Speaker 1: Spoilers are a path to the dark side. Spiders lead
Speaker 1: to anger. Anger lead to eat, he leads to suffering.
Speaker 1: I sent many spoilers in this podcast from our galaxy
Speaker 1: far far.
Speaker 2: Away in the series Star Wars Visions on Disney Plus,
Speaker 2: so beware of that.
Speaker 3: Also what if. Hello.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode four of x ray Vision, the cricket
Speaker 2: podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics,
Speaker 2: and pop culture and more. Today we are covering the
Speaker 2: first three unbelievable episodes of the new anthology series Star
Speaker 2: Wars Visions on Disney Plus, Disgraceful Plus news recaps, and
Speaker 2: of course, the endgame. But first, let's welcome back to
Speaker 2: the show one of our co hosts, Cody Ziggler Zig.
Speaker 3: How are you, sir?
Speaker 4: I am thriving. It was a great topic to talk about.
Speaker 5: I'm currently on hiatus from my writing shows, so I
Speaker 5: have been speeding through all the Star Wars movies in
Speaker 5: chronological orders, so this is a perfect episode for me.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to come back for marrying my love of
Speaker 5: anime and my love of the Lightsabers and Star Wars.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to talk about all of that.
Speaker 2: Zake, of course, as a podcaster, writer of both comics
Speaker 2: and TV, including Rick and Wardy, The up Becoming She Hulk.
Speaker 3: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: In today's previously on, Let's start with the shocking adaptation
Speaker 2: of a Marvel property, Hit Monkey, dropping November seventeenth on Hulu.
Speaker 3: Ten years ago.
Speaker 2: When I read the Hit Monkey, if you told me
Speaker 2: that it one day would be a property that would
Speaker 2: be adapted, I'd be like, what if you told me
Speaker 2: two days ago that it would have been a property
Speaker 2: that somebody plucked out of the Marvel canon too adapt
Speaker 2: I'd be like, what. Hit Monkey follows the adventures of
Speaker 2: a jap these snow monkey and Macaque voiced by Fred
Speaker 2: Tatoski or assisted by the ghosts of an American assassin
Speaker 2: named Price voiced by Jason sidikis, also starring George Takai
Speaker 2: as shiny Olivia Munn as a Kiko.
Speaker 3: Sci Fi War describes the series. It's this.
Speaker 2: Hit Monkey was originally one of four Marvel shows greenlit
Speaker 2: at Hulu, alongside Modoc Howard, The Duck Tiger and dazzlart Men.
Speaker 2: What a Slate Folks dropped the strain from that particular
Speaker 2: pitch meeting where all that stuff got green lit because
Speaker 2: I want it.
Speaker 5: Hater, it couldn't be done. Hater said they couldn't make
Speaker 5: a show about a hitman monkey. But now it's here.
Speaker 5: I love to hear it. What a perfect time to
Speaker 5: be a comic book nerd. I can't believe, like you said,
Speaker 5: like when I read Deadpool versus Hit Monkey or whatever,
Speaker 5: like fifteen years ago, I never would have pinged that
Speaker 5: one as the one that they get the show, And
Speaker 5: now I'm completely stoked for it. And the animation looks
Speaker 5: dope as fuck too, Like the trailer looked like like,
Speaker 5: oh wow, this is like an action like an action
Speaker 5: animated show. I can't wait for it.
Speaker 2: Now, everything but mo Doc obviously, and hit Monkey got axed.
Speaker 3: But here we are Hit Monkey. The trailer is out.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: I still can't believe we live in a world the
Speaker 2: flex is unprecedent Number one. Cool that they're using Hulu
Speaker 2: as like the place where you can see people get decapitated.
Speaker 3: And stuff, like in a Marvel property.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like they're more adult, kind of more reverent,
Speaker 2: non cannon world where you're going to see this stuff.
Speaker 2: But still, I can't believe that this happened I have
Speaker 2: not checked in on Hit Monkey or dead Pool versus
Speaker 2: Hit Monkey in twelve fifteen years.
Speaker 4: Whatever it is, Well, who has really? I mean who?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean as you're saying, like I do like
Speaker 5: the idea that Hulu is like the Marvel Nights or
Speaker 5: the Marvel Max line right, like, no, we have Like
Speaker 5: you know, Disney Plus is pretty obviously they don't. Really
Speaker 5: they really sort of stick like the PG thirteen but
Speaker 5: really PG for most of their stuf. So it is
Speaker 5: nice getting it out that we can see these like
Speaker 5: more eccentric characters go on more eccentric and centric adventures
Speaker 5: and stuff, and also show a little bit of blood,
Speaker 5: show him do get his arm mipped off, show a monkey,
Speaker 5: air the clip out like, I'm all for it.
Speaker 2: So for those of you who are like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck is hit Monkey? What is it about? Just off
Speaker 2: remembering going through the foggy archives of my brain from
Speaker 2: a decade plus ago. Hit Monkey is a Japanese snowmacac
Speaker 2: who comes into contact with a dying assassin who like
Speaker 2: was ambushed or something, and he wanders into like the mountains,
Speaker 2: comes across this tribe of monkeys, who then take care
Speaker 2: of this assassin but then hit Monkey disagrees with this,
Speaker 2: but like learns assassining from this assassin, and then much
Speaker 2: like John Wick or like the Frank Castle backstory, hit
Speaker 2: Monkey gains these skills of assassining. But then the assassins
Speaker 2: that tried to kill the Hitman come to the mountains,
Speaker 2: they kill his whole tribe of monkeys, and so now
Speaker 2: hit Monkey, bent on revenge, goes and eventually kills them
Speaker 2: and has these adventurers.
Speaker 3: He dresses in a nice suit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what It's important.
Speaker 6: Part.
Speaker 4: He has like a little monkey textedo that he walks
Speaker 4: around the world in.
Speaker 3: Like where does this open?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: I does that comport with your memories of Hit Monkey
Speaker 2: the series?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean my introduction to hit Monkey was through Deadpool.
Speaker 5: I think there was a run or there was like
Speaker 5: maybe a one off series called Deadpool Versus Hit Monkey
Speaker 5: where Deadpool just getsh to act to whip by this
Speaker 5: little monkey.
Speaker 4: From four issues.
Speaker 5: I was like, okay, like sign me up, because, like
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a huge Deadpool stand like he's one
Speaker 5: of my favorite characters. Like when he's getting fucking his
Speaker 5: ass waxed by a little monkey taxito, I was like,
Speaker 5: all right, this is a character I need to follow
Speaker 5: like that that tracks for me from what I remember
Speaker 5: reading a decade and a half ago.
Speaker 3: So wild.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited for this, I will say. Let me
Speaker 2: just I feel the need to say this. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: been a tough time for Asian people just getting murdered
Speaker 2: by hit men who are angry.
Speaker 3: That isn't happened a lot. So hopefully this is done.
Speaker 3: It'll in a tasteful way.
Speaker 2: And I get it, like he'd hit Monkey is also
Speaker 2: is Asian. That said we can do more than just
Speaker 2: be bodies that get dropped. That said, I'm excited for
Speaker 2: hit Monkey.
Speaker 4: Yeah I was.
Speaker 5: I watched Kate recently on Netflix and like like, man,
Speaker 5: this this white lady just hurting everyone's feeling into Japan.
Speaker 5: This seems kind of crazy, like this is this is wild,
Speaker 5: Like she's taking it out. Yeah, kuza like this. I mean,
Speaker 5: I mean, okay, maybe that's me. She's a trained assassin,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I was like, oh this is a wow.
Speaker 5: They just she's got bought, he's got numbers over here.
Speaker 2: She was running up the score. Mary Elizabeth, a fan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I had to turn the movie off. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about what if. Episode six What if kill Monger rescued
Speaker 2: Tony Stark uh in which Eric Stevens, otherwise known as
Speaker 2: Killmonger in the in like the depths of his run
Speaker 2: of Mongering kills, rescues Tony Stark from the Ten Rings
Speaker 2: attack in Afghanistan, goes on to become his buddy, basically
Speaker 2: blows up Obadiah Stains spot as Obadiah's in the midst
Speaker 2: of trying to betray Tony Stark, gets Tony's trust, gets
Speaker 2: a bunch of vibranium, and long story short, ends up
Speaker 2: taking over Wakanda. This was it feels like this is
Speaker 2: going to lead directly into the episodes that are that
Speaker 2: are coming or some other second part episode, because more
Speaker 2: than any of the other episodes, this one felt like
Speaker 2: there is a sequel somewhere.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, this one, This one in Marble Zombies felt
Speaker 5: the most like, oh, this is setting up for either
Speaker 5: there's a two part or later in this season, or like,
Speaker 5: I don't if they get another season, maybe they're going
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 4: The things we'll just have like sequels stitched in that.
Speaker 5: But like so, I came into this having just seen
Speaker 5: Black Panther aut the Hollywood Bowl where they have like
Speaker 5: the live orchestra and stuff, like I was already like
Speaker 5: I was completely prepped for it.
Speaker 3: I think this would have been if there's a second part.
Speaker 4: M hmm.
Speaker 3: There's parts of this that were my favorite episode.
Speaker 2: First of all, Killmonger, I think is I would argue
Speaker 2: at this point maybe the best villain in the Marvel
Speaker 2: Yeah cinematic universe canon, because what is the saying, like, uh,
Speaker 2: if the villain has a point, that's probably a good villain. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know who has a better point than
Speaker 2: Eric Stevens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like not even my Hotep friends, like all my
Speaker 5: black friends. When when when Black Panther dropped, Like yo,
Speaker 5: Killmuk was talking that talk right now. I mean he
Speaker 5: went about it and maybe not the best matter, but
Speaker 5: like he speaking of truth to power right now. Like
Speaker 5: I'm kind of rooting for him and like even for this,
Speaker 5: Like you know, Thanos is such a big character, Like
Speaker 5: it's hard to like wrap your head around the idea
Speaker 5: of like someone will sixteen, which half the fucking universe.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, like when you get to trillions, like you
Speaker 5: can't even comprehend that number when it's like yo, yeah
Speaker 5: you don't pay me what you owe like I can
Speaker 5: make to that, like I can won it percent relate
Speaker 5: to the kil Munger.
Speaker 4: I think that's why that villain sticks around so so much.
