#280. 'Moana 2' (Theaters)
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Sonny and Mike (with JVL present for most of it) dig into Moana 2 and, along the way, Moana, after Mike watched the original for the first time this week; both agree the sequel is a disappointment, with Sonny calling it the theatrical equivalent of Disney's cheap 90s straight-to-VHS sequels — explicitly likening it to The Return of Jafar — and blasting its unmemorable songs (no Lin-Manuel Miranda this time), muddled plot (a mid-film "villain" who's freed and never seen again, an ambiguous demigod ending), and Cocomelon-quality background animation; his own kids, unprompted, told him the songs were better in the original. Mike watched it with his ten-year-old, who loved it as he loves every movie, but Mike shares the critique of the weak songs, the drop in animation quality, and the padded, apparently-was-a-miniseries plotting (an underdeveloped new crew, a bafflingly romance-free arc for an aged-up Moana); Sonny nonetheless notes the film is "found money" for Disney, since it was originally slated for Disney+, and the two riff on Disney's history of vault releases and direct-to-video sequels (The Little Mermaid, Lion King 2) as a cautionary parallel to today's Disney+ content strategy and shows like The Mandalorian. The episode opens with a long Amazon-focused hangout segment: Sonny explains his "life hack" of accepting delayed shipping for small digital credits during Black Friday/Cyber Monday book binges, JVL jokingly accuses Amazon of effectively pirating rights holders by not compensating them for credit-funded rentals, and Mike complains at length about the proliferation of buggy youth-sports scheduling apps (TeamSnap, GameChanger, TeamSideline) before the three pivot into a box-office roundup covering Moana 2's record Thanksgiving five-day gross, Wicked's strong hold, and awards-season chatter about Wicked, A Complete Unknown, and Conclave. JVL has to bail almost exactly halfway through for an unspecified home emergency, leaving Sonny and Mike to close out the movie discussion alone, with Sonny reassuring listeners "we think everything is [fine], we don't overshare."
From the show notes
Just FYI, we lose JVL about 45 minutes into this episode. He's fine! Everyone's fine. Hopefully he has an update for us next week.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Before Maui stole Te Fiti's heart, our ancestors wanted to connect our island to all the people of the entire ocean. It's my job as a Wayfinder to finish what they started. Wanna show our people just how far we'll go. This is a call from the ancestors. Hidden in a terrible storm, it's an ancient island. Sitting foot on its sands would break the curse. Bring our people together again. I know what I have to do. Maui, I could really use your help.
Mike00:00:52Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I am your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are two guys with moving tattoos, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com where you can become a patron. You can join the conversation in the comments. Always a lively discussion there. When our episodes go up on Friday mornings, join us over at subbeacon.com. Tell your friends, tell your family, leave a comment. Join the Sub-Beacon community at subbeacon.com. We're going to be talking about Moana 2 and Moana 1. Why not? I watched it for the first time this week. We're going to be talking about the whole Moana expanded universe later on in the show. But first, let's check in to see how everyone is doing. Sonny Bunch, let me start with you.
Sonny00:01:46Hello. You know what I'm doing is I'm climbing out of all the Amazon boxes I ordered this week. It's the time of year. It's the time of year where Amazon has lots of sales, obviously, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, etc., etc. And so I ended up buying like four or five books that I don't need but have kind of wanted for a while. They were all on sale. It was like buy three, get two free. One was like $5. I went a little bit nuts. But when I order things from Amazon during this period of time, I don't know if you guys do this. Mike, you're not a Prime user, right? You don't have Prime.
Mike00:02:30I think we have Prime right now. Yes, we do. You do have Prime right now. Yeah, but we don't order the way you guys order from Amazon. We're not like – we don't do it in the massive way that you guys do.
Sonny00:02:44You're not just constantly – you're not ordering like eight AA batteries.
Mike00:02:48No.
Sonny00:02:49From Amazon. No. You go to the store. That's not us. You go to the store. Sometimes, yeah.
JVL00:02:56Man. OK. I order from Amazon at the drop of a hat.
Sonny00:03:02That's what I'm saying.
Mike00:03:03Absolutely. I'm trying to distinguish myself from you two greetings.
Sonny00:03:07Go ahead. Anyway, so during this time of year, I have my own little personal life hack I'm going to share with – it's not really a secret or anything, but when I order from Amazon, when I order Prime, you go to the checkout and again, I've ordered like one book. I've ordered like a $5 book that comes with free Prime one-day shipping. It will get there the next day. Sure. I go to checkout and at the checkout, they say like, "Hey, when do you want this shipped? Do you want it shipped in one day or two days? Do you want it shipped on your Amazon delivery day?" Which I have never once chosen that. Does anyone have used that? I've never once chosen that. The big pitch for this is we burn. We burn less carbon. Oh, I'm worried about the carbon. Less packaging. You save it. Oh, that's what that's. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like when you go to hotels and the hotels are like, "We don't do house cleaning every day because we care about the environment."
JVL00:04:12They care so much.
Sonny00:04:13You don't care about the environment. You just don't want to do it every day. You don't want to pay somebody to clean my room every day, which is fine. I put up the don't disturb sign anyway. But whenever I see that sign, I like want to take it down and demand more towels every day just on general principle.
Mike00:04:27I like the signs that have the ocean about the not washing the towels, you know, like sitting there and the thing. It's like save our ocean. It warms my heart.
Sonny00:04:38The ocean. That's what we're worried about. So I've never used Amazon, the Amazon Day method except accidentally. I think I accidentally clicked it once. I was like, "Why isn't my thing here?" Twenty-six hours later, I ordered it. I deserve it. I deserve it to be in my hands. And I realized I ordered the Amazon Day and I like dropped to my knees platoon styles like, "No!" Anyway.
JVL00:05:00Give me my digital credit or give it to me tomorrow.
