Blade Runner (1982) vs. The Thing (1982) vs. E.T. (1982): Part 3

<v Speaker 1>This is a podcast from Minute Media.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. The Epic Conclusion Part three et versus
<v Speaker 2>The Thing versus.
<v Speaker 3>Blade Runner Shirley fans, Jason and I have spent the
<v Speaker 3>day making origami, playing E T on the Atari, and
<v Speaker 3>drinking J and B whiskey.
<v Speaker 2>That will get us prepared for this epic conclusion and
<v Speaker 2>he won et cheating. That is not true. The FBI
<v Speaker 2>guy got me every time.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, Before we get roll on this awesome episode, Part three,
<v Speaker 3>Kapper of our epic three part series on these awesome movies,
<v Speaker 3>I got to give a shout out to the thirty
<v Speaker 3>something meter movie podcast guys. They are killing it over there.
<v Speaker 3>They're doing such a good job. This week they came
<v Speaker 3>out with their Encino Man episode, which is one of
<v Speaker 3>my favorites. And it also stars, as you noted in
<v Speaker 3>one of our last episodes, mister Richard Masser, who plays
<v Speaker 3>Clark in The Thing.
<v Speaker 2>That's right.
<v Speaker 3>It does, yeah, and it also involves whizzing the juice.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, weezing the Jews. There'd be the juice. The cheese
<v Speaker 2>is old and moldy. All right, Well, let's dive in, man,
<v Speaker 2>get ready to pass the final.
<v Speaker 3>Here, you're you're ready to bring up Okay, well, we
<v Speaker 3>are going to talk about some kind of big, amazing
<v Speaker 3>ideas in the movie. Before we jump into that, let's
<v Speaker 3>talk about the fact that these are three special effects
<v Speaker 3>amaze ball movies. Yeah right, I mean the Thing, of course,
<v Speaker 3>because it's a horror movie and so you're going to
<v Speaker 3>have the extra special effects. But the things that are
<v Speaker 3>going on with the scenery, and the blade Runner, and
<v Speaker 3>the animatronics that are going on with et these are
<v Speaker 3>things worth noting. As a matter of fact. They're not
<v Speaker 3>only worth noting, there are things that we could probably
<v Speaker 3>spend an entire episode on for each movie. So I'm sorry, listeners,
<v Speaker 3>we are not going to go as deep and in
<v Speaker 3>depth as we normally would on these things, but we've
<v Speaker 3>got to at least touch base on these.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, okay, So.
<v Speaker 3>Let's start with the thing again, as we it seems
<v Speaker 3>to lead out every time. We've got Rob Boteen, who
<v Speaker 3>we've mentioned before. Now, he just before this had done
<v Speaker 3>the fog, yes, and he had also done.
<v Speaker 2>The howling, oh, the hewling. That's right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, nineteen eighty one, be sure and check out our
<v Speaker 3>the Howling versus American Werewolf in London episodes.
<v Speaker 2>Those were great episodes. That was the a movie that
<v Speaker 2>he turned De Wallace into an ewok.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, yes, right, and so he did some incredible, incredible
<v Speaker 3>stuff with this. He had met John Carpenter when he
<v Speaker 3>was like twenty one and wanted to work with him,
<v Speaker 3>ended up getting a part in The Fog. Yes, And
<v Speaker 3>so we're going to talk about those in just a second.
<v Speaker 3>But I also got to mention a couple other guys.
<v Speaker 3>Number One, you got Albert Whitlock. He was the Matt artist.
<v Speaker 3>So those scenes where you're seeing the spaceship and the snow,
<v Speaker 3>those are painted no CGI back in nineteen eighty two,
<v Speaker 3>mind blowing. They would have the guys go stand on
<v Speaker 3>like you know, sheets on the ground out in the grass,
<v Speaker 3>filmed them and then Albert Whitlock would go in and
<v Speaker 3>paint over them. Now, Albert Whitlock is a guy who
<v Speaker 3>was the guy to go to, starting with Alfred Hitchcock,
<v Speaker 3>like Olver Hitchcock Houston for virtually all of his movies.
<v Speaker 3>But let me throw out some others that he was
<v Speaker 3>involved in. Okay, he was involved with Dune, which would
<v Speaker 3>come up just a bit later as Ridley Scott was
<v Speaker 3>almost the.
<v Speaker 2>Director, almost directed Dune.
<v Speaker 3>He did Never Ending Story too. I did Grimlins two.
<v Speaker 3>He did Coming to America, which is you know one
<v Speaker 3>we've covered before, but you get those Africa scenes. That's
<v Speaker 3>Albert Whitlock who painted those. Wow. And he did the
<v Speaker 3>Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
<v Speaker 2>The movie that had the sign out front that WELLcom
<v Speaker 2>Kurt Russell and John Carpenter to the movie studio when
<v Speaker 2>they were shooting the thing.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, and if I can tie in just one more
<v Speaker 3>episode of ours. He also did Spaceballs.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So he's an icon, Roboteen's icon. And then of
<v Speaker 3>course Roboteen had to have some animatronics involved with his
<v Speaker 3>special effects. And who did they have Stan Winston?
<v Speaker 2>That's right, they did. I did see that.
<v Speaker 3>So Stan Winston we talked about him on our Jurassic
<v Speaker 3>Park episode. He is another icon in the field involved
<v Speaker 3>with Star Wars and a million other animatronics style movies
<v Speaker 3>of the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>The stuff that is done on the monster special effects
<v Speaker 2>and the thing super fascinating.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So there is a scene where the chest cavity opens
<v Speaker 2>up and this little flower like thing comes out. Well,
<v Speaker 2>that flower is made up of dog tongues.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, if you'll remember it, because it looks like the
<v Speaker 3>Little Shop of Horrors Venus like.
<v Speaker 2>It really does, right, feed me Seymour yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Or if you're a Stranger Things fan, it kind of
<v Speaker 3>looks like the dog demon things on Stranger Things, right.
<v Speaker 3>John Carpenter had sent Rob botein down. They had a
<v Speaker 3>comic book artist there at the studio. They both work
<v Speaker 3>together designing these things, just in kind of picture format
<v Speaker 3>to start with, and then Rob botem go in and
<v Speaker 3>create these characters. Stan Winston came in and he's like, Okay, well,
<v Speaker 3>you know it's going to be hard to do animatronics
<v Speaker 3>on this, but if you've gotten no real definition on
<v Speaker 3>the way it's formed, if you can just mold around
<v Speaker 3>my arm, I could just work it like a puppet. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>And so a lot of the dog mouth action that
<v Speaker 3>you see, I mean that's literally a guy's arm in
<v Speaker 3>a puppet making that happen. You know.
<v Speaker 2>One of the effects that's really stunning to me, and
<v Speaker 2>I still don't really understand how they did it. But
<v Speaker 2>when the thing breaks open and all that like spaghetti
<v Speaker 2>like stuff is started whipping around. That creeped me out
<v Speaker 2>to no end. Man, that stuff is disgusting.
<v Speaker 3>So in that scene, there are a couple of things
<v Speaker 3>going on. Number One, he was making stuff up as
<v Speaker 3>he went. And so at one point when they're filming
<v Speaker 3>that scene, they've got all these chemicals there that have
<v Speaker 3>been flying around and shooting out and doing all this
<v Speaker 3>other stuff, and suddenly John Carpenter's like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
<v Speaker 3>in this part of the scene, he's just shot a
<v Speaker 3>flame thrower right before this, and the thing's on fire.
<v Speaker 3>So I can't just shoot this with no fire. It's
<v Speaker 3>not going to be consistent. And so they're like okay.
<v Speaker 3>And I mean they've got guys under the table doing
<v Speaker 3>all these mechanics and stuff like that, so they're like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 3>let's set it on fire. Well, those chemicals they had
<v Speaker 3>been using had just been filling the room with flammable gas,
<v Speaker 3>and all of a sudden, it just goes like the
<v Speaker 3>whole room in gulfs and flames and these things that
<v Speaker 3>Rob Boutin had spent weeks and he slept at the studio,
<v Speaker 3>right and I mean he was exhausted. He had spent months.
<v Speaker 2>He hospitalized at the end of this.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean it was. And so he's this monumental
<v Speaker 3>effort and all of a sudden he just sees it
<v Speaker 3>burned to a crisp. Fortunately it wasn't completely destroyed and
<v Speaker 3>he could patch it back up. But yeah, So the
<v Speaker 3>part where the guy's arms get bitten off, you know,
<v Speaker 3>they've got that animatronic thing that opens up his chest, yes,
<v Speaker 3>and clamps stand on it. Well, the way that they
<v Speaker 3>did that is they had a guy who was an
<v Speaker 3>amputee come in and they made him fake arms out
<v Speaker 3>of jello and other stuff like that, so that whenever
<v Speaker 3>the chest clamps shut, he can pull his arms out
<v Speaker 3>of the fake arms. Right. And so, since you know
<v Speaker 3>the actor who's playing this part isn't an amputee, they
<v Speaker 3>were like, well, what do we do there? You're going
<v Speaker 3>to see his face. They made a fake face. They
<v Speaker 3>made like a wax face and put it on the
<v Speaker 3>amputees face, so that when you see him like thrashing
<v Speaker 3>around with no arms, it's the guy is wearing a mask.
<v Speaker 2>Really, that's cool. Hey, I did see something that was
<v Speaker 2>really funny to me. They used a ton of ky jelly, right,
<v Speaker 2>who doesn't They used a ton of kyjilly and it
<v Speaker 2>makes everything look super slimy and slick and all that stuff. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and one of the guys I heard marveling was he's like,
<v Speaker 2>we bought this in fifty five gallon drums. He goes,
<v Speaker 2>who needs fifty five gallon drums of ky jelly? You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's crazy, that's funny.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, let's jump over to Blade Runner. So in Blade
<v Speaker 3>Runner there's not as many special effects per se. You
<v Speaker 3>don't have a lot of core going on, you don't
<v Speaker 3>have a lot of weird stuff. What you have is
<v Speaker 3>some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen in
<v Speaker 3>any movie in my life. We talked about how Ridley
<v Speaker 3>Scott wanted to use the Bradberry and they're like, no,
<v Speaker 3>everybody uses the Bradberry. He's like, not the way I'm
<v Speaker 3>going to do it right. Well, the entire thing is
<v Speaker 3>like that, and it all comes from this artist named
<v Speaker 3>Sid Mead, And Dude, I looked at this guy's life.
<v Speaker 3>Holy smokes. I mean, he's just he is a god
<v Speaker 3>among men. I mean, he just He worked for car
<v Speaker 3>design companies, he worked for building design companies. He was
<v Speaker 3>doing movie after movie. He did Tron at the same time,
<v Speaker 3>as he was doing he's designing, like he's drawing these
<v Speaker 3>city scapes, he's doing all of that stuff in his
<v Speaker 3>art work is just amazing. This is what he used
<v Speaker 3>for inspiration. Hong Kong on a very Bad Day and
<v Speaker 3>Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Those were his kind of instegrational points.
<v Speaker 3>And I think that's probably one of the most amazing
<v Speaker 3>features about Blade Runner, is the way that they put
<v Speaker 3>you in this future world and you buy in. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>when I'm watching it, I'm not thinking to myself, well,
<v Speaker 3>that's fake. That wouldn't really it, right. It all is
<v Speaker 3>stuff that you're just like, Oh, I can completely see
<v Speaker 3>this as our dystopian future.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely. One of the possible futures that they proposed in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty two was this idea that Los Angeles and
<v Speaker 2>San Francisco would grow together as one giant urban area, huh,
<v Speaker 2>and that you would have this sort of street language
<v Speaker 2>that included like Japanese and English. There's actually some Chinese lettering.
