#134. 'Prey'
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
The main event is Prey (2022, Hulu), the eighteenth-century Comanche-set Predator prequel, and Sonny delivers the promised "big boy review," praising director Dan Trachtenberg's (10 Cloverfield Lane) sharp action staging while blasting the cheap-looking CGI and arguing the film undercuts the franchise's core appeal by making lead Naru (Amber Midthunder, who Sonny says reads more like Aubrey Plaza doing modern eye-rolls than a period-accurate Comanche) an underdog who must grow into competence rather than pitting alpha killers against each other. JVL is entertained but needles the movie for undermining the Predator as a credible villain when it's repeatedly bested by "stone age" humans wielding spears and flintlocks, and dredges up 2018's Shane Black-directed The Predator as one of the worst films they've ever covered. Vic gives it a Quadrant grade of A for plot, A-plus for its short duration, an A-minus for action/violence (docked for CGI but boosted by the predator's kill-net), and an F for sex/nudity, landing around a B overall, while peppering the review with questions about the predator's inconsistent kill-or-spare logic, the hallucinogenic orange flowers that scramble its thermal vision, and why French trappers are always depicted as monsters. Before any of that, the trio spends the long opening stretch trading domestic gripes: JVL delivers an epic ode to his new $159 SimpleHuman trash can (and the resulting "cold war" with his wife over it, plus the matching one he gifted his sister for her birthday), Sonny rages about discovering his flickering laundry-room light is a hardwired LED disc he can't simply screw a new bulb into, and Vic recounts two Google Maps disasters — nearly driving into an abandoned lot near the John Paul II shrine, and getting pulled over by Six Flags Great Adventure's own security for blowing through a checkpoint into employee parking with his kids in the car. There's also a quick box-office check-in (Bullet Train on top, Top Gun: Maverick still hanging around after twelve weekends) and a closing tribute to the just-deceased director Wolfgang Petersen, with the hosts running through In the Line of Fire, Das Boot, The NeverEnding Story, Air Force One, and The Perfect Storm, plus the trivia that he was once attached to direct Batman vs. Superman.
From the show notes
Gone huntin'.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00- There's something out there. - I'm coming with you.
JVL00:00:04- You can't.
Vic00:00:05- I'm trying to protect you. - Protect me from what? - It's time. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. 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, and don't forget about the Sub-Beacon. The merchandise store at tpublic.com. Isn't this the time of year now when all the merchandise for summer is like half off and we're just giving away stuff like tank tops?
Sonny00:01:10I don't know. There's a sale there like every three weeks. Never buy anything full price from T-Public. Just wait. Just check the site and you'll find a sale there eventually.
Vic00:01:19That's right. Even on the headache shirts. Gentlemen, how are we JVL? What is going on?
JVL00:01:26I made some life choices. Oh boy.
Sonny00:01:31Big changes.
JVL00:01:32Garbage cans.
Sonny00:01:33Oh boy. Huh?
JVL00:01:35Garbage cans. Kitchen garbage cans. You mean for the inside of your house? Inside the kitchen. Yes. Really. The only important place in the house for garbage can is in the kitchen. And when we moved into the new place, uh, somebody in my family, I don't know, it could have been anybody, uh, went and unilaterally made a decision to purchase a trash can, which was a rectangular item. With two separate square thing. One for recycling. No.
Sonny00:02:04For trash.
JVL00:02:05No.
Sonny00:02:06No. And I. Does it fit approximately four pieces of trash before it fills up? You could say.
JVL00:02:11It's cylindrical. Some of them. Some of them six. Yeah. Sometimes you could get six pieces of trash. And if we're living with that for a month, I, uh, and I made, honestly, I made a good faith effort. I did not as the CTO in this family, I did not immediately, uh, rebel against having the micromanagement from the CEO. They're coming down the York chart to make my decisions for me, but I just couldn't live like that anymore. And so I, uh. A question. Yes. Is it one of these, uh, metallic garbage can things is fancy looking. Of course, fancy looking, but utterly non-functional because, uh, the way it is designed, a, you are getting much, you know, each garbage bag that you put in, cuz you use the standard 40 gallon or 44 gallon, you know, drawstring bags that you get from Kirkland from, you know, Costco that are like $9 for 500 of them or something. That's great. And, but you're, you're filling them maybe a third of the way, because they're nowhere near capacity. Yeah. And then you, you take 'em out and brr, and, and you're emptying them two times a day, sometimes three. Oh, come on. And because they, and, and that's for each one, right? You're emptying recyclables because God forbid it's only halfway full. You don't wanna empty it because you know that then they'll, you know, there'll be nothing in there when you pull the bag out. That's right. But also the way it is. It is set up. Uh, the lids are not slow close. When you, when you let go of that foot presser, it's just the, the plastic lid just flops down and it makes a brr, right? Oh. Makes one of those sounds and, uh, the, the bags don't tuck neatly under the, you know, there's this plastic square canister in it. So you got some fluff hanging out. Just got fluff. And because the fluff is hanging out, the lids don't close properly. Everything about this, everything about this just screams. Screamed Leppin, you know, like it was not even, you know, that's an insult to Leppin. Leppin does better QC and more thoughtful design of its product, which it does by simply stealing the molds from Lego, but just better than this.
Sonny00:04:14And so I, uh, where did this, where did this bastard can come from? I don't know. Was this like a target purchase?
JVL00:04:20It just arrived.
Sonny00:04:21It showed up in my house, showed up on the doorstep.
JVL00:04:24And again, who could say for all I know was G money who, uh, who made the decision to buy this and purchased it.
Sonny00:04:29Probably supposedly pulled up the Amazon app was like, I want a trash can.
Vic00:04:36So I have seen, I have seen those sort of dual use and I always wondered how much you can get in there. And the answer is very little, nothing, nothing.
JVL00:04:46So I, uh, I went and I, I looked around and I did some research. I did my own research as the people on the, on 4chan like to say, I, I did my own research and all the things that are happening in this world and I, you know, it's what Q tells us. Yeah. And, uh, and I hit upon what is, this is one of the things where it turns out we have a consensus answer. Somebody has designed the perfect kitchen garbage can. And so this category is now closed. We don't need any more innovation. We don't have like, it has been perfected mm-hmm and the company that does this is called simple human and the simple human rectangular step can is perfect. Everything. Everything about it is perfect. It's a slow close lid. The lid has a little mechanism to lock it upright. If you wanna lock the lid uprights, you don't have to stand on it while you're oh, sure. Sure.
Vic00:05:42Yeah.
JVL00:05:43Yeah. Putting stuff in it. Uh, it is, it's made basically of adamantium like this. You could just tell that this thing is indestructible. Uh, it's the, the aluminum or stainless steel is coated with something that you can't even leave fingerprints on it. Somehow. I don't know how it keeps fingerprints away, but it's like you go smudging. Your finger down it and there's nothing left vibranium and the, and the, the bags tuck away perfectly with no effort. Just like you put the bag over it and they sell their own bags. They try to screw you with their own bags, but you don't need to this.
Vic00:06:14You know, I know the kind of bag you garbage bags that the garbage cans that come with their own bags. When you use them, enjoy it because they, they make it so that they want you to get it only from them.
JVL00:06:24And if it's so perfectly, but otherwise simple human, not the people, this, you don't even have to make it work. Like it's, you just pop it. It's the easiest thing in the world requires zero effort.
Vic00:06:33Now, do you have to, by the way, now, did you have a meeting with your family to tell them to treat simple human with respect? So don't abuse simple human.
JVL00:06:45So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to level with you. What I did was I just, uh, I, I brought the simple human inside the house when everybody was out of the house and I just put it where the old place, the old trash handy. Used to be. And I moved the old trash can off to the side, just like for all, cuz I didn't, I, you know, for all recycling. So that the other one could just be pure recycling, nothing else. And after like a day and a half, I was so in love with the design on simple human that I went and bought a second one that we use for the recycling in the kitchen.
Vic00:07:18And what happened to the other, the other, the other, the other container was so excited. Oh, oh, I'm not being laid off. No, I'm just being repurposed. Okay.
