#294. 'Snowpiercer'
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The main event is a rewatch of Snowpiercer, and the hosts split hard: Sonny loves it unreservedly, calling it "the dumbest movie that I love" and praising the middle forty minutes of train-storming action (the Yekaterina Bridge tunnel fight, Tilda Swinton's and Allison Pill's gloriously campy performances) as some of the best high-concept action filmmaking of the 2010s, even while cheerfully conceding the class-revolt allegory is banal and its ultimate message — that the lower orders will destroy everything unless kept in line — is basically reactionary. JVL, self-described as no fan of "commie movies," dislikes it (and lumps in Elysium and other Neill Blomkamp films) for being agitprop that's too on-the-nose, though he and Sonny riff at length on how these ostensibly anti-capitalist films can be read as accidentally anti-communist. Mike liked it much less on rewatch than he remembered, wishing the movie had just been about the logistics of a train that circles a frozen earth rather than the class-war plot, and the three of them spend a long stretch firing off deliberately absurd nitpicks (mulch for the crops, sushi-chef downtime, toilet/water systems, surviving polar bears) that Sonny answers in character. Sonny also relays the (possibly apocryphal) Bong Joon Ho/Harvey Weinstein anecdote about fighting to keep the sushi scene, and the cut human-excrement-as-protein-bar detail that got vetoed for being too far. Before the movie talk, the opening third covers Sonny's Star Wars Unlimited card-game sessions with his kids (including deliberately throwing games so they don't get discouraged) and JVL's own Star Wars/chess battles with "G-Money," Mike's seasonal allergies and mulch delivery from the local Boy Scout troop, and a box-office segment where Sonny explains why Mickey 17 flopped, why Robert Pattinson isn't a movie-star draw, and why the VOD era has killed the old "Best Picture nomination boosts box office" bump (using Anora and Wicked as examples). They close by teasing The Electric State and marveling at its bloated $320 million Netflix budget.
From the show notes
Plus: just a lot of stuff, really, a lot of really exciting stuff. So much excitement your head might spin.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00- Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn't wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn't belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat, you are a shoe. I belong on the head, you belong on the foot. Yes, so it is.
Mike00:00:30- Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host Mike Warren. Joining me as always are my two co-hosts who are always in their particular plea-ordained position, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com where you can see and hear new episodes every Friday morning. Join the conversation in the comments only at subbeacon.com. You've got to be there.
?00:00:59Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there. Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there. Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there. Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there. Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there. Sub-Beacon.com. You've got to be there.
Mike00:00:59become a patron tell your friends and family that you've got to become a patron to listen to the show join the community at sub beacon.com we are going to be talking about snow piercer later on in the show but first let's check in and see how the fellas are doing jvl what is going on with you
JVL00:01:22really i just wanted to ask sunny how his uh star wars unlimited card game journey is going because the other night he texted i think on an open channel with all three of us a question about a particular card mechanic no no that was that was just to you jvl that was i didn't i didn't bother myself oh oh sonny's getting getting deep on into it the question
Sonny00:01:46so no it'd be uh i don't i don't want to bore everyone with lots of arcana about uh this too late for that i'm not going to describe the mechanics that we were we were going to into there suffice to say some of the card instructions are a little open to interpretation a little opaque but whatever i i emailed i texted jvl to ask what the deal was no uh i'll say here's here's the uh here's my big takeaway from the game so far uh so i play with my kids i play as the light side they play as the dark side dark side is more powerful and like more prone to aggression and attack like you want to attack if you have the dark side like you want to be on the attack and so for my son my six-year-old son this is perfect he just goes he just starts hitting the base aggro he goes he's like bam bam bam and i good for him that's how that's how you should play the game my daughter is does not play that way she's more restrained she she wants to get she wants to get guys out of her hand and onto the deck to play cards so she wastes again without getting into the mechanics of the of the game she spends a lot of her time and her resources getting cards onto the on on to getting characters into the game that's really not how the that's not necessarily the best way it's not the worst way to play i guess but it's not the best way to play anyway neither here nor there what's interesting about the game is that it is the first time i've really felt compelled to lay off of my children in a in a board game because you are naturally so much better than them because you do no no it's not even that it's just that like i get they they they can't think more than one move ahead they have no concept of like i'm gonna play this i'm gonna play this i'm gonna play this and like they they they just it's like playing chess with an invalid it's they you can't what am i supposed so i like i have found myself i've found myself dialing it back and like getting uh getting rid of cards that i would otherwise use or hold on to and like reminding them about things they need to do like i've basically started throwing games is what it comes down to i've basically started losing on purpose just so they don't get frustrated and bored with the game that's how much i enjoy this game i am losing i'm losing on purpose so they won't get bored and quit playing
Mike00:04:21i want to keep playing question question sonny yeah before but before we get into some more technical questions that jvl may have are you saying you have always destroyed your children and games that you've played up to this point like you've you've just demolished them in
Sonny00:04:40candyland or well not like non non-physical games like yeah it's not like it's not like i post up against my three six son on a basketball why not how else is he gonna learn it's not like i'm it's uh but what once they learn the mechanics like candyland is just locked yeah you're just you're just drawing the card and you go yahtzee for instance we play yahtzee and i just play the game you know i'll like i'll like if they have a question or whatever uh i'll i'll answer it and help them but like we just play the game it's just yahtzee there's another game we've been playing um called rummikub i don't know if you guys have ever played i know rummikub so like rummikub it's like gin rummy uh jvl except you get these tiles you put them on dominoes yeah it's it's it i it's fun it's again if you like grew up playing gin rummy it's it's you you pick it up very quickly it's fun um and there's there's like interesting things you can do with the mechanics of the game to keep it you know fun and you're you're whatever but like when we're playing those games i just play the game i play the game they play the game whoever wins wins yeah and that's good uh i and i think that's i think again these are games that are mostly luck it's you know when we play like monopoly junior or whatever you're rolling the dice you're just buying whatever you land on like it's it's a lot uh with this they do against you in chess well this so i we we have not i i tried to teach i they asked to be taught to play chess and i taught them how to set up the board and like was trying to teach them how to do the moves and they got bored of it very quick i bought i bought them like a i bought them like the bobby bobby fisher teach kids chess book and my daughter
