#270. 'Transformers One' (Theaters)
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The main event is Transformers One, the animated origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, and the three hosts split hard on it: Sonny, who took his five-year-old, calls it merely fine, dings it for going almost an hour without anyone transforming (prompting his kid's plaintive "daddy, when are they going to turn into vehicles?"), for a Megatron heel-turn he finds unearned, and for lacking the ogling-women shamelessness he insists is the real key to Transformers box office; JVL, who took his oldest ("G Money," whose in-theater joy he rates a flat 10/10 regardless of his own complaints), loves the movie's Shanghai Noon-style buddy-cop first hour but argues both Megatron's sudden villainy and Optimus's abrupt slide into blowhard mode are completely unmotivated, like Han Solo turning evil overnight; Mike, whose own son was jumping out of his seat shouting "that is sick," pushes back on both of them, insisting the film plants real groundwork for Megatron's disillusionment and handles its "your mythology is a lie" theme with unexpected depth. The episode opens with a long stretch of banter: JVL, newly in charge of buying uniforms and jackets for his kids' parochial school, polls Sonny and Mike on letterman jackets versus sleeker technical soft-shells, spinning into dueling high-school class-ring and jacket stories (UVA signet rings, Sonny's football-only letter jackets, Mike's letterman-happy Georgia school); Mike also recounts his wife's old wrestling-trainer letter jacket and her teammate Kyle Maynard, the armless-and-legless wrestler turned motivational speaker, and previews a modest midday "date" lunch for his wedding anniversary that JVL mocks as depressing. Before the review, Sonny runs through box-office numbers — Transformers One's soft $24.6 million opening, the year-to-date box office clawing back from a brutal spring, and the relative fortunes of The Substance, Matt Walsh's Am I Racist?, and the still-chugging Deadpool & Wolverine — and the episode closes with the hosts guessing at the voice cast (John Hamm as Sentinel Prime, Brian Tyree Henry as Megatron) and spotting Go-Bots Easter eggs.
From the show notes
Plus: do kids these days wear letter jackets?
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00You two, come with me. Report to Waste Management. Hi there. I'm V-127. I'm actually working on some nicknames. The one I'm floating right now is Badassatron, which is actually pronounced Badassatron. We're going to call you B.
Mike00:00:28Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me as always are my two co-hosts who more than meets the eye with these two, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com. Join the conversation. Tell your friends and family that they can listen to the show only at subbeacon.com. Join that conversation in the comments. Always a good time at subbeacon.com. We're going to be talking about Transformers 1 later in the show. But first JVL, what's, uh, what's going on? You've, you've got, you've got a question for us this week. Don't you? I have a question for you boys.
JVL00:01:06Did either of you, when you were in high school, were either of you in possession of a varsity letterman jacket? Yes. You know, the kind of jackets I'm talking about, right? But the, the, the wool, uh, chest, and then the, the big puffy leather sleeves, a letter, a letterman jacket, a letter, a letter jacket is what we call it.
Sonny00:01:28Yes. A letter jacket.
JVL00:01:30Yeah. What, what were your thoughts on the letter jacket? Sonny?
Sonny00:01:34Well, I, I, so I did not own one despite being a two-sport letterman. I, I should, two sports, really three if you count academic team. I don't count academic team, but I also lettered.
JVL00:01:46These days they count it all. These, I've seen kids in drama varsity jackets. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. With like, you know, the, the, the little drama face, tragedy comedy face.
Sonny00:01:56No, but I, I mean, I was, I was like, I. I, I was like a legit letterman in tennis. I was captain, you know, the team, whatever, but, and I was also a letterman in wrestling for one season. That didn't really count. That was, that was like a.
JVL00:02:08You touching another person.
Sonny00:02:10Participation letter, letter there really more than anything else. Um, uh, but like I, like in theory I could have owned one and worn and had a letter on it and would have had all the fucking adornments and shit. But I, I did not because the only people in our high school who got letterman jackets were football players. It was, it was like only the football players. It was only football players occasionally, like even the basketball players, the only basketball players who had them were the ones who were also on the football team. Like if you were, if you were on the football team and you were, you had your varsity letter, there was like an 80 to 90% chance you had a letterman jacket. But like, other than that, it was pretty, it was pretty rare. I, I would, I mean some of the, I guess some of the soccer players might have, I don't know. But it was definitely not, it was definitely not a regular thing for non football players to have one.
Mike00:03:03Okay. Michael, how about you? Uh, it was, it was as Sonny said, uh, it was a free for all in terms of who could letter and good letter, of course, in varsity sports, but you could also letter in, I believe you could let her in drama. I know he could let her in the marching band, marching band, right? Cheer. Academic team. Let her in cheer. I'm sure. Uh, yeah. There was a sport. I mean, I can't. Right. I know. Sure. No, they were, I mean, they were like doing tumbling and, uh, flips in the air and stuff. Um, so yeah, I had a letterman jacket. I don't remember what I lettered in for, for, for, for I, so I, I was a kid who did everything. So like, I don't remember what I don't remember what I let her, I assume I let her in, uh, in, uh, and I lettered in. Um, I, I may, I must've lettered in tennis cause that was the only sport school sport I played in, in high school. So, uh, but unlike Sonny, everybody wore leather jackets at my high school. Everybody wore them.
JVL00:04:15They were very popular. Was it a cool thing?
Mike00:04:18Did you wear yours everywhere?
JVL00:04:20If we were to get high school pictures of you in what percentage of them are you wearing your letter jacket? Oh, oh, very few.
Mike00:04:27Like I'm trying to remember when people were, I think it became, and I say this with all due respect to my marching band friends. I was friends with a lot of these people, but it, like it, it was very uncool after sort of freshman year, um, because, because it was not, unless you did, so it brings us back to Sonny's point, unless you did play football or baseball or soccer. So like our soccer team went to the state championship one year. Um, like that was, that was very cool, uh, to, to have a soccer leather jacket. Um, but it was, it was sort of, it was sort of like class rings where it was like everybody wore them at like right when they got them. And then very few people wore them after I never got them away. I was never saw it again. Justin. Yeah. Justin's that's right. Um, or Balfour. Um.
