#126. 'Minions: The Rise of Gru'
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Paul Crookston sits in for Vic this week as the hosts (and box office) turn to Minions: The Rise of Gru, which Sonny declares basically unreviewable as a movie — it's a collection of self-contained, Three-Stooges-style shorts (young Gru bonding with the villain who kidnapped him, a fat Minion's Easy Rider-style cross-country trip, and slapstick Minion sketches) with no real through-line, and the only review that matters is that the kids at his Alamo Drafthouse screening were "out of their chairs in the aisles laughing." Paul, who caught a mostly-teenage screening after ducking out of a joyless Lightyear he snuck into (and pans hard, along with Sonny and JVL, who calls Pixar's whole 2020s output emotional manipulation of parents), got a much more muted reaction and notes the film — unlike the original Despicable Me — offers nothing for older or nostalgic viewers. JVL spends much of the movie talk unpacking the Minions' improbable corporate genius: Illumination founder Chris Meledandri's rebound from tanking Fox's animation division, why kids' content built around three-minute reusable shorts is a streaming-catalog gold mine, and why the near-wordless Minions (like Jackie Chan) travel globally without translation — Paul, fresh off engagement-related immersion in South Korea, confirms the franchise's cross-border pull. Box office also covers Minions' $123 million four-day opening and the "Gentle Minions" TikTok trend of suited teens getting banned from theaters, which Sonny defends as harmless, theater-saving fun. The episode opens with the show's first third of banter: Paul's saga of getting engaged to his South Korean girlfriend after three tense FaceTime blessings from her parents and a National Gallery of Art proposal, and JVL's gloating account of scoring a $1,600 Human Scale Freedom office chair for a few hundred dollars from a college-kid furniture-liquidation flipper, much to Sonny's mock disdain for his own $80 Office Depot chair; Sonny also laments not taking his kids to a $5 revival screening of Pee-wee's Big Adventure and gripes about early Kevin Costner movies being absent from streaming. They close by calling an audible into a quick "most improbable hit movie series" bit (Jaws, John Wick, Air Bud, Iron Eagle, Rambo) before teasing a bonus RIP segment for James Caan.
From the show notes
Yeah, that's right, I used the same image twice. Sue me! Fun episode with the great Paul Crookston sitting in for Vic Matus.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00- This puny little child thinks he can be a villain. - I am pretty despicable.
?00:00:07♪ You better move this now ♪ ♪ The music, the romance, the romance ♪ ♪ You better never let it go ♪ ♪ Or you only get one shot ♪
Guest00:00:13♪ Viva, viva, viva ♪ - All right, all right, I'm not Minnie. Please stop calling me that.
Sonny00:00:30- Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victorino Matus. Wait, that's not right. I'm Sonny Bunch, along with JVL, Jonathan V. Last, and special guest host of the show, Paul Crookston. He's here too. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends. Don't forget about The Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, how are you? How are you doing?
JVL00:01:00- Sonny, we gotta go right to Paul.
Sonny00:01:02- Yeah, what?
JVL00:01:03- Because I have stuff for us to talk about. But Paul Crookston, mazel tov, has gotten himself engaged. - Thank you very much. - Yay, Paul! - Yes, it's true.
Sonny00:01:14You can still get away. - But yeah, they-- - Stop, stop. - She has a few more months left to escape. But no, the aforementioned South Korean girlfriend is now the South Korean fiance. Lauren and I got engaged at the National Gallery of Art. And yeah, it was beautiful. We just got the pictures, actually, from the photographer.
JVL00:01:35- I am a sucker for engagement stories in the same way that I am a sucker for weddings. Please tell me the story of how you proposed.
Sonny00:01:43- All right, so the main thing in this whole episode was getting the green light from the parents. So that was the final thing that this all hinged on. So everything was taken care of. The photographer, the ring, all of it was all a done deal. - A photographer? You bring a photographer to the engagement? Is that what the kids do now? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's not a must, but I have a friend who's a photographer.
JVL00:02:15- Okay, okay. Now, did you also TikTok it or just photos?
Sonny00:02:18- No, there actually has not been any social media. Mom wants me to post, so I'm probably gonna do that in the next couple days. I just got the full photograph list, so now we're social media ready.
JVL00:02:30- Okay. So you got the ring, you got the photographer, you had your battle plan, and then you went to Lauren's folks and said.
Sonny00:02:39- Yeah, so I went three times over the course of several months, and third time's the charm. So- - Wait, what did they say? Did they say no the first two times? - Yes, basically.
JVL00:02:49- What?
Sonny00:02:51- And so this-
JVL00:02:54- Wow, how do you, the balls the size of church bells on you to go back to the one? Well, not once, but twice on that? - Well, it was-
Sonny00:03:02- That's awesome. - Yeah, I mean, it was very clear that they were, they were saying not yet, rather than no.
JVL00:03:11So- - What are they saying? They say, we're sorry, which is until you can shave, Paul, you can't go around asking our daughter to marry you.
Sonny00:03:19- I was looking a little scruffy, actually. - What changed over the course of those weeks and months? - Basically, I convinced them that my career was not a total disaster, and that in fact, I am headed in the right direction, that Latin is making a comeback, and that I'm at the forefront of that teacherly endeavor. - Excellent, well, that's good. - So that, along with some other things, I was able to explain to them that, I know it sounds not great that I'm teaching part-time and that I'm editing part-time, but I actually have good editing clients and the school that I'm teaching part-time at is a really good school, so it's actually good that I'm transitioning from full-time Latin teacher to part-time Latin teacher 'cause I've moved to a better school. So convincing them of all that stuff, as you can imagine, when you're explaining, you're losing, as they say in politics. And there was a period there where I was doing a lot of explaining, and I was like, okay, I need to just be confident. And so I showed them the ring on FaceTime, put it right up to the camera, and they were like, all right, guys, for real. - Look at that. It's 30 carats. I got the whole diamond. - Yeah, you're off by 29.1 there, JVL, but thank you. - Wait, so were these meetings all over FaceTime? - Yes, so Korea is kind of still a fortress. It's loosened up a little bit in the last couple months, but we made plans to meet in the States. So they're gonna come here, and we're gonna meet up in Alaska.
JVL00:04:58- Did you do a PowerPoint? - Yeah. - For them? Like, on the third time, did you really just go all out with, you know, do you have flowers delivered to them five minutes before the assigned meeting time?
