#281. 'Interstellar' 10th Anniversary
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With Mike Warren out, Sonny and JVL devote the whole episode to Christopher Nolan's Interstellar on the occasion of its tenth-anniversary IMAX 70mm re-release, and split hard on it: Sonny drove to a sold-out 8am Wednesday screening in Dallas (one of only ten true 70mm IMAX screens in North America), reports weeping five times, and argues the film has always been mis-marketed as "hard sci-fi" when it is actually a goopy, Spielbergian film about love as a literal force like gravity — "the closest Nolan has gotten to Spielberg." JVL finds it "on the whole unwatchable" despite admiring the score, the performances, and the ideas, calling it "the emotional equivalent of torture pornography" and arguing that, unlike the meticulously reverse-engineered Memento, Nolan never fully gets his arms around the tesseract/wormhole plot; asked to rank Nolan's filmography for a guilt-free movie night, Sonny's last pick is Insomnia while JVL's dead-last pick is Interstellar itself. They also spar affectionately over whether The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar form a trilogy of "right-coded" blockbusters, with Sonny flagging the blight-denying villain literally named Dr. Mann as a conservative dog whistle and JVL countering that The Dark Knight's ferry scene actually vindicates liberalism. The episode opens, though, with the real drama: JVL recounts last week's on-air disappearing act, when a massive tree crushed a family friend's minivan parked in his driveway during a deep freeze, triggering an 11:30pm chainsaw battle by headlamp, a next-morning "money cannon" tree-removal binge while he was at a funeral, and the simultaneous failure of his dishwasher, washer, and dryer — all while he insists on covering the woman's deductible himself since, absent negligence, her own insurance won't. Along the way there's a lengthy tangent on Moana 2 (which Sonny found weak and predicts will underperform Wicked at the box office) and the theology of demigods, before circling back to relitigate the "cheat" ending of The Dark Knight Rises.
From the show notes
Plus: catastrophe at the Last homestead!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers, that we've barely begun, and that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.
Sonny00:00:30Welcome back to the Sub-Beacon. Mike is out this week, so you're stuck with me driving this car today. That's bad news for you, because I haven't prepared anything. But I'm excited to have JBL back on the show, who, if you were listening last week, he ran out of his office at about the 45-minute mark. Just sprinted. Just sprinted out. Shannon came in and was like, we have an emergency. You got to come right now. And JBL was out like a flash. And there's a story there. What happened?
JVL00:01:12It was, so a tree fell. Tree fell. A very large tree. And this tree is next to the house. It fell away from the house, which is good.
Sonny00:01:28Yes.
JVL00:01:29Across the driveway. Less good.
Sonny00:01:34Less good.
JVL00:01:34And on to the minivan of a woman who is a longtime friend of my mother-in-law. And it squished her car.
Sonny00:01:49Yeah, I saw the pictures. It looked like the back bumper was torn totally off. The windows were smashed in.
JVL00:01:56Yeah. I mean, enormous damage. It's basically totaled. And so we had a bunch of things that had to happen all at once because this woman was trapped at my house. We were trapped in the house because we couldn't get cars out of the driveway or out of the garage and down the driveway. Right. We had this enormous tree there. It was like 12 degrees outside. It was freezing. Sort of all sorts of bad things happening at once. And so I had to run out. Also, the kids were at school. So we had to figure out, like, how are we going to pick the children up from school? Are we going to send an Uber? What are we going to do? And that's why I had to get up and leave before you guys started talking about how what you really wanted was an NC-17 Moana where she's on a sexual journey.
Sonny00:02:51That's not. Well, that's certainly not what I was saying.
JVL00:02:53What I took from this is that.
Sonny00:02:55That's not quite what Mike was saying.
JVL00:02:56Mike wanted Moana to be like Anne Hathaway's. Character in what is in Havoc.
Sonny00:03:02Yeah, basically, that's precisely I know precisely where you're going with Anne Hathaway's character. When you start when you start the sentence that way, it's like, well, there's only one way this is ending.
JVL00:03:13Why? Why wasn't that happening is what Mike wanted to know. Don't we? Don't we teach children about mature adult feelings anymore?
Sonny00:03:20Don't we need? Don't we? Don't the kids need to know what a train is?
JVL00:03:28So.
Sonny00:03:29Choo choo, folks, for the kids listening in the car right now, it's a choo choo train.
JVL00:03:32Smoke comes out of the steam steam pipe and then it goes into the tunnel like goes in the northwest. Anyway, yada, yada, yada. It's eleven thirty at night. It's now like eight degrees outside and I have a headlamp on and I am out attacking this fucking tree with a chainsaw.
Sonny00:03:51Yeah. Where'd you get the chainsaw from? Friend. Buddy brought his chainsaw over, handed it to me over the tree because he couldn't.
JVL00:03:59Actually come all the way up my driveway and. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I got a lot of that tree done, but I eventually gave up. And I just realized, like, this is I will be out here for a day trying to do this and maybe I'll actually cut my own hand off while I'm at it. And and so. I abandoned and went to went inside and then over the course of the next three hours. Our dishwasher stopped working. Started throwing up error code saying that the overflow drip pan in the bottom was was collecting water. Our washer stopped working mid cycle stopped and then our dryer stopped working. So in the span of eight hours, we had the tree fall, trash a car and three major appliances die. All of which are unrelated, by the way, all of which.
Sonny00:05:01So this is this was my question when you told me when you told me that the it wasn't just that the the the car got totaled and that the the the all the stuff I assumed what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm like stumbling here, but I assumed what had happened was that the tree had fallen down and like taken out a power line or something. There was some sort of power surge. It would make more sense. It went through the house. That is not destroyed all the appliances.
JVL00:05:33That's not what happened. They all failed differently, but just within the same couple hours. The only commonality I can think of is that I did the day before I ran over a gypsy woman. Right. Intersection. And she started yelling something at me in the rearview mirror, but I didn't pay attention as I was going.
Sonny00:05:51Well, I mean, it's probably gibberish.
JVL00:05:53So probably gibberish. So. And. On Friday morning, we had to go to a funeral down in South Jersey. So all of this was anyway. Long story short. I have simply. I was so overwhelmed. Do you ever get like this? You get so overwhelmed with things. That you decide you're simply going to solve the problem with money. Yeah. And then sort out the money problem later, because, you know, the money, it will create a problem later down the line. As you. Have to sort of, you know, balance the books and figure out where am I going to get this and that and all that. But in the moment, like just for the purposes of we've got to get through the next X hours. I'm going to be like like the the the money cannon, you know, just like out there. Just firing twenty dollar bills at this.
Sonny00:06:49You're like you're like the the money blowing box that you you walk into. You just sent you just send. A delivery guys into the money blowing box. You're like, grab as much as you can.
JVL00:07:02Whatever, whatever you just make my problem go away.
Sonny00:07:04Right. So I call this tree service people. Totally.
JVL00:07:08Yeah. Well, we can be there a couple hours. But I was like, great. Don't you want to know how much it costs? I said, no, no, just go make this tree go away.
