Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have.
Speaker 3: Women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 3: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn best
Speaker 3: start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hey, Caitlin, Yes, Jamie, what's the matter with you? You're putting
Speaker 2: the feet of the world in the hands of your
Speaker 2: podcast partner and some has been ex astronaut.
Speaker 1: My intro is gonna be Houston. We have a problem.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: The moon is falling?
Speaker 4: Oh no, I okay, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast for
Speaker 4: I think one of our most requested episodes.
Speaker 2: Ever, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people have been gagging, foaming, rowling, frothing at the
Speaker 1: mouth for a Moonfall episode. Frankly gross, It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: It makes me sick.
Speaker 1: But we're here to finally honor the request. At least
Speaker 1: at least probably five hundred million people have requested this
Speaker 1: movie specifically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which accounts for about twenty percent of our listeners,
Speaker 2: so that's pretty big. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you're hearing this,
Speaker 2: it's now April, which means nothing to us except that
Speaker 2: International Women's Month has concluded and I think that's it.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure. So yeah, yeah, we're here to sort
Speaker 2: of give the people what they want and honor your
Speaker 2: request for a Moonfall episode. If this is your first
Speaker 2: episode of the Bechtel Cast, this is a great place
Speaker 2: to start.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, absolutely, this is a This is a.
Speaker 2: Show where we talk about your favorite movies, and we
Speaker 2: mean your favorite, using the Bechtel test as a jumping
Speaker 2: off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what is that, because
Speaker 2: it's going to be very relevant to today's discussion.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is a media metric created by friend of
Speaker 1: the pod, Alison Bechdel.
Speaker 2: Who is this is her favorite? But actually she's one
Speaker 2: of the people who has requested it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she emails us every day, not a brag, to say,
Speaker 1: where the hell is the Moonfall episode?
Speaker 2: Not a brag, but she she was like And then
Speaker 2: I did follow up with her once and I was like, hey, Alison,
Speaker 2: what is it about Moonfall? And she emailed me back
Speaker 2: fuck you, which was like whoa. But you know, people
Speaker 2: feel really strongly about this movie.
Speaker 1: They do, and I can see now that I've seen it,
Speaker 1: I guess multiple times to prep for this episode, I
Speaker 1: see why. Absolutely, absolutely so anyway a Bechdel test. Many
Speaker 1: versions of this media metric. The one that we use
Speaker 1: is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names?
Speaker 1: Do they speak to each other? And is that conversation
Speaker 1: about something other than a man?
Speaker 2: And I think that you know, we're really gonna this
Speaker 2: is a fascinating stress test for the Bechdel test because
Speaker 2: the protagonist there is a woman in the leading role.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the moon?
Speaker 2: Yes, say, I'm talking about the moon, And like most women,
Speaker 2: there's more to her than meets the I and that
Speaker 2: she is actually hollow and a spaceship and full of
Speaker 2: some sort of convoluted AI messaging that as all women are,
Speaker 2: I too, am filled with a cloud of dust that
Speaker 2: does like basically just turn into a fist, right like
Speaker 2: it turns into a snake or a fist like a claw.
Speaker 2: These these are the two things that the nanoblot cloud
Speaker 2: can do. Listen listeners, It's gonna be difficult because I
Speaker 2: think that, like we want to hold space for this film.
Speaker 2: I will not call it a movie. It is a film.
Speaker 1: It's an incredible film.
Speaker 2: It is a film. It is art house. It actually
Speaker 2: genuinely is an independent film which we'll talk about twitch is.
Speaker 1: What are the most expensive, like high budget independent films
Speaker 1: ever made?
Speaker 2: Yes, And I would say right in terms of men's
Speaker 2: singular vision, right up there with Megalopolis, really with a
Speaker 2: movie that no one wanted that just had to happen,
Speaker 2: and we're so glad it did. Because this is we
Speaker 2: will be discussing it in the context that it is
Speaker 2: a feminist masterpiece. And there's also just so much going
Speaker 2: on with the other woman in this movie. Who is
Speaker 2: I do think it takes us maybe a half hour
Speaker 2: to hear her name spoken, and I don't know that
Speaker 2: it ever happens again.
Speaker 1: J Cinda just her full name, Justinda. She is referred
Speaker 1: to as Joe.
Speaker 2: And sometimes as Fouler. But I was just struck with
Speaker 2: and this is speaking to how strong of a feminist
Speaker 2: hero she is. How few times her name is spoken
Speaker 2: in the movie, whereas are our male protagonist, Brian. I
Speaker 2: cannot stop saying his name, even and especially when it
Speaker 2: sounds silly.
Speaker 1: Yes, Brian Harper disgraced astronaut.
Speaker 2: So hard for him. You know, when you're disgraced and
Speaker 2: you just have to ride around on your motorcycle on
Speaker 2: the streets of la in your in your leather jacket.
Speaker 2: It's giving Larry Geely honestly.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. We have not invoked the name of Geelie
Speaker 1: in quite some time.
Speaker 2: You can't say it three times. It's like bloody Mary
Speaker 2: show up. If you say Larry Geely in the mirror
Speaker 2: three times, yeah, he'll show up behind you.
Speaker 1: It's candy Man all over again.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that cracked me up so much.
Speaker 2: I don't want to. I don't want to conjure him today.
Speaker 2: Not today. No, Larry g l no, No, he doesn't
Speaker 2: even kill you. He just slowly tries to convince you
Speaker 2: that you're not queer, you're in love with him. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, I forgot what Larry Gee's story is all about.
Speaker 2: But that's for another episode you can no longer listen
Speaker 2: to because we deleted it.
Speaker 1: Should we recover it some day?
Speaker 2: I don't know if we. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's good for the world. But you know
Speaker 2: what is good for the world?
Speaker 1: Moonfall?
Speaker 2: Moonfall?
Speaker 1: Mm well, I was going to pitch a double feature.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is a Matreon theme. Jelie and Chasing Amy?
Speaker 1: Are those not two movies about a man? And maybe
Speaker 1: specifically Benfleck, and in both cases there is a queer
Speaker 1: woman who is not interested in men, and he's like,
Speaker 1: but what if you are interested in me? I r
Speaker 1: is that the plot of both of those movies.
Speaker 2: I've never seen Chasing Amy. What I do know about
Speaker 2: Chasing Amy is that it has a massive queer fan base,
Speaker 2: which I do not believe that Jeelie can can say.
Speaker 2: It would be an interesting comparison because there was a
Speaker 2: documentary that came out a couple years ago that Princess
Speaker 2: Weeks is talking head in I'm pretty sure called Chasing
Speaker 2: Chasing Amy about the queer community's fascination with that movie specifically,
Speaker 2: And as far as I know, there's no Chasing Larry.
Speaker 1: And Cheezy Well. I have to imagine getting back on track,
Speaker 1: this Moonfall has an enormous queer following because of all
Speaker 1: the obvious queer undertones in the film.
Speaker 2: It would be foolish for that to not be the case.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, yeah, there's just there's just so much.
Speaker 2: This is such a rich text. Oh yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, don't look at the date
Speaker 2: that this episode is released on. Just let it in.
Speaker 2: Let I will say, I kept I listened to Skyfall
Speaker 2: by Adele like three times. It's it is kind of
Speaker 2: distracting for there to be a movie called Skyfall and
Speaker 2: then much later a movie called Moonfall.
Speaker 1: Moonfall. Maybe Adele should do a cover Moona.
Speaker 2: I feel like they tried. It seems like this movie
Speaker 2: was willing to do really anything for five dollars because
Speaker 2: you it turns into a random only a commercial for
Speaker 2: and feminist masterpiece, feminist masterpiece. It turns into a commercial
Speaker 2: for Lexus for like five full.
Speaker 5: Minutes, which was kind of wild, where he goes like,
Speaker 5: let's go hyper drive and then he just turns like
Speaker 5: his Lexus to sports mode and you're like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And then it like flies and survives the apocalypse, which
Speaker 2: I'm sure Alexis would do or something something. So we
Speaker 2: are here to talk about, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: feminist modern classics to kick off the month of April.
Speaker 1: April the like the first of April even maybe.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, which is also oh my god, I was
Speaker 2: thinking this whole time. April first is my dog's Sonny's birthday,
Speaker 2: and is there anything more Moonfall than having a son
Speaker 2: and being like, hmm, what should we call him?
Speaker 1: Sonny?
Speaker 2: And I wrote down, how foolish, And then I looked
Speaker 2: to my left. I was like, wait a second, the
Speaker 2: calls coming from inside the house. I too have a
Speaker 2: son called Sonny, and he too is a car jacking
Speaker 2: fief on an emotional journey. Wow, I know, I know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this movie is about fathers and sons. This movie is
Speaker 2: about mothers and sons. This movie could be about mothers
Speaker 2: and daughters, but it is more about a woman named
Speaker 2: Brenda and two extras, one of whom I think gets
Speaker 2: a name.
Speaker 1: Well, Jamie, if you sorry, I'm sorry, hear me out.
Speaker 2: I'm listening.
Speaker 1: The Moon, as we've established, is a woman, yes, the mother,
Speaker 1: mother to all, Mother mother Moon. And then also the
Speaker 1: Earth is a woman, mother Earth and daughter Earth, which.
Speaker 2: Is which is why we're killing her, because that's what
Speaker 2: we do. Two women, Yes, we kill them.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as this movie istides, which is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: scientific fact, the Moon gave birth to Earth. So this
Speaker 1: movie is about mothers and daughters, right right, So think
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. You're right, it's okay, it is. It
Speaker 2: is a story about women and women only.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jamie, what's your history with this movie? What is
Speaker 1: your relationship.
Speaker 2: I had somehow never seen this. I know that everyone
Speaker 2: else had, actually everyone else in the world. I will
Speaker 2: qualify that saying that we've we watched this in bed together.
Speaker 2: A couple of platonically watched it in bed. Okay, put
Speaker 2: your fingers away or I don't know whatever, but yes,
Speaker 2: we watched this in bed together on tour I think
Speaker 2: in San Francisco a couple of years ago, because you're like,
Speaker 2: you gotta see Moonfall. You gotta see Moonfall. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 2: And then we started watching it. I think we both
Speaker 2: fell asleep like twenty minutes in, so it had seen
Speaker 2: the beginning of this movie. I wouldn't even say I
Speaker 2: saw the first act because the first act really takes
Speaker 2: its time. Yeah, yes, but I think that you know again,
Speaker 2: and I mean that in a feminist, in.
Speaker 1: A complimentary way way.
Speaker 2: It takes its time. So this was my first full viewing,
Speaker 2: and I have to say, of the two hours and
Speaker 2: ten minutes that this film takes of your one life,
Speaker 2: you don't get a second.
Speaker 1: Unless you're case at the end of the movie getting
Speaker 1: uploaded to spoilers.
Speaker 2: Spoilers, spoilers, Oh my god, you know that feeling when
Speaker 2: they scanned your consciousness and you're part of the moon now.
Speaker 1: I know exactly that feeling.
Speaker 2: I love when they scan my consciousness and I'm part
Speaker 2: of the moon now. But yeah, I wouldn't shave a
Speaker 2: single one of all one hundred and thirty minutes of
Speaker 2: this off.
Speaker 1: No. In fact, I think it should have been longer.
Speaker 1: I think it should have been Titanic lengths. I feel
Speaker 1: like it could have been longer. Honestly, the chemistry between
Speaker 1: everyone is off the charts. Donald Sutherland definitely knows he
Speaker 1: was in this movie. Sorry, that's my son, Sonny.
Speaker 2: Oh, he just got I agreed to save the moon,
Speaker 2: so they let him out of jail or something.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this was my first full viewing of it.
Speaker 1: Wow, what about you? I saw this movie in theaters.
Speaker 2: Wow, and I was wait, really.
Speaker 1: Yes, all jokes aside, I saw this movie in theaters.
Speaker 2: Why. I'm genuinely curious, and I'm gonna uphold the bit
Speaker 2: best I can.
Speaker 1: But why Friend of the show, Catherine Leon and friend
Speaker 1: to us both listeners. You might remember her from our
Speaker 1: Spy Kids episode.
Speaker 2: She's got to come back. It's time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to bring Katherine back. Yeah, she was like, Caitlyn,
Speaker 1: have you seen Moonfall? And I was like, no, this.
Speaker 2: Feels exactly right. I love that she was able to
Speaker 2: alert you to this while it was still in theaters.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it was urgent, and she said you have
Speaker 1: to go see Moonfall. And I was like, are you sure,
Speaker 1: because it seems like it might not be very good.
Speaker 1: And she's like, well, Caitlyn, that's where you're wrong. And
Speaker 1: especially as one of the hosts of the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to see this because it's a feminist masterpiece.
Speaker 1: And then I watched it and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Catherine was right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know why there was not more discussion
Speaker 1: around how feminist this movie was. Yes, in regards to
Speaker 1: how powerful and dynamic of a character the Moon is.
Speaker 1: But that's what we're here for today. That's what we're
Speaker 1: doing today.
Speaker 2: Don't let the hollowness of this movie's moon fool you,
Speaker 2: and don't let it be a metaphor for the film overall. Instead,
Speaker 2: let the moon fall in because you'll I think what
Speaker 2: you'll find is that it's a hollow spaceship full of
Speaker 2: nanobots that turn into a big fist and then they
Speaker 2: turned Samuel Tarlie into an immortal moon guy. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, Michael Penya is there.
Speaker 1: Michael Penia is there?
Speaker 2: Michael Pania. Okay, this does not pass the Bechdel test,
Speaker 2: and so we'll be talking about women any second now.
Speaker 2: But and this movie is gonna make it easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Michael Pania first of all, was not supposed to be
Speaker 2: in this movie. Yes, I read this supposed to be
Speaker 2: I think Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci, which is such a
Speaker 2: bizarre swap of actor. I would not say similar energies
Speaker 2: at all. But lucky for Michael Paiya that he was
Speaker 2: in this movie. The two things I associate Michael well,
Speaker 2: other than like, Michael Panya is a very charismatic actor.