Sonny00:05:12- Yeah, I thought about something like that. I think my secret sauce kind of ended up being her sister. So her sister's a bit of a romantic, you know, maybe doesn't have all the same expectations that a around 60-year-old Korean married couple will have. for their firstborn daughter. So the younger sister was a big help. Not only is she helpful for translation purposes, but she's also really helpful from the standpoint of like, she's oohing and aahing at the ring and saying that I'm sweet and things like that. So she definitely helped the process a bit. Big thanks to her. And then I think the fact that I was committed, so this is three conversations with just me, but that's on top of something like 15 conversations with Lauren, me, and them. And so I think I had demonstrated commitment. I think they kind of wanted to make me sweat a little bit.
JVL00:06:10- Now was part of this them reconciling themselves to the fact that their daughter's gonna live in America or were they already reconciled to that? - That is a great question.
Sonny00:06:22I don't think that was necessarily a huge thing for them.
JVL00:06:26- I just have to tell you that if some guy said that they wanted to marry Favorite and live in a foreign country across an ocean from me, I would say no a bazillion times.
Sonny00:06:35- Correct, yes. - Not just twice. - And that's the thing I kept coming back to during this process, which got a little tough, was that when I think about it, when I step back, I'm like, I am kind of asking a lot here. So I need to bear with them. I think for them, it's just an adjustment. They know that Lauren is, her life is in America now. She has a law degree from America. She has an LLM in US tax law. Her career is not gonna be anywhere but America, right? And so I think this is part of the process of sort of like, of getting all that stuff processed and coming to grips with it or getting comfortable with it, you might say. And I think to just drop like a white boyfriend right in the middle of all that just is another, it's another layer to the whole thing. They didn't, they're really cool, especially to put it in blunt terms, especially for Korean parents, frankly. They are very chill. Korean parents are notoriously hard on potential spouses. This is apparently the case for women much more. I guess the first son always, always gets like--
JVL00:07:57- Gets through whatever he wants.
Sonny00:07:58- Yeah, very, very weird. Weird skepticism toward any girl that comes near the first son is like a major thing. But even for a daughter, and certainly Lauren is very loved by her family, there was just an attitude of, "Okay, this guy's got to prove himself." And they wanted to make me work a bit for it, I think. So it was just, it was a lot of processing for them and a lot of kind of feeling each other out and just telling who's, where does everybody stand on this kind of thing? And what's the future family going to look like? 'Cause I made it pretty clear early, sort of early on after we'd been dating for several months, that my goals were marriage. I didn't want to hide the ball on that. - That's great. - So yeah, they adjusted and they communicated with me and it all worked out.
JVL00:08:52- I had the opposite experience when I proposed to Shannon and I went to her folks for their blessing and they signed it off like before I was even finished asking basically. - There we go. - And I was like, what do you, hold on. Don't you want to think about this? And they were like, well, why, why not? Why wouldn't we? And so I then had to go and argue the other side
Sonny00:09:11of the case.
JVL00:09:12- Sure, in the interest of fairness. - I said, so I don't know. How about she's too young to make these decisions yet? Or I'm five years older than her and that's a lot of time. Or maybe she needs to start her career first and really find her place without having that all warped by the influence of being tied down in America. Like, don't you even want to consider these? They were like, no, no, we really like you. We think it's fine. - Yeah.
Sonny00:09:38- I was like, okay. Well, you're in it now. - Your conflicted response to them on that might've been a preview.
JVL00:09:47- Sonny, how was yours? What was your, you didn't even ask permission, did you? You're such a devil may care. You're just like, I'm gonna take, I am a lion. I will take what's mine.
Sonny00:09:58- Something like that. - No, I want to know more about the National Gallery of Art. - Oh yeah. So the actual proposal. So all that set up was to let you guys know that I got the permission on Thursday and I immediately started making plans for either that Friday or Saturday. - Can't let them change their mind. - Yeah, exactly. Strike when the iron's hot. And so I texted some key friends, including one of my oldest friends and my oldest friend period in DC. And she immediately was like, let me plan the party. She's like, I've always wanted to do an engagement party on less than 48 hours notice. So she, and she does like design stuff. She's kind of a whiz kid on a lot of that kind of thing. She immediately whipped up this like great spur of the moment engagement party for us with a...
JVL00:10:48- That was very nice of Eliana.
Sonny00:10:50- Here we go. You know, I got a text message from Eliana Johnson about the engagement. It was very sweet. - That's very kind. - I was genuinely quite touched. - Which, what painting did you do it in front of? - Oh yes, this is a great point. - Did you have like a thing? - So my coworker Matthias had a, basically read my mind. I described the situation and he was like, well, you definitely need to propose in front of the giant portrait of Napoleon. To which I said, I had the exact same thought, but I realized you can't have two things competing. You can't have two works of art competing for attention in the situation. So what I did is I did it in one of those indoor garden areas. So there wasn't actually an art piece distracting. Cause it's like, you've got feet, you've got the girl, you've got the ring. - That's nice. - You can't have too many focal points. So I ended up going that direction rather than doing it in front of a painting. - Gotcha.
JVL00:11:47- Fantastic. All right. So Sonny, here's what I want to talk about. What are you sitting in there? What kind of chair is that?
Sonny00:11:56- I don't know. I got it at the Office Depot. It was like $80.
JVL00:12:01- So, so as I was, as I was in the process of setting up my new home office, which is no longer a room that I share with G-Money, I realized that I kind of deserve a big boy office chair.
Sonny00:12:15- Oh, deserves an interesting word here, but okay, go on.
JVL00:12:18- These things are so expensive.
Sonny00:12:20- Yes.
JVL00:12:22- I don't know if you guys knew this. I don't think I really knew this. I thought that only the Herman Miller chairs were expensive and everything else was cheap. Not true. You go to Staples catalog or to Costco, you're paying $400 for a chair that looks like somebody at the DMV sits in it. - Yeah. - Like not special, not nice. And I wasn't going to pay $400 for that, but I also wasn't going to pay like $1,600 for what I really wanted, which was either a Herman Miller or a human scale or a steel case.
Sonny00:12:52- I don't know what any of these things are. You're, these are, you're throwing around names like-
JVL00:12:56- Oh, this, this guy right here. - Okay. - Is the steel case freedom with headrest. Sorry, no. So human scale freedom with headrest.
Sonny00:13:05- I'm sorry. So again, you're, you're throwing names around here. Like they mean something. I feel like this is a vestigial remnant of a mattress JBL.
JVL00:13:16- It's a-
Sonny00:13:17- Chair JBL and mattress JBL are probably very, very similar.
JVL00:13:20- Close. I, so I found, but I wasn't gonna, I'm not gonna pay $1,600 for a chair.
Sonny00:13:26- No, that's crazy.
JVL00:13:27- I'd pay $1,200, I'm not gonna pay $1,600 for a chair. So I went looking around and I found a nice business up here that specializes in premium office furniture that has fallen off of the back of a truck.
