# The Family That's Prey Together, Pt. 1 — War of the Worlds (2005)

An episode of [Filmspotting](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/73330112), 27 Aug 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/d28227f8-56d8-46d9-b2c5-b3d3012db5ab/a1832622-08b2-416f-9959-b4b1003596fe/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=83c52568-54c6-438a-8751-b3d3012db5c3

David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street drops an ordinary family into extraordinary circumstances, forcing them to focus all their energy on surviving— and maybe, just maybe, learning to understand each other along the way. That structure, combined with Oak Street’s Spielbergian spectacle, pointed us toward 2005’s War of the Worlds, which fuses H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel to images and emotions that draw on the attacks of 9/11. How that approach holds up a quarter-century removed from the events that inspired it is up for discussion this week, along with where War of the Worlds falls on the Steven Spielberg Alien-Encounter Continuum, and just how close that sentimental ending comes to ruining the movie entirely. Then in Feedback, a listener, with an assist from Orson Welles, invites us to get galaxy-brained on the nature of homage as it relates to cinema generally and this podcast specifically. Please share your thoughts about War of the Worlds, The End of Oak Street, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to comments@nextpictureshow.net, or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. This episode is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

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[0:41] Speaker 1: Picture Show.
[0:43] Speaker 2: It's very difficult to keep the line between the past.
[0:46] Speaker 3: And the past. You believe that someone out of the
[0:49] Speaker 3: past can enter to take possession of.
[0:53] Speaker 4: A living We may be through with the past, but
[0:55] Speaker 4: the past is not through with us.
[1:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to the Next Picture Show. A movie the Week
[1:04] Speaker 1: podcast invoted to a classic film and how it shaped
[1:06] Speaker 1: our thoughts on our recent release.
[1:07] Speaker 5: I'm Keith Phipps here with Genevieve Koski and Tasha Robinson.
[1:11] Speaker 1: We're once again a reduced crew here because we're recording
[1:14] Speaker 1: this on Scott Tobias's birthday, So everyone listening should now
[1:17] Speaker 1: take a moment to wish Scott a blated birthday.
[1:20] Speaker 5: Happy birthday, Scotty.
[1:21] Speaker 2: Wait, where are we at Scott Tobias's birthday party right now?
[1:24] Speaker 2: Where we just not invited?
[1:27] Speaker 1: All right? With that out of the way, let me
[1:29] Speaker 1: throw out a variation of a question that Scott and
[1:31] Speaker 1: I ask our readers at the Reveal, inspired by my
[1:33] Speaker 1: recent experiences spending time on long flights and stuck in airports.
[1:37] Speaker 1: When you're traveling, what kind of movies do you like
[1:39] Speaker 1: to watch? And I have a follow up question, do
[1:41] Speaker 1: you load up an iPad with options or prefer to
[1:44] Speaker 1: leave it a chance sticking with the in flight entertainment?
[1:47] Speaker 2: I mean, I don't leave anything to chance when I travel.
[1:50] Speaker 2: I have been stuck in airports, sometimes overnight, and now
[1:54] Speaker 2: I have become one of those people who carry, you know,
[1:58] Speaker 2: enough entertainment to get me through like three weeks. I
[2:00] Speaker 2: underpack and overplan for entertainment, so it's a kindle rather
[2:05] Speaker 2: than an iPad in my case. But last time I
[2:08] Speaker 2: flew internationally, I probably had like one hundred hours of
[2:12] Speaker 2: like downloaded Netflix things that I was definitely going to
[2:14] Speaker 2: get to at some point, and then I just ended
[2:18] Speaker 2: up watching in flight entertainment movies.
[2:20] Speaker 5: I'm going to disappoint you terribly and admit that I
[2:23] Speaker 5: rarely rarely watch movies on planes. I am an anxious flyer,
[2:28] Speaker 5: and I kind of have trouble getting into the headspace
[2:32] Speaker 5: I like to be in for a movie on a plane.
[2:35] Speaker 5: And I also tend to knit because it helps me,
[2:38] Speaker 5: helps with the nerves, you know, and so I need
[2:40] Speaker 5: to look at my knitting when I am doing that.
[2:44] Speaker 5: I'm not that accomplished in it or yet, So I
[2:47] Speaker 5: tend to opt for more in the podcast realm. Sometimes
[2:51] Speaker 5: I'll download a bunch of like YouTube videos, but I
[2:55] Speaker 5: generally opfer things that don't require my full attention that
[3:00] Speaker 5: you know, I feel okay giving divided attention to, which
[3:03] Speaker 5: is generally not movies. It's generally like TV shows. I've
[3:06] Speaker 5: seen a bunch if they happen to be part of
[3:08] Speaker 5: the inflight entertainment or like I said, YouTube videos or something.
[3:12] Speaker 5: The one recent exception I can think of is when
[3:15] Speaker 5: we went to Disney World a couple of years back,
[3:17] Speaker 5: and obviously we had to watch Disney movies on the plane,
[3:21] Speaker 5: and that was actually I wasn't on our Ratituoe episode,
[3:25] Speaker 5: but that was the most recent time I watched Ratiitue
[3:27] Speaker 5: was during my last trip to Disney World. So but
[3:31] Speaker 5: before that, I can't even think of when. What was
[3:32] Speaker 5: the last movie I watched on a plane, To be
[3:34] Speaker 5: quite honest with you.
[3:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's two hours or less, I'm not going
[3:37] Speaker 1: to bother with the movie. I'd rather read a book
[3:39] Speaker 1: at that point. But I was I flew internationally. I
[3:41] Speaker 1: flew to Norway for a little bit as a fun trip,
[3:44] Speaker 1: but I was on my mind because I loaded up
[3:46] Speaker 1: a bunch of Criterion stuff from the Criterion channel. They
[3:50] Speaker 1: have the murderous melodramas serious I want to check out, right,
[3:53] Speaker 1: But like I can half the time, more than half
[3:55] Speaker 1: the time, I love your Criterion channel, but your downloads
[3:57] Speaker 1: don't work on my iPad, so I tell myself kind
[4:00] Speaker 1: kind of. I had some other stuff too, but I
[4:02] Speaker 1: was a little. My original plans fell through. I ended
[4:05] Speaker 1: up watching the comedy Feckham Hall on the in Flight Entertainment,
[4:08] Speaker 1: which is sort of a parody of Dalton Abbey and
[4:11] Speaker 1: other sort of upstairs downstairs stories. It kind of segues
[4:14] Speaker 1: into a parody of Adam the Christie about halfway through.
[4:17] Speaker 1: It was delightful, It was really funny, it really stupid,
[4:19] Speaker 1: but I really quite enjoyed it. So that's my sort
[4:22] Speaker 1: of like sideways recommendation.
[4:24] Speaker 2: I guess, I guess to kind of like bridge what
[4:27] Speaker 2: both of you just said. Genevieve, I definitely don't pick
[4:30] Speaker 2: in flight movies that require my full attention. Yeah, for
[4:33] Speaker 2: a shorter flight, I'll read a book instead, because I
[4:36] Speaker 2: know we're going to get interrupted like five times, you know,
[4:38] Speaker 2: by just various plight things, and it's not a good
[4:42] Speaker 2: environment to watch something like a Criterion movie. I don't
[4:46] Speaker 2: want something that I need to focus on or that
[4:50] Speaker 2: I'm going to care about later. In flight movies for
[4:53] Speaker 2: me are usually potato chip movies, you know. It's it's
[4:55] Speaker 2: often a good time to get caught up on something
[5:00] Speaker 2: superficial and trashy that I often don't have enough time
[5:04] Speaker 2: for in my day to day, But then I know
[5:06] Speaker 2: isn't going to take a whole lot of a whole
[5:08] Speaker 2: lot of focus. Kat, I'm thinking about the Rebel Wilson
[5:12] Speaker 2: meta rom com. I watch that on a flight, and that,
[5:15] Speaker 2: just to me is like the ultimate in flight movie
[5:18] Speaker 2: is something we kind of know all of the beats.
[5:20] Speaker 2: It's funny enough to be enjoyable, but it doesn't require
[5:24] Speaker 2: focus or retention anyway.
[5:26] Speaker 1: I always think the most fascinating movie in the world
[5:28] Speaker 1: is whatever the person in front of you is watching
[5:31] Speaker 1: on the plane. What is that? Oh, that looks kind
[5:33] Speaker 1: of interesting. I think I swoiled myself on The Housemaid
[5:36] Speaker 1: by by watching watching that over somebody's shoulder for a
[5:39] Speaker 1: little bit, So now I know the big secret there,
[5:42] Speaker 1: I guess.
[5:42] Speaker 2: But I don't want to watch what they're watching unless
[5:45] Speaker 2: I've already seen it, and then I want to watch
[5:47] Speaker 2: them i'm watching it. I want to surreptitiously like, oh,
[5:50] Speaker 2: I know this big moment is coming up. How are
[5:52] Speaker 2: you going to respond to that? But just to make
[5:54] Speaker 2: me slightly less of a plane creep. I also do
[5:57] Speaker 2: this with my friends. I show the movies I'm excited
[5:59] Speaker 2: about that I've already and then surreptitiously watch them to
[6:02] Speaker 2: see how they respond to the big moments.
[6:04] Speaker 1: Well, maybe you're listening to this podcast on a plane,
[6:07] Speaker 1: but we're I guess we're done talking about plane stuff
[6:09] Speaker 1: for now.
[6:09] Speaker 5: I would venture that at least one of the movies
[6:12] Speaker 5: we're talking about this week has a grand future as
[6:15] Speaker 5: a plane movie.
[6:17] Speaker 1: Yes, I think, I think.
[6:19] Speaker 5: Not to spoil anything, Well.
[6:21] Speaker 1: That's not like a segue, Tasha, can you tell us
[6:23] Speaker 1: about the movies we paired for these next episodes?
[6:26] Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you a question, Keith. Have you
[6:28] Speaker 2: ever thought about what might happen if you and your
[6:30] Speaker 2: family woke up one day and realized your entire neighborhood
[6:34] Speaker 2: had somehow been transported back to a prehistoric era filled
[6:36] Speaker 2: with ravenous dinosaurs. No, I have, Yeah, I didn't think so,
[6:41] Speaker 2: but writer and director David Robert Mitchell certainly has. For
[6:44] Speaker 2: his follow up to It Follows and Under the Silver Lake,
[6:47] Speaker 2: Mitchell returned to the suburban Michigan of his youth for
[6:50] Speaker 2: an adventure tale that drops an ordinary family into pretty
[6:53] Speaker 2: extraordinary circumstances, forcing them to focus all their energy on survival.