JVL00:07:26After, after tonight, the other container will be nothing more. Than a rumor.
Sonny00:07:29Oh, wow. Victorino. That's scary. That, that, that, that, that guy's getting driven out to the cornfield.
JVL00:07:36And uh, and so it is one of these things where, uh, my girls noticed this and immediately started complaining. Why do we have two trash cans now? Why, what is this? Why? What is, and uh, and my wife has simply ignored the entire thing. The new one she's endorsed. She has ignored simply refused, refused to comment, to engage, to recognize it's just, she just carries on as if nothing. So we have this cold war over the trash cans, but I gotta say, I, I was so excited by this. My, it was my sister's birthday just, just last week, and, uh, and, and when I was over at her house, I realized I felt, where had I seen this terrible trash can design? It was my sister's, my, my sister, the exact same trash can. And so I, like any good brother who loves his sister more than anything in the world, I got her a simple human trash can for her birthday.
Vic00:08:42Did she, how did she react that she say, this is exactly what I've been hoping for.
JVL00:08:47It, uh, did not go exactly as I anticipated it.
Sonny00:08:50She didn't appreciate getting a trash can for her birthday.
JVL00:08:54You're telling me, uh, I, I made my brother-in-law look really good. My, my brother would, I don't even know what he got her, but whatever it was, it looked better than the trash. The, she returned to the simple human and I think she has forgiven me at this point.
Sonny00:09:10But, uh, she returned, she returned to the simple does she, does she just like her other one so much?
JVL00:09:16I don't know if it was that or just, uh, was so generally outraged of, oh, my older brother, the, the, the, the, the first man in my life, the guy I've always come to. Through, through good times and bad, he loves me so much that for my birthday, he bought me a trash can.
Vic00:09:33I mean, it's not, I mean, this is just an extension of that's what I tried explaining
JVL00:09:37to her. I said, this is a simple human. And yet this is, this is what's interesting about the simple human. You go look at the reviews on Amazon for this trash can, there are like 44,000 reviews. Oh, that's good. And they all say the same thing lit literally. They all start out the exact same way. I can't believe I spent a hundred. $159 on a trash can. Wait, my God, it's worth it. You did not tell us the cost. They, they all, they all say exactly this. They say it is insane to spend this much money on a trash can and yet it's worth it.
Sonny00:10:15That trash can costs more than my desk chair.
Vic00:10:19I'm like, okay, hold on. You had me until the cost. I was like, okay, I don't know, 40, 50 bucks, 50, $60, 60, 70.
JVL00:10:28A hundred, a hundred dollars where you get a square trash can with the plastic floppy lid that doesn't hide. This is look the simple human. This is not a complex machine. It's a simple human and it demands respect because it takes time and artisanship to craft it.
Vic00:10:47You know what? The good thing is your wife can use the older trash can and probably fill it up on her own every day. You're just like her alone. If she just used that devoted her refuse to that particular cat. You fill it up every day.
JVL00:10:59I am. I am not kidding when I say that, uh, it is one of those things we've talked about this, right? There, there are classes of objects where you go, okay, you gotta be fucking kidding me with the price point on this. And yet every once in a while you hit one of those where it's crazy, but then the thing is that good.
Vic00:11:19Yeah.
JVL00:11:20Well, that's, this is that this is the next time you have to buy a trash can for your kitchen until I just bite the bullet and you will never go back.
Sonny00:11:28Well, so my, in my kitchen, as we discussed last week or the week before, uh, I have a, I have a fancy kitchen, the decor sub-zero I have, I have a very, and in my kitchen it has one of those pullout trash situations.
Vic00:11:43Oh yeah. It's in the drawer.
Sonny00:11:46Yeah. It like it, it, it, it's, it's very nice cause it's not in the kitchen at all. It's not like the trash can is right there. That being said, the, the, uh, the actual like trash cans that are in it have clearly been there. They remodeled the things. They're all like tore. They're like cracked. Yeah.
JVL00:12:02Oh yeah. The plastic is. Those are just standard rubber made.
Sonny00:12:05Right. They're totally, I could replace them for $5 a piece. Yeah. I could, or I could just get annoyed every time I take the trash can out and it like catches on the like jagged plastic side. I don't know. I don't, this is, this is one of these things where I I've talked about this before that like I will go to, I will go to a grocery store and I will get like, I want, I want the 10 Kroger brands. Brand yogurts for, for 30 cents a piece instead of spending, you know, an extra 15 cents per yogurt on the Yoplait. Right. Um, or I will get the, I will get like the, uh, the, the, the generic sandwich bags instead of getting the Ziploc bags, I will like pinch pennies everywhere, but then I'll like go up to the meat counter and get like, I will get like the $50, you know, uh, ribeye steak, the dry prime age, you know, whatever wrapped in gold leaf, you know, whatever it is. Like a thing like I got my two trash cans there. They're mildly inconvenient. I'm there. They'll just be there until this house burns to the ground sooner, probably rather than
JVL00:13:05later because of that oven convenience is everything you can find something that eliminates one of those tiny friction points in your daily life, make your life just a little bit
Sonny00:13:14easier. I, I, I totally 100% agree with you. And I, I think about this literally every time I take a bag out of the trash can and
JVL00:13:22I still just Amazon you trash cans.
Sonny00:13:24No, I mean, there are specific size. Don't don't do that.
JVL00:13:28I assume they're the normal. I assume that the normal size trash cans that all of these pullout drawers are.
Sonny00:13:33I don't know.
JVL00:13:34Probably.
Vic00:13:35I don't know. So since we're all, uh, airing our various issues and grievances, I'm going to jump in here as well. I'm just going to say this. So, you know, for the two, two pet peeves, and I know you're going to say careful, you're going to tell me careful. I'm going to two pet peeves. Two pet peeves.
Sonny00:13:48One is I wasn't, I wasn't before now.
Vic00:13:50No. Okay. So, so one of them, and this hasn't happened in a while, but this happens when the kid, when you, when you have kids, particularly if you have kids. Kids who are, when they're younger, um, you ever take out trash and then you find out there's like garbage, not in the, in the, in the trash bag, but like, Oh yeah. Oh, with the bottom. How did that happen? Who did that? Who did that?
Sonny00:14:12Who committed that crime? Which one of you animals did this? Right. Right.
Vic00:14:16Through like, like, like, uh, an apple core. How did you do it?
JVL00:14:18How did you do it? Like in the actual metal, on the metal itself. Okay. That's Penn and Teller level subterfuge to be able to get the apple core somehow in the bottom of the barrel. Yeah.
Vic00:14:28Without ever, but they do it. They do it. It's amazing. Like in the time that I was probably taking out trash, some, you know, uh, a child goes in and just without thinking about it, puts it in really that happened. Okay. That hasn't happened in a while, but I tell you two other things. One is when you empty out trash and it's like, Oh great. We have a nice empty trash can now. And then somebody will put some giant bulky item. That's easily collapsible and shove it at the garbage is full.
JVL00:14:55If you don't, if 35% of the volume, cubic volume. Right.
Sonny00:14:58People, people who don't break down boxes. This is one of my, one of the things I've, one of the things I've learned in life is that if you, if you are ever in a situation where somebody, uh, puts a box in a trash can like that, you know, that they've never worked like a fast food job or retail because like breaking down boxes is like one of the key responsibility you learn about like saving space and, and it's actually like kind of, it's well, at least for me, kind of soothing to do. You get away from the mass of the crowd. You just go in the back with a fucking box cutter. And you just say, okay.
Vic00:15:31And then the final thing is, you know, the threshold about like, when is it time to take out the trash? And I have a lower threshold than other people. And what amazes me is sometimes somebody, I don't know who will manage to put it, I could be one of the kids, uh, food at such a level that you lift the lid. I know what you're going to say. They're staying on the lid.
JVL00:15:54It's touching the lid. Always better to go. Too early than too late. Yes. Thank you.
Vic00:16:01I'd rather, I'd rather be sure hope our wives don't listen to the show.
JVL00:16:05I'd rather be 20%, uh, away from being full rather than 1% over.
