Thomas and Frank break down an early horror classic from Director Wes Craven and a subversive indie film from Director Julia Hart.
First, Frank reviews "Swamp Thing" (1982). Then, Thomas reviews "Fast Color" (2018).
It's a brooding superhero Double Feature, and it starts right now!
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Meet Your Double Feature is a double-blind movie review podcast hosted by brothers Thomas and Frank. Thomas is an event producer and broadcaster from Chicago. Frank is an independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
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(00:00) Intro
(00:38) Swamp Thing (1982)
(41:30) Fast Color (2018)
(01:29:22) Final Scores and Wrap-Up
(01:42:43) Outro
00:00:09
Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, a mutated scientist
00:00:13
returns to wreak havoc on the men that caused his
00:00:16
transformation in Swamp Thing. Then a woman with dangerous
00:00:22
superpowers returns home to face the family she abandoned in fast
00:00:26
color. It's a brooding superhero double
00:00:30
feature, and it starts right now.
00:00:38
Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
00:00:41
movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
00:00:44
always by my brother Frank. Frank, how are you?
00:00:46
Oh, I'm excited, excited to be here.
00:00:49
He's excited to be here. He says that every time because
00:00:51
our show is a bit exciting. A.
00:00:53
Little bit a little bit exciting.
00:00:56
Exciting. OK, OK, we have two back-to-back
00:01:01
movie reviews in store for you tonight.
00:01:03
Later on in the show, I'm going to be talking about the movie
00:01:05
Frank asked me to watch, 2018's Fast Color.
00:01:08
But first up, Frank, we throw things over to you.
00:01:11
I recommended you to watch 1982's Swamp Thing.
00:01:15
This, you can't tell from those two titles, is part of our
00:01:18
ongoing series of forgotten superhero films.
00:01:21
I would say these two bit of a stretch.
00:01:25
Bit of a stretch. Like, not really in the sense
00:01:29
that they clearly are superhero movies, which for, you know,
00:01:32
we'll get into that, but they don't seem like it on paper as
00:01:35
much as a lot of the other stuff we've talked about.
00:01:38
Which I think is good. I feel like that was that was
00:01:40
the sort of goal I guess we had in mind for this season of
00:01:44
superhero movies was to find stuff that was different because
00:01:48
superhero films have become very sanitized and same.
00:01:52
Y so very samey. Yeah.
00:01:55
I, I'm trying to remember, I think the reason I asked you to
00:01:59
watch Swamp Thing, because, again, we recommend each other
00:02:02
movies that neither of us has ever seen in order to keep
00:02:04
things, keep things fresh. It's a blind review.
00:02:07
Swamp Thing. All I knew going in is that it
00:02:09
was directed by Wes Craven, the famous horror film director, but
00:02:14
that it predates a lot of his more famous work, like the
00:02:16
Nightmare on Elm Street series and Scream, etcetera.
00:02:19
So curious to hear how good Swamp Thing is.
00:02:22
Yeah, you know, something's fun to to stop on Wes Craven for a
00:02:26
second. From what I read, this movie
00:02:29
almost bankrupted him. Oh, OK.
00:02:32
Yeah, he said the only good thing to come out of making this
00:02:36
movie was that he came up with the idea for Nightmare on Elm
00:02:39
Street while they were filming it.
00:02:41
He was like, this movie production's a nightmare.
00:02:43
And then he looked up and there's like a street sign.
00:02:46
That's it. Or no, that's a tweet.
00:02:50
That would make more sense. No, no, no, it's just the
00:02:52
street. They're literally on Elm Street.
00:02:54
They're in a swamp, but it's somehow Elm St.
00:02:58
So we almost got Nightmare on Swamp Street, but she fixed it.
00:03:04
OK, well that's good to know. That's an interesting piece of
00:03:06
of history here. Right, Yeah, yeah, but that
00:03:09
makes sense. This movie is very stylistic.
00:03:13
I actually, I guess I'm not super familiar with a lot of Wes
00:03:16
Craven's movies. I honestly don't think I've seen
00:03:19
On Elm Street, maybe any of those films.
00:03:23
Probably same for me. I mean we've we've brought this
00:03:26
up before, neither of us are big on horror movies specifically.
00:03:29
Like we love films but we're not super well versed, especially in
00:03:34
like slasher movies. I don't.
00:03:35
I don't really have much of an appetite for those usually.
00:03:38
I'm coming around on horror movies in general 'cause I feel
00:03:41
like it has been a blind spot, so I'm trying to like, expose
00:03:44
myself to some more of them. I've gotten really into like the
00:03:48
Scream franchise recently. Which is also Wes Craven.
00:03:52
Yeah, and also really funny. Like I was like I was watching
00:03:58
like one of them was just like on or somebody was watching it
00:04:01
and I was watching a scene from Scream and it was like the
00:04:03
killer was like chasing a character around.
00:04:06
And it was like so slapstick how they kept like falling over that
00:04:10
I thought for a second that it was one of the Scream parody
00:04:14
movies like like the the Wayne brothers movies.
00:04:19
Oh, like Scary Movie? Yeah, I.
00:04:20
Thought it was scary when I was and I was like Oh no this is
00:04:23
actually. Scream, right, But that's kind
00:04:26
of what Scream's legacy is, is that it maintains the like
00:04:31
horror elements while really satirizing the entire genre up
00:04:35
to that point. I think Scream even has like an
00:04:38
in universe film franchise called Stab that is just also
00:04:42
the Scream movies. So it's very like goofy and was
00:04:46
very much an evolution on what at that point had been a long
00:04:50
career of standard horror movies from Wes Craven.
00:04:52
So you get, I guess you have seen some of the stuff you've
00:04:55
just seen. The newer ones, that's true.
00:04:57
That's true. I guess I haven't seen like his
00:04:59
like 80s stuff except for swamp Thing.
00:05:01
I saw swamp. Thing, which is what we're
00:05:03
talking about, in case you can't tell.
00:05:07
You don't want to talk about. Scream.
00:05:10
See, he was filming Nightmare on Elm Street and he was like, I'm
00:05:12
so mad. It makes me want to so I got
00:05:16
his. Makes you want a swamp thing
00:05:19
too. The return of swamp.
00:05:25
Thing, it's funny, there is a Swamp Thing sequel I think.
00:05:27
I don't think he made it, but if it's called just Swamp Thing to
00:05:31
return of the Swamp Thing, I don't want it.
00:05:33
No, it literally is called Return of the Swamp Thing.
00:05:36
I don't think they. Have the Swamp Thing.
00:05:37
Funny, but yeah, that's what I liked about it.
00:05:41
I wanted there to be Swamp Thing too.
00:05:42
Return of the Swamp Thing, just as I've ever done it.
00:05:44
That's. Yeah, unfortunately, no, they
00:05:49
they they didn't do The funny thing.
00:05:51
But anyway, yeah, Swamp Thing. The first one, Swamp Thing 1982,
00:05:56
a superhero film? Because I'm pretty sure Swamp
00:05:59
Thing is ADC comics character, right?
00:06:03
He he is yeah, and like he's hero ish in this movie.
00:06:09
He like like kind of saves he does he saves the day in this
00:06:13
movie. So, so he's he's, you know,
00:06:16
don't judge him just because he's a, he's an ugly swamp
00:06:18
monster. He can still be a superhero if
00:06:20
he wants, OK? So it's really it's about, yeah,
00:06:23
don't judge a swamp by its thing.
00:06:28
Gross. Wait, OK, so if he's what is the
00:06:36
threat in the story? Are we, is it the POV from Swamp
00:06:39
Thing or is it that there's some other thing going on and he's
00:06:43
helping give me give me the beats.
00:06:44
So. Yeah, OK, I will.
00:06:48
I will. So this movie, it's fun
00:06:54
actually. I like the setup and I like the
00:06:55
setting. It is.
00:06:57
It isn't a swamp. The whole movie is in a swamp.
00:07:01
Yeah, as you would expect. But it's like a cool.
00:07:03
Like they did film on location. I believe it was in South
00:07:08
Carolina. They had this like neat location
00:07:12
that was like like I have submerged like church and like
00:07:17
part of a town that like they say in the movie that it like a
00:07:23
storm came through and and like basically flooded the place.
00:07:28
And so it's like this really kind of cool backdrop that
00:07:30
they're in for like the first act of the movie because the
00:07:33
story is that there are these scientists working in this swamp
00:07:40
who are working on this like sci-fi formula for something
00:07:48
that can like grow plants in like any environment, basically.
00:07:53
And so our lead character, who I, I might mispronounce her the
00:07:59
actress's name, but it's Adrian Barbeau.
00:08:03
Well, maybe I think that's right.
00:08:05
OK. She plays Alice Cable, which is
00:08:09
a really cool name, especially because throughout the movie
00:08:11
they just call her Cable, you know?
00:08:14
And I'm like that. Sounds very comic booky.
00:08:16
It does. Well, there is there is Cable
00:08:18
from like, you know, Deadpool and the X-Men and stuff.
00:08:21
But like, yeah, it's just really neat.
00:08:23
And she kind of kicks ass throughout this movie too, which
00:08:26
is fun. You know, she she does kind of
00:08:29
like play the damsel in distress a bit, but she definitely like
00:08:34
does a lot of her own ass kicking in this movie.
00:08:36
And I'm like, yeah, go cable. Cable's cool, like.
00:08:39
Go cable. Yeah.
00:08:40
OK, that's interesting because on the on the cover that I saw
00:08:43
for Swamp Thing, it's like an illustrated cover.
00:08:46
It seems to really harken to like King Kong imagery almost of
00:08:49
the Swamp Thing like carrying her away and she's in like a
00:08:52
dress or something. So I wasn't sure if it would be
00:08:54
more like that or more like, you know, on a scale between that
00:08:58
and like Ripley from Aliens, you know, like what the what her
00:09:02
role would be. But that's a good comparison
00:09:04
because in my head, Ripley would probably be a more apt
00:09:06
comparison. But while I was watching it, I
00:09:08
was like, man, Cable kind of gives me, like, Samus Rand
00:09:10
vibes, you know, like, yeah. Also good.
00:09:15
Yeah. But no, the Swamp Thing has to
00:09:16
help her out after she's already been through a lot.
00:09:19
Like it's like she needs like she needs like a hot tag
00:09:23
whenever a Swamp Thing comes in to help because she's already
00:09:26
been fighting for her life. Well, so she's not Swamp Thing
00:09:30
is not the threat that there's there's another creature or
00:09:33
what's up? No.
00:09:34
OK, So there's the scientists there in the swamp.
00:09:38
Cable shows up because she's working for the government.
00:09:41
I'm not really clear on what she was sent there to do other than
00:09:45
to maybe like help out with this research or just like kind of
00:09:51
monitor this research and report back to the people that she's
00:09:54
working for. But basically there is like the
00:09:59
bad guy group who wants this experiment for themselves.
00:10:05
So they send in like a kind of like paramilitary organization
00:10:09
to come in and like kill all these scientists and, and take
00:10:13
the formula. And that results in the lead
00:10:19
scientist guy who's played by Ray Wise, who it's kind of like
00:10:24
a long time character actor type, but this was one of his
00:10:28
first movies. I think this might have been
00:10:30
like his second movie ever. But he's playing the lead
00:10:34
scientist who's working on this and his sister is is working on
00:10:38
it with him. And she gets killed when these
00:10:42
like military guys come in and try and steal the thing.
00:10:44
And in the tussle, the sci-fi goop gets on him and he like
00:10:51
bursts into flames in this like really fun, like pyrotechnic
00:10:57
sequence. It's like a stunt guy who's like
00:11:00
on fire, but he's like running through the set.
00:11:03
At one point he like, runs like he like jumps off like a, a
00:11:06
porch and there's like an explosion and it's all done like
00:11:09
practically. And I'm like, wow, that looks
00:11:11
really good. That guy's dead.
00:11:12
I think he he like exploded. That stunt actor is dead.
00:11:18
He gave his life for Swamp Thing.
00:11:20
Yeah, worth it. Worth it. 10 out of 10.
00:11:22
Thank you, stunt guy. But yeah, so like he he kind of
00:11:26
runs out of there on fire and like jumps into the swamp and
00:11:29
they're like, all right, well, that guy's gone.
00:11:31
But then that is what transforms him into the Swamp Thing.
00:11:34
So Swamp Thing is is definitely good guy superhero in this one.
00:11:39
OK, that's interesting. Where it goes from there is the
00:11:44
bad guys that were like because the formula got on him and and
00:11:49
transformed him and he ran away. They were looking for his like
00:11:52
notes for this formula and cable, 'cause she was there,
00:11:57
she's able to like escape with like the notes for the formula.
00:12:01
So it's like most of the rest of the film is them chasing her
00:12:04
through the swamps, you know, and her, like, fighting for her
00:12:08
life. And Swamp Thing has to come
00:12:09
savor a few times, OK. So this is much more like
00:12:14
science fiction action sounding to me than a straight up horror
00:12:18
film. Oh, no, this is not a horror
00:12:20
film. There's this is.
00:12:22
There's no. Labeled as one.
00:12:24
That's wrong. That is incorrect.
00:12:31
Unless, yeah, unless horror means something different than
00:12:35
what I understand it too. Like, I would not call this.
00:12:38
Yeah, no, it's way more like it's like, like Campy Bee Movie.
00:12:43
Like it's the movie's called Swamp Thing.
00:12:44
I mean, I like, I don't know what.
