Mike's Top 5 Favorite Movie Posters + Director Lee Cronin on How Much Money He Spend on Blood in ‘Evil Dead Rise’ (Max) + Movie Review: Elemental + Trailer Park: Kraven the Hunter

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. Today, I want to share with you my top five favorite movie posters of all time. Then we'll get into an interview with director Lee Cronin, which will continue our discussion of movie posters. But he is the director of Ewel Dead Rise, one of my favorite horror movies of the year, so I have so many questions about that movie, mainly regarding how much money he spent on blood to get that movie done. In the movie review, we'll be talking about Pixar's Elemental why it didn't do so well at the box office despite me thinking it's actually a pretty good movie. And in the trailer park, I'll be talking about Craven the Hunter, which is the new Marvel movie on the Sony side. There's always so much chaos going on with that side of Marvel, but this trailer actually looks promising, so we'll get into that. Thank you for being here, Thank you for telling a friend. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew, and now let's talk movies.

00:00:52
Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like ever before in a movie podcast, a man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: From the Nashville Podcast Network.

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Speaker 2: This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcasts.

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Speaker 1: I feel like movie posters have gone the way of the Western. That is my new slogan I'm trying out on this podcast, the way of the Western, meaning they are no longer a thing or no longer as popular as they used to be. And when it comes to movie posters, they used to be the thing that I attached with watching that movie. I would always see the poster first and base my decision on wanting to watch that movie strictly based on the poster. I remember going to Walmart, and if you were a nineties early two thousand kid, they used to have a section where you would just scroll through with your own hands the physical copies of these posters that would be displayed in these big things. And I remember going to that thing and having so much enjoyment looking at all the movie posters. But it's the image that you see when you actually go to the movies out front. It should be the biggest part of the marketing and packaging of a movie creating an iconic image that stays with your mind. But of course the world has changed, technology has changed. I feel like studios now focus more on the trailer, getting the views on YouTube and on Instagram and TikTok. I just feel like now the movie poster ranks so low on the list and the marketing because back in the day, there used to be artists who would be assigned to these movie posters to sit in a room and actually with paint and a brush, paint these images that we know and love and have been some of the most historical images for movies of all time. It used to be a process that there was an art to a literal R two, But that means they took time and they took money. Some of the most iconic movie posters took months to make. But what I loved about it is that it was an artist's vision on how to represent that movie in a single image on one poster. So they would be given scenes from the movie, maybe in some cases even be allowed to watch the movie, and then through photographs and through scene references, they would take all of those and make one single poster. But now they just feel like they're thrown together pretty quickly, you throw every floating head you can get on there, put all the actors' names, put the generic movie logo on there, and bam, you have your poster. So maybe the movie poster is the thing of the past and I just have to let it go. But I want to share with you my top five movie posters of all time. These are the five movie posters I would pick if I had limited space in my wall to showcase all of my favorite ones. These are the posters I would put on my wall. At Number five is the most recent one from twenty nineteen. It is Parasite. It is my favorite of the last five years. And the saying goes a picture is worth one thousand words. I feel like a movie poster should be worth a million, and frankly now they're worth about one hundred words. But not when it comes to the Parasite movie poster, which does all the things that I want it to, and the main thing being it conveys a sense of mystery and almost creates this tension in one single image. So if you're not familiar with the Parasite movie poster, what you have is a look at the family in Parasite. You have the main character standing at the front, and in every character's face, their eyes are blacked out. And I look at that image and think, I wonder why their eyes are blacked out. Two characters have black bars and two other characters have white bars across their eyes. And then at the bottom of the poster you see two very pale legs at the bottom, just laying there. You don't see a face, You just see from about the kneecapped down, and that creates a sense of mystery. Why are they laying there? Is that person dead? Is someone going to die in this movie? Why is the sun in the background holding this big rock? And why is there another character where you just see their silhouette in the mirror their eyes are not blacked out. So this poster perfectly captures in one single image what this movie is going to be about, creates that sense of mystery, and captures that this movie is going to have a lot of social commentary and also just have suspense throughout the movie. And just by seeing the title and the image alone, you almost think this is going to be more of a horror movie. But through the actual colors and tones used in the poster, it makes you feel like it's going to be more of a dramatic thriller. So this movie poster feels very sophisticated to me. It feels like a great visual representation of the movie, and combined with the fact that it's one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life, that is why I put Parasite at number five. At number four, I have teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the movie poster from nineteen ninety which is referred to as the sewer scene poster. If you are at a nineties kid, you have for sure seen this movie poster. What you see in this image is the four Ninja Turtles Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Rafael, and they are all peeking out from an open sewer lid. And that's just an iconic nineties image and it tells you exactly what you