<v Speaker 2>This is how detailed they got.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I don't speak Chinese, but apparently it says Asian's good,
<v Speaker 2>Americans bad or something like that. All they steered away
<v Speaker 2>from that one big urban area. But Demolition Man picked
<v Speaker 2>that up, idea up and ran with that a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and they did a great job of taking Sidmead's
<v Speaker 3>paintings and bringing him to life. And the guys that
<v Speaker 3>did that, that was Douglas Trumbull that I talked about
<v Speaker 3>in our last episode, who was kind of the man
<v Speaker 3>as far as those set designs go. And then we
<v Speaker 3>have et kaya swear.
<v Speaker 2>It one more time. I have that some absolute power.
<v Speaker 3>The biggest effect on ET is E T. Right, so
<v Speaker 3>you've got the creature of e T. He was created
<v Speaker 3>by Carlo Rumbaldi. Okay, Carlo Rumbaldi also involved in Doune
<v Speaker 3>and the original Never Ending Story and he before this
<v Speaker 3>movie he did the alien head an alien Yeah, like
<v Speaker 3>the effects where the mouth would come out. That was
<v Speaker 3>Carlo Rumbaldi. And he also did the alien effects on
<v Speaker 3>Close Encounters. Okay. After this movie he did a ton
<v Speaker 3>of movies. But one of them was the Werewolf suit
<v Speaker 3>in Silver Bowl.
<v Speaker 2>Oh nice.
<v Speaker 3>Did you see the seventy six version of King Kong?
<v Speaker 3>I have he did that one? He did King Kong
<v Speaker 3>as well. Yeah, he's another icon of the We've got
<v Speaker 3>icon after icon. The Matt paintings for this movie were
<v Speaker 3>done through ILM and as Christopher Evans, who was like
<v Speaker 3>the chief of Matt paintings for them. You get the
<v Speaker 3>spaceship animation and that sort of thing, but really, this
<v Speaker 3>isn't a movie that's super full of these special effects
<v Speaker 3>except for the Et, and the Et creature was something
<v Speaker 3>I was looking at the operators. I counted at least
<v Speaker 3>seven different operators on the and obviously they're doing it
<v Speaker 3>at different times. They had different suits that they used,
<v Speaker 3>but Carlo Rombaldi's design looks very similar to another thing
<v Speaker 3>that we've talked about just a bit before that. I
<v Speaker 3>wanted to get in a little bit more detail about. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>you ready for this?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Sure, okay, So here I am. I'm looking at the
<v Speaker 3>biggest special effects science fiction movies of nineteen eighty two
<v Speaker 3>and probably conceivably of all time. And there's a name
<v Speaker 3>that's missing. Okay, it's Rick freakin Baker. Where is Rick Baker?
<v Speaker 3>I can't. I'm like, Okay, Well, he did Ghost Story
<v Speaker 3>before this, and he did some other like Videodrome after this.
<v Speaker 3>What was he doing in nineteen eighty was he on vacation?
<v Speaker 3>I'm looking I can't figure it out. Why wouldn't you
<v Speaker 3>have Rick Baker? Right, why wouldn't you have Rick Baker
<v Speaker 3>involved and in some capacity in one of these movies?
<v Speaker 3>Let me tell you why. Okay, so you talked about
<v Speaker 3>in our first part of this series, Night Skies. Yes, so,
<v Speaker 3>Night Skies was this script that was written by John
<v Speaker 3>Sales that ended up spawning Poulter, Guys, E T and
<v Speaker 3>Grimlin's the movie right.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, that's correct.
<v Speaker 3>And so the way it was originally written, instead of
<v Speaker 3>Grimlins being the creatures that were running around creating havoc,
<v Speaker 3>it was little aliens like et running around creating the havoc.
<v Speaker 3>And I think you listed off some names last time.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Squid and there's Squirt and Scar yeah something like that, right, yep,
<v Speaker 2>Well here's what happened.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. Spielberg thinks he's going to be making this movie
<v Speaker 3>called Night Skies, right, and so he goes to the
<v Speaker 3>most logical guy, Rick Baker. Okay, Rick, I'm gonna make
<v Speaker 3>this movie. I've got lots of aliens that I need
<v Speaker 3>and you helped me out, and sir Rick Baker starts
<v Speaker 3>creating aliens, which they end up looking very similar to
<v Speaker 3>what we finally end up with with Et just a
<v Speaker 3>little rougher and tougher, but that same kind of style
<v Speaker 3>for sure. Okay, Well, then the movie changes and Spielberg's like, well,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not going to make one movie called night Skies.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to make three movies, none of which are
<v Speaker 3>night Skies, right, and so hey, Rick, thanks for your trouble,
<v Speaker 3>but I'm going to not do this right. Well, Rick
<v Speaker 3>had spent seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his
<v Speaker 3>own money, not to mention all of the hours that
<v Speaker 3>he put in to build these things. And he's like,
<v Speaker 3>what you're just saying, No, We're just done. And that's
<v Speaker 3>just it. I mean, at the time, you could think, hey,
<v Speaker 3>this is Spielberg telling me he's going to do a movie.
<v Speaker 3>I can feel safe and secure in doing this, right.
<v Speaker 3>So it really pissed him off. Yeah, of course, and
<v Speaker 3>he's like, I'm never going to work with that guy
<v Speaker 3>ever again. And if you look, they have never done
<v Speaker 3>a mill Wow. So there it is. That's the answer
<v Speaker 3>to the question. I couldn't figure out. The reason Rick
<v Speaker 3>Baker wasn't doing this is because he had been spurned
<v Speaker 3>by Spielberg in trying to do something that ultimately was
<v Speaker 3>a precursor.
<v Speaker 2>I can't believe he stiff team on that, man, I know. Gosh.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, okay, you ready to talk deep questions.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about the big issues in these movies. Okay, ready, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>let's start with Blade Runner.
<v Speaker 3>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 2>So before we get to the biggest question, we have
<v Speaker 2>to ask ourselves. Why are there multiple versions of this movie?
<v Speaker 3>That's a good question. Okay. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, I think you watched I watched the final
<v Speaker 2>You watch the final cut. I watched the director's cut. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>there's some differences between those two movies, right.
<v Speaker 3>I think the first time that I watched it, I
<v Speaker 3>didn't watch director's cut or final cut. I watched like
<v Speaker 3>the original version.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So, just for those of you who are listening,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's the work print prototype, there was the
<v Speaker 2>San Diego sneak preview. There's the US theatrical release which
<v Speaker 2>people saw in theaters. There was an international release. There
<v Speaker 2>was of course the TV version. Then we have the
<v Speaker 2>director's cut. So this is the interesting one. The original
<v Speaker 2>theatrical release in nineteen eighty Twoerson Ford did some narration. No,
<v Speaker 2>because when they had screened it, test audiences didn't really
<v Speaker 2>understand what was happening.
<v Speaker 4>Skin jobs, that's what Bryant called replicants, and.
<v Speaker 2>So the studio said, you got to clarify for these
<v Speaker 2>dumb people, you got to tell them what's going on.
<v Speaker 2>And Harrison Ford is like, no, this is stupid. I'm
<v Speaker 2>not going to dumb it down and tell these people.
<v Speaker 2>And basically they had to make him. Yeah, and you
<v Speaker 2>can tell by his performance that he does not want
<v Speaker 2>to be there.
<v Speaker 3>He seems extremely disinterested.
<v Speaker 2>Now, Harrison Ford has said, I didn't nail it in.
<v Speaker 2>I gave it my best.
<v Speaker 3>Sure you did, right, right, right, Sure you did, Harrison. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>because you're really good at hiding how you feel.
<v Speaker 2>He's grumpy. And then you had the happy ending at
<v Speaker 2>the end of the US theatrical release.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, yeah, for those of you who haven't seen it,
<v Speaker 3>the happy ending is that Deckert and Rachel are driving
<v Speaker 3>off into the sunset, right, They're going to go live together,
<v Speaker 3>and we find out that Rachel doesn't have the four
<v Speaker 3>year limitation, so they could potentially have their happily ever after.
<v Speaker 2>Here's the interesting thing about the happy ending. Yeah, they're
<v Speaker 2>going off into this mountains and snow and lakes and
<v Speaker 2>you know, beautiful, those were the castaway shots from the Shining.
<v Speaker 3>No, I know what you're talking about. You've got the
<v Speaker 3>ominous music playing as things are flying.
<v Speaker 2>Over Jagni Lin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was driving out
<v Speaker 2>to Colorado and that those shots were taken from leftover shots.
<v Speaker 3>Of the Shining. That's fantastic. I did not. You blew
<v Speaker 3>my mind right there? Cool, Where to go?
<v Speaker 2>So that's the original release. Well, really, Scott was dissatisfied
<v Speaker 2>with it. Harrison Ford was certainly dissatisfied with it. So
<v Speaker 2>ultimately it didn't help audiences. They still didn't understand it,
<v Speaker 2>they still didn't get it, and it didn't help it
<v Speaker 2>be a success.
<v Speaker 3>It wasn't. Yeah, it was a failure.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So listen to this. In nineteen ninety two, we
<v Speaker 2>get the director's cut, okay, and now listen to how
<v Speaker 2>this came about. In October of nineteen eighty nine, this
<v Speaker 2>guy named Michael Eric was looking for an old cut
<v Speaker 2>of the movie Gypsy. Okay. Now, he worked at the
<v Speaker 2>todd Ao Vaults, which is one of these places that
<v Speaker 2>store old movies and kind of preserve them and keep
<v Speaker 2>them or whatever. So he stumbled upon this version of
<v Speaker 2>Blade Runner. Okay, Okay, Well, it turns out it was
<v Speaker 2>the work print version, which means it did not have
<v Speaker 2>the happy ending and it did not have the narration.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So this theater in La the Cineplex Ordan Fairfax Theater
<v Speaker 2>got wind of this discovery and said, hey, Warner Brothers,
<v Speaker 2>is it okay if we show this version in our theaters?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Well, when they showed it, people were like, oh, this
<v Speaker 2>is so much better, right right, and then it sort
<v Speaker 2>of built up some of them and some of the
<v Speaker 2>people wanted to see this different cut of Blade Runner,
<v Speaker 2>and it caused a surge in popularity. And so Ridley
<v Speaker 2>Scott said he didn't work and he didn't edit it himself,
<v Speaker 2>but he okayed it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. He I think there was an he was in
<v Speaker 3>the middle of some other movies at the time, Thelma
<v Speaker 3>and Louise, I think if I remember, and I think
<v Speaker 3>that's right. Yeah, And there was somebody else who he
<v Speaker 3>trusted to make the cuts, and he said, here's what
<v Speaker 3>I would do, and that's how you get the title
<v Speaker 3>director's cut. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So in the director's cut, you have the removal of
<v Speaker 2>Deckard's voiceovers, right, you have the of the Unicorn dream sequence,
<v Speaker 2>which is huge. It's huge, it's so huig. I can't
<v Speaker 2>believe they took it out. I know, right, it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>make any I mean it, it's crazy. We'll talk about
<v Speaker 2>that more here in just a second. Yeah, and then
<v Speaker 2>they took off the happy ending.
<v Speaker 3>Well.
<v Speaker 2>In two thousand and seven you have the final cut version,
<v Speaker 2>which is actually Ridley Scott sitting down, going through with
<v Speaker 2>a fine tooth comb and making his own version of it.