Speaker 3: I completely agree.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like to your point of I might
Speaker 2: disagree with the methodology. You know, kill Monger is like, hey,
Speaker 2: y'all owe us, and the world is like, okay, well
Speaker 2: let's figure out let's figure out a payment plan. It's
Speaker 2: gonna be a multi step process. It'll probably take like
Speaker 2: half a century to maybe a century to like actually
Speaker 2: work it all out. We'll spend the first thirty years
Speaker 2: to fifty years just like discussing whether or not we
Speaker 2: actually owe anything.
Speaker 3: And kill Mongers like, just now, forget all that.
Speaker 5: I'm not trying to skip that Twitter discourse. Let's get
Speaker 5: right to it, b Let's get right to it.
Speaker 2: That part is what makes him so absolutely compelling. I
Speaker 2: will say, I love this entire episode. I have one note.
Speaker 2: My one small note is Michael B. Jordan needed to
Speaker 2: go harder in the Pain on the Waconda. Like I
Speaker 2: don't know if you like, if they missed it, like
Speaker 2: if they like clearly like Michael B's a busy guy.
Speaker 3: They probably only had him for a very limit did time.
Speaker 2: But when he recorded that line, it was like someone
Speaker 2: was sleeping in the next room doing it on like
Speaker 2: the Apple Voice memo or something, because he was just
Speaker 2: like whatever it was.
Speaker 5: It's like he was about to step into like his
Speaker 5: uber black to go to the airport. He's like, you know,
Speaker 5: when I gotta knock this ad R request un forever? Alright,
Speaker 5: great check.
Speaker 2: You know, like when you put it, when you put
Speaker 2: it in the back of your neck and pretend that
Speaker 2: you're screaming like a fake falsetto or something.
Speaker 5: It's like, man, he was walking out of the video
Speaker 5: booth and yelling it into the mic as he was
Speaker 5: like leaving, leaving the session over.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, I needed that a little stronger. I'm excited.
Speaker 3: Of course, this is gonna.
Speaker 2: Come out the day that the next episode of What
Speaker 2: If is coming out, which has been teased to include
Speaker 2: thor that we can let's what are you expecting for
Speaker 2: the end of the season of What If?
Speaker 5: You know, it's it's such a it's such a mixed bag,
Speaker 5: and that being a good thing as far as, like
Speaker 5: you know, these are mostly standalone episodes so far. I
Speaker 5: really do hope that they sort of start wrapping, tying
Speaker 5: things into other stuff that's happened, because it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: and the Doctor Strange episode, like that's the first time
Speaker 5: that we acknowledge that they, like people can interact with
Speaker 5: the Watcher at least people that are like that have
Speaker 5: cosmic scenes, cosmic you know, intuition or whatever. So like
Speaker 5: I'm hoping that at the home point that you know,
Speaker 5: the Watcher gets brought in and like has something that
Speaker 5: as affects the universe, like he needs to break his code.
Speaker 5: Like that's always the thing with the Watcher, Like you
Speaker 5: wait for him, You're wanting, You're waiting for him to
Speaker 5: break his code, and like I'm curious to see if
Speaker 5: that happens or what that thing is. Like I'm wondering
Speaker 5: if they're gonna tie in King to it all, Like
Speaker 5: what's the King of it? Since that's the person that
Speaker 5: sort of kickstarted all this whole, all this whole multiverse conversation.
Speaker 5: So like I'm hoping that it becomes a little bit
Speaker 5: more canonical and also that we see some like we
Speaker 5: have a more active.
Speaker 4: Watcher like he was in the Doctor Strange episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think that I said this on last week's episode
Speaker 2: with Rosie, but he I think that we're going to
Speaker 2: see the Watcher break his code obviously.
Speaker 3: I think that that is going to.
Speaker 2: Take the form of him being like the cosmic Nick Fury,
Speaker 2: assembling the Guardians of the of the Multiverse. Obviously they
Speaker 2: don't know about each other. So the Watcher is gonna
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, the multiverse. You know, I'm out of
Speaker 2: a job.
Speaker 3: If the multiverse goes, there's nothing to watch.
Speaker 2: Therefore, I'm gonna have to put all of y'all in
Speaker 2: contact with with each other. Like I know this Hero,
Speaker 2: I know this corrupted Strange. I also know this kill
Speaker 2: Monger who is bad but maybe you could use him.
Speaker 2: I also know this T'halla who is star Lord like.
Speaker 2: And then he's gonna start plucking people from these various
Speaker 2: multi I know this Captain Carter, and he's gonna start
Speaker 2: putting them in contexts with each other, and that will
Speaker 2: be the finale in which they take on you know,
Speaker 2: Infinite Ultron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is my theory.
Speaker 4: That's a solid theory. I'm with that. When I want
Speaker 4: to read it, I want to watch it.
Speaker 3: Let's get into Star Wars.
Speaker 1: You've been guided by the four since you were.
Speaker 6: Born at last, the moment arise.
Speaker 3: We're back today.
Speaker 2: We're stepping out of the airlock and into the Star
Speaker 2: Wars universe has never seen before. In the new anime
Speaker 2: inspired Yes you can say inspired, I mean it's just anime,
Speaker 2: straight up an anthology series Star Wars Visions. We're gonna
Speaker 2: be covering the first three episodes, The Duel, Tattooine Rhapsody,
Speaker 2: and the Twins. These are man all very very different,
Speaker 2: and all very very cool. Let's start with the Duel
Speaker 2: by Kamakazi Duga. In a remote village, a mysterious Ronan
Speaker 2: duels a Sith bandit leader while droves of armed bandits
Speaker 2: attempt to pellision plunder a town. Ultimately, it becomes clear
Speaker 2: that our wandering Ronan is also maybe a failed Sith
Speaker 2: or just a Jedi who didn't go through with his training.
Speaker 2: Whatever the case may be, the duel is exciting and
Speaker 2: ends with the death.
Speaker 3: Of the bandit leader.
Speaker 2: The Ronan is voiced by Brian t Sith bandit leader
Speaker 2: by Lucy Lou and the village chief by Jaden Waldman.
Speaker 3: Directed by Taknubu Mizuno. Just totally cool.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be a standalone novel based on this. It's
Speaker 2: great that they started with this one because it is
Speaker 2: the one that makes the most obvious nod to the
Speaker 2: original Japanese cinema influences on Star Wars the films of
Speaker 2: Kurosawa's kind of like black and white, rainy texture.
Speaker 3: What did you think of this episode?
Speaker 5: I'm gonna saying this a lot for every episode, by
Speaker 5: this exact shit that I wanted, Like like you're saying,
Speaker 5: like you know, it's like it's very much like you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's seven Samurai, It's the hidd and Forth. It's
Speaker 5: like you know, it's it's a classic. It's a classic
Speaker 5: Samurai chan bar or Western. We're like, oh, a drifter
Speaker 5: comes into town and they have to see them from
Speaker 5: the bandits, And like I also love a running thing
Speaker 5: that's throughout these episodes.
Speaker 4: Is that the idea of like the gray Jedi or like.
Speaker 5: The Gray Sith, And like, yeah, I also love that
Speaker 5: they finally completely married, Like yeah, the Gatanas are just
Speaker 5: like sabers, like they keep them in hilts for whatever reason,
Speaker 5: and like whenever my boy draws out his sword to
Speaker 5: like get into that first dance, like I'm with it,
Speaker 5: Like I also love that they have the callbacks like
Speaker 5: other like I love like the little Suboba guys driving
Speaker 5: like the little little droid racer, Like I love that
Speaker 5: the uh they do with the mini gun's like that,
Speaker 5: you know, the assassination robot, Like I loved all that shit.
Speaker 5: I less all love that, you know, just the the
Speaker 5: the art direction as far as like the bandits like
Speaker 5: all like they had like the Stormtroopers maths that all
Speaker 5: like sort of held together with like you know, duct
Speaker 5: tape and spit Like it's a perfect introduction like to
Speaker 5: what this status caol that this series is trying to
Speaker 5: stay as far as like we're gonna go in a
Speaker 5: gay so that's far for away and we call it
Speaker 5: the space. We can have like fetal Japan planet, we
Speaker 5: can have, you know, Miyazaki world, we can have like
Speaker 5: Robot a.
Speaker 4: Extro boy planet.
Speaker 5: Like it's the perfect worked episode to like get you
Speaker 5: primed for this world and what you're gonna be watching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted and it was
Speaker 2: the perfect way to open it. The vibe when the
Speaker 2: Sith Bandit leader arrives, so the village guards the chief
Speaker 2: of the village as a child flips the script on
Speaker 2: the bandits who have rounded up the villagers out come
Speaker 2: the hired mercenaries that guard the town, and it's like,
Speaker 2: as you said, like one of them is like a
Speaker 2: bounty hunter droid with a huge minigun. Another is like
Speaker 2: a bosque like trandosan with like two huge swords. Another
Speaker 2: one is like the Imperial spy drone from Empire.
Speaker 3: S breaks back with like Samurai swords and they just
Speaker 3: like wipe out these bandits.
Speaker 2: And then the Sith leader come out of her ship,
Speaker 2: surveys the destruction and just says very quietly disgraceful.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 3: And then the music kicks.
Speaker 7: It like look whenever the boss comes out and they say,
Speaker 7: they say one word like mediocre, like someone's asked is
Speaker 7: about to get fucking whipped, And like she pulls out
Speaker 7: that she has like her like special lightsaber umbrella that
Speaker 7: like has like eight different spindles.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yo, yes, sign me the f up boy.
Speaker 5: This is this is exactly the ship that I want.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was just so so cool, you know.
Speaker 5: I just like I said, I just rewatched all the
Speaker 5: Star Wars movies, like seeing that sort of take on,
Speaker 5: like the Anakin Obi Wan fight on, like the lava,
Speaker 5: like Mustafari on, like the log going down the river,
Speaker 5: and like.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: It was such such a fun like re like reimagining
Speaker 5: of what we we all the notes that we're used
Speaker 5: to seeing in these movies.
