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#8. Rogue One Redux
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Dudes Chatting — Rogue One deep dive (full spoilers): All three give Rogue One a second look. JVL declares it the best Star Wars film ever made, surpassing even The Empire Strikes Back, praising the morally compromised cast, Cassian Andor, K-2SO, and the Darth Vader hallway sequence (shot like a horror movie). The CGI Grand Moff Tarkin controversy is revisited: JVL initially criticized the portrayal but on second viewing comes around to Sonny's position that it was necessary. Both agree the CGI Princess Leia ending is a weaker choice; Vic quips it resembles her The Force Awakens appearance. The episode opens with Sonny's report on a five-minute Dunkirk preview at the Smithsonian IMAX, featuring Tom Hardy as a fighter pilot and Mark Rylance as a civilian ship captain. The group also runs through best-of-2016 picks. Corrections segment included. Spirit of the Week: Medley Indiana Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hi, I'm Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard. My New Year's resolution is to make this substandard the last substandard.
Guest00:00:30We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope.
Vic00:00:39Hello, and welcome back to The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Well, it is out. Rogue One, a Star Wars story blasted into theaters this past weekend and grossed a whopping $155 million domestic. And I know we already discussed Rogue One in a previous episode. But now that we've all seen it, we're going to talk about the movie itself, with a massive spoiler alert.
Sonny00:01:04Yeah, there's going to be some spoilers later on in the show. You can listen for now. We're going to talk about other stuff.
Vic00:01:08That's right. That's right. And I'd like to remind you all that The Substandard is available on iTunes. Just look under podcasts and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review. That said, I would like to point out that we recently received our first two-star review. What? Who was it? I don't know. My suspicion is Matt Continetti.
Sonny00:01:33Yeah, well, he's very jealous. He's very jealous of the movie.
Vic00:01:35You know what? If you don't like it, don't leave a review. Anyway, how are you?
JVL00:01:40It was after the Gilmore Girls episode, wasn't it?
Vic00:01:42He was upset that you gave it away in the opening with the audio drop.
JVL00:01:46Tough but fair.
Vic00:01:47Yeah, that's right. That's right. Gentlemen, how are we doing this week? Jonathan, how are you doing?
JVL00:01:53I'm still recovering from Rogue One, but we're not going to talk about that yet. That's right. I don't want to spoil things for people. I don't want to say anything to prejudge. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. How are you guys? Are you ready for Christmas? Is everyone ready? Never. We're doing it again this year. It's on the 25th this year.
Vic00:02:11Christmas is the worst. I hate Christmas. I am not ready yet. I am not ready yet. I haven't wrapped a single gift. I believe in that family, I'm responsible for wrapping one gift.
Sonny00:02:19I'm still receiving gifts. I still have. Amazon is bringing like a million packages to my office, and the girl at our front desk, Kelly, is just, she is not. Every time she comes into my office, she starts sneering a little bit more.
Vic00:02:32Because she knows what it is. She knows what's going on there, that this isn't work. This is all your gifts that you're giving away to people. Is that what that is?
Sonny00:02:38Yeah. I don't get stuff sent to my house. That's when the homeless people come around.
Vic00:02:42They steal it. Steal your stuff. True story. A friend of mine used to work for a lobbying firm, and I'm not going to reveal which kind of a firm it was. It was a big one. And he said he no longer works there. The woman who is working at the front desk, she was constantly receiving packages, and they never understood why, because it always went to her. And it turned out that she was running her own sort of mini boutique out of the front desk, and it was a boutique for sex toys. She was like manufacturing sex toys? Yeah. Things were coming in. Mary Kay of sex toys out of the lobby. Yes. And it was out of this lobby. That's kind of awesome. Big one. A big one. Okay. That's a Showtime original series. Yes. It would be good. As I mentioned, we've all finally... Finally seen Rogue One. But before we saw it now, when I went with my son Michael to the beautiful Ballston Regal Theater in Arlington, Virginia. Wow. That's still there? I thought they tore that down. Plenty of comfortable seats now, so they redid that.
JVL00:03:42That is the third worst theater in Northern Virginia.
Vic00:03:45You have to go back. They've redone it, and they're redoing the whole mall. What are the two worst?
Sonny00:03:51You just picked that. I just picked third. I mean, I think it's probably the worst.
Vic00:03:55I have not made a definitive staggering ranking. Well, this was... The good news is it's been renovated, so you can do the advanced seating. So there's no longer waiting in line.
JVL00:04:03Although, generally, I'm very pro-Regal Theater.
Vic00:04:06I think Regal Theaters are some of the finest theater chains in America. The fact that The Substandard is ultimately owned by the same company that owns Regal Theater has nothing to do with these endorsements. I didn't know that. No, surprise, surprise. Wow.
Sonny00:04:18Wait, really? Yes. Okay.
JVL00:04:21So as we were saying how great the theater experience was... You know what sucks? AMC. Oh, boo. Boo to AMC. The worst. You know what I hate about AMC? That they let you put your own... Put your own butter on your popcorn so that you can get exactly as much buttery product on your popcorn as you like. Jonathan, you should know better. That ain't no butter.
Vic00:04:34That's the worst. There's an urban legend until it's not. Oh, of course. We were inundated by... I think we went... Inundated. Inundated. We went to the 10 a.m. show, but I think it didn't start until 10.15. I think there were at least 15 minutes of trailers. At least. Maybe 20 minutes.
Sonny00:04:54That's the best part of going to the theaters.
Vic00:04:56You know, I guess, but most... I had 20. I actually clocked it. We had 24 minutes of our screening. Maybe that's what it was. And for us, they were mostly superhero, almost all superhero movies. So, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman. Did you get Power Rangers? Saban's, Jonathan. Saban's. Saban's. Saban's Power Rangers. So, it's better because it's Saban's Power Rangers now.
JVL00:05:16I would say the audience reaction at my screening for the reveal that that was not a remake of The Breakfast Club or a horror movie, but in fact was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was tremendous. People went crazy for it.
Vic00:05:27Like, excited? Or booed?
JVL00:05:29No, no. Like, excited and laughed and sort of, like, they were totally in on the joke. It made me believe that if the movie is any good, there could be an audience for it. I would say the only two... It's big enough.
Vic00:05:39Yeah. Well, you'd have to get there. The only two trailers that I liked were Guardians of the Galaxy's Volume 2, which is fantastic. No, I thought it was great. And Logan, of course, the Wolverine. Is this the same Logan trailer? Yes. I did not get that trailer. It's with the famous, the hurt, the song, Johnny Cash's cover. Of the Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor's song, Hurt. Perfect. It's an amazing trailer. It is a great...
JVL00:06:02We should link to that in the show notes. People should see it if they haven't. Yes. I'm pretty sure we already linked to this in previous show notes.
Sonny00:06:09Haven't we talked about this before? Maybe. Didn't we talk about this in the... But... We're already repeating ourselves.
JVL00:06:13I think that was over email. Yeah, that's entirely fine.
Vic00:06:15Cash does a bunch of covers from that particular album. He also did Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, and that's a great version, too. But we did not get a trailer which Jonathan and I had seen, I think, on YouTube, which was for Dunkirk. And Sonny, you got more than a trailer.
Sonny00:06:34So I saw Rogue One at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. It's the nicest IMAX theater that exists. It's giant screen. It's like real IMAX, not the fake. It's so good. Multiplex IMAX. You know, the nice thing about it is that it is huge and enormous, and the sound is perfect, and the projection, it's got like a whole new projection system. It's great. I assume these are all your tax dollars going to work, or maybe not. I don't know. I don't know how the funding of the Smithsonian's work. But anyway, it's fantastic, and I highly recommend it, in part because you get the five-minute prologue of Dunkirk, the new Christopher Nolan movie, in front of the screening of Star Wars Rogue One. So kind of like they show the first five minutes of Dark Knight Rises with the Bane and the airplane. The Bane airplane sequence.
Vic00:07:22You're kidding. So not just five minutes from the, just the first five minutes?
