Top 7 Opening Scenes in Superhero Movies + Movie Review: Napoleon + Trailer Park: Imaginary

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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 what I think are the top seven opening scenes in superhero movies of all time. I went through all my favorites and picked out the ones I think are the most iconic. In the movie review, I'll let you know how I felt about Joaquin Phoenix's performance in Napoleon. And then the trailer park. We have a new horror movie that looks so creepy from Blumhouse because it has to do with a kid, a teddy bear, and an imaginary friend all in one. I saw this trailer and I thought, can't wait to talk about this one. Thank you for being here, thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. 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. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTB with glasses.

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Speaker 1: From the Nashville Podcast Network.

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Speaker 2: This is Movie Mike's Movie Podcast.

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Speaker 1: This great opening scene sets the tone for a superhero movie. Those first five, seven, sometimes ten minutes, in my opinion, are the most important minutes. If you don't have me hooked in in that opening sequence, I'm not ready to take the ride. I think if you look at all of the superhero flops in the last ten years, it's probably because they have a weak opening scene. So I went through all my favorite superhero movies, both DC and Marvel. Out of every single one, which seven have the best opening superheroes scenes. I rated them based upon how iconic they think they are, the cinematography, the music, how they set the tone for the entire movie, the level of action, and just overall entertainment level, and how these scenes changed the landscape of superhero movies. So let's get right into the list. At number seven, I have the opening scene from The Dark Knight Rises back in twenty twelve. What happens in this opening scene is Bane and his henchmen and get captured by the CIA, and the CIA captors are trying to get this information out of them. They have these bags over their heads, so in that very opening moment, you don't realize or know that it's Bane until he starts speaking. Bain had this entire thing orchestrated and he was going to turn the tables on them. So what this opening scene does is set the tone for Bain and how smart he actually is and clues us into the type of threat he is going to be throughout this entire movie, where he is always just one step ahead of Batman and looks like a force that cannot be taken down. Aside from what this opening scene establishes with the plot, just visually really gave it a different feel than The Dark and Knight. Now. Christopher Nolan also shot The Dark Knight Rises for Imax, but I feel like he really flexed it in this opening sequence more so than The Dark Knight because you have these really beautiful shots up in the sky with the one plane going and the other plane coming on top of this plane to take over and then crash the plane, and Christopher Nolan just always knows how to add value on the screen and make use of these cameras to really put you in that situation. It also has two of my favorite quotes from Bain out of the entire movie. First up is this one, no one cared who I was till I put on the Mars, which is a really great commentary on the psychology and just the nature of humans that you could take somebody who otherwise doesn't really alert your interests, doesn't really set off any red flags. But the minute they do something a little bit different, like put on a mask or color their hair weird, I feel like us as a society just gravitate to that and say, this is weird, this is different, why are you doing this? So it even reminds me of musicians who kind of have like a gimmicky thing that becomes the thing they get known for, and it's just a way to get attention on your music. Maybe you have a weird hairstyle, you do something weird on stage that it just is so polarizing that people gravitate towards that you hook them in, but then you keep them around with your music. I think that's just what we do as a society. In this case, Bain having the mask makes him feel like more of a threat, makes him feel like more of a mystery, and the entire time the CIA is trying to get answers out of him of why he is wearing the mask. My other favorite quote in this sequence is this one the fire Arisals, which also sets the tone of the action that will follow this sequence. So those are two of my top four quotes from Bain in this entire movie. The other two would be this one, punishment must be most be and of course this one. Oh do you think Doc loses your ally? You merely adopted the doc. I was born in it, molded by it. Bain is just such a great villain and it was really just showcased and highlighted in this opening sequence. That's why I put The Dark Knight Rises at number seven and number six from nineteen ninety eight. I have a movie that is so overlooked in Marble really when it comes to the superhero genre for what it did back in the nineties. The movie is Blade. Wesley Snipes did an incredible