6 Perfect Parodies of Iconic Movies on The Simpsons in the 90’s + ‘The Fugitive’ Director on Working with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones  + Movie Review: Leave the World Behind (Netflix) + Trailer Park: “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, and if there's something that I could love almost as much as I love movies, it would be the Simpsons. And in this episode, I found a way to combine those two loves. I'm going to share with you six perfect parodies of iconic movies that the Simpsons did back in the nineties. We'll also talk to the director of The Fugitive and I'll let you know the way those two things tie in. That movie is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, so we'll talk to Andrew Davis about working with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in the movie review. If I can only do one part of this episode, it would be talking about Leave the World Behind on Netflix. Ah, that movie made me feel so many things. And in the trailer Park, continuing my Godzilla kick, we'll talk about Godzilla and Kong the New Empire. Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed, Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies.

00:00:50
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 a man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like oh walking IMTB with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network.

00:01:09
Speaker 3: This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: If you know me, you know that I love The Simpsons. I was born in the nineties, grew up watching them all the time, even when my parents didn't want me to. And I credit any ounce of funny that I have, even if it's just one percent funny, to The Simpsons and what I've learned about writing and just the essence of comedy by watching the show in my studio right now. One of my favorite things I have in the back wall if you watch my videos on YouTube or TikTok, is a sign Simpsons script from one of my favorite episodes ever that I got as a Christmas gift and the only other podcast I could probably do an entire thing I would be a Simpsons podcast, but that would be so niche, even more so than movies that I don't do that. And I've been trying to do an episode like this for a while now, but it wasn't until I had an interview opportunity with the director of The Fugitive. Name is Andrew Davis, and I thought, oh man, the way I learned about that movie was by watching The Simpsons. So I wanted to share with you six times at the Simpsons parody day movie back in the nineties, and in most cases, since I was still a kid watching all of these episodes, this is how I learned about a lot of iconic movies because at the time, when I was a kid watching these episodes, I didn't realize that they were doing a parody of something. I just thought, oh man, the Simpsons have the best writing. How did they come up with this stuff? But as my love of film grew and I started to realize.

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Speaker 3: Oh, these are based on.

00:02:35
Speaker 1: Movies, I in turn would go and watch these movies because I wanted to see what the source material was. So I feel like this probably happened to a lot of people, that we were exposed to movies on The Simpsons without knowing it. So let's get into it. Here are six examples of Simpsons movie parodies. The first one I want to share with you was from an episode called twenty two Short Films about Springfield, Season seven, episode twenty two, and and the movie this entire episode is really based on is Pulp fiction. This is one of the best animated episodes of any show, and I'm biased here because of how much I love the Simpsons. But what this episode is is a series of twenty two different short stories inside of one episode. So each story is a minute, a minute and a half, sometimes two minutes, sometimes a few seconds, but it's showing you all the lives of the characters. And the thing that's so great about this episode as how they are all intertwined. One scene ends and that serves as the kickoff for the next scene. But what this entire episode really is is a loose parody throughout the entire thing of pulp fiction, mostly with the interactions with Chief Wigham him eventually chasing the criminal snake and they get into this brawl and end up in somebody's basement, and that is where the main focus of the parody of pulp fiction takes place. But I just love that the Simpsons always committed to doing things line for line, scene for scene, and this is a great example of that. So here's the digal interaction in pulp fiction between John Travolta and Samuel L.

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Speaker 3: Jackson.

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Speaker 1: You know what a funny thing about Europe is what it's the little differences.

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Speaker 3: Example, you know what they call a quarter pound with cheese in and what did they call it?

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Speaker 1: They call it royal with cheese. Roy Yeah with cheese, And then the Simpsons just did a straight up parody of that in this episode.

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Speaker 2: You know. The funniest thing though, it's the little differences. Example, well, McDonald you can buy a Krusty burger with cheese, right, but they don't call it a Krusty burger with cheese.

