Moonfall

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast. 00:00:02 Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have. 00:00:04 Speaker 3: Women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn best start changing with the Bechdel Cast. 00:00:16 Speaker 2: Hey, Caitlin, Yes, Jamie, what's the matter with you? You're putting the feet of the world in the hands of your podcast partner and some has been ex astronaut. 00:00:29 Speaker 1: My intro is gonna be Houston. We have a problem. 00:00:34 Speaker 2: What is it? 00:00:35 Speaker 1: The moon is falling? 00:00:37 Speaker 4: Oh no, I okay, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast for I think one of our most requested episodes. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: Ever, one hundred percent. 00:00:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, people have been gagging, foaming, rowling, frothing at the mouth for a Moonfall episode. Frankly gross, It's disgusting. 00:01:01 Speaker 2: It makes me sick. 00:01:03 Speaker 1: But we're here to finally honor the request. At least at least probably five hundred million people have requested this movie specifically. 00:01:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, which accounts for about twenty percent of our listeners, so that's pretty big. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you're hearing this, it's now April, which means nothing to us except that International Women's Month has concluded and I think that's it. I'm pretty sure. So yeah, yeah, we're here to sort of give the people what they want and honor your request for a Moonfall episode. If this is your first episode of the Bechtel Cast, this is a great place to start. 00:01:43 Speaker 1: I think, yeah, absolutely, this is a This is a. 00:01:45 Speaker 2: Show where we talk about your favorite movies, and we mean your favorite, using the Bechtel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what is that, because it's going to be very relevant to today's discussion. 00:01:58 Speaker 1: Yes, it is a media metric created by friend of the pod, Alison Bechdel. 00:02:03 Speaker 2: Who is this is her favorite? But actually she's one of the people who has requested it. 00:02:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, she emails us every day, not a brag, to say, where the hell is the Moonfall episode? 00:02:13 Speaker 2: Not a brag, but she she was like And then I did follow up with her once and I was like, hey, Alison, what is it about Moonfall? And she emailed me back fuck you, which was like whoa. But you know, people feel really strongly about this movie. 00:02:31 Speaker 1: They do, and I can see now that I've seen it, I guess multiple times to prep for this episode, I see why. Absolutely, absolutely so anyway a Bechdel test. Many versions of this media metric. The one that we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And is that conversation about something other than a man? 00:02:58 Speaker 2: And I think that you know, we're really gonna this is a fascinating stress test for the Bechdel test because the protagonist there is a woman in the leading role. 00:03:13 Speaker 1: Are you talking about the moon? 00:03:15 Speaker 2: Yes, say, I'm talking about the moon, And like most women, there's more to her than meets the I and that she is actually hollow and a spaceship and full of some sort of convoluted AI messaging that as all women are, I too, am filled with a cloud of dust that does like basically just turn into a fist, right like it turns into a snake or a fist like a claw. These these are the two things that the nanoblot cloud can do. Listen listeners, It's gonna be difficult because I think that, like we want to hold space for this film. I will not call it a movie. It is a film. 00:04:03 Speaker 1: It's an incredible film. 00:04:06 Speaker 2: It is a film. It is art house. It actually genuinely is an independent film which we'll talk about twitch is. 00:04:13 Speaker 1: What are the most expensive, like high budget independent films ever made? 00:04:17 Speaker 2: Yes, And I would say right in terms of men's singular vision, right up there with Megalopolis, really with a movie that no one wanted that just had to happen, and we're so glad it did. Because this is we will be discussing it in the context that it is a feminist masterpiece. And there's also just so much going on with the other woman in this movie. Who is I do think it takes us maybe a half hour to hear her name spoken, and I don't know that it ever happens again. 00:04:59 Speaker 1: J Cinda just her full name, Justinda. She is referred to as Joe. 00:05:04 Speaker 2: And sometimes as Fouler. But I was just struck with and this is speaking to how strong of a feminist hero she is. How few times her name is spoken in the movie, whereas are our male protagonist, Brian. I cannot stop saying his name, even and especially when it sounds silly. 00:05:25 Speaker 1: Yes, Brian Harper disgraced astronaut. 00:05:30 Speaker 2: So hard for him. You know, when you're disgraced and you just have to ride around on your motorcycle on the streets of la in your in your leather jacket. It's giving Larry Geely honestly. 00:05:43 Speaker 1: Oh wow. We have not invoked the name of Geelie in quite some time. 00:05:50 Speaker 2: You can't say it three times. It's like bloody Mary show up. If you say Larry Geely in the mirror three times, yeah, he'll show up behind you. 00:06:03 Speaker 1: It's candy Man all over again. 00:06:06 Speaker 2: I don't know why that cracked me up so much. I don't want to. I don't want to conjure him today. Not today. No, Larry g l no, No, he doesn't even kill you. He just slowly tries to convince you that you're not queer, you're in love with him. Oh my god, I forgot what Larry Gee's story is all about. But that's for another episode you can no longer listen to because we deleted it. 00:06:40 Speaker 1: Should we recover it some day? 00:06:42 Speaker 2: I don't know if we. I don't know. I don't know if that's good for the world. But you know what is good for the world? 00:06:49 Speaker 1: Moonfall? 00:06:50 Speaker 2: Moonfall? 00:06:51 Speaker 1: Mm well, I was going to pitch a double feature. Maybe this is a Matreon theme. Jelie and Chasing Amy? Are those not two movies about a man? And maybe specifically Benfleck, and in both cases there is a queer woman who is not interested in men, and he's like, but what if you are interested in me? I r is that the plot of both of those movies. 00:07:17 Speaker 2: I've never seen Chasing Amy. What I do know about Chasing Amy is that it has a massive queer fan base, which I do not believe that Jeelie can can say. It would be an interesting comparison because there was a documentary that came out a couple years ago that Princess Weeks is talking head in I'm pretty sure called Chasing Chasing Amy about the queer community's fascination with that movie specifically, And as far as I know, there's no Chasing Larry. 00:07:51 Speaker 1: And Cheezy Well. I have to imagine getting back on track, this Moonfall has an enormous queer following because of all the obvious queer undertones in the film. 00:08:06 Speaker 2: It would be foolish for that to not be the case. I think, yes, yeah, there's just there's just so much. This is such a rich text. Oh yeah, it really is. And I think, you know, don't look at the date that this episode is released on. Just let it in. Let I will say, I kept I listened to Skyfall by Adele like three times. It's it is kind of distracting for there to be a movie called Skyfall and then much later a movie called Moonfall. 00:08:41 Speaker 1: Moonfall. Maybe Adele should do a cover Moona. 00:08:48 Speaker 2: I feel like they tried. It seems like this movie was willing to do really anything for five dollars because you it turns into a random only a commercial for and feminist masterpiece, feminist masterpiece. It turns into a commercial for Lexus for like five full. 00:09:08 Speaker 5: Minutes, which was kind of wild, where he goes like, let's go hyper drive and then he just turns like his Lexus to sports mode and you're like Jesus Christ. 00:09:20 Speaker 2: And then it like flies and survives the apocalypse, which I'm sure Alexis would do or something something. So we are here to talk about, you know, one of the feminist modern classics to kick off the month of April. 00:09:37 Speaker 1: April the like the first of April even maybe. 00:09:41 Speaker 2: Well yeah, which is also oh my god, I was thinking this whole time. April first is my dog's Sonny's birthday, and is there anything more Moonfall than having a son and being like, hmm, what should we call him? 00:09:55 Speaker 1: Sonny? 00:09:56 Speaker 2: And I wrote down, how foolish, And then I looked to my left. I was like, wait a second, the calls coming from inside the house. I too have a son called Sonny, and he too is a car jacking fief on an emotional journey. Wow, I know, I know. Yeah, this movie is about fathers and sons. This movie is about mothers and sons. This movie could be about mothers and daughters, but it is more about a woman named Brenda and two extras, one of whom I think gets a name. 00:10:35 Speaker 1: Well, Jamie, if you sorry, I'm sorry, hear me out. 00:10:39 Speaker 2: I'm listening. 00:10:40 Speaker 1: The Moon, as we've established, is a woman, yes, the mother, mother to all, Mother mother Moon. And then also the Earth is a woman, mother Earth and daughter Earth, which. 00:10:52 Speaker 2: Is which is why we're killing her, because that's what we do. Two women, Yes, we kill them. 00:10:57 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:10:58 Speaker 1: But as this movie istides, which is one hundred percent scientific fact, the Moon gave birth to Earth. So this movie is about mothers and daughters, right right, So think about that. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. You're right, it's okay, it is. It is a story about women and women only. 00:11:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, Jamie, what's your history with this movie? What is your relationship. 00:11:28 Speaker 2: I had somehow never seen this. I know that everyone else had, actually everyone else in the world. I will qualify that saying that we've we watched this in bed together. A couple of platonically watched it in bed. Okay, put your fingers away or I don't know whatever, but yes, we watched this in bed together on tour I think in San Francisco a couple of years ago, because you're like, you gotta see Moonfall. You gotta see Moonfall. I'm not kidding. And then we started watching it. I think we both fell asleep like twenty minutes in, so it had seen the beginning of this movie. I wouldn't even say I saw the first act because the first act really takes its time. Yeah, yes, but I think that you know again, and I mean that in a feminist, in. 00:12:25 Speaker 1: A complimentary way way. 00:12:27 Speaker 2: It takes its time. So this was my first full viewing, and I have to say, of the two hours and ten minutes that this film takes of your one life, you don't get a second. 00:12:41 Speaker 1: Unless you're case at the end of the movie getting uploaded to spoilers. 00:12:45 Speaker 2: Spoilers, spoilers, Oh my god, you know that feeling when they scanned your consciousness and you're part of the moon now. 00:12:55 Speaker 1: I know exactly that feeling. 00:12:57 Speaker 2: I love when they scan my consciousness and I'm part of the moon now. But yeah, I wouldn't shave a single one of all one hundred and thirty minutes of this off. 00:13:07 Speaker 1: No. In fact, I think it should have been longer. I think it should have been Titanic lengths. I feel like it could have been longer. Honestly, the chemistry between everyone is off the charts. Donald Sutherland definitely knows he was in this movie. Sorry, that's my son, Sonny. 00:13:31 Speaker 2: Oh, he just got I agreed to save the moon, so they let him out of jail or something. 00:13:38 Speaker 1: Mm hmm. 00:13:39 Speaker 2: So yeah, this was my first full viewing of it. 00:13:41 Speaker 1: Wow, what about you? I saw this movie in theaters. 00:13:46 Speaker 2: Wow, and I was wait, really. 00:13:49 Speaker 1: Yes, all jokes aside, I saw this movie in theaters. 00:13:53 Speaker 2: Why. I'm genuinely curious, and I'm gonna uphold the bit best I can. 00:14:00 Speaker 1: But why Friend of the show, Catherine Leon and friend to us both listeners. You might remember her from our Spy Kids episode. 00:14:07 Speaker 2: She's got to come back. It's time. 00:14:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to bring Katherine back. Yeah, she was like, Caitlyn, have you seen Moonfall? And I was like, no, this. 00:14:16 Speaker 2: Feels exactly right. I love that she was able to alert you to this while it was still in theaters. 00:14:23 Speaker 1: Yes, and it was urgent, and she said you have to go see Moonfall. And I was like, are you sure, because it seems like it might not be very good. And she's like, well, Caitlyn, that's where you're wrong. And especially as one of the hosts of the Bechdel Cast, you're gonna want to see this because it's a feminist masterpiece. And then I watched it and I was like, oh my god, Catherine was right. 00:14:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:14:46 Speaker 1: So I don't know why there was not more discussion around how feminist this movie was. Yes, in regards to how powerful and dynamic of a character the Moon is. But that's what we're here for today. That's what we're doing today. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: Don't let the hollowness of this movie's moon fool you, and don't let it be a metaphor for the film overall. Instead, let the moon fall in because you'll I think what you'll find is that it's a hollow spaceship full of nanobots that turn into a big fist and then they turned Samuel Tarlie into an immortal moon guy. Right. 00:15:32 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:15:32 Speaker 2: Also, Michael Penya is there. 