Avatar: The Way of Water with Marie Bardi

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin, Blank Check with Griffin, Blank Check I know one thing. Wherever we go, this podcast is our fortress. Mmm, that's good. Now we were saying- You wanted to do The Way of Water. But they don't have the full version online.

[00:00:33] The only part I could do is The Way of Podcast connects all things before your birth and after your death. But I want the full- I know, it was beautiful. What a mission statement. Yeah, one of 12 moments in this movie that almost made me cry. Hell yeah. Almost?

[00:00:48] I never got there. Yeah, I wasn't- Look, I put up no guard. Friend of the show, Katie, she's seen it twice. Uh-huh. She says she just cries the whole last hour. Cool. But especially one moment in particular. I mean, I think-

[00:01:01] Griffin, correct me if I'm wrong here, you don't have children. Then he knows- Hold on, hold on, hold on, let me check. No, I don't. I do not. I think that's what we're missing in terms of the crying factor. I don't cry often at movies.

[00:01:19] Griffin's not really a crier. I get choked up. I cry at everything. You cried at Fable 1s. I cried at Fable 1s. Yeah, but that was unusual. It was a little unusual. Okay. It was a little unusual. Yeah. Yeah, but you didn't cry, but you did see- Cheer.

[00:01:35] You did cheer. Yeah. Come? Mmm. Question mark. Great noise from me and Marie in stereo there. Well, I think we also- We need to get into our viewing experience. I know, I know. We have to hear all of this. We have a story. Introduce the podcast. Hello, everybody.

[00:01:53] Hello. Welcome. It's the end of the year. Woo! And here's what I say to our listeners. He's doing the thing. He's doing the hand motion. I see you. You may be hearing us right now, but I see you. I see you too.

[00:02:08] This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Lightning fast. Well, because someone- Spoiler alert for future episodes. Someone Bigfooted me. Yeah. You'll see. Yeah. This is a podcast about filmographies. Mm-hmm. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as making Terminator

[00:02:27] 2, True Lies, Titanic, and Avatar in a row. Mm-hmm. And are given a series of blank checks. Possibly the biggest checks ever offered to anyone. Yeah. To make whatever crazy passion products they want, such as five Avatar movies. Mm-hmm. Now maybe threatening up to seven. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:47] And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, maybe. Yeah. Sometimes they skim on the water, like the mighty Skimwing. Is that what they're called? Yes. Half of the- They're actually two different similar looking species of that size. There's the Eeloo and there's the Skimwing. What's the difference?

[00:03:05] I don't know. They look similar. They might be the same. The Skimwing seems to maybe have a longer nose and shorter wings. They're different. They're different. They do seem to be different. I didn't know they had names. I just was like, oh yeah, the underwater band species.

[00:03:18] The Skimwing fly. Oh, so the Eeloo do not fly. Okay. The Eeloo send the white flyers. That's what we're talking about. The white flyers. So that's like the difference? Yes. The Eeloo are like the dire horses- Gotcha. And the Skimwings are like the mighty Ikran. Uh-huh.

[00:03:31] And then of course we have our lovely space whales. The Tulkuun. The Tulkuun. Have you introduced the show? I forget. Yeah, I did the introduction. Today we return to Pandora. We return to one of the earliest filmmakers we ever covered who has taken 13 years to make another movie.

[00:03:46] He has. Remember when the Titanic- One of our first four mini-series, right? Gap felt long and somehow this is longer? Yes. He beat it by a year. Yes. You have to, I mean, it's probably because of the pandemic, but- Sure. That's true.

[00:04:03] There's a world where this came out a couple years ago, I guess. But no. At least a year. I think the pandemic pushed it back one final year. It is wild that it actually exists. Yeah. That it is in theaters and we have now all seen it. Yay!

[00:04:18] I remember when I tweeted about this. Mm-hmm. Like, oh guys, we have an Avatar 2 release date, December, whatever. Yeah. Multiple people tweeted at me saying, eh, not gonna happen. Because- I'll believe it when I see it. At that point where people were just like, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:04:34] It's the same people- Anyway, whatever. People made that joke about Top Gun Maverick. Right. They made that joke about, you know. Sometimes it actually happens. Sometimes it actually happens. Yes. And it did happen. We have returned to Pandora. Mm-hmm. And I could have stayed a little longer.

[00:04:50] That was my first criticism of the movie. Oh. Too short. I mean, truly, ring me out. There was- Because I got wet. Wet. Oh, good, good. Ben basically turned to me halfway through and said, I disavow ever being a dry guy. That's true. That was an ill-begotten phase.

[00:05:07] I'm back. Wow, Maria. I'm looking at every tweet you've ever written about Avatar. Some good ones in here. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. It feels incredible that we've seen it. And there was truly a point where I could tell like, oh, we've clicked into the final

[00:05:22] act I've heard so much about with the relentless action. And I got sad recognizing, oh, this means- This is it. Right. I'm closer to the end of this film. Yeah, we're almost done. Because, look, we like Avatar on this podcast. Something that has somehow become a controversial stance.

[00:05:39] Although maybe things are finally coming back around to that being a normal opinion people are allowed to have without being viewed as some like provocative contrarian take. Oh, whatever. Don't worry about all that. Everyone's dumb.

[00:05:52] But, but, that having been said, weirdly, ironically, the opposite of what Avatar haters say, where they're like, no one remembers the story. No one cares about the characters in Avatar. People just liked it because it was an experience and it was 3D and the visuals and everything.

[00:06:07] My love of Avatar has almost always been based in that movie's pure functionality in like its kind of narrative construction, its epic, you know, sincere storytelling. Okay. As much as I appreciate all these other qualities, I never was one of those people who had the

[00:06:28] post-Avatar effect that people talked about where it's like, I want to live in this world. I wish I was in Pandora. I want to live here. Watching this movie, I fully fucking felt it.

[00:06:39] I don't know if it says more about what's changed in the last 13 years and movies and myself, whatever. But I truly halfway through entered a zen state where I'm like, I want to be here for the rest of time. That's cool. What's the film called?

[00:06:54] Avatar, The Way of Water. Thank you. I was like, I just, when we're still in the intro, I just enter like a stasis. We're out of the intro. Now we're out. We're here to discuss. Podinator 2 Judgment Cast. That's really what we did. Our 2016 miniseries now finally. 2016? Was it 2016?

[00:07:13] I think he was, because I think we did Cameron Crowe and James Cameron back to back. I think he was the fourth guy we ever covered. He was the fourth guy we ever covered. Yeah, I guess we started in 2016. Yeah, we finished. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:28] Oh, we tipped into the beginning of 17? Just with the Avatarland episode. Okay. So it's been. Okay. Oh, that doesn't even count. That doesn't even count. That was later. Yeah. To root the first flight. Right. So December 16. Yeah. So here we are. Six years later.

[00:07:46] We've seen The Way of Water. Yes. His sequel to it's opening today. Basically, we went to the public preview screening. Like Thursday. Preview screening Thursday early. Right. Let us tell you folks, it was not easy. It was not easy. I know. I was not with you guys yesterday.

[00:08:07] I was at my staff holiday party for The Atlantic. I had seen the film a week before. I knew you guys were going to see it at five o'clock. You had an additional 10 days of having seen The Way of Water that I will never get back.

[00:08:20] I will never catch up with. You'll never forgive me. No. But so I'm not aware. I just know that there were some shenanigans last night and I want to hear about them. So as we introduce, we get into the meat of this episode first.

[00:08:32] We should also mention it's a party party. Marie Barty Party is here today. Ben's here as always. I'm here. I'm wet. And I don't really know what happened last night. I just know there was some chaos and I want to hear about it.

[00:08:46] And then we'll talk about the film Avatar The Way of Water. Let's talk all this just by prefacing. I've been waiting 13 years for this movie. I'm a little excited. Yeah, and you have some buildup. Also, by the way, a little nervous. Okay.

[00:09:00] Even though you at least there had been reactions that were positive. There's relief there, but like I felt similar to the first time. The whole never bet against Jim Cameron thing. The reason that exists is because... I had to cancel so many bets. Yeah.

[00:09:15] I had so many bets in. Yeah. You can't really... You know, Howie... What's his last name? Howie Ratner? Yeah, Howie Ratner on the phone. Cancel all my Cameron bets. I'm screwed. Paul Sorvino keeps knocking on our fucking studio door.

[00:09:31] But the reason that exists is because almost anytime James Cameron does anything, you're like, sounds maybe catastrophic, but he's never wrong. Right? Where he's like, I'm going to do a sequel to Avatar. And I'm like, logical. He's like Sigourney Weaver's playing a teenager. And I'm like, oh, really?

[00:09:51] We're writing four of them at the same time. We're doing it all together. We're bringing back all dead characters and adding eight children. Yeah, it's going to be mostly kids. There's going to be a white kid with dreads. And I'm like, oh. Right.

[00:10:04] And like the reviews are good. You've seen it. You like it. All of that. But you're still like, I want him to transport me. Right? This movie, The Tickets finally go on sale. Whatever it was like three weeks ago, four weeks ago.

[00:10:17] He has talked about the fact that this is the most different formats a movie has ever been released in. So I immediately feel the stress of what is the right way to see this movie? Where do we want to see it? At what time? On what day?

[00:10:31] Is it better go to the earliest possible screening? Is it better go where there's going to be more of a crowd? Do we want to see it in high frame rate 3D and IMAX 3D, but without high frame? It's so unclear what the best way to see it.

[00:10:43] Dolby, laser, prime, any of these things. Right? Basically, Regal seems to be the only chain that is advertising which screenings are high frame rate. Okay. We go to the Union Square Regal Theater. There is RPX, which is now their largest and most premium screen.

[00:11:00] That is essentially what they call these days. What's there's an abbreviation prime format or whatever. Mini Max or whatever? No, not that. It's like, right? You know, PFR or something? Sure. Where it's like, it's not IMAX. It's not anything in particular. Maybe they have a laser projector.

[00:11:19] That's their branded basically. Because AMC has the Dolby Cinema Partnership and this is like their equivalent of that. Premium large format PLF. That's it. Right. And they're like, this is our biggest screen. This is our best projection. All of this.

[00:11:32] In general, trying to guarantee you a better experience here. Absolutely. And we're like, it's 3D. It's high frame rate. The tickets are expensive. They basically cost as much as the 4DX in the same theater. But I was like, much I love 4DX.

[00:11:43] I don't want to watch this movie in 4DX for the first time. Absolutely not. Right? Right. So. I mean, we would have been fucking soaking. Yeah. Well, they don't even run the jets. They just seal the room and then slowly. Slowly. It's the end of Titanic.

[00:12:01] They hand out little floaties you put on your arm. They handcuff you to a pipe. Yeah. So let's set the scene for yesterday. The day has finally come. I arrive at Regal about 20 to 15 minutes early. Uh-huh. And. I have the tickets. Griffin has the tickets. A mistake.

[00:12:24] A profound mistake. I will say, I was not aware that that was the situation because I wasn't involved. But when that text came in. Yeah. Where Griff was like, I have the tickets. I'm at Grand Central waiting on the four train. Right. There were 10 minutes before showtime. Yeah.

[00:12:41] And I also talk about being excited for the screening. Yes, we're excited for Avatar, but we also are really excited for the previews that will be attached to. Everyone knows about Oppenheimer and then on the day people start being like, yo, they're just playing the Barbie trailer. Yeah.

[00:12:54] So I didn't know. I wasn't even preparing to see Barbie. That was a surprise. I mean, we'll get into it. But, you know, I'm watching my I'm watching the clock. Griffin is, you know, 30 blocks uptown. The train hasn't come yet. I'm starting to freak out.

[00:13:12] And I was about to say that he's one stop away, but we know he's a long express. It's an express, but it is technically one stop away. Yeah. But Tony Collette over here isn't happy. I understand. I know I got it. And and five comedy points.

[00:13:26] My timeline was I got into Grand Central at like 501. We have a five o'clock screening. You mean Union Square? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. I get there at five. We're basically in the theater like 506. Correct.

[00:13:39] But Marie texts at like 455 from the lobby and says, I am buying my own ticket because I don't want to miss the trailer. Yeah, because also with the the way that it works for getting into the theater, it's not the way of water.

[00:13:52] This is not this is the way of regal and it's bullshit. It sucks. Everyone needs to be there at the same time. There's only one ticket for. So it's like the ticket.

[00:14:00] Or if you do the printout, then you have to find a way to leave the other two tickets with someone. So we're meeting friends of the podcast, Jordan Fish, Rayton Tori also go to the screening with us. They bought their own tickets together. Right. So they're there.

[00:14:13] Marie's there. Ben then arrives. I arrive. Ben's waiting for me in the lobby. I retrieve our three tickets. There's now been four tickets bought for the three of us. That means I'm there in spirit. Of course. Yes, we get there.

[00:14:25] Marie is like they've just been doing the pre-roll. This is the first trailer. Right. We've been doing the regal show. You're really annoyed because Griffin actually got there. Well, just just you wait. Just you wait. Just you wait.

[00:14:39] So they do the thing that they also did for Top Gun Maverick, which I love, where they have like branded commemorative popcorn buckets. This is a new thing. And plastic merchandise special. Oh, he brought it. Yeah. Merchandise spotlight.

[00:14:54] Griff's bringing out a metal popcorn container with a bunch of tulkun on them. Yes. Oh, my God. He's got like four items. So I think how much did this cost? This was like twenty twenty dollars. Twenty five dollars. It was twenty five dollars with free refills.

[00:15:11] They caught me on it a little bit. I want to say, Griff. Yeah. Katie. Yeah. Text me from her screening in North Carolina. Great Katie Rich. Great Katie Rich. She got a glowing. Yeah. I will be going there for my second viewing.

[00:15:22] I will be getting that in their different collector cup. So this is a tin, a popcorn tin. Maurice says, I already bought the combo so you don't have to get one. And I said, fuck that. You think I'm not taking home my own bucket?

[00:15:32] Right. So you get this reusable cup with all the sea creatures on it. Yeah. There were special branded avatar 3D glasses. They're blue. They have the logo on them. In classic Big Jim Cameron style. The bags for the glasses were paper instead of plastic.

[00:15:50] Great. Can we get some sound effect of that on the mic? Here's what the tin sounds like. Sounds like this. Do not need sound effects. Collectible cup sounds like this. This is not an oral experience. And then the last. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[00:16:06] You got like a mason jar there. Right. Well, this was for my cocktail, which we'll talk about in a second. That's just Regal branded. And then you got a little. Oh, a little guy. A little Toe Clue. Is that a Toe Clue? No, it looks like a.

[00:16:17] This is a little. Yeah, I got a little a little. Yeah. So this was the combo. Right. So we get two of these. So I already got. They just had bones and all Polaroids. It has nothing to do with this movie.

[00:16:31] So I let everyone know excitedly, guys, I got the combo. And then Griffin's like, fuck you. I need my own combo. So Griffin leaves right as the Barbie trailer. There are two trailers play and they're both trailers that have been in circulation for like four or five months.

[00:16:44] Right. I don't remember what the first trailer was. No, it was John Wick was the first one. And I think trailer two was Barbie. No, no, no. Because trailer two was Shazam. And I was like, oh, you're right. You're right. I can fucking go get concessions while Shazam.

[00:16:57] I saw there wasn't a line. I'm going to go and I go and I think I'm pretty quick. And while I'm checking out Marie text me, they played the Barbie trailer. It's a 2001 shot for shot. And then I walk in and the Oppenheimer trailer is like media res.

[00:17:11] Yeah. As I'm trying to get through the aisles. Oh, my God. David. As David Sims of the Atlantic would say it owns bones. Hell yeah. It's it's the master meets interstellar.

[00:17:23] Do you know that owns bones was quoted in Vulture's Oscar handicapping piece about Avatar's chances as a best picture contender? Nate Jones. That's great. That's great. I have seen the Barbie trailer. However, it's online. Barbie trailer is very, very funny. Yeah.

[00:17:42] Because like at the beginning, I'm like, I'd already heard the 2001 parody thing. It's funny. She did the magic cut. I mean, it's all really a little belly laugh. And I also like that there's like genuine look. People have separate kinds of context.

[00:17:55] I think there is an important framing context for this movie to be like it was revolutionary that there was a doll that was an adult who was fashionable. Right. There wasn't just a fat baby. Yeah. She had boobs. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. Barbie. So yeah, Barbie trailer. Great.

[00:18:13] I bet you guys are thinking, OK, well, Griffin missed the Barbie trailer. That's couldn't get worse. Right. Right. Couldn't get worse. Why are they starting a podcast about getting there in time? Whatever. But like we're settling in. We're starting to feel fine.

[00:18:27] They turn the 3D on. They play a couple Marvel trailers in 3D. The 3D is working. This is an important part of the story. Like it did work when they did this. Guardians of the Galaxy. Ant-Man and Guardians.

[00:18:39] This is another fucking trailer with shitty post-conversion 3D that plays. The 3D is working. And then the movie Avatar, The Way of Water starts. And I'm pretty excited. We're thrilled. And I look across the aisle and all five of us are doing the exact same thing.

[00:18:57] We're taking our 3D glasses and like lifting them and lowering them and then like closing one eye and closing the other eye and going like. And you ain't watching Godard's Goodbye to Language. No. Something is up. And then it like keeps going on.

[00:19:12] I'm throwing some crazy references out. You're coming in hot today. That movie has the. Anyway. The more the movie goes on, we're talking the first like 90 seconds. We've caught a couple times now. You have those established shots at the beginning.

[00:19:25] But now we're in like no teary in the forest with the bow pregnant whatever. And we're like it's clearly not. There's no depth to this whatsoever. You take the glasses off. There's no blur. So the 3D is simply not on. Correct. Correct. It has not been turned on.

[00:19:39] And then the thing is, the image is glitching. I can only describe it as like the effect in Spider-Verse. Yeah. When the characters are being torn across realities and it's like. So the DCP is just broken. Yeah. The DCP must have been corrupted.

[00:19:53] There were like red and green strobing lights any time there was like something bright in the background. I hope Big Jim doesn't hear this because he's about to go rip someone to pieces.

[00:20:03] This is the other thing. So we're turned to each other and we're like this is fuck. This is fuck. This is fuck. And A we're stressed out that we've been waiting so long to see this movie.

[00:20:09] It's like you can't even you don't even want to watch this at all. Then we start panicking about the implications of this. Are we going to do the podcast? Not even not even not even not even. We mean what if. Oh they're all broken. They're all fucked up.

[00:20:24] Marie and I are turned to each other within two minutes of this movie breaking down and going like fuck his gambits gonna fail. If they were having trouble opening night first screening screening this movie. Is this happening? We weren't like there's a virus.

[00:20:36] We didn't think it was Y2K. Threw the package a little too hard out of the airplane or whatever. The other thing was like Jordan and Ray who are really well versed in all the technical sides. Yes Jordan will tell me where the best bulbs in Manhattan are.

[00:20:48] Yes and then both of them love 3D and stereoscopic projection all this sort of shit. They're both like it has to be the file. The projector is not fucked. The file is fucked. The file for this movie is obviously complicated.

[00:21:01] Sure. What are the odds that like this isn't happening other places? Not that it's Y2K and it's all collapsing but whatever. So we're at this point. Sounds like you guys were maybe just a little stressed out in general.

[00:21:12] I'm shaking. So 90 seconds into this two minutes tops right. Yeah. Yeah. I just go fuck it. I'm like you got to run out. You got to run.

[00:21:21] No one else is running out so I run out and I literally I say to the guy and it's that thing where I can tell the second I start verbalizing it. I'm embarrassingly close to crying. It's just it's just not the images and you're like I'm more trembling.

[00:21:34] Like someone bursting into a hospital being like is there a doctor. It was truly that I could. Oh we're in theater 13. And it is fucked. The projection is fucked. And they were like what's wrong. I'm like everything is wrong. I mean I can't even.

[00:21:50] OK. It was so dramatic. And then Griffin comes back and we're like OK so are they going to fix it. He's like they're troubleshooting the problem like the man follows the woman.

[00:21:58] They're troubleshooting the problem like the man followed me and he recognized that there was a problem because I have had this problem at that theater once before where I saw Jungle Cruise which was misprojected.

[00:22:08] I didn't care as much. Sure. I went out and complained. The guy followed me in and he went that's just how the movie looks. And I was like look I know this movie sucks but it's not supposed to look like.

