#25. 'Mortal Kombat' (2021)
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The main film is the 2021 Mortal Kombat, and the verdicts split hard. Sonny's big-boy review: it's not good — its cardinal sin is that a movie called Mortal Kombat contains no actual tournament and keeps breaking its own universe's rules (Outworld just spams assassins at Earth while everyone insists that's against the rules), redeemed only by the terrific Scorpion/Sub-Zero cold open and the gloriously vulgar Kano (Josh Lawson), the best thing in it. JVL cheerfully defends it: he concedes every plot hole but declares Kung Lao running a henchman lengthwise through his spinning-hat circular saw the single greatest moment in cinema, briefly crowning it "the greatest movie ever," and delivers a genuinely interesting history of the game (Midway's rushed 10-month build, and how Sub-Zero and Scorpion started as overpowered palette-swaps that fans latched onto). Vic runs the quadrants to a B-plus/A-minus (A+ plot, A+ duration, A++ violence, F nudity), leaning into his new "East German judge / Harvey Mansfield of the quadrants" stinginess. Sonny even pitches a better movie (Scorpion fighting his way through ten hell-tournaments to escape). The hangout covers JVL's mystery-gift Pagani Design watch (the Lepin knockoff of an Omega Seamaster), an LVMH deep-dive, Sonny's fully-vaccinated return to a maskless Dallas gym, and a Paddington 2 debate that detours into the traumatizing bolito scene from The Counselor (and a Paddington-head-on-Brad-Pitt gif). It closes with fighting-game and fatality rankings.
From the show notes
Is this movie a Fatality or a Friendship? And which one of those would be better? Sonny has an update on his identity issues. JVL got a watch! Plus: rankings galore! Also: If you want to watch along while JVL shows Vic and Sonny YouTube videos from the DOA fighting series, you can do so here and here . Make sure the kids aren't around!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Throughout history, different cultures all over the world reference a great tournament of champions that dragon marking, I think it's an invitation to fight for something known.
Vic00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another edition of the sub beacon. I'm Victor Mattis along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder the sub beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to sub beacon.com you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends, and don't forget about the sub beacon merchandise store at T public.com JVL what's going on.
Sonny00:01:00JVL somebody claimed to have solved the headache shirt mystery. They said it they said it was they said it was just just like wife beaters just tank tops. Why would they call that a headache shirt? I mean, who could say? Who was this who claimed to have solved the mystery? I don't know someone on Twitter. Somebody on Twitter with sensory issues. Who could say? So somebody sent me a watch. What? What kind of watch? In the mail it is what we would call in the mail.
JVL00:01:30In the trade and homage. Okay, a fashion knockoff. I don't make an Omega, a fashion knockoff of an Omega, the new modern Seamaster. And I laughed very hard at it. And it's great. It is a fun piece to have. And I am totally grateful to whoever sent it to me.
Vic00:01:51Are you sure? Are you sure it's a knockoff JVL? Yeah, how do you know it's a knockoff?
JVL00:01:58Because it is in order to escape copyright infringement. It is branded as hold on, let me let me pull out the watch brand. Pagani design. And if you go to Pagani designs website, it is like the echelon. It's the left. This is the lepin version of Ghani. It says fugazi. The Ghani is the lepin version of all sorts of watch. And so you go and they have like, you know, they have homages of all the Rolexes, homages of all the tag
Vic00:02:26colliers. Are they able to tutor Alec? What's like, do they like do they avoid getting in legal trouble because it's an homage? Or because everything's done in China where there is no law? One of those two. One of those questions. All of us say I'm very grateful for whoever did this. But I have not contacted you to express my gratitude because the package included no note. And I don't know how mystery gift question. Thank you. Yes. Did how how are those watches?
JVL00:02:56Any different from the vastly more expensive ones? Do they tell the time less efficiently? Is there is it? What's what's the actual difference? For starters? Yes, it will tell the time. Does the bezel not go to 11? I don't the bezel, which is the bezel, which is clear how long this one will function. It is unclear what would happen if water were to splash upon it. But I it's it's adorable. And it makes me smile. And I'm really grateful.
Vic00:03:26And if you're walking, and you're waving it around, like you have, you know, like a short sleeve shirt or whatnot, would you not be able to tell you be like, Oh, that guy's got an Omega?
JVL00:03:39I guess with the layman with the layman not be able to tell him and not obviously Jonathan V. Last would be able to tell here is my way. Yeah, Omega is I mean, people who don't know anything about watches don't know Omega, right? If you don't know anything about watches, then all you know is Rolex, right? And if one of the Rolexes of these rolled past you, and you didn't know anything, and you just sort of glanced it, you would think, Sure, that's a Rolex. That looks like a Datejust, right? That has a fluted bezel, I recognize what a fluted bezel looks like. The fluted bezel means Rolex, I guess that's a Rolex. To even know what an Omega Seamaster is, you have to be kind of into watches, right? I mean, no casual person would know that it's like it's even though it is
Vic00:04:26a incredibly large brand within the watch world huge is a very small brand within the world of people who don't pay attention to watches. I know with Rolexes that you can tell if it's a knockoff because of the second hand, the second hand, you know, the one that does a seconds. Is that what you call it? Tell me, tell me why you think the second hand is what tells Victorino. Okay, oh, because it a fake, you could see my hand in the screen here. A fake goes boom, boom, it bumps second to second. And of course, the Rolex is fluid.
JVL00:04:57So the Rolex is is more fluid, but it's not it is not fluid in the way that a grand Seiko spring drive movement is fluid. When when something does one tick per second, what that means is that it's quartz. And so one marker of a watch not being authentic would be that it says Rolex date just on it, but it in fact has a quartz battery powered quartz movement. Oh, oh, so one, one of the other ones you could tell. So the other ones are like digital then there it's like computers. Okay, very good. The others you take your punch card. There's a puncher with a series of holes in it and you shove those in but you have to punch upon and it's very small, very small punch card every hour you need a new punch card. Yeah, the for the experience. You know what I like looking at? For me, you know, like people have their favorite magazines to read, you know, especially when they're in
Vic00:05:55their office in the morning doing their ablutions, shall we say, like in Lethal Weapon to Danny Glover is caught, you know, when he's sitting on the toilet with the bomb. Yeah, what is he reading? Oh, he's reading like a yachting a boating magazine about boats, right? So funny because he's so into boats, right? He's so into boats. For me, I love when we go travel to places which has been now feels like forever. Barely legal busty. Besides, sorry. I'm in the bathroom, but not for that. No, it's it's for places that I've been to. So like one of them is like Grand Cayman. And it's like, you know, they always have like a magazine for Grand Cayman where I fantasize writing for that magazine where all you do is visit restaurants and write about it. It would be really exciting. And all the ads are like duty free ads and a huge full page ad on the back of the Grand Cayman one, which is upstairs is Omega. And it's got to be the Seamaster. But they have the Speedmaster as well. And I just love looking at it. So I you know, I was
JVL00:06:54thinking of you last night, Victorino, I was reading a, so I've subscribed to a new website that I really like. It's called the generalist. It's very expensive, but it's a it's a sort of tech finance newsletter. Oh, yeah. And it just has really interesting case studies. And there was a long probably 4000 word case study on LVHM. Oh, yeah, yeah, Louis Vuitton, Moen Hennessey. Yes. Or LVMH. Right. I guess. Right. Yeah. And the history of this company, which began essentially with a kid whose father owned an iron mine. Oh, that's like iron ore or something. And he convinced his dad to get out of the iron business and instead focus on real estate. He made enough money in real estate that then when Dior, I think, Christian Dior was in hard times in the 80s. And the French government wanted to broker a sale to somebody who is unimportant. What is important is that this they have become kind of like a tech company in that they have just specialized on acquisitions. And so they've gone out and they own Tiffany. They are Guinness. Yes, they own Fendi and not Cartier. So they've got like 60 brands. Right, right, right. And together. It's amazing. But their their market cap and revenue is close to Walmart. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:08:24Yeah, but only in luxury, but they only deal in luxury brands. Isn't that fascinating? And I thought of you and I thought get me in that. This is what Vic was made to do. I don't know what you would do there. I don't know either. But right. I can write their catalogs. I can write their brand. Oh, you would be the ambassador. Do you remember? Do you remember the ambassadrice? Sonny? Is that familiar? Is that that might be continuity where he and I think we did a courvoisier tasting. I did not. I was
Sonny00:08:53not part of that. Yeah, that was an interesting one. It was at Ozio's Cigar Lounge. Doubly interesting. Back in the day, early on. Wait, is this? I have a question. Did you guys wind up at the Mayflower drinking vodka martinis? Quite possibly. That night? Yes. We started drinking martinis. I remember getting a phone call from our friend Matt that night. As I'm walking, I'm walking home from the I couldn't go because I remember I couldn't go because I had a screening in Silver Spring. And I get a call. I get a call on my cell phone from from our friend from our mutual friend. And it was the most incoherent thing I've ever heard. I like I could not I could not make out heads or tails of what was being said. That was probably that was probably it. But I remember early on, you know, you you sit through a whole, you know, tasting and the representative was was not just the ambassador, but the she was called the ambassador.