job capturing the energy of this vampire slayer superhero, and this opening sequence feels so nineteen ninety eight, but that is what I love it. It starts out with this guy who goes to a nightclub and then realizes that everybody in this club our vampires. Once blood starts coming out of the sprinkler system, everybody's covered in blood, and I just can imagine that this scene was a nightmare to film because your entire body is covered in red. They probably took forever to get this off of their skin, but it was so worth it because of that visual of it just spraying down and covering everybody. And then you look over at all the faces of people and they have their vampire teeth, And just as it looks like our guys about to go down and become a victim of these vampires, outcomes Blade in the nick of time and he disposes every single vampire in sight. But the great thing about this opening sequence, and the great thing about Blade, is how cool he is. He's taking out these people in the coolest way. He's killing these vampires in the coolest way possible with his blades, with his silver bullets, and he does it so cool, calm and collected, making it feel unlike any superhero adaptation we have seen. And this was just in nineteen ninety eight, but even until now, no one has really recaptured the energy of Blade. So what this opening sequence did was create an exciting change in the genre and showing that they could be ultraviolent, dark and cool, which I feel is now more of the space that DC is operating in. And I'm hoping with the Blade remake they do with Maherschela Ali that they go back to the basics here, because if you go back and watch this movie, some of the special effects may not hold up, like when he kills a vampire and they burst into flames and evaporate. It looks very nineteen ninety eight. But the overall action and the overall just tone of the character is so perfect. If they could just replicate that and update those small little special effects without putting him into this whole entirely different sci fi world which he doesn't really need to go in, he could be a very much grounded character. If they are able to do that with a new version of Blade, it could honestly be one of the best Marvel movies in years, because it's R rated. At the time, it was the first R rated Marvel movie. Now we've had Deadpool and Logan, and it's just so hard to do vampire movies because they come across so cheesy naturally in film. I feel like if you could just strip everything down and keep it so cool again. So I just wanted to show some recognition to one of the best superhero movies that often gets overlooked, and a great opening sequence at number six is Blade at number five from twenty fourteen. I'm going with Guardians of the Galaxy. Not only is it a great opening sequence of Peter Quill showing us exactly who he is dancing to this song on an abandoned planet as these kicking aliens using them as microphones, you really learn everything you need to know about the character's personality. And that is what I love about a great opening sequence. Time and time again, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise has done this. It really became their thing, even with two and with three having that big, fun opening sequence. But this scene came at a time where Marvel really needed it in twenty fourteen. And why I included this scene on my list is because this represents the tonal shift that Marvel had at this time, where it was becoming not dark in the sense of like a grittier tone, but it was very much focused on war, very much focused on all the friction between the characters, and there needed to be some levity now. They always had like the cheesy one off remarks from superheroes that became known as you know, superhero comedy lines. Always just that one little quick moment that It made us all laugh, but over the movies were still fairly serious. And what Guardians of the Galaxy was. It became the franchise that was known for just having fun and doing things differently and being so rooted in sci fi, and that is exactly what this opening scene represents. It became the blueprint for the rest of the MCU. Even until now, it is still writing off of the momentum that this scene in this movie created back in twenty fourteen. Without this scene and Guardians of the Galaxy, the MCU would have failed in the twenty tens. It needed the Guardian of the Galaxy to make everything work, to connect everything, to bring that fun energy and bring characters in that we really cared about. But it was this scene that kicked it all off. You have our hero singing along. We all knew we were into something fun and something special. So at number five, I have Guardians of the Galaxy. At number four, we'll move it ahead just one year, staying in the MCU, I have the opening scene from Avengers Age of Oltron, which I also included this on my list because I feel overall, when you look at all the Avengers movies, this one is often viewed as being the worst, but I've gone back time and time again to rewatch Age of Oldtron, and I think that isn't a true statement. There's a lot that happens in this movie that is so important throughout the entire Infinity saga, and I really feel like at its core, Age of Oltron is a great