00:15:34 Speaker 1: Michael Penia is there? 00:15:36 Speaker 2: Michael Pania. Okay, this does not pass the Bechdel test, and so we'll be talking about women any second now. But and this movie is gonna make it easy. 00:15:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:15:45 Speaker 2: Michael Pania first of all, was not supposed to be in this movie. Yes, I read this supposed to be I think Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci, which is such a bizarre swap of actor. I would not say similar energies at all. But lucky for Michael Paiya that he was in this movie. The two things I associate Michael well, other than like, Michael Panya is a very charismatic actor. But the two other things I associate with him is number one scientologist, Yes, number two. In one of my favorite clips that I like to remind people about every so often, I know where this is going, Chuck E Cheese's favorite actor. I just would to remind our listeners that in twenty twenty, during Lockdown, Chuck E Cheese was doing this bizarre YouTube content. They were spotlighting the straight to HBO live action Tom and Jerry movie starring Tom, Jerry, Michael Pania, and Colin Jost and Chuck E Cheese interviewed Michael Penya on his YouTube channel and that Michael Pena was his favorite actor. 00:16:53 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:16:53 Speaker 2: And so every time I see Michael Panya, I'm like, oh my god, Chucky is losing it somewhere. Chuck E Chee is absolutely has seen Moonfall. He loves Michael Penia. 00:17:03 Speaker 1: Well, of course, wait is it? Because wait, which one is so of Tom and Jerry, which one is the cat and which one is the mouse? 00:17:12 Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked Cat, Tom, Mouse. 00:17:15 Speaker 1: Jerry and Michael penia voice is one of those characters? Which one? 00:17:19 Speaker 2: No? No, no, he plays Tom and Jerry's friend. 00:17:22 Speaker 1: Okay, I thought, okay, So where my brain was going. I thought maybe Michael Penia voiced the mouse character. And because Chuck E Cheese is a mouse, that's why he had such a strong connection to Michael Penia. 00:17:33 Speaker 2: No, No, that would that would have made sense. No, he plays the character of Terreen's Mendoza. Colin just plays just Ben. No last name for Colin, just uh huh. And Tom and Jerry they're at a hotel. I believe that Michael Penia works at the hotel. Okay, Chloe Grace Moretz is there? 00:17:56 Speaker 1: Wow? And should we cover this movie? 00:17:59 Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if the world is ready. There is actually like an interesting era of like straight to streaming movies that basically don't exist because they were released in like eight months in twenty twenty, where you're just like these And actually the pandemic meaningfully plays into the production history of Moonfall, and I feel like it's sort of referenced in a and I say bizarre in a feminist way, in a bizarre way in the film Moonfall. Sure, but so if you haven't seen this movie, please please, please please go and buy it on Blu Ray. 00:18:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, spend as much money as you can on it. 00:18:42 Speaker 2: Please. Yeah, order it from another country on Blu Ray. And really, let Roland Emeric know that you stand with Moonfall. 00:18:55 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:18:55 Speaker 2: And like many feminist masterpiece, it was not recognized in its time, true, but it has become a cult classic indie film is alive. And well, thank you. 00:19:06 Speaker 1: Moonfall, Thank you Moonfall. All right, Well, should we take a quick break and then come back for the recap? 00:19:15 Speaker 2: Let's do it? 00:19:25 Speaker 1: Okay, all right, here is the recap of the most feminist film of the past decade, Moonfall. We open on clips and sound bites of Apollo eleven, the mission famous for astronauts first landing on the Moon. We cut to January twelfth, twenty eleven. Some NASA astronauts are in space. Ever heard of it, repairing a satellite? So this is Brian in Harper, played by Patrick Wilson. 00:20:03 Speaker 2: And I love Patrick Wilson. I enjoy it, and it's so great for his career that he's in movies like Moonfall exclusively. What's your favorite Patrick Wilson performance? 00:20:15 Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. 00:20:18 Speaker 2: Mine's a tie. Okay, tell me, mine's a tie between Phantom of the Opera obviously, Oh right, and Hard Candy. He's great. Oh yeah, he's so great. 00:20:28 Speaker 1: Is there a movie where he has long, straggly hair? Am I thinking of Opera? 00:20:34 Speaker 2: Okay, unless you're He was also in a bunch of movies. Well, I saw a Watchman when it came out. I don't remember it. But he was in. 00:20:44 Speaker 1: Little Children, Yes, I've seen that. 00:20:46 Speaker 2: Oh, I've seen him in Insidious. I liked the first Insidious. He's in the Conjure, he's mister Condrey, one of which I saw Oh you know what, he's great in hmmm, season two of Fargo. 00:20:59 Speaker 1: Oh, I do the ever watched the first season. 00:21:01 Speaker 2: It's he's really good in it. Yeah, he's great, and so I think again, speaking back to the theme of this episode, it's really awesome that for some reason, for the last ten years he's been in movies of the caliber of Moonfall and like the Conjuring the Devil maybe do it right? 00:21:22 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:21:22 Speaker 1: That he's also in Aquaman, and I believe it's right cool? 00:21:27 Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yeah, that sucks that he had to be in Aquaman like that. Yeah, and he played Aquaman's like evil brother or something. 00:21:37 Speaker 1: Yes, I don't remember. 00:21:39 Speaker 2: We covered Aquaman and I have to say, I don't remember a bar of it. 00:21:44 Speaker 1: Couldn't tell you. 00:21:45 Speaker 2: I love James Wan thing. Well, I guess that's probably why Patrick Wilson is in it, because he's a James Wana. Oh so true, due to the conjuring of it all. Anyways, his best two movies came out twenty years ago, and we've gotta we've got to help him out. Except for Moonfall, of course, which. 00:22:02 Speaker 1: Is his best way his best performance. Yes, so we meet him. He plays Brian Harper. We also meet Josin de Fowler aka Joe aka played by Halle Berry Lee Berry. 00:22:14 Speaker 2: And you know, again, thank god her best work since The Flintstones. 00:22:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. Really, you know, there was a large gap in between those two movies where you know, I don't think she did anything really certainly was never nominated for an Oscar one. 00:22:35 Speaker 2: Genuinely. I feel like in the last like ten to fifteen years, Halle Berry, at least from what I can tell, has has not appeared in movies as much as she once did. She seems choosier about the projects that she has done, and so when she agrees to do Moonfall, you know, I mean something, this is gonna be good. Yes, And she plays iconic feminists Justinda Joe Fower. Yeah. I like that. We know that these characters like each other because they state that out of nowhere, after what has to be weeks, if not months in space. Don't you just love to announce your relationship to another person after spending months of unceasing time with them. She's just basically my work it's my work wife. She's my work wife. I would be saying I say that about you after we've been on the road together for eleven days just out of context. I just find myself saying it as if there's a camera pointed on me. 00:23:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I get it, Yeah, I get it. I say the same thing about you. 00:23:37 Speaker 2: And much like just into Fowlery Brian Harper, we are definitely in the same room for the entire shoot, and the chemistry is off the charts, off the charts. 00:23:50 Speaker 1: Yeah. The two of these characters are besties. And then there's a third guy there too. His name is Marcus. 00:23:57 Speaker 2: Don't get attached, do not? 00:23:59 Speaker 1: Because so they're in space repairing a satellite when all of a sudden, a bizarre space disturbance happens. It seems like a large cloud of debris, which might be sentient, comes crashing into them and propels. 00:24:17 Speaker 2: Fistful and nanobots it might be. 00:24:20 Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out. It propels Marcus into the depths of space. 00:24:25 Speaker 2: So Marcus is the guy to him. 00:24:28 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:24:28 Speaker 2: I love how people die in Moonfall, but. 00:24:32 Speaker 1: I mean my favorite is Michael Penia's death. 00:24:34 Speaker 2: Michael pas death is awesome. He literally just lays down and he goes. 00:24:40 Speaker 5: It. 00:24:41 Speaker 2: Really, it's it's such a and if he only could have hung in there for twelve more seconds, he would have been okay because iconically, and this is part of the joy of Moonfall, twelve seconds after Michael Penia's plot death, all of a sudd in sunny the sun. Yeah, the sun takes his mask off and he's like, the air's back. 00:25:07 Speaker 1: Why is the airback? We don't know, because the moon is a woman agency and she said, airs back, airs you're right. 00:25:17 Speaker 2: You're right. 00:25:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves. 00:25:20 Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry, sorry, I love Michael. 00:25:24 Speaker 1: It's so funny. 00:25:25 Speaker 2: Keep walking. Okay. 00:25:29 Speaker 1: So Marcus dies, Brian manages to safely get back to the spaceship where Joe has been knocked unconscious, and then he sees this cloud or this swarm of sentient space debris, yeah, burrow into the moon and we're like, oh no, that's that's a woman being violated. 00:25:53 Speaker 2: That's so true by the masculine nano bots nanotechnology. 00:25:59 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:25:59 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:26:00 Speaker 1: Then we cut to a year and a half later. Brian has been fired from NASA following this incident. They blame him for Marcus's death, but he maintains that this bizarre space anomaly caused the mishap, but of course no one believes him, including his best friend Joe. 00:26:22 Speaker 2: And this is an important lesson about this is that women, and I'm glad Will and Emeric brought this up. Women are deceitful liars who are out to get you. Regardless of how much you think you can trust them, you can't. 00:26:39 Speaker 1: Yes, that is one of the core tenants of the feminism of this movie. 00:26:45 Speaker 2: I would say, Yeah, you can't trust a woman any more than you can trust the concept of the moon belief. 00:26:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, everything you thought you knew about the moon, the moon's heart. Yes again, is a moon of secrets, a deep moon of secrets. 00:27:03 Speaker 2: It's been eighty four moons, moons, eighty four tens, twelve moons. 00:27:10 Speaker 1: Oh, because a moon equals one month. Yes, okay, I see, I see the math. 00:27:15 Speaker 2: Thank you, I okay, sorry to harp on every single bit of this masterpiece, but I just I was so visually captivated, Okay, like maybe maybe you were as well by the gigantic, unframed, high contrast photo of Patrick Wilson and his son Sonny that his future ex wife Brenda is just staring at. 00:27:40 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:27:41 Speaker 1: No, it was really quite remarkable. 00:27:43 Speaker 2: I've never seen a photo like that in my life. I have never seen a high contrast CPA photoshopped photo of Patrick Wilson and a child before and seeing it raw and unframed for some reason, I found kind of chill. 00:28:01 Speaker 1: And you're, of course referring to his ex wife, Brenda played by Carolina Bartzak, and she is his ex wife because this whole incident with Brian in this mishappened space has ruined his life. He's fired from NASA and it seems to have caused his marriage to fall apart. So he separates from Brenda and they have a son together, and that son, of course, is named as we've said, Sonny. 00:28:33 Speaker 2: It sounds ridiculous, but I did it, and so did Brian and Brenda. Yeah, names, we have to admit are better stated for siblings and for a married couple, but whatever. 00:28:44 Speaker 1: Oh sure the alliteration, yeah, of Brian and Brenda. Then we cut to ten years after that we meet Casey Housman played by John Bradley of Game of Thrones fame, yes, who works as a janitor, or at least pretends to be a janitor at UC Irvine so that he can break into a professor's office and hack his email so that he can access satellite images and data about the moon's orbital patterns right and where like exactly. 00:29:20 Speaker 2: I will say this part was supposed to have originally been played by my longtime nemesis Josh Gadd. True, and I'm glad that John Bradley is doing it, not Josh Gadd. I think that's fair. Some days are hard enough. 00:29:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine having to watch Moonfall and then Josh. 00:29:39 Speaker 2: Josh gadd performance on top of everything else. It just wouldn't have been It wouldn't have been right. 00:29:44 Speaker 1: It would have taken an otherwise perfect movie and really knocked it down quite a few pegs. 00:29:49 Speaker 2: Although I will say I would have loved to see Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci, I know in this movie, you know, but let Michael Pena stay. We did the same performance next to each other. They are okay. 00:30:04 Speaker 1: Brenda is polyamorous. She has two husbands, Polly, and they hang out in. 00:30:10 Speaker 2: A wide range of tastes. Stanley Tucci and Michael Pania. I genuinely would love to see a buddy movie with those two. 00:30:18 Speaker 1: Oh, that would be great, be fun. Imagine Devilwar's Prada, but it's Michael Panya instead of the Stanley Tucci character. 