Sonny00:05:03So this is my life hack. This is my life hack is that every time I order something, every time I order something from Amazon, I'm presented with one of two options now. There's two options. The first option is if you will, we will deliver this, you know, five to six days later. But we will also give you 7% back on your Amazon Prime Visa, which of course I have. I have the Amazon Prime Visa. You got to have the Amazon Prime Visa if you got Amazon Prime because you get 5% back on everything you order on Amazon. You're insane not to have the Amazon Prime Visa if you use Prime like I use Prime. But my point here is that there are now two options they offer. The first option is -- and they don't -- you don't get to choose. It's just like kind of a black box. You order something and then you get the prompt. So one of the prompts I get is instead of 5% back, you get 7% back, right? And on like a $5 book, that's not worth it. It's not worth it to me. I don't -- I'm going to save what? I'm going to get like 20 cents back at some point?
JVL00:06:06Give me my merchandise now.
Sonny00:06:08No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. That is not -- you ship it to me faster. You ship it to me faster on general principle. The second option though, the second option though is they offer digital credit. So either -- it depends. It depends on the item, depends on the time you're ordering, depends on where you're ordering. But I've gotten credits in the range of one -- I've gotten ship five days later and get a $1 credit or a $1.50 credit or a $2 credit. I think it just kind of depends on how busy they are, what the credit they offer.
Mike00:06:45Question. Yes. The credit goes to your Amazon account or to your credit card?
Sonny00:06:49The credit goes to -- it basically just puts -- it puts essentially a $2 or $1 or $1.50 credit for any digital order. So if you rent a movie or if you -- Oh, yeah.
Mike00:07:04I see.
Sonny00:07:05I see. If you order something digitally. Right. If you get a Kindle book, right? Right. Got it. Got it. So like basically it's like -- so it's like a free dollar or two. Or three. And I just accumulate. Or three. Or three. I had somebody -- somebody told me they got one for $3. And I was like, $3?
JVL00:07:21I get between a $1.50 and $3 as my offers.
Sonny00:07:24Oh, man. Yeah. See, I got to -- I got to start saying no to the $1 to see how often they'll -- see how many times I have to do that before they bump it up to $3.
Mike00:07:33Anyway. This is kind of like getting bumped off a flight. And it's like how much -- how much can I agree to --
Sonny00:07:39Well, this is -- exactly. It's exactly what it's like.
JVL00:07:41Yeah. I believe if you press the "see all shipping options." At time of checkout, because they give you two prompts. But beneath it is a "see other shipping options" or "see all shipping options" that it will then give you literally all. And so you might get the digital credit in addition to the 5% back or the whatever. Hold on.
Mike00:08:03Hold on.
Sonny00:08:04Hold on.
Mike00:08:05Hold on. Seven. Seven. Seven. How -- how sick are we that we're doing arbitration over shipping --
Sonny00:08:12Arbitrage, first of all.
Mike00:08:13Arbitrage. Sorry. Arbitrage over shipping, whether it's -- whether we're getting $1.50 or $2 or $3. Oh, no, no, no.
Sonny00:08:20No, no, no, no. This is sick. This is sick. Don't turn this -- don't turn this back on us. Don't turn this back on us, the consumer. That's exactly what I'm doing. We've been abused by these companies for so long using -- using their service and giving them money for it. Careful. Careful. And we deserve -- we deserve this. No, but, like, here's -- but here's the thing. Here's the thing. I -- I totally understand why Amazon does it because, like, they are overloaded with shipping and they don't want to -- they -- you know, they -- they're a huge logistics chain. They're trying to figure out the most efficient way to do it. I -- I get that. I also don't need 99% of the things I order within 24 hours. I just don't. Like, I -- like, I order things and I -- like, I order -- I ordered a Cormac McCarthy book. You know why I'm gonna read this? You know why I have time to read Cormac McCarthy's Sutry, which I got as part of --
Guest00:09:062032.
Sonny00:09:07Yeah, exactly. Never. Never gonna -- never gonna happen. It's never -- I'm never gonna be able to read this book, but I have it because I'm -- I wanted it because I, you know, have wanted to read this book for a while. And it was in the -- it was in the buy three -- or, I'm sorry, buy two, get the third item free sale. And I was like, you know what? That's a good item to get for free. That's a good item to get for free.
Mike00:09:26You know what Amazon should do with books is they should offer a service where you pay now and they only ship it to you when you're ready to read it, but you pay maybe a reduced rate. Something like that.
Sonny00:09:40That could work. That wouldn't work for you. The whole point of Amazon is that you order a thing. And when you're ready for it, if that's what you want to do. If I wanted -- if I wanted to wait until I had a spare week to read Suchery, I could do that.
Mike00:09:52But -- Who has the space? Who has the -- you know, there's boxes. You just said yourself, Sonny. You're surrounded by boxes. We have too much stuff and not enough space in my view.
Sonny00:10:01Can I just say also that I never expected the thing that would be most useful from my time working at McDonald's was learning how to break down and efficiently store boxes. Because I spend a disproportionate amount of my time trying to figure out, you know, the shape and size of various boxes and trying to get them to fit into each other to make sure that I have contained my mess into -- because I go -- like, I go into my, you know, the quote unquote mud room in my house and, like, I'll go in there and there will just be boxes thrown all around. And I'm like, well, what is this? Where do I live? And then I have to spend ten minutes breaking down boxes because I'm the only one in the house that will do it.
Mike00:10:44Do you know -- do you know the -- you take the box cutter down the middle once you've folded it, what, two or three times? You can take a box cutter, slice it down the middle, and then get another fold. Boom.
Sonny00:10:56I don't usually need to go quite that in-depth into it. I'm usually a little better off than that, but -- anyway, so that's how my week has been. A lot of Amazon -- a lot of Amazon, you know, issues. Not even issues. They're great. Consumption. I have no complaints about -- about, well, you know, the stuff that's been delivered or the timeliness and -- I watched a movie for free last night that I had to rent. You know why? Digital credits.
Mike00:11:22Congratulations. All right. Thank you, Sonny. JVL, what's going on with you?
JVL00:11:28Sonny, what would your feelings on this be if it turned out that Amazon had structured its deal so that when somebody used digital credits -- Right. -- for, say, the purchase or rental of a piece of intellectual property, the rights holder was not compensated, either contractually or through chicanery?
Sonny00:11:54Well, through chicanery, I would not be in favor of that, but contractually, I would probably -- well, I mean, I -- like, so you're saying if I -- I rent a movie and typically, you know, of a $4 rental, $3 goes to the studio, $1 goes to Amazon, and I use -- if I used $4 in -- in digital credits, $0 goes to anyone. That's what you're -- that's what you're saying.
