John Carter with Matt Singer

We are going to Barsoom with 2012's John Carter - a film that bounced almost as much as the titular hero bounced around on Mars! Matt Singer joins us to talk about this legendary flop - the cursed marketing campaign, the year of Taylor Kitsch, and Disney's acquisition of Marvel and Star Wars, which effectively made John Carter irrelevant almost immediately. Plus, we spend a lot of time talking about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for some reason. Read Second-Act Twist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/17/second-act-twist By Tad Friend https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/tad-friend and The Untold Story of Disney’s $307 Million Bomb ‘John Carter’: ‘It’s a Disaster’ https://www.thewrap.com/john-carter-movie-history-why-it-failed/ by Drew Taylor Pre-Order Matt's Book https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/790241/funny-business-by-matt-singer/ Read Matt's Writing https://screencrush.com/author/mattsinger/ 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?

  Uh, it was so fun. Uh, 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?

• 0:20David Sims?

  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.

• 0:37Speaker 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.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  When I saw you, I believed it was a sign that something new can come into this podcast.

• 1:47Griffin Newman?

  That was my bad defoe, Tarz Tarkas.

• 1:49David Sims?

  Mmm.

• 1:51Griffin Newman?

  That was the big line they used in the trailer. And it's to sort of hint at the mystery of the film. Now, I was saying before, I think this movie famously didn't have a tagline. And we'll spend roughly half an hour on this movie's disastrous marketing campaign. Kind of as big a legacy as the film itself. But it did in fact have a tagline and it's quite poor, I would say.

• 2:10David Sims?

  What is the tagline? Let me guess. He's from Mars. No, I don't know.

• 2:14Griffin Newman?

  Lost in our world, found in another. And then, of course, the title is John Carter, so Mars is nowhere on the poster.

• 2:21David Sims?

  Oh, you have to watch the movie to find out what world he was found in.

• 2:24Griffin Newman?

  And the poster is just bright red. That was their big move. This wasn't the one that had the.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  The JCM?

• 2:30Griffin Newman?

  That was the teaser poster.

• 2:31Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:32Griffin Newman?

  I wanna say that was even maybe before the title had been changed, but that was big JCM, black and white.

• 2:38David Sims?

  John Carter arrives.

• 2:39Griffin Newman?

  That was the tagline. It's telling you, John Carter's coming.

• 2:44David Sims?

  Um, no, but right, the classic poster, classic, of course.

• 2:48Griffin Newman?

  It was the all red.

• 2:49David Sims?

  Right, was this. Very red, very red.

• 2:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  I mean, it's kind of a cool image, I guess.

• 2:55David Sims?

  It's not bad. I, you know, it's every Mars movie did this.

• 2:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:00David Sims?

  And this movie is post the Mars craze. I like to think about the Mars craze.

• 3:04Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 3:04David Sims?

  Uh, because I recently watched Species Two.

• 3:07Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 3:07David Sims?

  And I forgot that Species Two is the first Mars movie of this wave.

• 3:11Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 3:12David Sims?

  Because it was right after they'd found the meteor on Mars with, or the thing on Mars, well, what, what do you?

• 3:18Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, I think some credits Total Recall, which was a secret Mars movie.

• 3:22David Sims?

  Not talking about, no, no, that doesn't count.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  He gets his ass to Mars.

• 3:25David Sims?

  Doesn't count. There are pre-Mars craze Mars movies. There's a few. There's the one that I bought the DVD for and keep me need to watch where Sean Connery is like a cop on Mars called, I think Outlander? Just Outland.

• 3:37Griffin Newman?

  Outland, okay.

• 3:38David Sims?

  Yeah, it's Total Recall. But there's, it's like Species Two, Mission to Mars, Red Planet. There's a fourth one. Like, there's a bunch of them all together for like two years.

• 3:47Griffin Newman?

  Mission to Mars and Red Planet were a true deep impact Armageddon thing.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  It's an Armageddon deep impact, yes.

• 3:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. And then they ended up moving a little further apart in dates because they were worried of the competition.

• 3:57David Sims?

  Eventually a year apart.

• 3:58Griffin Newman?

  But they were made simultaneously. It was like, which of the Mars movies is gonna work? I throw out Total Recall just because I think people kept pointing to that as, look, there was a successful Mars movie. Cause they kept bombing and they kept doing it.

• 4:11David Sims?

  No, it's, it's the different. It's about humans going to Mars. Total Recall, we live on Mars. Total Recall is a fact.

• 4:18Griffin Newman?

  He got his ass to Mars.

• 4:19Speaker 05

  We've colonized it.

• 4:21David Sims?

  Yeah, like, oh, oh, Ghosts of Mars.

• 4:23Griffin Newman?

  Oh, of course.

• 4:23David Sims?

  Those are the four. And it's all just like, how do we crack Mars? And zero of them crack Mars. Mission to Mars.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Ghosts this time.

• 4:31David Sims?

  Mission to Mars I defend and has very cool stuff. The other three, they're all do badly, right? And the other three. Species Two is basically like they go to Mars and what? What happens to the guys who went to Mars?

• 4:41Griffin Newman?

  They get species.

• 4:42David Sims?

  Sexy horny alien stuff like is inside them now. Uh oh.

• 4:46Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 4:46David Sims?

  You know.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  And all of us ultimately.

• 4:48Griffin Newman?

  It is funny.

• 4:49David Sims?

  Probably all of us, but even Species Two, Species One, poster is green. Species Two, how do we change it?

• 4:54Griffin Newman?

  Red.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Red. Ah.

• 4:55Griffin Newman?

  It is funny to consider.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  For Species Two?

• 4:58Griffin Newman?

  No, right?

• 4:58David Sims?

  Uh, there was no subtitle, but I of course could tell you the tagline.

• 5:03Speaker 05

  Please.

• 5:04David Sims?

  Mating season begins.

• 5:05Griffin Newman?

  Really good.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  It's not bad.

• 5:06Griffin Newman?

  Really, really.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  It's better than the John Carter tagline by a wide margin.

• 5:09David Sims?

  Now, if that had been the John Carter tagline, that might not have worked.

• 5:12Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna make my third attempt at, uh, this joke. Uh, it's funny to consider that in the year 2000, Disney, Walt Disney Pictures.

• 5:21David Sims?

  Walt Disney.

• 5:21Griffin Newman?

  Probably looked at the box office receipts for Mission of Mars and went, well, look, this, the good news is this is the least successful Mars movie Disney will ever release. We will never lose more money on a Mars movie than this. It's all upwards.

• 5:36David Sims?

  Uh, yes.

• 5:37Griffin Newman?

  That film was seen as a disaster.

• 5:40David Sims?

  Absolutely. It was seen as a disaster.

• 5:42Griffin Newman?

  And then Mars Needs Mom was like, hold, hold my beer.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  I didn't even remember Mars Needs Mom.

• 5:47Griffin Newman?

  Big part of the story of this movie. And then John Carter was like, don't worry, buddy. I got you.

• 5:51David Sims?

  Now, in Mars Needs Moms, which I have not seen.

• 5:53Griffin Newman?

  Mars Needs Moms.

• 5:54David Sims?

  Mars Needs Moms.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  I've never seen it either.

• 5:55David Sims?

  Isn't that largely set in like an attic or whatever? It's like they've come to Earth in search of our moms.

• 5:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 6:00David Sims?

  Right? Like I don't, is there a lot of Mars action in it, I wonder?

• 6:03Griffin Newman?

  I have not seen it either.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  The poster wasn't red in my memory. The poster was not red.

• 6:07Griffin Newman?

  Right. There are aliens, there are species. Yes, it was very Amblini.

• 6:10David Sims?

  It was blue, although the title is red.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 6:13David Sims?

  The words are red.

• 6:15Speaker 05

  Letters. If your movie has the word Mars in the title, the title has to be red. It is a rule.

• 6:20Griffin Newman?

  Right. That was a big.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  It's a law of Hollywood.

• 6:23Griffin Newman?

  Fuck up on their part. But then the final John Carter poster, after everyone complained about the marketing, was this, where it goes a lot more blue.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Blue and yellow. It violated the rule that I just invented.

• 6:32Griffin Newman?

  Him riding on creatures.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Thots.

• 6:35Griffin Newman?

  Thots.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  He's on a thoat.

• 6:37Griffin Newman?

  Thark's on thoats. Flanking John Carter.

• 6:41David Sims?

  This movie is in-

• 6:42Speaker 05

  If you like silly words, man.

• 6:43David Sims?

  I know, it's in that kind of, you know, lady in the water territory with like, every five minutes, let's throw a new made up word at these guys.

• 6:50Griffin Newman?

  But I feel like this is a thing that unites the three of us, is that's always kind of catnip for us. Even when the movie doesn't work.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  It can be catnip.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  It is very endearing when a movie throws a bunch of silly words at you.

• 7:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is.

• 7:03David Sims?

  I often do respond to movies that are like, since time immemorial, like Blarg has fought with the Kingdom of Jin, and I'm just like, yes, of course they have, yes, those two mighty kingdoms, like, you know-

• 7:16Speaker 05

  They removed Blarg, that was one of their mistakes on this one, they cut him out of the movie.

• 7:19David Sims?

  I know.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  They were saving him for the sequel that never happened.

• 7:22David Sims?

  I, I know it's all from books, and I know we'll talk about that, and I know these books have a cultural legacy and all that, but it is funny, like, how many times someone's like, Barsoom. Like, assuming the audience is gonna be, "Yes, Barsoo, they said it!"

• 7:36Griffin Newman?

  It's wild.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  It's all fake words, but then they'll, once in a while, they'll be like a normal word, like helium.

• 7:42Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  It's like, we have two cities, Zodanga and helium.

• 7:47David Sims?

  They really should have changed helium, cuz it's so confusing when they keep, "You have to save helium, the gas? No, our town's called that."

• 7:54Speaker 05

  Come on!

• 7:55David Sims?

  But we are running out of helium.

• 7:57Griffin Newman?

  We are.

• 7:57David Sims?

  Okay, well, let's go get some then.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  This movie was ahead of its time, when you think about it.

• 8:01David Sims?

  David is absolutely right, let's go get some.

• 8:04Griffin Newman?

  Let's go get some.

• 8:05David Sims?

  Where is it hiding?

• 8:06Griffin Newman?

  Unfortunately, I got bad news for you, it's on Barsoom.

• 8:08David Sims?

  Oh, fuck, alright. Well, then, let's get a medallion or something.

• 8:14Griffin Newman?

  What are the dragonfly ships called?

• 8:15David Sims?

  I don't fucking know what anything is called.

• 8:18Griffin Newman?

  This is the two-pronged problem, the movie is too confident that the audience is excited to finally see and hear all this stuff on screen. That it thinks the built-in audience is a lot larger than it is.

• 8:28David Sims?

  I do think it thinks that, yes.

• 8:29Griffin Newman?

  Secondly, this is like, one of the first major sci-fi adventure novels, space, you know, opera kind of things in American fiction, all of these names, the bar was really low.

• 8:44David Sims?

  Right, back then, just calling something Barsoom would be like, well, I've never seen a word like this before. How original.

• 8:49Griffin Newman?

  That word's crazy. And then there's like a century of people being like, what if we made things sound cool?

• 8:53David Sims?

  Yeah, Barsoom. And Barsoom's okay.

• 8:55Griffin Newman?

  Barsoom's okay.

• 8:56David Sims?

  Some of the other ones I don't love. Uh, like Zodanga, that's a little, you know.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  It's got dang in it.

• 9:03Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 9:03David Sims?

  That's true.

• 9:04Griffin Newman?

  I think Tars Tarkas is a great name.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Tars Tarkas is a good name. I agree. That's the best name.

• 9:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 9:10David Sims?

  What's that?

• 9:11Griffin Newman?

  Tars Tarkas is Willem Dafoe.

• 9:12David Sims?

  That's Willem Dafoe. Okay, right. Tars Tarkas.

• 9:14Griffin Newman?

  As you were saying, like, movie that just starts with a bunch of stuff, right? I couldn't figure out a good place to put podcasts in on this, but the opening voiceover of this movie being-

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Oh, love it.

• 9:23Griffin Newman?

  Mars. So you name it and think that you know it. The red planet, no air, no life, but you do not know Mars, for its true name is Barsoom.

• 9:33David Sims?

  Like, that is the kind of thing that does, you're right. Like, it could raise the hairs on my-

• 9:37Speaker 05

  You're rubbing your hands together.

• 9:39David Sims?

  Tell me more.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  It is not airless, nor is it dead, but it is dying. Intriguing.

• 9:45David Sims?

  Okay, sure.

• 9:46Griffin Newman?

  There is life, but the life's at risk. I like that.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Then he says Zodanga twice in one sentence.

• 9:51Griffin Newman?

  He does.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  And then you're going, wait a minute, what happened?

• 9:53Griffin Newman?

  The city of Zodanga saw to that.

• 9:55David Sims?

  Now, to kick our episode off.

• 9:56Griffin Newman?

  Let's cheers. Of course, a bit that's been, uh, really consistent since I established it at the beginning of this year. The Great Coffee Quest of 2026.

• 10:04David Sims?

  Jesus.

• 10:05Griffin Newman?

  Where I bought different movie-themed coffees that we're gonna try out to see if there's one that's worthy of being served to our guests. And usually we try to test these on ourselves before we bring them to guests, but today's guest, we promised him.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:17Griffin Newman?

  When I was in a separate group text, planning this coffee quest.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  I said, I'm only coming.

• 10:23Griffin Newman?

  If I can get a big, a big hunkin' cup of, what is it? Spidey's, uh, web slinger? Spider-Man's web slinger is the name of the coffee, I believe.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  It's not just named. It has a special flavor, though.

• 10:35Griffin Newman?

  It does. Okay, should we all take a sip?

• 10:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 05

  Cheers.

• 10:42David Sims?

  I don't like it.

• 10:43Griffin Newman?

  You don't like it?

• 10:44David Sims?

  I don't hate it.

• 10:45Griffin Newman?

  It didn't taste as strong as it smelled.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, the smell, the aroma is quite pungent.

• 10:50David Sims?

  The aroma is pretty.

• 10:51Speaker 05

  It singes the nostrils.

• 10:52David Sims?

  What's the note here? What am I missing?

• 10:54Griffin Newman?

  Uh, marshmallows?

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Marshmallow treat.

• 10:57Griffin Newman?

  Marshmallow treat, like, cause it's like webs.

• 11:00David Sims?

  I was guessing something sweet like chocolate or whatever, but yeah.

• 11:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It is from Bones Coffee Company.

• 11:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Griffin Newman?

  Web Slinger Crispy Marshmallow Treat Flavored Coffee.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  It's a great looking bag.

• 11:10Griffin Newman?

  It's a great bag.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  Excellent bag, good packaging.

• 11:13Griffin Newman?

  And I'd say Spider-Man's a good guy.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  One of my favorite guys.

• 11:16Griffin Newman?

  He's one of our best.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:18Griffin Newman?

  One of your good friends.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:20David Sims?

  As far as the flavor profile,

• 11:22Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 11:22David Sims?

  How is this representative of Spider-Man?

• 11:24Speaker 05

  It's a great question.

• 11:25Griffin Newman?

  Because it's marshmallow and marshmallow treats look like webs.

• 11:30Griffin Newman?

  Sticky marshmallow webs.

• 11:31David Sims?

  I guess you're right.

• 11:33Griffin Newman?

  There's a walk.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Sticky. Sticky is what we're going with.

• 11:35David Sims?

  It's sticky.

• 11:36Griffin Newman?

  It's a short swing to sticky.

• 11:38David Sims?

  Yes. Okay.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's not the worst coffee I've ever had.

• 11:42Griffin Newman?

  It's not.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  It isn't as bad as I feared when we smelled it?

• 11:46Griffin Newman?

  Will we serve it to anyone else?

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm sure you won't.

• 11:49David Sims?

  I would not serve this to someone unless they wanted it.

• 11:51Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. You're taking it home.

• 11:53David Sims?

  You're just gonna eat the grounds.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:54David Sims?

  You're not even gonna pour water over it.

• 11:58Griffin Newman?

  This is of course because our guest today, returning to the show, wrote the book on Spider-Man. Proper title?

• 12:03Speaker 05

  A book on Spider-Man. Marvel's Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular, extra colon, the definitive comic art collection.

• 12:11Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yes. Wrote a book on Siskel and Ebert, opposable thumbs.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  That's right. Colon, how Siskel and Ebert changed movies forever. Gotta have colons in your books.

• 12:21Griffin Newman?

  And of course, the way they changed movies forever is that they influenced Ben Hossley to recommend that we call this podcast Griffin Simsbert.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Yes, right. I probably knew that story.

• 12:30David Sims?

  Long ago.

• 12:31Griffin Newman?

  Uh, and the upcoming book?

• 12:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:35Griffin Newman?

  Copy on desk.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Yes, I have.

• 12:37Griffin Newman?

  Uncorrected proof or corrected?

• 12:38Speaker 05

  It's an uncorrected proof. I've already corrected things that are in this version.

• 12:42Griffin Newman?

  Funny Business.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 12:43Griffin Newman?

  The subtitle is "The Old School Wedding Crashers and Knocked-Up Virgins Who Changed Comedy Forever", and the book, of course, is about failed sci-fi franchises of the 2010s.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right. I don't know if we want to get into this now, but while we're talking about this book,

• 12:58Griffin Newman?

  Please.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  can I, I'm gonna hand it to you.

• 13:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes. The great Matt Singer.

• 13:02David Sims?

  Hi, Matt Singer. Welcome.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  Thank you. Now, if you look in the back of the book, there is a bookmarked part. There's a, uh, there's a post-it. I want you to look what's right above the post-it in the footnotes.

• 13:14Griffin Newman?

  Wow. Footnote number 58. Quote, "In any minute, Griffin Newman and David Sims host Blank Check with Griffin and David podcast, The Big Lebowski with Seth Rogen."

• 13:25Speaker 05

  You're a quoted source in my book.

• 13:28David Sims?

  Because Rogen was dropping bombs.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  He was!

• 13:29Griffin Newman?

  And it has a typed-out link, a URL.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Yes, if people want to go fact-check it themselves, they can go listen. It was an excellent, I was, I just happened to be working on that part of the book, and I was listening to him, and he's talking about, uh, working on The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, which I was working on that part of the book. Perfect quotes. Oh, you can have, you can have that. This is, uh, you can be shared by the,

• 13:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  We got a couple of copies, so you guys can enjoy that.

• 13:53Griffin Newman?

  Uh, it is a thing I always will take any opportunity to bring up on the show, that I often complain about the death of the theatrical studio comedy.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Indeed.

• 14:04Griffin Newman?

  But I think in people trying to do the postmortems, there is not enough study of what happened in comedy from like 2000 to 2015.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  Well, this is the book for you, Griffin.

• 14:18Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. I've been waiting for this book, but it, but it really did build up in a way that was kind of MCU-esque.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:25Griffin Newman?

  There, there was a sort of like franchise machinery to the way the personas got built, and the cross-pollination, and the rise of the sort of star producer, and all that kind of stuff.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  Um, that happened kind of, you mentioned the MCU, and it kind of happened around the, the, the tail end of this wave coincides with it, and I think very much of that and the... Cinematic universification of Hollywood.

• 14:51Griffin Newman?

  I think so.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  Had a big effect on why these movies started to go away.

• 14:54Griffin Newman?

  But I also think quietly, those movies and the modern franchises pulled from what was working there. I have always said that there was something that I think, whether consciously or unconsciously, that was wisely pulled from how appeto seeded performers in supporting roles to prep you for them in leading roles.

• 15:14David Sims?

  Right, and then he'd, right, I feel like while he's doing that, they're like onset being like, an interesting story in my life, and he's like, I love that, like, work on that, like, write me a script, like, you could turn that into a movie.

• 15:25Griffin Newman?

  But that also, once his thing worked, there was a house style, there was a sensibility.

• 15:29David Sims?

  For sure.

• 15:29Griffin Newman?

  There was a low concept, this is about interpersonal relationships, find a very specific dynamic. And then what started to piss people off is these movies are all the same.

• 15:39David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Griffin Newman?

  It's improv runs, it's an awkward romantic comedy about a dude who's the one who has to learn.

• 15:44David Sims?

  Silly boy, shrewish lady.

• 15:47Griffin Newman?

  Which I argue is kind of what's happening with Marvel now, where it's like, we know the format, but...

• 15:52David Sims?

  Ten years ago at this point, but yes, yes, I mean, it's just, hmm, maybe Marvel... You know, it's impossible, though, just thinking about Marvel, it's like, yeah, like, if Marvel was like, we did something totally different, people would just be like, ugh, like, no, right? Like, it's hard, it's hard to...

• 16:07Griffin Newman?

  Look, the movie does not fully work, you and I both quietly, partially defend it, but that's what Eternals was trying to do.

• 16:13David Sims?

  I agree with that.

• 16:14Griffin Newman?

  Eternals was, I think, feige wisely saying, we need to fucking mix it up, because people are gonna start getting tired of this quick, and then they did not find the right way to mix it up.

• 16:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 16:25Griffin Newman?

  And they took the rejection of that really hard, and were like, back to the old shit?

• 16:28David Sims?

  Right.

• 16:29Speaker 05

  Yes, it was a retreat, it was a swift retreat.

• 16:31David Sims?

  I just, this is on my mind because I just filed a review of Over Your Dead Body, a Yorimar Taconi movie that is like, that didn't totally work for me, I don't know if either of you have seen it.

• 16:41Griffin Newman?

  I have not seen it yet.

• 16:42David Sims?

  Uh, but like, you know, I thought was okay, and like, had some stuff, and of course, stars Jason Segel.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 16:48David Sims?

  And I was like, Segel is like, the last of those guys, right? Who is still making like, like, movie star comedies into the mid 2010s, after sex tape.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:58David Sims?

  He's released zero movies wide in theaters.

• 17:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 17:01David Sims?

  Zero.

• 17:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 17:02David Sims?

  Like, he's made a couple indies that got a theatrical release.

• 17:04Griffin Newman?

  It's like End of the Tour, there's the Charlie McDowell movie.

• 17:07David Sims?

  End of the Tour, and I have it here, and Our Friend.

• 17:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:11David Sims?

  Are the only ones that were even like indie releases. Everything else was Netflix, which is Discovery.

• 17:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:18David Sims?

  Come Sunday, Skies Everywhere, where he had a supporting role, which is on Apple, uh, Windfall.

• 17:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:23David Sims?

  Like, so three of those were like Charlie McDowell movies and like.

• 17:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:26David Sims?

  And like, and now, you know, this, Everyday Body's getting a tiny release as well. I know Seagull also kind of was like, I'm burned out. I don't like making these, like, you know, sex tape, Bad Teacher-y movies anymore.

• 17:38Griffin Newman?

  Gets sober, has a sort of kind of like, I need to pull away and work on my shit.

• 17:41David Sims?

  But like, post, you know, uh, forgetting Sarah Marshall, he did for years, like, he did the kind of like, yeah, I'll do a high concept sort of R-rated comedy for you every so often.

• 17:51Griffin Newman?

  And he was also.

• 17:51David Sims?

  And they would like do alright.

• 17:53Griffin Newman?

  He was often writing them or co-writing them?

• 17:55David Sims?

  Yeah, he was involved.

• 17:56Griffin Newman?

  Like, he is a writer on Sex Tape. Like, Sex Tape wasn't just a sort of like, fuck it, I'll take the paycheck.

• 18:01David Sims?

  No.

• 18:02Griffin Newman?

  And Five Year Engagement.

• 18:02David Sims?

  And it's just crazy, like.

• 18:03Griffin Newman?

  Muppets he co-writes, yeah.

• 18:05David Sims?

  And, and, um, you know, uh, yeah, he has like five or six, you know, of those.

• 18:11Griffin Newman?

  But even like Bad Teacher and, and I Love You Man, and like, he was getting plugged in.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  Love You Man, that's a good one.

• 18:16David Sims?

  And then Sex Tape is just like, you know, I remember when it came out, everyone was like, you know, is this a movie? Like, is this a big concept? Like, everyone's a little, no one was like, this sucks.

• 18:27Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 18:27David Sims?

  But everyone was a little like, eh.

• 18:29Griffin Newman?

  It was one of those movies where it's like, this thing is ending. And the problem is that if you look at.

• 18:33David Sims?

  And like the posters, just them going like, huh? Like, you know, it's like the laziest photo, they're like looking at an iPad.

• 18:38Griffin Newman?

  It also felt like we had come all the way around to like, the Apatow wave is a correction for how high concept star comedies had become. They'd gotten really big budget, it was twenty million dollar stars who felt like they were kind of lazily picking up a paycheck for like a one-sentence movie pitch where the title is the premise, and there's usually Magic or something like that, or Insane Mistaken Identity, and then it was like, let's bring this down to like human level. And Sex Tape felt like the first comic. That was an output, an extended reach of the Apatow family tendrils.

• 19:13David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Griffin Newman?

  Where the concept was like, what?

• 19:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 19:16Griffin Newman?

  Does this make sense?

• 19:17David Sims?

  Yes.

• 19:17Griffin Newman?

  They uploaded the sex tape to their personal cloud, but they gave everyone in their life an iPad for Christmas.

• 19:24David Sims?

  Yes.

• 19:25Griffin Newman?

  And those iPads are on their cloud, so their mailman has their sex tape.

• 19:30David Sims?

  We've all been there.

• 19:31Griffin Newman?

  Right. You're like, it's getting too sweaty here.

• 19:33David Sims?

  Very relatable.

• 19:34Griffin Newman?

  But that movie also made like 50 million domestic?

• 19:38David Sims?

  Yeah, I think it did alright. I can look up the final number.

• 19:41Griffin Newman?

  As a disaster and you're like, it ended up at a number pretty similar to.

• 19:44David Sims?

  One twenty-six worldwide, which means it made, yeah, it made forty domestic and ninety world, ninety international.

• 19:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  The international market, they love sex tapes?

• 19:54Griffin Newman?

  They love sex tapes. It's a fascinating thing to talk about.

• 19:57David Sims?

  Yes.

• 19:57Griffin Newman?

  Today we're talking about John Carter, because this is a podcast.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  The most famous R-rated sex comedies of the 2000s.

• 20:05Griffin Newman?

  I think this is an opportunity to really just discuss what was happening

• 20:09David Sims?

  Yes, right.

• 20:09Griffin Newman?

  in the movies in the early 2010s. And, and the Apatow stuff is part and parcel with it, right?

• 20:14David Sims?

  True.

• 20:14Griffin Newman?

  Bridesmaids is 2011. That is arguably the apex of the whole thing.

• 20:19David Sims?

  Yes.

• 20:19Griffin Newman?

  That is the highest grossing Apatow movie.

• 20:21David Sims?

  It's the highest grossing and it is like, it's somehow, even though the formula had been set already. When that was released, people, there was still the narrative like, is this too risky? Like, all girls are rated? Like, is anyone gonna go for this?

• 20:37Griffin Newman?

  It was a successful Eternals.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 20:40David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 20:41Speaker 05

  I'm sure they would love that comparison.

• 20:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, yes.

• 20:46Griffin Newman?

  Which of course then leads to Ghostbusters, the unsuccessful Eternals

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 20:49Griffin Newman?

  of this experiment, right?

• 20:51Speaker 05

  That's an interesting comparison.

• 20:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes, a beginning of the end movie, right?

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Oh, yes. Well, I think it had already, they were already on the downward slope, but that was a real, yes.

• 21:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes. This movie comes out in March, released by, as I said before, the Walt Disney company.

• 21:08David Sims?

  What are they? Are they like a new indie shingle or something at that time?

• 21:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they're like a utopia.

• 21:15David Sims?

  And it's being released, yeah, they're a vertical.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  Entertainment?

• 21:19David Sims?

  It's being released by Marvel, basically as they are, like, the ink is beginning to dry on their Marvel acquisition, right? Like, when is that? When do they buy Marvel? 2012?

• 21:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, oh, no, this is the timeline I was gonna say, right? So this film is released March 2012.

• 21:34David Sims?

  Right.

• 21:35Griffin Newman?

  May is the Avengers. Avengers.

• 21:37David Sims?

  Yeah, which was, did that movie do?

• 21:39Griffin Newman?

  It, it, it did in fact, quite well.

• 21:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 21:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh, I believe.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Almost as good as John Carter.

• 21:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 21:45David Sims?

  Okay.

• 21:46Griffin Newman?

  So, 2008 is Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk. 2010 is Iron Man 2.

• 21:52David Sims?

  Heard of it.

• 21:52Griffin Newman?

  And I believe after the release of Iron Man 2, Disney buys Marvel. Now, the original Paramount deal, that was similar to the original Pixar Disney deal. This is a five film slate distribution, you own underlying rights.

• 22:06David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 22:07Griffin Newman?

  Was supposed to be Iron Man, Incredible Hulk. I think Ant-Man was supposed to be part of that original five. Iron Man 2 takes that slot. And then, oh, well, of course, Incredible Hulk ended up being Universal because of them having the original rights. Thor, Captain America, Avengers.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Avengers.

• 22:24David Sims?

  Griffin, it's Universal because Hulk is green and Universal is our planet, which is also very green.

• 22:28Griffin Newman?

  Well.

• 22:29David Sims?

  That's why.

• 22:29Griffin Newman?

  Unless we don't take care of it, like in Wally.

• 22:33David Sims?

  Then it gets red.

• 22:33Griffin Newman?

  President Hulk.

• 22:34David Sims?

  There he is.

• 22:35Griffin Newman?

  Please salute. They buy it in 2010.

• 22:38David Sims?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:39Griffin Newman?

  2011 Paramount releases Captain America and Thor, but Disney now owns Marvel and is starting to message those characters as.

• 22:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 22:48Griffin Newman?

  These are ours, but you still are distributing them. Both of those movies do well. Not like absurdly well, but well. And then Disney spends an extraordinary amount of money, in my memory, it was $500 million, to buy Paramount out of Avengers and Iron Man 3.

• 23:06David Sims?

  That was, and that was a good deal by them.

• 23:08Griffin Newman?

  We can't wait, we just need it now. And Avengers comes out three months after this, two months after this, and just blows the doors off everything. And now it's just like, this, this is what the future is. It's over.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  I think it's, that's important context because, you know, you, we've already alluded to the marketing of John Carter.

• 23:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  That perhaps offers a potential explanation in that they're, they were already looking at the Avengers.

• 23:33Griffin Newman?

  There are a lot of.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  They're distracted.

• 23:35Griffin Newman?

  There are a lot of explanations for what went wrong in the marketing of this movie, but it was well, sort of discussed. By the time this movie was coming out, Disney didn't need this to be a franchise anymore. Cause what's the other thing that happened? In fall of 2011. Walt Disney completes its purchase of Lucasfilm.

• 23:56David Sims?

  That's, that is true.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  They really, they really, they made a couple of goodbyes.

• 24:01Griffin Newman?

  In 2011, Disney buys Marvel and Lucasfilm, and this movie is just kind of a dead man walking. I don't, I'm not saying they like, set it up to fail because there was so much money at stake that everyone would have been happier if this had been successful.

• 24:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 24:15Griffin Newman?

  But already, they were sort of like, we have the two surest bets in Hollywood.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 24:21Griffin Newman?

  This is not necessary, and this is coming at the end of a journey that brings you the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We can't let that franchise rest. We need another action franchise. Jack is back, right? Prince of Persia.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 24:37David Sims?

  Well, that.

• 24:38Griffin Newman?

  Drawn legacy.

• 24:39David Sims?

  I'm sorry.

• 24:39Griffin Newman?

  I was about.

• 24:40David Sims?

  The funniest thing Disney Plus did to me when I finished John Carter was shrink the credits and be like, and you're, are you ready for Prince of Persia? I was like, buddy, come on.

