson to be publicly like, I had to get out of there. Like the way this, these things work, it takes too long. You can't do anything. It sucks up all your life. And she exited in the seventh movie. She's in it like, and even then she was just like, no, I didn't want to even rap. Like one more movie. No, no, no, I had to go. God bless Tom and Chris and all those folks. Right?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I just kept about the two parter of it. I kept thinking about, I kept thinking about wicked. Where again, have not.

• 31:32David Sims?

  Unlimited. Do you think Tom Cruise said to Paramount, this production is unlimited? Should have said that.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been.

• 31:43David Sims?

  And like Sherry Redstone.

• 31:45Griffin Newman?

  I'm picturing Tom Cruise in a bed and Netflix in the bed. Next time he's going, oh thing.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  But like, you know how everyone's like, why the fuck are they splitting wicked into two movies? Cause the second act is boring and all the good stuff, all the good songs are in the first half.

• 31:58David Sims?

  Yeah. But then I saw wicked and I was like, oh, I understand why.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  No, you understand why, but you're like, I'm just anticipating wicked part two to not have as much of the juice.

• 32:07David Sims?

  I'm no longer anticipating that, but you can say my joke.

• 32:10Griffin Newman?

  David had the joke that I think about all the time and quote back to people all the time. I think it was on our Thomas Crown of Pear episode with the great Amanda Dobbins, where you said the splitting the wicked into two parts is like when I make dinner and decide that washing the dishes is a tomorrow David task.

• 32:26David Sims?

  That's morning David's problem.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Right. Yes.

• 32:29Griffin Newman?

  And you're like.

• 32:29David Sims?

  And then we get part two is like, I have to wash all these dishes. I'm sorry.

• 32:32Griffin Newman?

  Right. But you're like, tonight is incredible.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:34Griffin Newman?

  I made a meal. I ate it. It tasted great. And I didn't have to do any of the cleanup work.

• 32:39David Sims?

  I'm in bed, patting my big belly.

• 32:41Griffin Newman?

  Perfect. 10 out of 10. And then you wake up the next morning and you're like, oh my fucking God. This movie has a ton of tomorrow David business it has to take care of where it's like, oh Jesus fucking Christ. We passed all this stuff on to part two and a lot of it, they just go like, never mind.

• 32:57David Sims?

  Well, that's the thing.

• 32:58Griffin Newman?

  And that's some of the sloppiness is being like, you're not even going to fucking talk about this thing.

• 33:02David Sims?

  But the movie feels caught. Up in, oh gosh, we have to figure shit out that we never figured out, but then, right, it doesn't actually even try to figure everything out. Uh, just to speak on Wicked, just to make my point clear. Wicked for Good out this Thanksgiving or whatever, right?

• 33:19Griffin Newman?

  By the way, I think them calling it for good instead of part two is because they want to keep making these forever.

• 33:23David Sims?

  Maybe. There's a bunch more books.

• 33:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And they'll loosely adapt them, but they'll just, they want this to be an evergreen.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Wait, there aren't a bunch more books?

• 33:29Griffin Newman?

  Evergreen.

• 33:30David Sims?

  There's tons of the books.

• 33:31Griffin Newman?

  They just did a new one.

• 33:33David Sims?

  The guys, that

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Really?

• 33:34David Sims?

  Yeah, he pumped.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I thought he made only one book.

• 33:36David Sims?

  No, no, there's lots of them. It's a whole series.

• 33:38Griffin Newman?

  The books fear off in weird directions and they will.

• 33:39David Sims?

  The books are not similar to the movie.

• 33:41Griffin Newman?

  They will barely adapt them, but I think they will keep doing.

• 33:44David Sims?

  I read them all. They're great.

• 33:44Griffin Newman?

  Alphaba and Glinda.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Interesting, because I only, I only read the, the first book when I had, um, as stomach flu in high school.

• 33:49Griffin Newman?

  That was the other thing. They announced like overall deals with Arivo and Grande and then retitled Wicked and took the two out of it. And I'm like, that's them being like,

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Wow. Oh, my God.

• 33:59Griffin Newman?

  We want them playing these characters for 15 years.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  News to me.

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  And also maybe building a land on the same books. Go on, David.

• 34:05David Sims?

  Everything's gotta be a land now.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  We should have Mission Impossible land.

• 34:09David Sims?

  Okay. You just die.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  No, it's, I get to wear like a fun mask.

• 34:13David Sims?

  No, I want like Lea Sade to shoot me. That's my Mission Impossible, or bomb Clemente of Stabs me. I'm just like, I just want some lady to murder me.

• 34:21Griffin Newman?

  That's my land.

• 34:23David Sims?

  But, um, yeah, uh, Ree for Good. When I watched Wicked part one, which I enjoyed, uh, I was like, I can see now what they've done, which is that in Wicked, the stage show, they gloss that the Wizard of Oz is, Oz is happening in the background of act two. They will not be able to do that in the movie. People would be like, what the fuck? Like, and so they, they, they clearly were just like, there's way too much plot in act two, as much as there's less songs.

• 34:47Griffin Newman?

  But act two kind of yada yadas all the plot.

• 34:49David Sims?

  We can't just cram it into this movie. People will be baffled. Like, it, like, it's a Wizard of Oz prequel, like, or sort of side.

• 34:56Griffin Newman?

  But it does make it risky that it does seem like part two is gonna have the fucking, like Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow and Dorothy.

• 35:02David Sims?

  Well, but it's in the, it's in the show.

• 35:04Griffin Newman?

  But sort of like, look, there they are.

• 35:05David Sims?

  Kind of like, and he's actually the Tin Man, if you think about it. And people are like, whatever, it's 11 o'clock. I want to go have dinner, you know, like, it's, so I get it. I'm, I'm excited. I liked Wicked one. It was good.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, let's just say Mission Impossible, Final Reckoning, feeling very, um,

• 35:22Speaker 02

  My worst case scenario for

• 35:24David Sims?

  Little happy birthday sign.

• 35:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yeah, it's very happy birthday sign. And also, it is nowhere near the catastrophe of Rise of Skywalker. But there are certain similarities of this same kind of self-imposed pressure of how are we paying off what had been set up in the last two movies? And also, now we want to put the sense of importance on the entire series.

• 35:43David Sims?

  That is what Hamstrings did a little bit, right? Is Macquarie deciding like, I need to explain the rabbit's foot. I need to bring in Mission, you know, I want to bring in Mission Impossible one where I'm like, cute ideas, but you've already got so much stuff to do. Now, the thing I want to say about Rise of Skywalker, because he's invoking it.

• 36:00Griffin Newman?

  A terrible film.

• 36:01David Sims?

  Is not a good film, in my opinion, unsuccessful.

• 36:04Griffin Newman?

  Is almost entirely joyless.

• 36:07David Sims?

  Agreed. I hate that movie. I don't think anyone really likes that movie.

• 36:10Griffin Newman?

  It's a bummer to watch.

• 36:11David Sims?

  Right. It's a bummer to watch. It's a bummer to, now that I'm, I'm having a bit of a Star Wars moment, guys.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Is your, is your child getting into it? No?

• 36:20David Sims?

  No, because of Andor. Watching Andor and it's just like, I'm like, fucking love Star Wars. It's so good. I'm enjoying Andor so much. I started Ahsoka. Wow. I was like, I never watched that one. I started and I was like, pew. But anyway, moving on, Rise of Skywalker is not doing what this movie does. What this movie's doing is like, well, we still got the entity. Do you guys like him? Whereas Rise of Skywalker is like, forget everything that happened before. It was the Emperor all along. And there's like someone running in with like an Emperor's standee. And they're like, put him there. Like, yeah, see, it was him. It was him. And you're like, no, it wasn't. And they're like, yes, it was. Yes, it was. Don't, you know, pay attention.

• 37:01Griffin Newman?

  Well, the problem with that movie is it is so panicked and it's not delivering the things you want at the start.

• 37:06David Sims?

  What is, does that movie deliver one thing that made one person happy?

• 37:10Griffin Newman?

  That's the only one. He is my, he is always my answer. He is the only thing in that movie that makes me happy.

• 37:16David Sims?

  Hey, it's like, but the thing with Rise of Skywalker is they're like, well, actually, maybe Finn should have been a Jedi. So he is one and you're like, can you like, set that up or make that meaningful? They're like, no. Like, no, but we did it. So are you happy now? Like so much of Rise of Skywalker is just kind of like, are you happy now?

• 37:33Griffin Newman?

  Can I just quickly say, talk about Star Wars moment? Our friend David Erlich, friend of the show, past and future guest, recently showed his children all the Star Wars movies.

• 37:43David Sims?

  Uh, yeah.

• 37:44Griffin Newman?

  And they have gone berserk for them.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:45David Sims?

  They love him.

• 37:46Griffin Newman?

  To spend a lot of-

• 37:47David Sims?

  Asa loves him as well.

• 37:48Griffin Newman?

  But Rey does as well.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Rey is Darth Vader.

• 37:50David Sims?

  Yes.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  She does her little dum, dum, dum, dum, dum.

• 37:54Griffin Newman?

  She knows all the Williams themes. That's the crazy thing.

• 37:57David Sims?

  They're humable.

• 37:58Griffin Newman?

  But like-

• 37:58Speaker 02

  She's two years old.

• 37:59David Sims?

  I'll say it, you kind of went off with those themes.

• 38:01Griffin Newman?

  That, it's like-

• 38:02David Sims?

  You kind of popped off.

• 38:04Griffin Newman?

  I wasn't questioning his power, but to watch Erlich start humming a Williams theme and have it be like the 10th theme in Star Wars importance and see his two-year-old finish it. I'm like, this shit hits. But Asa is just fully Star Wars-pelled, right? He has this picture book of all the nine Star Wars movies. And, uh, Erlich out of town for Cannes, I was doing a little pickup, sort of babysitting kind of business. Uh, and I was like trying to stop a meltdown and I was like, Asa, I have a question for you. I need you to help me here. Which character is this? And I just started going through the book and pointing at all the characters. He knew every character's first and last name.

• 38:41David Sims?

  Jeter, so?

• 38:43Griffin Newman?

  Everybody.

• 38:43David Sims?

  I'm trying to think of like-

• 38:44Griffin Newman?

  Rogue One wasn't in there. It was only episodes, proper episodes.

• 38:47David Sims?

  Carrie Russell called in that one.

• 38:48Griffin Newman?

  She's not in the book. Zori Bliss.

• 38:50David Sims?

  Zori Bliss, there you go.

• 38:51Griffin Newman?

  Um, I was just kind of impressed by how deeply he knew it, but I just need to let the record show on Mike. It was the greatest compliment I've ever received. I point, I go, who's this? He goes Poe Dameron, and then he looks at me and he goes, you kind of look like Poe Dameron.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  What?

• 39:07David Sims?

  Does Asa, hmm.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Need glasses?

• 39:09David Sims?

  I'm gonna text Elisa. Get Asa a vision check.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  But that is so cute.

• 39:14David Sims?

  Very nice. Well, you got a little, you got kind of curly darker hair.

• 39:18Griffin Newman?

  Sure. I got facial scruff.

• 39:20David Sims?

  You're a little shorter and Poe Dameron's a little on the shorter side.

• 39:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:23David Sims?

  And you seem like a hero.

• 39:24Griffin Newman?

  Thank you.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:25David Sims?

  And you really seem like someone who'd be confident behind the wheels of a moving vehicle. And there, no less.

• 39:31Griffin Newman?

  Much like Poe Dameron. Is this guy quietly fucking everything up?

• 39:35David Sims?

  Yeah. Poe Dameron does knock over a lot of Jenga towers in the third movie.

• 39:41Griffin Newman?

  He's also like always 15 minutes late.

• 39:48Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 39:49David Sims?

  Yes? Moooo. Is that the Cineas cow?

• 39:54Griffin Newman?

  The Cineas cow is back.

• 39:55David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 39:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, she's reactivated because she's horny for chicken fingers.

• 40:02David Sims?

  Okay.

• 40:02Griffin Newman?

  And she's excited for the streaming debut of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 40:06David Sims?

  Wow.

• 40:07Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 40:09David Sims?

  Remember cow and chicken? Let's look it up. While you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on MUBI.

• 40:16Griffin Newman?

  Well, MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Curating and elevating visionary filmmaking, all handpicked, always. That's what MUBI does. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 40:28David Sims?

  Yes.

• 40:28Griffin Newman?

  One of my favorite movies of the year.

• 40:29David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 40:30Griffin Newman?

  You can feel the rush now at home. There's a hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.

• 40:36David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 40:37Griffin Newman?

  In the new movie from Jane Schomburn, Past and Future Guest.

• 40:40David Sims?

  Past and Future Guest, a great filmmaker, a great podcast guest.

• 40:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 40:44David Sims?

  Great friend.

• 40:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 40:46David Sims?

  This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

• 40:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 40:51David Sims?

  Legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 40:53Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 40:55David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 40:56Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 40:57David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 40:58Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 40:59David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. Won the Queer Palmitcan. If you haven't heard about this movie, I don't know what's going on with you. But like, it obviously has, it was out in theaters this summer and now it's on MUBI.

• 41:09Griffin Newman?

  Hannah Einbinder plays the filmmaker attempting to reboot the Camp Miasma franchise, trying to track down the original final girl from the first movie to make some sort of legacy sequel, who's played by Gillian Anderson, who lives at the summer camp.

• 41:24David Sims?

  At Camp Miasma, yes. And you know, and then they hang out and it's regular.

• 41:28Griffin Newman?

  What happens? It's one of those Hollywood's out of ideas. No, it's very much a movie about Hollywood being out of ideas while being an example of there still being new stories to tell.

• 41:40David Sims?

  It's now streaming exclusively on MUBI and you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com/blankcheck. That's M U B I dot com slash blankcheck for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 41:52Griffin Newman?

  They got so many great movies on there to watch, but worth it for 30 days for Miasma.

• 41:57David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 42:02Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 42:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 42:03Griffin Newman?

  He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey as Dracula, and an A-list cast, including Maggie Gyllenhaal as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood as Lucy, David Johnson as Dr. Seward, and many more. That is an all-star cast.

• 42:24David Sims?

  Yeah, this new full cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiance, Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her.

• 42:44Griffin Newman?

  Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina may just hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind.

• 43:00David Sims?

  Featuring a haunting original score by Elon Eschery and a spatial dolby Atmos sound design, Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full cast original adaptation. Written by Robin Ahern, now on Audible. Listen to the darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 43:35Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 43:35David Sims?

  Yes?

• 43:36Griffin Newman?

  Ugh.

• 43:37David Sims?

  Uh-oh.

• 43:37Griffin Newman?

  It's November.

• 43:39David Sims?

  Ah!

• 43:40Griffin Newman?

  And you know what that means. The old stereotype about November.

• 43:43David Sims?

  Turkeys?

• 43:43Griffin Newman?

  One long sprint to the finish line.

• 43:45David Sims?

  Oh, of course.

• 43:47Griffin Newman?

  Packed schedule, questionable food choices, and somehow a social calendar that got way fuller than you planned. And I ain't talking about Sam Fuller. We're not covering him yet in the podcast.

• 43:55David Sims?

  No, though, maybe we should.

• 43:56Griffin Newman?

  We might get there eventually.

• 43:58David Sims?

  I can't remember. Big Red One. We could call it the Big Red Podcast.

• 44:01Griffin Newman?

  Listen, when things get complicated, not when life is easy and when you've got time for a whole routine, right now, when everything is full and something has to give one scoop cold water every morning before anything else, as I like to say, scoop there it is.

• 44:14David Sims?

  You do like to say that every morning. You text me, scoop there it is. And that means I now know that you had your AG1.

• 44:21Griffin Newman?

  And I'm awake.

• 44:22David Sims?

  Uh, but yeah, you're, I know you're, you're a daily AG1 user and it's basically the, uh, the glue that holds your internal organs together at this point.

• 44:30Griffin Newman?

  It's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not weekend a study.

• 44:38David Sims?

  Thank you for that.

• 44:38Griffin Newman?

  Four independent studies with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. This is the thing I like about AG1. They're not resting on their laurels. They constantly work to better themselves.

• 44:50David Sims?

  Um, yes, AG1, they've got now AG1 Pro.

• 44:54Griffin Newman?

  For the professionals.

• 44:55David Sims?

  Same daily drink now with a performance and recovery layer built in. So you've got five grams of Cre vitalis, a premium German made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus CAH MB for muscle protection and zinc carnosine for gut support.

• 45:13Griffin Newman?

  Thank God.

• 45:14David Sims?

  Next Gen is the foundation. Pro adds what your body needs to recover.

• 45:18Griffin Newman?

  You might be having some big meals this November. AG1 is what you need to keep your gut in check. Keep things, as I like to put it, regular.

• 45:26David Sims?

  Yes. So for a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/chek and get a free immune support bundle, including omega three fish oil and vitamin D three plus K two with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/chek. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Belank Check sent you.

• 45:56Griffin Newman?

  You, you talk about the cuteness of the callbacky shit, right?

• 46:00David Sims?

  Uh, the, right, the rabbit.

• 46:01Griffin Newman?

  I kept thinking about this, watching it last night where I'm like, there are things in this movie that I like, where I'm like, I'm fine with this, but you've done four of the same thing in the one movie and I would take one of these.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Okay, let's vote, which I, I, I liked Dunlow.

• 46:19David Sims?

  Yeah. Uh, to me it's a hundred percent Dunlow. That worked so well. And that did kind of just like, kind of slide into the movie nicely. And then him being a big wife guy like kind of rocks.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  She is, she is a queen. To Pilsa, whatever her name is.

• 46:37David Sims?

  I mean, it is really funny.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Love her.

• 46:39David Sims?

  Ethan's like, hey, I'm sorry you were kind of collateral damage. He's like, no, no, Ethan, you too saved my life by having me meet my wife on my.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  It's all a matter of perspective.

• 46:49Griffin Newman?

  One of the people I saw with last night turned at that point and said, Ethan, don't question a single thing you've ever done. Every decision you've ever made has helped everyone. You are literally God. Chill out.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  The fact that he still has the knife too.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  I mean, that was a little cute.

• 47:08Griffin Newman?

  Here's truly maybe the single biggest issue with this movie. I, I do kind of want to at some point in time, stopwatch this film. I think there are truly.

• 47:18David Sims?

  You better get a big stopwatch.

• 47:20Griffin Newman?

  At least 25 minutes of flashbacks in this movie.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Oh, the flashbacks are, well, okay.

• 47:25Griffin Newman?

  And like.

• 47:25David Sims?

  Do you think the studio is at times like, we need more flashbacks. The audience too dumb. They won't get this. They won't get that.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  There's an article in GQ that I guess got published today by Zach Baron.

• 47:36David Sims?

  The great Zach Baron.

• 47:39Griffin Newman?

  Married to the great.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  As I was on my way here, I was starting to read it, but they were talking about, they did a test screening in Paramus, New Jersey.

• 47:48Griffin Newman?

  It has to be.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Where they were, they were like, the audience doesn't know what's going on.

• 47:51Griffin Newman?

  They can't follow this.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  They need, they need.

• 47:52David Sims?

  I a hundred percent buy it.

• 47:54Griffin Newman?

  The most panic shit in the world, but like down to the Dunlow thing, right? We see the flashback to Dunlow at Langley, I think five separate times in this movie.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  And he's got such a fucking distinctive face.

• 48:06Griffin Newman?

  And they keep underlining it being like, remember this is the same guy. And then after he hands Ethan the knife that he's been holding on to, it cuts to back again and we're like, yeah, we know. It becomes this inception level thing where when the movie is doing a flashback to something to one of, from one of the previous movies. In most cases, it is then the second or third time we've seen that exact clip in this movie. So it's almost a flashback to a flashback. Remember when we showed you this flashback two hours ago? But it has three separate streams of it is doing flashbacks to previous movies. Right? It is doing flashbacks to things that happened earlier in this movie.

• 48:46Griffin Newman?

  And it also has scenes that you didn't see the first time that happened earlier in the narrative that it's giving you later as flashbacks. Like Luther has two dialogue scenes after he died that are

• 48:58David Sims?

  The Luther thing is the most egregious, like what happened here thing in this movie.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  I have so many questions.

• 49:07Griffin Newman?

  These movies, for people who do not know, are constructed strangely. Do not really go into production with a proper script.

• 49:14David Sims?

  It's not a good way to make a movie. And like, I've gotten increasingly exhausted by Macquarie's kind of like, ah, but I pull it off thing where I'm just like, well, you stopped pulling it off.

• 49:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes, this is like the, the luck, you know, ran out on this movie. They built like a trap for themselves that was too big. They couldn't solve. I also think, I know I'm much more into those six hour breakdown podcasts than you are.

• 49:35David Sims?

  Can't stand them.

• 49:36Griffin Newman?

  But

• 49:36David Sims?

  I, I, that's, I think a hot take for me, but I, I, they really annoy me.

• 49:40Griffin Newman?

  But you're saying that

• 49:41David Sims?

  Because he's not revealing anything in them. It's like 12 hours of him puffing himself up.

• 49:45Griffin Newman?

  There's a lot of

• 49:46David Sims?

  And I think he's a smart guy and a great filmmaker.

• 49:48Griffin Newman?

  He's incredibly smart.

• 49:49David Sims?

  Right.

• 49:49Griffin Newman?

  But I also think you are misreading slightly that all of those things have this energy of this has like destroyed me. He's not like, look at me and how smart and clever I am.

• 49:58David Sims?

  I've listened and I know he says a lot of that. And then he's like, yeah, I'll never make another one.

• 50:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then they keep catching him back in it. There has been this fascinating thing of like the production of these movies mirroring the content of these movies and the character of Ethan Hunt mirroring the reality of Tom Cruise and the obsession with like, I cannot let go of this position. I'm the one guy who can do this. I need to keep doing this. And it all just becoming like the Venn diagram becoming one perfect circle. And then this is the movie where it all just collapses. And they kept sort of making it higher and higher risk for themselves and stacking the deck more and more against themselves for this working. And like signing on to try to do two movies back to back or shot concurrently would have already probably been a disaster had the Outside circumstances of the world not impeded it.

• 50:47Griffin Newman?

  But this just feels like these movies are not built from the ground up. They basically like start with a block of marble and start chipping away. And then over time go like, fuck, I guess it's this. You on the other side, start chipping this instead. That's an, that's an elbow, that's a knee. Right. And like refitting everything, so much of what they shoot is like, this is meant to be act one, and then they're like, never mind, it's act three. We have to shoot the dialogue scenes, reshoot them or ADR them to change the context of why this is happening. Because now this is happening before, after that. Part of the magic of these movies was that they always just kind of worked. Right. And this one, you feel all of that 100%. It absolutely feels like a movie that was made that way. And there's so much shit like that where you're just like,

• 51:31Griffin Newman?

  every scene, you're thinking, what was this supposed to be originally?

• 51:34David Sims?

  I assume he's, is he going to do another of these, you know, with the Empire guys for this movie?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  I'm assuming.

• 51:40David Sims?

  Will he cop to things a little bit more now that like,

• 51:42Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 51:43David Sims?

  It's all done.

• 51:43Griffin Newman?

  If I'm him, I'm like, I don't think I can talk about this one for three years.

• 51:49David Sims?

  Sure. But maybe he will, maybe he'll be like, look, let me tell you why it is sort of the way it is and what did change. Maybe I'd love him to truly lay it out.