JVL00:09:53And all I knew is that's what I want to do in life. So is be the ambassador. Did that happen with me? No, no, quite possibly. It got very blurry. So thank you, JVL. That's all. Anyway, that's good. Victorino, I was thinking that this is what you need to do. Yeah, I read about this is your future. This is a company where surely they have a place for a man of your talents and tastes. Yes, yes. And you might have to move to France. Yeah, which is I
Vic00:10:23believe their headquarters in Paris. Yeah. Could you manage that? It's good living. It's good living. I mean, you wouldn't want to live in France. Going to sit around and drink wine and eat cheese all day. That would be terrible. I wouldn't survive more than a month, I think. I think something would happen with my body. Can you still get your Wolverine blood there? Yeah, that's a good question. And I think you can because the drug is developed by Regeneron and Sanofi and Sanofi is French. I have a question. Yes.
JVL00:10:52Could you do peloton in France? Do they have French peloton? And if so, what is the French version of Emma Lovewell and Jess King? Right. Must be amazing. Right. Yeah. Much like French commercials for like. Right. I mean, can you even imagine what the French Jess King is? It's just, you know. It's basically 20-year-old Emmanuel Baird. That's your go-to. And she's smoking while she's riding on the bike, too. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And she belittles you.
Sonny00:11:22Go faster, you pig. Sonny, when we started recording, you had bangs. You're letting your hair grow out. Well, no, I just haven't combed it because I took a shower earlier because I went to the gym before picking up the kids. Oh, look at you. I know. I've been living the healthy life. Now that I'm immortal, now that I have the Highlander's blood in me in the form of Moderna shots one and two, I have been going back to the gym. Are you surprised about going back to the gym? Did I bring this up on a previous episode? Not a lot of detail. I can't remember. What is it like inside? Does Chicago law say that this new gym you've joined, you have to cancel it in person by flying to Dulles? Well, it's LA Fitness. It's LA Fitness, so probably I have to go to Los Angeles. It's just a law. I have to kill Eric Garcetti and parade around the city with his head on a pike and say, cancel my membership. Cancel my membership. That's the only way to get out of it. But I, so I went back to the gym and I waited until I was two weeks out of my second shot because I knew exactly what a gym in Dallas, Texas would be like. Oh, it would be sweat on. Let me tell you, no masks. There's nobody's wearing a mask in here. And that's fine. That's why I waited to go because I didn't want to work out with a mask either. And I'm sure all of these people have been fully vaccinated and are, you know, this is, this is, but I, so I, I went to, I went back to the gym after being fully vaccinated. Uh, and it was very amusing because again, no masks, whatever. That's fine. I'm, I like am ambivalent about it because I'm a more crowded. It's about as crowded as it was before. I, the gym I go to is never, it was never very crowded. It was never, it was never super crowded. I would say it's less crowded, frankly, than, than it was before. Even pre, even pre COVID. Yeah. It's less, less crowded than it was. I was not a fan. Oh no. No. A gym in our building. Was the worst. No, no. People hogging machines, people leaving the dump. You know how the people leave like, Oh, I'm, I'm using this one for later. No, I don't. Well, I don't, I don't, I don't use over there. I'm just going to hang my stuff on it. I don't, I don't lift weights like a savage, like a Neanderthal. Uh, I do, I do cardio. I do light cardio for 40 minutes. Uh, but the, uh, but the, the, again, no mask, which fine. That's what I was expecting. That's why I waited. Um, it was very amusing though. So I'm sitting, so there were, there are six, uh, uh, bikes. There are six, uh, you know, exercise bikes in a row. And, um, on every other bike, there's a piece of paper that says this, this device is closed for distancing. You please use the one next to it. Right. And, uh, and at the time I was going, all three of the open machines were being used. All three of the open machines were being used. So I'm just sitting there biking along, bike, bike, bike, bike, bike, not my fan, not a fancy Peloton bike. I, I bike like a man of the earth on a life fitness cycle, like a savage, like a farmer, like a, I am a, I'm a, I am a man of the people at my LA fitness. Uh, so the, uh, we, I, I'm just sitting there biking along. And of course this old man, 70, 60, 70 walks up, looks at the bikes all full. Gets on the one that's right next to me, just flips that piece of paper up, starts pedaling away. He's like, I'm not, I don't care. I'm going to, if I die, I'm going to die, made a choice. I was like, I was like, all right, whatever this, once again, this is why, this is why I waited. This is why I waited to be fully vaccinated. I don't, uh, I don't want to have to deal with any
Vic00:15:03of these people. I like the space even pre COVID that would be like, you know what? Unless it's a
JVL00:15:07woman. Yeah. It's just too close. Just say in this old man's defense, I assume these bikes are yes, they're all indoors. Okay. If there's no ventilation, if you are indoors with no ventilation doing heavy cardiovascular six feet away from somebody, it is for 40 minutes makes no difference. That is no difference than being three feet away in terms of excellent. And so, or being 90 feet away. And so long as you guys are vaccinated, everything's fine. I sure hope this gentleman
Sonny00:15:37is vaccinated. Well, that's, that is, I assume he probably was cause he's an older individual in
JVL00:15:43Texas. I don't believe that's true in Texas. That's true nationally, but thank goodness for
Vic00:15:50her. You think it is for herd immunity. Sonny, you have an update, I think about highlights.