Sonny00:07:26I don't, it's unclear. Whether or not this is literally the first five minutes of the movie, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's that, or if it's like five minutes from slightly later on. It starts in media res. You're right there. And like, so it basically, to describe it for those of you who haven't had a chance to see it, which is most of you because you're losers, the, what happens is it kind of weaves together three different plot lines from the movie. You've got these two guys carrying a stretcher down up here. To get it to a ship before it's headed back to England. You have Mark Rylance, who was, who won an Oscar for Bridge of Spies, and is, he's playing like a British captain of just a regular vessel who is conscripted to help ferry guys back and forth. And then the big subplot, so to speak, the big thread that is woven throughout is Tom Hardy as a fighter pilot, taking on some Germans, and it's shot in like the 65mm, 70mm IMAX film, it's, you know, it's big. It's big, it takes up the whole screen, and it's like you're in the airplane with him, and it like, there's even a little bit of judder, like when the engines are going, it's really, oh my god. Did the audience know what they're getting into, or did it just happen, it just appeared?
Vic00:08:44Did they say, you're about to see, or?
Sonny00:08:46No, I mean, it just, it just, like they, you know how they have the little, they have a symbol on the screen that has the 3D glasses with like a cross through it, like so you know not to. It's like the universal symbol to not wear your 3D glasses yet, so this part is not in 3D because Christopher Nolan is an adult who makes films for adults, and he doesn't make things in 3D, and then it just starts, you get the WB logo with like the kind of Dunkirk watery, you know, motif, and the footage just starts, it's like guys running on the beach, it's pretty, you're right up in it.
Vic00:09:22You know what I'd like to see is a 3D IMAX of Boogie Nights. I think that would be great. Sorry. All right, especially the end.
Sonny00:09:31How do you, wait, can we just, how is it that we always come back to Vic Mattis putting in random semi-pornographic references to Boogie Nights? It's not a touch-up, it's in my brain and it comes out of my mouth, that's what she said. Lowbrow humor.
Vic00:09:47Yes, okay, so.
JVL00:09:47So my favorite moment in that trailer is, in the trailer, not the five minute preview you got, was the, I don't know, it's like five frames that Nolan gives you. Of Tom Hardy taking the mask off. Yes. As opposed to, it's such a little fanboy. No one cared who Tom Hardy was. Nobody cared who Tom Hardy was until he took the mask off. It's fantastic. Can I ask you guys, could I get a definitive Sagerin ranking of Christopher Nolan trailers? Oof.
Sonny00:10:16I don't know if I'm going to leave this all to Sonny. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't do like a definitive, like, one through 25 ranking, but I will do a top three. Number three is the first trailer for... For The Dark Knight, which was all sorts of hot, just with the... I remember being, I was something of a Nolan skeptic until I saw Batman Begins, but I didn't see Batman Begins until, like, maybe, I don't know, six months before The Dark Knight Rises. I had just, I'd kind of skipped it. It had come out in a weird time where I wasn't going to a lot of movies, and I just skipped it, and I watched it, and I was totally blown away. Like, I was like, this is basically... This is basically perfect. This is the perfect Batman. So the kind of, like, hints at the Heath Ledger Joker and everything, it just, it was nuts. The second would be the Inception teaser trailer, which was where the brrm noise debuted. That was actually not in the movie score until it was in the trailer, and it was such a huge kind of, it became a meme of sorts.
Vic00:11:20Yes, are you saying that repeating heavy droning noise that all trailers now do for the...
Sonny00:11:25It was in the teaser. It was in the teaser, and it was not in the score. It was, like, the guy who, like, scored the teaser trailer put it in there, and it was so popular that they had to add it to the movie.
Vic00:11:33Rogue One, in fact, did the same thing for their trailer. I think the part, the first trailer, the first teaser, the same thing.
Sonny00:11:38Yeah, you get, it's in all sorts of, all sorts of, and then, but my all-time favorite Christopher Nolan trailer is the teaser trailer for Interstellar, the one that came out a year before the movie, and it was just Matthew McConaughey talking about how great America used to be, and how we were going to make it great again, and it was, like, I remember the first time I saw it, I may have, may have, it may have been a little bit like there was a high pollen count or something in my office, and I was just, there was some, there was, like, some tears.
Vic00:12:06And the fact that you have a daughter now, if you have a daughter in your life, I'm sure it has no bearing. It has no bearing.
Sonny00:12:11That is, that's, that's, like, a second, that was after actually seeing the movie, but the, the, that, that teaser trailer where, you know, where, where McConaughey is talking about how we, you know, we used to look up at the stars. Oh, Matthew McConaughey. He keeps getting older.
JVL00:12:27I didn't know he was here in the studio. He keeps getting older, but the girls stay the same age. The same, that, that, that, that troll. Can I, can I make an observation here? Please. Sure. It is interesting to me that the three Nolan trailers you mentioned here are ones which, where he was hugely and purposefully opaque about what his movies were about. Yes. I mean, we really had no idea what The Dark Knight was going to be about. We knew, oh, well, Heath Ledger is in it as the Joker. Nobody knew what that meant. Right. And Interstellar was a black box. Yeah. I mean, nobody. Nobody knew what Interstellar was about. And really the same for Inception, right? I mean, people knew, oh, well, somehow you, they get into people's dreams and there's a heist or something.
Sonny00:13:03I don't even know if we knew that. I mean, I, I, the only thing, the only thing I remember really was the folding city imagery. Yeah. It was like the imagery of the city folding up on itself.
JVL00:13:12And then, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Yeah, the quarter, the long quarter, they're flipping. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting that Dunkirk is the first Nolan film since The Prestige, I guess, where people know. If you want to know what's happening, you can, it's Dunkirk. Like, it's a historical event. It is interesting. And he, I just find it interesting that Nolan is tackling something. The guy who loves holding things back from the audience has chosen a story in which everybody, it's so famous that everybody knows the ending of it.
Sonny00:13:40So wait, what are your favorites? What are your favorites?
JVL00:13:42Don't tell me how it ends, but no, go ahead, Jonathan. Dark Knight Rises, actually, was my favorite of the Nolan, the Nolan teaser trailers. I don't need to go beyond that, I think.
Vic00:13:53And, and the... Dunkirk is also his first real historical movie, isn't it?
Sonny00:14:01Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, the prestige, the prestige was a picture, it was like a period
Vic00:14:05picture, but it was an actual historical event, and as you just mentioned, Jonathan, it's interesting because the trick of getting an audience to come to the theater, even though they know how it ends, even though they know that it's a bad ending as well, that's the other trick of it, you know?
Sonny00:14:19Well, this is, I am actually very curious to see how they, like, manage the tone of this, because it's a movie about, it's a movie... I mean, somebody, maybe my friend Victor Morton, somebody, you know, on Twitter was talking about, you know, like, as Churchill said, you know, you don't win wars by running away, or you don't win wars on evacuations, or something like that, you know, it's like, it's a very kind of weird historical moment.
Vic00:14:42Right, it's a movie about the Allies getting pushed off the continent for the first time ever, you know, and, but, I mean, you think about movies that have done this in the past, The Alamo, A Bridge Too Far, which was about Operation Market Garden. And, Flight 93 is another example, or even movies that aren't about, you know, war, terrorism, like, Titanic, The Perfect Storm, about the Andrea Gale. You know how it's going to end, and it takes a great filmmaker to, you know, make you want to come, and come back again, and I, well, obviously, no one can pull that off.
JVL00:15:14Sonny, hope is a weapon.
Vic00:15:16That's right, and what is the other line? Rebellions are based on hope. Rebellions are based on hope, because hope is a weapon. And survival is a victory, is the other line, but, you know, but the interesting thing is, and I was looking into this over the weekend, so, Dunkirk could have actually been a lot worse, believe it or not. You had, not that anyone can see my hand motions. Which has always made you sad, right, Vic? I'm not commenting on my feelings right now.
Sonny00:15:39I'm just talking about the German file in the room is really thinking about what could have been right now.
Vic00:15:46Tactical brilliance has no ideology. If only you guys could see his face. No, I'm not putting my hand in the slot.
JVL00:15:51Vic Mattis on the tragedy of Dunkirk.
