KenJac | Lights Camera Barstool
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00:00All right, welcome to Lights, Camera, Barstool. Today we are doing the Glickid review. That's
00:05right, Gladiator and Wicked. No crazy news. We're pretty, we backed this up pretty quickly
00:10to the last episode. Not a ton of news has dropped in between the points. We're just
00:13going to do straight Gladiator, straight Wicked, intravenous right into your veins. Me and
00:20Gootz were talking about it earlier. It is kind of funny that they tried to make Glickid
00:25a thing, I would say, and the discourse so far has basically just been Wicked. It's it's
00:31all Wicked. It's very not not as much Gladiator. Yeah, I mean, there's with I mean, I know
00:37Gootz loved it a lot, but it's with good reason, because one is being very well received and
00:42the other has like kind of like like room temperature fart reaction to it, like it's
00:48not going to ruin your day. Some may be OK with the smell, I guess, but for the most
00:52part, it's kind of like whatever. They also did not market like Wicked's marketing team
00:58was on it like they were. Yeah, absolutely. They were on it. But I'm saying Gladiator's
01:03team kind of fumbled the bag like I don't know if he I saw yesterday one of the old
01:08Gladiator promo like TV ads went around from 2000 and they knew exactly what they were
01:14doing then because they were like playing like sports highlights. And then there would
01:18be like Russell Crowe being like, are you not entertained? Yeah, I think these guys
01:22go hard at it. Wait till you see Gladiator. That's how they should have been marketing
01:27this movie. Get the guys out like marketing correctly. I saw Wicked commercials murdering
01:31football and I saw Gladiator. But like, did really Scott do something to the marketing
01:35departments of the movies that he makes? Like they it's since Martian, it's nothing. I guess
01:40Gucci had a little bit, but like Gucci's had the bad trailer to Lady Gaga. Gucci was just
01:46that one moment that everyone kept making fun of, which is the father son house of Gucci
01:50or whatever. Yeah, it's it's really bizarre. And the weird thing is Wicked did so much
01:55like they spent so much money in the marketing, so much care put into that, put care into
01:58everything except the trailers, I would say, which were like the worst part about the entire
02:03marketing campaign, at least to me anyway. But yeah, we can start out with Gladiator
02:07two. After his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome, Lucius is forced
02:11to enter the Coliseum and must look to his past to find strength to return to the glory
02:16of Rome to its people. Directed again by Ridley Scott. It's written by David Scarpa,
02:21who did Napoleon for Ridley Scott. He also did Man in the High Castle. Shout out me and Jeff.
02:25We look big, big watches of Man in the High Castle. Directed also written by Peter Craig,
02:31who did Top Gun Maverick, the Batman Bad Boys for Life in the Town. Expansive filmography for it
02:36for a screenwriter. Stars Paul Mescal, Denzel, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn,
02:42Fred Heshinger, and Matt Lucas. Big crew. I will say that I went to this movie with tempered
02:49expectations just because of what critics had said, what some of the people that I, at least
02:53the ones that I trusted said, and I was still kind of let down by this movie. I think the
03:00surface level stuff of Gladiator two is like action, visuals, that they work, but the base
03:07story is so scattered and just doesn't have enough time to develop anything into anything.
03:13And you add on to the fact that I think Paul Mescal was just the wrong fit for this role,
03:20and it really made the movie fall flat for me really badly. I was not a huge fan of Gladiator
03:26two. All of the inspiration and greatness of Russell Crowe's character, I just didn't feel it.
03:32He looks the part. Physically, yeah. He looks the part. Everything was flat to me.
03:39Strength and honor. Yeah, it's brutal. Come on. I have thoughts.
03:46Okay, so we can kind of break it down to a pro or at least break it down to whatever we liked
03:52and disliked about it. I don't know how you guys felt, but I think the action for the most part
03:56looked really good. Especially the opening fight sequence I think was like, oh man,
04:00we're really getting something cool here. Because that is awesome. That's like, to me,
04:03reminded me a lot of that opening fight sequence you get in Germania in the first Gladiator.
04:08Really cool, big set piece shit, like all big fights and all that. That looked great.
04:12And some of the 1v1s we get later in the Coliseum and stuff, that looks cool. I think Denzel was a
04:17really good fit in this movie. And that's one where everyone's like, how's it going to work
04:20with him just doing Denzel's accent? But it really didn't hurt my suspension of disbelief at all.
04:25And the production value and some of the sets were really good. But I don't know. That's the
04:29stuff I could say confidently this movie does well. There was two different movies happening
04:35here in my book. There was the movie Denzel was in, and then there was the movie that Denzel was
04:40in, and I forget the kid's name, and then Joseph Quinn, and then everyone else. And that was my
04:47biggest issue. Yeah, and see, that's where I think Paul Mescal, the complaints about Paul
04:52Mescal's performance, that's where I feel like they're coming from. I think Paul Mescal was
04:57written a certain way, along with Connie Nielsen, who also I think her character falls flat, pretty
05:02hard. And Pedro Pascal's character as well. Those three are in a completely different movie from the
05:10Denzel, Fred Hershinger, Joe Quinn movie, which is a much more entertaining movie. And every time
05:16you jump back and forth from one to the other, you're like, well, I'd rather be with Denzel
05:21right now. And then you go over to this sentimental storyline, which just is not hitting the correct
05:26notes. And I don't think that's Paul Mescal's fault as much as it is.