need to know about the Ninja Turtles. And this image shows you exactly what this movie is going to be about. You see the four characters there, one of the hands holding up the sewer lid as they are all peeking out, showing you that they live underground in the sewer and they can only look at New York City from their perspective because they have to remain hidden because they are these monstrous figures that even though they aren't bad, just by looking at them, you think they are bad. So they have to keep their identities secret and live in the sewer. I just love the point of view of this movie poster that you are seeing it from their level, and you see all the big New York City skyscrapers looking so huge, with the Empire State Building being there in the back with the big monstrous clouds behind it at sunset. I also love the tagline on this, which I feel like that's something that movie posters have gotten away from and says, hey, dude, this is new cartoon because it was the first live action representation of the Ninja Turtles. And then at the very bottom it says lean green and on the screen everywhere. I also loved the expression on the faces of the Ninja Turtles that on Michaelangelo and Donna Tello you only see their eyes, but with Leonardo and Raphael you also get them kind of gritting their teeth and you see their big old white teeth in this. So it is just the great image. That is why I put teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at number four at number three from nineteen ninety, I have Child's Play two, and this is a movie poster that scared the crap out of me as a kid, with Child's Play one being one of the first movies to ever give me nightmares, Child's Play two was the only horror movie that the poster alone gave me nightmares. And I later conquered my fear as an adult, and I went to Walmart and they had this exact movie poster on a T shirt and that is the first ever movie poster T shirt that I have purchased because it was me getting over my fear. And I think out of any genre, horror movies just have the best posters because of the images, because of the emotion that they convey, the emotion of fear, they are very impactful on a kid. But I love this movie poster because it says a lot of things about our character Chucky, who is a possessed doll, and you see him in his most vicious face on this poster with these giant scissors about to cut the neck of a jack in the box. So with that image, it gives you the entire picture of what Child's Play too, is all about a killer doll here murdering another toy. And then you also have a great tagline to bring it all together. At the very top of the poster, it says, sorry, Jack, Chucky's back. So I love this poster. It conveys perfectly what the horror genre is all about. Specific to Chucky. I love his wild red hair, his oshkosh pagosh overalls, and it shows you how violent he is. And it's a rather simple movie poster but yet has so much effect. So at number three, I'm going with Child's Play two from nineteen ninety and number two. Sticking in the horror movie genre, I have nineteen seventy eight's Halloween, another movie poster that I still have the T shirt on this one and every single Halloween I bust out my Halloween movie poster T shirt because I think it is the best horror movie poster of all time. This is one that I would consider getting a tattoo of, and I'm currently looking for tattoo inspiration. Specifically, I want a tattoo right now that represents my love of movies. Halloween would highly be up there, Although I feel like having a Halloween tattoo feels a little bit like it's related to a season. I don't want to carry Halloween with me all year long. Even though I I'm a darker individual and I love horror movies, I just feel in my mind that's a bit of a seasonal tattoo. And even though I feel like horror movies can be good at any time of the year, you don't have to just watch them around Halloween. I just feel like having one on my body would feel like wearing that T shirt year round, and I only bust it out around Halloween. So the other one I'm considering and really moving the needle towards No pun intended, but I'm really wanting to get a Marvel tattoo. And Spider Man has been my favorite superhero since I was a kid. So right now I kind of have this vision drawing board where I'm just taking all of these images of Spider Man that I love and trying to find one single image that represents my love of Spider Man. So once I kind of have that vision board done, I'm going to take that to my tattoo artist and see what they can come up with. My second one that I was really toying around with was Stanos, and I think because Stanos represents with one character I loved about that entire Infinity saga, it would just be kind of different to get a villain versus a superhero. But I just haven't loved Thanos as long as I've loved Spider Man. So those are the two I'm thinking of right now. If I had to throw a third in there, it would be Rocket from Guardians at the Galaxy, But that's probably because I just watched Guardians three and loved that movie. But anyway, back to the horror movie poster from Halloween nineteen seventy eight. I love the simplicity of this movie poster. You get the title of the movie at the very top in its iconic font, but what it's really all about is the menacing jack lantern that takes up basically the entire poster. It's the eerie glow of that Jack of Lennard that really conveys the entire unsettling tone of this film. The piercing eyes, of the jagged little triangles made on this pumpkin that at the very bottom has these very sharp points. But then on the other end of the jacka lantern, you have the hand of Michael Myers, which is all big and strong and veiny, and through the design of the poster has a similar color tone to that orange of the pumpkin. So really it's that leading image of Michael Myers's hand with the knife and then the Jack o' lantern behind it made to look like each of the pieces of the pumpkin are also kitchen knives. And then again you have what I love about movie posters. It's the one single line to sell it. The tagline on the Halloween poster is the night he came home. And this movie poster has stood the test of time. It's right up there with the Halloween theme being as long lasting, and just by looking at it, you know exactly what it is. If you can convey that message with a single image like this and be as long lasting as the Halloween movie poster, oh my gosh, that is what I look for. Let's get back to this era. So that's my number two Halloween, But at number one, my favorite movie poster of all time is from nineteen seventy