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#146. The Substandard on YA Adaptations and Pillow Talk
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Dudes Chatting — YA adaptations and the Fantastic Beasts problem: JVL opens with an extended account of replacing his 30-year-old pillow: after years of inability to sleep on any other pillow, he ordered ten-to-fifteen ultra-flat candidates from Amazon and found a winner in the Luma Life Lux, a modular memory-foam pillow built from eight stackable pancake layers. Sonny needs only two. Vic and Sonny find JVL's pillow obsession baffling. Sonny raises the topic of the YA adaptation boom after reviewing The House with a Clock in Its Walls (directed by Eli Roth, starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett) and finding it a perfectly competent, if lightweight, PG fantasy film. The group then digs into why some YA adaptations succeed wildly (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight) and most fail: JVL's theory is that Harry Potter created the YA market essentially ex nihilo, and the audience can detect knockoffs. A sidebar debates whether the Fantastic Beasts series can sustain itself as Harry Potter without Harry Potter — the group is skeptical, noting the first film underperformed. JVL's dream is for J.K. Rowling to write Hogwarts: A History as a massive Silmarillion-style companion book. The Red Letter Media Last Jedi review is also discussed at the end, with JVL and Sonny endorsing it enthusiastically, particularly for catching continuity absurdities and Mark Hamill's on-the-record disdain for the film's direction.
Reviews: The House with a Clock in Its Walls — Sonny reviewed it. Eli Roth working in an entirely different register than his usual fare, competently delivering a PG kids' fantasy with a low-key Holocaust-survival undercurrent. Acceptable for families, not a film Sonny would personally revisit.
Box Office: The House with a Clock in Its Walls opened at #1 with $27 million. A Simple Favor fell to #2 with $10.4 million. The Nun held at #3 with $10 million.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Substandard, sponsored by Calm, the number one app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. I'm Victorino Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you The Substandard is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Just look at our podcast and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. JVL, how are you?
JVL00:00:40I'm so great. I'm so great. I teased this in a text to you guys, or maybe on Twitter. I don't remember which is which anymore. But I made a major life change with the help of Lord Bezos. What'd you do? And it's great. And I can tell you about it. If you'd like, it'll take a minute or two. Go ahead. We have a lot of time. I am a man of eccentricities. No, I don't believe that. And one of them pertains to the pillow, which I sleep on. Oh, you're just going to get up and walk away while I explain this story.
Sonny00:01:17That's okay. I'm just changing the gear around. We're taping in the Free Beacon office, and it is unsatisfactory to me how it is set up here. So keep talking. I'm listening. I will chime in.
JVL00:01:27I have only one pillow on which I can sleep. I have been using this pillow since roughly the age of 18.
Sonny00:01:36Hate to see that pillow. I'm sorry. You've been using the same actual physical pillow or the same brand of pillow? The same pillow.
?00:01:46That's gross.
Vic00:01:47That's gross. I believe the word is unhygienic. Because this is not five years later. This is not ten years later.
JVL00:01:55Nearly 30 years later. I believe my pillow is older than something like 45% of our listeners. Yes, 50. Go ahead. This pillow is nearly perfectly flat.
Sonny00:02:10Well, I mean, it's a billion years old. Of course it is.
JVL00:02:12And it has an indentation in the center of it, which is perfectly contoured to my neck. So it's a very tiny indentation.
Vic00:02:21I literally cannot sleep without this pillow.
JVL00:02:25This pillow travels. Everywhere I travel, I have to take the pillow. I cannot sleep not on it.
Vic00:02:33Wait a minute. When you travel, how about when you go overseas? You pack the pillow in your suitcase? 100%. You don't use the hotel pillow? A hotel pillow.
JVL00:02:42Use the hotel pillow. So tell me, what is the decontamination process that hotels go through for their pillows between guests? I believe they use pillowcases. Oh, and the pillowcases, which are made of cotton, that cotton is impermeable.
Vic00:02:56Sonny, help me out here.
Sonny00:02:59It's made of mithril? You're asking me to reason with an insane person, and that is, what's even the point?
Vic00:03:05Do you bring a sleep sack with you on top of the bed as well?
JVL00:03:09I tell you what I sure do, though. At a hotel? I take those, the comforters that don't get washed between guests. That s*** goes right in the closet the minute I walk into a hotel room. That's ridiculous. I need those comforters. This way I take care of my business. Okay.
Vic00:03:26So, I have been in tension with these two intrinsic poles, which I feel.
JVL00:03:34The one is the hygiene, and I'm not going to lie. Having a 30-year-old pillow is disgusting, as Sonny said.
Sonny00:03:42I don't disagree. Yeah, I mean, that has accumulated. It's probably all, like, yellowish and all. That pillow is probably mostly skin flakes at this point.
Vic00:03:52It's no longer stuffed with goose feather. It's now just your detritus.
JVL00:03:56That pillow used to be. Your dermis is made of. It's a human pillow. It's a human pillow.
Sonny00:04:00That pillow used to be made of, like, you know, foam or feathers or something, and now it is 90% JBL. Acrylic or something. Hairs. Who can say?
JVL00:04:10Look, I'm not here to defend the pillow. I'm not telling you that it, oh, no, it's perfectly hygienic. It's not. It's disgusting. This is why you want a new pillow. But I needed it. I couldn't sleep without it. But if it's so flat, have you ever tried to sleep without a pillow? I have. Like the Japanese tatami style? Just a little bit of support. Just need a bump. So I have been thinking for years about getting a new pillow. And then last week, one of my children woke me up at, like, 2.30 in the morning, and I got them put back to sleep. And then I sat and I communed with Lord Bezos. And Lord Bezos was able, for the sum, the paltry sum of, like, $400, to send me a wide array of pillows, all of which advertise themselves as being exceptionally flat. And one of them was a winner.
Sonny00:05:00How many? You spent $400 on pillows. I'm sorry. How many pillows did you get? A large number of pillows. How many pillows? We're talking, like, 10 pillows? 20 pillows? Fewer than 20. Fewer than 20, but more than 10.
JVL00:05:14Fewer than 15.
Sonny00:05:15So fewer than 15 and more than 10.
JVL00:05:17More than nine.
Vic00:05:19And when you're, just to decide which pillow you want, you spent this amount of money. Can you return the other pillows?
JVL00:05:25Well, sure. Because I did. I didn't sleep on them. I didn't even take them out. Believe me.
Vic00:05:29Okay, so you're testing them and then you send them back.
JVL00:05:31No, no, no, no. I am not testing the pillows and sending them back. You're just looking at them. I am observing them. You're examining them. Because you can tell from looking whether or not these pillows are fine. Because they all say, ultra slim, crazy slim, galactic slimness. Because there are dozens of people like me. If you go out onto the message boards of Sleepopolis and Sleep Like the Dead, who look for, who need, who crave, who require. Very, very flat pillows. And I found one. So you're never fluffy. I found one which is perfect. It is the Luma Life Lux. And what it is, this is the genius of it.