Speaker 2: I agree, And I found myself thinking about the like
Speaker 2: globalisation of like pop culture influences and how you know,
Speaker 2: it must have been weird and disorienting, but also exciting
Speaker 2: to be like a Japanese person watching Star Wars and
Speaker 2: picking out all these influences and seeing how they were
Speaker 2: mashed together when you you know, when you saw the
Speaker 2: first Star Wars trilogy, similarly to watch these two and
Speaker 2: you know, speaking about the duel right now by Kama
Speaker 2: Koza Yuga, and see the way all the Star Wars
Speaker 2: influences are just thrown together in a way that is
Speaker 2: very it's very purposeful, but it's also like not bound
Speaker 2: by the quote unquote rules that would happen like if
Speaker 2: it like if if this was an adaptation done by
Speaker 2: a Western studio or an American studio, they'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: you can't do this because yeah, where is this planet
Speaker 2: even and this character was not around, and like how
Speaker 2: would they have gotten a forget that. Let's just throw
Speaker 2: all this shit together and it's cool. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: There's like an into the energy of that is so
Speaker 2: fun because I honestly like the childhood energy of Star
Speaker 2: Wars to me is just being like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: what is that is that? Who is that person that
Speaker 2: was in the background for two seconds? Yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: what is that like? And this captures that because it's
Speaker 2: like it's just like all these little details that you
Speaker 2: want to know more about everything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well it's like you know, Boba fav was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: that's the dude the cool helmet that says nothing in
Speaker 5: the Second Empire strikes Back and like and even Musk
Speaker 5: like he just you see his toes and you see
Speaker 5: his face, like that's all that he does in those movies.
Speaker 5: But you're like, oh, this dude looks cool, Like I
Speaker 5: want to I want to do this, and like I
Speaker 5: think that Another cool thing, as you're mentioning, is like
Speaker 5: the idea of like, since this is going to like
Speaker 5: Japanese studios, which are like obviously influence these movies, it's
Speaker 5: like they're being distilled down and reinterpreted by the people
Speaker 5: in culture that originally influenced. It's like they're able to
Speaker 5: have those those like those tropes and cliches like and
Speaker 5: not even cliches in a bad way, but it being
Speaker 5: like they can they can like really hammer those home.
Speaker 5: Like when Lucy Lou pulls out her lightsaber and the
Speaker 5: dude catches it with his hands with this force. I
Speaker 5: was like, that's my shit, Like that, that's such a
Speaker 5: classic clean trope in like any like you know, Samurai
Speaker 5: anime or it's just Semai movies in general, and like
Speaker 5: seeing that applied through the Force and like just seeing
Speaker 5: that like little tweak reinterpretation and how they apply it
Speaker 5: to Star Wars was like such a ret of fresh.
Speaker 2: Air about the standalone novel It's gonna be written by
Speaker 2: Emma Mikocandon. It arrives October twelve, spans the story of
Speaker 2: the sith Ronin. According to Star Wars dot Com, James Wah,
Speaker 2: the VP of Franchise Content and Strategy, says quote, out
Speaker 2: of all the shorts, the dual felt most rife for
Speaker 2: an ongoing story in a novel. The team at comic
Speaker 2: because Douga, We're very generous and obliging our interest in
Speaker 2: continuing the storytelling had a ton of ideas to lend
Speaker 2: in the creative process. The author Emma says, quote, I
Speaker 2: love that Visions as a whole is a grand recursive experiment,
Speaker 2: a fairy tale of a fairy tale, a myth built
Speaker 2: upon modern mythology. It makes the most sense in terms
Speaker 2: of it's the most disconnected from other stuff. The other
Speaker 2: episodes take place like in particular worlds that you will recognize,
Speaker 2: So this is it's the perfect.
Speaker 3: One to kind of like stretch their legs on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it screams like side story, and that's what I think.
Speaker 5: That's that's a big offering that this particular episode, or
Speaker 5: even though like this micro universe can can really expand.
Speaker 2: On next Tattooine Rhapsody by Studio Coloredo toin Engine, a
Speaker 2: former Jedi Padawan becomes the singer of an aspiring rock
Speaker 2: band very subtly carries his microphone slash lightsaber like got
Speaker 2: his belt just like as it there. The band's name
Speaker 2: is Star Waiver, and they ultimately come into conflict with
Speaker 2: Job of the Hut and Boba Fett because a member
Speaker 2: of their band is Jaba's son.
Speaker 3: And Jaba wants him back.
Speaker 2: The cast is Jay played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Geezer
Speaker 2: played by Bibby Mornihan Boba Fett, Timora Morrison K three p.
Speaker 2: Forty four as Shelby Young, and lan Mark Thompson. This
Speaker 2: was super fun. This is the one where you're like,
Speaker 2: if you start to think about where and when this
Speaker 2: possibly could have taken place in Clone Wars, You're introduced
Speaker 2: to Java Son Jaba Son as a child. At that point,
Speaker 2: it's not clear that it's it's not the same person.
Speaker 2: This is like completely different. This takes place on tattooine
Speaker 2: like in the pod racing arena. Yeah, super fun, like
Speaker 2: music based.
Speaker 5: It's the most like anime of it all as far
Speaker 5: as like we're gonna have a bunch of fun. It's
Speaker 5: gonna be a slice of life music anime and like
Speaker 5: we're gonna just we're just gonna map Star Wars over it.
Speaker 5: Like I love that Geezer is like his dirt bag
Speaker 5: son that has like he has like hair transplants and
Speaker 5: like a noseby he plays space bass.
Speaker 2: Yes in his garage garage man, Like, I mean this
Speaker 2: is perfect because like one of the music in Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Bands in Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Is such a under explored part of the in world
Speaker 2: reality like obviously that that you know, there is the
Speaker 2: band on Java's barge, there is the band in the canteena.
Speaker 2: There is like music all around, but this is the
Speaker 2: first time we ever really explored it in a way
Speaker 2: that like centers it. And just like you know, in
Speaker 2: the world of Star Wars, other than the animation stuff
Speaker 2: like just from the movies, you don't get you don't
Speaker 2: very often other than the music, get a sense of
Speaker 2: like culture, popular culture, what people talk about, like what
Speaker 2: people go and do as like entertainment other than pod racing,
Speaker 2: and like these little snippets of like a musical adventure.
Speaker 3: That's why I love this.
Speaker 2: The idea that there's like this band that's like on
Speaker 2: the on the rise out here in the galaxy is
Speaker 2: so fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that's when you say that because we
Speaker 5: get those snippets of like people like going to bars,
Speaker 5: going to canteenas, they like doing death sticks. But like
Speaker 5: that's really all that we have as far as like
Speaker 5: what people do when they're not like in war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is like it's a such of fun.
Speaker 5: Like this is the one that I also want to
Speaker 5: seek a sequel too, Like I just want to see
Speaker 5: that world blown out because like it's such a fun
Speaker 5: niche thing that could only happen in this universe. Like
Speaker 5: you're saying, like, yeah, what are the what are the
Speaker 5: dudes that play the space flutes do in the Containa man?
Speaker 4: Like what are the influences?
Speaker 5: Like what are there like Miles Davids that got them
Speaker 5: into like playing space jazz? Like I want to see,
Speaker 5: like I want to see like the Space strokes, Like
Speaker 5: what are these guys turned into?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that Jay's pitch to Jabas Like, hey, how
Speaker 2: about you become our our first sponsor?
Speaker 3: What about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: What a perfect Like you know, us wars are so heavy,
Speaker 5: like you know, good and bad must come together and
Speaker 5: face each other blues. And this was like, you know,
Speaker 5: we need money for a new Space fan. We would
Speaker 5: love if you didn't kill our bass player and we
Speaker 5: can make you a lot of money in the end.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at this, like we filled the pod
Speaker 3: racing stadium.
Speaker 2: People are going fucking ape shit Java, Like do you
Speaker 2: want a part of this? Also, don't pretend that I
Speaker 2: didn't see your tail tapping to the beat.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my guy, Yeah, yeah, I felt it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: we the slap's job and we see you slapping with it.
Speaker 5: B better we get Kendrick on the track Game over
Speaker 5: Space Kendrick, I.
Speaker 2: Would say, my one My one note is like maybe
Speaker 2: we should have brought in a pitch singer for Joe.
Speaker 2: My guy was like a full step and a half
Speaker 2: flat for the entire versus chorus.
Speaker 3: I got to feel that versus chorus, and I.
Speaker 2: Didn't feel it quite as much as I needed to,
Speaker 2: but still it was super fun.
Speaker 4: He committed to it.
Speaker 5: He committed, admitted, committed, and he also committed like this
Speaker 5: little my favorite like anime notes, like the like all
Speaker 5: that ye shuff like.
Speaker 3: He went hard, like he went hard in the way
Speaker 3: Michael b needed.
Speaker 4: To go hard.
Speaker 3: Say what kind of forever?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he like screamed the screen really really really fun.
Speaker 6: One.
Speaker 2: If people are feeling these first two animes, what would
Speaker 2: you say, are like the comps to like go out and.
Speaker 3: Oh boy and watch?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the first one definitely, I mean this
Speaker 5: is live actually, but Yo Jimbo, like that's obviously seven Samurai,
Speaker 5: but like anime wise, I'd say basilisk, it's a fun
Speaker 5: like Samurai anime it's like a ninju scroll like. Those
Speaker 5: are two ones I think are very fun. Cops that
Speaker 5: are think oh and sort of the Stranger Like, those
Speaker 5: are three that I think really compliment to compliment this
Speaker 5: as far as like Tattooed Rhapsody is funny because I
Speaker 5: don't watch that much like musical anime, but like there's
Speaker 5: like a nice like slice of life. Like I think
Speaker 5: if you like just google any like modern comedy anime,
Speaker 5: like that'll be a fun one to jump into. Any
Speaker 5: like anything that's like that looks bright and happy and weird.
Speaker 5: It has like weird like character proportions, like you're going
Speaker 5: to be into it, And I think that will be
Speaker 5: a perfect compliment for Tattooed Rhapsody.
Speaker 2: Next up is The Twins, a really really fun episode
Speaker 2: that really explores like the duality of the force through
Speaker 2: twins twins Bread and Groom to harness the power of
Speaker 2: the dark side. Guess what one of them decides that
Speaker 2: they don't necessarily want to do that anymore, then you
Speaker 2: get a fight. The cast is care was by Neil
Speaker 2: Patrick Harris, I'm Alison Brie and B twenty n Jonathan Lippbow,
Speaker 2: directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi. Justin Leitch, CEO of Cubic Pictures,
Speaker 2: said at the Anime Light Expo of the Twins quote
Speaker 2: subverts the idea of Luke and Lea and imagines a
Speaker 2: brand new set of twins born into the dark Side
Speaker 2: and how far the brother will go to save his sister.
Speaker 2: Finally we saw a humanoid general, grievous, multi armed, Yes,
Speaker 2: Sith with lightsabers.
Speaker 3: That's all I want.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love my dark side wife. Who I can
Speaker 5: save her? I can fix her.
