#122. Dino Bracket Bonus!
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This short bonus episode skips the usual review format entirely for a single-elimination dinosaur bracket that JVL dreamed up while sitting through Jurassic World Dominion, with Sonny and Vic serving as his co-judges after a quick tangent about their own childhood dinosaur phases. Working through JVL's eight-dino field, the Giganotosaurus (the movie's "big bad," essentially a spinier, supersized T-Rex) blows out the venom-spitting Dilophosaurus, the T-Rex gets a walkover past the underwater-swimming Pyro Raptor, the claw-swiping "hot dog fingers" Therizinosaurus edges the massive flying Quetzalcoatlus in the closest vote of the round, and a pack of Velociraptors easily dispatches the tiny Compys. In the semis, Vic and Sonny both take the Giganotosaurus over the Therizinosaurus (despite the Giganotosaurus having literally been impaled onscreen), while the T-Rex mauls the Raptor pack. The final splits the panel: JVL and Sonny crown the T-Rex, framing its fake-death recovery as a Rocky-style ten-count comeback, while Vic sticks with the bigger, meaner Giganotosaurus, and Sonny grumbles that the Giganotosaurus was really just a "ringer" brought in to make the T-Rex look good. They wrap by agreeing the true undisputed champion is the long-extinct Indominus Rex from Jurassic World, the genetically engineered monster that could go invisible, lower its own body heat, and perform surgery on itself to rip out its tracking chip -- prompting JVL to conclude humanity should have just let nature achieve harmony instead of resurrecting any of these creatures.
From the show notes
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Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Obviously, you do that. You're listening to this special exclusive episode, but please tell your friends. Go to subbeacon.com. They'll easily find us. Please subscribe. I just said that. Okay, so this week we're talking about dinosaurs and doing a dinosaur bracket, I think, because, you know, it's Jurassic Park all the time. And it must have been an amazing weekend. Sonny, box office loss? It's Monday. How did it do? How did it do? It did pretty good.
Sonny00:00:57How about that drop? How about that drop? That was something. Big screens.
Vic00:01:01That was something. That was something.
Sonny00:01:04JBL, explain the rules.
Vic00:01:05Yes, JBL, this was your idea. So what's happening?
JVL00:01:07Yeah, this is my idea. This is just something I thought of as I was sitting watching that interminable movie. And I thought what we could do is we could have a tournament of the dinosaurs from this movie, from Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Dominion. And I have an eight. An eight. Dino field. And the question for me is really what the determining factor is going to be. Is it going to be who would win in a fight or who we think is the most terrifying?
Vic00:01:37I feel like that's the same. I feel like that's the same. And I think that those are both equal factors.
JVL00:01:43Okay. And so as we go through the matchups, you have to understand that it isn't always mano a mano. So there are some dinosaurs. Oh, they can go in packs? Solo and some dinosaurs which hunted in very larger numbers. And so, you know, we are thinking about this as it would be in the wild, in situ. No, in vivo, not in situ, in vivo.
Vic00:02:11In vivo. I'm just going to tell you right now, my pick is the Allosaurus, which travels in packs of 20.
JVL00:02:17Hmm. That's a pretty good one. All right. In the, our number one seed.
Vic00:02:23And by the way, before we get into this, we, when you were growing up as, as, as, as boys, did you go through dinosaur phase? Did you like dinosaurs? Were you into that sort of thing?
JVL00:02:34Very briefly. Very briefly.
Sonny00:02:36I definitely had like one of those picture books with all the dinosaurs and like had real detailed explanations of all of them. Yes. I love dinosaurs. Like I definitely, I had a minor phase like that.
JVL00:02:46Once I got to G.I. Joe, once I discovered G.I. Joe and the little bio cards on the back of G.I. Joe. Yes, that was more, yeah. I think dinosaurs.
Vic00:02:55Forget it. Dinosaurs is when you're much younger than that. Yeah, that's right.
JVL00:02:59So, uh, our, our number one seed is the big bad from this movie, the Giganotosaurus, which is essentially a supersized T-Rex that's a little bit spiny.
Sonny00:03:11Basically big T-Rex.
JVL00:03:12And, and he goes up against the number eight seed, the Dilophosaurus. The Dilophosaurus is tiny, but the Dilophosaurus travels in. In packs and spits venom, which paralyzes you if it goes through a mucus membrane.
Vic00:03:33In the movie it does. And this is, this is how they killed Tim Cook. In the alien, that was the alien.
Sonny00:03:39That's how they killed Newman.
Vic00:03:40And Newman, of course. Yeah, Ned. And this is the, this is the alien sequence of Jurassic World Dominion, wasn't it? Because it's in that space age hyperloop thing.
JVL00:03:48And so they're very quick. There, there are a number of them in a pack.
Vic00:03:53And so in theory. Really scary.