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Speaker 1: Shut out all out of that, call it a quarter pounded with cheese, a quarter pounded with cheese. I love this episode. That's why I wanted to share this one with you first. Next up, number two. The movie that they parodied here was The Shining, which came out in nineteen eighty and this episode comes to us from season six, episode six, tree House of Horror five. Now, I could do an entire series on just the horror movies that they parodied in all of the Treehouse of episodes. That is really what these episodes are known for. But I remember discovering The Shining because of the Simpsons and because of this episode, which this is one of their best Halloween episodes ever. It was so iconic that I remember the promos that ran on TV for this episode. So in this episode, much like in the movie, the Simpsons family heads off to be the caretakers of mister Burns's spooky winter lodge, and then when Homer gets there, he discovers that he doesn't have a supply of beer and he doesn't have TV, causing him to go crazy, and much like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, goes and tries to kill his family. And the thing I love about the Treehouse of Horror episodes, at least back in the nineties is they had three different segments that were entirely self contained, so they were able to take the entire Shining movie and take all the best, most iconic parts of that and do it in about six to seven minutes. They covered all the iconic scenes like the blood and the elevator, the twins at the end of the hallway, the scene at the bar in the lodge, seeing the deranged right on the typewriter. But hands down, the best gag they did was the iconic here's Johnny seen So here's the original from The Shining, Here's Johnny, and here's the version from The Simpsons Johnny, So I put this one at number two at number three from the episode Cape Fear, which is season five episode two. Well you guessed it. They did a parody of the remake, which came out in nineteen ninety one, starring the one and only Robert de Niro, So much like in that movie, Krusty's X sidekick Sideshow Bob returns to Springfield to get revenge against Bart after Bart exposed his murder plot, sending him to prison. So in the real movie Cape Fear, at least the nineteen ninety one version, Robert De Niro's character gets sent to prison for fourteen years. The attorney in that movie knowingly withholds information that would have had him acquitted, so the entire time he holds it against him in prison. So then he gets out and then stalks this lawyer and his family who originally defended him. The nineteen ninety one k Fear was a remake of the nineteen sixty two movie, and both of those movies were based on a book called The Executioners that came out in nineteen fifty seven. But this episode came out back in nineteen ninety three, so I really don't remember when it originally aired, but I do know the first time I watched it, much like the other ones I've been telling you, I had no idea that it was based on a movie. And it wasn't until much much later that I saw just a still of Robert de Niro in the theater, laughing and smoking a cigar that I thought, Hey, that looks a lot like that scene from the episode with Sycho Bob doing the exact same thing. And then I realized, oh, it's a movie. So here's a little bit of that scene in the nineteen ninety one movie. What it's a Robert de Niro in that theater with the family. They're all watching Problem Child, which was an odd choice for a movie, and he is laughing and smoking a cigar. And this is how the Simpsons did a parody of that. Man's so rude.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you don't mind, we're trying to watch the mover.

00:08:07
Speaker 3: How am I getting my head out of this toe?

00:08:12
Speaker 2: Oh? Really, no, that's too much.