05:29No, that's not his fault.
05:30Yes, he gets written into this corner where, and we'll talk about more spoilers, where he's
05:36constantly being compared to Russell Crowe's Maximus, who's just a cooler character, a
05:41character with way more gravitas, way more charisma that his character just cannot live up to at any
05:48point. I guess my thing is, the entire movie, I'm asking, why do I care about his revenge here?
05:55Even the Pedro Pascal of it all, I guess he ordered the kill on his wife, but I don't know,
06:03he didn't kill her. It's a little flimsy to me. I couldn't get up there with that. I would have
06:10rather it had been, it all starts with Denzel's character from the beginning. That would have
06:17been my preference. That would have gotten me to care.
06:19Yeah, so let's talk about spoilers, because it's a tough one to talk about without spoiling too
06:23heavily. So if you haven't watched Skip Forward, I think the biggest, and you guys are hitting on
06:27this too, I think the biggest problem is the story, it was bad. It felt like, I think that
06:33they thought they were too close to a rerun of the original and like, hey, here's this once
06:39powerful person that's now brought low and forced to fight in the arena versus a tyrannical emperor.
06:44So they tried to add a lot of bells and whistles to distract you, and that didn't work for me,
06:49because like you guys are saying, there's so many moving parts, and that split the focus so bad
06:54between all these different characters, and that just made it, I think specifically with the Denzel
06:58and the Empress thing, there's just too many villains. There's too many villains. That would
07:03help me feel more anger versus the emperor, maybe more anger versus Pedro Pascal, maybe more anger
07:07versus like, think about that, Pedro Pascal, Denzel, and these two twin emperors are all villains at
07:12some point during this movie. You don't have the singular focus and hatred that you get out of
07:18Gladiator, where it's just, you have Maximus fighting against Commodus. And that to me is so
07:22simple. And the story gets so muddled in this that it is very tough for any more runtime.
07:27If you gave this movie like four hours, maybe that would work. It's just not, you can't do that in
07:30two and a half. There's like some silliness going on with Denzel and the monkey and the twins. And
07:35then there's like this serious, like, we have to get this uprising, my parents, like, I don't know,
07:38it's just like, I don't know. Yeah, no, Kinjaq, we were speaking before, I think this director's cut
07:43is going to absolutely rip. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Ridley Scott infamously has many
07:49director's cuts that are better than his original theatrical releases. And this one just felt like
07:54it needed another hour and a half of runtime. He creates too many storylines. And wants to,
08:01he wants you to really invest in all of them. And you don't have the time, like Jeff was saying to
08:07care. You just, you don't like with Russell Crowe's character with Maximus in the first film,
08:13they set that up so perfectly, his wife and his wife and kid get killed. His basically adopted
08:19father are killed right off the bat. So you're immediately on his side. And you hate, you hate
08:24Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus. Here, you don't even know why you should hate the Emperors. They're
08:29bad Emperors. But are they evil? Or are they just maniacal and kind of fucked up?
08:36The I think another and I just want to touch back on Paul Metzger for a bit. Because I know you
08:41liked him. I did like me and Jeff didn't really like him. I think that what made him not fit for
08:48me is because they really, and I think you kind of maybe trying to give him a little more leeway
08:53with this. They really wanted him to just be the Russell Crowe Maximus character. They really and
08:57that is what the role was written for. And I think that's the role you're written for it. You don't
09:01cast Pedro or you don't cast Paul Metzger, because he's not the right fit for that. There's just like
09:05so much presence and delivery and physicality. And I think like Metzger is a very good actor,
09:09but he lacks all of that. Like he does not have any of those traits to fit that role.
09:14Instead of like changing the role of Lucius to fit him as an actor, I think they did a very
09:20square peg round hole thing with him as an actor, and making him like a one on one of Maximus was
09:26such a mistake. And I think he all these moments where you have like these big inspirational
09:29speeches, they fell so flat, where I'm like, I don't believe for a second there is a warrior
09:36that is going to be inspired by Paul Metzger. Yeah, and me and fights, you mentioned the speech
09:42at the end, like, I think fights, it said, like, he was watching the speech at the end, and he
09:46wanted to just grab Paul Metzger and be like, you're the fucking gladiator, dude, like, like,
09:50act like it. You're supposed to be like this big guy, inspiring loyalty, inspiring courage,
09:54inspiring, like all these people to go and like risk their lives for like your mom. And like,
09:58all you can muster is like a little like, yeah, strength and honor. And like, just none of that
10:03works. That doesn't work at all. Where we are death is not mine. Yeah, that line we are death
10:08is not that was a bad line. Bad line. But my question, my follow up question, then would be,
10:14if it's not Paul Metzger, who, who possibly in the current Hollywood landscape could
10:19fit into that Russell Crowe that 2000 Russell Crowe, like spot, like, I don't think we have
10:25an actor right now who can even pull that off. I think someone had tweeted to me like,
10:29if this was 10 years ago, like Chris Hemsworth would be a perfect fit. And he would have been
10:33a fantastic fit for like that sort of physicality of a role. He is he has that voice. Yeah, like
10:38Timothee Chalamet, even if you look at him in like Dune to like he has, he doesn't have that
10:42like physical giant presence that like a Russell Crowe head, but like his command of a screen.