Sonny00:15:55About highlights. Oh, well, no, I, I was just texting with you guys that, uh, I got my cookie dough. Remember if you mentioned, if you remember, I mentioned that there was a, there was a, there was a, a young girl who was going around for the sixth grade fundraiser at the elementary school. That's one block from my house who was selling cookie dough, got that cookie dough. She came door to door with her little, with her little red wagon full of, full of cookie dough going door to door. And no word yet, no word yet on whether or not the children's hospital
JVL00:16:28has received those highlights. And a $600 charge in your bank to Toys R Us or to American girls. I guess Toys R Us is dead. $600. The Disney store. The American girl company. That's a, that's about it. Victorino, what, what's up buddy? Well, I was going to say
Vic00:16:47like you had something to say. I have a bunch of different things. One of them is, uh, you definitely can tell, uh, that the pandemic is ending because of my, again, my, my, my lunch and dinner appointments, various friends, family related, birthday dinner coming up for, uh, Kate's cousin. Everybody wants to go out now, uh, which is great. But the, for me, the problem is now it's the reverse and people talk about COVID-19. You get the night, you know, like you gain 19. I'm the reverse. I'm getting the post COVID night. I'm going to gain weight now that this is over. Like I lost weight cause I couldn't go out. So you know, I'm eating at home sensibly ish and then running three times a week. And now that it's begun again, I'm just barely staying even. In fact, I'm gaining some weight and I don't think it a good way. And I'm running like six plus miles, three times a week, about an hour. Cause that's all I, that's all the time I have. People who, it amazes me, people who run long distances, that's a real commitment in time. It's like an hour for me, that's a 60 minutes plus the time before, after it's like two hours altogether. You get showered and you know, do the whole
Sonny00:18:04thing. Are your kids back in school?
Vic00:18:06Uh, two days and two days. So like my son, uh, my, my, my daughter is in Tuesdays and Wednesdays and my son is Thursdays, Fridays.
JVL00:18:15That's the worst. They couldn't give you them both on the same day.
Vic00:18:17Not even on the same day. So we're never alone. We are never alone. Um, just, you know what?
Sonny00:18:22Tax, Texas, Texas, full of old men breathing COVID on you at the gym, but we got our kids in school. Tell you that.
JVL00:18:27Yeah, that's great. That truth is Kate called the school system. She made sure she made
Vic00:18:32sure it staggered. So I don't want to be alone. Uh, so anyway, and then, and then, uh, and then last Friday was a particularly long lunch that went from 12:30, 12:30.
JVL00:18:41A lot of business, business lunch from 12:30 to 6:30.
Sonny00:18:44Was that the goodbye to Gutowski?
Vic00:18:46No, I can't remember anymore. What sort of business did you do? It was networking. Did
JVL00:18:53you found a new magazine? It was networking. Really? It was, you know, uh, did you write
Vic00:18:58a 4,000 word piece while you were at lunch for six hours? How can I do that when I'm at lunch? I'd say, uh, I believe it was team building. It was just team building, building. Wait a minute. I'm actually trying to think, Oh no, no, no, no, no. Like I sent you a picture, Sonny. Uh, Stephanie Merrick was in town. She is still on maternity leave, but she came up to the city and so we went out to lunch and then that just sort
Sonny00:19:21of devolved. Where did you guys go? Where was that picture? I couldn't actually tell where that picture
Vic00:19:24was from. Oh, that's an interesting one. So we started off at the Palm and then we walked down to the corner of 19 and M outside, which used to be,
Sonny00:19:31Oh, that, that, oh, that's, uh, yeah.
Vic00:19:33It used to be at a Malaysian place. It switches over all the time. At the moment, right now, April, 2021, it is Boqueria. Okay. But it's like the served alcohol grade. We'll sit outside. And then after that we ended up at the quarter deck. Um, and so, but that's where I, so the weight gain issue is an issue for me and we'll see what happens. I'm trying to just gotta keep running, man. I don't know. I mean, I may have to cut back on the diet, but I find
Sonny00:20:01that very difficult. Just do just what, do what I've been doing. I've basically been on, uh, the, the diet that the old woman has in Requiem for a dream. I'm basically just eating, I'm eating a hard boiled egg and a cup of coffee every morning.
Vic00:20:14Uh, sometimes I throw a banana in there. I get into these, I get into these modes where I just can't stop eating, which is crazy. Okay. I do have to ask you this, uh, Sonny, uh, what is the deal with this whole Paddington two business that came up on Twitter?
Sonny00:20:30Paddington, Paddington two is now the highest rated movie of all time, uh, on Rotten Tomatoes. It has 100% fresh ratings, 245. Of 245 fresh, something like that. Why is that? I don't know. I haven't seen it. It looks like a trash movie. I want to, I want to watch it and give it a negative rating. It's a very good movie. See, now I feel even strongly, even more strongly.
JVL00:20:54The first Paddington is garbage. There was nothing about Paddington two, which recommended anything about it. And when I saw it for the first time a few years ago, I, I kind of couldn't believe it. And I had to watch it again. Was this movie good? And then I was talking with Jay pod and I said, am I nuts about this? And John was like, it's amazing.
Vic00:21:17The rare sequel that is better than the original, the rare sequel that is better than Godfather
Sonny00:21:22part two.
JVL00:21:23It's look, I'm not saying it's the Godfather part two bears, but I am saying that this isn't like Sonic, the hedgehog. That's what I'm saying. The first, the first Paddington might as well be the Jim Carrey, Sonic, the hedgehog. Who is the leading man? Is it Colin Firth? No, the leading man is, is, uh, oh, Ewan McGregor, Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant, who, who is a villain there. It was an aging stage quit. It's okay. It's fabulous. All right. All right. I made one
Vic00:21:54terrible mistake though, because I happened to glance on Twitter where you talked about somebody giving you a meat, a gift or something, or that they, they, they replaced, uh, Brad Pitt's head.
Sonny00:22:05Well, the, I, I joke, I joked that if I was going to write the negative Paddington to review, I would have to use as the image for it. Uh, the Bolito scene from the counselor, uh, but with Paddington's head on Brad Pitt's face.
Vic00:22:21Have you seen this movie? Have you seen this
JVL00:22:23movie? I read the screenplay. I didn't want to see the movie. I read the screenplay. The movie, the movie we should do. We should,
Sonny00:22:29we should do the movie. Cause I love that movie.
Vic00:22:31I never saw this movie, Sonny. And then I see you make a reference to it. So did you
Sonny00:22:36Google it? I went to YouTube.
Vic00:22:38And, and I was even more curious when I got a warning, like, Oh, you know, about the content and I said, I gotta find out. And it starts, I have no idea. Cause I never seen this movie and I'm like, Oh, it's Brad Pitt. And then I'm like, I get a nervous feeling. Something's going to happen to him. And I kind of know sort of a, a Bolito. I was thinking more like a garrote, like in marathon man, piano wires, that effect, similar idea, just a mechanized or something like a, you know, where it's a really quick, you know, something like that noise as you are, as you will. Uh, and then that thing happens where they put this neck vice on him and you hear this mechanical whirring sound and Sonny, I have to tell you, it was the most horrifying thing I've seen in a long time. And I, you know, I've seen a lot, I've seen a lot. I saw, I saw, I saw parts of some stuff, uh, and yeah, green inferno parts of, and this thing haunted me. Like, so I went for a run, I couldn't get out of my mind and all I could think of is like, what would I do if I was in that situation? JVL, do you want to know, do you
JVL00:23:37know what happens? Yeah, I've, I've read this thing. Uh, and the Belito is, you know, these the central metaphor of the movie. The movie is the Belito, right? The, the whole thing that the counselor finds himself in the situation is itself a Belito. It, the gears grind insanely fine. There's nothing he can do to stop it. Yeah. It's the screenplay is great. It was
Sonny00:24:06very Cormac McCarthy. Oh yeah. So the screenplay was written by Cormac McCarthy. It was directed by Ridley Scott. Yeah. And it's, it is a, it is a great movie. It is also the most terrifyingly nihilistic thing I've ever seen, which is like the, you know, those, those two are not unrelated, more nihilistic than Sicario. Oh yeah. Wow. Oh, I mean like Sicario at least has like at the, at the very least Sicario. Has within it a kernel of vengeance that kind of is like, all right, well this is like, you can see how, how vengeance would cause a person to do this. And in, in the counselor, it is just somebody makes a choice and that choice leads to him, uh, him, him, his, his, his wife, his wife, his wife being, his wife being raped and beheaded and thrown in a garbage dump and a Brad Pitt getting belittled on the streets. Of, you know, Los Angeles or wherever that happens.
