Joe 0:00

Ernest Klein spent a decade in IT support writing a 1980s Gatekeeper's Manifesto only for Steven Spielberg to turn it into a $175 million monster truck rally. It's the ultimate cinematic trade swapping a mid to high six-figure book advance for a film that replaces a 16-bit game of joust with a King Kong Demolition Derby. And I was like, I don't remember any of this stuff being really in the movie. Nope. And then I was like, did I really see the movie? Or maybe I only saw part of it. And then I watched it, the movie today, and I was like, I don't really remember a lot of the movie, but I think this was one of those like late night falling asleep type movies I put on where I don't think I was awake for the whole thing. Um, so I think it's a little bit of both. A little bit of no, a lot of stuff in the book isn't a good movie.

Tom 1:25

I was like, you're gonna remember the movie perfectly, Joe.

Joe 1:28

And I I kind of was watching the movie, but like I think falling asleep while I was watching it. So I so that's also why I don't remember stuff. I was surprised, I'll just say that much. Yeah, uh yeah. I read this thing, I read slash listened to this book in three days.

Tom 1:46

Wow.

Joe 1:46

I yeah, I crammed it down as you know, I had Will Wheaton up at like 1.4 speed, which was actually pretty good. And I just couldn't I just picture the characters now as Will Wheaton.

Jen 2:01

Will Wheaton.

Joe 2:02

Yes, I picture like a 19, 20-year-old Will Wheaton.

Jen 2:06

Will Wheaton's mentioned in this book, right?

Joe 2:08

Yes, he's to say his own name. Yes, he had to say his own name. Will Wheaton is like in charge, he's like on the Oasis, like he's like the president of the Oasis or something like that.

Jen 2:19

Will Wheaton's not mentioned, he's in the book, he's a person like yeah, him and somebody else are like old guys that are like on the advisory council of the Oasis or something like that.

Joe 2:29

They're like the players count, like you know, the the players council, uh or something like that. Yeah, user council. Uh that was weird of him mentioning his own name in there, but yeah. He was it was excellent, uh, you know, doing the audiobook. It was very enjoyable. Um, so I recommend the audiobook for this.

Tom 2:48

I'm going to disagree with you there. You didn't like it? I I couldn't stand it. Uh the book. It wasn't Will Wheaton's fault. Uh yeah. I uh it took me three days to get through four chapters, and then I said I'm not reading this book anymore.

Jen 3:04

You didn't read it?

Tom 3:05

No, it was awful.

Jen 3:07

I okay.

Joe 3:08

This is jump to screen. Let's get into this. This is jump to screen, the podcast where we discuss sci-fi of fantasy, literary adaptations to the big andor small screen. Uh, my name's Joe.

Jen 3:20

My name's Jed.

Tom 3:21

And I'm Tom Kokoza, baby.

Joe 3:25

And I had a we we gotta get into we had to start this thing once, Tom, you said your you know, your thoughts on the uh the book. I'm gonna go so Tom, is this your first experience? Is is reading the first four chapters your first experience with Ready Player One?

Tom 3:43

Yeah, I was aware of the book when it came out, and I was aware of the film uh when it came out, uh, but I hadn't gotten around to watching or reading any of them, uh either of them. And then yeah, I I read it for this, or I started to read it for this, and then I said, I got other things to do, man.

Jen 4:00

Did you watch the movie? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Tom 4:03

No, I remember I can't stand the movie. I will when we get into like the action, I I do want to talk about what happened before I watched the movie in order to get myself psyched up for it. But I no, it's just I mean, this isn't the first time that we've done one of these where we haven't one of us hasn't read the book. Uh I think this is the first time where one of us started to read the book and said, No, no, I'm just not gonna do that anymore.

Joe 4:32

Yeah, this is a shelf to screen first. We're 19 episodes into the podcast, and this is a first. We're still hitting first. So I'm I'm gonna guess before we go to your gen, I'm gonna guess why you didn't like it. Did you wanna like punch the main character in the face, Tom? Is that part of the reason why?

Tom 4:49

Uh that I think a part of it was that like I I mean he wasn't he wasn't terribly he's very teenager-y, whatever, but he's not like he wasn't completely unlikable. I will say this the entire time Will Wheaton was talking, I was just thinking, shut up, Wesley. Like um from you know, uh the Star Wars uh the Star Trek rather uh meme. But like uh what really got me was and I didn't even see I've never even seen this episode of of South Park, but like there's an episode of South Park with like the remember berries or whatever it is.

Jen 5:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tom 5:20

And I'm like, that's like that's literally just every paragraph of the book is just let me drop as many references as I can in this paragraph so that one of them you'll be like, oh, oh yeah, I like that. And like it was in the second chapter, I think, where he's like he goes through different 80s video game systems that like it was like it was a 2600 and an Activision and Atari 800 XL, and like literally he got to the that one and I was like, Oh, that's the one that I had. And I was like, fuck this book, man. And then like it made me do the thing, and exactly, and then like literally every single thing that it's like it's like if it's not explaining okay, this is this is the current state of the world, it's explaining like it's just engagement bait, like the entire book. And I'm like, I can't I can't do it. I'm like, it's not uh that that so it was that, and and it was I don't I don't care that this I don't care what happens to the guy, really, but like he is annoying and he and he does get less annoying, Tom.

Joe 6:26

I think he kind of matures as the book goes through. Um because I found him annoying in the beginning too. I will say this though, Tom, you missed because you didn't get to finish the book, and I would say this is maybe about two-thirds halfway to two-thirds through the book, there's a lot of them use him using like aliases for of like characters from whatever, you know, old 80s TV shows or whatever, movies. One of the aliases he gives is Henry Swanson. Do you know Henry Swanson is? I'll give you a hint. It's not the character in the movie's real name that he's referencing.

Tom 7:01

I don't from it sounds familiar. I don't remember.

Joe 7:04

Henry, I'll I'll say something. Henry Swanson's my name, and pleasure is my game. Oh what I Picture, glasses, a mullet.

Tom 7:16

Oh, oh yeah, Shaq Burton's fake identity. That's right. Sorry. What I'm really looking for is a Chinese girl with green eyes.

Joe 7:24

Yes, yes, he references Big Trouble in World China.

Tom 7:28

I yeah, I I mean the references were good. Uh and I did end up having like a 20-minute conversation with my well, it wasn't a conversation because she didn't remember either of these shows, and I couldn't believe it. That was really what the conversation was. But family ties and uh growing pains.

Jen 7:45

Like you remember them?

Tom 7:46

No, she didn't. I don't think she saw either of them. She doesn't remember watching either of them.

Jen 7:50

Oh my god.

Tom 7:51

And then I had to like kind of go through.

Joe 7:53

It's definitely a lot of family ties. Uh he's a big family ties fan, yeah. Um, Jen, your first experience with Ready Player One.

Jen 8:02

So I read a book a long time ago. Um, I thought I liked it a long time ago. And I'm wondering now it was fine. I'm just wondering now if like the references got me the first time I was reading it, and now I'm reading it again, and I'm like, just shut up about the references. And I was trying for like three days to think of the word to describe the characters in this book, and I finally thought of it and it's insufferable. Like, like just especially he does get better because I I did the end was better, but like at the beginning, when he's just when somebody will say, like, I watched Caravan of Courage, and he's like, Caravan of Courage, TV movie 1982, directed, but I'm like, shut up.

Tom 8:50

Shut up.

Jen 8:52

Just stuff like that. Where he would they would say like the title, what year came out, what what games like just stop.

Tom 8:57

Just stop.

unknown 8:58

Right.

Jen 8:59

So I don't know if I was like, yeah, I was like member buried into the, oh, this is cool. Look how many references they're dropping, how many like but now I'm like, just just stop. It's too much.

Joe 9:08

Yeah, if you take out all the references, this book is it's probably about a hundred pages shorter.

Tom 9:13

Yeah, I would say good.

Jen 9:14

And it's anyway, and I I I must have seen the movie partly because when I was rereading, and I I read it years ago, so I didn't remember everything that happened in it, but I'm reading it and I'm like three-quarters of the way through, and I'm like telling Dan, like, I remember the movie has like a car chase with like characters and like there's nothing like that in this book. And he's like, no, the car chase. I'm like, no, that's not in here. Like that's and then when I watched the movie, I was like, oh, they just changed, they just flat out changed the entire basically the entire story, everything they do. But um So yeah. So I am responsible for this book, and I feel now pressure after maybe not the best of my last two picks. I need to pick a really good book. Stardust. That's okay. That was the movie.

Tom 10:03

People liked the book, and the movie was perfectly cromulent. Um I have to say, I feel such a I felt so bad not liking the book because you picked it, Jen. And I felt like No, it's fun.

Jen 10:17

I thought I liked it. Like I don't know when did it come out.

Joe 10:21

2011, I think the book came out.

Jen 10:23

So I probably read it a long, a long time ago, and now I'm like just getting this.

Joe 10:27

Yeah, I I think the characters was probably more a little more relatable 14 years ago, 15 years ago, maybe because of our age. Right now, the the character kind of seems like maybe like one of my kids, maybe like a butt. The character seems like, yes, like seems like an annoying teenager.

Tom 10:46

Right.

Joe 10:47

Um, for sure. And I to be honest, I agree with you. He was a little insufferable. Thank you, Jen. That was the perfect word. But I did enjoy, like, he did get a little better, like he got better as the story goes on. He kind of matures a bit. Um, but I did, I I thought it was a lot of fun still. I really I thought the book was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it.

Tom 11:06

I yeah, I I literally couldn't, I I maybe I'll try to pick it up because I didn't get to any of the fun parts yet.

Jen 11:12

Yeah, you're there's a lot of backstory and explanation in the beginning of the movie. You're probably like stuck in that history of the guy, Halliday.

Tom 11:21

Like, yeah, I got to like uh like after like where you first meet H and they're mean to the the I rock the I rock guy because he's not uh like you know He's not TJ Miller like in the movie. Yeah, it was just like there's like I like that name. We'll just use a different make a different character. But like um, yeah, then I was just like I can't go anymore. I read something else instead.

