Pod Insights Panic World BONUS: How Eddington and Weapons hold a mirror up to our Panic World About this episode Two of 2025’s biggest movie releases so far, Eddington (basically Panic World: The Movie) and Weapons, are not the same genre but they both offer interesting looks into the state of our society today. Grant joins Ryan to talk about the thematic links between them and examine the question: how do you cover moral panics, mass hysteria, and the internet without just commenting on everything else that’s already been said?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.
0:26 Speaker 01 So Ryan Broderick, we are gathered here today because you didn't feel like working today and wanted to watch a movie, but the only way you could justify it to yourself-
0:34 Ryan Broderick? That's not true. It was the opposite. I didn't want to watch a movie. I wanted to work.
0:37 Speaker 01 Ryan can't do anything anymore unless it creates content.
1:00 Speaker 01 This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality, and how the film industry is just catching up to this podcast, baby. I'm Grant Irving, the producer of the show. And when Ryan wants to rage about movies, also the host. Joining me, normally the host, aspiring film critic, Ryan Broderick.
1:24 Ryan Broderick? Thanks for having me on my show.
1:25 Speaker 01 So Ryan, you watched a little movie. How you doing? How you feeling?
1:29 Ryan Broderick? I've watched two movies for this. One, because I wanted to watch it, which was Weapons. I've been trying to see that movie forever and it was great. And then I finally sat down and watched Eddington, which the reviews have been so mixed, I was not looking forward to. And I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think it's long. It's too long. But both movies to me feel very thematically linked. We'll get into it. But just top level, I would say, I'd say Weapons is a better movie. Eddington has more to say. I'm not sure, though, it says it all correctly, but Eddington felt very much like Panic World the Movie.
2:02 Speaker 01 It did.
2:03 Ryan Broderick? Weapons-
2:03 Speaker 01 It felt weird.
2:04 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, it felt, it felt a little strange. Weapons, like I said, is a better movie, I think, but both are tackling a really hard thing, which is like, how do you write about moral panics, mass hysteria, the internet, without just being the same as everything else on the internet? Like, how do you elevate that conversation? So it's definitely interesting to see filmmakers finally trying to tackle it head on. Eddington, to me, is trying to do something very difficult, and I don't think it succeeds, but I think it's trying and mostly does a decent job. But there's, there's a lot in Eddington. It's very dense.
2:42 Speaker 01 That's interesting to me because when I saw it, I was like, I think I like that. And the further I've gone away from it, the more I'm like, I think I love that movie. And I'm glad that somebody took the swing on it. And I'll just like ambiently be thinking back and like individual scenes in retrospect are very funny to me. I think it's actually a movie that's going to hold up really well the further we get.
3:06 Ryan Broderick? Possible. I think, well, okay, let's get into it. So basically, if you haven't seen Eddington, this episode is gonna be very boring for you, but we're, and we're gonna spoil both of these movies pretty, pretty thoroughly. That's your warning. So Eddington is about Joaquin Phoenix's character, a sheriff in New Mexico, who, he doesn't really get sucked down a right wing pipeline. He's already pretty cooked from it, but he is deeply isolated because of the pandemic. He has a personal grudge against the mayor, played by Pedro Pascal. Ted Garcia is the character's name. Joe Cross is the sheriff. And their kind of personal grudge match devolves. I think that's the simplest way to say it.
3:50 Ryan Broderick? And as the personal grudge match devolves, the town is flung into chaos. It's also set in May 2020, which is very important. Much like New York City being the fifth girl on Sex and the City, the COVID pandemic is very much a major character of Eddington.
4:06 Speaker 01 So each character is locked in their own little reality, a thing that we have yelled about in many different ways. I think that maybe before we just like go to like important scenes, we should start with the different realities that our main four characters are, are locked in.
4:23 Ryan Broderick? Well, let's run through it. So we've got Joe Cross, Joaquin Phoenix's character, the sheriff. He is actually probably the least digitally radicalized of anybody. He's like seen in the beginning, watching videos on YouTube about like how to convince your partner to have children with you. He's watching like cooking videos. He's not-
4:40 Speaker 01 The guy you're related to the most. Yeah.