Sonny00:06:11It is eight tiny, tiny layers.
JVL00:06:14How much is that, Sonny?
Vic00:06:15No, it's not that expensive. It's not that expensive.
JVL00:06:18It's like 50 bucks or 40 bucks. It's the same price as all these pillows. It comes with eight. It's pancake-like layers of memory foam, each of which is no thicker than about one-eighth of an inch.
?00:06:32Okay.
Vic00:06:33And so you just choose how many of those— You're giving a free advertisement.
JVL00:06:36How many of those you need to stack to make it your level of preferred thinness.
Sonny00:06:41This is the thing?
JVL00:06:43Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. And so it turns out I need two of them, two of the pancakes, not one. But the two pancakes are perfect.
Sonny00:06:53And because it's memory foam,
JVL00:06:56it allows me— It remembers where your neck is? Well, no. So it allows you to get the depression where your neck is that otherwise I had to carve out over the course of decades with my old pillow. And so what I think I need to do now is just buy, like, 30 of these and stash them in case they go out of business. I hope they don't. But this way I could literally have a new pillow that is perfect for me, like, once every two years. And so I could get all of my hygienic itches scratched while also getting all of my flat pillow itches scratched.
Vic00:07:24You are worse than the princess and the pea.
JVL00:07:26That's extremely high-maintenance.
Sonny00:07:27I can't believe you guys aren't excited by this. What do you do for pillows? What? I'm—
JVL00:07:32It has so much RAM.
Sonny00:07:34I'm very curious to know— So this was the only way— Did I break you? This was the only way—
JVL00:07:42Because I've got to tell you, I broke my wife. It's—yeah. When she saw— She started texting us. When she saw the—I'm not even kidding. When she saw the flatness of the one, she's like, what the hell is that? And I said, oh, that's my new pillow. Oh, she thought it was a dish mat. She thought it was a dish mat. But I started twitching, and she couldn't stop it.
Vic00:08:00Yeah, I have a whole segment here ready to ask you about pillows, but you beat us to it. Did I blow our—I blew a bit? Only because she'd been sending us texts telling us about how insane you are. So we totally were ready for this, but I was going to bring it up, but you brought it up anyway. But tell us about the flat—so the flat—well, what about her? I mean, so what does she—does she care as much about pillows as you do?
JVL00:08:24She doesn't care about the individual. She doesn't care about the individual pillows so long as she has a lot of them. She wants a mountain of pillows, and she doesn't care what the mountain is created from, if it is goose down or memory foam. She just wants, like, 15 pillows stacked like the Rockies.
Vic00:08:39How about—have you ever considered—what's the add-on cable I see all the time? The MyPillow. The MyPillow, where the guy presses the pillow. Now it's comfortable, but I'm not going to hold it down for you all night. You know that one? No. Are you curious about that? No. I'm kind of curious. Out there in the sleep—
JVL00:08:55They advertise it, the Substandard. I get it. Out there in the internet sleep space, there's a lot of discussion about what a scam the MyPillow is. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, take that, Mr. Trumpy McCrumpelstein MyPillow.
Sonny00:09:07Question. He's a big trumper, too. Question. Not that there's anything wrong with it. Yes, sorry. When you say that you spend a lot of time on the sleep web, is this like the dark web?
Vic00:09:18Yeah.
Sonny00:09:19Do you have to have a Tor account to access it?
JVL00:09:25Do you, while you're on this-
Sonny00:09:28Inappropriate images. While you're on the sleep web, do you have to use a VPN to make sure nobody knows what you're looking at?
JVL00:09:35Well, I use my ExpressVPN because I want to make sure that the big mattress-
Sonny00:09:41Big mattress doesn't know what you're looking at.
JVL00:09:42Who I can't name. We got a new mattress, but I think I'm not allowed to talk about that. No, you're not. It's in the contract. I would say that the sleep web is bigger than you could ever possibly imagine. Like, you can't imagine how big the internet that is devoted to sleep stuff actually is. People care about this like you wouldn't believe.
Sonny00:10:06Well, you sleep for a third of your life. You want to be comfortable while you do it. I would love it if I could sleep for a third of my life.
JVL00:10:12You sleep for an eighth of your life.
Sonny00:10:13Yeah, you sleep for a sixth of your life.
Vic00:10:16I'm a flat pillow person myself. I don't like the fluffy kind where your ears are covered and you feel like you're being enveloped in it.
JVL00:10:25Well, people whose heads don't weigh 35 pounds don't typically have that problem. Because that's me with even the flat pillow. It just goes in. I just tend to sink into the mattress. So what do you guys do for pillows? Whatever the pillow is. You know, my wife bought it. That's fine with me. And there's one that's – there's a couple that are fluffier and there's – I use one pillow. You can function in the world no matter what pillow is under your head. I have much more. What must it like to be able to experience the world in that way? I have people who sleep eight hours, right?
Sonny00:10:51I have much stronger thoughts about blankets than pillows. Like I need a heavy blanket. Down.
JVL00:10:56Do you need a weighted blanket? Or a down?
Sonny00:10:57No, I don't need a weighted blanket. Do you know what those are? I don't need a – yes. And I don't need a down blanket. Because I don't need to be hot necessarily. I just need the sensation of being covered. Being covered and cocooned and cradled. I need to feel like I'm in the womb again. That's how I – but this has led to a number of things like me always having the AC on at like 68 degrees and having our ceiling fan going full blast because I do get hot. Have you read about the jet bed? What's the jet bed? This is why we need a guide through the dark sleep web. This is the dark sleep web.
JVL00:11:31So for couples who have differing preferences, the way – I'm not sure how your spouse feels, but some – one spouse sleeps very hot, the other sleeps very cold. Yes, we're the exact opposite. They have what is called the jet bed, and it's like an air compressor that sits at the foot of the bed and it funnels air through to both sides individually, and you can get one side, getting cold air, and the other side, getting hot air, so that you can both be under whatever amount of covers you both need but both be experiencing in your own chambers the ideal temperature.
Vic00:12:05I was thinking about getting actually the sleep mattress after I saw the Kirk Cousins commercial. Kirk Cousins and his wife, he does the one with the number. Oh, the sleep number bed? The sleep number bed. The sleep number bed is such a scam. It worked for Kirk Cousins. Well, it didn't work for him last Sunday, but if it works for him generally –
JVL00:12:18It's an air mattress. It's an air mattress. Question. Yes.
Sonny00:12:25Is everything that is advertised on TV considered a scam to the dark sleep web? Yeah. So basically, people on the dark sleep web look at things that are on TV, and they're like, look at these noobs sleeping like idiots.
JVL00:12:40Suckers. Yeah, totally missing out. If it's on – it is like Ginsu knives to Henkels or to Wusthof. That is what it is. The Ginsu knives cut through cans.
Sonny00:12:50Did you see that? It cuts through the cans. I actually have a knife question because I saw – I saw an advertisement for something, and I was like, oh, those look like kind of crappy knives, but actually they turn out to be not crappy knives. Kamikoto knives? You know, just because they have a Japanese name, don't just go and buy it.