movie. It just wasn't what we wanted at the time that it came out. But if you go back and rewatch all the Avengers movies in order, it is so strong and the opening sequence is one of my favorites. Because of the action in this one, the Avengers are already a thing, and I always say part two in a superhero movie is sometimes better than part one because no origin story needed. It's already established that they are your team and you get right into action. It is top tier. You have every single character showing what makes them amazing in just the first ten minutes of this movie. The incredible Hold has the best fight sequence he has ever had in any movie in Avengers Age of Ultron, and he has always been a special character for me, even though his solo movies often get over criticized. Seeing him at his best is just there's nothing better than that. But hands down, the best moment in this opening scene is when they are all lunging forward and it's the full Avengers team in like a small little slow mo maybe one, two, maybe three seconds, but you see every single hero in action lunging forward, and it is the best action frame in any Avengers movie. Yeah, you could say the Avengers first assembling in the first movie, or then an endgame when you have everybody on screen. But if you just took one single image, if I just wanted one frame photo on my wall, it would be this one with all of our characters here lunging forward. It gives all six members a time to shine and gave us this gem of a moment from Captain America and Ironman calling him out language Jarvis, what's the few from upstairs? Twit a second? No one else is going to do with the fact that KP just said language I know. And then shortly after that it gave us one of the darkest scenes in the entire Avengers movies. Whenever Tony Stark has the vision that all of the Avengers are dead, I love it. That's why I put Age of Ultron at number four, at number three is the movie that blew my mind at twelve years old, sitting in the movie theater thinking this scene was so well executed, and it's from a franchise again that I feel doesn't get the recognition it deserves. But you know who's going to give it to him. I'm going to give it to him. The movie is X two X Men United. It came out in two thousand and three, and it's the scene where night Crawler attacks the Oval Office and attempts to take out the President and as a result, creating a full fledged war between humans and mutants, and also just shows you how powerful one single mutant can be in attack mode. This scene captures how exciting and thrilling these movies were, at least in the first three. But it starts out at the White House, which just anything that takes place at the White House has a little bit more weight to me because it seems like a place that nobody should be allowed to go. So seeing something like this take place in a movie, it really puts you thinking of this crazy situation that what if mutants were actually real? What if superheroes were a thing in the real world, how would we protect ourselves from them? But it starts at the White House. You have this mysterious man who is approached by security and it turns out to be Nightcrawler. First you see his tail, then you see his powers where he can teleport. You see like this cloud, a wiggly smoke where he once was, and then he ends up in a new location and as he's working through all of the Secret Service, he's trying to make his way to the Oval Office. He makes it to the Oval Office, takes out everybody in there, is about to stab the President, but then get shot, teleports away, but leaves behind the message Mutant freedom now. So this opening scene was to post to show us the tension between the mutants and the humans, which is the most important plot point in all of these original X Men movies. But what I love about this opening scene is how much it still holds up to today. There was so much attention to detail in creating comic book accurate representations on the big screen with these X Men movies, so they spent so much time and effort and money in makeup. And I love the detail you see on Nightcrawler's face as he's opening up his mouth. You see his sharp teeth and it would be one thing just to paint him entirely blue, but they also add these little details on his skin that are almost like raised tattoos all over his face to give him that next level of details. They did the same thing with Rebecca Romain as Mystique, and the decis to do that and not try and v effects Nightcrawler is what makes this opening sequence great. And then you also have the music happening behind all of this action that takes it to another level. My god, and something you may not notice after watching it for the first time, but Nightcrawler doesn't actually kill anybody in that opening sequence, which is later revealed his moral dilemma of killing humans and really shows that he was just there to send a message to end all of the mutant hate. So this scene was so exciting, so thrilling. I love it when movies get right to the action in that very opening sequence. That's why I put it at number three. At number two, I'm keeping it in the X Men world, but we're moving all the way to twenty seventeen with Logan this movie. Oh I put this entire movie in my top