<v Speaker 3>And let me just say, George Lucas could learn something
<v Speaker 3>from Ridley Scott, Yes, because you don't have any new
<v Speaker 3>like shiny spaceships coming in that are all cgi' and right,
<v Speaker 3>and you have a genuine effort to make the original
<v Speaker 3>product look better, not different. It was so much better
<v Speaker 3>looking than the originals.
<v Speaker 2>By the way. Yeah, I don't want to get into
<v Speaker 2>this too much. Yeah, but in two thousand and two,
<v Speaker 2>Steven Spielberg sat down and did a cut of Et,
<v Speaker 2>a twentieth anniversary cut. Whereas in the original theatrical cut
<v Speaker 2>you had ET's heart light when he's running from keys
<v Speaker 2>at the very beginning. Yeah, they're pulling him on a rail,
<v Speaker 2>and so that heartlight just goes evenly and in two
<v Speaker 2>thousand and two, Spielberg added a little bit of CGI
<v Speaker 2>just to make the heartlight jump like it had movement.
<v Speaker 2>Oh okay, And so it's subtle changes like that instead
<v Speaker 2>of Grido getting shot, you know, you know, subtle changes,
<v Speaker 2>Lucas subtle Okay, all right, so that's the multiple versions.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott in their battle.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Now, really, Scott has said that the toughest actor he
<v Speaker 2>has ever worked with is Harrison Ford.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, all right, He's probably not alone.
<v Speaker 2>Harrison Ford was not speaking to Ridley Scott by the
<v Speaker 2>end of this movie, and Alan lad Junior said even
<v Speaker 2>more than that he wanted to beat the crap out
<v Speaker 2>of him, like he was ready to go to fisticuffs
<v Speaker 2>with Ridley Scott. Now here's the interesting thing about it.
<v Speaker 2>It has to do with the big question of whether
<v Speaker 2>or not Deckard is a replicant or not.
<v Speaker 3>That is the big question.
<v Speaker 2>That's the big question.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. Let's talk about some iconic magery in this thing
<v Speaker 3>to lead us down this path.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, yes, okay.
<v Speaker 3>So let's start with Tyrel's pyramid. Okay, it is not
<v Speaker 3>an Egyptian pyramid. Is in a pyramid like the old
<v Speaker 3>Incas or Aztec type of pyramid, which is important because
<v Speaker 3>in their religion, the god or gods that existed created
<v Speaker 3>man not for loving but for service, as in you
<v Speaker 3>are my workers, my slaves, which is exactly what Tyrell
<v Speaker 3>has created his replicants for. Yes, okay, yep number two. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>the snake. Yes, now we get into the biblical imagery right, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>you've got the snake tattoo on Zora and then of
<v Speaker 3>course she owns the snake, but it's not a real snake. Well,
<v Speaker 3>this of course immediately brings up images of the garden
<v Speaker 3>and the serpent, but also the idea that the animals.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you're kidding me. I couldn't afford something like
<v Speaker 3>that if it was a real snake because it doesn't
<v Speaker 3>really detail it. But all of the animals have died off,
<v Speaker 3>which brings me to the owl. It was one of
<v Speaker 3>the first animals to die off, which is why you
<v Speaker 3>have that owl as a replicant. Here's the big one
<v Speaker 3>for me. Okay, where we're getting into it. Yes, fake
<v Speaker 3>family pictures. Yeah, so you know that Rachel when she
<v Speaker 3>comes in, she's like, I know I'm real because I
<v Speaker 3>have these memories of when I was a kid, and
<v Speaker 3>he describes the memory to her, and she has this
<v Speaker 3>picture of her sitting on her mom's lap.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 3>But he's like, no, Terrell just put the memories of
<v Speaker 3>his niece into you, and that's why you have these memories.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, And the idea that you have.
<v Speaker 3>Memories is directly connected to whether you are real or
<v Speaker 3>not real? Right? Yeah? I mean whenever Roy is talking
<v Speaker 3>to the little Chinese guy who makes the eyes, right,
<v Speaker 3>he's like, Oh, if you could have only seen the
<v Speaker 3>things with your eyes, with my eyes that you made
<v Speaker 3>for me, that's a big deal because Roy, even though
<v Speaker 3>he's a replicant, still has these memories. And so it
<v Speaker 3>seems to be that the memories and the family pictures
<v Speaker 3>are related to that are directly correlated to are you
<v Speaker 3>real or are you not real?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>And even says I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you have her fake family picture. But you also
<v Speaker 3>just before that scene, you have Deckert sitting at the
<v Speaker 3>piano looking at old photographs, and if you're familiar with
<v Speaker 3>the movie at all, you have to go, Okay, are
<v Speaker 3>these really his old photographs from his past? Or has
<v Speaker 3>he been programmed like all of the other replicants.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, that's true.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, Now that brings me to Gaff and the origami. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>so what's the first origami that we see Gaff making?
<v Speaker 2>First one is a chicken, that's right.
<v Speaker 3>And when is he making it?
<v Speaker 2>When he's being a coward?
<v Speaker 3>Right, it's whenever Deckert is like, I don't want to
<v Speaker 3>go do this. I'm not I am not a Blader
<v Speaker 3>Runner anymore. I don't do that stuff anymore. Well, you're
<v Speaker 3>gonna do this, right, So he makes the chicken. So
<v Speaker 3>that's simplism, very simple symbolism.
<v Speaker 2>Number one, you are being a chicken, right.
<v Speaker 4>Huh.
<v Speaker 2>What's the second one? The second one is a match man, right.
<v Speaker 3>It's little match stick Man, which literally is a human
<v Speaker 3>creating another human, just like the subject of this movie.
<v Speaker 3>And then finally, and this is the big deal because
<v Speaker 3>we talked about the unicorn, right right, Deckert has a
<v Speaker 3>dream about a unicorn, and really that's the whole dream,
<v Speaker 3>Like you just see the unicorn like round in the corner,
<v Speaker 3>and that's it towards him and that's it. At the
<v Speaker 3>very end of the movie, just after Gaff says.
<v Speaker 2>Too bad, she won't live. But then again, who does.
<v Speaker 3>Right, perfect, Decker goes back, finds Rachel. We don't know
<v Speaker 3>until he lifts up the blanket whether she's already been
<v Speaker 3>retired or not, right, but lifts it up. She's not retired,
<v Speaker 3>she's alive. But then he finds that orgami sitting there,
<v Speaker 3>which means Gaff has been there and he did not
<v Speaker 3>retire her.
<v Speaker 2>That's right.
<v Speaker 3>But then what is the orgamie of It's.
<v Speaker 2>Of a unicorn, which is Decord's dream.
<v Speaker 3>Right, So how would Gaff know what Decord was dreaming
<v Speaker 3>unless he was a replicant?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 3>And that brings that brings us to that main question.
<v Speaker 3>Will You talked before about how the replicants could be
<v Speaker 3>identified by the little red glint that's in their eyes, right,
<v Speaker 3>It's correct, And there's just that, I mean, it's less
<v Speaker 3>than a second long whenever Deckert is talking to Rachel
<v Speaker 3>and they both look the same direction at the same time,
<v Speaker 3>and you see a red glint in his.
<v Speaker 2>Eyes, but it is so brief, it's out of focus.
<v Speaker 2>It's in the background, yeah, but it's definitely there.
<v Speaker 3>Right, So you were talking to me about how where
<v Speaker 3>they got the you know, the camera magic to make
<v Speaker 3>this work.
<v Speaker 2>Tell me about that, Okay, So I don't fully understand it.
<v Speaker 2>This is a special effect, like an old school special
<v Speaker 2>effect that Fritz Lange did in the movie Metropolis. And
<v Speaker 2>so he used a light and he sort of shined
<v Speaker 2>it off a mirror at a forty five degree angle
<v Speaker 2>and thus it lit the black part of their eyes
<v Speaker 2>and made it red.
<v Speaker 3>Right. Yeah, So the camera would be facing them at
<v Speaker 3>one spot yep, and they would put this mirror that
<v Speaker 3>reflected the red lfe forty five degrees from that.
<v Speaker 2>Spot, and it caused their eyes to glow red. And
<v Speaker 2>every replicant, including the owl, has red eyes. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it comes and goes, but you see it. And like
<v Speaker 2>you said, at one point in the movie, Deckert has
<v Speaker 2>red eyes yea, which definitely hints that he is a replicant.
<v Speaker 2>Right now. Then, when Harrison Ford was signed on to
<v Speaker 2>play the part of Decker, really Scott was hoping to
<v Speaker 2>get somebody who would just come in and play a
<v Speaker 2>part and go home. Well, Harrison Ford's very collaborative, so
<v Speaker 2>he wants to be involved in the whole creation. In
<v Speaker 2>the storyteller at the beginning, he's like, okay, now we
<v Speaker 2>are agreeing that Deckert is not a replicant, right, really
<v Speaker 2>at the very beginning, Okay, So Harrison Ford's like, I
<v Speaker 2>feel like it's super important so that the audience has
<v Speaker 2>a representative in the movie that's human, and so they
<v Speaker 2>need to be able to identify with Deckert as being
<v Speaker 2>a man.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So then really Scott sort of started to kind of
<v Speaker 2>change his mind, right, and in the middle of it,
<v Speaker 2>he wanted to make it sort of ambiguous, and so
<v Speaker 2>Harrison Ford's like, no, that's not true. He is not
<v Speaker 2>a replicant. And Hampton Fancher, the guy who wrote the screenplay,
<v Speaker 2>in his screenplay, Deckard wasn't a replicant, right, And so
<v Speaker 2>when Harrison Ford went and saw the movie, he was
<v Speaker 2>mega pissed because Ridley Scott was doing stuff behind the scenes.
<v Speaker 2>You know, he agreed up front that yeah, he's not
<v Speaker 2>going to be a replicant, and then he would do
<v Speaker 2>stuff like insert the red eyes, right, And that made
<v Speaker 2>Harrison Ford super mad.
<v Speaker 3>Right, And I think it's I think it's also fascinating
<v Speaker 3>everybody who's a real human is not a really great person, right,
<v Speaker 3>Like they're not they don't seem to value life, and
<v Speaker 3>they're I mean, for lack of a better term. They're ugly,
<v Speaker 3>like they're they have ugly souls and ugly faces, and
<v Speaker 3>the only ones that are beautiful are the replicants. Are
<v Speaker 3>the replicants. I mean, you've got Rachel, you've got Roy,
<v Speaker 3>you've got I wouldn't say that, Leon, Leon, it's beautiful
<v Speaker 3>at all, right, But that wasn't his that wasn't his making, right.
<v Speaker 3>He was supposed to be strong, and he was definitely strong.
<v Speaker 3>And you've got Chris, who's beautiful, Zora who's beautiful, and
<v Speaker 3>then you've got him surrounded by these ugly people. And
<v Speaker 3>it's kind of this idea of fallen angels. Right. They're
<v Speaker 3>the ones who are concerned about their imminent demise. Right.
<v Speaker 3>They want to have a longer life, which is what
<v Speaker 3>all of us want, right, we don't want to have
<v Speaker 3>that death looming over our heads. And so that's their objective.
<v Speaker 3>Find their creator and convince him to give them longer life,
<v Speaker 3>that's right. And so then of course when he says
<v Speaker 3>it can't do that, then they kill them. They kill
<v Speaker 3>the god.
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to squeeze your head off, Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'm going to put my thumbs.
<v Speaker 2>Through your eye.