Vic00:13:06No, don't. You know, the only one I would say is Global and Shun. Those are very good. No, I have Miyabi.
JVL00:13:12My Miyabi is –
Vic00:13:13It's such an awesome knife, it scares me to use it. Oh, yeah. I've got like a – I've got a cleaver that my mother bought in Chinatown, and it's only used for body – human bodies that I only use. I mean, it's just – well, right through bone. You could use it in Civil War if you needed like a two-minute – we need to amputate this guy in two minutes. Okay, let me get this cleaver from Chinatown. That'll do it. Can we still say Chinatown? That's a good – It's like another 18-month tops.
Sonny00:13:39Yeah, before the whole idea of Chinatown is a thing you can't say anymore, right? That's a very good point. But the problem – you can't just call it Asian Town because there's a Chinatown and a Korean Town. Yeah, they don't want to be – They don't want to be called –
JVL00:13:49I think you better just use the cross streets.
Sonny00:13:55I was over at H and 17th. I was at H and 8th. I don't know. That place with the arch, the colorful arch. H and 17th is where the prostitutes are. H and like 7th is where the Chinatown is.
Vic00:14:04Sonny would know that. Sonny, how are you?
Sonny00:14:06How was your weekend, Sonny? Fine. I slept on a regular pillow, like a non-maniac.
JVL00:14:12Do you really – so you were like, Vic, you could just use whatever pillow's there?
Sonny00:14:14You don't have a pillow that is yours that you have to have? I don't have any strong feelings about pillows.
Vic00:14:19If I had a choice between a fluffy and a flat, I'll take the flat, but go ahead.
Sonny00:14:22I kind of prefer flat. I prefer flat. But I will just sleep on whatever. It doesn't matter.
JVL00:14:27For Christmas this year, I'm getting each of you the Luma Life Lux.
Vic00:14:32Don't make us feel like we have to get you something now for Christmas. You feel like – this is terrible.
JVL00:14:36You guys never get me anything. I always get you guys presents. You never get me anything. I don't have a problem with it. Men don't give each other presents.
Vic00:14:42I don't know. I don't have a problem with it.
JVL00:14:45That's just the way our relationship is. It's unrequited love. It's abusive. Yeah. No, it's fine.
Vic00:14:50Otherwise, you're fine.
JVL00:14:52Sonny, nothing else to report. I'm trying to think.
Sonny00:14:54My mind is just a blank now after all that talk about the dark sleep web.
JVL00:14:58Did you watch Chav Arthur again?
Sonny00:15:00No, I will never watch Chav Arthur again.
JVL00:15:03I'm going to watch it this weekend with my mother-in-law.
Sonny00:15:05I have a finite amount of time, and I have to watch very important movies. I don't have time to watch trash King Arthur reboots for failed cinematic universes. Sorry. Wow.
Vic00:15:17Okay. Well, I was going to say I was going to sleep fine since we're all talking about sleep. But I'm a light sleeper also. If Kate can't sleep, then I can't sleep. Like if she gets out of bed, then I'm awake. If she's not in bed, then I'm awake. And this was one of the things that happened yesterday. She's too pillow. I'm one pillow. I can't tell. You know what I mean? But normally she's a good sleeper. But for any number of reasons, too many things in her mind that she's thinking about, busy day, whatever it is, then she was up and I'm up. So I didn't have that much sleep. And I was thinking about when she grew up in Connecticut, her problem, she said. Was she had problems sleeping because at the Dwyer house, too many clocks. Mrs. Dwyer, she's a clock obsessive. So it's like Captain Hook's ship. So everything is just this constant. It's like a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. So it's just constant ticking. Like Siler and Heroes. Yes. And the problem is, and then they have clocks that chime in there. So whenever I'm there in Connecticut, like every hour, every half hour, every 15 minutes, you'll hear some clock going up. But they're not all synchronized. So they go off like one. After the other. Constantly. You will have 12 chimes because it's midnight. I can count. I'm like, what time is it? Oh, it's midnight. And then like 30 seconds later, the other clock goes off. And then it's just constant. But she said, but it drives Kate crazy. She says it's like, she said, it's very German of my mother-in-law. It's like tick-tock, tick-tock, time's a-wasting. Gotta hurry up. Time's a-wasting. You know, because constantly in your mind. And that probably explains why in our house, I think we only have one clock and that's in the kitchen. But speaking of clocks on the wall. Over the weekend. It took me very long. That was too obvious. It was too obvious. I saw that coming a while away. I had a different one. I had a different one. B plus. B plus. Speaking of torture, over the weekend, torture director Eli Roth was at the top of the box office. Don't you prefer the first one? He didn't direct torture.
Sonny00:17:11Torture porn.
Vic00:17:12That's what you're thinking. Yeah, it's okay. Over the weekend, the house with a clock in its walls, the first one was better, took the top spot at the box office with $27 million, followed by a simple favor. Again, what is that again? Simple favor. Is that the Paul Feig movie? We don't even know.
Sonny00:17:27Yeah, I haven't seen it. Okay.
Vic00:17:28Oh, is it like a world? It's not like a simple plan. No, it's not. I would prefer. Simple favor with $10.4 million. And in third place, The Nun, still hanging in there with $10 million, and it vows to break all kinds of records. Hi-yo. Hey, thank you. Its budget was $22 million. Nonetheless, it has now grossed over $100 million. Domestic Gene should have seen The Nun, but man, it would be hard to see that movie for anybody. Why? Because it's bad? It must be terrible. Because it looks terrible. It would take a miracle for Gene to see that movie. Sonny, you saw The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Am I the only one here who saw? I saw no reason for me to see this. I saw no reason for me to see this movie.
Sonny00:18:10No reason. Well, no reason. I mean, it's not like you're going to be talking about it on a podcast or anything.
Vic00:18:13Even if I saw it, what I'm going to say is, oh, it was good.
Sonny00:18:15It's not like you're going to have to tell people about the movie or whether or not.
Vic00:18:21So give us a review, and we'll get a feel of it.
Sonny00:18:23They should. You should go see it. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is set in the 1950s in Michigan, and it is about a young orphaned boy who goes to live with his crazy magic-obsessed uncle and discovers that his eccentricities are actually his strengths. And he learns how to do magic, and he and his uncle, who is played by Jack Black, as well as their kooky neighbor, who is played by a powerful, well, who is a witch that is very powerful, and she is played by Cate Blanchett, have to figure out why there is a clock in the walls of this house that Jack Black lives in. Turns out, doomsday clock. It's a doomsday clock. And they have to figure out how to stop that before an evil wizard who killed himself and has been brought back to the dead by the little orphan boy who is learning how to do magic has to, you know, he wants to end the world.
Vic00:19:24And the evil wizard is played by?