[00:22:17] Let's go ahead sir. His flowers are visual stylist. The man understands the technical aspects of filmmaking. But but so this the guy goes like oh fuck this is a problem.

[00:22:28] And also this is Avatar. It's really hard to work those theaters when there's like the big movies and like so he's it's not like Jungle Cruise where he's like motherfucker I don't know it's Jungle Cruise. Like it's like OK we can't we can't be showing this wrong.

[00:22:41] It is a horrible ice rain night in New York City. It's a nasty night. It's not packed. It's not like they're overrun. Well also you're there at five which is weirdly early like I feel like showing classically those showing started seven.

[00:22:54] So yeah this is we went to the earliest possible showing and we're like the first one in the most premium screen is failing. When I went also to complain the one employee turned to the other employee and went Avatar are you sure that's supposed to be in 3D.

[00:23:08] And I was like yes it's Avatar. But I forgot to mention this when I bought my own ticket to get into the theater early. The woman didn't give me 3D glasses and I was like excuse me ma'am. Is this for his camera heard that he'd be bursting blood.

[00:23:23] This is New York City. So make 3D a viable thing. And everyone else fucked it. And he's like look obviously it's been a rough couple of years. The foot went off the gas for 3D for six or seven years.

[00:23:35] I'm coming back to show people how to do it right. And this movie is being misprojected. So then at some point they flip a switch right.

[00:23:42] The movie goes black for like a millisecond and then it comes back basically at the moment where spoiler alert we'll get into all of this. Moskowitz is reawakening to be clear we will be spoiling every single aspect of this movie.

[00:23:53] Much like Regal spoiled our first attempt at watching the film. They flip the switch and you're like I think it's in 3D now and we put it on and we're like what's going on.

[00:24:03] And Jordan is basically immediately identifies what the problem is and he is like the like layers are flipped. They have the polarity flipped so the background elements are being forefronted and it almost sounds interesting. It was unwatchable viewing eight. Maybe I would have gotten sick.

[00:24:24] Of course your brain's not supposed to. It did feel like exposure double exposure stuff and goodbye language. But you're watching it and you're just like there was a 3D effect going on but in a way that breaks my brain.

[00:24:35] It's everything that everyone who dislikes 3D complains about where you're like I immediately have a headache. The strobing is out of control. So we go out and complain again and we just hit the point. We're now 15 20 minutes into the movie and Marie just finally says it.

[00:24:47] She says like this is it. We're never going to get over this. And even if they fix it I've already missed like what all of the table setting in the first like five ten. We started and we're so stressed out at this point. You can't be doing this.

[00:25:01] We all storm out. We lead a revolt of audience members. People start following us like pied piper. We made no announcement but everyone else was starting to recognize something's wrong here.

[00:25:10] So but we're the first to complain but by the time we leave there's like a big line behind us. And they basically like we're like look we're not gonna lie to you we're not restarting the movie. We can refund you immediately.

[00:25:20] And so we're getting refunded and Marie identifies like there's another screening starting in 10 minutes. It's also 3D high frame rate and a smaller screen. We can buy seats.

[00:25:28] We're sitting in the third row now hours before we triangulated the perfect place to sit for 3D lines of sight whatever. But we're like OK let's do it. We get there we settle down and we're like OK clean start.

[00:25:39] We're all sort of like knocking wood crossing our fingers. This is when you text. There's some text in my in the chain. Yes like 550. Yeah I'm at my holiday party and I see and I'm like the fuck is going on over there. Yes.

[00:25:53] Ben texts us where are you guys and I say at the second floor concession stand getting refunds and David is like what the fuck is happening. Leading a revolt. Yeah. And then also at this point Griffin is very distressed and so we decide that he needs a cocktail.

[00:26:10] Right because this Regal Theaters now have these cocktails. Daddy needs his medicine. These bars these full bars. I wouldn't say daddy I would say baby. Baby needs a baby.

[00:26:22] So Ben sees the bar and I'm like I want to sit down immediately because I don't want to miss the Barbie in Oppenheim trailer for a second time. Ben's like great. I will get the drinks.

[00:26:31] Right. I say Ben can you send me a photo of the menu when you get to the bar. All right. Can we go over the cocktails. Yes. Well first he sends me this photo. Just the classic Regal menu margarita spike lemonade.

[00:26:43] And right in the corner I see the little cardboard standy of what I want. And I said Ben take the photo of what I clearly want to see. Put that camera down. The way of cocktails. This is not branded. This doesn't seem to be official.

[00:26:54] There are no Fox trademarks on this but Regal has come up with four themed drinks to coincide with Avatar The Way of Water. Spiked moon milk deep blue sea rock candy martini the true blue vodka lemonade. All of these are fluorescent. And they all have rock candy stirrers.

[00:27:11] Which they didn't give me. I know I noticed that. I was a little disappointed. I was like I want a rock candy stirrer. And what I got was the agave aqua Rita which was you want to get out of those.

[00:27:22] I guess it's a loser's choice to Cooper to Cooper. Blue caracal curse curse out. Yeah. Lime juice and agave nectar. It was delicious. It was also so fucking potent. I think Ben can attest at five times during the movie. I took a sip and started choking.

[00:27:38] I was drinking like a moonshine. I couldn't tell if that was the drinker if it was popcorn. Drink drink drink. I do remember you coughing a lot. But it did chill me the fuck out and I needed to get brought back down.

[00:27:55] And Marie I think you said this after the movie but it was very wise. You were like it was actually good we had that failed experience because it brought us down to earth a little bit. It reset us. It got the nerves out of our system.

[00:28:08] The worst possible thing happened. Yeah. Yeah. And the movie starts up the first three shots that like establishing welcome back to Pandora shots or a little flat by design. We were holding our breath.

[00:28:21] Introduce you to 3D and it's not until that first interior close up and we all just like I'm like looking at rates and Tory being like are we good. Are we good. It was like I think we're good.

[00:28:32] That's a great thing is we have Ray and Jordan able to like right. Of course everything for us. But then we just we fucking we the water is warm. We step in. Yeah. We soak. Can I talk about my viewings. Yes.

[00:28:46] I might as well. I saw this film at the AMC Empire on 42nd Street. That's where the press screening was. Dolby. The Dolby Prime. OK. I had those with the high frame rate sequences. Absolutely. Because they're not advertising this. Good to know.

[00:29:00] And I had those special glasses that they have for the prime. Yes. Where if you walk out of the theater with them on like to go to the bathroom. Right. Because they're like expensive enough that they don't want you walking out.

[00:29:14] I'll make that one of my six viewings of this. And I had a great time. I was there with David Ehrlich and various other sundry members of the press. But I was not going to the evening screening went to the daytime screening.

[00:29:24] The minute they had a daytime screening I was like yeah. And I saw Avatar colon the way of water. I had a five guys burger. Forehand my. Which of the cocktails did you have from the way cocktails. No cocktail.

[00:29:36] I will say I think I had a Diet Coke. None of the AMCs in New York City have bars right now. Some of the AMCs in other parts of the country have. My guffins is what they call them.

[00:29:46] My mom's AMC in Georgetown has probably where I'm going to go see Babylon next week. Someone tweeted at us. I want to be there with a specialty Avatar cocktail that AMC has which also looks like a cocktail. It looked pretty good. Yeah yeah.

[00:30:02] Also they did put an effort more blue drinks was on the Reddit I think. OK. That's not important anyway. I saw the film and I had a great time. I do want to see it again. Yeah. You want to go back to Pandora. I'm going on Sunday.

[00:30:19] I'm at IMAX. It's like it's square the big one. I might see another IMAX this weekend. I want to try seeing it non high frame rate 3D. I think that's probably the most successful use of high frame rate. I would agree.

[00:30:33] I'd be curious to see the normal speed version. Yeah. For those who don't know we've talked about high frame rate twice before on our Ang Lee episodes. And we had a funeral for frames because it seemed like that was done a failed experiment.

[00:30:48] Cameron basically was like no the whole thing is you can't do it for the whole movie. Do it selectively. Right. That is James Cameron's gambit. And it's 48 frames as opposed to 120. Yeah.

[00:31:03] Although isn't there all this stuff where like some elements in the frame are moving at different speeds than other elements. Yes. So the two basically hacks he came up with are it's like well how do you do variable speeds. The projector can't switch.

[00:31:16] And he's like what I do is for any sequence that is quote unquote at 24 frames per second. We copy paste each frame two times. So the frame repeats which makes it appear to move at normal speed. Right. But you're just doubling up the image.

[00:31:33] And then when the sequences are 48 you just go into regular actual pure. But then there's this company that I forget who are the ones who came to him that used the re-release as the test balloon.

[00:31:43] To say like we have figured out how to isolate different elements in the frame.

[00:31:49] If you only want to have the background moving or only have the characters moving or one character moving so that he has a greater sense of control over what he can do with high frame rate whereas Ang Lee it was like all or nothing.

[00:32:02] I think I would put Gemini Man number one. It's the best use of. Yeah because I just don't it's sort of like I just don't think this needs it. I will say though. I'm not anti. I'm fairly neutral. Yeah.

[00:32:17] And I should I should see it without to compare.

[00:32:21] There was a point towards the end of the movie because Avatar the way after the way of water the first half the film the way he used it felt like when you see a movie in IMAX that was partially shot nightmare where it suddenly clicks into like oh we're in some sort of visual effects sequence or over you know the ratio changes more than you feel that immediate shift.

[00:32:41] Of like oh now it's gone taller and for this establishing shot or this one action sequence. Now there's a new clarity there's a new shape all of that way of water. Right. The first half the movie he'll use it sparingly for little blurts and stuff.

[00:32:57] And then once you go underwater for the first time he basically says like underwater everything's high frame rate which is pretty. And he's incredible.

[00:33:05] If anything not to question Big Jim I'm like if he didn't do it once until you went underwater for the first time it would maybe almost feel like Dorothy opening the door to I agree.

[00:33:15] I think it would have been more effective but it cool right does feel like he's trying to like slowly get the audience used to it before he's going to start using it more aggressively. And maybe that would be good.

[00:33:25] And then in like the last hour of the movie he's using it in like dialogue coverage close ups the exact kind of thing that seemed to foil angley right. And it starts feeling normal. This is why I think it's more successful than Gemini man. Sure.

[00:33:41] There gets to a point where he's using it for innocuous things rather than the money shots and I no longer was thinking about how weird it look. I want to go around the room here. What do you think of way of water. Loved it. Ones bones Ben.

[00:33:54] Yeah that's good. Okay I loved it as well. Marie I liked it. You have you because you I'm sensing reservations from the corners here. Yeah. We had a couple of reservations that I think are very valid. But what should we do.

[00:34:09] Can we go around again and just refresh people on what. Well people don't know what I thought of the original Avatar but. Okay. 2009. Okay. Griffin loved it owns bones. Sure. Okay. I love rules. I loved you. You wanted you.

[00:34:25] You tweeted that it should have won best picture over the hurt locker. Yeah. No. I stand by that. Marie was that your first impression from the movie or is it one that has grown on you. No it was my first impression from the movie.

[00:34:37] I saw it at opening weekend Lincoln Square IMAX big theater which I will be going to again on Sunday. How old were you when you did. I was in college 2009. I was 13 years younger than you are right now. 20. Yeah. And I really loved it.

[00:34:53] It sucks to think about actually. We're the exact same age. It sucks to think I was. I could not legally drink. You couldn't have gotten your agave aqua Rita if we if I couldn't. Not that not that any theater would be right.

[00:35:07] No it was illegal at that point in time. Yeah. But no I love the first one. I saw it again with my family the week of Christmas in Washington and you know I saw the re-release.

[00:35:18] I had not really re-watched it since 2009 because so much of what Avatar was at the time was the in theater experience. Whereas I've seen it multiple times on planes. Yeah no not not not me. It's really good on a plane.

[00:35:37] So Griffin when you earlier were like people say Avatar is all about the visual experience but I'm really into the relationship. Great impression by the way. Incredible dead on. To me that felt like I read Playboy for the articles. I want to make it clear.

[00:35:53] I love the visuals of Avatar. All I was trying to say is that I for me the thing was never this is pure immersive experience transporting. You know it was like I like how well built this thing is in a way.

[00:36:12] I get emotionally caught up in it but I do feel like the things I get emotionally caught up in are the narrative and the characters where everyone else is like dismissive of because they are obviously very broad. He paints with a the broadest brush possible right.

[00:36:27] It is very like primal mythic storytelling. I like the visuals. The thing I never got was the I want to live in Pandora thing. Part of that admittedly is I'm not a nature boy. I was about to say you're just not outdoorsy. Absolutely.

[00:36:40] And of all the elements water maybe the one I like the least. I don't swim. I don't like the beach any of this shit right.

[00:36:48] And I watch this and it was for me I was like I'm still liking everything I liked about the first movie but I am more feeling the transportive. I just want to be in this. I could just watch them swim for two hours.

[00:37:02] Do you think that's because like a big chunk of the movie like at least an hour of it. There is no war. There's just women around. Yeah. Yeah. But this film has.

[00:37:14] Look I already said this in my review but this film has the same structure as Avatar one identical. This is my whole thing with this film. I'm sitting down. I really know nothing because they didn't make you stand. They didn't make me.

[00:37:26] And that was nice to them actually. It's really nice. Standing room only screening good. Basically demand anything they want. British soccer game in the 70s or just like eat a pen. Yeah. Real bad crap. I'm sitting down in my own seat. Oh yeah.

[00:37:41] I didn't even have to share. Was it like Jet Blue where you had to pay extra to pick your own seat. No. OK. Extra legroom. Yeah. No I didn't pay anything at all. This was a press screening. Nice work if you can get it.

[00:37:54] Obviously there's been a trailer and we know the things that have been talked about for years. Kids in this movie. You know like things like that. But like I really don't know.

[00:38:02] I'm really sitting down being like is this movie going to like be shot out of a cannon and completely insane. Right. Like is this gonna be like a total left turn kind of like this ain't your daddy's avatar.

[00:38:13] Like you know it's something like does it open minute one with Jake Sully like getting an arrow in his head. Is he rewriting the rules. And then it's like 14 years later. You know I really have no notion of what's going on.

[00:38:23] And then the film the first 45 minutes of the film I had the same tingles that I feel like everyone has when they watch Avatar 1 the first time. And that we felt watching the rewatch of like it's not holding up.

[00:38:36] It's a lot of like story time and like narrative set up. It's clunky. You're putting the weight on fucking voiceover narration to be like here are 18 more rules of this universe. And I'm thinking like oh this. OK. So this is just OK.

[00:38:54] Like is that is that going to be the end. What with in the back of my mind I'm like I know how Cameron likes to build like you know I'm not like completely giving up.

[00:39:03] But you're like you haven't refined any of the things that people complain about the opening of the first movie. Right. And then the second hour hits and we're in the water. Yeah. And we're learning things and we're meeting creatures. And I was like fuck right.

[00:39:18] I know there's action coming. Like I know there's a big war coming literally. But I was like I forgot this is the best part. He's basically quantified Avatar into a genre in and of itself or a sub genre at least.

[00:39:30] And been like this is the structure of an Avatar movie. And I said that I tweeted that before the film came out. Yeah. It's like I was like it's like an Avatar movie and I was like L.O.L. There's only been two. Right.

[00:39:42] And I was like you don't understand. I was like I'm just like clearly because I'm sure they wrote 40 million scripts. Absolutely. He's talked about how they had like other pitches that they worked through and rejected.

[00:39:51] And I think at the end of the day they were like you know what that worked. Not not only that. I mean he's made it very clear that like you know they finally make the deal to make the sequels. Right.

[00:40:01] Which took a little bit after the first movie becomes the highest grossing movie in history. And then was like if I'm going to do this I want to like shoot him back to back. I want to try to replicate what Peter Jackson did.

[00:40:09] That feels like the better model to do this rather than put all this energy into one movie at a time. The problem is we don't have books to adapt. I want to assemble a writer's room to build out a whole mythology so that we can reverse engineer.

[00:40:23] Plot it out all at once have a sense of where we're going reuse assets whatever. Right. And he basically said he puts this room together and for the first like two months of the room he's like before we start talking about any new ideas.

[00:40:36] The job is to quantify why the first movie was successful. He was like I want us to study the first movie and figure out the things that people respond to. Which is funny but he's sort of like yeah why that thing work. Absolutely good. That's the vibe.

[00:40:53] We'll get we'll get into it. But I think a lot of what worked about the first movie is missing from this. I don't think it's perfectly replicated. This is madness. I can't believe it. It's perfectly replicated.

[00:41:07] I think you have the one specific you've called out that I don't disagree with. I just need to hear. All right. I'm in deep suspense here. So my first thing is I missed the romance. That's the one I. I just I accept.

[00:41:22] Yeah I think in all of these movies these big epics we've got Titanic last the Mohicans crouching tiger hidden dragon. Yes dance with wolves dances with wolves avatar. There's got to be a love story and especially in an era of blockbuster films often get called out for sexless.

[00:41:40] They are nice that avatar was called out for being too sexy or people like I don't I don't like their hair links up. I'm not acting. I think that is so fucking cool. Yeah. I love it. I wish I could do it.

[00:41:53] So I did feel like the focus on the kids. It feels like they're setting stuff up for movie number two. I know who our star-crossed lovers are going to be there. Indeed. But I was sure you're missing that. I was missing those things.

[00:42:07] The Jake and the Eteri meet cute. You moron. You don't know how to get on the horse. But when like the water princess is showing up and flirting with the two older sully boys Marie was like rubbing her hands together and she's like here we go.

[00:42:19] Yeah I was like oh here we got. And instead that's more of a break for me. Yeah that's more of a. And then the other thing and this I haven't I didn't bring up to you because I just brought this up with Ben today before you guys arrived.

[00:42:31] I I liked the device in the first movie where Jake Sully the Marine is paralyzed and that him being an avatar part of the freeing experience for him. He can walk. He's got his legs again.

[00:42:48] And I also think that's a really great way to bring the audience into this world. Yeah. And I know you don't have to do that anymore because we're already familiar with the world challenge. The movie has. Right. But it also introduces the courage as an avatar thing.

[00:43:02] But we don't really. I don't know. I just missed the. I understand what you're saying. Like the just I feel like the discovery that we have in this film is how cool the water people are. Yeah.

[00:43:16] That's and but I don't think that's as as arresting an experience as the first can offer a counter. Yes. One obviously you can't. It's hard to replicate the first movie.

[00:43:29] Two I do think there's something going on with courage here where he's actually having that kind of experience without admitting it to. Right. Yes. And that is a very interesting fun arc for the movie to have.

[00:43:41] But it also feels like because now he's thinking across five movies or four movies at once. He's not getting as it's too bread crummy for me. Like I felt a similar way after finishing Dune where I'm like I can't evaluate this without that's half a movie. Yeah.

[00:43:57] I feel less that way about this certainly. But I do think you know it's one of the reasons why I questioned to make an avatar to let alone avatar two three four five is that Jake Sully's arc is so fucking complete in the first one. It feels like.

[00:44:13] Yeah. I think it's something like kids fundamentally change the stakes of the thing. Also if you go to different parts of the planet with different rules you somehow take Jake back to a place of being an outsider. You know you once again put him in the hole.

[00:44:30] I do feel like it is impressive the way he figures out how to reengineer some of that right. Like taking Jake status away giving him new things to learn. Somehow giving him outsider status again when the first movie ends with him being the most powerful the V.

[00:44:48] Direct Mokto. But what you're saying I think is impossible to replicate it is the thing that is so daring about the first movie that you end it with him being like and he is never going to be a human again. I do think. Yeah. Good with his body.

[00:45:07] In the trap. And you get like swallowed up by the little little glowing things or I don't know. I don't know what they do with it. Yeah. Like a little like glowing over it right. I don't know. I guess we have to do with Dr. Grace Augustine's body.

[00:45:23] They get they get reabsorbed into a while. I think they fuck him. You know Griffin. What you're complaining there's no romance in this movie. Yeah romance not sex. Avatar the way of water is set a decade more than a decade. Yeah after the first film much like. Uh.

[00:45:45] 2022 is set more than a decade after 2009. Yes yes a lot of things have changed. He just published he's been publishing this comic David Avatar the high ground not interested. Well do you know what this is. No. Is it like fill in the blank time.