JVL00:12:19Right. I mean, that's basically piracy on Amazon's -- not your part, but on Amazon's part. Amazon is essentially pirating. And I know you're feeling --
Sonny00:12:32I don't -- that's actually -- that's actually a really interesting -- I would
JVL00:12:34be curious -- Yeah, of course it is.
Sonny00:12:36I ask interesting questions. That's -- I -- I -- I would assume -- I would assume that Amazon -- Yeah. -- still compensates them, because usually in a situation -- How are they gonna know?
JVL00:12:48What's that? How are they gonna know?
Sonny00:12:50Well, I -- I mean, how does anybody know? How do they know anything about -- Exactly. -- digital sales? I mean, it's, you know --
JVL00:12:57Right. Right? Totally. Uh-huh. I'm just saying, what if it turns out that Lord Beesauce is, uh, basically Pirate Bay?
Sonny00:13:06Well, apparently we have a way to stop CEOs from doing bad things in this country
JVL00:13:11now. Uh-huh. Oh, boy. Too soon.
Sonny00:13:15I -- I -- we were -- Mike and I were discussing this before. I think it's -- I think -- I think the reaction to the -- the killing of this, uh, CEO is, like, the worst thing I've ever seen on the internet, but we -- we don't need to -- we
Mike00:13:25don't need to talk about it. It's -- it's -- it's -- it's among them. There's -- there's -- there's quite, uh, a lot of depths that the internet has sunk to, and this is -- this is one of them, but -- all right, JVL, sorry, you -- you -- I got nothing. You have -- you have things going on.
JVL00:13:38You have got nothing. I -- I got nothing. I've been sick for, like, ten days. to the urgent care this morning and they gave me steroids and antibiotics and what you got no it's just like a normal cold that morphed into a sinus infection like you know how these things are right like it's just it's just a cold but they when they hang around too long then all the stuff like but the fluids bubbling around the sinuses just start you so uh i am looking forward to having science destroy the bacteria they're causing me discomfort i enjoy that um and uh
Mike00:14:11yeah that's that's all i've got what are you what are you up to michael uh so i have it's not a big complaint but and maybe it's something that i've brought up before but can i just say the we got to get control of the youth sport apps there's there's too many of them and i keep having a
?00:14:33you have
JVL00:14:33a download no idea what are you doing game changer or sports machine oh i don't know sports machine
Mike00:14:41hold on i'll tell you which ones i have now team snap snap game changer and team sideline no it's so so these apps are all buggy as shit and they make you pay to get rid of the ads and they're unwieldy they're horrible the the the bugginess of the team sideline app which i have now our basketball league has adopted it this season for the first time um is you know you press say you you go to your team and you look at the schedule and as a coach i want to see like okay who is coming to this practice and so you click on the practice on the schedule and nothing happens and i don't mean that it registers my press but it doesn't go to the next i mean i mean literally nothing happens there's no there's no indication that i have pressed the correct the the correct place uh there's no indication that the app is doing anything in response to my it it is as if i have not taken my index finger and pressed the screen on the place where the app says i should press it is as if i have just been staring like a moron at the screen and doing nothing so what do i do i press it again still nothing i press it again i press it five more times three seconds later let me tell you what happens now the screen moves to exactly where i want it to go and it's got that little circling thing to let me know what's thinking the app is thinking it's going to give me what i want and it proceeds for however many times my finger jabbed at the screen it proceeds to reload the screen that many times oh yeah until i can see that nobody has received responded i don't know who's coming to practice um but this is like there is so many of these apps you're right jvl uh they they charge you out the wazoo with it's like ads everywhere team snap is the worst on the ads it's just like it's it's a garbage app if there's a horrible if there's an app that i actually like and i've i've used and i was i'm ashamed to say i'm even been willing to pay for it's game changer um but only because of the videos and only because there are other parents who are willing to take the videos of the baseball games game changers owned by dicks
JVL00:17:09the same company that owns dick sporting correct and what's interesting is that hi oh the dicks uh it is owned by dicks speaking app is actually pretty good i don't know if you guys have ever
Mike00:17:21like purchasing through dick sports it is pretty good but what's weird is that like
JVL00:17:26if you buy something through dicks online so you open up your app and you buy a pair of running shoes and they get to you and you want to send them home or send them back rather the returns process is like you're trapped in 1992 so you've gotta uh like fill out you have to print out a piece of paper and write down with you know by hand like a monkey um the thing you're saying it is like getting a rebate it's not at all like the amazon return process or anything modern and it's very strange and uh i've always thought i think it's because dicks has had i would say from looking at loss prevention issue no i don't think that's what it is i think that they're they have inventory issues between online sales and in-store sales and i think that their system keeps those two inventories separate and and so that this causes trouble for them and that they never sell as a unified retailer but have set up e-commerce as a separate division and and this is just a mistake i think yeah but it's you know it's a clear legacy thing you could see why you can understand why a corporation that's big that doesn't actually have the resources to to do what
Mike00:18:52amazon does would do something like that right well look i again i don't have i actually like the concept of the app the specific app to deal with like schedules uh messaging all that stuff email works of course but it's it's nice to be able to have something that you can sort of easily check coaches can easily change things around and and if all the parents on the team have a buy have bought in so to speak or literally uh into into the particular app then then it can be very useful and effective my problem is that there is no broad agreement on which apps to use so for instance in our little league i've got two kids in our little league right now um uh they've used their teams have used different apps in the same little league because of the coach preference or whatever um that's bad that's frustrating because then you got it you can't remember which app it is and some apps are better than others i just i just think we need a moratorium on all new apps this is the case where we really do
JVL00:20:03need a monopoly yes a consolidation consolidation in the system if lord bezos if you could please just give us one kids sports app to rule them all we'll we'll use it and we'll even pay for it and
Sonny00:20:18then you can order stuff right through amazon you know yes it's actually not a terrible idea
Mike00:20:24give the apps give the apps like a discounted access to to aws because like whatever servers there some of these places are
JVL00:20:33using it's it's not working do you remember when amazon bought the internet movie database sunny uh yes remember early early on and the idea was like oh now you're going to be able to order the dvd from amazon right from it seems like a million years ago yeah well the the only thing they really
Sonny00:20:51did with that was they integrated it into the prime video x-ray thing you know like so if you watch something on prime video and you hit the you know you hit the the cursor button or whatever