Vic00:16:12It's not worth it. It's not worth it. Okay. That's all I got. Simple human. Thank you. Thank you. JVL. That was a lovely discussion. Uh, JV, uh, Sonny, how are you? And did you finally change your light bulb?
Sonny00:16:23I, uh, well, I don't want, I don't want to bring this up. Cause JBL is going to go on one of his rent, his pro led rants, but I, uh, it looked like
Vic00:16:33alien technology.
Sonny00:16:34I, I, I, I, so have you guys never changed the fixture?
Vic00:16:40Not for LEDs. I love that. If only I could take a picture of the three faces here, you should see JVL space to set
Sonny00:16:45the stage here.
Vic00:16:46I'm going to do this in a minute and a half.
Sonny00:16:48I'm, I'm in my, I'm in my, I'm in my house and one of the lights in the laundry room area has, has been flickering for a little while. It's clearly been going bad, but it finally got to the point where it was like, it was like doing a rapid, like, uh, epilepsy warning level strobelike. And I was like, all right, I like, I literally had to invert my eyes to go in there and turn it off. I was like, all right, this is, this is enough. I got to change this. But you know, but changing light bulbs is easy. Changing light bulbs. One of the easiest things you can do in the world, you go, you take the fixture, you unscrew the glass, you take it down, you unscrew the light bulb, you screw it a new light bulb. Boom. Two minutes. You're done. Boom. And I was, I was like, fine, I'll go do this. I'll take the five minutes of my day that it will take me to do this. And I, I go up there to see what kind of light bulb it is. I need to replace it with, you know, cause you want to have matching light bulbs and all the worms. And I take the thing off and it's just a flat disc with little, little panels on it. And I'm like, what the fuck is this?
JVL00:17:46Those are light emitting diodes. What is this? They're not panels. They're diodes. You lost me at the diodes.
Sonny00:17:51What is this thing that I'm looking at here? Why? What? What? What crap is this that I have to deal with now? So I like, I, I literally just stare at it for a solid 60 seconds. Like what, why is this, why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me? So then I like, I actually like unscrew, you know, cause it's, I, you have to take the whole fixture down. So I take, I take, I unscrew it from the, from the thing that's coming out and I take it, I take the fixture down and it's hardwired into the ceiling. It's not like there's a little clip or anything. You have to. You have to like strip the wire and then like put it in and I'm just saying there should
JVL00:18:31be a wire. The wire nuts. Nope. Doing wires.
Sonny00:18:35I don't know why it's all, it's, it's like it's, it's all hardwired in there. It's all taped up and hardwired in there and I'm just like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. I have no idea what to do with this.
Vic00:18:44So I'm going to have the cameras, the camera sticks out, starts pulling it down.
JVL00:18:51What is this red blinking light? It's been signed. I don't know who it's been transmitting to.
Sonny00:18:55I said, what is this? It said, don't worry about it. So I stopped worrying about it. But the, but the, but the, but I, so I'm like, well, I, I, so now instead of, instead of, you know, I, I said this, I said this to maybe you guys, I think it was you guys in J pod was on, was on, but I, I, as I said, you guys, the only mistake that George W. Bush ever made, the only bad thing that George W. Bush ever did in his entire presidency, uh, all eight years of it, triumph after triumph, the one mistake that he made was, uh, moving us away from standard light bulbs. Nonsense. The ridiculous regime that we have right now where it's like there are 17 different shades of light and they're all different standards and, and like half the time now it's these fucking disc things. These I don't know how to do. So I'm going to, instead of spending, instead of spending literally two minutes and 99 cents unscrewing a light bulb and screwing a new light bulb in, I'm going to have to spend $200 and uh, I don't know, hours out of my day hiring somebody to come and do the fucking wiring in my house. Don't mess with electricity. I don't mess with electricity. I don't mess with gas lines. I will, I will change like a water, I'll change like a water trap maybe if I'm feeling ambitious, but I'm not going to like mess with the water mains and instead of just being able to put in a new light bulb, instead of just being able to fuck and now I got to sell my first born to the, to the light company to replace all the lights in that area. I don't even know. I don't know how many lights I got to put in there. Ah, the worst. I'm done.
JVL00:20:31Can you, can you turn your old lights on and off with your phone? Because that's what I do with all of my beautiful led smart. Oh no. You cannot. I don't want to be. I'm not going to do colors of them.
Sonny00:20:42I don't want. I don't want the government knowing what my, when my lights are on, what the temperature in my house is.
JVL00:20:49You'll be totally screwed when the nice people, the Jin Chua electric company, absolutely not. Give them access to my, to my contacts and put in my social security number and tell my mother's maiden name. And now I can use their app to control the lights in my house. Climate. Crazy.
Sonny00:21:08And everything. Crazy. You're crazy. I would rather die. Yeah. Anyway. So that's, what's going my it's it's I, I am like, I, again, I am just genuinely flummoxed by, uh, by, by we, we were just, I mean, we were literally just talking about like every ways to make life 5% easier is what we do all the time. And we have instead done this thing that makes life a million times harder. We've gotten away from a technology that worked perfectly to one that doesn't really work at all. As far as I'm concerned. And we think it's better. Some of us think it's better. Some of us on this show think it's better. Some of us like not me, but not me Victorino.
JVL00:21:49Yes. I, when your surgeon is going in, when your surgeon, when your surgeon is going in to, uh, to, to remove. Okay. Your, your terrible, terrible tumor. Yes. He's going to use an led light.
Vic00:22:02I mean, he, I thought he has like the little pedal, you know, where you have to stay, step onto the pedal with your foot in order to get the drill to start worrying. Uh, I can't, in fact, I have to, uh, it's been pushed to probably October because I found out I can't schedule surgery until I have a physical, so you need the physical first. I guess they want to check out, make sure everything is fine, I guess. And then, uh, but I'm not having my physical until later in September, so then it'll be right after that. And that's, that's where we are. But you know, again, I've had this for, I don't know.
JVL00:22:35What sort of quack doc never picked up on this, this horrible tooth that's growing in your head before?
Vic00:22:41Uh, apparently it only comes up on the cat scan. So I looked at, we look at x-rays, you can't see it. And then when you do a cat scan and I did two now, obviously one with the, um, the oral surgeon recently, and I've never had to get a cat scan. My head before. And then now with this one, they can do all sorts of weird. You can't see me. Our listeners can't see me, but I'm pretending that there are dials, but I mean, they can magnify different areas up and down and they're using led lights.
JVL00:23:08Okay. Thank you for the led light, the big led in the house folks in defense of, okay. How are you? Victorino?
Vic00:23:19I'm doing fine. I wanted to complain. I haven't, I forgot to complain about this before and I'm just going to bring it up now. So it's a little belated.
JVL00:23:25It's great. The old age men complaining about things in their lives.
Vic00:23:27That's all we do. I'm going to complain about Google maps. I'm going to complain about Google maps on this because it is great. You know what? It is 90% successful, but the other 10% it's horrendous. And this happened twice recently. Once we had to go over to, um, the Kate and I had to go over to the John Paul, the second shrine, you know, the shrine at the national cathedral, uh, you know, the national shrine in the city, which is way on the other side of town. And so we're following it. It's telling us how to go there and you go up, you're basically borderline BW parkway it's like, you know, um, Bladensburg road.
Sonny00:23:58Southwest. Hmm.
Vic00:24:00It's in Southwest. No.
Sonny00:24:02Northeast.
Vic00:24:03I think. Yeah. Southeast. Yeah.
Sonny00:24:07Way in Northeast. Way, way, way. You're right on the edge of Maryland. Um, Oh, up near where the Washington times building.
Vic00:24:11Yes. Exactly. Where that's exactly where. And so suddenly like, okay, I think we're going in the right direction. And then they're like, okay. And then it tells you to turn off this ramp and then you have arrived at your destination. So we turn off the ramp and it's like this abandoned lot with a broken down chain link and I'm like, okay, we are now going to die. And we had to actually go like in reverse and get back on the high. It was crazy. Okay. So that's the first thing. The second thing was, um, during our, um, my vacation when I was up in Jersey, I had to take the kids and my niece, uh, to great adventure.