00:12:47
It's terrifying. OK, there's a.
00:12:50
Thing in that swamp yeah, like, but no, it's very like kind of
00:12:58
serial comics from like the kind of keeps coming back up but like
00:13:03
the shadow, you know, it's kind of like feels like of that era,
00:13:07
you know. That does seem like a lot of
00:13:10
what was being adapted into movies in the like late 80s and
00:13:14
through the 90s. And I don't know if that's
00:13:15
because the people writing the films would have consumed
00:13:19
stories like that when they were kids or something.
00:13:21
Like they would have seen like TV serial productions of like
00:13:26
Green Hornet and whatever. And they kind of based their
00:13:29
future works on that. But it does seem like that
00:13:31
really like had a moment in the sun where is now.
00:13:33
I don't think there's anything in production that resembles
00:13:36
this these kind of old style comic strip stories.
00:13:39
Which would be cool to revisit it now, now that it's even
00:13:42
further away from that, you know, and kind of see it like.
00:13:45
Yeah. Adapted like yet again through
00:13:48
another modern lens, but. Yeah, no, I think so.
00:13:51
I do take it back because Amazon is making a Spider Man Noir
00:13:57
series with Nicolas Cage because he was in the Spider verse
00:14:02
movies, but he's getting like a live action Spider noir and that
00:14:05
very much is the same kind of homage as a lot of the other
00:14:08
ones we're talking about. Yeah, that's true that that that
00:14:12
series actually looks cool. And you can check out our movie
00:14:14
while you're on Amazon, too. While you.
00:14:15
While you're on Amazon Prime, Nate and Mariah in Venice 2026
00:14:19
link in the description just. Plug that in there.
00:14:24
Or by the way, not being mine, being Franks and his Co producer
00:14:28
Austin Bulky. Check out his guest episode
00:14:30
appearance from a couple weeks back.
00:14:32
Oh yeah, that was, that was fun. That was pretty good.
00:14:34
We'll we'll have him back on soon too, to to to talk about
00:14:36
Return of the Swamp Thing too. To talk about Return of the
00:14:38
Swamp Thing, OK, so I feel like now I understand the premise of
00:14:45
Swamp Thing, which is fun. I am more interested than if it
00:14:48
was like a traditional throwback horror film about a swamp guy.
00:14:53
That. Would have been a little slow
00:14:55
probably. So I'm on, I'm on board.
00:14:57
I guess question for me now is, like you said, the production
00:15:01
elements were interesting. They had some good like
00:15:03
locations. How did they pad out this like,
00:15:06
chase portion of the story, 'cause I feel like I can
00:15:09
envision the beginning and then as soon as it's just we have to
00:15:12
chase Adrian Barbeau through a swamp, how does that feel what
00:15:16
must be like an hour of the movie?
00:15:18
I mean it, it really is a lot of back and forth.
00:15:21
She does meet another character like a young kid who's like
00:15:27
running a gas station and. In a swamp.
00:15:31
Yeah, yeah, 'cause they're like, they're like near civilization
00:15:35
kind of, you know, it's just that where they're doing their
00:15:38
research is, is in this this swamp, you know, So she, she
00:15:45
makes her way there and she meets this kid who like, kind of
00:15:49
helps her out a bit. And she like, asks him at one
00:15:52
point she's like, do your parents run this gas station?
00:15:56
And I don't think he answers that question.
00:15:57
So they never elaborate on that. You never see the kid with
00:15:59
anyone else other than her. So I'm like, I guess that's his
00:16:02
gas station. It's like 12.
00:16:03
That's fun just running a swamp gas station I guess.
00:16:09
He's just like, don't get much business around here on account
00:16:12
of it's a swamp. That's their slogan on account.
00:16:18
It's a swamp. There's like one car perennially
00:16:22
parked out front because it's completely submerged, but it's
00:16:25
like next to the little gas station kiosk and he's like
00:16:29
filled her up ages ago. Just hanging around.
00:16:37
So yeah. So she, she meets up with him at
00:16:41
one point. Like the military guys, like
00:16:45
they, it's like off screen, but they like presumably killed the
00:16:49
kid. And I was like, Oh my gosh,
00:16:51
like, are they going to they killed this kid?
00:16:55
But then the Swamp Thing finds him and like kind of
00:17:00
demonstrates that he has like healing swamp powers.
00:17:03
So he like heals the kid and like brings him back to life.
00:17:08
I'm not going to do it, but I would love in the video version
00:17:11
of this episode to have like a a counter in the top of the screen
00:17:14
for how many times we say swamp in this review?
00:17:19
No, you could do it. Throw it in there.
00:17:21
No way am I doing that, That would take forever.
00:17:25
Imagine, just pretend. Let us know in the comments how
00:17:30
many times we said swamp. Yeah, take a shot every time we
00:17:32
say swamp. No, I mean, it's a big part of
00:17:37
the movie. It is a swamp man thing in a
00:17:40
swamp and it's where they spend 90% of the film.
00:17:46
There is there there is one point near the end where they
00:17:48
are like captured and taken to the main villains, like a state
00:17:54
where he has like an underground dungeon that like connects to
00:17:58
the swamp for some reason. And and I should touch on the
00:18:02
bad guy real quick. His name is Anton Arcane, which
00:18:08
is a again, a very comic bookie, very arch villain.
00:18:12
Name Arcane. That's also interesting to me
00:18:15
because in our last episode we talked about Doctor Mordred,
00:18:18
which is a Doctor Strange RIP off and his name in that is
00:18:21
Anton Mordred. And this to me feels like they
00:18:24
wanted Mordred and they couldn't get him so they were like Anton
00:18:27
Arcane question mark. Oh, oh, it's like Mordred.
00:18:30
Wanted Doctor Strange and they couldn't get him, but Swamp
00:18:32
Thing wanted Mordred because they're like well, we can afford
00:18:34
doctor Mordred, but then they still couldn't get him.
00:18:36
They. Still couldn't get him, yeah.
00:18:39
And then settle. And then there's the sequel to
00:18:41
Swamp Thing. They can't afford Anton Arcane,
00:18:43
so they're just like Anton Weirdman.
00:18:46
Weirdman. Such a weird man.
00:18:51
He's just. Why is his estate connect to a
00:18:54
swamp that's bad for the land value.
00:18:57
I did look into the sequel a little bit.
00:18:59
The return of the Swamp Thing to the swamp.
00:19:02
The Swamp Thing. Let's be swamp to Thing, do
00:19:06
swamp to Thing. Yeah, that's better.
00:19:11
And and and Arcane is in that one, despite the fact that
00:19:16
spoiler, he dies at the end of this one, but.
00:19:18
Oh, OK. Somehow resurrected some.
00:19:21
Somehow he returned some. Anton Arcane returned.
00:19:28
Sorry, that was that was a that was a side by me.
00:19:30
But tell me about Mr. Arcane. Well, the main thing I wanted to
00:19:35
say is in the beginning of the movie, he's there with the other
00:19:38
scientists, like posing as one of them.
00:19:41
And I don't even know why this is necessary.
00:19:45
But like there's a scene where he's like he reveals like his
00:19:50
actual identity and he has like one of those Mission Impossible
00:19:53
like rubber faces on and he like peels it off to reveal like it's
00:19:59
actually me, Anton Arcane. And I'm like, I that OK, I still
00:20:04
don't know who you. I didn't know who you were
00:20:05
before. I don't know who you are now.
00:20:08
Like I don't know if the other characters even did.
00:20:11
So I don't know who this was for like.
00:20:13
Well, it's because it was supposed to be Jeffrey Combs as
00:20:16
Anton Mordred, and that they just.
00:20:18
Left it in the script and it was going to be, yeah, it's going to
00:20:22
be a big like reveal. The audience would have gone
00:20:24
crazy, like Oh my God, they got Mordred in this.
00:20:26
Oh my gosh, the guy from that? Not a movie that's 70 minutes
00:20:29
long. That that is.
00:20:33
Weird though that they would do the like villain reveal for
00:20:37
someone the audience has no reason to be surprised by.
00:20:40
The audience nor the other characters from what I could
00:20:42
understand, because they were also like OK and I just.
00:20:50
It's like a comedy beep. Yeah, it kind of is.
00:20:54
But like, it's, it's also like it was a really well done
00:20:57
effect. I'm like the way that they did
00:20:58
it, like there was like a hidden cut in there, but it looks like
00:21:01
it was all one static shock, static shock, Static shock.
00:21:09
Yeah, of him pulling his, you know, his face off.
00:21:13
It honestly looked just as good, if not better than it does in
00:21:16
like the modern Mission Impossible movies.
00:21:19
I was like, OK, that's fun. Thanks Arcane.
00:21:22
Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, horror directors, horror
00:21:25
production crews often are doing like complicated creature makeup
00:21:30
and effects. So I I'm guessing that a huge
00:21:33
part of the allure of this movie overall is just like the
00:21:35
atmosphere given who is behind it, because the story sounds
00:21:39
very simple and a little stupid. Yes, exactly.
00:21:43
But the atmosphere is fun. The atmosphere is like cool Wes
00:21:47
Craven like definitely has like some stylistic choices in there.
00:21:52
There's a lot of like interesting, like scene
00:21:55
transitions that are very Star Wars esque where it's like
00:22:00
screen wipes and like interesting like fades.
00:22:03
But it also has like something I I guess stuff that's influenced
00:22:09
by that. Like I guess it would be like
00:22:11
40s era B movie films, you know? I like the old sci-fi B movies.
00:22:18
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like those types of like screen
00:22:21
transitions throughout the movie.
00:22:24
And that's kind of fun. It helps like feel like things
00:22:28
are moving along in an interesting way when it goes
00:22:30
from 1 scene of a person running through a swamp to the next
00:22:33
scene is still somebody running through a swamp.
00:22:35
So like it helps feel like things are kind of moving at an
00:22:41
interesting pace, you know, But yeah, I mean, like he definitely
00:22:45
like you mentioned too, like the kind of practical effects are a
00:22:52
little hokey, but you know, they're they're like neat and
00:22:57
and can't be in their own way too.
00:22:59
At one point Swamp Thing gets his arm chopped off by a machete
00:23:03
and that's a silly looking effects but then he has to like
00:23:06
regrow it like he's Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z and.
00:23:11
That's exactly where I was going.
00:23:13
Yeah, yeah, he's green too. You know, he's green And so
00:23:18
yeah, But like the suits don't look great because the the
00:23:24
climax of the film is swamping, fighting Arcane, who has also
00:23:30
taken the formula and transformed into like, honestly
00:23:33
a weird looking like my gosh, I don't even know.
00:23:38
He looks like a Power Rangers villain.
00:23:40
Like he he looks like AI don't even know what animal to compare
00:23:44
him to. Kind of like a a giant feral,
00:23:47
like hedgehog or something. Maybe like Sonic?
00:23:54
Like where Sonic? You remember where where Sonic
00:23:56
for some reason? Werewolf Sonic.
00:23:58
Yeah. Very much that is.
00:24:02
That's an indictment on this character design if he looks
00:24:04
like a werewolf Sonic hedgehog. Pretty much a hat on a hat type
00:24:09
idea from Sega for that one. But that's that's what they took
00:24:12
inspiration from was in. 1982. Yeah.
00:24:18
OK so we get that. Still falls into the trope that
00:24:21
we keep talking about where like the superhero character just has
00:24:25
to fight a clone with the same powers but different.
00:24:29
I mean, yes and no. Like, he's not fighting another
00:24:32
Swamp Thing, he's fighting, oh, we're Sonic, so it's a little
00:24:36
different. One's a big, ugly, disgusting
00:24:41
creature and the other swamp thing.
00:24:45
Also like so when he turns into basically the the climax of the
00:24:51
film is Cable and Swamp Thing are like they're trapped at
00:24:58
arcanes like evil estates. Arcane is like trying to figure
00:25:02
out he's trying to get Swamp Thing to tell him the secret of
00:25:05
this formula and then he just like takes it himself, which I
00:25:08
was like, that was really stupid.
00:25:10
Did you not see what it did to this guy?
00:25:12
Like turned into a swamp monster Like, but like he for some
00:25:17
reason thought it was just going to like turn him into like a
00:25:20
super genius or something, but he takes it turns into a wear
00:25:24
Sonic. And then Cable and Swamp Thing
00:25:28
are like escaping his estate. And when he's chasing after
00:25:33
them, he like grabs like a sword off the wall to like chase after
00:25:38
them with. And like the whole ending fight
00:25:40
sequence between swamp Thing and Arcane.
00:25:44
They're like using this sword. And I'm like, I really didn't
00:25:47
expect this sword to become such a big part of this, but it is.
00:25:52
And at one point arcane like stabs cable in the chest and she
00:25:58
like, you know, like that dice but.
00:26:04
Thanks for elaborating, I was. Confused.
00:26:07
You know what happens when you get stabbed in the chest?
00:26:09
You know, you get stabbed in the chest and you're like you.
00:26:14
Gotta make the sound of fact, girls.
00:26:15
People won't know what happened. People won't.
00:26:17
Know this is an audio format? All right, we got to paint the
00:26:20
picture. Like Swamp Thing, he was like,
00:26:24
he's like, he heard it, you know?
00:26:25
He was like, what was that noise?
00:26:26
But where? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:27
She's dead. She's a goner, yeah.
00:26:30
She's a goner, but he's able to use his swamp healing hand on
00:26:35
her so she's. Fine so she's like he uses his
00:26:39
super powered micro gut Biome to fix her.