4:42 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, of course. He's not really online. He becomes more online as the movie progresses, but he is, he's pretty normal. He's just also very boomer coded and doesn't want to mask during the pandemic. He sees a lot of hypocrisy around how the local government, the liberal local government is handling the pandemic. So that's one sort of character there. There's also his mother-in-law, Emma Stone's character's mother in the movie, who is just full-on, flat earth, Infowars nightmare world all day long, every day. And she is in the house with them, just non-stop talking about conspiracy theories. Then we've got the teenagers, which are pretty funny. One of the, like, both of them are sort of orbiting this Black Lives Matter protester,
5:25 Ryan Broderick? and they want to sleep with her, so they're like pretending, they're like flirting with social justice ideas to do that. There's the sheriff's deputy, Michael, who is a crypto bro, and he is just constantly talking about Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I would say that's like kind of the main, I mean, is there anyone else that sticks out in terms of media diet in the movie for you?
5:45 Speaker 01 I mean, I guess Pedro Pascal's character is not, well, well, Emma Stone's media diet, I think, is really interesting.
5:51 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, her character is super interesting. She is, we come to learn, a victim of child sexual abuse, most likely her father, who used to be the sheriff in Eddington. And that starts to pull her towards a yassified Alex Jones, played by Austin Butler, a sort of hunk conspiracy theory evangelical cult leader.
6:14 Speaker 01 I mean, like, the suavest.
6:16 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, Vernon Jefferson Peak. Yeah, very good.
6:20 Speaker 01 Vernon?
6:20 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. And his character is very interesting. He's not good, but he's definitely seen as sort of like separate from the, the plot. He's sort of like, he's doing his own thing and no one really is paying any attention to him, which I think is interesting.
6:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's a fringe figure that would be a cult leader in any life.
6:39 Ryan Broderick? Right.
6:39 Speaker 01 But but in this life, he's able to do it through the internet and reach vulnerable people who would otherwise not have heard of him. Like Emma Stone.
6:47 Ryan Broderick? And now I have not seen Ari Aster's third film, Bo is Afraid, but I have seen his previous two. I just, I just don't have the time, man. I just don't. But I have seen his two previous films and both are fascinated with sort of like cults and brainwashing. And it's interesting within that context to see Eddington basically admit like, because of the pandemic, everyone is in a cult of their own making. And the guy who's literally running one isn't even important. Like, he's not even at the top of the priority list for everybody because everyone has cooked themselves with Facebook during the pandemic. The movie in its first act, I think, is its most coherent about sort of saying that the pandemic broke civil society.
7:30 Ryan Broderick? And all these grievances and all these issues bubbled to the surface very quickly because no one could agree on how to deal with the pandemic. And then from there, everything kind of unravels.
7:40 Speaker 01 The film opens showing us that a AI company is slowly getting built in the background.
7:46 Ryan Broderick? A company with a very important name, by the way, and we should actually address this right off the bat. I highly recommend filmcolossus.com's article from July titled Eddington Explained the Solid Gold Magic Carp of It All. So the company, the tech company that's coming to town is called Solid Gold Magic Carp. And solid gold magic carp is an AI term. It's effectively like a glitch in a large language model. A good example would be like how ChatGPT couldn't figure out how many Rs are in the word strawberry. And the theory that I think I subscribe to that Film Colossus put together is that the pandemic, it was a solid gold magic carp. It broke society by introducing a glitch and that everything like breaks down because of that. And I think that it's like pretty in your face if you know what that term means.
8:29 Speaker 01 And I, as the producer of this internet show, learned it an hour and a half earlier when Adam Bumis, our mid researcher, told me.
8:37 Ryan Broderick? Sure. I should also say magic carp also is funny because it is a Pokemon known for not being able to do anything.
8:49 Ryan Broderick? It is a Pokemon that has one attack splash and it eventually becomes an indestructible dragon. So it is a nuanced metaphor for a looming tech company coming to town and taking control. I think it's a pretty, it's pretty good. It's very millennial.
9:04 Speaker 01 It's so wild to be like Ari Aster's more online than most of us.
9:09 Ryan Broderick? I think he does a pretty good job showing the internet like.
9:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, he does a great job, but I'm, I'm like, this is made by a man who is in the swamp. Not somebody who's heard of the swamp.
9:19 Ryan Broderick? Well, the movie is, especially in the first act, the movie is full of fake misinformation. Like the, the, the, the main characters are consuming misinformation online and the movie is showing it. And that is such a hard thing to hit because you either totally neuter it by making it too outlandish and ridiculous. Or you make it too serious and it doesn't feel real. And the movie I think does a very good job of, there's like an opening scene where like, I think it's Emma Stone's character or Emma Stone's mom is watching a YouTube video about like the number 56 and how like you can use numbers to create magic. And how it was connected to the pandemic. And I'm like, yeah, that, that's, you can find that online. Like that's, that's very much a real conspiracy theory that is out there for sure.
10:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. And the, and the graphics were perfect for it.
10:05 Ryan Broderick? Unbelievable. Unbelievably well done. Yeah, really, really.
10:07 Speaker 01 Okay, so we open with like this AI evil looming as, as a thing that is building, which, which I think is really smart. Sheriff Joe is annoyed that he has to be wearing a mask. Then he is called to deal with an unhoused person who is bothering the mayor and his friends as they are supposedly having a town meeting, but really just enjoying a bar to themselves. And they don't want to deal with him. They call on the sheriff. It's clear that Joaquin, the, the sheriff and Pedro, the mayor have beef with each other, but it's his job and he grins his teeth and tries to deal with this, with this unhoused person who no one, these positions of power actually wants to help.
10:51 Speaker 01 And Joaquin manhandles the unhoused guy to leave them alone. You know, thesis is, is being hit hard in the, in these opening scenes.
11:01 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, the um, the, the guy that gets manhandled, character's name is Lodge. He's clearly like mentally unwell and he shows up pretty consistently throughout the first half of the film as a way of sort of signaling like the breakdown of society. He's sort of this walking metaphor for the, the tensions of the town. And no one, like, there's a really funny scene where he's walking through the Black Lives Matter protests, which is all organized by like all white teenagers. And they're all ignoring him or like trying to shoo him away from their phones so they can like take footage of their signs. I mean, I, I can see why this movie pissed a lot of people off because it is, I think correctly saying that
11:44 Ryan Broderick? these things do not all exist in different vacuums. Like they, that, that, that there is a connective thread that, that ties all this together. And no one can really watch this and the only people who are sort of depicted as like competent, doing their jobs, understanding what's going on are the indigenous police force that show up from time to time, which I think is also quite well done. Uh, they, there's, I think it's Navajo land that is borders the town. And the indigenous cops keep showing up and being like, what is wrong with all of you people? Which I think is really funny.
12:15 Speaker 01 It's a normal way. Right. That, that's a motif we get. We see that Joaquin's character is unhappy in his marriage, is, has his mother-in-law at home. They're all living in their worlds, as you summarized, and frustrated with the mask mandates and just kind of hating the mayor personally. Joe decides that he's going to run for mayor and thinks that if he can get himself on the YouTube, Emma Stone, his wife, will, will love him more. It's made very clear that, that he's like, well, she's obsessed with her screen. So what if I get on this screen, then, then I won't get my marriage back.
12:51 Ryan Broderick? I want to touch on this for a second because this is something that pops up in Weapons as well, and we'll get deeper into that later. But I think Eddington is more explicit about it, which is that there is a psychosexual component to a lot of the kind of Trumpian rage of the 2020s. And so Joaquin Phoenix's character, Sheriff Cross, is being cocked in several directions. He is, he is married to the daughter of the previous sheriff, who will not sleep with him or touch him or have children with him. They have convinced themselves that it has something to do with a very brief romance she sorta kinda had with the mayor 20 years ago,
13:33 Ryan Broderick? when what is, becomes increasingly clear throughout the movie is that she's a victim of child sexual abuse and like no one in the house wants to address it because it was at the hands of the previous sheriff. But this is all being sort of understood through Sheriff Cross's eyes. So he's sort of, he sees the mayor as like this guy who is cucking him professionally, personally.
13:52 Speaker 01 He represents-
13:53 Ryan Broderick? He's the driving force of the movie.