Vic00:25:08Sicario two, not Paddington two. I'm just going to say that. Yes, correct.
Sonny00:25:13Sicario two directed by the guy who just, they just released this movie without remorse or it's coming to, to, uh, to Amazon. Yes. Uh, which is the new Michael B. Jordan, Tom
Vic00:25:25Clancy movie. Bad. Oh, not good. Okay. Anyway, thank you for that lovely beheading treat
Sonny00:25:32this morning that I happen to see. And the best part is the fingers, the fingers that
Vic00:25:36get cut off right off as well. Anyway. Anyway. So a friend, a friend actually made me, I'm
Sonny00:25:42sorry, I'm interrupting your, uh, your, your, you know where we're going with it. So just go ahead. I'm interrupting your transition here, but the, uh, but, but a friend, a friend actually made me the gif of padding Paddington's face on Brad Pitt getting the Belito and I can't share it cause it's too horrifying. It's too horrifying to see. That's amazing.
Vic00:26:00Okay. Uh, well speaking of lots of gore and beheadings, uh, this week we're talking about Mortal Kombat. Uh, I have to say yesterday I was on the phone with my father and I said, well, I got to go. I said, I got to watch this movie with my son, uh, Mortal Kombat. And, and he said, Oh, he says, I saw that years ago. And I said, no, I said, this is a remake. This is a reboot. And he, it on HBO and he immediately said, Oh, I got to watch that then I gotta go. I gotta go. I said, okay, good. So I haven't spoken to him since we don't get a Dr. Matt. No, I have to ask him what I have to ask him what he thinks about it. Because, you know, even when we were watching it, my son, he goes, Oh, this is definitely a movie for my dad. I'm sorry. Let me, let me just go
JVL00:26:40out on a limb and guess the Dr. Mattis gives it four stars. Yeah, I bet he does. Uh, and
Vic00:26:46I told him about a boss level too. And he's like base level. I said, no, no, no boss level boss. Oh, I see. I've seen that. I said, okay, see that too. It's good. Sonny, how about
Sonny00:26:55a big boy review? Uh, so Mortal Kombat is not a good movie. And I, I say this as somebody who, who actually liked the original Mortal Kombat for what it was, which is, you know, it's a movie about a fighting tournament. Fine. That's fine. And it had all sorts of trappings from the, uh, Mortal Kombat games. But what the problem with Mortal Kombat, the new one, Mortal Kombat 2021, um, is that it seems almost embarrassed to be about an actual fighting tournament. And I say this because there is no Mortal Kombat tournament in the movie Mortal Kombat, which is a real problem. It's a real problem. Now that said, there are things that I like about it. And the things I like about it, uh, are almost entirely taken up in the first 10 minutes of the movie, uh, in which we, we've, we encounter a 17th century or something, uh, uh, ninja, the best ninja who's ever lived. He's wearing kind of a yellow striped gi or whatever, I don't know, whatever that, you know, outfit is called. Um, and he, uh, he gets attacked by a cryo assassin who was there to take him out and wipe out his, wipe out his term. No, I think that's in the, it's in the, it's in the, you know, uh, and if you can't tell exactly where this is going, where this like little 10 minute segment is going, there's no reason for you to be watching the rest of this movie. But like, I loved, I love that kind of little story about the, you know, the family, uh, vengeance and the, the blood feud and all that. I love that. And then everything else in this is just kind of dumb and the fight scenes are not that good and nothing in it, nothing that happens in it actually makes any sense. Let me just, this is, and this is what I mean. So the whole point of the movie, the whole point of the movie is in theory, uh, mortal combat takes place. And because outworld has is about to win their 10th in a row, they're going to be able to invade the realm of earth, right? Except outworld spends the entire movie already invading the realm of earth. There's no, there, they just keep sending assassins over to kill people. Shang Tsung's like, I'm going to send more people over to kill these guys. And Raiden's like, you better stop this. This is against the rules. You can't do this. And Shang Tsung is like, LOL, you mad, bro. What are you going to do to stop me? And, and that is like, that's what he'll do. But I mean, this is the thing. So it's like, he's like, Oh, what are you going to do? You're going to call the old gods. They're too busy jerking off in the background over there. They don't care anymore. And, and it's like, it's like, okay, well then what's the whole point of this mortal combat tournament? Why even have it? If you can just send people to the earth realm to kill all the fighters before the fights are even supposed to take place. I am like I, I, I, I can, I can put up with a lot of nonsense. And in the first movie, the original one by Paul W.S. Anderson, I did put up with a lot of nonsense. That movie is not a good movie exactly, but at least it knows what it is. This movie doesn't actually seem to know what it is. It introduces this new character who is the audience stand in. He is not one of the classic mortal combat, uh, uh, characters. He just is, is there to, you know, be again, the audience surrogate and he's annoying and terrible and awful at fighting. His, his, his, his, his, his, his only power is to get beaten all the time. That's like his main power. He just gets, just gets crap kicked out of him, but he happens to have the bloodline of, of the guy who becomes Scorpion. So we got to have him around, got to have him around. Um, I didn't care at all about the Jax and Sonya Blade storyline. The Liu Kang, Kung Lao stuff was okay, but not that interesting, not nearly interesting enough to keep me entertained. The only saving grace for the entire like last hour and 30 minutes of this movie is Kano, who is hilarious. Kano is like delightfully vulgar and stupid and, and ridiculous. And also like kind of funny and, uh, does, does some of the great bits from, from the game and from the, um, from the kind of, you know, legacy material. But like the movie as a whole, I was shocked, frankly, JBL, that you said that you love this movie because it is, it is dumb and full of plot holes. And like, again, like, it doesn't follow the basic rules of the universe that it creates, which is the biggest sin a movie like this can have. I like, I didn't, I didn't, if you're going to make a movie about Sub-Zero and Scorpion and their blood feud and take that through the centuries, I would gladly watch that. This is not that movie. And what it is, is just kind of disappointing. I'm done. Done with rant.
JVL00:31:28Slash rant. Wrong. JBL. Uh, look, I mean, if you would like to mount the argument that this is not, in fact, the Paddington 2 of Mortal Kombat movies, fine. I will grant that. It's not the Paddington 2 of Mortal Kombat movies. There are things I, I will confess. I really liked the first Mortal Kombat. I like Christopher Lambert. I like Mrs. Pete Sampras. I like the music.
Sonny00:32:05Totally entertaining movie that knows what it is, which is a B-movie set around a fighting
JVL00:32:10tournament. And your points about the lack of logic for what the outworld is doing, for who the old gods are, for why the old gods don't intervene, for why, why Shang Tsung just keeps coming. Sure. I will grant all of that. And in response, I will say that Kung Lao takes his metal hat and he throws it into the ground. And in the ground, it begins spinning halfway up like a circular saw. And Kung Lao then takes one of the bad guys, who I don't even remember who they are, and runs them through the circular saw lengthwise. Doesn't cut them in half like a magician. Cuts them in half straight on down the center line of the body. And I'm sorry, that's amazing. Boom roasted. Greatest movie ever. Again,
Sonny00:33:05I like I'm happy to admit that it has a couple of good kills, but it doesn't have nearly enough good kills to make up for all of the rest of it. And like, it takes forever to get to the kills. Like the fights, the fights are not very well shot. They're they're kind of boringly shot as far as like martial arts movies fights go. I can think of a dozen movies off the top of my head that are shot better than this. The the the actual action of it doesn't really kick in until I don't know, but they say all the phrases, but they say every single catchphrase. Here's here's another I have another big complaint here. This entire movie, the scorpion guy, just he's talking in Japanese to the point waiting for him to get over to the point to the point where like in the in the early going there are subtitles and it's like subtitles in Japanese, Chinese, and then and then and then Sub-Zero is talking. It's like in Chinese and they can't understand each other and they've got different subtitles going on. And then at the end, he just shouts, get over here all of a sudden, like he can just start.
