SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to season 10 of I'm Your Buddy with Nick and William, the podcast where two best friends are watching and discussing the filmography of writer director Alex Garland. I'm Nick, who loves Alex Garland.

SPEAKER_06 0:11

And I'm William who also loves Alex Garland.

SPEAKER_05 0:14

And today we're joined by our great, awesome, slightly taller, a lot more intelligent friend John Morgan with a great shirt.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And I also love Alex Garland.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Excellent. And today we're watching Civil War 2024. It rhymes, and I don't like that now.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I don't like that. Civil War for 2024.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Uh yeah, 2024's Civil War, which Leo just hit some ominous notes at the piano, so it sounds right on cue. Right on cue, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 0:42

We just quoted each other again.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

We're off. We're out of sync. Not good. It's early. It's nine o'clock on a Sunday morning. Uh, John, how are you since you were last here? What have you been up to? How's life?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Life's alright. Um, it was interesting to finally watch this movie. Yes. Because I had been avoiding watching this movie. Yeah. And there's actually a lot of Americans who are actively avoiding this movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:07

Yeah. A lot of our friends. Yeah. A good amount.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Like a good amount. Like, I actually I told, you know, sort of various people that I had seen this movie, and they were like, Oh yeah, I'm not watching that. Yeah. I'm not watching that.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, other our other friend of the pod, Dave Jordan, refuses to watch it as well. Uh, but I mean, he's a contrarian, we all know this, and he's such a contrarian, he's so dedicated to the game that he says he isn't a contrarian, which is admirable.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

It's an obvious contrarian thing to say.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Yeah, general consensus, you're a contrarian. I don't buy it.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Yeah, so but but yeah, but I think it's it's uncomfortable for a lot of people, and that's why I kind of wanted to uh encourage you to come on. I mean, not only because you brought up the good stuff on our dread episode episode of uh the British view of American politics, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

And you've got a I think at least a a better understanding of that, being a longtime dread reader and all this kind of stuff. But I don't think it's necessarily the movie that people think it's gonna be. Yeah, it wasn't for me. Yeah, and that's how Kira was too. She didn't see it in theaters, but she watched it with me over the past two days, and she was like, Yeah, just the trailer made it look so much different. And I was like, Yeah, it's about photojournalists and/or just journalists, war correspondents in general. And she was like, Yeah, I knew that, but I don't know, the vibes of the trailer were just different than what the vibes of the movie are.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

But I'm glad that you were willing to take the leap uh in these uncomfortable times. We were just talking about how you know the the world's kind of a shit show. But but I'm glad I I appreciate you taking the leap with us for this episode.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I'm you know, I'm a firm believer in making myself deeply uncomfortable at the movie theater sometimes. I love you know, I would like to point out as as the biggest flex is I saw one battle after another and begonia on the same day. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, I still need to see begonia. Yeah. And I've got it, I've got some of it spoiled for me by YouTube clips, or not clips, but like thumbnails, but I need to fucking watch it because I love Yorgos.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, it's it's one of his. Which did you see first? I saw one battle after another first. Okay, so it's like a good time and then a weird time, and then yeah, because they were like one battle after another had come back to the theaters for like I know, because you hadn't seen it.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

I hadn't seen it. That's right. I wanted to miss it. I'm glad you got to.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

But I wanted to see it in the theaters, and so it came back on a day, and then um the guild theater of Albuquerque was like also showing Begonia the same day and was leaving the next day. I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna put my helmet on, I'm gonna wear a cup, I am gonna go to both these. Hell yeah. So I basically like, yeah, like just lived in anxiety for like a solid like you know, eight hours.

SPEAKER_06 3:49

Exactly. No fear, like Tom Cruise.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yep. Yeah. So what did you think of one battle after another? One battle of nofair I thought was amazing. Like, I genuinely um I think in terms of the conversation about it, I thought was um because I saw like people kind of talking about it in the periphery. I was avoiding finding out anything about it. Yeah. But like how much I found out that like it was based on a book from the 80s made total sense to me because they were very much like the weather underground people from the 60s.

SPEAKER_06 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

And then, you know, and then like the idea of like kind of like the 80s where those old radicals are being kind of pulled apart, like in this world of kind of like of capitalism makes sense from what I read about Vineland, um, the book it came from. But it's interesting how well it transports.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, he frames it really well from his own no offense, Gen X burnouts of like we're gonna change the fucking world, and then you're like, nah, no, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

It's gonna get high. And like, and I think also, like, what do you call it? That element of you know, the radicals who are very flawed human beings. Like, you know, the fact is, it's like everybody had like, I think we're upset about how like kind of the the mother of the main character goes the way she goes, in that she, you know, she kind of betrays the cause, but there's a huge history of that of people who add like out the gate, like words like these radical, you can't touch me, and also probably kind of bipolar borderline manic level of like you know, riding a high of of a revolution. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, and then being addicted to that dopamine hit, yeah, getting huge dopamine hits off it, right? And feeling kind of like you're alive and you're on fire and the angels are singing through you, which also ties in a civil war, yeah. Which you know what I mean, like, and then and then the consequences come and your life is in danger, yeah. And you tend to blink when the danger comes at you, and like, and I think that's like what do you call it? A lot of people didn't forgive that part of the writing, but I thought it's very true.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Oh, yeah, yeah, just because you know it's uncomfortable, it's a righteous cause, but that doesn't mean that you're a traditionally good, whatever you would call good person or a good parent or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

It's like the cause can be righteous, but the but human beings are not righteous, yeah. Human beings have weird habits, yeah. And I think also the fact that the sexuality of it was the major flaw in the radical, yeah, yeah like you know what I mean? Like the the because she uses that as a weapon, but it also kind of leads to but it also kind of like puts her in danger, basically, puts her family in danger as well. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:27

If the yeah, if the mentality's rebellion, which takes you into these political circles, i you're still gonna be a rebellion in family domestication and all of that. And I love that it talked about that. Yeah, and like the the it's actually in me, it's it's in me all the way, and I don't understand these emotions, like her being jealous of her daughter is one of the things in the movie. I was just like, God damn, do you put that in there? Like that was crazy, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, but it feels but it feels very real. It does. Oh yeah, yeah, it's and so I yeah, I genuinely thought it was great, and I but I thought it was like it was great in a way that like annoys people. I find that like greatness in like novels and movies can also annoy people because it doesn't have like people are looking for is this good or is this bad? Is this is this person good or is this person a bad person? Are they great or are they not great? Gotcha. You know what I mean? Like and and tragic flaws annoy people now in the States when we have like you know, I mean, yeah, it's good for Shakespeare, but like for Americans, it's like don't I don't want to see tragic flaws with my heroes because that doesn't get me off. And we also because Americans have a really bad habit of saying, like, I identify with this character. I like characters I identify with.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

But truthfully, the character they're identifying with, they have no fucking resemblance to. Oh, yeah. The fact is, is we are all incredibly flawed creatures.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

It's a fantasy, yeah. I want to project that idea.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

I want to project that idea onto the fantasy. So, like, if there was a tragic flaw in the hero, then you can't you can't fuck with that fantasy. That's not a fantasy you can get off on. Yeah. Like, you know, like nobody watches Hamlet and is like, I'm like Hamlet, you know what I mean? Like, we're very few people do. You know, very few people are watching Macbeth and being like, ah, I'm like Macbeth. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, because they are flawed. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, exactly. And that's and that's what makes them like tragic heroes.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah. Yeah, we want to be Americans, we want to be part of the story. We want to be thus.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Well, we want to be elemental. We don't like the idea of a flaw. We like the idea of being a pure thing, part of the gem, no flaws in us, nothing wrong with us. We want that for our heroes because we want to project ourselves onto those heroes. Yeah, yeah. But that's that's a losing fucking game.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

Oh, yeah. And and I I think it can be interesting when your heroes are flawed. I don't know if it's the exact same when your villains are a little too charming. Because I think when we start talking real-world politics, we it's no fuck that. Like, uh, bad is bad, and I'm not gonna sit here and go, yeah, but he's I don't want to hear it anymore. Like that became such a thing, rightfully so. So now that you have a three-hour movie where you're a central hero, like one of the things they kept saying is like, he doesn't save the day, I don't like that. I was like, I get it, I get it.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

I I don't think he's the hero anyway.

SPEAKER_05 9:27

No, like like but he's the one I'm watching the most, and it's and he is hilarious, he's a beautiful, beautiful clown of a human being. Yeah, and that's that's where I th just how we square these things away, which will come up in this movie a lot, is like good guys aren't always good, and it gets scary when you can't pinpoint all the way the true evil in the room. Like just the straight that's a bad guy. Right. If you can't do that, we do get uncomfortable, we do get cagey in the world. No, for sure, and more so the last two decades it's been that way. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I think so. Yeah, and and yeah, that I think that's what people get confused with Leo's characters, like, yeah, he's a goof. He's not completely inept, and he isn't the main character. He's constantly playing catch up uh and trying to find what's going on. But the story is about him actually being a good parent and actually raising her correctly. Right, right, right. And she gets out of the situation on her own. Right. I mean, she's the one who is.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

She is she is the hero of the character, she is the hero of the story. Exactly. And she has probably the most difficult path to take in the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Oh yeah. It's so good. It's really great.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I just I like I've been I didn't want to derail your shit.

SPEAKER_05 10:35

No, no, but like but in terms of like it's a great movie to talk about for both.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I would put like in terms of like the two those two movies I saw that day that I was like using as a flex for watching uncomfortable shit. Yeah, yeah. That like this would definitely have fallen in that category. Oh yeah. Like of kind of like, we're gonna look at the sun now for a little bit. Although it's weird though, because like you said, what I thought I was going into and what I went into were two very different things.

SPEAKER_06 11:03

Okay, yeah. That's I really want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

I want to talk talking to that. William has seen this movie four times before. Holy Jesus. Yeah, I saw twice in theaters. Twice in theaters. Once when he bought it and now and then I've only seen it.

unknown 11:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

So did I. I bought it. Yeah, I watched it on 4K Blu-ray that I bought, and I only saw it once in theaters and then once again. So I bought it, but hadn't watched it.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Can I quiz you guys? Of course. So, like, let me ask you one. First, the first question is what did you think this movie was going to be about? So before you like just trailer-based.

SPEAKER_05 11:39

I was gonna say, even before that, when it got announced, Alex Garland's doing a movie called Civil War. I was that dumb guy, kept bugging Nick, going, I don't get how you can do that right now with Trump in office.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Right, I don't know how anyone's like no one's comfortable enough to no one's uncomfortable enough, no one's comfortable enough to show up to that story.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Well, it was during the election year. That's in so it's 2024, so he wasn't re-elected yet.

SPEAKER_05 12:03

So but that that was in my head is like before the trailer, I was just like, how are you gonna do a modern American like how are you doing that story right now that anyone wants to be a part of? Right, right. And I couldn't, I couldn't figure that out. It didn't. I think you I think you were right. And I was in that headspace of like, not you shouldn't, only you shouldn't because no one's gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 12:31

That's all I kept thinking. When the trailer came out, I think a lot of the imagery of the posters are very effective. The the gun nest on the Statue of Liberty, yeah, yeah, you know, certain things like that. So it started making it look like this was a full country at war. Yeah, the trailer made it look more like this is a smaller story. There's a road trip journalist movie. That's what got me excited is the idea of journalism in modern wartime. Right. That was my hook of like, okay, yeah, Alex is gonna crush this. This is gonna be great because that's what I was looking forward to.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah, and I didn't I liked the posters, the posters are really great, and yeah, I only remember seeing one trailer, which at the end kind of showcases that helicopter shot of in DC after the Lincoln Memorial gets blasted, which is fucking cool. Uh but um, but I didn't know that it was about like war journalists, and I didn't put that together from the trailer, so I was kind of surprised. I just I heard the same thing that William did. We obviously talk about this shit all the time when new trailers come out, but we were yeah, surprised, surprised that he was doing it at that time. And I just heard, oh, it's his first action movie. So I was just like, oh, cool. What a what a horrible take. No, exactly, you know, and it's marketing, I guess, right? But I was just like, okay, because there were, yeah, sure, there's action and stuff, but he's not an action director or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

But also, yeah, that's not the kind of action anyone that's not like John Wick, where you're like, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

You're like, ugh, yeah, you know what I mean? Like it's different, yeah. So it's it's just which I guess is to be expected with him. It's usually pretty accurate stuff. But yeah, so I didn't know what to expect going in. And so besides me knowing him and knowing like, oh, this is kind of a fucking dicey subject, so I I was taken uh by surprise with the with the journalism aspect, um, and then pleasantly surprised just with kind of with the story. And I actually left not liking it as much as I thought I would, and then re-watching it now, I love it so much more. I really liked it enough to buy it and like I think it's fucking brilliant now watching it now. But yeah, what what was your expectations of of it these past couple years since you haven't seen it?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, so I didn't watch it right because I probably was like a lot of people, probably like you said, where it was like, Oh fucker, I don't need this right now. You know what I mean? Like, and also I had far more trepidation about the the 2024 election going the way of like a rough uh conservative band just because I I after the pandemic I don't trust Americans to make good decisions.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

The um just inherently now.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yeah, working in the medical field.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Like, yeah, just I watched a lot of people make dumb bad decisions and in a row and die from it. And so there was part of that. But that's our god getting right, John. Sorry, okay. The uh well, I mean, yeah, there was a there like there was a part of like that where it was kind of like, yeah, I think there was this element of kind of like, this doesn't appeal to me. Like you know what I mean? Like I I'm like I'm already anxious right now. Yeah, like um this seems like this is gonna up that a little bit more. And I think also I didn't understand what it was about. I think just like because I would heard things, and I we'll get into that kind of like his world was an illogical world, and I think he did that intentionally, but it also it's kind of a strange dissonant element of it. Like that British element and like how the the the the the like the we'll take we'll call it like the chemical makeup of the civil war in the storyline. Like in the civil in the like what I had heard was like the California and Texas are gonna get together and secede. Yeah, right? I was like, that doesn't make any fucking sense. Right? Like, why what is even the logic to that in a kind of like science fiction y way? Like, you know, like there is part of this that is science fiction, right? That's speculative fiction. And with speculative fiction, you have to have a logic of it in order for the like reader, watcher to like understand what the rules are.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Yeah, you have to buy into the you have to buy into the conceit, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