• 51:57Griffin Newman?

  He's gonna be so much cagey than usual. And as you said, there's always a bit of like magician in him where he's like, I'm telling you everything, but a lot of it is, look at this, I'm distracting you away from this and I'm covering this.

• 52:08David Sims?

  And you, you told me that on Dead, the Dead Reckoning ones, he's like, and this is going to get answered and this is going to get answered. It's like none of that shit got answered.

• 52:15Griffin Newman?

  And also he was really cagey about Elsa's death, a thing that upset people a lot in the last movie. And was clearly, he's always trying to protect all of his collaborators, right? But then she came out interviews and was like, why am I not in the last one? Because in the time since I wrapped Dead Reckoning, part one, I have done three movies and two seasons of a TV show and they're still shooting part two.

• 52:39David Sims?

  I've entered the silo.

• 52:40Griffin Newman?

  That's why I'm not in it anymore because I was tired of this and he wouldn't say that.

• 52:44David Sims?

  It just, well, because

• 52:46Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 52:46David Sims?

  Fans were hoping till the end, maybe she's alive.

• 52:49Griffin Newman?

  But he also doesn't want to throw her under the bus. And I think he's like, I'll let them speak for themselves. Right. And there's a similar thing with like Ving Rhames. Health is not great. These movies are increasingly boxed in by things like this where they're just problem solving.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  So this is what I was going to ask. I normally, when one of these comes out, I try and watch all of them.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  In preparation, I didn't do that this time.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  I thought about doing it as well, and it still might do a marathon order, but there's a lot of movies at this point.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  It's a lot of movies and I've seen them all multiple times and we, we just went to the Museum of the Moving Image that has a really great exhibit on the, on the Mission Impossible franchise.

• 53:29Griffin Newman?

  Can we shout out?

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Sweep.

• 53:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they gave us a tour. It's an incredible exhibit. It's running through the end of the year.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yes. So we want to give a shout out to, uh,

• 53:38Griffin Newman?

  It's all eight movies.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Kawamoto, who is our, uh, PR contact and Barbara Miller, who was the curator of the exhibit. They showed us around the exhibit. It was so cool. Costumes, they had mannequins that were 3D printed to look like Tom Cruise, but not too much like Tom Cruise.

• 53:58Griffin Newman?

  It's fascinating.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  And he's, the poses of the mannequins are all in the poses of the stunts.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  They're suspended in the air. And so it's, it's like, it looks to size where you're like, huh? Okay. Maybe it actually is pretty close to how tall he is.

• 54:15Griffin Newman?

  Actual, actual humble brag. They very nicely let us in before the exhibit opened. So we had like two hours to walk around before it was open to the public. So we really got to do circles. And my number one priority was I want to get a sense of how tall I am in relation to a screen worn Tom Cruise costume. And it feels very deliberate that they don't let you get too close to any of the mannequins. They're all propelled from the ceilings or like on a slant or something like that. I did size myself up against Tom Clemente. We seem to be roughly the same height. If you remove the heels, I just want to put that out there.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  We did the math.

• 54:49Griffin Newman?

  We did the math.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  One of the fits, um, it was jeans that were quite dirty.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Authentic dirty.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  This was so funny.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Buried, but not clean. No.

• 55:00Griffin Newman?

  But we were walking around this for like two hours and Marie, as, as I think you're setting up, like we were, it felt like sacred. Like we were looking at these masks and the props and the cruciform key.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  When I saw the cruciform key, I literally like yelped.

• 55:14Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  Cruciform key is cool.

• 55:15Griffin Newman?

  It rules.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Great prop.

• 55:16Griffin Newman?

  It's one of, it's maybe the best key.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  It's, I, yes.

• 55:21David Sims?

  What about one of those really old ones that's big?

• 55:23Griffin Newman?

  I like that.

• 55:24David Sims?

  Ben likes that goes in like a big wooden door.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  But is it called a cru- well, you would like that because like those are skeleton keys, right?

• 55:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:30David Sims?

  I mean, skeleton keys are also pretty cool.

• 55:32Griffin Newman?

  Here's my clap back to you. You're saying, oh.

• 55:34David Sims?

  Clapping back to me.

• 55:35Griffin Newman?

  What about a big giant key that goes in a wooden door? I'm like, you know, it'd be cooler if it was two giant keys that fit together in a cruciform into a wooden door.

• 55:43David Sims?

  What about the big key Superman has to open the fortress of solitude?

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

  And my response to that would be, what if he had two keys?

• 55:49David Sims?

  You can't just say, what if he had two? It's not gonna work.

• 55:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:52David Sims?

  Nope.

• 55:53Griffin Newman?

  Cruciform.

• 55:54David Sims?

  I mean, it's good, though. I love the prop. It's a great prop.

• 55:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 55:56David Sims?

  Now, famous keys.

• 55:58Griffin Newman?

  But yes, they have these mannequins that are the screen worn costumes in the most iconic stunt of each movie in the position with this sort of stylization.

• 56:06David Sims?

  You know what's a great key?

• 56:07Griffin Newman?

  What?

• 56:07David Sims?

  The little button key in Coraline. That's a great.

• 56:10Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  That's a cute key. Yeah.

• 56:12David Sims?

  It's great. Let's not call it cute.

• 56:14Griffin Newman?

  It's great.

• 56:16David Sims?

  I'm gonna keep looking. I'm Googling great keys in movies.

• 56:20Griffin Newman?

  You go. Mr. Impossible, The Final Reckoning.

• 56:23David Sims?

  This is the film we're talking about today. I saw it only the one time. I, let me try to do, you guys saw it more recently. You have the plot in your head.

• 56:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 56:32David Sims?

  So let me try and do this.

• 56:33Griffin Newman?

  See if you can do it.

• 56:34David Sims?

  A couple of months have passed since the last movie.

• 56:37Griffin Newman?

  Right. When the movie starts, it feels like it's years have passed and then they reveal late that it's only been two months.

• 56:42David Sims?

  Which sort of makes sense in that AI is just moving so fast.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Did people laugh in your theater when that line?

• 56:47Griffin Newman?

  Yup.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yup. Both screenings, the, oh, it was only two months ago that all the events of the last movie took place.

• 56:54David Sims?

  People giggled.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  People laughed.

• 56:56David Sims?

  So, uh, the entity, the evil AI that was once in a Russian sub, but now it's everywhere.

• 57:01Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me. Thought leader.

• 57:03David Sims?

  Right. The, uh, king of the marketplace of ideas in the film, uh, is taking over.

• 57:09Griffin Newman?

  Podcasters are just asking questions.

• 57:10David Sims?

  All of the world's nuclear armaments.

• 57:14David Sims?

  Uh, one by one, like a big ticking clock. That's the ticking clock of the movie is like, he's taking all of the country's nukes, starting with the little ones and getting all the way to the big ones.

• 57:24Griffin Newman?

  He thinks that the way to improve existence is to annihilate it.

• 57:29David Sims?

  Yes. The entity has decided essentially, right, to just nuke the earth clean and then the entity will just live for a while doing nothing. And then I guess reboot humanity.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Now, I tried to book the entity for this episode. Didn't work out.

• 57:43Griffin Newman?

  Well, he's been doing.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  Been so busy with like press stuff.

• 57:46Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, he's doing the whole like manosphere circuit. Like he was on Theo Von last week. Hot Ones.

• 57:51David Sims?

  Theo Von grabbed in the coffin. And he came out dumber somehow. He was like, all right, man.

• 57:57Griffin Newman?

  Do you guys know how old Theo Von is?

• 57:59David Sims?

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't think about it that much.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  He was on Road Rules when I was like in middle school.

• 58:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 58:06David Sims?

  I'm gonna guess he's.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  But he was young on Road Rules.

• 58:08David Sims?

  Forty-two.

• 58:09Griffin Newman?

  He's forty-five. I just saw someone I follow.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  That tracks. What did you think he was older or younger?

• 58:14Griffin Newman?

  Someone I follow was spiraling and being like, this whole time I've thought this guy was thirty-two years old.

• 58:19David Sims?

  Right. Cause he's kind of like, hey, bro, what's up?

• 58:21Griffin Newman?

  And they were like, Mulaney going on Theo Von. I was like, this is kind of nice that he's supporting the younger generation of comics. This guy's three years older than Mulaney.

• 58:28David Sims?

  He's had a long, uh, you know, up and down, right? That's his thing. Um, so, so that's like the ticking clock of the movie. It's really the only thing they have to deal with, right? Is like, we must stop the entity before he nukes the earth.

• 58:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 58:42David Sims?

  It nukes the earth.

• 58:43Griffin Newman?

  The entity has control of, uh, five nuclear stockpiles.

• 58:47David Sims?

  Out of thirteen and it's all ticking off. It doesn't matter. It's like, you know, that's the ticking clock.

• 58:52Griffin Newman?

  You start the movie at DEFCON three.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Measure that?

• 58:54David Sims?

  Who fucking knows?

• 58:55Griffin Newman?

  Who knows?

• 58:56David Sims?

  And the Gabriel, once the entity's ally, has kind of been kicked out by the entity because he sort of failed.

• 59:04Griffin Newman?

  Anymore.

• 59:05David Sims?

  Right. He sort of failed to contain it in any way.

• 59:07Griffin Newman?

  So now he's out for vengeance and kind of wants to.

• 59:10David Sims?

  He's trying to kind of get the entity under his control.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. He wants to control the entity.

• 59:13Griffin Newman?

  He wants to win it back.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  But the one thing that, you know, Ethan understands that no one else does. To think you can control the entity? Who's Aaron?

• 59:23David Sims?

  Sure, America was sort of trying to do that in the first movie.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  They're still trying to do it.

• 59:26David Sims?

  There's somewhat, but it's their kind of, Carrie L was just dead. So like, that's a little less of a high priority.

• 59:31Griffin Newman?

  And it feels like they lose the thread of Kit Rich wanting it until the very end. And then it comes back again.

• 59:38David Sims?

  One of, one of my bigger notes of the movie, certainly. It's like, they don't, right? They don't really have a handle on that anymore.

• 59:42Griffin Newman?

  This movie seems to forget that the last movie is like, Kit Rich is crooked. He's a problem.

• 59:47David Sims?

  Right. So Gabriel is trying to get the entity back. Todd, there are so many do hickies. Tom has the cruci-, sorry, Ethan has the cruciform key. Ving Rhames Luther has made a thing that will kill the entity.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  The poison pill.

• 1:00:04David Sims?

  And Gabriel has or is trying to get the thingy, the poison pill will go in.

• 1:00:11Griffin Newman?

  The Podkova.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  The Podkova.

• 1:00:12Griffin Newman?

  He wants it. They have the Podkova.

• 1:00:14David Sims?

  Who has it?

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  The Podkova is in the sub.

• 1:00:17Griffin Newman?

  Right, that's what he has to get from the-

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  And the only person who-

• 1:00:19David Sims?

  You've got to get the Podkova from the sub.

• 1:00:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Is Ethan.

• 1:00:23David Sims?

  You've got to put, you've got to get the Podkova from the sub, using the cruciform key, put the poison pill in it while near the entity. And then, you know, it's later revealed, we'll trap him in a, in a USB.

• 1:00:34Griffin Newman?

  They need the world's best USB drive, the biggest one. They said it couldn't be done.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  A 5D optical drive.

• 1:00:40David Sims?

  It couldn't be done. And they need the world's best pickpocket to do the best USB plug.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  It's not a USB. It's a 5D optical drive.

• 1:00:49David Sims?

  I'm not saying that every time. It's a USB. Uh, and Cube SB. Yeah, it's a Cube SB.

• 1:00:58Griffin Newman?

  No, I mean, you are-

• 1:00:59David Sims?

  And that's kind of it, right? Like, that's the main drive of the movie.

• 1:01:03Griffin Newman?

  Right, like, now here's a problem with this film. There are literally four scenes in a row that take up most of the first hour that are extended dialogue scenes where Ethan locks in with someone and says, "Please, I need you to trust me. The entity thinks we will never work together. I need you to trust me."

• 1:01:20David Sims?

  He says that to Angela Bassett, who's president of the United States.

• 1:01:22Griffin Newman?

  He says it first to Shia Wiggum.

• 1:01:24David Sims?

  He says to Shia Wiggum, who is revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps.

• 1:01:29Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Mention that and then you're like, okay, and then it's just has no bearing on anything.

• 1:01:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. Which like getting back to earlier threads.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  It's like, why?

• 1:01:37Griffin Newman?

  This is how this movie is structured where it keeps circling back and going like, fuck, we forgot to set this up. Right. The, the callbacky shit is Dunlow is brought back and actually has a significant role and I think is used well.

• 1:01:49David Sims?

  He's fun. Yeah. He's a fun callback. The guy from Mr.

• 1:01:51Griffin Newman?

  Shea Williams' character, whose name was Briggs, which is the name of the original team leader in the original TV show, who was later replaced by the Phelps character, turns out to actually be Jim Phelps Jr., son of John Voight, out for vengeance, although he claims, I'm not out for vengeance.

• 1:02:07David Sims?

  No, I'm over it.

• 1:02:07Griffin Newman?

  I just love rules and doing my job.

• 1:02:09David Sims?

  I don't like you, but not because of that.

• 1:02:11Griffin Newman?

  Right. Then you have the, the sort of retcon notion that the rabbit's foot was actually.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  The code, the source code of the entity?

• 1:02:20Griffin Newman?

  That the entity was built off of.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:22Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he handed it over.

• 1:02:23David Sims?

  So like Ethan is somewhat responsible here in that he got the rabbit's foot and handed it over to save his wife or Carrie Russell or whoever he was trying to save.

• 1:02:33Griffin Newman?

  Now, the Hannah Waddingham character who is.

• 1:02:35David Sims?

  No, it was Maggie Q. Really. He was like, oh, gotta get, get her a CW show.

• 1:02:39Griffin Newman?

  The Hannah Waddingham character, who the president writes a note to that has a date on it. That's like, do you know what happened on this date? Something really bad happened and we lost people and we never recovered.

• 1:02:49David Sims?

  We didn't take a risk or something like that.

• 1:02:51Griffin Newman?

  The date that's on the note is the release date of the original De Palma movie. So both times I've watched it.

• 1:02:56David Sims?

  Just masturbatory.

• 1:02:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. I've been like, is it supposed to be that she's connected to something that happened in the original movie?

• 1:03:02David Sims?

  Them doing a sort of like pat on the back like, wow.

• 1:03:05Griffin Newman?

  But that feels so fucking dumb and the exact kind of thing McQuarrie has always stood in opposition to. And I think is one of the best at explaining why that shit is bad.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Griffin Newman?

  He does press tours for this movie.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  He literally just gave an interview saying that he thought fan service was a cancer or something.

• 1:03:19Griffin Newman?

  I was like, I can't believe he has the gall to say this when this movie is coming out. And then I realized that was an interview from the last movie that's being recirculated now.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:27Griffin Newman?

  But it's such a stark contrast of being like, he's usually so good at identifying. And I think we'll say other things that I like a lot about like. Tom and I both agree that there's this problem in like blockbuster filmmaking where you do these kind of jokes that like defuse the main characters where everyone's kind of like cutting everyone down to size and belittling them, not in like a back and forth repertoire way, but in a way where the movie's like, we want to make the joke about ourselves before the audience can make it, so we don't seem corny. And he's like, when you do that, it makes the audience think less of your main character and dislike the person that's making the joke, which I'm like, that's him nailing a core problem with like fucking Marvel movies, right? And he talks about the fan service thing. The thing that he brought

• 1:04:10Griffin Newman?

  up in this interview is that like, when you do that kind of shit, 50% of the audience is patting themselves on the back for recognizing the reference, which then takes them out of the story of the movie, and they're thinking about a different movie rather than the one they're watching, and then they have to re-enter. Or the other half of the audience doesn't know what it's a reference to, they're confused, and they're now in their head about what is that, what do I not know, am I not getting something? And they're also not paying attention to the movie. And this movie not only does that exact thing to the audience so many times, but it keeps showing flashbacks over and over again, being like, we want to make sure you're not confused, which then takes you out of the movie.

• 1:04:48David Sims?

  It does.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  You see May 22nd, 1996, written, they flashback to that piece of paper, like five times.

• 1:04:55Griffin Newman?

  No information gained. Now-

• 1:04:58David Sims?

  But I think it's just supposed to be like, you know, they've been taking the ultimate risk on these movies. I don't know, something like that.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  But I'm also just like, the whole time I was like, she mentioned Serbia, so I'm, it takes me out of the movie, because I'm like-

• 1:05:10Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  They didn't go to Serbia in the first Mission Impossible, right?

• 1:05:13David Sims?

  Maybe they did, you don't know.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Did they? I don't remember.

• 1:05:15Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, what's her last name? Did any other character have this last name? What's she connected to?

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Is she like Emilio Estevez's like ex-girlfriend?

• 1:05:22David Sims?

  Yeah, that's what she is.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  What, like-

• 1:05:23David Sims?

  She and Emilio had a hot night in Prague.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't fucking know.

• 1:05:26Griffin Newman?

  That's on the movie, not on us, because by this point in time, they've already set up the other three things, and we're in a mode where we're like, what does this connect to? You keep connecting shit.

• 1:05:35David Sims?

  Emilio Estevez is how many years older than Hannah Waddingham? Guess.

• 1:05:39Griffin Newman?

  15.

• 1:05:40David Sims?

  You were pretty close. 13.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  She's older than I think she is.

• 1:05:44David Sims?

  She's younger than you think.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Wait, really?

• 1:05:46David Sims?

  How old do you think she is? 1,000.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Forty-eight?

• 1:05:49Griffin Newman?

  I think she's, okay.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51David Sims?

  Okay, so I'm wrong.

• 1:05:52Griffin Newman?

  She's only five years old than Theo Von.

• 1:05:54David Sims?

  Uh, she's 16 years younger than Angela Bassett. So I'm not quite sure what the connection is there, but whatever.

• 1:06:00Griffin Newman?

  Um, the motion picture centers, a runaway success, an artistic triumph, someone making something personal and awesome and exciting within the studio system. I have heard a lot of people complain about what they feel like is an overabundance of flashbacks in sinners, which they're like, it feels like the movie doesn't trust the audience to remember.

• 1:06:19David Sims?

  That's Kugler believing and testing. Like Cougar tests his movies rigorously and like he does, he takes notes. But there, there's lots of reporting that Kugler was like, I'm playing ball. I want this to work like, because there was all those things of like, how dare this man want ownership of a film like he's gonna destroy cinema.

• 1:06:39Griffin Newman?

  That's also what the movie's fucking about, but.

• 1:06:42David Sims?

  I know.

• 1:06:42Griffin Newman?

  Right, but um, my point is I saw it a second time, right? And the flashback thing didn't bug me the first time I watched it. And even if it's just him doing the best execution of that note of the audience is confused, can you remind them? The way he actually executes those flashbacks and edits them in, in terms of like the rhythms and how he like uses the score in connection with them. It genuinely feels like he is finding a creative fix for a story problem that ends up playing more like a fucking like Malachi, these are echoes of thematic like memories. And it does feel like when the things happen, it's less like you need to remember this plot detail and more like, I'm trying to remind you of the connection between these two moments in terms of the emotion of the story.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  He's, he's using the flashbacks as a vibe check versus in this, in Mission Impossible, where it's like.

• 1:07:31Griffin Newman?

  Even if that stems from a test screening note, it ends up working that way.

• 1:07:35David Sims?

  It's a more successful film.

• 1:07:36Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:07:37David Sims?

  I'll just say.

• 1:07:38Griffin Newman?

  Whereas this, I'm like, this is just truly being like, remember, remember, remember? Um, in a way that is so confusing and disorienting. And especially when you're getting scenes that are like, wait, Luther died. What is this scene? Did this happen earlier? Did they just not show us this?

• 1:07:52David Sims?

  The Luther thing's just.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Okay, let's, let's.

• 1:07:54Griffin Newman?

  Disaster.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  A couple of things.

• 1:07:55David Sims?

  That's the thing in the movie that kind of irked me the most. I largely enjoyed watching this movie.

• 1:07:59Griffin Newman?

  And I, the way I feel about the Luther, the handling.

• 1:08:02David Sims?

  I'm not mad they killed him off. Like, I'm like, sure.

• 1:08:04Griffin Newman?

  But I feel about the execution of that. Similar to the way I think a lot of people got pissed off by the Elsa death, which I kind of defend the execution of more.

• 1:08:13David Sims?

  Sure. The Elsa death is more tense. The Luther thing where he's like, he's rigged this and I have to stay behind where you're just like, there's no tension to this, like, whatever.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Okay, first up, Luther has a little hospital room set up and tunnels underneath the London Underground.

• 1:08:33Griffin Newman?

  It has been two months. At the end of Dead Reckoning, Luther goes, Ethan, I need to go off and do something by myself. Good luck, right? And like, it is just.

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  Your uncle Luther's getting a little tired.

• 1:08:47Griffin Newman?

  They have talked about the fact that like, even in these globetrotting movies and with pandemics and all these restrictions, like every single thing Ving Rhames shot for the two movies was in London. His health is not great. His mobility is not great. They had to lock him into one city. They had to build around him. They had to batch shoot his stuff, right? So they do that thing at the end of the last movie where he's like, I gotta go off on a solo mission. And I'm like, I get it. Macquarie needs to come up with some structure for him to be off on a solo thing so that they don't have to work everyone else's schedules around him.

• 1:09:16David Sims?

  The idea is what he's doing is he's making the poison pill within the context of the movie.

• 1:09:20Griffin Newman?

  But then this movie starts, it's one of the things that makes you feel like, oh, five years must have passed. He looks like shit. He's in some private, like, black site hospice care. He's in like some government controlled, like, hidden tunnel hospice. He's gotten deathly ill.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, but my, I saw it with my husband who's like, wait, so when did this happen? And I'm like, I don't think it did. I think that like, this is the real, like, Ving Rhames being sick in real life or something, trickling into the movie, but in a way that like, is really like confusing and is blurring the lines.

• 1:09:58Griffin Newman?

  It's like, the first chunk of the movie is so rushed that I'm just like, okay, this is an elegant, but I guess I just gotta keep up with this. Ben David turned to me 10 minutes and said, I feel like I'm having a stroke. With like, the intensity and the speed at which they're throwing information at you, very sloppily and frantically.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  There's one scene in the beginning of the movie where it's. They're cutting between two conversations.

• 1:10:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  But Tom is in both of them.

• 1:10:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  And it is so confusing.

• 1:10:25Griffin Newman?

  And then you're also cutting to like flashback images of other things.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  So it's like Tom explaining something to someone about the poison pill. And then you're cutting to Luther and Benji explaining what the poison pill is to Tom.

• 1:10:39Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, this happened a week ago, but the movie didn't show me?

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Yes. And it is just, it is so inelegant.

• 1:10:45Griffin Newman?

  Which, look, these movies, they talk about, they figure out the plot like last, right? They retrofit it onto everything else that they figure out, which is why they often have these sort of sloppy intro scenes in which they get the message. And that's the thing that's like figured out finally, uh, with ADR to then explain what they're doing for the rest of the movie, right? This movie starts out with like the clunkiest one yet, which is just opens on Tom in tight close up silently reacting. We'll fill in the dialogue later. Angela Bassett monologuing for like eight minutes.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Pause. I am so glad that we're talking about this.

• 1:11:22Griffin Newman?

