Speaker 1: Warning, This podcast indeed spoilers for the first Avatar and
Speaker 1: the sequel Avatar Way of Water in Theater.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Jason Concepsio, and welcome to Expert
Speaker 1: Vision The Crooked Podcast, where we dive deep into the
Speaker 1: beautiful blue waters of Pandora to talk about your favorite shows, movies, comics,
Speaker 1: and pop culture. Of this episode, on the previously on
Speaker 1: Lots of News, We're gonna be talking about the new
Speaker 1: Across the Spider Verse trailer. I'll be talking about some
Speaker 1: stuff that I saw at the Game of Thrones convention.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a discussion of AI and the recent
Speaker 1: AI art controversy. In the airlock, Folks, we're going to Pandora. Baby,
Speaker 1: We're getting in cryos sleep, we're sawing out, We're like
Speaker 1: putting on our little breathers, and we're gonna be running
Speaker 1: around in the forest and then diving into the crystal
Speaker 1: blue waters and joining me today with all of that
Speaker 1: to commune with Awa together. She's the number one Pandora historian,
Speaker 1: the number one harvester of whale brain juice.
Speaker 3: It's a great Rosie Dadea. I must say I have
Speaker 3: never harvested a whale's brain juice. That would makes sense
Speaker 3: when you see Avatar.
Speaker 1: When you see Avatar Way of Water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well.
Speaker 4: I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: You know, my voice is coming back after doing so
Speaker 1: much talking over the weekend. I was speaking so much.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I'm hopped up on on Pandora
Speaker 1: buzz after seeing three hours of J. James Cameron's latest masterpiece,
Speaker 1: Avatar Way of Water. You're just living luxurious and amazing.
Speaker 2: I'm just living. How are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I reordered, I ordered my comic book collection. I put
Speaker 1: like everything in order, and yeah, and God's feel I
Speaker 1: want to keep and give away like in separate piles.
Speaker 2: I feel good.
Speaker 3: How are you? Yeah? I loved Tarry Yeah, yeah, same.
Speaker 3: I was. I was immersed. I was fully immersed for
Speaker 3: three hours and ten minutes in the vibrant three D
Speaker 3: of Avatar A Way of Water. I actually that was
Speaker 3: always my biggest complaint about their original Avatar. Is somebody
Speaker 3: who likes a three D movie where like an axe
Speaker 3: comes at your face or like, you know, one of
Speaker 3: my favorite three D movies is the My Bloody Valentine
Speaker 3: three D remake that they did. I thought that was
Speaker 3: like the peak of three D. The three D and
Speaker 3: this is really good. I was very immersed.
Speaker 2: It's tasteful three D.
Speaker 3: It's tasteful, but it was pushing the boundary. At one point,
Speaker 3: uh NATERII did almost shoot an arrow in my face,
Speaker 3: which I appreciated. And also there was moments when you're
Speaker 3: underwater where it feels like things are past your face.
Speaker 3: I felt like the boundaries of the three D was
Speaker 3: quite limited in the originals. I was. I was loved.
Speaker 3: Three D's back, baby, make every movie in three D,
Speaker 3: but like real three D, I want to see a
Speaker 3: ladder coming towards my face like I'm in Muppets four D.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into it. Let's get into it
Speaker 1: for something previously on.
Speaker 3: Tell us all about the Game of Thrones Official fan convention,
Speaker 3: because that is very very cool and you already it
Speaker 3: was you and Greta, right, it was all.
Speaker 4: Fan and I.
Speaker 1: This was the first time we'd ever met in person,
Speaker 1: which was wild.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this happens to you, but when
Speaker 1: you meet people for the first time and now in
Speaker 1: the COVID era, I don't know about you, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't even register almost anymore, like it feels like we
Speaker 1: have met you and all this time I met in person,
Speaker 1: I was like, somebody mentioned, all, this is the first
Speaker 1: time you guys meeting.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, just feels cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like almost like it feels so normalized now. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was the first time Greta and I had met
Speaker 1: in person. Uh, and it was just I got to
Speaker 1: see old friends, uh, you know, uh our friends from
Speaker 1: History of West Rosays He using Ashaia were there, which
Speaker 1: was wonderful.
Speaker 2: They were covering the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Kim Renfro from Insider was there. Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: just it was so fun. We were hanging you know,
Speaker 1: just like hanging out in the green room and like
Speaker 1: this one fun moment where like as Maybianca was there
Speaker 1: played Rosst.
Speaker 3: One of my old time favorite characters.
Speaker 1: And then Daniel Portman, who played Patrick Payne aka sex
Speaker 1: God Pod, came in and they started catching up and
Speaker 1: you know, like Grant and I are pretending like, oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't cool, We're just very just we're just like
Speaker 1: hanging out and they started having this conversation.
Speaker 2: Esmey was like, oh did you live? Did you make
Speaker 2: it to the end?
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I did, I made it. I lived
Speaker 1: all the way to the end of series. All these
Speaker 1: like fun little moments occurred. It was great seeing everybody
Speaker 1: in costume, and then I was really just like pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised at how generous everybody was with their answers. We
Speaker 1: interviewed Kit Kit Harrington ever heard of him, the famous
Speaker 1: John Snow aka the Bastard of Winterfell, aka the King
Speaker 1: in the North, aka the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch,
Speaker 1: and he like he was just like so wonderful with
Speaker 1: his answers, took time with all the audience questions. You
Speaker 1: could you could really sense how important like connecting with
Speaker 1: these people was to a lot of the fans who
Speaker 1: got to ask their questions, just how delighted they were
Speaker 1: to see everybody. There was a great moment where we
Speaker 1: were interviewing Patty Patty and Steve Patty who plays King
Speaker 1: Vissaras and Steve Dussant, who plays Cortless.
Speaker 2: Filarian, and I don't think Patty.
Speaker 1: Had fully realized like how beloved Vicea's was after this season,
Speaker 1: because I, you know, we had been talking for a
Speaker 1: little while and I said, you know, I'd be remiss
Speaker 1: if I didn't ask you about that incredible scene in
Speaker 1: the throne room where Visara's comes in to defend his
Speaker 1: daughter and just like the crowd exploded, and I mentioned
Speaker 1: it it was cold. I love, it was so cool.
Speaker 2: So, oh, this is a funny thing.
Speaker 1: So we're there for three days Friday, Saturday, Sunday by Sunday.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: It's great, great fun, but I'm beginning to.
Speaker 2: Get like a little t.
Speaker 1: So what happened was we had a panel and I
Speaker 1: forget what it was, but we had like an extra
Speaker 1: fifteen minute like break on top of our existing fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes because Greta was like introing some behind the scenes video.
Speaker 1: So I went up to the green room where all
Speaker 1: the talent was, like everybody from the cast was in there,
Speaker 1: and various people who were also like handlers and you know,
Speaker 1: Alfie Allen's manager and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So it was like I go in.
Speaker 1: There and all the there's like three round tabe four
Speaker 1: round tables, and all the seats are taken because it's
Speaker 1: like Kit Harrington sitting there, Alfie Allen is sitting there,
Speaker 1: Danny Portman is sitting there, like fucking Jack Lease and
Speaker 1: like so I go and lay on the ground to
Speaker 1: just kind of like relax for a little while. Next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I fall asleep and I wake up
Speaker 1: to one of the one of the convention people being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we've been looking for you, and like
Speaker 1: we've come in this room like four times, and this
Speaker 1: is the first.
Speaker 2: Time the street.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I was like out in the open,
Speaker 1: like if you take four steps into the green room
Speaker 1: and by the way, you can see, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the same. It was where were we for the La
Speaker 1: Comic Con. We were at four h two, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: like in that we were four oh seven. So we're
Speaker 1: literally down at the end of the hall and if
Speaker 1: they would have taken five steps or three steps into
Speaker 1: the room, it would have been obvious that I was
Speaker 1: right there. But they didn't do that, so they missed
Speaker 1: me like a million times. And so I woke up
Speaker 1: and I hear the music for the panel going on,
Speaker 1: and they're like, it's it's starting right now. Do you
Speaker 1: want to like run on stage. I'm like, no, that
Speaker 1: would be fucking weird. I guess I just missed this one.
Speaker 1: And so it was the Patty that that one was
Speaker 1: Patty's like solo panel which I which I watched from
Speaker 1: the side of the stage.
Speaker 2: It was really fun. He came out like.
Speaker 1: Tottering on a invisible cane, you know, when they opened
Speaker 1: the doors, he pretended to like totter out like Visara's.
Speaker 1: It was that was super fun. It was just it
Speaker 1: was a really great time. Like everybody wash was clearly
Speaker 1: so excited. You know, it's whenever someone gets up on
Speaker 1: the mic to ask a question and their voice is shaking,
Speaker 1: it's like wow, it's you realize, like how this series
Speaker 1: really just it just means a lot to people. And again,
Speaker 1: everybody was really really great with their you know, in
Speaker 1: answering the questions, and it was just a fun time.
Speaker 1: I love cosplay, I love conventions.
Speaker 2: I love the at all. I got it.
Speaker 1: I got a a corless and vices Funko pop, not
Speaker 1: a single funk I got two Fungo pops.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now Visaras without the Golden mask, but it's so
Speaker 1: it's like younger Visas. But it was really fun. It
Speaker 1: was a great time, man, it was it was. It
Speaker 1: was a long time, but it was really really fun
Speaker 1: and it was cool to see how much it meant
Speaker 1: to the fans.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean it was the first ever official Game
Speaker 3: of Thrones fan con, right, which is why you had
Speaker 3: so many unbelievable that was like a stacked cost of guests.
Speaker 3: It was everyone. You can't want to be there, I
Speaker 3: mean Kit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, holy shit, there he is.
Speaker 1: It's fucking Jon Snow And you never know what to do,
Speaker 1: you know, Like our friend Kenny who is my manager,
Speaker 1: was like he was there for day one because uh
Speaker 1: his wife is also is Daniel Portman's rep. And you know,
Speaker 1: just there to support Grant and I and he and
Speaker 1: you know like Elvi Allen is there and Jack Lison
Speaker 1: were there, and Tom Glencarney was there, you know, plays
Speaker 1: egg on the Elder.