And it already was like, like, what? You know what I mean? Like, and at the moment, like, and then of course there was the visuals of the the trailers where you're like, ooh. And like, and I think I didn't realize how much of it would have been based on journalism, as like the main, honestly, the um driving force of it, in terms of probably the heart of it, yeah, is largely like him thinking about journalists in conflict.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Yeah, it's about neutral parties trying to capture the terrible things that human beings are doing to each other.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Right, but he doesn't, but he thinks it in a way that is kind of impossible for the um audience not to be kind of like torn apart at. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're not just like I mean, he could have done a very similar movie to like Bosnian, like the Bosnian-Serbian conflict where there was like this inner civil war between a former you know state of Yugoslavia, and it and I almost wonder if that wasn't an influence on him, because I remember seeing the images of it.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

There is a film called Harrison's Flowers with Elias Koteus that is about journalism, uh, journalists in uh that uh conflict. I forget when it came out. It's good. I loved it as a kid, but it is that movie, and I don't know if he's ever referenced that being a uh starting point for this. I I haven't heard of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And I think that was like when I was watching it. I had a lot of those images I remember seeing when I think I was like in high school. Gotcha. Like um, and being and it could and it was very disorienting because like up until that moment I had seen conflicts that looked like other places or looked like the old times.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

And I think that's why people were uncomfortable with the trailer because you're like, oh shit, this is war in a modern America, and that's right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Because it feels like that. Yeah, no, you're right. The um I think like in terms of the disorienting aspect of that conflict, the Yugoslavian, you know, then Bosnian-Serbian conflict was the fact that like they were dressed like I was dressed.

SPEAKER_05 18:40

I was just about to say that's when we saw tracksuits and guns going. Right. I know people that look like that. That's right. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Like they were they were dressed like the people around me, and and you were watching just bodies of people who were dressed like you and like and who were like your age and kind of looked like you. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, and that was very like really up until that moment. I mean, if I think about like, yeah, I'd seen, you know, you'd seen conflicts in Africa, and you'd seen conflicts in the Middle East, and you'd seen, you know, old war footage from like Vietnam. But like that conflict looked like the world I recognized. Yeah, it's military. It's but but militarized, yeah, in a way, like and militarized and like oh what do you call it? thrown through the inferno of war. Yeah, like you know, transported to like transported to a nightmare world of war and one that like looked like my world. Yeah. In a way which remarkably, I mean the fact is it's like I don't know that I'd seen that up until that moment. Yeah, like and they reminded me a lot of that those sensations. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Yeah, it's an uncomfortable proposition, especially at that time, and it is that's one of the fascinating things about our American perspective and why it's important that I think he's British, is because our brains in 2024 and even now can't process a movie about an American Civil War that isn't about politics and sides and conservative versus liberal, and he does none of those things.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

A good guy and a bad guy. Well, that's the problem, though.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Like, but our American brains are just like no no no no, that's not how it would work. You don't understand. Right, right, right. You don't understand us. Texas and California wouldn't get together, and I think his reasoning for that is like, why wouldn't the two most powerful states in the United States see a guy who's forcing a third term, depend or regardless of what his political affiliations are, and be like, uh, the United States can't survive without us, so let's team up and fuck him up.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

That's that's that was that his actual logic? I think so.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

He's like, Yeah, but if if you're actually about the Constitution, and he's he underestimates how stupid a lot of Americans are, I think. But but I think that's one of the things where obviously we live here, we understand how it is, but our our we are so, and it's I don't think it's polarized. Polarized is way too much of a fucking thrownabout word, and we talk about it too much these days, but like we are so embedded in our own politics that it's difficult for us not to automatically assume that a civil war film or story uh isn't gonna be highly polarized, exactly like our political. Oh, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And I know that's kind of why he did it, right? Like with the fact that like he's like, I'm gonna make you, I'm not gonna give you the um satisfaction of seeing what you expect. Yeah, right. I'd like I get that really.

SPEAKER_05 21:31

It's the fuck the fans thing in my head for him is I know what movie I made the joke is like this isn't Reddit, the movie is like I know how you want to split these lines, right? I know there are people on the internet that want this movie to show the South has all the guns, the South has all the rednecks and all the military. They would crush the liberal elite coastal losers because you're all uh sissies. Like, I know that's what you want. Texans, California put them together. Fuck you. This isn't the world you're in. And I'm not talking about your little theories online. I'm not getting it. It's all there, by the way, but I'm not talking about it. Right. So you can clip and meme this movie up. Like it feels intentionally fuck you. I want to just cut a huge group of people that'll go, oh, I'll never see it. He did it wrong. He goes, Thank you. Stay out of the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

No, but that's the thing, is like that also was like, what do you call it? Like, I get the the instinct of it, the artistic instinct of it. Because yeah, he's like, I want to do a civil war, but I don't want you guys to get caught up in your normal bullshit. Yeah. So I want you to see it, but I don't want you to be like, I start, I don't want you to be identifying with the parties, right? I don't want you guys to start hooking up and being like, I'm I'm that side. I'm like Texas California. No one has ever said I'm the Texas California party. It's almost impossible to say that out loud. I'm part of the Texas Californian union. Yeah. Right? Like, no, like your body, the American brain just immediately shrieks. And then like, you know, or I'm with the like, you know, the secessionist in Florida or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Like, uh, God bless, I wish they would anyway. They like uh but the issue though is that that element, that dissonant element, it keeps kind of grading to the watcher who is an American watching it because you're keeping like, wait, what? What? You know, like there's kind of this element of it, like it doesn't go away. But like even though you're watching the movie and getting caught up in the movie, it still is kind of like like for instance, the United States that is uh, you know, the fractured United States, but the ones who call themselves the United States of America, like is this part that like has these people have seceded from, and they, in terms of their presence, are presenting as MAGA-esque, right? They present very MAGA-esque in terms of they are xenophobic, which is also odd for this civil war, because civil wars that's another part that's confusing in it, because there's a moment, um, like, are we jumping ahead? I worry about sometimes, but when we are whenever I come over, I just talk to you guys like I would talk to you in a table. Go for it. But we're not, we don't ever go over no the plot points. There's no strike, like we're never like, hey, what hits us is what the movie's about. Yeah, yeah. Like the movie starts here. Yeah, no, you and I just start talking, like you and I when we like when we hang out, just start talking. Is that okay? Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_05 24:37

It is, but I do want to ask you while we stay on, I want to stay on the Texas California thing and the expectation. Is this movie better or worse if it was more accurate to the current schisms in American politics?

SPEAKER_00 24:50

No, that's the thing. It's like for what he's trying to do here, he kind of has to do it this way. Like the the fact is, is if he he is not doing a legitimate projection of the future.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

But what he is trying to do is I'm gonna show you like war, and I'm gonna put it in the middle of the United States so you can kind of swim in it for a little while here. And you can swim in this war and see what it would look like, right? But I'm not giving you the satisfaction of being able to identify with fucking anyone, with the exception of maybe the journalists, right? And I and if he had done it the normal way, right? Like if he had done it down the splits that are currently existing, and it just been, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna accelerate this and I'm gonna accentuate this, right? It would not have been able, he would not have been able to make the movie he wants to make. And I 100% get that's kind of the conflict of the um creation of it.

SPEAKER_05 25:47

And that's what every I think I'm assuming is that that's what everyone was kind of hesitant about, thinking it was the alt-right Trump is Hitler movie, where it's like, I don't need to see a re reenactment of January 6th. I don't need to see the terms and everything we are seeing be played out in that way. Right. I think that's what everybody was scared about.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

What he is doing is being like, I'm gonna show you like an ending like uh Romania, like the end of like a dictator like in Romania, where they they were executed like in front of everybody, basically. Or I'm gonna show you like kind of like like you know, the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, but I'm gonna put it in a place that you're not comfortable with, and then make you kind of I'm gonna make you hang out in it, and you're gonna be uncomfortable. The issue with an American though is like we are so at the moment programmed in these dividing lines, and also it's kind of like I would say, like, I was trying to think of, you know, from the little like, you know, like like Britishness I know, right? I was trying to think of the best way to communicate it to someone who was British. And I was like, I was trying to think, like, if I was like talk to them, we'd be like, well, imagine South London getting together with Newcastle and then fighting the Dorset region or something like that. You know, like I'm trying to like, you know what I mean? Like in some way that, like, you know, like like where they would be like, what the hell are you talking about? That's what I'm saying. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're like, are those far away? Is that next-door neighbors? You know what I mean? Like, well, that's what I'm saying. Like, you say, like, you know, like the the Newcastle is kind of known, sort of like northern region. Okay, like kind of talk kind of funny, like, uh, and kind of like working classy, like they have like like you know, like the whole sort of cult of Newcastle people. And then the the the the South Londoners are like sort of known for being kind of snobby. So it's kind of like the idea of those two getting together. Yeah. I think. I think if I remember, if I know my like, you know, like the little bit of the UK, I know, but like, and like I'm like, could they be like gonna be like, and then they like, you know, I don't know, they fight Ireland, you know what I mean? Like, or something like that. Yeah, you know what I mean? There's some way that they could communicate I could communicate to them this is hard for us because like like it's like these old dividing lines of like say Texas and California, yeah, yeah, are so hardwired into us is this is this, this is that, that it's hard to like 100% put it away.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Like I can put it away somewhat, because eventually this movie kind of takes over and does its own thing, but there's always that element in the back of my mind where I'm like, yeah, but I mean, it could, you know, the governor of California could have come from Orange County, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Or something like that, uh, which is a notoriously conservative part of California that no one really talks about. Yeah, exactly. Right. San Diego, maybe. But uh I I I can it makes more sense in my head the more I watch it. When that's what I was gonna say, I had kind of the same reaction. I think that's how I I that's why I felt like I didn't know how to fully wrap my head around it the first time I watched it. And watching it this second time, I was like maybe it just goes away after enough time. Well, and that's the thing, it's it's I think he's going for I mean uh I mean we've been talking about it, but he's going for broader strokes, especially coming from the angle of journalism. All these people, and we see it in the movie, especially with Lee covering all these different conflicts and and how numb she is to it. So it's like all this is, all war is, is human beings killing one another.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Right. And actually, and but the funny part is about that moment, which I thought was a really good moment, where she was like, I had hoped that Americans would see this and be like, Oh, I never want that here, right? Yeah, which is kind of like um, what do you call it, like a pivotal seed of her character. The fact that like her supposed, you know, purpose is ruined, or like her supposed purpose is like irrelevant.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah, because she it yeah, she couldn't she couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

And I there were two things that happened to me when she said it. One was like Alex Carland, if you wanted that for this movie, you're like 10 years too late. You know what I mean? Like, that was kind of like if that was your attempt to do with this movie, was to make us go like, oh, I don't want that. Oh yeah. Like don't like you're like late on this.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Yeah, he's underestimating the stupidity.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Like how far into how far into our like the fact that the um current state is so locked in right now, it's very hard for us to like turn this cart around that's riding off the cliff.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

So anyone who believes in all this kind of shit, they're not gonna watch this movie anyway, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Right, right, right. And like it's gonna bug him to no end because they have a view of the of the states, it's very hard for them to shake. I think. But the other part I thought of is like like the other thought I had simultaneously when Lee makes that comment about I had hoped that by showing the like Americans these conflicts that they would know not to do it here. My other thought for her character was like, you dumb bitch. That's it. Americans' abilities to like disassociate for anything that doesn't look exactly like them is fucking hot shit, like white hot as the sun. Like the power of that is so intense for us to disassociate and not empathize with people who don't look exactly like us. It's sound exactly like us.

SPEAKER_05 31:00

It's even it's e in my head, it's even worse and more cynical than that, where I reference the the Eastern block dude in a tracksuit with a gun. That's fucking cool over here. Yeah, like because we're so far away. The troubles looked cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there's dudes like smoking cigarettes in like a chore coat with an AK, and we're like, that's kind of badass. That's a flex. Like that's aura and all of those words. I think that is Alex as Lee because that whole, oh, I thought I was doing this. No, you're punk rock, you're cool, and the younger girl, yeah, no understanding of the politics of a scenario, no understanding of who's being hurt and what, and what that means, what how you're supposed to react to human pain. She just goes, It's really cool to see it because I saw it through your photos. As Americas, we've watched everything pop off far away, and two things happen. We're detached, so it's a movie and it looks cool, and two, our ego goes, We could do that. I haven't, and I want to. Right. Like, I kinda am itching to take the capital. I'm itching to go fight a like we have that in us, and that's so much of like the the fringe uh alt scenes right now. Is the I'm not in the military. I love dressing like it. Oh, god, I love talking like it. I love my truck to look like like yes, I want to I like I love playing it online. The cosplay is so huge with us because we're itching to do what everybody else has done in history, and we've never had the chance. Modern.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

And I'm gonna look so cool doing it.

SPEAKER_05 32:45

That's what that line is to me, is I think Alex, a little pompous from the place that got bombed out in World War II, trying to tell us this is the point of this, is it's supposed to suck. And then we go, yeah, but it looks kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 33:01

And I I like he puts it in the movie. I hope it's intentional and he's not that it has to be. That's why that's Jesse's whole thing with it.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:09

But that's how I take that line is I don't think he deems journalism as high regard as maybe he's saying, because this movie's really showing like well, I think he heard they're shit people, but I think they're broken.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

He's I don't think it's a knock on journalism, and I don't think he has a knock on journalism, but I think he he is so pessimistic or maybe realistic about humanity's self-destructive behavior.