Speaker 2: But the two other things I associate with him is
Speaker 2: number one scientologist, Yes, number two. In one of my
Speaker 2: favorite clips that I like to remind people about every
Speaker 2: so often, I know where this is going, Chuck E
Speaker 2: Cheese's favorite actor. I just would to remind our listeners
Speaker 2: that in twenty twenty, during Lockdown, Chuck E Cheese was
Speaker 2: doing this bizarre YouTube content. They were spotlighting the straight
Speaker 2: to HBO live action Tom and Jerry movie starring Tom, Jerry,
Speaker 2: Michael Pania, and Colin Jost and Chuck E Cheese interviewed
Speaker 2: Michael Penya on his YouTube channel and that Michael Pena
Speaker 2: was his favorite actor.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so every time I see Michael Panya, I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Chucky is losing it somewhere. Chuck E
Speaker 2: Chee is absolutely has seen Moonfall. He loves Michael Penia.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, wait is it? Because wait, which one
Speaker 1: is so of Tom and Jerry, which one is the
Speaker 1: cat and which one is the mouse?
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked Cat, Tom, Mouse.
Speaker 1: Jerry and Michael penia voice is one of those characters?
Speaker 1: Which one?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, he plays Tom and Jerry's friend.
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought, okay, So where my brain was going.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe Michael Penia voiced the mouse character. And
Speaker 1: because Chuck E Cheese is a mouse, that's why he
Speaker 1: had such a strong connection to Michael Penia.
Speaker 2: No, No, that would that would have made sense. No,
Speaker 2: he plays the character of Terreen's Mendoza. Colin just plays
Speaker 2: just Ben. No last name for Colin, just uh huh.
Speaker 2: And Tom and Jerry they're at a hotel. I believe
Speaker 2: that Michael Penia works at the hotel. Okay, Chloe Grace
Speaker 2: Moretz is there?
Speaker 1: Wow? And should we cover this movie?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if the world is ready.
Speaker 2: There is actually like an interesting era of like straight
Speaker 2: to streaming movies that basically don't exist because they were
Speaker 2: released in like eight months in twenty twenty, where you're
Speaker 2: just like these And actually the pandemic meaningfully plays into
Speaker 2: the production history of Moonfall, and I feel like it's
Speaker 2: sort of referenced in a and I say bizarre in
Speaker 2: a feminist way, in a bizarre way in the film Moonfall. Sure,
Speaker 2: but so if you haven't seen this movie, please please,
Speaker 2: please please go and buy it on Blu Ray.
Speaker 1: Yeah, spend as much money as you can on it.
Speaker 2: Please. Yeah, order it from another country on Blu Ray.
Speaker 2: And really, let Roland Emeric know that you stand with Moonfall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like many feminist masterpiece, it was not recognized in
Speaker 2: its time, true, but it has become a cult classic
Speaker 2: indie film is alive. And well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Moonfall, Thank you Moonfall. All right, Well, should we take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then come back for the recap?
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, here is the recap of the most
Speaker 1: feminist film of the past decade, Moonfall. We open on
Speaker 1: clips and sound bites of Apollo eleven, the mission famous
Speaker 1: for astronauts first landing on the Moon. We cut to
Speaker 1: January twelfth, twenty eleven. Some NASA astronauts are in space.
Speaker 1: Ever heard of it, repairing a satellite? So this is
Speaker 1: Brian in Harper, played by Patrick Wilson.
Speaker 2: And I love Patrick Wilson. I enjoy it, and it's
Speaker 2: so great for his career that he's in movies like
Speaker 2: Moonfall exclusively. What's your favorite Patrick Wilson performance?
Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2: Mine's a tie. Okay, tell me, mine's a tie between
Speaker 2: Phantom of the Opera obviously, Oh right, and Hard Candy.
Speaker 2: He's great. Oh yeah, he's so great.
Speaker 1: Is there a movie where he has long, straggly hair?
Speaker 1: Am I thinking of Opera?
Speaker 2: Okay, unless you're He was also in a bunch of movies. Well,
Speaker 2: I saw a Watchman when it came out. I don't
Speaker 2: remember it. But he was in.
Speaker 1: Little Children, Yes, I've seen that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've seen him in Insidious. I liked the first Insidious.
Speaker 2: He's in the Conjure, he's mister Condrey, one of which
Speaker 2: I saw Oh you know what, he's great in hmmm,
Speaker 2: season two of Fargo.
Speaker 1: Oh, I do the ever watched the first season.
Speaker 2: It's he's really good in it. Yeah, he's great, and
Speaker 2: so I think again, speaking back to the theme of
Speaker 2: this episode, it's really awesome that for some reason, for
Speaker 2: the last ten years he's been in movies of the
Speaker 2: caliber of Moonfall and like the Conjuring the Devil maybe
Speaker 2: do it right?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: That he's also in Aquaman, and I believe it's right cool?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yeah, that sucks that he had to
Speaker 2: be in Aquaman like that. Yeah, and he played Aquaman's
Speaker 2: like evil brother or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: We covered Aquaman and I have to say, I don't
Speaker 2: remember a bar of it.
Speaker 1: Couldn't tell you.
Speaker 2: I love James Wan thing. Well, I guess that's probably
Speaker 2: why Patrick Wilson is in it, because he's a James Wana.
Speaker 2: Oh so true, due to the conjuring of it all. Anyways,
Speaker 2: his best two movies came out twenty years ago, and
Speaker 2: we've gotta we've got to help him out. Except for Moonfall,
Speaker 2: of course, which.
Speaker 1: Is his best way his best performance. Yes, so we
Speaker 1: meet him. He plays Brian Harper. We also meet Josin
Speaker 1: de Fowler aka Joe aka played by Halle Berry Lee Berry.
Speaker 2: And you know, again, thank god her best work since
Speaker 2: The Flintstones.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Really, you know, there was a large gap in
Speaker 1: between those two movies where you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: she did anything really certainly was never nominated for an
Speaker 1: Oscar one.
Speaker 2: Genuinely. I feel like in the last like ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen years, Halle Berry, at least from what I can tell,
Speaker 2: has has not appeared in movies as much as she
Speaker 2: once did. She seems choosier about the projects that she
Speaker 2: has done, and so when she agrees to do Moonfall,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean something, this is gonna be good. Yes,
Speaker 2: And she plays iconic feminists Justinda Joe Fower. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: like that. We know that these characters like each other
Speaker 2: because they state that out of nowhere, after what has
Speaker 2: to be weeks, if not months in space. Don't you
Speaker 2: just love to announce your relationship to another person after
Speaker 2: spending months of unceasing time with them. She's just basically
Speaker 2: my work it's my work wife. She's my work wife.
Speaker 2: I would be saying I say that about you after
Speaker 2: we've been on the road together for eleven days just
Speaker 2: out of context. I just find myself saying it as
Speaker 2: if there's a camera pointed on me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I get it, Yeah, I get it. I
Speaker 1: say the same thing about you.
Speaker 2: And much like just into Fowlery Brian Harper, we are
Speaker 2: definitely in the same room for the entire shoot, and
Speaker 2: the chemistry is off the charts, off the charts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The two of these characters are besties. And then
Speaker 1: there's a third guy there too. His name is Marcus.
Speaker 2: Don't get attached, do not?
Speaker 1: Because so they're in space repairing a satellite when all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, a bizarre space disturbance happens. It seems
Speaker 1: like a large cloud of debris, which might be sentient,
Speaker 1: comes crashing into them and propels.
Speaker 2: Fistful and nanobots it might be.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out. It propels Marcus into the
Speaker 1: depths of space.
Speaker 2: So Marcus is the guy to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love how people die in Moonfall, but.
Speaker 1: I mean my favorite is Michael Penia's death.
Speaker 2: Michael pas death is awesome. He literally just lays down
Speaker 2: and he goes.
Speaker 5: It.
Speaker 2: Really, it's it's such a and if he only could
Speaker 2: have hung in there for twelve more seconds, he would
Speaker 2: have been okay because iconically, and this is part of
Speaker 2: the joy of Moonfall, twelve seconds after Michael Penia's plot death,
Speaker 2: all of a sudd in sunny the sun. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: sun takes his mask off and he's like, the air's back.
Speaker 1: Why is the airback? We don't know, because the moon
Speaker 1: is a woman agency and she said, airs back, airs
Speaker 1: you're right.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry, sorry, I love Michael.
Speaker 1: It's so funny.
Speaker 2: Keep walking. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Marcus dies, Brian manages to safely get back to
Speaker 1: the spaceship where Joe has been knocked unconscious, and then
Speaker 1: he sees this cloud or this swarm of sentient space debris, yeah,
Speaker 1: burrow into the moon and we're like, oh no, that's
Speaker 1: that's a woman being violated.
Speaker 2: That's so true by the masculine nano bots nanotechnology.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Then we cut to a year and a half later.
Speaker 1: Brian has been fired from NASA following this incident. They
Speaker 1: blame him for Marcus's death, but he maintains that this
Speaker 1: bizarre space anomaly caused the mishap, but of course no
Speaker 1: one believes him, including his best friend Joe.
Speaker 2: And this is an important lesson about this is that women,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad Will and Emeric brought this up. Women
Speaker 2: are deceitful liars who are out to get you. Regardless
Speaker 2: of how much you think you can trust them, you can't.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is one of the core tenants of the
Speaker 1: feminism of this movie.
Speaker 2: I would say, Yeah, you can't trust a woman any
Speaker 2: more than you can trust the concept of the moon belief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything you thought you knew about the moon, the
Speaker 1: moon's heart. Yes again, is a moon of secrets, a
Speaker 1: deep moon of secrets.
Speaker 2: It's been eighty four moons, moons, eighty four tens, twelve moons.
Speaker 1: Oh, because a moon equals one month. Yes, okay, I see,
Speaker 1: I see the math.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I okay, sorry to harp on every single
Speaker 2: bit of this masterpiece, but I just I was so
Speaker 2: visually captivated, Okay, like maybe maybe you were as well
Speaker 2: by the gigantic, unframed, high contrast photo of Patrick Wilson
Speaker 2: and his son Sonny that his future ex wife Brenda
Speaker 2: is just staring at.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it was really quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a photo like that in my life.
Speaker 2: I have never seen a high contrast CPA photoshopped photo
Speaker 2: of Patrick Wilson and a child before and seeing it
Speaker 2: raw and unframed for some reason, I found kind of chill.
Speaker 1: And you're, of course referring to his ex wife, Brenda
Speaker 1: played by Carolina Bartzak, and she is his ex wife
Speaker 1: because this whole incident with Brian in this mishappened space
Speaker 1: has ruined his life. He's fired from NASA and it
Speaker 1: seems to have caused his marriage to fall apart. So
Speaker 1: he separates from Brenda and they have a son together,
Speaker 1: and that son, of course, is named as we've said, Sonny.
Speaker 2: It sounds ridiculous, but I did it, and so did
Speaker 2: Brian and Brenda. Yeah, names, we have to admit are
Speaker 2: better stated for siblings and for a married couple, but whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh sure the alliteration, yeah, of Brian and Brenda. Then
Speaker 1: we cut to ten years after that we meet Casey
Speaker 1: Housman played by John Bradley of Game of Thrones fame, yes,
Speaker 1: who works as a janitor, or at least pretends to
Speaker 1: be a janitor at UC Irvine so that he can
Speaker 1: break into a professor's office and hack his email so
Speaker 1: that he can access satellite images and data about the
Speaker 1: moon's orbital patterns right and where like exactly.
Speaker 2: I will say this part was supposed to have originally
Speaker 2: been played by my longtime nemesis Josh Gadd. True, and
Speaker 2: I'm glad that John Bradley is doing it, not Josh Gadd.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair. Some days are hard enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine having to watch Moonfall and then Josh.
Speaker 2: Josh gadd performance on top of everything else. It just
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been It wouldn't have been right.
Speaker 1: It would have taken an otherwise perfect movie and really
Speaker 1: knocked it down quite a few pegs.
Speaker 2: Although I will say I would have loved to see
Speaker 2: Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci, I know in this movie, you know,
Speaker 2: but let Michael Pena stay. We did the same performance
Speaker 2: next to each other. They are okay.
Speaker 1: Brenda is polyamorous. She has two husbands, Polly, and they
Speaker 1: hang out in.
Speaker 2: A wide range of tastes. Stanley Tucci and Michael Pania.
Speaker 2: I genuinely would love to see a buddy movie with
Speaker 2: those two.
Speaker 1: Oh, that would be great, be fun. Imagine Devilwar's Prada,
Speaker 1: but it's Michael Panya instead of the Stanley Tucci character.
Speaker 2: Or Michael Pania doing the same performance right next to
Speaker 2: Stanley Tucci and they're speaking in unison. Yeah. Wow, makes
Speaker 2: it's an idea this also, I would say, you know, haters,
Speaker 2: haters would say this was maybe a rough year for
Speaker 2: John Bradley filmography wise, because the other big movie he's
Speaker 2: in this year is Marry Me, the j Loo movie.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that?
Speaker 1: I remember it?
Speaker 2: I didn't see it. Is Owen Wilson in that also? Yes,
Speaker 2: j Lo and Owen Wilson are in it together. I
Speaker 2: saw it. I saw it in theaters. That was when
Speaker 2: you were saying Moonfall. I was seeing Marry Me. Wow,
Speaker 2: I said, between the two of us, we saw all
Speaker 2: of John Bradley's work that year. But yes, yeah, he's
Speaker 2: playing a guy named k C who I thought was
Speaker 2: just Casey that it turns out its case.