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Speaker 1: And I think that right there is a great example of the misdirection I learned by watching The Simpsons, because they're doing a parody and in the film they get upset because he's being obnoxious, distracting everybody from enjoying the movie. The Simpsons take that and they do the same thing, but then they flip the script because Homer becomes the more obnoxious one, to the point that he gets a rise out of the guy who is ruining it for everybody in this situation. That was side show Bob, voiced by Kelsey Grammer, who hands down is one of the best voice actors, not just that Sideshow Bob, but he also plays and voice beasts in the X Men movies, but hands down even more so than Fraser. My favorite role of his is when he voices sideshow Bob. So this one had to make it at number three. At number four, the episode is Bart of Darkness from season six, episode one. Hands down, I think my favorite season of The Simpsons ever. I still have the box set of DVD's, which is how I was exposed to a lot of these episodes watching them on DVD with the commentary. Without the commentary, I know these episodes so much that I could quote the deleted scenes, primarily from season six, but that's the episode. The movie they are paroting here is Rear Window, which came out in nineteen fifty four from director Alfred Hitchcock. So how they parody this movie is Bart breaks his leg at the beginning of summer vacation so has to spend the entire thing from his bedroom and he becomes really isolated and weird, and he gets these binoculars and just starts creeping in on everybody's windows in Springfield. They even do a direct parody because one of the windows he peeps into is actually Jimmy Stewart's character from Rear Window. But much like his character did in that movie, Bart discovers that his neighbor ned Flanders may have merged his wife and kids. So this entire episode plot point for plot point is essentially Rear Window, except he's spying on everybody with the telescope. So that's why I added this one at number four on my list. At number five, the episode is Bart's friend falls in Love from Season three, episode twenty three, and the movie they are parting here is Raiders of the Lost Arc, which came out in nineteen eighty one, and there is no better representation of how great the Simpsons were in the nineties than this scene alone, even if it wasn't a movie parody. And what I love about this episode and the movie tie in is that this starts from the very beginning of the episode, and it's something they really don't do anymore of taking big, bold wrists like this, and the way that they were able to parody this scene basically with all the major elements from Raiders of the Lost Arc with in that movie, it's Harrison Ford stealing this precious artifact and then escaping because as soon as he moves it, the entire thing comes crashing down and it was booby trapped, so he has to get out of there with his life as all these things are trying to kill him. In this episode did a great job of doing exactly what they did in that movie. The way the Simpsons did it is Bart was trying to steal Homer's big old change jar that he had in his room, and as soon as he grabs it, Homer starts chasing him in his underwear. So you have Bart running through the house and at one point Homer in his underwear is barreling down the stairs and he essentially looks like the Boulder, and Raiders with the Lost Arc you have Maggie shooting darts at Bart and Homer much like they do in the Harrison Ford scene. But hands down the best part is whenever Bart tries to escape from the garage, Homer slams on the door to have it come down, and just in the nick of time, Bart gets through and still has time to reach back and grab his hat like Indiana Jones did. So here's just a little bit of that scene. That is such a great way to start an episode and just a great way to pay homage to such an iconic film, which is something that Simpsons have done throughout the history of the show, even in the Simpsons movie in two thousand and seven, working in other movie references inside of that movie. It just shows you how sophisticated their writers are. And if you think that all the people who write for the Simpsons are a bunch of dummies. In the original run of the show back in the nineties, back in the Golden Age, there were all mostly Ivy League students, primarily Harvard graduates. One of the most famous Simpsons writers all time was Conan O'Brien himself, who is a really smart and intelligent guy. But you take people with all that book smart knowledge and make them write comedy, it just puts it on an entirely different level. And I think that's why throughout the history of the show you have all these references and parodies of movies that you have to be a nerd to under stand and to even know where to look to find these. So I think watching The Simpsons so much as a kid just attributed to my love of film, And now looking back on all the influential film that they have parodied over the years, they are some of the greatest movies of all time that I may not have discovered if it wouldn't have been for this show, because combined with me rewatching all these episodes on DVD, that led to the first incarnation of Netflix, where you would actually go online and get DVDs delivered to your house. That's what I would do. I would just go through this big list of Okay, here are all these iconic movies I've seen on The Simpsons. Now I have to watch the real movie. So the final parody I want to share with you is from an episode called Lisa's Rival, which was also in season six, episode two, and they parodied the movie The Fugitive, which came out back in nineteen ninety three starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones and it's celebrating its thirtieth anniversary right now, And I forgot how good this movie was. I just rewatched it and it reminded me how much this movie attributed my love of thrillers. The movie is about Harrison Ford's character who gets accused of killing his wife then goes to prison for it. As they are transporting him to prison, the bus crashes and he escapes and becomes well a fugitive. And then Tommy Lee Jones' character is relentless in capturing Harrison Ford and getting him back to prison. But the entire time, Harrison Ford is using that time while he has escaped to prove his innocence. So it's a great movie directed by Andrew Davis, and that leads us to our interview now with Andrew Davis, who is the director of the movie. He is known for making sophisticated thrillers like this. Like I said, The Fugitive is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year and had just released on four k UHD for the first time ever. I have a copy. Now we get into an entire discussion of why physical media is so important. But the movie went on to receive seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones ended up winning for Best Supporting Actor. Back in nineteen ninety four, Andrew Davis was also nominated for a Golden Goal for Best Director. In addition to this movie, he also directed one of my favorite movies from my childhood, Holes, which ironically just celebrated its twentieth anniversary. So all the movies I know in love are getting older, much like me. So for my final item on this list, we're actually going to talk to Andrew Davis how he feels about the Simpsons doing a parody of his movie The Fugitive, and then we'll get into him talking about working with Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. The first time I learned about The Fugitive was watching them parody the scene from the Damn.