[6:57] Speaker 2: So it contains his sheriff Grim violence the end of
[6:59] Speaker 2: a Rook Street is at heart a pretty light film. Nonetheless,
[7:03] Speaker 2: it reminded us of another much darker movie, directed by
[7:06] Speaker 2: a filmmaker whose influence can be felt throughout Mitchell's latest
[7:09] Speaker 2: Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, was released in two
[7:12] Speaker 2: thousand and five. This adaptation of HG. Well's eighteen ninety
[7:15] Speaker 2: eight novel roughly follows the plot of its source material,
[7:18] Speaker 2: particularly in the way it keeps the focus on a
[7:20] Speaker 2: single character's experience, but it fuses that novel to images
[7:23] Speaker 2: and emotions directly inspired by the attacks of nine to
[7:26] Speaker 2: eleven and its aftershocks.
[7:28] Speaker 1: So in this episode was Scott's one family's attempt to
[7:30] Speaker 1: survive the invasion of hostile aliens in the early years
[7:33] Speaker 1: of the twenty first century. Then in the companion episode,
[7:35] Speaker 1: we'll talk about a family from nineteen eighties, their journey
[7:37] Speaker 1: to the past and their attempts to defend themselves against
[7:40] Speaker 1: the creatures who lived there. Will be right back Ay.
[7:43] Speaker 5: Thirty set eight o'clock.
[7:46] Speaker 3: D get a hug.
[7:48] Speaker 4: Robbie's got a paper which she's yet to begin.
[7:51] Speaker 5: I just got to start writing at first.
[7:55] Speaker 6: Take care of our kids.
[7:56] Speaker 3: You got nothing to worry about that is so weird.
[8:07] Speaker 3: The wind is blowing toward the storm. It's okay, lightning
[8:13] Speaker 3: doesn't strike twice? Where's a thunder?
[8:18] Speaker 6: Robbie here saw the lightning, Yeah, twenty six times on
[8:21] Speaker 6: the an avenue.
[8:25] Speaker 5: It.
[8:31] Speaker 1: When Steven Spielberg's Wore the World's arrived in theaters in
[8:34] Speaker 1: two thousand and five, more than a few critics and
[8:36] Speaker 1: moviegoers described it as a kind of inverse of Close
[8:39] Speaker 1: Encounters of the Third Kind. Instead of featuring a visit
[8:42] Speaker 1: from friendly aliens entifty to make first contact with the
[8:44] Speaker 1: inhabitants of Earth, its aliens were hostile and wanted only
[8:48] Speaker 1: to conquer, not to befriend. Earth's inhabitants were little more
[8:52] Speaker 1: than a petty distraction. Described the film's opening narration adapta
[8:55] Speaker 1: for HG. Wells's novel as creatures. The aliens quote scrutinized
[8:59] Speaker 1: and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with
[9:02] Speaker 1: a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and
[9:06] Speaker 1: multiply in a drop of water. But were the World's
[9:09] Speaker 1: places Close Encounters of the third kinds opposite in other
[9:12] Speaker 1: ways as well. In Spielberg's earlier film, Richard Dreyfuss plays Roy,
[9:17] Speaker 1: a man whose obsessive fascination with UFOs coincides with his
[9:20] Speaker 1: disillusionment with family life from a wife he sees as
[9:23] Speaker 1: unsupportive to kids who favor the crass pleasures of Goofy
[9:26] Speaker 1: Gough over a chance to see Pinocchio on the big screen.
[9:30] Speaker 1: In the end, he discards them as easily as someone
[9:32] Speaker 1: might discard a pair of worn out socks when he
[9:34] Speaker 1: trades life on earth for life in the stars. Nearly
[9:38] Speaker 1: twenty years later, fatherhood had changed Spielberg's life and evidently
[9:41] Speaker 1: his point of view, but the world had changed as well,
[9:44] Speaker 1: in ways that would make his past sense of wonder
[9:46] Speaker 1: and abandoned feel out of step with the times. Nine
[9:50] Speaker 1: to eleven almost immediately quieted the end of history speculation
[9:54] Speaker 1: that became common at the end of the twentieth century.
[9:56] Speaker 1: Within this new perilous environment, Roy's near namesake, Ray, played
[10:00] Speaker 1: by Tom Cruise, is driven by a desperate need to
[10:03] Speaker 1: keep his family together, As the opening scenes reveal a
[10:06] Speaker 1: fractioning was in progress even before the arrival of aliens.
[10:09] Speaker 1: Ray's ex wife, mary Anne played by Miranda Otto, thinks
[10:12] Speaker 1: he's an irresponsible lout. His teenage son Robbie, justin Chatwin
[10:16] Speaker 1: sees with resentment at having to spend time with him.
[10:19] Speaker 1: Only Robbie's younger sister, Rachel Dakota Fanning, seems to hold
[10:23] Speaker 1: out any hope for her dad, and even she is
[10:25] Speaker 1: losing patience. Then, the arrival of deadly invaders changes everything,
[10:29] Speaker 1: transforming Ray from a man pushing his children away consciously
[10:32] Speaker 1: or unconsciously, to one who would do anything to protect them.
[10:36] Speaker 1: Existential threats of a way of refocusing priorities in Spielberg's
[10:40] Speaker 1: take on eh G. Wells's novel draws on images and
[10:42] Speaker 1: incidents connected to the nine to eleven attacks, but also
[10:45] Speaker 1: the fear and disorientation created by those attacks. We live
[10:49] Speaker 1: under a veil of fear that we didn't live under
[10:51] Speaker 1: before nine to eleven, Spielberg told USA Today in two
[10:53] Speaker 1: thousand and five, adding there has been a conscious emotional
[10:57] Speaker 1: shift in this country among those emotions with a sense
[11:00] Speaker 1: that everything could fall apart at any moment, if one
[11:03] Speaker 1: of the defining landmarks of the New York Skyline could
[11:05] Speaker 1: crumble into dust, if the Pentagon itself could be attacked,
[11:08] Speaker 1: if a plane could fall from the sky in a
[11:10] Speaker 1: Pennsylvania field. What assurances did we have that anything we
[11:13] Speaker 1: understood to be safe and reliable might not be unexpectedly destroyed?
[11:18] Speaker 1: War the world's draws on the feelings of that not
[11:20] Speaker 1: so long ago a moment first with an opening attack
[11:24] Speaker 1: in which a threat emerges from beneath the feet of
[11:26] Speaker 1: the residence of an ordinary neighborhood in Bayonne, New Jersey.
[11:29] Speaker 1: Ray witnesses at firsthand and barely survives the experience as
[11:32] Speaker 1: he flees with others through the streets that are suddenly
[11:35] Speaker 1: covered in dust and ash, pausing only to wash his face.
[11:39] Speaker 1: He then flees with Robbie and Rachel in tow thanks
[11:41] Speaker 1: to a vehicle he'd previously advised the neighborhood mechanic how
[11:44] Speaker 1: to restart in the wake of an electromagnetic pulse that's
[11:47] Speaker 1: rendered other automobiles useless. Notably, Rachel asked, is it the terrace,
[11:52] Speaker 1: as if she's been waiting her whole short life for
[11:54] Speaker 1: another shoe to drop. After nine to eleven, in his
[11:57] Speaker 1: wife's new home in the suburbs, they find only temporary shelter,
[12:00] Speaker 1: surviving the crashing of a jet by sheer luck and
[12:03] Speaker 1: while Ray's ability to keep his wits about him in
[12:05] Speaker 1: a crisis contributes to their survival. Luck plays just as
[12:08] Speaker 1: powerful a role that down jet can't help but bring
[12:11] Speaker 1: to mind the wreckage of United ninety three, just as
[12:14] Speaker 1: a hastily missing science can't help but bring to mind similar, hopeful,
[12:17] Speaker 1: but usually futile gestures. After nine to eleven, this was
[12:21] Speaker 1: by design, and the film's widespread critical support and the
[12:24] Speaker 1: acceptance of audiences turned it into a hit suggested enough
[12:27] Speaker 1: time had passed that such imagery was not only acceptable
[12:30] Speaker 1: but welcome. Not everyone saw it that way, however. In Slate,
[12:35] Speaker 1: Timothy Noah argued that it could quote only be described
[12:38] Speaker 1: as pornographic, but in the years after nine to eleven,
[12:41] Speaker 1: it was often the attempts to sidestep the subject that
[12:43] Speaker 1: felt distasteful. One of the first movie screen for critics
[12:46] Speaker 1: after nine to eleven, for instance, was Zoolander, and a
[12:49] Speaker 1: shot at the New York skyline, from which the World
[12:50] Speaker 1: Trade Center had been digitally erased, as if it had
[12:53] Speaker 1: never been there at all, felt wrong, almost obscene. In
[12:57] Speaker 1: Lesser Hands word the Worlds might have felt that way,
[13:00] Speaker 1: but Spielberg's decision to narrow the film's focus to a
[13:03] Speaker 1: single family overwhelmed by events they can't understand feels, choosing
[13:07] Speaker 1: the experiences of witnessing the tragedy and of living in
[13:09] Speaker 1: fear in its wake. So too does the film's ending,
[13:13] Speaker 1: which keeps the anti climax of the original novel by
[13:16] Speaker 1: depicting the invaders to combing to Earth's pathogens. The threats
[13:19] Speaker 1: behind thatne eleven didn't go away, of course, but the
[13:22] Speaker 1: sense of an immediate danger did eventually fade, leaving behind
[13:26] Speaker 1: the same question The characters of Where the Worlds are
[13:29] Speaker 1: left to ponder, what do we do now? And can
[13:32] Speaker 1: we ever rebuild what's been broken? We'll be right back.
[13:47] Speaker 3: Now. That's the fourth of July. Oh, it's okay, you're fine.
[14:06] Speaker 3: Right behind our house. It's not gonna hit there again.
[14:10] Speaker 7: Okay, because lightning doesn't strike twice in the same.
[14:19] Speaker 6: Boy, Robbie probably, okay, are you okay?
[14:32] Speaker 3: Okay.
[14:33] Speaker 1: So it's been twenty years since War the World's released.
[14:35] Speaker 1: How did it play for you at the time? And
[14:37] Speaker 1: did that change with this viewing?
[14:39] Speaker 5: Oh?