Sonny00:05:24Oh, okay. I have, I have a class ring question. Cause you, when you guys mentioned, when you guys mentioned the jackets, I then immediately started thinking of class rings, which was its own separate thing. So like for, for us, you didn't get a class ring until like junior year and a junior year. So like our, our school was like juniors and seniors wore class rings and most, most people did. Most people, most people did.
JVL00:05:48Um, literally no one in my entire high school ever once wore a class ring.
Sonny00:05:53That's fascinating. That's we were, we were for sure.
JVL00:05:57Um, many people bought them and they just like went into a drawer. It was bought, I think out of a, just sense of like, I guess you're supposed to do this.
Sonny00:06:05You gotta have one. I know we, uh, we, well, I didn't have one. You, you were, you went to school in Jersey, right? JBL. So you, you're, you all have like goomba pinky rings, right? It was like, uh, so, uh, so I can understand why you, but in, in Stafford, Virginia, we did not have pinky rings. It was, it was just that more interesting though, for me was. College class rings. So college class rings were fascinating to me. They're enormous at UVA, the signet ring, the, like the, like, you know, kind of oval every like a very large number and then would wear them for like a year or so after in the real world.
JVL00:06:50Oh, after you graduated from UVA, never, never once in my life at Hopkins, did I see a person wearing a, I don't, I don't even know that I knew that that was a thing that which could exist.
Sonny00:07:01UVA, very big in the class range and like people, people, UVA, a lot of UVA grads, a lot of UVA grads in DC, you know, and like you would definitely, you definitely run into, you know, fellow Wahoos wearing, wearing the ring. So it was a nice little conversation starter, you know?
Mike00:07:20Okay. But JVL, you brought up, you brought up letter jackets or Letterman jackets. What's, what's going on?
JVL00:07:27So I, I, I may have acquired a job at, uh, my kid's high school of being in charge of procurement for things like athletic uniforms and jackets and whatnot. And I'm trying to make really, I feel like agent Colson talking to Steve Rogers and the Avengers movie. Yeah. I had a little bit of design input on the. The modifications to the uniform. Um, and I, uh, and so I'm trying to get my head around what I want to do and what I, you know, what the, what the, the line that I'm going to do for these, for these kids. Cause I want to pick really cool shit. And I would say in my particular area of Jersey, I see a lot of Letterman jackets around with the high school kids. Uh, now the school that we are at, um, is, yeah. None of that. So it's, it's a very new school and we're standing up all this stuff. And so we're making choices. They're going to reverberate for generations. But my own experience was exactly like yours, Sonny, in that at my high school, which was a very idiosyncratic school, um, I went to a mid-sized public high school in a very, very ritzy town in South Jersey and the football team was the worst sports team in the school. Like historically in all ways, uh, they would win two to three games a year. None of the kids who played football played any other sports. So they just, they did football and they did nothing and they did it very badly. They were all very bad football players. They were terrible athletes. The good athletes were all the good athletes played tennis, um, and soccer and the, the
Mike00:09:22girls have, this is a ritzy high school by the way. Yeah.
JVL00:09:26The boys athletics was much, much better than the boys athletics. This is the duke of high school. Kind of, kind of like, you know, the, the girls would be state champs every year in soccer and field hockey and lacrosse and yeah, so, uh, it was, it was an incredibly white school and it's funny after I graduated, the football team got really, really good for exactly four years because they had a kid who came in, who I actually think went on to play in the sec, but it was, it was just funny, like, you know, cause South Jersey is not a big football place, not, not a football, uh, area and having one kid who is good enough to play at a high division one school is enough to turn your entire program around for the four years you could just give them ever like you're going to be the running back and the linebacker and you're just gonna, you're gonna sack the quarterback and cause fumbles and then run for 12 yards per carry.
Sonny00:10:26This is, I mean, this is what happened at my school, uh, in, um, uh, in Stafford was we had, we had one guy for two of the years I was there, maybe three of the years I was there. I think he graduated the year ahead of me. Um, who wound up, he went to UNC, he was a running back at UNC, which is like UNC is not, not a powerhouse school or anything, but like UNC is still like, it's still, it's we went to like state semis one year. We got like, you know, he's handing him the ball, state quarters or something another year. And it was entirely because he would just, you know, my high school in Georgia, um, I
Mike00:11:10think a couple of years, maybe four years or so after I left, um, ended up being ranked the number one high school football team in the country, um, for a number of years. And, uh, it got very competitive in a very competitive state and a very competitive conference and all those things. And, um, I would not be surprised. I don't know this. I would not be surprised if, uh, if the letter jacket became just like a football thing and everybody else felt like it became a football school in a, in a way that it wasn't when I was there, it was a brand new school at the time. And, um, uh, and interestingly, the head coach of that football team is, is now on the coaching no. Now on the coaching staff of Clemson university, um, kill the man.
Sonny00:12:01Uh, I have a question though. So you're, you're discussing this, like you were going to be buying jackets for these kids.
JVL00:12:09I mean, that's probably how it will work out in practice, but that's not how I don't know
Sonny00:12:13about Mike's school or your school in high school JBL. But like, if you wanted a letter jacket, you had to go out and buy one. It was, I mean, there was like a standard.
JVL00:12:21This is how it is. And, but, but look, you know, like this is my kids. Go to a parochial school that is not a ritzy parochial school. And I'm just telling you the reality is that I'm going to wind up buying the uniforms and I'm going to wind up buying the jackets for these kids because, uh, you know, like these are Catholic families with 10 kids and not a ton of money and uniforms, you know, the
Sonny00:12:44school should be buying the uniforms.
JVL00:12:46Yeah. We don't need to go into the economics of my, my particular parochial school. Here's the point.
Sonny00:12:51We do though, because this actually, okay.
JVL00:12:53No, I need a stylistic question. So my, I have a question. I have a bias against the letter, letter jackets because when I was a kid at my high school, 100% of the football players had letter jackets. They wore them all the time and the rest of us made fun of them because the football players were like the dumbest, worst athletes in school and they, they lost constantly. And yet they, they puffed up their letter jackets or, but around today they would. And so my question is, should we go with letter jackets for the kids? Or should we do something like just a super cool soft shell technical jacket that, uh, you know, with like really nice embroidery school crest on it or something like that instead? What, uh, I don't know. Like if you were a high school kid, what would you think would be like the coolest sport gear type jacket to have?