13:55 Speaker 01 He represents completely a moral liberal guy who doesn't actually believe in anything he says, is just kind of using like-
14:02 Ryan Broderick? Gavin Newsom. He's Gavin Newsom of New Mexico.
14:05 Speaker 01 Using all these sort of signifiers to, to oppress this guy when it's clear that he doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself and what's available for him. Which like 10 out of 10, Ari, no critiques there. I will, I just want to, I think we'll probably miss this in the overall thematic conversation we're having as we're trying to move through this to compare to another film. But in a movie where like most people are kind of playing slapstick and like that tone really works, Emma Stone, the moment where she starts referring to herself in third person and you realize how fucking sick she actually is. It is like for a director who's like kind of seen as like doesn't care, but like it is clear that he's like, you fuckers are ignoring somebody who is in real mental distress
14:47 Speaker 01 and like needs help and only, you're only thinking of her as a pawn in your own little world. And it is, it is really heartbreaking like, and she's just, she's so fucking good.
14:58 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, she's really good.
15:00 Speaker 01 That she's like really suffering and like you put the phone in front of her and she's going to cling on to anything that can give her an answer and it's completely, it gets at a lot of the conspiratorial thinking we've talked about where it's like very easy to have empathy and understand why she does what she does.
15:16 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, I mean, the, the, many of the characters in the film are using conspiracies or even just like social engagement online as a way to fill in gaps in information. And some of those gaps are like, they just don't know. And some of those gaps are because no one wants to acknowledge, like it, the movie is sort of saying that like the pandemic arrives and it just tears open the fabric of reality. And for, for many Americans, I'm going to focus on America because this is like a very uniquely American, I think.
15:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:53 Ryan Broderick? For many Americans, what is revealed in that downtime, in that like listless first months of the pandemic, in that lockdown is so horrible and so, you know, ugly that they can't face it. And the mom is, is that personified. She has gone completely nuts. She's gone completely off the walls because of internet content while she's living in a house full of art her daughter is making depicting her dad molesting her. Like, like it is, it is grim. It is grim stuff.
16:25 Speaker 01 And, and the minute you meet her, you can tell that before this moment, she was like, kind of kooky. Like this was not a person who randomly found this and radicalized at once. You're like, this was a kind of unstable person who was kind of holding it together and probably had some like thoughts about fluoride in the water. And now that she's alone, the mom, and now that she's alone with this, it's like the brakes are off. Emmeral gas.
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17:53 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.
18:19 Ryan Broderick? Joaquin announces he's running for office. He decides that all of his sheriffs are going to be his election campaign. It's very clear he has no idea what he's doing. Meanwhile, protests are forming on the street. And while he's just focused on his petty grievance, he gets a call for a noise complaint at the mayor's house. And I think we talked about on the show recently, social media showed that the rules for the rest of us just don't apply to the super rich, where at his compound, he was able to host a big party where everyone was staying outside, so supposedly staying away. But like, they're able to have a good time and socialize, have a DJ, have staff, while everyone else is stuck going fucking insane. So that brings Joaquin over there to complain about the noise.
19:03 Ryan Broderick? Right, so the sheriff drives up and like tries to turn the music off, which is Katy Perry's Fireworks, which is extremely funny.
19:10 Speaker 01 Ryan loves that song.
19:11 Ryan Broderick? I think it's a great song. I wish they had used Fight Song instead, but like it is very clear like what they're doing there. This is also like sort of around the area where I start to have problems with the movie and feel like it's biting off more than it can chew. The whole, like the whole inclusion of Black Lives Matter is funny, sort of. It's also when the movie's tone starts to get kind of wonky where, and I guess like what Ari Aster is doing, the point he's trying to make there, I don't know if I agree with, only because it's such a large topic to try to throw under this umbrella, but he's, he's clearly trying to make this argument that like the social tensions of the pandemic created a powder keg and Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests set it off.
19:53 Ryan Broderick? That's a little ahistorical to me. Like I, I sort of think like with or without the pandemic, those protests would have been pretty extreme, but he's, he's clearly trying to make a point with it. It's just that I don't totally agree with it. I, and it's funny as sort of the hypocritical white teenage protesters are and all the monologues about like anti-racism and stolen land and all that. It feels a little like boomer-y, like a little, it's a little simplistic. And I, that's where, that's, that's like the chunk of the movie where I'm like, you could have stayed a little more focused and I think told a better story.
