Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 3: This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: it's Monday, the day of each week that we read
Speaker 3: back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address.
Speaker 3: If you are a fan of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema, all the episodes we do on this feed,
Speaker 3: and you have never gotten in touch before, why not
Speaker 3: write in? You can reach us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com. We appreciate all different
Speaker 3: kinds of messages, but especially if you have something interesting
Speaker 3: to add to a topic we've recently talked about. Uh,
Speaker 3: let's see Rob. If you don't mind, I'm going to
Speaker 3: kick things off with a response to our series on Dust.
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: Okay. This comes to us from Stephanie. Stephanie says, Hello, Robert,
Speaker 3: Joe and JJ. Longtime listener, first time writing. It's springtime
Speaker 3: in the Northern Hemisphere and that is why I could
Speaker 3: not believe that zero mention was made of pollen during
Speaker 3: the Dust series. Did I just miss it? I listened
Speaker 3: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind at bedtime, maybe I
Speaker 3: snoozed right through it. In my native German language, pollen
Speaker 3: is called blutenstalb, which literally translates as flower dust. I
Speaker 3: looked this up and the translation I got was blossom dust,
Speaker 3: which I think means the same thing, but sounds to
Speaker 3: me even more elegant in English. So thank you for
Speaker 3: sharing that, Stephanie. We did briefly mention pollen as a
Speaker 3: major constituent of dust, I think, in part one of
Speaker 3: the series, but we certainly did not go into great
Speaker 3: detail on it anyway. After this, Stephanie goes on to
Speaker 3: say some very nice things about the show. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to read all of them because it would be
Speaker 3: somewhat embarrassing, but I will say among these nice things,
Speaker 3: she mentions that she enjoys Weird House Cinema episode even
Speaker 3: though she has seen almost none of the movies we cover,
Speaker 3: and I assume from the message also means that she
Speaker 3: does not plan to see them, and she likes that
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema episodes tend to be long. We will
Speaker 3: certainly take that. We you know, like, for whatever reason
Speaker 3: you want to listen to them. That's great.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 3: I got curious about this because we actually hear this
Speaker 3: a lot from listeners, don't we rob from people who
Speaker 3: say they're not really interested in watching the movies themselves,
Speaker 3: but they still enjoy listening to the Weird House episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do hear this from time to time. I've
Speaker 2: not conducted account but enough that it is a trend.
Speaker 2: It's at least a subset of Weird House listeners.
Speaker 3: I'm curious to learn more from fans like this, like specifically,
Speaker 3: what is appealing to you about Weird House cinema if
Speaker 3: you're not really very interested in weird movies or in
Speaker 3: movies at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe part of it is, like we watch
Speaker 2: them so they don't have to. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe it's our witty banter. Maybe it's our bits of
Speaker 2: film trivia. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hard to say, but yeah, let us know if
Speaker 3: you want to share your thoughts. Also, Stephanie mentions that
Speaker 3: she likes how core episodes of the show combined things
Speaker 3: like poetry and other sort of cultural things with the
Speaker 3: scientific topics we talk about. And I appreciate hearing this
Speaker 3: from Stephanie because I think this is in fact a
Speaker 3: primary value that our show provides. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of great science shows out there, hosted by many of
Speaker 3: them hosted by scientists, by people with direct subject matter expertise,
Speaker 3: which frankly, we don't have. We are not scientists, and
Speaker 3: it took me a while to realize that. I think
Speaker 3: one of the main distinctions of our show is that
Speaker 3: we are not scientists. We're sort of humanities people and
Speaker 3: arts people who love science and are very interested in it.
Speaker 3: So we work hard and try our best to understand
Speaker 3: the subject matter and get the technical details right. But
Speaker 3: we approach the scientific content with a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: with arts and humanity brains, and a lot of the
Speaker 3: connections we make are specifically across that divide to the
Speaker 3: arts and to literature and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times, I mean, we're sharing
Speaker 2: our research journey with you, our creative journey with you.
