Big Picture Podcast: Podcasts And Dragons

All right. Here we go. Quiet. A big picture podcast where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday and put the ball into some sort of context.

Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff online. Editor-in-Chief who really needs to change up this opening. Richard Dree. Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff online contributing editor and part-time daymettin impersonator that Tasha got scared.

I was going for Robin Williams on that one. This is Delvar. Hello. I see I went a little bit more esoteric with my with my female impersonators.

I try. Okay. No, no, no, I appreciate that. I mean, if you threw in a drive by fruiting reference or something, I probably would have got.

Or getting hit by a Guinness truck. Yes. Oh, poor lad. Um, anyways, how are you today?

It's beautiful Monday evening. Are you kidding me? I'm always looking on the bright side of life. Okay.

You're not even on the crucifix. I mean, it is Easter week, but still. It works. Yes.

Uh, I really proud of myself on that way. It was like, I just watched Life of Brian last week. So that's, yeah. I revisit Life of Brian and blazing saddles in like the same day.

Nice. I know. Talk about it. I'm going to say two minutes into this podcast.

We're already right down the heretical road here. Are you surprised? No. Okay.

But, um, no, it was like it was a great comedy weekend. And I've always thought that Mel Brooks was kind of the American equivalent of money Python in terms of like the, the idea of comedy movies at that time. Not so much the sketch comedy, um, but the just the idea of the lasting impression that it left on comedy films as a whole. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. We go with you there then. Truth be told. We just watched an episode of Miss Maize over here.

So, uh, so we're probably that's where our minds are right now, the idea of comedy and, and the founders of comedy and stuff like that. Well, my mind will be on probably on comedy for the next hour until I get home. And then it's, it's back to Raystar, uh, way start Royco with me. Yeah.

I've been, um, popping my cherry and getting through succession for the first time. Ah, okay. Okay. Interesting.

And yes, that is an appropriate phrase when you're talking about succession when you're like, just grab your baloney pipe and jizz. Wow. Okay. Just making a note here.

We have to have the explicit tag on this one in iTunes this week. Okay. What isn't there an explicit tag with our shit? Oh, yeah.

Okay. Folger is profane and we don't give a flying fuck. Oh, shit. So anyways, um, um, it's been an interesting week, uh, politically.

We're not going to get into that. Uh, it's been a couple of interesting weeks, uh, in terms of film news and stuff. Um, the Oscars talking about expanding the best picture screening requirements instead of screening and I think it's like five or six cities, they're going to expand it out to 15 to 20 possibly. Wow.

Yeah, which would force Netflix to if they want to participate and want to be a player they'd have to start dropping their stuff into more theaters, which is interesting. And that's going to be fun to see how that plays out. If that the Academy actually goes through with that or not. Um, I didn't get a chance to watch it yet.

I kind of skimmed it briefly when I'm between customers, but the first trailer for, uh, blue beetle drop today. Yes, it did. And by the way, I love the main actor. I can never pronounce his name correctly.

So in, um, in all fairness to the actor and anyone of the Latino Hispanic community listening, I'm not even going to try, but he played Miguel and Cobra Kai. Yes. And he's brilliant on that show. Like I was watching him going, this kid don't want to play.

Yeah, I'm excited for that. Now, okay, comic nerd time here. Uh, surprise. My, that's my cutest step back and let him take the mic for the next 10 minutes.

My favorite, okay, one of my favorite comic book heroes growing up was blue beetle. However, it was Ted Kord, who was the blue beetle, who was kind of a technogenius and he created the suit and a flying thing. And, you know, he went out and fought bad guys and had a good time. He kind of had a little bit of a similar vibe if he crossed Spider-Man on Tony Stark.

Really? Um, and then years later, DC comics were doing some changes, rebooting a few things and they came up with a whole new blue beetle character with a called named Jaime Raimus. Raimus, excuse me. And, um, that's who we're getting in the movie and I'm happy.

I'm not, that's great because even Ted Kord was the second person to be the blue beetle. Jaime's the third. There's another guy, Dan Garrett and like when you look at Scott Lang is like, uh, the second. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so I, you know, Ted Kord was my guy. He had his time in the sun. Uh, he shows up on some of the animated stuff and then, um, they filtered.