00:30:26 Speaker 2: Or Michael Pania doing the same performance right next to Stanley Tucci and they're speaking in unison. Yeah. Wow, makes it's an idea this also, I would say, you know, haters, haters would say this was maybe a rough year for John Bradley filmography wise, because the other big movie he's in this year is Marry Me, the j Loo movie. Do you remember that? 00:30:54 Speaker 1: I remember it? 00:30:55 Speaker 2: I didn't see it. Is Owen Wilson in that also? Yes, j Lo and Owen Wilson are in it together. I saw it. I saw it in theaters. That was when you were saying Moonfall. I was seeing Marry Me. Wow, I said, between the two of us, we saw all of John Bradley's work that year. But yes, yeah, he's playing a guy named k C who I thought was just Casey that it turns out its case. 00:31:19 Speaker 1: The initials k C. 00:31:21 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and he says the moon is hollow. And guess what. I think it's an important message that this movie holds that conspiracy theorists are correct and we shouldn't worry about the various restraining orders filed against them. It was a mistake. 00:31:38 Speaker 1: It was a mistake because they were right all along. Yeah yeah, okay, So Casey accesses data about the Moon and its orbital patterns, and he sees something really bizarre. We don't know what quite yet, but he tries to call NASA about it. Cut to a space center in Texas, I think, where Joe, who is now the deputy director of NASA, is told that the Moon's orbit is shifting and the Moon is getting closer and closer to Earth as it continues to circle around it, and she's like, what, that's impossible. 00:32:17 Speaker 2: And then she says, rather iconically, I think that you know, for the hyper compident characters that they are, it is wild that Joe and Brian do manage to be the last to know that the Moon is falling because Joe is in mission control or whatever this like stage in Montreal there in is and she's like, we need to make sure this remains contained. And then everyone in unison gets a push notification from like the Times saying in all caps moon is falling. 00:32:50 Speaker 1: Yes, well that's because Casey leaked the information. But the whole thing is like, we don't know the source of this, and he is not a credible source. So why the world devolves into mass panic after this? 00:33:06 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think it could be interesting commentary on, you know, the state of the news cycle, the state of defunding journalism, you know, how experts are now being treated as credible sources when they may not in fact be credible sources. However, I would say that is undercut by the fact that this conspiracy theorist Casey Houseman, of course his last name being Houseman because he's a man and he lives in a house. 00:33:30 Speaker 1: Just like how when you're a son, your name is son, name is sunny. 00:33:37 Speaker 2: And this movie went through descriptment, through many drafts, I'm sure, but it's why Casey Houseman. It's tricky because you know, it's like, it's one thing to say, oh, we are now treating conspiracy theorists with no accreditation as the arbiters of truth. This movie bravely asks, but what if they're right? But what if Casey house what if every Casey Houseman prediction is right and the moon is hollow. 00:34:04 Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of if there was a movie about how like a flat earther was like the Earth is flat, and then the big reveal is that the Earth is flat. 00:34:15 Speaker 2: Maybe that was what the sequel that tragically hasn't been realized yet yet is There is a cliffhanger at the end that is very confusing in a feminist way because it is delivered by a woman. And she says to Casey Houseman, more like Casey middle of the moonman now because they copied his consciousness and now he's a part of the moon famous. She says, your work is just beginning or something like that. I hope you're ready or get ready. So there's a lot of work to do. So maybe this sequel to the moonfall is earth flat. Maybe maybe we're just going to kind of keep going through the big hits in terms of conspiracy theories of the late twenty tens, moonfall, earth flat, vaccine, fake you know, and so on and so forth. 00:35:16 Speaker 1: Yes, I hope, so, I hope, so me too, I really hope. So. Okay, So, speaking of Casey, he cannot get through to NASA. No one will take him seriously, so he has to come up with a different plan. And he says out loud to no one, what would Elon Musk do? 00:35:37 Speaker 2: Now, this is interesting because Elon Musk, you know, obviously at the time you're listening to this is a full blown, out and out proud fascist yes, and you know, for those that have had had eyes on him for years, this will come as no surprise. It is just ideology that has grown louder and louder as time goes on. I wouldn't say that his position has meaningfully shifted. It has just increased in volume spree exactly. But there is this period, and it makes sense because this movie took so long to come out. But in the late twenty ten's, early twenty twenties where Elon Musk is getting a lot of pr in film, I'm thinking of that Lindsay Lohan movie. Yes, we watched on Netflix too, where it just and I wouldn't say it's free press. I would heavily speculate that he is paying for it in some way. Sure, But yeah, about how he was for some time sort of positioned as the man who could save the world with vaguely conspiracy theory adjacent ideas. I don't know, I don't know. I think the first time I got into an argument about Elon Musk was in twenty eighteen in the writer's room for Robot Chicken, in which I got into a shouting match with another writer, a man, a man older than myself, who was really infuriated that I didn't think Elon Musk was cool, and that really was the basis of the argument. And so for those of us who have been beating this drum for a long time, you hear that line and you wonder where is this going? And it's going to a later line that says our friends over at SpaceX. Yeah, and then I kind of lost the thread of where it was supposed to have been going other than saying that conspiracies are real, which is a feminist idea. 00:37:34 Speaker 1: The thread kids cut right then and there. Pretty much it doesn't go elsewhere. 00:37:40 Speaker 2: Movies don't need to answer every question, No, but it would be cool. I do feel like most movies answer at least one a question or presents you with potential answers and choose which you choose to believe. But some movies are just different, and these are mysterious. So yeah, what what what would Elon Musk do? And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk did something similar to Brian, which is like wear an embarrassing jacket and complain loudly to no one. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how children's dialogue is written in this film. 00:38:27 Speaker 1: Oh let's let's do that. 00:38:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, the way children talk in this movie is so true to life. You you would think you're just walking through a kmart. It is just really a amazing. 00:38:40 Speaker 1: Are there children a kmart? 00:38:43 Speaker 2: Well, there's you're just walking through the world, you know, you're just listen. I don't know why cam art came down. I don't even think kmart exists. No, You're just you're just you're just walking around a playground, like, because it's everything else that's perverted. You're like, well, I'm not just walking around a playground. Yeah, any kid would be saying things like I hate New Jersey. Any kid. There's a great scene that I really appreciated where Casey is Casey Houseman is impersonating Brian at the Griffith Observatory, Yes, which is iconic in many ways. And there's what is okay wait I wrote this down because. 00:39:26 Speaker 1: The kid who says, well, are you going to teach us about the moon or not? Yeah, and he says it exactly like that. 00:39:33 Speaker 2: Yes, that is exactly what I was talking about. I don't know where it went, but yeah, I wrote down the entire thing because it was so powerful to me. And then there's like another kid who shockingly talks to the exact same cadence as the first kid, almost as if no one was thinking about that. I just really, I really really loved it. 00:40:00 Speaker 1: There's a scene where when the earth suddenly starts running out of air. 00:40:05 Speaker 2: One look out, Michael Penia, watch out, targeting Michael Penia, only impending doom for him, just him though his and Brenda's daughter, one of them. 00:40:18 Speaker 1: There's like a there's a news cast and it says something like atmospheric dissipation is about to begin, and one of the daughters says, what's that? And then the other daughter, who's I don't know, maybe nine years old, says the earth is running out of air. Sully feminism, as if a nine year old child knows what atmospheric dissipation means. 00:40:41 Speaker 2: I don't know what that means. And I'm a hundred and don't get me started on Joe Fowler's son, who one are the weirdest kids ever committed to film? Okay, so here's that exchange of the students yelling at Samwell Tarli Shah grif Ritory, Yes, Okay, he's not two steps into the observatory when this kid clocks him and says, at volume one thousand, our teacher says, you're a wash up no show, and she's complaining to someone. You're like, oh. A second child says, you really don't look like an astronaut, and then the first kid says, calling back to you, well, are you going to teach us about space or what? And it just makes you wonder does Roland Emmericks have children and does. 00:41:31 Speaker 1: He he ever interacted with a child. 00:41:34 Speaker 2: And met them? And then the other kid is Joe's son, his father, because that is ultimately what the movie is about. Yes, And if fathers and sons are separated, well they just are like, well, here's Michael Panya and he's a new father, so okay, Joe follow her son a great one. And I really liked that his father, mister Military industrial Complex HIMSELFEP is calling hallebar on the phone and saying, how can you say I'm not spending time with our son. I talked to him on the phone all the time. And then you cut like talking about him as if he is not six, and then you see a six year old, I'm like, what are you talking on the phone about with this guy, like he talks about his six year old son like he's a full blown adult, consistently, to the point where maybe at some point in the script he was I find the way they talk about the kid very weird. Well, okay, sorry, sorry, I'm being so negative. 00:42:33 Speaker 1: Well yeah, Jamie Howell, I'm being a huge bitch. You're being an enormous bitch, and I can't believe it. No, But like, let's be let's think about this, Okay. Halle Berry she was I think in her mid fifties when she was very is Joe Fowler. Joe Fowler, she was in her mid fifties when this movie was being filmed and released. Sure, her son is, yeah, like six years old. Not to say that you cannot have a baby. 00:43:06 Speaker 2: You can. You can. 00:43:07 Speaker 1: Yeah, But I think it's one of those cases where they've cast an older actor to play a younger character, because heaven forbid, we have a like fifty five year old woman character on screen. 00:43:22 Speaker 2: And I would say that that's feminists in addition to the pressure that is put on women to look much younger than they actually are in order to retain employment in entertainment, And I think it's equally feminist. How people will attack said women for merely responding to how society is insisting they behave in order to. 00:43:49 Speaker 1: Work, and then they will attack other women who are less willing to adhere to those societal pressures and say, ooh, why do you look so old and gross? 00:44:03 Speaker 2: Or they will, you know, regard women who are you know, choosing to age naturally and infantilize them by saying they're brave. And there's just a million incredible ways to navigate talking about women. And they're all normal and they're all really nice. Yeah. There's also a character we meet who I think takes again in a way that it's like women are so complicated in a way that I think takes a very long time to determine who is this character and what is she doing? The character Michelle. 00:44:43 Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Yeah, I was. 00:44:46 Speaker 2: Wrong about who Michelle was in relation to the other characters about five times before I learned that she is an exchange student who is a nanny and perhaps a tutor. I'm maybe still not sure what mische Helle is doing. 00:45:01 Speaker 1: It is very unclear. 00:45:03 Speaker 2: I first thought she was dating Halle Berry Yes, Barry, yes, But then it turns. 00:45:09 Speaker 1: Out halle Berry is her boss. 00:45:12 Speaker 2: Right, and that she's like a nanny who's teaching her son Mandarin Mandarin. 00:45:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:45:21 Speaker 2: But before we can decide who is Michelle, what's going on with Michelle? Well, she's Sonny's girlfriend. And so then you're like, oh, thank god, Okay, I was this woman was getting too complicated. So it's good that she's just Sonny's girlfriend. Yes, But I did I do. I mean I did genuinely feel like she and halle Berry. I thought that, like, you know, because you meet her at the house and they have this like conversation about what seemed like their shared child. Yeah, and I was like, wow, queer representation, but that you find out several scenes later actually not no, no queer representation. No, the scene was just written weird. 00:46:02 Speaker 1: Yes, So glad we got that out of the way. 00:46:08 Speaker 2: I felt silly because I was like, wait, it was I like, but then I rewatched the scene. I was like, no, that's the way that they're talking to each other is very unclear. It was not giving professional relationship. 