JVL00:03:56Against the Giganotosaurus, perhaps they could paralyze it, right? I mean, look, he's going to take down a couple of them. Yeah. But if there are 10 of these things. If they shoot it in his eyeballs. I don't know. Like he's got his mouth open and they shoot it and it hits his tongue. And now maybe he's so big that the venom doesn't work on him. I, yes, I leave it to you guys. But I just think this is a really intriguing one, eight matchup.
Vic00:04:21It is less intriguing though, because when you find out that in reality, the Dilophosaurus did not spit venom.
JVL00:04:28Hmm.
Vic00:04:29But if you're going with a movie, if you're going with, if you're going strictly within the universe of Jurassic world, that's a much more intriguing. What eight matchup?
Sonny00:04:38It's definitely the Giganotosaurus cause the Dilophosaurus would just run away. They wouldn't, they wouldn't stick around and fight the Giganotosaurus.
JVL00:04:44Well, one assumes that we're in an arena, right Sonny? So you, you don't, you can't just, nobody's allowed to run away.
Sonny00:04:52You're going to fight to the death. I assume they're like in the reserve. They're all, you know, running around in the reserve together.
Vic00:04:58I, um, yes. All right.
JVL00:05:00So we take the Giganotosaurus in round one.
Vic00:05:02The heyday, the heyday of the Dilophosaurus was Jurassic Park. The first movie. And that was, I was genuinely like excitedly scared in that scene. Terrifying. That's a great scene.
JVL00:05:12Cause they eat you while you're alive. Yeah.
Vic00:05:14And it's Newman. It was just done so well. Yeah.
JVL00:05:18Uh, the five, four match. Well, you know what? No, we'll, we'll go down to the bottom of the bracket then we'll do this in this, uh, for the, the number two seed. This is gonna, this is a walkover, a two, seven, a two, seven, sorry, two, seven, a two, seven seed, the T-Rex Tyrannosaurus Rex against the pyro pyro Raptor, the pyro Raptor, which, uh, in the laser guided Raptors, no, the pyro Raptor in the movie is the, uh, the Raptor, which is slightly larger than a Velociraptor that has feathers that can also breathe underwater somehow.
Vic00:05:54Oh. The one that, the one that in the, in the, uh, goes underneath the ice in Jurassic world dominion and swims. And that was a Raptor.
JVL00:06:03That was a, a species of Raptor. Now maybe it can fly. Maybe I, to be honest, I think the T-Rex probably stomps it, but what do I know? T-Rex. Yeah.
Sonny00:06:13The T-Rex T-Rex, the T-Rex T-Rex T-Rex.
JVL00:06:18Okay. Uh, so we're gonna jump to the top half of the bracket then for the five, four matchup. And here we have the Therizinosaurus. Yes. Versus the Quetzalcoatlus.
Vic00:06:31I don't even know about that one.
Sonny00:06:32I don't, I don't, I don't remember what either of those, explain both of these dinosaurs.
JVL00:06:37The Therizinosaurus, go ahead Victorino.
Vic00:06:38The Therizinosaurus is in the scariest part of Jurassic world dominion.
JVL00:06:41The hot dog fingers.
Vic00:06:43Claws, they're claws. Hot dog fingers, they're hot dog fingers.
Sonny00:06:46Oh, that's the multiverse dinosaur.
Vic00:06:48The multiverse dinosaur. And she has to go under the swamp water. Yeah. And it.
Sonny00:06:53That dinosaur. That dinosaur was creepy. That was like something out of a Guillermo del Toro movie.
Vic00:06:57Yes, because the eyes were like gray and it was probably blind, which is surprisingly, it's not called the, do you think he saw us?
Sonny00:07:05Oh, little throwback to Jurassic Park. I thought the Quetzalcoatlus was the feather dinosaur.
JVL00:07:14That's what I thought. That's what the Quetzalcoatlus is. The Quetzalcoatlus is the gigantic feathered flying dinosaur with the insanely sharp beak. Oh, that's the one that takes out the airplane. So that thing is like the size of a plane. Yeah.
Vic00:07:27That is a serious, long, long beak.
JVL00:07:28That is a serious, long, long beak. You can impale on that. And so I got to say, in a weird way, that's a tough match up for both of them because the hot dog finger thing really has those long blades to swipe at an aerial attacker. And if you rip a wing, right, you rip a wing and that Quetzalcoatlus is down, it's dead. But. But on the other hand.
Vic00:07:53On strike. Sneak attack. Pretty tough.
JVL00:07:56Pretty tough, right?
Vic00:07:57I'm still going with Therizinosaurus, although it's unclear to me what the. I don't think it has very good sight.
JVL00:08:06Well, none of these things have very good sight, right?