Mike00:13:49So I can't speak for what high school kids think now, but I can tell you what I would have thought of as a high school student. And what I think of now as a, as a grown man, alleged, uh, as a grown man, I would, I would go with the nice soft shell, uh, you know, athletic jacket. Um, one, something that's like practical that, you know, you can use to zip lined one fleece lined or just, or, um, what, what is it? I don't know what the material is. It's like, um, you know, moisture wicking and, um, it's something you could zip up, you know? And, and, and wear after a game. Um, but the teenager in me would say, nah, I want a leather jacket. Uh, you know, a letter jacket. I want something that's like. Something like that. Give them a girlfriend. Exactly.
JVL00:14:38Wear around that has my name on it.
Mike00:14:40Exactly.
JVL00:14:41Right. I mean, isn't that what this is all really about is giving your letter jacket to your girlfriend. Yes. Yes.
Sonny00:14:47I, I would go just, I would go a different way entirely. You should get them like leather cuts, like from the, from the bike riders or, uh, sons of anarchy, you know? Like the motorcycle, the cuts, the like vests, like the sleeveless ones with like the, the gang sign on the back. That's it. And you gotta come up with a cool, I mean, the, the real issue is you gotta come up with a cool crest, like a cool gang crest to put on the back of
JVL00:15:13your, on the back of a pretty cool crest. Got a Sean clear and a cross on it. It's really, I don't know where Sean is.
Sonny00:15:19That sounds like a fake macho. We call him macho. I don't know. It's a rooster. It's a rooster.
JVL00:15:25Oh, it's a rooster.
Sonny00:15:26You got a cock on the back. Uh, so, so I, well, that's actually pretty good. You can, you go with the cocks, you know, that's like that. You just go walking around with that. You wouldn't put the cocks on it. That's probably against Catholic school rules or whatever, but like you just put, you know, they have a name though.
Mike00:15:43You have a nickname, right? For the, for the athletic teams, right? We do.
JVL00:15:47We do. Which is.
Mike00:15:49Oh, they are the shit.
JVL00:15:51They are the Shanta clears.
Mike00:15:53That's right.
JVL00:15:55We just refer to them. As the chickens, but, uh, yeah. Okay. So you wind up not helping. Maybe people will leave comments in the, in the thing about what, what the youth would, this entire thing feels like Steve Buscemi in what is it? Billy Manor. What, what, which movie is Steve Buscemi?
Mike00:16:11No, no, that's, this is from, um, happy Gilmore. It's no, uh, it's, it's from Portlandia. Oh, uh, no, it's 30. Oh, 30. Yeah.
Sonny00:16:22Hello, fellow children.
Mike00:16:23Hello, fellow kids.
Sonny00:16:24Hello, fellow kids. How are you?
JVL00:16:26Well, anyway, I, okay. So that's it. I'm just looking for, I'm just looking for help and guidance on what would be the coolest, most bad-ass thing for me to procure for these kids. Leave us a note in the comments. How are you?
Mike00:16:41All right, Sonny, what's going on with you?
Sonny00:16:43I don't really have. It is 30 rock.
Mike00:16:45It is 30 rock, by the way.
Sonny00:16:47It's 30 rock. Yeah. It's a port.
Mike00:16:49How do you do fellow kids? That's the line.
Sonny00:16:52Portlandia. There's a show you couldn't make today. I love that shit. Forbidden. So you have nothing. I don't really have anything, no. Now I'm too, I'm too focused on the, the, the clothing, the kids' clothing question. I think I, my two cents on this, my honest two cents is that you should, you should let them decide. You should let them, you should ask them what they want.
JVL00:17:18No, because we'll get 15 different answers.
Sonny00:17:20That's fine. And then you, then you do nothing and it solves all your problems. You get 15 different answers. You do nothing.
JVL00:17:26I just don't know. No, this is, you know what? Apple, Apple, Johnny Ivey doesn't let the customers decide whether or not they want a headphone jack in their iPhones or not because Johnny Ivey knows what's best.
Sonny00:17:38This is why we all have to listen to everybody's music everywhere now because of fucking Johnny Ivey being, everybody's got to do Bluetooth. No more, no more. That's what, that's why we all listen to everybody's music everywhere.
JVL00:17:49That's what I'm definitely not doing. I'm definitely not letting the children decide because they're children and they don't fucking know better. You can't even give them like three options and let them pick. Because A, they'll all fight about it. B, they won't be able to come to a consensus. And C, whatever they choose will be dumb.
Sonny00:18:07I would, I would go, I would go like the, the tracks, the sweat tracksuit route. So when I, I got on the tennis team.
JVL00:18:13That's what I was trying to say. The tennis team. Like you're a trash?
Sonny00:18:16Yeah, more or less. Like on the, on the, on the tennis team we had, I mean, not like, not like the tenon bombs. Not like, yeah, not like the tenon bombs. Not quite that, that. Uh, that's, but again, when I was on the tennis team, we had like, we had like tennis warmups with like the, again, like the kind of like fleece line sweats and the, and a jacket that you could zip on and zip off. And like, those were great. I, I really enjoyed wearing those because I don't know how it was at your guys' school, but like on game days you had to wear, you know, shirt and tie, uh, or is that not a thing you guys did? Is that not?
Mike00:18:51That was, that was a thing that definitely the football players had to do. Um, on game day was wear a shirt and tie and maybe some of the other like high level sports.
Sonny00:19:03We alternated between shirt and tie and the track suits and like the track suit days were much better than the shirt and tie days. That's, that's all I'll say about that. We did that though. So like teachers would know that, that you were like good to go. Like you were like, if you had to leave early on a bus or whatever, it was like, it was only away games too. That was the other thing. It was like away games. So like if you're leaving, if you're leaving the class, you're dressed up in your, your, your game day outfit.
JVL00:19:27Yeah. We, we looked at like having to dress up being something the poor's have to do. I would say my high school, like the idea is only to get dressed up. Like, I'm sorry. No. The whole point of being rich is that you don't have to dress up.
Mike00:19:40All right. Well, that's the public, right? That's the public school perspective there. Um, all right. Uh, what else is going on? I am fine.
JVL00:19:50I'm going to need a picture of you in your letter jacket. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I'm going to know where it is. Your mom. Your mom has one. I don't know. I am telling you this.