Joe 11:45

Yeah, I was expect I wasn't expecting that. I I pushed through this book, I did it, like I said, I thought it was fun and I enjoyed it. But yeah, I I get where you can I get where you can say that. I feel like this book is for a very and it's funny, we talked about this with Stardust about who is the audience for this. Well, that was the movie in Stardust. We talked about who who's the audience for this movie. I would say for this, who's the audio audience for this book?

Tom 12:10

And it's clearly like very Gen X, you know, coded with all, and I mean Ernest Klein himself is I think he's around our age, so yeah, he's a couple, he's I think he's like 76, he was born, or something like that. Like, yeah, a few years, a few if he's a few years older than us.

Joe 12:28

Okay, um, but yes, this book seems like it's very targeted towards a very particular group. I and uh obviously the movie was like, well, we can't do that for multiple reasons, right? Yeah, not by not necessarily all by choice, but um unless it's well it's not as interesting because we already talked about a similar book. Last week, when we were talking about Jurassic Park, another Steven Spielberg adaptation, uh, this book had a similar path to production in the sense of it was the movie rights were sold before the book was published. Um and and I think I think in Jurassic Park we said like within a couple of weeks from the book being sold to the publisher that the that the movie rights were sold. And this one, in this, it's 48 hours from when they the publishing rights were were sold to when the movie rights were sold. Um let's let's get a little bit into the backstory then. What the the research, the research team worked really hard on this, so I want to make sure I uh I cover all of this. So Ernest Klein, who's the author of this, uh his uh this book was conceived as a collision of Willy Wonka and The Matrix, which I thought was a pretty good description of this. Um, the specific spark for the narrative was the 1979 Atari 2600 game adventure. Uh, Klein was fascinated by the first ever digital Easter egg hidden within the game's code by programmer Warren Robinet, which they did put in the movie, um, which is a hidden room containing the developer's name. And I think the backstory you get in the book is that back then they would they didn't put the developers' names in the credits, they got no credit for the game, so Robinet snuck his name into the game. Um Klein extrapolated this idea into a global treasure hunt where a billionaire hides his entire fortune within a video game. Um the book's pervasive 1980s influence was deeply personal. Having grown up in that era, Klein drew from the films of Steven Spielberg, John Hughes, Robert Zemeckis, as well as the music and arcade culture of his youth, which features heavily in this book. Heavily. That's probably a reference on every page of this book, I would say, to the something in the 80s.

Jen 14:49

Or it's like a quote that somebody says in a movie that they say to each other.

Joe 14:54

Yeah.

Jen 14:55

Like smooth move X Lax.

Joe 14:57

Yes. I mean, Tom, there do you I always want I almost want to jump right into this. So do you know it so the the the Easter egg hunt is very different in the book? So there's a key and a gate. You get the key, and then you use the key to open a gate. You have to stop to find the gate, um, and then you have to clear the gate. The first gate in the book is he's in uh the movie War Games, and he has to act as Matthew Broderick and do all of the lines of the movie in the gate in the actual movie. That is the first gate that he has to clear.

Tom 15:34

That's banana pants, okay. Okay.

Joe 15:40

They're all they're all very different. They changed all of them.

Tom 15:44

So like I I read a little bit about like things that happened in the book just as I was like kind of preparing for the show. But like, um is it the same general like is it the same general concept as the movie? Like, hey, like it's like I'm learning lessons by like it's not just like I have to solve the puzzle, like I have to learn where this guy's life went wrong and how I'm gonna be better than this guy.

Jen 16:05

Well the end is the same, like when he talks to him.

Tom 16:09

Yeah.

Jen 16:10

And he just gives him advice, but not really like by each key.

unknown 16:15

Okay.

Joe 16:15

No, everything else. Everything else is related to pop culture, basically. Every key every key and hint is all it's all pop culture.

Tom 16:25

You've gotta learn that like you can't only rely on computers, like being a mess of guys.

Jen 16:30

That's like the m yeah, but it's not each each one isn't like a new a different let like that's the lesson at the end after everything's done, but each key and gate is just like a fun game or movie or something that you have to do.

Joe 16:46

Yeah. So I mentioned this right. The public of uh the publication of the book was characterized by a rare and intense 48-hour auction in June 2010. Even before the book reached shelves, a massive bidding war broke out among major publishers. Crown Publishing, which is a division of Random House, ultimately won the North American rights with a mid to high, as I mentioned in the intro, advance, an extraordinary sum for a debut novelist. Uh, so the writing of this manuscript was born out of personal professional frustration. Klein had previously written a screenplay or the screenplay for the movie Fanboys. Remember that movie Fanboys? Yeah, back in 2020. Um, an experienced he described as demoralizing because the studio heavily edited his original vision.

Jen 17:35

Wow.

Joe 17:36

Yeah.

Jen 17:38

But he didn't have a problem with his the second time.

Tom 17:41

No, things are much better now.

Jen 17:43

As long as he's getting money when they're editing his vision.

Joe 17:46

That's true. Uh, this mutilation of his work motivated him to write Ready Player One as a novel, ensuring he had absolute uh creative control over the lore and geek culture references. Klein spent standard work days in a technical support job, which is what the character does at one point in the book, not in the movie. Um, he wrote the book over a span of 10 years uh to f to fully inhabit the world of Wade Watts. Klein purchased and customized a 1982 DeLorean with an Ecto 88 license plate and a night and Knight Rider electronics, which became a centerpiece for his personal writing environment.

Jen 18:27

Sure.

Tom 18:28

Hey, whatever necessary.

Joe 18:30

Yeah. I mean, it's very clear he's got some sort of connection with the characters, two of the characters in the book, clearly, the main one and I guess Halliday.

Tom 18:41

Yeah, and I I I I you definitely get the sense, even from you know, the the little that I read, like that this is this this character is like is saying a lot of the stuff that he would like to say, or like feeling a lot of stuff that he probably felt going through high school and and and trying to to relate to people.

Joe 18:58

Yeah. Um, although you don't get much much high school in the in the book. I mean then the movie, they don't even talk about there's no high school doesn't exist in this in this movie. I think they mentioned Ludus and schools. Oh, yeah, yeah. When Ben Mendelssohn's trying to trick him in the talking about the schools in fast times at Ridgemont High and Ferris, right? Ferris Pules Day. I'm sorry. Yeah. Uh so let's see. Uh movie, right? Let's make this into a movie. So Warner Brothers uh secured the film rights for 1.75 million on the same day. Oh, sorry, it was the same day the book deal was signed.

Jen 19:36

But like how? Just off like this is what the book's about?

Joe 19:40

Manuscript.

Tom 19:41

Well, the galleys of the book, yeah. Like it had already kind of made its way. And I'm sure, like, I'm sure book publishing houses when they see something that like they like, it kind of like it the word gets out, you know.

Joe 19:54

Yeah. Uh and also I guess he had, you know, he was a screenwriter, so he had written before. I'm sure that yeah, like there was also he probably knew people as well, yeah. Uh despite the high-profile acquisition, though, the project languished in development for five years. Uh, the primary obstacle being licensing, right? It was merchandising, merchandising. Merchandise, right? The perceived impossibility of clearing the rights to hundreds of distinct IP intellectual properties from competing studios. There was a lot of other directors too attached to this. I was reading, uh, before Steven Spielberg, I think it was offered to Christopher Nolan first, and he he turned it down.

Tom 20:39

I can see that.

Joe 20:41

Yeah. Like, well. It was right after Interstellar. Yeah, I other people that they were they had on their short list after that was Zemeckis, Edgar Wright, Matthew Vaughn, and Peter Jackson. Um I don't know if I I might I might have enjoyed an Edgar Wright version of this. I feel like he would have leaned more into the geeky pop culture references.

Tom 21:06

I I think I would have as well.

Joe 21:08

I mean it's already got Simon Pegg in it, so it's true. It was offered also to Josh Trank. I don't even know who Josh Trank is. I probably should have looked at it.

Tom 21:15

He did um he did the awful Fantastic Four movie, but he did that movie, it was kind of like Capone Chronicle. Chronicle, that's the one I was thinking about. Oh, the superhero movie the kids get superpowers, and it's like all fun footage kind of.

Joe 21:30

Well, Josh Trank turned this down twice, so it wasn't until you make Fantastic Four? Oh, what oh god, when was Fantastic Four?

Tom 21:37

It was after Chronicle, I don't know. Yeah, that movie's atrocious.

Joe 21:42

Um, yeah, so Steven Spielberg finally signed on to direct and also produced, you know, viewing the story as a cautionary tale about dangers of escaping reality for virtuality, which is a theme in the book. So let's give it up to Steven Spielberg for keeping some themes from the book.

unknown 21:59

Um

Joe 22:00

Uh so casting wise, right, we've got Wade Watts, Ty Sheridan was casted. This is interesting. Ty Sheridan was cast for his grounded everyman quality. I'm not quite sure I got that from Ty Sheridan. Uh I thought it was very funny how they put glasses on him and thought that would make him look dorky. I don't know what they were going for.

Tom 22:20

I don't know. Um he's just a he's a he's a very interesting looking young man.

Joe 22:27

Well, he looks a you know, every time I was watching this, I kept thinking for a second, for forgetting it wasn't Barry Kyogen because he looks a lot like Barry Kyogen.

Tom 22:37

Yeah. Like I always thought Ty Sheridan um looks like he's got an old man face. Like he's got like a heavily lined, like kind of deep set face.

Joe 22:48

Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't know if I really know him from anything else, to be honest.

Tom 22:51

Even like young cyclops. Oh, okay, like the X-Men uh prequels.

Joe 22:56

Just young Cyclops.

Tom 22:58

Yeah, like Yeah. I saw some movie where I think he's like developmentally or whatever, like yeah, disabled yeah, or something. I don't like uh I didn't see the whole movie, but it's got Adda De Armis in it, and he's like a bellhop or something. It's a very odd film.

Joe 23:11

Oh, that sounds interesting. Um other actors considered for this role were Nick Robinson and Nat Wolf.

Jen 23:20

I don't know who either of those people are.

Joe 23:23

I don't know either. You think I should have looked this up too?

Tom 23:26

I don't know Nat Wolf.

Joe 23:28

What is Nat Wolf from? What do the research uh team didn't give me uh uh a heads up on these actors? Oh, Nick Robinson's in Jurassic World.