10:47And like that charisma of like that scene in Dune to where he's like talking to the seat or whatever,
10:51like he has that Paul Metzger, this doesn't have that.
10:54I think a smarter decision would have been to keep Paul Metzger because they kind of write his
10:57character in the first half way differently than in the second half where he tries to take up
11:01Maximus's mantle. We're in the first half, he's just kind of a psychopath, like an absolute
11:06psychopath returning home, it kind of reminded me of the Northmen with Skarsgård, like the
11:11promised prince comes home, he's fucking wiry. He's dirty. He's a psychopath. I mean, that's
11:18he's biting a baboon. He's eating a baboon. I think if they had stayed on that course and kept
11:24him in that lane, instead of trying to, like you said, fit him into his go round, round peg into a
11:30square hole, I think that would have been much smarter. But I think the for me, I feel like the
11:36reason people are hating this Paul Metzger performance is because the script and the movie
11:41just beg you to compare him to prime Russell Crowe, which is just tough, just impossible.
11:48He wears his armor, they script him into right wearing his arm and fighting the sword and saying
11:51his things and going and leading a fucking gladiator revolt like that's this is all there.
11:57They pointedly want you to think of him in the same light as Maximus, and that just doesn't work.
12:01He doesn't have that. And it's not like a knock against him as an actor. I don't think it's just
12:05not who he is yet. You guys want to talk about Denzel?
12:09He's great. I mean, I don't know if he's my pick for supporting actor, but I would still pick
12:14Karen Culkin, who seems to be the favorite by a hair. I guess I haven't seen Brutalist yet,
12:21but he was great. And I if you would have asked me a month ago why I gave this movie a seventy
12:26nine, I would have said fucking twenty one points for Denzel was horrible. So that that
12:30would have been my guess. So, yeah, impressive. His performance was like the Chris Paul like
12:37meme where it's like he cuts a big three to knock the lead down to fifty three.
12:40Like that was Denzel basically this entire movie. It's like him just
12:43ripping off cool ass lines like it's about politics, like all that shit, dude. He had
12:48such great delivery and like so many people were so pissed about that, like, oh, he's just doing
12:51these acts like these guys are doing fucking British accents. It makes no difference to me.
12:55They're in ancient Rome. They shouldn't be speaking fucking English or with an English
12:58accent at all. Like none of that mattered. But he was so good. That character was like rich
13:03and like interesting and had a lot of depth. And I think that him being that good and that
13:09interesting and that like well fleshed out, I think one of you had mentioned our group text
13:13about it, like it did hurt Mescal, like it did hurt him how badly he got acted under the table
13:18by Denzel for better or for worse. You could say for you could say it's by service of the script,
13:22but like he did make him look much worse. And it's just again, he was like he was in a
13:28different movie. It was like it was like Ridley Scott was like, hey, you got to be silly.
13:33And then everyone else is like, hey, you got to be really fucking serious. Dramatic. And just
13:36the contrast is just so bizarre to me. It kind of reminded me of how out of place Jared Leto's
13:41character was in House of Gucci. Like just not that. I mean, not that bad because this is.
13:47Yeah, that one was bad. The you know what I kind of reminds me to like even the the twin emperors,
13:55like, I think Joseph Quinn was more to me. Like I liked him better than I liked Hershinger. But
14:00I think both of them are good. They were not given enough time to develop as like a villain
14:05or whatever. Right. And that's fine. They were surface level rip offs of comedies, which is also
14:09fine. But like the them existing draws you away from Denzel. Denzel draws you away from Pedro
14:15Pascal. Like everybody is doing a disservice to each other in this movie by drawing focus away
14:20from other shit. Even like Connie Nielsen, to a degree, like draws you away from Paul Mescal.
14:24Like all of it is none of it works in like cohesively, I would say really at all. And that
14:31really hurt me. And I think what really hurt, too, why the fuck would you even cast Pedro Pascal
14:36in this if you're going to give him five lines? That to me was crazy and give him no development,
14:41no nothing. He's just there. And like this is one of the hottest names in all of Hollywood.
14:44That made no sense to me. I will say Pedro Pascal is someone that I think is a good actor,
14:49but I've firmly kind of held to the belief that he is a television actor.
14:54This kind of proved me wrong. I thought he was with limited, you know, screen time and limited,
14:59you know, speaking. I thought he was really great. I mean, he fit into that world perfectly,
15:04for sure. Actually, his physicality, like the action scene. I mean, obviously, we know over
15:09and he was great as that, but you haven't seen it in so long. He doesn't do the Mando suit.
15:13I didn't know if he'd still have it. And he was just as good as ever.
15:17He would have been a good like if they did a full reboot of Gladiator, he'd be a great Maximus.
15:22Yeah. Pascal's good and after son. He's a good actor like this. He's a very good actor,
15:29just not a great fit here. Yeah, he is. And I think something to remember is Russell Crowe was
15:33like fully he was a fully formed actor by 2000. Like he had done he had a dominant 90s. He'd come
15:39into his own. Mescal is still very young. Like his biggest role is after son, which made
15:4510 million dollars at the box office. And normal people which like, you know,
15:51I don't think a person over the age of 40 has seen that show.