five superhero movies of all time because of Hugh Jackman's performance because of the entire story of an age Wolverine and his powers are fading, but he has all this rage and him still just trying to live a normal life and after living a long, long life, not being able to fight like he once used to regenerate as quickly as he could, He's trying to take care of Professor Xavier. There's just something about an age superhero that just really hits me in the gut. But the art of this opening sequence was so attention getting, and I think it's because this movie was rated R that we finally had Wolverine unleashed unlike ever before. So I feel like this is where we truly got to see the grit of the character and how brutal he could be. So what happens in this opening scene is we find out that Wolverine is now working as a chauffeur, driving around people who are getting drunk in the back of his limb. He decides to take a nap in his limo and then finds these people trying to steal the rims and tires off of his car. He confronts them, and as he confronts them, they cut them off mid sentence. And just shoot them, and they think, oh, that's over. We kill the guy. Now, let's get his rims. But what they don't expect is to him to get up and start fighting him. And my favorite part in this opening scene is where they start to overtake him. They're just jumping in kicking him, and he gets so filled with rage that he just unleashes. And in that moment of him unleashing, we see what a rated R Wolverine movie is going to be. So you see him take the blades that are coming out of his hands and just rip people to shreds, tear off ligaments, and it is so brutal and so bloody, and I love it. It lets you know that you're in for a much more harm sure look at the character, and a much more violent approach to a superhero movie that we have ever seen. And as shocking as that violence was, it made this movie special and remains a perfect opening to a superhero movie. And I would say the best X Men movie of all time. And if it wasn't for number one, this easily could have been up there as well. But that is number two. Before I get to that number one, I do have some honorable mentions Deadpool from twenty sixteen, the entire slow mo joke sequence and then seeing all of the cliches listed of superhero movies, which is really what that movie did, and the statement it made of poking fun of the entire genre that even at that time, back in twenty sixteen, felt oversaturated and kind of played out. So that was a fun moment. You also have the opening sequence from Batman nineteen eighty nine that was important because the Batman character was viewed as very jokey before that, and Tim Burton was even seen as kind of a living start to make a serious superhero movie until you saw that opening sequence and you realize, oh, this is the tone we're going for here. This is not going to be Adam West doing a dance number. So that movie's opening sequence was really important. From twenty twenty one, I also love the Suicide Squads opening sequence from James Gunn. I love that it took all the time to establish these characters at the very beginning, only to have them all wiped out in really hilarious and violent ways in that opening. So those are a couple honorable mentions, but at number one is one I would say is not only, hands down the best opening scene in a superhero movie quite honestly might be my favorite opening scene to any movie of all time. It is from two thousand and eight The Dark Night, easily the opening scene I have watched the most out of this entire list. Sometimes I just go and watch this scene because of how good it is. And after this scene ended, I remember seeing it in the and looking around and feeling like everybody knew the ride we were about to get into. And this was before we all knew how impactful Heath Ledger's Joker was going to be. We didn't really know it and didn't really feel it until his opening scene. But what happens in this opening scene is you have this group of criminals, all wearing these clown masks, and they are trying to carry out a heist of this bank, and they all have very specific jobs throughout this entire heist, and they keep talking about their boss, the Joker, and as they all performed their individual jobs, they all get taken out by another guy. So what this opening scene shows is the sophistication of Joker, but also the fact that he doesn't care about anything and all he wants to do is watch the world burn because throughout that entire process of one getting taken out by the other, who was left standing at the end it is Joker and his ability to kill members of his crew without even flinching. Is probably my favorite part of the opening scene is a true representation of the character. But my favorite moment of the scene is whenever it's finally revealed that it's Heath Ledger behind one of these masks. You have his interaction with the owner of the bank, and then his escape as he hops onto the bus and drives it right into traffic. This scene is a ten out of ten. I'm betting the Joker told you to kill me soon as we loaded the cash. No, no, no, no, I killed the bus driver. Bus driver, look at you. What do you believe it?

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Speaker 2: Huh?