Speaker 2: We become interested in these topics, and the shows kind
Speaker 2: of about us sharing our interests. But also, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: journalists to a flaw. We may go off on a
Speaker 2: related tangent in a given episode, and you know, I
Speaker 2: think hopefully that's part of the appeal of the show
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Anyway, at the end, Stephanie says, be well, and she
Speaker 3: adds a ps saying, your editorial meetings would be fun
Speaker 3: to listen in on. How do you decide what to
Speaker 3: take up as a topic on the show? What is
Speaker 3: your guiding principle, Stephanie, I think this might not be
Speaker 3: the most riveting answer, but I think this is the truth.
Speaker 3: Most of the time. It's literally as simple as one
Speaker 3: of us gets interested in a subject or a question,
Speaker 3: and we make a judgment that it would be good
Speaker 3: subject matter for the show. So it's like two criteria,
Speaker 3: like number one, is this interesting to us? And number
Speaker 3: two do we think it would potentially be interesting to listeners?
Speaker 3: And that's about.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, pretty much. I mean we just kind of
Speaker 2: go back and forth, you know, and who's sort of
Speaker 2: taking the lead on a selection. And also I think
Speaker 2: there's a you know a great deal of trust where
Speaker 2: if one of us says, all right, next episode, we're
Speaker 2: doing it on I don't know, frog feed, you know,
Speaker 2: to the other one, we might we might initially wonder
Speaker 2: is there really an episode in frog Feed? There might
Speaker 2: not be, this doesn't sound all that interesting, but we
Speaker 2: tend to trust that the other person is interested because
Speaker 2: they have found some ankle or they have figured out
Speaker 2: how it's interesting, and I mean it always that always
Speaker 2: ends up being the case. Yeah, And in general we
Speaker 2: always find that, you know, you follow any topic, you
Speaker 2: dive into any topic, you'll find the interesting things about it.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think what criteria actually end up with
Speaker 3: us most often ruling outer a topic. I would say
Speaker 3: the most common reason we decide not to do a
Speaker 3: topic is that we can't actually find very reliable sources
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can be it, I mean, and we should
Speaker 2: have the caveat that. There are different factors involved in
Speaker 2: weird house cinema versus core, but just talking about core
Speaker 2: science here.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about core.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess across the board core and weird House,
Speaker 2: if we realize that a topic starts maybe becoming a
Speaker 2: little bit too much of a bummer, that might deter
Speaker 2: us from pushing on. But not always. I mean sometimes
Speaker 2: it's I mean, they're necessary bummers in life. You can't
Speaker 2: avoid all of them. But I know there have been
Speaker 2: times where I'm like, get interested in a topic, but
Speaker 2: then I get down to it, I was like, do
Speaker 2: I really want to talk about this? And so that
Speaker 2: can definitely be a factor. Also, I guess We tend
Speaker 2: to avoid super noozy things in part because those aren't
Speaker 2: very evergreen. They're often still developing, and if you sort
Speaker 2: of get in line to cover it, then you kind
Speaker 2: of you're agreeing that you're going to keep covering it.
Speaker 2: And sometimes that's fun. Sometimes that's the case for us,
Speaker 2: but generally we don't do those sorts of episodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the newsiest to most recent topics we cover.
Speaker 3: That are the ones that I find we need to
Speaker 3: end up coming back and like doing corrections or updates
Speaker 3: on because like something we said in the episode isn't
Speaker 3: really lasting. I like it better when we can give
Speaker 3: give a topic some time to sort of get some
Speaker 3: second and third order commentary and analysis that we can
Speaker 3: digest altogether before we try to cover it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, so there you have it. Partial answer, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, Well, thanks for writing in great points, great questions.
Speaker 3: Totally thank you, Stephanie.
Speaker 2: All Right, This next one comes to us from Jenny.