Tom 23:37

Yeah, he's the older.

Jen 23:38

Oh, he's one of those kids.

Joe 23:39

Okay, Zach.

Jen 23:41

The older one?

Joe 23:42

He was also in Boardwalk Empire. Interesting, he must have been very young.

Tom 23:47

Uh Nat Wolf is in a bunch of stuff that I never really saw. I just know the name. Paper towns. Paper towns and Death Note. That's right, probably that one from.

Joe 23:57

Oh, Death Note. I think I feel like I've seen that, so both both of these people are way too handsome.

Tom 24:04

Yeah, like I that was my Well, I mean, it's a movie. It's a movie, but like you can still have, I don't know, people who who who whatever, like fit unpopular nerd culture.

Jen 24:17

I'm just thinking of if we're gonna talk about what people are supposed to look like. Um the description of Artemis.

Joe 24:24

It's like way off. Oh yes. Well, nobody's description in this is anything like the characters in the book.

Jen 24:32

Well, I feel like he's like a just a He's supposed to be, isn't he supposed to be a little chubby, like a little g? Yeah, yeah. I know. Not a handsome, chiseled, uh She's described as Ruben-esque. And I go, I was like, I don't know what that means, and I googled it and I was like, Zuck. Yeah, she's not Rubines-que.

Tom 24:49

No.

Jen 24:50

And her birth mark is absolutely hideous. It's like you barely see.

Joe 24:54

I know. I was like, uh really? Are we are they trying to sell us that Olivia Cook doesn't look pretty with that birthmark on her face? Come on. Come on. That's yeah. Uh Jen, I kept trying to figure out what Rubinesque meant too, but I feel like at one point they give you, you actually, when he gets her file, I think they mention her height and weight in real life. I don't know about the characters.

Jen 25:17

Yeah, they do. They do.

Joe 25:18

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I was like, okay. Yeah, that she's definitely a little to three. No, no, she's like five seven. She's actually kind of tall, 160 something, I think they mentioned. Yeah, I didn't think that that was. No, no, no, no. She's not like she's not big, but she's not Olivia Cook.

Jen 25:37

It's like a like very busty and a big buttons. Like a very, very big hourglass, curved, very curvy.

Tom 25:45

Okay.

Jen 25:46

Not just like curvy, but like like extremely curvy. That's what the pictures I saw were.

Joe 25:52

So, yeah. Uh so speaking of Olivia Cook, she won the role after a series of high-pressure chemistry reads with Sheridan. Uh, some of the other finalists were L. Fanning and Lola Kirk.

Jen 26:05

L. Fanning, also not Ruben S.

Joe 26:07

No, not at all. I'll tell you what, they they have good chemistry in this movie. That's something that I think they got right. I do like I do like their um interplay uh interactions with each other. I think they're gonna be.

Jen 26:22

I don't think she's very much like the book character, though.

Joe 26:27

No, not at all.

Jen 26:28

She's more enjoyable to be around, I think, than the book character.

Joe 26:33

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she's much more she's much friendlier and like uh welcoming than she's not just like annoyed about potentially not winning, and I don't know. Well, I mean, yeah, we'll get into it when we start talking, I guess, about the movie because there's so many differences. Umrento, obviously Ben Mendelssohn, he was Steven Spielberg's first choice. Um, although there was some speculation at one point that Hugo Weaving could play the role. Um, I think Hugo Weaving would have done a good job too.

Jen 27:07

Yeah.

Joe 27:07

I'm sure he's probably he I don't know, he might have felt too much like Mr. Smith, Agent Smith, sorry.

Tom 27:13

Oh um, and then there was like a rumor that Gene Wilder was gonna play James Halliday, although it was never it was neverly offered to him, so I think it was Willie Walker fan casting.

Joe 27:32

Um as we mentioned, production's greatest challenge was all the IP clearance. Um the producer Christy Makosco Krieger spent three years negotiating with entities like Nintendo, Sega, the estate of various filmmakers. While Warner Brothers had uh easy access to DC comics like Batman, Harley Quinn, etc., they were notably unable to secure significant rights to the Star Wars, which I guess at this point was sold already sold to Disney, right? Yeah, so he couldn't go to his buddy George Lucas and say, hey, it might have been a different story if Lucas still had Star Wars rights. Um or Ultraman. Uh the latter's absence required a creative shift, although I feel like this is a very minor shift. Instead of being Ultraman, it's the Iron Giant.

Jen 28:19

But it's not even what they do, it's it's just like another robot in the fight. It doesn't, it's not used in the same way.

Joe 28:27

So I don't think if they had the rights of Ultraman, it would have changed how it was used, to be honest with you.

unknown 28:32

Yeah.

Tom 28:33

I would say like the Iron Giant is I don't know when the book came out or whatever, but like it's so much of a it's it's so much a 90s movie, like a late 90s movie, that it does kind of stick out that it's here.

Joe 28:44

Yeah. Well, the m uh so the book is the Iron Man. Yeah. It's on our list of adaptations.

Jen 28:52

Oh, the Iron Giant book is called The Iron Man.

Joe 28:54

Yes. Yeah. Um so you want to get into this movie?

Jen 29:01

Sure.

Tom 29:02

Sure. I I will say, like, before so I usually watch these movies. We record on Fridays, I usually watch the movies on Thursday night. And um like the kids go to bed, we're gonna put the movie on, and like talking about my wife. This is post-Family Ties conversation. Uh I'm like, I really like this book was so bad. I don't I'm not looking forward to watching this movie at all. I was like, let me let me watch the trailer and like start to get yo. And like I didn't look, I didn't all I knew Ty Sheridan was in it, like as the main kid. I didn't know anybody else was in the film. And I'm watching it, I'm like, I hate like half of the people that are in this movie.

Joe 29:40

Who else did you hate to tell him in this movie?

Tom 29:42

I hate I hate with a burning passion Mark Rylance. Uh he was good in this, though, I thought. No, yeah, I hate him. Well, who is that? He's Halliday in the Halliday.

Joe 29:54

I was getting very Garth vibes from his character.

Jen 29:58

Yes, yes.

Tom 29:59

I I think like, yeah, I uh one of the things I whatever. I I hate him for a very stupid reason, but I hate him. And um, I think he's you know, he's a British actor, and he plays a lot of non-British people in films, and I think he's awful at accents. Uh and he ends up doing impressions as accents, you know, kind of a thing. So I I'm with you on that. There's no reason, like whatever.

Joe 30:21

Anyway, um unlike Olivia Cook, who has an impeccable American accent, I would say. I didn't know she was a British until like I think until House of the Dragon, I think.

Tom 30:31

Yeah, uh, yeah. I think I think you're you're spelling that the first movie I saw her in, I didn't I didn't like I had no inkling that she wasn't American.

Joe 30:38

I'm a big fan of hers.

Tom 30:40

Yeah, she's alright. I don't like like Ben, I don't have anything against Ben Mendelssohn, but I don't like him in anything.

Joe 30:47

He's another he's another actor. I had no idea he was Australian until I heard an interview with him.

Tom 30:52

I know he's good, he's good, he's got a good accent, yeah. Yeah, and I was just like, uh, and I can't stand Simon Peg anymore. Why? Why? And I this is this is again, these are stupid, these are not real good reasons, but I cannot stand Simon Pegg because Simon Pegg is all tatted up in real life.

Joe 31:10

Is he?

Tom 31:10

And yeah, and I'm like, don't, you're not. That's not you.

Joe 31:14

What kind of tats though?

Tom 31:15

Is it like but if it was like Star Wars if it was like Star Wars tattoos and I don't care what it is, man. Like, he's not you're not cool, Simon Pegg. You're not cool.

Joe 31:24

Simon Peg's got tattoos.

Tom 31:26

Yeah, don't be don't try and be cool. Don't it's not you, it's not Elaine. So uh yeah. So I was I was just like groaning in pain. And I was like, either if you've seen the trailer or if anybody was listening has seen the trailer, but it's like um the trailer is very much what I didn't like about the book condensed into two minutes, uh with some really bad speechifying at the end. So I was very enthusiastic about the film on it.

Joe 31:55

That's all. I couldn't find any pictures of Simon Pegg's tattoos.

Tom 31:59

Uh all right.

Joe 32:00

Um I'm I'm a little upset.

Tom 32:02

I'll see if I can find one and I'll put it there.

Joe 32:04

I mean, I see a couple of tattoos, but not sleeves.

Tom 32:07

No, it's not like a full sleeve. It's just I'll find something. Please go on.

Joe 32:12

Actually, you I get it, Tom. I get well, no, I don't get that it's the tattoos that it's what you're just like about.

Tom 32:20

It's so stupid. I I don't like, you know.

Joe 32:23

If you were to said I'm just tired of him because you know he pops up and all these things and plays like almost the same exact role, like I would get you there. And I thought he was really I thought he was good in this. Um you know, it wasn't a typical Simon Pegg type character that he played. Yeah, I I don't know what to say about the cast. I think the cast was fine for the most part. I think, you know, it's not their fault that they don't look anything like how the characters are described in the book. Um their performances were pretty good. I mean, they they also made their avatars, I feel like, different looking in the book too, which is something they had control over. I don't recall H being a bald like creature or hobgoblin looking thing. In the book, it's just a guy.

Jen 33:10

Yeah.

Joe 33:11

Like a barrel-chested kind of guy with a floppy hair and a but he's also a white guy, right?

Jen 33:18

White guy with the chest shire grin. She says, like her mom or whatever shows a white male avatar because people gave her more respect or something.

Joe 33:29

Yes.

Jen 33:30

So that's what she did.

Joe 33:31

Yeah, they took that out of here.

Jen 33:32

Yeah.

Joe 33:33

There's no we don't need to go into that.

Jen 33:35

Well, we have to we're gonna hear it's the same voice. So like they just like they put like an effect on it, but like you couldn't have her voice on like a a white, I don't know. It just wouldn't sound right. So they just like kind of matched it up and just made her a man and then.

Joe 33:50

You're saying Alina Waith couldn't sound like a white guy, a white kid?

Jen 33:53

I don't know. I don't I'm not the person that I I was picturing as age. It wouldn't I don't think it would sound right.