Speaker 1: The initials k C.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and he says the moon is hollow. And
Speaker 2: guess what. I think it's an important message that this
Speaker 2: movie holds that conspiracy theorists are correct and we shouldn't
Speaker 2: worry about the various restraining orders filed against them. It
Speaker 2: was a mistake.
Speaker 1: It was a mistake because they were right all along.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, So Casey accesses data about the Moon
Speaker 1: and its orbital patterns, and he sees something really bizarre.
Speaker 1: We don't know what quite yet, but he tries to
Speaker 1: call NASA about it. Cut to a space center in Texas,
Speaker 1: I think, where Joe, who is now the deputy director
Speaker 1: of NASA, is told that the Moon's orbit is shifting
Speaker 1: and the Moon is getting closer and closer to Earth
Speaker 1: as it continues to circle around it, and she's like, what,
Speaker 1: that's impossible.
Speaker 2: And then she says, rather iconically, I think that you know,
Speaker 2: for the hyper compident characters that they are, it is
Speaker 2: wild that Joe and Brian do manage to be the
Speaker 2: last to know that the Moon is falling because Joe
Speaker 2: is in mission control or whatever this like stage in
Speaker 2: Montreal there in is and she's like, we need to
Speaker 2: make sure this remains contained. And then everyone in unison
Speaker 2: gets a push notification from like the Times saying in
Speaker 2: all caps moon is falling.
Speaker 1: Yes, well that's because Casey leaked the information. But the
Speaker 1: whole thing is like, we don't know the source of this,
Speaker 1: and he is not a credible source. So why the
Speaker 1: world devolves into mass panic after this?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think it could be interesting commentary on,
Speaker 2: you know, the state of the news cycle, the state
Speaker 2: of defunding journalism, you know, how experts are now being
Speaker 2: treated as credible sources when they may not in fact
Speaker 2: be credible sources. However, I would say that is undercut
Speaker 2: by the fact that this conspiracy theorist Casey Houseman, of
Speaker 2: course his last name being Houseman because he's a man
Speaker 2: and he lives in a house.
Speaker 1: Just like how when you're a son, your name is son,
Speaker 1: name is sunny.
Speaker 2: And this movie went through descriptment, through many drafts, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: but it's why Casey Houseman. It's tricky because you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, it's one thing to say, oh, we are
Speaker 2: now treating conspiracy theorists with no accreditation as the arbiters
Speaker 2: of truth. This movie bravely asks, but what if they're right?
Speaker 2: But what if Casey house what if every Casey Houseman
Speaker 2: prediction is right and the moon is hollow.
Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of if there was a movie about
Speaker 1: how like a flat earther was like the Earth is flat,
Speaker 1: and then the big reveal is that the Earth is flat.
Speaker 2: Maybe that was what the sequel that tragically hasn't been
Speaker 2: realized yet yet is There is a cliffhanger at the
Speaker 2: end that is very confusing in a feminist way because
Speaker 2: it is delivered by a woman. And she says to
Speaker 2: Casey Houseman, more like Casey middle of the moonman now
Speaker 2: because they copied his consciousness and now he's a part
Speaker 2: of the moon famous. She says, your work is just
Speaker 2: beginning or something like that. I hope you're ready or
Speaker 2: get ready. So there's a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2: So maybe this sequel to the moonfall is earth flat.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe we're just going to kind of keep going
Speaker 2: through the big hits in terms of conspiracy theories of
Speaker 2: the late twenty tens, moonfall, earth flat, vaccine, fake you know,
Speaker 2: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yes, I hope, so, I hope, so me too, I
Speaker 1: really hope. So. Okay, So, speaking of Casey, he cannot
Speaker 1: get through to NASA. No one will take him seriously,
Speaker 1: so he has to come up with a different plan.
Speaker 1: And he says out loud to no one, what would
Speaker 1: Elon Musk do?
Speaker 2: Now, this is interesting because Elon Musk, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: at the time you're listening to this is a full blown,
Speaker 2: out and out proud fascist yes, and you know, for
Speaker 2: those that have had had eyes on him for years,
Speaker 2: this will come as no surprise. It is just ideology
Speaker 2: that has grown louder and louder as time goes on.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that his position has meaningfully shifted. It
Speaker 2: has just increased in volume spree exactly. But there is
Speaker 2: this period, and it makes sense because this movie took
Speaker 2: so long to come out. But in the late twenty ten's,
Speaker 2: early twenty twenties where Elon Musk is getting a lot
Speaker 2: of pr in film, I'm thinking of that Lindsay Lohan movie. Yes,
Speaker 2: we watched on Netflix too, where it just and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say it's free press. I would heavily speculate that
Speaker 2: he is paying for it in some way. Sure, But yeah,
Speaker 2: about how he was for some time sort of positioned
Speaker 2: as the man who could save the world with vaguely
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory adjacent ideas. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the first time I got into an argument
Speaker 2: about Elon Musk was in twenty eighteen in the writer's
Speaker 2: room for Robot Chicken, in which I got into a
Speaker 2: shouting match with another writer, a man, a man older
Speaker 2: than myself, who was really infuriated that I didn't think
Speaker 2: Elon Musk was cool, and that really was the basis
Speaker 2: of the argument. And so for those of us who
Speaker 2: have been beating this drum for a long time, you
Speaker 2: hear that line and you wonder where is this going?
Speaker 2: And it's going to a later line that says our
Speaker 2: friends over at SpaceX. Yeah, and then I kind of
Speaker 2: lost the thread of where it was supposed to have
Speaker 2: been going other than saying that conspiracies are real, which
Speaker 2: is a feminist idea.
Speaker 1: The thread kids cut right then and there. Pretty much
Speaker 1: it doesn't go elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Movies don't need to answer every question, No, but it
Speaker 2: would be cool. I do feel like most movies answer
Speaker 2: at least one a question or presents you with potential
Speaker 2: answers and choose which you choose to believe. But some
Speaker 2: movies are just different, and these are mysterious. So yeah,
Speaker 2: what what what would Elon Musk do? And honestly, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk did something similar to Brian,
Speaker 2: which is like wear an embarrassing jacket and complain loudly
Speaker 2: to no one. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to take a
Speaker 2: moment to appreciate how children's dialogue is written in this film.
Speaker 1: Oh let's let's do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way children talk in this movie is so
Speaker 2: true to life. You you would think you're just walking
Speaker 2: through a kmart. It is just really a amazing.
Speaker 1: Are there children a kmart?
Speaker 2: Well, there's you're just walking through the world, you know,
Speaker 2: you're just listen. I don't know why cam art came down.
Speaker 2: I don't even think kmart exists. No, You're just you're
Speaker 2: just you're just walking around a playground, like, because it's
Speaker 2: everything else that's perverted. You're like, well, I'm not just
Speaker 2: walking around a playground. Yeah, any kid would be saying
Speaker 2: things like I hate New Jersey. Any kid. There's a
Speaker 2: great scene that I really appreciated where Casey is Casey
Speaker 2: Houseman is impersonating Brian at the Griffith Observatory, Yes, which
Speaker 2: is iconic in many ways. And there's what is okay
Speaker 2: wait I wrote this down because.
Speaker 1: The kid who says, well, are you going to teach
Speaker 1: us about the moon or not? Yeah, and he says
Speaker 1: it exactly like that.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is exactly what I was talking about. I
Speaker 2: don't know where it went, but yeah, I wrote down
Speaker 2: the entire thing because it was so powerful to me.
Speaker 2: And then there's like another kid who shockingly talks to
Speaker 2: the exact same cadence as the first kid, almost as
Speaker 2: if no one was thinking about that. I just really,
Speaker 2: I really really loved it.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where when the earth suddenly starts running
Speaker 1: out of air.
Speaker 2: One look out, Michael Penia, watch out, targeting Michael Penia,
Speaker 2: only impending doom for him, just him though his and
Speaker 2: Brenda's daughter, one of them.
Speaker 1: There's like a there's a news cast and it says
Speaker 1: something like atmospheric dissipation is about to begin, and one
Speaker 1: of the daughters says, what's that? And then the other daughter,
Speaker 1: who's I don't know, maybe nine years old, says the
Speaker 1: earth is running out of air. Sully feminism, as if
Speaker 1: a nine year old child knows what atmospheric dissipation means.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means. And I'm a hundred
Speaker 2: and don't get me started on Joe Fowler's son, who
Speaker 2: one are the weirdest kids ever committed to film? Okay,
Speaker 2: so here's that exchange of the students yelling at Samwell
Speaker 2: Tarli Shah grif Ritory, Yes, Okay, he's not two steps
Speaker 2: into the observatory when this kid clocks him and says,
Speaker 2: at volume one thousand, our teacher says, you're a wash
Speaker 2: up no show, and she's complaining to someone. You're like, oh.
Speaker 2: A second child says, you really don't look like an astronaut,
Speaker 2: and then the first kid says, calling back to you, well,
Speaker 2: are you going to teach us about space or what?
Speaker 2: And it just makes you wonder does Roland Emmericks have
Speaker 2: children and does.
Speaker 1: He he ever interacted with a child.
Speaker 2: And met them? And then the other kid is Joe's son,
Speaker 2: his father, because that is ultimately what the movie is about. Yes,
Speaker 2: And if fathers and sons are separated, well they just
Speaker 2: are like, well, here's Michael Panya and he's a new father,
Speaker 2: so okay, Joe follow her son a great one. And
Speaker 2: I really liked that his father, mister Military industrial Complex
Speaker 2: HIMSELFEP is calling hallebar on the phone and saying, how
Speaker 2: can you say I'm not spending time with our son.
Speaker 2: I talked to him on the phone all the time.
Speaker 2: And then you cut like talking about him as if
Speaker 2: he is not six, and then you see a six
Speaker 2: year old, I'm like, what are you talking on the
Speaker 2: phone about with this guy, like he talks about his
Speaker 2: six year old son like he's a full blown adult, consistently,
Speaker 2: to the point where maybe at some point in the
Speaker 2: script he was I find the way they talk about
Speaker 2: the kid very weird. Well, okay, sorry, sorry, I'm being
Speaker 2: so negative.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, Jamie Howell, I'm being a huge bitch. You're
Speaker 1: being an enormous bitch, and I can't believe it. No,
Speaker 1: But like, let's be let's think about this, Okay. Halle
Speaker 1: Berry she was I think in her mid fifties when
Speaker 1: she was very is Joe Fowler. Joe Fowler, she was
Speaker 1: in her mid fifties when this movie was being filmed
Speaker 1: and released. Sure, her son is, yeah, like six years old.
Speaker 1: Not to say that you cannot have a baby.
Speaker 2: You can. You can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I think it's one of those cases where
Speaker 1: they've cast an older actor to play a younger character,
Speaker 1: because heaven forbid, we have a like fifty five year
Speaker 1: old woman character on screen.
Speaker 2: And I would say that that's feminists in addition to
Speaker 2: the pressure that is put on women to look much
Speaker 2: younger than they actually are in order to retain employment
Speaker 2: in entertainment, And I think it's equally feminist. How people
Speaker 2: will attack said women for merely responding to how society
Speaker 2: is insisting they behave in order to.
Speaker 1: Work, and then they will attack other women who are
Speaker 1: less willing to adhere to those societal pressures and say, ooh,
Speaker 1: why do you look so old and gross?
Speaker 2: Or they will, you know, regard women who are you know,
Speaker 2: choosing to age naturally and infantilize them by saying they're brave.
Speaker 2: And there's just a million incredible ways to navigate talking
Speaker 2: about women. And they're all normal and they're all really nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's also a character we meet who I think takes
Speaker 2: again in a way that it's like women are so
Speaker 2: complicated in a way that I think takes a very
Speaker 2: long time to determine who is this character and what
Speaker 2: is she doing? The character Michelle.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: Wrong about who Michelle was in relation to the other
Speaker 2: characters about five times before I learned that she is
Speaker 2: an exchange student who is a nanny and perhaps a tutor.
Speaker 2: I'm maybe still not sure what mische Helle is doing.
Speaker 1: It is very unclear.
Speaker 2: I first thought she was dating Halle Berry Yes, Barry, yes,
Speaker 2: But then it turns.
Speaker 1: Out halle Berry is her boss.
Speaker 2: Right, and that she's like a nanny who's teaching her
Speaker 2: son Mandarin Mandarin.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But before we can decide who is Michelle, what's going
Speaker 2: on with Michelle? Well, she's Sonny's girlfriend. And so then
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, thank god, Okay, I was this woman
Speaker 2: was getting too complicated. So it's good that she's just
Speaker 2: Sonny's girlfriend. Yes, But I did I do. I mean
Speaker 2: I did genuinely feel like she and halle Berry. I
Speaker 2: thought that, like, you know, because you meet her at
Speaker 2: the house and they have this like conversation about what
Speaker 2: seemed like their shared child. Yeah, and I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: queer representation, but that you find out several scenes later
Speaker 2: actually not no, no queer representation. No, the scene was
Speaker 2: just written weird.
Speaker 1: Yes, So glad we got that out of the way.
Speaker 2: I felt silly because I was like, wait, it was
Speaker 2: I like, but then I rewatched the scene. I was like, no,
Speaker 2: that's the way that they're talking to each other is
Speaker 2: very unclear. It was not giving professional relationship.
Speaker 1: No, because like the first time you see Michelle on screen,
Speaker 1: she has okay, actually this is hilarious. It's early in
Speaker 1: the morning, she has a cup of coffee that she
Speaker 1: has made for Joe. And it seems the way it's written,
Speaker 1: in the way it's acted, it seems like here is
Speaker 1: a tender gesture, a loving gesture that one partner is
Speaker 1: doing for another partner. Romantic partner. Yes, Nope, it's just
Speaker 1: that Michelle wakes up at four o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: to make coffee for Joe. Also, she says.
Speaker 2: She's like a living nanny, but like, yeah, she's just
Speaker 2: very romantic. I don't know. Maybe it's just like these
Speaker 2: these actresses are just so like compelling that I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean they are they're they're beautiful, and so you
Speaker 2: want them to be married. I want them to like yeah.