• 24:49Griffin Newman?

  But they really, and Lone Ranger.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Lone Ranger's the other one that comes after this. They're really looking for that audience. And they've, they've already, as you're saying, they have already acquired the two locks on that audience. They couldn't have any bigger lock on that audience. And so, yes, poor John Carter is going, what about me?

• 25:08Griffin Newman?

  They kept trying to launch or relaunch something, either their own IP that they had or pull IP from somewhere else that they thought had some history and some built-in audience. And then they just bought the two things where they were like, you did the work for us. You primed the pump, the audience is there, you made those movies. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

• 25:30David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 25:32Griffin Newman?

  It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and 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. Rarely has that intro applied more thoroughly to this, the filmmaker we're discussing and the film we're talking about today. Is a movie that feels like it has been fated to be discussed on this podcast from the moment we decided this is what the podcast was?

• 25:58David Sims?

  This movie bounced similar to how John Carter can jump.

• 26:02Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  Great point.

• 26:03David Sims?

  Like a big cleat.

• 26:04Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 26:06Griffin Newman?

  And it is a movie that has become like a historic signpost.

• 26:10David Sims?

  Historic signposts in terms of like where franchises went and where blockbusters went? Or?

• 26:15Griffin Newman?

  This is what I think is interesting to discuss. This movie's release was greeted with a sort of like, well, never again, lessons learned. And I would argue Hollywood continued to basically take the wrong lessons from this movie and also repeat its mistakes in a lot of ways. I think watching this movie now, a film I kind of defend and enjoy watching while not wholly successful. It does feel like the world is a little kinder to this film today in contrast because other movies have gotten so much sloppier.

• 26:52David Sims?

  I think that is fair.

• 26:53Griffin Newman?

  In trying to do the same thing.

• 26:54David Sims?

  I think it is a largely good looking movie, given this, what it's trying to accomplish, the scale of what it's working with. I do think it's an unsuccessful film. I think it is a, on paper, just like we stacked up all the little numbers here and it is not successful.

• 27:11Griffin Newman?

  Here is my, my one counterpoint.

• 27:13David Sims?

  Go ahead.

• 27:13Griffin Newman?

  I don't think this movie really like functions in the way it wants to. Even though it has moments, it has spurts, the engine will start up and then it will like sputter again. I do find this movie more cohesive in feeling kind of like there is a vision that is executed here versus what I'd say a lot of the similar franchise movies that we get today where the story is they reshoot all of this three times and you feel it.

• 27:42David Sims?

  What are you thinking of?

• 27:43Griffin Newman?

  I think like-

• 27:44David Sims?

  Like what are you holding it against here?

• 27:46Griffin Newman?

  Like basically every Marvel movie.

• 27:48David Sims?

  No, no, no, name some, name movies, name movies.

• 27:49Griffin Newman?

  I mean, Rise of Skywalker.

• 27:51David Sims?

  No, but okay, no, but that, that's different. Sequels to me, that's a different kind of mess. I mean, Rise of Skywalker, can someone please write the tell-all? Can we just get, or can everyone just sit down and be like, I'll admit it.

• 28:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 28:05David Sims?

  It was a completely different movie that was also bad.

• 28:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 28:08David Sims?

  And then we, we panicked and turned it into that movie. I know none of it makes sense. I'm fully aware. Like, you know what? Let's sit down and watch it and I'll pause and I'll tell you like, yep, this was shot one year after this and I know that, you know, like, that's completely, I'm trying to think of like the franchise star. All right. The movie I compared this to the entire time I was watching this time is Avatar.

• 28:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 28:28David Sims?

  Because it was basically just like Avatar makes none of the mistakes and this movie makes most of them.

• 28:34Griffin Newman?

  And it is crazy that this film bombed this hard coming out three years after Avatar and is kind of-

• 28:40David Sims?

  Really two years, because it's like, when you think about like December, March, so it's really just a couple of years. It's really still like in the wake of Avatar.

• 28:48Griffin Newman?

  It starts production before Avatar is released.

• 28:51David Sims?

  Right. It can't watch what they're doing. Not that copying James Cameron is easy or whatever.

• 28:57Griffin Newman?

  And I think basically any time in history, a movie is like an out of the box, out of the blue hit that big. And the studios rush to find the copycats. It doesn't work. You look at the wave of post Lord of the Rings.

• 29:07David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Griffin Newman?

  What else can we adapt? This shit doesn't work. But the fact that it was-

• 29:11David Sims?

  It's inevitable. Everyone's gonna try.

• 29:12Griffin Newman?

  A little parallel thinking and they had a movie that could have been sold as like, here's the thing that inspired Avatar. It's kind of like Avatar. A human guy goes to Earth and romances an alien.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  You can't find a, an interview with Andrew Stanton about this movie where either he doesn't mention Avatar or someone asks him about Avatar. It's just in the wind.

• 29:31David Sims?

  It's unavoidable.

• 29:31Griffin Newman?

  It's a high grossing film of all time when this movie's coming out.

• 29:34David Sims?

  A fucking guy going to a new planet where he doesn't know the rules of how it works.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And it's an epic romance and there's a war of civilizations.

• 29:43David Sims?

  And there's tall aliens that are another color.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. Oh, but what he will-

• 29:47David Sims?

  And there's animal, like space animals.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  And what he'll always say is that this Avatar was inspired by this.

• 29:53David Sims?

  No shit.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  True. This is so much their, their marketing and what he, his sales pitch to people was, everything you love is inspired by what I made.

• 30:03Griffin Newman?

  There's a great quote where, and we'll get into all the previous versions of this movie that almost happened and didn't, going all the way back to the 1940s. Robert Zemeckis, they tried to sell him on doing it for Disney, I think.

• 30:15David Sims?

  We will talk about the many.

• 30:17Griffin Newman?

  And he hadn't read the books and, and I believe either Katzenberg or Eisner gives him the book to, to read it over. And he gets back to them and he goes, I can't make this. Lucas already plundered everything good from it.

• 30:29David Sims?

  It's totally, makes total sense, of course. Like the inspirations, it's kind of like, dude. Was as well, where like, yeah, it's hard to crack it when it's already been like little bits have been taken out of it for all the movies we like.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  Their, it's their main argument for why they make this movie like an Andrew Stanton. And it is a flawed argument because, yes, it's already been, yes, stripped mined for everything that's good. And just because something is the first, does not necessarily make it the best, especially when it's made as early as this is in the history of this kind of story.

• 31:01Griffin Newman?

  Iteration that is helpful.

• 31:04David Sims?

  If any of us, I know Ben's read all of the Barstow series.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:07David Sims?

  Have you ever read the?

• 31:09Speaker 05

  I've read the first book.

• 31:10David Sims?

  Right.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  Which is an iconic sci fi work. Sure.

• 31:14David Sims?

  Like, but in that way of like, you read it and you're like, it's so interesting how ideas were generated here that get built on by other works and all that stuff.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  But it's also pretty rough.

• 31:25David Sims?

  It's a little rough.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  And a little weird. There's not a lot of a, a story.

• 31:31David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Which this movie struggles with that by grafting on this, you know, certain elements, which I would assume, having not read the later books, are in the later books.

• 31:41David Sims?

  I don't know that they are. They might be a little bit invented.

• 31:44Griffin Newman?

  Pretty invented.

• 31:45David Sims?

  Yes.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  I mean, the therns, another silly word that we're gonna have to say a lot.

• 31:49David Sims?

  I'm gonna say it every two minutes.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Are in later books. They are not in the original book. The ninth ray, which is a, a not silly word, but it sounds silly when they say it a lot.

• 32:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  The ninth ray, that in the book is not a, now in this movie, it is like a all, it's like a all consuming death ray.

• 32:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  Can do anything. And in the book, again, maybe in later books, it becomes that. In the first book, it is kind of a MacGuffin of there's a artificial atmosphere on Mars and the ninth ray is what creates air inside an atmosphere factory. These are all things that they took out of, of the movie.

• 32:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  But that is not this like laser that you can zap at people and a magical like glow, like glow.

• 32:40David Sims?

  The powers are too powerful. I was really struggling with that thing.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  This is another huge-

• 32:44David Sims?

  It's like, can you do anything with this thing?

• 32:46Speaker 05

  This is a huge problem with this movie.

• 32:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Is that they, they made it, that's a story about, uh, shape shifting weirdos.

• 32:54David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 05

  Who have an all powerful ray which can kill anyone instantly. And the alternate force has a guy who can jump really high.

• 33:04Griffin Newman?

  It's-

• 33:04Speaker 05

  And people are so excited to get John Carter on their side. Like, literally, there's a scene where like, where, uh, Tars Tarkas is accusing Deja Tho. She's like, "You want this weapon for yourself, but he fights for the Tharks." And you're going, he's, it's like, he's literally a guy who can jump high.

• 33:22Griffin Newman?

  He can jump away from battle.

• 33:23David Sims?

  He can jump high.

• 33:24Griffin Newman?

  He can jump-

• 33:25David Sims?

  And I guess he can kill like 1,000 people if they try to hurt him?

• 33:28Griffin Newman?

  If he remembers his dead wife.

• 33:30David Sims?

  Yes, right. If he remembers burying, uh, family.

• 33:33Griffin Newman?

  It's the opposite of a mother gaining strength when her child is in danger.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 33:37Griffin Newman?

  He can, he can get stronger if he remembers-

• 33:40Speaker 05

  This is another thing that's not in the books.

• 33:42Griffin Newman?

  The family he didn't protect.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  Totally invented for the movie is to give him a tragic Hollywood backstory of, "My wife and child were killed and so, and I'm, and I no longer want to fight."

• 33:52David Sims?

  Right. He doesn't have a cause.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  In the books, he doesn't, right, in the movie, yeah. In the book, he not only doesn't have a tragic backstory, he's like, and this is another thing that's in the book that is not in the movie, is like, he's almost like a Highlander. He's like immortal. He talks about how like, "I don't remember my childhood. I've always been 30 years old." "I am as old as, uh, you know, like, I, I can't age. I've watched other people."

• 34:14David Sims?

  Maybe that gets addressed later.

• 34:15Griffin Newman?

  But it's also, look, it's like the Superman thing, right? Where when the character is created, the pitch of, "What if a guy was so fucking awesome?" Was all you needed to get people to lean in? And then Superman, over decades, is iterated to become more relatable.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:31David Sims?

  Totally, right. Let's give him a childhood. Let's give him family. Let's make this make sense.

• 34:35Griffin Newman?

  And John Carter is still kind of stuck in his original state, which is just, "What if a guy fucking ruled?"

• 34:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:42Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't need anything going on inside of him.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  And again, in the Burroughs book, he's, he's a warrior. He can jump. He is strong because of the density of his bones and the Martian whatever, but he's fighting- Other people with swords. It's like, you know, it's like, what if we drop this super cool warrior into the middle of a giant battle? Okay. But in the movie, they're like, what if that was happening, but also there was death rays? It's like, again, it's just, it's not, it's not even a knife to a gunfight. It's a guy with good legs at a death laser fight.

• 35:12Griffin Newman?

  There's stuff where I'm like, he was making the right choices and he didn't get all the way there. In terms of like, okay, so how do you give this like an emotional spine? In the books, John Carter fights for the South and he's a good soldier. And he's like, well, I can't build a fucking 250 million dollar Disney movie around a like loyal Confederate, right? So let me make it that he fought for the South, but it was against his will. And he like defected and was fighting against them. So then it kind of neutralizes him. Well, why is that the case? Because he lost his family in the war, so he's become so disillusioned. Oh, that means he doesn't want to fight. So once he gets to Barsoom, he's reluctant and you're like, we're getting there.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it could work. It's not a terrible idea. I just, yeah.

• 36:02David Sims?

  I'm sorry, I'm browsing the Encyclopedia Barsoomia right now, which is of course the name of the John Carter Wiki.

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 36:08David Sims?

  Um, but yes.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Did you have to drink magic liquid?

• 36:11David Sims?

  I do to.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  To understand it, to comprehend. We all did. Yeah, that's, oh, that's what was in there. Now we're speaking Barsoomian.

• 36:19David Sims?

  The Therns I don't, I think are very different in the books.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 36:24David Sims?

  They are, oh, they're not in the first book.

• 36:25Speaker 05

  They're not in it at all, no.

• 36:26David Sims?

  They're introduced later, but they are more just kind of like an old, you know, kind of like ancient Greek style. I think like the, the original civilization of Mars. There's also black Martians.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  There's other races of Martians.

• 36:41David Sims?

  Here I feel like we have like green and red, right?

• 36:44Speaker 05

  That's basically it. And they mentioned, yeah, and they mentioned the white apes, which I, I, I guess are the, the thing he fights in the arena.

• 36:51David Sims?

  Those are the big guy, the big monsters.

• 36:52Speaker 05

  But they're not that important to the, to the story.

• 36:55David Sims?

  Um, but the idea that they're like interstellar caretakers, that's not in the books.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  It's at least not in the first one at all, for sure.

• 37:02David Sims?

  According to the Encyclopedia Barsoomia. Disney film invention.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Okay. So are the books still relevant?

• 37:09David Sims?

  What do you mean by relevant? I mean, they're relevant to my life. I try to live my life by their teachings.

• 37:14Griffin Newman?

  They're relevant historically. This is a lot of what this movie came up against is like Andrew Stanton was pushing really hard to be like, this is the definitive text.

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 37:24Griffin Newman?

  Like, all modern sci-fi adventure storytelling comes from this.

• 37:28David Sims?

  Which is true.

• 37:29Griffin Newman?

  And the notion of-

• 37:30Speaker 05

  It's not wrong.

• 37:31Griffin Newman?

  The notion of making this, it's not even like Dune where it's like they've never gotten it right. It was no one has ever succeeded in getting to the starting line of making a movie about this. So it's gonna be greeted with such excitement of they're finally fucking doing it.

• 37:45David Sims?

  Right.

• 37:45Griffin Newman?

  And what he overstated was-

• 37:46Speaker 05

  But by who?

• 37:47Griffin Newman?

  Exactly.

• 37:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 37:48David Sims?

  Well, there you go.

• 37:49Griffin Newman?

  That's the problem. So by the time-

• 37:50David Sims?

  That was the problem they ran into.

• 37:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 37:52Speaker 05

  But yeah, I just like, is this like a thing that sci-fi fans are like-

• 37:58Griffin Newman?

  This starts out as a story serialized in Pulp magazines in 1912. So the movie is coming out 100 years after it is published.

• 38:07David Sims?

  This is dusty. It's a lot-

• 38:09Speaker 05

  And look like Dune is dusty, but this is dusty.

• 38:12David Sims?

  Very dusty.

• 38:13Griffin Newman?

  I think their notion was, everyone's waiting for this. And in reality, what it had become was, this is the thing that all of the people who made the sci-fi you actually like grew up reading.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 38:25Griffin Newman?

  And to general audiences, this only is really of interest to like hard-

• 38:31David Sims?

  Big nerds.

• 38:31Griffin Newman?

  Core-

• 38:32David Sims?

  Old people, I guess.

• 38:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I'd say like, in modern audiences, it was like, if you are a voracious reader and you're really interested in the history of science fiction and being able to like, retrace the threads back to the beginning.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  It's sort of like, it's like saying to someone, this is the video game that inspired it all, and then making someone play Pong in 2026. It's like, okay.

• 38:55David Sims?

  Well, but like-

• 38:55Speaker 05

  It's historically important, but would I-

• 38:57David Sims?

  An updated Pong with like some backstory.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  Right, right. Or would I rather play that or would I rather play my Playstation? I think I have a clear choice.

• 39:05David Sims?

  You knew the ball in Pong had a family that died.

• 39:08Griffin Newman?

  It's like making the Pong-

• 39:10Speaker 05

  Keep going.

• 39:11Griffin Newman?

  It's like making the Pong movie based off the logic of- Did you see how much money Super Mario Galaxy just made?

• 39:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:18Griffin Newman?

  That wasn't even the first video game.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  Well, we're gonna make Pong.

• 39:22David Sims?

  I love the work of Bruce Koval. I bring it up on this podcast a lot. The young adult author who did like Aliens, Did My Homework?

• 39:30Griffin Newman?

  Totally.

• 39:31David Sims?

  My Teacher, Funk the Planet and all that shit. And he references John Carter of Mars in those books and it's clearly was an inspiration for him.

• 39:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:38David Sims?

  And I would, as a kid, read that and he'd be like, yeah, and like, you know, my character, the character would be like, I love John Carter books. Like, the guy who wrote Tarzan, where they don't be like, that's interesting.

• 39:48David Sims?

  Never wanted to read them. You know what I mean? Never like, I knew they existed, but I was never like, I should pluck those off the shelves.

• 39:54Griffin Newman?

  I absolutely plucked it off the shelf.

• 39:56David Sims?

  You plucked it.

• 39:56Griffin Newman?

  And was like, this is dense. I can't get into this.

• 39:59David Sims?

  Right, because it's like a, it's like an early 1900s serial novel. I mean, like, I haven't read the fucking Tarzan books either.

• 40:05Griffin Newman?

  No, but Tarzan as a cultural idea persists in a way that John Carter doesn't.

• 40:10David Sims?

  And you'll be in our heart.

• 40:11Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely. That's the thing. Like, how many people are reading Tarzan books today? I don't know, but everyone knows what Tarzan is. And John Carter only exists as like, the thing that he influenced in the public consciousness.

• 40:24David Sims?

  I feel like we must open the dossier just because there is reams of context to dig through.

• 40:29Griffin Newman?

  On this one, I suppose it's gonna be a short dossier. There's not much.

• 40:31David Sims?

  JJ wants to shout out at the top of the dossier because he used so much stuff. There's a Drew Taylor piece in March 2022.

• 40:39Griffin Newman?

  The 10-year anniversary.

• 40:40David Sims?

  That went through everything in the anniversary. There's also a TadFren profile of Stanton.

• 40:44Griffin Newman?

  Second act twist.

• 40:46David Sims?

  In October 2011, that's like, leading up to the release of John Carter.

• 40:50Griffin Newman?

  Cannot strongly enough, and this is the only time I feel like I'm actually issuing homework to our listeners.

• 40:56David Sims?

  Read the TadFren thing?

• 40:58Griffin Newman?

  It is worth reading both of these things in full. We will pull out strands of them.

• 41:02David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Griffin Newman?

  But the one piece is as the movie's about to come out. And it's sort of talking about Stanton's history, his success up until this point, the trepidation from Disney. You know, it's right at the crossroads, right before the thing finally like, implodes. And then the 10 years later piece has people speaking very openly in retrospect about everything that happened.

• 41:23David Sims?

  We'll have links to both articles in the episode description.

• 41:25Griffin Newman?

  But both really well-written, thorough pieces.

• 41:27David Sims?

  Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author who goes best with, you know. Chicken.

• 41:33Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 41:34David Sims?

  Maybe a steak, if you want steak and rice, you know.

• 41:36Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, call him Ned.

• 41:39David Sims?

  Call him Ned.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  I thought you were talking about the character in this motion picture.

• 41:42David Sims?

  Oh, what a great character, played by the great Daryl Sabara.

• 41:45Griffin Newman?

  Can I reveal something?

• 41:45David Sims?

  The spy kid, please. Did you audition for this?

• 41:47Griffin Newman?

  I did. We gotta put it in the canon. This is, this is a movie covered on the show that I auditioned for.

• 41:51David Sims?

  Has Sabara beaten you out for multiple roles? I feel like that's come up before.

• 41:54Griffin Newman?

  Oh, boy, that's a good question. Let me look it up while you continue through the dossier. This is the only one I reme- Oh, no, he got the part in fucking It's Complicated.

• 42:02David Sims?

  That's what I was thinking about, yeah.

• 42:03Griffin Newman?

  That then was cut out.

• 42:03David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 42:04Griffin Newman?

  But the one I auditioned for like four times.

• 42:06David Sims?

  That part was Nemesis.

• 42:07Griffin Newman?

  It was, that was-

• 42:08David Sims?

  It was too complicated.

• 42:09Griffin Newman?

  It was very complicated. There was a whole extended scene at the beginning of It's Complicated that was Meryl Streep hits it off with a guy in a dating app and then she goes and it's a high school student.

• 42:19David Sims?

  Which is a good, good gag, like, yeah, and it was Daryl Sabara was the ultimate.

• 42:23Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Filming of the movie was pushed back twice because Nancy couldn't find the right casting for that role and the entire thing was removed.

• 42:31David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 42:31Griffin Newman?

  But yes, I auditioned for that role multiple times.

• 42:33David Sims?

  1912, he releases, uh, there are stories called Under the Moons of Mars and the magazine All-Star Story, then collected as the novel The Princess of Mars in 1917, published after Tarzan, uh, the success of Tarzan.

• 42:47Griffin Newman?

  It's kind of his blank check project.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  The story, I think, is before.

• 42:50David Sims?

  The story's before, the novel is after.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  The novel is after.

• 42:52Griffin Newman?

  Cause it starts serialized.

• 42:53David Sims?

  He writes like the first- Ten more novels in the Barsoom series after that, yes.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  I was just gonna say, I think this is the first thing he ever wrote. He was like, he had other odd jobs.

• 43:03David Sims?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  And then, uh, Princess of Mars in the serialized form was his first thing he wrote.

• 43:09David Sims?

  I mean, he wrote so many other fantasy series that I don't know much about. Like, there's the Pel- Pel- Pelucidar, which is like in a Hollow Earth kinda series. There's this thing called, uh, the Venus series, which is kinda like, you know. You hit it with Mars, next stop Venus, right? Like, I haven't read those. So, 1931, Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett.

• 43:34Griffin Newman?

  Legend.

• 43:34David Sims?

  A true legend, so much that even I've heard of him.

• 43:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 43:39David Sims?

  Is like, what if we turn these into a cartoon? The Barsoom books, like, they're so popular. And they create test footage a year before the release of Snow White?

• 43:47Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 43:47David Sims?

  That freaks people out and like, doesn't get turned into a feature.

• 43:51Griffin Newman?

  It's really realistic. The footage is amazing.

• 43:54David Sims?

  Cause it, is it like, rotoscopes? They were like, drawing off of live action stuff, right?

• 43:59Griffin Newman?

  Snow White uses a lot of rotoscoping.

• 44:01David Sims?

  Right.

• 44:01Griffin Newman?

  Like, the early Disney princess movies, until they start getting more stylized with like, Sleeping Beauty and such. Most of the human characters would be rotoscoped. And then, you know, the animals and the dwarves and everything were more stylized. It looks unbelievable.

• 44:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Griffin Newman?

  It was kind of so technically ahead of what anyone was doing at the time. And it's one of those things, since it was before Snow White, where you're like, if that's completed, does it kind of change the trajectory of animation to some degree? Because you have the 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s run, that also I feel like is relevant to this movie of like Atlantis, Treasure Planet.

• 44:39David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Pulp-y, serial sci-fi.

• 44:42Griffin Newman?

  Can we use animation to make cool shit for boys?

• 44:44David Sims?

  Yeah, with like a sort of a steampunk.

• 44:46Griffin Newman?

  How do we break out of it just being princess musicals? And it is, like, 2D animation because of Snow White and the impact becomes princess musicals and talking animals primarily is what is thought of. But yes, the Clampett tests are unbelievable.

• 45:00David Sims?

  They're very cool. You can check out, uh, in YouTube, there's little bits and pieces.

• 45:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 45:06David Sims?

  Very cool.

• 45:06Griffin Newman?

  Bob Clampett, just want to shout out, created Beanie and Cecil, which is one of my favorite cartoon shows as a kid, an old dusty cartoon show that was based on what used to be a local TV puppet show he did when he was young. And the Clampett family, like, puts out Beanie and Cecil DVD compilations, because I think they own the rights. And that's how I first found out that he tried to do John Carter, because the DVD just had like 30 minutes of John Carter shit in the special features, including those tests.

• 45:34David Sims?

  Ray Harryhausen in the 50s supposedly expressed some interest in like a stop motion bar scene thing.

• 45:38Griffin Newman?

  Makes perfect sense.

• 45:39David Sims?

  Does make sense.

• 45:40Griffin Newman?

  Seems like his kind of thing.

• 45:41David Sims?

  Also never really gained much momentum. My guess is that every time, like the enormous amount of money would be required, even for something animated or stop, people would just kind of be like, I think this is too weird.

• 45:50Griffin Newman?

  This is what sells it until Stanton does it, but you look at like, animation's the only way you could do this. You couldn't do it in live action, right? They missed the window for animation. Now the idea of doing a serious, realistic action movie in animation is unfathomable in the 30s, 40s, 50s, right? Harryhausen creates, you know, his style of stop motion special effects and how to blend it with live action. Okay, this makes sense. This is a way you could possibly adapt these. He can't crack it. And now it's like, on the table again until effects evolve in the 80s.

• 46:22David Sims?

  Right. In the 80s, right, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vanya, the Karolko guys, bring it to Disney.

• 46:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 46:29David Sims?

  Katzenberg is young at Disney.

• 46:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 46:31David Sims?

  He wants to do it. The Fly is Charles Pogue and Tales from the Crypts, Terry Black. These are screenwriters. Take a shot. Katzenberg basically is like, we want this to be our Star Wars.

• 46:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And this is Katzenberg and Eisner coming in after Disney has had the failed run of Black Hole, Tron, etc.

• 46:51David Sims?

  Right. Black says, you know, they wanted the story to be dramatic. The book has this very leisurely pace. And, you know, we just clashed a lot over like, how much of the book do you throw out? Ted Elliott and Terry Rosio, who are like kings of Disney in the 90s, they took a crack at it. John McTernan.

• 47:09Griffin Newman?

  And Tom Cruise.

• 47:10David Sims?

  Starts circling in 1990, brings in Bob Gale.

• 47:13Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:14David Sims?

  Gale's then replaced by Sam Resnick, who had written a TV Robin Hood that McTernan had produced.

• 47:20Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 47:21David Sims?

  Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts were supposedly courted to star. I don't know how intensely involved they were.

• 47:28Griffin Newman?

  But in 1990, the pitch of Zemeckis, Gale, Roberts, Cruise makes perfect sense. You can like imagine the alternate reality.

• 47:38David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Griffin Newman?

  Where that movie exists.

• 47:40David Sims?

  Definitely. But McTernan wisely and quickly is like, this is just too expensive. We can't pull this off yet. And then very wisely is like, I'll make Last Action Hero.

• 47:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 47:52David Sims?

  That'll go. That'll go great for me.

• 47:53Griffin Newman?

  That one will be easy.

• 47:55David Sims?

  Karol Kogos bankrupt, then Jim Jax, James Jax, Kevin Smith's buddy.

• 48:01Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 48:01David Sims?

  And we've talked on this podcast.

• 48:02Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 48:03David Sims?

  And Harry Knowles.

• 48:05Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:05David Sims?

  Who I guess is a huge fan of this.

• 48:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and in his biography, kept talking about what an influence it was for him.

• 48:11David Sims?

  He like beats the drum for it.

• 48:13Griffin Newman?

  And this is when Harry Knowles is still seen as.

• 48:15David Sims?

  He's got the nerd touch.

• 48:17Speaker 05

  He has the magic touch.

• 48:18David Sims?

  He can see what they want.

• 48:19Griffin Newman?

  Beyond the idea that he's a kingmaker, there was this thing of if Harry Knowles is saying it, does it mean that there are millions of silent nerds we don't realize are dying for this movie?

• 48:28Speaker 05

  He speaks for the internet.

• 48:29Griffin Newman?

  This starts to create the false sense, Ben, to your earlier question of are people waiting for this film?

• 48:35Speaker 05

  Who wants this?

• 48:36Griffin Newman?

  No, but like, do we not realize it that everyone wants this?

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 48:40Griffin Newman?

  So, yes, Jim Jax.

• 48:42David Sims?

  Jim Jax brings in Mark Protosovich, I think is his name, the guy who wrote The Cell. He's kind of like a hot guy back then. Robert Rodriguez is gonna direct it. Robert Rodriguez has resigned from the DGA because of Sin City.

• 48:56Griffin Newman?

  And, and let's call out, here's the other technological breakthrough. They're like, oh.

• 48:59David Sims?

  He wants to do his Sin City thing with it.

• 49:01Griffin Newman?

  Green screen. Is this a way to make this fucking work now? Can you do green screen stylized, build an extensive world without having to build crazy sets? And photorealistic aliens or whatever?

• 49:14David Sims?

  Paramount doesn't want to work with him for this reason. He's not in the DGA.

• 49:17Griffin Newman?

  So they fire him and who makes sense is the obvious next choice.

• 49:20David Sims?

  We'll get to him, but I do want to note the thing that Matt said already of they do throw it, Jax does throw it to Zemeckis and Zemeckis does say the thing of like George plundered these.

• 49:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 49:28David Sims?

  Like, there's nothing left. So then, yes, Carrie Connery.

• 49:31Griffin Newman?

  Carrie Connery, Ben, of course, you know.

• 49:33David Sims?

  Ben loves Carrie Connery. No, he doesn't know.

• 49:35Griffin Newman?

  What's your favorite Carrie Connery film?

• 49:37Speaker 05

  What's up?

• 49:39Griffin Newman?

  Carrie Connery.

• 49:40Speaker 05

  The look of fear.

• 49:40Griffin Newman?

  Is a man who has directed one and only one film and is a movie called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

• 49:46David Sims?

  Have you heard of it? No. Gay!

• 49:48Speaker 05

  I'm shocked.

• 49:49David Sims?

  Uh, it was a green screen, all green screen movie, Ben. It was like the future. People were like, you don't need sets anymore.

• 49:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 49:55David Sims?

  Couple movie stars, a bunch of crazy visual effects.

• 49:58Griffin Newman?

  He got like Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. For a week, he shot it in like a warehouse in Texas.

• 50:05David Sims?

  Right.

• 50:05Griffin Newman?

  And-

• 50:06David Sims?

  It's like a steampunk art deco, like 30s sort of-

• 50:10Speaker 05

  Is this the Ghost of Laurence Olivier, who also shows up?

• 50:13Griffin Newman?

  It's a movie I have a tremendous fondness for. It is unbelievably boring, but weirdly compelling.

• 50:17David Sims?

  I find it so boring.

• 50:18Griffin Newman?

  It's so boring. It is so boring. I've been using it recently, I said this to you in a text. I've been using it to help my, help myself fall asleep.

• 50:25David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Griffin Newman?

  And it's really effective on that front.

• 50:28David Sims?

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's used by hospitals around the world for that.

• 50:31Griffin Newman?

  But it like looks gorgeous.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  TNCs of Sky Captain, stat.

• 50:35Griffin Newman?

  It's basically like, what if you made a 1940s movie with CGI? It's trying to be sort of like melodramatic, and it's like an old school version of the future. But it is deathly boring. But when it was, it was a independently produced short film.

• 50:50David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh, one producer's like, fuck, this is the future. He bankrolls, I think it was John Avnet? Bankrolls it.

• 50:57David Sims?

  Sure.

• 50:57Griffin Newman?

  They then sell it to Paramount later off of like test footage. But he'd already gotten the actors, because part of the pitch was like, I only need a couple million dollars upfront to get the actors for a week, to do the green screen stage. We'll do some of the animation, we'll show it to people, they'll give us the money to finish it. Paramount is like, this is the future of movies. You can just do it in an afternoon.

• 51:19David Sims?

  Digital backlog.

• 51:19Griffin Newman?

  And it bombs-

• 51:20Speaker 05

  You just have to sit in this chair with like an old timey hat on your head.

• 51:23Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  That's your whole part.

• 51:24David Sims?

  Your performance definitely won't seem disengaged.