[14:39] Speaker 2: It definitely changed. I just remember seeing this and I
[14:43] Speaker 2: mean what you what you say about the aftershocks of
[14:46] Speaker 2: nine to eleven. We're just all over this movie. I
[14:48] Speaker 2: think the sequence that affected me most emotionally that first
[14:52] Speaker 2: time was watching the Neighborhood fall apart, and particularly watching
[14:57] Speaker 2: that crowd of people who react with terror to a
[15:02] Speaker 2: life threatening event in their midst but then also keep
[15:05] Speaker 2: kind of going back to it in fascination and horror.
[15:09] Speaker 2: And it seemed to me that this movie captured something
[15:12] Speaker 2: that I felt was true and that I had never
[15:13] Speaker 2: seen in a film before, which is how the sort
[15:17] Speaker 2: of animal flight response to something terrifying happened wars against curiosity.
[15:23] Speaker 2: We see a couple of people in that sequence pulling
[15:26] Speaker 2: out cameras to take pictures of the events and the tripod.
[15:30] Speaker 2: If this movie was made today, it would be everybody
[15:33] Speaker 2: pulling out their cell phones. But it felt at the
[15:35] Speaker 2: time like it was still capturing that mentality even before
[15:39] Speaker 2: it had really come into vogue. There was a lot
[15:42] Speaker 2: of debate over the time over kind of the ethics
[15:45] Speaker 2: of movies incorporating all of this image that we'd seen
[15:47] Speaker 2: on the news in two thousand and one, and this
[15:51] Speaker 2: movie did a lot of that, particularly when you see
[15:55] Speaker 2: Tom Cruise staggering back to his house covered in dust,
[15:59] Speaker 2: which is not only the dust of disintegrated buildings, it's
[16:02] Speaker 2: the dust of disintegrated people, and you know, I just
[16:06] Speaker 2: vividly remember the shots of people staggering out of downtown
[16:10] Speaker 2: New York, similarly covered with dust and just kind of
[16:14] Speaker 2: like visibly in shock in the same way. So it
[16:18] Speaker 2: all seemed very close to the bone back in two
[16:22] Speaker 2: thousand and five in a way it doesn't now, but
[16:25] Speaker 2: it does now watching it kind of call back some
[16:28] Speaker 2: of the memories and emotions of that time in a way.
[16:31] Speaker 2: I don't know whether that was really intended. I don't
[16:33] Speaker 2: know if he was thinking about the legacy of this
[16:36] Speaker 2: movie is going to be reminding people of how they
[16:39] Speaker 2: felt during those events. But you know, seeing it within
[16:42] Speaker 2: twenty years distance definitely was a different experience for me emotionally. Particularly.
[16:47] Speaker 5: I actually did not see this when it came out.
[16:50] Speaker 5: The summer it came out was the summer I was
[16:53] Speaker 5: starting grad school and in a pretty intensive academic space
[16:56] Speaker 5: and not seeing a lot of movies and theaters. But honestly,
[17:01] Speaker 5: watching this again, I think, well, I say again, I'm
[17:04] Speaker 5: not sure if I've ever seen this movie beginning to end.
[17:07] Speaker 5: I don't know if I watched it like at a
[17:11] Speaker 5: party or I don't know, maybe on a plane, you know,
[17:14] Speaker 5: like because like certain scenes were definitely familiar, particularly sort
[17:19] Speaker 5: of like the basement cellar scene where they're being stalked.
[17:23] Speaker 5: That was very familiar in my mind, along with a
[17:26] Speaker 5: couple other sequences, but like the overall shape of the
[17:30] Speaker 5: movie felt kind of new to me. On this viewing,
[17:33] Speaker 5: I was like, maybe I never actually saw a War
[17:35] Speaker 5: of the worlds. I can't remember an occasion when I did,
[17:38] Speaker 5: so it was fascinating viewing it twenty some years later.
[17:44] Speaker 5: I'm sure it was a different emotional experience than it
[17:46] Speaker 5: would have been if I had watched it only four
[17:48] Speaker 5: years out from nine to eleven, But it's still all
[17:51] Speaker 5: of those moments still hit just as hard as I
[17:55] Speaker 5: imagine they would have if I had seen it at
[17:57] Speaker 5: the time. We are all old enough to have lived
[18:01] Speaker 5: through that time and you know, been cognizant of the
[18:03] Speaker 5: world and the reaction around it, and it really brought
[18:07] Speaker 5: it back really strongly without actually I feel, distracting from
[18:13] Speaker 5: the movie, which is a really interesting trick, Like like
[18:15] Speaker 5: I never like felt taken out of the narrative of
[18:18] Speaker 5: the film, but at the same time, I could like
[18:21] Speaker 5: the emotions that the film was pulling out through that
[18:24] Speaker 5: imagery and those ideas about nine to eleven fit the
[18:27] Speaker 5: shape of the film, the narrative of the film kind
[18:30] Speaker 5: of perfectly.
[18:31] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if Spielberg was making a film with
[18:33] Speaker 1: the intent of this is based on my own experience
[18:36] Speaker 1: of making something that twenty years later you could show
[18:39] Speaker 1: your teenage child and say, this is kind of what
[18:41] Speaker 1: it felt like. You know, this is this is sort
[18:44] Speaker 1: of like the images we were dealing with being processed.
[18:47] Speaker 1: This in this really like you know, entertaining but extremely
[18:50] Speaker 1: dark summer blockbuster. I mean the images in this are
[18:54] Speaker 1: are you know, of just crowds being gobbled up and
[18:57] Speaker 1: destroyed or just wiped out, are really intense, and it
[19:01] Speaker 1: would be I think, you know, if you're making a
[19:04] Speaker 1: war of the World's removed from nine to eleven, I
[19:06] Speaker 1: think you it would still be affecting, but just kind
[19:10] Speaker 1: of adding that layer on top of it. I mean
[19:12] Speaker 1: some of it also that hits the hardest for me,
[19:15] Speaker 1: So parts of some of the parts that it hits
[19:16] Speaker 1: the hardest for me both times or I think I've
[19:18] Speaker 1: seen it in between, but certainly the first time. In
[19:20] Speaker 1: the most recent time are the missing posters, I mean,
[19:23] Speaker 1: which are so like what we saw outside the nine
[19:27] Speaker 1: to eleven side of New York at the time, and
[19:29] Speaker 1: it's just so poignant and at the same time you
[19:32] Speaker 1: realize this is probably not going to result in anything
[19:35] Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a tough one. Yeah.
[19:39] Speaker 5: What really jumped out to me was Robbie, the teenage
[19:43] Speaker 5: son played by Justin Chatwin, and his whole anger and
[19:47] Speaker 5: you know, kind of desire for vengeance and you know,
[19:51] Speaker 5: it's a character choice, but it also brought back so
[19:55] Speaker 5: much of the the vibe of that moment, you know,
[19:59] Speaker 5: and the discussions people were having about what happens now,
[20:03] Speaker 5: you know, and how it was all wrapped up in
[20:06] Speaker 5: grief and a feeling of helplessness and confusion, and it felt. Yeah,
[20:11] Speaker 5: just the character of Robbie took me right back to
[20:13] Speaker 5: being you know, I was eighteen at this time, so
[20:16] Speaker 5: like roughly roughly his same age, and just processing the
[20:20] Speaker 5: world having changed this way and what you as a
[20:24] Speaker 5: person can or cannot do about it. It was just
[20:27] Speaker 5: like a really potent emotional memory of that time for me.
[20:32] Speaker 2: Sort of another echo is just the place of kind
[20:35] Speaker 2: of the reification really of first responders in this movie
[20:39] Speaker 2: reminded me of you know, how people responded, kind of
[20:42] Speaker 2: how the conversation and thought around first responders changed around
[20:47] Speaker 2: nine to eleven. You have in this movie, you know,
[20:50] Speaker 2: police who obviously have no more idea what's going on
[20:53] Speaker 2: than anybody else does, but are desperately trying to keep
[20:56] Speaker 2: an entire neighborhood safe under control, people from being trampled.
[21:01] Speaker 2: You have a cop assaulting a car, you know, screaming
[21:04] Speaker 2: you could get twenty more people in there, and you know,
[21:07] Speaker 2: getting hurt in the process, but also you know, being
[21:11] Speaker 2: violent and crazy. You have a line of very young
[21:15] Speaker 2: troops trying to hold back a mob on a ferry,
[21:19] Speaker 2: not to mention you know, watching the military actually go
[21:21] Speaker 2: into action against these things. And there's just this sort
[21:24] Speaker 2: of this perpetual you know thin I don't know, blue green,
[21:27] Speaker 2: red line of people with some kind of authority desperately
[21:31] Speaker 2: trying to keep people safe, when that also means you know,
[21:36] Speaker 2: deciding potentially which people live and which people die, you know,
[21:39] Speaker 2: holding the line, cutting people off. You can't fit everybody
[21:42] Speaker 2: in this neighborhood on this ferry. You can't let people
[21:46] Speaker 2: go where they want when the neighborhood is literally coming
[21:49] Speaker 2: to pieces, so kind of watching the place of authority
[21:53] Speaker 2: figures in here among so much chaos, like kind of
[21:57] Speaker 2: trying to keep it together and maintain some sort of
[22:00] Speaker 2: order at any cost is really interesting and again definitely
[22:06] Speaker 2: kind of calls back an earlier time as far as
[22:10] Speaker 2: like national conversation about the police and in specific.
[22:14] Speaker 1: I didn't really see it that way though. I don't
[22:15] Speaker 1: think it's disrespectful to the first responders, the military or
[22:19] Speaker 1: the but also I think I kind of treat them
[22:21] Speaker 1: as like sort of another obstacle that this family had
[22:24] Speaker 1: to navigate that you know, Ray is attempted to protect
[22:28] Speaker 1: his family kind of involved him side stepping some of
[22:32] Speaker 1: these orders or or going his own way in some ways.
[22:36] Speaker 1: And certainly you see in a couple of different situations
[22:39] Speaker 1: you see the authority figures lose control and then you know,
[22:43] Speaker 1: just surviving becomes not a matter of listening to what
[22:46] Speaker 1: you're being told.