Sonny00:13:45- So Tony's chair company.
JVL00:13:47- I'm kidding. It's not actually off the back of a truck. So what it is, is it was this, it's this business run by this kid. He's 23 years old. In fact, he's a Princeton graduate. And because of COVID, his junior and senior years at Princeton were spent at home here in North Jersey. And he was bored out of his mind 'cause classes did not take up enough of his time 'cause he was a politics major. Loves the bulwark. And so he just didn't, so his mother had wanted an office chair at home. He went looking to buy a chair for her, like me, saw the chairs cost $2,000 and thought this was ridiculous, especially since there was a pandemic on and businesses were going out of business or downsizing their office footprints. And so he started looking into finding how do you go and buy office chairs from a company that's going out of business and started doing arbitrage where he would go out and buy, you know, liquidation office chairs and then resell them on Craigslist.
Sonny00:14:48- How does it, how does it actually work? Is it like a, is it like a, when a, you know, when a restaurant goes out of business, they like auction all that stuff off. They auction off tables and cookware and that sort of, is that how it works? Or was it just like.
JVL00:15:01- You gotta find the liquidators. You gotta find the liquidators who are handling that, right? 'Cause it's, you know, when a company's going out of business the process of it going out of business gets outsourced to a third party who specializes in it. - Right. - And he then swoops in, buys a bunch of chairs, refurbishes them and then turns around and sells them first on Craigslist, then on Craigslist and eBay. And then finally, 'cause retail space got so cheap because all the retail companies were going out of business, he just like opened up a storefront. And he'd go in and just sit on a bunch of chairs and.
Sonny00:15:34- See now I'm imagining like Robert De Niro at the end of Goodfellas, like around the corner. You go around the corner. That's where the good chairs are.
JVL00:15:44- It's great and I love my new chair and it's fantastic. This chair retails for $1,600, Sonny.
Sonny00:15:52- You paid 12?
JVL00:15:54- I paid much less than 12.
Sonny00:15:55- You paid eight?
JVL00:15:57- Much less than eight.
Sonny00:15:58- Oh, look at that. You're getting a deal here.
JVL00:16:00- Cut eight and a half, my friend.
Sonny00:16:02- 400 for this $1,600 chair. That's like, you're basically, they basically paid you $1,200.
JVL00:16:09- Well, the way I see it. - To take that chair off their hands. - They paid me $800 to take their chair off their hands. Because if you save $1,200 and you spend $400, that means the actual net on the transaction is that you are plus 800.
Sonny00:16:22- Your bank account is $800 larger after.
JVL00:16:26- That's how the math seems to work to me. - Yeah. - This thing is so great. I wake up in the morning looking forward to going down to my office to sit in this chair.
Sonny00:16:34- Does it have like vibrating pads or heating pads or anything in it? - No, it has this-- - It's not like a massage chair.
JVL00:16:40- Heavenly lumbar support. The lumbar support is fantastic. And it is adjustable in all the important ways. And when you, here, I'm gonna tilt back.
Sonny00:16:50- It's not-- - When you tilt back in it, oh. - It's not like a chair on the deck of the Enterprise. It doesn't have like panels that you can put to pop up and like order phasers to fire.
JVL00:17:01- It's amazing.
Sonny00:17:02- It's just a regular chair.
JVL00:17:03- Oh, I love it so much.
Sonny00:17:04- Once again, I spent like $80 on a brand new chair. It's fine.
JVL00:17:08- Is it? Well, see, this is not fine. - It's fine. - This is amazing. - I mean, I-- - Do you wake up in the morning and think, boy, I can't wait to go down and get in my chair?
Sonny00:17:15- No, that's because I'm not a psychopath. - Well. - That's what psychopaths think. When I wake up in the morning, it's like, oh my God, I have to go through another day on this planet. That's what my, no, again, my chair, like, oh, look, I'm leaning back, leaning back in my chair. I can do that.
JVL00:17:32- What's the padding in that made of? Is it low-density foam? 'Cause mine is made of reactive gel.
Sonny00:17:37- It's foam of some sort. It's some sort of faux leather handles and backing.
JVL00:17:41- Vinyl covering and what are the points of articulation on it? - It's on wheels.
Sonny00:17:45It's on wheels. I can roll around like this.
JVL00:17:48- Are they soft roller blade wheels? - See me rolling. - 'Cause I am on these roller blade wheels that just, you can feel them kissing the hardwood floors. - Roller blade wheels?
Sonny00:17:55What is this, the 1992? - Right? - You got some neon shorts on under there?
JVL00:18:02I, no, I'm like- - Human scale, everybody. Go look up human scale chairs. Get yourself, if you can afford, if you have the means. - I'm glad- - I suggest you use the human scale freedom headrest.
Sonny00:18:15- I'm glad that they paid you $800 to take that chair off their hands. That's good for you. But I have to say, I've never had any complaints about my $89 chair or whatever from Office Depot.
JVL00:18:28- That's 'cause you don't know what you're missing. How are you, Sonny? What's going on with you, buddy?
Sonny00:18:33- I don't know, I got this great chair. That's what's going on in my life. Not a whole lot, not a whole lot. It's funny, my kids have gotten very into going to the movie theaters. We'll talk about this in a minute since we're discussing Minions: Rise of Gru. But they have gotten so into it that for a while this week, I was seriously contemplating pulling my oldest child, she's gonna be seven in like two weeks, out of her camp to go see Pee-Wee's Big Adventure at the Alamo Drafthouse 'cause that's what they're showing for their weekday kids' movies. They have like a-- - Movie camp is what they call it. - Movie camp, exactly. They call it movie camp. $5 tickets, great deal. And I was very strongly considering just going and getting her out of class or out of camp and going to this. And eventually I brought this up kind of jokingly to my lovely wife. I was like, "Oh, wouldn't that be funny?" She's like, "No, that's a dumb idea. Why would you do that?" I was like, "Yeah, no, I would never do that. Take her to see one of my favorite movies from that age. Why would I do that?"
JVL00:19:49- Yeah, I was just kidding. I'm just testing you, Beth.
Sonny00:19:51- I didn't end up doing that. And then I almost, this was another thing I was very strongly considering until I got like a weird look from my lovely wife. I was like, "Ah, maybe I'll just go myself." She's like, "No, you can't just go to the kids camp movie by yourself. You'll get down some sort of list." - With the trench coat.
JVL00:20:10- You'll get on a- - Just sit in the back with a trench coat and a fedora on, totally cool.