Speaker 2: Jenny writes it and says it's Hi, guys. I want
Speaker 2: to say I love the show. I've been listening for
Speaker 2: many years. I especially look forward to Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: every Friday. Your recent series on dust was really interesting,
Speaker 2: but the last episode on dust storms reminded me of
Speaker 2: one of the weirdest days of my life. My husband
Speaker 2: and I were living in Manly, Australia in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight. One morning we awoke on what appeared to
Speaker 2: be Mars. The sky was red and everywhere there was
Speaker 2: sunlight it was red and at first I thought maybe
Speaker 2: it was wildfires that were too close to the house,
Speaker 2: but there was no smell or sight of smoke. What
Speaker 2: actually happened was a giant storm of red dust from
Speaker 2: Western Australia was covering Sydney and surrounding areas. The dust
Speaker 2: was high in the atmosphere and blocking the sunlight, but
Speaker 2: was not low enough to cause is shoes on the ground.
Speaker 2: The dust could be seen as far away as the
Speaker 2: coast of New Zealand. It took about two days for
Speaker 2: it to move west over the ocean. If you google
Speaker 2: pictures of it, it's mine bending. In the Wikipedia article,
Speaker 2: the director of Blade Runner said he was inspired by
Speaker 2: it when making the sequel. I hope you check it out.
Speaker 2: My other comment today is on weird House Cinema. My
Speaker 2: background is in clothing and textiles. When you go over
Speaker 2: all the cast and crew. It would be nice if
Speaker 2: you would include the costume designers. Sometimes you mention the
Speaker 2: way that the costumes play a large part in the
Speaker 2: field of the movies, and it would be great to
Speaker 2: know who's behind it all the best, Jenny.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jenny Well, first of all, yeah, about you
Speaker 3: mentioning the two thousand and nine dust storms in Australia.
Speaker 3: These really are crazy to look up. So if you've
Speaker 3: never seen images of it before, yeah, definitely give them
Speaker 3: a peek. And I can see exactly the comparison to
Speaker 3: specifically a certain scene or sequence in Danevilleneuve's Blade Runner sequel.
Speaker 3: There's like, oh, is it when he's going to try
Speaker 3: to find Decord somewhere that there's like this red environment
Speaker 3: with just like the sky is opaque and orange, and uh,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've only seen that one once and it
Speaker 2: was it was visually stunning.
Speaker 3: Also, Jenny, Yes, I agree that the costume designers play
Speaker 3: a huge part in the look and feel of a
Speaker 3: lot of great and weird movies. And we don't have
Speaker 3: time in our Weird House episodes to mention everybody who
Speaker 3: contributed to a film. There are a lot of people
Speaker 3: who make great contributions. But I agree that in tons
Speaker 3: of cases, especially of genre cinema, you know, fantasy and
Speaker 3: sci fi and horror, the kinds of things we cover
Speaker 3: more often, costume design place an especially important and underappreciated role.
Speaker 2: I know sometimes we do single it out, we have
Speaker 2: done it before, but yeah, it's not like part of
Speaker 2: the regular template. However, I will say that one of
Speaker 2: the two possible movies that we're going to cover next week,
Speaker 2: if all goes to plan, will definitely include a call
Speaker 2: out to the costume people on that one. Whichever one it.
Speaker 3: Is, all right, But yeah, in any case where we
Speaker 3: failed to mention a really notable costume designer in the past,
Speaker 3: sorry for the oversight. It's going to happen a lot
Speaker 3: because you know, films are huge projects with a lot
Speaker 3: of people making very important contributions, and they're all coming together,
Speaker 3: and so we do miss mentioning a lot of names
Speaker 3: and stuff. But generally, hats off to costume departments worldwide.
Speaker 3: They do great work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, what else do we have?
Speaker 3: Let's see? This next message is in response to our
Speaker 3: series about meteoric iron being used to make objects make artifacts.
Speaker 3: This is from Angelo and Angelo says, Hi, Robin Joe,
Speaker 3: I just listened to your first two episodes on meteoric iron.
Speaker 3: The idea of iron from meteorites being used to make
Speaker 3: weapons reminds me of the old Conan The Adventurer animated
Speaker 3: series from the nineteen nineties. In that series, the main
Speaker 3: bad guy is an interdimensional wizard along with his hinchmen
Speaker 3: from a race of shape shifting serpent men disguising themselves
Speaker 3: as regular people. Their goal is to allow their master,
Speaker 3: a giant snake being, to enter our dimension. The only
Speaker 3: thing that can stop them is Conan and his sword,
Speaker 3: which is made of star metal, forged by his father
Speaker 3: from a piece of metal that fell from the sky.