JVL00:06:38looked at like there's two pages and like with the anti-semic stuff yeah well the first two
Sonny00:06:44pages are like so the jews control the bishops um no but uh but the uh but the she she just like wasn't she wasn't that in she wasn't that into it so i and i'm like i'm not a chess guy myself i enjoy the game fine but i'm not like dying to play chess with them if they want to play great if they don't whatever we've played checkers a couple times um but they're not they're not super into checkers either this is the first game that we all kind of enjoy that i very explicitly have to like remind myself not to be i like if i was playing i was playing my six-year-old son today and i could have i could have there were like five moves in a row like five turns in a row where i could have beaten him just like run him right off the board and i didn't do it i didn't do it because because i don't want to break his spirit just yet i don't
JVL00:07:38want to i won't let him not yet so are we at the point where i can start sending you some
Sonny00:07:44paraphernalia i mean if if you have things you want to get rid of that's fine i wouldn't don't don't go out of your it's not clear to me how long they're going to stick with this frankly
JVL00:07:53we go through some phases you know okay so you're saying i shouldn't send you the game genic mats because the nice game mats really really improve the experience oh no don't don't do that don't because again i'm i like we use token set like a token set maybe some gem dice to help this damage counters a uh perhaps a deck box or two no don't don't send don't don't send
Sonny00:08:20any of those things don't send any of those things we'll we'll we'll get there eventually
JVL00:08:23check back in in a couple months yeah i will say i do not have that same experience with g money i win maybe a third of our games and i don't take it but part of it is like he has a deck which is overpowered because we started homebrewing our own decks and he has a very good deck um but we we played a game of chess this weekend and i beat him in chess half the time at best and he left his his left flank open and i was just going to town on him i kept saying are you sure you don't you want to look at what's going on over here don't you want to look what's going on over here he looks at me goes got checkmate in three moves dad i was like what are you stop with your nonsense and he fucking made like he really he was running another game on the other side that he only needed two pieces to do and he caught me in the castle and it was ah fuck that kid but uh my big my big tournament which i yeah what happened with your tournament well i see you guys know but the readers do yes tell us the story unless there's do not so it was saturday afternoon uh four o'clock and we wound up not making it to the tournament because at lunchtime g money declined to eat lunch and uh he chose instead to sit at the kitchen table with a half peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a plate in front of him with his arms crossed like this two fucking hours two hours he would he wanted to do that instead of going to the star wars tournament i just
Mike00:10:06like the minds of children what fascinating but but here's here's the other side of this kids ruin everything it it couldn't couldn't there a bit couldn't lunchtime have been over and like in two and a half hours when he's like i'm hungry i'm hungry dad you just say
JVL00:10:27missed lunch too bad so sad i because that's what i do with my kids yeah so i was not in charge of lunchtime that was another one of the managers at our firm and uh the other manager
Sonny00:10:43made some decisions some once you make the call once you make the call you can't change the call
JVL00:10:48you gotta say i was not there so i cannot uh i never second guess our our management team and uh so for all i know it was a perfectly perfectly reasonable thing to have done with that little fucker i mean these these tables aren't very aren't very uh comfortable comfortable two hours on a wooden stool uh no there is no try it again because the we have to wait for the next set the wave five pre-release set which is i think six months away
Sonny00:11:27wait which so was this uh was this a uh for the the new booster the new booster decks the jump
JVL00:11:36to light the jump to light speed yeah and with every with every wave of cards they introduce a new mechanic uh the new ones have what are called pilot cards which are ground units that can be a you could play them as a ground unit or you can attach them to a space vehicle as an upgrade
Sonny00:11:57so you can get yourself a wedge antilles oh yeah rare a rare wedge antilles what's that like a plus four plus plus four plus two what's what's the what's the damage and so what i can't understand
JVL00:12:13is and if you attach the ground unit to the attach your pilot unit to this and then the spaceship gets blown up does the pilot then parachute down and become a ground unit or does he die does he
Sonny00:12:27die yeah die if you attach it well you lose upgrades when your character dies or your vehicle
JVL00:12:33dies right if he's just sure but but you know he's not normally the upgrade is like a turret or something this is a human being maybe that person could uh could i don't think take a
Sonny00:12:44parachute no no x-wing pilot has ever survived no pork or what's his name what's the snow speeders
JVL00:12:52the snow speeders guys are on the ground though that's not a space that's that's a space unit
Sonny00:12:57that's not no the ground speeders are ground units are they ground vehicles yeah i'd have
Mike00:13:03to go like the snow is gonna die here i can see we're killing my spirit can can just a is there a card for nin nub for number nub i don't know the co-pilot in the falcon in return
JVL00:13:20of the jedi oh oh he's 100 100 100 in fact there's not only that guy but there are cards for his race his species whatever they are you know yeah oh yeah okay that dude all right he's there okay i'm glad that uh i'm glad your journey is michael we got to get you and your boys into this yeah why not listen michael michael yes do you want your boys having sex in high school do you want them impregnating the girls in their high school i don't think you do this is how we stop that we could stop it cold right we turn it all around i feel like i feel like we got quite a few
Mike00:14:04uh fail safes here to uh we don't need to throw another one like a becoming a card game guy a tabletop card game player they are into card games they're into the freaking pokemons they were they
Sonny00:14:17just had a friend what they like pokemon they'll like this they like star wars right yeah i don't
JVL00:14:23need to add more cards into the into the mix like better than hard there's these are so much better than the pokemon cards and you get to organize them i sent you guys a picture of my little organization cubby do you like that