seven. It is Star Wars a New Hope, And the one I'm talking about is Tom Jung's nineteen seventy seven style A poster. So what you see in this poster is a hand painted image of Luke Skywalker with his shirt basically ripped open and a very ripped muscular body is peeking out underneath. He has his hands up hoisted above his head and you see the image of his lightsaber going into three different directions. And right below him you see Princess Leah looking very sophisticated and sexy. And then in the background you see a small R two, D two and C three po That's really all you see on the hero side, but in the back you have a huge Darth Vader head almost taking up the entire poster, with a death star right next to him. At the very top of the poster you have the tagline A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, And that's really all you need to know about Star Wars or this image conveys the entire message that you are about to get into one of the greatest sci fi sagas of all time. And then of course at the very bottom you have the iconic Star Wars font which I am a big fan of fonts. I will get on TikTok and just follow all these accounts that just talk about fonts. I am a stickler for font and that's when it comes to anything I do, maybe a light amount of graphic design for my job when it comes to promo images for our podcast. When it comes to the actual logo for Movie Mike's Movie Podcast, I designed that myself. I drew it out on my iPad because I love fonts so much. I think they're very important and a very underappreciated aspect of design, and Star Wars has one of the most iconic logos of all time, and in this poster, it's actually slightly different than the one we know. This one, I feel, is much more seventies. So there are different versions of this poster. This one's my fa There's another one where it has more characters. You see Hans solo and at the very front of that one is Luke Skywalker with the blaster. I don't like that one as much. I'm talking about the og original Star Wars poster, and I think that's because this one, to me, feels like the real piece of art. It's very eye catching, it's so iconic. I also love that recently there was another artist on Instagram who took this same concept and applied it to Guardians to the Galaxy, showing you how iconic this poster is. And if you listen to this podcast, you know I'm a big fan of color palettes, and this one perfectly utilizes a blue and yellow color palette with that black just kind of offsetting it. In the back with Darth Vader. You also have the starships right next to Darth Vader's face, giving you more a sense of that action, a sense of those high speed chases and epic battles that'll be in Star Wars. So I think this is the most iconic movie poster of all time. I really need to get my hands on one because in my studio, if you follow me on Instagram and TikTok, I have an entire wall behind me filled with primarily movie art and different things I've collected over the years. And also recently I've gotten into collecting comic books, so I have a few comic books that I showcase on the wall. But I've been looking for just one iconic movie poster I need in my background, and I realized I don't really have any Star Wars memorabilia behind there. I think I have a baby Yoda aka Grogu little figure that I got once at like a gift shop. But I think now it is my goal to find a style a poster from Star Wars that looks legit. Maybe a hand painted one, maybe an original one, maybe an autographed one. I think I need that piece on my wall. So that is my top five. A few honorable mentions I would throw in there. I love the Honey I Shrunk the Kids movie poster, and I think that's because as a kid, I just remember big, fun posters that showed you very outlandish things, because just with this image, you know ex exactly what you're getting into. You see Rick Moranis's face taking up basically the entire poster, and then seeing all of his kids just there. The size of ants highly effective when it comes to hand painted posters. I love the look of the Raiders of the Lost Arc. Even though that's not one of my favorite movies, that is one of the most detailed movie posters of all time. I would also throw in full Metal Jacket. And then there's some posters that I feel like every teenager had growing up. When I would go over to someone's house and they had a movie poster, nine times out of ten they had a Scarface poster. I love Scarface, but I never got the fascination with that poster. It seemed like everybody had it, whether on their wall, whether they had a T shirt. Some people even had scarface tattoos. It's a great poster, I just never loved it that much. Along those same lines as the pulp fiction poster, which is an iconic image, but it's really just a picture of Uma Thurman and the credits on there. Yeah, you have the big yellow pulp fiction font at the top, but I don't really feel like that poster does anything for me. I wouldn't put that on my wall. I wouldn't get it on a T shirt. It's a good poster, but I don't feel like it's as iconic as everyone makes that one out to be. But I'll throw it in as an honorable mention. If you have one you want to add onto the list, send me a tweet at Mike Distro or email me moviemke d at gmail dot com. I will mention a few more. And that leads us to our interview this week with director Lee Cronin, who is the director of the new movie in the Evil Dead franchise, which is available now on Max. It is called Evil Dead Rise. It is my favorite horror movie of the year, and I believe horror movies should be enjoyed year round. So I love that this movie came out at a time where I was just itching for a horror movie in a franchise that I love and I feel is very underappreciated, and no one really brings it up when talking about the best horror franchises of all time. So if you haven't seen it yet, get on Max and go watch it now. We won't ruin anything in this interview, but it was a real treat to get to talk to Lee Cronin. He is known for his work in the horror genre. He was born in Ireland and started out his career as a screenwriter and a director of short films before making his first feature film debut, which was called The Hole in the Ground that came out in twenty nineteen. He is really good at storytelling and building tension, and that is why he has quickly risen as one of the best directors in the horror genre. So I was really excited to get to talk to him and about why he made this movie so terrifying and why he decided to use so much blood. So again, Evil Dead Rise is available now on Max. Let's get into our interview now with director Lee Cronin.