Speaker 2: He said, oh, you.
Speaker 1: Go go say go say how to the dollar? And
Speaker 1: I was like, you introduce yourself over the panel.
Speaker 2: You gotta do that. You gotta do that.
Speaker 1: You make sure that you know they know who you
Speaker 1: are and stuff like that, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, gosh, I don't want to bother them. They're just like,
Speaker 2: you know there.
Speaker 3: Everybody was ballad.
Speaker 1: It's the balance. But everybody was like super super sweet
Speaker 1: and super charming. There were some really thirsty asked questions
Speaker 1: at times, like there was oh my god, I had
Speaker 1: I had Tom.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. Day one.
Speaker 1: The original setup was Greta and I were gonna, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like trade off panels and certain bigger panels
Speaker 1: we do together just to kind of save our energy.
Speaker 1: But then we got to the end of day one
Speaker 1: and did the panel together and we're like, let's just
Speaker 1: do all the panels together.
Speaker 2: It's so much better and so much easier.
Speaker 1: But so originally Day one I did Tom Glencarney just
Speaker 1: by myself, and someone got up and was like, first
Speaker 1: question was hello Tom, You're very handsome, and we were like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's not a question. Yeah, And then another person was like,
Speaker 1: Hi Tom, just so you know, I call you King
Speaker 1: Poppy Chulo.
Speaker 5: To be and Con is like a you are like
Speaker 5: the teacher and the fan and the historian and the
Speaker 5: question asker and the bodyguard.
Speaker 3: New York Comic Con I did a movie premiere and
Speaker 3: one of the people the lot I should have stopped
Speaker 3: before the last question, but the last question the guy
Speaker 3: came up and Jake Lacy was in the movie is
Speaker 3: this really fun movie called Significant Other with Michael Momroan
Speaker 3: and Jake Lacy and the last guy came up and
Speaker 3: just made some really weird comment about how lucky Jake
Speaker 3: Lacy was that he'd like rolled in the hay with
Speaker 3: It wasn't even in the panel like jess I think
Speaker 3: it was Jessica Chastain or something, and I had to
Speaker 3: be like, let's keep it clean, let's get and everyone
Speaker 3: was like I could just be like I was like,
Speaker 3: I should never have let that last guy ask the question.
Speaker 3: But that's always the way people are excited to talk
Speaker 3: to these But it's that balance. It sounds like it
Speaker 3: was respectful fast at the game of.
Speaker 2: Was mainly respectful for Thirst.
Speaker 1: There was like a point five percent of like things
Speaker 1: that were like, okay.
Speaker 2: It was. It was a it was a very respectful Thirst.
Speaker 4: When the questioner was like I call you King, Tom
Speaker 4: was like, what's that mean?
Speaker 2: He like leaned over to me and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, I was like, oh, that's like a it's
Speaker 1: like a very handsome guy. Basically there was and forget
Speaker 1: it for Patrick Payne because who we always who of course,
Speaker 1: you know sex guy pod he made the eight he
Speaker 1: you know, the whoors of King's landing. We're giving him,
Speaker 1: you know, rolls in the hay for et cetera. There
Speaker 1: was they were giving him money, they were giving him
Speaker 1: him money. There were so many questions about, like, so,
Speaker 1: what do you think he did?
Speaker 2: What do you think it was?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 3: What was the backstory is? What was what was specialty? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 4: He was like, oh my gosh, it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a wonderful fun time, absolutely fun time.
Speaker 1: Shall we talk about the Across the Spider Verse trailer?
Speaker 3: That is, it's very exciting.
Speaker 1: Full trailer for the highly anticipated Spider Man Across the
Speaker 1: Spider Verse dropped this week. Of course, loss of returning
Speaker 1: characters Miles Morales, his dad, his father, Jefferson Davis.
Speaker 2: One of the most perplexing choices in.
Speaker 1: Recent comics history done of course, Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And lots of new characters appear in this trailer,
Speaker 1: just Spider Woman, the Vulture, various Spider Man variants. We
Speaker 1: get a Spider Punk, shots of fucking zig and it
Speaker 1: just man, it just seems extremely fun. I am of
Speaker 1: the opinion this is not a controversial opinion that into
Speaker 1: the Spider verses.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 1: Top two comic book movies ever like it certainly want
Speaker 1: to maybe rejectively the best one.
Speaker 3: Maybe everything everything else is like your own feelings, but
Speaker 3: it's definitely the best Spider Man movie. And I love
Speaker 3: that Tom Holland mcu Spider Man movies. I love Andrew Garfield,
Speaker 3: I love Toby, but that movie is unbelievable. I thought
Speaker 3: this was so much fun. I love They managed to
Speaker 3: do this great job with the trailer where they ground
Speaker 3: it in this conversation that Miles is having with his
Speaker 3: mom Rio where she's kind of just like, I spent
Speaker 3: all my life just looking after you, and I don't
Speaker 3: want you to be in a situation where I'm not
Speaker 3: able to do that. And if I'm not doing it,
Speaker 3: then I need you to do it and to take
Speaker 3: on that responsibility. And they ground it with that human
Speaker 3: like love and heart, which was such a big part
Speaker 3: of the movie. And then they're just like boom bombastic
Speaker 3: bag man, like, oh that's spider Man. May Day Parker
Speaker 3: by the way, Oh yes, so Peter B. Parker looks
Speaker 3: like he had a baby with Mary Jane. They revealed
Speaker 3: an image of the baby. We don't see it in
Speaker 3: the trailer. He's wearing the baby beyond, but it is
Speaker 3: made a Parker. But then there's also grown up may
Speaker 3: Day Parker. We see in this there's so many different people.
Speaker 3: They have the PS four Spider Man, they have like
Speaker 3: silver Armor Spider. There's all different kinds of variants. It's real. Oh,
Speaker 3: we don't it's hard to see him in the trailer,
Speaker 3: but they released a really cool character design for Spider
Speaker 3: Man India, So there's a lot of characters here. And
Speaker 3: then we have Spider Man twenty ninety nine. And this
Speaker 3: is the biggest question of the movie is what is
Speaker 3: his role because in this and in the pre trailer,
Speaker 3: it looks like he is either an antagonist or a
Speaker 3: straight up villain. And at the end it ends with
Speaker 3: I think it's Spider Gwen who says, oh, I thought
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be the good guys, and then
Speaker 3: he says we are. But he's like smashing miles his
Speaker 3: face into the ground. So it's unclear what kind of
Speaker 3: cataclysm and drama they're doing here. Also, so Jessica Drew
Speaker 3: Spider Woman here played voice by its Array and they
Speaker 3: did black Jessica Drew. I think that is going to
Speaker 3: be and I think Jessica Drew is going to be
Speaker 3: black in the MCU too.
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I think I think that that
Speaker 2: is going to be the case. I'll say I'll go
Speaker 2: a little.
Speaker 1: This, I'll go a little further on on this. I
Speaker 1: think that this animation style, I think you could make
Speaker 1: an entire like Marvel animated universe.
Speaker 2: I agree, and.
Speaker 1: Just do do do Avengers do West Coast Avengers, do
Speaker 1: x Men?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Do all do a whole universe of stories that's separated
Speaker 1: from the from the mcun like this, because I just
Speaker 1: think the animation startup is so engaging and exciting.
Speaker 3: A long time ago, we'd said, maybe it was around
Speaker 3: the time of What If. I don't remember, but we
Speaker 3: were like, they should use Marvel animation to basically tell
Speaker 3: different famous comic book arts. Yeah, I would love to
Speaker 3: see that in the Sony studio space where you're reaching
Speaker 3: literally no joke. I was on my Instagram the day
Speaker 3: the trailer came out, and like every cool artist that
Speaker 3: I followed was like, so proud this is out, so
Speaker 3: happy I got to do a bit of work on this,
Speaker 3: Like they bought like the best of the best illustrators, animators,
Speaker 3: everyone in to make this sequel, and I just feel
Speaker 3: like there's so much space. I mean, think about how
Speaker 3: great Kingpin was in that first movie. Obviously, Miles is
Speaker 3: movie like it's it's all about Miles, but I think
Speaker 3: so much about the visualization of Kingpin and how terrifying
Speaker 3: he was and how interesting and how visually exciting, and
Speaker 3: I think I would love to see, you know, you
Speaker 3: could even do a Punisher movie like this. And I'm
Speaker 3: not someone who's out here always advocating for many Punisher stories,
Speaker 3: but Punisher, that's a Spider Man villain. You know, that
Speaker 3: could be a really interesting space, and they do so
Speaker 3: much intriguing animation. I'd love to see them do Silk.
Speaker 3: You know, we know that Sony is now doing this
Speaker 3: Amazon deal where they're going to be making TV shows
Speaker 3: like Silk, and I would be really interested to see that.
Speaker 3: I'm also very interested to know and to think about
Speaker 3: when the animated Miles and Miles's movies will inevitably spit
Speaker 3: a real live action Miles into the MCU, because it's
Speaker 3: just it's so it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: It has to happen, it feels and.
Speaker 1: Here's my question, is it do they do it when
Speaker 1: Tom is like on his way out, Tom's gonna die,
Speaker 1: or you know, at the end of his contract. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do it anymore. Is that when they
Speaker 1: bring in Miles or is there a period of time
Speaker 1: where we get both of them?
Speaker 3: I think it's so. It might just be my own
Speaker 3: Miles bias, right, but I believe that the way that
Speaker 3: they ended No Way Home, it essentially establishes a world
Speaker 3: where Miles can exist because Peter doesn't have any personal connections.
Speaker 3: Now in the comics it's that Peter died inverted commerce
Speaker 3: whoever dies, but people thought Peter was dead in this
Speaker 3: the notion that Peter Parker doesn't exist, even though Spider
Speaker 3: Man as a figure does, that could inspire Miles to
Speaker 3: become a local Spider Man and then to have that duality.