Mike00:14:35i did like that but honestly all my kids do is organize their and reorganize and re-reorganize oh that's right come on cards that's how old is g money now eight oh yeah okay yeah
JVL00:14:50good age yeah you know maybe maybe we'll just have a starter set just a
Mike00:14:57here house i know where it's going right the garbage uh so uh no nothing is going on uh with me uh too much uh so it's that it's that time of year where like okay the frost has has has lifted right it's it is no longer cold and it's supposed to be glorious right like afternoons in the 60s and 70s and all that sort of thing and yet there is absolutely there's been absolutely no grace period and like the allergies have already kicked in like i've just noticed just just today and it it's like it's to me every year it's like a guessing game of like when will they kick in when do i need to start like pumping myself full of allergy medication so i can get through like i months waiting for it to be warmer and then immediately it becomes like my nose is all itchy my eyes i can't open my eyes in the mornings because they're all it's like should you maybe get allergy shots uh i've gotten them all i've i've i've done i've done all you've done the
JVL00:16:18allergist thing where they give you the like three years worth of injections and no i haven't done
Mike00:16:23that but i do that where they tell me what i'm allergic to and um uh and i'm allergic to a lot because we did this with favorite because she used she had
JVL00:16:33allergies really really bad and it's life changing yeah our friend friend of the show ben parker say it was the one who sort of turned us on to this i mean it's it's uh you know it's annoying because you got to go once a week and get jabbed with uh these little serum things for like three years in a row but it does help yeah but maybe this maybe that maybe the uh season
Mike00:16:57suffering is is just a part of life maybe listen i don't want to talk i'm sorry i i really don't
JVL00:17:02want to talk about your allergies i want to talk about mulch because it's spring and that's where i thought you were going with this i thought you were going to say it's spring so i'm starting to
Mike00:17:12think about my mulch no but i will say we already ordered our mulch and the mulch is coming but i am going to be out of town the weekend that's being delivered bags or is it a cubic yard to
JVL00:17:24get a uh so drop it in your front yard right
Mike00:17:27yeah but this year mulch we bought uh we bought from the local uh boy scout troop and so it's coming in bags but they deliver it how many bags i'm trying to remember i can't remember what i bought um something like 60 bags what kind of mulch do the boy scouts give you um is it good
JVL00:17:50stuff or is it like chinese filled with fungus and i don't know it's it's fine it's it's good
Mike00:17:57enough we like a couple years ago we got like one of the big uh local companies uh you know that that will just dump the truckload in your driveway and that's fine uh and it was a good price and it was high quality um but i do have to say that like it's such a bitch getting the whole mound like done you know whereas like the bags like it's it's a little lower quality a little more for it but like yeah you could like distribute it throughout the yard and get things all set so
JVL00:18:33i'm sure if you took those boy scouts uh some extra bucks they'll actually go and spread it for you parcel them out around your property oh yeah yeah yeah i'm sure that way yeah maybe give me an invite him inside you know one of them just uh invite him inside and sorry you're not picking up what i'm laying down from our green room conversation
Mike00:18:50no i'm i'm i'm picking it up oh we're picking it up i'm throwing it back in your face um so uh no but the only son have you ever been in a turkish prison do you like gladiator movies i i will be i'm barreling through this i will be gone the weekend that it's have you ever seen a grown man naked all right you know what we're gonna move on to the uh to the uh box office shall we sonny can you move his mic come on nothing for that
Sonny00:19:23nothing you don't want to hear you don't want to hear about my fence you that's oh tell us about your friends fence got fixed today that's it team came they reset eight poles fixed replaced a couple boards they're like all right we're done i'm like it's fence look at that two grand gone that's just like a little fire the lightning on fire at least it'll be fine though because in like in like three years i'll just have to replace the whole thing anyway so you know hmm
Mike00:19:57and this was like about like seven years ago when we had this giant windstorm and uh it blew a bunch of shingles off the roof and it wasn't time and really cost effective at the moment for us to replace the whole roof or anything right um but we did replace like 15 shingles which was like not exactly it's not replacing the roof but it's that point where you're like i'm spending a lot of money i might as well like just replace the roof michael which we
Sonny00:20:27mike yeah michael yeah that happens again you call me up he's got he's a roofer you weren't a
JVL00:20:34roof guy yet i am ready i know i will bang that bitch out over a weekend wait nothing would make
Sonny00:20:42me happier when you say it blew off shingles do you mean like the do you have like the terracotta
Mike00:20:48tiles like what did it blow off like like the the the shingles the blew off like the the roofing
Sonny00:20:55like the the like i don't know like i don't even i guess i don't quite understand correct i've got i mean i like got my at my last house i got the roof replaced the roof here thank god just got replaced like a year before we moved
Mike00:21:07in so this should be here until i die in five years uh you know the little overlapping roof
Sonny00:21:13shingles that are made yeah yeah yeah that's what okay that's that's what blew off yeah so i mean
Mike00:21:19it was it was a interesting you may have still you guys may have still been living here there's about seven years i remember because it was when my seven-year-old it was like two and a half weeks old and we lost power and there was all this wind it was like it was like bright sunny blue sky and uh wind that like knocked our power out uh we had to go stay with the mccormick's with our newborn uh because it was like cold i remember that yeah uh and it blew up it was weird it like blew off like a significant number but like like you know more than five shingles but fewer than 20 and uh yeah so it's
Sonny00:21:57like it's kind of like that do they do like individual shingle replacement because like correct because like when the when the reason i guess the reason i was kind of confused by this was when we got our roof done it's not like they were putting each shingle on individually
Mike00:22:10like they have like correct but this is but this this they did put on individual shingles to replace it was like it was like patch patchwork it was like there were little spots throughout
Sonny00:22:21the interest okay yeah sorry i like these are dumb questions i guess i should know but no i mean this
Mike00:22:27is really scintillating dudes chat and conversation we're talking about the star wars card game and
JVL00:22:32roofs and mulch and allergies it's really thrilling all right tell me how great that awesome captain america's movie is doing sonny uh it is number it is number two at the box office uh