<v Speaker 3>But so that creates as the fallen angels. That creates
<v Speaker 3>this idea that maybe they're demons, right, maybe Roy bat
<v Speaker 3>He's a demon, and he's certainly going after Deckert, knowing
<v Speaker 3>he's about to die, still going after him and breaking
<v Speaker 3>his hand and chasing them around and all of this
<v Speaker 3>other stuff. And then we have this moment where Roy
<v Speaker 3>has a nail pushed through his hand. Yes again, so biblical, right,
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, wait, is the bad guy supposed to
<v Speaker 3>be Jesus? That doesn't make any sense, right, right? And
<v Speaker 3>then of course later on they're up on the roof
<v Speaker 3>deckerd is not going to make it.
<v Speaker 2>Decert is falling to his death.
<v Speaker 3>And he gives this last defiant spit, right, And it's
<v Speaker 3>that moment that Roy Baddy decides to save him instead
<v Speaker 3>of letting him die. But also the same moment that
<v Speaker 3>Roy Baddy himself sees his end happen, yeh, and he
<v Speaker 3>gives this amazing speech about his memories. Right, it's all
<v Speaker 3>these things that are going to be disappearing, like tears
<v Speaker 3>in the rain, which, by the way, that was a
<v Speaker 3>Ruggerhuer improv line, by the way, yes, but it perfectly
<v Speaker 3>sums up the idea that's going on in this movie,
<v Speaker 3>that he's been redeemed, he sacrificed himself to save someone else,
<v Speaker 3>and then at the moment that he dies, what happens.
<v Speaker 3>He lets go of this dove that he's been whole things,
<v Speaker 3>which flies up to heaven as if it is his soul.
<v Speaker 2>It's really good, it's really good. And that's a great
<v Speaker 2>way to wrap up that story. But I got one
<v Speaker 2>more thing I want to throw in, sort of the
<v Speaker 2>additional information of why deckerd may be a replicant.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, sure, so just a.
<v Speaker 2>Couple of things. Rachel asks him in the movie, Well,
<v Speaker 2>how about you, mister big shot? Have you ever take
<v Speaker 2>the void comf test? He doesn't answer, Okay, So again ambiguous.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things that sort of added to the
<v Speaker 2>confusion whether or not Decord is a replicant or not.
<v Speaker 2>So we know that there are six replicants, okay, but
<v Speaker 2>there are five rogue replicants. Okay, so you've got Rachel.
<v Speaker 2>She's not rogue. She's kind of in a category by herself.
<v Speaker 3>Well, she ran off from Turrill's house.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, but she's not why Deckard is hired. Deckard
<v Speaker 2>is hired to track down these five replicants, okay, Roy
<v Speaker 2>PRIs Leon Zora. Who's the fifth? So Bryant says in
<v Speaker 2>the movie that there are six applicants, okay, okay, And
<v Speaker 2>in the original theatrical cut he said one of them
<v Speaker 2>got fried, one of them.
<v Speaker 3>I thought that there was two.
<v Speaker 2>Well in the final cut it's two.
<v Speaker 3>He's changed it.
<v Speaker 2>He changes it, okay. So that leads to the confusion.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, yep, right, yes.
<v Speaker 2>So when people in the original who saw the original
<v Speaker 2>movie or saw the director's cut, they're like, well, what
<v Speaker 2>do we what?
<v Speaker 3>Who's number five?
<v Speaker 2>Who's number five? So who can it be? Well, most
<v Speaker 2>people are like, it's gotta be Decker, right right, Well,
<v Speaker 2>apparently there was a character of Marv.
<v Speaker 3>Marv, Marv, Marv, what are you doing Marv?
<v Speaker 2>Hey Marv? Yeah, the web bandit Marv. But that character
<v Speaker 2>was written out, So that led to the confusion and
<v Speaker 2>the question of who is number five? And then of course,
<v Speaker 2>really Scott being as ambiguous as possible on whether or
<v Speaker 2>not it's it's Decker or not.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, have you seen later On.
<v Speaker 2>Of twenty forty nine, I've not seen it.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I'm going to, but I haven't seen it yet.
<v Speaker 2>Man, I saw it, but I don't remember it very well,
<v Speaker 2>and so I don't remember what kind of I.
<v Speaker 3>Don't know what resolution. But it's a different director, different writer,
<v Speaker 3>different everything except for Deckert and the idea, right right, right,
<v Speaker 3>So what do you say?
<v Speaker 2>I say Decert is not a replicant because I think
<v Speaker 2>it's important to the story at the very end that
<v Speaker 2>it's man versus machine, that it's creator versus creation for
<v Speaker 2>that to be that poignant. Plus Deckert, every replicant kicks
<v Speaker 2>his butt, so he doesn't appear to have any superhuman
<v Speaker 2>powers in any way.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, what do you think? I think he's a replicant. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>and I think it's he's a replicant because in this movie,
<v Speaker 3>the replicants are the real human like they're the ones
<v Speaker 3>that we should identify with. We don't really identify with
<v Speaker 3>any of the other humans. We identify with the replicants
<v Speaker 3>who don't want to die, the replicants who have memories
<v Speaker 3>that are going to be lost. I mean, if the
<v Speaker 3>main character is a guy should be a with that
<v Speaker 3>means he needs to be a replicant too. Plus he's
<v Speaker 3>one of the pretty people.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and the real question is is Baddie a good
<v Speaker 2>guy or a bad guy.
<v Speaker 3>I think that it's important. I think that it's important
<v Speaker 3>that you that he has changed. We have to have
<v Speaker 3>a character arc. So he's bad at the beginning, right,
<v Speaker 3>or at least self serving at the beginning, only to
<v Speaker 3>become sacrificial at the end. That's huge. That's very important
<v Speaker 3>the story. I also think it's important to the story
<v Speaker 3>that the question of whether Deckert is a replicant or
<v Speaker 3>not isn't answered. I agree with that. It's the reason
<v Speaker 3>we're talking about that's exactly right. So it is supposed
<v Speaker 3>to be ambiguous. I'm glad it's ambiguous. I like talking
<v Speaker 3>about the different pots of.
<v Speaker 2>It's really cool. Yeah, I mean there are people out
<v Speaker 2>there that nerd out to this question. Okay, we're done
<v Speaker 2>talking about the big issues with Blade Runner.
<v Speaker 3>They're literally again, there are podcasts that the entire podcast
<v Speaker 3>week after week is about Blade Runner. So we can't
<v Speaker 3>give as much attention as this needs. But yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>think we probably done at this point.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, let's go to the thing. Okay, I got two
<v Speaker 2>big questions from the thing. Okay, all right, my first
<v Speaker 2>biggish question to you is the beast the thing? The alien.
<v Speaker 2>Was it the pilot of that spacecraft or was it
<v Speaker 2>a parasite that that alien craft got taken over by
<v Speaker 2>and crash landed on Earth?
<v Speaker 3>Wow? So I don't think there's any way that it was.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think it was a parasite. I think it
<v Speaker 3>was the alien.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think it was flying that spacecraft?
<v Speaker 3>Because we have the scene where they follow the hole
<v Speaker 3>that goes down out of where they've been keeping Blair
<v Speaker 3>captive the whole time. It goes underneath the snow and
<v Speaker 3>they follow it back and they find a spaceship that
<v Speaker 3>is being built by Blair the alien. I mean, if
<v Speaker 3>it was just a parasite on the ship, he wouldn't
<v Speaker 3>be building another ship.
<v Speaker 2>What if they take your brain and your memories or
<v Speaker 2>something like that.
<v Speaker 3>They do, so you're saying that he's taken the memory
<v Speaker 3>of the Aliens from the original ship. And yeah, but
<v Speaker 3>why why do we have that as a Why is
<v Speaker 3>that a concern?
<v Speaker 2>It's just interesting? Why did that UFO crash land on Earth?
<v Speaker 2>What happened?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. It was before I was born, nice.
<v Speaker 2>See, I think years before. I think that that alien
<v Speaker 2>spacecraft was overtaken by this animal.
<v Speaker 3>Huh.
<v Speaker 2>And therefore caused it to crash, and therefore Earth is
<v Speaker 2>now contaminated. Okay, all right, yeah, all right, I'd be
<v Speaker 2>interested to hear what people think.
<v Speaker 3>It's just a thought, okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Now, then the real question is which one of the
<v Speaker 2>guys or both or neither at the end of the
<v Speaker 2>movie is the thing?
<v Speaker 3>Well, the question throughout the movie is which one of
<v Speaker 3>the guys that's the true that's true? Right, And so
<v Speaker 3>that I'm gonna I promise I won't go on as
<v Speaker 3>long about the thing as I did about That's.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's it.
<v Speaker 3>But there's just so many So this, of these three movies,
<v Speaker 3>this is the horror movie, right, yes, So can I
<v Speaker 3>talk about for just a second the elements that trigger
<v Speaker 3>our fear response. So, number one, climate, They're in the
<v Speaker 3>middle of the harshest weather in the world, right, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>this is the place where it's going to be more
<v Speaker 3>than one hundred degrees below zero. I mean, it's just
<v Speaker 3>absurd how cold it can get. And that's something that
<v Speaker 3>we as humans fear. The other thing isolation. Sure, they
<v Speaker 3>are stuck where they can't communicate with anybody despite windows
<v Speaker 3>best efforts, right, I mean, the nearest camp is still
<v Speaker 3>they say, like two hours away or something like that.
<v Speaker 3>That couldn't get beer all the way up there, It
<v Speaker 3>could get fear. That is an isolation that I truly fear.
<v Speaker 3>And then you've got this claustrophobic element because with that
<v Speaker 3>outside weather, you're stuck inside these close quarters with all
<v Speaker 3>of these other guys, which then brings us to the paranoia.
<v Speaker 3>And that's the key element, the key fear element that
<v Speaker 3>goes on with this. So fear is confronting a threat. Right,
<v Speaker 3>You've got a threat in front of you, and you're afraid.
<v Speaker 3>That's fear, right right, You're going to get anxiety if
<v Speaker 3>you're anticipating that feared threat. But paranoia is where you
<v Speaker 3>believe that the threat is all around you, including people
<v Speaker 3>who you should trust as friends that might ultimately be
<v Speaker 3>bad guys conspiring against you. And that paranoia is what
<v Speaker 3>bills this movie and what makes it great. Right, that's
<v Speaker 3>special effects, Yeah, I'm with you. It's yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Unlike like say Aliens, where it's just a threat and fear, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>paranoia adds that added element.
<v Speaker 3>Because it's the unknown. It's my brother might be the monster.
<v Speaker 3>And then I love, I love what they do on
<v Speaker 3>the very first change. I mean the changes that we have,
<v Speaker 3>we have different monsters. Each time that we see a
<v Speaker 3>creature change happen is a completely different looking thing. But
<v Speaker 3>the very first time when the dog changes, yes, is
<v Speaker 3>so impactful. So we've I just want to I want
<v Speaker 3>to list some stuff that you see as that first creature, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you see blood yep, you see slime, Yes, you see dogs,
<v Speaker 3>vicious dogs, snakes, spiders, insects. All of these attributes are
<v Speaker 3>connected to this creature. Well, those are all the most
<v Speaker 3>commonly feared things that we have. Blood, slime, vicious dogs, snakes, spiders, insects.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, the only thing they're missing is sharks, that's true.
<v Speaker 3>So again, they've got the storyline that captures are paranoia
<v Speaker 3>and fear, and they've got the special effects that tap
<v Speaker 3>into all of those primal fears.