00:46:21 Speaker 1: No, because like the first time you see Michelle on screen, she has okay, actually this is hilarious. It's early in the morning, she has a cup of coffee that she has made for Joe. And it seems the way it's written, in the way it's acted, it seems like here is a tender gesture, a loving gesture that one partner is doing for another partner. Romantic partner. Yes, Nope, it's just that Michelle wakes up at four o'clock in the morning to make coffee for Joe. Also, she says. 00:46:55 Speaker 2: She's like a living nanny, but like, yeah, she's just very romantic. I don't know. Maybe it's just like these these actresses are just so like compelling that I mean, I mean they are they're they're beautiful, and so you want them to be married. I want them to like yeah. 00:47:10 Speaker 1: But the funniest thing about that scene is that Michelle hands Joe a coffee and she says, black two sugars. Now, if it's a black coffee, there isn't any sugar in it. 00:47:23 Speaker 2: Whoa. 00:47:24 Speaker 1: But she says, I made coffee just the way you like it, black two sugars. 00:47:29 Speaker 2: And that's feminism, and that's feminism, and that passes the Bexel test. 00:47:35 Speaker 1: Yes, it does so. 00:47:36 Speaker 2: Early in the movie passes the Bechel test in women who do have names. Although they're spoken very infrequently, and their relationship to each other is completely incoherent. Because then I went on this journey where I went back to thinking that Michelle was actually dating Joe, just into Joe Fowler because you find out her husband. But then it said much later on, no, it's her ex husband, and I was like, okay, so she is with Michelle. But then Michelle shows up and a scene very much acting like a nanny. And by that We're well over an hour into the movie and I'm still trying to glean the relationships between basic who lived together. I still don't know who these people are to each other. And then it turns out no, Michelle is straight single and looking to date Patrick Wilson's car thief son named Sonny. 00:48:36 Speaker 3: Dug. 00:48:36 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:48:37 Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, back to the thing we were on. Casey he's trying to come up with a plan to let people know that there's something wacky going on with the moon, so he goes to disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper, hoping that he will help. Through various inters, including the one where Casey is loudly blathering on about his moon conspiracy theories to children, we learn that case believes that the moon is what's called a megastructure, which is an enormous artificial construction built by aliens. And then he tells he tells Brian Harper that the Moon's orbit has shifted and the moon is about to fall into Earth. And so Brian thinks that Kse is a lunatic get it, lunatic lunar 're. 00:49:42 Speaker 2: Like a moona tig. 00:49:46 Speaker 1: Moonatick? Yes? Okay, So then the movie takes a detour from the urgent moon situation to introduce a few subplots, including Casey taking care of his mother who seems to have Alzheimer's and Brian's now eighteen year old son whose name is still Sunny, getting arrested after being in a high speed car chase. 00:50:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, like an OJ Simpson style high speed televised car chase. Yes, as all car chases are televised like their OJ Simpson correct. 00:50:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, we cut back to Joe. The NASA scientists have concluded that in three weeks, the Moon will get too close to the Earth and it will basically fall apart and fling huge moon chunks into the Earth. 00:50:44 Speaker 2: Moon will fall, Moon will fall. The fall of the Moon, The dark, dark of the Moon. I remember that. 00:50:51 Speaker 1: I do remember that. Yeah. I think there is some weird conspiratorial moon thing in that Transformers movie too. 00:51:00 Speaker 2: Really. I mean I've only seen the first one, but that that would track for me. Yeah, I believe that Michael Bay believes and conspiracors. 00:51:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, listeners who are familiar with Transformers Dark of the Moon. Is the Moon a Transformer or something? 00:51:18 Speaker 2: Okay? See, that actually sounds way more fun than Moonfall, to be honest, I mean, a Moon being a Transformer would be would be fun. 00:51:27 Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what that movie is about, but there is. I feel like there is something weird about the Moon in that one anyway. So the stakes are very high. The moon will fall. 00:51:39 Speaker 2: The moon is very low. 00:51:40 Speaker 1: The moon is The stakes are high, but the moon is low exactly. Yeah, and so they need to send a team of astronauts to the Moon to fix it. 00:51:52 Speaker 2: Or something to to tell the Moon to knock it out, to say stop falling, get up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Moon. Yeah. 00:52:06 Speaker 1: Then the scene where we were just talking about, where Casey leaks the info about the Moon's orbit changing and now it's trending on Twitter, which everyone believes even though no one knows the source of this information. 00:52:19 Speaker 2: It is wild how that line of dialogue that exists in so many movies now sounds wild they dated, like it's going viral on Twitter, which now would mean kind of less than nothing. And it's ironic that whose fault is that, Well Elon Musk. Yeah, well what Elon Musk do amongst other things make it so that that line sounds very dated. 00:52:43 Speaker 1: Yes, anyways, so there's like now mass public panic, people are fleeing from cities, people are looting, all that kind of stuff. 00:52:53 Speaker 2: Which again feels like a weird amalgamation and like it felt to me based on when this movie was written and produced, felt like a dishonest conflating many issues at once. Reflection on twenty twenty and in a way that I found frustrating in a movie I otherwise love. 00:53:16 Speaker 1: And otherwise perfect movie. Yes, yeah, I can definitely see that, But we see so little because like a lot of disaster movies, where there's like a global disaster, you see a lot more of the chaos that the world has descended into. In this movie, there's only like very very very quick cuts, mostly as like news coverage. Yeah, you barely see anything well and in. 00:53:44 Speaker 2: The interesting way. And again, this is an episode coming out in early April, so we're gonna be doing extra care in the discussion. But like, it is interesting that like Roland Emeric is sort of playing on some of the disaster movie tropes that he helped popular, which are like anyone in the lower class is kind of like uh, violent and bass. 00:54:07 Speaker 1: Yeah and uncivilized, et cetera. 00:54:11 Speaker 2: But with regard to not showing that the disaster and the Disaster movie, I would say, Caitlin, you know, in their defense, they only had one hundred and fifty million dollars, and so would you be able to show a compelling image for one hundred and fifty million dollars. 00:54:27 Speaker 1: No, not me. I would blow that entire budget on craft services. Yeah, yes, say what you will about this movie. I actually think the special effects are decent, which I don't think they're amazing, but I think it looks like inexpensive movie because it is an expensive movie for sure, So it's not like the effects look shitty the way that a lot of B movie effects are really like shitty looking, Like this movie looks like they spent money on it, but it's just that the story is. 00:55:00 Speaker 2: And if I'm being critical and I wouldn't know if I was playing Devil's advocate here, sure sure, I would say it definitely does look expensive. What I don't think is that you can you can maybe get the sense that the actors, more often than that not don't know what they're supposed to be looking at because the reaction. And this is not a fault of the actors, because these effects were probably not even conceived of yet much less executed, but you can sort of tell that there's a moment with halle Berry I'm thinking about specifically, that the reaction just feels a little low temperature. For what she is looking at on a screen is astronauts being eaten by nanobots like a snake, and she's sort of like, oh that is that's really too bad, like it's really dead, kind. 00:55:52 Speaker 1: Of stone faced, no reaction whatsoever. 00:55:56 Speaker 2: It's almost as if she were directed to say, like, make a facial expression that could mean anything, And halle Berry is an incredible expressive actor, so I'm assuming she was told to do that. But it's so weird because what she ends up looking at is like really a good effect, but very graphically horrific. Yeah, it's like her, she's the head of NASA. These are we are to think some of her like best and brightest astronauts, astronauts she would know personally getting eaten by nanobots on camera and she's like she's just like, oh no, wow, well we should probably we should probably should probably the moose this moon. I will say, women in power, this is a great I think that Roland Emeric is bringing up another feminist idea here, which is that women in power is a bad idea because Joe Fowler, I will say it. I'll say it. She is not really killing it running NASA. 00:57:04 Speaker 1: She makes a lot of bad calls. 00:57:06 Speaker 2: I would say, there is like a small fuel leak, and she disbands NASA. 00:57:13 Speaker 1: She said, never mind, we're gonna get there. 00:57:15 Speaker 2: But I was really kind of stunned at how They're like, well, there's a fuel, we don't have the thing to put in the thing, and she's like, well, I guess we better disband NASA, and then she does. Moments later, consulting, no one disbands NASA and everyone in NASA's like, we're going to Colorado. Okay, Colorado? Colorado is like, I mean, is it like some Denver Airport shit, Like I know that there's a lot of I was thinking of Birasy theories in Colorado. Yeah, but it also gets you also sort of get the feeling that, like the Tourism Bureau of Colorado maybe through a couple bucks at this movie, like Colorado comes up, Colorado, Lexus, Elon Musk. These are just things that keep coming up up. 00:58:00 Speaker 1: Everyone evacuates to Colorado in this movie, or at least all the main characters. Yeah, okay, so actually we're about to get there. So there's this like mass public panic. Brian's ex wife, Brenda's new rich Lexus dealership owning husband Tom Lopez played by Michael Penia, wants his family to go to Aspen, Colorado for reasons that never become clear, so he starts evacuating the family to Aspen. Brian, meanwhile, is trying desperately to get his son, Sonny released from jail in La Right, his son's Sonny, Son's Sonny. 00:58:44 Speaker 2: There should be the daughter's named Dottery. Yes, it should be that easy for us to I know, Dottie maybe Dottie. Oh maybe that's it. Wow, Dorothy more like dot Dorothy. 00:59:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so then Brian sees something on the news about how maybe the Moon is a megastructure, and he's like, wait a minute, that guy who I thought and who belongs in the looney bin, get. 00:59:18 Speaker 2: It more Luner, the mooney bin things, the looney Bend or the mooney Bin. 00:59:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, He's like, that guy said something about the Moon being a megastructure. So Brian goes to find Casey, who continues to carry on about how something must have gone wrong inside the hollow megastructure that is the Moon and that's why it's veering off course. Now. Meanwhile, a NASA spaceship goes to the Moon discovers that there's a huge hole in one of the craters, so they drop a probe inside, which prompts the sentient swor of spiky technology nanobots to come out and kill the three astronauts who are on this mission which we were just talking about, which halle Berry's character has absolutely no reaction to. Her boss is like, fuck this, I'm out. I quit NASA. So now Joe is in charge of NASA, and so with her new security clearance, she starts digging through some classified records, which I guess as the deputy director of NASA she had no access to. But now that she's in like one step promoted, she has all the clearance and she goes to this guy named Holdenfield played by Donald Sutherland, who. 01:00:45 Speaker 2: He's literally he reminds me, you know who he reminds me of. Do you know that scene in Aladdin where there's like that old man in the ja I think it's like Jaffar in disguises. Yes, Donald Sutherland's character was kind of reminding me of that guy where he just comes out of the shadow, reveals some plot and disappears, and then the protagonist is like, whoa that it's kind of weird. That's kind of what happens. 01:01:15 Speaker 1: That is kind of what happens. Except the thing with Donald Sutherland's character is that it is implied that he's about to go end his own life right after this, right. 01:01:25 Speaker 2: Jaffar doesn't do that. It is it is bizarre. It is bizarre because again we're met with yet another halle Berry reaction that is very low temperature given the information that's just been conveyed to her. For sure, that scene sort of ends with her being like, well, these things will happen like it, These moons will fall moons will fall. It's like Vanessa Hudgens during COVID, people die, Like it's just it's do you remember that. I don't know why that that lives in my head, rent Free. It was like such a horrific thing to say, and not that anyone should be thinking about what Vanessa Haudgens said during COVID, but I still think about it. That's kind of halle Berry's vibe. She's sort of like, people are gonna die and that's sad. 01:02:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. So she now has all this new information, including that NASA covered up the nanobot video footage that they did get from Brian's helmet cam from the scene that we saw at the very beginning of the movie. So she's like, oh my gosh, I believe Brian now. So she's about to go recruit him. But first, the moon's orbit is affecting the tides and the ocean and stuff, so water comes gushing on to land and it starts destroying La where Brian and cac are. They end up trapped in a hotel, so they're just sort of like chilling in this hotel. They're like sleeping, hanging out hotel beds. 01:03:08 Speaker 2: There's some like hippie friends of Casey Houseman. Yea there, and it's like starting to feel like a movie from nineteen ninety seven. And it's like that's because it's Rollin Emerick directing it. So in many ways it is a movie from nineteen ninety seven. But yeah, they're just kind of hanging out. 01:03:27 Speaker 1: They're just chilling. Yeah, yeah, who cares if the moon's falling, We're just chilling. 