Mike00:20:01Your mom has one. Um, I know I have pictures of my wife and her letter jacket. Cause I remember she had one.
JVL00:20:08Oh, so her letter jacket, she would smile.
Mike00:20:13She went to a different high school. All right. All right. That's enough.
JVL00:20:16Um, what was, what was her jacket? And was it a science team?
Mike00:20:19Was it, uh, so she was a, she was a wrestler girl. She was a wrestler. Which a wrestler at, which were the, basically the trainers for the wrestling team. Um, and, uh, her school had a very competitive wrestling team. In fact, maybe I've talked about this on the show. Um, she was a wrestler at during, um, sort of at the end of maybe the most famous like wrestler from certainly from our County growing up, uh, no, a guy named Kyle Maynard who had no arms and no legs. Um, and he was a wrestler. He was, um, an excellent wrestler and he's like, now does like motivational speaking, but he's like, you know, he like runs and hikes like up mountains and stuff and he has no arms and no legs. But, uh, he was like, he was a legit wrestler. Look him up. He like 60 minutes did a story on him and all this stuff.
JVL00:21:14Um, son, JVL, don't you fucking say one word?
Sonny00:21:19I'm glad we're not, uh, there's no video of this. That's all I'll say about that.
Mike00:21:25He would kick both. Both of your asses. That's all I have to say. I have nothing.
Sonny00:21:30And mine and mine.
Mike00:21:31All right.
Sonny00:21:32Um, all right. We'll call it a draw.
Mike00:21:39Okay. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. We're all going straight to hell. Yeah.
Sonny00:21:43Why are we doing that? Not a fucking breaking news there. I'll see you there.
Mike00:21:48Um, no, I was going to talk about, um, speaking of my wife. Uh, so our, uh, our wedding anniversary. Is this weekend and we've cracked the, thank you. We've cracked the code. So last year for listeners may or may not remember, we went on a, uh, on a nice, our first, basically our first extended trip, just the two of us since our honeymoon essentially. So, um, uh, to Hawaii and that was a nice trip this year. Very, very different. Um, and I think we've cracked the code a little bit. So what we're doing is. So we're recording this on Thursday night. Um, I'm, I've got to finish up some work at my day job in the morning, but I've got the afternoon. I've, I've blocked it off. So I'm not, I'm not working. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm done. I'm not go to meetings, not go to the office. And so I've taken it off. And so the kids will all be gone and we're going to go do like a day date. We're like going to go eat it at a nice restaurant out in very nice part of Northern Virginia. Um, and just have like lunch and. Like cocktails and lunch and like, just have the date during the day, because we can't like all of our babysitters keep like graduating and, and, and leaving and like, not there. They're like in college or whatever. Um, we've got like on the actual day, the actual anniversary date is on Saturday, but we've got like baseball games and all, you know, all that kind of stuff and a toddler. And it's like, we'll just go during the day we'll like, you know, you know, fit a date in the middle of the day and then, uh, come home and have to deal with kids and, and bath time and all that crap. So it's, it's kind of sad, isn't it? A little pathetic.
JVL00:23:35It's actually incredibly sad. I think you'd be a better going out. Like just, just go grocery shopping together. At least that's fine.
Mike00:23:46It's nice. It's nice to get out and like, or like playing a little hooky from work.
Sonny00:23:51And is it nice to get out?
JVL00:23:53This is the saddest thing you've ever told me, Michael. Really? Take her, take her to the, take her to the garden center and just get some mulch.
Mike00:24:01God, that sounds sad.
JVL00:24:03Just run errands. Hold on, hold on. Don't try to, don't try to turn time that could be spent running errands into a date in the middle of the day.
Sonny00:24:11That's just sad. Why not?
?00:24:13All right. Okay.
Sonny00:24:14I'll say it's nice to go get lunch. That's a nice thing. Right?
Mike00:24:18It is nice to get, it's like nice to get lunch with your spouse, like in the middle of the day when, with no kids for like, that's nice.
Sonny00:24:25It's nice to be out. All right.
Mike00:24:26Well, I thought, I thought you guys would think that was like a brilliant move here, but I guess I'm wrong.
Sonny00:24:30Well, you, do you, do you both work from home?
Mike00:24:35I generally go into our office three, four days a week. But I don't know if I've told you guys this, that my wife has stepped back and she's now basically working part-time and then is going to be, so like she's, she's already working at home, but yes, she works at home.
JVL00:24:58Yeah. A little afternoon delight.
?00:25:01All right.
Mike00:25:03All right. You know what?
JVL00:25:04Let's move on here. Yeah. Let's, let's talk box office here. Move. How did Transformers 1 do at the box office, Michael?
Mike00:25:11It, it, it did not too bad. It came in second. It's still behind Beetlejuice. It's not great. It's not great. But it's not great.
Sonny00:25:2024.6 million dollars. That's not great.
Mike00:25:22Yeah.
Sonny00:25:23I'm honestly, I'm a little surprised that this movie didn't do better. But we talked about this. Me too. We talked about this on the last Transformers movie with the, the kid from the, uh, the play. Hamilton. Hamilton. Uh, yeah.
JVL00:25:38Anthony Ramos. The Beast. The Beast Warrior. Broadway legend, Anthony Ramos.
Sonny00:25:42The guy, the guy in the most important, uh, artistic institution in the country that nobody cares about. Um, uh, that movie didn't do particularly well either. And this movie didn't do particularly well. And I just, I think I really like it. I really think we have to acknowledge the fact that here's when Transformers movies do well. They do well when Michael Bay has a model caliber woman bending over a car. That's it. That's just like, we just have to face the facts on this. We have to face the facts on this. The, the Transformer, the ideal Transformers film appeals to men and only men does not try to appeal to women appeals only to men and particularly men. Men who, uh, are old enough to remember playing with them as toys, but are also old enough to appreciate an attractive woman. That's, that's like the, the meaty part of the Transformers curve. If you want to make money on a Transformers movie, it has to be sexist as shit. That's just what it comes down to. That's, that's all that's, I think we are going to, we have to live in that with that reality. That is our reality with Transformers. And they're talking about, they're going to make a Transformers and GI Joe movie and the Hamilton kid. Is coming back and everyone, and like, I'm sorry, that movie is going to, you know what? That movie is going to open to $35 million and it's going to gross 120 million domestic and two, and it's not going to do very well because you know what people want? They don't want Transformers versus GI Joe. They want Shia LaBeouf, ogling Megan Fox. And then later, uh, ogling, who was the, who was the model?