  Yes, we have to.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Because I love that the little, the mission briefing device is Ben's porch TV.

• 1:11:29Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Isn't that fun, guys?

• 1:11:31Griffin Newman?

  It's a TV vs. your combo. It is. It is.

• 1:11:35David Sims?

  Although he's, I guess, kind of for the first time ignoring his mission a little bit.

• 1:11:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, Angela Bassett goes, no one's been able to read you. You're not responding to anything. I thought you might respond to the president, right?

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  I thought you might respond. So does she send him the porch TV? Does she just send him?

• 1:11:51Griffin Newman?

  We don't know.

• 1:11:52David Sims?

  She's doing it on Best Buy.

• 1:11:54Griffin Newman?

  This feels like this was shot.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  That's actually a great question. Yeah. Does someone have to eBay? A combo and get it sent to that location?

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Or is it that like, this is how Ethan is consuming media now because he's so afraid of the entity? Like you've established that in order to like skirt the entity, you have to go analog.

• 1:12:09Griffin Newman?

  This feels like, well, by the way.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Doing just watching VHS tapes?

• 1:12:13Griffin Newman?

  Two years ago, I heard, and these things change so much. But two years ago, I heard on good authority that that was the big conceptual hook to the entire part two. Was the entity has reached so far.

• 1:12:27David Sims?

  Over cyberspace.

• 1:12:28Griffin Newman?

  That this is the first Mission Impossible movie where they can use no tech.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Griffin Newman?

  I was like, that's kind of an interesting angle.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  I think I remember you saying this when the last movie came out. Yeah.

• 1:12:36Griffin Newman?

  And.

• 1:12:36David Sims?

  And there's elements of that.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Elements.

• 1:12:38David Sims?

  Like their big base where they're pushing around.

• 1:12:40Griffin Newman?

  Down to the biplane, that being right. Yes.

• 1:12:43David Sims?

  That's kind of it, though.

• 1:12:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:12:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Griffin Newman?

  Which like the biplanes were something I think they largely shot in 2020. They shot that really early.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  But that whole sequence really slides into the movie really well.

• 1:12:55David Sims?

  I brought two planes.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  It feels like it really fits into the plot, just like so like, like snug.

• 1:13:03Griffin Newman?

  Maybe it was a little later than 2020. I know.

• 1:13:05David Sims?

  Cause they did not shoot this concurrently, right? Like that got abandoned.

• 1:13:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it essentially became a back to back shoot, but uh, the train from the end of the last one was supposed to be in this one. They did a swap of sequences.

• 1:13:22David Sims?

  I'm gonna need to see some reporting on this.

• 1:13:24Griffin Newman?

  Some stuff got sloppy. Here's what I want to say. Angela Bassett speaking to my TV VCR combo. This looks like it was shot in Tom Cruise's trailer one month ago. It is two close ups. We've seen so many versions of this scene where like Ethan's in some weird safe house. And then a guy delivers a thing and whatever. There's like no even attempt to place him in any environment.

• 1:13:45David Sims?

  The GQ article gets into it a little bit of like, Macquarie just has like this like repository of Cruise reaction shot.

• 1:13:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's.

• 1:13:53David Sims?

  Where he's like, give me that one.

• 1:13:54Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:13:54David Sims?

  Right. Cause they have just collected.

• 1:13:56Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't say anything and they keep coming back to him and he makes like, hmm, interesting face. And then like, I don't know about this face. And it's clear he's reacting to nothing. Angela Bassett monologues for so long. I'm like, this is sloppier than usual, but if this is what they need to do to get the movie off and running, then so be it.

• 1:14:12David Sims?

  Totally forgivable. Exactly.

• 1:14:14Griffin Newman?

  And then the movie spends an hour basically repeating this scene.

• 1:14:17David Sims?

  So what does it do? Remind me.

• 1:14:19Griffin Newman?

  When, okay. So here are some examples of ways that repeats.

• 1:14:21David Sims?

  Cause I, I agree with you that I felt.

• 1:14:23Griffin Newman?

  A lot of throat clearing in the first hour, but I don't really remember what actually happened. This scene also, by the way, is crazy because when you're watching this and like, no one's been able to reach you, you're like, oh, it's been five years. When you find it's been two months, you're like, why is the president freaking out?

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Because the entity is evolving so fast.

• 1:14:40Griffin Newman?

  Okay, fair. Yeah, it's kind of pretty hairy out there.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Half of the world's nuclear silos are already in the entity's control. We're DEFCON 3.

• 1:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Sure, sure. Which is insane. We would be a DEFCON one. She spends, she spends almost 10 minutes setting stuff up, right? Yeah. Then when he goes into the entity's coffin, I would argue the entity does another version of this for about seven minutes. The entity does another one with a little bit of sort of previewing things in the future. And it's similarly cutting to Tom reaction shots of his eyes in the coffin going, it can't be true. The entity, of course, is telling him for the first time about the nuclear armament thing, but it's so long. It goes on way too long. So long, especially when we've already had one of these info dumps and there hasn't been an action sequence yet. And then I would argue when he gets into the war room with Basset and all the other stuff shirts, there is a third version of this. And it's like, you can do-

• 1:15:30Griffin Newman?

  And it's again him being like, I know, I know, I know, but you have to trust me. And you're like, this is the kind of thing McQuarrie is usually good at, is looking at the footage and being like, fuck, you know what we need to do? We need to reshoot and combine the information in these three scenes into one scene. And instead, this movie has this thing where it's like making a dish with two preparations of the same protein, right? It's like you're eating a taco with like fucking like roasted and fried chicken in it. And I'm like, pick one. In the same way, we're revealed that Luther is in this fucking hospice site. I immediately go, huh, okay, this is sloppy and this is moving too fast. I'm very confused, but I can kind of see what they're getting at here. This is interesting.

• 1:16:16Griffin Newman?

  If Luther is dying and Ethan, whose whole thing is, I won't let anyone die, especially my whole team, right? You cannot sacrifice one, is facing a thing that he can't solve. Luther has a terminal illness and Ethan is going to have to accept that he can't save this guy's life, right? I was like, this is an interesting new test for this character. And then they have him die in a saw trap. And I'm like, then why is he sick?

• 1:16:41David Sims?

  It's a good question. Why he's sick is to soften the blow of his death. Right. Is to have it be like, he's like, look, it's time for me to sacrifice myself because I'm near the end.

• 1:16:52Griffin Newman?

  But also it makes it unemotional to me where I'm like, I'm, I'm eating it. I'm going, why is there chorizo and bacon at the same time?

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  You know, it would have been, it would have been so good if Luther died of, if.

• 1:17:02Griffin Newman?

  Doesn't.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. If Luther like dies of cancer, we get a, which is something that Ethan Hunt can't fix. We get a bit of a bedside repeat of the Magnolia scene. Tom emotional.

• 1:17:14David Sims?

  You want to shift into Magnolia mode?

• 1:17:17Griffin Newman?

  I kinda do.

• 1:17:18David Sims?

  The car to turn into a boat.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  One of, one of the things that bothered me in this movie is all the time, like Tom gets emotional in the movie, like twice.

• 1:17:27Griffin Newman?

  Ethan's not a real person. It doesn't make sense getting emotional. Movies adventure big screen, let's go.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Ethan gets emotional twice in this movie and the two times it happens, it's with fucking Shay Wiggum.

• 1:17:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, hey, Shay got done low. And it's like, I am so sorry. I ruined. He keeps doing this kind of like very clenched.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Like, bro, Luther, the only guy who's been with you since 96.

• 1:17:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but look.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Dies and it's just like, okay.

• 1:17:54David Sims?

  I wrote this in the Atlantic. It's always been hard for these as they progress and have built more serialization into them to be like Ethan Hunt, the guy. I'm like, he's not a person. Like.

• 1:18:06Griffin Newman?

  He's Tom Cruise.

• 1:18:07David Sims?

  He's Tom Cruise. He's this kind of mythic force. Like everyone in the movies talks about him. Yeah. Like he's like ball.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  The living manifestation of destiny.

• 1:18:15David Sims?

  Yes. Exactly. And it's sort of like, you know, right. I'm not, I'm never gonna like that. I love the idea that he's like, I'm going to marry Michelle Monahan. And it's like trying to put magnets together where it's just like, no, you're not allowed to do that. You are Ethan Hunt. Like your job is just to be Ethan Hunt.

• 1:18:30Griffin Newman?

  I, yeah, I don't know. I did re-watch Dead Reckoning, part one, uh, after seeing this the first time.

• 1:18:38Griffin Newman?

  Movie I like quite a bit. It is imperfect, coming off of a couple nearly perfect movies.

• 1:18:43David Sims?

  It's a really fun movie, by and large.

• 1:18:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And like-

• 1:18:46David Sims?

  There's one sequence in it I wish was better. The nightclub. The nightclub is the one sequence where I'm like, this could be better.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  You mean the Entity's party?

• 1:18:55David Sims?

  And look, I'm not dissing the guy's party planning.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Cause that's rude.

• 1:19:01David Sims?

  Well, I don't like the Entity.

• 1:19:03Griffin Newman?

  Someone's mad he didn't get an invite. Someone didn't get the part of falling.

• 1:19:08David Sims?

  Macedonia, where are they in that movie?

• 1:19:10Griffin Newman?

  I don't dislike that sequence, but that is the sequence-

• 1:19:13David Sims?

  It's just the one where I'm like, eh, it doesn't look that good.

• 1:19:15Griffin Newman?

  The most COVID affected to me.

• 1:19:16David Sims?

  It feels COVID affected. It also feels kind of like, also sort of filled with a bit of ADR and explanation and all that shit, you know?

• 1:19:24Griffin Newman?

  Um, but here's what I like about Elsa's death in that movie. Knowing that it probably came out of necessity of Rebecca Ferguson saying like, I want an early out on this.

• 1:19:33David Sims?

  Hillary Atwell in this movie, in the last movie, she's got stuff going on.

• 1:19:38Griffin Newman?

  I like her arc in it.

• 1:19:40David Sims?

  In the last one.

• 1:19:41Griffin Newman?

  In the last one.

• 1:19:41David Sims?

  In Final Reckoning, I'm like, this is just Elsa. This should just be Elsa.

• 1:19:45Griffin Newman?

  Everything she does saves for the two times she picks someone's pocket feels like it's supposed to be an Elsa scene. When she rescues him from the ice, I'm like, this scene makes sense if it's Ethan and Elsa. They don't have the history for this conversation.

• 1:19:59David Sims?

  Chemistry for these big moments.

• 1:20:01Griffin Newman?

  And once again, she has only been an agent for two months.

• 1:20:04David Sims?

  Well, she accepted the choice.

• 1:20:05Griffin Newman?

  I get it. But like, what I like about her arc in the last movie is this is the first time we're seeing someone start the pipeline through this. They've lost any sense of her still learning on the job in this one. She's as qualified as Benji.

• 1:20:17David Sims?

  She's just right. She's just in the team.

• 1:20:19Griffin Newman?

  She's just part of the team. There's like nothing-

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Two months.

• 1:20:22Griffin Newman?

  Two months. Two months. Like truly, some of the issues in this movie are immediately solved if that ADR line is five years ago. It doesn't solve all the problems, but it makes certain things less galling. Um, the Elsa death, what I like about it is, uh, Gabriel kills her, right? He can't save her. He's there crying on the bridge. And then it cuts to all of them in a safe house, sort of standing in silence mourning. And then they start planning the next mission, right? And I've heard a lot of people be like, this is the most important character. This is the heart of the franchise. Rebecca Ferguson across these three movies was like the secret sauce. How is the rest of the movie not existing in the wake of her death? Like, everyone should be so emotionally affected by it.

• 1:21:04Griffin Newman?

  And what I think was a good choice in terms of characterization is they're in silence. And then Haley Atwell, I believe, is the one who breaks it and says something like, "I don't think I got her name. Who was she?" And Luther kind of explains to her, like, "This is our life. We like lose people like this all the time. This is the choice we make. Death is part of the job." Like, I'm worried about Ethan, but also you have to understand, like, this thing you've gotten yourself into is, someone dies and then we go to a safe house and we sit in silence for like five minutes? And we plan the next mission. We don't get to mourn them. There's no funeral. We don't have human connections. And that makes for me, her final choice to accept the mission, right?

• 1:21:49Griffin Newman?

  At the end of the film, feel more impactful. That's why I think they make her death meaningful in that way is they're acknowledging, these people don't have time to grieve and they have to compartmentalize the notion that they even care about each other and try to move on. Whereas I think they're trying to make the Luther thing more of an emotional thing, but it doesn't work. I want him going Magnolia mode, not because it feels like the depth of that relationship has been written, but because he's literally the only guy who's in every other movie.

• 1:22:17David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:17Griffin Newman?

  And it's the one opportunity to acknowledge, like, to let Ethan break and be like, "Fuck, I do care about this guy more than I ever want to let on." Right? And that's why it doesn't need to be some crazy mission death. It's better if he's just fucking dying in a hospital bed and Ethan goes to visit him and he gets the poison pill and that's the final thing. I like him having the pre-recorded message at the end. It feels nice that the movie ends with fucking Luther.

• 1:22:39David Sims?

  Thing is fine.

• 1:22:40Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:22:40David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:22:41Griffin Newman?

  But they mishandle the death so much, you're so confused by what's going on with him. Then he's fucking trapped in the catacombs. Then he's flashbacked to two more times. You just like do not know what is happening.

• 1:22:55David Sims?

  All right. That's true. Well, I have, of course, always know what's happening. I'm so locked into everything. Um, but I feel like you kind of do the Luther thing. You do kind of not know what's happening or it doesn't fit into the plot very well. And the fact that he made a poison pill out of nowhere, which has not come up before. The last movie is like, he needs to get in the sub to get the thing. And I'm like, I got that. And they're like, he also needs to put Luther's thing into the thing. I'm like, okay.

• 1:23:22Griffin Newman?

  It's another thing.

• 1:23:23David Sims?

  Who cares?

• 1:23:23Griffin Newman?

  That McQuarrie is usually really good at of just like, it's one object and this is what they need to do with it. And you're like, it's like.

• 1:23:29David Sims?

  Three to four objects.

• 1:23:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. Like it's so simple, what the overarchingness is. And this now, as you said, it's like four different devices.

• 1:23:37David Sims?

  Four devices. Cause it's the key, the thing, the pill and the, uh, the, uh,

• 1:23:45David Sims?

  help me out here. Uh, the Podcova. No, the drive. Oh, the 5D optical drive. Optical drive.

• 1:23:50Griffin Newman?

  And that's, it's.

• 1:23:51David Sims?

  And what pray tell is the fifth dimension of this drive? I have no idea. Cool.

• 1:23:55Griffin Newman?

  Friendship.

• 1:23:57David Sims?

  You're right. You're right.

• 1:23:58Griffin Newman?

  The friends we made along the way.

• 1:24:01Griffin Newman?

  The impossible mission friendship.

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  So when does this movie kickoff for you then? If you're talking about the first hour being very slow.

• 1:24:09Griffin Newman?

  For me, I feel like what should basically be the cold open of this movie. And the only thing you need to solve is like, how do you get the Luther thing in here? And I have a thought on that is him being brought in in handcuffs in front of Angela Bassett. And them being like, here are the stakes and him being like, I need you to trust me. And then after that, he says, I need you to get me to this fucking aircraft carrier.

• 1:24:35David Sims?

  George H. W. Bush.

• 1:24:36Griffin Newman?

  Right. And you're like, oh, cool. Tom's gonna go fucking Top Gun mode in Mission Impossible. He lands there. He has one intense conversation with Hannah Waddingham. That's the third conversation like this in a row we've heard. It adds nothing to the movie. I think she is good in it, but it adds.

• 1:24:53David Sims?

  It doesn't.

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  Nothing. And like.

• 1:24:55David Sims?

  Except all of that is just like, wait a second, you're saying you need to be here when this is happening and this is how, you know, they're again, trying to pump us up with like.

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  Being like, not gonna do it.

• 1:25:06David Sims?

  Not gonna. And then she does chopping broccoli, which is weird. That's not even good.

• 1:25:12Griffin Newman?

  And then also John Lovett shows up behind her and goes, I can't believe I'm losing to this lady.

• 1:25:17David Sims?

  You know, who has a master of disguise?

• 1:25:21David Sims?

  You know who won.

• 1:25:22Griffin Newman?

  What if Tom Cruise announced, I am stepping down from the Mission Impossible franchise and handing it over to Dana Carvey?

• 1:25:27David Sims?

  The true, I recognize there's only one Master of the Sky assigned to Dana Carvey. We should shout out, I should say, in the first hour, the only action sequence that there really is, is the rescue of Paris, where they do do masks for a second.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  That's like an afterthought.

• 1:25:40Griffin Newman?

  There are, there are two deeply abridged fistfight sequences.

• 1:25:45David Sims?

  Oh, right. The other one, right. And the other one is, is the Looney Tunes, like, Tom Cruise master curse people off screen.

• 1:25:51Griffin Newman?

  But it also, right, it cuts away like, like fucking wet hot American summer to Joe Latrulio going like, oh my God, he's doing it. No, what? Master.

• 1:25:59David Sims?

  It's kind of funny.

• 1:26:00Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of funny. And then that becomes the light the fuse moment, right? Where the credits hit and Ben David, who fucking loves these movies.

• 1:26:07David Sims?

  And I love the light the fuse moments as much as I'm sure he does.

• 1:26:10Griffin Newman?

  Logo tattooed on his arm.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  David?

• 1:26:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, he's doing the thing.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  People have been asking for a photo of this.

• 1:26:16Griffin Newman?

  The double jointed stuff.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:26:18Griffin Newman?

  People need to see it.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  People need to see it. I posted it shortly.

• 1:26:21Griffin Newman?

  Ben David has the fucking IMF logo on his arm, right? You hear the da kicking in as Ethan goes like, good job surviving it. And they walk off and he looks at me like this, like that's the light the fuse moment. And I'm like, I agree. As much as these movies do not have some like sacred fucking like rulebook.

• 1:26:41David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:26:42Griffin Newman?

  I'd say the greatest consistency across all of the movies is the music kicks in after Ethan has done something so fucking awesome. And you're like, I cannot believe he pulled this off. And in this case, what he's done is faked a cyanide pill and then punched a bunch of people off camera, stabbing them in the chest.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  He killed them.

• 1:27:00Griffin Newman?

  He cleavered them.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  He murdered.

• 1:27:02David Sims?

  Okay. So I love the light the fuse moment in Ghost Protocol so much because he literally says, light the fuse. And it's then the, the visual presentation of that's so cool. Obviously in five, it's just him pulling the chute on the plane thing.

• 1:27:15Griffin Newman?

  Which rules.

• 1:27:16David Sims?

  Which rocks. And you're just like, hell yeah. What is it in Fallout?

• 1:27:19Griffin Newman?

  It's fucking the Wolf Blitzer moment where they tricked him into giving up the code.

• 1:27:23David Sims?

  Right. In Dead Reckoning, I remember it being cool. I remember being pretty pumped up.

• 1:27:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, why am I not remembering what it is in Dead Reckoning? And I watched it recently. I mean, two, obviously, it's the, the free climbing.

• 1:27:39David Sims?

  Yeah, which is fine.

• 1:27:40Griffin Newman?

  Which is like the pinnacle. No, no, but it's when he throws the sunglasses. But I'm saying it's off of that. It's so cool. Yeah.

• 1:27:48David Sims?

  Um.

• 1:27:50Griffin Newman?

  Dead Reckoning opens with the submarine and then it goes to him getting the message. It happens deep in. The first thing after that is the airport sequence, which I fucking love.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:28:01Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's him breaking into Kit Rich with the mask.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:28:04Griffin Newman?

  And putting the mask, putting the mask back on.

• 1:28:06David Sims?

  That's good.

• 1:28:07Griffin Newman?

  How do you expect to sneak out? And then he puts the Kit Rich mask on. It's, you want that kind of moment.

• 1:28:12David Sims?

  I think Ghost Protocol Rogue Nation is maybe the peak of light diffuse moments, I think.

• 1:28:16Griffin Newman?

  I, sure. Yes. But you want that feeling of like, that son of a bitch, he pulled it off.

• 1:28:21David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  And this movie is like faking it where it's like, we don't quite have it, but if we don't put it here, it's not going to happen for an hour and a half.

• 1:28:27David Sims?

  We need to do the credits.

• 1:28:28Griffin Newman?

  Truly. Right. So then he, he has the very brief fistfight there that largely, and the knife fight, ma- mass murder that happens largely off camera. He has the very brief sort of like sneak in to get Paris out of jail. Uh, Pom Clemente, uh, I would learn to make pasta from scratch. Um.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  It's not that hard. You just need like eggs and flour and stuff.

• 1:28:52Griffin Newman?

  Well, but let's tell her it's really hard and it took a lot of work.

• 1:28:56Griffin Newman?

  He, those are the only two things of any kind of like action adjacency. But beyond that, we're also not getting a thing that I think is wholly lacking from this movie, which is one of my favorite things of Mission Impossible. Not the stunt sequences, but the sort of like puzzle game. How do we solve this?

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  A million percent. We're missing, we're missing that.

• 1:29:18Griffin Newman?

  Anything like Ethan and Benji breaking into the Kremlin with the weird screen. We don't have anything like the airport and who's got the key.

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:29:25Griffin Newman?

  Like this sort of.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  And those are, those are always my favorite.

• 1:29:27Griffin Newman?

  Ground level sort of using their smarts.

• 1:29:30David Sims?

  I think is the problem that the stakes are too high.

• 1:29:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33David Sims?

  That like now that it's nuclear Armageddon, it's sort of like, well, we can't be having as much silly fun.

• 1:29:38Griffin Newman?

  And they have like assembled a makeshift version of this where there are like five concurrent actions and you have like Dunlow with the bomb. Right. Haley's gotta do the quick grab. But that's different. Harris doing the surgery. That's final sequence stuff. But it at least gave me the juice of every member of the team has to do something. Why am I not cutting to Jar Jar like, you know, got a big orb? What if they did that? That's one of my favorite things in the Mission Impossible franchise is that every movie has Jar Jar juggling an orb. Dropping it, feeling like a klutz, but actually. It rolls into a. In the process, knocking out a bunch of battle droids. Good job. And that's what Mission Impossible is about, if you ask me. It's about Jar Jar Binks. Yes. And another thing that's totally missing from this movie is people forget that Jar Jar actually in his power as a senator is one of the people who granted Palpatine the power.

• 1:30:23Griffin Newman?

  He not one, I think he's the one. That is a plot thread that is totally dropped in this film. I just am in such a Star Wars mood these days that I'm like, maybe we gotta do the prequels again.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Guys.

• 1:30:35Griffin Newman?

  David, motherfucker, you motherfucker. I have pitched that so many times and every time you make your stinky poo poo face, you go, I don't want to do Star Wars again. I pitched it for 400 for episode 500. I wanted it to be our 10th anniversary episode.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  I mean, this is the decade of dreams.

• 1:30:50Griffin Newman?

  Was we revisit Phantom Menace with context? And we didn't do it for our 10th anniversary because you went stinky poo poo and now you want to do it. Okay, maybe we slotted it in. What did we do for our 10th anniversary? Nothing.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 1:31:02Griffin Newman?

  Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. We released the last crusade episode. That was a good episode.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  I just have, I just have some.

• 1:31:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, rules.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Some notes that I took at my screening last night that I just want to make sure we address. Ethan was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

• 1:31:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, JJ texted us last night. Fired for being too excited about this. Yeah.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  I said.