Sonny00:19:26By Kyle MacLachlan, best known as the weird guy, the creepy guy on Showgirls. That's always how I think about him. Oh, really? That's literally the first movie I think about him, although he was good at that. You know, Blue Velvet or, you know, or Dune. That's where I first think about Kyle MacLachlan is Dune. Or Twin Peaks or whatever. Twin Peaks. But no, for me, it's always like, hey, it's that skeezy guy from Showgirls.
Vic00:19:48It's tainted. You know, the last thing, that's the last thing we remember. And he even had a stint on Sex and the City, but you're right. The Doors. The Doors.
JVL00:19:55Yeah, he plays Ray Manzarek. That's right.
Sonny00:19:58But, you know, Kyle MacLachlan is good. He's kind of underused. He's barely in the movie, which is, it's kind of an odd choice for him to be, to be cast in it at all. But I, look, here's the, the, the weirdest thing about this movie is that it is directed by Eli Roth, as you kind of hinted at in the second terrible transition. Who is best known for his kind of hard R bordering on NC-17. Um, uh, torture porn, uh, gore exploitation flicks, movies like Hostile Hostile 2, uh, The Green Inferno, um, that sort of thing. Uh, and he, he is here working on a PG movie and it's very much a PG movie. There's no real violence. There's no cursing. There's no sex. It's, it is, it is a, it is a movie for kids, um, that has some, I think, I think has some appeal to adults. I mean, I'm, uh, it's always hard for me to tell with these things because I'm so into kind of like what is actually going on. In the movie itself, you know, the filmmaking and the, the stars and, and that sort of thing. But like, it, it, it reminds me a bit of, um, it's much more, it's been much more successful, but it reminds me a bit of a, a movie that came out a few years back called Cirque du Freak, which starred John C. Riley as a vampire, um, uh, who like turns a little kid into his, his assistant, his vampire assistant, um, and, uh, had like all sorts of weird, um, uh, uh, cameos on like big actors and actresses in very small parts, like Salma Hayek was in it for a minute, and, um, what's his name, Let Them Fight, um, Ken Watanabe was in it, uh, and like it, it had like all of these, it had all of these little cameos, and I was like, oh, this is cool, this is neat, kind of like a very cheap, smaller scale version of the Harry Potter movies, which, um, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Yeah, but I, I liked it, I thought it was a totally acceptable, uh, young adult action, adventure, adaptation type movie. Uh, and it, it, it really is, I mean, look, you know, people, people give Eli Roth a lot of crap for being a, you know, a kind of a sensationalistic filmmaker, but he is perfectly competent at making a, I mean, and that is like nothing to sneer at. I, like, when I say perfectly competent, I mean, I, I like mean that in the nicest way possible. He knows how to frame a shot, he knows how to move a story along, he knows how to, uh, go from point to point, he knows how to play things subtly, I mean, there's a, there's a whole. Um, very under the surface, uh, kind of subplot about the Holocaust in this movie that is like not, is not really harped on, it is, it is just kind of in the background and gets at the themes about how we move on from tragedy and how we, how we get on with our lives. Um, so, I mean, I, I, I think it's, I think it is a good kind of, you know, if you got a 13 year old, you don't know what to do with them, get them out there, see this, see this sort of movie.
Vic00:22:50And it's based on a, a, a very popular book.
Sonny00:22:53It's based on, well, I mean, it's based on a young adult novel that has been in print for, I don't know, 40 years now. Is that right? But I, I, this is, the first I was hearing of it was these, the, the, you know, the advertising for this movie, um, which is unusual. Usually I have some awareness of these books. Um, but it, it gets into, this gets into one of the things I wanted to talk about today, which is like the whole industry of, uh, uh, adapting young adult novels is very fascinating to me because it seems like they keep trying to do it over and over and over again with very limited success.
Vic00:23:24Yes.
Sonny00:23:25With the exception of the big crossover ones, right? Like you have like your big hits, like your Harry Potter, um, your Hunger Games, your Twilight. Uh, and it is, my question on those is, were they successful because they were crossovers? Like, oh, look, here's an action adventure movie that's also a YA novel. Were they just capitalizing on the fact that these movies, uh, are based on books that had just come out, right? Like the Harry Potter books had just come out. The Twilight. The Twilight books had just come out. You know, the Hunger Games books were, they were all incredibly popular and they were also very, very, but also you have like the Divergent books, which are very popular and not as successful movies, right? So, anyway, uh, I, you know, a kind of secondary thing to look at here, JVL, I know you're a huge fan of the Harry Potter books, right? Yes. And you were a modest fan of the Harry Potter movies?
JVL00:24:19Hmm, what, what is a little bit less than modest? Okay, so you're like, you're like. You're like, eh, they're fine. Some are better than others. Like, three of them are mildly competent. Yeah.
Sonny00:24:30Um, so, but like here's, and now you have this whole Harry Potter spinoff thing, which is basically asking, will people enjoy Harry Potter movies without Harry Potter?
Vic00:24:39Oh, right. I'd like to talk about this because I just saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them last night.
Sonny00:24:44And I'm, I'm like, I'm kind of curious about, uh, you know, what, what the, the odds of success of a series like this are. From a huge Harry Potter fan.
Vic00:24:54Can I also ask a question of JVL first? Sure. Um, the Harry Potter books, have you, do you read them to your kids or no? Is that like bedtime reading or no?
JVL00:25:03Uh, Shannon reads them to our kids because she is a tremendously gifted reader. Uh, and she does the voices and the whole nine yards. Yes, yes.
Vic00:25:11I like doing, I like doing that as well. But there's other ways you could put your kids to bed, right, JVL?
JVL00:25:17That's, that's a lackluster transition. I, but that's okay. I thought that was good. That was way better than the clock one.
Vic00:25:22I agree. I like the clock one better. I surprised Sonny on that one.
JVL00:25:26So, this is, so here's where we talk about my buddies at Calm.com, Calm, Calm, Calm.com, C-A-L-M.com, uh, who have this fantastic app that everybody with children should, should listen to. So, uh, it's an app, you subscribe to it and it gives you access to this enormous world of like meditations and guided body scans, but the part we use it for most in our family, and as I said, we use it for our kids. I say this every week, uh, we have been Calm users for years, uh, and we pay full freight for it and it's worth every penny. They could double the price and we would still gladly give them our money. Uh, our sleep stories, they have this enormous library, which they're always adding to, of stories to put children to sleep. And as a, for instance, last night, my two-year-old, the little one who we don't have a nickname for, woke up and he was very, very unhappy and he was having bad dreams about bees and he was concerned that there were bees. He's in his room and it was just, it was a nightmare. So we tried putting him to bed. He woke back up. He didn't want to, don't leave me alone. Don't leave me alone. So I went downstairs to his room. I laid back on the easy chair with him and I said, would you like to listen to a story? And he was like, yes, story, please. And so we put on Miss Tamara Leavitt and Ella's Treasure, one of our favorite stories. And I, I've mentioned to you guys, Tamara Leavitt, who is my single favorite, favorite reader of all time. And I want to, I want to play her voice for you. So you can understand what I love about her. That is the great Tamara Leavitt. And her voice is like ambient for your soul. And I, well, she's got a little vocal fry going. I like that. Everything about her voice is magical. And I mean, I'm not kidding. 45 seconds into Ella's Treasure, the G-man was dead. I had to sleep on my chest.