[00:46:01] Like you know this was his original Avatar 2 idea. And then he started being like fuck I have too many ideas. I'm just going to zoom past this.

[00:46:11] So basically there was an entire concept for a movie that is glossed over in this opening 15 minutes of Jake Sully catching you up on the last 10 years. Yeah. That he's now publishing comic book form.

[00:46:23] But it does feel that way where people were like does he have enough story for five Avatar movies and then you watch this and the first 45 minutes or is it like. Is it like a movie for him breezing over what could be five complete movies. Right.

[00:46:36] Like he's he's in such a hurry at the beginning to just get so much shit out of the way to get you to a starting point. Can I ask some questions about the timing of things like how how old are their children supposed to be.

[00:46:50] Uh I think the oldest one is probably like um so the oldest child of course is called sorry. It's like N something. Netaim. Netaim. Okay. You know it's probably like what 14 13. I was going to say the two boys. I'm thinking older. The boys feel like 15 14 to me.

[00:47:07] They felt like 18 19. The actors might but. Okay. We don't know how Navi aged. Excellent point. But well. Yeah. Spider's the oldest. Spider I've got so many questions about. Yeah. I don't know if we have answers but you can ask them. Yeah.

[00:47:26] He's being played by a 19 year old actor. Right. But but also I mean obviously this the process this movie these movies were very long. One of the reasons why Cameron was like the first major film to restart production during

[00:47:38] the pandemic in summer 2020 is he like wrote a letter to the New Zealand government and was like this kid is aging so fast if we don't get back in and finish the live action part

[00:47:52] of this interesting in the next two months everything we've shot will not cut together and they basically were like any crew or cast you can fit onto one plane. Interesting. Who all quarantine together. You have permission to start filming under strict supervision in like July June or July

[00:48:09] 2020 maybe even earlier. I was shocked to find out that kid was 19. I thought he was like 27 and that was like one of my issues with the movie. He is one of those kids who just I'm sorry he's 18. He's not even 19. OK.

[00:48:24] Well he must have been like 16 17 when he just turned 18. So but he was cast at 14. I think most of the filming happened was 15 or 16. That character felt like it was written for a 14 year old. Yes.

[00:48:38] A lot of the butthole like I don't care dad you know like all that stuff feels like it should be a young teen. But this kid I think I said to you guys last night he looks like the teen friend of someone

[00:48:50] who was in a full house in 1991 being played by a 27 year old Jack Jack champions the name of the actor. Yep. Good name. It is not his fault. I know he does just innately feel more like an adult playing a kid than an actual teenager.

[00:49:05] It's something about his voice and his face and whatever it is so ripped. He really is. He's too jacked. Yeah. None of this was a problem for me. You know why. Why. I'm not. I'm just like this is like a weird movie.

[00:49:23] I'm the man of the movie was just a rasta kid who we like are growing up and he paints his body. I was like I love this. Here's my thing. I love this is bananas. I conceptually love everything about Spider.

[00:49:36] This performance is the one that doesn't work for me. I have a hard time identifying what it is. Some of it might be the weird vibe that Murray's talking about. That's not his fault.

[00:49:44] And I don't think he's bad but he feels like Worthington is a lot more comfortable in this room. And he feels like he's in the Worthington position where it's like some scenes feel forced. Some scenes he just feels a little wooden.

[00:49:57] It's also just mixed up with how he is like has two allegiances kind of like gets muddy in a lot of places. I think his performance really. Like dug into the duality there. It feels a little wooden and a little surfacey to me.

[00:50:16] I don't think he is bad. But it's like the character where you would love to see someone come in with a really dynamic dynamite. It would be great to see this character pop or at least just have an actor who has a certain energy that's grabbing you.

[00:50:31] I think he's fine. I like Spider. I want to love Spider. Do you want to hear about Spider? I just read in reading this interview with please started filming when he's 13. Crazy. And I see that picture on the Internet of that football player who's like 12 years old

[00:50:48] and has a mustache. I don't I don't I think that's I don't buy it. That's a hoax. That hasn't been said Marie though from what I read about like the pandemic concerns. I would be surprised if basically anything from when he was 13 is still in the movie.

[00:51:02] I'm sick. There's no fast and so dramatically that they like. Yeah. Started shooting 13 and he said basically they were like within two years you're going to be a good shirtless because the whole point is that you are a jungle right Navi. Yes. You swing from trees.

[00:51:23] You have an insane physique because you have to keep up with all these guys glow up. Yeah. And so you know they gave him a personal trainer who basically was like you're going to just do CrossFit and weightlifting all the time and like eat so much protein. Yeah.

[00:51:37] It sounds like my teen years kind of not good for you to do as a person that age anyway. I can you know I have no comment. You can basic I will say that you can basically do whatever you want to yourself at that age

[00:51:48] and probably figure it out later. One's body is more resilient back then. But yeah anyway that's the deal with him. He got to work out with Arnold Schwarzenegger a few times. That's pretty James Cameron set them up. James Cameron was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He made the Terminator film. Yeah.

[00:52:05] True lies. True lies. Wow. That's so cool. I think I like that I heard there was the good Sam Worthington profile in Hollywood Reporter about sort of like what happened to him in between movies and him coming back and sort of like yeah.

[00:52:25] And he was like I didn't handle the pressure fame well he had a big drinking problem he sobered out he's sort of like found himself and I think he's actually better in this movie than he is in the first one.

[00:52:35] I don't think he's terrible in the first one but you do feel he's a lot more comfortable in this one. Sure. But what was I going to say. He said that it was really jarring for him when he went from Avatar to like the Clash

[00:52:48] of Titans movies and Terminator Salvation because he was like Cameron is actually really good at not letting the actors at the center of his movies feel the weight of the production. And they had a quote from Cameron where he's like I really want to make actors feel safe

[00:53:03] and I want them to feel creative and I want to insulate them from all this and I really want to make them feel like they're the best audience I tend to them and I listen to them all this for a guy who's known for being pretty brash. Right.

[00:53:14] I mean yes whatever you don't think McG's like that. I don't know. Similarly there is a thing I heard that I think says a lot about Cameron one of the kids maybe the youngest kid who plays took has like not been doing the interview press junket stuff. Sure.

[00:53:33] And people were like is there a reason why. Cameron specifically put it in all of the kids contracts that they were not obligated to do any press. That girl is like 13 years old. And he basically was like you're going to be working on this for years.

[00:53:46] This press thing is a whole other rigmarole. This is scary and disorienting. I don't want you to be contractually obligated to do anything you don't want to do. All I have hired you to do is the movie.

[00:53:57] If you want to go to premieres and shit you can do that and I will look out for you. I am trying to shield you from as much of this as possible which I think is kind of cool. Yes.

[00:54:07] And they're not visible in the film apart from champion right. Who plays by their gifted sense of anonymity. They want to do anything. So speaking about actors feeling safe and people who are older playing younger and we talk a bit about our girl Sigourney. We absolutely can't.

[00:54:26] Weaver Sigourney Weaver plays Curie which I thought was Kitty the whole time. Well they say have this sort of Navi accent. Magic magic magic. Navi accent. Listen to me. This was announced early. You know where I went this year Sigourney Weaver.

[00:54:47] We always knew she would be returning to Avatar but it would be kind of like we you know we'll let you know how that works in when we did our episode six years ago. My prediction on Mike was I think she is going to play the tree.

[00:55:01] I think even though they failed to transfer you races consciousness you and I both were picking up on like look there was this thing that happened with the tree. It didn't stick. So that's the dangling thread they can pick up. Her spirit got uploaded.

[00:55:14] We were both thinking right. She would be kind of a vague character you know like one of those scenes in Star Wars where they go talk to her. And she's like hi. You know you give her that scene. We were playing checkers and James Cameron was playing chess.

[00:55:29] He was like he was playing like high or something. Yeah. He's like a whole different sport like rocks. Yeah right. Because it was announced Sigourney Weaver will be playing a teenage character 14 year old girl. Right. And I was like whatever man like sure you know great love it.

[00:55:49] No studio notes for you but he comes out and there's no dialogue really in it. There's the one young. She has the dialogue. She's the what how does her heart sound might. That was the second trailer.

[00:55:59] I'm saying the first teaser we saw for Dr. Strange there's the shot and you're like that kind of looks like Sigourney. Is he fucking doing this. And you're talking about sitting down and being like I don't know what this movie is going to be.

[00:56:11] It is fascinating that we knew for so long Stephen Lang is back Sigourney Weaver is back how I don't know. Don't question it. This movie in the first like 10 minutes devotes one sentence to each of them. It's not like any sustained mystery and they're like here's the deal.

[00:56:25] But no I was like astonishing because like so he's like he's he's in voiceover he's like years have passed. We've had kids I'm like I knew it. I knew you fuckers to have kids. You had that vibe.

[00:56:41] Two boys of their own two boys and a girl a little girl. And then they're like and then there were some leftover orphans. You know there was a leftover orphan from the humans because you can't put babies in cryo. Great concept makes total sense.

[00:56:55] Yes probably true even in the vague understanding of how that might work. Cool. So there's like a human kid leftover and I'm like oh he thinks he's a Na'vi love that right. He's the Tarzan boy. Exactly. Yes.

[00:57:08] And then they're like and then also there's this like weird thing where like Grace's avatar body had a baby and I was just like they show up the movie. He's like no I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.

[00:57:18] So they show up the movie. He's like no I'm not going to stop. We're going to keep going. They show her dead avatar body. It's not even dead it's like comatose because it doesn't have a brain but they failed to transfer the consciousness.

[00:57:30] Yeah so it's just kind of like a vessel. They show with a pregnant belly. They sure and they go like we never quite figured that one out. Anyway we've raised her. And then like minute 12 of the movie she's like climbing on top of the tube to talk to

[00:57:45] her mother and they're mocking her being like we think fucking Norm Spellman's your dad. The rudest thing you could ever say to me. They are claiming I guess that either Norm had sex with the avatar body right before everything

[00:58:01] went down or are they claiming that Norm had sex with like the comatose avatar body. Nobody really talks about it. Now somehow I don't know where I can with the timing is not really you know friends a

[00:58:12] podcast the ride had been all of December they're doing Feliz Navidad. Yes the way of winter stuff. Yes a month of Avatar which is great. And they had heard the thing that it's like Curie is the child of Grace Augustine.

[00:58:29] And before seeing the movie we're trying to parse that where they're like did she fuck when she was a human did she fuck in the Navy body if she did did another Navy fucker was it another avatar or true Navy was a human fucking all this stuff.

[00:58:41] And so I'm caught up in my head about like how are they going to fucking explain this. And I basically like that they're just like we don't know. No no anyway she's here and that's Sigourney Weaver.

[00:58:50] And I think Marie and I agreed giving a committed performance as a team. Great for a dig into a lot. Incredible Marie. I agree and I wonder if you have the same read.

[00:59:00] Yeah I feel like Curie is like is like the reincarnation of the tree basically in the in the failure to trans. I mean what is her mother. Right. That's how I think of it. And I'm sure that will be you know their fodder and sequel.

[00:59:14] No one no one fucked the Grace Augustine. We can't stop saying fuck. I'm going to say fuck a couple more times. When when avatars when Navi reproduce. Yeah. Is it through the brain. No I don't think so. We don't they have genitals right.

[00:59:30] She's pregnant she's pregnant she has a womb. Right. So there's you know the brains are not given birth out of the brain. They're fucking the way they join their brains together. I think it's just a very sexy experience. Fucking the trees. But I've kind of thought they were.

[00:59:43] No that's part of it. That's why it's cool but it's like what if you're like mounting the. It's not what you have sex with each other and at the same time make like a weird mental connection. You know that's so cool.

[00:59:56] But there are two separate things happening so they ever show toilets. They don't get into that. They never get into it. That'll be the fourth movie. Oh shit. The third one is. Let me show you how that works. Squeezes. She has you know the women. They have nipples.

[01:00:15] Navi have breasts. I believe someone in like some scientists back in the day was like this that would not make sense given how like his the biology of this works. Yes. To me and James Cameron was like look the girls have boobs. What do you want from me.

[01:00:30] I don't know. I'm telling them maybe he shouldn't have. But the heavy rumors of the third movie is called The Seed Bearer that has long been the rumored title. This is correct which makes me wonder if we're getting into all that more.

[01:00:40] But yes I think we all have the same interpretation that something happens in the process of trying to transfer Grace's dying consciousness into the Avatar. Anakin Skywalker the mother tree dying and them connecting to a one something where it's it's Jesus right.

[01:00:53] Well the Anakin Skywalker thing is obviously a little inspired by old old JC. I don't know if you've ever heard of the tale of Darth Plagueis the wise. No I don't want to talk about him.

[01:01:02] But no yeah and like but this is the thing I was worried it was gonna be more of a rise of Skywalker situation where like Palpatine's like I had children. You're like bitch you had children. How did you. What's the. When did you go to bed with someone.

[01:01:17] Did you take a shower before. You know you immediately start thinking about mechanics and when they set up. Don't think about. Yes. When they set up the no she doesn't know who her father thing is.

[01:01:25] The more it became clear like no she is like a manifestation of all these things. I felt such a sense of relief. I like this character so much. It is such a good performance. It is incredibly winning performance.

[01:01:38] It also was the most exciting aspect of the film to me to think about like future implications for the technology. Yes where we've talked a lot about actors doing de-aging. I mean we saw the Indiana Jones trailer before.

[01:01:52] Which look the brief glimpses in the trailer that is far and away the most successful de-aging I've ever seen in anything. It actually seems to work. We'll see if it holds up when he talks but this is more interesting.

[01:02:05] Yeah it was it clearly was her face on a blue body de-aged and it looked great. And he did all this stuff. She did mocap acting. She learned to dive. I kept thinking about her on set doing like child acting. It felt like very like acting exercise.

[01:02:26] And that felt I loved that. I was like oh she probably had so much fun playing around with it. A lot of the actors who have done mocap like established film actors for decades who then do one of these mocap volume movies say like it's great.

[01:02:43] It takes you back to your experimental theater days. You're in a black box. You're not only relating to the other actors. You're not thinking about the camera and suddenly you can play all these things that you couldn't literally play on camera. And you do feel that thing.

[01:02:55] She talks a lot about in interviews that he showed her the first design for the character and she like looked like just a slightly younger Sigourney. And she was like no she should be awkward. Her proportion should be off. Her limbs should be gangling.

[01:03:11] I was a weird tall teen who didn't know how to move my body. Like I want her to be more uncomfortable. And you can tell Sigourney is relishing the chance to move her body in that way

[01:03:21] in a way that no one would ever let her literally play on screen. On stage she could do it no one question and go wow what a good performance. FYI 14 years. That is the definitive answer. Just look at this is at 14 years after Avatar.

[01:03:35] Right. Well she's basically in real time. Essentially. And those then the oldest kids if we're assuming Curie is kind of the same age as the oldest boy. Yeah. Or 13 14. Okay. They're a little early. It seems like these boys develop early in the Avatar.

[01:03:50] You know Pandora. Those boys develop early. I don't know what that's a reference to. All these boys seem older. Kind of. What do you mean though? Like what do either of you mean? I don't know.

[01:04:04] Like what do you want them to have body hair? They don't have body hair in Avatar. No I don't want them to have body hair. They seem mature.

[01:04:09] So in my head I'm thinking about romance and I'm like well it's got to be the teens have to fall in love. How old is Neytiri? You don't have an answer to that question. I thought she would have been like 18 19. 47.

[01:04:22] But this doesn't come up because it's all nonsense. Spider being a human is really fucking with my perception of things. He's a teen. We want permission to want to see a romance. Yeah. Interesting. My theory. It feels like you're setting up a Curie Spider-Fen love story.

[01:04:39] This is what I said after we got out of the screening where I'm like God Spider's too old. He's got to be a 14 year old kid which I guess he was but he didn't look like that's me.

[01:04:47] But I'm like well if he's going to have a love scene with Sigourney Weaver in a mocap suit he can't be a 13 year old. Yes. He's got to be of age. It's the Jacob thing. He needs to like be a little bit of a man. Yeah.

[01:05:04] I like her bangs. I like everything about her. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just going to leave all of that and just kind of push it out to see on a big ice floe. A lot of these are as we said dangling threads about what he has.

[01:05:16] There's more coming in store. And it's the first time he's ever done that. Yes. Obviously he's made sequels. He's made two of the great sequels. Yep. Aliens and Terminator 2.

[01:05:30] But Terminator 1 you know kind of has that vague like who knows what the future holds thing but like it's not made with the intent.

[01:05:34] This is the first time that he is doing any sort of serialized thinking like you know this film is ending and I'm like oh there's a lot like. This is something we have to design all of these together. But that's a risk. Absolutely.

[01:05:48] And as you guys were saying. He's now basically talked about like all of three is in the can. Yeah. Three is coming out no matter what. This thing could make eight dollars and I think they probably still like might as well release three.

[01:06:00] It's coming out in two years like clockwork. It's done. He's done pieces of four and basically none of five. And he basically was has said like if this flops three will come out but we maybe don't make four and five. Right.

[01:06:14] I have designed this in that like three kind of has an off ramp closing point and then four and five reinvent the thing a little bit so it won't feel incomplete if we only get to three.

[01:06:27] But you definitely feel like a lot of this is setting up stuff for three. Not in a way that I think is I sometimes find frustrating with middle chapters especially in these we always planned it as a trilogy kind of series.

[01:06:39] I do think this is a full meal on its own. I agree. But there are certain things like the Quaritch arc what Kiri becomes spider where you're like these are leaving us on an ellipsis. Yeah.

[01:06:52] So they live the Sully family lives with the Amitakia the clan the forest clan we all know in the trees. They live way up there in the magic mountains floating mountains now right not in home tree. No RIP one of the greats. Salute bless up.

[01:07:10] Let's pour one out. Yeah. And they have kids and like you know things are fine. The flash photo of the Sully whatever man.

[01:07:25] The eyes are like yeah we're Navi and then once in a while Jake's like look I know I'm a Navi now but can we do like this human thing. You know yeah. It made me think of the end of old dogs. Oh yes.

[01:07:38] They should all have crazy old crazy faces. One day they see something in the sky big bright flashes and that's right. The human Jake's back. People have returned their giant ass fucking ships decelerating it's pretty cool actually.

[01:07:54] The zoom up there come out in their amp suits and it's like these humans we are going to stay away for long. No they make a new city called Bridgehead City giant you know by just burning everything down.

[01:08:06] And one of the people among these you know these new folks of course we've got Edie Falco. Of course we love to see her general exposition in a stilt suit but it's very cool. I knew she was in the movie.

[01:08:21] I did not know who she would be playing. She was playing a bad guy. I knew she was playing it. I saw Edie Falco in a Mecca suit. It is pretty bananas. Lost my shit. Shrinking coffee.

[01:08:33] She is using her controls to have the robot arm hold a giant coffee cup. And why not? It is great. This is the galaxy brain shit that only Cameron has the balls to do.

[01:08:46] I think it was you or someone else last night who brought up the humans reliance on coffee. Yes. But it is interesting because isn't that like a resource that we mine from indigenous communities. We did.

[01:09:01] I mean it's not like coal or something you can plant more coffee obviously. Grace also has her like fucking cigarette vise in the first movie which is similarly like a thing from the earth that we have like you know. I do. It's just it's a recurring motif. Yeah.

[01:09:17] These people in the RDA fucking downing their coffee smugly. Yes it is. I mean I think it's partly just Cameron loves that kind of old school like you know storytelling like we're introducing Grace. She wants a cigarette. It's like I get this.

[01:09:34] This is like kind of a hard bitten lady who you know and the same with the coffee. It's like agree with me. I do think it has a little bit of a deeper thematic. Yeah sure. But I also just think you know. Right.

[01:09:46] There are easy character signifiers to you know exactly who this person is. Love to smell a napalm in the morning etc.

[01:09:50] I mean he likes you know this is the thing people dig him for but he likes relying on cliches and tropes as shorthand because he has so much fucking world building to do that it's like look if I can get you to understand what type of character this is.

[01:10:07] This gives me the time to set up the things that are more complicated or allow you to spend an hour just swimming rather than really having to build a nuanced backstory. Pretending to float right now.