Joe 33:59

You were picturing more well, she's also not uh as as they quote in the book, a fat black chick.

Jen 34:06

Uh no.

Joe 34:07

Yeah.

Jen 34:08

Yeah, well, she's not she's not fat.

Tom 34:12

She's not fat.

Jen 34:14

She's also actually gonna say, is she a lesbian? They don't mention her being a lesbian in the movie, but that actress, I think, is a lesbian. So is that like right? I think, unless I'm totally off base.

Joe 34:25

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Jen 34:27

Right. I'm just like, are we just supposed to assume or Yeah.

Tom 34:32

I mean, uh I think um well, this this movie is I don't know, whatever. The movie is designed for as many people as possible to like it. Yeah, oh yeah. So like, sorry, we're not gonna, we're not gonna we're well it'll be there.

Jen 34:47

She's married to a woman, so yes.

Tom 34:49

It'll be there, but like we're not gonna mention it.

Joe 34:51

Well, here's a here's an here's a miss, then I guess from that, right?

Jen 34:55

Because she was married to a woman. Sorry.

Joe 34:57

I'm just gonna Spielberg's goal or or theme, right, was was the reality versus virtuality, right? There was not really much in this to kind of give backstory to the characters as to why they were escaping reality. I mean, except for Wade, right? And Artemis, I don't know, they made some shit up. I don't know what that was, but um, but yeah, they didn't they didn't put that in there, right? You don't get the I'm really a black girl, lesbian black girl, and I'm the reason, as Jen mentioned, that I'm not uh my character isn't one is because my mom was a white guy, my mom's character was a white guy because she did all her business that way and she got more respect and was able to get father and be more successful. Um yeah, they don't go into any of that.

Tom 35:46

No time, no time.

Joe 35:48

No, there isn't. Well, and I know we're just kind of like, I don't know, cherry-picking things, but this I felt this movie because I did one of those things where I checked how much was left in the movie, and when they got to the Castle Anorak part, you know, with uh the last key, I was like, Oh, let me see how much time's left in the movie. And there was still almost 50 minutes left in the movie. And I'm like, this is like the last, you know, 10% of the book, 5 maybe 15 of the book. Um, meanwhile, it's like almost, you know, almost half the well, it's about a third of the movie. We talk about this, I feel like week after week with some of these adaptations, is that they spent they and they did this with Stardust, and I I'm trying to remember some of the other stuff, but um where they they go through like 75% of the book in like half the movie or less, and then they just like the the end of the book is really really drawn out and they add a lot of shit to it. But yeah, yeah, which this movie did the same thing.

Tom 36:48

So I mean I'm gonna ask you, having read the book, right? My understanding is that like it's just like the the end is completely different, right? Like yes, oh it's very different.

Joe 36:59

Yeah, so just I mean, the whole idea of the castle and the shield and having to get in there to get the last yeah, the orb. Not to get the last key, it's really to clear the last gate because he already has the key. Um that's about it. That's and the characters, not even all the uh some of the characters are there, most of them are there.

Jen 37:18

Um well Dado dies in the book. Yes, like earlier.

Joe 37:23

His real life. I don't even know.

Jen 37:25

You don't even know who well, you know him from the movie, but one of the older Japanese kid.

Joe 37:30

He dies in the book. He gets killed.

Jen 37:31

He was murdered in real life. They like ch they like go to his house, they find out who he is and throw him off a balcony.

Joe 37:37

Throw him off the balcony of his 40-something st story apartment or whatever. Um yeah, they took that out.

Jen 37:45

Uh yeah, I I felt like somebody gave like if I didn't know that I didn't know when I wrote this note that there was the writer of the book that helped write the screenplay. I thought somebody was just like starting to explain what it was about, and then the guy and then the writer was like, all right, I'll just make up the rest of it.

Tom 38:02

Yeah, yeah.

Jen 38:03

Like that's how it, that's how it felt. Like you got the same characters and like the same they're on a quest for three keys, but like other than that, it's like wildly different.

Tom 38:15

So I guess with that, like to have like a like a big smash 'em up at the end, right? Like, I don't know. I I feel like it seems like a very like corporate exec, like, I want to see more things fighting, whatever, kind of a vibe. But you would think like Spielberg would be able to push back against that. I wonder if he even saw if that was just the script from the get-go. It was like, hey, we're gonna do it different from the movie, you know.

Joe 38:36

Well, so uh Klein uh co-wrote the initial script with uh do I have his name here? Sorry. Um he co-wrote the script with Eric Eason. And then Zach Penn came in later on, was hired to rewrite previous drafts, drafts that Eason and Klein um wrote, and Eason was just uncredited then. I don't know if that was uh if there was some sort of you know falling out or whatever uh conflict, but he wasn't even credited then. So But I mean Klein pray like really enjoyed working with Spielberg, at least that's yeah.

Jen 39:16

I mean, I get that. Like you wrote a book and then Spiel Steven Spielberg is gonna adapt it, and you get to like hang out and work with Steven Spielberg. So it's like it's kind of like you're just like, whatever.

Joe 39:27

Yeah, they get money for this.

Jen 39:29

Yeah, like some people are just able to, it seems, separate the movie entirely. It's a cool experience. I'm gonna make a lot of money, and my characters are gonna be in a movie. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Joe 39:43

It'll increase the sales of my other book as well.

Jen 39:46

Right. But some people are not able to do that. They're just like, I want to see what I wrote in a movie. Yes. And but this but I I get that like him playing a video game is you know not fun to watch. Him playing an arcade game, you know, like that's beating Pac-Man.

Joe 40:05

Him reenacting war games wouldn't be something that's just pause the movie and they just start showing clips of war games in the middle of it.

Jen 40:13

I get that, but like the race when it just starts, and they're like, okay, there's a race every day. Like, like, what? This is just out of control.

Joe 40:22

And it's like a huge- I didn't know what was going on at first. It took me the second until the second race to realize that this was like the first key they were racing for. Um, so let's get it. That's the beginning of the movie, right? We get the intro where we get like an abbreviated version of it. It's basically like a really quick summary of like the first, I don't know, 50 pages of the book or more. Um, they decide to condense all of this into Columbus, Ohio. The entire everything takes place in Columbus, Ohio. I guess, I guess they thought that the audience couldn't understand that there are other cities in the country. So let's just put everything in Columbus.

Tom 40:58

Big fans of Watcon.

Joe 41:01

I think I saw the Marriott in Dublin. It was it was there were some trailers stacked on it. You know where they filmed this, like those scenes, what the stand-in for Columbus was? Because they why why shoot in Columbus? Let's fly over to Birmingham, England, and uh film it there.

Tom 41:21

Very it's it's very close.

Joe 41:24

Yeah, yeah. They didn't they didn't do it in Columbus, unfortunately. And obviously, a lot of this was shot on uh sound stages and in in computers.

Tom 41:33

Yes.

Joe 41:35

So okay, so we get the uh abbreviated opening. We learn about the uh holiday and the oasis and the his the Easter egg hunt. Although they mention, I think when he describes an Easter egg, he says it's like a hidden secret, powerful item. And I'm like, no, most Easter eggs aren't actually like they're useless, they're just cool things that are hidden in the game, but they don't actually do anything. So um I like so there's some stuff in this movie that I do like that I think it's like, oh, this is funny that Spielberg did this, so that they put this in there, but like the montage of like all the different people like rage quitting their games when they, you know, are getting killed. I thought that was fun. Um, there's the what the one guy who's about to jump out the window of the building and they have to tackle him to stop him.

Jen 42:21

Yeah. I I didn't picture like there'd be people like in their houses like jumping around, like running around and well, I have comments about that later on towards the end. They didn't really indicate that you had to I some people had like a treadmill so you could walk, but I didn't think you had to like run around your house and like jump on things and like I don't know he does.

Joe 42:47

In the movie, he has one of those things right away. Meanwhile, in the book, he has like a school issue one, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he kind of upgrades later on.

Jen 42:56

Well, he gets it because he he wins the first key and he makes a lot of money from that, so that's when he buys it.

Joe 43:01

Yeah. Well, he does it.

Jen 43:03

Otherwise, it seems like he was using his ants thing.

Joe 43:05

No, no, because I don't think you can buy real-world stuff with in-store in Oasis dollars. In the movie, he can, but he he pays for it all with those endorsement deals he does. In the book. In the book, yeah. Sorry.

Jen 43:20

He No, in the movie, I th I mean, not in both. I thought that Oasis money was real money. That's how he gets money, and then he could use the money. It's like going into your bank account.

Joe 43:33

I don't remember if that's if the Oasis money is used is usable in the real world for real world items. I don't remember.

Tom 43:39

I think it I think it is.

Joe 43:42

I'm pretty sure he pays he uses his endorsement deals that he does in the book.

Tom 43:47

I don't I don't know about that, but I do know it in the beginning of the book at least, he it it it specifically talks about how you don't need to walk around or move around like that, like your hands and your eyes do all the work.

Jen 44:00

Right. Yeah. And then you eventually you could get into like a you could have a treadmill, which he has, or like a a seat that spins around and Oh, there was like a ball, like a ball at the end.

Joe 44:10

Is that what they're in at the end in the book? They're in like uh almost like hamster wheel type things. Or hamster balls.

Jen 44:16

The guy in the guy's house that each in like a yeah.

Joe 44:19

Yeah.

Jen 44:20

So you just run around the floor, yeah.

Joe 44:22

Um I don't know. So in the in the we get we meet Ben Mendelson is Nolan Sorrento, who's actually the head of innovative online industries IOI. In in the book, he's just the head of the Sixers.

Tom 44:36

Yeah.

Joe 44:36

Um, he's in charge of all the Sixers, he's not in charge of the entire company, which whatever. I get it. I feel like though he's doing a lot of lackey type stuff in the movie that like the head of a like a multi-billion dollar corporation CEO would never do.

Jen 44:50

Well, he has finale to help him. I don't know if you guys had close captioning on, but her name's spelled F apostrophe N-A-L-E.

Joe 45:03

Wow, I did not catch her. The character that does not know did not have not appear in the book. No, no, that's a made-up character. Uh, did not catch her name, didn't really care.

Jen 45:13

Finale.