Speaker 3: When star medal is put in close proximity, it reveals
Speaker 3: the true appearance of the serpent Men. Of course, when
Speaker 3: Conan strikes them or holds the star metal sword long
Speaker 3: enough in front of them, the serpent Men are sent
Speaker 3: back into the other dimension from film. Throughout the series,
Speaker 3: Conan makes friends and gets helped by other warriors who
Speaker 3: use a variety of star metal weapons like bolas and
Speaker 3: ninja stars. Interestingly, some of the episodes were actually pretty
Speaker 3: close to the Robert E. Howard Stories. I wasn't sure
Speaker 3: if you were if you were aware of that show,
Speaker 3: but I thought it might be interesting to you. Here's
Speaker 3: a link to the show's intro. Keep up the great work,
Speaker 3: and I look forward to part three of the series.
Speaker 3: Thanks Angelo, Well Angelo. I did look up the main
Speaker 3: theme to the Conan the Adventurer cartoon, which is very talky, Rob.
Speaker 3: Did you listen to the theme music?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I checked out part of the clip you sent.
Speaker 2: This show was completely off my radar. I this was
Speaker 2: not syndicated in my childhood.
Speaker 3: I genuinely can't remember if I had consciousness of this
Speaker 3: or not. It's kind of similar to like he Man
Speaker 3: and stuff, So I don't know if if I remember
Speaker 3: this specifically. But the opening theme has like a lot
Speaker 3: of narration. It's got like a guy talking who explains
Speaker 3: the premise of the story. And I gotta say, maybe
Speaker 3: we can feature a little clip of this opening theme
Speaker 3: music as well. It sounds like a parody of a
Speaker 3: nineties cartoon Theme's question.
Speaker 2: This sounds pretty good. I did look into it a
Speaker 2: little bit. I noticed that the main baddie here is
Speaker 2: like a snake wizard and in the show he's called
Speaker 2: wrath Ammon, and I was like, oh, that sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: So there is a thoth Amon in the original Roberty
Speaker 2: Howard Conan stories. And then there's, of course, is Thulsa
Speaker 2: Doom that we also see depicted in Conan the Barbarian.
Speaker 2: This character would seem to be a combination of both
Speaker 2: those characters. I think in the original stories Thulsa Doom
Speaker 2: doesn't have anything to do with snakes either, but thoth
Speaker 2: Amon does. And therefore, even the Thulsa Doom that we
Speaker 2: have in Coden the Barbarian is also kind of a
Speaker 2: mix and match of different elements.
Speaker 3: That would make sense.
Speaker 2: But I'm not an expert on Roberty Howard. I've only
Speaker 2: read a handful of Roberty Howard stories.
Speaker 3: So I noticed something funny about the snake wizard guy
Speaker 3: in this cartoon, which is okay, so you know, these
Speaker 3: are all snake They're like reptile people who were disguised
Speaker 3: as regular humans, and Conan's sword reveals their disguise and
Speaker 3: reveals the fact that they're actually reptiles underneath their human skin.
Speaker 3: But the leader of them is like riding around in
Speaker 3: reptile themed attire. He's got like a reptile hood on
Speaker 3: and a reptile sort of snake armor set, so it's
Speaker 3: like he's giving it away. I don't know why he's
Speaker 3: bothering to pretending to be a mammal.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe they wore snake armor and then you know,
Speaker 2: magical curse they become snake men. But they can't just
Speaker 2: get rid of the snake armor, so they're stuck with it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I already had this fitted. This is tailor can't get
Speaker 3: mammal armor. Now.
Speaker 2: It's like gives the football team the Atlanta Falcons if
Speaker 2: they were turned into like human falcon hybrids by a
Speaker 2: vengeful witch, Like, are they going to abandon the mascot
Speaker 2: and get new uniforms? Like no, No, They're just going
Speaker 2: to magically disguise themselves as humans and keep wearing Falcons gear.