Sonny00:22:44knocked off the number one spot by by mickey 17 mickey 17 uh yeah uh so mickey 17 grossed about 19 million dollars uh the warner brothers film that cost i don't know that's not great 120 million something like that
Guest00:23:04uh plus marketing etc etc um i don't know uh mickey 17 mickey 17 is 120 million dollars on that
Sonny00:23:11oh yeah yeah it was very expensive um and it and it also they've also been holding on to it for like a year and a half now like it was supposed to come out last year let's come out like middle of last year i guess about a year they've been holding it and anyway um i don't make you know the reason we are doing snow piercer today instead of making 17 is because mickey 17 is not good i didn't really want to talk about it on another podcast but i like snow piercer a lot it wanted to discuss that um but the uh we do whatever sonny wants yeah thank you i think that's how it should be for once in my life um mickey 17 uh has not done well but it was also a very hard sell because it's it's based on a novel but it's essentially an original sci-fi high concept movie um from a guy who has never like blown the doors off the box office snow piercer didn't do that well but got kind of buried by maramax um the uh you know parasite is his most successful film in the united states at least and that movie only did you know 60 70 million dollars something like that most of that and a lot of that came like during the oscar
Mike00:24:27season well wasn't that a lot of that after it won best picture some of it was some during during
Sonny00:24:34the whole during the whole the whole run-up when it robbed once upon a time in hollywood for a best picture um but no mickey 17 did didn't do great hard sell it it got pretty good reviews from other people it's like 80 fresh on rotten tomatoes but uh i didn't i didn't like it at all i i don't think i don't think it worked um but uh you know it's uh it's it's just another really shitty week at the box office they like
Mike00:25:04you know captain america world is on on mickey 17 i am shocked that robert pattinson on the on the on the uh on the poster didn't put more butts in seats you know really i mean like why no i'm kidding i'm kidding like he's like he's like not a he's not a star right the thing about robert
Sonny00:25:24he's a bad man the thing about robert pattinson is that he is edward cullen from the twilight movies and he is batman from the new the new
JVL00:25:32batman uh the most recent batman right um but made a bazillion dollars even though that was
Sonny00:25:39enormously successful movie and the thing about robert pattinson is that he's actually a pretty interesting actor he makes interesting movies but interesting are not interesting is not the same as commercial and this is a movie that is very much more aimed at the interesting segment the the audience the set the audience segment that wants interesting as opposed to the audience segment that wants sparkly vampires he's been in the harry potter
JVL00:26:08movies the he's in one of the twilight movies and then batman i think he's done enough commercial
Mike00:26:15movies total but if you look at the but if you look at the poster there's nothing about it that
Sonny00:26:22looks appealing right mike's point is this movie is being sold as look at robert pattinson he's playing two roles you like robert pattinson in one role what if he was in two roles at the same time and that and i mike is right that that's not a very good pitch because he's not actually a movie star in the sense that people aren't like i want to go see the new robert pattinson movie they say i want to see the new uh twilight movie i want to see the new batman movie uh i want to see the fourth harry potter movie or whatever um so he you know i i it's it's it's a weird thing he's very much it's he's kind of like chris pratt in this way right like people say i want to see the new guardians of the galaxy movie or i want to see the new jurassic park movie um they don't necessarily say i want to see the new chris pratt it's the same same basic idea um i don't know i the the whole the whole thing is my you know the monkey is holding okay good for them the guys at neon do do a good job selling these movies anora is back in theaters it's it's on two thousand screens and it jumped out did did less than a thousand dollars a screen this is this is the big this is the big change this is the big change in movie going right is it like once upon a time movie wins best a movie is nominated for best picture and being nominated for best picture is a real box office boon because people are like i want to go see the new box office i want to go see in the movie theater the new the best picture nominees i want to do that that's the thing i want to do
JVL00:27:53i feel like variety did a story on this once and it was it was worth a nomination which was worth like 20 million dollars in box office and their best picture win was worth a lot of
Sonny00:28:02money uh gabriel rossman did something on this years ago he like ran a he ran a regression of like what what what the value of a the value of a best picture nomination versus not getting nominated right and so like the theory is if you spend five million dollars on a uh on a uh prestige type movie um and you don't get that best picture nomination you've lost that money that money's gone you're not you're not getting that money you do get the best picture nomination then you get you know i it's it's worth a premium of you know seven to twelve million dollars something like that depending on depending on what you get nominated for depending on etc etc so i mean like it's it's it it once upon a time once upon in the long long ago if you were if you got a best picture a whole second run in movie theaters basically you would you would they'd put you back in or they'd bump you up from 500 to 1500 screens and you would you'd go on and on but look anora is very indicative of the the the problems in that segment that's specific segment of the market right which is that anora didn't gross that much money in the first place it did fine because it was a cheap movie didn't gross that much money in the first place it then came out on vod and it had been out on vod for a while i mean you guys rented it it was like six bucks right like it's not it's not a twenty dollar rental it's a six dollar rental and it's gonna be on hulu in a week it's gonna be on hulu in a week so like you if you're an audience member and you're like oh maybe i want to see this movie anora that won best picture what you do is you watch it at home for six dollars that's what that's how people are watching the
JVL00:29:57demand to be seen on a big screen anyway why not just watch it at home sure i mean i whatever but
Sonny00:30:02but once once upon a time though again oh shots fired oh boy once upon a time though you you would have to go see it in a movie theater because it there was it was not it was not there wasn't that vod window you would either go see it in the movie theater or you'd wait for it to be on hbo or on dvd or whatever right and like there's there there wasn't that there wasn't that option um and the video on demand market as as important as it is in certain regards for some movies it has killed that kind of prestige second wind oscar bump it does not it does not exist anymore it just doesn't exist anymore and the studios i look the studios have themselves to blame for this for going for the money like wicked should have been playing in theaters and only in theaters through the uh through through the end of oscar season they should have been doing sing-along screenings they should have been doing uh they should have been doing all sorts of things because not only does that help keep the movie in the the limelight for oscar season but also like you can make a lot of money doing that like it's a it's and instead they put it on vod after six weeks it was vod it was on vod in january and it's been on v it's it's gonna be on peacock like next i think uh so if it's not already why i mean is there is that there's money to be made