00:19:42
Speaker 3: Hey how are you, Lee? Hey, Mike, carry you? I'm good, Thank you.

00:19:45
Speaker 1: Oh, it's great to get to talk to you. As a movie reviewer. Every time I go see a movie out front, I like to take a picture with the poster and the issue I have now with a lot of modern movie posters, it's all just a bunch of floating heads. But I feel like with the Evil Dead Rise that was not the case. Just by looking at that poster, I get a sense, so what the movie story is going to be. I get a sense of the terror I'm going to get going into it. So is there a science behind the movie poster?

00:20:12
Speaker 3: I think there's definitely a science. Whether it gets applied all the time remains to be seen. And sometimes it's a tricky thing to get right because there's a lot of pathways that you can go. You know. I was very fortunate. I had a really excellent team that we're working on this movie, and we're believing in this movie in Warner Brothers, and they were able to really drill in and try and get to the core of what maybe a really striking image was, what the essence of the film could be, and how to draw people in closer and make them interested. And I think the art comes in trying to keep it simple and make it effective and make it visually appealing, but also to try and share a little bit of the tone of the movie. And I think with the main poster and Evil Dead Rise, that theatrical poster is the fact that you're showing the kind of clash of seeing something so horrifying, yet why are these children hugging her? And you know you've got that tagline Mom loves you to death, so you definitely want to dig deeper and find out a little bit more, you know, in terms of what's on the other side. If you if you open the door to the theater, walk inside, and go beyond the poster.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. And when I think of great movie posters, like in the horror genre, I think of, you know, Jaws, Halloween, in the Exorcist. For you, what are your top horror posters?

00:21:21
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you're putting me on the spot now. I well, Jaws, because Jaws is my favorite movie of all time. It's not a poster. But I love the consistent artwork for Evil Dead Too with the skull. That's something that really stands out to me childhood. And actually in the movie there is a little Easter egg to that poster that's very, very subtle that not everybody would have spotted. But I'll tell you about it right now. Because we're in that world, I can talk a little bit more openly.

00:21:45
Speaker 1: About I love Easter eggs. Hit me with it.

00:21:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is this is a subtle one, but it was very intentional, which was the fact that that Obviously that image on the Evil Dead Too artwork is not in the movie. It's not a shot from the film. It's a sales idea. But in the film, when Ellie emerges from the bathroom possessed and pokes her head around the door, I base the framing of that on the Evil Dead two poster. So after she's gone into the bath and done all her crazy screaming and then she comes back out to surprise the family, if you look at the angle and dynamic of that shot and the position of her eyes, it's a direct reference to the Evil Dead two poster and artwork.

00:22:21
Speaker 1: I love that. The other thing I loved about this movie. That first opening scene, the first maybe twenty minutes of the movie, I really start to connect with the characters, and I think sometimes in horror movies they just get into oh, here's all the blood and guts right away.

00:22:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, But what.

00:22:34
Speaker 1: Changed the level of this movie is like, I care about their backstory. I care about them getting together. So what is that kind of balance you have of like, Okay, I'm going to kind of commit to fleshing out these characters, even though I know people came here for the horror. You bought them in with the trailer, Like how do you balance that?

00:22:49
Speaker 3: I think you've got to just try and be true to those characters and give them enough air to exist and to feel real. I think that that is really important. And I remember when I approach this, because I again understand Evil Dead and what these type of movies need to be. I knew that I couldn't have extraordinarily elaborate arcs. You know, there had to be a point in time where things turned. And maybe it's really Beth in a lot of ways and Cassie to a certain extent, as they're accepting what's happening and trying to form this new little family unit to survive as the film progresses. But it's funny you talk about structure a lot when you write, and obviously I wrote the screenplay, and you know, from that point of view, rather than looking at it as a traditional three act structure, it was there was three parts to it. In my mind. There was a really great opening to the film that would draw people in, give them a fright, give them some scares, give them some of that visceral, give them a taste of what was to come. And then I wanted to go and spend some time with the family and hopefully have put people on edge so that then when they spend time with that family, they're wondering, well, when is this going to kick in and when is it all going to go crazy? And so I was comfortable spending time in that space with that family, getting to know and love those characters, because then when I turn it and everything falls apart for the people and the darkness rolls in and the evil wakes up, what you're kind of facing them is just that roller coaster, but you're doing it with people and characters that you care about. That was the key. So it's not a traditional three act structure, its structure, but it's still a story in three parts, which was you know, open that movie and scare the hell out of people, get them on board, strap them in, give them people that they love, and then just kid is shit out of everybody.

00:24:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned the writing process of this, and I always here to write about what, you know, Like if I were writing a horror movie, I would write about like the sleep paralysis, that face when I felt like there was like a demon on my chest. But for writing a movie like this, like where do you go in your mind? Do you like draw from personal experiences? Do you have like experiences with any kind of like demonic presence? Where do you go?

00:24:45
Speaker 3: I've got all these cheese grater wounds. And again it's actually back to character in a lot of ways, like I look to my family and people that I know. I'm not a parent, I don't have children, but the three kids in this movie are kind of loosely based on my sister's three children, for example, So that that was a place that I looked in terms of character. And then I actually wrote the film during the very first COVID lockdown that took place, so I was kind of trapped in my apartment, and that really aided me in just looking at the basic trappings of domestic life and how I could kind of use those. So in a way, I'm still drawing on quite banal things like I said, cheese great, or something you use when you're making a sandwich or you're making lasagna or whatever it might be. You know, you drink some wine from a glass, or you play with a toy er, you use a scissors to cut something, and it might seem obvious, but I was able to kind of stare at those objects and think about ways of using them. So again, I just will always lean into what I know. I've always, as you know, as a grown up, essentially lived in an apartment, so also kind of that context of that place of not knowing who's above, who's below, who's left, and who's right, and and what might kind of walk up the corridor in this strange place because you're in your own little island, locked in a box when you live in an apartment. So all of those things were still kind of personal and things that I could lean into to just try and draw a little bit of influence out of. Luckily, how haven't faced any real world demonic possessions yet, but you know.