Speaker 2: That's gotta be right, all right, Well, thanks for writing
Speaker 2: in about this. I'm always delighted to learn about. In
Speaker 2: this case, you animated series that I had never heard of.
Speaker 2: But this is fascinating. All right, this is a fun one.
Speaker 2: This one comes to us from Jeff. Jeff writes and
Speaker 2: it says, greeting science humans. I think we've heard from
Speaker 2: Jeff before I seem to remember that that opening, Jeff says,
Speaker 2: I actually saw Highlander two on a date. Oh it
Speaker 2: did not go well. I was making grumbling noises throughout
Speaker 2: as they showed the earthly named MacLeod and Ramires on
Speaker 2: another planet. Ramires space alien, familiar with spaceship and teleportation technology,
Speaker 2: but confused by trucks, etc. And was in physical pain
Speaker 2: by the end of the movie. I had been talking
Speaker 2: it up beforehand, the same actors and director awesome part one,
Speaker 2: this is going to be great. When it was over,
Speaker 2: I was outraged and demoralized. But my date didn't see
Speaker 2: the problem. She thought it was no worse than any
Speaker 2: other testosterone sci fi action movie and couldn't figure what
Speaker 2: all my sulking was about. That she couldn't see how
Speaker 2: bad it was drove me crazy. The fact that I
Speaker 2: considered highland Er two to be an appropriate date movie
Speaker 2: in the first place speaks volumes about who was truly
Speaker 2: at fault here, but that's another matter entirely. In the
Speaker 2: early days of the IMDb, back when the wounds were
Speaker 2: still fresh, Highlander two and Plan nine from Outer Space
Speaker 2: would swap places for worst reviewed movie in the entire database.
Speaker 2: I used to say that it was the most powerful
Speaker 2: movie I had ever seen. It had the power to
Speaker 2: warp time and alter history, souring the first film through
Speaker 2: simple association. I generally appreciate a revisionist take on famously
Speaker 2: bad movies, but this one hits too close to home.
Speaker 2: I still enjoyed your episode, though, to this day. When
Speaker 2: I see candles lit for loved ones in a Catholic church,
Speaker 2: particularly in the case if the candles have been replaced
Speaker 2: with flickering light bulbs and I can smack the top
Speaker 2: of them, I'll channel my inner Clancy Brown and quietly
Speaker 2: laugh as I pretend to snuff them out with my
Speaker 2: open palm when no one else is around.
Speaker 3: Of course, Yeah, come on, now, don't be disrespectful in
Speaker 3: a church, even if you're celebrating your fandom of Highlander.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, it's holy ground, holy grind. It continues
Speaker 2: at any rate, given that you spent two episodes on
Speaker 2: that soul crushing sequel, I am slightly less embarrassed about
Speaker 2: nominating perhaps my favorite crap best of all time, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two's Tron for the weird House treatment. I'm not
Speaker 2: even sure I want you guys to dissect this personal
Speaker 2: treasure and somehow it actually feels too wholesome for the show.
Speaker 2: But allow me to make the case. All right, now,
Speaker 2: I got it. We got a list of pros and
Speaker 2: cons here. It's pretty long, but I'm going to it. Pros.
Speaker 2: It's another film from the peculiar era where the Disney
Speaker 2: Corporation had burned through all of Walt's ideas and was
Speaker 2: desperately trying to remain innovative and relevant, taking big chances
Speaker 2: with varying results. Black Hole returned to oz et cet
Speaker 2: all right, Jeff Bridges, Jeff Bridges, and David Warner. Spectacular
Speaker 2: sound design sample included wonderful orchestral analog electronic score by
Speaker 2: Wendy Carlos, perplexing ludicrous costumes in an echo of the
Speaker 2: what are You crazy? No adult is going to sit
Speaker 2: still for a ninety minute cartoon snow white naysayer story.
Speaker 2: This was a huge bet on CGI in the era
Speaker 2: where the very idea was laughable. Let's see okay more
Speaker 2: pros A bizarre and never replicated style created by blending
Speaker 2: actual CGI with classic animation, lighting, set design, practical and
Speaker 2: film effects, all aimed at visualizing a world most people
Speaker 2: had no interest in seeing in the first place. Cons
Speaker 2: it's a terrible film.