• 51:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Um, but it is a movie that bombs really hard. And this guy, before its release, is announced as he's gonna direct John Carter, which makes perfect sense. They're like, here's another kind of like retro futuristic thing. And he figured out this way to make it cheaper. And a lot of it is like him and his buddies and his brother, who know how to do the effects themselves. Uh, and he's on the movie for a while, and then when he falls off at this film, he's like never discussed again.

• 51:53David Sims?

  No, that's the end of him. I mean, he's still around, I assume.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, what hap-

• 51:58David Sims?

  It goes to Jon Favreau after that, who brings in Mark Fergus, who wrote Children of Men.

• 52:03Griffin Newman?

  Favreau changes the whole.

• 52:03David Sims?

  Favreau makes a ton of sense for it.

• 52:06Griffin Newman?

  Favreau is similar to Rodriguez, like, I'm ready to make my big tent pole epic. I want to make my, my serious kind of blockbuster adventure film.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  And he supposedly loves it like Stanton. He likes, he's obsessed with the books.

• 52:18Griffin Newman?

  I wanted to do it forever. And he's starting to swing back to like, guys, we're not doing fucking virtual backlog shit. We're building sets.

• 52:25David Sims?

  He wants practical makeup. He wants, yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  This is a director aspiration to eventually do the epic, right?

• 52:34Griffin Newman?

  That's a thing.

• 52:34David Sims?

  Yeah. And then you want to make your Cubano.

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  No, but all these guys are like, I want to make my Star Wars. The way I felt seeing Star Wars as a child and my world exploded. Can I make my version of that for the next generation? Can I complete the circle? And it makes a lot of sense that for many of these guys, they're like, can I do that also with the book that made me feel that way when I read it?

• 52:57Speaker 03

  Right. But this has also got the sword and sandal thing.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  It does indeed.

• 53:01David Sims?

  It's old school.

• 53:02Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  It does indeed.

• 53:04David Sims?

  His script combines the first three books, Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, The Warlords of Mars.

• 53:09Griffin Newman?

  Which those were gonna be Stanton's three movies in his trilogy.

• 53:12David Sims?

  Sounds great.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  Which he was definitely going to make, too. He talks a lot about that.

• 53:18David Sims?

  Development slows, Jon Favreau decides to make Iron Man. Okay, good luck with that. A man made of iron?

• 53:24Griffin Newman?

  He's just like, this is stalled out.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  How does he even jump?

• 53:29Griffin Newman?

  But truly, like Paramount is just like dragging their feet on giving him a green light. And he's like, I want to make something. And like the Iron Man, like, sort of beacon lights up the sky. And he goes off and does that. And it's the most successful version of what he wanted to do.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 53:45David Sims?

  Now.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  And he levels up big time.

• 53:47David Sims?

  Andrew Stanton, as we've mentioned on this podcast, a very serious father, who's like a basically a rocket scientist, defense department, like radar guy. He was into like old, hard sci-fi stuff and gave his son John Carter novels, among other things. Stanton grew up loving these books. You know, in high school, he said his friend. Would call them his romance novels, like he was always reading his John Carter books.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  He was supposedly a fan of the Marvel comic. That was how he first discovered it, the seventies John Carter Warlord of Mars comic from Marvel that came out for a couple of years. And is like all set in the, in the space of the first book. It's sort of like the continuing adventures of John Carter.

• 54:30Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. It's a good looking book.

• 54:33David Sims?

  A track record lineup.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  I read a little, I had never read it myself. It's kind of before my time and hasn't been reprinted really. But I, I tracked down some and then read a little bit before we did this and it's, you know, it's fun. I could see the, uh, the appeal. But then, and then he kind of, yeah, then he discovered the books and became.

• 54:50David Sims?

  He was into the books?

• 54:51Speaker 05

  I know he was into the books and then, and, and I guess this is 1977 and it's right around when Star Wars comes out.

• 54:57David Sims?

  That's true.

• 54:57Griffin Newman?

  So he's discovering the book before Star Wars.

• 55:00David Sims?

  It was good.

• 55:00Speaker 05

  He's, yes.

• 55:01Griffin Newman?

  It probably, he probably liked it.

• 55:03David Sims?

  I like this, he thinks, watching Star Wars at the age of 12.

• 55:06Speaker 05

  But just when you're talking about filmmakers seeing this and going, I want to make my Star Wars and it's going to be this. For him, they're like inextricably linked from the beginning in his mind.

• 55:16Griffin Newman?

  He has both awakenings, maybe within the same year.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  It's a, yes, it's literally a stretch of like six months or something.

• 55:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's like the way your fetishes develop, you know, it's like these things just imprinted on him simultaneously.

• 55:38Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 55:39David Sims?

  Yes.

• 55:39Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 55:42David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's cow?

• 55:44Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's cow is back.

• 55:45David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 55:46Griffin Newman?

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

• 55:51David Sims?

  Okay.

• 55:52Griffin Newman?

  And she's excited for the streaming debut of teenage sex and death at Camp Miasma.

• 55:56David Sims?

  Wow.

• 55:57Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 55:59David Sims?

  Remember Cow and Chicken? Let's look it up while you tell the great listeners about the great stuff on movie.

• 56:06Griffin 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, one of my favorite movies of the year.

• 56:19David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 56:20Griffin Newman?

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

• 56:26David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 56:27Griffin Newman?

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

• 56:30David Sims?

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

• 56:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 56:36David Sims?

  This movie rocks. It's got, of course, it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Legends, and I tip my cap, but Zach Cherry.

• 56:44Griffin Newman?

  Friend of the show.

• 56:45David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 56:46Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 56:47David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 56:48Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 56:49David Sims?

  Such a cool movie. Won the Queer Pal McCann. 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.

• 56:59Griffin 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.

• 57:13David Sims?

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

• 57:17Griffin Newman?

  What happens? It's, 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.

• 57:30David Sims?

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

• 57:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 57:47David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 57:53Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 57:54David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 57:54Griffin Newman?

  It's not cuffing season for me, it's hosi season for me. And this year, that meant finally upgrading my new mattress from Lisa.

• 58:02David Sims?

  Lisa.

• 58:03Griffin Newman?

  It's supportive, comfortable, and just what my body needs after a long day. It makes crawling into bed on a chilly fall night feel like luxury.

• 58:10David Sims?

  Yeah, I have a Lisa too. They've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep.

• 58:16Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:17David Sims?

  Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. They've got eco-friendly materials.

• 58:23Griffin Newman?

  Maybe you hear eco-friendly and you go, oh, but I'm gonna sacrifice comfort.

• 58:27David Sims?

  No.

• 58:28Griffin Newman?

  Nope.

• 58:28David Sims?

  They've been awarded best hybrid and best memory foam mattresses by New York Times' Wirecutter. They're featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. And they work with local nonprofits across the US to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need. Over 43,000 mattresses donated to date. Go to leesa.com for up to 30% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code BLANKCHECK. Exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BLANKCHECK for up to 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BLANKCHECK.

• 59:16Griffin Newman?

  David.

• 59:16David Sims?

  Yes.

• 59:17Griffin Newman?

  Shop.com is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash.

• 59:21David Sims?

  Wow. Shop has all the stores you love and lets you track every order in one spot.

• 59:26Griffin Newman?

  I love that. It's very convenient.

• 59:28David Sims?

  And now, 1,000 shoppers are each gonna win $1,000 in Shop Cash just in time for the holidays.

• 59:35Griffin Newman?

  You get gifts for everyone on your list, or get yourself something a little merry and bright. Find exactly what you're looking for at shop.com.

• 59:43David Sims?

  Uh, got stocking stuffers, maybe the sickest luxury items. Cookware to kicks, toys to high tech, even tinsel and tree toppers. Type in what you're looking for to instantly search every shop at once. Okay, that's shop.com. You can just go click around, find brands you love, search across all the stores, track every order in one spot.

• 1:00:07Griffin Newman?

  From cult favorites to the world's biggest brands, score suite deals and check out fast all at shop.com. Enter to win the $1 million shop cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 1:00:40David Sims?

  While he's making Wally, he's like, which you spent five fucking years making an animated movie or whatever. He's like, I don't have an idea for another animated movie. I feel a little stuck. But he does kind of know that John Carter is floating around there.

• 1:00:55Griffin Newman?

  Paramount's basically, yeah, about to let the rights lapse.

• 1:00:59David Sims?

  Yes. Favreau departs.

• 1:01:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02David Sims?

  And Stanton sort of swoops in and pitches them like, look, I got nothing to lose here. I don't need another paycheck right now. You know what I mean? Like, he's like, he's got the kind of, the swagger of like, I think also like, it's about to fall into the public domain at this point, maybe. Like, we're getting to, you know.

• 1:01:18Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's, it's close. It's like, if you don't start making one now, then anyone could make one. But it also means like, this is the last moment where you have to pay a bunch of money to make one before it doesn't cost anything. I think his, his point is sort of like, if this goes into the public domain, Asylum is going to make a $2 million version of this tomorrow. They will flood the zone, right?

• 1:01:39David Sims?

  They did do that.

• 1:01:40Griffin Newman?

  But he's making this pitch to Disney where he goes to like the higher ups of Disney and basically says, there's a jump ball here to take the final crack at doing the definitive origin of American sci-fi correctly.

• 1:01:53David Sims?

  Yeah, he's saying to them like this could be serious.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56David Sims?

  You know.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Well, he says, you should get it. And I would, I'm so serious, I would even do it.

• 1:02:00Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  And he's, you know, he's already kind of, I guess he hasn't, like, Wally hasn't come out at this point.

• 1:02:06Griffin Newman?

  But Finding Nemo.

• 1:02:07Speaker 05

  But Finding Nemo is a huge.

• 1:02:08Griffin Newman?

  The highest grossing film Disney had ever released.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  Right. So that's an appealing.

• 1:02:12Griffin Newman?

  Holds a lot of weight. And, you know, even if they don't know that Wally is gonna work, Wally is good.

• 1:02:18David Sims?

  Indeed, they are interested. They want him happy, as he says. One might even say he has a bit of a blank track.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  I was, I was.

• 1:02:25Griffin Newman?

  A little bit.

• 1:02:25Speaker 05

  My mind.

• 1:02:26Griffin Newman?

  I would say so.

• 1:02:26David Sims?

  Um, Zemeckis, of course, as we said, had said, like, I think George Lucas kind of picked this clean. Things like Conan the Barbarian are cited as, you know, being influenced by it. This film, I've mentioned it already, Avatar.

• 1:02:41Griffin Newman?

  Avatar.

• 1:02:42David Sims?

  Um, Stanton does not agree. He says, no one's copied it. It's just inspired things. Like, it's, you know, there's plenty of meat on the bone.

• 1:02:50Griffin Newman?

  He's a little right in that the exact mix of the elements has not been brought to screen. Like, you bringing up the swords and sandals thing.

• 1:02:58David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Griffin Newman?

  That's the trickiest part of the equation, but if you can pull off that juxtaposition, rather than pick the elements clean and like, separate them.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  And you haven't seen a lot of guys jumping like this, be honest.

• 1:03:10David Sims?

  Yeah, but you know what, though? I really kept thinking about Attack of the Clones.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15David Sims?

  Which has, obviously the Jedis do be jumping like fleas.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  Genosis.

• 1:03:19David Sims?

  And has like.

• 1:03:19Griffin Newman?

  Feels very Barzum.

• 1:03:21David Sims?

  Stuff, the sort of like, the fighting pits, the weird creatures.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  Creature.

• 1:03:25David Sims?

  You know, like, it does kind of feel like we've seen this before. Now, that doesn't mean this movie can't be a hit.

• 1:03:30Griffin Newman?

  But Attack of the Clones is fully 10 years before. I mean, this is, this is why I fucking stick up for Attack of the Clones.

• 1:03:36David Sims?

  Me too, I like Attack of the Clones.

• 1:03:37Griffin Newman?

  So strange as like, his swords and sandals epic, also his noir homage. Like, he just takes three different genres he likes and is like, what if I can fucking like backstop them into Star Wars in a middle chapter?

• 1:03:50David Sims?

  They don't hang together perfectly.

• 1:03:51Griffin Newman?

  No, they don't hang together.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  Unlike John Carter.

• 1:03:53Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's like a closet where you open someone's closet up and you're like, what is your sense of fashion?

• 1:03:58David Sims?

  Hawaiian shirts and tuxedos. This is weird. But I mean, look, Attack of the Clones obviously just has like the most hard boiled incredible narrative and like the kind of, characters like Dexter Jester that you can't forget.

• 1:04:11Speaker 05

  Who bought these clones? I have a laundry ticket.

• 1:04:16David Sims?

  We already recently were talking about this. I do just love to litigate it all the time of like, if I just showed up to a planet in a brown robe, they would be like, "The clones are ready for you. No further questions."

• 1:04:28Speaker 05

  We've been waiting.

• 1:04:29David Sims?

  You don't need to prove who you are. You do not need to even seem to know what we're talking about.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  They're not gonna fit on your ship.

• 1:04:35David Sims?

  Huh? And they're like, "Yes, the clones, remember?" Anyway.

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  You're gonna need a bigger ship to take him out of here, though.

• 1:04:41David Sims?

  You are gonna need, right, some large ships.

• 1:04:43Griffin Newman?

  But Attack of the Clones even, 10 years old by the time this movie comes out.

• 1:04:48David Sims?

  So Stanton writes the script with Mark Andrews, who has worked on other Pixar stuff, Incredibles, Ratatouille.

• 1:04:53Griffin Newman?

  He ends up directing Brave after Brenda Chapman is fired. Brave comes out this same year.

• 1:04:59David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then Michael Shabon, who has the other credit on this, comes in, and I feel like Shabon had done a lot of work on Spider-Man 2, of course.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  And he's another guy who supposedly, yes, and loved another, like, huge John Carter fan, supposedly.

• 1:05:13Griffin Newman?

  Most of his Spider-Man 2 work was thrown out. By all accounts, they made a big, flashy announcement because Cavalier and Clay was so big.

• 1:05:21David Sims?

  He was so hot, and it was comics related.

• 1:05:23Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. Like, Hollywood loves when they're like, "Oh my god, there's a genius who likes quote-unquote low art and appreciates it."

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  What low art do we have that we can give to him to class up?

• 1:05:34Griffin Newman?

  Hire a highfalutin man to make our big blockbuster. So they make this big announcement that he's doing Spider-Man 2, throw out almost all of his work, and then bring in Alvin Sargent to basically do what the movie...

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  Pretty much write it.

• 1:05:43Griffin Newman?

  His version was about, like, Doc Ock hucking Spider-Man. Doc Ock was, like, young and sexy and...

• 1:05:49Speaker 05

  Keep talking. I'm interested.

• 1:05:50David Sims?

  I mean, Shabon is, especially because he then went to Star Trek, and people hate what he did at Star Trek too much. Yes, I do think he often is like, "I have a really different, big-brained idea." And it will bump against people being like, "We were kinda looking for, like, you know, the USS Enterprise to, like, go to a planet, maybe have an adventure." He's like, "You're not interested in all this stuff I'm thinking about?"

• 1:06:09Griffin Newman?

  But Spider-Man is two. Two is huge. Arguably the greatest comic book movie of all time, and his name is there in a big credit, so...

• 1:06:17David Sims?

  He had also written a spec screenplay called "The Mark... Agent that was essentially a hodgepodge of John Carter's stories, which he loved, as we say. You know, like, so like, he also was working on a show with Darren Aronofsky called Hobgoblin. That was a World War Two show about magic.

• 1:06:35Griffin Newman?

  That sounds kind of cool.

• 1:06:36David Sims?

  For HBO.

• 1:06:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37David Sims?

  Sound kind of cool.

• 1:06:38Griffin Newman?

  Hey, Ben, would you mind slinging me another web?

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  Wow. Wow. We gotta get rid of it. Talk about Spider-Man 2 made you, you got a little parched, huh?

• 1:06:48Griffin Newman?

  Thinking about Doc Ock cucking Spidey makes me want to have another cup.

• 1:06:51David Sims?

  So like Stanton, Andrews, Shabon, all love John Carter.

• 1:06:55Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56David Sims?

  You know what I mean? They're all working together with love for the, the books.

• 1:06:59Griffin Newman?

  And they're all, it's sort of feels like three little boys in a clubhouse being like, can we relocate what we loved about this? Will that be infectious?

• 1:07:06David Sims?

  Who did have benefited maybe from someone coming in who's like, I love sci-fi adventure movies. I don't love John Carter or know about it, so maybe I can help you put it on, yeah, but no polite decline.

• 1:07:17Griffin Newman?

  We're good.

• 1:07:18David Sims?

  On the coffee.

• 1:07:18Speaker 05

  I have, I have non Spider-Man coffee tonight.

• 1:07:20Griffin Newman?

  2009 Star Trek, that was kind of the whole strategy.

• 1:07:25David Sims?

  Abrams delivered a movie for you that basically will make Star Trek fans happy. Although not all of them, they're never happy, but that like kind of swerved away from the, you know, notions of Star Trek.

• 1:07:36Griffin Newman?

  Orsi and Abrams, you have three different levels of Star Trek fandom.

• 1:07:40David Sims?

  Casual nerd, I don't know what Star Trek is.

• 1:07:42Griffin Newman?

  Can we have the bona fides and also make it feel approachable?

• 1:07:46David Sims?

  Abrams is like, you had me at Star, lost me at Trek.

• 1:07:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49David Sims?

  But let's just go back to Star Trek.

• 1:07:51Griffin Newman?

  For now, I'll, I'll take Trek until something better comes along after Star Trek.

• 1:07:55David Sims?

  The frontrunner for the role of John Carter was an actor named Taylor Kitsch.

• 1:07:59Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:00David Sims?

  Who gets the role?

• 1:08:01Griffin Newman?

  And we fought on this a little bit.

• 1:08:03David Sims?

  Let's fight.

• 1:08:03Griffin Newman?

  Where I feel like you bring up Taylor Kitsch as the ultimate Gabbo, where the industry was like, this guy, we're telling you it's this guy. And you are.

• 1:08:11David Sims?

  To me, this movie has two Gabbos, but although Kitsch is obviously a huge one.

• 1:08:15Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:08:15David Sims?

  Who's Gabbo? Well, Gabbo is from The Simpsons, remember?

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Gabbo, Gabbo, Gabbo.

• 1:08:20David Sims?

  But you know, just kind of that, that like, Taylor Kitsch, the big star, you know, they do this all the time, Hollywood, you know.

• 1:08:24Griffin Newman?

  Right, that they put up billboards that just say the word Gabbo.

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Taylor Kitsch. They're insistent, he is the man. We love him.

• 1:08:31David Sims?

  Industry plant, kind of. Whatever, they've, they've, I mean, Colin Farrell suffered from this, like.

• 1:08:36Griffin Newman?

  It's more like the.

• 1:08:37David Sims?

  A guy has a little juice and they're like.

• 1:08:39Griffin Newman?

  The industry is so preoccupied on convincing you that they're already a thing.

• 1:08:44David Sims?

  Why are you, so what, what's your?

• 1:08:45Griffin Newman?

  And they think. Well, I, I feel like you have argued he is the ultimate. There was nothing there and they sort of just like picked him and pushed him random.

• 1:08:53David Sims?

  No, I have definitely not argued that because I love Friday Night Lights.

• 1:08:55Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:08:55David Sims?

  So there's no way I've argued that.

• 1:08:57Griffin Newman?

  That's the thing. Like, cause I feel like the 2010s have a lot of gabos, right?

• 1:09:00David Sims?

  The one who I truly think of as the ultimate is, um, Travis Fimmel.

• 1:09:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:06David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:09:07Griffin Newman?

  This is, I feel like the argument we've had in the past. When he shows up in Warcraft, I'm like, I keep reading that fucking, all these people can't justify a hundred million dollar budget. And this guy's the lead? He's on the A and E Viking show? You just got a guy who also has worn armor?

• 1:09:23David Sims?

  It was on the History Channel.

• 1:09:24Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:09:24David Sims?

  Take it back.

• 1:09:25Griffin Newman?

  But Taylor Kitsch has the sort of like buzzy, supporting, swoony, James Dean-esque bad boy role.

• 1:09:32Speaker 05

  He was good on that show.

• 1:09:34Griffin Newman?

  My brother and my mother are obsessed with that show.

• 1:09:36David Sims?

  Travis is so much as one of those guys where you're like, you're telling me he wasn't on Sons of Anarchy? Like, they're like, no, Vikings. You're like, but come on, he's got a big old beard and he's got a bald head.

• 1:09:46Griffin Newman?

  I think the whole pitch on Travis Fimmel was, he feels like a biker, but we can put him in like armor with a sword.

• 1:09:54David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 1:09:55Griffin Newman?

  Does it have a little?

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  He'll bring the, the biker to the Viking.

• 1:09:58David Sims?

  Tim Riggins, Taylor Kitsch is Tim Riggins. So the Friday Night Lights runs 06 to 11. And obviously it was never a hit show. It was always struggling for life. It was always critically acclaimed.

• 1:10:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08David Sims?

  He was always the sexiest of the boys on it.

• 1:10:11Griffin Newman?

  And he's got the part that feels like the best showreel to be a Hollywood leading man.

• 1:10:16David Sims?

  Torture, daddy issues.

• 1:10:17Griffin Newman?

  Remember my brother?

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  He's Dylan from 90210. He's, the homie all needed this.

• 1:10:22Griffin Newman?

  My brother and my mom watching the show every week would just be like, God, this guy is such a movie star. Like, when is someone gonna, you know, crack it?

• 1:10:29David Sims?

  And I, I feel like I first saw him in X, I mean, in a movie, in X-Men Origins Wolverine. Like, I, I know he's in like the Covenant and, uh, what's it called? Uh, the Snakes, Snakes on a Plane.

• 1:10:41Griffin Newman?

  No, but that was the real, that was the moment where Hollywood was like, we've taken notice. He's gonna have a small part in this.

• 1:10:48David Sims?

  But like a-

• 1:10:48Griffin Newman?

  But it's a coveted role.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  A coveted role that could be bigger for him.

• 1:10:52Speaker 05

  It's like the Apatow thing you were talking about. We're gonna give him a little part here.

• 1:10:55David Sims?

  Ten hot minutes.

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  You're gonna fall in love with him and then we're gonna give him his own thing.

• 1:10:59Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that movie has-

• 1:11:00David Sims?

  Good in X-Men Origins Wolverine, a terrible movie.

• 1:11:03Griffin Newman?

  Being okay?

• 1:11:05David Sims?

  He's all right.

• 1:11:05Speaker 05

  He's maybe one of the acceptable parts of an ungodly bad movie.

• 1:11:09David Sims?

  Right, maybe the least offensive parts of that movie.

• 1:11:13Griffin Newman?

  I mean, the movie does the same thing with him and Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds, at opposite parts of the film.

• 1:11:19David Sims?

  Right, Deadpool leads it off, he's in the middle.

• 1:11:21Griffin Newman?

  Where it's like, we've picked a star that we think is about to pop.

• 1:11:25David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:11:25Griffin Newman?

  We're calling dibs on a character, we're placing the intent on the board.

• 1:11:29David Sims?

  Character.

• 1:11:30Griffin Newman?

  And we're testing out how much you like this. And the rejection of both is so huge that it like, sets back Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds has to spend the next five years of his life pushing it back uphill.

• 1:11:40David Sims?

  Someone leaked that footage, I wonder who it was.

• 1:11:45Speaker 05

  A mystery that shall never be solved.

• 1:11:48David Sims?

  I remember like the Comic Con footage of him as Gambit, where he's got the staff and he goes like, you know, he like jumps and like, and people go like, wow!

• 1:11:56Griffin Newman?

  We've done it.

• 1:11:57David Sims?

  And then you saw the movie and they were like, oh, by the way, that's the only thing he does in the movie. Like, sorry. He throws some cards.

• 1:12:03Griffin Newman?

  Ninety percent of his screen time is seated behind a poker table and then he gets up at the end, twirls the staff once, throws some cards, goodbye Gambit.

• 1:12:10David Sims?

  That's all I remember. Marmee LeBeau.

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  But, but he, you were like, okay.

• 1:12:15Griffin Newman?

  He holds the screen, he's not bad.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  He gave good Gambit.

• 1:12:18Griffin Newman?

  He gave good Gambit.

• 1:12:19David Sims?

  The movie sucks, but obviously, no one's holding it against him.

• 1:12:22Griffin Newman?

  And Hollywood goes like, that's all we need to see, off to the races. And he books three giant movies, basically back to back to back, all of which come out in 2012.

• 1:12:32David Sims?

  Which was maybe, if I'm his agent, I'm sweating a little bit about that.

• 1:12:36Griffin Newman?

  In the span of four months, in chronological order, John Carter in March, Battleship in May.

• 1:12:43David Sims?

  Which of course we've covered on our Patreon.

• 1:12:44Griffin Newman?

  And then Oliver Stone's Savages in July.

• 1:12:48David Sims?

  Uh, was that July? Let's see. Yep.

• 1:12:50Griffin Newman?

  So when he's doing press for John Carter, they're like, you're the guy.

• 1:12:55David Sims?

  He's the lead of all three movies.

• 1:12:56Griffin Newman?

  He's the guy in all three movies and all the press is like, well, you're here promoting John Carter, but really, this is about the year of kitsch. By the end of this year, everyone will agree.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  It's getting kitschy.

• 1:13:08Griffin Newman?

  You're the biggest movie star alive.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  Things are getting kitschy.

• 1:13:11David Sims?

  He has made five films total since then.

• 1:13:15Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:13:16David Sims?

  And like, obviously he's done TV and he's done some other stuff, you know, but like, he has been in five movies since then.

• 1:13:20Griffin Newman?

  American Assassin.

• 1:13:22David Sims?

  That's one?

• 1:13:23Griffin Newman?

  A movie you've watched many times, Ben?

• 1:13:25David Sims?

  Once.

• 1:13:25Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:13:26David Sims?

  And I just was struck by how He's the sort of secondary. Trashy it was. Yeah. It's Keaton's the

• 1:13:32Griffin Newman?

  One of the only Keaton's I haven't seen. Keaton's the mentor, Dylan O'Brien's the hero, Kitsch is the former assassin who went bad? Is that right?

• 1:13:38David Sims?

  I think so.

• 1:13:39Griffin Newman?

  Okay. I haven't seen it. But wait, I'm struggling to even name the other four.

• 1:13:43David Sims?

  There's one you won't know, the four of them are real movies.

• 1:13:46Griffin Newman?

  Four of them are real movies, but he's not the lead in any of them. He's supporting parts and all.

• 1:13:50David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:13:50Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there was one thing I remember seeing him in where I was like, oh, he's pretty good.

• 1:13:55David Sims?

  There's a movie, a Canadian movie called Don McK, by Don McKellar called The Grand Seduction with him and Brendan Gleeson.

• 1:14:01Griffin Newman?

  Have not seen that.

• 1:14:01David Sims?

  Never heard of it.

• 1:14:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:14:02David Sims?

  Don't know anything about it. There is a big war movie that he's like the secondary lead in that was a huge hit.

• 1:14:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Lone Survivor.

• 1:14:07David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:14:08Griffin Newman?

  Right. Which that movie feels like it was Peter Berg doing a like, can I save Emile Hirsch? Can I save Taylor Kitsch? Like, bring these guys back.

• 1:14:16David Sims?

  Uh, there's an extremely good movie that he's quite good in, although he's not a lead, he's part of the ensemble. There was a giant bomb, uh, from a great director that was a disaster movie, real true story movie.

• 1:14:29Griffin Newman?

  Oh, Only the Brave?

• 1:14:30David Sims?

  Right. Where he's again, like Lone Survivor, one of the guys.

• 1:14:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34David Sims?

  But he's good in it.

• 1:14:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it was a giant bomb.

• 1:14:36David Sims?

  It was a giant bomb. And then there is a somewhat forgotten cop drama. It was pretty good.

• 1:14:42Griffin Newman?

  Uh, is, it's not the Chadwick Boseman one?

• 1:14:45David Sims?

  It sure is.

• 1:14:46Griffin Newman?

  Sixteen Bridges?

• 1:14:47David Sims?

  Keep going. Yeah, you need more bridges. Up.

• 1:14:49Griffin Newman?

  Twenty-four?

• 1:14:50David Sims?

  Down.

• 1:14:50Griffin Newman?

  Twenty-one.

• 1:14:51David Sims?

  There he is. Yeah. Where I think, I have seen, I think he might be the villain, I can't remember. But like, you know, he's just like, hey, I'm officer, good guy.

• 1:15:00Griffin Newman?

  It feels

• 1:15:00David Sims?

  I'm following up on the case. I have a few questions, I'll see you later. And you're like, watch out for that guy.

• 1:15:05Griffin Newman?

  He is allergic to the idea of being the center again, understandably. He doesn't want that weight on him.

• 1:15:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:15:11Griffin Newman?

  And all of them are variations on the former Golden Boy.

• 1:15:14David Sims?

  In his defense, obviously, he did do True Detective season two, which I know was like, uh, what, you know, another kind of weird blank check bounce, but like, you know, he wasn't, he was in

• 1:15:23Griffin Newman?

  The Unabomber show?

• 1:15:24David Sims?

  He was David Koresh in The Waco Show.

• 1:15:26Griffin Newman?

  Right, right, right. That's what it was, yeah.

• 1:15:28David Sims?

  And he's been in a bunch of other stuff. He's in that Chris Pratt show, The Terminalist. That everyone's always talking about.

• 1:15:35Griffin Newman?

  But you get the sense understandably that the experience of 2012 kind of shook him to his core.

• 1:15:41David Sims?

  Wow, I just found out.

• 1:15:42Griffin Newman?

  Tentative steps now.

• 1:15:43David Sims?

  Totally. I just found out that he is the lead character in a Terminal List spinoff.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, the wolf, the wolf one?

• 1:15:49David Sims?

  Dark Wolf.

• 1:15:50Speaker 05

  Dark Wolf.

• 1:15:51David Sims?

  The Terminal List is really doing so well that we need a spinoff? Like, are we sure?

• 1:15:55Speaker 05

  People wanna see the Dark Wolf.

• 1:15:58David Sims?

  Um, how do you think he is in this movie? I mean, to be clear again, like Stanton loved him in Friday Night Lights. Thought he kind of, cause he has the hair in Friday Night Lights.

• 1:16:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07David Sims?

  Thought he kind of matched the sort of classic kind of paintings of John Carter and the old paperbacks and stuff.

• 1:16:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14David Sims?

  And just was kind of like, this is my guy, even though I think there was some discussion of like, you sure we don't want to like call Tom Cruise?

• 1:16:23Griffin Newman?

  There's all this weird reporting of Tom Cruise being interested in the film. It is confirmed that Stanton met with Tom Cruise a few times.

• 1:16:31David Sims?

  The rap article says that Cruise campaigned for the job.

• 1:16:34Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:16:34David Sims?

  And Stanton says he met with him. I have, that feels impossible to me in terms of like, if Cruise had gone to, you know, Disney and said like, I would like to play John Carter, I imagine Disney would have said yes? Maybe not. It's kind of a weird period for him.

• 1:16:48Griffin Newman?

  It was a weird period for Cruise.

• 1:16:49David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Griffin Newman?

  Where it's like, yes, it would help to have a name above your title, but also he costs so much.

• 1:16:54David Sims?

  He's expensive, he's gonna take over.

• 1:16:56Griffin Newman?

  Like a big portion of your profits.

• 1:16:59David Sims?

  This is pre-Ghost Protocol, which kind of like reset the Cruise narrative. Like, so it's kind of the weird Cruise.

• 1:17:04Griffin Newman?

  Version of Pixar director goes to live action.

• 1:17:08David Sims?

  That is true.

• 1:17:09Griffin Newman?