00:26:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe for the next movie you get possessed.

00:26:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to be careful. I don't like, you know, research something and dabble with the with the wrong juju that then brings something my way that I don't want.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: This movie has one of my favorite just single images when Lily Sullivan has the chainsaw. She's covered in blood. All you can see is the white of her eyes and the white of her teeth. Did you have to fight for the amount of blood used in this movie?

00:26:27
Speaker 2: Not?

00:26:27
Speaker 3: Like not in terms of ambition. One of the biggest battles is actually, like, when you use that volume of blood, it's pretty expensive. It becomes like a serious budget line when you're when you're making a film. So it was finding the right way of making sure we could we could get all the blood right and use all the blood the way that we actually like needed to do it.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: What was the blood budget?

00:26:46
Speaker 3: I actually couldn't tell you how much we spent on it. I can tell you it was. It was around three thousand gallons I think, so, which is about in you know, I'm from Europe, so it's like six and a half thousand liters. So it was a lot of blood, but the expense of aspect was I made it clear really early on that we wouldn't cheat. There was no water with red food coloring or using something else in color correcting it. It's like, it's got to be movie blood. The cast have to suffer in a way, and they did when they were drenched in all of that sticky stuff that stick skin together, you lose hair, you can't walk properly. It's like it's really intense. But it actually added in a good way to their discomfort because it made them feel something very very real, and that was important.

00:27:26
Speaker 1: That final scene, all the blood coming down the elevator. It just made me feel whenever you first make the first trailer for this movie and you put that out, do you ever worry like this might be a little bit too scary for just like the general going like movie person.

00:27:41
Speaker 3: There's always that line, you know, because I wanted this movie to play to a wide audience, so I guess we got it right. But there's of course you ask those questions because there are certain people that just go no, no, no, no, there's no way I can watch this. But to be fair, those people also maybe will struggle to watch it one way or another, and maybe they want to wait and watch it at home. They're going to struggle to watch it in a room with a bunch of strangers in the theater or whatever. But I think you just got to put your best foot forward. And the goal of the trailer was to make it entertaining and scary. I don't think there's a line that's too scary. It's like it was a comedy. Hey, that trailer was too funny. The one thing I was really happy with was the trailer showed people a lot, but there was so much more to discover. So I remember that you'd always get comments and the trailer come out, it's like, oh, I hope they haven't shown everything. And I was kind of rubbing my hands in the background, going, you kind of ain't seen nothing yet, because we obviously there's there's quite a monstrous conclusion to the film, and nobody had a clue about that until the film came out, and and a lot of other kind of great kills and stuff like that. So yeah, I think you've got to make it scary. You've got to appeal to as wide an audience as you can, but you've got to try and push it right out to the line as far as you can. And again, great team and Warner Brothers. I think they you know, and you know, really took it to the right place.

00:28:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I've never been just scared off a trailer alone going into a movie, like I felt terrified in the theater the first time I watched it. So that was awesome. So I thought the movie was great. Really great time talking to you. I really appreciate it.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Nice to speak to you too.

00:29:07
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into a spoiler free movie review. Now let's talk about Disney and Pixar's Elemental which if you're a frequent listener of this podcast or if you are new, just know that right now, I kind of have a love hate relationship with Pixar. And before you say, whoa dude, you just turned thirty two, of course you're not gonna like a movie geared towards kids. I feel like every movie is a piece of art and deserves to be able to be commented on. That is what I do. I watch and I review movies, whether it's a big horror movie, whether it's a high fly in action movie, or whether it is a movie primarily geared towards kids. I think there should be something for everybody, and every piece of art has the right to be discussed, and that is what I do on this podcast. So yes, it may be a movie geared towards kids, and I know I am not the primary demographic for a Pixar movie like this, but I a also no what made those original movies great, what I was inspired by as a kid. Don't have kids myself, but I am speaking to ten year old eight year old movie Mike what he loved in Pixar movies and what I've seen in their trends over time. I just feel like as of late, their imagination is kind of fizzled out and they are not only retelling the same stories, which I think is fine. I think the same stories can be retold so that kids now can learn the things I learned as a kid with new characters. That is fine, you can do that. But Pixar in particular has always been at the cutting edge of animation and storytelling, and in the last really three years, in all the movies they've come out with have it pushed the envelope and they become so much more abstract that I'm not really able to grasp on to the story, to the characters, and they don't really leave a lasting impression that I would have wanted as a kid. So that is the perspective I am coming from somebody who wants these movies to be as magical.

00:31:03
Speaker 3: Now.