Jaime Raimus, Raimus, Jaime in more and more as, uh, you know, after they created his character and premiered him in the comics. So I'm excited to see, you know, how they bring that the live action that the trailer looked great. Um, maybe the story feels a little bit standard superhero origin story stuff, but at least his family's involved, which is nice. Um, you've ever seen any of Cobra Kai, have you?

I've seen like one or two episodes. Oh my God, it's so good. I don't even like Karate Kid. I know that is, that is like the ultimate.

What the fuck are you doing watching Cobra Kai, but are you kidding me? There are hot bad ass chicks in there too, who could kick the shit out of any guy? Of course I'm watching Cobra Kai. But no, it is a great story.

Um, the story that Johnny Lawrence has with Miguel and his mother who lived next door as well as their connections with Daniel Russo and all that. It is a solid freaking story and it's a good, like feel good time. I, I've never come out of watching an episode of Cobra Kai and I'm like, I'm just so bored or just so burned out or it's just too dark or I'm depressed from it. In fact, I can binge an entire season of that and still come out of it feeling like, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, well, that's again part of the greatness of the era that we're living in in terms of people are taking beloved film properties and finding new and different stories to explore in them. Maybe not as films with Stevie people are taking TV properties and finding new and different ways to explore them in film as well. I actually think Cobra Kai is better than the Karate Kid movies ever were. That's, that's the funny part is that, you know, I grew up on the Karate Kid films.

The only one I actually did own and again, this is sacrilege, but I needed a few of badass female role models as a kid. I had the next Karate Kid. That was the only one. That was the only one that I had.

And Michael Ironside too. Oh, he's so good. Yeah, he's only shows up. You're like, oh, shit's about to go down here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that's when he would show up in like V as a kid. I was like, yeah, that was the one to punch that made me Michael Ironside fan for. But now watching that, I don't know.

I just, I think the story is a lot tighter. Seeing how it affects generationally instead of just, oh, this is just something that happens to these kids as they get sucked into this world of Karate here. We can see that everyone's kind of following the path that someone else had already kind of set up. And so are you, it's kind of like, okay, are you setting these kids up to fail for the crimes that they never committed?

But now all of a sudden they are the bearers of it. Yeah, I think from what I understand that, you know, it definitely talks about generational trauma and passing that on or trying to break free of those cycles. Because, you know, the main bad guy from the Karate Kid movies was an A-hole. Cruzo?

Yeah, but, but that's because- Yeah, and then Silva shows up and Silva's thousand times worse than Cruz. Yeah, that's because he was basically abused as a kid in the thinking he had to be this kind of antagonist to him and being. And now he's trying to break free of that, which I think that's a great idea. It's, I'm, because I know I have sat around with friends in bars and we're talking about like movies from the 80s like Better Off Dead or Karate Kid or anything like that or, you know, Weird Science.

And you go, hey, I wonder what ever happened to like the bully from that movie. He probably wound up getting shot in, you know, shot in a bad drug deal or something, didn't he? Well, you know who the bully in, um, Weird Science is right. No, I've never seen one of those.

You know this. It's a very young Robert Downey Jr. Oh, okay. Um, but anyway, getting, getting back to.

So yeah, Cobra Kai is getting ready to finish its final season. They're going to be dropping that on Netflix probably by the end of the year. Um, so we're going to start seeing some of the younger kids. Like, Peyton List has already been doing some films outside of Cobra Kai.

Oh, God, I can't remember the Johnny Lawrence's son was just in the gender bent spinoff film. For she's all that. I think it was like, he's all that or something like that for Disney. And now it's, I'm glad to see that, uh, Miguel's getting some time in the spotlight as the new Blue Beetle.

Yes. Yes. Very excited. We also had a trail drop for secret invasion.

I missed that. Oh, and did that drop? That also dropped today. Late last night or something.

Disney Plus series for the MCU scrolls infiltrating America and Earth and Nick Furious fighting a secret war against them. You want to talk about a paranoid and a group mentality and all that and fear of that. That's a pretty hefty story. Yeah, it's it looks like it's very light on superhero stuff and heavy on the spy and espionage and paranoid thriller part of it, which looks good and they have at least one or two good moments of Olivia Coleman in the trailer, too.