Vic00:08:09Obviously, it couldn't find Bryce Dallas Howard. Also, by the way, in that scene, the deer, right, it swipes the deer, deer, they're very sensitive to noise. I don't know. Ignore the dinosaur.
Sonny00:08:20Yeah. That deer, that deer is an, that deer was an asshole. He was just hanging out there. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna vote. I'm gonna vote for the Quetzalcoatlus.
JVL00:08:28The Therizinosaurus is about 16 feet high, so pretty, pretty big. I'm looking for a size on the Quetzalcoatlus here.
Vic00:08:36I'm going with that one. It scared me more than, the bird's scary too. Big as a cargo plane. But I think that, that Therizinosaurus, that's some scary stuff.
JVL00:08:45I'm looking for the size. Where's the size? The size for the Quetzalcoatlus, a wingspan of 52 feet. 52 feet.
Sonny00:08:54It's like three times the size of that dumb hotdog finger.
JVL00:08:59It's not a hotdog, it's a blade.
Sonny00:09:02Just have to, all this is one- All right, you got to vote. You got to vote JBL. You got a timer.
JVL00:09:07I don't know, man. This is- Remember how-
Vic00:09:09You have to pick. Pick one. Also, don't forget, it impaled the Giganotosaurus. It's the size of a Cessna. It impaled the Giganotosaurus, like straight through the body in the movie. I'm sure it's not at all like that, but- I think I probably go with the Therizinosaurus.
JVL00:09:28Yeah.
Vic00:09:29Wow.
JVL00:09:30It's a close one.
Vic00:09:31That's like a- Upset. A five seed. That's like a Florida Butler game. It was very close.
JVL00:09:35All right, so down to the other half of the bracket, the Velociraptor versus the Compy. The Compy. What? It's like not this. What is that? Those are the tiny little tiny ones. Oh, the little ones. The little ones. The thing to understand is we're talking about a pack of Velociraptors versus a swarm of the Compies.
Sonny00:10:01Raptors win. Come on.
Vic00:10:03Raptors win unless you're somehow disabled like Peter Stormare. Remember that? Yeah. Well, also the Raptors- In Jurassic World. In Jurassic World. Lost World. In Lost World, I think the one we used with- Oh, the Lost World. Yeah. Yeah. With Peter, what's his name?
JVL00:10:20The other actor. Well, the Raptors also. We'll use their commando training to take out the swarm. They could probably use their own drones. They're very smart. Yeah, they're very smart. They could make an agreement with somebody, a bystander. They could engage in a verbal contract. Yes. Who would say, "Hey, do me a favor." If you help us with this, then I...
Sonny00:10:38Yeah. Chris Pratt, we'll give you three wishes if you help us out here.
JVL00:10:42So we got our final four, and in one semifinal, we have the Giganotosaurus versus the Thorazinosaurus. Oh, man. That's like the better game.
Vic00:10:54It's the one that people will look back on.
JVL00:10:56It's the Freddy Krueger. The Freddy Krueger dinosaur. Yeah.
Vic00:10:59Yeah. Yeah. No, this is like a Duke, Kentucky semifinal matchup, and then it'll be like, "Oh, people will think it's the final, but it's actually the semi."
JVL00:11:06So what do you think here? I mean, according to the movie, which is basically a documentary, the Thorazinosaurus wins, which
Vic00:11:14is basically a documentary.
Sonny00:11:16I mean, to be fair, it only wins because the T-Rex is- Yes.
Vic00:11:20Accomplished.
Sonny00:11:21I mean, T-Rex pushes. It's like saying ... I'm trying to think of another movie to ... I don't know.
JVL00:11:30I think-
Vic00:11:31That team-up, by the way, was so absurd.
Sonny00:11:33I think the Gigasaurus wins. Gigasaurus still ... It's just a big T-Rex, and T-Rex is obviously-
Vic00:11:37I'm going to say, as much as I love the Thorazinosaurus and the Claws of Death, which I do find very scary, and the eyes, Giganotosaurus.
JVL00:11:45All right, and then we have Pack of Raptors versus T-Rex. T-Rex.
Sonny00:11:52We've seen this play out before. We've seen this. We saw this play out in the first movie. We've seen it at the end of Jurassic Park.
JVL00:11:56And? T-Rex. T-Rex wins.
Sonny00:11:59T-Rex wins. T-Rex wins, and he roars, and then the banner comes down signaling the end of the park.
JVL00:12:04Yes, that's right. All right, which brings us to, I guess- The final. The final. The Giganotosaurus versus the T-Rex. Oh. Now, before you guys make your judgment, I would like you to consider that the T-Rex is so crafty that it is able to fake its own- Fake its own death. Do you remember this? Yes. In the film we saw. It fooled me. Fooled me. The T-Rex went down and then faked its own death and waited until it knew that the Giganotosaurus was engaged elsewhere before it opened its eyes.
