Tom 0:00

One of HG Wells' apocalyptic social satire was actually about Tom Cruise's parenting skills and some really loud tripods. It takes Wells's chilly, slow burn dismantling of Victorian complacency and swap it for divorced dad drama, running, screaming, crazy Tim Robbins, and the occasional alien blender.

Joe 0:36

When you say the tripods, I just wanted to go. It took me a bit to figure out whether that was the tripods or just the music. Right. Oh boy. This is Shelf to Screen, the podcast where we discuss sci-fi and fantasy literary adaptations to the big and or a small screen. I'm Joe Perry.

Jen 1:00

I'm Jen Isgrow.

Joe 1:01

And I'm Tom Kacosa. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about the classic. We only do classics around here. Classic sci-fi novel. Yes. Uh sorry, sorry. War of the Worlds by HG Wells. Um, and the 2005 adaptation by Steven Spielberg. Now there was a there was a 1953 or something like that uh movie that was made of this, and there was also a uh another adaptation uh with a slightly different take that came out not that long ago. Yeah, with uh Ice Cube, I remember, if I remember correctly. That's correct. Um there's a lot to talk about.

Tom 1:45

Yeah, I I I think we'd be uh neglectful to not mention the the the real I think the most famous adaptation of this is probably the radio play adaptation that uh a uh a young uh I think pre-Citizen Knight, Orson Wells did, that people thought was a real alien invasion. So um this this spoiler, this does not have that level of reality to it. It doesn't? I did not at any point get confused, no.

Joe 2:18

Okay. Okay. It didn't feel like uh like an action movie at all.

Tom 2:25

There were uh well, I guess I don't know how you want to get into it.

Joe 2:29

So let's let's let's get back to basics because we were doing a TV series before this, so we kind of fell a little bit out of a pattern, whatever pattern we had established for a very short time. Because I didn't need to add this question, but I did, I'm sorry, ask this question, but I did, you know, in the other episodes when we first started, you know, we did movies and we did the first episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is you know, what is your uh first introduction to War of the Worlds, whether it was the book or the movie or whatever?

Jen 2:59

I read this book a really long time ago. I vaguely remembered it, but I have read it again over the last week or two and watched the movie yesterday having never seen it before.

Joe 3:10

Jen, how was how is the read? How would you describe it? If you could pick one word to describe the read.

Jen 3:16

Oh. Tumultuous. Tumultuous. He loves that word. Tumult, tumultuous, use that word a lot. Um, but it I would not describe this book as tumultu as a tumultuous read.

Joe 3:32

Okay. How about you, Tom?

Tom 3:35

Um I feel like um something like this this omnipresent, like I don't remember a time where I didn't know something about this. Uh I too had read the book when I was much younger. Like I I mean, like preteen, you know, childhood, like probably too young to really understand what I was reading. So I I also read it anew uh in preparation for this show, and it was close to reading it. I knew it was gonna happen, kind of, but like I didn't remember any of the details of it. So that was a that was a fun experience. I think my first exposure to it was knowing about that radio play and reading about reading about it before I had seen like the the like the the 1950s movie with my dad. Um I saw this film, not when it came out, but probably the first time they were on 10 years ago or so. Um I do remember when it was being made though, because parts of it were filmed not that far away from my house. That's right.

Joe 4:34

This is a local locally sourced movie. Yeah. Or at least the beginning of it is. I haven't actually looked up where all the setting was because I have a feeling um once they get out of Jersey or once they get out of that area um where they live, that it could be filmed anywhere.

Tom 4:51

It's it's mostly filmed in the in the Northeast. Uh it's partially filmed in New Jersey as well as as uh New York and I believe in Connecticut and uh in LA on sound stages. So the exterior of the uh the basement in which the the the the uh major set piece of the of the film takes place is is uh real farm in in Connecticut. The actual basement that the film is is in LA.

Joe 5:19

So my introduction to this is I I think I read the book back a long time ago. I remember that I remember the book distinctly um in my house, and it was one of those little it was like a little square, and I think it was like a to be honest, like a children's version of the book. And I because I remember that it was like smaller than a regular book, and it had I pretty sure it had pictures in it, and we also had a copy of The Time Machine, which I do remember reading, and I do remember a bunch of that story. So um yeah, if I did read this book, I really didn't remember any of it. I also too do of the you know the Orson Wells um you know story and reading of it. And when this movie came out movie came out, I had no I had no desire to see this movie at all. So this is the first time I've seen this movie. This is my first official War of the Worlds um content. So and I'm very excited because I didn't read the book and I don't have anything to compare it to, so I don't have to worry or think about that whatsoever. So this is an old book, too, right? So H.G. Wells wrote this back in 1898. He wrote it after the Time Machine, about three years after the Time Machine. Um the story goes that he was uh walking uh the peaceful countryside of Surrey or Suray, I'm probably saying that wrong. Sorry, it's sorry. Sorry, sorry, okay.

Tom 6:46

You said it wrong twice.

Joe 6:48

Sorry. Surrey, sorry, isn't that uh is that Tom Cruise's daughter's name?

Jen 6:55

No, that's Rachel. What? In the movie in real life, sorry. Yes, in real life. Yeah, sorry, S-U-R-I.

Joe 7:06

Okay, coincidence, I think not. Uh he was walking with his brother Frank, and they were having a conversation. They were talking about Tasmanian indigenous population and the tragic fate they befell uh at the hands of European settlers. Stuff you talk about with your brother. Uh and he and he thought, suppose some beings from another planet were to drop out of the sky suddenly and land in England. And this was his inspiration for um for for the writing. Which this is so weird because I'm thinking now when we talked about Dune and how his inspiration was writing an article about about ecology and sand dunes in Oregon. And this is about this one comes from Tasmanian indigenous population.

Tom 7:51

Yeah. I I I will say it like there's no real subtext to it, it's just text. Um in the fact that like it's very, very clear, and this is part of I I enjoyed this, I didn't remember any of this at all. And if I even if I did, I don't know if I would have gotten it as a kid. But like, this is such social commentary for like how humans really just treat the planet unbelievably shittily, and we should think about doing a better job of being cohabitants on the planet.

Joe 8:22

Um this is back in the 1800s, which I mean this is probably this is the industrial revolution's going on right now, right? I mean, this in the late uh yeah, I mean it's been going on for a while. Uh this is this is But this is like where they're I guess the beginning, right? They don't they just they're starting to, I guess, realize the effects it has on the environment.

Tom 8:42

Yeah, this is like late Victorian height of the British Empire, right? Britain is the most powerful country on earth by by a fair margin. This is the the sun never sets on the British Empire era of the world. And and H. G. Wells was somebody who um, you know, you don't necessarily expect this from a guy writing in the 1800s was very like socially progressive and really felt like um, you know, maybe we should stop and think about the things that we're doing, you know? Yeah, because uh aliens could come.

Jen 9:14

You don't know this, but in the book, there's a there's a hefty portion of it that's about what's happening with his brother. So I can only imagine that his brother was like, You gotta put me in this.

Tom 9:25

That's true, that's true.

Jen 9:26

You better this guy better have a brother that does some cool shit. Well, what does the brother do in the book?

Joe 9:31

Well, because our character in the movie doesn't do anything.

Jen 9:33

It's like, let's cut over to my brother for like a bunch of chapters, and he's in London, and and what he's doing. Yeah. And it's like just you just don't follow the narrator anymore. It's just another a different guy.

Joe 9:45

It's another perspective of the invasion. Yeah, like a city, city versus countryside.

Jen 9:51

Pretty much.

Joe 9:51

Yeah, pretty much.

Tom 9:52

That's exactly what it is. It's it's showing stuff that like it's basically I can't get my narrator in all the set pieces I want to show. Yeah. Let's have this let's have his brother do a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah. Um they should have. Oh, is it cool stuff? Uh interesting stuff.

Joe 10:06

Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just gonna I was going to say that they sh they could have done, or he could have done a um what what's his name does? Max Brooks does in World War Z, where he does that. He cuts over to all different parts of the world, but it's all tied together by because he's a reporter interviewing all these people about what happened.

Tom 10:30

Okay. And this is very um the book is first-person narration, right? It's a guy who is already a writer uh pre-A-Lay invasion. Wait, he's he's not a longshoreman? No, no, long.

Jen 10:43

Is it lift shipping containers?

Tom 10:45

Uh he's a f he's a writer of uh he's a f he's like a writer of philosophy. Um, I see that okay and he's uh I see the connection there. Right. Very, very close adaptation, right? Um and so like he's like friends with academia and and all that circles, but he's writing his just his tale basically, and like towards the end of the novel, like they get into the fact that like a lot of the official popular versions of what happened are not really based on reality, it's just based on like second or third hand information. So he wanted to kind of give a sense of what really happened. Oh, okay.

Joe 11:21

Yeah, yeah, very different from the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Um a lot of it is. Um I I knew I knew going into this though, that the uh that that in the book, uh, the main character did not live in uh Bayonne, New Jersey. No, no.

Jen 11:38

In 2005.

Joe 11:39

In 2005.

Jen 11:40

No.

Joe 11:41

Well, well, I'm not on obviously it wasn't gonna be the same, you know, year, but that part.

Jen 11:46

Joe, I I don't know if you could tell that he lived in Bayonne because the Bayonne Bridge was in his backyard. That's that's Bayonne, like right on that strip. That's it. Everybody lives in Bayonne is in underneath the bridge.

Tom 11:58

Underneath the bridge.

Jen 11:59

That's it.

Tom 12:00

Yeah.

Jen 12:00

Just to make sure you didn't get confused.

Joe 12:02

I'm pretty sure that they even say in description, like Jersey City, and I'm like, that's not Jersey City. That's Bayonne, because he lives underneath the Bayonne Bridge.

Jen 12:12

I didn't hear the name of anywhere.

Joe 12:15

No, they talked about Boston. So that's you.

Jen 12:18

I was like, are they in the city?

Joe 12:20

They mentioned the turnpike at one point. His son's like, why aren't we on the turnpike? And he went.

Jen 12:25

Because I I knew they filmed part of it in Staten Island, so I was like, oh, is this like the Staten Island side of the Bayonne Bridge? Like, no, he's in New Jersey, yeah. But then they started talking about the Path Train and Yeah.