Speaker 3: Uh, she's problematic, but she just give me time with her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's my problematic fave. We'll get a couple of therapy,
Speaker 4: will fix here.
Speaker 5: Us speaking like coming off that the Joseph Gordon Levitt
Speaker 5: going for it, Alison Bree, you fucking went for it
Speaker 5: in this as well, went for it hard like she was.
Speaker 4: She went hard the.
Speaker 5: Motherfucking paint I think, I mean, this is the this
Speaker 5: is of the ones that we were today, Like this
Speaker 5: is the one that is the most like bombastic anime
Speaker 5: like that could only that could think things that could
Speaker 5: only transpire in animation. That lends itself to this, Like
Speaker 5: I just took jump straight to it, like my dude
Speaker 5: making a hyper lightsaber out of a special crystal and
Speaker 5: then jumping in front of an X wing and going
Speaker 5: through hyper speed to like cut a star story in half.
Speaker 4: Is the most hype shit I've ever seen.
Speaker 5: And also ship that could only get away with by
Speaker 5: Studio Trigger, the production company that made this, when like
Speaker 5: that's their bag, Like they do bombastic, hype ass hyperkinetic
Speaker 5: animation and they completely get away with it. Now, if
Speaker 5: I'm asking myself, why does the droid have a space
Speaker 5: suit on?
Speaker 4: At the end, I didn't even care. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I chalcol I chalk it them to the force.
Speaker 3: I mean, why does like Cara have an X wing
Speaker 3: like on an imperial ship?
Speaker 2: None of it, It doesn't it doesn't matter, don't worry
Speaker 2: about it. It's interesting because when I was I spent
Speaker 2: all weekends just like reading histories of anime and there's
Speaker 2: some really good economic papers about you know, just like
Speaker 2: the movement of pop culture in the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: and how anime is an example of a market that
Speaker 2: was the spread here in the United States is an
Speaker 2: example of a market that was purely fan driven. Like
Speaker 2: everybody who tried to make this happen on a popular
Speaker 2: on it from an actual professional corporate level failed.
Speaker 3: In numerous ways.
Speaker 2: Either the Japanese studios couldn't find a partner that would
Speaker 2: honor their material, that wouldn't just like cut it up
Speaker 2: and dub like wild shit over it, or they couldn't
Speaker 2: find a distributor who understand what they were about. Similarly, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the fans were just like, send these tapes over, we
Speaker 2: will translate them on our own, and we will disperse
Speaker 2: them on our own, and we will do that because
Speaker 2: nobody is feeding this market. Literally, nobody else is doing this,
Speaker 2: and it is super fascinating. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that was driving this was that, to your point, there
Speaker 2: was a level of bomb bast that was just not
Speaker 2: seen in American slash western animation, which is.
Speaker 3: Primarily for kids.
Speaker 2: Like in Japan, the tradition is the manga tradition is
Speaker 2: this is popular storytelling for everyone.
Speaker 3: Like you see adults reading this.
Speaker 2: Similarly with anime, there is no like age cutoff for
Speaker 2: this shit like adult themes, incredible violence, like if you
Speaker 2: want to know, you know, what's a short cut to
Speaker 2: like universal storytelling, stylized violence, incredibly stylized violence in which
Speaker 2: like like ships containing a million people get blown up
Speaker 2: or cutted half.
Speaker 3: You know that that is the shit you will see
Speaker 3: in anime.
Speaker 2: And that was the thing that really hooked people in
Speaker 2: the late seventies and eighties because they were like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3: I've never seen anything like this. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 3: what The Twins felt.
Speaker 5: Like to me, yeah percent, because I was thinking of that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, we would had like gi Jo's and Transformers,
Speaker 5: which were like, yes, nothing really happen. It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: there's no stakes to like what you're watching, Like there's
Speaker 5: like a roadblock. I'm assuming that a character named rod
Speaker 5: Block that sounds like a wrecker like whatever, Yeah, Roadblock's
Speaker 5: not get gets leg blown off in episode one and
Speaker 5: then have it not be their episode two. Like they're
Speaker 5: just no stakes. But for this is like one is
Speaker 5: like you also like everything is dialed up to fucking
Speaker 5: twenty five, so like the emotions are super heightened, like
Speaker 5: the like it's just like also it compacts everything down,
Speaker 5: like you get the Lea in Luke story and like
Speaker 5: was it like fifteen minutes? Like you get all that
Speaker 5: compacted really to one sequence in like a fifteen minute.
Speaker 5: Things like alreadily like you're you're fucking speeding through this
Speaker 5: a one hundred miles per hours, like you're on edge,
Speaker 5: and like you want to see how it plays out
Speaker 5: because also the animation is so kinetic.
Speaker 4: En diowed up to twenty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to your points.
Speaker 2: As a fan of Gi Joe as a kid, it
Speaker 2: used to annoy me so much that every time Gi
Speaker 2: Joe and Cobra would get in like some scuffle since
Speaker 2: you know, a big set piece battle. Yeah, at the
Speaker 2: end of every episode, may be blowing up each other's jets,
Speaker 2: big explosion as the jet gets shot down. You know,
Speaker 2: the pilot wait a jet and you see the parachute
Speaker 2: and they like gently drift to the ground. To let
Speaker 2: all those kids watching at home, don't worry nobody.
Speaker 3: This is a huge.
Speaker 2: Battle between two multinational security forces. Uh and like a
Speaker 2: wild high tech terrorist outfit. But actually nobody died in
Speaker 2: any of these battles. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know I had anime COVID into my life
Speaker 2: at that time, I would have been like.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you would have been scarred there.
Speaker 5: I remember the first time I but the first AIME
Speaker 5: I ever watched was the show called Robotech and like
Speaker 5: there was a there was a show that was serialized
Speaker 5: and like one of the main characters bites it like
Speaker 5: episode eight, I'm like, wait a minute, is he going
Speaker 5: to be here like next episode like no, he bleeds
Speaker 5: to death in his hospital bits like he's gone. I
Speaker 5: was like, oh wow, I'm not used to this. I'm
Speaker 5: used to like Optimus Prime coming back the next Saturday
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, you know, for for me, one of
Speaker 2: the most scarring moments in Childhood Animation is Optimus Prime dying.
Speaker 2: I was like, what how can you do this? How
Speaker 2: dare you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, in in anime, people are dying, getting there, getting
Speaker 2: cut in half like all the time.
Speaker 3: And it mattered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 5: Also, they don't get graceful deaths, like they get fucking
Speaker 5: murked by someone that they loved, you know, they get
Speaker 5: killed in the phone booth and you're like, oh wow,
Speaker 5: no dignity in this death.
Speaker 2: Uh So when you watch Robotech, were you watching the
Speaker 2: original Japanese Robotech or you know, watching the dubbed version.
Speaker 5: Or I watched I was watching the Harmony gold dubs,
Speaker 5: So like I'm a tunami stand like that's what that
Speaker 5: fucking changed the game for me. I was like twelve
Speaker 5: or thirteen, and like that was the first like anime
Speaker 5: I ever saw. I was like, oh wow, this is
Speaker 5: one Like it had robots.
Speaker 4: I love robots.
Speaker 5: But also it was the first show that I be
Speaker 5: cognitiant of being like, oh, this is serialized, Like what
Speaker 5: happens in episode one is going to affect episode twenty seven,
Speaker 5: which is going to affect episode thirty two or whatever,
Speaker 5: and like having those stakes happen. Also having like characters
Speaker 5: that you attached to and then having them die was like,
Speaker 5: oh wow, this is like this is this is real,
Speaker 5: Like I've never seen that type of stuff and like
Speaker 5: that's what fucking unlocked the gate to like the nerdom
Speaker 5: that I currently find myself yelling about anime Star Wars
Speaker 5: right now, one big snowball baby.
Speaker 3: So, of these three, which is your favorite? And why?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 3: It's the dual Tattooing Rhapsody and the Twins.
Speaker 5: I you know, I think aesthetically I think aesthetically distilled
Speaker 5: down the duel is what for me is like what
Speaker 5: I think Star Wars is when it comes to like
Speaker 5: the influences, the action, the the subtle stuff as far
Speaker 5: as like you know, good bad and even having the
Speaker 5: idea of like the gray like this. Also the Twins
Speaker 5: covers the idea of like someone turning to the light,
Speaker 5: like I love all that. Also it's in and out,
Speaker 5: like you get a taste of like these worlds can
Speaker 5: be whatever they want to, Like you said, we can
Speaker 5: have feudal planet, we can have you know, we can
Speaker 5: have rock garage, rock planet.
Speaker 4: Like the Dual hits all that stuff.
Speaker 5: And also you see all the love letters like your
Speaker 5: Jimbo seven Samurai, Yeah, all those things is still down that.
Speaker 5: I think the Duel just like really captures like it's
Speaker 5: what It's the perfect pilot for what you need right
Speaker 5: off the gate for this series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my favorite one as well, I think.
Speaker 2: Then followed by the Twins.
Speaker 3: You know, the Duel.
Speaker 2: There is something perfect and circular about like closing that
Speaker 2: loop and like uh acknowledging original influence of Kurosawa's pictures
Speaker 2: on Star Wars, you know, famously Hidden Fortress. You know,
Speaker 2: Lucas openly took a bunch of plot points from that
Speaker 2: movie and used it to build up the early drafts
Speaker 2: of Star Wars. Like at one point, the character that
Speaker 2: became Darth Vader, was named General Akira. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff in there, and so acknowledging that
Speaker 2: was super cool. And then just the textures and feel
Speaker 2: of it, like taking animation, putting that like dirty film,
Speaker 2: black and white, gray film, grain, but then having the
Speaker 2: lightsabers have these pops of color, the laser beams be
Speaker 2: these pops with blasters, be these pops of color.
Speaker 4: The explosion on his wrist.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, to call his to call his R two.
Speaker 2: The way that it took like the archetypical essential story
Speaker 2: beats of a Star Wars story, right, the battle between
Speaker 2: good and evil. These lived in high tech, futuristic worlds
Speaker 2: where you can imagine people just like working and going
Speaker 2: about their day, incredible duel droids like all that shit
Speaker 2: together in basically like under thirteen minutes.
Speaker 3: I think it was just it was the perfect introduction.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, for me who is not
Speaker 2: as versed an anime, there is so much Star Wars
Speaker 2: there and it's so upfront with its influences that it
Speaker 2: just you feel like it's like a great syllabus to
Speaker 2: be like, I want to dive in further.