Speaker 3: So my fingers are crossed, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: Spider Verse is really the most successful multiverse kind of
Speaker 3: accessible storytelling that we've had, So it makes sense that
Speaker 3: there could be a world where that multiverse spills into
Speaker 3: them see you. But I also think that Sony is
Speaker 3: probably keeping Miles Morales very close to their chest.
Speaker 6: They're not going to give him yeah for nothing, that's
Speaker 6: going to be a negotiation. Looks so great if he
Speaker 6: does come in, wait if and when he does come
Speaker 6: into the live action world while Peter Parker is there. Man,
Speaker 6: think about how heart wrenching a death of Spider Man
Speaker 6: like an ultimate Spider Man end of Peter Parker's run.
Speaker 2: How just like good punch level that would be exactly screen.
Speaker 3: They're establishing so many of the character relationships that would
Speaker 3: need to be set up for that to happen in
Speaker 3: these Spider Verse movies. And my gut says that with
Speaker 3: the looming threat of DC attempting this kind of wildly
Speaker 3: ambitious James Gunpeter Saffran led animation TV film into Connected
Speaker 3: Universe in a more streamline way, because DC has been
Speaker 3: doing that for a while, but it's not been widely recognized.
Speaker 3: I think that that pushes that likely pushes Marvel to
Speaker 3: wanna can in spite of us with the MCU in
Speaker 3: a more distinct way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, up next, AI art. You may have noticed lots
Speaker 1: of people you follow on social media sharing various portraits
Speaker 1: of themselves that are done in this kind of like
Speaker 1: artistic way. Here they are in space, Here they are
Speaker 1: in a forest, Here they are is some kind of
Speaker 1: comic book warrior. This is probably the lensa AI app
Speaker 1: that allows people to create portraits of themselves according to
Speaker 1: whatever prompt the user might input into the user interface.
Speaker 2: But this technology is raising a lot of red flags
Speaker 2: with artists, as in it rosie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So LENSA AI works on open source image the
Speaker 3: text model called stable Diffusion, and that is run by
Speaker 3: a non profit company and what it does is it
Speaker 3: scrapes are from the Internet without artists' consent to train
Speaker 3: the AI. Now that in itself is its own wider
Speaker 3: ethical issue. The problem that really upset people was lens
Speaker 3: is actually charging people for this, so it's no longer nonprofit.
Speaker 3: And as many different people managed to source there was
Speaker 3: some really great kind of just like community journalism, where
Speaker 3: it became quite obvious that you could actually still see
Speaker 3: signatures in the corner of the art because the AI
Speaker 3: is trained off of people's artwork that had signatures, and
Speaker 3: for some artists it was very easy to see an
Speaker 3: image that somebody shared off LENSA that was clearly kind
Speaker 3: of what you would say, like biting their art style.
Speaker 3: But in this it's less of a human choosing to plagiarize,
Speaker 3: and the nature of the way that the AI is
Speaker 3: being trained is on the art of others. So for
Speaker 3: a lot of cartoonists and the illustration community, this is
Speaker 3: like a big kind of upset. Understandably so because a
Speaker 3: lot of conversations about the ethics of AI have been
Speaker 3: very widely agreed upon, and I think for a lot
Speaker 3: of people in the comic book community and the cartooning
Speaker 3: and illustration community, this felt like everyone was just like,
Speaker 3: oh wait, but I want to look see what I
Speaker 3: would look like as a call like Superhero, So I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna pay my eight dollars and put in my
Speaker 3: ten photos. And then outside of that that, which is
Speaker 3: a huge part and is like the main issue that
Speaker 3: a lot of people have had. My understanding is that
Speaker 3: the nature of the way that Stable Diffusion works and
Speaker 3: the company laio N who run this nonprofit your photos
Speaker 3: once they are in there, not only are we talking
Speaker 3: about a likeness rights which they will own and that
Speaker 3: is in the terms and conditions, and many people have
Speaker 3: done great reporting on that, but also they can then
Speaker 3: use your photos and will use your photos to try
Speaker 3: your AI to do stuff like facial recognition that can
Speaker 3: then be used in like a surveillance state. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of different layers to what to the problems
Speaker 3: with it and the different ways that it can be exploited,
Speaker 3: most of which has come from the fact that it's
Speaker 3: new technology and a lot of us don't really understand it.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 1: To your point, there's a lot of different implications of
Speaker 1: this is obviously kind of you know, not to overstate it,
Speaker 1: but AI in general is world changing technology that you know,
Speaker 1: change the way we generate ideas, change the way a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people will work creatively.
Speaker 1: And I think on the one hand, it's it's unstoppable
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's moving so fast that it's
Speaker 1: here and it's kind of not going anywhere. That said,
Speaker 1: because of the way it works and the stuff that
Speaker 1: it scrapes to build out how it works, it is
Speaker 1: essentially at this point theft. You know, it's intellectual property theft. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess the people who are very pro AI would say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're working on safeguards and things like that,
Speaker 1: but it's also like, you know, this is moving so
Speaker 1: fast that it's kind of you can't really stop where
Speaker 1: this is going, and therefore, you know, it's better to
Speaker 1: you know, to support this kind of progress than worry
Speaker 1: too much about the various eggs that are going to
Speaker 1: be broken, yeah, to which I would counter, you know,
Speaker 1: this is you know, artists are not the illustrators that
Speaker 1: we know are not like they're not raking it in
Speaker 1: an exactly.
Speaker 3: I think this is the This is the bigger problem
Speaker 3: is that artists already, whether it's the artists who draw
Speaker 3: your favorite superhero comics or it's an artist who's trying
Speaker 3: to make their own independent work, they are already being
Speaker 3: exploited and undervalued. And the biggest problem with that approach
Speaker 3: to this is that it essentially erases all the work
Speaker 3: that has been done and the years of work the
Speaker 3: artists have done to even be able to train the
Speaker 3: AI in the first place, let alone just to learn
Speaker 3: how to do art. And then I've been reading some
Speaker 3: really interesting, more kind of philosophical questions about it, which
Speaker 3: is kind of the notion of like what does art
Speaker 3: mean to you?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 3: Is art just a series of photos or images that
Speaker 3: tell a story? And if so, then how does that
Speaker 3: change when it's AI or it's a human Because if
Speaker 3: a human is making that art, that art is a
Speaker 3: long ges stating result of their ideas and their experiences
Speaker 3: and their influences. And I'm not a verse. I'm very
Speaker 3: much like I think a lot about like I grew
Speaker 3: up on sci fi, right, so I have a lot
Speaker 3: of feelings about the nature of AI and the possibilities
Speaker 3: of sentient AI and the rights. Nobody is like AI
Speaker 3: art is bad forever blanket banned bad. The problem is
Speaker 3: that right now, with stuff like LENSA, companies are profiting
Speaker 3: off art that is stolen from artists who didn't give
Speaker 3: their consent, and it's seeing kind of widely accepted as
Speaker 3: the norm, which makes it more easy for corporations and
Speaker 3: singular people to exploit artists. I saw multiple examples of
Speaker 3: some really. Some of the stuff that shocked me the
Speaker 3: most was after I'd learned about LENSA, which I was
Speaker 3: down on from the beginning. Some I love creator rights,
Speaker 3: so I'd always felt suspicious about it. But some of
Speaker 3: the wildest stuff I saw was other artists who had
Speaker 3: had their art style directly stolen and fed into AI generators,
Speaker 3: and then had people sharing their art and winning comp
Speaker 3: petitions with their art and getting paid for the art
Speaker 3: that they just fed somebody else's art into the generator.
Speaker 3: And that's the other side of it, is it. It
Speaker 3: makes it a lot easier to plagiarize a specific art
Speaker 3: style or to take work away from working artists. So
Speaker 3: it's it's really complex, and I feel like this is
Speaker 3: probably just the beginning of like a much bigger conversation.
Speaker 1: Like this is before we even get into the questions
Speaker 1: of AI generated revenge porn, and also you can create
Speaker 1: propaganda using AI created art, whether or not the AI
Speaker 1: algorithm and the underlying mathematics and it were created with
Speaker 1: inherent biases.
Speaker 3: You see the images, you see the examples. I think
Speaker 3: it was Megan Fox who had said it. I think
Speaker 3: Nissi Nash had sheared some, but there was The Guardian
Speaker 3: did a piece about where they put images of famous
Speaker 3: women men who had done historically notable things, and one
Speaker 3: of them was one of the ones that got spout
Speaker 3: was like Emilia earhartlight laying naked on a bed and
Speaker 3: Megan Fox all of her pictures were just all just
Speaker 3: the boobs. That was just all it was. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: and they make people skinnier and life.
Speaker 1: Before even before we even get to that like philosophical
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 2: It really what we're really dealing with.
Speaker 1: Is uh a transfer of It's really a transfer of
Speaker 1: wealth from artists to capital because listen, art this is
Speaker 1: not in the short medium, and I would dare to
Speaker 1: say even the long term. This is not going to
Speaker 1: replace artists and real art at the top level. Like
Speaker 1: you know, this is not people aren't going to walk
Speaker 1: into a gallery and buy an AI generator or piece.
Speaker 1: Maybe they will, but very successful, well did they?
Speaker 2: Or is that just a scam? Perfect? I so?
Speaker 1: And at the same time, NFTs are basically digital versions
Speaker 1: of human created art anyway, But the way this will
Speaker 1: be applied is I am a movie studio. I don't
Speaker 1: want I want to cut costs anywhere I can. Therefore,
Speaker 1: when I'm storyboarding out a script, rather than pay an illustrator,
Speaker 1: I will put my script into an AI, and that
Speaker 1: AI will create a storyboard that is using art styles
Speaker 1: and details scraped from actual artists, and I will create
Speaker 1: this product that will then help me create my other product,
Speaker 1: and that is one or two or a handful of
Speaker 1: illustrators that now don't have a job because I've cut
Speaker 1: that part out of it or storyboard yeah, or if
Speaker 1: i'm you know, or if I'm like mocking up graphics
Speaker 1: for a book or for definitely or assigned for my bakery.