So I know you're going to want to say, oh, yeah, that's right. She doesn't give bad moments, does she? No. She's the only reason why I want to watch the new FX red expectations.

I know. I have a show. Come on. That is a great role for her.

I have not heard great things about great expectations, unfortunately. So maybe maybe go into it with lowered expectations. It's me being sentimental as that was the only book that was ever read to me as a kid. Wow.

Great expectations. I was six years old. So I wonder I'm fucked up. I probably model my entire childhood into adolescence off of a Stella.

You're going to have a huge epiphany. Yeah. You just watch doing this podcast is much cheaper than therapy, but you have a long talk with your mom soon. Aren't you?

No. Do you think she's fucking listening to it? No, you're right. No.

I'm going to flick my fair, you know, that idea on someone else and I get to watch their faces. They're like, I'm being inflicted with a virus. Yeah, that's me. In this case.

Oh, you're so screwed, dude. Yeah. A couple of other movies came out recently. Well, by the time you hear this, which should be like either Tuesday or Wednesday morning of this week, air will be just about ready to open.

It opens up Wednesday and Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, it's a great movie, wonderful work together. If you ever thought when don't they do good stuff together, even in the last duel? I mean, they didn't have a lot of scenes together. And man, Ben Affleck was chomping at the bid, June of the scenery and Matt Damon was just gruff and pathetic.

Yeah. But it's a solid movie, it's a great story. If you ever thought, gee, the story of how they signed a business deal, how could that be interesting? Well, guess what?

It is. It's really good. As is another story about how they signed a business deal, Tetris, over on Apple Plus, which dropped this past week, really enjoyed that. I don't care about Tetris as a game.

I don't video game all that much. I play Tetris. I find it fun. I understand how insanely addictive it is.

It's seriously addictive, addictive. Well, I will say anyone who's ever had to move knows anyone who is really good at moving and packing. Learn their skills from Tetris. We could use that video game when my dad was packing up the station wagon for family vacations.

I was like, okay, let me tell you. Well, I told you about the times that Rachel and I went down to Virginia and the amount of shit that we got into my little VW bug, including her dog on a dog bed. I don't know how you guys do that. But the Tetris story involves how the game was invented by a Russian computer programmer who invented it for fun.

The game circulated out through Russia by people passing along floppy disks with a game on it. Ultimately, it came time to license that game. This is still during the Soviet Union era in Russia. The guy who wants to license it runs up against the Soviet bureaucracy, and the Soviet Union is right on the edge of falling apart.

Some of these bureaucrats are trying to get as much money for themselves as they can, and there's another game publisher from England headed by Robert Maxwell, who is a real-life piece of shit. Look him up on Wikipedia. You'll find out what a big giant piece of garbage he was, and oh, jeez, spoiler alert, he dies by falling off his boat while taking a leak off the side of it one night, and drowns, and no one cared. Jesus.

No, he's terrible. He's just a rotten human being. He was stealing millions out of the pension fund of his company, and screwing people over left and right in center. He was a bully.

The world's better off of that. So he's the other player here trying to get the right. It's a fantastic story, and it gets a little bit espionage-ish at moments to the point where you're like, really? Over a video game?

But then when you realize that, ultimately, Tetris is one of the foundational video games for console and for handheld. It's like, oh, wow, yeah, this went on to have such an impact. This story is amazing. I haven't played it in a while, and my phone is in my hand right now, and all I'm thinking about is I really miss fucking playing Tetris.

I'm about ready to download it on the video. Don't you dare. We got to talk about another game first. Oh, nice.

It's not a great save way. Yes. Yes. All righty.

And that means, yes, we're just going to talk about Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves, which opened this past weekend. We both saw it. But yeah, let's start off with, you've played Dungeons and Dragons with your husband and the step kids. Most of the pandemic playing, actually.

Yes. Was that your first time ever playing? I had had experiences with it where I have watched others play it. So I would be invited over in high school to my friend's house, and she would set it up.