JVL00:24:42And so, yes, the real one, what was it? The real one.
Vic00:24:47Okay. Well, it's interesting. So how is it? I've been there forever. Yeah. I'll tell you about it in a second. So the first part is I, um, uh, I, I just put it in Google. I mean, I know basically where it is, but they have you, he's got to one 95, the Jackson. So I doubled back and to head in that direction, but they make you, they, they're trying to give you these shortcuts. Right. So turn here, turn there. You're going through various small neighborhoods. Everything is extremely flat out there. It's very interesting. And you're like, you're through the Barons, you know, I mean, you're just going through everything there.
JVL00:25:18Were you going from Tom's river or from Tom's river?
Vic00:25:20Right. So I'm going, I'm heading back out west, um, 40 minute drive.
JVL00:25:24That's not far.
Vic00:25:25Right. And then it tells you, um, to like, here's for the parking, uh, entrances and you know what they had me do?
JVL00:25:32Or do they take you to like the employee parking? Yes. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Really? Yeah. I could, that's an easy thing. I could see them.
Sonny00:25:41Yeah. I do that. I, that happens all the time with like airports. Oh, if you don't, if you don't know exactly which parking area you want to go to, or like
JVL00:25:48where the drop off or the pickup is that parking lot when I interviewed for a job at great adventure once.
Vic00:25:54Oh, okay. So, you know, that's the answer. Which is, well, I was so distracted by listening to the Google maps and the kids in the background and everything else. I just, and Kate, Kate was going to go with the kids, but I was working that day. So I'm like, I'm driving through. I sped right through the security checkpoint and I just kept on going. And then all of a sudden I'm like, what is this? And all of a sudden I find myself in the back end of the giant parking lot and like we're here. So I start going through and all of a sudden I hear this honking and I look behind. Sirens, bells, whistling. It's the great adventure police, the great adventure police. And I'm waving at him like this, like, okay, let me just get to the corner. I get to the corner and I, and, and he pulls over and he starts chewing me out, this guy. And I just tell the kids, kids get out now.
JVL00:26:43Is he 18? What? Is he a teenager? No, no.
Vic00:26:47He was an old man. And I'll tell you the best way to describe him. He was like the police chief in last action hero Slater, you know, and like smoke. It was like, he could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. Sonny's nodding. So what did he do?
JVL00:27:00I thought it was actually the actor. Did he write you a great adventure ticket? What? Did he write you a great adventure ticket?
Vic00:27:05Yeah, no, I thought there was going to be, and I looked at him and I go, I said, I don't know. I said, I don't even want to, I actually said to him, I go, I don't even want to be here. I said, just, just, he goes, and I'm waving, I'm siren, I'm hocking at you and you keep on going. I said, I know, I know. I don't, I don't know how I got here. This is how they got me here. And the kids over there, everybody's left the car. And I just said, I just need to get out just, and he goes, oh, I'll show you how to get out. He says, and then I, and that was, it was ridiculous.
Sonny00:27:32Were you, did he had to like take you to the proper parking lot?
Vic00:27:35I, I, no, I, I just went backwards with him out the way I came in. And then I stopped and I rolled down my window and said, all right, already. Okay.
JVL00:27:44I, you know what? Your kids will tell each other that story and giggle about it for the next 50 years, 50 years. You will be long dead and they will laugh. Yeah. Sitting around having scotch at night. Do you remember when dad like drove through the wrong parking lot at Great Adventure?
Vic00:28:00And I told the kids, I, when I, when I saw them that, and my sister picked them up at the end of the day and I saw them and I said, I hope you're happy that I spent the last six hours in Great Adventure jail. I told them. Cause you know, they all have jails, but to answer your question JVL, uh, almost all the rides that we know are not there anymore. Lightning loops? No, no. Is that, is that the first thing that comes to mind? Is lightning loops?
JVL00:28:24100%. When I think Great Adventure, the, the things I think are, uh, lightning loops. Yeah. Gone. Uh, haunted, lightning loops is gone.
Vic00:28:33Lightning loops is not there. You can, you can explain to Sonny what lightning loops is cause it's not an actual roller coaster per se.
Sonny00:28:40Uh. Is that the, is that the thing that decapitated the people?
JVL00:28:43No, it's one of the first looping roller coasters, but when it, it just down around in a loop and back out to the other side and back. And maybe it'll go backwards. And that's it. Uh, that one killed somebody because, uh, he fell out at the top, hit the tracks, lived. And then, but then the train ran over run over by like final destination style. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think of that. I think of free fall. Yeah. Gone. I think of hell hole. Oh, I don't even remember hell hole. And, uh, and. Haunted, haunted house. Oh, the haunted mansion.
Vic00:29:17Of course. Haunted house.
JVL00:29:19The fire. So what, what do you, what, what, what, what's up?
Vic00:29:22What's there now? The rides. Okay. The, uh, the, well, I'd say the biggest one that I saw and it looks terrifying is wonder woman. And it's just like a giant pendulum, but you know, it's like, it's so it's not like, wait,
Sonny00:29:34is this a six flags?
Vic00:29:35Yes. Six flags. It's like six flags. Yes. It's just all DC theme, by the way.
Sonny00:29:40They have. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's the, the six flags out near, near us. Six flags over Texas. Is, is all, uh, is all. Uh, DC stuff. Yes. Batman jokers.
Vic00:29:50Revenge. That's right. Man of steel. The whole thing. And, and Batman, uh, the wonder woman thing is, is check it out online. It's crazy. People are, you know, like lined up around and it's like a giant pendulum and, and it just goes all the way up and all the way down and swings wildly while the wonder woman theme song is playing. Not the one from the TV show from the seventies, but from the movie, help us out from under wonder woman.
JVL00:30:15Now this is the, the, the, the one from the starship enterprise where it goes around. Yes. Kind of like that.
Sonny00:30:22And now it never quite. It does a full loop like, like the Viking ship.
Vic00:30:25Yes. But much larger. It's enormous. Uh, and then there's one called king, the car, a roller coaster, El Toro, which my daughter got sick on, uh, and, uh, yeah.
Sonny00:30:37And, and, and, but all those other ones on the ride, threw up on the ride after she had
Vic00:30:42eaten and then she get one on, uh, El Toro. And then that was it quite a show, quite a show as my son, as people are watching and seeing this happen. And, and, and my son is standing behind her and just looking at the people and shaking his head.
Sonny00:30:57Like, can you believe her? Not with her. Yeah.
Vic00:31:00Not with her. I know. So, so there was that, and there's a really funny picture of, uh, the look on her face and it's like genuine, like, why did I just do this? Um, so that's all gone. You know what else is gone? Runaway train. Speaking of which over the weekend, bullet train. It's much better. Thank you. I remember runaway train. Runaway train. It's like a, it's a roller coaster for beginners. Yup. Over the weekend, bullet train stayed on course at the top of the box office with $13.4 million. This is summer, uh, followed by top gun. What Maverick with 7.1 million and in third place, DC league of super pets with 7 million box office thoughts. It's mid August and we're still talking about top gun, Sonny.
JVL00:31:44What are the chances? Top gun becomes number one again. They're not zero.
Sonny00:31:51I don't know. It's not zero. It's not zero, but it, it would be, it would be hard. I mean, it would, it would have to make, I mean, it went up 3% last weekend. I think it went, it went up 3% last week, but it also added all the IMAX screens. I think it's gonna be losing most of those again. I, I don't, I it's not, it's not 100% clear to me what the IMAX situation is through the rest of the summer. It's you're right though. It's not zero. It's not a 0% chance. Um, that said, it, I think it is hitting digital finally either next week or the, the, the weekend after that. It is finally gonna be available at home, which will probably slow it down a little. Uh, I mean, I, I, I just think it's amazing that it's gonna, it'll get to 700 million, uh, without, without too much trouble, which is shocking.
JVL00:32:33You said on the, the, our Top Gun show, you said that there was an outside chance it could make $600 million and this is, and this was a, that was our wildly optimistic projection for it.
