Hello, all you listeners out there, and welcome back to another episode of Movie Mastery. It's the podcast where we watch the movies that you've recommended. I'm your host, John, as with me as always is Jeff. Hi there, how are you? Hey, it's great. We're having a great time and everything's good because we watched Existence. Yeah, this might actually... What movies has Cronenberg made exactly? I'm not up to speed on it. Uh, Cronenberg? Oh, he did Videodrome. Okay, yeah, haven't seen that. Uh, Shivers. Okay, yeah, haven't seen that. This might be my first Cronenberg movie.
It's entirely possible it might be. Oh, no, wait. No, you've definitely seen The Fly. No, no, I've not seen The Fly. You have never seen The Fly? Yeah, you want me to go ahead and turn in my cred as a reviewer of films at this time, or do you want to do it later? Jesus. God. Ugh. Man, I've seen too many. I've seen too many Cronenberg films. Like, not all of them, but I've seen too many still. Spoiler alert, John. Me too. Ha ha ha! Ooh, ooh, coming out swinging.
Yeah, this movie wasn't... I mean, nutshell review, moody and well-acted, stupid as hell. That's my review. Yeah, I saw Exist Ends like a year or so after it came out. Like, this came out in 99. I think I watched it in 2000, maybe early 2001. I feel even worse seeing it right around then, because then you'd have an even closer realization to how much this is just a shitty meat matrix. Yeah, I mean, God, I remembered nothing. Like, I went, oh yeah, I've seen this. It has...
weird bio plugs and like that's the extent i could remember nothing about the plot nothing about the characters zero i'm feeling kind of weird about diving in angry on this one because when you look at the imdb page for it this did well it has like it still has a 74 on rotten tomatoes uh it won awards there were a few people who were like this is just the matrix but worse but for the most part people really liked this they called it like slimy grotesque fun and stuff yeah i mean i think the big problem is that this came out the same year as the matrix and so you know it's one of those like Deep Impact, Armageddon-type things, where it's not like one was copying the other, but they just came out at the same time, and you're like, oh, but one of these is great, and one of these has a weird meat puppet that plugs into you. Yeah, ultimately, also, most of the Matrix makes sense, and it's cohesive, and it's got a pulse to it where you feel like you're being pulled through the movie, where this is an overlong Twilight Zone episode, and with too many famous people in it. Oh, yeah. I mean, honestly, this is basically a very long proto-Black Mirror episode, where it's like, maybe technology not good? Perhaps technology...
too much? What if computer bad? Yeah, it has all the hallmarks of just being an overlong Too Many Famous People Black Mirror episode. But then again, a lot of the people in it are good and they do good performances. It's just that they're doing a great job of acting out nonsense against an ugly backdrop. Yeah, it's just a shame to be like, oh man, Willem Dafoe is in this and he's great. I love him for the brief period he's in here and yet he had to be in this movie.
Yeah, you get Eccleston in here doing absolutely nothing. You get Ian Holman here doing basically nothing. Basically, imagine a lot of your favorite character or side actors all in a movie and all doing really bad Eastern European accents, which they themselves don't want to do. Yeah, it's definitely something. Yeah, but believe me, on the other side of the break, a long, long discussion about when old guys write video game movies, because that's most of my opinions. Yeah, I mean, we are going to take a little musical break and come in with the spoilers, but man.
You can watch this and not feel too bad. I mean, the thing is, you can watch it and be like, oh, I didn't hate everything. But you'll sort of come out the other end and go like, why did I watch that, though? I'll be honest. I spent most of the movie being like, where's Sarah Polly? The opening credits promise Sarah Polly. Boy, how are you going to get about two minutes of that? At the very end. All right. We will be back after this short break with a full spoiler review of Exist Ends. Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see. Hey, we're back. It is time to really plug in to Existens. Now, you might think that that is some sort of boner pill that you get from the gas station, but indeed not. It is a movie. It is also a video game present in the movie, although it's not a video game. And to their credit, they don't actually refer to it as a video game, rather just a game. Yeah. Since this is Cronenberg, it's mostly just a game where you plug an umbilical cord made of goop into your back and it connects to a...
A PS4 controller made of meat that's about the size of the original Xbox controller. Yeah, I mean, coming off of, if you've ever seen Videodrome, which you haven't, and by God, someday I might force you to watch that for this show because it is fucking nonsense bonkers. But watching, you know, James Woods with a stomach vagina pull a biogun out of there, you're like, oh, okay, I can see where you went from that to this. No, it makes sense. I mean, sure, I haven't seen any Cronenberg previously, but it's not like I haven't heard of him. Yeah. So I knew going in what to expect, you know, body horror, goopy meat, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and here we are.
There you are. So, yeah, we've got Jude Law in this, which is great as one of our protagonists. Yeah, yeah. Jude Law always elevates movies where I wish I wasn't watching them in the first place. Like, he's great in AI, and I'm just like, God, I wish I wasn't watching AI. Oh, Jude Law. Oh, hey, Jude Law. Thanks for, you know, putting in the time. Yep. You definitely showed up to this movie. Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow. I'm like, God, I wish I wasn't watching Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow. Why is everything yellow? This movie is bad. Oh, hey, Jude Law. God, I hope he's in that. If he's not, then, you know.
I think he's the star. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I know it's him and Angelina Jolie and another lady. And someone else. But no, they're both doing fine jobs. You want to take the lead on describing the plot of this or how do we want to do this? So our sort of generic opening plot is right away you see that this is not really our world. Like this isn't quite our Earth. Maybe it's supposed to be like way in the future, but, you know, we've got weird bio.
plug-in video games. At one point, Jude Law scans someone's ID, and it's all, like, holographic and has also some Babylonian on the bottom of it for some reason, which, okay, why not? And there's also a point where he has to pull out his cell phone, and his cell phone is just a smooth lump of meat that grows red sometimes, which feels like it's less useful than a phone, because that thing can only do one thing, which is answer unknown phone calls, where a cell phone will show you who is calling, and all kinds of other fun tools. Yeah. In the weird dimension that this takes place in...
All technology has basically been replaced by meat. Well, except it hasn't. It's like all modern upscale new technology is meat. But, I mean, there's an extended sequence in the middle of the movie about, like, bolt guns and stuff, which are essential to the process of doing the meat games. Yes. And, you know, they drive around in a regular-ass car. Well, you're not going to drive around in a meat car. That'd be weird. Yeah, you got me there. That would be weird. But also, they act super surprised. Because, okay, at the beginning of the movie, there's a surprise attack on some...
people who are up on stage and the surprise attack is done with a gun that shoots teeth. And one of the people, the lady in question who designs these meat games is like, what's up with that weirdo pistol? Does that shoot teeth? That's a crazy bio-organic thing. And I'm like, didn't you make a meat PlayStation? Like, who are you to judge? Yeah. And I get like the beginning of this with the whole introduction of there is a Allegra.