Vic00:12:37What? Oh, in fact, its eyes. Its eyes.
Sonny00:12:40You saw his eye go, huh? Oh, yeah. I thought this was more like Rocky getting up at the nine count.
Vic00:12:44Yes.
Sonny00:12:45He was concussed. The T-Rex was concussed. I think the T-Rex was rattled. I don't think he was playing possum.
Vic00:12:50He wasn't faking it. No. I think he was. Because he saw the pupil.
Sonny00:12:54The pupil did adjust. It was like, oh, I even came back. Yeah. I think this is. I think it's more like in Snatch when Brad Pitt gets knocked down and he's like in the water and he hears the count and he comes up and bam. Bam.
JVL00:13:05I got to say that even though we've seen that the Giganotosaurus does not strike me as a dinosaur with a lot of heart. This does feel like a Von Drago versus Rocky and I myself would take the T-Rex. The T-Rex. Over the Giganotosaurus.
Vic00:13:20In this movie.
Sonny00:13:22I would take. I would take the Giganotosaurus. Giganotosaurus has size. It has. Its arms are longer. It only. It only lost. Remember, it only lost in this movie because it was it was going at the same time it was fighting a number two and a number five seed. This is like Duke having to play North Carolina and Stanford at the same time. Right. You know, this is like it's not fair. I don't know. UCLA or whatever. I think of a West Coast team. USC. Oh, yeah. Sure. But but like it was like it was a two on one fight and it held its own. It held its own until getting essentially sucker punched by the T-Rex.
Vic00:14:06Yeah.
JVL00:14:07So I had been in it had been in one on one fight. It was going to die anyway because it had been impaled by the Therizinosaurus. Right. Like, how was it going to recover from that? It was dead. It was dead. One on one fight. It was walking death. You know what? Actually, as I was watching that, I flashed back to the last Godzilla movie, which gave us Godzilla and Mothra versus Mechagodzilla. Yes. That's something. Yes. Was it Mothra?
Sonny00:14:38Or was it somebody else? No, it's Godzilla and Kong. Godzilla and Kong.
JVL00:14:41Godzilla and Kong versus Mechagodzilla. And it just once more impressed upon me how stupid this fucking Jurassic Park movie was. Because however dumb Godzilla versus King Kong was, and it was a dumb movie, when they gave us the fight between Godzilla, King Kong and Mechagodzilla, it delivered, right? It all worked. It all paid off. I mean, that was, that was, it was epic. It was everything we would hope for.
Sonny00:15:07It was filled with the moments where you, you know, oh yeah, I've always wanted to see that.
JVL00:15:14And this was just like, you know, it just, it felt again, perfunctory and insulting.
Vic00:15:19As, as much as I would like to see the T-Rex win, and it's clear they, they have a soft spot that everyone involved in this movie with the T-Rex, because that's Jurassic Park. It's a classic. At the end of the day, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, the Giganotosaurus.
Sonny00:15:36I mean, my, my problem, I don't know that it has heart. It doesn't.
Vic00:15:41It doesn't have heart, but it still win and everybody be like, oh, there they go again.
Sonny00:15:45My problem with this whole movie is that it's like the Giganotosaurus. It's like a ringer who's brought in to like, make the T-Rex look good. It's like, oh, look at this big guy, look at this big, and then he fights them. And it's like, it's, you know, I don't know what the proper boxing analogy would be, but.
Vic00:16:00You know, and they, and they mentioned this and they tease it in the trailer when they have to say the biggest dinosaur that ever lived or whatever, really. It's just, they over, it was too much. And I knew it, it was going to disappoint and it did.
JVL00:16:13What happened to the other biggest dinosaur ever? Yeah. The one that could control. The one that they made. The T-Rex. The Indominus Rex. Oh yes. It could turn invisible. Remember?
Sonny00:16:23It would turn invisible and unlock doors. It would lower its body heat.
JVL00:16:25Yeah. Wait a minute.
Vic00:16:27And could sense. What movie?
JVL00:16:29What movie was it? Jurassic World. Oh man. You remember it could sense that it had, it knew that it had a tracker in it. And so it was able to perform surgery. Oh, that's right.
Vic00:16:35Because it was hiding in the thing. It was hiding in the.
JVL00:16:37It knew that there was a tracker in it. So it removed, it performed surgery and ripped the tracker out of its own body because this thing again, incredibly incredible. Maybe. Maybe it knew the commando velociraptors.
Sonny00:16:50I mean, I think the Indominus Rex would definitely win this tournament if, if there were any left, if it had not been cruelly made to go extinct after we viciously brought it to life, the monstrosity.
JVL00:17:01Should have let nature achieve harmony.
Sonny00:17:04Should have. We should nuke all these fucking dinosaurs.
Vic00:17:07I'm sure that would be fine.
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