JVL00:21:02i wonder how many people
Sonny00:21:03are in that division at amazon i don't know it's like the biggest problem with the biggest problem with uh the purchase of imdb by amazon is that it meant they also bought box office mojo and for a while they didn't do anything to box office mojo and then they they totally fucked box office by trying to roll it into imdb pro like trying to roll like the useful charts and things and it it basically killed it as a useful there are still things i i mean i still go to box office mojo every week because it's it's easier to look at the weekend numbers there than at the numbers which is but the numbers is more useful for like if i want to see if i want to see the box office results for an individual person for instance i go to the numbers
Mike00:21:49it's just it's easier well speaking of box office mojo i've got it right up here look at that on my uh on my tabs here uh so that we can talk about box office uh number one at the box office this week moana 2 it debuted at the box office um what last week the week before and so thanksgiving debut right or thanksgiving thanksgiving is weird things things come out
Sonny00:22:18on wednesday night and they go all the way through sunday but it's still number one it's beating out
Mike00:22:23wicked which everybody's talking about but but but the people the kids the families are going to see moana 2 number one 130 almost 140 million dollars uh in its opening weekend you add that to the thanksgiving weekend it's like 225 million dollars uh number two wicked number three gladiator two uh number four red one actually uh doing not too bad at number four um any box office thoughts about the dominance uh in just one weekend plus of moana 2 well it's the biggest thanksgiving
Sonny00:23:03five day ever i believe yeah is the was the was the you know bottom line result here it's the it's the the highest the highest grossing five dollar uh five day box office gross and it's funny it's interesting you mentioned red one red one is down just red one lost nearly 700 screens which is about uh a quarter i don't know maybe a quarter or a fifth of its total something like that um and it was down just three point seven percent which you know families they they they like to go see family movies red one is finally kind of a family christmas movie it's it's you know a fairly
Mike00:23:40but it's it's finally dwayne johnson is actually delivering in terms of in terms of box office
Sonny00:23:44well i mean i like the movie is going to gross less than 100 million dollars domestic which is not not ideal but again it's kind of found money it's it's found money anyway the the no this is this was here i have i i have a stat i have a stat for you so you know uh through through the year i i have talked about the uh the delta between the 2024 and the 2023 box office right so in may after the disappointing results of twister 2 uh and some other stuff the uh domestic the domestic or it wasn't i'm sorry it wasn't twister 2 it was a mad max fury road or mad max furiosa the after after furiosa didn't do very well um which was supposed to be the big kind of tentpole uh movie from that from that period the box office was down something like 24 year over year in may and it in that that gap closed a little bit as the year went along uh but still by the end of november at the end of november um uh or at the at the beginning of november the gap was 11 11.2 something like that the cumulative gap from from january to november or january to october was was about 11 that gap persisted throughout november until the final weekend until this thanksgiving day five day period when the year over year gap over the year over year gap reduced from 11.2 percent something like that 11.2 11.1 percent to seven percent uh year over year this one weekend wiped out four percentage points of it basically cleared a third of the the gap in one in one go um and i think that that sort of performance is going to persist through to the end of the year because i think wicked and uh wicked and moana 2 um and then the lion king mufasa i think the all of those movies are going to do very well through the end of the year and uh although mufasa i'm not totally sold we'll see we'll see how that does i there i don't know i don't know
JVL00:25:59if you guys have been these are all disney properties aren't they
Sonny00:26:03uh wicked is not wicked is not wicked's owned by somebody else wicked's mgm or something um it's so weird oh no wicked's universal i'm sorry wicked's universal uh anyway the the the long and the short of it is the this is this was the biggest week at the box office in a long time i think it was the biggest individual day at the box office since avengers endgame um uh like it's just a huge
JVL00:26:33huge amount of money can you talk about the hold on wicked please because i couldn't tell it's it was like two percent or something decline but i couldn't tell that's just a function of it having been a holiday weekend well if that's a real two percent
Sonny00:26:51whatever it is yeah it's down 28 weekend over weekend which is a very good hold um from first to second weekend you're right though it's hard to say because there's a there's a um there is a holiday weekend factor here that said i think that i think the response to this movie has been extremely positive i think it's going to hold all all uh all all winter and i do think i think i the other thing i think is that i don't want to go out on a limb and say this i don't want to go out on a limb and say this but if i was a braver person what i would say is i think there's a decent chance that wicked ends up overtaking moana too by the end of the year right now wicked moana 2 is basically on pace to gross around to clarify wicked has grossed more than moana 2 right wicked has grossed uh 270 million or so moana 2 is like 240 million or so but that that uh that that will be reversed by next weekend moana 2 will will probably be outgrossing wicked but i think i think the legs on wicked will be longer and hold better than moana 2 which i think has gotten oh an okay response from audiences but if my kids reaction to it was any indication i don't think it's going to do repeat business like some of the other animated stuff
Mike00:28:16yeah just a guess but wicked will i mean people will want to go yeah we see it again in the
Sonny00:28:23theater wicked people are gonna go see this movie a hundred times even though it's whatever it's not my thing say it and it's and it's gonna it's gonna win best picture it's gonna win wicked's gonna win best picture i just want everybody to be prepared for that right now it's either it's either gonna be wicked or the the bob dylan movie uh oh yeah with um with timothy chalamet oh timothy chalamet timothy chalamet playing bob dylan they should have gotten the uh the guy
Mike00:28:52who does trump on saturday night live to do it he he does a much better vocal impression um
Sonny00:28:57timothy chalamet is big star though dune 2 okay what i i forget what this dumb bob dylan
JVL00:29:03movie is called what's it called charlie and the chocolate fight didn't his charlie and the
Sonny00:29:06chocolate factory movie do very well it held for a long time but again this was a this was a function of like it came out at christmas time there was not really anything to watch and a complete unknown a complete unknown that is my number one my number one pick is probably wicked but my number one a is probably a complete unknown even though i haven't seen it yet and number two it's boomer porn is what it is a an increasingly distant three is conclave which i still think has a shot it's like the most prestigy of these movies but i don't know what um oh yeah conclave is conclave is uh the green book of this year in that it's a it's a movie that very much appeals to older audiences it has like kind of a patina of prestige and seriousness but it's also got a social issue involved because the because of the gender identity of the priest uh who gets chosen to be the new pope at the end and you know it's a very it's a very hot button issue right now so and rate the new pope as a girl no the new pope well i spoilers i guess if you want if you don't want to know what happens at the end of conclave is this a crying game skip ahead skip ahead not quite skip ahead like 30 seconds just hit the hit the skip ahead button uh no the new pope is uh you stop listening i don't want to hear any fucking complaints from people the new pope is intersex not trans but intersex so a little bit of crying game so it's like half a crying game it's like a it's like a it's like a weeping game