• 1:31:24Griffin Newman?

  But that's literally, you just see it in his file, right?

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  But interesting character.

• 1:31:27Griffin Newman?

  No one's like, what was it like? Oh, cold Madison winters or whatever. We should also mention that like multiple, in terms of like talking about this movie having like repetition of the same beat over and over again, five different characters across the three hours of this movie fired JJ. That is true. Ethan looks into, he shoots the lens. Kittridge is like, and fire that guy. JJ, you are fired. He's got tears in his eyes. You have to trust me on this. Right. You're fired. Angela Bassett breaks the biscuit and the note inside on the present stationery. Fire JJ.

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  Fire JJ.

• 1:31:59Griffin Newman?

  USS Fire JJ is the name of the submarine.

• 1:32:04Griffin Newman?

  When he gets an entity's cough and the entity is like, and above all else, JJ must be fired.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  I'm so excited. We haven't really talked about this. We're all gonna meet JJ for the first time.

• 1:32:14Griffin Newman?

  None of us have ever met JJ in person.

• 1:32:16David Sims?

  I've known him longer than you guys and I, I too have never met him.

• 1:32:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Our upcoming live show, Town Hall.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Show.

• 1:32:22Griffin Newman?

  Tickets still available, June 6. That's right.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:25Griffin Newman?

  Blank check, finally, request an audience.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  With King Ralph.

• 1:32:28Griffin Newman?

  With King Ralph.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be like a live episode. We're not gonna watch the movie.

• 1:32:32Griffin Newman?

  No, we're gonna talk about it.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Talk about it with a lot of, you know, fun little interactive bits.

• 1:32:38Griffin Newman?

  A lot of fun, a lot of fun.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  But, um, anyway, yeah, we're gonna meet JJ for the first time.

• 1:32:44Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna do a lot of fun, little interactive bits. We're gonna explain Gabriel's backstory. We're gonna tell you who that woman was.

• 1:32:50David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. Well, that's coming. What if Macquarie's like, no, uh, we'll do a nice movie. I'll explain it then.

• 1:32:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. We'll answer all of that in Jack Reacher 3.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  Okay, wait.

• 1:32:59Griffin Newman?

  They're going back to Jack Reacher.

• 1:33:00David Sims?

  Coming back.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Um, some more notes. Uh, I like that they have a defibrillator in the torture chamber. Is that standard? You know how they bring him back to life after his fake?

• 1:33:11Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then he, he flips it on them.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just thought that was interesting.

• 1:33:15Griffin Newman?

  Better safe than sorry.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Luther's nurse. What's she thinking about all this?

• 1:33:20Griffin Newman?

  Great question. But this is where I'm like, what is?

• 1:33:23David Sims?

  Weird commute.

• 1:33:28David Sims?

  Yeah, hang a left at the dungeons.

• 1:33:33David Sims?

  Take go to Charing Cross Station and then into the dungeon.

• 1:33:35Griffin Newman?

  Ben's eyes just lit up. He's Googling nursing school.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, okay. And then there, this whole, the entity is counting on you hating me, so we have to do the one thing it doesn't expect. Which, I got a lot of problems with this.

• 1:33:50David Sims?

  I mean, and they say stuff like this all over the movie of like, well, this is the one thing the entity won't predict. Like, and I'm like, doesn't it predict everything?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  The entity's like learning. So did the entity not watch Mission Impossible?

• 1:34:02David Sims?

  No.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Dead reckoning?

• 1:34:03David Sims?

  No, they didn't have time. You know, that movie underperformed because the entity didn't buy any tickets.

• 1:34:07Griffin Newman?

  No, I, Marie, this is a great point. And this gets into the repetition of story beats, right? He keeps saying to people, I need. You distrust me and for us to work together because the entity isn't expecting that. And that's the only way we can beat it.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  But they work together in every movie.

• 1:34:19Griffin Newman?

  He says later, like, the entity isn't intelligent. It's only working off of what we've done in the past. It doesn't have ideas of its own, right? Which I'm like, I like as a conceit.

• 1:34:29David Sims?

  Sure, I like, because let's make fun of AI thing.

• 1:34:32Griffin Newman?

  Totally, and I'm like, that's the potential of having the villain be AI rather than a human is this idea of it thinks it's smarter than him because it has the data.

• 1:34:40David Sims?

  Ted Sarandos, fine.

• 1:34:41Griffin Newman?

  Totally. But he keeps saying, the entity thinks it knows what I'm going to do and I have to get ahead of it. The entity is never fucking like doing that. The entity tells him at the beginning, here's exactly what I'm gonna do. And he's just like, I'll meet you there in five days. And Ethan keeps saying to people, you, we need to do this so the entity doesn't. There's no feeling of like, fuck, the entity anticipated this and it cut me off at the pass.

• 1:35:06David Sims?

  What, people complained about this in the last movie and I kind of gave the last movie a break. But it's tough to have your villain be a screen saver with no personality, that has no motivations, that has no particular like personality.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  There was one point where Ethan says that and it's when he's talking to Shay Wiggum. And they're, they're leaning into each other and it's like, there's the one thing we, the entity doesn't expect us to do. And I was like, kiss.

• 1:35:31David Sims?

  Make out.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And I really thought that might happen, but of course it, it didn't.

• 1:35:36Griffin Newman?

  So when he gets dragged in front of Basset and Co.

• 1:35:40David Sims?

  Oh, Lord, can we move on?

• 1:35:41Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, in handcuffs, right? I'm like, that can be the info dump for the entire fucking movie.

• 1:35:47David Sims?

  And then it's like, we gotta get you on this sub.

• 1:35:49Griffin Newman?

  When, when they're saying you gotta go to Hannah Waddingham, I'm like, oh, is she gonna? He needs her approval to do some cool action sequence, doesn't happen.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  But we do see some naval plane, naval jets land and take off.

• 1:36:02Griffin Newman?

  You see that, right?

• 1:36:03David Sims?

  Danger zone planes?

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  You got some danger zone.

• 1:36:05Griffin Newman?

  No fucking set piece. The movie doesn't really kick into gear until he gets on the submarine. Part of this is that.

• 1:36:10David Sims?

  Which the movie should be starting basically like you're saying with the submarine, because that's how the last movie ends is we gotta get to that submarine.

• 1:36:17Griffin Newman?

  It should start with Basset being like, here's the briefing and then the plane drops him in the middle of the ocean. He gets on the submarine, like everything else before that doesn't fucking matter. I also think this movie makes the mistake of being like. Well, Ethan's been off the grid for two months. The president sends him a message. He has to get the team back together, right? He reconvenes with Benji and Grace. He recruits DeGasse and Paris. And then he goes in the coffin. Luther dies. He goes in the coffin and almost immediately he's like, guys, I gotta go solo. Benji, you lead the team. And I'm like, why doesn't this movie just start with Ethan's been off the grid and Benji's leading the team without him? I think Simon Pegg is very good in this movie. I think he is doing yeoman's work.

• 1:37:00Griffin Newman?

  Watching it the second time, it stood out for me even more. He doesn't really have an arc to play, but what I think he is doing very well is this quiet, man, we have been watching Benji for 20 years.

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  He's evolved.

• 1:37:11Griffin Newman?

  And in this movie, he actually has to lead the team. He's not trying to be Ethan Hunt. He's not trying to be an action hero, but when he's doing the briefings in the plane and shit, I'm like, I buy that this guy who was a fucking tech nerd behind the desk, comic relief character, has the authority to tell people what to do. Right? And like, there's a history there and it's good. And I like him with the junior members. I think all of that's fun. Let Ethan just go to the fucking president, go to the submarine. The second he gets in the submarine, the movie starts to have a little juice. It's gay as hell.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  Oh, love the gay submarine.

• 1:37:44Griffin Newman?

  Everyone in this submarine is good and Trimal Toman is like fucking magical.

• 1:37:49David Sims?

  Well, he really.

• 1:37:50Griffin Newman?

  In this movie.

• 1:37:50David Sims?

  He's a really great performer, just full stop. But I think he really gets how to bounce off of Tom Cruise in an interesting way and not to do, God bless Hannah Waddingham, who is a good actor. I like her, but she's more just kind of doing like I'm a stern authority figure. And instead for him to have this kind of weird personality.

• 1:38:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:38:09David Sims?

  Which kind of tracks for someone who lives in a sub where they can't ever go outside and like, where you're like, yeah, these guys are all a little like sort of off kilter.

• 1:38:18Griffin Newman?

  I truly, yesterday in IMAX. Three of his line deliveries got applause. Yeah, because he rocks.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Both screenings.

• 1:38:24David Sims?

  I mean, that's what he's like in Severance too. Like, it's just where you're just like, I, what an interesting way to read that line, you know, like.

• 1:38:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and he's so good and you're just like, I don't need three other authority figures being like, I guess I'll trust you. It's so much more fun to just have him give the hard sell to this one guy. And the one guy be like, dude, I was on board the second you broke into the submarine.

• 1:38:46Speaker 02

  All right, let's fucking go.

• 1:38:47Griffin Newman?

  Basically like, I'm a madman, you're a madman.

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:50Griffin Newman?

  You don't have to sell me on this shit.

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  They match each other's freaks, like, yeah.

• 1:38:54Griffin Newman?

  Then David turns to me at one point and goes, I assume this is a bad time to go to the bathroom. And I go, now's actually a great time to go to the bathroom. He thought it was a bad time because it's when Katie O'Brien and the rest of the team is showing him the equipment

• 1:39:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:39:06Griffin Newman?

  of the fucking oxygen tank.

• 1:39:08David Sims?

  This is this.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  His lungs are gonna explode if he breathes out.

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  Thing where they're like, you can't let this, this, this, or this fail. And I'm like, so all those things are gonna fail, right?

• 1:39:15Griffin Newman?

  And he was like, so this is important. And I was like, go to the bathroom now. He comes back. One scene later, they're about to launch him out of the submarine and they basically repeat all of that information again. And I turned to Ben Dave and I go, everything you missed is being said now. I went to the bathroom during the Hina Waddingham scene. I'm like, nothing lost here. There's so much shit like this. And then when you get to the submarine, the submarine rules. If this movie was truly Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise showing up on video and being like, hey, we want to apologize. This one got away from us. We didn't figure out the story. Here are two great set pieces. And you literally just showed me the entire submarine sequence and the entire biplane sequence.

• 1:39:58Griffin Newman?

  I would be like, I strongly endorse spending $25 to go see that in IMAX. Like, the movie, those two things are so fucking good and top level that this movie cannot be a complete failure because they are executed so well.

• 1:40:12David Sims?

  I found the submarine sequence very interesting.

• 1:40:14Griffin Newman?

  It is.

• 1:40:14David Sims?

  Very good.

• 1:40:15Griffin Newman?

  Very upsetting.

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  I was so, I was so, I kept thinking about the Titanic submarine people who got, um.

• 1:40:22David Sims?

  Well, they got, I mean.

• 1:40:23Griffin Newman?

  Unalive?

• 1:40:24David Sims?

  They, they, they did get unalive, but I mean, they got liquefied, right? Like, it's like, at least there's no, like, weird frozen corpses.

• 1:40:30Griffin Newman?

  They got kind of more. Scanners.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Okay, wait, so before we get really into the submarine sequence.

• 1:40:34David Sims?

  I'm gonna watch the hell out of that Netflix documentary that's just like copping together shit I already know, but just people being like, and then that crazy guy thought he could get in a fucking soup can and like just drop it down with a PlayStation controller. And I'm like, yeah, he did. And did he pay the price? Like those fucking documentaries?

• 1:40:51Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes Netflix will put something on their main carousel like that.

• 1:40:55David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Griffin Newman?

  Where it's like, hey, here's a cup of poison. Do you want it? And I'm like, yeah, I want to drink the poison. Of course.

• 1:41:00David Sims?

  Tasty, tasty poison.

• 1:41:01Griffin Newman?

  This is gonna be horribly made.

• 1:41:04David Sims?

  Right. It was made in two minutes.

• 1:41:06Griffin Newman?

  Right. And also, it's like, super like, morose and creepy that I wanna watch this.

• 1:41:12David Sims?

  Why would it's like, but like, it's like me like, being like, I need to read a Wikipedia entry about some disaster.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I I love. That's like my sweet spot. Anyway, um, before we get too into the underwater pieces, I want to talk about what's happening at the Sosus listening station.

• 1:41:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, good call.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  With Dunlow.

• 1:41:30Griffin Newman?

  Which is, by the way, another thing where I'm like, if the movie is president, then rest of team arrives at Dunlow's cabin, then Ethan gets dropped off at submarine. I'm like, the first 15 minutes of this movie are hidden.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, I am obs- what's her name? Like Tepilsa or something?

• 1:41:49Griffin Newman?

  I mean, look it up.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  Dunlow's wife.

• 1:41:52Griffin Newman?

  This, of course, is the man who Ethan gave diarrhea.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't talk about the diarrhea at all.

• 1:41:57David Sims?

  Pizza.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  To pizza.

• 1:41:59Griffin Newman?

  It it has always made him one of my favorite characters in the Mission Impossible franchise.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Cause he has tummy troubles like you do.

• 1:42:04Griffin Newman?

  His tummy troubles and it fucked up his entire life.

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Ethan put diarrhea juice in his coffee through a pen.

• 1:42:12Griffin Newman?

  Remember they squished the diarrhea?

• 1:42:14David Sims?

  Oh, I remember. And it does look a little, you're like, eh, I don't want that in my coffee.

• 1:42:18Griffin Newman?

  All right. First of all, my cup of coffee is ruined. It's not gonna taste good. Second of all, I'm gonna shit my brains. I'm gonna make my own coffee. If you know what I'm saying. Uh, my own hot brew. Anyway, uh, he, the, to get the knock list, the, the infamous.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:42:34Griffin Newman?

  Mission Impossible drop. Here is the guy who that movie sets up is gonna be fucking reassigned because of.

• 1:42:40David Sims?

  Right. And he got reassigned to the Bering Sea and now he listens for, you know, maybe the Titan exploding or whatever. And he did happen to hear when the Sylvester pole exploded. So he'll know where it is maybe.

• 1:42:52Griffin Newman?

  But his department is also getting like dogged.

• 1:42:55David Sims?

  Yeah, it's getting dogged.

• 1:42:56Griffin Newman?

  They keep cutting it down. They keep taking equipment away. They never update the systems. He's working on a very analog level. When he's introduced, I was like, okay, is this a little too cute? I was so pleasantly surprised that he is in the rest of the movie.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:43:08Griffin Newman?

  I'm like, it is what transcends it being dumb fan service shit is that you're like, no, we're actually gonna make this a real character and a real guy. And also now that Luther's dead, he kind of fills the Luther role, right? Like, he's really good at.

• 1:43:23David Sims?

  He's the, I can explain how something works technically. I can strip some wires.

• 1:43:27Griffin Newman?

  Ralph Saxon. He's got incredible voice. He's done a lot of voiceover work in the last 15 years. I think especially in video games and he just clearly has that authority where he can be like, Ethan, there's two wires. We must cut them. He's great. Nice.

• 1:43:40David Sims?

  Cool.

• 1:43:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41David Sims?

  I mean, I agree. Totally agree. Um, seems to do. Yeah. He does some theater. He does some, I don't know. He's, he's definitely worked less in recent years, so it's nice for him that he's back. Um, but, uh.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  They got a lot of bookcases in their home, which they use a lot. It looks cozy. It looks really cozy.

• 1:44:01David Sims?

  I was feeling for their house.

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  Their house is really cute. Unfortunately, it's been occupied by Russians.

• 1:44:07David Sims?

  Uh, who's the Russian guy?

• 1:44:09Griffin Newman?

  I like him too.

• 1:44:10David Sims?

  Who's that guy? He's in a lot of stuff.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  I don't know, but I know his first name is Captain.

• 1:44:13Griffin Newman?

  It's another example though of like, these sort of fun little side supporting guys.

• 1:44:19David Sims?

  Pasha Linchikov.

• 1:44:21Griffin Newman?

  We like him. We like Tramell. We like Kira Bryan. All these people are taking an hour to enter and no one is fun for the first hour of the movie. Like no new performers are popping for the first hour. Period.

• 1:44:34David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, he's in Miami Vice. He's in Crystal Skull. I remember him in Crystal Skull. He's got such a face.

• 1:44:40Griffin Newman?

  He's not the Ants guy.

• 1:44:42David Sims?

  I think he's not the Ants guy, but he's in that.

• 1:44:45Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:44:45David Sims?

  Right. In that group. Is he the Ants guy?

• 1:44:48Griffin Newman?

  Let me see. I know the Ants guy's name. I'll recognize it. It is not. He's Russian soldier Roosevelt. That guy's name is like, it's something with a K. I want to say.

• 1:44:56David Sims?

  But like.

• 1:44:57Griffin Newman?

  Romulan commander in Star Trek.

• 1:44:58David Sims?

  Yeah, he was in, he's in the, the Abram Star Trek. Do I know him from a TV show? Maybe he's in a lot of TV.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I mean, look, he's.

• 1:45:05David Sims?

  Playing a lot of like, Yuri's and Ivan.

• 1:45:08Griffin Newman?

  He was on 16 episodes of Deadwood as Blazanov.

• 1:45:11David Sims?

  Oh, fuck, that's right. That's a minor character, but he is like around. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So great actor. Love to see him.

• 1:45:19Griffin Newman?

  Lovely.

• 1:45:20David Sims?

  Um, but there's, um, yeah, there's an action sequence here.

• 1:45:24Griffin Newman?

  It's a, it's a little, I mean, yeah.

• 1:45:26Speaker 03

  They have like another set of keys.

• 1:45:29David Sims?

  Yeah, that's revealed kind of late. It turns out.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  Two really, really annoying deflating reveals. It's the fact that the Russians have a dupe of the cruciform key. So the, the whole cruciform key thing becomes irrelevant. And the other thing is that Dunlow, right? You know, like halfway through him and Benji trying to put together a drive. He's like, yeah, so by the way, uh, I can just give you the coordinates.

• 1:45:53Griffin Newman?

  I have it memorized.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  I have it memorized.

• 1:45:54Griffin Newman?

  But, but yet like Ross Saxon nails the delivery of like, you know, the coordinates. And what does he say? He says like, down to the centimeter.

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  No. Yeah. Down to the last square meter.

• 1:46:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yes. Yes. His, like, that's another thing I love in Mission Impossible movies is just a really good character actor saying something with such importance. Down to the square meter.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  There was, there was another line in the sequence that made me laugh the second time I saw the movie where Haley Atwell is trying to like, talk to the Russians, like.

• 1:46:27David Sims?

  Yeah. She's trying to be like, right. Like, can we, you know?

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  You know, let's forget, let's forget the, the sides of, but she goes, forget about us being Americans and you being Russians. We're just humans. And I'm like, girl, you and Simon Pegg are British.

• 1:46:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  Like, Paris is French.

• 1:46:42Griffin Newman?

  British as hell.

• 1:46:43Speaker 02

  So why are we saying?

• 1:46:46Griffin Newman?

  You should be like, hey, by the way, fuck America. None of us like America.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  We're not here for America, man.

• 1:46:50David Sims?

  To America.

• 1:46:51Griffin Newman?

  But he's got his good joke where she's like trying to appeal to like your family, like the world's. Not even dog.

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  Not even dog.

• 1:46:59Griffin Newman?

  Um, I look, I'm obviously horny as hell for Palm, but I do like what they do with her character in this movie, which is like, none of these movies in their team have had a wild card. And I like that they're sort of like, she's part of the team and everyone kind of doesn't trust her. She's drinking all the time. They know she's a mask murderer.

• 1:47:15David Sims?

  It just kind of feels like if you accidentally said like, you should kill that guy. She like, you'd be like, I was kidding, but she's already like buried a knife in his skull or whatever.

• 1:47:21Griffin Newman?

  Right. She's like Wolverine or whatever. And she keeps making like French quips. I like that they commit to her only speaking in French and that the other characters now have to be bilingual.

• 1:47:30David Sims?

  But right, what's happening right, if I'm, it's like, those guys are at the cabin trying to get the coordinates because Ethan is under the water with the sub and he needs, like, they need to know where to find him.

• 1:47:42Griffin Newman?

  The signals need to match up and they're basically like, we're about to enter a dark zone where we won't be able to send a signal. If we don't send you out now, we never will. And like, your team needs to be able to find you in order to save you from the other side of the ice.

• 1:47:55David Sims?

  But what's so cool about Ethan in the sub is that there's no dialogue. It's scary. It feels like a swerve for the series.

• 1:48:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:48:04David Sims?

  Uh, like to not have, it's so long. To not have like Peg, you know, Benji being like, you gotta go to level three.

• 1:48:12Griffin Newman?

  And you're watching it and it is like, every single shot, you're like, how did people not die doing this?

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  I was, I was like holding my breath. The-

• 1:48:20Griffin Newman?

  Not just crews on camera, but like, how did no crew people die doing this?

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  Anytime, the thing that really got me was when the nukes would, um, like just bump into each other or that would fall into a specific pattern that would make it impossible for him to go around them. Or, you know, I was just like, oh my, like, this is, this is nightmare.

• 1:48:40Griffin Newman?

  And it's the kind of like very subtle sort of escalation that they're so good at building in these movies of like, watching silently, him having to do the math of like, fuck, my only way to get through this tunnel is to lose the oxygen pack. Right?

• 1:48:52Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 1:48:53Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna be cut on this blade unless I get rid of the suit. Like making these sort of sacrifices that like raise the stakes over and over and over again. It's so good. I kept thinking of the fucking Soderbergh quote that I'm gonna paraphrase about watching Mad Max Fury Road, where he's like, my whole life is trying to figure out, thinking about how to stage sequences. And if you asked me to do one sequence in that movie, I would put a gun in my mouth. Well, I'm like, I actually don't understand how you make this.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Then the fact that the

• 1:49:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm not equating myself to Soderbergh, but I like, watch it and I'm like, I don't understand how they successfully got this footage.

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  Is on a like a shelf and it keeps turning.

• 1:49:33Speaker 03

  Have you ever seen the Jamarquai video?

• 1:49:35Griffin Newman?

  Oh, of course.

• 1:49:36Speaker 03

  It's kind of like that.

• 1:49:37Griffin Newman?

  It is. It is.

• 1:49:38Speaker 03

  Kind of like that.

• 1:49:39Griffin Newman?

  But right, it's like, it's got this inception thing where because the sub keeps tilting on its axis where the water is in the sub that is like half sort of flooded.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Griffin Newman?

  Keeps changing directions.

• 1:49:52Speaker 03

  I think they just do a good job communicating all of the changes happening without anyone being like, Ethan, the sub has moved and now it's filling with water over here or whatever.

• 1:50:03Griffin Newman?

  Which like, we enjoy when the movies do that kind of thing, but it's all the more impressive that they pull off the sequence without that, which gives it a different tone than anything we've seen in any of them.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  It also is make, it puts the first part of the movie in such stark relief because it's them over explaining everything with dialogue versus in this sequence when they're just relying purely on visual information and staging.

• 1:50:30David Sims?

  Did you know that Jamarquai's third album, Traveling Without Moving, is the highest selling funk album in the history of the world?

• 1:50:37Speaker 03

  Isn't that hilarious? That is actually shocking. I, I mean, they are though, they're a pretty huge band.