I loved the idea of it, but it was just very complicated. And no one was willing to teach me. It was one of those, either you know, or you don't know, or just sit off to the side and keep your mouth shut kind of thing, which I thought was a little fun word, but yeah, watching them. I kind of got the hang of it and did some research, and then during the pandemic had a lot of time on our hands.

So I started playing with my husband and my step sons. By the way, I'm a rogue assassin. Of course you are. And I wield daggers.

I forget what my goddamn level is, because it's probably been a good year and a half to two years since I played Don't Ask Me My Level. That's okay. Well, and also we're big Stranger Things fans, so Stranger Things is pretty much a version of D&D, and then you mix in a lot of these movies, and it creates a life of its own. No, that just for that alone made me interested.

So it takes on life of its own. Okay. Well, I started playing the game back in 1980 when I got my first, the original basic D&D set, which came with like one rule book, beginner module, keep on the borderlands if I remember correctly, and some dice. And you know, my friends, I was in junior high, I was in sixth grade, some other friends had started playing the game.

So you know, I begged my mom for the set. And this is right about a year before, so before the whole Satanic Panic thing kind of blew up big. Which is actually in Stranger Things season four. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, Irish Catholic mom, I was really just deadly afraid that, you know, we were going to go to church one day, the game was going to get denounced from the altar, and all my stuff would disappear. Amazingly. Wow, Father Mahoney.

Well, yes, and Irish priest, too. Wow, Father Mahoney was denouncing the game along with Iron Maiden albums or whatever else he was going on about in that homily that one time. And my mom and dad were cool with it. They were just fine with me still playing the game.

Does it realize it's just damn game? Yeah, they trusted me enough to understand that I was using my imagination, and I knew things weren't real, which was a great, a great compliment I felt from my parents. It made me feel better about myself, just in that, and that I had that kind of trust that they knew I wasn't some kind of dummy, or that, or that they would at least listen. Thank you.

Or that they would at least, you know, listen to me and value my opinion. I know. I know. Thank you, dear.

I know college, really, and then kind of getting people together on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. Get harder as they get older. Yeah. It was kind of harder.

We had gone through, you know, I was playing the first edition advanced rules, had my players handbook Monster Manual, fiend folio, deities, and demigods, and Dungeon Master Hand, Dungeon Master Sky. I wish I kept all that stuff. I did not. It'd be worth a fortune now.

Yeah. But no, with me playing D&D, yeah, it does get harder as you get older. It takes probably a half an hour to create character sheets, and sometimes people get really into it. I'm not even starting before I even draw out what my character's supposed to look like.

Yeah. And that's funny. Okay, guys, come on. Yeah.

Which one, like, are we going to play before I have to go home? A good DM will actually kind of have some of that shit set up. Anyways. But getting to the idea of gameplay, how did this movie feel to you?

Did it feel like you were playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons or how a game of Dungeons and Dragons would play? Oh, a little. There are definitely some inside jokes, like the moment where they're like, okay, we have a token, we can bring a guy back from the dev. We can only ask him five questions at which point he'll go back to being dead.

And I think Dorek, Sophia Lewis, this character goes, well, that's a little arbitrary, like you're like, why five? Like, that's something we've asked ourselves a million times, like, but also how that, but also how that scene plays out with somebody accidentally asking a question. And then the enchanted corpse answers that question. And that's something I've had evil mean nasties slide games do to me, and I'm sure everybody's ever played that game.

It's something similar. Yeah. And again, which is fun. It's fun.

And you know, it's fun. And I just felt like the interplay between the, the cat, the characters. Yeah. If they had pulled back and we saw just them sitting around a table with rolling dice and everything, playing the game, the same interplay would be exactly the same.

It's just them, you know, kind of joshing each other, cracking jokes, trying to do things, getting frustrated when apparently they rolled a one and they couldn't do a thing. I was just about to say that. Sorry. Okay.

So yeah, no, another moment where I felt like that was prevalent was when they were trying to cross the bridge in the underworld or under, yeah, I think it was called the underworld. And oh, yeah, there's a specific way to get across this bridge is all numbers only until the middle section. And then it goes to even numbers only. But every kid's stuck.