20:23 Speaker 01 I think that the section that he is showing and like based off the location, this might have just been the people who are actually in, at these protests versus, you know, like if it was set in Atlanta, it would have probably been a very different story. But like, it's like, oh, we all have to stay in the house and we can't interact at all unless it's for social justice was very much the reality then. And you see that amongst, and I think like, like you see that amongst the teenagers and like that is like point taken that it's like, oh, thank God. There's an outlet that we've decided is justifiable was a large part of it. But finish the loop on the party scene and how you think that ties thematically before we, we lose, we lose that thread.
20:59 Ryan Broderick? Well, it's basically like the whole movie Mayor Ted is just trying to get through it. And he's very comfortable and he's literally up in town, like away from town. Or he's in the bubble of his bar, having like a fake city council meeting that allows them to be inside. Or he's having a fundraiser event or whatever for his mayoral election. And he's not taking Sheriff Joe Cross seriously at any point. And it is very obvious that that is, you know, saying some things about the Democratic Party and their lack of connection to the common person, perhaps during the pandemic. And it's well done, and I generally agree with it.
21:41 Ryan Broderick? But like I said, this is the part of the movie that I think is the most thematically jumbled. Because like what is a pretty tight sort of rising tension throughout the movie around characters, I think in the middle section here or not, I mean, the movie's long. So I'm not even sure this is the middle section, but it's like, it's definitely like the beginning of the second half, let's say, or the end of the first half, whatever. It starts to fill up with like a bunch of like buzzy topics. And I just don't think we have enough distance from those topics yet to like talk about them decently in film. It is funny though, it like, it is funny. I just, I have issues. I have similar issues with the Austin Butler character, the sort of inclusion of the pedophile network conspiracy theory stuff, where it just feels like the movie is trying to make this like massive, massive statement,
22:26 Ryan Broderick? but it doesn't actually make that statement at any point. And a lot of that stuff kind of just like gets forgotten about and then brought back in an epilogue.
22:33 Speaker 01 Let's get there. So, so the Sheriff Joaquin goes to this party. He literally just unplugs the ox. They plug it back in, he goes back and the mayor slaps him in the face.
22:43 Ryan Broderick? Right.
22:43 Speaker 01 And, and, and the, the entire time, um, the mayor's son is watching this while, while he's just trying to hook up with the girl from his class. And it's very clear, like, you know, it's, I, I think it's filmed and it's like, it's like, this isn't going to matter. Like, like the sheriff has no authority here.
22:59 Ryan Broderick? This is taking place after Joaquin Phoenix's character has accused the mayor of raping Emma Stone's character. Emma Stone's character has publicly denied it and they're playing her public denial video at the party, which is nuts. The, the sort of constant trivialization of that is interesting. And once again, it's like, there are these interesting threads throughout this movie and they pile up. But yeah, so this is the turning point. Like this is the moment where the movie switches gears.
23:25 Speaker 01 And then it goes crazy. So after he does the cockiest walk of shame at this party, he gets a sniper rifle and comes back after the party's over and the mayor and his son are just chilling in their home. And he shoots and kills both the mayor and his son. And then in a fit of rage, also kills lodged the unhoused man. And now we are in cover up murder investigation and an attempt to, uh, shocker, blame it on Antifa.
23:55 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, blame it on Antifa. They also decide that they're gonna blame it on Michael, the black deputy who owns Bitcoin. And that's when things really go off the walls. So you see the shot of, uh, what is a private plane with a symbol that is supposed to mean globalists written on it. And it's like a bunch of Antifa super soldiers flying to town.
24:16 Speaker 01 Fuck yeah. I think I actually moved in the theater when Antifa super soldiers made their appearance.
24:21 Ryan Broderick? I groaned so loudly. Um, and I was like, this, I, I, I thought like this movie is either, this movie has to do a lot to stick the landing. And I'm still not sure it has, but.
24:32 Speaker 01 It's also very clear that the, that they were insiders, that they're right.