JVL00:34:10He just starts speaking English. English when he was in hell. How did that happen? He was in hell for 600 years and he learned English while he's down there. They should have used Rosetta, the Rosetta program, and he picked up very quick. They should have done what they did
Vic00:34:22in Cannonball Run one when Jackie Chan was doing this game show thing and it's supposed to be Japanese. And the entire time he's speaking Japanese and then the host of the other people are speaking Chinese. Doesn't matter. It's fine. No, he's speaking. Chinese rather. The other people are speaking Japanese. Doesn't matter.
JVL00:34:38I was by by the end of like minute four. I was practically twitching and tweaking like somebody needing their heroin fix, waiting for him to say, get over here. I'm just like, so that's the catchphrase. That's say it. Say the word. That's just that. OK, so if I was going to be serious, I would say so it is an accident of fate that Sub-Zero and Scorpion became the two most popular characters in the game. If you go back and look at and we'll talk about the video game at some point, I actually want to have a long discussion about the video game. But if you go back and look at those two characters are clearly padding being put on by the game developers at Midway because they were under an insane timeline to deliver this game. The history of Mortal Kombat, there is no this is not auteur theory. This is a pure commerce play. So Midway comes to a couple of the developers in their stable in 1991 and says, Hey, we need a side scrolling fighting game. And we need it 10 months from now because Street Fighter two is coming out from Capcom. And we got to have something to compete with that in the arcades. And so these four guys are like, Okay, let's build it. So it isn't like you know, they have this deep thought. And so they just start throwing this together. And decide to try digitizing and pixelating the sort of photo realistic guys, and they're just running out of room. And so what do they do? They take two of the guys, they just make them the same but change the color on them. This is like, this is like, when GI Joe would release the repaint of a figure. Yes, right. It was gone. Yet those two are the two characters that players latched on to. And so deciding that they're just going to lean into that and make the entire Mortal Kombat universe part of the Sub-Zero Scorpion drama is a very nice piece of
Sonny00:36:42storytelling. Fair. There, you sit with that pop pop. Here, can I can I can I can I give you an idea? Sure. That would have would have improved this whole thing? Sure. I agree that the Scorpion Sub-Zero drama is the only interesting thing. I agree that it's a nice way to deal with the fans. What if I were to suggest to you that Scorpion, after he goes to hell, engages in a series of tournaments. If you win 10 of them in a row, you get to leave hell. And the movie, the whole movie is him engaging in the 10th and final tournament. And he takes, you know, Liu Kang or somebody under his wing, but keeps him kind of at a distance. And it turns out that they have to fight each other in the championship. And they do. And Scorpion kills him. And then he kills Shang Tsung, who is actually the devil. He takes the souls of the people. And then he gets to escape hell and then he gets to fight Sub-Zero. What if we did that? Because that would be a million times better. It would make way more sense than anything that's happened
JVL00:37:48in this movie. I would see that movie as well. And the good news is we're going to get more of these movies. Yeah, because they're going after, what's his name? Victorino, did you notice that in the original Sub-Zero versus Scorpion thing, Sub-Zero is speaking Chinese and Scorpion is
Vic00:38:05Japanese. Did I notice in the what? In the opening seven minutes. One of them is Japanese, one of them is Chinese. They make a big deal out of the language. Yeah, the subtitles.
JVL00:38:17It's, I don't know, it's fucking amazing. It's fucking amazing. And you know what? Your version of the movie, if Sub-Zero gets to say, get over here 10 times because he has to win 10 victories, then it would be even 10 times better because he'd say my favorite catchphrase over and over again. Do we think that people latched on to- It was great. If you can't have fun, if you can't have fun with this movie and you liked the video game, right? This is the other key. For somebody who has never played Mortal Kombat, absolutely, of course. Why, you know, you might as well watch the test pattern. Right. Right. I only played this game a couple of times, so I watch it basically as a movie. For those of us who remember spending, you know, many hours
Sonny00:38:58mashing our fingers into the- I played this game a ton growing up. That's why I respect, I respect the idea of Mortal Kombat, which is that it is a tournament between Earth and Outworld to determine the fate of the universe. In a tournament. In an arena. And the fact that they get rid of all of this, they get rid of all of this, they discard all of the rules. Raiden is impotent. He is unable to protect the people. Yeah. The old gods have turned their back on everything. Shang Tsung is just like, I'm going to send guys over. Who cares? How are you going to stop me? Can't stop me. Ridiculous. Don't care for it. You know what's funny?
JVL00:39:35Is the entire tournament story, the mythology of Mortal Kombat was all layered on after the
Sonny00:39:42game was made. Well, who cares? That's what it is. No, I'm not saying I'm not saying it's bad or
JVL00:39:46good. I'm saying it's one of these interesting stories. It's kind of like the Marvel method of writing stories where, you know, Jack Kirby would draw a bunch of panels and then Stan Lee would come in and tell the story of what's happening in those panels. It's this insane ass backwards way of doing things. But that is essentially how Mortal Kombat was made. It was we'll make this video game that somebody else will come up with an idea for the story. Question. Right. Victorino. Victorino. Yes. I need to put a quarter in the machine and hear the man of the people. OK, well, before
Vic00:40:20that, speaking of which, was Mortal Kombat a 50 cent game or a dollar? 50 cent. Yeah. Yeah. I always preferred the quarter games. So no wonder I didn't play a quarter. No, no, there's no way it was too. It was very complex for its time. There's no way it was 25 cents. I was going to say a dollar, but it's, you know, no, it definitely was not a dollar. You look, it must have been 50 cents then. But, you know, because you had these actors or the visuals were much different. The quadrant score that I have. OK, so the overall quadrant score is about a B plus a minus B plus.
JVL00:40:59When did you become the East German judge? Yeah, I know. Well, for the last couple of months. Yeah.
Vic00:41:05You've been stingy as fuck. I have. And I think it's because nudity in this because because I am I'm removing the A's and so that it that gets an F and it lowers the grade. So the the plot is an A plus. Obviously, very straightforward. We know what's going on. Duration is an A plus. So did
Sonny00:41:25you think it went too long, Sonny? Well, no. How is the plot an A plus? It's way more complicated
Vic00:41:31than it needs to be. No, no, no. Plot is very straightforward. They're going to fight each other. That's the plot. That's the plot.
Sonny00:41:35That's not the plot, though. That's not. That's not actually the plot. In theory, that's what the plot should be. The plot should be like they're all going to get together. They're going to fight. But instead, it's like Shang Tsung is like, I'm going to I'm going to like
JVL00:41:47turn Kano evil. And the plot is somebody says flawless victory. Yeah. OK, so that's why
Vic00:41:55A plus. OK. Duration A plus violence. Violence action is A plus plus plus. So that is. And
Sonny00:42:05nudity is F. You have been giving. I know. I'm changing. I'm getting tough. I'm becoming
Vic00:42:12Harvey Mansfield of the quadrants. And thank you for the deep pull. And I thought about it. Is it unfair to give this movie an F for sex nudity? And the question and the answer is no, because I was thinking of other movies that were similar to this from the 1980s, namely The Octagon with Chuck Norris. And it's the same thing where he's got to go in and there is a terrorist camp. Run by ninjas and he's got to bust it up. And then there's a scene where he's in a motel with the fellow, the woman that he's going to go fight together with. It takes off her top.