  Which comes out the year before this. Like, it's also weird that you're like, the things that you feel would have encouraged Disney to greenlight this, hadn't actually happened yet. Avatar hasn't come out. Ghost Protocol hasn't come out.

• 1:17:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:17:22Griffin Newman?

  You're like, the math, retroactively, you're like, it must have been, they looked at those two things and said, sure.

• 1:17:27David Sims?

  I think the other thing is Stanton's like, we wanted a young actor because the idea is we're making a series here, right?

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Yes. We need somebody who can make three of these over the next 10 years.

• 1:17:36Griffin Newman?

  I also feel like the implication has always been that Cruise kind of came to him late, that either. Kitch had already been cast, or he had his eye on Kitch. He'd certainly done all the screen testing, because there was like Josh Duhamel and Chant Tatum, all the people you'd assume were in that pot. And then Cruise kind of like swept in and was like, what about me? And because he was so focused on the trilogy thing, he's like, am I gonna have to make like a third movie with a 60-year-old Cruise? Certainly a 60-year-old Cruise-

• 1:18:05Speaker 05

  He's surely not gonna be making action movies at that point-

• 1:18:08Griffin Newman?

  His body will decompose.

• 1:18:09David Sims?

  Lynn Collins also says, like, everyone I tested against was like a Kitch-aged actor. Like, if Cruise was involved, it was not what-

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I read something where Stanton was talking about, like, at first I was like, he's too young, but then I looked back at, you know, the ages of Harrison Ford when he made Star Wars, and people like that, and they were always younger than he, than you think they were. And so he felt like he could carry it off, he had the gravitas or whatever. But, uh-

• 1:18:34Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:18:35Speaker 05

  Having, having said that-

• 1:18:36Griffin Newman?

  Can we talk about the performance for a little bit? I know we got more context to get into, but you asked the question-

• 1:18:40David Sims?

  I think it's a good question, like-

• 1:18:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:42David Sims?

  Is Taylor Kitch good as John Carter in the film John Carter, which was a Disney release in 2012, directed by Andrew Stanton?

• 1:18:48Griffin Newman?

  I, I, I think it like, his performance half works. I think it works in spurts, like the movie itself, right? And I think it's a weird case where you're like, historically at this time, a man of his age would have experienced a lot of life, and could be kind of hardened and broken down by said experiences. But to see him in a 2012 movie, you're like, this guy's too young.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Griffin Newman?

  I don't buy this guy having the kind of like war wounds and emotional damage-

• 1:19:18David Sims?

  It doesn't jibe with his backstory. You're right, yeah.

• 1:19:20Griffin Newman?

  I think he's kind of good at the charming swashbuckling thing. I think he has moments where he does the Indiana Jones thing well. I think anytime the movie wants him to sell the haunted, and the sort of weary, he can't quite sell it. And I do think he's fundamentally too modern.

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  I think he, I, I mean, I was another person, loved Friday Night Lights. Loved that show. My wife and I watched every episode. And he was good on that show. And, but I think what he was doing on that show was like, almost- And I don't mean this like insultingly, like it was almost nothing. It was a lot of just like presence. He didn't have to, he was just standing there looking incredible and being handsome.

• 1:20:00David Sims?

  He had emotional moments, but like the emotions of that show are carried more by like, obviously Zach Gilford, you know, like by other actors.

• 1:20:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I just think he, he, he was good in stillness, let's say. And, and in this movie, I don't know, he's, it just feels like he's trying so hard. I feel him trying. Whereas like, Riggins is so laconic.

• 1:20:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and this character, and, and I don't know about anybody else, but in this room, but every time he speaks, there's something very affected about his voice. And the voice that he's using, you know, it's almost like he's like trying to do John Wayne or something.

• 1:20:40Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's got a bit of Tug Speedman where it feels like the way you parody an action star rather than an actual effortless action star.

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  You know, like there's that, one of the scenes that like half works very well in this movie is his first encounter with Tars Tarkas. You have Willem Dafoe, who's very good and very funny.

• 1:20:59Griffin Newman?

  Locked in.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  He is locked in.

• 1:21:00David Sims?

  I mean, like he's done it many times. He can just, he's just good at this shit.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  And he's doing the alien voice in Tars Tarkas.

• 1:21:07David Sims?

  Aquaman, he's good at this role, right? Like, how many times has he done this?

• 1:21:10Griffin Newman?

  For, for your knowledge, Ben, this is Dafoe on set, like in the dinner.

• 1:21:17Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 1:21:17Griffin Newman?

  On stilts with a mo cap rig over his head. And some Dafoe who loves challenges and technical exercises and whatever is like walking in stilts in the desert.

• 1:21:27Speaker 05

  He, he's not just walking. In some scenes, he's like running and they have guys, you can, I found like footage behind the scenes of him. He has a guy literally dressed from head to toe, covered completely in green, whose job it is, is to just make sure he doesn't topple over as he's running full speed as extras, brandishing a sword. But in this scene, he's doing the, you know, like, Tars Tarkas, suck, do this, you know? And he's, and he, and he's great. And Virginia.

• 1:21:53Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:21:54Speaker 05

  You're Virginia.

• 1:21:54Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  You're Virginia. Hilarious. And then they cut to the other side and it's Taylor Kitsch going. You know, like.

• 1:22:01David Sims?

  What's going on, man?

• 1:22:03Speaker 05

  Captain John Carter, Virginia.

• 1:22:06David Sims?

  I, he doesn't quite bump on me as hard as he seems to be bucking on you.

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:22:10David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't love it.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  I am dotar so Jack.

• 1:22:14Griffin Newman?

  You saying the, the presence and the stillness thing. What's tricky about these types of movies? And why it's always really tough to be like, well, we need a young lead because we want to build a franchise. But that also means we're placing someone into this type of film who has limited experience.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:22:31Griffin Newman?

  Even if you've worked a lot, it's like, how often have you been the lead? How big has the project you're in the lead been? And now you're on like a shoot where you might for two or three consecutive weeks have one line of dialogue. Something like shooting the white ape sequence is like so many tiny little pieces. Where I do think you kind of want a cast for presence. Ideally, you want Harrison Ford. You want someone who's equally good at selling the dialogue scenes and the character and the comedy. But also if you're getting into technical action pieces, every one of those is going to have an energy and a presence and not just be a guy hitting choreography.

• 1:23:08Speaker 05

  But there is an additional problem here with him, which actually is not his fault. It is the conception of the character, which is that they cast this incredibly handsome, striking man to play a shockingly frequent like focus of ridicule, especially in the beginning of this movie. They, you know, the tug speedman thing is kind of funny because they almost do cast him as like this bumbling comic. Like loon, this boo.

• 1:23:35David Sims?

  A lot of the movie.

• 1:23:35Speaker 05

  So much, especially at the beginning of the movie is making fun of him. They literally, they like put him, they treat him like a baby, like they, they discover the Martian babies. He is baby. They put him in a, they put him in a diaper.

• 1:23:49David Sims?

  They do.

• 1:23:50Speaker 05

  They put him in a diaper.

• 1:23:51David Sims?

  Throw a blue goo on him or something.

• 1:23:52Speaker 05

  Baby powder him, they stick him in a vat of alien, is it cum? I don't know what it is.

• 1:23:57David Sims?

  Who knows?

• 1:23:59Griffin Newman?

  I feel like you were burning.

• 1:24:00David Sims?

  Just be soup.

• 1:24:00Griffin Newman?

  To say something, Sims.

• 1:24:02David Sims?

  Oh, I'm not su-, oh, well, oh, well, Sam Worthington, right? Again, I can't help it, but I do think it's, it's vital when we're talking about Taylor Ketch, because Sam Worthington's the same. Play.

• 1:24:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:24:11David Sims?

  Even a less known guy.

• 1:24:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13David Sims?

  You kind of just need to be.

• 1:24:15Speaker 05

  Hold the center.

• 1:24:16David Sims?

  A little regular, hold the center, be relatable.

• 1:24:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19David Sims?

  Have a little personality. You will be blue, often.

• 1:24:23Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:23David Sims?

  Like, unlike Taylor Kitsch. Although Taylor Kitsch briefly is blue in this movie. When he comes out of the.

• 1:24:27Speaker 05

  White ape.

• 1:24:28David Sims?

  Yeah. Right?

• 1:24:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29David Sims?

  And I do think Sam Worthington is better. Why is that? I don't think like Sam Worthington is incredible in Avatar or anything, but like, is it just that he has like a little bit more good humor and like?

• 1:24:39Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 1:24:39David Sims?

  That kind of vibe?

• 1:24:40Speaker 05

  They don't make him dress and act like a baby.

• 1:24:43David Sims?

  Well, sure. I mean, he does wear a, you know.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  There's so much, it's, it's just, you've cast this guy who's so cool. And I don't think of as a comedic actor. And then like, as soon as he's on Mars, it's all shtick. Actually, before Mars, his introduction with the, with.

• 1:24:59Griffin Newman?

  With Cranston.

• 1:24:59Speaker 05

  With Cranston is like him jumping out of windows, peeing on the ground. It's all shtick.

• 1:25:05Griffin Newman?

  See, this is a, your mileage may vary thing, but I.

• 1:25:08Speaker 05

  You like, you like this?

• 1:25:10Griffin Newman?

  And, and rewatching it was pleasantly surprised. I think he sells the comedy better than I would imagine. I wouldn't say he's funny in this.

• 1:25:18David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Griffin Newman?

  But I also think if we're looking at Worthington, Hunnam, Hedlund.

• 1:25:23David Sims?

  Sure, right, right, right.

• 1:25:24Griffin Newman?

  The guys in this.

• 1:25:25David Sims?

  So, right. Hunnam is, I mean, like Pacific Rim, I guess.

• 1:25:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and then King Arthur later.

• 1:25:29David Sims?

  Right. Hedlund is, you know, Tron Legacy, which I liked that performance in that movie, but a lot of people didn't really.

• 1:25:35Griffin Newman?

  And it's a similar kind of swagery, like, is there a little bit of Marlon Brando wild one? Is there a little bit of cheeky humor in this? That's what they're trying to get. A modern, they don't want a guy playing stoic sci fi hero. I think what works for Worthington is that Cameron kind of set him up to succeed. In the inverse of how Stanton a little bit set Kitch up to fail. In Avatar, he's like, kind of the point is that you're the boring guy. Kind of the point is that you're just like a personalityless marine. And then we'll, we'll build the humanity in later. There's a, we didn't talk about this in Dead Poets Society, but then I saw someone on the Reddit call it out. That Hawk did this interview where he said, Weir was really smart about casting for the final.

• 1:26:20Griffin Newman?

  Color and what he meant by that was.

• 1:26:22David Sims?

  Yes, yes, we can't believe we didn't bring this up.

• 1:26:25Griffin Newman?

  I know, but that like in Dead Poets Society, you're like weird, you're having Hawk play like the timid guy, not Robert Sean Leonard's part where he's like the artsy ambitious. You know, passionate guy and he said, you want to cast for the final color, Robert Sean Leonard will ultimately get you to the suicide scene where you need to. That's his wheelhouse.

• 1:26:45David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:26:45Griffin Newman?

  And it will feel explosive when that part of him comes out likewise, when Hawk gets on the desk and finally is passionate, overly earnest Ethan Hawk. That will be explosive, right? And I think there was a little bit of Cameron casting for the final color, which is just like, have Jake Sully be a little bit of a blank. And then what Worthington is good at is kind of the earthy, earnest, I care romance thing, which is like.

• 1:27:09David Sims?

  He is good at that.

• 1:27:09Griffin Newman?

  Passing him off of fucking somersault and shit, right?

• 1:27:11David Sims?

  Yeah, he is good at that, yes.

• 1:27:12Griffin Newman?

  But you're also really not asking him to be funny. You're making him the joke, but in a kind of lower level way. And you're letting all the other characters pop around him.

• 1:27:20David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:27:20Griffin Newman?

  The secret to that movie is it's Nateri is really driving everything.

• 1:27:23David Sims?

  Well, and we're good.

• 1:27:24Griffin Newman?

  And they cast that.

• 1:27:25David Sims?

  We will talk about the rest of the ensemble in a second and all that. That does matter a lot.

• 1:27:29Griffin Newman?

  I think what Stan really wants is the Indiana Jones thing.

• 1:27:32David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Griffin Newman?

  And you saying that the movie is constantly embarrassing him. It's the thing that at this point in time, I think Hollywood. Filmmakers are pointing at a lot. We're getting a lot of blank, generic, kind of stoic heroes. And what people are forgetting is that Han Solo and Indiana Jones fucked up a lot. They were funny. They weren't just cool all the time.

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:27:55Griffin Newman?

  And a lot of it was watching them finesse a situation and feeling the struggle of, are they going to be able to pull this off?

• 1:28:01David Sims?

  Yeah, well Ford's really good at the, I'm one plan ahead at best, kind of like on the fly.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  He's always scrambling.

• 1:28:08Griffin Newman?

  And then you watch him trip, but then you watch him recover.

• 1:28:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:28:11Griffin Newman?

  And this is a movie that builds in those moments of mid battle, John Carter being like, you know, the moment that I felt like was really big in the trailer of the white ape. The second and third white apes coming out and it cutting to him sighing.

• 1:28:23David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Griffin Newman?

  Of like, oh, this is a guy who has vulnerability. He stressed out that he's in this movie.

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  I guess I don't butt up against that as much as.

• 1:28:30Griffin Newman?

  That's a big ask.

• 1:28:31Speaker 05

  As much as just how goofy some of the things they, I mean, he's literally like.

• 1:28:36David Sims?

  I think you're also.

• 1:28:37Griffin Newman?

  A diaper.

• 1:28:38David Sims?

  You're describing a problem that the movie has in general of it can't quite reconcile the goofiness and the epicness.

• 1:28:44Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:28:44David Sims?

  That well, and.

• 1:28:45Griffin Newman?

  And the tragic weight and.

• 1:28:47David Sims?

  Kitch also doesn't like work at the end of the movie when he's like, my master plan is being revealed and I am still just like, you just kind of feel 29 years old to me.

• 1:28:55Griffin Newman?

  I, I do love the ending and the ending.

• 1:28:57David Sims?

  I don't mind the concept of the ending. I just don't think he is.

• 1:29:01Griffin Newman?

  I think he kind of sells it. I'm, I'm a little hotter in this performance than you, even though it doesn't totally work.

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. Again, I, I, it's, to me, it's like, it's an interesting way to conceive the character because it's not, it's not from the books, you know, as much as Stanton loves the books, the books are not about this guy having these wacky adventures. This is grand epic romance, very serious. And, but, and the books are very serious.

• 1:29:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:29:25Speaker 05

  And, you know, like grand. And here we have all this shtick and it almost feels like, and I don't know this, but it's just like, well, we're making a movie based on this thing from the 19 teens. Maybe we want to give it a little like silent comedy flavor, you know, there's almost kind of like a.

• 1:29:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  When he, when he's bumbling around in the desert.

• 1:29:44Griffin Newman?

  You're right. There's a little Buster Keaton in it.

• 1:29:45Speaker 05

  There's a Buster Keaton kind of a thing for sure. And he's in the desert, bumbling around, trying to stand.

• 1:29:51Griffin Newman?

  Let's also acknowledge he's running straight from this into Wally, right? Like he gets Disney to buy the rights to this while he's finishing Wally.

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  This is what I was gonna say.

• 1:30:00Griffin Newman?

  And he's going into production on this a year and a half after Wally is released. Like these things are like overlapping. And Wally, as we covered last week, he's just mainlining Lloyd Chaplin Keaton. Like they said at Pixar, every week they would screen those movies. They'd re-watch them. They were obsessively studying the type of hero. And as he said, what he learned with Wally is the emotional arc isn't the guy, it's the way he changes the world around him.

• 1:30:27Speaker 05

  I think you can feel that in this movie. I had a lot of success. People loved Wally. They loved that, the way that I kind of imbued that character with that silent comedian energy.

• 1:30:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 05

  And it, it seems to be here as well. And I just don't think it fits this movie the way it fit that movie, especially. Actually with Taylor Kitsch as your guy.

• 1:30:47David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Speaker 05

  A guy that I like, a guy that I was excited to see in this movie.

• 1:30:51David Sims?

  He says he regrets that he didn't do enough personally, he didn't give everything he had. He kind of sounds like an athlete talking after a loss. A kind of like, it's on me, it's not on anyone else, like the team is great, the coach is great. Um, but he says he talks to Lynn Collins every day, these relationships were born. He says he had a huge respect for Andrew, I never had a fight with him. Even day eighty in the miserable fucking desert because I respect him so much. This isn't a production where people are like, what a nightmare. Like everyone had a good.

• 1:31:19Griffin Newman?

  No, that is true.

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  The cast of this movie.

• 1:31:20David Sims?

  Was into it.

• 1:31:21Griffin Newman?

  Has continued to defend it.

• 1:31:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:31:23Griffin Newman?

  Like you read interviews with Samantha Morton, with Defoe, with everybody to this day. And they're like, I had a great time doing that and it felt like the movie got thrown under the bus. Dominic West continues to defend it.

• 1:31:33David Sims?

  Dominic West, who looks really good in this movie.

• 1:31:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes, he does.

• 1:31:36David Sims?

  Fucking hot, like, you know, like, because now Dominic West is settled into his, like, I play British buffoons. I'm a little older, you know, like, forget, like, Dominic West was fucking hot. I mean, obviously we love McNutty, but like, that's a little different.

• 1:31:47Griffin Newman?

  It is funny when you watch a movie and you can tell what the director was watching at the time. And you're like.

• 1:31:53David Sims?

  It's same with James Purefoy. I know, yeah, exactly. When James Purefoy showed up, I was like, we don't need to be bringing, I don't mind him as an actor. He cannot come in this late, I'm sorry. You already had Dominic West, you can't give me two British guy, like, a TV actors.

• 1:32:07Griffin Newman?

  But it's so much kind of Rise of Prestige TV, late 2000s, early 2010s, where you're like.

• 1:32:12David Sims?

  I mean, if fucking Lynn was on, Lynn Collins was on True Blood.

• 1:32:16Griffin Newman?

  You got a wire person, you got a True Blood person, you got the Breaking Bad guy, you got a Friday Night Lights guy.

• 1:32:20Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 1:32:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Speaker 05

  It's the, that era All-Stars.

• 1:32:22David Sims?

  Tars Tarkas had that sitcom, the guy, the character.

• 1:32:26Griffin Newman?

  It's called Tars.

• 1:32:28David Sims?

  Uh, so, uh, Willem Dafoe.

• 1:32:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30David Sims?

  Obviously had worked on Finding Nemo. He liked Pixar, he liked their approach. And as he puts it, uh, that guy asked me to play a 12 foot tall Jedek of the green race of tharks. What, you're gonna say no to that? I don't think so. That's the Willem Dafoe attitude. Because I feel like some other actors would be like, uh, no. I do think, no. Stilton Desert, no. Willem Dafoe's like, let me at it.

• 1:32:52Griffin Newman?

  When you say likes Pixar, likes the approach, it's the other thing. Thing around this movie, which is, man, Pixar have had the best track record.

• 1:33:01Speaker 05

  This is true.

• 1:33:02Griffin Newman?

  Of anyone in Hollywood history.

• 1:33:04Speaker 05

  And of course.

• 1:33:04Griffin Newman?

  It feels like they just work and work and work until they crack the story.

• 1:33:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:33:08Griffin Newman?

  And it always just fits together perfectly. And there's a growing feeling of, why are these kids' movies better than all the quote unquote, serious adult blockbusters that Hollywood's making? Should they be making those? How do we like infect the Pixar process into

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:33:26Griffin Newman?

  The other areas of studio filmmaking?

• 1:33:28Speaker 05

  And by the time this comes out, the Ghost Protocol has come out.

• 1:33:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:31Speaker 05

  And that has only increased that that sentiment. Cause it's like, wow, they, he, Brad, but really cracked that one.

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  Let these guys do everything.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  Yes. I mean, I, I'm saying a lot of negative things about John Carter, but what I do want to say here, I was excited about this movie when it came out.

• 1:33:46Griffin Newman?

  Right. I was, I was so pumped.

• 1:33:47David Sims?

  Excited. I, I remember the trailer really getting pushed down our throats and all that. And like, starting to get a little tired of

• 1:33:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55David Sims?

  That, you know, inevitable blockbustery sort of thing where they're just like, you're all excited. And I'm like,

• 1:34:01Griffin Newman?

  Teaser trailer a year in advance.

• 1:34:03David Sims?

  Alright, a little bit more, uh, Five Months in the Desert on stilts. That's, that's quite an achievement, according to Willem Dafoe.

• 1:34:09Griffin Newman?

  Mostly the Four Corners.

• 1:34:10David Sims?

  Dominic West thought it was a brilliant film, thinks, uh, Andrew Stanton is a fucking genius.

• 1:34:15Griffin Newman?

  Works with him again on Finding Dory.

• 1:34:17David Sims?

  Right. He thinks Hollywood politics put it in the bin. Like, he, he's just, right. Some of these actors are just like, I don't know. I loved that. Like, no further questions.

• 1:34:25Griffin Newman?

  There is, I don't.

• 1:34:26David Sims?

  Cranston also basically was like, it was great.

• 1:34:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30David Sims?

  Fuck box office, fuck Hollywood tracking, like these jerks.

• 1:34:34Griffin Newman?

  I don't think this film ever was going to be a mega hit, but there is no denying that by the time it came out, it was doomed. There was three months of the most overwhelming press.

• 1:34:44David Sims?

  Yeah, the kind of trades thing where they smell a bomb and they start to exult in like, did you know how much this costs? And it's called John Carter? What are they thinking? You know?

• 1:34:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56David Sims?

  Which like then they tried to do with Sinners.

• 1:34:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:34:59David Sims?

  And then when it blew up in their faces, they were like, okay, but it didn't do that good for like a week. And people screamed at them so much that they were like, they were like, All right, you know, maybe forget it. Like, I guess it's okay.

• 1:35:09Griffin Newman?

  But there's also Dick Cook, who had had this incredibly triumphant run at Disney, had stepped down. Rich Ross takes over. Rich Ross had been running the Disney Channel, I believe.

• 1:35:18David Sims?

  Right. And I mean, Rick Ross was doing great at that time.

• 1:35:20Griffin Newman?

  The boss.

• 1:35:21David Sims?

  Yeah, right. You know, Teflon Don over there.

• 1:35:24Griffin Newman?

  But then he has a really shaky run. Like, he inherits several films that end up being really successful, like The First Alice in Wonderland and things like that. But the things that he greenlights basically all start to crash and burn. And he's out pretty shortly after this. They hire a woman named M.T. Carney, who ran a boutique marketing agency, to be put in charge of all marketing for Disney films. And it was a sort of shockwave announcement of like, is Disney trying to like, do something different? This is someone who does not have the experience and has not ever worked at this scale. She's never worked in movie marketing, period. And this ended up being the main film she worked on.

• 1:36:07Griffin Newman?

  And then I believe she got fired either a month before, a month after it came out. Like, this movie is overseen by a bunch of transitional people in the Disney regime?

• 1:36:17Speaker 05

  I just remember a lot of talk about the title.

• 1:36:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Speaker 05

  And John Carter of Mars, or just John Carter, and who is John Carter? And there was all these articles about that and...

• 1:36:26Griffin Newman?

  There's all this second guessing. There's all this revolving door shit. Disney at this point in time is in a struggle, which is part of why they fucking just buy Marvel and Lucasfilm and go like, that's our live-action thing solved.

• 1:36:38David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:36:38Griffin Newman?

  But this movie becomes the center to focus on of what the fuck is going on at Disney and how much money have they spent on this thing that we've never heard of? Ben, just to clearly state this, the book is called A Princess of Mars. That title immediately evokes something. But Disney releases the film, The Princess and the Frog, covered on this show, and it does well, but not hugely well. And their takeaway is, no boy will see a movie with princess in the title. They immediately pivot to the in-development, in-production Rapunzel movie being retitled Tangled.

• 1:37:12Griffin Newman?

  And the Snow Queen movie being retitled Frozen? They're like, we need these kind of actiony titles. And they say to Stanton, cannot be called Princess of Mars. Got it. We'll call it John Carter of Mars. That helps us come up with our franchise heading. John Carter's the guy. What happens then? Disney releases a movie called Mars Needs Moms, aforementioned. The final film in their deal with Zemeckis. He produces it, but does not direct. It is his final, like, mocap movie. And it is a gigantic disaster. And the takeaway from that is, fuck, Mars is a problem. And they zoom out and they look at the data that David mentioned before. They're like, fuck, there were all these Mars movies in the last 10 years.

• 1:37:55David Sims?

  And also, like, it sounds like a boy thing, right? Like, it's like, it's funny that they're like, Princess is too girly. And then they're like, Mars is too boy, though.

• 1:38:02Griffin Newman?

  They admit this. They're like...

• 1:38:04David Sims?

  Girls won't go to a Mars movie.

• 1:38:05Griffin Newman?

  Yes, both things. So you end up with John Carter that means nothing. Because they're so terrified of scaring off both sides of the audience. And they end up on a thing that is...

• 1:38:16Speaker 05

  Isn't that the guy on ER?

• 1:38:17Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:38:18David Sims?

  Like, don't you want to... Yeah, of course, Dr. John Carter, M.D. Uh, but like, yeah, don't you want to go see a John Carter? Well, what's that about? Guy called John Carter? What does he do? He's on Mars, they say, and stuff. Like, it's just like, how are you...

• 1:38:30Griffin Newman?

  Impossible. But it's like, the perfect fucking, like, Hollywood outthinks themselves into a hole.

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  I was watching the end of this movie on the train here. And a woman sat down next to me and tapped on my shoulder and was like, what are you watching? And I'm like, John Carter? She's like, what?

• 1:38:49Griffin Newman?

  She's probably tapping you on the shoulder and expecting you to say Dune. And she'll go, oh, that's what Dune is. I hear everyone talking about Dune. The idea that she's seeing this, like, expensive sci-fi movie on your phone and the title is something she hasn't heard of.

• 1:39:13Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:39:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:14Griffin Newman?

  This episode is brought to you by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary, Capturing Bigfoot.

• 1:39:20David Sims?

  Hmm.

• 1:39:20Griffin Newman?

  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?

• 1:39:31David Sims?

  It is an iconic video.

• 1:39:32Griffin Newman?

  Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. 59 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.

• 1:39:55David 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.

• 1:40:07Griffin 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.

• 1:40:16David Sims?

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

• 1:40:18Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:19David 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.

• 1:40:26Griffin 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.

• 1:40:40David Sims?

  I'm something of an expert in cryptozoology.

• 1:40:42Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:40:44David 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.

• 1:41:00Griffin Newman?

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

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 1:41:16David Sims?

  Yes?

• 1:41:17Griffin Newman?

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• 1:41:38David Sims?

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• 1:41:57Griffin 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.

• 1:42:13David 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/ListenToDracula.

• 1:42:48Griffin Newman?

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• 1:42:49David Sims?

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• 1:42:54Griffin Newman?

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• 1:43:20Griffin Newman?

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• 1:43:27Griffin Newman?

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• 1:43:42Griffin Newman?

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• 1:44:21Griffin Newman?

  Dune is another interesting thing to place out here. We're watching this, it's so similar to Dune in so many ways. And it feels like after this run of not just the failed Disney Boys Adventure movies, but like Valerian, you know, Patrick Williams, our buddy did a great video on what he called the Gonzo Blockbuster. These movies that were sort of like very silly and operatic Jupiter Ascending. Speed Racer certainly falls into that. And his argument is that like Fury Road is the only one of those movies that worked at the time. There was a sort of like 10 year run of can we let guys just fucking do anything? And Fury Road's the only one that's a hit and is well liked upon release. And most of them kind of miss.

• 1:45:05Griffin Newman?

  And it feels like Dune is the final correction for that, which is you need to just ground the shit out of this. If you're going to make these kinds of movies, you have to really just like place it in, you know, intimate human emotions and hard details. And versus solitude versus just like, I don't know, there's like a ship that flies.

• 1:45:25Speaker 05

  I mean, I guess I have to give this movie some amount of credit that they didn't water it down.

• 1:45:32Griffin Newman?

  I love that most about.

• 1:45:34Speaker 05

  I mean, it's got these crazy green four armed aliens.

• 1:45:39David Sims?

  And not just that.

• 1:45:40Speaker 05

  They kept the names and the.

• 1:45:41David Sims?

  Right, just the kind of like that it's about a bunch of inter Martian politics.

• 1:45:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46David Sims?

  That they, in my opinion, could have maybe done a better job explaining.

• 1:45:49Griffin Newman?

  It could have simple.

• 1:45:49David Sims?

  But they are definitely trying to get it all across.

• 1:45:53Griffin Newman?

  And as much as they make him a comedic figure, this movie is mercifully devoid of, you're called the what? There's no John Carter is, it's more them making fun of John Carter than John Carter being like, Barsoom. Okay, now I've heard everything.

• 1:46:09Speaker 05

  That is true, but on the flip side, I will say, John Carter takes a long time to figure out that he is on Mars.

• 1:46:17Griffin Newman?

  Over an hour?

• 1:46:17Speaker 05

  Fifty one minutes. Fifty one, he's already met. Why do you keep saying Barsoom? He's already met green skin. Why are you green? He's met four armed, green skinned, ten foot tall aliens. He has seen alien creatures burst out of eggs. And he's like, where am I, Montana? He's seen flying, he's seen flying ships. And he's like, what is, yeah, he's like. Which state am I in? And here we are on Earth. And she's like, no, John Carter, you are on Basum.

• 1:46:45Griffin Newman?

  His wildest thinking is.

• 1:46:46Speaker 05

  And he literally says, I'm on Mars?

• 1:46:48Griffin Newman?

  His wildest thinking is, this must be that Canada I've heard so much about.

• 1:46:52Speaker 05

  Well, it's like, I. They're like us, but a little different. Again, again, they're just treating him as such a dunderhead. Like, I want, I want to just kind of shake him a little bit and be like, I.

• 1:47:04Griffin Newman?

  Get with the program.

• 1:47:05Speaker 05

  Get with the program. We're not, yeah, we're not in Canada. We're not in Montana, clearly. This is, we gotta be able to keep up with this, buddy.

• 1:47:14David Sims?

  Now, the film was made in, initially made at Long Cross Studios, which is in London, which, I don't know if you guys have been to London, does not resemble Mars.

• 1:47:22Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:47:22David Sims?

  At all.

• 1:47:23Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:47:23David Sims?

  Dan Mendel, who shot this movie, who's like a big, I would say, like, does a lot of these big kind of productions.

• 1:47:29Griffin Newman?

  Basically, the film he makes in between Star Trek and Star Wars, The Force Awakens.

• 1:47:36David Sims?

  Yeah, he also shot Star Trek Into Darkness.

• 1:47:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:47:38David Sims?

  He shot Amazing Spider-Man 2. He also shot a little film starring the hottest movie star in the world, Taylor Kitsch, Savages.

• 1:47:45Griffin Newman?

  Man, he, this guy got to lens Taylor Kitsch so much.

• 1:47:50David Sims?

  Uh, he's currently making my most anticipated film of all time, Godzilla X Kong Supernova.

• 1:47:55Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 1:47:56David Sims?

  He's basically like, the studio was fucking being cheap. We should have shot the entire thing in the four corners, like, you know, deserty America.

• 1:48:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:05David Sims?

  We eventually did end up there, but it was way too late. So much of it was done on stages. It doesn't feel textured enough. Like, he, he's very anti, um, like, that they did England stuff.

• 1:48:17Griffin Newman?

  It, it is maybe the best thing this movie has going for it, especially now 14 years on, is anytime they are in a fucking like, John Ford Vista.

• 1:48:26Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:27Griffin Newman?