24:36 Ryan Broderick? Oh, I, I assume they're working for the tech company because Joe Cross has screwed up the T, the deal the tech company was doing with the mayor. The problem with that idea. Yeah. I, I assume it's a false flag attack. I think it's a little too, uh,
24:51 Speaker 01 Cute.
24:51 Ryan Broderick? Too vague, too, and too cute. I think, I think the tonal shift is, is wild and a little undeserved and, and kind of ruins like a more interesting movie that was in the works, to be honest. It is sort of saved by the epilogue, but there's so much in the first half that is interesting and being thoughtfully picked at. And when the Antifa super soldiers show up. It feels very much like Astor going like, well, we've looked at that. I have nothing, I have no idea what to do about that. And, and, and I'm not saying that like, the movie has to be like, here's how we fix the country. But the movie is introducing all these very interesting ideas about the pandemic and technology and social justice and the breakdown of the American order and all this interesting stuff.
25:36 Ryan Broderick? And then it, it wants to say, okay, it's actually all the fault of big tech, but it doesn't even say that either. Like it, it doesn't, because I don't think there's an easy way to show that without having like cartoon villains in some like Silicon Valley boardroom. So it's like, it's trying to do this thing that's like, I just don't think earned. The epilogue though, I think brings, like, I think it saves some of that. And like, that's why I can't say like, I hated the movie because the epilogue is really dark and really funny and well done. Basically everything from the indigenous cop noticing that Joe Cross's E's are written the same on the, on the whiteboard in the sheriff's office. And in the like frame job after he kills the mayor. So he realizes that the sheriff has killed the mayor.
26:17 Ryan Broderick? Everything from that point on, up until the epilogue, I don't know how I feel about.
26:22 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, what I kind of liked it at the time before I made the connection that it was that like, we're, we're seeing like this, this globalist Antifa plane. Where you never see their faces, but you see the masks. I was thinking, oh, so everything's boiling over. Now Ari Aster just likes to play in nightmares. What if it's like the fever dream?
26:43 Ryan Broderick? I thought about this.
26:44 Speaker 01 What, what if the fever dream of like, what people think of the conspiracies they're, they're, they're shelling actually came to light? And there's this great source of power. So Antifa super soldiers show up and they are, we, we figure out they're there to set things right for the AI company. And then lots of people start to die or get framed. So you got, you got the other police trying to solve it, getting, getting murdered by them. You have, everything goes, it becomes, it becomes a completely impractical, like super ops ability to just make whatever they want to happen. Even though it seems implausible from setting. A sheriff's station on fire to to frame jobs, etc.
27:29 Speaker 01 So now we have a suddenly very loud, violent movie. Meanwhile, Emma Stone's character, Joaquin's wife, has run off with Vernon, the hot Alex Jones cult leader. So Joaquin is in a full spiral with nothing clear to live for besides survival and not being pinned. But his life is essentially over regardless of what happens next.
27:53 Ryan Broderick? So if you want to think of it as as sort of becoming more surreal and magical, I had thought about this as well, and I actually just pulled up the movie to make sure it works. And I think it does work. So there is something that you could you could argue here. And I'm actually, now that I've seen how well this lines up, I actually think this might genuinely be the case. So he kills Lodge, he kills the mayor, and he kills his son. He covers it up. And then he does a press conference where he's just like, we've got guns. Antifa, don't come here. You're not allowed to come here. We'll defend our town. Okay, that happens. And then immediately after the news footage of that press conference is shown, we see the private plane full of Antifa super soldiers.
28:36 Ryan Broderick? The very next scene is the sheriff very clearly wheezing. And then he wakes up the next morning and he can't taste coffee. And he then progressively gets worse and worse with COVID for the next 50 minutes of the film. The final, the final scene is him brain dead as the mayor. There is an argument to be made that he won the election, was put on a ventilator and like is now the mayor as a vegetable. And nothing happens between like, that is all just a, that is all just a dream sequence.
29:11 Speaker 01 Just like our last two presidents. Yeah, totally. The movie seems end with a prolonged gunfight between him and these Antifa super soldiers. It rocks. It's like, it's like 25 minutes.
29:24 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, no, the action scene is fun. I think I've decided, though, that it didn't happen. In fact, like there are inconsistencies that abound.