00:26:45
He's like, you tried these, these mushroom coffee.
00:26:47
It's pretty good so. OK then she gets stabbed but
00:26:53
swap thing saves her. He saves her and he like he gets
00:26:58
the sword away from arcane, who's who's a were hog and kills
00:27:03
him with the sword and I'm like, oh, OK, that didn't feel like, I
00:27:09
don't know, thematic at all. It just felt like you just had
00:27:12
this sword and you just kind of like chopped this guy up you.
00:27:15
Tell me you haven't heard of Swamp Things famous sword.
00:27:18
I write like, just like, oh, he got his sword at the end.
00:27:24
I hope they have the scene in it where Swamp Thing grabs his
00:27:26
famous sword and says it's it's swamping time.
00:27:28
It's swamping time. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:32
But yeah, that's that's that's the end.
00:27:34
That's. That's pretty traditional.
00:27:37
Yeah, and I mean, the the action sequence is, is is thrilling.
00:27:41
It's, it's, you know, it's very much two guys in rubber suits
00:27:43
bouncing into each other. I just like that it's a sword
00:27:46
fight where there's only one sword involved.
00:27:48
Exactly. That's that's kind of funny.
00:27:50
Like it's not a sword duel, it's just A1 singular prop that they
00:27:54
have to trade. Right, right.
00:27:58
Yeah, yeah, but Swamp think it's really mad when when Cable gets
00:28:01
gets black bed and then he has to get the sword back and kill
00:28:05
Arcane with it. But Arcane's in the sequel, so
00:28:08
you don't know. Well, I mean.
00:28:10
That makes more sense now because he's got swamp DNA.
00:28:13
Swamp. DNA.
00:28:14
That's true, yeah, Yeah. So he could come back I guess.
00:28:17
New question, given the King Kong style imagery on the cover
00:28:22
and that ending, is there supposed to be like a romantic
00:28:25
element between Adrian Barbeau and Swamp Thing?
00:28:28
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Like in the beginning when she
00:28:31
first gets there, she like this is all her first crazy first day
00:28:35
on the job for her 'cause this all happens in the same day.
00:28:40
But when she first gets there, she's she's talking to Ray Wise,
00:28:45
who who he's playing the the scientist character when he's a
00:28:47
human. I think it's they just found a
00:28:49
much bigger man to be in the Swamp Thing outfit.
00:28:52
So Ray Wise is really kind of only in the beginning of the
00:28:54
movie. He might be doing, I don't know
00:28:57
if he's doing the voice either actually, for when he's actually
00:29:00
the Swamp Thing. He maybe is.
00:29:02
Does one thing, Does one thing speak words?
00:29:05
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For for a while he's just kind
00:29:08
of like like guttural yelling, but like, and he's there's a
00:29:13
couple scenes where he's trying to like communicate with Cable
00:29:18
that he is the scientist character, but she's just like,
00:29:21
there's literally a scene where she's just like shoot shoe, go
00:29:25
away shoe because he's like she like recognizes at this point
00:29:32
that he's like helped her out a couple times, but she's just
00:29:34
like, you're gross. I don't want to talk to you.
00:29:39
I mean, maybe if you had a sword, we could do things that.
00:29:41
'D be different but pretty sweet, but not, you know, come
00:29:45
back when you have the sword, then we'll talk.
00:29:46
Come. Back with the sword, Yeah.
00:29:48
OK, so it's like the same kind of trope, almost of like the
00:29:53
beauty and the beast thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally,
00:29:56
totally. And like, the movie ends where
00:30:00
she, after he she's healed and he defeated Arcane, he's like,
00:30:05
all right, I must go into the swamps now.
00:30:07
And she's like, well, I mean, let me stay here with you.
00:30:11
And he was like, no, no, like, no.
00:30:18
He's just kind of like he's, I think he tells her like, you got
00:30:20
to go and tell our story, Like tell them what happened here or
00:30:24
something. And then he just starts going
00:30:28
shoe. Shoe he shoes her away.
00:30:30
Yeah. I was hoping we would get an
00:30:35
inversion where you assume that to be together she has to live
00:30:38
in the swamp, but then we cut to like 6 months later and he just
00:30:41
lives in her New York City apt. I think that would be my
00:30:44
preferred ending where she's just like swampy, you've
00:30:49
destroyed the living room, it's just like shucks.
00:30:54
Or whatever his catch phrase is. It's like a swamping time.
00:30:58
Swamping time. No, it's not swamping time all
00:31:00
the time. Swamp Thing.
00:31:01
We got to talk about this. We got to sit.
00:31:02
Swamp Boundaries Swamp time is from 9:00 to 5:00 and it's
00:31:07
person time. It's like that could have been
00:31:11
the sequel is is like swamp in the city and like swamp in.
00:31:17
The city. Go on now you're just being
00:31:22
ridiculous. Now, now we're being silly.
00:31:26
No, that would have been great. That would have been awesome.
00:31:28
No, I don't think her character comes back.
00:31:30
He has like a different romantic interest in the sequel.
00:31:34
And I think from what I read, it's the daughter of bad guy
00:31:39
Arcane. Like she comes to the swamp and
00:31:43
like she falls in love with Swamp Thing, I think.
00:31:46
So yeah, cables, cables out. She's doing her own swamp in the
00:31:49
city. Yeah, dude, Swamp thing.
00:31:53
He's got a lot of rizz, I guess. I mean.
00:31:56
Dude, yeah, he's. Confident.
00:31:58
OK, You know, he makes good eye contact.
00:32:02
He's got a sword. He's.
00:32:03
Got he's got that sweet sword. I think he did leave it behind.
00:32:06
He should have kept that with him, but I guess he doesn't need
00:32:09
it. I mean, I feel like I get it.
00:32:12
I feel like I get both what Swamp Thing is and what it
00:32:15
should have been instead. What?
00:32:17
What should it have been? What I mean what?
00:32:19
Swamp in the city. Just told you.
00:32:25
She's been over this. It's a white couch.
00:32:27
She's all green and swampy. A ROM com where her friends are
00:32:31
just like, I don't know, there's something off about your new
00:32:33
boyfriend and she's just like, what is it his anger?
00:32:35
And then they're like, no, it's he's a 6 foot tall SWAT monster.
00:32:39
And she's like, you have to get over your prejudices.
00:32:42
Like, yeah. And then in the whole time in
00:32:46
the background, there's a scene of him just like hurling police
00:32:48
cars into building. That is one of his favorite
00:32:51
moves. When he's fighting these like
00:32:54
military guys, he just loves tossing them around.
00:32:58
That's like all he really knows how to do is to just pick them
00:33:00
up and throw them over there. There's a couple like.
00:33:03
Funny scenes too actually, which I think is worth pointing out.
00:33:07
Like at one point, like the first scene where like Swamp
00:33:11
Thing is there and like fighting the military guys, they're kind
00:33:14
of like running around scared and they have like these machine
00:33:16
guns. And at one point it's like 2
00:33:18
guys and they like hear something behind them and one of
00:33:21
the guys like turns around and starts shooting and he like
00:33:24
accidentally shoots one of their own guys.
00:33:26
And like, the dialogue around it is really funny.
00:33:29
And like the guy's reaction, he just like puts his like hands on
00:33:33
his head like, Oh no, I shot that.
00:33:37
Like, and like later, like two other characters meet up and one
00:33:41
of them he's like, he's like, where's that guy?
00:33:43
He's like, where's Billy or whatever?
00:33:45
And he's like, oh, well, Dave shot Billy.
00:33:47
So we got to go like, it's just like, it's just like funny.
00:33:51
I'm like, that's, that's fun. I I like this.
00:33:54
There's also some like, dialogue that I thought was interesting
00:33:57
and like a Swamp Thing has some kind of fire bars.
00:34:00
Honestly, like that's maybe like, you know, maybe that's how
00:34:03
he's picking up all these chicks, but like.
00:34:07
Or a farming over here swamp. Thing Yeah, seriously.
00:34:11
Like he he has like the first time he's like the first time
00:34:16
that cable doesn't chew him away and they actually are able to
00:34:18
have a conversation after he's turned into the Swamp Thing.
00:34:23
Can't remember what she says to him to set this up, but he like
00:34:26
she's oh, she's saying like she's saying like, am I
00:34:30
dreaming? She's like this all feels like a
00:34:33
dream or something like that. And he says to her, like,
00:34:36
everything's a dream when you're alone.
00:34:38
And like, they kind of have this like romantic scene there.
00:34:40
I'm like, oh, wow, that's actually a really good line.
00:34:43
And then that is good later, like one of the cards that's
00:34:49
like leading them into their cell when they're like trapped
00:34:53
at at the villains estate near the end, he says, oh, 'cause one
00:34:58
of their own guides the, the bad guy, he tested the serum before
00:35:02
he did it on himself. He tested it on one of the
00:35:06
military guys and it kind of turned him into sort of a
00:35:08
deformed creature. And that guy was saying to one
00:35:12
of the other military guys, like, you know, thanks for
00:35:15
betraying me basically, and like putting me in this cell with
00:35:18
these guys. And that guy says to him, he
00:35:21
says every man for himself and God against all.
00:35:25
And I was like, whoa, why are you just dropping these like
00:35:28
cold ass lines out of nowhere? But I.
00:35:31
But then when I was looking up the movie, I guess part of Wes
00:35:35
Craven's inspiration when he was writing this movie was a
00:35:39
different film that wound up changing the title.
00:35:43
But that was the original title of the film that he was inspired
00:35:47
by. Was Every Man for Himself and
00:35:50
God against All. And so he put that.
00:35:52
Like a reference. To the movie yeah, yeah, yeah,
00:35:55
yeah. So I was like, wow, there's
00:35:57
there's just those like for something that overall was very
00:36:01
basic and formulaic, had those those nice little touches
00:36:06
throughout, you know, it's like some good dialogue and like some
00:36:08
little funny comedy beats and like some campy action sequences
00:36:13
and and like I said, like Cable especially like she really was
00:36:17
fighting for her life out there. She she was carrying her weight
00:36:19
in this team like like fighting these bad guys off.
00:36:24
She like punch combos, a guy at one point, like she just like
00:36:27
machine guns a guy. I'm like, she did not hesitate
00:36:30
at all. Like, good for her.
00:36:32
So this I feel like I'm picturing sort of a, you know
00:36:36
how often times movies will get advertised as being like X movie
00:36:39
meets Y movie. This to me sounds like 1930s
00:36:44
Universal monster horror meets like 70s and 80s sci-fi horror.
00:36:50
You know what I mean? Like because he's such a classic
00:36:52
little Black Lagoon monster guy, but the tone almost seems
00:36:56
inspired by stuff like Alien a little bit.
00:36:59
I would. I would say so, yeah, yeah,
00:37:01
totally. Especially because it's like,
00:37:02
yeah, it's like early 80s, you know, 82.
00:37:05
So like visually has a very kind of like 70s aesthetic too,
00:37:09
which, yeah. So I think it's, it's definitely
00:37:11
a blend of those genres. And I, and I feel like that's
00:37:15
what Russ Craven was going for stylistically.
00:37:20
And, and I guess it's worth noting too, that this like there
00:37:24
was an actual sequel. There was a live action
00:37:27
television series that came from this too, where I think a couple
00:37:31
of the actors reprised their roles in that TV.
00:37:34
Swamp Thing. TV swamp thing dude.
00:37:37
And it had like 70 episodes or something too.
00:37:39
Like it was kind of was like it lasted for at least a couple
00:37:42
seasons. That's crazy, how do you get
00:37:45
episodic storytelling out of Swamp Monster?
00:37:47
Unless they did do our Sex and the City spin off.
00:37:51
Swamp in the city. Caroline was mean to me.
00:37:58
I like that that's what you assume the dialogue in Sex and
00:38:00
the City is. She was mean to me.
00:38:07
That's how she was a little. Rude.
00:38:12
Yeah, well, and I mean, I guess, you know, he's ADC character, so
00:38:15
it's like he's like appeared in other things.
00:38:18
But I think this sequel and like TV series were like, and there
00:38:22
was even an animated series that was very brief.
00:38:26
But I think all of those were like directly related to this
00:38:30
particular movie. And then like other versions of
00:38:33
the character were just different adaptations, 'cause I
00:38:36
was going to point out too that in like, I think it was around
00:38:39
like 2019, there was a, a short lived live action Swamp Thing
00:38:46
show that like got cancelled midway through its first season.
00:38:50
But it was like, technically part of the like, Arrowverse,
00:38:54
like CW shows, and Adrian Barbeau had like a guest
00:39:00
appearance in that show, So that's cool.
00:39:03
So it was successful enough to have like nostalgia baiting 25
00:39:07
years later. That's that's a nice bar to
00:39:09
clear for a superhero story. Yeah, and it kind of reminds me
00:39:13
when we talk about Supergirl, how like, she appeared in, I
00:39:16
think it was Smallville. I think she she appeared in an
00:39:18
episode of Smallville. Interesting.
00:39:22
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of, like, related media
00:39:25
to Swamp Thing. Like it.
00:39:28
It definitely kind of left an impression of sorts, you know,
00:39:32
like the character's been around for a while at least.
00:39:36
And this is a fun movie. It's a fun movie.
00:39:38
Fun movie. I mean, I like it.
00:39:40
I might go watch it. Yeah, I don't, I don't think
00:39:43
you'd be disappointed at all actually.