01:03:32 Speaker 2: Just two feminist allies hanging out at a hotel. Nothing to see here. 01:03:36 Speaker 1: Yes. Then there's a part where Joe's ex husband, Doug. 01:03:41 Speaker 2: Who only appears in conference rooms the entire movie. 01:03:46 Speaker 1: Yes, and like you said, he is military industrial complex the man. He wants to take Joe and their son Jimmy, also to Colorado for some reason. 01:03:59 Speaker 2: Well, because that's where it's safe visit Colorado. 01:04:05 Speaker 1: Yes, but Joe is like, I can't go to Colorado. I have to go to the moon. 01:04:11 Speaker 7: No. 01:04:12 Speaker 2: Well she does not really tell him that. He finds out from Sunny later, right, And that is one of my favorite non reactions in the movie, Like Joe and her ex husband really found each other because they stay not reacting to gigantic pieces of news like that's how they became so powerful in the American government by not knowing what anyone is saying and being stonefaced in the face of absolute horrors. Where she never informs him that she is not coming to Colorado. She's given her son over with her not girlfriend, it turns out nanny and lets her get into this car with a known car thief who said, by the way, my license is suspended, So showing no regard for her own child safety, even though we're told but whatever, it's all about telling, it's not about showing. So even though her actions would indicate she doesn't care about her son's safety, we're told she does care, so she does, so she does. A half hour later. A half hour later, the husband calls, or the ex husband calls, because they do even a big government meetings specify they are no longer married, as if there's a camera on them, as if there were studio notes saying it's unclear who anyone is to each other in this movie. But Sonny, a character this man does not know, calls them and says, oh, sorry, your ex wife didn't go to Colorado. She actually went to the moon. I've got your son. And he's like, oh, okay, well, when are you gonna get to Colorado? I was like, what, Okay, also consider this, so okay, sorry, you're right this huge bitch, huge betch huge bitch. Yeah, damn it, Jamie, I'm sorry, stop criticizing this perfect movie. No, I'm about to do the same thing. So okay, the moon is famously falling. Yeah, and it's affecting gravity on Earth. Well, depending on what the plot requires, sure, well exactly. Yeah, but somehow it is not affecting the satellites that are orbiting Earth that would affect people being able to. 01:06:29 Speaker 1: Make cell phone calls. Oh yeah, because everyone just keeps making so many phone calls even though the satellites would be so fucked. 01:06:36 Speaker 2: Up gravity affected cell phone reception. Perfect. Yeah, Verizon really should have gotten in on this, like. 01:06:45 Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they should. 01:06:46 Speaker 2: Have missed opportunity. I'm sure they were reached out to. 01:06:50 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:06:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, that honestly didn't even occur to me. Yeah, everyone is making crystal clear phone calls. 01:06:55 Speaker 1: The whole the whole movie. Satellites are working perfectly even though the is crashing into all of them. 01:07:03 Speaker 2: Probably it is really fascinating because it's like disaster movies, all disaster movies good, Bad, or not have these kinds of plot holes present. But if the movie, if you like the characters enough and like the visuals are exciting enough, you're willing to forget about a lot. 01:07:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, suspension of disbelief, baby. 01:07:23 Speaker 2: But it's interesting that we're noticing these plot holes and. 01:07:26 Speaker 1: Plot holes more like a hole in the moon's crater. 01:07:33 Speaker 2: Moon holes moon hole. Also, they keep saying crater and I was like, wow, that's that's great fiance his last name. Yeah, people are actually in sci fi movies they're saying his last name, and then in movies in the movie Twisters, they're saying his first name a lot because there's the Daisy what's her name, Daisy? I forget what is act name is, but there's a whole thing between her and Glenn Power. I remember me and my brother laughed so heart in theaters at Grant because there's a repeated line of she is like, I need to go get a big fat Grant. It's fun by research. 01:08:13 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wow, both of Grant's names are nouns. 01:08:17 Speaker 2: I know, I know it's weird that it is his actual government name, because I was like, it sounds fake, but it's real. Anyways, Moonfall. Sorry, I keep getting distracted, which is wild because the plot is so riveting. 01:08:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, okay. So then Joe goes to recruit Brian and by default because Brian and Casey are buddies. Now, so Brian and Casey get recruited to help Joe, but they're not sure how they're going to get to the moon because according to this movie, all of the spaceships are in museums. 01:08:54 Speaker 2: And don't worry about what that means, why that is or who made that decision, because you do get the feeling that well, I guess it would be halle Berry's boss, kind of a patriarchy, the guy kind of guy who does quit his job. You know you said earlier he quits his job so he could of course go to Colorado. Yeah, and then just like hands halle Berry a key card and says, you want to be the head of NASA so bad? Well you are. Now you go, Now, why did that? Assuming that's the guy who put all the spaceships in museums, what has NASA been up to? Well, all the spaceships are in museums. 01:09:38 Speaker 1: We keep cutting to present day NASA, and they seem to be fully operational. 01:09:45 Speaker 2: But then you find out actually all the space ships are in museums, which is interesting because we've seen astronauts gotten eaten by nanobots today today. Yes, so it's safe to assume we were in a spaceship, but maybe that was the last space that wasn't in a museum. Follow up question, why are the space ships that are in museums so loosely secure that there's graffiti on them that say fuck the Moon. That's a great question. What museum are they in that security is that low? 01:10:18 Speaker 1: It's a museum in La Also. 01:10:21 Speaker 2: Well, clearly they didn't give roll in Emeric any money because they made the whole place like pretty low rent. 01:10:26 Speaker 1: Well and then they and they flooded the whole city. 01:10:29 Speaker 2: It's true. 01:10:30 Speaker 1: They said, they said, fuck La Denver is the only safe place in the US or Colorado in general. 01:10:38 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:10:38 Speaker 1: Okay, so they're like, yeah, all the spaceships are in museum except for the Endeavor, which is the ship that they were on at the very beginning of the movie. 01:10:48 Speaker 2: Oh wait, that's the graffiti ship that says fucked the most. 01:10:51 Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, it's not in a museum. It was just in storage or something. 01:10:56 Speaker 2: It was just at like public storage. 01:11:01 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So Brian and a few other astronauts prep for this mission where they're gonna go to the Moon to stop it from falling. 01:11:11 Speaker 2: Well, and it's not a few other astronauts, it's like a lot of that, it's most of NASA is preparing for this mission. 01:11:19 Speaker 1: A lot of people are there on the ground, and then like a handful are actually gonna go into space. 01:11:23 Speaker 2: Is actually gonna go, but it's a big thing. 01:11:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, until of course. 01:11:27 Speaker 2: Operates some sort of like coolant issue, and then NASA has to be disbanded, disbanded so that you can all go to Colorado. 01:11:36 Speaker 1: So in the meantime, though they're they're prepping for this mission, SpaceX gets mentioned. Casey continues to have a raging hard on for Elon Musk. Their plan is unclear, but it seems like basically they're going to lure the evil spiky nanotechnology bots out of the Moon and then blow up that swarm with a bomb. I think I wasn't clear. 01:12:09 Speaker 2: Are they gonna blow up the Moon or are they just gonna blow up something like near the moo. 01:12:13 Speaker 1: That's such a good question. We're just not too sure. 01:12:17 Speaker 2: I wasn't able to get. But again, it's not the movies that is actually one of my favorite things that because this is true, but I do think it's overused by a certain type of letterbox user who will be like, it's not the movie's job to tell you all the answers, and then you're like, I do feel like it is the movie's job to tell me if the objective of most of the movie is to blow the moon up or not. There are certain questions that I don't feel are pedantic, and in Moonfall, I would like to know if they are trying to blow up the moon or if they're like trying to do something else. But luckily there's like a plot room inside of the moon in which things will become even more confusing. But that's we're a ways away. First, halle Berry disbands NASA. 01:13:12 Speaker 1: And also before Brian leaves on this mission, he reunites with his son Sonny. 01:13:19 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because that's that's the agreement. He will come back for one last hurrah blowing the moon up, possibly as long as his son Sonny is let. 01:13:32 Speaker 1: Out of jail. Yeah, yeah, yes, it all makes sense. Then what you're referring to happens where an earthquake or something destroys one of the spaceship's engines and coolant is leaking or something, but they can't go to space anymore because there's only two engines left. 01:13:53 Speaker 2: That's like saying, Josh Gadd is no longer available. We can't make moonfall. We all have to go to Colorade. Come on, right, where's your spirit? 01:14:03 Speaker 1: Well? Kse steps in with some new calculations. 01:14:08 Speaker 2: Much like John Bradley for Josh Gad precisely okay, and he's like, wait a minute, if we wait until the moon, which is falling, it is directly above us, the gravitational pull from the Moon will pull the spaceship up to. 01:14:28 Speaker 1: The Moon, so we don't even need engines, really, we just need the Moon's gravity. And everyone's like, yeah, I will be honest, I'm so glad that. 01:14:39 Speaker 2: That came through to you, because I was like, I was really not sure what his justification for going through with it, because it seemed like to me, what it seemed like is like, oh no, this issue with the cool ANDT is so bad that we have to disband an entire government agency. But then an hour later, the same person who disbanded said government agency. Halle Berry is like, actually, never mind, let's go to space. Let's go to space right now. Even though, like I think, canonically NASA and by NASA, I mean every employee of NASA who is just dismissed from NASA wouldn't have even had time to make it to the airport, like they could have come back right. She could have been like, sorry, guys, faalse along, I shouldn't have disbanded NASA just there. But she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, never mind. Actually could your son? Who Again, this is an anti Curst rule show, but like some I would not let my young child in the car with an eighteen year old who had just been in a very dangerous car chase. Agree. I don't think that's good parenting. 01:15:54 Speaker 1: I think no. 01:15:55 Speaker 2: But that's where Joe Fowler has me beat. I just like she's playing a game of chess. I'm not well. She's amazing, she's trying to have it all. She's a woman in stem it's hard to have the director of NASA. She's got to got a little moon. 01:16:10 Speaker 1: She's a mom. She's just trying to make it all work. 01:16:13 Speaker 2: You know, her ex husband can't get out of that weird room in Colorado he's in anymore than Michael Payna can get out of the weird room he's in in Aspen, which is also in Colorado. They're already in Colorado. 01:16:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, why are they going elsewhere in Colorado? 01:16:27 Speaker 2: They're all in Colorado. 01:16:29 Speaker 1: So confusing. Okay, So they're waiting for the Moon to position itself so that the gravity because somehow, because even though the Moon is smaller than Earth, the Moon's gravity is strong, and so it's gonna pull the spaceship up to the Moon. Maybe that's real science. I don't I'm not a I'm not a person in stem. I think we can safely say no. But if listeners have dissenting opinions and this act comes together quite beautifully, please let us know. Okay, So their plans to go into space to the Moon are going to move forward. Meanwhile, Sonny, little Jimmy, and then this woman Michelle, who we've been talking about, played by Kelly You. She is Jimmy's nanny, although sometimes it seems like she is Joe's girlfriend also, but yes, but no, but yes, but no. 01:17:28 Speaker 2: She's also an exchange student. I don't even know why they mentioned that. 01:17:33 Speaker 1: She loudly blurts it out. 01:17:36 Speaker 2: People people did that sometimes I just am like, I'm from massive choosett Like you just can't your place of origin and occupation. It's just yes, human nature. 