Top 5 Movies Mike Wants to See Before He Dies + Movie Review: Venom: The Last Dance + Trailer Park: Ballerina

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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 movies I want to be alive to see. I know what's kind of a morbid topic. It is Halloween week. I'm not doing a horror theme or scary movie episode, but to some that topic might be a little bit morbid. In the movie review, we'll be talking about the conclusion to the Venom franchise, Venom the Last Dance. Did it live up to the expectations of closing out well? I don't know if anybody has real expectations about Venom. The movies have been fun. Where does this one lie compared to the other two? And in the trailer park, we'll take a look at the john Wick spinoff starring Ana the Ottamas Ballerina. Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning movie crew. I love you guys. And now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.

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Speaker 1: A man with so much movie nalla.

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Speaker 2: He's basically like a walking ONMTB with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network.

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Speaker 1: This is movie Mike, some movie podcast. Some major movie news dropped last week and it got me thinking, I want to be alive to see this movie. So I decided to put together a list of my top five movies I want to be alive to see. I'm not sick or anything, but anytime a movie gets announced, just announce, not even that they're working on it or there's a script or a director attached, just when it gets announced, just the hype on that. I get excited. But I also think, man, am I gonna be alive to see this movie? That is always how I feel, especially with all of the MCU movies where they announce their slate and they're like, boy, do we have a movie coming for you in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven. I'm like, I need this now. And it's not that I'm sick or have any reason to believe I'm gonna drop dead in my thirties, but I think I have this anxiety of something bad is always going to happen. If you want to take a look inside my brain, I always feel like there is something looming happening. I almost feel like when I go to sleep at night, there is a sword dangling ride above me that could come down at any time. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Mike, and I suffer from anxiety. That is just how I feel. And one of my biggest things about living to see the next day is I really do it. Not only to enjoy my wife, my family, and friends, but I want to see all these movies that are getting announced because my biggest fear in life is not dying, but it is dying and not knowing how they're going to do some of these movies, especially ones that have been rumored for so long. If I went away and I got to Heaven or maybe Hell, I hope I don't get to Hell. But if I die and they don't have a movie theater wherever I go, no way of me seeing any of these movies. I am coming back as a ghost and I will be in the rear you go in Nashville, sitting there to watch these movies. That is gonna be my unfinished business. And that is what keeps me up at night. And I get so excited when they announce these movies. But when it's three four or five years away. I'm like, why does it have to be so long? Can't you go film it now so I can watch it tomorrow, maybe by Friday. But that's not the way the world works. I also think we live in a world now where we get so much information all the time about everything. Back in the nineties, we did not look I sound like a freakin' boomer right now. Back in my day, Back when I was a kid in the nineties, or even the two thousands, maybe later in like the twenty tens, we didn't know about every phase of every movie at every single time. And that is why it feels like now, whenever a movie finally comes out in theaters, we've known about it forever because we hear the moment it gets announced. We hear the moment a director gets attached to it. We hear the moment a script is done, and we hear another moment when that director drops out and they recast. We get reported on every aspect of the process to by the time the movie actually comes out in theaters, we are exhausted. We feel like we've known everything about this movie. We've seen trailer after trailer after trailer. Sometimes I wish we could just go back to that time where we see a trailer and be like, Oh, I want to go see that, and then it comes down in theaters. We're not sitting here looking at pictures on threads trying to decide if that really is the look of Superman? Is this gonna be in this movie? Are they going to tease this character? And a lot of how I feel and in describing here is frustrations with superhero comic book culture. That is kind of the nature of this relationship we have Harvard. We want to know all the things, we want to know the things being teased, So a bit of it it is a product of how we treat these movies. But there are cases with other types of movies too, so you're even going to see that reflected in this list. So what I did is I put together my top five of movies I want to be alive to see that are already announced. They are either already have their own release date or the idea of these movies are actually out and they are going to happen at some point. And then I also did my top five movies that have no indication that they are actually happening, but they are movies that in my lifetime I want to see come to fruition. So let's get the list started. Now. At number five is Christopher Nolan's untitled project, The news of This really just broke last week. It is supposed to come out in theaters July seventeenth, twenty twenty six. It is being written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and as of now, it stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Florence Pugh. So Christopher Nolan now kind of creating his own new cast of characters, like a new pool, because Christopher Nolan since his first early films, has always gone to the same cast of actors, which I love because I that gives a director their identity, their brand of who they like to work with. If I'm going to watch a Christopher Nolan movie, I'm probably gonna get Killian Murphy. I'm probably gonna get Christian Bale in some capacity. Matt Damon was in Oppenheimer, so maybe that's now them forming a relationship. Florence Pugh was also in Oppenheimer. Tom Holland was probably the only actor in Hollywood that was not in Oppenheimer. There were so many people in that massive, massive cast and whenever that movie got announced, I was thinking, Christopher Nolan doing a bio pick of somebody I really have no idea about their life what that movie is going to entail. And I went to go see that and was completely blown away by it. I still stand by my five out of five rating with that. The only movie of Christopher Nolan's in recent history that I was a little bit confused by the premise when it was first announced, And that's normally what