00:39:44
Like swamp Things, like actually neat it.
00:39:47
It's like far from perfect and like can be kind of dull because
00:39:52
there's really not much narrative.
00:39:55
It's it's kind of front loaded with narrative.
00:39:56
The the first act is actually really well paced and while
00:40:00
watching it, I'm like, you know, with a worse movie like this
00:40:04
would have been much clunkier. This setup or just not really
00:40:07
happened at all and they just would have gotten right into
00:40:09
like the stupid stuff. So definitely the first act is
00:40:13
worth appreciating and then the rest is like entertaining
00:40:15
enough. Like I said, it does enough like
00:40:17
little things to kind of keep it going throughout.
00:40:20
OK, all right, I'm sold. I'm in on Swamp Thing.
00:40:24
I think obviously at the end of the episode we'll do our scores,
00:40:26
but this definitely sounds like 1 where we haven't given away
00:40:29
enough to ruin the experience of watching it for the audience.
00:40:32
So I think anybody listening, check out 1982.
00:40:35
Swamp Thing I think is the conclusion.
00:40:38
Check it out. Swamp in the city?
00:40:39
Check. It out swamp in the city, so
00:40:41
Caroline said earlier when we were at lunch, she said you're a
00:40:45
disgusting freak. And I was like, first of all,
00:40:49
no. I, I, I know I swamped thing.
00:40:55
I was there. I was there.
00:40:58
That injury, Marbo, yeah. Yeah, I was there.
00:41:06
You don't have to tell me swamp there, I just want to say it out
00:41:08
loud. I don't have to repeat it.
00:41:09
I feel better over this. It's not swamp in time.
00:41:13
They have a lot of problems in their relationship.
00:41:15
A lot of, I mean, that's it, right?
00:41:20
That's the end. Just move on from that.
00:41:33
All right, coming back now from the other side of the break,
00:41:36
frankly, turn things over to the movie that you asked me to
00:41:38
watch, 2018's Fast Color. Sorry, 2019.
00:41:43
Did I get this wrong? Double checking.
00:41:46
Looks like 18 to me. OK, I had it right.
00:41:48
That was a near miss 2018's Fast Color.
00:41:52
We joked last time I said, is there anything you want to tell
00:41:55
me about Fast Color? And you just said no.
00:42:01
So our our audience hasn't heard a word about this.
00:42:04
Is there anything that you would like to say now perhaps?
00:42:09
No, still no, no. This movie, like when I was
00:42:13
looking for movies that fit the theme of the season, I came
00:42:18
across this one and I was like, I'm like this, This just looks
00:42:22
like a real movie, like a like a drama, like something that's
00:42:27
actually like a critically acclaimed film, which felt very
00:42:32
much like a standout for like a superhero movie and very
00:42:35
different from everything else we've talked about.
00:42:37
So it just seems like an interesting pick to throw into
00:42:41
the mix. I actually did not look too much
00:42:44
into the plot of it beyond that, so I don't really know that much
00:42:48
about it, so you'll have to tell me.
00:42:51
Well, you're spot on. It's an independent drama.
00:42:54
Interestingly, the acclaim that you're mentioning, the Run
00:42:58
Tomato score from critics is right now at an 83%, but the
00:43:02
audience score is at a 58, which is a distinction you do not
00:43:06
often see. I think the opposite happens
00:43:08
where audiences will like a movie and critics think it's
00:43:10
like boring or you know, just not anything new.
00:43:14
But to see something that critics preferred over audiences
00:43:17
was very interesting to me. I think kind of gives a good
00:43:19
impression right away that this is a somewhat like message heavy
00:43:24
low budget indie drama if that paints a picture.
00:43:29
So it's a low budget film, but from what I understand there are
00:43:33
super hero or superpower characters in it at least.
00:43:37
Yeah, and by low budget I don't mean it looks bad, it looks
00:43:40
nice. It just is very small in scope.
00:43:43
There are only like 6 actors that have any significant screen
00:43:49
time. There's a couple of bit parts,
00:43:53
really only like two or three locations.
00:43:55
So it's very stripped down storytelling, huge emphasis on
00:44:00
dialogue and character. But there are a couple of key
00:44:03
moments where you have VFX sequences that actually look
00:44:07
very nice. So I think it is a limited scope
00:44:10
film, but it used its budget appropriately and still kind of
00:44:14
captured what it wanted to show. That's cool.
00:44:17
I like that, you know, I like an indie film like kind of
00:44:20
understanding its limitations and putting its limited
00:44:23
resources towards what it needed to, you know, 'cause it's like,
00:44:27
if you're telling this like compelling drama and then the,
00:44:30
the VFX looked terrible, that would really kind of like throw
00:44:34
the whole film off balance, I think.
00:44:36
It absolutely would, especially because those sequences are so
00:44:40
core to the narrative and they build up to especially this one
00:44:43
at the end for quite a long time.
00:44:46
Plot wise. Again, fairly simple.
00:44:49
But as you mentioned, it is, you know, maybe not a superhero
00:44:52
story, but a super powers story. The premise here is that it's
00:44:57
like near future science fiction in that at some indeterminate
00:45:03
point, either America or the entire world goes through this
00:45:06
like endless drought. I think the film opens with a
00:45:10
monologue from the main character's mother, who mentions
00:45:15
that there has not been any rain in like 8 years or something.
00:45:18
And so the entire world has kind of started to collapse because
00:45:22
obviously that affects food production and just everything.
00:45:25
And so the people are living on these severe, expensive water
00:45:29
rations. And that's like, the main
00:45:31
problem going on in the world they inhabit.
00:45:34
But then beyond that, these main characters in the story, this,
00:45:39
like, these three generations of women all happen to have some
00:45:42
kind of supernatural power that puts them in the sights of like,
00:45:47
the federal government who thinks that they can maybe use
00:45:49
that power to somehow like, you know, theoretically, maybe try
00:45:53
to bring back water or just do something to like, save the
00:45:56
world. That's an interesting set up.
00:45:58
I mean, do they explain where these characters got these
00:46:01
powers from or is it irrelevant? It's explained in this, but not
00:46:06
right away. The first act of the film is
00:46:08
played very much as like a mystery.
00:46:12
And it's probably my favorite part of the movie because it's
00:46:15
where they, in an effort to entice the viewer, I think use a
00:46:18
lot more of a variety of like locations and characters.
00:46:23
And they really try to create a momentum so that when you get
00:46:25
towards the middle, when everything slows down, you're
00:46:28
already invested a little bit more.
00:46:31
And I really appreciate all of the like show don't tell style
00:46:37
storytelling in the opening act because after we hear that
00:46:41
narration at the beginning, it's from the main character.
00:46:43
Her name is Ruth, but this narration is from her mother
00:46:46
who's seemingly reading from like a diary entry or something.
00:46:48
And she explains the lore. The world doesn't have any
00:46:51
water. And she just kind of has this
00:46:53
flowery prose that, among other things, iterates one of the
00:46:57
movies core themes where she says, like, if something's
00:46:59
broken, it stays broken. And that's like a core message
00:47:03
that is repeated throughout. And then we fade out from that
00:47:07
to Ruth, the main character, who is seemingly like on the run
00:47:11
from something, we're not sure what.
00:47:14
She steals a car. We see that she has these, like,
00:47:16
rope bonds around her wrists. And then she has to run off to
00:47:20
like, a really crummy motel. And that's how the story opens.
00:47:24
Which is she has what on her wrist?
00:47:27
Ropes like she was tied up. Bonds.
00:47:30
I thought you said bombs. She does.
00:47:32
Not have bombs on her. Wrist explosives on her wrist.
00:47:35
I was like, that's cool. That's superpower.
00:47:37
They call me explosive floaty wrist.
00:47:42
I used my power once, I ain't got wrist no more.
00:47:45
Really it works. Sorry, yes, She had ropes around
00:47:49
her hands, which implied that she was tied up somewhere.
00:47:52
And we're not exactly sure why, but there's a nice shot of her
00:47:55
with her hands on the wheel of this car and you see that
00:47:57
they've been like recently, you know, tethered.
00:48:00
Like she kind of like cut them with a knife, but they're still
00:48:02
there. OK, OK, cool, cool.
00:48:05
So it's a it's a mystery. It's like is the world is this
00:48:09
like so it's like near future no rain.
00:48:12
Is it looking kind of post apocalyptic?
00:48:14
It looks real dirty and real sad.
00:48:18
They they're going sad like swap thing.
00:48:25
They go out of their way to show the effects of the water
00:48:28
rationing, like everywhere that they go in order to get water to
00:48:31
do anything. You know, like, like when she
00:48:33
first escapes, she's trying to get water from the person
00:48:37
running the hotel so that in part so she can like, clean
00:48:39
herself up because she's like bleeding and just needs to, you
00:48:42
know, take care of her body. And the person gives her this
00:48:45
like, really dirty, like half full jug of water.
00:48:48
And it's like, that'll be like $30.00.
00:48:50
So they're trying to sell that water's not completely gone or
00:48:53
inaccessible because everyone would be dead in that case.
00:48:56
But it's just increasingly expensive and hard to come by.
00:48:59
Yeah, I mean, that could never happen in the real world.
00:49:02
That's. No, no, no science.
00:49:04
Fiction. Science fiction.
00:49:06
It says that that means it's never going to happen.
00:49:08
Never not. Real.
00:49:11
Too spooky? And yeah, they they really give
00:49:15
a strong impression of how far that's gone.
00:49:17
Like the house that a lot of the movie takes place in her mom's
00:49:21
house. They occasionally do flashbacks
00:49:23
where you see that she has all these, like, plants in the front
00:49:25
yard. And then anytime we're in the
00:49:26
present, they're all gone. And the most she has is a couple
00:49:29
little plants, like hanging in her kitchen window, even in the
00:49:34
motel room. When Ruth gets into it, after
00:49:36
she first goes inside, you see that she has to pour water out
00:49:39
into the sink to clean up her hands.
00:49:41
But there's no taps. There's no like, faucet anymore.
00:49:44
Like they've all been removed, which is kind of funny because
00:49:46
it's like you don't actually, you don't need to take those
00:49:48
off. But it it's just to remind the
00:49:50
audience like there's nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:54
That's fair. That's visual language.
00:49:55
I get it. Yes, there's a lot of visual
00:49:57
language. The movie does a good job of not
00:50:01
making the main character just talk out loud to communicate
00:50:04
what she's thinking, even though she's by herself.
00:50:07
You know, that's a problem, not a problem, but that's like a
00:50:09
tool that a lot of stories use. You'll have like your John
00:50:12
Mcclane in Die Hard, where he just kind of has to say out loud
00:50:14
what he's thinking all the time. This isn't.
00:50:17
This isn't a second screen experience.
00:50:20
No, you do have to watch the movie actually to understand it.
00:50:24
She's not walking around saying my wrists explode.
00:50:26
Also, I'm pretty thirsty. Pretty thirsty every few
00:50:32
seconds. Still thirsty?
00:50:35
Not a lot of water. Not a lot, but yeah, this
00:50:39
opening too, like visually it looks nice.
00:50:43
It's kind of that classic, like 2010's indie drama lighting
00:50:47
where it's very dark and like high contrast.
00:50:50
I would say like color palette wise, you're looking at a lot of
00:50:52
like dark blue and gold is kind of like the main things that
00:50:57
they try to evoke. So it looks nice and the score
00:50:59
is really nice. It kind of has like a almost
00:51:02
like a cyberpunk sound to it. Oh, that's fun.
00:51:07
I like that. Yeah, like it's very heavy on
00:51:09
synths and at times almost sounds like it's riffing on like
00:51:12
the Stranger Things soundtrack as well, which would make sense
00:51:14
for when it was made. So there's a bit of a variety,
00:51:18
but overall it has this very heavy like, like this wouldn't
00:51:20
sound out of place in Blade Runner or something.
00:51:24
And so it has a very strong sense of atmosphere as it gets
00:51:26
going because the main character, Ruth, is on the run
00:51:28
from something we don't know what.
00:51:30
You're immediately thrust into how like unwelcoming and
00:51:34
horrible this world is now. And then the music is really
00:51:36
under. The music is really emphasizing,
00:51:39
like, just how tense she is about needing to get wherever it
00:51:43
is she's trying to go. Well, that's great.
00:51:46
That's great. Like strong score pushing the
00:51:49
narrative forward too. This all sounded really good so
00:51:52
far. This I'm.
00:51:53
It's it's a strong opening. I think the the opening really
00:51:55
had me hooked. For trivia, the person who did
00:51:59
the soundtrack, I don't remember the name off the top of my head,
00:52:02
but they have done a lot of recent films.
00:52:05
I think they even scored Deadpool and Wolverine like
00:52:08
they've worked on bigger productions too.
00:52:10
All right, still superhero themed, sticking with the theme
00:52:13
for the. Superheroes.
00:52:14
That's a good point. He's like, I only throw heroes,
00:52:17
OK, they got to have powers or I'm not doing the music.
00:52:21
It just wouldn't make sense, you know?
00:52:22
There's no super powers, there's no music.
00:52:25
No music. That's what makes music.
00:52:29
Weird guy, weird composer. That's our fun character for
00:52:32
this review. Composer, man, composer.
00:52:36
He is a superhero. That's it.
00:52:40
So anyway, I just wanted to mention that because I thought
00:52:42
it was interesting that the composer is one of the strong
00:52:45
points of fast color, but also has gone on to do a lot of
00:52:48
bigger projects too. Yeah.