  It's remarkable. You're like, we don't get this anymore. You don't get people and CGI creatures in a beautiful, organic landscape that isn't the volume.

• 1:48:37Speaker 05

  Yes. And it is cool that it starts in Monument Valley and then you're in this alien landscape and wherever they shot it, it just, it feels, it has a, a realistic texture to it.

• 1:48:47Griffin Newman?

  Going for the Mars version of Monument Valley, I think is a smart strategy. And anytime the movie is deploying that.

• 1:48:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Griffin Newman?

  And making it a parallel to the actual, like, West we see at the beginning, i- is effective. But they shot this on film?

• 1:49:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:49:04Griffin Newman?

  There was already the 3D push that they fought up against. Of course, there was one of those last minutes.

• 1:49:08Speaker 05

  Post conversion.

• 1:49:09David Sims?

  No concessions or adjustments for 3D. They shot on 35.

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  We're like, it's gonna be too hard to figure out how to do this. We don't want to do it incorrectly.

• 1:49:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:49:18Speaker 05

  I mean, the look of this, I don't, I don't think the look of this movie is a problem, even if, if what he's saying about the stages, I mean,

• 1:49:24David Sims?

  There are sort of like green screeny bits that you're like, okay, that doesn't look good. I don't think it looks bad.

• 1:49:29Speaker 05

  I think it looks, I mean, there's a lot of really cool props and set design and costumes.

• 1:49:35Griffin Newman?

  I think all the production design in this movie is good.

• 1:49:37Speaker 05

  The aliens are cool. The tharks are really cool. The, the way that they move, how, you know, like, Tars, Tarkas gestures with his arms and uses his hands to like, some of his hands are, are gesture hands and some of them are like, he'll, he'll use all of them in different ways. One thought I had watching this, uh, again this week was like, I know it's John Carter of Mars, but what if it was about Tars? He's kind of, he's kind of my man. Tars of Mars is a winner.

• 1:50:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:03Speaker 05

  You got Willem, I mean, Willem Dafoe is maybe just, just because I just think he's so locked in and he did such a great performance. I want more Tars.

• 1:50:09Griffin Newman?

  I also think it's the Single biggest story mistake this movie makes maybe is.

• 1:50:13David Sims?

  Is like having him vanish.

• 1:50:15Griffin Newman?

  I think this Samantha Morton character does not work at all. And I, I think I parsed what they were trying to do, but you're watching it and just going like, this whole thing should be buddy movie with John and Tars.

• 1:50:26David Sims?

  Have Defoe play that role.

• 1:50:28Speaker 05

  That is one of the things that is pretty faithful to the book is that that character, the Sola character has even more screen time in the book.

• 1:50:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:38Speaker 05

  And has a backstory. They make much more of the backstory of her with Tars.

• 1:50:42David Sims?

  Right, the hatchling thing.

• 1:50:43Speaker 05

  She has a whole chapter that explains her backstory, where she tells John Carter her backstory. It's not like him, like I guess in the movie, John Carter just kind of intuits what's going on with like, she's your daughter.

• 1:50:55David Sims?

  A scene I don't, right, that does not work. And he's like, she's your daughter, right? And he's like, how do you know that?

• 1:51:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:51:01David Sims?

  And he's like, uh, intuition. And I'm like, intuit, what the fuck are you talking? These creatures are born out of eggs. Like, you, you literally just went through their hatchling. How the fuck would you know that?

• 1:51:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they all, also, not to be racist, kind of look the same.

• 1:51:14David Sims?

  Yeah, and then, and Will and Defoe's like, you have successfully guessed that the one in a million, like, she was kind of raised as my daughter thing is true of her.

• 1:51:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:25David Sims?

  Anyway.

• 1:51:25Speaker 05

  In the book, that's all literally explained to John Carter by Sola.

• 1:51:29Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Collins talks about this a lot in that 10 years later piece, but that the character was originally a lot flintier and spike-er.

• 1:51:36David Sims?

  Her character or the, or the Sola character?

• 1:51:38Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:51:39David Sims?

  And that's. Would make sense. Have her be fucking Nate Terry.

• 1:51:42Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and that there were like, you know, the three rounds of reshoots on this movie, basically. And I think when you're calling out the couple little pieces that feel more apparently green screening, those are like the brief moments that feel like these were the last reshoots.

• 1:51:56David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:57Griffin Newman?

  Because part of what made this cost go up so high is every time they did reshoots versus how they usually do them today, where they stick out like sore thumbs, they would just fucking go back and reconstruct the sets or go back to the four corners. Like, they were doing like full production cost, we're just redoing this.

• 1:52:12David Sims?

  Indeed, of course. Stanton says, when we're at Pixar, we basically make a movie four to seven times. And. I've never been part of a movie where you don't do that because obviously he never made a live action movie before.

• 1:52:25Griffin Newman?

  The way the stories get this-

• 1:52:26David Sims?

  Wasn't really prepared for how you do that.

• 1:52:29Griffin Newman?

  And a thing they said at Pixar all the time that I think Steve Jobs sort of passed on to them was the goal is to be wrong as quickly as possible. It's not to try to get it right immediately. It's to try to identify the wrong moves fast so that you can correct them.

• 1:52:45David Sims?

  Right, like you make your animatics, you put your own voice on it, you see what works, you see what doesn't.

• 1:52:50Griffin Newman?

  If you can identify what the problem is, then you can actually solve it. It's not about being a genius who has the whole thing figured out from the beginning. We talked about in the Wally episode that it's, it's one of the biggest kind of like, and certainly the most successful Pixar, fuck, I got it wrong. We have to reanimate mostly finished footage where like less than a year before it comes out, he's like, I fucked this up. I had Eve getting damaged and Wally needing to save her for the last act. And they have to scrap and redo almost everything. That's not like a small change that affects everything in the plot. And then he sort of was like, oh, and it needed to be this all along and the ripple effect. It's part of why Wally was so expensive. It was the most expensive animated film at the time.

• 1:53:32Griffin Newman?

  But he's able to point to that and go, guys, I know that was an expensive choice and people would have said good enough, but didn't the results bear out the decision?

• 1:53:42David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:53:43Griffin Newman?

  He's, he's running off of that kind of confidence of-

• 1:53:45Speaker 05

  Again, this is a real blank check movie.

• 1:53:48Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Speaker 05

  But here's-

• 1:53:49Griffin Newman?

  And, and Wally was a blank check and it cleared-

• 1:53:52Speaker 05

  And cleared.

• 1:53:52Griffin Newman?

  With flying colors. So then he's in kind of like a Nolan post inception state of, I did my risky expensive thing that you were letting me do just to stay in business with me and that exceeded expectations?

• 1:54:04Speaker 05

  I, I will say, one of the ways in which I do think this movie is interesting is as the kind of larger meta allegory of John Carter, the guy from Earth who goes to Mars, Andrew Stanton, the animator, making his first very tentative, very bobble-y steps into live action. There is something that's interesting in that.

• 1:54:27Griffin Newman?

  I think it's in the New Yorker piece, but he said when they finally greenlit the movie, he was like, I'm gonna lose 20 pounds.

• 1:54:35David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:54:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm gonna run like a mile or two every day. And when I'm on set, I'm never sitting down.

• 1:54:41David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:54:42Griffin Newman?

  I'm never going to my trailer. I so badly want to fight the notion that I'm like an animation guy who cheated his way into this.

• 1:54:50David Sims?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 1:54:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:54:52David Sims?

  And look, again, everyone speaks highly of him on set and all that. Now, it is maybe a mistake by him to do an incredibly frank profile in The New Yorker before the movie comes out.

• 1:55:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:55:02David Sims?

  In which he talks about the fact that he showed a two hour, 50 minute cut of the film to Disney in December of 2011. Okay, so four months before it comes out. The Pixar guys who watch it at this meeting immediately are like, um, we could plus this, we could plus that, you know, like, start doing all of that. And like, but we're confused by the beginning and the lecture about Barsoom. Doesn't feel really personal. And the Pixar process, obviously, would be like, yeah, yeah, that was our first go.

• 1:55:30Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:55:31David Sims?

  And well, now let's get to work on fixing it.

• 1:55:32Griffin Newman?

  Thank God we showed it to you in the story reels stage rather than finished production.

• 1:55:37David Sims?

  And then, obviously, at this point, there's only so much that can be done. They do do many reshoots. Lynn Collins felt like, you know, as you said, like in the original script, she slaps John Carter a few times.

• 1:55:50Griffin Newman?

  That was her audition scene.

• 1:55:51David Sims?

  She's a warrior.

• 1:55:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:53David Sims?

  And Disney basically was like, this character comes off too hard, too bitchy. Like, may soften her. At a certain point, she says during the reshoot, she was just like to Andrew, like, just tell me where to stand and what to do. I've lost the character, like, whatever it is you need from me, I'll do it.

• 1:56:07Griffin Newman?

  There's like 20 minutes of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray. And it's frustrating because you're like, I know there's an hour and 20 minutes. There's a John Carter, the missing pieces.

• 1:56:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Griffin Newman?

  And I want to see all of it. And I'm sure a lot of the deleted footage is like alternate versions in like a choose your own adventure book way of what could have been in the movie. But there's an alternate opening that starts with her that Lynn Collins is doing the opening narration.

• 1:56:32David Sims?

  Beginnings are difficult times or whatever.

• 1:56:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And then it cuts to her sort of like meeting with all the leaders, trying to sort of, you know.

• 1:56:40David Sims?

  Breaker piece.

• 1:56:41Griffin Newman?

  And then there were several deleted scenes that sort of were focused on her and Samantha. Morton character, where beyond it just being, well, that's from the books. It felt like they were trying to make a sort of parallel story of the two of them. You know, not trying to be defined by their fathers and trying to be leaders. And when you nerf her character down, the Samantha Morton character just feels like she is there. And the whole time you're, to invoke another Simpsons thing, asking, where is Taurus?

• 1:57:08David Sims?

  Where is Taurus? But also, I think Lynn, yeah, what's her, what's the character? Lynn Collins. Lynn Collins, but what's the character? Deja Thora.

• 1:57:13Griffin Newman?

  Deja Thora.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  Deja, of course. She also is mostly just there and is kind of just a problem of like, we need to get to helium. And then it's like, I'm getting married and I don't want to.

• 1:57:22Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to get married.

• 1:57:22David Sims?

  Stop that, please.

• 1:57:23Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:57:24David Sims?

  Yeah. Some Andrew Stanton quotes that, again, perhaps I might not say to a reporter before my movie comes out. The demon I'm chasing is, can I figure out what my story is before I run out of time?

• 1:57:35David Sims?

  Feathers March, see my march. You know, he admits, like, the second act of the movie, I never cracked it. It sags. And I would agree, like, the second act of this movie is pretty boring.

• 1:57:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:57:45David Sims?

  First and third acts, more's happening, action's a little better, you know, like, right, you know? He and the Pixar brain trust liked the reinvention of Carter, the family backstory, tortured Confederate soldier kind of thing. I don't really think that works, but I get that it's something.

• 1:58:02Griffin Newman?

  This is what's also fascinating, is the single most fascinating thing about this movie to me. So when the marketing is in freefall and the buzz is negative, there are all these stories about, did Disney fuck it up? Or did Stanton fuck it up with the marketing? Was he too confident, weighing in too much of, you know, I want the trailer to be soundtrack to, uh, the Super Bowl ad was set to cashmere, but the original teaser trailer was Peter Gallagher doing a cover of Arcade Fire's My Body is a Cage. It was like, all these things in the marketing that were his personal tastes. And they were like, does this make sense to audiences? But then when Disney threw something out, that didn't work either. So one of the Hail Mary pass things they do for the marketing is they're like, how do we get people to like,

• 1:58:44Griffin Newman?

  understand Andrew Stanton's track record and invest in the idea of him as a filmmaker? He does a TED Talk where he explains the story of the Finding Nemo thing. We of course discussed in that episode where he had. Marlin's wife's death and the death of all the other babies scattered as flashbacks across the movie and the audience didn't like him. And that when he stopped being clever structurally and put it at the beginning, they understood his tragedy and then they were with him the rest of the way. And he, while promoting this movie, points at, "I learned a very important lesson about storytelling that day," and then this movie does the opposite thing. This movie does the, "Why is John Carter so angry? Why does he have so much contempt for the military?"

• 1:59:28Speaker 05

  Why doesn't he want to fight anymore?

• 1:59:29Griffin Newman?

  Why does he want to run away? And we're just gonna keep giving you little flashes and focusing on the ring and something bad happened. You know it. It's not a surprise when it comes, but it's what he talks about learning with Finding Nemo of, if you let the audience experience it with the character, they feel it. It's not like it's a satisfying twist ending to be, "Oh, oh shit, something bad happened to him." It's if you can dramatically pull that scene off correctly, then the audience is endeared to that character. And this movie has, the moment where it finally all like is shown to you is an abstracted flashback in the middle of what is his biggest action sequence.

• 2:00:10Speaker 05

  Big action, where he's flailing wildly.

• 2:00:13Griffin Newman?

  It's like an interesting conceit of filmmaking.

• 2:00:16David Sims?

  It's a very much right where you're like, "Wow, that's a big idea."

• 2:00:19Speaker 05

  It's an idea.

• 2:00:20Griffin Newman?

  Huge.

• 2:00:21Speaker 05

  It's a big idea.

• 2:00:22Griffin Newman?

  But it's self-defeating emotionally.

• 2:00:23David Sims?

  I think it is, and I really, it's like, the fact that it's his wife and child.

• 2:00:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:27David Sims?

  Did they burn up? Were they killed? We don't really even know.

• 2:00:30Speaker 05

  They don't even fully explain it, but they show their, they show the aftermath of this.

• 2:00:33David Sims?

  I'm just like watching it, I'm like, I'm just kinda bummed out right now. Like, I'm not feeling very triumphant.

• 2:00:39Griffin Newman?

  But this is the Finding Nemo thing of, if you start with that and then you get it out of the way and then the movie's fun.

• 2:00:44Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:00:45Griffin Newman?

  We can ride with it.

• 2:00:46Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:00:47Griffin Newman?

  If you drop it in the middle, it bums us out. And the scene that should be exciting then becomes really heavy.

• 2:00:52Speaker 05

  I mean, I watched that TED Talk and there is, and there's a lot of stuff around, around the, the buildup to this movie of, of storytelling, the importance of stories and being a good storyteller. And here is the secret. I have, we, we at Pixar have cracked the secret. Secret of good storytelling, which at the time, as Pixar fans, we were all like, yeah, you have.

• 2:01:12Griffin Newman?

  You did.

• 2:01:13Speaker 05

  Absolutely did. But then you watch this movie and there are all these strange story choices that, that don't work.

• 2:01:20Griffin Newman?

  That aren't in conversation with each other.

• 2:01:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:01:22Griffin Newman?

  Which is the thing about the Pixar golden run is that these things feel so holistic and so tight. And they don't feel algorithmic. And you saying, David, like, why would he admit all this shit in a fucking New Yorker?

• 2:01:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:01:35Griffin Newman?

  Right? He's always been a very frank interview subject.

• 2:01:39Speaker 05

  Right. Which is great. Good for him.

• 2:01:40Griffin Newman?

  And I think he likes the idea of being a bit of an open source filmmaker like the guys he grew up with. Where he's explaining the process and Pixar is so at the tip of DVD special features, we're showing you our mistakes. And it's like, this is part of creativity is you get things wrong and then you learn. And I think he's doing that because he's also assuming it's going to turn out the way the last two did.

• 2:02:03Speaker 05

  Right. It always worked out before.

• 2:02:04Griffin Newman?

  A lot of things didn't work and then we figured it out at the last moment.

• 2:02:08Speaker 05

  Cause the end of the article is like, it tested pretty well. We just held our first test screening. It got a 75. Disney rounded that up to an 80 because it was unfinished. And like, there's the hubris of like, you're hearing that and you're like, well, that doesn't sound that good. That sounds okay.

• 2:02:23Griffin Newman?

  It should be a hundred.

• 2:02:24Speaker 05

  Right. Nine should at least be involved. Right.

• 2:02:27Griffin Newman?

  But the iterative process, which when he gets tagged a little with, is this guy coming in way too cocky?

• 2:02:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. And again, it is this guy, and he had this incredible success.

• 2:02:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Speaker 05

  Not just as a director. I mean, you look at all the movies he helped write at Pixar. He kind of was like this guy who had the magic touch, who was sprinkling it all over.

• 2:02:48Griffin Newman?

  Making a serious effort to reestablish this in every episode on this series. It is really important to understand that he was the story guy at Pixar.

• 2:02:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Griffin Newman?

  That he is credited with being, he was the best in-house screenwriter. He's the one who always was cracking stuff, taking the lead on the script, you know, launching the original idea.

• 2:03:09Speaker 05

  Right. But ironically, this movie, it has some good things in it. There are aspects I liked. It's not a good story.

• 2:03:15Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:03:16Speaker 05

  And, and.

• 2:03:17Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:03:17David Sims?

  Not really.

• 2:03:18Speaker 05

  We have barely talked, I mean, like, we barely talked about the Therns, which are a huge part of this movie that makes absolutely no sense.

• 2:03:26Griffin Newman?

  It's the reshoot opening in what feels like such a clear reshoot of, we start with a big action sequence after a Willem Dafoe voiceover of like two warring parties that look silly.

• 2:03:38Speaker 05

  And they look so much alike. We don't know who's fighting and why.

• 2:03:40Griffin Newman?

  On a spaceship, talking grimly, and you don't know what's going on. And then it cuts to the actual superstructure of the movie.

• 2:03:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:03:47Griffin Newman?

  Which is the Edgar Rice Burroughs thing, that this is a dramatization of the author of the book who is now changed into the nephew of the character.

• 2:03:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:03:59Griffin Newman?

  Who is being told of his uncle's death and is locating his diaries and reading the story.

• 2:04:06Speaker 05

  Yes. But that, and then once you get-

• 2:04:08David Sims?

  I would not have done that.

• 2:04:08Griffin Newman?

  And then the story starts with John Carter on Earth. So it's like a Russian nesting doll thing.

• 2:04:14Speaker 05

  Yes. Some of the structure in terms of Burroughs and the, and like finding his manuscript, that is from the books. Like, that is, uh, that is something that he took from the books. But again, the, this notion of the, of the Therns, and like, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? Why do we care? What do they want? You know, they, eventually there is that scene where Mark Strong does get to kind of explain what he is doing and why. But his explanation is wholly like unsatisfying. And you, it doesn't clarify anything. And you're like, you know, he, every, there's all these scenes because again, John Carter is a guy who jumps a lot. It's like, why don't they just kill this guy?

• 2:04:50Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:51Speaker 05

  And every time Dominic West is about to zap him, he's like, no, let him live.

• 2:04:55David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:04:56Speaker 05

  We must further study him. And you're sitting there going, they even have Dominic West being like, what's the point of all this if I can't use this thing? And you're like, he's right. Why can't he just kill this guy?

• 2:05:06Griffin Newman?

  What is the explanation?

• 2:05:08Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 2:05:09David Sims?

  It's just the kind of Dune-esque, like, our plans are measured in centuries. But like, the Therns don't make sense.

• 2:05:16Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:05:16David Sims?

  Because-

• 2:05:17Griffin Newman?

  Are they like a parasitic race?

• 2:05:19Speaker 05

  They like, they say they like manage the destruction of planets.

• 2:05:22David Sims?

  They're like galactic.

• 2:05:23Speaker 05

  They like to manipulate, they're just for like, they're in it for the shits and giggles.

• 2:05:27Griffin Newman?

  They're in the Benadryza watcher, but they get their hands dirty.

• 2:05:30Speaker 03

  What's the Dune, the Bene Gesserit? Is that kind of the thing?

• 2:05:34David Sims?

  I mean, I guess so. That's, that's what he sort of explains when he's in explain Mark Strong's character, of course.

• 2:05:41Speaker 05

  But at least in Dune, they explain what-

• 2:05:42David Sims?

  The name of that character is Mattai Shang.

• 2:05:43Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:05:44David Sims?

  Well, no, in Dune is-

• 2:05:45Speaker 05

  The Bene Gesserit, they have a goal that they actually explain. And here it's just, we're gonna, yeah, these people are gonna rule because we say so.

• 2:05:51David Sims?

  It's a little League of Shadows-y from Batman of kinda like, we're always behind the scenes.

• 2:05:56Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:05:57David Sims?

  We, right, we're like, we're in charge of the ends of civilizations in vague ways.

• 2:06:02Speaker 05

  And they're also on Earth in, in, in the movie. They actually are watching and doing things on Earth, and they're immortal, and they, and they live forever, and they're all, they only have one weakness: being shot one time, which happens two different times in the movie, where these unkillable immortal beings are like, they sneak up behind John Carter and he shoots them once and they fall dead immediately.

• 2:06:24David Sims?

  1910 gun.

• 2:06:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:06:25Griffin Newman?

  Let's also consider, he's like, I don't want to do the thing where the movie has to start with an endless like spiel of, at the beginning, there was yada, yada, yada, right? And he's like, the Edgar Allan Poe's thing is a way to ease us into it, to create a sense of mystery, what was happening here, it's giving us a slightly more relatable character, a more modern sort of normal dude, and then we sort of like slowly ease into all of this. And then they do the screening and Pixar's like, this, I would just like, too much fucking happening, because in that version, he shoots the guy in the cave, and then Mark Strong doesn't appear until like an hour and a half into the movie and start explaining stuff. And they're like, this is too much to drop too late.

• 2:07:07Griffin Newman?

  So then they come up with the new opening where you cold open with him and the idea that something's going on here, and as admitted in the New Yorker piece, that realization that that needed to be an opening necessitated 18 new scenes. They were like, the ripple effect of this is, if this is happening here, then this is this and this is this, and Disney- Like, okay, well, write you a check for more reshoots.

• 2:07:29David Sims?

  Right, cuz Disney is essentially like, you were on budget and on time.

• 2:07:34Griffin Newman?

  The first time.

• 2:07:34David Sims?

  Yeah, like, the shoot was not a problem.

• 2:07:36Griffin Newman?

  At all.

• 2:07:38David Sims?

  And, and you made successful films.

• 2:07:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:41David Sims?

  And now you're saying you need reshoots, and that's kinda how you do it at Pixar.

• 2:07:43Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:07:44David Sims?

  And you're in the, right. So I guess the answer is yes.

• 2:07:47Griffin Newman?

  And he's even saying, I, I'm here to sorta try to show Hollywood why our movies work.

• 2:07:54David Sims?

  Right, why our process makes sense.

• 2:07:56Griffin Newman?

  And that more movies should be like this.

• 2:07:58David Sims?

  Let's iterate, let's just like, right.

• 2:08:00Griffin Newman?

  You need to, yeah, it, it's about seeing the whole thing and then going back and circling back. And what's fascinating to me is that everyone goes like, hey dude, you fucked up. This doesn't work in live action, go back to your animation corner. And then immediately it feels like the studios start making movies this way all the time.

• 2:08:20David Sims?

  But like, but cheaper, like where the reshoots are not quite as.

• 2:08:25Griffin Newman?

  They're lazy.

• 2:08:26David Sims?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:08:26Griffin Newman?

  And they're just sort of like, the first shoot is gonna be almost a drive on.

• 2:08:31David Sims?

  That's your, that's your first draft.

• 2:08:32Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:08:33David Sims?

  It's true, you're right.

• 2:08:33Griffin Newman?

  We'll make that a lot simpler and a lot shorter, and if we don't have a finished script, then let's just get what we need to get.

• 2:08:39David Sims?

  Speaking to those kinds of movies that are coming.

• 2:08:41Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:08:42David Sims?

  You do watch this and you're like, I guess I realize why every Marvel movie ended with them needing to close a portal and kill a bunch of guys. Cuz it's just kinda like, the audience can grapple with these clear video gamey goals very easily. Whereas I'm watching John Carter, and that's before we get to the epilogue.

• 2:09:01Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:09:01David Sims?

  Which is the end of the movie, right, like, which is not one minute, it's six or seven. And I'm just like, what does he need to do?

• 2:09:09Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:09David Sims?

  And what will that accomplish?

• 2:09:11Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:09:11David Sims?

  Like, I get that Mark Strong is bad.

• 2:09:13Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:09:15David Sims?

  Although I'm not totally sure how you kill him.

• 2:09:17Griffin Newman?

  You shoot him one, one time.

• 2:09:18David Sims?

  I'm aware, I'm aware that you could shoot him one time.

• 2:09:21Griffin Newman?

  Solar Plex.

• 2:09:21David Sims?

  Yeah. But then I'm like, is Dominic West good or bad?

• 2:09:25Speaker 05

  Unclear.

• 2:09:26David Sims?

  Bad, I guess, but like-

• 2:09:28Speaker 05

  He's, he's, yeah.

• 2:09:29David Sims?

  Pragmatic.

• 2:09:29Speaker 05

  He's pragmatic.

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  I guess.

• 2:09:31Speaker 05

  He's, sometimes, he, he spends a lot of the movie being like, "I love you, Deja Thora." "I, I'm, my, you can kill me if you want."

• 2:09:37David Sims?

  Right, take my blade.

• 2:09:38Speaker 05

  And then, at the end of the movie, John Carter shows up and he's like, "Death to you!"

• 2:09:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:43Griffin Newman?

  Like, he's not a, he's not a Gaston, but you're also like, clearly the movie doesn't want

• 2:09:48David Sims?

  He's-

• 2:09:49Griffin Newman?

  me to want them to get married.

• 2:09:51David Sims?

  Right, and like, this wedding, you're, you know, Mark Strong is like, of course, after they've exchanged their vows, we'll kill her and that'll be the final step in us taking control of her city. And I'm like, "Why?"

• 2:10:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:10:03David Sims?

  He's like, "Ah, the fallout of that." And I'm like, "Why would that be good for you? Like, that you killed the princess or what?"

• 2:10:10Speaker 05

  To your question-

• 2:10:11David Sims?

  And he doesn't really explain it in turn, except for the sort of like, "I'm the puppet master and everything I do works out," you know?

• 2:10:16Griffin Newman?

  To your question, Ben, this is a perfect example to me of a movie that does the exact wrong amount of explaining. You either need to explain way more or way less.

• 2:10:25David Sims?

  Or just like, "Don't worry about it."

• 2:10:26Griffin Newman?

  Either you need to have a real, specific answer that you can eventually sell us on, or you just need to be like, "For a century, these two species have been waging war." And just go like, "They've just been fighting forever."

• 2:10:38David Sims?

  They're different and they don't like each other, right.

• 2:10:40Griffin Newman?

  And instead, they keep getting into it and you're like, "I still don't think I have my arms around it. I know you're telling me stuff."

• 2:10:45David Sims?

  And I never quite engage with like, "Do the red Martians and green Martians hate each other or just not vibe?"

• 2:10:51Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:10:51David Sims?

  Because they're not actually at war with each other, but they don't like each other.

• 2:10:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:10:55David Sims?

  But the red Martians are, are at war with the, the Thorns.

• 2:10:59Griffin Newman?

  But it also feels like-

• 2:11:00David Sims?

  Who are not Martians.

• 2:11:00Griffin Newman?

  The Thorns are just kind of manipulating everyone to what end, even, we all make fun of fucking Unobtanium, right? To your point of like, we make fun of the portal in the sky.

• 2:11:09David Sims?

  We need the thing that's there.

• 2:11:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:11:11Griffin Newman?

  It's the reason these movies do this, is they're just like, there is just one thing we're fighting over.

• 2:11:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:11:17Griffin Newman?

  And this, you're like, "What is the technology?" There are several swirling around-

• 2:11:21David Sims?

  What is the goal? What do they want to do?

• 2:11:22Speaker 05

  The thing is sort of the ninth ray, but they don't, again, they don't make it clear what it exactly can do-

• 2:11:27David Sims?

  What that is, what it, right, how it works, where you get it, yeah.

• 2:11:31Speaker 05

  See, Deja Thora has to- Discovered it also in the beginning of the movie and she's giving a like a PowerPoint presentation about it.

• 2:11:37David Sims?

  Treating her like someone who's like, I found something called an, you know, where they're like, you're making this up or this is fringe science.

• 2:11:44Speaker 05

  There's a thorn in disguise, which is another aspect of the thorns that we may not have even mentioned, which is they can look like anyone and be anywhere. And then he like zaps her ninth ray with his ninth ray.

• 2:11:56Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:11:56Speaker 05

  And and destroys it. And then somehow, you know, like everyone, again, no one believes her. And then she's gonna have to marry Dominic West. And yeah, it's just baffling.

• 2:12:08Griffin Newman?

  Let's also acknowledge.

• 2:12:09Speaker 03

  But she's an inventor and we need to shout that out. She makes a, like a, she's a woman in STEM.

• 2:12:14Griffin Newman?

  Rain gun.

• 2:12:15Speaker 03

  Yes. And and she's a woman in STEM.

• 2:12:17David Sims?

  We haven't discussed Lynn Collins. I saw on Letterboxd that you praised her performance in this film in a prior, not recently.

• 2:12:24Speaker 05

  Like when it first came out.

• 2:12:25Griffin Newman?

  You've revisited this movie a couple of times, though. We noted that you've given it a couple, a couple at bats on Letterboxd.

• 2:12:31Speaker 05

  I keep trying.

• 2:12:32Griffin Newman?

  I keep trying. Yeah.

• 2:12:34Speaker 05

  Because I, because again, I like Andrew Stanton.

• 2:12:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Speaker 05

  And I, this just feels like the kind of movie I should like.

• 2:12:40Griffin Newman?

  And there is stuff in it that works.

• 2:12:42Speaker 05

  And there is stuff in it that works, like Tars Tarkas and the design of it. I do kind of like going to Mars. I kind of like.

• 2:12:48Speaker 03

  Mars Dog Works.

• 2:12:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, we haven't mentioned Wula, who actually is a very good boy and is very likeable.

• 2:12:55David Sims?

  I agree that he's a good boy.

• 2:12:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57David Sims?

  He is kind of in and out of the movie. I remember the marketing being like, get ready to meet Wula.

• 2:13:02Griffin Newman?

  That was also last gas marketing.

• 2:13:05David Sims?

  That kind of Despicable Me pivot to like, wait, should we go to the little guy?

• 2:13:09Griffin Newman?

  It's just Wula.

• 2:13:10Speaker 05

  Right. What are the things that are testing well? And he was probably one of the few.

• 2:13:13David Sims?

  But he's got a nice little face.

• 2:13:15Griffin Newman?

  It's funny that he's like an alien dog with a lot of legs and he's really fast. It does also mean that sometimes the movie is just like zip and he's gone and then he's just back.

• 2:13:24Speaker 05

  That is, that is shockingly pretty faithful to the book, actually. He kinda like will tell him to stay somewhere and he'll just wait there sadly with the puppy dog face. And then a few scenes later, John Carter will be in trouble and who will save him? Wula will come to the rescue. So that, I mean, that is kind of, again, it speaks to like the episodic nature of the book. The book was written as episodic. It was written as chapters.

• 2:13:46Griffin Newman?

  It was serialized in pulp magazines.

• 2:13:47Speaker 05

  Yes. So it didn't have like a superstructure of it's the story of John Carter doing this. It was, it was the continuing adventures of John Carter wandering this strange.

• 2:13:58Griffin Newman?

  Here's some new cool shit I made up.

• 2:14:00Speaker 05

  It was an ethnographic report on this strange lost civilization on this other planet.

• 2:14:05Griffin Newman?

  It's also why comic book movies are not adapted this way. You know, no one goes like, I'm gonna try to adapt the first 30 issues of Spider-Man, literally.

• 2:14:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:18Griffin Newman?

  Because it was not written in a form that, that helps you in adapting to a closed loop narrative. You know? You more like extract the feeling.