29:31 Speaker 01 I think it's a more interesting read on the movie.
29:33 Ryan Broderick? I mean, the the status of Michael is interesting because like he very much explodes.
29:40 Ryan Broderick? And he is in the final scene of the movie. The only thing that sort of gets in the way of that interpretation, I guess, that it was a sort of some kind of dream sequence is that there is a mural to the indigenous police officer who's killed by the Antifa super soldiers as well. I think it's a mural saying he's dead. Hold on, I'm pulling this up. I'm convinced that this didn't actually happen. I would like to believe that. It's a better movie if it didn't happen, to be honest. Uh, no, he died. But because of the pandemic, he could have actually just gotten COVID because he was interacting with the sheriff who had COVID.
30:12 Speaker 01 Or as the sheriff was getting sick with COVID, like he could have taken him out and done this for his guilt. Like, if you're in this version where the sheriff becomes a vegetable because of COVID, everything, once he starts wheezing, becomes in question.
30:24 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, I mean, there's other issues, though, which is like the whole, like, Kyle Rittenhouse turn of the social justice kid.
30:31 Speaker 01 Oh, that was, we should, we should talk about that.
30:34 Ryan Broderick? Basically, the kid who has been like, this is where the movie gets a little both sidesy for me, and I think is like, kind of stupid. He is shown being like radicalized into social justice language to like impress a girl, which is funny. I get it.
30:47 Speaker 01 The dinner table scene is so funny.
30:49 Ryan Broderick? The dinner table scene is unbelievable. It's like, it's very funny. He then basically saves the sheriff, sort of, from the Antifa super soldiers. There's a viral video of it that is very similar to Kyle Rittenhouse. And then it is shown that this kid has completely abandoned his social justice principles and has flipped, and he's now a right wing grifter, and he lives in Gainesville, Florida. And it's, all of that stuff is so good, again. And it's like, I want to just sort of give Astro credit and be like, you nailed so much stuff so well. I just wish he had like, held it. Like, we would be talking about like, I don't know, like a Doctor Strange level satire if he'd been able to pull it off, staying in the same tonal lane he's like throughout the whole movie.
31:33 Ryan Broderick? Like, if he'd been able to basically take what we see in the opening scenes of the movie and carry that consistently and satisfactorily all the way to the end, like, this would be like, a genuine masterpiece. And I think the movie can't, because we just don't have enough distance from whatever it is we're in right now to be able to point at it and say, this is what it is. That, that is my major criticism of the film.
31:53 Speaker 01 I I I think time is actually going to be nicer to it.
31:56 Ryan Broderick? Even the last part, you think like, well, what like five years from now, like the la- last part will feel better?
32:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, because we'll be we'll be somewhere else and we'll then be able to be like, cool, now now a bunch of crazy shit is happening at like a really fast speed and and it's unpredictable and you'll be able to just sort of appreciate that as a movie, not as like, I think it's unfair that this movie has to carry the weight. And I give him credit because it kind of does before he goes into director jail of being like, this was clearly his last blank check. Before he's only allowed to make like mid budget car movies about families again. And I just like salute to you, sir, for deciding like, I'm going to do this swing on something that like is impossible to market. But I think we'll look at those scenes and we'll be able to interpret them from character perspectives, from like different allegorical perspectives.
32:45 Speaker 01 Right now, we're so in on it that it just has to bear the weight of like coming up with a thesis for the moment that no one else is even trying. Or no one has the power that he does to get something like this greenlit to try. So I think we'll be able to look at it in different parts. I think I think this is going to age like a movie like American Gangster, a movie like Fire Walk With Me. Movies that were overstuffed that like then let you play with interpretations for generations to come. I think that this is going to, this is like always going to be really interesting to revisit the more we move. But we also didn't talk about the epilogue, which I do agree is the part that like haunts the haunts the viewer.
33:23 Ryan Broderick? Which part of the epilogue?