[22:47] Speaker 2: I think that's true, But I mean, I don't think
[22:49] Speaker 2: it's disrespectful to first responders, because you're seeing people trying
[22:54] Speaker 2: to maintain order in a situation, which means doing what's
[22:58] Speaker 2: best for the aggregate, not necessary what's best for this
[23:01] Speaker 2: particular family. The scene on the ferry in particular, where
[23:04] Speaker 2: the military is trying to keep Ray and his kids
[23:07] Speaker 2: and the two neighbors they've picked up off the boat,
[23:10] Speaker 2: like they're doing what's best for the people on the
[23:13] Speaker 2: boat and the crew of the boat and the boat itself,
[23:16] Speaker 2: kind of trying to get it out of a dangerous
[23:18] Speaker 2: situation potentially so it can save the lives of everybody
[23:21] Speaker 2: on there and then still be like an operable asset
[23:24] Speaker 2: to come back again. But as far as our one
[23:27] Speaker 2: family is concerned, that's maybe be the best decision for
[23:30] Speaker 2: the aggregate, it's not the best decision for them. And
[23:34] Speaker 2: I don't know Robbie stepping up in that moment to
[23:36] Speaker 2: try to save people who you know, other people who
[23:39] Speaker 2: went around the authority figures and try to get on
[23:41] Speaker 2: the boat is kind of a turning point for his
[23:44] Speaker 2: character and I think for his relationship with Ray. In
[23:47] Speaker 2: a lot of ways, we're just we're seeing how difficult
[23:50] Speaker 2: decisions become when you're choosing for you know, what's best
[23:54] Speaker 2: for a large group of people in terms of survivability,
[23:57] Speaker 2: as opposed to you what's best for a protagonist, which
[24:00] Speaker 2: is very rarely the same thing.
[24:03] Speaker 1: Well, that's certainly one of the film's most memorable moments,
[24:05] Speaker 1: and I kind of want to talk about some other ones,
[24:07] Speaker 1: but we're going to take a short break and when
[24:09] Speaker 1: we be right back to discuss those. The Next Picture
[24:18] Speaker 1: Show is once again presented by Regal Unlimited, the all
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[25:25] Speaker 3: Do this. I want to be one.
[25:26] Speaker 5: I need to see I know it seems like you're
[25:28] Speaker 5: have me, but you don't please me.
[25:31] Speaker 6: You Okay, wait, my, what are you doing here? Although yourself?
[25:36] Speaker 3: Look, sweetie, you've got to.
[25:37] Speaker 5: Come those away.
[25:40] Speaker 4: Your hands, stay here.
[25:41] Speaker 3: I'm not gonna leave her alive. I'm not letting you
[25:44] Speaker 3: do this.
[25:44] Speaker 2: You can hate me, you could hate me, but I
[25:47] Speaker 2: love you.
[25:47] Speaker 3: Not letting you do this. Yeah, it's gonna be okay.
[25:53] Speaker 6: You need to clean.
[26:00] Speaker 2: I need to be here.
[26:01] Speaker 1: I want to see this.
[26:04] Speaker 3: Just stick. If your sister please let me go.
[26:07] Speaker 6: You need to let me go.
[26:09] Speaker 1: Okay. So this is an episodic film. What sequences to
[26:12] Speaker 1: stand out for you? I will throw out one that
[26:16] Speaker 1: kind of haunts me from from both times I've seen
[26:18] Speaker 1: this film or every time I seen this film, which
[26:21] Speaker 1: is that scene in the car where the Ray is
[26:25] Speaker 1: you know, Ray is driving through the crowd and suddenly
[26:29] Speaker 1: the car becomes this object that everybody wants. You kind
[26:33] Speaker 1: of understand the action to every single person in that scene. Yeah,
[26:36] Speaker 1: they're right, it's you know.
[26:39] Speaker 5: Yeah, No, that was the exact scene I was gonna
[26:42] Speaker 5: bring up you raise this question. Obviously we were just
[26:46] Speaker 5: speaking about the very scene that it sort of leads to.
[26:49] Speaker 5: But what's like, I think so kind of remarkable about
[26:53] Speaker 5: the car scene before it is that, like, it isn't
[26:57] Speaker 5: a big action moment by it is so tense and
[27:03] Speaker 5: it feels like one of the scariest moments of the film,
[27:06] Speaker 5: even though it's just like people in a van. There
[27:08] Speaker 5: are no war machines or explosions in sight. And because it's.
[27:13] Speaker 2: Really aliens, was us all along exactly?
[27:16] Speaker 3: Yes?
[27:16] Speaker 5: And I mean this this is like such a Spielberg
[27:20] Speaker 5: thing and like not uncommon in alien movies in general.
[27:25] Speaker 5: You know that, like the story about Aliens is you know,
[27:29] Speaker 5: a story that reflects something about us, but you know,
[27:32] Speaker 5: it's not even specific to Aliens in this case. It's
[27:35] Speaker 5: just like humanity in moments of crisis and how quickly
[27:40] Speaker 5: the social order can break down and the you know,
[27:44] Speaker 5: every man for himself mentality take over. And how scary
[27:49] Speaker 5: that can be, especially when you are someone who has
[27:53] Speaker 5: other people in your care and can't just you know,
[27:56] Speaker 5: fight for yourself in yourself alone.
[27:59] Speaker 1: I forget which critic pointed this out, but someone I
[28:02] Speaker 1: observed that, you know the fact that they watched the
[28:05] Speaker 1: family watches this play out from inside this all American diner,
[28:09] Speaker 1: that sort of America, the order of America breaking down
[28:12] Speaker 1: from inside like this all America, that it's such a
[28:15] Speaker 1: it's such a Spielberg touch.
[28:16] Speaker 2: So is I think them being the center of this
[28:19] Speaker 2: mailstrom and then escaping the mailstrom and then just sort
[28:22] Speaker 2: of the way the shot is composed, where the car
[28:26] Speaker 2: is still moving very slowly as the person who picked
[28:30] Speaker 2: up raised gun murders the man who stole the car,
[28:33] Speaker 2: as more and more people pile on, and it just
[28:35] Speaker 2: kind of drifts out of the shot. You know, it's
[28:38] Speaker 2: we're being told this is still going on, and it's
[28:42] Speaker 2: still probably going to go on until that car is
[28:44] Speaker 2: torn to pieces, Like nobody is getting out of this,
[28:47] Speaker 2: but our players have moved on to the next set piece.
[28:52] Speaker 2: And there's something I love about just sort of the
[28:55] Speaker 2: staging of that reminder that you know, a thousand stories
[28:58] Speaker 2: like this are going on everywhere. One's going to continue,
[29:01] Speaker 2: but we're we're just not going to focus on it.
[29:03] Speaker 2: We're going to folks, We're going to stay with our
[29:04] Speaker 2: protagonists while this thing that they have introduced into this
[29:07] Speaker 2: tiny little society continues to help it come apart.
[29:11] Speaker 5: I mean to kind of take it to the I
[29:13] Speaker 5: was gonna say, take it to the opposite end of
[29:15] Speaker 5: the spectrum in terms of action, but it actually is
[29:17] Speaker 5: an overall pretty quiet, tense scene, which is of course
[29:21] Speaker 5: the basement. It's seen the tentacles, uh them hiding from
[29:25] Speaker 5: the Russians. Yeah, and that's just like the scene I
[29:31] Speaker 5: associate with this movie to the extent I have associations
[29:35] Speaker 5: with this movie, as I previously explained, but just the
[29:40] Speaker 5: interplay of darkness and light and quiet and tension and
[29:45] Speaker 5: then the where it all leads. I guess it's like
[29:49] Speaker 5: kind of multiple scenes because when the alien the actual
[29:53] Speaker 5: aliens come back, that's another sort of shock moment. But yeah,
[29:57] Speaker 5: that's everything about that feels quintessentially Spielbergian.
[30:01] Speaker 1: I'd forgotten how much time, how long the basement sequence is,
[30:04] Speaker 1: how many there's like several sequences within the basement, but
[30:07] Speaker 1: they're down there for a long time.
[30:11] Speaker 2: Enough to have a bunch of different set pieces. I
[30:14] Speaker 2: mean to me, the you know, evading the Russian water
[30:17] Speaker 2: tentacle sequence. This is an abyss joke for the three
[30:21] Speaker 2: of our listeners who don't instantly get it or you know,
[30:24] Speaker 2: like we have not seen the Abyss in forever. That
[30:26] Speaker 2: sequence just always reminded me visually of the staging of
[30:30] Speaker 2: the water tentacle scene, you know, just with more expensive
[30:35] Speaker 2: special effects anyway, Actually maybe not more expensive, because the
[30:39] Speaker 2: Russian water tunicle was very expensive. I'm getting off down
[30:42] Speaker 2: a weird rabbit tripp.
[30:44] Speaker 1: You're just trying to push us to do in a
[30:45] Speaker 1: best episode, which we've been talking about doing for a while.
[30:47] Speaker 1: We haven't coming up.
[30:49] Speaker 2: We keep we keep bringing it up as maybe it
[30:52] Speaker 2: would be appairing with this one of these days. We're
[30:54] Speaker 2: we're definitely going to do that. For me. One of
[30:57] Speaker 2: the just most memorable scenes of the movie, which is
[31:02] Speaker 2: almost beside the point, is what happens at the end
[31:07] Speaker 2: between Ray and Harlan. The fact that it happens off screen,
[31:10] Speaker 2: that there aren't a lot of sound cues to let
[31:14] Speaker 2: you know exactly what's happening. The fact that we're getting
[31:16] Speaker 2: it through the point of view of Rachel, who is blindfolded,
[31:20] Speaker 2: covering her ears and singing like a lot of the
[31:24] Speaker 2: basement turns into a horror movie, and the kind of
[31:27] Speaker 2: horror movie where the monster's in the house and you're
[31:29] Speaker 2: trying to avoid it, just like a very literal nightmare experience.
[31:33] Speaker 2: But that sequence in particular with Ray deciding that Harlan
[31:38] Speaker 2: is dangerous and frightening and a threat to his daughter
[31:43] Speaker 2: and you know, taking the actions that he does, that
[31:47] Speaker 2: also is a horror movie, but a completely different kind
[31:49] Speaker 2: of horror movie. And it's just it's really striking to
[31:51] Speaker 2: me in a movie that's so much about big set
[31:54] Speaker 2: pieces and exploding buildings and running from fires and the
[31:58] Speaker 2: military is going in one direction and a giant mob
[32:01] Speaker 2: is going to the other direction, just this very quiet,
[32:04] Speaker 2: off screen moment of deep seated horror, and not for
[32:10] Speaker 2: the first time, not for the last time, watching this
[32:13] Speaker 2: man who has been burdened with more responsibility than he
[32:15] Speaker 2: knows how to handle, going through a trauma that he
[32:20] Speaker 2: you can just tell he's got to pack in, internalize,
[32:23] Speaker 2: and not express for the sake of in this case,
[32:26] Speaker 2: just one of his kids. The one, the one that's left.