Speaker 3: How do I get there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great like cultural bridge. We're like, all right,
Speaker 5: this is we're going to bring fans over to anime.
Speaker 5: We're gona bing anime fans over to Star Wars and
Speaker 5: like we can all have them populate and find some
Speaker 5: more gems in both of those those mediums of storytelling.
Speaker 2: People wanted to get into some of these The studios
Speaker 2: that created these Kamakazi Duga Studio, Trigger, Twin Engine, do
Speaker 2: you have like a some movies that they should check
Speaker 2: out or some.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Studio Trigger Studio Trigger is one of the best
Speaker 5: in the game. Like what what you saw for the
Speaker 5: Twins is a great encapsulation of like their style when
Speaker 5: it comes to like character design and like action and
Speaker 5: like also humor. I highly recommend Kill a Kill that
Speaker 5: was probably like one of the most well known first series.
Speaker 5: I think it's on Netflix. All the seedents are on
Speaker 5: there or Hulu, one of the two. And also feeling
Speaker 5: for like a feature that they did pro Mayor I
Speaker 5: think p R O M A R E. That's on
Speaker 5: I believe Amazon. It's a It's a fantastic, fantastic feature
Speaker 5: with like some amazing animation, uh and some crazy character designs.
Speaker 5: That's also like that their style. If you notice, like
Speaker 5: they don't do a lot of like borders for their stuff,
Speaker 5: Like they'll have like outlines for characters, but a lot
Speaker 5: of their like background is just like the paint.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: You don't get any like bard R and stuff like.
Speaker 5: That's a really cool film to see that through it
Speaker 5: like a whole future. I highly recommend both of those.
Speaker 3: This has been so fun.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to have you back so we can
Speaker 2: talk about the rest of the season. Up next, I
Speaker 2: crack open the Omnibus. Welcome to another chapter in the
Speaker 2: Omnibus where Laura, analysis and understanding come together. Today we
Speaker 2: explore the life and work of director at Kira Kurosawa,
Speaker 2: his influence on Star Wars and the globalization of anime,
Speaker 2: which set the stage for Star Wars Visions, a series
Speaker 2: that we are watching and talking about today. It makes
Speaker 2: sense in all of this to start with The Hidden
Speaker 2: Fortress director Akira kurosawa is nineteen fifty eight classic about
Speaker 2: a mismatched pair of commoners who bumble their way into
Speaker 2: a mission to rescue Wolf Princess from.
Speaker 3: The upheaval of a civil war.
Speaker 2: Is the most famous example of the influence of Japanese
Speaker 2: culture on Star Wars. Whenever the film comes up in conversation,
Speaker 2: someone will mention, hey, George Lucas was inspired by that
Speaker 2: to make Star Wars. Indeed, George Lucas's early scripts for
Speaker 2: a New Hope hewed so closely to Fortresses that, according
Speaker 2: to John Baxter and George Lucas a biography, the director
Speaker 2: briefly considered purchasing the film's remake rights.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Hidden Fortress was an influence on Star Wars right from
Speaker 3: the very beginning, Lucas says in JW. Rinsler's The Making
Speaker 3: of Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Fortress is known as a Jedi jecki, a genre of
Speaker 2: action adventure usually set during Japan's Edo period, which is
Speaker 2: thought to be the phonic source of the word Jedi.
Speaker 2: In the first draft of Star Wars, the villain who
Speaker 2: became Darth Vader is named Akira Obi Wan Kenobi would
Speaker 2: have hit different if the actor playing him was the
Speaker 2: Hidden Fortresses star and frequent Kurosawa collaborator to Shira Mafuni
Speaker 2: and Lucas explore the possibility of casting Maffuni before settling
Speaker 2: on Alec Guinness, and of course, the Jedi themselves are
Speaker 2: essentially space Samurai Akira Kurosawa casts a death star size
Speaker 2: shadow over American popular culture and international cinema nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Raschaman won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival
Speaker 2: and launched Kurosaw at a global acclaim. The movie occupies
Speaker 2: an interesting cultural space. On the one hand, it's only
Speaker 2: been officially remade once nineteen sixty four is The Outrage
Speaker 2: starring Paul Newman. On the other hand, since its release,
Speaker 2: every story which has come out, every movie in which
Speaker 2: a single event is examined from multiple points of view
Speaker 2: owes something to Raschiman. Rachaman has since become a synonym
Speaker 2: for the subjective nature of reality and the punchline for
Speaker 2: a very very funny joke on The Simpsons. Basically, Marge
Speaker 2: is like, you liked Rashaman, and then Homer is like, no,
Speaker 2: I didn't, and then they remember this one situation very differently.
Speaker 2: Cursawa's nineteen sixty one film Yo Jimbo and its sequel
Speaker 2: Sinjuro introduced the trope of the mysterious protagonist, later popularised
Speaker 2: by Clint Eastwood's character in Sergeio Leoni's A Fistful of
Speaker 2: Dollars trilogy. The Man with No Name would later influence
Speaker 2: Logan's look and vibe in Frank Miller's four issue Wolverine
Speaker 2: limited series. Another major influence on Star Wars Cursawa's nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four masterpiece The Seven Samurai is credited with creating
Speaker 2: the team of specialists on a mission trope, which spawned
Speaker 2: any number of movies and stories.
Speaker 3: That you can imagine.
Speaker 2: The Fast and the Furious, Marvels, The Avengers, The Ocean's Eleven,
Speaker 2: The Remake, and almost every heist movie of the last
Speaker 2: sixty years.
Speaker 3: The Town.
Speaker 2: Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo in ninety ten to
Speaker 2: a family descended from Samurai. The youngest of eight children,
Speaker 2: Akira wanted to be a painter. His father, however, a
Speaker 2: former military officer and physical education teacher, encouraged him towards
Speaker 2: the cinema, which was just then emerging in Japan. In
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, Kurosawa answered an advertisement from PCL Studios
Speaker 2: and was hired on as an assistant director the next year.
Speaker 2: During this time, Japan was reaching the culmination of a
Speaker 2: decades long program of rapid modernization in the late eighteen sixties,
Speaker 2: Japan was a fractious collection of feuding states with a
Speaker 2: weak military a pre modern agrarian economy hamstrung by extortionate
Speaker 2: trade treaties forced on the country by Europe and the
Speaker 2: United States. Fast forward in nineteen twelve, and Japan has
Speaker 2: a strong central bureaucracy governing the country, which enjoyed a
Speaker 2: burgeoning industrial based a highly educated population zipped around the
Speaker 2: country in a modern railway system. Once preyed upon by
Speaker 2: colonial powers, Japan, behind its modern army and navy, had
Speaker 2: itself become a colonizer after prying the Korean Peninsula away
Speaker 2: from China in eighteen ninety five. The lasting effects of
Speaker 2: that continued to this day. When Russia, one of the
Speaker 2: so called great powers of the era, began encroaching on
Speaker 2: Japan's Korean holdings. Japan in nineteen oh four launched a
Speaker 2: surprise attack on the Tsar's fleet, sparking the Russo Japanese War.
Speaker 2: Japan's defeat of Russia, it's fair to say, shocked the
Speaker 2: world and elevated Japan to a first world power. And
Speaker 2: it is really hard to fathom from a American perspective
Speaker 2: what the effect of this rapid tectonic change had on
Speaker 2: Japan and its culture. In the Asian influence on Hollywood
Speaker 2: action films, Barnard William Donovan writes of this period, quote,
Speaker 2: Japanese society, founded on centuries of reverence for tradition and
Speaker 2: a very powerful sense of cultural identity, would now begin
Speaker 2: to struggle with the question of how modernization, industrial development,
Speaker 2: foreign contact, and the need to attain the status of
Speaker 2: a global power could at the same time remain compatible
Speaker 2: with their insular, traditional japaneseeness. Krisawa's career as a director
Speaker 2: took place during and immediately after World War Two. Under
Speaker 2: Japan's wartime censorship regime, films were, as Leonard Epp describes
Speaker 2: in The Oxonian Review quote anti western and preferred representations
Speaker 2: of devoted and unindividuated workers who were subordinate at least
Speaker 2: to a social goal, if not also to received and
Speaker 2: semi feudalistic notion of an authentic Japan, which was under
Speaker 2: attack from Western influences end quote. During the American occupation,
Speaker 2: the Americans put in their own censorship regime, and in
Speaker 2: addition to managing what American and European movies could be
Speaker 2: shown in Japan. During this time, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, for instance,
Speaker 2: was denied because it depicted a Nazi captain briefly in
Speaker 2: control of the fate of the lifeboat's passengers. Nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: As of Metal for Benny was not allowed to be
Speaker 2: shown due to the film celebration of the protagonist's killing
Speaker 2: of numerous Japanese soldiers during wartime, probably a good idea,
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy demanded that domestically produced films break with Japan's
Speaker 2: feudal past and should criticize Japan's wartime actions a cure.
Speaker 2: Kurosawa's nineteen forty five film They Who Tread On the
Speaker 2: Tiger's Trail was denied release because it was set in
Speaker 2: twelfth century feudal Japan and promoted Japanese feudal values. It
Speaker 2: was released later in nineteen fifty two after the Treaty
Speaker 2: of San Francisco, which reinstated peaceful relations between Japan and
Speaker 2: the United States and ended the American occupation. But by then,
Speaker 2: of course, Rashaman had won Kurrosawa international recognition and set
Speaker 2: his career on a path towards the most rarefied levels
Speaker 2: of influence, respect and a claim that an artist can reach.
Speaker 2: It is ironic, then, that Kurasawa's reputation in his home
Speaker 2: country at the time and now is decidedly mixed. In
Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies, new wave Japanese directors reacted against
Speaker 2: Kurrosawa's reputation and his perceived cinematic authority rights Leonard Epp
Speaker 2: in The Oxonian Review. They rebelled against what they saw
Speaker 2: as an American style which was overly individualistic and too
Speaker 2: directly influenced by Westerns in the style of John Ford
Speaker 2: end quote. Kurrasawa was always open about his admiration for
Speaker 2: American films and Western literature, and most notably the work
Speaker 2: of director John Ford. This, along with ironically his acclaim
Speaker 2: in the US, was used against Kirosawa by his critics
Speaker 2: and contemporaries, who derided his work as old fashioned, elitist, arrogant,
Speaker 2: and shaped by the biases of a Western audience, pandering
Speaker 2: two American audiences. Essentially, by the nineteen sixties, Kirosawa found
Speaker 2: himself at a step in Japan, but with the standing
Speaker 2: of an auteur in Hollywood. In nineteen sixty six, Twenty
Speaker 2: Century Fox hired him to direct The World War II
Speaker 2: epic to Tora about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2: After working on the script for two years, Korrosawa was
Speaker 2: either fired or resigned two weeks into shooting. The rumor
Speaker 2: has it that he was too authoritarian with his American actors.