01:17:50 Speaker 1: So true. Okay, So the three of them get in a truck with sunny driving and they head to you guessed it, call Colorado. Sure, they have to outrun a huge gravity wave of water that's coming from the ocean. They drive for a while, then some hijackers steal their truck, so they set off on foot. Yeah, in the middle of winter, presum it seems like, because it's snowing. 01:18:20 Speaker 2: And and to be clear, the carjackers, what we know about them is that they're. 01:18:24 Speaker 1: They're they're poor, Yeah, and therefore scary violence trust them. Right then chunks of the moon start barreling down around them. Sure, Back in space, Brian, Joe and Case set a trap for the evil nanotechnology monster swarm thing, but it doesn't take the bait, so the astronauts decide to take a smaller space vessel inside of the Moon. They discover that, sure enough, it is a megastructure, and they're like, whoa, so. 01:19:06 Speaker 2: Which means the moon is hollow. The moon is fake. The moon landing was fake. Elon Musk is awesome that yes, I never Yeah, well whatever, I don't. I can't think about Elon Musk anymore today. On our joke episode, Sorry. 01:19:26 Speaker 1: What wait, Genie, what what? 01:19:29 Speaker 2: I'm sorry? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 01:19:32 Speaker 1: Happy aprifolds everyone. Okay, Back on Earth, Sonny, Jimmy, and Michelle link up with Brenda and Tom. They have to go find some oxygen tanks because all of a sudden, the Earth is running out of breathable air. The hijackers from earlier show up with guns, and so they're hassling Sonny and friends, but they're able to get away, and there's a chase and blah blah blah elsewhere in Colorado. Meanwhile, the military is about to launch a nuclear attack at the Moon. 01:20:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, which I do appreciate is repeatedly referred to as nuking the Moon. That's the kind of disaster movie shorthand I show up to hear in the movie noona Moonfall is that if halle Berry isn't expeditious in getting the Moon saved or exposing the Moon, or whatever the hell it is she's supposed to be doing, they're gonna nuke the moon. 01:20:39 Speaker 1: Nuke the moon. Yeah, that's a tagline if I've ever heard one. 01:20:43 Speaker 2: Now, that's what I call steaks. They're gonna nuke the moon, all right, we better get moving. 01:20:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, and really they do because Brian, Joe, and Casey are good so fast. They're still inside the Hollow Moon Mega structure, where the swarm of nanobots start to go after them, but then something seems to save them and kind of pull their spaceship to safety. Brian, who has gotten separated from the other two, finds himself in a room a plot void, a plot void with the Moon's operating system, which has taken the form of Sonny when he was a little son when he hated New Jersey, hated New Jersey. And this is something that the movie Moonfall seems to have lifted directly from the movie Contact, because do you remember at the end of that movie when Jodie Foster is like talking to the alien and it takes the form of her father and it's like, yeah, this is a form that will be easier to communicate with you. In Moonfall does the same exact thing, except for its except it's sunny. 01:21:58 Speaker 2: Except it doesn't work. Yeah, it is very confusing this movie. Again, I think probably politically it falls on its attitude toward I just think because attitudes towards Ai have changed and clarified, and I include myself in this too, where like I think in twenty twenty two, I don't know how many like cogent thoughts I had on Ai other than I don't like it. So I wasn't shocked to see a sort of bizarre, incoherent view on Ai. 01:22:36 Speaker 1: It's just so coherent. 01:22:37 Speaker 2: It's really confusing because it does seem to be basically anti but. 01:22:43 Speaker 1: Except for when it's pro Ai in the movie, right, not decide where it lands on Ai. 01:22:48 Speaker 2: Because they're like, because of Ai, well this is what Okay, so this is actually going in sequence, Like we learn in the plot void that due to Ai there was an amazing Utope. Yeah, so AI was good, but then AI became sentient, and then AI was bad and now there's two. It reminded me a lot of I Frankenstein, where you find out deep into the movie there's a war between demons and gargoyles, and you're like, there's a war between demons and gargoyles. It feels like that, except there's like a war between two AI. 01:23:22 Speaker 1: There's benevolent AI and evil AI according to this movie. 01:23:27 Speaker 2: So it really does refuse to choose a side as to are we pro AI, and they're like, well, we're pro the good AI, and we cannot be more specific about what that means. 01:23:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, correct, Yeah, yeah, we can talk more about that, but. 01:23:43 Speaker 2: I really don't want to. But okay, but we can. 01:23:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I suppose we don't have to. But what happens here in the story is this construct of Sonny, This AI manifestation of this little boy explains that billions of years ago, the ancestors of humans lived in a hyper advanced utopian society. 01:24:14 Speaker 2: That like AI made for them. 01:24:16 Speaker 1: It was either AI made for them or they made the AI, but we made. 01:24:21 Speaker 2: It for them, we don't know, or that like maintained the world, yeah, it says. 01:24:27 Speaker 1: The movie says that this utopian society was controlled by a central self learning computer system aka AI. For a while, this went great. Human ancestors expanded and built other planets which they lived on. They were like doing space colonialism and they yeah, but then one day everything changed when the AI became self aware and it turned into this warm of evil spiky nanotechnology that we have been seeing throughout the movie, and that started a war against all biological life. Because of that, the ancestors built structures like the Moon, which was operated by benevolent AI to try to keep them safe from the evil AI, and they would send these megastructures to various solar systems looking for a new place to inhabit, and one of them being our moon. So the Moon gets shot off to our solar system. But meanwhile, the evil AI killed all of the ancestors. So now it was up to the Moon to create Earth from space dust, and it gives birth to the Earth, and it puts the DNA for humans onto Earth so that humans would eventually evolve. 01:25:58 Speaker 2: I guess I got to my eyes glazed over when I heard it in the movie, and I my eyes glazed over. Just now, I have no idea what the hell happened in that plot. Void they were like like to me, my takeaway was like, Okay, so there's a war between demons and gargoyles basically pretty much, and both sides sound bad, but for some reason, we're on the side of gargoyles. Yeah. Using my big I Frankenstein brain, I think I was able to basically get there, but the AI messaging was completely incoherent, nonsensical, could mean I mean, like I think a lot of movies that are trying to make a ton of money globally, the messages that are supposed to be specific are extremely vague, so that they could mean anything to anyone in the hopes that everyone will like this movie. And what sometimes happens is no one likes it. 01:26:55 Speaker 1: Not us, though we love us. 01:26:59 Speaker 2: We're geniuses. Yeah, we understood that in the War of Demons versus Gargoyles, we were of course siding with gargoyles. 01:27:07 Speaker 1: Gargoles. No, but I know what you mean. There were several so I watched this movie twice to prep for the episode, as I always do. There were specific moments, you know, when you're like trying to watch a movie or like read a book as you're falling asleep, and then you fall asleep at the same exact moment, but then you kind of wake up and you rewind because you missed it, and then you watch it again and then you fall asleep at the same exact moment again. This kept happening. While I was watching this movie. I would just black out sometimes during specific moments. 01:27:39 Speaker 2: I'm really proud of you that, for our sorry listeners, our April Fools episode, which is supposed to be a lightlift for us at the show, that you have taken it upon yourself to fully understand what happens in this movie, because I was like, there's no First of all, with all due respect to our listeners, there was no chance in hell. I was watching this a second time, and yeah, I did rewatch certain scenes to be like, oh my god, wait. I totally stopped paying attention in the middle of that because it was so confusing and like bizarre. So I would like, go, you know, try to keep pace with it. But it was like certain sequences like this, I'm like, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, Like, ah, I have no fucking clue. 01:28:24 Speaker 1: It's utter nonsense. I had to like really force myself. I had to like pry my eyes open Clockwork Orange style at certain points because I was like, wait, what happens. 01:28:37 Speaker 2: That's sort of like what it feels like with this movie and the concept of going to Colorado. You're being Clockwork Orange into going to Colorado, the only safe place that exist on Earth. 01:28:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Okay, So the movie is pretty close to being done. Wait, no, I have like so many more paragraphs of this recap changing. 01:28:55 Speaker 8: No, Actually a lot of stuff happens at the end, but it's like staged in such an abrupt and boring I'm kind of dropping the premise of our April Foll's episode, but it's like it's staged in such. 01:29:06 Speaker 2: An abrupt and boring way that you kind of forget how much happens in comparison to how interesting it is to watch and take in. 01:29:15 Speaker 1: So true, yeah, so. 01:29:18 Speaker 2: Sunny. 01:29:19 Speaker 1: The benevolent AI construct explains that they need a human to lure the evil AI swarm away from the Moon's power core or something which is destroying and that's why the Moon is veering off course. They need to destroy the AI swarm so that the Moon can return to its original orbit, and it's up to Brian and friends to do this because for some reason, the super technologically advanced Moon doesn't have the technology to save itself. Sure, and so Brian, who by the way, has Moon Jedi powers now and just can open doors with the wave of his hand. Doug Caln sorry sorry, he, Joe and Casey get into their once broken spaceship that the moon fixed. Okay, to destroy the AI swarm. We cut back to Earth where Sunny and company are walking to whatever part of Colorado has the military bunker where Doug is. Oh, Doug, by the way, uh huh that's her ex husband. Who oh yeah. 01:30:41 Speaker 2: Some point they just say the name Doug. And then the guy who is always like, I love talking to my son on the phone. He's in first grade, like Doug a weird guy, a weird, weird guy, but like but slayh you know, good for Doug, but good for him? Why not? So I look at Dog, I say why not? Why not him? 01:31:03 Speaker 1: Okay? Now the Earth is almost out of air, all the air leaked out while the Moon was falling into it. Oh God, and Michael Penia suffocates and he fucking croaks. 01:31:20 Speaker 2: He I really, and with all due respect to those who have lost a loved one in this manner, yes, because. 01:31:27 Speaker 1: Of this manner being the Moon falling into the Earth, the Earth's atmosphere. 01:31:32 Speaker 2: It really is implied that Michael Penia is among a maximum of ten casualties in this mass disaster. And it really I've never seen a death that you're like, oh, that's what the word keel over me and. 01:31:50 Speaker 7: He he just kind of falls to the side, and yeah, rough rough break from Michael Pina in this one, because you're just like, what is going on? 01:32:05 Speaker 2: Like what am I looking at? And the answer is, don't worry about it. 01:32:08 Speaker 1: Don't even worry about it. 01:32:10 Speaker 2: I don't worry about it. I just did this. Let people enjoy things, just kidding. Please don't let people enjoy things. This sucks. 01:32:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, don't don't like what I mean here, Okay, here's what I'll say about Moonfall. Please say it. 01:32:29 Speaker 2: Someone has to. As much as this movie blows ass in a feminist way. 01:32:35 Speaker 9: In a feminist way, women. 01:32:39 Speaker 2: Can blow ass to or something I do kind of love. 01:32:45 Speaker 1: It's what it's. Moonfall to Me is as I Frankenstein is to you. 01:32:52 Speaker 2: Fair enough, fair enough, I I Frankenstein to me is the perfect bad movie because at least it focuses on one confusing guy and not twenty confusing guys. Sure, and say what you will about Adam Frankenstein and I let's forget that is his name. We know who this guy is. He just is the fucking weirdest guy to ever live. For a thing, how it is incredible, just thinking, Wow, there are so many ways that you could portray two hundred years passing, but the way I Frankenstein does it is the best, which is just Aaron Eckhart swinging nunchucks at the top of a mountain, and then it fades. His outfit changes and all of a sudden, it's twenty fourteen. 01:33:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets a haircut, and it's two hundred years later. Oh you know, some would say that I Frankenstein walked so that Ghirrimo del Toro's Frankenstein could run. 01:33:56 Speaker 2: Let's talk about that. That's so true. Yeah, that's so true. Okay, So so yeah, Michael Panya keels over and dies. This I will say, Patrick Wilson shortly will have really no, no, actually, there is an iconic scene at the end where they all meet at the tip of the Chrysler building. Very unclear where this actually is. 01:34:22 Speaker 1: No, this is still in Colorado. 