SPEAKER_05 33:40

At a certain point, the pessimism's turned to realism, where we're at.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Yeah, the we are incapable of learning how to treat each other well. Like we don't want to, we have it right there, it's boring, goodness is in us, but goddamn is stupidity more powerful than anything.

SPEAKER_05 33:56

So, yeah, like and I think all of his films and stuff gotta tell that she she saw hanging bodies in the car wash, and instead of being scared, I gotta go see that. Like that was her mentality.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

But you mean the younger one? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:13

Jesse, when they stopped for gas. Like, that was the thing, is the old guy. That's a good name. I forget his name. The guy from Devs, the guy we love. Sammy, he's there, he's like, I'm not leaving this fucking car. We gotta do this as quick as possible because you don't want to be in the guys. She saw that and was like, I gotta get as close as possible. This is exciting and cool. She's not reading these situations. That is us, that is America for so many years of getting so close. We just opened this talking about how like we've trivialized and memed January 6th, and now the story is it wasn't that bad, and it was kind of light, and they just got to go in, and there's so few deaths, and blah blah blah. Like, we didn't see that as a warning.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Oh, we did. We got it, but there was there was enough people who did not.

SPEAKER_05 35:02

Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't see it that way. A lot of people were like, I want to get as close as possible to this. Right, right. And then we back away and go, see, nothing happened. Like, I still have my job.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Well, we want to have they want to have their cake and eat it too. That's we all do. That's America. That is all of us, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

I think, yeah, the um the the journalism aspect of it, I think that's part of the thing where I like I liked this movie, but like there were elements of it where I was like, like, you know, and I'm not one of those people who mean who I where I feel like a movie has to be one thing. I don't believe that. I think it's better if it doesn't. But it's weird when it feels like it's trying to be like one thing and it's not quite getting there. And like, and you know what I mean? Like, and I kept thinking like after the fact, after watching it, like, Alex, what did you want from this movie? What did you want to say? What did you want to say? What are you trying to say? What is this movie? Like, I feel like he probably went into it with imagery. Like, he probably went into it, like a lot of us, like, write, like, we write like in terms of we see a thing in our head, sure, and then we try to make it work. Yeah, right. Like we go image to image. We go, like, he probably saw this conflict, he saw the journalists, yeah. And then had to write it together.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Yeah, how can you get close to this without telling the story of a like a soldier or something like that? Without telling the sides, okay, journalists. Right, right. He found a way in.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Like he found a way in, right? Like the um, but like I kept being like, what is this movie meaning to say? Is it about journalism? Is it about conflict? Is it about like what America, like the tragedy of America letting in this kind of demon into its side, like inside again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

I think all of that is there, and uh one of the keys that kind of made this click, and the episode that comes out tomorrow, uh, with our our friend Antonio, which isn't out yet, but it's men. And he brought up a great fucking point, especially when we only have a couple movies left uh in this season. We only have three left, is Alex Garland is obsessed with doppelgangers. Okay. And I I we hadn't really kind of clicked with this. Um it's all there, and it's yeah, it's kind of very fascinating, at least it especially in Civil War, where we are watching Jesse become and replace Lee.

SPEAKER_05 37:22

Yes. But in my opinion, back to the never let me go and the annihilation is the soulless version of like Lee has that mantra. Lee has like an emotional, like an ethos in of like, I'm trying to do something for the world. I have a story, I have a purpose, I have a message. The thing replacing her, built on her, mirroring her, yeah, does not have that. She's here for the cool shot, she's here for the thrill, and we've lost a message. Yeah, she's a lost meaning.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

She's a mix of Lee and Joel. Joel is a thrill seeker. He may he may be a journalist, he's he's there for the thrill. Lee is not there for the thrill.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Oh man, I gotta say, can we just talk about Joel for a sec? They're like one of the things I was saying, like there were certain things that like were always kind of like on me while I was watching this. And if it's about journalism, it annoyed me to no end that neither Joel nor Sammy was ever taking fucking notes. Notes, they never were writing, and it annoys me whenever like writer characters are not writing, like you know, or taking notes or you know, just like taking pictures of documents, or you know what I mean? Like, so for further reference in the future, yeah, and like he is never writing, yeah. Or taking one note, like one, like, oh, this is you know, yeah, this is so many things.

SPEAKER_05 38:45

He's and this is a thing. Fuck you, do not work for Reuters, you work for Vice. Like you're you're the weed coke hipster guy from Williamsburg that's like I'm gonna go hang out with a cartel and then just use a few of their words to like make this spicy. Yeah, I'm doing I'm doing like rip-off Bourdain shit. That guy is not a good journalist at all.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

No, not even close, not even close, and you don't get that from him. Like, you don't, like, he does not, you know, like it's a great question. Like, what kind of like journalist do you think Joel is? Yeah, and thank you, actually. Really, William, the vice journalist is the best possible submission for like maybe the journalist he is. Sammy strikes me as probably more of like an Atlantic, you know, he was like New Yorker.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

They mentioned the whatever writing for the whatever remains of the New York Times.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Right, right, right, right. And and like, but he also is not taking any fucking notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was driving me crazy. That's hilarious. It's like, you motherfuckers, you're right, yeah. Like, and also there's moments where she's driving, like like Lee's driving. Yeah, those two should have in the back, yeah, like writing, yeah, yeah. Right? Like, like motherfuckers, when are you gonna get the time otherwise? They're here for the hands. You're gonna be doing it in the car, fucker. Yeah, like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Like just like getting sleep, you should probably be writing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

You fuckers should be writing.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

But I don't, and this is the thing too, I think is the only way that I can excuse it, because I agree with you, I think we should see them going else, is they at least once they are going to DC to find the story. Right, but they are seeing the story on the way. But I I think that they're not seeing that that's the story. We are watching the story, but they, as the characters, are just like, oh, we're driving from point A to point B, and at point B the story becomes. But I but I talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

But in terms of like, if they had if they were people who had ever been paid for a job writing, like I have a hard time imagining that like they wouldn't have recognized the fact, also like if anything, journalists are like or like any kind of kind of writer, which is they are wildly egotistical. So the fact that their lives came in danger multiple times, yeah. They would write about it, they would have written it, they would have written about it, they would not have been like, you know, sure, I you know almost got you know executed. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna leave that part out. The fuck you say. The um the fuck you say.

SPEAKER_05 41:12

Absolutely. The other example that I think none of these people are good journalists is we've watched one movie about a really good journalist, Al Pacino, at the beginning of The Insider, of like he came in with a bag on his head and he talked his way out and got a phone. Like these guys, when they meet Jesse Plemens, everyone crumbles. As if the war's been going on for this long, they've never been around guns. Right, right. No one knows how to sweet talk a scenario like at all. Right.

SPEAKER_06 41:42

And that's where I was like, aren't good at this.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Like, I think they're good. But also, like, they they would have been put in positions where they met those psychopaths.

SPEAKER_05 41:53

That's what I'm saying, yeah. Al Pacino's there, he knows how to calm Jesse Clemens down, and he knows how to get the fuck out of there. He knows not to say you're from Hong Kong, he knows to say my grandparents are, or my parents are, I'm from Queens, or I'm from like this is enough to be.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

But that itself, that was another bit though, right? Like where the the the xenophobia aspect of the war, right, doesn't make any sense in this conflict, right? In a civil war, the rest of the world becomes kind of irrelevant. It is us and them, right? The us and them element that, like, and that's the part that I was like just north and south, right? We're not thinking anybody. We're not thinking about France, we're not thinking about Mexico. You fuckers are irrelevant because we're here to fight. And there was actually, I remember like reading what was it, this article about football sucker, where somebody was like, you know, there's like this Italian team going to the World Cup, but they don't give a hot fuck about the World Cup. Their lives are based on like Milan versus Rome. They live their lives and they die their lives about that conflict. Yeah, yeah. And like in this case, like where that like he's like, where are you from? He says Hong Kong and he shoots him. It doesn't make any sense. Like the person he would have shot would have been someone from California, so I or it would have been someone from Texas.

SPEAKER_05 43:16

I this is one of those scenes. It's he should have shot him when he said Florida, yeah. It's epic in the trailer, and the first time I saw it, I was like, Beyond how great Jesse Plemens is, just incredible. He's incredible. He's a great thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

He comes in and Pagonia. I like like somehow raised my opinion of him, and it was already higher than it could have been.

SPEAKER_05 43:36

Yeah, it's insane. He just came on and uh knocks this out. But this was the scene. The first time I saw it, I was like, that's such a good scene. It's so disturbing and it's oh for sure. Then the more I watched it a second time, and then the internet started catching on that what kind of American are you? And it's been memeed, and like we all use it in such a good line at such a good moment. But then it feels weird that he. He's going out towards the people that aren't American. So the what kind of American, South American, Central American, he says Florida. And he does he gives a pass. He goes, okay, Central. He likes the Missouri and the Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Which makes sense because they are not part of the secessionists.

SPEAKER_05 44:19

So this is where I think if the scene plays out, uh, what's his name? Um Wagnamora. Joel. Joel's the next out.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

For sure. Joel shouldn't have been shot first.

SPEAKER_05 44:31

He's on the list of I'm killing everybody that's not of the states I like. But I also like the idea that because there's a civil war, that guy might not even know there's a fucking war going on. There's no reason to kill the whole town. Right. Like, was the town part of do you see what I'm saying? Like there's an idea of that's a serial killer, and says the government's in chaos, I can now just kill whoever I want. Right. My racism doesn't stop because the country's fighting in its own little thing. I can still totally be racist and kill women and white women and children. There's a white little baby in that pile.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:12

So, like, there is an idea of if we break our rules of society, yeah, guys like that also get to start killing, and you have no idea why they kill. So I still like the idea that he holds the line of just being a racist scumbag and it's not a political, I'm killing people for like my team.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Right, right, right. I that's so much more disturbing to me. But like if you take like in the case of like like the case of the Bosnian-Serbian thing, like that was definitely what do you call it? That was ethnic. It just wasn't an ethnic Americans could understand.

SPEAKER_06 45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

You know what I mean? Like, because it's not, you know, ones we like it was not formats we we recognized. But like white on whites. It was like white on whites, but it's like, why are the white people shooting the white people?

SPEAKER_02 45:54

And there's no slaves to be followed by the city.

SPEAKER_05 45:57

And I know this is uh I know it's very uncomfortable, but like the truth of the matter is is if we did go into a modern civil war, we all have to understand, as uncomfortable as it is, there's a certain group of people that the minute we went to war and anarchy broke, they would go, Well, I'm killing all the Muslims.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 46:17

I've wanted to forever.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Right.

SPEAKER_05 46:19

Now we're all fighting, uh, we're all banging it out.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

So, like, Siri Hick Siri clip that.

SPEAKER_05 46:24

Yeah, like the all of the all the racists and the xenophobic and the anti-uh Semitic people, they would a million percent use this moment to go, well, I'm gonna go do the thing that that will for sure happen when America gets there.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Well, that's the thing though, is but that's what Alex Garland isn't allowing.

SPEAKER_05 46:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Right? Like, because right now, like, we already talked about the fact that like there is a a split in America right now that we all recognize very easily. That like an outsider might not necessarily recognize as well, right? That um because other people's shit, you know, it's kind of like you know, yeah, like your fan your house has a logic to it that I might not recognize, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Yeah, right, because it's you know, yeah, it's an external representation of your brain kind of.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Right, exactly. Whereas if you went to my house, he'd be like, Why is this over here? Right, like just but in this case, he is trying to go against that. So the the the xenophobic aspect of it shouldn't really be in there because it's cleaner if it's not. Because if it does, then that immediately sets me into like that's a MAGA guy. Like when I saw that, I was like, that reads to me like MAGA because MAGA is known for their xenophobia, yeah. And known for their sort of fear of other.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Right? Sexual other, you know, ethnic other, whatever, racial other. Any any other, right? Yeah, like and that moment reads like those people. Sure. Like, right, and that immediately puts me back in my world. Whereas he's trying to get me out of it. Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_05 47:56

He's trying to be like But here's the thing. I don't think he is trying to get you out of it. I think he set that Texas, California, and the Florida separatist big picture. We're not going there. Right. This is what I told Nick is I'm still not giving I'm still a little off on is this or is this not the movie everyone was scared of it. We still invade the White House and murder the president.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Right. But is it a good thing or a bad thing?

SPEAKER_05 48:22

And that's where I sit with this movie, the more I see it. So the very first uh shootout they go to, they're watching it at night, they're talking about how horny they are for it and excited for the action.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Right, right.

SPEAKER_05 48:33

And then they get there. The people who are very vice journalists. Very vice. The guys they're with are essentially the Bugaloo boys. Those are uh it's an alt-right movement, it's a white supremacist typical, typically, not always, but it is an alt-right movement that has identified themselves in their whole thing is they wear the Hawaiian shirts. Oh, is it? That's in this movie.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

That's interesting. I didn't get that.

SPEAKER_05 49:00

So that's who they are.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 49:03

They win that battle.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Right.

SPEAKER_05 49:06

They kill that military. Right. They gun down the vic they gun down prisoners tied up. Right. War crimes galore. Right. That's who our reporter main characters are hanging out with.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Right.

SPEAKER_05 49:18

Because the Bugaloo boys, the alt-right guys, the book.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

But they're not, but they're not alt-right in this case, right? Like what like this. Are they or are they not? In this world, they are just, it's kind of like they're the equivalent of like they are separatists. Like in in our civil world, but we do.