Mike00:31:32more uh consistently or predictably on vod as opposed to in theaters well no i mean it's just
Sonny00:31:41it's the reasons the reasons are are complicated and in certain cases particularly with universal at least partly ideological like universal has this very strong belief that a uh there there is a new segment of customer the 20 pvod customer who they can capitalize on that does not cannibalize from the theatrical market and i think that is true to a certain extent but it's not true in all cases i mean just look at oppenheimer you know christopher nolan strong armed a 100 day uh theatrical window out of them and that movie grows 300 some million dollars rated three hour historical biopic gross 300 million dollars now christopher nolan is sui generous that not everybody can do that it doesn't always make sense but a thing like wicked a thing like wicked should be in theaters for more than six weeks should be exclusively in theaters for more than six weeks and especially if it's especially if it's nominated for 10 or 12 oscars or whatever it that that is a movie that you need to keep exclusively in theaters through oscar season it's four months you you'll still have that pvod money later you'll still have that vod money later you'll still have the peacock subscriptions when people want to watch the sing-along version over and over again like i just think it it is it is self-defeating lunacy what these people are doing it drives me crazy
Mike00:33:20question yeah do you think had wicked been in the theaters that would have changed how it performed at the oscars
Sonny00:33:31potentially i'm probably not really on if we're being honest probably not okay yeah probably not
Mike00:33:39just i i didn't know if that that keeping it in the in these in the air might have some kind of influence on on the oscar voters but probably i don't i think you're probably right maybe
Sonny00:33:49maybe but probably not i would say okay um all right well any other box office thoughts
Mike00:33:56no why don't we why don't we move back in time 12 years to talk about the movie that we're actually going to talk about which is not mickey 17 it's certainly not wicked it is snowpiercer sonny do you want to give us a review of snowpiercer snowpiercer uh starring captain
Sonny00:34:21america himself chris evans or as i like to think of him uh the guy from sunshine um uh snowpiercer the the setup of snowpiercer is pretty straightforward the uh in the future in well like actually i guess it's actually technically the past now this this happens in i think 2014 or 15 or something like that in the film but the in the in the in the future uh due to worries about climate change a consortium of nations put a agent in the everything we all we all die uh everybody dies except for except for the people on board the train the snowpiercer which is circumnavigating the globe going all the way around the world uh and it is smashing through the ice ice flows and the blockages with its with its powerful nose and its miraculous engine created by the great wilford uh and um what you have to understand is that it's the dumbest movie that i love it's the the the the the the concept it's it's like somebody it's like somebody sat i know it's based it's based on a french comic book or something i think but it's like somebody sat down yeah it's like somebody sat down and was like trains have a class system trains have a first class and a steer a second class steerage class society has a class system you've got the swells up top you got the what if we put all of society onto a train and then had the people from the rear try to make their way to the front of the train could you could you imagine such a thing that would be crazy it's like hold on hold on it's
Mike00:36:15like it's like the class in the back is the lowest yeah class up in the front is the high it's it's sort of like like they're like the the lower class and then the ones at the front of the train are the upper class
Sonny00:36:30like it's like it's society on the snowpiercer the people in the back live in shoddy conditions it's dirty they eat literal bug meat they're eating the bugs uh the the uh they live on top of each other and filth the when the when the higher orders come in they boss them around and they steal their children and take them to the front of the train for god only knows what um and so curtis who was played by chris evans decides that enough is enough and leads a team to the front of the train to rescue one of the children who has been taken but really as part of a general class revolt um and again this movie this movie is like it's it is the politics of it are pretty banal for the most part we can discuss maybe maybe you guys disagree i don't know but the politics of it the class politics are pretty banal but the reason the movie works is because the middle 40 minutes where they actually make the attack on the train are like the 40 what's up 40 of the best minutes in uh kind of high concept action cinema in the 2010s i like i it's it's like how the matrix reloaded is not necessarily a great movie but it does have an hour of the best action of any movie of the 2000s i feel very similar about snow piercer it takes a little while to get going and it lingers a little bit too long on the stuff at the end with uh curtis and and ed harris as as the great wolford but the stuff in the middle is like uh terry jilliam made uh uh the raid on a train um with with like all with great with these great ridiculous costumes and these great over-the-top performances um from like tilda swinton who's playing a you know kind of a i don't know official of some sort who has this ridiculous accent and this ridiculous wig and she just looks great as as the or like allison pill allison pill plays a school teacher um who is teaching the children about the great mr wilfred and she looks like she is she is like kind of girlfully exuberant um and like when she pulls out a she pulls out like an uzi and is like shooting it around like doing like little looks and stuff like it's just it's a series of spectacular performances that are all nestled around these great action sequences as in the one where the lower the lower class meets the like army of the upper class uh in the um the tunnel of the yakka the yakka arena bridge yakka tarina bridge or whatever like that sequence great just this great fantastic martial arts sequence um i don't know i love that so much it kind of blots out everything else and i'm like again i'm perfectly happy to admit the movie is silly and the whole metaphor is is ridiculous um i do think it ends it ends on a poignant note which is that if we let the lower orders have their way they'll kill us all they'll they'll kill us all they'll just they'll ruin they'll destroy all of society and i like i'm
JVL00:39:52there's a reason they're the lower orders well it's like it's like parasites