Speaker 1: You know, now, all of a sudden, you're transferring the
Speaker 1: monies that would have gone into the pocket of an
Speaker 1: actual human being, an illustrator, and you're moving it towards
Speaker 1: the technologists who have created this AI.
Speaker 2: So should you should we be doing that?
Speaker 1: Is a is a kind of basic question, I think
Speaker 1: is going to be the more everyday question that we
Speaker 1: have to grapple with before we start grappling with these
Speaker 1: kind of really big and obviously you know, super impactful
Speaker 1: questions about like, Okay, what if someone wants to create
Speaker 1: a picture of me committing a crime and then report
Speaker 1: me to the police, Or what if somebody wants to
Speaker 1: create uh, you know, completely realistic propaganda, or what if
Speaker 1: somebody wants to get back at their X and create
Speaker 1: nudes of them? Like those are all issues that are
Speaker 1: going to get dealt with as well, and they're probably
Speaker 1: going to get dealt with at the governmental level because
Speaker 1: they're just salacious and huge. But stuff like what about
Speaker 1: the illustrator that lost a storyboarding gig because you know
Speaker 1: this and that company used an AI rather than them,
Speaker 1: Those are the things that we should be saying right now,
Speaker 1: because that's the that is an application that's going to
Speaker 1: happen like tomorrow, Yeah.
Speaker 3: If it's already yeah, if it's not already happening in
Speaker 3: some studio. And the other thing is as well that
Speaker 3: So there's a there's a website coote that you can
Speaker 3: look at called have I Been Trained dot com and
Speaker 3: you can put in any image and see if it
Speaker 3: was used to train the AI stable diffusion or the
Speaker 3: different processes. The most interesting thing about it is that
Speaker 3: when people started to look into it, they also realized
Speaker 3: that there was some unhinged things collected in there. And
Speaker 3: this is kind of the the problem that this massive
Speaker 3: data set that isn't necessarily regulated, you know, offers up.
Speaker 3: Is there was a Twitter user called the pen who
Speaker 3: found that a bunch of before and after medical photos
Speaker 3: that she had had taken by a clinical physician had
Speaker 3: ended up on there, and then through that people started
Speaker 3: to realize that there were thousands of medical photos and
Speaker 3: all different kinds of things that had ended up on
Speaker 3: there that again really start to blur the lines of consent,
Speaker 3: because there's the consent of oh, you put yourselfie on
Speaker 3: Instagram and anyone can look at it and use it.
Speaker 3: But then there's the consent of something that is private,
Speaker 3: like a medical image or a nude which other people
Speaker 3: found on there, and these are the things that are
Speaker 3: being used to train it. So it's just very messy.
Speaker 3: And I think Jason, you made a really great point
Speaker 3: that really the most direct question to ask yourself is
Speaker 3: like would I rather give money to an independent artist
Speaker 3: or would I rather give money to somebody who is
Speaker 3: creating this tool that, as we said, has like multiple
Speaker 3: ethical questions surrounding it before we even just get to
Speaker 3: that baseline question of could I just pay an artist?
Speaker 3: And I will say, you can just pay an artist.
Speaker 2: Guess what?
Speaker 3: You can commission an artist? A lot of artists on
Speaker 3: Instagram will are open to commissions your favorite artists. You
Speaker 3: can pay someone like Jim Lee. He'll do a charity commission.
Speaker 3: It'll be ten thousand dollars. If you're wealthy, maybe you
Speaker 3: want a Gimley commission to someone who's doing a ten
Speaker 3: dollar commission of your favorite character for charity. There is
Speaker 3: every range. You can get. Portrait commissions like lens. A
Speaker 3: lot of artists do those. I have had multiple portrait
Speaker 3: commissions done of me and people that I love, and
Speaker 3: it's a really great way to support art and you
Speaker 3: get something that's absolutely unique. So I think that's just
Speaker 3: the most important thing is to just say support artists.
Speaker 3: And at this point, I think that's the kind of
Speaker 3: the baseline of our response that we can have to
Speaker 3: this because it's incredibly complex, and like Jason said, it's
Speaker 3: not going anywhere, It's only gonna get more complex.
Speaker 1: Speaking of computer generated graphics. Up next, Avatar Way x
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Speaker 1: Folks were stepping out of the airlock and into the
Speaker 1: mouth of a beautiful baby toulcun God. I love him
Speaker 1: so much for Avatar the Way of Water in theaters. Now, folks,
Speaker 1: Avatar Way of Water, the long, long, long awaited seql
Speaker 1: to two thousand and nine Avatar.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: A quick recap of Avatar Way of Water, which follows
Speaker 1: ten plus years do they I forget now we're just
Speaker 1: it's about ten years after after Jake and his Navvi
Speaker 1: allies have evicted humanity from Pandora. From the planet of Andorra,
Speaker 1: Jake and Tierri have family together, a growing family, and
Speaker 1: their family is, you know, at this point, like their
Speaker 1: eldest son is of warrior age, their youngest son is
Speaker 1: not quite there but clearly like the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: human teenager.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: In that time they also have two daughters. When an
Speaker 1: adopted daughter, Kirie, who is the the the daughter of
Speaker 1: doctor Grace played by Sigourney Weaver in the first film,
Speaker 1: and has something of her personality still and her there's
Speaker 1: clearly some kind of like chosen one aspect.
Speaker 3: It was essentially an immaculate conception from all that we
Speaker 3: know how Cirie was born of Grace's seemingly dead avatar.
Speaker 1: But one day everything's beautiful on the on the beautiful
Speaker 1: topian planet of Pandora. But then one day the sky
Speaker 1: people aka the human beings come back. And then we
Speaker 1: fast forward another year and the sky people have basically
Speaker 1: brought Colonel Miles Quaritch, who is the antagonist from the
Speaker 1: first film played by Stephen Lang. The fucking ageless Stephen
Speaker 1: hes like he's seventy years old.
Speaker 3: I believe, and he's He's in every action movie, every
Speaker 3: crazy horror movie. He's doing it all.
Speaker 1: He's fucking it's it's truly insane. The first time I
Speaker 1: ever saw him was in a little, little remembered action
Speaker 1: movie called Band of the Hand from the eighties, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody but me has ever seen,
Speaker 1: and it's basically about it's kind of like Miami Wece
Speaker 1: meets twenty one drum Street. There's like this cop who
Speaker 1: takes these teenage runaways and turns them into like a
Speaker 1: special like DEA like special forces fighting group anyway, and
Speaker 1: Stephen Lang was their captain. So and the sky People return.
Speaker 1: Colonel Miles Quaritch is his His consciousness that you know,
Speaker 1: or at least the consciousness that existed before his death,
Speaker 1: is uploaded into a Navvy body grown from hybrid NOVI
Speaker 1: slash human DNA. He's leading a bunch of other similar
Speaker 1: Navvy marines and their mission is find Jake Sully, wipe
Speaker 1: him out, stop his insurgency by decapitating it in order
Speaker 1: to save his people, the you know, spare them. The
Speaker 1: trouble and heartache of the attacks that are that they
Speaker 1: know are coming. Jake and Natiri decide to flee to
Speaker 1: the coast.
Speaker 2: They go to the and there they are taken in
Speaker 2: by the reef.
Speaker 1: People who not quite you know, kind of grudgingly like
Speaker 1: take them in. They learn new ways, They learn the
Speaker 1: way of water, much like the much like the title says,
Speaker 1: they learn about how important the toolcon are to the
Speaker 1: to the reef novve and this, you know, the toolcoon
Speaker 1: are like these uh, these whales, whale like creatures that
Speaker 1: are intensely smart and intensely emotional, and they go on
Speaker 1: these long, long journeys throughout the ocean. But over time
Speaker 1: they come back and they return to the various villages
Speaker 1: to commune with the nave, who have an almost like
Speaker 1: familial kinship bond with individual toolcoon whales. And they come
Speaker 1: back and they'll tell each other stories about what's been
Speaker 1: going on with their lives. But unfortunately, the brain usee
Speaker 1: of these toolcoons is worth a lot of money. Unobtainium,
Speaker 1: which you might remember from the first movie that is
Speaker 1: no longer the mcguffin.
Speaker 2: The new mcguffin. They don't care about.
Speaker 4: That they don't even say it.
Speaker 1: It's off. It's fucking off the board. The new thing
Speaker 1: is this, uh, this juice that is that is secreted
Speaker 1: in the Toolcoon's brain. Is this beautiful amber liquid that
Speaker 1: can only obviously only be harvested by brutally murdering these creatures.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The juice is then harvested and is shipped to Earth,
Speaker 1: where apparently it just flat out stops human aging according
Speaker 1: to the men who harvest this this substance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're getting into like deep seeding territory to the
Speaker 3: potential next three movies, because not only are we going
Speaker 3: to have an ageless elite thanks to the brain juices
Speaker 3: of the tolcoonuices of the tool pot, as Edie Falco's character,
Speaker 3: General Francis Ardmore says, wiping on optainium off the board
Speaker 3: as as super projuice. A soul hilariously just pointed out
Speaker 3: in the chat they obtained the unobtainium. They they obtained it.
Speaker 3: So she says, you know, we're not mining anymore, they're terrorforming.
Speaker 3: They they want to make.
Speaker 2: Cashed out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they want That's going to be the long
Speaker 3: battle here is Pandora is being targeted as a place
Speaker 3: for them to bring the rich and the wealthy and
Speaker 3: probably the age list thanks to the brain juices, and
Speaker 3: that is probably seeding the next three potential movies.
Speaker 1: So we're over in the coast, but eventually uh Querich
Speaker 1: in his navvy body manages to track the Jake to
Speaker 1: the coast.
Speaker 5: Look, I know what I'm about to do it.
Speaker 3: He is aided.
Speaker 2: He is aided in.