Speaker 2: If that's the case, there was surely some kind of
Speaker 2: like culture misunderstanding there as well. That said, I think
Speaker 2: it's fair to say, if you read anything about Krosawa
Speaker 2: that he was quite imperious with the people he worked with.
Speaker 2: Let's put it that way. I think it's fair to
Speaker 2: call him arrogant. In nineteen seventy Do des Kaden, Krissawa's
Speaker 2: first color film, was savaged by Japanese critics, and it
Speaker 2: later flopped at the box office. Krosawa fell into a
Speaker 2: deep depression and in nineteen seventy one attempted suicide. In
Speaker 2: the last decades of his career, the filmmaker would find
Speaker 2: it impossible to finance his projects in Japan. George Lucas, Coppola,
Speaker 2: and Spielberg used their clout with American studios to raise
Speaker 2: funds for Kagamusha in nineteen eighty Ran nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: and Dreams in nineteen ninety, writes Barno William Donovan, Kirosawa's
Speaker 2: dip in fortunes was ironically in part of failure to
Speaker 2: react to the rise of television in Japan. Japanese film
Speaker 2: studios never recovered from the shock of television. While younger
Speaker 2: directors adapted to the new age by making cheaper films
Speaker 2: are working for television, Kurrosawa refused. Ian Buruma wrote in
Speaker 2: a nineteen eighty nine article about Kurrosawa, Japanese television's ascent
Speaker 2: was fueled ironically in part by the domestic audience's hunger
Speaker 2: for a new form of entertainment anime. The transnational pathways
Speaker 2: of globalization that led us to Star Wars visions just
Speaker 2: wander off and really really unexpected directions when you dig
Speaker 2: into it. In the nineteen seventies, new consumer products invented
Speaker 2: and mass produced in Japan, notably the Walkman, but in
Speaker 2: particular for our purposes, the Betamax, and most influentially, the VCR,
Speaker 2: the video cassette recorder, made culture portable in a way
Speaker 2: that was simply impossible previously. Americans in Japan, many of
Speaker 2: whom were members of the military based in the country,
Speaker 2: began recording Japanese broadcasts of shows like Ashraboy and Starblazers
Speaker 2: off Japanese television and sent the tapes back to the States.
Speaker 2: In May nineteen seventy seven, several Los Angeles area anime
Speaker 2: enthusiasts founded the Cartoon Fantasy Organization CFO, the first anime
Speaker 2: fan club, and the organization quickly spread. The Cartoon Fantasy
Speaker 2: Organization will meet from ten thirty am to five thirty
Speaker 2: pm today behind the Bank of the Hills on Research.
Speaker 2: Features will include Grandizer, Danguard, Danguard, Ace, Space Ketters, Starvengers,
Speaker 2: Brave Raiding, and Astro Boy. The group meets on the
Speaker 2: second Saturday of each month. End Quote reads an event
Speaker 2: posting in the September twelfth, nineteen eighty one issue of
Speaker 2: the Austin American Statesman. The October twelfth, nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: edition of the Philadelphia in Choir ran a bemused coverage
Speaker 2: of the Philadelphia chapter of the cfo's second anniversary meet up.
Speaker 2: Quote a little unusual as CFO is, but definitely original.
Speaker 2: While other Philadelphians are cruising Saturday night hotspots trying to
Speaker 2: look like Michael Jackson or Prince, the club's members are
Speaker 2: searching for artistic and creative merit in and science fiction
Speaker 2: shows that the rest of the world might find terribly strange.
Speaker 2: That's nineteen eighty four, folks. A rather good profile of
Speaker 2: the CFO appears in the November nineteenth, nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 2: edition of the Chicago Tribune, which states that the CFO
Speaker 2: at the time had thirty chapters with several thousand members
Speaker 2: in Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities.
Speaker 2: In a two thousand and four paper, Progress Against the
Speaker 2: Law about the spread of anime in the US, cultural
Speaker 2: globalization and copyright theft, which I'd urge you to read
Speaker 2: if you want a great history of anime up to
Speaker 2: the mid two thousands, MIT Sean Leonard writes that anime
Speaker 2: fan distribution networks quote represented prostalyization commons or spaces where
Speaker 2: media and ideas could be freely exchanged INWD to advance
Speaker 2: a directed cause, which I think is a good description
Speaker 2: of the Internet. In twenty twenty one, an examination of
Speaker 2: Japanese and American popular culture across pollenization reveals these dizzying
Speaker 2: meta textures details that surrounds It's not often clear who
Speaker 2: pollinated whom Up Next? Alisha Lutz joins us for the
Speaker 2: Hive Mind Welcome to the Hive Mind, where we dive
Speaker 2: deeper into a particular topic with the help of a
Speaker 2: guest panelist. On today's episode, Actually Vision is happy to
Speaker 2: welcome writer Alisha Lutz. You can find her most recent
Speaker 2: article on Vulture, which features an interview with Ted Lasso's
Speaker 2: Phil Dunster.
Speaker 3: Alicia, Welcome, Thank you so much for having me. Jason,
Speaker 3: it's a thrill.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about with the release of Star Wars Visions,
Speaker 2: it's worth unpacking the role that the movies now play
Speaker 2: in the overall firmament of the Star Wars universe. I
Speaker 2: guess we could boil that time down to does it
Speaker 2: matter if the Star Wars movies suck or not? The
Speaker 2: most recent trilogy, I think the general contensus it was disappointing.
Speaker 2: But it feels like with Star Wars Visions, with the Mandalorian,
Speaker 2: with all the various Disney Plus shows that are coming out,
Speaker 2: with Star Wars Rebels, with the finale of Clone Wars,
Speaker 2: it kind of doesn't matter because we have so much stuff.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it, Alicia, start with you. Does it
Speaker 2: like where do you think what is the role of
Speaker 2: the Star Wars movies now with all this other Star
Speaker 2: Wars content.
Speaker 3: That is out there. Well, you know, it's interesting because
Speaker 3: I think that.
Speaker 6: Lucasfilm and Star Wars thought really big, but they got
Speaker 6: themselves stuck in a trap by sort of repeating old
Speaker 6: patterns and thinking that they're getting.
Speaker 3: It's a trap.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I I know, I thought about not doing it,
Speaker 2: but then I felt everybody listening to this doing it,
Speaker 2: so that I had to do.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, continue, you know what, It's fair, It's absolutely fair.
Speaker 6: But yeah, no, I think that it's just they set
Speaker 6: themselves up for failure with the most recent trilogy, although
Speaker 6: I am somebody who does like a lot of what
Speaker 6: was being presented in The Last Jedi, even though that
Speaker 6: there's very constructive and valid reasons why some of the
Speaker 6: things in that film didn't work. But what I think
Speaker 6: Ryan Johnson was trying to get at in that was
Speaker 6: that the Force belongs to everyone. And I think that
Speaker 6: we're getting to see that in Star Wars Visions, and
Speaker 6: we're getting to see that in you know, Clone Wars
Speaker 6: and Rebels, and you get to see these other parts
Speaker 6: of the universe that have so many different stories to tell,
Speaker 6: and it's just such a deliciously verdant breeding ground for
Speaker 6: all of the different types of stories that can be
Speaker 6: told in this vast universe.
Speaker 3: Like it's galaxies, it's not just one family just doing
Speaker 3: the thing over and over again, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was Karl Marx who said that
Speaker 2: we must seize the means of producing the kyber crystals
Speaker 2: and socialize the force for everyone. Yeah, I like, you know,
Speaker 2: I feel the same way about the about the the
Speaker 2: most recent trilogy, and that there's like a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff to admire. Honestly, in all the three moves to
Speaker 2: the Last Year is my favorite of those. There was
Speaker 2: good stuff in all of them, but on the whole
Speaker 2: it felt a little bit like movie making Bike Committee.
Speaker 2: Whereas the Mandalorian Rebels and now Star Wars visions there
Speaker 2: is a reason behind them existing and there's something that.
Speaker 3: They are saying, Oh totally, zig, what do you what is?
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts about like where the movies stand
Speaker 2: in the in the current content offerings.
Speaker 5: I mean, both of all are spitting straight facts right now.
Speaker 5: I think that one is having just just telling Jason,
Speaker 5: I had just rewatched all the movies in chronological order,
Speaker 5: because I'm very unimp at the moment. So my my
Speaker 5: big takeaway rewatching the first the Newest trilogies is that
Speaker 5: like there's not a lot of fun in them. Like
Speaker 5: the first like Stars and Star Wars Awakens is like
Speaker 5: the most fun. We're like, oh, we got wacky jokes
Speaker 5: and stuff. But like even watch the original trilogy, like
Speaker 5: it's it's it's like a watching it. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: obviously made for kids, and like that's something that like
Speaker 5: sort of perminates about all of them. But like the
Speaker 5: Newest trilogy where like you know, you're you're you're wristling
Speaker 5: with like the light and dark stuff, which is interesting,
Speaker 5: but like it's also like so heavy, and like the second,
Speaker 5: like the whole third act of like the first one
Speaker 5: is just like so not fun. Like so like there's
Speaker 5: this whole like mystery box stuff, which like you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not a big fan of that in general, Like
Speaker 5: there's no real mystery and the original it's like you
Speaker 5: don't wonder who Luke's parents are, Like you don't care.
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, this is a kid.
Speaker 5: He went, he goes on an adventure, he meets some
Speaker 5: weird people and like that's his thing, Like I don't
Speaker 5: I don't care about how the person got there, and
Speaker 5: like speaking to your point about like you have this
Speaker 5: enormous galaxy, which I think the TV shows really tap into,
Speaker 5: Like you get to see what happens with like the
Speaker 5: squad of like the Bad Troopers, so you can see
Speaker 5: what the Mandalorian does, or you can see like what
Speaker 5: Ahsoka is doing up up to but like this, it
Speaker 5: seems the movies seem so contained because it's just two bloodlines,
Speaker 5: and like the whole thesis for the Last Jedi, which
Speaker 5: I really enjoyed, was that like who gives a shit,
Speaker 5: throw out the good the bad, this like it's about
Speaker 5: starting something over with and like I really enjoyed that,
Speaker 5: and I felt it was a little bit of an
Speaker 5: undercut at the end when like the first the kid
Speaker 5: that we see that gets powers is like another white kid.