Sonny00:32:44I mean, that was, that was me being, that was me being like in a, in a crazy world, this makes 600 million. So I, uh. Uh, you know, it's, it's a, it's a huge hit. People love it. Uh, and like you said, it went up in its, what was it? The 12th weekend? Yeah. The 12th weekend, it increased the gross, which is again, it's basically unheard of. Um, especially I, uh, uh, except for like Oscar season, you see the sort of thing in Oscar season where something comes back into theaters, uh, after being nominated for best picture and it picks up a bunch of screens and then, you know, goes up.
Vic00:33:15I always feel like that's a cheat on their final numbers.
Sonny00:33:17But anyway. No, I think, I mean, whatever it's, it is what it, that's, that's one of the main reasons the Oscars exist is to do things like that, is to, is to pump up numbers. Yeah.
JVL00:33:27I had to get movies like the shape of water up to $7 million total.
Sonny00:33:31Exactly. Exactly. Uh, but the, uh, but you know, uh, I mean the, the, the, the box office is, I mean, this is one of the worst weekends since the pandemic more or less ended. I mean, it's, there's just not a ton of, there's nothing, there was nothing new this weekend. Next weekend is going to be real slow. Slow again. I mean, it's, uh, the, the new big release theatrically out is beast. The Idris Elba movie hunt about the lions circle of life hunted by lions circle of life
JVL00:34:02movie, right? There's a cute little war.
Sonny00:34:04There's another Idris Elba movie that we're in Idris Elba season folks. That's how, you know, things are dire. Uh, there are two Idris Elba movies opening weekends.
JVL00:34:15I like Idris Elba longing the George Miller, 3000 years.
Sonny00:34:18Yeah. The George Miller, the director. Yeah. The director of mad max fury road brings you the story about the old lady who wants to get banged by the genie. That's it. That's it.
JVL00:34:29That's the thing. That's the plot. Another old lady, the androgynous old lady.
Sonny00:34:34Yeah. The androgynous. I don't know. Uh, so anyway. Yes. So that's why this week we are talking about.
Vic00:34:41Pray. And I don't mean pray like we need to pray to make it today. I'm sorry.
JVL00:34:46We're talking, but pray. Pray. That is a movie I would like to see the evil of prey starring with the predator going and just massacring every fucking character in that movie.
Vic00:35:01In that movie.
Sonny00:35:02Was that Julia Roberts?
JVL00:35:03Yes.
Sonny00:35:04Yeah. This is what this has always been. My big theory about predator.
Vic00:35:07If you only knew that was the best book that that would, you'd never have to work again. If you wrote a book like that, JVL, that's it.
Sonny00:35:13You just take a, you take a genre and you drop the predator into it and that and watch them go. Okay.
Vic00:35:19So yes, we're talking about prey. Why? Which is part of the predator family of movies. Uh, and it's really kind of a prequel, uh, sunny. How about a big boy review?
Sonny00:35:32So a prey is as Vic said, kind of a prequel to the predator and the predator series in the sense that it is set centuries before the events of the first one. It's not really connected to the first one in any real way. There is a connection to the second one toward the end of the film. We see where the, the gun that Danny Glover gets at the end of predator two. Comes from remember the, do you, have you seen predator two? Yes. So at the end of predator two, the, when, uh, Danny Glover survives, he's given, uh, an old flintlock.
Vic00:36:05Oh, yes.
Sonny00:36:06And that's the, from the, anyway, yeah, see, this is like, these are the things that you miss if you don't really pay attention to the great movie prey. Uh, so, all right. So prey is set in Comanche territory, which I guess. 1719.
Vic00:36:21I'm picturing Nebraska, but I could be the plains of Texas.
Sonny00:36:24I think, uh, the, the, there, there are French trappers, which suggests, you know, maybe it's east Texas, uh, because the French trappers were all around the Louisiana area, but it's not very, it's not very, it's not super clear. Um, I actually thought it was French Canada for a while. I thought it was shot.
Vic00:36:40I thought they were.
Sonny00:36:41That would be because they filmed it. What? Well, they had shot. Well, but it could, I mean, it could be shot anywhere with like big planes. It's not a, you know, whatever. Um, all right. Okay. Uh, movie set in Comanche territory, Comanche times, uh, a, uh, a girl, uh, who is, uh, hold on. Let me pull up the actual, I, cause I, I don't want to botch everybody's.
JVL00:37:01Amber mid thunder, talk about thunder, Amber, that's it. That's the actress's name.
Sonny00:37:10All right. So the, the lead character, her name is Nauru played by Amber mid thunder. Thank you. Uh, JBL. Um, she is a, she's a hunter, but she's also a guy. She's a woman and the, she's really not a hunter though. She's a healer. Boys, the boys in her tribe do not think she should be allowed to take the test to become a hunter. Because she's a healer. She's a tracker.
JVL00:37:31The glass, you know, the indigenous people had some pretty retrograde, uh, retrograde views about gender roles.
Sonny00:37:36It is. It's total sexism. Her brother, uh, Tabe, uh, who's played by, uh, Dakota Beavers in this, who I think is actually the best actor in the movie, but whatever, um, he believes in his sister, but you know, it is like still hesitant to take her. Take her out. She's not ready for that. She hasn't done the trials. Uh, and the predator shows up and she can, she understands that something is different in this, with this hunt that they're on. There's something, but everybody ignores her. They're just like, oh, it's just a mountain lion. It's fine. And sure enough, mountain lion shows up. She can't defeat the mountain lion. Uh, and she can't, she can't, uh, I'll get, I'll get to, she can't feed the mountain lion gets knocked out, goes back to the, gets dragged back to the village, uh, by her brother who comes back with mountain lion on his shoulders, big, successful victory, whatever. Then shit hits the fan cause the predator shows up, starts murdering everybody. Uh, in addition to that, the predator also fights a bear, a CGI bear, uh, well, it was, it's, it's the stuff that's on screen is bad too, uh, and then, and then, and then it turns into kind of a classic predator movie where predators killing a bunch of humans and she's got to figure out how to defeat the predator and she does the end. All right. So here's, here's my problem. So here's my problem with this movie.
Vic00:38:49It's almost as long as the, the, the actual duration of the movie, which is here's, here's
Sonny00:38:54my problem with this movie. I have to, I have two, I have two big problems with this movie. The first is just that it looks very cheap. I mean, it just, it looks like, uh, the, the CGI work is not very good with the, the animal fights.
JVL00:39:05I mentioned that the mountain lion was like a Hulu original, which is what it is for TV.
Sonny00:39:11Well, we can, it, it's not, well, we can talk about that in a second. So it looks very cheap. It's all very cheaply done. The CGI is not great. And that's very annoying. Yeah. Because it's actually shot very well. It's it's well-paced, uh, the, the action sequences are, um, uh, are shot from interesting angles. Uh, the director Dan Trachtenberg made 10 Cloverfield lane. I don't know if you guys saw that, but I like that movie a lot.
Vic00:39:33It's a nice tight contain John Goodman sequel to Cloverfield.
Sonny00:39:37Um, uh, there are some good sequences in this, like the, uh, the scene in the high grass where they're trying to get away from the predator and they're like kind of both high and low angles to, to both give us. Most of the POV view and the, give us the sense of everything. Uh, the stuff where the predator, uh, kills all the French trappers is great. Like I, I, I love that sequence again, it calls to mind predator too, which is like the dirty little secret of the predator movies is that the, the thing that is the most fun about them is watching the predator just take apart a group of like stereotypes. So in predator two, it's the Jamaican gangs and the Colombian gang, right? They're fighting each other here. It's the filthy Western colonizers who are, you know, defiling the land. That's, that's who we are all are supposed to hate now. Um, so, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's fun to watch that. Um, but the problem with the movie, the big problem with the movie, the big thematic problem with the movie, and I'm curious to get JBL's take on this, but like I, uh, the thing about the predator movies that has always been interesting is that it it's about predators hunting absolute alpha killers, alpha human killers. So in the first one, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger and his great special ops team. Right. Um, in the second one, it's the Jamaican gangs and the Colombian gang. And then finally like the LA cops, the baddest bad asses in the world before we were, again, weren't allowed to say that, um, in the movie predators, uh, where they get the, the predator kidnaps, uh, Yakuza and, uh, uh, special forces guy and, uh, IDF sniper and like, you know, a serial killer, whatever, like a whole bunch, like again, like kidnaps a bunch of like alpha top tier human killers, puts them on the game planet and hunts them. But in this movie, that's not what they're doing at all in this movie. She is shown to be an incompetent hunter. She is not, she doesn't kill the deer in the early going. She doesn't kill the mountain lion. It's it's instead of being a narrative about alphas coming up against each other and seeing who will triumph, it's, it's a believe in yourself narrative. It's an underdog wins narrative. And I just think that's like, not what the, that's not what the S that's not what the series is about.