Sonny00:27:24And it's just magic.
JVL00:27:25And it's been like this for all of my kids. I believe it is true that 90% of every single bedtime, my three youngest kids fall asleep listening to sleep stories from Calm.com. It is, I've said it before, I will say it again, their corporate motto should be better than Benadryl. So people should do this if you have kids. I suppose if you like meditation, you should try Calm.com too. I can't really speak to that because that's not how we use it at home, but I'm sure it's great. But man, the sleep stories they have are worth every penny if you have kids. So you should subscribe. All you have to do is go to Calm.com, C-A-L-M.com slash Substandard, and they will give you 25% off of a premium subscription, which is a tremendously great deal. We in The Last Family do not do 25% off. We pay full freight, and we are totally grateful for it. It's absolutely worth it at twice the price. Unlimited access to. All of their stuff, all of their sleep stories, all of their meditations, Calm.com slash Substandard. That's C-A-L-M.com slash Substandard, and you will get 25% off.
Vic00:28:34Go today. Thank you, JVL. A question about that also. Is it original content, the stories that they have?
JVL00:28:40So some of them are stories written for them. Some of them are readings of just like traditional stories that people have adapted, like Cinderella or The Wind in the Willows. Some of them are read essays, because they have them both. Both for kids and for grown-ups. There's a whole world on grown-up sleep stories. It would be an interesting gig.
Vic00:28:55It would be an interesting gig to write. Oh, yeah. Believe me. I write things that people fall asleep to anyway, so.
JVL00:29:02Raise your hand if you are dying for them to ask you to maybe, maybe you'd like to take Not to read it. No, I couldn't read it. I don't have that sort of, the pipes. But they're amazing. And so they have the one for Yellowstone. They do a reading of, I believe the guy's name is John Muir, who was the first explorer to go through the area that is now Yellowstone. So they read him. And his diaries. Oh. And it's just, so it's both interesting and beautiful, and then it just lulls you to sleep while you think about a place that is better, that doesn't have bees in it.
Vic00:29:33Very nice.
JVL00:29:35Okay, let's go back to our. Without bees, all the plants will die. That's true. There's a bee shortage. We have a bee shortage. I'm softer on bees than I am on hornets. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, hornets, we should just make them extinct. Yes. Hornets are terrible.
Vic00:29:47Hornets are the ****. Particularly. The animal. Of the stinging. The stinging. Of the stinging insect. In the Indian world. August and in September when they get very, very angry. I got tagged by six of them when I was down at the beach.
JVL00:29:59And they can sting you more than once.
Vic00:30:01That's the worst part. Yeah, that's the other thing. It's like they figured out a way around their whole. The sting and die. The sting and die thing. Yeah, the worst.
JVL00:30:08Which, as a kid, I always took a lot of comfort from the idea that a bee that's stinging, well, at least he died, too.
Vic00:30:12And now to know that they can sting multiple times, like Macaulay Culkin and, not my girl, not Stand By Me, the end of My Girl. That's terrible. Okay. Talking about the YA world, Sonny, you had a deep thought about the Harry Potter. Can it stand on its own? Like, do people want, for example, in November. Well, Harry Potter without Harry Potter.
Sonny00:30:33Like, what is that? Right, right. November. Who thought that was actually a good idea? Because the sense I get is that nobody actually really likes these movies, especially in the Harry Potter world. Oh, the Fantastic Beasts series. Do the kids like them? The kids like them. Kids love them.
Vic00:30:47Or I think people miss them and they want to force themselves to like it. So there's all this excitement, for example. In the latest final trailer for Crimes of Grindelwald.
JVL00:30:57Yeah.
Vic00:30:57Right? Oh my gosh, there's a reveal about Nagini. Nagini's in this. You know, so everyone's getting excited.
Sonny00:31:02Is there excitement, though?
JVL00:31:03I mean, do these movies do well? They don't.
Sonny00:31:05No. They don't do very well. They don't do that well.
JVL00:31:07And they are solo to The Force Awakens.
Sonny00:31:11Aren't they? Kind of. Well, not quite. I don't think they're quite that bad. But I do think the first one really underperformed, which, again, I think was surprising. It was surprising to the folks at WB, and also I'm kind of surprised they were surprised, because, again, you're making Harry Potter movies without Harry Potter. It's a franchise.
JVL00:31:30I'm like, what is... The executives at Warner Brothers put out a piece of crap product that they could never have imagined wouldn't get an audience reaction? They wouldn't do that with any... I don't believe that. They wouldn't do that with any other properties, would they? I don't believe that for a minute.
Sonny00:31:43Yeah. Anyway, but the whole kind of YA cinematic adaptation universe is fascinating to me, because, like, you really... You have, like, these kind of really big hits, and you have these kind of really big bombs, like the Miss Peregrine's movie, and the... Actually, that movie made almost $300 million worldwide, so it wasn't that bad. Yeah, that's weird. But, like, oh, what was it? The Lemony Snicket movie. Lemony Snicket. Was that Jim Carrey? With Jim Carrey. And these are fantastically expensive movies. I mean, Miss Peregrine cost $110 million. The Lemony Snicket movie cost $140 million somehow.
Vic00:32:20I assume Fantastic Beasts was an expensive...
Sonny00:32:22Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you have, like, cheaper ones, like The House with the Clock and its Walls, which is $40 or $50 million. The Goosebumps movie cost $40 or $50 million. Things like that. But I'm also... I'm always, like, kind of curious, like, why do they make the movies they make? Like, who was, like, this 45-year-old, you know, YA book that is, like, existed, that's been around for a while, but I'm not sure is necessarily... Like, why is that a thing we want to put $50 million? $50 million into and say, like, here's a property. Here's a...
JVL00:32:55Well, they're all panting after Star Wars. I mean, this is, like, in the wake of Star Wars, Hollywood greenlit, like, 70 terrible sci-fi movies because they just thought, well, this is what the audience wants. They didn't think that the audience wanted, like, the amazing space opera that is Star Wars. They just thought, oh, people want spaceships. They want to see spaceships. And this is in the wake of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, which are the only two that really succeeded on screen and made a lot of money. But they succeeded so fantastically. They were such sort of giant black swans here that they, everybody thinks, well, we'll just go and do that and maybe my, maybe this property has a 10% chance of hitting and a 90% chance of missing. But if it hits, it hits really, really big. But it's, they shouldn't think that because you could see it even within the book series that there is something special about Harry Potter. There is something special about The Hunger Games that all, they are first in their, they're the first movers in their genres, right? Harry Potter really creates the young adult market in fiction. It didn't really exist. Pre-Harry Potter, you had like 40 years ago, you had The Catcher in the Rye, which was very different, but became a young adult novel. But the young adult books were all things like The House with the Clockman's Walls or The Babysitter's Club or The Hardy Boys. It wasn't really a robust market that crossed over in sales figures into the mainstream.
