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This week, on the Most Banal Philosophizing:
To celebrate Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY, David Hallgren flies to the west coast to discuss Matt Damon’s OG odyssey, THE MARTIAN, in person!
It’s an extremely easy love letter to write for some of us. Others… Might have some notes.
About the Traveling Wilburys:
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest in the house. David Hallgren is in the same time zone as us, which is very strange. Amazing in the same building as Greg currently, but they can’t be in the same room together, per the judges orders. So we’re just following orders at this point. But in the movie we just watched, the main character gets ditched by his friends and he has to spend years getting back to them.
Speaker 1 So my question to you all is when was the last time you were ditched? I’ll toss it to you, David. You can go first. I had a hard time remembering a time, but what? I used to ski with a bunch of our friends. We would try and ditch each other on purpose, and then go on the ski lift and see if we could find each other and throw snowballs.
Speaker 1 Awesome. So that was like a common ditching practice. Like ski as fast as you can down to leave someone or push them and then ski away or things like that. So we practiced our ditching on the ski slopes. Awesome. On Mount Baker is that Mount Baker? Mount Baker? Yep. Amazing. Yeah. Greg and I have a famous Mount Baker experience.
Speaker 1 It’s probably the worst snowboarding experience in my entire life. It was the first time for both of us. That’s always the worst experience. Yeah, it was horrible. Soul one. Soul one. Yes. What about you, Greg? Well, David just said soul. So I have to do this, like in the movie. One time I was recording a record with the Pale Pacific.
Speaker 1 We were recording in a cabin on Orcas Island, and so I was doing the drums for this song that we have called All My Friends, which is one of my favorite songs by the civic. But cam, who was our guitar player, was also the guy who recorded our records that he pressed record. And then as I was tracking the song, he went downstairs and left.
Speaker 1 And then when I was done with my take. I was like, waiting for him to stop, press stop on the recording, and he would just wasn’t there. And so I was like, hello, hello. And his wife was still in the cabin, but no one else was there. And so I pressed up and pressed save. And then I think I did another take and it was just like, wow, that is like producer of the year press record and just leave in the middle of my take.
Speaker 1 Classic cam move right there. So that’s probably why the drums are just a little bit sadder on that song. And that’s what really makes it. So yeah, it was just producing like a like one of the best right there. Yeah, exactly. He was bringing out the angst in that song for you. So did it. What about you, Joe?
Speaker 1 You ever been ditched by your friends? Yes. On Mars. On Mars? Obviously. It used to be kind of a game that we have as friends. Like where we would just, like, randomly ditch each other, like at a bar. We would go and then, like, two of us would be like, you want to you want to go somewhere else and not tell anyone and just like, leave.
Speaker 1 It happened to me at like after a soccer game. I had a flat tire and then everyone was like, all right, sucks to be you. And they left. And so I had to deal with it myself. Some people got mad about it, but it was what we did. So like when when everyone left at the soccer game, I was annoyed.
Speaker 1 But I had earned it because I had done it to all of them before as well, so I couldn’t be too mad. How old were you when this happened? 25, maybe. Yeah. Okay. That’s a good age for for that kind of story with friends. Yeah. That’s awesome. We get to the show, let’s get to the show.
Speaker 2 I guarantee you that at some point, everything’s going to go south. On. You ready?
Speaker 2 You’re going to say, this is it.
Speaker 2 This is how I end. Mark is dead.
Speaker 3 We have to go.
Speaker 2 Now, you can either accept that.
Speaker 2 Or you can get to work.
Speaker 4 This will come as quite a shock to my crewmates and to NASA and to the entire world. But I’m still alive. Surprise!
Speaker 5 There must be some kind of way out of here. Okay.
Speaker 4 So let’s do the math. I have enough food to last for 50 days. He’s going to starve to death long before we can help. So I’m going to have to. Science. They have this.
Speaker 2 I am the greatest botanist on this planet.
Speaker 6 I know how to say Mark Watney. We need the Hermes crew.
Speaker 4 We either.
Speaker 7 Have a high chance of killing one or a little chance of killing six.
Speaker 4 I’m not risking their lives. It’s bigger than one person. No, no.
Speaker 4 No matter what happens.
Speaker 4 Tell the world.
Speaker 4 Tell my family. And I never stop fighting to make it home.
Speaker 4 The year is 2015, and.
Speaker 1 Ridley Scott picks up a. Script by Drew Goddard, based on a book by Andy. We’re in cancels his sequel to Prometheus, and decides to make a movie called The Martian. We are talking about Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, and I think that’s it. Hold up. Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Kate. Mara, Sebastian Stan to attempt at you for the bench on this is so deep.
Speaker 1 Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Nick Mohammed from Ted lasso. We could keep going, but I’m going to stop there. David Hogan, what makes The Martian a great bad movie? The Martian is a great, bad movie, and we’ll talk more about this.
Speaker 8 If it truly is a great, bad movie, because I’m really excited to answer that. Right. And I think Joe will contribute to that. But I think it’s a great bad movie because you have Matt Damon. Yeah. And every time the cameras on him, it’s great. But then you also are brought along. There are some things that I would say there’s some badness to the movie as well, but but it’s woven in between that amazing cast and humor and all the things that I look for in a movie.
Speaker 8 But there are a few times where I’m like, I feel like I’m being dictated what to think and feel right now.
Speaker 1 Oh, interesting. Okay, okay. Joe Sky Tucker, you sent some interesting texts this week as you were watching this movie for the first time. Is The Martian a great bad movie? It’s definitely deserving of being on this podcast. I will say that. Okay. I will start with the positive. This cast is insane. Hold on. The singular. The positive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Like you said, the bench on this is so deep. Like everybody is in this movie. Everybody gives a great performance, and it. It’s a well written movie, start to finish. But at no point during this movie did I worry that Matt Damon or anybody was going to be in peril. Ever. Even though he’s stranded on an island or on Mars.
Speaker 1 I love that they lean heavily into the science of actually how long it takes. So we don’t have Hobbes and Shaw travel logic in this. It’s like it takes months to get to Mars and back. And that part I appreciated. They do speed up parts of the communication. I know they have to do that for editing purposes. But the frustrating part for me was I was never once worried about any of the main character.
Speaker 1 The stakes were high in the movie, but I didn’t feel them at all. I was never worried that Matt Damon wasn’t going to make it at all, ever. So while it gets completely ridiculous by the end of the length that they have to go to to save them, which makes it a great bad movie, by the way, just like so over the top.
Speaker 1 Ridiculous. But there are really funny moments. There are some really heartfelt moments. This is a movie that is designed to be a feel good movie. You go into the movie, you watch it. It takes you on a roller coaster of emotions. You walk out feeling really good and happy. And that’s all this is to me. Is middle America drivel dressed up with a nice director?
Speaker 1 If I’m being honest, this should have been a TV show on HBO. The beats are all there. But yeah, I struggled with this movie as soon as it became very clear that nothing bad was going to happen to any of the main characters. I’m on an island on this, and I know I can feel it. Well, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 Did you like the movie? I liked it, okay. It was like, I will never watch this movie again. Okay. I enjoyed it. It was a little long, I enjoyed it. I’ll never watch this movie again. But you’re asking for it to be five one hour episodes of an HBO show like longer would have helped it. I think it would be better.
Speaker 1 Okay, okay. Bring in Mr. West Wing to go straight on it. Aaron Sorkin’s he’s spiritually there anyway. Yeah, I feel like every time they’re at the podium or walking and talking in this movie, it’s Aaron Sorkin. Yeah. It is an interesting premise. They could have leaned more into the science of it. I think that that that was the most interesting for me was all the different pieces of, you know, all the different kinds of rockets and the testing that they have to go through.
Speaker 1 And you don’t really you don’t ever know any of that stuff. And so I found that part interesting. And I know this author really goes heavy into the science of these of what space travel is, except when he doesn’t. Yeah. Except when they’re on Mars and yeah. Yeah. So those are the pieces. But it needed to either be to me longer and like, take the beats like slow it down a little bit or add some real stakes, like, maybe Matt Damon and another character are stranded and that character dies or, you know.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You have to kill off a character to make it at all feel like there are real stakes in this movie. And I never felt like there were. It was interesting. Yeah. And I was like, well, where is this going to go? But it never it didn’t pay off for me in the end. Okay.
Speaker 8 I have to.
Speaker 1 Ask.
Speaker 8 You a gray.
Speaker 1 Man related.
Speaker 8 Question.
Speaker 1 To what you just said. If we are leaning towards science, does that mean we are leaning toward or away from Lloyd? I mean, in this case, we have to lean a little away from Lloyd. Probably shave the mustache. Okay, get him some socks. Better shoes. And that’s trouble. Yeah, this just sounds like a movie you’re not going to enjoy as much.
Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, he can keep the white pants as what I’m saying, but that was my next question. Thank you. Yeah. All right, well, I need to tell you, Joe, that in 2015, I was over on the East coast in a town called Pennington, new Jersey, visiting our good friend David Hallgren. And we went to go see this movie in the theater together.
Speaker 1 And my impression of this movie since then is, I think that might be the most enjoyable movie I’ve ever watched in my life. Awesome. I do all over your movie. Sorry. Great. That’s been my description of this movie for 11 years. I think it’s the most enjoyable movie I’ve ever seen in my life. This came out after 127 hours, right?
Speaker 1 Is that what it was called? The James Franco movie where he stuck? This could have gone that way. You know, like, if Danny Boyle was doing this movie, it could have been intense like that. But, you know, they kind of zagged a little bit in this case. So I guess I appreciated that because I expected it to be kind of another 127 hours.
Speaker 1 I was also, as I was watching it this time, is this kind of an updated Die Hard on Mars? Could be. We need Steve Buscemi going space crazy a la Armageddon. 100%. To really push that over the edge.
Speaker 8 I did wonder about like, could you edit in some Armageddon and have the Martian Armageddon, you know, like Billy Bob in the control room? And yeah.
Speaker 1 There are so many references to other space movies in this movie. Like what? So there’s clear Armageddon with the the rockets and the like have the two people being Mars and Earth, and they have the stapler. That is. That is a clear reference to Armageddon.
Speaker 8 The slingshot and.
Speaker 1 Yeah, on the slingshot. And then the spinning thing where they have gravity is a 2001 reference. There are other space movies that they’re referencing, probably like 3 or 4 that I noticed as well, but Armageddon and 2001 were the main ones that I captured. It’s a little weird that you just glossed over Star Trek for The Voyage Home, when they had to slingshot around the Earth to go get whales from the past.
Speaker 1 That’s right. I was wondering why they had that whole side quest about whales in this movie for some reason. Would this movie have been better or worse with time travel, like Star Trek for a Voyage home? I mean, it wouldn’t have been worse in my mind. Couldn’t have been worse. David, what’s your memory of us going to see this movie?
Speaker 8 I remember loving it. And same thing. Like I walked out of that movie full of joy. That’s just kind of what I remember. And. And I think that’s what I love about. And I asked Greg earlier this week, can a guest push the golden buzzer? Could this be a great, great movie?
Speaker 1 100%, because.