00:15:34
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, I didn't do anything.

00:15:36
Speaker 2: I don't care.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: So I got to know, as a director, how does it feel when the Simpsons parody your movie?

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Speaker 3: It's wonderful. I mean, I knew that I had sort of made the big leaves when I was in San Francisco and I picked up MED magazine and talked about underslush for undersea, and then there were then then shortly thereafter was the stugitive. When they started making fun of you, it's either because they like it or they hate it, and in these cases they like.

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Speaker 1: The line they chose to use was the Tommy Lee Jones line, I don't care.

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Speaker 2: I didn't kill my wife. I don't care.

00:16:19
Speaker 3: In the script?

00:16:20
Speaker 1: Was that supposed to be a big moment, a big because it's a key turning point in the entire movie of him in the beginning saying how he doesn't care right or wrong, but it all comes back around. Was it supposed to be that impactful in the script?

00:16:32
Speaker 3: You know, this is a controversial line because I've read articles where Harrison's talked about, well, there were pages and pages of dialogue and we decided to throw all that out and just say I don't care. And Tommy thinks he created that line. Jeff Stewart doesn't remember exactly how it happened. He thinks he created that line. And now somebody found an old draft, a Walter Hill draft, where it says I don't care you're a fugitive. So whoever came up with it seems, you know, it's It reverberates so much because this is basically saying, my job is not to decide whether you're guilty or innocent. It's just to bring you in.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: You know.

00:17:12
Speaker 3: My job is to bring you in and let the course decide, and let the justice Department decide. And so that's why. And then and then in the story of course, Tommy develops his empathy for this doctor who's still trying to save people, still trying to run an investigation. It doesn't you know. So he realizes this doesn't make sense. Why would the guy be doing all this if he's if he's trying to just disappear.

00:17:34
Speaker 1: In the movie, Tommy Lee Jones character is just relentless, And I got to imagine that Tommy Lee Jones just has that like I just picture him being like that in person. So is that how he actually just approached the character and was like around set?

00:17:46
Speaker 3: Well, you know, he's a professional actor, you know, he's not someone who who carries that character when he goes home tonight, you know, to eat dinner. He's able to just bring it to the set and play it on the set. He basically became the godfather to those marshals. He was he was the leader. He was their boss, he was was his family, you know, so that that helped him have that that banter back and forth to everybody. I just think, you know, he's a very smart guy who figured out how to how to how to have this role be part of him. And you know, this is a role that's triggered to many other characters. And you know, you look at Men in Black, that's that's a different version of Gerard.

00:18:29
Speaker 1: Now in the movie, Harrison Ford and Timi Lee Jones, they don't have a lot of screen like screen time together because it's all the cat and Mouse gave him him trying to capture him. Was there any like rule on set that they couldn't be around each other because they would take away from the illusion, It would take away from that tension of where their character needed to be in that mindset.

00:18:47
Speaker 3: No, No, I mean, you know, we were together on the damn we were together in the tunnel. We were together of course at the end of the movie. Yeah, but you know it wasn't like, oh, you can't get near each other because you may become friends and it'll ruin your relationship. You know, they're they're too sophisticated to deal with that. You know, they really didn't have much time together, and yet they really appreciated working together on the movie.

00:19:11
Speaker 1: My favorite thing about the movie is the tension that it build really from the very beginning, Right at the very start of the movie, I'm immediately sucked into this story and I want to take the ride with these characters. I want to know, when making a thriller like this, how do you create that tension? Is it on the page in the script, is it in the moment when you're filming it, or is it an a post where you just feel that tension.

