#261. 'Twisters'
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The main event is Twisters, which all three hosts enjoy without quite calling it good: Sonny loves it even while granting it's "not a very good movie precisely," relishing its go-for-broke plot — a traumatized storm-chaser (Daisy Edgar-Jones) fleeing to New York, then lured back to Oklahoma by Anthony Ramos and pulled toward YouTube-star tornado wrangler Glenn Powell — and especially its accidental villain, a real-estate developer buying up storm-wrecked land whom Sonny insists is actually the good guy. JVL agrees it's "not a good movie, it's a fun movie" but wishes it had spent less time on Anthony Ramos's plot and more with Powell's band of misfits, and argues, having rewatched the original the night before, that 1996's Twister is structured like a monster movie riffing on the raptor-cage shot from Jurassic Park while this one is a straight disaster picture with roughly triple the tornadoes. Mike is charmed by the motel-pool sequence, the meta tornado-hits-the-movie-theater climax, and a scene-stealing Maura Tierney; all three agree Glenn Powell is a genuine star (closer to Chris Pratt or Ryan Gosling than Leonardo DiCaprio, and best when radiating pure cockiness) while Edgar-Jones is merely fine, with everyone arguing Dakota Johnson or Sydney Sweeney would have been funnier in the role, and JVL flags the odd choice to keep the leads chastely un-kissed at Spielberg's reported insistence. Before any of that, the guys burn a big chunk of the front third on Southwest Airlines scrapping its beloved open-seating boarding system: Sonny rants at length about loving the letter-and-number boarding groups and dreads becoming just another Delta or United, JVL delivers an economics lecture on plane turnaround times, brand suicide at JetBlue and Frontier and Midwest, and the "enshittification" of premium-seat pricing, and Mike wonders whether anyone has actually cracked efficient boarding at all. They also run through a strong box-office weekend — Twisters opened to roughly $82 million, one of the year's biggest debuts, ahead of Despicable Me 4, Inside Out 2, Long Legs, and A Quiet Place: Day One — and needle each other over the Wicked trailer, which JVL insists is a much bigger cultural deal than Sonny gives it credit for, one that's hiding both that it's a musical and that it's only Part 1.
From the show notes
Plus: Southwest talk!
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00You've got quite the reputation, city girl. You think you can disrupt a tornado.
Guest00:00:06In Derry. But in the field. In the moment. I got it wrong. We never had a chance.
Sonny00:00:22You want one?
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the Subbeacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts, who tried to tell the theaters that they aren't built to withstand what's coming. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Subbeacon.com. Tell your friends and family. Join the conversation in the comments. You can get new episodes every Friday morning, only at Subbeacon.com. We are going to be talking about Twisters later in the show. But first, JBL, what's going on with you, my man?
JVL00:01:06Nothing. You know, the truth is I'm not in it for the science. I'm only in it for the money.
Mike00:01:12I knew that about you.
JVL00:01:14Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't have anything. I think we're going to have so much to talk about with these two movies. Because I went and watched the original one last night on Max. Max! Max has been pushing it at me, and so I yield my time.
Mike00:01:32Ooh, okay.
JVL00:01:33Michael, how are you? Oh, sorry. Sonny, how are you? Hey, who's co-hosting this thing? I don't know. I don't know. What's happening? I don't know what's happening.
Sonny00:01:40Sonny, what's up? Your brain's all scrambled from all the tornadoes. Big news. Big news in my world. My world. So, I don't know if you guys heard, but Southwest is changing how they're doing their –
Mike00:01:57First thing I saw when I woke up this morning was that news alert.
Sonny00:02:01I feel like I need to explain to people how –
JVL00:02:04There's no chance this actually lasts, right? This is going to be like New Coke. They'll do this for a month, and then they will back off of it. Hold on.
Mike00:02:11Let's explain to the folks at home what this is.
Sonny00:02:13So, normally, if you go to an airport, right, if you buy a ticket to an airplane, You're buying a seat, right? You're buying, like, I want seat A27 on United 647. It would be 27A. And I want, you know, I want the, you know.
Mike00:02:31Economy Plus.
Sonny00:02:33I'm paying extra for Economy Plus. I want to blah, blah, blah. And when you go to the airport, they put you in. You go to your gate, and then there are, like, 17 boarding classes. It's like, you know, you're in group, you're in group six B, you go on with the, the priests from the Hindu temple, but not before the, the priest from the Catholic temple. And like, it's like, whatever, it's, it's bizarre. It's there's 17,000 different permutations and you go on, but you have your seat, you have your seat. So, you know, exactly where you're going to sit. Southwest does it differently. Southwest does it differently. So when you go to Southwest, you buy, you buy your ticket. And when it's time to check in 24 hours before or 48 hours or whatever it is, you go and you check in. And however, by the order of the check-in, you are assigned a gate number, a boarding number. There are three sections. There's A, B, and C, and it's 1 through 60 in each of these sections. So there are ways to get around this. I always do the early bird, so I usually get a seat in the A section, and it's fine. But the point is, you line up in the number in the letter, right? So you're boarding group A. If you're A55 or whatever, you go, you find the little stanchion that marks off 50 to 55, and you stand between that, and you go on the 55th person onto the airplane. Okay. And then you go and you pick whatever seat you want. You can sit in an aisle seat. You sit in a middle seat. You can sit wherever you want. it's open seating. There's no assigned seating. You just go and you sit, you go and you sit wherever. Okay, fine. This is, uh, when I moved to Dallas, I became a Southwest person, not for reasons of ideology or anything, not because I love the Southwest boarding system, uh, when I got here, but because Southwest is the airport, uh, Southwest is the airline that flies out of Lovefield. Lovefield for people who don't know, essentially Lovefield is like DCA. It's like Reagan, um, compared to DFW, which is like Dulles. That's like, or, or, or midways it's, it's midway to O'Hare. I don't know Chicago. So I'll, I'll assume that that's correct. But like the, the, the, this is what I know. Or it's like John Wayne and LAX, right? It's the small, it's smaller, but it's, it's better located. It's, it's right. It's like it, when I drive there in the early morning, if I drive there at like five in the morning, it takes me less than 20 minutes to get there it's great um uh so it's it's it's that's what i fly out of but but it's they only have southwest and at first i was like kind of i didn't entirely love the southwest system because it's like wow this is you know this is annoying i gotta get the early bird blah blah but i have come to love it i have come to absolutely love it i love being able to sit wherever i want to sit being able to like kind of pick and choose who i want to sit near uh i love the fact that if i do the early bird i know i'm going to get in the a group i'm always going to have overhead space and what i have found with every other airline before and since is that the i the the whole boarding process for these airlines in theory is simpler it's like oh well you're in group one you're in group four but it doesn't matter it's it's still people line up and then they rush to the gate when it's time they start getting in line too early they there's no it's not like the other system is any better with their with their assigned seating you're you're still got people who are pushing forward to get to the front they gotta because they want to be able to jam their stuff in the overhead compartment and that's and like i hate that i just i hate that i would much rather be able to pick and choose where i sit uh and and uh but news came down news came down thursday morning that southwest is getting rid of the choose your own seating they're going to have assigned seating like every other goddamn airline in this country they're gonna they're they're also introduced they're gonna have economy plus seating and they're gonna you know they're they're gonna have some late night red eye flights blah blah but the big change is getting rid of the a through abc one through 60 setup and i hate this i hate this so much i i if i wanted to fly some other garbage airlines way of doing their garbage boarding i would do that there's a million options out there i can fly delta i can fly united i don't want to fly any of those i want to fly southwest and i
Mike00:06:51want to do it how i always used to do it slash and rant slash rant so okay so i am i am temperamentally with you on this sunny um however i am sort of fascinated that what seems to be happening here and what seems to be happening like at all the airlines with this is like nobody has cracked the code on if the efficient seating processes right like like i i hear you that it does seem like the the open seating is more efficient than the you know group one medallion members uh etc etc all
Sonny00:07:35their dumb little names that they have for these things oh you're in group three which is the premier plus general boarding membership class for the and i shut the fuck up just give me a number
Mike00:07:48in a letter but is it is is southwest's like the most like this is a question i don't know the answer to this but like is southwest's current system the most efficient is there
Sonny00:07:59like this is a logistics question that jvl will have lots of thoughts on um so this is one of