• 1:50:44David Sims?

  Well, that, that's the virtual insanity moment. I think that's their peak hit there. It's just him. JK.

• 1:50:51Speaker 03

  Him in that hat.

• 1:50:52David Sims?

  Big hats. Maybe you should, maybe you should do some big hats. Like you just walk in one day with a big furry top hat.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  I kind of have a big noggin.

• 1:51:01David Sims?

  Just don't comment on it. So.

• 1:51:02Speaker 03

  So I feel like a big hat accentuates that I have a big head.

• 1:51:10Griffin Newman?

  David? Yeah. This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary, Capturing Bigfoot. Hmm. On October 20th, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods. I wonder if you can log that on Letterboxd.

• 1:51:28Speaker 03

  It is an

• 1:51:28David Sims?

  Iconic video.

• 1:51:29Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty nine years later, a reel of 16 millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.

• 1:51:52David Sims?

  Of course, you got the classic, what they call Patterson Gimlin film everyone knows of Bigfoot out in the woods, like the famous Bigfoot picture. This has other stuff shot by him that no one's ever seen. That's what makes this movie different.

• 1:52:04Griffin Newman?

  But we're also talking brand new 4K scans of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called the best rendering of the footage ever seen.

• 1:52:13David Sims?

  I feel like we've all seen that footage as like grainy.

• 1:52:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:52:16David Sims?

  You know, that you see, you know, whatever, you see it in a documentary for two seconds, but this is restoring it and making it look much more clear.

• 1:52:23Griffin Newman?

  There's also a companion podcast, the Capturing Bigfoot podcast, which goes deeper into the legend and lore of Bigfoot and the Patterson Gimlin film. Featuring weekly episodes with experts in cryptozoology, urban legends and filmmaking.

• 1:52:37David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:52:39Griffin Newman?

  Well, of course, yes, but that's more of a hobby.

• 1:52:42David Sims?

  Yeah, this podcast, Capturing Bigfoot podcast is hosted by the director of the film, Mark Evans, and it's available for free on YouTube and Spotify with exclusive episodes and content. Available on Patreon to members of the Capturing Bigfoot Society.

• 1:52:57Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Capturing Bigfoot is now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com.

• 1:53:13Griffin Newman?

  David. Yes. Uh, uh, who are you wearing? Uh, who am I wearing? I'm doing like an impression of a red carpet correspondent, asking who you're wearing right now. Well, I am wearing Quince. Well, well, wow. What a Quince, Quince, Quincy dance.

• 1:53:28David Sims?

  It's a Mongolian cashmere zip sweater.

• 1:53:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:53:33David Sims?

  It's a sort of a brown. Would you agree?

• 1:53:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's like maybe like a, uh, what would you, a chocolate?

• 1:53:38David Sims?

  Sure. I have been seated next to people wearing this item of clothing and they have brushed against me, not to brag, and gone like. So soft.

• 1:53:46Griffin Newman?

  Oh, a soft boy. But listen, the best pieces in your closet are the ones that you can count on whether you're heading to work, going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone on my list.

• 1:54:03David Sims?

  Quince does rock. It's got high-quality staples made with these premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, Italian leather.

• 1:54:14Griffin Newman?

  Mamma mia.

• 1:54:15David Sims?

  All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. These cashmere sweaters, like the one I'm wearing, start at just $60. Lineup doesn't stop there. You've got premium down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories, everything your loved ones need to stay warm and look good together all season long.

• 1:54:34Griffin Newman?

  And everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 1:54:47David Sims?

  So yeah, obviously, I'm wearing Quince's sweater right now. I've got Quince bedding at home. Ooh, they've got Christmas stockings.

• 1:54:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, well, well, well.

• 1:54:55David Sims?

  They got tree skirts. They got garlands if you want to go Christmas mode.

• 1:54:59Griffin Newman?

  Your tree deserves to be dressed in Quince as well. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has a lot more than clothing. Think fine jewelry, leather bags, the aforementioned hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. If you want to give the gift of quality this holiday season, download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's a year. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. Ding dong. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was blank check. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:55:45Griffin Newman?

  Owen Gleiberman's review of this for Variety. He spends like half the review just talking about the biplane sequence, but everything he says about it feels like it also could apply to the submarine. And the review feels very indicative to the response of this movie, which is like, you walk out of the theater being like, holy shit, that biplane sequence. Two thumbs up. Like you end on such a high. But what he was saying, which I think this is like triply true for the submarine because it has zero dialogue, is the ultimate miracle of what Tom Cruise is pulling off isn't just that he's like putting himself in these crazy situations and not dying. It is that he is acting, that he is actually successfully emoting in a nuanced way.

• 1:56:27Griffin Newman?

  And in a sequence like this, where he's conveying all of this without words on his face while wearing a stupid helmet.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  I love how stupid the helmet is. Because I love how it exaggerates the features of his face, which feels very like unvain.

• 1:56:42Griffin Newman?

  They talk about-

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  Even though we talk about this movie as being kind of a vanity.

• 1:56:45Griffin Newman?

  Totally. I mean, they talk about this with the halo jump in Fallout, that they like needed to design a special helmet to make his face readable. So A, it needs to have the lights inside of it, otherwise his face will get lost on camera. And B, it feels like if they don't magnify it, you won't see his expressions. But speaking of lack of vanity, you feel the fact that this movie has footage shot across five different years in like, his face changes a lot. Like when they greenlit this movie, he was 58 and now he's 63 or 60. I mean, whatever my math is. We got it. Yeah. You're just like, you're really acutely feeling in this one, like he is pushing against

• 1:57:29Griffin Newman?

  the absolute limits of like staying young and looking like, you know, he doesn't want to be fucking, as much as he keeps saying that. Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones is an inspiration to him and what he wants to keep doing and keep making these movies into his eighties. You're like Harrison Ford's like, fuck it, I'm gray, I'm old, these movies are about me being old. He was so ready to make that transition Harrison Ford to be a grumpy old man. And this movie is Ethan still just like, holding on to the final embers of the idea that he is like youthful.

• 1:58:03Speaker 02

  Um, one thing I want to address also just looking at my notes, we haven't really talked about the doomsday cult that-

• 1:58:11David Sims?

  That's because the movie doesn't-

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  The movie doesn't really get into it, but-

• 1:58:14David Sims?

  Just like that exists, people, and it's, they're setting it up right at the start, like, people are so under the sway of the entity that anyone could be a threat. And that basically just comes up once on the submarine.

• 1:58:24Griffin Newman?

  It manifests twice.

• 1:58:25David Sims?

  What's the other time?

• 1:58:26Griffin Newman?

  The Secret Service agent in the war room.

• 1:58:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we have to, we have to bring up the time on the submarine because Tom beats the shit out of Guy by saying, "You spend too much time on the internet."

• 1:58:37David Sims?

  That line makes me laugh. I think it's funny. It feels a little-

• 1:58:41Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:58:41David Sims?

  Cute.

• 1:58:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It makes me laugh and then immediately go like, huh.

• 1:58:45David Sims?

  It made me laugh, so I don't want to be too much of a grump.

• 1:58:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  Um, I also want to note that I love Tom's little Podkova bag.

• 1:58:52Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure. He's got a little Podkova sack.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  He got a little Podkova sack. I like how he has to like, take the little Podkova out, put it in the little plastic bag and zip it up and carry it with him and make sure he doesn't drop it. I'm like, oh, that's cute.

• 1:59:04Speaker 03

  I really think the sub sequence is great. I just, I wanted a giant octopus. That's so true.

• 1:59:11Griffin Newman?

  Playing drum.

• 1:59:11Speaker 03

  That's, that's just one of those things where it's like, it's been buried at the bottom of the ocean.

• 1:59:15David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 1:59:16Speaker 03

  And there should be a big creature inside now.

• 1:59:19David Sims?

  We're going to Atlantis.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  There needs to be like, we have those angler fishes, the ones that got the big scary teeth that has a light?

• 1:59:25Speaker 03

  Yes. Oh my God, that's a great call.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  But we might not be deep enough in the ocean. This was another thing that was confusing me because I'm like- He can't physically be down that deep.

• 1:59:35Griffin Newman?

  No, it's on a cliff.

• 1:59:36Speaker 02

  But it's on a shelf, so it's pretty close to. But also, if it's that close, how come no one could find it?

• 1:59:42Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 1:59:43David Sims?

  No one was looking.

• 1:59:44Griffin Newman?

  That's another thing.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  No, everyone was looking.

• 1:59:46Griffin Newman?

  The last movie ends with Ethan having both parts of the key and being like, I'm going to the submarine. I know where the submarine is. And the final shot is the submarine and you're like, he's going straight there. It takes him 90 minutes to get there in this movie.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  Actually, wait, sorry, guys, I can't, I don't have the coordinates. What am I talking about?

• 2:00:01David Sims?

  You forgot everything. And, and right, and like after the submarine, he exits, they, they heal him in the puffy tent. Haley Atwell.

• 2:00:09Griffin Newman?

  Haley Atwell has this very odd sexually charged scene with him.

• 2:00:12David Sims?

  Very booby.

• 2:00:12Griffin Newman?

  Where she's also, well, not to hum and a hum and a hum and a, but this is a movie that features like three of the most beautiful women on the planet, in my humble opinion. There is the shot of her rescuing him that is framed as her bosom coming into frame first.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  Can we?

• 2:00:30Griffin Newman?

  That did get me a little hot and bothered.

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  Well, I was just rewatching my favorite scene from Mission Impossible 2, which is when, I guess it's when Tom and Tandy meet for the first time where they're in the bathtub together. When she's doing the heist.

• 2:00:44David Sims?

  I know the scene you're talking about.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  And it, there's a shot where it's from like her perspective, she's on top of him. And he's in the bathtub like this with his like arms behind his head, but you see her tits in the foreground. Like, so they populate, like her cleavage populates the bottom half of the frame, which I am like, oh, that's a really funny shot.

• 2:01:06David Sims?

  Crazy shot.

• 2:01:06Griffin Newman?

  I mean, this is Tom in like fetal position and you're like, oh, he's got the bends, he's dying, no one's gonna rescue him. And then in slow motion boobs lowered down.

• 2:01:14David Sims?

  Atwell in the tank top, she's a good looking lady.

• 2:01:17Speaker 02

  So. I was talking about this with my husband yesterday.

• 2:01:21David Sims?

  Wow, humble brag.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:23David Sims?

  You guys have conversations.

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  We talk, we're married, we see Mission Impossible.

• 2:01:25Griffin Newman?

  Good lines of communication, must be nice.

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  The decision to make Ethan asexual, that happens.

• 2:01:36Speaker 02

  When?

• 2:01:37David Sims?

  After Michelle Monahan.

• 2:01:39Griffin Newman?

  Basically.

• 2:01:40David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, it's too, he's too horny and I think no one really.

• 2:01:44Griffin Newman?

  It's an over.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I did. I love how horny he is in that movie.

• 2:01:47Griffin Newman?

  But that is, that is the divorce.

• 2:01:48David Sims?

  It doesn't work for me.

• 2:01:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. That is the post divorce movie and it's also like the, um, I, my, my take on Mission Impossible two has always been that guy's having a mental breakdown over the death of his team and he's like, I'm so good. Look at how cool I am. I grew my hair out. I have sunglasses.

• 2:02:04Speaker 02

  I'm with you.

• 2:02:05Griffin Newman?

  Fuck ladies.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  Biscuit.

• 2:02:06Griffin Newman?

  I actually like being alone.

• 2:02:10David Sims?

  And then in three, it's like, he's gonna settle down. He's met a nice lady. They're gonna get married.

• 2:02:15Griffin Newman?

  He's working with people.

• 2:02:15David Sims?

  And then four is like, he's not allowed to love.

• 2:02:18Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:02:18David Sims?

  She must, he can only look at her from afar, you know?

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  And that is, but don't they also introduce like a bit of a Paula, like isn't?

• 2:02:25Griffin Newman?

  No, but Paula Patton is mourning her dead love in the same way that he is until you realize.

• 2:02:30David Sims?

  Paula Patton's jelly got eyes for Sawyer.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  Sawyer from Lost.

• 2:02:33Griffin Newman?

  I think Paula Patton is a misdirect of.

• 2:02:35David Sims?

  But like, but then they're both great. He has free song with Elsa. Free song.

• 2:02:40Griffin Newman?

  But that's the whole Elsa thing that I love is that you're like, part of this is almost them recognizing, I get you and both of us know we could never actually be with another person. That it's sort of just like the creative juice of being like, fuck, we're the same.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  And then, but then like, we talked about this when Haley Atwell was introduced in the last movie, where we were like, there's gotta be something more to her.

• 2:03:05Griffin Newman?

  I thought she was gonna be his daughter.

• 2:03:06Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 2:03:07Griffin Newman?

  Especially.

• 2:03:07David Sims?

  Who's daughter?

• 2:03:08Griffin Newman?

  I thought Haley Atwell was gonna be Ethan's daughter because of how much they were hiding her name in the previous movie.

• 2:03:14David Sims?

  Ethan's daughter?

• 2:03:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:03:15David Sims?

  With who?

• 2:03:16Griffin Newman?

  With Marie.

• 2:03:17Speaker 02

  With me.

• 2:03:18Griffin Newman?

  The dead lady.

• 2:03:18David Sims?

  Bartie?

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  Yes, with me, my child.

• 2:03:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But she died. I know the math doesn't totally work out that Marie is Haley Atwell's mother.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Yes, but you know what?

• 2:03:27David Sims?

  It doesn't completely lie.

• 2:03:29Speaker 02

  This, this franchise is all about impossible.

• 2:03:32David Sims?

  Oh, but that would, that would have stunk.

• 2:03:35Speaker 02

  Well, no, it would have been, it would have been really stupid, but it's like, okay, so they, she's not his love interest. He's treating her as more of a like mentor mentee sort of thing, but then also you have these scenes in this movie where they are like cuddling in bed, but also he just doesn't kiss her.

• 2:03:53Griffin Newman?

  This is McQuarrie backfire stuff, right? He talks so much about like, we shot a lot of scenes with Marie. She had her own character poster and then we decided to save that stuff for the second movie. You'll get a lot of answers on her. Well, I mean, the idea of Gabriel being a guy from Ethan's past is irrelevant in this movie. Gabriel could be anyone. He could be a new character.

• 2:04:13David Sims?

  I'm willing to believe that they did film stuff and they did have stuff planned and that everyone kind of came to their senses and was like, I don't think anyone cares enough.

• 2:04:22Griffin Newman?

  And the way these movies are made.

• 2:04:24David Sims?

  This movie's overstuffed.

• 2:04:25Griffin Newman?

  The way these movies are made, it's not even like, oh, they filmed a bunch of stuff and cut it out. It's that they probably shot three different versions of them and then used none of them. Like people asking why this movie cost $400 million and saying like, but it doesn't even have CGI characters. Like, how could it cost this much? The answer is that the amount of stuff that is not on screen is mind boggling. Not just the alternate versions and possibly entire action sequences that were cut out wholesale. There's like paparazzi footage of stunts shot in major cities over the last five years that there are not elements of in either of these last two movies.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  It might have been, it was either the biplane sequence in this movie or it was like the helicopter chase with Henry Cavill. It's what opens the GQ article that just came out where they talk about how they shot.

• 2:05:11David Sims?

  It's the Cavill helicopter.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  They shot 80 hours of footage of that stunt and it is 12 minutes in the movie.

• 2:05:19Griffin Newman?

  Right. I mean, I, I heard there was a 40 minute version assembly of the opening Sevastopol disaster from Dead Reckoning, part one. There was 40 minutes of dialogue. Like the amount of shit they throw out on these movies is crazy. And also like these movies shot in insane circumstances, world events, and like they continued to pay everyone during shutdowns of production. It's part of why. Why these movies are so expensive and why actors desperately want out of them and keep begging to have their characters killed off is because when someone signs up for one of these movies, they're like, here's the deal. You have no script and we own you for two and a half years. At any moment, we might call you up and say, you need to get on a plane to Bulgaria right now.

• 2:06:02Griffin Newman?

  Because we've written a bunch of shit and then you get to Bulgaria and they go, never mind. The sequence is cut. And you have to reshoot things 10 times to fix the plot. So people get so aggravated working on these movies and he keeps losing, especially like his above the line crew. There's a reason these movies don't hold on to DPs, you know? Is because even when they come away from it and they're like, fuck, it did work for what a nightmare it was. It was a triumph. Those people still walk away and go, the fucking life's too short. I don't need this again. I want to see my kids, right? Lauren Balf, who has scored the last three movies and rules.

• 2:06:37David Sims?

  Or six and seven.

• 2:06:38Griffin Newman?

  Uh, five, six and seven.

• 2:06:40David Sims?

  No, he didn't do, he didn't do five.

• 2:06:41Griffin Newman?

  He did Rogue Nation.

• 2:06:42David Sims?

  No, he didn't.

• 2:06:43Griffin Newman?

  Who did Rogue Nation?

• 2:06:44David Sims?

  Joe Kramer.

• 2:06:45Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 2:06:45David Sims?

  Yeah, I listened to it all the time. It rocks.

• 2:06:47Griffin Newman?

  Wild. That is a great score.

• 2:06:48David Sims?

  Joe Kramer was the guy who did Way of the Gun, Jack Reacher. He was Akari's original guy and the Rogue Nation score rocks.

• 2:06:54Griffin Newman?

  He was announced as doing the score for this one. His name was taken off the movie.

• 2:06:57David Sims?

  Although he has like a score consultant credit or something.

• 2:07:00Griffin Newman?

  His name was taken off the movie eight weeks ago. There is a weird credit in this film that's something akin to like score produced by. And it is two of like Lauren Balf's associates who usually help him on his work, but it doesn't even have a traditional like composer or score by credit. It is very clear that they were changing stuff so much and needed so much new material and redoing it that at a certain point he walked away.

• 2:07:24David Sims?

  That's wild considering he's such a workhorse.

• 2:07:26Griffin Newman?

  Totally. And that's like a post-production job like, and there's stuff like the submarine sequence that plays out silently that doesn't have any underscoring, which on top of the lack of dialogue, I think lends it this weird power. It does work. The rest of the movie is like largely overscored and you feel that they did not have time to develop new themes. And they're just like, we need another version of the chiffon score, right? To your point of there should be an octopus, as much as I like the silence of the submarine.

• 2:07:54David Sims?

  And let's speak back to that point.

• 2:07:57Griffin Newman?

  I do kind of wish that when he's in the submarine.

• 2:08:00David Sims?

  Perhaps Neptune, god of the sea.

• 2:08:02Griffin Newman?

  Here's my pitch.

• 2:08:03David Sims?

  Oh shit, Manta Ray.

• 2:08:05Griffin Newman?

  Manta.

• 2:08:06David Sims?

  Those things are big.

• 2:08:07Speaker 02

  I was thinking of the guy from.

• 2:08:08David Sims?

  I was thinking of Black Manta.

• 2:08:09Speaker 02

  Aquaman.

• 2:08:09David Sims?

  Oh, sorry. That's cool too. But a Manta Ray, just a huge one. Just a big one.

• 2:08:14Speaker 03

  You can't fail with this.

• 2:08:16David Sims?

  It just flies. It's Tom Cruise. He's like, eh, that's it.

• 2:08:19Griffin Newman?

  First half of the Sevestapool, dead silence, right? No dialogue, no music.

• 2:08:24David Sims?

  Right. Second half.

• 2:08:25Griffin Newman?

  As things are getting worse and things are tilting, right? And it's like, oh man, how could this situation become even deadlier? You hear a little.

• 2:08:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh no, there's a hot crustacean band.

• 2:08:40David Sims?

  Oh, Sebastian's there.

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  But they're all wearing puffer coats.

• 2:08:47Griffin Newman?

  They're under the sea.

• 2:08:48David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:08:49Griffin Newman?

  Whaling.

• 2:08:50David Sims?

  Right. And they're telling him to stay down there and it maybe tempts him? He's like, maybe it is better down where it's wet.

• 2:08:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. And they have Mermaid Marie, the ghost of his dead girlfriend. No, me. Yes. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Literally me. Yeah. Yes. Um. These are the kind of story decisions I don't understand why they abandoned in this film.

• 2:09:09David Sims?

  The mermaid.

• 2:09:10Griffin Newman?

  Crustacean band, Mermaid Marie. It's actually Marie, out Marie.

• 2:09:14David Sims?

  He's out. This is what I was trying to do.

• 2:09:17David Sims?

  We're, it's like, okay, everyone's united. All the devices have been recovered. We're going to South Africa.

• 2:09:24Griffin Newman?

  There is one clear plan for the rest of the.

• 2:09:26David Sims?

  There's a magic, like, digital tomb that the entity wants to go inside. We have to put it there.

• 2:09:35Griffin Newman?

  I think the movie is basically good from this moment on. There are a little gripes, bits and pieces of gripes I have, but it basically works from this moment on in like, just giving me the basics of what I, my lizard brain wants from a Mission Impossible movie.

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  Um, can I tell you my favorite part of the last sequence of the movie? It's actually, it's not part of the IMF cruise stuff. It's where, it's from the, uh, the Mount Weather, Virginia Crisis Command Center.

• 2:10:08Griffin Newman?

  The failsafe. Or, or no?

• 2:10:11Speaker 02

  It's.

• 2:10:13Speaker 02

  They have to come up with an American city to sacrifice.

• 2:10:17Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever seen failsafe, the Lumet movie?

• 2:10:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:10:20Griffin Newman?

  This feels like.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  In failsafe, they nuke, uh, New York essentially is an apology for accidentally, well, I'm spoiling failsafe. It's apology for accidentally nuking Moscow.

• 2:10:27Speaker 02

  Wait, so they, so something as big as New York? Cause I was.

• 2:10:30David Sims?

  In failsafe.

• 2:10:31Griffin Newman?

  In failsafe, it is literally New York.

• 2:10:32Speaker 02

  They don't tell you what it is. They just were like.

• 2:10:34David Sims?

  Let's just be honest, it was Houston.

• 2:10:35Speaker 02

  Well, my guess was Phoenix.

• 2:10:37Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say Columbus.

• 2:10:39David Sims?

  I think Phoenix, everyone would be like, okay.

• 2:10:41Griffin Newman?

  It is funny that the line of dialogue is, President, do we have your approval to do the thing to the city that you chose? They go out of their way to, they're like, she chose something off screen in between cuts. And they're repeating it back to her while not saying the name of the city. That city that you selected.

• 2:11:02Speaker 02

  Such a funny choice to do that.

• 2:11:04Griffin Newman?

  Literally New York and it's the same kind of thing of like, we will be seen as hostile and blamed for this if we don't make ourselves look like we are also part of the attack. And the president has to make that kind of decision. It's a fucking awesome movie. I also feel like the way those scenes are staged from the moment they proposed this idea, shot and edited feels very like much referencing.

• 2:11:26David Sims?

  Sure, I've heard this.

• 2:11:27Griffin Newman?

  The Lumet sort of like classic close up.

• 2:11:29Speaker 02

  Are they really sweaty in failsafe? Cause I like how sweaty they are.

• 2:11:33Griffin Newman?

  Has the fucking 12 Angry Men thing where you're like, these are the most exciting closeups I've ever seen in my life of people discussing shit.

• 2:11:39David Sims?

  It's got that, but there is something kind of silly about this sort of like cut to Offerman, cut to Macaulay. Where I'm like, yeah, these aren't characters, like.