SPEAKER_05 49:36

Because no one talked about it yet.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

But that what we're giving. We're given clues, right? The clues are that like the United States, like in this movie, has the good uniform. The separatists, the secessionists, have the kind of wonky uniforms, like the civilian uniforms with the military gear strapped over it.

SPEAKER_05 49:55

The Texas army.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Like the Texas California, the Texas California Union, right? Those are the ones who are dressed irregular. So it's the irregular dress.

SPEAKER_05 50:05

No, the Texas is the military. Texas takes the White House.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

I thought it was like no, it's but it's the union. It's a union California union.

SPEAKER_05 50:13

Well, the Texas-California. Those are together. That's the military. So Texas White House.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Texas is a California are called the Western Forces. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Western Forces. The Western Forces is militarized, not militia. I thought the Western Forces was the one that like basically, because they're the ones that started with the most power, and it's the secessionists that are coming up without with like that to put their military together, basically. Because they don't start with the military. The United States starts with a military.

SPEAKER_05 50:41

See, and I think I think Texas the movie intentionally makes it unclear.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

The Western forces are just as militarized as the United States of America. Right at the end. The third act action scene is military versus military. Right. Just one has surrendered, being the United States of America, as they say, uh at the Western Forces camp. They've surrendered.

SPEAKER_05 51:02

Yeah, that camp is the Texas-California Western Forces. Right, right, right, right, right. You're right. And they're a very normal military camp.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

But in terms of what we're seeing, like with those guys, we're talking about the guys in the Hawaiian shirts, and we're talking about the sniper with his scout, which are both dudes from Devs. The guy that makes the the joke that you like the spotter. That's Sergei. No way. Yes, that's Sergei. Oh, that's funny. And the guy who's the sniper is the boyfriend. Yeah. So it's the two boyfriends. Oh, they did great in that side. From Devs. Yeah, there was a there were actually. I didn't know that was Sergei because yeah, I was like, I like that guy. Yeah. But but those guys and the guys in the Hawaiian shirts, we don't know what side they're on. That's what I'm saying. We just know that they're from interesting. So let's just say that's the first thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

That's I read them as Western forces because they were going against the the military group there.

SPEAKER_05 51:48

But that's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

Because at that point, like the what do you call it? So the United States in this movie is falling apart. Like, and the secessionists are making the Western forces are making their ways inwards. And probably the White House. And probably gaining states as they go. That is the impression we get, right? Like that they are winning state by state by state, and that the United States, uh, which had started as this larger union than the um secessionist Western forces, is shrinking to the point where it just ends up, we're just ending up in DC, and the president is falling apart, basically.

SPEAKER_02 52:24

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the United States forces are losing ground and Texas and California are uh gaining ground. But I think that there's smaller pockets. There's smaller.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

There's smaller pockets of conflicts in between all that.

SPEAKER_05 52:36

Because state by state, you don't know where they sit with uh the old guard or the Western forces. Yeah, exactly. That's my whole point with fight.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Which is also mad.

SPEAKER_05 52:48

The very first action scene we see uh through my optics of uh being on the horrible corners of the internet, they're with the alt-right.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 52:59

And the alt-right wins the battle because when they see the shooting, they don't know who's doing what. Right, right, right. And they're journalists. They're not, he specifically opens that whole night with like, I just want to go with the action, is they don't have a side.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

Because that's the thing, too, is yeah, exactly. So I don't think they have a side either. And I'm just remembering that with the United States soldiers, it's mentioned, oh, they kill journalists on sites you're in. Exactly. Right, right, right. So anybody else, these have to be.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

Oh, and I think that was also the reason I thought the guys in the Hawaiian shirts were Western forces. Because the journalists were safe. Yeah. And also because we know at the beginning that the United States is collapsing.

SPEAKER_03 53:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

So I'm assuming this was my assumptions, and you might be right. I might be wrong. Like the um my assumption in going into that scene is this is a a visualization of the collapsing of the United States like army, and these are outside forces coming in and kind of slowly taking ground or getting the city.

SPEAKER_05 53:56

And it could be because our characters are there, it's easy for us to go, well, they're with the good side. Well, I don't call it, we don't, I don't think he wants, I don't think Alex wants us to say good side.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:07

I think he's purposely playing with modern uh uh movements to show of like you you really can't tell the good and the bad side. Yeah, right, right. I agree. To me, just uh the way because he's purposely using those Hawaiian shirts, we're with the bad guys creating war crimes and kind of having fun with it. That's so fascinating to me. And it's so unsettling and disturbing to me the fact that your your first action scene is set with we're we're with the alt-right, so to speak. If that if that's I don't read it, I don't read them as alt-right though. If that's my read of it, that's why that scene means so much to me, because it's deeply disturbing beyond.

SPEAKER_02 54:49

Well, and that's a they're they're there to document right whatever it is. Yeah, they don't think that's part of the message of the film.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

But the fact that they're allowed in makes me think they're Western forces. And the fact that they tell them And it could be, and they could be secessionists. And in the case of like when we meet Jesse Plemens' character, his reaction to them makes me think he's the United States. Because he doesn't like journalists or whatever. Or at the very least, he's immediately unsettled by that.

SPEAKER_05 55:18

But again, it's it's oh let's just go with that and go down that road of if it's Texas and California, are w I mean, are we not gonna say the alt-right has a pretty good hold in Texas right now? I mean, so like if if the alt-right, if that uh thing comes up against a president that forces a third term, takes action and starts killing civilians, the two-way, the second amendment, the 1770, the three percent, all of those guys, they might flip on the government because they've been gov anti-government this whole time. It just so happens the personality in government they enjoy. They're always anti-government. So if the government goes that way, they could be Texas Western forces. They could.

SPEAKER_00 56:04

Yeah, of course. But you keep thinking about it.

SPEAKER_05 56:15

They can still be racist, horrible scumbags, right? But you're just shooting at the end of the state.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

But like in the case of it, if you look up but if you look up the the ethnic and racial group up of the group of the people who are in that moment, right?

SPEAKER_05 56:30

Leader of the Proud Boys was a Mexican.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

The um I mean for God's sakes, it's not true. Because they take the worst jobs.

SPEAKER_05 56:35

They like uh Well, hey, uh we we take where the work is.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

But anyway, but like, but I'm just saying, like, in terms of like what do you call it, the racial makeup of both groups is pretty diverse. Yeah. Like in both cases. Yeah, so like it's a big thing. They really, so it won't really, what do you call it? Yeah, no, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Like, the fact is it's like But the racial makeup won't tell us anything. And it that's not anyone's intentionally ambiguously at that point.

SPEAKER_05 57:02

Yeah, but the sniper having the the the coded trans flag uh painted fingernails, like he's he's playing with modern imagery without taking a stance on it, putting a nut. Which is intentional, yes, purposely to confuse everyone's brain.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

That is that is the part of me that was like this aspect is a dissonant aspect for American because you we're all right now we want to know, like like we're watching it and we're trying to pick it apart and make sense of it to our current state and our current habits, right? So, like, while one hand, like it's a movie about journalism and conflict, the American is constantly like their brain is going at a month a hundred miles an hour, right? Like, trying to be like, well, this looks like this, and this looks like that must mean they must be this, that means they must be that. And we can't it's hard to turn it on.

SPEAKER_02 57:53

Okay, so yeah, so I want to I want to pose this question because we're all pretty pop culture film literate. I mean, that sounds very pompous, but it's not pompous. But I find it fascinating that your brain is so thrown by the dissonance.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

Because no, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

Because how does that ambiguity make you feel as an American, as an intelligent person, as a viewer of this movie? Because you seem pretty uncomfortable with no no no.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

I like uh I thought it was what do you call it? But just like feel, how does it make you feel? How does it make you feel where do you feel it in your body? But no, like because where does it feel is in your chest? I agree.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

No, this is exactly what I want to make. It's because we can talk about the criticism of Americans, but what you're asking is in a very American thing. You said in my mind, you're I'm interpreting it as you want to I want to know what the fucking sides are, and you need to tell me.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

No, no, but I'm like what I'm saying is like you're uncomfortable with how it's hard to turn it off. It is like you know what I mean? And that's what I'm saying. I actually I actually think it is not that it like it is a point against the movie, gotcha, necessarily. What I am saying is is that like while I'm watching the movie, that part of my brain like will not shut the fuck up. Yeah, yeah. And like, and I appreciate the fact that he knows that my brain will not shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_03 59:15

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

But it is hard to pay attention to a story about journalists in a conflict while my brain is like, well, that looks like this. Yeah, yeah. Like, are these guys this? What does that mean? You know what I mean? Like, like we now it is going all the time. Yeah, yeah. Like, and I don't think, like, what do you call it? I don't think that's even a point necessarily against it, but I am saying it's just a reality. It is like, it is this like, like, you know, like this, like, me, like it's like this tinnitus that I am going, that I am trying to listen to a Beethoven concert with. You know what I mean? Like, it is like, could it shut up? I don't know if it can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like I am like living through an era of like constant scroll and constant anxiety from is this country falling apart or not? Right. And so, and I am when I meet people now on the street at work, right? I'm doing the same thing I am in civil war. I'm looking for clues, right? Like y'all don't necessarily work where I work, right? So I work in healthcare. Yeah, yeah. So we work in a state of like dealing with a problem, but there's a lot of different people on the floor with a lot of different ethnic opinions and like, you know, like political opinions that I'm hoping not to find out. Yeah, yeah. Right? Because it's gonna make my life more difficult than I know. They're thinking like idiots. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:34

Yeah, I'm I'm in a similar field, and the thing I have to do is when we talk insurance and someone starts bringing up Medicare, yeah, yeah, and the rate's going up for medical, like, oh you know, they went up 46%. Right. All I do is just go, how do you feel about that? Because I don't ask. There's all well, I I still live in the world, I gotta kinda know who I'm in the room. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I still need I don't wanna I don't wanna go just turn the lights off until I get out. Right, right, right. I gotta know a little bit. So I always ask that because they're gonna do two things. Either go, my heart bleeds for these people, and I'm giving them bad news, and that makes me sad because they need help and it's too expensive. Or they say, This was set uh last presidency. These terms and these deadlines, like this happens all the time. I'm like, I know exactly who you are. That's all you have to say. We don't have to we don't have to say names. If you start defending, going it's actually not that big a deal and it happens all the time. I know who we I know who you are. I see it, and that's but like I'm not saying like I like what do you call it?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

Like I find out these things anyway, but like, but like the fact is is like I still have to work with them regardless. Yep. You know what I mean? Like, but the fact is is my attempt, like the the need for pattern recognition is always there, right? And the urge for pattern recognition is inherent and it's a human thing, yeah. So like so for that the fact like the this movie like constantly does to an American of that aspect of like seeking pattern recognition, gotcha, right? And like, is it a point against it? No, that's like my points against it are far more the journalists not acting like journalists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

That to me is far more of a problem.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:19

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

I but like it is always there, gotcha, and it's like, and it does great sometimes because you're like, wait, does that mean this? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like what are we saying?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:30

I the the journalist thing, I have a different take on it than Alex. This is the movie where what this means to me is more important than what Alex says the movie is.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:45

I don't think this is what he he he says it is. He's talked about the journalism and it's important and that message that Lee has.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

His grandfather was a war correspondent error. Oh, I didn't know that too, or something like that. He has journalism. I bet you that guy took notes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:01

So well, this is he had to, he didn't have a cell phone. He didn't have a cell phone, exactly. I mean, that's the thing. If they were in the back of the little thumb he going away, I would have I would have shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:10

Yeah. Like, I think he does have a reverence for journalism. I think he's deeply anti-war. He's talked about wanting to make an anti-war movie, which uh there's what I I want to talk about that because I have something to with uh music choices, but this film is not a journalist film. This film is my my view, the message is the closer you are to this much destruction and war, you lose your soul, you lose humanity. Like these journalists that have been bred and they've been living in this place, you're either getting sexually aroused by war crimes, yeah, like Joel, or you're crying when helicopters fly over you because of the the amount of PTSD you have, like Lee. Right. And then the youngest one that's not used to it, that's getting into it, she's just excited over the action. Like this is his way of doing anti-war, which is you don't want to be around destruction. It it kills the human in you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:17

That's what we lose when we fight here. It's not just the Mason Dixon line, it's not just DC versus Virginia. We lose us, and that's I think he wants to talk about that. He's using journalists saying, I've been all over the world watching people die. Now I'm in my hometown watching people die.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:37

That's what makes this the worst thing ever. It's not the actual destruction, it's the internal.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:43

When I think of that being the movie he wants to talk about, this movie means a lot more to me. When I think it's a journalism movie, they're bad journalists. I don't think Lee's a bad journalist. I don't think Lee's a bad journalist at all. I don't, not her. I agree. She she has a she has a purpose to the art and the the message she has, but everybody else around her and the old guy, I think Sammy's good. But like, I mean, the the Chinese reporters, they're also here to have it. It's a thrill seek. It's a thrill. That's what I'm saying. But it's the vice of it all.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:15

That's what's spot on. It's the vice of it all. That's such a thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

But I'm not shocked. Like, I'm sure they were also correspondents on vice doing a thing on Shanghai. Yeah. This is this is where Shanghai bare knuckle box like hookers. Like, you know what I mean? Or something like that. They would all oh Joel and those two dudes are at we're at that. We're at that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

Oh yeah. Just getting fucking hammered. Yeah, it's the just fucking getting drunk, getting that's there. They're there for the fucking thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:40

They they went on the grants to go talk about weaker camps, but they kept going, are the opium dems real? Right now, totally like yeah. Can we do that? Yeah, a hundred percent. That's all it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

That is that is the impression you get from those people.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:54

But yeah, I think it's about the I think you're right though, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

The I think it is in those moments where The movie is at its best. Like, I think that is the point where, like, because I did like for all of my quibbling, and I got a lot of quibbling to do still, and I have done a lot of quibbling, and there will be quibbling to come. So fucking sit down and listen.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:15