JVL00:08:04the things that uh that airlines care a lot right so i know so much about this um i knew you would what airlines measure their baseline measure is the cost per seat per mile so their their their measure of what their expenses are is how much does it cost to move a seat one mile and all sorts of stuff gets wrapped into this right um there's the labor there's the maintenance there's fuel costs but one of the things that gets gets looped into this is turnaround time for a plane so once a plane lands before it can go back out how long is it and one of the components of that right there is there is the cleaning of the plane one of the reasons they don't put out pillows and uh blankets anymore is because it just takes time to do that right so there's the restocking of the galley there's the cleaning of the toilets uh refueling of the plane switching a flight cruise and boarding passengers south west's system has historically been the fastest of from like ready to board to ready to pull out and this is one of the reasons why i'm surprised that they announced this move another is because this is a brand differentiation southwest has all sorts of brand differentiations about like they don't charge you for bags and stuff uh they they are the only airline with a loyalty that extends beyond point systems like there are there are people who just love southwest in the way that there are people who love like aldi or trader joe's or you know any other like weird discount type purveyor of goods or services.
Sonny00:10:00I have a Southwest credit card now. So I can get the points so I can fly my family for, we're flying, we're going to San Diego next week. Do you have the companion pass? I do have companion pass. I do have companion pass.
JVL00:10:15So I, I'm surprised. I, I find it hard to believe this is going to last, but on the other hand, So Southwest has done a bunch of things over the last decade which have taken it away from the cost structure which it opened with. So, for instance, they only used one kind of plane for like 30 years. Why only one kind of plane? Because, A, you have to stock fewer parts for maintenance and replacement because you're only stocking the parts for one particular model. And B, your training costs on your pilots are lower because everybody's just trained on the same thing, right? No pilot needs to be rated for both the Airbus 300 and the 737 or, you know, the 730. Yeah, the 737-2. It was the 737, yeah. Right. So they moved away from that. They moved to different planes. They started expanding from, you know, becoming more national. And so here's the thing, though. We have seen in the airline industry in the past, beloved brands commit suicide. So JetBlue, once upon a time, the most beloved airline brand in the world. and the the corporation which owns jet owns jet blue just decided to stop doing that and to make it the most hated airline in the country frontier frontier was once upon a time like the southwest of the mountain west and people loved it and it was you know it was a slightly upscale but still at bargain prices and then frontier decided no we're not we're gonna make this midwest midwest remember midwest with the chocolate chip cookies midwest airlines was the idea this was midwest was the southwest of like wisconsin chicago right and purchased by delta and right and so the idea was you could uh you know they were nicer seats i believe you sat wherever you want southwest style and they had soft baked chocolate chip cookies upon takeoff and so the entire plane smelled like cookies it's like the double tree of airlines yeah the double tree of airlines and uh they decided that they're they wanted to increase their margins so they could get bought and so they just like how can we make this the shittiest experience possible to squeeze every last penny so that somebody will acquire us and i have never really understood these moves by by corporations but uh unless southwest has decided that they want to inch this is you guys have seen the the enshitification of the internet theory yeah yeah right it's like that but for airlines can you explain the enshitification of the internet boy uh can you
Sonny00:13:04sonny the short version is everything on the internet is getting worse because it's all designed to uh every everything on the internet is getting worse for a variety of different reasons one of them is link decay right one of them is uh trying to maximize ad revenue yep um and making things like google more useless another is uh seo optimization which is plays into the blah blah but like basically everything is getting worse all the time for reasons that are that are directly
JVL00:13:37unrelated to user experience right and which are which are completely knowable seeable and predictable i see and so i there may just be something like that about air travel which we are still like 70 years into the air travel revolution after it was deregulated um we're still not all the way at bottom yet where it's going to be just become greyhound of the skies right and there will be two tiers there will be like air dubai and then there will be everybody else has taken greyhound and it's the shittiest possible experience because what you're gonna do
Sonny00:14:16about it well and that was in and so like that was kind of the argument for southwest right southwest was like we're the bus of the skies like that that was their argument middle class but it was nice i mean it was nicer it was nicer it was don't get me wrong i i fly southwest i like southwest right a coach bus not um i have a question i have a jbl i want to loop back to something you had mentioned about brands that went away do you do you have thoughts or knowledge on twa and uh virgin atlantic virgin atlantic i always used to fly virgin atlantic i love virgin virgin atlantic was great i love virgin but it would but my understanding is that it like lost money every year that it was totally totally unprofitable that it was it didn't it didn't work
JVL00:14:57i don't understand the virgin atlantic stuff and in the same way i don't understand virgin galactic like the entire richard branson expanded universe the richard branson cinematic universe never made
Mike00:15:09any sense to me okay isn't it i never understood it's just a rich guy sort of like like trying to
JVL00:15:15look like a mogul whether or not it works or not right maybe i again none of it made any sense at all love flying it love flying virgin atlantic it was great um but i yeah i don't understand the south and southwest is also it's not quite a cooperative like it's not like rei but it's closer to rei than it is to united like it is you know the employees are owners to a certain degree uh it doesn't it doesn't make a ton of sense to me and i expect there will be a course correction
Mike00:15:46but is this is this all is this all i mean is is this sort of downstream of a decision to try to get some of that sweet sweet premium seat cash right like they have the early bird check-in which is like their version of it,
JVL00:16:01but ding, ding, ding. Yeah. So, and they started this, right. They started 12 years ago, 15 years ago, doing things like that, where you could pay extra to pick your seat. And then they had a version of a business class that was right. And it could be that this is, I mean, it could be that the economics of this stuff is all the way it is like with stadiums where, you know, what makes a stadium profitable? It's luxury boxes. Right. And that airline travel, everybody, all of those seat per mile things get pushed. There's like everybody else. And then there's the premium level. And with the premium level, you want to be able to charge anything you fucking can, because those are people who aren't paying for the seats themselves. Those are all business travelers whose companies are footing the bill for them. Right. Right. And that's where the big distortion comes in, because this is it's like a big externality. Would a normal person pay $3,000 to fly one way from LaGuardia to Los Angeles in first class? Absolutely not. There's almost no – the percentage of real people who do that is this big. What those seats wind up being is they are people whose companies are paying for them. And so the companies are price insensitive because they're not making rational decisions about what goes in and what goes out. uh and then you're getting the rest of those are upgrades which are the business reason for that is so you trap people into your ecosystems that they're flying 45 coach legs so that on the 46th leg they can fly uh they can they can fly first class because they've used an upgrade right and so that's that's what those seats are for the seats are for not only you know your luxury seats are for your people who are not paying their own fare and then they're for locking your your the hoi polloi but who are frequent travelers into still using your system it's all very bad yeah
Sonny00:18:03and this is and so like i the sense so what what southwest said in their their release was like 80 percent of the people who say they don't fly southwest is because of the choose your own seating thing they they they fly and they hate and they don't like it and like what about the rest of
JVL00:18:20us what about the problem is like 80 of southwest flyers really like it right this is the they somebody somebody looked at this at the powerpoint and said like well here's the pie of all air travel and here's the pie that represents southwest well all the look at all these other people out there we could get them if we just do this thing so long as we ignore the thing that the people
Mike00:18:44were actually in our pie already like so i mean i will say that i frequently fly southwest i flew it last week and the amount of confusion that people who have never flown southwest before have with the system first of all it's mind-boggling to me but i'm i need to recognize that like not everybody flies yes no as frequently as i do but it's but it causes like in the moment it causes all this chaos that drives me a regular flyer kind of crazy, but like that's, that's, that's air, air travel all the time. Like people are always surprised they have to take stuff. Like if they're not doing TSA pre-check, they have to take stuff out of their, out of their pockets, you know, it's idiotic stuff.