Speaker 8 I would put it in that category. I love this movie. I love that I don’t feel in jeopardy. I think it’s it’s an A grade movie because all it is, is a character just solving one problem at a time. That’s the key to this is just following him one step at a time, and you get there and it’s a patient movie and I loved it.
Speaker 8 I think we did talk all the way Home about this might have been the most enjoyable movie we’ve ever seen.
Speaker 1 I mean, it’s totally subjective as well. Like maybe that’s just what we needed that week. I think in the theater this is a different experience as well. Like there are there are some CGI moments early in the film that are a little rough for me, but I can see this as like in theater experience being just exceptional from just the visuals of it and the difference between Earth and Mars and the shots of space.
Speaker 1 It is a really pretty movie with just a couple moments that are like, oh, that’s a little rough. Yeah, yeah, filmed in Jordan. You know, he’s kind of like roving around. That’s in Jordan. Yeah. Interesting. And I couldn’t tell. Do you think there was, like, some sort of, like, color filter on it, Joe? Well, have to wait for the trope lightning round, but.
Speaker 1 It’s possible that I. That is marked. Yes. Well.
Speaker 8 So I would bring up the question to like, does the context of when you saw it and how you saw it and who you saw it with? Change your ability to decide the quality of the movie. Does the fact that Greg and I were seeing each other, you know, and he was visiting and it was an event like going to this movie was an event that was filled with nostalgia and that.
Speaker 8 And so that 100%, I think, pointed me in a trajectory.
Speaker 1 Absolutely. It’s why one of the reasons I love Fast and Furious nine is because Greg and I saw it in the theater, and when we got out of the movie, was like, that was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life, I think, I think. Absolutely. Of course, that’s going to shape what you think of the movie.
Speaker 1 I was I was listening to a podcast. Someone was at Cannes, and they made all the critics stand outside in the rain before they could go in and watch the movie, and they had to wait out there for like an hour. The movie started late, and then it kind of got some a bunch of negative reviews, and it might not have been entirely been because of the movie.
Speaker 1 And I think 100% I think we’re a pretty forgiving audience as well. You know, you and me, David, we’re like great bad movie friends from way back. I can think of one movie that we’ve seen together that even us being together couldn’t save our impression of this movie. Do you know what movie I’m thinking of?
Speaker 8 I think you might be talking about Logan.
Speaker 1 Not. Well, yeah. That’s interesting. Logan, that was the saddest movie we’ve ever seen. I think in the theater. Yeah, but what was, like, just a bad movie?
Speaker 8 You’re gonna have to help me out.
Speaker 1 Jack Reacher two. Oh, not even us being together could save that movie.
Speaker 8 Yeah. Don’t ever go back. Isn’t that what it is? Jack Reacher, don’t ever go back to that movie.
Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8 Yeah. That was horrible. So rough. Yeah.
Speaker 1 So, yeah. You know, next time you watch this movie, just invite me and David over. Joe. Okay. Perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 9 It is not unpleasant to watch. It’s just I wanted higher stakes of. Yeah. So it was interesting. Like, that’s where I think a TV show would have been better for it, because then they could have actually slowed it down. And you could have leaned into every step. You know, the time compression, like the first part of the movie, is really a very short amount of time where he’s like trying to save himself.
Speaker 9 He’s patching himself up, he’s trying to figure out how to survive. And then the time kind of stretches as he’s starting to communicate and they’re, you know, trying to build a plan, and then all of a sudden they jump ahead seven months. Yeah, yeah. And the last third of the movie is just third act. Go go go. I would have liked to have that a little, like kind of pick a lane a little bit more on it.
Speaker 9 But the writing, the direction, the acting, the cast. Yeah. It’s great. They’re all amazing. You know, I think the best way to put it, this is not my kind of movie. Nobody ever says, hey, this is not you want to watch a feel good movie? I’d be like, do you want me to punch you in the face? It would be my my answer to that.
Speaker 9 You know, I want frivolous action or I want really high stakes drama, kind of movie like shows and stuff like that, if I really want to feel something. And so this isn’t my kind of movie. Yeah. And I wanted to hate it more than I did. Oh, and so pleasantly surprised. Although I have one major, major continuity floor with.
Speaker 1 This movie to it. Yeah, yeah. What is it?
Speaker 9 We are set up with Matt Damon. He’s on Mars. He knows everything that’s happening. He would know that there are satellites taking pictures of the base.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And so the way they discover that he’s alive is someone sees, like, a different like that. He’s moved the rover. He would know that there are satellites taking pictures and would have written a message in the rocks or something. They to to say, hey, I’m alive. He knows everything else about where past missions are and how long ago they were, and where on Mars they are and how to and but he doesn’t know that they have satellites taking pictures of Mars.
Speaker 9 Come on. That was like.
Speaker 8 They have to relocate it, didn’t they have to get permission because they said Harry six isn’t going out for five more years and they had to relocate the satellite. That was the big permission that they had to get. And Jeff Daniels is like, no, we’re not going to do that or we don’t want to see his dead body.
Speaker 8 You know, he was saying he had to be convinced to change the satellite to do it. And when they changed it, that’s when she saw the satellite.
Speaker 9 But wouldn’t you, if you knew there were satellites pointed there on the off chance that they’re going to see it?
Speaker 8 Absolutely. Line up the rocks. David’s alive. Come get me. I’m hungry.
Speaker 9 Yeah. So that was like, as soon as I was like, come on the other piece. And they can’t really get into this, but like, he’s in solitary confinement for years. He would go a little crazy. And they don’t really show that. You know, he stays like exactly the same throughout.
Speaker 8 It took Steve Buscemi 20 minutes to go crazy on the moon.
Speaker 9 You know.
Speaker 1 Exactly. I mean, you don’t go from just zero straight to space pirate. You need a couple souls in there, right? Sorry. Every time I say so, I have to play that. Well, let’s talk about the opening of this movie, because I feel like this movie starts really intensely and then quickly, is kind of forgiving and becomes kind of funny and motivating.
Speaker 1 What do you think of the opening scene, Joe?
Speaker 9 I kind of hate me.
Speaker 1 Space storm.
Speaker 9 It’s like such a trope to me in a space movie that there’s a storm moving in and it’s coming faster than we anticipated. And so it was just like, come on! And then the comedy of errors that they make to like, make bad decisions.
Speaker 1 Like.
Speaker 9 Yeah, space storm coming in. You’re on Mars. You get off the planet as fast as you can. You don’t try to, like, finish the mission. That was another, to me, a plot hole of you either do what Matt Damon says, you hunker down and you wait for it to pass, or you get off. You don’t try to, like, thread the needle because the stakes are too high, because you are eight months away from Earth.
Speaker 9 And boy, do they want us to know about the angle where they can’t take off anymore. So, you know, kind of.
Speaker 1 Tip over. Pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 And the other piece that bothered me about that was there in a space storm. And yet they get into the spaceship and they are the cleanest.
Speaker 9 They’re they’re not. One speck of dust is on them. I know, I’m sorry.
Speaker 1 No. Yeah. So that’s a great point. So what did you think of when he has to get the antenna that’s in his abdomen out. I’m assuming he goes to, like, a veterinary office on Mars to get this out. Yeah. What did you think of that scene when he kind of operates on himself?
Speaker 9 I was like, there’s a trope. First of all. Yeah. So happy about that moment.
Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.
Speaker 9 I was waiting for him to have some sort of crack about what an amateur it was that it missed all vital organs. So.
Speaker 1 Sure. Did you like that? He had the little dish to drop. The thing he pulled out into.
Speaker 9 That scene was great.
Speaker 1 Perfect.
Speaker 9 Yeah, that was a riveting thing. Like, those are the moments that I loved this movie. When we have Matt Damon, like, in the moment, I putting myself there. What a crazy moment to, like, have to operate on yourself. You probably have like, the thought of like as soon as you pull something out, you’re worried about internal bleeding and you’ve got to, you know.
Speaker 9 So unfortunately, as soon as he patches himself up, he’s pretty much fine the rest of the movie. I mean, he does blow up, but again, yeah, I wasn’t worried about him like that was the most worried about him. I was was in that moment.
Speaker 1 When he blows himself up and sits down in front of the camera and he has like, smoke coming off of him. I’ve laughed out loud every time I’ve seen this movie. Yeah.
Speaker 8 It’s so funny.
Speaker 1 I suppose this movie doesn’t hold up quite as well, because it really does kind of have some like the Office vibes, you know, people talking to camera and saying like, so I blew myself up, you know? Yeah, there’s a little bit of that time period in it.
Speaker 9 Yeah. And I was okay with that. Like, he’s got to break the tension. He’s got a, you know, a laugh kind of refocuses people, keeps things going on track. Matt Damon has incredible comic timing throughout this. So the way he delivers his lines are so funny. There are a few other laughs, but he’s really driving the humor in this movie and he’s likable.
Speaker 9 You have to like him because you have to want him to get off the planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 So yeah.
Speaker 9 From a like performance, from a casting standpoint, he is dead on in this. He’s great.
Speaker 1 Do you think it would have also raised the stakes if there was like a bad guy played by Gary Busey?
Speaker 9 Yes.
Speaker 1 Okay, okay.
Speaker 8 The bad guy was Mars. Yeah. And time. And that’s a little heady for a great bad movie.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 9 That is very true. How hard do they sell the bad guy? Our eternal demise, you mean.
Speaker 8 Yeah, totally. So we’re spag guy. Ever. Mars and gravity and, like air. No one wins against that.
Speaker 1 There are so many moments in this movie where we are getting an update on what our pressure percentage is, or like our oxygen level. Those two things, there’s like pressure that we hear a lot about in oxygen that we hear a lot about. And it kind of didn’t get old for me. It’s amazing how they can create tension with just a sound effect when he cracks his kind of like helmets and he’s covering it with duct tape, it’s really just tension with sound.
Speaker 1 It seems like. Yeah. Pretty amazing.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 8 You know, what’s funny is I just watched The Meg two again a couple days ago. Yeah. And they have a very similar scene where this main character is underneath, and it’s they’re under the water and they’re, they’re glassing cracks a little bit and they’re almost there, almost there. But they end up I mean, spoiler alert for Meg two.
Speaker 1 Oh.
Speaker 8 She dies before they get to the place. It was that tension that I think Joe was looking for is because it was a main character and you didn’t know, and it really was surprising.
Speaker 1 Wow. It’s like a Samuel L Jackson in deep Blue Sea.
Speaker 8 Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 Super smart sharks. It’s like a Tom Skerritt. An alien. Yeah. Speaking of which, is this maybe the greatest space movie that’s ever been made? We’re coming off. We’ve got three big space years. We’ve got interstellar, we’ve got gravity, and then interstellar, which has Damon as an astronaut, and then The Martian.
Speaker 8 And Star Wars.
Speaker 1 And. Yeah, I guess you have to include Star Wars in those three movies.
Speaker 8 So, no, I don’t think it’s greater than Star Wars.
Speaker 1 No, no.
Speaker 8 As much as I love this movie.
Speaker 1 You know, because of Ridley Scott directing this, and it is just made with such craftsmanship. And, you know, this is a guy that I guess he had just made Prometheus. So he had done some spaceship stuff. But this is the guy that made alien. And I kind of felt like this. I just really like it when Ridley Scott is in space.