[32:28] Speaker 2: But over and over throughout this movie, we see, you know,
[32:32] Speaker 2: this man having very human horror experiences and then having
[32:36] Speaker 2: to not let himself respond to them because he's trying
[32:40] Speaker 2: to pretend to his kids that everything's okay. And this
[32:43] Speaker 2: is just kind of the ultimate, you know, he deals
[32:46] Speaker 2: with Harlan and then he just kind of sits down
[32:49] Speaker 2: to be in shock for a moment and he's got
[32:51] Speaker 2: to pick up and keep moving.
[32:52] Speaker 1: It's a choice you cannot say one hundred percent was
[32:54] Speaker 1: correct true there? You know, you have to like like
[32:58] Speaker 1: and I bet that's expressing it. You can tell that's
[33:01] Speaker 1: what's going through his mind as well. Did I have
[33:03] Speaker 1: to do this? And now I don live with it?
[33:05] Speaker 2: And you know, it's it's not very clear to me
[33:09] Speaker 2: how we're supposed to feel about Ray as a result.
[33:12] Speaker 2: One of the things that I think I find most
[33:14] Speaker 2: interesting about this movie on this rewatch, you know, the
[33:17] Speaker 2: first time through, it's just a survival movie, an action
[33:22] Speaker 2: adventure movie where you're watching three people desperately try to
[33:26] Speaker 2: not die in a circumstance where thousands of people all
[33:30] Speaker 2: around them are dying. Watching it this time, I was
[33:33] Speaker 2: just really struck by how little we're given of Ray
[33:39] Speaker 2: that's likable or respectable. You know, he definitely is kind
[33:44] Speaker 2: of a child in some ways. He Tom Cruise seems
[33:47] Speaker 2: impossibly young to me in this movie, and particularly kind
[33:51] Speaker 2: of obscenely young to have a teenage son. But he's
[33:55] Speaker 2: not the world's greatest dad. He's not very good in
[33:59] Speaker 2: a crisis. He's not very good about facing facts. He's
[34:02] Speaker 2: not very good about communicating with his kids or calming
[34:06] Speaker 2: them or taking care of them. He's doing what he
[34:09] Speaker 2: can under the circumstances. But he's just not an unvarnished hero.
[34:14] Speaker 2: He's not a simple character. And I really like this.
[34:17] Speaker 2: I think it's an unusual choice. As Keith pointed out
[34:21] Speaker 2: the keynote about close encounters, you know, this is a
[34:25] Speaker 2: kind of complicated figure who is not doing his best
[34:28] Speaker 2: for his family, but is maybe doing the best he's
[34:31] Speaker 2: capable of. And that's just a thread I think that
[34:34] Speaker 2: goes through the movie, but particularly in the sequence with
[34:38] Speaker 2: Harland and his decision there. It's just it's complicated. It's
[34:41] Speaker 2: not a simple, black and white moral decision.
[34:45] Speaker 1: I will say that at the time, there was some
[34:46] Speaker 1: talk about whether or not Tom Cruise was appropriately cast
[34:49] Speaker 1: as like a working class dude.
[34:51] Speaker 5: I was going to say, I found it kind of
[34:53] Speaker 5: interesting to see him as a like a father figure,
[34:56] Speaker 5: a family man, which is another thing that he does
[34:59] Speaker 5: not very often.
[35:01] Speaker 1: No, it's true, and I like what he does here.
[35:03] Speaker 1: I think it's I think he's good. You know, does
[35:05] Speaker 1: he really suggest working class Bay owned resident? Not really,
[35:09] Speaker 1: but Betty, it's a really good performance. But I will
[35:11] Speaker 1: say this, the fact that the opening scene, the most
[35:14] Speaker 1: Tom Cruise thing in this is the opening scene. It's
[35:17] Speaker 1: established not is he just a Stevid or he's the
[35:19] Speaker 1: hot shot Steven or the everybody to do the best.
[35:23] Speaker 1: He's the best at what he does. You know. That
[35:26] Speaker 1: felt to be like the most top gunny Tom Cruise
[35:29] Speaker 1: moment in the film.
[35:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's hilarious, and it almost feels a little contractual,
[35:33] Speaker 2: just like, if this is not Tom Cruise is not
[35:36] Speaker 2: allowed to lose a fight, but it is. Tom Cruise
[35:38] Speaker 2: has to be the best of the best. He's the
[35:41] Speaker 2: Steve dorm.
[35:41] Speaker 5: Maverick, and he gets to run some. He does crime
[35:45] Speaker 5: prime running.
[35:47] Speaker 2: It's truly possible that they looked at the script and
[35:49] Speaker 2: were like, how much time is this character going to spin?
[35:51] Speaker 2: Running what's Tom up to this weekend? Yes, there is,
[35:56] Speaker 2: there's some quality Tom Cruise running, and there's also at
[35:59] Speaker 2: the beginning, in particular, some pretty quality like Tom Cruise
[36:04] Speaker 2: flashing that smile around under circumstances where you can kind
[36:10] Speaker 2: of see that people like him but also possibly think
[36:13] Speaker 2: he's a little smarmy and a little shallow and.
[36:16] Speaker 5: Have made his family not really like him, which is
[36:19] Speaker 5: like an important starting point for the family narrative here.
[36:23] Speaker 2: I just want to shout out the simplicity and effectiveness
[36:29] Speaker 2: of that family introduction. I love the fact that Tim
[36:33] Speaker 2: purposefully like stands back and stays out of the way
[36:37] Speaker 2: and just like minimizes himself, but at the same time
[36:41] Speaker 2: very clearly has like stood up for these kids and
[36:43] Speaker 2: has made himself a father to them. Where's Mary Anne
[36:48] Speaker 2: Ray's wife? The way she just kind of steps in
[36:51] Speaker 2: when Rachel is struggling with a suitcase and then ins
[36:54] Speaker 2: his son carrying a heavy suitcase up you know, several
[36:57] Speaker 2: flights of stairs while very pregnant, even as Ray and
[37:02] Speaker 2: Tim both step in and try to do it. It just
[37:05] Speaker 2: it says so much about both her character and her
[37:08] Speaker 2: relationship to both of those men without anything needing to
[37:12] Speaker 2: be said. It's it's it's just like Chef's kiss level
[37:15] Speaker 2: of efficient characterization through action, albeit very very small, very
[37:21] Speaker 2: mundane action.
[37:22] Speaker 1: I thought, I think Belly, either Merandatto is really pregnant.
[37:26] Speaker 1: Wrote that into the script.
[37:27] Speaker 2: That's good efficient use of Hey, Marandato is pregnant. But
[37:32] Speaker 2: I think you would lose something if she wasn't that
[37:37] Speaker 2: that whole scene, that whole sequence plays out very differently
[37:39] Speaker 2: if she isn't visibly pregnant, not just in her you know,
[37:43] Speaker 2: choosing to like shrug off two men and left a
[37:45] Speaker 2: heavy bag herself for her daughter, but also just when
[37:49] Speaker 2: Ray first sees her and says very riley like, this
[37:53] Speaker 2: is a good look for you. You know, it's just
[37:55] Speaker 2: very very evident that she's moved on and that she
[37:58] Speaker 2: and this other man are starting a new family that
[38:00] Speaker 2: has nothing to do with him, and that she trusts
[38:03] Speaker 2: this other man to be a father and be there
[38:06] Speaker 2: for his kids in a way that Ray hasn't. Again,
[38:09] Speaker 2: very efficient, those.
[38:17] Speaker 7: Machines, those that's right, Boze got They buried him right
[38:27] Speaker 7: under our feet.
[38:30] Speaker 4: Since before the there were even people here, have been
[38:35] Speaker 4: planning this for a million years.
[38:40] Speaker 3: Please, I don't.
[38:42] Speaker 4: Think about it. They defeated the greatest power in the
[38:48] Speaker 4: world in a couple of days, walked right over us,
[38:53] Speaker 4: and these are only the first.
[38:54] Speaker 3: They'll keep coming.
[38:57] Speaker 4: This is not a war anymore than there's a war
[38:59] Speaker 4: between men and maggot. This is an extermination.
[39:04] Speaker 1: This may not have another answer other than the simplest one,
[39:08] Speaker 1: but the one change Spielberg wanted was to have aliens
[39:11] Speaker 1: emerged from the ground rather than just send from the air.
[39:14] Speaker 1: I think I think he said something like it just
[39:15] Speaker 1: kind of a cliche that he'd seen in too many movies,
[39:19] Speaker 1: But what was the logic there? I actually found that
[39:21] Speaker 1: that's sort of like, you know, the so they've been
[39:23] Speaker 1: there for for a long long time, felt like the
[39:26] Speaker 1: machines have machine.
[39:28] Speaker 5: But and then that aliens themselves ride the lightning down
[39:31] Speaker 5: into the machine.
[39:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little it's a little curious, but is
[39:35] Speaker 1: there like, is there a metaphorical reason for this? Does it?
[39:37] Speaker 1: Does it make sense to how the threat coming from
[39:40] Speaker 1: within in some way?
[39:42] Speaker 6: No?
[39:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I mean if.
[39:45] Speaker 2: You oversee over the simplistic but nope. Makes for some
[39:49] Speaker 2: really cool visuals and doing something differently. But I don't
[39:53] Speaker 2: know that we we've got to talk about the book
[39:56] Speaker 2: ending more Morgan Freeman narration, But it starts off by
[40:00] Speaker 2: talking about in the early years of the twenty first century,
[40:02] Speaker 2: our world was being watched by intelligence is greater than
[40:05] Speaker 2: our own. And then we kind of turn around and say, oh,
[40:08] Speaker 2: but the things have been buried there for untold thousands
[40:11] Speaker 2: of years.
[40:12] Speaker 5: Yeah, I forgot about that timing element in the intro
[40:15] Speaker 5: because I was going to say, like to give it
[40:17] Speaker 5: some credit, the idea of them having been buried for
[40:20] Speaker 5: so long kind of speaks to a century spanning plan,
[40:25] Speaker 5: like this has been in the works for longer than
[40:28] Speaker 5: recorded history maybe. But then, yeah, the narration does kind
[40:31] Speaker 5: of blow that up, doesn't it.
[40:33] Speaker 2: And I'm fine with that. I'm fine with you know,
[40:35] Speaker 2: this is a ten thousand year old plot. It just
[40:37] Speaker 2: makes the aliens seem more alien. But then you just
[40:40] Speaker 2: end up with a bunch of questions about like, Okay,
[40:43] Speaker 2: why now, why not?