Sonny00:19:27And you know what, and you know what this, so this is, this is one of these things where I saw somebody, I saw somebody mentioned this on some social media platform the other day, but like you, you don't understand if you, if you are a person and I, I'm being I want to be very clear. I'm not I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone's asparagus. But but if you if you are a person who is not of below average intelligence, you can't possibly understand what it's like to go through life as a person of below average intelligence. And these people are confronted with Southwest and they're like, what numbers and letters? And it's not just a you're not just going to put me in the line.
JVL00:20:08It's not intuitive. Correct. It's not intuitive. It's very intuitive. It's inducted into a society or into a club, right? And once you learn it, you feel like, oh, I have the secret knowledge, right? It's like learning from an off menu.
Sonny00:20:23But it's literally just like, all right, numbers one through 60, there's an A and a B and a C. You know how the alphabet works, right? A is first, B is second, C is third. You know how numbers work. One is first, 60 is last.
JVL00:20:35i'm surprised you both still fly southwest because i used to love southwest it was my airline of choice and i stopped once we had kids because once you have kids you you can't do the well we sit anywhere anymore right so now you have to you have to be able to sit next to your kid and if you know to buy the ticket and then if you you get into b and the b group and you show up and all of a sudden like there are no seats together you're screwed and so i can't do
Sonny00:21:04that i don't even think we never fly with our kids so that's that's so we we still fly with our kids and our uh our kids are still under the age that we can board uh at the between the a and the b gotcha like so that that's okay for us but i will say i will say look i i am i am at the point where next year we're probably gonna have to fly with them and again it's because i because i have the southwest credit card i get all the points so we we flew for we're flying to san diego for free I mean, zero zero dollars, which is great. But if next year we have if we if next year we decide to fly somewhere again, I will just pay. I will pay early bird for everyone and we'll pay two hundred dollars for the flight because it'll be fifty dollars piece times four. And it'll be two hundred. It will pay two hundred dollars round trip and we'll be able to sit together, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, OK, well, that that is a thing I will do now. Again, you have more kids. It's harder for you, JBL. But, like, but also, I mean, I don't fly with the family very often. We fly maybe once a year. I fly for business. As a business traveler, Southwest is amazing. Like, it just is. It's just, like, because it's.
Mike00:22:15Especially if you're going to be somewhere for an extended period of time, the two free check bags, it's such a, it's such a, to me, if I need to, for instance, bring a garment bag that has, like, a jacket and shirts and stuff like that, that i don't want to like lug around like you check it and it's free like it's so i flew southwest last week out somewhere and then flew a different airline back uh and you know the difference was paying a whole lot more uh on the flight back just to just to check the bag that i
JVL00:22:49had checked for free on southwest so the other thing is the other airlines are collapsing towards the southwest model so i mean if you go to united now right and you you buy a ticket from a to b the base price ticket does not include a seat so the base price ticket is uh you will check in and then we will assign your seat then and so that is the functional equivalent of showing up and you're last in line you are last in line you're number 180 in group c that is like we're just going to give it to you and then to get a seat meaning you have to pick a seat so again if you're traveling with with two people who need to sit together to choose that seat is a huge price jump it's it's not like a 40 price jump it's like an 80 or 70 increase over the basest economy fair and that's before you even start touching you know carry-ons or check bags or anything like that or or premium economy or economy plus so you know everybody is trying to squeeze every last cent out of everybody's preference right it just it they're trying to make everybody they're trying to hit everybody at their at their price sensitivity point and they do it by by unbundling all of the things that that make an air airline travel right
Sonny00:24:16i think i i think it's alaska there's there's there's one of the one of the budget airlines charges for carry-on bags yeah so that's spirit spirit spirit yeah spirit so and i actually think i'm gonna make i'm gonna make a slightly counterintuitive argument here i actually think that that's smarter because like a if you charge people for carry-on bags you'll have fewer carry-on bags which will speed the boarding process right but also b that is like what people actually want that's what that's what you know the that's where you're that will make you more money i see if i were running an airline i would give people one check bag for free or charge them for the overhead that's what that's what i would do because again you're speeding up the process of getting people on the plane it'll go faster that way sure yeah but you're
JVL00:25:04then paying the labor to unload unload and circulate baggage through the through the belly the plane like there's there's cost there it costs money to get a bag that you check onto the plane off the plane into the baggage carousel system okay boy welcome to welcome to business school talk on airlines airplane we should have a points guy on this uh on this
Mike00:25:29podcast talk about this all right um well let's just move on i mean there's nothing else going mike what's going on in your world nothing let's move on um all right so let's talk uh box office this what happened with this movie i i missed it entirely the box office number one at the box office 81 million dollars in its opening weekend is twisters the movie that we'll be talking about today followed by number two despicable me four uh it uh clocking in at a respectable 24 million dollars number three inside out two number four long legs number five a quiet place day one um the movies are back baby
Sonny00:26:09movies are back baby Twister's huge hit this movie was projected to do something like 50 million dollars opening weekend and it blew blew past blew away that number so it did it did a huge huge 82.3 or 81.3 million dollars whatever it was huge number enormous it's one of the biggest openings of the year it's just under Dune Part 2 it was it's a it's a big hit um Despicable Me 4 continues to hold pretty well 44% drop Inside Out uh 2 I think is now the second highest grossing animated film of all time I thought I thought it passed Frozen 2 yeah but it's it's after The Lion King and some I don't know okay um and the other the other big surprise here is Long Legs horror film again the horror film from Neon uh grossed about 12 million dollars and it only dropped 46 percent in its second weekend which is a very good hold for a horror movie it's not it's not putting up smile numbers so when smile came out two years ago that movie debuted to about the same amount of money it was like 21 or 22 million dollar debut but it dropped only 18 i mean it that that movie held and held and held this movie's not holding quite that well but it's still holding very well um so it's that's gonna end up being a real big hit for neon. Uh, there's just also, there's everything is, everything is doing, uh, everything is doing real well. Uh, bad boys ride or die is still, you know, holding pretty well, even though it's losing screens, it's, it's going to get up near $200 million. Um, uh, things are, things are good. Things are good at the box office. You love to see it. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's striking
Mike00:27:53to me right we've got uh kind of big tentpole disaster movie number one two kids movies two horror films all rounding out the top five like this is what this is this is the future of
JVL00:28:07of movies right like these are the three what's funny when's the last time we had a conversation like this and it wasn't a superhero movie exactly where i was going with that oh really i don't Look at that.