Vic00:34:15Harry Potter changed that. That's right. There was one that my wife remembers. I wrote it down because I saw the movie of it. Of course, I didn't. The Babysitter's Club. No, no, no. You ready for this?
Sonny00:34:25No, that's a different movie.
Vic00:34:27John Leguizamo, remember that one? No, this is from the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frank. Basil E. Rottweiler? Basil E. Rottweiler. Frank Rottweiler. Frank Weiler. Frank Weiler. Rottweiler. And it's about the kids who hide out at the Metropolitan Museum. Yeah, exactly. And I saw that the movie was old. It was like from the early 70s. And the old woman was Ingrid Bergman, of all people. No kidding. Yeah. That's sad, isn't it? Yeah. You should see the poster of it. It is sad because they have her hair and the whole deal. But that was it, as far as I knew about that sort of YA thing. And it became, you know, but it did become a thing.
JVL00:35:04And Harry Potter shows, the success of Harry Potter carves out an actual niche in publishing where YA can make enormous sums of money. And so you had, after the Harry Potter hit, you had a flood of wizarding magic books in that space, like the Percy Jackson books. And people love them.
Vic00:35:22People love these things. Well, no, but I don't think people actually did love them.
JVL00:35:25Like, their sales were always a fraction of what the original was. The same thing with the vampire romance novels, which came after the Twilight series. Now, you may not like the Twilight series. I do not like the Twilight series. But at least it was original-ish for the space. And nobody was ever able to imitate it successfully. Same thing with The Hunger Games, right? So Hunger Games pioneers these sort of dystopian warfare YA space. And then you get Divergent and a whole bunch of things which are just knockoffs of it after. And the audience can tell.
Vic00:35:53The audience can always tell. What is Maze Runner?
JVL00:35:57Is that related to any of these? Or is it Maze Runner? It's another Hunger Games. And so this is my theory, is that the audience for the books can tell these things. And they'll buy them because, you know, you've got to ply children with books, right? But also you can ply children with books much more economically over a long tail than you can with a movie. And if the movie is, you know, a crappy production based on a crappy knockoff property to begin with, well, we don't need another Harry Potter in the movies because we already have a Harry Potter. Right. Right. You can just watch that on Amazon over and over again. You don't need to have a second-rate Harry Potter.
Vic00:36:31Will there be a Harry Potter, not a prequel, but a sequel, like Harry Potter's son, Albus Severus Potter? Sure hope not. I mean, they'll have his father and then they can have them as parents. Daniel Radcliffe is a father.
JVL00:36:48So this is the weird thing about J.K. Rowling, who is a tremendously. Gifted writer. Like she's, she's a better writer than her stuff needs to be. Those books could have been just as successful if they were written with 30% less skill because the idea was so magic. But she had, I mean, she everywhere, she's better than she has to be as a writer. She has shown that even though she now has more money than God, she still wants to write. And so she still wants to keep writing more, which is interesting. Kind of Stephen King-like in a way. And she's shown that she wants to do other stuff. She's done some murder mysteries. And, you know, just push unrelated to, but she's also willing to revisit her original creation, which is interesting and has so far not been terribly successful.
Sonny00:37:33Well, it is, it's interesting in that it has like managed to, every time she does it, she makes some usually progressive cohort of her fans angry, even when she's trying to be super progressive about it. It's very, it's very, you know, again, we don't, we don't do politics here, but it is interesting to like, look at the reaction. Oh yeah, Dumbledore was gay thing, right? Like, because you know, who got the angriest about that were the liberal fans who were like, you can't just say this, you have to show it. You have to show him having sex in the movies with a man, or it doesn't count. And it's just like, can't be with a house elf. These are, these are, these are, these are, these are, you know, it's, these are kids movies. Oh no. Oh boy. But like, and we saw this in the trailer for the, the, the new Grindelwald movie, right? Like the, the revelation that the snake was. This woman. Yes, Nagini. And now, and everyone, and I mean, I saw, I saw literally within minutes of this trailer going up four or five different pieces that were like, it's really troubling that they turned this woman into an object who's owned by this Nazi-like figure. And I'm just like, really?
JVL00:38:39Is this why we're, is this why we're doing this?
Sonny00:38:41Is this why we're all watching these movies? Yes. To get angry about this sort of stuff. Beginning now, yes. But anyway, but like, it's very weird that she is like, it is. It is, it is. You see it a lot with, with actors and actresses like Scarlett Johansson, who's like super progressive and like always saying the right things and then like gets dragged every time she makes a movie because it violates some tenet of intersectionality. And J.K. Rowling falls very much into that space of like, I am a progressive. I hate Donald Trump. Stop yelling at me. Stop. I'm just trying to be good. But it's never enough.
JVL00:39:16You can't ever get ahead of the revolution. No. Right. I mean, this is impossible. Yeah. I. I mean, my worries about her going back to these things is that I, I worry that in the long run she cheapens the, or dampens the appeal of the original stuff. Right. Now, I don't, I don't know that she will. It could be that everybody just loves it. I mean, they built a theme park for it. Right. Name the last set of books that had a giant theme park made for them. I think people will still read Harry Potter the way people still read Lord of the Rings 70 years after it was written by Tolkien. Yeah. I really think. I don't think they're that good.
Vic00:39:52I think it depends on how, you know, if she's straining in the next movie or a couple movies to make connections. Oh, and this is where, you know, Voldemort came from, or this is Tom Riddle's connection to these people. And if it looks like it's, like, labored, then it's not going to work. You know, people don't want to see that.
Sonny00:40:08But that's what this series has to be, right? The whole point of this series is building up to, like, the introduction of Voldemort.
JVL00:40:15No, totally agree. But what's it, she's not doing this as a cash grab. She's doing it because she's so in love with the characters that she, she just wants to go back and play with them more. Like, it is a right, so if it's a sin, it's a writerly sin and not a, believe me, she doesn't need an extra five billion.
Sonny00:40:29But then, but then why isn't she actually writing books for these? Why is she just? Right.
Vic00:40:34That was my question. Fantastic Beasts. She has been writing books. She keeps writing, like, short stories on the Pottermore website.
JVL00:40:40And she's, she's, she's dipping back into this constantly.
Vic00:40:43But Fantastic Beasts and the next movie, they're not based on books. I mean, the books, the books now exist based on, after the fact, after the movies come out. I would have to effort that. Okay. I can't say for sure. Yeah. So, okay. Sorry.
JVL00:40:57I'm sure we have readers who know a lot more about this than I do. What my, my dream for her was always that she would write one more Harry Potter book after she finished the series. And it would be a similarian, like, 4,000 pages.