00:31:03
Speaker 1: Maybe they are to some kids, but I really think our children deserve better. I'm looking out for the kids, y'all, because I know someday my future kids, I want them to experience and have a childhood like me when it comes to movies, And I don't think it is there right now, but I think they can get back. Will this be the movie to do it? And I don't think so. Elemental was very okay. What the movie is about. It revolves around this city where fire, water, land, and air all live together. They are all the residents of this city. It focuses on a fiery young woman named Ember, who represents the fire element and she discovers this go with the flow guy named Wade, who represents the water element. And Ember is at a point in her life where she's struggling with her identity. She works at this store that sells a lot of fire things, and it's one that her dad built from the ground up. He immigrated from another world, had nothing. Was they able to build this store, and now, as he is getting older about to retire, have her run and operate it. The problem is she has never had a successful day at running the store, and Ember has a problem with her temper. Anytime a customer gets under her skin, she explodes with rage and fire goes everywhere. So her dad is telling her, yo, you have to chill out. You have to be in control of your emotions. You have to deal with these customers successfully in order to run the business. So Ember is trying to get her emotions under control, essentially failing in That leads her to discover Wade, who is a safety inspector and through her fit of rage, discovers that the shop has so many violations. He reports them to his boss and essentially is going to shut down the store. So this entire movie is them two working together after he realizes how much the store means to her and her family, to try and get the store from being condemned. So this Pixar movie is very much more a slice of life story when it comes to Pixar and the movies I tend to enjoy In the Pixar world are really big adventures. I think of movies like Up. I think of movies like Coco, where this small little character goes on a very big journey. This movie was not that, but it did what it set out to do very well. And this movie really teaches us a similar lesson that we got with Zoutopia just less than a decade ago, not to judge others based on stereotypes, teaching us acceptance and also teaching us to embrace the things that make us different and using them to our benefit. And that is the lesson we learned through the relationship between Ember and Wade. They are fire and water, two elements that are not supposed to go together, but they develop this not only friendship, but really love throughout the movie, and that is something different that I wasn't expecting here. Elemental really played out like the first pix Our rom com. It was these two characters who had every reason to not be friends, not be together, but really showing their kind of love story and I thought that was kind of nice. And through their relationship you also get some really good visuals in this movie. What I felt like really shine through in this movie was their use of lighting. There are some scenes where it's a nighttime city scene, but they use almost these neon elements to bring this life to this city. I thought that was a really cool, fun visual aspect. When it comes to the character designed specifically, doesn't really feel like Pixar to me, and I think if they did make every single Pixar movie it look like the classic animated Pixar style, we know that would probably get a little bit boring. It just feels a little too abstract for me to grasp onto these characters. And I'm not saying that abstract is bad. If it's done well, it can be really effective. But I just felt like none of these characters left a lasting impression on my mind. I don't really want to see them again on a big screen. The other lesson I thought was really beneficial to kids in this movie was showing you that different people come from different backgrounds. Fire in this case comes from a poorer background, comes from nothing, which is something I related to. And on the opposite end, Wade comes from a more wealthy background and has parents who have connections, and it shows you the differences in both of their lives and what happens if you bring those two people together and how that can kind of clash of one person being like I've had to work for everything I have in my life and the other person essentially having things handed to them, and why sometimes that can be unfair to just assume that somebody who is rich with parents who have good jobs have essentially just had things handed to them and that they haven't had any kind of adversity in their life, which isn't the case. They also make a commentary with Wade being very in touch with us emotions, which is another great lesson for kids. It's okay to cry. Isn't had to be viewed as a comical thing for somebody just to cry. So what I'm getting to is this entire movie just felt very safe to me. They didn't really take any chances. They didn't really do anything that would make me think this is the new Pixar franchise that's going to demand an Elemental two and three. Even if that was the plan, they didn't really do that with this movie, and within the first weekend at the box office it would be considered a flop because they spent two hundred million dollars on this movie. When everything was said and done, so that's not only with the production costs in this movie, but also with marketing, which I find kind of crazy that they spent that much money on marketing when really I felt like they did kind of a bad job with it. The trailer itself did not give me a sense of the story. The first time I saw the Elemental trailer, I wasn't in I had no idea what it was going to be about. Didn't really showcase the characters to me. So I think think their trailers did a bad job selling this movie. But also we've been talking about this entire episode movie posters. The movie poster was just the water hand and the fire hand wanting to touch Again. Doesn't really tell you a whole lot about the story. So I feel like the visuals that were pretty good in this movie weren't showcased in any of the marketing tactics, because in the first three day weekend, it ended up having one of the worst Pixar openings of all time, making less than thirty million dollars. The one Pixar movie to have a worse opening weekend than Elemental was Toy Story from Back in the Day, but it was a very much different environment for that movie because Pixar just wasn't what it is now what it was then when the first Pixar movie came out. So I would honestly say this leans more towards being the worst Pixar opening of all time. And I wasn't going to bring this up, but I've seen so many articles on it saying the reason this movie flopped is because it has a non binary character. Everybody wants to make Disney and Pixar movies political, when that is not the case. I watched this movie as an adult and I didn't even pick up on that. I don't think this movie is trying to push any agenda on kids. I really think that is the headline meant to sensationalize a non issue and get a bunch of people riled up and make people not want to go watch this movie. So articles like that are really just trying to divide people and create this kind of hysteria that Disney is awful and Pixar is awful for some political reason. That is not the case. So if ever you think I have a beef with Disney and Pixar because it's a political reason, that is not me at all. My beef comes down to the animation, the characters, and the storytelling. So overall, I don't think it's a bad movie. I just think it's very okay. But you cannot be putting out an okay movie in theaters right now when we just had one of the best animated movies of all time just a few weeks ago, Spider Man Across the Spider Verse, which is such an amazing an artistic movie that pushes the envelope, and then you have this movie just kind of sitting there, which looks honestly laughable in comparison when it comes to the art, and Pixart needs to be the one dominating animation. So I really think the reason this movie didn't succeed at the box office, and it may pick up a little bit of steam, it may end up making some of that money back once it goes to streaming, once the full numbers come out with the international box office as well. But with so many great movies coming out right now in the summer, just one after another, so many big titles, this one just kind of got lumped in there. So I do think it's also a victim of the time it came out Father's Day weekend. I don't really see a whole lot of people rushing to see Elemental. It was maybe just a bunch of dads who got dragged there by accident. I also don't know how long family friendly movies like this will have success at the box office. When it's becoming more and more expensive for a family with three, four or five kids to go to the movies, and you're already getting them with their Disney Plus subscription. It's gonna have to be something really groundbreaking to get most people to want to spend their money to go watch an okay movie in theaters that they could just wait another few months for to watch it home. So maybe Disney Plus is kind of shooting itself in the foot with having that option. And you think of other movies that have had great success on the illumination side, with the Super Mario Brothers movie not only being the highest grossing animated movie of the year, but at crossing the billion dollar mark is just the highest grossing movie overall. And look at what they did great. They had a bigger, well known cast, they had a much more fun trailer movie posters, there were so much more hype around that movie. But of course they also had a legacy game, one of the most famous video games of all time, probably the most iconic video game character we will ever know with Mario, so that also had the international interest as well. But Illumination also gets to write with the Minions movie last year, they had one of the top five highest grossing movies of the year as well, So maybe Disney and Pixar needs to start looking at their competitor who was doing so much better when it comes to just box office numbers. Are they making better art? No, I wouldn't say that, but I think they are selling it better, and they also aren't splitting it between their streaming service. There's much more of a reason to go watch one of those movies in theaters than there is to go watch a Disney Pixar movie. So I left this movie just thinking, well, that was a cute story, but nothing I need to write home about, and nothing I think you need to go see in theaters. You can really just wait for it to come out on Disney Plus. So for Elemental, I give it three out of five water drops.