00:19:33
Speaker 3: It's all the above, it's all the above. All those elements have to work. You know, the basic story and the caring about this guy who's unjustly accused. This guy was there given as part of the whole basis of Lena's Robla, going back to, you know, the basis of the story that was created here for the TV show that became so popular that we adapted it. And then you know, on the set every day we came up with things that sort of enhanced and embellished what we were trying to do. And then, of course, in post production, with all this footage available and brilliant editors and a great soundtrack. It sort of all comes together.

00:20:14
Speaker 1: When the movie gets nominated for Best Picture and you're up against Shindler's List. Do you ever think of yourself, should we have put this movie out in a different year?

00:20:22
Speaker 3: I did? I did? I think, how are you going to be a story like that and a film that was that well made? But you know, you know, probably if Schindler's List wasn't out that year, we may have won. But it's okay, I mean, but.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: The legacy of the movie goes on. I feel like it inspired an entire genre in the nineties of trying to create a thriller like this. If you were to go back to making your very first film, ever, what is the one thing you would do differently about your first film?

00:20:50
Speaker 3: It's very interesting. Did you say that? Because I just came back from a screening of my first film. Stony Island is being re released, and we had a screening at the Cisco Center. It's available on all these platforms. If you look at Stony Island, you'll see the Fugitive. You'll see a lot of the textures of the fugitive are in my first film, and they carried on to other films through Above the Law to the package chain reaction. Those are all films that were shot in Chicago and have this kind of reality of the city and the people in the city. And what's interesting about Living on the Blue ray? The four K Blu ray is so good looking and it actually looks better than the original movie, I think, and as people can get their hands on that Blu ray and get the right player, they can experience the movie. I just talked to somebody who said he was blown away by how the quality of what it looks like today. So in some ways it's got it's been reborn.

00:21:44
Speaker 1: I mean that is music to my ears because I am such a stickler about quality, and I tell people, when you're just streaming all these things, you're losing out on the quality, or if you're not going to see it in theaters, you're not seeing it the way it was meant to be seen. So for a movie like The Fugitive, when you hear somebody maybe seeing it on their phone, what does that make you feel?

00:22:01
Speaker 3: Well, glad that they can follow it on their phone and they still care about it, But it makes me feel like they're not getting the full effort in the full effect of what the movie is. You know. So when now in a sixty five inch monitor with the Blu Ray, it's looking better than it even looks in the theater.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: So watch it at home. Everybody, get that Blu Ray. My final question for you was working with Harrison Ford. Is there ever an urge to call him Han or Indy at any point? No?

00:22:26
Speaker 3: Call him Harry. That was his name in high school. People came to visit the set, who went to Harry? How are you Harry?

00:22:32
Speaker 1: Well? I appreciate it. I love the movie. Hope everybody gets a chance to check it out on Blu ray and see it how it was meant to be seen, if not even better.

00:22:39
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, nice making you, Mike.

00:22:40
Speaker 1: Thank you. Let's get into it now. A spoiler free movie review today, we're talking about Leave the World Behind, which is on Netflix. It's also in theaters. This is a review that I've been waiting to do. And when I say that, it's because either I was so passionate about a movie. I loved it so much I can't wait to share it with you. The other reason, and I say that, is because I was so infuriated by a movie that I cannot wait to tell you about it. Which is this one? This is the one I was infuriated with because I love movies about the end of the world, one of my favorite genres. I think about the end of the world all the time. My most reoccurring dream is the world ending of things coming from the sky, and I've had that in my life since I've been like thirteen years old. Torments me. So I love movies about the end of the world, movies that do it well, let me say, and that is exactly what this movie is about. And the cast is amazing, the one and only Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawk, Maherschela Ahli. Those three actors combined alone should make it just all out enjoyable. And then you have Kevin Bacon thrown in there, who I feel is the X factor in that casting, because maybe if it was eighties nineties Kevin Bacon, I'd be like, oh, yeah, it's gonna be great. But now when I see Kevin Bacon cast in a movie, I start to question their decision. The movie is based on a book, and I know that I'm gonna get it to some things I didn't like about it, And people are gonna yell in the come and saying it's based on a book. If it's based on a book, they should have fixed the things while making the movie that the book got wrong then. But it's also from the executive producer and director of Mister Robot, which lines up perfectly with the material we have here in this movie. So what it's about is Julia Roberts and Ethan Hank are married. They're living in the city and they decide they want to go away for a weekend and a really fancy airbnb. They're spending a weekend away with their kids, enjoying life. They're out on the beach one day and this giant ship just comes onto the beach where they are, and it's really weird, but they think nothing of it at the time. And then some other weird things happening with their cell phones networking with a Wi Fi being down, and this movie just starts to create all of these weird elements and all of this mystery. And then they get a knock in the middle of the night and it's Maherschelo Ali's character, who is the actual owner of the home, and he gives them a story on why he shows up on their doorstep. So this one has to be very careful with because I don't want to ruin it for you, because I will say at the start of this that I was still highly entertained by this movie. I would even say oddly entertained by it, because again I love movies about the end.