Joe 12:37

Yes. So then I'm so uh just for so anyone who doesn't know the Bay Own Bridge connects Bayonne, New Jersey and Staten Island.

Tom 12:46

On on the Tom Cruise and War of the World side of the Bayonne Bridge, that's where George R. R. Martin was was born and raised. And he so where I was born, I live on Staten Island my whole life, and from my childhood home, I could see the Bayonne Bridge out of like uh the downstairs window. As I went down the stairs, there's a window to the side, and I looked out that window, I could see the Bayonne Bridge. And and somewhere 10, 20 years prior to that, George R. R. Martin stood a similar distance from that bridge and dreamed what glories could be on the other side. See my house from the base King's Landing on your house. I'm pretty sure I would well, whatever. I was on the north, sure. I don't know how I would be in the I don't know the the exact geography, but I would be in the north, I think. Okay. Um anyway. Um very, very, very, very local to us.

Joe 13:40

I want to cut I want to cut to the chase here because I I I need to know.

unknown 13:45

Okay.

Joe 13:45

But I think I already do know the answer to this. On a scale of one to ten, how close is the movie to the book?

Jen 13:52

Three, two, three? Yeah. There's aliens in it. There's aliens in it. The aliens resemble what the what those machines are kind of the same with the tripods.

Tom 14:02

The red plants exist but aren't the same in the Yeah.

Jen 14:06

And the the ray gun, the heat gun, the heat ray, they call it in the book, a heat ray gun that just disintegrates people. The the throwing of people into the baskets is the baskets and eating them in a certain way. Um, I don't think it's the same. I don't think it's the same. It's not the same.

Tom 14:23

It's very yeah. Um it's similar. Okay.

Jen 14:27

It's kind of it. There's a there's a lot of things that bothered me a lot that don't make any sense.

Joe 14:32

Aaron Ross Powell Well, there's a lot of things in this movie that don't make sense.

Jen 14:37

Even if you haven't read the books. I understand that the book is good. It's a good book, but it's there's a lot of like I was in this town, then I went to this town, then this chamber, and then this town. I'm like, I don't am I supposed to have any idea what you're talking about? This is for these people that live here right now. It's like Staten Island town.

Tom 14:53

Yeah, no, it's like what I just did like five minutes ago, is what he does in the book.

Jen 14:58

There's a bunch of parts in the book where you're like, oh, this is cool, but the rest of it is like it's it's just whatever, but it's a guy surviving, and this and everything in them that he explains makes sense in a world where an alien, you know, would come from Mars, but it makes sense to me. There's things in this movie that don't make any sense.

Tom 15:16

Yes, a lot of things in this movie don't make sense. And I would say that the the the the to me, like the primary difference this is just a guy who happened to survive and he tells you what happened to him. Like he's not a hero in the book. He doesn't he's brave sometimes because there's Martians killing people and he's out there trying to survive, but he's not a hero, he doesn't necessarily ever do anything heroic, and for the most of the story, he's by himself. Like he sends his wife to a different town for safety early on before they know what the danger is, and then he can't get back to her, right?

Jen 15:50

Um all his friends that know anything about this are killed. Yes, yes, 30 pages into the aliens kill all of them.

Tom 15:58

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all the people all the it's all the smart scientists that are gonna like try and figure out they're immediately killed by the Martians, and then the military is also immediately killed. So it's it's it's but like there's never a time where I've written the book where I think, okay, at the end, this guy's gonna get a machine gun or some grenades and blow up some Martians. Like, that's not what this story is. Um, he doesn't have kids, he doesn't have like fractured relationships with family, no, happily married, right? And um, and then they were like, well, Tom Cruise is gonna be the star. So let's let's Tom Cruise it up a little bit. Let's give him some of the things that we're gonna do.

Joe 16:34

I think they went up, yeah. Well, they feel like they went opposite with Tom Cruise, like a prototypical Tom Cruise character where where this guy was was a a deadbeat dad. Yeah. Um I feel like we needed more dead. I mean, one one of the um one of my notes is I I I felt that we needed more more establishment of Tom Cruise's character being a deadbeat. Like there was just like a few changes.

Jen 16:58

But I wanted to like don't really like him.

Joe 17:00

I wanted to get into his character before, you know, before the alien invasion was. Yeah, there's not enough establishment of of of like this is not a very long movie. It's it's less than two hours.

Jen 17:10

Yeah.

Joe 17:10

They could have added five more minutes of Tom Cruise being a deadbeat dad.

Jen 17:14

Joe, but everybody in the neighborhood is his friend. Everybody he passes on the street, he knows by name.

unknown 17:21

Yeah.

Jen 17:22

So he must be a good guy.

Joe 17:24

I thought Amy Ryan was gonna be in the movie a bit more when I saw her.

unknown 17:27

I know.

Joe 17:28

I was like, oh, that's Amy Ryan. She's probably gonna be. I was like, she won't make it through the whole movie, but she'll probably be like on the first quarter leg of their journey.

Jen 17:35

What about um Lisa and Walter? Also in like a minute and a half.

Tom 17:40

Well, this movie is 20 years old. 21 years old.

Jen 17:43

I know, but like why even put that character in there? I don't know. There's a lot of things.

Tom 17:48

Like the case, his buddy, his buddy with the van. It's like you're like, oh, okay, here's his friend.

Joe 17:52

Oh, he's dead immediately, too. Oh yeah. Oh, what's his face? That guy's a comedian, right, in real life.

Jen 17:58

I didn't know who he was.

Joe 17:59

Lenny, yeah, Lenny Venito.

Jen 18:01

But why does Tom why is Tom Cruise, a guy who lifts shipping containers, the only person in the vicinity who could think of how to fix a car. Not even the mechanic thinks of it. Well Why does he think of it?

Joe 18:18

Well, he there's established that he's some sort of a mechanic, uh, because he has the engine in his l in his kitchen just sitting up on the on like a stand. Yeah, I think it's like kind of It's like right in the beginning when they go in the house, he says he makes a comment about it, and there's just an engine in the like on a stand in his like dining room kitchen area.

Tom 18:37

I I am not a car guy, but I was reading about this after the fact that apparently like the car that he has is like a super gearhead kind of like a it's supposed to imply like he's like a muscle car. Yeah, but it's supposed to imply that he's like very mechanically automotively inclined.

Joe 18:55

Although he never uses that. One car. Yeah, that's right. He steals the car. He didn't do anything mechanical to that car except use the colour.

Jen 19:06

So it tells him replace this piece, which is like uh the electromagnetic. So I guess like that's how you fix the alien lightning that turned that shut off everything.

Tom 19:14

Well, if it makes you feel any better, apparently a lot of other people know that because people use cars like they're like drive it on the ferry and stuff. Like some of the cars die, but like Yeah, I I don't know.

Jen 19:24

Whatever.

Tom 19:24

Just maybe the old cars that don't have electricity inside of them.

Joe 19:30

That that car might have been from the nineties, so maybe.

Tom 19:34

Okay.

Joe 19:34

There was electricity in the cars in the nineties, though. Um so let's I I wanna I want us to start getting into this and talking about it because there's a lot of interesting things in here, and I I'm just gonna keep asking questions about the book. But just to get into the movie, right? We mentioned that there was uh an older version of this movie. Um a little bit about this movie was it was all done very, very quickly. The the movie itself was fast-tracked into production, it only took 72 days, I think I have somewhere around here. 72 days to shoot.

Tom 20:09

Yeah, and it was 10 months from start to to in the theaters. Yeah, 10 months, yeah. Yeah, that's wild.

Joe 20:16

I don't think that happens ever. Um I mean, I guess you just say like Steven Spielberg's like they right, so this is right, this is shortly after Minority Report. So Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruiser collaborated. I guess they said, let's do something again. Sure, let's go. Um we're both really powerful people in in the industry. We'll just let's just let's just start filming tomorrow. Who likes this movie?

Jen 20:39

I have to do that.

Joe 20:39

David Cap, let's get David Cap, who's written tons of yeah, yeah.

Jen 20:44

Did they call him up at like midnight and say, I need the script by 5 30? It was even though that's like what it feels like. Even though it doesn't make any sense.

Tom 20:51

The production of it was even the screenwriting stuff was very rushed. I think um Munich, which was um which if memory serves, uh as soon as post-production rep the next day Spielberg was filming Munich, Munich had gotten delayed, and Cruz had a gap, and they said, let's do it now. Oh my god. And so um this is the first movie too that you know George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are are are you know long, long time friends. Lucas had just you know uh finished doing all the the Star Wars prequels and showed Spielberg about um doing pre-vis, right? Pre-visualizations of of of your VFX shots to kind of help set that up. This is the first movie that Spielberg did that with, which helped him understand what all the big effects shots were going to be. They filmed all of that stuff first, so the VFX studios could be working on that while they were filming the less effects heavy, you know, uh intimate scenes later on the production schedule, which kind of helped push all that along. And the effects are very good. Like normally when you hear something's that rushed, the visuals really take a hit. But if you know What you're going to do, and you're able to plan that out appropriately, and you have the resources of Spielberg and Cruz together. I guess you can get the the effects houses to um have the time and to do what they need to do. Yeah.

Joe 22:13

And they must have spent some time working on the script because there was a whole big thing where they this is right. This is a post-9-11 movie, right? It's four years after 9-11. I mean, they started filming it, well, probably filming that same year.

Tom 22:30

Yeah, I think it was all it was all the same year.

Joe 22:32

Yeah. Yeah. So it might have been the same year. I don't remember what time uh what time of year. This feels like a summer movie though, but you know, so maybe they did start filming in 2004. Um right, there was that like, how do we how do we make this you know movie that's about mass panic in New York or adjacent to New York City um without being exploited exploitative? Um yeah. So I remember some thought.