• 2:14:30David Sims?

  But Lynn Collins.

• 2:14:31Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Collins.

• 2:14:32David Sims?

  Who I know from three things, I think. I think, I think when I'm looking, I mean, obviously she's got other credits, but it's like, she's on six episodes of the first season of True Blood.

• 2:14:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:14:43David Sims?

  Like she is out of that season before the season wraps.

• 2:14:47Griffin Newman?

  But it was a buzzy show.

• 2:14:48David Sims?

  It was a, the very buzzy show and she was like the bombshell in it. She was the big hottie, although the first season of True Blood, like all subsequent seasons of True Blood is insane and people die all the time kinda randomly and like, and as, which is what happens to her. And then like she's in X-Men Origins Wolverine the next year.

• 2:15:08Speaker 05

  She's also, she's another, she's another X-Men Origins Wolverine.

• 2:15:12Griffin Newman?

  And it was sort of like, who is this? How did she get this?

• 2:15:15David Sims?

  But it had a little bit of this sort of like, the studio being like, we found our next fucking Hugh Jackman, right?

• 2:15:20Griffin Newman?

  And I must acknowledge.

• 2:15:22Speaker 05

  Kayla Silverfuck.

• 2:15:24Griffin Newman?

  I must acknowledge.

• 2:15:25Speaker 05

  She gets to give him the name The Wolverine, is that what you're gonna say?

• 2:15:27Griffin Newman?

  No, no, no, to, to your great. Consternation and frustration. I must acknowledge, she was a graduate of Juilliard.

• 2:15:35David Sims?

  She was from Juilliard.

• 2:15:36Griffin Newman?

  So when she is discovered, it is also like, this is a serious actor.

• 2:15:39David Sims?

  Yeah, I mean, she's, you know, she's in the Michael Radford Merchant of Venice movie with Al Pacino as Portia, which is an incredibly important role in 2004, when she's barely been in anything.

• 2:15:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:51David Sims?

  I have not seen that movie.

• 2:15:53Griffin Newman?

  Neither have I.

• 2:15:54David Sims?

  Like, there's no-

• 2:15:55Griffin Newman?

  I'm sure Pacino gives a subtle sense of performance as Shylock, the moneylender. That was one where I-

• 2:16:03David Sims?

  I look-

• 2:16:03Griffin Newman?

  I saw the poster and I was like, this feels like an attack on my people.

• 2:16:09David Sims?

  I studied Merchant of Venice in school. I know the play very well. I've never seen the movie. I should watch it. I'm just looking at- I know.

• 2:16:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:15David Sims?

  It was one of those movies that was DOA, obviously, like, but like, that she had that role, unless she stinks in it, which is possible, I should watch it. Like, that's definitely, that's a sign of some chops.

• 2:16:27Griffin Newman?

  It also feels like, you know, a couple of years later, Pacino discovers, well, she's very good in bug.

• 2:16:32David Sims?

  Yeah, I haven't seen that movie in a long time, but I don't remember her being bad.

• 2:16:37Griffin Newman?

  But, uh-

• 2:16:38David Sims?

  She's in, um, uh, number 23, although not in a big role, I don't think.

• 2:16:42Griffin Newman?

  She plays number two.

• 2:16:45David Sims?

  What do you remember?

• 2:16:46Griffin Newman?

  That, it's not that I remember, but just a couple of years after Merchant of Venice, Pacino discovers Jessica Chastain similarly, who is a Juilliard person. He does the, the Wild Salome, Salome thing with her. And then it takes her a couple of years for the industry to sort of like, accept her. But it felt like both of them were a similar, like, Pacino has found a young female Juilliard bombshell, who he is working into the classics and presenting as, I approve of this person. I think they have the goods.

• 2:17:19David Sims?

  Which, like, by all means, Al. Like, that's fine. I don't like X-Men Origins Wolverine.

• 2:17:24Griffin Newman?

  It's a dogshit movie.

• 2:17:25David Sims?

  I remember her role being incredibly thankless in it.

• 2:17:29Griffin Newman?

  It totally sucks.

• 2:17:30David Sims?

  I do not remember her being good at all in it. Like, she's a, she's a blank in that movie. She has a hat?

• 2:17:37Speaker 05

  She's forced to explain a dream that involves a Wolverine.

• 2:17:41David Sims?

  Cool.

• 2:17:42Speaker 05

  That, that's how he gets the name Wolverine.

• 2:17:44David Sims?

  She has like one of those lame powers where it's just like-

• 2:17:46Griffin Newman?

  She's a human, you're like, oh, this is his human love interest, his tragic love interest-

• 2:17:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:17:51Griffin Newman?

  Before he became Wolverine. And then the reveal at the end is that she's a mutant whose power is that she can emotionally manipulate people.

• 2:17:59David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:17:59Griffin Newman?

  Which feels like faking misogynistic.

• 2:18:01David Sims?

  Yeah, she touches you.

• 2:18:03Griffin Newman?

  It's a woman who can make you just like-

• 2:18:05David Sims?

  No. It's, it's Will.i.am who has the hat. I'm sorry.

• 2:18:08Griffin Newman?

  Will.i.am has the hat.

• 2:18:09David Sims?

  Will.i.am's character was, I got a cowboy hat on my-

• 2:18:12Speaker 03

  And he's in the movie.

• 2:18:13David Sims?

  He's in the movie playing a role.

• 2:18:15Griffin Newman?

  His character's name is Blink and he can teleport, like Nightcrawler?

• 2:18:19David Sims?

  No, he's not Blink. No, he's not Blink.

• 2:18:21Speaker 05

  John Rafe.

• 2:18:22David Sims?

  He's, yeah, he's a mu- the whole thing with X-Men Origins Wolverine was you could tell that Marvel was like, they were like, can we have Blink? And they were like, we don't even want to give you Blink. You can have, uh, and like just dug in the bucket.

• 2:18:35Griffin Newman?

  It also feels like-

• 2:18:35David Sims?

  John Rafe?

• 2:18:36Griffin Newman?

  HBO's Lanterns where they're like, no one will wear a costume. Everyone is wearing a leather jacket and a hat.

• 2:18:42David Sims?

  Totally.

• 2:18:43Griffin Newman?

  Dominic Moynihan plays a guy who can turn light bulbs on. Which character is he?

• 2:18:46David Sims?

  So he is weirdly-

• 2:18:48Speaker 05

  Chris Bradley?

• 2:18:49David Sims?

  He's, yes, he's Chris Bradley who was sort of known as Maverick.

• 2:18:53Speaker 05

  Maverick is how I would know him.

• 2:18:55David Sims?

  He had been initially announced to be playing Beak, who is a Grant Morrison character- Who's like a living bird.

• 2:19:00Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:19:01David Sims?

  And then I bet you someone was like, we'd have to like, put a bird face on him. Can he just be someone who turns off light bulbs or whatever?

• 2:19:08Griffin Newman?

  And then, and then there's Agent Zero is in it, Ben, who of course is a mutant, whose mutant power is he's good at shooting guns.

• 2:19:15David Sims?

  Guns.

• 2:19:15Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  This movie sucks.

• 2:19:17David Sims?

  Like, Agent Zero's power is guns, Deadpool's power is sword, like, you know, like-

• 2:19:22Griffin Newman?

  Look, X-Men Origins-

• 2:19:23David Sims?

  Will.i.am can teleport?

• 2:19:24Griffin Newman?

  Wolverine, it is, it is neither Lynn Collins nor, uh, Taylor Kitsch's fault. But for the infinite trust I had- Andrew Stanton, the first warning sign was, I've announced my two leads, I've discovered the stars of tomorrow. Both of them are in the cast of X-Men Origins Wolverine. And I was like, I feel like we should treat that movie as like a Three Mile Island stay away at all costs.

• 2:19:48Speaker 05

  Especially since it ends on Three Mile Island.

• 2:19:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:19:50David Sims?

  It sure does.

• 2:19:51Griffin Newman?

  It's also funny-

• 2:19:52David Sims?

  In a thrilling and coherent sequence.

• 2:19:54Speaker 03

  Sabretooth just not in it?

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  No, he's in it.

• 2:19:56Speaker 05

  He's in it.

• 2:19:57David Sims?

  But like the trick on Sabretooth is like he has sideburns and a jacket.

• 2:20:00Griffin Newman?

  He's played by Liev Schreiber.

• 2:20:01David Sims?

  And some, uh, some little fingernails.

• 2:20:03Speaker 05

  You should Google Liev Schreiber, like, running as Sabretooth. And we're gonna watch your face as you watch this man jumping like a dog.

• 2:20:12David Sims?

  He's got like a kinda like, right, like a dog gallop thing.

• 2:20:14Griffin Newman?

  I think Liev Schreiber is the one good performance in that movie.

• 2:20:17David Sims?

  He's gotta take.

• 2:20:18Speaker 05

  He's not bad.

• 2:20:18Griffin Newman?

  He's gotta take, but it's also funny that already, less than 10 years in the X-Men franchise was like, we're just re-conning everything. Now, here's Sabretooth, who is nothing like the previous Sabretooth and is also his brother.

• 2:20:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:20:31David Sims?

  This is true. Do we think Lynn Collins is good in John Carter?

• 2:20:35Griffin Newman?

  I don't think she's bad. I think this character does not work at all.

• 2:20:39Speaker 05

  It's kinda the same thing with, with Taylor Kitsch, where it's like, I don't necessarily dislike her.

• 2:20:44David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:45Speaker 05

  The problems are sort of putting her into this role, which has all these, these issues. The, the, the structure of it is, is way off.

• 2:20:52David Sims?

  I, I find like, I don't really get the accent she decided on. This kind of like vaguely English regally kind of accent.

• 2:21:01Speaker 05

  I mean, she hits it harder than I remembered. I'll give you that.

• 2:21:03David Sims?

  She's also kind of similar to Natalie Portman in Attack of the Clones, as we talked about.

• 2:21:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:21:07David Sims?

  She's like brown, like, or tan, bronze.

• 2:21:11Speaker 05

  She's red.

• 2:21:12David Sims?

  Cause she's a red Martian.

• 2:21:13Speaker 05

  She's a red Martian.

• 2:21:14David Sims?

  My wife kept being like, what's she supposed to be? And I was like, red Martian. And, and my wife was like, and that is? And I was like, what do you want from me? I don't know. I mean, like, desert-y, I guess, is the idea.

• 2:21:26Griffin Newman?

  Everyone is like bright red, which makes them look like aliens, even though they are otherwise humanoid. It is visually distinctive. I feel like Stan communicates that it, they thought it would feel a little silly and they wanted to make it a little more grounded. They end up at heavily tanned.

• 2:21:41David Sims?

  They end up in this kinda-

• 2:21:42Speaker 05

  Red kind of like

• 2:21:43David Sims?

  With some makeup.

• 2:21:44Speaker 05

  Tribal-y tattoos.

• 2:21:45Griffin Newman?

  No, I also feel like

• 2:21:47David Sims?

  It just feels like a college student who went to Morocco and still thinks they can be like that.

• 2:21:53Griffin Newman?

  It's very burning, man.

• 2:21:53David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:54Griffin Newman?

  It was unspoken, but I have to imagine part of their concern was like, if, if they are bright red and, and too caked in tribal stuff, do we get into touchy Native American territory?

• 2:22:05Speaker 05

  I suspect that that was a consideration.

• 2:22:07Griffin Newman?

  Where they end up in trying to avoid that almost feels more uncomfortable?

• 2:22:12David Sims?

  I would agree.

• 2:22:13Griffin Newman?

  And I, I think you're right. It's, it's very Padme where it's like, what is your weird like mid Atlantic accent?

• 2:22:19David Sims?

  Yes, right.

• 2:22:19Griffin Newman?

  What is this skin tone? What are we culturally pulling from? None of this is her fault. He kind of makes the Star Wars decision of like, all of the aliens and the villains are British, right? Like the humanoid, the sort of, they're, they're coded as kind of the Roman Empire.

• 2:22:35David Sims?

  Right, to the point-

• 2:22:36Griffin Newman?

  I'm casting people from the Rome TV show on HBO.

• 2:22:38David Sims?

  To the point where, right, I do think like Mark Strong, Kieran Hins, Dominic West, James Pugh, like, can we at least remove one of these guys? Like you've got maybe too many kind of UK, Ireland thespes.

• 2:22:48Griffin Newman?

  It's four types of pig-based meat on one slice of pizza.

• 2:22:51David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:52David Sims?

  I'm sorry, David Schwimmer is in this?

• 2:22:54Speaker 05

  I think just like a cameo is one of the arcs, because he's another random person who loves John Carter. And Babro also got-

• 2:23:02David Sims?

  Babro did a little cameo.

• 2:23:03Griffin Newman?

  All right, I watched it.

• 2:23:04Speaker 05

  What do you think? What do you think? Good stuff?

• 2:23:05Griffin Newman?

  Fucking stinks.

• 2:23:07David Sims?

  You see, you see his fucking nails grow?

• 2:23:10Speaker 05

  His nails grow. He, and he-

• 2:23:12Griffin Newman?

  This is a movie that is so obsessed with not doing any goofy comic book stuff, that they're like, well, you can't just have Sabretooth be a big WWE wrestler with like a mane of yellow hair. And like big claws and roaring. And you're like, why? Everyone liked that. And they're like, no, he's a guy who like talks quietly and his nails grow a little bit.

• 2:23:30Speaker 05

  Nails grow and he wears a black duster.

• 2:23:32Griffin Newman?

  But then anytime it does something like him running on all fours, you're like, well, now that's twice as silly because you haven't built a movie that can support comic booky shit. It's so bad.

• 2:23:42David Sims?

  It's so weird.

• 2:23:43Speaker 05

  Have you, you haven't seen this movie?

• 2:23:46David Sims?

  I truly was thinking when you were talking about it. I mean, love Wolverine.

• 2:23:52Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:23:52David Sims?

  He's my guy.

• 2:23:53Speaker 05

  We love Wolverine.

• 2:23:54David Sims?

  I've, don't remember this at all.

• 2:23:56Griffin Newman?

  This is another franchise death thing.

• 2:23:58Speaker 05

  He's gotta Google another thing then.

• 2:23:59Griffin Newman?

  Deadpool, final battle.

• 2:24:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, final battle Deadpool, and you gotta see what they make Deadpool look like.

• 2:24:04Griffin Newman?

  So Ryan Reynolds really wanted to play Deadpool, like, early on. He called dibs on that.

• 2:24:08David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:08Griffin Newman?

  And I wanna make my own movie as Deadpool. Then they go, "We've written Deadpool into X-Men Origins Wolverine. This is a good launching pad, but it's gonna be early Deadpool before he really becomes Deadpool." So he's just Wade Wilson, a merc with a mouth.

• 2:24:21David Sims?

  He looks like Ryan Reynolds.

• 2:24:23Speaker 05

  Wise, cracking mercenary.

• 2:24:23Griffin Newman?

  He's Ryan Reynolds with a red tank top.

• 2:24:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:26Griffin Newman?

  Who's got double swords.

• 2:24:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:24:28Griffin Newman?

  And then they decide, fuck, he popped in the first act.

• 2:24:31Speaker 05

  Right. He's the only thing people like in this movie.

• 2:24:33Griffin Newman?

  And we dispense of him, so they do extensive reshoots to make Deadpool the villain at the end of the movie, where they've kidnapped Deadpool and tortured him and made him into like a mega mutant, where now he has like seven different powers. He has Cyclops's optic glass.

• 2:24:49Speaker 05

  He can teleport.

• 2:24:50Griffin Newman?

  Katana arms. He can teleport.

• 2:24:52Speaker 05

  Just like John Rafe, everyone's favorite teleporting character.

• 2:24:54Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. And Ryan Reynolds is like, "I refuse to do this." So Scott Adkins, legendary.

• 2:25:00Speaker 05

  The great Scott Adkins.

• 2:25:01Griffin Newman?

  Martial artist.

• 2:25:02Speaker 05

  Action hero.

• 2:25:03Griffin Newman?

  King of the DTV action movie, is in Ryan Reynolds' makeup as mouthless Deadpool, which is a joke to spite the fans of, well Deadpool is famously the merc with a mouth. Danny Huston, the second of four actors to play William Stryker?

• 2:25:19David Sims?

  There's been a lot. There's been a fair few.

• 2:25:21Griffin Newman?

  Keep saying, "Why won't you shut up, Wade?" And so when they do all these weird operations on him, the first thing they do is sew his mouth shut.

• 2:25:27David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:25:28Griffin Newman?

  You know, that thing that everyone hates when Deadpool can make jokes during action sequences.

• 2:25:32David Sims?

  To be fair, I did grow to hate it.

• 2:25:34Griffin Newman?

  We do hate it, but it has made billions of dollars.

• 2:25:36David Sims?

  I'm gonna say confidently that John Rafe, AKA Maverick, is...

• 2:25:41Speaker 05

  No, those are two different people.

• 2:25:43David Sims?

  John Wraith, AKA what? What's his name?

• 2:25:45Speaker 05

  I don't know. I think it might just be Wraith.

• 2:25:46Griffin Newman?

  I think his name is Wraith. Maverick is Moynihan, right?

• 2:25:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:25:50David Sims?

  Dude, I can't watch this anymore. This is dog shit.

• 2:25:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:54David Sims?

  But this was, they had- No, he is called Maverick. You guys are thinking, you guys already forgot what the other guy's-

• 2:25:59Speaker 03

  Why, is this, this is no goodness.

• 2:26:02Griffin Newman?

  They had made the third X-Men and they were like, that is the proper end to the trilogy.

• 2:26:06David Sims?

  Bradley was also known as Maverick.

• 2:26:07Griffin Newman?

  There we go!

• 2:26:08David Sims?

  Wow, they did it for both?

• 2:26:09Speaker 05

  Kestrel. The Wikipedia says John Wraith's other name is Kestrel.

• 2:26:14Griffin Newman?

  They were like, X-Men was a trilogy, we are done, and the ongoing future of the X-Men franchise is doing spinoff origin movies. We're gonna do everyone's backstory.

• 2:26:24Speaker 05

  Magneto was supposed to get one.

• 2:26:25Griffin Newman?

  And this one bombed so hard, they take the script for X-Men Origins: Magneto and retrofit that into First Class.

• 2:26:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:26:33Griffin Newman?

  The sort of Nazi hunting stuff was supposed to be the whole-

• 2:26:35Speaker 05

  Kind of pull it off.

• 2:26:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:36David Sims?

  Kind of pull it off.

• 2:26:37Griffin Newman?

  That movie kind of works.

• 2:26:38David Sims?

  I think Wraith is, okay, so the most famous X-Men who teleports is Nightcrawler.

• 2:26:41Speaker 05

  Obviously, yes.

• 2:26:42David Sims?

  Number two is Blink, I would say. Blink was a very popular character for a while there.

• 2:26:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:45David Sims?

  Number three, with a bullet, I'm going for Magic.

• 2:26:49Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, Magic has to be number three.

• 2:26:51David Sims?

  Because she can dimensionally travel and all that.

• 2:26:52Speaker 05

  Yes, and she has a cool sword.

• 2:26:53David Sims?

  Number four, let's talk about him, Nightcrawler's weird brother, Azazel.

• 2:26:58Speaker 05

  Is that how you say it? I don't, I never even know how to say it.

• 2:27:00David Sims?

  Or Azazel.

• 2:27:01Speaker 05

  Azazel, Azazel?

• 2:27:02David Sims?

  He can do kind of like red teleporting.

• 2:27:04Speaker 03

  And I say Azazel.

• 2:27:05Griffin Newman?

  And he's Nightcrawler's dad, which gives him, like, he's a nepo daddy.

• 2:27:08David Sims?

  But it's red, because he red, instead of-

• 2:27:10Griffin Newman?

  Red, purple.

• 2:27:11Speaker 05

  Instead of blue.

• 2:27:11David Sims?

  Yeah, blue.

• 2:27:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:13Speaker 05

  And Mystique is his mom.

• 2:27:14David Sims?

  Yeah, that's true. Number five, I think it's gotta be Pixie. Pixie-

• 2:27:19Speaker 05

  Pixie, sure.

• 2:27:20David Sims?

  Can teleport, and she was hot in the 2010s or whatever.

• 2:27:23Speaker 05

  Yes, like, Matt Fractionera, maybe?

• 2:27:25David Sims?

  Correct. I think I'm comfortable putting John Wraith at six.

• 2:27:29Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 2:27:30David Sims?

  Right, given that he was-

• 2:27:31Speaker 05

  I can't think of anyone that would go above him at this moment.

• 2:27:33David Sims?

  Everyone else listed with teleporting powers are people like Hope Summers, who just copy other powers, or people like Apocalypse, who just kind of have, like, all the powers.

• 2:27:40Griffin Newman?

  It's a bonus.

• 2:27:41David Sims?

  Right, yeah, it's sort of like, that's his, like, 20th power.

• 2:27:44Griffin Newman?

  It's also funny, and then we're gonna close the loop on X-Men Origins Wolverine.

• 2:27:47David Sims?

  Maybe reopen it again.

• 2:27:48Speaker 05

  We're just counting X-Men, right?

• 2:27:50David Sims?

  X-Men universe.

• 2:27:51Speaker 05

  Okay, cuz like Lockjaw is obviously.

• 2:27:54Griffin Newman?

  It's a better Marvel teleporter.

• 2:27:55David Sims?

  And you know what, there was that Gateway character who was.

• 2:27:57Speaker 05

  Oh, Gateway. We didn't forget Gateway.

• 2:27:59David Sims?

  So maybe he's, maybe Wraith's down to eight?

• 2:28:01Speaker 05

  Wraith's gotta be, Gateway's definitely above.

• 2:28:03Griffin Newman?

  She makes star portals?

• 2:28:05David Sims?

  She makes star portals, that's true, but she's not really X-Men, right?

• 2:28:08Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm saying if we're opening it up to Marvel.

• 2:28:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28:10Griffin Newman?

  They're like so afraid of letting any of these characters be comic booky, but they also include Blob, who had been cut out of all three mainline X-Men movies up until that point.

• 2:28:20David Sims?

  They do, but I feel like their take on Blob is like, he's large, has suit on, like has like a makeup suit on.

• 2:28:27Speaker 05

  Prosthetic suit.

• 2:28:28David Sims?

  But like, he's not actually blobby, he's kinda tough, he punch.

• 2:28:31Griffin Newman?

  Their take is, rather than Blob's power being like this endless kind of growth of mass, that it like has so much power behind it, they're like, he was a guy whose power was bulletproof skin and then he let himself go.

• 2:28:44Speaker 05

  He let himself go, that is the take, I forgot that.

• 2:28:47Griffin Newman?

  So rather than letting Blob be like an extension of a mutant evolution, they're just like, this guy just eats too much junk food now.

• 2:28:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:28:54Griffin Newman?

  Wolverine served with him in the war and he was really cut and then he goes to a boxing gym and he's just a fat ass eating Cheetos. And they make fat jokes for five minutes.

• 2:29:03Speaker 05

  Yes, and he has a voice, they gave him a voice.

• 2:29:05David Sims?

  It's Kevin Durand, who I always enjoy.

• 2:29:08Griffin Newman?

  Lovely actor.

• 2:29:09David Sims?

  Um, like, that X-Men Origins Wolverine problem of where they're like, meet all these new characters. Oh, okay, no, no, no, meet them later when they suck.

• 2:29:18Griffin Newman?

  We'll meet them before they're cool.

• 2:29:20David Sims?

  We'll see them for two minutes at the start and then later he'll rebuild a team that you don't know anything about.

• 2:29:24Griffin Newman?

  You only see them before they figure their thing out and after they're washed up.

• 2:29:27Speaker 05

  And after they suck. And then we kill them.

• 2:29:30David Sims?

  They suck, and then they all die immediately anyway, so who cares, right?

• 2:29:34Speaker 05

  Okay, so. Can't believe that movie didn't work.

• 2:29:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48David Sims?

  John Carter.

• 2:29:49Speaker 05

  John Carter.

• 2:29:50David Sims?

  Yeah, so obviously-

• 2:29:51Speaker 05

  John Carter Origins Wolverine.

• 2:29:53Griffin Newman?

  Here's another story issue this movie has, in my opinion.

• 2:29:56David Sims?

  I forgot Thomas Haden Church is the bad, uh, thark.

• 2:30:00Griffin Newman?

  He's doing a voice. It doesn't even sound like him, really.

• 2:30:02David Sims?

  No, doesn't.

• 2:30:03Griffin Newman?

  He's got the gravel. Yeah, yeah. You basically give John Carter the Dorothy Wizard of Oz thing of, "All I want to do is get home. I don't want to be here." "Right before I got teleported, I discovered a cave full of gold."

• 2:30:17David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:30:18Griffin Newman?

  "I was running away from the cavalry."

• 2:30:20David Sims?

  They keep saying-

• 2:30:21Griffin Newman?

  "They were gonna kill me, but now I'm about to be so rich."

• 2:30:23David Sims?

  "Save my city, become our warrior," and he's like, "Where is the exit?"

• 2:30:28Griffin Newman?

  "Get me back to the gold cave." It's not just, "I miss home," but it keeps invoking-

• 2:30:33David Sims?

  Cranston's getting all the gold!

• 2:30:35Griffin Newman?

  He's like, "I was a minute away from being a millionaire and owning, you know, the railroads and whichever," which you already know he succeeded in doing because when Ned Burrows is called to his dead uncle's estate, you see that he is now a very wealthy man.

• 2:30:52David Sims?

  Oh, and we know for sure he is definitely dead, right? Oh, yeah, when they're like-

• 2:30:56Griffin Newman?

  They really sell it.

• 2:30:57David Sims?

  It's so weird. His tomb can only be opened from the inside. It's almost like it's a weird puzzle thing. "Anyway, here are his books."

• 2:31:03Speaker 05

  "Here's the picture of vim and vigor."

• 2:31:06David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:06Speaker 05

  "Not five minutes before he passed."

• 2:31:09David Sims?

  It is funny how Taylor Kitsch, again, 29 when he makes this movie, he's like, the performance of him being like, "Call for my doctor. Might as well get the attorney too while you're out of the door." It was like, "Very well, sir."

• 2:31:20Speaker 05

  I do love any movie where they create the device of, "This thing will make you look dead for 15 minutes."

• 2:31:27David Sims?

  It's the little fucker.

• 2:31:28Griffin Newman?

  A little thing.

• 2:31:28Speaker 05

  Pufferfish.

• 2:31:29Griffin Newman?

  Pufferfish.

• 2:31:30Speaker 05

  It's a venom of a pufferfish. Is that, I don't even know. Is that a thing? Can we, I would-

• 2:31:34David Sims?

  I think in the days before- EKG's heart rate monitors, possibly you could simulate coma like.

• 2:31:42Griffin Newman?

  There were more.

• 2:31:43David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:31:43Griffin Newman?

  There were more primitive versions of NyQuil and people would just accept.

• 2:31:47David Sims?

  I guess this guy's fucking dead.

• 2:31:49Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen someone sleep that hard.

• 2:31:50Speaker 05

  You gotta think if they were real, the Jackass guys would have used it in one of their movies at this point. It would be an incredible actual prank to be like.

• 2:31:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:31:58David Sims?

  The final prank of Knoxville died.

• 2:32:00Griffin Newman?

  Do we think that Jackass 5, Jackass Best and Last?

• 2:32:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:32:03Griffin Newman?

  Which is coming out shortly after this episode's release.

• 2:32:05David Sims?

  Yeah, it's coming up pretty soon, right?

• 2:32:06Speaker 05

  The trailer dropped today.

• 2:32:07Griffin Newman?

  It dropped today. Do we think they try to do a flatliners? That does feel like the final frontier.

• 2:32:13David Sims?

  Kill me and then bring me back.

• 2:32:15Griffin Newman?

  Can we do it?

• 2:32:16Speaker 05

  It would be, it would be appropriate, given the theme of this is the last one.

• 2:32:19Griffin Newman?

  Best and last.

• 2:32:20David Sims?

  Yeah, I do feel like I worry about them, like the, the, the sort of narrative they're putting forward with it of like, we, we know that as the last one, this has to be like the biggest one ever.

• 2:32:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:31David Sims?

  I'm just like, I really just enjoy.

• 2:32:33Griffin Newman?

  Same.

• 2:32:34David Sims?

  Y'all being together and having fun. Like, I don't need you actually to try and top yourselves. You're older.

• 2:32:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:39David Sims?

  Like, I think your, your physical peaks have passed.

• 2:32:42Speaker 05

  And we don't, and we don't actually want them to die. We enjoy their company.

• 2:32:45David Sims?

  Not only not die, it's just like, whatever. Like, just have fun, guys.

• 2:32:48Griffin Newman?

  My read on that situation is that that was very much their intent for four, right?

• 2:32:53David Sims?

  Covid fucks with four.

• 2:32:54Griffin Newman?

  Exactly. And so I think Knoxville and crew got a little itchy and were like, we didn't really get to do everything we wanted to do on four.

• 2:33:01Speaker 05

  And people loved four.

• 2:33:02Griffin Newman?

  Four's really good.

• 2:33:03Speaker 05

  And they got a lot of, suddenly now everyone, critically, every, every Jackass movie has gotten better reviews than the one before it.

• 2:33:10Griffin Newman?

  It is the funniest thing, this phenomenon, and Jackass is the best example of it, where the fourth movie comes out is a New York Times critics pick.

• 2:33:17David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:17Griffin Newman?

  And also it said, obviously not as good as the earlier entries.

• 2:33:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:33:21Griffin Newman?

  And you're like, all of these were trashed at the time.

• 2:33:25David Sims?

  They were seen as a sign of a declining culture by older critics and all that.

• 2:33:29Griffin Newman?

  They're actually the best of us.

• 2:33:29David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:33:31Speaker 05

  So anyway, puffer fish venom, we're gonna taste it.

• 2:33:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 05

  Right? It's in, you, you put it in the Spider-Man coffee. You just didn't mention it.

• 2:33:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes, I did.

• 2:33:38Speaker 05

  So we're all about to attain a certain.

• 2:33:40David Sims?

  Comatose state briefly.

• 2:33:42Griffin Newman?

  And then hopefully our nephews will send us to Barso.

• 2:33:44Speaker 03

  Okay, but so the idea is that a copy of him has been made. This is a thing the movie.

• 2:33:49Griffin Newman?

  Also makes no sense. Weirdly, it's a bit of a like, your body's actually on Earth?

• 2:33:53Speaker 05

  Well, they say they sent a copy, just like a telegraph, which is not how telegraph works. Which is very, a very funny explanation where he's like, it's like a telegraph. They've sent a copy and you're like, that's not how telegraphs work.

• 2:34:03Griffin Newman?

  That's some 1912 shit.

• 2:34:04Speaker 03

  This is stupid to even ask, but we see that when he comes back to his body, that the kernel is like bones now.

• 2:34:14Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:34:14Speaker 03

  And he's been there for a really long time. Does he shit his pants?

• 2:34:19David Sims?

  Great question.

• 2:34:20Speaker 05

  Which person?

• 2:34:20Speaker 03

  Is there breaches? Is John Carter's breaches just full up?

• 2:34:25Griffin Newman?

  Like, he hasn't been eating.

• 2:34:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, but. But I'm saying he's just been laying there.

• 2:34:29David Sims?

  But he's not in a regular coma.

• 2:34:31Speaker 03

  What are the rules?

• 2:34:32David Sims?

  Well, we don't know, but he's not in a regular coma. He's in like a, your, your spirit and body have been transported to Mars coma.

• 2:34:40Speaker 05

  Thern coma.

• 2:34:41David Sims?

  So maybe he is truly like just frozen in time, right? And not pooping.

• 2:34:45Griffin Newman?