Sonny00:41:12Yeah, hardcore, so Merlin. That is Hogwarts, a history, which is the single book which is referenced all the way
JVL00:41:18throughout the Harry Potter books and series, whenever there was, like, you know, well, wait a minute, where did this come from? And then Hermione will consult Hogwarts, a history, and it will fill in some little, like, just write that book. That would be awesome. And she could make, take her a decade. Take her a decade, and there are all the stories she wanted to tell.
Vic00:41:32You could have huge chunks that are as dense and dry as possible that would be authentic in that way.
JVL00:41:36Yeah, she could tell all the stories she wanted to, and she could build out her entire universe without touching the Harry Potter stuff, and people would love it, and I still hope she does it.
Vic00:41:45Yeah. Okay.
JVL00:41:47Any other thoughts, Sonny?
Sonny00:41:49No. All right. You know, I didn't have any. I was going to save this for the Grindelwald episode, but all right. Maybe we'll come back to it.
Vic00:41:55This is a tough time, this season. I was going to say, I didn't, were you a, why, did you read, like, a lot of these kind of books when you were growing up? I read. They didn't exist for us, right?
Sonny00:42:04I mean, I read, like, Hardy Boys. I read Goosebumps. Oh. I read, there were some, like, did you read the new Jack Hardy Boys or the original Hardy Boys? I read both, actually. Like, the, like, original run, like, and then, like, the covers with them as, like, action heroes. Action heroes on the front. Yeah. Like, I read both. What else did I, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to remember, really, what I was reading back then.
JVL00:42:30I never read the Hardy Boys as a kid. I've only listened to them recently. As audio books. I read a lot of Roald Dahl.
Vic00:42:35Oh, good for you. Yeah. With your, with your pipe and your elbow patches. I will dip into some Roald Dahl.
Sonny00:42:44I mean, it's movies. Then watch some Truffaut. It's like Matilda. No, no. It's like Matilda and the twins. The highbrow children. That's not true. It's not highbrow children stuff. It's like. I watched, I watched the Hardy Boys.
Vic00:42:55Vic, what did you read? Please, tell us. As you know, I didn't read. I watched all these things. I watched the Hardy Boys with, God, Sean. Boy, they're going to. There was a Hardy Boys. TV show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the, it was the brother of Keith from the Partridge family. Everyone's listening to this, is yelling at me right now, his name. But he was Sean and then Parker was the, was the other brother. And Parker, Steve. Stevenson, I think was his name. Parker something. And he, Parker, ended up marrying Kirstie Alley. That's the only thing I remember about it in later years. But it was. This is the 1995 or 1969. No, no, 70s, 69. Yeah. And it was Sean. I'm not there yet. I'm sorry you're not there. I'm crying out loud.
JVL00:43:42We were just dragging this thing. But that's what. Keep going. Yeah.
Vic00:43:45And I mean, they did Nancy Drew. There was a Nancy Drew. This is all happening like in the 70s. They just had spin-off. They turned it into TV. TV shows that had, you know, middling success. But yeah, that's. Otherwise, I didn't. I read Choose Your Own Adventure. That's what I. You remember those? Yeah.
JVL00:44:00That was it. Those are so great. Yeah.
Vic00:44:02So anyway.
JVL00:44:03Wouldn't Choose Your Own Adventure awesome?
Vic00:44:05Yeah, they were great. There was one that was particularly an espionage World War II one. Fantastic. Like sabotage or saboteur or something like that.
JVL00:44:12Okay. Do you tell the Gestapo agent everything he wants to know? No, no, no. Turn to 72. Victor's like, page 72, page 72.
Vic00:44:19No, no, no. I remember you could get like killed quickly. It's like, oh, we have to start again. So anyway. Did you cheat when you did Choose Your Own Adventure? No, not the. No, not the first time I would read it.
JVL00:44:28No. I mean, I could look later on. Oh, I cheated. Did you? I would always like at every decision point, I would like stick a finger in the old page where I just decided. And so I would try to like always. I literally would sit there with all four fingers and just turning the pages with my thumb and trying to be like, okay, so if I die, if I go back two decision points to there.
Sonny00:44:45I would do the same thing, and I think this is why I can't play the like massively open video game. Games like Fallout, you know, those games where like the characters have like multiple branching trees of dialogue because I just want to do all of the trees. I just want to be like, so I get, I end up in these things where I like go and the first person I meet, I spend like 30 minutes talking to them because I'm like, tell me all of the things that you know I want. And it like, I just, I can't play them. I can't play them right.
Vic00:45:09The answer is Sean Cassidy. I remember Sean Cassidy. His brother was, you know, David Cassidy. Okay. Now, you know what I remember watching as a kid? I remember watching Coma, but that was not, that was based on a Robin Cook novel. Which is not YA. What? And Michael Douglas was in that movie. And I remember because it was on TV and I had to ask my mother, what is a coma? That was a classic 70s paranoia thing. Yeah, because who is, who's the villain? The villain's usually like corporate. The doctor, isn't he? Yeah, the doctor and the pharmaceutical company or the medical company.
JVL00:45:44Young female doctor takes and then notices an unnatural amount of comas occurring in the hospital. Including. She uncovers a horrible conspiracy. Of course. In most 70s America. Yeah.
Vic00:45:54Including, including, you know who one of the patients was, was as a character, just a side actor, was Tom Selleck. And he plays like an actor.
JVL00:46:00And then suddenly he's in a coma. It was a routine surgery.
Vic00:46:03He's in a coma. They're all in a coma. Ripped horn. Yeah. And the actress had a French name. I forget her name. Genevieve Bugeaud. That's the one.
Sonny00:46:12Okay. Why were they in a coma?
Vic00:46:14So they can, a medical company wanted their bodies to do testing on.
Sonny00:46:18But like how did, how did they get put in the comas? Was there a coma?
Vic00:46:21Oh, you ready for this? Carbon dioxide.
Sonny00:46:24So they like.
Vic00:46:25Or monoxide. So they would, it would put them like. There was like a carbon monoxide or dioxide. It was like a. So they made them brain dead? Yes. Yes. And it was like connecting. There was a plant that had all the tanks of dioxide and it would go into room number eight. And then anyone who had an operation in that room, that's it. And the people. Nighty night. The people in comas.
JVL00:46:45Oh yeah, they're floating. Are like suspended. Yes, they're floating. From the, look at this. So they have wires attached to their body, which are suspended. Suspending them from the ceiling. Wow. And they're like half naked.
Vic00:46:54And it's. It was for purposes of space that they had the bodies suspended. And so I didn't want. So again, I didn't. That was my version. We didn't have Harry Potter growing up, but we had coma at least. Which. I remember asking.
JVL00:47:07Tom's River must have been an amazing place in 1978.
Vic00:47:10I remember asking my mother, like, what is a coma? And she's like, well, you're neither alive or dead. You're in this. And I said, that's horrifying. Okay. Time for kids. Time for bed, kids. Okay. Any other thoughts? Are we good, Sonny? How are we doing? I usually take a sneak peek at time, but I can't see here. We're short. We're fine. Whatever. If you want to talk about black label, DC black label, do you want to talk about that?