Geller is a super famous video game maker, and she's about to show everyone Existens, her new video game. Now, one of the things about the naming convention of games in this universe is that they always have two capital letters, and it's always one word, and they always make a big point in the movie of telling you which letters are capitalized. Yes. Now, I feel like this is mostly supposed to be like taking the piss out of modern naming conventions in 1999, because, you know, oh, it's Existens with a capital E and a capital, no, it's a capital X and a capital Z, and that's a Z at the end instead of a CE. Isn't that, that's just like how we name our computers nowadays. It's all bullshit. But it belies just a weird fundamental misunderstanding of how anyone names anything and it just seems off. And it's going to go on like that. You're going to hear the names of three or four other things in the movie that use this same dumb process. I do actually, I'm going to say this, really like the way that they presented it at the beginning because Eccleston is the one who's sort of like presenting everything and being like, hey, I'm sort of the rep that's here. And every time he mentions it, he's always like, it's existence from Antenna.
and always has to throw in the name of the company every time he does it. Well, because he's an antenna rep who's only recently acquired this hot new designer. Yeah, and so I just really appreciate that they're like, oh no, we're very into the whole like, hi, this is Existence from Antenna. And I'm like, good, thank you. I'm glad that you have decided to go full in on that. Yeah, that was appreciable. But yeah, we're introduced to Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra Geller, and she is worshipped by the game community of the world to a degree that is not recognizable on Earth. I mean, not since Doomguy, what's his name, Carmack. No one's cared that much about video game makers.
I mean, maybe Miyamoto. We've had, you know, some names in video games before, but very infrequently do they get to a point where, like in this, she is not only like a superstar, but also so important that she has people attempting to murder. Yeah, yeah. This is basically like if people were constantly trying to assassinate Hideo Kojima instead of him just thinking they are. I mean, the whole premise for this, apparently Cronenberg was like, oh, I got the idea from like the whole...
kerfuffle with Salman Rushdie. Really? Yeah, he's like, but what if video game and they hated it? I would not have guessed that. I would have figured it was going to be based loosely on Carmack, who was being a big deal and unveiling Daikatana and shit like that right around this time, trying to become the hotshot celebrity video game designer. No, apparently it was the Satanic Versus. I'll tell you what, I should have guessed that instead because this movie belies a deep lack of understanding in any way about what people like about games or video games or videos. Yes. No, Cronenberg has no idea.
what a video game is or why one would want to play it. I think he saw a controller once and he was like, oh, the nubs are interesting. It's like it has nipples. I'll put those on a meat pile and call that a game controller. I do love that. I love that he was just like, oh man, I saw a PlayStation controller once and I was like, that's almost body horror. Let's up that. Let's take that to another degree. So she's here to introduce her brand new game, is Geller, and it's called Existence and there's no point in the movie where she's willing to define it as anything other than a whole new revolution. And that's a regular problem. She's like, oh, it's a new game and no one can be told what the Existence is.
Yeah. She's like, oh, it's a whole new, it's not just a new game. It's a new paradigm. It's a new game system. I'm like, okay, so what, like it's a Switch or a 3DS or something? It's a new game system? That's cool. Does it have Mario? No, you don't understand. It's a whole new paradigm in gaming. All right, what do you do? What do you do in the game? Oh, it's beyond your biggest imaginations. Okay, but what do you do? Well, you see, when you play it, you have to figure out why you're playing it. No, no, thank you. I already don't like sandbox games. And if you're going to not even give me a main storyline, I'm good.
Yeah, I don't want a game like that. I don't want a game where I... And also, this has the hallmarks of a 90s movie about VR, where they're like, oh, you could jack into a virtual world. And what's the virtual world like? It's a dirty stock room. And you can stay in there as long as you want. And I'm like, I don't want to go in a dirty stock room. If I have VR, I can go wherever the fuck I want. I want to fly around the rings of Jupiter or some shit. Let's do something cool. And it's always like, no, what you want to do is hang around in a fish-stinky warehouse. I mean, at least there's a point where after someone takes a bio gun that shoots teeth out and attempts to assassinate Geller, Ted Peichel, which is Jude Law's character, sort of...
takes her on the run to try and protect her. And they go at one point to a ski lodge and at least she says like, oh, no one skis for real anymore. So you do kind of figure like, yeah, most of the shit that people want to do like that they are doing in VR. I assume that's why a weird dirty stock room is the thing you would get because all the other stuff has already been done. I like the idea that we're seeing the ultimate evolution of video games because all the cool shit happened already. So here's the one where you make out with a person against your will in the back room of a video game store and that's the best it's ever going to get. This is it. This is a new paradigm.
The other problem, that whole thing, you're right, it was kind of a neat moment for her to be like, no one actually skis anymore, you just play ski games in your brain with meat stuff, is that it really drives home that Jude Law's character is the gobsmacked audience insert of the universe, because they're like, oh my god, you don't even have the port to play the games, and he's like, oh, I would love to play the games, it's my dream to play the games, but I don't understand anything about them, every time you explain anything about them to me, I'm going to be shocked and angry, I'm going to get increasingly uncomfortable with all of it, and I'm never going to understand what's going on. Yeah, I mean, from the start, he's supposed to be sort of a PR trainee for this company. But his whole thing is, oh, he doesn't have a bio port. He's afraid of anyone penetrating him because, you know, Cronenberg. And so he... Well, just as an analogy, imagine a guy who was a PR rep for Coke. Even if he got hired today, he was a PR rep for Coke. And he's like, oh, yeah, I've always dreamed of consuming a Coke product. It's one of my ultimate fantasies. I've studied it in all its respects. And they're like, well, here's one now. And he's like, what, it's a soda? And you drink it into your body?
That's basically this guy. In a universe, a world that's being presented where everyone plays the hottest new meat games all the time, he doesn't even know what they are, and yet he is also obsessed with them. His character makes no sense. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't know how the games work. He gets told about at least one of the other hugely popular games that Geller has made, Art God. Which sounded so pretentious. Oh, yeah. But even then he was like, oh, I don't know what that is. And you're like, okay, why are you, who, what?
how did you get hired when you were like sitting down for the job interview and they're like great now can you please tell us just a couple of uh let's hear about your familiarity with uh you know antenna products and he's like i've never heard of any of them and i'd be scared too i would never in my life use one of your products and i do not want to know about them And they're like, okay, but do you think you could be a PR person for us? Yes, I can. I don't want your products. I would definitely talk to people about these products I don't know about. I refuse to gain familiarity with your products, but I will show them for you. I mean, that's not too unbelievable. I guess, but it does feel very weird that every new twist and turn in the movie that requires him to learn something about the game systems, he's always like, what? That's crazy. That's a violation. It's like, dude, you took a job for this company. How did you make it through orientation? Also, you would think with Geller being a, like,
assassination-worthy target. And we do learn that there's like an entire resistance against video games that are like, oh, we prefer reality and video games are warping things and whatnot. And that's just part of the old man shakes fist at video games. But you'd think that even just like in the zeitgeist, you'd pick up information that he seems confused about. That was exactly what I meant by the Coke analogy, where this guy even should have the bare minimum understanding. And he kind of does, because he knows that it involves a jack bolt that you have to get into your spine, which...