Vic00:15:54They could have done so much more. So, in fact, you had, you know, you had, there were two army groups that were encircling the British Expeditionary Force. A little quick history here. And so, Army Group A had come from the south and moved, pushed its way up towards Belgium and the Netherlands. And Army Group B, this is the Wehrmacht, they were coming down from Holland, Belgium, and they were going to close them in. So, the Army Group A, which is in the south, which was the famous Panzer commander, Heinz meeting that with Field Marshal Rundstedt, they were told by Hitler to stop. Much like in Return of the Jedi, when the Star Destroyers say, oh, you know, just, what did they say? Oh, we only need to stop them from escaping. The Emperor has a surprise planned. And the Fuhrer's surprise was he wanted to award it to Army Group B in the north, Federvan Bach's Army of Infanteries. And they'll take them and surround them and pound them with Luftwaffe because they were thinking, well, what are they going to do anyway? Well, they're not going to cross the English Channel.
Sonny00:16:55Yeah. Well, there's that great shot in the trailer of the flyers being dropped on the troops who are in town. I love that scene. It's like, we are here. You are here. We're, you know.
Vic00:17:04It's such an amazing scene because we're so used to the other way around. We're always the ones that you see who is dropping flyers warning you, you know, to leave or surrender. And there was, as Kenneth Brodick mentions in the trailer, there was 400,000 men on the beach. So it was supposedly like 11,000 died at Dunkirk, but they said like something like somebody like 75% of the entire British Expeditionary Force was able to make it across because they were, again, this is the movie, is the heroism of all these boats. I mean, we're not talking about just transports, but even luxury yachts and sailboats, anything that anyone can get and load them up and bring them back. And I think that's probably going to be the bulk of that. Is that what you think the bulk of the movie will be about?
Sonny00:17:47You're really going out on a limb here.
Vic00:17:49I am. And the other thing is, there was a story in the New York Times from, and this was from 1970. 1940. And they called it, quote, one of the bravest chapters in Great Britain's annals. So even then, they had that sort of uplifting take, or they had to be, at least. I'm not saying that this is over and they got pushed off the continent. So anyway, I think that's going to be exciting. And the other question is, is there going to be, in the words of John Podhoretz when he was reviewing Pearl Harbor, a money shot? And that is, remember in Pearl Harbor, it's the bomb that goes into the Arizona. Remember that camera that followed?
JVL00:18:22It isn't actually a camera, Vic. It's all sand. It's all CGI. So the answer is there will be no money shot because Christopher Nolan is going to use practical effects.
Sonny00:18:29He has actual historical airplanes that he's used to shoot. The money shot is him using IMAX cameras to shoot dogfights.
Vic00:18:36Yes, and he's going to actually have, and this actually happened at Dunkirk, a bomb, a German bomb actually went into the smokestack of a British destroyer, and it didn't touch the side, so it went all the way to the bottom and blew the whole thing up. And I wonder about that and if he's going to have that in the movie. Knowing him, I bet he'll do it.
Sonny00:18:56You seem real excited for the Germans to blow up some bricks. No. I mean, it's really kind of distressing here. Sonny, again. No offense, Vic.
Vic00:19:04I know that you have your- It's a story of hope. Hope is a weapon. And here's my great segue.
Sonny00:19:10I know you're sad we're not eating Wienerschnitzel for Thanksgiving every-
Vic00:19:14I had some last week at Thirsty Bertie's in Arlington. Speaking of hope as a weapon, we could now talk about Rogue One. It's good transition. Thank you.
Sonny00:19:26Spoilers. If you are listening in your car, if you've already downloaded this and you haven't watched the movie yet, just save this. Don't listen to any of this. Don't listen. First off, why are you listening to us in the first place? That's a bad choice. You've already made poor life decisions.
Vic00:19:40Why are you listening to us and giving us two stars?
Sonny00:19:42You got to let that go, man. People don't like us. That's fine. It's all right. You got to embrace the hatred. But yeah, if you have any plans on seeing the movie, you don't want to be spoiled. So hit stop. Okay, good. And then come back and then enjoy.
JVL00:19:58He already told them to hit stop. They didn't hear that. They don't want to stop.
Vic00:20:01Okay. All right. Welcome back to The Substandard. Jonathan, why don't you just go? Also, why are you unbuttoning your pants? I don't know what you're talking about.
JVL00:20:13It's great. This is the first time since I was 11 years old that I have loved a Star Wars movie unequivocally. I mean, it's weird. So I'm a Star Wars fanboy, but I only actually like two of them. The original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, to me, are great films that I really like. And everything else, from Return of the Jedi through all three prequels.
Vic00:20:34I thought you loved Attack of the Clones.
JVL00:20:36Are you kidding? Attack of the Clones is one of the worst science fiction movies ever non-ironically committed to digital celluloid. You weren't impressed by the special effects because it blended them so well. Just stop. Stop. And I even thought... Force Awakens left me very cold. And it left me cold at the time, and really cold on second viewing. I would say the second viewing I made of Force Awakens, I realized exactly how compromised a film that is. And this thing is amazing. It's the first Star Wars movie that's an adult movie. It's not for kids. The first thing I did when I left the theater on Friday was text you, Vic, and tell you, don't take your son to this. And you did it anyway. But like my kid, I won't take him to it. Because... Because he's too... My son thinks it's the best show of all the Star Wars. Because here's the thing. Gareth spends 90 minutes introducing to this cast of characters and making you really like them in a very organic way. It is not a put-on to get you to like them. And then he kills all of them. And so what you think is going to be a heist movie turns out to be Saving Private Ryan. You know, that final sequence in Saving Private Ryan where everyone... And at first, when the first one dies, you think, okay, well, someone had to die. They've raised the stage. They've raised the stakes. And then as these guys keep getting offed, you realize, oh, my God, none of them are going to make it out. And in retrospect, we should have known, because to me, the movie's calling card is early on when you meet Caspian, who is a new character. And he... The first time... Cassian. Cassian. You're thinking of Prince Cassian. Cassian. Cassian Andor. When you meet Cassian and the first time you see him, he is in terror. No. He's not interrogating, but he's talking with an informant who is giving him vital information. They are happened upon by... An ally, right? Somebody on his side. They are happened upon by two stormtroopers. He kills the stormtroopers. And then his informant, who is very squirrely, Cassian, says to him, don't worry. We can get out of here together. Everything's going to be fine. And as the guy turns around, he brutally murders him. He shoots him right in the back. Shoots him in the back so as to cover his own tracks and be able to get away. And that is when you realize you are in a whole new world for Star Wars. A world in which things are... And none of this is bloody. None of this is...
Vic00:22:57You're not going to have Greedo shooting first in this movie. No.
JVL00:23:01No. And anyway, so everything about it is great. To me, it is like the Dark Knight in that the good guys nominally win at the end, but it feels like a loss because everyone is compromised. Everybody in the movie is compromised. The politics are interesting.
Sonny00:23:14I would say, so this is... We could talk about lots more, but I will hand it off to you so I don't monologue you. This is great. This is the key thing for me is that it sets up the actual kind of political and moral universe of the Star Wars realm much, much better than, say, The Force Awakens. So remember The Force Awakens, at the beginning you have the crawl and it talks about how the resistance is fighting against the First Order. And if you stop and think about it for like 30 seconds, it doesn't make any sense at all because you're like, wait, why if the rebellion has won, is there a resistance? What are they resisting? Why isn't the rebellion still going after this remnant of the Empire? And they never explain it. They never... Apparently in the novelizations, which don't count because reading is for losers, they explain, you know, like kind of how the whole thing is set up and like what it comes down to is Princess Leia is essentially, you know, Hassan Nasrallah, he's like the, he's like a, you know, a kind of a terrorist. She's kind of a terrorist, kind of, you know, waging her own, her own war. But like, you don't understand any of this from the film itself. And in Rogue One, they do a much, much better job of setting up, you have, you have like kind of the feckless, gutless rebel leadership headed by Mon Mothma and Jimmy Smits, Bail Organa, and they are trying to kind of rally the rest of the rebellion to attack the Empire. And most of the people in the council are like, I don't want any part of that. We got to get out of here. We got to run. We got to flee. And then you have Saw Gerrera on Jedha, which is where kind of the second or the end of the first act, the second act takes place. Um, which is, it's a, he's, he basically is leading a band of extremist rebel terrorists. Like they have, it's very much like something you would see in, uh, in, in Afghanistan or Iraq, you know, with, uh, terrorists attacking a Empire convoy and blowing it up and civilians getting murdered everywhere. Blending into the population.
JVL00:25:17Blending into the population. I believe there's an IED. Yeah.
Vic00:25:19I mean, I mean, it's, I mean, no, I believe it was, they also used Jonathan Thurbell, that nadir's, if you heard the sound, it was that ticking sound. I said, wait, where have I heard that before?