Tom 23:00

I remember, yes, it was definitely the the the making of this movie was a reaction to 9-11, both in uh like the powerlessness that people in America felt, and in the like something from outside of our culture is coming to destroy us, and uh maybe it's showing us things about ourselves, but like also like the panic and the violence that it brought in American society, da-da-da. I remember there was a period of time from around when this movie came out through like uh the second Star Trek reboot movie, the one uh Star Trek in the darkness, where it's like, I am so sick of buildings getting destroyed and people getting covered in Grey Tustan films. I'm sick of watching 9-11 interpreted on in film again. But but I will say this as much as it is that, and it's it's very clear uh that that's that's an influence in this movie. In the book, like there is the aliens have like another form of killing people, which is like this black poison cloud. It like HG Wells kind of pre-vised uh chemical warfare, right? Mustard gas and stuff and things that were used during World War I. But yeah, this black poisonous cloud that when it dissipated left like people covered in like a black ashy soot. And so it is something that's kind of pulled from the book as well.

Joe 24:13

Well, I will say this that you know, in this movie, um there wasn't so much coverage by by the gray soot of crumbled buildings, so much as the uh gray soot of uh freshly vaporized human beings. That's true. Well, I mean, but their clothes were okay, didn't touch the clothes. Um it makes for it makes for a good thing.

Jen 24:37

I didn't even notice that. There's another thing that makes no sense.

Joe 24:41

But yeah, well, that how do you not notice it?

Jen 24:43

You just see you see clothes falling from the sky multiple times. I noticed it. I didn't I didn't like think of it as being dumb.

Joe 24:51

It was weird, but it made it made for a really cool visual, though. Yeah, like these are these are clothes falling from the sky. These were all once people, and it's like, yeah.

Tom 25:01

The marsh the the the not Martian, the alien death rays, uh kill living beings, not organic matter.

Joe 25:09

Yeah, only organic matter. Um and then that that scene where like Tom Cruise is in, you know, when he goes back to his house after everything goes down, and he's like he's looking in the mirror, and then he like realizes what's on him, and he's like brushing it off, like these are people on me. Yeah. I thought that was a really uh I thought that was a really cool scene.

Tom 25:27

Um Yeah, I I think I I will say this because like I think Jed and I both were a little bit like not necessarily thrilled with all this film, but I don't I don't think it's poorly acted by by Cruz or or uh you know Fanning. Or I and again I bet we mentioned it in the opening, but I I the only thing I really I truly remembered from this movie before re-watching it was how much I love Tim Robbins in it. Well, oh wow, okay.

Joe 25:51

Like so yeah, I feel like I feel like when we got to that part, the movie just hit a wall and just dragged from that like it just slowed down, it just slowed down. It was like Tim Robbins, boom! Tim Robbins, we hit the Tim Robbins wall, it just drags from there on because I feel like that scene, I don't I didn't time it, but that whole scene from when they meet Tim Robbins to when when they leave that area, because I mean he you know they get sucked up into the alien thing and all that stuff, and the the the one grenade, one grenade blows up that whole thing, which was probably not even powerful enough to kill all those people in that cage. But anyway, all the way up until there, I feel like that was like a third of the movie. I think it was real time.

Tom 26:44

I don't know. I I I hear you. I do think that's a very significant portion of the film. Like Tim Robbins is effectively the only other like character in the movie. Like Dakota Fanny is not even like she's she's a very talented actress, like she doesn't do anything in this movie, she just exists to be in danger.

Jen 27:02

Uh but you can tell she's spunky because her clothes don't match.

Tom 27:06

That's true. And then um you think you think like the other son's gonna be a great foil for Cruz, but then he's just gone for most of the film.

Jen 27:14

Just what even gone do this dad.

Joe 27:17

I gotta do it.

Jen 27:18

What do you mean? What are you going to do? I don't understand. I don't understand what you're saying. You're 17 years old.

Tom 27:26

I gotta fight.

Jen 27:27

Like, no. Then join the army after the aliens are defeated. Like, what are you talking about? Why? It worked out for him. He just doesn't want to do his homework, is what it comes down to.

Joe 27:36

How did I don't know how it worked out for him? I don't know how the hell he got out of there.

Jen 27:39

I I I don't know.

Joe 27:40

Well, it's a it's a movie, everybody.

Jen 27:42

No, a dead one. That's why he worked out. He made it because of Steven Spielberg. That whole part is in this movie because of Steven Spielberg. We need to have a son and father conflict.

Tom 27:51

Yeah.

Jen 27:52

Like this is dumb. It doesn't make any sense.

Tom 27:54

Like, wait, yeah. If you if Steven Spielberg's in there, you know that the there's gonna be a divorced or a single parent, and that parent is gonna have an issue with their kid.

Jen 28:04

Like, what? I just Okay, go ahead, run off. Go ahead.

Tom 28:08

All right. Yeah.

Jen 28:08

Well, your sister's about to get kidnapped by these two clients.

Tom 28:11

Look, if they would have just followed their son, they would have made it a Boston fine.

unknown 28:16

I guess.

Joe 28:16

He's already he he didn't have to, you know, Tom Cruise didn't have to say, hey, wait here, just just come with me, walk, walk the 20 feet over here to your brother. Um well, maybe he planned on saying some things he didn't want her to hear. I don't know. Or maybe we just needed to have that play out that way for the movie.

Tom 28:33

Um I yeah anyway, uh uh regarding Tim Robbins, yes, that scene is um is very long, but I feel like um I feel like Tim Robbins is like this movie wants to be about what real people would go through. But it's the problem is the real person is Tom Cruise, and he's not like you can't expect Tom Cruise.

Joe 28:51

Tom Cruise is not a real person.

Tom 28:52

You can't expect Tom Cruise to play in every man. You just can't. So that I can imagine Tim Robbins being some crazy dude who's just like Yeah, he was good in it.

Joe 29:01

It just the movie was was going, it was moving, it was moving, and then it was just like eh, we're gonna stop here for a while.

Jen 29:08

That scene is like partly from the book.

Tom 29:11

Yeah. Like it's it draws it, it draws exp uh he's like a combo of I think like two different characters from the book.

Jen 29:19

Yeah.

Tom 29:19

Right?

Joe 29:20

Did um did the did the narrator in the book decide that he's just gonna murder the guy?

Jen 29:25

Yes. Uh he doesn't murder well he o he almost murders them.

Tom 29:30

And he decides not to, and then he knocks him out. He knocks him out, and then the alien and then the alien. Yeah, the martial. So he effectively kills him. Yeah, he does feel bad about it afterwards. But that guy's that guy, the the character in the book is like a curate, which is like kind of like a deacon, I guess, you know. Um and has gone like full on crazy at this point, like religious media, and is like they're hiding in the house, and the guy's just screaming about how he's gonna, you know, meet God or whatever else, and he's running out trying to get the the Martian's attention. So so the narrator picks up a meat cleaver and then at the last minute says, wait, and hits him with the handle instead of the blade and knocks him out. But then the aliens hear Martians hear him anyway and eat him.

Joe 30:11

Uh yeah, I mean they would the Tim Robbins stuff was good. That the whole eye that that was just very long with the eye looking around for them and then the tentacle and the mirror. And then the aliens come in and start looking through photos, like that part was weird. That was because it was it wouldn't have been weird if that one alien picked up the photo, looked at it, and put it down. No, he passes it to the other alien and is like, hey, check this out. And picks up another photo, if I recall correctly.

Tom 30:44

Awesome. I know what you're talking about.

Joe 30:45

Oh boy. Um so much stuff. I I liked my favorite line of the movie is in the beginning when um when the the uh aliens first come and and Tom Cruise grabs his kids and they're they're getting out of town. Um and and saw uh Justin Chatwin's asking him what's going on, like where they where they come from, uh or something like that. And Tom Cruise goes, it came from someplace else. And Justin Chatwin goes, like Europe? Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise goes, No, Robbie, not Europe. Like just the way he said it. Like he wanted to punch him in the face and be like, you fucking idiot. Uh sorry. I just stopped and laughed hysterical at that line. Um so a question I do have about the book because this is something in the movie that they don't really go into, and I didn't know if it was something they pulled from the books or not. I feel like if they probably did because they didn't go into it too much. Um, but is it in the books? Are these like robot machines buried beneath the earth? No, and the aliens come up. Okay, so none of that.

Jen 31:51

That makes no sense.

Tom 31:52

It doesn't make any sense.

Jen 31:54

They must have been there for a million years. A million years in all these locations, on right under the ground, and we never found them. No one ever came across one. Right.

Joe 32:02

Well, you were in New Bayo, New Jersey. Well, they're not just DeBayo, New Jersey, right? But your bodies are buried underneath that.

Jen 32:10

In the book, they come down from from Mars. And I don't like in the we in our notes about this, it says, well, they didn't want to have them come down from Mars because we know there's nobody on Mars. Who cares? It's an alien movie. That's where you're gonna draw the line that they can't come from Mars because we that's beyond us. Shut up. So so they so they came a million years ago and put their shit under the ground and then waited.

Tom 32:35

And then they come with lightning to like pop I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense. It's dumb.

Jen 32:40

But they create lightning. In the book, they come down in like cylind- he calls them cylinders, like ships, I guess. They crashed in a bunch of different places in England, and they spent a little time like building their I guess they're putting the tripods together with the shit they brought with them, and then they come out. So like the first one that comes is in there for like a day or a day and a half, like trying to come out and building it, and that's believable to me. Yeah, it's it's actually like more than what we saw in this book.

Tom 33:06

It's a cool part of like the beginning pieces of the story because like it's just one ship, and then like every few days another ship lands. So like in the beginning, there's not a ton of Martians, and they're like they're protecting the Martians who are like getting set up. So like they're traveling to like a crash site, and like the Martians who are there already are like running defense while other guys kind of build up until they build up their troops. Um, and it's always like every time you think it here's another another ship's gonna come. And in the beginning of the story, like I mentioned, the guy's friends with academia, so he's hanging out with some of his astronomer friends, and they're they're noticing that like there's 10 would end up being ship launches off of Mars, right? Over the course of a few nights. Uh so like you know, okay, there's gonna be at least this many coming, because he's seen them at the beginning, so it adds like a counter as the as the story goes on. But yes, they're not like secretly buried under the ground, and then like are the aliens in the lightning and the machines are under the ground and the lightning.

Jen 34:08

That's what the news reporter shows them the thing.