Sonny00:07:16Yeah. Yes. I have experienced this before. I've told the story before how we when we went to Disney World or we went to Disney World and like our flight got canceled. We had a direct flight. It got canceled. And so we we like we basically we bought a one way ticket at a different airport the day of. It was like two thousand dollars or something. It was like an insane purchase. I never would have made, you know, rationally without without this kind of emergency situation going on. But like we we we had to do it. The nice thing about that, though, was that the insurance we had the flight insurance for the first time ever. We bought like trip insurance, like the only time it's like we won. We won the lottery on that one. We it was like the only time we've ever purchased trip insurance because we were like, well, you know, we've got these things. We were going to the we're going to this theme park. And, you know, it has to be it has to be right. Like the timing on this has to be right. And we ended up so I I forget what the actual numbers are. I think the ticket we we instead of flying United, we flew Southwest. The one way tickets for the family cost something like twenty one hundred dollars. And I think we got like two thousand of that. Back from the insurance, which is like, you know, again, we like it all worked out. But the but so insurance, though, insurance brings up the big question. What does how does insurance handle your tree falling on somebody else's car?
JVL00:08:46Oh, my God. So this is I'm going to talk elliptically about this. The lady whose car. Got crushed is a very. Very, very old family friend of my. Yes. Wife's mother. She is an older lady. She is. Not technically savvy. Sure. You you you're picking up what I'm laying down here. I understand. Right. Yeah. Had this been my car crushed by a tree. I simply would have dealt with it in one way or another. Yeah. But it is her car. And so I am trying to stay. I am trying to wage manage this while also simply I want to shield. It is important to me to shield her out of out of pocket. Right. Expenses.
Sonny00:09:40Totally. Totally understand.
JVL00:09:41Because she's older. She's on a fixed income like this sort of thing would be hard for her.
Sonny00:09:45It's not her fault.
JVL00:09:46It is not her fault. And she was a guest at my house. Right. This is like she wasn't parked on the on the street. She was in my house. Right. Right. But as it turns out, the tree was an act of grace. God, not of negligence. Had the tree fallen for negligent reasons, then my insurance policy would cover her expenses.
Sonny00:10:08OK.
JVL00:10:09But because it was not negligence, it was merely an act of God. My insurance will have nothing to do with it. OK. And it has to go through her insurance.
Sonny00:10:20OK.
JVL00:10:21So I am picking up her rental car. I'm picking up the deductible on her car insurance. And her insurance company is going to total out the car, but she doesn't want to. She loves this car. She wants to keep this car because she's the original owner and she babies it and she knows this car and has a bond with this car. And so I'm going to wind up paying the difference between I'm going to wind up paying the difference to get this car restored to its glory. And it just has to be that. And if this had been a UPS truck, I would not have. I would say to UPS, I'm sorry. The insurance companies say it's not my responsibility. You're on your own. Right.
Sonny00:11:11So in theory, but it's not right.
JVL00:11:13And if this was a friend of mine who worked for like a Silicon Valley, you know, if it was a friend of mine who worked at Goldman, who was visiting, I would be like, yeah, chief, you'll be fine. Yeah, but that's not the situation. And although I'm not legally liable. I do not want this very sweet old woman to bear any out of pocket costs from this.
Sonny00:11:37So to be clear what you ran over the gypsy woman and you said, fuck you, gypsy lady, you're you're on your own, but your friend, you're you're making whole.
JVL00:11:48Yes, because I don't know that gypsy lady.
Sonny00:11:50Right. Well, I mean, nobody wants to take care of a stranger. The so but I guess so. But this does my. My. My overarching question here, though, was her insurance covers it. Is that is that I mean, like, you know, like we get into like it totals and she wants to keep it, whatever. But like her insurance covers the the damage. Is that is that basically how it works?
JVL00:12:15Her insurance will cover up to the value, total value of the car. Right, right, right, right. However, since the cost of repairing the car will be larger than that. I will make up the difference.
Sonny00:12:32Right. I mean, but that's true of any that's true of any insurance situation, right? Is it like they cover up to, you know, whatever, whatever the value of the cars. Right.
JVL00:12:41I'm setting aside your your me, for instance, I would simply take the money and then just go buy a new car.
Sonny00:12:48Right.
JVL00:12:48I mean, a new car. But right. You know, they make you only go out, buy an equivalent car, same year, same mileage, et cetera, et cetera.
Sonny00:12:54That's not what she wants to do.
JVL00:12:55That's OK. I love her. Love her like a family member. Going to take care of her.
Sonny00:13:02I would drive me crazy.
JVL00:13:04That's I'm holding up the number of fingers for how much this is going to cost me.
Sonny00:13:08Is it? Well, that's I mean, that's not that bad. It's not that times 10, is it?
JVL00:13:17I mean, it's it's it's that with with this many zeros after it.
Sonny00:13:23Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, that that like again, I. That that does not like a lot of money. Looks like a lot of looking at the damage to the car, looking at the damage to the car. I will say that you getting out with that. But now I guess I don't really understand how car insurance works on this on this end of things is if they they total out the car. Does she now not have insurance on that car? Like, what is that?
JVL00:13:48Sets up a whole new policy.
Sonny00:13:50So they have to create a new policy.
JVL00:13:52New policy. That policy is ended. Unimportant. It's it's just been a. Fucking. And then since I mean, my entire family has basically been sick since two days before Thanksgiving. And so while this has been happening, we've had a rolling. We've all basically gotten sick twice over the last like two and a half weeks. And so that combined with, you know, this funeral, which is very sad. And the tree in the appliance. And I now have a new appliances coming. New appliances are coming. I went to appliance shopping.
Sonny00:14:26You got to do your favorite thing. Which is shop for dishwashers. So I want to I want some dishwasher talk. You there have been vast improvements in dishwasher technology over the last five years since you've had to buy a dishwasher. No, no.
JVL00:14:41See, Sonny, that's where you're wrong. I bought this dishwasher, which just failed two years ago. Oh, it is a Bosch 800 series. It is. I love this dishwasher. I love this dishwasher so fucking much. And it turns out that there is a crack in the zeolite system. The zeolite system. What is the zeolite system?
Sonny00:15:07What is the zeolite system? You might be asking.
JVL00:15:09It is a revolutionary new system for drying the dishes without heat. That is not exactly proprietary to Bosch, but only a couple of the high end makers have systems like this. And the repair guy came in and looked. I don't know. Science.
Sonny00:15:28Does it create like a little mini hurricane in there? No, there's like an event horizon.
JVL00:15:33There's an event horizon and it pulls the moisture in through the vent and out a wormhole into a tesseract. It's very confusing. It's an interstellar joke since we're going to talk about interstellar.
Sonny00:15:44Sounds expensive.
JVL00:15:46So the repair guy is like, oh, yeah. Now you got a crack in the zeolite system. It's OK. How much is that going to cost? He's like, it'll be at least 700 bucks to fix that. This thing is too fast. I'm two fucking years old. Are you kidding me? I got like the most expensive dishwasher because I like. He goes, yeah, the problem is we see a lot of these cracks. The zeolite systems have a lot of problems. So I am going to replace and I'm going to step down a level. I'm going from a Bosch 800 series to a Bosch 500 series, which is going to be two decibels louder than my 800. And doesn't have a zeolite system. And the reason I'm doing it is because I'm trying to avoid having another zeolite system break on me. Sonny, it is one thing to have to spend money to replace something. It is another thing to spend money to upgrade spending money to go backwards. This is almost literally the definition of the Dark Ages, right? Right. You're in 1200 BC. Things are shittier than they were in 600 or 1200 AD. Things are shittier than they were in 600 AD. And that's what's happening. I'm going backwards in time. And it's not a good feeling. Not a good feeling. But I'll tell you this. I don't know if you remember. But I when I replaced my the first Bosch I ever replaced, I kept the racks. I kept the interior racks of the Bosch.