Sonny00:20:15- I'm just here to see the movie. I didn't realize it was for children. But no, so I did not end up doing either of those things. And I regret it. I regret it already. My life is filled with regrets. I've got this terrible childhood chair apparently. I didn't go see "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" on the big screen like I wanted to. I just, I keep messing up. So that's how my week has been. Just a series of regrets. And the other thing that I've been doing is I've been watching a lot of Kevin Costner movies recently for a thing. One of which is that, knock on wood, but I should have the director and writer of "Bull Durham" on "Buller Goes to Hollywood" next week, it'll be a fun show. But I don't know where I was going with this. Oh, the weird thing about Kevin Costner is that very few of his movies, weirdly, are available on streaming, especially his early movies. Like I had to rent "Fandango" on VOD, which is a great movie. If you haven't seen "Fandango," you should see it. It's fantastic. And also, God, what else? Oh, "Silverado." "Silverado" is not on. - Isn't that the name of a movie ticket service? - It is, it is. I mean, there's a title card at the beginning that is "Fandango" is a type of music or a dance or like a general craziness. - I see. - So it means something before fandango.com, the movie ticket sales company. But yeah, it's been like vaguely annoying how few of these early Kevin Costner movies are just streaming on HBO Max or whatever. People need to get on it. We need more Kevin Costner in our lives.
JVL00:21:57- Yeah, God forbid you just just purchase them.
Sonny00:21:59- Well, I rented them, I rented them on VOD. But like also like, it's not like fandango, it's not like there's a, you know, a 4K copy of fandango floating around. I think there's like a shout factory. There's like a shout factory Blu-ray that is out of print at like $80 now, which is whatever.
JVL00:22:17- It just means it's a good investment. You should have picked it up, Sonny.
Sonny00:22:19- I should have bought it at the time. I actually think that one's still in print. There was some other one that is out of print.
JVL00:22:24- It's like 20% of a really good desk chair.
Sonny00:22:28And it's better too, 'cause it's art.
JVL00:22:30- By the way, I would just say the other, to make my chair buying experience complete, as this kid is checking me out in his store, he says to me, "Do you know Tim Miller?" And this was- - You should say, "No, he's an asshole." - The third, the third time this week that I had been in proximity to somebody. And what the only question they had for me was whether or not I knew Tim Miller.
Sonny00:22:57- New York Times bestselling author, New York Times bestselling author. - Real-time guest, you know, MSNBC regular, where he's gonna be big one of these days. So, good for him, good for him. You get, you got a chair, he got a bestselling book. I think you're the winner. He can't sit on those books. - I said,
JVL00:23:14"I do know Tim, I'm just one of his minions."
Sonny00:23:18- Oh, speaking of minions, huge weekend at the box office for the minions. Hold on, let me pull up box office mode for you, JoJo. Big weekend, movie grossed $125 million over the four-day weekend, or I'm sorry, $123 million over the four-day weekend. Meanwhile, Top Gun Maverick did, I'm just gonna go to three-day weekends 'cause then I can talk about drops. Three-day weekend for Top Gun Maverick is 26 million, dropping 12%. Elvis does 18.5 million for a drop of 40%, which is a pretty good hold. Meanwhile, Lightyear continues to fall like a stone. It's down 65% again this weekend, 6.5 million. That movie is not, Lightyear will make less money in its entire run than Minions made in its opening four-day weekend. I mean, I don't know what happened with that movie, but it's a disaster.
JVL00:24:16Nobody wants to see it. - Pixar is trash.
Sonny00:24:18That's why. - Apparently, Pixar's trash. It's too woke, the movie's too woke, and Pixar's trash.
JVL00:24:24- No, Pixar makes movies for parents now, not for kids. Pixar is trash. All Pixar exists now to do is to take a needle and push it through the eye of parents in order to stimulate parts of their brain to make them cry. That's all Pixar has done for the last 10 years. - That's all Pixar's ever done. - Well, they used to be like with also with a little bit of imagination, but we are all wise to their formula now, and we're not gonna be manipulated by Pixar into crying anymore.
Sonny00:24:54- Well, I'll tell you what I cried at. I cried at, I cried at Top Gun Maverick. - Oh, of course. - I cried at Midnight. - Oh, yeah. - When Ice died. - You saw Top Gun Maverick, right? Right, Paul? - I am crazy about Top Gun Maverick. I saw it with, with Vic and his son, and it is incredibly awesome. Like to the point where there aren't words for it. And I think Vic described my reaction on the show as being like my expectations were through the roof and it met them anyway. But what I actually said was my expectations were through the roof and it exceeded them. So yes, I am crazy about Top Gun Maverick. And speaking of light year, totally joyless. I stepped into it after Minions. Cause I was like, I'm in a theater and it's raining outside.
JVL00:25:40I've got a few minutes to kill. And Sonny isn't that close to piracy?
Sonny00:25:44- Did you buy another ticket? - No, I did not buy another ticket. - How dare you? - So I stepped in and I saw, I actually came in right when the title card was there. And it's just like very notable. So I saw it from the beginning I was like jumping in, you know? And it's just like. - So you watched an entire second movie for free? - No, I did not watch the entire movie. - How much of the movie did you watch? How much of the movie did you watch Paul? - I stuck out, it felt like, it felt like 25 minutes. I think it was probably more like 12. All the banter was bad. It wasn't charming or anything. And it also, the whole plot is that they're stuck. I hate it when the plot is like, we're stuck. Or we're not moving or this is like the last jet. I had this problem where like, we're out of space. We're out of space gasoline. And so we can't move. It's so boring. It's like a very joyless movie. So I totally see.
JVL00:26:40- Tell me, does this strike you as the kind of movie that a nine year old child would have seen in 1991 and thought, this is amazing. This has blown my mind. I have to have all the toys of it.
Sonny00:26:51- Yeah, that's the thing.
JVL00:26:52- And if so, if so, would that child have wanted the Buzz Lightyear toy or the cat toy? Because I think. - I think they would have wanted the robot cat. It just doesn't make sense on it. Again, and all of it is, it's a we're going to hit parents about what family means. Go F yourself, Pixar.
Sonny00:27:08- Yeah, but I don't think it even does that very well. Really, it really doesn't do that very. I don't know what this movie is trying to do. But like, to your point about the movie being stuck, the worst part of the movie is that they decide just to stay there. At the like, the conclusion of the movie is, is they're like, yeah, we're just going to stay on this planet now. This is where we live. We'll send the space rangers off to do their space ranger things, I guess, at the end. But like, we're just going to-- this is our planet now. This is our home. And just like, it really-- the whole thing, the whole thing is bad and annoying. - And I do think the woke aspect of it-- - I'm glad you didn't pay for a ticket. - Quote unquote, yeah. I do think like, the woke aspect, quote unquote, is one of those things where I don't think that people are trying to shield their eyes from lesbian relationships. People do have like, a little bit of a radar for a movie that's like, trying to be serious when it shouldn't be.