Speaker 1: This regard by his biological son, Spider, who human little
Speaker 1: human tarzan boy with dreads who was raised among the
Speaker 1: nove certainly seems to have something of a crush on Cirie,
Speaker 1: Jake and Nattiri's daughter, but is captured by Colonel Quaritch
Speaker 1: early on in the movie and then basically acts as
Speaker 1: a mostly unwilling but actually way way too willing betrayer
Speaker 1: of the nave Ways.
Speaker 2: He teaches fucking Colonel.
Speaker 1: Quarris how to bond with with the the flying creatures
Speaker 1: whose name I don't know. He's like translates for them
Speaker 1: when they raid various villages.
Speaker 3: Looking people's houses down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And though he's like, no, you shouldn't be doing this,
Speaker 1: he's still fucking helping.
Speaker 2: So fuck Spider anyway.
Speaker 1: Fuck Spider anyway, Spider is helping them, and this eventually
Speaker 1: leads to to Quaritch getting the whaling fleet to target
Speaker 1: Toolcun not in the deep ocean, but right off the
Speaker 1: coast of inhabited nav coastline. Because the understanding is that
Speaker 1: because the Nave are you know, so emotionally bonded to
Speaker 1: these creatures, killing them is a kin to murder, this
Speaker 1: is going to cause a response and this will flush
Speaker 1: Jake out. It works, so there is a big response
Speaker 1: the Nave uh you know, strike back against the whaling fleet.
Speaker 1: They're helped by a rogue toolcoun named Piacan who has
Speaker 1: been cast out of Toulcun society because uh, he they killed.
Speaker 3: They think he killed a bunch of them, but actually
Speaker 3: they were hunted by right and so he to the
Speaker 3: brain juice and he defended them from the brain juice harvesters.
Speaker 1: But even that is against is against the rules of
Speaker 1: the Toolcun, who only live in non violent piece yeah,
Speaker 1: absolute peace. So Pilecan is like, you know, fuck this
Speaker 1: shit and goes free Willy on the whaling vessel.
Speaker 2: Like you know, whipping major jump literally like free Willy.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then uh, there's a big showdown with Sully and
Speaker 1: Tire and Quaritch, and eventually the Whalers and Quarach are
Speaker 1: driven off. Quarich survives thanks to Spider, who saves him
Speaker 1: from drowning.
Speaker 3: But no reason anyone can understand apart from they need
Speaker 3: him to be in the next movie.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: We will talk about this at depth after the recap,
Speaker 1: but once again, fuck Spider.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And this leads to a narration.
Speaker 1: From Jake in which he says, you know, my family
Speaker 1: is my greatest weakness, but it's also our greatest strength.
Speaker 1: And now I realize that this is our home. The
Speaker 1: entire planet is our home, and we need to defend
Speaker 1: our home.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is setting up Avatar III, in which we
Speaker 1: would imagine Jake and his Nave forces wage complete war
Speaker 1: against the human colony on Pandora. Folks, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: We saw it in three D, which I will say,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned.
Speaker 2: It's the spring.
Speaker 4: He is really great, Like, it's very amassive.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was much more three D than the first one,
Speaker 3: which I agree a fan of.
Speaker 1: And it's not just like dumb like, oh look now
Speaker 1: the arrow is coming pointing right at your face. You
Speaker 1: know it's it's stuff like, but they do, addam, they
Speaker 1: do have a little bit of that end, but it's
Speaker 1: not just like that wow kind of stuff of like
Speaker 1: Quartz's gun is pointing directly at you, or like the
Speaker 1: beak of his flying beast is like, you know, coming
Speaker 1: out of the screen.
Speaker 4: It's more like as they're underwater.
Speaker 3: That's really got me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see these like motes of of of light
Speaker 1: and different substances.
Speaker 3: Just y, Yeah, that's the coolest stuff, and it just
Speaker 3: it really feels like you're underwater.
Speaker 2: It was really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was that to me was my favorite new
Speaker 3: development in this movie. I am not the biggest original
Speaker 3: Avatar stan and I cannot say that this film has
Speaker 3: turned me into one, but I was very immersed in
Speaker 3: that spectacle and experience, especially for me the immersive three D.
Speaker 3: I really enjoy that experience and I'd love to see that,
Speaker 3: you know, in all different kinds of movies. So that
Speaker 3: that was a big selling point for me.
Speaker 1: Rosie, do you think people need to see this movie
Speaker 1: that need to see the first Avatar before they see
Speaker 1: Avatar where you water?
Speaker 3: You know what, I don't think it's a full necessity
Speaker 3: because I feel like the opening of the movie does
Speaker 3: a lot of heavy list lifting when it comes to
Speaker 3: introducing the characters, introducing the family, introducing Jake's j I
Speaker 3: would also say that this movie follows a lot of
Speaker 3: similar thematic beat says the first movie. So I think
Speaker 3: that you can really understand the world of Avatar. But
Speaker 3: I will say that I do think that if you
Speaker 3: wanted to rewatch it and also see whether you were
Speaker 3: a fan, because I feel like this is very much
Speaker 3: like if you really like the first movie, you're probably
Speaker 3: gonna really like or love this movie. So it's also
Speaker 3: a good kind of watermark. But I don't necessarily think
Speaker 3: it's a necessity to see the first one before coming
Speaker 3: into this. I do think that if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 3: probably watch the first one before you see this, because
Speaker 3: once you've watched this one, the graphics of the first
Speaker 3: one look very dated.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, very very vrritated.
Speaker 1: I'll say this, I think, what's I think if you
Speaker 1: wanted to go back and just kind of refresher, you
Speaker 1: haven't seen the first Avatar, what you need to do
Speaker 1: is watch the first thirty minutes of the First Avatar
Speaker 1: because you need to understand how the Avatar technology works, Like.
Speaker 2: What it is.
Speaker 1: That's how Jake came to be in the Nave body,
Speaker 1: where the Navi bodies come from. And you know, there
Speaker 1: are various scenes like the torture of Spider that kind
Speaker 1: of like hinge on the audience's understanding of how the
Speaker 1: kind of like Avatar and the high technology of this
Speaker 1: of this you know, age of humanity's like ability to
Speaker 1: peer into the human brain, like how what they can
Speaker 1: do with that technology. And so I think it's important
Speaker 1: to kind of like have that as like an understanding
Speaker 1: of the world and the kind of world building of it,
Speaker 1: how human race came to be on Pandora, how they
Speaker 1: get there, how far it is, why they're there. I
Speaker 1: think all that stuff happens basically in the first half
Speaker 1: hour forty five minutes of the three hour plus epic
Speaker 1: of Avatar number one, two thousand and nine. You know Avatar,
Speaker 1: And if you didn't have three hours plus to carve out,
Speaker 1: then just watch the first thirty to forty five minutes
Speaker 1: of the first Avatar to kind of understand the reality
Speaker 1: of where we are and the rest of it. You'll understand,
Speaker 1: like there's a bad guy. It's basically dances with wolves
Speaker 1: in space only this time the indigenous win.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very interesting. Let's talk about something because you
Speaker 3: say that, right, and that immediately makes me feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, we talked a lot about the way that
Speaker 3: and Or dealt with real life analogous storytelling that felt radical.
Speaker 3: But you made a really great point in the lead
Speaker 3: up to this episode about your reading of the accessibility
Speaker 3: of Avatar and could you speak a little bit to that.
Speaker 1: Sure, Well, I just think James Cameron is a is
Speaker 1: truly a master filmmaker, a truly master storyteller in.
Speaker 2: A medium that.
Speaker 1: Is is basically like box office blockbuster, like that is
Speaker 1: his milieu. He understands how to create a story that
Speaker 1: crosses all kinds of national, ideological and political lines, to
Speaker 1: create a story that is accessible to the biggest possible
Speaker 1: audience ever. This is one of the what five movies
Speaker 1: this year the American films that's going to open in China?
Speaker 4: Right, they think it's going to do two hundred million
Speaker 4: in China.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 1: It's because he's able to gesture at all these different
Speaker 1: kinds of groups and concerns that different groups have about
Speaker 1: stories in this extremely fractured, you know, political era that
Speaker 1: we're living. In and create something like unified out of it,
Speaker 1: and there's something almost diabolical about it.
Speaker 2: So this is what this is. This is what I mean.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, like we live in an age
Speaker 1: in which I think people rightly and fairly are concerned
Speaker 1: about diversity, about depictions of diversity, and they want to
Speaker 1: see themselves reflected on screen. So here is a story
Speaker 1: about an indigenous people, right, an indigenous group.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: They're essentially underdogs at the same time, so that that
Speaker 1: gives you like entree and they don't look like us, right,
Speaker 1: they have different ways of being. They're very connected to
Speaker 1: nature in a way that feels like you know, uh
Speaker 1: uh and at times almost simplistic mapping of indigenous concerns
Speaker 1: and an indigenous character onto onto a sci fi character.
Speaker 1: At the same time, this is a group that also
Speaker 1: reaches like a cross that has an appeal beyond that
Speaker 1: kind of you know, uh, a kind of narrow sliced
Speaker 1: appeal because they're a unified ethno religious group right there there,
Speaker 1: they have they and their religion is at the center
Speaker 1: of their existence. So they're very religious, mono culture and
Speaker 1: they have very very traditional gender roles, like at one
Speaker 1: point Jake says, a father's role is to protect, you know,
Speaker 1: Like this film opens with Jake teaching Natayam, his oldest son,
Speaker 1: like how to fish, and meanwhile, it's like Natiri, his wife,
Speaker 1: who's the bow and arrow is her thing? Like she
Speaker 1: is an absolute fucking artist with the bow and arrow,
Speaker 1: and that is in fact in this movie, that's like
Speaker 1: her calling card, Like Korrig is able to identify like
Speaker 1: her by her arrows.
Speaker 2: But it's Jake.
Speaker 1: Who's teaching the kids to hunt, not Natiri who's doing
Speaker 1: Natiri not to say that, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: she is a warrior. She is a fierce warrior by
Speaker 1: that same token, and we never we see her like
Speaker 1: preparing food in a very traditional kind of way, like
Speaker 1: in the huts, chopping up fish.