Speaker 3: I've got some thoughts about this, but let's continue with
Speaker 3: Jeff's first.
Speaker 2: Okay, the making of documentary included on the DVD is
Speaker 2: maybe more interesting in the movie itself. Their tools were
Speaker 2: so primitive they could scribble XYZ coordinates and pencil on
Speaker 2: graph paper facts the documents across the country, and then
Speaker 2: they had to wait days or weeks until they saw
Speaker 2: the result printed on film. They didn't even have video
Speaker 2: monitors for the computers. The live action scenes were augmented
Speaker 2: manually on a frame by frame basis. Mistakes caused by
Speaker 2: unconventional use of film created aberrant images, which they leaned
Speaker 2: into within universe explanations, adding to the beauty and weirdness.
Speaker 2: When this movie came out, it was rare for anyone
Speaker 2: to own a computer or even use when at work,
Speaker 2: and most people were not familiar with even the simplest terminology.
Speaker 2: As a kid, I thought this film speaks to me.
Speaker 2: It helped that most adults, including some of the cast,
Speaker 2: found it incomprehensible. It is somewhat embarrassing to admit how
Speaker 2: much it shaped my life. And career. I have watched
Speaker 2: it dozens of times and know most of the dialogue
Speaker 2: by heart, or at least did at some point. But still,
Speaker 2: it's a really bad movie. I'm pretty sure I knew
Speaker 2: it even then. It was never a movie you could
Speaker 2: show to a regular person and expect them to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: But it is a fascinating, attempted moonshot of a film,
Speaker 2: filled with naive energy, both enthusiasm and skepticism for near
Speaker 2: future tech, and a lot of really bad dialogue and
Speaker 2: really bad acting by anyone not named Jeff Bridges or
Speaker 2: David Warner. And I would argue that while it might
Speaker 2: give it a run for its money, it's not worse
Speaker 2: than Highlander two. Probably. Okay, that's my pitch. Thanks for
Speaker 2: your time, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Well, Jeff, I don't know if I agree that Tron
Speaker 3: is a very bad movie. I certainly I do think
Speaker 3: there are some things about the script that don't really
Speaker 3: work as intended. Some parts of the movie are more
Speaker 3: exciting than others, but I agree with your list of pros,
Speaker 3: and I think they carry it a long way. Of course,
Speaker 3: I love the main hero and villain. David Warner and
Speaker 3: Jeff Bridges are fantastic. I also love the computerized villain
Speaker 3: of the Master Control program and the way he manipulates
Speaker 3: his underlings. There's particularly a scene that is burned into
Speaker 3: my memory where the Master Control system is taunting David
Speaker 3: Warner his hinchman and says something like He's like, you know,
Speaker 3: what if I were to slow down some of your
Speaker 3: compute cycles? And David Warner says, no, I need that,
Speaker 3: And so it's just great. I love the music, you know,
Speaker 3: The Wendy Carlos score is fantastic. I have aired many
Speaker 3: complaints on this show before about movies that are too
Speaker 3: reliant on CGI, but that's mostly aimed at modern CGI
Speaker 3: that is attempting to look realistic. I think tronon actually much.