01:34:23 Speaker 2: They're still in Colorado, okay, because they theoretically, I don't know how they would have gotten out of Colorado. But they they all meet up and then they just sort of state what their relationships to each other are at the end of the movie, much like they did going Okay, so this guy died. Oh that's sad. This guy died. Oh that's sad. But we're friends, and you're my son, and you're my ex wife, and here's oh and here's little Jimmy. And my ex husband is nearby but he's not here, and we're friends and oh yeah and Kate. Oh wait, well we need to talk about how Casey dies. 01:35:02 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, let me oh, well, we need to get to the climax. 01:35:06 Speaker 2: Of the movie. So what would you say is the climax of the movie really? 01:35:10 Speaker 1: Well, actually, I think it's pretty I think it's clear. 01:35:15 Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, No, I'm sorry, I'm being a bitch, bitche Sorry sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, all right. 01:35:20 Speaker 1: So whatever, Michael Penia dies, Sonny goes looking for him. Michelle goes looking for Sonny. Moonchunks are plummeting to the earth. 01:35:33 Speaker 2: He said it like Moonchunks is the name of a character, is it not? I think we should write a character named moonchunks. But okay, no, sorry, we're back. We're okay. 01:35:45 Speaker 1: So New York City ever heard of it? 01:35:49 Speaker 2: All right? 01:35:50 Speaker 1: Is being ripped apart. The military is minutes away from launching their nuclear attack on the Moon. So the steaks are higher. The farther the moon falls down, the further the stakes rise up. 01:36:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, to the people of Colorado, we're really not sure we're going out outside of Colorado elsewhere. We don't give a shitla freak it out. 01:36:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So back inside of the moon, Brian in front, and let's just pause for a minute to really reflect. 01:36:21 Speaker 2: I'm not laughing, Sorry, that was rude to that. 01:36:25 Speaker 1: Statement of being inside of the moon. Brian and friends are flying around in their ship. The evil AI swarm is chasing it. Brian reveals his plan that he is going to act as bait and sacrifice himself to destroy the swarm, but Casey is like, no, I will be the one to sacrifice myself. And I have a whole spiel on why I think that is. We'll get to it. 01:36:54 Speaker 2: But caitlinus are even two hours in this episode. How much are we going to talk about it? 01:36:58 Speaker 1: Okay, fine, all right, I'll okay. So the other two astronauts on this mission are Brian and Joe. They each have a kid. Casey does not have a kid, and I feel like the movie basically suggests that it has to be him who sacrifices himself and dies because he doesn't have any children. Therefore he is quote unquote expendable. The only family he has is a mom with Alzheimer's. 01:37:28 Speaker 2: Well that's also like, right, so he's a caretaker. I mean, it's so hard to like because I think I totally agree. I think that's one of the reasons. But there's also this movie is so playing on so many broad tropes that it's like so many reasons. I feel like it has to do with like, the least famous person in the scene has to die, the least Western beauty standards attractive person in the scene has to die, the comic relief as opposed to the dramatic hero has to die. There's like a Jillian tropes at play here, all at once, and all of them, unfortunately indicate that John Bradley must die, but. 01:38:07 Speaker 1: But John Tucker must die. 01:38:09 Speaker 2: But but John Bradley does not die. His consciousness is melded with the moon and then he's a part of the moon. So no, okay, is it is bad. It's like playing on every trope and I mean it just and and it's playing on a number of fat phobic tropes. It's playing on so many tropes are present here, except really with our two protagonists, who are so bland that. 01:38:40 Speaker 1: You're like that there's sort of nothing going on. 01:38:43 Speaker 2: There's they're just dead behind the eyes and they don't even bother to imply that maybe these and again I'm not saying I honestly, this is actually the rare, the rare story where I think that having some romantic chemistry between these two actors would have helped me them be more interesting to watch. Where I know that, like it's the Bechdel Cast and we're not like not every like man woman pairing needs to be romantically interested. But it's like, what is there between these two people. I'm not feeling the friendship, I'm not feeling the resentment of the betrayal. We might as well just make the hot people kiss, but they don't even touch at the end of the movie. There's not even a friendly handshake, Like there is nothing between these two people. Well, it feels like Arrested Development season four. It's like they're not even like in the same room together. 01:39:35 Speaker 1: Wow, so true. Well you're forgetting that they have a running inside joke about the lyrics. 01:39:42 Speaker 2: About two Totos Africa. 01:39:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, that is referenced. 01:39:45 Speaker 2: Twice fifteen years apart, and they're like, haha, yes, remember that. Remember that he's also referencing the wedding of a failed marriage, which I wouldn't necessarily bring up in in front of my dear friend, but whatever. Yeah. 01:40:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, if these two characters had been kind of like forced together in a romantic kiss at the end or something, I would have been like boo. But also, but it's like there's nothing between them, so I'm also like between two characters. 01:40:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, I just was like, you know, romantic interest. It would have been half asked, it would have been trite, it would have been vaguely sexist. Yeah, but it also would have been something. 01:40:33 Speaker 1: What happens is nothing, absolutely nothing, including when Casey is like, no, I'm gonna be the one to sacrifice myself and Brian and Joe are like, no, stop, Okay, you can go ahead and do it. 01:40:50 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, to be fair, they've known this guy, they've been allegedly best friends for a decade, and they just met this guy. And also, not for nothing, halle Berry's character allegedly has an active restraining order against John Bradley's character Oh yeah, which is referenced once in Passing, but is said basically as a joke. So yeah, I don't know. They all should have blown up. Honestly, the moon. 01:41:21 Speaker 1: Should have just fallen all the way. Yeah. Okay, So back on Earth, Sonny has been trapped under a fallen tree because the Moon isn't the only thing that's falling. Trees are also falling, and he's lightly dying. And then Michelle finds him. But then we cut back to space and this is the climax. Casey does the sacrificial act of being the human bait and he hits the button for the bomb, the electromagnetic pulse thing do and it destroys the evil swarm. Back to Earth, Michelle saves Sonny, but it's mostly gravity doing the heavy lifting. And talk about irony. 01:42:12 Speaker 2: Ha ha ha ha. So yeah, Michael Penya and John Bradley are the only ones who die, and honestly, John Bradley doesn't die. O. Michael Paya is the only character who dies, yes, permanently. Rip. Michael Paya does not become one with the Moon. 01:42:28 Speaker 1: No, no, he doesn't. No, sad but true. Okay, we cut back to space. Brian has passed out, so Joe flies her and Brian back to Earth. So I mean, look at all these women saving men. Michelle save Sonny, Joe saves Brian, and that's feminism. Then Brian and Joe, who have conveniently landed in Colorado, of course, reunite with their families. There's a scene when you're just describing where they just kind of list all the people that they know who have also died. 01:43:07 Speaker 2: They're like, all right, so movie's over. Movie is over. 01:43:11 Speaker 1: The moon is returning to its regular orbit, and then we cut back inside the moon where an AI construct of k C appears and avoid as well as his mom and his cat, whose name is fuzz Aldrin. Okay, see, I here's what I wrote down. Of all the attempts at comedy in this movie, which there are a lot, I think that fuzz Aldrin is maybe the cleverest one. And that's saying something because it's like pretty good. 01:43:49 Speaker 2: If true, is what I'll say. But it's because but it's because a Lizzie Maguire as joke. 01:43:56 Speaker 1: But but but listen to this. It's because the jokes keep falling. 01:44:02 Speaker 9: Flat moonflat moonfall more like joke fall joke flat gravity is fucking with the jokes and how they land. 01:44:14 Speaker 2: Ay. But yeah, there, So it's something something His mom and his cat appear in the Ai Hollow Moon and set up a sequel. 01:44:25 Speaker 1: That will never be produced. Because this movie was produced on a budget of one hundred and fifty million dollars. 01:44:33 Speaker 2: And independently redependently, which is actually pretty impressive. It isn't really speaks to because if you're not familiar, you don't remember who Roland Emmerick is. He is a German director who is most famous for disaster movies like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, twenty twelve, et cetera. And so there is a lot of goodwill for him. Yeah, and he is like a proven talent at you know, at making iconic movies that make a lot of money that generally glorify the war industrial complex. But so like he raised this money independently after it sounds like years in development hell on this and in a rarer situation of the Hollywood machine being totally correct, he should not have made this movie. 01:45:24 Speaker 1: He should not have made this. 01:45:25 Speaker 2: He hasn't made a movie since. Yeah, it seems like it's really. 01:45:29 Speaker 1: Kind of and and it was a huge flop at the box office. It only earned sixty seven million dollars. 01:45:36 Speaker 2: It didn't even come out in Canada. Canada said they didn't even bother. 01:45:42 Speaker 1: They said, we our theaters are closed due to COVID pass yikes. 01:45:48 Speaker 2: Although I mean, what I will say about Rolodemeric outside of Moonfall not being good, it's he he is a queer icon. He does have a you know, a pretty you know, solid record in terms of his politics, especially for someone that's powerful. I mean, he has repeatedly advocated for In two of his disaster movies, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, there are interracial couples that the studios did not want him to have, and in Moonfall for some reason, he's like, I don't die either, but well, I guess Michael Panya and Brenda. But either way, either way, I'm just saying, like Roland Ewick seems like a totally lovely person. 01:46:35 Speaker 1: Hmmm. 01:46:36 Speaker 2: And also he made Moonfall. 01:46:38 Speaker 1: And he made Moonfall, which I mean, there's not a whole lot else that we need to spend time talking about. 01:46:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, like, at the end of the day, there are women in this movie. 01:46:53 Speaker 1: There are one of them is a woman in Stem. 01:46:56 Speaker 2: One of them is a woman in Stem. The rest of them are why and girlfriends or acting in a maternal acting as mother. 01:47:06 Speaker 1: Their mothers or mother figures or caretakers of some kind, including the Moon, who, let's not forget, is the mother of the Earth. 01:47:15 Speaker 2: Yes, And in the case of Joe Fowler and the Moon, they are liars. 01:47:22 Speaker 1: So they're deceitful. They I'll push back on Joe being a liar because. 01:47:29 Speaker 2: She I guess she was gaslt She was. 01:47:33 Speaker 1: Gas lit by NASA, which you know, unsurprising that a federal agency of the United States government would be doing some fuck shit. And honestly, she doesn't just automatically come to a man's defense, and that's actually feminism, So. 01:47:52 Speaker 2: I guess, I don't know. I mean, she and her husband are interesting in that. And again it's our April Fol's episode, so this isn't going to be the degree of analysis he would normally get. But this episode is two hours long, so you're welcome. The plot is simply that convoluted. Like I think that she NASA has always been an interesting branch of the American government, where like it is a military industrial complex tool, but I don't think it is publicly perceived as being so it has been very effectively marketed and I think to some extent, I still kind of drink the kool aid on NASA of like space exploration is cool, like it's people like in my mind, it's people like Elon Musku ruin it where they're turning it into colonization and not just learning more about the universe that we exist in that is very exciting and cool. But here we have and I think that this is more effectively done in other role in emeric movies like Independence Day, where it almost feels like he's like reheating his own nachos a little bit of like Okay, so there is like this big industrial judicial or whatever executive branch the war Cabinet, and that is represented by Doug question marked. And then they are the scientists, and they are government scientists, and they are patriots and they love America so much, but they're not that and it is an interesting sort of tool to encourage kind of unquestioning patriotism while seeming counter cultural. I think it's like how astronauts are very frequently portrayed in film, and we've talked about this in other episodes, but I do think it's like an interesting kind of tool that is used that is I guess not really worth talking about here because it's not effective and it doesn't make any sense. But I was thinking about it because there are a few lines that either Patrick Wilson or halle Berry say that are like, we're not this, we're scientists, and yeah, well, I do think that a lot of halle Berry's actions do sort of lightly push back or like push back on an idea of the government versus what I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I'm saying is like, for sure, do I believe that the American government, particularly at present, would say We're just gonna nuke the moon? Yes? 01:50:23 Speaker 1: I do. 01:50:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, But I feel like it's like whatever, presented in a cartoonish way so that we are not to question an institution like NASA. 01:50:35 Speaker 1: Well, I mean, this movie also does something that a lot of other movies that are about a global disaster do. And we've talked about this on episodes about movies where there is a global disaster, but the movie, because it's an American Hollywood movie, it will completely center the US and act as though the US is the only country with people and technology who can figure out what's going on, who can handle the disaster that's affecting the whole world. 