[40:44] Speaker 3: When?
[40:46] Speaker 2: Why not ten thousand years ago when there was like
[40:48] Speaker 2: just a lot less to contend with in terms of
[40:53] Speaker 2: mars of forming Earth.
[40:54] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like in the new Godzilla movies, like the
[40:58] Speaker 5: New Monster Verse, the Hollow Earth. You know, there's like
[41:00] Speaker 5: a whole other sort of portal. There's a portal to
[41:03] Speaker 5: another world inside the Earth, so maybe that's where they
[41:06] Speaker 5: came from. The Spielberg was sort of setting the stage
[41:09] Speaker 5: for that franchise.
[41:11] Speaker 1: There's also it's kind of like Craater Mass in the Pit,
[41:14] Speaker 1: the British science fiction movie where they find this sort
[41:17] Speaker 1: of ancient alien threat by telling and through the by
[41:21] Speaker 1: digging in your tunnel in the and then a London
[41:22] Speaker 1: underground I believe or something. I forgot what the details are.
[41:24] Speaker 1: Good movie, but yeah.
[41:26] Speaker 2: Well that's just it. I mean, you know, there are
[41:29] Speaker 2: thousands at least of these ships around the world, and
[41:32] Speaker 2: none of them has ever been found when people were like,
[41:36] Speaker 2: you know, excavating for sewer systems or whatnot. In my head,
[41:40] Speaker 2: none of this matters in my head. If you can
[41:44] Speaker 2: zap an alien down to Earth with lightning and they've
[41:47] Speaker 2: got this incredible super future tech, you know, you can
[41:51] Speaker 2: have it show up with you know, a bottle of
[41:55] Speaker 2: nanobots that can then you know, build a super ship
[41:58] Speaker 2: out of available materials. And maybe they waited as long
[42:00] Speaker 2: as they did because there would be a lot of
[42:02] Speaker 2: metal available. I don't know. If we don't have to
[42:04] Speaker 2: explain it too much. There's very deliberately a lot we
[42:07] Speaker 2: don't know in this movie, and a lot of it
[42:10] Speaker 2: I think, you know, to speak to what Kick called
[42:13] Speaker 2: an anti climax. A lot of this story is kind
[42:16] Speaker 2: of built around just from the point of view of
[42:20] Speaker 2: the protagonists. You just don't know what's going on. Most
[42:23] Speaker 2: of the time. You get bits and pieces from people
[42:26] Speaker 2: another sequence while we're theoretically still talking about sequence is
[42:29] Speaker 2: we like, I really like the montage of you know,
[42:33] Speaker 2: Europe's completely untouched, they got away clean cut to somebody
[42:37] Speaker 2: else saying Europe got the worst of it. You know,
[42:38] Speaker 2: everybody's operating on rumors. Nobody fully knows what's going on
[42:42] Speaker 2: because the mass media's disappeared. So these protagonists are not
[42:45] Speaker 2: saving the world. They're not the ones that come up
[42:48] Speaker 2: with the laptop, the Apple laptop that you can just
[42:51] Speaker 2: plug into the alien ships and make them all die.
[42:55] Speaker 2: They're experiencing things completely outside of their understanding and control. So,
[43:00] Speaker 2: you know, I'm willing to believe that there's a bunch
[43:03] Speaker 2: of technology at work that we're just not getting the
[43:06] Speaker 2: details on. And the people saying like, oh, they've been
[43:09] Speaker 2: underground all along, are just you know, spreading more rumors
[43:12] Speaker 2: that they don't really know the truth about.
[43:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, nine years to write this for Independence Day. But
[43:17] Speaker 1: like the cultural and political environment that produced one film
[43:20] Speaker 1: versus the cultural and political environment the press another are
[43:23] Speaker 1: very different.
[43:24] Speaker 2: Before we move on from from scenes that we love,
[43:28] Speaker 2: the sequence where Ray has to let Robbie go, the
[43:31] Speaker 2: kind of almost tortuously extended sequence where he realizes he
[43:37] Speaker 2: is about to lose both of them and he has
[43:39] Speaker 2: to make a choice between them, you know, the sequence
[43:42] Speaker 2: where Ray sings to Rachel, the sequence where Rachel covers
[43:47] Speaker 2: up while Ray goes off to deal with Harland, and
[43:50] Speaker 2: then they'll letting go. Sequence like those, to me are
[43:52] Speaker 2: the three emotional beats of the movie, the three moments
[43:56] Speaker 2: in this film that aren't just about you know, spectacle
[43:59] Speaker 2: and terror in the unknown. And I think as far
[44:03] Speaker 2: as you know, playing a blue collar workman, playing a
[44:05] Speaker 2: family man, this is also the sequence where Tom Cruise
[44:08] Speaker 2: really excels because I can you know, you can see
[44:12] Speaker 2: in just kind of the moments that pass between him
[44:15] Speaker 2: and Chatlin' they're having a conversation, and that conversation is
[44:20] Speaker 2: kind of repetitive. It's just just let me go, don't go,
[44:22] Speaker 2: let me go, don't go. And the fact that they
[44:24] Speaker 2: only verbalize some of it, I think is very well done.
[44:27] Speaker 2: But you know, you can see Ray is being torn apart.
[44:30] Speaker 2: He doesn't want to lose either of these kids that
[44:33] Speaker 2: we're told at the beginning of the movie he's maybe
[44:35] Speaker 2: been wanting to lose, you know, he doesn't know how
[44:37] Speaker 2: to relate to them. He finds them burdensome. In this moment,
[44:41] Speaker 2: he's just having this emotional crisis of he can't save
[44:45] Speaker 2: both of them, which one is he going to save?
[44:47] Speaker 2: And he makes his choice. It's heartbreaking. It's kind of
[44:50] Speaker 2: a kind of a Sophie's choice almost, And.
[44:54] Speaker 5: I do love sort of the mechanic of Rachel. You
[44:58] Speaker 5: know that the threat of her being taken away by
[45:00] Speaker 5: someone who is trying to help her, you know, someone
[45:03] Speaker 5: who thinks that they are doing a good thing and
[45:07] Speaker 5: is protecting her, and so sort of like the overlapping
[45:10] Speaker 5: protective instincts in that moment are just really interesting. And
[45:16] Speaker 5: I do like that we when he does go after
[45:19] Speaker 5: Rachel and you know, they reunite, that that woman does
[45:22] Speaker 5: get a moment of like, I'm sorry, I thought she
[45:24] Speaker 5: was alone. You know, that was really important to me.
[45:28] Speaker 5: I think I was identifying with that woman a lot
[45:30] Speaker 5: in that moment.
[45:32] Speaker 2: I mean, it's entirely possible that Harland in the basement
[45:35] Speaker 2: was was going through something similar. He saw a scared child,
[45:39] Speaker 2: and he was promising to protect a scared child. But
[45:42] Speaker 2: you know, a strange man talking to your little girl
[45:47] Speaker 2: alone about how he's going to take care of her.
[45:49] Speaker 2: It's you know, you can see why Ray reacts the
[45:52] Speaker 2: way he does, but you can also see a scenario
[45:55] Speaker 2: where Harland really meant it and was just trying to
[45:58] Speaker 2: comfort a scared kid.
[45:59] Speaker 5: He did to becoming pretty undone though I know.
[46:02] Speaker 2: He's I mean, he's he's a loose cannon at the absolute,
[46:06] Speaker 2: absolute best.
[46:07] Speaker 1: Good Tim Robbins performance too, Tasha, You're bringing up the
[46:11] Speaker 1: Robbie moment brings me. I want to talk about the
[46:13] Speaker 1: ending of this film, because in that moment, I feel
[46:16] Speaker 1: like Robbie becomes sort of a surrogate for everybody who
[46:19] Speaker 1: goes to surf, and after nine eleven he signs up
[46:22] Speaker 1: for the fight, whatever the fight is and wherever it
[46:25] Speaker 1: might take them. And then at the end of the
[46:28] Speaker 1: movie he's just at Grandma and Grandpa's house and I
[46:31] Speaker 1: think I really don't love that.
[46:33] Speaker 2: To be honest, I loathe it. It comes very close
[46:37] Speaker 2: to ruining this movie for me. I you want to
[46:40] Speaker 2: talk about when you when you first saw this movie,
[46:42] Speaker 2: I might have yelled something in the theater. If I
[46:45] Speaker 2: did not, it was through an act of will I
[46:48] Speaker 2: was so angry about that because it's such a cheat,
[46:52] Speaker 2: and it's not just a cheat. It undoes a really
[46:56] Speaker 2: spectacular emotional moment and action scene and I don't know it.
[47:01] Speaker 5: It's like a cheat on the top of a sheet too,
[47:04] Speaker 5: because like it's it's already like, oh, they're everyone's okay,
[47:07] Speaker 5: you know, like her parents' house is fine. You know,
[47:10] Speaker 5: this neighborhood is.
[47:10] Speaker 2: Completely untouched by the catacoism that has turned to other
[47:13] Speaker 2: parts of not very far away from here parts of
[47:17] Speaker 2: the planet into an alien hellscape covered with human blood.
[47:22] Speaker 5: Yeah, but it's okay.
[47:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, they got a nice brown stone, they're all fine. Yeah.
[47:28] Speaker 2: It's it's sentimental. It feels very tact on, it feels
[47:32] Speaker 2: very audience focus. Uh, well, they don't want the kid
[47:36] Speaker 2: to die, so let's shoot a version where the kid's alive.
[47:38] Speaker 2: It's also just inexplicable.
[47:40] Speaker 5: Is that a Spielberg thing like like, do you ever
[47:43] Speaker 5: like kill off you know, a main character in that way.
[47:46] Speaker 2: You don't remember ET where they're flying their bikes past
[47:50] Speaker 2: the moon and Bet doesn't have enough power to keep
[47:52] Speaker 2: all the other kids up, so he and Elliott fly
[47:54] Speaker 2: away and the other kids off all of their dead.
[47:56] Speaker 5: We really dropped the ball not talking about that scene
[47:59] Speaker 5: on our ET episode in a few weeks.
[48:01] Speaker 1: I really I feel like so just every once in
[48:04] Speaker 1: a while, Bielberg will do exactly what people accuse him
[48:08] Speaker 1: of doing all the time. This is one of those moments,
[48:10] Speaker 1: you know, I think, you know, I don't think he's
[48:13] Speaker 1: overly sentimental most of the time, but when he is
[48:15] Speaker 1: that you get something like this. And to be clear,
[48:17] Speaker 1: I really like all the Boston stuff up to that moment.