Sonny00:25:28And then, and then on the Empire side of things, you have the power struggle between Moff, Grand Moff Tarkin, who we can discuss in a moment. Governor Tarkin. Governor Tarkin, whatever. Uh, the, and, uh, the, the, and director Orson Krennic, uh, who was played by Ben Mendelsohn, the great Ben Mendelsohn, uh, who felt in charge. He felt in charge in this movie. Do you know how old Ben Mendelsohn is? I don't guess. He's not much older than us.
JVL00:25:55He's not much older than you, Victorino. This is, he shocks, because he looks, I would say he has an old face, an old soul, old eyes
Vic00:26:01maybe, but he is not very old at all. He was, uh. I think he's 46. He was, he started, he was an Australian kid actor. Yeah. He did kid and teen movies and. Okay, I don't care about this. I don't care.
Sonny00:26:12Let's, but anyway.
Vic00:26:13He kind of looked like Tom Hulse when he was younger, who was at Amadeus. We'll get to Ben and, Ben Mendelsohn in a minute. Go ahead. Yeah.
Sonny00:26:18And you have, you have this kind of, uh, you have this power struggle in the Empire, which is all kind of settled by the Empire's, uh, the Emperor's right-hand man, Darth Vader. And the Darth Vader stuff in this movie is fantastic. We can come back to that. I don't know. But it was, it was like the, the, his scene in the middle is good. His scene at the end is, uh, makes me want a whole series of just Darth Vader standalone movies.
Vic00:26:43Where he starts splitting people apart.
Sonny00:26:44Where he just, he just starts murdering everyone.
JVL00:26:46Well, he's, I'll let you jump to that and then we can jump back because everybody listening now has seen the movie anyway. Um, so that is. That is the first time we have ever seen the force welded in a way which is terrifying. And that's fantastic. Again, like everything about this I love. So when you, so just thinking about this logistically, how it is shot, he's shot, he's moving very quickly, but he is not moving at the comic book speed that like Yoda moves in, in. The third? The third one.
Vic00:27:15When he, when he takes on Christopher Lee's character. And he's jumping and doing. Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes. Right? Yeah, Yoda's.
JVL00:27:20And when you see that, it's ridiculous. And people, I remember being. In the theater and people cheering. Cheering. And I thought this is, this is preposterous. Because it is not real. Everything, there's no weight to it. Yeah. And the, instead, Vader is moving at what I think of like Jason Bourne speed, which is, it actually in a way feels slow. You know, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. In that way. And it is, it is shot like a horror movie. You're in this claustrophobic space. It's dark. It's very dark. Yes, the lights go out. There's panic. And when the lightsaber goes on, he's, you know, and he's using the force, he's using the lightsaber, and the door. The door is wedged, and the guys are trying to get out, and when they realize they can't get out, they hand the disc through, and then he just slices through the door like it's made of papier-mâché.
Vic00:28:01That was like, that was like. But it's fantastic.
JVL00:28:03Again, this is a scene for grown-ups. This is not a scene for little kids. I was going to say, that was my son's favorite scene, actually.
Vic00:28:08He loves Darth Vader, and he thought it was so exciting what he was just doing. Throwing the weapons. He has the weapons go flying out of their hands, you know. And what, what I thought of was, there was a scene in Aliens, the, the Cameron, James Cameron-directed one, in which they're all through that, they're, they're trying, they're locked in this room, they're trying to weld a door shut, because the aliens are getting closer. It had that sort of effect, and in Aliens, of course, they realized that they were on the ceiling, and they were going to come down, but it's, it's the same thing, where there's just this panic, and we're trying to escape, and, and they're trying to open something that isn't opening. And it had that, absolutely had that feel, and it was a sort of a precursor to the, the opening of A New Hope, of course, where the rebel soldiers are poised, but of course, instead of stormtroopers coming at it, and it's just a plain old firefight, it's the light, you hear the voice, you hear the breathing, and that makes it sort of that horror feel, and then the lightsaber, and then the look of terror on their faces, because the, here he is, and it's over. Speaking-
JVL00:29:05Well, you realize they don't, these guys don't, from their perspective, don't have any idea what's coming at them, right? I mean, they, Darth Vader, you get the sense at this point, is a subject of myth, maybe, maybe, you know, your rank-and-file rebel cannon fodder guy would have maybe heard some rumors that there is a god. I like this. And then to be confronted with something that's essentially the unknown is, again, it makes it all terrifying and amazing. It's fantastic.
Vic00:29:31I was also interested in the perceived power struggle between Grand Moff Tarkin, Orson Krennic, and Darth Vader. Like, what's the relationship of, clearly, Tarkin has more power than Krennic, and then there's Vader and the Emperor, but it was interesting.
Sonny00:29:47Well, Tarkin and Krennic are clearly in some sort of military command structure. Yes. You know, maybe they're- They're on- Maybe we're talking about, you know, a Marine commander versus an Air Force, you know, general or something. I, you know, it would- I don't know exactly how you would break that down, but Darth Vader obviously exists kind of outside of that whole superstructure and above it in, I think, very- In very obvious and serious ways, because he is- You know, what is the role of Darth Vader? It is to make- It is to enforce the Emperor's will.
Vic00:30:23He's sort of the combination of church and state, you know, because there's that religious aspect and, of course, his political role, which he combines in one-
JVL00:30:31A knight Templar. Yeah. Right. But you get the sense Vader has no governing job. Like, Vader's not interested and would not be used for anything like governing or setting policy or keeping systems in line with fear or anything like that, or even in coming up with the idea for the execution of a Death Star, right? He just does what he's told by the Emperor.
Vic00:30:49Right. And it was also fascinating with the first time we see him, because you travel to the planet with the lava. Mustafar. Is it the same one where he burned- I would assume it is.
JVL00:30:57I believe we should be assuming that this is.
Sonny00:31:00It's actually a very clever thing that they do in the movie, by the way, where they don't have the name of the planet, which is they have in front of all of the other planets when you go to it. Yeah, there's no-
JVL00:31:08There's no Mustafar. There's no- That's called the title card. Yeah, I guess. Whatever. Whatever. Sure.
Sonny00:31:14But you were not given any sort of heads up of where you're going, even though, of course, if you were familiar with Revenge of the Sith, you know- You haven't- You don't have an idea of where you are. Right.
JVL00:31:25It's interesting that he would put his temple there.
Vic00:31:27Yes. Mwah. And, of course, you have the old guys who are working as the sort of high priests and the imperial guards.
JVL00:31:34Well, weren't you interested? Because you're originally shown, only from the back, a hooded, cloaked figure who is heading in towards what you would think you're going to see, Vader's chamber. In fact- So you're wondering, who is this guy with the cloak? Do we know him? And when he takes it off, only then do you realize, oh, we don't. We have no idea. And there is the quasi-religious aspect to all of this.
Vic00:31:53I was wondering, did you think that the body of Vader in the water tank, was that Hayden Christensen? Stop. Stop.
JVL00:32:05Hasn't he suffered enough? He had to make two movies with George Lucas directing him.
Vic00:32:09What did they say that Lucas described dialogue as? Ditch digging? Because ditch digging is what they said it was. So what did you guys think, then, about the return of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin?
?00:32:23Terrible.
Sonny00:32:25It did not work for me. Again, I saw this on the biggest, clearest screen possible. I saw it in 3D. That probably doesn't work well. It looked just off. It looked just slightly off. Not quite like Uncanny Valley revulsion style wrong, but wrong enough that I was kind of taken aback that they thought that this was an acceptable solution.
Vic00:32:50I would have preferred less as opposed to more. I think the first time we see Cushing is from behind, and you see his face reflected in the glass, and that totally worked for me. I thought, okay, that's him, and that's a pretty good likeness, and they have him turn a little bit, and that still would have been okay, but you have these sort of full frottles of his face and the eyes, and I think the brain obviously picks up on the fact that this is not real. Even if you didn't know Peter Cushing was alive, there's something off about him. I don't know. What did you think, Jonathan?