Joe 45:15

Um, although I was very confused at her role because I thought she was kind of like another corporate worker, like high-ranking corporate worker, but then she breaks out some kung fu at the end and you know, combat skills, and I'm like, okay, I misjudged her.

Tom 45:30

I well she's got sweet Bostaff skills, Josh.

Jen 45:34

How does she live being thrown out of the back of that car? She hit the street so hard.

Joe 45:39

She's fine.

Tom 45:41

She's made of rubber.

Joe 45:42

She was fine. Finale. Oh wow, finale Zandor. Finale, yeah. I bet you if you mix up those, that's an anagram for something. For sure. I don't know.

Tom 45:53

I want to look that up.

Joe 45:54

Yeah, you're gonna put that in there. Uh, I think we we we talked about H looking very different from the book. I don't I don't remember in the book and like the characters look like people, most of them, the avatars. They're I they don't really talk about avatars looking like other types of creatures. I don't want to be able to do that.

Jen 46:13

Well, they said, yeah, they said you could be whatever you wanted, but like these people just chose to be humans.

Joe 46:20

Human, human-looking people.

Jen 46:22

Yeah.

Joe 46:22

Um, I was also gonna talk about like uh what's his name? Uh Wade's backstory a little bit. Um, they cut out all of the school stuff.

Jen 46:33

Yeah.

Joe 46:34

Really, except for the mention of the school, the Ludus. And I guess they make his aunt not as bad of car as she is in the book.

Jen 46:43

Yeah.

Joe 46:43

Uh it's just she has bad taste in men. He doesn't seem as poor in the in the movie as he is in the book. Well, they don't get into any of that. Like the teleporting off the like it costs money to teleport. Yeah, that's the way it's like, he's basically stuck on that planet, you know, and all that. I got, yeah.

Jen 46:59

It's too much. Yeah. I was thinking that same thing. Like describe how he has to get money and you can't do this. You gotta yeah, it's just uh you're right.

Joe 47:07

It makes sense to just pull that completely out of there. Let's look, let's look at where he lives. That should tell us everything.

Jen 47:12

Yeah. He's sleeping on top of a washing machine. I mean.

Joe 47:17

Yeah. Who's got it worse? Him or Harry Potter. At least Harry Potter had like a close, you know, a door.

Jen 47:22

An enclosed area.

Joe 47:24

Yeah. It was small, but a nice enclosed area.

unknown 47:29

Yeah.

Jen 47:31

Not only is he sleeping on top of the washing machine, but she's doing wash at night, so he can't rest. Yes. I just thought it's funny. Like that thing has to be shaking all night when he's trying to sleep.

Joe 47:45

Maybe that helps him sleep.

Jen 47:47

I don't know. Maybe he's turned it on. Yeah, I don't know. We wouldn't have known it was a washing machine unless it was shaking.

Joe 47:55

Uh yeah, I mean, we jump right into it. We get this car race scene, which I again I had no idea what was going on until I think the second time around, where I was like, oh, this is for the key. And they just, like you said, race every day for the key. Um, I love how they put a T-Rex in there. I thought that was a nice touch, Spielberg. Did he call his buddies over and say, hey, can we get another T-Rex going?

Tom 48:22

Clip it, clip it in, clip it in. Yeah.

Joe 48:24

And got uh King Kong.

Jen 48:28

Yeah.

Joe 48:28

It's a big part of this. And we meet Artemis right away.

Jen 48:32

Yeah.

Joe 48:33

They bring her in a little bit earlier in the I guess you gotta get things going.

Jen 48:36

That's the first key when he meets her.

Joe 48:38

That is true.

Jen 48:39

Um just not right at the beginning of the movie.

Joe 48:42

Yeah, so so the first key in the book, Tom, is there's uh I was gonna say real world, but there's an Oasis world version of the Tomb of Horrors from the Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Tomb of Horrors, and okay, and he has to go through that.

Tom 49:02

Yeah, he got you.

Joe 49:05

He has to go through that, and at the end, he meets the Lich and he has to beat the Lich in the game Joust, the arcade game joust, to get the key.

Tom 49:16

For fuck's sake.

Joe 49:18

But there's like there's little poems that give him clues that you have to figure out to find out where the key is, right? And then when you get the key, there's a clue that tells you where the gate is that the key opens, and then he has to go to the gate and then clear the gate.

Tom 49:31

Okay.

Joe 49:31

There's much more involved in that in the book, but they're all very different. Like I said, this is literally the tomb of horrors from Dungeons and Dragons he has to go through. Um they they then play joust. Yeah, they almost completely erase Dungeons and Dragons from this movie, if not completely. I don't think it's mentioned once. Uh there might be some background images or something, but I don't know. There's a lot of Dungeons and Dragons references in the book that they just boom. There's a planet called Gygax, I believe. Um, some other characters, like you know, names and things like that. But and there's like all kinds of the characters do magic spells, and there's magic spells from Dungeons and Dragons, but all that gone.

Tom 50:16

Yeah.

Joe 50:17

Uh so very different. Thoughts on the race? The backwards driving to get the key?

Jen 50:27

Yeah, I don't I don't know. It was I mean, it's cool to watch, it's it's fun to watch. It's not like the book at all.

Joe 50:35

Was it satisfying though, I guess.

Jen 50:38

Well, he drove backwards the opposite direction, and then all of a sudden he was underneath going the right way, but backwards. It's confusing.

Joe 50:49

That's true.

Jen 50:50

I don't know how that happened, but yeah, I mean it was cool that he that's how he got past King Kong, and then Yeah, I mean, it was a it was uh what am I throwing to say? It was a good visual experience, I guess. Rather than watching him playing him a chance, yeah.

Joe 51:10

I would have liked to see him go through the two horrors. Yeah, that would be cool. Um it's too confusing, I think. I don't think you could a lot of these changes were because of obviously visuals, right? Like you can't just we can't watch, like you said, Jen, somebody play a game of Pac-Man. Um, although, come on, Spielberg, you can't make a game of Pac-Man intense. I mean, in The Wizard, they made a game of Super Mario Brothers 3 intense.

Tom 51:34

That's right.

Joe 51:35

Um watch that movie.

Tom 51:38

My son knows about this movie because he's a huge um Godzilla and King Kong fan. And so he knows that Mecha Godzilla and King Kong are in this movie. So he was very excited that we were doing it this week. And he was disappointed that I watched it after he went to bed.

Joe 51:55

Uh uh. There's some scenes in there here you shouldn't say, probably. Yeah, yeah.

Jen 52:02

Yeah, that that was different from the book, right?

Joe 52:05

Like which one?

Jen 52:06

The dance scene.

Joe 52:07

Oh, yeah, there was a lot more uh she was really uh teasing him.

Jen 52:12

Yeah.

unknown 52:14

Yeah.

Joe 52:14

What kind of suit is that? Does it have all the feeling things? I was like, whoa, this is getting a little a little grown up.

Jen 52:21

And he's like, I love you, and she's like, no, no, sorry. Like, you just look what you just did.

Joe 52:27

You just like slid under his crown.

Jen 52:30

Yeah.

Joe 52:30

Rubbing up on a yeah, you don't even know me. I'm rubbing my hands all over your virtual avatar.

Tom 52:41

Yeah.

Joe 52:44

Uh what else we got here? We got we get the uh the holiday j journals.

Jen 52:58

Yeah, that's fully made up for the movie.

Joe 53:00

With cure well, is that like a stand-in for the Arnax almanac, I guess?

Jen 53:05

Well, yeah, I guess because he has all this stuff in like his he can just pull things up when he's in the yeah, like on the screens when he's in the Oasis. So they can't do that.

Joe 53:15

There's the yeah, so and then they have you know, surprise, secret, uh Simon Pegg as the curator, even though I think I knew that it was him already. I didn't know it was it was supposed to be him, though, like the same character. I thought they just gave Simon Pegg double duty.

Jen 53:30

Was he doing he was doing the voice of the guy, though, right? Yeah, his actual voice.

Joe 53:34

Yeah, yes. But I thought it was just doing double duty. I didn't know that they were it was like, oh no, that was him all along. Uh I don't know, not a real it didn't really add anything to it for me, but um, it answered that question. I was like, oh no, it is him, not just doing two two characters. He wasn't a John Reese Davies uh yeah for this one. We did get the IOI though, backstory, a bit of it, how they're like their plans for the oasis. I like how they threw that in there and they kind of it was again more of a visual thing because obviously the book's all first person, so you can't it's it's him telling you a lot of things, so they're showing you obviously, and they show you their plans of the uh to sell ads and different tiers, and they even I don't think this is part of the book, but Sorrento wasn't like an intern for no Halliday, right? No, no, okay, I didn't think so. We did get a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference because that is also so for the last gate tom, he has to he does the same thing he did for war games with Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tom 54:46

Who does who does he have to is Arthur in it? Or is it whoever has the most lines in each scene?

Joe 54:52

And it's just oh my god, he'll be Lancelot. But at this at this point, he's got they're all calm linked up to him, so anything like he forgets, although he mentions he's seen it whatever, 175 times or whatever, he has this, he has the rest of the group in his ear, in his comms to help him if he forgets anything.

Jen 55:08

So Tom, I don't know if you know this, but he has seen every single movie that this guy liked, memorized every line, played every game, knows how to beat every game, knows the album liner notes from every album that the guy liked.

Tom 55:28

He's the smartest guy in the world and the hottest guy in the world.

Joe 55:31

Well, he's not the smartest guy. He just he only knows about holiday and what he liked. Yeah, basically.

Jen 55:40

I've watched every episode of Family Ties a hundred times. Like how you're not having even been alive long enough to gain this knowledge.

Joe 55:49

That's it's the last five years. It's only five years, right? Like well, he mentions he's been missing a lot of school.

Jen 55:55

Yeah, I guess he's just like watching shit and doing like doing nothing else for that whole time.

Joe 56:01

Yeah, he has no life. He mentions he's got no his only friend is a uh a black woman who he thinks is a white dude. That's it. And he's never met them, he's never met him, her at all. Yes, that's all he does, Jen, is is read uh or listen to music that Holliday liked, watch movies that Holiday liked, watch TV shows that he liked, play games that Holiday liked. That's what he does. It's all he does. It's very clear, I think, in the book. He goes on and on about that.