Speaker 8 You know, it’s funny is I don’t think this was a space movie. I think it was castaway.
Speaker 1 Oh, castaway in space?
Speaker 8 Yeah, castaway in space.
Speaker 1 Alien. Was jaws in space? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 So you’re really just seeing a guy? Is he capable enough to get home? All we were missing was Wilson, you know.
Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9 Well, the camera direct the camera as Wilson.
Speaker 1 Is this movie better with Wilson, Joe? Yes.
Speaker 9 Because you have stakes. Because the hardest scene to watch in castaway is when he loses Wilson in the sea.
Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Totally.
Speaker 9 And it’s, you know, it’s just a volleyball, but it’s it’s represents so much more. So you needed that. Yeah, I just needed the like if we had had a little bit of that, I think this movie, I would have been all in on this movie.
Speaker 8 I think what I missed was, you know, here’s this guy. He has a family, right? You don’t see him lamenting the birthdays he’s missing. The the anniversary is the you know, he’s up there for so long, he’s just solving robotically solving that problem. And you see the humor in it, but you don’t see, like, what you’re saying earlier, Greg.
Speaker 8 You don’t see him begin to unravel. And some, some turn in the movie. To have them unravel a bit makes the joy of the end more meaningful.
Speaker 1 There should have been a time where he’s sitting there, sad about something that’s happened, and Disco Song is playing out of the any, like just takes a baseball bat and smashes the disco song. Yeah. Stereo.
Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m putting myself, you know, as everyone does in his shoes. Honestly, I’m committing suicide in three weeks.
Speaker 1 But you’re not known for your potato farming.
Speaker 9 No, I’m not known at all for my potato farming, so. But, like, I totally agree, David. Like, it needed that moment of, like, what’s the spiral where he’s like, you know, we need the classic. What is the moment that turns him around and he gets back on track, maybe as he gets the email from somebody from home or from the crew or those sorts of things.
Speaker 9 But he is so like steadily.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, positive.
Speaker 9 Maybe that’s the most unbelievable part of this is I need to have like a depression cycle in the midst of being stranded on Mars for years. He’s just like, well, got to do some farming instead of I might not see anybody that I know or love anymore, and I don’t think I’m going to get off of here. What are the options?
Speaker 9 Or there wasn’t a scene where it’s like, okay, here are the options. I, you know, we go through the rations I have this many days. You know, if I stretch it out, I can make it this far.
Speaker 1 Is that the word they used this many days.
Speaker 9 Or souls? Sorry. Souls.
Speaker 1 Okay, great.
Speaker 9 Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 8 He does address his parents. You know that one time he says if this is how I die, then I’m happy. But even that, like, I wanted to see like them send an email of, like, a Father’s Day card his kid made him, you know, or something like that. Were you actually feel this? You know, these astronauts are people.
Speaker 1 Did Matt Damon have a kid?
Speaker 8 We don’t know. There’s no. I think that’s what Joe say. There’s nothing at stake for if he lives or not, he comes home. What’s he come home to? Like? What would he have truly lost if he never came home?
Speaker 1 Who was Tom Hanks married to in castaway, Helen Hunt? Helen Hunt.
Speaker 8 That would have been awesome.
Speaker 1 That would have been awesome.
Speaker 9 Especially if they had, like, just superimposed Matt Damon’s face on Tom Hanks face and just shot for shot. The last scene of crossroads. Yeah.
Speaker 1 I think this is probably the unofficial sequel to castaway, and he is the son of Helen Hunt and Tom Hanks. That’s who he’s writing that letter to. Yeah, I love it. I really would have loved if Wilson was in this movie. And at some point Wilson gets a little punctured and starts leaking, and then you hear like, ball pressure, 89%.
Speaker 1 It’s like Wilson, no ball pressure.
Speaker 8 Duct tape.
Speaker 1 Like 47%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would have I would have really enjoyed that scene.
Speaker 9 He puts Wilson in one of the spacesuits on the ship with him in the helmet.
Speaker 1 Takes it everywhere. That would have been incredible. That would be so great. Instantly. That’s instantly a great, great movie.
Speaker 9 Yep.
Speaker 1 Done. That fixes every ill. Let me ask you, did you guys ever get annoyed by how everything was a soul?
Speaker 1 Did you know that a soul is different than an Earth Day?
Speaker 8 Yeah. I wondered what it was like. How? How many souls in an Earth day?
Speaker 1 So soul is short for Solar Day on Mars, and it is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. That is one soul.
Speaker 8 So pretty close.
Speaker 9 A little longer.
Speaker 1 Pretty close.
Speaker 8 Pretty close to an Earth Day.
Speaker 1 Knowingly close. We might just call that even. Why would we? Why do we need to make the distinction? Should we talk about the cast of this movie? Do it because this is also like a workplace drama. It’s not just I heard on Mars.
Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, this movie honestly could almost be a play. It’s really just like three main set pieces, maybe four. You know, there’s where he lives on Mars, there’s the Situation Room at NASA, and then there’s the lab at NASA that they’ve contracted with to build the rockets. Like most of the action. And the conversations happen in set pieces.
Speaker 9 That’s what kind of, to me, has that feel of a TV show where you have the sets and it’s there were pieces that I really wanted a little bit more of, like I wanted more of Donald Glover. Like I find anytime he shows up in a movie, I want more of him. I find him just magnetic on the screen.
Speaker 9 Same with the lab that is, you know, asked to do way more with less. And they have really interesting characters. That’s where I come back to like this is five episodes and you can have one of them that’s dedicated to each of those moments.
Speaker 1 Oh, like a season of The Wire.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 8 I’m in. I’m all in that just one mirror over right there.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I think you can call your five episode series, and I say I raise it to five seasons.
Speaker 9 Okay.
Speaker 8 I was going to say think about like if you get to know some of the cast deeper, if you get to know Jessica Chastain. Yeah. And some of her motivation, like, maybe she left behind someone when she was like a soldier before she became an astronaut. And so this is like a driving psychological need for her. You know, there’s a lot of things you could unpack that would bring more meaning to that payoff of Mark Watney is reunited and comes back.
Speaker 1 I mean, she and Sebastian Stan were probably just moving on to this job from the events of the 355, which is a great bad movie we will definitely be getting to.
Speaker 9 I mean, if it’s the unofficial prequel to this movie, maybe we need to get to it.
Speaker 1 It’s pretty. Yeah, this is pretty important stuff. Simon Kinberg wrote and directed that movie, though. He’s a producer on this movie. So I think, you know, they stayed in The Martian Averse.
Speaker 9 This is the writing right on the wall.
Speaker 1 Right there.
Speaker 9 That’s.
Speaker 1 What are you saying? And then we got to Attila Edgar, who is just so good, he is immediately dramatic, and then he’s immediately funny. He might be my favorite character in this movie that isn’t Matt Damon. I like Jeff Daniels, but Jeff Daniels, he was on The Newsroom at this time, I think, and he is basically just in the newsroom in this movie.
Speaker 8 100%.
Speaker 1 Totally. That kind of bothered me a little bit. And there are some things that he does in this movie that sound like Aaron Sorkin wrote it.
Speaker 9 I 100% agree with that. Yeah, yeah. And he’s standing at a podium. It feels so much like the West Wing and CJ standing at the, you know, in the press room. Yeah. So yeah. Spoiler alert one of my drinking games is every time Jeff Daniels is standing at a podium take a drink. Because first half of this movie you’re drunk.
Speaker 1 I do have a clip that I just called West Wing Meeting. Let me play this to kind of show what we’re talking about here.
Speaker 10 All right. Let’s ask the very, very expensive question. Is the probe going to be ready on time?
Speaker 7 We’re behind.
Speaker 10 Give me a number.
Speaker 7 15 days and I can get it done.
Speaker 10 All right, let’s create 15 days. 13 days to mount the probe. Can we reduce.
Speaker 4 It actually only takes three days to mount the probe. And we can get that down to two. Right?
Speaker 7 I can get it down to.
Speaker 4 Ten days of fantastic inspections.
Speaker 10 How often do those inspections reveal a problem?
Speaker 4 Well, you suggesting we don’t do the inspections.
Speaker 10 Right now? I’m asking how often they reveal a problem.
Speaker 4 1 in 20. But that’s grounds for countdown. Halt. I can’t tell you that.
Speaker 10 Anyone else know a safer way to buy more time, Doctor Keller? Stretch what? Knives, rations? Four more days. You’re not going to like it, but that’ll get us to 15. And we’ll cancel the inspections.
Speaker 11 Sir, if that ever got out.
Speaker 10 It’s on me. You got your two weeks. Get it done.
Speaker 1 I could watch scenes like that for the rest of my life, I love that.
Speaker 9 Imagine that as a TV show. You have that scene?
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And then you have the rocket takes off. Okay. Everyone’s happy. It explodes. The episode ends with Mark Watney. Email. How did the launch go?
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 Credits. The next episode like, to me, that was such a, like TV show episode. Everything is going great. We’ve got the plan. We’re working. We got all the steps, we figured it out, we’ve cut it down, and then everything hits the fan.
Speaker 1 This is hard for me, Joe, because I feel like I want to fight for more movies. But I think you’re entirely right that this would be an incredible show as well, because it’s a book. Maybe it will become an Amazon show at some point. You know, they they buy that stuff up. It did kind of become a universe.
Speaker 1 I mean, Project Hail Mary came out this year with Gosling, and it was basically the spiritual sequel to The Martian. Go see that movie.
Speaker 9 I have not seen that movie.
Speaker 1 No.
Speaker 9 I have heard of.
Speaker 1 That movie. Yeah, I’ve heard that you noticed The Age of the Martian when you watch Project Hail Mary. You know, ten years of definitely gone by in entertainment.
Speaker 9 I mean, you do have Ryan Gosling, who is one of the most charming people on the planet, on the screen and defeated Lloyd in an epic battle as the sun rose.
Speaker 1 Yeah. That’s solid.
Speaker 9 Can we just talk about Sean Bean and the. Yeah, the total reference to the Lord of the rings that they throw in there.
Speaker 8 Oh, my gosh, that was awesome. Yes.
Speaker 9 Oh my God, that scene alone was worth its weight to me to have Sean Bean in there as a reference to the Lord of the rings. It was awesome.
Speaker 1 And it’s basically the only scene where Kristen Wiig is being funny, and she’s funny in a way that she typically wasn’t on SNL. Yeah, let’s listen to that scene.
Speaker 11 What the hell is Project Elrond?
Speaker 4 I had to make something up.
Speaker 11 But Elrond.
Speaker 4 Because he’s a secret meeting.
Speaker 11 How do you know that? Why does Elrond mean secret meeting?
Speaker 7 The Council of L1 is the Lord of the rings. It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the one man I’m going.
Speaker 10 To call something Project Elrond. I know I like my code name to be blah.
Speaker 11 I hate every one of you.
Speaker 9 So good. Perfect. No notes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Nailed it. I wonder if was written by Stephen Colbert, who’s famously a Lord of the rings.
Speaker 9 It got.