JVL00:33:18He just doesn't move the right way with the subtle motions. His eyes are wrong. They move too quickly. His eyes are wrong, but the big thing is he simply doesn't have the weight on screen that Peter Cushing had. I mean, if you go to YouTube and pull up two scenes of it, you'll see that Peter Cushing has an incredible presence on screen, and this CGI phantasmagoram of him does not. Right. And this leads me to really my only complaint about the movie is that there's too much fan service. Lots. The entire conceit of having grandma. Grandma Tarkin in this position, as opposed to just some other new character, is pure fan service. There's no reason that this has to be Tarkin. You could have had Krennic and bad guy number seven as his boss.
Sonny00:34:05I'm going to have to, I'll disagree with this, but go ahead and finish.
JVL00:34:07And you could have the two of them fighting with Peter Cushing's grandma Tarkin over them, in which case you get one shot of him where his face is reflecting the glass, and he sort of is settling there. You really don't need that. The final reveal of Princess Leia, I think, is a... It's a terrible moment to end the movie on, because A, she looks creepy again, in the way that Peter Cushing looks creepy, and B, her expression is wrong. She is this, like, happy... She says, oh, hope. And this is... She's just witnessed the eradication of half the rebel fleet. She should be grim-faced. I mean, think about the original Star Wars, A New Hope. She is grim-faced. I don't think she cracks a smile until the very, very end of that movie.
Sonny00:34:48She should be basically... At the Arian Nation ceremony. At the Arian Nation.
JVL00:34:52At the Arian Nation ceremony. That's the first time you see Carrie Fisher smile as Princess Leia, and you ought to have dour glowering if you need to do that. But again, we as fans didn't need that much service. I think if we had... Hold on, hold on. If we had gotten Princess Leia from behind in silhouette... So to speak. So to speak. I mean, her silhouette in that outfit is totally iconic. Everybody would know instantly who that was. We don't need... You can show and not tell there. And this is... Like with Walrus Man on Jedi. You know, Walrus Man and You'll Be Dead Guy. Watch where you're going.
Vic00:35:26You just watch yourself. We don't need that. Yeah.
JVL00:35:29I think they were a little bit too solicitous of super fans in ways... I like that. R2-D2 and C-3PO. That's fine.
Vic00:35:36That's fine. I didn't mind it. But what I disagree with you, Jonathan, is the CGI of Princess Leia, I thought it was no different than her CGI-ed appearance in The Force Awakens. Shots fired. Ouch. What? Are you telling me she's alive?
Sonny00:35:51National Organization for the Study of Princess Leia. And for women, that was Victorino Matus who said that. You can hit him up on Twitter.
JVL00:35:57That sort of shaming is really uncalled for.
Sonny00:36:00I would say, I agree with you that there was too much fan service, and I think that we are... I think the movie is poorly served by it, because it kind of pulls you out of the moment and it's like, okay, this is a movie that I'm watching, and oh, those are other movies that I watched. I remember those. So I don't like that. I do think that... I think that the grand... The Gandalf-Tarkin subplot works very well. I think that you actually need that, with the way that the chronology of the film is set up, like going straight into A New Hope, that you need this kind of, this power struggle where he's there and he's taking over the Death Star, and if he, you know... I am okay with all that.
JVL00:36:42Which leads me to my one substantive critique of the movie. Go on. Which is that they make Tarkin into a little bitch, and I don't like that, because I am Team Tarkin. Tarkin. Grand Moff Tarkin is one of the most interesting...
Sonny00:36:55I just want to let the podcast listeners know that Jonathan Last threw up a gang sign that I assume means Tarkin.
JVL00:37:02Means Grand Moff. Grand Moff forever.
Sonny00:37:03Grand Moff. Grand Moffville. I don't...
JVL00:37:07How so? How so? So Tarkin of A New Hope is this quiet assassin, this total badass who is just, you know, he is tough as nails, and then here you see he's just another guy fighting with office politics like everyone else, you know? Oh, there's somebody else. There's somebody else who wants to take credit for a big idea, and so he's trying to fight to make sure that he gets the bonus and the title change, and that this other guy... It's like... Leave me out of this. It's like we've moved him into an episode of The Office, and I did not.
Sonny00:37:35Don't debase Grand Moff Tarkin like that. See, again, I think this is wrong.
JVL00:37:37You make him less heavy.
Sonny00:37:39I think this is a misreading of the film, because I think it's very clear from the film that he is in charge, and that Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic is the little bitch who is worried about losing all his credit. I think I'm with Sonny on that.
Vic00:37:52But what you also see is, you know, people can change once they have a consolidation of power, and so, I mean, obviously, now that he eliminated his closest rival, then you see he holds much more serious Tarkin.
Sonny00:38:03The best part of the movie is when Grand Moff Tarkin orders the Death Star strike on his own people. And he's just like... You know, this is another...
JVL00:38:11But he only does it because he knows Krennic is down there. Exactly. It's not necessary.
Sonny00:38:15It's a power play, but it's also, again, a reminder that Grand Moff Tarkin's about order and stability, and he's just trying to take... Take out as many rebels as he can. If it means losing some of his own troops, so be it, but, you know... You do get the impression that Krennic is the one who's a little bloodthirsty, right?
JVL00:38:30Like, Krennic is sort of eager for the destruction, and Tarkin is the one who just wants to have it as a strategic weapon.
Sonny00:38:36Well, exactly. And remember, there's the scene where they blow up the city on Jedha, and he says, we just need a demonstration, not a manifesto. And this is, again, he doesn't... You don't need to blow up the whole planet, you just need to show that it works. Once you do that, then we can show what works on a target.
Vic00:38:52I really enjoyed Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krennic in this movie, and there's that wonderful scene at the very end when he looks up at, like, the rising moon of the Death Star, you know, and the, oh, the sweet irony of noticing, oh, wait a minute, you know, here is my creation. And then, of course, the last thought is Tarkin, you know.
JVL00:39:09So, Ben Mendelsohn has now played opposite two of the heaviest bad guys in the last half century of film, which is amazing in its own way. The other? Yeah, the other being... The other being Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. And as I watch this, I thought to myself, I hope there's an outtake of his scene with Vader, where Vader places the back of his hand next to his cheek and says, do you feel in charge, director Krennic? Because that would be outtake gold.
Vic00:39:43Here's a one technical total geek question, but if you made it this far into the substandard, there's no turning back. The ship that Princess Leia is on... This is an actual question. Is that a hammerhead corvette? I hate saying that, because you know what I'm talking about? I do, it's not. The hammerhead corvette that rams one Death Star to another, it's the other way. Because that would add to the lies of the ship being a diplomatic ship.
Sonny00:40:07By the way, can we just discuss that this is now the second movie where we've seen a Death Star get disabled and then crash into an Imperial... They seem like relatively easy ships to take out. All you have to do is you take out the ship... And then you push them and go into something. I mean, these are not very terrifying vehicles.
Vic00:40:27I don't know why they could have done that earlier. They could have done that in Empire Strikes Back when they were escaping from Hoth, or they could have done it in Return of the Jedi. Just ram it.
Sonny00:40:35I don't know. We can't ram it.
Vic00:40:37That was very... Yeah. Okay.
JVL00:40:40So before we move... I mean, there are a lot of things to talk about. I don't know how many hours we're... This will not be longer than three hours, this episode, right? We made a pact before this that we'll cut off at three hours.
Vic00:40:50I want to talk about the X-Wing pilots.
JVL00:40:52So I... Again, talking about how compromised everybody is, I was thinking through this through. So Saul Guerrera, who is the Forrest Whitaker's character, the extremist rebel, I wanted a whole movie about him. And I hope to get a whole movie about him. Because again, so here's how compromised he is. He gets this defector bringing him critical information, and he tortures the guy anyway because he has to make sure whether or not it's genuine info. Yeah. And that's fascinating.
Sonny00:41:20He has to make sure he's not... Are you saying... ...a spy from the Empire there to kill him.
JVL00:41:24So Saul himself is compromised. The rebellion, the Namby Pamby, the real rebellion, they want to kill Saul, and they want to kill Jyn's father, and they're doing it surreptitiously and lying to Jyn about it. They're compromised. And then you have the Empire, which is, again, so compromised. They're running around blowing up trunks of planets. And again, Cassian Andor is tasked with all these kind of missions of killing those people. And so this is the other movie I want coming out of this. And this is, we talked about this when we did our first Star Wars, is the idea that you could get to spinoffs that are based totally around characters who aren't in any of the original movies. And I want a movie with Cassian and K-2SO, because the two of them are, I think it could almost be like a buddy cop, right? Yeah, we haven't talked about K-2SO at all. K-2SO is clearly not only the best Star Wars droid ever, but to my mind is in the running to challenge TARS as the best sci-fi droid all time. TARS currently... The number one, number one, greatest...