Speaker 3: I agree with your comments actually about the visual style
Speaker 3: of Tron. It embraces the limitations of early CGI in
Speaker 3: a way that makes for a very unique and stylish
Speaker 3: visual flare of its own. So I like the way
Speaker 3: CGI is used and incorporated along with the traditional animation
Speaker 3: and live action in Tron. So I agree there are
Speaker 3: a lot a lot of the weaknesses I think are
Speaker 3: kind of things in the script that that could have
Speaker 3: been tightened up and made to work better. But but overall,
Speaker 3: I think Tron is a success, and and I really
Speaker 3: like a lot about the you know, just the aesthetics
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Well, I have I have not seen the original Tron
Speaker 2: in a very long time. I have, I've seen the
Speaker 2: sequel far more recently. I've played discs of Tron far
Speaker 2: more recently than I have seen the original Tron. So
Speaker 2: I don't know i'd be up for giving it another look,
Speaker 2: for sure. I think I had the story book with
Speaker 2: the audio casset as a kid, and that's probably the
Speaker 2: main thing I remember about Tron. But the sequel is
Speaker 2: really cool to look at. So I think I can
Speaker 2: definitely feel you on this idea of early CGI. Yes,
Speaker 2: but creating, not attempting to create the real world, creating
Speaker 2: this artificial world, and therefore there's something okay about it. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you would feel about applying these
Speaker 2: same thoughts to either film and the lawnmower Man franchise,
Speaker 2: but I imagine you could make a similar case.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that's genuinely different, lawndwer Man. You would
Speaker 3: have to you would be finding the diamonds in the
Speaker 3: rough there that actually is bad. But I would defend
Speaker 3: the core quality of tron It's fairly high.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, I'm buying it. I'm down for
Speaker 2: some tron at some point if we want to do that.
Speaker 3: Just want to say another thing that the Jeff mentions
Speaker 3: about the movie that is good, and I totally agrees
Speaker 3: that it has good sound design, just like the sound
Speaker 3: effects for say, the light cycle races are very cool.
Speaker 3: Like we can maybe get a little sample here if
Speaker 3: you've never seen. At the premise of Tron is humans
Speaker 3: get sucked into a video game world where they must
Speaker 3: compete within these video games that people are playing in
Speaker 3: like an arcade, and they don't even realize that there
Speaker 3: are like little sentient beings down there inside the you know,
Speaker 3: planes and cars they're piloting around on the screen and stuff.
Speaker 3: And so the light Cycles is like a puzzle action
Speaker 3: game where these motorcycles are racing around and they draw
Speaker 3: a line behind them as they drive, which turns into
Speaker 3: a wall and you can crash into the wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has some really cool vehicles and stuff in it,
Speaker 2: for sure. I remember the solar sale type vehicle being
Speaker 2: pretty cool. I guess it's not quite a solar sale.
Speaker 2: It's more of a laser sale vehicle, and I don't
Speaker 2: remember what it was doing or why it was doing it.
Speaker 3: I think they're using it to try to escape the
Speaker 3: computer at the end. Okay, Yeah, this is Tron. He
Speaker 3: fights for the users.
Speaker 2: Well, they have another one on the way. There's a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five tron Aries coming out, so get excited.
Speaker 2: It's got Jeff Bridges in it, and also Gillian Anderson
Speaker 2: and also Jared Leto, so let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Also, as for the high Lander feedback, that's exactly what
Speaker 2: we asked for. It was great to get a little
Speaker 2: more a little more insight into where people were when
Speaker 2: Highlander two came out and hit theaters. You know, the
Speaker 2: excitement mixed with the surprise and the confusion and indeed
Speaker 2: perhaps the anger. So yeah, thanks for writing in about that.
Speaker 3: I mean it taught you a valuable lesson about not
Speaker 3: building movies up too much before you see them.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think it's always important to realize that
Speaker 2: a good movie is something special by whatever standard you're
Speaker 2: using to measure it, you know, and even just just
Speaker 2: dealing with your own personal like, you know, if a
Speaker 2: movie is feels special to you, that's great. But don't expect,
Speaker 2: don't count on a sequel occurring at all. And then
Speaker 2: if a sequel does happen, you know, if it's as
Speaker 2: good or better like, that's amazing. It doesn't happen all
Speaker 2: that often.
Speaker 3: Really, Okay, should we wrap it up there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go and wrap it up. We're going to
Speaker 2: close the mail bag for today, but keep them coming.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you here in the Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Listener mails occur on Monday,
Speaker 2: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact, Monster fact or
Speaker 2: an Ammalius Dependium on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
Speaker 2: aside most series concerns, just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to support the show,
Speaker 2: the number one thing you can do is subscribe and
Speaker 2: make sure you're getting downloads. Wherever you get those downloads,
Speaker 2: wherever you make those subscriptions, such as Apple or any
Speaker 2: other place helps us out, helps us, helps keep the
Speaker 2: show's lights on.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.