Sonny00:28:19Well, next week we're going to get that because Deadpool Wolverine is going to do $160, $180 million. Okay. Crap on our narrative there. It's going to – I mean, that – but it's definitely – I mean, look. This is – you know, we're –
JVL00:28:32If they only make movies with Deadpool and Wolverine, then everything will be fine. The comic book – the entire comic book industry did that for 15 years. That's right.
Sonny00:28:41It'll keep doing it too. The box office is still running, you know, 20% behind last year. And it's not helped that this was the weekend last year that Barbie and Oppenheimer came out. So that was, you know, that was an enormous weekend, a shocker. Nobody saw that coming. So, you know, we're still, that gap is still there, though Deadpool and Wolverine will close it a bit.
JVL00:29:07I've got a question for you, Sonny.
Sonny00:29:08Yeah.
JVL00:29:09At the theater, I saw a trailer for Wicked.
Sonny00:29:12Yes.
JVL00:29:12Which featured not one single song in it. Question, JBL. Are they trying to do the same thing with that that they did with Willy Wonka? Are they trying to hide the fact that it's a musical?
Sonny00:29:23JBL, I have a much, I have a similar question for you. How many parts would you assume Wicked is going to be from having seen that trailer?
Mike00:29:31Oh, no. Is it a part one and part two?
Sonny00:29:35That is Wicked part one. Unless they have scrapped it, that is Wicked part one. And they are not telling anyone it is Wicked Part 1 in the trailer. They are pulling a Dune. They're doing a Willy Wonka Dune with this. Well, it's a Chalamet. They're pulling a Chalamet. They're not only hiding that it's a musical from everyone. They are also hiding that it is a Part 1. And I can't wait to see this in a movie theater with people. So when Wicked Part 1 comes up on the title screen, somebody yells out, What the fuck? Because that's what's going to happen. That's what's going to happen. they're not telling anybody any of these things and it's gonna be there's gonna be chaos in the in the cinema when it happens so again unless they've changed unless they have gotten a whiff of like how how little people want two parts of wicked and are have like smushed it all back
JVL00:30:27together into one that may not be true i mean i i think your particular window into culture is probably completely blind to how big a deal Wicked is. I guess.
Sonny00:30:43I don't know.
Mike00:30:44It feels like... I don't know. I have no insight into Wicked. I was just like, oh, so we're just remaking Wizard of Oz here.
JVL00:30:54Wicked is a very, very, very big deal.
Sonny00:30:58They made a better version of Wicked ten years ago. The Sam Raimi Great and Powerful Oz movie.
JVL00:31:06I'm just telling you that out in the world of like theater kids and Broadway, Wicked is, believe me, I understand. Like I said, this is your particular one. It's not my world. It's not, Sonny. This is not your world. But Wicked is the most important contemporary musical. And most important and most beloved. Question. I think. Question. John, back me up on that.
Mike00:31:35Question, JBL.
Sonny00:31:36yes bigger deal than cats very possibly is it a bigger deal than the lion king musical
JVL00:31:45yeah because it's better than the lion king musical this is the the thing but so the lion king musical is like the mcdonald's of musicals i liked the lion king musical when i saw it a few years ago i'm sure you did yeah you know what it was kind of cool the the people who ship on in there from virginia they all love the lion king show lord when they show up to time square and
Sonny00:32:11look around when the rubes get there and they're like i'm going to see the lion king
Mike00:32:16i mean i mean yes singing in puppets that makes sense together to me singing with real people
JVL00:32:24but uh i mean this is you know this is the movie this is the movie this is the show that made
Mike00:32:30dina menzel a star that made uh wickedly talented what's the other the the other the little the
JVL00:32:38little tiny blonde powerful girl kristen chenoweth a star uh it this you say star like these i'm
Sonny00:32:47sorry like i this is a thing i've argued i have argued with you guys is the star of uh of uncut
Mike00:32:54gems that movie that's on adina menzel you know who the star of uncut gems is adam sandler adam
Sonny00:33:02sandler she's not even she's not even like the biggest woman in that movie who was that idiot
JVL00:33:07come on sir with the come on give me a little something for that pole there no that was good
Sonny00:33:11that was good no i uh the the this is this is the thing i argue about when whenever i see people talk about the EGOT, you know, which is the Emmys, Grammys, Oscar and Tonys. I always ask, how did they convince people that the Tonys are as big a deal as those other two? Because they're not. I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry. Broadway is very important for like 4% of the population. That's it. Like, get this Broadway nonsense out of here.
JVL00:33:45Let me see if I can...
Sonny00:33:46Live theater, live theater, go in your little entertainment ghetto stay away stay away from the popular the true popular arts
JVL00:33:54wicked is to theater folk as dune is to sci-fi nerds in terms of doing the movie or doing the belovedness dune the book okay and so the level just as annoying oh can you believe it they
Sonny00:34:13so it's annoying as shit yeah that's exactly what yeah i'm just saying i think there is there are a
JVL00:34:22lot of people who will be very very excited to see what i think you're probably you're probably
Sonny00:34:26right now you're you're probably right it'll probably end up making a ton of money but i the point though again is that they are hiding that it's a musical and they're hiding that it's
JVL00:34:34uh they're hiding that it's that's what surprised me which is watching i was like oh great i can't wait to hear some of the songs you might not the songs are really it really the trailer really does make it look like just a straight prequel to the wizard drama yeah not a musical at all yeah i
Sonny00:34:52somebody on somebody on twitter who is familiar with the broadway community got very mad at me because i was i was making this i was making this exact argument wicked is hiding that it's a musical and it's hiding that it's a part one and he was like first off everyone knows wicked is a musical i'm like i'm sorry buddy you're just because you and your friends like to you know drink uh your boujee and talk about fucking the songs of wicked that doesn't mean everybody knows what it is second of all not everybody knows that it's a part one but it's in all the trades oh people don't read trade magazines people don't read it was in variety telling me it was on deadline you're telling me that people weren't flocking to deadline to find out about this
JVL00:35:34come on epistemic closure all right that's all i have sorry i just want i didn't mean to derail us there i just wanted to ask you guys about the wicked trailer that's all all right well let's
Mike00:35:45move on uh leave uh wicked behind which also involves a twister a twister a twister to talk about this week's movie twisters sunny you want to give us a big boy review of twisters what what
Sonny00:35:58did you say bad transition oh thank you thank you i thought you were insulting me go ahead give us a big boy review the good kind like you want uh so the uh twisters stars glenn powell man of the moment action movie star extraordinaire glenn powell uh and daisy edgar jones as uh as a couple people who are chasing tornadoes and there's tornado action and then there's a wicked bad guy who's twirling his mustache and then there's more tornado action and then uh credits roll There's some country songs and a rodeo. That's it. That's the movie. I love Twisters. I love Twisters. I don't think it's a very good movie precisely, but I love Twisters. I love the concept of it because it's so basic. Again, the story, all right, more seriously, plot is Daisy Edgar Jones plays a girl who is trying to get funds to do a study about tornadoes. Her team gets wiped out in a Twister attack.