00:25:12
Speaker 3: Of the world.

00:25:13
Speaker 1: And then you have Marshall Ali's character, who is there with this daughter, so you have them two coming together with Ethan Hank, Julia Roberts and their two kids. What this movie did very early, I would say, in the first thirty minutes. So I don't think this is spoiling anything. But I realized that the movie had bitten off more than it could chew, and I just it just hit me that I knew that all the little things it was setting in place, it was never going to be able to deliver on everything that I wanted as far as answering all the things. It reminded me of one of my favorite shows of all time.

00:25:45
Speaker 3: Lost.

00:25:46
Speaker 1: People either love or hate that show, mainly because at the end of Lost, you don't get all the answers of what happened on the island. I am on the other side of that that I loved Lost, and I believe that it was more about the journey than the destination was lost. They had such great characters that I bonded with, and I felt like I went through a lot of things through the course of that show that even though the finale was what it was, I found that the journey getting there I enjoyed. I experienced something that you can't take away from me. So for me, that entire show isn't ruined because I didn't know what a smoke monster was at the end of it. So in that case, I had a more rational approach. In this case, with this movie that's two hours and twenty minutes, almost two and a half, there were so many things going on and so much mystery being built that it never really fully satisfied me. Throughout the movie, they're trying to figure out why all of these catastrophic and weird events are happening around them. There's also a lot of tension between all of the characters, primarily between Julia Roberts's character and myherschel Ali, of her not fully trusting him for some odd reason and him kind of having this dark, hidden pass that he's not being fully upfront with them.

00:26:59
Speaker 2: Either.

00:26:59
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of back and forth between just characters not trusting each other, but also them trying to figure out why they don't have internet. Is it just a blackout? Is it something bigger? And throughout the entire movie, there's just all these things just getting bigger and stronger and bigger and stronger until you wait for it for the big thing to finally happen and it's fully revealed exactly what is going on here. And I would have to say that I have never wanted to know the ending more while watching a movie. This was one that I was like, I gotta see it through to the end, just because I need to know how this movie ends. So credit to them for hooking me in and creating all this mystery to really make me want to finish a movie, which is really important with a Netflix movie right now, they're so focused on their completion rate that this is a movie that will get you to want to watch the entire movie. That being said, it felt like it was doing an impression of m Night Shyamalan mixed with Jordan Peel. Those are two directors who do a movie like this really well. We're getting some big mystery and then there's gonna be some overarching theme or overarching message that the movie was trying to convey. It never really had its own distinctive style that I was just kind of craving. It really tried to do it through the use of cinematography. Now, if I have to give this movie just gold stars for it's because of how great it looked visually. That is really what had me suck in in this movie. That I found myself saying a lot throughout it is how did they get that shot? They did it a lot at the start of the film. The first instance was when the family was driving out in their jeep to the rental house that there was a camera move that went from outside of the car into the car. You get a glimpse of every member of the family, and then the camera is outside of the car. So I feel like that was some trickery with some fake windows, But there were a lot of shots like that that were really jarring, maybe a little bit too much, too flashy, that they were trying a little bit too hard to create that style of going from horizontal to vertical inside the house to outside of the house. You also see like all the levels of the houses the camera would pay from top to bottom, so visually there was a lot to look at, and I have to respect their commitment to making this movie look and feel unique because it keeps your eyes on the screen. It was almost like they filmed this movie incursive. It is hard to review this one spoiler free because primarily my issue with it was not being satisfied by the ending. And the reason that is is because for a movie to take me on a two and almost half hour journey and to not have any closure, even if it was based on the book, and that's exactly how the book ends. I was left with cinematic blue balls after watching this movie because the story started out with so much promise, building all this mystery and me trying to figure it out on my own by the character's actions and picking up on things you said this here and you said that there, Are you lying? Are you telling the truth? Are you really who you say you are? And then to get to a point where not only are none of those those questions answered, but the grand scheme of thing just felt like a waste of time. That is the biggest takeaway of this movie. It felt like, what was the point of going on this journey with these characters to get to this destination that I wasn't any better off than when I started this movie, and this movie just felt like it was trying to be something else, like Netflix attached themselves to this story because they wanted another bird Box that was gonna get people talking by creating this psychological end of world type movie to recapture that energy of a movie that everybody watches and talks about, which I have seen a lot of people watching this movie, but have also seen people having that same reaction I had, of being pretty let down by the time you watch it. That being said, even though I didn't love this movie, I would still encourage you if you, like me, were intrigued by the trailer of wanting to give this movie a chance. Maybe it's because you love Julia Roberts or Ethan hank Commercial Ali. I still think this movie is entertaining. But I'm here just to warn you about a movie that starts out with so much promise and will probably leave you disappointed because it's not even that it's a full on bad movie in its own right. It's still an entertaining movie and probably did what it set out to do. It just wasn't for me and just didn't leave me feeling good at the end. So based on entertainment value and also based on the fact that you did have a good cast here. The acting was actually on point throughout this entire movie. But being what it is, I give leave the world behind three out of five blackouts.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie Mike trailor Paul Ah.