Speaker 1 To be there. Probably. We got to call Stephen if we’re doing this. Yeah.
Speaker 9 So great. I just have to say that the famous scene where Sean Bean is saying one does not simply walk into Mordor, which has become a meme, and that whole speech, he has the script written and taped to his leg. That’s why he’s looking down, because I wrote it that day, and so he’s reading it and it makes it.
Speaker 9 It looks like he’s being pensive, but he’s really just trying to remember the words.
Speaker 1 To that.
Speaker 9 Script or that scene.
Speaker 8 The only way it could have been better is if he would have ended it by saying, well, let’s get going because winter is coming.
Speaker 9 And then a dragon flies across the screen.
Speaker 9 I feel like we need to talk about this crew that leave because Greg, if I have like a thought for you of like it is let’s get let’s get the band back together. Let’s get the crew together.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And as the like barometer of crews, of people, of groups of people. Would you like to hang out with this crew and, like, go on adventures? Yeah. Or not?
Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Michael Penny is involved. Yes.
Speaker 9 I know, National treasure right there.
Speaker 1 Kate. Mara. Was it Kate that was in shooter? Yeah. Okay, so we got Kate Mara from shooter. I’m assuming still playing that Johansson. That was her name. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 Michael Panda and shoot her too. I mean, maybe this is the unofficial sequel to shoot her.
Speaker 1 Oh.
Speaker 9 Now everything is changed. If this is the unofficial sequel to shooter. And what was the other one? That was.
Speaker 1 The.
Speaker 9 55 and the 350? I mean, a trilogy of movies.
Speaker 8 When he took that thing out of his side, I did think of shooter. Yeah, when Mark Wahlberg’s in the veterinary place, you know, I was like, oh my gosh. But they used it up a little bit and made it more intelligent because he pulls out the thing and then he he puts it together with the little stick to see if he got everything.
Speaker 8 You know, it was.
Speaker 1 Like.
Speaker 8 Oh, that’s so smart. Next time that happens to me, I’m totally gonna make sure I’ve gotten everything.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And some really solid Wahlberg esque breathe acting in that scene from maximum. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 9 Okay, so if this is a trilogy and you have the three five, five shooter and The Martian.
Speaker 9 What’s the right order for this?
Speaker 9 Aside from being the best trilogy that’s ever been made.
Speaker 1 I start flying over Africa in Shooter. Okay.
Speaker 9 Donnie showing his like. And this is Sarah. Isn’t she pretty? Yeah.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gosh. I start with shooter, I go Martian, and then I go, 355. We saw some crimes at the end, I think so.
Speaker 9 Wow. So they get out of there, done got a crazy experience and now I like it. I’m in.
Speaker 1 Jessica Chastain kind of leaves him on Mars at the beginning. And I really wondered as I was watching this movie, if that’s just what it’s like to know Jessica Chastain. She constantly leaving people behind, forgetting about them. Yeah, bailing on them.
Speaker 9 There’s another movie where she’s a an assassin. Ava. Ava. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Was that good?
Speaker 9 It’s definitely one of our movies. It’s not good, but in the best possible ways. Like, it wants to be the assassin movie with a weird heart and a different angle, and it just ends up being another assassin movie. But it is definitely worth watching.
Speaker 8 I did think, man, Jessica Chastain went way harder after Osama bin laden than she did for Mark Watney.
Speaker 1 Yes, that’s you know, that’s a good point.
Speaker 8 Like if she had. It like she did for Mark Watney, like she never would have found bin laden. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Should Kathryn Bigelow have directed this movie?
Speaker 9 Yes, always. I think that would have changed everything, because Kathryn Bigelow has the ability to make every moment feel important, even if it’s just a little character moment, like, yeah, yes, yes, she should have.
Speaker 1 They make kind of a a bomb at the end. And I just thought, oh man, if if she was directing this movie, it would be like a spiritual sequel to A House of dynamite, but it would be called a House of sugar, liquid oxygen and stain remover.
Speaker 1 Straight to Netflix 2027.
Speaker 9 I watch it 100%.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I did think at the beginning of this movie, I kind of feel like James Cameron passed on this. James Cameron could have made this movie. Yeah, I don’t think he ever did. But Drew Goddard was going to direct it. The guy who wrote the script, he’s kind of one of J.J. Abrams crew, I think. Did you guys ever see Bad Times at the El Royale?
Speaker 8 Brad Pitt.
Speaker 1 No, it’s. You ready for this cast? We should probably get to this movie. Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Chris Hemsworth, Nick Offerman, Lewis Pullman, Shea Whigham.
Speaker 9 Wait, did you say Shea Whigham?
Speaker 1 Yeah, I did okay. And I think Jon Hamm is in it as well.
Speaker 8 I don’t know, I’ve never seen that movie. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1 Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s pretty good.
Speaker 9 Over under on David. Watching this movie is three days.
Speaker 9 Absolutely taken the under if we’re betting on Kelsey.
Speaker 1 Which is about two and a half souls if I remember that. Right. No. Three and a half stars.
Speaker 1 He shaves at the end before he gets picked up out in space. I liked that he kind of shaves, but I did think they were robbing us of the scene where someone else shaves him. That old trope.
Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 And as you were talking about this, Joe, I was kind of like, okay, well, somebody starts shaving him. They have that scene, and then that person, whoever it is, drops dead mid shaving. We have the scene of the star we didn’t think was going to die. Mid shave no less. And then he has to finish shaving like pick up the razor himself and finish shaving to represent that.
Speaker 1 He’s still fighting and wants to go home.
Speaker 9 This movie is instantly better.
Speaker 8 Johansson would want me to finish.
Speaker 1 I think I got some of her poop in my beard for my potato farming.
Speaker 1 I’m out of earplugs for my nose to block the smell.
Speaker 9 I did add a new trope based specifically on the the hero shaving before the final. Yeah scene, so.
Speaker 1 There’s probably a pretty good version of this movie where someone close to Matt Damon dies in absolutely every scene of the movie, and by the end, he’s the last one. Yeah. What if, like, nobody dies? What if we just up that to 20? Joe? Is it a better movie then?
Speaker 9 Way better. Okay, they’re all stuck on Mars. It tips over.
Speaker 1 Yes. Oh, and that’s like 40%. I’m hearing you say.
Speaker 9 Yeah, it gets to 14% tips over they stay and then slowly he yes has to watch all his crew members die but gets rescued at the end.
Speaker 1 Yep.
Speaker 9 I think it’s a it’s a much different experience. I enjoy it more and America hates it as why. It’s basically what I think it.
Speaker 1 David, did you have a favorite needle drop in this movie?
Speaker 8 Well, I mean, the David Bowie one.
Speaker 1 Bass man.
Speaker 8 Yeah, man, that was perfect. And it, it was at the perfect time of the movie where you’re like, okay, let’s move this. Let’s drop a few souls to get moving forward. Right.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 So what’s this all can is there is there a potentially. Okay. Okay, good. It was very there wasn’t a sound effect for a soul.
Speaker 1 There was one soul, actually, that was kind of amazing where there was a cinematic boom right before the pain. It was like, gosh, being like, whoa, I feel like that should have cost extra. Yeah. I was with you on Spaceman until Waterloo by ABBA drops. Oh, yeah. Just incredible. I loved it so much. There are so many montages in this movie to make time kind of pass faster, I guess, so that we’re not doing a five episode series.
Speaker 8 Which I love. I’m a sucker for a montage.
Speaker 1 I loved every montage in this movie.
Speaker 9 Yeah, I think I’m with David on the David Bowie one, but the the ABBA one. I was trying to figure out what they were trying to say with the Waterloo.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 Like, is this his Waterloo? And or is it just like a song that they had the rights to and they liked it because it fit? I couldn’t figure.
Speaker 1 It out. My if I had to guess. I think it’s the vibe. Ridley Scott was like, let’s drop a vibe, guys.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 This movie came out six years after Iron Man. Did you like that? They made an Iron Man reference with what they were doing.
Speaker 8 Oh yeah, I love that. I thought that was great. I did think about that last scene where they’re trying to line up. Was that a gravity where it’s almost the same scene?
Speaker 1 I don’t remember, actually. Is there something like that?
Speaker 8 Yeah. Where George Clooney, right.
Speaker 1 Yep, yep.
Speaker 8 Where he I mean, that’s where he, like, floats away.
Speaker 1 Don’t spoil it. Don’t spoil it.
Speaker 8 Oh, sorry.
Speaker 1 Joe hasn’t.
Speaker 8 Seen it. That’s where that’s where he gets his scream.
Speaker 9 David don’t worry.
Speaker 8 And sees his family again.
Speaker 9 So happy ending his thing.
Speaker 1 In space. He’s floating and he goes. I could see blue. He looks glorious.
Speaker 8 Yeah. So I thought of like, that vibe there. But I did think it was funny that he was like, wanting to be Iron Man.
Speaker 1 Totally. Yeah. That scene is so much like Wall-E as well, with like, isn’t like a fire extinguisher in Wall-E. Oh yeah.
Speaker 9 Yeah, that last scene was a little. I had shades of like the last The Last Jedi, I think, and End Game where they just, like so many things, have to go right, but everything just kind of goes right for them.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 You know, it’s like, well, we’ve got to get rid of all this weight and we’ve got to create a convertible space. You just throw a tarp over it, like, and everything just kind of has to go right and go right. And you know, by that point I’m just like, fine, let’s let’s rescue this guy. For the love of God, I cannot, cannot handle any more.
Speaker 1 For the sake of Joe’s guy Tucker sanity. We should wrap this up. Yeah.
Speaker 9 So it’s a much better movie than both of those to me. So if you’re like, for if you’re, say we have three movies, you know, we have The Last Jedi, we have endgame and we have Martian. I’m picking the Martian every time.
Speaker 1 Really?
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 Wow. Wow. Okay, there’s some.
Speaker 9 New ones, even though more people die. And the other ones, apparently, I’m just the harbinger of death here. So.
Speaker 8 You know, when you were talking a little bit earlier, I thought, like, oh, you know, what you wanted is you wanted Matt Damon in The Bourne Supremacy, right? Where his girlfriend dies, you know, at the beginning of the movie, you know, like that, like real thing where she was the star in the first movie?
Speaker 9 Yep. That’s exactly what I wanted.
Speaker 8 Yeah. Or Jessica Chastain has to choose.
Speaker 1 You know.
Speaker 9 I love that.
Speaker 8 Yeah. She makes the choice. She shuts the hatch. Well, she’s got eye contact with Michael Pena, you know, and she has to, like, wave goodbye to him as they’re going, you know, something like that.
Speaker 9 Exactly. I think we’ve made this movie infinitely better. Call Ridley Scott, we’re reshooting.
Speaker 1 Can Michael Pena be his character from Ant-Man in this movie?
Speaker 9 Isn’t he just that character in.
Speaker 1 Every movie.
Speaker 8 For chips?
Speaker 1 Chips classic Dax Shepherd?
Speaker 9 I mean, the only movie I’ve seen him not play that character is End of Watch, and it still is that character. But it’s.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9 And that’s that’s another that’s a great movie.
Speaker 1 A lot of discussion of relative velocity at this. At the end of this movie, we’re really just paying attention to that relative velocity a lot. That cracked me up.