Speaker 1: But the funniest thing about that scene is that Michelle
Speaker 1: hands Joe a coffee and she says, black two sugars. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's a black coffee, there isn't any sugar in it.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: But she says, I made coffee just the way you
Speaker 1: like it, black two sugars.
Speaker 2: And that's feminism, and that's feminism, and that passes the
Speaker 2: Bexel test.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does so.
Speaker 2: Early in the movie passes the Bechel test in women
Speaker 2: who do have names. Although they're spoken very infrequently, and
Speaker 2: their relationship to each other is completely incoherent. Because then
Speaker 2: I went on this journey where I went back to
Speaker 2: thinking that Michelle was actually dating Joe, just into Joe
Speaker 2: Fowler because you find out her husband. But then it
Speaker 2: said much later on, no, it's her ex husband, and
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, so she is with Michelle. But
Speaker 2: then Michelle shows up and a scene very much acting
Speaker 2: like a nanny. And by that We're well over an
Speaker 2: hour into the movie and I'm still trying to glean
Speaker 2: the relationships between basic who lived together. I still don't
Speaker 2: know who these people are to each other. And then
Speaker 2: it turns out no, Michelle is straight single and looking
Speaker 2: to date Patrick Wilson's car thief son named Sonny.
Speaker 3: Dug.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, back to the thing we were on. Casey
Speaker 1: he's trying to come up with a plan to let
Speaker 1: people know that there's something wacky going on with the moon,
Speaker 1: so he goes to disgraced former astronaut Brian Harper, hoping
Speaker 1: that he will help. Through various inters, including the one
Speaker 1: where Casey is loudly blathering on about his moon conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories to children, we learn that case believes that the
Speaker 1: moon is what's called a megastructure, which is an enormous
Speaker 1: artificial construction built by aliens. And then he tells he
Speaker 1: tells Brian Harper that the Moon's orbit has shifted and
Speaker 1: the moon is about to fall into Earth. And so
Speaker 1: Brian thinks that Kse is a lunatic get it, lunatic
Speaker 1: lunar 're.
Speaker 2: Like a moona tig.
Speaker 1: Moonatick? Yes? Okay, So then the movie takes a detour
Speaker 1: from the urgent moon situation to introduce a few subplots,
Speaker 1: including Casey taking care of his mother who seems to
Speaker 1: have Alzheimer's and Brian's now eighteen year old son whose
Speaker 1: name is still Sunny, getting arrested after being in a
Speaker 1: high speed car chase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like an OJ Simpson style high speed televised car chase. Yes,
Speaker 2: as all car chases are televised like their OJ Simpson correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we cut back to Joe. The NASA scientists have
Speaker 1: concluded that in three weeks, the Moon will get too
Speaker 1: close to the Earth and it will basically fall apart
Speaker 1: and fling huge moon chunks into the Earth.
Speaker 2: Moon will fall, Moon will fall. The fall of the Moon,
Speaker 2: The dark, dark of the Moon. I remember that.
Speaker 1: I do remember that. Yeah. I think there is some
Speaker 1: weird conspiratorial moon thing in that Transformers movie too.
Speaker 2: Really. I mean I've only seen the first one, but
Speaker 2: that that would track for me. Yeah, I believe that
Speaker 2: Michael Bay believes and conspiracors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listeners who are familiar with Transformers Dark of the Moon.
Speaker 1: Is the Moon a Transformer or something?
Speaker 2: Okay? See, that actually sounds way more fun than Moonfall,
Speaker 2: to be honest, I mean, a Moon being a Transformer
Speaker 2: would be would be fun.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what that movie is about,
Speaker 1: but there is. I feel like there is something weird
Speaker 1: about the Moon in that one anyway. So the stakes
Speaker 1: are very high. The moon will fall.
Speaker 2: The moon is very low.
Speaker 1: The moon is The stakes are high, but the moon
Speaker 1: is low exactly. Yeah, and so they need to send
Speaker 1: a team of astronauts to the Moon to fix it.
Speaker 2: Or something to to tell the Moon to knock it out,
Speaker 2: to say stop falling, get up, pull yourself up by
Speaker 2: your bootstraps. Moon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then the scene where we were just talking about, where
Speaker 1: Casey leaks the info about the Moon's orbit changing and
Speaker 1: now it's trending on Twitter, which everyone believes even though
Speaker 1: no one knows the source of this information.
Speaker 2: It is wild how that line of dialogue that exists
Speaker 2: in so many movies now sounds wild they dated, like
Speaker 2: it's going viral on Twitter, which now would mean kind
Speaker 2: of less than nothing. And it's ironic that whose fault
Speaker 2: is that, Well Elon Musk. Yeah, well what Elon Musk
Speaker 2: do amongst other things make it so that that line
Speaker 2: sounds very dated.
Speaker 1: Yes, anyways, so there's like now mass public panic, people
Speaker 1: are fleeing from cities, people are looting, all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Which again feels like a weird amalgamation and like it
Speaker 2: felt to me based on when this movie was written
Speaker 2: and produced, felt like a dishonest conflating many issues at once.
Speaker 2: Reflection on twenty twenty and in a way that I
Speaker 2: found frustrating in a movie I otherwise love.
Speaker 1: And otherwise perfect movie. Yes, yeah, I can definitely see that,
Speaker 1: But we see so little because like a lot of
Speaker 1: disaster movies, where there's like a global disaster, you see
Speaker 1: a lot more of the chaos that the world has
Speaker 1: descended into. In this movie, there's only like very very
Speaker 1: very quick cuts, mostly as like news coverage. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: barely see anything well and in.
Speaker 2: The interesting way. And again, this is an episode coming
Speaker 2: out in early April, so we're gonna be doing extra
Speaker 2: care in the discussion. But like, it is interesting that
Speaker 2: like Roland Emeric is sort of playing on some of
Speaker 2: the disaster movie tropes that he helped popular, which are
Speaker 2: like anyone in the lower class is kind of like uh,
Speaker 2: violent and bass.
Speaker 1: Yeah and uncivilized, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But with regard to not showing that the disaster and
Speaker 2: the Disaster movie, I would say, Caitlin, you know, in
Speaker 2: their defense, they only had one hundred and fifty million dollars,
Speaker 2: and so would you be able to show a compelling
Speaker 2: image for one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: No, not me. I would blow that entire budget on
Speaker 1: craft services. Yeah, yes, say what you will about this movie.
Speaker 1: I actually think the special effects are decent, which I
Speaker 1: don't think they're amazing, but I think it looks like
Speaker 1: inexpensive movie because it is an expensive movie for sure,
Speaker 1: So it's not like the effects look shitty the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of B movie effects are really like
Speaker 1: shitty looking, Like this movie looks like they spent money
Speaker 1: on it, but it's just that the story is.
Speaker 2: And if I'm being critical and I wouldn't know if
Speaker 2: I was playing Devil's advocate here, sure sure, I would
Speaker 2: say it definitely does look expensive. What I don't think
Speaker 2: is that you can you can maybe get the sense
Speaker 2: that the actors, more often than that not don't know
Speaker 2: what they're supposed to be looking at because the reaction.
Speaker 2: And this is not a fault of the actors, because
Speaker 2: these effects were probably not even conceived of yet much
Speaker 2: less executed, but you can sort of tell that there's
Speaker 2: a moment with halle Berry I'm thinking about specifically, that
Speaker 2: the reaction just feels a little low temperature. For what
Speaker 2: she is looking at on a screen is astronauts being
Speaker 2: eaten by nanobots like a snake, and she's sort of like,
Speaker 2: oh that is that's really too bad, like it's really dead, kind.
Speaker 1: Of stone faced, no reaction whatsoever.
Speaker 2: It's almost as if she were directed to say, like,
Speaker 2: make a facial expression that could mean anything, And halle
Speaker 2: Berry is an incredible expressive actor, so I'm assuming she
Speaker 2: was told to do that. But it's so weird because
Speaker 2: what she ends up looking at is like really a
Speaker 2: good effect, but very graphically horrific. Yeah, it's like her,
Speaker 2: she's the head of NASA. These are we are to
Speaker 2: think some of her like best and brightest astronauts, astronauts
Speaker 2: she would know personally getting eaten by nanobots on camera
Speaker 2: and she's like she's just like, oh no, wow, well
Speaker 2: we should probably we should probably should probably the moose
Speaker 2: this moon. I will say, women in power, this is
Speaker 2: a great I think that Roland Emeric is bringing up
Speaker 2: another feminist idea here, which is that women in power
Speaker 2: is a bad idea because Joe Fowler, I will say it.
Speaker 2: I'll say it. She is not really killing it running NASA.
Speaker 1: She makes a lot of bad calls.
Speaker 2: I would say, there is like a small fuel leak,
Speaker 2: and she disbands NASA.
Speaker 1: She said, never mind, we're gonna get there.
Speaker 2: But I was really kind of stunned at how They're like, well,
Speaker 2: there's a fuel, we don't have the thing to put
Speaker 2: in the thing, and she's like, well, I guess we
Speaker 2: better disband NASA, and then she does. Moments later, consulting,
Speaker 2: no one disbands NASA and everyone in NASA's like, we're
Speaker 2: going to Colorado. Okay, Colorado? Colorado is like, I mean,
Speaker 2: is it like some Denver Airport shit, Like I know
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of I was thinking of Birasy
Speaker 2: theories in Colorado. Yeah, but it also gets you also
Speaker 2: sort of get the feeling that, like the Tourism Bureau
Speaker 2: of Colorado maybe through a couple bucks at this movie,
Speaker 2: like Colorado comes up, Colorado, Lexus, Elon Musk. These are
Speaker 2: just things that keep coming up up.
Speaker 1: Everyone evacuates to Colorado in this movie, or at least
Speaker 1: all the main characters. Yeah, okay, so actually we're about
Speaker 1: to get there. So there's this like mass public panic.
Speaker 1: Brian's ex wife, Brenda's new rich Lexus dealership owning husband
Speaker 1: Tom Lopez played by Michael Penia, wants his family to
Speaker 1: go to Aspen, Colorado for reasons that never become clear,
Speaker 1: so he starts evacuating the family to Aspen. Brian, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: is trying desperately to get his son, Sonny released from
Speaker 1: jail in La Right, his son's Sonny, Son's Sonny.
Speaker 2: There should be the daughter's named Dottery. Yes, it should
Speaker 2: be that easy for us to I know, Dottie maybe Dottie.
Speaker 2: Oh maybe that's it. Wow, Dorothy more like dot Dorothy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so then Brian sees something on the news
Speaker 1: about how maybe the Moon is a megastructure, and he's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that guy who I thought and who
Speaker 1: belongs in the looney bin, get.
Speaker 2: It more Luner, the mooney bin things, the looney Bend
Speaker 2: or the mooney Bin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, He's like, that guy said something about the
Speaker 1: Moon being a megastructure. So Brian goes to find Casey,
Speaker 1: who continues to carry on about how something must have
Speaker 1: gone wrong inside the hollow megastructure that is the Moon
Speaker 1: and that's why it's veering off course. Now. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: NASA spaceship goes to the Moon discovers that there's a
Speaker 1: huge hole in one of the craters, so they drop
Speaker 1: a probe inside, which prompts the sentient swor of spiky
Speaker 1: technology nanobots to come out and kill the three astronauts
Speaker 1: who are on this mission which we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: which halle Berry's character has absolutely no reaction to. Her
Speaker 1: boss is like, fuck this, I'm out. I quit NASA.
Speaker 1: So now Joe is in charge of NASA, and so
Speaker 1: with her new security clearance, she starts digging through some
Speaker 1: classified records, which I guess as the deputy director of
Speaker 1: NASA she had no access to. But now that she's
Speaker 1: in like one step promoted, she has all the clearance
Speaker 1: and she goes to this guy named Holdenfield played by
Speaker 1: Donald Sutherland, who.
Speaker 2: He's literally he reminds me, you know who he reminds
Speaker 2: me of. Do you know that scene in Aladdin where
Speaker 2: there's like that old man in the ja I think
Speaker 2: it's like Jaffar in disguises. Yes, Donald Sutherland's character was
Speaker 2: kind of reminding me of that guy where he just
Speaker 2: comes out of the shadow, reveals some plot and disappears,
Speaker 2: and then the protagonist is like, whoa that it's kind
Speaker 2: of weird. That's kind of what happens.
Speaker 1: That is kind of what happens. Except the thing with
Speaker 1: Donald Sutherland's character is that it is implied that he's
Speaker 1: about to go end his own life right after this, right.
Speaker 2: Jaffar doesn't do that. It is it is bizarre. It
Speaker 2: is bizarre because again we're met with yet another halle
Speaker 2: Berry reaction that is very low temperature given the information
Speaker 2: that's just been conveyed to her. For sure, that scene
Speaker 2: sort of ends with her being like, well, these things
Speaker 2: will happen like it, These moons will fall moons will fall.
Speaker 2: It's like Vanessa Hudgens during COVID, people die, Like it's
Speaker 2: just it's do you remember that. I don't know why
Speaker 2: that that lives in my head, rent Free. It was
Speaker 2: like such a horrific thing to say, and not that
Speaker 2: anyone should be thinking about what Vanessa Haudgens said during COVID,
Speaker 2: but I still think about it. That's kind of halle
Speaker 2: Berry's vibe. She's sort of like, people are gonna die
Speaker 2: and that's sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she now has all this new information, including
Speaker 1: that NASA covered up the nanobot video footage that they
Speaker 1: did get from Brian's helmet cam from the scene that
Speaker 1: we saw at the very beginning of the movie. So
Speaker 1: she's like, oh my gosh, I believe Brian now. So
Speaker 1: she's about to go recruit him. But first, the moon's
Speaker 1: orbit is affecting the tides and the ocean and stuff,
Speaker 1: so water comes gushing on to land and it starts
Speaker 1: destroying La where Brian and cac are. They end up
Speaker 1: trapped in a hotel, so they're just sort of like
Speaker 1: chilling in this hotel. They're like sleeping, hanging out hotel beds.