happens with Christopher Nolan. He is so ahead of his time and forward thinking when it comes to film that a lot of his movies, like Interstellar Inception are movies that you might not get the first time you go see it in theaters or sit down to watch it at home. They often take a good two sometimes three times to rewatch to fully understand them. But for me, the movie that I was confused by when it was first announced and was still confused by when I saw it for the first time was Tenant. But with this new film, I kind of feel the same way I felt about Tenant is I don't know how he is going to make this premise good, but I have faith in him because the movie is allegedly going to be a nineteen twenties period horror movie about vampires with Tom Holland and Matt Damon and Florence Pugh thrown in there somewhere, and for me, I really don't love period pieces, especially going back to the twenties, where I can't even associate what twenties culture is, aside from people like mah, she she you haven't met my Tommy gunh that is kind of what I associate the twenties with. And to put a horror movie where Christopher Nolan hasn't done a horror movie. The closest I feel he has really gotten to the horror genre was probably Insomnia with Robin Williams and Al Pacino, but it was really more of a thriller. But based on the performances in that movie, you could paint that movie out to be a horror movie. It had some of those elements, but a straight on horror film he has not done. So maybe he wants to dip into that genre because I feel like every great director has dipped their toes in horror and that is exciting to me. It was also cool seeing how Tom Holland reacted to getting cast in this movie, which is a huge deal. Tom Holland has been so in demand in the last I would say, even just four years altogether, and for him to get a call and say that it was very reminiscent of the time that he got the phone call that he was going to be Spider Man. To think to work with that caliber of director, which I really believe now that you can't really put all your money and investment and time into just a list actors. I think when you really look at the greatest movies in history, they have to have a great director. I think an a list director has much more longevity and impact in film than an A list actor because without these people creating these unforgettable experiences and having these amazing visions, I feel like that is a foundation of filmmaking and the foundation of movies that have really affected and stayed inside of our lives, in movies that we rewatch time and time again. And sometimes you don't always feel that. I feel generally probably if you're walking down the street and talk to people about their favorite movies, sometimes they have no idea who directed them. But if you broke it down and looked at the movies that have had the most impact in America that people would say are their most favorite films of all time. What you would see is a great director behind all of those movies who have done multiple really great movies. And I feel, especially with Christopher Nolan, he is responsible for keeping some actors careers alive who otherwise maybe wouldn't have had the longevity that they had. That is exactly what Anne Hathaway said that Christopher Nolan did for her career, that without him casting her in his movies, her career maybe would have died out. So I can't wait to see what this movie is about. I just have to stay alive until twenty twenty six. At number two, I have The Batman, which is supposed to come out O this one hurts October second, twenty twenty six. And I guess the crazy part of this is that we're almost all the way through twenty twenty four, so twenty twenty five isn't that far away at this point in time. But October second, twenty twenty six, I mean, it's still October now. To have to wait another two years for this movie that has been delayed so much becase because of the strike, because of the pandemic, It's also a really big and expensive movie to make, and I have really high expectations on the Batman two for a couple of reasons. One is because Part one really changed the way I felt about Batman's portrayal in movies, really seeing him for the first time being the great detective that he is like he has described in the comic books. And I think the big criticism that all the Batman movies and even the Joker movies have now is why are we making them so dark? Why does Batman need to be so dark? He is based on a comic book. If you look back on the early iterations of Batman, like Adam West or even some of the movies of the nineties where he got a little bit more campy and cartoon like, a lot of people are demanding that we get away from the dark stuff and make Batman movies fun again and colorful. But if you look at the comic books like The Long Halloween, The Court of Vowels, a lot of the stuff back in the eighties and nineties, Batman has always been a dark comic. And yes there is the version that is more kid friendly. I think a lot of people are looking back on the first iterations of Batman back when it was first introduced. But if you look at a lot of the defining Batman stories and graphic novels and comics, it is the really dark stuff that cuts through that makes Gotham out to be this crazy city and really defines the character of Bruce Wayne and Batman. So if you think that just because it's based on a comic book that Batman was created for kids, that the movie shouldn't be as dark as they are, that you should feel shame in watching these movies because they are so dark. I think the source material is there and that is where I feel the action, the characters, the villains really shine. I also think there's a lot of anticipation going into this movie for me, and a lot of hype being built because of The Penguin right now on HBO, which is my favorite show to watch right now, easily going to be in my top three favorite shows of the year, right up there next to X Men ninety seven, which is fantastic in a much different way. But this show has a grip on me like any other show, and I think it's because I love the movie so much and there's such fantastic performances in this show, and it is really opening up the world of Gotham that I hope leads back into The Batman two. And it does give me an appreciation for TV shows based on comic books, because you are able to flesh out characters so much in multiple episode series that you can't really do in a movie you have limited time, and I think that is the big reason why some movies are getting longer, because there's so much story to tell. You want to flesh out these characters, you want to give them backstory, and you can really only cram so much of that in a two two and a half hour movie, So that is why these movies are swelling to three hours. And sometimes even I get a little bit annoyed when movies are that long. But if a movie can keep your attention for that long, I am a okay with it. And by watching The Penguin, I realize the power in television to be able to dedicate an entire hour episode to giving a character all of this amazing backstory that