JVL00:36:54She's got the best instincts in the world.
Sonny00:36:55She's got the best tornado instincts in the world. She chases them. She knows exactly where they are. Her team gets killed because of her terrible instincts. And she flees Oklahoma and she goes to New York City. She's going to be the country girl in the big city. She's working for the National Weather Service up there where it's much safer. All you got to do is not get stabbed on the street by a homeless guy. But no tornadoes. It's fine. And then one of the guys, the only other survivor of this team, who's played by Anthony Ramos, who is, my understanding, is a big star. He's a big star. He's a huge star. He was in In the Heights.
JVL00:37:31Is that right? He's in the last Transformers movie.
Sonny00:37:34He's in... I remember. That's who I recognized him from. Was he a Hamilton guy?
JVL00:37:37He, in fact, plays in Hamilton, yeah.
Sonny00:37:39Was he in the original cast of Hamilton? Yeah, he's in the original cast. Doesn't matter.
JVL00:37:43You're making fun of me, yes. I am making fun of you. He's in the original cast of Hamilton.
Sonny00:37:46Because we've had this argument about Anthony Ramos before, who's not a big star. He's a nobody. And he's a nobody in this movie. He's dull on the screen compared to Daisy Edgar Jones and Glenn Powell. But that's neither here nor there. So Anthony Ramos convinces Daisy Edgar Jones to go back to Oklahoma because he's got a huge military radar that's going to penetrate into the soul of the tornado. They're going to really map the soul of the tornado. And when she gets there, she is accosted by YouTube star Glenn Powell. I don't know any of these characters' names. It doesn't matter. He's Logan Paul.
JVL00:38:17He's basically Logan Paul.
Sonny00:38:19He's Tornado Logan Paul. He's Tornado Mr. Beast combined with Logan Paul. Yes, yes. He's got a little bit of both in there because he's also doing good, JVL. He and his team of tornado wranglers are saving puppies and delivering food to devastated communities that they pay for with their merch. See? Tornado wranglers with a heart of gold. They get there. Tornadoes destroying everything. There's a whole will they or won't they thing with Daisy Edgar Jones and Glenn Powell. But my favorite part of this movie.
JVL00:38:47But also with Daisy Edgar Jones and Anthony Ramos.
Mike00:38:50There's no will they or won't they. Weirdly.
JVL00:38:52Oh, no. There's 100% will they or won't they.
Sonny00:38:55He is friend-zoned as hard as I've ever seen a character get friend-zoned in a movie. It's a will-she, but they do that thing with him anyway. He's very clearly into her, but she's like, you're nice.
JVL00:39:08That's such a weird choice for the script.
Sonny00:39:10You're nice. Totally. Anyway, he gets friend-zoned. But my favorite part of this movie is the villain, which aren't actually the tornadoes. Tornado is not the villain of this movie. The villain is essentially Black Rock. So like the the the there's a real estate developer who has hired Anthony Ramos with his phase array radar, whatever, to come in and to chase the tornadoes around. And while they're doing this, they also on his behalf make offers for the destroyed land and homes of all. So he's going to buy up all this land and he's going to build houses on it and he's going to use his magical radar to predict the the the tornadoes that are coming. And this is all treated as villainous, even though, like, this guy's coming in and he is giving people money for their destroyed homes that they otherwise wouldn't get from their insurance, right? He's actually providing a real service to people, and he's going to improve the local economy by building new houses. And he's working on developing a new technology that's going to save people from tornadoes. I don't understand why he is portrayed as the villain in this film. He's clearly the good guy.
JVL00:40:16Can we sidebar to talk about this?
Sonny00:40:18What's that?
JVL00:40:19Can we sidebar to talk about this?
Mike00:40:20I allow it. JBL, go.
JVL00:40:23Because this entire thing with the bad guy who's got a name that sounds almost like he's a sheriff or something and he's got big buckles. It's like balls or something.
Sonny00:40:32Boss Tornado Hog.
JVL00:40:34Boss Tornado Boss Hog. It makes no sense because the idea that what we are sold on the premise is that he has employed these high tech tornado wranglers with Anthony Ramos to chase. And then after a tornado, do a bunch of like public record searches on the deeds and properties and mortgages. He doesn't he doesn't need tornado wranglers to do that. You just watch the news and then have some guy who sits in your office do those public. That's all you you don't you don't need. And also, I'm sorry, he's going to all of the places that we see devastated by tornadoes have a population density of like one person per 12 miles. He's going to build suburban tract homes for who?
Sonny00:41:18Yeah. Who's living there?
JVL00:41:20Nowhere but fuck Oklahoma. Nobody is going to swoop in and develop this and go, well, I could put a shopping mall here. For who? There is not. So your idea about stimulating local economy, again, it's insane because this land is cheap.
Sonny00:41:34None of this makes any sense.
JVL00:41:35By the way. None of it is economically productive land.
Mike00:41:38The villain's name is classic. Marshall Riggs. Yes. Marshall Riggs.
JVL00:41:44See, get it?
Mike00:41:45He's Marshall, he's a sheriff, and he's rigging it.
JVL00:41:48One of the dumbest villain things I've ever seen in a movie.
Sonny00:41:53It doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all.
Mike00:41:57You never hear from Marshall Riggs. He is literally just in the background and pointed at. And maybe he has a line or two, but that's it.
Sonny00:42:06The real bad guy is David Cornsweat, who is the new Superman, by the way. So the other-
JVL00:42:10The MIT, his partner.
Sonny00:42:12Right, right. The other the other guy working with Anthony Ramos is the new Superman. He's like he but he's, you know, some MIT egghead. And he's the real bad guy because he's just he's like the middleman. He's just, you know, swooping in and stealing these people's homes. And like everybody gets Glenn Powell gets so offended. He's like, do you even know what these guys are doing? And it seems like they're just giving people money for their destroyed homes. Like what? They can go build another shack down the road. I don't understand what the issue is. Anyway, so that's the funniest part of this whole movie.
JVL00:42:46The most unrealistic thing about this is the economics and views of rural real estate.