<v Speaker 2>That we have. When that one guy's head falls off
<v Speaker 2>the body and the tongue like anchors it to a
<v Speaker 2>chair and he grows spider legs, and when I saw
<v Speaker 2>that for the first time, my eyeballs almost fell out
<v Speaker 2>of my head.
<v Speaker 1>Yes.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So our friend David Wright was asking about before
<v Speaker 3>he saw Maverick. He likes there, you know, taking a
<v Speaker 3>kid anything to be concerned about. I said, there's one
<v Speaker 3>F bomb, right, but it's earned right, like it's a
<v Speaker 3>it's an F bomb that if I was in the situation,
<v Speaker 3>I probably would be saying the same thing, right, same
<v Speaker 3>is true for that scene, right. You watch that thing
<v Speaker 3>crawl out the door, and you're gonna say, you gotta
<v Speaker 3>be fing kidding me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man.
<v Speaker 3>So ultimately we've got this paranoia the whole time, and
<v Speaker 3>still we managed to end with the same paranoia. We've
<v Speaker 3>got Child's and we got mccredy. Yeah, which one is
<v Speaker 3>the alien or either of them? Are both of them?
<v Speaker 3>Could one be and the other one's not? Who is it? Okay?
<v Speaker 2>So here's the thing. Carpenter has sort of gone back
<v Speaker 2>and forth on this. He's done the Ridley Scott game
<v Speaker 2>here right, where yes they are yes, one is, no,
<v Speaker 2>they're both not. They even shot a happy ending, right,
<v Speaker 2>they shot a happy ending where both McCready and childs
<v Speaker 2>were rescued and everybody gets to go home. Well, instead,
<v Speaker 2>they chop that off and you're left wondering. The interesting
<v Speaker 2>thing to me, there's a there's an eye theory in
<v Speaker 2>the thing as well as Bladeerner okay. And this goes
<v Speaker 2>back to when they're testing the blood, which is maybe
<v Speaker 2>the best scene in the entire movie. They draw everybody's
<v Speaker 2>blood and they're going to burn the blood because McCready
<v Speaker 2>theorizes that the thing is made up of everything, and
<v Speaker 2>so we'll react when it's burned. And when he burns
<v Speaker 2>Palmer's blood and that Petri dish and that thing leaps
<v Speaker 2>out of the dish, it scares the heck out of
<v Speaker 2>everybody in the audience, and Kurt Russell jumps out of
<v Speaker 2>his skin, and then everybody's tied to the couch with
<v Speaker 2>that guy. He starts shaking.
<v Speaker 3>Didn't see that as a problem.
<v Speaker 2>Good timing. Right before that happens, they actually changed the
<v Speaker 2>positioning so that there will be no light, no what
<v Speaker 2>they call it the eye gleam r reflection, no reflection
<v Speaker 2>of light in his eyes, and if you look closely
<v Speaker 2>at it, it's not there, and that that is the
<v Speaker 2>indicator that it's the thing.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So the thing has no eyeling, the thing has
<v Speaker 3>no igling, gotcha? Okay, But upon further review, that theory
<v Speaker 3>doesn't hold up. Okay, because like the dog, when it's changing,
<v Speaker 3>it has igling. Okay, and other people when they're changing,
<v Speaker 3>they have igling, right, But it's a really cool thing,
<v Speaker 3>and it definitely when Palmer changes, they did that intentionally.
<v Speaker 3>So at the end, Child's and McCready both have iyegling.
<v Speaker 3>Okay they did, yeah, okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>However, John Carpenter points out that Child's has no breath.
<v Speaker 3>This is true. I watched this one with Brock, and
<v Speaker 3>Brock is like, why can't you see his breath?
<v Speaker 4>Right?
<v Speaker 3>Like, he wasn't. It wasn't tuning in that you can't
<v Speaker 3>see his breath because it's he's the alien. It was
<v Speaker 3>just it seems weird that I'm watching this guy huff
<v Speaker 3>and puff and there's steam coming out of his mouth
<v Speaker 3>and there's no steam coming out of Child's mouth.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, here's the other theory. Yeah, there is a the
<v Speaker 2>Molotov cocktail theory. Have you heard this?
<v Speaker 3>Tell me?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So, right before the end the final McCready is
<v Speaker 2>using his jamb whiskey bottles to throw Molotov cocktails all
<v Speaker 2>over the place. Well, at the end, when it's just McCready,
<v Speaker 2>he's got a bottle of jamb whiskey, Child comes and
<v Speaker 2>sits down, and it's theorized that maybe McCready is testing
<v Speaker 2>Child's and offers him a drink from the whiskey bottle,
<v Speaker 2>that maybe gasoline, oh okay, right, yeah, and that the
<v Speaker 2>thing wouldn't react adversely to drinking gasoline, and so McCready
<v Speaker 2>would then know and he kind of laughs knowingly after
<v Speaker 2>he drinks, right, he kind of smiles, and so some
<v Speaker 2>people have speculated that he served him gasoline to drink
<v Speaker 2>and the thing did and was fine, didn't react bad.
<v Speaker 2>The only problem is when McCready's by himself and Child's
<v Speaker 2>is behind him and he doesn't know he's there, McCready
<v Speaker 2>is getting ready to take a drink and then Childs
<v Speaker 2>walks in, So that theory doesn't really hold up for
<v Speaker 2>me either.
<v Speaker 3>Well, unless he knew that he was done for anyway,
<v Speaker 3>and he was looking for a quicker way out than
<v Speaker 3>freezing to.
<v Speaker 2>Death drinking gasoline. Sure, okay, well, I mean you have
<v Speaker 2>a gun. Yeah, And our buddy James Buckley did send
<v Speaker 2>us a picture, like a comic book picture. There is
<v Speaker 2>a Child's thing monster that showed up in the comics
<v Speaker 2>and it was pretty cool. It was just this big
<v Speaker 2>scary beast that was made.
<v Speaker 3>Of child's nice Okay, time for ET.
<v Speaker 2>Let's go to ET. I've been waiting to talk about
<v Speaker 2>this one.
<v Speaker 3>I'm excited. You lead the way, my friend.
<v Speaker 2>All right, So before we get to the big, big question, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I want to know what happened when Eat died and resurrected.
<v Speaker 2>Let's back it up. Let's back it up, because when
<v Speaker 2>they set up the transmitter, Elliott goes to sleep. When
<v Speaker 2>he wakes up, ET's being you know, chewed on by
<v Speaker 2>a raccoon, which as a kid, I was like, get
<v Speaker 2>that raccoon away from e tea right right? And he
<v Speaker 2>looks like powder dump. Yeah, and he's not doing well.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>He went from being fine phoning home to being lost
<v Speaker 2>in what's going on?
<v Speaker 3>Worst hangover ever?
<v Speaker 2>Right, and they can't find Elliott doesn't know where he is.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, he wanders off and raccoons are carrying him off. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So what happened? Why does he get sick? Why has
<v Speaker 2>he died?
<v Speaker 3>All right?
<v Speaker 2>What's going on?
<v Speaker 3>So is this a question that you're asking you? It's
<v Speaker 3>not rhetorical? Well, I mean, okay, what's going on? Well,
<v Speaker 3>he's an alien. He is a stranger in a strange land,
<v Speaker 3>Yes he is, and so he can probably handle our
<v Speaker 3>air for a while, but he can't handle it indefinitely. Right, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>So I mean the fact that he's not not able
<v Speaker 3>to live forever on our world doesn't bother me too much, right.
<v Speaker 3>I think the most interesting question is how does he
<v Speaker 3>come back to life? And what all that really means? Right?
<v Speaker 3>We talked about the biblical similarities to the Christ story
<v Speaker 3>in this and so what you have in this situation,
<v Speaker 3>you have E t who has become connected to humanity,
<v Speaker 3>but in order to save humanity must become disconnected with humanity,
<v Speaker 3>which is strong on the biblical Christ image of dying
<v Speaker 3>on the cross, right, right, And then we don't get
<v Speaker 3>a how did Christ rise again other than he just
<v Speaker 3>did right? He just did right? And so for Edi
<v Speaker 3>to come back, the why is he?
<v Speaker 2>Who's e?
<v Speaker 3>For Et to come back? The why isn't the big question.
<v Speaker 3>It is just a part of his relationship and a
<v Speaker 3>part of what has to happen for him to be
<v Speaker 3>able to leave, because just like Jesus is like, don't
<v Speaker 3>try to hold on to me. If I stayed here,
<v Speaker 3>you wouldn't have the counselor inside of you. I must
<v Speaker 3>go for you to have him, which is exactly the
<v Speaker 3>same as Et going, I'll be right here. That's good.
<v Speaker 2>And you know Steven Spielberg, who was born and raised
<v Speaker 2>as a Jewish person, he rejects that idea. Of course.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, he said his mom would be very upset
<v Speaker 2>if it was a Christian allegory. But it is an
<v Speaker 2>interesting question. As soon as Et disconnects from Eliot, he
<v Speaker 2>then resurrects, which as a kid, I bawled my eyes
<v Speaker 2>out in that scene, and actually I was already. There
<v Speaker 2>are about five times as a grown man where Et
<v Speaker 2>I'm watching it and I have to choke back tears.
<v Speaker 2>When they're doing the defibrillator on Et and Gardi's there
<v Speaker 2>watching and tears are flowing. The lump is prominent.
<v Speaker 3>I understand, you know what I mean. I understand.
<v Speaker 2>And then when Elliott notices the red light and he's back,
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh, et vone home, and I'm like, ah, he's.
<v Speaker 3>Back, I mean phone home, e d vone.
<v Speaker 2>Home, and it's just the lump is there many times. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>But here's the real question. Okay, the real question is
<v Speaker 2>is Et a Jedi?
<v Speaker 4>What?
<v Speaker 3>Now?
<v Speaker 2>What is Et a Jedi?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, so you asked this at the end of our
<v Speaker 3>at the end of last episode, and you're just gonna
<v Speaker 3>have to elaborate, my friend.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I'm gonna give you the case for yes, Et
<v Speaker 2>is a Jedi. Okay, right, yeah, okay. First of all,
<v Speaker 2>uses the force through the entire movie fifteen thousand times.
<v Speaker 3>He certainly can make things float with the wave of
<v Speaker 3>his hand.
<v Speaker 2>She makes objects levitate.
<v Speaker 3>He has mind control over Elliott.
<v Speaker 2>There is something going like Jedi mind trick.
<v Speaker 3>Hey, yeah, similar in their features. Okay, okay, all right.
<v Speaker 2>In episode one, the Phantom Menace, Oh no, yes, I'm
<v Speaker 2>going there. Yes, no, no, no, I am going there
<v Speaker 2>in the Galactic Council meeting. If you weren't asleep during
<v Speaker 2>all the politics going on in Phantom Menace, there you.
<v Speaker 3>Locked it out of your mind.
<v Speaker 2>Like the rest of the world. Our man Terence Stamp
<v Speaker 2>is given a vote of no confidence and the council
<v Speaker 2>goes crazy, and there is very clearly at least three Assogians.
<v Speaker 2>Now that is ET's race. I bet you didn't know that.
<v Speaker 3>I did not know that.
<v Speaker 2>Assogians in Star Wars the Phantom Mena, so clearly the
<v Speaker 2>Asogian Et is in the Star Wars universe. We've established
<v Speaker 2>that with the Phantom menace. Yeah, okay, yeah, now that
<v Speaker 2>he also force heels Elliott's finger. True, Okay, yeah, he
<v Speaker 2>wears a white Jedi rope, the blanket.