But like, no, but they're the vein of the episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:18

The core of it will be the wheelback. Core of it will be quibbles. Yeah. But I thought that the fact is that I was emotionally moved by this a lot of the time. And that is the part that was the most moving. Was the like the lack of humanity and the the seeping out of humanity, like of the of these people in order for this to take place.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:38

You watched prisoners tied up, Americans tied up, getting gunned down to De La Soul by Americans, and everyone's hanging out laughing in the background.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:49

Sammy dies. This dude goes on a drunk bender, kills a bottle. Right, right. And he he's he's doing the Edmund Garfield scream at the abyss.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

Which is fucking silly. But like the uh but the thing about that was is he like the bottle was far more about the fact the horror touched him.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:09

That's exactly what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

That was like because it really, I genuinely felt that that moment it was far less about the death of Sammy, who I think you see Lee is definitely affected by to her detriment in that moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:22

Yeah, because the next time we see her, she's in war and she's shook up. We've never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

In a way, because basically the like the horror of war, like Joel has been like jerking off to it for a while, and it reaches out and it actually touches him. And then suddenly that is the reason he is drinking in that moment. That's what I'm saying is to numb the horror of that moment.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:42

The the the self-centeredness in war, where you can watch so many people die. You just pick Jesse up out of a pile, right? But it's the fact that a guy you're hanging out with died.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

Now your life is and you almost died.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:57

Yeah. Well, and that's the brilliance of the characters and the uh the way that he writes them is you have Joel horrified in a real way for the first time we've seen him going to drink. But what pulls him back because he's a fucking journalist and makes him actually not give a shit about Sam anymore, is when uh fucking Lily from Devs, the British correspondent who does the TV stuff, she says, Oh yeah, they've surrendered, and he goes, The fucking story is gone. So Sammy died for nothing.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

And they keep trying to say, Oh, we're really sorry about Sam. He's like, Yeah, yeah, we I get it, but the story's dead. And then so we have Lee who's shuck up by Sammy's death, and she goes into the final act, fucking full PTSD. We've never seen her like that. And when she sees that she believes that she has a way into the story, uh the story being about the president being killed. He's not in the car, he's not in the car, she snaps in and fucking locks in again. Right. So she leaves the horror behind. So these people are so career-minded. That sounds cynical, but no, but they are all about the fucking story and all about the shot, and that is what pulls them out.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:05

It's literally it's the procedure. I don't care about my wife, I want to know how we did the magic trick.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:10

Like they all hit that exact same thing. Same, yeah, and then Jeff's over now.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

The same moment, she photographs her hero dying. Yeah, right. And actually, I I read the script, uh, the end of the script, because I wanted to know how he did it in the edit. And the script actually differs from that final moment when Lee is killed. Really? And I think he made the better choice in the edit, actually. Because in the script, she takes the photos of Lee as she gets shot because she's being stupid. Jesse's not fucking listening to the to the Western forces soldiers that she's with. She goes out, Lee sacrifices herself. Which kind of annoyed, but it's which I hated that when I first saw it. This time I don't really care because it's the doppelganger, it's the it it's their the transfer. It's the transfer. There, she's becoming Lee in that moment. And in the script, it's not like that. It's very fascinating. She does the same thing, shoots, uh, gets the photos of Lee dying, but she's actually staring at Lee while she's dead on the ground. And when Joel comes and grabs her on the shoulder, Joel, you can hear what he says in the script, and he just says, Let's go. We we've got to go, we've got to keep moving. And then she gets up and she goes. But the way that they film it is there's no sound. Yeah, she never looks back at Lee until that last moment when she's silhouetted and her face is in darkness. And so that whole, I think it's much more brilliant of she does she can't look at her own hero that she just saw die through her own lens, and she has to fucking get up. We don't even hear what uh Joel says to her. She knows what he says to her. He's fucking grabbing her. And it's pretty obvious at that point. We just have that slow fucking track back of her not even looking, and then she can only look back in the last moment. And what does she choose to do? Fucking go and get the shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:56

And and the way that it's framed at the end, the the script either doesn't end on Jesse's face. The script ends with uh Joel, you know, saying that'll do for the president's quote, yeah, getting shot. And it ends with the soldiers just being like fucking stoked that they killed the president. Mose being drilled the fucking president. And so, but in the movie, I like it a lot better because we end on the the fucking centered shot, which kind of morphs into this soft focus background, which is how we fucking see Lee at that protest in the beginning when she first meets Jesse. Oh, interesting. It's they get her with that a few times, yeah. Shot exactly the way that Lee is framed multiple times at the beginning of the film. So solidifying that she's transforming into her because all of our shots of Jesse so far have they've been normal, but they it's a specific depth of focus where it's really out of they use the same lens, I imagine, you know, in the in the cinematography, but it just ends on the culmination of she has taken Lee's place and become this yeah, she has become this fucking hardened, deadened person. But right guess what? She got the fucking shots.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Right, right, right. So which also can I say like I mildly like the point about like uh Lee and Sammy I feel is really important in that moment because there's a moment where like she's like the shot is the shot is the shot, is what we hear from Lee. Yeah, because it's like set up payoff. She's like, if I if you got shot, I would take the shot. Yeah, I of course she was like, would you do you even have to ask? Yeah, she has a picture of Sammy's death, deletes and she deletes it. Yes, and that is, I think, the indicator. Like she is no longer like I feel it's kind of like thief. Remember, like in Thief, like where like he's like talking about like I need to not care about anything in order to get this done. Exactly. And he has his little like, you know, like you know, kind of collage of things that matter to him, yeah. Right? Like I'm like God damn it, I love thief. And then like and then he rips it up when he's gotta kill a bunch of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a similar thing. Like the second when she erases Sammy's picture, it means that like I am no longer able to disassociate myself from the horror.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:07

I am now a human being again.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

I am now a human being again. Yes, and it's the wrong place to be at the wrong time. Yeah, like she is unfortunately she has empathy back, and she has uh what do you call it? The sensation of the importance of human life are back in her. Yes, and it just put her in danger. Yeah, and I think that is the interesting part, is like and then she takes the ultimate date, she sacrifices up. She literally makes her a less functional driver.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:31

I was just about to say, even before the missed a shot is now she gets her humanity back. She's a fucking mess. She's a target, like where it's the scariest thing she's ever been a part of because you're not supposed to be experiencing that as a human.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:49

Too much for us. This time, him doing the incomprehensible God and it breaks our brains is literally just that level of violence. Right. Yeah. Your mind is not supposed to comprehend that level of violence.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:02

We are not supposed to be doing this to one another. Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:06

That loud, that many noises, like every sensory overload, you're not supposed to be able to handle it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

Oh, yeah. And in the theater, I should note This is why I saw it twice in theaters. Yeah, the mix, actually, the home uh 4K Blu-ray mix is pretty good. We didn't couldn't listen to it too loud because Leo was sleeping, but that fucking final third act in IMAX is so fucking loud. Oh, yeah. Like, so the yeah, it's insane how much uh like it's just a wall of sound for that entire fucking scene.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:40

Those tanks rolling through, the helicopter coming through.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:42

It's like a Christopher Nolan movie how he cranks up the fucking mix where you're just like Jesus Christ. That's exactly how it is, but it's actual real war stuff. Yeah, it was insane. Yeah, it was super loud and visceral, and you're like, geez.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:54

All the gunshots. That first uh action scene where he's hiding behind the pillar and they're getting shot. It's every pop, every gunshot was so loud you flinch in the theater. And I use it. And I I think it helps with the entire experience of this isn't supposed to be exciting and cool, this is scary.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:14

And they use they use fully loaded blank uh so usually Michael Mann style, yeah. Michael Mann style, exactly. So the gunshots, you know, for the the prop guns that they used were just as loud as real weapons. Oh, wow so on set the the characters could actually react to them as they would in a real life scenario. So they would naturally flinch, yes, yeah, exactly. That makes sense, yeah. So that's very smart, but yeah, it's I see I love that stuff. I think I love the character journeys, I love the kind of I completely understand the journalist stuff, and that's so fucking hilarious, actually. And the Pacino thing talking about the insider, that's that's a brilliant fucking poll, actually, because they should be much more capable. But as much as that is about criticism, if he is a vice journalist, now I buy it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

Yeah, that's a vice journalist. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_06 1:16:03

Yeah, like we're in the we locked in on the world now, and you're like, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:07

Yeah, so it's well honestly, like at that moment, and actually, this is one where like because sometimes I have friends who argue out a movie, and I'm like, You're just doing this to make this movie work for you. Sure, like you're like you're like a you're like a defense lawyer, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:21

Being like, Your Honor, you're arguing for the film.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

You know, his balls were hot, so of course he had his pants off around the children. That was it has nothing to do with it.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:29

Oh, you know Zack Snyder fans too.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:31

How they force things into a movie. Right, right, right. Like they like, like, yeah, like totally, right? Like I know those people who are like, I'm like, this is a bad movie. They're like, no, no, if you put it in this context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, jeez. But putting Joel as a vice journalist 100% makes so much of this work for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, him not taking notes, right? Like Sammy still should be taking notes. Yes. Joel, maybe not. Like, you know, where he's like, I just need the camera on me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and also just him being in that situation and saying everything wrong. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and being and thinking he's gonna charm somebody. Yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 1:17:09

Like, you name drop Reuters to a backcountry.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:14

A British news company. Yeah, exactly. You you you name drop that to like, you know, yeah, some weird fascist creep like who's about to do like a massive thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:24

There's a there's a yeah, which I get, and I read some trivia on the red glasses, which actually uh supposedly it emphasizes red wavelengths that you see, so you can really tell shades of skin more. So the even if you're like lightly tanned, you look darker than if you're a white person. So there that's pretty funny. So it's an intentional choice of like he see he's trying to see different people's shades of skin. Right, right, right. So, which does go to the fact of like, yeah, he he would have marked uh Joel right away, probably even.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:54

Yeah, but I think Joel was absolutely about to get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:57

He just had plot armor for sure. But I think yeah, he probably would have killed it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:00

Yeah, I definitely think there was like plot armor there for sure. And like also I think there was plot magnets on Sammy, which I don't think would have happened.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:08

Yeah, that that's one of the things that threw me too, is just like you he I hate it when cars sneak up on people in movies because especially how large that Ford excursion is, yeah, and it wasn't as bad like watching it a second time, like because I remember in the theater like it just popping up and then them being like, oh it's a jump scare. But it is like a long lens, and you do hear the the engine go and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:31

It's better and they are distracted because they're in this moment of conflict, and they're in there, and they're and everybody's screaming, everybody's screaming, and like and uh Plemmin's character is obviously kind of gearing up to do something, exactly. Yeah, like and he is also and and Joel's character obviously is not paying attention, like no one is like they're all locked in kind of exactly so. I can kind of let that one set semi-pass. Yes, it's semi-pass, but it is funny.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:54

I feel the same every time it's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:56

I hate cars, cars cannot be sneaky, yeah, especially giant fucking SUVs. Right, which are inherently loud. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:04

But the um like it could easily like they could have wounded Sammy. Like the fact that like like he gets hit in a way that like he of that he has to die in, yeah. Which they need in that moment for Lee to have her moment. Exactly. But that annoys. Whenever like I feel like it isn't necessarily like you can feel the plot, like you can feel like whenever I feel the plot, I'm always a little like for sure. I can like more so even than in like if I see strings on like the the airplanes or something like that. Yeah, that doesn't bug me as much as feeling the plot.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:37

Because you can go, you can either go, oh yeah, we're at the halfway point, or you go, okay, this is the third act coming. Yeah, you lock in going, oh, this is the all hope is lost.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

Because that's what it is, that's what we are. So that, yeah, for people, sometimes sometimes we talk about screenwriting, but yeah, that when Sammy dies, when they're in the Western forces, that's the end of the second act. So that's everyone's at their lowest. Everyone's at their lowest. Right. Not only did personal tragedy hit them, one of their friends died in Sammy, which that's what they were worried about in the beginning. It's just like, no, we don't want to fucking bring you, you're an old man, you're gonna get hurt. Jesse threw up in the car and has to sit with it. That's disgusting. And then so you have a personal loss and you have the loss of what the actual goal of the film is. The goal of the film, or whatever, their driving force of what they want to do is they want to get to DC and they want to get this photo of the president because they want to capture the fucking taking, they want to do it. But what happens? They find out, oh, the forces have already surrendered.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:35

Which that kind of bugs me actually as a writer. Like, I need another scene where they're like, okay, well, we're just gonna go with them anyway. Because it they don't even mention anything. They're like, they watch the Western forces leave and then they're just kind of sitting there and they're cleaning up the blood.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:51

It's better than nothing, might as well go anyways. But they don't say anything. They don't say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:54

You just cut to, and then they're with the fucking Western forces. I'm like, wait, I thought the story wasn't there. Why are you fucking going then? They I needed someone to say, like, oh well, we're already here, so let's just fucking see what happens. I needed that, but but yeah, it's that all is lost.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:08

Yeah, when we when we talk about uh is this movie what people thought it was gonna be or not? Could you imagine if I I told you I'm pitching a movie, American Civil War, Texas assassinates the president. Doesn't that sound horrible?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:25

Texas and California.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:26

No, but if I just say Texas, you see what I'm saying? Like there's a part of the You think of like oh it's still not a good I still don't think the ending's good. The president's definitely bad, force a third term, but just the idea of like Texas won, guys. Texas and California with Texas won.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:47

That's the problem. See, even you are doing it. No, your brain won't let you marry Texas and California.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:54

In my head, California is the um I don't want to use a certain term. There they played the odds. California says, I got the money you need.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:05