• 2:11:47Griffin Newman?

  No, and also.

• 2:11:48David Sims?

  So I don't really, I mean, whatever, I'm complaining and I feel like I'm being, yeah, right. Only one cube headed man.

• 2:11:55Griffin Newman?

  Right, pick.

• 2:11:56David Sims?

  Uh, like I'm complaining and I feel like I'm being a grumpy guts because I was very involved for basically all this movie, especially the latter half.

• 2:12:04Griffin Newman?

  I'm sitting next to you, you're, you're biting your nails, you're shifting around, you're eating a hot dog.

• 2:12:09David Sims?

  I do.

• 2:12:10Griffin Newman?

  The submarine. And biplane.

• 2:12:12David Sims?

  And I rolled right from there to Planet Hollywood.

• 2:12:14Griffin Newman?

  He had a biplane of hot dogs. Planet Hollywood coming soon. To different feet. Those are the two sequences I saw you lean in. And when they got to the failsafe stuff, we looked at each other and we were like, this is kind of fun.

• 2:12:25David Sims?

  Fail safe.

• 2:12:26Griffin Newman?

  This is kind of fun, the failsafe thing, but it was taking a while.

• 2:12:30David Sims?

  It takes a bit of a time, but no, I basically like all this, the biplane stuff. What can you say? It's crazy. If you read the Zach Baron story, it's the classic like Tom met with like wing walkers where he's like, I want to like hang between the wings and like be in zero G. And like, and they were like, that's not possible. And he was like, buy me more wing walkers to talk to. Tell it's someone who tells me it is possible, right? Like, and you're like, ah, Tom, you're so crazy.

• 2:12:52Speaker 02

  One of, one of my favorite parts.

• 2:12:54David Sims?

  How low to the ground it is, is so.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  That's what scared me.

• 2:12:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:58Speaker 02

  The most, but when we were at the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit, there is a like digital biography of Tom Cruise.

• 2:13:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise that you can swipe through. That's like.

• 2:13:10Griffin Newman?

  You can like sort of like touchscreen, open the fact file on Tom Cruise.

• 2:13:13Speaker 02

  It is 12 pages long.

• 2:13:14Griffin Newman?

  She's like, how are they going to describe Tom Cruise? As if this is like you reading this fact file is your first exposure to the guy.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  It is like, there, there's like one page about his like movie career. And then the remainder of it is all about the different certifications he has and crazy shit. The, the specific planes that he's licensed to fly, uh, his free diving training, the fact that he's one of only 36 civilians made an, you know, an honorary naval aviator. And there is absolutely nothing about his personal life.

• 2:13:51Griffin Newman?

  They have like a 10 plus minute, uh, straight to camera interview with Tom Cruise in some undisclosed screening room that plays in the corner of the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit that they said was basically shot just for this.

• 2:14:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  And he keeps saying stuff like, when I'm not making movies, I'm like, learning things that I can apply to movies later, right? You're like, this guy, and I know when we talk about him this way, people are like, why do the Blank Check team love to fucking sanctify Tom Cruise and make him a deity? I think what we find interesting is like, the balance between how admirable it is and how sad and broken it belies him being, that there's nothing else. And like, he has, at some other interview I saw with him recently, and obviously, like, post fucking couch jump, every interview he does is so controlled. He has like, the number of anecdotes that he wants to say, and he only wants to talk about the process. I've felt him being a little more vulnerable on this, obviously, within guardrails. There

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  was some interview where they were talking about, like, you just like, live for this stuff? You love it? Like, you're there every day? And like, this idea we have of like, Tom Cruise gets a rush from the things that everyone else would be terrified by. And they're talking about the biplane sequence. And he was like, I remember one day, we woke up, and we were supposed to film, like, our 10th consecutive day on the biplanes, and I saw that it was raining. And the interviewer's like, oh, and you're Tom Cruise? You must have been so angry. You must have been like, let's go out in the rain anyway. And he was like, no, I was like, oh, thank God. I need a day off from this. Now, then, of course, he immediately filters it into a Tom Cruise way of like, I'm not gonna be able to do 10 more days unless I give my body one day to recharge. He wasn't like, I'm gonna lounge on the couch and like, fucking watch Young Sheldon. Maybe he does.

• 2:15:34Griffin Newman?

  Maybe. But he was admitting, like, no, of course, I'm a human being, and I'm getting to a point where I'm not invincible. But yeah, it's, what else is going on in this guy's life? And like, I feel like Rebecca Ferguson, there's an interview that's circulating around recently that we posted in our group chat, where she's just sort of like, when we had days off, he would just like, go to set. Right. And like, prep stuff. He likes being in movies. And when like, the movies got shut down because of like, COVID and the strikes, it didn't feel like it was just this feeling of like, I have to save the industry. It was, I don't know what I'm doing if productions aren't happening.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  In a way, which is, really tracks with Ethan Hunt as a character.

• 2:16:13Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. Which is what has made these movies increasingly interesting. But it's also out of hand.

• 2:16:20David Sims?

  And I think there is no way to top things anymore. Not that he couldn't make more Mission Impossibles where he does some crazy stunt. But I'm not kind of like, what do I need Ethan Hunt to do at this point?

• 2:16:33Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:16:33David Sims?

  And it's what Marie's also saying.

• 2:16:35Griffin Newman?

  We're gonna talk about.

• 2:16:36David Sims?

  Nuclear Armageddon is.

• 2:16:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  Like, the only other thing that could is like, we have to introduce like Kaiju or Alien.

• 2:16:43Griffin Newman?

  That, right, but then you're in other franchises. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's.

• 2:16:46David Sims?

  Squid's back.

• 2:16:48Griffin Newman?

  I, I agree with you that like, the only way you can heighten from this is like, pulpy sci-fi concepts, which then feel like they're betraying what.

• 2:16:55David Sims?

  It would be something to do with space and it would be a disaster.

• 2:16:58Griffin Newman?

  Right. It would suck. It's why I think this movie should have a slightly greater sense of finality is you almost feel like the only way for him to come back and do this again is if they actually put it to bed for a bit. And he makes one in like 10 years and he's older and it's a different movie. What I actually think they should do is never do one of these again.

• 2:17:17David Sims?

  I think they won't.

• 2:17:18Griffin Newman?

  I think they just like have backed themselves into a corner where they can't fucking top themselves. And you feel that panic in this movie. And like, what I want from the end of this movie, like from the literal ending of this movie, I don't want him to die. I don't give a shit, right? But when the parachute catches on fire, it does feel like there is certainly a version of this that they shot where he dies and he fought them on it, right? There's the notion of like, is he gonna become the IMF director? Which feels like the cleanest, neatest way to do a thing where you're like, and then the doors open where he could still be mentor if they did spin off movies, but also he can always come back. You know, I was like, he's gonna give us some ending where there's a sense of a closing of a chapter,

• 2:18:01Griffin Newman?

  but also he can come back whenever he wants and be like, hey, you guys miss me, right?

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  In my heart of hearts, I was hoping that even though like I know Elsa's dead. That it would be like, okay, well, he's off. They're both.

• 2:18:16David Sims?

  It's a Dark Knight Rises.

• 2:18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're both dead, but no, they're just.

• 2:18:19Griffin Newman?

  Even if it would have been too cute, it is the only happy ending you can imagine for this character. What I actually felt I wanted is when he lands in the middle of the field and you see the cowherds, and I'm going to pitch this badly because I haven't quite cracked the right version of this, but you have this moment where you're like, oh, everyone thinks he's dead. The rest of the team who are all celebrating.

• 2:18:41David Sims?

  Yeah, so maybe he actually gets to walk off Jack Bauer's style and be like, I'm presumed dead. I can go do whatever I want.

• 2:18:47Griffin Newman?

  That's what I kind of want. I want an ending where he's just like, I'm not retired. I'm not dead, but they think I'm dead. I can walk away. And there's this sort of mystery of like, what is this guy gonna do? I kinda hate fucking Kittridge and Phelps, meeting him in the field. The handshake is so absurd.

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:19:06Griffin Newman?

  This sort of like, hey, I love you, man moment.

• 2:19:08David Sims?

  He did save the world.

• 2:19:10Griffin Newman?

  Yep, but Phelps points a gun at him, then turns the gun around, turns it into a handshake.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  And it's the predator. It's the predator bro shake.

• 2:19:18Griffin Newman?

  Then it's like a pat on the back. Hey, you're all right by me.

• 2:19:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:21Griffin Newman?

  It is another example of like, it's three beats in one. You could get away with one of these. The audience starts laughing at how overstated it is.

• 2:19:28David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:29Griffin Newman?

  He hands the pod COVID to Kittridge, who seemingly thinks that that is what the entity is stored in, but it's busted and it's burnt. And he sort of has this disappointment of like, oh, fuck, you destroyed it. I can't control it. Well, it did what it is. They don't know that the entity is stored in something else.

• 2:19:47Speaker 02

  5D optical drive.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  And then it's like, we cut to London and all of them meet there and give each other a nod and Haley Atwell opens a case and the drive's in there and she hands it to him, the thing that he says he doesn't want. Like, I like that in that scene where she saves him, he's just like, I'm not God. No one should have this. It should be destroyed. And at the end, the movie feels like it's being like, no, he is our God and he should control.

• 2:20:10David Sims?

  It does, I guess.

• 2:20:10Griffin Newman?

  And it dresses me out. I'm like.

• 2:20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, why does he still have it? He should destroy it.

• 2:20:14Griffin Newman?

  If he just smashed it, throw it under a car.

• 2:20:16David Sims?

  He should just go to like an apple store and just be like, wink, just plug it in.

• 2:20:20Griffin Newman?

  And just be like, what's up? I miss you.

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  What if?

• 2:20:22Griffin Newman?

  In a way, you're maybe the best friend I've ever had.

• 2:20:24David Sims?

  Right, right. Can I go back in the coffin?

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  Um, some stuff I want to address, because we're, we just talked about the end of the movie, but there are some things we didn't talk about.

• 2:20:31Griffin Newman?

  I just wanted to mention that I don't like the actual final emotional notes.

• 2:20:34David Sims?

  Let's fill in what we want to address. I like how Gabriel gets his head bisected.

• 2:20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was really great. I loved that. Um, although.

• 2:20:41David Sims?

  Cause he's annoying.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  He's so annoying. And he was doing like mustache twirling shit, Richard. I'm like, no, we don't need that.

• 2:20:46Griffin Newman?

  I also like that they set up on the plane, the sort of like, here's the crazy plan. We need to get Gabriel to work with us. And it's a classic Mission Impossible. That's so risky. And he's like, but it's the only way. And then you get there and immediately everything goes wrong. Gabriel's guys shoot Kitchard, Kitchard's interrupts, all this shit. And you're like, now the, the difficult plan they had outlined for us.

• 2:21:06David Sims?

  Even crazier and harder.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  Um, we've got another bomb that needs to be defused. And I like that Dunlow and his wife volunteered to do it. We already talked about this, but Tarzan's like, I guess I'll hang out with you.

• 2:21:20Griffin Newman?

  Like a chaperone?

• 2:21:20David Sims?

  I like that anytime the wife is like, I'll see you again. You believe her and she's always right.

• 2:21:25Griffin Newman?

  And Dunlow's basically like Luther, like this is a suicide mission in order to like diffuse the bomb. I'm gonna have to die with it.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  But also he's like, I don't know how to dismantle a bomb.

• 2:21:34Griffin Newman?

  Right. I always like someone being a little like over their skin.

• 2:21:38David Sims?

  The lady who plays the wife, the wife is um, called uh, Tepisa, is called Lucy Tuligaduke, I believe.

• 2:21:44Griffin Newman?

  Her and Rob Paxton get a split with card.

• 2:21:46David Sims?

  They do. And she was in that film. Do you remember that film? Um, Atana Jerut, the fast runner.

• 2:21:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:53David Sims?

  Which she's the lead of that movie, which was like a Canadian Inuit movie that like, maybe didn't get an Oscar nomination, but was at least like kind of in the, right? In the running and was this cool Inuit movie where you don't, you know, you never see anything. Anyway, she's um, she's, she's cool.

• 2:22:09Griffin Newman?

  Uh, he has a line where he's like, wait a second, there's maybe a way out of this. And they're like, what? And he goes, the wires are repeated in triplicate, or he says.

• 2:22:18Speaker 02

  They're triple redundant.

• 2:22:19Griffin Newman?

  The wires are triple.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  Which is kind of like how the exposition.

• 2:22:23Griffin Newman?

  I was like, this is a metaphor for the movie that he's like, actually they built this wrong? There are actually three wires serving the same function? I can cut one of them. We have 10 seconds to.

• 2:22:33David Sims?

  Right. We're not even talking about, of course, how like Benji has been shot in one of the crossfires here.

• 2:22:38Speaker 02

  It turns into, it turns into the pit.

• 2:22:40David Sims?

  Right. He's having surgery done on him.

• 2:22:41Speaker 02

  They got, they got a crake, my guy.

• 2:22:43David Sims?

  Mission Impossible escalates.

• 2:22:45Speaker 03

  He hides the bullet from Ethan because he doesn't want him to get upset. He treats him like a little child.

• 2:22:51David Sims?

  But I think it's also like, well, Ethan will fucking probably try to do something.

• 2:22:55Griffin Newman?

  Right. He's not a human being. We have to like.

• 2:22:57David Sims?

  Cause Ethan just like, won't let people die.

• 2:22:59Speaker 03

  He'll just start running somewhere.

• 2:23:00David Sims?

  He just runs in a circle.

• 2:23:02Griffin Newman?

  Plays this really well. Pam plays this really well.

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  When she's like really upset and stressed and also like.

• 2:23:08Griffin Newman?

  I kill people.

• 2:23:09Speaker 02

  The tears come to her eyes. I'm like, oh my God, girl, like you did it.

• 2:23:12Griffin Newman?

  But that dialogue exchange of, does anyone here know surgery? And she says, I kill people. And he says, good enough.

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Love it.

• 2:23:18Griffin Newman?

  Love it.

• 2:23:19Speaker 02

  Um, and then.

• 2:23:20Griffin Newman?

  And all of the like back and forth of like using her flask.

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:24Griffin Newman?

  Both to like chill themselves out and to disinfect all the.

• 2:23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:28Griffin Newman?

  Objects is really good. Yeah. And right. Gabriel says to him, you're gonna give me the control. And I'm gonna get out of here on a biplane. It's analog. It's a perfect plan. It's such a perfect plan. I have a backup. And you're like, oh, wow. I wonder what that backup's gonna do.

• 2:23:45David Sims?

  I wonder who's gonna drive that?

• 2:23:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:46David Sims?

  Little guy. But the plane stuff rocks.

• 2:23:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's the fucking poster and it's the thing they've been selling in the trailers. And when you get to it, it is thrilling and it is thrilling, much like the submarine sequence, how long it lasts.

• 2:23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:59Griffin Newman?

  Like in, in babysitting, they aforementioned Asa Urlik and trying to calm him down. He was like having a mini meltdown in the back of a lift. And I started going like, hey, Asa, do you know about Tom Cruise? Tom Cruise is this guy who does crazy things. And I started showing him Mission Impossible stunts and just being like, he's a good guy and he's trying to stop the bad guys. It's all fake and it's really safe, but isn't he silly? And I was showing him stuff like the plane from the beginning of Rogue Nation, which to me is still one of the craziest shots. And yet that lasts for like 60 seconds. And in this, you're like, there are 800 setups, it feels like, from so many angles of him relative to this plane. Where you're like, how, did this shoot for four months?

• 2:24:40David Sims?

  Uh, I think they, I mean, like the way it's described in the Baron interview, not that sequence, but the helicopter sequence. Just of like them having to radio Tom Cruise being like a little left, a little right. That's your shot. Okay. Stay in that.

• 2:24:55Speaker 02

  Stay there.

• 2:24:55David Sims?

  They have to be telling him over the radio, like the camera's here.

• 2:24:59Speaker 02

  And he has to do. And he has to act while he's flying the plane.

• 2:25:02Griffin Newman?

  That's the magic.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  Which is crazy.

• 2:25:04Griffin Newman?

  But they have to do so many months of prep and rehearsals and practice and like coaching before they can ever put this in front of camera. And then how hard it must be to get multiple takes. Right? Like if the take doesn't work, it probably is like four hours before they can get another one up. And then you have time for one more take before the sun sets. It is, uh, it's just, it's wild shit. And as we said, he's like emoting during this. And he's like maintaining a continuity of like the character's emotions of like the arc of what he's trying to solve. And there is such good, kind of like, you know, Gabriel's monologuing a little bit, but like largely silent telegraphing of like, the thing's on

• 2:25:46Griffin Newman?

  his neck, he's got to get the thing, the cockpit's here, where's the other pilot? That's one of the shots that almost astounds me the most is when Ethan finally ejects the other pilot and you just watch him slowly fall out of frame to the ground. And I'm like, I know that guy just pulled the parachute the second he was out of frame and that guy's a stunt diver or whatever, but it still feels unreal.

• 2:26:08David Sims?

  My favorite is always gonna be the Burj Khalifa. It's my favorite.

• 2:26:12Griffin Newman?

  Here's a gripe. Saw and IMAX. Uh, our friends, the Doughboys have been doing a Mission Impossible series. Uh, and they were talking about how Burj Khalifa and IMAX was the greatest shit in the world. And there is a sanctity to it of it. They don't even try to replicate it, the aspect ratio thing on home video or streaming releases, because that thing only works if you have this crazy tall screen and suddenly the world of the movie goes like, and it expands in a way you can't imagine. You see shots of the Burj Khalifa in this. I'm seeing the movie in IMAX. I'm like, why aren't you showing me this IMAX footage? If you're gonna do 8,000 flashbacks, at least give me the flashbacks in IMAX because I'm seeing sequences that I know.

• 2:26:52David Sims?

  I wonder if, I wonder if there's an interesting technical reason for that.

• 2:26:55Griffin Newman?

  Possibly?

• 2:26:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:56Griffin Newman?

  Or like this movie was finished five minutes before they had to deliver it? Probably. Yeah. But I was like, man, this would have been my chance to see two seconds of the Burj Khalifa again.

• 2:27:05David Sims?

  You know, these movies went very digital with the last one and Macquarie explains why at length at Empire Magazine, you pay 50 bucks, you can hear him say it or whatever it is, right? You have to pay money now. Um.

• 2:27:17David Sims?

  And it is probably partly because it's so insane how they make them or whatever. But I do miss the look of the earlier movies.

• 2:27:24Griffin Newman?

  Do you? Well, yeah, these two basically had to be digital largely because of the pandemic. Uh, and just workflows becoming so much more complicated, uh, and longer. Um, do you folks know what they did with, uh, Final Destination Bloodlines in IMAX?

• 2:27:40David Sims?

  No, I saw it at the Alamo.

• 2:27:41Griffin Newman?

  It is the only time I can think of where the filmmakers have used the aspect ratio change as a deliberate storytelling tool with rules that they do not break.

• 2:27:53Speaker 02

  I, I saw it in IMAX and I don't even.

• 2:27:56David Sims?

  But go on.

• 2:27:56Griffin Newman?

  What does Hunger Games do?

• 2:27:57David Sims?

  In Hunger Games catching fire, when she enters the arena, it switches to IMAX.

• 2:28:01Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 2:28:02Speaker 02

  When she's in the elevator, it's really cool.

• 2:28:04David Sims?

  Ever seen.

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  I didn't see any of those. What is the thing in Bloodlines? I don't, I saw it in IMAX. I don't remember.

• 2:28:09Griffin Newman?

  Every time death is present, the screen slowly.

• 2:28:12David Sims?

  That nasty guy death.

• 2:28:14Griffin Newman?

  Slowly grows.

• 2:28:15David Sims?

  Isn't the best part in Bloodlines when the grandma's like yelling at death like, I see you.

• 2:28:20Griffin Newman?

  But it's so good. They don't do the like hard cut.

• 2:28:23David Sims?

  No, that rocks. That rocks. They do the expansion.

• 2:28:25Griffin Newman?

  Slowly grows and it's usually coupled with a camera move and the score going a little off. And so you're suddenly like.

• 2:28:32David Sims?

  Those guys who made the Kim Possible Disney Channel movie or whatever, they popped off.

• 2:28:35Griffin Newman?

  Favorite contestants on On the Lot, I referred to them as the Jennifer Hudson of On the Lot, where when they got eliminated, it was like, what the fuck is this show? And I'm the only person who was still watching that show at that point. And it is so satisfying to see them make good. You have not seen this movie yet, Ben?

• 2:28:51David Sims?

  No.

• 2:28:51Griffin Newman?

  Final Destination Bloodlines is.

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  You're, you're gonna love it.

• 2:28:54David Sims?

  I was kind of shocked that you guys were like so hyped on.

• 2:28:57Griffin Newman?

  It is so fucking good. And it also pulls off some of the shit that like fucking Final Reckoning is trying to do of tying back to previous movies in a way that is really smart and doesn't feel fan service-y. Feels like deepening. Like I, on paper, I have no problem with the idea of making the rabbit's foot the like origin of the entity, because the rabbit's foot thing is still so annoying and is brought up all the time as JJ being way too cute and in your face about the McGuffin thing.

• 2:29:28Speaker 02

  It doesn't, it doesn't actually matter.

• 2:29:30Griffin Newman?

  Right. In a way where I'm like, I get that it doesn't matter, but the second that you're making jokes about the fact that it doesn't matter, you're telling me to not take your movie seriously. You're like saying like, and by the way, this is all fucking bullshit. Where I'm like, I'm into you retconning the rabbit's foot to have been something so that that feels less galling and glib, but it too much going on in this movie. Like you, you can't have that be one of 8,000 elements that's sort of just like thrown at you and then never talked about again.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Can I ask a question about the ending of this movie that I'm like, I'm truly confused about? And this is like, I don't think of myself as a particularly stupid movie watcher.

• 2:30:12Griffin Newman?

  I think you're a very intelligent person and a very film literate person.

• 2:30:15David Sims?

  I like how we had opposite reactions.

• 2:30:17Speaker 02

  But thank you, Griffin, and fuck you, David. Um.

• 2:30:20Griffin Newman?

  You know, Marie and I are very close.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:22Griffin Newman?

  Our desks are close together and our birthdays are.

• 2:30:24Speaker 02

  Our birthdays are really close.

• 2:30:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes, we're really similar. Go on.

• 2:30:26Speaker 02

  Um, we're both the same age as the look who's talking, baby.

• 2:30:29Griffin Newman?

  Hey, do you know that Marie and I?

• 2:30:31David Sims?

  You guys both just looked at me like I was supposed to go like, whoa!

• 2:30:34Griffin Newman?

  Do you know that Marie and I are really close to Mikey? Baby Mikey.

• 2:30:38David Sims?

  What a, what a dream.

• 2:30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:39Griffin Newman?

  And his desk is in between the two of ours and his birthday.

• 2:30:42David Sims?

  Are you guys having like a mental episode right now?

• 2:30:44Griffin Newman?

  It's called friendship, David. Try it sometime.

• 2:30:46David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  Uh, but okay, the, the whole, the plan to defeat the entity, does cyberspace go offline?

• 2:30:58David Sims?

  Marie, you are not stupid. This is a move, this is a thing the movie does. Multiple critics asked me this as like after the movie screened, where they're like, wait, so does cyberspace go away or not? Because everything seems fine.

• 2:31:10Griffin Newman?