you really couldn't do in a movie, because an hour long episode showing why someone is the way they are, why someone is a villain, would have to be like a five to seven minute sequence in a movie, because there's so much more to get to. So I really like what Max is doing by creating the spinoff, building this entire world of Gotham for anybody who wants to know more about it, who wants to invest more into these characters, and then have them brought back into the movie, Because when you start seeing characters from The Penguin Show up and The Batman, all the fans of that show are gonna say, oh, we know all about them, We know all about them because we watched the show. And maybe to the people who only watch The Batman and then watch The Batman too, they don't really lose on an any of the meaning of it, but it really shows an appreciation to the fans of the show. So I hope that DC handles it a little bit different to where you don't necessarily have to watch the show to get the next movie, which is what Marvel does. You gotta watch this show because it's gonna be referenced here. Instead, it can be an extension of but not required watching, which I think is going to be the key difference in the next phase of DC. So that is why I'm excited at number four. The Batman too. At number three. I'm lumping in both of the Avengers movies, Avengers Doomsday, which is coming out on May first, twenty twenty six, and Avenger Secret Wars coming out on May seventh, twenty twenty seven, three years away. That is wild to me. That is a really long time. By the time this movie comes out. I'm gonna be thirty six years old. Sometimes I forget how old I am. Somebody mentioned someone being thirty one and I was like, oh, I'm thirty one. I'm like, no, I was thirty one two years ago. But I'm gonna be thirty six still going to the theater and watching superhero movies, which is another thing that people say is that the genre is going to die out. I don't think it's gonna die out. But what I'm looking forward to the most about Doom's Day, of course, to see how they bring Robert Downey Junior into the picture. The more and more I see and read about it, and the more and more I get invested into the character of doctor Doom, I get more excited and I really feel like something is brewing and I just want to be in that theater to experience that moment, the first time you see the person that we know as Tony Stark now as a villain. I have to know how that happens. I cannot leave this world until I know how that happens. I'm just gonna say that that is already gonna be a core movie memory for me, like a lot of Marvel movies have contained. And on top of that, the next year we get Secret Wars, which is my favorite story out of anything in ma Marvel Comics. It is on my wall in this studio, I have the issue number eight with the first appearance of the Black Suit Spider Man. I feel it is the best story because it takes all the superheroes, puts them on a planet and pits them against each other, the X Men, Fantastic Four, the Avengers. That is going to be such a big feat for the Russo Brothers to get right. But if I had to invest in somebody to do it, it would be with the people who brought us Infinity War and who brought us Endgame. Everything now, of course, is a rumor of how they are going to do it. I cannot wait to see those stories come to fruition. I just got to make it to twenty twenty seven at number two. I have TMNT the last ronin. When this got announced earlier this year, I thought I was dreaming this is one of those movies. I never thought what happened, because I have been a lifelong teenage mutant Ninja Turtles fan since the first one back in nineteen ninety. Growing up, my favorite was probably, well, at least the one I watch the most was Secret of the Us because that one was a lot more appealing to me as a kid, because they knew that okay. The first one was a little bit more serious, the violence was a little bit more intense because the demo was the kids who grew up with the cartoon in the eighties and now wanted to see that cartoon come to life. And for me as a kid, seeing Secret of the Ewes was exactly what I wanted. It was fun quick lines, It was fun battles where they weren't necessarily hurting each other with weapons, they were using other things to fight off the villains, and at the core of it, it was just a lot of fun. You have Vanilla Ice dancing. I still see it going on tour with Ninja Turtles because of how big This song was in that movie. But now The Last Ronin is going to take everything we know about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and totally flip it on its side, because it's now going to be an R rated version based upon the graphic novel, which is the graphic novel that has really gotten me into rehic novels. It entirely changed my perspective on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lore. And if you're not familiar with what happens in The Last Rownin, there is only one remaining Ninja Turtle who was out to avenge the deaths of his brothers and the death of Splinter, And it's a very raw and emotional story. And I know we've been talking about things that have a darker, sinister feel to it, anything, why do the Ninja Turtles that need to be dark and sinister? They say calabunga and they eat pizza. But if you think back to that first movie, the root of the anger of the Ninja Turtles of being a now cast, of wanting to be heroes to these humans, but they also see you as a monster. There is a lot of pent up anger in there. And I think why this movie is going to be successful. It's obviously because it's in the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, and you're gonna have the people like me who grew up with them. I mean, they were even a little bit ahead of my time. I feel like you had to be an eighties kid to really fully appreciate the Turtles. But they've had so many iterations throughout the years that you've no matter when you grew up, you were introduced to them in some capacity. But I think now at this point in time which the movie is supposed to there's no official release date on it now they're working on it. It was just now earlier this year, so it's probably going to be twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, and by that time, I'm going to be in thirty six, thirty seven years old. I'll probably be thirty five thirty six years old, and I'm going to be at that age where they're going to be making it for the people like me who grew up with them and who are now adults and probably feeling like these type of ways that these characters are and what you would do to avenge the death of your brothers, which is something you really couldn't explore back when they were teenagers. And I think the big success of this movie is going to come down to the look of the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles, because back when they did it with Michael Bay, the look just wasn't right. That I never felt any connection to those characters because they were entirely CGI, which I feel now they're gonna probably lean towards CGI, and I'm not opposed to