[48:20] Speaker 1: I think it's it's really effective, but uh yeah, it's
[48:24] Speaker 1: a little rough.
[48:25] Speaker 2: I would really have to just like sit down with
[48:27] Speaker 2: his filmography because one of the one of the problems
[48:30] Speaker 2: of has somebody ever done this thing with somebody as
[48:34] Speaker 2: somebody that's this prolific you know, is well, I'm sure
[48:37] Speaker 2: we're forgetting something. But I did always think it was
[48:39] Speaker 2: kind of a cheat that Hooper survives Jaws and that
[48:43] Speaker 2: kind of has a little bit of the same feel
[48:46] Speaker 2: to it of just you know, it's it's honestly, it's
[48:50] Speaker 2: more believable than Robbie's surviving here, and the tone of
[48:54] Speaker 2: the end of Jaws kind of makes it feel like,
[48:57] Speaker 2: you know, one person's survival is almost beside the point
[49:00] Speaker 2: as opposed to a huge moment for the movie. But
[49:03] Speaker 2: it did kind of strike me in the same way
[49:06] Speaker 2: when I first saw it was sort of, Oh, you're
[49:09] Speaker 2: gonna you just gonna walk that back then, Okay, okay, cool.
[49:13] Speaker 1: We talked about et and to Close Day at length
[49:16] Speaker 1: together when we when we paired those two. We were
[49:18] Speaker 1: talking off mic before this as to as to who
[49:21] Speaker 1: we've done more, Spielberg or the Cohen's at this point
[49:24] Speaker 1: we should actually tally it up at some point.
[49:26] Speaker 5: But do you we did do Close Encounters way back
[49:28] Speaker 5: in the day too, So we are now closing the
[49:32] Speaker 5: loop on our alien tetrology is that.
[49:36] Speaker 1: Unless you count came in the Christmas Trystal Skull as
[49:39] Speaker 1: a Skielberg alien movie. But I mean, is there a
[49:43] Speaker 1: through line here? I mean, you certainly get a lot
[49:46] Speaker 1: more optimism in Close Encounters need t than in more
[49:49] Speaker 1: of the Worlds Disclosure Day almost see, it's kind of
[49:52] Speaker 1: like trying to attempt to bring it home, but in
[49:54] Speaker 1: a way that's like sort of like really paranoid and
[49:57] Speaker 1: scary up to you know, for much much of the run.
[50:00] Speaker 5: Kind of what I said before, it's a through line
[50:03] Speaker 5: that's not specific or unique to Spielberg and is present
[50:07] Speaker 5: in other you know, sort of alien movies. But you know,
[50:10] Speaker 5: just the idea of it being a story about aliens
[50:14] Speaker 5: that is really about us feels very very like kind
[50:17] Speaker 5: of quintessential to his interest in the subject matter, and
[50:21] Speaker 5: like the way in which she keeps returning to it.
[50:24] Speaker 5: They all tend to be family stories in one way
[50:29] Speaker 5: or another, too. And it just occurred to me that
[50:32] Speaker 5: in every case we don't really know very much about
[50:37] Speaker 5: the alien racer. We're giving very little information about them,
[50:41] Speaker 5: and it feels like this movie is probably like where
[50:43] Speaker 5: we have the most information about the alien race and
[50:47] Speaker 5: it kind of comes a lot from the source material,
[50:49] Speaker 5: you know, or it's kind of baked in by the
[50:51] Speaker 5: source material. And sure, sure, yeah, I guess maybe the
[50:55] Speaker 5: through line is more just like the aliens being more
[50:58] Speaker 5: the catalyst than the sub jick matter themselves.
[51:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's just a major threat in science
[51:04] Speaker 2: fiction in general. It's either examining a possible future for
[51:10] Speaker 2: what we're doing right now where it might lead, or
[51:12] Speaker 2: bringing in something that is inhuman to show us what
[51:15] Speaker 2: it means to be human is a very common thing,
[51:18] Speaker 2: and I do see that kind of stretching throughout these movies.
[51:22] Speaker 2: But you know, it could also just sort of come
[51:24] Speaker 2: from an impulse to explore stuff he likes while doing
[51:27] Speaker 2: it differently. You know, what what if aliens were sweet,
[51:31] Speaker 2: little wise like Yoda like childlike creatures.
[51:34] Speaker 3: Okay?
[51:35] Speaker 2: Now what if they were ravening monsters? Okay? Now what
[51:37] Speaker 2: if they were just completely unknowable? Okay? What if they
[51:41] Speaker 2: were the source of like all human wisdom? You know,
[51:43] Speaker 2: just kind of like hitting kind of a series of
[51:45] Speaker 2: different balls so you're not just playing the same game
[51:47] Speaker 2: over and over.
[51:48] Speaker 1: And et began as a subplot in a movie he
[51:51] Speaker 1: never made called Night Skies, which is like an alien
[51:53] Speaker 1: invasion movie, where the subplot was basically, well, what if
[51:56] Speaker 1: one alien befronted everybody and then and then we lost
[51:59] Speaker 1: we lost the evil alien to that one and just
[52:01] Speaker 1: kept the nice one. Well, anything else we should talk about.
[52:04] Speaker 2: I guess I do want to wrap up by talking
[52:06] Speaker 2: about the Morgan Freeman Narration, which you know, taking text
[52:11] Speaker 2: directly from eighteen ninety eight is styled as it is
[52:14] Speaker 2: and as in the period as it is, and sticking
[52:18] Speaker 2: it on a blockbuster in two thousand and five. There
[52:21] Speaker 2: is something I like about the opening of you know,
[52:24] Speaker 2: talking about the implacable, unsympathetic eyes like coveting Earth. I've
[52:30] Speaker 2: always kind of liked that wording in the book, the
[52:34] Speaker 2: part at the end about how you know humanity Basically,
[52:38] Speaker 2: humanity's legacy is a billion of us died to make
[52:42] Speaker 2: us immune to bacteria, and therefore humans do not live
[52:48] Speaker 2: or die in vain. That strikes me as really overreaching,
[52:52] Speaker 2: but also it just to me it takes this story
[52:56] Speaker 2: that has been so specifically aut kind of this one
[53:02] Speaker 2: man who may or may not be a very good
[53:04] Speaker 2: father still doing his absolute best for his children and
[53:09] Speaker 2: kind of being rewarded at the end, and those two
[53:11] Speaker 2: children going through tremendous trauma and surviving a cataclysm they
[53:16] Speaker 2: can't understand, and that is beyond them turning that into
[53:21] Speaker 2: God put molecules on the planet in order to save
[53:25] Speaker 2: us from aliens. And here's here's a giant philosophy about
[53:30] Speaker 2: the purpose of humanity that comes out of it just
[53:32] Speaker 2: strikes me as so impersonal compared to the very personal
[53:36] Speaker 2: story we just went through. And I kind of feel
[53:39] Speaker 2: like Spielberg felt he needed to keep or cap they
[53:43] Speaker 2: felt that they needed to keep that narration because otherwise
[53:46] Speaker 2: it's unclear why the aliens are dying, and they wanted
[53:50] Speaker 2: the explanation. But I hate, hate the wording at the end.
[53:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's also a place where the nine to eleven
[53:56] Speaker 5: metaphor just gets kind of hand waved away entirely, you know,
[54:01] Speaker 5: and just the entire ending of this which does wrap
[54:07] Speaker 5: up pretty quickly to the point where as you say,
[54:11] Speaker 5: it kind of needs the narration to explain what happened.
[54:14] Speaker 5: That does feel like a pretty clear example of the
[54:18] Speaker 5: source material butting up awkwardly against the sort of contemporary
[54:24] Speaker 5: lens that Spielberg was putting on this story.
[54:27] Speaker 2: Points forgetting Morgan Freeman, who can make almost anything sound
[54:34] Speaker 2: sound good, you know, if you put enough avuncular spin
[54:39] Speaker 2: and enough you know, a g folk wisdom on it all,
[54:42] Speaker 2: it almost sounds reasonable. But it still just does not
[54:45] Speaker 2: feel like it belongs in this story to me.
[54:47] Speaker 1: Wow, I'm going to find on this particular discussion. Well,
[54:50] Speaker 1: we'll bring back where the World's next episode, and we're
[54:53] Speaker 1: not done with this episode yet. We'll be right back
[54:55] Speaker 1: with feedback. Now it's time for feedback, But first let's
[55:08] Speaker 1: dive into what's happening elsewhere in the extended film spotting
[55:11] Speaker 1: and cinematic universe. As usual, it's quite busy as we
[55:14] Speaker 1: record this. Matt Singer and Jordan Hoffin at Film Spotting
[55:16] Speaker 1: SVU have recently released an episode about Netflix's The Last
[55:20] Speaker 1: House and about the services apocalyptic obsessions in general. At
[55:23] Speaker 1: the Movie Racket, Michael Phillips talks to screenwriter David Kanyich
[55:26] Speaker 1: about the art of adaptation and when it's best as
[55:28] Speaker 1: stray from the source material relevant to this discussion, I'm
[55:31] Speaker 1: sure and over At the Film Spotting Mothership podcast, Adam
[55:34] Speaker 1: and Josh talk about Jane Jon Brums teenage sex and
[55:37] Speaker 1: death at Camp Miasma, a movie I liked a lot.
[55:39] Speaker 1: Did either of you see it? And what'd you think
[55:41] Speaker 1: of it?
[55:42] Speaker 2: I've not seen it yet.
[55:43] Speaker 5: I haven't seen it yet either.
[55:44] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we'll see it. We'll do a bonus episode.
[55:47] Speaker 1: It's kind of a shame we couldn't do that one
[55:49] Speaker 1: on this because it's certainly a movie about movies. But
[55:52] Speaker 1: you can find all that plus the latest Next Picture
[55:54] Speaker 1: Show episodes at film spotting dot net. Now it's side
[55:58] Speaker 1: for feedback, where we normally address some of the responses
[56:00] Speaker 1: we've gotten to recent episodes, but this one's sort of
[56:02] Speaker 1: a general question about no particular episode, but germane to
[56:05] Speaker 1: the whole podcast, Jenny, can you read that?
[56:07] Speaker 5: Sure? Christ from Toronto writes, I'm a longtime listener because
[56:10] Speaker 5: I wholeheartedly believe in your maxim that no art exists
[56:13] Speaker 5: in a vacuum, and that our appreciation of current film
[56:15] Speaker 5: can only be deepened by engagement with what came before it.