Sonny00:39:56man remember parasite that movie is a fascinating movie because it's really about how you cannot trust the lower orders they're they're not just they're not just liars and thieves and grifters they also smell bad and they get mad when you point out how they smell bad um no but uh put a shoe on a head but but the uh but but the the silliness of the silliness the i like i think one of the strengths of snowpiercer is how dumb and silly it is because it's so basic and so straightforward that you know it never gets bogged down in like theory or anything like that you're just like okay lower orders versus the upper orders go and like that that's that's perfect that works uh so anyway i love this movie thumbs up big thumbs up from me for snowpiercer 13 years later thank you sonny jvl your thoughts on snowpiercer
JVL00:40:52yeah i don't uh i don't love it and i don't you know i'm a commie i do not love commie movies i really do not love commie movies i don't like snowpiercer i don't like elysium these like big agitprop agitprop yeah like everything is so fucking on the nose it's like reading french existentialists like oh he's turning into a beetle what sort of metaphor could that be fuck you try try being a little subtle that's where the art is that was a czech existentialist but go ahead and uh i it's funny is it what i really like are the anti-commie movies like on the waterfront stuff like that sure i like once upon a time in hollywood which is an anti-commie movie uh the things the thing i didn't like most about uh oppenheimer was that it was soft peddling how bad the commies were peddling the commies um so
Sonny00:41:56well no but even but even in all of the commie move like even in all right so let's let's tackle these commie movies one after the other right again snowpiercer the theme is the actual end result is the lower orders will kill us all if you don't if you don't if you don't give these freeloaders what they want and remember it's not like these folks on the train are working
JVL00:42:16they don't have a job they just think the only they only exist you gotta call them
Sonny00:42:22they only they literally only did not die because system they only did not die because wilford in his great magnificence allowed them onto the train
JVL00:42:33and said you can survive to make children so that every once in a while if a part on the train breaks you can take one of the little children and make it into a into a that's a that's gear barely that's barely even a sacrifice come on uh one plus you can use your industrial waste to make
Sonny00:42:50uh narcotics which keep them as my good friend as my good friend from amalas reminds me very frequently look it's just one kid it's just it's just one kid all right so uh anyway um uh what was oh god what were the other examples that you gave uh elysium elysium elysium elysium is a fascinating movie because if you know anything about neil blomkamp he's uh he he's he's a white the white south african and uh uh between between that movie and district 10 there's a lot of really interesting metaphors going on with interesting politics what happens to a society that is allowed to kind of run itself and what and how they try to better their situation i just i want people to think about that the next time they watch the movie about uh that like lots of people have just described district is it district 9 or a lot of people have described district 9 district a lot of people have described district 9 as an as an apartheid metaphor and like uh-huh that's a that's a movie true that's a movie where the the people in the the the creatures in the ghetto are little literal aliens who are addicted to cat food i'm just throwing that out there just on anyway what about uh well chappies keep going chappies just short circuit in south africa which is why i love it because i love
JVL00:44:31short circuit but hello johnny five is alive johnny five so anyway i like i like the pro
Sonny00:44:39commie movies because they always uh demonstrate that the commies are actually bad really like the the lower orders cause nothing but chaos and if somebody's not keeping them in control things go off the rails very quickly they need a firm hand that's all literally go off the rails i'm in the head uh so michael you like a shoe on a head it wouldn't put a shoe on a head
Mike00:45:05uh okay so first of all when i mentioned to my lovely wife that we were going to be watching i was going to be re-watching this for the show and would she like to join me to re-watch it she said hell no uh she had no interest in watching it again um and the funny thing is she remembered all kinds of things that i had completely forgotten about the movie like i really had very little memory of what happens in the movie and she and like before i was watching it she was like i don't want to see anybody's like limbs get frozen off and i don't want to see if she was just like naming all the you know uh the the freaky rave uh party thing i was like i don't i do not have any memory of this so i felt like part of me was going into a cold although and and every step and every like new car i was like oh yeah i remember they did that oh yeah i remember they had sushi oh yeah i remember they had the school and the and the eggs and all that um i liked this movie a lot less than i did the first time i saw it i feel like i saw all of how stupid it was uh i guess my memory coming back to me immediately was like oh yeah oh yeah this is that came back i was reminded how dumb it was um i look but what i remember when i first when it first came out uh and what i was hopeful for when i re-watched it was the idea of the train that goes around the world while everything else is a frozen wasteland outside like that concept like i want to see a movie about that train um i don't really care about that movie if it's about if it's the people on the train crap no i mean like you want you want a
JVL00:47:03logistics work i want a logistics how what powers the engine how do they lay the rails down no not
Mike00:47:11i'm not looking for a documentary here uh yeah i'm not looking for the conductor what do they do for tickets like like i want to see i want to see uh you know murder on the orient express on this on this uh train that goes around the world i want to see like some other story other than make it a murder mystery or something or anything make it a comment i don't know i just i want to see a different movie set on this train than the movie that snow piercer is and i just found myself resenting it uh the whole time even as i was enjoying the set pieces that sonny likes like the all the set pieces are great in the middle um basically from like once they're eating the sushi like everything from there on until they meet ed harris at the end like is is like fun to watch and by the way i noticed a couple things so so the teacher what was the actress's name allison something until um allison pill like she's she's she's so psychotic looking um and there's a moment that i had i picked up the second time i watched it where when they're singing the the hymn to wilford or whatever and she's like got like the camera's like above her and she's got her eyes closed as she's like singing some point and like her closed eye does this like insane twitch like she's like glitching out and i don't know if that was just as you know i i don't know if that was just a a thing that happened as she was acting in the scene or if it was deliberate or whatever but like it added so much to like the heightened insanity of this person uh and the propaganda she's saying oh again i love all that tilda swinton is i mean she's fantastic in part because she really laid like the campiness and the ridiculousness she just like there's no apology for it there's no kind of as you say sunny like it it knows it's silly and it kind of leans into that silliness um so i guess i appreciated those but on the whole i was just i was so by the time they get to the end and it's like the one kid who's like crawls out and crawl crawl you know gets into the engine it's like i don't care about this i don't care just just show me just but i do have a sacrifice it's a noble sacrifice for the good of humanity do it what is he even doing i don't even know he's got his little hands in there turn