15:54Yeah, this just wasn't. It was very square peg round hole. And I think if they could really
15:58Scott was dead on like her dead, just serious, like I really want Paul Mescal in this movie,
16:01you change this the character to fit him in his strength as an actor, you don't
16:06force him into something he's clearly not great at. It just doesn't, you know, you know, I mean,
16:11you don't fucking have like a shack on your team to shoot three pointers. You know what I mean?
16:15Like, it just doesn't it did nothing about it finished his strengths. I also thought Connie
16:19Nielsen maybe took up too much screen time, too, because like that character. Yes. Oh,
16:22is there is a lot of Connie Nielsen. That was not necessary.
16:25She's lucky I saw Lucy Liu in red one a few days ago because that I mean, she was. Also,
16:31did you think that Russell Crowe's in a show was like a force ghost at the end there when he was
16:35in the arena and he's picking up the dirt? Yeah, he's going to speak to me, father. I swear to God,
16:41I was like, he's about he's about to be in the clouds. Yeah, he's about to be in the fucking
16:46cloud. He wasn't, obviously, but I thought he's going to dig out the fucking little dolls that
16:51the guy buried in the first one. I thought for sure that was about to happen.
16:54Were you guys like for long stretches of the runtime digging through your memory to like,
16:59see, like, did I miss a part of Gladiator the million times I've watched it?
17:03No, you didn't. You didn't really have to worry about it too much because they showed you about
17:06a thousand flashbacks throughout the movie. But like in the sense of like Lucius being,
17:11I guess we've gotten this far, Lucius being Maximus's son, they bring up multiple things
17:18throughout. They're like, did that happen in Gladiator? I cannot remember. Like,
17:22obviously, the affair is like allusion to or like they had a past.
17:27Yeah, they imply that not a kid, but the kid then having a kid together, especially with how
17:34like much of a driving force in Gladiator, his relationship to his wife and his kids is
17:39you wouldn't think of him as being a adulterer.
17:45And there's a scene in Gladiator when he first starts talking to Connie Nielsen, where
17:49like they're talking about their sons and he's like, oh, your son is only like eight months
17:53older than me or something. And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, you were fucking weren't you Maximus?
17:59That was kind of weird. But yeah, the other flashback stuff I didn't love either when
18:03they would just like flashback to whatever sequence. I trust our audience a little bit.
18:06This is one of the most like widely watched movies. I trust them to have remember some
18:11stuff from Gladiator. On a whole, I just think bad story, not enough time to flesh anything out,
18:18bad casting in Mescal. Like, again, I'm not saying he's a bad actor. I think he's a good
18:23actor, which is not the right role for him. He and some of the production value stuff,
18:28like some of the big sets look great. And then you'd rather we have those fucking CGI baboons,
18:31which look horrible, but terrible. Every animal, every animal in the worst looking one was the one
18:37that he fought. Yeah, it looked bad. Why was that? I don't know. You figured all the care
18:42would be put into that. And they also go ahead. I was just gonna say, like, they also kind of
18:47gloss over the fact that, like, all those guys were fighting the baboons, right? Like and
18:51Palmetto bites the one and then kills it. And all the other baboons are really gone. And they
18:54were they were fucking everybody up. And all of a sudden they're all just dead. Like there's
18:57that's the scene just ends very unceremoniously, like a lot of other scenes in this.
19:02That was a very weird decision to have those animals throughout the movie. Like the sharks,
19:07obviously, did not work. It never made sense for the sharks. Like there's a level of suspension
19:13of disbelief you can get to, but sharks in the Coliseum, like ten of them. It's kind of tough
19:18to gloss over favorite scene, though, because it fit them. It fit like the fun vibe that I was
19:22getting from Denzel. And it also had color. It popped. It did look like, look, I know, like,
19:29Rome or whatever, like that area didn't have, like, lush greenery, like around, like, every
19:34single part. And like, like, it's not like the 1960s. It doesn't need to pop it that much color.
19:39But there is like there's a little bit of like that the one with the water. It kind of just
19:45popped a little bit and it fit more with the vibe of the movie. And that's why that scene I like the
19:48most. Yeah, I would agree with you, too. I loved I loved the way a lot of outside of the animals.
19:54I did love the way this movie looked. I will say that, like, especially sets were really good,
19:58like the Paladin Hills, like the mansions that they the emperors and Connie Nielsen live in.
20:03Like, you don't you rarely get that in those movies. You didn't get it at all in Gladiator.
20:07It was nice to get those like just intimate areas like the tunnels in the back, the back
20:11alleys that they use, stuff like that. Love the look of that. I'm higher than you all are on this,
20:17but I'm fully aware this is a far from perfect movie. It's in a weird spot where it's a follow
20:22up to a Best Picture winner, but I would say it's a guilty pleasure for me. You know what I mean?
20:27Like, it's a guilty pleasure enjoyment for me. I'm fully aware of that, but
20:32it has issues. I'm just willing to overlook them for now. I want to make I want him to
20:38make another one. I'll say what would you score it at? An 80? Probably right at an 80. But my 80
20:43is a little different than Jeff 79, I guess. So yeah, I'll be higher. I would have it like,
20:48I'd say closer to 70. It's just, there's so much about it that really falls right now. And again,
20:54this was said, like, right before we started recording, I think the director's cut of this
20:57is going to be awesome. Because there's so obviously, this so obviously needed more time
21:02to develop all these different storylines that had going on. And there are so many scenes that end,
21:07I feel so abruptly, where it's like clearly something else was supposed to happen here.