Joe 34:10

She shows them the uh the alien in the lightning going into the ground. No, dumb. Absolutely dumb. Uh it's really weird. That's so dumb. Well, that's why I thought maybe it was in the book because I thought, like, who are like why would you come? Why couldn't the machines just come down from the sky? Yeah, why would you do that? The machines come from the sky.

Jen 34:28

That's a great idea. I wish somebody would have wrote about it. Oh, they did a hundred years ago.

Joe 34:35

Like they could have just had the tripods come fully formed from the sky.

Jen 34:39

Right, or whatever. That's that's beyond believing.

Joe 34:42

Or they come down as like, you know, like ships and then the legs come out of them, you know.

Jen 34:46

They come out, yeah.

Joe 34:47

Whatever. Whatever. It's an alien movie. I wonder why they did this. Yeah, this is an interesting choice. Um, yeah, it didn't make sense to me. Like, what these things have been here for millions of years. Like, I know this was this was unreliable characters surmising this, right? They weren't, it wasn't like we actually got any official knowledge or information uh that this was the case. So, but but how else did they get there? The the machines, I don't know.

Tom 35:16

Uh I and like that's I guess because they they can't have like they're here and they're getting their shit together. Like that's I understand, like at a certain point, you're like, well, humanity's technology has increased in the hundred or so years since the book was written, right? So, like, you know, whatever there weren't telephones, like well, there there weren't there weren't cell phones and they weren't cars yet, you know, and they so there weren't planes. So like the aliens can take their time, and it's gonna take time for like troops to mobilize anyway, and they um but they could have landed somewhere not in the city, right?

Jen 35:51

They could have landed in like in the book, they land in like the countryside where it's gonna take people a little bit of time to figure out what's going on here because it's a little bit deserted.

Tom 36:00

You can't be a longshoreman on the countryside, Jen.

Jen 36:03

Well, be something else.

Tom 36:05

He can work on the river. He doesn't have to work, he doesn't have to work on the ocean.

Jen 36:08

He could have been on the shipping boat going down.

Tom 36:11

Uh yeah.

Jen 36:14

Then you can't see the Bayonne Bridge collapse, I guess. I guess you know in Bayonne.

Tom 36:18

Yeah. Gotta put that in there. It's required. Yeah, the lightning stuff is no good.

Jen 36:23

No, dumb. Lightning doesn't sit the same place twice.

Joe 36:27

Oh man, how how predictable was that, huh? Some of the stuff is so telegraphed, I'm like, oh, I know what's gonna happen next.

Jen 36:34

It's bad. I just bad it's bad. I don't understand. This is a Steven Spielberg movie. Like, what is going on? 72 days and it and everybody loved it. It made a lot of money. It made a lot of money.

Joe 36:46

Made a shit ton of money.

Jen 36:48

I don't know.

Tom 36:49

It looked awesome. I remember I remember like it was a Super Bowl commercial for it. Um and like, you know, seeing I think you see the bridge blow up in the commercial, and like it looked awesome. And you think like Spielberg, Cruise, War of the Worlds. It sounds great. Yeah.

Joe 37:04

It didn't to me though, because I had no interest in this movie when it came out. And I think I was like, Spielberg, you know, Cruise War of the Worlds. I don't this doesn't look good. So but it was I I it was entertaining. I'm not saying this was a great movie at all, but I enjoyed watching it until we got to the you know, about halfway through this uh Tim Robbins section.

Jen 37:22

There's more I have to talk about before that. Oh no, I know that.

Joe 37:25

Okay, good. I'm just saying, like, that's good. Let's go back. We can go back. I mean, do you want to go back to when uh you know society breaks down and people are jumping on cars, ripping open windshields with their bare hands?

Jen 37:40

Yeah. So wait. That guy was possessed. I want to go back to them being in Bayola Bridge collapses, and then he's in Staten Island by the Outer Bridge, which does it know he's not supposed to be in Staten Island, but that bothered me because there's no way for him to get there. But anyway, um Gossel's bridge. Dad wanted me to make a joke about whether the traffic on the on the expressway is worse in this movie or in on a regular day. With every car not moving and people walking around.

Joe 38:14

But um good thing he's the only one who knows about solenoids, though.

Jen 38:19

Right. Change that solenoid. What the f what? Okay, cool. Yeah. And then the plane crash. Can we talk about the plane crashing into the house with not a soul aboard? What's going on? Why did that plane crash? Because the plane's falling out of the sky?

Joe 38:37

No, I probably got hit with the ray or something, right? One of those. I don't know.

Jen 38:42

Who knows? Because there's nobody in the plane. There's nobody on there's no passengers.

Joe 38:47

Yeah, that's a weird, that's a weird thing. And I think maybe they I I think that was just like Steven Spookmark saying, I don't want to show a bunch of Maybe they're vaporized, Jen. Maybe they got vaporized by the So where's all their clothes? Well, they're there. It's a lot of rubble there. I don't know.

Jen 39:02

I just feel like if you didn't want to show them, then keep the fuselage closed. Don't break it open so I could see a hundred empty seats on the plane. I don't know. That bothered.

Joe 39:11

I guess they wanted that one guy to do his uh scavenging through for food.

Jen 39:15

Were you on this plane? What?

Joe 39:17

I just thought it was more strange that they didn't know that a fucking plane crashed right on like basically next to the house. Uh jet, you know, a fucking 747 jet crashed literally in into the s into the street in front of his house, and they didn't even realize it.

Jen 39:34

Well they didn't rem in the basement. I know there was the fire thing, but when they were driving, the sun says, Where's all the planes? So I was like, oh, all the planes are gonna just like fall out of the sky now because like they don't work anymore.

Tom 39:47

Yeah.

Jen 39:47

That didn't happen, except for like 12 hours later, one plane fell with nobody on it.

Joe 39:53

Like what's the other one? Well, maybe that was from the lightning. The lightning. I don't.

Jen 39:56

But it was but it was a half a day later.

Joe 40:00

But they weren't the attack wasn't all in like the same place at the same time, right? Because in the beginning of the movie, like they've already attacked in the Ukraine, and there's mentions of other places that the aliens have already started attacking.

Jen 40:12

Yeah, but they they were still in New Jersey, though.

Joe 40:15

They were in a nicer part of New Jersey.

Jen 40:18

They were Menelepin. They didn't attack Menelepan until the next day.

Joe 40:23

They were over near where uh Tony Soprano lives.

Jen 40:25

They were in Far Hills, that's where my in-laws live. Okay, yeah. Um, I get it. Whatever. I don't know.

Joe 40:36

Um what uh a scene I really did like though was the uh the whole scene with well, right? We have this scene with the horrible people and the guns, and Tom Cruise is just like I just give me my just my daughter, just give me my daughter. And then people just start going crazy. Like, I don't know where this guy thinks he's going with uh with the car, but um not very far, clearly. Uh but then we get the fairy scene afterwards, which I really liked. I thought it was a cool it was a good scene. Yeah, yeah. Entertainment value. It might be one it might be the best sequence in the movie. I don't know. I I I like that whole sequence. Uh the birds flying away. I was like, why what what's going on with that? And then I guess it comes back later where the birds are flying at it. I don't I don't know.

Jen 41:20

At the end?

Joe 41:21

Yeah.

Jen 41:22

So that didn't make sense to me either because he was using that to indicate that the birds could touch the machine and therefore the shields were down. Yeah. But in the book, he sees the birds flying around the tripod because the alien's dead and they're like eating it.

Tom 41:37

Yeah.

Jen 41:38

So it's completely different.

unknown 41:40

Yeah.

Jen 41:40

It's like up top in the driver's seat, I guess. And I guess once he's dead, I guess maybe it's broken and they can get in there and start like scavenging. And the dogs are scavenging on them, and that's how he kind of realizes that these things are dead. They're they're dead inside the machines.

Tom 41:55

Okay.

unknown 41:56

All right.

Jen 41:57

Except for the one that like crawls out and dramatically dies in front of everyone. Oh, by the way. And like a whole bunch of goo falls out. What is that? Dan thought it was liquefied people, but I I don't know.

Tom 42:10

I th it I mean, it so I think it's supposed to be. Right? So that is something in the books, right? The books, they they they they kind of talk about like how the aliens don't have any sort of digestive system at all. And they just literally like are kind of like vampires.

Jen 42:24

They they take their sustenance from the fluids of other creatures, so they just suck you dry and and yeah, I didn't think that they like liquefied your whole body into like a liqu like I thought they just like got your blood or whatever was in you and like injected it into their straight into their bloodstream.

Tom 42:39

Yeah, they actually say they have like a little like like a second mouth to like pour that stuff in. And it just uh that they run on that till they run out and then they go. And that's and that's how they eventually get sick.

Jen 42:51

Well, that's how they die so fast because it's literally right in their bloodstream.

Tom 42:54

Right, they're just pumping in whatever whatever germs people have directly into their own bloodstream. Yeah.

Joe 43:00

Yeah, I mean, thank God for Morgan Freeman to explain that for us. That was interesting. Now like I was like, oh, he's narrating the the opening of this movie. I wonder if he's gonna be in it or anything else, but no, he just and then I forgot at the end he started talking again. I was like, oh, that's right. Morgan Freeman narrated the beginning of this movie. He's gonna do it at the end, too. Was Morgan Freeman, you think, the character from the book? Uh probably not. Probably not.

Jen 43:28

I'm gonna go with no on that one. Did the character from the book even have a name? Unnamed. Okay. So this Dan was like, they're shooting them with a heat ray, and this guy's name is Ray. Yes, that's right. And they'd be like, everybody in the name in the family had an R name. It was just Yeah.

Tom 43:44

They were all R's. We know we know people We know people like that.

Jen 43:46

Yeah. Except for Marianne, the wife. Well they're not together anymore.

Joe 43:51

But he should he should have knew that that she was not gonna work, it was not gonna work out because they didn't have the same first letter.

Jen 43:56

Right.

Joe 43:57

So that's on them. For not realizing that ahead of time. Um I thought the tripods were cool.

Jen 44:04

Yeah, they were.

Joe 44:06

They were cool.

Jen 44:07

Fine.

Joe 44:08

Um Yeah, no, they no, they weren't. You guys said that.