<v Speaker 3>He was dressed up like a ghost.
<v Speaker 2>No, no, no, no, no, that's my big one. That's
<v Speaker 2>the one on cut. That's my uppercut right here, okay,
<v Speaker 2>my little jab Here is the the little white blanket
<v Speaker 2>Jedi rope. Okay, all right, here's the uppercut. You're ready
<v Speaker 2>for this. When e T is dressed as a ghost
<v Speaker 2>on Halloween and they're dragging him around the neighborhood. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>And the kid dressed up as Yoda, who is actually
<v Speaker 2>I think dever Winger.
<v Speaker 3>No, dever Winger is dressed up as a zombie carrying
<v Speaker 3>a dog. Okay, she's just the voice. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So somebody is dressed up as Yoda.
<v Speaker 3>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>And he walks right up to Et and Et recognizes him. Yeah, buddy,
<v Speaker 2>I freaking know this guy. And he even says home. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and you get the cool little musical cue from John Williams.
<v Speaker 2>There you get yogastin eat back at his planet. He
<v Speaker 2>recognizes Joda.
<v Speaker 3>Good bam, thinking that's the Jedi.
<v Speaker 2>Huh, listen.
<v Speaker 3>I like the idea, okay, the fact that it relies
<v Speaker 3>on episode one.
<v Speaker 2>You're not liking that?
<v Speaker 3>Du not like that idea?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? The case, here's the case against already. Where's his lightsaber?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 2>No Jedi leaves without his lightsaber?
<v Speaker 3>Right? He's he's a lowly worker picking up plants. He
<v Speaker 3>is not a Jedi master, no.
<v Speaker 2>Our buddy, Jeff Mazukah, Yeah, he came at me pretty strong.
<v Speaker 2>That can't we just let these two movies be separate
<v Speaker 2>and enjoy them without trying to crossming a limit.
<v Speaker 3>No, this is what we do, sorry, Jeff.
<v Speaker 2>So I'm going with yes, Absolutely, Et is a Jedi.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, what do you say? No, he is not a Jedi?
<v Speaker 2>Why not?
<v Speaker 3>You can't just say no, Well he did because he
<v Speaker 3>is not a He does not have a lightsaber. He
<v Speaker 3>is not a member of some large organization that is
<v Speaker 3>empowered with protecting the universe.
<v Speaker 2>How do you know that?
<v Speaker 3>Because he wouldn't have gotten left behind it. Okay, they
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't have left Yoda behind, they wouldn't have left Luke behind,
<v Speaker 3>they wouldn't have left Darth Vader behind. No way, not
<v Speaker 3>a Jedi.
<v Speaker 5>All right, sounds good. Okay, all right, are we ready
<v Speaker 5>to move on to composers. Yeah, let's talk composers real quick.
<v Speaker 5>And again I'll try to fly pass this as quickly
<v Speaker 5>as I can. Okay, right, ready, So again the thing
<v Speaker 5>our composer Ineo Morricone man and icon right, no.
<v Speaker 3>Man, the guy who did all of the uh Sergio leone.
<v Speaker 2>Esde matt and the ugly the one that we know
<v Speaker 2>so well, fistful of dollars, ecstasy of gold and icon
<v Speaker 2>right right.
<v Speaker 3>So, and he does what he's the composer for the thing.
<v Speaker 2>The thing.
<v Speaker 3>Now, what's interesting is this music isn't really like his
<v Speaker 3>style of music. It's really much more like the style
<v Speaker 3>of John Carpenter's music. So John Carpenter is a musician,
<v Speaker 3>like he's still doing live stage performances and stuff. And
<v Speaker 3>he composed one of the most iconic musical pieces in
<v Speaker 3>film history from Halloween.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely, And so I had to think that they, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>all of the all directors talked to their composer about
<v Speaker 3>what their thoughts and ideas are for the music sound
<v Speaker 3>But there is a clear similarity to what Anniomorcone's soundtrack
<v Speaker 3>sounds like and what John Carpenter's music sound like, sounds
<v Speaker 3>like sure, so say this real quick, okay. Twenty sixteen,
<v Speaker 3>he won the Oscar for the Hateful eighty when he
<v Speaker 3>gave a speech. I mean he just passed away, not
<v Speaker 3>too long ago, like a couple of years ago, and
<v Speaker 3>I think he was ninety one. He lived a long
<v Speaker 3>time because in his eighties when he gets the Oscar, right,
<v Speaker 3>he gives special thanks to John Williams, who is also
<v Speaker 3>nominated that year for the music in Force Awake.
<v Speaker 2>Really.
<v Speaker 3>Also in twenty sixteen, John Carpenter was performing Morriconi's The
<v Speaker 3>Thing live on stage.
<v Speaker 5>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, by the way, the Thing score, Yeah, won a
<v Speaker 2>Razzie for Worst Score. It's terrible.
<v Speaker 3>It's terrible that that that has happened. The main theme.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, we can't we can't possibly go through all
<v Speaker 3>of them, but the main theme, if you just listen
<v Speaker 3>to it, you've got this pulsing, heartbeat like thing going on,
<v Speaker 3>and then you've got these dissonant chords that are overlapping
<v Speaker 3>with each other just I mean, they just create anxiety
<v Speaker 3>just to listen to the music, which is exactly what
<v Speaker 3>you want if you've got a horror movie going on, right,
<v Speaker 3>So it's perfect. It is perfect music for this movie. Now,
<v Speaker 3>I could go on for days and days about Anyo Morriconi,
<v Speaker 3>but I'm not going to. Okay, but I will say
<v Speaker 3>one fascinating tidbit I found out. Yeah, nineteen eighty seven,
<v Speaker 3>he co wrote a song called it Couldn't Happen Here
<v Speaker 3>with the Pet Shop Boys, which was on their album. Actually, man,
<v Speaker 3>I got it.
<v Speaker 2>We got to hear that. That's cool, Mutch, there you go. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>now to play run? Yes we have ours?
<v Speaker 3>Yes? Who just passed away less than a month ago,
<v Speaker 3>like May nineteenth, I think, Yeah, not very long ago
<v Speaker 3>at all, just a couple of weeks ago. But here's
<v Speaker 3>a guy who's done some amazing film scores that you
<v Speaker 3>just don't ever hear about. He's really a very private guy.
<v Speaker 3>He just I did get to see one interview where he,
<v Speaker 3>if I could sum up, he basically said, I don't
<v Speaker 3>operate the way that people want me to operate because
<v Speaker 3>I don't want what they want. I don't want fame,
<v Speaker 3>I don't want this other stuff. The only reason I
<v Speaker 3>really did the things that are big that I did,
<v Speaker 3>that I kind of operated in that system, was because
<v Speaker 3>it allowed me to do all of the other things.
<v Speaker 3>That I wanted to do, which was creating music. Ineo
<v Speaker 3>Morriconi born in Rome Begallis was Greek. He was a
<v Speaker 3>member of a couple of rock bands, none of which
<v Speaker 3>are super important. But another interesting bit that I found
<v Speaker 3>from seventy nine to eighty six, he was in a
<v Speaker 3>duo group with Joby Close a John that spells his
<v Speaker 3>name Jon.
<v Speaker 4>Oh.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, but it's John Anderson of the group. Yes, they're
<v Speaker 3>in a group called John and Van Gallis.
<v Speaker 2>Really. Yeah, you want to hear a quick tie into Yes, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna throw this in real quick. Do that?
<v Speaker 3>All right?
<v Speaker 2>Everybody, listen up. We are doing a exclusive Patreon episode
<v Speaker 2>every month. Now We're going to pick one song from
<v Speaker 2>the eighties or nineties or whatever, and we're gonna deep
<v Speaker 2>dive into that song. One of the things I found
<v Speaker 2>out about the guys from the Buggles because we're getting
<v Speaker 2>ready to do video killed the Radio Star. You know
<v Speaker 2>two of those guys were in the band.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, very good, nicely done. Do you want to hear
<v Speaker 3>the rest of that episode? Go to patreon dot com.
<v Speaker 3>Slash Shirley Podcast. Okay, so we know that Vangelis won
<v Speaker 3>the Oscar for Chariots of Fire, which also hit number
<v Speaker 3>one on the Hot one hundred. I mean, that's pretty
<v Speaker 3>impressive for a music scorer song.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about that for just a second. Okay, okay,
<v Speaker 2>because people who weren't born early enough to remember how
<v Speaker 2>big the Chariots of Fire theme song was. It was everywhere,
<v Speaker 2>absolutely and it I mean was in the movie Vacation
<v Speaker 2>when Chivi and Chase runs towards Wally World.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Yep.
<v Speaker 2>It was huge.
<v Speaker 3>So he didn't read music. He was very musical from
<v Speaker 3>a young age, very musical, like was playing their piano
<v Speaker 3>when he was four. He would experiment with it and
<v Speaker 3>put nails and kitchen pans in there and play it
<v Speaker 3>to make different sounds, which is I mean, you could
<v Speaker 3>tell from the way that he writes music he's got
<v Speaker 3>a taste for a different sound than everybody.
<v Speaker 2>Else wants, right, kind of like Nick Rhoades in when
<v Speaker 2>we talked about our Rio episode where he banged the
<v Speaker 2>chords of the piano.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, exactly. When it was time for him to
<v Speaker 3>score Blade Runner, he got videotapes and so he would
<v Speaker 3>watch the videotapes and he wasn't writing down music. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>it's not John Williams writing down a sketch on notebook
<v Speaker 3>paper because he doesn't read or write music. He would
<v Speaker 3>just sit there on his keyboard, which was a Yamaha
<v Speaker 3>CS eighty. He'd used a whole bunch of stuff, but
<v Speaker 3>that was the primary one. That's the recognizable sound that
<v Speaker 3>you hear there. And he would just improvise based on
<v Speaker 3>what he was watching on those videos.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's incredible. That's the talent I don't have.
<v Speaker 3>Well. This soundtrack was called the best film score of
<v Speaker 3>all time by Pitchfork in twenty nineteen.
<v Speaker 2>It is.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, there are multiple sources that say this is,
<v Speaker 3>if not the best soundtrack, it's the best synth soundtrack
<v Speaker 3>of all time.
<v Speaker 2>Here's the interesting thing about this soundtrack from Blade Runner. Okay, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the release of the official soundtrack recording was delayed for
<v Speaker 2>over a decade.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, with and there have been three or four different
<v Speaker 3>soundtracks that have come out in the meantime, and none
<v Speaker 3>of them had all of his music. They would have
<v Speaker 3>things that were in the film that weren't on the soundtrack.
<v Speaker 3>They would have things on the soundtrack that weren't in
<v Speaker 3>the film. There's been a huge mishmash of songs. As
<v Speaker 3>far as the Blade Runner soundtrack goes. Wow, the one
<v Speaker 3>that I listened to has little sound clips from the
<v Speaker 3>movie in it, like the little dialogue parts, which I
<v Speaker 3>think is pretty innovative for the early eighties. I don't
<v Speaker 3>remember any movie doing that that early.
<v Speaker 2>On, but Queen did it in Flash Gordon.
<v Speaker 3>Right right, which was eighty right yep, same time that
<v Speaker 3>he's recording this stuff. So yeah, it's pretty impressive. When
<v Speaker 3>Hans Zimmer and Ben Walfish did the score for Blade
<v Speaker 3>Runner twenty forty nine, they use the Yamaha C S
<v Speaker 3>eighty to capture that same feeling, and they were largely
<v Speaker 3>inspired by Van Gelis's soundtrack.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome.