21:11But like you were you didn't have you had to cut time somewhere. And there's
21:15the seemed like a good space to skip a little bit. So I think the director's cut of this is
21:19gonna be really good. It's just until then with the existing version we have, I'm not,
21:23not I was not thrilled with it. And I wasn't expecting it on I still just felt let down.
21:29But now we could talk about a movie that was the opposite of that in Wicked. Wicked,
21:34followed by the misunderstood young woman because of her green skin and Glinda the
21:38well, it's Galinda. Why did the description put her as Galinda first?
21:42Glinda wasn't Galinda. It's Galinda first, and that's Galinda later. But in the description,
21:47they just put her as Galinda. But I guess that's what she is. Whatever. A popular girl become
21:51friends at Shiz University at the University of Oz after an encounter with the wonderful
21:54Wizard of Oz, the friendship reaches a crossroads, directed by John Chu, who's obviously done a ton
21:57of amazing stuff, written by a lot of the same crew that did the Wicked the stage musical,
22:03but also written by Dana Fox who did Cruella, which I think you could definitely feel a little
22:07bit of that in the within the movie after knowing it. Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande,
22:12Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, bunch of others, including was it fucks his name,
22:17Ethan Slater. How'd you get the big hitter out of the way? Hand up totally wrong. Watch. I watched
22:23these trailers for this movie. And I was rarely more confident that a movie would be bad than I
22:29was after seeing those horrible, horrible trailers, which not only made this look like a
22:35big CGI slop fest that had nothing to do other than show you big nasty scenes on blue screen,
22:40but also like cut up scenes and made them worse, like patched up dialogue that didn't match with
22:47the scene that was happening. Like they cut scene stuff from scene A and put it into scene B,
22:51and it didn't fit the scene that actually happened. And like, whatever, all the money spent
22:55on fucking marketing, which must have been the goddamn trillions with how much wicked is
22:58everywhere. They didn't put enough care, I think, into those trailers. But yeah, I could not be
23:02happier to be wrong, because I think that this movie Wicked is about as perfect of an example
23:07as a stage to screen adaptation could be. Like, it delivers everything from the play,
23:13the feel of a play, like it feels like you're watching an actual Broadway play,
23:17except it's just expanded in scale. And it just adds a few things to help make it its own,
23:21which is also very nice. Because then that's the thing we talk about every time you've mentioned
23:24like a play adaptation, like you want to do justice to the original and do what they do.
23:28But you also want to give you something to make it worth making a movie out of, you know what I mean?
23:33So really liked it. All my expectations based, again, on those trailers blown away.
23:39Yeah, I mean, that's a top 10 movie of the year for me. I have it in the 90s, gave it a 92.
23:45I give 79 for Gladiator. I mean, it's excellent. Like, I guess if I were to have one critique,
23:51it's a little long in the tooth, maybe in some spots, but I don't like,
23:56I don't know if it even really mattered all that much. Like, it didn't make the movie.
23:58I didn't feel the movie's like length. Like, I think you could have made it tighter. Like,
24:02there could have been some spots that you could have, like, you know, maybe chopped up some of
24:05like the regular dialogue and just gone to the next song. Because the music does a great job
24:09of kind of moving things along. But I mean, just outstanding from everybody, song and dance,
24:15all the musical numbers are great. They're all like showstoppers. Opening was was pretty damn
24:21good. The OG font to open the movie with the title. That was fucking awesome. That was awesome.
24:28I mean, everything was great. I had a blast. Jonathan Bailey was awesome. Maybe you could
24:34argue that about dancing through life was probably one of the best parts of the week,
24:37or it was like 20 minutes long. So like to take up a good chunk of it. But it was it was it was
24:42great. And I would I'd say probably a top three ending of the year, like just an unreal ending,
24:49like that's like a stand up and clap type movie ending. So, yeah, I mean, one of the weirdest
24:54press tours you'll ever see. Again, I I'll take a debate on this. I don't think I'm wrong is the
25:02most heavily marketed movie since The Force Awakens. You can maybe argue last year, but since
25:07a Star Wars movie, Marvel never had to market this much. So it was all in your face. It was
25:11kind of cringy. It was kind of annoying. And then it's going to be one of the biggest movies of the
25:15year. And it's going to make a billion dollars. Yeah, super. It's it's Dark Horse. It's Dark
25:21Horse. But it is a legitimate Dark Horse threat to win Best Picture. I don't think it will.
25:25But the odds were eight thousand two weeks ago. And now when to win. Absolutely. In a year where
25:34there's no clear winner, where the contenders for it are a Nora amazing movie, second favorite movie
25:40of the year, incredible movie, pretty grating movie, though, that that is like that. And I'm
25:45not sure Sean Baker is going to rally the troops to to get him to win there. The Brutus, a three
25:51and a half hour long movie. It's very good. Are is the much larger voting pool now? A couple of
25:57years ago, I would not say this, but this is a larger voting pool for the Academy. Now, are they
26:01going to like the Brutalist Conclave? I guess maybe Dune Part two, I think, came out way too
26:06early. It is being hurt by the fact that last year in a large epic one in Oppenheimer, I'm not
26:11saying it's going to win, but it went from eight thousand a few weeks ago on Draftkings to twelve
26:16hundred this week. It is a legitimate threat to win Best Picture. The Kassabian movement. Yeah,
26:21that was crazy. I legacy property to if this was like like like like Blurpo, the musical,
26:28something that was made up yesterday, maybe not. But this is a it's a legacy property.