JVL00:30:38now we have to do an episode on this like a sniffling game
Sonny00:30:43all right now you can listen again did moana 2 over perform tracking yes i well i think so i there there had been seems like it numbers have been kind of all over the place but i think it it definitely did better than people were expecting i i'd have to go back and look at what matt bellany said uh like because disney must be
JVL00:31:10very very happy with this right i mean this is like incredibles 2 level like remember how incredibles 2 kills it came out of nowhere and did a bazillion dollars of business um oh like i don't think anybody suspected it would open this big like well this wasn't frozen too in terms of expectation and fandom right stuff i'll say look i i
Sonny00:31:33said back in march or april or whenever they announced that this was going to come out in thanksgiving i said it was an instant front runner for highest grossing movie of the year and the reason i thought that is because moana has consistently been the most watched film yeah the most watched film in streaming for like any streaming decade for like i don't know for like for like three years now it's like it's it's consistently in like the top 10 movies streamed by minutes like kids watch this thing on a fucking loop um uh so i i was pretty sure it was going to be an enormous hit even though i do think that it still overperformed that number look like i said last week this is all found money for disney this is all found money for disney this was originally scheduled they had designed this thing to be a uh a disney plus show it looks like a disney plus show the animation is not very good in it uh and the storytelling the songs are bad and unmemorable this the storytelling is not that good we'll get into that in a minute but like this this thing was designed to be on disney plus and instead of wasting it on disney plus they're going to gross a billion dollars they're going to gross 1.4 or 5 billion dollars with this thing and then they're going to put it on disney plus where it's going to play on a loop
Mike00:32:51so this is this is good for theater heads like you sonny right like this is this is a this is a potentially good concept for
JVL00:33:00like stop dumping shit on streaming yes
Sonny00:33:03yeah that's what i'm saying yeah yeah yeah no totally i mean look this and this is the same thing about this the same the same argument goes for red one right red one is the sort of movie that like you you make you if you spend 200 million dollars and put this thing on amazon you know people might watch it for a weekend nobody's going to remember it doesn't do you any good instead what you should do is you spend 100 million dollars on it you put it in theaters for three months and then you put it on streaming and like you like there's there's no there's no there is no upside to
JVL00:33:33to any you want to be like netflix well there it was so this is the thing
Sonny00:33:37netflix can get away with this because they have more money than god netflix has netflix has the amount and like i you know without wasting too much time on this or getting too into conspiracy theorizing i do think that netflix has the most uh uncompetitive thing that they have engaged in is driving up the cost of these ridiculous streaming movies by paying out profit points a head of time which has like just totally screwed up the entire financial structure of the theatrical industry so like you you if you spend if you spend a hundred million dollars on a movie with j-lo and you pay her 25 million dollars and it's on netflix and you know 30 million people watch it in a weekend and then everybody forgets about it that's fine for netflix that's totally fine for them but the the secondary benefit they get is that now everybody else has to pay that same amount of money to get inferior for the most part
Mike00:34:33products it's anyway well let's why don't we move on from box office talk and talk about this actual movie moana 2 we can talk about moana 1 as i said at the top i saw both for the first time this week and um we just talk about all this stuff sonny do you want to give us a review of moana 2 electric boogaloo moana 2
Sonny00:34:57posits what if disney decided to put all the shitty straight to vhs sequels that they made in the 90s in movie theaters that's my basic review i uh moana 2 picks up where moana 1 left off moana is searching for people across across the ocean because she wants to expand her empire she has imperial ambitions and she wants to crush the neighboring islands beneath her heel um and uh but she has to find them first and to find them they have to lift a curse and the curse is i don't know some guy who doesn't like humans and wants to see them all scattered and destroyed and she's got to rescue maui and this movie has an enormous structural problem in that maui is not in the movie for the first hour of the movie i like i maui who a little bit at the very beginning
Mike00:35:46little bit of the very there's a very there's a there's a brief little snippet
Sonny00:35:49at the beginning and then he is now we fight jason statham later and then he then he uh then he is there too he does walking tall uh for a bit uh he goes to the uh anyway so moana has to he she assembles a team of her islanders and they go out and they run into the kakamora and the kakamora join them and then they go looking i i gotta be honest with you i was bored out of my mind watching this movie i was bored out of my i was bored out of my mind it's not very good it's not funny the songs are not memorable you gotta like say what you will about lin-manuel miranda and lots of people like to have fun at his expense i didn't care for hamilton i know jvl is a hamilton head i did not care for hamilton doesn't do anything for me but the man knows how to write a song that appeals to children and like the the songs on the songs on uh both the original moana and what's the what's the one about yeah the the one about the colombian drug runners who have a village drug mules no they're it's a family that gets powers from a magical
JVL00:37:00white powder we're getting off course we're getting off course fair enough uh the cartel the very nice magical cartel it's a cartel i mean that's
Sonny00:37:07literally what they are uh anyway uh they're running from the colombian federales like i mean come on anyway the the neither neither here nor there the the uh say what you will about lin-manuel miranda that man can write a catchy kids tune and the songs in this and this is why well this is one reason why it might not actually be a standard disney plus uh you know playing on repeat sort of movie for kids is because the the songs are not good or memorable um
Mike00:37:38at all like i there's there's a lot of them too i feel like there's one or two more they're kind of a lot but like they're