[01:10:18] So they show up and of course along with Edie Falco who I could watch a whole movie about her just running this base is Colonel Miles Quaritch. Okay. Now back baby. What's a good explanation. This whole time I've been like how do they fucking explain this.

[01:10:33] He wakes up in this Navy body and they play him a video that's Quaritch being like look if you've seen this the video is so good. It's so he's like look I'm not gonna die but you're making me do this.

[01:10:44] Fucking pushies are making me back my consciousness up into the cloud. That's basically this Navy body wakes up and is an iCloud backup of Miles Quaritch and the RDA is like look you want to take this big dramatic theatrical grandstand against the Navy go to war with them.

[01:11:01] That's fine. Let's back you all up. So if this doesn't work you will come back as giant tall blue people and we do it our way. So all these grunts are waking up. Here's a big question we debated.

[01:11:14] Do you think the Navis or the soldiers are built with their tattoos on or do they upon waking up going my tattoo is a key part of my personality. Please reapply it. My guess is the second interesting.

[01:11:29] I thought they were just but I don't know if they were formed work that way. I agree. I you know they're not like but what if in the future maybe the tattoo is now part of our designer engineering DNA makes it fine. I'm on board with that.

[01:11:43] That's a bit obviously that is not textually as you did notice that he didn't have the scars right. You know he doesn't. He is a baby. He's a baby in one way.

[01:11:53] He is Miles Quaritch all the same memories up to before his death to the day before he died. But in another way he's a brand new person.

[01:12:02] I like that it's kind of a prestige thing where you're like this guy both is and isn't exactly understands that a lot of like his sense of self is filled with human resentment. He is not human right. He is father to spider spoiler alert.

[01:12:15] I didn't figure that but he's actually not says that shit. He's not bluffing. He's not being an asshole. I think he's conflict. He's working it out in his own head because it's complicated. Yes. The other guys are stupid to me. They're just like we're not right.

[01:12:27] You know you don't have a lot going on to see private Pike and Wayne Fleetback. Sure. I love their wraparound sunglasses. Oh yeah. I love these tacky Navi.

[01:12:38] I know that they're like we're not V now but I got my Oakley's like my fucking extra long jacket with her bubble gum. Yes. Oh great. The video is the only time we see Giovanni. Yeah.

[01:12:52] The only time we see Giovanni home sure was like the age for the video because he looks exactly the same. Yeah. I think clearly do the same with Sigur Rune as well in the in the video when Curie talks to her. Very well done.

[01:13:04] Giovanni RBC showing up in the background of a voice memo a video memo for 30 seconds. Look get single card billing. I would love to see probably gets paid twice as much as I've ever paid for anything my entire life. No doubt about it.

[01:13:18] I just was doing the math while watching but and that's good for him. But he may be in another one. I guess like maybe he shows up in the third meeting. All right you guys are fucking up like come on I'm here to fix things.

[01:13:28] I would love to see him back. We all know then he could be older. I love Parker Selfridge. Me too. One of the great characters of cinema evil industrialist Parker Selfridge. Love's cheddar his vice. Yes exactly.

[01:13:40] But of course a thing we don't know and is not revealed until the third act of this movie basically or the end of the second act is that Arnab tanium that shit is old news. We've moved on. They don't even care about that anymore.

[01:13:52] I mean maybe they do and maybe they're still getting it but it's kind of like we've got some new currency. I'm just going to say it now. Yeah that the basically brain matter. Yeah of the whale species that lives on this planet. Space belt brings juice. Yeah.

[01:14:08] What is brain juice makes you immortal. Yes it's the fountain of you which I truly love because I wasn't really thinking about it and then of course I'm realizing in the movie I'm like why are they hunting the whales though what's going on here.

[01:14:21] And when the guys like that stuff and I'm like he better not be about to say like that it's a clean fuel like that's boring and he's like that is it's vanity. That is a real world analog though because we do kill whales for makeup. Yes.

[01:14:37] Ambergris there they're special stuff. But you know a movie I like a lot that James Cameron was involved in Terminator Dark Fate where some people felt like this is annoying and cynical because it undoes any sense of success from Terminator 2. They didn't stop Judgment Day right.

[01:14:55] It's the whole problem with doing a Terminator sequel. Of course. To a great term. I think he does well in that movie what Cameron did as a writer and producer and sort of organizing the story for that thing. And I think it's a thing that similarly.

[01:15:09] Lonnie Wachowski did very well on Matrix Resurrections that I like is it doesn't feel like this flip kind of like I don't know it didn't work. They're both getting at this thing where it's like stop that but you know the basic fucking impulses of human beings.

[01:15:23] We don't learn from our lessons we repeat history so in Terminator Dark Fate it's like you stop Judgment Day and then guess what a new company a different company Cyberdyne didn't activate sky but someone else figured out fucking did it and simply in this it's like the thing is over.

[01:15:39] We're never going to stop trying to mine this planet and this one more than in the first one they start acknowledging like we all know Earth is fine. Well this is I was about to say this that's the other thing Falco is very clear about that right.

[01:15:49] We need to colonize this planet because Earth is bad now Jake does get the resources and bring them back to Earth but longer term plan we need to live here.

[01:15:56] Jake does say in the first movie when he hooks up with a wife you're going for the battle where he's like my world you know it's broken it's not green anymore it's not nice so you have that sense in the first film but this much more explicit where it's like this is not just some offshore humanity is on a hundred year plan to fully move to this place we can live here even though obviously they can't breathe the air.

[01:16:16] So I don't know what the plan is there but my guess is terraforming or something insane like that anyway that's what they're doing they're there and so there begins the sort of first act action stuff which is that Jake and company become like kind of a you know insurgency cell like they're guerrilla fighters they're disrupting RDA supply lines they blow up a train they you know all that shit.

[01:16:41] The other part of it too is that like Quaritch wakes up and immediately is like Sully like his his overriding emotion is I hate that guy.

[01:16:49] I do find it interesting that he doesn't remember that Natiri is the one who really actually kills him because he doesn't know he doesn't happen to him right but Sully was obviously his main rival so he's got this personal vendetta against like I understand the marching orders I have from the company but also I just want to fucking kill Jake Sully for myself.

[01:17:09] Correct. So target on Jake Sully's head anything he's trying to do as a leader and as a father is is greatly compromised by the fact that he's putting everyone around him in danger. There's a little of that. Yeah by his very existence.

[01:17:25] Right they're always gonna have a target on their head. Yeah. His kids will always be in danger because they can be used against. Cameron's running on empty. But there's also yes. They were the weather underground and now River Phoenix can go to music school.

[01:17:37] But then there's also this sort of thing of like Jake runs his family like a military unit because he's a Marine like that is how he kind of understands things right. Yes. His kids call him sir. Yes.

[01:17:48] He's not like an unloving father but there's like you know he seems to struggle with discipline right. You know like it's kind of like he's like why won't they just do what they're told you know and they're teenagers he doesn't get that. It's all very cute and interesting.

[01:18:00] He's a he's a fairly flawed dad. This is where the movie is about. It's not like the movie is ignoring that I would argue becomes James Cameron's most personal film ever. A take I've seen other people have. Did you read.

[01:18:13] I think it was in the Empire long form interview with him. Oh this thing about the Cameron family meeting. God I'm already impressed but go ahead. This is good. No I'm not. I'm not. Yes yes. But it's going to hit like a ton of bricks. OK.

[01:18:29] The structure of his family is very similar to the structure of this movie. Basically I think for kids I believe over. You know he had two kids with Susie Amos his current wife. Yes. Susie Amos has one or two kids from a previous marriage.

[01:18:41] James Robards is that his first name. Am I getting wrong. Sam Robards. Sam Robards. Sam Robards. Artificial. And then they have the oldest child is the child that he had with her. No Linda. Right. Yeah. But all those kids lived under the same roof for a long time.

[01:18:58] Right. This sort of like built family. Yes. And he goes and makes the first Avatar movie. Very intensive process. Takes years is wildly successful. And he is like I run my family like a military operation. I run it like a business.

[01:19:15] Everyone has to speak to each other with radical honesty. I don't believe in like saying things to spare people's feelings. We have to be direct to each other because I have no room for inefficiency or whatever. Super chill. Right. And he's like that's how I operate.

[01:19:28] I finish Avatar. I come back home to decompress. And my wife is like James we have been waiting for you to be done. We understand you've been busy but we're overdue for a family meeting. And he's like OK what's up?

[01:19:38] And they're like we have some gripes with you. Here's your system. We're turning it back on you. Airing your grievances. Kids. Floor is yours. And they were like you're a shitty dad. Sure. You're a shitty dad and an asshole. Right. You barely have time for us.

[01:19:51] And beyond that you only know how to relate to us in telling us what you would do and how you would do it. You do not relate to us as people. Stunning that that's James Cameron's vibe as a dad. Can't believe it.

[01:20:01] And also they probably were like stop going underwater you freak. Right. We don't die. Well that. But also to go away for months on end. And risk your life in the process.

[01:20:12] Be like I'll be gone for 18 months if I ever make it back from the deepest darkest parts of the sea. The belly of the earth. And Sigourney. Mariana Trench. Mariana Trench. That's what it's called. And I'll be clear he's mispronouncing her name deliberately guys. It's a funny bit.

[01:20:29] I forget who created it originally. A million years ago. But she has said like how radically different he was on this movie than any time she's worked with him in the past. Interesting. She's obviously worked with him twice before.

[01:20:41] And he's been like I kind of learned how to become a nicer person in between Avatar and Avatar 2. My children like really got through to me. It's been 13 years. Made me reassess my life. He does seem chill in a way that he has not before.

[01:20:53] I'm not saying I know anything about the man. But this press tour. He'll take his snipey little funny shots at like Marvel movies and all that night and you'll be like ah Jim you rascal. You know but like that's fine.

[01:21:06] But in general he does seem a little blissed out like considering he's been working on these things. And he's talked about like I've learned that I can still be demanding and exacting about

[01:21:13] what I want but I can also get those things out of people by being nice to them. Right. Whereas I previously thought the only way you could do that was through intimidation. Anyway all of the Jake Sully arc stuff.

[01:21:24] I do think he's poured a little of that himself. A lot. A lot. But yes the Jake Sully certainty of I know what I'm doing I'm doing the right thing and basically getting to the point where the family is like you need to chill out.

[01:21:36] You are causing problems. That's what sort of is building too but like because I don't know how you guys felt but when Jake is like we got to go we got to go. Yeah we got to leave the Amidakaya.

[01:21:45] Got to leave this place because they're always going to be chasing us. I cannot be Turok Mokto anymore. I'm going to I'm going to resign this guy here. You know Jimmy the Na'vi he's he's great guy. He's going to be in charge now. I renounce my wish.

[01:21:57] I love how there's just like there's that guy who's like you're the chief. I asked this question last night because I remember Jake bonding with the big Banshee. Yeah Turok Turok. Right was a big deal in the first one. So this guy just gets grandfathered in.

[01:22:16] No no no no Jake doesn't even ride Turok. Jake's got his regular guy but he still rides. Well then who's riding Turok. Nobody nobody knows what can ride to work. I am scary. Marie there are two different titles that Jake Sully has right.

[01:22:29] One is the title he essentially inherited from West duty of like the leader of the clan. He's the chieftain right. He passes that title on to the Dave of this universe.

[01:22:38] I want to see Avatar 3 be about Sam Worthington a milquetoast guy from a small town where they're like you look kind of like Jake Sully. Do you want to fill the role. And there's a Navi Franklin Jella who's stick to the script. That's what I want to see.

[01:22:52] But but Turok McTow the title is over. He's like I had to be that unless you are a writer of the last. There hadn't been one of those in generations and I I I resign my title. No one thought he was giving that title to the new.

[01:23:07] You're just like that is the other title. He is like the chief. Right. But like when he's making this decision my my point is I was kind of like this is a bad move because what's going to happen is what happens in the movie.

[01:23:21] Like this is going to find you wherever you go anyway. You might as well fight right. And so much of the movie is building to nature being like we have to stop doing this. We have to just fight. But at the same time is he right.

[01:23:33] But they're also they're traumatized after the destruction of home tree. They probably don't want to put their people through that again. Right. It's fine. Yeah. But essentially they move to like Canada. It's like they live in Florida and they move to Winnipeg.

[01:23:45] Yes because they like show up you know the ocean kind of like hey guys you're the ocean guys right. Can we hang out here. We're sorry. Yes. Right. Like he's moving to a whole other country. Yes yes. It's the Simpsons going to Alaska.

[01:24:01] I would say it's less Canada more like going to New Zealand. Well exactly. I was doing drastic shift.

[01:24:07] Which is another thing that happens in between Avatar and Avatar 2 is James Cameron moves to New Zealand takes his whole family there and chills the fuck out and makes this entire movie. Yeah. All the sequels. Yes. So they go to I met Hyena clan. Yes.

[01:24:23] No it takes a while to get like 45 minutes happen to get to the water. Yeah. I think more than that maybe an hour. Yeah. It felt like that was like the first third of the movie. Yeah. I think it's an hour and change.

[01:24:35] Well you didn't want to get a cramp. Most of the movie is with the McCain. I'm just saying because I know when we walked out of the first screening where the things went wrong at minute like 35 you're still in Jake voiceover filling you in.

[01:24:49] Then you have the extended sort of raid train sequence whatever. I think it's basically like an hour hour 15 where they go to the water because I remember it being deep enough in where I was like oh right this movie is about water.

[01:25:01] This is the main location we're actually going to live in now for the next two hours. But I do love they show up and this is new right. I didn't know this.

[01:25:12] They have five fingies and that marks them as different from regular established in the first place but never called out. Right. I didn't know that.

[01:25:22] And so signifier between the avatars and the true Navy is they have the human number of hands and the V I guess only a four finger longer fingers. They Mickey Mouse hands but with long ass fingers. I mean good for them. Jack Skellington hands.

[01:25:37] Yes but I just love that they're showing up. We know nothing which James Cameron is really good at this. Yes it just being like we don't we will fill in as we go. Same with things like the whale stuff.

[01:25:49] That one moment in the first movie where Jake Sully's like I had to unite all the clans. Yeah. Just fly to like three clans. Hey and you don't hear what he's saying. All right. See you later.

[01:26:00] You know there are these other like communities but he hasn't flushed these out at all. And only dorks think about this. I think 99 percent of people who saw Avatar 1 was like all Na'vi live in the forest. This is the entire thing. There was the big implication.

[01:26:14] No there's like water Na'vi there's mountain Na'vi there's you know name a place. There's one of those. We talked about this. Yeah we want either underground mole people Na'vi or desert Na'vi. Not either. We have five seven right. All of these. We want worm Na'vi.

[01:26:33] There's definitely you could I was browsing the Avatar Wiki. There's all kinds that have already been established and all the bullshit you know that can clearly be dispensed with.

[01:26:39] I think you can almost argue that the video games and the clan in the first movie is like the air clan right because they're like rooted in the Banshees the flying mountains obviously the tree and whatever. There is a more air clan than them. Really? Yes.

[01:26:52] The Omedekia are the forest clan. Okay specific. They're forest. The big air clan and I want to look this up. Let me just let me just fucking blue sky. We want like subterranean mole people Na'vi who are saying maybe they like glow bright or have like giant eyes.

[01:27:06] Correct. I also want to learn more about like like mushrooms fungus like all that great. Yeah bugs as much as been disavowed being a dry guy. The Kekunan clan. Okay the greatest Banshee riding clan of them all.

[01:27:23] Wow known for their fast reflexes and bright boisterous colors that Kekunan love nothing more than to leap and dance from one floating mountain to another. I like it. So that's like probably you know more of a Banshee focus clan I guess I don't know.

[01:27:38] Jordan Fish pitch avatar the gust of dust. So that's like desert. The desert clan right. And I want I want fucking fire Na'vi. Oh fire Na'vi that's cool. Right. It's like fucking red stripes avatar the eternal flame. Let's see.

[01:27:55] There's also apparently OK the Oolong clan who are migratory. They're nomadic. They move from place to place. Those have to be our. Yeah they're versed. Those should be our desert guys. There's the Ratanu clan who live in arid highlands and they are more farmers than hunters. OK.

[01:28:15] Sound boring. Yeah. I'm looking here. There's the Jones clan which is like gated housing communities. They sort of have like NIMBY energy and they're just like just give me my space. Give me my little McMansion.

[01:28:28] And of course again all of this can I'm sure just be like dumb because this is all from video games and comic books mostly. But I like that the Takami clan are kind of like they're like the religious. They're like the keepers of A-1 knowledge. Right.

[01:28:41] Because I love that idea. That you would meet some kind of priest type guys. On a voyage to them in one of these movies. To become you know head priestess. Maybe meet the seed bearer. Maybe that's who the seed bearer is. Someone's got to be bearing that seed.

[01:28:55] Right. Yeah. Can I say something? I know we've passed this part in the movie but I do want to shout this out because when it happened I turned to Ben and Griffin and I was like I cannot believe he just did that.

[01:29:06] When we first meet the teen sons of Sully, Jake and Nateri. Yes. And there's like a Jake voiceover line he's like you know I've got so fluent in Navi. We have to talk about this. It sounds like English.

[01:29:24] It sounds like English and then the rest of the movie is in English but it's implied that they're actually speaking. No they are. It's not implied. It was a huge question for me. Right. They built an entire Navi language. Everyone in the movie is speaking Navi.

[01:29:38] A lot of the dialogue in the first movie happens in subtitles. The only reason there's so much in English is because he spends a lot of the movie speaking to humans and they have to speak to him. They have to speak like sky people because he won't understand.

[01:29:47] This movie barely has human characters in it. Exactly. My fear was I was like he's not going to do an entire movie in Navi right. No no no I thought it would be the other way. Oh interesting. Because like James Cameron does love his you know his worlds.

[01:30:00] No I saw I mean. And I love that they're like pretty quickly like anyway. The subtitle dissolves. It does. It's amazing. It's really clever. Yeah. I think it's a really good story choice.

[01:30:11] I just think he's so smart about which things fall into who gives a shit category where you're just like this is the full amount I need to explain this. I'm doing it this way because it makes it easier for you to watch. It makes this film less alienating.

[01:30:23] I've come up with an explanation in the body of the film that supports it and then just go with it. It also had me wondering the entire movie like what the Navi term is for bro. And cuz. Yeah.

[01:30:36] I'm saying it because they keep saying that's the thing you do know that they don't speak Navi well because Spider has to be their translator. No no no. He's the one saying the teens. The teens are like fuck you guys.

[01:30:47] I'm saying the grunts say bro a lot too. That's true. Yeah but they're speaking English. No I know that's what I was trying to say. But the kids are like yo bro you want to step to me right now bro. Like let's take this outside bro.

[01:30:58] We know that they have a word for moron. Scone. Scone. That's in the first movie. So yeah maybe they have kind of a colloquial dialect. I wish that they said full on cousin and not just cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz.

[01:31:21] Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. Cuz. That's true. And Kami gets it right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little alarmed that I don't really know the difference between the two kids.

[01:32:02] I'm not alarmed in terms of like my personal safety. I feel safe and comfortable. One's got a ponytail. But I was just like, huh, James Cameron's usually pretty good at kind of like giving me distinct guys. The two guys are so close in age. They're close in age.

[01:32:15] They look so similar. They have very similar personalities. Yeah, they're Navi. Like, am I supposed to be really? Like you know, I can't even... Obviously there's the younger son. I'm getting more of his arc because he's disappointing his dad.

[01:32:27] He's kind of a little easily led into, you know, being in trouble. Then the older son, I'm like, who is he? Is there anything here? And then about 90 minutes into the movie, I was like, oh, he's dead. He's dead meat.

[01:32:39] I just immediately clicked and I was like, oh, because like I thought watching this, I think we've talked about it. I was like, are they going to kill off Jake Sully? Are they going to kind of do the rude? Yeah. Sam Worthington, sorry, your time is up.

[01:32:50] Hollywood says no more. So you actually have to die to make some stakes here. Yes. I was like, no, this movie is very invested in Jake Sully. Jake Sully's not going anywhere. That having been said, at the end of the film... Sure.

[01:33:02] At the end of the film, I'm wondering if anyone's... I truly believed it and I would have felt like if you kill him at this point, it's not rude. You've sort of vindicated him. Yeah, but I knew they wouldn't. Because the son had already died.