  It's fascinating, because.

• 2:34:46David Sims?

  Maybe if you're in a regular coma, you do poop.

• 2:34:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:49David Sims?

  It's all happening.

• 2:34:50Griffin Newman?

  But it feels like a prestige where, oh, at this moment, a new version of you is being made. That is birthed at this other spot.

• 2:35:00Speaker 05

  God, yes, yes, that is what happens.

• 2:35:02Griffin Newman?

  It's like, we've built a thing, we've placed it there, and now we're gonna transfer your consciousness. And there's one consciousness going in between the two. But in this, it is, at this moment, you are copied, that copy is sent there. And your consciousness is being transferred.

• 2:35:17David Sims?

  But I, I think copy is misleading because his Earth body is just lying in the cave.

• 2:35:23Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:35:23David Sims?

  So it's not, copy sort of suggests like there are two John Carters walking around on two planets. You know what I mean?

• 2:35:30Griffin Newman?

  There are two John Carters, but only one of them can walk at a time.

• 2:35:33David Sims?

  There's just one then, really.

• 2:35:35Griffin Newman?

  There are two bodies, though.

• 2:35:37David Sims?

  It needs, the, the body needs to exist, we assume.

• 2:35:40Speaker 05

  The one Carter, two cups?

• 2:35:41Griffin Newman?

  And which one's pooping?

• 2:35:42David Sims?

  I'm just saying, give me a big old Rumpelstiltskin beard.

• 2:35:46Speaker 05

  I did, I, I had the same thought, which is why isn't, yeah, shouldn't he have a big old bushy beard when he wakes up?

• 2:35:52David Sims?

  And also maybe have like, birds that built a nest on his head.

• 2:35:56Griffin Newman?

  And can he wake up in the eighties? Can he like, wake up with the beard and be like, where am I? And then he hears like.

• 2:36:01David Sims?

  Blondie on the like, someone's like, cruise by.

• 2:36:05Griffin Newman?

  Right. And he peeks his head out and he's in the back of a Sam Goody's.

• 2:36:10David Sims?

  All, all good ideas.

• 2:36:11Speaker 05

  Where on earth am I?

• 2:36:13David Sims?

  Right now, I'm Andrew Stanton sweating. I'm like, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Yeah, no, maybe, maybe, maybe I do that, maybe, yeah.

• 2:36:19Speaker 05

  I do like when he wakes up back on Earth and there's like crackling noises and he's all dusty. I mean, that is kind of fun. And yeah, he looks over and Bryan Cranston's a skeleton man. That's kind of fun.

• 2:36:29Griffin Newman?

  I like the Cranston sequence. I like the him constantly trying to escape and getting put in more and more restraint.

• 2:36:35David Sims?

  The Cranston sequence is fine. I think the movie, it's interesting because like the Mars adventure ends with him falling in love with Deja Thoris.

• 2:36:44Griffin Newman?

  Getting married, which I would say is-

• 2:36:45David Sims?

  Naring her and becoming the prince of helium.

• 2:36:47Griffin Newman?

  A little unearned that they get there that fast.

• 2:36:50David Sims?

  Fucking complete, they only get married, I feel like, because they're like, I mean, all the wedding shit's already here. So I guess we'll do that.

• 2:36:58Speaker 05

  They're spaceballs.

• 2:36:59Griffin Newman?

  They've kissed one time, implied because he forgot he wasn't talking to his dead wife. And then he immediately walks away and apologizes. And then like, it feels like six hours later, they're married.

• 2:37:09David Sims?

  Their chemistry is not like very electrifying.

• 2:37:12Griffin Newman?

  They get married in the movie because they get married in the books. And they probably get married in the books because it's like, well, you're a dirty, single woman. I'm doing you a favor. It's 1912.

• 2:37:22Speaker 05

  Yes, in the books, they get married and then even though they don't describe it, this is like literally one paragraph. They say like 10 years passed. He basically, they're, they're, he lives there for 10 years. They have a egg, not even a full born, like they don't, she doesn't give birth to a child, like a baby. She somehow, they don't get into the details, produces an egg. And the egg is about to be born when he is pulled back to Earth in the book. And there's this whole thing that is, again, not in the movie at all, involving the atmosphere factory that creates the air of Mars. Where it stops working. They've established earlier in the book, this atmosphere factory. And if it ever goes down, there's going to be a big problem. At the end of the book, it goes down.

• 2:38:04Speaker 05

  He heroically goes to save it or like repair it. He's the only one who can do it. He knows the secret password that can open the unopenable door because he's awesome.

• 2:38:14David Sims?

  The secret password of Ned.

• 2:38:17Speaker 05

  He opens, thank you. He opens the door and is like misty. He doesn't even understand why he's like sucked back to Earth and then has to figure out how to get back to his wife and his unborn child. And that's the end of the book. It ends on like a huge cliffhanger, which this one really doesn't. The other thing about the marriage, which we haven't mentioned one time, I feel like we should at least mention is in the book, he and everyone is naked on Mars.

• 2:38:41Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:38:42Speaker 05

  He shows up totally naked.

• 2:38:44Griffin Newman?

  Well, well, well.

• 2:38:44Speaker 05

  They describe how all the Tharks are naked.

• 2:38:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:48Speaker 05

  And Deja Thoris is naked, like.

• 2:38:50Griffin Newman?

  And most of the sort of.

• 2:38:52Speaker 05

  So like the whole book is everyone's just running around with, you know, their hogs hanging out and whatnot.

• 2:38:57Griffin Newman?

  Most of the visual sort of history, cultural memory of John Carter is from when Frank Frazetta does a bunch of additions of Frank Frazetta is like sort of the main Conan artist, you know, that sort of classical kind of oil painting barbarian look. And um, they were very scantily clad. Like it was sort of like Deja Thoris is wearing like a ribbon.

• 2:39:21Speaker 05

  A bikini.

• 2:39:22Griffin Newman?

  Right. Yes, very. And John Carter's wearing like the the skimpiest loincloth. And so that was another thing where Stanton was like, that would look silly. It can't be that cheesecakey. I think the furthest this movie could successfully go and sell me is that by the end of the movie, he's identified that he's fallen for her. That they have a connection and then he gets that back and that's why he wants to go back. You can't sell me by the end of it. They've settled. We're obviously madly in love with each other. I'm ready to be here forever.

• 2:39:54David Sims?

  Right. I mean, because that is the movie is like, right. The triumph is he's decided to be John Carter of Mars.

• 2:39:59Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:39:59David Sims?

  He's gonna throw away the medallion.

• 2:40:01Speaker 05

  The medallion.

• 2:40:02David Sims?

  He's gonna like he, this is it. His new life is here.

• 2:40:04Griffin Newman?

  In the kingdom where he now lives.

• 2:40:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:40:07Speaker 05

  The medallion that he sometimes is like, he literally leaves behind in places. And in other times is like desperately like scrambling to grab it.

• 2:40:15Griffin Newman?

  Such a focused shot when he's jumping away the first time with the medallion there.

• 2:40:18Speaker 05

  Left it behind.

• 2:40:19Griffin Newman?

  And I go, oh, right. So the movie's gonna be, he doesn't realize this is valuable. And the rest of the film is he has to get the medallion back.

• 2:40:25Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:40:25Griffin Newman?

  Which feels like a cleaner thing to track. In terms of us saying like, what is the movie like? What are the stakes? What is he gunning for? If it's, oh, he left the fucking ruby slippers behind.

• 2:40:37David Sims?

  Yeah, just give it to Dominic West. Have him have it the whole time.

• 2:40:40Griffin Newman?

  In order to get back to the gold cave, he's gotta get the medallion. And that's what's driving him the whole movie. That's what keeps him in the battle. Stan, like a year or two after this movie came out, was like, well, seems like they're never gonna be sequels. I'll tell you some of the stuff I was thinking. And posted like the logos for the sequels and his opening for the second film, which was it was gonna open with the story of John Carter being told. And then the reveal that it was Deja Thor is telling it to their son.

• 2:41:05David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:41:06Griffin Newman?

  And then it's like opening title. Then it cuts to John Carter like in the coffin, Ned activating him, him going back up. He gets there, many years have passed. Deja and the son have gone missing. And the movie is him trying to find them and then discovering the atmosphere machine.

• 2:41:22David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:41:23Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 2:41:24David Sims?

  Uh.

• 2:41:24Griffin Newman?

  So it feels like it rushes to the wedding because he's already like planning out, I wanna start with the kid.

• 2:41:31David Sims?

  But look.

• 2:41:31Griffin Newman?

  This is fucking trilogy brained bullshit that fucked up the 2000s.

• 2:41:35David Sims?

  But whereas, to bring it up one more time, Avatar.

• 2:41:38Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:41:38David Sims?

  The end of Avatar, they shoot the villain that you hate full of arrows until he dies.

• 2:41:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:41:44David Sims?

  Which rocks? And I clap and cheer.

• 2:41:46Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:46David Sims?

  Humans leave.

• 2:41:47Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:41:48David Sims?

  Home tree is saved. Awa has heard us.

• 2:41:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:51David Sims?

  Great. And it's like, well, what will the sequels be? And it's like, we'll figure it out later. I don't care. You need an ending and a sense of triumph. And here the triumph is like, well, we definitely took Mark Strong off the board. And I'm like, okay. And I get to be the prince. And you're like, Prince of Helium? What does that mean? I don't know. Look, I've decided to just live on Mars. And that's what's important.

• 2:42:11Griffin Newman?

  There was 10 to 15 years of this as a fucking cancer in the industry. And I blame Lord of the Rings for all of it. And it's so annoying that they never stepped back and went, oh, right, but Lord of the Rings was a trilogy of books that worked on paper. We were adapting a thing that was rock solid.

• 2:42:30David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:42:31Griffin Newman?

  Versus anytime there was a new attempt at a franchise, whether it was adapted from something or original, it was littered with all of these threads that were, and that's gonna be really important in the second movie.

• 2:42:43David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:42:44Griffin Newman?

  The third movie is gonna pay that off.

• 2:42:46David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:42:47Griffin Newman?

  And there was a lot of, I think, backlash against this movie that was the anger from audiences having seen this 15 times already of, I don't wanna watch the movie that's telling me how good the next movie's gonna be.

• 2:43:02David Sims?

  I-

• 2:43:02Griffin Newman?

  Make the fucking movie right now.

• 2:43:04David Sims?

  This problem moved to TV, obviously, which, you know, has its own similar issues.

• 2:43:13Griffin Newman?

  It's the thing that Marvel cracked that helped for a while, which is, oh, Thor 1 doesn't need to be setting up Thor 2.

• 2:43:19David Sims?

  No, it sets up Thor 2 by existing. Right, right.

• 2:43:23Griffin Newman?

  And then what it's setting up is your continued investment in the Marvel Universe.

• 2:43:27Speaker 05

  Little tease of Captain America.

• 2:43:28Griffin Newman?

  Right, and the, the sequels to each sub-franchise are kind of standalone.

• 2:43:34David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:43:34Griffin Newman?

  They, they aren't feeding off of the things set up here or there or whatever.

• 2:43:38David Sims?

  They were smart there for a while.

• 2:43:39Griffin Newman?

  It's more just the larger buy-in. You feel like you're kinda getting a complete meal, and then they're teasing you with what the next meal's gonna be.

• 2:43:45Speaker 05

  A lot of the ones that don't work were the ones that avoided that and instead tried to make it too heavy on lore.

• 2:43:51Griffin Newman?

  And like Doctor Strange, like, oh, the whole first movie Baron Mordo is his friend, and at the end, he's like, I might think about being evil.

• 2:43:58David Sims?

  He's still thinking about it.

• 2:43:59Griffin Newman?

  He's still thinking about it.

• 2:44:00David Sims?

  Like, 10 years later, he's like, maybe.

• 2:44:03Griffin Newman?

  Do you think Showa Tell's agent calls once a week, once a month, once a year?

• 2:44:08David Sims?

  I heard you guys doing an Avengers movie. He'll, he'll be in that one, right?

• 2:44:12Speaker 05

  What about Mordo?

• 2:44:12Griffin Newman?

  And you still own his ass? Like, you still have him under contract?

• 2:44:17Speaker 05

  When's he gonna be a Baron?

• 2:44:18Speaker 03

  Okay, my Jetx. Jetx? Jetx?

• 2:44:21Speaker 05

  Jetx.

• 2:44:22Speaker 03

  Anything else we wanna talk about? As far as John Carter, anything from the movie we haven't covered?

• 2:44:28Speaker 05

  Which John Carter?

• 2:44:29Griffin Newman?

  Of Mars.

• 2:44:30Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 2:44:30David Sims?

  There's nothing else I want to talk about. I have seen this movie three times, I think.

• 2:44:35Griffin Newman?

  Same.

• 2:44:36David Sims?

  I have always- Uh, thought that it's an impressive swing that doesn't work.

• 2:44:42Griffin Newman?

  The first forty-five minutes to an hour, every time I watch it, I'm like, does this work?

• 2:44:47David Sims?

  There's nothing about it that I out and out hate.

• 2:44:50Griffin Newman?

  Shame.

• 2:44:50David Sims?

  There's very little of it that I love, though. Like, there's nothing that I'm like, I'm unambiguously into that, and like-

• 2:44:56Griffin Newman?

  There's a good amount of stuff I like, I would agree with you, but there's nothing I love.

• 2:44:59David Sims?

  Like Jupiter Ascending, which also has like flying bug ships, right? Is much more my vibe.

• 2:45:05Griffin Newman?

  Same.

• 2:45:05David Sims?

  Because like, that one, just as much as it's silly and insane, does a little bit of a better idea, giving you like the power struggles.

• 2:45:13Griffin Newman?

  I agree, because it simplifies them.

• 2:45:15David Sims?

  Every performance is big-

• 2:45:17Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, it's also bigger, it's like more bombastic.

• 2:45:20Griffin Newman?

  It's messier, but it doesn't feel-

• 2:45:22David Sims?

  And it has that Wachowski, I don't give a fuck thing, that this one's, like you're saying, it's like, we could be the next Star Wars, and Jupiter Ascending's like, we're not the next anything, this is just crazy, okay?

• 2:45:31Griffin Newman?

  It's also this weird balance of, this movie doesn't feel that studio managed outside of maybe the kind of nerfing of Lin Collins' character down to like the most one-dimensional damsel in distress.

• 2:45:43David Sims?

  That definitely does, right.

• 2:45:44Griffin Newman?

  It feels pretty pure, but it does feel like they're, um, not self-censoring, but they're so in their heads about how do we make this cool? Versus how do we make, like-

• 2:45:58David Sims?

  It's the Disney problem, right? Like, they're always a little too worried about being uncool, because they know they're not that cool.

• 2:46:02Griffin Newman?

  John Legacy has that whole thing where you're like, everyone loves this first movie, but also it was too nerdy at the time.

• 2:46:08David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:46:08Griffin Newman?

  Can we make this a little more badass? I just think the iterative, we're gonna reshoot it three times, we start filming with an unfinished script kind of thing. We'll fix it in post, we'll find the story beats later, we'll fill in the gaps, becomes how basically almost every Marvel, DC, and Star Wars movie is made. It's more the exceptions to the rule, the ones like The Last Jedi, where you're like, that seemingly was what they planned, they shot it the way they wanted to. Every other Disney-Star Wars movie was, by all accounts, made like this. And Usain Sims, I wish they would write the fucking book on Rise of Skywalker.

• 2:46:46David Sims?

  Yeah, certainly.

• 2:46:47Griffin Newman?

  Notably, they're used- To always be these very transparent making of books and Lucas would allow the making of docs. There was one that was announced for Force Awakens and then was pulled and canceled something. You know, nothing about Matt Singer when you write an entire book and then they don't let you publish.

• 2:47:03David Sims?

  Oh, yeah. No, that's never happened to me that I can speak about on the record.

• 2:47:08Griffin Newman?

  But the answer was they changed a lot of shit substantially. And I think learning a little from the lesson of John Carter, they're like, we don't want people to know that we didn't have it all figured out from the get go.

• 2:47:21David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:22Griffin Newman?

  We don't want to communicate to people that we figured it out on the go. But then you get disasters like Justice League being shot two complete times, Solo being shot two complete times with different directors. That are this again. And like Disney is the one who is more often than not. Green lighting movies and allowing them to happen this way.

• 2:47:43David Sims?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:47:43Griffin Newman?

  And it was a too big to fail thing where the Star Wars movies and the Marvel movies in particular. Kept on just making enough money that it wasn't stupid to spend $300 million to shoot a film three times.

• 2:47:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just, again, this, it's just, it fast, to me, it's like, I agree with what you said, David. I would also just say it's like, you noticed on my Letterboxd, I keep watching it. It's like a movie.

• 2:48:08David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:48:08Speaker 05

  It's a movie that I'm sort of inexplicably drawn to, even though I don't particularly like it. It's like a classic five out of 10. It's like, I wouldn't say I like this movie, but. I guess maybe it's just because I do like and respect Andrew Stanton as a filmmaker that I'm just always trying to figure out, where did it go wrong?

• 2:48:24Griffin Newman?

  I think there's something kind of pure about it, right? It's very pure in its intentions and it doesn't feel that meddled. And so even if the movie feels a little self-conscious and a little bit wary of like letting its freak flag fly. The other movies we're talking about are you get to something like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Which was by all accounts shot 27 times.

• 2:48:46David Sims?

  What are you talking about? Every, every, just scene to scene flows with no issues.

• 2:48:51Speaker 05

  Every time Elizabeth Olsen does an interview, she's like, at a certain point, I don't, I don't fucking know.

• 2:48:55David Sims?

  Yeah, she's in the Lynn Collins thing of like. Just tell me where to stand.

• 2:48:58Speaker 05

  Tell me what to do.

• 2:48:59Griffin Newman?

  Two versions ago, I was the hero.

• 2:49:01Speaker 05

  Am I good or bad?

• 2:49:02Griffin Newman?

  Now I'm the villain. Is this before WandaVision or after WandaVision?

• 2:49:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:49:05Griffin Newman?

  And that's a very managed movie that doesn't feel cohesive, but has like explosive ecstatic sequences that fucking rule.

• 2:49:12David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:12Griffin Newman?

  It has flashes of Raimi shit.

• 2:49:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:49:14Griffin Newman?

  But you're also like, this is a weird exquisite corpse of a movie.

• 2:49:17Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:49:18Griffin Newman?

  And in an odd way, John Carter feels more coherent to me, even if it can't figure out what it's saying. It is like a straight line.

• 2:49:26Speaker 05

  Sure. I mean, it's clear that it is.

• 2:49:28Griffin Newman?

  No, I'm agreeing. I'm saying it is, you feel that the, the, the passion of Andrew Stanton for the material.

• 2:49:33David Sims?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:49:34Speaker 05

  It just, you know, and, and look, a lot of times that is where the best stuff comes from, is that love of the material and wanting to try to transmit what you loved about it into the film version. It just, some, something, uh, didn't get translated. He didn't get the Martian juice that magically translates. I don't know, but something got lost in the, in the translation.

• 2:49:53Griffin Newman?

  He's also just such a supreme visual storyteller, in my opinion, that you have sequences that feel really thoughtfully designed. It's not just that there's a cool creature. There's like really deliberate shot sequencing and rhythms where even if none of the, none of the sequences like fully levitate, they are well made versus the types of movies we're talking about, like Justice League, where you're watching an action sequence and you can tell the parts of this were shot three years apart. You're cutting in with random jokes and asides, or this character got redesigned in post, or any of that sort of stuff. There is just a, a little bit of like, I don't know, there, there's a, a clarity to

• 2:50:35Griffin Newman?

  this movie in its messiness that feels, um, that I'm almost a little nostalgic for.

• 2:50:42David Sims?

  Sure, that's a nice way to put it.

• 2:50:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:44David Sims?

  And I, there's a reason this era, you know, uh, is gone, right?

• 2:50:50Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:50:50David Sims?

  Uh, and that the Marvel era happened, the superhero franchise era happened, and the superhero franchise era got out of hand too.

• 2:50:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:51:00David Sims?

  But did have its highs.

• 2:51:01Griffin Newman?

  It is fascinating to be talking about this movie in the year when Star Wars is about to return.

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:51:06Griffin Newman?

  And

• 2:51:06David Sims?

  Now we're in a new era.

• 2:51:08Griffin Newman?

  Is the big swing of can we save Marvel? And both of these franchises are like on their heels, being like, can you give me one shot to win you back?

• 2:51:16David Sims?

  With Star Wars, I will basically, I'm always like. You know, like, I'm like, Star Wars can continue to flop and we'll always be there for someone to kind of grab the ball years later if they want, right? Like, I could buy pretty much three flops in a row, but like, who cares? Like, maybe 10 years. Marvel, the doomsday thing, it's a little bit more like, if that doesn't work, a harder reset may be required.

• 2:51:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:40David Sims?

  Like, a very hard reset.

• 2:51:41Griffin Newman?

  I'm also, I'm watching this, asking myself, what are the chances I prefer The Mandalorian and Grogu to this? And I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but everything I see from the marketing of the movie makes me feel like it is gonna be basically John Carter vibes.

• 2:51:59David Sims?

  Interesting in that Favreau wanted to make a John Carter. I don't know, Mandalorian and Grogu look to me, looks so good, I just know what it's about, and it looks good. Like, that's the thing, you know, people on Twitter have been like, Rise of Skywalker looks good.

• 2:52:14Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 2:52:15David Sims?

  It has sets, it's got lighting choices.

• 2:52:18Griffin Newman?

  Right? He's a very good DP.

• 2:52:20David Sims?

  Flop movie, we can all agree, but it's crazy that now not even this new Star Wars movie does, looks like a Verizon commercial. Like, what the fuck is going on?

• 2:52:29Griffin Newman?

  Talking about where I'm just like, they let Stanton shoot it his way, they went to places, they built giant sets, you know? They put people in a ton of costumes.

• 2:52:37Speaker 05

  No, I'm looking up, I'll tell you, okay, I was right. So, we're talking about Favreau wanted to make John Carter.

• 2:52:43David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:45Speaker 05

  Which has the tharks, a lot of arms, I'm looking right now at Martin Scorsese's character in Mandalorian. He's got a lot of arms.

• 2:52:51Griffin Newman?

  He has a lot of arms.

• 2:52:51Speaker 05

  He's not tall, he's not big.

• 2:52:53David Sims?

  I believe.

• 2:52:54Speaker 05

  Like, a little thark.

• 2:52:54David Sims?

  Martin Scorsese is playing a species that is the same thing that Favreau is in solo. And they are, I saw some tweets saying they were related.

• 2:53:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:04David Sims?

  And someone being like, I can't believe, like, Scorsese is playing a Glupshido, which is, of course, the sort of the internet term.

• 2:53:11Griffin Newman?

  Playing like Glupshido's uncle?

• 2:53:12Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:53:14David Sims?

  Like, they're like, "We finally got Scorsese to be in Star Wars. How fun." He's, "Who is he?" "Well, you remember the guy in Solo?" "No." "Oh, I was hoping you did, because he's his uncle." Like, you know.

• 2:53:23Griffin Newman?

  It's very funny to me, like, everyone I know under the age of 10 seems a little excited by Mandalorian and Grogu just because it is the first Star Wars movie being released in theaters in their conscious lifetime.

• 2:53:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:53:34Griffin Newman?

  It's just, oh, right, Star Wars hasn't been movies.

• 2:53:37Speaker 05

  My kids are psyched.

• 2:53:39Griffin Newman?

  And I like Grogu, right? Every adult I know has no excitement for it, save for our friend, Alison Wilmore.

• 2:53:45Speaker 05

  Oh, she loves Grogu.

• 2:53:48Griffin Newman?

  Is not, like, overall excited for the movie, and I feel like this has not manifested that many times on mic when we've been recording Critical Darlings, but before, after almost every record, she brings up how into Hot Jabba's son she is.

• 2:54:02Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 2:54:02Griffin Newman?

  The Jeremy Allen White six-pack road to the hut.

• 2:54:05David Sims?

  Look, Hot Jabba's son is at least a play.

• 2:54:09Griffin Newman?

  Just every time, like, Lawson and Fresh and I are shitting on Mandalorian and Grogu, she's like, "But what about Hot Jabba's son?" I really kinda buy in the stock.

• 2:54:19David Sims?

  Well, I'm told he's a large part of the film, I believe, right? He's like the third lead or something?

• 2:54:23Griffin Newman?

  On the poster, I believe the billing is,

• 2:54:26David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:54:27Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Pedro Pascal, Jeremy Allen White, and Sigourney Weaver. There are only three credited actors on the poster.

• 2:54:37Speaker 05

  Who's the villain? Great question.

• 2:54:39Griffin Newman?

  Me.

• 2:54:40Speaker 05

  Great question.

• 2:54:41Griffin Newman?

  Truly. This is, I'm like, the movie has done nothing to sell me on what the story of this film is.

• 2:54:50David Sims?

  It's an issue that I do not know what the story is, except like, Grogu will be asked to do a task and get distracted by some cheese nips or whatever.

• 2:55:00Griffin Newman?

  Mandalorian is hired to do a thing, and maybe the person who hired him isn't trustworthy.

• 2:55:06Speaker 05

  Right, double-crosses him, maybe.

• 2:55:07Griffin Newman?

  But if you're doing a movie that's the payoff of three seasons of television, even if those seasons of television are popular and beloved, I think your marketing immediately wants to communicate, "This is why this had to be a movie." Here's a clean hook story we came up with that couldn't have just been an episode.

• 2:55:25Speaker 05

  He baby Yoda.

• 2:55:26Griffin Newman?

  He baby Yoda.

• 2:55:27David Sims?

  He do be small baby Yoda. Let's play the box office game for John Carter.

• 2:55:31Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. I don't know if you noticed Ben, when you were watching it on the train with the woman looking over your shoulder, but at the end credits when John Carter gets zapped back to Mars,

• 2:55:42Griffin Newman?

  the, it says John Carter and then of Mars fades in. And that was Stanton being like, I,

• 2:55:47David Sims?

  It's my real title.

• 2:55:49Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 2:55:49David Sims?

  And then it goes J C M. Like they have a logo.

• 2:55:53Griffin Newman?

  But I like fought to get it at the end and I'm hoping that retroactively people just call it John Carter of Mars. And maybe it's sort of that he doesn't really become John Carter of Mars until the end. So the title changes. But of course this movie is dead on arrival and the sequel.

• 2:56:07David Sims?

  Yeah, just a couple of more things from the dossier I should mention, of course. There was a lot of fighting over the marketing, which we sort of talked about, but um, it was Stanton who insisted on Kashmir.

• 2:56:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:16David Sims?

  Being used, the Led Zeppelin song.

• 2:56:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:18Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 2:56:19David Sims?

  Trailer even though.

• 2:56:20Griffin Newman?

  That was the Superbowl teaser.

• 2:56:22David Sims?

  Right.

• 2:56:22Griffin Newman?

  Had, um, you were seeing clips from the movie and as the camera pulled back, you realized the clips were inside the letters John Carter. As Kashmir plays.

• 2:56:33David Sims?

  Some of the Disney executives were like, isn't that like an old song that young people won't care about? He, he went for that.

• 2:56:40Griffin Newman?

  But this is where it's a perfect storm because then Disney goes like, you gotta let us take control of the marketing. And then they make even worse decisions. When like Deadline was doing it sort of postmortem on the box office failure. They had a bunch of marketing people from rival studios speaking anonymously. And one of them just said like, this is the most disastrous marketing campaign in the history of Hollywood. It is like going to be studied for decades. They fucked everything up.

• 2:57:04David Sims?

  They made every mistake or whatever. By the premiere, the vibes are horrendous. You know, it's like, the premiere was not celebratory at all.

• 2:57:13Griffin Newman?

  Lynn Collins tells a story of watching Taylor Kitsch walking down the red carpet, Rich Ross, the boss of Disney films.

• 2:57:21David Sims?

  Disney who is about himself to be fired.

• 2:57:23Griffin Newman?

  About to be fired.

• 2:57:24David Sims?

  Kind of not over this, just over general sort of mismanagement of Disney, I feel.

• 2:57:28Griffin Newman?

  He like whispers something into Taylor. Kitch's a year and she's like, I watch him like react as if he's been struck by lightning. And I follow him and go, what did he say? And he said, the head of Disney just leaned in and whispered, it's a disaster.

• 2:57:42David Sims?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:57:43Griffin Newman?

  Before the premiere.

• 2:57:45David Sims?

  And then they went down the press line. Collins says she thinks she like borne the brunt of it. And like she, at one point she says like, you know, Taylor went on to continue to work. He did Battleship and other things. And I think she's just kind of forgotten that like Battleship was the same year.

• 2:58:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, he'd already been working on that.

• 2:58:03David Sims?

  He did not like, he did make more movies, but like he no longer was allowed to be the star of a movie.

• 2:58:08Griffin Newman?

  They had different problems. I feel like everyone learned Taylor Kitch's name. And he became the shorthand for guy being shoved down our throats in movies we don't want to see. Versus she kind of just like retreated back into anonymity. But she talked about that her reps, like the week before it came out said like, you're gonna just need to hide out. Like you need to disappear for a year or two. That everyone around her was kind of telling her, you're radioactive. And then she, yeah, like fired the whole management team.

• 2:58:38David Sims?

  She no longer, I mean, she, it's not like she's never worked again. She did some TV, she was on Walking Dead for a year. But she obviously never made a movie like this again.

• 2:58:46Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:58:47Speaker 05

  And Tars Tarkas, he had, I mean, he had a lot of trouble getting work after this.

• 2:58:50Griffin Newman?

  Well, but he also, you're forgetting the sex scandal.

• 2:58:52David Sims?

  I was about to say, he had some off camera stuff.

• 2:58:56David Sims?

  Some weird tweets, weird tweets.

• 2:58:58Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:58Speaker 05

  Should have left those eggs alone, I'm saying.

• 2:59:01David Sims?

  The film opens on March 9th, 2012 at number one of the box office, surely. Surely it's number one.

• 2:59:08Griffin Newman?

  Romley's birthday, I will say. It also was the-

• 2:59:11David Sims?

  Like the meme with Anakin and Padme was like, number one of the box office, right? Number one, right?

• 2:59:16Griffin Newman?

  It was the rare case of usually movies that feel this ominous with the cloud over it. They keep pushing it off as far as they can. They pulled this one up. They were so-

• 2:59:27David Sims?

  They were like, let's rip the Band-Aid off, baby. Let's rip this a Q1 right off.

• 2:59:30Griffin Newman?

  In the summer and they were like, maybe in March it will overperform if there just aren't other blockbusters. I believe it comes out the week before The Hunger Games.

• 2:59:38David Sims?

  That's a good question, actually.

• 2:59:39Griffin Newman?

  The first Hunger Games, that's the other thing is they were like, March, no one releases a blockbuster in March. We'll have the month to ourselves.

• 2:59:43David Sims?

  It's two weeks before The Hunger Games, but the week, a week before 21 Jump Street, which also is a hit.

• 2:59:49Griffin Newman?

  Wildly overperformed.

• 2:59:50David Sims?

  Right, so it, but it's opening to $30 million, which is bad because they want it, because it costs a lot of money.

• 2:59:56Griffin Newman?

  If it had opened to 50, they would have been worried.

• 2:59:59David Sims?

  If it opened at 50, it would have been a regular bomb. 30 makes it a kind of like bomb that gets written about in like the New York Times.

• 3:00:06Griffin Newman?

  The break even point was like 600 or 700. Many people think this might have been the biggest write down on a movie ever. But also after this, studios stopped being as open about how much movies cost.

• 3:00:19David Sims?

  Yes, that's true.

• 3:00:21Griffin Newman?

  It really did kind of change things where they were like.