Sonny00:17:18Yes.
JVL00:17:19Because I was just like, I don't know if I'll need them again. And I kept them for five years in my garage. Back in Virginia. And then my my lovely wife, who hated the fact that we had just dishwasher racks sitting in our garage, finally browbeat me into throwing them away. And three months later, I needed them because a dishwasher rack rack broke. And I had to replace. I had to go buy an entirely new dishwasher rack that I already owned.
Sonny00:17:49Yeah.
JVL00:17:50I'm keeping the fucking interior racks of this dishwasher forever for life. And they're going in my shed.
Sonny00:17:56They're going in your shed. You've got a whole shed.
JVL00:17:58They're going in my shed.
Sonny00:17:59Luckily, luckily, the tree didn't crush the shed. Could you imagine what would have happened if the tree had crushed the shed? That would have been better, frankly.
JVL00:18:06If the tree had had fallen on the shed, it might have broken me. That might have like that's like I just go full Michael Douglas and falling down and I just I can't take it anymore. So it's been it's been a journey. You can hear I'm still a little bit under the weather. I'm like, I'm mostly better, but I still have anger and cough. You sound fine. Excited to get my new laundry machines, I guess. Have you done this? Have you purchased washers and dryers?
Sonny00:18:36Well, so we when we moved to Texas, we had to purchase washers and dryers because in so in Virginia, like it's kind of customary to leave your washer and dryer.
JVL00:18:44Right.
Sonny00:18:44Right.
JVL00:18:45They all convey.
Sonny00:18:46It conveys in Texas. It doesn't convey. In Texas, people take their washers and dryers to the next location, which I find kind of interesting. But I don't know why. It's so strange. It is. It is strange, isn't it? Isn't it kind of strange? I don't know. But it's so like every every part of like in in in America, if you move into a new house that you buy, it's basically either like there are certain parts of the country where they leave the washer and dryer and the fridge and all that stuff. And there are certain parts of the country where they take it. Now, they in in a lot of Texas homes, they take the fridge, too, but they didn't take ours because it's like a built in. Right. It's it's like the built in. It's the built in. You have a nice. Yeah, it's incredibly nice. It's incredibly nice. I can't wait to have to replace that thing. But the but we so we had to buy a washer and dryer and like we just went to Lowe's and we're like, OK, well, we want my wife wanted to get one that was made in America because she works for the Alliance for American Manufacturing. And they you know, we ended up getting I don't even know or Electrolux is my guess. I don't I don't remember what it was. I would I would have to go look it up. I can't remember. I don't care about this sort of thing, really. But the one thing that we did that I would not do again is we got one that doesn't have the agitator in the middle.
JVL00:20:13Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:20:14It's just like the big drum. Yeah.
JVL00:20:16Like you don't like that. Why not?
Sonny00:20:18I don't like that. Everything gets off balance. Oh, I love it. So when we if you throw if we throw like if we throw like a big, you know, blanket or something in there. It's the only. The only thing we can put in the washing machine with that that load like it has to go in separately on its own because otherwise it like wraps everything up inside it and it goes on the edge like a centrifuge. Yeah. And it like it starts and then it stops and it's like, you're off balance. Fix me. I'm like, I don't. This is why I pay you machine. Do it yourself. But the anyway, so we we have that and we we have we had to replace the lid of the washer. It like cracked. It was very annoying, but that was a pretty easy fix.
JVL00:21:01So I will tell you this. It is a sign of a bubble that in the current environment for washing machines. The big innovation. A.I. Oh, they're all advertising that they're now using a.i.
Sonny00:21:20At the top model in your clothes are.
JVL00:21:22It's dumb as fuck. So it is like I don't know if you remember this, but when all of a sudden everything was named. H.D. Yeah. So right after high definition, the original 1080p definition televisions came out. Everything got named. Oh, this is H.D. Film. This is H.D. Contact line. I think that's the stage we're at with a.i. And so they just if we can slap the letters a.i. onto anything. And then say that there's a you know that we can charge a premium for it.
Sonny00:21:54Yeah.
JVL00:21:55I chose the non a.i. version.
Sonny00:21:58That's smart. I would I like I dislike I go into like my friends homes and they have like TV screens on their fridges and stuff. They you know, the fridge tells them when they're out of something and like I don't need that. I don't I don't not only do I not need that. I actively don't want it. I don't want I don't want the Internet of things.
JVL00:22:18Well, the ones I got are Internet enabled because it's getting harder to buy appliances that are not Internet enabled. But. At least they don't have fake AI, which again, and I should be clear, the stuff that it's because I was curious. I was like, so how does this AI work? What is it? And it isn't anything. It's just like it. It remembers the modes that you use most often and suggest them. So if you use the 67 minute cycle with cold water. It knows that and it says, would you like to use the 67 minute cycle with cold water? And they call that AI and they charge $300 for it.
Sonny00:22:56That's not it.
JVL00:22:56Yeah. Anyway, that's that's. That's my terrible middle-aged man thing. How are you?
Sonny00:23:03So your new dishwasher is going to be two decibels louder.
JVL00:23:06It's going to be two decibels louder. Yeah. I'm not happy about it and it won't have a zeolite system. So it'll have to use heat to dry the dishes.
Sonny00:23:15Is that bad? Do you not want it to use heat?
JVL00:23:17I mean, I feel like again, it's like saying, well, sure. I mean, you used an outhouse for all those years and then you had indoor plumbing for two years and now all of a sudden you're too good for an outhouse. Like, yeah, I'm too good for the fucking outhouse now. But the prospect of having to replace this thing again in two years. Now, for all I know, the gentleman at PC Richards, the appliance store, has an arrangement with the gentleman from the appliance fix it repair shop and the arrangement is if you just go in and tell people that fixing their appliances costs the same price and then you send them to me, I'll give you one hundred fifty bucks a head because that sounds like a thing that would happen in New Jersey. So maybe there is no problem with the zeolite system and he could have fixed my Bosch.
Sonny00:24:07And did you look into replacing the zeolite system yourself? Did you did you check on YouTube to see if it's a thing that you could do?
JVL00:24:14I just didn't didn't bother because, again, I decided had only one thing happened to me, I might have done that. But I was going to use my money cannon and please understand, I get how privileged it is to even have a money can, even though I am going to have to, like, go and balance the books and like it isn't actually free. I get that even having the ability to solve problems with money is itself a luxury.
Sonny00:24:37I'm sorry, this is but this is why this is why credit cards exist. This is why this is the reason why this is why I mean, this is like I mean, again, this is like the reason why credit card people misuse credit cards and they use credit cards wrong. But like the point of a credit card is like in an emergency and you need you're in an emergency, you're in a problem, you can worry about the interest rate later. OK, like people, people who overspend just on, you know, as a matter of course and matter of principle, like those people have have, you know, given credit cards a bad name. Now, I use my credit card for everything because I get all the points, right? I just pay it off from from the I just put everything on the credit card. I pay it off every month. And this is why I fly for free everywhere now. It's great.