Sonny00:37:46just not good they're not they're not good they're not catchy they're not entertaining uh i don't know the movie and and also like so i i mentioned this uh in the box office segment i went to see this movie with my kids i like to take my kids to see kids movies because i am not the target audience for these movies i the kids are the target audience for these movies and i like to get i get i like to get their sense of how they respond to a movie so like they they any basically every movie we've ever been to i say hey so what'd you guys think of that and they say we liked it and then they start talking about the funny jokes from the movie they start like remember when they did this remember when he said this and they they go through the things they liked i asked my kids we were still in the theaters when we were still in the we're sitting in the theater movie stops credits roll i leaned over i say so what do you guys think of that and my daughter looks at me like the songs were better in the first one like that's the first thing she said and that has never happened that is that is and then and then for like five minutes both of them were just running through various plot holes and things that didn't work or make
JVL00:38:53sense well sonny they were like they were like
Sonny00:38:55breaking it down on a on a story structure level and i was like and one of the things they mentioned which i which i agree with and was like kind of confused by in in the movie so in the movie maui has been captured by some sort of goddess who turns into a bat or something and has bats and and she uh yeah she i i don't i don't understand what her deal is but like she she's captured maui and maui wants to keep uh moana away from her because she maui thinks that this this uh lady will kill her or be mean to her uh but then they get there and they find out she's just misunderstood and they free her from uh by film's end she is freed from her curse but we never see her again she just just like this this character who's like a mid-level boss who like you think is going to have some resonance later in the film just disappears doesn't show up again maybe she was in maybe there's like a post credits teaser or something where she shows up i don't know but like i like i was i was like what is happening with this what is happening just on a story structure level with this movie it's all broken and bad and again like i said it looks like a disney plus show disney plus show that has been blown up on the big screen it does not look good um the the animation is not it's not bad i mean they still probably spent you know 250 million dollars animating this thing but like it doesn't look good um the the i have whole things about i have i have lots of thoughts on
Mike00:40:27this okay i saw it with my 10 year old he said he loved it because he he loved everything um everything he just saw that the movie he just saw is the greatest movie he's ever seen um but we were in agreement with each other and with you and your kids sonny that the songs in this one sucked they were not memorable uh they were kind of awful um the movie was only 100 minutes long it's shorter than the than the first one and it dragged it was boring it was like a when is this thing going to end terrible um okay on the animation i noticed it from the get-go because as i have said multiple times in this podcast i watched the first one for the first time it's like my wife's favorite disney movie at the moment she's watched it a bunch she can't convince my boys to watch it as much as she would like to watch it um she just because is it because moana's a girl yeah that's basically the only i mean no why my boys
Sonny00:41:32is that what the is that what the actual reason is their objection for watching
Mike00:41:38yeah you mean uh no they just they they want to watch like they no it has nothing to do with moana it has everything to do with like their weird hang-ups about like movies that they watched at a certain age that they're
Sonny00:41:54too young it's oh they're too cool they're too cool for moana maybe or it's
Mike00:41:58like no we're watching lego stuff right now so we don't want to watch they need ironing right disney doesn't do ironing um no i have no idea what it is they just they're they're finicky point is is that we when we watched it i i've know the songs because they play we we play them on alexa and all those things um and i know that they're good songs from the from the first one but i was struck by how good the animation in moana the original looks like the the hair and the water is animated in ways that like just shocked me and some of it's like you watch a lot of like animated movies with animals and so when you see people animated in this day and age or whatever that was eight years ago it's like it is like wow they've really come a long way in in in this computer animation when they put money behind it this one moana 2 you know what the people and so the animation the actual main characters is not as good they like look more cartoony than they than they did and original but you know what the background characters look like sunny they look like cocomelon they all look like cocomelon like cheap computer animation on YouTube for babies that's what they look like and I was like watching it was like there's like one character who looks like a cocomelon who looks like a cocomelon dad like he's like standing in the background but you but his he had he says like those big eyes you know and like they kept like he kept like sticking out to me in the background of these is like why why is that character looks so weird and it took me forever I figured out it's cocomelon so animation is crap this like my big problem with the original Moana is that there's too much going on in it and I didn't really care for it frankly I don't really care for the original Moana there's like too much happening and I don't understand why these things are happening Moana 2 has the same problem but it's just all stupider like there's too much stuff happening and it's just dumber the one thing I liked the one big thing I liked about the story in Moana and that I was liking in Moana 2 were the little coconut creatures yeah the Kokomora the pirates I love that I thought it was clever and funny and my favorite thing about them from the original was that like they just kind of appear and they just like they they do their raid and they're awful little minion like they do Fury Road exactly it's great and so I loved when they showed up again in this movie it's like oh great wonderful the Kokomora are back and then it's like all of a sudden like they had to make them like they're not bad if they're not little impish creatures they're just people like us looking for their home and in fact they're going to be help us now like ah just it's so cheesy it's so it's exactly what you said you know what I thought of as well Sonny the return of Jafar this movie is the return of Jafar do you guys remember the return of Jafar yeah and I believe
JVL00:45:19Jafar is the first Disney direct-to-DVD sequel correct it was it was so long ago
Mike00:45:26direct to VHS exactly even at that even at the age that I saw that when I saw when it came out I was I was like stoked I was like are you serious they're making another Aladdin movie and I could just watch it on VHS right now was like oh this is not as good as Aladdin this is like like Robin Williams is still here but it's not as good no he's not he was not he's in the he's in the second sequel right he's in the King of Thieves yeah no you're right you're right but he
Sonny00:45:54was he they he was in a fight with Eisner somebody about like royalties off the
Mike00:46:02and so Dan Castellanata it was was the voice of the genie in in anyway it's crap I was bored I hated it it was stupid it's still gonna make a bunch of money all right well we've had well I would say we have not had some technical
Sonny00:46:32difficulties JVL has JVL had to go JVL had to get out of here in a very short order so it's just me it's just me and Mike now we're gonna finish up the show
Mike00:46:44just the two of us I'm pretty sure we were dominating the show anyway so Sonny
Sonny00:46:49so like what JVL is for the record JVL is fine he's he's not in any physical danger I don't think but uh it sounded like there were some issues uh he did at the home front so uh JVL hope hope everything's okay and uh we'll we'll