Sonny00:42:24TARS from Interstellar.
JVL00:42:26Right. The box.
Sonny00:42:27I'm just reminding everyone else.
JVL00:42:29You think there's anyone listening to this podcast who doesn't know who TARS is?
Vic00:42:33Is there anyone listening to this podcast?
JVL00:42:35But would you not watch a movie which is the two of them running around basically doing special missions? Because Cassian is a great character. He's totally unassuming. There's nothing charismatic about him. There's nothing special about him. But he's one of the... The way real assassins are, in one sense, is like the Jackal. In real life, just very average looking can blend into a crowd and are guys who have nothing left to lose. You know, hyper-competent with nothing to lose. And he and K2SO running around having adventures, that is a movie I would like to go watch.
Vic00:43:04I would like to see Cassian and Andor and another guy and a girl who are driving around Mexico, just sort of vacationing, doing wild, crazy things.
JVL00:43:10Go to a pool, see what happens.
Vic00:43:12Who knows what happens? Sonny's looking at us. That would be our E2 Mama Tambien reference.
Sonny00:43:17My problem with... I actually did not love Cassian in this movie. I did not think... Diego Luna is the actor. He just didn't really do anything for me. He has kind of these dull, dead eyes, which I think is part of the character, but also just... He was not charismatic enough for me to carry his own movie, I don't think. Oh, see, I like that. For me, that was a feature, not a plug. I would watch a movie about the blind Jedi, Temple Guard. Everybody loves those guys. The guy who should definitely be Cable. Whenever they make a new Mutants movie. That guy is Cable. That is who he should be. Or Bishop. I'm sorry, not Cable, Bishop. I'm thinking of Bishop.
JVL00:44:01Those two guys are fantastic, aren't they? Fantastic. Guardians of the Jedi Temple, right? And so this brings a whole... Again, this is the first time we've ever gotten a glimpse of the Jedi and the Force qua religion. Not just as... And it's great. It's complicated. It's interesting. You already see, from the moment of Revenge of the Sith to here, where... The religion is being literally dismantled in front of them as the temple is being strip-mined for kyber... Or is it dilithium crystals? Kyber crystals. Is it dilithium crystals?
Sonny00:44:31No, trilithium. Trilithium. Trilithium.
JVL00:44:34And so that's happening, and you already have people within the Temple Guard falling away into unbelief. And so the schism between guys who still believe and don't believe... And as he's reciting his mantra whenever he's in trouble, which is like seeing a Roman Catholic sailor in a World War II movie saying the Hail Mary over... Right, right, absolutely. And that's a deeply affecting scene, isn't it?
Vic00:44:55It was just like the bus driver saying the Hail Mary in Volcano before he melted...
JVL00:45:01The metro, the train driver.
Vic00:45:02The metro train driver, yeah. The train driver, yes. Great actor. I'd like to see a movie of that. You were talking about Saw Gerrera torturing the guy, and it was that squid alien? Yeah. I'd like to see a movie of the squid alien.
JVL00:45:14I wonder what else it can do. They have them in Japan, I'm pretty sure. It's not just torture.
Vic00:45:20Torture is subjective. That's a subjective. That's a subjective term. Okay.
JVL00:45:22But anyway, so I thought that we were throwing away that guy as he was being tortured, and not only do they keep him, but they get us invested. It's just great character. Rhys Achmed.
Vic00:45:33He was great, and again, I... Great storytelling. It was like the Dirty Dozen. It was like Saving Private Ryan, and that scene where Rhys Achmed's character, he has to get the cable across.
JVL00:45:43Which is Tom Sizor, right?
Vic00:45:44Doesn't he have to do that at the end of Saving Private Ryan? And Captain Miller does it for him. I mean, Tom Hanks does it for him and gets killed in the process, and I just knew it. Trailer, you have a scene where Rhys Achmed is hiding behind some barrier, and there's a shootout, and there's a look on his face, and I knew that. I said, I bet you this guy dies a battle death, but he had that great look. He just had a great look.
JVL00:46:04So my buddy Ben Dominich ran an essay a couple years ago by a friend of ours, and I believe this was done anonymously, and so I don't want to say who it was unless they want credit for it. We'll put this in the show notes as well. Called The Ballad of Porkins. Writing about how Porkins is one of the more interesting stories from the original Star Wars. He was this fat slob who you could see was just basically hanging out, you know, painting his Warhammer miniatures, and then the Empire comes, and he decides he's going to put away his D&D stuff. Childish things. Childish things, and go do something, and he would never, he couldn't have been a pilot in the Empire, right? I mean, he's a slob. No way. They would never have taken him, and he goes off to do something.
Vic00:46:47They don't make stormtrooper outfits that big.
JVL00:46:49Right, and he goes off to do something heroic and die in the midst of this. It's this family opera saga, which is all about the Skywalkers, and the royal people, and the Jedi, and a guy like Porkins is out there sacrificing himself, and that's what this entire movie was about. This entire movie was The Ballad of Porkins, writ large.
Vic00:47:05Was Porkins in this movie?
JVL00:47:07No. I don't believe so. We get Gold Leader, right?
Vic00:47:10Gold Leader's in there.
Sonny00:47:11Gold Leader. Yep. On target. It is very interesting how they kind of have gone back and, you know, without getting super alt-righty here, they kind of go back. To the lame part of the rebellion, and they've really retconned in a lot of alien and non-white human characters, because, you know, diversity is the most important thing right now. It's very, it's, this is, and this was, this was, of course, I think what set off so many of the Make America Great Again types about this movie, is that it was, you know, but it is, it is, it is kind of, it is kind of- And it really, really hurt the, really hurt the- It really hurt the- But no, but like, again, the problem with our whole political system is that you have idiots on both sides, right? So you have the awful alt-right people, but then you have the radical bites, the Jonathan McIntosh, or whatever his name is, on Twitter talking about how, you know, this is, the scenes on Jeddah are really bad examples of Orientalism, and that this is, you know, all of the, all of the extreme terrorists, all of the extreme rebels are portrayed as terrorists, and they've got turbans on, and it's, you know, just like, dude, this is like, you, you have to accept the fact that things are getting better for your side here, on terms of representation, and, you know, like, and if you don't, this is how you get Trump.
JVL00:48:31And how, how about on Jeddah also, before you forget it and lose, there are guys who are wearing what look like similar outfits to the Empire's Imperial Guard. Do you, do you know, do you remember this? Yes, I saw that. And again, it's just a little echo hinting that, again, there's some schism within the force, right, between the people who worship the, the good side, the light side.
Vic00:48:51And the dark. It's, it's also, it's, and as you mentioned in Jeddah, it's very vague, you know, who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, when the firefight happens, you know, people shooting each other. Well, nobody knows. And, and or shooting guys, not just Imperial guys. I mean, it's just chaos. So, any other thoughts right now?
JVL00:49:08I have a couple more before we go. Okay, go for it. Okay, while we're talking about, like, identity politics, and I was fully, fully expecting this to have Jyn Erso as Mary Sue Naples Ultra, and she is not. No, no, she's great. She's a fantastic character. Jyn, greater sign, Rey. Like, to such a, to such an extent that I would hope that the writers of episode eight are, like, embarrassed and decide to make Rey a more interesting character, because Jyn is fantastic. Totally.
Vic00:49:39She, she, she and Andor, by the way, they, they died a deep impact death, didn't they?
JVL00:49:44They did. Well, but this leads me to the last thing I want to talk about, which is that friend of the show, Matt Continetti. Hey, Matt. He expressed to me that he believes that it's pretty clear from reading the promotional materials and looking at the ads that actually Jyn was supposed to survive, and that part of the reshoots, Matt speculates, would involve making the decision to kill Sheehan Cassian. If true, I think that is a stroke of genius, because the movie that spares the two of them at the end and then, like, has them fall in love or something, that becomes a schmaltzy digital product. This actually has a real impact. It has a real impact and resonance. You get an entire self-contained story of this girl's life from the moment she is, like, six years old to her death. She never has any real happiness. She doesn't even know, you know, why does she and Cassian not fall in love? Because she doesn't know how to fall in love, because she's been on the run and, like, part of, like, rebel groups for 25 years or however long it is. And the fact that she then dies having done the first really noble thing in her life that she's ever done is fantastic. And so kudos to whoever at Disney had the sand to make the decision to kill her off.