JVL00:25:22So it's a it's what happened to the tree behind us? It's gone. What happened to the tree? It was great. This is I literally so I am driving to this funeral. I call the nice people from Seneca Trees and I say, can you do this for me? And they say yes. And I come home from the funeral and the tree is gone. That's great.
Sonny00:25:46Problem disappeared.
JVL00:25:47It literally I literally made the problem disappear with my money.
Sonny00:25:52The problem, the problem. It's like I'm some money on it.
JVL00:25:55Joe Bluth, right? You know, God Bluth. I'm sitting there with my, you know, I know I dropped money. I drop a hundred pennies on it and it disappears. Yeah. And that was a good feeling. That was a nice feeling. What have you been up to, man? What's going on?
Sonny00:26:09Nothing. There's nothing in my life that's as interesting as as the various calamities that have befallen you.
JVL00:26:15So you did not want to see Moana. Fuck.
Sonny00:26:19Well, my my point, my point when when Mike brought this up is that like. Yeah, there, you know, the. It's interesting. So I think I think he's right that there has been a shift in how like Disney cartoons treat princesses like hoping to be in relationships. Right. Like that was like always the thing where a princess wants to marry somebody, go live in the castle, you know, king and queen. Sure. Happily ever after. And like I and and Disney has certainly moved away from that. Indeed, that's like kind of what. Frozen is about right. Frozen is like explicitly a rejection of that. Yeah, it's like it's like, no, we don't actually print could be evil. Women, women don't need a man to empower them. They're empowered on their own. There you go. And like it's definitely and it's it's also interestingly kind of in in Canto. So remember in in in Canto, there's a song where like it's a song towards the end where the the cousin who had. Like had a crush on a guy, the whole movie like they get they get together and the guy's like, let's get married. And then she's like, slow down. I always hated that. I actually hated that because it was like it's like, screw you. She's wanted this the whole movie. You can't you can't have it both ways like this.
JVL00:27:42Oh, no, it was great, though, because that character, the guy character, the whole movie has been like, well, won't somebody marry me? I just want to get married. Like he's like that with the sister when he's set up with the sister beforehand. So the reason she's saying slow down is because he's a little needy. Yeah, it's great.
Sonny00:27:59I thought that I don't I don't care for that. I don't care. That's not how the world really works. Come on. So I understand. I understand his basic point. I do think that. Did you see? So you you did not see Moana, too, right? You did. I did not. Couldn't pay. So so so Moana to like there's a thing at the end. And we talked about this a little bit. But there's a thing at the end that implies that Moana is now a demigod and Mo and Maui is a demigod. So like. I don't know, man.
JVL00:28:29Are they going to. I don't know. Is this like the Greek stuff where they eat the demigods eat their own children? I don't know. I was a Polynesian deities like. I don't know how that works.
Sonny00:28:40I was. I don't know. But this gets me into a separate point, which I was trying to explain to my six year old what a demigod is. He was like, so it's like he's like Jesus. And I was like, well, kind of.
JVL00:28:52No, not not precisely.
Sonny00:28:55No, precisely. I mean, Jesus. Is superpowered like Maui, different superpowers, but he has superpowers. He is the son of a god. And Maui is not technically the son of a god. He was human, but the gods adopted him. And it's kind of like Hercules, but not really. Hercules is actually closer to Jesus. I confused him very badly. I confused him very badly.
JVL00:29:14You should have told him a demigod like Mary, because Mary is kind of like a co-god with Jesus. I'm sorry. This is an elaborate Catholic troll just to make Father Anthony and Father Harrison. Start screaming at their phones, because one of the things you will often hear Protestants saying about Catholics is that they worship Mary and they view her as co-god, which is not, in fact, true. But sorry, digression, Catholic humor. If Mike was here, he'd laugh at it.
Sonny00:29:43But Jesus is kind of a co-god.
JVL00:29:46No, it's a triune God. There's only one God. It's like if I pointed to an olive tree, I was like, so there's olive oil in it. And there are olives hanging from the branch. And then there's wood. Which of these three things is olive tree? And the answer is, well, all of them are. They're inseparable. That's. But you can't separate them.
Sonny00:30:12You can squeeze the you can squeeze the olives until the oil comes out. Is that what the crucifixion was?
JVL00:30:17I mean, basically. Well, that's that's good. Good work on your part. The kid. So tell me more about. The Moana stuff or it doesn't matter.
Sonny00:30:28I think we're all done. We're all done with this. Let's move on to the.
JVL00:30:31All right. Box office.
Sonny00:30:32Box office. I mentioned last week that the the delta between 2024 and 2023 had gone from, I think, 12 percent to 7 percent. It's now down to like 6 percent. It's a they're 2023 is closing in. You know what's helping? You know what's helping lead the charge?
JVL00:30:50Family films.
Sonny00:30:51Well, family films. But well, and speaking of family films, Interstellar. Interstellar is the greatest family film. So the Interstellar was in, I think, 160 theaters.
JVL00:31:07These 70 millimeter prints were just.
Sonny00:31:09Well, so it's it was in 160 some IMAX theater. Hold on. Let me pull up the actual numbers. But it was it was it's got a 10th anniversary IMAX re-release. It is currently in 165 theaters.
JVL00:31:22I remember going to see that with you and Continetti. Yeah. At the Air and Space. That was 10 years ago.
Sonny00:31:3010 years ago. 10 years. Time flies. 10 years. So Interstellar is back in theaters for the 10th anniversary. It's on 165 screens. 10 of those screens are the IMAX 70 millimeter screen. So those are the those are the I think the only IMAX theaters that still use film. There may be some 35 millimeter project. I don't know for sure. But the but the. The IMAX 70 millimeter is like the top of the line IMAX. This is like when you say IMAX, this is what people think of, you know, the screen. The screen in the Dallas theater is five stories tall. It's three stories wide. Enormous, enormous screen. It's very large. It's I mean, just just huge. That's where I saw Oppenheimer for the third time. Was that that theater to see the IMAX 70 millimeter print? Because I saw it once. I saw it once in. I saw it once in 70 millimeter at the press screening. I saw it a second time at the the Alamo Drafthouse, just on a DCP, just a digital cinema projector, whatever DC, whatever DCP stands for. I don't even know. And then I saw it at the IMAX 70 millimeter and the IMAX 70 millimeter was great. It's the best way to see you should see everything should be seen in IMAX 70 millimeter. But the the the 10 the 10 places in North America. That you can see this movie in IMAX 70 millimeter. One of them is in Dallas, like 10 miles from my house. So I I went Wednesday at 8 a.m. You know why I went to a Wednesday at 8 a.m. Screening JVO.
JVL00:33:09Why is that?
Sonny00:33:09Because every screening was sold out. Every screening was sold out. Like for it showed six times. It showed six times a day at like 8, 1130 to I don't know, 6, 10 p.m. And then a 220 a.m. Showing. It was a 220 a.m. Showing. Those were not sold out, but they were like 90 percent sold. The only seats in those ones were like the front two rows. Could you imagine what kind of degenerate you have to be to go to a 220 a.m.
JVL00:33:41You have a problem. 220 a.m.
Sonny00:33:44Of that screening of a 10 year old movie. Anyway, it was it's it's like it's a real event. I mean, it really is a real event. I walk. You walk in. You walk into the auditorium. And again, the auditorium is cavernous. It's it's enormous. It's big. Like, you don't see movie theaters be big anymore. It's huge. And you walked in and the lights are down. The lights are down. The like house lights aren't on over the speakers. They're playing the score from the movie. There's no advertisements on the screen. You know, usually you go into a movie theater these days. There's ads on the screen. There's a new V with Maria.