00:52:50
Yeah, that's neat. I like that.
00:52:52
Yeah. So the other piece of
00:52:54
information that you get at the beginning of the story, in the
00:52:56
same scene at the hotel, Ruth goes in, she talks to this very
00:53:00
thirsty looking person behind the desk who is like has a young
00:53:04
child, thirsty. For water not thirsty for.
00:53:06
Water. Not, no, not like Swamp Thing.
00:53:09
I'm talking thirsty for water. Swamp Thing's very thirsty.
00:53:14
Yeah, this very sad looking woman behind the counter who has
00:53:17
like her young daughter and while looking at the young
00:53:21
daughter, Ruth has some sort of bizarre like memory flash across
00:53:25
her screen and you're not her screen, her face, my screen, so.
00:53:30
You everybody's in their screens.
00:53:32
Man, he's in their screens. Nobody talks anymore.
00:53:37
She has a there's a flash on screen and you're not sure as
00:53:40
the viewer if it's like a memory or like a premonition or
00:53:43
something. But she has a reaction to seeing
00:53:45
the small child. And then when she goes inside
00:53:49
and is in the motel room, all of a sudden one of her hand starts
00:53:52
like shaking. Like her whole arm starts to
00:53:54
shake in this very kind of unnatural way.
00:53:57
And she's clearly aware that something is about to happen and
00:53:59
has probably happened to her before.
00:54:02
And so once again, you know, show, don't tell.
00:54:04
She starts like taking everything in the hotel room and
00:54:07
like putting it on the ground, like trying to stop things from
00:54:10
falling over. Theoretically.
00:54:11
She like puts things down on their side.
00:54:13
She puts the TV on the ground. And then she remembers that
00:54:16
little girl that she saw at the front desk.
00:54:18
And so she even calls the front desk and tells the woman, like,
00:54:21
you need to get your daughter out of here right now.
00:54:22
Like just go take cover somewhere.
00:54:24
So there's this big build up. And like, you see that she's
00:54:26
shaking more and more. And then she ends up actually
00:54:28
tying herself to the bed, which helps kind of answer the
00:54:32
question of why she had her hands tied before.
00:54:35
Because what eventually happens is she has a full body seizure
00:54:39
and it causes like a full scale earthquake.
00:54:42
How does she tie herself to the bed?
00:54:45
And then how? Does she never show that?
00:54:48
They never show that. It doesn't make any sense.
00:54:50
But they depict it as her somehow tying both of her hands
00:54:54
and and feet, even I or maybe just hands to a bedpost.
00:54:58
And I'm like, that's impossible. But continue.
00:55:00
Yeah. That's a superpower in and of
00:55:02
itself. So anyway, that is very silly.
00:55:07
They do just kind of skip over that part, but the implication
00:55:11
being there's this is the Super powered side of this main
00:55:14
character. There is something about her
00:55:15
that she has these uncontrollable seizures that are
00:55:18
so powerful that they legitimately cause like
00:55:20
measurable earthquakes. OK, well that's cool.
00:55:24
That kind of reminds me of what I'm thinking of.
00:55:26
Like, is it Terra from Teen Titans?
00:55:29
Isn't that like her thing? She was an earthquake person,
00:55:32
yeah. Earthquake person.
00:55:35
Yeah, category of earthquake, People earthquake.
00:55:38
People swamp Thing, you know, Yes.
00:55:42
So in this case, it is completely outside of her
00:55:44
control. It's sort of like a curse more
00:55:46
so than a superpower. But that also kind of helps
00:55:50
explain to the viewer why she's constantly moving and is on the
00:55:53
run as because as you can imagine, this attracts a lot of
00:55:56
attention. Yeah, earthquakes happening
00:55:59
where they shouldn't be happening.
00:56:01
Exactly. And so the front desk woman who
00:56:04
did get her daughter to safety calls, like the police and his
00:56:07
cleanup crew arrives, who clearly knows that they're
00:56:09
looking for Ruth already, like, there's some government
00:56:12
organization here trying to track her down.
00:56:14
And then once again, they go into the room that you've been
00:56:17
staying in, and they're, like you said, it came from in here.
00:56:19
And then they go inside, and Ruth's not there, but they cut
00:56:23
to the bathroom. And you can see that, like, the
00:56:24
tiny bathroom window above the shower is open and like, there's
00:56:28
like a little curtain blowing in the wind.
00:56:30
And it's like, oh, she got away. Which is really really simple,
00:56:34
but nice. Yeah, yeah, a lot of visual
00:56:37
storytelling happening here. Like you have to be paying
00:56:40
attention and watching. You have to watch the movie to
00:56:43
see the movie. Also wait a minute though they
00:56:47
were like so you say that earthquake came from this room
00:56:50
like how does that? Happen.
00:56:51
Well, not the earthquake, the the the phone call.
00:56:56
Trace the earthquake going back to room 7B.
00:57:00
Somebody tripped and fell and it cost us 6.3.
00:57:04
So yeah, no, they traced back the phone call because that's
00:57:07
ultimately like Ruth gives herself away by warning the
00:57:11
woman to keep her child safe. Got it, got it.
00:57:14
OK, very heroic thing to do. Heroic thing to do.
00:57:18
She's got an earthquake curse. She's moving on to the next
00:57:20
town. We've also already.
00:57:23
Yeah, We've also already seen visually that she pulled up a
00:57:27
map and pointed where she was and then traced her hand to
00:57:30
where she was trying to go, which was a town called
00:57:32
Garrison. I don't know in what state.
00:57:34
I think this is like the South or the Pacific Northwest or
00:57:37
something. Middle.
00:57:40
Middle of the country. Middle.
00:57:42
Yeah. So she's on her way to Garrison
00:57:44
and then the next morning she goes into a diner and once
00:57:48
again, visual storytelling, She has her back to the door and
00:57:51
she's trying to eat this like terrible low quality food
00:57:54
because it's all the diner has. And every time the door opens,
00:57:57
the little bell rings. She like whips her head around
00:57:59
to see who's coming inside and then tries to kind of like play
00:58:01
it off like she wasn't doing that.
00:58:03
And it's like, oh, she nervous. I get it because I'm watching
00:58:06
the movie. She's scared, She shake.
00:58:11
She tie herself to the bed. She tie herself to the bed
00:58:14
somehow. And so again, we're just telling
00:58:17
this very basic story, but with like easy to follow beats and a
00:58:21
little bit of a mystery with good music.
00:58:22
So right away, first act, very, very nice.
00:58:25
More than I expected out of this movie when I turned it on.
00:58:28
Oh OK, came in with low. Expectations No, I just came in
00:58:32
with like nothing. And you know, I, I thought it
00:58:33
would be just jump right into whatever it's main story was,
00:58:36
but they don't really get into the meat of the premise until
00:58:40
almost like 2530 minutes in. The whole first act is just this
00:58:43
journey from wherever she started to Garrison, and what we
00:58:47
eventually find out is her mom's house.
00:58:50
Oh, that's where she's, that's where she's going.
00:58:52
Yep, on the way we have what is probably the best scene in the
00:58:55
movie actually is at that diner, this guy, this white man.
00:59:00
There's also the three women in this movie are all black women.
00:59:04
And there's a lot in the themes of the story that are about
00:59:06
like, cycles of maternal trauma passed on from mothers to
00:59:11
daughters, all of which I am woefully unqualified to talk
00:59:13
about. And I'm just going to put that
00:59:15
out there right now is could you do not listen to two white men
00:59:19
tell you about this movie? And if you want to really get
00:59:24
it, sure. Sure.
00:59:26
Like I'm going to tell you what happens in it.
00:59:28
I'm going to talk about production elements, but the
00:59:30
themes are the the core audience for this movie is not me, and I
00:59:36
know that. Sure, but you engaged with it
00:59:38
though. You engaged with it and like
00:59:40
like recognized the themes of the film.
00:59:43
And I'm going to do my best to explain it as I understood it,
00:59:46
but just wanted to throw that out there.
00:59:48
Frank, you've given me a tough assignment.
00:59:49
Once again, this is heavy art film stuff.
00:59:53
Yeah. I like doing that to you, yeah.
00:59:56
Yeah, making me look foolish. I'm like, hey, this guy, Swamp
01:00:00
Thing. And you're like, Oh, yeah.
01:00:04
Gotcha. So anyway, that's the reason I
01:00:06
specify that there's this kind of like, nice white guy who
01:00:10
talks to Ruth at the diner and keeps trying to be nice to her,
01:00:15
but is also clearly asking these oddly probing questions.
01:00:19
And Ruth is so on edge that she's giving like, especially
01:00:23
like, curt answers. And it leads to this very tense
01:00:26
bit of dialogue where he's acting very jovial towards her
01:00:29
just being like, so like, where you going?
01:00:32
You know where? And she just has no answer.
01:00:34
She's just like, I'm just going. She can't even come up with a
01:00:37
lie because she's just not ready for it.
01:00:39
And even like, again, good dialogue, good dialogue.
01:00:41
In this first act, he's complaining to her that the
01:00:44
coffee sucks because it's made with probably some terrible
01:00:48
replacement and they don't have any water.
01:00:49
So like, it just is probably made with something that tastes
01:00:51
gross. And he's like, wow, this is
01:00:53
awful. But then he orders her a cup of
01:00:54
coffee, and she drinks it like it's the best thing she's ever
01:00:57
had because she's clearly been on the run and doesn't have
01:00:59
access to anything. And so right away, it's like
01:01:01
she's giving herself away even further.
01:01:05
Just a good scene, Just a good, very tense scene.
01:01:08
And then as soon as that ends, he says he's leaving.
01:01:11
But then when she goes back outside, she finds that the car
01:01:14
that she stole to get here, there's like a cop out in front
01:01:17
of it. And so she's like, oh, no, you
01:01:19
know, they've got me again. But then that nice white man
01:01:22
plays it off like, that's his wife.
01:01:24
And he's like, hey, honey, like, come with me.
01:01:25
We'll get going now. And so you're this whole time
01:01:28
you're like, who is this guy? Is he actually just like a nice
01:01:30
white dude who thinks this person needs help or what's you
01:01:34
know, what's the deal? Good basic dialogue driven
01:01:37
tension. I'm tense.
01:01:39
I don't know where this is going to go.
01:01:41
Yeah. And so they have that whole
01:01:43
scene, and then they're in his car driving, you know, roughly
01:01:45
in the direction of where she asked him to go.
01:01:47
And he's just trying to make conversation again.
01:01:49
But then over the course of the drive, now that she's stuck in
01:01:52
the car with him, we eventually kind of like turn all the way
01:01:56
over into him being like, hey, who do you think called that cop
01:01:59
just now? And then he says that he knows
01:02:01
her name. And he reveals that he's like a
01:02:03
scientist as who is part of some sort of federal government
01:02:07
operation that had previously captured Ruth and that she
01:02:10
escaped from. Damn.
01:02:15
Very upsetting, very upsetting scene because the car is moving
01:02:18
and she can't get out. The door is locked.
01:02:20
And then he's trying to still play nice, convince her to come
01:02:23
back with him because he just keeps saying like, you have
01:02:27
abilities that we need to study, we need your help, we just need
01:02:31
to run these tests on you, which is obviously not.
01:02:34
It's not a nice thing that he's asking her to do.
01:02:36
And then we find out because we saw earlier visually that she
01:02:40
has a gun in reverse. Oh wait, did we see that?
01:02:43
I don't remember a gun. Well, I didn't mention it.
01:02:45
I forgot. Shut up.
01:02:48
Why don't you you watch the movie?
01:02:52
You would have seen that. She had a gun.
01:02:53
You had a gun in a map. OK, So she pulls the gun and she
01:02:58
gets into a fight with this guy in his car after they pull off
01:03:01
to the side of the road and she manages to like, shoot his
01:03:04
fingers off or something and then runs away.
01:03:06
Shoot. His fingers off.
01:03:08
That's well. She shoots him in the hand.
01:03:11
OK, OK. All right, cool.
01:03:14
Very, very tense scene. Again, like the music's
01:03:16
pounding. We've had a sequence of new
01:03:18
locations in every scene. She runs away from here.
01:03:20
She ends up at this like really cruddy looking gas station where
01:03:24
she has to buy more expensive water.
01:03:26
She almost has a seizure. Again, very, very tense stuff.
01:03:29
Very like almost punching above its weight in terms of the scope
01:03:32
and budget of the rest of the movie.
01:03:33
They really give their all in the first act to be like there's
01:03:36
a lot happening just to almost earn the right to slow things
01:03:40
down once she makes it to her mom's house.
01:03:43
Nice. Yeah, that's a good way to put
01:03:44
that. They're really like this.
01:03:46
This seems like a smartly written script and a smartly
01:03:50
executed production. It's very, very well written in
01:03:54
the first act. All right, here's the turn.
01:03:58
Here's the Here's why I got to criticize this movie written by
01:04:05
and for women, about the cycles of violence and grief that women
01:04:09
suffer. And I'm here to say it sucks.
01:04:12
Yeah, tell us your problems with.
01:04:13
Tell us why you think that's wrong.
01:04:15
Here's why this didn't do anything for me.
01:04:18
So no, the movie is not ever bad, but it peaks massively in
01:04:22
this first act and never again recaptures that.
01:04:25
Like really tense atmosphere in favor of mostly just having kind
01:04:30
of like thoughtful emotional dialogue.