By the way, imagine if that was the next level in video games from today. If it was like, oh, you've enjoyed the Switch. Now we've got to shoot a bolt into your spine so you can play the Switch 2. And then people would be like, I don't think so. And they're like, but there's a new Animal Crossing. Well, all right. I guess I don't need my spine unbolted for much. I guess you could give me a spine vagina. That's fine. Great. That sounds fun. Yeah. So she has to get her at this meeting about the product, which for whatever reason is held in front of about 40 people in an old church. It's a major product unveiling, and it seems to be being held at a revival meeting or like an AA meeting or something.
She gets hauled on stage with about 12 people, and they're going to play the game together, and she doesn't even want to do it. And we get established right away that Geller, despite being a famous celebrity mega game designer millionaire, is a shy, reclusive person who just wants to spend time designing her games. This will last until such time as she gets shot and is on the run, at which point she becomes a cool, confident weirdo instead. Yeah, that whole affectation just dropped in. It was like, oh, we're on the run. Well, now I'm in charge, and I've got cool boss ideas, and I need you to do what I tell you to do. I'm like, what happened to the weird nerd that's a shut-in?
Because that was supposed to be your character. That was the opening, the opening of the movie. And yes, as you're probably guessing if you haven't seen this, this is one of those mindfuck movies where you can never be sure whether or not you're in the game. Ooh, whatever, Rick and Morty, blah, blah. But this is- 1,000 years, Rick and Morty. But this isn't, there's been no opportunity for realities to jump around at this point. She comes out, she's like, I don't really like talking. Okay, do I have to play this game with these guys for a long time? I don't want to. I've been shot. Let's get in this car. Hey, would you like to have an intimate encounter with me? Shut up, you nerd. I'm in charge. I'm the cool one. And I'm like, what the shit?
Whatever. I guess it doesn't matter. Yeah, eventually she's like, yo, getting shot while I was plugged into the machine, fucked it up somehow. And I need to jack into it with someone else for some reason in order to make sure that the game structure is still OK in my meat PlayStation, because this is the only copy that exists, which is. Bullshit. Yeah, so there's a lot of bullshit in this. I mean, again, either it's a lot of liberties being taken in order to tell a very Twilight Zone-y story, or it's just a fundamental misunderstanding about everything that is video game design. Well, they're like, who designs video games? One reclusive person designs every individual video game. Yeah, that may have been a thing that could happen back when video games were like, this is some pixels and it took me a little bit to make this game. If you're talking about like a fully immersive VR past the uncanny valley, all five senses, like, no, you would have...
teams and teams of people working on this. Yeah, you can tell there must have been teams and teams of people working on this because when she finally jacks into her own game in the movie, which doesn't happen for like 45 minutes, she immediately starts critiquing it for being kind of lame. She's like, huh, this is weird. And I'm like, you just said you needed to jack into this so you could tell if it was okay. How can you tell if it's okay if you don't know what the fuck is in it? Well, it's different for every person. The game plays you, John. Oh, I see. I'm sorry, this game was made in Soviet Russia.
So yeah, there's a moment where they have to stop and dig the bullet out of her that she was shot with out of some kind of freaky bone and green meat gun. And he's like, wait a minute, this is a tooth. This gun shoots human teeth. That's a freaky deaky thing. I should call for help on my meatwad cell phone. I gotta say, I love the line here where she's just like kind of losing it over the fact that there is a like bone gun that shoots teeth. And she just at one point was like, oh, if you wanted a smaller caliber gun, you have to use baby teeth. And she's just kind of like off in her own little world. And I love that moment. Yeah, it was cute. She also had the line of, oh, look, this one's even got a cavity.
Yeah, she just seems very fine with the situation for having been shot with a tooth. Yeah, she's pretty detached about the whole deal. And I guess the idea is supposed to be that the tooth or the tooth gun is hypoallergenic and won't show up on any kind of sensor because it's made out of people. So, you know, obviously it's going to register as people when scanned. Well, yeah, because this is a one of those like get around all the security measures where, oh, we've got metal detectors, but this is an all meat gun. And since all of our video games are made out of meat now, I guess you just scan it and go, well, that's meat. I guess you want to play a game. I'm very surprised that they didn't, you know.
fashion bullets out of bone as opposed to just have it shoot teeth? Because teeth aren't, like, designed for their aerodynamic qualities. I mean... And the bullet, the tooth that goes into her is a molar. It's not even like a canine. It doesn't have a sharp part. Oh, it has the sharp part, the downward part that goes into your mouth. The roots, I guess. Anyway, she's like, well, you've got to help me jack into this game system so I can make sure it's okay. And he's, I don't have a bioport. What? How could you possibly not have a bioport? Well, we're going to have to get you one so we can do that. You can get bioports installed at any friendly local gas station.
Smash cut to local gas station, literally named that. And the gas station attendant, gas. Yeah, gas is the gas. I mean, I'm pretty sure he's not gas station attendant. He just has gas on his shirt and they call him gas. But this is Willem Dafoe acting creepy just the way you'd want him to. Yeah, he is super obsessed with these games. And he's just he's to start with. He's just that slight level of off that you can only get from Willem Dafoe that I just love. Where, again, this movie is.
kind of dumb bullshit, but God, everyone's really trying their best. God bless them. There's a lot of good actors in here doing a great job of delivering bullshit. And this, this in particular has a lot of like bad plot holes in it, his sequence, because his whole deal is, you know, he pretends to be, or I guess he is an early worshiper of her work, but then it turns out he's betraying her for a bounty. There's a $5 million on her head from the realist movement. And he's like, well, you know, love your work, but I want $5 million. Right. So his plan is to like put a bad.
reader into Jude Law's spine, and then just shoot both of them? And he's like, yeah, I definitely think I just murdered your game. That's what that did, right? I hope. I don't even know how any of this crap works. And I was like, no, you do. You're a big fan of it. You have your own Jackin thing, and you're a Jackin thing installer, and you talked at length about how much you liked her pretentious-ass mechanic that's a god game, Art God. Yeah, where you, the player, Art God. Oh my god. It was so... That was the moment where I was like, oh wow, I wish this guy had ever even heard of a video game. Like, even a little bit, because he was like, well, this is the game that she made, Art God. We're thou.
art god. Do you get it? Do you get the brilliance? God is like a mechanic, and I am a mechanic. And I'm like, but what do you do in the game? Are you just god? Is it Sim Earth? I assume it's a painting game. No, it's Mario Paint, but you're god. It's Mario Paint, but you're god. Yeah, it's black and white meets Mario Paint, and it's all in VR. Yeah, it's Axel A, but instead of the scenes where you go down and do the side-scroller, you just go draw a picture. Yeah.
Okay. Anyway, he betrays them, and they shoot him in the head with... A tooth. A tooth. They shoot him with a tooth gun. Oh, no, wait, no, he shoots him with the bolt installer. Yeah, because let's... Just to be brief about this real quick here, the game systems are like...