[01:33:12] I knew they wouldn't give us two deaths. Our buddy Jordan Fish made a great point. He was like, oh fuck, this kid who I don't know anything about, he's doomed. Or too boring. But I think we should have known a little bit more. You think so?

[01:33:23] I just think they're a little bit interchangeable and then it gets to the point... The moment where you realize the older brother is going to die is the moment where the younger one starts developing an actual personality. Oh, I don't agree with that.

[01:33:34] I think the younger one's personality is very clear. It's the older one has no personality. That's what I'm saying. No, that's what I'm saying. I kept getting them... You realize literally when you think he's going to die, like when he's been shot. Like when it's kind of dawning.

[01:33:45] When the younger brother starts getting me put on the bones, I was like, this is my character. Once he's bonding with the whales and everything, I'm like, this guy's now become a character. I care about him. I can pluck him out of the lineup.

[01:33:57] The older one is shifting further and further into the background. The little girl is cute. I mean, she sticks in the head. And the older brother is the one who's like, why are you... Can I ask? Because I thought they looked alike too.

[01:34:11] Who is the hot reef girl into? Which brother? The younger brother or the older brother? The older one, right? Is she holding his dead body when he dies? No, she's into the younger one. She's into the younger one. Really? Yes. They have a forbidden romance.

[01:34:25] I also felt like she was kind of pitting them against each other. The older one is only in love with saying yes sir to his dad. He doesn't have anything going on.

[01:34:31] See, I think if older brother had the romance, there just need to be something more so that if... So when he dies, I care. It's fine, but it's a three hour 10 minute movie. Because I mean... Yeah, they made their choices.

[01:34:42] For House of the Dragons, spoiler for the series if you haven't watched it. The brother we know more about is the one that... I truly think you could have James Cameron devoted three minutes to it and had most of it play out in the background or wide shots.

[01:34:59] The two of them holding hands. No, but he doesn't want that. He wants the romance to be... Because the whole thing with the middle kid... I just think it would have worked better. Yeah. But then the middle kid's got nothing. No, kid connects to the whales.

[01:35:08] No, kid has the whale. Yeah, but he needs to be with the girl in movie three. Then we can get to that after the older brother dies. She's mourning the death of older brother. I'm with Dave. I like that it makes him more conflicted.

[01:35:21] I hate the, I'm dating my brother's widow girlfriend. Fuck that. Hunter Biden did it. I hate that. Peter Bogdanovich did it. You guys are naming some of the most cursed individuals to ever exist in American society. I just think that's compelling in terms of the arc.

[01:35:38] I don't think that's compelling for a family adventure film. The younger brother kind of keeps putting the older brother in danger. He kind of keeps pulling him in. The older brother keeps being like, we shouldn't do this, but okay. That's kind of his... He's just Jake Jr.

[01:35:52] No, he's not Jake Jr. because Jake took risks. Well, you're right. You're right. He's Jake's model son. He's a rule follower. He's boring. Get rid of him. No one cares. That's what they do. He's the son Jake thinks he wants. Right. Exactly.

[01:36:08] Whereas he recognizes the other son is actually more like him. When he says, I see you, that got me. You guys are just explaining why this is good. Yeah, to screw you on Spawn. Yeah, exactly. It's not a problem at all.

[01:36:17] I agree with Bri on some of these things. By the way, I'm not like digging the movie, but there are things where I'm just... And part of it is, it's hard to just fully gauge because you're like, where's he going with all of this? Right.

[01:36:28] Especially, this is why I'm very excited to see it again because I won't be too worried about like, okay, what's next? I did say last night... There's a lot to process on first date.

[01:36:35] One of the first things I asked Griffin was like, how do you feel about this compared to Top Gun Maverick? And I think that's an unfair question for a lot of reasons. Because Marie, I saw Top Gun Maverick with you. I know.

[01:36:48] And you were not sure how you felt about it. And then when I saw it the second time, I was like, masterpiece, five stars. I'll say, I had a similar thing where I enjoyed Top Gun the first time I saw it.

[01:36:57] The second time I saw it, it really soared for me. But... It took flight in your imagination, one might say. Right. I don't want to ramp out of the wreckage of a non-specific military base from a foreign enemy whose faces are never seen.

[01:37:17] My response to Marie was, I think Top Gun is more successful in delivering just like fucking, satisfying popcorn, clean entertainment. I think this is a more sophisticated movie. And I don't say that in any backhanded way, but I think this is also a lot more sophisticated

[01:37:36] than the first movie. What you were saying, I had sort of been predicting for a while of like, is Jake Sully going to die in the first 20 minutes of this movie? And then the narrative is going to get passed on to someone else.

[01:37:46] The thing that was surprising to me was, this is truly an ensemble movie where once you get past the first 30 minutes of Jake doing the narration table setting, this movie basically has 10 primary characters and will just shift between them. And one of them is a whale. Yeah.

[01:38:01] At least 10 characters. If anything, the character with the most screen time might be Quaritch. Because he's really like in charge of any time he's on screen. But I'm like, it's Quaritch, Kiri, Spider, the whale, Jake, Nateri, the second youngest son. Yeah, the second youngest son's way above.

[01:38:21] Nateri doesn't get anything to do in this movie. I would say that's sort of the biggest gripe I have. Now again, I am like, it's a three hour, 10 minute movie. I put Curtis in there as well. Love him. Yeah. We haven't talked about... We're gonna. Yeah.

[01:38:34] You mean the water people? I mean, Kate Winslet. Yeah, let's catch back up to where we were. They've gone on the land. They arrive. Yes. And I just love this vibe. It's like if like the president of France, I guess, had just been like deposed and he

[01:38:47] like showed up in Britain and he was like, hi, it's me, the president of France. Diplomatic community? Yeah. And they're like, well, we have to take him seriously. He's not nobody. But like, they're just having this vibe like, ah, on our doorstep. We have our own thing here.

[01:39:00] The main characters as you know, they're like, we saw the first Avatar. We didn't like it. We think it's unmemorable. People only like it for the visuals. It was a 3D experience. Tonawari. You can't even name the character. You are the guy. Can you remember your own name?

[01:39:13] What's your name, motherfucker? Tonawari. Yes. Played by Cliff Curtis is the chief of the Metcaena. In the pocket. Let's just say James Cameron announces Cliff Curtis is going to play the chief of rival tribe. Pretty logical. But the thing is so obvious.

[01:39:29] Is the performance going to be boring? But there's a version of it where you're like, what I like is like, he's good. But I mean, I don't know what you guys thought, but like, he's like, he's genuinely conflicted.

[01:39:41] I really felt that he's like, I don't know what to do about this. Like not in some henpecked way. Because they're like, watch out for his wife. It's not performative. It's not showboating. He's truly like, you feel him being like, I want to help these guys out.

[01:39:53] But I also like, I don't like the vibe. What am I bringing up to my doorstep? And this is the other magic trick. When he gets mad later, he doesn't like turn into some thundering guy either. He's he's conflicted.

[01:40:04] The magic trick of Cameron figuring out how to repeat the effective story beats from the first movie in new ways with new layers extends to this where it's like the human shit in the first avatar is like so annoying that once he finally settles into Pandora in the

[01:40:22] forest with interior, she's showing him everything. You're like, what a relief. Yeah, this is a fucking better way to live. I just figured out when you get to the water, people, you feel like those forest people are so high struck.

[01:40:35] This is like they actually figured out a better way to operate. Not just that the water is pleasant, but it's like these are chiller vibes. He's a lot less of a like showboat than West Study even. Yeah. Motherfucking basket houses, y'all. With the bouncy floor.

[01:40:53] They've like, I know. It's nice. It looks like a resort. It looks like Sandals Jamaica or whatever. Go to their pale blue rather than the sort of I'd say the more teal. They're greenish. They've got a different color scheme. They kind of have flipper hands.

[01:41:09] Question about their arms. Are they different sizes? I can't tell because I just like looked up some official. They have a dominant swimming arm. I think one hand is one arm is bigger than the other. And it's for like, it doesn't look like that. Right.

[01:41:24] I will say, I don't know. This is official too. It's very, he found what we were talking about. The D.K. Visual dictionary. I did like that immediately. They're like, look at their shitty fucking tails. Yeah. Like they like. Oh yeah. They got thick tails because they're swimmers.

[01:41:42] Just so we know, is played by Kate Winslet. Yes. Academy Award winner winner getting the end in this movie, returning to the fold with Big Jim Cameron. As Scott so beautifully pointed out in one of their Avatar PTR episodes recently, it's like 10 plus years, 20 years.

[01:42:01] Kate Winslet does these interviews where she's like, look, I'm happy I did Avatar. That was a brutal shoot. It was terrible. Sorry. Brutal shoot. It was really tough. It went on forever. And like eight months of it was us in freezing cold water. James Cameron's barking at us.

[01:42:16] He's not very sensitive. I basically didn't want to make a Hollywood movie for five years. Did you like accidentally eat chowder laced with BCP? Everybody did. Everyone. Yes. Including James Cameron. Yes. I think Leo was the only one who didn't because he's vegan or whatever.

[01:42:29] There's like a few people who didn't. There's just that famous story of James Cameron's eyes being like bloodshot. Yeah. I don't know who's done this. Like whatever. But it's like not only did she return to the fold, but he's also like, cool.

[01:42:38] So you want to go underwater for seven minutes at a time? Yeah. She broke a record. You want to play the most water person? She broke the record for free diving on screen. I want to make this clear because the video came out recently.

[01:42:49] So for an actor, free diving or whatever. They basically do this training because so much of it is they have to like train your brain to not freak out. He's like, you can hold your breath for longer if you're not spending the mental energy,

[01:43:01] the panic and not thinking about it. You have to slow down your heart. Exactly. I mean, people do free dive. Train your rhythms. You're monitored, whatever. The thing where she did seven and a half minutes was her sitting face down in the water just

[01:43:15] to test how long she could hold. One was like you get up to that length. So your stamina is that high when you're not doing anything else, when you're actually doing takes and you have to think and you have to perform.

[01:43:26] The most you get out of anybody is two and a half or three minutes. We had to get them all close to six so they could last two and a half. You can hold your breath for six minutes.

[01:43:34] You never know these like the pearl divers who can go underwater for six months of military training. Yeah. Which they all did. And Kate broke the record. But she was doing it not while diving. She was doing it just the test of the whole.

[01:43:47] I'm going to test myself right now. There's a video of her coming up when she broke the record and you see her. She's just sitting basically on the steps of the pool with her face down. To be clear, she did not break like the world record.

[01:43:58] She broke like the film record, the world record. You want to guess? Longest breath held underwater. 16 minutes. 16 minutes. I'm going to get 16. So now I'm trying to price this right rules. Closest without going over. Yeah. I'm going to go 14.

[01:44:14] Marie is currently holding her breath and she's been going for 18 seconds. I'm going to guess that Marie will break the record and it will have to be updated after that. That's right. Marie is definitely going to hold her breath for longer than 24 minutes and 37 seconds. That's insane.

[01:44:28] I don't know. Boudmir Sobat of Croatia doesn't agree with you. The current record holder. You know what the other wild thing that Kate Winslet said was? He was like, don't do this at home. There's a reason they train you for this for months and you have like supervision.

[01:44:43] Marie is still holding her breath. She's going to break the record. She's going for it. I'm going to do it. It wasn't even a minute. It was 53 seconds. The thing she said that I found fascinating was she was like, the place where people actually

[01:44:59] fuck themselves up and experience like health problems or like fuck up their brains and trying to do this isn't in the hold and depriving the oxygen for that long. It's that when they come up, they like start taking huge breaths and they basically pass

[01:45:15] out and they like conk out. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Because you're right. And it's like the biggest thing they teach you is that when you come up, you go like for like 30 seconds before you say anything. But it's very measured paced rhythmic. Yeah.

[01:45:32] I thought it was cool that the reef people didn't have gills. They just had trained themselves to hold their breath a long time. Yes. Now they do have weird butterfly aliens that they can tie to their backs. Oh, I love that will extend underwater butterfly jellyfish thing.

[01:45:47] That comes up. It looks beautiful. It's incredible. But you also go like, is he giving himself a cheat code to make this movie easier? And then they basically don't use them again. We use it once in a while. Yeah. Which is good. He is selective. Damn.

[01:46:01] Does the underwater scenes just look incredible? Everything about it. It's just like the colors, the way he like has made it just feel so real. Their hair movement. The hair, my God.

[01:46:14] This is where the high frame rate stuff is like, oh, it helps that because I feel like when he goes in high frame rate for the aerial battle stuff, it still sometimes has that soap opera effect where you're like, this is moving too fast.

[01:46:27] The fluttering wings still feel a little manic versus once they're submerged, they're naturally moving slower, but there's just a clarity to the image and like the ripple effects in the water and whatever. And it is truly captivating shit that I could have watched forever. Here was my fear.

[01:46:46] Was just that there was going to be a lot of like, you know, we're swimming, we're swimming and then like, you know, Jake Sully and company are like, wait up. They do a little of that.

[01:46:58] And then pretty quickly, you know, and like the clansmen being like, this is so annoying. Basically just a repeat of the first movie where Nate Tiri is like, I have to teach this guy everything. Yeah. And then pretty quickly it's like everyone's having a good time. Yeah. Underwater.

[01:47:15] No. B and pal. Except those teen kids. Okay. So two big dramatic things happen. They do. One is Kiri goes down deep and connects to the tree. Their water tree. Um, yes. Oh yeah. And then she has a seizure. She has a seizure.

[01:47:27] She sees her mother in a vision. Dr. Grace Augustine. In a, in a, um, a memory palace desktop computer. And then she turns into her, of course, Stanford t-shirt wearing Navi body. But she's talking to both of them.

[01:47:42] But I do appreciate the curious, like it's not just like, mom, it's so good to see you. But it's like, who is my dad? How was I born? Like, you know, she's like, got some questions for you by the way. And there's a thing.

[01:47:52] Look, she fully accepts Nate Tiri and Jake as her parents. She refers to CCH Pounder as her grandmother, a true honor. A thing we all wish we had the right to do. If CCH Pounder was my grandmother, I don't know.

[01:48:02] I would never complain about having to fix her devices if CCH Pounder was my grandmother. About logging her into Netflix. I'd go to the Upper East Side and be like, how many times have I told you what your password is? Right. Uh, I don't have a password.

[01:48:14] You do. Everyone has a Netflix password. I don't. Anyway. She's the only one. CCH Pounder would say it with gravitas. That's the difference. Um, uh, there is that thing of like, I don't discredit, she doesn't have the angry, you're not my real dad.

[01:48:29] You're not my real mom thing. But she does just have this feeling of mystery, of longing, of connection to this woman. She cannot know. Um, and just who am I? What's my fucking deal? But then it all goes haywire and she has a senior. Yeah.

[01:48:44] And this is diagnosed by, we haven't mentioned them yet, Joel David Moore and Delete Brow who are just still like hanging out on Pandora. They're just popping in a little bit. Which is nice to see them. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:48:54] I liked the, uh, the bit that, um, Kate Winslet was pissed that they brought the human scientist to check her out. She's like, have you forgotten about the ways of the Navi? Well, I really liked that scene. Yeah. Um, because it is scary.

[01:49:08] Like the interior is there and she's obviously freaked out. Right. And they are taking Jake aside and they're being like, look, she like clearly has like epilepsy or something. She shouldn't be plugging into that tree anymore. I the viewer, I'm like, they are wrong.

[01:49:20] That's definitely not what this is. And they're sort of like, you know, but Jake's like, okay, okay. Jake and Interior are coming at it from this angle of like, she has questions. She is inquisitive. She's like, I have to let her go on her journey.

[01:49:30] And then the water tribe is like, she will die. This is dangerous. It is ill-advised. No, it's not the water tribe say that it's Dilley Brown and Joel David Moore. Yes. But no, but then Kate Winslet is- But they were also like, that water tree is powerful.

[01:49:41] Yeah, true. Most people couldn't take that. But then Kate Winslet is like, get them out of here. And then it does some sort of, you know, tribal stuff, you know, like, yeah. But, but yeah. But they fucked up. They fucked up.

[01:49:53] And then they sent a ship over and they, uh, humans are able to track that shit. Right. That's when they start to be like, all right, they're over there somewhere. Well, this is the other huge dramatic thread that is established, which is there are these

[01:50:07] beautiful sea whales, space sea whales. Okay, so here we go. The tool coup. This is where the movie really like clicks into a whole other gear. Uh, he, the- Because we've already met that, like, oh, they ride, like, sort of sea, uh, ikran. Skin wings.

[01:50:25] You know, and you have to make the connection. You got to hold on. And I'm like, okay, okay. So they got their own version of it. But then they're like, no, we have another thing that you guys don't have any version of this. Right.

[01:50:34] We are symbiotically bonded to these whales that like travel the world. They're kind of the roaming mother trees. But they have, but they also have trees. Right. No, so it's like, this is new, right? Like there's no real like one-to-one here.

[01:50:47] We're talking about the parallels within the narrative structure, uh, this in the first movie, right? The beat where they kill the mother whale is very similar to the destruction of it. Very true. 100%. It's playing the same narrative role, the whales and the tree. Yeah.

[01:51:04] Uh, but it is different. It's different. It's different. They're like everybody, the implication is that everyone has a tulkun that they're kind of bonded with. Right. And you swim into their mouth and plug your hair into their brain through there. Like, you know, it feels like they're uvula.

[01:51:21] Yeah. They're uvula or whatever. Um, and you kind of have this shared thing with them. Their like predator mouth opens up like six ways. I mean, the design of the tulkuns is so sick. We were saying it's like a whale, but a catfish, but a sea turtle. Yeah.

[01:51:37] There's like a turtle texture on top. You have the two eyes on each side. Then the underbelly feels like it has tribal tattoos, but it's like, are those natural? Are their tattoos mimicking the patterns? I don't know.

[01:51:51] Um, I love all of it, but I also love that this information is kind of slowly revealed. Like just how important they are. They set up very quickly. They're like, hey, by the way, that tulkun is bad. He's bad news. He's got bad vibes. He's a negative influence.

[01:52:06] Don't hang out with him. He smokes. It's because there's, so this gets class. He's the bad boy. He's the bad boy. Which only makes me want him more. Absolutely. Loak is the middle son, right? He gets in a fight with the brother of the girl he likes.

[01:52:20] They have that fight. And then they, that's when they go out on like the big trip and they kind of strand him. Right. He's like, I bet you couldn't fucking do this. I can't fucking do it. And they're sort of daring each other.

[01:52:31] They're essentially, it's the race from the end of Greece. Yes. But that's where he meets Payakan, which is what you're talking about. The outcast. But doesn't this also, this exact thing happens in Avatar the first where he's being chased

[01:52:48] by one scary thing and then it's then taken out by an even bigger, scarier thing. Sure. You have the, uh, what are they called? The night vipers and the Thanator or the whatever it is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Same thing.

[01:53:06] But, but, but this is different because it's like the Tulkun is not actually violent, but he has the cut flipper. And when you, when, you know, when Loak's like, Hey, he's got like, he's missing a flip with

[01:53:14] the like, Oh well he's no good because he did something bad and he like broke their code. Navi. He kills in general. Right. Exactly. And, uh, and then one of my favorite moments in the movie is when Loak goes back to see

[01:53:29] him and sort of they're, they communicate. The whale vision. But first he's like, what's up with you? And the whale says, it's too painful. I love, Oh man, I love that. That's the first time they're really talking and you're just like, wait, wait, wait, what's going on?

[01:53:44] That's the preview sequence we saw after the release. Right. Well, but he's taking the thing. And it ends with them just holding hands. Yeah. I mean, that is, look, I liked that out of context just as like a mood piece after the

[01:54:00] re-release, but it didn't make a ton of sense. You didn't know what was going on really. And then to rewatch the scene now with the buildup into that point, one of many moments that nearly brought me to the edge of tears.

[01:54:10] Some of the other moments were just something looked really pretty and I was overwhelmed. But that moment emotionally got to me. And it's a real, it's what I predicted was the moment that would really cause Ben to lock

[01:54:24] in because it feels very tied to Ben's anytime in a movie someone is nice to an animal when they don't have to be. Yeah. He takes the hook out of his fin. And he's sort of like, I can tell you're scared. Hold on. Yeah.