Sonny00:42:44Look, there's all I'm saying is that, you know what? Fighters do a lot. They take showers.
Vic00:42:49Yeah, no, exactly. They could have had that, you know, something like they don't. There's
Sonny00:42:53no one. No imagination. You know, and there's no more movies. There's no more gratuitous
Vic00:42:57nudity. It's gone. You know, everyone talks about why everyone. I wonder why it's gone. Everyone talks about, oh, yeah, everybody needs to say, oh, I think it gets worse and worse.
JVL00:43:05You know, you put Harvey Weinstein in jail and suddenly women aren't getting naked on screen anymore.
Vic00:43:10This is terrible. It really is terrible. And so everyone always talks about how things getting worse. Yeah, it's getting worse for me. That's what's getting worse. OK, other than that, I enjoyed it. I thought it was fine. I thought it was a lot of action and violence. Not too disturbing. It was bloody, but it wasn't like it's like it looked like computer blood. It looked like the same computer special effect for blood as the game, I guess, as opposed to, let's say, Brad Pitt in that Bolido scene, which was.
JVL00:43:35Because that is a lot more realistic than this. It's not realistic. It's not realistic. And I would make this point. There is a level people don't, I think, appreciate that there is a level which the violence becomes cartoonish, which makes it less disturbing. Right. So absolutely. For me, one of the most disturbing acts of violence I've ever seen on the screen is in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Oh, yeah. And when Matthew Damon hits Philip Seymour Hoffman in the side of the head with a board or with an oar. That's it. He just gets him in the side of the head once with an oar. That is way more disturbing than watching whoever is. Yeah, that's right. Run through the circular saw
Sonny00:44:15of Jacks, Jacks, Jackson with his little T-Rex arms like that was terrible. OK, I was not
Vic00:44:23a so, you know, I wouldn't say it's after my time because we're close in age, JV, obviously. But it wasn't my game and I sucked at it. I played it maybe three or four times. Did not like it. You got the middle knobs. You got a little knobs. You're moving them around. I don't know what's going on. I'm just doing this thing. You know, can I ask much like foreplay? I have no idea what's
Sonny00:44:41happened. Just move the knobs, knobs, knobs. I don't know. Can I did did Scorpion and Sub-Zero become the fan favorites because their moves were so easy to do because they had the easiest
JVL00:44:52moves to do? I believe so. So there's a there's a real question about this, about. So in game design, when the game, when the designers are not careful or they are rushed or they're not thinking through, you will often have characters who are overpowered and Sub-Zero and Scorpion were both clearly overpowered in the first version of Mortal Kombat. And especially and Scorpion in particular was really easy. Right. So the other thing they talk games I was talking about is whether a character is easy or deep. Right. And the deeper a character is, the character can become very powerful if you know how to use him. Right. So a character which is. Say, rel reliant on long combinations, like long combos will be a very deep character and you can inflict a ton of damage if you know how to use them. But the thing is, you have to know how to run like six combos together. Whereas with Scorpion or Sub-Zero, you just mash the buttons. That's what I was doing. Mashing them down half circle back two punches together. Oh,
Vic00:45:56yeah. And I threw a spirit. How did I do that? I don't know. Just do go crazy. Yeah. I did
JVL00:46:02not play it much in the arcade. I played it mostly. On PlayStation JBL. Did you want to talk? You said about the game itself. You played on PlayStation or Sega? I'm pretty sure PlayStation pretty sure is PlayStation. Yeah. Yeah. The game, the game itself is, is a really important in the history of games. It's part of the reason we have the rating system for games is because I don't know if you guys remember this. Sonny, you may not. There's a huge outcry. Yeah, there was a moral panic over Mortal Kombat blood spill, right? There's blood everywhere.
Sonny00:46:41We'll get we'll get to this. We'll get to this when I rank the fatalities. Anyway, it's
JVL00:46:47an important game. I qua game, we're gonna do some rankings. You'll you may be surprised where I rank it in the fighting game rankings because I have I have a whole big old ranking
Sonny00:47:02of fighting games. Samurai Showdown number one is Neo Geo Samurai Showdown number one. Did you have Neo Geo? No, but I did. I did have Samurai Showdown on on Super Nintendo. Yeah, Super Nintendo. There were always kids.
JVL00:47:18There was somebody who had a Neo Geo and somebody who had an Atari Jaguar, who would just insist this is five times better than everything else that's out here. Why won't you recognize
Vic00:47:30its greatness? It was the beta of it. Meanwhile, I think I was probably playing
JVL00:47:35Karateka on the app playing Tekken on we're going to get to Tekken. So now I think everything about it is amazing. And the fact that this thing was was written in 10 months, like from conception to art renderings to design and coding, it always kind of looked that way.
Sonny00:47:59It always looked shaky and kind of cheap, even as as it was kind of fun and cool to do the moves.
JVL00:48:05But it hit I mean, people, people like people loved it. People loved it. It was it was it was every once in a while you get a game that takes like wider American culture by storm. They're very rare. You know, I would say in that class would be Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers. In Mortal Kombat, I mean, I can't think of too many more Halo, maybe. Halo. Yeah, Halo. Halo is Halo is a good example of it. But they're really few and far between. And even Halo is more of a hardcore gamer thing. You know, that just everything. And because we don't have we don't have arcades anymore for people just wander into because people just wander into arcade to plunk 50 cents down to play Mortal Kombat. Yeah. And it was it was amazing. It was amazing. So what do you so what rankings do we have? What are the rankings? I have a ranking of the fighting game franchises. Oh, I have a ranking of the the fatalities from the first
Vic00:49:12Mortal Kombat game. Let me just do mine then, because mine is from somebody who didn't play Mortal Kombat. And it's just from the movie, which is five deaths ranked from the movie only five deaths in this crap movie. And I was not really good in Mortal Kombat. So let me just go through it. Number five, Sonya Blade blows Molina away. So she has suddenly her suddenly she has powers. So question if you kill you kill somebody with the mark, you inherit the mark. Yes. Yeah. So just because you have the mark doesn't mean you are obviously immortal. So she but then she then she gets then she gets her arcana immediately. And it's a stressful situation. And it's stupid movie pink laser beams that
JVL00:50:00went right through like, but you see through Molina is the holes in her body. Yes, I
Sonny00:50:05Okay, that's right. That's right. That's right. Okay. That's a vampire. Did it did it better
Vic00:50:11and quicken the dead? That is a fantastic shot and quicken the dead. Okay, so I had to look for these names. I cannot keep track of these names. I looked on IMDb. And I'm looking on the left column in the right column, much like a Chinese restaurant. And it was like Chin Han Shang Song. Like, who is who? Which is the actor? And which one is the character's name? Very confusing. Sorry, I can say it. I can say my grandfather. That was Victorino Matus from extraction from the Philippines. That's right. So number four, Goro gets disemboweled by Cole. Did everybody want to be Goro in Mortal Kombat? Because I couldn't play as
JVL00:50:47Goro. Oh, you couldn't. Mortal Kombat 2. Yeah. And all the arms. Goro. Goro not. Not especially.
Vic00:50:54Too slow. Yeah. What is question? I have questions between the rankings. What a question. What is Cole's arcana armor? Is it armor? Golden armor?
Sonny00:51:05Great question. Great question. Why don't you explain that to us? Actually, his armor
JVL00:51:09looks a lot like Aquaman's armor. It is this golden suit. OK. Number three, Rico, I guess
Vic00:51:18his name gets beheaded by Jax. And now I would have what I would have. He's the guy with a giant hammer, the sledgehammer fella, I think. And I think I would have used that to be had him to crush his head. But instead, he just uses his now. Humongous, the mechanical
JVL00:51:35bow. Yes, that's what that's what he does to it. Wow. Jax was a sucker character. Jax was underpowered in Tekken. You didn't you never wanted to play as Jax. Mortal Kombat.