26:33And, you know, I love that shit, Jeff. Jeff, I'm getting I'm getting angry thinking about how
26:37West Side Story didn't win Best Picture now. Well, that that well, that's a whole different
26:42discussion. I would agree with you on because that would be probably. Yeah, that's a whole
26:45different discussion. I just started thinking about that. My blood started boiling. But
26:51all right. So I was I was with you all. I think we've all talked about this. The trailers were
26:55terrible all the way through the press tour, even worse, just terrible. But you know what?
27:03Ariana Grande, you proved me wrong. Cynthia Riva, Rivo, you proved me wrong. You are
27:08talented as hell. Those songs were incredible. I'm not familiar with the wicked. I mean,
27:14musical at all. Never seen it. Never listened to the soundtrack at all. But they knocked those
27:19songs out of the park, out of the park. I'm lower than you all, but my complaints are more technical.
27:27So I don't really want to like I don't love the way this movie looks. I've seen some people say
27:31most people say it looks better than the trailers. I think it looks marginally better.
27:35It was grating for me to look at that backlighting for three hours. I think they'll
27:41fix that in the next the next go around, which I'm happy about. Also didn't really love the court,
27:48not so much the choreography, just the way they shot the dance scenes. But overall,
27:52just a very, very fun time. Like this is absolutely what you want out of this type of movie.
27:58People are going to flock to the theaters and they're going to leave happy. That's like the
28:01biggest compliment I can give pretty much any big blockbuster is that, you know, five year old girls
28:06are going to go see this and they're going to love it. Seventy year old women are going to go
28:09see this and love it. I've seen guys who got dragged to the theater with their girlfriends.
28:13They've loved it. Guys who go out on their own like white boy, Rick, they've loved it.
28:19So that's like the biggest thing. This is a great movie. I'm happy it's doing well. And hopefully,
28:24you know, it does pass a billion dollars, because I don't know if you all saw every movie in the top
28:28ten right now is a sequel. And I guess you could call this one, too. But this would be the only
28:34non sequel this year to be in the top ten for ice grossing. So I'm rooting for it.
28:39It rocks so hard that Despicable Me four didn't make a billion dollars. Like I'm glad it just
28:44made under like I'm good for them. They made their money good for the studios. I'm glad it like
28:48like it just missed like that. That's a win. That's a win right there.
28:52Yeah, like the fucking fisherman ad with like the one dollar go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would agree
28:58with a lot of guys systems, too. I think like the big positives for me, like I think the production
29:01value for the physical sets that they had were really good. A lot of the sequences like when
29:06they're in. I was gonna say like Whoville every single time I talk about this. It's so close to
29:11in my brain. Yeah, whenever they're like a munchkin land, like all these places when they
29:15have like a physical set, all that stuff, I think look great. The again, the trailers made it feel
29:19like it was gonna be super overwrought with CGI. I feel like they it was a lot more limited than I
29:25thought it would be to more background shit. And I think that a lot they had a lot of these great
29:30looking extras, really good costume design and like a lot of care put into like all of that,
29:35which is amazing. And so I think important, especially in like trying to make a movie feel
29:40like a musical. Arriva and Grande were perfectly cast. They're both their whole way. We all knew
29:45like they are super talented people. But like, it was like almost like, you know, like the whole
29:50I'm built for this. Like that was that was Ariana Grande specifically with the character of Galinda.
29:55But like, that was fantastic. I think the music was amazing. Like the the classic songs are all
30:01great. The new stuff that they had was also awesome. And I think that the cinematography
30:05does a really good job of highlighting those moments, especially in that last scene we're
30:08talking about. Like that last sequence, it's tough to underscore a music moment better than
30:16they did with how they structured that whole scene from like a cinematography standpoint.
30:21And we can we'll talk about spoilers here. So if you haven't watched yet, skip forward,
30:27I guess to the end. But yeah, so and then a couple of characters like legacy characters
30:31from the play showing up. That shit was fucking that was a big like,
30:35I said, I stood up and saluted in my theater. I saw a friend of the pod,
30:39Chris Chinoweth show up. Oh, my God, our talented co-worker Quigs. I may be making
30:44requests for him to do like the portals from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a very funny.
30:49Like, I think that's what it felt like. Also, like that was like I saw I had it spoiled for me.
30:55The guy behind. So the I don't know how detailed I want to get. Not that the guy listens anyway,
31:01but there's a guy that works at the Cinemark I go to and he's a really nice guy, but he talks my
31:06ear off every time I go there, sometimes so much so that I miss all of the previews. And he absolutely
31:11spoiled the cameos for me. Oh, no, that's unbelievable. Move on on Friday morning.
31:16So I show up, he goes, oh, he goes, what to today? And I was like, I mean, I was like,
31:19come on, you got to know this. Also, you want to you don't know his energy. He told me he thought
31:25he told me he's like, I don't know. He goes, he gave me like this thing. And I don't want to hear
31:29that Godzilla minus one is more fun than Godzilla versus Kong, too. And I was like,
31:33I was like, oh, God, that's his energy. He's like the finger wag guy. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
31:38you seem like like it's like the like that one anime kid in high school videos like that energy.