<v Speaker 3>It's got components of those film noir sounds in parts,
<v Speaker 3>but then obviously very futuristic, very dystopian, saw teasingly mystical.
<v Speaker 3>I thought that's pretty spot on. Okay, yeah, I'll go
<v Speaker 3>with that. Yeah, So there you go. There is the
<v Speaker 3>soundtrack for Blade Runner, arguably one of the best soundtracks
<v Speaker 3>of all time.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, blow muscart up about that one. Finally, we ready
<v Speaker 2>to talk about the goat here.
<v Speaker 3>Who's the composer for e T I don't think I
<v Speaker 3>remember his name?
<v Speaker 2>Mister Johnny Williams.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, Johnny.
<v Speaker 2>So he won the Oscar for this score. Okay, he
<v Speaker 2>won it het well well deserved.
<v Speaker 3>Right, as you mentioned just a second ago, there's a
<v Speaker 3>song on the soundtrack called The Magic Falloween, and he
<v Speaker 3>puts a little sound cue from Yoda's.
<v Speaker 2>Theme from The Empire Strikes Back, The.
<v Speaker 3>Empire Strikes Back, which, of course he also wrote that right.
<v Speaker 3>And then, of course, as you also mentioned, George Lucas
<v Speaker 3>springs at full circle by having the little et neogens
<v Speaker 3>or whatever you call Themsojians. Yes, sure has them in
<v Speaker 3>that horrible, horrible movie.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, don't forget that. Johnny Williams was friends with the
<v Speaker 2>guys in Toto.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, that's right. The Toto guys used to hang out
<v Speaker 3>of his house all the time, and his son became
<v Speaker 3>their lead singer. That's exactly right.
<v Speaker 2>Yep.
<v Speaker 3>If you want some more in depth John Williams info,
<v Speaker 3>go check out our Jaws versus Jurassic Park episode as
<v Speaker 3>well as our Indiana Jones versus The Future Future episodes. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>last bit, he was having trouble timing the music right
<v Speaker 3>to the chase sequence. Yes, and so Steven Spielberg was
<v Speaker 3>sitting there and he said, turn off the projector. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>turns off the projector. He says, just do it the
<v Speaker 3>way you want to do it. Yeah, And so John
<v Speaker 3>Williams that last bit, which is the best, the best
<v Speaker 3>cinematic experience because of that music. He did it his
<v Speaker 3>own way. And then Spielberg went back and he edited
<v Speaker 3>the chase scene to match what John Williams had composed.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I'm not ready to spike the football on et
<v Speaker 2>being the best John Williams composition good because it's not well,
<v Speaker 2>it's in the conversation.
<v Speaker 3>It's it is in the conversation. I told you it
<v Speaker 3>wasn't before and listened off about seven.
<v Speaker 2>Well, that's it. It's like talking about Michael Jordan's best game, right,
<v Speaker 2>because you're like, oh, well, the Jaws.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, come on, Jaws, right, right?
<v Speaker 2>And then I'm like, well, I mean Raiders of the
<v Speaker 2>Lost Arc man he kills it. I mean, Indy has
<v Speaker 2>a theme, Marion has a theme, The Arc has a theme,
<v Speaker 2>the Nazis. And then you're like, well, crap, what about
<v Speaker 2>Star Wars?
<v Speaker 3>Right? What about Superman?
<v Speaker 2>What about Superman? What about Close Encounters? What about Jurassic Park.
<v Speaker 3>What about Harry Potter.
<v Speaker 2>He's the best.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he's the best. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>ET is phenomenal. The music carries me emotionally through the movie.
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>If the music isn't in this movie, it's not good.
<v Speaker 2>It might be Mac and me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's exactly right. It might be some sort of
<v Speaker 3>schleppy nothing.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I agree, I agree. It's incredible.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, that is all I have for the composers. We've
<v Speaker 3>talked already about the reception. Obviously, E T was the
<v Speaker 3>number one movie for weeks and weeks until it got
<v Speaker 3>bumped by Zapped right, and then it was like Officer
<v Speaker 3>and a Gentleman, and then it was ET again for
<v Speaker 3>weeks and weeks.
<v Speaker 2>Curiously, the Empire Strikes Back reached the number one spot
<v Speaker 2>during a re release in nineteen eighty two There You Go,
<v Speaker 2>and then E T. Retouching ran with it.
<v Speaker 3>All right, So obviously, as far as box office concerned,
<v Speaker 3>ET is the clear winner for best of these three,
<v Speaker 3>clear winner. But as we mentioned before, financial failures, Blade
<v Speaker 3>Runner and The Thing.
<v Speaker 2>Right all right, d it's almost time for final judgment.
<v Speaker 2>I've got one last item of discussion. Okay, we briefly
<v Speaker 2>mentioned it in our last episode, I feel like we
<v Speaker 2>should talk briefly about the et Atari game. Okay, did
<v Speaker 2>you play the et Atari game?
<v Speaker 4>No?
<v Speaker 3>I did not.
<v Speaker 2>I played it, Okay, I played it. It was created
<v Speaker 2>by the same guy who made the Riders of the
<v Speaker 2>Lost Art game. Both these games were maddening to me.
<v Speaker 2>They were sort of those journey games where we had
<v Speaker 2>to go and collect items and try to do this
<v Speaker 2>and that and figure it out. And I just wanted
<v Speaker 2>to see the completion of the game for Raiders of
<v Speaker 2>Lost Ark and ET and I could never do it.
<v Speaker 2>And it was freaking hard. Yeah, the stupid FBI agent
<v Speaker 2>would always grab me and I could never I could
<v Speaker 2>never do anything in the et game and it was frustrating.
<v Speaker 2>And you know what what, I wasn't the only one
<v Speaker 2>that found it really frustrating.
<v Speaker 4>Now.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, Atari bet the company on this game and
<v Speaker 2>lost and it was a bust.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. We talked in our previous episode about the fact
<v Speaker 3>that all the companies that you see in the Blade
<v Speaker 3>Runner Future Verse are actually companies that went out of
<v Speaker 3>business or had some real financial setback at the time,
<v Speaker 3>and Atari is definitely one of those. And it was
<v Speaker 3>because of et There's a documentary out there on I've
<v Speaker 3>watched it. The land fell where like two hundred and
<v Speaker 3>fifty thousand and the or something et cartridges were buried.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, during the in the documentary they actually go to
<v Speaker 2>the landfill. They figure out like look at the catalog
<v Speaker 2>and figure out the date and then go to that
<v Speaker 2>spot and then have to go eight feet down to
<v Speaker 2>find the.
<v Speaker 3>It's a good documentary and making a cameo appearances. Ernest Klein,
<v Speaker 3>writer of Ready Player one. I think it did you
<v Speaker 3>drive us Delarean over there?
<v Speaker 2>I think he did?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think that's right. Has definitely something to check out.
<v Speaker 3>All right, good TIDBT.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, guys, let's hear from our buddy James Buckley and
<v Speaker 2>hear what he has to say on these three movies.
<v Speaker 4>Hey, Jason, Indeed, this is James Buckley chiming in from
<v Speaker 4>the North Louisiana chapter of the show You Can't Be
<v Speaker 4>Serious Appreciation Society. I've been asked to chime in on
<v Speaker 4>the three movies you guys are looking at this week.
<v Speaker 4>And while I definitely have a favorite, there's no going
<v Speaker 4>wrong with any of these three films. Each one is
<v Speaker 4>a classic in its own right, and each one deserves
<v Speaker 4>all the praise it's received over the years, starting with
<v Speaker 4>et this is a perfect fairy tale, I'll be at
<v Speaker 4>A slightly dark fairy tale in some points, extremely well
<v Speaker 4>acted by the kids, Lots of tense action scenes. The
<v Speaker 4>old botanist, as I believe the alien was called in
<v Speaker 4>some promotional material, was very well done, especially considering the
<v Speaker 4>level of special effects at the time. Oh, in all,
<v Speaker 4>it's a perfect movie for kids and adults. I love
<v Speaker 4>it as a twelve year old, and I love it now.
<v Speaker 4>Blade Runner, it's a slightly different story. I saw this
<v Speaker 4>when I was twelve with a buddy of mine, and
<v Speaker 4>confession I was a little bit of a geek. So
<v Speaker 4>I had read Philip K. Dick's novel beforehand and I
<v Speaker 4>was puzzled. And I saw the movie and I was
<v Speaker 4>still puzzled. There were some great action scenes, a topless
<v Speaker 4>scene but don't tell my mother, But overall, the question
<v Speaker 4>about what it means to be human? Yeah, this was
<v Speaker 4>not what I was looking for in a movie at
<v Speaker 4>the time. Subsequent versions of the movie really straightened a
<v Speaker 4>lot out for me and gave me a greater appreciation
<v Speaker 4>for the overall narrative. But from a visual sense. This
<v Speaker 4>movie was amazing. The cyberpunk, vaguely post apocalyptic city in
<v Speaker 4>which Decker lived, Decker's cool gun coat and flying car,
<v Speaker 4>all this was amazing to look at. Rutger Howard was
<v Speaker 4>outstanding as Roy Batty. His improvised rooftop scene was amazing
<v Speaker 4>of work and stands the test of time. Now we
<v Speaker 4>get to John Carpenter's The Thing. I had read Alan
<v Speaker 4>Dean Foster's novelization of this movie prior to actually seeing
<v Speaker 4>the movie, so I was pretty pumped up and I
<v Speaker 4>was not disappointed. It's an amazing science fiction horror movie.
<v Speaker 4>I had seen the original with James Arness as the
<v Speaker 4>bloodsucking Vegetableman from Space and it was okay, But this
<v Speaker 4>movie was mind blowing. John Carpenter really created a palpable
<v Speaker 4>sense of isolation in Paranoia, which was really helped by score.
<v Speaker 4>Kurt Russell was amazing as always, as was the rest
<v Speaker 4>of the crew, including the dog and the special effects man.
<v Speaker 4>Not to give anything away, but when the guy's back
<v Speaker 4>splits open and tries to eat somebody, yeah, that was
<v Speaker 4>pretty shocking at the time. I think it's safe to
<v Speaker 4>say that this is my favorite of the three it
<v Speaker 4>was such a well made movie. I still enjoy watching
<v Speaker 4>it today, always rank it as one of my favorite
<v Speaker 4>films regardless of genre. So yeah, you can put me
<v Speaker 4>down in team McReady, but honestly, as a earlier all
<v Speaker 4>these films are great and uh well what you guys
<v Speaker 4>have brought out about them. So that's it for tonight,
<v Speaker 4>keep on keeping on. You guys really have the greatest
<v Speaker 4>podcast out there.
<v Speaker 2>We'll talk to you later, all right, James, thanks a
<v Speaker 2>lot for weighing in there. From northern Louisiana. We can
<v Speaker 2>hear the crickets as they are chirping. Appreciate you as always.
<v Speaker 2>Wake up, time to die, reay for final judgment.
<v Speaker 3>Let me have it, buddy. What do you think? All right?
<v Speaker 3>And my first? You're first?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Listen, we don't pick any losers, right right. We
<v Speaker 2>pick nothing but winners, although we're going to make an
<v Speaker 2>exception in July. I feel actual pressure on this one
<v Speaker 2>to like make sure that I cover all my bases
<v Speaker 2>and then I think through my judgment and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 2>So here's where I am. My heart says et okay,
<v Speaker 2>my head says blade Runner okay, and my balls say
<v Speaker 2>the thing. Say your balls yes. Pg. Thirteen. I can't
<v Speaker 2>say that.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just gonna keep going. They say balls is PG
<v Speaker 3>thirteen time.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, so when I was a kid. So
<v Speaker 2>let's get in the Doloreum and go back to nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty two. I mentioned before that et was one of
<v Speaker 2>the greatest cinematic experiences I've ever had in my entire life.