Sonny00:49:42the things so the train doesn't stop i don't know i don't know how a fucking train works mike but that's the movie we needed sunny yeah well this is mike's like i want to know where the cogs go
JVL00:49:56in the here's what i want to know here's what i want to know what gauge is the track that they
Sonny00:50:00use for that how do they replace the ties when they freeze i don't understand i didn't have that
Mike00:50:06question i did have that question i had to level that whole thing i wonder what kind of what kind
Sonny00:50:12of mulch do they use for the crops where they're where they're growing the corn what are they
JVL00:50:18putting down but like i okay but hold on chinese mulch or that the good stuff from the local garden
Mike00:50:26i had questions i had questions okay hold on so the the ravers and all those people like
Sonny00:50:33where are they sleeping they represent the decadent youth they represent the decadent elite wealthy youth they just sleep wherever they see they just sleep they do their drugs
Mike00:50:42they sleep in the club and then they wake up and do it all over okay they just fall down wherever
Sonny00:50:47because it doesn't because they're again this is this is why the the decadent upper class needs to go it's because they're you know they don't provide they don't provide anything granted again the lower class doesn't really provide anything either in this movie but uh they're not just really honestly just just willard well it's wilfred wilfred willard
Mike00:51:09is the rat isn't it um uh in the in the the rat movie um well but hold on another another question uh another question okay so they have the whole sushi station um but they only serve sushi twice a year only twice so like what does the what does the sushi chef do um a lot of downtime the rest of the year
Sonny00:51:32you're you're acting as if a sushi chef can only do one thing sushi chefs can do anything
Mike00:51:39no i know so i'm asking what does he do what does he do he could also
JVL00:51:43how like the girl who's uh you know helping out in the lido deck at breakfast is also on stage at night as part of the cabaret show right it's that sort of setup on the snowpiercer
Sonny00:51:56he's a sushi chef chef so he's probably helping to teach karate to the others in the why why would the sushi guy be teaching karate karate maybe akito i don't know all right
Mike00:52:10another question another question how did none of the kids die in the the when they've got like the the guns and all the kids are just like screaming and running around but they're like trying to kill the guys like like and then where do the kids go we never see the kids again you they just they just like just that they you know disappeared like do they have their own little
Sonny00:52:30compartments these are the questions i have but they're again lots of interesting logistical issues here but there is there is there is one issue with the uh kind of logical do for toilets well i assume it just dumps out like dave matthews band into the chicago river go as they go
Mike00:52:56yeah yeah and the water but i mean the water they got to preserve the water so well there's tons of
Sonny00:53:01water they're in an ice world yeah but it's not melting just bring it from outside you bring it in from outside while you're moving what do you mean you got little snow catcher things i don't know i again i'm not a scientist i don't know how these things work how does the snow piercer's
Mike00:53:18cistern function okay i'm not interested in in in the water system okay but question question so are we to believe uh ed harris at the end where he's like saying like oh no i would you know when it's revealed that he's the one been sending the notes that uh that john hurt has like been in cahoots with him and like this is all like are we supposed to believe him or is that supposed to be a lie like all of that stuff is like not it's sort of like unresolved and well
Sonny00:53:50that's ambiguous i think i think it's i think it's intentionally ambiguous i do think it probably i think it probably is true because again the only thing the communists love more than mankind is themselves so he was he was trading he was he was giving up information for i'm sure favors extra food he probably got sushi day three times a year instead of two uh okay the final question about
Mike00:54:20this stupid movie um okay how is how was the uh the girl and the little boy how are they supposed to survive with the with the polar bear
Sonny00:54:30at the end like no they're not they're all gonna die they're all they all die they're all gonna die okay the the again the the real argument of this film is that if you don't kowtow to the lower order's terroristic demands they'll ruin it for everyone they'll kill everyone they'll just destroy all of society so i like this is why i again you get some of this with parasite too which is a little some is a is a little more complicated than the straightforward anti-capitalism metaphor uh it is sometimes pitched as i i the the the esoteric reading of snowpiercer is orders under control if you don't everyone dies i gotta say this is one of the weirdest
JVL00:55:25movies that i've ever seen that falls within the filmography of a best picture winning director like the only thing i could think of that's close is like popeye i don't did
Sonny00:55:42did i what what did rob did robert allman win best picture for what did he win it for
JVL00:55:47like shortcut for mash right for mash didn't he maybe i don't know best director best picture or
Mike00:55:55picture best picture no mash isn't is it best picture um but no didn't robert altman win for
JVL00:56:01well okay j-bots like yelling uh yeah i i don't know um it's a weird fucking movie for somebody
Mike00:56:10who also walks around okay picture oscar right okay okay okay uh i i got i got one better uh i got one better it's um uh shoot what is that what is that movie uh meet the feebles
Sonny00:56:25which is uh peter jackson's puppet oh yeah i guess there's there's definitely some peter jackson uh entries okay or like robert robert zemeckis robert zemeckis has a lot of very strange movies in his oeuvre you know like that beowulf movie or uh polar express the one where jim carrey is all the characters in uh the charles dickens story the
Mike00:56:55christmas carol christmas carol um all right uh maybe those are just bad more than weird uh i have a question um sure so was this so there was i was reading about this afterward there was some controversy with the cut of this movie right and that's part of why it like took