31:44Yeah. So he so he spoiled it for me. And I was like, there's one thing you can spoil the movie.
31:51That's the only spoilable thing. Yeah. Like the fuck, dude. But but the only nice thing is,
31:57is I didn't I thought it would be like, oh, there they are not. They're literally singing
32:01like an entire song with them. I was like, OK, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was the portals
32:05is a good description. It was a portals last moment. And she was great. She was I mean,
32:09obviously she did the role for I mean, both of them did the role for I don't know how long,
32:13probably a decade. And they stepped right back into it. It was like perfect. Like she was perfect
32:19as the older Glenda, the the faux Glenda. Yeah, it was so funny. Yeah, they were amazing. And
32:25that was such a nice tribute, too. And I think they had a bunch of other people from the original
32:29cast that cameo throughout, I think the writer and like some other people that are involved in
32:32like the creation of the musical were like scattered throughout, at least that's what's in
32:35the wiki as like random smaller character cameo characters. That's all really nice,
32:39because, again, when you're doing a stage to screen thing, like you want to pay an homage
32:45to these people or to this original play, you want to do everything that they do and do your
32:49own thing. And I think that they did that. And I think if you're like a fan of Wicked, like you
32:53especially like we're just like general movie fans. I don't think any of us will claim to be
32:57like, Oh, my God, I'm a fucking day one Wicked Broadway stan. I go there. I've seen the play
33:02five none of us are that. But still, that moment is so fucking cool. That was such a great moment.
33:07I think the only things I could really throw is like a con in here like, like the middle
33:12definitely drags a little bit, but I'm with Jeff and like there's not many points where I'd be like,
33:16like, Oh, this whole sequence was useless. Like this, you could have cut this easily.
33:21Definitely not enough to cut where you could turn this into one part into anything less than
33:25two part movie, which now I think it makes more sense. I did ending to like the ending was like
33:32a great ending. It pops out the Broadway show goes to but like it, it felt very like it. It's
33:39not it was a cliffhanger, but it didn't feel like a cliffhanger. It's a good end to that first that
33:43character arc. Perfect conclusion to that, especially just like them parting ways like
33:49Glenda and I felt I felt I hate that name. My my big thing is that it into the woods is not a great
33:59example. There's a lot of big musical numbers in Wicked, but into the woods had this thing that
34:04always bothered me is that it didn't feel like the Broadway show at all. It kind of is the same
34:10thing when you say like the Lion King remake is is the same thing as the Lion King cartoon,
34:15but not really. That's basically what into the woods was. You're just like it's missing this.
34:18Like it doesn't have that Broadway feel. This had this felt like the Broadway show
34:26while also being cinematic, but again, not sacrificing the Broadway elements like it.
34:31It felt like I was watching both, which is like it's that perfect fusion, which not a lot get
34:35right. West side story. That's one that got it right. And when that happens, it works. It's
34:40great when it doesn't. It's like an into the woods. I don't hate into the woods. I enjoy into
34:44the woods. But like, you know, it's got a best picture nomination. Crazy. But like into the
34:48woods, like was way worse than it had any business being because it should have been way better than
34:53it was. And then because of that, because it felt like it just was like it was a movie where they
34:57happened to be singing. This felt like a Broadway adaptation, I think. And I don't know if you guys
35:02agree with me. I think part of it is the quality of the singing. Like, I think that like the the
35:06yeah, we're singing in this. It didn't feel too perfect. It felt like the actual Broadway cast
35:12singing where it's like there are imperfections in the voice or whatever. It felt like you could
35:16hear that. And that, I think, makes it feel more like you're at this play. And at the same time,
35:22while you're in like this play, you're seeing these big, massive, giant scenes, like big,
35:27deep scenery, like no, I should. I think it was awesome. Again, the only negative I'm trying to
35:31nitpick here, like I didn't love Michelle Yeoh in this role. I don't think she was particularly
35:35strong. Ethan Slater, I don't think there's a face I want to punch. I like I've come around
35:40and this little fucking SpongeBob guy every time I see his face and like he's perfectly cast in
35:44this role. Like, you know, I mean, like that is the kind of like the character, like dorky little
35:48munchkin or whatever, like frumpy guy. But like that is and I won't even put it as a con. That's
35:53not a con. Michelle Yeoh is the only one. I'm excited to see the people who don't know Wicked
35:58and realize like who these characters are and what happens to them. And like it is like there
36:03are people who don't know that. And I hope people don't look it up who don't know that because
36:06you're like, oh, what the fuck? And there's one very obvious one already spoiled for me already.
36:12Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Once you know, I was like, well, I wish I didn't know that.
36:17I mean, there's there's there's one that's very obvious because it's like, well, what else?