JVL00:47:31You know, maybe we should save that for the outtakes. Because the other thing I want to talk about, I finally watched the red letter media Last Jedi. Oh, yeah. The whole hour. Have you seen it, Victorino? You've seen it. Tell me. Tell us about it.
Sonny00:47:41It's the Mr. Plinkett. Right.
JVL00:47:43The Mr. Plinkett's Last Jedi review.
Sonny00:47:47They did another. They did like an actual review, like a half in the bag review.
JVL00:47:51Oh, it is so good. Yeah. My favorite thing, because they have all the stuff where they catch things that even I and my hatred of The Last Jedi did not. And my favorite of them is that towards the end, when Admiral F.E. Trinket has destroyed the First Order fleet.
Vic00:48:10Oh, what's her name? Laura Dern. Laura Dern.
JVL00:48:13They cut to a establishing shot of the last like 15 rebel resistor types. Where the main characters are staring out of the viewport in their spaceship to watch this amazing event. And behind them, there are a bunch of extras who are just chatting. And there's like, hey, bro, what's up? Like, what are we going to do after we get to the next base? I don't know. Get a keg? Maybe we'll get some of that awesome alien dinosaur milk. And they're just, how does that happen? Like, how? It's a disaster. And then there's the macro point about how, you know. You know, even, everything is so stupid in the Rian Johnson attempt to subvert the expectations that, so, you know, in a way they are aping, in a very real way they're aping Empire because everything works out bad for the rebels, right? So Rey goes to learn about the force from Luke. She doesn't actually learn about it. Luke doesn't actually help her. She tries to turn Kylo. She fails at turning Kylo. The rebel resistance goes from 18,000 people to 18 people. And yet Rey's sort of... Attitude throughout the whole thing is like, yeah! And so there's this, like, as 99.9% of the resistance is dying, we have a shot of her in the Millennium Falcon, like, shooting things. And she's like, yeah!
Vic00:49:34Rock and roll! I love this!
?00:49:35You know?
JVL00:49:36And then, at the end, there's no... They're like, look, we have all we need to resist.
Vic00:49:42Oh, if you only needed 18 people, then why did you have those other 17,900 people die for you?
JVL00:49:48It's just sort of... It obliterates... It obliterates all of the stakes that the movie has laid out for you ahead of time. It is, like, Rian Johnson is not just subverting expectations, but he is telling the audience, don't care about this, you shouldn't care about this, I don't care about any of this, and you shouldn't either. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:50:05No, and there, again, I do think there is a good movie somewhere in there that just gets rid of all the Rose and Finn stuff, and, like, you know, that was my... And the casino. Yeah, that was a good point that the Red Litter media guys make about, like, well, they've got this ship that can just get people. Get all the people off the ship. That's why not get... All the people off the ship. Why not get all the people off the ship?
JVL00:50:24Just jump, lightspeed, come back, jump, lightspeed, come back. It's really, it's really bad. And it's really, really bad. And there is the... He hints that Kathleen Kennedy is unhappy about it from, like, things gleaned from the supplementary material. There's this great shot of, like, Rian Johnson talking, sitting on a sofa next to Kathy Kennedy, and there's this look on her face, which is, like, the Chris Christie, Thousand-Yard Death stare, where she's like, what have I gotten myself into? Mark Hamill slags off on Rian Johnson endlessly. It's tremendous. Yeah. And if you haven't seen it, go find the Mr. Plinkett Last Jedi review.
Vic00:51:05I did see that half-in-the-bag review of Predator.
JVL00:51:08The Predator. Yeah, yeah.
Vic00:51:09It was fantastic. I mean, it really is.
JVL00:51:11They wind up having the same view of basically all cinema that we do, which is a little terrifying.
Sonny00:51:17Pretty close, mostly. Like, I didn't think anybody else... Saw the world the way the three of us do.
JVL00:51:23You know what they don't have? Gene.
Sonny00:51:27Okay. You know what they don't have? Dozens of fans.
JVL00:51:32You never hear pillow talk and dark sleep web on Red Letter Media, do you?
Vic00:51:38It's what keeps them coming back for more. Unfortunately, that's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus, at Sonny Bunch. At JBLast. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard or podcasts. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. So, you mentioned, I didn't see this in the news, you mentioned it, the Black Label. DC Black Label. This is going to bring in more readers?
JVL00:52:16So, DC is launching a new Black Label line of comics?
Sonny00:52:20Yes, for adults.
JVL00:52:22Yeah. Does it come wrapped in like a plastic bag kind of a thing? I don't know. I haven't been to the comic book shop since Flash made fun of me the last time. And so, did I send you the pictures?
Vic00:52:36No. What's in the first? No, no, no, no, no, no.
JVL00:52:39The big reveal? So to speak. So to speak. Three, what time is it, Sonny?
Sonny00:52:4712, 13.
JVL00:52:48Three panels of Batman. Do we have to bleep?
Vic00:52:52No, no, no, no. That's his organ. Anyway, really, and that's what we're going to do.
JVL00:52:57Because what the problems Warner Brothers and DC have been experiencing with their intellectual property over the last 10 years, all because they haven't shown enough Batman. More Batman. That's what we need. That is going to fix this whole problem. It's just like, who's running the ship over there? Who is saying? We are sitting on this mountain of intellectual property, and none of it's going well, and so the way we're going to dig ourselves out of this hole is just go do that. Yeah, but, I mean, it's dumb.
Sonny00:53:37It's dumb on every level. But also, DC tried to do a line of comic books for adults. It was called Vertigo. Vertigo's still around, right? More or less. So why not just have a Batman Vertigo book? I don't know.
JVL00:53:51This is what I'm saying.
Sonny00:53:52But also, do we need that? That's not, I feel like...
Vic00:53:55Go ahead. We don't need any of it, except for if they do a Black Label Supergirl.
JVL00:54:05Or Black Label Batgirl. Well, this is a... No, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Sonny00:54:12But this is a real point, is that you would think that the actual market for comic books with nudity in it would be not for the male characters. I'm presuming, assuming these boys are making comic books. But that would be so problematic. That's the problem. Right, so you can't do that because they're all so progressive. Because they're all such good liberals that you couldn't possibly have a Harley Quinn Black Label comic.
Vic00:54:37I mean, if you were a 14-year-old boy, could you purchase this comic book? Or would it be like trying to purchase, like, you know, back in the olden days, you know, Hustler or something?
Sonny00:54:48I remember when I was 15, I bought a... Trade paperback of Sin City. And when I bought it, I was just like, oh, Frank Miller comic. Like, I know this is, like, I read Wizard. Like, this is, like, kind of a, you know, a harder edge comic. And I took it and I, like, went to pay for it. And, you know, the comic book guy who I was, like, you know, friendly with. I would see him once a week. And we were, you know. He was just like, I'll sell this to you, but you cannot tell your parents you bought it here. And I was like, what? Give me more of them. I'm going to buy two copies. How many other Sin City books do you have? So that was, you know, I'm sure that was fine.
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