01:51:10 Speaker 2: Specifically people in the US who live in Colorado, Like it is wild how for a movie shot in Montreal, which is also very funny given to this movie, I will repeat, did not ever come out theatrically in Canada, which had to do with COVID restrictions. But I just think it's funny that Canada, like you could not have seen this movie in Canada if you wanted to. And also that this movie came in second place at the box office behind Jackass the Jackass reboot, and Jackass made three times more money than Moonfall did in this first weekend. Wow, it is interesting. I wonder if I don't think there's really an appetite for it right now. Disaster movies don't tend to perform very well during disastrous times. There is not an element of escape. I am not wanting to see a disaster movie right now because I could also just look outside, I could check the news. 01:52:09 Speaker 1: So very true. 01:52:10 Speaker 2: You know, disaster movies tend to be more commercially successful during times historically where they feel more fictional, and that's not where we're at historically, and so I was not surprised to see that Moonfall did not perform better, which is a shame because it is a feminist gem. 01:52:31 Speaker 1: A masterpiece. We've said it before, We'll say it again. Yeah. 01:52:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. Is there is there anything that's like burning in your heart that you need to talk to talk about with regards to Moonfall? Because I do have notes, but I'm also like, I think a lot of them came out in the recap. 01:52:49 Speaker 1: Same. I'll just rattle off a few very quick things, please fuzz Aldron. There are too many subplots because everyone has a sun. 01:52:59 Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes, I did really like that. When Patrick Wilson can no longer be around his son named Sonny, they're just like, so, how does Sonny feel about Michael Penia And You're like, who cares? No one cares about the cares. They just are like, we don't know. It's truly like they cannot think of a quality for the son named Sunny outside of having a father, so they just give him a different one. And there's like one scene between them before Michael Penall like suffocates. 01:53:30 Speaker 1: He's like, there's not much time left here on earth because the moon is falling into us. Let's not hate each other in these last hours and then Sonny is like, I don't hate you, and then Michael Penney's characters like I'll take it. End of subplot. 01:53:45 Speaker 2: Okay, the lining was thinking of earlier. And again, I don't mean to come off anti NASA. I'm obviously not anti NASA. I just mean science as a branch of government and all the complications they're in. But there's a line Patrick Wilson says. W he says, I'm an astronaut, not a soldier. Oh yeah, you know. Yeah, that's more what I was thinking of. 01:54:06 Speaker 1: Anyways, there's a part where Sonny says, extremely deadpan, oh shit, the moon is rising, and then Michelle, also very deadpan, says gravity's gonna go crazy. 01:54:23 Speaker 2: Also, we didn't talk about Sonny's gigantic tattoo. 01:54:27 Speaker 1: Wait I didn't even notice it. 01:54:29 Speaker 2: Oh my god. There's a whole joke about it where Sonny shows his gigantic tattoo, which I think is supposed to be like a Chinese character. And yeah, Michelle says, oh, that says the Jonas brothers. And he goes, what because this movie was almost certainly written in two thousand and nine, and she's like, just kidding, And then I don't think we learned what it actually says. She doesn't so we know what it doesn't say, which. 01:54:53 Speaker 1: Is it does not say Jonas brothers. 01:54:56 Speaker 2: Another thing that I had a note of here that made me laugh is when the evil people steal Sunny's car, they come in with this like weird opening line. I think this is when they come back. They come up to Sonny and they say the menacing line, so are you a college boy? 01:55:15 Speaker 1: Like, okay, well no, here's what happens. He just says, everybody calmed down, and then the then the hijackers are like, oh okay, smart ass, are you a college boy? And it's like he didn't say anything that would indicate literally just said can we calm down? 01:55:34 Speaker 2: It was really funny. 01:55:36 Speaker 1: Oh. 01:55:36 Speaker 2: Another good moment was Sonny. A lot of things happened to Sunny. I would say, Sonny does very little. There's and just to make sure you know who this character is supposed to be, they do go through the trouble of naming her Karen Ye. There's a woman who is a neighbor to Michael Pana in this richy, rich ass compound neighborhood that has turned into a compound overnight. Due to the moon falling. She has an AK forty seven, which I think could be a reference to a number of things, clearly a riff on the Karen. Yeah, but she has a big, gigantic AK forty seven. It almost shoots Sonny and then Michael Pania comes out and says, hey, Karen, relaxed, stop. 01:56:19 Speaker 1: Stop shooting my step son. 01:56:21 Speaker 2: I think it's a joke. I don't know, but I honestly am not sure. It is never referenced again. 01:56:26 Speaker 1: Well again, the jokes fall flat because joke fall moonfall. 01:56:31 Speaker 2: Also the fact that it's interesting that you reference that everyone has perfect reception the whole time. That is true, but they also seem to all have Nokia phones. Why was that? Oh yeah, no one has like a no one has a smartphone. Because I think that maybe maybe Roland Emmerick was like, Apple, do you want to give me money? And they said no, and he's like, fine, then everyone has a Nokia. 01:56:52 Speaker 1: Nokia gave me ten thousand dollars. 01:56:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. There are technically daughters, but they like you're saying, like like you said earlier, one of them says something precocious and that's it, and one of them walks away from from a dying Michael Pani. 01:57:10 Speaker 1: She said, fuck you, Dad, that's kind of all that happens. Yeah, those characters are very undercooked. Michelle, I would say, is one of the most undercooked characters committed to film in recent years. 01:57:22 Speaker 2: It takes us for an hour to even know what she who does? 01:57:27 Speaker 1: Truly what is she? 01:57:29 Speaker 2: She's an exchange student, so you're like, Okay, she's a student, is she? 01:57:32 Speaker 1: But she works full time as a nanny and lives there. Does she does she have time to study? 01:57:38 Speaker 2: I'm curious because Roland Emmerick is a queer icon. I'm wondering if that was supposed to be a queer relationship and then like that was like reversed or something. That introduction scene, I just have like it it felt like they were together, I know, and obviously Roland Emmerick is like, you know, very He's been very involved in queer activism over the years. I'm just wondering if like that was how it was originally written and then this script kept changing, or maybe they were like, oh, we want this movie to show everywhere, including wildly homophobic countries, so we're gonna revert. But like, yeah, her character ends up coming off unbelievably vague, and then they give her the worst boyfriend available, I mean Sonny, And also what is there? What are how old? Like Sonny is supposed to be eighteen, he's eighteen. I have some idea how old she's supposed to be, but the actor is in her thirties, right. 01:58:34 Speaker 1: I didn't quite pick up on as much. I know that, like she saves him and that sometimes is like a movie telegraphing and they're gonna end up together. But I wasn't getting any like romantic vibes between them, so. 01:58:48 Speaker 2: Really, yeah, so this movie is so confusing. I thought for sure that was what was intended. That's so interesting. 01:58:55 Speaker 1: Hmmm, well again, everything about this movie is confusing and nonsense. So honestly, you could interpret anything and it would be both exactly right and exactly wrong. 01:59:05 Speaker 2: I like that we've turned on our own episode. That was our idea, you know what. When you said it at one point and I was like, oh, we should have done that for April Fools and you said the word trap, I'm like, we should have done trap. That's what we should have done. Oh we should do that for Father's Day. 01:59:20 Speaker 1: Trap, I mean fathers and daughters, fathers and daughters. 01:59:25 Speaker 2: I love Trap. At that moment, and Trap or Josh Hartnett points at the hole in the floor and it's like, should we go down there? It makes me laugh so much. I love because Trap is about fathers and daughters in a meta way, because it's also about m Night China trying to make his daughter's career happen, his daughter, his daughter. Anyways, do you have anything else to say about Moonfall? 01:59:50 Speaker 7: No? 01:59:53 Speaker 2: Me either, Oh no. 01:59:55 Speaker 1: I mean probably, but I'm I'm tired. 01:59:59 Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you all five hundred thousand people who requested this episode, five hundred million, five hundred million, which again half a billion people portion of our listener. You know, if anyone, if any Hollywood power players are listening, can someone please utilize Patrick Wilson well, like, just please halle Berry and Halle Berry, I just like, these are two great actors who have been given dog shit in the last decade. 02:00:31 Speaker 1: I feel like halle Berry made Catwoman, and then after that she like could not get. 02:00:36 Speaker 2: They blamed it on her. She's still an X Men movies after that, but that but yeah, right, and she was in Robots. 02:00:43 Speaker 1: But then she was also in was it New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day. 02:00:47 Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, wait, let me she was in New Year's Eve. She played another episode. I have absolutely no recollection of record. She played a character named Nurse. 02:00:56 Speaker 1: Amy, who I think also had a military husband. 02:01:00 Speaker 2: Let her live, leave her alone. Oh my god, all right, we gotta get out of here, We gotta get out of here. Happy April Fool's Day to all this to all the fathers, and Sunny is out there, to all the Patrick Wilson's and their Sunnis. This this movie, even if it does, does pass the Bechdel test. Oh yeah, during it does that same where they're definitely not together, and it's an employer and an employee having an intimate conversation over Sunrise coffee and she. 02:01:29 Speaker 1: Says, here's your black coffee. It has two sugars in. 02:01:33 Speaker 2: It, women's wrongs. It passes the Bechdel test. And that's why I'm giving it five nipples. 02:01:38 Speaker 1: I'm giving it five nipples, and I'm giving it five moons. And what is a nipple but a moon? And what is a moon but a giant sky nipple? What do you ever think about that they have the same shape. 02:01:53 Speaker 2: That people are always Yeah, are you ever on a romantic day and then someone puts their arm around you and says, look at that. That the old nipple in the sky. 02:02:03 Speaker 6: Kiss when the moon hits you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I am gonna give it five big sky nipples, and I'm going to give them all to Joe Fowler, feminist icon I aspire. 02:02:24 Speaker 2: She inspired me to look with an absolute distant, forty yard glaze as I watch people I've known for years get eaten by nanobots in high resolution. 02:02:37 Speaker 1: It's it's just iconic. 02:02:39 Speaker 2: It's iconic, and that's feminism. And that's our Moonfall episode. Happy April Fools to our listeners. If you if you enjoyed a silly one, if you enjoyed a looser episode but just Caitlin and I, you might enjoy our Patreon aka Matreon so True, which is linked in the description of this in every episode. It is the best way to support the show. It's five bucks a month and you get access to two new episodes a month on a theme of usually yours but sometimes ours if you're behaving in an unruly fashion choosing, and it also gives you access to nearly two hundred of our back catalog episodes on the Matreon or Real Investment. 02:03:20 Speaker 1: You could say, I could say that, and I will say it, and you just said it. We just said it. We'll be back next time with a really serious with. 02:03:32 Speaker 2: A real one. We'll be back next week with the normal show. Yeah, love you, Bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and. 02:03:48 Speaker 1: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann and. 02:03:53 Speaker 2: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of Them? 02:03:56 Speaker 1: That's me and our logo and merch and all of our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever heard of her? 02:04:04 Speaker 2: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo. 02:04:16 Speaker 1: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Specdelcast

Moonfall

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