[01:54:39] I'm here to help you. So he's essentially bonding against the rules with this outcast. But he's doing the bonding thing. And he's like, you don't know him like I do. And they're like, I know him. His parents are shitty. So it's all lovely.

[01:54:51] What if this is a commentary on cancel culture? What's out of control? It's out of control. Goddammit. Cancel culture will not come to Pandora. Thank God. And that's what the movie is about. And the movie is a binary. Yeah, right.

[01:55:05] That movie is definitely just about what's happening to her is not fair. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely TARS vibe. Okay. So maybe should we jump over to sort of the bad guys? Cause we haven't really talked during all of this.

[01:55:16] He's doing kind of a scorched earth thing and you know, he'll land at some town and he'll be like, where's Jake Sully? And they'll be like, we don't know. And he's like fucking burn it all down until they tell me he's taken in spider. Yes.

[01:55:30] And he like quickly pierced. I forgot about that. Right. Right. He gets spider. Cause spider knows who his dad is. They invoke it and he's like, Hey, look, maybe you're not that guy.

[01:55:37] But he also says to Curie, he's like, you know, maybe you're lucky that you don't know who your fucking dad is. And they hard cut to Navi. You figure it out. But then immediately, he doesn't hold any of these secrets.

[01:55:46] But there's an early scene in the first act of the movie where they have a big fight and spider gets taken hostage. Right. And he's like, you're going to be translator. There's that scene where Coric goes into the cell with him. Yes.

[01:55:58] And it's like, look, I get it. You don't want to betray your kind. I get it. I respect insane torture scene where they put a machine that's in like the evil MRI. Yeah. Edie Falco's don't like that. He's got like the face mask on. Yeah.

[01:56:12] And then then Coric turns it off and is like, let's, you know, let's kill him with kindness here. Let's try and like, you know, kind of give him a. This is what I do like about spider as a character on paper is he is genuinely conflicted.

[01:56:25] He hates his father. I thought Cameron might go for the easier fuck. The allure of his dad being back is enough to make him turn on his chosen family. Right. But the reality is, no, he doesn't like this guy. And yet he can't ever fully reject him. Right.

[01:56:41] You know, he's being held against his will. But it's not like he gets fucking courage pilled. No, he does a little, but only a little. Just a little. The second he gets the chance, he, you know, escapes. He likes when his dad gives him any positive.

[01:56:58] He doesn't want his dad to die. Yeah. And his dad doesn't want him to die either. Both of those thoughts are kind of against their internal codes. And yet they kind of over. He doesn't want to be his dad.

[01:57:10] And he seems pretty angsty the whole time he's with them versus how he seems with the Sully clan. Right. I just didn't. And I mentioned this before. I just didn't feel like the performance. It's not. That's fine. The performance is less complicated than the vibe.

[01:57:23] I think his vibe should be weird. And so I don't really mind the performance. I think it should be weird. And I like it when he's just rubbing himself blue with like paint and he's like, I'm kind of like this is normal. Right.

[01:57:33] And you're just like, oh my God, this poor kid. He's so confused. I felt this was a huge missed opportunity for an awesome moment where I don't know why they kept Spider in the loincloth the whole time. This is a good take from her.

[01:57:43] They should have put him in little like human. Horse should have made him wear the RDA. Yeah. Standard issue. That's all fine. See, no, I think his vibe is he won't do that. No, they gotta have him rip it off.

[01:57:54] He should have been wearing cut off jeans referencing arrested development. And that's fine. But I think Marie's take is put him in the human clothes against his will. So he has the moment where he makes the choice. There needs to be. I just wanted a change.

[01:58:09] But I think, you know, he's feral to them like they cannot control him at all. So whatever. They're like, all right, buddy, you want to be fucking shirtless Tarzan boy. All right. I think by the time that he's like working with them, I think he's already accepted.

[01:58:22] Because the first minute that Quaritch shows up at a village and starts burning things down, he freaks out. He's not like wincing going like, oh, this is terrible. He's like, you have to stop this right now. This is so bad. Yeah.

[01:58:37] Like and and he stops it like, you know, Quaritch is like, all right, all right. But he's about to execute someone in spider loses his mind. Yeah. Right. At no point does spider go like, look, I see both sides of this. You know what I mean?

[01:58:49] He's always on the other side. Yeah. He doesn't want his dad to die. That's all. He doesn't want his dad to die. And he'd love for his dad to have a modicum of respect for him, even if he doesn't want

[01:58:58] to do it by killing playing by his dad's rules. He also knows that he can interfere and hopefully do something he can maybe mitigate. And he's not the Quaritch doesn't want to kill him. Right. You know, like he is valuable.

[01:59:11] Can we circle back to Kate Winslet for a second? Yes. Because I have an atomic hot take that I pinned last night. I put forward the notion that this is the best accent work of Kate Winslet's career. An accent that doesn't exist.

[01:59:27] I'm going to run down some accents, but you say it doesn't exist. But of course, she could at least go off what had been done in the first movie that other actors had sort of tried. Right. But you tried new rules.

[01:59:38] So what are some accents she's done over the years? Australian. Well, now I'm going to take this chronologically. In the film Titanic, she sort of had an American accent. That's a sort of fancy, you know, Mid-Atlantic. Before then, she's always doing English accents in Heavenly Creatures.

[01:59:52] She has an English accent. She's playing an English girl. Sure. Okay. But in Holy Smoke, she is Australian. Yes. We talked about this in the Holy Smoke episode. That's why I'm bringing this back that I think she is great with accents.

[02:00:04] This is why I think she overdoes her accents. I think she like overcranked them. She puts a little mustard. What do you think? I never care. This is my Holy Smoke take. I'm like, Eternal Sunshine... I don't remember it bothering me too much.

[02:00:18] Well, no, I want to do this chronologically. My point is just... Holy Smoke. I feel this way about Holy Smoke. I think she overdoes the Australian, but I think she's someone where her overdoing the accent never actually is an impediment to the quality of the performance.

[02:00:30] I just want to see how good I can be at this. The next accent she did was in The Life of David Gale. She has an American accent. It's a bit of a... It kind of makes your teeth hurt. I remember it.

[02:00:39] It's one of those sort of English people doing an American accent where you're like, this doesn't sound like it's from anywhere. As often as she... The children's TV thing. She follows it up with Eternal Sunshine where she feels more natural. More of a natural performance.

[02:00:49] I do think some of that performance is like, Joel, this is what you do. But that's me. It's an incredible performance. It fits with the character. I don't criticize at all. This is my point. I also think her Australian accent in Holy Smoke is good. I never...

[02:01:01] I don't remember that accent bothering me. That's not the accent we're going to talk about. Romance and cigarettes. Did she do an American accent in that one? I don't remember. She does a lot of New York-y shit in that, from my memory.

[02:01:10] All the King's Men, I'm assuming she's doing kind of a Southern accent in that. I can see that. Down in the bayou. It was probably this guy. Champagne, come over here. Hey, Kingfisher. Go roll in the hay with OK Winslet over here.

[02:01:19] I'm making oyster po' boys for dinner. I say, I say. Let me throw these damn beignets in the powdered sugar. The princess and the frog is underrated. Look. Little children. My friend Ray is in love with the moon. He wants to love the moon.

[02:01:27] He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a... He's a little bit of a...

[02:01:35] He's a little bit of a... I'm Kingfisher and I'm making oyster po' boys for dinner. Little children. The princess and the frog is underrated. Look. Little children. My friend Ray is in love with the moon. He wants to fuck.

[02:01:44] My friend Louis is a gator who plays the trumpet. Who wants to be a jazz musician. Are you okay, Marie? Are you all right? I shouldn't have held my breath earlier. I'm Kingfisher. Little children.

[02:01:58] I think she did an American accent that was similar to her past American accents. Yes, the holiday. She's English. Obviously the reader The reader is where I'm just like I get the fuck out of here with this

[02:02:12] If I was German, I'd be so mad at that performance. Hey, when's that one my favorite actors ever? I would argue doing my job arguably Worst performance ever in that movie. It's it's it's not a performance. I like that much. I don't like the film that much either

[02:02:26] Yeah revolutionary road back to you know Slightly more like dialed break out of this. Yeah. Yeah Contagion Works for the American government, she's really good in that I just really labor day. That's where that's more where I would Only so much time in the life

[02:02:51] Divergent was she divergent ease accent there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah the other big one you have to talk. They're two big ones Yeah, they're right. There's two big ones, but Steve Jobs

[02:03:04] You cannot do this, you know like you're in like but then other scenes she's like hey Steve listen you can't do this I think it is an amazing performance. I agree and I kind of love the accent

[02:03:14] But if I was Polish, maybe I would have some no, this is my whole thing I always think I never think she has given a performance where the accent feels Particularly natural, but I also think it is never to the detriment of the performance itself

[02:03:30] There's two more performance always transcends before Navi. There's triple nine where she plays like a Russian gangster She is insane in that she's kind of fun in that movie She's like he is forgot a mob boss sister to Gal Gadot one of the weirdest Movies that doesn't exist

[02:03:47] Cast in big cast and then there's one that we what's the matter with you? Or whatever was happening in that movie, maybe you want to eat poison sure And that and then Mare of Easttown is the one where I think the thing sure you're fine

[02:04:03] But like that was something where she people were like she worked on in this and you know what? It's avatar the way of water water and Water a water race. There's a praler on grub road, which you know, she does it She's so good

[02:04:38] So but I think I think Griffin this is a blistering hot take I don't agree with you. I think I think Mare of Easttown is if nothing else I don't mean it backhandedly. I just think that even when she's accurate

[02:04:53] I think her accents are always accurate, but they are a little oversold and in this one I felt like I couldn't hear Kate Winslet in there. Yeah, this is my question Yeah, if you didn't know Kate Winslet was in it, would you know that was Kate?

[02:05:06] Absolutely. No, I don't think so because I know people who see it like that was I can tell her face when she cries I agree. She does like a grimace thing with her jaw, but I love Kate Winslet

[02:05:15] And also I was saying you she was in the movie I had a couple people say to me like I was like Kate Winslet, huh? And they were like, who was she? I didn't see her. She disappears and they're like David the Edie Falco was that right, right?

[02:05:28] It's easy to see how rude David it's easy to say like well, of course she disappears She's painted over a blue makeup But I'm like, you know who every other actor is pretty much you you see them the design of the characters you see

[02:05:40] Cliff Curtis face right and I I really think she like Disappears into this in the way that we I mean low-ach. He looks like Britain Dalton so bad Oh, it was like this guy's Britain Dalton thing all over the place. Second of you Wayne Fleet showed up

[02:05:54] I went I I didn't know Wayne Fleet anywhere. I know from Wayne Fleet I'd know we we said in our We went we went on the big picture podcast with their buddy Sean Fennessy talk about avatar a couple months ago

[02:06:05] The humble reg that we did that and you should listen that episode But I'm now just so jealous that I wasn't on the episode where he and Tim Simons just talked about blu-rays for an hour and a

[02:06:14] Half just drop that in our text thread was like by the way Called you guys out a bunch in an episode where we talked about physical me Do you know what I did you're the one who asks us which edition you should buy Tim

[02:06:27] I I didn't tell you guys this but I of course listen to the episode and ends with Tim being like all I want to do Is go to the criterion closet. Mm-hmm. You said it up

[02:06:38] He's only been once though, right? I don't he's ever been you know, I've got wise Okay, well actually eat a bowl of turds, um, I Don't ever took a video of me there. So wait, no, I'm that Hillary. What the hell? The ceiling's too low for him

[02:06:55] Yeah, I Think like we said in the big picture episode that Saldana's performance is the one that actually makes you believe this is a real culture, right? He's the most successful element of the first but I think Winslow is doing a similar thing here

[02:07:09] Well, whenever she does anything I like I buy the language It's why I think the accent so impressive because you're going off an abstract thing All the actors are sort of doing something a little different Saldana has hit it the hardest

[02:07:21] But she's not just copying that and just down to her movements and her energy and all this I like fully by this I raise a complicated question. I think you know, I'm going to ask. Yes

[02:07:32] So they made a big deal how to out of how in the first movie the Na'vi were all played by Non white color. Yes indigenous. Yes performers. Mm-hmm hate is a

[02:07:47] White lady, but so are a lot of the people at Britain Dalton who I just shouted out who plays low. Aki's white Well, no, I'm just what if you're talking this conversation about the cape being like so authentic and stuff Like what are we? Made up thing, right?

[02:07:59] This is why I bring up the Saldana point which is just like she makes this feel like there is a specific thing here It's not like I feel like she's being authentic in that like she's pulling from this real thing and the world tricky poles, right?

[02:08:13] like is is that It's not specific enough to any culture for you to start asking too many questions, but her performance makes it feel specific I I think Winslet and Saldana culture. Yeah

[02:08:25] To to a made-up phony baloney thing rather than being like, oh, they're sort of just pulling from this. I Don't know. It's her performance is fascinating in this. I think it's a good performance

[02:08:34] Yeah, I wanted more. Well, I I want to into avatar 3. I think she's in theory signed up for all of them, right? I don't I wouldn't clear with all she said she did a month

[02:08:44] She was very clear that she was not on set for very long. So she was kind of like my character is important Thematically, but I am NOT like some screen time soaker upper like, you know, I'm used sparingly here

[02:08:56] Yeah, so I'm sure she'll be in three. Okay, but you know, I was very moved by her connection with the mommy Fulcrum and the baby token. Yes, and like that is as you said the loss of that tool Coon is kind of a oh Shit, you know

[02:09:14] Danger theme it's called is that is the the harpoons with the Inflatable balloon. Are the balloon harpoons are those real? I bet you think I bet you don't up shit like that. Yeah exists That's like make something

[02:09:27] Is that a Cameron thing or is that just a whale? I'm guessing it's a Cameron I made it 10% more extreme than reality feel kind of real I checked it out a little bit which is of course part of the whale balloon harpoon

[02:09:42] While you know like we've got you know Cartch is doing his kind of old-school Like I'm just gonna fucking point guns at people until they tell me where Jake Sully is the whole mix pointing guns at people That's a potent mix

[02:09:54] Hey, hey Kate wins, but what do you think we haven't said this Stephen Lang is having a ball in this movie He is just clearly loves this. Yes, but Eventually, they're like well, you know, they're clearly out in the ocean

[02:10:07] So why don't you hitch a ride with you know, some of our sort of ocean guys? Yeah, but those guys who's the guy? Who's the guy? Scores, there's Brendan Cowell is the actor obviously Jermaine Clement is on these and we'll talk about him in a second

[02:10:21] But Brendan Cowell's characters was like look I got quotas like you want to go see it, but I've got quotas And he's like what right? He's like a gross Australian slob Yeah, yeah, it was just like I got job to do get him on fucking what?

[02:10:35] And we quickly realized like his job is hunting. Yes, it's all coon He doesn't like to go near the coast No Because he's like those are the ones that are like fucking bonded to the Na'vi and they'll get mad

[02:10:45] And so usually we avoid that right Jermaine Clement whose name is Jermaine not Jermaine as I previously said in a Moana episode where Identified him as not having my already background Great job. Thank you. I've never ever gotten anything else wrong in the history of this show

[02:11:00] Of course not by the way in the novel shaft. The character is written as being African American But he plays These sort of empathetic whale scientist who is taking the money to fund his research

[02:11:17] In the process giving them the information that helps them successfully hunt and then every time they kill a whale They're kind of like this pays for your research man. He's like He's a compromised character. I think it's a fairly interesting character doing a

[02:11:30] pretty successful American accent from Jermaine although American accent I thought he was just doing he's sort of like I just want to save these well Not really saving the whales no doing a bad job. Dr. Ian Garvin

[02:11:48] No, Mark Maron said on the Sigur Rune episode of WTF recently that he auditioned for that part I want to see Mark Maron play a human in Avatar movie. He would not be right for that role

[02:12:00] He would be right for the rowdy or fuck you get killed the fucking whales for me. I got the Or honestly the Falco Want him grunting yeah, I'm drinking coffee and talking shit about the Fucking tree. Yeah, I guess cute

[02:12:24] So how long can you do 45 minutes an hour? Would he've had to be doing just WTF like from a cat ranch in New Zealand? Exactly interviewing like Paul Williams every week exactly what I want

[02:12:40] Our entire well, I don't know if it was the entire audience definitely our row first out the entire audience when The bad harpoon man got his arm off you get that fucking moment where I like this

[02:12:55] Smack the table cheer you get the moment where like this metal tether right this like steel Right. It's pinning him against a lot and we all sort of look at each other and the tension is building for something

[02:13:07] What's against the arm and we're just like is Jim gonna do it and then it's like boat capsizes arm flies off in one wide shot It's not like you're doing it anyway. Oh good the fucking ship

[02:13:18] We I mean like all of the different than like parts of the ship. Yeah, there's submarines I like crab the crab things are so cool

[02:13:28] I like that the master ship folds out like a Mighty Max play set like it feels like it's like here's our battle mode and Here's where you can see all the pieces. They have to make that into a toy, right? I mean that is like

[02:13:39] Designed if they were like a giant toy with all the different little elements in an hour and 15 minutes from Merck spotlight the end of this episode All right, I'll hold off Let's say two hours and 15 minutes. Okay, great

[02:13:54] We got still got plenty of time Marie wants to present something to the table and by the table we mean David So I was thinking about getting us a group project

[02:14:04] Things together. We didn't do like a holiday party. We've never said, you know, like uh-huh. So I'm like well I My therapist's office is next to the Lego store. Yes up on Nomad. Yeah

[02:14:22] They got a home tree Lego set, okay, and I thought wouldn't that be fun for us all to do together great idea But I didn't want to I was just gonna buy it and bring it today

[02:14:32] But I didn't want to spring a Lego set on you not knowing your schedule, you know You mean like do it today? Yeah, it's kind of like we would sort of maybe just put out a table It's kind of like when you have like a thousand piece puzzle

[02:14:48] It's like yeah, I'm gonna work on the puzzle for 10 minutes, you know But I just built my first ever Lego set. I never had them as a kid No, I'm a girl and I had no brothers and my dad's a sex toy

[02:14:58] Mom there's a reason they invested 500 million dollars in the market research developed the Lego friends brand because even though it is a sensibly unisex toy, there is a stigma against girls. I agree with you Marie that it is it was coded as a bit of a boy

[02:15:13] My fiance, hey fucking keep in your pants My fiance brought me the the Seinfeld Lego set as a surprise gift the other night. I one of my favorite tick tocks Because there's the apartment is the main set correct, but then there is a stand-up

[02:15:31] And one of my fav tick tocks is you know, the tick tock that's like Emma. No, you know, that's the audio I did someone just taking the Kramer

[02:15:45] Now I did bring I did bring a much lower commitment oh you've got a toy I got the avatar themed Kinder Joy Oh Dessert There's a little avatar animal friend to build inside we do this now or do we're at the halfway point in the episode, right?