JVL00:27:19Estella Warren.
Sonny00:27:20Estella Warren. Estella Warren in the third Transformers movie, which I think is the highest grossing. Grossing of them. Uh, Dark of the Moon. Is that, is that, is that the third one?
JVL00:27:30That can't be the highest grossing of them.
Sonny00:27:31I'm pretty, pretty sure that's the highest grossing one.
JVL00:27:35That's depressing.
Sonny00:27:36Um, which, you know, that's what, that's what people want. That's what, that's what paying audiences want. They want sexist robot movies. That's it. That's all they want. So that's my, that's my main box office thought.
Mike00:27:48Is that too much to ask?
Sonny00:27:49Um, speaking of which, speaking of which, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, there's a movie out about, uh, we talked a little bit about it over text, The Substance, which is this movie with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, which is about how Hollywood doesn't value old women and only wants young women. And I, and I wrote about it. We're not going to talk about it, so I don't want to talk about it. But it is very funny that this movie is neck and neck with Matt Walsh's Am I Racist? And like the, the, the, the, Matt Walsh's Am I, so Matt Walsh, of course, is the Daily Wire guy. I'm sure we all hear hate him, blah, blah, whatever. Uh, but like I, uh, the, the Am I Racist? movie is very funny to me because it is going to end up, it will probably end up grossing, uh, the, an amount of money that would make it like the 20th highest grossing A24 movie of all time if it had been released by A24, which just, I like it, that just cracks me up personally. It's going to end up, it'll probably end up making more money than any individual entry of the like Pearl franchise. So like Pearl, X, uh, Maxine, like those movies are all, you know, huge indicates, blah, blah. Everyone talks about how. Those movies aren't huge hits. They're not huge hits. They, they are very modestly successful if they are even successful financially. And I'm not 100% sure they are. Uh, but it just like it, it, it, it cracks me up. Um, I don't know. I don't, I obviously we're, we're not going to do that one either. Deadpool and Wolverine continues to make money. I mean, it's still the number five, number five movie, uh, in the weekend and it's still, it's in its ninth weekend now. I don't know that.
JVL00:29:26That's an enormous. Give the pigs their slop.
Sonny00:29:28Give the pigs their slop. Give the pigs their slop. The, but the big, the big thing for me is the year to date number on the domestic yearly box office. So I need, I'm going to get into the weeds here for a minute. You guys, I'm gonna get into the, into the box office weeds. It's going to be real exciting. Early in the year box office disaster. The box office was an enormous disaster. The cumulative, uh, number through March. So through March, uh, the 2021. 24 box office was $1.6 billion compared to the year before when it was $1.7 billion. So it was off about 6%. You know, that's the, these numbers, swings come swings go, um, but like that that's within the normal range by April, the 2023 box office was around 22% compared to the year before. And through may that number creeps up to 23.8%. All right. So at, at the end of may, it's 23.8% since then, since then. Uh, we are now, I believe like 12% off year to date. So like the, the, the, my, my point here is this, the box office earlier in the year was looking disastrous, just looking like an enormous disaster. Everyone was like, oh my God, the, everything is collapsing. It's it's nothing is working. People aren't showing up for any of these movies. And as the year has gone along, the box office has been clawing back more and more of it. And I think, honestly, I think there's going to be. Pretty close to even by the end of the year, because the end of last year was a disaster because of all the strikes. They didn't release anything. Um, the end of this year is going to be much better. Like that fucking lion King sequel prequel thing is going to be an enormous hit. I'm sure. Wait, wait, uh, the live action lion King is getting action Lion King didn't do very well. I'll bet you a dollar. It did. You want to go look up what the live action lion King grossed JVL. I'll wait.
Mike00:31:24Hold on. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Sonny00:31:31I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Mike00:31:34I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Sonny00:31:38I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Mike00:31:43I'm not.
Sonny00:31:44I'm not.
Mike00:31:45I'm not.
Sonny00:31:46I'm not.
Mike00:31:47I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
Sonny00:31:52No. No. No. that much money but it's it's uh it it will probably be okay i'm sure we'll do money i don't
JVL00:32:02know mustafa what it's it's uh mustafa mufasa mufasa whatever whatever some fucking tertiary
Mike00:32:11character in a movie nobody cares about um sunny i have a question though i wonder if this data is
JVL00:32:18slightly misleading because what is it possible that what has happened is that we have cut the number of wide releases down so far that we are now at a place where like three movies or four movies performing very well can change the entire yearly box office in a way that was less true 10 years ago i mean it was still true that like you get a titanic and titanic changes everything right you know you one one historic level hit can change the the overall picture for the year for the industry but like we now live in a world where if you do barbie and oppenheimer together like they can save an entire right year by themselves you do like deadpool wolverine and i don't know whatever what other hits have been you know beetlejuice beetlejuice they can say because there just aren't do you see what i'm saying like the total number of wide releases is so much smaller it used to be we would get 65 to 80 wide releases per annum and i think it's probably like 35 now
Sonny00:33:30i i think it's i this is definitely an issue there are fewer uh there are fewer tentpoles and you kind of wrap more of your year up in them i mean like the real issue again the real issue is just that in march april and may thing or uh february and march things were pretty disastrous like the the ghostbusters frozen empire movie performed really badly uh the fall guy really underperformed furiosa a mad max saga that that died at the box office like they were there were a lot of real misses um that uh that kind of i don't know that that had been placed earlier in the year people thought they were going to be you know early summer hits and just none of them landed it was just like bomb after bomb after bomb so yeah
Mike00:34:18all right well let's let's talk about the uh the number two movie at the box office this past week transformers one uh sonny you want to give us a big boy review of transformers one i'm gonna give