Sonny00:42:51Yes, I don't understand any of that. But the real sell of the movie here, of course, is the tornadoes. The tornado action is great. I thought the special effects work in this movie was really, really good. It's not too much. It's just the right amount of much. It's like the muchness is perfect. But also Daisy Edgar Jones and Glenn Powell. And here's the thing. I've heard people, I've had critic friends say like, oh, they're nothing on screen. They've got no chemistry. They're no good together. I'm sorry. I loved every moment that they were on the screen together. I thought they were great. I think he is a genuine star. And I'm going to tell one story before we wrap up here. I was getting the tags for my new car I mentioned last week. So I was at the dealership. I was getting tags. And I was talking to the salesman, and he mentioned, unprompted, because he remembered I do movies. You know, he's a good salesman. He remembers my job. He's like, oh, yeah, hey, I want to go see that new Twisters movie. Is it any good? And I was like, oh, yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Why'd you want to see it? And he said, well, you know, the trailer's pretty good. Trailer's pretty good. I like the trailer. But it's got that guy in it. It's got that guy from the, he was in that Netflix movie where he played the undercover cop. And I was like, yes, it does. It has Glenn Powell. He's like, yeah, I like that Glenn Powell. And, you know, he was also in, and he said this very sheepishly, like he was embarrassed. He was, he's also in that, you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a girl movie that anyone, but you was like, yeah, yeah. With Sidney Sweeney. He's like, yeah, yeah. I liked him in that too.
JVL00:44:20But she didn't show her hooters.
Sonny00:44:22And then I asked, then I asked, I was like, so, oh, did you like him in a Top Gun Maverick? And he looked at me and he kind of squinted. He said, I didn't see that one. I saw the original Top Gun. Didn't see the new one. He was in that. And I was like, wait, you saw, you saw it, man.
JVL00:44:37But you, but not Top Gun Maverick.
Sonny00:44:39You saw Hitman and Anyone But You, but not Top Gun Maverick. He's like, yeah, I didn't see that one. Is it good? I was like, yeah, it's pretty good.
?00:44:44You should watch it.
Sonny00:44:45You should watch it. But Glenn Powell was the number two item. If he was doing Ranked Choice, number one was good trailer. Number two, that guy from the Netflix undercover cop movie, which I think we can assume to mean Glenn Powell. I don't think he was talking about the villain of that one. But anyway, Glenn Powell, movie star.
?00:45:05JBL.
JVL00:45:06Yeah, I mean, it's not a good movie. It's a fun movie. It would have been ten times better if Daisy... Which Daisy is she? Is she a Ridley or an Edgar Jones? Daisy Edgar Jones had been instead Dakota Johnson. Movie would have been ten times better with Dakota Johnson in that role. Disagree. But she's too...
Sonny00:45:32Dakota Johnson would be too above it all.
JVL00:45:35Yeah, and that's what would make it funny. Because she's a New Yorker now. Killed my mother. She's not actually a New Yorker, though.
Sonny00:45:40This movie is actually a Hallmark movie. No, it is. It's a movie about the girl who escapes.
JVL00:45:47Yes. So what I was going to say is, this is a Hallmark. The jokes that you see, like, you know, the girl from the high-powered magazine in New York returns to her small town and can't believe that what she was looking for was here all along. Yes! But here's the thing that I think the movie suffers from a little bit is whenever Glenn Powell isn't on screen, everything slows down.
Sonny00:46:15Yes.
JVL00:46:16And I agree that Glenn Powell and Daisy Edgar Jones are good together. I don't know how much of that is because of her and how much of that is because of him because his screen presence is great. And especially when they let him be Logan Paul, when he is doing his tornado. If you feel it, chase it. That stuff is great. His band of misfits, which are who he rides with, is great. The movie needs more time with them. The movie needs way. We get so much time with Anthony Ramos and his character and all of the bad guys with his storm par, whatever. And the movie doesn't need that. Those guys could be, you could cut their screen time by 90%. Just have them be like the faceless villain. Oh, there's those bad storm power guys. They're only in it for the money. They don't care about the science. Have them do that with them and spend the rest of the time meeting all of the weirdos and Boone and the girl with the drone and the older African-American gentleman who seems like he's a super nerd. His voice is great, by the way. Oh, it's so great.
Sonny00:47:27The older black guy, when he starts talking, is like, oh, he's a giant nerd. That's awesome.
JVL00:47:34So this is, again, I think this is critiquing the movie. I think the movie would have been much better had it spent more time with them and less time with Anthony Ramos, will they, won't they? Which, again, we all know they won't because it's a very strange choice to make that into a kind of like, hold on, he's sort of into her. What's that about? Because it takes you away from Glenn Powell and he's the star of this. And so I went and I watched the original Twister and I mean, maybe I'm sure you guys remember, but maybe other people forgotten. It has a similar structure in that there is a band of misfits who are in that there with Helen Hunt. It inverts this, the structure, in that the Band of Misfits this time is with Glenn Powell's character. And your main character, the Helen Hunt character, is allied with the team of soulless corporatists. But that Band of Misfits is Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeremy Davies and Alan Ruck. And they are super interesting character actors. And they've all got stuff going on. And the movie gives you gives you little bits of time with them, gives them business to do. And I think this I think twisters, it would have been better served by having more of that. Am I wrong?
Mike00:48:54No, totally. Well, wasn't it? It's like thirty five minutes before in the movie, before Glenn Powell shows up. Yeah.
JVL00:49:02The movie needs more. It needs more Glenn Powell. It's it was right. I feel a drag a little bit.
Mike00:49:09I was sitting there. while the movie's going on i'm like wait isn't glenn powell in this movie like where is he like why haven't we seen this guy and i i know we discussed this with the transformers movie anthony ramos like uh does absolutely nothing like he is he is he is not impressive on the screen
Sonny00:49:35i'm does not have he does not have movie star eyes totally i'm sorry this is totally i'm sure he's got a great voice i'm sure he's very electric uh physical on the stage man he can dance the eyes maybe he can dance and sing but he's better at a distance than he is in close-up and i feel bad saying that about a guy but we're like it's it's it's just a it's a real thing he just doesn't he doesn't have movie star eyes and that's that's a real it's a real problem so there's a quiet
JVL00:50:03desperation that undergirds him even when he's not supposed to be
Mike00:50:08sure I just like I don't need to see quiet desperation when I'm saying it's vaguely off putting
JVL00:50:15it's vaguely putting on screen
Mike00:50:17so besides Glenn Powell the only like actor that really jumped out at me when they were on the screen was more a tyranny I knew you were going to say that it needs more of her too the movie needs more of her like she does so much with her a little bit of screen time like yeah it was it was when she enters the movie you're like oh finally like a grown up or like a like a real actor and her character is more interesting than her daughter's character what a thousand percent right a thousand percent so I was like especially when she and Glenn Powell were together actually it was that was the best fantastic yes I'm so glad
Sonny00:50:58you said that Michael the best moment is when she looks at the t-shirt and is like Yes. Totally. Yes. And he's, and he's kind of like, yeah.