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Speaker 1: What I believe? Whatever doesn't kill you simply makes your stranger. What this opening scene taught me is that it really goes all back to basics on creating tension and making a meaningful open to a movie that starts out cold. And I credit this all to Christopher Nolan, who I mentioned earlier when talking about The Dark Knight. Right is also here in The Dark Knight. There are no special effects going on as far as fancy techniques, no lens, flare, no closeups on any of the characters, but yet does a great job of pacing and making you feel it and making each moment seem so significant, And even if you took away all the action from this opening scene, it has my favorite single frame from any opening of Jokers standing on that corner with a mask in his hand and a Duffel bag in the other hand, just slightly looking over his shoulder. That one frame is all I need to know about the Joker and all I need to know about the Dark Knight. You can capture that in one frame, you deserve every single oscar. So that is the list my top seven opening scenes in superhero movies. If you want to let me know one you think I missed or one you think should be rated, hire hit me up on email moviemke d at gmail dot com, or find all my socials in the episode notes we'll come back, we'll talk about Napoleon, and then the trailer park, we'll talk about a new scary movie called Imaginary. Let's get into it now. A spoiler free movie review of Napoleon. I will let you know that I had really high expectations going into this movie because look at the cast and the leading role as Napoleon Bonaparte. You have Joaquin Phoenix, who is arguably one of my favorite actors still working today. He's been in Her Walk the Line, he was the Joker, he was in Gladiator, so many movies that I'm always just automatically attaching myself to any new project that he has coming up, and I feel highly invested into seeing how it plays out into his career and where it fits in between all of his movies. You also have Vanessa Kirby playing his wife Josephine in this movie. You may know her from The Crown. Most recently just saw her in Dead Reckoning Part one and I thought she was fantastic in that. But then you have the director Ridley Scott, who has done movies like Alien, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, so it's working with Joaquin Phoenix again, also movies like Blade Runner, the list of on and on, and he's a director who has a very high variety of different types of movies, and I love those type of directors who is really not just typecast as doing one thing really well. He can do action, he can do romantic movies, he can do war movies. He can really do it all. As of late, his last two films haven't been the biggest fan of But I thought him taking on the story of Napoleon in a big epic war movie was gonna be his bread and butter. And with a movie like this, I thought it was going to rattle me. And in the end, it didn't really do it. So what this movie was about was the rise and fall of Napoleon, how he went from nothing to having it all and then to losing it all. It takes place in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, and you start out getting to see how brutal this movie is, and Kelsey went with me. I told her she would probably enjoy this movie because she loves history, but she didn't want something to be so overly gruesome, and I was like, that's gonna be fine, you're gonna love it. With in the first five minutes, they used the guillotine to slice somebody's head off, and that really set the tone of the entire movie of how brutal it was going to be. The war scenes are very bloody, very detailed, very gruesome. Very shocking, which isn't a surprise coming from Ridley Scott, But I honestly thought that was where this movie shined because I feel like this is where they spent the majority of the budget to make these war scenes look really good. The war scenes really reminded me of Game of Thrones, those being the best episodes whenever they spent a lot of money to make those wars and battles look really good. But a lot of the movie dealt with that, when Napoleon and the French army and these really crazy battles where there were a lot of casualties and really shows you the recklessness that was Napoleon. And aside from that, the movie served as a character study and a look into the life off the battlefield with his relationship with Josephine, who they had a really troublesome, all you would say toxic relationship, but even looking back in the late seventeen hundreds early eighteen hundreds, I wonder if this was just the norm. To say the least, their relationship was toxic. There was a lot of cheating, there was a lot of arguments, a lot of abuse, a lot of him being angry at her for not loving him more so on the forefront, the way all the French people see him as this very powerful, reckless, fearless leader, and then behind closed doors he was a lot more sensitive than you would expect. Very melancholy is how he describes himself in the movie. The other interesting thing about their relationship, and really this entire movie is the weird levels of comedy that I was not expecting. There were just things that were oddly funny in between them, arguing that I found the entire theater laughing. At one scene in particular, I had to write down a line where Napoleon said Destiny has brought me to the slam chop and I just loved that line. That was very memorable and just something that I wasn't really expecting for it to have any kind of levity. It did feel a little bit out of place, but I was like, Okay, if they're trying to bring some humor into this movie that's relatively dark, dismal, gruesome and bloody, I'll take it. So when it came to the acting, I don't know if it was just because I expected more from Jaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby for the matter, which I think she was actually the one with the better performance throughout this entire movie. I