Speaker 2: There's some like hippie friends of Casey Houseman. Yea there,
Speaker 2: and it's like starting to feel like a movie from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. And it's like that's because it's Rollin
Speaker 2: Emerick directing it. So in many ways it is a
Speaker 2: movie from nineteen ninety seven. But yeah, they're just kind
Speaker 2: of hanging out.
Speaker 1: They're just chilling. Yeah, yeah, who cares if the moon's falling,
Speaker 1: We're just chilling.
Speaker 2: Just two feminist allies hanging out at a hotel. Nothing
Speaker 2: to see here.
Speaker 1: Yes. Then there's a part where Joe's ex husband, Doug.
Speaker 2: Who only appears in conference rooms the entire movie.
Speaker 1: Yes, and like you said, he is military industrial complex
Speaker 1: the man. He wants to take Joe and their son Jimmy,
Speaker 1: also to Colorado for some reason.
Speaker 2: Well, because that's where it's safe visit Colorado.
Speaker 1: Yes, but Joe is like, I can't go to Colorado.
Speaker 1: I have to go to the moon.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 2: Well she does not really tell him that. He finds
Speaker 2: out from Sunny later, right, And that is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite non reactions in the movie, Like Joe and
Speaker 2: her ex husband really found each other because they stay
Speaker 2: not reacting to gigantic pieces of news like that's how
Speaker 2: they became so powerful in the American government by not
Speaker 2: knowing what anyone is saying and being stonefaced in the
Speaker 2: face of absolute horrors. Where she never informs him that
Speaker 2: she is not coming to Colorado. She's given her son
Speaker 2: over with her not girlfriend, it turns out nanny and
Speaker 2: lets her get into this car with a known car
Speaker 2: thief who said, by the way, my license is suspended,
Speaker 2: So showing no regard for her own child safety, even
Speaker 2: though we're told but whatever, it's all about telling, it's
Speaker 2: not about showing. So even though her actions would indicate
Speaker 2: she doesn't care about her son's safety, we're told she
Speaker 2: does care, so she does, so she does. A half
Speaker 2: hour later. A half hour later, the husband calls, or
Speaker 2: the ex husband calls, because they do even a big
Speaker 2: government meetings specify they are no longer married, as if
Speaker 2: there's a camera on them, as if there were studio
Speaker 2: notes saying it's unclear who anyone is to each other
Speaker 2: in this movie. But Sonny, a character this man does
Speaker 2: not know, calls them and says, oh, sorry, your ex
Speaker 2: wife didn't go to Colorado. She actually went to the moon.
Speaker 2: I've got your son. And he's like, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 2: when are you gonna get to Colorado? I was like, what, Okay,
Speaker 2: also consider this, so okay, sorry, you're right this huge bitch,
Speaker 2: huge betch huge bitch. Yeah, damn it, Jamie, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: stop criticizing this perfect movie. No, I'm about to do
Speaker 2: the same thing. So okay, the moon is famously falling. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's affecting gravity on Earth. Well, depending on what
Speaker 2: the plot requires, sure, well exactly. Yeah, but somehow it
Speaker 2: is not affecting the satellites that are orbiting Earth that
Speaker 2: would affect people being able to.
Speaker 1: Make cell phone calls. Oh yeah, because everyone just keeps
Speaker 1: making so many phone calls even though the satellites would
Speaker 1: be so fucked.
Speaker 2: Up gravity affected cell phone reception. Perfect. Yeah, Verizon really
Speaker 2: should have gotten in on this, like.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they should.
Speaker 2: Have missed opportunity. I'm sure they were reached out to.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that honestly didn't even occur to me. Yeah, everyone
Speaker 2: is making crystal clear phone calls.
Speaker 1: The whole the whole movie. Satellites are working perfectly even
Speaker 1: though the is crashing into all of them.
Speaker 2: Probably it is really fascinating because it's like disaster movies,
Speaker 2: all disaster movies good, Bad, or not have these kinds
Speaker 2: of plot holes present. But if the movie, if you
Speaker 2: like the characters enough and like the visuals are exciting enough,
Speaker 2: you're willing to forget about a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, suspension of disbelief, baby.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting that we're noticing these plot holes and.
Speaker 1: Plot holes more like a hole in the moon's crater.
Speaker 2: Moon holes moon hole. Also, they keep saying crater and
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, that's that's great fiance his last name. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people are actually in sci fi movies they're saying his
Speaker 2: last name, and then in movies in the movie Twisters,
Speaker 2: they're saying his first name a lot because there's the
Speaker 2: Daisy what's her name, Daisy? I forget what is act
Speaker 2: name is, but there's a whole thing between her and
Speaker 2: Glenn Power. I remember me and my brother laughed so
Speaker 2: heart in theaters at Grant because there's a repeated line
Speaker 2: of she is like, I need to go get a
Speaker 2: big fat Grant. It's fun by research.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wow, both of Grant's names are nouns.
Speaker 2: I know, I know it's weird that it is his
Speaker 2: actual government name, because I was like, it sounds fake,
Speaker 2: but it's real. Anyways, Moonfall. Sorry, I keep getting distracted,
Speaker 2: which is wild because the plot is so riveting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, okay. So then Joe goes to recruit Brian
Speaker 1: and by default because Brian and Casey are buddies. Now,
Speaker 1: so Brian and Casey get recruited to help Joe, but
Speaker 1: they're not sure how they're going to get to the
Speaker 1: moon because according to this movie, all of the spaceships
Speaker 1: are in museums.
Speaker 2: And don't worry about what that means, why that is
Speaker 2: or who made that decision, because you do get the
Speaker 2: feeling that well, I guess it would be halle Berry's boss,
Speaker 2: kind of a patriarchy, the guy kind of guy who
Speaker 2: does quit his job. You know you said earlier he
Speaker 2: quits his job so he could of course go to Colorado. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then just like hands halle Berry a key card
Speaker 2: and says, you want to be the head of NASA
Speaker 2: so bad? Well you are. Now you go, Now, why
Speaker 2: did that? Assuming that's the guy who put all the
Speaker 2: spaceships in museums, what has NASA been up to? Well,
Speaker 2: all the spaceships are in museums.
Speaker 1: We keep cutting to present day NASA, and they seem
Speaker 1: to be fully operational.
Speaker 2: But then you find out actually all the space ships
Speaker 2: are in museums, which is interesting because we've seen astronauts
Speaker 2: gotten eaten by nanobots today today. Yes, so it's safe
Speaker 2: to assume we were in a spaceship, but maybe that
Speaker 2: was the last space that wasn't in a museum. Follow
Speaker 2: up question, why are the space ships that are in
Speaker 2: museums so loosely secure that there's graffiti on them that
Speaker 2: say fuck the Moon. That's a great question. What museum
Speaker 2: are they in that security is that low?
Speaker 1: It's a museum in La Also.
Speaker 2: Well, clearly they didn't give roll in Emeric any money
Speaker 2: because they made the whole place like pretty low rent.
Speaker 1: Well and then they and they flooded the whole city.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: They said, they said, fuck La Denver is the only
Speaker 1: safe place in the US or Colorado in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they're like, yeah, all the spaceships are in
Speaker 1: museum except for the Endeavor, which is the ship that
Speaker 1: they were on at the very beginning of the movie.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, that's the graffiti ship that says fucked the most.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, it's not in a museum. It was
Speaker 1: just in storage or something.
Speaker 2: It was just at like public storage.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So Brian and a few other astronauts prep
Speaker 1: for this mission where they're gonna go to the Moon
Speaker 1: to stop it from falling.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's not a few other astronauts, it's like
Speaker 2: a lot of that, it's most of NASA is preparing
Speaker 2: for this mission.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are there on the ground, and
Speaker 1: then like a handful are actually gonna go into space.
Speaker 2: Is actually gonna go, but it's a big thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, until of course.
Speaker 2: Operates some sort of like coolant issue, and then NASA
Speaker 2: has to be disbanded, disbanded so that you can all
Speaker 2: go to Colorado.
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, though they're they're prepping for this mission,
Speaker 1: SpaceX gets mentioned. Casey continues to have a raging hard
Speaker 1: on for Elon Musk. Their plan is unclear, but it
Speaker 1: seems like basically they're going to lure the evil spiky
Speaker 1: nanotechnology bots out of the Moon and then blow up
Speaker 1: that swarm with a bomb. I think I wasn't clear.
Speaker 2: Are they gonna blow up the Moon or are they
Speaker 2: just gonna blow up something like near the moo.
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. We're just not too sure.
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to get. But again, it's not the
Speaker 2: movies that is actually one of my favorite things that
Speaker 2: because this is true, but I do think it's overused
Speaker 2: by a certain type of letterbox user who will be like,
Speaker 2: it's not the movie's job to tell you all the answers,
Speaker 2: and then you're like, I do feel like it is
Speaker 2: the movie's job to tell me if the objective of
Speaker 2: most of the movie is to blow the moon up
Speaker 2: or not. There are certain questions that I don't feel
Speaker 2: are pedantic, and in Moonfall, I would like to know
Speaker 2: if they are trying to blow up the moon or
Speaker 2: if they're like trying to do something else. But luckily
Speaker 2: there's like a plot room inside of the moon in
Speaker 2: which things will become even more confusing. But that's we're
Speaker 2: a ways away. First, halle Berry disbands NASA.
Speaker 1: And also before Brian leaves on this mission, he reunites
Speaker 1: with his son Sonny.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because that's that's the agreement. He will come
Speaker 2: back for one last hurrah blowing the moon up, possibly
Speaker 2: as long as his son Sonny is let.
Speaker 1: Out of jail. Yeah, yeah, yes, it all makes sense.
Speaker 1: Then what you're referring to happens where an earthquake or
Speaker 1: something destroys one of the spaceship's engines and coolant is
Speaker 1: leaking or something, but they can't go to space anymore
Speaker 1: because there's only two engines left.
Speaker 2: That's like saying, Josh Gadd is no longer available. We
Speaker 2: can't make moonfall. We all have to go to Colorade.
Speaker 2: Come on, right, where's your spirit?
Speaker 1: Well? Kse steps in with some new calculations.
Speaker 2: Much like John Bradley for Josh Gad precisely okay, and
Speaker 2: he's like, wait a minute, if we wait until the moon,
Speaker 2: which is falling, it is directly above us, the gravitational
Speaker 2: pull from the Moon will pull the spaceship up to.
Speaker 1: The Moon, so we don't even need engines, really, we
Speaker 1: just need the Moon's gravity. And everyone's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: will be honest, I'm so glad that.
Speaker 2: That came through to you, because I was like, I
Speaker 2: was really not sure what his justification for going through
Speaker 2: with it, because it seemed like to me, what it
Speaker 2: seemed like is like, oh no, this issue with the
Speaker 2: cool ANDT is so bad that we have to disband
Speaker 2: an entire government agency. But then an hour later, the
Speaker 2: same person who disbanded said government agency. Halle Berry is like, actually,
Speaker 2: never mind, let's go to space. Let's go to space
Speaker 2: right now. Even though, like I think, canonically NASA and
Speaker 2: by NASA, I mean every employee of NASA who is
Speaker 2: just dismissed from NASA wouldn't have even had time to
Speaker 2: make it to the airport, like they could have come
Speaker 2: back right. She could have been like, sorry, guys, faalse along,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have disbanded NASA just there. But she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: never mind. Actually could your son? Who Again, this is
Speaker 2: an anti Curst rule show, but like some I would
Speaker 2: not let my young child in the car with an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old who had just been in a very
Speaker 2: dangerous car chase. Agree. I don't think that's good parenting.
Speaker 1: I think no.
Speaker 2: But that's where Joe Fowler has me beat. I just
Speaker 2: like she's playing a game of chess. I'm not well.
Speaker 2: She's amazing, she's trying to have it all. She's a
Speaker 2: woman in stem it's hard to have the director of NASA.
Speaker 2: She's got to got a little moon.
Speaker 1: She's a mom. She's just trying to make it all work.
Speaker 2: You know, her ex husband can't get out of that
Speaker 2: weird room in Colorado he's in anymore than Michael Payna
Speaker 2: can get out of the weird room he's in in Aspen,
Speaker 2: which is also in Colorado. They're already in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why are they going elsewhere in Colorado?
Speaker 2: They're all in Colorado.
Speaker 1: So confusing. Okay, So they're waiting for the Moon to
Speaker 1: position itself so that the gravity because somehow, because even
Speaker 1: though the Moon is smaller than Earth, the Moon's gravity
Speaker 1: is strong, and so it's gonna pull the spaceship up
Speaker 1: to the Moon. Maybe that's real science. I don't I'm
Speaker 1: not a I'm not a person in stem. I think
Speaker 1: we can safely say no. But if listeners have dissenting
Speaker 1: opinions and this act comes together quite beautifully, please let
Speaker 1: us know. Okay, So their plans to go into space
Speaker 1: to the Moon are going to move forward. Meanwhile, Sonny,
Speaker 1: little Jimmy, and then this woman Michelle, who we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, played by Kelly You. She is Jimmy's nanny,
Speaker 1: although sometimes it seems like she is Joe's girlfriend also,
Speaker 1: but yes, but no, but yes, but no.
Speaker 2: She's also an exchange student. I don't even know why
Speaker 2: they mentioned that.
Speaker 1: She loudly blurts it out.
Speaker 2: People people did that sometimes I just am like, I'm
Speaker 2: from massive choosett Like you just can't your place of
Speaker 2: origin and occupation. It's just yes, human nature.
Speaker 1: So true. Okay, So the three of them get in
Speaker 1: a truck with sunny driving and they head to you
Speaker 1: guessed it, call Colorado. Sure, they have to outrun a
Speaker 1: huge gravity wave of water that's coming from the ocean.