Sonny00:50:51It would have been better as if she had gotten off the planet with the tape and gotten to the ship and they get it and then Darth Vader takes her out. Yes, that would have been great. If Darth Vader had been the one to, like, where's the tapes? And then stabs her with the lightsaber.
JVL00:51:08That said, I like giving Jyn the, if she has to go, this is a way to give her an out, which is less horrifying.
Vic00:51:17Do you think, you know, she's told to trust the force, so, I mean, it's even known to her. I remember that as a child, about the existence of the force as a religion, and I wondered if she was related to Qui-Gon Jyn, Jyn Erso. Thank you.
JVL00:51:33I am hoping, while we're talking about bravery, I actually wonder if deep in the sale agreement from Lucasfilm to Disney, there isn't tucked away some sort of clause about when they're allowed to remake one through three.
Vic00:51:48I was going to ask you the very same question.
JVL00:51:50Because if they have to wait. If they have to wait for Lucas to. Die. Shuffle off this mortal coil. For George Lucas to ride off into the sunset, if they have to wait for Lucas to ride off into the sunset, and by the way, John. Become a force ghost. Mr. Podoritz, I've never said anything nice about George Lucas. If they have to wait for, I wonder if they have the power then to remake those train wrecks of movies. Because if they did, you could remake those in ways which don't suck.
Vic00:52:17Oh my gosh. I think if you could do, I was thinking about this because we saw the trailer for Spider-Man, again, the reboot of Spider-Man. We've had reboots of Super-Man, and I wondered about the possibilities of a reboot of 1 to 3.
Sonny00:52:27But you don't need, like, this doesn't, none of this makes any real sense. Why reboot when you can just expand the universe in which they're playing forever? To fix their mistake, that's why. Well, yeah, but what's done is done. I don't think, I think once you get into like retconning what actually happened in the movies, you're treading into very dangerous territory.
JVL00:52:48Doing it would kill Lucas. Yeah, right. I mean, having bought the company from him to then say, hey, these three movies, which are the only pure distillation of your artistic vision, yeah, we're just going to go ahead
Vic00:53:02and remake those. That would put him in the ground. That's right. Did you enjoy, really quickly, technical aspects of the movie, like the reference of the Stormtroopers to the making of the T-15 Obsolete? Did you get that part?
Sonny00:53:14I actually didn't understand that. What is the T-15?
Vic00:53:17The T-15 is a spaceship, Luke Skywalker. Oh, the Landspeeder. It's not the Landspeeder. It's the ship that looks like an Imperial shuttle. He's playing around with Luke Skywalker's plague in episode four when he's hanging around in his little abode in Tatooine. And that's the T-15. That's what the Stormtroopers talk about, making that obsolete. Also, TIE Strikers. What happened to them? We don't see what happens. I like TIE Strikers. They're gone. Okay, now I'm worried. And the AT-AT, great appearance of the AT-AT, different kinds of AT-AT. Fantastic AT-ATs. Great AT-AT. Oh, boy. Okay.
JVL00:53:53Are we ready to move on? I'm going to go see it again tonight. So, we're done talking about this for now. Wow.
Vic00:53:59Okay. Well, we're getting to the part where I think we would like to talk. Wait, I'm sorry.
JVL00:54:03No. I just want to lay this down once and for all. Rogue One, best Star Wars movie ever. Better than Empire.
Vic00:54:13My son will agree with you wholeheartedly. There. Fight about it in the comments. That's wrong.
JVL00:54:18I'll say Empire, Rogue One.
Vic00:54:21Okay. Sonny? No. Wow. Okay. Sonny's going to say Return of the Jedi. Wrong. Yeah. Phantom Menace.
JVL00:54:28Okay.
Vic00:54:29Now, as you know, we're not having an issue, or an episode, I should say, next week because of the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays happening. Happy holidays, everyone. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. So, boom. Bigot. Bigot. Thank you. And so, we would like to give our quick take. On the year's best whatever. Jonathan, go for it.
JVL00:54:57Don't make me go first. What do you think is the best movie, Jonathan? The best movie I saw of 2016, hand to God, Rogue One. Yeah. Okay. I'm not even kidding. That's what I figured. Look, here's the thing. I saw this movie Friday morning, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since then. I have not felt that way about a Star Wars movie, and again, since like 30 years. I'm not surprised. Are you thinking about it right now? Yes. Best book, I read. War and Peace this year. Wow. And it's awesome, and anybody who has ever wanted to read it should do it. Like, it's one of these things that is absolutely worth it, that will change who you are as a person, that is better than everybody says it is, even. It's awesome. And you said to pick a TV show, but I don't watch TV. Gilmore Girls. I don't watch TV. Did you do Gilmore Girls? That doesn't count? Gilmore Girls blows. It's true.
Sonny00:55:45He's not wrong. Deep thoughts. Best movie I saw this year was Arrival, which we've been watching. We've discussed on this show. Best book I read, best new book I read was Norm Macdonald's biography based on a true story, which is really more of like a kind of comic novel, like comic tragic novel than a celebrity memoir. Best old book I read was Infinite Jest. Took me like three months, so I'm going to get some credit for that here right now. Absolutely. David Foster Wallace, that guy. He knew how to write a book. Yeah, that's probably a better book than War and Peace. Well, this is the hipster war. This is the hipster war in peace, right? This is like Infinite Jest is the hipster war in peace. So this is what I read. They should put that on the next soft cover edition of it. On the 30th anniversary. On the cover, the 30th anniversary, the hipster war in peace. So, well, you know, I am what I am. And best TV show I watched this year was probably, I guess probably the new, I'm going to go with the new Westworld, the Westworld series, which was really, really pretty, pretty great. Jonathan Nolan. Those Nolan boys. They can do no wrong in my eyes.
Vic00:56:53Jonathan Nolan, my fellow Georgetown Hoya, a few years younger than me, and we're both equally successful now.
Sonny00:56:59Yeah. Look at him. You've got a podcast. He has like a million, a billion dollars.
Vic00:57:04Same. Same. Same. We had both of a series, equal experience on the hilltop. Best show, I like The Americans this season. I'd like to see how it progresses as we get closer and closer towards the end of the Soviet Union. How is the show going to handle the glass nose and piracy? We're talking about the secret Soviet spy couple living in Falls Church, Virginia, and I hope they don't get rid of the good guys who really are the FBI guys, Agent Beeman and Agent Adderholt. I like those guys, and that's who I'm rooting for in The Americans. Best movie, you know what? I was going to say Rogue One. I'm still letting it sink in, the impact of it, because it's really quite a movie. Aside from that, I really enjoyed the Coen Brothers movie. We Hail Caesar. Oh, that's great. I thought they had ... A lot of people did not like it. It gets few stars on IMDb. A lot of people are stupid. By a lot of people, do you mean your mother-in-law? No, no, no. She hasn't seen it, but she saw the musical segment with Channing Tatum, thought it was great. I think they had such a great take on the Hollywood blacklist.
Sonny00:58:10Yeah, it's great. It's an actual communist conspiracy.
Vic00:58:13No, no, that's exactly right. The actor, there's an actor, David Krumholz, who used to be a teen actor, and now he's grown up. He plays an angry communist writer. He plays an angry communist writer so well. It is such a short scene, but he does it so well. Best book, I enjoyed Paul Friedman's Ten Restaurants That Changed America. It sort of chronicles America's evolving eating habits and tastes from the 1800s until the present, and how things like the immigrant impact on our menu and how the French refined us. But the really interesting thing about that book is the one thing that stays the same, like lots of food we don't eat. They're more like terrapin soup. We don't eat turtles as much anymore. The one thing on menus from the 1800s to the day that keeps them popping up, mac and cheese. Because it's amazing. Yeah, it's delicious. There we go.
Sonny00:59:03Corrections. Classics never go out of style. A lot of corrections. All right. A lot of corrections.