Sonny00:57:15so long to get out uh well it was uh it was a miramax movie so harvey weinstein the weinsteins buy this movie at con or wherever um and want to cut like 15 minutes out of it um and bong john who was like no i don't want to cut 15 minutes out of it i want the movie released as is and there's there's a you know there's a it's it is as with everything else with the weinsteins who knows what's what's fact and fiction at this point but there's a story that uh bong john who was in a meeting with them and uh they were like we want to cut the sushi scene we want we we got to cut the sushi scene it's unnecessary it just takes up time it keeps us it keeps us from getting to the to the action interesting bong john who like gave him a long gave harvey weinstein a long story about how his father was a fisherman and would take the fish to the sushi chef or something something of this nature and and that the whole scene is really an homage to his his family it's an homage to his father he can't he can't cut that because it's like deeply important to him and of course whatever you say about the weinsteins miramax is literally named after their parents it's named after uh max max weinstein and their uh their their mother miriam um and this moved harvey who was like fine we'll keep the sushi scene that's fine and then i like a couple years ago somebody asked bong john who about this and he was like oh no that was a total lie my dad was a car salesman or something my dad was a professor at the university it was that's pretty good uh but yeah no it's like it's like whatever it's like everything else with miramax there were there were fights between the director and and the weinsteins about what what needed to be cut what didn't need to be cut and that's one of the reasons why the movie got kind of dumped on release it did not do particularly well it uh it got it got kind of a token release which was always very which was kind of surprising because again it starred chris evans who at the time was captain america like in theaters after the avengers has made 1.6 billion dollars worldwide like you would think like chris evans in an action type movie right you should really be out there selling this and
JVL00:59:37it got kind of got kind of you know uh shit can all right one other fun fact oh one other fun fact
Sonny00:59:46about it so uh i don't know if this was just in the script or if they actually shot this and had originally initially the blocks the protein blocks oh yeah the lower the lower classes are fed which we we in the movie they're cockroaches it's you know a cockroach slurry um actually it was human shit that's where the they were eating human shit and that and it would that was so disgusting that everyone was like you can't do that you can't you cannot feed them bars of human shit you were asking where the waste goes and it goes right to the lower class
JVL01:00:24there we have it uh yeah somebody somebody took them aside and said you know that's a little too
Sonny01:00:30on the nose it's too we're going too far just an inch too far we gotta pull it back just slightly
JVL01:00:36biong biong boom bong bingo bongo whatever your name is uh that that we understand what you're trying for here but uh we get the point we get we kind of get the point yeah
Mike01:00:47yeah um all right well that is all the time that we are going to uh give to this episode uh join us over at subbeacon.com uh tell us what uh tell us what you think about snow piercer in the comments and we will talk to you next time um uh i've got a couple of other best pictures where the director has uh a very weird uh movie uh in their in their oeuvre um well obviously there's uh there's guillermo del toro um he's got like a gazillion weird movies in his
Sonny01:01:33what did he win the shape of water he went for the shape of water remember
Mike01:01:37yeah all right um then there's the game the daniels literally everything everywhere all at once is which one best picture is a weird ass movie um so yes yes that's a great movie i i totally agree can we tease the movie we're gonna do
JVL01:01:57i sent you guys the 320 million dollar movie the russo brothers movie oh the electric state
Sonny01:02:04yeah i don't know when that comes out i it's like next week fresh it's on netflix though right i believe i believe so
JVL01:02:13so i'm excited you just explain to people what this thing is
Sonny01:02:16uh the electric state is a 2025 american science fiction adventure comedy film directed by anthony and joe rousseau from a screenplay by chris i i don't know my understanding of the movie is that well i'm trying to see when it comes out march 14th i think i guess it comes out this friday um the uh the basic plot is uh mascot robots such as mr peanut come to life and are imbued with intelligence possibly artificial and uh humanity decides that they have to destroy them all and so they get kind of exiled to the titular electric state is my under is my basic understanding of what this movie is about and then there's some sort of mystery they gotta go find something i don't know um i don't wait to watch it it's it's it's based on a it's based on a relatively well-received uh graphic novel i think but i i honestly i honestly don't i don't know i don't know what interests
JVL01:03:27me is the budget and this is a 320 million dollar movie that is being dumped onto netflix here's the thing about that number right
Sonny01:03:35so it's three a 320 million dollar movie 80 million of that went to the russo brothers 50 million of that went to chris pratt 50 million of that went to bobby millie brown uh and you know the the 120 million that's left over or whatever is what actually what the movie actually cost
JVL01:03:56like it's it is you know what fuck it i'm i'm down for the commie stuff
Sonny01:04:01you should you want to put the russo brothers on snowpiercer i i just
JVL01:04:07there is no world in which any of those economics make sense
Sonny01:04:15yes millie bobby brown 50 million dollars well who knows who knows what she actually i don't i
JVL01:04:23don't know i don't know what they know again i understand that you're just i understand that this isn't actually like she got 50 million but you see what i'm saying like there is no world in which the russo brothers who are the biggest hacks for hire that i've ever seen are worth anything like literally they are replacement level directors they grow they you know what
Sonny01:04:46they made they made the marvel movies they made a lot of money made a lot of money yeah i always
JVL01:04:52laugh when i see them on arrest development credits uh well did they do did they do arrested development too because
Sonny01:04:59they were they were they were the uh they were also the five and the russos are directed like
JVL01:05:04between them well it's only two-thirds of the first three seasons of arrest development i think
Mike01:05:09that's why tobias funke is in one of the is a has a cameo in one of the marvel movies one of the
Sonny01:05:14well the uh the um uh the russos also directed a bunch of i don't know i don't know what percentage a bunch of them were executive producers on the show community as well they were they were very very much involved in that in that movie or that show um i don't know i like i don't i don't none of the economics of netflix make any sense to me but that's because netflix has more money than god like they they generate so much fucking revenue they have 300 million users at an arpu an average revenue per user of some ungodly number they keep raising their prices and nobody nobody drops the service they could they could raise the prices to 40 a month and people wouldn't drop the service
JVL01:06:02drops it even though there's nothing that's good there's nothing to watch i would not have none of it makes any sense to me i would not have netflix right now if i didn't
Sonny01:06:10need it for work if i did not like my kids kind of like it they watch it but there are other
Mike01:06:15services they would watch more i like a lot of it and it's annoying but yeah i hear you sure it's fine
?01:06:23Thank you.
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