00:41:47
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie Mike Treylor Paul.

00:41:52
Speaker 1: I did not know what to expect from Craven the Hunter. It comes to us from Sony's Spider Verse, who has his story? Not made the best Marvel movies, I feel like they haven't made anything completely awful aside from Morbius. But it's like scratching a niche. I go into a Marvel movie wanting an it's to be scratched, and it's the best feeling when you have something that just needs to be scratched and you scratch it and you feel completely satisfied. After going into a Sony Marvel movie is like going into a movie knowing that it's not gonna fully scratch that itch, you're gonna leave still still need in that scratch. That is what these movies have done for me. With movies like Venom one and two, which I just rewatched for the second time, and as much as I love Venom, I just can't fully say that those are good movies. But they're not completely bad movies. I just feel like they had everything go okay as far as box office numbers, as far as reception, that they're not really gonna change a whole lot. But after the tanking of Morbius, maybe that gave them a little bit of a differ perspective. Going into another anti hero story. Essentially, these movies are exploring the villains of Spider Man, who has the best villains. We'll get into more of that. Craven the Hunter is coming out on October sixth. Before I get into my full thoughts, here is just a little bit of the trailer.

00:43:17
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're show weakness, you will give our enemies. And opening shot he is weak like his mother, leave him. What happened that day.