Jen 44:11

No, they weren't good. The acting was good. Everything else in the movie, I thought I thought the the I thought the the screenplay, the s the script was terrible. Every nothing in the movie made sense to me. There's no climax to the movie at all. Like after the grenade, is that the climate because once they get to Boston, it's just like, oh, but he's dead.

Tom 44:30

Yeah.

Jen 44:31

He did it. Like what? There's no big like I know there's no big it's not in the book either. It just kind of ends.

Tom 44:38

It does, but there is like a big for it's a personal climate for him realizing what's happened. Right. And like it's cool because like, whatever. In the book, he goes back to London. Like London's already a bit obliterated by these things. They're they're running it. And like he's trying to find out if he can find out where his wife is, and he's trying to he figures London's the only place that may have people who may have information about anything that's like what happened after everything went to shit. So he goes in and he's hearing, he's hearing things, he's trying to figure out what's happening. And so it's like a big revelation. You think like he's the first person to discover because this thing dies in front of him and he sees other ones are dead. And then like he's like, actually, people found out like the night before. Uh, and they had already like told everybody, but it was it was for me, it was the first time I do. Like so, um, but again, that's the climax of the book, is like it's just you, the reader, knowing what happened. And he and like it's interesting because he he teases it with the plant life, which is just plant life. It's not like I don't know, it doesn't run on blood or whatever. It's red because it's just because it's red because Mars has a lot of iron, like and so it's just red. Okay, that's the connection. Just red plant life, right? Yeah, and but the plant life dies first.

Jen 45:50

Yeah. Well that happens in the in the movie. Yeah, but what's the last three minutes before the aliens died?

Joe 45:55

Did they come to Earth to kill people and plant?

Jen 45:57

Is that what they're doing while they're no the plant just like grew. Yeah, then they're like, I don't know if they planted it.

Tom 46:03

No, they they he says he doesn't know whether it was like on purpose or if he if they brought it as food or if they brought it as like or if it if or even if it was on purpose or not, but like this plant life was on the ships and it kind of grew out. No, and then um it dies from from like plant bacteria, whatever, I don't know, fungal, in fact, whatever, first. So he kind of like seeds the idea with you that like this the life is not really capable of living on this planet before what happens to the Martians has to be.

Joe 46:32

We get that conveyed by Tom Cruise touching the stuff and looking at it and then brushing it away.

Jen 46:37

Yeah, like a minute before the aliens die.

Joe 46:40

Oh well, well he he t well, I mean I guess they set it up, right? You're talking about at when it gets to Boston and like all the plant the vines are like dead. But I mean, even I mean when like he first Oh before that? Yeah, when he first is like touching it. There's it's just there's no discussion about it whatsoever. No. Well, I guess he's got nobody to talk to about it, but um he could have talked to Tim Robbins about it, but I guess he was a little going crazy or whatever. Um yeah, I kind of got the feeling though in the book though, that they don't explain a lot either, but that's the whole point, is like they don't know. No, they they don't explain more than more than more.

Jen 47:18

Because he's also saying, like, I some of the stuff like I found out later.

Tom 47:22

Right, okay.

Jen 47:23

Like he didn't tell you about this now, but I didn't know it at the time, but now I have this knowledge that this is X, Y, Z.

Tom 47:29

Yeah, they didn't do that in this where I want to say about a halfway through, maybe three quarters of the way through, like he lets you know straight up like that humans win. Like, this is not like I'm writing this from a cave somewhere, kind of story. And he talks about like the autopsies that we've done after the fact found that this was like about the digestive systems and like how the aliens are like what what the aliens are. And he's like basically they're just heads, they're just brains and and eyes and mouths and hands, tentacles or hands, and like that's it.

Jen 47:59

There's a really good line in the book. It's something like they don't have like any bad humor that like humans have based on their when they have a bad gastric system or their digestive system is out of whack. Right. Like they don't have to worry about that. He's just saying like our temperament as humans can be based on whether whether we're having basically whether you're having like a stomach ache that day. Right. Or if you're angry.

Tom 48:24

And they're genderless, and so you don't have to worry about like any kind of weird psychosexual hangups either. Like they actually one of them buds. That's right. I forgot about that. Like they they they they duplicated budding in the books.

Joe 48:37

Oh. I'm glad we didn't see that. I'm kind of glad we didn't see that.

Jen 48:41

They don't look anything like what they look like in the book either. They look like typical movie aliens to him.

Tom 48:48

He kind of describes them looking like like uh uh like uh oh goombas with tentacles.

Jen 48:54

Yeah, they have like crazy weird tentacles. They know legs, there's like these tentacles that they walk on and then like an ear in the back of their head or something. And two big eyes and like a mouth. That's it.

Joe 49:03

Aaron Ross Powell Oh, that would have been kind of cool to see.

Jen 49:05

Yeah, imagine. Um I also, why is his ex-wife just in the house with her parents and it's just cool. There's like an alien out three blocks away from them. I don't understand.

Joe 49:21

Oh, you mean why haven't they like evacuated or whatever?

Jen 49:23

Yeah, like everything's fine with them. They're just home. And like they didn't evacuate, the house is fine, everything's fine.

Tom 49:29

Because real wasp people don't don't run from aliens. That's right. Who doesn't? Real wasps. Like Miranda Arlo.

Joe 49:40

I was like, exactly. Right.

Jen 49:42

She's not gonna ask about her son. They're just gonna just like assume he's dead, and then he came out. I was like, get the fuck out of here.

Joe 49:47

Who's not gonna ask about the son? Oh, her or all the time.

Jen 49:50

She saw the daughter and then they like reunited, and then I was like, oh, she's not even gonna ask about the her.

Joe 49:54

She did take a double take where I thought she was gonna ask about Robbie and then and then he appeared. So I was like, oh.

Tom 50:01

Come on. And here's A Blinkett. I was like, everyone's back.

Joe 50:04

Yeah. Uh he can't die. We yeah, yeah. I that I didn't like that whole part, that whole thing. Like you made him go off, and then he's just, yeah, he's fine.

Jen 50:13

Yeah, like did he like not have enough time to finish filming?

Joe 50:15

And he got and he got back before you.

Jen 50:18

Yeah, like how he wasn't still. Was the army just like, what are you doing here? And they just like put him in a car and took him away.

Joe 50:24

Yeah, he didn't get stuck in the basement with Tim Robbins for uh 45 minutes. That's what it is. He got way.

Tom 50:31

He just went straight to the city.

Joe 50:32

Captain Oda shirt. Yeah. It was just to emphasize how long he liked.

Jen 50:37

He pretended he was going there and he was like, I just gotta get away from my dad. Like as soon as Tom Cruise turned around, he just went in the opposite direction.

Tom 50:43

Yeah. He doesn't even like the Yankees, just wearing a hat on purpose.

Joe 50:48

Yeah, his Boston hat. In the beginning of the movie, I thought he literally was wearing a Boston hat for no other reason than to piss his dad off.

Jen 50:58

Antagonize his dad.

Joe 51:00

And I was like, wow, this kid really hates his father. And then I was like, oh no, like he's got his family's from Boston, so I get like it makes sense. He's still he's still being a dick to his dad, but it makes sense. It's not as bad as I thought.

Jen 51:15

No.

Joe 51:16

Although, not knowing your own daughter is allergic to peanuts, that's pretty fucking bad.

Jen 51:20

Yeah.

Tom 51:21

Yes. Both of my children are allergic to peanuts.

Joe 51:24

Did um Tom in the movie, did the narrator throw a peanut butter sandwich at a window?

Jen 51:31

How many times in the book I mean? How many times do they have to do that to get the bread to stick to the window?

Joe 51:38

It probably was like one or two times. I bet you're a peanut butter. They could have just buttered both sides, too.

Tom 51:45

I also feel like I I Tom Cruise seems like the kind of person who could just be like, oh yeah, I could do that. Like, no problem.

Joe 51:53

Um I'm Tom Cruise. Want me to jump out of an airplane? I'll jump out of an airplane. Want me to throw a peanut butter sandwich at a window?

Jen 52:00

Tom, just throw the peanut butter sandwich.

Tom 52:02

That was like the start that was the start of him getting really hooked on stunts. He's like, man, first take. I got an I got an itch for this now.

Joe 52:09

Tom Cruise actually wanted to jump through the window and they were like, no, no, no, just throw the sandwich at it.

Jen 52:13

Just the sandwich.

Joe 52:14

Just the sandwich.

Tom 52:20

Yeah, the the the narrator, um, so it's funny you say how long it is. The the the the person that Tim Robbins character kind of one of the two characters that he's kind of based on is this guy, like I said, he's he's called the curate, who eventually like collapses into religious mania. But like the two of them are stuck in a house that's literally like buried underneath one of these Martian ships that crash land for like two weeks. It's just the two of them in the house, and the guy like the curate's getting crazier and crazier and won't stop eating all the food. And so, like, that's like the only time that this guy actually gets like physical is where eventually he's like, No, I you have to stop and you cannot eat anymore because we need to save this or we'll die.

Jen 53:00

He starts out like hating the guy from the back. Well, yeah, the guy's a wacko for the get-go.

Tom 53:05

Yeah, yeah, I can't, but well before any of this stuff happens, he's like, he meets the guy and he talks about how like he should have just left him behind immediately, but unfortunately he didn't. And then like it's a bunch of chapters with the brother, and then you find out why this guy's a whack too.

Jen 53:20

Yeah.

Tom 53:22

Oh, okay. Okay.

Jen 53:24

The brother gets into like a fist fight.

Tom 53:26

Yeah, the brother has action, and like a lot of the stuff that with like the carjackings and like people being lunatics like traveling and travel like travel through, a lot of that is the stuff that the brother experiences because he's in London and trying to get out, and he has an idea. Most of the people in London are trying to go north, and he's trying to go west. And so he's basically just traveling against a giant stream of people the entire time, and it's all pre-car times, but like people are running each other over with like horse and buggy carts and like trying to take things from each other, and so there's a lot of that. Uh a lot of that is from the books in just a more modern version.

Joe 54:03

And this, like, the whole concept of and I think you kind of touched on it a bit, of like how it ends with the aliens just uh dying from basically like bacteria and you know, germs. It just made me think of Independence Day with the germs. Yeah, well, that's a reference. That's a reference to this. Yeah, yeah. Um that's all that's part of the books, right? That's just yeah, what happens. Yeah, yeah. And I liked um it's just so funny at the end of the the movie, it's just Morgan Freeman's like, ah, well, they would they were gonna die as soon as they got here anyway. Yeah. Well, why do we watch this movie then?