Vic00:51:44Mortal Kombat. I got that sense. And two is is is Kano getting skull fucked by the gnome. So which is something it remind me of Die Hard two where the Bruce Willis kills the villain by shoving the ice icicle into his eyeball. And the last one, again, I had to find the succubus basically was Nitzara. And she goes head first into the hat buzzsaw.
JVL00:52:12Sonny. You missed one. I missed one. You missed one. I forget. You missed Kano. You missed
Vic00:52:16Kano. Kano ripping out Lizard's heart. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. That's the best. That's the best kill in the whole movie. Yeah. Could you be the can you be the
Sonny00:52:24lizard in the game? Yes. He was a hidden character in the first game or second game. Let me let
JVL00:52:31me throw this at you. So Kano, who in this is played by Australian actor? Is he Australian? Josh Lawson is his name. I don't know where he's from. He is a better version of what Ryan Reynolds would have done had he been given this part. He's great in this movie. I'm glad that you I'm very glad that you mentioned them because he's hysterical. Yeah. He's the best thing in the movie by far. I like the
Vic00:52:59best thing in the movie. The movie misses him once he dies. His his his his, uh, uh, opposite in the outworld is somebody we don't see but looks is Predator like wearing the
Sonny00:53:10mask and we don't. Yeah. Cabal Cabal. Uh, the the scene where Kano gets swept like five times in a row hysterical is the best scene in the movie because it's just like that's
JVL00:53:21a thing that happens in the game, right? Is what Liu Kang would do over and over, right? Liu Kang with that low leg sweep. Yeah, it was super fast because he was so I would say
Vic00:53:32the honorable mention death is when Jax loses his life. His arms. He should have just died, but it was very humiliating that he dies armless
JVL00:53:40just a masculine. Yeah, it was totally was losing his appendages. Awful, uh, Red Sonja
Vic00:53:46Sonja Blade Sonja, Sonja, Sonja Blade. Didn't she remind you of Hillary Swank? That's who
JVL00:53:52I thought. Yeah, she she was actually the worst piece of casting in this. Uh, I would say you need so again, Mrs. Pete Sampras really inhabited that. Mrs. Mrs. Pete Sampras was
Sonny00:54:04great in all of the. Non fighting scenes, but when she is asked to do anything physical, she looks absurd in that movie. What did you I watch? I rewatched it recently. I rewatched it like a week or two ago and she like she looks like I mean, she looks like girl doing these things. There's no other way to put it. Um, like trying to shoot a shotgun and you know, you know, whatever.
JVL00:54:29Go ahead. Your guys turns. Uh, you know, so let me let me do mine because this will be a little more nerd nerd tastic. Uh, number six, I have six video game franchises. The number six on this list is dead or alive. Do you guys remember dead or alive? Is that the volleyball one? So dead or alive began as just a normal 3d fighting game knockoff, very Japanese. Uh, and then the designers went full Vic and started spending basically all of their time trying to program realistic physics for the female characters breasts. And, uh, the, the result of this, I would like to, to show you be reached its Apogee in dead or alive extreme three, which was a spinoff of the main dead or alive series, which took all of the female fighters from the series, uh, put them on a beach resort in bikinis and in, it had, you could choose different things to play. One of the things you could play was the hopping game. What is the hopping game? You choose your figure and she jumps, you know, I think I might've
Vic00:55:52watched her job. I've gotten some sort of version of this game from a listener who they sent it to me when, uh, when I had it for the X-Box, another, another game at the resort
JVL00:56:02is the two girls stand on a floaty device. Speaker 2: Back to back and mash their butts into each other until one can knock another
Vic00:56:10one off. These are great games, another competition volleyball. So listen, this is going to require
JVL00:56:15some editing, Sonny, and I'm sorry, but you guys have to see this. So give me a moment and I'm going to show you just a, just a clip from this amazing game. Speaker 1: Look at the, this is the butt fighting. I love it because they all have the Japanese voice Speaker 2: in one of the, in one of the dead or alive, uh, extreme franchises. There is, you know, with these things, you can always get buffs, right? And buffs. There is a buff, which is a kind of lotion, which, uh, which makes the skin soft. It's a skin softening lotion, but the result of which is just to add more jiggle. Speaker 1: And so this is, I, I, you can't
Sonny00:57:20believe this is real, but I promise you Speaker 2: This is riveting, riveting, you
Vic00:57:25know, audio podcast material. Speaker 1: Oh, hold on. You're going to, you're
JVL00:57:31going to have to put the links in the Patriot on Sonny. Speaker 2: This is a video game. This is a fighting game. That's great. Okay. Yes,
Vic00:57:48I see that one. Yeah. Yeah. So there's no actual fighting is what you're saying. This
JVL00:57:53is just them having a vacation, but in, in that is in dead or alive extreme, but in the dead or alive series, there was a great deal of fighting. It's just almost entirely between girls and bikinis who are, who are jiggling. Speaker 1: Speaker 2: So that's genius. I thought you would say that at number five, I put the street fighter series, which is by Capcom, which is the granddaddy of them all, but which I never had much affinity for it's flat 2d scrolling. I loved it. It was just my kind of game. I was very happy that they partnered with Marvel. And so you've got both an X-Men version of street fighter called children of the Adam, as well as then the Capcom versus Marvel. And that was kind of fun, but it didn't do it for me. Speaker 1: I played that in the summer of 92. Yeah. Which one? Marvel versus street fighter. No, just street fighter. I got into that. Who was your character? Oh, I might
Vic00:58:44have. Blanca. Is that the Brazilian monster? That's right. Again, it's just a Blanca was
JVL00:58:51the character to play. If you knew nothing about, yeah. Did you play Chung Lee? No, I,
Vic00:58:55I always played one of the, one of the dudes who was like, he looked like he was like,
JVL00:58:59yeah, that's right. That's exactly who. Okay. Yeah. Uh, number four for me is the more mortal combat series, which to be honest, my favorite entry of which is the mortal combat versus DC, which, uh, which was a direct to, to console port. And it had a whole bunch of DC heroes and villains, and you could fight them against each other or against the moral combat characters. It was great. A lot of fun. Number three, Sega's Virtua fighter series. Do either of you remember this? Sure. Never say. It was so good. Virtua fighter three, I believe had a, a character who is a drunken master. And so he would, you know, did the full drunken Shaolin drunken gun. It was really great. There was, but there was no story behind it. Right. It was just, here's a cool collection
Vic00:59:53of really great motion capture. If you watched cook on Saturday, whatever you do, the character
JVL00:59:58Oh yeah. Uh, Tekken number two. Uh, my favorite of all the Tekkens was Tekken two. It was a Amco, uh, port really great. And number one, all time soul caliber, which is a, the sword fighting version of Tekken. So half martial arts, half swords, you get to both do martial arts stuff, but also Perry. And it was just great. Great. I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours I spent playing soul caliber. Samurai showdown better than all these so, but I do have one thing I wanted to mention as the worst fighting game ever. It was for PlayStation. It was called Bushido blade. Do either of you remember this? Yeah. Bushido blade sold itself as the most realistic sword fighting game ever. And it was, it was realistic in the sense that if you basically touch the other person, they die. That's exactly right. And you know, one hit, no matter where it is, kills the other person. And the game was so no fun that it even had a whole bunch of moves that were doable. You could do them if you want to do, you could throw sand in the person's eyes, but because they were against the honor code, if you use them, then you couldn't advance past a certain level. This is, this is, this is like a video game, the video game version of the flight simulators that were too realistic. You know, Like, Hey, it's a flight simulator. It's just like flying a seven 37 from New York to Australia. And then you realize, wait a minute, who the fuck wants to fly a through there? Like, it's just what that means is you sit at your computer for 20 hours, right? That's right. That's what some dudes do. That's what hyper-realistic flight simulators do. Uh, I hyper-realistic sword fighting simulator, not fun, not fun at all.