Sonny00:34:32you a little boy review of transformers one because i took my five-year-old to see transformers one and all you really need to know about this movie is this i maybe made jbl sounded like he had some serious thoughts about this movie i mostly i thought it was fine whatever it was it was whatever it's a cartoon for kids it's fine it has deeper themes animation isn't just for animation is for adults and we keep saying that every time there's a fucking kids movie out whatever um uh the uh the thing about transformers one is about so this movie's about 105 minutes long 107 minutes long something like that and i would say a hundred minutes into the movie so about or no and not 90 minutes into the movie maybe maybe like 70 minutes into the movie somewhere in that range my uh my my son leans over and he says not in his inside not not not in an outside voice but not really in a quiet voice either he says daddy when are they going to turn into vehicles and i was like you know what man i don't know i kind of wish they would turn into vehicles too because this is a movie with a very serious structural flaw which is that it's a transformers movie but they aren't able to transform for literally like the first 60 minutes of the hour 45 run time or whatever they they they are the the way the movie is set up is the there are a whole bunch of mining transformers they're they've been sent to the mines to get precious energon which has stopped flowing because the matrix of leadership has disappeared and uh the the reason is spoiler that they're they are all miners is because they have had their transformation cogs stolen from them by the the evil uh the evil what's his name sent sentinel central sentinel prime sentinel prime that's a circumcision allegory sentinel prime has stolen stolen their uh their trans cogs so they can't change into what they want to be i'm sorry they're trans transformation cogs uh and as such they they got a whole you've got a whole class of oppressed transformers who are forced to be minors don't want to be minors but they gotta they gotta be minors because they can't transform but it turns out uh the transformation cogs are held in a cave underground or something they get them all back uh but this is a real problem with the movie it's a transformers movie where nobody transforms for like the whole point of the movie is that like we can't transform for like an hour so
JVL00:37:13why would you need to transform into a vehicle in a world where everybody's just a robot
Sonny00:37:18like vehicles are to convey humans no you need to be so you can get around so you can do the races
JVL00:37:24so you can do the the gladiatorial races that's why you should transform into a car or a passenger
Sonny00:37:31vehicle or a semi-truck well that's you got some roads in the race you got roads and sky they can change into road they can change into cars and airplanes it's great it's great there's no you are you are asking questions of logic that don't make any sense um oh i have questions uh anyway so that's that's a problem with this movie and probably the biggest one is that i like i whatever again it's it's fine it's it's all about the relationship between optimus prime and megatron and they were friends but they are but then they then they turn against each other kind of on a dime megatron's like i'm actually going to be evil now fuck you and like okay sure why not i guess that makes sense you're you you got to be megatron after all um it was fine it was it was i saw it in 3d did you guys see it in 3d
JVL00:38:26no no i saw it on dolby but i kind of wish i had seen it in 3d i saw it in 3d the other thing the
Sonny00:38:32other my other note uh from my five-year-old the we we i had to he he wanted to take the glasses off about halfway through he was like they hurt my head i was like they hurt your head and i remembered he has like a vic mattis sized head so i i got him adult sized glasses i got him i got him adult sized glasses and he was like oh this is much better it's not pinching the side of my head anymore so i was like okay here that's this is i'm glad we i'm glad we figured that out i'm glad we i don't know i the the movie was fine i didn't i didn't hate it i didn't love it it's it is uh i i refuse to take it as seriously as it demands to be taken this is a movie that like really wants us to argue about the weighty themes of betrayal and friendship and what we owe each other and blah and like fuck you just turn into cars turn into cars and have megan fox shake her ass for my pleasure have hentai megan flocks in the in the background somewhere that's all i want that's you know this is an animated film she can't be there as a human but you could
Mike00:39:29draw her that'd be fine all right thank you sonny jvl yeah gee i mean thoughts here i so i don't
JVL00:39:35know what all three of us saw this with our boys right i saw it with my oldest and i am my tenure so what was i mean you know if we were gonna try to approximate our children's reactions on a on a scale of one to ten where was your son sonny he's probably like a seven he thought it was fine michael how about you a nine yeah g money was like 17 and he kept standing up out of his seat and raising his arms above his head and shouting yes that is sick because i guess that's what all the kids are saying in school now or spooky that's so spooky i haven't heard skibbity i've heard skibbity saying skibbity didn't say skibbity said spooky and uh he just thought it was the greatest movie ever yeah um i uh i i'll just say this i mean i i have like a serious thing i want to talk about but the unserious thing i will say is that there's a scene early in the movie in which optimus prime is being chased by two bigger robots and we get a chase through the transformer city and he evades them and he then stops and put his his hands on his knees and is breathing heavily because he's tired out and he's breathing they're fucking robots they don't respire they they are not taking oxygen into their bloodstream for power why is he breathing it's it was the laziest fucking thing i've ever seen do you do you want him to be making like high rpm noises or just don't bother okay right or you could say boy that was a close call so are they
Mike00:41:35just robots i thought there was some kind of sense in which they are like semi-organic creatures but
JVL00:41:42i could be nothing organic nothing organic they are in sold michael there's a ghost inside the machine but here's here's here's what i here's the central problem about this film for me uh for of the hour 42 or 45 runtime about an hour of it it is a uh odd couple buddy cop movie it's shanghai noon for kids and so optimus and megatron are opposites but they're best friends and one of them is a rule follower and the other one is just a crazy dreamer and it is it is fucking jackie chan and owen wilson and they're they get into scrapes and they're making jokes and you know what that stuff was great like the idea of of like an actually kind of funny kids version of shanghai noon but with transformers and animated it was fabulous like it was you know the the g money was loving it i was sort of charmed by it because you're not really in a transformers movie we're just using the transformers to do a kid buddy cop movie sure and uh and then all of a sudden it turns into the hunger games with like really really serious weighty issues about the way in which the servant class is oppressed and how you're being tricked by the elites in power and as you say sonny megatron becomes even it's i mean i understand this is a children's movie about robots who turn into vehicles eventually but even in that context some character transformations have to be earned this much it's it was it was so jarring and so unearned it was as if uh you were watching star wars or or and you know uh han solo just became bad or something like like wait a minute this doesn't make any sense nothing about this happening now makes any sense why why is megatron suddenly like angry at his his best friend of decades and what why is megatron want to okay i understand why megatron wants to kill uh sentinel prime or whatever why does megatron want to become like a a jacobin and tear down all of paris like why is he trying to burn the city to the ground like the joker this is none none of this makes sense and i am sorry to criticize it for not being a movie that i wanted to see but like if you're gonna make that turn why not rewrite the star wars canon to make this less uh optimus and megatron so i'm sorry rewrite the canon so that it's much more like professor xavier and magneto where they are you know friends who just sort of see different ways right and so the the enmity it's not real enmity they just have you know they want the same thing but have different goals and i would say the other character transformation is optimus who goes from being again this fun luke wilson-ish kind of character to being this insufferable blowhard over like in like five seconds and you're like how i understand it's because maybe maybe it's because he caught the the matrix of leadership or something yeah he gets he gets the cog from the