JVL00:28:02And when there's like, a thing going on where it's like,
Sonny00:28:06oh, well, we have like, a social comment that we're trying to make. And we have this, and we have that. And it's like, people just want a fun movie. That's what Pixar's for. - Yeah, it's not a good movie, a bad movie. But Minions is definitely a movie that kids love. I have never seen my children react to a movie like they reacted to Minions: Rise of Guru. Just peals of laughter. And that's the only review I can really give this movie. I like, the movie itself is, I...
JVL00:28:45- It's not a movie.
Sonny00:28:47- To say it's incomprehensible is wrong, 'cause it's not incomprehensible. It's very comprehensible. But it just like, every single thing that happened, and I was like, why is this happening? I don't care about any of this.
JVL00:28:56Or any of these people. It's like three minute shorts.
Sonny00:28:58It's not a movie. - It's like a Three Stooges. - Yes. That is exactly what it is. - Like over and over and over again.
JVL00:29:05- Yes. Kevin Stewart and Bob are the Three Stooges. - Yeah. - And we have them running, and so, well, whatever. You should do a big one. Do you want me to do a big Roy review?
Sonny00:29:14- You do a big Roy review, 'cause I have nothing to say about this movie. I just like, have nothing to say about it.
JVL00:29:19Do it. - Minions. - Minions. - The Rise of Guru takes us back to the childhood of Thelonious Gru in 1978. He's somewhere, and everybody is swingers and with disco hair and bell bottoms. - Disco. - And Rue is in sixth grade, and he wants to join the Sinister Six, and...
Sonny00:29:39- No, it's something else. It's like the...
JVL00:29:41- All right. Sinister Six. We can't just say that. Sinister Six is the Spider-Man villain.
Sonny00:29:46- Insidious Six or something.
JVL00:29:47- Whatever. He wants to join the Legion of Doom, and the Legion of Doom people inexplicably have cast off their leader for no good reason. Except so that the movie can happen. And they have gone and stolen the Emerald whatchamacallit, which is gonna let them do things that are never explained until later. - Zodiac wheel. - And...
Sonny00:30:10- Chinese Zodiac.
JVL00:30:11- And Rue wants to go and join them, and he decides he's gonna leave his minions behind because he's ready for the big time. But instead, Rue is kidnapped by the former head who'd been betrayed. - Now, honey, the point is we have three movies, three stories happening. The first story is Rue joining forces with the guy who has kidnapped him and viewing him as a father figure. The second is the fat minion going cross-country doing Easy Rider as he goes to get the special gem Emerald Zodiac. And the third movie is a series of sketches with the Three Stooges minions. All of these, nothing in the movie, no sequence is longer than three minutes, I don't think. Each sequence can be seen as its own short with a beginning, middle, and end so that each sequence feels like a completed story, even though it's a short animated story. And the whole thing is over in, what, 70 minutes, 75 minutes?
Sonny00:31:23- Yeah, 85 minutes. It's pretty quick.
JVL00:31:25- And children get... - Giggle their fool heads through the whole thing. And because these things started in, I think, 2010 is the first Despicable Me.
Sonny00:31:35- Yes, 2010.
JVL00:31:36- We have a whole generation of people who are now like 16 to 20 years old who grew up with Minions and for whom the Minions are, to them, what Tom and Jerry were to other people or Bugs Bunny or Roger Rabbit, and they make TikTok videos by showing up wearing suits.
Sonny00:31:57- They're still Minions. - They're still Minions. No, this is my favorite thing about... All right, so this is the one thing I do actually know something. So there was a meme, there was a TikTok viral meme of kids wearing full formal suits with sunglasses and stuff and going to the theaters and they would... The well-behaved ones would sit there and tense their fingers and do evil things, right? And then the ill-behaved ones would have raves, they'd be freaking out and dancing in the aisles and blah, blah, blah. To the point where certain theaters in England and in New York City, a couple of other places, they just stopped selling tickets. If you came to the box office wearing a suit, they were like, "You do not get to buy a ticket for Minions: Rise of Gru." And there was another video I saw that wasn't people actually dressed up in suits. They were all wearing yellow. So maybe this is a different meme, but they were flipping out and the managers came out before the show was like, "If you don't calm down, we're gonna send all you home. None of you are getting a refund." And sure enough, they got sent home, none of them got a refund. But I'm pro Gentle Minions. I am gonna shock the world here by coming out in favor of the rowdy kids in the movie theaters. And let me tell you why. It's because we need this generation to have some experiences in the theaters that are pleasant and memory forming, and they gotta come back to the theaters, otherwise theaters are gonna die. Can I... Pro Gentle Minions.
JVL00:33:25Before we go on with this. Um, does Hollywood want to die? Because if you are a theatrical in the theatrical exhibition business, uh, and there you, you would pay people to come to your theater at this point, right? You do anything to get the idea that the exhibitors would want to crack down on getting a younger generation of kids showing up to the theater to buy books. It just strikes me as insane.
Sonny00:33:52Right? I mean, I'll play devil's advocate. I agree with you, but I'll play devil's advocate here because like some of these. People were like bringing bananas to the thing and throwing them at the screen. Like you can't have that obviously. Uh, and you know, they were, they were causing such a ruckus that like other paying customers were demanding their money back and leaving, like, obviously that's, that's a problem. That's not ideal. But the, uh, but like, I can't believe that you set up like the Rocky horror picture of
JVL00:34:16it, right? You lean into it and make it a thing.
Sonny00:34:19I can't understand how meme Lord, Adam Aaron, head of AMC hasn't like got, uh, a banana NFTs that he's giving away to kids to come to the movie theaters and, you know, do their, do their, uh, tick tock dances or whatever at AMC is like set up, set up an area outside in the lobby where they can like come and like stand with the standees and like, I, you know, whatever you have send, send the guy in the truth monkey costume out to these, uh, theaters with bananas and have them, you know, I don't know, do whatever but like lean into this, how can you not lean into this? Yeah.
JVL00:35:01So, uh, Paul, what did you think? Have you, are you, you're slightly too old, right? So the Minions, the first Minions movie comes out when you're in like middle school, so you're too old for animation and it doesn't mean anything to you, is that about right?