Like, I was like, yeah, that feels like it's more of a fucking game. And then Simon steps on something and triggers the mechanism and the whole damn bridge collapses at which one I went, he rolled a D one. Yeah. He failed at saving crew.

He did not roll his intelligence or his dexterity. No, I lost it laughing. And I'm like, oh, this feels, this feels right. Yeah.

And it feels very much like gameplay, but at the same time, it feels natural just for the story. So if you never played this game, if you never sat down around around a table with some friends all hyped up on Mountain Dew, and you can still watch this movie and go, okay, this is a fun action comedy adventure game adventure movie. Excuse me. Oh, yeah.

It was a hell of a blast with it. It was fun. It was funny. Michelle Rodriguez playing a bad ass, must be Tuesday.

On is one of the biggest shocks of the film for me was Sofina. Oh? Yeah. I mean, I had recently started watching Shadow and Bone on Netflix and trying to catch up with some things that I've missed out on, like, for example, suction.

And Shadow and Bone is one that I've started doing, and she's really good in that. And I'm like, oh, I need to pay closer attention to some of these people coming out of these shows because they're going to be huge over the next few years. When I first saw the trailer for it, I'm like, oh, that's a girl from Shadow and Bone. And then I did some research.

She's a legacy. Yes, she is. Speaking of Must be Tuesday, yes, Tuesday nights were Buffy night. She is the daughter of Anthony Stewart Head, who played for Giles.

And she's wonderful in this. She's very talented. I know. But she's really, there's not a false note in this cast.

And it's just everything is, everybody's putting together a movie like this and making sure everybody's on that same kind of tonal wavelength is hard. It has to be hard. And here it feels effortless though. It really does.

And I'm also trying to sneak in like a little, the monsters and it's just like obvious like the Owl Bear. And oh my God, I can't remember the name of the Pudgy Dragon. Yeah, well, just it was a dragon, but it was a Pudgy one. But it had a specific name and I cannot remember it either.

Yeah, even though they mentioned it and then seeing some of the other creatures throughout the film, like again, it feels effortless. It feels right for the story. These monsters are in the Coliseum part of the games. They are an obstacle that you do have to defeat to get out of it.

They're a Latna's Cube, a displacer beast, a mimic, all sorts of things, you know, a dungeon master would throw at you to screw with your day. My only complaint is I think in the trailers and the, they released like a little bit of that portion of the one scene with the intellect of ours, just kind of walking by them. And then when they're in the underworld and then they go, they only attack if you're having like, you know, a really smart thought. Oh, the brain.

Yeah. And then they go, that was disappointing. Yeah. I laughed at that because that means it's a great joke.

It is a great joke, but that also means that those things pass by Rajesh on page, who is the smartest among them at that time, who knows what these fuckers are and they didn't even attack him. He could cause his brain to go blank. Yeah. There's some kind of paladin thing involved, but I don't think there was any outside of the the dragging the dragon itself being pudgy.

I don't think there was any creature that was really a surprise. I think they kind of gave away almost in terms of creatures from the game. I think they kind of gave away all of those in the trailers and the promotional materials. Which is a little disappointing.

The gelatinous cube wasn't in the trailer. Oh, yes it was. I didn't see. I saw it and I jumped up.

I Leo named on that. I was like, ah. Okay, then you were paying closer attention to it than I was. Okay.

But honestly, I don't care that there was no surprises from the creatures themselves, because I think the story itself has enough surprises within it. And in order to do justice to the game itself, not just as a film, but to pay homage to all the generations of gamers who played it, there's enough inside jokes in the dialogue that more than make up for the sites of having too many creatures. I think there's just enough creatures to keep you entertained without overpowering. Yeah.

It's not space jam. You're not going to be in the background going, oh, what's that one? What's that one? That doesn't matter.

And I think also too, this movie benefits from the fact that as an intellectual property, it doesn't have a set canon of stories. And therefore, people aren't expected to really, well, they have to adapt this story. They have to adapt this Spider-Man story or that, whatever, Dungeons and Dragons is so open world. Sure, there's novels, there's the dragon lance stuff and forgotten realms and all that stuff.

But there's so much of it that. But the beauty of that, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but the beauty of Dungeons and Dragons is being able to create a character to who you are, kind of who you want to be. And then the story just kind of evolves from there.