00:43:39
Speaker 1: I stared death in the face for the first time, I saw my true self. So this movie stars Aaron Taylor Johnson, who is our anti hero, who is our protagonist in this movie, and he is seeking revenge against his father played by Russell Crowe, who essentially in this trailer leaves him for dead. He is out on a hunting trip with his father. He ends up getting attacked by a lion, severely wounding him and in that trailer you hear Russell Crowe saying he's weak, saying to leave him behind. And in this trailer you essentially see his origin story as the blood from the lion drips into his wounds, giving him this superability to have almost the same powers of a lion, being able to hunt, being able to kill, being able to attack, and basically move around like a lion. So he is the ultimate predator, and isn't that the most relatable story of all time? The greatest villain ever you have to face is your own father, your own flesh and blood. So I think the premise of this movie actually sounds pretty good of him not only trying to fight this other super villain, but that supervillain just happens to be his own father. Done dun Dune, So I guess I was expecting this movie to have a similar tone as Venom one and two, which I feel like with Venom one tried to have a little bit more of a serious approach. It had the R rating, but it also had a little bit of comedy, and I feel like after that first movie, they decided we should make Venom a little bit more funny, a little bit more charming, So they really leaned more into that in Venom two, which I just didn't like as much. So I'm happy to see that in this R rated Marvel movie, it looks like they are fully dedicating to just being a brutal, vicious action movie and not straying away from the blood and violence. And Marvel has not only good but great villains, particularly just talking about in the Spider Verse, you have Craven the Hunter, who I didn't really know a whole lot about before this but looks amazing, has a great story. But I'm talking villains like doc Och, Rhino, Vulture, Green, Goblin, hob Goblin, Venom is my favorite of all time, and I just wish that those movies were better. But I'll take it. I'll take the Sony Spider Verse doing solo movies on all of these villains, which is really what they are owning, because Marvel is really split into two categories right now. You have the Disney MCU side, who just recently got the rights back to The Incredible Hulk, but there's always been this divide on who has the rights to what characters, and on the Sony side, they still have Spider Man and all, if not most, of his villains. So that is why we are getting more movies like this, And so far they haven't made a movie that can compare to anything in the MCU. They just have a different tone. They don't really have their vision on what they're trying to do here, the world they're trying to create I thought more Vius was going to connect a little bit more with Spider Man, and that's really what they keep teasing us with and making us interested, like, oh, we're gonna give you a little Spider Man, which we know you love. We're gonna give you a little bit of Spider Man, and then they kind of take it away from us and give us just like a quick little Easter egg, which is fine. But I just know that our rated superhero movies can be great, so I just feel like they need to make them better. But in that this movie already looks fifty times better than Morbius. It has a more serious tone, it's a little bit more set in reality, and I think Aaron Taylor Johnson looks magnificent and he looks perfectly cast as Craven the Hunter. I loved him recently in Bullet Train. I feel like kick Ass, which he started, is a very underrated superhero movie, and he was also great as Quicksilver aka Wanda's brother in The Avengers Age of Ultron, So I feel like he has the experience and all the qualities I want for a lead in this type of movie. So I think this could be a step in the right direction for Sony. This movie is coming out on October sixth this year. After that, they have Madam Webb, which is coming out on February sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and then there's another Venom movie that's supposed to come out next year in October, but that's only if everything keeps coming out according to plan. And last week, as of now, it looks like the Spider Man spinout starring Bad Bunny called El Muerto has been taken off of Sony's release schedule, and this is probably due to the fact that the writer's strike is going on right now and they wanted to make some changes to the script, but they don't have the ability to do that right now. And then you have the star Bad Bunny, who is a global music icon right now about to go on tour, only has this limited window to get this movie filmed. If they're not able to make the changes to the script during the writer's strike, he's going to miss out on that window because he has to go back out and tour the world. So you lose your star. So they may shelve this movie, which I was very interested in watching because it was supposed to be the first real Latino lead character in a Marvel movie, elmerto is also an anti hero. He is a Mexican wrestler who in the comic books fights Spider Man. I just thought that was going to be an interesting, fun movie. I mean, there's another connection with Bullet Train because just like Aaron Taylor Johnson, Bad Bunny was also in Bullet Train, and I was curious to see how he would handle a leading role in a movie. So I had a lot of my favorite things Bad Bunny, who I'm a fan of his music, I'm a fan of him as a person. You have a Spider Man villain getting his origin story, and then you have the Latino representation, which I was excited for. But now it looks like it's been ripped away from me. But that's okay. I'm gonna let it go. I'm gonna let elmertodae much like the meaning of his name.

00:49:24
Speaker 2: And that was this week's edition of Movie Lin.

00:49:27
Speaker 1: Tramer Bar And that's gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. Before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week. This week's listener shout out comes to you from my Instagram comments on my flash review, and it's from Lizzie, who also shared her review on the movie, and Liz wrote, it was a giant bummer. I had such high hopes, even though Ezra Miller is a trash human. Those hopes were dashed ten minutes into the movie. Once the Hospital Secrets came on, I knew it wasn't getting any better. Two hours later, I didn't even stay for the end credits. Such a letdown. I agree with you, Liz, that opening sequence. Although when I first watched it, I thought, Okay, they're doing something different here, but the CGI in that was so weird and off putting. It gave me this bad taste in my mouth like that I couldn't get out for the rest of the movie. And like you, Liz, I wanted it to get better, and it just never did, even when Michael Keaton came out. And for the first time, it was also hard for me to separate the art from the artist. And Ezra Miller has been accused, has been arrested of some pretty awful things, and I just got a sense that they didn't really take a whole lot of consideration of what they wanted the Flash character to be in this movie, and the message they wanted to convey and the tone they wanted to portray. That I never felt connected with Ezra Miller's Flash, and that is a big part of a superhero movie. I feel like they should have recast the Flash. So that's also how I still feel about this movie. Thank you Liz for that comment. You are this week's listener of the week. And oh my gosh, anytime you say anything negative about DC, you get people coming after you. You should have seen my dms and comments this week. People telling me I was dumb, telling me I was hating on a movie just for the sake of hating on a movie, which is not the case for me. If you listen to this podcast, you know in the past I have defended DC. I still get dragged from my Shazam to review because I still think that was a pretty good movie. I enjoyed Shazam two better than Shazam one, and maybe it's because I had low expectations going into that movie that I had a lot of fun, and the opposite was the situation with the Flash that I had such high expectations that were not met. So I don't go into any DC movie with any kind of agenda I want it to be good. I want to believe in DC, but they just continue to let me down. So I am not one of those people who just has a negative opinion about everything DC and jumps on with everybody else. I don't look at any other reviews before I give my review for that exact reason I don't do it. I don't want anybody else to influence me. So just know I always give you my honest opinions, my honest thoughts, and I never expect you to agree with everything I say. I let you know my bias if there ever is one, I will always just give you my truth. So to everyone online, assuming they know who I am from one single clip, much like I do my homework before giving a review, do your homework on me before you leave those dumb comments. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later