Speaker 4: You're like I've seen.
Speaker 5: That movies, Like yeah, it's like there's like a there's
Speaker 5: like a there's like a black kid like right there,
Speaker 5: give it to them, Like there's like a little brown
Speaker 5: girl like give that to them. And like the course
Speaker 5: correction in like the last the last of three was
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, maybe maybe the films could be sort
Speaker 5: of a thing where they make these big tents, they
Speaker 5: set up like more stuff for the world, so like
Speaker 5: it's a big well and they can go back to
Speaker 5: like all right, we need to establish that there's like
Speaker 5: the final order or whatever, like all right, we'll set
Speaker 5: this up in one movie and then like we can
Speaker 5: just have that permeate through like the TV shows if
Speaker 5: they want to go to that and like tap into
Speaker 5: these certain things. Like I think maybe doing standalone is
Speaker 5: the is the maybe the move like where one was great,
Speaker 5: Solo was was fantastic. In my opinion, I think having small,
Speaker 5: self contained stories might be the move going forward because
Speaker 5: also like trilogies are just sort of a going going
Speaker 5: out of the way, like you know, besides mar of
Speaker 5: like I don't know ive trilogies is like.
Speaker 4: The move for like features at this point.
Speaker 2: Story, Yeah, Rogue one is my favorite, and I think
Speaker 2: part of that is because it is a different angle
Speaker 2: on the story that you know, it's filling in one,
Speaker 2: it's answering a story which was like how do they
Speaker 2: get these plans? You know, ever since uh, you know,
Speaker 2: you heard about the spy mission to acquire the plans,
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, how did this happen? So now you
Speaker 2: get that, which was so cool. And also it just
Speaker 2: wasn't based. It is no more Skywalkers, like it wasn't.
Speaker 2: These were like all new people, and you really felt
Speaker 2: it when they died. It's interesting because the fact that
Speaker 2: there that Clone Wars exist, that Rebels exist, kind of
Speaker 2: for me at least softened the blow of the disappointment of,
Speaker 2: you know, the new trilogy. The fact that it wasn't
Speaker 2: that great didn't leave me crushed in the same way
Speaker 2: that the prequels when they when the first.
Speaker 3: You know, when oh the Prequels came out and it
Speaker 3: was like what the fuck was that?
Speaker 2: It really like hurt me because I was like, now
Speaker 2: it's like, it's unclear that novelization stuff is even canon anymore,
Speaker 2: and now this kind of sucked, like what are we
Speaker 2: gonna do? And it wasn't until Clone Wars kind of
Speaker 2: got going years later that all of that stuff got
Speaker 2: recontextualized and became kind of cool. But this makes it,
Speaker 2: This makes it so that not everything hangs on the
Speaker 2: movies just being good. I would I do wonder you
Speaker 2: mentioned Marvel like I wonder if I wonder if they
Speaker 2: they go for a kind of like Marvel architecture in
Speaker 2: that they have these kind of like one shots.
Speaker 3: We're exploring the universe.
Speaker 2: Let's go over here and check out what these rebels
Speaker 2: are doing over here, Let's see what these this spy
Speaker 2: faction is doing over here. Let's just go off and
Speaker 2: check out a weird world. And then, much like the
Speaker 2: Marvel movies, there's some kind of thing that teems them
Speaker 2: all up in a later movie, and then and that
Speaker 2: breaks you out of like this kind of like trilogy architecture,
Speaker 2: which yes, Star Wars kind of like pioneered, but is
Speaker 2: feels like old movie thinking.
Speaker 6: It's so stale now to do sort of like this.
Speaker 6: It's very expected to do a trilogy or a quadrilogy
Speaker 6: or you know, to do these big sort of sequelized stories.
Speaker 6: But I think that because of the just the financial
Speaker 6: pressure on a business standpoint of what it takes to
Speaker 6: make those movies happen, it makes so much.
Speaker 3: More sense to have your sort of.
Speaker 6: Area of exploration and play be on television, be in
Speaker 6: these little stories. And I mean we got to see,
Speaker 6: especially in Visions, just the what happens when you let
Speaker 6: people do what they're good at and really like let
Speaker 6: them just play and have fun and tackle some of
Speaker 6: the themes that Star Wars does so well, but in
Speaker 6: a completely different from a completely different perspective. I think
Speaker 6: it's just it's what it's what this universe needs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and even the speaking of that, like the cultural
Speaker 5: half life is so much longer when like you're releasing
Speaker 5: an episode every week like YEP eight for two months
Speaker 5: to two and a half months, everyone talked, Everyone talked
Speaker 5: about was baby Yoda.
Speaker 4: That's all that they talked about. I was, I was.
Speaker 5: I was up there with the bill horn yelling about
Speaker 5: how much I would die for this little puppet. It
Speaker 5: was like what the movie comes out, you know, you
Speaker 5: have really two to four weeks of like all right, yo,
Speaker 5: did you see the new Star Wars whatever?
Speaker 4: And then it's like just dead.
Speaker 5: But with having this like recurring thing coming out also,
Speaker 5: you're stacking that so like you'll have Mandela, and you'll
Speaker 5: have the bad Batch, you'll have whatever coming out. Like
Speaker 5: it just stays in the cultural zeitgeist so much longer
Speaker 5: than just a film which comes out and then it's
Speaker 5: gone in less than a month.
Speaker 4: Unless it's like you know, endgame or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's a great point.
Speaker 2: I was working at the Ringer at the time that
Speaker 2: the first Mandalorian season came out, and people who don't
Speaker 2: care about Star Wars, don't give a shit about sci
Speaker 2: fi or fantasy that worked. There would be like when
Speaker 2: the subject of baby Yoda came up, like there was
Speaker 2: a it was like.
Speaker 3: You could feel the energy change in the room.
Speaker 2: Like my former editor Chris Ryan, like his wife was like,
Speaker 2: if you get a chance to see baby Yoda, to
Speaker 2: meet Baby Yoda, to go and see the prop, like
Speaker 2: you have to take me not a person who like
Speaker 2: cares about side. And that was like the vibe. There
Speaker 2: were people who were just like, listen, if Baby Yoda
Speaker 2: is coming by the office, or if anybody gets to
Speaker 2: go see Babyoda, please tell me because I want to
Speaker 2: go see Baby Yoda.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 3: I have not experienced something like that in a while,
Speaker 3: where it was just like this little.
Speaker 2: Prop doll baby and a matronic rogu baby fifty years
Speaker 2: old child, just like it was something that so many
Speaker 2: people needed And yeah, that was not that was not
Speaker 2: that's not a thing that could have really happened in
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 6: Koa totally and like I also think the pandemic and
Speaker 6: it all probably played into that a little bit.
Speaker 3: We were all looking for some joy, but.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, again it was it was taking something that
Speaker 6: we are very familiar with, you know, Yoda, and just
Speaker 6: flipping it on its head just a little.
Speaker 3: Bit, no Bay, and all of a sudden we're all.
Speaker 6: Were hurtzalg and we're all like, let me see the baby,
Speaker 6: let me see the baby.
Speaker 9: When I saw him for the first time, I said, John,
Speaker 9: do you understand what you have done? For the first time,
Speaker 9: you have captured the energy that was originally put into
Speaker 9: the world by the depictions of the Madonna and child,
Speaker 9: the Messiah John.
Speaker 4: Sevral chaos raids. John.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so cool and I want to acknowledge
Speaker 2: something to Zigwert and I were talking about this, like
Speaker 2: when we were getting the Zoom started up. Okay, the
Speaker 2: movies the latest trilogy.
Speaker 3: Was a disappointment.
Speaker 2: That said, we also grade this stuff on a different scale,
Speaker 2: which I think is a huge strength for the TV offerings,
Speaker 2: Right like Kathleen Kennedy JJ Aram's Ettal got to make
Speaker 2: three movies and we judge them on those three movies.
Speaker 2: On the TV side, it's like Clone Wars, which spanned
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty three episodes, and some of those.
Speaker 3: Suck, but we don't care.
Speaker 2: You're never going to talk about the fact that some
Speaker 2: of those I didn't watch Resistance, I watched some of it,
Speaker 2: it wasn't for me.
Speaker 3: I love Rebels.
Speaker 2: But like the fact that on the TV side they
Speaker 2: get all of these they get all these chances to
Speaker 2: tell a story. And you know what if three episodes here,
Speaker 2: four episodes there are two episode arc here doesn't hit,
Speaker 2: we don't. We don't fucking give a shit. But if
Speaker 2: the movie suck, you're gonna hear about it. So there
Speaker 2: is an inherent there's a different way that we talk
Speaker 2: about these properties. And it's a little bit unfair for
Speaker 2: for JJ and Kathleen because you know, they only got
Speaker 2: those three chances where I was on the TV side,
Speaker 2: they got dozens and dozens and dozens of chances over
Speaker 2: multiple seasons to get it right or get yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I will say it would have been nice
Speaker 6: if JJ and everybody decided to have a plan when
Speaker 6: they made those three movies rather than just I go
Speaker 6: in a little willy nilly with it, because on TV
Speaker 6: they play you plan a lot I feel like they
Speaker 6: had one.
Speaker 2: But again, you can feel the filmmaking by committee in those.
Speaker 3: You can feel like you.
Speaker 2: Can feel that they're you know, somebody, some executive somewhere
Speaker 2: was like, there's not enough kids with the force in here.
Speaker 2: Can't one of these stable hands that have the Force
Speaker 2: or something? And they're like, oh shit, now we got
Speaker 2: to rewrite. But and you had to address it. But
Speaker 2: you felt and honestly the right you know, the last
Speaker 2: Jedi feels the least of that, but you feel it
Speaker 2: in all of them where it's like there's stuff in
Speaker 2: Rise of Skywalker where you like where it hooks up
Speaker 2: to nothing else. It's just like a snippet that happens.
Speaker 5: It's like that, like, yeah, we got to give fan
Speaker 5: a love interest because we can't. You can't date a
Speaker 5: black person, can't date a white lady in the future
Speaker 5: in space.
Speaker 2: Like, so, what are the futures of the movies? Like,
Speaker 2: one thing that is for sure is that people at
Speaker 2: Disney are smart.
Speaker 3: They may have made three.
Speaker 2: Like disappointing movies, but these are people who think about
Speaker 2: this ship all the time, Like, so, how do y'all think.