Speaker 8 Yeah, a lot of math going into that.
Speaker 1 A lot of math. Yeah. I think we need a Billy Bob Thornton in like the the control room. I think you aren’t a movie with a control room unless Billy Bob Thornton walks in. Agreed. But there were so many scenes in this movie where in the control room, people are just looking at each other, like having eye contact.
Speaker 1 They don’t say anything to each other, but they’re having like, I contact and then doing like minimal movement with their face to show something that seemed to be like a challenge that they had.
Speaker 9 Is it like when two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos, perhaps, and.
Speaker 1 A little bit like Jeff Daniels is like, you know, just I will say that Sean Bean has incredible micro emotes in this movie, just like little things, like a half blink with one of his eyes to kind of show that something’s happening. He’s unbelievable. Is this the one movie Sean Bean doesn’t die in?
Speaker 9 I think we’ve talked about this, but Liam Neeson has the highest percentage of movies he lives through, and Sean Bean has the highest percentage of movies he dies through. So yes, this might be the only one that he lives through.
Speaker 1 But did he die in Patriot Games? Let’s say he didn’t. And it’s that character that has snuck into NASA.
Speaker 1 And has. And now he has a heart.
Speaker 9 Starts over. He got a new lease on life. Yes, totally. And the whole movie is about him trying to cover his tracks on the FBI.
Speaker 1 That’s on.
Speaker 1 He looks at his phone and Harrison Ford is calling throughout the whole movie like, don’t take that. Geez, I want him to.
Speaker 9 Know that’s one episode. The whole episode is him trying to keep his cover. See, this needs to be a TV show. So what I’m saying.
Speaker 1 There was a reverse long kiss goodnight in this where they say, remember in that movie there was like, I need you to wake up the president. In this movie, the president just calls into the movie for a second. Yeah, I loved that. Yeah, because Matt Damon is just kind of typing f words like, everybody is seeing this. He’s like, really?
Speaker 9 I like that they don’t have like an off switch for his emails. Apparently everyone just automatically gets his emails no matter what. Yeah. There’s nothing we can do. There’s just, you know.
Speaker 1 Yeah. No.
Speaker 9 Everyone in the world is seeing your emails right now, so.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Joe, it occurs to me that we’ve been talking about this movie and there’s just a chance in the last 11 years, somebody listening to this maybe hasn’t had the chance to watch The Martian yet. So for that person who has not watched The Martian yet, can we pretend that we’re walking down the aisles of Blockbuster Video wherever you lived in 2015?
Speaker 1 We’re renting movies. We’re trying to figure out which one we should rent. We’re picking up boxes off the shelf, reading the synopsis on the back to figure out what movie we should rent. That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Speaker 12 It’s the back of the box.
Speaker 9 Stranded on Mars, an astronaut, Matt Damon, must learn how to live alone with no hope of rescue. For years and years, this ambitious tour de force takes us into the details of survival and rescue, as slowly the world learns of his fate and the efforts to save him. Can he survive until help comes on a planet with no respite and unrelenting demands?
Speaker 1 Who?
Speaker 9 Do you rent that movie?
Speaker 1 I’m surprised you didn’t just say yes and move on to a different movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1 I think I do rent that movie.
Speaker 9 That’s the hope.
Speaker 1 That is the hope. But that’s not what we’re here to do. That’s like the marketing back of the box. Let’s get to the real honest Joe Sky Tucker unfiltered. Back in the box.
Speaker 9 The pros. It is a love letter to science. The cons I never once was worried about any of the characters. It is a long slog with intermittent moments of laughter. This is designed as a feel good movie and I was happy when it was over. This would have been better as a five episode prestige show on HBO, Ala Chernobyl.
Speaker 9 I’m sure I am an outlier on this movie. It is fine and no more. I was not super happy with this movie as usual.
Speaker 8 Really.
Speaker 9 I am. I am more in on this movie as we have talked about it, but.
Speaker 1 All right guys, well, should we talk about the box office and critical reception of this movie? Absolutely. This movie, we think it cost about $108 million to make, which given how the bench is so deep on this movie, I wonder if everyone just kind of wanted to work with Ridley Scott.
Speaker 9 That’s what it feels like.
Speaker 1 Yeah, $108 million budget domestically. It made 228 internationally for oh two. So this movie needs $630 million.
Speaker 9 I was not prepared for that number.
Speaker 1 What would you have guessed?
Speaker 9 I would have guessed around 300 million total.
Speaker 8 That’s what I was thinking in my head.
Speaker 1 Well, I don’t know if these people liked it or not. Let’s get into what the critics said. Joe, what do you think the The Critic rating is on Rotten Tomatoes for this movie?
Speaker 9 I mean, I feel like at the 70 I will let David give us the real score. I feel like critics would have loved this. So this is like a 93 for critics. What do you think, David?
Speaker 1 Wow.
Speaker 8 I was thinking 92.
Speaker 1 It’s a 91.
Speaker 9 High five. David.
Speaker 1 But it does feel like a 70. It does feel like a 70. I think you’re right. But we’ve got 100,000 audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. So tell me what. What do you think the popcorn meter is on Rotten Tomatoes?
Speaker 9 96.
Speaker 8 99.
Speaker 1 Geez. Near Toy Story levels. No, it’s a 91. We’ve got a 91 and a 91 on this one. All right, all right. So let’s hear what the critic said. We always start with the Seattle Times. Our hometown paper saw an Anderson reviewed it for the for the Seattle Times. He said it’s pretty sunny and often funny a space oddity for a director not known for pictures with a sense of humor.
Speaker 1 Three out of four stars. That is true. Ridley Scott is not typically this funny.
Speaker 9 No, I don’t. I’m trying to think of every Ridley Scott movie. I don’t know how many laughs there are in them, but it is.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 Totally played. Renner was hilarious.
Speaker 9 Well, I mean, obviously that was the comedy gem.
Speaker 1 So 2049 is the funniest year. We can agree on that. But I mean, there’s like Donald Glover was on community at this time. I think Kristen Wiig I think had just finished up with SNL. Lots of funny people in this movie. Manohla Dargis in The New York Times says, what makes this epic personal is Mr. Scott’s filmmaking, in which every soaring aerial shot of a red planet is answered by the intimate landscape of a face.
Speaker 9 Wow. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds good. So.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, she liked it. Here’s my my very favorite critic to read. Kevin Maher from the Times UK. Notoriously hot or cold on a film and not afraid to say it for this movie, he says a muscular storytelling masterclass, a giddy, audience pleasing thrill ride and certainly the most purely entertaining sci fi movie since 2013. Awards. Magnet.
Speaker 1 Gravity four out of five stars.
Speaker 9 Wow.
Speaker 1 Running a.
Speaker 8 Little hot, didn’t he? Watch it. What’s us?
Speaker 1 I think he did. Yeah, he was there with us. All right. Dwight Brown says a half hour into The Martian. Any seasoned moviegoer can figure out where the plotline in this feel good movie has to go. That’s a shame. And the film’s biggest transgression.
Speaker 9 I agree. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Nailed it. Anthony Lane in The New Yorker says Damon has never seemed more at home than he does here, millions of miles adrift. Would any other actor have shouldered the weight of the role with such diligent grace?
Speaker 8 Love that.
Speaker 1 Who would have been better?
Speaker 9 Ryan Gosling, I feel like would have nailed this.
Speaker 1 I mean, obviously.
Speaker 9 I could have seen Robert Downey Jr. It’s a different movie, but.
Speaker 1 Yeah, in 2015. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 8 Damon’s the guy. He’s the only one I can think of.
Speaker 1 Damon’s the guy.
Speaker 8 Yeah.
Speaker 1 I, I think I called Jake Busey.
Speaker 9 Because the scene with the stakes as his father dies in his arms in the first scene. And so that’s driving him the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1 I don’t think we limit it there, though. I think this is also a clone movie. And Gary Busey dies in every scene. A new Gary Busey dies in every scene.
Speaker 8 Do you think Chris Pratt could have done this?
Speaker 1 I think Chris Pratt could have gotten close. David, I think you’re onto something there. But I think those moments when, like when he’s about to get picked up and he’s really emotional. Yeah. I don’t think Chris Pratt cells that as authentically.
Speaker 8 I agree.
Speaker 1 Have you guys watched the new Chris Pratt movie that came out this January.
Speaker 9 The one with Rebecca Ferguson?
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 I have not know.
Speaker 1 It’s called mercy.
Speaker 9 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 And it’s like a it’s like a whodunit almost. But with Chris Pratt just sitting there the whole time.
Speaker 9 An AI as the bad guy. Right.
Speaker 1 And yeah, Rebecca Ferguson is AI. And I got like 35 minutes in. I was like, I don’t think I watched this movie anymore.
Speaker 8 It’s probably too good to be in my algorithm.
Speaker 9 Yeah. I mean, have you seen the Tomorrow War, David?
Speaker 8 No.
Speaker 9 Okay. Call me when you have seen the Tomorrow War with Chris Pratt.
Speaker 8 I will. Tomorrow afternoon.
Speaker 9 It will change your life. And not for the better.
Speaker 1 All right. Last review J.R. Jones in the Chicago Reader says 3-D conveys the frightening depth of space, but the suspense machinery crowds out all but the most banal philosophizing.
Speaker 9 Oh, but now philosophizing could be the nice title for the show. So nailed it.
Speaker 1 There we go, there we go. We did it! We found one.
Speaker 1 All right, guys, are you ready to get to. What do we do next? Drinking games. All right, guys, should we get to drinking games?
Speaker 9 I am so excited to hear what you’re drinking. Games are. But before we do that, we got to start with our stock drinking games again. They don’t have to be alcohol. I mean, just because we’re hopeless alcoholics doesn’t mean that you have to be throw your life away like we have. So. Or me? Clearly.
Speaker 1 I keep thinking it’s going to stop the crying.
Speaker 9 Yeah. It doesn’t. It doesn’t just make the crying bearable.
Speaker 1 Less memorable. The crying is less memorable.
Speaker 9 Exactly. It’s took a dark turn anyway. Catch me at a meeting tomorrow morning anyway. Does this movie have a silent or surprise helicopter? I didn’t think so until the last scene of this movie. And then, poof, there is a helicopter out of nowhere for you. So it is great.
Speaker 1 Amazing.
Speaker 9 Pushing and enhance. Oh, every time there’s a satellite picture of Mars, they are enhancing the the bejesus out of that thing.
Speaker 1 Okay, okay.
Speaker 9 There are several moments when people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos. There’s an explosion where silent suffering and ringing in the ears. When Matt Damon forgets how much oxygen is in his exhalations. The opening credit scene does lock into place with the sound. The score makes like a little bit of a tinkle sound. It does not flash back to dialog.
Speaker 9 There is some bad CGI, especially that opening scene with the Mars. I don’t know what it is. Storm. Basically no great bad shot because no one is shooting anything at this movie. It’s weird. I did not notice inexplicably wet streets, but that’s because most of this movie takes place on Mars. Yeah, but, Greg, David, did you notice any on Earth when they were showing scenes of Earth?