that, but they look so freakish like and so oversized and had no real warmth to them that I never really found myself grasping to those characters like I did to the rubber suits back in the nineties. And it's not just because I had the nostalgia for those suits. It's just because it felt a little bit cold and a little bit faceless, that this really isn't how these characters should be represented. So I'm okay if they use some CGI, which has greatly improved. If you look at the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, they do a fantastic job with CGI, especially with the character like Rocket Raccoon, where it looks like on the screen that you could actually go in there and touch them. Even though he is a CGI character. That movie also had a fantastic wardrobe and makeup and hair department. They use over twenty thousand prosthetics, five hundred wigs, and one hundred and thirty facial hair pieces to create the characters and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three. That movie actually broke the record for the most prosthetics ever used in a film. So to make this teenage mutant Ninja Turtles movie look great, you're gonna have to spend some money, which I hope they actually invest the money in this movie, because that is gonna make or break it. You can't rely on the power of the name and the nostalgia bate and it doesn't just take a great story like basing it on the Great graphic novel. You have to spend the money to make the movie look good, which I feel gets overlooked so much in reboots and sequels that you think, which sounds so elementary. Oh, to get a movie that people are gonna be excited about, it has to look good. Yes, it has to represent what the characters embody, and that's gonna cost money, and studios cannot cut corners in that department. So I'm fine with the CGI, use your animation, use your special effects, make it to where the CGI is not distracting. If you go on YouTube and look up some tmn T test footage that somebody did of these fights between Leonardo and Donna Tello with some foot clan, it looks fantastic. The skin actually looks like skin, you could touch it very much. Looks like those nineties rubber suits, but it has this texture to it that I think wild look fantastic. Also looks pretty expensive. So to the creators of this movie, go to YouTube and find the people who made that and put it in this movie and it will work. So no official release date. I'm hoping twenty twenty six, but probably looking more at twenty twenty seven. I have to be alive to see the last ronin But now at number one. The movie that inspired this entire list because Tom Holland went on Good Morning America last week and said, Spider Man is happening, and I quote he said, all I can tell you is that it's happening. The idea is crazy. It's a little different to anything we've done before, but I think the fans are really gonna respond to it. I feel like Tom Holland had to be very careful to not give any spoilers. You know, he knows more than that he has famously spoiled some movies. But I also think Marvel probably lets him actually do that, Like, hey, be kind of a funny bit to have Tom Holland go on different things and spoil movies, but that's really just the way to create time. I would do the same thing. But Spider Man for is set to start filming next summer. He's going to be back, Zandaa's going to be back. I don't want to say too much about how that movie ended if you haven't seen it yet. Although I feel weird about spoilers to superhero movies because to me, they're kind of like live events. Marvel gives everybody like that first weekend really to not post spoilers, but I almost feel like that goes out the window whenever the next Marvel project is announced, because they always tease that by talking about what happened in the last one. So I almost feel like you have to be a part of those movies as they happen, and the same rules don't apply, especially when one Avengers movie goes right into the next one. So if you're talking about the next one, you're referencing what happened in the other one. So it's hard to keep all those same spoiler rules on Marvel projects. But for the sake of this podcast, I won't say what happened at the end of that one, but I have to assume what he is saying there that is different, and what fans are going to respond to has to be how they ended that one and how they're going to carry on Spider Man's story into this one. If I had to rank all of the Tom Holland Spider Man movies as of now, I rewatch Homecoming a couple weeks ago, I would say every single year, I rewatch every Spider Man movie. Right now, it is all the Tom Holland Spider Man movies. Homecoming. Ough, I have to put that one at number one because I had to put myself back to win that movie first came out, and how refreshing it was, and how I felt that they finally got the Peter Parker character down by making them younger, by making them more in love with the world, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and really playing into making Peter Parker feel like a high schooler very inexperienced, and that was the Peter Parker that we needed, especially to be so different than Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire, who looked like, you know, thirty five year old Spider Man out there playing teenagers. So I felt like they got the character himself of Peter Parker at least really down in that movie. And number two I would put No Way Home because you saw the evolution from Peter Parker into what embodies all the things that I would classify it as what makes a great Spider Man, so not only having that childlike sense of humor, that weediness, but also going through some real chemical changes that turn Peter Parker into really being Spider Man. We felt that in No Way Home. And then at the bottom a number three I would put Far from Home. Even though I had a great theater experience when I saw that back when it first came out, every time I watch it again and again, I find myself liking that one a little bit less. Even though I love Mysterio, I love Jake Jillenhall in that movie, it's just when I compare them to not only the other two Spider Man movies and then all the other Spider Man movies with maguire and Andrew Garfield. I think that one just ends up getting lower and lower on the list, so I would put that in the bottom three here, but probably in the bottom three overall. It is interesting to me that they call this movie Spider Man for even though none of these movies had numbers, and it's like, man, if we could have ever got the Amazing Spider Man three and four or Sam Raimi Spider Man four, I'm still kind of holding onto home if they do those at some point, especially after what happened in No Way Home. But for some reason, to me, this doesn't feel like a true Spider Man for. But it is a movie I need to see before I die again. I'm doing okay right now, but that is the of the top five movies that have actually been announced that I want to be alive to see. I'll go through quickly five other movies I hope to see in my lifetime before I die, and these are movies that