Mike00:47:06check in after we're done taping absolutely uh so anyway so it's it's uh I think we should talk a little bit about this this like secondary market that Disney discovered in the 90s of the direct uh direct-to-video uh movies and like I guess like they were money makers right because they they made a ton of money they made a ton of them so huge huge enormous money
Sonny00:47:32so you know there uh there's a whole there's a whole section on this in um in the the book about uh Eisner's time at Disney it's called Disney War uh and it's it's really fascinating but the long and the short of it is you know Disney Disney's whole business model is get people to see movies in theaters get people who love the movies that they saw in theaters to the theme parks and get them kind of trapped in that ecosystem forever right like you like you like what you see on screen at Disney you go experience the theme park and then the the rise of home video led to enormous profits now this was you know home video was huge for everyone home video was huge for all the studios it became it became an enormous profit center a big reason the streaming revolution happened is because they thought that it could be even bigger than DVD basically um and that has not really been the case but that's a conversation for another time but the long and the short of it is you know disney uh disney basically disney did an interesting thing with home video right and we all remember this i'm sure most of the people listening to this will remember this remember the disney vault oh yeah the disney so that's coming out
Mike00:48:49of the disney vault and it's going back in and it won't be out ever again yeah so disney for a long time
Sonny00:48:56did not release all of and may still not i don't know what i don't know exactly what their what their strategy is with this stuff but for a long time something like cinderella would go into the disney vault and it would come out on vhs for like 12 months and then it would go back into the disney vault and if you know you'd buy it and if you didn't buy it in that 12 months you know you were just sol that was uh that was the that was uh you know that's how they got people so they they did this for a long time and that's kind of an interesting business strategy in and of itself it's very different from how everybody else used home video which was just to like they put things out and you know yeah you know juice juice their numbers and and and get lots of bonuses
Mike00:49:36etc etc but it made sense for disney right because like you create the scarcity everybody remembers these movies from their childhood and it's
Sonny00:49:42like i gotta get it because it made a ton of sense for disney it became an event it became an event like oh fox and the hound is coming out of the vault oh fox and the hound anyway uh so everyone saw it was like oh yeah that's oh yeah that's that can stay in the vault uh anyway so so that that was one aspect of their home video stuff but the way they the way they kept things go like the way they kept the money rolling from home video was to create this kind of line of straight to vhs uh releases and the ones i always remember were the terrible uh little mermaid sequels which were all which were all awful um return of jafar i don't know i ever actually saw return of jafar but the little mermaid sequels i remember and they were and like they they did this for for a lot of they did a lot of versions of these right like it was it was a kind of a constant um constant uh money maker and there you know again the reason you do this is to keep people in the disney ecosystem it's to uh it's it's to say like oh you liked the lion king i bet you'll like this lion king sequel that we're doing i bet you'll like this this line it's called the lion king 2 simba's pride exactly uh and look there there there was there there was some um there it was smart not just from a business sense but also from a reputational sense because they did not spend the money needed to make these good and also because like there was a there was a stigma against animated sequels there was a stigma against you know putting these things out in theaters disney was kind of embarrassed by them frankly right they they they understood that they were enormous money makers but they were not yeah were they producing by the same studio i right i mean i believe so i they may have there may have been some sort of sub disney studio like a but a but they have like the disney logo on them
Mike00:51:44right but i'm wondering because didn't they break i mean because there is a like some of these studios had like their own home video subsidiaries or whatever that were like that where it was like a different or i'm looking this up on on wikipedia now there's like a disney television animation studio that is different from right the walt disney animated pictures
Sonny00:52:06the short way to answer your question is there were there were fewer quality control measures does that right does that yes i mean i like that is i think that is objectively true if you watch watch especially watch some of the uh the little mermaid my daughter was watching you have it out recently on on disney plus and i was like god this looks like shit i didn't say this to her i didn't say i i thought it i thought it in my head it's like why are you watching this
Mike00:52:36well i'm looking at the list i'm looking at the list here so you've got the return of jafar then you have aladdin and the king of thieves which is the return that that does have uh that does have robin williams in there um and in fact i'm looking at the at the box uh and it says aladdin and the king of thieves starring robin williams like they were really like yeah trying trying to make people yeah he's back baby then you've got beauty and the beast the enchanted christmas i remember the advertisement for this one on some vhs some disney vhs in the remember the old clamshell uh disney like they were they had like foam uh vhs cases you know anyway um and i remember seeing this at the ad for the beauty and the beast christmas movie and even at my young age being like that looks like crap that looks so stupid i don't want to see bell and the beast why is he the beast again i thought he was i thought he was uh a man again um then there was a second one bell's magical world don't even remember that one pocahontas 2 journey to a new world very problematic uh the lion king 2 simba's pride bell's tales of friendship uh blah blah blah but they made you know the hunchback of notre dame 2 cinderella 2 101 dalmatians 2 they haven't thought of 102 dalmatians for that the lion king one and a half i mean it just it got out of control the last one appears to be another little mermaid one the little mermaid ariel's beginning from 2008 lots of these movies and i guess they kind of ran their course after after well so i mean it's it's
Sonny00:54:16interesting because you know the again what what has happened here in recent times is disney looks at disney plus as the way to do this on a on a much bigger and um uh much more consistently profitable scale right like the idea is we're gonna use disney plus and it's gonna be a combination of the old disney channel and it's gonna be where we put the new stuff and it's where we keep people interested in the mcu and star wars in between movies and we're gonna put you know we're gonna put animated stuff here it's gonna be great and like there that works to a certain extent right like i think you can you can do uh you can do that but you you also end up you also end up diluting the brand and this is what they were always worried about with the disney animated sequels is that like it's not going to be the same level of quality and people will uh will eventually turn against it and uh and you see some of that in star wars right where like watching something like the mandalorian you know what i'm what i'm really struck by watching the mandalorian it looks cheap it looks like crap like there was a i think we talked about this on the show maybe it was boba fett i can't remember it was one of it was one of the star wars tv shows