A little lump of flesh with controller nubs connected to your back by an umbilical cord. The installing system is a big, greasy gas station bolt gun that you have to get pressed up against your spine. Well, I mean, in this instance, you would assume that in a professional installation, you would have something that looked nicer. Why would they even build these? Like, well, you know, some of our customers who are going to be installing these cortical spine jack-in things may work in dingy, shitty gas stations. We should build them huge, greasy bolt shooters instead of just selling them the regular thing. We'll charge a premium for it.
Yeah, I mean, this is probably one of those, like, knockoff versions of it. This is the Mad Cat's version of the bolt installer. Anyway, now he has a cortical jack in his spine, and this leads to my favorite stupid conversation, like a brush-off conversation in the whole movie, where he's like, I don't want a hole in my spine. Isn't it gonna get infected? And she's like, oh, you fucking idiot. You big dumb turd. You stupidest moron in the world. Look, and she opens her mouth, and she's like, see? Nature put holes all over us. And I'm like, you're right, Jennifer Jason Leigh. No mouth has ever been infected with anything. Indeed. Who's ever heard of, like, a nasal infection or an ear infection? Goodness me.
The Lord doth give us big, clean holes, and that's the way they remain. So say I, art god. I mean, especially because you know that any actual gamer out there is just going to have one of these meat things on a shelf somewhere surrounded by fucking Doritos and old Mountain Dew. You're going to shove some sort of crusty ass nonsense under your back and be like, ugh. Well, I mean, luckily, the only people we actually have to see these cortical jack things installed on are sexy people. So we don't have to picture what they'd be like on the average stereotypical movie gamer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, of course, because this is Cronenberg, the little spine jack is also just a vagina. Just, you know, like every time they talk about it, they're like, oh, yeah.
Your new jack is hungry for it. It wants it. Sometimes these new ones are a little tight, but it's okay because we can lube it up before installation. Yeah, there's a point where Jude Law essentially starts committing cunnilingus on it, and you're like, okay, no, I got it. You don't need to do this. Yeah, at this point, they try to jack him into the meat matrix, and it doesn't work because he has a bad jack installed, and they shoot the big guy who does it, and then they drive away. They end up at a ski chalet run by Ian Holm doing the saddest Russian accents. Yeah, just the worst accent possible, although...
That's in character. You know, here's the thing, though. Yes, it's in character. A lot of the people in this movie, because everything's a video game and what layer are you even on? Oh, mind blown. Whatever. There's also on a moment where they're driving up to the ski chalet where Jude Law just loses his American accents entirely while in the car. And they just keep it. He's just like, oh, I'm very uncomfortable. I'm very uncomfortable with this is what's making me uncomfortable. And you're like, couldn't you have done another take? No. He sounded like Australian. I really know what Jude Law is.
Is he Australian? What is a Jude Law? The world may never know. No, they not Jude Law. No, he's British. He's just British. He's regular type British. All right. Yeah. Ian Holm is like Ian Holm is a he's he is a like meat game doctor, so he can perform surgery on a grape. And he gets in there with his assistant is like, oh, we're going to we're going to go ahead and slice this baby open and play with its guts and I'll get you a new.
pipe in you as well. And, you know, my setup looks professional instead of being a gas station somewhere. I mean, granted, it's still just a ski chalet instead of a gas station, but it does look a lot better. Yeah, he's actually got like sterilized stainless steel stuff. Yeah.
And of course, this is another opportunity for Tim Peichel, or Jude Law's character, to have no idea what's going on. Because when they're fixing the game station, the lump, he's like, oh my god, there's just like meat and organs in that thing. I would have expected technology, but it's just goop in there. Well, it looks like you're cutting open someone's dog. And I was like, what did you think was going on? It's clearly a sack of meat that connects to your back with an umbilical cord. This is like you carving into a hamburger and being like, I was expected to find microchips in here.
So they finally, after all of this, will get to jack into the game, and it turns out Existence is- Fucking boring. It's fucking- Existence is a retail video game. Like, they basically jack into a GameStop, and there's a little tiny version of the, like, it's the- flesh Game Boy now instead of the PlayStation. Oh, yeah. The first thing, they walk into a GameStop, but for me, they walk right up to a random kiosk in the middle of the store and are immediately greeted with the sight of a GamePod mini. And they're just like, hey, look at this. This is definitely the thing we need to be looking at. I agree. That is the thing we should look at. And then a man walks over with a pirate-ish Welsh accent. Again, because everyone in this movie has a fake accent. So he comes up and he's like, R.I.B. Darcy Carden, the proprietor of this here establishment. Because he's doing that piratical Welsh.
To their credit, at least Jennifer Jason Leigh is like, that's a dumb accent. I don't know how he ended up with that. Oh man, whoever programmed this game was an idiot. Oh wait, it was me. So this guy, he's a Final Fantasy NPC. He's programmed with a list of responses, but if you don't say something he expects, he just sort of lulls his head in a circle and waits for you to say the right shit. Yeah, this is where we get one of the conceits of this game world is sometimes like NPCs or characters or whatever, you have to address them by name so that like the game knows that you are trying to talk to them. And then also...
you have to say something that they can respond to. Right, which is always hilarious to me in these movies about VR where they're like, oh yeah, programming human behavior is really hard. And I'm like, you know what would actually be really hard is making perfect VR right past the uncanny valley replicas of humans that live and breathe and have pores and sweat and shit. It seems like you did the really hard part. So the fact that they're like, you're like, oh, I built a fully realized human dude who kind of looks like an angry old Welshman. But when I talk to him, all he can say is, welcome to Corneria. I like swords. It's like, I feel like you did the hard part, but skip the easy part. Well, you know, it's more expensive if you want to hire writers for this, so.
It's all procedurally generated. Hi there, we're looking for a video game. What do you like about looking for a video game? Tell me more about Hi There. Oh, God. The fact that Allegra at this point is like, oh, yeah, this game is the whole point is to figure out why you're playing the game. And Jude Law, at least, is credibly like, but why? Who would want that? Like, who is this game for? That sounds like a bad game. Couldn't we instead, like, run from left to right and jump on turtles? I mean, I'm going to throw this out here. How about I swing from a vine over a pit? Huh? How about that? Look, I'm really hungry for power pellets. Can't we just go get some power pellets and then eat some ghosts afterward if we still have room, maybe? Can we do that? Huh?
No, you have to go make out with me in a stock room. Yeah, we have to get real horny. Because here's the other conceit about this game world. Most of it's cut scene that you're just sort of forced to be along for the ride on because they get taken back to a stock room where they have to say the right thing to this Darcy guy to get him to move him to the next part of the game. But when he leaves the room, they're just like, wait a minute, we have to make out with each other. I don't want to make out with you. We have to. It's what the game wants. Yes, it's so that we can have a more emotional tension for the next scene in the game. And also there are lines that the game will force you to deliver where it just sort of takes you over and makes you say certain things because it has to for the plot.