haven't even been announced. There is no indication that any of these are happening. So don't take what I'm saying about these movies. And hey, Mike was talking about this movie actually happening. These are not happening. This is all just from my desires of movies that I hope they finally do because they are stories and characters I hope have justice in the film world. At number five is Gambit, and that is largely due to the success of Wolverine and Deadpool, and there's been kind of rumors that this was going to happen. I've seen fake posters, but I really feel like Gambit has had a great year, especially with X Men ninety seven, and he's been exposed to a lot of people who didn't really know him from the animated series or the comic books, had no idea he had an accent, so are maybe confused by the way he was depicted in Will and Deadpool. I'm not sure if they're gonna work Gambit into the next two Avengers movies, but I hope at some point he gets his own solo movie. Maybe after they announced that they pulled Blade from their upcoming list of movies, maybe they're working in a Gambit movie. So at number five, I have Gambit, and number two I have a proper dragon Ball movie. I don't care if it's Dragonball Z dragon Ball Super because in the world of dragon Ball. They are fantastic animated movies that I would take any day of the week. But the only live action American version we have is Dragonball Evolution from two thousand and nine, which is horrendous. The character design in that movie is awful. You can't even tell some of the characters are supposed to be certain characters because they look so bad. The action is bad, everything about Dragonball was wasted in that film. It looked like a parody movie. And I was so excited for that movie back in two thous thousand and nine because I've been a Dragonball Z fan since I was a kid, going to Mexico and watching it in Spanish with my cousins. Dragon Ball was huge in Mexico all over the world that I watched it more with Spanish dubs than I ever did with English dubs. And the world of dragon Ball is so immersive, which is why I have to believe it is such a daunting task to take on and make a two hour movie too, because there is so much of a world to explore. But I think if you really focused on the action instead of trying to build all those characters and do everything all at once, in one movie and just made a really good action movie and the story of Goku. I think that would be fantastic, and I hope I live to see that. At number three, I have the Simpsons Movie Tube, primarily because every time I get on Facebook, somebody is posting a fake movie poster, which I think. I want to do an episode where I just take all the fake posters I've seen on Facebook that people believe are actually happening, even though they are such bad photoshop. You have Graham Wichita still believing that Forrest Gump two is happening, and it's a Christmas movie. It's not happening, so don't get all up in rage in the comments. Those are fake posters. But I always see somebody saying the Simpsons to a movie has been announced and it's confirmed that there's no word that it's actually happening. I feel they just put this story out to enraged nerds like me who love the two thousand and seven movie and want to see another movie happen, especially with knowing that The Simpsons aren't going to go on forever. They did that episode earlier this year, but they tease their serious finale, and that was just like Oh man, I kind of want to see it come to an end in my lifetime, just because I want to experience it. And I think we're at that point to where really the only thing that would cause the Simpsons to end would be one of the legacy voice actors passing away, which would be really sad, and I'm not sure that they would go on and replace somebody like a Dan Castanletta who does the voice of Homer Simpson. I think that would cause a real big decision to make of do we continue this or do we decide just to end this. So I hope before anything tragic like that happens again it's a very odd, more fidly themed episode. Before anything like that happens, I hope they make another Simpsons movie. At number two, I have a live action Miles Morales movie, which has kind of been teased with all of the success of the indto the Spider Verse movies, So I think, out of anything on this list, that is probably the easiest. Oh yeah, We're gonna make that movie eventually. That has to be a timing issue because they have to get all the animated movies out there. They also have to find the right Miles morales for that project. So out of everything I've been talking about, that one probably has the longest date to ever happen. I'm gonna put that one if I had to, at twenty thirty four at the earliest, but at number one movies I hope to see before I die, even though there's no indication of me dying or anybody making This movie is a proper live action Pokemon movie, not Detective Pikachu. We don't want that anymore. I want a full on Pokemon movie, and they should call it Pokemon Indigo, which would be based on the original anime series that we all grew up with and were introduced back in the nineties, heavily based on that TV show and also the first Game Boy video game, red version, blue version, even the yellow version. I think that would be an instant cash cow. All these thirty plus year olds who grew up with that video game and just have been wanting to see that for our entire lives. Just take this idea that we grew up with, the simple concept and bring it to the big screen, which is all we've ever wanted. We had the animated movies, which are fantastic, which have a fantastic little cubby hole in my heart. Those are great, but I just want to see it live action, and I did enjoy it To take a Pikachu. I rewatched that movie from time to time, especially when it's on a flight. It's to the point that I'll start it on the plane and then be like, oh, I didn't get to finish it on the plane. I have to watch it at home. And what I loved about that movie is it did show the creatures in the wild and how humans interact with them. But I want to see that traditional story. I want to see ash Ketchum going on his journey from Palettetown, battling Pokemon, getting his first Pokemon, the relationship with Pikachu being afraid and him not responding to him not wanting to go in his poke baal, and then having that first bonding experience. If you broke down those first initial episodes of Pokemon and turned them into one concise story, that would be fantastic. And I don't know why they don't do it. Pokemon is like the biggest franchise in the world. Please make it happen for all the aging millennials out there. So that is my list. I'll come back. I'll give my spoiler free review on Venom The Last Dance. I don't know what I was expecting. Guys, Welcome to a spoiler free movie review of Venom The Last Dance. It is Tom Hardy saying goodbye to the Venom character the lovable symbiote, which, if you can tell by watching on YouTube. I'm a huge Venom fan, obviously, Spider Man being my favorite superhero of all time, Venom has been for a