[56:18] Speaker 5: I did, however, recently encounter the famous quote from Worson
[56:21] Speaker 5: Wells which goes strongly against this idea, and I haven't
[56:24] Speaker 5: been able to shake it.
[56:25] Speaker 3: Quote.
[56:26] Speaker 5: The most detestable habit in cinema is the homage, even
[56:29] Speaker 5: the unconscious homage. Don't soak yourself in films. You should
[56:32] Speaker 5: do films innocently end quote. In short, Wells thought the
[56:36] Speaker 5: new Hollywood directors watched too many movies and should have
[56:38] Speaker 5: instead drawn from their own experiences in philosophy instead of
[56:41] Speaker 5: copying others. Now, whether Wells is right or not isn't
[56:44] Speaker 5: my question. Instead, I was wondering if, in the course
[56:47] Speaker 5: of your film criticism careers, you have ever encountered a
[56:50] Speaker 5: film that was so wholly unique that it would be
[56:52] Speaker 5: impossible to compare it to anything else you've seen before.
[56:55] Speaker 5: Has there been anything recently where there were so few
[56:57] Speaker 5: connections to draw with the classic film that your podcast
[57:00] Speaker 5: format was impossible? Is there anything new under the sun?
[57:03] Speaker 5: Is it true that movies, especially anything made in the
[57:05] Speaker 5: last few decades, are just playing the hits of what
[57:08] Speaker 5: we've already seen.
[57:09] Speaker 2: I've been thinking about this one a fair bunch, and
[57:11] Speaker 2: particularly about movies where we kind of ran up against
[57:14] Speaker 2: the what's a good match question? And oddly enough, one
[57:19] Speaker 2: of the things we've had the hardest time matching has
[57:21] Speaker 2: been the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. And that's not because
[57:26] Speaker 2: you know, there haven't been blockbusters in the past, or
[57:28] Speaker 2: action movies or superhero movies. But when we've paired them,
[57:31] Speaker 2: we have definitely tended towards like, let's pick a specific
[57:36] Speaker 2: aspect of this movie, of the plot of this movie,
[57:39] Speaker 2: or something that the director specifically said they looked to
[57:43] Speaker 2: for visual inspiration as opposed to like structurally or plot
[57:48] Speaker 2: or even character, because those movies evolved into such a
[57:53] Speaker 2: specific place where they were just drawing on each other
[57:57] Speaker 2: and kind of the formula created by Marvel Studio that
[58:00] Speaker 2: they just didn't resemble a lot of cinema that came
[58:04] Speaker 2: before in tone and structure or intent, and we had
[58:08] Speaker 2: a hard time. You know, maybe if we could have
[58:10] Speaker 2: reached back to like Flash Gordon serials or whatever, that
[58:14] Speaker 2: would have worked. But it's not that I think that
[58:16] Speaker 2: they're a new thing under the sun. They're just kind
[58:19] Speaker 2: of remixing cinema in a way that makes it very
[58:23] Speaker 2: hard to connect to classic cinema. Really.
[58:26] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a really good one to shout out. Like
[58:29] Speaker 5: the most recent Spider Man movie, I feel like we
[58:32] Speaker 5: didn't even really consider it because we've already done Spider
[58:37] Speaker 5: Man two, which we paired I believe with into the
[58:40] Speaker 5: Spider Verse. And that kind of speaks to another problem
[58:44] Speaker 5: that we run up against increasingly these days. You know,
[58:48] Speaker 5: five hundred some episodes into this podcast is like a
[58:50] Speaker 5: lot of times, the most clear or obvious quote unquote
[58:54] Speaker 5: homage we've already done it. You know, like even this week,
[58:58] Speaker 5: Jurassic Park was right there, already done it. Donnie Darko
[59:01] Speaker 5: probably would have been fun. We've already done it. You know,
[59:05] Speaker 5: a lot of Spielberg we've already done because he, you know,
[59:09] Speaker 5: obviously is a director who has had a major effect
[59:12] Speaker 5: contemporary film, so he comes up a lot in sort
[59:16] Speaker 5: of these comparison points. But to speak to the Wells
[59:19] Speaker 5: quote that Chris brings up here, like a lot of
[59:21] Speaker 5: the pairings we do, I feel aren't necessarily coming from
[59:25] Speaker 5: the realm of homage. Occasionally we do have a situation
[59:29] Speaker 5: where a filmmaker is like, yes, I was thinking of
[59:32] Speaker 5: this film, and then we're like, yay, that's an easy
[59:34] Speaker 5: one for us to do. But you know, there are
[59:38] Speaker 5: a lot of more unique or unusual films these days
[59:42] Speaker 5: that aren't trying to follow in other footsteps, but we
[59:46] Speaker 5: have still managed to find a way to connect them
[59:50] Speaker 5: to cinema's past in other ways. Back Rooms being like
[59:54] Speaker 5: a really recent example. You know, I don't think Kane
[59:58] Speaker 5: Parsons probably had fans, hasn't in mind when he was
[1:00:02] Speaker 5: making that. I mean maybe he did. But Tasha, I'm
[1:00:06] Speaker 5: looking at you are our researcher, I don't think you've
[1:00:10] Speaker 5: come across anything to that effect.
[1:00:12] Speaker 2: I'm not sure Kane Parsons is old enough to know
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: that phantasm exists exactly. I think, particularly with our uber
[1:00:20] Speaker 2: young like new wave of filmmakers who came up on YouTube,
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: they're drawing a lot less from classic cinema. I mean,
[1:00:28] Speaker 2: some of them are super film hounds, and some of
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: them were brought up on YouTube and like, are drawing
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: from a completely new tradition of media. So you know,
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: whether there's an homage level connection there and inspiration level
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: connection there, I think a lot of them are just
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: not going to have that, and we don't let that
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: get on our way. We look for you know, what
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: was the equivalent of this, like functionally or creatively? You know,
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: twenty thirty forty years ago.
[1:00:56] Speaker 1: To get to the bigger, the big picture question, you like,
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: if if in an alternate universe. I continued to study medieval literature,
[1:01:04] Speaker 1: right and so and and it's a period when originality
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: wasn't only not valued, it was treated as suspect. With
[1:01:12] Speaker 1: the idea is you know, you tell the you tell
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: the story that's been told before, you tell it better,
[1:01:17] Speaker 1: but you do your own thing with it. And I
[1:01:19] Speaker 1: think originality, the idea of a completely original thing is
[1:01:22] Speaker 1: is not only an overrated idea, I think it's kind
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: of impossible too. And you're always building on on what's
[1:01:29] Speaker 1: been been done before. And maybe the first k paintings worked,
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: but I think everything after that has has been constructed
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: of bits and pieces of what's come before. So I
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: don't really get hung up unless something is you know,
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: the line between homage and ripoff can be a little thin,
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: but you know, I think it's a matter of how
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: well you do it. I guess, and sometimes so I have.
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: I have no problems with homage. And I'm sure you
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: know Orson Welless had sources of inspiration too. He wasn't
[1:01:57] Speaker 1: right all the time.
[1:01:59] Speaker 2: And I also, when you're talking about just really unique films,
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: one of the first things we like we keep a
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: spreadsheet of what we have covered and what we haven't
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: because we've been doing for this for more than ten
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: years now and we've gotten to a place where every
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: pairing was sponsoring some kind of have we ever talked
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: about blank question? So Genevieve and her capacity as producer,
[1:02:22] Speaker 2: organizer and incredibly ambitious spreadsheet creator and also, you know,
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: host of our ten year anniversary episode put together spreadsheet,
[1:02:32] Speaker 2: So I so this is how I know that we've
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: done three different yorgo slanthemost films over the years, but
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: we didn't do the Lobster, and that one just leaped
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: out at me like if we had been pairing the Lobster.
[1:02:46] Speaker 2: There are a lot of things there to draw on
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: in terms of you know, relationships or weird hotels or
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: like uncomfortable romances between not necessarily suitable people. But I
[1:02:59] Speaker 2: don't I think you can point to like, oh, this
[1:03:02] Speaker 2: is a remake of Blank or an homage to Blank.
[1:03:05] Speaker 2: And I think a lot of the films that we
[1:03:07] Speaker 2: would think of as really unique conceptually or in execution,
[1:03:14] Speaker 2: in narrative are still coming out of you know, if
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: you're not coming from some sort of universal feeling, some
[1:03:20] Speaker 2: sort of like human experience, then what are you even doing?
[1:03:23] Speaker 2: Like what kind of story are you telling? I feel
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: like there's always some sort of connection you can draw
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: on there, just in terms of what is this movie
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: fundamentally about or what's it trying to get at?
[1:03:33] Speaker 1: There you go, So what you're saying is basically our
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: podcast is a good idea.
[1:03:39] Speaker 5: And shove it Wells.
[1:03:41] Speaker 2: I do think that Wells is wrong. This is not
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: the first or last time he was wrong. But our
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: podcast is a good idea. If I had a buck
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: for every time I've told people like, oh, here's the
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: basic log line of the podcast I'm on and they
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: have said, oh, that's a really good idea, with a
[1:03:57] Speaker 2: tone that implies, damn it. I hadn't thought of that,
[1:04:00] Speaker 2: And now I'm met at myself because I haven't. I
[1:04:03] Speaker 2: would have, you know, several dollars.
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: Then you tell them that, well, okay, the barrier entry
[1:04:08] Speaker 1: is actually a little high because it requires watching two
[1:04:10] Speaker 1: movies and c But whatever, We're gonna keep doing it.
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: But that's it for this episode of The Next Picture Show.
[1:04:18] Speaker 1: In our next episode, we'll talk about the suburban dinosaurs
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: of the End of Oak Street and how they connect
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: and that film connects to War the World's Look for
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: that episode next Tuesday on your podcat or of choice.
[1:04:28] Speaker 1: For ad free versions of the podcast and extra content,
[1:04:31] Speaker 1: find us on Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Next
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: Picture Show. You can find us at Next Picture Show
[1:04:36] Speaker 1: dot net and on Blue Sky at the Next Picture Show.
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: If you want to keep track of when new episodes
[1:04:40] Speaker 1: drop until next time. Keep watching the guys and also
[1:04:43] Speaker 1: the ground. You never know where those extraterrestrials threats will
[1:04:46] Speaker 1: come from.
[1:04:57] Speaker 2: That was a good movie.
[1:04:59] Speaker 3: Yeah S for once,

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