Tom 56:32

Right, committed to being obsessed.

Joe 56:34

Yeah. A character that is in the book that we get in this movie is I Rock, although a very different role.

Tom 56:41

Yes.

Joe 56:42

Oh, that was the other one. The other what? Actor you don't like?

Tom 56:46

Yeah, I I TJ Miller I used to really enjoy, but apparently he's like an awful person.

Joe 56:50

Oh, yes, yes.

Tom 56:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe 56:52

Yeah. Uh he was in the he was canceled for sure during that whole cancel, you know, period. Um, but he's probably one of the best parts of this movie. Yeah. I think he's pretty funny in this. Anyway, yes, very different character, right? We got Iraq here, who's just a spy working for IOI. He's just some guy who who works for them. Um, I guess a consultant on that side. Uh in the book, he's just one of their he's he goes to school, I think, with H. And he kind of hangs out with them a couple of times, although they nobody really likes him. He kind of gives away Wade's uh he gives away where Wade goes to school, I think is what happens. And then that's how they find out where Wade lives. They go to like the they bribe like the principal to get into school records. In this, it's just in the movie, it's just uh he slips, he says his name Wade to Artemis, right? In the dance at the dance, and he mentions he just bought a new rig, and that's how they track him. You seem confused. Tom.

Tom 58:00

Yeah, no, I'm just uh no, sorry. I was just I was thinking I I I read the first appearance of the guy in the book where it's just like he's a he's a douchebag, but they're also just really mean to him. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of those ones where it's just like, oh, I like that character name. I rock. Yeah. Yes. We'll just create a different character and give him that name.

Joe 58:21

They're already friends with Daito and Sho. I guess they couldn't fit the at the TO at the end of Sho's name. Uh, not show not Daito and Show to. I guess they meant they thought that would be too many toes.

Jen 58:33

I don't know.

Joe 58:34

It's a bad joke.

Jen 58:35

That's where they cut the draw the line.

Joe 58:38

Yeah. All of the keys are all very different. I mean, the end key, the end one is the closest, but it's still different.

Jen 58:45

Yeah. The shining key instead of uh what was well that was like a supposed to be instead of war games?

Joe 58:52

That was instead of war games, really. I mean, that was one of those things where, like, oh, that's because Steven Spielberg was friends with Kubrick, he was able to get the rights to put the shining, to use the shining, and that's basically what happened.

Tom 59:06

Finished uh I finished AI, you owe me.

Joe 59:09

Yeah, and I guess well, it was his it was Kubrick's estate, obviously. Kubrick was dead at the time.

Jen 59:13

Um I was dead at the time.

Joe 59:15

Yes.

Jen 59:16

With Steve.

Joe 59:18

But you know, they changed it from him just reenacting the movie war games to them being in the overlook hotel in the shining, which was, I mean, it was funny because H had never seen The Shining, and seeing some of that stuff in there was kind of funny.

Jen 59:32

Yeah, she's like, is it scary? I've never seen it.

Joe 59:36

Yes, he's like, uh, I watched it with my fingers over my like between my fingers or something like that. Oh, I see I saw Betelgeuse in there somewhere at one point.

Tom 59:47

Really?

Joe 59:48

Yeah, when he goes to after he clears the first key, I forget where he goes. It's where Artemis is like is like hiding in that suit. She grabs him and she's like, You can't be in public, you can't be in public.

Jen 1:00:00

Oh, that's in the journal place.

Joe 1:00:03

Oh, it's in the journal.

Jen 1:00:04

I feel like everybody goes back there because they, you know, he got the key, so now it's like they're back to studying it again.

Joe 1:00:10

Yeah, you see, you see Beetlejuice there, uh, or somebody like who looks like Beetlejuice. Um then he gets his Clark Kent disguise.

Tom 1:00:20

Yeah.

Joe 1:00:21

Uh okay. We talked about uh Sorrento being a former intern of Halliday and Haliday, I guess dismiss being dismissive of him.

unknown 1:00:31

Yeah.

Jen 1:00:32

You don't have to give the bad guys reasons to be bad.

Tom 1:00:34

Yeah. He's corporate and evil, it's enough.

Joe 1:00:37

Well, at the end, he almost he almost thought he was gonna kind he was gonna like kind of turn good when he saw the Easter egg, the glowing of the Easter egg. But I think it was more of a he was overcome by greed fever. Griever, greedver.

Tom 1:00:54

I feel we referenced gold fever on this podcast a lot.

Jen 1:00:59

Gold fever.

Joe 1:01:00

Well, we talked about it with the hobbit, like all for all three episodes, because I mean Thorin just looked like he had gold fever. The only thing he didn't do was like hiccup while he, you know, during his performance. Uh I don't remember what the character's name was in the in the duck tales, those gold fever duck tails episodes.

Jen 1:01:22

Oh, the Scottish, the other Scottish fair.

Joe 1:01:24

No, no, he's like a oh okay, yeah. He's he's like he's like a Spanish conquistador looking kind of guy.

Jen 1:01:31

Oh, I don't know.

Joe 1:01:32

Anyway, uh we talked about Mark Rylance's Garth Algar. Um, I don't know. What else is there to talk about this movie? Does that do other things happen? Yes, they do. We get there, we get the the dance party, which is kind of in the book. The scene is in the book in a different way, in a different spot. They actually play Blue Monday, which is actually the song that they play in the book in this scene, or at least part of the scene. But I feel like we get all of them kind of meeting, either already knowing each other or meeting each other right in the beginning and immediately working together.

Jen 1:02:08

Yeah.

Tom 1:02:08

We are the five best friends.

Jen 1:02:10

I feel like Halliday's speech at the end, like, doesn't hit us hard because like they're they've already been hanging out in person and like Yes. So like they don't meet in person until like the last page of the book, basically. Artemis and Parzoval.

Joe 1:02:29

So it is really like the last five pages of the book is when we first meet. Like she purposely keeps avoiding him, too, which which is also like I feel like it's a bit overly dramatic in the book.

Jen 1:02:40

Yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:02:41

Cause she's you you're waiting to find out that there's some, at least I was, waiting to find out that there's some really, really like twist with her character. Like, I don't know, she's in a wheelchair or she's you know, a 75-year-old man, whatever it is.

unknown 1:02:58

Right.

Joe 1:02:59

But but the whole payoff is just that no, she's got uh the red, a red birthmark on her face. It's much more I I feel like in the book it's more prominent. Yeah, probably, but um, but that's it. That's it.

Jen 1:03:12

But we know about the birthmark because he sees a picture of her when he goes through the files, remember?

Joe 1:03:17

Yeah, but that's like a that's like the towards the very end of the book.

Jen 1:03:20

Well, when he's in when the indentured servants. Yeah, they got rid of that. They called it the loyalty centers. Yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:03:29

I guess they didn't want to reference indentured servitude in the movie. Too harsh. Um but I did like the zero gravity dance club scene. I mean, like I said, it's a version of a scene in the books that happens at a different time, and yeah, um some different things happen there, but we do get them dancing, and that's where we get that weird, we can say it here, erotic uh scene of the two of them dancing. Um I like how there's a mechas cube and you hear the back to the uh back to the future music start playing. I feel like the back to the future music comes in a few times in this movie.

Jen 1:04:07

Who does the music for this movie? Alan Silvestri.

Joe 1:04:10

Sylvestri, yeah.

Jen 1:04:11

Is he the one that does back to the future music? I think he does the music. I think so.

unknown 1:04:14

Yeah.

Joe 1:04:15

Is that why they got him? I I know originally John Williams was going to do the was going to do the music, but then he went and did other Spielberg movies.

Jen 1:04:28

Um yeah, this guy, maybe he just like wove the back to the future theme into the music that he was writing for this.

Joe 1:04:35

Yeah, Williams left the project in favor of scoring Spielberg's The Post, and then Alan Sylvestri took over.

Tom 1:04:42

I do like Alan Sylvestri's work a lot.

Joe 1:04:44

Yeah, the music was good in this.

Tom 1:04:46

Yes, he does the Back to the Future music.

Joe 1:04:48

There you go. He was able to and I'm telling you, there's more than one time where he plays it. I feel like this is the most prominent time with the Zemeckas Cube, um, but I feel like it comes up a couple of times. Obviously, the DeLoreans all over this movie. I did like the change or just like the adaptation of how we find out about the loyalty centers, which are again the indentured servitude um in the book. But like Artemis tells a story of like her dad was became in debt and he was sent to the loyalty centers where and they she gets the background of how like you never work off your debt because of the interest and then everything else they throw on top of it. It's basically designed so that you just have to work for them until you die.

Tom 1:05:38

Were we talking on this show or like one of like the pre or post show talks about the the song sixteen tons and how that's what that is, right? I'm trying to remember what which one I know why we're it it wasn't for it was for a show, uh, was it just for a show I was watching on television.

Joe 1:05:57

It was uh Well no, we brought it up in an episode, but I can't. But we brought it up in episode.

Tom 1:06:01

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Dension servitude, um uh running theme of Shelter's.

Joe 1:06:06

It might have been Dune.

Tom 1:06:08

Maybe. Yeah, it was early on.

Joe 1:06:10

Um, sorry. Another good another good condensation of the story is how they hack. Well, I shouldn't even say this because this is very different in the book, too. He they hack into his rig in the movie. In the book, that they hack it, he hacks into the IOI uh intranet and gets all the files and video, like he gets video of their meeting where he basically says, I'm gonna kill your aunt, blow up your aunt's trailer. And they also get he also gets video of them killing Daito in real life. Uh, but none of that happens, or at least none of that's um in the movie, except we do have, I think at the end, H says they recorded the conversation, right? Because the police come and they're and they're like, oh, who we want to talk to you, Wade, you know, about the video of you of uh Sorento saying he's killing he's gonna kill your aunt, blow up your aunt, and then H is like, oh no, that was me. I record everything or in my I don't remember what H says. Something like I record everything in my in my shop or something like that. I watched this movie a couple hours ago.

Tom 1:07:23

Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah. I'm like, it was late. I don't remember.