Sonny00:35:15You were probably, you were probably like what, wait, let me guess, you were 14 when the first one came out. 2010, we said? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think I was 17. He was six. Um. So, uh, side note though, I am a huge animation fan in general, so I don't, I don't observe the, uh, uh, like age restriction niceties necessarily. That being said, Despicable Me definitely felt like something that was aimed at a younger audience and while I thought it was a good movie in some ways, like it definitely had some redeeming qualities. It wasn't the sort of thing where I was like totally bought in, whereas like How to Train Your Dragon. Um, was a movie that actually like kind of excited me, like I, like it had something kind of like a little bit, um, like different and exciting to me, whereas Despicable Me felt like a play to kids. Um, so like Avatar The Last Airbender felt like it was aiming sort of upward, like something that more grown up people could enjoy as well. And Despicable Me felt like something that was like aiming downward with like the fart jokes and stuff. Well, it, it, I mean, it just felt to me like I actually thought it was a DreamWorks animation picture, uh, for a long time. I didn't realize it was universal until like I was trying to figure out where to watch the originals because my kids really, really wanted to watch the rest of the Minions movies after, after seeing Minions Rise of Gru. So we watched Despicable Me this week and their review, not enough Minions. Yeah. Needed more Minions. Yeah. The Minions were an accident.
JVL00:36:51So this is the, yeah, I mean, this is all, I don't know how, the corporate story of the Minions verse. Yeah. Is interesting. So this all comes about because Chris Melandandri, am I selling, am I saying his reign, his name,
Sonny00:37:05right?
JVL00:37:06Something like that. He, uh, he comes, never has been a more of a career been made of less. He comes out of Fox where he is responsible for Fox animation, Titan AE, which is a movie that bombs so hard that Fox shut down its animation unit after it. He broke Fox. His job was running Fox animation and he broke Fox animation and for his next job, universal came to him and said, we want you so bad to run our animation department that we will give you a piece of the action. They gave him an ownership stake. And what he has done is oversee a couple of minions movies.
Sonny00:37:57And a couple sing movies, the same movies are also huge.
JVL00:38:00That's it. Yeah. But these things are so valuable as part of a streaming organizations catalog, because you cannot succeed in streaming without a really strong kids park. Cause this is, I don't wanna, I don't wanna spoil the ride for you, Paul, but you need screens to park your children in front of yes, without them, you can't get through the day. And, and so you need to be. A little part and get kids. That's why exactly, you know, I, I would say Chris learned his lesson. Chris Melandrani or whatever is, I mean, we say his name, uh, don't go for tight, naggy make stuff for the six year olds. Make the six year olds laugh because the six year olds will watch the same movie a thousand fucking times. Yep.
Sonny00:38:46Uh, and see also Shrek.
JVL00:38:48Yeah. Shrek. Um, so I, I, I actually like the original despicable me because it is a comedy. Which works on two levels. The, the first is the fart jokes, but the second, what is funny about it is that grew in, in the original selling, he goes and adopts a bunch of orphans because he wants to use them to steal a piece of technology. And so it is, if you are a parent, the idea of somebody willingly becoming a parent because he thinks he's gonna be able to use the kids to get something is hilarious. Right? Like, I'm sorry you chose to do that. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it is filled with the humor of watching somebody who has bumbled into parenthood being confronted with what parenthood actually means. Uh, and so there is this dark humor to it that only operates at the level of parents and it's not, it is not the Pixar, like heartstrings, tugging, hugging and learning type stuff. Uh, and that works really well and nothing else in the mood. This is the rise of grew is the fifth installment. We have a sixth installment coming out. Two years from now in 2024, uh, none of the other ones really work, but as movies, but they all really work as pieces of kids content. Yeah. Because again, I, I really believe is I think it's because kids can pop in and out of them for three minutes at a time. And you know, the through the through line to the movie itself is totally immaterial. It's a bunch of shorts.
Sonny00:40:19Well, it's funny. So the last trailer for this movie was literally, it was just the airplane sequence. In full and it, and when, when the sequence started, so first off, I just kind of assumed that the whole, for some reason I had assumed the whole movie would be about them running an airline. Cause I was like, well, I guess that's what they're doing now. They got, they're running this airline. Uh, but no, when it started, it was literally just the trailer in full in the movie. And I was like, wait, I've seen, I've seen all of this. I mean, not like, not like I've seen most of it or I I've seen beats of it, or like I can follow what's happening from, it was like, I've seen this whole three minutes stretch of the film, like five times in movie theaters, what, what is happening here? But that's what the whole movie is. You could have pulled any three minutes stretch of the film out and used it as a trailer and it would have worked fine. Or at least any three minute that is focused, a three minute segment that is focused entirely on the minions. You could have, you could have pulled any of those segments out and put it here and it would have been fine. And I like, I there's, there's an, there's a purity to that, that I kind of admire in a way. Like, I don't think that I don't think writing that sort of thing is easy. Exactly. I don't think it's terribly hard, but I also don't think it's easy. Uh, and the, the, the fact that the fact that a, they're able to do it successfully and B kids genuinely love it. I mean, like the kids in my theater were out of their chairs in the aisles laughing. I mean, it was like, I've never seen anything like that before, uh, at the, at the draft house. I just had never seen anything like that.
JVL00:41:55Yeah. It was like a belly laugh mode where he just couldn't stop. And I was a little worried that it was so much, except lots of other kids in the theater were doing the same thing.
Sonny00:42:04Yeah. It's crazy. I've, I was not, I was not as somebody who is, who like actually has never watched any of these in full before this, I w like, I went back and rewatched despicable me, which I like a little bit less than JBL. I think it's fine. But like, I'd never really watched any, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Lost it. They all, every, every kid. Everybody under the age of eight in my theater was on the ground, like rolling, like, uh, like, uh, like in a horror movie when the laughing gas is released, that's what my theater was like. Yeah. So Paul, what'd you think? I was hoping for an experience like that myself. So I came in, um, and Sonny, you talked about the whole, you went alone to the minions movie,
JVL00:42:49like Sonny wanting to go along to the peewee.
Sonny00:42:51Yes. And I, I may have entered a little bit of a Victorino Mattis situation because. When I walked into the theater, uh, it was all teenagers. So it was teen girls who were at my showing and cause that's because they're, they were, they were like five, six, seven when the first one comes out or the second one or whatever. And so they still have, it's like you said, Tom and Jerry for like that generation. Um, so I was, I was wondering a little bit what their reaction would be. I was hoping for kids cause I knew that it would be boisterous and that would be kind of entertaining in its own way. Um, but I didn't, I didn't get much from the teenage crowd. I think that, um, I think that they are going to stay, like you said, they're like kids content. Like, so they're, they really, I think with the first Despicable Me, there was a broad interest there. I really loved the kid characters in that movie, Agnes, uh, Margo, they really work, I think. And that's why the first Despicable Me was one of the reasons why it works so well. Um. They're not attempting anything like that anymore. And they haven't, I went, I did my research. I went back. I watched Despicable Me 2. I skipped Despicable Me 3 because apparently it's terrible. I watched Minions, the first one, uh, in, in prep for this one. And it was just very clear that like the, that core through line of the first one, they didn't really have anything else like that in the other movies. What's funny to me is they kind of tried in this movie with the old guy villain. That we mentioned earlier. And that character completely does not work. Yeah. Yeah. Wild Knuckles. Voiced by Alan Arkin. That completely does not work. So there's, there's no, there's no virtue in it for like the teenager or the adult that has nostalgia for the Minions and for Gru and things like that. There's just not anything there. It's like totally just a play for kids. Wait. So in the first Minions movie, in the first prequel Minions, it, it, that is a prequel,
JVL00:44:55right? Yeah. At the end they find Gru at the end of it.