Speaker 1: They drive for a while, then some hijackers steal their truck,
Speaker 1: so they set off on foot. Yeah, in the middle
Speaker 1: of winter, presum it seems like, because it's snowing.
Speaker 2: And and to be clear, the carjackers, what we know
Speaker 2: about them is that they're.
Speaker 1: They're they're poor, Yeah, and therefore scary violence trust them.
Speaker 1: Right then chunks of the moon start barreling down around them. Sure,
Speaker 1: Back in space, Brian, Joe and Case set a trap
Speaker 1: for the evil nanotechnology monster swarm thing, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: take the bait, so the astronauts decide to take a
Speaker 1: smaller space vessel inside of the Moon. They discover that,
Speaker 1: sure enough, it is a megastructure, and they're like, whoa, so.
Speaker 2: Which means the moon is hollow. The moon is fake.
Speaker 2: The moon landing was fake. Elon Musk is awesome that yes,
Speaker 2: I never Yeah, well whatever, I don't. I can't think
Speaker 2: about Elon Musk anymore today. On our joke episode, Sorry.
Speaker 1: What wait, Genie, what what?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry? I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Happy aprifolds everyone. Okay, Back on Earth, Sonny, Jimmy, and
Speaker 1: Michelle link up with Brenda and Tom. They have to
Speaker 1: go find some oxygen tanks because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the Earth is running out of breathable air. The hijackers
Speaker 1: from earlier show up with guns, and so they're hassling
Speaker 1: Sonny and friends, but they're able to get away, and
Speaker 1: there's a chase and blah blah blah elsewhere in Colorado. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the military is about to launch a nuclear attack at
Speaker 1: the Moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I do appreciate is repeatedly referred to as
Speaker 2: nuking the Moon. That's the kind of disaster movie shorthand
Speaker 2: I show up to hear in the movie noona Moonfall
Speaker 2: is that if halle Berry isn't expeditious in getting the
Speaker 2: Moon saved or exposing the Moon, or whatever the hell
Speaker 2: it is she's supposed to be doing, they're gonna nuke
Speaker 2: the moon.
Speaker 1: Nuke the moon. Yeah, that's a tagline if I've ever
Speaker 1: heard one.
Speaker 2: Now, that's what I call steaks. They're gonna nuke the moon,
Speaker 2: all right, we better get moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and really they do because Brian, Joe, and Casey
Speaker 1: are good so fast. They're still inside the Hollow Moon
Speaker 1: Mega structure, where the swarm of nanobots start to go
Speaker 1: after them, but then something seems to save them and
Speaker 1: kind of pull their spaceship to safety. Brian, who has
Speaker 1: gotten separated from the other two, finds himself in a
Speaker 1: room a plot void, a plot void with the Moon's
Speaker 1: operating system, which has taken the form of Sonny when
Speaker 1: he was a little son when he hated New Jersey,
Speaker 1: hated New Jersey. And this is something that the movie
Speaker 1: Moonfall seems to have lifted directly from the movie Contact,
Speaker 1: because do you remember at the end of that movie
Speaker 1: when Jodie Foster is like talking to the alien and
Speaker 1: it takes the form of her father and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a form that will be easier to communicate
Speaker 1: with you. In Moonfall does the same exact thing, except
Speaker 1: for its except it's sunny.
Speaker 2: Except it doesn't work. Yeah, it is very confusing this movie. Again,
Speaker 2: I think probably politically it falls on its attitude toward
Speaker 2: I just think because attitudes towards Ai have changed and clarified,
Speaker 2: and I include myself in this too, where like I
Speaker 2: think in twenty twenty two, I don't know how many
Speaker 2: like cogent thoughts I had on Ai other than I
Speaker 2: don't like it. So I wasn't shocked to see a
Speaker 2: sort of bizarre, incoherent view on Ai.
Speaker 1: It's just so coherent.
Speaker 2: It's really confusing because it does seem to be basically
Speaker 2: anti but.
Speaker 1: Except for when it's pro Ai in the movie, right,
Speaker 1: not decide where it lands on Ai.
Speaker 2: Because they're like, because of Ai, well this is what Okay,
Speaker 2: so this is actually going in sequence, Like we learn
Speaker 2: in the plot void that due to Ai there was
Speaker 2: an amazing Utope. Yeah, so AI was good, but then
Speaker 2: AI became sentient, and then AI was bad and now
Speaker 2: there's two. It reminded me a lot of I Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: where you find out deep into the movie there's a
Speaker 2: war between demons and gargoyles, and you're like, there's a
Speaker 2: war between demons and gargoyles. It feels like that, except
Speaker 2: there's like a war between two AI.
Speaker 1: There's benevolent AI and evil AI according to this movie.
Speaker 2: So it really does refuse to choose a side as
Speaker 2: to are we pro AI, and they're like, well, we're
Speaker 2: pro the good AI, and we cannot be more specific
Speaker 2: about what that means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, correct, Yeah, yeah, we can talk more about that, but.
Speaker 2: I really don't want to. But okay, but we can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I suppose we don't have to. But
Speaker 1: what happens here in the story is this construct of Sonny,
Speaker 1: This AI manifestation of this little boy explains that billions
Speaker 1: of years ago, the ancestors of humans lived in a
Speaker 1: hyper advanced utopian society.
Speaker 2: That like AI made for them.
Speaker 1: It was either AI made for them or they made
Speaker 1: the AI, but we made.
Speaker 2: It for them, we don't know, or that like maintained
Speaker 2: the world, yeah, it says.
Speaker 1: The movie says that this utopian society was controlled by
Speaker 1: a central self learning computer system aka AI. For a while,
Speaker 1: this went great. Human ancestors expanded and built other planets
Speaker 1: which they lived on. They were like doing space colonialism
Speaker 1: and they yeah, but then one day everything changed when
Speaker 1: the AI became self aware and it turned into this
Speaker 1: warm of evil spiky nanotechnology that we have been seeing
Speaker 1: throughout the movie, and that started a war against all
Speaker 1: biological life. Because of that, the ancestors built structures like
Speaker 1: the Moon, which was operated by benevolent AI to try
Speaker 1: to keep them safe from the evil AI, and they
Speaker 1: would send these megastructures to various solar systems looking for
Speaker 1: a new place to inhabit, and one of them being
Speaker 1: our moon. So the Moon gets shot off to our
Speaker 1: solar system. But meanwhile, the evil AI killed all of
Speaker 1: the ancestors. So now it was up to the Moon
Speaker 1: to create Earth from space dust, and it gives birth
Speaker 1: to the Earth, and it puts the DNA for humans
Speaker 1: onto Earth so that humans would eventually evolve.
Speaker 2: I guess I got to my eyes glazed over when
Speaker 2: I heard it in the movie, and I my eyes
Speaker 2: glazed over. Just now, I have no idea what the
Speaker 2: hell happened in that plot. Void they were like like
Speaker 2: to me, my takeaway was like, Okay, so there's a
Speaker 2: war between demons and gargoyles basically pretty much, and both
Speaker 2: sides sound bad, but for some reason, we're on the
Speaker 2: side of gargoyles. Yeah. Using my big I Frankenstein brain,
Speaker 2: I think I was able to basically get there, but
Speaker 2: the AI messaging was completely incoherent, nonsensical, could mean I mean,
Speaker 2: like I think a lot of movies that are trying
Speaker 2: to make a ton of money globally, the messages that
Speaker 2: are supposed to be specific are extremely vague, so that
Speaker 2: they could mean anything to anyone in the hopes that
Speaker 2: everyone will like this movie. And what sometimes happens is
Speaker 2: no one likes it.
Speaker 1: Not us, though we love us.
Speaker 2: We're geniuses. Yeah, we understood that in the War of
Speaker 2: Demons versus Gargoyles, we were of course siding with gargoyles.
Speaker 1: Gargoles. No, but I know what you mean. There were
Speaker 1: several so I watched this movie twice to prep for
Speaker 1: the episode, as I always do. There were specific moments,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're like trying to watch a movie
Speaker 1: or like read a book as you're falling asleep, and
Speaker 1: then you fall asleep at the same exact moment, but
Speaker 1: then you kind of wake up and you rewind because
Speaker 1: you missed it, and then you watch it again and
Speaker 1: then you fall asleep at the same exact moment again.
Speaker 1: This kept happening. While I was watching this movie. I
Speaker 1: would just black out sometimes during specific moments.
Speaker 2: I'm really proud of you that, for our sorry listeners,
Speaker 2: our April Fools episode, which is supposed to be a
Speaker 2: lightlift for us at the show, that you have taken
Speaker 2: it upon yourself to fully understand what happens in this movie,
Speaker 2: because I was like, there's no First of all, with
Speaker 2: all due respect to our listeners, there was no chance
Speaker 2: in hell. I was watching this a second time, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I did rewatch certain scenes to be like, oh my god, wait.
Speaker 2: I totally stopped paying attention in the middle of that
Speaker 2: because it was so confusing and like bizarre. So I
Speaker 2: would like, go, you know, try to keep pace with it.
Speaker 2: But it was like certain sequences like this, I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's not gonna happen. Yeah, Like, ah, I have no
Speaker 2: fucking clue.
Speaker 1: It's utter nonsense. I had to like really force myself.
Speaker 1: I had to like pry my eyes open Clockwork Orange
Speaker 1: style at certain points because I was like, wait, what happens.
Speaker 2: That's sort of like what it feels like with this
Speaker 2: movie and the concept of going to Colorado. You're being
Speaker 2: Clockwork Orange into going to Colorado, the only safe place
Speaker 2: that exist on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Okay, So the movie is pretty close to
Speaker 1: being done. Wait, no, I have like so many more
Speaker 1: paragraphs of this recap changing.
Speaker 8: No, Actually a lot of stuff happens at the end,
Speaker 8: but it's like staged in such an abrupt and boring
Speaker 8: I'm kind of dropping the premise of our April Foll's episode,
Speaker 8: but it's like it's staged in such.
Speaker 2: An abrupt and boring way that you kind of forget
Speaker 2: how much happens in comparison to how interesting it is
Speaker 2: to watch and take in.
Speaker 1: So true, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Sunny.
Speaker 1: The benevolent AI construct explains that they need a human
Speaker 1: to lure the evil AI swarm away from the Moon's
Speaker 1: power core or something which is destroying and that's why
Speaker 1: the Moon is veering off course. They need to destroy
Speaker 1: the AI swarm so that the Moon can return to
Speaker 1: its original orbit, and it's up to Brian and friends
Speaker 1: to do this because for some reason, the super technologically
Speaker 1: advanced Moon doesn't have the technology to save itself. Sure,
Speaker 1: and so Brian, who by the way, has Moon Jedi
Speaker 1: powers now and just can open doors with the wave
Speaker 1: of his hand. Doug Caln sorry sorry, he, Joe and
Speaker 1: Casey get into their once broken spaceship that the moon fixed. Okay,
Speaker 1: to destroy the AI swarm. We cut back to Earth
Speaker 1: where Sunny and company are walking to whatever part of
Speaker 1: Colorado has the military bunker where Doug is. Oh, Doug,
Speaker 1: by the way, uh huh that's her ex husband. Who
Speaker 1: oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Some point they just say the name Doug. And then
Speaker 2: the guy who is always like, I love talking to
Speaker 2: my son on the phone. He's in first grade, like
Speaker 2: Doug a weird guy, a weird, weird guy, but like
Speaker 2: but slayh you know, good for Doug, but good for him?
Speaker 2: Why not? So I look at Dog, I say why not?
Speaker 2: Why not him?
Speaker 1: Okay? Now the Earth is almost out of air, all
Speaker 1: the air leaked out while the Moon was falling into it.
Speaker 1: Oh God, and Michael Penia suffocates and he fucking croaks.
Speaker 2: He I really, and with all due respect to those
Speaker 2: who have lost a loved one in this manner, yes, because.
Speaker 1: Of this manner being the Moon falling into the Earth,
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 2: It really is implied that Michael Penia is among a
Speaker 2: maximum of ten casualties in this mass disaster. And it
Speaker 2: really I've never seen a death that you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's what the word keel over me and.
Speaker 7: He he just kind of falls to the side, and yeah,
Speaker 7: rough rough break from Michael Pina in this one, because
Speaker 7: you're just like, what is going on?
Speaker 2: Like what am I looking at? And the answer is,
Speaker 2: don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Don't even worry about it.
Speaker 2: I don't worry about it. I just did this. Let
Speaker 2: people enjoy things, just kidding. Please don't let people enjoy things.
Speaker 2: This sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't don't like what I mean here, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: what I'll say about Moonfall. Please say it.
Speaker 2: Someone has to. As much as this movie blows ass
Speaker 2: in a feminist way.
Speaker 9: In a feminist way, women.
Speaker 2: Can blow ass to or something I do kind of love.
Speaker 1: It's what it's. Moonfall to Me is as I Frankenstein
Speaker 1: is to you.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, fair enough, I I Frankenstein to me is
Speaker 2: the perfect bad movie because at least it focuses on
Speaker 2: one confusing guy and not twenty confusing guys. Sure, and
Speaker 2: say what you will about Adam Frankenstein and I let's
Speaker 2: forget that is his name. We know who this guy is.
Speaker 2: He just is the fucking weirdest guy to ever live.
Speaker 2: For a thing, how it is incredible, just thinking, Wow,
Speaker 2: there are so many ways that you could portray two
Speaker 2: hundred years passing, but the way I Frankenstein does it
Speaker 2: is the best, which is just Aaron Eckhart swinging nunchucks
Speaker 2: at the top of a mountain, and then it fades.