33:25 Speaker 01 So after after Joaquin gets stabbed, he's supposedly the mayor and he is basically a vegetable being wheeled around. Being being run as a puppet, something that only feels more relevant with each passing day somehow. And we see him, he's getting, he's, he's carried by aides to the toilet who who hit him when when he has a fidget. He's then put in bed with his mother in law who is fucking the nurse. Like, he was this product to be used and then he only gets moved to like the ultimate cuck. He starts off being cucked by the world supposedly from a position of authority. And most of what he does is deplorable, but like, I think there is a plea there to recognize that we're all humans being used.
34:10 Speaker 01 Even if you find that that human deplorable. And I think that's a pretty damn good thesis.
34:16 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, I have issues with it. I just have, I have issues with, I mean, I do think like fundamentally, the movie's depiction of Black Lives Matter is its weakest.
34:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:24 Ryan Broderick? Part. It is, it is the point in which the movie feels like it's biting off way more than it can chew. I also think that it's tightest when it's focusing on the mayor and the sheriff. And it's sort of playing in a, I don't know, like a, I've seen this compared to No Country for Old Men a lot. I could see it. It's like very new neo-Western and I like that. And then, yeah, the ending, I just, uh, but the, the Kyle Rittenhouse influencer kid. It's interesting. It's another one of those like fun ideas that the first act is full of, which the movie feels both more interested in and bored of by the end in a weird way. Like, like the movie is having a lot of fun, completely loses interest in it, becomes a two other separate movies and then ends with the movie that it opened with, which I like better.
35:09 Ryan Broderick? I have to sit more with this movie, but I would say for our purposes, it is the closest I've seen to literally showing what we cover on this show in film. I, I haven't seen a better version.
35:20 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and I was like, this is a man who has reached many of the same conclusions about people being consumed in their own world. And the clashing of those realities makes an impossible co-reality.
35:33 Ryan Broderick? I would like to have him on the show to talk to him. I'd be curious if they are the same conclusions. I, I think he has absolutely noticed what we've noticed. The movie is not clear enough though, about what he thinks is the cause and how they intersect. Because the part of the movie where I think if you had more time and distance from this subject matter, you'd be able to see it more clearly. It goes into magical realism to a degree. If you, even, even if you accept that the anti of a super soldier stuff is real and literal in the film, which I guess it probably is. That's the part of the movie where like, I think if you had more distance from the pandemic, you'd be able to make a clearer satire, a clearer thriller based in this world. But like, we're still, I think, too close. We're still in it technically.
36:17 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean,
36:18 Ryan Broderick? I mean, yeah, the pandemic, but also like the world of the pandemic is still very much alive and present.
36:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. I felt relieved just seeing somebody wrestle.
36:27 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, me too.
36:27 Speaker 01 Wait, wait, wait.
36:28 Ryan Broderick? I shouldn't say I don't want to fault this movie. I don't want to say this movie is like bad. It's like, it just, I think it's a little messy and undercooked. And I only care because it's doing such interesting work before it loses interest in that work.
36:41 Speaker 01 I think that's right, but I think that like the sides, I saw the TV glow. Like I can think of very few examples that are even anything dealing with that. We are living in different realities.
36:54 Ryan Broderick? So I, I love, I saw the TV glow. I think we're all going to the world's fair is a little better. It's definitely, well, they're kind of tackling similar things. Basically, people listening should watch both of those films. They're very much in conversation with each other. It's the same filmmaker. They're great. You should like, they're great movies. You should watch them, but I agree.
37:11 Speaker 01 Let's talk about a much more straightforward movie.
37:15 Ryan Broderick? Let's talk about Weapons.
37:17 Speaker 01 Okay, we will pick up the rest of the conversation on Weapons. You might, you might've heard of that movie. It's a, they do a little silly run. It's pretty creepy and we will compare both movies on our Patreon. Don't freak out. The Patreon is just 50 cents this month. Patreon.com/panicworld, use the code PANICYEAR and you can listen to the rest of this for basically free. Patreon.com/panicworld, code PANICYEAR, all caps. Thank you for listening. We will be back with a full episode next week. Patreon.com/panicworld, code PANICYEAR. You got it.
37:59 Ryan Broderick? Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstedt is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Kevin Maroney and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. YouTube and Podcast Growth Marketer, Samantha Hallows. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected] .
38:44 Ryan Broderick? Be sure to check out the Panic World YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com/panicworldpod. And please, give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.
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