Sonny00:45:36the prime which like i but and like i could i could see i could see like the early character
JVL00:45:41is more interesting you put the cogs in them and that changes things i don't know the luke wilson version of optimus is a lot more fun and a lot more interesting on screen and once he turns into the same blowhardy optimist that we all know from all these other movies you're like uh interesting do you know do you want to know how uh i have a couple other notes and sure one of which is the difference in what you can get away with on screen if it's animated and they are robots and not people the amount of unbelievable sentient beings oh yeah people i mean decapitations uh guys being torn in half again just if we do the exact same animation but were they're all just people because we're in gi joe world or something there's absolutely no way this thing is pg-13 it's much more like a blumhouse
Sonny00:46:37it's like the kill bill uh anime segment yeah it really is isn't it yeah no the uh well my favorite you mentioned that though again i'm gonna go back to the michael bay transformers because the the most fascinating thing about those is that they're they're all shot in such a hectic michael bayesian style right that like eventually somebody went like scene by scene through the uh through the like 4k version of the transformers and like in in like the battle sequences where the robots are fighting and there are humans around there are like constant decapitations and like bodies getting torn in half but you can't see it because it's all going so fast and you know they're so
Mike00:47:14small to scale so i transformers one pg-13
JVL00:47:18pg not pg-13 i i want to to just illustrate to the youths who may be listening to this who have thoughts about varsity letterman jackets um how much the world has changed when i was i was i remember when the transformers first came out um and uh megatron was the coolest of all the transformers and everybody wanted a megatron what did megatron transform into a fucking life-size gun what what kind of gun a fucking luger a nazi pistol it was so cool in 1986 like everything was so chill in 1986 that you could be like yeah we're gonna sell these kids a realistic looking nazi nazi handgun that transforms into an evil robot and the whole country was just like sure great here's my money it's a different time more than meets the eye i like how they've always elided what so what does megatron transform into right yes like the transformers movies have never really answered that well in in the movies in the live action
Sonny00:48:34ones he just changes into like cars and stuff like he does not he does not become a nazi gun
JVL00:48:39that's all just that has basically become the song of the south megatron's actual transformational ability is is in the transformers universe it's just been airbrushed out and we all just pretend that oh who could say what the big guy transforms
Mike00:48:52into why you know yeah yeah some of the decepticons transform into airplanes right and other things
JVL00:49:00like yeah the tape recorders cassette tape recorders sure that was what sound wave sound
Mike00:49:07screen was right yeah it was like a sound wave or sound wave not star screen star screen
Sonny00:49:12oh sorry i never really watched the cartoons when i was a kid it was not my it's not my idea what do you make of the movie transformers uh i loved it i thought it was great i was
Mike00:49:29i would have been up there with g money like with my arms pumping in the air uh i don't know my my oldest and i we we just loved the whole thing and we had a great time and i'm
JVL00:49:43sorry i just want to say michael the despite my complaints about it my actual the time i had at the movie theater with g money was an absolute 10 out of 10 totally because being there with him while he was just vibing on this movie so hard i was like this is great
Mike00:49:59i have this is fabulous the stakes were high and so my kid was just like he was super into it he's he's always this way with movies like super into you know even though he's been watching movies now for for nearly you know for what eight years um like he still is not quite totally familiar with the language of movies and so like he gets real like he gets really into those climactic moments or those so so he he enjoyed that i mean i just have to disagree with you guys like i thought i thought Megatron's turn was earned i think they laid the groundwork early in the movie yes they laid the groundwork early in the movie that his friend while while he had this friendship with Optimus Prime whatever his bullshit name was before he's Optimus Prime that there was there was a little something where he was annoyed with his friend beyond just like oh there goes my crazy free free will and friend there was something not quite hostile but it's Felix and Oscar there's a but exactly but it's but it it if there was an edge to it i should say that i think was subtle but was there and i was i was sold on his on his transformation so to speak uh into a bad guy right like he had this traumatic experience and i thought they did such a good job of i can't believe i'm saying this about an animated movie about transforming robots but like they they did a great job of treating this idea of like finding out that what you thought the mythology of something you believed in how like how different people react to finding out that it's not true or that it's different than what you thought and um and i i thought they they handled that with like it's a complex idea that i thought the movie handled terrifically like optimus prime like takes this as an opportunity to like uh find a leadership role that like nobody would have thought he'd done but he he like uses this moment to sort of like transform again like i'm not i'm not trying to make a pun here but like transform himself and transform his attitude and megatron uses it to feel bitter and to look at the sort of optimistic worldview that has always seemed to like annoy him about his friend and to view that as like um like he doesn't care he doesn't care that this lie has been told to them and you can see he becomes a retinacist is what you're saying yes 100 and megatron has reddit atheist i thought it was i thought it was really well done i thought it was it was a it was a it was it felt real in a way that i was surprised to see uh in an animated movie about talking transforming robots um and did you guys love bumblebee i was very annoyed
JVL00:53:11by bumblebee oh i thought it was the best the best portrayal of bumblebee i've ever seen in
Mike00:53:16it was it was hilarious it
JVL00:53:17made bumblebee into a character who i thought oh i'd like fine transformers have been trying to sell audiences on bumblebee for fucking forever and this is the first time i was just like oh okay i would spend time with this character keegan michael keene that's i mean that's that's it's
Mike00:53:33clear he did you guys have a tron so funny it was very funny uh did what you're saying is wait
Sonny00:53:41what you're saying is that uh jordan peele is the megatron uh and keegan michael key is the prime of that that partnership is that is that what you're basically um i have to say i i am
Mike00:53:55very pleased that keegan michael key is like doing stuff like this because there was this moment where like jordan peele like when they kind of broke off from their their their comedy partnership like jordan peele all of a sudden it's like you know he's like oh he was a serious filmmaker he's