Mike00:51:07But it was, that was the, that was the, those were the only moments where I, it felt like on par with the original movie and the sense of like, of the actors and the sort of professionalism that like that original, you know what I mean? Right. Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, all the, all the other guys, like, they're just like solid movie people. and this just i agree i like this hallmark movie idea the other thing that i didn't like and i want to say some of the things i i loved about it um so yes it's will they won't they between daisy ridley powell jones or whatever her name is um and uh and clem powell no that's that's the palace um but like they don't actually kiss which i thought was weird like i'm not like i'm not like sitting there like come on let's uh let's see some uh french kiss in here but like it was weird that they ended the kissing movie mike i know but it's weird that they ended the movie without any sort of so pardon the word consummation of this like yeah a little bit better if you
JVL00:52:11venture over the tsa gate and just rail on her from behind that's not what i meant i gotta chase
Mike00:52:17it! Chase it! Did you feel it? Chase it!
JVL00:52:21Did you feel it? He's high-fiving the TSA guys while he's riding her. That's great. Suddenly it's a very different
Sonny00:52:27movie. Different movie. Not a Hallmark movie anymore. We've gone to a different place on the cable dial. We wound up on the Vivid channel. I'm like, what's happening
JVL00:52:37here? I don't know.
Sonny00:52:38This was a note from Steven Spielberg. So this is an Amblin movie. This was an Amblin movie. Steven Spielberg's an executive producer, and his note was they shouldn't kiss at the end. We got to give people – we don't want to give them closure on – because kissing is closure. Them kissing, it's no longer will, they won't, it's they have.
JVL00:52:59Anal, not closure, but kissing. Kissing is closure.
Sonny00:53:04Exactly. So the – but his note was no kissing. It's too cliche. It gives them too much closure. We save it for the sequel. We save it for twist. It's like twister, but with a three for an S. Twisters.
Mike00:53:21Twisters. Twisters. But like, I'm sorry. It's too cliche in this movie where when it flashes forward from the initial scene, like before it shows you, when it just shows you that she's now in New York, I literally said to myself in my head, I go, five years later. And then, like, two seconds, it said, five years later, it was like, boom, this movie is full of cliche's.
Sonny00:53:47I mean, the best part is, it's the Jurassic Park shoot her scene with the tornado, except you can't shoot a tornado. Exactly. Shoot her!
JVL00:53:54And he's, like, sucking away the guy. So, hold on, no. It is not that. Because the very first twister, that movie's opening scene, is the Jurassic Park shoot her scene. So, again, I went back and watched this last night. Yeah. And in the first movie, young baby Helen Hunt, who's like six years old, there's a tornado hits and her parents take her down to their storm cellar and the mom is holding her in the back of the cellar. The dad is holding on, is holding on to the doors, trying to keep the doors from from blowing open. And we don't see any part of the tornado itself. What we do is we have a tiny little window through which Helen Hunt is seeing. And it is exactly like the cage that the Velociraptor is in that you kind of just see the eye through. And with the sound design, because the sound design of the original is, I think, better than this. So the sound design of the original imagines the twisters as monsters. And so they sound more like monsters than storms. They all have their own sort of guttural thing going on. And so, I mean, Michael Crichton has a credit somehow. I don't know why these characters are based on Michael Crichton.
Sonny00:55:18He has a story by credit. So it's basically like, my understanding is he was like, Tornado, Jurassic Park?
JVL00:55:28But the first, the opening scene of the original movie is a hundred percent based entire a hundred percent based on uh the the opening scene of the first dress now that makes sense this one isn't this one is much more it's a disaster movie
Mike00:55:45yes versus a monster movie does that make sense well you know i have not seen twister the original and forever i don't remember the last time i saw it but um when it came out it uh absolutely terrified me and i think i mentioned this last week like it was just it the my memory of it was exactly what you just described jvl it was it was monstrous and the idea that the tornado was gonna was under my bed and gonna come get me like that like i i was i was terrified and i didn't grow up in like tornado alley or anything but like you know in in the south and like in georgia and things that like tornadoes were somewhat common there was like i remember a year and a half after the movie came out you know there was a tornado not far from where i grew up that like did some destruction and damage and so i just like that is powerful and in this movie i just felt like didn't have that punch that feeling that these things were were terrifying monsters and um And even like the premise from the trailer, it was like, remember there's that in the trailer, it's like, there's two of them, there's twins, twins, we got twins, and twins. But like-
JVL00:57:05Again, different movie.
Mike00:57:07Exactly. Different channel on the dial. But it didn't really deliver on that promise either. That was just kind of like a set piece in the middle of it, but it wasn't this-
JVL00:57:21There are a lot of tornadoes in this movie.
Mike00:57:23A lot.
JVL00:57:23That's the other thing that is different. I did not do a tornado count, but I believe there are probably twice, perhaps even three times as many tornadoes in this movie as there are in the original.
Sonny00:57:36Well, in this movie, they run the gamut, too. It's like they have small tornadoes. Fire tornadoes. They have big tornadoes. They've got, you know, tornadoes you can shoot fireworks up into. Tornadoes that destroy rodeos.
JVL00:57:47No tornadoes with sharks in them yet. that's for twifters twifters um so what do we call this movie though is this a it's not a sequel
Sonny00:57:57it's not a standalone sequel it's a standalone it's a soft reboot i would is how i soft reboot okay it's almost i mean it's almost frankly a remake it's it's essentially a remake uh but it's not technically a remake the the characters are all different it feels like it still lives in
Mike00:58:12that universe well dorothy is in it right at the very beginning so we know that it's in the same universe it's it's not like a separate timeline um i can i say that michael tell us the things you liked though so yeah so i i really liked the whole sequence with the after they leave the rodeo and they and they get to the motel and then she thinks to get into the pool and then they're so
JVL00:58:37happy the guy who threatens to leave a bad yelp review gets killed yes that was that was uh that
Mike00:58:42was this is a very moralistic movie the people who deserve to die they die the wicked the wicked are killed by the tornado god that's right indeed um uh so i love that i thought like that was that was the most gripping thrilling and like there there was a little bit of monstery stuff there right with like the the big trailer thing that like came in like it's so close to killing them all um i loved it was very on the nose and meta but like the whole movie theater scene at the end with like the screen like like ripping out and like there's the tornado for real great
Sonny00:59:19i love this movie kills in 4dx i bet with the the seats that blow the water and the air into your
Mike00:59:25face um love that so yeah i mean i love that i loved um i loved glenn powell i i loved the sort of this felt in this in a similar way to top gun maverick there was a kind of like um it was you could see it pitch to like red state america in a way that like it was not made for red state america but like it was made with the sense like you know you don't really need to piss them off Like they buy movie tickets, too. And like, no, but I would say, do you know what I mean?