Right, which to me means that she built the Ultimate Sandbox really badly. If it's like, oh, by the way, this is the Ultimate Sandbox, you can do whatever you want, and you have to find out what the game wants you to do, but it's completely on rails. I mean, you also don't even get a choice. It's not like, oh, yeah, you talk to this person, you've got, like, the Paragon and Renegade options. It's just one line that you have to say. Fuck you, Darcy, I'll kill your children. Renegade points, plus five. You're a good man, Darcy, here's a puppy. Paragon points, plus five.
Oh boy, unlock the Paragon armor. Ooh. But anyway, yeah, so they're hanging out in the stockroom of a video game store, making out on a crate. And I mean, we're talking like a shitty stockroom where like all the paint's peeling off the walls and stuff. And I'm like, I get it. You wanted to create a realistic environment, but this just looks shitty. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't get a cortical spine implant so I could make out of the back room of a GameStop. Uh, they, uh, God. So at this point they have to put the GamePod minis, just the whole thing up in their backs. Right. Which of course, Jude Law can't feel at all.
But when it happens to Jennifer Jason Leigh, she's like, because it's a vagina, you see. Yeah, no, this happens as well with, like, when they plug into the thing. Like, the little umbilical cord has, like, a butt plug at the end of it. And it goes into your spine, Gina. And when Jude Law gets it, it just sort of goes in there. And he's like, okay. But then, of course...
Jennifer Jason Leigh's like, ugh. Yeah, yeah. She's into it and she feels it every time, which is weird because it's a choice to be like, well, the sexy lady feels it. The dude, obviously, we don't want anyone to think about how it's like he's getting something up his butt. So instead, it's a completely neuter experience for him. Just 100% neutral. It's like he's getting his teeth cleaned. Which is sad because the entire aspect of like, oh, yes, in order to...
play these games, you have to be one in a very vulnerable, submissive thing. Like he says, I'm feeling very vulnerable when gas is going to go put the bolt in his back. There's this whole aspect of like, oh, we need to, you know, lube up your tight hole and everything. And you'd think that the movie would want to play with the aspect of like, yes, this is taking someone out of their very standard, like heteronormative stuff and making them feel body uncomfortable. Completely. And then what you really want is for him to enjoy the experience against his own expectations.
Like that would have made, if they were like, oh, well, I've got this dumb bolt thing in my back and I really didn't want this. Well, anyway, let's check. You went, holy shit, that feels great. That's what you wanted. But instead it's, that feels like nothing. It is like I am eating grape nut cereal on a Wednesday. Oh, that would make me feel terrible. You ever had grape nut cereal? That shit's garbage. I've had it on a Tuesday. But yeah. Solomon Grundy won't pay its two. It's just like, did they, did they do that on purpose? Was it supposed to be that it's an inherently sexual act when a woman does it, but when a man does it, we can't let anyone think he's got the gays. Yeah, it was, it's just a weird choice.
that I wish they had really leaned harder into rather than just sort of playfully getting to the edge of it and sort of hinting at that and then doing nothing with it. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, this new game system teleports them into a dirty fish market or fish... gutting factory that is now being used to gut mutated amphibians, which is what they make the game pods out of. Yes. So now they are within a game within the game where their whole thing is they have to make contact with someone and they're making pods out of the organs of weird mutant fish. And then the bad Russian accent guy is like, hey, go to the Chinese restaurant and order the special. Don't do not take no for answer. Yeah, this guy is he's a lot. There's a lot of this guy.
Yeah, and then we have... Yeah, so he's told to... This is Jude Law's character. He's told to go to a Chinese restaurant in the forest and ask for the special, which sounds appreciably video game-y, but again, it doesn't sound like a fun video game. None of this sounds like fun. Like, he's spending all day gutting mutated frogs in a warehouse on an assembly line, and the whole place is filthy and nasty, and then he has to go to a Chinese restaurant in a forest and ask for nasty goop, and none of it seems like he's doing anything that anyone would classify as enjoyable. Yeah, I mean, I can sort of understand the base level of like, oh, we're going...
to try and make this be a Cronenbergian total recall of like, oh, now you're a secret spy and you've got to go do whatever and is this part of the memory thing or is this real? But like, also like you say, a video game where it's like, what happens? Well, first you go to a GameStop and then you go to a nasty fish slaughterhouse and you'll hang out there for a while and then you'll get the worst meal ever. You're like, oh good, this sounds great. Is there a point where I hide behind crates and shoot approaching thugs or something? No, you work in the factory. You are the thugs.
No, it's you have to sit there and for an indeterminate amount of time, cut open nasty looking mutant amphibians, take their guts out and wrap them up in brown paper. Press A to gut. Press B to wrap. Pro tip. Press A and B to gut and wrap. It's just it's just so boring. And I keep I keep feeling like they lose. They consistently lose the conceit that this is supposed to be a game that they are selling. Yeah. At least Jude Law still is like, who wants this? This is a game where everything sucks and you have nothing and everyone is just an asshole to you. What game is this? This isn't a game.
And of course, Allegra's response is just like, yeah, but isn't that real life where you're fighting for your life and everyone sucks? And you're like, okay, I get it. You're very pretentious. You know what? Yes, you're right, Allegra. That is real life, which is why video games are fun. That's the point of them. They're an entertaining diversion. I don't want to jack into another job. Yeah. Oh, good. You've jacked into my newest video game, working at a slaughterhouse. Oh, is there any sort? No, don't worry about that. You'll put in eight hours. Do I at least get to have a cool body instead of my own real human shitty body? Nope. Same one. All right. Well, I guess.
interacting with the mechanics of this would be interesting. Oh no, it's jacked into your brain so that it just feels like you are physically cutting open things and putting stuff into brown wrapping paper. It's not like you're using game mechanics. You're not solving a puzzle. You're literally working a job. Okay, but what if I rebel against that and just go outside and get in a car and press triangle so I can drive it around and run over like pops and stuff? No, the game will pause and do nothing until you go back to the rails. Yeah, everyone will just sort of stop and you'll have to sit there and do nothing until you decide, all right, fine, I'm on board with your dumb bullshit idea. I mean, ultimately, I don't know if the...
review of existence being existence seems like a fucking shitty video game is like that useful as a critique but it really bothered me so they head to the Chinese restaurant hang on before we get there there was one thing I want to mention when he finds Allegra again because she's working in the same factory but she's at like a higher station like assembly assembling the game pads out of the fish parts she has a moment where he's like hey we have to go to this Chinese restaurant or she says oh dude I talked to someone named Larry Ashen and you sent the message and he's like hey yeah look we have to go to this Chinese restaurant and get the special and then she just looks at him blankly and says I heard you talk to Larry Ashen and needed to send the message. And I was like, oh, is this an NPC version of her? Have we found a video game? Because she did the same thing that the video game characters do, which is repeat themselves until you say what they want. But then that's discarded. And for the rest of this scene and this level of the video game, she's just herself again. Yeah, part of me believes. I'm going to go ahead. I mean, fuck, we've been talking for 50 minutes. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the end where, oh, it turns out that even the top level of Existence was a video game. And instead of meat, it's an actual, like, regular technology thing that's on your head. And they were playing a game the whole time.