but there's a scene where like the entire village the entire town has to like evacuate and they're all they're leaving they're leaving the town and it's carl weathers is like leading a whole group of people out of the town and it's like 17 people it's like the whole town is like 17 people and it's just like this looks like cheap shit uh and you know uh and that no it's a western it's a western it's supposed to be like out west exactly exactly and anyway that's that's the that's the risk for this sort of thing and that's frankly the risk that moana 2 poses here because total moana 2 is objectively worse than than the original and like look you say like well things are sequels are often worse than the original that doesn't that doesn't hurt the studio necessarily but like even something like with pixar even well yeah even something like frozen 2 right frozen 2 is a sequel it's not as good as the original but it doesn't look like it was made for tv frozen 2 is like well animated some of the song the songs there's nothing in uh there's nothing in frozen 2 that is is good as the you know um whatever whatever the big show stopping song let it go right there's nothing there's nothing as good as let it go in that but you know show yourself is pretty good like they like it's at least kind of
Mike00:56:51catchy and into the unknown into the unknown i like that song that's fine that's a good song what's the one what's the what's the snowman song in the second one it's the uh
Sonny00:57:02uh when i'm older right yeah yeah again like the songs the songs aren't bad i we listen to that we listen to that soundtrack a fair amount not as much as the original but like my my kids were into the into that soundtrack they have not once asked to listen to the moana 2 soundtrack no garbage i can't imagine they ever asked to listen to the moana 2
Mike00:57:23soundtrack can i can we go back i'm sorry to moana 2 here because the other thing that so it once i knew that this was a movie that had been you know that was a vestige or there are vestiges of the what would have been like a six episode miniseries or something like that yeah something like that like then you can see all the seams and you can see exactly like where they were going with this so like the crew the crew that moana takes with her totally unnecessary like there is no reason for this crew except like if you are building an idea of padding out episodes and you need like some stuff where like some some character development and you've got to have like multiple characters so like but but what ends up happening in this a hundred minute movie is like you don't really learn much of anything about these new crew members it's like yeah there's the engineer who's like smart and knows stuff and the storyteller I don't know about that guy and then like the old guy is grump like it's like it's so I don't care the whole time I was watching this was like I don't care about any of this crap and it looks bad so I do what I do wonder if like if there's a reputational hit or Disney will just make so much money they won't
Sonny00:58:52care who knows well that's I mean like that's the thing is it this is you get away with releasing bad things if they make lots and lots of money and this is this is making lots and lots of money and like you know we'll see if maybe maybe it maybe the next maybe the next Moana movie people are like the last one wasn't that good they'll have like on the on the posters Lin-Manuel Miranda's back you know like like he's Robin Williams yeah exactly the other thing and
Mike00:59:24then we'll wrap this up like this makes me a retrograde knuckle-dragger but like it's so blaringly obvious how uncomfortable these movies are with like any sense like having any kind of romantic element to it and like Moana is a is a is a like an older teenager in this movie like they they make it clear that she's older she's several years older than from the first one and I you know she does it doesn't need to be a full-blown love story I'm not looking for that but it's it's weird to me it it sticks out that like there's another like teenage kid the storytelling you know buff guy that that you know like worships Maui that like there could be some kind of romance story or buddy you know puppy love kind of romance thing I mean that's like impossible to imagine apparently in this it's not it's not on the table no it not at all and like they even like give her a baby sister so there's that kind of so there is like a a kind of relationship to to root for which I don't I frankly don't care like big sis little sis like give me a break I don't know like what what is what is this Sonny like why are we so just avoiding this aspect of storytelling which I agree could be a crutch if you like use it too much and they don't they want to show that there are other things and that of course like obviously like girls don't need you know to be princesses and and be swept off their feet but like it's just it's weird you wouldn't be
Sonny01:01:05asking this about a male star finder wave what what male star what male stars of movies you wouldn't you wouldn't be asking why doesn't this man have a woman in his life well look I was
Mike01:01:19listening to a bunch of podcasts about this and I've thought a lot about no just kidding um I don't know it's weird right is it it's it's not it's it's like an aspect of humanity that is just like absent from these kids am I am I weird am I being weird about this
Sonny01:01:35no I I think you're I I understand where you're coming from uh I have I have a like I have a different sort of question which is at the end of this movie so spoilers I guess if you're you know if you've made it this far you know if you're really worried about hearing the end of Moana 2 I'm gonna spoil it here so at the end it sucks so at the end of Moana 2 again log off if you're if you're worried about spoilers at the end of Moana 2 uh the Moana dies I think like that's fairly that she like it dies and her ancestors come and instead of welcoming her into the ancestral plane or whatever wherever Polynesians go they uh she becomes a demigod is that am I is that am I am I
Mike01:02:31my 10 year old my 10 year old asked this question was like wait so is she a demigod now or not she gets all those tattoos and she gets like
Sonny01:02:40the paddle and it seems to be like magical like Maui's hook right but except we don't see her nobody actually explains this at all she doesn't demonstrate any powers she just kind of comes back to life and she gets the magical paddle and she is uh and and there's even a line where she's like so am I or and and and then Maui's like yeah your tattoos aren't as cool as mine or something right but like it's not it's it's very unclear precisely what is what that what what for a kid's movie that's not supposed to end on some sort of like you know oblique whatever i guess my question though is if she's a if she's a demigod and he's a demigod
Mike01:03:26oh they were hugging at some point yeah got it they got a love
Sonny01:03:31they got a love-hate relationship you know they got a real moonlighting thing going on there's an age gap there's an age gap she he's thousands of years old and she's 12 or whatever you know there's she's like 60 she's like 14 or 15 in this movie i don't know i'm not look i'm not gonna judge their culture i don't know i don't i'm not gonna judge what they do out there i'm just saying i like you asked for a romantic relationship mike and i'm just saying that maybe they're setting that up for number three
JVL01:04:08be careful what you wish for be careful what you wish for
Mike01:04:12uh all right well that is all the time we're gonna give to this episode uh everything is fine with uh uh with jvl don't worry and uh go check us out at subbeacon.com give us a comment and we'll talk to you next time i i i say that everything is fine with jvl i think
Sonny01:04:40we think everything is we don't overshare i'm sure it's fine
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