[02:16:04] What do you say to 15 halfway point? We're roaring into the finale So this is the dumb American Kinder Joy where you can't put the toy in the egg. So you split it God, that's so weird. And then one side of the egg. You have to package them separately

[02:16:18] This is so business. This is not how kinders were when I was a kid. Yes My hair would bring us the authentic It's still the normal thing. Oh, it looks like I got a you know, I got a

[02:16:29] What's the loo? I got a fishy I got an a teary I think Yeah, I got a dire horse Yeah, it's fine. I think I got one when I was in Rochester and I got I got to rock

[02:16:43] There's like instructions. Yeah, you don't really need them. You can piece it together. What do you get Ben? What is this let me see look at that It might be a skim wing. Yeah, I don't know how you're gonna put it together. Oh, yeah, it's a skim wing

[02:16:57] Or it might be it might be a Naturi's Banshee Look at this nice little tapestry of what a nice little intermission, you know Halfway through We can download a free It's complicated. Okay, so our Renegade whale is like the big hero in this fight scene

[02:17:21] Yeah, I fucking love because he keeps on sort of saying like I know my parents don't like you But I just need to like I'll bring you around and I'll show them what's cool about you and they keep on going Don't fucking talk to him

[02:17:34] He finally shares his memories and explains like the I did do violence which is against my like Tolkien code It's against the Dent Act. Let's also mention justified. They kept didn't they kill he killed his mother But the whole

[02:17:49] Right thing is like yes, they have this kind of built-in. We don't do that. We don't fight But he's like look man, the rules are changing because these dang humans

[02:17:59] You know, they don't respect how things work in Pandora the hierarchy of power in the Avatar universe has changed And he needs to change along with it. Yeah, I have no idea how to put this together. It is so fucking complicated Oh my god

[02:18:11] We get to see to them perform surgery and get that whale juice, which is really gruesome It looks like just a giant dentist. It sucks But now and like sort of like wrote their whole process

[02:18:27] And the only part he gets any joy out of it is when he's holding it up and he's like this thing's worth fucking 200 million he says 80 million and then he does the classic Oh

[02:18:38] Spiders like wait, what are you gonna do with the rest of it? And they're like Usually just sink it but they're like we'll leave it for them to discover right large is like let him know I Mean he said something about it. Maybe being a pretty mix. Yeah

[02:18:55] Leaving a dead body to spite them. That's a pretty mix When I'm on tab Remember that see more courts turns to the camera and he's like, oh hello there. I Bet you thought I was dead

[02:19:11] Although you never did see me dad. Did you did see him die? He got shot full of fucking arrows We all know there are no crimes in art As I've always said crimes in art, that's a pretty potent

[02:19:31] You do it you do it Maria and I are big and clever You had a build-up bigger than both of you Three pieces and David doesn't know how to put this together insane have fun

[02:19:48] Cork is looking for them. Yeah, lock finally links with Paya Khan who is the tool that you know took him that he shot Learned see how he was cast out and they basically They go to their dad and

[02:20:01] Say like this is for real. We have to deal with this the same time Loak Her name is Syria, I think the you know chieftain's daughter. Okay, took little to our capture by Quaritch and So that's when like it's like a game on right?

[02:20:22] Put your little thing together for you. I can't use my delicate fingers but nest clever. Yeah Fishy guy. Hey, I think it's pretty clear. It's gonna do the heavy lifting on the tree of life There was a tree of life Office buildings at forced perspectives

[02:20:47] Sean Penn's character just Sick the DET truck Will let David build like a like a bush or something and we'll we'll take the tree the home tree No, but the whole thing that happens is they attack the older brother and in trying to save the brother

[02:21:09] He lets the two girls get captured So when Jake Sully when they bring the dead body to Jake Sully and he's like obviously Beside himself upset angry beyond that. He's like wait fucking on top of this

[02:21:23] Where are your sisters because Quaritch is called in as like I have him here on the boat. He thinks they're playing chess He captures the three of them before the Sun dies. Yeah, but they don't go after them

[02:21:37] Well, no, please don't go after them they say cuz they bring the body to The body of the older brother, I'm not we're not there The date that low luck mm-hmm and His siblings, okay go to

[02:21:56] Chase the whalers and get captured remember there on the boat. Where'd they go? They were going to warn The out the bad boy, yeah To the boat, okay That's when Jake and a tear in the Mary minty Kanya the whole chief clan go out. Okay war

[02:22:15] Okay, and you know they're on their fucking flappy Icthyosaur thing. Oh sure sure not sure sure That's when Kate Winslet is like we ride, you know when she's pregnant and he's like you should probably stay home

[02:22:27] And she's like we're not staying anywhere. No, they killed my whale bitch. I'm going out Lesson Because like the thing even more than the guy getting his arm cut off that may be go fucking ape shit was when they are in They're on there What are they called?

[02:22:45] The you know the flying thing Skin wings. There you go. They're skin wings, you know And they're they're coming at the humans and then it's suddenly like, you know Which is coming closer closer closer and then it's like action time and they dive

[02:22:57] Oh my god, and you're just like, ah, yeah, they can dive underwater. Yeah, it's so cool Of course, I knew they could do that. This is a bit proper world-building. So I understand the rules of how everything works Yeah, but when you finally see it, it's so good

[02:23:10] It's like it's like, you know The feeling you get one from Top Gun Maverick when they've explained what they're going to do the entire movie and then they do it No But I mean if I can can I do one minute on top going Maverick?

[02:23:20] Yes, the genius of Top Gun Maverick and Marie you and I have discussed the genius of his head setting up like a heist movie Spend the whole movie being

[02:23:28] Should go but the entire time in Top Gun, it's not even that they keep saying like so then we're gonna do this sidewinder Down you got to hit the target then you climb out and then you got a deal with the you know

[02:23:40] The plane then you got to make it home. They don't but they just kind of they yada yada that last part Yeah, they're like and then you know, you know because they keep concentrating on everything else and you don't think about it that hard and

[02:23:52] Then when they finally pull it off and you're like they did it they blew up the thing and then you immediately realize like oh shit

[02:24:02] Now no rules apply and now everything they've learned is gone and they have to go by instinct and that's what Maverick was teaching them Yeah, fuck remember when he threw the book in the garbage Oh

[02:24:17] Didn't want him to do that. No him said book out of the garbage books don't belong in garbage Maverick knew different Yeah, fix the rules rules of garbage anyway back to Pandora

[02:24:26] I mean, but it's the same thing you're always just like oh shit all these puzzle pieces suddenly So I Like a pieces yeah this we're now on not a puzzle it's It's

[02:24:41] Fucking Cameron does the cement pour he makes sure there's a fucking rock-solid foundation before he starts building architecture So I know that there was a lot of jokes About how you know James Cameron's going back to the water. Yeah Resist and

[02:25:03] Opposite of a landlubber this one people say Oh avatars got a lot of water doesn't really it's really very foresty When we got on this frickin boat, yeah, yeah with a moon pool no handcuffed to poles Doing the other before and the boat starts filling up with water

[02:25:28] My body started vibrating There's that one shot in the trailer where you see like a room filling with water and you were like he he's not he's not Gonna do it the whole fucking thing again is there's also that

[02:25:40] Strobing lights as they're going out was the one as the boat is filling with oh my god There's that scene when they go to Cliff Curtis, and they're like hey, you know we got like five kids We haven't had a night alone for a while

[02:25:51] What do you mean watching them for a night just on a tear and I can have like a date night and they go into Like a space car and they fuck in the back of the space car and it steams up and you see

[02:26:04] Can't believe this motherfuckers doing it again He's playing the hits and I loved when Victor Garber's cameo as the captain of the ship and he's just fixing the little clock I also love when No one will ever care about a home tree Releasing it yet again

[02:26:44] Are me but also magic Mike three is also Valentine's Day clever I mean my god. I'm gonna spend all weekend at the movies The last half hour that movie is dancing

[02:26:57] No, I'm sorry we're talking about the magic Mike franchise no, I know you thought it would be about whatever tax fraud but now Just a half-hour dance sequence Yeah, they go to if they go to get their kids and that is when there's the big fight

[02:27:16] Sure with the whalers the whales themselves start to fight. You know the big shot of the whale Jumping out of the water. Oh my god. I'm overwhelmed with Little Caesars and definitely not emotion. Yeah and that is when

[02:27:31] Neta I am the oldest son is fatally shot. Okay, that is when I see you happens That's when they tear he lets out her cry of grief, you know, they go back to save spider Yes, yeah, he goes back to the church and then dies. Yeah, right and

[02:27:48] There is some moment, you know at which that's when the sisters get caught You should they're on the ship. We should get them and he's like I we got to get this body back to dad as quickly As possible. Yeah, so they sort of make the

[02:28:00] decision to prioritize that over Going after the girl. I was so stressed about Nate area and to being because it was it Nate area and to court together in the ship

[02:28:10] Yes, yes, that's a little after I just want to shout out the moment where to gets handcuffed again and shouts She's like I can't believe Characters, I really did not want to see die

[02:28:22] Especially since interior doesn't have a lot to do in this movie the moment where the Jake Sully like is maybe gonna die I'm like he dies now. He dies with dignity and he's had a good art

[02:28:30] I was worried Nate area was gonna die. I would have been really pissed up interior day, but you know There's the sequence where in between all of this, you know when they go to then get Kiri and

[02:28:43] To where carage grabs Kiri and it's using her as a hostage and interior just does the same with spider You know and a son for a son and she oh man, she looks like she's gonna do it

[02:28:56] She's gonna kill him and car to the one who stops her So he has that first it's the first time his like resolve breaks in any way. It is kind of compelling But also spider who doesn't fully think of himself as their kid

[02:29:08] But as Sully says the beginning like you just hangs around a lot. He's you know, he wants to be a Na'vi It's all he knows. He's like cash right? He always wanted to be a Sully and

[02:29:20] You can tell when she grabs him and holds him up at knife point He's kind of like why is my vague mother figure doing this? But also if this is theater if this is a strategic play, I'm fine with it When she cuts him across the chest

[02:29:34] I do think I thought it was a real cut and I think he plays the moment pretty fucking well of Being like wait a second. Would she actually right? There's a real I'm not a real kid. She and she's like mad with grief She's incredibly sad, right?

[02:29:49] So it just feels tense. Yeah, but that's where it all breaks up Mm-hmm, and we cut you know, we break into like Jake fighting carage, right where they have that kind of like All right. Let's just fucking do it and

[02:30:03] Nateri getting stuck with took as using, you know down in the bowels of the ship looks like they're gonna go Titanic style Kiri rescues them using a magical floating fish glowing fish, which is really nice

[02:30:15] The kids the kids coming to the parents rescue. I thought that in both situations is really nice That's what happens Jake eventually where look is like calm down. We're gonna do this. I also love this this thread in the film about

[02:30:28] Like adaptation and how the kids seem to get the hang of right they're better younger they can Yeah, they're helping their parents yeah, they're saving their parents and helping them because they

[02:30:46] They're not just writing things on a post-it then they've been loose, right talk to my grandmother, please talk to her I can't shoulder this burden alone. One thing that I love about just the Avatar

[02:30:57] World in general is whenever a Navi gets a machine gun you love this or hate it's pretty cool It is so good. Where's the fucking the net communicator? Jake looks cool in this movie. Okay, what do we think of his mega dreads though?

[02:31:14] Cuz he is rocking it is you be rocking it is dicey I think he pulls it all see in the first movie. He has kind of the shorter hair. Yeah

[02:31:25] I think he pulls it off. I respect him. What if you went to like the Met Ball looking like that? Well, what was the theme? Under the sea Amid a kayak, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. No, no Jake's cool. I think I yeah, he's cool

[02:31:45] And I liked it in the first movie He's trying so hard to be like I am one of you and in this it's sort of more like he understands his Advantages having a little bit of marine brain a little bit in the V brain

[02:31:56] I like that. He's sort of mixing the two he's doing like face paint with Anytime he like says human things to the kids. It just would make me laugh and be like you're grounded They don't watch friends Right

[02:32:14] Foreign country or something we're like that's something he keeps calling a kid carry a baby girl. All right, baby girl And I'm like, okay I mean, I like the Door Yeah, you know kind of hacky sack guy clash with the Marine like yes

[02:32:33] But I also do feel like a lot of the movie is about how he's sort of tying his arms behind his back cuz he doesn't Want to fight cuz he thinks he'll lose. Yes, and he wants to protect his family

[02:32:42] Yeah, right and like it ends up I don't know if you know up at this family's a fortress, right? Except one of them fucking dies Sunfire. Yeah, but it's the boring one

[02:32:51] He does cry and then sort of turns into your ankle like I mean if it had to be one of them I don't want to like obviously I love Talk what if we would have been taking this a lot harder? No, it's

[02:33:08] But you know Kiri saves her mother and sister yes, Lohak saves his father Cuz his ass got fucked up Yes, he's also been throughout the movie doing things like just lying face down in the water staring at the same She'll sort of zone out and kind of

[02:33:25] She does this at the end to kind of like summon the glowing fishies that help. Yeah, that was cool Yes, very little like that. I cheat movements. Yeah It's just so Excuse her mother and You know Sully Strangles Quaritch and drowns him but spider rescues him

[02:33:46] Leaves him on a rock and it's like look I ain't all about you, but I didn't want you to die. Anyway, goodbye I also saw it as maybe an eye for an eye kind of thing because he kind of technically saves spider

[02:33:57] So it's like maybe that's like sort of code right payback It's complicated I like I like that it's a little complicated and I like complicated things. Sure. Do you like it's complicated? It's complicated on that one

[02:34:14] Like parts of it. I like when they make the croissants. I love that and now here's the see Martin Here's the thing. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I see. I wasn't sure what the conclusion would be here

[02:34:24] It's kind of the Empire Strikes Back conclusion where they're like, okay, we had a big battle We're looking out the window what's gonna happen, right? But you know Jake goes to Tonowari. Yeah chieftain and he's like look, this is all my fault. I get it. We'll leave

[02:34:35] I'm the asshole here They want me and ton of worry and I was thinking like yeah Is it gonna be like the exact same structure with the like off we go gotta climb the mountain now join the Everest

[02:34:47] Exactly. Yeah, and he's like no. No you you're part of the clan one of us. We love you. You can stay so they're gonna be sea people yes, and That's kind of how it's left right? Yeah, there's no post-credits scene. No, thank God. Thank God

[02:35:02] There is an end credit song from the weekend. We were talking about this over dinner I Give it a gentleman six. I don't mind his new album. This felt kind of like the Leona Lewis vibe where it's like

[02:35:12] Hmm sending us out bad. I think we wanted him to show up Writing we want a whale where you're intercutting scenes from the movie with him superimposed onto a skim wing

[02:35:24] Or yeah, just chillin with the whale wouldn't mind that at all or he's underwater he's signing his leader. Yeah, I want that Here's what I like about it. I Like that it exists I like that this is the one franchise that still is doing the thing of

[02:35:40] We hire someone to sing a song to the themes from the score with lyrics that are about whatever Yes, like that. This is like it's not just some song that technically is from do you think it's that he's like

[02:35:53] We love what you do and we'd love you to do a movie a song for avatar and weekends like cool So what's avatar 2 about James Cameron's like I can't tell you Anything highly class. So we were having the we were having the discussion afterwards

[02:36:04] Where'd you guys get dinner the Smith? It was raining so fucking hard and we went to like six places We were like, let's go to the closest place four consecutive places closed for private Christmas party Yeah

[02:36:15] I suppose as was the Atlantic's office and then like two places had closed early for dinner because the movie is long even though we Saw it early and then we finally yeah, you were out of there like 930. Yeah, it was late

[02:36:25] So you went to the Smith? I mean nothing wrong with this. It was fine. We had a good time third and 11th Don't dox us. Yeah, how dare I reveal the public information of where the Smith is

[02:36:36] That's true, well, that's the one you were at we were trying to figure out like okay, so let's say it's not the weekend Who is the best fit to do the avatar and song?

[02:36:46] Right and Marie was sort of saying cuz like Jordan's a big Charlie Puth er and he was like do you do a poof? Do you have a poof with it? You need to cut a poop with a Khalifa is Jordan. Okay, it's doing all right

[02:36:57] Yeah, I think Jordan's doing all right It was like is Billie Eilish too obvious has she been doing that too much Seven do you need to let it go through a couple rotations? I came up with what I thought was the best possible answer creatively it just creatively

[02:37:15] What is the best version of an avatar and credit song? I don't know David Byrne Well, sure that's shooting high. Then I countered and I said it would know to David Byrne. Yes to Peter Gabriel

[02:37:26] I don't think David Byrne is schlocky enough. Marie's argument is that is that Gabriel will hit the emotions? Perfect. You need someone with a little I mean even Phil Collins I know he doesn't really make music over like someone with a nice healthy dollop of cheese

[02:37:40] But I want I want maybe for another one of these middle entries if we end up doing 12 of these For burn to come in and be like I really considered what music sounds like on Pandora

[02:37:49] Well that I built the drums, but I mean like cuz like I love how the Lord of the Rings movies He was like we're not going current here We're going with Lennox Annie Lennox and Enya and he wanted Bjork for the second one where he's like

[02:38:01] I want people who may kind of like trippy movie, you know trippy. Yeah easy listening from the 90s like, you know I mean Annie Lennox I think the problem is that this is the one aspect of the movie that it feels like Cameron is not invested in it

[02:38:13] We were talking about last night how known it is that he didn't want my heart will go on He conceded when he finally heard it

[02:38:18] Right, but he was like I don't want one of these fucking in credit songs and it feels like this is the one like sort Of Fox domain thing where they're like, please let us just hand an mp3 over to a popular artist and let them hurt

[02:38:29] We'll go on thing. Yes. It's like truly I think they're just like we need to miss out on that right at the very chance that we could have a hit like That I found the weekend song relaxing and pleasant

[02:38:39] We will see if it sticks with me to any degree But I like his latest album is good at the images of the whales while that played my other

[02:38:46] Galaxy brain take and this was probably like me being a little stoned at this point where I was like, you know Who would have fucking loved avatar in general but who died right before the first movie came out? Mm-hmm died into Oh Oh Murray is on

[02:39:01] Target with us Michael Jackson Michael Jackson would have had a Jackson would have loved Well, he did a really song. Yeah, and this movie ends with a good free Willy shot There would have been a decade where every interview Michael Jackson did

[02:39:16] He was talking about avatar instead of talking about like Peter Pan and right you and shit Yeah, and you know, he would have built like an avatar wing and neverland injections to make his skin blue

[02:39:26] Yeah, he would have turned blue and he would have you say this would have been good for avatar I Think it's a fact. Yeah, he would have been obsessed with it I and you know, he wouldn't have made he would have seen avatar one and is like James

[02:39:42] Yeah, give me the song an avatar We're just saying it's a fact and the other fact is in that timeline the pandemic doesn't happen and I'm not saying it's good or bad Yeah, the novel coronavirus is never never

[02:39:54] The film was shot by Russell Carpenter. Did you notice that? No, Rena? Okay fine was reuniting for his DP from Titanic cool I forget who shot the first it has four credited editors. One of them is him himself

[02:40:07] Well, yeah, he added he's always and one of them died One of them gets the dedication at the end of the movie. Yeah, I mean Avatar one had three editors right Mara Mauro Fiore Shot the first step right and one of us go for it

[02:40:22] My friend's brother was on the camera department his name's Robin Charters And I saw his name in the credits and I did learn a little behind-the-scenes that That all of the crafty and all of the food was vegan except

[02:40:41] Some some of the G&E guys refused they called themselves the pirates and they had a tent where they could eat meat Wow respect Cool. I noticed there was a whole Kabuki department in the end credits

[02:40:54] I couldn't tell if that was like a clever name for some technology or if he literally brought in Kabuki theater people To work with them, which either one feels equally plausible to me. I don't I don't there was like Kabuki department

[02:41:07] And there was a Kabuki lead assistant Kabuki Avatar the way of water I Had such a good time I'm glad you're happy I'm excited to watch it again anything would have been a real bummer if you were like I really just was not vibing with it

[02:41:24] No, I vibe so hard and especially after the the near miss of the of the opening Yeah, imagine what this episode like what would we have done? Oh my god. We would maybe end the show Don't say that

[02:41:36] Never but uh, no, we just have to put it we wouldn't have an episode. Yeah That would be funny if we just tweet like guys Griffin's gotta see it again. I don't know. He wasn't feeling it. We're worried

[02:41:47] Wait, what he's had this for a while. This is his old spear. I'm ready to reconstruct the sphere Okay This is a triumphant episode as I brought to the episode last night Of course my my child sized. Yeah, it's the first flight

[02:42:02] I'm glad that you waited for two hours and 46 minutes into the episode to break this all You got to save some stuff for the end I didn't realize this was a child-sized sweatshirt that Griffin just put on so I tried to put it on when we were eating

[02:42:18] Dinner and I was like, oh no, this is very tight This is a youth size 12 and Griffin confessed that he buys a lot of youth size That is not what I said Okay

[02:42:25] I said this was in the period of my life where I was so spendthrift II that as a small person I would try to save $10 by buying large child sizes rather than small adult sizes And it has rendered a lot of my clothes unwearable

[02:42:40] I now am willing to pay ten extra dollars for clothes that do not cut off circulation such as for example What are we getting now keep talking Oh God should we do more Kate Winslet doing a new

[02:42:54] What do we really talk about the Barbie trailer because I think people really want us to talk about that I thought it was really funny. I loved it I like the look of the Barbie world that we see beyond, you know, the jokey

[02:43:07] Buttoning his pants. Oh no. Oh Drop and trout Wow, we're getting the full Newman right now, okay Okay You can handle photos Griffin took his pants off and he is wearing Navi tights

[02:43:33] Tight but adult-sized. Yes, and he's also wearing a Navi sweatshirt that has ears and a tail and he's holding a glowing staff that is also from the Avatar franchise One thing I liked about Griffin you're um single right? I

[02:43:58] Liked about what you did last night Griffin is that you you changed into your Navi outfit I did you you didn't you know have to wear it on the subway No, you got seated and then as soon as the lights went down

[02:44:14] Not only that when our screening was like breaking down the first time I switched back So I could complain normal human clothes and not look like the most insane man in America And then we settled down. I was like now I can go back

[02:44:27] Oh, that's part of why you were so stressed out that you had to keep changing outfits We talked about painting our faces blue, yeah, I just got I got a temporary tattoo that was in my frosted mini-wheats box

[02:44:43] These are very comfy by the way, yeah, you look you look very comfortable you look at ease I feel in my skin Comfortable in my skin, you know, that's good. It's good to feel comfortable in your skin

[02:44:55] Box office projections. Let's see. It's 17 million dollars on preview night on Thursday evening screenings Which is on par with the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, right? But not as good as the Black Panther sequel or Top Gun Maverick, right?