Speaker 2: His outfit changes and all of a sudden, it's twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets a haircut, and it's two hundred years later.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, some would say that I Frankenstein walked
Speaker 1: so that Ghirrimo del Toro's Frankenstein could run.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that. That's so true. Yeah, that's so true. Okay,
Speaker 2: So so yeah, Michael Panya keels over and dies. This
Speaker 2: I will say, Patrick Wilson shortly will have really no, no, actually,
Speaker 2: there is an iconic scene at the end where they
Speaker 2: all meet at the tip of the Chrysler building. Very
Speaker 2: unclear where this actually is.
Speaker 1: No, this is still in Colorado.
Speaker 2: They're still in Colorado, okay, because they theoretically, I don't
Speaker 2: know how they would have gotten out of Colorado. But
Speaker 2: they they all meet up and then they just sort
Speaker 2: of state what their relationships to each other are at
Speaker 2: the end of the movie, much like they did going Okay,
Speaker 2: so this guy died. Oh that's sad. This guy died.
Speaker 2: Oh that's sad. But we're friends, and you're my son,
Speaker 2: and you're my ex wife, and here's oh and here's
Speaker 2: little Jimmy. And my ex husband is nearby but he's
Speaker 2: not here, and we're friends and oh yeah and Kate.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, well we need to talk about how Casey dies.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, let me oh, well, we
Speaker 1: need to get to the climax.
Speaker 2: Of the movie. So what would you say is the
Speaker 2: climax of the movie really?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I think it's pretty I think it's clear.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, No, I'm sorry, I'm being a bitch, bitche
Speaker 2: Sorry sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, all right.
Speaker 1: So whatever, Michael Penia dies, Sonny goes looking for him.
Speaker 1: Michelle goes looking for Sonny. Moonchunks are plummeting to the earth.
Speaker 2: He said it like Moonchunks is the name of a character,
Speaker 2: is it not? I think we should write a character
Speaker 2: named moonchunks. But okay, no, sorry, we're back. We're okay.
Speaker 1: So New York City ever heard of it?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Is being ripped apart. The military is minutes away from
Speaker 1: launching their nuclear attack on the Moon. So the steaks
Speaker 1: are higher. The farther the moon falls down, the further
Speaker 1: the stakes rise up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, to the people of Colorado, we're really not
Speaker 2: sure we're going out outside of Colorado elsewhere. We don't
Speaker 2: give a shitla freak it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So back inside of the moon, Brian in front,
Speaker 1: and let's just pause for a minute to really reflect.
Speaker 2: I'm not laughing, Sorry, that was rude to that.
Speaker 1: Statement of being inside of the moon. Brian and friends
Speaker 1: are flying around in their ship. The evil AI swarm
Speaker 1: is chasing it. Brian reveals his plan that he is
Speaker 1: going to act as bait and sacrifice himself to destroy
Speaker 1: the swarm, but Casey is like, no, I will be
Speaker 1: the one to sacrifice myself. And I have a whole
Speaker 1: spiel on why I think that is. We'll get to it.
Speaker 2: But caitlinus are even two hours in this episode. How
Speaker 2: much are we going to talk about it?
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, all right, I'll okay. So the other two
Speaker 1: astronauts on this mission are Brian and Joe. They each
Speaker 1: have a kid. Casey does not have a kid, and
Speaker 1: I feel like the movie basically suggests that it has
Speaker 1: to be him who sacrifices himself and dies because he
Speaker 1: doesn't have any children. Therefore he is quote unquote expendable.
Speaker 1: The only family he has is a mom with Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Well that's also like, right, so he's a caretaker. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's so hard to like because I think I totally agree.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons. But there's also
Speaker 2: this movie is so playing on so many broad tropes
Speaker 2: that it's like so many reasons. I feel like it
Speaker 2: has to do with like, the least famous person in
Speaker 2: the scene has to die, the least Western beauty standards
Speaker 2: attractive person in the scene has to die, the comic
Speaker 2: relief as opposed to the dramatic hero has to die.
Speaker 2: There's like a Jillian tropes at play here, all at once,
Speaker 2: and all of them, unfortunately indicate that John Bradley must die, but.
Speaker 1: But John Tucker must die.
Speaker 2: But but John Bradley does not die. His consciousness is
Speaker 2: melded with the moon and then he's a part of
Speaker 2: the moon. So no, okay, is it is bad. It's
Speaker 2: like playing on every trope and I mean it just
Speaker 2: and and it's playing on a number of fat phobic tropes.
Speaker 2: It's playing on so many tropes are present here, except
Speaker 2: really with our two protagonists, who are so bland that.
Speaker 1: You're like that there's sort of nothing going on.
Speaker 2: There's they're just dead behind the eyes and they don't
Speaker 2: even bother to imply that maybe these and again I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I honestly, this is actually the rare, the
Speaker 2: rare story where I think that having some romantic chemistry
Speaker 2: between these two actors would have helped me them be
Speaker 2: more interesting to watch. Where I know that, like it's
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Cast and we're not like not every like
Speaker 2: man woman pairing needs to be romantically interested. But it's like,
Speaker 2: what is there between these two people. I'm not feeling
Speaker 2: the friendship, I'm not feeling the resentment of the betrayal.
Speaker 2: We might as well just make the hot people kiss,
Speaker 2: but they don't even touch at the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: There's not even a friendly handshake, Like there is nothing
Speaker 2: between these two people. Well, it feels like Arrested Development
Speaker 2: season four. It's like they're not even like in the
Speaker 2: same room together.
Speaker 1: Wow, so true. Well you're forgetting that they have a
Speaker 1: running inside joke about the lyrics.
Speaker 2: About two Totos Africa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is referenced.
Speaker 2: Twice fifteen years apart, and they're like, haha, yes, remember that.
Speaker 2: Remember that he's also referencing the wedding of a failed marriage,
Speaker 2: which I wouldn't necessarily bring up in in front of
Speaker 2: my dear friend, but whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if these two characters had been kind of like
Speaker 1: forced together in a romantic kiss at the end or something,
Speaker 1: I would have been like boo. But also, but it's
Speaker 1: like there's nothing between them, so I'm also like between
Speaker 1: two characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just was like, you know, romantic interest. It
Speaker 2: would have been half asked, it would have been trite,
Speaker 2: it would have been vaguely sexist. Yeah, but it also
Speaker 2: would have been something.
Speaker 1: What happens is nothing, absolutely nothing, including when Casey is like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the one to sacrifice myself and Brian
Speaker 1: and Joe are like, no, stop, Okay, you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, to be fair, they've known this guy,
Speaker 2: they've been allegedly best friends for a decade, and they
Speaker 2: just met this guy. And also, not for nothing, halle
Speaker 2: Berry's character allegedly has an active restraining order against John
Speaker 2: Bradley's character Oh yeah, which is referenced once in Passing,
Speaker 2: but is said basically as a joke. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. They all should have blown up. Honestly, the moon.
Speaker 1: Should have just fallen all the way. Yeah. Okay, So
Speaker 1: back on Earth, Sonny has been trapped under a fallen
Speaker 1: tree because the Moon isn't the only thing that's falling.
Speaker 1: Trees are also falling, and he's lightly dying. And then
Speaker 1: Michelle finds him. But then we cut back to space
Speaker 1: and this is the climax. Casey does the sacrificial act
Speaker 1: of being the human bait and he hits the button
Speaker 1: for the bomb, the electromagnetic pulse thing do and it
Speaker 1: destroys the evil swarm. Back to Earth, Michelle saves Sonny,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly gravity doing the heavy lifting. And talk
Speaker 1: about irony.
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha ha. So yeah, Michael Penya and John
Speaker 2: Bradley are the only ones who die, and honestly, John
Speaker 2: Bradley doesn't die. O. Michael Paya is the only character
Speaker 2: who dies, yes, permanently. Rip. Michael Paya does not become
Speaker 2: one with the Moon.
Speaker 1: No, no, he doesn't. No, sad but true. Okay, we
Speaker 1: cut back to space. Brian has passed out, so Joe
Speaker 1: flies her and Brian back to Earth. So I mean,
Speaker 1: look at all these women saving men. Michelle save Sonny,
Speaker 1: Joe saves Brian, and that's feminism. Then Brian and Joe,
Speaker 1: who have conveniently landed in Colorado, of course, reunite with
Speaker 1: their families. There's a scene when you're just describing where
Speaker 1: they just kind of list all the people that they
Speaker 1: know who have also died.
Speaker 2: They're like, all right, so movie's over. Movie is over.
Speaker 1: The moon is returning to its regular orbit, and then
Speaker 1: we cut back inside the moon where an AI construct
Speaker 1: of k C appears and avoid as well as his
Speaker 1: mom and his cat, whose name is fuzz Aldrin. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: I here's what I wrote down. Of all the attempts
Speaker 1: at comedy in this movie, which there are a lot,
Speaker 1: I think that fuzz Aldrin is maybe the cleverest one.
Speaker 1: And that's saying something because it's like pretty good.
Speaker 2: If true, is what I'll say. But it's because but
Speaker 2: it's because a Lizzie Maguire as joke.
Speaker 1: But but but listen to this. It's because the jokes
Speaker 1: keep falling.
Speaker 9: Flat moonflat moonfall more like joke fall joke flat gravity
Speaker 9: is fucking with the jokes and how they land.
Speaker 2: Ay. But yeah, there, So it's something something His mom
Speaker 2: and his cat appear in the Ai Hollow Moon and
Speaker 2: set up a sequel.
Speaker 1: That will never be produced. Because this movie was produced
Speaker 1: on a budget of one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 2: And independently redependently, which is actually pretty impressive. It isn't
Speaker 2: really speaks to because if you're not familiar, you don't
Speaker 2: remember who Roland Emmerick is. He is a German director
Speaker 2: who is most famous for disaster movies like Independence Day,
Speaker 2: The Day After Tomorrow, twenty twelve, et cetera. And so
Speaker 2: there is a lot of goodwill for him. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he is like a proven talent at you know, at
Speaker 2: making iconic movies that make a lot of money that
Speaker 2: generally glorify the war industrial complex. But so like he
Speaker 2: raised this money independently after it sounds like years in
Speaker 2: development hell on this and in a rarer situation of
Speaker 2: the Hollywood machine being totally correct, he should not have
Speaker 2: made this movie.
Speaker 1: He should not have made this.
Speaker 2: He hasn't made a movie since. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 2: it's really.
Speaker 1: Kind of and and it was a huge flop at
Speaker 1: the box office. It only earned sixty seven million dollars.
Speaker 2: It didn't even come out in Canada. Canada said they
Speaker 2: didn't even bother.
Speaker 1: They said, we our theaters are closed due to COVID
Speaker 1: pass yikes.
Speaker 2: Although I mean, what I will say about Rolodemeric outside
Speaker 2: of Moonfall not being good, it's he he is a
Speaker 2: queer icon. He does have a you know, a pretty
Speaker 2: you know, solid record in terms of his politics, especially
Speaker 2: for someone that's powerful. I mean, he has repeatedly advocated
Speaker 2: for In two of his disaster movies, Independence Day and
Speaker 2: The Day After Tomorrow, there are interracial couples that the
Speaker 2: studios did not want him to have, and in Moonfall
Speaker 2: for some reason, he's like, I don't die either, but well,
Speaker 2: I guess Michael Panya and Brenda. But either way, either way,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, like Roland Ewick seems like a totally
Speaker 2: lovely person.
Speaker 1: Hmmm.
Speaker 2: And also he made Moonfall.
Speaker 1: And he made Moonfall, which I mean, there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot else that we need to spend time talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: there are women in this movie.
Speaker 1: There are one of them is a woman in Stem.
Speaker 2: One of them is a woman in Stem. The rest
Speaker 2: of them are why and girlfriends or acting in a
Speaker 2: maternal acting as mother.
Speaker 1: Their mothers or mother figures or caretakers of some kind,
Speaker 1: including the Moon, who, let's not forget, is the mother
Speaker 1: of the Earth.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in the case of Joe Fowler and the Moon,
Speaker 2: they are liars.
Speaker 1: So they're deceitful. They I'll push back on Joe being
Speaker 1: a liar because.
Speaker 2: She I guess she was gaslt She was.
Speaker 1: Gas lit by NASA, which you know, unsurprising that a
Speaker 1: federal agency of the United States government would be doing
Speaker 1: some fuck shit. And honestly, she doesn't just automatically come
Speaker 1: to a man's defense, and that's actually feminism, So.
Speaker 2: I guess, I don't know. I mean, she and her
Speaker 2: husband are interesting in that. And again it's our April
Speaker 2: Fol's episode, so this isn't going to be the degree
Speaker 2: of analysis he would normally get. But this episode is
Speaker 2: two hours long, so you're welcome. The plot is simply
Speaker 2: that convoluted. Like I think that she NASA has always
Speaker 2: been an interesting branch of the American government, where like
Speaker 2: it is a military industrial complex tool, but I don't
Speaker 2: think it is publicly perceived as being so it has
Speaker 2: been very effectively marketed and I think to some extent,
Speaker 2: I still kind of drink the kool aid on NASA
Speaker 2: of like space exploration is cool, like it's people like
Speaker 2: in my mind, it's people like Elon Musku ruin it
Speaker 2: where they're turning it into colonization and not just learning
Speaker 2: more about the universe that we exist in that is
Speaker 2: very exciting and cool. But here we have and I
Speaker 2: think that this is more effectively done in other role
Speaker 2: in emeric movies like Independence Day, where it almost feels
Speaker 2: like he's like reheating his own nachos a little bit
Speaker 2: of like Okay, so there is like this big industrial
Speaker 2: judicial or whatever executive branch the war Cabinet, and that
Speaker 2: is represented by Doug question marked. And then they are
Speaker 2: the scientists, and they are government scientists, and they are
Speaker 2: patriots and they love America so much, but they're not
Speaker 2: that and it is an interesting sort of tool to
Speaker 2: encourage kind of unquestioning patriotism while seeming counter cultural. I
Speaker 2: think it's like how astronauts are very frequently portrayed in film,
Speaker 2: and we've talked about this in other episodes, but I
Speaker 2: do think it's like an interesting kind of tool that
Speaker 2: is used that is I guess not really worth talking
Speaker 2: about here because it's not effective and it doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. But I was thinking about it because there
Speaker 2: are a few lines that either Patrick Wilson or halle
Speaker 2: Berry say that are like, we're not this, we're scientists,
Speaker 2: and yeah, well, I do think that a lot of
Speaker 2: halle Berry's actions do sort of lightly push back or
Speaker 2: like push back on an idea of the government versus
Speaker 2: what I don't know. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying is like, for sure,
Speaker 2: do I believe that the American government, particularly at present,
Speaker 2: would say We're just gonna nuke the moon? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I feel like it's like whatever, presented in
Speaker 2: a cartoonish way so that we are not to question
Speaker 2: an institution like NASA.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, this movie also does something that a
Speaker 1: lot of other movies that are about a global disaster do.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this on episodes about movies where
Speaker 1: there is a global disaster, but the movie, because it's
Speaker 1: an American Hollywood movie, it will completely center the US
Speaker 1: and act as though the US is the only country
Speaker 1: with people and technology who can figure out what's going on,
Speaker 1: who can handle the disaster that's affecting the whole world.