JVL00:34:22Oh, God. Got to get your new V.
Sonny00:34:25There was no new V. There were no previews. There were no there were no trailers. There were no ads. There was nothing like that. Just a just a dark screen. A guy who works at the Cinemark comes out and talks about the actual process of displaying this film, which is like kind of interestingly technical. You know, it's it's a pure analog system. It's it is, you know, they run film. The film runs, you know, normally if you look at a film projector, the film runs vertically. Right. It goes like over the IMAX screen. It goes horizontally. At 24 frames per second, which is kind of interesting in and of itself. And the film strip itself is huge. I mean, it's like, yeah, it's it's like the cells are gigantic. The cells are gigantic. And there is an interesting thing I learned this time that I did not know that I did not. He did not mention because he gave like kind of the same spiel before the Oppenheimer IMAX 70 millimeter. The so the projectors for these these giant 70 millimeter IMAX projectors. They they have a little windshield wiper on them, essentially. So if you get if so, if like a little piece of dust or something gets onto the screen, which happens, you could actually. So after you mentioned this, I watched the screen waiting to see the dust. And every 20 minutes or so, a piece of dust would get on the lens. And because it's, you know, because it's projected so huge, the piece of dust is big. I mean, it's like like an actual part of the film almost. And and you and if you just sit there and watch, just watch that little speck of dust or whatever. After a certain amount of time, I think he said the thing runs every 10 or 20 seconds. After a certain amount of time, it would just disappear. It was just like you couldn't. It wasn't like it wasn't, you know, I mean, it's not like an actual windshield wiper. That would be too distracting. It just like goes across with, I would assume, a like frame of the film. Yeah. Every 20 seconds or whatever, you know. So like you don't see it, but but it takes care of the problem. It's it's really again, it's just a fascinating little mechanical thing that does not exist anymore. These, you know, you don't you don't have this sort of thing these days.
JVL00:36:35People was everybody in the audience wearing a trench coat because this is the sort of film pornography that a very like you, me and Tony. Yeah. Would be into it. Right. We would just go in there like sickos.
Sonny00:36:51But it was but it was I mean, again, it was sold out and Interstellar has. It's funny. I've been I've been texting with some friends of mine who said that, you know, he he told his like normie brother in law who goes to see one movie a year that he was going to see Interstellar at the Bob Bullock IMAX, which is not a 70 millimeter IMAX, but it's a very large IMAX screen in Austin. He was like, I'm going, you know, I'm going to see the IMAX Interstellar. He's like, oh, man, that's awesome. Can I come? This has an Interstellar has found an enormously large normie audience. Hmm. That is that is very into this movie. And I have thoughts on this. I have some thoughts on this. We can discuss it when we actually talk about the film itself. But it's it is the audience was the audience was packed. A shocking, shocking number of women there, frankly, for for, you know, again, as you say, like kind of what you would expect to be more of a film nerd crowd. The furthest the guy who was introducing it asked, like, what the farthest anyone had come. Somebody was there from New Orleans, which is like an eight hour drive. He had driven eight hours to get to the 70 millimeter IMAX screening of Interstellar 10 years after the fact.
JVL00:38:06Degenerate film snob.
Sonny00:38:08We are. We are.
JVL00:38:09We can't go to the normal IMAX. No, I need the 70 millimeters.
Sonny00:38:15You go to the you go to the normal IMAX. That's basically just a multiplex screen. It really it's like it's you know, that's like looking at it's like watching it on your laptop. You might as well. Might as well.
JVL00:38:25Take a shower wearing a raincoat.
Sonny00:38:27You might as well pull out your phone and watch it in portrait mode. If you're going to go to a regular IMAX screen, you got to go to the IMAX 70 millimeter. Anyway, I'm going on and on. But it is like I will get to the movie in a minute.
JVL00:38:40What happened to Moana 2? Did it drop? What's the drop on Moana?
Sonny00:38:44It did fine. It held. It held OK. I mean, it dropped 63 percent, which is a pretty big drop. But it also opened so ridiculously large that that sort of thing is to be expected. This is the biggest. This was the biggest post Thanksgiving weekend ever. It was, you know, it was just an enormous weekend. We could drop 55 percent. Those two movies, Moana 2 and Wicked are both over 300 million. Gladiator 2 is still holding OK. I mean, it's you know, it'll it'll probably get up around 150, 160 million, something like that.
JVL00:39:18Is Moana 2 going to outgross Wicked?
Sonny00:39:23I yes, I think. I think Moana. I think Moana 2 will outgross Wicked, but I don't think it's going to get to, you know, some some folks had suggested 500, 600 million for that. I think it's dropping too fast for that. I don't think it's very good. I mean, it's just not a good movie. I haven't heard. I haven't heard anybody be like, I love Moana 2. I'm going to go back to it over and over again. It is. It is total, you know, it's not it's not it's not doing. And I think Wicked is going to hold very well because it's going to win a bunch of awards.
JVL00:39:51It's going to, you know, you'll have a second life once.
Sonny00:39:54Award season starts and it's going to and then people are going to start doing sing along screenings. It's going to be a nightmare. But wait, you know, but the but yeah, the again, the biggest.
JVL00:40:09Interstellar. Do you have a big boy review?
Sonny00:40:14Interstellar. Ten years ago, Christopher Nolan released his first film post The Dark Knight Rises. And I don't I I'm curious. Before I say anything, JBL, what's your remembrance of how that film was a received was received a critically and be commercially?
JVL00:40:35My memory is that critically it was met with. A great deal of respect. And also befuddlement. So respectful befuddlement.
Sonny00:40:51Respectful befuddlement. OK, yeah.
JVL00:40:54That it did well commercially. But not gigantically well. Right. Is this correct?
Sonny00:41:02I think that's I think that's a fair. I think that is a fair assessment of how it was received. I want to hold on. I just want to pull up the awards because I want to make sure. So I don't think this was nominated for Best Picture. I feel like this was a this was this was a movie. It was was borderline, but I can't remember for sure. Give me one sec here. It was nominated for Best Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects and Production Design, but not no acting, no Best Picture, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And like you said, it did well, but it didn't do that well. It was a very expensive movie. I think it cost one hundred eighty million dollars, you know, which was real money back in 2014.
JVL00:41:54Yeah, that's like 70 percent of the cost of Moana, too.
Sonny00:41:58Could you imagine? It's it's it's it basically cost a hundred million dollars less than Red One. Think about it that way.
JVL00:42:08Oh, it's funny because it's true.