They also, the people who were in it, are talking about, like, oh, you were so good at the game and whatever, that I have to imagine that everyone was sort of doing their own shit, and we were just following Jude Law, and there was definitely a point where, like, someone said something to Jude Law, and the game forced him to just stop and not do anything, but we don't get that because it's from his perspective. Yeah, almost definitely that's happened. Also, there's a whole thing where every character that they interact with actually is on the stage at the end of the movie, like, you know, oh, well, here I am, Willem Dafoe, I really enjoyed my short time as the crazy gas station owner. Oh, I hate that I was taken out so early. I guess I then did the standard, like, Ghost Follow the Protagonist mode. Which is a real weird thing to think about, that everyone was in Ghost Follow the Protagonist unless they were currently playing, because there's a part where Jennifer Jason Leigh basically blows Jude Law. And all I could think was like, okay, so these two are being forced to make out by this game's AI system, and then she goes down on them, but also Ian Holm is there watching. Also, there's just an invisible Willem Dafoe hanging out like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Hey there, Callum Keith Rennie. I love what's going on. Don't stop.
I just, that definitely happened in that situation, and that is so weird. Anyway, they go to the Chinese restaurant, and they get the special, and it turns out that it's a bunch of mutated nonsense that looks gross, but when you eat it, you can assemble that bone gun that we saw in the top level of not the video game, but ostensibly the real world. Right, so he puts it together, and he makes a joke based on the way that the assassin shot at her at the beginning of the movie, which is that whenever anyone's gonna kill anyone else in this over their anger about video games or meat games and so on, they're always like, death to the demoness, Allegra, whatever her last name is. Geller. Geller, Allegra Geller, or Death to the Demon, Death to Games, Life Towards Realism, I Declare Death. Everyone's so dramatic about their assassinations. Speaking of dramatic, there's a point where he wants to pause during this, and he's like, there's gotta be a way to pause this game, and apparently it is to stand stock straight up, yell, Existence is paused, and then slam your face into a table. I declare bankruptcy! You can't just say bankruptcy. I didn't, I declared it.
That's what happens. He just goes, existence is paused! And I was like, that would suck. Most modern video games have voice-activated controls built into them. You can yell into your PS4 controller if you've got the right stuff. Imagine if you were playing Spider-Man on the PS4 and you had to be like, Spider-Man, be paused! In order to pause the game, so you could go to the bathroom. Oh, God. Anyway, they shoot the waiter with the gun. It's one of those what they call game urges. Yeah, he's like, oh, I've got to. He's kind of like, oh, I don't think I could kill a person. Everything feels so real here. And then he just does. Right, yeah.
Now we find out that the plot is essentially a super twisting thing where like, oh, the person they made contact with is actually, instead of part of the... The realists. The realism movement, he's a double agent and you were supposed to make contact with the Chinese waiter who was your real contact, but he got you to kill him. Yeah, Darcy fooled him into killing the Chinese waiter who was actually a member of the realist movement. Darcy was a member of Cortical Technologies, which is the other company that wants to steal...
Allegra away to be a designer for them. So it's a lot of corporate espionage shit that's actually the driving force of the video game that is the top level of video game of this movie. Yeah. I mean, we get to a point where, like, they go back into the fucking slaughterhouse thing, and I'm like, okay, sure, why not? And then they're like, oh, I see. There's a diseased, even meatier version of the meat PlayStation, and if we jack this into a bioport, it will infect that bioport with whatever the disease this thing has, and then you can plug...
of like normal game into your port and then disease that thing and then like try and spread it like a virus because then it'll infect whoever plugs into that and then so on and so on. So it would be weird if they were sitting there like, oh, well, all I've got to do is just continually plug into various things and have no one stop me. Oh, also, I'll be really sick and dying the whole time. Yeah, but it turns out that, oh no, it was a trap from, I guess, the... Someone.
the realists and they were like oh we're gonna kill you with this thing rather than having it be to try and get rid of games and then the russian guy's like no death to realism up with games yeah so he he murders the game box with a flamethrower uh allegra is dying because there was no way to get the umbilical cord out of her so she's just bleeding out of a cut open umbilical cord the russian guy dies the building gets set on fire everything's messed up with spores and then they jack out for safety's purposes and and it's just get more layers of now they're back in their ski chalet hotel room and shit happens oh no somehow the fungal infection from the video game has infected the game pod in the real world. Okay. Yeah. Oh, but what about my spine? What if I've got fungus in there? All right, well, I'm going to put this butt plug in you, in your spingina, and you just keep that in there and it should get all the nastiness out. Right. And then their window blows open and one man runs in. He's the guy who was the second employee of the GameStop. And he's like, it's weird because it's supposed to be like a big war and fight going on outside, but he just runs in looking like an ersatz Rambo. And it's just like, death to whatever, cortical something or other, come with me. And it just all feels very spare.
as if it shouldn't just be one dude running in and declaring something dramatically. This whole movie kind of feels just like a play. Well, the end here especially feels very rushed because they're like, oh no, if you're infected in the game, you're infected in real life. We've got some great dumb nonsense going on that happens in every video game thing. And then it's just immediately interrupted with, oh, actually there's a revolution going on outside. Don't worry if you can't see any other people and just me. And then I'm going to get shot. And then Ian Holm gets up and he gets shot. And then Jude Law gets shot.
After everything else, he's just like, oh, by the way, I was the bad assassin the whole time. And she's like, I know, I remember it from when you pointed that gun at me at the restaurant and you didn't shoot me. That's how I knew you were an assassin sent to kill me. And he's like, well, it's because you didn't have a back plug. So I knew you were part of the realism movement. He's like, I got a back plug to get closer to you. And then she uses that butt plug she put in him to blow up his back and he dies. And now she's like, yeah, I guess I'm the winner. And she walks around for a while and then she gets jacked out of the.
Oh, plot twist, everybody. Spoiler alert, she gets jacked out of what you thought was the real world. Everything you think is the real world is just another level of the game. Yeah, now she's got, instead of a weird meat station that plugs into your back, it looks more like something that might actually exist, but it's like a tech cap that you wear. And then like a little thing that goes over your hand. So it's like the Power Glove and Cerebro are how you play this video game. Yep. And she's walking around with that and sort of thinks to herself victorious. And then we jack out to the top level and they're sitting back on that church revival stage. Except that now even Christopher Eccleston, who was the announcer last time, is one of the people in one of the chairs. And the person who was watching everyone go through it is finally Sarah Pauly. Finally for the last two minutes. Yeah.
And I love that when they go through the round table on this, Eccleston is just like, I feel like I didn't have much to do. And I'm like, yeah, it's a bad video game. I was pretty important in that church part. And then I did like it when I watched Jude Law get blown. But otherwise, there really wasn't much that I was a part of at all. Anyway, but that's Transcendence, the game we've been playing. Don't you guys get it? It's made by Pilgrimage. Capital P, capital I, Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage in particular is like, okay, you found that the word image is in the word pilgrimage, but...