They're bankrolling it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:06

I'll bankroll Texas is the biggest military, you have the most bases, this and that. So I'll fund you. There's a lot in California by it. There is. But this is yeah, San Diego, Camp Pendleton, can't like so Port Y Navy. You take all of that and say, We'll bankroll this, you're the leading force of this, we'll probably win. So California's the muscle or Texas is the muscle to the California money. That's how that worked in my head. But even if it's not, still just the idea is like whatever side Texas was on, they won, and now they get to set the president.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:41

Well, and that's what they mean. They allude to that in the beginning of the movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:44

They're like I still don't like a bad guy lost. I don't know if the quote unquote good guy won. Well, that's now you're in the text.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:52

That's already what Alex is going for, though. It's like we're not sure if like what the end result of this is. They mention that.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:57

They're like, oh, well, then the other states are gonna tear each other apart after the Capitol falls. They mention that.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:02

Is it better just because the the bad president died? It's like, well, what's coming next is what I feel at the end of this movie. Where I laugh at it, but there is that bleak of like.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:14

Well, yeah, well, Jesse became Lee. She became this emotionally detached person. That's not a happy ending. No, right, right. And then we add with the fucking uh the photo of the fucking soldiers over the dead president, like, which just looks like Guantanamo Bobet photos, right? So that's what it brings to mind in terms of the modern uh Middle Eastern wars or sorry, our wars in the Middle East. Uh but appropriate framing. Yeah, exactly. But uh that's not half the issue.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:45

It's very like the um God bless America, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:48

Like the yeah, like the kill no capture is like fun. It feels bad. Right, no, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:53

And that's the part is like in the end, right? That whole sort of kill not capture like speaks to a very specific kind of military that's coming. Yeah, or very kind of military world is coming. Where this is a land of war, like not a not a land that's gonna put up a Nuremberg trial.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:08

No, well, yeah. I mean, the fucking Secret Service agent is trying trying to fucking, you know, yeah, the press secretary, whoever we killed, like shot her middle. Yeah, okay, fuck this bomb. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:19

It's like and that moment in itself, because they could have pushed her aside. Yeah, no, she was unarmed, they she could not have stopped them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:26

Yeah, her gun was on the ground, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:28

You know what I mean? Like, and so like the fact that like the uh the killing of her was already proof that like oh yeah, like how it was going. Yeah. The um because in that moment they could have easily been like, yeah, girl, no, never mind. Like, get the fuck out of the way. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:42

Like, take no prisoners, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:43

Yeah, it it is that joke of like, are we the baddies?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:46

It's like, yeah, you said kill, no capture. Yes, you're also the bad guy, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:51

Right, right, right. Again, it's just it's just about the whores of what humanity does to one another.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:56

But again, you're doing pattern recognition.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:58

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:59

I mean, I'm on the bugaloo boy time, I'm on the Texas time, I'm on, you know, the idea that Jesse Plemens is doing what he did. There's white people in that pit. He's in military gear, it looks like a smaller town. I forget what state they're in at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:16

West Virginia, maybe?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:18

I don't know if they were in Virginia. It was after Pittsburgh, so yeah, I think that again, West fucking Virginia. My brain equates a certain person in West Virginia where I'm like, okay, I know who Jesse is.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:29

But do you think Alex Garland knows that? And the answer is I don't think he does. A little bit, but not all of that. I don't think he's not gonna he's not gonna know the refined elements of our kind of known biases. No, not West Virginia. Like like American biases toward America is like, you know, I feel like like, you know, the amount of kanji a Japanese person has to know to graduate college. You know, yeah, like where it's like hundreds of thousands. Oh yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Like our known biases of state to state to state.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:00

Yeah, I think especially I mean, it's interesting in Europe because they do have so many like regional, especially like in the UK, like it's very specific. Actually, very specific. But at the same time, they also they don't necessarily think about having opinions on the other European countries, and that's how we think of a lot of other states, right? Because that's how big we are. We are one country, yes. But yeah, we can't we're more like the European Union than the United Kingdom. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:27

I've never in my life been to Florida. I don't know if Nick has or not, but it will never come up in this podcast without me and Nick equally going, ew. I would join and I would join in the chorus. And we already did. We're gonna be able to do that. I would add I would add base to your little tenors, and yeah, I would say I've never been there, and I know up to the city.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:46

Apologies to Josh James, who we do give a hard time for being.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:50

He made it out of the fire because there's a little bit of good in him.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:53

No, and he but he knows when we when we disparage it, he's like, Oh yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:57

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like, oh, a hundred percent. Like, yeah, just saying West Virginia, we all can have the like you know, the shaking of Percocet Maraca in the world. Right, no, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:07

Or or even like, I just remember like, what was it, John Denver saying, West Virginian mountain mama, take me home. Yeah, and even as a kid, I was like, no, thank you. Yeah, no, no, I'd rather not.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:16

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please no. That's great.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:19

Not my mama.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:20

Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, I mean, you just can't, yeah, as a as a person outside of America, it is hard to reconcile.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:28

So, but that's the thing. He doesn't need to, right? Because what he's doing here is he is trying to like force us to think about our world that we take in a very specific way and shake it up and put like this, like these horrors of war inside it. But like as I was saying before, like that to an American watching this movie, the urge to try to figure out like, well, what is this? What does this mean? And what does that mean?

SPEAKER_05 1:27:52

That's the sniper scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:54

That, like, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:55

We want to know who are you shooting? Who are you who are you shooting?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:57

Who shots? Who's in the house?

SPEAKER_05 1:27:58

Are you hunting them or are

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

Yeah, because as a as Americans, they would have an opinion. We had to. But he says, oh, they're just trying to they're trying to kill me. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:09

And that was also the problem with Alex Garland's like uh attempting to promote this movie. I remember him, like, God bless, he could not say the right thing to an American.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:21

Because like he kept being like, you know, there's good signs to every conflict. And you know, in this context of this movie, I understand what he's saying. In the context of America right now, I'm like, the fuck you said. Well, and that's like you know what I mean? Like, because it's kind of like that makes it sound like Trump saying, like, in the case of like people on both sides, people they're good on both sides, like you know what I mean. Like, yeah, but like in his thing, he's trying to like be like, no, this is like a conflict that I'm trying to make it the hardest to read for you to possible, yeah, so that you'll pay attention to these journalists. That is not almost possible for an American to not try to read the room every time we go to a new scene.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:59

And generally, Americans don't give a fuck about journalists. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:05

You know, we have these institutions and all this kind of stuff, but like we are as bad to journalists right now as we have ever been in my life. No, and that's that's especially literally stepping on their nuts all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:14

Oh, yeah, yeah. And I mean, the with the fucking corporate takeovers with all the Trump-backed people, and they don't give a fuck about you know, it's in a dark time, but also like He called her piggy.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:26

Quiet Piggy.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:28

Like that that was the president who said that to a journalist about the fucking Epstein files.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:34

About the Epstein files.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:35

Quiet Piggy. That's insane. I get it's funny. I get it's the funniest thing I heard that day. I understand it is very important.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:44

I genuinely thought she should have hooked something at him. Oh yeah, I thought she should have taken her. I thought she should have taken her clipboard and just hucked it at his head.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:52

That's how I always feel about those situations. I know he I know that's that's a position of power, but at a certain point, uh there's I'm not that guy. So at a certain point, it is like, I know I look tribal, but like, fuck this. Like, no, we're gonna do this. Like, you can't do that. Like, dude, when he gives those handshakes, how do you not just yank your hand and like what the fuck are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:18

Yeah, no, totally, totally.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:19

It's that's where I'm like, how does no one ever press him yet?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:23

It's because it's insane politicians are fucking would I get if I pressed him?

SPEAKER_05 1:30:28

I don't touch him, but I fucking press him.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:31

That's where I'm just like, how do you yeah, it's crazy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:35

No, for sure. The ruling class are a bunch of fucking room of cowards. Yeah, absolutely. But the thing is, is like, in terms of this context, like Alex is being trying to be like, don't think about that. Yeah, don't think about that. Don't think about that. Saying that to an America right now is a big ask. Yeah, yeah. It's a pass ass.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:53

I think we're all fairly intelligent, and that's a part of our brain for this almost two hours. We didn't turn it off once. Right, right, right. We can't. I don't think anybody can.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:02

That's why I go back to which I think is why it's better in the rewatch. Yes, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:08

I think the reason it's better in the rewatch is because you're trying to find the answers when you're watching it the first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:14

When you're watching it the first time, you're like, surely I'm gonna get the right clue that's gonna click to me, whether or not I like the Western forces. Yeah, yeah. Or like I like, or whether or not I like the United States forces. Yeah, I I'm trying to choose a side here, bro. Like and he's like, I'm not gonna let you, I'm not gonna let you. I'm gonna give you, if anything, I'm gonna mix you up. You don't know. I'm gonna give you weird signals that your brain is gonna be like, oh, they must be this. And then and I'm gonna mix them with other signals that so you can't do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:40

That's the biggest thing no one knew was in this movie is the the the intentional dissonance. Yeah, he's intentional. He spoke a lot about anti-war films, and he didn't want to make it it's hard to do a war film and it not come off pro something. Yes, and uh, you know, God bless him, my heart goes out to him, but that's the the hole that Michael Bay falls into every time. Michael Bay can't stop talking about how the system is disgusting, but then he's like, Fucking guns are awesome, tanks are cool. But this movie, he spoke so much about anti-war, and the only movie he references is Come and See, which I haven't seen.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:21

Oh, I've seen Come and See.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:22

That's his uh I think that's interesting. I definitely got that.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:25

I think it's a good one.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:27

In my head, I think when you do uh modern military, modern any action, me and Nick already reference Michael Mann. Me and Nick already I saw this in theaters twice because of the experience and the auditory. A lot of people have a problem with the music choices in this film. They're interesting choices, they're very weird choices. I think that's my my take on it is he picked that De La Soul song on purpose for the dissonance to not make this cool. I don't want you clipping this up. Right. I don't want to put you know what I mean. Like it's even back in the the Iraq the the uh the lack of irony and the stupidity of the American troops going down to fucking rage against machine because the riffs are tasty. Yeah, they would blare that out of the Hummers, but like they were always picking cool songs. It's insane. It's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:27

That clap was just me smacking my knee, by the way. I literally like like like I am smacking my knee. I am I am yeah fucking ridiculous.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:39

But I think he picked that song deliberately to go. I don't want you to think this is cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:45

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:46

I think that a little bit too.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:49

He did he does a relatively good job, actually, in terms of not making this fun. Yeah, like the funniest part of this is like you know, the fact is it's like like action thriller, you know, like what do you call it, editing, right? Naturally come up with things like this, yeah. And naturally naturally give everybody a little bit of a charge, right? And so working against that, I think it's a fairly uphill battle and a remarkably hard target to hit. Yeah, I do think he succeeds at it in this. Yeah, I did not enjoy these moments, yeah. Like I was never like, yeah, like I was always like which is I think which is the proper the proper thing he wants from me. I think so too. But it is yeah, it is funny to me because I remember seeing Jarhead, which was an anti-war movie. Yeah. That I remember listening to people be like, Man, I love Jarhead, I'm gonna join the military. And I was like, God damn, people cannot succeed at this game. It is a hard game to succeed at to make an anti-war movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:47

They made Jake June Hall too hot.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:50

It's too sexy. They play football outside of Jake Jim Halloween. Full metal jacket. Like full metal jacket. Like, like there's plenty of people I know who be like, man, full metal jacket's a great movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:00

Yeah, piles of pussy. That's that's what I got. I'm not supposed to read anything more into what happened to him, except yeah, the the weak ones wash out. It's like I think you miss the entire point of the case.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:11

No, for sure. And like again and again, again, there's like it's it's almost like like a tale as old as time to quote Disney. Like, you know what I mean? Like that like directors are like, War is horrible. I'm gonna make a movie about how war is horrible. And then people go, like, man, that was a fucking blast. Yeah, yeah. That was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:29

Yeah, because it's it's difficult because when you're making a fucking narrative, you want it to be entertaining, especially.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:37

Well, I mean, like narrative drive, narrative drive naturally, yeah, like just brings you in and it gives you a charge and it gives you like like you're upbeat from it just naturally.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:46

Yeah, it's it's the Michael Bay of it all. You yeah, you have you believe this thing, you want to say something, but hey man, you're spending millions of dollars. I want to make something fucking cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:54

And honestly, shout out to uh the generator of this podcast, Michael Bay's underling, Peter Berg made Lone Survivor, and that story is like four to five SEAL members, they get ambushed and they one by one die, and one guy makes it out. That actual story, the guy that made it out, the problem with his story is when he came back and told and wrote the book, when they found him, he expended no ammo. His entire life now is like, I feel bad that like I let my team down. I didn't kill anybody, I didn't shoot my gun, I lost it at a certain point. We fell down this hill. Like, I didn't kill anybody. Peter Berg made that movie, and it's a fucking John Woo movie. They're killing hundreds by the hundreds. Like, it's insane how many people they kill in that movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:48

I'm just imagining doves in slow motion right now, by the way.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:51

It should have been. It might as well have been. Like that movie's intense and it has one of the best action scenes when they fall down the hill. I still don't know how you film something like that because it just looks like Emile Hirsch is falling down a hill. Yeah, like it feels like you just at a certain point had to do it. So it there's moments in there, but like, yeah, that's a movie about a tragedy of us dying, and he goes, and we're gonna do it. You're gonna feel sad when Ben Foster dies, but I'm giving you an hour.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:19

You're gonna have such a boner, like during all of this.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:22

The amount of magaz empty magazines they're throwing away like John Wick is insane in that movie. The body count is enormous. We can't help ourselves. Yeah, those seals did the fucking Death Star in that mountain, then they die, and then we get sad that we saw four white guys with beards get shot. Right. No, for sure. He can't help himself. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:49