don't know if it was them and their chemistry or really what I think it was was just the nature of this story and trying to depict these characters from the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, and I just think this is how people acted back in the day. Because the acting was so subtle, it felt a little bit boring to me. So I really think they were playing the characters right just them themselves. Weren't that interesting to learn about. And I think for me, I already come out a place where I really don't like period pieces, but I'm open to them. I got a little bored here in there. About ninety minutes into the movie, I felt myself becoming more invested and thinking, Okay, I think they're getting somewhere. I think there's actually going to be a big payoff here. And then I kind of realized that it was kind of going to be a lot of the same thing. So I didn't really necessarily hate it, but definitely was expecting a lot more. Even when it came to the visuals, there was a lot left to be desired because Apple Films right now are crushing it. Visually, anything I sit down to watch that comes from Apple, I just know that it's going to have a higher quality to it. I don't know what standards they have when it comes to filming and editing and the cameras they use, but they always just look like a step above what anybody else is doing right now. But when it came to this movie, it felt and looked a little bit generic, like a normal war movie, and I was expecting it to look more like a spectacle, something that demanded the big screen. If not, I could have just waited to watch this on Apple TV. Plus, when it comes out down the line probably goes back to what I said earlier that they spent so much on the battles that maybe there just wasn't enough money to go around at the end of the day. So I really felt that this movie could have looked better, especially since Ridley Scott worked with a cinematographer that has been his go to in a lot of his movies that have looked the part, but where the cinematography lack. I found myself loving the wardrobe Napoleon had drip. I was a dude in the late seventeen hundreds early eighteen hundreds. I would want that same look you mean, the big, weird looking hat, the emperor uniform. I would want to look like Napoleon. I feel like if this movie would have been forty five minutes less, I would have loved it. I want the opposite of the director's cut. I want all the fat taken out and give me just the meat of this movie and what I need to know about Napoleon and take out some of the stuff that just felt a little bit boring period piece, especially for a movie that costs almost two hundred million dollars to make. They could have saved themselves some cash there. I did love what Ridley Scott said in response to some critics who said the movie wasn't completely historically accurate, and he said, when I have issues with historians, I ask, excuse me, mate, were you there?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 1: Well, then shut the blink up. Which is just funny because you have to take some liberties in making a movie about history, and there was so much research he did while making this movie, and of course you're gonna embellish some things to make a more cinematically appealing. So I don't really have any issue with that. And I just know when going to watch a movie about something that happened in history, it's probably not all gonna be down to the facts. If they did, it would probably be a much more boring movie, not just in this movie's case, but any movie in history. So I really don't think this movie is for everybody, unless like me, you're a big Joaquin Phoenix fan, or you're just really into war dramas. Kelsey did not enjoy this movie whatsoever, so I think that's also a pretty good indicator of somebody who is not a fan of this type of movie, because it was over the top gory and graphic. There was one scene in particular, there's not any graphic nudity, but there is you know what happens. There was a scene that went down and then forty five seconds later this family walked in, and I was like, if they would have walked in just a minute earlier, probably looking for the Trolls movie, they would have been traumatized. So that's also letting you know what else to expect from this movie. But in the end, I did find myself enjoying the movie. I just thought it was gonna be a movie that would stick with me, especially going into Oscar season, I thought that Joaquin Phoenix would maybe have another Oscar worthy performance, we would have a Best Director nomination here. I don't even think that's the case. So for Napoleon, in honor of one of the most gruesome scenes in the movie where his horse gets taken out, I give it three out of five horses. It's time to head down to movie.

00:31:45
Speaker 2: Mike Trey Lar Paul.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: If there's a kid in a horror movie talking to a demonic presence, I'm all in. I don't care how good or bad the movie is. I just know I'm going to like it because that is all playing to my taste in horror movies. And that is exactly what we have here. And the new Blumhouse movie called Imaginary, it's about a kid who gets really attached to this teddy bear, but the teddy bear is talking to her. So before I get into some more creepy moments from Imaginary, here's just a little bit of the trailer. And every culture has entities that tether to the young. We call them imaginary friends. You are always saying with your imaginary friend. When the connection with severb, the entity becomes in rage, he says he's right behind you. Can I hang out with your imaginary friend? He's not imaginary, He's not your friend. So what this movie is about. You have a character named Jessica who moves back into her childhood home with her family and her youngest stepdaughter is named Alice. She develops this eerie attachment with a stuffed bear named Chauncey, which Chauncey is just a weird, creepy name, and you know there's gonna