Vic00:59:07Did you get, Jonathan, did you get our friend Adam White's clarification about the reality TV series taking place on a cruise ship? No. Yes. Yes. He talks about it. I don't have it with me in front of me. I thought you had it. I thought you had it. Good job. Yeah. Good job. This is how you host a show. This is how you, there is a show that took place on a cruise ship. It was a dating show and it always ended badly, of course.
JVL00:59:34Listeners wrote in to tell me that I had Gilmore Girls all wrong. Lorelei Gilmore was 16 when she had Rory, not 17. Rory did get into Harvard and Yale. It was Paris, her friend, who didn't get into Harvard. And then it was Paris, her friend, who went on the... I had sex and I didn't get into Harvard public meltdown. So there, I got that wrong. It doesn't change anything. Rory Gilmore is still an awful person and the enemy of that. I mean, the actual bad guy of that show. Then I, we had a long email from our buddy Gabe Rossman saying that Sonny is absolutely correct and that I am incorrect. The GIGO is not bad and definitely not so bad as good, just that it's really good at being bad. And Gabe then goes off to... Do a larger digression of that. I'm actually going to put Gabe's entire email into our show notes. It's very smart. Gabe is a professor of sociology at UCLA and has forgotten more about pop culture than most of us will ever know.
Sonny01:00:33Sonny, you... Yeah, I'm looking at my phone right now and I find nothing. No corrections.
Vic01:00:39You didn't get that email from Adam White? Mr. Perfect.
Sonny01:00:42I refuse to read anything from Adam White. His opinions on Oasis are... No, I'm just kidding. I love you, Adam. You're great.
Vic01:00:51In reference, by the way, Sonny, in reference to your complaining about our going on about Star Wars toys, the 20 plus minutes... How many people are saying it was great? According to longtime Substandard listener and media consultant Alex Finland, he says, quote, if Sonny's parents didn't get him Return of the Jedi toys when he was three and four years old... It was one. It was one when that movie came out. That's all of them. They had those things on the shelf until at least 1986. That's what Alex says. Good. And now we're moving on to Spirit of the Week. This is a good one. Did you like it, Sonny? Yeah, it was pretty good. This is from our friend, Michael Goldfarb. This is called Metz's Select, the 2015 Medley Indiana Straight Bourbon Whiskey. It's from the powerhouse distillery MGP, which makes a lot of other bourbons that say they're from there, but in fact, they get them from MGP in Indiana. And I like the fact that they're unafraid to say that it's Indiana whiskey as opposed to Kentucky. There's nothing wrong with Indiana. So thank you, Goldfarb, for that. Yeah, you know, I really liked it. How was your, what did you have this week, Zima? Was it Zima, or was it?
Sonny01:01:56Did you have some? Schuffer Hofer. Hard lemonade? Mike's Hard Lemonade?
JVL01:02:00No, this is Schuffer Hofer, a German concoction, which is half grapefruit juice, half Hefeweizen, and all delicious.
Sonny01:02:11This is a real man's podcast here. We're talking about Huffen Schuffen and Star Wars. It's huge in Germany. Star Wars, Rogue One.
Vic01:02:20All right. Well, we've only hit an hour mark. An hour? I will say that is all the time we have on this week's episode of The Substandard. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch, not at JV Last, who recently got hacked, but I hope your account is back in your control. Who can say? Who can say? You haven't visited it. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. Just type in Substandard on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. And again, we're off. Next week, it's Christmas, it's Hanukkah, all at the same time, it's an interfaith weekend. Happy holidays. Yes, so Merry Christmas from TheSubstandard, and we'll see you next year. Okay. All right.
JVL01:03:04Have you ever noticed how our intro outro music sounds like third-tier regional wrestling intro music? So if you were down in Georgia-
Vic01:03:15What channel would it be on?
JVL01:03:16So if you were down in Georgia watching a UHF channel in 1989- And there was some mid-card tag team coming in for the first time. Ladies and gentlemen, hailing from Stone Mountain, Georgia, the Midnight Express Rockers! This is what their music would sound like. Yeah.
Sonny01:03:31I'm fine with that. That's about where we are in the pecking order of the world, frankly. Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way. Fair enough. I mean, let's not oversell ourselves.
Vic01:03:39Yeah, that's good. My mother, recently, she called, I spoke to her today by accident, and I dialed the wrong number. But she went on to tell me that she experienced a Christmas miracle or a Christmas experience, spirit of Christmas, true meaning of Christmas. She was at Walmart, buying groceries and stuff, and the woman in front of her-
JVL01:03:56Your mother or your mother-in-law?
Vic01:03:57My mother! My mother in New Thompson, New Jersey!
JVL01:03:59Your mother-in-law would never be caught dead in a Walmart. No, no, no.
Vic01:04:02They don't go there. She doesn't go there. And she's waiting. It is Jersey, too. So she's waiting in line. And the woman in front is buying just generic paper towels, whatever, and then leaves. And then my mother goes to pick, they ring her up, and the cashier lady says, the woman in front of you had a gift card, and there's- There's $40 left over, and she said just to give it to you. Oh, that's nice. And my mother, she was like, tears welled up. She goes, you know, it's like a Christmas miracle. I said, yeah, it's a miracle the woman didn't see her Louis Vuitton bag.
Sonny01:04:31Yeah. I mean, in the realm of people who need the $40- It's so nice that the wife of the doctor is being given $40 at Walmart.
JVL01:04:38It's a miracle they didn't see her Rolex watch.
Sonny01:04:40Did she run out and get a gift card so she could be like, oh, $43, I better save this.
Vic01:04:45I tried to find her, she was gone. But you know what, she's going to be nicer to people. You're going to pay.
JVL01:04:50Your mom couldn't pay it forward. Your mother couldn't be nicer to people. Your mother doesn't, they don't make people nicer than your mother.
Vic01:04:56No, no, especially to their face, to their face. Okay.
JVL01:04:59I'll be good. I think that's- No, there was something else. Something else. Wasn't there something else we were going to talk about this week? I thought it was more- So, this really solidifies the case for The Empire, right? How many times do you suspect you will have seen this in the theater when all is said and done?
Sonny01:05:15I might go see it one more time.
Vic01:05:17Yeah. I was going to let Michael see it with Kate. Because she wanted to see it as well.
JVL01:05:23So, I'd love to see it again.
Vic01:05:25I just don't know when that opportunity will come up. I'd love to see it again in the theater.
Sonny01:05:29Yeah. All right.
Vic01:05:29Well, I'm going to set my over-under at five.
Sonny01:05:32Like I said, I might see it one more time. I don't really see a ton of movies in the theater more than once, just for time reasons. Because I see movies all the time. Please tell me how little time you have. It's great. It's great. I see a movie every week, and it's fantastic. But the, you know, I did see Hail- I saw Hail Caesar. I saw Hail Caesar in the theater twice this year. Wow. Which was kind of surprising. And I loved it. Both times good. I loved it. And then I watched it again at home on, I rented it from Amazon to watch with Beth. Still good. And it was fantastic.
Vic01:06:03Also, really, finally, very quickly, a special thank you to Substandard listener David Shaywitz for naming us as one of his favorite podcasts of 2016.
JVL01:06:13Yeah. That was awesome.
Vic01:06:14We're going to use those blurbs all over the posters and in our ads. Four stars.
JVL01:06:19A rock. Well, those ads we have for this. The side of the bus are really cool. Have you seen those?
Vic01:06:23They're really neat.
Sonny01:06:23For the Substandard.
Vic01:06:24Oh, so exciting. I can't wait to see it.
Sonny01:06:26Do they have caricatures of us? Am I?
JVL01:06:29They're going to wrap the bus in the ads. It's going to be awesome.
Sonny01:06:31Do they have a sculpture of my face on the front of the bus, like the Green Goblin from Maximum Overdrive?
JVL01:06:37No, there's only, I'm afraid there's only room for one head in its face.
Sonny01:06:39Well, that's, you can't, this is ridiculous. You and I get blotted out. If you put his face on the front of a bus, the bus is going to tip over front ways.
Vic01:06:47No, I'm only on the double-decker buses. You'll see me on the back. The double-decker bus.
Sonny01:06:51No, well, the double-wides, really, not really the double-decker.
Vic01:06:55Okay, we're done.
JVL01:06:56Are we?
Sonny01:06:57Are we? Was that pretty good, Jamie?
JVL01:07:00I'm sure it's fine.
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