It's like and like I do think like, does Alex Scarland make war look fun? 100% he does not.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:56

No, and that's that's why I'm curious because I haven't seen his next movie, which he co-directs with a natural soldier.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:02

Right, yeah, yeah, which I'm very curious about after seeing this. Yeah, and it was like that's what he asked. Because I actually remember like when we did the dread episode together, I had talked about the fact that I wondered if the war comics of Britain had affected this movie. Right. Because they just love war so goddamn hard. Yeah, for real, yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Like, uh, what was it? And I even read something like a book recently called Flashman, which was kind of famous about like a coward who goes through like these various conflicts, like and like bangs a bunch of women at the same time. Of course, like um but like it's just about the conflicts, like a lot of it is just this author who wanted to do these old historical colonial fights and wanted to portray everybody as they were, but needed a like a method to do it, and he does it in a sort of semi-comedic method. But really, you can tell he just wants to be he wants to talk about these conflicts and about these wars, and then like reading these, like all these war comics. I was like, is this what Alex Garland is gonna go for? Because I read them all before I saw Civil War, and I don't think it is. Oh, okay. I don't get that impression at all.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:03

Did you watch 28 Years Later? No, I haven't seen 28 Years Later. I only saw it the once. I kind of feel like that's what he's talking about in that movie. I think he has a lot to say about how the British view to the well, one nostalgia into the the honor of war. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:22

Something built into heat. There is there is something in Brits about that, I feel like. Because, like, yeah, honestly, Americans don't like what do you call it, delve into British war comics enough. Yeah, they're fascinating. They're fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

The um yeah, I flipped through some of them last time we left the comic shouting. And and and so it's just fucking walls of text. You're just like, what the fuck? Well it's walls of text, but it's walls of war.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:45

No, it's like it's just like war, war, war, war, war. And like there's like like romance doesn't even affect them. Like, you know, like there's there's no Gwen Stacy's in a war comic. There's no like there's like it's just dudes hanging out with dudes killing dudes, no soap proper whatsoever. Like, and you know, and and it doesn't matter if the the main character is German or British or American or just you just want to see that shit go down. Yeah, yeah. And I would wonder if Civil War was gonna be like that. And I don't feel like that. I feel if anything, there's other contexts. Like there was a movie called that was based on a book called Fortunes of War, um, that was had like Kenneth Braun and Emma Thompson when they were still together. Okay. And it's about this guy who's in, I think, like Romania, like like Budapest or something like that, as World War II is starting. And like, you know, the German forces are coming. And you watch them flee, like, like through these, like, kind of like, you know, Eastern European nations, and watch these Eastern European nations c crumble around them. And like it felt far more like like it was based on a book by Olivia Manning or a series of books by Olivia Manning. And it felt a lot like that world of like, you know, kind of like we're in this place and we're watching kind of society around us crumble around us. Yeah. Um, but I didn't get that like like we're gonna talk about just men being honorable men shooting honorable men and everybody's gonna get off on it. Yeah, but I'm wondering about the next movie. Well wondering about the other war movie, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:12

I mean yeah, I'm gonna be curious about that. Because Alex Garland, like, as you know, you can't escape where you come from, right? In terms of how you're raised, that kind of stuff. We're American, he's British, that kind of stuff. You you know, that that that shapes you. But I think he's interested in the even more macro view of just humanity, right? I don't he I don't think he's necessarily interested in the British identity of that kind of war comic mentality of like fucking stiff upper lip honor, that kind of shit. Yeah, he doesn't really give a it. I don't think he's interested in that. Um, but I don't know, maybe we'll we'll see a little bit of it in warfare, and that is interesting that you bring that up about 28 years. Yeah, I'll be curious to rewatch that and kind of look at it through that lens. Because we have seen him, you know, uh he started out with 28 days, that's a British set, London set film, and then we just got out of the British countryside with men, you know, which and we talk about on that episode, the Green Man, and how that's like local fork folklore. We didn't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:14

I gotta I gotta watch that stuff then.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:15

Yeah, you haven't watched men? I haven't seen men, you should watch. It's it's huge folk whore small story, but it's it's very much has other folk, other folk career anyway. He says that this is their companion pieces, men and civil war. Really? So they they're talking about because where men is about misogyny and uh civil war is about uh you know American shit show politics and us killing each other. But yeah, exactly. So you yeah, you should watch men um if you're interested in that, but yeah, it's all British folklore stuff. But yeah, I no, I'm kind of interested in that that war comic aspect of if that's gonna bleed in. Because yeah, I don't feel like it just whatever, glancing over it it felt nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:59

But that was kind of what I thought I was getting into, yeah. You know, just from like the uh the trailer and such.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:04

Yeah, right. Well, because Andread isn't, I mean, it's directly it's such a great adaptation of the comic books, right? Right in the sentiments of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:13

I do feel there's just and it it it falls back into my uh love of early David Gordon Green and like Jeff Nichols, there's something we lost having a British guy come to quote unquote Americana imagery. Right. That I'm like, if an American director with a little bit of that, we we get more out of that JCPenney with a Black Hawk helicopter on fire in front of it. Right, that small town gets photographed just a little differently, right? The gas station would have been filmed a little differently because I I love that we opened talking about the Bosnia conflict and stuff, because that's what that gas station looks like. They're in the tracksuits, they're standing outside. I think if you give that to early David Gordon Green, they're dressed different, they talk different. Oh, for sure. The the set dressing's different, like there's so much more uh texture would be given if it was through a uh rural American lens. Oh, yeah. And Rob Hardy, the cinematography. I can't help but think I can't. I'm I'm glad the British came in to do this because it took all the personalization out of it and added the dissonance, but there is something deep in me of like, I I wish we did this. I wish we'd like to.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:32

The problem is if we'd done it, we would be late. It's kind of like how we talk about we talked about like in the dread one that like like anybody who brought dread to the table now, they'd be like, bro, that's a lot. Slow on the rooms, like, and I feel like the the one you're talking about, I think could have happened. Like if it had come out in like the 70s or 80s or 90s, right? Like, and they could have done a good job of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:57

What's his name? The DP that uh works with Malik. Is it Wexler that also did like a bunch of civil rights documentaries? Oh, interesting. I forgot his name, but like, yeah, no, if he photographed this type of film, right, because he's he's in that world. Well, that's that's a different texture to this, if you get this in like 76.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:17

Yeah. We're such an interesting country, and it's we're slow and lazy. Well, real quick, but that's the thing, but but at the same time, we know how beautiful America is, and it ties into how much you know what you're talking about, not only like in terms of the idealism of the foundations of the country and stuff like that, but like the variety of the landscapes of America, right? Right, right. And the beauty of a sunset, yeah, the beauty of a sunrise, like these little things that these sites across the country that we understand uh innately as growing up in this country, like a British person's not gonna be able to see that.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:57

But that just that is But I don't but like you said, I don't know that he needed to for those. No, I but but but I do agree that like those are his version of this is gonna come out way different. But yeah, it's definitely now if an American brought it to the table, like the biases of like the written boards would like their brains would melt with how fast they were typing. You know what I mean? Like, because it would be like, oh well, you know, Gordon Green is blah blah blah, that kind of that kind of American, or this kind of American's like this. So obviously he wouldn't get like you know what I mean. Like like it would be almost impossible now. Like you would have to have done it like when we were at best like George W level annoying.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:36

I take it back. I I think the only time we could have gotten it off is you sneak it in 09. Oh, like the optimism of the Obama era where Reidenhide and Transformers and Obama's uh slow jamming with the roots on Fallon. That's when you could be critical of America and everybody wouldn't be so scared of it. Because then you go, well, it's science fiction. You're not talking about today. Yeah, Obama's really cool. Right, right, right. That's when we could have snuck it in. Yeah, no, I you couldn't do it when we're already kind of at odds with our political climate. Because then we are demanding that better be a Bush proxy. That better because it would have been fascinating and cool to see what if that was a left-leaning president. Right. You know what I mean? Like what if you could have gone? You could have gone. To add to that dissonance of like, what if he's a left-lean? Right. That's crazy to like, you know, you can start messing with that, but if we had the security blanket of the 0809, then we'd be more comfortable to talk about it because we wouldn't take it so personally, going, yeah, but that's not now.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:46

And also, like, right, right, like right now, we're like in a recession going on a depression. You know what I mean? Like the uh because of Biden's gas? Yeah, whatever. Whatever, whatever was the main cause of it, but we all know who was the main cause of it. They're like, yeah, but and people are always like kind of like we're already kind of like in a moment of like just everybody is super tense right now. Everybody's like, do I still have a job? Do I like, you know what I mean? Like, how am I gonna pay rent? How am I gonna eat food? And so, yeah, so anybody who brought this movie to the table at this moment, if they were American, yeah, never like never like never, ever, ever. Yeah. I am curious though, like, about sometimes when you were watching this movie, did it not feel to me like was this like a series like devs? And like you like had to boil it down because like there were moments where I'm like, this is a rest of the movie. I could easily imagine like where there were sections of them traveling. Yeah, it could have been episodic.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:41

It could work as a television show. I would like to see it longer. That would be cool seeing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:45

Like, because I like because I felt there were moments where like I felt like it almost like in the traveling, like it felt like I could do this, like this could have been like six episodes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:55

Yeah, the only thing that I saw is that he wrote it in 2020, supposedly. Did he? Uh yeah, so he wrote it that year, but I I didn't hear I always wondered if he wrote it sooner, just cause but like I mean, which that's you know, that's that's right in the middle of the fucking Trump stuff. So um, so but I don't know. That that could be interesting. And I would love to see a longer format. I would because I love death.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:15

Each each each little bit of it feels like it's its own kind of container. That's yeah, the the town that could be an episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:23

That could be an episode, that could be, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:25

Yeah, there's a scene where the town that's like well guarded but looks uh what do you call it? Looks peaceful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they said, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:34

All the it's it's our uh it's uh it's the town made up of all our mothers, just like, oh I don't know, I'm just going about my day. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, I don't oh I don't pay attention that sort of stuff. Like yeah, that town, the sniper, like that whole thing could be extrapolated into an hour of who's who's that who go to the house, find out who was shooting you.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:56

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:57

What if that was the same team you're on? Yeah. You uh reckon with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:02

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:02

Just to show more of that bleakness of them just going, like, well, you shouldn't have fucking shot at me. These these sides are kind of sort of made up. I don't even know that person, or the emotional toll of I do know that person. And I wish I wasn't shooting him. But I gotta like there's so much to say about every one of those scenes that, yeah, I could see that being six hours for sure. And then that's how you get to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:26

And also, like you would get to know like the the murder, the the the death of Sammy, I felt like would have had more impact to me if I hadn't just met the fucker. Like whenever, like, whenever they like are like, oh, this is a very impactful character, they're trying to communicate that to me, but you got like less than two hours to do it. Like, it's always kind of like I just met this guy, he seems okay, but like you know, he's not that kind of writer, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:54

With the with a with a movie who uh that is packed to the fucking brim with death and destruction, right? And people being desensitized to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:03

Alex Garland is not an emotional writer, no, you get the you get the archetype, he's the voice of reason, he's the old dog, you get all of that, but that doesn't mean I care about him more. That just means I look at him going, you're you're more reasonable. Yeah, you're probably right in the world. So when you die, I'm not like heartbroken as much as I would probably feel way more over Joel because Joel's more of a character. There's charisma there, right? Right. Oh damn, that sucks. Like the cool guy died as opposed to the old.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:33

It's funny that you called the cool guy, but like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:36

Like he's drinking and flirting and he's talking about being hard and horny for like action. Like he he has all of that. So for the the color and the noise of it, because it they do fall into archetypes, so yeah, when they fill that van up to drive, if I have to guess which one dies first, Sammy's on the menu. Of course, I'm like, well, obviously he's gonna be the like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:58

Like Sammy's 100% on the menu. Yeah, you see, see, like, like in terms of this person's gonna die. I was wondering if the young girl at the beginning was gonna die. Yeah, you know, just because of that conversation, yeah. And then, like you said, like in that moment where like where you see Lee start to fuck up, you're like, oh fuck, yeah, she must be the one on the menu. Yep, you know what I mean? Like, and then yeah, it would have been Joel is an interesting one anyway. Like, Joel with the Joel character could have been, I feel like with another writer, so much more. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, because one, just the things we get from him, like well, also the fact that like he didn't try to to bang Jesse more often did not ring true. Yeah, like 100%. I have no doubt in my mind, the reason he let her in the car is because she was young and impressionable.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

Well, and that's what the friends who come in. Right. They're like, Yeah, I saw you, you were flirting with that car. Like, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:57

Because like, like, there's no way good intentions are there. No, no, like you know, the intentions are obviously like this this is a young impressionable thing. Like, well, and that's it. I can probably get in her pants.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:07

Well, and when Lee uh lectures them outside the car, which is a great fucking shot. You have Sammy and Jesse sitting in the car, and behind it, you have Lee and Joel uh arguing behind him and they can hear him. Like fucking Joel literally says, Oh, she's 23. So you know he asked.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:26

Yeah, she was like, you know, and like and the fact that like he is remarkably subtle for that kind of person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For like a vice journalist, yeah, please. Yeah, and with how shit Felix said that isn't gonna come up again and again. It's like, hey Ali, you should get the back. Jesse, you should sit next to me while I'm driving.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:43

Yeah, the worst part of writing is the night before the shootout that he didn't also sleep in the truck bed with her. Right, right, right. That's what happens, is he goes, No, fall asleep, I'll be on this side. He sleeps in the truck with her for sure. He's in the backseat going, Oh, you put your head on my lap.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:00

Yeah, talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:00

Of course he can. Are you are you cold? Constantly grabbing her in battle and holding her? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:06