Speaker 9 I didn’t know, but.
Speaker 1 I.
Speaker 9 Didn’t know. Sometimes I missed these, so.
Speaker 8 The only thing I noticed was explicable wet Viking.
Speaker 1 Yes.
Speaker 9 So dealer’s choice if you drink on that one or not. But we do have a give us the room, which I was so excited about. No Interpol and no cell phone smash. So those are our stock drinking games. I toss it to you as our guest of honor. David Hallgren, what is your first drinking game?
Speaker 8 Anytime someone enters the airlock.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 That’s such a good one. What about you, Greg?
Speaker 1 Every time they announce a soul. Oh, my God, you drink water?
Speaker 9 Every other one on that one.
Speaker 1 I’m not talking about the ping. I’m talking about just every time they say what soul will be or is or was okay. That’s when you’re taking a drink.
Speaker 9 Okay. This one is a tough one. So you’re going to need to like alternate with water. If you are drinking alcohol anytime words on the screen make a noise.
Speaker 1 Take a drink. Okay.
Speaker 8 That’s a lot.
Speaker 1 That’s selling.
Speaker 9 It’s a lot because every soul, every every everything.
Speaker 1 On it.
Speaker 9 All right, David, what do you got for us?
Speaker 8 Anytime someone is mentioned or referred to by their last name.
Speaker 9 That’s such a good one.
Speaker 8 I mean, Martinez Johansen.
Speaker 1 Really good. Perfect. Really good. Anytime someone is saying out loud what they are also typing at the same time.
Speaker 9 Because that’s how we all type emails is by saying them out loud. As for typing them.
Speaker 1 Yes.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 It happens a very healthy amount of time and I loved it every time. Take a drink.
Speaker 9 Awesome. My next one, and I mentioned this one before, is every time Jeff Daniels is at a podium speaking. Take a drink.
Speaker 1 Love it. Yeah, great.
Speaker 8 I had that one to Jeff Daniels press conferences.
Speaker 1 Awesome. Yeah. What else do you have? David, anytime.
Speaker 8 They have initials for abbreviations like.
Speaker 1 Yes.
Speaker 8 The have the MAV, the OMS like. Yeah. Everything has like a shortened abbreviation.
Speaker 1 Love it. That’s really.
Speaker 8 Like a drink.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Every time they say the word watney.
Speaker 1 Take a drink.
Speaker 8 Super hydration.
Speaker 1 Oh, my God.
Speaker 9 I love that. I have anytime a disco song is playing. Take a drink.
Speaker 1 No. That’s good.
Speaker 8 I have anytime. Mark Watney looks at his wrist computer.
Speaker 9 Again. Alternate with water.
Speaker 1 Every time someone references a degree, whether it’s of tipping something over or temperature. Take a drink.
Speaker 9 Awesome. I have anytime something is not dirty when it should be like coming in out of a storm, or when he drives miles and miles to uncover something that has been buried in the sand and just like, dusted off with his hands. And it’s like, perfectly clean. Drove me crazy.
Speaker 1 In this movie. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 That’s so great. I have anytime you see a potato.
Speaker 9 It’s my favorite so far.
Speaker 1 Yup, yup. Anytime they say a percentage. Take a drink.
Speaker 9 I love that one. That’s really good. So it’s a PG 13 movie, 2015. They say the F word one time and then reference it very cleverly throughout the movie. So anytime they either say it the one time, I think in 2015, they were allowed to say it in a in a PG 13 movie and then reference the F word going forward.
Speaker 9 Take a drink.
Speaker 1 That is really good. Yeah.
Speaker 8 Well, you have to go with this one. Any use of duct tape?
Speaker 1 Yeah. No. So good. That’s great. That’s a really good one. Yeah, that’s a really good one. It’s the proper amount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going to say every time someone says a swear word, even if the audio isn’t there, like the camera is outside of his thing. But you see him swearing sometimes messages come through and there are some stars in there, so they don’t actually show the word.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Anytime a swear word is referenced. Is that the same as yours, Joe, or is that different?
Speaker 9 I think that’s different. Mine is very specific to the F word.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 9 I have control room shots where they’re either happy or sad, as you know, things are exploding or launching into space.
Speaker 8 Okay. Here’s one. Any video message?
Speaker 1 Oh. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 9 Again. Drink water with that one. If you’re.
Speaker 1 That could be rotating through the room. If you have a bunch of friends over and you’re watching this.
Speaker 9 Every other.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Let’s see I have every time there’s a montage. Take a drink. And if there’s a David Bowie song playing that’s called Starman at the same time, that’s two drinks. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 9 So I had I had Montage to David Bowie. So finish your drink on that one. The other one that I have is finish your drink. If there’s a Lord of the rings reference with Sean Bean in the scene. Finish your drink.
Speaker 8 So great. Any time Donald Glover explains something.
Speaker 1 Oh.
Speaker 9 That’s so good.
Speaker 1 It is so good. Can we listen to that? Yes, please.
Speaker 7 Rich Purnell.
Speaker 4 Astro dynamics. Tell them what you just told me.
Speaker 6 I can get the Hermes back to Mars by soul 561. Okay, let’s pretend that this stapler is the Hermes, and you are sorry. What’s your name again?
Speaker 10 Teddy. I’m the director of NASA.
Speaker 6 Cool. Teddy. Your earth. And right now, the Hermes is headed towards you, starting its month long deceleration to intersect. But instead, what I’m proposing is.
Speaker 6 We start accelerating immediately to preserve velocity and gain even more. We don’t intersect with Earth at all, but we come close enough to get a gravity assist in a just course. While we’re doing that. You resupply with the probe.
Speaker 4 The tie and shin.
Speaker 6 Pick up whatever provisions we need, and now we’re accelerating towards Mars.
Speaker 6 You’re Mars. Now we’re going to fast at this point to fall into orbit. But we can do a flyby, and then we just head home.
Speaker 6 I done math checks out.
Speaker 10 Rich.
Speaker 6 Yes, sir.
Speaker 10 Get out.
Speaker 9 Of the room.
Speaker 1 Give us the room. Yeah.
Speaker 9 So they’re like three other drinking games that we mentioned just in that scene?
Speaker 1 Yep.
Speaker 8 Totally. That was like, two beers worth.
Speaker 9 And including the other ones that I have of using things as ships, aka the stapler and the Armageddon reference of the slingshot. That scene would make you drunk. Just just that whatever two minute clip that you just played is perfect in every way.
Speaker 1 So great.
Speaker 9 What else you got for us, David O.
Speaker 8 Did we say this? Any mention of the Rover?
Speaker 1 No, no, that’s a good one.
Speaker 9 I know we missed that.
Speaker 1 I’ve got every time he writes a number of days on something.
Speaker 8 That’s great.
Speaker 1 I think I think.
Speaker 9 I have anytime there’s parallel process of like they’re working on the same problem on Earth and then on Mars at the same time. So kind of an Apollo 13 reference there.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And I will just throw in my other homage to other space movies reference, which that is a Apollo 13. There’s Armageddon, there’s 2001 at least. So those are the three that I remember, and I’m sure there are other other references in there as well.
Speaker 1 I think Apollo 13 is a really strong like spiritual prequel to this movie.
Speaker 9 David, do you have any others?
Speaker 8 Oh, anytime. He has to handle poop.
Speaker 1 Yeah. My last one is any time they mention a relative velocity number. Yeah. Take a drink. So you’re finishing strong in this movie? Absolutely.
Speaker 9 Yeah. My last one is any time you notice that him not eating is actually not having any effect on him in the.
Speaker 1 Movie.
Speaker 9 Whatsoever, except for one scene where they show him sort of naked, but then his face looks totally normal in the next scene.
Speaker 1 So. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 8 It was a body double.
Speaker 1 Is that true?
Speaker 8 Yeah. They used a body double for that one scene.
Speaker 1 Oh, funny. All right. Joe. Well, I’m not sure we’re going to have much to talk about here, but, you know, when we’re watching these movies, there are there is an equation that gets you to great bad movie. And so it’s time for us to go through what those things actually are. And Joe’s trope Lightning Round aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Speaker 9 You all might be shocked at how many tropes are in this movie. There are sound effects on things that don’t make sounds. There are body cams and sensors that are on people and on screen. There’s a $300 haircut, and then a new trope of a shaves before the final battle scene or final scene. Exploding fire extinguisher color filters on a third world country or a third world planet, in this case.
Speaker 1 A third world.
Speaker 9 Or I should say, economically, I don’t know. There’s a better term for that than third World, but I am not going to sue late for me to think about that. We have kind of a reluctant hero. We have amazing recovery. We have medical care by a partner, love interest or staples oneself up. We have downloading a file under pressure and a call trace timer in this movie.
Speaker 9 So trope heavy if you will, on this great ish movie. Greg. Important questions coming your way.
Speaker 1 Yeah, we’ve been dancing around some of the most important things to talk about, and I’ve had it. Let’s get to important questions. All right guys. Did The Martian hold up in 2015?
Speaker 8 It held up everything. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Yes. Held up my entire world. Yeah. Joe. Sky. Tucker. Does it hold up now?
Speaker 9 Mostly.
Speaker 1 Mostly. Okay.
Speaker 9 It’s okay. It’s not the worst. It’s not the best. I feel like it’s probably held up better in 2015 than it does now. For me, I would say.
Speaker 1 That might be true. How about you, David?
Speaker 8 I would say yes. In an 11 Musk centric world. This movie holds up as an alternative vision for Mars.
Speaker 1 Interesting. Okay. We might revisit that theme later on in the show. Maybe on a future question. Joe, how hard do they sell the good guy in this movie?
Speaker 9 I think they show it. They show us who Matt Damon is throughout. They don’t really do the classic selling of the good guy.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I don’t think they really do that. Do they do it? Do they go through the list of his rap sheet or anything like that?
Speaker 8 No. But when he holds up that thing and he says, botanist, you know.
Speaker 1 Yeah, sure sells himself. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 8 A little bit.
Speaker 9 Yeah. He is the best botanist ever. You know, it’s the first movie ever, I think, that has a botanist as the protagonist, so it’s got that going for it.
Speaker 1 How hard do they sell the bad guy, aka mars? They do. There’s a lot of, like, my head will explode kind of stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 9 Yeah. They show it. They don’t do the classic. There are storms coming in that are, you know, ten times worse than our normal whatever tornado, you know, tornadoes or those sorts of things.
Speaker 8 Category. Category 11 storm.
Speaker 9 Yeah, exactly. They could do. They could have that. If Michael Bay directs. They totally do that, though.
Speaker 1 By the way, this movie is mostly true for what they knew in 2015 about Mars, except that that storm never would have been as dangerous as it was a hundred mile an hour wind in Mars, which is the thing that happens. It would actually actually be. It would feel like seven miles an hour. I think the very low number, it would feel like a breeze.
Speaker 1 It would not be doing what it’s doing here. But, you know, Andy, we needed it. Yeah. The other thing I should say is he wouldn’t have to make water the way he does, because after this movie was made, they discovered that there’s water in the soil just under the surface on Mars. And all he would have needed to do was cook that a little bit and then capture the steam.
Speaker 1
Speaker 8 Nice.