Joe 1:07:27

Another thing I like that they did too was when during that meeting with Wade and Sorrento, when he's you know offering him, you know, to pay him to help him find or to give him the key. That's another thing, too. Apparently, in this you can give people the keys, but in the book, when you find the key, it like goes into your inventory and it stays there. Like nobody can take it from you, you can't lose it. They're not transferable to people, like the you can't just give someone the key and then they can go in, you know, to the next part. Doesn't work like that. You have to complete the the task. But I like in that scene how they cut to you'll see Ben Mendelson talking, and he's talking to to the avatar of Wade, but they'll actually they actually cut to Wade in the haptic suit in real life. And yeah, it's it's like a scene, it's like this is like a scene between two actors and not uh you know a computer-generated avatar and an actor.

Tom 1:08:19

Yeah.

Joe 1:08:20

I thought that was a good call by Spielberg there. And then I guess let's talk a little bit about Artemis and how she's very she's got like a whole crew of uh people that work with her. I don't know. Are they rebels? Yeah, I don't know what that is. What's going on?

Jen 1:08:35

I don't know. It's not anything from the book. I guess she in the book she says she wants to like do good things and like stand up and destroy IOI, but I guess she's like actually taking steps to do that now.

Tom 1:08:49

So I will say in the trailer. In the trailer, it's like there's a line in the trailer before like uh he gives his rousing speech or whatever where she goes like welcome to the rebellion. I was like, fuck this movie. Um so I that's that's that's my take on the scene, too.

Joe 1:09:10

Okay, yeah. I mean, she reveals herself and her real world identity like very quickly. Like, as we said in the book, it's like five pages left in the book. She like they actually all go to Ogden, Ogden Morrow says, Everybody come to my house, I'll fly you to my house. It's the only place you'll be safe because the IOA is coming for you in real life.

Jen 1:09:31

Yeah.

Joe 1:09:32

Right? So they all go there. When him and uh him and H, Wade and H like meet meet up at like the airport and fly there together. So they meet each other in real person, uh, in real life uh beforehand. When they get to Ogden Mara's house, he's like, Oh, they're already in their their haptic suits, like boots. Um, Artemis doesn't want to meet you yet because she's like, I don't want to, you know, we don't we gotta focus or whatever, and we'll we'll meet afterwards. So he literally is like in the room next to her, doesn't meet her until the very, very, very, very end. We're like with it's like five pages or something like that.

Tom 1:10:09

Okay.

Joe 1:10:09

And she she's very resistant to meeting him in real in in I keep saying real person, in real life in the book. Whereas this she's just like, I'm gonna go get him. I need to go save him.

Jen 1:10:20

Yeah, she's very focused on like winning the contest and like thinks every everything else is a distraction, and right you know, she separates from him for a while.

Joe 1:10:31

Oh, that's right, yeah. So they do kind of like start to hang out a lot, but then she kind of breaks it off with him because she's like, we gotta focus on getting the you know, winning the contest, so IOI doesn't get it. Um, and they she's Canadian in the book, too.

Jen 1:10:46

That's right, she is Canadian, she's in like the Vancouver airport. Everyone's from Columbus.

Joe 1:10:50

Everyone's from Columbus.

Jen 1:10:51

Yeah, like uh are the two Japanese kids, they were supposed to be from Japan, but they just show up, and I'm like, I wonder how they got here. Because in the bookie, it's like you can't just like get on a plane and fly. You can't just buy a like a plane ticket.

Joe 1:11:05

No, it's very expensive. Only rich people fly.

Jen 1:11:07

So I guess they're from Columbus.

Joe 1:11:09

They're Columbus. There's a big Japanese culture in Columbus. Um, he does mention in the beginning, I think they they clear all this up in the very beginning where he says Columbus is like the large fastest growing city.

Jen 1:11:21

Yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:11:23

That's why everything that's why everything takes place in Columbus. It's the place to be. Uh yeah. Other funny stuff that I thought was pretty good is during the shining sequence, uh, all the scary stuff when they would cut to like the uh the Sixers at IOI, just like all screaming in terror when they're in the overlook. I thought that I thought that was funny.

Jen 1:11:47

I it's weird how they also like kind of endeared the the team that was trying to like guess which game they were gonna play, and then you're like, am I supposed to like these people or not like them?

Joe 1:11:58

Yeah. Well, they they definitely don't shit on the Sixers in the movie as much as they do in the books. Like they're so despised, and I mean it's clear Wade's character because he's one talking, and on all of them, they all despise the Sixers, and and they don't they don't like they mention clans in this, but you never see like clans, yeah, the Gunter clans.

Tom 1:12:22

Right, there's like clans who's like they they hunt Sixers more than they even like actually search for the Easter egg.

Joe 1:12:28

Yes, yes. And I just have to say Klein, Gunter, not a good word, not a good choice of a word. Yeah, it does not sound it's not a pleasant word to say, or it doesn't it doesn't evoke anything good in my mind.

Tom 1:12:46

Yeah.

Joe 1:12:47

I mean Gunther is a name that's somebody, right? You think of the guy who's friends.

Jen 1:12:52

Gunter. That's gun. Well, that's Gunther. Gunter is like a wrestler. They call some people call him Gunther, other people call him Gunther.

Joe 1:12:58

Yeah, well. Well Gunther's how it's supposed to pronounce it, yeah. I think, right? In German. German.

Jen 1:13:03

Yeah.

Joe 1:13:04

Um yeah, Gunther is not a not a great word, Klein. I would have gone with something else.

Tom 1:13:11

Egos. I'm an idea, man, Joe. That's what they came for.

Joe 1:13:21

Egos. I love it. Where were you when Ernest Klein was writing this book?

Tom 1:13:26

I should have been one of his uh his his readers, yeah.

Joe 1:13:29

I like egos much better. Um how did you feel about Wade's uh speech to to rally all the Oasis users, basically the entire world, to come and help them?

Tom 1:13:44

Not to not to hammer a theme, Joe, but I didn't like it.

Joe 1:13:47

What didn't you like?

Tom 1:13:48

I thought it was kind of it was fine, it was corny as hell, and that's like right, like it's just I don't know. Um, I felt like every hero's journey doesn't have to be exactly the same. Like, I don't know. He doesn't like he can just be a nerd and like be a nerd and not have to be a nerd that turns into a hero. He's be a nerd and win. And like he doesn't need to be a leader of men. I don't know.

Joe 1:14:12

I I I want to ask a question here because there was something that bothered me. I know you say something. Um there's a scene where they cut to like just people out in the street walking around with their suits on, so they're walking while in the oasis in the real world, while in the oasis. I don't I didn't understand that.

Jen 1:14:32

That's what I was saying before.

Joe 1:14:33

Like people are like moving all around and jumping over things in their apartments and stuff, like no, not not in their apartments, they were out on the streets walking around with their suits on, like and their visors on.

Tom 1:14:45

They don't give life life's shit, Joe. If they get hit by a car, great. Nobody's got gas anyway. I don't know.

Joe 1:14:51

Yeah, there's there is a payoff for that scene because when the big fight starts at the end, they cut back to that same scene, and all of the people are just like miming kung fu and things like that because they're fighting in the oasis. Which I thought which I thought was funny. So there was a payoff for it, although I still think it was strange. I'm not sure if it was quite worth the payoff.

Tom 1:15:17

Oh man.

Joe 1:15:18

The scales are pretty close to balanced on that one for me. Yeah. Uh something else that I thought maybe was the last the Anarax castle part, like the Sixers figure that the Sixers figure that out, that that's where it is, and our main characters just kind of steal the steal that from them. Like they don't figure it out on their. Right. No more. Four is too much, five is right out. I think he's right. He should have counted to three. It shouldn't have gone off. I don't know. I don't have anything else. We I we talked about everything I think that I had on my list.

Tom 1:17:06

I mean, but I I feel like I'm overly negative tonight. But like, um I understand it is what it is, and we're we're dealing with the technology that we're gonna deal with, but like I felt like the entire Oasis was uh and all the avatars were too cartoony. Yeah.

Joe 1:17:21

Like it wasn't video gamey enough.

Tom 1:17:24

Is that I didn't want it to be video gamey, I wanted it to look like a different reality. Like I wanted it to just be I wanted to be more the Matrix and less the Sims.

Joe 1:17:33

Well, I will say this, and I don't know if it just was this was just me not really paying attention. Whenever we they were in the Oasis, I don't recall ever seeing like kind of like a normal sky, right?

Tom 1:17:47

It was it me or um I don't know, just yeah.

Joe 1:17:52

I don't think so. Like we never see clouds in a blue sky and the sun. Yeah, I don't think at all when they're in the oasis. And I think that might be part of why you didn't it didn't feel like another reality.

Tom 1:18:06

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I mean, and again, like it's the future. I don't know. I don't wanna expect them to I don't know. I mean I I feel like that might be a little too nitpicky of my dislike of Simon Peg.

Joe 1:18:19

More nitpicky than than your dislike of Simon Peg. Yeah um uh the heroes win in a really strange, different ending.

Tom 1:18:29

Um well what is it uh uh I'm sorry, what is it in the book?

Joe 1:18:34

Okay, it's it's the whole end is very different. I mean, there's a battle, there's a like a big battle, but um so after um what's his name's killed, uh Dido gets killed, Shodo right calls and tells him that like it was the uh you know IOI did it. He's pretty sure. They the third key is found, and I believe they find where the third gate is. And Wade comes up with this whole plan about how he's gonna basically win, not maybe maybe not necessarily win, but how he's going to get the shield down, right? They put up this invincible shield around the castle, and that's what the Sixers do, right? When once they finally get to the location, they block the location off so nobody else can try to get the key. Um, and they just kind of farm it until you know uh as much as they can. So Wade decides in real life he hacks into um I don't know, the credit servers and and adds creates a debt for himself. So the indent so the IOI indentured servitude police come and grab him and lock him up, but it's all a plan because he wants to get inside so he can hack into their computers to get information on Sorrento and what he's been doing, and you know, um basically send it to the media to try to get him, you know, incriminate him and get him arrested or whatever. The other part of it is that when he hacks into when he gets when he hacks into their system, they have these like uh I don't know, like ammo robots, but they're like basically they look like Johnny 5 robots that kind of just do tasks for them. So he puts in like a requisition for like an antimatter whatever uh thing, bomb or something like that, to and it's gotta be delivered at ex at exactly noon on whatever, like two days from then, or whatever how many days it is from then. Uh, but then he finds out that they that the IOI knows who uh Artemis is and knows knows who everybody is in real life and they're coming for them. So he so he escapes out of IOI, he rallies the troops together, and then he does he does send a message out to basically every single Oasis user saying, like, hey, we're gonna make a all-out attack on the Sixers, come you know, at this time, um, you know, be ready because that shield's gonna drop. And at the time, the the ro the Johnny 5 robot delivers the antimatter thing and sets it off, and it takes down the shield, and then they all attack.