Sonny00:44:58So how, where do the Minions come from?
JVL00:45:02They, they have been around since the dawn of time. Like Oompa Loompas basically they're, they're immortal. They're just sort of always there. They're basically indestructible. How do you kill a Minion?
Sonny00:45:14They're indestructible. Yeah. They're indestructible. And I don't think they breed because it's the same ones. When you go back to ancient history, when there's dinosaurs and stuff, it's looks like it's the same group of group of kids. So are they all male? Yes, I think so. So every Minion that we see in a dress is wearing drag.
JVL00:45:32I think they're, I think male is too strong. I think you're imposing a biological construct on them, which does not exist. I think they simply are.
Sonny00:45:41They do have male names and they occupy, they basically, they all have male, well, this is what I'm saying. They all have male names and when they dress up like women, they're all wearing like comic British drag with like melons and they are voiced by a man. And, and I think the idea is I would describe it as like, it's the human logo on the men bathroom kind of idea. They are, they are Minion and they sort of are a default male facing kind of thing, but they don't really have a gender. Okay.
JVL00:46:17Okay. Very weird. They're not, they're not real Sonny. You know what they are, they are one of the greatest merchandising opportunities in the history of animation. I mean, they bigger than the Smurfs, bigger than, I mean, as a piece of merchandising, the lunch boxes, the sweatshirts, the t-shirts, the toothpaste, the, the bananas, right? You go, go buy bananas and go buy a $5 banana has, has the, how much could a banana cost
Sonny00:46:47branded $10? You know, they, they increase the price because of the branding. It's ridiculous. Yeah. I, I, well, there was a, there was a funny viral tweet that was going around that was like, when I. When I, when I got my new apartment, this was the key they gave me. And the guy like has it on one side, he flips it over. It's a minions key. It's like, it's like he went to the home deep, like he got from the home depot, you know, the minions branded and that's everything. It's everywhere. I, again, I, I never quite realized how huge this phenomenon was, but apparently it's very, very big.
JVL00:47:16I gotta tell you my, my favorite piece of minions branding or the minions Halloween costumes for kids, especially I, my niece went as a. At age two, I think one of the greatest kids costumes I've ever seen, because like toddlers are the perfect size to be life to be real life minions.
Sonny00:47:36Yeah. I can't see that.
JVL00:47:38Yeah. It's it's, it's amazing.
Sonny00:47:40Um, so, uh, if you make it real big and plushy too, they can like fall around basically indestructible toss 'em downstairs.
JVL00:47:46And, uh, I think I told you about this, that one of the other, there is a certain genius to the minions, which is that it all plays almost equally well as a silent movie. Yeah. As it does. Like you, you need no dialogue. Yeah. And the minions made up language changes wherever they show the movie. So the, the German version of minions, their language is different than what we hear, because the idea is that you are hearing a bunch of sounds that are vaguely like your native tongue mixed with some foreign words that will be, uh, understandable to you based upon. So if you speak English, you're gonna understand the occasional French word or the occasional Spanish word that the, the minions throw out. Uh, it's, you know, genius in a way. I mean, it is, it is pure commerce in a way which I almost find adm, admirable. I mean, it's like you ate the whole wheel of cheese, right? I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.
Sonny00:48:48Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the thing is that, and this is why I like, I can't even, I, I thought about coming home and trying to write a review of this movie and I was like, how would I review it? I don't even like, I don't know what I would, I don't really know what the point would be of reviewing. Now, granted, I'm gonna review Thor four and there's not really much point in reviewing that either. But, uh, you know, um, you know, I, like it's such a, it's such a weird narrowly, but also like very, it's like narrowly directed at kids, but it's also like broad enough to hit all kids. Yeah. They, I like, I like don't even know, like I it's, it's the definition of critic group. It's like what it was. I don't think a six year old gonna read my review and be like, look at this asshole. Like, I don't. You become a thing on TikTok. I was, I was like, everyone's, everyone's attacking you. Hey, did you hear about the Sonny Bunch guy? Is that even a real name? Some more like bunch of bananas. And then they do like a crazy dance and they throw bananas everywhere. That's how, that's what would, that's what I imagine TikTok is like. I don't, I don't go on, I don't do, I don't watch Minions movies. I don't go on TikTok. So the whole Minions TikTok craze is like doubly confusing to me. So I, I, I did do, I did do a little research on this, you know, cause I want to bring some value here and uh, you know, anyone can go. Yeah. We wanted you to Minionsplain this to us. Minionsplain these movies to us. Yeah. Anyone can go just look up, you know, on Box Office Mojo or whatever, the numbers in Korea. That's right Sonny. I'm looking at you. Wow. Um, but can, can anyone just go straight to the man on the street in Korea? You know, that's the great exporter now of culture is South Korea. Um, and so I went straight to my sources, uh, Chanmi and Paul, and I was just asking him like, what's the deal with the minions? Cause I knew that like they had used a minions gif one time in a conversation. So I was like, all right, this is, they're aware. And so I started chatting with them and they said, kids are obsessed with them. They sing the banana song all the time. Um, that it, it, I think it works, uh, really, really well because for a similar reason that, uh, Adam Sandler. It works well overseas. Comedy is usually, uh, culturally specific and it doesn't cross borders. Um, unless you have something that is like elemental and physical and doesn't really rely on dialogue very much. Um, and so like as the man child archetype, Adam Sandler has been able to be a global brand, like pretty much no other like comedy figure is. Um, movies, I think go global very easily for all the reasons that you guys described. Um, so while my friends were not in to the minions movies, they were definitely very aware of them. They think they're cute, you know, that kind of thing. There's a, there's an awareness that they are like the adorable kid mascots of like this younger generation. Um, and that's, that's something that crosses borders, I think very easily given the reality of what it is.