Jen 54:41

The first shot of the movie is like a germ.

Tom 54:43

Yeah, it's paramese humor support. So I didn't notice that. Yeah, yeah, it's like in water, yeah. Yeah. So at the end of the book, the book like that happens. There's like two chapters of denounce after after the aliens evasion fails. Um denalment, Tom, isn't it?

Joe 54:59

I think you mean denim.

Tom 55:02

I do.

Joe 55:03

Um and spoken like a two wasp.

Tom 55:08

So yeah, there's there's two chapters of of of falling action after after the climax of the book. And I think it's in the epilogue piece where he's like, they're they're hypothesizing why this happened. And is Mars like getting too cold? Is it too far away from the sun, or like they're just desperate to find someplace else to go? And so they just tried it and see saw whether it could work or not. And then like observers find like whatever it is, like they're looking at the different uh orbit patterns of the planets, and they notice that like Mars now sent some stuff over to Venus to try there, and like that's like part of the end. It's like it's just it's it's like so like theorizing that like Mars is just dying, so they have to try something, and so they're just trying to find another planet where they can live.

Joe 55:51

Okay, it's I feel like this is the plot of a lot of alien movies, but I guess obviously it takes it from this because one of the first uh aliens are trying just trying to survive, their planet's dying, and uh they need to find someplace else to go.

Tom 56:05

And again, like he's directly, which other things more or less I think understand it, they're touching upon this, but he's directly saying, like, this is what we as British imperialists do to the rest of the world. We just want places to live, so we go there and kill everybody, and then we take it for ourselves.

Joe 56:24

Okay, so it's not a but but is it a survival thing that the aliens do this for, or is it they do it because then if you like it's almost like I think that's the science fiction piece of it, is like he's they're trying to figure out is there a reason why they theorize that it's farther away from the sun, maybe it's dying, maybe it's getting colder.

Tom 56:43

Like, I think at this point they've noticed the polar ice caps in Mars or or whatever. So um he's trying to figure out a reason for it, but again, like the British feel they have a reason for expanding outside of England, like there's not enough space for all of everybody, and they want more, and they have gotta go, and da-da-da. Um, so I think the idea is not that the Martians are bad for coming, it's the way that they came that is bad. If the Martians came and said, Hey, we need a place to live, can you help us?

Joe 57:12

Oh, I'm sure we would, right? Oh, yeah, definitely.

Tom 57:15

We'd all would. Yeah, well, they didn't land in America, man. They landed in a civilized country. But uh, but um and that's his idea. I'm not saying it's the right idea, but like I think he's saying like they came to try and dominate and then they paid the price.

Joe 57:33

Yeah, they were doomed uh before they even got there. Which makes the whole uh buried machines for whatever long time. Yeah.

Jen 57:43

That's so like why Yeah, like where they come from another planet in the in a lightning bolt?

Joe 57:50

Like, they just on on the spot. They came up with it on the spot. They were on set and they were like, shit, we forgot to write a way that the aliens get here. Uh okay, this is what we're gonna do.

Jen 58:00

That's what I'm saying. This was this was like this guy kind of read War of the Worlds. He had like a couple of things he remembered from when he read it when he was 13, like us. And then he was like, just wrote it in four hours.

unknown 58:12

That's it.

Jen 58:12

And they were like, whatever. It's Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, summer movie, just doesn't matter. Get it out there. There's aliens in it, people will go see it, and we'll make six hundred million dollars off the first weekend, and that's it.

Joe 58:24

Well, that was I think I don't think that was the first weekend, but well, whatever. Um That would have been great if they made six hundred million dollars on the first weekend.

Tom 58:32

I'm just saying the other thing I I will say too, like in this movie I feel like it's terrible, but it's also really kind of quick and then it's over. Like in the book, the aliens take like they take over England. Like it's got like they've destroyed the government, they killed millions of people, and they own England, and they're just trying to like they're just planning for what's next. They're building machines to fly off of England to go to other parts of the world.

Joe 58:58

As long as it um probably so it's not it's it's not like a world invasion, like in the in the movie. No, it starts in England, yeah. Of course, because they have to, that's where you would go first.

Jen 59:08

Two to three weeks?

Tom 59:09

Yeah, I think it's I think yeah, probably about three weeks. Yeah.

Joe 59:12

Yeah, this is like two or three days. Yeah.

Tom 59:15

Like the it the the book the book is split up in two halves. Uh it's like The Coming of the Martians is book one, and The World Under the Martians is book two. Like they've already, like, halfway through the book, they've taken over England. Like they've they've destroyed civil government, murdered millions of people, London is a dead city. Whatever.

Joe 59:34

Nah, we didn't well, I mean, we don't know if we got that here. We don't really find that out.

Jen 59:39

Is Bay Own a dead city? I have to know.

Joe 59:42

Well, Boston is a big deal. Boston looks fine. I mean Boston's fine. It looks like pretty I don't know if there's a lot of dust, that's all I'm saying. So but um but that's okay because uh you know his ex-wife was fine and her parents. Her parents they her parents are played by um um Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, who were in the uh 1953 War of the Worlds adaptation.

Tom 1:00:10

Oh, that's kind of cool.

Jen 1:00:12

Is the that adaptation closer to this or more far away?

Joe 1:00:15

I don't know. We might have to watch it someday. Maybe have a bonus episode. Although I think I'd rather watch the iceberg. I think I'd rather watch the ice cube version.

Tom 1:00:25

Yeah, would I think we would all rate this movie much higher if we watched the ice cube version in comparison? Yeah.

Joe 1:00:33

Um I uh Tom, I know you wanted to get into the Tim Robbins section because I know you really like Tim Robbins and that. Um what what did you like about that?

Tom 1:00:43

I want to know I just really enjoy Tim Robbins as an actor, and I thought that um I remember when I first watched the movie, like thinking like, you know, you get to see people in chaos, and you get to see that kind of of dark side of humanity, but you don't get to see somebody who's just become like a lunatic survivalist. And again, like not to get to this is a movie in reaction to 9-11, and I feel like I knew multiple people who just like completely went down that path of personality about like we gotta get them before they get us, and like we're gonna we're like there, you know, again like all the stuff, even though this I did not remember, this comes right from the book. A different character in the book, I just I mentioned Sam Malcolm, there's like another guy that comes in and out of the story that's like an artilleryman, like just a soldier that the narrator meets in the beginning and then meets up at the end, and by the end, the guy's like, hey man, we're like rats to them, you know, like we kind of just we're gonna live in the tunnels and we're gonna survive and da da da. Um, and he's less crazy and more just like, we lost, you know, it's over. Uh like if it was if it was 70 years later, he would be like a stoner. Um like, hey man, like you know, but um yeah, I just thought it was a I remember being like and I I felt it again watching now, like just a really arresting performance about somebody who is as much of a threat to these people's health and well-being as the aliens outside.

Joe 1:02:07

Yeah, I mean, I'll I'll say this. Not having seen the movie, right? I immediately was like, why is he closing the door when only two of them came over? Like he's waving people over, and then as soon as that those two come, he closes the door. I was like, he's he's gonna do something. I actually wrote down he's gonna eat them. Um that's what I wrote down. He's gonna eat them as soon as why is he sharpening an axe staring at them? Again, I wrote, he's gonna eat them. He's gonna eat them. I was a little disappointed that he didn't eat them. Um Tim Robbins reaffirms the theory because two people say it now, that the the the tripods were you know planted before people existed. That's what that's his theory. The other one, I think in the beginning it's just like uh, you know, they did it a long time ago. Um and he's pretty sure of himself. And even that, I I agree, Tom. Tim Robbins is great, his performance is great. And I think if it had ended at the point, if they had cut out the whole alien point portion of that that section, yeah, I know what you mean. Or not cut it out, but shorten it. Like that whole scene with the eye and the tentacle goes on for like I don't know how many minutes, but way, way too long. And then they pull out the mirror, and it's like, oh, is the mirror gonna do something? No, it's just a fucking thing that in between the two of them, it doesn't do anything. I then the boot there, I was like, I knew that I was like, that's not a foot, that's someone's boot. That's a boot. This is they're not there. This is like, and then sorry, and then you know, I we talked about the aliens, you know, you can't fool me. Looking through photos past the aliens looking through photos, which is just the most ridiculous part of that whole sequence, is maybe the second most ridiculous part where the two of them are struggling with the gun, but silently, and they're like they're like making the sounds and motions, but there's no sounds coming out of them. I thought that was so I started laughing out loud when I saw that. Um and it would cut back to them, and you'd just be like, and you'd hear like a occasionally you hear like a gasp of the air, like very intense.

Tom 1:04:19

So um I'm trying to I'm trying to I'm trying to picture it in my head right now, and I don't know if I'm like Tim Robbins has gotta be a foot, a full foot taller than Tom Cruise.

Joe 1:04:29

Probably more eight to ten eight to ten inches at least.

Tom 1:04:31

No, I think uh yeah. I I I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I yes. I mean Tim Tim Robbins is is is like close to like six and a half feet tall. Oh, is he?

Joe 1:04:40

I thought it was like six three or something. He's gigantic, yeah. Okay.

Tom 1:04:43

And so like it's it's one of those things where it's like, okay, well, you're Tom Cruise, so it's a believable physical comp conflict. Right?

Joe 1:04:51

But in real life, it's pretty quiet, so it's in real life, it's like struggle more.

Tom 1:04:56

Yeah, in real life, it would be like you having a wrestling match with your kid over a gun. Like he's so much bigger than him.

Joe 1:05:03

Yeah, and they're I mean, there's the age gap is not really.

Tom 1:05:08

They're probably around the same age.

Joe 1:05:09

Yeah, they're probably only a couple years apart, maybe. Um I did research on this, yeah.

Tom 1:05:14

I'm sure they're around the same age.

Joe 1:05:17

And uh I I don't know. The where when he makes the decision to just go kill him, I thought it looked it made him look a little bad that because Tim Robbins is just in the other room digging.