Sonny00:42:11Yeah, but the but so Interstellar cost Interstellar cost about one hundred eighty million dollars is very expensive. It grossed around 700 million worldwide, which was like, which is a good number. Like nobody nobody is. Turning their nose up at 700 million. But you got to remember, he's coming off of the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises, which both grossed over a billion dollars and Inception, which grossed nearly a billion. It did very, very well. So there were there were very high expectations for this. It didn't blow. It didn't blow anybody away. It only grossed 200 million dollars. It grows less than 200 million dollars domestically. It grows less than 200 million dollars domestically. So it was like I think people were I think it was a mild disappointment financially. Is my basic remembrance of it. And I think is basically right. And you see this because Dunkirk, his next movie comes out. And that was a movie. He made that for like 100 million dollars. He made that for like half half as much money. And it did. Again, it did well, but neither here nor there. So, you know, this movie, I think, has grown a lot in people's minds over the year. As I mentioned, you know, my friend, his normie audience, his normie family member. Are like totally into love Interstellar. Love it. And I think I think what has happened to the film is this. When it came out, everybody talked about how it was this super cerebral, hard sci-fi movie. Right. Like we got Kip Thorne here. Kip Thorne is here and he's showing us how black holes look. And it's all about relativity and it's about time dilation. And we've got Tesseracts and we've got, you know, it's gravity and we've got equations. And, you know, this is a hard sci-fi movie. And this was the wrong way to market it because it's not a hard sci-fi movie at all.
JVL00:44:04Fantasy movie.
Sonny00:44:04It's not a hard sci-fi movie at all. It is a it's a sci-fi. It's a movie with the trappings of a hard sci-fi movie that is actually a goopy, emotional Spielberg film. This is the closest Christopher Nolan has gotten to Steven Spielberg. I think there is there is a. A huge emotional heart at the middle of this film, to the extent that the film is actually literally about how love is a force like gravity that transcends time and space.
JVL00:44:35One might even call it the fifth element.
Sonny00:44:37One could call it the fifth element. Precisely. Precisely. But it is it is a movie that posits love as a real thing and a real force that transcends time and space. And yes, is what makes people do what they do. And if it it's not until you get a little distance from the movie and start watching it at home that you see this. And look, I have a very I've I think I've talked about this on the show before, but I've certainly talked about it with you. I had a very interesting experience of watching this movie. Movie comes out in 2014. I see it the first time and I'm like, this is good. I like this movie. This is a good movie. Good movie. I enjoyed it. But I was I was left a little cold by it. To be totally honest, I was left a little cold by it because I was expecting the hard side. I think there's a there's just this enormous kind of deus ex machina in the middle involving beings from a fifth dimension, you know, whatever. I saw the movie the second time I saw the movie with which was with you and you and Matt at the Air and Space IMAX. Second time I saw the movie was after I had learned that my wife was pregnant with our first child. Hits very differently that second time. And it is it is continued to hit differently as I have rewatched it over the years as my daughter is who is now nine. Basically Murph's age, right? Basically Murph's age when he leaves Earth. I I I am not a big crier in movies, not a big crier in movies. I was like quietly weeping in my seat like five different times. On Wednesday, because it because it is it is a movie. It is a movie about parents and children and love and abandonment and what you actually want for them versus what they want. Like it is it is again, it's Spielbergian. It is it is sentimental and. And deeply emotional and like keys on things that are obviously very important to Nolan and we can we can talk about some of his background, I guess. Like it is just it is. This is why I think the movie has found this kind of, again, big, big normie audience is because it is not the hard cerebral sci-fi 2001 ask movie that it was kind of pitched to audiences as initially. It is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, except with a much bigger heart at the center of it.
JVL00:47:18Yeah, maybe. Maybe I.
Sonny00:47:24You don't love it, do you?
JVL00:47:26I find it. There are many things about it which I admire. And I find it on the whole unwatchable. So it is. Beautiful. The score is astonishing. The score is really something else.
Sonny00:47:46It's amazing.
JVL00:47:46And the performances are wonderful and some of the ideas are great. But for me, this is the emotional equivalent of torture pornography. So like, like, you know, the whole it's not called torture, but the whole genre, which is like saw and hostile and torture porn. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, you know, we can do things. They're just going to turn your stomach. Watch us do that. And this movie is like week. I can do things. They're going to break your heart, make you cry in your seat. Here, watch. Look, you can't stop yourself from crying, can you? So my reaction is fuck you.
Sonny00:48:31So you think of it as Christopher Nolan's Pixar movie? Yes. Not his Spielberg movie.
JVL00:48:37I mean, tomato, tomato. But yeah, Pixar movies are largely Spielberg movies. And I, I really have never gotten over the fact that it doesn't make sense. OK, but this is the movie that. That made it that should have made me unsurprised by Tenet. Because Nolan, I mean, it is now pretty clear from his work. Sometimes he doesn't get all of the bad on the ball. Right, like he doesn't he doesn't bat a thousand and like Dunkirk is not the best movie in the world, the very good movie. But he he understands the movie qua the movie. Right. He understands what he has built. He certainly understands what he's built in Oppenheimer, in the second two Batman movies, in Inception. It is it feels and also in Tenet like he just had this some sort of big idea. And you know what this is like as a writer. Sure. You you get some idea that you're in love with and you write around it. But as you're writing it, you never really. Have your arms all the way around it, you know, and but you think the idea is good enough to make the piece worth to make the piece work on its own. Even if you don't quite. Like have full, full ownership over, you know, everything. And that's what this intended are. I think these are big, very cool ideas. It turns out he doesn't actually have control over. He doesn't understand the story. All the way down to the level, you know, famously when when they did Memento, you know, they physically undid the script and rearranged it, you know, backwards to forwards to make sure that every single beat made sense.
Sonny00:50:40And every beat doesn't make sense of this.
JVL00:50:43Like it just because they're they're like, oh, how does this have just magic? What is the equation going to do? Who can say what is the spaceship? It's the planet Earth, or maybe it's not like. It's just like there's a lot of. Yeah, don't don't get too hung up on that. And all I can think of. And I really always thought this was Nolan's giving the finger to the audience in Tenet when the little French girl says.
Guest00:51:09Don't try to understand it.
JVL00:51:11Feel it. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I would like to understand the story.
Sonny00:51:17Yeah. So in. So I don't. Have you read Tom Schoen's book, The Nolan Variations? No, it's it's great. I strongly I highly recommend it. I'll link to it in the if I remember, I'll link to it in the email that goes out with this. But it's it's the most in-depth collection of interviews that Nolan has ever sat down for. He talks to Tom Schoen. It's I mean, it's if you were if you are a Nolan guy like I did a podcast with him. I did a podcast with Tom Schoen. It was a great episode. But it's a it's like it's a must own. It's a great birthday present or Christmas present for anybody who wants. Who if you have a Christopher Nolan fan in your life, but the there's in the in the section on Interstellar, Schoen makes essentially the the the same the same point you do. Right. So he's he says objections on Interstellar range from the pedantic to the amusingly pedantic to the genuinely perplexed rather than nitpick Nolan with a barrage of complaints. I present him with what seems to me the biggest one, the deus ex machina device of the five dimensional beings who orchestrate. The entire plot, placing the Tesseract in the black hole so that rather than perishing there, Cooper can communicate with his daughter and feed her the data that will allow her to save mankind from extinction. It's quite an intervention. And like, this is totally true. I 100 percent agree with that. Right. That's this is it is the entire for all the talk about Nolan as a puzzle box filmmaker with the clockwork precision that sometimes is true. It's sometimes it's true. It's truer with. Like Dunkirk or Inception than than some of his some some of his other movies, including Tenet and Interstellar, I think. And and Nolan responds, he says, you know, I think I think you're missing I think you're missing the narrative point, which is that jumping into black holes is the ultimate act of faith. He's caught by creatures who, you know, exist and who you've been wondering who they are for the entire film. Who are they? It's first set in the first act. It's all up front. Who put the wormhole there? And so they're not a deus ex machina. They're specified right from the beginning. Are you like it or not? For people who like the film, they don't read the Tesseract as a deus ex machina. They understand where it's coming from. And then Tom Schoen says, well, I do like the film. And then Nolan interjects, saying, like it more unreservedly. And that and that and like that. And you can I can just see I can see like the smile on Nolan's face as he's saying that. Right. I can see it like the kind of joking tone, except he means it. He 100 percent means it. And like that is totally kidding.