Speaker 2: Specifically people in the US who live in Colorado, Like
Speaker 2: it is wild how for a movie shot in Montreal,
Speaker 2: which is also very funny given to this movie, I
Speaker 2: will repeat, did not ever come out theatrically in Canada,
Speaker 2: which had to do with COVID restrictions. But I just
Speaker 2: think it's funny that Canada, like you could not have
Speaker 2: seen this movie in Canada if you wanted to. And
Speaker 2: also that this movie came in second place at the
Speaker 2: box office behind Jackass the Jackass reboot, and Jackass made
Speaker 2: three times more money than Moonfall did in this first weekend. Wow,
Speaker 2: it is interesting. I wonder if I don't think there's
Speaker 2: really an appetite for it right now. Disaster movies don't
Speaker 2: tend to perform very well during disastrous times. There is
Speaker 2: not an element of escape. I am not wanting to
Speaker 2: see a disaster movie right now because I could also
Speaker 2: just look outside, I could check the news.
Speaker 1: So very true.
Speaker 2: You know, disaster movies tend to be more commercially successful
Speaker 2: during times historically where they feel more fictional, and that's
Speaker 2: not where we're at historically, and so I was not
Speaker 2: surprised to see that Moonfall did not perform better, which
Speaker 2: is a shame because it is a feminist gem.
Speaker 1: A masterpiece. We've said it before, We'll say it again. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is there is there anything that's like burning in
Speaker 2: your heart that you need to talk to talk about
Speaker 2: with regards to Moonfall? Because I do have notes, but
Speaker 2: I'm also like, I think a lot of them came
Speaker 2: out in the recap.
Speaker 1: Same. I'll just rattle off a few very quick things,
Speaker 1: please fuzz Aldron. There are too many subplots because everyone
Speaker 1: has a sun.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes, I did really like that. When
Speaker 2: Patrick Wilson can no longer be around his son named Sonny,
Speaker 2: they're just like, so, how does Sonny feel about Michael
Speaker 2: Penia And You're like, who cares? No one cares about
Speaker 2: the cares. They just are like, we don't know. It's
Speaker 2: truly like they cannot think of a quality for the
Speaker 2: son named Sunny outside of having a father, so they
Speaker 2: just give him a different one. And there's like one
Speaker 2: scene between them before Michael Penall like suffocates.
Speaker 1: He's like, there's not much time left here on earth
Speaker 1: because the moon is falling into us. Let's not hate
Speaker 1: each other in these last hours and then Sonny is like,
Speaker 1: I don't hate you, and then Michael Penney's characters like
Speaker 1: I'll take it. End of subplot.
Speaker 2: Okay, the lining was thinking of earlier. And again, I
Speaker 2: don't mean to come off anti NASA. I'm obviously not
Speaker 2: anti NASA. I just mean science as a branch of
Speaker 2: government and all the complications they're in. But there's a
Speaker 2: line Patrick Wilson says. W he says, I'm an astronaut,
Speaker 2: not a soldier. Oh yeah, you know. Yeah, that's more
Speaker 2: what I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: Anyways, there's a part where Sonny says, extremely deadpan, oh shit,
Speaker 1: the moon is rising, and then Michelle, also very deadpan,
Speaker 1: says gravity's gonna go crazy.
Speaker 2: Also, we didn't talk about Sonny's gigantic tattoo.
Speaker 1: Wait I didn't even notice it.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. There's a whole joke about it where
Speaker 2: Sonny shows his gigantic tattoo, which I think is supposed
Speaker 2: to be like a Chinese character. And yeah, Michelle says, oh,
Speaker 2: that says the Jonas brothers. And he goes, what because
Speaker 2: this movie was almost certainly written in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: and she's like, just kidding, And then I don't think
Speaker 2: we learned what it actually says. She doesn't so we
Speaker 2: know what it doesn't say, which.
Speaker 1: Is it does not say Jonas brothers.
Speaker 2: Another thing that I had a note of here that
Speaker 2: made me laugh is when the evil people steal Sunny's car,
Speaker 2: they come in with this like weird opening line. I
Speaker 2: think this is when they come back. They come up
Speaker 2: to Sonny and they say the menacing line, so are
Speaker 2: you a college boy?
Speaker 1: Like, okay, well no, here's what happens. He just says,
Speaker 1: everybody calmed down, and then the then the hijackers are like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, smart ass, are you a college boy? And
Speaker 1: it's like he didn't say anything that would indicate literally
Speaker 1: just said can we calm down?
Speaker 2: It was really funny.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Another good moment was Sonny. A lot of things happened
Speaker 2: to Sunny. I would say, Sonny does very little. There's
Speaker 2: and just to make sure you know who this character
Speaker 2: is supposed to be, they do go through the trouble
Speaker 2: of naming her Karen Ye. There's a woman who is
Speaker 2: a neighbor to Michael Pana in this richy, rich ass
Speaker 2: compound neighborhood that has turned into a compound overnight. Due
Speaker 2: to the moon falling. She has an AK forty seven,
Speaker 2: which I think could be a reference to a number
Speaker 2: of things, clearly a riff on the Karen. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: she has a big, gigantic AK forty seven. It almost
Speaker 2: shoots Sonny and then Michael Pania comes out and says, hey, Karen, relaxed, stop.
Speaker 1: Stop shooting my step son.
Speaker 2: I think it's a joke. I don't know, but I
Speaker 2: honestly am not sure. It is never referenced again.
Speaker 1: Well again, the jokes fall flat because joke fall moonfall.
Speaker 2: Also the fact that it's interesting that you reference that
Speaker 2: everyone has perfect reception the whole time. That is true,
Speaker 2: but they also seem to all have Nokia phones. Why
Speaker 2: was that? Oh yeah, no one has like a no
Speaker 2: one has a smartphone. Because I think that maybe maybe
Speaker 2: Roland Emmerick was like, Apple, do you want to give
Speaker 2: me money? And they said no, and he's like, fine,
Speaker 2: then everyone has a Nokia.
Speaker 1: Nokia gave me ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. There are technically daughters, but they
Speaker 2: like you're saying, like like you said earlier, one of
Speaker 2: them says something precocious and that's it, and one of
Speaker 2: them walks away from from a dying Michael Pani.
Speaker 1: She said, fuck you, Dad, that's kind of all that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those characters are very undercooked. Michelle, I would say, is
Speaker 1: one of the most undercooked characters committed to film in
Speaker 1: recent years.
Speaker 2: It takes us for an hour to even know what
Speaker 2: she who does?
Speaker 1: Truly what is she?
Speaker 2: She's an exchange student, so you're like, Okay, she's a student,
Speaker 2: is she?
Speaker 1: But she works full time as a nanny and lives there.
Speaker 1: Does she does she have time to study?
Speaker 2: I'm curious because Roland Emmerick is a queer icon. I'm
Speaker 2: wondering if that was supposed to be a queer relationship
Speaker 2: and then like that was like reversed or something. That
Speaker 2: introduction scene, I just have like it it felt like
Speaker 2: they were together, I know, and obviously Roland Emmerick is like,
Speaker 2: you know, very He's been very involved in queer activism
Speaker 2: over the years. I'm just wondering if like that was
Speaker 2: how it was originally written and then this script kept changing,
Speaker 2: or maybe they were like, oh, we want this movie
Speaker 2: to show everywhere, including wildly homophobic countries, so we're gonna revert.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, her character ends up coming off unbelievably vague,
Speaker 2: and then they give her the worst boyfriend available, I
Speaker 2: mean Sonny, And also what is there? What are how old?
Speaker 2: Like Sonny is supposed to be eighteen, he's eighteen. I
Speaker 2: have some idea how old she's supposed to be, but
Speaker 2: the actor is in her thirties, right.
Speaker 1: I didn't quite pick up on as much. I know that,
Speaker 1: like she saves him and that sometimes is like a
Speaker 1: movie telegraphing and they're gonna end up together. But I
Speaker 1: wasn't getting any like romantic vibes between them, so.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, so this movie is so confusing. I thought
Speaker 2: for sure that was what was intended. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, well again, everything about this movie is confusing and nonsense.
Speaker 1: So honestly, you could interpret anything and it would be
Speaker 1: both exactly right and exactly wrong.
Speaker 2: I like that we've turned on our own episode. That
Speaker 2: was our idea, you know what. When you said it
Speaker 2: at one point and I was like, oh, we should
Speaker 2: have done that for April Fools and you said the
Speaker 2: word trap, I'm like, we should have done trap. That's
Speaker 2: what we should have done. Oh we should do that
Speaker 2: for Father's Day.
Speaker 1: Trap, I mean fathers and daughters, fathers and daughters.
Speaker 2: I love Trap. At that moment, and Trap or Josh
Speaker 2: Hartnett points at the hole in the floor and it's like,
Speaker 2: should we go down there? It makes me laugh so much.
Speaker 2: I love because Trap is about fathers and daughters in
Speaker 2: a meta way, because it's also about m Night China
Speaker 2: trying to make his daughter's career happen, his daughter, his daughter. Anyways,
Speaker 2: do you have anything else to say about Moonfall?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 2: Me either, Oh no.
Speaker 1: I mean probably, but I'm I'm tired.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you all five hundred thousand people who
Speaker 2: requested this episode, five hundred million, five hundred million, which
Speaker 2: again half a billion people portion of our listener. You know,
Speaker 2: if anyone, if any Hollywood power players are listening, can
Speaker 2: someone please utilize Patrick Wilson well, like, just please halle
Speaker 2: Berry and Halle Berry, I just like, these are two
Speaker 2: great actors who have been given dog shit in the
Speaker 2: last decade.
Speaker 1: I feel like halle Berry made Catwoman, and then after
Speaker 1: that she like could not get.
Speaker 2: They blamed it on her. She's still an X Men
Speaker 2: movies after that, but that but yeah, right, and she
Speaker 2: was in Robots.
Speaker 1: But then she was also in was it New Year's
Speaker 1: Eve or Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, wait, let me she was in New
Speaker 2: Year's Eve. She played another episode. I have absolutely no
Speaker 2: recollection of record. She played a character named Nurse.
Speaker 1: Amy, who I think also had a military husband.
Speaker 2: Let her live, leave her alone. Oh my god, all right,
Speaker 2: we gotta get out of here, We gotta get out
Speaker 2: of here. Happy April Fool's Day to all this to
Speaker 2: all the fathers, and Sunny is out there, to all
Speaker 2: the Patrick Wilson's and their Sunnis. This this movie, even
Speaker 2: if it does, does pass the Bechdel test. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: during it does that same where they're definitely not together,
Speaker 2: and it's an employer and an employee having an intimate
Speaker 2: conversation over Sunrise coffee and she.
Speaker 1: Says, here's your black coffee. It has two sugars in.
Speaker 2: It, women's wrongs. It passes the Bechdel test. And that's
Speaker 2: why I'm giving it five nipples.
Speaker 1: I'm giving it five nipples, and I'm giving it five moons.
Speaker 1: And what is a nipple but a moon? And what
Speaker 1: is a moon but a giant sky nipple? What do
Speaker 1: you ever think about that they have the same shape.
Speaker 2: That people are always Yeah, are you ever on a
Speaker 2: romantic day and then someone puts their arm around you
Speaker 2: and says, look at that. That the old nipple in
Speaker 2: the sky.
Speaker 6: Kiss when the moon hits you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I am gonna give it five big sky nipples, and
Speaker 6: I'm going to give them all to Joe Fowler, feminist
Speaker 6: icon I aspire.
Speaker 2: She inspired me to look with an absolute distant, forty
Speaker 2: yard glaze as I watch people I've known for years
Speaker 2: get eaten by nanobots in high resolution.
Speaker 1: It's it's just iconic.
Speaker 2: It's iconic, and that's feminism. And that's our Moonfall episode.
Speaker 2: Happy April Fools to our listeners. If you if you
Speaker 2: enjoyed a silly one, if you enjoyed a looser episode
Speaker 2: but just Caitlin and I, you might enjoy our Patreon
Speaker 2: aka Matreon so True, which is linked in the description
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Speaker 2: episodes on the Matreon or Real Investment.
Speaker 1: You could say, I could say that, and I will
Speaker 1: say it, and you just said it. We just said it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next time with a really serious with.
Speaker 2: A real one. We'll be back next week with the
Speaker 2: normal show. Yeah, love you, Bye bye. The Bechdel Cast
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me,
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 1: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Speaker 1: Lichtermann and.
Speaker 2: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of Them?
Speaker 1: That's me and our logo and merch and all of
Speaker 1: our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever
Speaker 1: heard of her?
Speaker 2: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way,
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