Speaker 1 So, yeah, you know, that’s that’s why people listen to this podcast for information like that.
Speaker 9 Obviously.
Speaker 8 That’s so great.
Speaker 1 I’m sure I said it wrong and I’ll regret it. Next week in our bonus episode.
Speaker 8 Call in if you want to refute what Greg, just say.
Speaker 1 Totally. Totally.
Speaker 9 Also, no one’s listening to the call in line, so.
Speaker 1 That’s a good point. Is there romance in this movie?
Speaker 9 No. It’s great. It’s awesome.
Speaker 8 It’s Kate. Mara does kiss that guy’s helmet.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 8 It says don’t tell anyone.
Speaker 1 Sebastian. Stan. Yeah.
Speaker 8 Sebastian. Stan.
Speaker 1 It’s a nice moment. Yeah. Like, don’t tell anyone to do that. The crew almost always funny. Very sarcastic. Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 8 Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 1 Matt Damon was concerned that he had just played an astronaut in interstellar. And Ridley Scott said, don’t worry about it. This is a totally different character, a totally different crew. It’s very sarcastic. This is going to be a funny movie. Guys, are we bad people for loving this movie? Well, Joe doesn’t love this movie. No, I know that.
Speaker 1 Are we bad people? Joe? Are David and I bad people for loving this movie?
Speaker 9 I don’t think so. This is a feel good movie. This is not a. The values of this movie are not bad. I’m probably the bad person for not liking this movie.
Speaker 1 I think.
Speaker 9 Probably more accurate.
Speaker 8 Yeah, I feel like this movie was the movie we needed it to be in 2015.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 And and I can’t apologize for what I needed at that point. Yeah. Is it what we need today? Maybe not. So, Joe, you’re a good person, too. All right.
Speaker 1 We are doing this movie because Matt Damon is in the Odyssey opening this week. But also, I wanted to get to it because just about across the board, everyone that I’ve heard talk about Project Hail Mary has said it was much better than I thought it was going to be. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.
Speaker 1 So I wonder if Project Hail Mary kind of fixes the Martian problems that you have. Joe, we’ll find out. All right. Let’s start with you. David, does this movie deserve a sequel?
Speaker 8 Yes.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 8 And here’s the sequel. It’s. I mean, we’re starting with Matt Damon, and we’ve had oceans eight, 11, 12 and 13.
Speaker 9 Yep. I like going.
Speaker 8 Now we have to fund the next Aries mission. Yeah. And where are we going to get that? No one’s funding it. So now Matt Damon calls some of his colleagues Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Don Cheadle.
Speaker 1 Yep.
Speaker 8 He gets the gang back together to pull the heist. To go back to Mars.
Speaker 1 Oh, I love it.
Speaker 9 So, Ocean’s 14, directed by. Can we get Ron Howard to direct? And this also be the sequel to Apollo 13?
Speaker 1 Yes. Totally.
Speaker 8 Oceans and Apollo 14.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes. Wow. Both 14.
Speaker 8 It’s just 14. Just left. Yeah.
Speaker 9 Even better.
Speaker 8 Yeah.
Speaker 9 How much money do you need? And green light all the way is what I say.
Speaker 1 Yeah. $400 million. Yeah. Yeah. Have you guys heard about the Ocean’s prequel? That’s in the works? No, it is Danny Ocean, the character that George Clooney plays. It’s his parents. Written by and played by Bradley Cooper. And the wife is Margot Robbie.
Speaker 8 Oh, yeah, I’ll see that.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 Me too. Monica Barbaros in it. It looks pretty killer.
Speaker 8 Because George and Sandy were like the siblings. Right.
Speaker 1 Right. It’s almost like when they showed all the flashbacks in Hobbs and Shaw.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Vanessa Kirby and her brothers.
Speaker 9 Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 Speaking of Hobbs and Shaw, you did mention Hobbs and Shaw. Travel logic. David, did you want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 8 Yeah. I love this because this was the exact opposite. Yes. You know, like in Hobbs and Shaw, you’re in Russia, and 36 minutes later, you’re getting off your plane in South Africa right here. You literally start in the spaceship in the first, like, seven minutes of the movie. Yeah. And you travel the entire time? The entire movie to the end.
Speaker 8 All they’re doing is trying to get from A to B. Yeah. It’s the exact opposite of Hobbs and Shah. Travel.
Speaker 1 Yeah. And it would just skip, like, suddenly it’s like a hundred souls later.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 8 And in 14, they’re going to. We’re we’re going to employ Hobbs and Shaw travel logic just to keep. Keep it going.
Speaker 1 Yeah. You have to. Yeah. In this economy, you have.
Speaker 9 We need some sort of quantum warp drive that makes things go faster in space. And then all of a sudden, we’ve solved the problem and we can get anywhere we need to. So.
Speaker 1 Joe, does it deserve a sequel?
Speaker 9 I don’t know if it deserves a sequel because I feel like it told the story it needed to tell. Okay. But I feel like there’s a sequel out there, and maybe it’s Project Hail Mary as the unofficial sequel. It made enough money to get a sequel, is what I would say.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that there should be a sequel where there’s like a tech billionaire’s first manned tech billionaire trip to Mars and something goes wrong and there’s they’re trapped there. And Mark Whatley is a retired astronaut, and he starts talking to them, sending them messages and telling them how to get out of it.
Speaker 9 And does he have to come back out of retirement to maybe save the day? I’ll. Maverick.
Speaker 1 Yes. Okay. Totally.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 8 Or Robert Duvall and Armageddon.
Speaker 9 Wait, wasn’t he in Deep Impact?
Speaker 8 Yeah. I got those mixed up.
Speaker 9 God damn it, David. It’s the last time we have you on the show. Never mix up. Deep impact and Armageddon ever again. In fact. Don’t look at me in the eye. And you’ll have to walk the faces behind me and I’ll.
Speaker 8 But Frodo Baggins was in Armageddon, wasn’t he?
Speaker 1 That’s true. Yes. Let me ask you a question that occurred to me the other day. Sometimes, you know, just walking around. I think everybody does this. Sometimes I ask myself important questions.
Speaker 9 I cannot wait for this question.
Speaker 1 I spent a little bit of time the other day on if I can only press play on one one of these two movies, which one would I do in 2026? Deep Impact or Armageddon? Which one do you choose in 2026?
Speaker 9 It’s been easily 30 years since I’ve seen both movies.
Speaker 1
Speaker 9 Deep impact is a better movie in terms of frivolous. I’m just putting on a movie. Armageddon is a way to go, but it’s hard for me to pick Michael Bay in this moment. David, I’m going to let you decide.
Speaker 8 Ten times out of ten. It’s Armageddon.
Speaker 9 Wow. Okay.
Speaker 8 It’s so much more entertaining. Ridiculous. Stupid. You know, I feel like Deep Impact tries to make it bound, right? And Armageddon is space bound. And. And I just like that. Plus all the side characters in Armageddon. You know, Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke. Duncan, Billy Bob Thornton.
Speaker 9 Oh, good. You know.
Speaker 8 All of those people just bring that up for me. The enjoyment level. Is it a better movie? No, it’s it’s ridiculous.
Speaker 9 I think I’m with you, David. I think it’s Armageddon. I can’t believe I’m saying that.
Speaker 1 Well, let me follow that up with the next important question. Does this movie deserve a prequel?
Speaker 9 I thought we figured out that the prequel is the 355. And what was the other one?
Speaker 1 Oh.
Speaker 9 And shooter. Shooter, shooter.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 9 So it’s already got two amazing prequels.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. All right. Very important question. I’m very hesitant to ask this. And this one’s actually come up quite a bit in the past. Should this movie have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 2016?
Speaker 9 What’s it up against?
Speaker 1 It is up against spotlight, which was the winner? Okay, the big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, mad Max Fury Road, The Revenant Room, and a movie called The Martian. This movie was nominated for Best Picture.
Speaker 9 Oh, wow. I don’t have a problem with the thing nominated.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 8 I will not just allow it, and I have no problem. In fact, I have 100% support. I think it should have won the Academy Award.
Speaker 1 Wow. Wow. I mean, we should also say that, like, the Kingsman came out this year.
Speaker 9 I mean, if it’s against the Kingsman, the Kingsman should win. But that’s just my humble opinion.
Speaker 1 By the way, I started watching The King’s Man, the prequel, Ralph Fiennes, and did not regret it. So good. Okay, I got about 35 minutes in and it was incredible. Okay, so I appreciate you guys encouraging me to watch that. A couple more important questions. How can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake? David, let’s start with you.
Speaker 8 I do have some notes.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 8 First off, Michael been, you know, he was in alien.
Speaker 1 Yes.
Speaker 8 And. Yeah, just bring him back. So.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 8 Okay. He makes any movie like this better? Great. Second, maybe. Yoda.
Speaker 1 Okay. Where is Yoda working?
Speaker 8 Yoda’s in a cave on Mars.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 8 Oh, he’s going to, like, visit. One of the sites comes out. Yoda gives him a little bit of, you know, insight, you know? Yoda.
Speaker 1 Okay.
Speaker 9 I didn’t realize Mars was in the system, but that’s okay.
Speaker 8 It’s one planet over from Tatooine.
Speaker 9 Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s.
Speaker 8 Well, the other note I have is. And we talked about this earlier. Wilson. The volleyball.
Speaker 1 Yes.
Speaker 8 And then what I talked about as well to Brad Pitt. George Clooney, basically the oceans cast.
Speaker 9 Yeah. 14. Right. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 14.
Speaker 1 Joe, what do you.
Speaker 9 Think the the only thing that I have is what if we remake this movie and Sam Rockwell plays every character in the movie?
Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.
Speaker 9 Yep. Sam. I mean, Sam Rockwell might be the only actor that I think could do better than Matt Damon having just watched. Good luck. Have fun. Don’t die. I think Sam Rockwell is a living legend.
Speaker 1 And have you seen moon?
Speaker 9 I have not.
Speaker 1 Oh, he kind of made The Martian. Okay. And it was directed by David Bowie’s son or.
Speaker 8 Galaxy Quest.
Speaker 9 Yeah, I have seen Galaxy. It’s amazing in that, too. So, Sam Rockwell, just throw him in there anywhere. What about you, Greg? How do you make this movie better? Or can you.
Speaker 1 Well, I’ve already said that they’re cloned Gary Busey, and they die in every scene. Yeah, but it’s, like, fresh. Yeah. It’s like we’ve seen it before. But this particular Gary Busey clone has never died before. And so they are selling it. Yeah. The only way only Busey can. The other one is in every scene. Just somebody in the crew passes away.
Speaker 1 But honestly, I really like this movie. I probably wouldn’t change very much. Okay. Other than the whole Gary Busey thing. Yeah.
Speaker 8 And in the last scene, when all the students ask the question to raise their hand. Yeah. Jake Busey sitting in the front row, and he asks the question.
Speaker 1 Yes, totally. All right. Next important question. What album is this movie? David.
Speaker 8 So I thought quite a bit. I mean, they give us some music in the movie, which that could be inspirational. But I went off of that and I thought of an album that I loved growing up, and one reason I loved it was because of its space themes on it.