• 3:00:24David Sims?

  I don't know, it'll cost some money. What do you want from me?

• 3:00:26Griffin Newman?

  How much did Avengers Endgame cost? I don't know. The receipts are here somewhere. We never added them all.

• 3:00:30David Sims?

  The papers, so many papers.

• 3:00:32Speaker 05

  The Blu-rays and the rights.

• 3:00:34Griffin Newman?

  That's, that's another thing about this movie is for how much money Disney invested in it. There was no merchandising. There were no tie-ins.

• 3:00:42Speaker 05

  I know. There's no merchandise spotlight.

• 3:00:44David Sims?

  You didn't eat one pancake with Carter juice on it?

• 3:00:47Speaker 05

  I was looking this up. I mean, it's very telling.

• 3:00:50Griffin Newman?

  And it, but it's also bizarre.

• 3:00:52David Sims?

  Green, red pancakes and red pancakes.

• 3:00:53Griffin Newman?

  That stuff has to be like figured out years in advance. And that is often a way they help buffer the costs of these things where it's like.

• 3:01:03Speaker 05

  There were Vinylmations? Do you have the Vinylmations?

• 3:01:05Griffin Newman?

  I've been looking for the cheapest one I can find on eBay. Vinylmation was a series of like kind of little LeBloubo-esque blind bag figures that all looked like Mickey Mouse. So they had his form factor in the ears, but then they'd paint them to look like other characters. And they made four Vinylmations. They made John Carter, Deja Thoris, Tars Tarkas and the White Ape.

• 3:01:28Speaker 05

  Everyone's favorite characters from the motion picture.

• 3:01:30Griffin Newman?

  The only pieces of John Carter merch that exist, but the fact that, you know, getting fucking Denny's to do a meal or whatever helps get them free marketing. Merchandising, these companies pay for the licensing. These things help cover the costs and this was a movie that cost 260 million dollars. That was all just Disney putting their neck out.

• 3:01:49Speaker 05

  How they didn't make, you know, like John Carter Milk, like the white group that they stuck him in, I'll never know.

• 3:01:55Griffin Newman?

  Just like no other ancillary sort of revenue streams on this.

• 3:01:59David Sims?

  It's opening at 30 million dollars. It's going to gross 73 domestic, 282 worldwide, which is bad, but like, it is amazing how like even a bomb like this made almost 30 million dollars. So.

• 3:02:10Griffin Newman?

  But it's number two.

• 3:02:11David Sims?

  It's number two. What's number one? It's just hilarious to lose to this. It's the second weekend of an animated film.

• 3:02:18Griffin Newman?

  Holdover in 2012. It's not Rio, is it?

• 3:02:23David Sims?

  No, perfectly good guess.

• 3:02:25Griffin Newman?

  Is it a DreamWorks?

• 3:02:27David Sims?

  Hmm, I think yes, right? I can, it's, it's an illumination, I think. No, so it's universal. Yeah, I can never remember who had what when, you know.

• 3:02:36Griffin Newman?

  Oh, is it the Lorax?

• 3:02:37David Sims?

  Dr. Seuss is the Lorax.

• 3:02:38Griffin Newman?

  Overperforming.

• 3:02:39David Sims?

  Weekend two, though.

• 3:02:40Griffin Newman?

  Cause Lorax opening weekend was 70? It was something crazy.

• 3:02:43Speaker 05

  And that was a movie that had an IHOP tie-in, where they had pancakes with a-

• 3:02:48David Sims?

  With a mustache on it.

• 3:02:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. Pancakes with a lollipop in the top of it, I believe.

• 3:02:52Griffin Newman?

  That was a 70 opening, right?

• 3:02:53David Sims?

  Yeah, 70 opening.

• 3:02:54Griffin Newman?

  Crazy. So the second weekend is 40 something?

• 3:02:56David Sims?

  38, 38. So it's dropping, dropping hard for an animated, but that's the thing where like, you know, the guys at Disney are like, I mean, we'll beat Weekend Two with a Lorax, right?

• 3:03:06Speaker 05

  We gotta beat them.

• 3:03:07David Sims?

  And the Lorax just like, poof, and it like kicks you in the behind.

• 3:03:09Griffin Newman?

  It is crazy that in four consecutive weeks, John Carter is the only movie that doesn't hit. Where you're like, Lorax works.

• 3:03:16David Sims?

  Hollywood generally is like, yay!

• 3:03:18Griffin Newman?

  21 Jump Street.

• 3:03:19David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 3:03:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Hunger Games mega hit.

• 3:03:22David Sims?

  So number two is John Carter. Number three is a comedy film.

• 3:03:27Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:03:27David Sims?

  That opened the week before, uh, with kinda like a, kind of a format twist to it. Um, never seen it.

• 3:03:36Griffin Newman?

  Format twist? Format twist?

• 3:03:38David Sims?

  An R-rated teen comedy film.

• 3:03:42Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it's Project X.

• 3:03:43David Sims?

  That's right. Never seen this one, which is a found footage comedy film.

• 3:03:47Griffin Newman?

  High school party movie.

• 3:03:48David Sims?

  Because like, it is not sinister, right? Like, it literally is just about like, what about the wildest party ever happened? And you're watching it like, there's some-

• 3:03:56Griffin Newman?

  No, there's not like supernatural twist. It's, yeah, it's nerds throw a party to be cool. Um, and one kid is filming it. A weird-

• 3:04:05Speaker 05

  Does it get wildly out of hand, perhaps?

• 3:04:06Griffin Newman?

  Oh, it goes crazy.

• 3:04:08David Sims?

  Whoa.

• 3:04:08Griffin Newman?

  Uh, one weird thing about that movie is Miles Teller is in it. It's, it's part of the early wave of Hollywood trying to make Mars Teller a star.

• 3:04:16David Sims?

  He plays himself.

• 3:04:17Griffin Newman?

  Versus the Taylor Kitsch thing, what felt like a very slow evolution. But yes, he plays himself. His character is named Miles Teller, and he's the coolest guy in school.

• 3:04:26David Sims?

  Right, it's like- What if the guy from Rabbit Hole? Was a minor celebrity at your school.

• 3:04:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, produced by Todd Phillips.

• 3:04:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and Joel Silver.

• 3:04:34David Sims?

  That movie was really pushed.

• 3:04:36Speaker 05

  Extensively in Funny Business.

• 3:04:38David Sims?

  But like that, I feel like Project X was really pushed, it's like, that genius Phillips has found another great angle on, and like, it kinda wasn't a big hit.

• 3:04:46Griffin Newman?

  It was called Project X because it was this top secret project. It was like, Todd Phillips has come up with a radical pitch on how to reinvent the high school movie, and they're keeping it under wraps. I auditioned for that one like, six times, for every fucking character. But it was, Project X was the code name, and then they just decided it sounded cool.

• 3:05:03Speaker 05

  They didn't, you, did you audition to play Miles Teller?

• 3:05:06Griffin Newman?

  No, but I probably auditioned to play every other virgin in that movie.

• 3:05:12David Sims?

  Um, uh, this, it made fifty-four domestic, I'm sure everyone was happy with that.

• 3:05:18Speaker 05

  Very cheap. I was gonna say, it couldn't, it couldn't, it must've cost ten million bucks.

• 3:05:21David Sims?

  Alright, so now we're getting into weird, though. Alright, number four is one of those early twenty teens action movies, war movies.

• 3:05:29Speaker 05

  War.

• 3:05:30David Sims?

  War.

• 3:05:31Griffin Newman?

  Is it Act of Valor?

• 3:05:32David Sims?

  Act of Valor.

• 3:05:33Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 3:05:33Griffin Newman?

  Because that's such a weird.

• 3:05:35David Sims?

  Where, where you're like, who does it star, and they're like, real soldiers.

• 3:05:39Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It was trying to do the fifteen seventeen to Paris, it was directed by two like, action sort of stunt guys.

• 3:05:45Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:05:46David Sims?

  Miles McCoy and Scott Wall.

• 3:05:48Speaker 05

  I remember the poster with just like, shadowy figures of like, soldiers in the distance, it didn't, you know, you couldn't see anybody, it didn't matter.

• 3:05:55David Sims?

  They're gonna do an Act of Valor.

• 3:05:55Griffin Newman?

  Did pretty well, and was also cheap.

• 3:05:57David Sims?

  It made eighteen, eighty-one million dollars worldwide on a twelve million dollar budget, like, you know, I, I don't think it's a masterpiece, but it did exist and it made a little bit of money.

• 3:06:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:07David Sims?

  Uh, number five at the box office is a horror film.

• 3:06:11Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 3:06:12David Sims?

  That, uh, had debuted at Sundance the year before, so, January twenty eleven.

• 3:06:17Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 3:06:18David Sims?

  That has a very high concept sort of thing going on.

• 3:06:22Griffin Newman?

  Um, it's the Elizabeth Olsen one?

• 3:06:23David Sims?

  That's correct, it's a real time.

• 3:06:24Speaker 05

  Silent House?

• 3:06:26Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say Safe House.

• 3:06:28Speaker 05

  Silent House.

• 3:06:29Griffin Newman?

  The Denzel Ryan Reynolds.

• 3:06:30David Sims?

  I've never seen it. It's one take, real time, she's being haunted.

• 3:06:35Speaker 05

  It's not great.

• 3:06:35David Sims?

  Yeah. But it was all about the concept.

• 3:06:37Speaker 05

  It was, yes, it was, got a lot of buzz for being, yes, like a single take.

• 3:06:40David Sims?

  And she was hot.

• 3:06:41Griffin Newman?

  That and Martha were at the same Sundance. So there's this explosion of, holy shit, she's in two movies as the lead, and certainly Silent House is a skill piece because it's one take.

• 3:06:52David Sims?

  How'd she do that?

• 3:06:53Griffin Newman?

  How'd she do it? And then they waited a year to release it, assuming that her star was gonna explode, and by the time it came out, everyone was like, people liked this at Sundance?

• 3:07:01David Sims?

  It's opening, yeah, it sucks. No, it was opening number five, it only made 12 domestic. Uh, number six, opening at number six, which is bad news for this movie, is the Eddie Murphy movie, Eight Thousand Words.

• 3:07:12Griffin Newman?

  Oh, that was a-

• 3:07:13David Sims?

  A true nadir for him.

• 3:07:15Griffin Newman?

  It was, it was a delayed several years.

• 3:07:17David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:07:17Griffin Newman?

  That's when Eddie Murphy goes into the wilderness and doesn't make a movie for like five or six years.

• 3:07:22David Sims?

  Yeah, well, cause like, that is basically the kinda thing where it's like, your name above the title seems to do nothing anymore.

• 3:07:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:28David Sims?

  It's like, we're not even gonna just clear, like, thirty million dollars on the fact that you're in a kinda family-friendly comedy.

• 3:07:35Griffin Newman?

  He had a couple family flops in a row, including Meet Dave and Imagine That, and then he signed on to do Tower Heist, and the promise of Tower Heist was, it's gonna be old Eddie.

• 3:07:44David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:07:44Griffin Newman?

  He's gonna be the wild card, he's gonna curse. And so they pushed A Thousand Words to come out after Tower Heist, and also after he was going to host the Oscars.

• 3:07:56David Sims?

  Yeah, this-

• 3:07:56Griffin Newman?

  So they were like, Eddie Murphy's about to have a comeback.

• 3:07:58David Sims?

  And he did a great job.

• 3:07:59Griffin Newman?

  He's, he's gonna do a raunchy movie with Brett Ratner, and then he's gonna host the Oscars, directed by Brett Ratner, and everyone's gonna love Eddie again and will be in The Halo Effect. And Tower Heist bombs, and he quits the Oscars because Brett Ratner is fired for using slurs.

• 3:08:15David Sims?

  Having used slurs in his life, yes.

• 3:08:18Griffin Newman?

  No-

• 3:08:18David Sims?

  Oh, no, he used them right, he said like, let's not be a-

• 3:08:20Griffin Newman?

  On Howard Stern talking about-

• 3:08:22David Sims?

  Yeah, I forgot about that.

• 3:08:23Griffin Newman?

  The Oscars he's gonna do.

• 3:08:24David Sims?

  Ah, I mean, Brett Ratner had just never put a foot wrong until then, it's crazy.

• 3:08:29Griffin Newman?

  It's insane.

• 3:08:29David Sims?

  Uh, yeah.

• 3:08:30Griffin Newman?

  Yes, and then, and then Brett was supposed to, my buddy Brett, was supposed to direct Beverly Hills Cop 4 right after that. He was like, I'm the guy who's gonna bring Eddie back, I'm getting him to host the Oscars, he's gonna do stand-up again, and, and Eddie retreats for years.

• 3:08:44David Sims?

  Number seven is, wow, Safe House.

• 3:08:48Griffin Newman?

  They're both there.

• 3:08:49David Sims?

  They're both in the top 10. So that's Denzel and Ryan Reynolds?

• 3:08:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, X-Men Origins Wolverine's own Ryan Reynolds.

• 3:08:54David Sims?

  Never seen. Daniel Espinoza.

• 3:08:56Speaker 05

  Extremely forgettable action movie.

• 3:08:58David Sims?

  No one is safe in his house.

• 3:08:59Speaker 05

  I have seen that one.

• 3:09:00David Sims?

  That was the old Doug Benson joke.

• 3:09:02Speaker 05

  What if there was a safe house?

• 3:09:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:09:04Griffin Newman?

  But it is a real pre-pandemic, right? Movies like that used to just come out, make a hundred million dollars, disappear.

• 3:09:13David Sims?

  Right, where you're like, what's the premise? It's like, have you not seen the poster? They both have guns.

• 3:09:16Griffin Newman?

  There were two stars.

• 3:09:18David Sims?

  Right, there's two stars.

• 3:09:19Speaker 05

  These two guys, and there's a safe house.

• 3:09:20David Sims?

  Will they shoot them at each other? Are they friends of the enemies?

• 3:09:21Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 3:09:21Speaker 05

  How about both?

• 3:09:22David Sims?

  Watch the movie.

• 3:09:23Speaker 05

  How about both?

• 3:09:23David Sims?

  It gets figured out, probably.

• 3:09:25Griffin Newman?

  Probably.

• 3:09:26David Sims?

  And you know, the apex of it being two guns.

• 3:09:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:28David Sims?

  Like, where they're like, it's Denzel and Wahlberg. What do they do? They're shooting money that's in the air, I think.

• 3:09:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:33David Sims?

  I don't know. Like, maybe they'll have to shoot all of the money. Who could say?

• 3:09:37Griffin Newman?

  Safe House was like the only hit Ryan Reynolds had in that run.

• 3:09:41David Sims?

  Yes.

• 3:09:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:09:42David Sims?

  You mean post-proposal of like him doing like action movies?

• 3:09:46Griffin Newman?

  Green Lantern and whatever, and, uh, but everyone just gave Denzel all the credit.

• 3:09:51David Sims?

  Totally, because what the fuck? Who even knows what that movie is?

• 3:09:55Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And then Ryan Reynolds goes into his forgotten indie phase where he's like, "I'll be in The Woman in Gold."

• 3:10:00Speaker 05

  He tries some stuff.

• 3:10:01Griffin Newman?

  Yes, "I'll do Mississippi grind."

• 3:10:04David Sims?

  He tried some stuff.

• 3:10:05Griffin Newman?

  And then he stopped.

• 3:10:06David Sims?

  Trying stuff.

• 3:10:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:10:07David Sims?

  Uh, and started making, I guess in his defense, oodles and oodles of money and running a cellphone company very well, I assume.

• 3:10:13Griffin Newman?

  What? Yeah.

• 3:10:15David Sims?

  I haven't checked in with him lately. Uh, you've also got-

• 3:10:18Griffin Newman?

  Funny that we used to have to do ad reads for them.

• 3:10:20David Sims?

  I've done ad reads for that.

• 3:10:22Griffin Newman?

  I love Mint Mobile.

• 3:10:23David Sims?

  Mint Mobile, I would use it if I didn't have other cell service.

• 3:10:27Griffin Newman?

  Matt, that's a great question.

• 3:10:28Speaker 05

  He does the ad reads.

• 3:10:29Griffin Newman?

  If the whole value of Mint Mobile is that he does the ads, why were they spending money to have David and I in like 2019 be like, "I love dialing numbers and having a phone call go through."

• 3:10:42David Sims?

  Number eight at the box office is the Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, uh, film, The Vow.

• 3:10:47Griffin Newman?

  A big hit. This is the year where Channing Tatum manifests what Hollywood wants all these other guys were talking about to be.

• 3:10:53Speaker 05

  I'm going Channing Tatum, John Carter?

• 3:10:56Griffin Newman?

  21 Jump Street.

• 3:10:57David Sims?

  He makes sense.

• 3:10:58Griffin Newman?

  The Vow, Magic Mike are all in the same year.

• 3:11:01Speaker 05

  He would, I'm- He would be a good John Carter. And he could be funny.

• 3:11:06David Sims?

  Could be funny.

• 3:11:06Speaker 05

  He could be dunked in the goo.

• 3:11:08David Sims?

  The Vow is one of those movies where you're like, is this based on Nicholas Sparks? And they're like, no, but that's where we're going.

• 3:11:14Speaker 05

  Not literally, but metaphorically, yes.

• 3:11:16Griffin Newman?

  Like weirdly based on nothing.

• 3:11:17David Sims?

  No, based on nothing, just original screenplay about, I assume.

• 3:11:20Speaker 05

  Based on the vibe of all those other movies.

• 3:11:21Griffin Newman?

  That must have been a bestseller. It's serious 50 First Dates. She gets amnesia and they're married and he has to make her fall in love with him again.

• 3:11:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:11:28David Sims?

  Love it. Number nine at the box office, I assume it's great, uh, is another mega flop, much hyped mega flop of this Q1, uh, which is This Means War. Uh, the, uh, McG.

• 3:11:41Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:11:42Griffin Newman?

  Is that talked about in your book at all?

• 3:11:43Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 3:11:44David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, I didn't get to that.

• 3:11:45Griffin Newman?

  That was like a 90s high concept spec buy that went through every permutation of, if they're never gonna make a Bad Boys sequel, is this the way to re-team Will Smith, Martin Lawrence? And then there was a version that was supposed to be Seth Rogen and another kind of frat pack guy.

• 3:12:01David Sims?

  It was gonna be, Martin Lawrence was like often attached and they're like Bradley Cooper, Seth Rogen, Sam Worthington. At one point they're like, should it be Martin and Chris Rock?

• 3:12:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:12David Sims?

  Like kinda try to do a new Bad Boys with Martin and another like major black superstar? And, uh, like by the time they're like, we got Reese Witherspoon. That's fun.

• 3:12:22Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:23David Sims?

  So now it'll be spy versus spy versus the gray spy, the girl won. You know, cause it was, the old one was kind of more of a spy versus spy thing.

• 3:12:31Griffin Newman?

  It was always them fighting over a woman.

• 3:12:32David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:12:32Griffin Newman?

  But I think the woman was less of a character.

• 3:12:35David Sims?

  Right.

• 3:12:35Griffin Newman?

  And they were like, we've hired a mega star to play the woman.

• 3:12:39Speaker 05

  You gotta be fun with that part.

• 3:12:40David Sims?

  And then they get Bradley Cooper off of The Hangover and then he's like, I wanna do other things. And they, they're like, it's okay, it's okay. Chris Pine and Tom Hardy. And everyone's like, I guess. Like they're brand new. Like they're both like such recent stars.

• 3:12:52Griffin Newman?

  They picked the right guys, but I tried watching that movie recently and they are just floundering.

• 3:12:58Speaker 05

  It's a bad, it's a bad movie.

• 3:13:00Griffin Newman?

  It's a disaster.

• 3:13:00Speaker 05

  It's one of those movies where it bombs, everyone says it's terrible and you go, well, how bad could it be?

• 3:13:04Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:13:05Speaker 05

  And then you watch it and you're like, oh, it was bad. It, it was bad.

• 3:13:08David Sims?

  It was bad. Number 10 at the box office is Journey to the Mysterious Island.

• 3:13:13Griffin Newman?

  A big hit.

• 3:13:13David Sims?

  Wow, we hit three hours again, Ben. It's a problem. This is a problem. Blank check needs finessing. We gotta do it. Don't worry, our Martin Scorsese series, I'm sure will be filled with lots of shorties.

• 3:13:24Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 3:13:24Griffin Newman?

  I don't want, look, I don't wanna call a shot. I do think the next two Stanton's will be shorter.

• 3:13:29David Sims?

  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, our guest for Dory, it could be some tangents.

• 3:13:35Griffin Newman?

  And he, he's coming in with a full-throated defense of its star.

• 3:13:39Speaker 05

  A full-throated?

• 3:13:41Griffin Newman?

  A full-throated.

• 3:13:42Speaker 05

  Full-throated, a tho- to's full? That's what you said?

• 3:13:45David Sims?

  Ah, boy, oh, boy.

• 3:13:47Griffin Newman?

  Um, it's a fascinating movie and it, it is like, it, it feels like such a flashpoint of everything that was going on at that exact moment, of what had happened before, of what's to come. Uh, and, and like Stanton, unsurprisingly, takes it very hard. He does a piece, I think with the LA Times, like six months after it comes out. Rarely does a filmmaker own a flop that quickly.

• 3:14:14David Sims?

  That way.

• 3:14:15Griffin Newman?

  And was like, I decided, gonna take a year, I'm gonna go to New York where my daughter's in school, I'm gonna read books.

• 3:14:22David Sims?

  Hey, love to ride the subway.

• 3:14:24Speaker 05

  Love to ride the subway.

• 3:14:25Griffin Newman?

  I, I need to like pull back, uh, and reset my batteries. What had also happened in the background is that, of course, Disney had bought Pixar.

• 3:14:34David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:35Griffin Newman?

  They start immediately saying, can we start up the sequel machine? They're begging for a Finding Nemo sequel. They always sort of have the respect of, we won't do it unless the original filmmaker approves. He oversees the 3D re-release of Nemo that I think is in 2011, the year before this.

• 3:14:51David Sims?

  Sure.

• 3:14:51Griffin Newman?

  And he said that when he was overseeing it and he got to the scene where Dory says, I, where is my family? He went, there is possibly a sequel there. So he goes to Pixar and he says, I would let this happen. They hire a writer and he was not intending to direct it. It was, I'm clearly in the John Carter business.

• 3:15:12David Sims?

  I'll be, I'll be on Mars.

• 3:15:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:15:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:14Griffin Newman?

  I, I bring this up only because the obvious perception would be John Carter flops, he runs panicked back to Pixar and says, can you let me do Finding Dory?

• 3:15:23David Sims?

  Right, kind of similar to Bird eventually doing Incredibles 2 after a flop or two.

• 3:15:27Griffin Newman?

  The reality is, it was, it was in the works and then he said, actually, maybe I want to do it myself.

• 3:15:32Speaker 05

  Right. But still, rarely, I mean, rarely do you see a, a director, you know, make these crazy big swings. And then immediately, I, I see what you're saying. It wasn't created with that in mind, but he does then go make a sequel.

• 3:15:44David Sims?

  But there's really like, how many careers are like this of?

• 3:15:48Speaker 05

  It's an interesting one.

• 3:15:48David Sims?

  Animation to live action, back to animation, then TV, and then back to live action and animation in the same year.

• 3:15:55Griffin Newman?

  This is what's interesting, and we'll talk about it in the next two, three episodes.

• 3:15:59Speaker 05

  I'm looking forward to hearing this in the blink of an eye. I'd like to hear you guys talk for three hours about in the blink of an eye.

• 3:16:03David Sims?

  We're gonna keep that one at ninety two hundred.

• 3:16:05Speaker 05

  Ben's giving me a dirty look, the dirtiest look.

• 3:16:08Griffin Newman?

  But he is like, he is lucky, and it's from his own doing that he has in his possession a get out of jail free card from the moment this movie flops.

• 3:16:18David Sims?

  He is lucky. He's also lucky that he's already made, uh, Finding Nemo and Wally.

• 3:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 3:16:24David Sims?

  That's cool.

• 3:16:25Griffin Newman?

  But, but.

• 3:16:26David Sims?

  That rocks.

• 3:16:26Griffin Newman?

  But saying, what if I want to direct Finding Dory? No one's gonna question him on that.

• 3:16:32Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:16:33Griffin Newman?

  They're not gonna be hovering over his shoulder. They're like, we trust that. You're good. You don't have to spend any time in movie jail if that's what you're doing next.

• 3:16:41David Sims?

  Yep.

• 3:16:43David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, yeah, I say goodbye to Matt. I mean, he'll be back, but, uh, you know, I think we gotta wrap this up.

• 3:16:49Griffin Newman?

  That's a promise.

• 3:16:50Speaker 05

  Maybe in three more years or whatever it's been.

• 3:16:52David Sims?

  Has it been three years?

• 3:16:53Speaker 05

  No, it would, yes. It was when the book, when the, the last book came out was I was here.

• 3:16:58David Sims?

  I think you're forgetting something.

• 3:16:59Griffin Newman?

  There was something.

• 3:17:00Speaker 05

  Inform, inform me. See if I have memory hold.

• 3:17:02David Sims?

  In fact, let's see if you've made like a five time.

• 3:17:03Griffin Newman?

  Planet of the Apes, first Spider-Man.

• 3:17:05Speaker 05

  This is your fourth.

• 3:17:06Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:17:07David Sims?

  Wow, it has been three years. What the fuck?

• 3:17:08Speaker 05

  Really? Since Alien Three?

• 3:17:10Griffin Newman?

  We suck.

• 3:17:11David Sims?

  We do suck. What a disaster.

• 3:17:13Griffin Newman?

  That was three years ago. Jesus Christ.

• 3:17:14David Sims?

  Yeah, that's actually maybe more the, uh, sticking point here.

• 3:17:17Speaker 05

  At a certain point, I was like, if I ever want to do another blank check, I better write another, I better write another book.

• 3:17:23Griffin Newman?

  Apatow was in March Madness, and it didn't feel like he.

• 3:17:26Speaker 05

  I was feeling like, oh, man, if he gets in, I'm, I'm in, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm golden.

• 3:17:31Griffin Newman?

  No, we, we were overdue to get you on either way. Um, oh, great news. Uh, JJ has texted us Sony taps Brian Hedgeland to script.

• 3:17:40David Sims?

  Heldgeland.

• 3:17:41Griffin Newman?

  Zorro.

• 3:17:42Speaker 05

  I think it's Heldgeland.

• 3:17:43Griffin Newman?

  Zorro versus Django, which is another movie that has been in the works for so long. It was part of the Sony hack.

• 3:17:49David Sims?

  I mean, cause Tarantino wrote it as a comic book.

• 3:17:51Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, didn't they make a comic book out of that already?

• 3:17:53Griffin Newman?

  So then also, at one point Gerard Carmichael was supposed to write it.

• 3:17:56David Sims?

  Hmm. Cool.

• 3:17:58Griffin Newman?

  What were you?

• 3:17:58David Sims?

  And that's, it's, so it's Django teams up with Zorro, the hero, the folk hero?

• 3:18:02Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:18:03David Sims?

  And will Jamie Foxx be back?

• 3:18:06Griffin Newman?

  But, but people don't realize is all these things came from Zorro. Man, this is the original.

• 3:18:11David Sims?

  Isn't Jamie Foxx almost sixty? I guess these things don't matter anymore.

• 3:18:14Griffin Newman?

  It really doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters.

• 3:18:19Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. Anyway.

• 3:18:21Speaker 05

  It's been a while, but I'm glad to be back.

• 3:18:23Griffin Newman?

  The book is coming out in October.

• 3:18:24Speaker 05

  Comes out October 6th. You can preorder it right now, anywhere you preorder books.

• 3:18:29Griffin Newman?

  And please do.

• 3:18:29Speaker 05

  Please do. Yes, it's very helpful. And hopefully I can write another book and come back in three years and review.

• 3:18:37David Sims?

  We all be back.

• 3:18:38Speaker 05

  Superbad or something.

• 3:18:39David Sims?

  Preach, motherfucker.

• 3:18:40Griffin Newman?

  I do want to do Apatow.

• 3:18:41David Sims?

  No, but that's not Apatow.

• 3:18:43Griffin Newman?

  I know, but I'm just saying.

• 3:18:45David Sims?

  Yeah, I wanted to do Apatow too. I do, I mean, I want the new movie to come out.

• 3:18:49Speaker 05

  Apatow would be a great blank check subject. He would be, for sure.

• 3:18:52Griffin Newman?

  It feels like the last couple of years we've been pushing and people are like, why? And this year in March Madness, people got it for the first time.

• 3:18:59David Sims?

  He did win a matchup.

• 3:19:00Speaker 05

  He did. Yes, I was watching, I was voting.

• 3:19:03Griffin Newman?

  And it felt like we have enough distance from it that it's worth studying in the way that you did in your book.

• 3:19:09Speaker 05

  Well, I certainly think so, and if people agree, they can check out the book. Business.

• 3:19:14Griffin Newman?

  Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Finding Dory with Zach Cherry.

• 3:19:23David Sims?

  That's right.

• 3:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Who is not actually.

• 3:19:26David Sims?

  Defending Ellen DeGeneres is.

• 3:19:27Griffin Newman?

  But that's been a running bit for a year.

• 3:19:29David Sims?

  Has it?

• 3:19:30Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there's been a year of texting with Zach.

• 3:19:32David Sims?

  He's like, get ready for the Ellen defense.

• 3:19:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:19:36David Sims?

  I don't really remember that, but that's, I, but as I said to you when you floated that idea long ago, I was like, Zach Cherry Finding Dory episode, sounds good to me.

• 3:19:44Griffin Newman?

  It just sounds funny.

• 3:19:45David Sims?

  Sounds fun.

• 3:19:46Griffin Newman?

  We look at the spreadsheet and we chuckle.

• 3:19:49David Sims?

  Sounds pretty good.

• 3:19:50Griffin Newman?

  Sounds pretty good. Pretty good movie, too.

• 3:19:53David Sims?

  It's a movie I've seen many, many times because of my daughter and I, I enjoy it.

• 3:19:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:19:58David Sims?

  I don't like, love it, but like, I enjoy it.

• 3:20:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:01David Sims?

  There's fish.

• 3:20:02Griffin Newman?

  There's fish.

• 3:20:03David Sims?

  Dory.

• 3:20:04Speaker 05

  There's an octopus.

• 3:20:05David Sims?

  Octopus. He's a septopus. He's a septopus. Sorry.

• 3:20:09Griffin Newman?

  Tune in next week for that.

• 3:20:10David Sims?

  Yep.

• 3:20:11Griffin Newman?

  And as always, bar soon.

• 3:20:20Griffin Newman?

  I love the sound of that pour.

• 3:20:23David Sims?

  It would be bad if it was like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

• 3:20:26Griffin Newman?

  If it was thick.

• 3:20:27Speaker 05

  Clunk, clunk.

• 3:20:28Griffin Newman?

  This is like a Ben and Jerry's coffee, David. It's got a lot of objects in it.

• 3:20:34Speaker 05

  Mix it, mix it, mix-ins.

• 3:20:36David Sims?

  Chunky.

• 3:20:38Griffin Newman?

  Oh, there was a tagline.

• 3:20:40Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:20:40Griffin Newman?

  Okay, okay.

• 3:20:41David Sims?

  Maybe do the tagline. I think, I think in fact, that's probably your best bet.

• 3:20:45Griffin Newman?

  Could do a couple of things. Thank you.

• 3:20:47Speaker 05

  It's a potent, a potent aroma.

• 3:20:50Speaker 04

  It's a potent mix.

• 3:20:51Speaker 05

  That is a potent mix.

• 3:20:55Speaker 03

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by L.A. 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 blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features,

• 3:21:37Speaker 03

  for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. 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.