Yeah. Okay. This is a weird analogy that just literally just popped into my head. I was very impressed.

There's not a lot of side quests. That's true. Yeah. Dungeons and Dragons is like a cooking contest where they just give you some ingredients and they tell you you have a certain time limit to make something that feels like every cooking show ever put on television versus versus going to culinary school and being given a recipe and being expected to replicate that recipe in a certain way.

That's a movie adaption of the Hunger Games. Yeah. Okay. That example.

Well, you know what I'm saying though. Yeah. You know, there's a certain formula, certain story beats, et cetera. You're supposed to hit.

If you're telling the Hunger Games story, if you're telling a Dungeons and Dragons story, you can do anything. Yes. You know, it's a wide, wide world. And you create all of it.

You know, you, and if you're like, oh, we need some kind of monster here, you just pull down a game book off the shelf and flip through it. I think this would be fun to have. Yeah. Boom.

And that's in your movie. That's what's fantastic about this movie. I lived up to that potential. I happen to agree.

Now, have you seen the original D&D movie from the 90s? With Thor, Birch, and Jeremy Irons? Yeah. The one that almost killed Thor, Birch's career.

She didn't work a lot after that for a while. I know. I know. Pits and pieces.

I think I still have nightmares. Yeah, it does. It does. It does.

Don't go for the rest of the glue to put those pieces together. Well, the sad part is when I think of Thor, Birch, and Dungeons and Dragons, I somehow end up connecting her with the character from the never ending story. Okay. They are very...

The child like Empress. They are very similar. Okay. I will see that.

Yeah. So my brain has to go, wait. Nope. Separate them.

And connect it to this film. Connect it to this film. I saw a lot of weird films that came out in the early 2000s that had a D&D kind of style to it. There was an adaptation of Ivanhoe called Darkest Night.

That was absolutely a flaming piece of shit with a worse special effect. It was deaf. I'm pretty certain it was made for television. But again, it had that large UK Dungeons and Dragons feel to it.

Rain of Fire. No. Rain of Fire doesn't even... It's not even the same realm as that shitty D&D.

No. I'm just saying as a... Yeah. But I'm saying as a kind of D&D inspired film, it feels like...

Okay. I would say go back to the 80s. And the Disney film Dragon Slayer. Dragon Slayer.

Which is really good. Oh my God. That's amazing. And I heard the 4K disc that they just released is like amazing.

It looks the best. It's gonna be amazing. I even watched that in forever. But the amount of times where I've been able to think of like, okay, the dragon scales and the girl chains of the steak as a sacrifice to the...

I was like, oh my God. Now I need to go watch that. Well, there's not a whole lot of like really good high fantasy films in terms of like Dragon Slayer. Yes.

This new Dungeons Dragon movie. Yes. The Lord of the Rings. Yes.

I can't off the top of my head. Maybe I'll throw in Lady Hawk. Oh my God. I haven't watched Lady Hawk in forever either.

I can't think of anything else that really... Excalibur. Yeah, I guess. It is kind of low budgeted.

No. I don't think it's a little budget. But I think it's solid. It's a solid movie.

It's not my favorite movie. I know people who love this movie a lot more than I do. I know I'm kind of an outlier on it. It's fine to people.

Whereas other people will just love it to pieces. Legend for me. Legend for me. Legend for me.

I know it's not a great movie. It is a good time. I'm guessing. For fantasy.

Yeah. Sword and the Sorcerer from Director Albert Pion. Not great but had some fun moments in it. But it's something that one's really tried to really kind of crack in the last 20 years.

We got a little bit more of it on television. When I think of fantasy on TV apart from Game of Thrones, which is strong, but it's also definitely not just all fantasy. Yeah. Honest.

My brain goes to the BBC Marlin TV show. Marlin. Incredible and still has that light hearted whimsy, which is slightly off special effects, particularly on the John Hurt Dragon. But you know what?

It's so damn good storyline wise. You don't even give a fuck. Speaking of famous Britishers voicing dragons, Dragonheart. Oh my God.

Voice by Sean Conner. One of the great early CG characters really. You know, that was amazing. How about a while either.