  The final sequence basically is.

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  But no one has iPhones.

• 2:31:13Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:31:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:31:14Griffin Newman?

  The final sequence is centered around.

• 2:31:16David Sims?

  Like if cyberspace, like if like the internet went away like that, I think that would be fairly bad because like a lot of stuff is sort of like tied to that, right?

• 2:31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, including frigging podcasts. We'd be fucked. We'd be fucked. Let's get the entity. We have to plug it back in. There's just one podcast that was just the entity going like, wah, wah, wah, like.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  The entity would have

• 2:31:38David Sims?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Manscaped promo code entity.

• 2:31:44Speaker 02

  I feel like the entity already kind of seems like a podcaster.

• 2:31:47David Sims?

  Yeah, whoa. And he has very, very, very aromatic balls. Thanks to his Manscaped wipes.

• 2:31:56David Sims?

  The hero is just like, oh, shaving cream, deodorant, and you're like, fifty ball wipes.

• 2:32:02Griffin Newman?

  Crop duster.

• 2:32:04Griffin Newman?

  Crop protector.

• 2:32:05David Sims?

  I think that early in the film, obviously, they're like, you can't do that. You would destroy cyberspace, which is so bad. And at the end of the movie, it's either just like, no, that didn't happen because of what they did. They did it right.

• 2:32:17Griffin Newman?

  Cause it's basically this underground archive in Africa that controls all of the information of the internet, which is why it's protected.

• 2:32:25Speaker 02

  No, but it's only the things that someone.

• 2:32:27Griffin Newman?

  It's like a library of Congress.

• 2:32:28David Sims?

  Backup. It's like a big backup. It's like a big zip drive.

• 2:32:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:32:32David Sims?

  Remember those?

• 2:32:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. But, but that if the entity gets in there, he'll have access to everything. So the, I mean, this is the whole final setup of it that I do find effective where it's like, they need Haley Outwell because the difference between a good pickpocket and a great pickpocket is a blink of an eye. And basically, if she pulls it, she pulls it a millisecond too early.

• 2:32:53David Sims?

  It won't work.

• 2:32:54Griffin Newman?

  They don't capture the entity.

• 2:32:55David Sims?

  And I was worried that she wasn't gonna do it. Me too.

• 2:32:58Griffin Newman?

  I still find it satisfying. The shot of her doing the yank.

• 2:33:02David Sims?

  It's cool.

• 2:33:02Griffin Newman?

  Got me both.

• 2:33:03Speaker 02

  It's great. But again, I'm like, I kind of would have liked it if he killed cyberspace. Cause then that would have felt like, okay, well, this, we're done.

• 2:33:13David Sims?

  I wanted to see him fight.

• 2:33:14Griffin Newman?

  Welcome to society.

• 2:33:15David Sims?

  Like fist fight. Yeah, I think we needed a lawnmower man style. Like he's like. Looks out and materializes.

• 2:33:22Griffin Newman?

  Superman two has a version of that where the evil computer turns it into a lady.

• 2:33:27David Sims?

  Three, Superman three.

• 2:33:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. Uh, but you want, you want that. Yeah.

• 2:33:31David Sims?

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:33:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I don't, I, I, as I was watching the final scene, I'm like, okay, so we did like a hard reset on tech. No one in Trafalgar Square is looking at their iPhones. They're just people living in the moment.

• 2:33:43David Sims?

  You know what? And that's all we want.

• 2:33:45Speaker 02

  And I was like, I was like, you know what? That's so nice.

• 2:33:49David Sims?

  I vastly prefer the greatest ending of recent memory, which is Ready Player One, where they're like, you can have your phones, but can you take like one to two days off a week? And everyone's like, okay.

• 2:34:00Griffin Newman?

  The greatest moment in recent, the ending in recent memory is fucking Bloodlines. The final moment of Bloodlines is unbelievable.

• 2:34:08David Sims?

  It is. I mean, I loved it and I was very satisfied by the final moment of Bloodlines. That is what every Final Destination movie does.

• 2:34:14Griffin Newman?

  I rewatched them all in the run up to this and it's, that always hits that every Final Destination moment, movie ends with someone being like, we're in the clear. And then the worst thing happens.

• 2:34:24David Sims?

  Bloodlines does acknowledge that Mary Elizabeth Winslet, or no, is it two? No, the girl from two.

• 2:34:29Speaker 02

  A.J.

• 2:34:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. She survives, but there's a similar ironic ending.

• 2:34:34David Sims?

  There is, but like she's the only one, Tony Todd does shout it out, who actually pulled it off.

• 2:34:39Griffin Newman?

  I like the fucking, the way Bloodlines handles the, the canon.

• 2:34:42David Sims?

  Me too.

• 2:34:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:44David Sims?

  Yeah. A really good movie, really impressed.

• 2:34:46Speaker 02

  The only movie I've ever been to where a child dies and the entire audience like celebrates.

• 2:34:52David Sims?

  The only thing I'll say and everyone's saying is like, I don't like the CGI gore. Not in a way where I'm like, I like, I won't look at this, but I'm just like, I understand why this is what we do now. I understand it's way easier.

• 2:35:04Griffin Newman?

  It also is basically a trademark of that franchise.

• 2:35:07David Sims?

  It is.

• 2:35:08Griffin Newman?

  They, they've been doing CGI kills the whole time.

• 2:35:10David Sims?

  Basically since one, right? Certainly since two.

• 2:35:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, two, absolutely.

• 2:35:14David Sims?

  And like, but it never quite, it's why Final Destination will always be a sort of B tier for me.

• 2:35:20Griffin Newman?

  Cause let's say it, those movies are not scary. They're fun.

• 2:35:24David Sims?

  They are not.

• 2:35:25Griffin Newman?

  Mostly the fucking better as comedy.

• 2:35:27David Sims?

  Scary.

• 2:35:28Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:35:29David Sims?

  Like that, you know, all right, I'll, I'll take it back because things like the plane crash sometimes will be visceral enough for a minute or two.

• 2:35:33Griffin Newman?

  Where do you find the plane crash episode?

• 2:35:35David Sims?

  Or the logs.

• 2:35:37Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes, but I think that's.

• 2:35:39David Sims?

  For a minute or two, you're like, this is intense. This is scary.

• 2:35:42Griffin Newman?

  I think it's intense more than it's scary. I think the movie will sometimes get thriller type jolts.

• 2:35:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:35:48Griffin Newman?

  But there's never like fucking slasher movie, like, oh, fuck.

• 2:35:51David Sims?

  Not really.

• 2:35:52Speaker 02

  In this one, the, I had to look away anytime like the piercings came into play.

• 2:35:59David Sims?

  I like that.

• 2:36:00Griffin Newman?

  They get the thriller tension.

• 2:36:01David Sims?

  You know, there was that tweet of like Don Draper in the movie theater, right? Where it was like watching Final Destination and like a screw starts to come loose.

• 2:36:09Speaker 02

  No, but like specifically body piercings are like a big ick for me. Like not, I'm not like trying to.

• 2:36:17David Sims?

  You're not judging.

• 2:36:18Speaker 02

  I'm not judging.

• 2:36:19Griffin Newman?

  Personally.

• 2:36:19Speaker 02

  If like, that is a fear of mine to get yanked.

• 2:36:23Griffin Newman?

  When that fucking like MRI goes into research mode.

• 2:36:26David Sims?

  Oh. They shouldn't have. Research.

• 2:36:28Griffin Newman?

  They should. And by the way, and let us be a lesson to all of our listeners. Never put it in research mode.

• 2:36:35David Sims?

  No, no, no.

• 2:36:36Griffin Newman?

  Ben, you're.

• 2:36:36David Sims?

  Yeah, I do love that Final Destination posits that like every MRI machine could like implode the hospital if left.

• 2:36:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:36:43David Sims?

  Turned on.

• 2:36:44Griffin Newman?

  And that's why you never get a Prince Edward piercing.

• 2:36:47David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:36:47Speaker 02

  Isn't it Albert?

• 2:36:48David Sims?

  It's Prince Albert.

• 2:36:48Griffin Newman?

  Fuck.

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna talk about this when we cover.

• 2:36:51Griffin Newman?

  Well, maybe, hey, excuse me. Maybe Prince Edward piercing is a different thing.

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  No, but I'm assuming we're gonna just do like a lot of royal family digressions. I'm reading a really great Diana book right now about Diana world.

• 2:37:02Griffin Newman?

  David, am I allowed to say, especially if this helps move tickets? We are in advanced negotiations to unretire the bit for one night only. Live and on stage.

• 2:37:11David Sims?

  One night only, one night only.

• 2:37:14Speaker 02

  We will retire the bit.

• 2:37:16Griffin Newman?

  We are also in advanced negotiations to license the entire Dreamgirls songbook, which we plan to perform from beginning to end.

• 2:37:22David Sims?

  We're gonna do that one where about how we're a tree. Remember there's that one.

• 2:37:26Griffin Newman?

  We are a family like a giant tree.

• 2:37:29David Sims?

  Yeah, where you're like, isn't this supposed to be a Motown musical? Um, Tom Cruise is in this film. This is his only film this year that I know of.

• 2:37:36Griffin Newman?

  Wait, let me just check out to be to make sure you're right about that.

• 2:37:39David Sims?

  Uh, next year, he's in a, what's been described as a comedy? Being directed by Alejandro Gonzales.

• 2:37:46Speaker 02

  Described as a comedy?

• 2:37:48Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 2:37:49Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 2:37:49Griffin Newman?

  But it's also.

• 2:37:50David Sims?

  Now, now it's being described as a comedy by that crazy Mexican Alejandro Gonzales Inari.

• 2:37:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:57David Sims?

  It was, what was it the show and Pincle him on the Oscar stage?

• 2:38:00Griffin Newman?

  And what he said, like, someone check this man's green card and call ICE.

• 2:38:05David Sims?

  Uh, let me find the exact interview because he spoke very highly of Tom Cruise. Uh, in an interview, I guess he was at Cannes because they're doing a 20th anniversary for a Morris Perot screening or something. Um, and he said, okay, well, let me, let's move past all the Tom Cruise, all the Morris Peres talk.

• 2:38:23Speaker 03

  This is the last Beetlejuice ring pop.

• 2:38:26Griffin Newman?

  The final reckoning?

• 2:38:28David Sims?

  I'm so glad. We need to get some proper snacks now.

• 2:38:30Speaker 03

  I know.

• 2:38:31Griffin Newman?

  Costco.

• 2:38:31Speaker 03

  Is it okay if I have?

• 2:38:32Griffin Newman?

  Of course.

• 2:38:32Speaker 03

  I just wanted to make sure.

• 2:38:34David Sims?

  He says, this is what he says.

• 2:38:35Griffin Newman?

  Hey, Ben, how are you gonna fit that ring pop on your hand when you got a fucking wedding ring on there already?

• 2:38:41Speaker 03

  One night only.

• 2:38:42Griffin Newman?

  One night only. Producer Ben is married.

• 2:38:47Speaker 03

  He is a family, like a giant tree.

• 2:38:51David Sims?

  Here's what Mr. Inori two says. This is a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions. It's insane. Tom makes me laugh every day. The range I discovered working with him is unprecedented for me as a director. I was so fucking, Jesus, Alejandro, impressed and happy. So that's fun.

• 2:39:08Griffin Newman?

  The second you said a giant comedy, I turned into a fucking Looney Tunes puff of dust so I could refund my tickets immediately.

• 2:39:15Speaker 02

  I think Tom is really bad at.

• 2:39:17David Sims?

  It's a brutal comedy. It's a wild comedy of human nature.

• 2:39:20Griffin Newman?

  I like him at comedy. You know who I don't trust making comedy?

• 2:39:23David Sims?

  Alejandro Gonzales Inouye, one of the great comedies of all time.

• 2:39:26Speaker 02

  Okay, like what I think I'm.

• 2:39:28David Sims?

  I mean, Birdman had a joke or two in it, I guess.

• 2:39:31Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that movie's absolutely considered a comedy.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  I'm in the minority here, but I really like that. I find everything he does in Tropic Thunder to be really cringey.

• 2:39:39Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 2:39:40David Sims?

  I don't like. I don't love that performance, perform whatever.

• 2:39:45Speaker 02

  Whatever, whatever the fuck he's doing.

• 2:39:47David Sims?

  I don't like Tropic Thunder that much.

• 2:39:49Speaker 02

  I like Tropic Thunder.

• 2:39:50Griffin Newman?

  I rewatched it recently and I liked it a little more than I used to, but I do feel like it's all overstated.

• 2:39:56David Sims?

  It's just so.

• 2:39:56Griffin Newman?

  And I don't care about subtlety, but it is like so, everything's so over cranked in it.

• 2:40:03David Sims?

  It's just like, there is a good movie in it and it's kind of annoys me. Like some of the Cruz stuff, like out of context is kind of funny.

• 2:40:11Griffin Newman?

  I think that.

• 2:40:12David Sims?

  And him dancing at the end is funny.

• 2:40:13Griffin Newman?

  McConaughey is like on fire in that.

• 2:40:15David Sims?

  Well, that's because McConaughey was just on fire in life.

• 2:40:18Griffin Newman?

  Quiet start of the McConaughey that no one's giving credit for. And I'm like, McConaughey to me is doing a more incisive, like damning portrayal of Hollywood bullshitters than Cruz is, but Cruz just has the fucking makeup and the hands.

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  I know, but it just, it feels.

• 2:40:33David Sims?

  And I'm realizing I never saw Bardo. I have not seen any.

• 2:40:36Speaker 02

  Has anyone?

• 2:40:37David Sims?

  Oh, I assume someone did since.

• 2:40:40Griffin Newman?

  Marie Bardo?

• 2:40:41Speaker 02

  You're looking at me right now.

• 2:40:43David Sims?

  False Chronicle of Truths right over here.

• 2:40:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:46Speaker 02

  I love, okay, back to Mission Impossible. Love when Tom refers to the entity as the Lord of Lies.

• 2:40:53David Sims?

  That part's good when he's like, we can get one over.

• 2:40:56Griffin Newman?

  I want that kind of self-serious shit.

• 2:40:58David Sims?

  But it's a tightrope and like, these movies have walked it fairly well. And I do feel like this one is just not quite as good walking the tightrope. But I still liked it.

• 2:41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:07David Sims?

  And had a good time. Everyone got so mad at me for putting it seventh on my Mission Impossible list.

• 2:41:11Speaker 02

  The floor for me is like four stars on Mission Impossible movies. Like, I don't like, they can be stupid and I will just love them.

• 2:41:19Griffin Newman?

  I think you and I ranked it the same way and people on our subreddit.

• 2:41:24David Sims?

  I think people are mad that we put it below three.

• 2:41:26Griffin Newman?

  But they were also just getting mad about it before they had seen it. And I was seeing this, I'm also on the Mission Impossible subreddit and as early reviews were coming in, everyone was like, well, we don't have to trust them. Maybe they're insane.

• 2:41:38David Sims?

  The Lord of Lies!

• 2:41:40Griffin Newman?

  Right. Well, there was this feeling of like.

• 2:41:42Speaker 02

  We literally like.

• 2:41:43David Sims?

  A lot of panic.

• 2:41:43Speaker 02

  We talked, we, before you guys saw it and at Ben's wedding celebration, Ehrlich was there and he had seen it.

• 2:41:49Griffin Newman?

  We were panicked.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  And we, he was like, it's bad. And we're like, fuck you. You, you don't have good opinions. We hate you.

• 2:41:54David Sims?

  Well, I just say that to him right all the time. Just anytime he speaks, really. But it's still kind of crazy to me that you threw a wallet at his head. He fucking deserved it. I should do that all the time. You do it all the time? No, I should. I should do it more. Every day he's been at Cannes, he's been at Cannes for, I mean, he's back now.

• 2:42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's back.

• 2:42:13David Sims?

  12 or 13 days. His wife, who is single parenting, has the grift of, just would just text me like, another day. You know what I mean? Like every morning, we're just like, I, he should, he should hang his head in shame.

• 2:42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he looks, he, he saw 32 movies.

• 2:42:30Griffin Newman?

  Review movies?

• 2:42:30David Sims?

  Exactly. It's disgusting. On the beach, no less.

• 2:42:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, these are things you hate doing. Going to screenings, going to the beach, writing reviews, honestly.

• 2:42:40Speaker 02

  People hate, I hate when people complain about Cannes.

• 2:42:43David Sims?

  What do you mean complaining about going to Cannes?

• 2:42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, fuck you.

• 2:42:46David Sims?

  Yeah, this seems kind of nice.

• 2:42:47Speaker 02

  It seems great.

• 2:42:48David Sims?

  If you're gonna go to a busy film festival, seems like a pretty fun one.

• 2:42:50Speaker 02

  That seems like the best one to go to.

• 2:42:52Griffin Newman?

  You get to spot Jeff Wells everywhere.

• 2:42:55David Sims?

  Jeff Wells, it seems also, by the way, he did the opposite of Erlich. He saw like five movies in 20 days or whatever.

• 2:43:00Griffin Newman?

  Erlich landed and sent me.

• 2:43:01David Sims?

  He'd be like logging on Hollywood also, like, feel a little tired today.

• 2:43:04Griffin Newman?

  It felt like Erlich sent me a picture of Jeff Wells within 45 minutes of him landing at the airport. Like, he was just like, immediately, here he is.

• 2:43:11David Sims?

  Who is funding, like, Jeff Wells is like Patreon that gets into Cannes, like, who's?

• 2:43:15Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 2:43:16Griffin Newman?

  I, I don't know what to tell you.

• 2:43:18David Sims?

  What shadowy entity?

• 2:43:18Speaker 02

  The entity.

• 2:43:19Speaker 03

  It's the entity.

• 2:43:20Griffin Newman?

  You're not, you're not subscribed to HE Plus?

• 2:43:22David Sims?

  I'm not. Was I supposed to be?

• 2:43:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's a government decree. Have to support small businesses.

• 2:43:30David Sims?

  Well, not only.

• 2:43:31Griffin Newman?

  No, I find this movie very frustrating. I still.

• 2:43:34David Sims?

  I think you're more frustrated than I, but I'm not disagreeing with you.

• 2:43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It is just.

• 2:43:38Speaker 02

  I get, I get it.

• 2:43:40Griffin Newman?

  So sloppy and I would forgive a lot of its, uh, messiness if it were also trimmed. Like, it's not like, oh, there are scenes that are badly executed or like threads that are like poorly tied together. It's also just like, guys, do less. Do less. Fucking take most of this out.

• 2:44:00David Sims?

  I think Macquarie's a better filmmaker than Abrams, speaking to this, me ranking this below three. But three, for its flaws and occasional kind of, you know, lens flary, I can't even see what's going on stuff. As Philip Seymour Hoffman in it.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 2:44:15David Sims?

  It's got very fun kind of team stuff in it generally.

• 2:44:17Griffin Newman?

  It's a fairly complete idea.

• 2:44:19David Sims?

  Right, exactly. It's got a story it's telling in two hours, pretty compelling cruises, very locked in in it.

• 2:44:24Griffin Newman?

  Hoffman alone is like giving it a full star.

• 2:44:27David Sims?

  It's a totally entertaining movie. Like, I have it below, to me, it's sort of like Fallout Ghost Protocol. That's where it's just like, the madness just came together so perfectly. Rogue Nation's right up there.

• 2:44:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's those three for me are the top tier.

• 2:44:42David Sims?

  And then the De Palma movie is so special and silly and fun. I think people slightly overrate it.

• 2:44:48Griffin Newman?

  I think so too.

• 2:44:49David Sims?

  Because De Palma is such a madman and like, it's so fun to watch any De Palma movie.

• 2:44:53Griffin Newman?

  But that's right. I put that and Dead Reckoning.

• 2:44:56David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:44:56Griffin Newman?

  On a similar tier. And then, and, and three is at the bottom of that tier and like. This and two are the only ones that actively frustrate me while I'm watching them. I like this way more than two. I don't like two. There's been a lot of two revisionism out there, including from Marie Bardo with her false Chronicle of Truth. I mean, two is another, like, the good stuff in it is great, but there's less good stuff in it than in this. The villain in it is disastrous. He's so bad. Sorry, Duke Gray. I don't know what you're up to right now. But at least he was, he made a great Wolverine. We all saw him play that character to wild success for 25 years and everything worked out for him. What is he doing? He's married to Claire Forlani.

• 2:45:35Speaker 02

  I did know that.

• 2:45:36Griffin Newman?

  You can get her. Seriously. I got no complaints about that.

• 2:45:39Speaker 02

  They both are like Scottish actors who like had a moment at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s, and then were never seen from again.

• 2:45:47Griffin Newman?

  Do you think they just sit at home and talk about that? Go like, man, it really almost happened, huh? Crazy how we're Scottish. Yeah, she was, she was the spokesperson for some fucking doers.

• 2:45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think she still is. I think that's pretty much like funding their entire lifestyle.

• 2:46:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I like those commercials.

• 2:46:02Speaker 02

  Doers Jacks.

• 2:46:03Griffin Newman?

  He played Arthur Miller in My Week with Marilyn, which was a real kind of jumpscare casting of like, oh, you're still around?

• 2:46:11Griffin Newman?

  And then he went like a. Yeah, he pulled the mask off.

• 2:46:14Speaker 02

  It was really fun to see that some of the masks at the Mo Me exhibit, they got the Wolf Blitzer mask.

• 2:46:21Griffin Newman?

  They got the Blitz. They got the fucking, this was another thing we saw that we commented on. They have a couple of the life casts, right? And like the Hoffman mask. And we were talking about, especially in an era where you still literally had to do plaster head casts. Now they can do the head scans. So you don't have like, you're not suffocated and your skin isn't being pulled down.

• 2:46:38Speaker 02

  It gets all jowly and depressed. It looks like a death mask.

• 2:46:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. So they all look like death masks because people like. The Wolf Blitzer one especially haunting. Right. They're just like so blank and like gravity is fighting against them and whatever. And then you look at the Tom Cruise head cast and you're like, fuck, that has presence.

• 2:46:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's staring straight ahead.

• 2:46:55Griffin Newman?

  The man's famous. The man just, he's got whatever weird, yeah. He sacrificed everything at the altar of being able to turn it on and get it done. We're wrapping up here, in my opinion, but my point that I was trying to make a million years ago when I brought up Pinochet too, is like Cruz making that movie, whether or not it's good, whether or not it's a laugh out loud comedy. I'm hearing it's actually secretly Wedding Crashers 2.

• 2:47:19David Sims?

  It's like, it really feels like him very consciously announcing to the world like, "Okay."

• 2:47:25Griffin Newman?

  And him signing a deal with DeLuca.

• 2:47:27David Sims?

  Correct.

• 2:47:27Griffin Newman?

  Like the statement of-

• 2:47:28David Sims?

  "I'm done with the last 10 plus years of stunts and action and all that. I'm making a movie where the second lead is Sandra Huler. Like, you know, I'm making something that's auteurist and interesting."

• 2:47:40Griffin Newman?

  I mean, you know, it's a fascinating thing of like, Top Gun was supposed to come out in 2020. I think they did some serious re-editing with the delays and figured out a way to improve the movie, but it wasn't like they did reshoots or anything. They made some structural changes that I, McQuarrie talks about being like, "With the little extra time, we cracked a couple of things," right? But that movie was basically in the can in 2019. Obviously doesn't come out until 2022 and saves the theaters. But he has spent the last five years of his life just working on these two movies.