36:20What else would this this one thing be? They've singled out that they're talking about for 15
36:24minutes in the plot. Jeff Goldblum also not in full, but he got. If you if you had a scale of
36:33Ari of Kristen Chenoweth and Pierce Brosnan and Mamma Mia, Jeff Goldblum got closer to
36:38the Pierce Brosnan treatment like that when he's like, when you hear me now, darling,
36:43can't you hear me? So that's basically what his song was. Yeah, that's the best part of
36:47Mamma Mia is when Pierce Brosnan just talks that song in a reprise. It's like it's like,
36:53Pierce, you cannot sing. So like Goldblum got it, but like they didn't let him. They didn't have
36:56him go like all out. Yeah. That whole I think closing 25 was just so fucking good. It's really
37:05tough to end. And like, you know, that's going to be the ending thing. And they showed so much of
37:08that in the trailer, too, which I hate. But like that moment was still so good. And like so like
37:14powerful is probably like an over over exaggeration. But like it was it felt like you felt
37:18it was a great cinematic, huge moment. And it was underscored, I think, by even cooler moments
37:22like you were saying before, like the cameras before that and all that shit. I really enjoyed
37:26Wicked blew away all my expectations from this horrible trailers and very happy, happy to be
37:30wrong about Wicked. It made me think it really, really made me think about
37:39cats. Yeah, me too. Me too. I was hanging that to other people today. Yep.
37:44Because that the the the part of the part of Defying Gravity, like the big thing that ends
37:50all the trailers, like that line at the end or the I guess the whatever the fuck it's called
37:54musically. What do you I don't know what you call that note. Yeah. The high note she hits
37:59when she put her own spin on it, which I liked better in the movie than when I first heard in
38:02the trailer, because it is different that like memory and cats is just as famous in terms of
38:09Broadway like moments. And like this got its moment on the big screen and Wicked in memory
38:15was the gaseous, wettest fart of all time. And it's just such it's it's such a shame because
38:22look, Wicked's a very easy thing to pick up. It's it's Wizard of Oz. Cats is not. It is
38:27absurdly British. It doesn't translate all that well. And you kind of have to be a little bizarre
38:33to like it. Like I love it. And a lot of people do like it. And the music is great in cats.
38:37But like that is such an iconic Broadway that song Memory and it compared to Defying Gravity.
38:44It is like it's it's unbelievable, like the bastardization of fucking cats and what they
38:49did to that movie. It's so sad because it's just they'll never try that again.
38:54Like, I don't think they ever will, nor should they. No, no, absolutely not. I pray every day
39:00that they never try to remake another remake cats or adapt cats. God, they should do it.
39:06They should do it. They should put them in little costumes like they did in the
39:09Wizard of Oz, like the original Wizard of Oz. They should have them in those.
39:12I mean, the cats are better, but the cats in the Broadway show look good.
39:18Yeah, should have done that. That's the crazy thing. Like, they look fantastic on stage.
39:24So like, no, no, no, we got it. We got to really make them smooth.
39:27We have to fuck this up. We need to make this as fucked up as humanly possible.
39:31Make it like the most visually abrasive thing you've ever seen in your fucking life.
39:35But yeah, it made me think of cats. Maybe think of like all these other stage to screen adaptations
39:38and how like I feel like this is this is like the gold standard now as far as like stage to screen
39:45in recent memory of like, hey, you're going to try and take a stage musical, make it into a big
39:48sweeping movie like an epic, big budget movie like this is now that's the standard. Like this
39:55is exactly what you want to do. You want to give the homage to the original, but you don't want to
39:58overdo that like Lion King. You want to put a spin on your own thing, but you also don't want to
40:03change everything about it like you want to. This is, I think, such a perfect, perfect example of
40:07what all this we have a future adaptation should strive for. And I really liked it.
40:11Yeah, I'm at like I'd say like a ninety one roughly for it. Where were you at?
40:17About seventy five. But like I said, I do have I really don't like the way this movie looks
40:22like. I will probably never rewatch it, but I'll listen to the soundtrack quite a bit.
40:26But I do. I do not like the way this movie really didn't like to see.
40:30I thought the CGI was like it. Not the CGI. It's the backlighting.
40:34It takes away from how beautiful these practical sets that they built are,
40:38and it just doles out the color and you can't see their faces correctly. If they I think they'll fix
40:42it in part two, which I'm hoping for, and I think they will. But for part one, yeah, it was it was
40:48tough for me to look at that. There's an editing things I don't love. The choreography couldn't
40:52really see the points kind of sticks on to the two main characters too much. But like I said,
40:57these are very like technical things I didn't like. But from like an enjoyment, like overall,
41:02I'm just very happy with the way this turned out. I really am.
41:06Big fans of Wicked, not as much big fans. I can't believe you rated Gladiator higher,
41:12Gladiator 2 higher. That's that's sickening work.
41:15Not that crazy.
41:15That's sickening work, my friend. And next week, I think we will do Moana 2
41:21coming out. That'll be a fun one. I feel like I've watched like a good, a good kids movie.
41:26I feel like I've been missing other than like Inside Out 2, I guess is probably the last
41:30good one I think I've watched.
41:33Queers sing along in theater. Don't forget. The Rock said it's OK.
41:37The Rock said he wants you to sing along in theater. Don't forget about that. And John
41:39Chu also said you should ask the theaters to turn the volume up when you when you watch Wicked,
41:45which I think they did do that. My theater was loud as fuck.
41:49Dude, it's imagine how much that sucks for the guy like in the theater next door.
41:53Like that's got that's kind of so fucking brutal.
41:55I saw your tweet about someone watching Conclave.
41:58Yeah. And just like blasting, defying gravity, just reverberating throughout your entire...
42:02Thematically, it works with the ending of Conclave.
42:05A little bit, yeah. But maybe Queer 2 we could watch. Can't wait to watch our good boy Daniel
42:11Craig bust it down. He's going to tear those those little back with those little boy pussy down.
42:16OK, so watch those movies. We'll be back next week.