Jen 1:05:29

Yeah.

Joe 1:05:30

And he's just like, well, I'm just gonna go kill him because he's he's probably gonna get us killed, but I don't know. Or eat us. Yeah, well, if I think it should have been more of like a clear cut, like he does it in like self-defense type of scenario. This was more like it was it was more like I'm just gonna get him before he gets me.

Tom 1:05:49

So they are they're four years. Uh Tim Robinson's four years older than that. Okay.

Joe 1:05:53

Yeah, so not that much.

Tom 1:05:54

Yeah.

Joe 1:05:54

I'm sure he's not in the physical condition though that Tom Cruise keeps himself in, though.

Tom 1:05:59

I am very sure. Sure that, yeah.

Jen 1:06:03

Throw sandwiches against the window to work out?

Joe 1:06:05

Yeah. I mean, come on.

Tom 1:06:06

So they're vegetarian sandwiches.

Joe 1:06:08

Yeah, that was one thing that I was like, uh, you're making Tom Cruise look a little bad now because it seemed a little cruel and vicious and sadistic. Well, not sadistic, but cruel and vicious. Um Yeah, thank you, Danny, who says he kills him to protect his daughter, who immediately walks outside and gets taken by alias.

Jen 1:06:28

Yeah. Oh my god.

Joe 1:06:31

I was not expecting the whole uh cage thing with people in it, because I had no idea that they were really that they were taking people. I I had only thought that they were vaporizing them. So that was cool. And I know you you mentioned that that is in the book. Um is there like a weird like uh almost sandworm anus uh thing that sucks them the people up or pulls the people up through it?

Jen 1:06:54

I don't think so.

Tom 1:06:55

You don't see the the the narrator doesn't see exactly what happens, just that the people are alive and then they're they're sucked dry. So he sees like the after effects.

Joe 1:07:04

The n the narrator never gets so the narrator never gets taken in one and he doesn't stick a grenade in it.

Tom 1:07:10

No. No, okay, no. The the the Tim Robbins-esque character in the book, the narrator knocks out in that fight, and then the alien takes the the guy and and but they see somebody else first to kind of get uh they're like, what is that? Oh, that's a person. Oh, but it like kind of happens they can't see what what the process is. Yeah. But like, yeah, they they imply it's like they're they're kind of like vampiring, though they're just sucking out their their blood and and whatever nutrients are in the body. Yeah. And they're they're like, and they say that they brought some other life forms from Mars that they had already like like basically the to eat on the way. So like the implication is that uh like this is just how they do it. They they they rely on other creatures to have digestive systems to get nutrients, and then they just take the nutrients from the bloodstreams of those creatures.

Joe 1:07:59

Oh okay. Um yeah, I guess you didn't really need to explain that in the movie.

Tom 1:08:03

Yeah, that that's that's something that I think, you know. Uh why is a longshoreman gonna be uh well, you see, what they're doing is like yeah, it's not yeah, they uh they would have gone the route of like the happening where Mark Wahlberg, the science teacher, figures everything out.

Joe 1:08:18

Um we're not gonna make any bones about this. He d he's he don't know. It doesn't matter. Right. Look at the cool aliens, look at the the the rays, the heat rays, laser beams.

Tom 1:08:31

Yeah, see, he is inside of a big machine and moving things around at the beginning, and then the aliens are in big machines and they move things around as well.

Joe 1:08:40

You know what would be cool, Tom, if he used that machine to fight the aliens.

Tom 1:08:45

Yeah, like the end of aliens, right? Get away from here, you bitch.

Joe 1:08:48

Yeah. Again, something that they kind of set up in this in the movie, but it doesn't ever pace off. No. Um yeah, yeah.

Jen 1:08:57

Just whip a shipping container at it.

Joe 1:08:59

Yeah, exactly. He just starts throwing shipping containers at that, or you know, it picks one up to block, block their heat rays with it. I don't know. Something. Think about something.

Tom 1:09:09

I I've realized now, and then having this conversation, we seriously failed as a podcast. We have a friend who this is what this guy does for a living.

Joe 1:09:16

Oh, yeah, we should have reached out to Dave. I was I was trying to see if that's solenoids. Well, that's a that's a car.

Jen 1:09:26

But I know, but this guy knew about solenoids.

Joe 1:09:29

Oh, well, that we we've established that those are two separate things, those are two separate skills that aren't related for him. Maybe maybe not. Um no, in the beginning I was looking at the shot and I was trying to see if that was the peer that he works at. I don't think it was. I think that's a different one.

Tom 1:09:46

Should see if he he if he does a good job representing the yeah, representing the job.

Joe 1:09:51

I was just like laughing at that opening shot of him in the uh in the machine, Tom Cruise, and like what he how they had him like dressed. And I was like, they're trying to make Tom Cruise look like a blue-collar guy. And it's it looked like he was pretending.

Tom 1:10:06

Well, he was.

Jen 1:10:08

I know acting.

Joe 1:10:11

Uh yeah. I would I would I would have liked to see more of that. Like I said, I would have loved to have gotten a little bit more of uh the Tom, the Ray. What are their last names? I don't even know what his last name is.

Jen 1:10:21

Ferrier? Ferrier?

Joe 1:10:23

Ferrier? Why?

Jen 1:10:24

F-E-R-R-I-E-R.

Joe 1:10:27

Ray Ferrier. I'm gonna say Ferrier. They're more like Ferry Less. Oh very good. Uh I want to shout shout out to uh Spanish and um and uh what's his name? The other guy who's uh in Seinfeld. Yes, his other friend that the two of them are together.

Jen 1:10:49

He's also on Severance.

Joe 1:10:51

Yes, he's on Severance. He was also in uh The Outsider, I believe, if I recall the movie. Uh not the movie, the uh the TV show and HBO of the Stephen King book. Um he's the guy who says, You don't you don't wear the ribbon? Yeah, right? And Seinfeld. Okay.

unknown 1:11:07

Yeah.

Joe 1:11:07

I think so. Amy Ryan, who I thought was gonna be in the movie more. And then who's the woman Go ahead, sorry.

Jen 1:11:14

No, she wasn't famous back then, I don't think.

Joe 1:11:17

So no, probably not. Um And then who was the woman who played the uh the the friend Lisa M.

Jen 1:11:26

Walter.

Joe 1:11:27

That's the woman from is that the woman from Abbott Elementary? Yes. Okay, I thought it was her, a much younger her.

Jen 1:11:32

I was like, she was in I think she was in the parent trap.

Tom 1:11:35

She was in the parent trap.

Jen 1:11:36

Okay, I never saw that. But yeah.

Tom 1:11:38

Yeah. Maybe Ryan had already like she was already somebody. No, not the office. I think she was done.

Jen 1:11:46

Okay.

Joe 1:11:46

And uh and of course, last but certainly not least, uh Roz Abrams.

Jen 1:11:52

Oh, I have a note about that. The note is the note is Roz Abrams. Oh, I was like, oh, I remember her. Yeah.

Joe 1:12:03

Uh Roz. Good old Roz. Good old Roz Abrams. If you don't know who Roz Abrams Roz Abrams is, look it up. We're not gonna tell you.

Jen 1:12:12

It doesn't matter.

Joe 1:12:14

It doesn't matter.

Jen 1:12:16

We were excited about it.

Tom 1:12:17

So I I think about Amy Ryan didn't really hit it big until a couple years after this movie. She did Gom Baby Gom, it was like her first breakout performance. Yeah.

Joe 1:12:27

So um all right, uh, anything else that uh that you want to share about this movie uh compared to the book? Um I will say that this was the book itself was released as a serial uh uh serialized in in Pearson's magazine in 1897 before the hardcover release in 1898. So technically, I guess the story came out a year prior to the book.

Tom 1:12:56

Um the book comes out well, the book was published in that time frame. It does take place in the very early years of the of the of the 20th century in the 1900s, so it's like a few years in the future. Um so the this movie is is roughly 100 years after the book takes place.

Joe 1:13:16

Yeah. That's yeah, very different. I guess that's why it's different, right?

Tom 1:13:21

That's the only reason. Yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:13:22

And in America, it it came out uh as a serial uh in the cosmopolitan. So remember that? Remember when like they used to put like stories in magazines and publications? I do remember that. That was cool. That was cool. I wish they did that still.

Tom 1:13:39

Um I some of the chapters of the book are so much shorter than other chapters. Yeah. Uh-huh. That I imagine, like, if I'm like you know, I'm reading it as a serial, I'm like, oh good, the next the next chapter's out. I'm like, it's four pages long. Like being quite uh quite upset, but that's alright. Yeah.

Joe 1:13:57

I think we touched on it a bit already, right? So the the this movie cost uh, let's see, a hundred and I have it here somewhere, 132 million dollars roughly, 10 months from production to uh release. And I was a bit blown away by this because but I guess I shouldn't be surprised because it's a Steven Spielberg Tom Cruise movie, but it made over 600 million dollars globally. So while while might not have been the greatest movie, it made a shit ton of money.

Tom 1:14:30

I will say this, I really enjoyed rereading the book, even though the author did have a a taste for certain words uh used again and again. Um, and I would recommend it to anybody uh who like I think Jen mentioned it, I think it was on live enough prior to this, but like yes, the beginning of the book is like a travelogue through a land I know nothing about. So like they're just you need a map of of England a hundred years ago to understand like some of the the references. But um it's per surprise it was surprisingly modern in its ideas and its philosophies, which I thought was uh it made for a fun read.

Joe 1:15:04

Yeah, uh just a note about what you were saying, Tom. Like he, you know, Wells made it a point. Uh he meticulously mapped the the path, you know, the Martian's destructive path, um, through, you know, actual Surrey suburbs. You know, he used real landmarks and made it as, you know, the descriptions were of the present-day locations, and you know, he went to those locations and obviously wanted to make sure everything was scientifically accurate in this or ge geographically accurate. So much so that I heard that when people read this book who lived in those areas, it kind of creeped them out a bit because it felt real to them because he was just describing you know what they saw outside their windows. So maybe maybe one day I'll go back and read that one.

Tom 1:15:50

Sure.

Joe 1:15:51

Alright, uh, shall we shall we give this movie a rating?

Jen 1:15:58

Yes.