01:04:34
It just it never really regains that sense of like cat and mouse
01:04:37
tension that it opens with. Does it like feel like like
01:04:42
watching a play in terms of just like heavy dialogue driven
01:04:48
scenes or is it like overly dramatic?
01:04:51
What is the I, I guess appeal of of where it goes from there?
01:04:55
It's interesting. I would say this is a movie of
01:04:58
three acts because they're all very distinct and have, like
01:05:00
different tones. The first one, peak tension,
01:05:04
peak cyberpunk energy, just on the run.
01:05:08
Eventually she makes it to Garrison, which this is my last
01:05:10
thing I'm going to spotlight as visual storytelling.
01:05:13
After Ruth runs away from the guy, she goes to the gas
01:05:16
station, she goes to the bathroom.
01:05:17
She's cleaning off her hands again because now she has blood
01:05:19
on her face from getting into a fight with this dude.
01:05:21
And she like, is looking at herself in the mirror trying to
01:05:25
calm down. And then we rack focus to this,
01:05:27
like, sticker that somebody had stuck on the mirror because it's
01:05:30
all covered in graffiti and stuff.
01:05:32
And it's a sticker for the local high school team, the Garrison
01:05:35
Tigers. And so that's how we let the
01:05:37
viewer know like, oh, she made it like they got all the way to
01:05:40
where she was going. Great.
01:05:42
Love that smart visual. Like directing some photography.
01:05:48
Yeah. Yes, really looks nice, well
01:05:51
directed. Big fan of all those little
01:05:52
touches. Most of them are in the first
01:05:55
act because it's where you need to do that much lifting because
01:05:57
Ruth doesn't have anybody to talk to.
01:05:59
Once you get past this, it's not as relevant.
01:06:01
There's a lot more, just character dialogue, but I really
01:06:03
want to spot like that. I at this point in my notes was
01:06:05
just like check, check. Very nice, very nice.
01:06:08
OK. Throw that again.
01:06:14
Very nice second act. She finally makes it home to her
01:06:18
mom who is named Beau, and there's also a little girl in
01:06:22
the house named Lila. This isn't really a spoiler
01:06:25
because it comes out pretty early on.
01:06:26
At the beginning it's not clear if this girl is maybe Ruth's
01:06:29
little sister, but we soon find out that that's actually Ruth's
01:06:32
daughter. So it's 3 generations of women
01:06:35
in the house and the entire second act is Ruth returning
01:06:39
home to a place where she had to run away from and trying to
01:06:43
reconnect with her mom and also her daughter at the same time.
01:06:47
That's that sounds heavy. Very heavy pick this.
01:06:52
I didn't know. Also, it's a good movie.
01:06:55
All right. Sorry that I made you watch a
01:06:57
good dramatic movie. I think swap thing OK so I I
01:07:04
don't want to spend too much time just like recounting every
01:07:06
scene but I there's a lot of plot to set up to get to this
01:07:09
point. Everything past this mostly
01:07:12
focuses on some lore around this family of women, all of whom
01:07:17
actually have a history of some kind of like supernatural
01:07:20
powers. Most of them are nothing like
01:07:23
Ruth's though. Ruth has these seizures that are
01:07:25
causing earthquakes, but the power that her daughter and her
01:07:29
mom and like every woman in her family before her has had is
01:07:32
different. They can essentially like take
01:07:37
objects and break them apart into like 1 little
01:07:40
shards in the air and almost into this like cloud of like
01:07:45
colors and light and then restore it back to what it
01:07:49
started as. It's almost just like a little
01:07:50
parlor trick they call it. Like that's what the rest of
01:07:53
them could do. Oh.
01:07:55
So they can all do the same thing, but hers is earthquakes.
01:07:59
Hers is earthquakes, but you learn that Ruth originally could
01:08:03
do the same thing they could, but around the time she had her
01:08:06
daughter, she lost the ability to do the normal thing and in
01:08:09
exchange ended up with this horrible curse of earthquake
01:08:13
seizures. Interesting.
01:08:15
OK. So like thematically, their
01:08:17
powers are representative of their traumas in life and that's
01:08:23
what changes them. It's complicated because there's
01:08:27
a lot to it. They also, this is important, it
01:08:30
relates to the title of the movie, The daughter.
01:08:32
Lila explains essentially to the viewer that every time one of
01:08:36
them uses their powers the normal way where they like break
01:08:38
an object apart and kind of like spin it around and put it back,
01:08:41
the after image of that is this like sea of beautiful colors in
01:08:46
the sky that only the person who did it can see.
01:08:49
So the little girl when she does it, she like takes apart a bowl
01:08:52
and puts it back together. And then you just see her kind
01:08:55
of like looking up because she's taking in all this like crazy
01:08:58
like tie dye color effect in this in the air.
01:09:01
Ruth used to be able to do this too, but she kind of phrases it.
01:09:04
It's like I can't see the colors anymore.
01:09:07
Oh, wait, so everyone can see the thing get broken apart and
01:09:10
put back together, but they can't see the colors, only the
01:09:13
person who did it? OK, Yeah.
01:09:15
And these things are, are specific and nuanced, but that's
01:09:18
it. That's not, that's basically it.
01:09:20
Now, Bo the, the, you know, the grandma in this case has the
01:09:23
power too. Lila has the power.
01:09:25
Ruth used to have it. Now she does it.
01:09:27
And you essentially figure out that historically, every woman
01:09:31
in this family has gone through this very similar cycle.
01:09:35
They've all lived in the same house.
01:09:37
They all had a strained relationship with their mother
01:09:41
because whenever they kind of came of age and wanted to leave
01:09:43
home to go see the world, their mothers always end up being
01:09:47
overprotective of them and trying to essentially shield
01:09:51
them from like the horrors of the outside world.
01:09:54
But then in doing so, they strained the relationship so
01:09:56
much that the daughters often run away from home.
01:09:59
And in almost, in several cases at least, Bo and Ruth both
01:10:03
quickly got pregnant with some by some man who like didn't stay
01:10:07
with them and then ended up just repeating the cycle again with
01:10:10
their own daughter. So it's like maternal mother
01:10:13
daughter traumas repeated over and over again and then
01:10:17
reinforced by this imagery about their superpowers.
01:10:21
That's I mean, that's really neat.
01:10:24
Like, it's interesting like on paper, but it sounds like you
01:10:29
were saying this is the part where like visually and
01:10:32
narratively the the movie just kind of slows to a halt almost.
01:10:36
It slows down a lot and feels much more so like it's padding
01:10:39
for time because the dialogue in the second act is still quite
01:10:43
strong and the performances from these three women are all very
01:10:45
good. But we spend so much time in
01:10:48
this one location with just not enough to cut away to.
01:10:53
Like, you would think we would spend more time with this guy
01:10:56
who was chasing Bruce at the beginning, the white guy, the
01:10:59
fake helpful guy, and he's still in the story.
01:11:02
But whenever we cut to him, he doesn't really do anything.
01:11:04
We'll just cut to him, kind of remind you that he's there and
01:11:07
then nothing really happens. And then he doesn't really play
01:11:09
much of A role until closer to the end.
01:11:12
Oh yeah. Like in some ways this almost
01:11:15
feels like a short film or short story that had to get stretched.
01:11:19
That's yes, like if you just gave me the first act, like the
01:11:22
1st 20 or so minutes as a story. That's a really nice short film.
01:11:25
It leaves a lot unanswered, but that almost makes it better. 10
01:11:28
out of 10, if you gave me the second act as a play, I'd be
01:11:33
fairly engaged with it still, although I would be lamenting
01:11:36
that we don't have enough visual variety outside of this house
01:11:39
that they film in. And then the third act, to me,
01:11:45
the big emotional, rousing conclusion to this story just
01:11:49
straight up doesn't work, and I think it really, really tanks
01:11:53
what would otherwise still be. Overall, a pretty great film.
01:11:56
Tell me more, why does it not work for you?
01:11:58
It's so hard to explain, like I was watching this one with my
01:12:02
wife because I was like you woman, you maybe understand
01:12:05
better. Woman.
01:12:08
You woman me Swamp. But we both had the same feeling
01:12:13
at the end. We're like, ultimately, the
01:12:16
government people catch up with Ruth and find out where she is.
01:12:20
And it leads to this climax where at first Ruth tries to run
01:12:24
away again, like leaving her mother and her daughter behind
01:12:27
to kind of just get away. But then in doing so, because
01:12:32
she has spent time with them both, she kind of confronts her
01:12:36
past trauma and gets her original powers back.
01:12:40
She loses the earthquake powers. She she manages to voluntarily
01:12:44
stop one of the seizures. And what you learn is the first
01:12:48
time she ever had one, she was in a bed with her newborn
01:12:52
daughter and had a seizure that she couldn't control.
01:12:56
And it caused like a water main to leak and like the room they
01:13:00
were in flooded. And her daughter almost died,
01:13:02
like she almost drowned. And so that moment where Ruth,
01:13:06
you know, imagery wise, we're almost thinking like the water
01:13:09
breaking, like having her own child created this dynamic where
01:13:14
like all of a sudden she had these side effects she couldn't
01:13:16
control. And she almost hurt her daughter
01:13:18
in the process. And it traumatized her so much
01:13:20
that she essentially ran away from home and like, left the
01:13:22
daughter behind. So this kind of reminded me, it
01:13:25
sounded kind of like X-Men style storytelling where it's like the
01:13:29
characters powers are almost like allegorical or like
01:13:33
metaphorical for their like struggles and adversities in
01:13:38
life, you know, which is cool. I think that's a cool way to use
01:13:41
superpowers in storytelling. That's a great shout.
01:13:45
That is very reminiscent of a lot of good X-Men storytelling.
01:13:48
Because I think in the X-Men, it's Canon that you get your
01:13:52
superpowers when you go through puberty.
01:13:54
Yeah. Like, you don't have them as a
01:13:56
child usually, but you unlock them.
01:13:57
And it's akin to just like, your body's changing and you can't
01:14:00
handle like the, you know, all of the pain and the things that
01:14:04
you don't know how to control. And this is kind of similar to
01:14:06
that, especially with that angle that she had this trauma about
01:14:09
accidentally hurting her daughter, which plays into the
01:14:11
larger theme. Plot wise.
01:14:15
Ruth is like out in the middle of a field when this happens.
01:14:17
And she gets up and we have the big VFX moment of the movie
01:14:21
where after like silencing the seizure, she stands up and sees
01:14:25
this massive cloud of colors in the sky.
01:14:28
Like she could see the colors again.
01:14:30
And more importantly, in doing so, she somehow like made a rain
01:14:34
cloud too. So her power is even greater
01:14:37
than the others in that she can somehow like the way they phrase
01:14:40
it. It's like tear open the sky and
01:14:43
like in doing so, bring back the water that has been missing.
01:14:46
Oh wow, that's OK. Cool.
01:14:49
This is heavy metaphorical stuff, and it's all still
01:14:54
engaging up to this point. But then there's an ending.
01:14:57
I guess I'll just explain the ending.
01:14:59
Like, overall, I'd still say the movie's interesting, and if
01:15:02
you've been engaged by everything up to this point,
01:15:04
maybe just skip to our next chapter and then go watch the
01:15:07
end of the movie yourself. But if you don't want to do
01:15:10
that, or you just want to hear the ending spoiler warning, I
01:15:12
guess. Sure, sure.
01:15:15
So the end to end of the movie is that Ruth with her powers
01:15:18
returned, goes back home only to find that the feds did show up
01:15:22
while she was gone and actually left with her daughter because
01:15:24
they realized the daughter had powers too.
01:15:26
And they just want to study these super powered women for
01:15:30
for spooky science reasons. And so Beau, the grandma and
01:15:36
Ruth go to get her back. The other character who's there,
01:15:39
who I haven't really talked about is Beau's Ruth's father,
01:15:44
who is another white man who lived in the town who had a
01:15:48
relationship with her mother Beau, but they didn't like stay
01:15:50
together after Ruth was born. So she's just like, that's my
01:15:53
dad. He lives in town.
01:15:54
He's a cop. He said he's a helpful guy.
01:15:57
He stayed away kind of to keep them safe.
01:15:59
It's it's a whole Side Story that like he's not a bad person,
01:16:02
but he also was like, like everyone else, the men always
01:16:05
leave, like the women are always left to raise the daughter by
01:16:08
themselves. So those three, the dad, Beau
01:16:13
and Ruth going to town to get the daughter back.
01:16:16
And everything after this point to me is very muddy and
01:16:19
confusing, both in terms of literally what's happening, how
01:16:24
it impacts the core metaphor and like resolves the core metaphor
01:16:27
of the story. And also the blocking in the
01:16:30
scene is ridiculous. Like oh OK.
01:16:34
It's so weird because again, the movie's low budget, low scale.
01:16:38
They clearly were able to go film on like a like a small town
01:16:42
St. set. Like it's outside, but it looks
01:16:46
like a fake town that just is like 1 Main St. with businesses
01:16:51
on either side. Kind of looks like the town from
01:16:53
the TV show Northern Exposure. Oh, all right, I got it.
01:16:57
I'm with. It that now yeah, that helps
01:16:59
Frank. Probably nobody else, but so
01:17:02
they're there. Ruth pulls up in her truck.
01:17:05
She, in order to get everybody's attention, I guess, summons A
01:17:08
rainstorm, which is a huge deal because there's been no rain on
01:17:11
Earth, I guess, for like a decade.
01:17:13
And so the feds come out and they're like, what on earth?