<v Speaker 2>I laughed, I cried, I was moved, I was entranced.
<v Speaker 3>Better than cats. I'll see it again and again.
<v Speaker 2>I loved it, absolutely loved it as a nine year old.
<v Speaker 2>So I was nine and eighty two, so basically I'm
<v Speaker 2>the same age as Elliott.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>When I finally saw Blade Runner, I guess I saw
<v Speaker 2>the director's cut in the early nineties. I didn't quite
<v Speaker 2>get it, but ever since that time, it's one of
<v Speaker 2>those movies you can't really shake, and every time I
<v Speaker 2>watch it, I like it a little bit more every time.
<v Speaker 2>I'm also a big believer that sort of modern movies.
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes it can get cluttered with characters. I love the
<v Speaker 2>final Mono Emano scene with Harrison Ford and Roy Batty.
<v Speaker 2>There can be only one and so I really love
<v Speaker 2>that part about Blade Runner. I also love the ambiguity
<v Speaker 2>and the questions and the discussions that go along with that,
<v Speaker 2>and the thing I was thrilled by. I was scared,
<v Speaker 2>I was paranoid about it. Really was a heart thumper
<v Speaker 2>for me. So it all comes down to it. I
<v Speaker 2>can't even say rewatchability because I don't rewatch ET very much,
<v Speaker 2>but when I do, it still moves me. Okay, So
<v Speaker 2>here's what I'm going to say of these three, and
<v Speaker 2>it's razors Sharp in the number three spot.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to go the thing.
<v Speaker 2>I love it, the poster, the plot is exciting. I
<v Speaker 2>love Kurt Russell. I love it. Number two, Blade Runner,
<v Speaker 2>It's very interesting. It makes me think. I love the
<v Speaker 2>futuristic stuff. I'm a big fan of Ridley Scott. But
<v Speaker 2>for me, number one has to be ET. I'm an
<v Speaker 2>old school guy. John Williams, Steven Spielberg and a little
<v Speaker 2>man from space. Come on, I get a lump in
<v Speaker 2>my throat just thinking about the movie ET. So that's
<v Speaker 2>how I'm gonna go. Spike in the football ET number one.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, where yet? All right? So when we started on this,
<v Speaker 3>I was pretty confident where I was going to end up. Right, ET.
<v Speaker 3>I loved when I was a kid. I was Gertie's age.
<v Speaker 3>I was due Barrymore's age. Okay, so a little bit younger.
<v Speaker 3>So I didn't quite get all of it, but there
<v Speaker 3>wasn't much that I didn't get. It was pretty simple story.
<v Speaker 3>The thing was something that I watched with my dad
<v Speaker 3>because he preferred the kind of scarier, tougher movies, and
<v Speaker 3>this one didn't have any nudity in it. You got
<v Speaker 3>some f bombs, but you know, when we watched the
<v Speaker 3>TV versions, it was probably those were edited out right.
<v Speaker 3>So I've got nostalgia with my dad associated with the thing,
<v Speaker 3>and so the last one for me was definitely gonna
<v Speaker 3>be played Runner because I had seen it. I hadn't
<v Speaker 3>seen it. I didn't see it in the eighties. I
<v Speaker 3>don't even think I saw it in the nineties. I
<v Speaker 3>think it was twenty first century before I ever sat
<v Speaker 3>down and watched the movie. I wasn't super impressed with it.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't know why it was such a big deal
<v Speaker 3>when I watched it the first time, and it literally
<v Speaker 3>was the one that I had to force myself to
<v Speaker 3>watch this last time. So when I watched ET, I
<v Speaker 3>was impressed by the simplicity of the story, right, And
<v Speaker 3>I had to keep asking myself the question like why
<v Speaker 3>did this one win? Right? Why did this one break
<v Speaker 3>all the records? And the other two were cut and
<v Speaker 3>left to die right, and only became cult classics later
<v Speaker 3>on after years and years go by. And then when
<v Speaker 3>I watched the thing, I was like, Okay, how much
<v Speaker 3>of this do I remember for being a little kid,
<v Speaker 3>and how much of it did I really love? The
<v Speaker 3>thing was the reason I became a fangor a ficionado.
<v Speaker 3>Okay like that, I mean the makeup effects like Blew
<v Speaker 3>Me Away, and so I became obsessed with Ye, yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I became obsessed with movie makeup special effects because of
<v Speaker 3>that movie. But when I watched it, there were parts
<v Speaker 3>in the plot that I, as an adult, I went,
<v Speaker 3>this doesn't make any sense. Yeah, Like they're burning down
<v Speaker 3>the camp at the end of the movie, which is
<v Speaker 3>kind of an important feature, and it doesn't make any sense,
<v Speaker 3>Like why is this going to solve the problem? It
<v Speaker 3>really just seems like a way for you to have
<v Speaker 3>a bunch of explosions and everybody dead at the end, right,
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it just does It didn't need shelter, Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it didn't make it. I mean, the idea is we're
<v Speaker 3>going to burn him out and then he can't, you know,
<v Speaker 3>hide in the ice. Well what if he watched twenty
<v Speaker 3>yards away where it's freezing cold. You guys are about
<v Speaker 3>to freeze to death right now in the middle of
<v Speaker 3>all of this stuff. It didn't make any sense. So
<v Speaker 3>I was troubled by that, and so I thought, Okay, well,
<v Speaker 3>the thing is going to finish second to ET, because
<v Speaker 3>Et is still amazing. And the thing that ET did,
<v Speaker 3>and this is really what I believe is the key here,
<v Speaker 3>is that it was the pepsi cola of these three movies.
<v Speaker 3>When they had the pepsi challenge, everybody picked pepsi. And
<v Speaker 3>why do they pick pepsi Because it's sweeter? Yeah, right right.
<v Speaker 2>You take that first drink and you're like, oh, that's it.
<v Speaker 3>But here's the thing. If you have an extended test,
<v Speaker 3>you don't pick pepsi. You pick coke because that's sweet.
<v Speaker 3>For that amount of time, it's not that great. So
<v Speaker 3>you've got it long enough for a year worth of
<v Speaker 3>great movies and some rewatches, but I don't go back
<v Speaker 3>and revisit it. And when I watched it with my daughter,
<v Speaker 3>I didn't get choked up. I thought, this is a
<v Speaker 3>pretty simple, straightforward movie. The thing that Spielberg hit the
<v Speaker 3>nail on the head with was the emotional vantage point
<v Speaker 3>of a child, and he lowered the camera. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>you got crop shots at the beginning, right, he lowered
<v Speaker 3>the camera and he let the kids go chronologically through
<v Speaker 3>the story, all to capture the emotions of a child.
<v Speaker 3>And so that's great if you're nine or if you
<v Speaker 3>were six, But as a forty five year old, I'm like, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>this is a pretty simple story. The effects aren't that great.
<v Speaker 3>You've got compelling music, which is really the reason that
<v Speaker 3>this movie is so great, but if you really analyze it,
<v Speaker 3>it's not super impressive. And so that left me with
<v Speaker 3>Blade Runner, which I didn't even like the first time.
<v Speaker 2>I fall out of my chair if you say Blade Runner.
<v Speaker 3>I watched Blade Runner this time and I was engrossed.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, holy cow, how did I not realize
<v Speaker 3>how good the movie this was? And maybe it was
<v Speaker 3>because I didn't watch final cut the first time, and
<v Speaker 3>I watched final cut this time, and there are those
<v Speaker 3>various versions. So probably in the eighties I would not
<v Speaker 3>be picking Blade Runner. I wouldn't want the voiceover. I
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't want the happy ending, but you give me the
<v Speaker 3>final cut Ridley Scott's original idea, and you give me
<v Speaker 3>those iconic imagery that sid Mead does, and you give
<v Speaker 3>me the little pieces of deeper meaning as far as
<v Speaker 3>historical fiction goes, and religion and meaning and the question
<v Speaker 3>of life, and you put all that together in a
<v Speaker 3>detective story. Blade Runner overtook me. WHOA, I didn't even
<v Speaker 3>want to watch it again, and it overtook me, and
<v Speaker 3>it overtook the Thing, and it overtook ET. So Blade
<v Speaker 3>Runner is my number one pick. Cinematically incredible, visually incredible,
<v Speaker 3>acted incredibly. The guys you identify with are the bad guys,
<v Speaker 3>and it's still great. Wow, it's for me number one,
<v Speaker 3>Blade Runner, number two ET, and number three the Thing,
<v Speaker 3>only because the Thing had some plot problems with it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's fascinating because when, like before I knew that
<v Speaker 2>you hadn't seen Blade Runner, I may have guessed that
<v Speaker 2>because you're kind of the thinker and I'm kind of
<v Speaker 2>a feeler, and so that kind of makes sense for
<v Speaker 2>me to take ET and you to take Blade Runner.
<v Speaker 2>But you were like, I didn't like it, not really
<v Speaker 2>and for now for it to emerge number one. That
<v Speaker 2>makes me want to fall out of my chair, and
<v Speaker 2>that makes me feel great because I love it when
<v Speaker 2>we change opinions, and maybe we changed yours, maybe we
<v Speaker 2>changed the people out there.
<v Speaker 3>Shirley fans. If you have not seen these movies in
<v Speaker 3>a while, go give them a second look, especially the
<v Speaker 3>final cut of Blade Runner, which is on HBO Max
<v Speaker 3>right now. If you happen to have a subscription to that,
<v Speaker 3>it is well worth the rewatch. And speaking of rewatch,
<v Speaker 3>I will be watching it again soon before it's gone
<v Speaker 3>off of HBO because I want to just drink it
<v Speaker 3>all in.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. Fantastic. All right, d So that's the Kapper three
<v Speaker 2>parter et Blade Run of the thing. What do we
<v Speaker 2>got coming next week?
<v Speaker 3>So next week we have a special unplanned episode. We
<v Speaker 3>talked briefly in Top Gun about the Top Gun soundtrack,
<v Speaker 3>but those episodes have been so popular for us that
<v Speaker 3>we have decided we are going to cover the Top
<v Speaker 3>Gun soundtrack in depth, track by track, and we're going
<v Speaker 3>to give you some bonus tracks from the Maverick soundtrack
<v Speaker 3>as well.
<v Speaker 2>It's gonna be awesome. One of my favorite albums nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty six hands down, I can't wait to dive into that.
<v Speaker 2>After that, we got Motley Crue Versus Whitesnake. We're back
<v Speaker 2>to stripper music. It's gonna be great.
<v Speaker 3>Great stories to go along with both of those albums.
<v Speaker 3>I can't wait.
<v Speaker 2>Come back next week. Don't forget Patreon. You now get
<v Speaker 2>additional Patreon episodes once a month. It's gonna be awesome.
<v Speaker 3>One hit Wonders of the Eighties and beyond. If you're
<v Speaker 3>a Patreon subscriber. If that's not within your budget, totally understand.
<v Speaker 3>If you could do something free for us, leave us
<v Speaker 3>a review hit the five Stars. It just help us
<v Speaker 3>out tremendously and it doesn't trout you had done.
<v Speaker 2>Plus, we love it. It's great.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, builds our ego too. Thank you guys, look forward
<v Speaker 3>to seeing you in next week.
<v Speaker 2>See you next week.