JVL00:54:12serious filmmaker winning oscars 500 million dollars right exactly because he
Sonny00:54:17owns most of the pieces of get out he got a lot of money from get out and but like i always thought
Mike00:54:24keegan michael key was sort of a more pure he's a more pure comedian yeah and um and sort of understood comedy a lot better and i just have a soft spot for that there's a there's a there
Sonny00:54:37was a very i saw a very funny clip uh the other day uh where keegan michael key was talking about you know you know the the key and peel sketch where it's like the increasingly ridiculous uh names before the football player names you know you like you know you know a so there's a sketch where they're doing like increasingly ridiculous names and i can't remember any of the names but like they're just they're absurd and this was all based on uh tj jackson to very miss king yeah demarcus williams thank you thank you this was this was based on uh uh key showing peel this de bricashaw ferguson de bricashaw ferguson de bricashaw ferguson uva great and
Mike00:55:17uh and jordan peele had no i thought i was made up but jordan peele thought the name was made up
Sonny00:55:22but also had never seen this in a football game before he didn't like understand this ritual of like the guys coming onto the screen and saying their name and where they went to school so like when he saw he saw like de bricashaw ferguson say de bricashaw ferguson uva or whatever like he was oh my god university of virginia this is the funniest thing i've ever seen and like that went away but like it explains so much about jordan peele that he literally just never watched a football game before with like had never had never actually experienced and i was like oh this actually this is the the pieces are kind of falling together here on the the jordan peele puzzle
Mike00:56:03when i while i'm listening to this story hinkle mcringleberry uh and the the the best joke of it all is this the east team and then the west team and the very last player is a white dude dan smith byu um great uh so i don't know i i really i thought i had a lot of depth so this thing really spoke to you it it was just it surprised me it i had very low expectations did you choke up a little bit when when optimus went full optimus no because i don't like i i agree with you actually that optimus prime is kind of a drip um and and very annoying but like in in that like oh yes like it uh he all the sayings right all the stuff from the from the tv show that they had to like kind of push in in in there all the optimus prime things i just thought i i was not expecting to for the i was not expecting the sort of adult themes and i mean that in like a you know like the sort of like serious themes to be treated with such um such a plum so the only good thing
JVL00:57:17was that they basically played optimus i don't know if you guys remember this as if he was doing william shatner shakespeare and everybody else in the movie thinks he's ridiculous all the other transformers around him like they are not genuflecting they just look at him like oh there he goes again like this guy and that was a great bit i could see entire movies in which the optimus is actually the butt of the jokes and the nobody nobody likes him but he's the biggest of them and he has the energon axe and so they all have to have to do what he says it basically makes him like mumar gaddafi optimus is gaddafi you know doing these ridiculous things everybody just has to do what he says so quick question
Mike00:58:04before we wrap up here so like what is scarlett johansson doing in this in this movie like
JVL00:58:10that character wasn't voiced by aquafina isn't that isn't aquafina required by law to be cast in movies like this the aquafina
Mike00:58:23full employment act has been repealed that's why we had a recession thanks biden um yeah i don't know like i i was just surprised i was surprised to hear her voice i was like oh really like it felt a little like slumming it for her and then again it's chris hemsworth
Sonny00:58:39like he's doing it so like she was in sing yeah these guys these guys are getting 7 to a million dollars for like five days of work because it's not like they're they're like they they just go there and read the lines they're and they're not all their translation you know she was you know how much she probably got like 30 grand for that movie what are you gonna do you're gonna do one uh transformers cartoon or seven thousand lost in translations
JVL00:59:08you know this is you know as i i was watching uh an old red letter media review of something maybe it was the the rise of skywalker and they were like you know uh they you know people like scarlett johansson do the avengers movies they can like have their mansions and then they do marriage story to pay for coffee you know this is just transformers and then she gets to do uh you know her little films okay god
Sonny00:59:39bless her i bet she i bet she got five million dollars for a marriage story i bet i bet i mean that was like netflix netflix was throwing yeah netflix was throwing yeah i guess that's
Mike00:59:52so much money at the wall on those things under the skin it's more more what what pays for the coffee um all right uh any more of the thoughts on transformers one all right
JVL01:00:04no is this gonna be the big jumping off point for a an animated transformers franchise it
Sonny01:00:11should be twenty five million dollars opening weekend yikes i guess not
JVL01:00:17maybe it'll be usually direct paramount plus so it'll be shitty animation and voiced by aquafina
Mike01:00:24all right that is all the time we are going to give to this episode uh join us over at subbeacon.com tell your friends and family give us a comment say hello and we'll talk to you next so the credits said john ham had a voice in this sentinel prime he was sentinel prime i did not it's so funny how certain voices like i can pick them up immediately i'm like oh that's scarlett
Sonny01:01:00johansson and like others are i was just like huh i can't scarlett johansson i see i was the exact opposite i was like oh john ham and i was like who was the lady that was it wasn't aquafina
JVL01:01:10who was it i don't brian tyree hill i spent three quarters of the movie trying to place the his voice and i was like who who who is this who's voicing megatron who i i know it's right on the tip of my tongue and i felt like maybe i was a racist because i couldn't come up with
Sonny01:01:27uh he was so good in atlanta he was uh he was he's very good on that show good show did did
Mike01:01:32you guys catch uh a couple of the kind of fourth wall breaking jokes there was there was one where
Sonny01:01:37uh bots the go bots one that was fun i well i i caught that and i was like wait are go bots part
Mike01:01:44of the transformers universe they are but they were not they were
Sonny01:01:47initially they were a um they were like the knockoff right yeah and then like hasbro bottom
JVL01:01:53or something yeah yeah what were the other ones did you catch there michael um i know well now
Mike01:01:58i can't remember the go bots one was the one that jumped out there was there was another one there was some like quoting of the of the song um more than meets the eye yeah we're gonna show them
JVL01:02:10more than meets the eye that was the one i yeah yeah i'm kind of like i mean we do they're all celebrating at the end but they're still at war with these uh organic yeah biologics which are
Sonny01:02:24gonna come back don't they have to go defeat them why do they want the energon does it was that ever
JVL01:02:29explained it doesn't make any sense because those things are carbon based not not metallic like it doesn't why do they why do they end up going why are they breathing heavily i'm sure it's fine
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