Vic01:01:59There was a movie in the eighties called Bushido blade. And I believe that just did very well. It did well on all the quadrants too, because it was in the eighties.
JVL01:02:09Hey, so that is my, my ranking JVL. I, I did, did either of you ever play soul caliber? No, I didn't play any of these games except for street fight. I had one of the soul caliber
Sonny01:02:22games for either PS three or PS four because it was like $10 one black Friday or something. I was like, Oh yeah, I'll get this. And it was fine. I just like, I couldn't, I couldn't get into it. It was too, it was too hard. Like all the new, all the new fighting games are, there's too much to do a lot going on. There's, there's too much to do. There are too many like characters and skins and moves. And I just like, I just want to play, I want to fight in a linear fashion and progress in this tournament and then fight a boss who you can't get otherwise. That's all, that's all I want to do in these games.
JVL01:02:54All right. Well, so Sonny, would you like to, what is, yeah, I'll go quick. Cause we're,
Sonny01:02:59we're, we're, we're running kind of long here. All right. I'm just, I'm ranking the original moral combat fatalities. Uh, seven and last is Lou Kang's uppercut. Terrible, boring, boring move. Uh, six is Raiden's electrocution. Again, kind of boring, terrible. Not, not that interesting. Um, five was Johnny Cage's uppercut, which was slightly more interesting than Lou Kang's uppercut. Not that great. Uh, here's where it starts to get more fun. Sonya Blade's kiss of death. That was always a, that was always a nice one to see, uh, broken out. Scorpion's fire breath was like the actual, like. One of the like three good ones. Cause he pulls off, he pulls off his face and there's a skull underneath and he breathes fire and he burns the guy.
JVL01:03:43It's a character reveal, right? Until you do that, you think he's a man. You don't realize
Sonny01:03:46he's a demon. He's a demon. He is demon. And he's gonna, he's gonna get ya. Uh, the number two is the sub-zero spine rip. You like rip a guy's head off and then there's the spine just wiggling underneath. And then number one was Kano, who you could, you could reach into somebody's chest and pull out their heart and eat it. I feel like there was some eating of the heart. Uh, but that was always, that was, that was what I think got them into the most trouble with the, with Congress was eating, was eating
JVL01:04:14the heart. Yeah. Did you ever do babealities?
Sonny01:04:17Well, that wasn't until that wasn't until the second and third ones, they added different things like friendships and, and the, uh, the babealities, the animalities, all of that stuff.
JVL01:04:30Which I think were just middle fingers to, to the politicians, right?
Sonny01:04:33Yeah. The friendships certainly were the French, like they're like, one of them was like, uh, the guy like holds up a stop sign and like helps all the characters across the street, you know? And that, that was one of the friendships. It was kind of, I mean, they're, they were funny, but they were also clearly like an F you to, to sit to the Senate. Yeah.
Vic01:04:52Yeah. By the way, Raiden's character with the, the, the lightning bolts and stuff. That's basically, if you remember big trouble, little China, there was a guy who looked exactly like him with the same hat.
JVL01:05:00That is a hundred percent true. A hundred percent true. I do. I do miss Christopher Lambert. He has a Scottish Chinese rice patty. God. Yeah.
Sonny01:05:09That was, that was, uh, an inspired laughing at awkward times and inspired bit of casting.
JVL01:05:13All right. Well, so good. So we all agree. It was the greatest movie ever.
Vic01:05:17Okay. Thank you. JVL, uh, spirit of the week. Sonny, you're tricking a martini. What's going on?
Sonny01:05:22I, I made, I made a, I made a Roku gin martini. You, you inspired me to go out and buy a bottle of Roku gin with your thoughtful. Yes. Advertorial.
Vic01:05:34Advertorial.
Sonny01:05:35It is an advertorial. Uh, well, I tried to do the, I tried to do the, um, the drizzly thing, but apparently that's only like for your first drizzly order of any type. I thought it was like the first time you order Roku gin and buy a drizzly.
Vic01:05:46I was going to say clarification. Your first purchase, not your first purchase of Roku, but your first purchase at drizzly. So you are a drizzly regular.
Sonny01:05:55Uh, I wouldn't say I'm a regular, but I've used it three or four times during the pandemic. Great.
Vic01:06:01What did you do with the twist or, uh, olives or what? Olives. Olives.
Sonny01:06:05Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives.
Vic01:06:09Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Olives. Uh, you put a little orange bitter in there too. Of course. Very good. Very good. Okay. Uh, I also want to speak, speak of spirit of the week. I wanted to give a special thanks to listener and friend Robert Little, who, uh, when he, he heard us talking about, uh, barrel aging cocktails, sent me several small, uh, bottles like the size of bitters that he had put him put together himself, uh, as a sample. Um, they arrived today. Uh, two of the four were crushed, uh, courtesy of us postal service. So, um, and so, I mean like crushed, like wet and broken glass, sadly, um, it is not your fault. However, the rusty nail and the old fashioned, we're still intact. They're upstairs. I haven't gotten to it yet, but I look forward to it, especially the rusty nail, which I think I've only had once ever, and that's the Drambuie and Scotch. That's very exciting. So thank you so much for that. Okay. So, um, corrections, uh, friend and listener, Ian Brody says, uh, you guys on the last episode, you said John Smiley, but it's George Smiley must've just misspoke. I'm sure you all know that. Uh, and anything else? Nope. Okay. That's all the time we're giving to this episode questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Mattis. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patrion. Just go to some beacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time. Bye.
?01:07:35Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Sonny01:07:39Bye. Bye. Bye.
JVL01:07:42Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Vic01:07:54Bye.
?01:07:55Bye.
Vic01:07:56Bye.
JVL01:07:57Bye. Bye.
Vic01:07:59You got anything? I have something, but it's not really an outtake. It's more of Sonny and I should do a whole show.
Sonny01:08:02Just us to talk about it because Vic, you won't have any interest in it. Yes. It's a bunch of thought eventually.
Vic01:08:05I think it's actually the second best to Disney. They're popping in movies a lot now that I remember when I first looked at HBO Max and I was like, "Oh, this is it," because you reach the end. You reach the end when you're scrolling and all of a sudden, there's like ... I'll think of a movie, "Oh, I'd like to watch this with my son," whatever. Where is it streaming? It'll pop up and it'll say, "It's streaming on HBO Max."
Sonny01:08:28I would say Disney Plus is the best for kids probably. I rarely go to Disney. Yes. True. But HBO Max is ... When I am just trying to figure out what I want to watch some night and I don't have an actual idea of, "I want to watch this specific thing," I turn on HBO Max and just start scrolling around and within five minutes, I find something.
JVL01:08:47You'll be surprised. This is the thing. Netflix has nothing on that anybody actually wants to watch. It has a million things and nothing that's any good and HBO Max and Disney have much smaller libraries but full of mostly things that people would like to see. Right.
Vic01:09:04Yeah. I was thinking about it because one of them had Dunkirk and things like that and I think Tenet's coming up and things of that nature and I thought ... Yeah.
JVL01:09:13So you and I can do a whole bonus show on that if you want to. But that's all I had. Did you guys have anything?
Sonny01:09:17No.
Vic01:09:18Things going on? I'm waiting for Brazzers Max.
Sonny01:09:20I'm sure it's fine.
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