[02:45:10] But it basically it puts it on track for an opening somewhere between like 120 150 over 220. That is low as low 70 something but Different world Obviously the big hope for this movie is that it will have crazy legs, right?

[02:45:31] partly because it has no competition partly because as people pointed out like it's just not built like a Marvel movie and that people have To see it. There's no spoilers. No, there's nothing you can really Deadline whose box office analysis is often weird

[02:45:46] Had a really good point in their article today Which is this is actually a movie that people are going to be very strategic about how they see and when yeah rather than

[02:45:55] Needing to see it Thursday to avoid spoilers. It's also like I want to wait to see it 9 max We were scanning screenings last night because we were sort of surprised by how many of the Union Square scenings were not sold out

[02:46:05] And it was like the problem is these multiplexes are showing you like 50 times Yeah, and yeah, there was a 5 o'clock of 530 and a 6 o'clock What the right format is but you look at basically any True iMac screen and it's like sold out for the next two weeks. Yeah

[02:46:20] obviously in those You know premium. Yes quality Pricey screenings as part of the whole strategy. Yeah, although owning those premium screens for px fuck this The other thing of course is Luckily or maybe we could get inspiratorial about it

[02:46:39] Maybe James Cameron was behind protests across the entire nation, but China has essentially lifted its kovat listed restrictions Just in time for avatar to come out there and it's tracking to open gigantic there. It's always hugely popular

[02:46:54] Yes, I mean obviously this was all part of its magic run the first time it translated globally They're also already like putting the emphasis on we're projecting 500 million dollar Worldwide opening weekend rather than putting the projection focus on the domestic, right?

[02:47:09] But but the other thing is most American blockbusters have been blocked from China for the last year plus There's been a big run of all these films being hamstrung on top of just theaters being closed and hope it right

[02:47:21] I haven't had any movies. Yeah, no movies. Yeah, like nothing's open big at all. Like yeah, it's crazy Number one's gonna be avatar. Yeah, and I guess number two is gonna be Black Panther Wakanda forever Yeah, my one last weekend

[02:47:36] Just basically uninterrupted without a challenge million dollars. Yeah nice work if you can get it a movie I think we both like I have a soft spot for that movie. I think it's interesting. I do too. I admire it

[02:47:48] It's fundamentally struggling with you know, it is but it impossible circumstances I think the only way that movie could be better is if you would given him like

[02:47:55] Three more years to start from scratch and completely reconceive it. I basically like every idea in that movie and its execution I don't know how much it adds up to Sort of the thing with all these Marvel movies. Yes, it's a whale go wide this week

[02:48:08] No, the whale I think is opening slowly because there's only had six screens last week YouTube we're not fans No As our friend Mike Mitchell the doughboys podcast said How embarrassing for the whale that it's not even the best whale movie of December 2022

[02:48:32] I don't even have it in my bottom 10 Rough bottom 10. Yeah, tell us what your bottom Use you have to see a lot a little film called Well, I probably shouldn't even tell you because it's a secret

[02:48:47] Fantastic piece of secret film door. That's your worst. Okay. Well, that was unforgettable Well, I didn't that was like malpractice I lied my lead my least favorite film is Pinocchio Pinocchio Pinocchio down there. I've got a little movie called Jurassic World a Dominion

[02:49:05] I'm putting whale below these guys whale goes below. Don't worry darling for me. Oh, absolutely Don't worry darling. I have whale just below don't yeah, don't worry darling at least had a plus production design

[02:49:17] And well is is very close to the bottom of the barrel for me. Yeah, it might be dead last it made me angry For many reasons like some reasons I did not anticipate at all

[02:49:29] I also had the gray man down there. I had fleabag persuasion down there. I had sleep a Little hero by the name of Black Adam is Changing the balance of power down there hierarchy power, whatever and and you know one one specific doctor who you know

[02:49:50] People could listen to dr. Michael Morbius, right? Hi I acquired contender for worst movie I've seen this year It had been the bottom of my list now the whale is threatening it just in terms of your

[02:50:01] Incompetency zero joy, and this is on me for paying money to go see this in a theater Liam Neeson's black light is a movie that I don't I don't know about what that is Haven't even heard of that And I know that these days

[02:50:16] He just makes one movie a year with a title like black light where it feels like they're just pulling it out of a tombola

[02:50:21] I have I have seen few movies in my life that are less anything than that that have been said his other film this year memory Which Martin Campbell quietly directed? I think is pretty fucking solid cuz Martin Campbell doesn't really make like

[02:50:34] Total stinkers like he can make a competent cannot completely junk it up. Yeah, even as much as the protégé gets close Yeah That's Michael Keaton right and Maggie Q. Yeah, and Sam Jack And Sam good in it Wednesday bed a couple times I'll listen for you

[02:50:51] Okay, cuz I don't know about that. So I feel like it'll be Avatar. Mm-hmm Black Panther. There's nothing else opening wide this weekend, right? There's no counter Is there a Christian thing? That's out right now the Whitney Houston next week

[02:51:06] I feel like that's the only thing that's even attempting next week is Babylon Whitney Houston puss in boots and The Empire will finally expand lights will fill theaters How wide that's expanding? Richard Lawson likes that movie, right? I mean, I think that's

[02:51:23] Interesting, you know, it's really embarrassing about that movie. I'm not a fan personally What you know, it's like really what's embarrassing about that movie Olivia Coleman's not even nominated for an Oscar

[02:51:33] You never know she might it's you haven't seen it right? No, it is a very big performance Sure the gigantic Oscar scene. Yeah, so I could see it kind of just sneaking in and that's sort of like I don't know

[02:51:45] I think actresses to credit. I think I agree basically become Judi Dench where if you release anything the last two months It's like a big movie I think if she was mrs. Harris, oh Got nominated

[02:52:02] But I'll say this I have four people that I'm fairly comfortable with in that category I'm not sure who the fifth is gonna be Who's your fourth man those mortal long? I wish she'd get a gold. No, it's to see it because it's when shut yo Williams

[02:52:17] Daniel Deadweiler will be no and then Viola Davis It's like it feels like it's between Viola Davis, maybe Margot Robbie depending on how that goes over Olivia Coleman Those feel like the strongest and then it's kind of like this morass

[02:52:30] So like Emma Thompson just Jennifer Lawrence like these sort of stream movies that didn't like a lot of attention Oh the Brent Terry Henry has been holding on. Okay, which at least good and proves that people watch that movie That's why Lawrence could so

[02:52:43] Good in that movie. She's really good in it to that guy One of the most watchable people around the whole question was supporting actor is whether two fable mins get in Yeah, in which case I feel like that's that

[02:52:57] Right, there's like k-ho Quan Brendan Gleeson and honestly Barry Keegan. Well, that's the other thing There's the two fable mins question and then there's the two Like that yeah, and then like it's sort of this thing of like, okay Well Hirsch feels like it is a good shot

[02:53:12] But like, you know, do you know not just why I don't want to film but like, you know One of those guys who's never been on me for an Oscar He's gonna stuck in a no-man's-land Griffin

[02:53:24] Beginning to end that's a I think that movie has three leads and he has more screen time than Gabriel about I think Gabriel Abel should be nominated. I do too. I would I would hear In best actor. It's like a network situation

[02:53:39] Who do you think is more likely to get the fifth actor spot I want to remind people I'm still wearing leggings Yes, my friend is yeah Yeah, so we know that Frazier Farrell and

[02:53:53] And Austin Butler are locks and I would call Bill Nye kind of a soft lock We're assuming he was default just because of one issue nobody likes the film where his performance that's what he's running up against

[02:54:08] What I've heard I've heard something different which is that people actually despise Sort of weird kind of I don't know what to tell you man you did it. Yeah Like a key to the city nomination, right? It's on a cruise day in Hollywood Paul Mescal's nomination

[02:54:32] That would be a combo of like that film just kind of being well-liked right? It's a very internal performance, obviously Yeah, and he is everywhere. He's like really like pounding the pavement Who are your other two? Other challengers there are Jeremy Pope

[02:54:51] Very good pretty fucking phenomenal performance. I think it's a very good performance. Yeah or Diego Calva again this Babylon thing of like do they like it if they like it? Yeah, maybe it gets in Yeah Right It is a comedy right under drama they did

[02:55:11] Amien Rhapsody was drama rocket but Rocket Man was me Ray was musical walk the line was musical They always used to use the fucking music biopic except Sometimes they don't really want to be serious. Yeah, like stars born and Bohemian Rhapsody

[02:55:26] That's the weird year where Bohemian Rhapsody was named the drama of the year and Green Book was named the comedy Better than ever nothing wrong here And then you know, you got like Tom Hanks and Man Called Auto maybe people are

[02:55:48] Yeah, everyone's seen it. Really? Not me. What is it? Honestly, I don't know Won't believe his you'll believe his name is it Otto? Oh shit. We spoil that I think people also there was talk before Emancipation came out people were like I'm not hearing that talk right now

[02:56:07] Well, it's gonna show up No, that just felt like one of those things Rappel was like, I don't see a good solution to this Let's just release it and see what happens. Yeah, right

[02:56:16] Yeah, I don't think waiting here makes this any difference. So just put it out. Yeah put it up worst-case scenario It's sunk cost. Yeah, it did feel like there was a moment where people were like excited about it and they will saw

[02:56:26] Yeah, I don't know. It's okay. Yeah, you know, right? It's a fook It is we will have of course a patreon release coming up in a few days which is a National Book of Secrets, we're gonna open the book of secrets

[02:56:40] Um, but yes, this is our final main feed episode of the year now We usually take one week off the week of Christmas the way of water this year. We're taking two weeks off. Oh My gosh, wait

[02:56:52] Someone's at the door. What has been doing? Let me just see it. Okay. Hold on one second. Ben just got very This planned Absolutely, Ben's opening the door Nelly I'm wearing avatar leggings. I Took my pants off. Thank you. I'm she's saying he looks good, which is

[02:57:29] I should've bought fucking Lego set. Oh my god It's to David from Ben hey wait, I put this under the tree like what's this? Okay, who goes first let's also say I bought Ben and Nelly a Christmas present last week

[02:57:45] Nelly how long you been waiting outside that door? Okay, good. Okay No wonder no wonder Ben wasn't yada yada. You know telling us to speed up the Oscar talk I got Ben and Nelly for their home a Toxic Avenger pillow. Yes in the shape of Toxie's head

[02:58:09] Which Ben was very touched by and Nelly so graciously Holler For now has not for now. Yes, and we definitely won't get lost in any future moves. Oh my god I'm astounded it is Okay, so I got I got the classic congratulations balloon

[02:58:29] Last year you gave us ornaments Yes, which you still have many slow Christmas ornaments. Yes, and then the Hey look, it's pot. Oh, well you say okay. So this is a this is a different loves to wear baseball

[02:58:42] I love baseball caps. This is an olive green baseball cap with an embroidered Popeye the sailor smoking a pipe But the real nice touch. Oh, I guess this is the name of the brand. I thought it was a

[02:58:54] Personalized thing the back it just says Noah that's in the company. I think just the brown. I like this is a great hat Thank you very much. They're like a cool streetwear brand

[02:59:02] Yeah, I like this open this first it's a tote looks like a tote yep, I'm always going to the farmers market me Oh look, it's it's Schroeder and Lucy. Oh Hey, wait, what's he saying?

[02:59:19] From peanuts. Yeah for anyone who doesn't know buying records cheers me up whenever I feel low I buy some new records So Ben saying got me a record. Okay It's the Charlie Brown is Vince Giraldi I love this one Thank you, you're welcome guys

[02:59:39] You're behind the curve I got my taxi well cuz I like Mike it's what did Marie get? Oh, I got glasses to drinking glass. Well, you just move I just moved. Oh My god, these are oh These are oh

[02:59:57] These are really nice. Where'd you go? So nice. It's a place in And green only get on my get on shove his ass off these may or may not be on my wedding register

[03:00:09] That is how good of a job. She's out a great little store in Greenpoint called big night Yeah, yeah, yeah, not the Stanley Sucre Campbell Scott movie no, although they do weirdly call home the store Those were a mrs. Haas special pick. Thanks Nelly

[03:00:29] Santa has but Santa houses. Yes. Yes Right because it's now the third year in a row it's become a tradition. Yeah, I'm here to announce here at the end of this three episode whatever slow Christmas to

[03:01:00] Now is now available. You might catch the logic gap in what fan just said for the third year in a row I'm proud to announce Slow Xmas to do you want to explain why because I've decided that the first volume is slow Xmas zero, that's right

[03:01:16] I've made things more complicated Then they need to be mm-hmm because I love doing shit like that Yeah, so slow Christmas volume to the third volume in the slow Christmas trilogy Well, no cuz technically now series Whatever technically now what? well, I think he's saying the

[03:01:37] The fourth slow Christmas album will be slow Christmas three would will be the end of the trilogy zero He could always yeah, maybe it's a 2.5 Oh What if it's just like a colon and then a subtitle or like a 2.1 plus remix

[03:01:52] Do you want to announce any of the people who are on this one? Well, what I was thinking is I could announce them, but I also thought maybe just play a clip Oh, yeah, I feel like This year in particular we have a past guest. Yes

[03:02:06] Please on slow Christmas. Mm-hmm is a yeah has a track on the album So here we go slows it down a visit from st. Nicholas or alternatively a Slow visit from st. Nicholas By Clement Clark Moore read by Roman Mars Twas the night before Christmas Through the house

[03:02:47] Not a creature was stirring not even a Mouse The stockings were hung by the chimney Nicholas Soon Would be there Now Roman, of course has one of the best voices in the world one of the best on mic voices

[03:03:27] But oh my god slow Christmas is there's there's computers involved in the slowing down of things. There's there's technology volume 0 was Okay, mostly mixed that way volume 1 what we're now calling volume 1 The second installment was mostly been directing people to perform

[03:03:44] Slowly. Yes to perform right? That's the big live slow instead of like tweaking it and right and now we're adding spoken word Yes, Roman just keeping it slow all by his lonesome Not a Scorsese to begin with no he's in a very deliberate tone

[03:04:01] It's sounding man assumed Oh What a good fit you can have Roman speak and it will be slower than most people tell that tale But man, did you slow it? Did you did you is that your all direction or was that edited in post?

[03:04:14] Roman he sat down and did that he sat down and did that you stepped away from his fucking family Yeah, and did that that's a clean take but he knew but like he knew to really space out mouse Yes So you can listen to all

[03:04:32] 12 minutes and 26 seconds of the full reading of a slow visit from st. Nicholas performed by Roman Mars we also have Producer Brian from back in the day our years He performs sort of a like heavy metal version of we three kings fucking rules

[03:04:53] Yeah, we have you have like the traditional Polish Holly's and that's the one single you've already leaked. Yeah by heavy Gus Just it's a Polish Lullaby that they're performing Of course very slow remind people that all of this is real last week

[03:05:10] Ben's holiday party doubled as an album listening party where he made custom napkins Like embossed it was really nice oil stamp napkins that said slow Christmas 2022 listening party and Also bought a party sub and put a post-it note in front of it that said Italian ass

[03:05:31] Just so people knew what kind of sandwich the vibes were immaculate Yeah, it's available now on Spotify So, please give it a listen. Give it a listen. Give it a spin. I'll of course have some links in the description

[03:05:45] Yeah, thanks guys and look you're gonna need a slow Chris sound to fill up the next two weeks without main feed episodes But then we return January 7th. Is that correct? that is correct the next episode of blank check with Griffin and

[03:06:02] David will be dropping on January 8th. Hey, sorry On New Year's Day no episode on Christmas Coraline with JD Amato chops on January 8th. It's another fucking three-hour episode, right? They all yell at me for not knowing Wilvin Wilvinton's name there is a really incredible

[03:06:25] Other piece of music in that episode and that's all I'll say. Oh, yes Right, there's a lot going on in that episode I think One out of our dump show and then we did Wendell and wild and then our new mini-series will begin after that

[03:06:39] Yeah, and it's a secret keep this speculation going secrets of Dumble Sims Yeah, and no one will guess what we're doing based on what I watch on letterbox. No, no, no. No, it's possible Yeah. Well anyway, that was fun. Happy

[03:06:55] 2022 everybody happy avatar. I don't I'm trying to sign. Yeah First off I made this mistake when we were recording the other day This shit makes me tired the little Caesars pizza more than any other food makes me tired It out you get the little plastic

[03:07:17] It looks like a face and then yeah this head to scoop out Yeah, yeah, it's no it's not the toys are good. We're talking about the Kinder eggs. Yeah the kinder joy Doesn't give me joy

[03:07:29] All right. Well Griff, can you take us out? Yeah, I was checking make sure I didn't have anything else in my bag But no I revealed on my my gimmicks Thank you all for listening

[03:07:39] For another year. Yeah. Yeah coming up on eight a thing that when I tell people Astounds them. Mm-hmm. They're like, oh you have a podcast. How long has that been going and they assume I'm going to measure it in months Yeah, but yes

[03:07:55] Your ape begins soon. Yes plenty of great stuff coming. We've got a really cool March Madness that we're yeah We're hammering out the March Madness and making some tough decisions now about what makes the cup

[03:08:06] I think we got a really cool theme that's gonna open things up in a lot of ways, right? Bring back a couple returning favorite competitors, but it opens it up to a lot of new people. Yes, I think we'll be good I can either anyway

[03:08:22] Let's give some special things, you know the same people we thank every week, but let's put a little extra a little extra stink on these Thanks Because people like Murray Barty we love her I love you guys too

[03:08:35] Marie the best Marie the best, but you know who else the best JJ Burch our researcher taking a nice week off from this episode not having to look up shit Well soon JJ constantly bruised besieged by daycare bugs. Yeah the daycare bugs Chip on Pat rounds

[03:08:55] For artwork Pat coming up with another Beautifully cursed Photoshop of us as an AV and of course Ben got spidered, of course Yeah, you'll see the photo arrived right before we start recording with resignation dropped his head and said, of course I got spidered

[03:09:12] Thank you to Alex Baron a Jimmy Keon for editing Yep Thank you to Lane Montgomery in the Great American novel for our theme song You can go to blank check pod comm for links some real nerdy shit including new store Shopify store

[03:09:25] Some of those items are pre-orders and the pre-orders will close soon Some of them the things that have sold out if the demand is there we will do another run

[03:09:34] We're testing out a lot of new things in terms of merch seeing what people want what they like and trying not to end up With 18 boxes of spatulas that people don't want or working it out

[03:09:45] You can still order those from our website. You still can't a reduced rate. Yeah at this very great I use mine this week and we're maybe six months away Ben and I came up with the plan last night Maybe at some point we Zazz left them

[03:09:57] We asked for the government to bail us out on our spatulas we bury them somewhere no one can ever access them I'm very gonna write them off. We got a right a ma too many spatulas Tune in next week for nothing

[03:10:10] Reach out to the ones you love in your life Yeah, have a conversation with them in person if you can take your family to see avatar two weeks from now tune in for once again, not us

[03:10:21] Circle back reach out to a friend. You haven't seen in a long time Maybe not the people you love in your life But the people you like see avatar a third time and then we'll see you back here And as always I see you I see you