It doesn't add up to anything. It's not a cool name because I guess maybe it's like, oh, it's a journey into the game and that's the pilgrimage. Well, yeah. Also, just a little bit of a trivia for you in the whole Existens thing. Between the X and the Z, Isten is apparently like God in whatever these directors, I think they're Hungarian. So yeah, that's why the X and the Z, I guess, are capitalized so that you can have that in there because they're as pretentious as Art God. Wait, wasn't this directed by Cronenberg and filmed in Canada? How do these Hungarian guys get involved in the screenwriters? Yeah.
Okay, very good, very good. Yeah, and of course the game they're playing isn't Existence, that's a meat game. They're playing a technology game called Transcendence. Oh, Transcendence. Then they spend some time all celebrating how great and magnificent the game was, even though a lot of them are like, I feel like I didn't get to do anything. I got taken out real early, and my character was bullshit. Yeah, I feel like as the only Chinese person sitting here playing the game, I find it problematic that I was both forced to play as a Chinese stereotype and then say a Chinese stereotypical thing when I got brought out of the machine.
Because the poor guy who had to be the waiter, his whole life is to be a Chinese waiter and speak with a thick Chinese accent and be called the Chinese waiter all the time. And then when he gets out, he's like, oh boy, everybody, who wants a bowl of hot and sour soup on me? Eh? You get it? I was a waiter. Get it? It's interesting to me that as the only person of color who was playing this game, you made me play a waiter for my ethnicity. I don't feel like this is a very well-designed game. And the thing is, both in Existence and then we find out in Transcendence,
Apparently the video game isn't an actual game because the person who was like the Russian contact is actually the game designer when we go to this level. And he's talking to Sarah Polly about like, oh man, it's very worrisome that there were a lot of anti-video game themes. that happened in that game. And I'm like, you made the game. I mean, presumably what he made was an interface by which people get together and then a procedurally generated game based on their interests comes into existence. I made a VR roguelike and it just procedurally generates the world's worst dungeon. Effectively, it's a VR engine that you play like, whose line is it anyway? Where you get in there and it's just from your subconscious is like, I need a suggestion from the audience, murdering video game designers. Okay, great. And then I need a location, a shitty factory.
What have you got in your mind? Well, I recently went to GameStop. Great, that's going to be a place that you go to. A game engine that forces you to go into a game engine that forces you to go into a game engine that forces you to make out with someone. Great. Let's do that. That sounds good. Oh, we also have to learn at the top level that Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law's characters are dating in real life, and that's why the game engine connected them with each other, to the point where Jude Law even has to be like, by the way, she wouldn't just randomly hook up with a security guard. She's not that type of woman. Yeah, she wouldn't hook up with a security guard unless they were me. I was like, fuck you, you moralizing shit. What if it was a great security guard?
What if that security guard was The Rock, huh? Just her soulmate. Just her soulmate was the security guard. She was like, well, I can't date a security guard. I'm married to at least a Jude Law or higher. And then, yeah, sure enough, it turns out that Vent, what's his name? Nourish, Yevgeny Nourish, the top level designer, was right to be worried that there was anti-video game designer sentiment in the video game because Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Lay walk over and ask him the stupidest questions in the world that just stop making, because they're just like...
You are indeed the world's greatest video game designer. That random assemblage of bullshit that we were the stars of was the best video game ever made. Oh, thank you. Don't you think you deserve to be punished for it? Don't you think that video games, and by extension, you that make them, are a blight on the world and should be punished for it? And he's like, no. No, I don't. I mean, they're fun games you can play. And we don't get an explanation as to whether... The problem is this movie's lacking the pan out.
You know, the pan out at the end of the movie to show you that in every other home in the entire neighborhood and then across the state and the country and so on, everyone's just sitting in a room with a blue fucking thing on their head playing video games all the time. Well, that's not the point, because the whole point is they pull out hidden actual real guns, not tooth guns, and kill him. And then when they point it at the Chinese waiter guy at the very end, he's like, wait a minute, are we still in the game? And that's supposed to be the whole thing. It's like, oh, there was an anti-gay movement in existence. Now in Transcendence, there's an anti-gay movement. But is it real? Who cares? I mean...
I don't know. Was 1999 the first time someone did one of these, are you in the real world or are you still in a dream type stories? I don't think it was. I mean, definitely not. Yeah. So the fact that that's the ending, that the ending is just like, well, perhaps this is still the dream. It doesn't have the narrative teeth that you're looking for in a movie that's got a lot of teeth. Yeah. You get shot with them. Yeah. So this ending, which is just like, you might still be in a video game. How would you even know? And I'm like, dude, even by 1999 standards, this is not blowing my mind.
Maybe that's just me. At least The Matrix wasn't really about video games when you get down to it. The game part of it was a convenient excuse to keep humans pliable. This one is still trying to sell games as a fun thing to do, and then there's nothing fun in them. Yeah. I mean, going back to the very beginning with the old man shakes fist at video games, it really sort of misses the entire idea behind this.
Like, if you want to get into the whole, like, oh, what if, I don't know, your technology or your hobby or whatever takes over your life to the point where, like, that's what your life is? Sure, great. I mean, that's not exactly novel, but, you know, whatever. You've got enough good actors. You can probably pull something out with that. Yeah, there's plenty of movies that are that, where the lesson is, like, don't get, you know, completely consumed by your hobby. You'll become a part of it, and it'll become a part of you, and blah, blah, blah. There's movies about that. Yeah, I mean, I understand being like, oh, you know, hey, maybe take a break from the video games every once in a while, kids. Eh? But this seems like it wants to be very...
up its own ass with like the moralizing on like, oh, well, you know, technology goes too far and we've got to try and spend time with reality. It's the type of movie that would tell you to quit taking a picture with your cell phone and enjoy the moment. Yeah. And the problem it generates is that nothing it presents to us is anything like real world games in any way. So the end argument kind of feels like, what if this crazy shit I made up? You never thought about that, did you? Well, yeah, there's no point where you're like, oh, wow, I can see why someone would get, you know, addicted to whatever. And then it ruined things.
All we see is, oh, video games suck ass. Why do you have a realism movement? The movie wants to present a slippery slope argument that, like, video games are eventually, as video games and technology advance, they're going to become closer and closer to reality, and eventually they'll become indistinguishable from it, and eventually we'll find ourselves in a world where no one can tell what's real and what's fake. And the problem is, when you look at the bottom of the pit that video games are right now, it doesn't look like anyone's going to make a game where you pretend you work in a factory. And so you don't... I mean, if you look on Steam, there definitely will be.
Someone is making forklift operator for VR. That's true. They are. Or even that game, I forget the name of it, where you literally play as an office worker and discover mundane little mysteries in your office. But the world of video games is going to get so realistic that you cannot possibly tell them apart. Also, video games need to be installed through your spine. It's too much for the slippery slope argument where you're like, man, we really should step back from video game design. Maybe we shouldn't develop Final Fantasy IX. It might be too much for people. The problem is, the slope's too slippery. Or too sloping. One of them.