• 2:48:13David Sims?

  Which is insane.

• 2:48:13Griffin Newman?

  And they have taken him from his late 50s into his early 60s. And I agree with you that it did feel like him throwing down a gauntlet of being like, "I'm making a deal with DeLuca. I'm going over to Warner Brothers. We're retiting, titling Dead Reckoning Part Two into The Final Reckoning. Maybe this is a transition point in my career."

• 2:48:31David Sims?

  I'm in my mid 60s.

• 2:48:32Griffin Newman?

  I'm in my mid 60s. And there are all these other movies that he and McQuarrie keep saying that they want to make that are original films that keep getting pushed back because he'll rope McQuarrie into-

• 2:48:40David Sims?

  So go make them.

• 2:48:41Griffin Newman?

  Yet another. Yep.

• 2:48:42David Sims?

  I do not want another one of these.

• 2:48:44Griffin Newman?

  I want it to be done.

• 2:48:45David Sims?

  Yes. I want it to be done. Fast, Xi, let Leterrier cook.

• 2:48:51Griffin Newman?

  It is a-

• 2:48:51David Sims?

  Let Momoa cook.

• 2:48:53Griffin Newman?

  No, but here, it is an analog for me where I'm like, F9, I was like, "Oh, my God, they got this thing back on tracks. I'm happy with this movie," you know? Yeah. And then, you know, Lin is back. I think he drilled back into what I missed. And then 10, like X is such a deflating experience for me where I'm like, "Guys, I'd actually be happier if you never finished this."

• 2:49:12David Sims?

  But it would be so weird if that was the end of the whole franchise.

• 2:49:16Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:49:17David Sims?

  But like- It's just like a damn exploding.

• 2:49:19Griffin Newman?

  It truly feels like it's been three years and they are no closer to making the next movie.

• 2:49:25David Sims?

  It certainly seems like it's still at the Vin Diesel Instagram post stage of development.

• 2:49:30Griffin Newman?

  An absolute logjam.

• 2:49:35Speaker 04

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• 2:50:08David Sims?

  I mean, the fact that The Rock is in the post credits of Fast X.

• 2:50:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:13David Sims?

  And now is just kind of like, I'm making a 24 movies. Like, it's like, he's not even around for this.

• 2:50:18Griffin Newman?

  Not only that, Rock being in the post credits of Fast X, everyone was like, oh, so he's back for Fast X2 or whatever. And then he, within a week, posts on Instagram, by the way, what this is setting up is a solo Hobbs movie. I'm not coming back to mainline Fast and Furious. The next Fast and Furious film is going to be solo Hobbs, something that also seems nowhere closer to happening. No director, no writer attached, nothing's happening on that franchise.

• 2:50:44David Sims?

  Box office game.

• 2:50:45Griffin Newman?

  Let things die.

• 2:50:46Speaker 02

  How, is the movie, oh.

• 2:50:47David Sims?

  We can do it.

• 2:50:48Speaker 02

  We can, we can.

• 2:50:48David Sims?

  What's going to be number one?

• 2:50:50Griffin Newman?

  The number one.

• 2:50:50David Sims?

  We have the Thursday numbers.

• 2:50:52Speaker 02

  I think Lilo Stitch, Lilo Stitch is going to be number one.

• 2:50:54David Sims?

  Sure, there's no think about it. That thing's making a ton of money.

• 2:50:57Griffin Newman?

  Looks like it's going to make at least $150 million.

• 2:50:59David Sims?

  So I'll tell you what else it looks like. Poopoo.

• 2:51:03Griffin Newman?

  David is pretending to smoke a pink pen.

• 2:51:05David Sims?

  Poop.

• 2:51:06Speaker 02

  Are you smoking the poop?

• 2:51:08David Sims?

  Sure. Number two at the box office.

• 2:51:10Griffin Newman?

  I just want to remind people, one of the first moments of being like, fuck, is Tom Cruise losing a little bit of his heat? It's not the same circumstance.

• 2:51:18David Sims?

  Is Lilo and Stitch beating Minority Report?

• 2:51:20Griffin Newman?

  Opening weekend and domestic final.

• 2:51:22David Sims?

  You can't keep Stitch down. That's what we're learning here.

• 2:51:25Griffin Newman?

  I'm just like, 23 years later, Cruise went up against Stitch again. This time it feels like he has the confidence of being like, I know I'm not going to beat him, I just need to do well.

• 2:51:32David Sims?

  Maybe Final Reckoning should have ended with him saying, Ohana means family.

• 2:51:35Griffin Newman?

  Probably.

• 2:51:35David Sims?

  As he meets Benji again or.

• 2:51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that would have, I think like.

• 2:51:39David Sims?

  Or like Ilsa comes out of her grave and is like, Ohana means family.

• 2:51:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and then you bring Ving Rhames back as Cobra Bubbles.

• 2:51:47Speaker 02

  God, this.

• 2:51:47David Sims?

  Great performance.

• 2:51:48Griffin Newman?

  I'm Luther's brother, Cobra Bub.

• 2:51:49Speaker 02

  This would, this is all making sense.

• 2:51:51Griffin Newman?

  This is good screenwriting.

• 2:51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:53Griffin Newman?

  And the hot crustacean band is there.

• 2:51:55David Sims?

  Yes. Number two at the box office is gonna be Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. It's tracking for like around eighty. Oh, a hundred?

• 2:52:03Griffin Newman?

  I think for the four day.

• 2:52:04David Sims?

  Well, we'll see.

• 2:52:05Griffin Newman?

  Cause it got a Memorial Day, right? It's gonna make somewhere between eighty and a hundred, hopefully. Although Dead Reckoning greatly underperformed the expectations even of a day or two before release.

• 2:52:17David Sims?

  It did.

• 2:52:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:18David Sims?

  It did, so we'll see, I guess.

• 2:52:19Griffin Newman?

  Number three in America will be Final Destination: Bloodlines.

• 2:52:22David Sims?

  And without a doubt, a huge hit.

• 2:52:23Griffin Newman?

  Kickin' ass and takin' names.

• 2:52:24David Sims?

  Pretty much like guaranteed to be the biggest in the franchise, right?

• 2:52:27Griffin Newman?

  It almost outgrossed domestically every entry in the opening weekend alone. All the Final Destination movies have basically topped out under sixty.

• 2:52:36David Sims?

  Yeah, it was just The that made sixty-six.

• 2:52:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:52:40David Sims?

  So, yes, this movie's already outgrossed all of them by making, it's already made seventy and it's gonna make more. It's a great movie, lots of fun, I don't know.

• 2:52:47Griffin Newman?

  Hard to agree, really, really, really good. They're like one of the most satisfying popcorn movies I've seen in a long.

• 2:52:53Speaker 02

  Had a great time.

• 2:52:53David Sims?

  Great time.

• 2:52:54Speaker 02

  Had a great time.

• 2:52:55David Sims?

  I was at Alamo, like chicken wings.

• 2:52:56Griffin Newman?

  It got so many applause breaks and I felt last night at Mission Impossible IMAX, people trying to start it.

• 2:53:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:02Griffin Newman?

  And it wouldn't really take and Final Destination: Bloodlines had like ten spontaneous, everyone just being like, holy shit, that was so cool.

• 2:53:10David Sims?

  You know, it's also right, that's a movie just made out of the applause breaks, right?

• 2:53:13Speaker 02

  We got applause, we got applause when Tony, for the beginning of Tony Todd's scene and the end.

• 2:53:18Griffin Newman?

  And, and the title card.

• 2:53:19Speaker 02

  The title card.

• 2:53:20David Sims?

  Yeah, well, he should get an Oscar nomination. Number four at the box office will be Sinners, uh, which I'm told has bankrupted Hollywood. Uh, one of the most ruinous financial follies ever released.

• 2:53:31Griffin Newman?

  All time. I mean, we've got.

• 2:53:33David Sims?

  What were they thinking making that movie?

• 2:53:34Griffin Newman?

  We've got ourselves into a state right now where like, as much as, once again, four months ago, everyone was like, is Hollywood finally dead? A story that's gotten repeated the last four years in a row, right? Anytime there's a bad season of box office because no movies are getting released, um.

• 2:53:53Griffin Newman?

  There is now like an absolute war for IMAX screens where you're like Sinners was too popular on IMAX screens that now they need to bring it back.

• 2:54:00David Sims?

  When Thunderbolts went on IMAX, people were like, boo, get it off.

• 2:54:04Griffin Newman?

  Final Destination only had one week because it has to hand over to Mission Impossible, which is then shortening its run to bring Sinners back to IMAX. If you make movies that people want to see, they will go see them.

• 2:54:15David Sims?

  Well, no, I, I don't, I don't, I don't agree with you at all. And I think it's disgusting that Sinners was made and they should have made, um, uh, Black Panther V instead.

• 2:54:25Griffin Newman?

  David, I never noticed that property of Ted Sarandos tattoo on your neck saying, people don't actually.

• 2:54:29David Sims?

  People can't walk to theaters. They can't get to them. They don't exist anymore.

• 2:54:33Griffin Newman?

  It is elitist to think that people like sitting in rooms together.

• 2:54:37David Sims?

  Sinners.

• 2:54:37Griffin Newman?

  That aren't their living room.

• 2:54:38David Sims?

  I'm so thrilled for its success. I do think it's just like, it was a shameful moment when that movie opened well and everyone was like, well, it doesn't matter.

• 2:54:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, all those people should be like fucking Eaten Crow on Twitch. They should turn their cameras on and for 12 hours livestream Eaten Crow pie.

• 2:54:56David Sims?

  Humble pies for all. Number five at the box office is a little success story called A Minecraft Movie, uh, where the only question now is will it hit $1 billion despite being stupid garbage?

• 2:55:07Griffin Newman?

  It is another funny thing that like three months ago, it was like Mike DeLuca and Pamela Abdi are going to be fired within two days and now they're on such a fucking hot streak. I mean, fucking Minecraft, Sinners and Final Destination in a row.

• 2:55:23David Sims?

  Some other hits at the box office right now. Accountant Two. Haven't seen it yet.

• 2:55:27Griffin Newman?

  A film that Warner Brothers gave up and let Amazon make.

• 2:55:29David Sims?

  Uh, a really good movie I've heard about called Hurry Up Tomorrow with The Weeknd. I'm hearing that's real fun.

• 2:55:34Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 2:55:35Griffin Newman?

  I want to see.

• 2:55:37David Sims?

  I watched The Idol and I was like, more acting from this fellow, please.

• 2:55:40Griffin Newman?

  I'll tell you what I want to see. I just wish The Weeknd would make something about how he's really horny with a young starlet. I wish, I, I don't care if it's a TV show, a movie or both. I just think there's this part of this personality that hasn't been explored and he's such a good actor.

• 2:55:56David Sims?

  Number seven.

• 2:55:57Griffin Newman?

  My joke is that he's doing the new version of the Pete Davidson, I can't stop making movies about myself and my mom. Does it work as a TV show instead?

• 2:56:05David Sims?

  A movie that's performing really well in an exciting way is Friendship. People are going to see that.

• 2:56:10Speaker 02

  I want to apologize to people in the most recent, well, by the time this episode comes out, it'll be like a couple of weeks away.

• 2:56:17Griffin Newman?

  The checkbook.

• 2:56:17Speaker 02

  In the checkbook, I was like.

• 2:56:18Griffin Newman?

  Wonderful sub stack that you run.

• 2:56:20Speaker 02

  I'm going to talk about two films that are, you know, accessible for everyone to go see this weekend, and I didn't realize that Friendship wasn't in wide release.

• 2:56:28David Sims?

  But it is now.

• 2:56:29Speaker 02

  Now it is.

• 2:56:30Griffin Newman?

  It is getting wider.

• 2:56:31Speaker 02

  But I, you know, I'm sorry for being a coastal lead. I truly didn't know that Friendship wasn't wide yet because it was in like week two when I saw it.

• 2:56:40Griffin Newman?

  It was going semi-wide. I, it is, it feels like we're in that flux state where I'm like trying not to get too excited, but it feels like that movie is working and my fear is that it's going to like hit 2,000 screens. No one shows up and they're like, oh, we've hit the ceiling of this, which keeps happening anytime they're trying to like platform a comedy in the last five years and have something catch on as a word of mouth hit. It feels like it's going to work for this one. I'm praying it does. If this movie makes like $20 million, it will be such a fucking victory.

• 2:57:12David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, that's all. I mean, there's movies like The Amateur and Until Dawn still sort of.

• 2:57:18Griffin Newman?

  I saw The Amateur.

• 2:57:19David Sims?

  Lurking. Yeah, The Amateur's pretty boring, huh?

• 2:57:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I like when he does the amateur thing.

• 2:57:23David Sims?

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:57:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:24David Sims?

  I'm just an amateur.

• 2:57:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Uh, Until Dawn, uh, just a weird doesn't exist movie, like an adaptation of a very popular video game with a big director.

• 2:57:32Speaker 02

  Well, it got, it was.

• 2:57:33David Sims?

  Very popular is strong. I would say somewhat popular.

• 2:57:36Speaker 02

  It had its moment like, I don't know, like eight, nine years ago.

• 2:57:40David Sims?

  Exactly. Kind of old news.

• 2:57:42Speaker 02

  The movie like got delayed for so long.

• 2:57:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:45Speaker 02

  But didn't like Larry Fessenden write that video game?

• 2:57:47Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, it's Larry Fessenden and Graham Reis. Yep, absolutely. And I'm like, maybe you should have let them make the movie. No disrespect to David Sandberg, who I, I like quite a bit and I think has been stuck in a rut.

• 2:57:58David Sims?

  He's in this rut. Yeah.

• 2:58:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but maybe like let, let Larry and Graham make that. Um, here's, here's a little bit of house business. I wanna just quickly talk about the end of this episode.

• 2:58:09David Sims?

  Let's do the, uh, house business.

• 2:58:10Griffin Newman?

  I want to talk a little bit about our Patreon, just because as people know, we tend to record this episode very far in advance and a thing like this that's coming out in a quick turnaround with a new release and probably will have more years on it.

• 2:58:21David Sims?

  What do you want to say about our Patreon?

• 2:58:21Griffin Newman?

  Good opportunity to talk about these things. So over in our Patreon, right now, we are doing a series on the Superman films going from Reeve, straight through to corn sweat. We will be doing a new release episode on James Gunn Superman. It will be on Patreon.

• 2:58:37David Sims?

  Yep.

• 2:58:38Griffin Newman?

  As the end of that series.

• 2:58:38Speaker 02

  Not a commentary.

• 2:58:39Griffin Newman?

  Not a commentary.

• 2:58:40David Sims?

  No.

• 2:58:41Griffin Newman?

  It will be, we will go see it, we'll talk about it.

• 2:58:43David Sims?

  We will offer our commentary.

• 2:58:44Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:58:45David Sims?

  On current events.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  The same format as this.

• 2:58:47David Sims?

  Yeah, so it's a regular episode.

• 2:58:49Griffin Newman?

  Superman, the movie to Man of Steel, we're doing as commentary watch alongs. Uh, after that, it is what won our March Madness series, which is 90s indie comic heroes. We have, for a number of reasons, decided to add.

• 2:59:03David Sims?

  We've beefed it out.

• 2:59:04Griffin Newman?

  Two more titles.

• 2:59:06Speaker 02

  By popular demand.

• 2:59:07Griffin Newman?

  By popular demand and it helps our scheduling.

• 2:59:09David Sims?

  The crow.

• 2:59:10Griffin Newman?

  David's going in chronological order here.

• 2:59:11David Sims?

  Tank Girl, Relax Ben.

• 2:59:12Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:59:12David Sims?

  Judge Dredd, Relax David. Barb Wire, Relax Griffin?

• 2:59:17Griffin Newman?

  Added. A film I've never seen. The next one is the Relax Griffin.

• 2:59:22David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah. No, no. Spawn, Relax Everybody.

• 2:59:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:25David Sims?

  Mystery Men, Relax Griffin. Uh, and then, uh, just cause we have to, in my opinion, uh, it's not really, uh, P. Travis's Dread, a great movie. Uh, and then we're gonna do something else for the end of here. But that's what we're doing.

• 2:59:38Griffin Newman?

  The last two slots to end out the holiday season. Just want people to know that we've added those.

• 2:59:42David Sims?

  The new crow.

• 2:59:42Griffin Newman?

  No. No.

• 2:59:44David Sims?

  And also not the like many straight to video crow sequels and all that. There's a lot of them.

• 2:59:50Griffin Newman?

  There's only one crow movie worth fucking with at all, right? And it's the one we're gonna talk about. Uh, but, uh, we're very excited for that series. Fun. Feels like a good moment to talk about Pamela Anderson too.

• 3:00:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:00:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:01Speaker 02

  Maybe I'll make myself available for that episode.

• 3:00:03David Sims?

  Oh, Marie, you have to watch Barbed Wire.

• 3:00:05Speaker 02

  I'm looking forward to it.

• 3:00:06David Sims?

  Like, you never, you want to see Casablanca with fucking Pam Anderson?

• 3:00:10Speaker 02

  Yes, I do.

• 3:00:11David Sims?

  Like, cyberpunk.

• 3:00:12Griffin Newman?

  I'm looking at it.

• 3:00:13Speaker 02

  Sounds great.

• 3:00:14David Sims?

  With Udo Kier is like Julie Wilson.

• 3:00:16Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 3:00:17Griffin Newman?

  It's one of those movies that like, not even Vinegar Syndrome has touched, but like, Australian distributors have made like eight disc 4K ultimate cuts.

• 3:00:24David Sims?

  It's not a good.

• 3:00:25Griffin Newman?

  And I'm like, am I gonna fucking?

• 3:00:26David Sims?

  But it's got some stuff.

• 3:00:27Griffin Newman?

  Am I gonna pay tariffs for a 4K's hardback slipcover barbed wire? Possibly. But here's the other thing I want to say. We kind of very quietly launched what we're calling the no ad bits tier. It is an ad free tier due to also popular demand of people for a very long time asking for that. It was a thing that we did kind of suddenly after going back and forth on it for a lot of years. We never really got to message about it. I just want to very clearly say what it is because there has been some confusion. Our basic $5 tier is still what it always is, the three episodes per month for Blank Check special features. For the $10 tier, you get the entire history of Blank Check.

• 3:01:12David Sims?

  All of them.

• 3:01:13Griffin Newman?

  The entire back catalog and all new episodes, all without ads. If you get the $10 tier, every single episode is going to be in that one feed ad free.

• 3:01:22Speaker 02

  If you want to listen to old episodes and want to listen to them for free, you still can wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:01:28David Sims?

  But they will have ads to tell you about very normal things.

• 3:01:31Griffin Newman?

  A lot of podcasts these days, especially ones that have been running as long as we have, put older episodes behind a paywall. We're not doing that. We're totally independent. We're constantly growing and hiring new people and trying to pay them well. But all of this to say, you know, we rely on the ad money. We get that they can be annoying to listen to. And we just went back and forth on the numbers and this is sort of where it landed for it to be sustainable for us. So if that is the thing you care about for $10, you're getting all the special features content, every new episode and every past episode in one feed minus ads. That's what the deal is.

• 3:02:11David Sims?

  I need you to trust me one last time.

• 3:02:15Griffin Newman?

  Next week, we are talking about Look Who's Talking: The Final Reckoning?

• 3:02:18David Sims?

  No.

• 3:02:19Griffin Newman?

  No, it's.

• 3:02:20David Sims?

  Next week, we're talking about a little film called Clueless.

• 3:02:24Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:02:26David Sims?

  Our guest on that episode is Heidi Gardner of Saturday Night Live.

• 3:02:30Griffin Newman?

  Of Saturday Night Live.

• 3:02:31David Sims?

  It's a very fun episode.

• 3:02:32Griffin Newman?

  It's a fun episode.

• 3:02:32David Sims?

  We do briefly talk about Kansas City to everyone's total surprise.

• 3:02:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. She has a really good Clueless origin story.

• 3:02:39David Sims?

  She does. It's an awesome episode. She's got a great story.

• 3:02:42Griffin Newman?

  You know how we love asking guests, like, what's your history with this movie?

• 3:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:45Griffin Newman?

  Heidi came locked and loaded with one of the best ones.

• 3:02:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 3:02:49Griffin Newman?

  It's a very blanchek-y story. I think anyone who listens to this podcast will love the will relate to having that specific a memory of the circumstances relating to seeing it for the first time. So, yes, Look Who's Talking: The Final Reckoning will be happening on the aforementioned Patreon, which of course is Look Who's Talking now.

• 3:03:07Speaker 02

  But Look Who's Talking 2 will have just

• 3:03:09Griffin Newman?

  Will have just come out last week from Max Mungella. So that's what's going on here.

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  I just watched that movie.

• 3:03:14David Sims?

  And you are so happy, right?

• 3:03:16Speaker 02

  It's

• 3:03:18David Sims?

  It's dog shit.

• 3:03:19Griffin Newman?

  Would you be surprised to hear, I mean, it's, it feels like an easy pun to call it dog shit, and yet it feels like the only accurate way to describe that film. Would you be surprised to hear that this is one of those instances where Ben showed up to a recording and was like, wait, you guys don't like this? I thought the dog stuff was fun. He liked everything about it.

• 3:03:37Speaker 02

  Well, that's

• 3:03:37Griffin Newman?

  His name is fucking Rock, man.

• 3:03:39Speaker 02

  I haven't watched the dog one yet. I'm talking about the one with two.

• 3:03:42Griffin Newman?

  Two.

• 3:03:43Speaker 02

  Two is fast, two is like bad, but it's also like

• 3:03:46David Sims?

  It's got some weird stuff.

• 3:03:47Griffin Newman?

  Weird. Like Lars Luntreer's Antichrist.

• 3:03:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's so dark.

• 3:03:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:51David Sims?

  It's a little dark.

• 3:03:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I kind of love it.

• 3:03:53David Sims?

  All right. Look, we've beaten the film's running time. Let's be done. Good night.

• 3:03:57Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Good night. Good luck.

• 3:03:59David Sims?

  Goodbye to Ethan Hunt, possibly forever. Keep a hold on that 5D drive, please.

• 3:04:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Yeah. And like, look, I

• 3:04:06David Sims?

  Go make a real movie, Chris McQuarrie. Not that these aren't real movies.

• 3:04:09Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise.

• 3:04:10David Sims?

  Not, non, you know, make something else.

• 3:04:11Griffin Newman?

  Let's, let's put this out there, okay? I hope we will be covering Tom Cruise much more in the future with upcoming projects he makes with auteur directors, possibly people we previously covered, possibly people will cover in the future. But I'm just like, I want him to get back to making the kind of thing that we talk about outside of this one franchise.

• 3:04:32David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:04:34Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. And as always, you have to get the cruciform key to the sevesta pole to unlock the podkova and then use the poison pill in the podkova to force the entity into the five dimensional drive. The key maker.

• 3:04:52Speaker 03

  That's, that's

• 3:04:54David Sims?

  He's the king of keys.

• 3:04:55Speaker 03

  So then that's the end of the episode.

• 3:04:56David Sims?

  But there's not one particular key.

• 3:04:58Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter.

• 3:04:59David Sims?

  But it's so many keys.

• 3:05:00Speaker 03

  So. Quantity over quality.

• 3:05:02David Sims?

  Then that's that.

• 3:05:08Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and The Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to Blank Check Pod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

• 3:05:53Speaker 03

  Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.