So for television fantasy, maybe throw in Hercules and Zeno. I mean, I think they're more, they vibe, you know, because they kind of had that Lucy, you know, not Lucy Wallace, but Lucy Guzy kind of feel that the current Dungeons and Dragons movie has. When I think of like fantasy films, though, my brain definitely goes to the 80s. And it doesn't even have to be true fantasy.

I mean, when I think of that kind of style, I think Ray Harryhausen. So my brain does go to Clash of the Titans, Jason the Argonauts, stuff like that. Because the Ray Harryhausen Clash of the Titans, not that other piece of shit. Yes.

Okay. The one thing I will defend. I don't care what people have to say. The Kraken, the style of the Kraken, the actual schematic for it.

The Ray Harryhausen one was just a big giant gorilla with six arms and he was not terrifying to me at all. He just looked goofy as a kid. When the new Clash of the Titans came out and they unveiled the first look at the Kraken in that trailer, I nearly pissed myself. I was 16 and my brain was nearly explode.

I was like, holy fuck, that is what I wanted to say when I was a kid. Nice. But no, Ray Harryhausen is what I think when I think fantasy, like that kind of off, not terrible CGI, but there's just something very either robotic or too shiny about it or not realistic enough. And that's where I think Game of Thrones fails in terms of when we talk about fantasy and the same with like a rain of fire.

They're too serious that they don't have that idea of whimsy behind it. Okay. I was going to say like outside of Lord of the Rings though, to circle back to film, in the last 20, 25 years, what have we had for kind of like high fantasy, the Narnia movies? And that's it.

And I'm looking past you towards my Blu-ray shelves and I'm not saying anything that's jogging a memory either. And yes, I mean, talking about good fantasy films, so we can set the hobbit to the side a little bit because I like it too. There's a lot of things I like, but I don't think they hold a candle to Lord of the Rings. They're not supposed to hold a candle to the Lord of the Rings.

They're just supposed to be something that if you're, you want more of that particular style when you're done watching Lord of the Rings, you're like, okay, I can throw this on. And now I don't actually have to watch it. I can go watch the dishes. Wow.

But yeah, why is that? Why haven't why haven't I tried this because whimsy doesn't sell much anymore in a post 9 11 world? Yeah. I could see that when you want to think about superhero films up until Marvel really started dishing it out.

DC was the big hitter and it was very serious. Well, for the Batman films, yeah, but I mean Superman though, a decade earlier, you know, that was hope and that was a decade earlier. Yeah. Now here's the thing though.

Okay, Superman, the motion picture came, the movie came out in 78 and then Superman was 81. We're talking post 9 11. Yeah. But I'm thinking here though from end of World War II, 45, 46 cinema was very kind of took a downward turn.

Yeah. They didn't want the happy upbeat musicals anymore. They wanted something that will reflect in World War II. So we got to know our face.

Noir. And then the indie movement of the sixties and into the early seventies still had a dark pessimistic streak to it, even going up to the mid seventies and movies like I'm looking for Mr. Goodbar for goodness. And we got so many movies about Vietnam during that era, just as a Vietnam kind of reinforce that, you know, no one's going out on the first date of the deer hunter.

Yeah. And so I'm thinking, okay, that cycle was roughly 30 years of trauma partially, you know, reinforced by Vietnam. And then in the eighties, we had a, you know, fantasy so that I was basically kicked the door open for being happy again. So right now, we're, you know, we're still 22 years from, from 9 11, 21, 22 years from 9 11, which feels like we should start getting towards that again as long as we don't have another, you know, reinforcement trauma like Vietnam, we should, I would think we should be getting more open and happier in our films again.

It's not just, you know, war that also reflects the trauma. Oh, yeah. I mean, the, the national political climb right now is pretty horrific. Well, okay.

First off, you had, you had 9 11, then six or seven years later recession, then a few years I'm not even talking like economic factors, because there were also booms and recessions through all of their to from World War two to 77, 77 was a hell of a recession. Oh, yeah. I'm old enough to remember gas lines where it was like you can get gas for your car. If your license plate ends in an odd number on odd number days, and if your license plate ends with a even number, then you can get gas on even number days and you really had to like make sure you knew what you were doing.