Speaker 2: And preparing stuff for the family life, an act we
Speaker 2: never see Jake doing.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's able to appeal to people who care
Speaker 1: about diversity and also people who are like, there's too
Speaker 1: much diversity in this world. It's able to open in China,
Speaker 1: right because who are the fucking bad.
Speaker 2: Guys in this movie?
Speaker 1: The American military, the American corporate and military interests are
Speaker 1: the bad guys in this film. Who are the and
Speaker 1: why can't it open in America? Also because who's the
Speaker 1: good guy in this film? An American soldier, a white guy.
Speaker 1: The greatest Nave in the history of NAVI is a
Speaker 1: white man named Jake. We love shit like that, and
Speaker 1: so it's really interesting the way he is. He has
Speaker 1: like crafted this story that just has absolutely massive universal appeal,
Speaker 1: not just to people like who you know love movies
Speaker 1: quote unquote the way they used to be, but people
Speaker 1: who care about like uh about representation and things now,
Speaker 1: Like that is it's diabolical what he's done. It's really
Speaker 1: crazy what he's done it and it absolutely works, Like
Speaker 1: is there a cynical element to it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so, yes.
Speaker 1: At the same time, like when Pyocan starts wrecking shop
Speaker 1: and hurling whalers like into the water and slapping them
Speaker 1: with his tail so that their bodies just like fucking
Speaker 1: go rag dolling across the deck and then the Nave
Speaker 1: show up and start spearing dudes like out of their
Speaker 1: quad copters. I'm like, fuck, yeah, kill them absolute, let's
Speaker 1: kill these fucking bastards, please, like kill them all.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: So this shit really works, like it's it's it's amazing
Speaker 1: and it's got and there's a through line with a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that James Karen has cared about
Speaker 1: for basically hisn entire filmmaking career, which is, you know, militarism,
Speaker 1: the the effects, the wide ranging effects of corporate power,
Speaker 1: the effects of capitalism outside of the view of the
Speaker 1: kind of.
Speaker 2: The general public.
Speaker 1: Like this is, it's always like what happens when a
Speaker 1: corporation goes to space with military power, What happens when
Speaker 1: a corporation, you know, is mining off world as in aliens.
Speaker 1: What happens when they're when they're placing colonies on another
Speaker 1: earth in another world? Excuse me, what happens when they're
Speaker 1: mining outside of the view of the press and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. This is like the kind of shit he
Speaker 1: cares about. What happens when when technology runs amok. This
Speaker 1: is the stuff that James Karen cares about. And of
Speaker 1: course we all know he absolutely loves the oceans. This
Speaker 1: guy loves them, So it's how incredible what he has
Speaker 1: done here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that your point is so astute about
Speaker 3: that wide appeal. I think that's why for some people
Speaker 3: like myself, it's not always going to hit because that
Speaker 3: the vagaries or the the lack of making a solid
Speaker 3: commitment to a message or a story, you know. And
Speaker 3: I also something that I struggle with after watching last
Speaker 3: night that ABC twenty twenty special Avatar The Deep Dive
Speaker 3: about making this movie. I think that there is a
Speaker 3: very interesting conversation to be had by different people than me,
Speaker 3: but I will be seeking it out. The way that
Speaker 3: the Navvy have always been very coded towards like different races,
Speaker 3: but then the people that are brought in to play
Speaker 3: the characters, like I was very surprised to find that Ranal,
Speaker 3: who is the wife of the you know, the Mechcane,
Speaker 3: the water People's leader. Again, she's the wife and he's
Speaker 3: the he's the husband and he's the leader. She's played
Speaker 3: by Kate Winslet, even though they're very obviously inspired visually
Speaker 3: by the Maori and married communities. Now her husband is
Speaker 3: played by a married actor. But there's just some things
Speaker 3: like that for this and the kind of the choices
Speaker 3: that they make in representing this kind of alien indigenous
Speaker 3: community that just doesn't really sit for me. But I
Speaker 3: will say it does follow many of the traditions of
Speaker 3: things that we love about comic books. It is an
Speaker 3: analogous story. It's just now we're living in a great time.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty two has been an amazing year for indigenous
Speaker 3: entertainment made by Indigenous people, whether it's Spirit Rangers on
Speaker 3: Netflix or Prey or you Know Well, which wasn't made
Speaker 3: by an Indigenous person but had a lot of Indigenous
Speaker 3: people working on it, including the producer. Also you know
Speaker 3: obviously Reservation Dogs. Ye. So I think like that puts
Speaker 3: it into a different light. I feel like this is
Speaker 3: still a very two thousand and nine story even in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, and I think that for me, shines
Speaker 3: through a little bit more narratively because of the other
Speaker 3: entertainment that we kind of get to imbibe in the
Speaker 3: stories that we get to experience. But it is a
Speaker 3: it's a wild spectacle and an absolute feat of kind
Speaker 3: of showing what you can do with CGI. I also
Speaker 3: like to think this movie took you know, like thirteen
Speaker 3: years to get made.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like to think that it's like the I hope
Speaker 3: that this is not wrong and there won't be horror
Speaker 3: stories coming out, but I like to think that this
Speaker 3: is like the most sustainable CG heavy movie that's ever
Speaker 3: been made and that everyone who worked on it got
Speaker 3: like a long time to do all the effects and everything,
Speaker 3: because like that's the horrible thing about watching a Marvel
Speaker 3: movie or a DC movie, a Star Wars movie. You know,
Speaker 3: you hear all these horror stories about the incredible v
Speaker 3: effects artists just being run into the ground. And I
Speaker 3: love the idea that James Cameron's just like chilling taking
Speaker 3: his time, giving everyone like a really good amount of
Speaker 3: time to walk on the movie. This seems like a
Speaker 3: very James Cameron move.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: This movie needs to make over a billion dollars just
Speaker 1: to like break even, So that's gonna be something to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, COVID, how do you think that's going to go?
Speaker 3: Because we are in a different cinematicandscape.
Speaker 1: I think this movie is gonna make I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna make billions of dollars. I think it's going to
Speaker 1: do it again because I think, you know, I was
Speaker 1: struck when I was doing my research for for rewatching
Speaker 1: Avatar ahead of watching Way of Water. How why again,
Speaker 1: how wide raging the peel of that movie was. There
Speaker 1: was like a story from two thousand and nine of
Speaker 1: these Palestinian protesters dressed up like they had painted their
Speaker 1: bodies like nave. And again you have this story that
Speaker 1: appeals to people who feel on who feel like they
Speaker 1: fall on either side of the various conversations about imperialism
Speaker 1: and colonialism, like to name one of the of the
Speaker 1: many dualities that this movie manages to straddle. In this
Speaker 1: these two movies manages to straddle. It's it's honestly really
Speaker 1: crazy that he's managed to do this. And I feel
Speaker 1: the same way about you in terms of like the
Speaker 1: the maor codedness. Obviously the first one, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was rewatching it the other night, it is like
Speaker 1: striking how how American indigenous coded. It is like it's
Speaker 1: not even you can't even see coded because it basically
Speaker 1: is like from the war yelps to the casting of
Speaker 1: West Study to you know, like this is what it is, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the strange like the one thing that I think
Speaker 3: I saw some reviewers kind of astutely point this out,
Speaker 3: but like the costume designs, they lean into this strange
Speaker 3: sexualization of the characters even and that I think is
Speaker 3: something that feels more in line of the outdated kind
Speaker 3: of coding of how how those characters were often portrayed.
Speaker 3: So it's those little things that I think. But you
Speaker 3: know what if it if it gets people to feel
Speaker 3: a little bit more thoughtful about this stuff, that's always
Speaker 3: a good thing.
Speaker 1: Now I will say that I think I liked it.
Speaker 1: Clearly I liked it more than you. I had a
Speaker 1: good time because you know, I for me, it's like
Speaker 1: the story is whatever. I feel the same way about
Speaker 1: the First Avatar. It's like that movie opens up and
Speaker 1: half an hour into it, it's like, Okay, I understand
Speaker 1: what's happening here. Yeah, it's such This is not a
Speaker 1: subtle movie. And it's the same thing with Way of Water.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not a movie where you know,
Speaker 1: you get to the end of act two and you
Speaker 1: can feel the story mechanisms working adequately so that like
Speaker 1: the villains, you hate them more to you know, like
Speaker 1: more than anything else in the world, and you want
Speaker 1: the heroes to just like whoop their asses, and you
Speaker 1: understand that this movie is going to give it to you.
Speaker 1: There's never a moment where you're like, this movie is
Speaker 1: not going to give me that hero is kicking the
Speaker 1: villain's assets moment.
Speaker 2: So I enjoyed it for the spectacle.
Speaker 1: And because there's almost something again mathematical archetetical about and
Speaker 1: about the amount of kind of thought that Cameron has
Speaker 1: put into crafting a story that you know, super producer
Speaker 1: Sol and I were talking about like tropes of sci
Speaker 1: fi and how many various tropes and of sci fi
Speaker 1: and storytelling were at large that the Avatar series uses.
Speaker 1: That it's really beyond tropes the way the way this
Speaker 1: story and Cameron is able to take themes and things
Speaker 1: that different groups care care about and kind of like
Speaker 1: boil them down into the most universal like ideals that
Speaker 1: people hold, like it's important to protect the family, and
Speaker 1: that your land is worth defending, that people should have
Speaker 1: a connection to their community, that religion is important and
Speaker 1: is worth respecting. That you know, unchecked consumerism that destroys cultures.
Speaker 4: Is bad, you know.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things here like I'm interested to see what the response
Speaker 1: from the Marory communities, Like, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things here where I'm like, gosh, I wonder how people
Speaker 1: are going to feel and talk about this, because again.
Speaker 3: I'm interested to see that.
Speaker 1: And it feels like the most consciously apolitical movie that
Speaker 1: we've seen, certainly in a long time.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I do like about.