JVL00:51:54The, the perfect example. Of what you're talking about, Paul is Jackie Chan, who is essentially Buster Keaton, right? I mean, Jackie Chan can play anywhere in the world because what he's doing is all physical and all perfectly relatable because he, you know, it's, it's comedy, but it's also action and you don't need to, you don't need a single word of dialogue to understand what's happening. All of it is being done with his body and his, his very broad facial expressions, uh, which are part of the secret of Jackie Chan, it's not just the physicality, but his face is so big and expressive.
Sonny00:52:27Yeah.
?00:52:28Yeah.
Sonny00:52:29That sounds about right. All right. All right.
JVL00:52:33Can't wait to talk about Jimmy Kahn and the bonus. Yes.
Sonny00:52:36All right. We, we're gonna, we, we're, we're pulling out, we're calling an audible, uh, here on, uh, Paul, we told him to prep for a different segment, but instead we're going to do RIP James Kahn. So go to IMDB and look up James Kahn's movies, uh, Paul, while I do the outro, uh, uh, all right. Uh, that's, uh, That's all the time we are giving to this week's episode, uh, questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch, uh, or, uh, Paul, what's your, what's your Twitter handle? Where can people follow you? Uh, I am P underscore Crookston, P as in Paul. All right. Uh, again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patreon, go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time.
JVL00:53:17Uh, so what we had told Paula prep for was the most unlikely successful series. And I would like to just spend the 30 seconds we have here, uh, on that topic, cuz it really interested me. The first series that came to mind for me was jaws. Nothing about the movie jaws says to me, this is a series except that what jaws establishes, uh, is that series are driven by action. And economics and nothing else, right? If, if a movie makes enough money, then it has to become a series. And the reason it has to become a series is because movies exist to make money. And so this happens again. And again, I don't think anybody expected alien to be a series or nightmare on Elm street or Friday the 13th, any, any of these fast and the furious, right? None of these were intent. You see intentional plays at building franchises and, and mini worlds and, you know, the monster verse. Uh, or the chav, the lead of battle angel, you know, but those are, I would say historically the exception rather than the rule. And the rule is that, uh, a series is born when a movie makes just way more money than anybody thinks it was going to, uh, and in that way, I still think jaws kind of strikes me as like, it's this weird horror ish movie, but not really a horror movie. The truth is it's very long and talky. The action is very intermittent. Uh, the stars are Richard Dreyfus, um, who is not yet really a movie star, movie star, uh, and what's, uh, helping Roy Schneider, shy, shy, shy, shy, who is, you know, a star, but he's not Harrison Ford or anything. Uh, and yet it, how many jaws movies were there seven, four, I mean, I feel like there was a lot of jaws. Yeah. So anyway, that was my answer for that.
Sonny00:55:29Yeah. Jaws. Well, I, I mean, but, but see the, the, the original, the initial question was inexplicable success. And to me it's like very explicable. It's like, okay, draws made shitload of money, right? That's like, that's why, uh, in that same vein though, since we're discussing like random successes and, and how they became sequels, I mean, this is also the John wick story, you know, John wick is like a, is like a very well done. Very well reviewed, very well received action movie, like makes a decent amount of money at the box office, but doesn't blow the doors off. I think that first one only made about 80 million worldwide off a $20 million budget. So like it made, it made like it probably just about broke even on, on the, the domestic and foreign, you know, more or less, it probably about broke even, um, but where it made, where it made a ton of money was, uh, home sales. I mean, it made, it made something like 45 million. On, on home sales, which, uh, I'm, I'm reading, uh, I'm reading an oral history of the John wick books right now. And the, the, the producer mentions that like we did about $45 million on either John wick or John wick too. I forget which one, um, and compare that to fast and the furious eight or nine, uh, which also did about $45 million on home sales. So like, this is a, this is a, this is a series that plays exceptionally well at home. People buy these movies, people rent them. Um, uh, and that is what like made it a viable series. Now it's a, now, now it is a box office monster, uh, as well as being a, um, uh, a home video sales monster. But it, it started the reason that became a series is because like it made a ton of money, uh, off of red box and VOD and DVD and blu-ray. And then, you know, 4k sales, uh, tons and tons of money. Paul, what was your entry on this? I, I actually thought of jaws immediately too, for this. The same reasons you described, it doesn't make sense to do sequels, but of course they're gonna do it. Cause it was just too much of a hit. Um, I love Roger Ebert's, uh, review of jaws 3d. Um, I believe the shark roars in jaws 3d, um, which, uh, um, I also thought of, um, air bud, um, which was one of those ridiculous movies that got, uh, it got one theatrical sequel. Cause I had to look this up. Um, golden receiver was the only theatrical sequel that got, um, but it has like 37 direct to video sequels. It's one of the most prolific, uh, just like there's like, cause there was this whole spin off buddies that they had where they go to space and there's just like, it's like one of those hilarious things where it's like all those, all those dog movies were like Beethoven. There's like seven Beethoven movies. Remember Beethoven?
JVL00:58:20Uh, there's another one with the golden retriever. Um, yeah. You know, along the same, the iron Eagle movies with Louis Gossett jr. I feel like they made a ton of those and nobody likes them. Right. I mean, they're, they're, they just kept making them because there was a whole, the top gun never made any sequels until Maverick. And so the iron Eagle guys are just sitting there going, people like fighter plane movies. We'll do another.
Sonny00:58:46The weirdest, the weirdest, we'll, we'll, we'll end this here in a second. But the weirdest, uh, like turn in these series has to be Rambo. So like first blood comes out. First blood is basically like, it's kind of actiony, but it's also like a story about, you know, the Vietnam vet who is like wrong by society. It's like kind of more internally focused and whatever. And then Rambo first blood, what it was Rambo to first blood to whatever comes out. And he's like enormous and he's like putting on the headbands. He's going back to Vietnam to save the POWs and people are like getting angry that this movie exists. And by the third one, you know, he's like, you know, winning the war in Afghanistan, handedly like that, that series shifted in such a way that, uh, that is very weird to me. And, but also like makes perfect sense. It's like, if you want, like, if you want this to be a series, it basically has to be like Rambo can't just like show up in random towns all across the country and get beaten up by asshole cops. Like that's not, that's not a series. He has to be like a, he has to be an action hero in the Stallone Schwarzenegger mode. And how do you do that? Well, you send them, send them overseas and have them kill a bunch of foreigners.
JVL00:59:55Cause that, that fast and furious, same thing, right. Fast and furious is a heist movie that by they, you know, by like number four, I guess they realize, yeah, we gotta turn this into mission impossible. And then by six, they're like, yeah, just make it a superhero movie. Yeah. Just make them superheroes. That's all that matters. And, uh, and it works. I'm sure it's fine.
?01:00:17All right.
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