JVL00:41:38That's not what makes it good or interesting. That's what the alien movies are about.
Sonny00:41:42That's what the alien movies are about. It's more what the, and even like alien versus predator, right? Alien versus predator. It's like, what if the greatest hunter in the world took on the perfect killing machine or the greatest hunter in the universe took on the greatest killing machine in the universe. Right. But like this is, this is a different sort of thing. And that's why it just, it doesn't feel like a predator movie. It feels like a very different sort of movie. It doesn't help that this actress reminds me to a scary degree of Aubrey Plaza circa
Vic00:42:08parks and rec her eyes with her eyes, her eyes.
Sonny00:42:12But also like, she's like constantly rolling her eyes and like a semi, like, like she, she, she acts like a 20th century, 21st century American girl. And she does not, she does not act like a Comanche or what I would at least imagine a Comanche of that time, a Comanche whose name is Amber.
?00:42:34Basically.
Sonny00:42:35Yeah. She's like the California school girl version of a, of a, give her my peace pipe.
JVL00:42:43Thank you. That's what I, I wanted Jean to come out for this just for Amber. Just for Amber. Mid thunder. Just for mid thunder. Okay. Uh, uh.
Vic00:42:52Vic, you hated it, right? Okay. I, uh.
JVL00:42:55Let me just say this. If you liked this, but not Bullet Train, then I'm going to flip this table over.
Vic00:42:59My, you're going to leave my favorite part of this movie. Can I tell you my favorite part of this movie?
Sonny00:43:04The end?
Vic00:43:05No. Besides that, my favorite part of this movie was where the predator turns to her and says, no man can kill me. And then she says, I am no man.
JVL00:43:14Ah, yes. You like that?
Vic00:43:17Miranda Otto. Where did she go? Eowyn. Eowyn? Yes. Another, another lovely. Uh, I was like, really? And when she comes back, by the way, and then the other little girl Indians are looking
JVL00:43:29up to her, like, oh, she gives up this hope and this whole thing.
Vic00:43:32Okay. Yeah. What was going on in this movie? Okay. Um, uh, quadrant score. The plot was an A. It's really nothing to get confused about with this plot. It's pretty straightforward. He's here to hunt, faces her. She proves herself, uh, duration. It's an A plus. It's a short movie. Um, action and violence actually was not that bad. Um, it's, I hated the CGI stuff, um, but there were some ingenious deaths and I gave it an A minus. Do you know why? You gave that the same score for action of violence as bullet train. I did. You know why? Cause you get the predator net of death.
Sonny00:44:11Oh man. That was a good sequence. You gotta love the predator.
Vic00:44:15I'd rather get speared. Then then the net. Okay. And then sex nudity is an F. She didn't, she have to bathe at some point. Okay. That's what I have in my parenthetical here. So it gets about a B. Um, did I like it? No, it was, it was, it was so, so okay. Uh, yeah. So there were some interesting fight sequences, uh, but I have, I have questions and things like this, but I'm, I'm gonna hand it off to JVL and then I'll, I'll come back. Come back to me.
JVL00:44:43At some point. Haven't you begun? Begun to undermine the entire idea for the franchise because the predator who is the ultimate hunter has been getting pantsed by humans for five fucking movies now. And this time the predator can't get enough for earth. This time is getting, getting beaten up by people who have nothing but sharpened sticks
Sonny00:45:11and some front lock guns. Oh, at some point you have to reestablish your villain is heavy.
Vic00:45:16Don't you hold on one second. Does the predator match? Like it doesn't, it doesn't match the opponent with terms of their level of like, oh, if you're using, uh, Spears laser targeting and, and invisibility and his net of death. And what are those hollow, those floating things with the blades that was very, I never
JVL00:45:37seen. I'm sorry. This species has mastered faster than light travel and they get, they, they get murdered by a group of 25. Yeah. Basically stone age humans. Are you kidding me? This is at some point you just, they're not, they're not legitimate anymore and you've undermined. They're not very good. They are not very good hunters. As it turns out.
?00:45:58Right.
JVL00:45:59Am I, am I wrong about this? No, no, no, no, no. That's great. You know? And so what, but what you, what I'm saying is as a storytelling thing, then you have to, in every one of these movies, after the first one or the second one, you've got to really reestablish them as heavy and to this, they do it with the bear. And you know what? I'm sorry. That, that doesn't cut it. Right. And it was a very, just Wolverine stabbing an animated bear kind of off screen while the bear is distracted. That doesn't do it. And uh, I don't know. This is one of the predator franchise has always mystified me. And uh, I mean you forget there was a predator movie we did just like 18 months ago. Oh, that was the worst. That was the Shane Black.
Sonny00:46:40The Predator. Shane Black was terrible. Yes.
JVL00:46:43That was the worst thing I've ever seen.
Sonny00:46:44That's right. That was one of the worst movies we've ever talked incomprehensibly bad.
JVL00:46:49One of those movies that had to have some tremendous backstory to explain why it was so bad because otherwise it doesn't make sense. Right. Um, and like this is a franchise that isn't really beloved and none of them has been especially good. I mean the first two predator movies, the first one's a very good nineties action movie. It's a classic of its time.
Sonny00:47:13First off eighties. Uh, but it's, it's a. The, the original predator, the John McTiernan was 1987 predator or 1988 predator is a perfect movie. I just want, I want that on the record. It is a perfect, it's a perfect high concept, like 105 minutes in the way that every John
JVL00:47:31McTiernan movie from that period was he made, he made that diehard hunt for red October
Sonny00:47:37back to back.
JVL00:47:38I mean like, yeah, but you know, like nobody's clamoring for this. There is no predator universe in any real world. In a real way. Right. And, and so instead you just, it's like a video game series searching for relevance and have we gotten, no, I guess that was Freddie versus Jason, but I, I expect at some point to have like the predator versus Jason or the began just like you, you, it's like putting
Vic00:48:01match. That, that was the whole alien AVP.
JVL00:48:04Yeah. I, I just was like, why, why are we being shoveled this did the last one didn't make any money. The last one lost money.
Sonny00:48:12We have this one.
JVL00:48:13Last one was a huge, this one is, this one is a failure. I assume unless it's streaming, streaming economics mean that you can't, who can say how much it made? Yeah.
Sonny00:48:20Well, we can talk about that because it's actually kind of interesting. So I mean, this was not, this was not technically a made for TV movie. This was not necessarily a made for Hulu movie. It was made Fox and Disney didn't know what to do with it, made by 20th century. And basically the way, the way their deal breaks down is if a 20th century movie goes into theaters, they, uh, it has to stream on HBO max, but if it does not go to theaters, go to theaters, they can stream it directly on Hulu and it's, it stays there, lives there. Um, so basically they made the call that like this movie is probably not going to make $200 million in the domestic box office where we're better off just putting it on better off putting it on Hulu and having it live there. Um, and you know, maybe it'll drive some stuff. Now I will say, look, Hulu says, Hulu says that this is the, they're the most watched a original movie and the history of Hulu, but tons of tons of people, they don't give any actual numbers of course, but it's, you know, by Hulu standards, it's, it is an enormous hit, at least in terms of getting people to watch it. But this is the problem with all streaming economics. This is why like the, the decision to shelve Batgirl makes total economic sense because nobody's signing up for, for HBO max to watch Batgirl. Nobody is signing up to watch a $90 billion CW pilot, uh, quality movie. It wasn't technically a CW pilot. It just looked as bad as a CW pilot apparently. Um, so like taking a $40 million tax write off or whatever makes more sense. It just makes more sense than sticking it on the service. And like, I, I mean, I, you know, I don't, you got, you, you've got a thing like Hulu. It's it, it got, it's gotten tremendously good reviews as you would expect, you know, finally a woman can defeat the predator.