Sonny01:00:04No. To your point, to your point. Here's what here's what jumped out at me when I was watching it was the the the soundtrack is all country music, all country music. But it's not country music I recognized, which is like I don't know any of there was a Miranda Lambert song. I don't know any of these songs. Yeah. So it's like it's like it's it's country music that is not necessarily pitched to like pop culture country. right it is like it it it has a very specific vibe and it does it feels i mean look this is the most midwest coded movie i have seen in a long time i like it is very much a movie of the midwest of and for the midwest plains midwest not not like tornado alley whatever not big heartland
Mike01:00:48the heartland flyover country whatever you want to call it no no no i totally agree um so my point is like you know like there's all these scenes that are just played straight like at the rodeo for instance with like the american flag and all this stuff and it's like they don't make a big deal out of it and like nobody says anything political in it which is which is great and a relief like you don't need that but it was it just seemed like it was it was made for mass audience with all those little like those little details feel very kind of mass audience and and not trying to make some you know they could have leaned more into the subtext of like you know why are all of these tornadoes showing up here at all why is all this tornado activity like they could have made like a sort of in in the script like a a climate change point but they didn't really need to and they and they chose not to and i just i i recognize that i you know i don't have a strong
JVL01:01:43opinion about it other than it seems like it was intentional what stuck out to me was another was a top gun maverick parallel but it was very different it was that this movie rewards people who saw and enjoyed twister but is absolutely not essential for anybody to have seen the original and so it has that both ways right it is it gives you the joys of a sequel with absolutely zero necessity of you ever having seen the original yep which is a neat trick yep so the on the
Mike01:02:16soundtrack by the way yeah miranda lambert luke combs um there was somebody else on eleni wilson
Sonny01:02:22like like these are people who are who are tyler children's names but i could not i could not pick
Mike01:02:30out any other songs this is like this is like cool country this is this is sort of this is um you wouldn't call it alternative country the big star sure yeah exactly how much of a star do
JVL01:02:42we think glenn powell can be what do you think his ceiling is real interesting question because
Sonny01:02:48that gets into a whole different so the way i did i was so it's funny before i like literally in the midst of me having a text conversation with uh our friend jpod uh about glenn powell and whether he's a star or not is when i had the conversation with uh my my salesman at the kia dealership and what was uh what was what what here's how i kind of describe him i think he is on a scale of on a scale of ryan gosling to leonardo dicaprio he's probably closer to ryan gosling i don't think he can necessarily open a movie by himself like here's a ryan gosling movie but i also think he's closer to chris pratt than ryan gosling in the sense that if you put him in the right sort of franchise already pre-aware thing he is there's a decent chance it really pops and I think that's exactly what we see here with Twisters to a lesser extent I mean Top Gun Maverick's not his movie at all but like it's in that same mold
JVL01:03:50but it's very interesting because he is a late bloomer I mean he has been bouncing around movies for a long time and it's only with top gun maverick that he becomes somebody who anybody really notices on screen uh i i i just find him interesting it's i find him to be an interesting commodity is he a tom cruise like
Sonny01:04:13protege like does tom cruise have some kind of tom cruise has taken him under his wing is that true tom cruise gave him the six hour tom cruise movie class have you guys remember the torpedo who tom
JVL01:04:23cruise was so interested in the australian swimmer australian boy swimmer you guys don't remember that from the olympics oh oh go go go do some googling i don't i don't think i believe it was ian thorpe was his name and he was this prodigy olympic swimmer from australia and tom cruise was at all of his meets and was just like super into this young hairless swimmer who's 30 years younger
Mike01:04:51than him i don't know we got it we got it we got it so i'm i learned just now as you were talking about that i was trying to think about something else that glenn powell is going to be in a running
Sonny01:05:01man uh remake edgar wright is making a running man remake i mean shoot in the fall i'm there i'm there baby like that's what i'm talking about i think i think that he he certainly has that he has that like if you put him in a thing that you already kind of want to see anyway it's like yes yes this is this is what i want i'm not i but this is the thing is i don't know there are not many actors out there who i think sell audiences just by being in a thing i just
JVL01:05:34like the movie star is over right we i so here's my concern about him as a as a star star i don't know that he has more than one speed because where he is unbelievably effective is as this incredibly cocky guy who ultimately has a heart of gold right but when he's most electric on screen is when he's being cocky right that that gigantic smile that he's got i mean he just lights up the screen yeah yeah you know but when he goes then when we are in this movie for instance when we're in the barn with him and daisy and they're at least looking at her science project and suddenly he's not being cocky he's just like you know vibing with her that's very pedestrian i don't think that mode for him is any more interesting than any replacement level actor so what you're
Sonny01:06:30saying is he needs to be shot from a low angle where he's got a big grin on all the time huge
JVL01:06:35grin on and he has got to his character needs to be acting like he's the king of the world at all times I think and that's where he excels that's where his fastball is is at its is at its peak is there anything
Mike01:06:49to say about Daisy Ecker Jones because I she's fine I was I was not I was not like I didn't hate her but I was kind of unimpressed but she's a replacement level she looks yeah on the screen
Sonny01:07:02it's all you really need I guess
JVL01:07:05i don't know again give me dakota johnson dakota johnson is funnier her banter would have been
Sonny01:07:09sharper this is this love dakota johnson madame webb thing it's insane just let dakota johnson go
Mike01:07:16but but i don't think dakota johnson could have sold the dandelion sea which was just
Sonny01:07:22transcendent she couldn't she couldn't sell she couldn't sell being the country mouse coming back
Mike01:07:26to the little city she'd be she would be sydney sweeney sydney sweeney although you could say
JVL01:07:32said in almost every but in almost every movie with some like young ingenue you could say well
Sonny01:07:38this would have been better with sydney sweeney you gotta you just slaughter really any any movie
Mike01:07:42any movie just just yeah just just put her in uh any other thoughts on twisters or twist slide her you can slide her into the glenn powell frankly i'd see that i'd see that in twifters twifters
Sonny01:07:54starring sydney sweeney imagine sydney sweeney as the tornado wrangler if you feel oh yeah
JVL01:08:00all right any uh again we're heading towards a very different movie
Mike01:08:07uh okay jvl any other thoughts uh sunny no thoughts on twister all right uh all right well that is all the time we are giving to this episode uh join us next time and we will talk to
Sonny01:08:22then i like twisters a lot i'm glad it's a big hit and it's gotten again there's there's been this weird reaction like it's gotten pretty it's gotten relatively positive reviews i think it's like 77 fresh or something what is the complaint there's been people on uh in film twitter who really dislike this movie who like think it's uh think that glenn powell's a fraud they're like oh this movie's no good it's bad like the original is bad i'm like i whether or not it's a good movie is not like it's a fun i'm not saying it's not an oscar picture it's not it's not a but it's like summer is supposed to be summer blockbuster movie that's what this is this is this is what we all
Mike01:09:07want can i can i can i say i don't mean to derail this but um did you guys because i watched this at the alamo and they had you know the pre-roll stuff and one of the things they they highlighted was the universal studios florida it's not quite a ride but like the twister like experience i remember i remember going on that oh yeah that's that was like that was a lot of friend of the pod
JVL01:09:29kristen solda sanderson i believe is that what she worked that ride that's cool yeah i i remember
Mike01:09:35going and again being terrified of the movie like it was a big step for me as like a you know 12 year old or however old i was to like have the guts to go on that thing and it's you know and the they showed you like how in this pre-roll they had like a behind the scenes of how they do it and um it just it's like just like jurassic park dinosaurs were a thing for for a few years tornadoes were a thing after twisters or after twister it was a it was a big deal i wrote this
JVL01:10:05down uh last night watching the the original there's a line in which bill paxton talking about the bad guy played by carrie elwes that's right carrie says he's in it for the money not the science he's got all the high-tech gadgets but he doesn't have the instincts
Sonny01:10:24brilliant i'm sure it's fine
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