00:31:37
Speaker 1: Yes, I am now in full Godzilla geek out mode. After last week I shared with you my five out of five film Godzilla minus one. Still highly encourage you to go check out that movie. But now right after that, I guess they did this perfectly the time out with that, but we got the trailer for god Zilla and Kong the New Empire, which I gotta say, after watching Godzilla Minus one and seeing the trailer for this movie, and even though I love the Monster.

00:32:08
Speaker 3: Verse, it just doesn't look the same.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: It's hard to go back. It's like how I imagined a dog would feel if you were to give him wet food and then revert back to giving him dry food. They're like, I want the wet food. That is how I feel now about Godzilla. I've seen them in the best version and done at such a cheap price, which now they are saying that it costs even less than the reported fifteen million dollars to make that movie. So it is just incredible to me still that you can make a movie that looks like that for so little money, which fifteen million dollars is still a lot of money, but not when it comes to making movies. And then I see a movie like this which is easily gonna cost almost ten times that, because cong versus Godzilla costs around one hundred and fifty five million dollars to make, and by the looks of this trailer, they probably uped it just a little bit because you have so many more monsters running around fighting each other. So what the premise is in this movie. It's now Kong and Godzilla teaming up to fight this other big Kong like creature who was more violent and just a lot more hardcore than Kong. And what you have in this trailer is something that I was not really expecting to see because when these movies started out, this monster verse back in twenty fourteen with Godzilla, they were a lot more grounded and they were a lot more focused on the human element and their connection with all the monsters in those movies, So, whether it be the Godzilla movies or even like Kong, because when you look back on the twenty fourteen Godzilla, which really changed the landscape of the Monster verse and how we receive these movies, they were a lot more rooted in the human characters, and with every movie they'd kind of gotten a little bit more and more away from that. And I think that's also what led me to love Godzilla vers just Coung so much, because it was really just them two being the main characters in those movies, and now here in this trailer it almost looks like you don't need the humans whatsoever, because there are so many monsters fighting each other and Kong and god Zilla teaming up that it almost feels like it's going the way of the Fast and the Furious movies, where you just get right to the action and you get to the ridiculousness of all these sponsors just fighting. So this movie is coming out next year. Before I get into more of my thoughts, here's just a little bit of the trailer. This world has more secrets than we could possibly imagine.

00:34:23
Speaker 3: What it's not, that's not cong con can't stop this on his own. He won't be alone.