large majority of my life, my favorite villain, dating back to the animated series, dating back to the video game. He has always just looked really cool to me. Black is my favorite color, and you take all the qualities of Spider Man but rot them up, give him a lot of crazy teeth. Have a pretty great backstory with Eddie Barrock in the comics which I have actually a copy of, well not the actual copy, but a reprint of Spider Man three hundred, which is the first full appearance of Venom. The character was co created by Todd McFarlane, who is my favorite comic book artist. Has done some amazing covers, and even in that first iteration, Venom was a much more grittier character and My overall complaint with Venom being my favorite character is I don't feel he's been represented well in these movies. The first one came out in twenty eighteen, and I thought it was pretty okay, pretty average, some pretty good action, but overall, what I realized is they were going for more fun movies and not really making any great movies. And we're dealing with the Sody Spider verse here, which has been historically bad, and Venom has actually been their best franchise so far in a world of Madam Web. This is kind of like their goal and child because it's really the only thing that has generated fan interest, and going into this one coming off of Venom two, which they didn't really do the character of Carnage justice in that one either, But overall Part one and Part two have been pretty enjoyable. They've just kind of been declining in overall value as they've gone along. So first, I'd put it up there as being the best. Second, I think critically, if you look at it and break down all the things that happened in that movie, it's pretty dumb. But for me, going into a movie just wanting to have fun for the sake of having fun, which is sadly how you have to approach these movies. I wish that wasn't the case, because Venom is such a great character. I mean, just look at the design of Venom. These should be amazingly awesome movies even without having Spider Man in there. That one took a bit of a decline, but that one actually had some story, It had some substance in there. Venom three was so underwhelming and so uninteresting. The only real reason I had my expectations even a little bit higher than two is because anytime you close out a chapter to a character, I'm just expecting some kind of big, epic finish, at least some kind of just great bookend that even if you didn't watch part one or two, that you could watch this movie and think, oh, I actually felt something emotional there. That is not the case with this movie. So even if you're thinking, should I check this movie out? Do I need to watch one? Do I need to watch two? If you didn't watch one or two, this one, by no means would win you over. You would go into this movie and think, what exactly is going on? Why does Venom talk like that? Which is another thing that it can't get over heard of them. That sounds so cartoony and off putting to me. I feel like Venom should be a little bit more fierce, and their entire relationship has been more of a buddy cop than it is, like a symbiot host, like a symbiote taking over your body, it should be putting you through some real mental struggle and anguish, much like we saw with Toef for Grace and Spider Man three and Toby Maguire. Not the case in this one. They're just best friends hanging out doing best friend things. And it was from the very opening scene of this movie, in the first fight between Venom and the Mexican dudes, that I was like, this is not gonna be a fun time for me. And what this movie is about. Eddie Brock and Venom are still hanging out, hiding out in Mexico. They happen to watch a just perfectly timed newscast that Eddie Brock is wanted in connection of a murder from a character from Part two. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen that one, although after watching three, I don't really encourage you to go back and watch one or two. I don't really even encourage just to take this one on to see how bad it is, because I do think there is a different level of bad movies, and I'm gonna start comparing this movie to Joker two, which was the last bad movie I saw in theaters. Two entirely different types of bad movies. Joker two is bad in the sense that it was such a creative departure from the first one, and it was so different that it alienated the fan base that it created with that first one and was kind of a middle finger to you, and it just kind of gave you this heap of just I don't even know what this is. Is it a musical, was it a courtroom drama? It just felt like a mess. But I still believe that Joker two set out to do what it wanted to do, like that was the big creative swing it took. It did it. It just didn't land with audiences. So that is bad because you just don't like the results of the movie. There's another type of bad that all of the acting, all of the cgi, the entire story is just bad and awful, and on paper, it's not even a good movie. So it's not even that it does things right. That you just don't enjoy. It just doesn't do anything right. And I was so surprised of just how uninteresting this story was. It never at any point felt like a movie to me. It just kind of felt like when you're starting up your car and it just won't turn on for some reason, maybe the batteries like half dead, and you're like, I can almost get it on there, but it just never turns on. That is exactly how I felt by watching this movie from that first scene where it's just so comical in a really weird way. And I think that's what they are going for with Venom, of trying to be almost like a meta Deadpool movie, because they do make some references to the MCU and the multiverse. They talk about thanos and talk about like, oh, an alien wouldn't be into rings, he would be into eating people. And it just felt like it wasn't really that funny. It's almost like that kid in class who was known as the funny kid, even though he never really said anything funny. In no way at all did he have any comedic ability. He would just say things loud and declares that he was the funny kid in class, even though there was no credit to his name, Like, dude, you've never done a funny thing in your life. We've never really fully laughed at you. You're just the one laughing in the corner. You can't declare yourself the funny kid. That is kind of how I feel about Venom. That they wanted that dead Pool relationship, that going back and forth, that commentary on comic book movies, and it never got there whatsoever. And it committed to that. It tried to be funny time and time again, even more so than part one, even more so than Part two. It was really leaning into that and even got away from the action that at least the first and the second part had going for it, So it ended up becoming a big mess of nothing. So they are on the run because Eddie Brock sees that he's wanted in Mexico, and if they're seeing this news report here, they're probably seeing it all over the world, and for some reason they decided to go to New York City. They take off and