Vic00:49:58So
Sonny00:49:59Oh, it's got good reviews, pray like 90% fresh, 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, uh, and you know,
JVL00:50:07Because it's the right kind of movie for the right. It's for the right time.
Sonny00:50:09Exactly. Oh yeah. Well, as I said,
JVL00:50:12Well, that's the only reason anybody liked alien was because Sigourney Weaver killed the thing. I'm the only, that's all just feminist, right? This is Yeah. I'm being facetious because the point is that like people love the alien because it's a great movie. Yeah. Great movie. There is, you know, Sigourney Weaver's character is fantastic and there's no, Right, right, right. This is different.
Vic00:50:30Um, I had, uh, it's funny, I, I, I fast forwarded, there were no stingers were there in this movie or no? Not really I don't think so. Um, uh, I did notice in the end where it says, you know, the, the, they assure you when they say no animals were harmed. I was like, no shit. They didn't use any animals. Yeah. They didn't even use anything.
Sonny00:50:48No animals.
Vic00:50:49No animals approached any. Oh, don't even get me started. But you know what? I actually rewound, I rewound, uh, uh, a few action sequences cause there was some dismemberments going on that I was interested in. So I mean that, that
Sonny00:51:01All computer generated though. I mean, it's like, like the, the, the violence in this movie is very interesting in the sense that like everything happens at a quick cutaway or is so obviously CGI that it's not.
Vic00:51:14You know, is it just because it's just cheaper than to actually have cheaper to do it?
Sonny00:51:18You can't, you can't doing an actual practical effect is hard.
Vic00:51:21It's hard to make it look good. What's his name? Uh, uh, Kenny Baker in ILM and that stuff.
Sonny00:51:27That's very sad.
JVL00:51:28Yeah. Um, you know, I, I saw a real fire yesterday. I was driving from North Carolina up to Jersey and, uh, it, it must've happened like three minutes before we got there, but a car drove off the road. On, on I 95 into the gigantic wooded median between the northbound and southbound lanes and uh, hit a tree and burst into flames. Oh. And, uh, it was, I mean, it was burning and burning. They brought tons of, you know, we were just sitting there parked as they shut down the road and then, you know, 50 feet away watching this thing. I don't want to say it looked cool, but you know, it was impressive in the way that real fire is impressive. Yes. And it, it just brought home to me how something as simple as fire on screen, when it is done in CGI, it is weightless and your brain, your brain understand, even if your mind doesn't understand that it's fake fire, your brain knows that it's fake fire.
Sonny00:52:36Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, th there's a movie I just watched that I'm reviewing this week, uh, orphan first kill. Uh, movie orphan. Uh, finally, we're getting, we're getting worried about, are we at the orphan expanded
JVL00:52:48universe?
Sonny00:52:49I can't imagine. I can imagine. Uh, but the, but, uh, the, the climactic set piece in that movie takes place in a house that's burning down and it's just fake fire everywhere. Just just trash, fake fire. And I'm just like, why even bother?
Vic00:53:03Well, here's the other thing in terms of CGI, the alien's face, you notice, you don't get a lot of good looks at the alien's face versus, uh, the alien's face. Alien's face in the first predator, which was so was like organic and the way it was moving its mouth and, and, and, and Schwarzenegger kills him. Yeah.
Sonny00:53:22Calls them the whole thing. Well, they, you know, it's, they, it's, it's, they did a, they did the whole face over again with CGI because they, there was a practical, there was a prac, there was an actual practical effect in prey for the face of the predator. I saw some videos of it. It looked cool. I was like, this looks like the original predator. Why not just do this? And then. Can't do that. Okay.
Vic00:53:39Can't have that. So I have, what I wrote down was that I felt like this was Mulan meets predator by ways, by way of dances with wolves is what I had written down when I saw this, because it's like, I can't remember if Pocahontas was this way, but this is like Mulan, right? Cause she wants to be the warrior. Yes. Kind of.
JVL00:53:57Mulan.
Vic00:53:58Okay. Here's my question. Mulan's actually good. Why, why are French trappers always bad? Are they always.
Sonny00:54:06To be fair. Are there any good French trappers?
Vic00:54:08The French are always bad. Do you remember the revenant in the, in the revenant, they had the French trappers at the end. They were, oh no, you know what? It wasn't the revenant. I think it was, it was, it is either the revenant or hostels, um, uh, maybe it was hostels with Christian Bale. I can't remember. Uh, one of those movies, they come across French trappers and they're horrible. They're all murderers and rapists.
JVL00:54:29And I wondered if that's just, is that, are all the, there's no good French trappers. Think about what that life must've been. Or the kind of guys that went out.
Vic00:54:36The kind of guy that signed up for that. I'm going out there. Okay. Um, okay. Question. Uh, what's her name? Nauru. Amber. Mid thunder. Thank you. She speaks both English and Comanche. How is that possible?
Sonny00:54:49Well, uh, the, the, she speaks English and Comanche and then the French speaks, she speaks
JVL00:54:54predator, right?
Sonny00:54:55And the, and the French speak French and English. Yes. They're just no, there's no, like, there's no language.
Vic00:55:04It would have been better if they just decided that everybody would speak Comanche.
Sonny00:55:08They should just do it. They should do it. They should have done it like Apocalypto.
Vic00:55:11Yes. That would have been it. Okay. Uh, next question. What exactly are the predators rules of engagement? If you dropped your weapon, would it not kill you anymore? Or because you had your weapon, no matter what he's coming after you.
JVL00:55:25It makes no sense. Right? So, uh, she's caught in a trap, so she's no longer a threat, so I won't go after her, but this guy is lying on the ground playing dead. Right. And I just tripped over him. Yeah.
Vic00:55:38Might as well kill him.
JVL00:55:39Right.
Vic00:55:40Okay. Good. I was wondering if it was just me. Okay. And then the next, the next question is, uh, what's up with the orange flowers? Is there some sort of a hallucinogenic, you know how they have these, it's a very, uh, it's very homeopathic.
Sonny00:55:55What's a fever reducer? It's, it's like aspirin. It's, it's Comanche aspirin. I see.
Vic00:55:59Lowers your body temperature. And, and because of that, the, the, the, hence the predators high technology for. It's thermal imaging. It's like the mud. Thermal imaging was totally messed up by the flowers. Yeah.
Sonny00:56:09Right. Okay. In the first one, in, in the original predator. Remember when Arnold covers himself in the mud in the same thing, same thing you hide
Vic00:56:16from these, again, these predators that, you know, they're good in some ways or all their technology, completely incompetent. Okay. And then, um, no, my other observation was thank goodness. The predator bought the Indian sometime delaying the progress of the white man.
JVL00:56:32That's all because that's the ending, right?
Vic00:56:33We have to move, right? They're coming and they don't mean the predators.
Sonny00:56:36They meant, they meant they meant the real predator, which is the west.
JVL00:56:40Am I wrong? Am I wrong in thinking that at some level, the attraction of the predator movies is that the audience is kind of rooting for the predator two thirds of the time. Like when you get to the final fight, right? Whoever the final girl is, whether it's Schwarzenegger or whatever, like at that point you're rooting for, for them, but for the other parts of it, the predator is kind of cool and you want to see how he kills people and that's, we identify as a predator.