Yeah, the only way that I can kind of excuse it is I think he was that guy in his 20s, but now he's in his mid-40s, and he's like, I just want to fucking get this story.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:17

He's more turned on by the shooting than the girl. I think so. He shot his shot two, three times. He's like, eh, I don't care enough. That's way hotter. That's that's how I read it. I'm about to watch war.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:27

Well, I'm not actually saying that like it's necessarily a bad representation, but I am saying that there were way more they could do with him. Yes. Like, and in terms, I mean, outside of the fact that he should have been writing more often. Yeah. But like that kind of guy probably also would have been more glad-handy with people, yeah. Probably would have been trying to charm people more often.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:44

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that Pacino from Insider thing. Yeah, that that use his charisma in a more effective way than yeah, than he does.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:53

They're not even good at the gas station scene. They are you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:54:56

Like, yeah, yeah, like they're not I feel which is funny to me that like a writer who's a good writer, like like Garland is, doesn't write writers well. Like, he obviously prefers the photojournalists to think about.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:11

Yeah, um because he thinks in images, you know, as a director, kind of thing, I guess, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:16

But he started out as like a writer, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:19

That's why I think it might be intentional.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:21

Also, the fact is he might not want to be looking that far deep.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:24

Like and it's gonna distract from the story as well. It's like we don't we want to trust Joel. We don't want to not trust him. He's he's a certain type of person, but he still is trustworthy. Where in the real world, in a little more complex character, he probably wouldn't be.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:39

Well, I mean, he might like, you know, what do you call it? A good journalist does not make a trustworthy person necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and you know, what do you call it? Like in the case of like I feel like, like I said, like I feel like Lee and Jesse's story is pretty is is working pretty well for me. Yeah. And overall, the whole the whole movie works for me. But like, but there's aspects where I'm like where we talk about like where I was like saying if this was longer, I felt like there's lots, I see lots in these characters that they could have fleshed out. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:06

I yeah, I would love I would have loved have seen it as a as a larger thing for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:11

Um and it also would have made the ending way more brutal. Oh yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:18

Like yeah, because you would have spent six hours with these people, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:21

Right. And like and like seeing like Sammy actually do his job well, yeah. Like, you know, which I'm sure he would probably was a very good journalist. Like you get that impression, like he might not be moving fast, but he thinks well and he thinks fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:34

Yeah, man of integrity.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:36

And like, and so him maybe interviewing people at that like gas station or talking to people at that gas station.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:41

Yeah, but also as a person of color, he's like, I'm not talking to these guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:45

Well, that's the thing, is that that but but that would be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:47

That could be an that could be explored in the TV show, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:50

Yeah, which I hope he gets back to TV after he directs Elden Ring and all this stuff. Yeah, I hope he gets another TV idea because I I would like a uh I like devs quite a bit. Devs yeah, devs is great even despite its flaws, and I want to see I think this would fit really well in a TV sense, and I would love to see a narrative more like this in a TV show from him because where devs fails, we have two big deaths in the end of devs. If you haven't seen it and you just skip that whole us talking about it, I won't spoil, but you have two big deaths at the end of devs, and I don't really feel anything necessarily for him. That's part of the quantum weirdness of it, but also main protagonist in devs, the audience knows more than her the entire time, so that's an emotional disadvantage for the audience. You can't root for her as much or feel as surprised by the things that happen to her because we know more than she is.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:43

I'm just watching things happen now, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:45

So you're watching her play catch. It doesn't help you empathize that that that well. So but with this, there's no crazy shit going in the background. We're just with these journalists, so we only know as much as they see. So that I think that would be a good one.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:59

Right, and we learn as they learn, exactly. You know what I mean? Like when they come to a town, it's you know, I don't know, it's it's like a fucking Star Trek episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:07

We're not cutting to the other guys at the gas station and getting their perspectives necessarily. So yeah, I I think I want to see a narrative more like this from him where it's a sing, you know, where the audience isn't in uh on the story as much as they are in devs. Uh, but yeah, do we have any random stuff we didn't hit on?

SPEAKER_05 1:58:24

Uh I think I might just have one stupid, silly random thing I I had to talk about. Yeah, anything we didn't bring out. All the sound, all the sound design in that shootout with the in the distance, the building's alarm, just keeping it unsettling. Yeah, yeah. The noise of the guy moaning in the distance when they're going up to the room. Oh yeah. Like the way he's doing sound design in all his films and the way it blends with the music, I think is really good. But my my little thing that I caught, and I was like, that's a weird specificity he added, and it's enough to make me uh smile, is in the shootout for the White House, the Western forces, the military-dressed ones, they're going through room to room, you're clearing rooms, you're calling out on point at the door is your big gunner, your machine gunner, large magazine, so he can just hold that, you know, just the barrage of bullets. There's a little scene when he turns the corner and he gets shot at, and instead of going back out for cover, he just lowers and then just unloads the gun. And just the idea is that's why you do the machine gunner to clear the room first. Is even if you're getting shot at, you're just like, I just got a a wall of bullets at whatever shot at me to make them stop shooting. I was like, I like that. It's like good. That's for me. Well, yeah, it's a good little tactical detail he put in.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:45

For the s yeah, he did hire a lot of ex-military guys to not only coordinate all the stunts, but to act them out as well. So a lot of those performers who play the military people are actual military people. That's why it's so.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:07

Like when I told him I was gonna be like watching it, was talking about yeah, I like that movie really kind of kind of messed with me. And he said, But I took my buddy, who was like ex-military and had done a certain amount of tours, and he's like, he didn't he didn't say anything to me afterwards, like like it really genuinely probably fucked that guy up a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:25

This took him right back to it, probably.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:26

Well, I think probably because it took him right back to it, but it also put it in a context that really shook him.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:30

Oh, yeah. Well, because it's you know what I mean because of the White House.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:33

Because like I think, you know, like for some of those guys, they can put it in a context, and if you shift the context hard enough, it probably gives them like vertigo or something.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:42

Oh, yeah, because it was out in the desert, it was in in fucking Iraq.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:44

Right, different worlds, different times, completely different landscape, different people, right? Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:49

And it just, you know, and I'm not saying we're closing up right now, but like I I do have to stress, like, for me, his horror brain comes out in this final act where like it's insane. I think if you write a third act of an invasion of the White House, you're not doing it better than this. Like, it's everything that it's so disturbing. It is it feels so weird being in the White House when they first go in. Yeah, you see the seal and the troops going past it in silhouette and it's quiet and kind of empty. Right. I'm just like, you're not supposed to be doing this. It has that feeling in my gut. Like it's like you're not supposed to do this, it's sacrilegious. It's blasphemy. Exactly. I I truly do feel that in that whole final act where I'm just like, yeah, you did the damn thing. You did it exactly how you should have, with the amount of chaos and the disturbing imagery of it, and also keeping in line with the it's also fairly nonchalant. Like they're just walking through, jumping over tables, right? Shooting people in the middle of a conversation, like it he kept it all there. So, like, that's I still stand by this. Might be the movie Dave Jordan's scared of. It might still be.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:06

No, for sure, for sure. I I like I think that's the thing, is like it was disturbing for them. Yeah, oh yeah, like, and it was unsettling for that throughout. It just, yeah, like by and large, I would say it I would by and large say it succeeds at what it's attempting to do. All even though I'm kind of uncertain what it's attempting to do sometimes. I like your theory best in terms of like this is about like showing how war dehumanizes and putting it in the context of our world, which we have been living with for a long time, or used to, like in a safe format, and like just rubbing our noses into the the the imagery that we have been posting elsewhere. We've been putting in other parts of the world.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:48

Oh, yeah. We we yeah, as much as we make fun of the cause playing MAGA folk, we as we as America also do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:56

Yeah, but we can't help we outsource it, right? Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:59

We don't want the war here, we're gonna we'll take it over there. We still want to do it, right? We want the money that it makes or whatever the fuck.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:05

Yeah, every guy loves World War II because it feels like a justifiable and honorable thing to go run around the field with your dude friends killing true evil people, right? But there is a thing inside of us of like, yeah, I do want to want to go kill somebody, and it's cool to have the fantasy of being able to do it with someone that we all agreed should have been uh dealt with. Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:28

So that's it was it was actually kind of it was maybe unfortunate in some ways. We romanticized because allowed Americans to be like, well, that must be what this is like. Yeah, exactly. Like this must be the good time, it's always supposed to be. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:39

The uh we definitely romanticize uh war and violence and destruction.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:43

I think, like honestly, it's like the amount to which Americans want to solve their problems with murder is genuinely hysterical to some degree. I mean, it's terrifying, but it's also hysterical. Oh, it's hysterical. Like the the degree to which they romant like to be like, what I really want to do is just fix everything, you know, the socioeconomic, environmental conflicts of the world with murdering specific people. Yeah. And then everything turns okay. Somehow. Yeah. Like, you know, it's it and the fact that it maybe kinda happened one time has thrown everybody off enormous.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:18

It and well, it's because they don't think about all the work that came after it.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:22

Right, right, right. Well, and also the fact that the rest of the times it didn't. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:26

But it's also I'll put my head in there of like that's the Luigi thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:31

Oh, yeah, for sure. No, Luigi's. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 2:04:33

Like at a certain point, we all kind of sort of go, can someone do something about this? And when we say that, we're hiding behind that's what we mean. Right. And we all sit here and go, Yes, I know that's bad. I know that's not the way to fix it. But there's an we get a better team. Well, look, can it not be so sloppy?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:55

And I don't, this is a comedy podcast. Satire. It's just a satire, right? Satire.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:01

But I'm being very earnest right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:03

I'm not. This is this is a joke. What Nick's about to say is satire.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:09

He put his Mel Brooks hat on.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:10

Exactly. And I mean, as you can see from my Garfield guillotine on there, okay. Yeah, the rich and the powerful, when they take everything from us, the only thing they leave for us to take is their lives.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:25

Okay, Melbrooks.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:26

That's all we can do.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:28

We're being silly with things, but it it has history shown us there's another, like, did France and Haiti and all these places show us, like, no, you're supposed to play the game that they built for us. Yeah, but get in their system and then talk to them at the table to ask nicely.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:46

Can you reason with unreasonable people? No, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:49

I mean, because we all are sitting here in the world of a successful story of how Bernie Sanders did that grassroots, and it worked for them. So, like, obviously, that's the only way to do it, and the thing Nick is saying is pure satire because historically it has never worked for any other country. Just like healthcare. We shouldn't look at them on how to do healthcare because no one's figured it out other than the way we do it. Also, with political revolution and class restructuring, we also shouldn't look at any other country ever on how they did it. No, we gotta play. They're not American, we got it right the first time. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, you're being subjugated, but you need to do so while in line with manners.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:30

But you got Instagram, feels good to scroll. Right, it feels good to scroll. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I I'm glad you watched it, John. Thank you for taking the time to watch it. I and I feel kind of the first time I watched it, I felt just as equally as scrambled, I think, where you're just like, fuck, you're fighting, you're trying to find the answer. There are so many movies where on a second watch I like them more because the first time I'm watching it, I'm trying to figure out what it's trying to say, where it's gonna go, right, what's the point. And a lot of times that happens with more analytical filmmakers, which he's a very analytical filmmaker. Right. If with with emotional storytellers, you're along for the uh soap opera, the drama, the character kind of stuff, but he isn't that guy.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:13

Yeah, this guy made ex machina and devs. Like he's a structured, thought-out guy.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:18

Yeah, and he's talking about these very human, though heady subjects. So I completely empathize with that, where you're just like, Wait, hold on, I'm I'm trying to fucking lock in on this. Yeah, yeah. And it's a moving fucking target the whole time. Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:32

I I think these three films, uh, men, civil war, and warfare, in his own way, this is very experimental for him. Gotcha. I think so. Because I see that men is very yeah, I want to hear what you think about it after X Machina, and uh to a point, Annihilation in Depth. Like he's playing with structure and form a whole lot more. He's comfortable going surreal, and he's not all the way talking about like just one crystallized like idea or concept. It's more of or not a not plot, but more of an idea. Sure. More of a feeling, more of a general theoretical something. And I think that's what men is, is like we walk away at the end of that movie going, so what is this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are we saying about it? And civil war is kind of similar. That's what this feels like, and uh not to spoil anything, but when we watch Warfare in the weirdest way, that's one of his most experimental films. Oh shit. Where you're just like, Yeah, you you did this with this time in this way to say a certain thing. It's very odd for him as the way he writes, typically. Yeah. The guy that did never let me go and sunshine in X Mach in a he he helped make warfare. Like, keep that in mind of how weird and different structurally these things are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting uh little pocket of his career we're in right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:02

Yeah, I'm looking, I'm looking forward to it because yeah, I have the trailers look great. I just I think Leo was younger, I couldn't get to the theater.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:09

Yeah, yeah. I'm not actually watching myself. I'm actually very curious about it now.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:12

Yeah, watch men, watch war, yeah, watch men. Yeah, I'd be very curious.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:15

And the 28 years movies. They're good, they're yeah, men's got some shit going on, man. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:20

Another big uh third act where you're just like, well, I've never seen this before. I've never seen in the invasion on the White House, and whatever the hell the third act is of men, you know. You've never seen that either. Whether you love or hate it, you're like, I ain't never seen that before. Yeah, you gotta watch it.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:35

Yeah, it's sold. Um, so yeah, we'll be we'll be back next week. Uh thanks again to John. Uh, you're always welcome, and we'll see with future seasons.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:44

And yeah, yeah, I'll take any assignments you throw at me.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:46

Oh, appreciate it. Definitely. Yeah, be careful what you wish for. Um, but we'll be back next week with warfare, with hopefully we have a guest, William's brother Sean, who's an actual military veteran. Oh, nice, nice. So uh we'll be back then. I hope you guys join us.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:01

I love you guys.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:02

Love you too, love you both.