JVL00:53:54I'm not kidding.
Sonny00:53:55That that is that is actually where I have gotten to with this movie is that I I cannot I cannot separate my own personal experience of watching the movie and like different phases of my life from the mechanics of the movie, from the plotting of the movie. And I I just I love it. I love giving myself over to it. I love I mean, the the it's between it's so funny. Because between this and Oppenheimer, you have essentially big three hour movies where most of the action is just people talking.
JVL00:54:32Right.
Sonny00:54:33It's just people talking their masterpieces of editing as much as anything else. He edits in such a way to keep you engaged and entertained without it feeling frenetic or forced. Right. And there's there's a great sequence in this film. The best the best the best iteration of this in the film is where he. Where they get to man's planet, they get to the ice planet, and he's cutting back and forth between trying to stop man and the the action that's going on on Earth, where Murph is trying to figure out, you know, what secret has been left. And, yes, she has to distract Casey Affleck by burning his field. And like, it's just this it's this masterpiece of editing, cutting back and forth. And then he finally stops cutting and we get to the part where. He's got to reconnect the ship. Right. And they go into the spin. And it's just like. It is as good as anything. He has done it is as it is as thrilling as the the the final 30 minutes of like, I don't know, Return of the Jedi. Right. Which like kind of famously cuts between the action on Endor and in space and in the Death Star and does it in such a way. That is like seamless and, you know, propulsive and entertaining and and you don't lose track of what's going on. That's the other thing is when you're cutting between all of these different times and locations and actions and behaviors, it's easy to lose the audience and he never loses the audience. And that's why I mean, the film, the film, again, I will 100 percent grant that that it does not always make intellectual narrative sense, but it always makes emotional. Narrative sense. Yeah. And I hate that. See, that's that. That works. That's that's that's just film, man.
JVL00:56:31I would say so. I don't disagree with any of what you just said. And I, as I said, I intensely admire things about it. Right. Like the score, like the editing. But all I can say about it is this. If you told me. JVL, you got three hours of Hall Pass tonight. You don't have any work to do. Nothing to do. You can sit down and just luxuriate in any Christopher Nolan movie you want. Which one do you want? The first thing I'd say would be give me Dark Knight Rises. If you then said, oh, sorry, I don't have that one. What's next? I'd say give me Dark Knight. You said, I'm sorry, we don't have that either. I didn't say how about Inception? Right. If we kept going down the literal last. Christopher Nolan movie I would pick from his entire filmography is Interstellar.
Sonny00:57:31Wow. That's a I don't know. It's it's it's a very hard question to answer, because for me, it's a very it's a differently hard question to answer, because I have like five of his movies are five out of five star movies.
JVL00:57:45No, I'm saying again, you know, I would be and I would be happy with almost any one of those movies. I mean, there are only a couple of those movies that I would not want to watch again. Um, Memento, for instance, I don't want to watch again. It's very, very tough watch. Like it's, you know, it's a dark, dark movie. Yeah. But I mean, I thought I would watch Tenet again just to see some of the interesting things done in Tenet, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense. Yeah. Before I would choose to spend more time with Interstellar again.
Sonny00:58:18Yeah. It's interesting that you put Dark Knight Rises over the Dark Knight.
JVL00:58:24I just realized that the Dark Knight is a better movie than the Dark Knight Rises. Just like the Dark Knight Rises, the Dark Knight is a perfect movie. There is nothing wrong in it. And the Dark Knight Rises has some first act problems. And yet the third act of Dark Knight Rises might be the best third act of any movie ever made.
Sonny00:58:50Well, the third in the third act, he does. He again does cutting. He does. The thing where he cuts between three different sequences, right? He's cutting between Batman, you know, flying around in the Batwing and fighting Bane and the bus that's on the bridge with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
JVL00:59:07It just goes on rails once you get the third act in a way which the cathartic satisfaction of the third act of Dark Knight Rises is so visceral and so good that over. I mean. Because the truth is, if you had to find a weak point of Dark Knight, it is actually the way in which you you wind up in this fight with the Joker through the, you know, with the computerized lenses and that you then after that go to the showdown with Harvey. Like there is a again that all works for me and it's great. But in terms of the satisfaction of a third act close. What what what Dark Knight Rises delivers over that final 45 minutes is just the most satisfying filmmaking film watching experience I think ever.
Sonny01:00:07My beef with the Dark Knight Rises is that it ends on a cheat and it ends on a cheat in one very specific way. Right. Like so the you know, for folks who don't remember the Dark Knight Rises spoiler, I guess if you're worried about spoilers for the Dark Knight Rises. To not know. But the but, you know, the way the Dark Knight Rises end is Batman flies the bomb out into the bay and it explodes and everybody thinks he dies. They make the statue to him. And then as we as we close things out at the end, we talk. We we hear that somebody has fixed the autopilot function and and and Alfred goes to his his, you know, Paris cafe and drinks his, you know, drinks his drink and he looks over and he sees Bruce Wayne. I I would be fine with all of that, except for except for there's a shot. There's a shot after there's a shot after Batman gets the bomb and is flying out into the bay in the cockpit of the Batwing and they show him in the Batwing and then he flies out into the bay and then the bomb blows up. You take out that one shot, take out that one shot and I am OK with everything else. That's a cheat. That is that's a big cheat.
JVL01:01:26No one's ever really gone.
Guest01:01:27I know I I get it.
Sonny01:01:31It's such a nitpick. It's such a nitpick. But it like it just it it drove me so crazy.