then chew atail. Edgy Afour's character is like this, I don't take any crap military guy and swoops in trying to find them. He is on their trail. The entire time. You have this other plot line with Juno Temple's character from ted Lasso. Her brother died and she is living out his dream of being this scientist. So there are a lot of things going on at once, all these little plot lines that are supposed to all meet up, and it just felt like a big, heaping mess. And then you have the symbiolt Killers who were trying to find Venom and Eddie Brock because they need something from him in order to take it back to their big bad And never, at any point did I have any interest in all of these plot lines that were happening. It just felt like they were trying to crow bart in a lot of different characters and comic book references and Easter eggs and try to set up some villains to gain some people's interests that they could take from this movie and create another movie for even though this is supposed to be the last Venom movie, although I feel like would have easily made another one if this one would have performed well in the box office or had. They weren't gonna get the critical acclaim. They know that, but even the audience reaction of enjoying this one, maybe they could crank out another one and be like, Oh, we're not done yet. So it was almost like they were going into this movie without fully committing to that goodbye, and it really showed there was just no real turmoil in this movie. There was no real defining moment of Eddie Brock or Venom. The CGI was very mediocre, felt like nothing was on the line, and Tom Hardy just didn't really sell this movie. He is a great actor, and I don't really know why he is so attached to making Venom movies. I almost feel like the character is a little bit beneath them. But it makes me like a more that he is such a fan of the comic book character that he has done three of these movies. I have to imagine he's made some pretty good money from doing these movies, so maybe that's a little bit of an influence too. But it just felt like he was never really there. The die felt very canned, and I was just overall bored for a majority of the film, and it had one of the most cringe worthy scenes out of any superhero movie of all time, and I saw it in the trailer. There was a glimpse of it of Venom dancing on this staircase, and I just knew that was a bad indication of what was to come. And it's not that I don't like comedy. I would love to laugh. I love laughing. Look at me, I'm laughing now, ma. It's not that I don't like to laugh or want to hate something for the fact that it's. Ah, it's just supposed to be fun. You're not supposed to think too much about it. Movies can be fun, but they also have to be good. There is a very fine line to walk where you're making something with the intention of just making people smile, disconnect from reality, be a form of escapism. But if you're giving somebody something that doesn't even feel like a finished product, it can't really be that fun. And overall just really cringey at times. And the other moment in the trailer that didn't really hit in the movie either was whenever they take over the horse and they're running. It's supposed to be like a callback to the first one when he's on the motorcycle. The movie just overall felt a little bit embarrassing to me. Going in my Venom shirt. It really makes me feel more hesitation going into Craven the Hunter, which was the preview right before Venom, because on paper that looks kind of good too. It's rated R, looks a little bit more hardcore. Aaron Taylor Johnson looks great as Craven the Hunter. But if you look at the Sony Spider Verse movies as a whole, Morbius now Venom three, Madam Webb, they just don't have a great track history. And I was rooting for it. I wanted to enjoy it, but it just couldn't get behind Venom the last dance. I give it one point five out of five symbiotes and say goodbye, see you later. Why on earth did you make Venom do a dance number? It's time to head down to.

00:46:01
Speaker 2: Paul.

00:46:02
Speaker 1: Spinoffs over prequels all day. Every day. I'll take a spin off. Think about prequels. It's not all about a story you don't really care about. Do you really want to know the way that I got this glass eye? A character who's had a glass eye of the entire time, and then they do a whole movie explaining why that character has a glass eye, and by the end of that movie, you're like, Oh, this is why he has a glass eye? All right? That doesn't really add anything to Part one, two, or three, but now I know how he has a glass eye. I just feel every time they make a prequel it is a cash grab and they are just kind of out of the story. Want to still live in that world. So let's do the fans some little justice and say, oh, we're feeding the fans here, but really we're just scraping the barrel for a story here. That is why I would take a spin off over a prequel all day or day, except for the fact that this is kind of a spinoff and a prequel in one, so I have a little bit of hesitation going into it. But the movie we are talking about is Ballerina, which is a John Wick spinoff. It takes place between part three and Part four of John Wick, so the chapter in between that is where this story takes place. So the reason I feel it's a little bit different is because it's not a full on John Wick prequel. Because in john Wick one, he is already an assassin. You biting to the fact that, Okay, he's an assassin. I get it, he's mad because they killed his dog. You go on this journey with him. That movie works because starts at the action, and it's all a direct result of that first moment in that scene. It's not him going to assassin school rising up the ranks. You just exist in that world. You go on that journey one, two, and three and four Bam, Bam bam. A fantastic action franchise. We don't need to know his story, but here in Ballerina, we're kind of getting what would be the making of his story because this movie is about another Attemasi's character who trained to be an assassin to avenge the death of her father. So much like John Wick was avenging the death of his dog, went on an entire killing spree just to do that. She is doing that because somebody killed her father. So you will see a little bit of how she becomes an assassin. So we will see that with her character. And John Wick does make an appearance, not only in the movie, but you actually see him in the trailer. It's not like we're getting his full backstory. It's kind of a side quest for him. I feel like they kind of included him in the trailer to get people more interested in it, to show, hey, here's Keanu Reeves in this movie, much like they did Iron Man. With some of the Spider Man movies. So before I get into more of my thoughts of Ballerina, here's just a little bit of the trailer. To stop the assassin, you must become the assassin. You will always be weaker, you will always be smaller.

00:48:53
Speaker 3: They killed my father. This isn't done until they're dead. Are That's the one they called a how do I start doing what you do?