01:17:15
But then they pull guns on her because they're scared and still
01:17:19
want to capture her. At the same time, Bo and Dean, I
01:17:24
think is the dad's name, show up.
01:17:26
And the resolution we get is all driven by Bo, the grandma, who
01:17:31
is the one who essentially did not break this cycle of trauma
01:17:36
inflicted upon their daughters. Like Ruth is the main character,
01:17:38
so she ultimately breaks the cycle with her daughter.
01:17:41
But Beau kind of failed to do that and it's what led to Ruth's
01:17:43
feeling neglected and running away on her own.
01:17:46
So she resolves this conflict. First off, she dissolves all of
01:17:51
the guns in the hands of the feds because that's the power
01:17:55
they can break things into pieces.
01:17:56
So she gets rid of all their guns and essentially implies
01:17:59
like, don't come at me, you can't hurt us.
01:18:03
Like we're more powerful than you.
01:18:05
Because so much of the story of the movie is like women's
01:18:11
inherent power and how their mothers often force them to
01:18:17
downplay their abilities in order to like, fit into a man's
01:18:21
world better and not be singled out too much.
01:18:24
Like don't stand out. Don't, don't show your strength.
01:18:27
Just blend in because there's a line even where both says
01:18:32
something like, I'm not afraid that I can't stop those men.
01:18:36
I'm afraid that I can. And so there's just this angle
01:18:39
here about like, women's power and in a way, like black women's
01:18:41
power specifically because there's kind of this approach
01:18:43
of, like, some of it feels like a cultural context to like the
01:18:47
pressure on black women in America to like, downplay things
01:18:51
that are specific to their, like, cultural roots.
01:18:54
Do you see how I'm not qualified to talk about this?
01:18:57
I think you're you. At the very least you
01:18:59
interpreted the film. You have a good read on it like
01:19:02
this is, Yeah, like I said, maybe not the most qualified
01:19:06
person to speak on it, but you at least are like receiving the
01:19:10
message of the film. Which is good, getting the
01:19:12
message. My problem here is after the
01:19:14
guns get dissolved, the feds don't have anything.
01:19:17
They're just standing there. But Lila the daughter is still
01:19:21
trapped inside the building and nobody moves to go get her until
01:19:24
Bo is done. Having a monologue like Ruth is
01:19:26
like half a street back because she just got out of her car like
01:19:29
further down the road. And even during this whole
01:19:31
conversation she just like stays where she is for no clear
01:19:35
reason. Like theoretically she'd be like
01:19:37
running up to go rescue her daughter or at least go stand by
01:19:40
her parents. But she just like camps out in
01:19:43
the back because they're like, well, your next line isn't until
01:19:46
like 4 script pages from now. She.
01:19:48
Was in her trailer, she's waiting.
01:19:50
She's just waiting to the point where even when the daughter
01:19:53
runs out of the building because she's freed, Bo is like, go to
01:19:57
your mother. And the daughter's like, mom
01:19:58
came back for me. And it's like, is that why we
01:20:01
had her stand over there? And so we could have that line
01:20:04
where we can be like, yeah, she came back for you, but it's
01:20:06
like, you clearly would have seen her.
01:20:08
There's six people out here. She's right over there.
01:20:10
Yeah, it was presumably for that line of dialogue that they
01:20:13
blocked it that way. Very awkward, very static,
01:20:16
everybody like assumes a position and just doesn't move
01:20:19
for the next like 5 minutes and it's very clunky.
01:20:22
Also pure plot level. Bo's solution is the feds can
01:20:27
take me and in turn let my daughter and granddaughter go
01:20:31
like, I'm breaking the cycle. I'm going to let you guys go out
01:20:35
into the world and find other people like you, like us.
01:20:39
I'm going to like make the sacrifice here that I didn't
01:20:41
make before. And it's like, OK, you can break
01:20:46
guns apart. Ruth just showed she can make
01:20:49
water. That is the most crucial thing
01:20:52
that these people could want. There's no way on earth they
01:20:55
would be like, you can go. Yeah, of course.
01:20:58
That's why I was thinking the same thing, like, yeah, we're
01:20:59
going to take you and you and you, like you're all.
01:21:02
Three of you. Yeah.
01:21:04
Like it doesn't track and her bodes dialogue at the end where
01:21:10
she's trying to kind of like resolve.
01:21:11
The whole metaphor is just really confusing to me where I'm
01:21:15
like what does you going with the evil white man do to finish
01:21:20
out this thought about like mothers who are too
01:21:23
overprotective of their daughters and don't let them
01:21:26
like express themselves or go out into the world because
01:21:29
they're afraid. Like the daughters leaving at
01:21:32
the end makes sense. Like Lila and Ruth going off on
01:21:35
their own and like trying to find more like people like them.
01:21:39
But what does Bo going with the government do for that?
01:21:45
Yeah, it kind of seems like narratively the plot doesn't
01:21:49
congeal with their thematic resolution that they wanted to
01:21:53
achieve. Yes, it's confusing.
01:21:56
And I honestly feel like the movie felt that the federal
01:21:59
government angle was like a nuisance by the end that they
01:22:02
had to wrap up because ultimately the main story they
01:22:05
wanted to tell was just between the three women, like that
01:22:08
second act portion. And then they were like, Oh,
01:22:10
yeah, we had this crazy, like, sci-fi cyberpunk intro.
01:22:13
We have to do something with that.
01:22:15
And then they just had like the worst, most confusing resolution
01:22:20
to that. And it looked bad.
01:22:21
It was like all of the strengths of the earlier parts of the
01:22:24
movie just evaporate and no, no pun intended, water.
01:22:28
But. Water.
01:22:29
H2O. H2O.
01:22:33
So yeah, just really, really strange.
01:22:35
And that is kind of it. Like Ruth and her daughter drive
01:22:38
away at the end. And then I think she opens a
01:22:41
note from Bo that just says, like, there are others like you,
01:22:45
like, go find them. Go tear apart this guy.
01:22:48
I'm like, again, the government would be on her ass so much more
01:22:52
than before. Yeah, totally.
01:22:55
She used to make, She used to make earthquakes.
01:22:57
Now she makes water. That's way better.
01:23:01
That's way better. Especially because they don't
01:23:03
have water. They.
01:23:04
Don't have water? We need water, even plot wise.
01:23:09
Ruth's responsibility now should be to go make water like for a
01:23:13
living. For a Yeah, right.
01:23:15
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
01:23:16
Like help people, I guess. Like help the world.
01:23:21
Very very strange this movie Fast Color is 3 movies and the
01:23:25
first one's awesome and the second one's interesting and the
01:23:27
third one sucks it. Really does seem very
01:23:30
disjointed. Like, like to your point
01:23:33
earlier, it's like that first act felt like, you know, a way
01:23:37
for you to buy into this, but it seems like it was telling or
01:23:40
like showing you a completely different movie than what the
01:23:43
rest of the movie was going to be.
01:23:46
Yeah, They just wanted to draw up engagement, and they did.
01:23:49
I really liked the first act, and I would have had no problem
01:23:52
if it slowed down into the second.
01:23:53
But we had an interesting, meaningful conclusion to that
01:23:57
narrative that we just, not only did we not get a good one, we
01:23:59
got like an expressly bad finale to the story, which really tanks
01:24:05
the like, overall enjoyment I had of it 'cause I just left
01:24:07
feeling frustrated. I was like what?
01:24:09
What, what? Yeah, I'm kind of understanding
01:24:13
now that the discrepancy between the critics reception and
01:24:17
audience, because I feel like the critics appreciate what
01:24:20
sounds like a lot of strong filmmaking.
01:24:22
Sounds like there was a lot of strong filmmaking throughout the
01:24:25
whole thing, but as like 1 consistent narrative, which like
01:24:33
I think is what general audiences are more interested
01:24:37
in. They're like not as invested in
01:24:39
the filmmaking components, but just like being told a good
01:24:43
story that it didn't really land for people that way.
01:24:48
Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at it
01:24:51
through both lenses and I feel like maybe the critical
01:24:56
reception was we're going to give credit to the strengths of
01:25:00
the 1st 2/3 of the movie. But for me, as a conclusive
01:25:06
opinion, I kind of take into account all of it and it kind of
01:25:08
just averages towards the middle.
01:25:10
Because if you start high, you coast through the middle and you
01:25:12
end low, you've just kind of been in the middle the whole
01:25:15
time. Yeah, yeah.
01:25:18
That's like, would you even call this a superhero movie?
01:25:23
I mean, well, it's. A theme.
01:25:26
It does. It's a super powers movie.
01:25:29
I think it's just women's collective power and the
01:25:32
strength of coming together and recognizing that they should not
01:25:35
be that not allow themselves to be held down either by their own
01:25:39
family who are afraid of them expressing themselves or by the
01:25:42
world that they know is dangerous but they still need to
01:25:44
exist in. It's kind of broad in the end,
01:25:47
like this, the message, but it's still a superhero movie.
01:25:51
It just a very atypical 1. No, I actually, yeah, I want, I
01:25:55
want to, I retract that because like I was comparing it to like
01:25:58
X-Men before and, and I feel like this is actually like one
01:26:02
of the best ways to use superpowers in a story is to
01:26:09
enhance those thematic and narrative elements because
01:26:11
otherwise it is just people punching each other mostly like.
01:26:16
Yeah, so like, this is not really related in terms of what
01:26:20
it's discussing, but one of my favorite little X-Men stories
01:26:24
that kind of has a similar tone for me is I think it's just a
01:26:27
story from one of the comics. And it's like a short piece
01:26:30
where this teenage boy wakes up one day and thinks that
01:26:35
everybody in his town has been, like, raptured because they're
01:26:38
all missing and their clothes were left behind.
01:26:40
And they all just, he can't find anybody at home or in his whole
01:26:43
town or anywhere he goes. And then after like a long while
01:26:47
of holding on, this Wolverine shows up and has to explain to
01:26:51
the kid he's like, hey, your mutant power is activated and
01:26:53
they're killing everyone in a certain radius of you.
01:26:57
And I can only be here because of my Wolverine powers.
01:27:00
Like, otherwise I'd be dead too. And this is like a teenager, and
01:27:03
Wolverine's just there to kill him.
01:27:05
I remember this, yeah. He's just like, you can't, we
01:27:09
can't allow this. Like, you have an uncontrolled
01:27:11
violent power that is just evaporating everybody within a
01:27:15
square mile of you, like, and they just have a short little
01:27:18
conversation. And then we cut away and
01:27:19
Wolverine presumably kills this boy.
01:27:21
And it's like, that's messed up. But again, it's a very
01:27:25
interesting way to integrate superpowers into narrative
01:27:27
storytelling in a more like sincerely dramatic way.
01:27:32
Yeah, because, like, the great thing, I mean, now we're kind of
01:27:36
really jumping into X-Men, but that is what this is reminding
01:27:39
me the most of. But like, the great thing about
01:27:41
like those characters and the way they tell those kinds of
01:27:43
stories, which I think is different from a lot of other
01:27:45
superhero media, is that like the X-Men, and this definitely
01:27:50
ties into this movie too. Like they've, they've always
01:27:53
been able to use those characters to like represent
01:27:56
different minorities and like marginalized groups too.
01:28:00
Like, cause another one I was thinking of is like, I was
01:28:03
thinking of that scene in X-Men 2 where like Ice Man has to like
01:28:08
come out to his parents about being a mutant basically and.
01:28:13
Like. They have like a line of
01:28:15
dialogue where like his mom is just like, have you tried not
01:28:18
being a mutant? Like, you know, it's so sad.
01:28:22
It's just on the nose. But like, you know, it, it's
01:28:26
like I said before, it's it's like one of the best ways to
01:28:30
tell an interesting story using these sort of fantastical
01:28:36
elements and place it in like our real world, which it seems
01:28:39
like that's what this movie was doing or trying to do.
01:28:42
Yes, and I do commend it for that.
01:28:44
I will not. I'm not ignoring that.
01:28:46
I really enjoyed a lot of aspects of the movie.
01:28:48
I was just like at the roller coaster ride of watching it left
01:28:51
me disappointed because I was like really with it.
01:28:53
And then to end on a low note, I was disappointed.
01:28:55
But it's still interesting. I mean, anything else we could
01:28:59
pick for a forgotten superhero movie?
01:29:00
I don't think anything would resemble fast Color.
01:29:03
It's very unique. Which is good and that's why I
01:29:06
picked it. I didn't explain that last.
01:29:07
Time why I picked it? Said no.
01:29:11
And he knew that. He definitely didn't just pick
01:29:13
it out of a hat and be like, I don't know, a superhero.
01:29:16
Yeah, yeah. What do you think?
01:29:18
What do you think about that? OK.
01:29:25
Well that does it for my review of Fast Color.
01:29:28
Frank, we turn things over now to final scores and wrap up.
01:29:31
We're going to give each movie a score out of 10 to see who's
01:29:34
blind movie pick for the day was better.
01:29:38
I guess. Let's start with you.
01:29:39
You talked about Swamp Thing first.
01:29:40
Final Final opinions about 1982 Swamp in the city.
01:29:47
Well, it's what I try and do with these scores is I when I'm
01:29:51
done with the movie, I'm like, OK, what's my initial score?
01:29:54
I just give it like that first reaction, you know, and then
01:29:58
sometimes it changes when we talk about it.
01:30:00
Sometimes I'm like, oh, absolutely, yeah.
01:30:02
That I feel a bit differently about it now.