Speaker 1: This movie, actually love about this movie is that we
Speaker 1: haven't had a smoke a big joint and just like
Speaker 1: sit back movie to watch the movie, I haven't we
Speaker 1: have not had one of those in a long time,
Speaker 1: Like you know the MCU movies. You kind of have
Speaker 1: to understand what happened in like thirty three other films. Uh,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been like an epic, just like Get Baked
Speaker 1: and enjoy the visuals movie in a long time. And
Speaker 1: in that sense, I actually quite liked Avatar. And again
Speaker 1: when the nove in the third act start striking back,
Speaker 1: the story mechanisms absolutely worked on me, and I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: show me in slow mo, you know, sixty frames a
Speaker 1: second detail. Show me a novey grab a guy by
Speaker 1: the head and throw them.
Speaker 2: Off the ship into the water.
Speaker 1: Show me show me a nove hitting them in the
Speaker 1: face with their bows.
Speaker 3: Shood chopped off in three D and coming towards you
Speaker 3: into the light.
Speaker 1: Show me PIU can like fucking bouncing a explosive harpoon
Speaker 1: off his metal skulp plate. So that was pretty badass.
Speaker 1: So that it hits another boat and those soldiers.
Speaker 2: Go flying like that part of it was really cool.
Speaker 1: But I will again, there's a level, there's a way
Speaker 1: to look at the way this entire story is structured
Speaker 1: and fuel like there's just like a lot of cynicism here.
Speaker 3: I I'm very the funniest thing is right. I think
Speaker 3: talking to you about it as always has enlightened me.
Speaker 3: I think I think the major reason, one of the
Speaker 3: major reasons that I didn't love the first one, and
Speaker 3: I still have not been fully converted, though I did
Speaker 3: enjoy this one more with the visuals. You know, I
Speaker 3: really I do not enjoy war movies. They are not
Speaker 3: something I've ever particularly enjoyed. There's obviously exceptions of movies
Speaker 3: that are like masterpieces, like all Quite on the Western
Speaker 3: Front and Come See and stuff like that, but like
Speaker 3: generally a militarized movie about like giant people there then
Speaker 3: they're shoot Well, if it was giants, that would be cool,
Speaker 3: but like big guys and they got guns and they're
Speaker 3: killing a bunch of people. That's never appealed to me.
Speaker 3: And those were actually the moments, the militarization aspects, even
Speaker 3: though they are portrayed negatively. And I do love to
Speaker 3: see American very negative negatively that to me, the stuff
Speaker 3: where I'd feel myself really getting immersed is like swimming
Speaker 3: under the water and seeing some cool creatures, and then
Speaker 3: as soon as it got back to the like violence
Speaker 3: and the military and stuff, that's kind of where I
Speaker 3: would lose my immersion in the movie and my kind
Speaker 3: of enjoyment. So I think that's it is in some ways,
Speaker 3: and this is the nature of the movie. It's a
Speaker 3: war movie, it's an anti war movie, but through the
Speaker 3: lens of here are the horrors of war, and in
Speaker 3: this case that is not necessarily what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: In a way, I kind of like the more the
Speaker 3: aspects of it where it feels more like Europe. I
Speaker 3: used to go to the Imax a lot when I
Speaker 3: was a kid in London. They have a big Imax
Speaker 3: there there that for a long time was the biggest
Speaker 3: one in the world, and you could go and pay
Speaker 3: like five or six dollars and see a twenty five
Speaker 3: minute to forty five minute long movie that was made
Speaker 3: specifically to show off the Imax, and it would be
Speaker 3: I saw ones about like the X Games, I saw
Speaker 3: ones about dinosaurs, I saw one about under the sea,
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of moments in this where
Speaker 3: I was just like, I just wanted to lose myself
Speaker 3: in that huge spectacle of the vibe and experience a
Speaker 3: different world. And this does deliver that at certain points,
Speaker 3: but there's just things that were kind of taking me
Speaker 3: out of it. And I think it's that aspect of
Speaker 3: a story about war. I've always found that hard to
Speaker 3: connect with, even you know, throughout my life as a
Speaker 3: film lover. So yeah, I think it is. It's a
Speaker 3: very interesting conversation piece, and I think the conversations about
Speaker 3: it will be far more complex and long running than
Speaker 3: the kind of meme of the original Avatar, which was
Speaker 3: kind of like, oh, it's forgettable, even though it's the
Speaker 3: biggest movie in the world. This feels like there's going
Speaker 3: to be a lot more kind of in depth conversation
Speaker 3: had about it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Spider, So Spider, we must talk about Spider.
Speaker 1: So Spider again, the son, the biological son of Colonel Quaritch.
Speaker 1: He's raised on Pandora. He is both part of their
Speaker 1: world and not part of their world. He puts on
Speaker 1: blue body paint in a way that feels, you know,
Speaker 1: both you know, a nod and a kind of there's
Speaker 1: some you know, like a nod to the culture that
Speaker 1: he is immersed in, but also feels like weirdly, it
Speaker 1: just feels weird that.
Speaker 2: He's like doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Quarch captures him, uh, and then he is tortured,
Speaker 1: which is awful, but then kind of bonds with his
Speaker 1: father in an interesting.
Speaker 3: Way even though so so we just need to say,
Speaker 3: like James Cameron in avatat too way of what goes
Speaker 3: out of his way many times to say he is
Speaker 3: not technically the biological son of this Quaritch, because this
Speaker 3: Quoritch is like a random avatar. He is the biological
Speaker 3: son of the other Quoritch who all of his brain
Speaker 3: matta memories and on a USB drive went into the avatar.
Speaker 3: So they do have a connection, but they don't, and
Speaker 3: they play on that a lot to kind of do
Speaker 3: this like moral gray area where or like will they
Speaker 3: look after each other will they not?
Speaker 1: And they do obviously, And so Spider really becomes Quaritch
Speaker 1: is begrudging at times but really right hand person, like
Speaker 1: he helps with translations, He teaches them how to bond
Speaker 1: with animals using their braids, and in a moment that
Speaker 1: I think actually burns the character because all throughout Spider
Speaker 1: you can tell is empathizing with the various you know
Speaker 1: Nave who are being brutalized by these bi quartchs military
Speaker 1: forces and they're search for Jake. He he stops at
Speaker 1: various times his father from just like flat out murdering
Speaker 1: the Navi, like just to find Jake and to like
Speaker 1: send a message. But after the kind of like climactic
Speaker 1: battle between Jake and Quorich under the water where Jake
Speaker 1: chokes out Corrich, Spider, who is who has entered the
Speaker 1: wreck of this whaling vessel, sees his you know father
Speaker 1: and Nave form there drowning and decides, fuck it, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna save him. And it's a weird moment because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, this story is like wants you to
Speaker 1: feel for Spider as a as a as a being
Speaker 1: without a home, without a father. Yeah, his only father
Speaker 1: figure is not his father. He feels more at home
Speaker 1: amongst an alien species who don't who are very very
Speaker 1: kind and accepting to him as a family. They don't
Speaker 1: fully embrace him, right, They're never mean to him in anybody.
Speaker 3: Is cold, but the kids see him as a sibling.
Speaker 3: But really it's only Carrie.
Speaker 1: Who truly embraces him, right, and for him to save
Speaker 1: the life of their tormentor for reasons.
Speaker 3: It just has to be narrative reasons.
Speaker 1: That's that, yes, But sure, I mean, like obviously it's
Speaker 1: because no, because there isn't even the narrative reason.
Speaker 3: Like because they want him to be in the movie
Speaker 3: next time.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't even that doesn't even make sense because
Speaker 1: they've already established at the beginning of this movie that
Speaker 1: death doesn't matter. Just upload another fucking version of that
Speaker 1: saved on the hard drive into another Navvy body and
Speaker 1: be done with it.
Speaker 3: No, you don't need.
Speaker 2: Him, he can't die.
Speaker 3: I really felt that choice, which is hilarious because like Spider,
Speaker 3: I mean, to me, that's a classic, like it's almost
Speaker 3: become a trope that like young sidekick, human sidekick that
Speaker 3: kind of annoys people. But the funny thing is the
Speaker 3: moment that I found most powerful in this whole film,
Speaker 3: in its message about family, was when Spider turned up.
Speaker 3: He's at the end of the movie, he's on the ship.
Speaker 3: He's obviously binning hooots with Quorich and everything, But the
Speaker 3: moment he sees his you know, his Navy siblings, the
Speaker 3: people who he's been raised with. He wants to help them.
Speaker 3: He helps them, and not for a single second to
Speaker 3: any of them question why he was with them, judge him.
Speaker 3: They're just like, we're happy you're here. You're making the
Speaker 3: right choice right now, and that's all that matters. I
Speaker 3: thought that was such an empathetic, interesting, compassionate choice, and
Speaker 3: I was so deeply bummed to see that final choice,
Speaker 3: which sells out the character. But also, just like you said,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really make sense. Just upload a new one,
Speaker 3: make a new Super Super Navy or something, Which is.
Speaker 1: Why I feel like the I think the way the
Speaker 1: movie is going, or the series is going, is that
Speaker 1: eventually Spider is going to be you know, Originally, the
Speaker 1: reason they create these avatars is to, you know, to
Speaker 1: send humans into Navi society so that they could learn
Speaker 1: for them and hopefully find a diplomatic solution to the
Speaker 1: fact that the human race needs on obtaining them and
Speaker 1: various other resources from Pandora and the Navy, you know,
Speaker 1: are rightly and fairly and justly and brutally defending their homeland.
Speaker 1: So how do we come to an agreement on this?
Speaker 1: And then eventually Quartz is like, Okay, Jake, you're going
Speaker 1: to go in. You're going to learn from the enemy.
Speaker 1: You're going to learn their way so that we can
Speaker 1: more effectively destroy them from within. I think, if I'm right,
Speaker 1: I think that's what Spider is being set up to do. Spider,
Speaker 1: they are going to, like Quarch, eventually they're going to
Speaker 1: move him aside and the true villain.