be some crazy backstory to Chauncey. But she finds them in the basement and then they start playing all these games together, and she has this list that she's talking about of all these things that Chauncey wants her to do, and they get creepier and creepier as you go down the line of things. One of them involves her having to hurt herself. In the trailer, you see her pull this board out of a fence that has a nail on it, and then she puts the board down and it looks like she stabs her hand right through the nail. So there are a lot of things I love about this movie. Just going back to Blumhouse, who I feel is taking a lot of risk and horror right now. If you're not familiar with Blumhouse. Earlier this year, they brought us Megan and they also put out five nights at Freddy's pretty recently. And even though I didn't entirely love that movie, I can respect how much money that movie made on a really modest budget. And that is the beauty of horror movies is as long as you have a great concept a unique style, you can turn a little bit of money into a whole lot of money at the box office. So it is a great genre for your return on investment. And then if you make one that you didn't spend a whole lot of money on and then it didn't do so well and people hate it, well at least they're not out a whole lot of money. I also learned that from Jason Blum, who was a guest shark on Shark Tank. He did the Halloween episode and told his entire life story and how he created Blumhouse. So that as another pleasure of mine sitting down on a Friday night and watching Shark Tank. But going back to Imaginary, it feels like a film that needs to be seen in a full theater on a Friday night. In this trailer, it has what I call a oh heck no moment. Clean that up a little bit for the young ears listening, but it has that moment where the teddy Bear is sitting in a hallway. You have this teenager on the other end thinking how did this teddy bear get here? And then the teddy Bear starts to move. That is a situation where, if it were in the real world, you would just high tail it out of there and not look back. But instead the kid stays there. The teddy Bear gets closer and closer and closer, and then a quick second you see it kind of erupt into this monstrous villain that we're probably gonna learn about. I'm sure there's gonna be one big final battle scene where it goes from being just this creepy little teddy bear to being the full fledged monster that is hidden inside of it. So the reason I say it feels like a film that needs to be seen on a Friday night in a full theater is because movies like this in the horror genre need to be experienced with people to reach their full potential, and I really think that is what Blumhouse is trying to do. Get Away from the streaming only releases and focus so much on that in theater experience, which is so important to horror movies because it's so much more scary watching it in a big, dark theater surrounded by other people. Because what you get in a theater like that that you don't get at home is other people's reactions, and that is a big part of it. If you hear someone else getting scared at a moment, it may make you get a little bit scared. It just adds this level of intensity. But also what Blumhouse does in their movies is provide a little bit of comedy, like we saw with Megan, which I've told you before that I feel like horror movies like this are the new comedy genre because of that juxtaposition of it being scary but also the fun part about it being scary, it turns into it being funny. That is what Megan did so well. This kind of feels like taking that same energy of Megan, repackaging it up and making a movie like this so essentially ripping themselves off before we get Megan too. Even going back to that oh heck no moment I was talking about that just very much reminds me of a slasher movie from the nineties or a supernatural movie from the early two thousands that was just so much more impactful when you go see it in theaters. So does this movie look like it's gonna be the greatest thing ever in the horror genre? No, but it looks like a lot of fun. And even though they showed a lot of the plot in this trailer, I pretty much know, give or take what's gonna happen beginning to end, it is still a ride I want to go on. I also love the use of the Temptations in the trailer. You know, when you get a slowed down pop song from back in the day in a trailer, you're in for a scary time. So again, the movie is called Imaginary and it's coming out in theaters next year on March eighth.

00:37:12
Speaker 2: Head that for us next week's edition of Movie by Framer Park.

00:37:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week. And usually these shout outs of the week come to us from email movie Mike d at gmail dot com or a DM or comment on TikTok or YouTube, which if you don't follow me there, you can check out individual movie reviews at YouTube dot com. Slash Mike Dstro This was an in person listener shout out because I was on a run one day on a Monday after I left the radio show, met someone out on the trail. Somebody coming down the other way just shout at Mike d Hey, I'm listening to your podcast right now, and unfortunately, listener of the week, I did not get your name. It was a very quick interaction, but one that was really meaningful because not only did I run into you on a Monday, which is when I put out in new episodes, but you just happened to be listening to the podcast in that very moment. A lot of things had to go right that day for that exchange to happen. So I did not get your name, but you looked very much like an elite athlete. You were running with your shirt off, and you were listening to a great podcast. So you are this week's listener shout out of the week, Shirtless runner. That is what I'm calling you, and thank you to listening right now, for telling a friend, for being subscribed, being here every single Monday until next time. Go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.