01:30:05
But this one I think I'm going to stick with.
01:30:07
I'm going to give us one thing, a 5 out of 10.
01:30:08
I think it's right right there in the middle because like, you
01:30:14
know, on the one hand, it kind of sucked like.
01:30:21
It's just, oh man, that could be the whole, that could be that
01:30:24
whole half of the show, on the one hand kind of sucked and then
01:30:27
we just started the next one. Kind of not much going on for
01:30:31
the most of the movie, really basic, really straightforward,
01:30:35
but it had those just kind of like quirks to it that I really
01:30:41
enjoyed. Like just those little things
01:30:43
along the way that that made it like appeal to me specifically.
01:30:49
And so it landed in a very middle space and, you know, not
01:30:53
bad, not a bad score. No, fives are good.
01:30:56
Yeah, I stress that every time. We are not.
01:30:59
This is not a middle school English paper.
01:31:02
You don't need to get an 80% to be good. 5 out of 10 is like
01:31:05
media movie, pretty good. Yeah, exactly.
01:31:08
I'd still recommend it. I'd still, you know, I think if
01:31:10
you went to watch it, you'd, you'd appreciate.
01:31:12
Swamp, I think I would like it. And I think we established like,
01:31:15
if you like this, you'd like Swamp Thing.
01:31:17
So if you like Alien or The Thing or Sex in the City or HB
01:31:24
OS and just like that, you'd probably like swapping is is.
01:31:28
That the sequel is that the. Sex.
01:31:29
That's the sequel one. Yeah, yeah.
01:31:31
Good, that's good. I agree.
01:31:34
OK, watch that first and then watch.
01:31:36
Watch that first or else you'll be confused because it'll be
01:31:39
like, what did Caroline say that made him upset?
01:31:41
Samantha. I assume that's one of the
01:31:43
characters names. Just three syllable names.
01:31:50
OK, 5 out of 10 for Swamp Thing. Fast Color just got done talking
01:31:55
about in quite a lot of depth. I would say that because of how
01:31:59
much I liked the first act and how engaged I was with the
01:32:03
thematic content throughout, Fast Color still lands as a 7
01:32:08
out of 10 for me. I think.
01:32:10
To your point, Frank, what's that?
01:32:13
I was just to say that's higher than I thought.
01:32:15
It's higher than I thought because when I was done watching
01:32:18
it, same thing. I wrote down like a kind of
01:32:21
instinctual review. I gave it a six out of 10
01:32:23
because I was like, yeah, it's, it's down the middle.
01:32:25
The ending is really bad and like undercuts some of the
01:32:29
messaging. And it's just there's none of
01:32:31
the filmmaking prowess on display here that we saw in the
01:32:34
rest of the film in the ending, which is the worst place to
01:32:37
fumble at the end of the story. But after talking about it and
01:32:43
even being only a couple of days removed from watching it now,
01:32:46
I'm thinking about like, what kind of impression did it leave
01:32:48
on me, Which is also important. And I think that my impression
01:32:51
of it is positive. And I think the connection you
01:32:53
made to X-Men and that type of superhero storytelling actually
01:32:58
works for me. And it made me think more highly
01:33:01
of Fast Color in that way because I like that kind of
01:33:03
thing. And I think it's something we
01:33:04
need more of in the space. We've talked about a lot of
01:33:07
silly superhero stuff the past 5 episodes and I like the angle
01:33:11
that this one took. Yeah, I can see that one landing
01:33:14
pretty high if like even if the middle was kind of a drag, if
01:33:19
they just had the ending in a way that kind of felt more like
01:33:24
a good conclusion. I I could see that one like
01:33:28
being like really good, something you would have
01:33:30
appreciated a lot. First of all, the whole thing
01:33:34
should have ended more conclusively as soon as Ruth
01:33:37
summons a thunderstorm like that's so crucial to the the
01:33:41
world building of that story that it should have been more
01:33:44
akin to. This is maybe a random show, but
01:33:47
if you've ever seen Children of Men, I.
01:33:50
Don't think I have actually OK. Children of Men is a sci-fi
01:33:54
dystopia movie where for some reason no one on earth is able
01:33:58
to have children anymore. And we're like 20 years into
01:34:00
that crisis and it's just everything's awful.
01:34:02
And towards the end of the story, this woman does have a
01:34:05
baby for the first time. And they're in this very like
01:34:08
inescapable situation, but they literally walk out with the
01:34:11
baby. And all of these people who were
01:34:13
fighting like stopping their tracks and kind of just, it's
01:34:17
like a Jesus moment. They're like, Oh my God, a
01:34:19
child. And they forget what they were
01:34:22
fighting about. And everybody is just shocked to
01:34:24
the point where like they can actually change something
01:34:28
shocked to their senses. And I feel like Ruth summoning a
01:34:32
a rainstorm should have been the baby from Children of Men thing.
01:34:36
Like it should have just stunned everybody.
01:34:39
But the fact that instead they're like, whoa, rain.
01:34:41
Anyway, put your hands on your head.
01:34:43
Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it really
01:34:44
had almost no impact on the story at all.
01:34:48
It was almost like it didn't matter.
01:34:51
So that was dumb, and I think that focusing on that as the
01:34:53
actual climactic beat instead of Beau's weird monologue would
01:34:57
have been a little better. So overall, 7 out of 10 could
01:35:00
have been better. Could have been a heck of a lot
01:35:01
worse. It could have been, could have
01:35:04
been, Yeah. I feel like, you know, the most
01:35:08
movie movie we've talked about this season.
01:35:10
Maybe that wasn't kind of silly. Yep, Yep Yep.
01:35:14
Not really silly at all. Struggled to make comedy out of
01:35:17
that one Anyway. Frank, you've won the episode.
01:35:22
The movie you picked for me was better than the one I gave for
01:35:25
you. You've you've won.
01:35:27
Good, good. That is important for two
01:35:34
reasons. First of all, you've closed the
01:35:36
gap in our superhero season standings.
01:35:39
If you look at all of our cumulative point totals for the
01:35:41
movies we've each selected, it's within like 3 or 4 points
01:35:44
difference. And we do have one more
01:35:46
superhero double feature left to go.
01:35:48
And because you won the episode, you get to make the first pick
01:35:51
for next time. Oh man this is tough.
01:35:54
I I literally have multiple tabs open on my computer right now of
01:36:00
options. For.
01:36:03
This last film to give you and I, I got to be honest, I don't
01:36:06
think any of them are good so. Turns out there's maybe 10
01:36:11
forgotten superhero movies that are worth the time.
01:36:15
I'm, I'm oh gosh, I think I'm going to go with 1990 fives
01:36:24
because we can't get away from the 90s.
01:36:26
Nineteen 90 fives Tank Girl. Tank Girl.
01:36:32
I'm thinking Tank Girl, what do you think?
01:36:38
What do you think? I don't have an opinion because
01:36:41
I just do what I'm told so I will watch tank.
01:36:43
Girl got iced tea in it. Is that?
01:36:47
How does that does that do for you?
01:36:49
Oh, I was feeling pretty thirsty after fast colors, so that seems
01:36:52
refreshing. I think, I think this movie also
01:36:56
centers around a drought. So you know what?
01:37:02
So you know. The real season 2 drought
01:37:05
movies. It's not a lot of that.
01:37:09
Tank Girl 95. I've heard of Tank Girl.
01:37:12
I know it's like science fiction, like you know, in the
01:37:15
future type stuff. I think people historically
01:37:18
don't like it, but I think it's also extremely 90s and I got
01:37:23
it's. Either or you go ahead, you go
01:37:26
ahead. No, no, no, you go ahead.
01:37:27
That's fine. I was.
01:37:28
Just going to say, it was either that or I had one of these was
01:37:32
was a Russian movie that I think you and I saw like a little bit
01:37:35
of on TV once called Guardians. Oh Guardians looks awful.
01:37:41
One of them. We watched all of Guardians.
01:37:44
Did we see the whole thing? We saw the whole thing.
01:37:46
It's like a weird Russian superhero team movie that was
01:37:49
clearly supposed to be Guardians of the Galaxy.
01:37:52
Like they just based it off that title but it's horrendous.
01:37:56
Oh, it's awful. Yeah.
01:37:57
Yeah. I didn't remember that.
01:37:58
We saw the whole thing. I maybe didn't.
01:37:59
Don't. I don't pick that one.
01:38:02
There was also a 2020 Vin Diesel film that I had queued up for
01:38:06
you, so that one was tempting. But no, we're going to go with
01:38:10
Tank. Girl no Tank Girl.
01:38:13
OK OK. I mean, I'll admit I don't have
01:38:16
a good idea either. I'm glad we made this a six
01:38:20
episode season and not 12 because then I think we would
01:38:22
just be like crying in the corner by the time we got to the
01:38:24
end. OK, going up against Tank Girl
01:38:28
for next time, let's think this through.
01:38:33
Right. It's a tough decision.
01:38:34
Last last pick of this little season here.
01:38:39
OK, so I've tried to come up with different angles for each
01:38:42
of my picks, like different types of superhero films.
01:38:46
We started with a straightforward 1, and then I
01:38:48
gave you, like, a pulp action story and then a, you know,
01:38:51
tokasatsu film. This one I don't think really
01:38:54
covers new ground, but I just genuinely need someone to watch
01:38:57
it and tell me what it is. So your film is 1990s Dick
01:39:02
Tracy? Dick.
01:39:04
Tracy. OK, He's the guy who wears the
01:39:08
yellow trench coat, and that's all I have.
01:39:15
Yeah, still in that like pulp. I like we're we're back to the
01:39:18
shadow. We've come all the way back
01:39:20
around to the. Shadow back to the shadow and
01:39:22
like, listen, episode 6 of the season.
01:39:24
We're just cleaning up loose ends, All right, I want to know
01:39:26
what's going on with Dick Tracy. You're curious about Tank Girl?
01:39:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
01:39:32
Who's in that? Who?
01:39:32
Who's playing the lead in that? Dick Tracy is played by Warren
01:39:35
Beatty who did a lot of popular stuff in like the 70s and 80s,
01:39:40
but I don't know what modern audiences would recognize him
01:39:43
from. Honestly, maybe this.
01:39:45
From Dick Tracy, yeah. Dick Tracy.
01:39:47
I also know that Warren Beatty owns the rights to the Dick
01:39:50
Tracy comics character and doesn't want to give them up and
01:39:55
periodically makes like little short films as Dick Tracy's just
01:39:59
so that he can maintain the copyright.
01:40:03
That's that's hilarious and kind of petty.
01:40:05
I think I'm going to have to watch one of these short films
01:40:08
after watching. The movies, yeah, or something.
01:40:10
He makes some kind of content where he plays Dick Tracy just
01:40:13
so he can be like, no, I own it, nobody else can have it.
01:40:17
I hope it's just like him dressed as Dick Tracy, but just
01:40:20
like reading, like his grocery list.
01:40:21
And he's just like, Yep, that's me, good old Dick Tracy.
01:40:26
That's you're wondering how I got here?
01:40:29
Yeah. OK, so that'll be our forgotten
01:40:33
superhero season finale. Very exciting.
01:40:37
Frank, you could still win the season.
01:40:39
I think I have to crunch the numbers, but you're within like
01:40:42
4 points cumulatively for all six episodes.
01:40:45
So if Tank Girl is amazing and Dick Tracy stinks, you could win
01:40:49
the whole thing. I I will win the whole thing.
01:40:52
And he's going to win the whole thing.
01:40:53
He's manifesting it right now. Yeah, yeah, stay tuned.
01:40:58
I mean spoiler I guess, but. Spoiler Tank Girl 10 out of 10
01:41:03
she turns into a tank probably. Who knows?
01:41:07
Sounds cool. OK, well, that'll bring us to
01:41:12
the end of tonight's episode of Meet Your Double Feature.
01:41:14
Frank, thank you for joining me and thanks everyone for
01:41:16
listening. If you'd like tonight's episode,
01:41:19
please give us a rating or a review.
01:41:21
Follow us on our social media channels, which are LinkedIn,
01:41:24
the description for this episode.
01:41:25
Or if you want to find everything, meet your double
01:41:27
feature, you can go to our website,
01:41:29
meetyourdoublefeature.com. Appreciate the support, helps us
01:41:32
keep the show going. But thank you so much again for
01:41:34
that, Frank. I'm going to do the same plug
01:41:37
that we kind of just keep doing now.
01:41:39
Frank made a movie. It's available to watch.
01:41:43
Yeah, it's Nate Morion, Venice, available on Amazon Prime Video,
01:41:48
coming soon to other streaming platforms near you.
01:41:54
Fantastic. That's an independent drama akin
01:41:56
to Fast Color. Same category.
01:42:00
Yeah, it's basically like like if you've seen Guardians, like
01:42:03
the Russian 2017 film, kind of just like that, you know?
01:42:07
Not really. Just like that.
01:42:09
Yeah. I thought it was weird that you
01:42:10
filmed everything in Russian. I was like, oh, you guys don't
01:42:12
speak Russian? You.
01:42:13
Just kind of guess. It's really easy actually.
01:42:15
Don't have to try that hard. How many Russian words do we
01:42:18
got? Is Russian the 1:00 where
01:42:20
they're like duh or is that Germany?
01:42:29
That's the end. That's anyway, yeah.
01:42:31
See you later. Coming up next, it's Tank Girl,
01:42:48
followed by Dick Tracy on Meet Your Double feature.