00:49:13
Speaker 1: Looks like you already have Keanu Reeves with this classic line delivery there. I think just in this trailer alone, he probably said at least half the words that he did in the entire john Wick Chapter four. I just love the character of John Wick of being so loof, very calm and jill and saying things like this but on screen just being a total ba the entire time. I really love that the identity of the john Wick films is in this trailer for Ballerina. You had the fantastic action. I think the john Wick trademarks are the gunfire, which is just NonStop crazy weapons. I would also put in there people getting thrown through glass, which was one of my favorite parts of the last chapter four. Like in my lifetime, I just want to be thrown through a fake wall of glass. They make it look so cool, and they also, I guess, don't properly show what it would be like to get thrown through a wall of glass, just like a big glass panel that would get stuck into every piece of your body. You would not be able to walk away from that. But in the movies the entire thing shatters and you don't even get a scratch on you. That would out of everything. I mean, that could probably be worse than getting shot in the leg, Like going through your entire body through all that glass and walking out of it. In Hollywood, it's all just like salt water and jelly and all these things they make look like glass. But in real life that would be such a pain, such a terror, probably the worst experience. But you have the gunfire, the glass, and the really fast paced action, and also some really brutal headshot, which I think is something that John Wick really owned. It really desensitized me to violence on an entirely different level. Now I see somebody get shot in the head, I'm just like, oh cool, that was a cool shot. I wonder how they got it, not like, oh man, I hope that he's not okay, he is lying on the floor and in a world where we have very short attention spans and where sometimes in action movies now the actual action sequences just kind of feel like a waste. It's people going through the motions, really slow action and gunfire. You will go down, You'll go down. John Wick movies take it all up to a ten and just like boom boom boom right after another, to where your eye is just looking on the screen the entire time and has stimulated in some way. So I'm glad to see that they took that fiber of the john Wick movies and are incorporating it into this Ballerina story, even just from the scenes of her training up until the point to where she becomes more on the level of a John Wick. I think that transformation is actually going to be interesting to watch and learning about her wanting to avenge the death of her father. This movie was actually supposed to come out on June seventh of this year, but it's been delayed and coming out on June sixth, twenty twenty five. Ana the Otomas is a fantastic actor and it's really cool to see her in an action role. There are some fantastics shots in here, where it doesn't look at all weird to see her performing some of this stunts. It makes sense because I believe her to be this hardcore. There's a scene that I loved in this trailer where she's fighting this dude takes the grenade, throws it, pins them behind the door, and you just see the grenade explode. That is fantastic. And then at the end of the trailer you have a dude with a flamethrower. Oh that is my dream to be like in an open concrete lot with a flamethrower and just allowed to unleash all this anger I have pent up, just like that is what I want to do. Like I was talking about earlier movies, I want to be alive to see. On my bucket list is of things I want to do before I die is to be able just to shoot a flamethrower, not with anybody around. I don't want to burn down Bill, I don't want to burn people. I'm not that demented. I just want to feel the fire. I guess I'm revealing here that I was a bit of a pyro as a kid. I love going to Mexico because, as like a ten year old, you could go to the store and buy matches, and I would spend a lot of my money that my parents gave me four snacks to go buy matches, and I would just light the entire box of matches on fire because I just found it enjoyable. I would get Mexican fireworks, and I had a great old time lighting things on fire in Mexico. So I would just want to have a flamethrower, even though those are probably really dangerous because in movies you always see people with the flamethrower and they had the tank on their back, and then someone shoots the tank on their back and they all go up and flame. So it's a very dangerous tool. But just in like a concrete area with nothing, just to be able to feel the flame in my hand burning the whiskers of my face. That is something I want to do and something that is on my bucket list, and that is what this movie provided for me. Of like, ah, I want to be able to do that. The other part of this trailer that kind of got me that I wasn't expecting to was seeing Lance Reddick's character who passed away last year. He plays the concierge down at the Continental, which is the Hotel in john Wick, And I remember it was really sad when that movie came out and then he passed away. And a lot of times, like actor deaths don't really affect me because to me, a famous person will continue to exist in my mind if I go and watch their work, because I don't know Lance Reddick as a person. I've never met him, probably would have never met him even if he was still alive. To me, their work continues to carry on their legacy. But it's just kind of sad seeing them in this trailer and knowing that he's not actually alive anymore and this will be the last time we ever see him in a new movie, and that just made me sad. But then I went back to thinking about the flamethrower, thinking having a dreamed for that flamethrower. So again, this movie is coming out next summer on June sixth, twenty twenty five. I will be there with flame thro in my eyes.

00:55:01
Speaker 2: And that was this week's edition of Movie Li Tramer Bar.

00:55:06
Speaker 1: And that is going to do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week. How do you get a listener shout out of the week, Well, I am glad that you asked. You can go to Facebook dot com slash Mike Dstro, comment on my Instagram, be sure to follow me there at Mike Distro TikTok, or YouTube dot com slash Mike Dstro. If you're really old school, you can go movie Mike d at gmail dot com send me an email. I do read those all the time, but this week I'm going over to my YouTube channel and the shout out of the week goes to green robot five on YouTube, who wrote, I have my entire Nightmare on ELM Street interview up there, so if you miss that, you can go watch it in its entirety. But green robot five wrote how does this video have only seventy nine likes? The questions were smart and not the same ones we hear over and over. I really appreciate that, Green robot. I have been seeing the support of this interview trickle out more and more as some of the clips have blown up on TikTok. Some people have discovered the podcast from that, some people have discovered and subscribed to the YouTube channel. And I don't really have the most subscribers on YouTube right now. That is something I kind of just built alongside of this podcast because I wanted to have a place that people could go and find individual reviews without having to go through all the old backlog of podcasts. Sometimes you just want to hear my thoughts on one particular movie, so that is why I created that channel. I also decided to put all my interviews there, so if you want to see me talking to other people I've had on the podcast, they all exist there. So it's something that really this year I started to become more conscious of of building and putting new things on there, trying to create content that doesn't even exist on this podcast and put it there. So I'll admit I'm not exactly where I want to be on YouTube yet, but thank you Greeting Robot for giving me that encouragement to continue to post videos there and build that channel because I'm just trying to be everything everywhere all at once. So appreciate that. Thank you for being subscribed over on YouTube wherever you're listening to this podcast now, really appreciate it. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.