Sonny00:57:10So, so again, I, I. I made this point in my review that the, the, one of the, one of the appeals of, of this whole series, uh, again, specifically look at like, look at predator two, where he goes to town on the vicious Colombian and Jamaican gangs, right. Or in this movie where he's hunting the filthy colonizing trappers, the whole, the whole appeal of these, or even earlier in prey, even earlier in prey, when he kills all of the evil sexist Indians, when he kills all those guys. Yes. And part of the appeal of these movies is giving you an art sanctioned outlet for your own sadism to, to watch the dismemberment of again, outgroups. You, you, you have these bad outgroups and it is fun to watch people hurt the out. Yeah. That is okay for you to root for that. It's always been the case. It's always been. It's like, this is like human. But it's not just the people hurting the outgroup. Human sadism 101.
JVL00:58:05The predator himself is kind of cool. Right. Well, no, but this is.
Sonny00:58:08Yeah, but no, but this is.
JVL00:58:09Cause it isn't like watching the alien. Yeah. Massacre outgroups. Nobody's interested in that. Right? The alien is always evil. Nobody's ever rooting. There is no moment in any of the alien movies where you're rooting for the alien, even when it's killing a character. No, no, no. Alien is no. Right. You just, you can't have. Even when it's killing Carter.
Sonny00:58:27Even when it's killing whoever. Right.
JVL00:58:29Yeah. Carter Burke. But, but, but the predator, like it's kind of cool. Like he's gonna go invisible. He's got the, the, the little triangle laser reticle. Right.
Sonny00:58:36Right. It's like. Look at all these cool toys he has to kill people with. Right. They cuts off limbs. Right. He's got the net. It closes. Dices them up. I'm only. Again. It's, it's sadism. It is. This is, it's just like the enjoyment of watching people get hurt in interesting ways. It is art. It is art sanctioned. He's Jack Reacher. Ideological sanctioned. Sadism.
Vic00:58:55Do you think.
Sonny00:58:56Yes.
Vic00:58:57Very similar. Very similar. Do you think this movie now paves the way for predator time, like time travel movies where it's like, oh, predators, civil war, you know, predator world war one.
Sonny00:59:06Predator versus the 300.
Vic00:59:07Yes. No. Well, is it, are we gonna see some of these more, more of these movies you think, or is it just.
Sonny00:59:11I don't see any reason why not. I mean, again, like the whole, they should, this is how the series should be working. They should be just dropping the predator into like random.
JVL00:59:19He said that it's some action, some of the movies, the predator has to win John wick. That's the, in order to, to make the franchise viable, maybe we're just over, maybe we're
Sonny00:59:31just overestimating the predator. Maybe we're just overestimating what the predator is because we see his cool spaceship and all his cool toys. And we're like, oh, this must be an advanced hunter race. What if they're actually just like Safari? What if they're like douchebag dentists, safaris from America who go in, like cut off the tails of elephants. Yeah. Same basic idea. He was killing. He, those guys aren't skilled hunters. They're not.
JVL00:59:54They're posting to their alien Facebook account, pictures themselves, carcass of an elephant.
Vic01:00:01Was it the wolf head or the dog head? And he, he puts that on his waist on his belt. Yeah. That's a great, that's one to be proud of. You really, you really did that one. That was a tough one.
JVL01:00:10Yeah.
Vic01:00:11Yeah. Um, okay. I had other thoughts, but I think I'm forgetting. Oh yeah. No, I don't. Okay. I think I'm done. That's it. Um, all right. Do you have any other thoughts? That's it. We're predator out. Bad. Yeah. That's all the time. We're good.
Sonny01:00:2790% fresh folks. Don't listen to critics. They're idiots. None of us have any idea what we're talking. That is all the time we're giving to this episode, questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch @VictorinoMattus.
Vic01:00:33Again, be sure to subscribe to us on social media. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
?01:00:47Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Sonny01:00:51Bye. Bye.
JVL01:00:53Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right.
Sonny01:00:58What do you got? Do you guys want to talk for a minute about Wolfgang Peterson? Oh. I was going to, I was going to say, we should say RIP Wolfgang. Wolfgang Peterson.
Vic01:01:03Underrated. An underrated director. I find it. I find it interesting that.
Sonny01:01:07He gave a speed. What? He gave us. No. That was John de Bono.
Vic01:01:12Oh yeah. Yeah. That's right. John de Bono. No. But I find it interesting that they keep on mentioning Air Force One, but that's like one of my least favorite of his movies, of those movies. What?
Sonny01:01:20Oh, it was ridiculous.
Vic01:01:21Air Force One is great.
Sonny01:01:22Unrealistic.
Vic01:01:23You're ridiculous. Oh, unrealistic. Yes. He, Harrison Ford was holding on the president and, and when they jumped the parachuting scene, can I just say that? JVL and I talked about it. Thank you. Thank you, JVL. Yeah. You've complained about this before.
JVL01:01:35You lost me. Okay. Worst green screen effect ever in a big budget.
Sonny01:01:38That's not good. But the whole sequence at the beginning where the, the team assaults, like the presidential palace.
Vic01:01:45Very, very upsetting in the plane.
Sonny01:01:47And Harrison Ford is like, we are not gonna bow down to terror. I mean, he's like the original George W. Bush who again, never did anything wrong except light bulbs. The no Wolfgang Peterson was great. It was funny. I was looking at his IMDb after he died. I, I, I must've known this, but I'd forgotten that he was a director. His first Hollywood movie was the never ending story. You guys remember the never ending story? Um, and I, I've loved that movie. It's one of my early film memories, but I mean, I like, did you ever get it mixed up with dark crystal and, uh, no, no, no, no, that was, I totally, those movies are the
JVL01:02:19same in my head.
Sonny01:02:20No, very different. Uh, I mean, uh, dark crystals, like Jim Henson, Jim Henson, and the never ending story also
Vic01:02:27has it. It felt like it came out at the same time. One of them had David Bowie in it.
Sonny01:02:30Similar. They're similar. No, that's lab. Oh, there you go. Thank you. See labyrinth and dark crystal. I could see getting those two confused. Uh, but I mean, like in the line of fire, uh, you know, people, people were goofing on Troy this week after he died, but I, I love that. I actually love that movie.
Vic01:02:45In the line of fire for me, that is a perfect movie.
JVL01:02:48That is a perfect movie. In the line of fire, great movie. So the, the Wolfgang, the one that got away for about a year circa 1999, Wolfgang Peterson was attached to direct justice league. Wow. And that would have been amazing. That would have been weird.
Vic01:03:07I mean, yeah, you know, maybe I'm wrong.
Sonny01:03:14Maybe it was Batman versus Superman because it, it, George Miller was attached to justice league for a long time. Yeah. Wolfgang Peter Peterson, uh, was, was it, it was Batman versus Batman versus Superman.
JVL01:03:27Yeah. Uh, and this is, you know, forever and a day ago, pre Nolan, pre pre everything. Right. Except for, uh, Michael Keaton, Batman movies. Right. That would have been a way to save DC comics group from what it was becoming with, uh, with the ridiculous Batman spinoffs. Yeah. And, uh, I would have paid money to go, to go see that.
Sonny01:03:52Sure.
Vic01:03:53That would have been great. I, I love Wolfgang. I would say my favorite movies of his were, uh, in the line of fire. And then of course, dust boat, even though it had a very sad ending.
Sonny01:04:02Oh, come on, come on, I feel like we've made that joke on the, on the show. The show before you can't, you can't joke about that sort of thing anymore, Vic. That's not, I mean, he also, I mean, look, he also did, I, I just pulled up his IMDb cause I, I, but he also directed outbreak love break that great sick monkey movie. Um, uh, and, uh, the perfect storm, which was sold to everybody with the big giant CGI wave.
JVL01:04:31That's a horrible way to go.
Sonny01:04:34And I actually read the book.
JVL01:04:36Really? Yeah. Of how many years?
Vic01:04:39Oh, no. I read it over the summer after, uh, after I was up in Maine and I had met that woman, Linda Greenlaw, who was played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. It's a really great book.
JVL01:04:49She probably looks a lot like in real life, like Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Vic01:04:53She kind of, you know who she looked like? She looked like an older Karen Allen. Funny enough. Well, she looked like Karen Allen. Now, if that makes any sense. So anyway, left with that. But you know what it is? It's the sun. Don't stay out in the sun. You get sun wrinkles. Yeah. I'm sure it's fine.
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