00:34:36
Speaker 1: Is that a mini can Ah? Yes, it looks like we're getting baby King Kong in this movie. So you have some stars returning like Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry, who I love. Doesn't look like Millie Bobby Brown is coming back for this one, which I'm really okay with. She can go back and maybe finish Stranger Things so we can all get some closure there. But even she's done with that series, so maybe she doesn't like any of these movies whatsoever anymore. If I hadn't have seen Minus one before seeing this trailer, I probably would have been a lot more excited for this. But I have to say my palette is just not itching for a movie like this right now, even though I'm currently rewatching all the Monster Verse movies. I just finished King of Monsters and it's just not the same. Like those movies are fun and entertaining, But to realize that there could be a much more sophisticated version of Godzilla, I'm like, oh man, they should really get some different filmmakers here. But the thing that's troubling me about this trailer is how ridiculous it looks, and whenever they come out with like a baby King Kong, or if they did a baby Godzilla, it just feels a little bit cheesy to me. And like I said in my review, I'm not the biggest King Kong fan. I'm much more into Godzilla. I'm not the biggest fan of his look. In this trailer. They chose to make them pink, which maybe they're trying to level them up a little bit. It's like you went Super Saiyan that references for all my Dragon ball Z fans. So maybe they just wanted up, you know, level them up a little bit and make them look a little bit more hardcore. I just feel like they revealed a little bit too much of the mystery of this movie in this trailer, really trying to sell us on the big visuals and all of the fighting and all of the crazy locations that it looks like they're going into. It just feels less and less like a movie grounded in reality. I realizing I'm saying this about a Monster Verse movie, but it looks like it's just grounded a little bit, less and less in reality, and more so just a bunch of animals kind of fighting out in the middle of nowhere, but there is one scene that did give me hype, and even with saying all this, I'm gonna go watch this movie in theaters and love it and take it for what it is. But the scene of Godzilla and King Kong like running together, and to think just how much those characters have evolved from being you know, big and slow and they don't really move that fast, especially Godzilla as he's ripping through cities, to just fool out sprinting. That is what I look for in a movie like this.

00:36:56
Speaker 3: I guess.

00:36:56
Speaker 1: The other problem I had with a look at this trailer is how much it reminded me of Transformers Rise of the Beasts. It almost looks hand in hand identical. There's one scene in particular where either it's Kong's hand or the villain in this movie. It comes out from the ground and it has like this mechanical look to it. I thought I was watching a new cut of Transformers Rise of the Beasts. So these movies feel so similar to me that I think I'm gonna have the same kind of experience going to watch them. Which Transformers Rise of the Beast was a fun time at the movies this summer, but it didn't really leave me like wanting more of that, or it didn't really enrich my life in the way that the early Transformers movies did. So I just kind of feel like this one is getting away from having any real story to it and instead just kind of being WWE wrestling with Kong and Godzilla. So again, the movie is called Godzilla and Kong the New Empire and it's coming out in theaters next year on April twelfth, twenty twenty four.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: And that is this week's edition of movie Line Tram or Bar.

00:37:58
Speaker 1: And that is gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. Before I go, I gotta get my listeners shout out of the week. I encourage you if I made your top five most listened to podcasts of the year, to tag me in your Instagram story or send me a DM with a screenshot making your top five. And this week I got a shout out silas Pace, who I'm right there in is top five most listened to podcasts of the year, and he said I'd probably be higher if I put out more episodes than a week, So maybe I can work on that because there's a lot of spoiler episodes that I would like to do really diving into some details of some movies I've watched recently.

00:38:32
Speaker 3: So thank you.

00:38:33
Speaker 1: Silas for being a top listener this year. Thank you listening right now being a part of the movie crew. What does that mean? It just means you share your love for the show on social media. Tag me and your Instagram story at Mike Distro, comment on my TikTok to get next week's listener shout out since we had an interview this week, comment on my TikTok and Instagram with the cop emoji. So many great movies coming out this month, so it's a great time to be a part of the podcast and share it with a friend who you know shares your love for movies like we all do on this podcast, so they can be a part of the fun. Thank you, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.