Tom 1:15:59

I feel like Jed really wants to go first. Yeah.

Jen 1:16:02

Um I did not like this movie at all. I don't think it was a good adaptation. And I am giving it two stars.

Joe 1:16:13

Two stars.

Tom 1:16:15

Alright. Tom. I have to say I thought she was gonna go even lower than that based on some of her comments before. So it's low for me.

Jen 1:16:22

It is low. It's slow. I mean, it's a it's some bad that is a bad rating, yeah. It's a movie that exists, and like some of the stuff in it is good, but for the most part, not good. Not enjoyable for me. I I'm mad that other people liked it. There you go.

Joe 1:16:39

What do you want to do with those people, Jen?

Jen 1:16:42

I want to make their lives tumultuous.

Joe 1:16:46

This got a 6.6 out of 10 on um on IMTB.

Tom 1:16:50

Yeah, that's a high rate. That's that's that's that's overrating it. I think um I didn't like the movie that much either. I think I liked it a little bit more than Jen, but I'm also a um, I don't know. I I I feel like my bell curve of of good and bad ratings is more extreme than hers. So even though I liked it more, I'm also giving it a two, which I think is like a two is like a normal. It's a normal bad movie. It's a normal bad movie for me. Like I feel like if I disliked it as much as Jen, I would give it like a one or a one and a half. I think it's like it's a it's a sub-average film. It's got some good performances, it's got good effects shots, and good visuals. I mean, Steven Spielberg always knows where to put the camera and how to frame a shot. Yeah. So I think that some of the visuals in the movie are very good. I do think it's a very subpar adaptation of a book, and it well, it it I feel like they wanted to make a movie about something, and they use this book as an excuse to make that movie, as opposed to making an adaptation of the book.

Joe 1:17:48

I have a question then, because I I feel like we've kind of been, you know, using this rating. Um, we're looking at it different ways from different perspectives. And I'm wondering if this is if this rating should be just the not comparing itself to the uh the literary work and just as a movie.

Tom 1:18:09

Yeah.

Joe 1:18:09

Um I mean that's what it sounds like, Jen, you're taking that into account. You're like, I'm I'm just rating it as a movie. That's why I'm giving it a two, and I I like it. Bless the time.

Jen 1:18:19

You think I should I shouldn't think about the book? Or I should.

Joe 1:18:23

Oh, I don't know. I'm asking, I'm posing that question here. We never discussed that.

Jen 1:18:26

No, I think we have to. That's the whole point of this.

Joe 1:18:28

Well, no, I was gonna then there's the second question, whether you think it was a successful adaptation.

Tom 1:18:33

I feel like we make it sorry, go ahead.

Joe 1:18:35

No, I was gonna say, I feel like there's movies that I think are good, but I think they're not good adaptations. Oh, yeah. So Yeah.

Tom 1:18:42

Well, I I we we have some of those planned on the docket, right?

Joe 1:18:46

Uh where it's where it's weird, right? There's not I feel like it's not often that the the movie's better than the book, but it does happen sometimes.

Tom 1:18:55

Well, I also I mean, I think sometimes the movie's good, the book's good, the movie's not a good adaptation to the book, it's just a good movie, right? Um I don't think this movie is that I think it's I don't think it's that bad, but I think it is below average. Uh and I feel like uh for me, a two is like a below average movie.

Joe 1:19:13

Yeah. I I'm giving it a three. It's very watchable, except when you get to the to Tim Robbins section.

Tom 1:19:22

Except for 25% of the film. That part's bad.

Joe 1:19:26

Nothing's happening. It's just like one thing happens. We're stuck in Tim Robbins' basement. We're stuck in what's his face, what's his character's name? Harlan Ogilvy. Ogilvy.

Jen 1:19:36

That's a character. That's a name from the book.

Tom 1:19:38

Yeah, that's a neither of the two characters. Neither of the two characters that he's based on.

Jen 1:19:45

It's one of his like astronomer friends that gets killed.

Joe 1:19:48

Gets heat read up. Yeah. Um again, not that I dislike Tim Robbins. It was just very, very it just it was just just a drastic change of pace. I would just end, really, and then it just ends.

Jen 1:20:01

It just ends.

Joe 1:20:03

It just ends. So I I give it a three, though. Like I said, it's entertaining to watch. It's not a it's not a great movie, but it's not a bad movie. There's things that don't make sense, but I feel like I don't watch Steven Spielberg Tom Cruise movies to to try to make sense. Although, I mean, the their prior collab like I I'm not when I watch those movie, those types of movies, I'm not trying to make sense of it.

Tom 1:20:24

Yes. I I I I get what you're saying. Like, you don't like the science fiction in this movie is a trapping. It's it's it and you kind of made a reference to it very early on. Like this is like more like an action-e film than it is the science fiction film.

Joe 1:20:36

Science fiction was just a red herring.

Tom 1:20:38

Exactly.

Jen 1:20:39

Um I mean, like I I don't expect it to make sense in like how do the alien how are the alien chips powered. Like that's fine. I don't have to know that. Yeah. But the but the alien chips being like that doesn't make any sense. They're very difficult. It doesn't make any sense. And I that part needs to make sense for me.

Joe 1:20:58

Yeah. I I get you. It didn't make any sense to me and it it did bother me, but I was like, I don't it doesn't matter. And not for this movie.

Jen 1:21:04

I was like, they had they had the story, like I they weren't gonna adapt adapt it straight from the book, but like s w don't change that. That doesn't make any sense. Don't change it to something worse and stupid.

Joe 1:21:18

So I think you know you're both are saying this is not a successful adaptation of the book. Well, it was entertaining and I enjoyed it, but was it good? It's okay. Sorry.

Jen 1:21:30

Was it entertaining? No. But did I enjoy it?

unknown 1:21:34

No.

Jen 1:21:34

Not really. Was it good? Still no.

Joe 1:21:37

It's not the jury's still out. Um I would say this.

Tom 1:21:44

If you're if you're interested in watching a Spielberg film or a Cruz film, there are many other options.

Joe 1:21:50

Well, uh well, well, and we're gonna do another one of them for sure. Right? Because we we already mentioned Minority Report, which is another which is another sci-fi adaptation that the two of them did, which is a much better movie than this movie. Yeah. So if you're gonna if you're gonna decide like, hey, should I go back and watch this movie, I would go back and watch it. It's definitely an entertaining movie, and there's definitely a lot of things to talk about. Um, but if you want to watch a good movie with these two, go watch Minari report. You know what we have to do. No, you don't know what we have to do. We have re-uh opened up the Patreon. Oh, we do have to do it. Oh, and as part of the Patreon uh I want to say rewards, but as part of what we do uh here for anyone who is a patron of ours is we give them a shout-out on the podcast. Um so we are gonna go back and read all of our patrons' names, not all on this episode, because there's 350,000 of them. No, just kidding. Uh there's not even 350 of them. But we're gonna um we're gonna do some of them because I don't want to just read out a whole list of names and then people are gonna turn off the podcast. So I'm gonna read out a couple of them. Uh and we'll go through a couple each each week.

Tom 1:23:06

Like rapper room?

Joe 1:23:07

Like ropper room.

Jen 1:23:09

I see. I'm just gonna say the people in chat. I see Dana and Danny and Speeder and Meg and Jason. Okay, sorry. All right.

Joe 1:23:22

My gosh. My gosh. We're gonna start out with our uh heroes of the horn. Uh oh, this name looks familiar. Vincent Coza. Hey, Doc Brown, and Chris G. Thank you all for supporting us and continuing to support us. We appreciate you.

Tom 1:23:45

We do.

Joe 1:23:45

Um, and then I'll start going through some of these other ones. We're not gonna get through these. Oh, thank you to Celtic Mist. Oh, Brendan Johnston. We know him. Ben Kenobi, Kano4, Stephen Rawls, David Garan, Millie Theron, Tristan Akiyama, and I'm gonna stop here at RAUR because I'm gonna remember that when we record next time so we can pick up from there. Thank you all for continuing to support us. We appreciate you.

Jen 1:24:14

Thank you. Thank you.

Joe 1:24:16

Um, and if anyone wants to join our Patreon just to hear me, Jen, or Tom, say your name, check out the links.

Tom 1:24:21

We also just dropped our our first uh bonus content for this podcast, right? For matrix.

Joe 1:24:27

We did. We did it. It is so we recovered uh the uh recent adaptations of Dune. So we have uh an episode talking about the 1984 David Lynch adaptation. This is act that's actually our pilot episode. It's like our, right? I guess you can consider it like a pilot episode. We just never released it, it was a practice run.

Tom 1:24:49

Yeah, it was us trying to figure out uh what the format of this would would really be. Put it in we we mentioned it on our Discord earlier today, but like for anyone who listens to this or knows me, like, you know how much I was looking forward to talking about that movie particularly. I love it, and uh it's worth a join just to listen to that episode.

Joe 1:25:11

Oh, it's quite a movie too, if you haven't watched it.

Tom 1:25:13

So oh my gosh, it's great.

Joe 1:25:14

Whack a doodle.

Jen 1:25:15

Good movie. That's a good movie.

Joe 1:25:18

That's right. I want to remind everyone to follow us on social media. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Blue Sky. Join us over in Discord to continue the conversation there. We also post our episodes on YouTube, so be sure to go to our YouTube page to like and subscribe. Written review us wherever you listen to podcasts, and check out our Patreon page to support us that way. Links to all the aforementioned information are included in the show notes to this episode's. Final thoughts, Jen and Tom?

Jen 1:25:44

This is not a war any more than there's a war between men and maggots. This is an extermination.

Joe 1:25:52

Was that in the movie?

Jen 1:25:53

Yeah.

Joe 1:25:53

Yeah. You know who says it? Uh is it is it uh Morgan Freeman?

Jen 1:25:58

No.

Joe 1:25:59

It's Tim Robbins, man. Oh, that's right, of course, Tim Robbins.

Jen 1:26:03

There's a similar line in the book, but it's a little different.

Joe 1:26:06

I feel like, yeah, that was definitely uh something that could have been from the book. All right. I wanna uh oh, I already did all that. That was the last word. That was the last word. Thanks everyone for listening, and you'll hear us next time.