Speaker 2: I hope this is what they're doing.
Speaker 1: This is actually what I hope that they're doing, and
Speaker 1: that eventually Spider becomes that dagger pointed directly at the
Speaker 1: heart of the novey. Who understands their ways, who is
Speaker 1: raised amongst them, let's really speak their language perfectly, who
Speaker 1: understands the way they think, the way their cultures work,
Speaker 1: the things they care about. And it's eventually in the
Speaker 1: further movie, in the you know, the later sequels, Spider,
Speaker 1: who is going to be the uber weapon of humanity
Speaker 1: that Jake never was, that Jake rejected. That's the only
Speaker 1: way this makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: I think that makes a lot of sense, especially there
Speaker 3: would be a lot of good, sad kind of irony
Speaker 3: in Spider in the fourth or fifth movie getting to
Speaker 3: become Novvey and using an avatar himself and being able
Speaker 3: to achieve the one thing that he'd always wanted to achieve,
Speaker 3: but in a space where he's using it to destroy
Speaker 3: them also makes a lot of sense on a narrative
Speaker 3: level if we think about the fact that him and
Speaker 3: k have this deep connection, and something this movie clearly
Speaker 3: sets up is it's almost implied that Kiri is sort
Speaker 3: of the daughter of Pandora. Kiri is partially made of Pandora.
Speaker 3: Kiri Knight.
Speaker 1: She has a connection with the planet and the planets
Speaker 1: like bio consciousness.
Speaker 2: That is, she's.
Speaker 1: Able to command, She's able to command the plant life
Speaker 1: and the and the and the animal.
Speaker 2: Life to attack, uh.
Speaker 1: Like the human naval forces in a way that is
Speaker 1: clearly superhuman super navy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and super navy. I like that, Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: think it would make a lot of sense because then
Speaker 3: you can have the inevitable conflict between Spider and Kirie.
Speaker 3: But the real truth is that then Spider would likely
Speaker 3: come in the final moments, would make the right decision
Speaker 3: because Kurrie is the person that he was connected with.
Speaker 1: Now, if that is the case, if if they are
Speaker 1: setting up Spider to eventually be like the Uber villain
Speaker 1: of this series. I actually think, now this is a
Speaker 1: really interesting Now I'm really interested in this.
Speaker 3: Now I'm like, wait a.
Speaker 1: Minute, because I think the implications of him saving him
Speaker 1: beyond the plot, because again I think it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: for the plot.
Speaker 3: Because because I like your point the us upload, I.
Speaker 1: Think the implications are really interesting because like what happens
Speaker 1: when Spider tells them.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming he doesn't tell them that's right, and then
Speaker 3: that becomes the third movie is really about the conflict
Speaker 3: of them finding out and Korwich being an active player,
Speaker 3: or you have a kind of situation where Quorich is
Speaker 3: still injured and in the forest and Spider is secretly
Speaker 3: helping keeping him alive while they do this kind of
Speaker 3: greater battle against the sky people.
Speaker 1: I hope that that that that is the case, because
Speaker 1: this conversation reminds me a little bit of the the
Speaker 1: Iniatu movie The Revenant starring Leo, which which is a
Speaker 1: movie that I enjoyed for the spectacle, but also kind
Speaker 1: of disagreed with in the sense that you know, there's
Speaker 1: Leo's character. The movie didn't seem to understand that Leo's character,
Speaker 1: while a hero, in the course of the story is
Speaker 1: also like the vanguard of this European invasion that is
Speaker 1: like pressing its way into the heart of the indigenous lands.
Speaker 1: Like the fact that he is out there like looking
Speaker 1: for furs, and yes, he has a mohawk wife, But
Speaker 1: the fact that he is out there leading people deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper and deeper into this territory, albeitly in a
Speaker 1: peaceful way, is like forging the path for the conflict
Speaker 1: that is coming. And in that sense, like Jake and
Speaker 1: then Spider after him, make you grapple with the question
Speaker 1: of is there any way for a technologically advanced society
Speaker 1: to interact with with a less technologically advanced society in
Speaker 1: a way that is at all equitable? Like is there
Speaker 1: any way that those two groups can come to an
Speaker 1: understanding based on the values, knowledge, and material culture that
Speaker 1: they both have. And in that sense, like again, if
Speaker 1: Spider is the villain, that's interesting. If it's just like
Speaker 1: a weird thing to keep the plot going, then I
Speaker 1: think this is terrible, But I'd be fascinated to see
Speaker 1: what happens when Jake and his family find out that
Speaker 1: fucking Spider. Yeah, they have been nothing but great too,
Speaker 1: nothing but wonderful.
Speaker 3: Love understand.
Speaker 1: They fucking raise this kid. They let him hang out
Speaker 1: with them, pull on their tails. He hisses like a
Speaker 1: novvey when he's threatened. When they find out that he
Speaker 1: saved the life of their greatest tormentor, I wonder what
Speaker 1: their reaction will be, I.
Speaker 3: Really do, And we will get to find that out.
Speaker 3: Because Avata three yet untitled that we can probably guess
Speaker 3: it might have something to do with you know, fire
Speaker 3: or win this point fire, Yeah, you know exactly. You
Speaker 3: know those are all great, but we Avatar three was
Speaker 3: actually filmed alongside this. So whatever happens, however this Avatar
Speaker 3: performs in this post COVID landscape, Avatar three will come out,
Speaker 3: so we will find that the question is whether it
Speaker 3: will perform well enough for Avatar four and five to
Speaker 3: be made. So whatever happens, we'll find out what happens
Speaker 3: in the third movie. And James Cameron, as he always
Speaker 3: is in his fox jacket, had a very cool, chill
Speaker 3: viewpoint on it on the special I watched where he
Speaker 3: was kind of like, audiences have changed, things that people
Speaker 3: like have changed. Let's just see how it goes. I
Speaker 3: hope people connect with it, and if they don't, that's
Speaker 3: also okay, and he's.
Speaker 2: Like, this guy is so fucking rich.
Speaker 1: He's created, he has created, like with Titanic and Avatar.
Speaker 1: He is twice directed, the biggest ever in.
Speaker 3: Terminated Too, was like the most expensive movie ever made
Speaker 3: when it came out. And I will just say Spider
Speaker 3: does fit into in my opinion, he is the worst
Speaker 3: version of but look Aliens, now, James Cameron put a
Speaker 3: kid in there and they'll.
Speaker 2: Ragtag kid who needs to see also had made.
Speaker 3: He's the best version of that character in my book,
Speaker 3: John Connor in Terminator Too. If you're making a James
Speaker 3: Cameron sequel, you've got to have a small child. Sadly, Spider,
Speaker 3: he's low on the ranking for me of the James
Speaker 3: Cameron small child sequel trope. But yeah, I'll be very interested.
Speaker 3: I really like that. It's so funny how I never
Speaker 3: really thought I never really been like getting deep into
Speaker 3: like Avatar theories.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: My theory is very much in the in the comic
Speaker 3: book movie and action movie kind of franchise horror space.
Speaker 3: But I'm very invested in your Avatar theory. I think
Speaker 3: if that's the way they're leading, that could go somewhere
Speaker 3: pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's when you know this story
Speaker 1: has been Again, it's pretty basic. It's all about the spectacle,
Speaker 1: like if you're looking like, oh my god, well, I'd
Speaker 1: be spoiled blusb to warn about it. But if they
Speaker 1: go in that direction, if they go in that direction,
Speaker 1: I actually think, you know, the questions about like how again,
Speaker 1: how you how I technologically advanced culture can interact with
Speaker 1: a with a more you know, with a more naturalistic culture,
Speaker 1: I think is a really interesting one. And if they
Speaker 1: explore that via Spider, who I think is terrible and maybe.
Speaker 2: That's pretty interesting. I'll be interesting to see what happens.
Speaker 2: A big thank you.
Speaker 1: To Rosie Knight for joining us on X ray Vision.
Speaker 1: Rosie plug stuff plug Plug Plug plug Plug.
Speaker 2: It's me.
Speaker 3: Uh. You can read my writing at noticed iegen Den
Speaker 3: of Geek, all those cool places Polygon. We just had
Speaker 3: our big comic books Best comic books of the Year.
Speaker 3: I w was shouting out some of my faves. That
Speaker 3: Wash Day Diaries such a great comic. Also, my aunt
Speaker 3: is the Monster Ths too, of my favorite this year.
Speaker 3: You can find me on lab box, at Instagram at
Speaker 3: Rosy Marx and.
Speaker 1: Here catch the next episode in December twenty third. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be our live panel taped at La Comic Con
Speaker 1: from a few weeks ago. We will be taking the
Speaker 1: last week of December in the first week of January
Speaker 1: off and we hope that you're able to do the same.
Speaker 1: Our first episode of twenty twenty three will be Wednesday,
Speaker 1: January eleventh, and then, folks, are you sitting down, We're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing two episodes a week starting then for
Speaker 1: the rest of time, we're just gonna be doing them
Speaker 1: two a week, So get ready for more X ray
Speaker 1: Vision than your ears can possibly hold. This means episodes
Speaker 1: of Extra Vision every Wednesday and Friday starting January eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Don't forget Subscribe to the show on YouTube,
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Speaker 1: out with lots of other amazing fans of X ray
Speaker 1: Vision plus Rosie and I five star ratings, five star reviews.
Speaker 1: We love them. We gotta have them, we need them.
Speaker 1: It's like the whale brain juice. We need them to
Speaker 1: stop our aging. Here's one from Egypt Brown Essential Listening.
Speaker 1: Rosie and Jason have quickly become one of my favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: The pair not just knowledgeable, but funny as heck too.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you, We Travis, We try our best.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by Chris Lord and Soul Rubin. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by myself and Sandy's Rhard Are editing
Speaker 1: and sound design Who's by Vascillis Patopoulos, Dilon Villanueva and
Speaker 1: Matt De Group provide video production support. Alex Reller for
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Speaker 1: See you next time, folks,