Tom 1:21:08

Okay.

Joe 1:21:08

Um and then they he gets into the gate and does I think he has to play uh he plays Tempest is the game that he plays. And he just has to beat, he just has to beat Halliday's score. He doesn't have to win. He beats Halliday's high score, and then he purposely dies, and then he gets the egg or whatever. I don't know.

Jen 1:21:29

Yes.

Joe 1:21:30

Um, and I think I mentioned before that they all go to Ognan Morrow. Ogden morrow takes them to his house and says you can be you'll be safe here.

Tom 1:21:38

Right, yeah, yeah.

Joe 1:21:39

And they basically do all this while they're at his house.

Tom 1:21:42

And then the two wozniak of uh the film.

Joe 1:21:46

And then our Artemis and and uh Parzoval finally meet and fall in love. Um, but they don't they don't close the oasis on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That that doesn't matter. Yeah, that's weird in the book.

Jen 1:22:01

So we can't.

Tom 1:22:02

Tuesday and Thursday. I was like the days are so sick. Why are those days like And people are working in there?

Jen 1:22:09

You can't just shut it down.

Joe 1:22:11

They go to school in there, right?

Jen 1:22:13

Why not make it the weekend? They don't go to school anymore.

Joe 1:22:16

Nobody goes to school. The other kids do.

Jen 1:22:17

Well, other kids do, but not him.

Joe 1:22:19

Oh yeah, he graduated. He does graduate high school and like halfway through the the book. He also like he also has to assume another identity and yeah, yeah.

Jen 1:22:28

He buys this he rents an apartment and he's like hiding, he spray paints the windows black. He's like hiding from everyone in there. That's like the whole sec like the middle section of the book.

Joe 1:22:39

Yeah. He's got a Max Headroom, though, computer program assistant.

Tom 1:22:43

That's all you need.

Joe 1:22:44

Yeah. He's very complimentary of Matt Freurer in the book.

Tom 1:22:50

As anyone should be.

Joe 1:22:52

I think he calls him a genius, by the way, in the book. So um I like I feel like we've talked way too much about this movie, but go ahead.

Tom 1:23:01

I'm just saying, I like three things that Matt Freurer was in.

Joe 1:23:04

Oh, okay. I like three things in this movie. Big differences, the keys, finding the keys, very different. Um, those are probably, I guess, I guess those are the biggest things. Like it's just it's really wild. I get why they changed it, but I feel like it's it's very wild that you change like three huge set pieces in the book um to just something totally different.

Jen 1:23:30

Yeah, I don't know.

Joe 1:23:31

Uh, but I guess people seem to like this movie because it it was a pretty pretty massive commercial success. It made $583 million worldwide. People like the movie, got 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics, you know, praised the technical mastery of Steven Spielberg, but you know, I feel that's just like every Spielberg movie. Yeah, noting that the plot felt secondary to the spectacle, which happens in some Steven Spielberg movies. Yeah. Um, you know, fans obviously book fans were not necessarily happy about this because of the massive changes, yeah, drastic changes. But as you mentioned, Tom, right? The film kind of went a lot more broader, broader, broader.

Tom 1:24:16

Broader.

Joe 1:24:18

It went broader.

Tom 1:24:21

We gotta go broader.

Joe 1:24:23

We need to go broader.

Jen 1:24:25

Um that's a different accent.

Joe 1:24:28

That's true. That's how I said it though, broader.

Tom 1:24:32

I'm eating some clam chatter, it needs to go broader. Sorry.

Joe 1:24:37

Uh Klein, though, was happy with it. He thought it was a surreal experience working with Spielberg. Um, he he defended some of the deviations from his book. You know, he's he admitted like a little translation would have been unwatchable.

Tom 1:24:53

Um like you can't like you're not gonna watch it's not gonna be fun to watch some guy be the main character in a movie that's not like you're like I don't want to see him doing bad impressions of the the Monty Python cast or Matthew Proderick.

Joe 1:25:11

I think yeah, I I wouldn't have mind seeing just a little bit of that. It's not like they were gonna show the whole movie like him doing it.

Tom 1:25:18

Okay, yeah.

Joe 1:25:19

Or him playing a Pac-Man. You don't think that would have been fun watching him play Pac-Man?

Tom 1:25:24

I think it would have been a blast.

Joe 1:25:27

Yeah. Um, I don't know. I can't imagine. I can't imagine being happy about this if I was Klein, but I guess we're different people, so yeah.

Jen 1:25:37

I don't know.

Tom 1:25:37

Cashola, Joe.

Joe 1:25:39

I get, you know, we talked about Jurassic Park and a lot of changes in that, but that's not anything compared to this, I think.

Tom 1:25:46

Night, night and day.

Joe 1:25:48

Night and day. Um, yeah.

Tom 1:25:51

I wonder if, like, whatever. And I mean, whatever. He's Steven Spielberg, he doesn't need confidence by anything, but like he knows he can make an adaptation that's completely different from the book and still make it terrific.

Joe 1:26:02

I don't think this was terrific, though. This movie, no, no, no, no, no. That's my that's my point.

Tom 1:26:07

Is like he's like like maybe like Jurassic Park, right? I did it with Jurassic Park, I can do it with this one too, right?

Joe 1:26:14

Yeah, yeah. I definitely now know I did watch the movie before because I remember feeling like the movie fell flat, and that's with me not even reading the book when I first saw this movie. It fell flat for me again. I mean, there's some things I enjoyed in it, but for the most part, yeah, it was very rushed. I'm not sure the changes even worked that well. No, like the key changes.

Tom 1:26:39

Well, I mean I can't speak to the changes, but I can speak to the didn't work that well. Yes.

Joe 1:26:45

All right. Uh should we should we get to our ratings of this?

Jen 1:26:49

Sure.

Joe 1:26:50

All right, who wants to go first?

Jen 1:26:52

I'll go first. I think I'm gonna give it a three. It's like right in the middle.

Tom 1:26:58

That's not right in the middle. That's a good two and a half is in the middle. Three is a good rating.

Jen 1:27:03

Three is in the middle for me.

Joe 1:27:05

Well, yeah.

Jen 1:27:06

One, two, three, four, five. That's how I think of it.

Joe 1:27:09

You can give something zero star. Well, I gave something a half a star.

Tom 1:27:13

So exactly. We have zero in our in our zero stars in our back pocket.

Jen 1:27:20

I don't think it was I don't think if I saw the movie, I think I would have might have liked the movie more if I didn't know what it was based off of. I didn't like I didn't think the movie was great. I think it was like okay, but I liked it less, I think, because of how I knew the original source material.

Joe 1:27:38

Yes, I definitely liked it less, I think, this time watching it, having just read the book, um, which I enjoyed.

Tom 1:27:45

Um, I'm gonna give it a the movie a two point two five. I thought it was um you know, obviously he's got technical capabilities. I think that the script is not great, and I don't think all the performances are that great. Some of them are okay, you know, it uh From a capitalist point of view, it's I think it's it's it's it's well designed. And even though I didn't um love the look of the oasis, like it's still you know, it's still impressive that they were that they made the movie like that. So um yeah, slightly below average for me.

Joe 1:28:16

Alright. That's yeah, no, no, okay. One of our lower probably our lowest ratings since well, since Stardust.

Tom 1:28:26

This is lower than the Hobbit? Damn it!

Joe 1:28:28

No, no, no, I'm saying it's just one of our lowest ratings in Stardust.

Jen 1:28:32

Okay.

Joe 1:28:33

No, nothing's gonna get lower than the Hobbit, I don't think. I don't think we're well we might we might get there.

Jen 1:28:38

Don't speak too soon.

Joe 1:28:39

Uh we've got a movie. There's a movie on here that I hated for sure.

Tom 1:28:45

There's a movie on there that I know for a fact is atrociously bad.

Joe 1:28:50

Yeah, there's a yeah, there's I think I know what you're talking about.

Jen 1:28:53

I'm gonna pick that one next. Let's see if we can find it anywhere.

Joe 1:28:57

I might pick that one next. Just because I want to see how good this book is that they decided to make it into a movie. Um so there we go. Successful adaptation, Jen?

Jen 1:29:07

Um, not really. No. I don't I I don't have a better idea of how to do it, but I I I don't think this didn't really adapt the story very well.

Joe 1:29:18

Yeah, I'm I'm on the same page as you. Not a successful adaptation. I mean the movie made money and it was a successful movie, but as an adaptation, I don't I don't think it was done very well. I don't think it really I mean, I guess it captures the moral of the story at the end, but I feel like we took a very different path there.

Tom 1:29:38

Yeah. Um I watched the whole movie, so not successful for me either.

Joe 1:29:43

Yes. Well, it was successful because you actually got through the whole movie.

Tom 1:29:52

I'm watching this movie.

Jen 1:29:53

It sucks, but the adaptation was spectacular.

Tom 1:29:56

Yeah. Perfect adaptation. Um I'm sorry, Joe, I cut you off. I didn't mean to.

Joe 1:30:02

No, I wasn't gonna say anything else. I was gonna just close this out. Remind everyone to follow us on social media. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, 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, write and 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. Final thoughts, Tom?

Tom 1:30:28

Um, I think I will be more cheerful next week. Sorry, guys.

Joe 1:30:34

Oh, yes. Well, it was your it's your choice next week, so.

Tom 1:30:37

That's it's that's true.

Joe 1:30:38

Jen, do you want to take us out?

Jen 1:30:41

You only know what I want you to know. You only see what I want you to see. That's what you're in love with.

Joe 1:30:47

Thanks everyone for listening, and you'll hear us next time.