Thank you. All right. Yeah, there you go. That's existence. Let's go ahead and do our bests and worsts in this film. Jeff, what's the best thing in this movie? Willem Dafoe and his crazy performance. God damn, it's so good. Every time. Is there a bad Willem Dafoe? Oh, wait, yes, there is. There is a bad Willem Dafoe performance. And even it's still pretty good. Yeah, Willem Dafoe is like pizza or sex. Yeah. What am I thinking of? It's the something Saints, Boondock Saints. They make him play like a ludicrously over the top gay stereotype, but he's still good because he's Willem Dafoe.
So, yeah, Willem Dafoe, always good, and he was great in this, and I feel like he bought into the dumb horror premise well and had a fun time. And, of course, it's always nice to see him as a regular guy who is not a creep, because at the very end of the movie, he pops up and is just like, I enjoyed that. I felt like I could have lasted longer, though. Yeah, I'm sad I got taken out so quickly. I had fun with the character, though. And, you know, someone else was like, yeah, you were really creepy. He's like, oh, thanks. Yeah, so that was the best part of the movie for me. It was just Willem Dafoe's fun performance, and honestly, also a lot of the other little side performances by people who are great side character actors. What about you? I mean, honestly, it's Willem Dafoe. He was the best in this film.
small scene of just him as the gas station guy is so good. He's just so much better than everyone in this film for that one scene. These are good actors, so it's not like, oh man, he's so much better because everyone else was shit. Yeah, I was going to say, don't get me wrong. I love Callum Keith Rennie. I love Christopher Eccleston. I love Ian Holm. I love Jude Law. This is a murderer's row of very good talent, but I feel like a lot of them didn't quite get what this was, and Willem Dafoe definitely. Oh yeah. And even with people like Jude Law, it's not his fault. He definitely knew what was going on. His character was written to be...
an absolute moron who doesn't understand the world he lives in, which is my least favorite trope of anything you can do in fiction, is having the one character who's ostensibly lived in the world his whole life, looks to be in his early 30s, and has no idea what the fuck anything is. Yeah, the gobsmacked, you know, reader insert. Yeah, the Harry Potter. When Harry Potter's around year five, by the way, of course, every time we mention Harry Potter, we have to say fuck J.K. Rowling and her turf bullshit. There, put it out of the way. But Harry Potter, by year five...
You're like, come on, man. You've been in high school for like five years. You should know what this shit is. And he's like, there's three schools? And you're like, fuck you, Harry. How did you not? One moment, get your head out of your own fucking ass. And this is the same problem, except you don't hate him as much because he's not a millionaire who's the best at everything and grows up to be a magical cop.
So are you going to take that character as your least favorite then? Well, just the concept. I didn't like the character of Ted Peichel. I think Jude Law did a good job and was well acted and was fun to watch. But yeah, the writing around his character where they were like, oh, well, we need a main character who doesn't know what's going on so we can explain shit in the movie is lazy and it always comes across as a shitty decision. So yes, that's my least favorite part. All right. There's other ways to explain the shit in your movie than having your main character be a total fucking moron. True. I mean, I get it. Yeah. What about you? I mean, I'm probably going to have to go with, God, I'm going to say the entire Chinese restaurant thing. Yeah.
Where I'm just like, oh man, Chinese people, am I right? They have gross food. Look at that. The other problem you ran into with that is that because of this movie's kind of house rule that you can only get NPCs to react to you by calling them by their name, and they don't know his name, so they just keep calling this poor guy Chinese waiter. Hey, Chinese waiter, come over here. Listen, Chinese waiter. Yeah, it is. It's fucking rough. That's not a good look. Ugh.
All right, so now we're going to go ahead and give the movie a rating each of us 0 to 5, which will give it a rating out of 10. Jeff, exist ends. Right down the middle of the road, John. This is a two and a half movie for me. I like a lot of the ideas from it, but ultimately it was a little too stupid and disjointed for me to really want to give it a high recommend. That said, there wasn't a point where I was actively angry, and it's a fine Sunday, you won't get out of the couch type movie. What about you? I'll give it a three, and mostly, I mean, I'm on board for Cronenberg's dumb bullshit far more than you are. I don't know, this is the only one I've seen. What if I love all the other ones?
I mean, you would almost certainly love The Fly. I mean, it's Goldblum being amazing. Yeah, I'm sure. And I bet you he's got a Jeffrey Combs movie. I feel like those two were made for each other. How do you not have a Jeffrey Combs movie? Look, Cronenberg, if you haven't made a Jeffrey Combs movie, also, not Cronenberg, Combs, and also, if you're still alive, I don't know if Cronenberg is alive or not. Sure. Then get that shit together. Go make a Jeffrey Combs movie. I think he's still alive. Didn't he make a movie called, like, Map to the Stars in the last year or two? I don't know. Whatever, go ahead. Three.
I give it a three. There was a lot of, I feel, good potential in this film. You know, as I mentioned, there's a lot of things that I feel like they flirted with and then kind of dropped the ball on. But it is a movie that watching has enough under it that you're like, man, I can see what this could have been. And it would have been rad. But instead, it's mostly just not understanding a lot of stuff. It's kind of bullshit. But I'm both hating and loving the fact that it is at the same time. I give it a three just because I'm like, I can watch this. It's okay. And it's very stupid. And I kind of like how stupid it is.
Okay, that's fair enough. That gives it a five and a half out of ten. Just edging its way past the halfway point. Yes, indeed. It's all about edging here. That's what we do. We edge up past that sea. So thank you so much for joining us on this journey through existence. And if you want to listen to more, even more of us, why we have a Patreon at patreon.com slash system mastery. We got some bonus content where right now we are going through season one of Smallville. And it's it is a journey. It is definitely it's something. Oh, yeah. I'm really looking forward to it.
Because this episode that we just did, John, a very special episode of Smallville. I can't wait to talk about it. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we're going through it pretty quickly. I don't think we're going to stick with Smallville beyond season one. I can't wait to see what we go to next as well. Oh, yeah. I may just take every dumb genre show that I love and force you to watch season one. Can you just pick your favorite seasons instead? No. Hey, we're going to watch Supernatural season one. Fuck you. No.
I don't want to. Too bad. Sliders season one. Sliders season one is the good one. And I'm sure you're about to tell me that the best season of either one of those two Stargate shows was season one. I mean, no, but. But that's what we're watching. That's what we're doing. SG-1 coming in hot and heavy season one. This is going to last until I grab the reins and make you watch the first season of Babylon 5. I mean, that show got good, but it didn't start good. So you're going to suffer.
So yeah, go over to patreon.com slash system mastery. Join us at the $5 level to unlock that. And it unlocks all of our other content. You get the content for our Star Wars stuff, our RPG stuff, and our monthly afterthought where you get access to a special room on our Discord. You can ask us questions. We answer them on air. And we do a little talking about stuff. We get a little more real. We turn the chair around and we want to rap. That's what we do. We turn the chair around and our hats around. And I put all my clothes crisscross style. Yeah. And we make references. We make references that are at least that fresh all the time.
At least. 1994 or better. So thank you so much for joining us. We will, of course, be back in another two weeks with another Movie Mastery. And until then, you have a good one.