Speaker 3: They'll recalibrate in the future?
Speaker 2: And how will they approach movies now to work in
Speaker 2: conjunction with this burgeoning slate of TV offerings plus the comics,
Speaker 2: plus the books, etc.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: I think that they're going to really use sort of
Speaker 6: this space that they're creating with television to get a
Speaker 6: feel for what people are really responding to and really
Speaker 6: start to understand that storytelling is changing and the way
Speaker 6: we tell stories people want more from them. And I
Speaker 6: think that this is going to be a real opportunity
Speaker 6: for them to sort of sit back and like take
Speaker 6: a beat and take a breath and not necessarily have
Speaker 6: to put out a movie every single year and all
Speaker 6: the have all of those expectations sort of rolled into it.
Speaker 3: They're going to be able to.
Speaker 6: Really let the creation of new lore sort of simmer
Speaker 6: in itself and see what people are really responding to
Speaker 6: and what really resonates with what's going on cult truly.
Speaker 6: So I think it's really important because this trilogy that
Speaker 6: we just saw it comes from a different culture, like,
Speaker 6: it comes from a different desire for what movies are
Speaker 6: and what movies should be, and it was just too
Speaker 6: much of a reflection of what we've seen in the past,
Speaker 6: and we're moving so much farther ahead in how we
Speaker 6: tell stories and the types of stories that we want
Speaker 6: to tell. And I think that TV gives them a
Speaker 6: much greater space of experimentation that I think they'll be
Speaker 6: able to then sort of let things rise to the
Speaker 6: top and really explore that in a big budget way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, just especially that last part about the
Speaker 5: idea of experimentation, Like that's where they can test things
Speaker 5: out and see what sticks, you know, like like introducing
Speaker 5: the idea of like force healing in the Mandalorian before
Speaker 5: it went to the big screens, Like I mean Star Wars.
Speaker 4: I mean, all fans are bad. Fantom is bad in general,
Speaker 4: but like you know, Star.
Speaker 5: Wars fans hate when you introduce a new power that
Speaker 5: comes out of nowhere. But when you think about it,
Speaker 5: like they like there was no tea up for like
Speaker 5: force lightning, like propatites, like does that ship and yeah help, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: somehow he came back and he can do force lighting.
Speaker 4: But like you know, like that tea that.
Speaker 5: Like Gorgo does that in the minimal rate and then
Speaker 5: like Raid does, Like that's a running theme throughout you know,
Speaker 5: the Rise of Skywalkers. Like I think that teeing stuff
Speaker 5: up that like maybe just get like a little a
Speaker 5: little nugget of like, oh, this is a force power,
Speaker 5: like this is like a thing of the universe that
Speaker 5: we didn't know. And then I think, you know, if
Speaker 5: they want to test out, like if there's like a
Speaker 5: if they do, like you know, they have like a
Speaker 5: Sith show or whatever they want to like, Oh, this
Speaker 5: character is interesting and I would like to see it
Speaker 5: makes sense for this to come to culminate in a feature.
Speaker 5: This is a story that can only be told in
Speaker 5: a ninety minute like features story act, Like I think
Speaker 5: our structure that would make sense.
Speaker 4: Like, but I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I can't see them being like we're gonna do another
Speaker 5: trilogy about another good versus bad. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 5: think an interesting take would see the gray of the world,
Speaker 5: like the neutral Sith, the gray Jedi, like just seeing
Speaker 5: like how those people interact, like something that takes place
Speaker 5: after the fall of the Jedi Order, where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: there are people out there sort of like kyler Rin
Speaker 5: who are like sort of okay at being sort using
Speaker 5: the four, but they can still get their ass beat
Speaker 5: by people that don't know what they're that sort of
Speaker 5: know what they're doing. Like that's an interesting onle just
Speaker 5: like seeing the rogue one of it, seeing like you know,
Speaker 5: the the feet on the ground every day, people that
Speaker 5: are like living in this post glactic or Final chapter,
Speaker 5: whatever the fuck it was called.
Speaker 4: What they're like final order.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well that's what I loved so much about Visions,
Speaker 6: Like the ideas that they get into in those in
Speaker 6: the episodes are just it's so exciting to see, you know,
Speaker 6: like a Ronan style story with you know, like a
Speaker 6: Sith and just I mean the way that the Force
Speaker 6: they use different aspects of the Force on different planets.
Speaker 3: I love that shit, Like give.
Speaker 6: Me more of it, like spoon feed it to me, Like.
Speaker 3: That's what I what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, as a as a kind of like
Speaker 2: basic storytelling rule, there should always be new information. And
Speaker 2: that's the great thing about Star Wars Visions is yes,
Speaker 2: we're exploring kind of like the core themes of Star Wars,
Speaker 2: the duality of the Force, you know, droids, a human
Speaker 2: relationship with droids, cool laser swords, et cetera. But it's
Speaker 2: also just feels so fresh and new. This has been
Speaker 2: so fun up next to the endgame. We're in the
Speaker 2: end game now, and this week we are playing the
Speaker 2: Medal of Yavin, in which we will award that great
Speaker 2: medal that Chewiy didn't get at the end of Star
Speaker 2: Wars racial basically racial reasons like why didn't he was
Speaker 2: so important to the to the mission to blow up
Speaker 2: the death start and then he doesn't get a fucking medal.
Speaker 2: It's it's honestly insane, and I still get mad about it.
Speaker 2: But we are gonna award the Medal of Yavin to
Speaker 2: our favorite character from the first three episodes of Star
Speaker 2: Wars Visions. Let's start with you, Cody, who is your favorite?
Speaker 5: I got to give award to my boy, to my
Speaker 5: slug king Geezer, the Hub. He's holding it down for
Speaker 5: all the fail sons out there in the universe. Garage
Speaker 5: Space Garage Buck band playing that double bass or double
Speaker 5: space base. But if they called it, Yeah, I Love,
Speaker 5: I Love, I Love a good hut that's going through
Speaker 5: his punk phase. And since they lived for thousands of years,
Speaker 5: I've imagine Geezer's probably like two hundred years old, So
Speaker 5: like I Love, Yeah, we stay at a King.
Speaker 3: Alicia, I have to go.
Speaker 6: This is I have to say this is unusual for me.
Speaker 3: I'm not usually like a.
Speaker 6: Big SITH person, but the Bandit Leader Lucy Lewis character
Speaker 6: and the duel she just she deserves a metal just
Speaker 6: for the crazy swhirling lightsaber umbrella thing, like I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: that is like one of the most bad ass.
Speaker 3: Things I have ever seen.
Speaker 6: And I mean I also really the little chief in
Speaker 6: the in the ronan he's he's actually probably deserves it
Speaker 6: more than the actual terrible sys O's Like.
Speaker 3: She was just so badass, Like I couldn't get enough.
Speaker 3: She was incredibly bad.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, for days.
Speaker 2: When she lets her like her hood just like fly
Speaker 2: her hair was like, yes, I also love the Bandit Leader,
Speaker 2: but you know what, in order to keep it different,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pick the twins together carrying in. I'm
Speaker 2: going to pick them as one person who together kind
Speaker 2: of embody the duality of the force and the constant
Speaker 2: struggle between light and dark.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And of course for their incredible uh use of hyper
Speaker 2: stylized violence, massive destruction, and immense power in the seemingly
Speaker 2: frail bodies of two individuals. The contains so much power
Speaker 2: and force and it was just it was incredible to watch.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna they're gonna have to share the medal. They'll
Speaker 2: figure out a way to do it. Yeah, slice it
Speaker 2: down the medal.
Speaker 4: Those are.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 2: I was so that that medals for them. Let me
Speaker 2: just leave it in a room and walk away. I
Speaker 2: don't want to hand it to them because I'll probably
Speaker 2: get cut up into a million pieces.
Speaker 3: That's it for the endgame.
Speaker 2: Let us know whether you agree or couldn't disagree more
Speaker 2: or have your own Medal of Yavin winner. Get it
Speaker 2: us at hashtag x r v endgame. That's x r
Speaker 2: v end Game, Cody, Alicia, thanks for joining us on
Speaker 2: another episode of Extra Vision.
Speaker 3: Plug plug Plug. Where can we find y'all next?
Speaker 5: If you want to find me, yay, physic across all
Speaker 5: them social media platforms, Baby, that's where I be. Check
Speaker 5: out Amazing Spider Man number seventy. Yeah, I got I
Speaker 5: got that dropping out. So yeah, that's that's where.
Speaker 8: I be amazing, And I'm at Alicia lots on all
Speaker 8: the things Twitter, Instagram, not Facebook, and that's where I
Speaker 8: post all my stories and all.
Speaker 3: The silly thoughts. So yeah, you can check me out there.
Speaker 2: Join us each week on Wednesday, our new regular release
Speaker 2: day for your weekly dose to the deepest dives, hottest takes,
Speaker 2: et cetera. May the Force remain with you, May it
Speaker 2: be with you, carry it with you wherever you go.
Speaker 4: Folks.
Speaker 2: X ray Vision is a Crooked Beata production. This show
Speaker 2: is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show
Speaker 2: is executive produced by myself and Sandy Geard, Caroline Resident
Speaker 2: and Carlton Gillespie Or Consulting produces. Thank you to Brian
Speaker 2: Vasquez for our theme music and editing and sound design. Today,
Speaker 2: Sarah give Alaska and the folks at chapter four. Sarah,
Speaker 2: thank you for doing this from your vehicle today. I
Speaker 2: super appreciate it and it's been fun to watch over
Speaker 2: Bye bye Cody, who is the tastiest star Wars Alien
Speaker 2: Like if you had to give you had to cook
Speaker 2: him up?
Speaker 5: Oh boy, Uh, this sounds great. I mean the salacious
Speaker 5: Crumb comes to mind because his last name says crumbs,
Speaker 5: so I feel like he's probably some tasty liver fat
Speaker 5: going on.
Speaker 2: I've I've always maintained that Admiral Acbar like some salt,
Speaker 2: oh boy, yeah, and some lemon. You sear that bad
Speaker 2: boy up? Yeah, he's good it tastes. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 2: fucking good.
Speaker 5: Pull out those pin bones, yeah you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: I bet him? And what was that the Squid Dude
Speaker 4: kid Kit bash? Oh yeah yeah we.
Speaker 3: Get this cut, the cut those tentacles off and like
Speaker 3: just like fry those up.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, like oh fuck yeah there fry yeah,