JVL01:01:37So here's why I I love that cheat and I love that this is what they do. So the people don't fully understand, I think non nerds don't understand that the Christopher Nolan Batman is very much not a canon Batman. It is a very I mean Batman is classically a psychopath who does what he does because it's a compulsion and the idea that he would ever want to walk away from it. Like, you know, there's a famous line in the short maxi series identity crisis in which you have voiceover from Batman and he's saying, you know, he says, you know, people think that this is a compulsion. It's an obsession of mine. But that's not that's not. I could stop anytime I want to it's just today isn't that day and tomorrow won't be either and it's this like fantastic unreliable narrator where the the way in which Batman is insisting that he could stop anytime he wants is all the proof you need that he can't right he's a monster but Nolan's Bruce Wayne is not that Nolan's Bruce Wayne is looking for a way out almost from the beginning he's looking for a way out over the course of all three movies and
Sonny01:02:54so for Nolan to give that character an out is incredibly fitting because that is an almost unique take on Batman oh I don't even ever like that oh but see I don't even mind I don't even mind giving him the out I don't mind the last shot of him at the cafe that's not what I mind I mind very specifically the shot in the cockpit yeah no I there's no way he could have escaped like that just like it doesn't it doesn't work it doesn't work as a piece of but again this is like this is a this is such a nitpick that it's it almost
JVL01:03:24feels dumb to but what is your last Nolan so same thing right you have three hours tonight no responsibilities you can just luxuriate so this isn't a which is the best this isn't which is the favorite but you're getting just the beautiful experience of guilt-free I'm gonna luxuriate in a Christopher Nolan movie what would be your first and then like if we went through and I just kept saying oh I'm sorry somebody rented that I don't have it what is the last one
Sonny01:03:54uh number one this number number one would probably be tenant just because I I I just I uh it's like you I love I love watching it and like I love trying to uh figure out why how I have failed and not understanding that whole middle segment of the movie I know this is a me problem it's a me problem somewhere I've I've failed Christopher Nolan and I'm gonna I'm gonna solve um uh but I I love that and again I love that movie for reasons that are that are hard to disentangle from the way I watched it I like remember that was like the first big movie that played in theaters during COVID and like the theater shut down again after that because nobody went to go see it and like I went to see it in an IMAX theater and I just like started like I did like a fucking joker smile like as the as the as the shot in the opera house goes where they're like running around the corner and the camera's like I'm like oh this is what a real movie looks like I've been watching all these VOD movies that got dumped to Netflix or wherever for the last six months I'd forgotten what a real movie looks like um the the last one again this is not I don't think this is his worst movie in some ways it is his most underappreciated movie but the last one would probably be insomnia yeah you get that even following I don't know have you ever seen following which is like his
JVL01:05:21student film no I never did
Sonny01:05:24so so following is interesting because it was a film he started shooting as a student he finished it up uh after school it came out the same year that it came it played at um it played at Sundance the same year that the Blair Witch Project played at Sundance interestingly um but like it was it like got kind of lost in the shuffle it's on the Criterion Collection if uh anybody wants to wants to check it out but it's it's interesting even that movie is is very interesting as a Christopher Nolan film because it's it's a very interesting movie and it's a very interesting movie and it's it like it does his whole kind of time shifting parallel timeline structures but in a in a slightly wonkier way than he he didn't have full grasp over over that aspect of the script but also just like he he there are character names that show up in later movies used in this where it's like clearly there was something in his head that what he he had something in his head while he was making this that has shown up in almost everything else he has made it's fascinating again if you're a nolanologist fascinating movie um to check out i recommend it uh for folks who haven't
JVL01:06:30seen it i'll just i'll just add this for close out we were running really long um so i i have not allowed g money to see any of the nolan batman movies yet because he's eight i think it's too much i think that the scarecrow scarecrow the scarecrow the visions that you see are too much and i think that the uh the joker is way too much for him like i think that however he is endlessly needling me about it like when can i watch when can i watch when can i watch and he said are there any parts of these movies that i could watch and so i sat down with him and watched some selected scenes from rises um including the fight with bane and batman in which he breaks in the back in yeah and a just you know just reminded of what an amazing movie this is but g money like his mind was blown it was like he was seeing what cinema could be for the first time ever and he never occurred to him because he's like raised on marvel movies you know or aquaman and yeah and seeing this he was like i want more and i was like oh buddy i'm sorry we can only do i'm so you know we can't do
Sonny01:08:01a lot more than that sequence is so good i there was a stretch there was a stretch in 2013 14 when the movie came out on you know blu-ray digital whatever where i was just watching those the the bane scenes on youtube just i would just like sit down and be like i'm gonna watch i'm gonna watch
JVL01:08:17bane's speech at black gate yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna watch feel in charge i'm gonna i'm gonna
Sonny01:08:22watch i'm gonna watch the the bat cave fight because it's because it's so god it's anyway so good your punishment will have to be more severe yeah that's all oh tom hardy all right that's it uh for this week's episode on interstellar uh go sign up at the patreon uh sub sub beacon.com you'll easily find us uh leave leave a comment uh uh tell us your favorite nolan movie in the in the comments come see the movie in imax playing for another week at the just fly out to dallas you'll be fine it'll be great we'll have a few drinks get a few laughs have a few laughs uh all right uh yeah i uh jbl can i make a a can i say a a strong thing sure i i have argued to folks more more privately because i don't i don't want to make a big deal about about this on main on social media main as they say but i i have argued fairly consistently that the dark knight the dark knight rises and interstellar are like the three great right coded blockbusters of the last 20 years and i don't think that's i don't think that's wrong right am i am i wrong on that like conservative coded i think that's wrong you think that's wrong you don't think you don't
JVL01:09:54think that's right i think that's wrong i think the the i mean i can see where you get them right so for dark knight it's because of the surveillance and the fact that it's a it's very express 9-11 parallels like the scene of him in the the it's the war on terror the movie is about the war on terror well it is it's about the war on terror and about the the difference between how illiberal and liberal societies handle their confrontations against um and it asks the question can but here's here's why i think it's not actually right-wing because the the question is can liberalism defend itself against an illiberal challenge and the the right-wing answer to that is no the right-wing answer is that we must become illiberal to fight the right that that is if you if you were going to boil down the war temporarily a liberal
Sonny01:10:54in certain circumstances which is exactly what happened well except that the the movie the movie
JVL01:11:02takes the opposite view and the key there is that the the prisoners and the people on the ferry both throw away the detonators right and i so that's why i just don't think it fits neatly into i don't think it fits in any like real recognizable way into the conservative liberal fight um dark knight is a very again i could see where you would think that because it happens sort of post-occupy wall street and there is a if you know now these things belong to everybody aspect to it but it's really i mean it is the direct influence of it is tale of two cities and well right which is which is about
Sonny01:11:43the horrors of left-wing uh revolt and economic populism yeah i mean it's about well yeah conservatives are conservatives are very opposed to the french revolution
JVL01:11:54that is true but if if you go back and read tale of two cities i just wrote about this this week um i saw it is it is also full of the french revolution was inevitable because of the depredations of the aristocracy and i think that is an undercurrent happening within within dark night rise as well and interstellar i mean i think the only reason i think the coding is because it's not climate change that gets us it's blight and then the man the evil scientist named after the climate change doctor is the villain the villain is played by matt damon climate change uh the villain named dr man
Sonny01:12:38right fakes his climate science data so it was so funny i was i was the way i described it to a friend was like the the term dog whistle is overused now dog whistle is now essentially the way people use it is to say here's a bigoted statement that my opponent said that i don't like that gives him plausible deniability and that's like a that's kind of what it is but it's not entirely what it is right a real dog whistle is a thing that you say that is keyed in such a pitch that only true believers hear it and understand it right right and when i i when i describe interstellar as the dr man stuff as a dog whistle what i mean is like zero liberal film critics which is ninety eight percent of them picked up on it like zero of them have ever mentioned this in any way and every single conservative film and every single every single conservative or liberal i know who are libertarian i know who saw the movie came up to me at some point it kind of like whispered like so so dr man huh and like that and like again it's like it's a in it there's other stuff like the textbook right the federal textbook that says the the you know the space mission was faked to bankrupt the soviet union blah blah blah like there there are other little things but it it it it is interesting it's also like i think it's very clear that nolan got tired of being pegged as a conservative filmmaker and has like stepped away from that in certain certain regards like with oppenheimer and uh and um tenets
JVL01:14:06whitewashes the actual malignant influence of communist spies yes but it also like it's
Sonny01:14:15so funny oppenheimer like in oppenheimer like the argument of oppenheimer is like of course he wasn't a communist he wasn't like a real communist right well that's he was just like nobody would nobody would be a real communist right like that that it which again is like is itself like kind of a well whatever i'm sure it's fine
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