Oh, yeah. I guess stations were closed on Sundays and along with just about everything else. But yeah. So you had 9 11, you had recession, you had, and then you had all of the obviously the geopolitical stuff, you have the war in Iraq that went on for several years, kind of a Korea allegory.

If we're looking to parallel certain points, I mean, yeah, and then you had one of the biggest hitters. COVID. Yeah. Yeah.

Could that be the reinforcement reinforcing trauma? Possibly. We haven't had a good, hopeful, happy time since probably 9 11 and I would say 9 11 itself was an happy hopeful time for crying out. Let me finish my sentence.

Yes, 9 11 wasn't happy, but I say since 9 11 because Lord of the Rings came out pretty much right afterwards. But it was pretty much shot before 9 11 first film, literally the first film was released like three months later. But that doesn't affect the populace. Trust me.

Well, true. True. But I'm talking about what's going on politically, socioeconomically in the world affecting Phil, not the other way around though. So I'm getting there.

Okay. Okay. Go, go, go. So 2003, end of 2003 is when we had pretty much the holdover from Lord of the Rings end.

So whatever hope there was left, where did it all go? It's gone. So where else do you have to go except to get suckered back into the life of what's going on right now? We're coming up on the 2004 elections, which went back in be carried and the cycle just kept going.

But there's nothing left to keep you upbeat and happy. So you create your own, you know, it's not yeah, the movies reflect that attitude, but George Lucas came along and there wasn't anything that he he was drawing from on the national stage at that moment in 1975, 76 as he's writing and creating Star Wars. He just kind of said, you know what, I don't know if this was even consciously or not. He just wanted to do something that was upbeat in the face of everything else.

I mean, his contemporaries are turning out movies like the conversation and the Godfather and things like that. And he just said, no, here's something that's hopeful, you know, just kind of flew in the face of everything. Remember, 20th Century Fox's big movie for that summer was supposed to be Damnation Alley, which is a story about survival in a post-apocalyptic world. And they did not, they thought that was going to be the big hit.

They didn't think it Star Wars is going to be big. And I think Star Wars as a movie just changed everybody's attitude and mood and also works because you can take your kids to it. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And you know, people were, because there was a generational aspect to it, people were taking their kids. And as we go into the 80s, we get a lot more of these like breezier science fiction movies. People trying to tap into that same idea, you know, whether it's, you know, something that's not so great, like, um, battle beyond the stars or you get something like Battlestar Galactica on TV and all of that kind of, you know, had more of an uplift. So to put this all back to Dungeons and Dragons, which we left feels like we left behind a little island.

I just don't think we're going to see anything like that for a while. That would be a shame. But if, but if this movie were, I don't see this movie as being as big as Star Wars for God's sakes, no, um, or, you know, as impactful, I don't know if any movie can ever have that kind of zeitgeist impact again, but well, you know how I feel about everything everywhere all at once. True.

Oh, yeah. Well, we love that. But I still don't think that's, you know, as impactful as Star Wars as a movie on pop culture. We will see in the long term.

Yeah, we will. Um, when it comes to hope still existing and lightness, um, I dare say the only show that still has that feel to it, uh, is definitely true. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

The one show where it doesn't matter how bad your day is, if you want a little lightness, if you want a little whimsy, if you want a reason to fight for the next day, that's the show you turn on. Yes, definitely. And I would like to see maybe more of that, more, more films like Dungeons and Dragons going forward. I hope for Barbie.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes.

I have a feeling it's going to be, I have a feeling I don't know what it is, but I'm so excited to find out. Sorry. I'm a very, I'm a very, I'm a very, I'm a very, okay, but on that note though, I think that does just about wrap us up. Remember, you can find us online at big picture pod.com and we are also available on iTunes Stitcher and Google Play.

So either use the link in the show in the closer head directly there and search and hit subscribe. And if you like what you're listening to, please leave us a review because that always helps us connect with new listeners. We'll be back next time with more news and a film review of something. Oh, we will.

Yes, we will. Pop the magic dragon, live by the sea, and collect in the autumn mist in a land called Hanalee.