Speaker 1 Oh.
Speaker 8 So I think that this movie is Boston Third stage.
Speaker 1 Wow. Okay.
Speaker 9 I was not ready for Boston to make an appearance in the show.
Speaker 8 The album cover is a is a guitar. That’s a spaceship.
Speaker 1 You know?
Speaker 8 Yeah. I just couldn’t get away from that.
Speaker 1 Didn’t they record that, like, in their apartment or something? Yeah.
Speaker 8 I actually looked. I did a little research on it. They told the record company that they were in a professional studio because they didn’t want to travel to LA. They were all like, why would we go there? Let’s just do it in Tom’s apartment. So they lied to the the record company and said, oh yeah, we’re in a professional studio in Boston.
Speaker 9 Awesome.
Speaker 1 So doing it on their own? Yeah. Seeing the word out of Boston record. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 8 Figuring it out. One step at a time.
Speaker 1 Yes. All right, Joe, what’s your answer to this?
Speaker 9 So mine is based on the fact that, as you say, the bench on this movie is crazy. So everybody is in this movie. The cast is crazy. Yup. Any one of many of the people could have carried this movie or carry movies in the in the future. So this album is the Traveling Wilburys Volume one.
Speaker 1 Wow.
Speaker 9 Everybody’s on that.
Speaker 1 For the people who don’t know. Tell us what Traveling Wilburys was.
Speaker 9 I mean, it’s Tom petty.
Speaker 8 Roy Orbison.
Speaker 9 Yeah. Help me out here. George Harrison. It is every famous musician from, like, the 60s.
Speaker 1 Bob Dylan. Jeff Lynne from yellow.
Speaker 9 Yeah. On this, on this album albums, I should say. It also was a very popular album with my parents. So I have listened to these songs over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And it is. It’s great music and to me, fitting for this movie of everyone’s in this movie.
Speaker 1 I think so Jeff Lynne produced that, and I think they recorded that at Bob Dylan’s house. Yeah.
Speaker 9 I think so.
Speaker 1 And I think there’s like some percussion that’s them hitting the back coils of his kitchen refrigerator with some drumsticks. But they had to do it really fast, too, because Bob Dylan was about to leave on tour when they decided to do it and they had like nine days or something.
Speaker 9 The best things come out of when you’re like, under pressure or you’re trying to, you know, get around things. And so what about you, Greg? What album is this for you?
Speaker 1 Well, man, first of all, I have to say that’s such a good way to approach it. And I approached it the other way, which was one person stuck. And that’s the limitation. You know, just one person in a place. And I’ve already done the first Boney record, which would have been a really good one for this. And I’ve already done the first Foo Fighters record, which would have also been a really good one for this.
Speaker 1 So I was looking for another album, and this album has been coming up a lot in my life in the last couple of weeks, and so it seems perfect. I’m going to say that this is the 2015 album Currents by Tame Impala.
Speaker 9 Oh, all right.
Speaker 1 Friend of the show, Drew Baker, has argued that Tame and Paula is the band of the 20 tens. If you narrow it down, what is the band that symbolizes this decade? And he thinks this record is the record that says it? I think he would say that, but basically Tim and Paula Tours is a band, but it’s really just one dude.
Speaker 1 It’s this guy, Kevin Parker, and I don’t know if you guys have listened to Much Tame and Paula, but he would. It’s kind of like psych rock, really fuzzy guitars. And at the end of his second album, Touring cycle, he was at a friend’s house and that friend put on the song Staying Alive by the BGS. And he had this completely like, visceral experience, and he just decided, I’m not going to hide behind fuzzy guitars anymore.
Speaker 1 I’m going to make a clean sounding record that both, you know, represents me, but also could be played in a dance club. And so he made this album called currents, and I think this record will be like Amongst the Cockroaches when the World Ends. I think this record is really going to be referenced and around for a very long time, and he did it on his own.
Speaker 1 So I’m going to say that this album is currently with him.
Speaker 9 I love it.
Speaker 1 All right guys. It has finally come down to this. It is time for us to rate this movie. We have a scale. Great bad movie. Good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie. Worst case scenario. Awful bad movie. David Horgan, where do you land on this, on this scale?
Speaker 8 Well, Joe, you’ve references, you start the pod in a place and this is a dynamic podcast. So then I have moved. I started off like getting ready to push the golden buzzer and say, this is a great, great movie. Yep. But I do think this is a great bad movie.
Speaker 1 Yeah, I like it. The relationships shaped how you felt about it. Yeah, yeah. Through conversation and connection. Yeah. Joe Sky Tucker, how do you rate this movie?
Speaker 9 Well, I think what this proves is the real treasure is the friends we make along the way. Yeah.
Speaker 1 And so.
Speaker 9 Similarly, I was at an okay, bad movie when I started this podcast. I can’t get a great bad movie, but this is a good, bad movie. There’s enough there. Love it to be good. It’s. I can’t go all the way. So it’s a good, bad movie for me. But what about you? Greg, where do you. Where do you stand on this?
Speaker 1 I can’t believe I’m just bringing this up now, but I’m not opposed to great, great movie on this one.
Speaker 9 Okay. Wow.
Speaker 1 It has to be unanimous for it to be a thing. But that’s how high on this movie I am. Like, I feel bad saying great bad movie when it comes to the people and what they accomplished in this movie. But I am going to say great bad movie. Okay. We need to find some great, great movies. Our batting average is pretty low on great, great movies in the last 18 months.
Speaker 9 It’s got to be. That’s that’s the pinnacle. So yeah.
Speaker 8 You know, what are the great, great movies?
Speaker 1 Edge of tomorrow.
Speaker 8 It’s so.
Speaker 1 Great and unstoppable.
Speaker 9 There’s been to end of list. Does there need to be any more?
Speaker 1 I don’t know if you know about that movie. It’s because a train with no brakes is a train with no brakes.
Speaker 9 It’s got a Tony Scott of helicopters, and it’s still a great, great movie.
Speaker 8 Oh, is that there? Yeah. That’s awesome. I love that.
Speaker 9 I have to give a shout out to our amazing editor, Sam Cunningham, who takes our garbled mess and turns us into a coherent, streamlined podcast. If you’re looking for a podcast editor, reach out to us. We’ll connect you with Sam Cunningham. He’s amazing. Just had a baby, so he’s really sleep deprived and only gives us 100%. So he’ll give you 99% on your podcast.
Speaker 9 But for us, he gives 100%, 110% probably maybe 115. Who knows? But Sam Cunningham, you are the third wheel. Third spoke I don’t know what the right analogy is. You make this podcast what it is. Thank you so much. And we couldn’t do this without you. And if you edit out any of this, I will hunt you down and find you.
Speaker 1 So wow. Got really dark at the end of.
Speaker 9 This way. It got really dark. But don’t. He really makes this podcast thing. We say the same things like 30 times in this and he like, takes the best part of all of what we do. So thank you, Sam, for all you do for us.
Speaker 1 Listener. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please go to whatever app you’re listening to it on and give us a rating. We would appreciate five stars and leave an inside joke as a comment or some kind of comment. That is one of the best ways you could possibly help this show out. Another way is just telling a friend or as Joe has requested, 100 friends.
Speaker 9 Yeah, if you don’t have one on your friends, don’t listen to this show is basically what we’re saying.
Speaker 1 It’s a small ask. It’s a small ask.
Speaker 9 Smallest just a hundred of your closest friends. Please tell them to listen to the show.
Speaker 1 Totally.
Speaker 9 And then tell them to tell 100 people that they know and then we’ll take over. The world is what we’re saying.
Speaker 1 It’s a pyramid scheme. Suddenly sounds exactly like a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 9 Yes, exactly like a permit scheme is what we’re saying.
Speaker 1 Dave, is there anything that you want to plug before you wrap up?
Speaker 8 Yeah. Oh, thanks for asking. You know, I work with not on my watch, which is a 501 C3 out of new Jersey. And we work with kids and women and self-defense and character. And we have some camps coming up, run out of our Jiu-Jitsu studio in Pennington, new Jersey. So if you get a chance to check out WWE.
Speaker 8 Look us up and support us if you can. If you know in the area, sign up for our summer camps. There’s still some spots.
Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, I’m jealous. I wish I could be in those camps. All right, well, Joe, I do want to also kind of piggyback on what you were saying about Sam Cunningham. And, you know, when you think about someone as awesome as Sam and the work that he does on this, it really makes me just want to say, oh, oh my gosh, I just noticed the time.
Speaker 1 Joe.
Speaker 9 Yeah.
Speaker 1 We got this has been incredible. I don’t want to take away from anything we’ve just done. It’s been great. It’s been great. Super great. To start with a positive. Yeah. But I just noticed that the calculations have been incorrect this whole time. And I need to go talk to Donald Glover about that and, and and figure this out.
Speaker 1 So I better go.
Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah. That tracks I’ve also got to do some math. I’ve got to recalculate how much oxygen excel so I don’t blow myself up again. So that’s right.
Speaker 1 Sorry. That makes sense.
Speaker 8 Oh that’s great. I do have to go check my Mars calendar to see what soul it is.
Speaker 9 No.
Speaker 9 Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 Okay. Well, that works for me, because, you know, much like Jessica Chastain, I’m almost positive I left someone behind on a plan in a while back, and I feel like I should go pick them up again, so I got to go.
Speaker 9 Yeah. That track that tracks. Yeah. This email I just sent through space probably could have been a satellite image. So I’m going to go check on that.
Speaker 8 Oh that’s good because I just found a bin of Joe and Greg’s poop and I have to go plant some potatoes.
Speaker 1 Here’s some earplugs. This will help. Okay, well, that works for me, guys, I I’m sure you’ve noticed as we’ve been talking, but I wear, you know, my emotions on my face, and I’m sure I look like a guy who ran out of ketchup seven days ago. And so I’m going to go see if I have some Vicodin to dip my potatoes in as a substitute.
Speaker 1 So I better go.
Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah. Like, Lloyd, I just found the Vicodin. So we’re all good. All good?
Speaker 1 Yeah.
Speaker 9 And I’m late to my potato harvest, so, you know, I’ll be back. I’ll be back constantly.
Speaker 1 You’ve always been late to that one.
Speaker 8 That’s great, because I have to go write a hexadecimal code so that I can communicate across the solar system.
Speaker 1 Oh, no. Again? Yeah. Interesting. Okay, I, I don’t want to bring up, like, a sticky point so late in the show, but I was very clear, guys, that I wanted you to call me Captain Blond Beard during this episode, and you haven’t. So I’m going to head out.
Speaker 9 Yes. Well, captain Blond Beard leaves in a huff again. So that tracks that tracks. Anyway, I’ve got six months of work to do, but I feel like I can probably get that down to 14 days if I cut out all safety measures. So I’ll be right back.
Speaker 8 Oh, that’s so great. I have to go colonize Uranus. David Hogan, space pirate.
Speaker 1 Yes!
Speaker 9 Oh my God, that’s got to be no notes.
Speaker 1 All right, well that works for me. So guys, thank you so much for watching The Martian with me this week. And I will see you soon.
Speaker 9 See you soon.
Speaker 8 See you later.